The Third Annual Terpestival

by Dr. Dominic Corva, Terpestival Producer and Social Science Research Director

The Cannabis and Social Policy Center is proud to announce the third return of our annual popular education event, the Terpestival (TM). It will take place July 15, 2017, at Sodo Dockside, in partnership with the Cannabis Alliance and Medicine Creek Analytics. Let’s review its key elements!

1. The Terpestival is a Whole Plant, Whole Society popular education event with particular relevance to industry, consumers, policymakers, and the general public that benefits from conscious approaches to cannabis production, processing, retail, consumption. We use one constituent element of cannabis, terpenes, to promote a wider understanding of what cannabis is and how it can be part of wellness promotion in society.
2. The cannabis plant is incredibly diverse, not just because there’s more to it than cannabinoids, of which THC and CBD are the most well-known, but because there’s so much more to the plant within these two major constituent elements. The “whole plant” entourage effect of cannabis varies across terpene categories and clusters, each with unique potentials for therapeutic effect. Even the trace terpenes can cause a significant difference in smell, taste, and effect. Think about the difference between “lime” and “lemon.” Both derive citrus flavor and smell from limonene, but what makes lime so distinctive is its combination with minor terpenes that may not even show up on a lab test.
3. Educating the public about the whole plant through the lens of “terpenes” not only promotes wellness in the public interest, but substantially opens up the field of possibilities for industry branding and marketing. The public and the private interest intersect strongly for our event, and we aim to capture industry as a vehicle for promoting wellness as a result. It’s not just good to know “what else” about cannabis than cannabinoids. It’s good business sense. We see the nascent legal industry struggling to differentiate their products for a number of reasons, but in particular because there’s only so far a THC or CBD score can go to appeal to consumers. This is especially the case in Washington’s legal market, where consumers can’t smell or experience what they are buying until after they are out the door.
4. Thus, our terpene “tournament.” Historically, cannabis competitions don’t have a lot of categories to work with beyond product type and cannabinoid ratio. Many of the more forward-looking competitions provide categories that reflect how cannabis is grown — in the sun or indoor, for example. This is a welcome step away from a monocultural market that reflects decades of black market commodity chains, to which the new legal markets still cater! The legal cannabis consumer is by definition potentially very different from the traditional cannabis consumer, and the industry is blocking itself by not promoting diverse cannabis experiences to a more diverse and broad potential consumer market.
5. We prefer the term “tournament” to “competition” because we aim to lift up and empower diversity in cannabis values rather than singular value. It’s not just a matter of giving everyone an award — though the more of these, the better. Rather, there are so many different ways cannabis can be valuable to the people that sell it and the people that buy it. The more different ways cannabis can reflect diverse botanical value, the more likely it is that its economic benefits can be widely realized by cottage industry and small businesses. Category champions in the tournament will be empowered to brand distinct values for market success.
6. The tournament’s value depends on the strength of our popular education programming. We are incredibly grateful to plant a flag on our annual keynote speaker, Dr. Ethan Russo, one of the world’s most accomplished cannabis scientists and all-around plant person. His talk alone is worth the price of admission and adds profound legitimacy and credibility to the terpene tournament associated with his talks.
7. But we don’t stop there. Dr. Michelle Sexton, our organization’s Medical Research Director and clinical researcher, is a world-class whole plant specialist. The event is in many ways a showcase for her incredibly valuable contributions as a cannabis scientist and public intellectual for the whole plant.
8. Drs. Russo and Sexton are the foundation upon which our subject matter expert panels stand. This year, we have three panels designed to evolve the I 502 cannabis industry towards the promotion of wellness in society. Dr. Sexton herself curates the “Terpenes and Wellness” panel, which includes Dr. Russo, Dr. Hatha Gbedawo, and Virginia Hoyer. We will describe the panels in more detail in a forthcoming post, but the other two address “Industry Evolution” as it relates to terpenes; and a contemporary issues panel with an annually rotating theme. This year that theme is “Cannabis-derived and Other Terpenes.”

We are incredibly excited for this year’s event, and look forward to posts about our tournament methodology and categories; judging process; detailed panel descriptions with our already-booked world class Subject Matter Experts; and more.