The event was held by the opposition Girchi (Georgian for 'cone') party in one of Tbilisi's parks on Saturday. The event was not greenlighted by the authorities, and police prevented organizers from actually holding any "festival."Instead, an unauthorized meeting of several hundreds of party supporters and dozens of reporters took place.

The leader of the Girchi party, presidential candidate Zurab Japaridze is a strong advocate of marijuana legalization, and of Georgia's membership in NATO and the EU. While much needs to be done on the latter issues, Japaridze managed to win a case with the country's Constitutional Court this summer, which completely decriminalized personal usage of the weed.

Despite the joint efforts of the party, distribution and growing of marijuana remain illegal.