Snoop Dogg’s Smoke4ACure Summit 2018
Modern day renaissance man and avid marijuana enthusiast, Snoop Dogg, recently teamed up with NBA champ Matt Barnes at the Athletes vs Cancer Summer 2018 festivities for the first-ever Smoke4ACure Summit. The summit brought together a number of different cannabis vendors like Louis the XIII, Kurvana, Kannibox, among others, along with athletes and other celebrities in order to help raise cancer awareness as well as for fundraising.
The summit, which was hosted at Snoop’s South Los Angeles compound on August 9th, kicked off the four day event series for Matt Barnes’ own organization, Athletes Vs. Cancer. Barnes founded Athletes Vs. Cancer seven years ago after his mother passed away shortly after being diagnosed with stage four cancer.
“Such a huge loss makes it easy to focus on your own devastating pain. Eventually, I couldn’t help but think of families who are still in the fight of their lives. I didn’t want them to bear the same pain and suffering that my family endured and decided to act. I began hosting free health clinics, renting mobile screening units, and providing clinics for early detection. Five years later, I added yet another layer and provided financial support to help families pay for funerals, hospice care, surgeries, medications, and more. The economic impact that cancer survivors endure is crippling.” Barnes said of his experience in dealing with such a devastating loss of a loved one to cancer, hoping that his organization’s efforts will help folks dealing with similar situations.
Snoop and Barnes allegedly thought up of the Smoke4ACure concept on Father’s Day after Snoop had attended another Athletes Vs. Cancer event with the goal in mind of bringing together different marijuana vendors in order to help raise much needed funds for cancer research and marijuana studies. The summit officially kicked off the four days of events that had been planned as a part of Athletes Vs. Cancer
It can be said that the first Smoke4ACure summit was a success with over $50,000 in donations raised. Although the Athletes Vs. Cancer events typically send the collected funds directly to the struggling families of cancer patients, the proceeds for the Smoke4ACure summit would be going to UCLA and its Cannabis Research Initiative. According to a spokesperson for Athletes Vs. Cancer: “Half [will go] to UCLA [and] half to Athletes Vs. Cancer, so we can begin our mobile screening pop-up activations and medical community supply drop-offs with other organizations such as the American Cancer Society, and a portion will go into the scholarship fund for kids and teens that survive and need help with college funding.”
Barnes was also quoted as saying the following regarding his organization’s partnership with UCLA, his alma mater: “I’m really trying to be an advocate in this space,” he says. “Teaming up with UCLA has been a tremendous opportunity to continue to push our efforts to educate people and lift the stigma on cannabis.”
Do you expect that another Smoke4ACure summit will be held soon? Would you like to see more of these types of charitable initiatives in the world of cannabis?
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