This week, Hudson News stores at more than 50 airports across the United States and Canada began shipping Cannabis Nowmagazine “dedicated to fostering a responsible dialogue about cannabis”.
A new title is joining High Timesa publication that focused more on the recreational aspects of marijuana, which has been available in Hudson stores since the early 1990s but is only carried at a limited number of airports.
“We strive to provide traveling consumers with products and magazines that meet their needs and interests, and cannabis is a hot topic of conversation,” Hope Remoundos, executive vice president of sales and marketing at Hudson Group, told Today in the Sky.
“Twenty-one states have legalized cannabis in some form, while others are awaiting legislation. This title is about the business of cannabis, including the medical benefits,” she said.
Cannabis Now Publisher Eugenio Garcia said the magazine’s appearance in airport stores across the country signals that “mainstream America is ready for a different conversation about cannabis.”
He said that during negotiations with the group, Hudson “was always under the assumption that we would not be featured in the ‘special interest’ section of tattoo and smut magazines. We wanted our magazine to be in the general interest section Vogue and The rolling stone.”
And it is.
“At the end of the day, Hudson Group is a business that wants to sell magazines,” Garcia said, “and selling traditional print media—newspapers or magazines—has been challenged as travelers move to digital devices. But the statistics behind niche or specialty publications show that sales have increased over the last few years and that our magazine is part of a niche that is performing very well.”
Soon, Hudson News stores in airports across the country will also have another specialty magazine, Playboyas well as with general interest magazines.
In October, the publisher of the magazine announced that it would stop publishing pictures of fully naked women starting this spring. Remoundos said this meant the publication would be easier to display in airport shops with similar titles such as GQ, Esquire and Maxim.
Earlier, the airport shops were “blinded”. Playboy cover and exposed the magazine at least four feet from the ground.
Harriet Baskas is a Seattle-based airport and aviation writer and USA TODAY Travel’s “At the Airport” columnist. He is an occasional contributor to Ben Mutzabaugh’s Today in the Sky blog. Follow her on twitter.com/hbaskas.
