SAN BERNARDINO >> Thousands of marijuana patients and pot advocates converged over the weekend at the National Orange Show Events Center for the High Times Medical Cannabis Cup festival.

The event featured a Saturday night B.o.B. rap concert and culminated in an awards ceremony for top strains and product of medicinal marijuana on Sunday. Categories of medicinal marijuana competition included Sativa, Indica, edible product and concentrates.

“This is like a Good Housekeeping seal of approval,” said Mary McEvoy, publisher of High Times magazine. “This is like winning an Olympic Gold for these people. You get in the magazine and you get to use the logo, and it gives great authenticity for these companies to say we are a third party verifier of their quality.”

McEvoy said judging is done offsite, and that product entered in the competition is also analyzed at labs to determine quality.

“It’s like the Oscars, when we give these cups out, they come out and accept them with tears in their eyes and say ‘this is my love and now I’m sharing it with the world, and thank you High Times, for giving me this honor,’” McEvoy said.

Christopher Phillips of San Francisco, a breeder whose strain of Blue Diamond O.G. (ocean grown) had been entered in the Sativa competition, is CEO of MCS Delivery, a San Francisco medical cannabis dispensary.

“Everyday patients can come to these events and see everything on a broad scale, from edibles, to tinctures, to dabs, to flowers and actually really see how much medicine works for them and then take that back home to their collective and know how to treat themselves,” Phillips said. “You have so many people coming from everywhere with different techniques and different lifestyles of growing.”

About 200 vendors showcased their product in a medicating area for visitors with medical cannabis cards.

The competitions are held every year in San Francisco, San Bernardino, and in Denver and Seattle, where recreational consumption of cannabis is now legal and taxed under state law. In Colorado and Washington state, the event is called the U.S. Cannabis Cup.

“This event is awesome,” said Brian Sebern of the VIP Meds dispensary in Menefee. “It’s a cool place for a lot of people from the same community and counterculture to meet up and learn a lot of new things. It’s pretty interesting.”

The events are modeled after the High Times Cannabis Cup championship event in Amsterdam.

About 10,000 people attended the San Bernardino event each day, said McEvoy.

McEvoy said the magazine hopes to return to San Bernardino next year.