First seen in Washington City Paper.
As Maryland and Virginia compete on price, D.C.’s medical dispensaries are betting on the experience—hosting comedy shows, yoga classes, and a place to actually smoke what you buy.
An alternative to D.C.’s alcohol–soaked social scene is quietly growing in the city’s newly expanded medical cannabis market: weed lounges and summer gardens. At Bluntsluts’ “Giggle Room” or Higher Ground’s summer garden and lounge, registered medical cannabis patients can smoke a joint while working on their laptop, laughing through a comedy show, or taking an “elevated” yoga class.
Cannabis lounges are only operating in eight states along with the District, which is the only place in the DMV where people can buy cannabis from a dispensary and legally consume it in a space connected to the store.
A law that went into effect in 2023 expanded the city’s small medical cannabis market by creating new licenses and a pathway for gray-market “gifting” shops to go legal. It also opened up licenses for consumption lounges and “summer gardens” (i.e., outdoor patio spaces).
According to the Alcoholic Beverage and Cannabis Administration, the city has issued four summer garden permits, with two more pending. The agency did not respond to questions about how many indoor cannabis lounges are open or pending. But a City Paper analysis found five open and operating lounges. D.C.’s first, at New Leaf on H Street NE, opened in 2025.
At least two new lounges—plus Bluntsluts’ second location—are set to open before the end of the year, at Firetuned in Dupont Circle and Produce in Mount Vernon Triangle. Ahmed Bush, Produce’s manager, says its forthcoming hub will function more like a coffee shop than a bar. “The lounge will be a communal, upscale, and uplifting type of space with comfortable seating, board games, and high-end paraphernalia provided for patients to use during their experience,” says Bush.
Yemaya’s Lounge, which offers two levels and a summer garden in its Petworth neighborhood, has hosted events built around its five operating pillars: health and wellness, education and training, food and beverage, entertainment, and social impact—including record-expungement events for people harmed by cannabis criminalization. Another lounge in Mount Vernon Square, Don Fuego’s, offers 30-minute rentals for patients to use an array of high-end smoking glass.
D.C. has long had an unofficial cannabis culture built around events at gray-market “I-71” gifting shops, which often hosted local concerts, comedy shows, exercise classes, and other arts events. But recent years of enforcement forced these shops back underground and ended the events. Today, nearly all of the new legal cannabis lounges are owned by legacy gifting shops that transitioned to the legal market—and they’re carrying on the tradition of cannabis gatherings with them.
Permits for indoor and outdoor lounges must be approved by the local Advisory Neighborhood Commission and follow city guidelines, including requirements for improved ventilation systems. No alcohol or tobacco consumption is allowed, and all products must be purchased from the medical dispensary hosting the lounge—no bring-your-own. To enter, people 21 and over can self-register as a D.C. medical patient on-site (which typically takes less than 10 minutes) or show an existing medical card from D.C. or another state.
Lounges are not yet serving food, but that’s in the works at Higher Ground in Ivy City, according to general manager Robbie Martin.
Since opening its summer garden and lounge more than five months ago, Higher Ground has hosted dozens of events—from forums on psychedelic and cannabis policy to a Father’s Day infused wing buffet. Higher Ground also hosted the launch party for Pink Fox’s High20, the first legal THC drink made in D.C.
Higher Ground operates like a true bar, where patients can order a product from a budtender, then sit inside or on an outdoor patio to consume it. Other large lounges, like Bluntsluts’ Adams Morgan location, offer indoor space for up to 60 people. Bluntsluts’ second location is scheduled to open on Capitol Hill in October and will offer a mid-century vibe for up to 40 people, according to Juan Duran, who owns the company with his girlfriend, Shelby Fountain.
“We kind of have to differentiate the brand in some type of way,” says Duran referring to D.C.’s limited market for cannabis products. Though there are more than 60 medical dispensaries in D.C., all must carry products sourced from medical licensed growers and manufacturers within city limits, where there are fewer than a dozen growers and edible makers. He thinks of their lounges as Bluntsluts’ “living room,” physical spaces that cement the brand’s culture and bring people together.
D.C.’s cannabis market continues to face steep regional competition: Maryland’s adult-use dispensaries offer cheaper prices to anyone 21 and over with no medical registration required, and Virginia’s adult-use market is set to launch in 2027. Congress, meanwhile, continues to bar D.C. from launching a full adult-use market of its own. But neither state offers lounges like those in D.C.
“Being able to provide an experience on top of access to cannabis is going to be a big thing for D.C.,” Martin says. These consumption spaces, Martin says, are a way for the medical market to draw in tourists, and Higher Ground’s events have helped boost consistent sales for the dispensary on Okie Street.
“I think—on some level—we all want to create that ‘Amsterdam smoke shop’ vibe,” says Mark Nigab, the owner of Pink Fox. “A place, outside your house, where you can go, roll up, and not worry about offending someone by smoking or getting hassled by cops.”
Nigab doesn’t think cannabis lounges and summer gardens will replace bars, but he believes that the two could maybe even share the same physical space—eventually. He caught a few World Cup games at Higher Ground lounge this past summer. “It is honestly just a great place to smoke,” he says.
Large lounges that can host events are the future of the city’s cannabis scene, Nigab says before adding, “The familiarity of a bar experience, but with cannabis.”
