As of 5 p.m. PST on August 31, High Times withdrew its Temporary Event Application to hold its 2015 Oregon Cannabis Cup in the City of Milwaukie, Oregon.
“Bringing the High Times Cannabis Cup to Oregon has proven to be a Herculean task— in fact, it’s been the most difficult of all of our Cannabis Cups to get off the ground,” High Times Event Director Amanda Younger explained.
High Times commenced work on its inaugural Portland-area Cannabis Cup in early 2015. While Oregonians were elated to have such an event close to home, the Oregon Liquor Control Commission (OLCC) made it effectively impossible to bring the Cannabis Cup to Portland.
“A small High Times Cannabis Cup draws upwards of 5000 attendees,” Younger said, “and Portland-area venues that can accommodate such volume inevitably have liquor licenses. The OLCC made extremely clear that holding a Cannabis Cup at a venue with a liquor license would put that liquor license in jeopardy of being revoked, regardless of whether or not liquor would be served at the Cannabis Cup.”
After exhausting every viable Portland option, High Times turned its attention to the City of Milwaukie and began negotiations with city officials in July to secure a Temporary Event Permit for the Cannabis Cup in early Fall 2015.
“We jumped through hoops of fire, answered every question posited, responded to every critique lodged, made every refinement requested in connection with the Milwaukie application,” Younger said. “In one instance the city asked us to change anticipated attendance from 5000 to 7000 and then cited the change it requested as a concern for granting the permit.”
In her withdrawal email to the City of Milwaukie, Younger wrote, “It has become clear to us that regardless of the amount of time we spend going back and forth on this application, the City of Milwaukie will never grant it.”
A single Cannabis Cup is known to bring hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of dollars into a community.
“We received a fantastic write-up regarding the boon an area experiences when a High Times Cannabis Cup comes to town. It’s a shame that Milwaukie residents will not be the economic beneficiaries of a Cannabis Cup,” Younger stated.
Younger does note that there’s a proverbial silver lining: “Through this process, we’ve met amazing professionals who worked with us to the very end. We could not have made the headway we did without the wise counsel of lawyers Ross Day and Leland Berger, and the tireless energy and effort of Sid Gupta and Nick Desai of Pistil Point Cannabis.”
Immediately upon withdrawing its application from the City of Milwaukie, High Times began its search for a venue for the Oregon Cannabis Cup, to be held in Spring 2016.