April 20th, known within the Cannabis community simply as "4/20" has been the unofficial international weed holiday for over 30 years - and it's also Harborside Health Center's busiest sales day of the year. As much as Steve DeAngelo loves 4/20 as a day of celebration and booming business, he fears that widespread images of tie-dyed hippies smoking 6 foot joints ultimately damages the credibility of their "medical movement" with the public at large. This year, only three days after 4/20, Harborside Health Center is launching "Deep Green", a festival aimed at characterizing Marijuana not as an intoxicant, but as an aid to wellness. Will their festival dramatically re-brand the public's image of the plant, or simply attract the same old stoners?
Weed Wars is an American reality-documentary television series that documents the world's largest medical marijuana dispensary, Harborside Health Center, in Oakland, California. The series premiered on the Discovery Channel on December 1, 2011. The series has since been cancelled.
In regards to their intentions by allowing their business to be documented for television, Steve DeAngelo has said, "We wanted to be a model to other dispensaries, most of [which] have a media phobia. We wanted to tell our story and we gave Discovery complete access so that people could make up their own minds... There are a lot of stereotypes about who comes to these dispensaries, but viewers will see our customers cover a huge cross-section of the population – age, race and economic classes. They will also see how Harborside treats cannabis as a medicine, and we have a high standard of medical care."
