The Ganjapreneur Podcast – Ganjapreneur.com: Recent Episodes
None
In this compilation episode of Highly Enlightened, host Jon Purow hits the road—capturing quick, insightful interviews with leading voices across the cannabis industry. Recorded at MJ Unpacked Missouri 2024, the WomenGrow Leadership Summit 2025, and the Benzinga New Jersey Cannabis Market Spotlight, this lineup showcases the perspectives of founders and experts from all corners of the industry.
Listen to the episode:
Ganjapreneur · Highly Enlightened: One Hitters, Volume 2 – Interviews From the Event Circuit
Episode sponsored by eBottlesThis episode of Highly Enlightened is made possible by eBottles. If you’re in the cannabis business, you know that quality packaging isn’t just important—it’s essential. That’s where eBottles comes in. Whether you’re just starting out or scaling up, eBottles offers proprietary top-of-the-line packaging products built for cannabis. eBottles is a market leader for a good reason: they are experts in the field. Six patents, five warehouse locations around the country, a network of exceptional distributors. Get eBottles and Grow Boldly.
Featured Guests (in order of appearance):
1. Jordan Mackenzie Whittaker
The Weedaker Group
2. Mitch Pfeifer
Director of Community Relations, Active
3. Sheila Fey
Marketing Director, Elevated Roots
4. Ian Powell
Founder, Loud Minds TV
5. Paul Vancea
Kosmik Brands
When cannabis fails a microbial test, the consequences can be costly—lost product, damaged reputations, and in some cases, a total recall. But what if the entire process could be de-risked? In this episode, Jeff Adams, founder and managing director of XR Pure, and national sales manager Joseph Bancheri join TG Branfalt for a conversation about how their x-ray-based decontamination tech is offering a clean, consistent solution for cultivators. With deep roots in x-ray engineering and cannabis sales respectively, they make a compelling case for proactive remediation as a standard step in cannabis operations. Listen to the episode below or wherever you get your podcasts, or scroll down for the transcript!
Listen to the episode:Ganjapreneur · Jeff Adams & Joseph Bancheri: Decontaminating Cannabis with X-Ray Technology
Read the transcript:Editor’s note: this transcript was generated automatically and may contain errors.
TG Branfalt:
Hey there, I’m your host, TG Branfalt, and this is the Ganjapreneur.com podcast where we try to bring you actionable information and normalized cannabis through the stories of ganjapreneurs, activists and industry stakeholders. Today I’m joined by Jeff Adams, founder and managing director, and Joseph Bancheri, national sales manager for Las Vegas, Nevada based XR Pure, which recently launched the XR 16, capable of eliminating mold, mildew, bacteria, and other harmful pathogens on cannabis flower. How you doing this morning guys?
Jeff Adams:
Doing great, TG. Thanks for having us. Appreciate it.
Joseph Bancheri:
Doing well, thank you.
TG Branfalt:
It’s really going to be an interesting episode. This is a technology that I am not that familiar with, which doesn’t happen that frequently anymore. But before we get into the tech, tell me about yourselves, your background, and how you ended up working in the cannabis space.
Jeff Adams:
If it’s okay, I’ll go first. This is Jeff. I came into this from the technology side. I’ve been working at an x-ray component manufacturing company for the last 20 years, so I spent a lot of my career in X-ray and over time we do many different applications and we found out that there is an application for sterilization of cannabis. And as I dug into that, I found that basically we believe that we could build a better mousetrap than what was already out there. Our technology was very applicable to what was needed in that space. And so I got busy figuring out what is it going to take, would the machine look like? And that culminated in XR Pure.
TG Branfalt:
How about you, Joe?
Joseph Bancheri:
Yeah, myself, I’ve been a cannabis advocate for over 20 years. I started in the legal industry with technology background as well with environmental controls. Then I moved over to the THC side. I was a natural brand manager for a cannabis brand and also sold and then moved to other brands here in Nevada. I was a wholesale director at a facility here in Vegas, and we had a big problem with our remediation unit, and I met Jeff at MJ biz when they, they’re checking everything out and I said, Hey dude, come check this thing out and make something better, and when you do let me know and I’ll be on board and here.
TG Branfalt:
So tell me about the science behind this tech. What were the previous applications and what are the applications in the cannabis industry?
Jeff Adams:
Sure, I’ll take that one. X-ray has been used for sterilization for a long time. This is not a new idea. It is a little bit of a new application in cannabis, but since the forties and fifties, x-ray has been used for sterilization, food sterilization, medical device sterilization, many other kinds of things. And so that part of it is not new. The cool part with cannabis is that x-rays kind of uniquely qualified or applicable to decontaminating cannabis. And when I say that by killing microbes on cannabis without affecting the integrity of the flower without affecting the potency, terpene profiles, all of those things, which makes it a great way to do this versus maybe some other kinds of techniques that could be used to do it, it is the one that really preserves the integrity of the plant, let’s say it that way. Okay.
TG Branfalt:
Joe, you had mentioned that you were facing a remediation issue. How did you sort of decide that x-ray might be the best way for you to handle that issue?
Joseph Bancheri:
Well, at my facility, we were using the X-ray unit. It just happened to be down a lot. When it was down, I couldn’t sell weed and I was not a happy guy. And obviously the owners aren’t happy either because they’re losing money, but there are other technologies as well that I feel actually harm the plant, like ozone, rf, those will change the actual, the terpene profile, the look of the plant. I want the end user to get the best possible plant in the cleanest possible form. So that’s why x-ray, how it kind of looks to me is the plant’s been harvested, the plant’s no longer alive, the microbials are alive, their DNA’s alive living on this plant, and these little x-rays are so tiny, they break up that DNA kill the microbials. So this way, when you put in a jar, nothing’s growing. We’ve got a 10,000 CFU limit here in Nevada for microbials. If you pass with 8,000, 9,000, you throw that in a jar, put it on a shelf, on a dispensary, it’s growing. So by the time the end user gets it, who knows what the accountants. So that’s why I think this should be pretty much standard for everyone going forward.
TG Branfalt:
And what is the success rate for remediation?
Jeff Adams:
The success rate is really good. X-ray is very effective. It’s a process that does take some time. It’s not like it just zaps it and instantly everything’s gone. The way it works is the x-ray energy has to be absorbed into, not necessarily into the plant, but be absorbed by the microbes. And as those are absorbing energy, their DNA breaks apart and they become AUR and they can’t grow anymore after that. But that process takes some time. And so for example, with our machine, you can load between 15 and 20 pounds of dried cannabis into our machine at one time, and then that load is going to take somewhere between two and a half and three and a half hours to get fully decontaminated. So it’d be nice if it was just an instant, turn it on and man, it’s gone, but it does take some time.
And so when you talk about effectivity, then the variables there are obviously how contaminated is the product coming in and very contaminated. Then you want to give it a longer treatment. You might choose to treat four or five hours, or if you just know that it’s lightly contaminated and you’re kind of doing an insurance run, you might only treat for an hour or an hour and a half, something like that, and you’ll be fine. In X-ray speak, the x-ray dose is measured by what’s called graze. And so a typical dose for cannabis would be 2000 gras. And like I said, between two and a half and three and a half hours, our machine can deliver 2000 gras. Something like trim is a much more dense product. That more dense product is going to take longer to absorb the x-ray. So you’re probably looking at three and a half, four hours for a load of trim, but then you can do 40 plus pounds at a time of trim in that same volume. So it is just an equation of how dirty is the incoming stuff, how dense is the material that you’re trying to treat, and then what is the assurance level that you want to give yourself in the end.
TG Branfalt:
You said you got into this, you designed a better mouse trap as it were. Can you tell me about that process? What was that like for
Jeff Adams:
You? Yeah, I’d be happy to. I spent a little over a, not only studying the cannabis market, but studying the different technologies that were out there. And what I found was that the machines that were currently available were most of them actually using x-ray tubes that are used in X-ray imaging. And those tubes have limitations because they have a very small focal spot. I don’t want to get too technical here, but just saying that they’re limited on the power that they can create because they’re intended or designed for an imaging application. Other kinds of x-ray tubes are made specifically for irradiation, and so they can handle higher power, but there aren’t very many of them out there. And what we had at XR Pure was a purpose built irradiation tube that could generate more power than really anybody out there. So state-of-the-art for irradiation tubes was about four kilowatts per tube. And for imaging tubes was about six kilowatts per tube. And our first version of our tube created 12 kilowatts. So we’re already two to three times more powerful than anyone else out of the gate. And right now, as you mentioned, we just released our XR 16, which is a 16 kilowatt tube. So now we’re about four times as powerful, and that’s what gives us the ability to make a simple machine.
X-ray power decreases with distance. And so in order to do a good job decontaminating with a low power tube, you have to try to get the cannabis very close to the tube to have a decent decontamination rate. And that is the case with some of the lower power x-ray tubes. And so in order to do that, they’ve come up with all kinds of mechanical movement systems where they have to spin and rotate the cannabis in order to get it close to their tube to get a good rate. Well, with our extra power, we don’t need all of that motion. We’ve eliminated all of that complexity and complication. You literally just load the cannabis flour inside a Turkey bag or whatever you’re using in your own facility. You load that into our tray, you close the door and you do the irradiation. There’s no movement, there’s no tumbling, there’s no physical harm done to the plant because it’s just a very simple, straightforward way of doing it.
TG Branfalt:
I mean, it sounds like it’s a very much simpler process and the old adage where if you have less stuff to break, you have less stuff to break.
Jeff Adams:
We believe that’s true. One other thing there is we use a factory sealed x-ray tube that x-ray tubes need to have a vacuum inside of them in order to generate how they work. So some people use tubes, that’s called an open architecture tube where you can’t actually open the tube up, but it requires a secondary vacuum pump running all the time to create that vacuum for the x-ray to operate. Our tubes are not like that. Our tubes are made from the factory with the vacuum sealed in. So no additional equipment is needed to keep the vacuum. All you need is the power supply for the x-ray tube and it will create x-ray. So again, there’s simpler in the fact that we don’t need all that additional equipment. We don’t need the vacuum pump and other things to make our x-ray tubes work.
TG Branfalt:
So Joe, you had said that you had started your career in this industry as sort of an advocate. How have you taken that sort of advocacy role and applied it to your job as national sales manager?
Joseph Bancheri:
Yeah. Well, basically I’m a plant guy and I believe in the plant as medicine and it obviously has many different uses, but I want the full integrity of the plant to be delivered to the customer. We have pre and post data showing that the terpene profile THC water content before and after it’s been run through our equipment. And that’s why I’m in this because I stand by that as far as back in the day, I would go out, get petitions signed and do all the things and get the medicine to the people any way I could. But as now I back up this technology and I believe in it. So that’s why I think when I talk to people, they understand that.
TG Branfalt:
And when you talk to people, does anyone bring up any safety concerns and are there any safety concerns with using X-ray tech devices to
Joseph Bancheri:
Yeah, so on that concern, there’s a stigma about using x-ray, right? And the x-ray just passes right through the plant and it gets absorbed into the lead walls of the cabinet. Nothing is actual, there’s no residual in the plant. So that’s the thing. People think they’re smoking radioactive weed. No, it’s like a light. You turn it on, you turn it off, it’s gone. So that’s the education that we need to get out there, and I’m working on different ways to show that I’m going to run a measurement on the flower before we run it, after we run it and show it’s not radioactive, it’s safe, it’s just clean, and that’s the whole idea.
TG Branfalt:
So we talked a bit about the development process, and I know that the XR 16 is a scaled up version of previous tech. Is that correct?
Jeff Adams:
Correct.
TG Branfalt:
How quickly did you see the need to scale up from first launch to now the XR 16?
Jeff Adams:
Yeah, the need for that really comes with the MSOs and the large growers, right? Because they have a lot of volume that they’re trying to get through, sometimes hundreds of pounds a week. And back to, I mentioned, it’s two and a half to three and a half hours to do a batch through our XR 12 product. You add that up, and if you’re really trying to push it and you’re running the machine 24 hours a day, you can do 130 or 140 pounds a day with the XR 16, we can increase that by a third basically. And so now you’re getting close to 200 pounds a day and somebody where they’re really trying to get every bit through that they can, that makes a big difference and time is money for them. So one batch drops down to between an hour and a half and two hours for one batch rather than two and a half to three and a half.
Joseph Bancheri:
The big MSOs need to be able to push that amount of weight through the machine for sure.
TG Branfalt:
And so we know that that product recalls have a price fixed to them, whether it be remediation or getting rid of destroying the problematic product. Can you tell me the cost of an x-ray decontamination device versus the cost of an average product recall?
Jeff Adams:
Yeah, so with our equipment, the most popular way to get our equipment has been through a lease program and depending on the length of the lease and the terms of that, it ends up between somewhere between 10 and 12 KA month. And so if you just think about if you’ve got contaminated product, even on the wholesale level, if you can save 10 pounds in a month, basically you’ve paid for your month’s worth of the machine and not to discount what harm it might do to your reputation in the marketplace. The dispensaries may not want to carry your product anymore after a recall or whatever. I think those costs multiply even tenfold or something of what the cost of the product itself is and the harm to your reputation, et cetera. So the payback on the machine is extremely fast, very easy to justify. It’s kind of an insurance policy in a way. Having that and making sure that every time you send something for test it’s going to pass, you’re not going to have an R on your COA, which means it’s been remediated, right? All of those things are things that people that are savvy about this, they’re looking for that kind of stuff. They don’t want to buy flour that has those issues. And so this is going to help your sales to dispensaries and others.
TG Branfalt:
Are there other ways that operators can access this device that’s not a sort of lease program
Jeff Adams:
There? We have customers that basically use the machine and do tolling, it’s called. And so it depends on the laws of the particular state that you’re in, but for the state will allow it, then these toll operators then will bring somebody’s flower in, run it through for a certain price per pound, and then they take it back and they package it and sell it after that. And so if you’re a small operator or something like that, this is a great solution, a way for you to get access and get things decontaminated without making the big investment. The other thing that we’re working on, and maybe a little early information here is we are building a version of our product where we’ve taken one of our machines and mounted it in a mobile trailer and we’ve got a partner that we’re working with there. So the idea then is they will take that trailer around and they’ll come right to your farm, they’ll bring it to you, set up there for a day or two days or however long it takes for whatever amount of product you’ve got, run it through the machine. Now you’ve got door to door service and you’ve got access to this technology that maybe feels out of reach for a lot of small growers.
TG Branfalt:
And is that something Joe that you’re doing is trying to raise awareness of that potential sort of mobile unit as it’s rolling out?
Joseph Bancheri:
Yeah. Well, we’re looking to start in the Albany area, so yeah, so when I was up in Syracuse, I was talking to a lot of the cultivators I ran into up there, but it’ll probably have to stay in that zone. So as much as I can, I do let them know about that. And it’s just a great way to see the technology. I know if your machine is down as well and you have some kind of emergency, you need backup. I think it could be an awesome solution for that as well. So agreed.
TG Branfalt:
And have you guys run up against, you had mentioned regulations in each state. Have you run up against cannabis control boards or offices of cannabis management, whatever, it’s state by state against this technology or any sort of issues there?
Jeff Adams:
That definitely has happened. I would say that we were a little bit late to the market. There were a couple of other x-ray machine producers out there in the market before us, and that’s been a little bit of a blessing for us because they have actually fought those fights with the cannabis control boards in other places. Nevada is a great example. I mean, it even came down to a lawsuit, right in Nevada to get approval to have this kind of technology. Now that there’s several years of runway there and the technology has been proven, we have not seen very much resistance from cannabis control boards or other people. Been pretty well accepted, easily registered and stuff. And we give kudos to our predecessors for that help.
Joseph Bancheri:
There’s a whole process of getting it registered and with the control boards and stuff like that, which we help all of our clients on our end with all the proper paperwork and stuff like that.
Jeff Adams:
Maybe just to elaborate on that a little bit, every state is going to have an office of x-ray control. Every x-ray machine in every state has to be registered, every doctor’s office, dentist’s office, et cetera. So we fall into that same thing. And then some states, the cannabis board will want to be involved in that and also want registration with them and other states they don’t really care.
TG Branfalt:
And is there a learning curve when you’re talking to people in the cannabis control board or OCM about helping them to understand and what is that process like?
Jeff Adams:
One of the things that’s been very helpful there is that x-ray is not a new technology, and so it’s something that’s well understood and well regulated. And for example, we follow an FDA regulation that governs basically how much x-ray could be leaking out of the machine. And we follow the very most stringent regulations that way, which say that if we can pass those regulations, a person could stand next to that machine all day long and receive no harm from the machine. You don’t even have to have a monitoring device. But again, every different kind of x-ray machine sort of is on that spectrum to where you might need leaded walls around it all the way to needing nothing, and we fall on the nothing end. We take great care to shield that machine appropriately as well as having control systems, safety systems interlocks, and things that make sure that if there was any problem with the machine, if there’s any risk that somebody could be exposed to x-ray, then the machine shuts itself off in those cases and protects the user.
TG Branfalt:
And Joe, what was the learning curve like for you getting into this very dense tech?
Joseph Bancheri:
Yeah. Well, first of all, I was actually selling weed for a brand out here, and they were the first ones with a remediation unit in Nevada and I was selling it. I didn’t even know they were using that unit. So I went through my whole, I’m smoking radioactive weed thing and I’m selling radioactive weed. So that kind of fucked me up a little bit. But then once I got with these guys and the guy who designed it, and Jeff, these guys are, and it’s something we haven’t talked about, the parent company that builds our tubes where these guys actually started with, they’ve been around for 75 years, so solid company. I’ll let Jeff talk more about that maybe, but they explained to me how everything works. That’s why I’m able to talk about the DNA on the microbials and the plant and kind of explain that to people now that I understand it with confidence, and I feel I’m totally okay with it now, but I went through my faith as well.
TG Branfalt:
Jeff, how important is it to have somebody with this sort of breadth of cannabis experience as a member of your team? Being predominantly a tech company,
Jeff Adams:
It is invaluable. The cannabis space, I will admit, as new to me, I’ve been in it for about three and a half years now, so I’ve learned a lot. But to say it this way in cannabis, you need some street cred. You know what I mean? It was for many years in illegal industry and it’s like if you’re in, you’re in and if you’re out, you’re out. And you need somebody that understands the ins and outs of cannabis and what that’s all about and can sort of talk the talk and walk the walk. And that’s been important for me. I joke with Joe, I’m a little bit of a Chad. I get it. I own that because I haven’t historically been part of it. What I will say though is as I have gotten into the cannabis industry, I have met people, many people whose lives have really been helped by cannabis, and I absolutely understand the medical benefit and the medicinal benefit of cannabis and have really changed my own attitudes about the value of cannabis in society and what it can really do. And I fully support legalization and especially in a medical use case, fully support that.
TG Branfalt:
Was there any, Joe had mentioned that the parent company or the company that designs the tubes is 75 years old. Was there any trepidation about them by them being associated with the cannabis industry?
Jeff Adams:
There was, and that’s part of how XR Pure came apart about is that we formed a separate company in order to do this cannabis division because of some of the nervousness of the bankers and the lawyers and the accountants, and maybe they have good reason for that because I don’t think the banking system and all of that in the US has fully embraced cannabis yet. It’s still a problem for everybody. And so we made some legal separations and some protections there for the parent company as well.
TG Branfalt:
So in some states, they do not allow for remediation of cannabis products. They demand that they be destroyed once they come off the shelves, but most states do allow it. Now, oftentimes you will see a mass recall of products that have already hit store shelves, and they’ll recall the entire brand, not just sort of an afflicted product in some cases. How can the x-ray tech be used, or is it possible that it can be used to prevent these sort of mass recalls in states that do allow remediation?
Jeff Adams:
Oh, I definitely believe that it can prevent them, yes. The way that we advocate our customers using the machine is as a standard part of their SOP as a preventative measure, not as a reactive measure. Right?
TG Branfalt:
Interesting.
Jeff Adams:
And so we say every ounce that you grow should go through that machine and decontaminated, and not only that, it should be decontaminated early in the process, meaning that right after dry and cure and trim, that would be the time to run it through and decontaminate it that way. Any of those microbials that were existing through the growing process and all of that, you cut those down to nearly zero, and then you can store the product cleanly or package it at that point and have confidence that it’s not growing inside the package. If you take the mindset that, Hey, I’m just going to test it first and only the stuff that fails, I’m going to remediate after the fact, you’re exposing yourself to a lot of risk of recalls and things down the line because that, as Joe mentioned earlier, if you’ve got a lot that just barely passes the regulation for microbials, it’s going to be growing inside that package and it multiplies fast. It’s only a few months worth of time to where you can go from something that’s clean and smells right and all of that to literally visible mold, a terrible smell, and all of that doesn’t take that long for that to happen.
TG Branfalt:
Joe, do you get any pushback from operators or how do they react when you suggest that this is part of the SOPs?
Joseph Bancheri:
Yeah, well, I mean a lot of ’em, I think they understand because if you’re thinking of all the tests and retesting, every test costs you money. So that’s a bottom line thing. They just, it’s considered basically a kill step along the way. And if you know your product well enough, we’ve got some people that are using a thousand gray, 1500 gray, they don’t need to use the whole 2000 gray just as an insurance policy. And I think people understand it. They know it’s not going to affect their plant. They know they’re going to pass their COAs first time, it’s their cheat code, whatever, but it’s also creating clean product for the end users, so everybody wins. That’s how I look at it.
TG Branfalt:
Can either one of you give me any sort of ballpark indication of how many businesses are using this technology currently?
Joseph Bancheri:
Well, what I like to say is there’s, in Colorado you got businesses, that’s all they do. They have five machines, they just take on people’s product, and that’s all they do. They’re running remediation all day. They don’t even grow. That’s their business. Colorado’s very saturated with remediation units. Michigan, it’s very saturated Illinois. I think you have to have one that’s a thousand CFU there. So I think New York’s still at a hundred thousand or they’re not in that realm yet, but once those start getting tightened up, it’s going to, you’re see it a lot more, a lot of different machines out there.
TG Branfalt:
How much competition is in the x-ray decontamination space for cannabis?
Jeff Adams:
There’s about five companies right now that are doing the X-ray machines specifically for cannabis. So decent amount of competition, I guess s, but not a ton of providers. Your other question I would answer also a little bit differently. We believe there’s maybe 250 to 300 machines at the most out in the country. And so the states where Kansas has been legal for a long time, like Joe mentioned, Colorado, pretty saturated with machines and we believe a good portion, I won’t venture an actual number, but a good portion of the operators are using X-ray remediation and new states. The nice thing is they have the benefit of learning from those older states, and we’re seeing them asking for x-ray right off the bat right from the beginning because they know it’s the best way to do it.
TG Branfalt:
It’s very fascinating sort of sector of the industry that I don’t think many people think about. And I think that through this conversation, almost calling it remediation as a misnomer, if you’re, again putting it as part of your SOP process, it becomes sort of preventative.
Jeff Adams:
So we prefer the term decontamination, which really does indicate a proactive approach to it. And part of the SOP where remediation in our language would mean something that’s already been proven to have failed, and then now you’re going to run it through to remediate it. The other comment I would have is that the stigma for X-rayed product is real. There’s no doubt about it. And so many of our companies don’t want us talking about the fact that we’re selling the machine or leasing them a machine. And I get that from their standpoint. I completely get that. Our standpoint, we have just the opposite viewpoint. We believe that using x-ray to decontaminate a product gives you a better product in the end. And I think you should be advertising that to your customers. Like, Hey, it’s been through this product. It is guaranteed to be clean, especially if you’re immunocompromised medical patients, you know that you’re getting clean stuff. It has been treated, and yet the potency is still going to be medicine for you. It’s still going to give you all the benefits that you’re looking for, but it’s not going to make you sick. And I would be advertising that, but I know it’s hard to get over that public perception and that stigma.
TG Branfalt:
Well, and there is a study from California Department of Cannabis Control that lays out exactly what you just said in black and white. That was an independent study using x-ray that found that there was no sort of harm associated with the technology.
Joseph Bancheri:
That’s right. We’re going to work on a six month, 12 month stabilization test showing flour that has not been remediated and our flower that has been remediated and show what it looks like after six months, after 12 months compared to the one that was not remediated. And I think once that data, once we get more and more data out there, it’s going to be more helpful for people to
TG Branfalt:
Understand. So I do want to ask just sort of about remediation. I know that we’ve sort of moved away from calling the X RRP that we want to call the decontamination, which I can’t say, but could this technology be used in remediating illegal cannabis cultivation sites at all?
Jeff Adams:
That’s an interesting question. I mean, certainly it could, right? All you need is a space and some power, and you can hook that thing up and do what you want with it. I haven’t ever thought about would we be willing to sell a machine or lease a machine to somebody like that?
TG Branfalt:
Well, no, not leasing a machine to somebody like that, but say in California where there is just acres of land that’s being used to cultivate cannabis illegally, it’s polluting the soil and leaving a lot of contamination behind. Is there any utility do you think, for x-ray tech in cleaning up these sites?
Joseph Bancheri:
I would say if we had a partner and they did a trailer with us, one of these mobile trailers where they go, we don’t care. We just have a profit share on the pound rate that they charge. So if they want to go whatever farm they go to, that’s fine. I just don’t think we would place a unit there. So that would be the workaround for that.
TG Branfalt:
Yeah, and I guess you couldn’t really use a device like this for remitting soil or anything like that. Now that I sort of No. Understand the
Joseph Bancheri:
Technology, yeah, it would have to be after the plant’s been harvested and cured. If you did put a live plan in there, it would kill it basically.
TG Branfalt:
What advice would you have for operators who are facing a recall, who are trying to remediate get this product to market without losing thousands of dollars?
Joseph Bancheri:
Well, what I would say, oh, go ahead Jim.
Jeff Adams:
I’d just say that there’s plenty of access to these machines. As we mentioned, there’s several hundred of them in the country. And so even going, finding somebody who could help you remediate that product and make it viable again, is one way. Again, we really would push the proactive approach to making it part of your own process and guaranteeing yourself good results by using that technology.
TG Branfalt:
And finally, where can people find out more about XR Pure and the XR 16?
Jeff Adams:
The best way is through our website, XR pure.com. All the information about the equipment and everything is there. One of the little features on the website that I’d like to plug is that there’s a calculator there, so anybody can go on and they can put in their own numbers. This is what I’m selling the wholesale flower for. If I can’t sell it as wholesale, I’ve got to sell it as trim. And what price is that? How much are you growing and what’s your failure rate? So very quickly, within just a matter of seconds, you can go on, plug in those numbers and we’ll spit you back at basically an ROI that says, this is what kind of money we can save you by using this kind of technology. Aside from information on just the equipment itself, we tried to do our part to help with education.
We have a blog there on the website that has many different articles about tips and tricks on how to run a clean facility. Aside from using decontamination or remediation technology, what things can you do proactively in your growing process, in your drying process and how you clean the facility? All of that. We’ve done our best to gather that kind of information and make that available for people to understand X-ray as a a comprehensive program of making sure that you’re clean and doing things that would maintain the integrity of your product. All of that’s available on our website.
TG Branfalt:
Well, I do appreciate you guys coming on the show. This is, again, not something that we’ve ever talked about on the Entrepreneur Podcast, and you do a great job at clarifying and helping people understand, and hopefully this episode helps reduce the stigma that’s associated with alleged radioactive cannabis because it does not seem like that is the case. I certainly wouldn’t shy away from smoking some grass that had gone through this process for sure. So I appreciate you guys taking the time and really explaining it in a way that me and the listeners can’t understand.
Jeff Adams:
Well, you’re very welcome, Tim, and thank you again for taking the time with us and to understand what we do and giving us some exposure on your podcast.
TG Branfalt:
That is Jeff Adams, founder and managing director, and Joseph Cheri, national Sales Manager from Las Vegas, Nevada based XR Pure, which recently launched the XR 16 capable of eliminating mold of mildew, bacteria, and other harmful pathogens on cannabis flower. You can find more episodes of the Ganjapreneur.com podcast and the podcast section of ganjapreneur.com and wherever you get your podcast. In the Ganjapreneur website, you’ll find the latest cannabis news and cannabis jobs updated daily along with transcripts of this podcast. You can also download the Ganjapreneur.com app in iTunes and Google Play. This episode was engineered by Wayward Sound Studio. I’ve been your host, TG Branfalt.
In this episode of The Ganjapreneur Podcast, host TG Branfalt speaks with Laura Trujillo and Amanda Terpstra, co-founders of BestBuds, a woman- and Hispanic-owned dispensary based in Woodbury, New Jersey. Lifelong friends turned business partners, Laura and Amanda share their remarkable story of bootstrapping a licensed cannabis retail business from the ground up—navigating community pushback, lawsuits, zoning battles, and a grueling fundraising process along the way.
Together, they break down how their complementary skills, entrepreneurial drive, and deep community engagement helped them overcome early resistance in a small-town setting. The conversation touches on fundraising challenges for women and minority founders, the changing product landscape in New Jersey, and why staffing and personality fit are critical to cannabis retail success. It’s an inspiring and highly practical look at what it really takes to open—and sustain—a dispensary in today’s regulated environment.
Listen below or scroll down for the full transcript!
Listen to the episode:Ganjapreneur · Laura Trujillo & Amanda Terpstra: From College Teammates to Cannabis Trailblazers
Read the transcript:Editor’s note: this transcript was auto-generated and may contain errors.
Commercial:
The Ganjapreneur Podcast is made possible by over 500 cannabis industry service providers in Ganjapreneurs Cannabis Business Index. At some point, every plant touching brand experiences the stigma that many industries still have to toward cannabis going strong. Since 2015, our business index is the most comprehensive and frequently visited directory for cannabis friendly services on the internet, saving you the time and hassle of sifting through uninformed and unwelcoming providers with categories for everything from business financing to extraction equipment to interior designers and public relations. You’ll find every kind of specialist and business service you could ever need. Check out the business index today at ganjapreneur.com/businesses.
TG Branfalt:
Hey there, I’m your host, TG Brand Fault, and this is the ganjapreneur.com podcast where we try to bring you actionable information and normalized cannabis through the stories of ganjapreneurs, activists and industry stakeholders. Today I am joined by Laura Trujillo, COO, and Amanda Terpstra, CEO, their co-founders of BestBuds, a woman and Hispanic owned dispensary based in Woodbury, New Jersey. How are you doing this afternoon?
Laura Trujillo:
Great. Doing great. How are you doing?
TG Branfalt:
I’m doing doing just fine, just fine. Excited to hear about your story. It’s really, really interesting. You guys have a history together and then have brought that to the cannabis space. So why don’t you tell me about your background and how you ended up in the cannabis space?
Laura Trujillo:
I think I’ll start. I’m Laura Trujillo, the COO and co-founder of BestBuds. I think our story goes back to college. Me and Amanda met playing college soccer where our bond was initially formed, running suicides on the soccer field and just dying on that sideline. But through life, through college, we’ve remained best buds, so we really are in fact best buds. We just don’t have it for a name, and it was my grandiose idea to come to her after going over to the West coast for corporate work functions. I would try to go to as many dispensaries as possible on the west coast, knowing that eventually it was going to come over to the East coast. And being a cannabis consumer myself for many years, for PTSD, I always would just like to see how the cannabis industry was helping within the community and how it impacted.
Of course, west Coast and Colorado was probably one of my first stops, and so they were also doing a lot of breweries as well. So wherever there was a brewery, there was a dispensary. So on family vacations, my husband would go to the brewery, I’d go to the dispensary. It is a win-win for everyone. Then I be in my best butt. Amanda, I knocked on her door and one day, and I know she was kind of trying to figure out her what’s the next challenge to be, and I was kind of tired of corporate America and traveling between Jersey and West Coast and I said to her, let’s open a dispensary, man. I came knocking on our door and she looked at me like I was crazy and told me to get out of here, but then I was like, Hey man, let’s go to this Canna Gather event in New Jersey.
Probably one of the first events, it was right when they decriminalized can cannabis and Trenton, so it would be like a $50 fine. And from that moment on, I think we saw the vision and the potential and the networking and just being able to bring something different to the community in Woodbury that will also help Woodbury grow. As a small town in New Jersey, we are a small business and we really want to grow our community around us through the power of cannabis being women. And Hispanic owned is also another niche that we have in the market as well. There’s not very many of us out there that have actually opened, but we’ve been through the rigors, we’ve been through the lobbying, the ordinances in New Jersey, fundraised ourselves. You’ll find that me and Amanda are often called peanut butter and jelly. I am all things creative design. I designed the logo I came up with, the name was on top of getting that trademarked early on. So we are registered, which is really important and she’s all things, I call her my legal and my HR and my business, but I wanted to give Amanda a test to introduce herself in her words.
Amanda Terpstra:
Hey everyone, thanks for having us here today. I’m Amanda and CEO of BestBuds. Yes, I’m all things business. My background comes from a family of entrepreneurs, which is actually how we got located in Woodbury. My grandmother was actually an owner of her own business. She did have a male partner. A lot of people don’t realize that it wasn’t really until the eighties that women could get their own loans and start their own businesses. So to have someone like that in my life so intricate without realizing it and now living my dream of owning their own business, amazing. But ultimately that’s how we got to Woodbury was being familiar with business downtown and the people in the community helped us a lot to get to where we are. But yeah, is Laura’s original dream and vision coming to life, but mine in a different way at the same time
TG Branfalt:
She said that you were maybe a little bit hesitant at first. Do you want to sort of elaborate as to your feelings at the time?
Amanda Terpstra:
Well, I think it was more like Laura was like, Hey, let’s open a dispensary. And I was like, what are you talking about? And she kind of explained to me that cannabis was legalizing and I honestly was a little bit blind to the fact. So it was quite interesting to go to this event and to learn about this emerging industry, and I was at a pinnacle in my career of what’s my next step? So after a lot of thought and discussion and brainstorming and we figured it out and my husband was like, we can do this. And I was like, all right, I’m going to do it. And that was it. The first day I left my job, I actually went to another networking event on cannabis just to keep the ball moving. But yeah.
TG Branfalt:
So tell me a little bit about those early days. Tell me about Woodbury. You described it as sort of a smaller town, right?
Amanda Terpstra:
Yeah, Woodbury, it’s in Gloucester County, New Jersey right across the Walt Whitman from Philly is the county seat of Gloucester County. I grew up in Woodbury Heights, the town over, but my family owned and operated businesses in Woodbury. My grandmother had a title agency, so I grew up doing all this admin work, which you don’t realize what you’re learning until later in life sometimes. But yeah, it’s a cute little small town. It’s redeveloping, it’s growing right now. I think small town America is really making a turn for the comeback and we’re excited to be a part of that with my family and friends being down there, it was nice to kind of reconnect and regroup and there’s a lot of great organizations in the town that are doing a lot and coming together to really try to improve the downtown and get the community back. I think everyone’s kind of on a curve from covid and figuring out what’s going on now and going back to work and things of that nature, but love to be there and continue my family’s legacy. In terms of the city,
TG Branfalt:
Did you guys experience any sort of pushback from maybe local zoning, local authorities, anything like that? Because of the sort of small town nature, it’s often as much harder I think for these types of businesses to get the permits, the necessary permits.
Amanda Terpstra:
I think we were the first cannabis business to be sued for our location in New Jersey.
