{"id":4081,"date":"2022-02-04T21:18:41","date_gmt":"2022-02-04T21:18:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cannabisnow.com\/?p=58595"},"modified":"2022-02-04T21:18:41","modified_gmt":"2022-02-04T21:18:41","slug":"is-cannabis-legalization-killing-weed-events","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thcinct.com\/?p=4081","title":{"rendered":"Is Cannabis Legalization Killing Weed Events?"},"content":{"rendered":"
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There was plenty of weed at the recent \u201cHarvest Ball,\u201d the first edition of the newly rechristened mid-December cannabis event which was focused on celebrating northern California\u2019s sungrown harvest, formerly known as the Emerald Cup. (The official \u201cEmerald Cup\u201d happens in May in Los Angeles at Green Street Festival.) This non-Emerald Cup was just the \u201croad to the Cup,\u201d if you follow. The only trouble was getting your hands on any weed without burning an hour waiting in line or running afoul of the law.<\/p>\n

The first big cannabis event to happen in California in the COVID-19 era that\u2019s not a business conference, the Harvest Ball was also the first cannabis-consumer forward event to happen under the watchful eye of the new Department of Cannabis Control (DCC), the single state agency formed last summer by Gov. Gavin Newsom. It was also the first \u201cEmerald Cup\u201d event to happen after the brand\u2019s new format signaled<\/a> a shift away from its Emerald Triangle roots and towards population centers in Southern California.<\/p>\n

For all these reasons\u2014COVID, Newsom, rules, commercialization\u2014significant changes were inevitable. Much has happened since the old days of bursting turkey bags and mason jars stuffed with head stashes, lids unscrewed every few minutes so growers can swap sniffs of terpene bouquets or exchange fistfuls of bud for cash, for different bud\u2014or, just as likely, for the joy of sharing.<\/p>\n

But according to event organizers as well as attendees, things were so difficult that unless state law is significantly revised\u2014to allow farmers to sell directly to consumers, and to loosen (or at least clarify) rules around what stashes can be sold or not\u2014events such as the Harvest Ball\/Emerald Cup\/whatever-you-call-them simply won\u2019t work.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe need modifications so that future events are viable,\u201d said Taylor Blake,<\/a> the event\u2019s co-producer and daughter of Tim Blake, the Mendocino County grower and founder who now serves as CEO.<\/p>\n

What went wrong? And what needs to change so things go right?<\/p>\n

Too Much Fuss, Too Much \u201cBust\u201d<\/strong><\/h4>\n

Cannabis events and the law have always had an uneasy relationship but have yet managed to co-exist, if not peacefully and comfortably, at least functionally.<\/p>\n

Implicit in most every weed event\u2019s ethos is the acknowledgment that it\u2019s a market.<\/p>\n

Vendors pay money for booths so attendees can come and give them money for whatever they\u2019re selling: T-shirts, posters, books or (at a weed event, this is what people really want) weed. Under current California law, the most difficult thing to sell at a cannabis event is cannabis.<\/p>\n

Though most every cannabis brand had product available at their booths, not all of those brands have a state sales license. And with good reason\u2014those licenses are expensive. If you\u2019re not in the retail game, why would you have one? That meant anyone who wanted to sell cannabis at the event had limited options.<\/p>\n

You could agree to sell under the event license\u2014which would then take a 50% cut of your gross, a fee several aghast attendees described as \u201cpredatory.\u201d Or, if you were a small farmer at the designated \u201csmall farmer area\u201d (a description that used to apply to the entire Emerald Cup and not a subsection), you could set aside some inventory for the single sales counter, but that inventory had to be properly packaged, tested and entered into the state\u2019s track-and-trace system.<\/p>\n

The result was a lot of what retail and tech nerds call \u201cfriction\u201d\u2014that is, barriers. Visitors to a booth who saw cannabis they liked had to take notes or remember what they wanted; take that list to a line that could take an hour to work through; and finally give their order to an overworked clerk who was likely unsure if the strain name the customer uttered was still in stock or even properly prepared by the farm. It wasn\u2019t easy and it didn\u2019t make logical sense, but that\u2019s the law.<\/p>\n

