Local Access is our ongoing series in which notable names in the cannabis community share insider travel tips for doing their hometowns right.
Ethan Zohn has worn plenty of hats over the years: professional soccer player, Survivor winner, cancer survivor, advocate, entrepreneur, inventor, content creator…the list goes on. His latest role? Cannabis tour guide!
As the host of High Times’ Kicking Back, a YouTube travel series that streamed in the summer of 2026, Ethan explored the unique intersection of soccer, cannabis, and local culture in World Cup host cities across the United States.
But while soccer is one of Ethan’s lifelong passions, cannabis wasn’t always part of his world. Growing up in Lexington, Massachusetts, he was an athlete who steered clear of the plant. That changed when he turned to cannabis to help manage the physical and emotional toll of cancer, chemotherapy, radiation, and surgery. “Cannabis is how I got off a daily stack of synthetics, and that turned me into a pretty loud advocate,” he told HighWays Travel.
We tapped the New England native for his insider tips on how cannabis travelers can best explore his home turf—and beyond. Keep reading for his expert insights and recommendations.
Where do you call home?
I grew up in Lexington, Massachusetts. Played pro soccer in Boston, Hawaii, Cape Cod, Israel, and the Zimbabwe Premier League. I’ve lived in New York City, New Hampshire, and Florida, and I’ve been to more than 60 countries.
But home is New England. Sixty-plus countries, and the place that still does it for me is a coastline I could drive in an afternoon.
What‘s your relationship with cannabis?
I sold it before I ever smoked it. 1996, living in Hawaii after college, working the overnight check-in desk at a youth hostel in Waikiki with dyed white-blond surfer hair. I’d never touched the stuff—I was still chasing a pro soccer career and wasn’t about to risk it. But every tourist who walked through that door asked me the same question: where do I get weed? So, ever the entrepreneur, I saved up, bought an ounce for $350, rolled it into joints, and sold them for twenty bucks apiece. I invented the pre-roll. You’re welcome.
I didn’t actually use cannabis until cancer in 2009. During treatment I was on Percocet, Zofran, Xanax, Ambien, Lexapro, Ativan, Adderall—and Marinol, which is synthetic THC. That one broke my brain. Lab-made THC was fine, the plant was illegal. Not one person on my care team could tell me a form or a dose, so I paid a cannabis nurse $250 out of pocket to teach me what my hospital wouldn’t. Now I have a great relationship with the plant and advocate for safe, trusted, guided cannabis use for patients.
What makes New England special?
Compression. Everything is close to everything. You can have coffee on Lexington Battle Green, where the Revolution actually started on April 19th, 1775, and be eating a lobster roll on the water a couple of hours later. Then you’ve got four real seasons, a coastline that changes character every twenty minutes of driving, and about six states stacked into a space most countries would call a province.
And the people. New Englanders have a reputation for being cold. We’re not cold, we’re efficient. It takes a decade to make a friend here, and then that person is your friend forever.
How would you describe New England’s cannabis culture?
People assume the whole region is uniformly progressive because Massachusetts was the first state east of the Mississippi to legalize, back in 2016, with the first stores opening in November 2018. Massachusetts has had legal retail for seven-plus years now, so the market’s mature—real operators, budtenders who actually understand dosing, and a customer base that skews a lot older than people think.
Maine’s got a genuinely great craft scene. New Hampshire is a medical-only island in the middle of it. That border creates a commuter culture: grown adults driving over a state line to buy a tested, labeled, legal product and then driving it home, where possession is a civil fine. Nobody is safer because of that arrangement. But the culture itself isn’t a scene, it’s a utility. That’s my entire argument for national regulation, and you can experience it in New England on a single tank of gas.
What’s one restaurant, café, or food experience every visitor should try?
Lobster rolls, oysters, and clams up the coast. Not one restaurant—the drive. That’s the experience.
Start around Boston, head north, and just keep stopping. The Beach Plum in North Hampton on the New Hampshire seacoast does a foot-long with about twenty ounces of meat and no filler (it’s seasonal, plan ahead). Then cross into Maine to Bite Into Maine in Fort Williams Park, where you’re eating with Portland Head Light right behind you, or Red’s Eats in Wiscasset (if you’ve got the patience for the line), which is legendary.
Maine style is cold with mayo, Connecticut style is warm with butter, and people will fight you about it. The correct answer is both. That’s why it’s a drive and not a lunch.
What’s a place most tourists miss but absolutely shouldn’t?
Can I flip this one? Because the best thing that happened to me this summer was watching it run in reverse. On Kicking Back, I interviewed fans from all 48 teams—48 countries landing in the US, Canada, and Mexico, and a staggering number of them walked into a legal dispensary for the first time in their lives.
