The event at the Los Angeles Convention Center, which runs through the weekend, is all about medical marijuana.

Dispensaries were offering patients wisdom on which uppers or downers would be best for their specific ailments. Lawyers advised how to mount a legal defense if charged with possession of a controlled substance. And chefs provided recipes for cooking “incredible edibles.”

Posters displayed various strains of medical marijuana, such as strawberry kush — “looks just like a frosty gumdrop and smells and tastes like strawberry, will do wonders in helping to treat patients with chronic pain” — and cotton candy kush, which supposedly provides “a luxurious, warm-all-over, stone that lasts for hours, excellent for the treatment of migraines, insomnia and muscle and back pain.”

“Anything that they need, they can get it right here,” said Jose Hernandez, a manager at City Compassionate Caregivers, a dispensary based in East Los Angeles.

He insisted the dispensary is not for profit, saying, “Everyone that comes in, they get complete compassion. You don’t have to put in money — it’s pretty much a service from us.”

And yet, a magazine ad for City Compassionate Caregivers showed “Grams start at $8.” Hernandez referred to those as donations.

At another booth, Christina Wilson, sales manager for Edible Remedies, handed out postcards with photos of truffles containing medical marijuana.

“It’s a lot tastier,” she said. “And it doesn’t give you the aftertaste that smoking gives you.”

The company is based in Pasadena but makes deliveries throughout the region, including to the San Fernando Valley. Its drug-laced products include red velvet truffles, yogurt and mixed berry granola, English toffee fudge brownie, and even s’mores and deep dish pizza.

One of the seminars at HempCon 2011 is to be given by lawyer Chris Darden, who was part of the legal team that failed to convict O.J. Simpson for murder. He gained notoriety for asking the football star to try on the bloody glove, which turned out to be too small.

Lawyer Freddy Sayegh, Darden’s colleague at The Foxx Firm, a criminal defense firm based in Culver City, said they hope to educate medical marijuana users about their rights.

Sayegh said he will offer patients tips on “what to say, what to do, how to invoke your Fourth Amendment rights (protecting against unreasonable search and seizure), how to invoke your Miranda rights, clean off your text messages, when to show your medical marijuana card, when not to show your card, things like that.”

Source: http://www.dailynews.com/20110826/plenty-of-recipes-advice-available-at-hempcon-2011