We got our ordinance passed and we got our resolution and then there was the lawsuit, and it is because we’re downtown, it was harder to get that at first. The city drafted an ordinance that excluded specifically South Broad Street, which is the downtown area, so we had to fight for them to include that and revise it, and then we got the approval and then the lawsuit is that there was a daycare in a church a few doors down, and in my mind, if we have a toddler wandering around the streets that far, I think that that is a bigger concern than cannabis. But yeah, so it was quite interesting. We did win obviously. I mean we got a lot of pushback. They almost opted out and then we kind of rallied a bunch of, we did all kinds of social media email and calling and the town really came out. The people really came out and we rallied and we were one of the first cities in the state before the optout where they opted in and it created a lot of attraction. And then there was some berating at some town council meeting, public sessions of who we are. And I won’t get into the nitty gritty of that, but it was, I don’t know, I don’t know if you want to talk about it, Laura,
Laura Trujillo:
Give you a little bit more color too. At that point, once we decided that we wanted to have our dispensary in Woodbury, New Jersey, we started with going to every single town council meeting. We didn’t want to be people that just showed up and say, Hey, we need this. We wanted to know the town. We wanted to know what was going on, where the needs were. Eventually you got to a point where it was cheers and everybody knew your name. Even just we would present, we knew the people we knew miss so-and-so with the roof, and you start to get to know the community and what they need and where their money is going into and not just going, we would present to the town and at this time it was CBD, the hemp bill had just passed too, but we just started educating them and just having a basic informative educational session on the agenda, not in the public speaking moment.
So it’s official. And so just educating them on CBD and cannabis and very, very elementary stuff to get them to see that you start to create that knowledge and people start to dig a little bit more. It’s power. It’s powerful when they start to research everything and see that it’s not just going to be a bunch of hippie standing around on the corner because that’s what they thought. I mean, don’t get me wrong, you have your people on council that are stuck in that old time ideology. That’s what you’re fighting against because in the towns, those are the people that have the vote and saying, you need an ordinance or you need zoning. So and educating your local town council members and your local zoning officials to really say, Hey, this is a secure facility, more secure than a jewelry store or a casino shop, and it’s not going to smell eventually leading up to it.
But yeah, we did have a lot of pushback and we fought those battles too with expungement events within the town, partnering with local communities and local charities and showing that we were an active partner within the community without even having a business yet, just having the idea of wanting to have a business there. So it took us about probably two years or so of consistently working with the town eventually where we knew that the time was ticking on when to opt in if you’re going to be a New Jersey town in New Jersey to opt in to have cannabis businesses within your town. And then of course once you start that process, then you have to get your zoning, your property. Originally we thought we wanted to go into the medical side before recreational came legal in New Jersey, but that was just a really big, you had to be vertically integrated and it was almost a godsend that we didn’t go into the medical because there’s a big lawsuit, New Jersey, it held those operators and manufacturers back about a year or two.
That’s a year, the two of them paying rent and for something that they don’t know that they’ve even got as far as licensure. And it took probably another year for licensing and hey, we hit the pavement, we fundraised on our own. We had fundraising, we had a fundraising coach for investment and we for almost every day for a year, it was like, how many people can we get in front of and tell our story and take the chance to invest and fine tuning our numbers and our projections and the marketing and the decks and networking, networking, networking. And you just keep working. You just keep believing and keep having faith that you didn’t come this far to come this far. And that’s something that still rings true for us today, even now that we’re open.
TG Branfalt:
That’s reallys really good advice and it’s really incredible story. How did you identify these people within the community to sort of partner with on the expungement events that you mentioned and just sort of the community outreach in general?
Amanda Terpstra:
So I’ll take that. This Amanda, I quit my job and was a hundred percent full-time BestBuds and my goal was just to network, network, network, but also learn at the same time. So as I was networking when the area I joined the local chamber of commerce, we became 365 members of United Way through networking and then I also was on the Gloucester County Economic Development Board. There’s a lot that the county’s done economically to continue to try to build things, but that’s where I kind of met people. There’s a local nonprofit in Woodbury obviously that does expungements and they focus on reentry programs in general. So as I was networking and learning, obviously social equity is a huge thing in the cannabis industry. At the time when you had to apply for medical licensing in New Jersey, it originally had to be that you also had a connection with a nonprofit.
So a lot of people were creating their own nonprofits and I was like, there has to be a nonprofit we can work with because it’s a lot of work to do that itself. So luckily I found a gentleman and their company specialized it. They already had, it wasn’t as attorney driven as some of the programs that you see, which are great as well, but it was really just through constant networking that we met all of these wonderful people. It’s where we built the support with the town. When we had to rally, I mean even these years later when we finally got to site plan approval, we were still calling upon these people like, Hey, we’re hitting this roadblock. Can you help? What do we do? Who do we talk to? So it it’s been the journey, but nonetheless it’s all those connections and all that networking and time and effort put in that has given us that validation and the capability to kind of do things without having to do them ourselves. It’s about who sometimes not how.
TG Branfalt:
And I do want to take a sort of step back a little bit too, and you guys met in college and I do want to know how you each utilized your college degrees in the cannabis business that you started.
Laura Trujillo:
Well, I’m a create graphic designer, bachelor of arts in college, got my degree and my experience, I kind of took everything that I’ve run. I’ve worked at a small business hand coding websites, HTMO, search engine optimization. Back before there was WordPress, I was building and creating and working in marketing and then I worked my way up to a medium sized business where I laid out employment law handbooks and worked in the IT and fixed the network. So I got that knowledge and then I worked at Samsung and I got the security knowledge and managing global teams and international and branding and logo registration and trademarks and setting up trade shows and art and banners. And I took all of that and I put it into BestBuds and I came up with the logo. You needed a slogan, you have to get registered, you want to protect your intellectual copy. That’s Samsung website from the very first job that I did. And I’ve always worked with websites and I built our website.
We started with hemp, CBD to really understand the regulations and really understand, I mean at that time too, it was like 20 19, 20 20 hemp CBD was big on the market and we got a lot of questions from our family members on what’s legit, what’s great. And we created a system to source premium quality CBD. Amanda created this amazing questionnaire to verify lab results and where it was grown to make sure, I think it was to the point where some of them started using our questionnaires. It’s incredible networking to just be able to provide, it’s always been about providing the best product for our consumers to give them the best quality of life that’s always been behind BestBuds. And throughout the journey we’ve become best buds with our town, with communities, with our everybody that we know is our best. But at the core it’s always been about education and just giving human beings like ourselves and everyone around us that better quality of life through the power of cannabis and CBD is a part of that.
And just applying all that to the dispensary side. Now, Amanda and I had security. I worked at Samsung and I was in charge of setting up their trade show booths for their security cameras. So what do you need in the cannabis industry security? So I had my connections and my network backing of great sales guys that are vice presidents and presidents now of companies and just keeping that dialogue going and super, super supportive. Even when back in the day when I was the only one with a med card in Las Vegas and we had a Las Vegas trade show and I would go get some weed for the team, it’s a little bit of full circuit. It’s like you go through the stage of life of learning and absorbing and now it’s like how do you apply it to what you really want to create in life?
And for me, it’s really applying all of my assets. I mean even now I work part, I still have a full-time job and the pharmaceutical industry as a creative director for a small medical communications company. So I see that whole, I work with the FDA and regulations and passing pharmaceutical drugs. So you see if federalization comes down, what that looks like in the cannabis space as well. So it is really applying all those lessons to our business and knowing, although it’s a different animal, I mean I’m sure Amanda can speak to all her finance and business knowledge. So you can start to see the clear lineage here between the till. It
TG Branfalt:
Is kind of crazy though the narrative that people who open these dispensaries become rich overnight. You’re still working another gig.
Laura Trujillo:
We don’t even pay ourselves, man. For us, not yet Lauren, not yet. We’ve been in this, we’ve worked the hardest. We’ve worked two jobs. I mean I would say we work three jobs because we’re moms too
And wives. So it’s a constant balancing effort here. But for us it’s more important to set the company off. First of all, it’s play our employees before us and we’re actively involved. We’re there about two, three times a week at the shop. Not to mention that’s about an hour and 50 minute commute for me, sometimes a two hour commute for Amanda. So it’s balancing your family and schedule and having the employees that are dedicated and really understand that this is your baby and that they just, sometimes we just need you to run the store and we’ll take care of all the other business but can’t clone ourselves and look for us, it’s more important to have a solid team that doesn’t have to worry about their paycheck and their solid 40 hours we’ve been making due for the past six years that we can make, do a little bit more and make sure that we’re off on the right foot.
And that’s also Amanda too because I’m always, sometimes I’m like, man, when we go get paid, you’re not a millionaire because you have a dispensary. Unless you are someone that comes in it from a different business and has made your money and you have the capital to spend, it’s very slow profit growth at it at the beginning. Any qualified investor, anybody will tell you that. It’s not like you get in and first of all, we fundraise 2.25 million. So we had investors to, it’s not like we had it. We went as door to door as you can get, as self-made as it gets, man. And I don’t know if Amanda wants to add anything to it.
Amanda Terpstra:
Yeah, it’s very nice to have when you want a website change or a marketing thing done, I just go, Laura, but I don’t have the wait. That’s the on-demand part. It’s struggle sometimes. But yeah, so I am the all things business. My background, my degree is in business management. Shout out to FDU, Fairleigh Dickinson. That’s where Laura and I met. We also had some fun jobs in college, but
So with business management, ironically Laura looking back and maybe I’m going off on a tangent here, but I took management. I didn’t have a real focus. I didn’t know if I want to do accounting marketing, I wasn’t sure. And I thought I was really going to do marketing and I had someone copy someone else’s work on my team and then we had to go in front of the dean and all this stuff and I was like, I don’t think I’m going to do marketing. Maybe that’s for a good purpose looking back. But yeah, I think growing up in a business world, my grandmother owned title insurance. My grandfather and my father were construction, so it was a perfect match, worked odd jobs in several retail facets. And then out of college I thought I was going to get in the mortgage industry and I left banking and went, I worked at Bear Stearns actually in human resources of all things. I was in my early twenties. It was quite the experience because I was on a Sunday, my boss was calling me, I was like, why is my boss calling me? And it was like, we’re not sure we’re going to open the doors tomorrow. And I’m like, shit. I was like, wonder what is going on? I don’t know. I’m like 22.
TG Branfalt:
That’s a crazy story of itself, man.
Amanda Terpstra:
Yeah, so luckily we got saved by JP Morgan, but I went through, we did all the hiring and I did all the orientation for New Jersey. So it was quite the facet to go through that aspect of HR and learn a lot. I was going to lose my job, but that’s when I got into financial advising. So I got a job as an assistant and I just worked my way up, got fully licensed. I’m actually A CFP by trade, so I was which a certified financial planner. So I left wealth management. And that education I think is what really helped us, not just on the business spectrum and understanding things through my degree, but through that financial experience understanding how do you fundraise? What do these terms mean? What’s a convertible note? What are different ways of fundraising? It’s different when you’re applying those things you learn. But yeah, it’s funny, I’m the legal compliance nerd. I tell Laura, we can’t do that or we can’t pay or that’s not going to happen. I’m always like, you get to do all the fun stuff. And I’m the HR legal nerd. So it’s a fun combination, but that’s where we’re very yin and yang and it works out in terms of being friends, but also because trust me, it reaches the point where we have our moments, but we’re like sisters, then we’ll be like, let’s go smoke a bowl and get some pizza. I don’t know.
Laura Trujillo:
Yeah, I mean look, and a lot of it’s from our soccer relationship, from being teammates from you miss. She was defense and I was offense. I score goals with my head. I am like, yeah, I hated playing. She hated marketing me. But I think it’s just I know what I’m strong at and accepting what I’m strong at. And I am completely, I don’t know, she runs the numbers and the spreadsheets and she’s like Einstein over there and it’s really amazing whenever we get together all the time because she learns something and I learn something new every day and we see each other for that and we don’t try to pretend or we really just bring out the best of each other. And I think that soccer ball always allows you, if you miss a goal, you got to let it go and move on. We go our thing goldfish, we go, yeah, be a goldfish. It’s a hundred percent true. Be a goldfish. They’re the happiest animals in the world. This
Amanda Terpstra:
Is an animal, not really.
TG Branfalt:
So tell me about hiring staff. How do you identify people that you can leave the day to day I guess, or the shop to? How do you find those people and what do you look for?
Amanda Terpstra:
I’m going to jump in really fast on this. Yeah, we had a lot of learning lessons with staffing and I can’t explain to everyone how important personality tests are. It is really interesting. I think if you’ve worked in corporate job, you’ve probably taken a personality test at some point, but from a small end perspective, it’s so much more intimate. And we did not instantly take personality tests. We took them a couple months after. We had hired four different managers at different levels of work and everyone was a protagonist and I was a law ian, so I had all these empath, creative free spirits. And here I am like, can we get to some spreadsheets today? Where’s the order and the structure? And I was like, this is why I’m losing my mind. I’m like, everyone has great ideas and we do get our work done, but there’s there’s no real order. And it was eyeopening for me in terms of how important that is when you’re hiring people, especially your closer management team. That’s just one little facet. But we did all of our own hiring really with our general manager.
Laura Trujillo:
We did our own hiring. And I think when it comes to hiring people, I think the reality is is that some people are meant to be part of your journey for the whole way. And some people only met for a certain amount of time, and that’s the reality of business and to just really be grateful and thankful for whatever presence they were in your journey. And that allows you to grow and learn and narrow down what you really want. There’s a lot out there when you’re opening a business of a lot of advice on you should have this kind of structure or that kind of structure. But at the end of the day, I think you have to go through some of these trials and tribulations and projecting that. A lot of it comes down to how much money you’re bringing in too. It’s a business at the end of the day, and that determines your staff when you’re actually open. But I think a lot of it too is you’re just constantly learning. You’re learning how different personalities work you as an owner want. What are your core values? What are our core values? We have a big poster in the dispensary. I think our dispensary is described as really opening. It’s almost like a festival vibe.
Me and Amanda have gone to tons of festivals together. We’re big fish and Dave and Keller and Tom Petty fans. So we created the dispensary as a representation of us. And you want to have that open atmosphere of everyone’s inclusive. We’re super inclusive, super supportive, but there’s only certain people that can actually do the job that is required to at the end of the day. At the end of the day, there is a hierarchy. There’s an organizational chart that we don’t like to follow by labels, but you kind of need it, although we’re kind of free flowing, but then Amanda, it’s like, no, we need structure. And I’m like, you’re right.
Amanda Terpstra:
And I think to speak back to the personality test, it’s been interesting. Now we’ve had our whole staff do the test and it gives us a better grasp of like, okay, these people are in this role and they’re all the same personality. It makes perfect sense, but what can I give to them to keep them going on to what are they looking for? We have a lot of commanders and they love to work with startups. And that’s the other part is we’re a startup. We’re not an MSO. You’re not stepping into somewhere where you’re kind of a number. And we do a lot more leaning on our staff for information, asking questions, but at the same time teaching them because they’re growing and learning with us. And I think that helps us too. That’s always helped me. If I can explain things to Laura, then I’m like, okay, I can it and I get it myself even more so now. So it’s not only does the staff want to be part of that and do they want to learn and grow, and this commander grow is great, but I’m like, how do I keep them wanting more and growing and learning? And so it’s coming with creative ideas like that too, around how to keep your staff because you have to find the right people, especially in a startup phase.
TG Branfalt:
So how has the industry’s changed since you opened the business in New Jersey and how have you sort of adapted to those changes?
Amanda Terpstra:
Sure. So we did get a later start, and some of that was to our learning experiences. It is interesting. In New Jersey there was kind of a few and far between dispensaries in Woodbury, we were one of the first to pass, but we were second to open, and MSO came in and opened in Woodbury and another experience operator opened not too far away, probably six to eight months after that. So now we’re at the point where there is becoming saturation. It’s not too heavy, and I think the opportunity is still there, but now it’s battling changing consumer habits. It’s also you’re starting to see price compression because there’s more brands coming out. So it’s where are you buying and how do you maintain your margins through people dropping their prices? And you can only get so many credits and things like that from your vendors. So it’s interesting, we are still expanding in New Jersey, but at the same time everything’s compressing because of competition. So it’s interesting
Laura Trujillo:
Product variety. Before you were limited to what the big guys, the corporate cannabis guys were putting out there with New Jersey, they established the industry because they’re the ones that had the 20 million to be able, they had had to be vertically integrated on a medical level as well. And then you had to be able to have the supply on a rec level. And let’s be honest, there’s not too many local small businesses that can bring up 15, 20, $30 million to have that kind of operation. And then that’s just a raise. That doesn’t mean to continue it, but now you’re getting what I call is that craft cannabis in New Jersey, the local, the small guys being able, so the product landscape is changing. Then within the next six months to a year, you’ll see a lot more. And the regulatory commission has recognized that edibles are a big part for consumers in New Jersey.
So they expand it to brownies and now there’s chocolates. Before it was just hard lozenges, and now we have gummies and then you’re seeing drinks come on, people having drinks come on board. So as far as product, what you see in West Coast that’s slowly trickling over and then you’re fighting consumer habits. People like the MSO cannabis had a guy come in and he is like, I saw that you were women owned. I’m just looking for a different vibe now because you tend to get bored a little bit. And we have a great variety. So he came in and that for every person that comes in, it’s probably like 10 other people that they tell. As far as on a marketing level, it’s difficult. It’s nothing like it is on the west coast. I can do podcasts and probably some more advertising in Philly with a billboard. I can’t advertise in New Jersey, I can’t put anything out in front of my door except park around the rear. I can’t advertise like a liquor store. I can’t advertise on radio. Our Instagram gets taken down every time. So on the marketing side of it, it’s very challenging to be able to let people know that you’re open. So you have to constantly be thinking out the box mailers, okay, what works? So it’s a constant evolution when it comes to from then to now,
Amanda Terpstra:
What’s been fun though is like I’d say MJ unpacked last year in Atlantic City was they moved from New York to AC and it was so much more Jersey focused because Atlantic City’s like you’re only going there for a reason,
But they had the after hours event and it was at the pool and they have this whole outdoor section, and it felt like it was, first of all, a lot of the west coast is out here now, so that’s fun because you guys are, it’s fun, but you guys, they brought that vibe with it and it was finally a cool, fun consumption friendly, oh, that’s cool party in Jersey. It was cool. And that’s the part where you get wrapped up in all this stuff going on over here with the business, but it’s taking that back and remembering those moments. And that was a really cool, fun time. And it was like, I can’t believe this is my job.
TG Branfalt:
Well, you had mentioned about the consumer tastes are changing, and I know that in New York, one of the top selling things is low dose edibles followed by pre-rolls, and it may be flipped that pre-rolls are sort of the bestselling thing followed by low dose edibles. What products are you seeing sort of emerge in New Jersey?
Laura Trujillo:
I think Flower King where we’re at, and you got to remember pa, we’re 20 minutes from Philly, so what is it? I think it’s called.
Amanda Terpstra:
So
Laura Trujillo:
They don’t have any pre-rolls on the market, so you want to capitalize that. And right now I think what we’re leading is vapes, flowers, vapes, and edibles right now, very low on pictures. I think that’s, oh, concentrates have been pretty big for us recently as well too. So you are getting more of a somewhat educated consumer. You still have your new consumers that come in, but you are getting more people that have tried things into the market, but flour still remains king and try and get some brownies and cookies in people, some of that all, there’s only so many edibles. Woodstock, it’s pretty much
Amanda Terpstra:
Ies and chocolates butter case is the only one that does the cookies and brownies right now. But you’re starting to see some of these new brands come out just, but the manufacturing is probably going to be the biggest expansion this year, I would say. But interesting low dose edibles. I feel like jersey’s still in the market of cheapest price, highest THC, which is so frustrating because it’s like all you do is educate, educate, educate, and they’re like, what’s the highest DHC? You’re like, no.
TG Branfalt:
Do you guys trust the testing results that you get on those products?
Amanda Terpstra:
No, no. I think there’s so much controversy around that and there’s still so much I don’t, yeah, I don’t want to tell stories.
Laura Trujillo:
I think we leave it to, we’re consumers too, and our staff consumes and we are very open. I don’t know how it works in other dispensaries, but of course we get samples and stuff. But I always tell, it’s funny because my social media manager, we just brought in dog walkers and I’m like, take this, go get high and walk your dog. Tell me what it’s like, videotape it, take some pictures, videotape it for social media content. But a lot of it is tapping into the different generations, first of all. So it’s important to have a multi-generational workforce as well, because different generations like different things. I have a couple employees that they only dab and they love concentrates me, I love flower. I’m old school festival pre-roll, give me any kind of flour, I’ll vape. I have some edibles. But then you start talking about your bioavailability and how that affects your tolerance and everything like that.
Amanda Terpstra:
Laura went down an edible patch and
Laura Trujillo:
Then it was very rough. Yeah, I needed a tea break as they cooked, but that’s not an option. But I think for us too is testing the product, talking to our customers. Amanda was in there this weekend and asked customer feedback. What do you they know people know. I think it’s being able to have that open line of communication.
Amanda Terpstra:
Yeah, and it’s interesting, I might like your brand of products, but there’s some shitty disposable vapes out there. Sorry, I don’t know if I can say that word, but it’s like I might buy your carts. I like your carts, but your vapes always clog. So I’m not just talking, buy your bes and that is what it is. And I think that’s where Laura was talking about the MSO product versus these newer brands. You’re starting to see higher quality of things and I think that’s going to change, but some of these high price points got to come down no matter what.
TG Branfalt:
Are you getting more customers who are talking the sort of language of chemistry? You’re talking about terpenes and flavanoids and that sort of stuff. Is that something you’re starting to see more of?
Laura Trujillo:
Not so much when we, but definitely terpenes. Not so much flavors, terpenes. We actually have a AI bud tender called Turly on our website and on our kiosks by a great team. Eric Mercado does it and he learns recommendation based on terpenes and it learns. You sign up, it learns what you’re buying, and it’ll start to recognize because not everybody wants to come into and talk to a bud tender. Although our average customer stays about a half hour in our store, so chill.
Amanda Terpstra:
Really? No, not that long. It’s like six to eight minutes. It’s longer than a, well,
Laura Trujillo:
I’ve had people stay longer, but it’s the dialogue of terpenes. What kind of mood are you looking for? And I’ve had some more people that are a little bit more terpene knowledge. I’m looking something with some Carlene or what has the most myrcene in it. Fucking love myrcene. What are the Terps in this? Yeah,
Amanda Terpstra:
That’s not are the, in this one, Laura makes beautiful, we have a whole terpene festival thing. She makes these terpene posters and it goes over different things. And we have on our website, you can have, this month is Tural, what is it? Oh, lol. No, it’s Lionel this month. And so she has Icks and then she has lion law focused heavy products. So we’re trying, that’s cool,
TG Branfalt:
Man.
Laura Trujillo:
Some people are very, I make the poster, it’s like a festival, so it’s like your artist lineup.
TG Branfalt:
That’s cool.
Laura Trujillo:
The wear stage in Bonnaroo, the over there stage can have full tilt, but you’re being creative with dropping the names, but you’re not necessarily saying the things that’ll get you banned. But I made a 12 month calendar, I designed it all, and it’s almost like it’s a throwback to when you go to a fish show and Madison Square Gardens, you go to a Keller show and then you get a custom limited poster.
TG Branfalt:
That’s an amazing, amazing idea. So I do want to sort of switch gears a little bit and ask you what could or should the cannabis industry be doing broadly to support more women and people of color in this industry?
Amanda Terpstra:
For me, I think it’s the fundraising. I think fundraising in general is very complicated. I think that there’s still a shortage of probably women and I’m not sure, but I would say minority within the financial services industry in general. But fundraising is very hard. And I think if as a woman, we’ve all had those moments, no offense, but with men and it’s complicated in itself and I think that people are often overlooked that are really passionate and have opportunity. Yeah,
Laura Trujillo:
I think it’s definitely on the fundraising and when it comes to, I mean I don’t know how it is in every other state, but in New Jersey, if you’re going to do anything in the town with cannabis, it’s learning the ropes of lobbying for yourself. Where do you go? What do you do? How do you speak up for yourself at these town councils? How do you even begin to educate and having that kind of representation there because people are making decisions in your local town that you may not even be aware of when it comes to cannabis and you’ll be the last one to know if there’s a specific ordinance or something. I think it’s supporting them and even after they get past all of these barriers of entry. I mean, forget about the town fees and when you got to do a traffic study and it’s like you need your legal, you need a land.
I think it’s overall supporting that small business minority and women in having that network. I know women in cannabis and women grow is really big, but having those local chapters really reach out and not just accept membership fees but really make a difference and help people have conversations. Don’t just throw all the big terms out, lay it out how it really is. This is difficult. It, it’s not a road for if you want to make some fast money real quick, they you’d be better off doing something else. It takes a lot of resilience and you need to have that support network. And having that support network to help women and minorities is huge. Even after you open, because you’re facing competitors that have been out there, they’re making 80,000 a day while you’re still making a thousand. And it’s continuously trying to find those resources to succeed. So it’s like before middle and after. You just need that help, that network, the trusted network of who can help you. I think that’s important.
TG Branfalt:
So finally, what advice would each of you have for entrepreneurs who are considering maybe opening a retail dispensary?
Laura Trujillo:
Go ahead, Amanda.
Amanda Terpstra:
So much advice. No, I think it is
Laura Trujillo:
Green nugget. Give ’em a green nugget.
Amanda Terpstra:
Well, I think most important it’s choosing your teammates. I think that you have to choosing your team wisely, and that’s not just your business partner, but it’s everyone you surround yourself with, whether that be your attorney, your accountant, your insurance agent, your vendors. You’re going to find people that you just prefer to work with. And that’s no offense to anybody else, it’s just you got to find your tribe, but it’s also don’t give up on any roadblock. You’re going to hit a lot of roadblocks, you’re going to hear a lot of nos, but that doesn’t mean that you can’t get it done. It’s just not the right point or time. So I think that’s probably it.
Laura Trujillo:
I think for me it is a green nugget that was told to us failure plan is planning to fail, be resilient, and you got to believe, you got to believe in yourself. You got to believe in your dream. You got to believe when you have $2,000 left in the bank and you got to close on this building and you have no idea how you’re going to get $600,000. And Amanda did a 3:00 AM chat on LinkedIn and found us an investor and we closed within 20 days on our building. You got to believe in the miracles or I always say we found a jet, and this is a testament to our story, is when there was that big hurricane in Puerto Rico and nobody could get any Aiden and my family’s from Puerto Rico and I called him in and I was like, yo, you got a jet? I know you could fly a plane.
Amanda Terpstra:
Another classic Laura,
Laura Trujillo:
Another classic thing. But within 24 to 48 hours, somehow she knew an American Airlines pilot and we were able to get 600 pounds of food within 72 hours of the storm hitting, creating the lifeline for my family in the surrounding communities to be able to have some water or some food until they started to operate again. I mean, you really got to believe be a goldfish and just never give up man. Never give up. If it’s what you want to do and this is your destiny, find your tribe. Get the people that believe in that vision like you do, and just keep going until you get it because you only get one life man. And you might as well do it with your best buds because at the end of the day, what’s life without your best bud?
TG Branfalt:
Dude, you guys are super incredible. The story is incredible. Congratulations on your success, having the best buds and keeping that dream alive despite many of the sort of roadblocks that you mentioned and that you overcame. It’s a really incredible story. Where can people find out more about you and more about BestBuds?
Laura Trujillo:
You can have the website, BestBudsNJ.com. Follow us on social media
TG Branfalt:
Until they shut it down
Laura Trujillo:
Best. Yeah, before they shut it down, we’re on LinkedIn under Best buzz, we have Facebook under Best Buzz. You can follow our Twitter handle Best buds nj. You can follow our Instagram handle Best buds, nj, of course, all our social media is on our website and our menu and just continue to follow our story, follow up on our newsletters, and if you’re in the Woodbury area or in that south area, we deliver too. So we come to you now. There’s something exciting thing for a small business to have is a cannabis delivery and something that you never thought you would see in this lifetime. But yeah, go to our website best buds nj.com.
TG Branfalt:
That is Laura Trujillo, COO, and Amanda Terpstra, CEO. They’re the co-founders of BestBuds, a woman and Hispanic owned dispensary based in Woodbury, New Jersey. Thank you so much for coming on the show and once again, congratulations. This has been a really, really awesome conversation. Thank you so much.
Laura Trujillo:
Thank you so much, Tim. Really appreciate your time. Thank you.
TG Branfalt:
You can find more episodes of the entrepreneur.com podcast and the podcast section of Ganjapreneur.com and wherever you get your podcast. On the Ganjapreneur.com website, you’ll find the latest cannabis news and cannabis jobs updated daily along with transcripts of this podcast. You can also download the Ganjapreneur.com app in iTunes and Google Play. This episode was engineered by Wayward Sound Studio. I’ve been your host, TG Branfalt.
Kevin Brooks, former CEO of Cookies Management and Connected Cannabis, identified plant health as a key vulnerability in the cannabis supply chain based on his experience leading vertically integrated cannabis operations in California. This insight led him to establish Conception Nurseries, a Sacramento-based company that provides commercial-scale tissue culture services to the cannabis industry. In addition to maintaining a large catalog of cultivar clones, Conception offers remediation, cold storage, and exclusive production services. Brooks brings prior leadership experience and successful exits from the regulated tech sector to his role at Conception. Listen or read the transcript below, and find more episodes of Highly Enlightened on Buzzsprout!
Listen to the episode:Ganjapreneur · Highly Enlightened: Kevin Brooks, CEO at Conception Nurseries
Episode sponsored by eBottles:This episode of Highly Enlightened is made possible by eBottles. If you’re in the cannabis business, you know that quality packaging isn’t just important—it’s essential. That’s where eBottles comes in. Whether you’re just starting out or scaling up, eBottles offers proprietary top-of-the-line packaging products built for cannabis. eBottles is a market leader for a good reason: they are experts in the field. Six patents, five warehouse locations around the country, a network of exceptional distributors. Get eBottles and Grow Boldly.
Read the transcript:Editor’s note: this transcript was generated automatically and may contain errors.
Jon Purow:
Welcome to the Highly Enlightened Podcast, syndicated by Ganjapreneur. I’m your host, Jon Purow. So on this podcast we interview cannabis luminaries and I also cover Golden Nugget stories, which are stories that are not getting as much attention as they think they should. So tune in, join us, and as always, stay grassy. My buds. Alright, now with that, I have the pleasure of introducing Kevin Brooks, the CEO of conception nurseries. Kevin, I’m very, very excited to have you here so we could really kind of geek out about this stuff, but I just want, first, thank you for taking the time out of your busy schedule to come join me for this joint endeavor, pun always intended.
Kevin Brooks:
My pleasure. Yep, my pleasure. Thanks for having me. Glad to be here.
Jon Purow:
Yeah, yeah. So I like to talk a little bit, I mean, there are a few people who went directly into cannabis outside of the guests that I asked that question to the other day that made me look foolish. But there are a few people who started out in cannabis and I appreciate something we’re going to discuss with respect to your company, a comic book geek, and the origin stories were always called issue number zero. So my question to you, Kevin Brooks, is what from your issue, number zero, your origin story pre cannabis do you believe has been most useful in the cannabis industry?
Kevin Brooks:
Oh gosh, it’s a big question. Look, I think
Jon Purow:
The second question is what’s the meaning of life? So we just thought we’d start you easy. Okay.
Kevin Brooks:
Start easy. Yeah, A couple of softballs. Yeah. Look, I graduated college in 2002. We’re talking about right in the heart of the dot bomb. I’m in Silicon Valley. I get thrown into my first kind of recruiter sales job, and it was a fucking disaster, like recruiting software engineers during the dot bomb meltdown when layoffs were going left and I had buddies of mine that were answering the phone and making a ton of money. Then I get into the workforce and it was tough and it was really, really tough. And I think the one thing that I took away from my time in Silicon Valley, both in recruiting and then getting involved with my own company is really just resilience and grit. This is a really, really tough industry. Oftentimes, we’re working with both hands behind of our back. We’ve got unique regulatory challenges, we’ve got capital constraints, we’ve got interstate commerce challenges across the board. Imagine being a blueberry, launching a blueberry company and not being able to ship your product across state lines or get a bank account or receive funding. It’s just being able to pivot and read the tea leaves and just white knuckle it through tough times.
Jon Purow:
So I mean, to a certain extent I think that you’re kind of is that you can’t take no for an answer, right? Because in this industry you constantly face setbacks. Well, my prayer to the wifi gods might not have been answered. I am going to try the Scientology video chat. God von next. Maybe I’ll have more luck with that guy. Tom Cruise thinks so. Anyways, apologies for that. So basically the idea is that you don’t take no for an answer, right? Because I feel like even in this industry, no can be temporary. So here’s my follow up question. So we know that you face a setback, you’re not giving up first, you don’t succeed choke again. So if that’s the case with you, Kevin, then what skillset sets do you think that you and your team bring to the table in addressing issues like that that are most handy and help you get to the next step and grow as a company?
Kevin Brooks:
Yeah, I think it’s a much bigger answer, and I think the way that we kind of think about this business is it’s absolutely critical to have legacy cannabis folks who understand the culture, understand and are empathetic to growers’ challenges. But at the same time having smart business individuals who understand supply chain and operational consolidation and financial consolidation and being able to bridge those two, I guess two different philosophies. You look at some of the publicly traded companies that try to compete in the non-limited license states like California that are just getting their teeth kicked in. I mean, they’re just seen as very disingenuine. They don’t understand their consumer base. And then you have some of the private companies like for example, Elliot Lewis and Catalyst who is evangelical for his customer base, for his employees, for doing the right thing. He’s definitely out there, I love Elliot, but he has a workforce that lives and breathes catalyst. He has a customer base that again, is evangelical about the company versus some of the publicly traded or the consolidated retail footprint. So I think for us it’s having that balance and understanding that yes, we can look to traditional agriculture in terms of where the industry is going, but we have to stay true to the culture, to the plant, to our customer base, our growers.
Jon Purow:
Got it. I think that this field really does breed consumer loyalty, which is why there’s such a fixation on brands to some extent because you’re trusting your consciousness to someone else. So there’s a lot of loyalty that’s builds up out of that. Now I do want to talk about a specific topic that I think is very important. So on my news rehash, I come up with the highlights and then the golden nuggets and the golden nugget stories are the ones that I feel should be getting more press and should be more out there. And that’s where I first covered hop latent vir, which I believe if you’re not aware of in the industry, you’re not in the industry to some extent. Can you educate a little bit here about that and then we could get into what makes your company so unique in relation to battling things like that?
Kevin Brooks:
Yeah, so Hop-Latent Viroid or otherwise known as HLVD, is an incredibly elusive vir in cannabis plants identified maybe six, seven years ago here in California. And long story short, it causes duing in the plant, right? It causes, yeah,
Jon Purow:
Gutters. Yeah, I love it.
Kevin Brooks:
I love the name of that massive, massive and significant underperformance. So I’ll give you an example. We have a grower that we’ve worked with for a while who bought, I don’t know, a thousand plants from us and a thousand plants from a competitor just de-risking their operation, not relying on two nurseries. The competitor who I won’t use, their name is a great, they’re a good nursery, they’ve got a good reputation. But we’re talking about again, an incredibly elusive thyroid that you can test the plant at different points or at different times and it can test negative for this thyroid negative. And so I’m not saying this was done on purpose, but this grower bought a thousand plus plants from us and a thousand plants from a competitor. Now, we don’t claim to eradicate HLVD, that’s not what we do. What we do is we go out and find plants that we know are clean, we test it in seven different points in the plant.
