2013 High Times Cannabis Cup in Denver: Dabba Dabba Hey!

Whew. The 2013 Cannabis Cup, presented by High Times and featuring the first “legal” cannabis competition in the United States, took place this past weekend in Denver. Personally, it was a great weekend because The Cup was the perfect opportunity to meet lots of great people, sample some amazing meds, and pass out a TON of promotional materials for Karmaceticals, the dispensary where I work.

I have to start by saying congratulations to Jim and Shannon from Mahatma Extreme Concentrates, who took home the cup for Best Medical Concentrate. Karma was fortunate to get to share a booth with Mahatma at the event, and they kept us all in dabs of their incredible wax. (Jim also brought along a batch of his tincturita (a tincture drink that was delicious, which I was drinking like a 6 year old drinks apple juice). I’ve been saying for months that Mahatma makes the best earwax around, and turns out I was right! A much-deserved win to recognize their outstanding full melt concentrates.

Reviews of the event itself will vary depending on whom you ask; some of our other Weedist writers found themselves in the unfortunate position of being without a CO medical marijuana card. The big problem with the Cannabis Cup in Denver was that it often seemed like there were two separate events going on within the same building: the first was a convention with just a few and far between booths that were indeed sampling cannabis, and the second was truly what you would imagine from the High Times Cannabis Cup. The first event was oversold to the point of being absolutely ridiculous, with a long line just to get in and then just  be packed in shoulder-to-shoulder with other people, who were all equally confused by the lack of signs pointing them to the good stuff. The second event was freaking awesome.

This “second event” was really just the “medicated” area, where you needed your red card. For those that could get into it, it was a crazy experience where every booth was giving away something better than the last. Just about every booth I saw was either a dispensary or similar company that had a wealth of dab hits, joints, flyers with nugs pinned to them, and lots more stuff to give away. Karma was raffling off a clone every 15 minutes, and the booth directly across from us was giving away your choice of either a joint or medicated lollypop; a few feet away was Discreet Treats, who kept making fresh batches of medicated pulled pork sandwiches and chocolates. Seriously. This was truly what the Cannabis Cup should be about- the best cannabis being enjoyed by fans in a safe, controlled environment. The medicated section was much less crowded than the general area, and featured some of the absolute best medical marijuana centers in Colorado.

For those that flew in from out of state and paid for a ticket, I can’t imagine it was a great experience. The Exdo Center is nothing special and is in a fairly weird part of Denver, and the presence of overpriced food and beer just made it seem like every other festival. And while I couldn’t attend because I was working at the shop on Saturday, 4/20 (a day that felt absolutely like working at Best Buy on Black Friday), I’m told that it was actually more crowded than when I was there on Sunday, which is not at all hard to believe.

It does bring up an interesting grievance about the state of cannabis commercialization: how OK are we stoners, so long overlooked by major corporations as a demographic, that we are now being sold on 4/20-friendly events and similarly related merchandise? While checking out the “recreational” and other areas, there were times where the entire thing did just seem like someone’s clever way to make a quick buck (or several, several bucks).

I think that next year, High Times needs to seriously consider selling a few (or a few hundred) less tickets and hiring someone to help them with basic things, like better signage pointing to different areas of the event. I think I saw just one sign with a direction on it, and it wasn’t like there were many staff who were there to help. They also need to seriously think about what the value is to someone who doesn’t have a medical marijuana card; a few booths giving out dab hits and joints are obviously going to have ridiculously long lines, and a plethora of other booths that only relate to everyone’s favorite activity without actually having the goods just isn’t going to cut it if they plan to make this a yearly event in the United States.

However, I personally had a great experience because I was able to actually get into the areas where the medicine was abundant. And good god was it ever.