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Canada: Reefer Gladness: Cannabis fans celebrate 4/20 with three-day festival downtown Lindsay Charlton Windsor Star Friday 19 Apr 2019 “Everybody’s having a good time,” said Ian Morris, clad in his Maple Leafs jersey and tuque as he sparked a joint in front of Charles Clarke Square for Windsor’s third annual Epic 420 Festival. “The reason why we’re having this is it’s our right as Canadians to smoke pot.” This year, the festival runs over three days — Thursday through Saturday from 11 a.m. to 11 p.m. — and features speakers, live music, DJs, and plenty of pot-friendly vendors. “What I want to see is the normalization of cannabis and that’s what we’re seeing today is 100 per cent normalization,” said festival organizer and pot activist Leo Lucier. Lucier has his sights set on expansion, moving the festival to other communities and more frequent demonstrations. “We’re going to do some summer festivals along the way now that it’s legalized,” said Lucier, a former operator of Compassion House on Tecumseh Road. With 4/20 falling on Easter weekend this year, admission to the festival was either $5 or a canned good to be added to a UHaul that was filling up with non-perishable foods on Friday. “It always seems that time of the year after Easter that the food banks are depleted and there’s nothing there for them,” Lucier said. “So if I can use cannabis as a theme, let’s do it.” With April 20 traditionally recognized an international day for cannabis protests and demonstrations, Lucier said the festival will endure, even with legalization of cannabis. The event maintained its political tone with many of the speakers and activists, who are still working to normalize cannabis culture. Some still take issue with how legalized weed was rolled out. “The government can boast legalization, they did take the right step by legalizing it,” Lucier said. “But they did it in the wrong way.” Michael (Puffdog) Gallagher, an advocate and founder of Dads for Marijuana International, told the crowd he comes from a long line of medical cannabis users — from his grandfather, who used it to help with post traumatic stress disorder after serving as a medic in the military, to his mother who consumed pot while suffering from cancer in the 1980s. “We need to take a stand,” Gallagher said. “The law has been rewritten in a way that isn’t really an end to prohibition — it’s what I like to call prohibition 2.0 — where we have stricter penalties, more lengthy penalties. “I’ve been at this game since 1975 and it hasn’t gotten any easier.” Gallagher, who travelled to Windsor from Hamilton for the festivities, said events like the Epic 420 Festival are important because they allow the community an opportunity to get together and network. “Folks here in Windsor have really put together a wonderful celebration here,” he said. “I’ve stood on some of the biggest stages but I’m telling you some of these smaller festivals are where it really happens because it’s grassroots.” https://windsorstar.com/news/local-news/reefer-gladness-cannabis-fans-celebrate-4-20-with-three-day-festival-downtown?fbclid=IwAR3TUjp0kAAQvZ1x2ytlSMApcjOjFHUTK0oF5K1gK0RxtGd39gU50nmRTTY
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