We test it over multiple iterations. We know with a very, very, very high level of certainty and a high level of confidence that it is a clean plant, meaning there’s no vir present in it. And so this plant that they got from us and the competitors, the VIR Express itself kind of halfway through quarters through the system, through the grow cycle, and it resulted in the conception plants having a 10 x value over the competitor’s plants. And so look, the sophistication of the testing is getting better. Nurseries are getting smarter, growers are getting smarter, but there’s a tremendous amount of money lost. We’ll see, wall Street Journal did a article a few months ago called the billion dollar Weed Problem around Hhl V. So it’s serious.
Jon Purow:
They did. Oh wow. So now it’s getting a lot more. Got it. Okay.
Kevin Brooks:
Yep. And the bigger challenge, John, and why this impacts the worldwide supply chain is look, I’ve had the opportunity to go visit Barcelona many times for Spana bis. I’m on the east coast, often visiting grows and talking with some of our satellite lab expansion. Everyone is getting genetics from California. So what you’re seeing are these dirty plants really finding their way around the world. And again, I haven’t seen anyone that gives us a very, very high level of confidence that they have eradicated a hundred percent. They may have eradicated through a few cycles or lightened the thyroid load to be not detectable until it is detectable. So for us, being able to guarantee clean, healthy, vigorous tru to tie plants is a very big deal and it’s a big
Jon Purow:
Differentiator. Yes. So I mean, just as you said, when the articles first came out and they were trying to estimate the size of the problem, it was that they estimated it could end up being a billion dollar problem in a 30 billion industry. And the specific, I forgot the nurseries that started investigating this for the good of everybody when they started testing around different places, specifically in California, they hit HLVD and some incredibly high percentage disturbingly high. It might have been even high as 90, but I don’t know if I’m confusing that with the heavy metal or one of those studies or whatever. But it was crazy high. And then you understand the scale of it and in an industry where you are scraping by where you were talking about all the challenges that you encounter to have to run into that on top of everything else.
I mean, look, systematically, we’re just looking as an industry to find efficiencies to deal with the unique hurdles that we have to deal with. Something that to invest all the time and effort into a plant only for it to end up as a dud, that’s pretty devastating and can be certainly devastating for some businesses that are probably just from grow to grow. And so from paycheck to paycheck, from Grow to grow, that’s how our industry thinks. One quarter ounce at a time. Right. That’s my fast and furious reference instead of quarter mile. There you go. So I want to learn a little bit more. I referenced before the comic book geek issue number zero, right? So now you were talking about the 10 x return on your stuff. Can you give me a little bit more detail about what you call a Generation Zero plant and its upside?
Kevin Brooks:
Yeah. So what we’ll do is we, first off, it’ll take us call it six to nine months to take a plant through tissue culture. The whole process of cleaning it up, restoring its health and vigor. In order for us to take on that kind of financial commitment and time commitment, we want to make sure that the plant performs at commercial scale. We can take a plant through and you and I can get in the car and fly into San Diego and drive up to Humboldt and stop at every nursery along the way. And by every kind of cultivar available. It doesn’t mean that those plants were meant to grow at commercial scale. So for us, we spend an exceptional amount of time, one that plants have the appropriate agronomic traits to grow at commercial scale, but that they’re also backed by a known breeder. Every cult of bar we put into the market, we pay a royalty to a breeder on. We’re really, really big on breeder’s rights. We believe it spurs innovation, it’s the right thing to do. So we know the plant performs well, we know it’s clean and we know it’s backed by a well-recognized, well awarded breeder.
So we take that plant through the tissue culture lifecycle. We have no moms in our facility. It’s all Gen zero directly out of the lab. Tiny, healthy, clean, vigorous plants and hermetically sealed containers. So a Gen zero plant is a plant that comes directly from our lab, directly from its original stock. A gen one would then be a plant that’s a Gen zero that’s grown up and you take cuts off at your traditional propagation. We all know that plants, mother plants especially are vectors for pest disease. So the gen zero is,
Jon Purow:
Yeah. So I remember when reading about how to remediate for hopley and vir, and I don’t remember the specific details, but it said you had to essentially do something at the mother level in order to knock out the thyroid. But I mean it would be basically saying goodbye to anything that could have been risk exposure, and it is insidious and spreads. It is a major issue. So understood. So this is how you have to think about it. Well look, I guess also it comes down to cost benefit, right? I’m assuming your genetics are more expensive by comparison to other genetics, but when they have a 10 x return because they have a higher degree of certainty that they’re not going to manifest with something like HLVD therein lies the value proposition.
Kevin Brooks:
Interestingly enough, we are less expensive than our competitors and we can get that through automation. So our price point is oftentimes less than what you would get from a traditional nursery.
Jon Purow:
Well, that’s interesting. I didn’t mean to turn it completely into a sales pitch. None of this was planned. Dear audience, that was spur of the moment, but that’s fascinating. So why don’t we delve into that a little bit, right? Because I feel that we are at this pitfall point of society with artificial intelligence and these incredible efficiencies that it creates. Tying back to the theme of efficiency, that what are interesting ways that you folks leverage technology to create efficiencies that enable you? Other examples, if there are any that come to your mind in terms of how you leverage technology to create efficiencies that allows you to undercut competitors with inferior product?
Kevin Brooks:
Yeah, big question. So first I would say if you get a chance to jump on our website and look some of the videos we put out there just in terms of the automation and our indoor growth environments. So what we do is micro propagation, right? Micro meaning small, small propagation. To give you some reference, we can put out around seven to 800,000 plants in a month in 20,000 square foot facility. A big part of that facility is our conference room offices, break rooms, bathroom storage. So we’re talking about a fairly small footprint that we’re actually producing plants in. And the fact that we can put out 700, 800,000 plants in a month in what would likely take upwards of 15 to 18 acres of traditional propagation allows us to crank through a lot of plants in a small area with less employees. And then we automate a lot, right?
A big part of our business is our media and a media is, it’s like a gel that the plants live in. It’s the perfect environment and nutrients and salt for that plant at that stage, that process we’re putting out, A lot of that media is completely and a hundred percent automated. I mean, we don’t even put the lid on the jars. Everything is done for us. So it’s a higher output, a more consistent output. It ensures the customer is getting a more consistent plan every single time. We have these indoor environmental growth chambers where you can think about a growth chamber that measures every single environmental aspect that you can imagine. That’s probably the size of most kitchens, maybe a large kitchen. Lemme try to think of square footage wise that can hold around 750,000 mother plants. They’re only about that big, about that big. But we can still hold three quarters of a million mother plants and all the racks are even lighted. It all has the light’s fragment down evenly. So the plants are all getting even distribution of lights. It’s got the appropriate airflow. So it’s getting too hot. It’s a really, really cool setup. It’s a big part of our IP and allows us to put out a superior, more consistent clean plant every single time.
Jon Purow:
Wow. Okay. I need to come up with a pop pun that describes it. When you just hear something like that as a cannabis enthusiast, that gets you so excited. It’s like, oh, the new harvest is ready. Oh, the new 700,000 harvest is ready. I don’t want to say bud B word. I got to come up with something rise stoner, but a bud blank. I’ll come up with something. But I had one of those right when you were talking about that, that is absolutely astounding that you could fit that scale in that size while essentially guaranteeing that quality. So as an intellectual property attorney, I greatly appreciate the leg up that you have competitively by virtue of that ip. But as you said, it also is a function of these are people, what their chosen profession is is to generate amazing genetics and these folks have to trust you too. And there is a role to play there because of patenting of certain plants, people concerned about people patenting strains. The fact of the matter is you’re a record right there of certain things existing at certain points. Correct. So just like there used to be, the thing with Mogley and Philos, it seems like similar conceptually that you have a genetic database there that could be very, very useful not just for creating great plants, but for also fighting against people who are acting in bad faith and claiming that they created something. Right?
Kevin Brooks:
That’s exactly right. When we receive plants in, we send them to our friends in medicinal genomics who test them and can help us identify if they’re true to type and who the real breeder is. So we take as many steps as we can to make sure that we are doing right by the industry and protecting IP for our breeders.
Jon Purow:
And so I want people to think about that, right? You’re protecting IP for your breeders. So also I remember speaking with Tanya and understanding what you folks did a little bit is that you’re creating this record, this database of different things that breeders have created and enabling them to propagate it wherever and however they want and hold it true at the same time.
Kevin Brooks:
That’s exactly right. Yeah. Part of our credit storage program is a cleanup in store.
Jon Purow:
Yeah, exactly. So the cleanup in store. And so then also, let’s add on top of this one interesting point that came up with the idea that when the DEA post farm bill said that its policy in a letter was that if something that you’re shipping in its current form’s less than 0.3% THC, then it is considered hemp and it is legal. Even if it were to grow up to be what I’m like to call high THC, cannabis HTC rather than marijuana, it’s less racist. So isn’t that another way of looking at it?
Kevin Brooks:
I suppose so. I mean, if you’re asking me if we’re shipping plants around the country, there are groups that are out there doing that. That’s not our model today.
Jon Purow:
That’s not what you do. Okay, got it. No,
Kevin Brooks:
It’s not our model today. I mean, right now we service the California market. We have a few licensing deals. We have launched our mini lab or satellite lab program, which allows us to launch very quickly into in new states. But yeah, I think we’re still waiting to get enough legal cover to feel comfortable to do that. There’s quite a few loopholes
Jon Purow:
That does not count as an opinion letter for the record, right. Just because an attorney, right. Any opinions are my own and not those of legal opinion. I was just having a conversation again, I inadvertently gave you a product pitch earlier. Alright, so we were talking a little bit about leadership and we’re talking about persistence as something that’s very, very important. But I mean, as a leader in your company, what do you think is important in terms of instilling in the cannabis culture of your company? Bonus points for alliteration.
Kevin Brooks:
Yeah. I mean, look, I think it goes back to the nod to the breeders. I think it goes to acknowledging the folks that sacrifice and really got us where we are. We held an event that was really cool a few years ago where we brought all of our breeders together, put ’em on film, and then ’em talk about what they like their story in this space. I mean, I think those kinds of events are absolutely crucial. But I think also running a tight business. I mean, I think when you look at taking outside capital, when you look at expanding, you have this fiduciary duty to your investor base into your employees and your customers for running a smart company. And we have a business intelligence team internally that tells us where the market trends are that tells us how to look and think about KPIs. So it is a very delicate balance. I think we missed the mark when we first launched in a thousand different ways, and I could probably spend more time talking about areas where we than where we stepped correctly. But it’s all part of the process. It’s all learning. And I think as long as we continue, right, say that.
Jon Purow:
Yeah. I mean, I say that if it’s not a positive experience, make it a learning experience when it comes down to it. So when you’re talking about business intelligence and you’re talking about trends and everything, I guess that could be a function of trends of where consumers are enjoying things. Like I know that purple cannabis has been in vogue, but at the same time, right? Here’s the interesting thing about purple cannabis, wasn’t there, that story that came out about that specific strain, I believe it was some type of Jamaican purple haze that was resistant to HLVD. And so I was curious to ask myself, I wonder if the genetic trait that would help against HLVD is something that expresses this purple, but is that the type of thing that your business intelligence crew is checking out in terms of anticipating the market to get ahead of
Kevin Brooks:
It? Yeah, look, I’m not intimately familiar with the example you had mentioned. I think what we’re seeing in terms of trends are large scale commercial growers are pivoting away from exotics and they are pivoting towards, or they’re adopting more of what’s consistent. Most of these growers are concerned about taking risks. So how do we de-risk our business? And you do it by growing something that performs well in your environment, meaning maybe it is less susceptible to things like tus or disease resistant, or it has a very thick stem, so you’re seeing less mites issues. So pivoting towards agronomic traits, pivoting towards what the market they know the market wants and what they know they can grow versus how do we try the new hottest strain. I mean, it’s called exotics for a reason. Typically it’s very difficult to grow. And so I think what we’re seeing is large scale commercial growers more focused on agronomic traits to fill what the market demand is.
And some of the smaller boutiquey growers really focus on staying on what’s hot. But to answer your question, we are in the initial stages of working with a group who helps advance the traits, the desirable traits of plants, and we’ve talked to them about their technology outside of cannabis and how they can take a plant that has traits that maybe the plant is HLVD resistant and how to use that to breed into other plants. So we are not a breeding company. We’ll likely never become a breeding company, but it’s pretty interesting to see what’s out there.
Jon Purow:
I mean, are you talking about CRISPR gene editing technology applied to cannabis?
Kevin Brooks:
Yeah, this group isn’t specific to crispr, although there are groups out there using CRISPR that are in cannabis. This group, it’s more data-driven, right? So they’ll look at a thousand plants under a high powered microscope to identify certain traits that are very attractive and they will breed for those specific traits in an accelerated manner.
Jon Purow:
So now also talking about the database that you’re accumulating there for each of these specific strains and stuff, are you also cataloging typical terpene ratios and typical effects going that far? What do you end up recording in this database with respect to each of these plants that are sitting in what you have?
Kevin Brooks:
So I wouldn’t think of our library so much as a database, as much as just cold storage. Again, we’re not a breeding company and I don’t have the rights to use these plants for anything other than propagating and selling them to growers or through our retail channels. Typically, we collect data on agronomic performance. How does it yield? What’s the flower time, right? So we run a 40 point inspection checklist prior to taking it through culture, and then we collect as much COA information as we can to provide to our growers. So I think we’ve gotten smarter, we’ve gotten better. We try not to get over our skis and make promises we can’t keep, but we are collecting what you would typically get from either a COA or from just agronomic traits of the plant itself as a crows.
Jon Purow:
Got it. So here’s my other question. And for how folks that think of you and the different roles that you fill. So just to be clear, right? I mean you play the function of almost like a routing house, that if someone says, I want this specific strain from this grower, that grower whose plants are with you, genetics are with you, says, can we arrange that for that person to get that in generation zero form? Or are you also reactive in the sense that customers come up and say, I want something of this variety, and you say, well, you know what, these five strains from these five different growers that are sitting in our database also work? Or are you just out there also marketing specific things that you say, alright, you large grower because volume matters to you. This is the one that is the most stable agronomically and you, hey, small grower, this is a couple strains that are the hottest thing that are out there right now. These are exotics, but they’re good for you because you want to sell out on day one. All of those roles, all of the above.
Kevin Brooks:
Hey ha, fair question. Look, the more cultivars we have on our menu, the more complex our operation is. So we really try to keep our open source menu to around 25 to 35 different cultivars that we rotate off every quarter. We’ll rotate five off and bring in four or five new. We do have a fairly robust customer success team and part of that team, their function is to give advice, to give suggestions. We don’t recommend growing this cultivar in this region because it doesn’t handle heat well. Or we really, what we’ve seen in Central Valley, this performs exceptionally well, or this is good for indoor outdoor. So we definitely make recommendations. Typically, our customers either order from our open source menu and those are plants that we license from breeders or they have their own private production where they say, Hey, I want a thousand of these three or four different cultivars. They gave us their library, we clean them up and we sell them back Gen zero. Those are kind of the two models we play with here in California. You there? Did I lose you? Did I lose you?
Jon Purow:
Yeah, I don’t know what’s going on. I’m literally right next to the wifi thing. So that was on me. So we could try and rewind, we could roll with it and make fun of it again by saying that I need to pick different wifi deities to pray to. If you have any suggestions, please send them to me and we could kind of pick back up. But I don’t want to lose necessarily any of that answer. And at the same time, by the way, if I’m getting too specific about your business, just let me know. But I find it fascinating as you could probably tell, but we will start covering some of these other questions. So yeah, so I don’t know, how do you want to handle, should you rewind what
Kevin Brooks:
Your world, I’ll follow your lead. This is your world. So you tell me what works best.
Jon Purow:
I think, and by the way,
Kevin Brooks:
I didn’t realize you were going to pick up my screen. I had notes from your questions, so that’s why you’re like, oh, something happened. I was actually flipping up my screen to pull my notes earlier on. They’re like, what
Jon Purow:
Happened? Didn’t see. Oh, I didn’t see. Oh, so that was on your end that you were checking something out. Oh, okay.
Kevin Brooks:
I was pointing my notes on the side here, and you’re like, what happened? So I don’t
Jon Purow:
See anything that, I didn’t see anything, unfortunately that would’ve be kind of fun. I need to do something where they do a teleprompter on the screen for certain things and I probably wouldn’t. Then I’d actually look in this direction more like I should think that mean that question was very specific about your business. Right? So here’s my question. Do you want to leave in the question talking about the different roles that you fill, do you think that that’s a value in terms of putting your company out there and what you guys do? Or should we just skip it?
Kevin Brooks:
Sorry, what was the question? Go ahead.
Jon Purow:
So the question that I think that you were in the middle of answering was asking about the different roles that you fill, like being a routing house, you marketing people’s stuff and other people marketing. And you’re talking about the 25 to 35. And I thought that that was useful because it’s almost like my reaction to that was going to be like, oh, I understand. So you don’t want to offer 700 a thousand things in a menu. It makes sense. So we could circle back to that question and kind of cover it again.
Yeah, yeah. Okay. So let’s do that. Alright, so as you were, I lost my train of thought, by the way. No, so as you were talking about it, right? To understand the different things that conception nursery does with this Titanic genetic database is, are you folks routing house where growers who have stored their genetics with you in Generation Zero say, oh, can you hook this person up with that? And with the knowledge knowing, sorry, with the knowledge of that, there shouldn’t be HLVD in it or significantly decreased chance of there being HLVD. Are you marketing strains to specific people seasonally? Or are you having customers who could basically be any cultivator out there coming to you, Hey, this is what I’m in the mood for, which the latter. We know what you do, right?
Kevin Brooks:
Yeah. Look, the more VARs that we put on the menu, the more complex our operation is, and the more complex our operation is, the more expensive it is to produce a plant. So in order for us to keep our prices really competitive, we limit our menu selection at any given time to 25, 35 different genetics.
Jon Purow:
Makes
Kevin Brooks:
Sense. Every call, every quarter, we sub some off. We have plants that we like more for the outdoor season. We have plants that we like more for our indoor growers. Our customer success team will work with our customers to say, Hey, this works good in this region, or this doesn’t work great in indoors. So we spend a lot of time really helping growers fine tune what they’re looking for. We also do exclusive production. So we have a large customer down the street from us, for example, we’ve taken in their database, we’ve cleaned it up, we bank it, and they give us a six month planning guide where every week we deliver them new plants and everything in between.
Jon Purow:
Got it. Exactly. It could be many, many, many different things. I always like to say this one because I’m a glass half full kind of guy. Can you share any anecdotes or I mean stories about one time where the company pulled something off and you’re like, F yeah, we really nailed the landing on a hard one in that. Is it onboarding something quickly and then shooting it back out? What meets that standard that I’ve set there?
Kevin Brooks:
Yeah, that’s a great question. I think we’ve had a couple of really nice wins recently. We have a very large customer in the caria, Santa Barbara area, large greenhouse grower, who’s been in this space for a while and just kept underperforming to a point where they thought they were going to potentially lose their farm. I want to say like 95, 90 8% of their plants tested positive for Hhl BD
Jon Purow:
Oh Jesus.
Kevin Brooks:
Pretty scary stuff. We ended up switching over to conception. We brought in our head of plant pathology. We work with them on best practices to not infector of their other plants. We help them everywhere from clean out their water systems to appropriate cutting techniques to appropriate testing. And I think today that group is sitting around two or 3% of their plants now have HLVD positive. So we’ve eradicated 95% of their issues. We’re not the exclusive provider for this group. So they are getting plans from internal, they get it from other places, but I think we did a great job of turning around. They have been just a very loyal customer and a great testament to the importance of clean genetics.
Jon Purow:
So you’re talking right there. I mean you guys also perform remediation, it sounds like.
Kevin Brooks:
We did not take their plants in to clean them up and fry ’em back. They ended up buying plants on our menu that were already cleaned.
Jon Purow:
The podcast is proud to be sponsored by Ebottles. If you’re in the cannabis business, you know that quality packaging isn’t just important. It’s essential. That’s where ebottles comes in, whether you’re just starting out or scaling up. Ebottles offers proprietary top of the line packaging products built for cannabis. Ebottles is the market leader for a good reason. They’re experts in the field, six patents, five warehouse locations around the country, and a network of exceptional distributors. So get ebottles and grow boldly. That’s big one. I think I got it. So that’s awesome. That’s very cool. You feel like you made a difference, you did good there for someone that this is their life’s work and it get ruined by a fricking virus. So actually I think I warned you that I could be creative in everything. So I think I came up with a new product line for you.
So here’s what we got. So I think that we’re using the genetics we’re going to get and we’re going to design some plants that you could essentially have them manifest traits that you want, almost like hypnotize these plants like a weed whisperer. And we could call the product line inception nurseries. I’m sorry, I couldn’t help myself. I was picturing a version of inception, but with plants, like plants versus zombies with Leonardo DiCaprio, wading through. I’m a big Christopher Nolan fan. So I think that suggesting plants and inception nurseries instead of just conception. I think that there’s something there, but I may just be overly enthusiastic. Kevin, Kevin’s got a stoic face on, oh, hashtag dad jokes, not bad jokes. Alright. Now I would say I always like to look, I’m a geek, so I get into data in different ways to look at data and understand things from it. And so I like to first start with talking about internal data. So what are some of the key internal metrics that you look at to measure your success, your impact, where you want to go for your specific business? What data matters in that regard?
Kevin Brooks:
So we have a look, I can answer just a hundred points. We have internal KPIs that we hit every day. I think that the biggest threat to my business is not a lack of demand, but contamination event or plants degrading. And we’re not repopulating ’em quick enough. So we’re not giving optimal plants to customers. We used to let the plants tell us over time if they’re having issues and we’ve learned that we don’t have time. So if I send a plant out to a customer and the customer underperforms, I hear about it five months after we cut that plan or four months after. We want to know the day of, I want to know within 48 if we’re seeing a downward trend in the plant performance, any degradation or potential contamination. And so we look at internal KPIs every single day on how’s my multiplication rate?
So multiplication rate is if I take a plant and I want to cut it and replicate it, build more biomass, am I still getting a five x or is it dropped to 4.7, drop to 4.7 on Thursday? On Friday it was 4.6. And so all of a sudden you’re like, oh my gosh, I’m seeing trends in this plant. I need to address it quicker. Is my rooting rate going up? Why is it going up? Is it coming down? Why is it going down? So we look at internal KPIs, it’s almost like religion for us. So I think that that is probably how we’ve been able to just stay in front of potential problems and keep our business moving forward.
Jon Purow:
But here’s my question, right? So you do all of this testing, as you said, as key performance indicators internally. Now, do you say goodbye to the ability to get data once you sell things to a customer? Or do you have some manner of also tracking how things play out? So that could help inform the next 25 to 35 that you offer the next season. So
Kevin Brooks:
This may come as a big surprise to you, but most growers are not great at communication or detailed data travel. I know it’s a big shocker. In all serious though, we do have a handful of customers that are just total data geeks and they are excited and eager for what we’re doing and they share everything that we can ask for. And in return, we give them some commercial benefit, first access into genetics or discounts or whatever. But they give us the data we need to get smarter and better and then ultimately helps them. So we will take as much information as our customers are willing to give us. We have a meeting every week called Case Squad where we go through every single case or every single complaint that we get from a customer, whether it’s we sell 10,000 cultivars and we have one of them that die off and they call and they go, Hey, it was great 9,999, but we had one die off.
We log it, we talk about it, our team comes together, pathology looks at it, customer success looks at it, and that’s how we continually get better. We’ve had our version one plants, which were terrible on version two, which we started getting some attention, our version three, which we had for the last several years and really just launched our version four. So it’s all about incremental daily improvements, and you get that from data, you get it from your KPIs, you get it from customer feedback, you get it from being really raw and honest with yourself about your performance.
Jon Purow:
Got it. Alright, so let’s talk about data again now. Talking about the specific data that you see in your role in the industry, what are some of the most interesting trends that are developing in your mind? And also, as you said, you offer 700,000 way too big a menu, 25 to 35, you offer them periodically. So looking at that 25 to 35, going back multiple generations, what are the trends that we’ve seen and what are you anticipating in terms of other trends?
Kevin Brooks:
Yeah, I think before launching conception, I was a CEO for the plant touching entity for cookies. And then that company eventually rolled into connected cannabis and Alien Labs who did the Alien Labs acquisition. And those groups are known for putting out really, really hot strains. The newest, coolest, like this is what you want to smoke. This is what’s trending where it’s in rap songs, it’s changing pop culture, absolute bleeding edge of genetic diversity. And I think what we learned was, and what we’re seeing is there’s always going to be that demand, as I mentioned earlier, but interesting enough, our top seller for the last three years is the same cultivar it produces. It’s a great,
Jon Purow:
It’s old, reliable.
Kevin Brooks:
It’s reliable. It’s got the purple candy gas that the market’s looking for. I know a large chunk of our customers rename it something else. That’s fine. They’re welcome to do that. But it’s really that just steady, consistent. I mean, I think everyone is just kind of worried where the market’s going, our prices coming up, our prices going down. I just need to know that I can sell this product, that I can grow this product and that it gets consistent and there’s demand for it. And I think that trend is going to continue and I think we’re going to see it normalize in other states.
Jon Purow:
I find it interesting that you say that they could call it different things, right? Because I feel like, I don’t know if you would call it an inefficiency in the market, it’s just a reflection of the experience of getting high is that you can’t compare highs. You could have the exact same stuff if it looked differently to you day one versus day two, day one, it’s purple day two, it’s green. And theoretically it could have the exact same effect on you and you wouldn’t be able to necessarily say that it was genetically the same because the subjective nature of highs and also when and how you’re experiencing them, you can’t recreate a high. And so I find it interesting you say that they’ll slap their own name on it. It’s the same thing. And what that is, is reliability. And ultimately also what I feel like cannabis is either going to be an upper, a downer or a chiller, and it’s going to fall into one of those three categories and to some extent, and so I find it interesting, the idea that old, reliable, steady goes the race that’s the most popular and continues to be the most popular.
And you see the trends below that, that sits first place and everything else just follows that. So here’s the question that I always like to ask in an industry that is constantly changing, and I like to say there’s never a dull moment in the dope game. What are some of the biggest surprises that you found in the industry?
Kevin Brooks:
No one knows what the fuck they’re doing. No one knows. Look, you got guys from CPG that are coming in this space that are looking through a completely different lens. You’ve got big ad coming in this space. They’re looking through a totally different lens and pitching one story. You’ve got legacy operators that believe something else. Nobody really knows what’s going on or what’s going to happen with this space. Is rescheduling going to happen? If it does, what does it look like? Is rescheduling not going to happen? If it does, can we survive on family offices and higher net worth individuals to continue to carry the shoulder, the capital constraints of the space? So I think it’s a really, really unique industry. I think this ridiculous pressure that the industry has put on us and the regulators have put on us to be fully vertically integrated,
Only causes more inefficiencies than focusing on specialized parts of supply chain. So there’s just, nobody really knows. And you get these guys, these analysts that have been wrong across the board. I mean, I remember sitting in, it was a canaccord in 2016 watching these presentations where guys were sitting there with their presentations and they’re like, look, here’s a rendering of our facility and here’s a snapshot of a example forma, and here’s our professional team, which never has done this before, and everyone’s going to be billionaires overnight. And to watch that trend of the valuations go nuts and then the classic, it’s just so immature and there’s so many rabbit holes we can go down. I just have a hard time believing anyone too much in this space and if they’re too certain of what’s going to happen.
Jon Purow:
Yeah, no, I think it comes a point in most interviews where that comes up, and I always do the quote from Aaron Miles and Ano where I refer to something as a mature market. And he said, there’s no such thing as a mature market in this industry. It’s just less immature. Something to that effect. And the idea is in every way that you look around the market, you see that, right? We don’t have product diversification. We really don’t. Right? And we certainly don’t have it in different states because of all the regulations I’m seeing, the five bracelets that my daughters, they pick for me every day. She went for the John Wrist world record today of five. So anyways, that’s why I’m so jeweled for those who are watching rather than listening, but I kind of feel like we don’t have diverse products. The mature markets like say California, Colorado, that have been that legalize on the earlier side, they’re still redoing their regulations in major ways, major ways.
I mean, a lot of those early states, they didn’t tackle social equity. It was the states that had higher percentages of people affected by that, like New Jersey and New York who did it from the beginning. Colorado circles back, there’s nothing mature about this industry. So I a hundred percent agree with you that if anyone says that they know what is going on in this industry and where it’s going to go. I think that that’s incredibly difficult. Which leads me to my last question, which is when I ask you to do exactly that, right? So Kevin, I can never decide if I want to call it Toker dus or Smoker dus. So please, I need your vote first and then I want to picture you. I want you to picture yourself putting on a wizard hat stylized like a joint, and you are now going to tell me what you foresee on a macro and or micro level in the near and or far future in this industry, because this is going to be fascinating. No pressure.
Kevin Brooks:
Got it. Well, first, I think the first point, I would probably lean towards smoker Damas, but they’re also good. It’s hard for me to decide. It’s tough. So look, I think where this is going, or if I had to put my joint hat on, I think what you’re seeing is folks outside of the industry starting to dip their toe in. And I think if rescheduling happens and we have access to traditional capital and we have folks that have played in that schedule with other products, start to move in, I think you’re going to see them frame up the industry a little more than outside influence has in the past. But I also think, as I mentioned earlier, earlier, this hyper focus on full vertical integration, I think you’re going to see multiple companies emerge specialty in their specific vertical. I think that you’ll start seeing that push towards specialization and less around full vertical integration. I think companies like conception that focus on the supply chain at the very beginning or different parts of the supply chain that can do it better and faster and cheaper than a company can do themselves are the ones that will lead the way in terms of innovation.
Jon Purow:
Got it.
Kevin Brooks:
Why would you have a distribution company and self distribute when there’s someone that can distribute your products to a wider range of customers at a lower price point and a higher guarantee of success? It just doesn’t make sense. Nobody. Distribution sucks, right? It’s a low margin business In fleet management, multi-generational alcohol distributors are going to own that one, right? So it’s not going to be a brand in California who has six drivers who don’t go to certain neighborhoods, they get robbed, and it’s just not the same scale
Jon Purow:
Changes. No, exactly. These infrastructures exist in place in neighboring industries that are jealously looking over and waiting for their opportunity. And so ultimately it’s not like, oh, no big alcohol, big tobacco are coming in. No, it could just be the distributors who know exactly what they’re doing and could transport refrigerated products without ease. With ease and just snapping their fingers. So I just want to say a very, very hardy thank you for putting up with my inception nursery’s joke, which I may need to cut out. I just think that that thing was DOA, but who knows? Maybe the audience will think differently. But thank you so much for taking your time and joining me. For me, this was an absolutely fascinating conversation. In my opinion.
In this compilation episode of Highly Enlightened, host Jon Purow hits the road—capturing quick, insightful interviews with leading voices across the cannabis industry. Filmed at MJ Unpacked Missouri 2024, the WomenGrow Leadership Summit 2025, and the Benzinga New Jersey Cannabis Market Spotlight, this lineup showcases perspectives from founders, marketers, security experts, and more. These “One Hitters” may be short, but they pack a punch—perfect for a snapshot of where cannabis is going next.
Listen to the episode:Ganjapreneur · Highly Enlightened: One-Hitter Interviews from MJ Unpacked Missouri, WomenGrow Leadership Summit, and Benzinga New Jersey
Episode sponsored by eBottlesThis episode of Highly Enlightened is made possible by eBottles. If you’re in the cannabis business, you know that quality packaging isn’t just important—it’s essential. That’s where eBottles comes in. Whether you’re just starting out or scaling up, eBottles offers proprietary top-of-the-line packaging products built for cannabis. eBottles is a market leader for a good reason: they are experts in the field. Six patents, five warehouse locations around the country, a network of exceptional distributors. Get eBottles and Grow Boldly.
Featured Guests (in order of appearance):
1. Precious Osagie-Erise
Founder, Precious Cannabis Co.
📍 Filmed at WomenGrow Leadership Summit 2025
2. Corey Bix
Director of Business Development, Silverstar Protection Group
📍 Filmed at MJ Unpacked Missouri 2024
3. Tawnie Scarborough
Principal, Fox Foot Inc.
📍 Filmed at WomenGrow Leadership Summit 2025
4. Amna Shamim
Director of Content Marketing, The Cannabis Community
📍 Filmed at WomenGrow Leadership Summit 2025
5. Tor Hamer
CEO, Green Nexus
📍 Filmed at WomenGrow Leadership Summit 2025
6. Ben Burstein
Corporate Development Manager, LeafLink
📍 Filmed at Benzinga New Jersey Cannabis Market Spotlight
7. Sarah Trent
Founder & CEO, Valley Wellness NJ
📍 Filmed at Benzinga New Jersey Cannabis Market Spotlight
8. David Zelinger
Partner, Canis Major Partners
📍 Filmed at Benzinga New Jersey Cannabis Market Spotlight
9. Bran Noonan
CEO, OGeez!
📍 Filmed at Benzinga New Jersey Cannabis Market Spotlight
When it comes to moving federal cannabis policy forward, progress requires coordination, persistence, and strategic advocacy. In this episode of The Ganjapreneur Podcast, Edward Conklin, Executive Director of the U.S. Cannabis Council, and Saphira Galoob, Executive Director of the National Cannabis Roundtable — join host TG Branfalt to discuss the historic merger of their organizations into the U.S. Cannabis Roundtable.
This conversation dives into what commercial entities are doing to lobby Congress for meaningful reform, including the uphill battle to pass safe banking legislation, the real implications of cannabis rescheduling to Schedule III, and the importance of building trust with lawmakers. Galoob and Conklin also share insider perspectives on why some legislation stalls, how policy change actually happens in D.C., and what entrepreneurs can do to get involved at the local and national levels.
Listen below or wherever you get your podcasts, or scroll down for the full transcript!
Listen to the episode:
Ganjapreneur · Saphira Galoob & Ed Conklin: Merging Power to Move Cannabis Policy
Read the full transcript:
Editor’s note: this transcript was generated automatically and may contain errors.
TG Branfalt:
Hey there, I’m your host, TG Branfalt, and this is the Ganjapreneur.com podcast where we try to bring you actionable information and normalized cannabis through the stories of ganjapreneurs, activists and industry stakeholders. Today I’m joined by Edward Conklin. He’s the executive director of the US Cannabis Council and Saphira Galoob, executive Director of the National Cannabis Roundtable. The USC and NCR announced plans to combine their organizations to create the US Cannabis Roundtable. How are we doing this afternoon, folks? We’re great.
Ed Conklin:
Excellent. Thanks for having us.
Saphira Galoob:
Thanks for having us on. Tim.
TG Branfalt:
Really excited to talk shop and in this case, public policy. As most of my listeners know, I’m a bit of a public policy nerd, and so these are some of my favorite conversations to have. But before we get into that, Edward and Sphera, thank you for being here. Tell me about yourself and how you ended up in this part of the cannabis industry.
Saphira Galoob:
Ed, I’ll let you go first.
Ed Conklin:
Ladies first,
Saphira Galoob:
Please. Well, if you insist, so Tim, I’ve been doing this work specifically focused on federal advocacy work in the cannabis space since November 7th, 2017. And when I came into the space federally, it was the year I remember it because I’m from Oklahoma and it was the year that Oklahoma legalized. And that year, seven states actually came online and I remember doing an analysis, there were two lobbyists at the time in the federal walking the halls of Congress. And I assessed that there were at that point 113 Republican congressional offices that now had legal cannabis in their state. And so before I even started my business, I just started making meetings with these offices and visited 83 offices and five of those Republican offices had ever even heard that cannabis was an issue. So given the trajectory of states passing legalization movements and the number of congressional offices that now had constituents who live in states with legal cannabis and the fact that there were two lobbyists on Capitol Hill, I knew there was an opportunity to be had. And so I launched my career at that point.
