On Saturday we travelled down to Preston Park in Brighton for Green Pride 2016, an event set up by Brighton Cannabis club and now in its third year. This was our first time at the event, and we will most certainly be heading back next year.

This is where I’d include a photo of our stall, but unfortunately, I didn’t plan enough and only had flyers and clipboards to go on a 6ft table. Oh well, at least we have the table for next time.

We did manage to give out about 1500 flyers throughout the day, and it was great to see people really getting behind ISMOKE:

Quite a diverse range of people attended Green Pride 2016, and UKCSC President Greg De Hoedt summed up the exhibitors nicely in an update last night: “We had glassblowers from all 4 corners of the UK marketing their wares and about 8 booths set up from headshops, to cannnabis clubs like Hampshire Cannabis Community, to Dutch Snacks UK and Ismoke Magazine,Dotcombong and United Kingdom Cannabis Social Clubs, United Patients Alliance. Tottenham Cannabis-club and London Smokers Club.”

Black The Ripper was also there with the Dank of England crew.

We also caught up with Durham City CC, a new cannabis club that has been set up to help unite the cannabis community and spread cannabis education to the masses.

Piff Advisor were in attendance at the event, spreading the word about their new website launching this autumn. Props to Rando, Piff Advisor’s founder, who has been in attendance at every cannabis event we have been at this year. We’re looking forward to the launch of the Piff Advisor Website (feature and write up of their launch party coming soon).

East London Head Shop and Smoke Loud UK were also at the event, making it almost a min-Product Earth (minus the food stalls, music and camping!).

The police presence at the event was minimal, and early on in the day we saw two police officers liaising with the UKCSC before leaving without interference. TWO POLICE OFFICERS. Do you remember Hyde Park on 20th April? They had a lot more police there for a, quite frankly, very similar event. It felt as though in Brighton we could be trusted to have a good time, whereas in Hyde Park a strong police presence was always there, on the outskirts, waiting to pick up bait people and those straying too far from the group for too long (or smelling too good!).

The event itself had roughly 2000 people attending at various points, probably peaking around 4:20. The atmosphere of the day was great, only temporarily interrupted by some idiots who thought it would be funny to let off firecrackers about 10 times over the afternoon. Aside from that minimal disruption, there was no trouble, as cannabis users from all over the country came together to celebrate “Green Pride”.

This guy was a legend: “Why am I trying to hide my weed for this photo?”

There were lots of medical cannabis users at the event too, and it was great to speak to people who have seen massive benefits from cannabis. It’s even more infuriating when you sit and think about how there are people in the UK who are still criminalised for growing their own medicine. As a recreational cannabis user I believe in free access for all adults, but there is no denying that there are people out there who need cannabis a lot more than I do.

I’ve said it before after Product Earth and I’ll say it again – The UK needs more cannabis events like this. Green Pride was a particularly good event because of the freedom that it gave to canna-businesses to turn up and show off their wares without a charge. This led to there being at least 10 gazebos along the edge of the event which gave it that festival feel. Big respect to Brighton Cannabis club for putting this on – I hope that more UK cannabis clubs begin to organise similar events – we need one per month somewhere in the UK as a minimum!

Green Pride is a fitting name, because we are proud to be cannabis users. The law needs to change, and the country needs to shake off this stoner stereotype. I’m going to be putting myself and ISMOKE out there a lot more moving forward, so expect to see us at all the major cannabis events around the country.

If you would like ISMOKE to cover your cannabis-inspired event, feel free to drop us an email at [email protected]

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