Seattle City Attorney Is Hoping For Pot Lounges

Seattle City Attorney Pete Holmes wants to legalize pot lounges in the city.

Seattle City Attorney Pete Holmes wants to legalize pot lounges in the city.

The idea is part of a much larger plan to align city and state marijuana laws detailed in a 20-page memo released by Holmes.

In his memo, Holmes argues I-502 legalizes marijuana but significantly limits where people can legally smoke it.

Because public use is prohibited, the memo states, "Single family homeowners have a legal place to consume marijuana; others however, such as out-of-town visitors, the homeless, and renters and condominium owners whose buildings do not permit marijuana use, have fewer options."

"You can enforce that law much better if you, at the same time, provide an outlet for that demand," Holmes said.

Under his proposal, the lounges would be open only to those 21 years of age and older, prohibit alcohol, have minimum ventilation requirements, allow smoking only through vaporizers and require customers to bring their own marijuana.

In Colorado, where marijuana is also legal, private cannabis clubs have already opened.

What a cool dude.

I don't really agree with not allowing smoking though, it's ingrained as a part of the culture. Smoking or non-smoking? Just like restaurants back in the day, that's how I think it should be.

The amount of smoke that a large group of pot smokers would produce would be enough that I would stay away. You would never get that smell out of your clothing and the neighborhood would be constantly calling in smell complaints.

I could see going to a vape lounge as I am sure the atmosphere and discussions would be amazing.

Here in Oregon you can't smoke indoors anywhere. Its a great policy. Smoking sections in restaurants and airplanes never worked for me. Somehow I could still smell it . . . A vape lounge would be a great idea. A place with clean vapes you can try, bringing in your own medicine, no alcohol served so no liquor license. It could work. I would call it "Fog" . . .

For years, smoking has been prohibited in pretty much all public indoor places in Washington as well (bars included, even though the tavern industry whined about it prior to the vote saying that it would destroy their businesses -- which it didn't at all). Even though I've never been a cigarette smoker and am totally committed to vaping, I would be willing to tolerate marijuana smoking in a lounge as long as they took the ventilation requirements seriously.

I think the only way they are going to get this passed if there was no smoking. It would have to be strictly vaporizers IMO. That would be a boom to the vaporizer companies.