Cannabis and Wine Confab in Buellton
Santa Barbara County Growers and Vintners Ponder a Mutual Tourism Future Together
With their relationship recently strained as pot farms pop up alongside tasting rooms and vineyards, cannabis growers and vintners gathered together in Buellton on Wednesday night to discuss a mutually beneficial goal: developing tourism opportunities that would promote and profit both industries.
More than 100 people crammed into the Grand Room at Industrial Eats to listen to a large panel of eight speakers, from cannabis growers like Sara Rotman and John De Friel to former Central Valley Congressmember Dan Denham (now working on federal cannabis issues), Lompoc Mayor Jenelle Osborne, media consultant Jennifer Zacharias, and wine industry veterans Wes Hagen and Stephen Pepe.
The invited speakers, all pro-cannabis, urged wine and cannabis growers to work through their disagreements and unite. Though once against legalization, Denham suggested that all signs point to cannabis being federally legal in the next few years, a move he now supports.
