Cannabis legalization has happened in three main waves.<\/p>\n
First, there were the outlaws, people who grew cannabis outside the realm of legal protection and risked jail time in order to be close to this transformative plant. Then came the next wave of cannabis activists, who demanded changes to America\u2019s failed drug laws and championed the movement for cannabis legalization and prison reform. Finally, there came the wave of investors, largely devoid of attachment to the plant, who have flocked to the cannabis industry with money in order to make more.<\/p>\n
Tim Blake<\/a>\u00a0has been growing cannabis for over 40 years now, since before it was an industry, and before many cannabis activists were even involved with the movement to legalize. He has seen all kinds of changes take place in California\u2019s shift from the unregulated Wild West to one of the most restrictive cannabis markets in the world. Yet Blake is most widely known not for his growing, but for his founding of the annual cannabis competition and celebration,\u00a0the Emerald Cup<\/a>, which is celebrating its 15th year.<\/p>\n In a far-ranging interview, Blake told Cannabis Now about the changes in the cannabis world he has seen over the years and shared some advice for other cannabis event producers.<\/p>\n Blake and I spoke at length about the differences between the old days of the unregulated market and the new era of regulated cannabis. Blake said he \u201cgrew up in the times when we were rooting for every outlaw to make it.\u201d Back then \u201cit was us against the cops\u201d he said and unlike today, \u201cthere was never a competition because we would all be able to sell our bud.\u201d Now that the market is regulated and fiercely competitive, licensed companies beholden to investors have a vested interest in\u00a0alerting the BCC<\/a>\u00a0to any unlicensed competitors; in other words, snitching has become a standard operating procedure.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen people used to snitch on each other, it wasn\u2019t really so much a company being competitive, it was somebody snitching on a friend to avoid a prison sentence,\u201d Blake said. Rather than it being a business decision, it was personal, because people were ratting on their friends. \u201cIt changed with the federal mandatory minimums,\u201d said Blake, when a \u201csix-month sentence turned into 10 to 15 years.\u201d Blake said he \u201cfaced that twice and never snitched on anyone\u201d but he can see why people might, especially if they have a family to take care of.<\/p>\n Blake remained an outlaw for many years until about 10 years ago when he jumped into the political sphere. Blake jumped in head first and sponsored the first sheriffs debate up at\u00a0Area 101<\/a>. Thanks in part to Blake\u2019s efforts,\u00a0Tom Allman<\/a>\u00a0was elected sheriff for\u00a0Mendocino County<\/a>\u00a0in 2006. Those efforts also led to the Mendocino County ordinance that allowed growers to have up to 99 plants. Then, when the DEA came in and busted people for growing those 99 plants legally Blake said, \u201cTom came out and pointed out that the DEA had big cartel busts they could have made but they went for 99 plant semi-legal growers.\u201d<\/p>\n Blake is very pragmatic, saying that progress with cannabis legalization is the result of \u201cincremental change,\u201d which is why he voted for Prop 64 despite its shortcomings.<\/p>\n \u201cWe needed to stop putting people in jail and get good quality medicine for patients,\u201d Blake said, things which are now happening thanks to Prop 64 passing.<\/p>\n Blake also spoke of \u201cthe gauntlet\u201d of undercover cops he used to have to slip by to transport cannabis from the Emerald Triangle to the Bay Area.<\/p>\n \u201cNow, there is no gauntlet anymore,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Blake took me back to the cup\u2019s humble beginnings in Laytonville. \u201cIt started out as under a couple hundred people,\u201d said Blake. \u201cYou look at Area 101, it\u2019s not a very big building, so we would attach tents on it, and they stretched all the way out.\u201d Eventually, the cup \u201cwas bursting at the seams with well over 1,000 people,\u201d he said and it had to find a new home.<\/p>\n For one year they moved to Humboldt\u2019s\u00a0Mateel Community Center<\/a>\u00a0where Blake said they hosted \u201cthe biggest event they ever had.\u201d Unfortunately, \u201cboth the Humboldt and Mendocino county fairgrounds\u201d passed on the cup moving to either site permanently, which was when the move south to Santa Rosa happened. The first year there Blake said \u201ca lot of farmers didn\u2019t come down,\u201d but once they saw how well people did there, they came rushing back. Like those farmers who were initially skeptical, \u201cMendocino could have had the tax money, but they passed on it,\u201d said Blake.<\/p>\n When asked about the connection between the cup and music, Blake said musical performances were always a core part of the event. \u201cThe music was always there, it was a cannabis event celebrating music, or a music event celebrating cannabis,\u201d Blake said. In fact, the cup was so music-focused that it \u201cdidn\u2019t have vendors for the first five or six years,\u201d it was just \u201cthe contest and music, then we added more over the years.\u201d<\/p>\n When asked who gets to pick the music, Blake lit up. \u201cI used to do that, and it was a really joy-filled moment,\u201d he said. \u201cBut kind of crazy, because you\u2019re trying to find musicians at the end of the year when they aren\u2019t touring.\u201d Currently, Red Light Management (RLM) handles the booking. Over the past half-decade the cup has taken place in Santa Rosa, their music budget has quintupled to nearly $600,000.<\/p>\n The major acts on Dec. 15 include the New York-based folk-punk band\u00a0Gogol Bordello<\/a>, whose hits include raucous songs \u201cStart Wearing Purple<\/a>\u201d and \u201cWanderlust King<\/a>.\u201d But more than just punks like cannabis, so if you\u2019re more into hip hop,\u00a0Chali 2na<\/a>\u00a0(of Jurassic 5 and Ozomatli) might be more your speed. Other than the music, fans of \u201cDogma,\u201d \u201cClerks\u201d and \u201cTusk<\/a>\u201d can rejoice to see Kevin Smith and Jason Mewes do a live recording of their #1 ranked comedy podcast \u201cJay and Silent Bob Get Old<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n While the big names on Dec. 16 cater largely to the electronic music crowd, with headliners including\u00a0Big Gigantic<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Sound Tribe Sector 9 (STS9)<\/a>, the cup has something for everyone. Sunday also features the rising country star Margo Price. Price, who has played with\u00a0Willie Nelson<\/a>, recently released a strain of cannabis under his Willie\u2019s Reserve brand.