TG Branfalt:
How did you first get those meetings? It is not really every day that someone just walks in.
Saphira Galoob:
Well, I am a lawyer and a lobbyist by career. I had a 25 year career in DC and had done a pretty decent amount of lobbying in other areas, and so I knew the drill. So a lot of times when you’re starting a new business, and I’m an entrepreneur at heart, I haven’t had a job working for anybody since 2006. So you just basically start as if you’re already successful and you make a meeting, you make a meeting request. These offices, particularly in an issue that is a bit unknown, they’ll take a meeting even if it’s 15 minute phone meeting. So it is more accessible than people understand, but it requires more work than people appreciate.
TG Branfalt:
So how about you, ed? How did you end up in the cannabis space?
Ed Conklin:
A good question. I used to work for McDonald’s. I worked for a clown, so in the hamburger side and did government relations there for 20 some plus years and retired and actually got a phone call from Joe Ardi at CAF and asked me to come over work for him, and I decided to start that route there. So I was used to lobbying state, federal, international at the time period, but just like sfia when my first trip to dc It’s interesting, and she is absolutely right how she approached it and she was fearless at the time, I got to tell you. So was fearless on this stuff. I started fumbling around in DC with some friends and lobbyists going to these meetings, and a lot of these offices wouldn’t even take your meeting when you talked about cannabis. I mean, there was a long time ago when they’re like, thanks, but no thanks. Prefer not to meet on this until it’s normalized or whatever word you want to use there. But now compared to leap four today, you can go in every office and Sophia is absolutely right. We did a lot of meetings, a lot of discussions, and a lot of talks. So started off small and grew into where we’re at today. So it’s a wonderful industry, some great people to work with, some great entrepreneurs and couldn’t have more fun.
TG Branfalt:
Can one or both of you describe to me sort of the difference now, the actual difference now than when you first started lobbying these lawmakers on the cannabis issue?
Saphira Galoob:
We probably have similar stories. I’ll start and let Ed fill in. So I think depending on the point of reference of the lawmaker, their relationship with the issue is either connected to a criminal justice, social justice, economic justice perspective, or it is a freedom perspective, a state’s rights perspective. Many of these lawmakers, in addition to having those two perspectives also have personal use cases in their families or personal use cases with constituents whose children or family members, sick family members were impacted by cannabis. And so one of the unique things about our industry, it’s not unique to our industry, but I think it is unique about our industry, is that a lawmaker’s relationship with our issue and our policy can really come from a lot of different vantage points and we can leverage those perspectives in a really important and impactful way if we do so strategically,
Ed Conklin:
I think absolutely right. And so what I found out and my first member meeting in the US Senate, I can’t tell you the person’s name just because of the conversation, but it was funny because just like Shafi said, she got as supportive of medical cannabis because her neighbor’s daughter had epilepsy and her neighbor’s daughter and the mother would always talk about how the seizures would go away when they had medical cannabis and the problem of how they got to that point and how they had to secure it. But I think every member has a different perspective, some of that stuff. And I think a fair and ideal with day in day out is old tapes and it’s a war on drugs crowd. They just haven’t understand the difference now, and they have their opinion, even if the state goes legal, I mean even the state goes legal, you still have a lot of folks out there who are just, they have their opinions and that’s what we work on day in, day out, not only in DC but back in their districts, trying to make sure that we educate folks about what cannabis is and isn’t and try to get them to understand the benefits of it.
TG Branfalt:
Do you find that members of Congress are more open to having the medical cannabis use conversation than the adult use conversation
Saphira Galoob:
Ubiquitously? Yes. And I will also say it doesn’t even matter on, there are some folks for whom economic justice, social justice, criminal justice is their motivation, but even their most progressive members, I mean you have, and I say a handful, I mean you can argue about what a handful means in Washington, but adult use cannabis comes with additional complications for lawmakers that cause them to have some vulnerability. I mean, just look what happened with the opioid crisis when Congress realized the misstep and the colossus step where with tobacco, and we’ve seen the numbers on alcohol, both abuse and deaths and members of Congress, whether you agree or disagree with it, their perspective or their policy position, they take public safety, consumer safety, patient safety very seriously. And so having adult use cannabis for many of them is one, they’re not quite there yet. Two, they’re concerned about the lack of data to be able to put the guardrails on for product safety, consumer safety, driving safety, all of the elements of safety elements. But medical cannabis is a much more ubiquitously accepted concept.
Ed Conklin:
Agree. Yeah. I think the number one thing you’ll find between Sophia and I promote is consumer safety, consumer safety, consumer safety. And that ranges from testing the verification to age gating to making sure this product, it isn’t toxin. We got to make sure it doesn’t fall in the hands of minors. And that’s something we always have to look out for. So when you’re talking to senators, staff, congressmen, staff or regulators, that’s a lot of their focus is consumer safety, consumer safety, and they want the testing and the loop we’re stuck in the feedback loop is right now with schedule one drug, it’s hard to do a lot of testing because a lot of these universities can’t touch the actual drug themselves. So it’s a lot of subjective type of tests. So that’s why we’re encouraged on this. President’s push for schedule three and we’re hoping to get there so we can get a lot of research done. And I think Tim, that will change the tone and tenor in DC on lobbying too. There’s a lot of elected officials, they’ll tell you, it’s a federal one right now, come back to see me when it’s not a federal one, schedule one drug. It’ll make it a lot easier to approach these offices when it’s schedule three.
TG Branfalt:
Do either of you hear lawmakers talking about the sort of international treaty issue at all? Because we know that many nations have signed this international, these treaties to prevent legalization of drugs. Obviously Canada in 2018 went ahead with it. And so also in addition to that, do they talk about the success that Canada’s national federal legalization has been, or do they even think about it?
Saphira Galoob:
I would say that’s not on the majority of their radars. I mean, you may go into an office that’s very, very sophisticated, but they’re more concerned with, I’m going to use the word more cursory, but things that lie a little bit more on the surface. We have our eye on that. In fact, I was just in Zurich having the conversation about the treaties this past week because it is an issue with the 30 plus countries around the world that have advanced legalization. Switzerland actually was the host country. They’re actually advancing adult use cannabis pilot program. And Switzerland’s a pretty conservative place. France is going to have a very robust system starting in January. Of course we’ve seen news on Germany that’s got a whole issue around its impending change in government. But I do think the momentum around the world is going to impact the US government’s perspective, particularly this administration’s perspective on what our status and stature is on this plant.
TG Branfalt:
Before we talk a bit more about some of these federal policy issues, why did your organizations decide to combine your efforts?
Saphira Galoob:
Ed, do you want to take this one?
Ed Conklin:
I think this is, it’s a great fit, right? Fair’s organization, NCI does a wonderful job top notch first in class USCC, same exact thing. And by coming together you bring all the best of the best together. I mean, you’re going to have a really very dynamic lobbying group. You’ve got great communications, we’ve got great membership, we’ve got great board members and allows us to do a lot more together. It really is one plus one equals three or four. I mean it’s going to be a terrific addition and it allows for better coordination with all our member companies. A lot of ’em shared actually are members of both groups, but there’s a bunch that weren’t. So I think it’s a dynamic change. And with this change, we’re getting a lot of inquiries. We’re getting a lot of new members, so it’s great to have more help to help us in dc but I think it makes all the sense in the world, and I couldn’t be more excited.
Saphira Galoob:
And Ed talks about the importance of combining great teams. I also remind listeners there are 535 plus members of Congress. There are 535 members of Congress. Depending on people’s, the number can change if somebody is taking an administrative position they haven’t building yet. But just think about the number 5 35 in both chambers. That’s a lot of membership to meet with on the Hill. And last year, I think NCR, well the number I need to refresh my recollection specifically, but we did like 434 meetings.
But imagine if knowing that you need to meet, which with each office eight to 10 times, I mean just in the course, you’re obviously not going to meet with each one, but just imagine the amount of, we call it shoe leather lobbying that needs to be done, the number of meetings that need to happen. It is so, I mean it’s enjoyably onerous, but it is a lot of effort to establishing the relationship, curating the relationship, developing the relationship, advancing a relationship, coordinating relationships, and it’s all very much human to human. And so being able to join these two lobbying efforts into one allows us to cover more ground, gets deeper and advance momentum in a way that we were, I don’t think we were able to do as effectively when we were individual organizations.
Ed Conklin:
Well said. It does, Tim. It takes a ton of work to meet these offices. It really does. It is not because you’re trying to meet 535, I mean, let’s think all those people in times like Sophia set of, but there’s a lot of staff there and you’re doing a lot of education now. Some of those officers, they walk in, there’re high fiving, Hey, we’re with you. Let’s go. Let’s charge other ones. It takes a lot of work and you got to build trust and the US Senate, you still need 60 to pass something. So it’s going to take a lot no matter who’s in charge of the US Senate and our job is to get us 60 votes.
TG Branfalt:
Let me ask you this. Why is something as, how do I put this logical as the Safe Banking Act that’s been supported by members from both parties. It was not passed when there was Democrats in charge. Why can’t they get something this simple done right? I mean, this isn’t a huge overhaul of policy. This is allowing people to not have to operate in cash. And if they’re worried about the safety factor, then wouldn’t that take, I mean what 70% of the risk out? I mean, what prevents this from happening?
Saphira Galoob:
So I’m so glad you asked that question and the way you asked that question is a big compliment to you. I will not infrequently have to say to a host, you’re asking me the wrong question, but in this case, I’m telling you, you’re asking the perfect question.
TG Branfalt:
Thank you.
Saphira Galoob:
And I understand why listeners are both frustrated and furious about the seemingly stalling of this legislation. The first thing I will share with everyone as a reminder is it takes an average of 10 years to get anything through Congress. And that is simple things. So yes, safe banking has a widespread support and has passed out of the house many, many times, eight times now out of Senate banking. But the reality of the way we’re going to get this bill into a law is that we cannot go on our own the way that the calendar works in the Senate and the amount of floor time available for these members to do their prioritized work, there’s no way we can do it alone. And if anybody ever wants to get really in the weeds and talk about why that’s the case, we can do it, but just take my word for it.
We have to ride on another piece of legislation. So then the question becomes what are we going to ride on? And if you look at the number of bills that actually pass through Congress, it is very, very small, particularly those that share some sort of jurisdictional oversight because we don’t want to be in another committee of jurisdiction. We only want to be in the senate banking or financial services. So we’ve got a super careful, and there are even fewer number of bills that pass on that and those committees. And so we are limited on the rides that we can catch. Imagine being in the desert and there’s only one car coming once or twice a year. How are you going to get on that car? And so that then depends on the politics and the policy of that car. And so we’ve been working on a banking strategy, we’ve been working on a crypto strategy, we’ve been working on an access to capital strategy. Every strategy you can imagine, we are activating and operating and we are getting closer. I realize that this is not darts or hand grenades or mini golf, actually, I don’t even know if mini golf counts, but the win is the win. And anything less than the win is not the win, but we are getting closer to the win.
Ed Conklin:
Yeah, the only thing I’d add on there, Tim, is it was a good question is there’s still people in leadership in the Senate up until last year and even this session that aren’t fully on board yet. And once again, I said it is kind of what goes first. And there’s a lot of people that say, well, the arguments against safe banking, which are few and far between. I mean it is really not a vote for campus. It’s vote for safety. That’s all this is really about is voting for safety because unfortunately people are getting robbed. People are getting killed in dispensaries. It’s a horrible situation and nobody wants that. But when you break it down, there are still a lot of people in the Senate and others who are not broke cannabis and some of those folks are in leadership positions. And it takes a lot of discussion to get through that.
And as Sofia said, is there’s two cars coming and you’re trying to get everybody lined up. We had last session, and I’ll go with 67, 68 votes on safe banking, but we just couldn’t get Leader Schumer and minority leader McConnell to agree on what to attach it to and go through the process. So it’s just a frustrating part and it’s just part of the job. We deal with it all the time. And it can be very frustrating for CEOs and people in charge. We get that. We understand that, but it’s something we’re dealing with. And I think with the merger happening here and all the resources that we have now together in the focus that it changes everything for us. And I feel real positive where we’re at. Of course, I feel positive every time because in this industry you got to be positive because if you’re a negative person, you’re not going to last this industry and you won’t do it. But
Saphira Galoob:
Generally,
Tim, I want to bring up something really important that Ed said, and particularly for listeners, because again, we’re talking about the logic, why can’t it get through? So one of the things that people on the outside of DC don’t, and when I say it failed to realize I’m not suggesting, I mean, I don’t speak languages in other people’s industry and I don’t expect ’em to speak dc, but messenger matters. So someone will hear of an individual on one side of the aisle, one side of the chambers, senator of the house, this person loves us and they’re going forward for us. And I’d be like, well, that doesn’t really matter because that person one doesn’t sit on the right committee. Two is not in the majority, three doesn’t have juice in their caucus, and four doesn’t really have a negotiating stature to actually be able to get us momentum.
And so frequently I will go be at odds with folks in the industry about who should introduce the bill, not what the bill is, but who should introduce. And so we need more of the right champions. We have a lot of support, but we don’t have enough support with people with a lot of juice and we’re developing. But it takes a really long time. And when I say a really long time, I’m not talking about months, I’m talking about years. It took us four years to get Senator Danes to agree to step into the banking. And it came through his admiration of the veterans issue and his relationship with Cory Gardner and Cory Gardner’s then exiting the Senate and him taking the mantle then and things going on in his state. But I can tell you, Steve Daines, Senator Daines stepped off committee and we absolutely would like to have another champion take the Safe Banking Act in the Senate.
And it’s very, very difficult. And the reason difficult is because for many of these senators, they don’t get any kind of push or any kind of improved support by supporting an issue, say thinking for example in their district. And for many of them, they actually risk being, I don’t use the word beaten up a little bit, but they actually risk losing support or having some challenges by leading on an issue that’s not super popular amongst their constituents. So it’s way more delicate than people outside of DC appreciate. We have a lot of money morning quarterbacking on what Eds and I do all day every day. And I would invite anybody to come in and see it real time. You would change your tune if you had to sing the song and walk the halls with us.
TG Branfalt:
I really do appreciate your candor on this because I think for a lot of people, the term lobbyist is a dirty word. And I think that this is sort of evidence of the tenacity of what you’re actually doing. I mean, I hate to say it’s almost a little thankless, but in this conversation
Saphira Galoob:
It’s completely thankless now. Thankless. It’s completely thankless. And Ed and I honestly, ed and I hasn’t had a lot of disagreements, but the one time we had a disagreement is he said, oh, say thanking that nothing has passed. So we failed. And I said, I refuse to accept that word failure. We may have not gone over the finish line, but I mark my success by progress made. And I do think there is that you actually charted, you actually charted the progress and you show the documentation of how close we get from year to year. I mean, I realized that the win is not the win until it’s the win. But you don’t get to the win until you do all the things that we’ve done and more. You just don’t get there.
Ed Conklin:
And while lobbyists might be a dirty word to sum, Tim, everybody’s a lobbyist. I’ve given this presentation to colleges as classes. How many times have you ever gotten pulled around a confidence speeding ticket? You ever try to lobby yourself out of that speeding ticket? Yeah, you have when you’re a kid, you wanted your allowance, you wanted a new iPhone. Yeah, you lobby or Yeah, we’re all lobbyists. I mean, we lobby for an industry, that’s what we do.
TG Branfalt:
Y’all go to dc so I don’t have to What expectations? Do you have any expectations for any policy reforms this session?
Saphira Galoob:
Yes, yes. That president is going meet the promises he made on the campaign trail. That is our expectation and that is what we are focusing on 100%.
Ed Conklin:
President Trump has come out in support of schedule three. He’s come out in support of safe banking, he’s come out in support of state rights and all those are critical. And this president keeps his promises. So both of us are in our trade groups. We’re working very hard to support him. It’s going to take time. I mean, I know you’re getting the same phone call as I, this should be done by now. He’s got other issues he’s dealing with. There’s a lot of other issues that he’ll get to this issue and we are doing all the right things. We’re doing the polling super packs, we are doing the fly-ins. We’ll do all the stuff that we do, but we’re going to work very hard to make sure we are there to support him with his promises.
TG Branfalt:
I mean, even with the nomination of RFK Junior as head of HHS, you think that this administration is better for cannabis than maybe the previous one.
Saphira Galoob:
I mean, holistically, if you look at the way this president has engaged with our issue both pragmatically and publicly, this president is actually much better for our industry, even in a criminal justice perspective, the commitment that this president has shown towards clemencies and expungements to people who were incarcerated because of cannabis. I mean, we have more to show on the criminal justice side for people who have criminal justice decades in the system because of cannabis, more so than with Biden, because Biden did extend commutations, but not for people. I mean, I think there’s a handful, less than a handful for cannabis incarcerated people were incarcerated for cannabis. So the other thing is that this president made a commitment on the campaign trail very, very specifically towards two of the things, three of the things that are most important to most people in this industry. And we didn’t hear that level of diligence or dedication by then President Biden or president nominee vice president candidate Harris. So we are in a promises made, promises kept trajectory, and that is where we’re focused all day every day.
Ed Conklin:
And I think too, I think this president is showing you his cabinet and his people that he has direction fluence over are going to follow his lead. And when you think about schedule three, the key person there is the attorney general Pam Bondy. And we’ve been very open that she can go right to rule on schedule three. And so there’s a lot that she can do by, she doesn’t need everything else. I mean, she’s ready to go. And we’ve done a lot of work. We’ve had some great attorneys that have been working on this issue since the last administration initiated it. So 30,000 plus comments in and of that 90 some percent or I don’t know exactly percent, but it’s a huge percent is positive, right? So they’ve got everything they need to go forward. So as Sophia said, promises made, kept promises said, promises kept. So we’re going to keep going with that process and work it very hard.
TG Branfalt:
What do you hear from your members about the potential change to schedule three? I’ve spoken to some people in the industry who envision that that’s going to basically get rid of medical cannabis programs because it’s going to put cannabis in the hands of the HHS and the pharmaceutical companies. And what are you hearing from your members and what do you think that Schedule three would do to state industries?
Saphira Galoob:
So first of all, our members, whether they like it or not, they are very educated on what’s going on in DC because we just bombard them with really deep, deep policy. And this is where we’re headed, this is what we’re up against. So if you talk to our members, they really understand the difference. So let’s remind ourselves that moving cannabis from a schedule one to schedule three, that impacts whether or not something has medical utility and it impacts the intoxication affecting the addiction. So it is, we expect for there to be no change on state programs from a Scion perspective, Antonin Scalia, stripped scrutiny, those state programs are still not in compliance with federal law, even under a Schedule iii. Now I say that and I don’t think we’re going to have what I call the black helicopters descending. The state programs will still stay and be deferred to the federal government has long not just had a deference for state level cannabis programs, but a preference for it, both Democrat and Republican Congress in both Democrat and Republican administration.
So a change to schedule three, we do not believe disrupts state cannabis programs. We also believe that whether medical programs are successful in the state depend on the state. And we believe that a pharmaceutical company’s ability to get in is not going to be impacted by a change in Schedule three. It’s whether or not those pharmaceutical companies, either one want to follow a traditional pharma route that Epidiolex followed, or they want to purchase a license from an existing cannabis operator. So whether or not cannabis concedes to pharma likely has more to do with what cannabis decides than what Pharmac decides. And frankly, we are such small potatoes for them in terms of profitability and market share that we are of less interest than other areas where they can extend their investment. I didn’t know if you knew I had an opinion on that, but I’m glad you asked.
Ed Conklin:
I think when you think about what we talked about about the president, you get rescheduling done, which is the fairness outline with that we’ll do plus two 80 E, right? Take care. That will energize everybody. Everybody says it’s a big, big player. It’s not. It’s small, medium, large. Everybody’s going to benefit from that. No matter who you are in the sphere, 80% tax is not a good thing. I mean, you can’t survive on that. We need more regulations. We’re all for more regulations, safety, compliance, all that. We fully support that. You get safe banking done. That’s another key message point. Get them cash out of the system. Let’s get it through the financial system. Let’s make it safe in our dispensaries for not only our employees but our consumers. And then you get states rights and man, if you get capital access, get us on New York Stock Exchange. This whole industry is going to explode and it’s going to be great for everybody. Everybody will do a wonderful, have a wonderful time in this industry, and there’ll be a ton of investment pouring in, and then you’re going to have a real industry. I think it’s going to be fun to be there and watch it happen.
TG Branfalt:
Is there any legislation that’s been introduced this session that you guys are tracking and that could see some movement?
Saphira Galoob:
So the bills that you’re referring to are bills that we’ve seen in the past, and we’re working with those key bill champions. There is a sequencing and a timing for introducing bills. And so while we have not seen the introductions as early on in the Congress, as we have seen in prior congresses, one should not interpret that as negative one should interpret that as strategic.
Ed Conklin:
Very
TG Branfalt:
True. And then we’ve talked about the sort of banking access, the two a DE. You mentioned that as a combined organization, what is your sort of mission statement or messaging going to be sort of broadly speaking to the cannabis industry and stakeholders?
Saphira Galoob:
Do you want me to start with this one? And you can have, sure.
Yeah. Actually we’re interrupting each other a lot less, but we are still learning how to be good dance partners. One voice, one vision, one industry. That’s what a combined effort between USCC and NCR gives us. I know there are folks that are not familiar with either of our individual organizations and not familiar with our combined organizations, but we invite them to get to know us. Washington is a curious place. You want the best players on the field in Washington, even if you don’t like them personally or you don’t respect them politically, you want the best players on the field. And this combined entity gives you an effort that looks at the smallest players to the largest, to folks that are operating in one to dispensary or multi-state that are ancillary businesses or are vertically integrated. This organization represents that collective one voice, one vision, one industry.
Ed Conklin:
And if you’re not a member, come join us. Call us phe. Call me. We would love to have you part of the team. We need everybody, Tim, we need everybody’s help on this thing. There is not enough folks involved. And we would encourage everybody to pick up those phones, dial our phone numbers or send us an email. We’d love to hear from you.
TG Branfalt:
Given both of your combined experience lobbying, would you describe this as the most difficult sort of issue that you’ve gone to Washington for?
Ed Conklin:
Oh
Saphira Galoob:
Yeah, cheeseburger. Are hamburgers and cheeseburgers easier than cannabis?
Ed Conklin:
This is a crazy, I mean, it is so much fun to be involved. I mean, you have entrepreneurs, you got businesses, you got people who you got the illicit market, which is just absolutely nuts, right? I mean the illicit market, I mean, who knows what you’re getting, right? So all I can tell you is there’s a lot of this confusion in DC that triggers all this thing. And you have the state markets and you have the hemp industry out there. So you got all these things out there working. And what’s going to help us out immensely is the fact Asir said one voice. It is time to align. We have to align behind few issues. We can’t boil the ocean. We got to align behind few issues, and we got to all speak the same voice, same message, and we’ll deliver a victory. And that’s what we’re going to do.
TG Branfalt:
Of all of the things that we’ve sort of discussed here, what is sort of the top of going to be the priority pile for you? Is it going to be two 80 e? Is it going to be the rescheduling issue? What’s going to rise to the top here?
Saphira Galoob:
Yeah, so I definitely want to ride on Ed’s comment that we got to get really focused as well as yours about what’s the top, rather than choosing, we are going to only do this or only do that. We have enough bandwidth and there’s enough momentum on rescheduling and on access to all financial services. And then really building that base work for the state’s rights to actually do that. There’s that three-legged stool there. And I will say for folks who want everyone to have everything or no one gets anything approached, that kind of all or nothing approach, there is little to nothing in DC where that actually happens. And so while that is that altruism is really notable and inspiring, it’s just not pragmatic. And so if we can achieve the schedule three, that work has been in play, in addition to the 90,000 comments, remember we had a 252 page outstanding recommendation. We had an office of legal counsel memo saying, we concur with that recommendation and we have the Department of Justice recommend a schedule three. So we are winning, we’re winning, we’re winning. We just got stalled in a very discreet issue in litigation. And in order to restart that, we’ve got some really impactful recommendations for newly stated AG Bondi. But getting schedule three, addressing access to financial services is what this industry demands and deserves immediately.
TG Branfalt:
Finally, what advice would you have for entrepreneurs who might want to get involved on a policy level?
Ed Conklin:
Call us, call us, us, email us. I think everybody thinks, from my perspective, and I can only speak what I see, everybody thinks about the dispensary owners. I want to be dispensary owner, but there’s so many other facets. This industry, it’s out there that is available for entrepreneurs to get involved with. So between s Sophia and myself, and between our boards and between all our members, if somebody has an interest to get involved or if they are involved, they want to learn more, contact us. We have a lot of contacts and put you in contact with and help you out. It is one thing that’s great about the business industry. There’s a lot of sharing and caring going on. And Tim, like you and I were talking about before with this snow up there and you helping out your neighbors, that’s what this industry does a really good job at. I mean, there’s a lot of sharing. There’s a lot of people putting their shoulders against the wheel and pushing hard to get this thing moving along. And it’s fun to watch and it’s fun to watch success and there’s some failures happening, but every industry has a little failure in startup and stops. But there’s a lot of great successes out there and a lot of great stories.
Saphira Galoob:
And I would say there are some folks for whom engaging in Washington is just really hard right now for other reasons. And if that’s the case, my assignment to you is as follows, one, do you know who your member of Congress is? You should find that out. Two, sharing what your congress person, what these priorities are, access to safe banking. And they can’t do a whole lot on the scheduling assuring states rights or whatever your point of reference is, are you involved in your local politics? Are you involved with your chamber of commerce? Are you sponsoring a little league team so much about familiarity and reducing the stigma? Do you have a relationship with your religious community so that they know what you’re doing for the community? How are you giving back to your community outside of cannabis? That is the ecosystem of trust. That is the ecosystem of credibility. That is the ecosystem of consistency that we need to be able to bring to Washington. And so I would just invite anybody who is concerned about this to get involved somehow some way someplace.
Ed Conklin:
I can guarantee you what Sophia said is a hundred percent true. And another thing I used to give this class, I could tell you about congressional members, not Senate, but congressional members. They have all these meetings back in the district all the time. It’s breakfasts, it’s lunches, it’s dinners, meetings, just attend one and go up and introduce yourself. You’re going to find out they don’t have a third eye. They wanted to get to know you. They want your vote, first of all, and you probably did vote for ’em. Or if you didn’t, it’s still fine. And just have a conversation with ’em and ask for a follow-up meeting and they’ll be happy to do it. I mean, these folks who are elected are people, people, people persons, and they want to talk to people. And they’re a lot of great elected officials out there in this us, and they’re fun to be with. They have great stories. I can guarantee you, you will have a connection with them because they know a lot of people in your town already. Once you start talking to ’em, you’re going to have all these connections. The next thing you know, you’re off to the races, so please reach out to ’em
TG Branfalt:
If you could peer into a crystal ball. I mean, obviously you had mentioned Shafi that we are in this sort of litigation issue with getting this hearing on the schedule three re-designation Vegas odds that we’ll get that hearing this year.
Saphira Galoob:
Well, I don’t want to, first of all, I’m not a betting person. I have to go to Vegas for MJ Bs, but I’ve never placed a bet myself, so I’m not going to bet. But what I’m going to say is there’s been a significant amount of progress made in the rescheduling and the process for rescheduling that’s statutorily designated. And there are a lot of pathways towards success. And I don’t think it is mean. This is where I’m not saying it’s not a fair question for me or a fair question for the process because there are a lot of different ways to get to success and we are leaving no stem unturned to get to that success.
Ed Conklin:
I would say, say you don’t need a hearing, I’d say the ag could go right to rule three. If she go right to rule pronounce, it’s going to schedule three and then it’s going to end up in court anyway. Right? There’s opposition to everything. There’s always people pro and there’s always people opposite and somebody’s going to complain about, but there is law, there is rules, and the attorney general, Pam Bondy has the ability to go to schedule three. Well,
TG Branfalt:
I hope we could avoid a drawn out legal process here to advance this finally. It’s been a long time since I think, and I think you would obviously agree that federal reform are desperately, desperately, desperately long overdue on this issue. So where can people find out more about your organizations and soon your combined organizations?
Saphira Galoob:
We are still working on our new website, but we do have an email address and it’s funny Ed, because it’s info@uscr.org. Am I saying that correct?
Ed Conklin:
There is that, or you can just go, mine’s ed@uscc.org. ed@uscc.org and ra, you got yours?
Saphira Galoob:
Yep, ra. I have my lobbying firm hat ra@theliaisongroup.org. But what we can do, Tim is in the show notes, we can put some contact information so folks don’t have to be writing madly. If they’d like to get in touch,
TG Branfalt:
We can certainly, certainly do that. Yep. Thank you both so much for taking the time out of your busy schedules trying to save us from dc. I really appreciate it. This has been a lot of fun and I hope that we can touch base and the next time we do that, there’s been some progress made. Right?
Saphira Galoob:
We look forward to it.
Ed Conklin:
We look forward to it, and thanks for having us on.
TG Branfalt:
But is Edward Conklin, executive director of the US Cannabis Council and s Galu, executive Director of National Cannabis Roundtable. The USCC and NCR last month announced they are going to combine other organizations to create the US Cannabis Roundtable. You can find more episodes of the entrepreneur.com podcast in the podcast section of entrepreneur.com or wherever you get your podcasts. On the entrepreneur.com website, you’ll find the latest cannabis news and cannabis jobs updated daily along with transcripts of this podcast. You can also download the entrepreneur.com app in iTunes and Google Play. This episode was engineered by Wayward Sound Studio. I’ve been your host, TG Branfalt.
Ricky Williams won a Heisman Trophy at Texas and rushed for over 10,000 yards in 11 NFL seasons. He is now the President and Co-Founder of Highsman, a lifestyle brand that Ricky personally curates, from the cannabis to the accessories. Ricky launched Highsman to provide communities of sports fans and herb enthusiasts everywhere with a platform to own their relationship with cannabis and its ability to unlock true, personal greatness.
In this episode of Highly Enlightened, syndicated by Ganjapreneur, host Jon Purow speaks with Ricky about the principles that have guided his journey — from challenging the stigma around cannabis as an athlete to becoming a founder and advocate within the cannabis industry. Ricky shares hard-earned wisdom on leadership, the deeper meaning of cannabis, the spiritual and practical lessons from his career, and how staying true to his values shaped his personal and professional evolution. This episode is a thoughtful, philosophical conversation that touches on resilience, the power of perspective, and why Ricky believes cannabis is more than just a product — it’s a tool for personal and societal transformation.
Listen to the episode below or wherever you get your podcasts — you can find more episodes of Highly Enlightened on Buzzsprout.
Listen to the episode:Ganjapreneur · Highly Enlightened: Ricky Williams, Founder at Highsman
Episode sponsored by eBottlesThis episode of Highly Enlightened is made possible by eBottles. If you’re in the cannabis business, you know that quality packaging isn’t just important—it’s essential. That’s where eBottles comes in. Whether you’re just starting out or scaling up, eBottles offers proprietary top-of-the-line packaging products built for cannabis. eBottles is a market leader for a good reason: they are experts in the field. Six patents, five warehouse locations around the country, a network of exceptional distributors. Get eBottles and Grow Boldly.
Read the transcript:Jon Purow:
Hey there. Welcome to another Canna-Convo episode of my Highly Enlightened podcast. Very excited to have a specific guest today. The podcast is syndicated by Ganjapreneur, and as always, I’m your host, Jon Purow. Now, before we get an awesome interview, I want to note that any opinions I express on my own are not those in my brand new law firm. Herbal Laws LLC, though judging by the name, you could probably guess they probably wouldn’t be that offended before we start. As I always like to do quick prayer to the video chat, gods may, our wifi connections be sturdy, all dogs and children remain quiet and my Amazon Prime another time. Amen. Now I have the pleasure of introducing the one and only Ricky Williams. I forgot. I apologize, Ricky, because one thing I did not neglected to before we started was to clarify what title you wanted to be introduced by. But you know what? I think this is the best first question to start with is how would you introduce yourself in a, how do you try and boil down Ricky Williams to a title?
Ricky Williams:
I don’t. I don’t.
Jon Purow:
Okay, then that’s it. Let’s not give you a title. Let’s pull. Yeah, perfect. Look, you’re someone obviously who, some people are familiar with your experience prior to the cannabis industry, but this is such a new industry that we’re all bringing something from the past into it, and we find something useful in ways that we don’t expect. So what do you think in terms of your life experience that you brought to the cannabis industry has been the most kind of helpful to you and why?
Ricky Williams:
I think getting in trouble and having the opportunity to take a public stand for my cannabis consumption. I think by far, I think because inspiration there, and I think people, if they weren’t around or paying attention to the story in real time with YouTube and the internet, they can track down the story. And young people, old people that have had similar experiences, I can tell they all get a sense of inspiration and that’s extremely helpful in this industry right now.
Jon Purow:
Well, this is what I mean. I think that’s why I was so happy to finally meet you, because I think that you are legitimately a hero in this industry. And to recap, Ricky is being modest and everything, but to recap, really what we’re talking about here is Ricky, during what was on track, we could still say potentially a hall of fame career. You were using marijuana to treat your social anxiety disorder. You were testing positive, and it was called there are repercussions for you. And you took a stand, essentially in favor of the plant and the medicine for you. And so one question that I find fascinating about this is we’re still so nascent in terms of the medical research about this, right? Everyone I know who has, there’s so many people in this industry who are ADHD and use the plant because it’s effectively medicine.
And at some point what I realized was it’s not a function of whether or not there’s a link there that it can treat it as medicine. It’s that we just haven’t discovered it yet. So when you were taking your stand, this was 20 years ago, there was no backup. There was no doctor saying, oh no, he’s pursuing something. That’s an actual treatment. It was just you knowing your truth. Right. So I’m curious to know your decision making, how you took that stand, right? And what helped for yourself that this is something you had to take the stand for.
Ricky Williams:
Yeah, I mean, you mentioned the word hero, and I don’t take that lightly. As a professional football player, I was trying to be a hero. And even in football, the heroes are made in those vitals, those situations where it can go one way or the other where everything is on the line. And did your training prepare you to make the right decision and to come through in that situation? And for me, that came through in cannabis when it became public that I failed, that I failed a drug test. And a couple of moments where I had an opportunity to tell the truth and to tell my story or to lie and to make up something. And based on first and foremost, the most powerful thing, my own experience, based on my own experience, I had no doubt that cannabis was helping me, helping me with what?
That was a big question at the time because we didn’t have the language, but there was no doubt that it was helping me. And I think of the many, many, many thousands, hundreds of thousands of years that we’ve existed without medical research to tell us what was good for us. And somehow we survived. Somehow we survived. So I trusted myself. And the one point of outside data that I get is everyone I asked who was really into cannabis at the time, I asked them the story about when they first started or how they got into it, 90% of them told a story about some kind of physical, emotional, spiritual injury and how it helped him. It was across the board. So from my own personal data and my own personal experience, I had no doubt that I was onto something.
Jon Purow:
And look, and this is the reason why I think that the term hero is appropriate, is that heroes are an ideal. Here’s what I think the connection is. Heroes do things out of principle, and they’ll take a stand and they’ll pay the consequence for it. And they could be a martyr hero. They could be that brave hero who steps up in the moment, like you said, whether it’s an athletic game or when you have that opportunity to, but you had that purity of heart and spirit that you weren’t going to compromise. You could have played the game, like you said, but why you wouldn’t? Do
Ricky Williams:
I know? I don’t know. I don’t think I could have.
