Hash Bash
Scenes from the 2010 International Cannabis and Hemp Expo
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GoogleOn Saturday morning at the Cow Palace, a 15,000 seat indoor arena located just south of San Francisco, the nacho concession was surprisingly deserted. But it was early yet, and given the long line of people who were waiting to gain access to the Prop 215 Tent at the International Cannabis and Hemp Expo, business would eventually pick up. After four years of wrangling with local officials, the Expo’s promoters had managed to obtain a permit that would allow on-site pot-smoking at the event, and the Prop 215 Tent, where attendees equipped with medical marijuana cards could light up, vaporize, consume medibles, or otherwise treat themselves, was the early favorite for most popular attraction.
Even for those without a card, the Expo was fairly mind-blowing. There are hundreds of medical marijuana dispensaries in California now, and between them and all the illicit dealing that goes on, annual marijuana sales in the state are estimated at approximately $14 billion. Given the state’s terminally ill budget, proposals to legalize cannabis for all adults is gaining momentum: A marijuana tax won’t cure a $20 billion shortfall, but at least it could offer some minor pain relief.
In November, residents will vote on Tax Cannabis 2010, an initiative that would make it legal for anyone 21 or older to possess up to one ounce of marijuana while giving local governments the power to tax and regulate commercial production. Meanwhile, California Assemblyman Tom Ammiano is pushing a similar proposal in the state legislature that would legalize marijuana for adult usage and subject it to a $50 per ounce excise tax. While either proposal could end up generating as much as $1.4 billion in revenue for the state, what the International Cannabis and Hemp Expo made clear is how much ancillary economic activity the trade is already generating.
With approximately 150 exhibitors showcasing their wares and pitching their services, the Expo isn’t quite ready to fill up a Vegas-sized hall, but for a semi-permitted industry where severe legal repercussions are still a very tangible cost of doing business, the degree to which the marijuana trade has mainstreamed itself in the last few years, and the speed at which it continues to evolve, is pretty astounding.
Everywhere you looked, there were little bowls of candy, free branded pens, booth babes handing out sales brochures, and all the other hallmarks of traditional American enterprise in convention mode. The air was thick with super-potent, freshly harvested business cards.
Gone are the days when triple-chambered bongs stood as the most advanced pot-related hardware for sale in commercial venues. At the Expo, a company called GrowOp Technology was demo’ing the Little Bud, a hydroponic grow room encased in a 40-foot truck trailer. Equipped with a 400 plant cloning station, carbon air scrubbers, a remote surveillance system that you can monitor via your iPhone, and a bunch of other stuff that was making burly, tattooed dudes gasp like four-year-olds ogling bright red fire engines, it retails for $49,990 and offers maximum discretion, portability, and security straight off the lot. A 53-foot version, the Big Bud, goes for $59,990 and financing is available. GrowOp co-founder Tom Del Sol told the Oakland Tribune the company has already taken 37 orders for the recently introduced units.
For those without the space to accommodate a Big Bud, there were at least two other vendors of smaller prefab grow units and also Good Green Builders, a construction company whose founders were billing it as the first licensed general contractor in the Bay Area to specialize in building custom indoor hydroponic grow rooms. There was an insurance company offering “live plant coverage,” worker’s compensation policies, employment practices liability protection, and various other forms of coverage for medical cannabis cultivators, dispensaries, caregivers, edible manufacturers, and delivery services. Representatives from Local Union 13, a non-profit agricultural cooperative that wants to bring health care and retirement benefits to the workers who process crops after they’ve been harvested, amongst other objectives, were trying to recruit new members. Oaksterdam University, an institution in Oakland, California whose curriculum includes semester-long classes in horticulture, dispensary management, cooking with cannabis, procurement and allocation, and numerous other subjects, was advertising upcoming courses. Staffers from Confidential Mediation Services were pitching their ability to resolve disputes that arise between parties who aren’t exactly eager to expose the details of their business operations to the court system. “This is still an industry that’s transitioning from the underground,” said company founder Daniel Bornstein, a San Francisco attorney who also operates a medical marijuana dispensary. “There aren’t many contracts involved.”
