Las Vegas has spent decades perfecting spectacle, so it’s no surprise the city now bills itself—informally, at least—as America’s capital of marijuana attractions. With more than 40.8 million visitors in 2023 and visitation climbing again in 2024, the resort corridor has a built-in audience of curious travelers looking for the next big experience.

What sets Las Vegas apart isn’t just legal access to cannabis, but the way the city wraps that access in theater. Planet 13, often described as the world’s largest cannabis dispensary, feels less like a store and more like a theme park for adults. The 112,000-square-foot superstore pairs an enormous product menu with interactive floor art, LED installations, and behind-glass production views, turning a simple shopping trip into a full-blown attraction that routinely shows up alongside casinos and shows on tourist itineraries.

Just a few minutes away, NuWu Cannabis Marketplace—owned by the Las Vegas Paiute Tribe—leans into scale in its own way. The complex promotes itself as the world’s largest dispensary and offers more than a thousand products, a 24-hour drive-thru, and a cannabis lounge and event space where concerts, comedy nights, and 420-themed fairs share the calendar. For tourists accustomed to quick hotel stops, the idea of a drive-thru dispensary or a tribal-run tasting room is pure “only in Vegas” novelty.

Policy has helped fuel this attraction economy. Nevada regulators approved a new category of cannabis consumption lounges in 2022, creating a pathway for legal on-site use and pushing operators to imagine hospitality-driven spaces rather than simple retail counters. The first state-regulated lounges began opening around the Strip corridor in 2024, adding a new layer to the city’s nightlife portfolio where curated menus, mocktails, and table service replace the traditional bar model.

The story hasn’t been without setbacks. Smoke and Mirrors, the city’s first fully regulated lounge, opened to national attention but later scaled back public hours, highlighting how regulatory costs, bans on alcohol, and competition from unlicensed events can squeeze margins. Yet even critiques of the model reinforce Las Vegas’s position at the center of the conversation: analysts and operators across the country watch closely to see how the market evolves because what works on the Strip often sets a template for cannabis hospitality elsewhere.

Layered on top of all this is Las Vegas itself. Visitors already arrive primed to try something new—whether that’s Formula 1 night racing, a DJ megaclub, or a helicopter flight over the desert. Cannabis attractions simply slot into that mindset. Superstores and lounges market themselves like shows, complete with billboards, social content, and package deals. Tour companies offer dispensary and grow-house tours; concierge desks casually field questions about “the big weed place off the Strip.” In a city built on reinvention, marijuana has become the latest headliner, making Las Vegas the unofficial capital of American cannabis tourism—one immersive experience at a time.