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More than 100,000 people visited a first-of-its-kind pop-up shopping area and on-site consumption lounge at the recent California State Fair, breaking new mainstream ground for the cannabis industry and setting a trend that could spread across the country.
The family-friendly festival, in its 170th year—featuring carnival rides, rock concerts, fried snacks and sweltering weather—was the first in America to allow cannafans to buy and consume weed on the premises.
The tightly regulated program drew scouting missions from Nevada and several other states, with government officials taking note of the layout, guidelines and partnerships that gelled to create the 21-and-older “California Cannabis Experience.”
Founders at Embarc, a 15-store dispensary chain, spearheaded the effort with Fair Play Ventures that spanned 30,000 square feet at the Cal Expo complex in Sacramento. The project included more than 80 cannabis brands, a large-scale educational exhibit, live entertainment and panel discussions and a competition judged by experts at Budist that put cannabis on par with California’s fine wines, cheeses and olive oils.
Attendees could buy flower, prerolls, edibles, sodas and other THC-laced products from the on-site vendors and dispensary, while the consumption lounge was located a few football fields away, all in designated security-heavy zones.
“This is California taking a historic leadership position—it’s bigger than sales, it’s bigger than consumption and it’s bigger than any one of us,” Lauren Carpenter, co-founder and CEO of Embarc, told ADWEEK a few days into the event. “Failure is not an option when you’re on a world stage like this—we have to pull this off in a way that creates a gold standard.”
Embarc and its collaborators did just that, according to fair organizers who have already committed to a redo of the program for 2025.
Tom Martinez, CEO of the California State Fair and Cal Expo, said there were “a mix of opinions” from the general public on adding cannabis sales and consumption to the event before it happened.