Has legalization of recreational cannabis made Canada a destination for pot pilgrimage?

One mild afternoon a few weeks ago, out on Queen Street West in flannels, walking my girlfriend’s Dachshund, I was approached by a man with a beseeching look. “Hey there,” he said, a touch of Staten Island in the accent. “Do you know where I can buy some pot?”

Well, sure, I started—you just have to pop in to a dispensary, and there are dispensaries all over… “I thought so, too,” he said. “But somebody told me all the dispensaries are closed.”

 

 

Then I remembered: For reasons too obscure to explain to the bewildered tourist in front of me, exactly around the time cannabis was legalized across Canada last fall, the privately owned, dubiously lawful boutiques that had swarmed downtown Toronto were shuttered. I mumbled something apologetic about having to order the stuff online. The man looked thwarted. “Humph,” he sighed. “I thought weed was supposed to be legal in this country.”

Isn’t it? Speculation about Canada’s cannabis tourism industry—often referred to, somewhat annoyingly, as “canna-tourism”—has been rampant since legalization seemed like even a distant possibility. Pundits predicted we’d become the ultimate destination for the world’s pot pilgrimages, the economy invigorated as an influx of spendthrift travellers descend upon our cities to partake of our wares. Just days after actual legalization, the CBC interviewed Sean Roby, founder of the marijuana-oriented hospitality company, Bud and Breakfast, on what he believes will become a “multi-billion dollar industry.” A former dispensary owner turned tour planner told Toronto’s CityNews he expected cannabis, the “new champagne,” to attract couples for romantic getaways and weed-themed weddings.

“Canada is about to go gaga for ganja,” gushed a British journalist. “Could it be the next big thing for tourism?”

This optimism is backed up by data, more or less. Deloitte recently issued the results of a survey conducted late last year of “current and likely recreational cannabis consumers across the country.” Bearing the intriguing title, A society in transition, an industry ready to bloom, it concludes, basically, that legalized pot is a galactic supernova of moneymaking potential; in the first year after legalization, weed “is expected to generate up to $7.17 billion in total sales.”

Shaman Ferraro, CEO of a cannabis tourism guide called Gocanna, estimates based on this study and others that marijuana could bring another $2 billion into the country from tourist spending alone.

It could all happen: Canada’s major cities could become so many Amsterdams. Ontario cannabis is now available at retail. By funny coincidence, the first brick-and-mortar cannabis dispensary in Toronto opened its doors on the morning of April 1, almost exactly where that frustrated American had asked me for pot weeks before. Another shop in Toronto has since opened.

It could all happen: Canada’s major cities could become so many Amsterdams.

Other provinces offer easier access to tourists. Alberta and British Columbia have been opening stores regularly for the last six months. A visitor hitting the Maritimes from, say, New England, would have no shortage of legal marijuana to smoke. There are 20 retailers across New Brunswick. In Nova Scotia, you can buy weed in liquor stores, secure behind partitions in dedicated aisles.

The problem is that, in many of these places, visitors have nowhere to smoke what they buy in public—whether in parks, on sidewalks, or in a vehicle, parked or moving. (This goes for vaping, too.) Smoking at hotels is fine, except that most major chains ban lighting up of any kind on their properties, in rooms or common areas. So you’re out of luck, unless you manage to book a rare “420-friendly” room. Smoking indoors, at a bar or restaurant, on covered patios, or “entertainment locations” such as concert halls or arenas, is also prohibited by municipal bylaw in practically every city across the country.

We have allowed, perhaps reluctantly, for weed to be sold in Canada. We are still not sure where we want it to be used. This makes the purchase and consumption of marijuana complicated and bit unwieldy for Canadians. For visitors to Canada, the confusion makes it nearly impossible. And of course navigating all this would be a lot easier if you had a tour guide to help.

Canadian Kush Tours—an aptly named hospitality venture that has been in the news a great deal since October—will pick you up from the airport in Toronto and whisk you to a vaping lounge (which technically qualify as “research centres” under the Smoke-Free Ontario Act, and thanks to this loophole allow vaping indoors). You can ride in a Hummer limousine for $800. A package called “The Romantic” offers only a regular limo, but throws in “a chef prepared meal for 2” [sic] for $750. Several other businesses offering similar tours and services at similar prices can be found online.

These enterprises so far tend toward the gimmicky. The major players in the hospitality business, the Hiltons and the Marriotts, seem uninterested in capitalizing on the new laws around recreational cannabis for the time being, and their absence from the market makes the canna-tourism industry feel a little niche. In lieu of any streamlined, mainstream tour packages or travel programs, weed-inclined visitors to Canada will instead find a number of boutique services geared towards sightseeing while high.

At Canada High Tours, you can hire local guides to show you around Toronto’s Kensington Market, Sugar Beach or (fittingly) High Park, though the company’s website advises would-be customers that if they wish to light up, they must provide their own green. In Ottawa, $50 an hour will get you a Graffiti Tour of the Glebe.

Other outfits across the country offer guided visits to local dispensaries, walking excursions on trails and through provincial parks, and various culinary and athletic activities meant to be done after consuming cannabis, including eating gourmet meals, yoga classes and rounds of golf. (It can be hard to tell whether any of these services are actually popular with tourists, as few have reviews on Facebook or TripAdvisor, yet.)

A handful of upstart tour groups seizing the moment have also made available some rather lavish escapades. Vice Magazine, earlier this year, reported on the luxury “high hiking” experiences offered by Victoria’s Butiq Escapes, which involve travel by private jet and cost upwards of $12,000. Such curios and novelties make for colourful copy, but again, this is hardly intended for the mainstream traveller.

Cannabis tours of the more modest kind do steady business south of the border. California legalized marijuana in 2016, and in San Francisco, in keeping with the spirit of the city, one can enjoy a Ganja Goddess Getaway, a weekend retreat for women that includes yoga and spa treatments with a side of herb. In Colorado, where recreational marijuana has been legal for the last five years, visitors can hire Denver’s 420 Airport Pickup, which does what it sounds like, or, on the ground, commission Mile High Limo Tours.

In Amsterdam, tourists flock to “coffeeshops,” which is what the Dutch call cafes that sell marijuana. But their prevalence is not only a matter of long-established taste and citywide infrastructure—hundreds of independent businesses cultivated over a period of decades—it’s also, in a broader sense, a matter of philosophy. Coffeeshops are part of the local culture, and offer a unique, regional experience. If the point of going to Amsterdam was simply to get high, nobody would go; it’s easy, even in countries where it’s illegal, to get high at home. You go to Amsterdam to smoke because smoking in Amsterdam is specifically, inimitably cool.

In Amsterdam, tourists flock to “coffeeshops,” which is what the Dutch call cafes that sell marijuana.

There’s too much to lose to let pot languish behind closed doors in Canada for long. What we need for the future—if Canada is to become the Mecca for marijuana many seem to want it to be—is a change in the culture to match the change in law.

Legality on its own is not a sure-fire condition of a robust tourist trade: cannabis has been legal in Uruguay for years, but most people are not even aware of it, let alone enticed to summer in Montevideo en masse. A 2015 study showed only four per cent of visitors over the age of 25 came to Colorado expressly for the pot and bought some while visiting.

If Canada expects to draw tourists on account of cannabis, we need to accommodate, facilitate, even (I know it sounds alarming) encourage it: we need to make it easy to buy pot, easy to smoke pot and, above all, easy to understand where pot fits in to the cultural landscape.

This seems pretty reasonable. After all, isn’t marijuana supposed to be legal in this country?