Hemp Music Festival in Balboa Park

Hemp Music Festival in Balboa Park

by LEO E. LAURENCE, J.D.

Copyright © 2011 by Leo E. Laurence for Zenger’s Newsmagazine. All rights reserved

While music festivals supporting medical marijuana are common in southern California, it was rare when longtime cannabis (marijuana) activist James Dean Stacy on July 9 produced an event focused on hemp.

“Hemp is the cousin of cannabis that has no THC in it,” explained Stacy in an interview for Zen-ger’s Newsmagazine. (THC is the chemical that produces the “high” associated with marijuana use.)

“It’s used as an industrial product to make over 25,000 different things, everything from cloth to paint to fuel.

“This (music festival) is to share information with people who don’t know the history of all the different uses (of hemp),” Stacy explained.

“We also have some activism tables where people can send letters to their congressman and senator, either electronically or manually.

“We want support for federal legislation to provide for a medical-marijuana defense in federal court.

“We want Congress to take cannabis off the scheduling and allow states to handle it.” Currently, cannabis is a Schedule I drug — legally considered to have no medical uses and a high potential for abuse — and the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) recently restated that belief despite the growing number of scientific studies documenting the medical uses of cannabis.

“We also want to support a congressional bill that would allow farmers to grow industrial hemp,” Stacy added.

At least 13 tables were selling everything from homemade cupcakes to glass pipes.

Photo caption:

Glass pipes of every description were sold by the “Smoke Shop” from 3146 El Cajon Blvd. at the “Discovery Hemp Music Festival” in Balboa Park on July 9th. Photo by Leo E. Laurence