BY ED MURRIETA
Two cannabis-themed events with “frightful” overtones are planned for Saturday night at two Sacramento medical cannabis dispensaries. One event is a fund-raiser for a group of patients, medical professionals, scientists and concerned citizens promoting safe and legal access to cannabis for therapeutic use and research. The other event marks a dispensary’s closure as Sacramento County and the federal government put the scare on the industry.
At Common Roots Collective in south Sacramento, the cannabis activist group Americans for Safe Access hosts “Puff Puff Politics.” According to ASA’s flyer for the event, “It’s like a wine tasting but with cannabis.” Three top medical strains will be tasted, and cannabis activists will lead discussions between tastings. There’ll even be a silent auction of jack o’ lanterns carved in cannabis themes.
Tickets are $50 per person; you can buy them online. Attendees are promised swag bags of goodies. Bhang, the top-tier cannabis chocolatier, is among the sponors. The promoter told me today that other sponors, speakers and tasting panelists won’t be revealed until Friday.
Americans for Safe Access is the largest national member-based organization of patients, medical professionals, scientists and concerned citizens promoting safe and legal access to cannabis for therapeutic use and research. Common Roots is like a farmers market collective, with licensed cannabis growers offering their products directly to patients. No grams over $10. Commom Roots offers art therapy and yoga, and has hosted reggae bands and an African dance troupe in its large warehouse space, which has been blessed by a shamanic healer.
The Farmers Market could use some healing juju. The medical cannabis dispensary on the edge of the old Mather Field in Sacramento County is throwing a party on Saturday night, but instead of raising funds with a frightful holiday event, The Farmers Market, like many medical cannabis dispensaries, is being scared out of operation. Saturday’s customer appreciation party will be The Farmers Market’s last — its last party and its last day of business before it switches to a delivery-only business model.
I had the pleasure of attending The Farmers Market’s two previous customer appreciation parties in the past month. Both were fun and informative, featuring food — grilled hot dogs and polish sausage one night, a do-it-your-self nacho bar the other night — and soft drinks and snacks. One event featured edibles makers who not only offered samples of their products but offered insight into infusing cannabis into water — a simple prodedure with powerful effects. Of course, both nights offered heavy doses of bonhomie — people talking, sharing, enjoying themselves and enjoying each other’s company, the things that happen in clean, comfortable social settings. Many people were enjoying cannabis — in joints, in pipes, and vaporized in elaborate bongs that cried out to be shared, if only for their conversation-piece value.
The Farmers Market bills Saturday’s event as a Harvest Party. But, really, given the cannabis crackdown, the party marks anything but a harvest. What Sacramento County is doing — spitting in the face of a voter-approved state initiative, turning its back on jobs and tax revenue — amounts to burning your fields in the face of famine. What the federal governent is doing — withholding cannabis research approval, threatening to seize property and prosecute landowners, ensuring ever-larger profits for the pharmaceuticals industry — is a fright worth fighting.
Puff Puff Politics, a fund-raiser for Americans for Safe Access: Oct. 29, 7 p.m.-midnight, Common Roots Collective, 3039 52nd Ave., Unit B, Sacramento. Tickets: $50.
The Farmers Market Harvest Party, 7 p.m.-midnight, 3791 Bradview Drive, Sacramento.
Still not convinced that medical cannabis dispensaries are part of the lifeblood of the communities they serve? Consider that patient members of Orangevale’s Magnolia Wellness Collective gave 25 pints of plasma in last year’s Orangevale Community Blood Drive.
Magnolia, which just became the Sacramento region’s first dispensary to unionized its employees, hopes to double the amount of donated blood this year. To prime the plasma pump, Magnolia will give its registered patients a free medicated edible from Uncle Buck’s Bakery when they donate blood at Friday’s drive. Better than the donuts and orange juice people usually get for donating blood.
BY ED MURRIETA
