THE BIG BIG BIG OPPORTUNITY IN CANNABIS

Is Welcoming Tourists To Our Fields Of Gold

A LOOK INSIDE THE BUDDING CANNA-TOURISM INDUSTRY.

BY SARA HODGKINSON

The wine industry in Canada is an $11.5-billion-dollar industry. There are 101 wineries in the Niagara Peninsula where tourism regularly tops $2 billion dollars. The area welcomes more than two million wine-related tourists each year. How many people reading KIND have ever taken trips to Amsterdam to smoke weed? How many people could come to Canada as pot tourists if we legalized sales from the vineyards of licensed dispensaries and welcomed tourists into cannabis destinations from Kelowna, British Columbia to the acres of Prince Edward County?

“We offer so much more than your average wine tour,” says Anne Marie Locas of Okanagan Cannabis Tours, a frontline pioneer in offering cannabis trips. By law, her journeys are interactive and educational— no cannabis can be sampled—but Anne Marie has found alternative ways to make her customers feel high. “We sample terpene profiles by heating cannabis to the vaporization point so that folks can learn about how all these aspects of the plant influence the cannabis strain,” she said. “We also offer non-infused versions of products that are sold at the dispensaries we visit, and we have stops along the way where tour members can meet legacy growers who have operated in the region for decades to discuss the history of the land.”

Okanagan Cannabis Tours also delivers patrons to various cannabis farms, where they can speak with the owners, learn what they do and purchase their weed. “We make sure we’re doing everything by the book. No cannabis is consumed in or on the bus or at the farms, but we do stop at some smoke-friendly viewpoints,” she says, with a grin. However, lighting up on the side of the road isn’t ideal, and the people visiting wineries don’t have to conceal their grapes. Anne Marie says her clients tend to be from overseas (Australians seem to be particularly keen) or else are Canadians on their honeymoon or those wanting to take friends and family visiting from out of province to experience something truly unique. But she still believes canna-tourism can be so much more and it’s the same thing bugging Jason Alexander and Kelly Sinclair, who opened Fridays Cannabis in Picton, Ontario, in October of 2020. Their dispensary is designed for locals and tourists alike.

“We started to notice a lot of people were coming in from Toronto, Ottawa, Montreal and Rochester,” said Alexander, adding that it was no accident that the owners picked the small town location for their shop. Picton is in Prince Edward County, a bucolic area about two hours east of Toronto. With its picturesque barns, wineries and beaches, the county has long been a destination for the epicurean city dweller looking for a weekend away. “The cannabis industry has evolved over the last few years,” Alexander says. “When it started it was almost like post-prohibition where people were just happy to have anything, but now I think cannabis tourism can be much more than it currently is.”

As the cannabis industry expands, consumer curiosity and the desire for curated events have grown with it. Both local Canadians and visitors from abroad are looking to engage with cannabis through tours and unique consumption experiences, like the kind held for budtenders by KIND. What used to be a very closed, illegal and tightly knit industry is starting to open up, and consumers worldwide want to be a part of that. Recent years have shown an increase in the number of cannabis-forward tourism companies, albeit with varying levels of success. It helps that many cannabis farms and production sites cropped up in fertile areas already well established in the wine industry, and that wineries and cannabis producers are now piggybacking business off each other as they increasingly find themselves to be neighbours.

Cannabis tourism is of course nothing new, but this is the first time in modern history it can be explored here at home. After five years of legalization, Canada is still the only G7 country to offer federally legalized recreational cannabis. Tourism in Canada, already a $19.5-billion industry, already has the agritourism infrastructure—particularly in wine regions like the Okanagan and Niagara. So what’s holding back booming cannabis tours?

“It’s been so hard to figure out the laws, everything seems to be gray,” says Ian McClatchey, who moved to Prince Edward County in 2021 to open a cannabis catering business called CHC, which provides private dining experiences. He says current cannabis legislation is holding him back. Like many cannabis business owners, he finds the legal requirements constrictive. “When I spoke to my lawyer about opening this business, he warned me that a lot of laws surrounding how I could operate as a cannabis-adjacent business just didn’t exist yet,” says McClatchey. “I’m running a bootstrap business and what I find mystifying is that I don’t even sell cannabis! My customers bring me their own cannabis from legal dispensaries and I turn that into ingestibles which can be added to their private dinners, yet I’m beholden to the same rules as LPs. I’m trying to adhere to the law, but we’re in a precarious situation because everything is so unclear.”

Tourism in Prince Edward Country is a $190-million industry. Experts agree that including cannabis in their tourism options would see that number radically increase. Think dining experiences, educational events, cannabis tours and tourism experiences, and special events like weddings (weddings, especially, could be huge). These limitations surrounding cannabis for special events are particularly frustrating for the team at Fridays in Prince Edward County, who have had to turn away potential clients looking for cannabis at their destination weddings. While special event licenses for alcohol are fairly easy to procure, they are all nearly impossible to access for cannabis dispensers.

“We have had discussions with venues and couples who wanted to have cannabis at their wedding and for us to be involved we’d have to have the bud bar in a separate building or it would have to be an adults-only event,” Kelly said. “These heavy-handed laws are contributing to a stigma surrounding cannabis that should have been done away with a long time ago.”

“People all over the world love coming to Canada and Canadians explore their country everyday. We should do more to help these lovely people get high.”