I could have. So part of it is I can take credit, but it’s principles and thank God I grew up in a very religious household were principles were very important to me. And so it kind of stuck through. And so when I got to this place where it wasn’t what I expected, because in one sense I did everything I wasn’t supposed to do. When you’re a good athlete or you have a lot of potential, the one thing they told me growing up, it stay away from drugs, you’ll throw it all away from drugs for drugs. And there I was throwing it all away for drugs. So it was a powerful external narrative that was really challenged by internal principles. But again, the benefits that I received from cannabis, I couldn’t deny them. It would be sacrilege to pretend that I wasn’t receiving something helpful and beneficial.
Jon Purow:
Yeah, no, I mean, I just think it’s great. And I think that it’s important to look, there’s stories that need to be told in this industry. We need to tell the stories of the people whose lives were horribly ruined by a bullshit war on drugs. And when there’s an inspirational story like yours, even if there are obviously some of the tough parts of it, I think that that has to be amplified. Right. So I’m happy to talk about it in this context. Now, being in the industry, you are a leader in this industry and you are a unique leader in this industry. So what advice would you give, I don’t know if I’m blurry on your end, but probably look better this way to most people. I got a face for radio. What advice would you give regarding leadership to other leaders in the cannabis space? What have you learned along the way?
Ricky Williams:
We all have a certain gift, and I’d say my gift is to stay true and be clear about what my principles are. And so the only advice I can give is going to be really related to that. And to be clear on what your principles are, I think the biggest issue for a lot of us is we’re not clear on what our principles are. Even if we’re principles, a lot of times we don’t have the awareness of what actually we’re being principled towards, because a lot of it was put into us before we were old enough to make that conscious decision. And I think one of the gifts of cannabis is it opens our minds to be able to even consider asking these kinds of questions of what am I being principled towards? And when I started asking myself those questions, I realized that it was kind of arbitrary. And then underneath the arbitrary, whatever I’ve been taught to be principled to is a choice of what do I feel really connected to and really strongly about that would feel better to me to be principled towards. And so that would be my advice is use the plant. Use the plant to help make you a better leader. And whatever that means to anyone, that’s going to mean something different to every person. But that would be my advice. If you’re going to be a leader in this industry, it’s nice if you’re co-leading with some kind of connection to the plant.
Jon Purow:
Yeah, no, I mean, I agree with that. I mean, we find our truths in the plant and we try and spread those truths or you like the way of phrasing that?
Ricky Williams:
Well, but again, when we talk about the plant, this plant is older than the English language,
Jon Purow:
And our youth have been medically is older than that. I take great pride when they find the stories of, they’re like, Hey, the Jews burn cannabis. And I was like, yes. Right. I knew that we had a connection. It goes back thousands of years. So I appreciate that as well. So I think that that makes a lot of, this is what I appreciate what you’re talking about, right? We’re talking about a story where your principles essentially were the basis of how everything played out. Now you’re saying examine what your principles are, think about what they are at any given time. And frankly, you know what? I think we don’t give ourselves enough time to do anymore, constantly distracted. And our phones are the biggest drugs trying to use our attention for the attention economy is we don’t say to ourselves enough, why are we doing this? And I also just think that principle wise, you know what always comes down to, and this is me honoring my mother’s legacy, I say more than anything is the golden rule. Everything could come down to that. Treat others. You want to be treated. I come up with ways of extensions of that. And I just think that I appreciate when we find people who are of principle, and you proved it personally by taking a stand, those are the people we should value purity of spirit and everything like that. So lemme know, I’m tossing around words like hero and everything, but I’m trying to explain why I respect you in that regard.
Ricky Williams:
Yeah. Well, I think when we know that someone is of principles, because we’ve seen evidence, the value is we know what we’re going to get in a specific area because third areas of my life, I’m not so principled because they’re not important to me, but the things I’m principled about, they’re extremely important to me and it’s going to show up in my behavior, in my acts.
Jon Purow:
The funny thing is, is that when I was thinking about what I thought about you the other day, and what I thought about was why can’t politicians be like that? Why can’t politicians, we get them up there, we put them on a stand, they have to change their mind or not, or they wishy-washy whatever it is. But you would want politicians and leaders with that purity of spirit. You know what I’m saying? So Ricky Williams for Texas governor starting in here, and you’re going to be on the tick with Matthew McConaughey, right? Be, I think that that would be a good match. You guys both appreciate the plant. Okay,
Ricky Williams:
That’s not a bad idea.
Jon Purow:
There you go. You heard it here first. We broke news. So now I wanted to ask you, what are some of the biggest factors in terms of, you have this wonderful brand, Heisman, which of course plays upon the fact that you won the Heisman Trophy, but I love it because it’s a parody spelled Heisman. What are some of the biggest factors in terms of how Heisman has grown over the years it’s been active?
Ricky Williams:
Oh man. Biggest factors. If you have a principle, it’s like a target, but it takes time and effort and overcoming obstacles and figuring things out to make momentum, to make headway in that direction. And so that’s what it’s been, us getting clear on what we want to do. Because when we first started, when you first start anything, it’s a vision. It’s something that exists in the ether and making it real. That’s all the effort. And the tagline of Heisman is spark greatness. And people see it and they laugh. The goal of, to me this brand is people see it and they get it, then they get it. We can talk about the word high and it’s been given a really bad connotation. But if you think deeply, the opposite of high is low. It is low. And I think of my experience when I consume cannabis and what I get out of it most is the ability to see the larger perspective. And if I’m trying to see the larger perspective of a piece of land, the higher I go, I have a greater view of the bigger picture. If I’m down low, all I can see is what’s right in front of me. And in this world, what’s right in front of us is kind of depressing.
No, no. And I think sometimes when it’s depressing, it’s not that we need to escape, but we need to see the bigger picture so we can have some perspective so we can do something to change the things that are depressing us.
Jon Purow:
Yeah, look, I hate it when we have to go to that spot, but the fact of the matter is that there’s a lot of things in this world right now where it seems like we’re behind eight ball. I have a nine and 13-year-old daughter. I mean, to be personal about this, my 9-year-old daughter is anxious about all the stuff going on in the world, keeps her up at night. She’s nine. This is when kids are supposed to be innocent. And she’s already lost her innocence to the horrors of the world that she’s going to inherit. And so that’s why I think that I, I told you about, I think I might’ve told you about this, when I say everything boils down to the golden rule, when I was healing from breaking my back, I came up with this kind of value system or school of thought called alpha truism.
And the idea is compound good. Don’t just do good. When we talk about how we’re going to value good, there’s certain things and Jewish value systems, or if it’s an anonymous gift, then that’s a pure form of giving or whatever, but it’s trying to do good, but compound it. Can you systematize it? Can you replicate it? And so I just want to tell you that when I think about the parade of horribles that there is out there right now, I think that we get the right people together, we get the right mindset, and it’s like instead of being diabolical, it’s like good diabolical. And that’s what I think we could all do together as we seek inspiration and build stuff. So I mean, I think that that’s what you said helped your company grow was your perspective. I think that you have this natural thing where you’re saying we takes you to that place, but it’s that you get that high level view.
Ricky Williams:
Yeah, because in the startup world and in cannabis both, and then when you combine both, it’s like, whoa, people always feel like the sky is falling. And if you’re on the earth, you’re down here and things are falling, that’s what you think the sky is falling. If you’re up here out, it’s just raining a little bit. So keeping everyone on the same page and making sure when the sky feels like it’s falling, that we have perspective and we remember what we are doing, that this is not going to something we’re going to build overnight, that this is a major transition in history and we get to be a part of it. And all we have to do is hold on and stay true to our message, and we will come through on the end. And what I’m saying about things on the ground level being difficult, it’s not a bad thing. It’s the reality of it. And it’s something that comes through in playing football is that every week we have a new opponent that has someone that’s being paid a whole lot of money because they’re really good that we have to make sure we account for or we will lose. So this idea of we have football, we have to come together as a team and do good because it easily translates to do good so that when the opponent comes, we have enough good saved up that we can overcome it and we can be victorious.
Jon Purow:
Yeah. Yeah, a hundred percent.
[Commercial break]
So now I want to ask you are in your time in the industry, and I think that you’ve kind of touched upon some of these points a little bit philosophically so far, but what are a couple of things that the industry has taught you? What are facts that jump out that were surprises to you or just important points that you’ve used as kind of a guide as you proceed?
Ricky Williams:
I’m 47 now, and there is something about this idea of being over the hill, and I won’t say to the extent of I’ve seen everything, but you’ve been on the planet 40 something years and you’ve lived as intensely as I have. It’s not that you don’t see anything new, but everything you see, it reminds you of something else that you’ve already known. It may be to different magnitudes. You get to see it more closely, so you appreciate it more. So it’s not like it’s necessarily anything new, but basically everything I’ve learned in football, it’s just that it applies to real life with a little bit of sensitivity. It is like the first thing is if football is know your opponent, and actually the first thing in football is self scout. Know yourself, know your opponent, come up with a game plan, execute, review, rinse and repeat. That’s the lesson in football, and it applies to cannabis in the industry. But the tricky part is knowing yourself and knowing your opponent, knowing yourself is tricky because most people that have survived this long that understand business, but a lot of people, they don’t necessarily understand cannabis. That’s a huge question, at least in my mind, is a huge question mark, is what is this? What is cannabis? And coming from a bit of a tech background, it’s an emerging technology,
It’s an emerging technology. It’s still a big question mark. And at the same time, we’re trying to do business, but we are not even really clear what exactly we’re selling.
Jon Purow:
Oh, I mean, the fact is that we’re still developing it, right? I mean, this is the thing. We’re still developing it. Our product diversification, we are at the tip of the iceberg. And so when you talk about a product and what are we developing, drugs serve a certain function. And so we don’t even know all the functions that it can serve and the form factors that it can. But we analyze it from a macro level saying, how do we cater to the cane? How do we cater to the can of curious and what are the effects that we’re going for? So right now, when I’m licensing tech, what am I trying to do? Really, I’m trying to license any feeling with any cannabinoid in any type of onset for however long I want to design it. That’s what I’m trying to achieve.
Ricky Williams:
I think the potential of what we learned about this plant, I think it’s going to come down to something you just said about we are selling a feeling.
Jon Purow:
Yeah.
Ricky Williams:
Yeah. And so again, a bigger philosophical question is I think is people get more clarity about the use of feelings, what they can be used for. Because to me, this spills us over into the idea of what is medicine you? What is
Jon Purow:
Medicine? Yeah. I mean, medicine is self manipulation, right? There is a condition of the self, you want to do something about it. You can’t do it necessarily internally, you need an external thing. So who are we supposed to say that there’s a difference in value between a pharmaceutical drug that was produced in the laboratory and a plant that was given to us effectively by God, evolution, whatever you want to believe was behind it. I mean, the fact of the matter is pharmaceutical drugs repurpose things from nature all the time. So the natural order came to value, to values that we’re extracting more value out of natural things. And so if we take in a drug, we’re trying to achieve a certain effect. And what it is, is it’s a form of self manipulation. We’re all trying, if every old life is a video game simulation, we’re trying to get, when we are doing drugs, trying to control the sensation, the environment of all of it.
And I just think that that’s what we’re chasing. Just like I meditate to self manipulate, and I get certain effects from that meditation, but you’re saying we need to rethink what a drug is. Meditation is a drug. I view meditation as a drug. I view that as the best drug I’ve ever done. There’s no negative health effects. And it puts me in the right state of mind, basically similar and can make me feel high if I’m doing breathing exercises. You could have psychedelic effects based on your breathing routines, right? Meditation is a drug. So that’s my responsible from
Ricky Williams:
That. Yeah. I mean, just to throw something kind of funny out there at the right time, a good hug is a drug. I won’t go down that path, but I will go down this path is it is self manipulation, but just in the world of AI where we’re getting a new language and a new way to think about technology and drugs, I was thinking, I’ve been thinking about this a lot. It’s automation. It’s automation of biological functions. Because I used to think when I first started learning about cannabis, it was the same time I was learning about meditation and I realized what I can get to from meditating daily for an hour, for two weeks, two weeks on the right day, I can get to you with a couple of hits. But the difference is the point I get to meditation in two weeks, it lasts longer. There’s an automation, and if we know how to utilize the automation to make ourselves more efficient, oh wow. That’s why I call this an emerging technology. But if we become lazy through the automation, then we create dependencies that aren’t constructive.
Jon Purow:
Yeah, no, exactly right. That’s when a drug becomes an addiction because then the self manipulation, they say the definition of an addiction is when your dependency on something turns negative, overall, the cost benefit doesn’t justify it. And I think that that’s sometimes hard when it’s something that we’re relying upon so much. But the funny thing is that you hit the tolerance conundrum. If I’m microdosing for a DHD right now, I’m taking two puffs, right? After a couple months, I’m taking nine puffs, and then I’m basically smoking all the time. And at what point does that become something that’s counterproductive because I’m walking around smelling a certain way or whatever that my wife and daughter love, just love. But it’s like this is my medicine. So I mean, I got to take care of myself to take care of my family. I think that you could, no, I just love this because I think that this has been a real philosophical examination of we’re reexamining things on a very, very macro level. And I think it’s the things that jump out at you or how many specific facts fit into these macro examinations. Exactly. Yeah, exactly. That was what I would say. So then one question I want to ask you is, and this is a particular great question for you because you care about doing good, is what metrics, how do you judge success as a brand? Fuck, as a person, I’d like to know how do you judge that you’ve done good, that you’ve been successful
Ricky Williams:
On one level, that you’re still in the ring?
Jon Purow:
Yeah. Fighting.
Ricky Williams:
Yes. Because if you think of success relative to evolution, success means that you survived. That’s true. True.
Jon Purow:
That’s true. Preach it. Evolution. It’s just like I keep on fighting. Right? Life is a struggle. So if you’re still struggling,
Ricky Williams:
You’re successful. Yeah.
Jon Purow:
It’s like Spider-Man at the end of the movie, he gets beaten down, beaten down, BD, they always ask, what does a hero at the end gets back up
Ricky Williams:
Alive,
Jon Purow:
Gets back up basically to just keep on taking a beating. We are all Sisyphus shoving a rock up a hill through our entire lives. Right? Okay, I like it.
Ricky Williams:
Well, that’s kind of right. That’s part of the story. But once you get that and you graduate to the next level, then you’re on the other side of it. But you can’t avoid that, right?
Jon Purow:
Yeah,
Ricky Williams:
No, you can’t avoid it. So I say that’s the first definition of success because you don’t get any other success if you don’t survive. And the idea of surviving is in the process of surviving, you figure stuff out, you figure stuff out. And I think that’s the gold, right? Is the stuff you figure out. And eventually you figure out, the ideal is eventually you figure out enough stuff that you can create something of good that persists. Persists. So this question of ultimate success, only time will tell. But to know if you got a shot right, you got to still be in the ring.
Jon Purow:
Yeah, no, but I agree with this, right? Because I mean, ultimately I think that the way that we operate in general, let’s not forget that we are just highly evolved monkeys. And really what there are animalistic parts of us, and there are the parts that the mind has developed, and the mind tries to perpetuate its own value. I mean, we now have ideals that will dictate who we procreate with, that dictate who we consider an enemy. And it’s purely out of the mind, nothing out of the body. And I just think that I completely lost my train of thought because it’s just like, I love that we’ve gotten so philosophical. I’m staring at some of the questions that I still have to ask, and it’s like, what do you think about this part of the industry? And I’m like, I’m not asking that because we’re in completely different level field right now. And it’s just like some of my other interview conversations of God, I’m like this with Socrates, rosenfeld of I, our Jane. And so I just appreciate, look, this is one thing that the plant brings together is this creativity, this openness of spirit, I think. And it gives us strength. It gave you strength to make a stand for it, right?
Ricky Williams:
Yeah, a hundred percent.
Jon Purow:
Yeah. But I think that maybe we wrap it up there just because I think it’s perfect. It was just so pure that I don’t want to touch it after this. So let me ask,
Ricky Williams:
I think there is one way to tie a bow, to tie a bow on this, to bring it down to earth a little bit. Okay? Right? Yes. We definitely went there. Very philosophical conversation. And I’m not saying that every conversation should be like this, but to me, in the industry, if people are really consuming the plan and appreciating the plant, there are going to be more conversations like this that on some level contribute to the direction that the industry is headed.
Jon Purow:
And to try and just add a bow to that is, I feel closest to the people in the industry that I can have a conversation like this with. And then because of that, you’re someone whose energy I appreciate and I say, oh, you know what? Maybe we could do business together. You know what I’m saying? I think that that’s because the plant helps us bond on that level. Good in the industry comes out of it.
Ricky Williams:
Yeah.
Jon Purow:
Alright. Thank you so much for taking the time.
In this episode of Highly Enlightened, host Jon Purow connects with Bryan Gerber, the founder and CEO of HARA Supply, a supplier of custom preroll cones and packaging. HARA Supply spans 15 facilities with over 4,000 personnel based in India, along with HQ office and warehouse located in Las Vegas, NV. They currently produce over a billion pre-rolled cones per year for some of the cannabis industry’s largest entities.
Gerber is also the founder and CEO of HARA Brands, a four-time inc. 5000 company, which includes: Hemper, the largest subscription business in the cannabis industry with more than 1 million boxes sold, as well as Hemper Tech and Goody Glass, providing high quality smoking accessories and related products.
Listen to the episode below or wherever you get your podcasts — you can find more episodes of Highly Enlightened on Buzzsprout.
Listen to the episode:Ganjapreneur · Highly Enlightened: Bryan Gerber, CEO at Hara Supply
Episode sponsored by eBottlesThis episode of Highly Enlightened is made possible by eBottles. If you’re in the cannabis business, you know that quality packaging isn’t just important—it’s essential. That’s where eBottles comes in. Whether you’re just starting out or scaling up, eBottles offers proprietary top-of-the-line packaging products built for cannabis. eBottles is a market leader for a good reason: they are experts in the field. Six patents, five warehouse locations around the country, a network of exceptional distributors. Get eBottles and Grow Boldly.
Read the Transcript:Note: this transcript was automatically generated and may contain errors.
Jon Purow:
Welcome to an interview episode of Highly Enlightened, I’m your host, John Purow. Now, before we get to a very, very exciting interview, I want to note that any views I express are my own now as I always like to do, and most of the time it’s successful. I want to do a quick prayer to the video chat. Gods may. Our wifi connections be sturdy. All dogs and children, they’re around remain quiet and may Amazon Prime another time. Amen. Now I have the pleasure of introducing Brian Gerber, the CEO of HARA Supply, a major player here in the industry. And I just want to first say thank you for taking the time out of your busy schedule to join me for this joint endeavor, pun intended.
Bryan Gerber:
Thanks for having me on, John. I appreciate it. Looking forward to chatting about the industry today.
Jon Purow:
Yes. And for those unfamiliar, I do just want to note that Harris Supply is the largest manufacturer of cannabis cones and combustibles in the world. And you produce a hundred million plus cones monthly, which means that you produce over a billion per year. Which leads me to my first always incredibly serious question. Do you enjoy being able to say that you sell 1 billion items per year? Because that is an amazingly large round number. Is there any enjoyment that you get in being able to say it, and do you do it with accents or impersonations?
Bryan Gerber:
I reserve the doctor evil impersonation for my closest confidants, but no, it is pretty cool to say that we produce over a billion cones a year and products alike. I think a lot of people don’t realize the scale of millions, two billions and what type of infrastructure and setup that really entails.
Jon Purow:
Got it. So look, all of us came from somewhere before the cannabis industry being the age that it is. So I’m curious to know, out of all the experiences that you went through, skills that you built up prior to the cannabis industry, which did you think has been most instrumental or useful in your leadership role at Harris Supply?
Bryan Gerber:
So I’m one of the fortunate ones that never had a career before this industry. I graduated to university and then went straight into the startup world. But I can tell you persistence and tenacity.
Jon Purow:
Yes. As a parent of girls, I read all my self-improvement articles. They always say that if there’s going to be a determination of success and or happiness, persistence, stick to itness is what you want to roll with so much, right. If at first you don’t succeed, try again. Or if at first you don’t succeed, get high again. Right. There’s got to be some pop pun option that we could come to, so. Got it. So you are one of the lucky few that was born straight into this industry professionally and we’re able to kind of succeed with it. So now being a leader and in the lofty perch, the pop perch that you’ve reached, what advice would you give to other leaders in the cannabis industry? What tips would you put out there?
Bryan Gerber:
Yeah, so in terms of startup world culture, I think the bootstrapping and cash management is a major topic and something that I think a lot of startups that I invest in or do angel investing in, I just preach all day. Cash is king. Focus on managing the cash, lower the burn as fast as possible and try to get to cashflow positive. I think that’s definitely one of the biggest ones because it’s necessary to keep alive and keep the lights on. And I think a lot of people in our industry thought that it was going to kind of be big tech where we can raise unlimited funds and keep going and burn this guy to rob Paul, to pay Peter to pay Sally to that type of thing. So I think that’s definitely a big thing. And I think a lot of other things that I say revolve around finding revenue streams.
Go figure it out. I think a lot of new industries, there’s a lot of rocks that go unturned, and I say turnover every rock because you never know what pot of gold might be under that. And I think for us as horror supply kind of morphing from the paraphernalia, smoking accessories world to getting into this massive pre-roll solutions partner behemoth company, it really showed that we started in one lane and then figured out many more revenue streams to keep the business growing. And I think now looking back, hindsight bias, obviously 2020, I think to really build a big business, you need multiple revenue streams.
Jon Purow:
So look, you stick in a lane, but I think flexibility and also as you said, the vision to expand as you are growing, to continue having money coming in the door. Yeah. I found it funny the way that you were saying cash is king. People might forget that, and there’s plenty of attrition in the industry that we see all the time in terms of people who forget fundamental items like that.
Bryan Gerber:
Yes. I get surprised every day hearing a new story about took money, bought a Ferrari, bought an apartment. I’m like, why can’t I be like that?
Jon Purow:
Well, you could be like that now because you’ve earned the right to be right, but not, it’s not necessarily a requirement. Ferrari, I would say for most startup companies if I’m correct, since I’m just on the service industry side of it. But yeah, I don’t think it’s a requirement.
Bryan Gerber:
Exactly.
Jon Purow:
Yeah, I always have little things pop in my brain. By the way, here’s a slogan for you. We supply what gets you high. There you go. Boom. All right. That’s a freebie for you. I’m sure you have something like that. Now in your time in the industry, what would you say that I always like to focus on? What are some of the biggest surprises at this point? It’s not surprising, as you said, when you hear stories about wonderful ways that people have crashed and burned outside the industry. But what are some of the biggest surprises to you from where you
Bryan Gerber:
Sit? Yeah, for sure. I think one of the biggest surprises, not just from poor leadership that I see in the industry, but the turnover is insane. I mean, the roles get replaced every other week, especially on our side of the business development. You’re sitting there for 90 days going through custom sampling, tooling, all different types of stuff, and you get to the finish line where we’re about to go put the order in and that person gets fired and you’re like, oh no. Okay, now I got it. And then Sally picks it up and she’s like, I have no idea why we’re even here today. I’m like, well, we were working with Joey for nine months and Joey’s no longer there. So Sally, you’re here picking up the pieces. Let me kind of break it down for you. So I think turnover has been one of the biggest pain in the butts in this industry and surprises, another surprise is just how much people can raise and spend in a very short amount of time.
It’s quite intriguing, I guess I’ve seen it. We do a lot of the big MSOs, we deal with a lot of the processors, and I think just some of these guys are able to just continuously raise funds and keep raising and it’s like, where’s the light at the end of the tunnel? For us, we raised three and a half million dollars back in 2018, 2019, and we’ve been cashflow positive since. And so for us it’s a different kind of story of where we didn’t go out and raise tens of millions of dollars, hundreds of millions of dollars. So I think that’s another one is doing a lot with a little bit. And a lot of people seem to have a lot and can’t figure out how to do a little you. But I would say those are probably the two biggest surprises that I’ve come across in this industry.
Jon Purow:
Are there processes that you put into place to streamline having to deal with someone new outside of forwarding the old email chain? Is there anything you’ve done to get accustomed to the fact that there is such frequent turnover?
Bryan Gerber:
I’ve really tried nurturing C-suite relationships so that regardless who ends up becoming the buyer or the supply chain person I’m friendly with, the person at the top
Jon Purow:
Has seemed to. And I think that that touches upon something. There is something in my mind completely unique about how collegial the cannabis industry is, and I’ve always tried to put my finger on it. And I don’t know if it comes all the way back to the puff puff past mentality that sharing is ingrained as part of the culture, but I’m curious to know if you agree, right, and how important relationships can be in this industry.
Bryan Gerber:
Yeah, no, I think this goes back to my early days of being an entrepreneur where everyone’s like, oh, I need you to sign an NDA to talk to you, or if I give you my idea, then you’re just going to steal it from here. And I realized if you sit in a room by yourself telling yourself your own ideas, it never helps anyone or yourself. And so this industry specifically, I feel like when you get into a C-suite room, people are talking about what’s working, what’s not working, what have you guys tried, whatever else. But I think a lot of that core initial gray market guys are still very close to the chest. They don’t share resources or secrets or whatever it is. But I think a lot of the companies that we sit with where we’re like, they’re like, well, we want to implement automation. And we say, well, great, we know Festus, we know pre-roll or we know accelerant, we know all these guys. Here’s all the offerings, here’s all the information. Do with what you will. I’m not here to make the decision for you, but I can offer optionality. And so I think that’s been a lot of the side where, to your point, the pup past. But I think it’s the specific rooms are willing to communicate, but I don’t think it’s the whole market is ready to open up the Komodo and say, this is how we do it.
Jon Purow:
Yeah, I like to say there’s a difference between the can tenderers and the pret pretenders. And to a certain extent, I feel like people who are newer to the industry don’t understand that collegiality exists and are therefore more skeptical. And some of these folks that are coming in from the illicit market, they’re used to being cloak and dagger can a cloak and dagger in the illicit market. And so it’s a process before they realize that they can open up and there are things that happen, but I think in general there’s just something unique about this industry in terms of that. By the way, how much do you, so first off, as I always like to say, my favorite pop pun being a Jewish guy Mar Wof on having one raise and then being able to just continuously expand to where you are. Do you think that that’s a function of being the pick axis in the industry versus plant touching when it comes down to it that partially played how that played out?
Bryan Gerber:
So I think on first off, why raise more money than you need? You’re just going to dilute yourself. And so that’s 1 0 1 for founders, but at this point, we’re the original founders still own majority equity. We control the board, we’re fully autonomous. We basically get to wake up and work with our best friends every day. So it’s a different setup than I think a lot of people get themselves into, which is a loan to own set up with a lot of these companies and they don’t realize what they’re signing on or they’re signing away. And when one thing goes wrong, we’re coming in, you’re out and we’re going to restructure this thing. For us, we feel like we’re the experts, we know how to drive the ship properly. And I feel like if I got replaced or my other co-founders got replaced, I don’t even know if the company would survive.
So for us, I think on the picks and shovels side, of course I’d love to see a he pre-roll on the shelf one day. But for us, I realized that the customers are the MSOs. It’s an input play. If you’re selling them cones, okay, let’s go to tubes next, let’s go to Blunts, let’s go to glass tip cones, whatever the input is, it’s really just create a great service, have great customer service, deliver time and time again, people will keep coming back. And there’s been so many, getting back to that, finding revenue opportunities is a lot of our customers come to us and say, Hey, you guys did so great with this, can you do this? And we figure out how to do it for them. And so I think a lot of people are just tired of getting burned and the turnover and dealing with multiple different supply chain sources and not really having a centralized location or someone they can actually trust that can deliver. Because before us, I’ll give you an example, Jeter Dream Fields, their first orders with us were like 10,000 cones. You see the volume Jeter does today. And so it’s nurturing the customer whether they’re at the start or the end, and we can come in no matter what part of the journey you’re on, and really fix issues or solidify that infrastructure and get you exactly what you need when you need it.
Jon Purow:
Got it. So now one thing that you touched upon is that you are also, in terms of another hat that you wear, a high hat, oh man, I got to restrain it. The pop puns are just always trying to spill out, but you’re also the CEO and founder of Howard Brands and you referenced Hemper. So if you could just give us a little bit of an intro to that, I think that might be helpful for the audience
Bryan Gerber:
For sure. So I’ll do long story short. So company started in 2015 originally on the smoking accessory side, which we started a brand called Hemper, which was a direct to consumer subscription box, kind of like Dollar Shave Club for stoners.
And we morphed that into kind of this celebrity curated box where it was like smoke like Snoop Dogg for a month, about a year and a half doing that. We kind got away from the celebrities and started moving more into our own proprietary themed and we realized that the subscription box was our Trojan horse marketing outlet for developing new smoking accessories. And so what we figured out was that this was our paid test market for us to go design, develop, and implement new products that made your ritual better. And so Hemper has now become an international brand. We’re sold in about 55 countries. We’ve serviced over 2 million customers in the last decade. We’ve got one of the largest social media followings and we’ve got over 500 different products that we’ve developed. And so with Hemper, a lot of the new initiatives for growth have been getting smoking accessories into convenience stores.
So like Mass Market seven 11, circle K, we’ve been doing a lot of international shows. I was telling you before we were at the Mary Jane Berlin, which ended up being like 50,000 consumers and B2B, B2C focused folks from Germany and all the surrounding countries. And so there’s a lot going on internationally. Germany went legal, we’re going to Czech Republic for another show here in a couple months, which they’re probably going to be the next country to go more fully legal. And so I think that domino effect has really rebirth Europe, I think not just, oh, look at what’s going on in North America. It’s legal here. I think now Europe is starting that domino effect for where we kind of picked up a lot of steam over the last five years.
Jon Purow:
Yeah, I mean as I like to say, you have a trailblazer in each geographic region, which is unfortunately why one reason what’s happening in Thailand is where they legalize and then exploded and they’re pulling back is something that I feel is almost like I say, like a golden nugget, not getting enough attention that it could be, that’s not something that’s really happened in the industry before.
Bryan Gerber:
I dunno if you saw today or yesterday the prime Minister got kicked out.
Jon Purow:
Well, no. So thank you for breaking news. I live in my cannabis bubble and I had not checked my podcast news aggregator so hot off the presses whenever we release this interview. I mean, I actually no lukewarm off the presses to possibly a little bit cooler off the presses, but interesting. I did not see that. So that could be an interesting change in the winds there.
Bryan Gerber:
We have a lot of customers in Thailand and they basically told us that now that he’s, so he got kicked out for fraud or something, so now, and he was the one opposing all the cannabis laws, and so now they think it’s going to go back to normal or even be more prolific. And so a lot of our customers, there’re actually ordering now so that in Anticip they’ll have it on hand.
Jon Purow:
Got it. That’s very, very cool. The thing, the overarching thing for me is I feel like ultimately convenience wins. I feel like it’s how Amazon won and I feel like we see as the different sectors looking at the data, how things grow, things like pre-rolls and everything. Do you feel that convenience wins out in cannabis? And that’s, I mean look, you talk about convenience in terms of people being able to come to you at any time and get what they want and to also even when that includes innovation. But I’m curious to know your thoughts about trends towards convenience and how you guys cater to that.
Bryan Gerber:
Yeah, definitely. So on the convenience side, obviously just taking apart the pre-roll category, I think it’s 10 to 15% here roughly. It’s roughly closer to 20% in Canada. And I think what, just taking from the tobacco cigarette industry, that is the most convenient method for consuming tobacco. I think the pre-roll segment is developing at a rapid pace now than previous. It was. I think that’s from a lot more automation in play, availability of cones and providers like myself, our supply, more solutions, partner approaches as well. I think a lot of these companies are trying to get away from the monkey see monkey do act and try and come out their own unique innovative products. And our pitch is really, Hey, let us help you figure out what your Coca-Cola is. We know you don’t know what it is yet, but we’ll walk down the path with you.
And so I think on the convenience factor, the rise of multi-packs is kind of the new 30 rack when we were in college or high school. It’s like I want to go hang out with my buddies. I’m bringing 14 joints with me. It’s all in one pack and I don’t have to figure out who’s smoking what. Everyone gets their own. And especially post covid era, that’s what’s been happening a lot more. Point two five, 0.35 gram joints, you show up with 5, 10, 15 of them and all your buddies get to smoke their own. And I think the micro consumption methods are becoming way more prevalent now. And I think that whole can of curious world is definitely exponentially increasing. So I think the people that want 0.15 or 10 times a day are now coming out more because of the availability of the products. And the people that want to smoke one gram once a day aren’t really the customer anymore. And so now we’re appealing to obviously GTI one of our large clients, they’ve got the dog walkers brand, which is very popular. And I think that’s kind of what the future is for consumption and convenience is really just these, what is the 10 pack, what is the 14 pack? So I can interchange strains, but the mode and the medium is still that microdose joint.
Jon Purow:
I think that raises an interesting question. So we’re talking about, so it’s interesting, right? There are certainly when we talk about the kind of curious, there are folks who are going to put their foot down and they’re never going to smoke or anything like that. However, that begins to shift. And it’s interesting, we’re talking about the puff puff pass mentality and in a post covid world, there’s a movement, something like that, that everyone gets their individualized thing. And the joint experience, pun always intended is that everyone’s sitting having their own joint. And so as you’re saying, the counter curious could get a little bit more open to smoking when what they’re smoking is getting smaller and smaller. And it’s also funny because when you’re passing around something that’s big, you’re only having a certain little amount, but it’s very, very different when you’re actually just holding something tinier psychologically that people who wouldn’t necessarily smoke previously might be open to doing. So when they see, oh, I’m not going to get that messed up, it’s only this little thing I’m in control entirely of how much I’m smoking of it.
Bryan Gerber:
And I think another factor is just the taste and flavor profile of a smaller pre-roll, right? You’re getting better flavor. Most of the hits to get to the finish line are fresh hits. When you’re smoking a one gram joint, you’re smoking this thing, but by 25% of the way through it kind of just tastes like shit. And a lot of people want to move on and I get why. Right? So the rise of this multi-pack micro dose 0.25, I’ve seen all the way down to 1.5 gram joint. We do a brand called Piners up in Canada, tiniest, it’s more paper than cannabis.
Jon Purow:
The podcast proud to be sponsored by Ebos. If you’re in the cannabis business, that quality packaging isn’t just important. It’s essential. That’s where Ebos comes in, whether you’re just starting out or scaling up. Ebos offers proprietary top of the line packaging products built for cannabis. Ebos is the market leader for a good reason. They’re experts in the field, six patents, five warehouse locations around the country and a network of exceptional distributors. So get ebos and grow boldly. Got it. I just came up with bitty blunts, right? There’s a mini blunt brand name right there that we could throw out there. So I’m also curious to know in terms of the innovation that you’re seeing are people, and we have the for the curious, there’s catering and other product categories that ties to effects based. Are you seeing different things in terms of what’s being mixed in terms of effects based and that’s another place of innovation or not necessarily as much?
