High Times Cannabis Cup this Year will have the People be the Judges

In the past, the High Times Cannabis Cup would always feature some of the finest buds you can smoke with high profile celebrity judges grading them. This year there’s going to be a major shakeup to this process. Instead of letting celebrities decide which strains will take home the awards for being the best, that decision has been left to be made by us regular folk. That’s right, this year for the Cannabis Cup in Illinois if you live instate you can become a judge! There even calling it the High Times Cannabis Cup 2020: People’s Choice Edition. There are eight categories that you can judge on: Indica Flower, Sativa Flower, Hybrid Flower, Pre-Rolls, Non-Solvent Concentrates, Solvent Concentrates, Vape Pens & Cartridges, and Edibles. Judges will also need to pick up a testing kit for each of the categories they are judging. Now here’s the catch. First off when signing up you can only choose up to five of the categories you want to judge. Second, you will need to buy a testing kit for each of the categories which can range anywhere from $100-$300 - so it won’t be cheap.  The judging timeframe will run from August 25 - September 25.

This new format for the Cannabis cup is a great idea. We already have so many other great competitions and institutions where we allow the people to decide, so might as well include judging marijuana and marijuana products to that list. People were getting tired of seeing Snoop Dogg judge some exotic weed and saying something cool about it. He does it for all the weed strains he smokes. In the words of Jonah Hill, who was pretending to be Woody Harrelson in that scene from This is the End, “Weed is for the people, it’s the people’s weed.” It’s time for us, the regular 9-5 working folk, to decide what is the dankest of the dank. (Now obligatory clip from This Is The End)

Now some of you are probably thinking “Well what about the pandemic going on? Will it be indoors or outdoors? Do I need to wear a mask? Rabble rabble rabble.” Good news! You don’t need to worry about any of that stuff because the awards show will be done virtually this time and it will be done on September 26. So no need to worry about that nasty Corona! The downside though is that this won’t be like the other Cannabis Cups in the past where it’s a packed venue full of pot-loving adults, trying various flowers and edibles, buying sweet new pipes and bongs at stands, and enjoying live music. Damn you Corona!

-Rafael Santos