Cannabis Tourism: Why Travelers May Face Higher Risks

From Amsterdam and Canada to California, Thailand and Germany, cannabis laws are reshaping tourism. New research linking multiple forms of cannabis consumption with daily use and cannabis use disorder raises another question: Do people experiment more with marijuana when they travel than they would at home?

For decades, Amsterdam was the obvious destination for travelers who wanted to combine marijuana and a vacation. Today, legal or partially legal cannabis markets stretch from Canada and parts of the United States to Uruguay, Malta, Germany and other destinations, while countries including Thailand have discovered how quickly cannabis tourism can develop — and how difficult it can be to control once it does.

An industry is emerging around it, too. There are cannabis tours, farms, tasting experiences, consumption lounges, cannabis-friendly accommodation and specialist travel organizations. Research highlighted by the Pacific Asia Travel Association (PATA) in 2025 found that 39 percent of surveyed travelers were interested in cannabis-related vacation experiences. Perhaps more importantly, nearly a quarter of those interested were not regular cannabis users. That raises a question receiving far less attention than cannabis tourism’s economic potential:

Do people use cannabis differently when they travel — and could vacation experimentation increase health and addiction risks?

New U.S. research makes that question particularly timely.

Researchers led by NYU Langone Health found that cannabis users who consumed the drug through many different methods — smoking, vaping, edibles and other forms — were substantially more likely to consume cannabis daily and to have cannabis use disorder than people whose consumption was concentrated in one form.

The study does not demonstrate that experimenting with cannabis while traveling causes addiction. Nor did it investigate tourism. But its findings matter for destinations because modern cannabis tourism increasingly exposes visitors to exactly this variety of products and consumption methods.

A traveler who normally smokes occasionally at home might encounter gummies, cannabis beverages, vape products or concentrates on vacation. Someone who rarely uses cannabis at all might enter a dispensary simply because doing so has become part of the destination experience.

Cannabis tourism is therefore no longer just a legalization story. It is becoming a tourism, public-health and visitor-management story as well.

Amsterdam demonstrates just how strongly cannabis can influence destination choice.

Research by the City of Amsterdam among young international visitors to its historic centre found that 22 percent named coffeeshops as their main reason for coming to Amsterdam, while 57 percent said coffeeshops played an important or very important role in their decision to visit. Some 72 percent had visited a coffeeshop during their stay.

Those numbers matter because they demonstrate the difference between cannabis use by tourists and actual cannabis tourism.

For some visitors, cannabis is the principal attraction. For others, it is an additional experience — alongside museums, restaurants, nightlife and sightseeing.

And that second group may be particularly important from a public-health perspective. People do things on vacation that they do not necessarily do at home.

Travel temporarily removes many everyday restraints. There may be no work the following morning. Family responsibilities disappear for a week. Social stigma may be lower. Driving can be replaced by public transportation. Travelers are seeking novelty, and activities associated with the destination can acquire an implicit “when in Rome” legitimacy.

Someone who would never seek out marijuana at home might think differently about entering an Amsterdam coffeeshop or a legal dispensary while visiting California.

The PATA findings reinforce that possibility. Almost four in ten travelers surveyed expressed interest in cannabis vacation experiences, yet nearly one-quarter of that interested group were not regular cannabis users. Cannabis shops, sampling rooms, and farms were among the experiences attracting interest.

Cannabis tourism, in other words, does not only attract cannabis users. It can create cannabis users for the duration of a trip. Whether that experimentation stops when the vacation ends is another question entirely.

The new research adds an important dimension to that question. Researchers analyzed data from 17,732 adults who had used cannabis during the previous month, using the 2022–2023 National Survey on Drug Use and Health.

Instead of considering cannabis users as a single group, the researchers examined how different methods of consumption naturally clustered. They identified four broad patterns.

About 48 percent primarily smoked cannabis. Another 21 percent smoked and vaped, while 17 percent predominantly consumed edibles. The remaining 14 percent belonged to what the researchers described as a “polymodal” group: people consuming cannabis through nearly every available method.

The differences between those groups were striking. Approximately half of the polymodal users consumed cannabis every day. That compared with 28 percent among those who mainly smoked, 31 percent among people who smoked and vaped and approximately 13 percent among predominantly edible users.

