[420 Girl]

With the sun permeating through the trees, hundreds of people danced, played and shopped Saturday at East City Park in Moscow. With no pool in sight, one man walked around with a yellow, duck-shaped flotation device wrapped around his waist.

The 13th Annual Moscow Hempfest showcased eight bands, dozens of vendors, and educational talks with a spotlight on issues surrounding hemp and marijuana.

The event's focus was to disseminate information emphasizing the teaching and learning of hemp, Hempfest organizer Arlene Falcon said. She said the event is not just a party, because it is important for people to recognize that some things need to change.

One advocate for change was volunteer Ryan Davidson, who said his responsibility was to get Moscow's registered voters to sign petitions for two initiatives regarding marijuana.

"This is the perfect crowd to get signatures," he said.

The first initiative is to legalize medicinal marijuana in Moscow and the other is to get police officers to put marijuana lower on their priority list of crimes to investigate. People with religious objections and parents who are scared their children will get addicted to marijuana are the most common opponents to the initiatives, Davidson said.

"People think it's a stepping stone to eventually legalize smoking," he said Unlicensed lawyer Scott Thurston said people shouldn't be arrested for what they put inside their body because they would only be hurting themselves.

"This country is still free, but we have the highest incarceration rate in the world," he said. "The bottom line is revenue, nothing more than another way to tax people." Thurston said he teaches people about their rights because people who don't know their rights don't have any.

Falcon said Hempfest was started by a University of Idaho student and taken on by student groups. She said she decided to organize the event four years ago because there wasn't enough consistency with students leaving each year.

She said the event was a little different than previous years because she decided to pay for entertainment.

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