MAHRIA

When Mahria Baughn first began advocating for cannabis back in 2019, she faced scrutiny from her community and peers who remained unsure of the benefits of the plant. “No one was really doing it at the time,” Mahria remembers, “and I was trying to be super vocal and positive. For me, education was key. Putting the research out there, talking about the terpenes, trying to teach patients.”

Fortunately, Mahria’s valiant efforts to change the hearts of those in doubt paid off when she began to meet like-minded individuals who wanted to grow and learn alongside her. As she sought out and traded knowledge with some of the industry’s pioneers, people who were sick, or just curious about cannabis, would ask her for more information. Mahria would meet with cancer patients to help them educate themselves on the benefits and safe consumption of RSO, raise money to help patients afford their medicine, and set them up with full RSO regimens by working with processors and cultivators to provide wholesale pricing.

“I didn’t realize how uneducated people were on the medicinal use of marijuana,” Mahria says. “It really is amazing. Doing the advocacy work at such an early stage really helped me get my name out

there. It just started with networking and meeting up with people, walking into dispensaries and asking if they were doing events, if I could sell t-shirts, or if I could raise money to help vets get their medical card.”

When it came time for the Cowboy Cup to recruit its judges, Mahria applied with all of the experience and education she had accumulated over time. She was selected to judge the edible catego ry at the first-ever cup. “Judging edibles was a great opportunity and taught me so much about what to look for in products,” Mahria remembers. “The second year, I applied and was selected for edibles again. We were offered in-depth training from people who had been in the cannabis industry for a long time.” sample. We received even more incredible training over judging last year.”

In Mahria’s eyes, being a judge for the Cowboy Cup has opened up many opportunities for her. “I have had about three different cultivators reach out, asking me to help them phenohunt or critique their flower. The dispensary I work for receives three times the number of vendors each day than we used to. I get to meet people from all over Oklahoma and see so much product because of my experience with the cup.”

“Oklahoma is so small with such a huge industry,” Mahria adds, “and the sky’s the limit for everyone here. I went from screaming at the top of my lungs, advocating on social media, to simply sitting back and being able to judge cannabis varieties from all over Oklahoma. What a cool industry? It truly is amazing.”

For last year’s cup, Mahria was offered the opportunity to finally judge sun-grown flower. “I was so happy,” she reports. “The flower was judged based on around 7 different categories, and we were asked to provide at least a paragraph description about each

Will Mahria be back at this year’s Cowboy Cup to judge and celebrate Oklahoma’s blossoming cannabis industry? “Absolutely,” she confirms. “ I will keep judging as long as they will let me.”