The same pattern appeared for cannabis use disorder, the clinical term covering problematic cannabis use and addiction.

About 67 percent of polymodal cannabis users had cannabis use disorder, compared with 36 percent among those who primarily smoked, 47 percent among smoking-and-vaping users and 15 percent among predominantly edible users.

Study lead author Omar El-Shahawy of NYU Grossman School of Medicine said the findings suggest that using cannabis in multiple forms may function as a warning sign for heavier use and addiction symptoms.

Senior author Joseph J. Palamar also highlighted another concern: people who smoked cannabis were more likely to smoke cigarettes as well, potentially increasing exposure to combustion-related chemicals.

There are important limitations. The study relied on participants reporting their own cannabis behavior, meaning some consumption may have been underreported. Most importantly, the research was observational.

It cannot establish cause and effect.

People do not necessarily develop cannabis use disorder because they consume cannabis in several different forms. It is equally plausible that people who already consume cannabis heavily are more willing to use multiple products. But for tourism, the association raises a question worth investigating.

Imagine a traveler spending four days in a destination with a mature legal cannabis market. On the first evening, the visitor smokes cannabis. The following day, curiosity leads to a gummy. Later, there is an opportunity to try a vape or cannabis beverage.

That person has suddenly moved across several consumption methods — not because this reflects their normal cannabis behavior, but because vacation has concentrated novelty, availability and opportunity into a short period.

There is currently no evidence from the NYU research that such short-term vacation experimentation produces cannabis use disorder. But the scenario illustrates why tourism researchers and public-health researchers may need to start talking to each other.

Legal cannabis markets increasingly resemble sophisticated consumer markets. Visitors may encounter flower, pre-rolled joints, vapes, oils, gummies, chocolates, beverages, and potent concentrates.

The product itself has diversified. Tourism may provide the environment in which people explore that diversity.

Different methods of cannabis consumption also behave differently. Smoking or vaping generally produces effects relatively quickly. Edibles can take substantially longer.

That creates a familiar problem: an inexperienced consumer eats a cannabis product, feels little immediate effect, and assumes the dose was too small. A second dose is consumed before the first has reached its full effect.

For residents familiar with their local cannabis market, labels, potency and regulations may already be understood. A tourist may have none of that knowledge.

Visitors can be unfamiliar with THC concentrations, local terminology, product sizes, consumption laws, public-transport systems or where to seek medical help.

Cannabis may also be consumed alongside alcohol because tourism and nightlife frequently overlap. Legal access therefore does not necessarily mean informed access.

No city better illustrates the contradictions of cannabis tourism than Amsterdam. Its coffeeshops helped create one of the world’s most recognizable cannabis-tourism destinations. City research confirms their significance as a visitor attraction.

But Amsterdam has increasingly tried to distance itself from an anything-goes tourism image and manage nuisance and overtourism associated with parts of its historic center. The challenge is difficult.

Cannabis tourism generates visitor demand, supports businesses and has become embedded in Amsterdam’s international identity. Yet the same concentration of cannabis, nightlife and international visitors can contribute to behavior that residents and city authorities want to control.

Simply excluding tourists from legal outlets presents another potential problem: demand does not necessarily disappear when legal access disappears.

Amsterdam therefore represents the fundamental cannabis-tourism dilemma: how does a destination regulate an attraction that it simultaneously benefits from and wants to control?

Canada represents a very different model.

Adult-use cannabis is legal nationally, subject to provincial and territorial rules. This means international visitors of legal age can encounter a regulated commercial cannabis market rather than the unusual Dutch coffeeshop model.

But cannabis legality stops abruptly at Canada’s international border. The Canada Border Services Agency’s advice is unusually simple: “Don’t bring it in. Don’t take it out.”

Bringing cannabis across the Canadian border without the appropriate authorization remains a serious criminal offense, regardless of Canada’s domestic legalization. The warning includes products containing THC or CBD. This produces one of cannabis tourism’s strangest contradictions.

A tourist can legally purchase a product while traveling and commit a serious offense by forgetting that the same product is still in a suitcase while crossing the border.

