From left, the “Guru of Ganja” horticulturalist Ed Rosenthal, cannabis activist Chris Conrad and me, all sporting the same Island Hemp Wear shirt at the California Cannabis Awards on July 18, 2026.
The bad news: When I jetted up to the California Cannabis Awards the Friday before last, I did so horribly underprepared recording-equipment-wise. As a result, most of the video I shot of the Proposition 215 activists (who had gathered en masse to receive the Pebbles Trippet Lifetime Achievement Award) is unintelligible and unusable.
The good news: I did manage to capture the moment author, cannabis activist and expert witness Chris Conrad responded to a loud “Boo” from the crowd that came in response to his mention of Prop. 64 (that’s the 2016 one that made recreational weed legal in the Golden State). “People can boo if they want,” Conrad said. “But instead of more people getting arrested, fewer people got arrested. Felony arrests were down 90-plus percent [and] misdemeanors were down the high 70s percent.” He then acknowledged that “we still need to solve the business side of it.”
I don’t know Conrad — we’d only met a few hours earlier because we were both wearing the same Island Hemp Wear shirt (as was weed-world horticultural legend Ed Rosenthal, we found out later) — but his retort perfectly sums up why we shouldn’t as the saying goes, “let the perfect be the enemy of the good.”
The bottom line — and I know it’s a low bar — is this: Nobody should go to jail for the plant. Full stop. Are there problems, issues, challenges to how legal weed works across the country? Absolutely. Are there bad actors? Ditto. Taxes that are too high and enforcement against illegal shops that is too lax? Yes and yes. But the big takeaway from Conrad and the handful of other Prop. 215 organizers, campaigners and agitators who took the stage before and he did to share their tales from the trenches of 30 years ago is that change is possible.
The hardware handed out to the Prop. 215 activists at the California Cannabis Awards on July 18, 2026.
I’m super glad that the Prop. 215 activists were recognized from the stage later that evening during the presentation of the prestigious Golden Bear Awards, an event that absolutely could not have been possible without their efforts of so long ago. And while events and tribute medals are a nice touch, I think the best way to show our thanks is with our deeds, our voices, our energy and our dollars.
Get involved. Support NORML. Join the fight. Don’t be quiet. And who knows, maybe, in 30 years, you’ll have made the kind of difference they did. There’s only one way to find out.
