A legal panel debated public policy and a doctor discussed the state of health care as girls in bikinis posed near tables of bongs and a guy in a green bear suit offered free hits off a 5-foot pipe.
And the smell of marijuana wafted over the Ship Canal.
Seattle's first-ever Medical Cannabis Cup — part gourmet weed contest, part trade show, part smoke-in — showcased the entrepreneurial drive and explosive growth of the local medical-marijuana industry.
From dispensaries offering dozens of marijuana varieties to new potency-testing labs to makers of cannabis-infused capsules and candy corn, storefronts displaying the trademark green cross dot nearly every Seattle neighborhood. The city estimates there are at least 150 marijuana-related businesses here, more ubiquitous than Starbucks. Elsewhere in Washington, business may not be as out in the open, but it's still chugging along.
"We're at the infancy of a new industry," said Dan Skye, editorial director at High Times magazine, which put on the Cannabis Cup. "Everybody's trying to get their foundations.
But just as quickly as this quasi-legal industry has grown, it is at a crossroads.
With virtually no state regulation, hustlers threaten to stain what began as a grass-roots patient-care movement. Federal authorities continue to enforce the prohibition against marijuana, with recent warnings to dispensaries and a handful of prosecutions.
And, as voters consider a ballot measure to legalize recreational marijuana use, it's clear that, under the guise of medicine, the party has already started, particularly in Seattle.
Leaders in the medical-marijuana industry are pushing for more regulation from Olympia. In the interim, they're working to police themselves, including writing their own ethics guidelines. Some even pay taxes.
"I would like our industry to appear more grown up," said John Davis, owner of a West Seattle dispensary. "But I understand that's not the way it is right now."
Now, some say it's more like the Wild West.
Photo: Steve Ringman
