The Great American Dispensary Tour series is backed by Flowhub, a cannabis software company, and is hosted by founder and CEO Kyle Sherman. Produced in collaboration with Emmy-winner Ricki Lake and journalist Jason Kennedy, the travel show is designed to “uncover the human stories behind the nation’s rapidly evolving cannabis industry.”

For Episode 1, “Cannabis is Home in Nevada,” Sherman starts in the place known for its vices: Las Vegas. The 30-minute episode moves from MJBizCon — the industry’s massive annual trade show — to pioneering consumption lounges, dispensaries like Thrive, and extraction labs and grows that keep Vegas shelves stocked.

Then the bus heads eight hours north to Winnemucca, where the veteran-owned Gold Leaf dispensary functions as a small-town community hub in a landscape that feels worlds away from the Strip.

The result is a Nevada that looks far more complex than a simple “Sin City with weed.” The gray area and tough economic environment that cannabis exists in means the scene is always changing — despite cannabis being legal in half of states, and the fact that the industry is valued at an estimated $45 billion. This isn’t an Anthony Bourdain-style show, or full of typical travel insight that makes you want to save every location featured like the coast-to-coast cannabis travel book “Green Scenes” does.

Sherman is tight-lipped about where the bus will take viewers after the Nevada episode. He makes no promises about being an expert in every place he goes for the series, and in the months between filming and the release some places he featured heavily have closed. Still, the show does give viewers a taste of the vibe that can be experienced when cannabis is treated as part of a destination’s draw.

The days of cannabis-curious travelers heading en masse to Colorado or Washington, the first states to legalize adult-use, are over. Most people who live in the US can stay in their hometown for their cannabis experiences, rather than having to head west. Cannabis tourism can be tricky, but the state-by-state differences make the trips worth it for anyone curious (or anyone who just wants to add some cannabis into their existing trip). Mostly because the plant’s federal status means everything sold in a legal state must be grown there, so there are local differences everywhere you go.

“As a cannabis tourist, if you wanted to go experience cannabis in different places and grown in different climates, indoor and outdoor, you have to traverse the states and find different strains and different terpene profiles,” Sherman tells me. “It’s entirely different state to state.”

Nevada is no exception. It has the world’s largest cannabis dispensary with Planet 13, was early in allowing licensed consumption lounges, and has no shortage of things that are fun to do a little higher.

After watching an early preview of the first episode of The Great American Dispensary Tour, I caught up with Sherman over the phone to talk about all things cannabis in Nevada.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Matador Network: Why did you choose Nevada for the first episode?

Kyle Sherman: I think there was something about telling this Nevada story, this being the entertainment epicenter with this big [MJBiz] expo, cannabis lounges. It was fun to make that the first one because everyone knows Las Vegas, but not many people also see outside the Strip and go up to Winnemucca and see this Air Force pilot’s veteran-owned dispensary in the middle of nowhere.

What were some of the things that surprised you about the cannabis scene in Nevada?

You’ve got to go to Winnemucca. I had never heard of Winnemucca before this. It’s an old mining town, and the people are so nice. You’ve got to go check out the Gold Leaf. We realize a lot of people aren’t going to go out of the way on their own, it’s an eight hour drive from from Las Vegas Strip, which is one of the reasons we go to them on the show. This is the stuff most people don’t get to see. But I highly recommend hitting up these dispensaries and areas that are not in the most populated areas.

It’s it’s like going to the small restaurant in the middle of nowhere that’s got a Michelin star. You want to find these off-the-beaten-trail, highly rated dispensaries because you end up finding products that maybe you would have never tried before. You’re working with a a great budtender teaching you what they know about that area. I’m a big fan of visiting these small places.

Obviously, it’s always fun to go to the big destinations. Going to Thrive is amazing. It’s right off the Strip and they’ve got these installations with a zillion products. But there are so many cool small dispensaries and small dispensary experiences that you you can’t get in these big cities. And so some of it’s worth going out of the way for, right? If you’re living the van life or whatever, pop in these small towns. They’re full of great cannabis.

What should visitors know about cannabis in casinos in Nevada?

A really interesting part of the show that kind of came together naturally was this thread of how there’s cigars and cigarettes and drinking happening in these casinos. What about cannabis?

This is where federal legalization comes into play. You start to crisscross all these highly regulated businesses, and one of them is federally illegal still. Probably not a great idea to mix gaming and cannabis.

[Chair of Nevada’s Cannabis Compliance Board] Adriana Guzman Freighic, we interviewed her in Reno and she made a great point: these casinos are doing, you know, X billion dollars a month. Cannabis is doing millions a month, right? It’s just a totally different scale, so never shall the two meet.

We get federal legalization, and I think a lot of things start to look different. We’ve got to get that done.

So, what’s your favorite thing to do in Nevada after you’ve consumed?

For me, it’s going to sleep. Maybe that’s why the casino doesn’t want people consuming — there’d be nobody on the floor after 9 PM.

No it’s always fun to go see a show. There’s some wacky stuff going on in Vegas all the time, you know. The old Vegas by the Golden Nugget — you see these street performers and it makes you think, “Wow, I don’t know where I am right now, but this is this this is what life’s about.” You can spend a whole night out there.