The problem demonstrates why cannabis tourism cannot be treated only as a domestic legalization question. Tourists cross borders. Cannabis laws generally do not.

The United States makes the legal geography even more complicated. Adult recreational cannabis markets operate in numerous states, and destinations including California, Colorado, Nevada, and New York have become closely associated with legal cannabis.

Some jurisdictions have moved beyond retail dispensaries toward consumption lounges and hospitality experiences.

But federal prohibition creates boundaries that travelers can easily misunderstand. A visitor can encounter a product legally in one jurisdiction but face different rules when traveling elsewhere.

For cannabis tourists, “legal” therefore rarely means universally legal throughout a journey. That makes visitor education particularly important.

Germany provides an almost opposite example. Its Cannabis Act permits adults to possess cannabis within specified limits and created non-commercial cultivation associations. But policymakers deliberately designed those associations so that they would not become tourist dispensaries.

Members must be adults and must have had their residence or habitual abode in Germany for at least six months. Associations must also require a minimum membership period of three months. Germany’s Federal Ministry of Health is explicit about the reason: these rules are intended to prevent cross-border drug tourism.

Germany therefore makes a distinction that is often lost in international discussion: Legalizing cannabis for residents is not the same thing as legalizing cannabis tourism.

A country can liberalize possession and cultivation while intentionally preventing a visitor market from emerging.

Thailand provides another lesson. Its liberalization of cannabis produced an extremely visible commercial market, particularly in heavily visited destinations such as Bangkok and Phuket.

Cannabis shops became part of tourist streetscapes with remarkable speed. But Thailand subsequently tightened its approach and shifted policy back toward medical rather than unrestricted recreational use.

Its experience illustrates another difficulty facing governments: once entrepreneurs, visitors and destinations begin building an economy around cannabis, reversing direction becomes more complicated.

Tourism demand can develop faster than national tourism policy.

Cannabis tourism is established enough to have developed its own industry organizations.

The Cannabis Travel Association International (CTAI) describes itself as the global voice of cannabis travel and tourism and works to advance mainstream integration of cannabis-related travel through advocacy, education and networking.

Its members and partners span cannabis businesses as well as tour operators, retailers, transportation companies, hotels, tourism boards, media companies, and other organizations connected with the visitor economy. CTAI says it promotes safe and responsible cannabis travel and industry best practices.

The organization has also run a Cannabis Travel World Fair covering consumption lounges, safe cannabis events, wellness and medical travel, entertainment and other visitor experiences. This is important because it shows that cannabis tourism is evolving from spontaneous tourist behavior into an identifiable travel sector.

In April 2025, CTAI promoted a presentation at the ICBC conference in Berlin specifically titled “Cannabis & Hemp Tourism as an Engine for Growth and Differentiation.” The event cited research estimating the U.S. cannabis travel audience at approximately 72 million people.

Cannabis tourism is therefore no longer just something tourists do. Businesses are actively trying to turn it into a recognizable segment of the global experience economy.

More significant still is the emergence of cannabis inside mainstream destination management.

Destinations International, which represents destination organizations, created a Cannabis & Hemp Task Force to examine the intersection of cannabis, hemp and travel.

Its stated vision is a tourism landscape in which cannabis and hemp can provide authentic, safe and meaningful visitor experiences while producing sustainable economic benefits for destinations. Its work has included developing a toolkit to help destination organizations understand the subject through data, case studies and best practices.

The discussion goes considerably further than simply asking whether cannabis attracts tourists. It asks whether tourism employees understand cannabis regulations, whether frontline hospitality staff need training, how legal cannabis businesses fit into destination strategies and what “best practice” should mean when tourists consume THC.

The task force’s commentary has specifically argued for caution around intoxicating cannabis experiences in the mainstream visitor economy and has raised the idea of lower-dose approaches and non-inhaled options.

That begins to connect cannabis tourism with the questions raised by the new addiction research.

If destinations actively create cannabis experiences for mainstream tourists — including people who are not regular users — responsibility cannot stop at providing legal access. It also involves considering how those visitors consume cannabis once they arrive.

