New Mexico Issues First Social Use License

New Mexico’s first cannabis social use lounge has opened in Las Cruces, KFOX14 reports. The license was granted to Sol Cannabis.

Company co-founder Kwame Ponshock said getting the license is “groundbreaking” for both Sol and the entire state.

“I wanted to have a refuge for people like myself and be able to utilize cannabis in a cannabis friendly zone with other cannabis users gives us a way to adapt and be more public.” – Ponshock to KFOX14

Under the state’s legalization law, public cannabis use can be met with a $50 fine. Ponshock said the lounge gives “a home” to cannabis consumers.

“…It’s exciting for us to be able to spread the joy and love cannabis has brought us,” he said in the report.

Brett Burke, co-owner of Sol, told KVIA that he can “foresee people instead of stopping at the brewery for a beer after work, that they stop by for a cannabis cocktail to wind down before they go home.”

Bria Sargent, a Sol patron, told KFOX14 that sometimes cannabis consumers “feel isolated because alcohol is in everybody’s faces.”

“Now we have something that is medicinal,” she said, “it’s herbal and comes from the earth and we get to actually do our thing.”

Adult-use cannabis sales launched on April 1 and New Mexico saw more than $4.5 million in both adult-use and medical cannabis sales during the opening weekend – nearly 70% of which were from adult-use sales.