Hempfest Prepares for Final Festival
June 25th, 2009 by RickOrganizer Rob Waddell says this year’s annual Hempfest (aptly named Hempfest: The End of an Era) in Ontario, Canada from August 27-30, is scheduled to be the last. A celebration centered around enjoying marijuana medicinally and recreation-ally, the four day event has had a lot of buzzkills to contend with over the years in the form of:
- Unwarranted police presence.
- Police vehicle checks that focus on “interrogation”.
- Police hindering access.
- Police not weeding out actual impaired drivers.
Waddell frustratingly notes:
It’s the harassment of people traveling to and from the festival. The constitution and Charter of Rights guarantee us the right to gather peacefully and demonstrate against unjust laws, which we’re doing. [...] The police keep interfering with our people and the right to gather.
Waddell even claims that the Ontario Provincial Police have U.S. law enforcement with them when Hempfest is happening:
They’re targeting the sick. We’re not a bunch of crazies out in the bush, getting stoned and running around, it’s (mostly) people that are 35-60 years old that are out there and (having) just a great weekend of educating each other and talking about friends and talking about the benefits and the situations that are arising about the medical use of cannabis in Canada. [...] While others may decide in future to pick up the Hempfest torch, this year’s event will be the last to be held in Poplar Dale, a community of less than 100 people who will be able to ‘get back to their peaceful way of life out there in the country.’
Oddly enough Waddell plans to turns Hempfest into a music festival where he hopes it will become “a real good rocking time for four days.”