<\/p>\n One can only hope that Nelson and Price get together on stage after Nelson receives his lifetime achievement award on Dec. 16. The cup is hereafter renaming the award the Willie Nelson Award in his honor.<\/p>\n Blake is a cancer survivor who said he \u201cused cannabis to heal three rounds of metastasized bone cancer.\u201d Now he helps \u201cteach people to lead a gluten-free, sugar-free lifestyle and use cannabis to supplement it.\u201d His personal philosophy carried over to the cup, which began as a competitive for organic, outdoor cannabis. \u201cThe first couple of years, people thought I was just some hippie organic guy,\u201d Blake said.<\/p>\n Blake\u2019s family also did not take his lifelong career in cannabis seriously for many years, but they too have come around. \u201cI had a felony charge, and that kind of thing will make you a pariah,\u201d said Blake. \u201cI was the black sheep of my family for years, but now they are looking into using cannabis for my uncle and they want me to educate them about cannabis.\u201d<\/p>\n Blake\u2019s uncle is a 90-year-old priest, and according to Blake \u201call the medication he is on is making him go crazy.\u201d Despite Blake\u2019s views on cannabis and politics, his family is made up of \u201clawyers and conservative people,\u201d but he said even they are now onboard with taking his uncle \u201coff the meds and to let him use cannabis.\u201d They first started him with\u00a0CBD<\/a>, slowly stepped up the dose and even introduced THC, which Blake said his uncle \u201cloves.\u201d\u00a0<\/b><\/p>\n The cup, like the cannabis industry itself, did not always require lab testing. And Blake said once the cup began lab testing in 2015, they were surprised by what they saw. According to the\u00a0East Bay Express<\/a>, at the 2015 cup, \u201cabout one in six entries failed lab tests for\u00a0pesticides<\/a>\u00a0or pathogens like mold, bacteria, and fungi.\u201d<\/p>\n The\u00a0Emerald Report<\/a>\u00a0spoke to SC Labs about their testing for the 2016 cup, where they found \u201cabout 25 percent of 263 samples in the concentrates categories submitted from producers across the state were disqualified, mostly because they tested positive for pesticides.\u201d The concentrates category was comparably the dirtiest category that year, and only \u201c5 percent of cannabis flower samples showed evidence of pesticides.\u201d<\/p>\n Blake feels that those pesticide-testing issues are now a thing of the past. \u201cThe first year we did it, people weren\u2019t really aware, so we had a high failure rate because they didn\u2019t expect it,\u201d said Blake. \u201cNow people have gotten much more aware and they are putting better quality entrants into the cup and it has gone way down over the past couple of years to less than 5 percent.\u201d<\/p>\n The issue he pointed to now was with state testing, specifically calling out the stringency of homogeneity testing in edibles, and plants having traces of pesticides due to soil contamination. Blake also noted the double standards being applied to cannabis. \u201cCompared to traditional agriculture there is very restrictive testing and nothing could pass it,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n With 15 years of experience hosting the Emerald Cup, Blake is an expert with cannabis events. Given the major recent regulatory changes around cannabis events in California, there are a lot of gray areas event organizers need to navigate in order to stay compliant.<\/p>\n \u201cThe first thing is to get a good attorney,\u201d Blake said. Or if an attorney is off the table, at the very least \u201ca compliance person or a lobbyist.\u201d Blake said the cup has a lobbyist working with the BCC to get some changes made to the regulations and they have gone to all the BCC meetings. They also have plans to \u201cform a trade association to teach the other event organizers how to do it right.\u201d<\/p>\n Beyond forming a cannabis event trade association, Blake has plans to grow the cup beyond the Sonoma County Fairgrounds and \u201cdo other Emerald Cups around the state, country, and the world.\u201d Blake said the cup\u2019s partnership with RLM will be crucial in growing the event, as they \u201cown Outside Lands, Bonnaroo, and South by South West,\u201d and came in to build the cup \u201cinto an international show.\u201d<\/p>\n TELL US<\/b>, will you be at the Emerald Cup in Santa Rosa this year?<\/p>\n The post Tim Blake Talks History, Health & the Future of the Emerald Cup<\/a> appeared first on Cannabis Now<\/a>.<\/p>\n
Cannabis legalization has happened in three main waves. First, there were the outlaws, people who grew cannabis outside the realm of legal protection and risked jail time in order to be close to this transformative plant. Then came the next wave of cannabis activists, who demanded changes to America\u2019s failedContinue Reading<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":114,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"false","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[6680,6718,50,216,99,478,6684,6719,6720,6721,105,2013,1066,5419],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31330"}],"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\/114"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31330"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31330\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":31331,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31330\/revisions\/31331"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31330"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31330"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31330"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}An Outlaw Becomes a Political Activist<\/h4>\n
The Creation of the Emerald Cup<\/h4>\n
A Cancer Survivor on a Mission for Clean Living<\/h4>\n
A Problem with Pesticide Testing<\/h4>\n
Advice for Other Event Organizers and Future Plans<\/h4>\n
\n
\nRead More: Tim Blake Talks History, Health & the Future of the Emerald Cup<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"