An Ohio cannabis festival is looking to make several new hires as they prepare to launch, and the positions they are looking to fill come with a high pay grade.
Only a few weeks away from its inaugural three-day stretch at Wisteria Campground, the Stargazer Cannabis Festival is set to occur during the first full year that Ohio has legalized recreational marijuana. The festival is slated to occur just a little more than a month after the state opened applications for sales at dispensaries.
Chad Thompson, the festival organizer, spoke on his plans to hire numerous judges for the joint rolling contest at the event on July 27. The job posting was launched late Monday evening online.
Speaking on the contest, Thompson said, “There’s two divisions, a classic division, and artistic division, and in both of those divisions, one of the criteria is, ‘how does it smoke?’ The potential smoke-ability.”
As the classic division maintains a focus on conventional rolling ability, Thompson emphasized that the artistic division aims to see intricately designed shapes such as “tanks, cars, and birds.” There are also several other factors that judges will be expected to review, which Thompson broke down in detail before commenting on the pay.
Thompson said, “We’re going to be checking for the draw of the joint and the joint stability, like checking for runs and so forth and all that’s going to go into the judging process.” He continued, “And we’re hoping that the pay will be enough to get a large pool of potential candidates. …We are paying $100.00 an hour, you know, to just smoke joints.”
According to Thompson, the extremely high hourly rate will not be for a short period either. The festival organizer revealed an estimate of “a couple of hours, if not more” of people’s time to judge, which means all applicants must be highly experienced as well.
“If there’s somebody who smokes maybe once a month, maybe they might not be the best person,” Thompson highlighted. “But you know, if they’re a pretty regular smoker, I think they’ll be able to handle it.”
Additionally, Thompson spoke on about the event, clarifying that no vendors will be selling recreational marijuana at the festival, and there is a farmers market at the event that will sell primarily hemp-derived products. Nevertheless, he still mentioned that recreational marijuana will have a noticeable presence in other forms at Stargazer. Vendors are permitted to sell cannabis seeds — which are federally legal —that the people of Ohio can use to grow up to six plants per resident.
Festival-goers are also permitted to use their homegrown marijuana on the campgrounds, as well as at the joint rolling contest.
Thompson stated, “It’d be completely legal to be homegrown cannabis, or they may roll it with hemp or they may not, I’m not gonna ask.” He added, “I’m sure that there will be attendees that have legal cannabis with THC and will be consuming it, but there’s going to be no person-to-person sales.”
Thompson said that tickets are currently still available online but have been selling quickly. “Based on capacity,” the Stargazer team will decide whether to sell door tickets on the weekend of the event. Food vendor applications are no longer being accepted.
“If you definitely want to get into Stargazer, you definitely should buy your ticket as soon as possible. If you wait, there will be a likely chance you will not get in. I’m getting calls from all over the region.”
Those interested in becoming joint rolling judges or buying standard tickets can do either by visiting the Stargazer Festival website. Scroll to the bottom for a link to the job posting.
