Maine Takes Another Step Toward Becoming a Marijuana Tourism Destination—But Are We Moving Fast Enough?

Maine’s cannabis tourism program might be hitting its stride. The Office of Marijuana Policy has reached “instant reciprocity” arrangements with 23 states which allow medical cannabis patients from those states to also use their patient cards in Maine. Here’s the announcement from the OMP. Consistent with state law, the visiting qualifying patient can purchase up to 2.5 oz of medical marijuana and marijuana products every 15 days while visiting Maine. 

Adult use tourism will obviously be of a different cloth, since the hope is that it will attract consumers who can’t legally purchase marijuana products in their home state. There is some evidence that Massachusetts’ rec program is attracting New Yorkers, and the hope is that Maine’s program will bring folks from New Hampshire and New York, etc. Of course, in an industry where there’s a massive "first mover" advantage, it’s not clear that Maine will really open the floodgates to adult use marijuana in time to reap many of the benefits that earlier states are seeing.