Look at Group H: Uruguay, the first country on earth to fully legalize, back in 2013. Spain and its cannabis social clubs. And Saudi Arabia, where there’s no medical or recreational exception of any kind and a foreigner caught with it is looking at prison and deportation. Same group. Same stadiums. Group F drew the Netherlands and its coffeeshops against Japan, which just rewrote a 1948 law to make use a crime and has signaled it may pursue citizens who consume abroad. Morocco is the strangest of all—the Rif Mountains have been one of the world’s great hashish regions for generations, and recreational use is still illegal there; their 2021 law covers medical and industrial only.
So you had fans from countries where this plant can end your life standing in line next to fans from countries where it comes from a pharmacy. It was wild. Crazy fun. It must have been absolutely bonkers for them.
What’s your favorite thing to do after consuming cannabis in New England?
Get outside in New Hampshire in the fall. Edible at home first (public consumption is illegal in all three states and I’m not going to pretend otherwise), then walk. New England in October is already INSANE, and cannabis makes it worse in the best possible way. The trees, in fall, winter, spring and summer. I’ll bring a soccer ball and juggle on the forest floor, which is the closest thing I have to meditation. There were years where I was walking thirty-six laps around a hospital floor just to feel like an athlete. Walking outside under trees is not a small thing to me.
If someone had only 24 hours in New England, how would you tell them to spend it?
I’m going to cheat and send you to Amsterdam. It’s the most clichéd answer in cannabis travel, and I don’t care. It’s a thousand percent worth it, and the city has absolutely everything.
Here’s the day. Rent a bike first thing, before anything else; that’s not a suggestion, it’s how the city works. Start at the Anne Frank House, and book it the second you decide to go—tickets are sold only at annefrank.org, they drop on Tuesdays at 10am Amsterdam time for a date six weeks out, and the good slots are gone in minutes. You will not talk your way in at the door. Come out quiet, walk down Prinsengracht, and eat Dutch pancakes, which are nothing like ours—thin, enormous, savory if you’re brave. Then Museumplein: Pick one of the big ones, Rijksmuseum or Van Gogh, and then go to the Moco, where Dalí hangs a few feet from Banksy and Basquiat, and the whole thing takes an hour.
Midafternoon, coffeeshop. Know the rules: 18-plus, bring ID, five grams max per visit, no tobacco inside, and do not smoke on the street in the Red Light District, Dam, Damrak or Nieuwmarkt—that’s a hundred-euro fine. Then the part nobody does on a one-day trip: Walk your bike onto the free ferry behind Centraal Station and cross to Noord. NDSM Wharf, the old shipyard, covered in graffiti, and see the EYE film museum glowing on the water. Fifteen minutes, costs nothing, totally different city.
Evening is soccer if the fixture gods are kind—Ajax at the Johan Cruijff Arena, and if you’ve never heard a Dutch crowd sing, go. If there’s no match, eat an Indonesian rijsttafel instead, which is twenty small dishes and the best meal in the country. Finish on foot along the canals in the Jordaan, no map, no plan.
Bike, boat, ball, art, food, water. That’s the whole city in a day.
What’s one of the best cannabis destinations you’ve been to in your travels? Why?
Zimbabwe—and not because the weed was good. The weed was horrible. Rust colored. Got you high for about eight minutes and then handed you a headache. The guys rolled it in newspaper. I was playing for the Highlanders in the Zimbabwe Premier League, and that’s where I learned the thing that still drives everything I do: Weed is everywhere. Sixty-plus countries, every single one of them. Zimbabwe, Israel, Argentina, Dallas—doesn’t matter.
Hunting down the local cannabis scene is still my favorite thing to do when I travel. Sourcing it is a different story and not fit for public consumption. Put it this way: I’m good at what I do, and I’ve never been to jail. But that newspaper joint is exactly why I argue for regulation. Not because I want it fancy, but because people deserve to know what’s in the thing they’re putting in their body.
🥊 Quick Hits
☀️ Sunrise or Sunset? Both
🌲 Mountains, beach, desert, or city? NOT THE BEACH!!!! I hate sand because I was forced live in it for 3 seasons of Survivor. I’m a forest, lake guy.
🛺 Plane, train, car, or boat? All of the above…and add a rickshaw in there.
🍫 Edible, flower, beverage, vape, or concentrate? Edible and tincture…but drinks are looking good these days.
🧀 Favorite travel snack? Cheddar Cheese Combos
⛴️ Dream cannabis travel destination? I’m thinking a River Canna Cruise through Europe or a long, slow athletic endeavor.
🇿🇼 Most underrated place you’ve visited? Bulawayo, Zimbabwe, and Loon Pond in Hillsboro, NH.
What are your favorite places for cannabis travel in New England? Share your thoughts in the comments below.