Bryan Gerber:
Yeah, no. On the pre-roll side for innovation, I would say connoisseur fused market really has taken off over the last few years. I think people realize that adding in a little bit of whether it’s water hash rosin, I’m not the fan of Keith, whatever it is, really does pack that punch, right? And I think for the consumer that’s looking for more of a higher THC level that does get that across for them when they’d have to smoke two or three regular joints to really get the same feeling. And then I think another trend that’s been coming up is more premium. So ceramic filter tips on it, glass filter tips, wood filter tips, those types of things, which we’ve been really dishing out to a lot of companies recently. And also on the not tobacco alternative, but a hemp blunt as well. So we do a product for Eazy called the Eazy forties, which is like a glass tip hemp blunt, and people love it. It smokes awesome. The glass tip is a really elevated experience and to ceramic and glass, the touch is cool. So as you’re smoking it actually feels cooler than it is smoking a regular joint with a paper filter tip.
Jon Purow:
Yes, having experienced it firsthand is completely different and better my opinion in terms of that aspect of it. So that’s I think a great insight. Are there other types of innovation that you’re seeing in other categories that you touch upon in anything? So by the way, just to be clear in terms of the premium that you’re saying that comes down to the plant that’s going into it, that this what a limited release kind of vibe of a specific strain is what you’re referring to with that one.
Bryan Gerber:
I think as consistently growing cannabis, the same strain all the time is very difficult. I know it doesn’t exist actually. Exactly. So I think that a lot of companies are trying to get that across where I can have my cookie strain all the time. It’s the same levels, it’s the same. TURP profiles doesn’t really exist. So I think a lot of these brands, and this could just be kind of a marking ploy. When I was living in California, Lowell Farms used to do these limited edition packs and my business partner would be like, dude, that’s just excess inventory that they put into a multi-pack that’s not limited edition. They didn’t have enough cannabis to fill all these packs as this one strain. So they did a multi-strain box. And I’m thinking as the consumer, wow, this is really cool. I get one strain times 10, I get 10 different strains in this box, that’s really cool.
And I’m basically drinking the Kool-Aid on the marketing. And so you don’t really know whether it was purposeful or they were fixing a problem or things like that. But in terms of innovation, I think in other categories, I think really fast onset edibles are really important because I think the time delay one confuses consumer. I don’t know how to operate whether can I get out of my chair yet or is the ride about a start? And so I think the two milligram or the five milligram little mince or whatever, I think 1907 or 19 33, 1 of those companies does it pretty well.
Jon Purow:
1906,
Bryan Gerber:
Yeah, 1906. Yeah. And so that I think is really important because I think people get overdosed on edibles really quickly and they don’t realize the onsets coming and they don’t know when. So I think,
Yeah, so n emulsification, all that type of stuff is really important and I think that’s why people go towards edibles. And the more microdose side is because it’s more controllable. And I know that I’m not going to get obliterated today, but in terms of bulk flour, I mean there’s not much innovation besides crazy looking bags on vape carts. I think that’s still very much a repurposed market. I don’t think anyone has really developed new technology that really takes it to the next level. I saw recently a company came out with a disposable rosin device where you can put maybe 0.25 of rosin in it. But I was looking at the device and as a rozen user myself, I was like, okay, if I reheat that pen twice, I’m smoking poop like dirt basically, right? Terpenes are burnt off by then I’m not getting any flavor and it kind of tastes like shit. So I think a lot of the innovation has still escaped this market, but I think a lot of the nerdy science cannabis guys are figuring out if we tweak this, we can get a better plan and maybe better genetics or we can get rid of some of the bad parts of this plan through tissue cultures and that type of innovation. But I think in terms of the end product, people are still trying to figure it out,
Jon Purow:
Agree. And I do respect the good marketing thing and no matter how it’s motivated, he said as he took his sip out of a Stanley Cup that one of his daughters bought rather than a construction worker. There we go. Actually, I want to go back to the innovation thing because I was impressed by something you said that a lot of people are focused on it or having their own, I guess, customized, right? I’m curious to know in terms of the folks that are looking for those, and you said Hemper was this amazing almost market research tool, you’re up to offering 500 different products. Is there a demographic that you see the people who want customization or the people who want innovation? Is it the big folks? Is it the brand new folks trying to establish a foothold that are actually thinking ahead? I’m curious to know how that breaks down.
Bryan Gerber:
So from an MSO perspective, I think they’re just trying to get the wheels turning in a consistent manner. I don’t think they’re trying to complicate their business any more than it already is. So when we pitch innovation on the pre-roll side to them, they kind of don’t know what to do with it yet. And I’d have to fight really hard to get this across the table. When you look at more of those SSO operators that are going into more of the key strategic markets that are brand focused, they’re the ones that are looking for the innovation, right? Because I think those are owned by more of the heady owners or kind of the old school cannabis 1.0 guys. And I think that they’re the ones looking for the innovation. I think the MSOs are just looking to create a quality product that’s really consistent and it’s on the shelf all the time, which is kind of the Walmart method and guys like Jeter and Sneezy and those brands are really truly looking for the innovation. And I think that’s what’s going to keep the social proof aspects of them being more popular than another MSO brand is that kind of grassroots like, oh, we’re developing new stuff or we got these new strain flavors or new terpene profiles or whatever it is. So I think those are the guys that are looking for it. I think the are really just looking to stay consistent, have product available and fix all their issues.
Jon Purow:
Yeah, no, and I think that that makes sense because there’s so many brands there. Everyone is trying to be the national brands, arguably only one has crossed over at this point. And so if you’re competing in this kind of stoner slaughterhouse of brands, innovation is one path. Marketing is another path to differentiating yourself. So it makes sense, as you said, right? They’re not trying to be the Walmart, they’re trying to stick out and last. So I think that that makes a lot of sense. Now, I always like to geek out, I’m trying to be the Dan historic, the most ganja geek that, and I always like to ask my interviewees who have access to different types of data, what are surprises that you see in the data? What are trends that you are seeing that you’re comfortable sharing from your position in the industry?
Bryan Gerber:
One thing that continuously surprises me is how much distillate cartridges are sold in this country. I don’t know who’s using them. I mean I know who’s using them, but I mean it’s like poop soup and a cartridge. And there’s companies that are doing 2, 3, 4, 500 million a year selling distillate in carts or vapes or whatever. And I just don’t understand it. I don’t think consumers really understand it, what they’re smoking. And even in markets like Nevada where we’re using remediation tactics to get rid of microbials and heavy metals and all this stuff, and we’re reintroducing it back into the market in edibles and carts and cards and it’s like something doesn’t sound all right here, but yeah, one of the biggest ones is how much distillate product is sold in this country.
Jon Purow:
Sorry, I didn’t mean to interrupt, but I agree with you. It’s when you’re dealing with the end consumer, we speak this language so well, having been in it so long that everything just becomes secondhand. And yet when interacting with people out there and trying to tell them about the difference between hemp products and state licensed products, they have no idea. The question I get more than anything for consumers is why can I buy that in a gas station? And it just shows that there’s this level of not knowing that is surprising. And I just think that that’s a function of familiarity to a certain extent. The people like us who are constantly dealing with this, and it’s like the same thing where you’re talking and you use acronyms with an assumption that people are going to understand and there’s that base level of standing that sometimes isn’t there. Not to say that we were doing that at all in this conversation, but it’s just an example of how you literally start speaking a specific language with baseline knowledge. And it’s crazy when you see that people are just, the major consumers out there are not anywhere near that level of understanding
Bryan Gerber:
The whole trend that’s been going on in our country about don’t use seed oils anymore. That’s basically distillate people
Jon Purow:
We’re pulling back the layer. We just did a maram Uck raking thing, right? Brian’s news flash, right? So all consumers out there,
Bryan Gerber:
And I think to your point about the D eight stuff that’s going on, I think that’s a big conversation that I was having at Benzinga about six months ago was the dispensaries. I don’t know if they even realize if they don’t have their merchandising proper, they don’t have product on the shelves, they’re losing the sale to the smoke shop around the corner or the gas station around the corner where I can get my snack, my $5 delta, I can get my $5 cart from there, I can get my drinks and I can get all my accessories. And I think that MSOs are losing a lot of business to these gas station, the hemp market, hemp drive market, but I don’t think consumers really realize what they’re even inhaling or consuming. I think the FDA has done a shit job at figuring out how to really regulate this and stop this and the DA and the A TF and all these guys that are claiming they’re pulling stuff off the shelves.
I really don’t think they are. And I think it’s just kind of like, well, it’s kind of happening so we can’t enforce it. We don’t have enough manpower. But it’s like you probably do, but you choose not to. And I think a lot of these companies, when I’m pitching merchandising programs to MSOs and they’re like, well, it’s not really a focus. I’m like, well, is it losing more business to the guy around the corner that’s selling the D eight, the smoke shop and the snack at the same time? Because to convince a dispensary chain why seven 11 has a Slurpee machine and why they have cups and straws is a hard conversation to get through.
Jon Purow:
I never forget, one of the pieces of law school that I go back to the most is it’s not one thing to just make the law. It’s another thing to enforce it. And I mean frankly, look at the, I think it comes down to a certain extent, like a variation on degree. The fact that cannabis doesn’t kill people comes in very handy when the DEA has to make a choice. Fentanyl enforcement and enforcement against some of these cannabinoids. I remember the Delta eight joint F-D-A-C-D-C thing. What did they say? 646 people went to the hospital and then they were fine. And so I think that that almost plays to our advantage. But this is also in your role here. I mean, you’re selling picks and shovels to state license and hemp folks, right? I mean you have hemper, right? And so you get to occupy a position where there’s no choosing size or anything. You’re catering to whatever vehicle it is that people are getting and you actually have an insight into the relative size of the markets. Also is one interesting point I would say with where you are occupying the industry.
Bryan Gerber:
Definitely. Yeah. No, we see it going to a champs trade show. If you look at the show floor, I mean there’s so many D eight hemp derived THCA brands, you would think that it was legal and normal and totally cool. Yeah, and I think what’s really shitty is now I guess they’re finding with the whole amanita gummies and all these crazy gummy product or mushroom products that it’s actually like synthetic DMT and all these crazy other synthetic drugs and it’s just like what is going on? What happened to just smoking good old fashioned cannabis
Jon Purow:
The way that you delivered that line sounded a little bit esque. That was even like, I appreciated that for some reason it almost got draw and it rose above for that reason for me had to say that. So look, as a success story in terms of expanding from the three co-founders to now over 2000 employees, what are the next steps that you see in terms of growing the company, right? I mean we talked about expanding into different product lines. What are that or regions? I mean you touched upon, where do you see growth coming in the next couple steps?
Bryan Gerber:
Definitely. So one of our big initiatives has been getting the reliance of this industry off of China and moving things outside of that. So we’ve been investing heavily in India and the infrastructure that we have over there. And so we’ve been pulling, obviously we did cones out of there, we’re doing glass out of there now. We just started our own injection mold facilities. So we’re actually doing packaging now out of India. And so definitely getting away from the tariff issues and all those extra expenses that a lot of the packaging companies put on the customers nowadays, you don’t get that working with us because we’re pulling it out of a different country. So definitely that. And I think in terms of the domestic market merchandising and helping figure out these dispensary chains, how to successfully bring accessories in and sell them to your customers, I think people need to realize that your customer that’s coming to buy their eighth for the week does not care about a t-shirt or a lanyard anymore.
It just doesn’t work. It hasn’t worked. It never worked. It isn’t going to work. And everyone’s focused on, oh, well it’s only 1% of our total top line revenue. Well, it’s like a self-fulfilling prophecy. If you don’t focus on it, it’s going to stay at 1%. And so I think showing them that it can be 5% of your total top line and here’s your path to that and we’re going to help in terms of distribution and making sure all the shelter stocked and here’s your merchandising program, here’s your planogram. Here’s all these things that traditional retailers focus on that we just somehow can’t figure out in this industry. So helping them figure that part out. And then definitely international, right? That’s been massive for us in terms of just getting out there. Like I said, we were in Germany, we were in Spain for cannabis. I mean, it’s so ingrained in the culture there. It’s just a matter of time where once it goes fully legal, it’s already there. It’s the infrastructure, the farms, everything is already there. It’s really just like can the governments and the parliament and all these prime ministers get their act together and realize it’s the undertones been there, just let’s bring it out.
Jon Purow:
Yeah. There’s no issue like this where say in the US you have 70% support. And when you see the polls in Europe, like Italy, very, very conservative country in certain respects, the polls are crazy in terms of being in favor of it. And yet crossing the finish line becomes so difficult because of what I’m still calling though. I don’t love the pop pun marijuana, no betters, right? That it’s just there’s that puritanical roots that whether it’s from the Pope himself or whatever it is in Italy, that it’s just like it’s difficult. We a universe, we need a worldwide ballot initiative, is what I think we need, is that the people in the world can be like, Hey, governments of the world, 70% of us are down for this. This drug is less harmful than alcohol. Why don’t we try it? So I always like to wrap up by the way, but I never can decide what I want to call it. So please, I do want your vote. Right. So now Brian, I want you to be either Toker dus or smoker Domus and let us know which one you like. You are putting on your wizard hat in the stylized like a joint, right? Throw out anything that you foresee on a macro micro level on a near far term basis for the industry. Just throw out some thoughts.
Bryan Gerber:
I have to pick whether I’m toker, dus, or smoker.
Jon Purow:
That’s the most important part of the question. I’m kidding
Bryan Gerber:
With Tous. And in terms of foresee in terms of macro, micro level, good question.
Jon Purow:
Just anything it pops in your brain box.
Bryan Gerber:
I think everyone is fooling themselves on phal legalization and the timeline. I keep saying this time and time again, there is no way federal government can play friendly with the states by increasing more taxes.
Jon Purow:
Do you think that the progress that’s made on the hemp side is like a form of stealth federal legalization? I mean we have hemp D nine beverages being sold in major alcohol chains at this point.
Bryan Gerber:
I know everyone’s pissed off at total wine. I think it’s letting the big boys play in the gray. I don’t think it’s doing much.
Jon Purow:
It doesn’t actually push us forward. You’re saying because it’s just, it’s risk appetite that people are wandering out there when we realize at any point, hey, the next farm bill could come along and all that could be put back in the bottle with potentially good reason considering the lack of regulation and some of these cannabinoids. So I think that’s your take on that. Yes. Okay. Any quick closing thoughts? I don’t want to run over too much and infringe on your time and you’ve been so giving with it.
Bryan Gerber:
If you need to contact us for any reason, our supply, we’re the premier solutions partner for the pre-roll category. We’re here to help whether we do it or not.
Jon Purow:
Alright. They’ll do it if they can. Exactly. That’s how they got to where they are. So look, Brian, I just want to say I thought that that was fascinating and I really, really appreciate your taking the time. Thank you so much, sir, for joining.
Bryan Gerber:
Thank you, John. Appreciate you having me on today.
Insurance is a crucial yet often overlooked pillar of the cannabis and psychedelic industries. As businesses navigate complex regulations, raise capital, and manage risk, securing proper coverage can make the difference between success and failure. In this episode of the Ganjapreneur Podcast, Joe Ziolkowski, CEO and founder of Relm Insurance, shares insights on the unique challenges cannabis and psychedelic companies face in the insurance market. With a background in alternative risk transfer and a focus on emerging industries, Joe has built Relm into a forward-thinking insurance provider willing to cover businesses that traditional insurers avoid.
From the impact of federal policy changes to the role of radical transparency in securing investment, this conversation sheds light on a side of the industry few talk about—but all businesses need to understand. Listen to the episode below, or scroll down for the full transcript!
Listen to the episode:Ganjapreneur · Joseph Ziolkowski: Navigating Insurance, Regulation & Risk in Cannabis
Read the transcript:Editor’s note: this transcript was generated automatically and may contain errors.
TG Branfalt:
Hey there, I’m your host, TG Branfalt, and this is the ganjapreneur.com podcast where we try to bring you actionable information and normalized cannabis through the stories of ganjapreneurs, activists and industry stakeholders. Today I’m joined by Joe Ziolkowski. He’s the CEO and founder of Relm Insurance, which offers insurance for the cannabis and psychedelic industries. How are we doing this afternoon, Joe?
Joe Ziolkowski:
Awesome, TG, thanks so much for having me. Great to be here.
TG Branfalt:
I’m real stoked to get into what you do because I think it’s a very underlooked sort of portion of both the cannabis and emergent psychedelic industries. But before we get to that, man, tell me about yourself. How’d you end up serving the cannabis and psychedelic industries? How’d you get involved in insurance? Tell me the story, man.
Joe Ziolkowski:
Yeah, I mean, I’ll give you the quick and dirty version of it. Ultimately, I’ve been in the insurance industry for about 15 years, and fortunately I came into the insurance industry through, in hindsight, a specialized niche of the global insurance industry. I came into the insurance industry focusing on the alternative risk transfer side of the business. So without going too far into the details, the traditional insurance industry is massive. It’s global. It accounts for trillions of dollars of capital sitting on balance sheets of some of the biggest companies in the world. It accounts for trillions of dollars of premium that are paid by companies in 180 plus different countries. And the traditional insurance market encompasses a lot of traditional companies doing traditional things that yield traditional types of risks. But there are a portfolio of exposures and products that are very non-standard, and a lot of the companies that are looking for solutions or conclusions that just aren’t possible to achieve through the traditional insurance marketplace will turn to what’s called the alternative risk transfer sector, or this alternative aspect of the insurance and reinsurance industry where bespoke products are developed, capacity is created with, let’s say third party investor, capital insurance infrastructure and reinsurance infrastructure is set up to solve very specific and tailored problems.
And if you look at the Fortune 1000, 90% of those companies are accessing products and solutions through the alternative insurance and reinsurance marketplace. And so that’s where I came into the insurance industry really in what I think is probably the most stimulating entry point to an industry that’s considered so boring and opaque by so many others. And I spent eight years just going through solution after solution and product development initiative after product development initiative, really getting I think a unique and super interesting perspective on how this industry works.
TG Branfalt:
So what drew you to it initially?
Joe Ziolkowski:
Yeah, I mean, I had a finance background and I was working for a real estate development company that needed an alternative solution to some of the bonding performance and payment bonding that they were required to secure for some of the projects they were working on. And I got exposure to the execution of this type of solution where they were essentially self-insuring, right, utilizing insurance infrastructure that they owned and controlled to finance those risks in a way that enabled them to keep a portion of the risk on their own kind of affiliated balance sheet and then access reinsurance on a wholesale basis. So the idea ultimately is instead of paying premium to an insurance company that you have no control over, no affiliation with, and you continue to do that year after year after year without filing any claims, that third party insurance company gets to keep the premium and all of the retained profits. In the alternative sense. You could use some of your own insurance or reinsurance infrastructure to retain some of those profits and investment income that would otherwise be kept by some insurance company you don’t own or control. And so I got exposure to that and realized how prevalent this type of solution is for a very specific set of companies doing some of the most sophisticated things in the world and then found myself in the insurance business.
TG Branfalt:
So this is obviously a, could we call it non-traditional sort of insurance? Absolutely. So how is this sort of a non-traditional model ensuring non-traditional businesses such as cannabis and psychedelics?
Joe Ziolkowski:
Well, so I think when you look at the types of risks or the types of companies that approach these non-standard solutions, they are companies in some instances, they’re companies doing new things. If you think about the way that the insurance industry works, it is a backwards looking industry by design. It takes a whole bunch of historical data about a particular type of loss, and it models that data millions of times to effectively predict the future. It’s taking all those historical loss incidences and forecasting the anticipated future frequency and severity of that similar type of loss happening under similar sets of circumstances. And so when you have that historical perspective of a lot of data, it puts the insurance industry in a position better than most industries to actually predict the future. But when you lack that historical data, when you’ve lacked that historical perspective, the insurance industry almost seizes it, right?
It almost can’t put forward a product at a premium that they can stand up in front of regulators and say, with a high confidence level, this premium is going to be adequate relative to anticipated loss because they have no historical data on which to base that prediction. And so regulators essentially put the kibosh on traditional insurance companies trying to come into market for solutions related to new things. And it’s one of the challenges of being an innovator. It’s one of the challenges of pushing the boundaries in even a traditional industry is that when it comes to seeking insurance, which is something that underlies the bedrock of any sustainable industry, accessibility to insurance is a hallmark of a sustainable industry. If you can’t access that coverage, it is literally an impediment to your business model. And unfortunately, a lot of companies who’ve been operating in the cannabis space for the last decade have been running into brick walls trying to find a line capacity that’s going to enable them to raise rounds of funding, get regulated, satisfy insurance requirements in different sorts of contracts, et cetera. So it’s a major challenge for any new industry to find these types of insurance or reinsurance solutions.
TG Branfalt:
So now, are there differences, let’s say, between insurance for a business that touches the plant like cultivators and that sort of thing versus one in the industry that may not?
Joe Ziolkowski:
Yeah, yeah, definitely. Right. And so I think when you look at where I came into the insurance industry and where we’re at today with Realm, it was really kind of this transition of setting up these bespoke insurance or reinsurance solutions for individual companies gaining an understanding of what the insurance industry does really well and understanding what the insurance industry doesn’t do particularly well. And if you’re going to try to maybe compete isn’t the best way to describe it, but if you’re going to try to bring a value proposition to a market as big and as deep and broad as the insurance industry on a global basis, you really have to find those sectors or areas where the insurance industry doesn’t function particularly well. So as I was kind of coming out of the alternative insurance and reinsurance space and looking to provide broader market solutions, it was really a function of saying, what are these sectors that are truly innovative, are emerging, and that I believe are going to be here for a long time?
Not trends that are going to pop up and disappear, but really innovative and emerging technologies or products and services that are going to likely fundamentally change the way that we interact or trade or consume or travel. And those are the industries that I want to focus on from a product and solution standpoint. And the idea ultimately was back in 2019, was to set up an insurance company that we had full ownership and control over that was really only focused on looking forward instead of looking backward. And so when we launched, after receiving our license from the Bermuda Monetary Authority in 2019, our entire strategy as a traditional insurance company was to focus on companies doing really innovative things and bring informed and dedicated insurance capacity and products to the market. So companies across the cannabis supply chain or early stage psychedelics companies looking at different ways of treating really important neurologic diseases could access the type of capacity that they ultimately need. And that’s really the genesis. And I would say the reason for our existence at Realm is to find these companies doing really interesting and important things, but are really inhibited by the slow moving nature of an industry that they didn’t even realize they need the support of in order to grow their business and scale it. Does that make sense?
TG Branfalt:
Yeah. What are some of the challenges when you’re approached by a company, when they’re talking about when they’re looking for your service, essentially, what are some of the challenges that they’re trying to figure out? What sort of roadblocks have been in their way and then they come to you? What do you typically hear? Sure.
Joe Ziolkowski:
Yeah. So when you look at companies operating in the cannabis space, it’s pretty varied, but one I think really important one is if you’re a private company looking to raise your first round of funding or you’re looking at bringing a physician partner onto your staff as a senior advisor, or you’re looking for an independent director to bring credibility to your business model, those individuals are typically bringing a really important professional reputation to the company, and very few of them are going to be inclined to serve in the absence of having directors and officers liability insurance. So if you look at something like directors and officers liability insurance, it exists to provide protection to the directors and officers of your company for doing things in their capacity as a director and officer. And in the absence of that coverage, if you get sued by a regulator, if you get sued by a competitor, if you get sued by a consumer and the individual directors and officers of your company are named, they’re personally liable for defense expenses and judgments that are ultimately levied against the company and them in their capacity. So when you look at companies trying to raise funding and advance clinical trials, it puts the company in a position to onboard really credible talent because it gives that talent a level of confidence and protection against the things that could go wrong in any company that’s pushing the boundaries. Does that make sense? So that’s directors and officers liability insurance, which is a really important coverage.
TG Branfalt:
It’s really interesting because that’s not something that I don’t think anyone listening would really think about is as sort of top line of one of the problems that faces the industry. Now, I get press releases quite frequently, and there’s often some sort of, there are insurance companies or are these sort of different people taking different angles? How can operators figure out what the best option is as far as insurance providers goes?
Joe Ziolkowski:
Yeah, I think one of the hallmarks of a business that is differentiating itself from its competitors in some of these innovative and emerging sectors like cannabis or psychedelics, is a company that actually has a perspective on risk management. It sounds really boring, and it sounds certainly not really sexy compared to a lot of cool stuff that’s happening in the cannabis and psychedelic space. But these companies are trying to build something sustainable. They’re trying to find something that is attractive to as a potential acquisition target, or they’re looking to build something that’s attractive from an investor perspective. And to your point, these entrepreneurs and these founders or these companies of early stage or growth stage companies are so focused on generating revenue and not really appropriately focused on the things that are going to enable them to ultimately scale their business. And when you look at risk management and you look at the important role that insurance plays in any single industry that’s been around for a long time, it is an enabler.
So the thing that I would recommend most to any company, regardless of their stage of existence, but particularly for early stage, is to find an insurance broker that has experience solving insurance related problems for companies operating in their industry sector. And I think in that respect, it’s important to create clarity between the two roles that need to be distinguished within the insurance placement process. You have brokers that work with these companies to understand their business and understand their kind of insurance related needs, and then the brokers go to the local and global insurance market to try to find an insurance carrier that has the capacity and products and willingness to actually take on the risk of insuring these types of companies. So realm is a risk taker, right? We are an insurance carrier that works through brokers who have clients operating across the cannabis or psychedelics ecosystem that need certain types of coverage. So the answer to your question ultimately is the first step is really as a owner or operator of a company in the cannabis or psychedelic space, find a great broker broker that understands your business and start engaging in transparent dialogue about how your company is positioned, the products and services you’re looking to put into the market. And that’s a really critical door opener to understanding how you should be thinking about insurance and risk management.
TG Branfalt:
So what about when you launched your company? I’m sure there weren’t a whole lot of brokers that knew you existed or there weren’t a whole lot of brokers working for cannabis industry companies. How did you sort of link up with them? How did you make those connections?
Joe Ziolkowski:
Yeah, so it’s really interesting because in an insurance market, as big as the global insurance market is what Realm offered was extremely unique. I mean, globally, I think I can sit here and say five years later, we were the only insurance company back in late 2019, early 2020 that had a strategy that was laser focused on providing solutions for companies operating in the cannabis and psychedelic space. The other sector that we were servicing a ton was companies operating in the crypto and blockchain space. So when you look at our overall appetite, it looks nothing like a traditional insurance company. And for us, that means we’re not encumbered by legacy data. We’re not encumbered by bureaucratic hierarchical organizational structures that are used to doing very traditional and normal things. And now we need to branch out and do something very abnormal. Our DNA is really forward looking.
So from our perspective, what we were bringing to the market was number one, a commitment to companies operating in the sector that we actually genuinely believed in and wanted to support. And then if you look at the way insurance brokers work, and this is not to denigrate at all insurance brokers, but it’s largely an income stream that’s based on commission. So if you are functioning as an insurance broker and you have a growing pipeline of clients in the cannabis space that need certain products and you can’t find them anywhere, and you get a whisper of this new insurance company that’s just hit the market that may have an appetite for this sort of thing, you’re going to find out about it real quickly. In our first year of operations by December, we had insurance brokers sending us business from Australia to Canada and some of the biggest names, no way. And it goes to show you the importance of product market fit. It goes to show you the importance of identifying a problem that exists in a particular industry and spending a lot of time making sure you’ve got something that helps solve it.
TG Branfalt:
So you talk about risk and that realm is a risk taker. One of the biggest risks obviously is the sort of status of cannabis and most psychedelics under federal law. Obviously there’s talk from the DEA rescheduling cannabis, keeping in mind that the Trump administration could undo the Biden recommendation and everything like that. But how could insurance cannabis businesses change if the DEA reschedules cannabis or even if a new administration decides to move backwards, what are the ramifications there?
Joe Ziolkowski:
Yeah, I mean, right. This is one of the reasons the cannabis industry is so easy for the insurance industry to kind of turn its back on, particularly in the us. I mean, the schedule one status is an absolute non-starter for most insurance companies. And then when you look at the insurance companies that are willing to support companies, let’s say non plant touching companies in the United States, those insurance companies then have to get comfortable with this state-based approach to regulation and legalization. And that adds a whole area of complexity around what happens to companies operating on an interstate basis. And before it just becomes so easy for insurance companies to say, we’re making, we’re generating a lot of premium over here for traditional companies doing traditional things, and the amount of effort in red tape I’ve got to jump through to dip my toe in the water of something that’s really complicated and problematic, it’s just not going to happen.
And so I think when you look at the idea of regulations or legislations rolling back, I guess what we could call momentum in the United States at a federal level, I’d say it’s problematic for companies operating in the sector. It’s only going to make the availability of capacity and products. These companies need to grow their businesses harder to come by, and they’re left with a supply demand dynamic. And this supply demand dynamic exists in every type of business. If there’s a growing need for something and there’s a dearth of supply, it gets expensive and the types of solutions you need become harder to come by. So that would be an unfortunate turn of events, I would say, at least in the us.
TG Branfalt:
What happens if it goes the other way? Does that open up, if they do reschedule cannabis, would that open up the industry for maybe more traditional players? And is that something that your company is looking at in the future?
Joe Ziolkowski:
Two part question. If they reschedule cannabis, let’s say as a Schedule three substance, I think you’ll see much more market participation. And by market participation, I mean a lot of other insurance carriers who’ve been sitting on the sidelines come into the market with an appetite. And it’s insurance companies that are comfortable ensuring agricultural businesses. It’s insurance companies that are comfortable ensuring consumer packaged goods businesses. It’s insurance companies that are comfortable ensuring retail and wholesale type distribution and retail arrangements. When you look at cannabis as a product, either on the agricultural side of things or something that sits on the shelves of a retail outlet, it looks like a lot of other products with the exception of the fact that right now it’s federally illegal. And when that federal status changes, I think what you would see and certainly would be a benefit to companies operating in the space is increased availability of the type of coverage and capacity that these companies are going to need over the long haul to protect their businesses as they grow up.
TG Branfalt:
And the other thing that you’ve mentioned a couple of times is the reinsurance industry. And we’ve been hearing a lot about that on the news because of all the sort of natural disasters that have occurred in Florida and other states is the changing insurance landscape for things like homeowner’s insurance due to climate related disasters, having any impact on ensuring the cannabis and psychedelic industries. Because from what I’m sort of here and reading the news is that many companies are trying to get out of insuring certain states. And so if you’re insuring, say a lot of businesses in, say, Florida, for example, and is there more risk associated with those manufacturing businesses or those cultivation businesses?
Joe Ziolkowski:
Yeah, I mean, listen, I would say there is a loose correlation between the really negative profitability impact that a surge in natural catastrophes have on certain insurance carriers, and the challenges that companies operating in the cannabis space face trying to find coverage. So what I mean by that is the insurance marketplace is very segmented the same, the insurance companies that are insuring a lot of residential houses in natural catastrophe exposed areas like Florida or wildfire in California are not at all necessarily the same insurance companies that are focused on providing a little bit of capacity companies operating in the cannabis and psychedelic space. So there are circumstances where that correlation is non-existent. But the overall, I think takeaway is that whenever there’s a surgeon in loss experience in one corner of the insurance industry, it can have knock on effects in other aspects of the insurance industry. And typically that knock on effect is reduced capacity increase in prices. So that’s really the major thing to look out for. I would
TG Branfalt:
Say, I just remembered that during the wildfires a couple of years ago, a lot of cultivators, especially in northern California, they did not get those insurance payments, which is why, and I’m not sort of accusing the insurance company broadly or the insurance industry broadly. It’s one of those things that has come up sort of in the past.
Joe Ziolkowski:
Yeah, absolutely. And I think those challenges are, I feel for a lot of the companies operating, especially in the cannabis space in some of these more cat exposed areas, because you can be transacting or providing very vanilla products and services in the California market right now, if you have any sort of property that has wildfire exposure, you’re going to face really extreme challenges finding adequate cover. And then if you bolt on any sort of marijuana related business component to that, the limited pipeline of companies that may have an interest in providing you some sort of property cover gets reduced even further. So again, it’s that supply demand challenge that’s difficult for a lot of companies to navigate.
TG Branfalt:
So what are you looking at as far as the future of the psychedelic industry over the next several years? If it’s something that you’re already looking at, you say you look forward at these industries instead of looking backwards. What do you see that industry looking like as it takes shape, which is obviously happening much slower than cannabis?
Joe Ziolkowski:
Yeah, I mean, I think it’s really fascinating. If you had asked me in 2019 if there was a chance by at some point in our early existence, we’d be ensuring companies using psilocybin, MDMA, ketamine, DMT Ayahuasca, I would’ve said, you’re crazy. Maybe I could see it somewhere in the distant future. But the fact that we’ve been able to engage with companies utilizing these psychedelic compounds to treat things like substance abuse and depression and PTSD, these really impactful, negatively impactful neurologic diseases that don’t really have any solid, consistent, dependable means of treatment, at least in the pharmaceutical sense to me, is super compelling and really important. And when you look at the slow, but maybe building momentum on a global basis of different jurisdictions, legalizing or decriminalizing, you can kind of get a sense for where this is going. I mean, I think Alberta was the first province in Canada to legalize psilocybin.
And you’ve got two states in the us not necessarily the best examples, but they’ve kind of decriminalized. And then you’ve got Australia, which I think is the first country, and you’ve got Switzerland that enables certain types of early stage stuff. On the psychedelic side, you’ve got state referendums here in the US that are on the table to legalize or decriminalize certain psychedelic compounds. And while I agree with you that the momentum certainly has been slower, you can see it building over the next 10 years, and you also can see some of the interest from traditional pharmaceutical companies or biotech companies that are looking at making investments or making acquisitions of companies that are pushing the envelope in some of these early stage psychedelic initiatives. So to me, I think it’s a really interesting perspective and a privileged perspective that we have as a pick and shovel that these companies can use to try to push their initiatives further along.
TG Branfalt:
So lemme ask you personally, because did you know that psychedelics had these sort of medical, let’s call ’em benefits just for the sake of this conversation before getting into potentially ensuring these businesses? Or did the companies come to you and say, Hey, this is what we’re doing?
Joe Ziolkowski:
Yeah, it is a great question and there is an important line there because we really moved into the market with an appetite to support companies operating in the cannabis space and a really beneficial byproduct of ensuring venture funds that were making investments into marijuana related businesses and service providers to companies in that industry. And then of course, companies operating directly themselves as part of a cannabis supply chain is we kind of developed a reputation with insurance brokers of an insurance company, number one with a non-standard appetite, but also one that was willing to put its money where its mouth is, right? And that was a function of quoting and binding coverage for companies doing non-standard things. So to your question, I mean, I wish I could say back in 2019 that I knew psychedelics was going to be this really compelling thing to come around and provide potential solutions to people suffering from these really onerous and painful ailments.
But the beautiful part about us operating in the industry servicing an adjacent sector is that we then became aware of this growing opportunity from brokers that are saying, Hey, would you look at companies using psilocybin for this use or that use case and our objective or our natural response to that type of an inquiry is absolutely, we want to hear about it. And we try to curb our enthusiasm in the sense that just because we say we’re interested to a broker doesn’t mean we’re definitely going to ensure this company just because we hop on an underwriting call and we listen to the company leadership, explain to us how they’re positioning their products or their services, or maybe we get a look at an investor deck and we understand the types of investors they’re trying to raise capital from. That doesn’t necessarily mean we’re going to ensure that company, but it absolutely means we’re going to do our best to investigate, make informed risk selection decisions, and as long as we can get access to this information, we’re going to put our products in capacity behind it. And so that is, I think, a really interesting way that we came around to supporting companies in the psychedelic space.
TG Branfalt:
Can I ask what you say no to?
