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A cool 7,114 miles\u00a0south of San Francisco you\u2019ll find Dunedin, a small city in a small country at the bottom of the world. It is there that you will discover the Whakamana Cannabis Museum: New Zealand\u2019s first and only space solely dedicated to promoting pot.<\/p>\n
As New Zealand\u2019s main university town, Dunedin has been home to a rich cannabis culture for generations. For over a decade, students of the University of Otago in\u00a0Dunedin\u00a0a.k.a. \u201cDunsterdam<\/a>\u201d\u00a0have come together twice a week to smoke weed in public under the Walnut Tree on the University\u2019s Union Lawn as an act of protest against the prohibition laws of cannabis. (It\u2019s worth noting that the local police have never stopped these organized 420 events.) So it comes as no surprise that Whakamana Cannabis Museum was established in the city. The museum also claims appellations of being both the fifth cannabis in the world to open and the most southern cannabis museum.<\/p>\n When the opportunity to visit Dunedin finally presented itself to me, I reached out to my friend Abe Gray, an American botanist and\u00a0curator<\/a>\u00a0of the museum, to arrange a tour of the facility. A cannabis activist back in his native USA, Gray has immersed himself in the local and national cannabis scene and legalization movement since he moved to the country in 2002. His aim is to release New Zealanders from the pressure of illegal cannabis use. As we walked through the museum, Gray told me some history of the museum, their recent upgrade into a new building, and what he hopes the future of legal cannabis looks like in New Zealand.<\/p>\n Currently, New Zealand<\/a> has neither medical or adult-use cannabis, but is working towards both forms of legalization. When Gray first immigrated, New Zealand looked set to become the first country in the world to federally legalize cannabis.<\/p>\n \u201cUnfortunately that plan was sacrificed as part of political horse-trading in the election that year, the same week I arrived,\u201d Gray said. \u201cI came to study botany at the university and had hoped to put my skills to use researching cannabis. I was also a Teaching Fellow and Lab Instructor at the local university for botany and biology courses for over a decade.\u201d<\/p>\n When legalization promises failed to materialize, Gray joined up with fellow activists in Dunedin. He founded the\u00a0Whakamana Cannabis Museum as a sanctuary for the cannabis community and an information service to counteract false information and prohibitionist propaganda.<\/p>\n \u201cWhakamana combines my passions for cannabis politics and science communication to create a public information center to demystify the increasingly topical cannabis issue,\u201d Gray said. \u201cIt also serves as a sanctuary for the cannabis community and an information service to counteract false information and prohibitionist propaganda.\u201d<\/p>\n Photo courtesy of Whakamana Cannabis Museum<\/p>\n<\/div>\n The word Whakamana is M\u0101ori, the native language of New Zealand, and means to build up or restore status and prestige. Suitably fitting for a facility that is \u201crestoring the status and prestige of the cannabis plant in our society after a century of unfair denigration,\u201d Gray said.<\/p>\n Whakamana recently moved from a small house in the suburbs to a new purpose-built facility in the middle of the city.<\/p>\n \u201cOur move six weeks ago to the\u00a0center of downtown Dunedin has been an amazing transition,\u201d Gray said.<\/p>\n A\u00a0historic Dunedin building is the new home to the dedicated\u00a0cannabis museum complete that is with a caf\u00e9 and VIP facilities. The\u00a0Hightide Caf\u00e9<\/a>\u00a0offers a delicious menu and great coffee. The price? $4.20.<\/p>\n Whakamana Cannabis Museum is a center for cannabis education, information and law reform activism. It includes interactive displays on hemp as a product, medicinal cannabis and popular cannabis consumption devices. The exhibition space features permanent displays of cannabis paraphernalia, memorabilia from places with legal cannabis and hemp products.<\/p>\n \u201cWe are run off our feet with cannabis enthusiasm from the general public,\u201d Gray said. \u201cWith our new purpose-built facility we are able to change the minds of prohibitionist doubters much more easily and rapidly.\u201d<\/p>\n The museum\u2019s library is home to hundreds of books about cannabis, sitting alongside books about politics, other drugs, ancient cultures and other topics to inspire and enlighten visitors.<\/p>\n The price of coffee isn\u2019t the only nod to international cannabis culture. VIP membership to Whakamana is $4.20 a week and allows access to the member\u2019s lounge that includes retro video games, ping pong tables and a smoking area to chill with fellow enthusiasts. The museum also houses a dispensary that, unfortunately, isn\u2019t allowed to sell cannabis. Instead, they help raise funds for the museum by selling merchandise and legal smoking apparatuses.<\/p>\n Inquisitive members of the public aren\u2019t the only people through the door. \u201cThe associate health minister who traditionally holds the role of \u2018Drug Czar\u2019 visited us and posed with a traditional cannabis consumption device,\u201d Gray said. \u201cWe\u2019ve had other visits from international entertainers and celebrities, but I\u2019m not allowed to name them as they don\u2019t want any visa or immigration issues.\u201d<\/p>\n The New Zealand government plans to hold a referendum to legalize cannabis in either 2019 or 2020 which, at this point, looks to be non-binding, meaning the government doesn\u2019t have to implement the outcome. However, due to the stigma that still surrounds cannabis, officials have concerns that holding the referendum in the 2020 general election could be a bad move politically.<\/p>\n When asked what he thinks would be a logical step forward for legalization and cultivation, Gray believes New Zealand should look to the recreationally legal states for ideas.<\/p>\n \u201cI personally favor a\u00a0Colorado-style<\/a>\u00a0tax and regulation that allows commercialization,\u201d Gray said. \u201cAlthough, just as with other large-scale commercial activities in New Zealand, I think we need to distinguish ourselves globally with a higher level of environmental and social responsibility and take a particular focus on ag-tech R&D and tourism.\u201d<\/p>\n Gray is positive about the future of cannabis in New Zealand and believes that it has real potential to thrive and become a commercially viable enterprise. \u201cI see a cannabis information\/community center along the lines of the Whakamana Museum model in every main New Zealand city in less than five years,\u201d Gray said. \u201cHopefully by five years time, we will be legally allowed to sell cannabis in them.\u201d<\/p>\n TELL US<\/strong>, have you visited a cannabis museum?<\/p>\n The post It\u2019s Always 420 at the Whakamana Cannabis Museum<\/a> appeared first on Cannabis Now<\/a>.<\/p>\n
A cool 7,114 miles\u00a0south of San Francisco you\u2019ll find Dunedin, a small city in a small country at the bottom of the world. It is there that you will discover the Whakamana Cannabis Museum: New Zealand\u2019s first and only space solely dedicated to promoting pot. Welcome to Cannabis City AsContinue Reading<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":234,"featured_media":27479,"comment_status":"false","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[480,50,216,4804,99,4805,1112,4806],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27478"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/234"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27478"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27478\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":27480,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27478\/revisions\/27480"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/27479"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27478"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27478"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27478"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Whakamana Cannabis Museum is Educational, Entertaining & Engaging<\/h4>\n
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<\/a><\/p>\nThe Future of Whakamana<\/h4>\n
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\nRead More: It\u2019s Always 420 at the Whakamana Cannabis Museum<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"