There is, on the other hand, quite a bit of advertising. While the local alt-weeklies do a brisk trade in ads for dispensaries, collectives, doctors who specialize in writing recommendations for card-seeking patients, and home-delivery services like the Canny Bus, the industry has spawned a number of standalone publications like West Coast Leaf and West Coast Cannabis that are fat with ads too. Rosebud, which bills itself as a “hydroponics growers’ lifestyle magazine,” is the newest, thickest, glossiest entrant in the bunch. Its covers features Hollywood stars like Jeff Bridges, Viggo Mortensen, and Brad Pitt. Its issues run to 170 pages or more and are filled with full-page color ads for seed suppliers, high-voltage lighting controllers, organic plant nutrients, LED lighting systems, stainless steel bud trimmers, and also PETA, Chevrolet, the American Red Cross, and Cadillac.
The last time a local magazine was this thick with ads it was the dot-com era, just a few months before the monumental collapse. Then, the good times were mostly being fueled by venture capitalists puffing billions into enterprises with no real prospects of ever making a profit. This time, the good times are being fueled by consumers willing to pay $300 or more per ounce for products like Grandaddy Purple and Hindu Kush Skunk. How increased legalization—and the additional taxes and regulation that would come with it—might impact the dynamic entrepreneurism that currently informs the medical marijuana industry is hard to predict. But at the Cow Palace on Saturday, at least, the industry’s future looked as bright as the interior of a mobile grow lab equipped with 1000 watt MH/HPS lights and highly reflective wall coverings.
Contributing Editor Greg Beato is a writer living in San Francisco. Read his Reason archive here.
Editor's Note: We invite comments and request that they be civil and on-topic. We do not moderate or assume any responsibility for comments, which are owned by the readers who post them. Comments do not represent the views of Reason.com or Reason Foundation. We reserve the right to delete any comment for any reason at any time.
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Don't forget to have those HIDs on a whirlygig. Spread the bright around.
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At CocaCon, there are no wheezing fat ponytailed nerds who smell like an ape cage full of ranch Bugles.
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Is that your only complaint?
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I like that you guys posted this on 420
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The kit stuff is cool, but there's something about YouTubing around and looking at all the DIY setups people come up with. Cannabis cultivation is spawning a generation of botanical engineers who are among most inventive people you'll meet.
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"Mebiles"? Is that "medical edibles" or "marijuana edibles"?
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There used to be a t-shirt and poster for sale in the Haight, which included a gorgeous, full-color rendering of the Seal of the Great State of North California. I didn't buy either when I had the chance, and could never find them again, until Santa Cruz had its own hemp expo a few years ago. Unfortunately, the "State Seal" on the t-shirt that was available there was a black-and-white line drawing only. It is possible that the color poster is still available, perhaps at the present-day Expo?
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Happy 4/20
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CNBC has been running how much marijuana could add to the economy all day.
*4/20 :)
The just said they are "honoring" 4/20.
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yep...this is what it's all about! right on!!!
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Here we go again. I think all Libertarianism means to a lot of you people is the legalization of pot. Once you guys get that legalized, you'll drift off into a haze of smoke and forget about much more important rights that are being trampled on. The Libertarian movement is a joke. You should just rename this stupid site "High Times Online" and be done with it. It has become patently obvious that "Libertarianism" is nothing but a facade for the "legalization movement." Nothing to see here, move along...just a bunch of fucking stoners here. Morons all.
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Taffy
+100
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Fuck you Taffy, ignorant Troll.
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Your right on the money Taffy, it's mainly addicts who want the drug legalised and they hi jack the liberty train with their stupidity, make them spend a day in one of the Mental Health units and then lets see them argue for pot use, Bi Polar, schizophrenia, schizoid affected disorder, depression these were disorders we rarely saw even 10 years ago and now there rampant, POT kills people brains and destroys lives
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Thanks Mr. Beato for starting your story like ever other fucking retard in America who writes about pot. haha pot makes you eat food haha.