The Pacific Asia Travel Association (PATA) has provided one of the clearest indications that cannabis tourism could extend into mainstream travel.

In a 2025 article presenting findings from MMGY research, PATA reported that 39 percent of travelers were interested in cannabis-related vacation experiences, with particularly strong interest among Gen Z and Millennials. Nearly a quarter of those interested were not regular cannabis users. Cannabis shops, sampling rooms and farms were among the most attractive activities.

That statistic may be one of the most important numbers in the cannabis-tourism debate. It suggests that destinations are not dealing solely with experienced cannabis consumers who happen to travel.

They may also be dealing with travelers who consume because they are traveling. And that distinction has public-health implications.

Here the contrast is striking. Cannabis tourism has specialist associations. Destination organizations are beginning to develop frameworks. PATA has publicized traveler-demand research.

Yet searches of publicly accessible material from UN Tourism, the World Travel & Tourism Council (WTTC) and the European Travel Commission (ETC) do not reveal a comparable dedicated cannabis-tourism policy or substantial standalone research program.

That observation needs an important qualification.

An absence from publicly searchable material does not mean these organizations oppose cannabis tourism, support it, or have never considered it internally.

It means that cannabis has not yet emerged as a prominent standalone subject in their publicly accessible tourism-policy work comparable with topics such as sustainability, accessibility, overtourism and responsible destination development.

That is notable because cannabis tourism sits at the intersection of several subjects these organizations already address: visitor safety, destination management, wellness, regulation, sustainability and responsible tourism.

Cannabis, however, continues to be treated predominantly as a health, drug-policy or criminal-law issue. The tourist can consequently fall between those policy worlds.

This leaves an unusual gap.

- The cannabis industry is developing visitor products.

- Tourists are expressing interest.

- Cannabis travel associations are organizing.

- Destination organizations are beginning to develop strategies.

- National governments are liberalizing, restricting or reversing cannabis laws.

Yet there is still little international consensus about what responsible cannabis tourism should actually mean.

Tourism authorities would not need to advocate legalization in order to address that question. In destinations where tourists already have legal access, practical issues exist whether tourism organizations promote cannabis or not.

- Should visitor-information offices warn travelers about the delayed effects of edibles?

- Should cannabis hospitality businesses receive training comparable with responsible alcohol-service programs?

- How should destinations communicate THC potency to international visitors?

- What should travelers know about combining cannabis and alcohol?

- Should tourism campaigns warn that cannabis legally purchased at a destination may be illegal to carry across a border?

- And should visitors be warned about experimenting with several cannabis consumption methods during a short trip?

One of the greatest risks of cannabis tourism may begin when the holiday ends. A traveler can legally buy cannabis in Canada or parts of the United States, encounter coffeeshops in Amsterdam, and then board a flight to a country where possession of the same substance is treated as a serious criminal offence. The differences are extraordinary. Japan says unauthorized cannabis use or simple possession can bring imprisonment of up to seven years, while Singapore imposes still harsher penalties: cannabis possession can lead to lengthy imprisonment and, at higher quantities, caning, while trafficking, importing or exporting more than 500 grams can be punishable by death.

The death penalty for drug offences also remains legally available in a number of countries, although the drugs, quantities and offences that qualify vary considerably. Harm Reduction International documented new death sentences for drug offences in numerous countries during 2025, including China, Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Laos, Malaysia, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Singapore and Sri Lanka. Cannabis should not be conflated with the drugs involved in every one of those cases, nor should personal possession be confused with trafficking: the legal thresholds differ dramatically. But for international travelers the broader message is stark. Cannabis that is legally purchased during one part of a journey can become illegal — and potentially expose the traveler to extremely severe punishment — after crossing a border.

That makes cross-border cannabis law an especially strong addition to the article. It also gives you another Google/AI-search angle: “countries with strict cannabis laws,” “cannabis laws for tourists,” “can you travel internationally with cannabis,” and “countries with death penalty for cannabis.”

- Do people consume cannabis more frequently on vacation than at home?

- Do occasional users experiment with more forms of cannabis while traveling?

- Do legal cannabis destinations increase consumption among people

Reporting originally appeared via eTurboNews. Read the full source for additional context.