Drug tourism is travel for the purpose of obtaining or using drugs for personal use that are unavailable or illegal in one's home jurisdiction. Drug tourism can be also defined as the phenomenon by which one's travel experience involves the consumption and usage of drugs that are considered to be illegal or illegitimate in either the visited destination or the tourist’s country of origin. This would include crossing a national border to obtain drugs over the counter that are not sold in one's own country, or traveling to another country in order to obtain or use narcotics that are illegal in one's own country, or even traveling from one province/county/state to another in order to buy alcohol or tobacco more easily. Drug tourism to other countries is also popular among college students in the United States younger than 21 who are not yet of the legal drinking age for alcohol purchasing and consumption. Empirical studies show that drug tourism is heterogeneous and might involve either the pursuit of mere pleasure and escapism or a quest for profound and meaningful experiences through the consumption of drugs.

The Black Hills (Pahá Sápa in Lakota, Moʼȯhta-voʼhonáaeva in Cheyenne) are a small, isolated mountain range rising from the Great Plains of North America in western South Dakota and extending into Wyoming, USA.Harney Peak, which rises to 7,244 feet (2,208 m), is the range's highest summit. The Black Hills encompass the Black Hills National Forest and are home to the tallest peaks of continental North America east of the Rockies. The name "Black Hills" is a translation of the Lakota Pahá Sápa. The hills were so-called because of their dark appearance from a distance, as they were covered in trees.

Native Americans have a long history in the Black Hills. After conquering the Cheyenne in 1776, the Lakota took over the territory of the Black Hills, which became central to their culture. In 1868, the U.S. government signed the Fort Laramie Treaty of 1868, exempting the Black Hills from all white settlement forever. However, when European Americans discovered gold there in 1874, as a result of George Armstrong Custer's Black Hills Expedition, erstwhile miners swept into the area in a gold rush. The US government re-assigned the Lakota, against their wishes, to other reservations in western South Dakota. Unlike most of South Dakota, the Black Hills were settled by European Americans primarily from population centers to the west and south of the region, as miners flocked there from earlier gold boom locations in Colorado and Montana.