Cannabis tourism: An emerging transformative tourism form
Cannabis tourism emerges as a tourism form whereby tourists consume cannabis while temporarily traveling away from their normal place of work or residence. Since recreational cannabis use is traditionally judged as a deviant behaviour in many societies, it is regarded as a non-institutionalised type of tourism or marginal tourism. However, with the normalisation of cannabis use in societies and its legality being promoted in many jurisdictions across the globe, cannabis tourism has recently been experiencing rapid growth.
Previous studies on cannabis tourism mostly focused on revealing tourists’ motivations or reflecting on the regulation at a specific destination, yet lack insights into the current business practices in various legal environment across countries. Thus, this chapter aims to present an overview of cannabis tourism and legal environments around the world.
It first introduces cannabis uses and applications, classifies different legislative approaches, then describes cannabis tourism and legal environments across key destinations, and finally provides a discussion and concluding remarks. The countries examined include Jamaica in the Caribbean; Netherlands, Denmark, Czech Republic, and Spain in Europe; US and Canada in North America; Uruguay in South America; and Australia in Oceania.
Discussion and recommendation
Cannabis tourism is often overlooked for different reasons, such as social stigmas associated with recreational cannabis use. However, as policies on legalising and regulating cannabis are gaining momentum on the global scale, the worldwide public’s view and awareness of this subject has shifted from demonizing cannabis to understanding and employing it for medical, industrial, and recreational purposes. This results in an increasing need for effective and sustainable management or regulation strategies for businesses and governments to capture the economic opportunities as well as legal and operational challenges associated.
While cannabis commercialisation may bring benefits to the local economy, it should be noted that most of the profits are made on the addicted users, which may pose a threat to public health and the development of cannabis tourism. Jurisdictions developing cannabis tourism should learn from early adopters to employ a ‘harm-reduction’ approach to minimising potential social, civic, and health harms, particularly to protect newborns (i.e., during pregnancy), children, and adolescents where choice is not informed and harms are clear.
Cannabis tourism also shapes and is shaped by the lived cultural, social, and political contexts where it takes place. For instance, cannabis tourism enclaves can be used to examine the destination’s cannabis legalization and escalate the normalisation of cannabis use. Tourists’ distance from the norms and values governing their daily lives also implies potential for incorporating tourist home legal environment in cannabis tourism research and examining tourist behaviours in the holistic context of individuals’ daily lives.
For marketing professionals, promoting existing cannabis tourism offerings or developing related products requires a good appreciation of this form of tourism. A two-stage international segmentation is recommended when structuring the heterogeneity of cannabis tourists and identifying appropriate target segments. This involves grouping markets based on home-destination cannabis legal environments and then classifying individuals based on their consumption motives.
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This research is also available on eprints.