Maine Sea Goddess Dethroned For Cannabis Use

Maine Sea Goddess Dethroned For Cannabis Use

It’s only normal that Maine would have a Lobster Festival, but why isn’t the Sea Goddess allowed to smoke pot and be open about it?

On Monday, the festival officials announced that they would be making “sweeping changes” to the event’s yearly Sea Goddess competition. This is all because this year’s winner, 18 year old Taylor Hamlin, was forced to relinquish her crown since she posted a photo of her smoking a joint.

To say that this is unfair is an understatement, considering that Maine was one of the first states in the East Coast to legalize recreational cannabis in 2016.

Hamlin was crowned the 2018 Maine Sea Goddess end of July, but it was only one day later that festival organizers forced her to step down after they were emailed pictures of her holding a joint and Juul, a vaping instrument.

“Everybody is a teen once and a while,” Hamlin spoke out on her Facebook account. “I’m sorry to whoever didn’t receive the goddess they wanted and felt the need to sabotage this amazing thing that has happened to me.”

The lobster festival board says that they’re trying to keep the feedback on “this polarizing issue to a minimum out of respect for the Hamlin family and for Taylor.” However, on Monday’s statement from the board, they shed light on what goes on behind the decision-making process that resulted in this scandal as well as criticism towards the festival.

“Immediately after the coronation, our committee chair began receiving several messages indicating that the public persona on social media of our Sea Goddess was something to be concerned about,” the statement read. “Eight photographs were received and confirmed via multiple independent sources that illustrate illegal behavior and a pride in that behavior and persona. The images have not been doctored and are clearly of illegal activity.”

The board added that what was more concerning for them was the fact that the night prior to the coronation, following the voting process, was a photo that “specifically mentioned the Lobster Festival and coronation along with an inappropriate image.”

“It is an important distinction, this was not a social media background check, rather it was a photo posted by Taylor during the event mentioning the event,” the board says. “Along with it were seven other photos indicating a pattern of behavior and public persona being presented.”

The news website Boston.com reached out to Hamlin, but she didn’t respond to the request for comments. However, she did write on her Facebook account that it was never her intention to “apply hate” toward the festival when festival officials said they felt threatened with the backlash.

Celia Knight, a volunteer member of the executive committee that manages the event, says that they’ve even received death threats, on top of the trolling on their Facebook, as a result of the controversy. She and others think that this will cause local residents to no longer support the event, which usually attracts tens of thousands of people. “It’s been pretty brutal,” Knight says, adding that her family has faced harassment even if she didn’t vote to strip the title from Hamlin. “A so-called friend even said she was burning all of her lobster festival shirts.”

“The support from our community is overwhelming and I truly appreciate it,” she says. “But instead of boycotting and bashing the festival think of the inside. Our citizens, our vendors, and children. The business we need for OUR community. There will be good that comes out of this. Which is a lesson for everyone, that social media is a privilege and when you use it the wrong way it can backfire and ruin amazing opportunities for you.”

But festival organizers say that they won’t be sharing the images of Hamlin nor the audio recordings of the meetings they had with her and her family, out of respect. They said that during the meetings, Hamlin “took responsibility for her actions and ownership of the photos posted on social media.”

“It was indicated that we would not discuss the specific reasons why in order to protect her privacy and dignity,” the organizers said. “However, Taylor then opted to post publicly online the reasons along with misinformation about the photographs.”

“This is a terribly difficult situation with lessons learned on all sides,” say the board. “Actions taken to keep information private were intended to protect Taylor. However, it’s clear that it has polarized the community, which was never our intention and for that we are deeply regretful. Our committee was doing what they thought best at the time.”