Joe Ziolkowski:
Yeah. I mean, we say no to lack of information. We say no to, obviously, no, we don’t say yes to anything illegal, but when it comes to ensuring companies in these sectors, for us it’s almost like give us you’re tired, you’re meek, you’re humble, you’re poor, which is to say we anticipate that a lot of the companies that are trying to make headway in these industries are going to be early stage. A lot of ’em are not going to have detailed audited historical financials. A lot of them are going to have cash runways that are measured in months, not years. And our whole objective is we’re not looking for the most mature or the most liquid or a company that’s publicly listed versus privately held. We are looking for companies that are willing to give us access to the information that we need in order to make informed risk selection decision.
So really where we draw a hard line is if our underwriting review and the subsequent question and answers that inevitably precipitate through broker via email or video conference come to an abrupt halt, then we move on to the next risks. And because of that, we have insured companies that are going into bankruptcy or coming out of bankruptcy or are trying to raise a bridge round of funding to keep their company alive or trying to secure a regulatory approval that’s going to enable them to be commercially viable. And so yeah, where we stop is when the information stops flowing,
TG Branfalt:
How closely do you have to monitor state regulations, which change frequently? Does that have an impact on your sector at all?
Joe Ziolkowski:
Yeah. Yeah, it does. I mean, when you think about something like directors and officers liability, that has, depending on the scope of coverage that can provide protection against regulatory enforcement actions. So when you look at the way that we can manage some of that exposure for, let’s say US companies operating in the cannabis spaces, there are a number of regulatory technology companies, reg tech companies that are bolting on to let’s say banks or other service providers that are enabling these companies to manage more programmatically in an automated fashion that they’re doing the appropriate things on a state by state basis to maintain compliance. And so we can leverage access to that technology in order to make much more efficient decisions on not just the current posture of how a company’s operating, but their ability to proactively monitor the impact of state by state changes in regulation.
TG Branfalt:
I will say when I booked this interview, I didn’t expect it to be so full of nuance and risk. I mean, quite frankly, and I’ve spoken to a lot of venture capital CEOs, firms, that sort of thing, and would it be safe to call you a venture insurance company because you’re doing something, you’re working with these startup companies, you’re doing all of these really unique sort of things that I think sort of put you in that category?
Joe Ziolkowski:
Yeah, I mean, it is an interesting way of looking at it. A venture insurance company, I think it’s fair from the standpoint that our starting point is a fairly well-defined thesis in support of companies operating in a particular manner. We have never looked at our movement into an innovative or emerging sector as a hit it and quit it type of strategy. It’s always been a function of is our commitment defined by a belief in what these companies are doing in a way that’s going to yield a sustainable industry that will enable us to scale products and top line revenue in a profitable manner? If the answer’s yes, then we are going to go deeper and broader into that sector with products and solutions and ideas, and that’s probably pretty consistent with the way that certain venture funds approach the way that they deploy capital in a particular sector.
TG Branfalt:
So finally, I want to ask you as a pick and shovel business as a company that really got in before many others, if not completely first mover, what advice do you have for businesses or entrepreneurs that are maybe in your position that are just sort of starting any business really, because I think that you might have an interesting perspective because there is a lot of risk in what you do.
Joe Ziolkowski:
Yeah, I think it could be summed up in two words. Radical transparency. If you are starting a business and you are thinking about building something that is sustainable and is scalable, you need to be prepared to be transparent about the foundation that you’re building that’s going to enable you to do something different than your peers in the market. I think. And if you take our appetite, for example, you can have a company that’s big generating a lot of revenue, but is clearly disorganized to the point where they can’t answer basic questions about their liquidity or their financial position, or they don’t have cap tables that are up to date in order to give us current information about who their shareholders are and to what degree, or if they don’t maintain current entity organizational structures to understand the growing complexity of their operations and organizational structure.
It becomes almost impossible to underwrite those types of companies. But if you’ve got a company that from the beginning is organizing themselves in a way that’s not bureaucratic and full of red tape, but is sensitive to the type of people that they’re bringing onto, their board is very particular about the way that they’re maintaining their financial reporting and is providing and building transparency around the overall operations and their service or product delivery, it is a massive differentiator, not just for an underwriter, but for investors looking to raise capital for counterparties, looking to engage in contracts. And so I think to me, no matter how innovative or emerging the thing is that you’re doing, you’re going to need to face counterparties. Those counterparties are going to have demands of disclosure that you may never have been prepared to provide at the beginning. And the sooner you can position your company and your leadership team to build that approach to radical transparency, I think it’s going to set you distinctly apart from your competitors in the market.
TG Branfalt:
That’s really some of the most, I think, profound sort of advice that I’ve never heard before in my seven years doing this show. So thank you for being so radically transparent. Joe, where can people find out more about you and more about realm insurance, get in touch with you, that sort of thing?
Joe Ziolkowski:
Yeah, I mean, our website is realm insurance.com. You can go on there and learn more about where we’ve come from, where we’re headed, the types of products and services and solutions that we offer. And I think that’s really the best starting point. We have a lot of really smart, capable, creative people inside realm. We’ve got a full-time team of more than 75 people across five different countries now that all bring a really unique perspective on the sectors and the products that we support. So I think that’s really the best starting point for reaching out. We’re happy to have conversations with companies about how they’re positioned, what they’re trying to do, and if they ultimately need insurance, we’re always happy to pass ’em off to an insurance broker that we know is capable and competent of doing business in their sector.
TG Branfalt:
Awesome, man. That is Joel Ziolkowski, the CEO and founder of Rome Insurance, which offers insurance for the cannabis and psychedelic industries. Thank you so, so much for taking the time to have this conversation with me, really enlightening, really interesting, and I really do appreciate it. Thank you so much.
Joe Ziolkowski:
Yeah, thanks for having me. Great to be here.
TG Branfalt:
You can find more episodes of the ganjapreneur.com podcast and the podcast section of ganjapreneur.com and wherever you get your podcast. On the ganjapreneur.com website, you’ll find the latest cannabis news and cannabis jobs updated daily along with transcripts of this podcast. You can also download the entrepreneur.com app in iTunes and Google Play. This episode was engineered by Wayward Sound Studio. I’ve been your host, TG brand.
In this episode of Highly Enlightened, host Jon Purow interviews Jonathan Black, a seasoned business attorney and entrepreneur with expertise across real estate, entertainment, tech, retail, cannabis, and law, currently serving as the CEO of Cheech and Chong’s Global Holdings. After earning his degree at the University of San Diego and completing law school, Jonathan founded Weston Law Group PC. Over the years, he has also worked on securing government contracts, managed a real estate fund with over $200 million in assets, and produced two Hollywood films. In 2019, he became the COO of MediaJel, a cannabis Adtech company, and, through multiple successful exits, continues to hold ownership and board positions in various ventures. Jonathan resides in the Bay Area with his wife and three children.
Listen to the episode below or wherever you get your podcasts — you can find more episodes of Highly Enlightened on Buzzsprout.
Listen to the episode:Ganjapreneur · Highly Enlightened: Jonathan Black, CEO of Cheech and Chong's Global
Episode sponsored by eBottlesThis episode of Highly Enlightened is made possible by eBottles. If you’re in the cannabis business, you know that quality packaging isn’t just important—it’s essential. That’s where eBottles comes in. Whether you’re just starting out or scaling up, eBottles offers proprietary top-of-the-line packaging products built for cannabis. eBottles is a market leader for a good reason: they are experts in the field. Six patents, five warehouse locations around the country, a network of exceptional distributors. Get eBottles and Grow Boldly.
Read the transcript:Editor’s note: this transcript was automatically generated and may contain errors.
Jon Purow:
Welcome to a Highly Informed Interview episode. I’m your host, Jon Purow. Now, before we get to an awesome interview, I just want to note that any opinions I express are my own. As always, I have to do my quick prayer to the video chat. Gods may. Our wifi connections be sturdy. All dogs and my children remain quiet and may Amazon Prime another time. Amen. Alright, now I have the pleasure of introducing Jonathan Black, the CEO and Director of Cheech and Chong’s Global Holdings Company. How are you doing today, sir? I want to thank you for taking the time out of your busy schedule to join me for this joint endeavor. Pun is intended.
Jonathan Black:
I love it, Jon. I love it. Thank you for having me. It’s a pleasure to be here and chatting with you.
Jon Purow:
Yeah, no, so look, I always start off with just the hard hitting question, right? So it gets easier after this, so out of exactly, just like I’m just going to crush you right at the beginning, just so it seems easier after that. So how much of your success, how much do you think what you’ve been able to accomplish in life is owed to the fact that you have the best first name in the history of humanity? Not that I’m biased.
Jonathan Black:
All of it. All of it. All of it. Isn a part of it.
Jon Purow:
Okay, perfect. That’s the right answer, right? It only gets easier from here.
Jonathan Black:
It’s a great name, man. I love the name Jonathan, and obviously you have the same similar love and passion for the name that I do. So
Jon Purow:
Does anyone call you Johnny, is the question?
Jonathan Black:
No. When I was younger, some of my uncles would call me John. John. I don’t know where that came from. There’s been other nicknames I’ve had that are probably not verbally appropriate to express on your podcast growing up playing sports because I definitely was tenacious in what I was trying to accomplish.
Jon Purow:
You’re going to have to tell me that one after, right?
Jonathan Black:
Absolutely.
Jon Purow:
It just lends to so many nicknames. I mean, since I now am saddled with the nickname Broke Back, John, since I literally broke my back jumping in Jamaica, I just think it lends itself to nicknames there, but that’s great. So I’m glad to hear that This’s worked out so well for you. So look outside of Brian Gerber from Harris Supply. Basically everyone that I’ve spoken to on the podcast came from somewhere and was working somewhere before coming into the industry. So I’m curious, out of all the experiences, indoor skills outside of being named Jonathan that you brought from your prior work history and everything into the cannabis industry, what do you think was the most helpful and why?
Jonathan Black:
Yeah, that is a really good question. I have a very diverse background and experiences. My attitude in trying to find out what I wanted to do was learning by the things I didn’t want to do, engaging in things I didn’t want to do. I was with publicly traded companies. I owned my own businesses myself. And so ultimately, I think the best experience that I had was really in some of the ownership of small businesses, growing businesses, even selling businesses. I always had great partners. That was kind of the key to success. And here at Brandon Harshberger, the president of Chichen Chang Global Holdings is a fantastic partner. So a lot of the things that I learned was if you want to grow, how do you trust in people? And this was throughout these companies experiences from standard Pacific Homes all the way to owning several different businesses myself.
It became something I learned in order to grow, you’ve got to have a way of dividing up what each person is good at, putting them in their best position, trusting the people that you have with you to do their job. And so what I took from that was obviously branding and what a company should look like and what things should feel like and what a consumer experiences when they’re making that snap judgment on a product. They might be on their phone standing in a dispensary, they might be in front of a glass door looking at drinks. They might be online shopping. What does that experience in that consumer activation look like? And so that goes from branding a name, something people can trust and something people want, a product that you’re proud of. Early in my career, I made two movies, not very proud of them. I produced those, raised the money, went out and made and had theatrical releases and they were crap, but they made money. And
Jon Purow:
May I ask what they were? Do you not want that to be public information? Are
Jonathan Black:
You actively running? Yeah, no, no. Yeah, I mean, I made Dark House early on in my career and I don’t mean crap mean we had some really good actors, a great director, my co-producer partner on it was awesome and amazing, but they weren’t something that was going to get an award. We weren’t winning an award. We put together a way of trying to monetize a horror movie into income, which we successfully did twice ultimately. But something I learned a lot from that, right? I learned a lot in dealing with celebrities, number one and number two obviously how to put together a production in the team and trust in the team and what everybody was going to do in that. So I think that when you look at all the experiences from movie making to land acquisition, to running government contracts, to working for California Assembly and the governor in the process of working on bills and building multiple businesses, working on taking them public, obviously I was at Media Jail for a while too.
Building this ultimate idea of what a brand should be, a look and a feel is very important. But definitely having people around you such as a good partner in Brandon that I trust, or previous to that Jake Lit key who I trusted a lot and liked a lot is so important because it’s so hard at the top to make a company maneuver in a manner in which you want it to grow because you got the day-to-day ultimately, and then you got the long-term vision. And sometimes those things will collide for a variety of different reasons. It could be finances, it could be personnel, it could be products, it could be legislation. So ultimately in my mind, having an ability to work side by side with somebody is important as it is the understanding. I feel like a lot of CEOs have their board and then they have people that they kind send orders to, so to speak.
And you’re operating on only so much information. So assuming a good CEO is operating on 10 to 20% of the information available to make a decision, if you have a partner in that business with you, that moves you up to 20 to 40%, right? Your chances of getting it right, almost double. And so that’s been kind of crucial in my experiences is finding the right team. I think people invest more in teams than they do an idea. Ideas are great, you got to have a good idea, but if you don’t have people that can execute, ultimately it’s just a good idea.
Jon Purow:
No, a hundred percent agree speaking as someone who’s in intellectual property, an idea isn’t worth anything. It can’t get protected on its own. It’s the team. So I think that to a certain extent, you almost even kind of segmented into an answer for the next question in terms of advice that you would give regarding leadership to leaders in the cannabis industry. So I think one of the first things you say is pick the right team starts with that,
Jonathan Black:
Pick the right team. And I think ultimately, besides picking the right team, it’s trusting the team and giving them room to operate as team players. I think the other thing you got to look at is what are the things that bite people or cause difficulties in the situation? And so I really look to four factors ultimately in that. One is the grass is always greener. So comparing against another company is, I think problematic because you have no idea the details in which you’re comparing to. You’re just looking at whatever they’ve posted on LinkedIn or Facebook or wherever it is of their success in that moment, but you have no idea of the stride that they went through to get there and what it may have cost them to get it. The second one, which is a big one, is the attitude. We’re not going to make it right. That attitude has to go away. If that’s the attitude going into something, it’s not going to work, right? It’s doomed ultimately there. The third one I look at a lot is we’re not good enough. That concept of we’re not good enough or that imposter syndrome that follows people around through their careers is absolute bs in my mind. I think if you put your mind to something and you’re willing to work at it and you’re willing to take time to understand it, you’re as good as anybody else out there ultimately.
And I think the issue is people operate on not enough information. And ultimately the last one that comes to mind a lot of times is just an ability for people to be able to, what are the three characteristics of a person’s makeup and looking at a problem or solution. And to me, if they have a work ethic desire to want to learn new concepts and ability to speak their mind to address things that people aren’t going to want to hear, they have room for that. You’ve got a successful personnel around you and a successful culture, which is everybody wants to talk about culture, but I see these ploys that don’t work like pinball machines and drinking at noon on Fridays or whatever it is, that’s great, but the culture that needs to be there is people are able to express the dissent in a situation without fear of losing their job or fear of backlash from another coworker.
That attitude, I guess the fourth one really is people are out to get me kind of attitude. It has to go away. You’ve got to be able to express dissent, and if you feel everybody’s against you, you’re not going to express descent. So that’s kind of the four factors that ultimately we try to look at and do. I think Brandon would say we try everything once, which is a great slogan, but I think it’s a little more detailed in how I look at it and how he looks at it in dealing with the team both internally and externally with partners, vendors, people we’re doing business with.
Jon Purow:
I recently tried to put it together in my head by saying that we become what we fear, and the way that you kind of express that there is it’s negative energy in a work environment of different types. We can’t pull this off. I can’t pull this off. I’m an imposter. And your goal is essentially to have a workplace environment that doesn’t have any of that, right? And even something that you could look as being a dissenting viewpoint is an opportunity to learn something. And so if you don’t, and a dissenting viewpoint is an opportunity to be creative, and if you’re to create an environment that stifles that, and I mean so long as you have the people who could execute it because they have the work ethic, they have the intelligence, and they have that enthusiasm, I think you eliminate those things. I think it’s just very, very astute what you’re saying that you could accomplish anything with the right team members in that environment. So I think that that’s super valuable advice. What would you say is one of the main things that you’ve learned as a leader specifically in the cannabis industry? I
Jonathan Black:
Learned leading is very, very tough ultimately being a leader. I guess I joke with other people like this is the last time I played the role of CEO, I’ll be a board member going around. I think leading is ultimately very tough. You can’t lead from the back of the field. You’ve got to be out in front of it. You’ve got to be experiencing it. You’ve got to want to have the hard conversations and understand concepts. You’ve got to be flexible on how you plan ultimately the scope and the direction of the company because I think people get cemented into what they tell board members or investors. And without flexibility, there’s no room for growth. You need fertile soil or you can expand roots. So when I look at leadership, and I don’t think I’ve necessarily done a great example of this for my team throughout the whole time of being CEO of this company. I think I’ve struggled with it to be just really honest. But I think ultimately with the right people around you, you will get it right. You will get on track with it and it’ll start to come together. But you need the grace of people that work for you and you need to give them the grace that you have backwards and forwards. So that can cement itself into a strong working relationship and bond.
Jon Purow:
Got it. So obviously Chechen Chong, in terms of old school brands, name recognition, you’re starting with that mean. So putting that aside, what do you think are some of the biggest factors in how you’ve been able and how the company has been able to grow over the years?
Jonathan Black:
Yeah, it was tough. I mean, ultimately Tommy and Che came back together to curate this brand. At the end of the day, they made the decision to come together and get this to work. There was some lineage stuff that had been done that had to be cleaned or tweaked. They both had their separate brands going when I walked in the door, which was very, very confusing for a consumer, for the public offering and where these products were being offered and the style in which they were going accustomed to. But they came together. And so I think as the brand came together and the marketing side like Steve Gunn and Brandon who just understand ad buying spots and creative more so than I will ever, we were able to make something more of it. It’s shocking because some people recognize the name but couldn’t tell me a movie or a joke from the guys just because they’ve seen so many ads, endless ads out there from us.
So I think the big thing, that’s a big mistake. We use Ben Mason at Pillars or Agency. We’ve invested a lot into the marketing side of this company. I think you have two extremes. People that invest too much. People don’t invest anything into it because they feel like, Hey, we got to get products on shelves. Getting products on shelves is half the battle. Consumer interfacing is other half the battle, and people spend too much on marketing the product’s on the shelves. They’ll sell it, but people will come back and buy it. So there’s a very delicate balance there in getting a brand and branding a brand and marketing a brand that has to make sense. Are you getting ROI off your advertisement? Our DBC has been our massive driver, our engine of the company. And so thankfully that branding and that exposure and that advertising dollar that we’re spending continues to lift the high tide of the whole boat on other things that we’re doing and recognition in what we’re doing.
And then we have 52, 54, sorry, 54 years of lineage with Tommy and Chi, right? Just amazing, amazing lineage. Here’s two guys that have been trying to say cannabis should not be a situation where it’s banned, right? Cannabis is something that you can utilize, be functional in a lot of cases it’s necessary for people. And so they wanted to really try to get that message across. I hope that we are, but we do it in a fun way because they’re comedians and we want to echo their thought process, their creative process in our branding and our marketing and our products.
Jon Purow:
The podcast is proud to be sponsored by Ebos. If you’re in the cannabis business, that quality packaging isn’t just important. It’s essential. That’s where Ebos comes in, whether you’re just starting out or scaling up bottles offers proprietary, top of the line packaging products built for cannabis bottles is the market leader for a good reason. They’re experts in the field, six patents, five warehouse locations around the country, and a network of exceptional distributors. So get ebos and grow boldly. Yeah. The other thing that’s interesting about them is that I think I mentioned to you when we first spoke, my father showed me up in smoke when I was way too young, but you hit that age group demographic, then you have that seventies show with Tommy, and then you have what Chee and Nas Bridge is. So there’s another generation in between that gets familiar with them. And so now I’m almost curious a little bit, how do you reach the current youngest generation with that brand? Is that just purely in terms of leaning into marketing and social media a certain way? Who do you feel that you most cater to and how do you cater to the folks that might not necessarily immediately have that name recognition, that puts a smile on their face like it does for me, full disclosure.
Jonathan Black:
And John, that’s an awesome question, right? Because I think that so many people have been stuck in this faction of this is what they are. Well, Tanya played the Yakkin, Zootopia and Che was in Lion King, right? They were voices. So ultimately you continue on, so to speak. But I think when you look at the branding of it, Jack Daniels is no longer alive. Jim Bean has long since passed. A lot of these name brands that are out there, Evan Williams is gone. I’m just mentioning a few alcohol arms. There’s other ones, so and so forth. These people have long since passed. And the reason why the brands continue is because of great marketing effect and knowledge of consumer. When you look at a consumer buying something in front of the glass door, looking at their phone, not thinking they’re reaching for something that they know is a product in which they want, how do you get ’em there?
So yeah, I think it’s a lot of endless branding. We just did the Call of Duty with Tommy and Cheech. They have skins in the game. So again, there’s another reach of another audience. But one of our biggest surprises, John was on our Hemp Thrive beverage is women between the age of 25 and 50, where our biggest consumer and I had always heard, well, you’re not going to reach women. It’s an audience for this. It’s an audience for that. It’s not true. They saw the name, they believed that this would be a product they should try, and they tried it and they loved it on the hemp drive beverage side in mass retail. So seeing stuff like that just tells you Peach and Chang can really become the next Coca-Cola of the plant of this industry that’s emerging. If I don’t screw it up ultimately, or we don’t make bad decisions, we have a runway to do that because the reach is there. But yes, commonly when you and I talk, I think it’s hilarious. My mom knows him from up in Smoke. My mom recognizes him from there. I recognize she’s from Tin Cup, right? In seventies, as you said,
Jon Purow:
Great movie.
Jonathan Black:
And my daughters recognized him from the Yak, right? You, me talking to him,
Jon Purow:
We just watched that movie,
Jonathan Black:
The Yak daddy, the Yak Daddy, and or The Lion King. And so I think that you have multiple generations in my household that recognize them for different reasons, which is important. But I think consumers recognize these guys have been around for a long time. There’s consistency and they wouldn’t put their names on a bad product and the branding, they’re consistently seen. So it’s developing even further past the lineage of just a movie career or celebrity fame into a household name and brand. And it’s amazing the references to them. I was watching Billions and they said up in Smoke like Chi and Chong, they made a reference to it, and it’s like,
Jon Purow:
Great show.
Jonathan Black:
Yeah, great show has absolutely nothing to do with, I know, I know with
Jon Purow:
Cannabis, but it’s cultural cache, right? It’s cultural cache. And in a world where I feel like everyone should learn about logical fallacies and be reminded of them frequently, where a lot of endorsements are all about appeal to inappropriate authority. Why does a sports star have any basis for telling you what car to buy? The fact of the matter is when you have celebrities that are so associated with a specific type of product that comes with that understanding on the consumer side, that trust level of there’s quality here, and you combine that with product diversification to cater to different demographics like you said, and just having that little built in thing and then sticking the landing with a quality product that meets people where they are, that’s where you could really accomplish stuff.
Jonathan Black:
You’re a hundred percent right, but John, you bring up an important point. It is very tough in the world of soundbites in the world of things that you see going on. I literally saw Peter Theo, who’s, I love watching him and Steve Jobs whenever they talk or there’s a video online, I stop what I’m doing. I’m watching these guys, even if I’ve seen it or watched it again, because they’re just common sense to business practices is something that you would think would be well known, but is often missed because it’s just a common sense practice that they’re applying application. But he gave a talk, I think it was to the graduating class of Harvard or something. He gave a talk just recently talking about the clip of the Hawk Two girl that’s out there and how this is just insanity. And so we are in this competitive means. We do participate in stuff like that for advertisement and pushing to the brand, but it is a different world, which is nice to have people that have been for movies and TV because it can ascend into the TikTok side of things. That has really grown into how people understand and become accustomed with brands and things that are out there
Product wise. Yeah.
Jon Purow:
Can I ask you one time where you, when all was said and done with the business where you kind of just said to yourself, F Yeah, we really nailed the landing on something hard here, out of curiosity.
Jonathan Black:
Yeah. We did a Benny’s launch in Illinois. Benny’s is a large liquor store retailer in Benny’s, a lot like BevMo in California or seven 11 in this specific area. And we did a launch there and we brought the guys out and we just nailed it, went through pallets and pallets of drinks, and I was just blown away. We didn’t know, Brandon and I were very nervous going into that situation on how this would work out, how this activation would go. It was really our first big retail activation on B2B side, which is the thing we’re drastically trying to lift. We’d done it on the canvas side, it worked out and opening up the dispensary as and Massachusetts and New Mexico, and lines around the block and numbers are fine and things are great, but we hadn’t done it on the mass retailer audience spectrum in a liquor store, multiple service liquor store.
And we were just really concerned going into it. And when we were leaving, we gave each other a big hug, and we were just so excited that it had worked, and we always believed that it would, right? It wasn’t a disbelief going into the situation by any stretch, but you get anxiety and you’re nervous about how will this go? How will people respond? People were camping out in line to meet the guys. Obviously it was fantastic. But then the sales throughout the whole retail store cycle, not just the store we’re in, but just overall the mass audience and the activation was just incredible. And we did a lot of work. Our CMO, Brooke did a lot of work on that. Pillar did a lot of work on that. Ben Mason with Pillar and our COO Jay Bueno did just an amazing job putting this all together. And it worked. And it was a sigh of relief, honestly, John, because I didn’t know. I did not know that we were going to,
Jon Purow:
That’s the fear of the unknown when you’re sticking your neck out there and stuff, and those are the ones where you say, heck yeah, right. We stuck the landing on that. I got it. So now we were talking, I mean, we’ve been starting to talk about already and alluding to it how you folks are in the hemp industry and stuff. So I am just curious to know, when we were pre-gaming a little bit, we were talking about some of the most interesting things in the industry, and you were alluding to some of these ideas of hemp and state licensed cannabis and also cannabis and alcohol. So what are some of the most interesting things that you’re noticing in your unique position in the industry with respect to those dichotomies, those classes?
Jonathan Black:
Yeah. Yeah, no, great question. Yeah, we were kind of going around about this a little bit before, but one of the big things I’ve noticed is that there’s this idea that there’s a war between hemp and cannabis or ultimately alcohol and cannabis or at this divide. And cannabis is the headwind against alcohol for the slumping sails or hemp is the headwind against cannabis for its slumping sails. And I just think it’s completely ridiculous based on the numbers that when these seeds get planted, ultimately people hear it enough where they get emotionally attached to it and then they start believing it, and they start using emotions instead of facts to justify their position. And it doesn’t exist. I mean, if you look at, take California for a second, we’re working right now to set up 40 brands both on the Canvas side and total 40 brands, but brands from the cannabis side and Brandon from Hemp side, which we are on both in California, to come to a meeting and work on legislation for California for the governor who just executed emergency order, which we feel was misplaced, but we want to work with the governor.
We want to work with all politicians on this. We don’t get upset because they didn’t see it our way. We just have to handle it in a manner and mechanism that we’re given. But I think when you look at this, I don’t think that by the numbers, I believe it’s like 6.5% of dispensary sales in California or beverages. And ultimately of those beverages, less than a fourth of a point are under 10 milligrams. So we are not having a low dose hump drive drink in BevMo or Total Wines is not affecting their business. In fact, it’s opening the door to a compliance, a taxation methodology that we want cannabis to follow through. We want our cannabis products. We have a chia lot of those 50 milligrams in California that we
Jon Purow:
Love,
Jonathan Black:
And we want that drink to be eventually on the shelf, you would have a beer and you have liquor. There’s different proofs, there’s different amounts that people drink of it. There’s different
Jon Purow:
Consumers. Exactly.
Jonathan Black:
And so to think that one size fits all or we’re preventing them is absolutely ridiculous. And then when you look at the cannabis and alcohol side, well, first of all, some of the alcohol players IE, the distributors, the retailers, even the production mechanisms, and we use some of those producers that make beer have come over to this site already. We’re working together. And to say there’s this divide because alcohol sales or something is just ridiculous during covid, alcohol sales blossomed, and now you’re coming off of that, you’re going to go downwards.
And that’s just the fact of the matter. It doesn’t have anything to do with it. Someone that wants cannabis, wants cannabis, someone that wants alcohol, wants alcohol. It’s nots, not a competitor. It’s not like I can walk in today to, again, a seven 11 and oh, should I buy beer or should I buy a blunt? That’s not happening. I’m specifically going to a dispensary or I’m specifically going to seven 11 to buy alcohol, so to speak. So not one and the same thing. And so this gets a little bit disturbing because these seeds are being sprinkled out there and people are ingesting this. And it’s not actually situated in any kind of factual numbers that I can see other than the fact that one’s going down and one’s going up. But it doesn’t mean that they’re necessarily related to each other, the expansion,
Jon Purow:
Correlation, and causation.
Jonathan Black:
Yeah.
Jon Purow:
Yeah. I mean it just don’t get confused about the two. By the way. Can I just say I am a little bit worried that you might come for my podcast hosting job with my pop puns because you kept on saying planting the seed, right? Ingesting, I mean, you just naturally pun, sir. So I mean, I tip my cap on that, but I honestly think that one of the most interesting statistics I’ve heard is that statistic that you said in terms of how strong the beverages in the state license market are, right? Versus how many are low dose. And that just speaks to when we’re talking about product diversification before to cater to different demographics. I always like to say the cannae versus the canna curious. So what that’s implying is that the cannae with the higher tolerance are the ones who are buying the beverages in the state licensed market.
And frankly, for the good of the industry, we don’t want necessarily higher dose things. On the hemp side, there is a model here, potentially we don’t want higher dose things because as people saw with Delta eight and stuff, when people are interacting and when the consumers, this is old hat to us, we speak the vocabulary, we have the tolerance, but the vast majority of consumers don’t know about the different cannabinoids. And it’s just you’re trying to educate people in a time when their attention spans are smaller and smaller, that you want low dose there, frankly, just because it guarantees that more people have a positive experience the first time they do something
Jonathan Black:
Right. I think that’s ultimately important. When you look at the hemp category versus looking at the cannabis category, you have two totally different consumers in my mind, someone like Joey Marin, Che’s son, who’s our chief product officer, is not going to go out and buy a bunch of our drinks because it’s not going to do anything for him. On the hemp side, he will take down a chilada, maybe two. The guy has incredible endurance, can tell you exactly what’s in it, what flavors he has. He’s a connoisseur. And I think both markets are exist. I mean, do people drink beer and wine? Yes, they do, but there’s a preference there. If someone has a wine cellar, they generally don’t have a bunch of beers in their refrigerator too. People are going to make their selective choices, and I think consumers should have those options. I have seen that the influx in a mass market of hemp drive drinks will lead people ultimately to canvas sales. We’ve seen it. We’ve activated people from our hemp side to our canvas side. And ultimately that was the step that was missing because when we came out, we had this strong CBD presence and we had this cannabis presence, and we had nothing in between. To get someone to go from a CBD product to a cannabis product was a lot further of a task from a hemp product or cannabis product and back and forth. And there’s states in which, Texas, Florida, in places North Carolina, where hemp is the only optionality to a consumer.
And ultimately our idea as a company is we want to get products into every consumer’s hands no matter where they are. And so the challenges with that are how do you get a cannabis product into someone’s hands in North Carolina short of having them buy it, smoke it, and consume it on a reservation that doesn’t exist for you, right?
Jon Purow:
You’re talking about a recent story,
Jonathan Black:
Right? So ultimately, when we look at stuff like this, we’re trying to figure out how do we play the cards that were dealt on the legislative side and hemp cannabis. Ultimately, at some point, I feel there will be a complete immersion of the two. They will work together. And so hemp did something a little bit different. They got the farm bill passed, ultimately under that farm bill, they have federal protection to sell these products across the United States, and now they have to deal with the states, but they have the federal side, whereas cannabis went after the states and don’t have the federal protections. And so it’s a whole different legislative beast on both sides that you’re dealing with constantly, that we’re constantly looking at and dealing with. And then alcohol ultimately is the crown jewel. It’s how you get taxation and you get mass production and how you get this to go.
But I think the thing that a lot of people miss out on is simply this. It is impossible to scale a cannabis business inside of state lines because those are your only consumers inside that state, right? If you’re doing mass production for the whole United States as a cannabis producer, you can hit price points that other people can’t hit, and you would kill a black market that exists. The black market thrives on an opportunity. Same with the hemp side, same thing with the hemp side. So I’ve never heard of a bootlegger bust. I guess there’s that show on discovery, but generally there’s not bootleggers out there because you can’t make a beer cheaper than Budweiser does. It’s impossible for me to do that. Even with the taxation regulation, the three tier system, the compliance that exists, you can’t beat ’em on price because of
Jon Purow:
Scale.
Jonathan Black:
This needs to happen with hemp and cannabis. We need to find a way to scale it so that we can kill the black market and people can benefit from the taxation and benefit from something they want to use. Consumers aren’t going to go away. There’s people smoking cannabis today in North Carolina doing it illegally, right? It’s happening. So why would this state not want to regulate and tax, and by tax, I mean not Overregulate and not overtax, which we’ve seen in California, right? They’ve really decimated that market by just a misunderstanding of what cannabis is and what it isn’t, but would give them an ability to deal across the board and make that taxable revenue that they’re after.
Jon Purow:
No, I think I’m a big proponent, obviously, of cannabis beverages having been the secretary of the Cannabis Beverage Association, but you made something click in my head there that the way that you laid it out is perfect because it’s, you want the economies of scale. You can’t get them on a state by state basis. The thing where there’s the best economies of scale, frankly, are beverages when done right by big beverage makers. And so if you could put that product at a good price point, yeah, the taxation structures in the different states make it very, very difficult to compete with the black market. I mean, sorry, I don’t call it the black market, the illicit market to compete with the illicit market, but that’s not the problem right now in hemp. And then at the same time, we’re getting to a point where the two things could kind of fuse the state license market and hemp can fuse because hemp, look, we expect some type of something to happen in the next farm bill or in the standalone legislation, potentially in terms of not making it quite the wild, wild west of weed on the hemp side.
And we’re going to hit schedule three in a loosening of restrictions, most likely on the state license side, and make that a little bit more federally friendly. Obviously the two 80 E benefit. And so I think that for those reasons, thinking in that framework that they are going to merge, some of those things click in my head that we’re heading in that direction already. So I mean, that might lead into a solid other, I mean, you already kind of, to certain extent maybe answered this in respect, but what are some future trends that you anticipate overall? And like I said, if that’s your main trend, we’ve already got a good start, but if there’s any other trends that you’re noticing that you find interesting in the world of the state license cannabis or hemp, what do you think they are and how are you preparing for them without giving away any trade secrets?
Jonathan Black:
Yeah. Well, I don’t need to, Tilray just tipped their hand. Tilray came in and bought a bunch of distribution, a bunch of production on the alcohol side. Now they’re launching their hemp drinks that are coming out, and eventually their cannabis drinks will come too. I think you’re going to see it merging between these industries as time ticks on just because it makes sense, right? We’ve met with the teamsters in the unions in regards to this multiple times because they’re getting laid off. They’re having a hard time getting wages. When you have a deflating market, here comes the answer. So people see it and they’re looking at it and they’re trying to understand it because the regulations and the state lines and things make things tough. But I think the Cannabis Beverage Alliance Association is a fantastic association. I think there’s a bunch of great associations out there, like the U-S-H-R-T has changed over. So I
Jon Purow:
Think
Jonathan Black:
That Jonathan Miller has really made it an opportunity to change his spot, so to speak, in that organization for the better. I think HBA and Chris Lachner have done a great job. Diana, who we talked about has done a great job. And I think the inward fighting of this really just we’ve tried ultimately to get these groups to merge together, to come together, work together, both on the cannabis side, the hemp side, and everywhere else, because they need to work together to find a pathway forward because it will merge together at some point. And so it’s very tough when we’re looking at situations like this, and you have someone that wants to do this and someone wants to do that, and they don’t want to do this, and that product shouldn’t be here. I think you have to come in with room and say, everything’s on the table, let’s discuss it. And that’s what we’re set out to do in California on November 15th in Sacramento.
