Report: Marijuana sampling station will set up near Coachella

As if Radiohead, Lady Gaga and Kendrick Lamar weren’t enough to draw you to the desert for Coachella, one of the nation’s biggest music festivals, an unaffiliated event a few miles down the road promises to offer some of the state’s best cannabis.

TMZ reports that Weedmaps, the online dispensary-mapping site, will team up with Talent Resources, a firm that connects celebrities and “influencers” with “lifestyle brands,” to stage the event. (No word on which, if any, celebrities might be involved, but you can guess the likely candidates.)

The renowned Coachella music festival is held at the polo grounds in Indio each spring. (Photo: VisitPalmSprings.com)

The Coachella festival runs at Indio’s Empire Polo Club for two concurrent weeks — April 14-16 and 21-23 — and, like most concert venues, has a prohibition on “drugs and drug paraphernalia.” Since cigarette smoking is allowed, though, it’s fair to guess that there’ll be plenty of pot on the festival grounds.

It remains to be seen if the event can navigate both state and federal law on marijuana. Organizers of Nevada’s High Times Cannabis Cup were forced to ban cannabis from their event earlier this month after a threat from a U.S. Attorney.

The Weedmaps pavilion will be about six miles down the road from Coachella, TMZ reports. It’ll feature two growhouses and a greenhouse, as well as geodesic domes highlighting five different strains from GenX, Brass Knuckle and West Coast Cure. Budologists will be on hand to make recommendations, and marijuana will be given away, not sold, TMZ says.

TMZ didn’t have details about admission to the cannabis event, but it’s described as “VIP,” so it may be more of a waystation for pot-friendly celebs and their friends than a place for the unwashed masses to refill their weed stock before heading back to the festival. We’ll see.