There was plenty of weed at the Cannabis Cup celebration last weekend in Denver. Billed as the biggest marijuana party in the world, the Cup is a three-day psychedelic mash-up of counter culture, high technology and entrepreneurship, equal parts Woodstock, SXSW, Comic-Con and Gold Rush.
After the state Marijuana Enforcement Division announced a couple days before the event that businesses with Colorado licenses wouldn’t be allowed to offer free samples, I wondered what the effect might be on the party, since freebies are at least part of the reason more than 40,000 people, many from out of state, are willing to pay $40 a day for tickets and wait for more than an hour just to get in the place.
The freebie ban didn’t apply to outof-state businesses, so the dab and shatter booths immediately attracted long lines. There was no shortage of product and sharing was common. I attended the trade show; elsewhere, there were concerts, 4/20 celebrations, plant and strain competitions and shuttles to take you where you needed to go.
I hadn’t been in the building more than 10 minutes before I found myself staring into the familiar countenance of Keith Stroup, the founder of NORML and one of the most recognizable voices for marijuana reform in the U.S. over the last decades. Stroup was one of those people in the 1970s publicly questioning the “facts” as presented in the wake of the Controlled Substances Act. The Justice Department, for instance, was telling us that cannabis use made people apathetic, unable to concentrate or work, unreliable and stupid. My experience being completely the opposite, watching people like Stroup ask the questions I was seeking answers to was important to helping me begin to understand the travesty that comprises the War on Drugs.
Surprised, the first thing I could blurt out was, “Did you ever actually believe that you would be standing at something called the Cannabis Cup in a state where marijuana is legal in your lifetime?” He smiled and allowed that he did, but wasn’t sure he would live long enough to see it.
We talked a bit about the growing acceptance and continued stigma of marijuana today. “There are now a majority of people in the United States who support marijuana legalization,” he said. “But many of them have a bad opinion of pot smokers themselves. I couldn’t believe the large numbers of people who have a negative impression of people like us.”
I thought about that the rest of the time I was at the Cup, which in itself encapsulates the dichotomy of the marijuana movement in loud, bright colors and bold strokes. Tens of thousands of attendees of every age, stripe and color, almost every one of them smoking joints or vaping, strolled past hundreds of display booths for products and services like Bong Beauties, Magical Butter Bus, Dope Ass Glass, Rare Dankness, Scapegoat Genetics, Gorilla Extracts, Super Smacked, Freakies Smokeshop, Vape Genies, Med Max Nutrients, Ganja Gold, Smoked Out Clothing, Weed Wipes, Fryed and Dyed and Get Shnockered. There were booths of growers, investors, CO2 extractors, herbalists, arborists, mechanical trimmers, plant systems, branding companies, bakers, health products, ointments, lotions, salves, cleaning products, genetics, clothing, social media sites, magazines, even a company offering canine protection.
Every aspect of cannabis culture was on display. Some of the products, like stylish bags and clothes made from hemp, wouldn’t look out of place in any high-end tourist outlet. Still, the ambience reeked of the counter culture from whence NORML and the legalization movement came. Watching Cup antics on television news probably won’t do much to convince the more than 40 percent of Americans who still oppose legalization to change their minds about marijuana users.
There are plenty of people, myself included, who would like to see the image people have of marijuana users move beyond Cheech and Chong comedy sketches, stoner movies and dumbeddown TV characters. The National Cannabis Industry Association, which is lobbying Congress on medical marijuana and banking bills in committee, last month fired Tommy Chong as a celebrity activist for this very reason.
But in the long run, as we have with alcohol, we’ll have to get used to the extremes. Events like last year’s Classically Cannabis series, which paired marijuana with chamber music, certainly helped people see this drug, and its users, in a different light. The Drug Policy Alliance recently released a series of photos through a Creative Commons license that depicts people using cannabis in their homes. Attractive displays of marijuana merchandise — potholders, mugs, cookbooks, flasks, tote bags, coasters and Blundt Cakes — are now requisite in every store on the Pearl Street Mall right alongside the CU and state logo merch.
The Boulder campus was open Monday on April 20 for the first time in three years, and more than 125,000 people attended the Cup and other 4/20 events. Denver police issued 160 potrelated tickets over the weekend, mostly for public-consumption violations.
But perhaps the most positive sign of change came on Sunday night, when @ DenverPolice tweeted this message about the coming 4/20 celebration: “We see you rollin, but we ain’t hatin’ HAHA… Seriously though, #Denver, please remember to #ConsumeResponsibly this 4/20 weekend.”
The reference is to a song by rapper Chamillionaire. But what came through was the attitude: Friendly, not confrontational. And that pretty much defines the weekend of the biggest marijuana party in the world 2015.
You can hear Leland discuss his most recent column and Colorado cannabis issues each Thursday morning on KGNU. http:// news.kgnu.org/weed
