TACOMA HEMPFEST OWN SECURITY CITES VENDORS

Tacoma Hempfest Organizers Said Several Vendors at the Saturday Event
Were Cited for Selling Drug Paraphernalia -- by the Same Tacoma Police
Officers the Organizers Hired to Work As Security at the Event.

Angry Tacoma Hempfest organizers said several vendors at the Saturday
event were cited for selling drug paraphernalia -- by the same Tacoma
police officers the organizers hired to work as security at the event.

Soon after Tacoma Hempfest opened in Wright Park at 11 a.m., police
cited about 12 vendors selling pipes, bongs and other
"tobacco-consumption products," said Michael Byers, a Hempfest
organizer. They even cited a vendor selling Tupperware-like containers
called "doob-tubes," he said.

Vendors walk a fine line to keep their products technically legal
under state laws. They sell glass pipes and bongs they say are for use
with legal substances or by medical-marijuana patients, said Douglas
Hiatt, an attorney for a group called Sensible Washington, whose
members helped organize the event.

"The Tacoma police are being way out of line doing this," Hiatt said.
"The Seattle police walk past miles of glass, literally, at Seattle's
Hempfest."

Tacoma police spokesman Mark Fulghum was not available this weekend by
cellphone. The police sergeant who led the officers writing citations
did not return messages.

The Metro Parks Tacoma spokeswoman did not return calls for
comment.

In the afternoon, Byers said, several officers came back through
Hempfest, surrounded vendors and told them they would be arrested
unless they stopped selling some products. Several vendors left the
event, said organizers.

Hempfest has a city permit, and vendors had to get individual business
licenses, Byers said. As part of the permit, he said, Hempfest paid
$7,000 to the city so Tacoma police would provide security, as they
would for any festival. But the officers paid to provide security
began writing citations, Byers said.

The police sergeant in charge of security warned Byers and organizer
Justin Prince earlier in the week that any kind of paraphernalia for
sale could draw arrests or citations, but organizers thought they were
covered.

The same types of vendors found no trouble at last year's inaugural
event, organizers said.

Seattle's annual waterfront Hempfest draws hundreds of thousands of
people, and vendors selling items that could be used to smoke
marijuana abound.

"I would not have done this had I had any notion ... that any of my
people would be in jeopardy," said J.T. Tapp, whose Tacoma glass shop,
The Green Room, was an event sponsor last year.

Tapp said she hadn't been cited, but she recruited some suppliers who
had. "I'm a little bit beside myself," she said.