Events are a great way to meet fellow patients, learn about the latest research and discuss the issues and challenges faced by other cannabis patients.

Events can be divided into three broad categories.

• Industry events
• Patient events
• Cannabis Fayres

Industry events include conferences such as Cannabis Europa, MBiz.com and the International Cannabis Business Conference in Berlin. These are useful to hear about the latest issues facing the industry, including updates on laws, regulations and medical research. However, they can be expensive to attend and inconvenient for many patients, for example, held mid-week during the day.

Patient events are increasingly common and tend to be oganised by patients themselves. They can take the form of conferences, held in halls or meeting spaces. Or, they can be held in venues, such as 420-friendly cafes. Due to the stigma around cannabis, these might be discrete events, where self-medicating patients gather to discuss how cannabis helps their conditions, talking about strains and devices.

Cannabis Fayres include events like Product Earth and Spannabis. They tend to be larger with a mixture of stalls, panels and patient groups. In a similar manner to the Patient events they can often be ‘secret’, with the venue or location only given out at the last minute. While we attend many of these ourselves we respect the organisers wish to remain anonymous and aimed at verified members only.