Police raid dampens Cannabis Cup

Just when you think you know what you're talking about, events sometimes take a sharp, unanticipated turn and one ends up with a bad case of foot-in-the-mouth disease.

My last column from Amsterdam trumpeting the joys of the Cannabis Cup, Dutch tolerance of the cannabis culture, and the growth of the semi-licit industry that services it is a case in point.

The sad fact is that this year's High Times Cannabis Cup was raided on the third day of the exposition by a massive force of more than 100 Amsterdam police officers who shut down the venue and turned all the attendees out in the cold. No attendees were arrested, and the cops were described by one observer as "friendly and polite."

But in a chilling twist of long-established procedure, the police demanded that everyone surrender their personal stashes before leaving the premises, although several High Times staffers reported that people were allowed to smoke up rather than turn their weed over to the coppers, which made for a somewhat surreal scene.

One observer, Dana Larsen, director of the Vancouver Cannabis Dispensary Society, messaged from the site that a "police officer told me they saw some booths giving out weed and breaking other rules, so now the event is shut down [and] everyone has to leave except for exhibitors."

High Times spokesman David Holland said the raid "started over a misunderstanding about a permit application filed by the venue to host the event." Once matters were straightened out, the Cannabis Cup formally concluded as usual on the next night — American Thanksgiving — with the annual awards ceremony and concert at the Melkweg.

Struggling to comprehend exactly what had provoked the police raid, unprecedented in the 24-year history of the flamboyant festivities, I spoke with longtime Cannabis Cup organizer Steve Hager. It seems that this year's exhibition hall, Borchland, a new sports facility on the outskirts of town, accepted the High Times event without understanding it is an unabashed cannabis exposition.

Hager couldn't say who had alerted the authorities, but some suspect it was the proprietor himself who was evidently freaked out by the massive consumption of cannabis on his premises and, fearful of being cited for smoking violations and other possible improprieties, called in the police to shut the thing down.

In any case, Hager felt that the immediate problem stemmed from the rental of a new venue in a part of town outside the accustomed orbit of the event's organizers and in a jurisdiction administered by a different bureau of the police department than the one the organizers had traditionally dealt with.

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