T.O.’s budding pot tourism industry must overcome hurdles to become lit

Pot tourism could be the next big thing in the Big Smoke.

But the budding bud-based tourism industry in here has barely caused a blip yet.

Less than a year after cannabis was legalized in Canada, growth in new weed-based tourism in a largely smoke-free city once dubbed Toronto the Good is expected to come in fits and starts, according to some local entrepreneurs who have already dipped their toes into what is essentially a niche business.

“As with all new things, we suspect the uptake will be steady and slow to begin with,” said Matt Cronin, the founder and CEO of Canada High Tours. “Normalization needs to take place and stigmas removed. That will take time. Until retail outlets in Toronto become established — we are talking more than the (five) or so initially planned, ‘functioning’ cannabis tourism in volumes will be slow.”

Cannabis tourism is well established in Washington state, where it became legal in 2012, and reportedly shown massive growth in Colorado in the five years since the state legalized cannabis in early 2014. That’s to say nothing of the coffee shops of Amsterdam that have been drawing pot aficionados for decades, despite marijuana technically not being legal.

In Toronto, though, the pot tourism industry hasn’t exactly sprinted out of the gate. the slow start is something Ed Kim of Toronto Toke Tours has seen before south of the border and expected, to the point where he expects to lose money for the first two years of operation.

“The first year of legalization in Colorado was a s*** show,” said Kim. “No one knew what was what, there were no hotels, no support companies. Everyone was kind of winging it. I figure the first year (here) is going to be terrible.

“I think the first year if going to be a lot of pain and growing but also it’s a lot of opportunity. There are a lot of challenges but I do think it’s a growth industry.”

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Those challenges, Kim says, are plenty. At the top of the list is that smoking of any kind is illegal in virtually everywhere indoors, including hotels, bars and limousines.

“You can’t have tourism for cannabis if no hotels will let you smoke inside,” Kim said, noting that cannabis-friendly hotels will be part of the growing industry. “In Colorado, you can smoke on the party buses and limos. Here, you can’t even smoke cigarettes in a limo. That’s an issue, too. The Colorado model is not going to work in Toronto.”

Some websites, like BudandBreakfast.com, have listings for cannabis-friendly rental properties but hotels or Airbnb units that allow customers to spark up aren’t plentiful.

It’s tough to pin down exactly how much business these start-up operations are presently doing — Kim says he has a group of 50 Americans booked for Caribana weekend and others from San Francisco coming to the city for Pride — but it’s clear there is plenty of room for growth.

But these businesses need to let consumers know they exist and rules about the promotion of cannabis are as tight as they are with tobacco products, with marketing essentially prohibited. The penalties are severe, with hefty fines and even the possibility of jail time.

Another roadblock, they say, it that government-run tourism agencies are doing virtually nothing to help an industry that could have an overall financial impact of millions of dollars. Amsterdam, says Neev Tapiero of Canadian Kush Tours, has a lot of information on cannabis available to tourists, appreciating it is part of the overall tourism industry there.

“If you contact Ontario tourism of any government tourism agencies, they have no information on cannabis,” Tapiero said. “There’s very little information for tourists at the government level, the dos and don’ts. (But) legalization is part of the normalization process. As it becomes more normal, it becomes less niche.”