Thirty years after Prop 215, the California State Fair crowned its first home-grow champion and hung medals on the people who made growing legal in the first place. Some of them had been arrested for it.
The question came from the stage, and hands went up across the room.
“How many in this audience were arrested for medical marijuana?”
The man asking was Dale Gieringer, director of California NORML and a co-author of the Compassionate Use Act. He was speaking at the California Cannabis Awards, held on the grounds of the California State Fair. And the people raising their hands were about to be given medals in front of a state seal.
That is the whole story of the night, and arguably of the last thirty years, compressed into one show of hands.
Thirty Years Since 215
Bonnie Metcalf. Photo by Matt Adams
The fifth annual California Cannabis Awards handed out its Golden Bear trophies in Sacramento this month, part of the California Cannabis Experience at a State Fair that ran through August 2. Cannabis sits there alongside the wine, the cheese and the olive oil. That alone would have been unthinkable in 1996.
This is why the organizers gave this year’s Pebbles Trippet Lifetime Achievement Award to a crowd instead of a person.
The award is named for Pebbles Trippet, the activist behind the Trippet Standard, the California legal precedent that established a medical patient’s right to transport cannabis. She received the first one. This year, on the thirtieth anniversary of Proposition 215, it went collectively to the activists who put the initiative on the ballot and passed it. California NORML recommended the list of medal recipients. Several dozen showed up to collect theirs. More than three hundred additional names scrolled on screen.
Gieringer spoke for the group. In prepared remarks, he walked the room back to a time when everything in it would have been a felony.
“Thirty years ago, this event was inconceivable. It was a felony to grow or distribute marijuana anywhere in the U.S. But patients and doctors were discovering that marijuana was good medicine for AIDS, cancer, chronic pain, and many other conditions.”
Chris Conrad and Mikki Norris. Photo by Matt Adams
He named the dead and the living. Dennis Peron, who opened the first medical cannabis buyers’ club in San Francisco and is no longer here. Dr. Tod Mikuriya. Anna Boyce, Scott Imler and John Entwistle, the group that formed Californians for Compassionate Use. Mikki Norris and Chris Conrad, who organized the volunteer petitioners. Debby Goldsberry, Mary Pat Jacobs and the rest of the people who stood outside grocery stores collecting signatures for something most of the country thought was a joke.
Others in the room had done their part in handcuffs. Among them were Mike Corral and Rick Cook of WAMM, the Wo/Men’s Alliance for Medical Marijuana, growers who were raided for supplying patients.
Prop 215 passed with 56 percent of the vote. Gieringer told the room that 41 states and 57 foreign countries have since followed California’s lead on medical cannabis.
“We helped change the world for the better,” he said.
The Prop 215 medal. Photo by Matt Adams
For Rachelle Gordon, who works on the awards, the tribute was the highlight of the night. “Honoring the activists who helped pass Prop 215 was an incredibly special moment and a highlight of my career,” she said. “These elders set in motion a drug policy revolution that eventually reverberated across the country. Our industry would not be where it is today without the hard work of these individuals.”
One line from the evening stuck harder than the speeches, and nobody is quite sure who said it. Aundre Speciale, herself among the medal recipients, told organizers she overheard an activist in the crowd say: “I never felt recognized for what I did back then, until today.”
The First Home Grow Champion
Diego Fernandez, left, and Ed Rosenthal. Photo by Matt Adams
The other first of the first belonged to a guy from Kelseyville.
Diego Fernandez won the Golden Bear in the inaugural home grow competition for his Dolato S1, taking the first trophy in what organizers describe as the country’s first state-sanctioned personal-use cultivation contest. Not a licensed operator. Not a commercial farm. A person who grew weed at his house, judged at the state fair, same as a prize tomato.
Ed Rosenthal took the first Golden Grower lifetime achievement award the same weekend, which is its own kind of full circle. Rosenthal spent decades teaching people to grow at home, was federally prosecuted for cultivation in 2003, and is now collecting hardware from a California state fair for the trouble. He is also on the Prop 215 medal list.
Put those two next to the medals and the shape of the night is obvious. The activists made it legal to grow. Thirty years later, the state started handing out trophies for doing it well.
The 2026 Golden Bears
Mark Greyshock of Greenshock Farms. Photo by Matt Adams
On the competition side, judging ran through Budist and SC Labs, with flower entries lab-tested before a blind sensory panel picked the winners. The 2026 Golden Bears:
Pre-Rolls — One of a Kind x Joy Ridge Farms, Dutch Treat
Cartridges — Moon Valley Cannabis, Neon Panther Live Rosin All-in-One
Concentrates — Moon Valley Cannabis, Neon Panther Ice Water Hash
Edibles — Emerald Sky, Blue Dream Live Rosin GrooveBar
Beverages — St. Ides, Lychee Pear High Tea
Wellness — Emerald Bay Extracts, Super Lemon Haze RSO Tablets
Jason Gellman of Ridgeline Farms. Photo by Matt Adams
Jason Gellman of Ridgeline Farms took the Mixed Light bear for a second consecutive year, and used the moment to point past his own farm. “This is about the people who came before us, the legacy farmers who built this culture long before there were awards,” he said. “The ones who took the risks, protected the genetics, and passed down the knowledge that shaped Humboldt County.”
Moon Valley Cannabis won both the cartridge and concentrate bears with its Neon Panther line. Ridgeline is a Humboldt operation and Greenshock farms in Mendocino, which is to say the legacy Gellman was talking about was standing in the room too.
Same Act, Different Century
Photo by Matt Adams
Strip away the trophies and the two headlines from this year’s awards are the same headline.
People who were once arrested over cannabis collected medals beneath a state seal. A man from Lake County won a Golden Bear for growing it at home. Thirty years and one ballot initiative separate those two facts.
The bears go home with the brands. The rest of it belongs to everybody who grows.
High Times runs its own competition, the Cannabis Cup, judged by everyday consumers rather than expert panels. Pre-registration is open now for the Montana and Massachusetts 2026 editions.
Photography by Matt Adams, courtesy of the California Cannabis Awards.