Worse for some attendees was the omnipresent DCC, whose agents could be identified by their olive-drab jackets, blue hats with tiny fan-leaf logos and deep interest in how much cannabis one might be carrying\u2014and whether it was over the eight-ounce limit imposed by the state\u2019s legalization law.<\/p>\n

According to photos and interviews, DCC officials swooped in on several friend circles where attendees said they were merely showing off their weed to one another\u2014not selling nor sharing product marked for sale (which you can\u2019t do; once product is entered into the track-and-trace system, it has to be sold or destroyed). They also may have been a little overzealous, which isn\u2019t the vibe anyone paying $90 and up for a ticket was there for.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe DCC hassled licensed farmers with booths who were showing their samples of their product,\u201d said Trevor Wittke, a second-generation grower who posts on Instagram as @sungrownmidz<\/a> and is the former executive director of the Calaveras County Cannabis Alliance. Wittke, too, reported being corralled and questioned by the DCC to see if he was playing by the rules\u2014and shared a photo of what appeared to be an enormous trash bag, full of cannabis products, toted around by a DCC agent.<\/p>\n

In a statement, Christina Dempsey, the acting deputy director of external affairs for the Department of Cannabis Control, said the agency didn\u2019t confiscate any cannabis. The terminology the DCC prefers, according to an e-mail exchange, is \u201cvoluntarily surrendered,\u201d an exercise in semantics that didn\u2019t win regulators any points with exhausted and exasperated attendees like Wittke.<\/p>\n

As for the viability of the event, the DCC is \u201cin the midst of examining the current event regulations in order to improve and clarify the requirements,\u201d Dempsey said. \u201cThis will include gathering feedback from licensees who participate in and run cannabis events. We\u2019re also assessing what guidance would help event organizers, retailers and exhibitors better understand requirements and consider innovative approaches to events.\u201d<\/p>\n

Fix or Die<\/strong><\/h4>\n

To hear the Emerald Cup\u2019s people tell it, the major friction source was around product identification and safety. State law requires anything sold be tested before it can enter the supply chain. That was bound to cause some confusion and irritation with a crowd used to a freewheeling vibe.<\/p>\n

One real easy way to fix at least some of that would be to give what small farmers have been screaming for from the beginning: the ability to do what they\u2019ve always done and sell directly to a consumer.<\/p>\n

\u201cFix the cultivation tax and allow us to sell to people directly,\u201d said Casey O\u2019Neill, the owner-operator at HappyDay Farms in Laytonville and one of the more visible and outspoken advocates for small farmers. Other vendors agreed. Simple solutions, maybe, but not so simple to implement.<\/p>\n

Fixing the cultivation tax\u2014which currently levies a tax of $10.08 per ounce on cannabis, or $162 and change per pound, a hefty sum in a market where $500 is a good wholesale price for an outdoor-grown pound\u2014will require a 2\/3-vote at the California Legislature. It remains to be seen if that\u2019s possible. Fixing rules to make weed events easier would require lawmaker action as well.<\/p>\n

And in the COVID-19 era, relaxing rules that some believe have strangled the Emerald Cup<\/a> and similar gatherings are bound to discourage sponsors, vendors and attendees from even bothering to host or attend public cannabis events. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There was plenty of weed at the recent \u201cHarvest Ball,\u201d the first edition of the newly rechristened mid-December cannabis event which was focused on celebrating northern California\u2019s sungrown harvest, formerly known as the Emerald Cup. (The official \u201cEmerald Cup\u201d happens in May in Los Angeles at Green Street Festival.) This non-Emerald Cup was just the \u201croad to the Cup,\u201d if you follow. The only trouble was getting your hands on any weed without burning an hour waiting in line or running afoul of the law. The first big cannabis event to happen in California in the COVID-19 era that\u2019s not… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4081","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-marijuana_information"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thcinct.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4081","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thcinct.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thcinct.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thcinct.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thcinct.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4081"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thcinct.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4081\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thcinct.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4081"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thcinct.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4081"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thcinct.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4081"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}