News and Culture

Former WW coverboy Paul Stanford swept the annual Oregon Medical Cannabis Awards on Saturday night, winning the top three prizes for buds grown in his Felony Flats garden.

Stanford, who runs a growing chain of medical-marijuana clinics, took first place with his version of a strain known as Lemon Pledge, second with a strain called Train Wreck, and third with his Dynamite.

He accepted his glass trophies in front of 100 people who attended the awards banquet at the Ambridge Events Center in Northeast Portland. Stanford also won an honorable mention for best flavor with his Green Lantern.

“I’m amazed and humbled,” Stanford told WW after sweeping the field of 27 entries from Oregon’s top medical cannabis growers. “We did a lot better job mixing our dirt this year.”

Stanford has entered the contest before but has never broken into the top three. Top honors usually go to Long Creek grower David Verstoppen, who has won first place for the past three years with his Dynamite and Medicine Woman strains.

But this year Verstoppen had to settle for honorable mention for outstanding aroma.

“Competition is stiff,” said a deflated Verstoppen, who made the five-hour drive from his Eastern Oregon home to attend the awards. “These growers out there, and the genetics, it’s hard to say who’s going to win.”

But Stanford owes his sweep in part to Verstoppen. His third-place Dynamite strain was grown from a cutting from one of Verstoppen’s plants.

Stanford’s victory was all the more remarkable because his top two strains were “re-vegetated,” meaning they were the second harvest from the plant. Most growers harvest a plant only once, then chop it down, believing that a second harvest is not as strong. Stanford proved that perceived wisdom wrong. He also noted that his crops are 100 percent organic.

Stanford told the crowd the police visited his outdoor grow site in outer East Portland three times this year, but he refused them entry each time.

Besides growing some outstanding ganja, Stanford is planning a 2010 ballot measure to tax and regulate marijuana.

“The fight goes on,” he told the crowd, “and we’re gonna legalize it.”

As reported in this week’s WW, Hoffman Construction general counsel Dan Harmon has been touring the state to stoke support for a new law making it easier for employers to fire medical-marijuana patients.

But based on a new poll paid for by marijuana advocates, Harmon’s PR campaign hasn’t yielded much in the way of public support.

In a statewide poll from Dec. 3-7, 49 percent said they were opposed to Harmon’s proposed changes to the medical-marijuana law. Thirty-two percent said they supported the proposed changes, and 20 percent were unsure.

Anthony Johnson of the local marijuana reform group Voter Power released the results of the poll to WW. He says the phone survey of 500 people, with an error margin of plus or minus 4.4 percent, was done by Portland-based Grove Insight.

According to Johnson, the survey framed the issue like this:

“Current Oregon law does not require employers to accommodate the use of medical marijuana in any workplace. In the upcoming session, legislators may consider amending the law to allow employers to fire or not hire medical-marijuana patients, regardless of where the use of medical marijuana occurs.”

Johnson says the survey also gauged support for a proposed ballot title allowing adults to cultivate and consume marijuana at home, and support of the medical-marijuana law in general.

Johnson declined to release those results, but said “they are very exciting for our side.”