Cannabis Jul 1, 2015 at 4:20 pm

The Mercury's Cannabis Legalization Issue

Comments

1
THE PEOPLE! UNITED! WILL NEVER BE DE-WEEDED!
2
All I can say is that last night's muddled public smoke-out and weed giveaway beneath the Portland Oregon sign certainly didn't usher in the new era well!

I and perhaps as much as a thousand others behind me shambled along for over an hour and a half from the dismal end of the Burnside Bridge to the disgusting one, only to discover all the weed had been given out and what wasn't pocketed and walked off the scene was clenched tightly in the Gollum fists of closed cliques. It would have been nice if NORML and the supporting dispensaries would have actually organized the event, made it so that everyone could partake instead of a mob of greedy guttersnipe ne'er-do-wells, and kept those of us wanting to participate apprised of the supply status and helped to police crowd behavior (which was predictably sanguine).

I would have done better staying home finishing my six-pack of High Life, without weed.
3
Weed the People was a total bust for us. Whoever organized this thing needs a new job description. We got there a half hour early and waited in the 95 degree sun for two hours before we got in. The line came to a complete stop for another 25 minutes once we got inside and before we got checked in.

That's when we discovered there was another freaking 2 hour line inside to get the samples. The 'samples' line wasn't moving at all. We were told the sample line was 'full' and that we should walk around and come back in ten minutes. We were told that there wasn't room for one more person on the sample line. We walked around for ten minutes and when we came back we found they had let another hundred people on the 'full' sample line. Now the wait looked like three hours. It was at least 90 degrees inside. There weren't that many tables either so there wasn't much to do or say.. The only thing to do in there was wait on lines. We left. It wasn't worth the $80 we paid. When we got outside there was even a longer line outside than we had waited on.

Those poor people had a three hour wait to get on a two or three hour line to get samples that probably would be gone by the time they got there. All on an above 90 degree day.

My wife and i agreed that this was the worst event we had attended together in the 13 years
we have known each other.

Weed the people? More like Torture the people!
4
what a horrible planned event. We got there at 230 and didn't get towards the end of the line to get the samples until 730 and at that time organizers were passing out samples if you wanted to just leave. Why A.. wait until 730 to come up with that idea and B. Why do it only feet away from the Grower's Garden? Why not offer the samples farther back in line to ease up the crowd? Really not worth the $40
5
I sent the following to the editors and Josh Jardine after leaving Weed The People yesterday:

After sweating it out for two hours in line for Weed The People today, I thought I might be home free once I got inside the event. No such luck. Instead, I was greeted with a line for the "Grower's Garden" so long and twisting that it took three of the event staff to help locate the line's end. When prompted, they refused to make things easier for other attendees by, for example, having an "END OF THE LINE" sign that could be held up.

In fact, no staffers we spoke to seemed to have any authority, nor to take any responsibility for a woefully mismanaged event that undermined what should have been a joyful celebration of the legalization of recreational cannabis in Oregon. Instead, we were packed in line with other increasingly frustrated, disappointed attendees. We all presumably expected more than a steaming warehouse with a few paltry booths and an impersonal, harried weed handout line. Not that I bothered to waste any more of my time to get to its end. At least staffer Bri Brey cheerfully offered me information on how to get a refund, though she seemed to have no idea who was in charge, nor the name of the evidently incompetent event company behind this mess.

The path to legalization has been long, and the victory hard-won. Capitalizing on that success with a miserably-planned event at $40 a head is nothing less than a cynical insult to the cannabis community. It validates every fear that the advent of recreational use will usher in an era of predatory corporate behavior that cannabis culture has been, to date, a rare refuge from in the culture at large.

Shame on you, Mercury. You should refund every attendee, who spent even more on cabs and Lyft rides to take part in this disaster. You should own up to overselling the event, and apologize for wasting people's time by not taking the obvious step of issuing timed-entry tickets.

Let's hope there are others in town better poised to celebrate this victory the right way in the coming weeks and months. You've roundly failed, as is now clear from a quick search of social media, which will yield pictures of attendees passed out from the heat and angry tweets from others who wasted their time and money.
6
Shame on you Portland Mercury for the hell that was "weed the people". That was a shit show of an event.

I want my money back.

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