Traveling For Cannabis: Edibles Most Popular Product, Colorado Favorite Destination

The beginning of 2020 was also the beginning of legal cannabis sales in Illinois, which has become the 11^th state in the U.S. to legalize the recreational use of cannabis.

While medical marijuana is legal across 33 states, 11 states currently allow its residents over the age of 21 to possess certain amounts of cannabis.

Those cannabis enthusiasts who live in states where adult-use cannabis is still illegal are compelled to travel to one of those 11 states with legal cannabis sales. That is if they are looking for legal and controlled products.

AmericanMarijuana.org decided to examine this, surveying more than 1,000 people who had traveled to purchase adult-use cannabis. The study was finalized in December and revealed which states are the most popular cannabis destinations, which products are most popular, and whether consumers take a risk on bringing cannabis souvenirs home.

Colorado As The Most Popular Cannabis Destination

According to the study, the first state to legalize recreational cannabis, Colorado, was the most popular cannabis destination with 52% of people traveling there and making an average of 2.5 trips since legalization. CNBC also reported 25% of people who traveled to Colorado between 2013 and 2018 were traveling because of cannabis.

Taking this into account, it comes as no surprise that the state surpassed $1 billion in total cannabis-related revenue in June, becoming the first in the U.S. to reach that milestone.

California was the second most popular cannabis destination, with almost one-third of respondents traveling there.

Naturally, cannabis destinations and the number of trips mostly depended on a user’s home state, as most of them avoided traveling by plane, especially if they wanted to bring home some souvenirs.

Hence, 57.3% traveled by car, even though taking cannabis to states where it is illegal, is illegal no matter the means of transport you choose.

Interestingly, not all the travelers lived in states where adult-use was illegal, in fact, almost 30% lived in a state where it was legal.

Edibles As A Most Popular Product

In spite of smoking marijuana being considered the most common way of its consumption, this survey showed that 69% who traveled purchased edibles.

Other popular cannabis products were marijuana buds or leaves with 57.1% of travelers buying it, and prewrapped joints, which 38.8% of travelers bought. Around 22.3% also purchased CBD oil.

Most of the travelers spend more money on cannabis products than they planned, or on average $265. But their entire trips to buy cannabis, which also included transport, lodging, food, cost around $980 on average.

Sneaking Souvenirs

Almost 57% of people brought cannabis products to their homes, with weekly users being the most common type of users to do so, slightly ahead of daily and monthly users.

Of those who decided to bring back souvenirs, only 7.2% chose to take a risk by flying them, and almost 1 in 5 people mailed them trying to avoid transportation security.

Among those who didn’t want to take a risk of bringing cannabis home, 56.8% said they chose not to do it because it was illegal in their home state, and 40.2% explained they feared getting caught.