A petition supporting the legalization of marijuana that requires more than 50,000 signatures statewide will be circulating at Moscow Hemp Fest April 20, said Arlene Falcon, owner of Tye Dye Everything.
“The first year that we had the petition we got over 500 signatures representing 22 different counties,” Falcon said. “That’s the thing about getting signatures, you have to sign the right page to the county you live in, and you have to be a registered voter. So it’s a little complicated.”
She said the focus of the petition is the use of medical marijuana, not recreational, so seriously or terminally ill people are not criminalized.
Falcon said many different counties are represented in Moscow because of the University of Idaho and the student population. She said the reason they have to get so many signatures is because once the petition is signed the signatures must be validated, and sometimes out of 20 sheets of signatures, only five or six will be legitimate.
Aside from Hemp Fest, Falcon said she and other advocates acquire signatures through the Farmers Market and groups such as Students for Sensible Drug Policy.
Falcon said SSDP were great advocates and set up on campus as often as possible to get signatures, but the group went inactive this year.
“This is a good opportunity to reach out to students, I love for students to get involved and say yes, I would love to help get signatures,” she said.
Hemp Fest was started by UI students who were activists in the Hemp movement, and after they made some products using hemp thought “Let’s do something during Moms Weekend — we don’t have anything fun going on,” Falcon said. This year is the 17th annual Hemp Fest.
Before she got involved with the Moscow Hempfest, Falcon attended Seattle Hemp Fest. There she sought help from Steve Phun, MC each year in Moscow, to help spread information about the hemp movement.
Speakers attending this year’s event will be Compassionate Idaho, wich began the new petition, and Sarah Frank of Mom’s for Marijuna located in Oregon. Falcon said 30-40 vendors with arts and crafts from around the Northwest will be in attendance.
Willow Falcon, owner of Glassphemy — a glassblowing shop in Pullman — and Arlene Falcon’s daughter, said she and other glass-blowing artisits had been attending Hemp Fest before Glassphemy was even a business.
“The first couple years, we didn’t have a store yet — we were just trying to make some money,” she said. “Now we do it because we want to be advocates for use of medical marijuana and in Washington state — things have really come a long way. We’re experimenting with legalizing recreational marijuana, which I don’t think is a dangerous thing for our society and I would certainly encourage Idaho to do.”
Willow said she advocates the decriminalization of marijuana, which is why she attends Hemp Fest, and that the event plays a big part in decriminalization.
“Once we opened our business, we were intending to advertise in a way — make customers aware, but now attending Hemp Fest is a big part of our business. I just want to show our community that we’re here,” she said.
Hemp Fest is a lot of fun, Willow said. Regardless of any political stance Hemp Fest represents, she said she believes it’s a great event for the community.
“It’s an awesome festival that kind of breaks people out of their winter shell and people should go whether they’re thinking about pot or not,” she said.
Lt. Paul Kwiatkowski said no major problems occur during Hemp Fest. In the past, the Moscow Police Department has seen some issues with the use of marijuana in the park, which they deal with in accordance, but there are no issues with out-of-control people.
“It’s not us against them, people tend to think that. But it’s just another day in the park for us,” Kwiatkowski said.
As for paraphernalia, vendors are allowed to sell pipes and bongs.
“You can sell hemp products, that’s perfectly fine,” he said. “However, they can’t be used to ingest any illegal substance such as marijuana and hash. If you use them to smoke tobacco products, that’s perfectly OK — if you smoke marijuana in the park, that’s illegal in the state of Idaho and you’ll be dealt with accordingly. That’s all.”
Molly Spencer can be reached at [email protected]