Disquiet in the Cannabis Cup

Laurence Cherniak's stage appearance had been a pleasurable but brief interlude in the main business of the awards ceremony, which was giving cups to the Green House. Most of the Dutch at the Melkweg stood at the back, recognizable by their fashionable clothes, short hair and fresh faces. But Arjan and his posse were in front of me at the side of the stage to minimize delays as, on almost every possible occasion, they bounded up to take first prize.
My first inkling that not everyone was content with this state of affairs came when the owner of De Rokerij coffee shop, on accepting a second prize, pleaded: 'Come on everyone, no protests any more! Just have fun!' Then there was Arjan's acceptance speech when he went to collect the top trophy.

He said: 'There was a lot of controversv around the cups - we always win the cups, but we have to work very hard ... We hope that next year we have more coffee shops entering. For us it's good for the whole industry that the whole industry enters, and that even more Americans come over for the Cup. When we heard that a few people didn't want to enter we were really, really sorry. We hope they enter more next year.'

The consensus was that the Green House had won a hollow victory. Their chief rival, De Dampkring (The Atmosphere), had pulled out after winning the Cannabis Cup in '96 and '97, circulating leaflets describing the event as a 'commercial circus'. Next day I saw Steve Hager for the first time at his press conference in the saloon-style Emerald Room of the Pax Party House (the different rooms are named after different gems). He was a slightly built guy in his forties with a young face and greying hair. He wanted to talk about his technical coup in putting the awards ceremony on the Internet. 'It's going to transform our whole way of dealing with this issue. Once people see this on TV the whole Reefer Madness campaign is just going to melt away.' But a British journalist researching a feature for Sky magazine had previously been briefed by someone from De Dampkring and wasn't going to give Hager an easy ride. One thing that had infuriated De Dampkring had been that they didn't feel that their victories in the two previous years had sufficiently diverted High Times from its editorial love-in with Arjan.

Hager: 'When people win they get coverage. You don't read about all the teams who tried to get to the Superbowl. He's consistently won more cups than anybody else so he gets, more ..

Guy from Sky: 'The guy was saying it isn't like that. Last year's winner withdrew . . .'

Hager: 'Dampkring are probably back next year. They pulled a big publicity stunt and got a lot of attention for themselves and didn't have to worry about losing.'

Guy from Sky: 'They told me that they bought the cup last year. They had to spend 40,000 guilders ($20,000) to win the cup.'

(The Sky reporter was amazed by the amount of free samples going around. Later that day he and his girlfriend were trying without success to smoke their way through a mound of free weed they had either to smoke or leave behind. I took a bit, then lost it, and panicked going through Gatwick customs that it was somewhere in my luggage.)

The money spent isn't surprising when you consider the number of Americans paying $200, plus travel and accommodation, to serve as judges: nearly 2,500 in 1998. The samples themselves are a major investment (the sixteen out of Amsterdam's 356 coffee shops that enter the Cup have to submit four to each judge), if the coffee-shop owners absorb the cost, as they are urged to by the High Times organisers. But that's only the start of it. Eya from the Blue Bird, which also pulled out in 1998, described it as 'an advertising campaign': 'Last year the Green House put on a whole media show, dancing girls, girls standing handing out free samples, free joints'. The parties are one investment; there're also the shuttle buses and the free merchandizing (stickers, T-shirts, bags and caps). Staff are sent out to the Pax Party House to mingle with the judges, light a joint with them and bend their ear on the qualities of their employers' product. One of the most important weapons is a laminated plastic tag, similar to those that High Times gives to the judges, which carries the name and address of your coffee shop and entitles the bearer to free or discount drinks and smokes. 'It isn't a cannabis competition,' one observer told me. 'It's a beauty contest for the coffee shops.' And Arjan's personalityAmericans are socially insecure - they spend their whole life in hiding because of American culture - and he's smiling and shaking their hands and saying, "I remember you from last year." Apparently Arjan is a rich kid, the son of a senior Shell executive, and stands out among the drop-outs and bad boys who are the more usual kind of coffee shop proprietor.