Putting for Hemp - Jack Herer Celebrity Golf Tournament
By Chelsea Young
Tomorrow on the golf courses of Sand Canyon Country Club in Santa Clarita, California, the Jack Herer Foundation Inaugural Celebrity Golf Tournament will be in high gear. Jack Herer, the tournament’s namesake, was a legendary cannabis activist and is often credited as “The Hemp Emperor” due to his fight to decriminalize hemp, especially for industrial use. Dan Herer, Jack’s son, is now the director of his father’s foundation, where he continues to work for universal education about hemp and its multitude of uses. The proceeds of the golf tournament will go towards two of the foundation’s most important initiatives: a traveling mobile education center, and the Jack Herer National Hemp Museum.
To learn more about the event, HoneyPot hopped on a quick phone call with Mitch Crump, co-chairman of E.L.F Investment group, the managers of the golf tournament. While E.L.F has always worked to put on golfing and sporting events, they wanted to collaborate with the Jack Herer foundation to host an event centered around the growing hemp and CBD conversation.
Mitch Crump became interested in hemp when he was searching for relief as a stage four esophagus cancer patient. He was eager to find a treatment that didn’t carry the toxicity of chemotherapy. Crump explained that while chemo attacks your entire body, both cancer cells and healthy cells, hemp will only attack the cancer. After realizing how frequently hemp can be substituted for less effective or even harmful everyday products, he was eager to share that information with the world.
Backed by this passion, the companies came together to host this weekend’s educational and star-studded affair. While Crump could not give a list of names, we know that Master of Ceremony will be retired basketball athlete and current talk show host John Sally, who has expressed his interest in the cannabis community before, and celebrities such as Matt Burns and Mark Whalberg are also potential attendees. Sponsors of this event include Moxie, High Times, Culture Magazine, Dope Magazine, Southern Hemp Expo and many more.
According to Crump, there are plans to bring the golf tournament to the East Coast, with the possible host states of North Carolina (Crumps first choice), or Florida. Due to the subject of the tournaments’ charity, though, it can be hard to find enough golfers to publicly participate. Hosts are also experimenting with setting the pay-to-play cost, as the prices for the upcoming tournament are already significantly cheaper than those of E.L.F’s previous tournaments.
However, these challenges will not halt the continued efforts of the Jack Herer Foundation and E.L.F. to spread the word about the thousands of cross-industry uses for this sustainable plant. “No one understands why and what hemp can do,” Crump stated. “We can take this plant instead of an advil. We can take this plant instead of chemo. No one really understands what all it can do.” Hopefully, more people will know a little bit more thanks to the Jack Herer Foundation Inaugural Celebrity Golf Tournament.
Chelsea Young is a staff writer at HoneySuckle Magazine and alumna of Pace University NYC where she studied Communications, Journalism, and African American Studies.