From classes on cooking with cannabis to taste-testing tours at legal marijuana grow-ops, entrepreneurs are banking on an influx of pot tourism in Washington state.
Lawmakers are still hammering out the logistics of legal marijuana – the drug isn’t due to hit state-licensed stores until next year – but that hasn’t stopped residents from dreaming up ways to capitalize on pot’s popularity.
The Canna Law Group is already helping marijuana-oriented businesses navigate new regulatory requirements, and lawyer Hilary Bricken said she’s been pitched on everything from bud bowling alleys to cannabis cruises.
And Bricken believes they’re all potential profit-makers.
“If the right entrepreneurs get involved and they invest, we could be the Amsterdam of the United States,” she said.
Mike Momany has also founded the Washington State Cannabis Tourism Association, a lobbying group that aims to assist the budding marijuana industry and pot-hungry consumers alike.
“In the long run we’re going to see coffee shops, we’re going to see Bud and Breakfasts,” Momany said.
But practicalities of legal marijuana remain in a hazy cloud, as the federal government still prohibits pot.
Momany said a planned event called the Cannabis Corral last month was cancelled on short notice because the venue owner got cold feet.
Washington law also forbids users from toking up in public, though some bars have tried to sidestep the ban. Frankie’s Sports Bar & Grill in the state capital of Olympia has set up a private room for patrons to smoke pot at their leisure.
“I feel that it’s really none of [the government’s] business, that they should stay the hell out of our business,” owner Frank Schnarr told CTV News.
The BB Ranch butcher shop in Seattle’s Pike Place Market, a tourism hotspot, has also drawn attention with pot-fed pork products like “hemp hog.”
The meats won’t get you high, however, and are unlikely to attract federal law enforcement.
Last month, Washington released a first glimpse at how the pot industry will be regulated, including warning labels and extensive tracking protocols to follow marijuana from seed to store. Under the rules, marijuana extracts such as hash will only be sold if infused with another product.
There will be nothing stopping tourists, from Canada and elsewhere, from partaking.
With a report from CTV British Columbia’s Michele Brunoro