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Anyone who like myself who works in the mental health arena on a daily basis will tell you that Cannabis is a very very dangerous drug and the list of Psychosis that we now see on a daily basis is simply alarming, California will pay dearly for the Cannabis craze in years to come as they see their children succumb to it's ravages of the mind, be warned..
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Senior Editor Katherine Mangu-Ward sat down with Harris on February 24, 2010, at the Reason offices in Washington, D.C., to discuss the Christmas Day bomber, why one promising electronic surveillance system was wiped out due to privacy concerns, information turf wars in Washington, and what it's like to be a spy in the age of Google.
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Senior Editor Katherine Mangu-Ward sat down with Harris on February 24, 2010, at the Reason offices in Washington, D.C., to discuss the Christmas Day bomber, why one promising electronic surveillance system was wiped out due to privacy concerns, information turf wars in Washington, and what it's like to be a spy in the age of Google.
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California will pay dearly for the Cannabis craze in years to come as they see their children succumb to it's ravages of the mind
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It still boggles me why the UK government won't legalise cannibas. It's the people you have to deal with when buying the stuff that csan lead onto other things ....
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"the nacho concession was surprisingly deserted" ... lol!
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good job man!!! i got similar vids as well :) I love that expo :)
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Jon Payne of Ann Arbor observed that the mood at today’s Hash Bash was more of a celebration of progress than the protests that he recalled from years past - although concern about marijuana laws remains.
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“What’s criminal is denying people their medicine,” said Payne, who has been attending the Hash Bash for many years. “I’m afraid that Michigan’s Republican governor and attorney general will be aggressive in their enforcement of marijuana.”
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Traffic in downtown Ann Arbor was busier than usual around the time of the Hash Bash, and there was also a lot of foot traffic both downtown and on campus as the speeches started near noon, followed by the Monroe Street Fair immediately afterwards.
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The Diag was a sea of people, with crowds estimated at about 6,500. The smell of marijuana was pervasive, despite a warning form from Hash Bash organizer Adam Brook that Campus police enforce the state law on U-M property, and that can mean marijuana possession is punishable by one year in jail and up to $2,000 in fines.
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That didn’t stop Brandon Carle and his friends from Lapeer from sharing a joint.
“It’s much more liberal in Ann Arbor,” he said.
“We like being around like minded people,” said Tere Kloth from Oakland County, who also was partaking.
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Volunteer Michael Labadie from Ypsilanti carried a bucket through the crowd collecting donations for what he called, “A good cause-the legalization of marijuana.”
Gary Johnson, former Republican Governor of New Mexico, was a featured speaker at today’s event. Brook referred to Johnson as, “the highest ranking official to call for the legalization of marijuana.”
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“We need to legalize marijuana,” Johnson told the enthusiastic crowd. “46 percent of Americans support the legalization of marijuana, and 30 million Americans are touched by the marijuana drug laws. Most of the people in jail connected to marijuana participated in non-violent, victimless crimes.”
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One of the final speakers today was activist John Sinclair, who has become known as the martyr of the movement to legalize marijuana. Sinclair was sentenced to a 10-year prison term for possession of two joints in 1971, spurring John Lennon to come to Crisler Arena in December of that year to headline the “Free John Now” benefit concert.
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The Michigan Supreme Court then ruled the state’s marijuana statutes were unconstitutional and Sinclair was released from prison after serving two-and-a-half years of his sentence. On April 1, 1972, the first Hash Bash took place on the Diag.
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Hash Bash is an annual event held in Ann Arbor, Michigan, on the first Saturday of April at high noon on the University of Michigan Diag. A collection of speeches, live music, street vending and occasional civil disobedience are centered on the goal of reforming federal
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Hash Bash was held on Saturday, April 1 1972 in response to the March 9th 1972 decision by Michigan Supreme Court declaring unconstitutional the law used to convict cultural activist John Sinclair for possession of two marijuana joints
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Good point. I stand corrected. Let me edit my sentence then:
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