Included in the law that made cannabis legal in Connecticut was a provision designed to keep smoke away from any businesses. Specifically, businesses are not allowed to create smoking areas inside the building or “within 25 feet of any doorway, operable window or air intake vent.”
The three friends behind the Emerald Lounge saw that restriction not as a barrier but as an opportunity.
“We were aiming to provide something that we saw as a hole in the market, as folks who have partaken in this industry in many different avenues,” said Alex Poulos. “We also wanted to supply something to this new market that we think people need.”
The clean air provisions included in Connecticut’s statutes, and those limiting the sale and possession of cannabis, make cannabis “consumption lounges” almost impossible from a legal perspective. The Emerald Lounge does not get around the law as much as follow it to the letter.
Poulos and his partners in the venture, Noe Lopes and Jeff Marcus, have decked out a trailer to look like a club on the inside, designed to be warm and inviting. There’s wood paneling on the walls, a propane fireplace, lounge chairs and barstools, four televisions and a Bluetooth sound system.
“It is literally like a miniature version of any type of decent, high-end lounge or bar you might walk into anywhere in Manhattan, in Boston, in Hartford, in Stamford,” Lopes said. “You would see something like this anywhere, except we’ve done it inside of a trailer.”
The trailer is brought to private property or, if an event is being held at a venue like a brewery, to the parking lot outside, where the team makes certain it’s parked a minimum of 25 feet away from any doors or windows or vents.
Inside, guests are invited to smoke their own cannabis. No cannabis is sold inside the trailer. If a guest needs help rolling a joint or learning how to use a particular piece of accoutrement, there’s someone on hand to help.
“If someone’s in there and they’re like, ‘Hey, I’ve got this weed, and I’ve only ever smoked out of this glass piece. I have these papers, and I’m curious, can you show me how to roll,’ absolutely, I’ll show you how, or show you how to roll a blunt,” Lopes said.
If a customer would like, the team will hold on to the guests’ stash, as long as it does not exceed the legal limit of 1.5 ounces per person or 5 ounces in a locked container. There’s no alcohol served inside, and the state’s law preventing open alcohol containers creates a natural line between the bar inside the venue and the Emerald Lounge parked outside.
State Department of Consumer Protection spokesperson Kaitlyn Krasselt confirmed that the Emerald Lounge is not breaking any laws, though she said “we just encourage anyone who chooses to participate, to be responsible.”
The trio did get a call from DCP asking for a meeting, which Lopes unexpectedly had to attend without his partners by his side, which he said was “a little bit nerve-wracking.”
“They left me behind. They went on a vacation,” he joked.
Representatives from DCP’s drug control and liquor control divisions, and local police were on hand to make sure everything was above board, Lopes said.
It was a chance, he said, “to be able to sit down with all of them and really lay out some situations, some scenarios, and say, ‘This is how I understand the law,’ and to be able to bounce things back and forth.”
“They basically reinforced everything that my research had shown, that we had found out, and we had believed, so that that was refreshing,” Lopes said.
To their knowledge, the Emerald Lounge is the only service of its kind in Connecticut or Massachusetts. Poulos floated the idea at a cannabis event in Washington D.C. and found nothing of the sort but enthusiasm for the idea.
Since opening earlier this year, there have been a few “minds blown” to find out it’s a completely legal activity. Some older customers, who got used to using cannabis during its prohibition, are particularly surprised.
“This has been so illegal for so long that a lot of people are just slow to kind of wrap their head around the fact that it’s legal to smoke marijuana,” Lopes said. “I can talk to people about this, like I talk to people about having a drink. Some people are still very weird about that.”
