California State Fair To Host Cannabis Exhibitions And Awards For The First Time In 2022
California will welcome a plant once outlawed for nearly a century when its annual state fair returns next summer after a two-year COVID-19 hiatus.
Officials announced over the weekend that the event, based in the state capital of Sacramento and scheduled for July 15 to July 31, will include a series of cannabis awards to celebrate the state’s hundreds of legal cultivators.
By recognizing the plant and its unique compounds, the science-based competition aims to showcase the diversity of California’s “microclimates, appellations, indoor, sun grown, mixed light farms, and brands,” according to event spokeswoman DeeDee Taft.
“The Awards will reach a new audience and serve as a platform for consumer education,” Taft said. “It will illustrate the role of the cannabis industry as a vital contributor to the California economy.”
The flower-only competition will include first-place awards for 11 compound categories – including dominant terpenes, codominant terpenes and cannabinoids, among others. Each competition will also give awards to several runners-up in each category, putting the total number of cannabis-related awards at 70.
A science-based analysis performed and certified by SC Labs will objectively score the results instead of human judges by testing each cultivar for chemometric data. Cannabis use outside of private residences is still banned in Sacramento, so people won’t be allowed to smoke at the fair.
The plant joins the fair’s expansive list of high-profile competitions — including those for wine, craft beer, cheese and olive oil. Nearly 600,000 people attended the 17-day event back in 2019, and organizers said they expect a similar number for next summer.
California is one of 19 adult-use cannabis states and adopted the plant relatively early compared to other areas of the country. Voters legalized the plant on the November 2016 ballot and dispensaries got the thumbs-up to begin retail sales in early 2018. The most recent statistics, for 2020, showed legal cannabis stores in the Golden State tallied a whopping $4.4 billion in sales last year.
An editorial from the Los Angeles Times contended the cannabis competition could be the most culturally significant moment for California agriculture since a blind tasting event in 1976 in which a panel of mainly French wine judges scored Napa Valley wines above those of Burgundy and Bordeaux, causing California wine to skyrocket in popularity.