Very excited to do that with Karen from Kiva. Very great. We’ve been able to set aside our differences. And our first conversation, I got to tell you, I never thought we’d be able to work together, but she was very upset with me. I was very upset with the situation. I don’t know if she was upset with me as much as the situation, but those lines of communication, we’ve been able to put down those swords and tip my cap to her to put down those swords and come to the table. And so I think more of this is going to go on. I think that you and Diana and Mike Ramirez and people in your organization are fundamental to that change. I think that
Jon Purow:
Former organization, for me, former, unfortunately I do it. I had to. Yeah, that was, it wasn’t palace intrigue. It was just hopping from one firm to another. Yeah. Yeah. No, so no, I get That’s all. I always mean the time has flown by. Right? And so I think I’m have to move on to the last question that I like to think, right? JB Jonathan, you are putting on the hat, the wizard hat, stylized like a J, right? You are going to play either tous, smoker, dus, whichever one you prefer. I still haven’t decided that recently on a LinkedIn poll, Tous crushed Smoker dus. Now make any prediction that you want, sir, about other, you’ve made the biggest prediction there is already about the merging of this, but on a macro, micro level call the future of some facet of the industry on the legislative side with the farm bill or anything or anything. Your imagination is the only limit to your answer to this question.
Jonathan Black:
Yeah, that’s a tough one. You really brought it there. Yeah. Look, I think ultimately when you look out there and what’s going on, you have so many different channels of selling so many different products with so much different legislation. I think that there’s going to be a way, a path forward with Schedule three. I think that you saw a pact that was being discussed between multiple West Coast states when it comes to cannabis.
Here’s where I think this goes. I think cannabis will ultimately become like malts not subsidized by the government. Malt runs at $20 a pound. I think cannabis will get to that scenario. I think cannabis will ultimately play into both the hemp side and the alcohol space in some derivative form or another. And I think compliance and taxation will follow as these things open up. I think hemp is positioned to lead the way for cannabis, and I think cannabis has to join the fight with hemp to allow that to happen so that they can coattail on in. But the compliance structure that’s set up in the three tier system that exists from alcohol is something that’s going to have to ultimately be implemented across the hemp and cannabis spectrum for it to work.
And I think that Amazon is going to be a key player in this. Obviously, Tilray will be a key player in this, and then your big retailers are going to be a key player in this. And I think the more that you look for that opportunity to go, the better off you are. You have to deal with the cards you’re dealt right now and distribution channels and retailers that you have, and what products you can’t actually sell. And then you got to build upon that, right? As you build consumer confidence, as you build legislative confidence in your ability that this is not a black market or something that should be shunned, but something that consumers are preferring and want and they’re a safe, compliant and taxable way to do it, I think it makes a lot of sense. So my prediction ultimately is that you’re going to see cannabis, the poundage drop, the real players are going to step forward.
And it’s been an ultimate mess. You had some OGs mixed with some investment bankers, and I’ve never understood how they ever worked together, but somehow they did to an extent. And some beautiful things have been built from those oddball relationships. And I think you’re going to see them become very expansive into the hemp and alcohol categories as this continues on in those systematic approaches. And I think it’s going to be amazing. And I do think that consumers are used to consuming a beverage, and there hasn’t been a functional beverage in this country since caffeine and alcohol, and now you got one. And so I think that there’s going to be a way in which this develops and rolls into a mass audience, and you’re going to have another fight what you saw on the craft beer side, and there’s going to be additional fights, and we can all fight it out later, but for right now, it needs to be something that people work together and stay on the same page with.
Jon Purow:
Yeah. Yeah. No, and it’s like a hopeful note too. So I feel like I’m glad that we’re ending with that in a state license market that could be very, very difficult at times. Never a dull moment in the dope game, always having to bob and weave. I love ending on a hopeful note like that. So I just want to thank you again for taking the time to join me before I stop the recording here.
Jonathan Black:
Yeah, absolutely, John, anytime, man. It was a pleasure to be here with you.
Jon Purow:
Yep. All right.
In this episode of Highly Enlightened, Jon Purow is joined by Socrates Rosenfeld, the Co-Founder and CEO of Jane Technologies. A U.S. Army veteran and former Apache helicopter commander, he turned to cannabis to help re-acclimate to civilian life after leaving active duty in 2011. Frustrated by the lack of legal access in Massachusetts and the unreliable black market, he co-founded Jane Technologies with his brother Abraham to create a trusted e-commerce solution for cannabis retailers.
Since its 2017 launch, Jane has become a leading digital provider in the industry, powering over 2,500 dispensaries and brands across 39 U.S. states and Canada with e-commerce, market analytics, payments, and point-of-sale technologies. Under Socrates’ leadership, Jane has earned recognition from Forbes’ The Cannabis 42.0 (2023), Inc. Power Partner (2023), and Deloitte’s Technology Fast 500 (2022), while also being featured at major industry events like SXSW and MJBizCon. Before founding Jane, Socrates was an associate at McKinsey & Company, and he holds a degree from the United States Military Academy as well as an MBA in entrepreneurship from MIT.
Listen to the episode below or wherever you get your podcasts — you can find more episodes of Highly Enlightened on Buzzsprout.
Listen to the episode:Ganjapreneur · Highly Enlightened: Socrates Rosenfeld, CEO + Co-Founder, Jane Technologies Inc.
Episode sponsored by eBottlesThis episode of Highly Enlightened is made possible by eBottles. If you’re in the cannabis business, you know that quality packaging isn’t just important—it’s essential. That’s where eBottles comes in. Whether you’re just starting out or scaling up, eBottles offers proprietary top-of-the-line packaging products built for cannabis. eBottles is a market leader for a good reason: they are experts in the field. Six patents, five warehouse locations around the country, a network of exceptional distributors. Get eBottles and Grow Boldly.
Read the transcript:Editor’s note: this transcript was auto-generated and may contain errors.
Jon Purow:
Welcome to an interview episode of Highly Enlightened, I’m your host, Jon Purow. Now, before we get to a really exciting interview, I want to note that any opinions I express are my own. Now, before we start, I always do my quick prayer to the video chat. Gods may our wifi connections be sturdy. May all dogs and children remain quiet and may Amazon Prime another time. Now I have the pleasure of introducing Socrates Rosenfeld, the CEO of Jane Technologies. Socrates, thank you for taking the time out. I’m going to call you Soc from here on out, given me thanks for taking the time to join me on this. Oh, my pleasure, John.
Socrates Rosenfeld:
I’m looking forward to this one. So it’s a pleasure to be on, man. Thanks for having me.
Jon Purow:
Oh, really? All right. Yeah, some of these, the questions in the pre-discussion. Got you. Ready for what an incredibly serious attorney and person I am. So I assume that’s where that’s coming from. Now, this
Socrates Rosenfeld:
World’s too crowded with too many serious attorneys, man, so I appreciate you showing a little bit of humanity. It’s
Jon Purow:
Good. Yes, exactly. I always used to say when I went to law school, that was the modified Ferris Bueller quote is right. Most of the people there, you shove a lump of coal up there. You know what, two weeks later you got a diamond. Yeah, that was the law school vibe. So I fit in perfectly and that’s why my wife and I found each other amidst all those tightly wound people.
Socrates Rosenfeld:
Beautiful.
Jon Purow:
Alright, so soak, without going out into too much detail into your personal history, though, it is such a badass one when we’re talking about you flew an Apache helicopter in the military, then you decided to go full Tony Stark and went to MIT. Right. And we’re studying computer engineering there, if I am correct. Right.
Socrates Rosenfeld:
Actually, the business, I have to correct it because there are a lot of MIT grads and current students right now being like, that dude is definitely not course six, which is computer science. They say they named the course. So I was course 15, which was business, which no offense to anybody who’s course 15, it’s probably the easiest subject at MIT though it wasn’t easy for me. But yeah, I snuck in, man.
Jon Purow:
Okay, got it. You got in on the athletic scholarship, as I like to say about Brown, right? Yeah, that’s how I snuck in and blackmail. People just forget about blackmail and how useful, like you got to think Agatha Christie was onto something. So you have this ridiculously cool backstory that I’m hoping to kind of just wear off of me by osmosis, but let’s put it this way. So of all the experience and skills that you brought from your prior experience flying helicopters and everything and everything else into the cannabis industry, what do you think was the most helpful in terms of forming your view of it or in any other fashion?
Socrates Rosenfeld:
A view of cannabis or view? Just,
Jon Purow:
Yeah, just what ended up being a formative thing for how you are in the industry that you brought in from somewhere else. Right. From your issue number zero origin story, as a comic book geek, what do you think was the most helpful coming to the cannabis industry within an arrow in your quiver
Socrates Rosenfeld:
Experiencing cannabis? For myself, not taking anybody’s word for it, not listening to police officer doing his best in the DARE program or my coach or the commander at West Point or my parents. But really to experience it for myself and then to make my own decision from there, which I had never done in my life, John, or I should say rarely had done. I’d always listened to the truth as it was told to me, and I just accepted it on face value and I was essentially at my wit’s end coming out of the army, and I really didn’t know what to do. Everything that I had been doing wasn’t working for me. And what I mean by working for me was getting me back home to my heart, to myself, and I tried cannabis reluctantly for myself, and I swear from the moment I tried it and experienced it for myself, all the misinformation, all the untruths were very apparent to me.
And I was like, man, nothing that these people have told me about this plant is true. I feel good. I’m back to myself. I’m not killing brain cells. I’m not addicted to crack cocaine. I am healthy. I want to be kind to myself and everybody around me. And I thought, okay, the year was 2011 and I said, this plant being illegal can’t be illegal forever because this helps me. This is going to help too many people. And I said, okay, from that point on, I’m going to leave that door. And then five years later I started Jane with my co-founders. And yeah, so touching the truth was really the catalyst to get me going.
Jon Purow:
That’s awesome. Did you come to, so you said reluctantly, right? So my curiosity, everyone has their own personal journey to it, and that journey evolves, right? I mean, I only consider myself a medical cannabis patient when I started using it after I broke my back cliff jumping in Jamaica five months ago. And now I’m like, wait, there’s nothing else like this. And even I focus on the fact that you don’t even need the psychoactive component because a month ago we had that study coming out that said terpenes without THC beats opioids when it comes to treatment of certain pain. So did you come to it just because of that personal experience or was there any medical element to it? Was it a mental health thing? Was it like,
Socrates Rosenfeld:
Yeah, I coach Steve DeAngelo a lot. He was the early advocate, I guess in the modern age of cannabis legalization. And he says he has this beautiful saying here where we think too binary in terms of medical versus recreational. And really this plant puts you somewhere on the spectrum of wellness and wellbeing.
And I wasn’t, well, I was fit. I could run fast. I was intellectually I could take a standardized test and score relatively high. But was I well, was I present? Was I healthy? Was I soft and kind? No, I wasn’t. And so yeah, cannabis put me really on this path of thinking less about medical versus recreational. And I’m so grateful that I was 29 years old when I was introduced to this plant because back when I was 16, when normally people gravitate towards the plant or try it, I was doing that with alcohol and I just wanted to get as drunk as I possibly could, what you do at that age. But here I was at 29 and I was using it from day one as a sacrament in mature, in mature
Jon Purow:
Fashion.
Socrates Rosenfeld:
And it’s wild too because now my friends around me, my family around me who have tried cannabis earlier in their life, see me consuming and it’s changed their perspective and their relationship with the plant. Just like you have said, I imagine you consume before you had that accident in Jamaica and now that you’re consuming it, you’re realizing this is actually more of a medicine. I don’t say a medical, but a real medicine. It helps heal whatever is ailing you. And I think we cannot lose touch with that as things are becoming bigger and more mainstream. And that’s beautiful. But let’s not forget that at the end of the day for millennia human beings have been using this plant to help with wellness and wellbeing. And some might call that recreational, some might call that medical, that’s fine, but it makes you feel that’s the connection. I have the plan and I will never lose that connection. And as long as I’m at Jane, we at Jane will never lose that connection with this plan either.
Jon Purow:
Well, I mean, that was awesome. Preach it bud brother. And our Jewish ancestors appreciated that. One of my favorite things in the podcast news aggregator was popped up at a temple 2000 years ago, right? Mixed with manure. So I think they probably just did that for burning purposes. And I always think of my mother-in-law who lived on the kibbutz going up to the kibbutz and the manure smell from a mile away and her being smells like home. And I’m like, everything’s a matter of perspective. So I greatly, greatly appreciate that. I think the thing that you could probably appreciate too that hits home with me more and more is we understand a fraction of the connection to the plant. I mean, there are 625 phytocannabinoids to play with. We’ve done research in five, it’s early goings. I mean, they discovered the endocannabinoid during the war on drugs when there’s an international treaty preventing anybody from researching it. So it’s like we are scratching the tip of the iceberg. And that’s why I had this thing I put on LinkedIn where I said, I could convince you in six facts or less that there’ll be cures for cancer in the plant from one. But putting all that aside, personal wellness,
Socrates Rosenfeld:
Yes,
Jon Purow:
There’s nothing like it. And I think at some point I just realized, well one, it’s crazy how many people there are with a DHD in the industry who are very, very successful, right? Because a DHD folks find things that help them and everything. But I also just, the thing I say sometimes is if I’m going down more of a negative cycle, it puts me back in touch with my mojo, right? In my purest form, I’m dancing. That’s beautiful. I don’t see that out a lot, right? But I smoke. That’s purest form.
Socrates Rosenfeld:
You’re dancing. That’s beautiful. Bob Marley says, I think it’s cliche, I think it’s poetry. The herb will reveal yourself to you and you’re like, oh, this is me and dancing inside and that’s beautiful.
Jon Purow:
And
Socrates Rosenfeld:
I had never found myself, I thought me was Captain Rosenfeld in the army flying Apaches or MIT grad student or athlete, fill in the blank, whatever me was. But then really only you really know the real me inside there and the planet is a key. It’s not the only key. For some people it’s music. For some people it’s meditation. I have tools in my toolkit to remind myself who I am, but when used with intention, just like with anything, that medium becomes a vehicle through which you can connect back to yourself. And cannabis is a good friend in that sense. So that’s cool man in inside. That’s right.
Jon Purow:
What’s funny to me is that, well one, first of all, I just love how kind of personal this has started out and we both got to share some stuff and no, I mean I appreciate everything that you’re saying in terms of, but actually what here? So alcohol is always a comparison point. And so I found it very funny when you’re talking about how the leaf reveals who you truly are when comparing to alcohol, and we’re talking about which drug is more harmful or not, alcohol reveals your uglier parts,
Socrates Rosenfeld:
Right?
Jon Purow:
Exactly. Your doesn’t that ultimately what it does, it removes your inhibitions. So it’s not like you’re staring yourself in the mirror being like, that’s the dude. Right? It brings out the ugly parts.
Socrates Rosenfeld:
Yeah, man. I mean, I’m of the belief that we are coming back to the sense of self. We’re going to get weird enough. Sorry, my name is Socrates, so
Jon Purow:
No, please lean in,
Socrates Rosenfeld:
Man. What is John? You can describe, Hey, I’m a lawyer. I’m from here, I’m Jewish, I’m a man, all these things. But is that really you? And on some level, some might argue that, okay, we’re in this human form on some level, we are animals. I won’t refuse a really good glass of wine. I’m not dogmatic in that sense. And there’s some people who don’t touch it, and I respect that, but I really don’t drink often. But what I can recall back to the times when I got drunk, I lost my entire sense of humanity, my almost connection with my spiritual self and just became an animal that wanted to fight or the other Fs right out there. And you lose your sense of self. So I would argue it’s the opposite of cannabis. And there are some people who when they consume the plant who are heavy in drinking alcohol, it makes them uncomfortable. It actually makes them sick because the metaphor I use is they’ve been on a roller coaster for so long,
Jon Purow:
The
Socrates Rosenfeld:
Plant has you stepping off the rollercoaster. And when you’ve ever done that before, you kind of get disoriented a little bit. Man, that’s the medicine part. That’s the healing part in my opinion and in my own experience. I’m not trying to preach to anyone, but it’s interesting that you contrast that with alcohol. No one’s ever done that on a podcast I’ve been on. And here it is. It’s in movie theaters, airplanes, college games where the crowd isn’t even able to drink alcohol. It’s on every commercial. It’s a trip, man. How much we just push that onto society. And some might even argue that that’s keeping us not as awake as we potentially could be
Jon Purow:
And think a lot of
Socrates Rosenfeld:
Medicines are
Jon Purow:
Doing that. Yeah, I agree with you a hundred percent. Right. And I feel like we should never forget this country’s immaturity by comparison. So say like Europe, where they just have so much more of a mature approach to drugs, which is where I went to Spain between my junior, senior year of high school, and I got exposed to people drinking, not to binge drink, but to have a glass of wine at dinner. And they could do that if they were 18. And I just had a more mature kind of approach to alcohol as I went the first week of college and watched all the ambulances come in to pick people up from alcohol poisoning whose parents never let them try it before. So they went straight to drinking way too much and losing control. And I just think that it’s, so the way that I frankly see it, dude, is that alcohol days are numbered. Marijuana is a superior drug. I also think that people need to understand that marijuana isn’t just a single, sorry, marijuana I don’t like because it’s a racist term. High. THC, cannabis, HTC, high THC, cannabis. There you
Socrates Rosenfeld:
Go.
Jon Purow:
I’m trying to come up with something.
Socrates Rosenfeld:
I like it. I was asked by a group of executives early on because they were just kind of fact finding fishing around in the cannabis industry. And I guess I was the only dude to pick up the phone. And I was talking to them very well-known company, they sponsored the Super Bowl. They were flat out, they asked me point blank directly, do you think cannabis is a substitute or a compliment to alcohol? And without question, it was like, Hey, it’s a substitute based on, again, my own experience, the more I consume the plant, the less I gravitated towards wanting alcohol. And I think that’s consistent with a lot of people who have consumed. And immediately they said, that’s exactly what we thought. And that’s scaring us. So they’re thinking about it already. Our position,
My hope is that we don’t figuratively or literally water down the plant to, its like, Hey, this thing just gets you high just like alcohol or makes you feel a certain way just like alcohol. Because in my experience with plant medicines beyond cannabis, it won’t let you do that. And if you try to use it as an escape, a numbing agent, Hey, I want to escape from the real world. It’s going to teach you a lesson whether you like it or not. And I think we need to be very mindful of how we introduce this plant into the mainstream. I’m not saying we have to get all scientific and spiritual, but let’s not treat it just like alcohol in the sense of let’s put in a bottle, let’s pour some water into it, and then let’s literally water this down to its most non essence, right? Yeah. That’s what we’re hoping to prevent here at Jane, and we consider ourselves stewards to do that.
Jon Purow:
Yeah, I feel like, well, one, I mean I was just interviewing CEO of power supply, and we’re talking about just distillate, conceptually, just how kind disturbing it is to take something away from the way it’s intended. But let’s go back to what you’re saying there in terms of introducing people to the plant. And I always talk about kind of curious, a lot of us in the industry, I mean, you play a very large role in this, right? In terms of facilitating for people, convenience always wins. Just ask Amazon until the antitrust suit comes to fruition. But you play this role in terms of exposing people to the industry. And the one thing that just drives me nuts is I understand, look, like we already said alcohol, I consider one drug. Yes, you could get a different vibe off drinking scotch and the warmth versus a margarita, but really,
Socrates Rosenfeld:
I know you’re going this, John, and I love it, man. Yes, go.
Jon Purow:
If you know where I’m going, I’m going to appreciate it. And we need a shorthand. However, indica and sativa is bullshit, bullshit historically and everything. And yet I just want us to get to something where it’s like, alright, upper or downer mean
Socrates Rosenfeld:
Is,
Jon Purow:
And we all have different reactions, some of the
Socrates Rosenfeld:
Exactly.
So at Jane, there’s a couple of things I want to share. One is our brand design marketing team, pretty much I would argue pretty much every employee at the company has a personal relationship with the plant. I’m not saying they all consume, they’ve had a father, a mother, a friend. They understand that this is not some pill. You pop and all of a sudden you feel good. It’s plant medicine. But hopefully you’ll like this. John. A lot of people like to equate cannabis with alcohol and exactly right. There’s one dimension to alcohol. One, it’s like you drink it, you have a beer, I have a beer, okay? Our tolerance level will dictate how drunk we become, how inebriated we are. One drink. I mean, if I have a half a glass of wine, I will be tipsy. So my former Army buddies are laughing at me. Now, we say here at Jane, cannabis is more like music where if I say jazz or country or hip hop or pop, you’re like, oh, I just hate all jazz. Okay, well that’s pretty binary. Let’s listen to the actual specific song.
Jon Purow:
And
Socrates Rosenfeld:
Why I equ it to music is you use the word, it’s so personal when you listen to a Beatles song or a Led Zeppelin song, I love Led Zeppelin. Sometimes I’ll play Led Zeppelin. I turn over to someone I’m listening to and they’re like, yo, this is some scary loud music. I’m like, oh, this makes me feel peaceful or listen to a Beatles song. My wife loves it, a George Harrison song. She’s having a great day. I’m almost in tears. And so then the beautiful challenge becomes, and at Jane, and we’re not the only ones accepting this challenge, but here at Jane, we take it very seriously. How do we present cannabis to a consumer like Spotify presents music to a listener that is the art. And also, quite frankly, the science around how do you package this thing, this plant up in a way where a consumer will understand, oh, this is why you’re showing this to me.
I like bass beats in loud drums or guitar solos or quiet melodic tones. Man, can we start talking about terpenes that way one day and how it affects you personally? That’s the dream state. And I think we can get there. And you can’t do that with alcohol, bud Light, Miller Light. It’s literally all the same thing. It’s very important for us not to commoditize this plant and in fact, go the opposite direction and make this an extremely personal curated product that people can develop their own relationship with. And if Jane is a gateway into that, a threshold into that, well, that’s even more,
Jon Purow:
The podcast is proud to be sponsored by E bottles. If you’re in the cannabis business, that quality packaging isn’t just important. It’s essential. That’s where Ebos comes in, whether you’re just starting out or scaling up. Ebos offers proprietary top of the line packaging products built for cannabis bottles is the market leader for a good reason. They’re experts in the field, six patents, five warehouse locations around the country, and a network of exceptional distributors. So get ebos and grow boldly. Yeah, I mean, look, I think that ultimately we need to emulate alcohol in the sense that of product diversity. I mean, I just think that there’s going to be that easy access point as much as I don’t love distillate, conceptually, right? Stealth and health, right? Stealth and health. I get it. Well, vapes, well, putting aside heavy metal, which is in my mind the biggest secret that the industry doesn’t put out there a lot, but every study that comes back is terrifying. But I would say so, yeah, no, I appreciate all of that, but I feel like we need that product diversification. And I think that what you’re saying is, and that’s what I see the industry evolving for the cane like
Socrates Rosenfeld:
Us
Jon Purow:
Who started paying attention to their terpene profiles and get really, really specific, because I’m looking for, I don’t view it as one drug. I view it as a plant that has many roads to wellness and as a function of which one satisfies for me now, but it’s crazy to me that there could be a strain literally growing on my suburban block in South Arms New Jersey, where I like to say that the people here know how to roll literally and figuratively was a pleasant surprise when they came to the burbs. There was a strain that would just trigger high level creativity. And I’m not talking about the creativity where it’s like you go back the next morning, you look at it and you’re like, you’re just laughing. Pass the laugh test. It’s like high level creativity where other people are like, that’s a good idea. And I’m just like, A plant gave that to me. How crazy is that? And how amazing is that?
Socrates Rosenfeld:
I would even argue that the plant allowed you to find it within yourself. John,
Jon Purow:
There you go.
Socrates Rosenfeld:
Yeah,
Jon Purow:
I know. I like getting spiritual like that. You’re talking me on a great day. I had two great meditations. I had some hemp with Delta eight, and I am feeling more mindful than I felt in weeks. So you’re like, this conversation’s hitting right at the right time. So let me ask you this question. I almost feel like I want to try and answer it because I feel like we actually already know each other quite well, even though it’s been a whopping 30 minutes or so. But
I mean, the question is, what advice would you give regarding leadership to other leaders in the cannabis industry? And I’ll say, my answer is, you are authentic as possible, right? You love the plant and you are authentic as possible. And the older I get, the more I just believe in energy and how it’s contagious and how they’re positive feedback kind of cycles and stuff. And I frankly would, I’d be happy showing up to work if you were the one leading because you believe in it, right? And you are, or at least, I don’t know, you’ll be more you if I see you smoking because of what you said.
Socrates Rosenfeld:
Yeah. Yeah. I’ve come to just surrender to the fact that I can’t be anyone but myself. I can’t, can’t be somebody. I just have to be me. So I appreciate you recognizing that. And as Miles David said, it takes a lifetime to find your voice. So I’m still finding it, but I think my advice, if I’m in any position to give advice, I’m really talking to myself, is connect with your why. Connect with your, why are you doing this and to own your why. There are some people here that just see cannabis as an opportunity to make a lot of money. And you know what? Although that’s not my personal, and I’m not here to judge and say that’s good or bad, man, that’s great. Maybe that means you drive efficient businesses. Maybe that’s you build great technology, maybe that’s you make really sound strategic decisions and you can grow and provide more access to this plant.
Beautiful. But own it if you’re here because you see this as an opportunity to make your mark as a tech entrepreneur and you couldn’t really make it happen in other verticals, but here’s a blank canvas. Say it. Do it. Own it. People will follow you. The right people will follow you to do that. Where I think we could do better as an industry is the inauthenticity saying, oh, cannabis really is a medicine, but at the same time, your business practices don’t align with that. Or, Hey, we really should get people out of prison who have been wrongly incarcerated for nonviolent crimes here. But really you’re not really taking the action to go and do that type of stuff. And I’m not
Jon Purow:
Saying, is that a Biden reference in terms of letting the federal prisoners
Socrates Rosenfeld:
Out or whatever. Really just anyone who’s kind of not true and pure in their intention. And I tell you what, man, Jane has been a beautiful mirror for me because we have employees, my teammates here at Jane, they are not going to stay and continue this thing, this stuff that we do is hard, man, this John, it is challenging. It’s scary, it’s uncertain. This is just the nature of taking something from the illicit market into a legal market. You have to play in this mucky water. But the moment I stand in front of, I say, Jane is a beautiful mirror for me, really, it’s an honor to sit in the seat of CEO O because it forces me to be honest with myself, that is the only way I’m going to be able to connect with my teammates. And the only way they’re going to be able to say, yeah, I want to continue to do hard stuff with you, SOC.
Yeah, let’s continue to drive this mission forward. If I was talking out of both sides of my mouth, as we have experienced, right? Politicians, teachers, parents, you name it, we’ve all been there and it’s like, oh man, I don’t want to be here anymore. I don’t believe in this anymore. And so my respectful challenge to anybody in this space is to own your why and to be honest with your why. And there’s not a single why that is right or a single why that is wrong. But just to live in alignment with that I think is what the world needs and what this industry certainly needs.
Jon Purow:
I always say that my mother’s main legacy is that I live by the golden rule. And I think that the way that you’re describing it, the way that you’re talking it out, it is touching upon that similar concept. And I also feel like I almost finish your thought or try and articulate it in a modified way, is to get in touch with your own why and to meet people at their why. Beautiful. Because what you’re saying is what you’re saying is that, look, these are all my pop puns for some of the things that you say, I call ’em can of carpet baggers, right?
Socrates Rosenfeld:
Love it.
Jon Purow:
And I’m just like, if that’s what you’re here for, if you’re a finance bro and you’re here as long as I see you and that’s what you’re telegraphing, then that’s all good. But just don’t inauthenticity. I think our industry, perhaps because of what you said, that cannabis has been this pathway to ourselves for so many people for whom it’s so meaningful that the idea of someone being inauthentic is offensive. It is like
Socrates Rosenfeld:
It’s a great point.
Jon Purow:
I have an allergic reaction when I interact with someone in the industry who I feel is here not be. And then when you realize that everybody in the industry has a personal tie, a medical tie, a family tie. When Al Harrington told the story about his grandma in glaucoma, and I’m crying, when you find someone who’s just like, yeah, I’m here. And they’re just kind of full of shit, I’m allergic to it on another kind of level.
Jon Purow:
Yeah.
Jon Purow:
Yeah.
Socrates Rosenfeld:
Imagine that’s what makes dinner parties good or bad,
Jon Purow:
Right?
Socrates Rosenfeld:
I’m older now. I’m in my forties, and so I don’t get that money. Me too. Oh, right on you. Neither
Jon Purow:
Do
Socrates Rosenfeld:
- Yeah, plant those well for you, but I don’t care. Republican, Democrat, north, south, old, young. As long as you have a sense of self and you are being authentic, that we’re going to have a great dinner. And this is why no one likes networking events. Everybody’s got the costume on and fronting, and it’s just so exhausting and so tiring. And I think in this day and age, 2024, we’re just so over it, right? And I think we like to gravitate towards brands that are authentic. I think we like to gravitate towards people that are authentic. So why not do it? And it’s scary. It’s scary to take the mask off and it takes time. But coming back full circle, cannabis is a great friend in that sense, where it helps you take the mask off a safe way in a way that is nonjudgmental and self empathetic. And it’s a beautiful place to come from, man. And as someone who has stood in front of military soldiers trying to act a certain way, I wish I could go back and be just myself. And now at Jane, I have, I’m so grateful for the opportunity to do that because it’s an act of self. It’s a self practice, not a
Public practice. It’s really for the self. And like you said, with your meditation, only you will really know. Only you will really know.
Jon Purow:
I listen to, there’s a self-forgiveness meditation that I do. Sometimes I go way down the perfectionist rabbit hole too much. And one of the parts I love about it is, well, you’re talking about wishing you could go back and go to yourself when you were inculcated with all these different views before you tried it, and it literally opened up your mind, right? By the way, I love the fact that that’s actually what psychedelics literally do, right? Psychedelics treatment resistant depression is literally closing down neuro pathways in your brain. Neuroplasticity and psychedelics are literally opening your mind. And I think that to a certain extent, cannabis does the same thing. And I think that that’s why it’s such a good bond to have with someone. I agree with you, that networking in any sense that the inauthentic nature of it, where we’re selling, we’re all selling. I say
Socrates Rosenfeld:
It where you’re everyone beer in your hand. So it’s even compounding that, right? It’s
Jon Purow:
Like, yeah, man, it is a funny hypocrite. It’s a funny little kind of conundrum. That’s why I try to have the cannabis beverage. That’s why I was the secretary of the Cannabis Beverage Association.
Socrates Rosenfeld:
Awesome, man. Yeah. We’ve got to put more cannabis beverages in the hands of these network
Jon Purow:
Events there. I was thinking about what you were saying before in terms of where we’re trying to go. I think the cane are heading towards the micro batches and the things that are very specific and knowing their terpene profiles. But we do need for the can curious and everyone, the crossover product and cannabis beverages going to be it. And they’re already there and they’re already crossing over, and you’re referencing alcohol people calling you up and asking, you we’re already on Generation 2.0, right? We’re what, five years past the constellation deal or something? So they’re coming, right? This next farm bill, very, very interesting. Let’s see how it plays out. So wait, one thing I forgot to ask you. No, well, it was one of my silly questions. My silly. I
Socrates Rosenfeld:
Love it.
Jon Purow:
No, yeah. I’m going back to the silly question, right? So you were an actual helicopter pilot in the military, which I’m picturing in my head just for the record, as Top Gun Maverick, but with helicopters, okay? Right.
Socrates Rosenfeld:
There is a movie, actually no one knows this because it was, the Army does many things. Well, the one thing that you don’t do well, better than the Navy, the Navy’s the best at putting out military propaganda films, top Gun, Navy, seal this, all this stuff, write all the books. So the story is Top Gun came out, it’s the coolest movie. Navy submissions for applications went through the roof. So the Army saw it and was like, we can make one. So they called up Nick Cage and they made a film called Firebird. So to anybody listening, and that’s a movie that you want to watch on an international
Jon Purow:
Show, I want to watch that in
Socrates Rosenfeld:
Movie. Movie. Oh, God, it’s so bad that it’s good, man.
Jon Purow:
So Craptastic, craptastic, man. Yeah. Anyways, anyways.
Socrates Rosenfeld:
Fire Firebird. Sorry. Sorry
Jon Purow:
For distracting. No, it’s no worries, man. I mean, I get a date back to Airwolf. I found some
Socrates Rosenfeld:
That’s great.
Jon Purow:
Notebooks I had when I was in fifth grade, it was just like the front of a helicopter where literally every inch was a gun or a missile.
Socrates Rosenfeld:
Oh gosh. I know. Now it’s just parts and cannabis plants and rainbows, man.
Jon Purow:
Exactly. Exactly. So now what would you say are some of the biggest factors in terms of how Jane has reached its lofty position in the industry?
Socrates Rosenfeld:
If I were to boil it down to its essence, we create the space for special people to create. That’s what we do at Jane. We all have a why. I don’t want to, if you’re ever interviewing at Jane, that’s the only question I ask. So the secret is out, but that’s it. Like, Hey, why? And it’s like, it’s not necessarily what you say, but how you say it, right? Kind of gauge in authenticity.
Jon Purow:
So you interview like a three-year-old. Got it. Okay. Right. That phase where they’re just like, but why? But
Socrates Rosenfeld:
Why. Yeah, exactly. But to coming back to how did Jane go from where we were to where we are creating a space. And so for people to create, and if you think about that, what does it mean to create a space, create a safe space where people can be themselves. The only way from yourself can you create, if you’re being fake, you’re just going to copy, you’re going to replicate, you’re not going to do anything innovative. Do we have alignment and trust and transparency? We share and meet as a company, as a whole company every Friday. And we give updates. We share cashflow statements, we share strategy, we share wins, we share losses and learnings because without that sense of shared understanding and trust that we’re going to move in multiple different directions, and we’re a remote team. And then I think at the end of the day, we know, and I’m going to say it, and I know a lot of people throw that word around, but we love each other. Not love in the romantic sense, not loving in the fufu sense, but love of like, dang, you signed up for this ride too. It’s a
Jon Purow:
Mission,
Socrates Rosenfeld:
Right? And oh, you’re also creating space for me to make mistakes, to be myself, to be vulnerable. That’s the love. And so do we make mistakes all the time? And it starts with me. I make so many mistakes, man. But is there a space here where I feel safe, where I feel heard, where I feel seen? Can I ask for help when I need it? Can I communicate the intention and the vision at the end of the day? Can I go where it’s really hard and scary? And if I were to think back to my military days, that’s actually what it was, man. People ask me all the time, do you miss flying? Do you miss the action? I miss the InBetween. I miss knowing that time
Jon Purow:
With the team.
Socrates Rosenfeld:
Yeah, I got a bunch of other soldiers who have my back so I can go and do hard stuff. That is, and then we can get into the strategy and the product, but that’s all the other stuff. It really comes from, is there a shared understanding of each other and the mission that we are pursuing? And are we without condition? Are we here for it? And am I here for you without condition? Oh, if you’re this, then I’ll help you out. No, there’s none of that here. And that’s why in my opinion, we can stay remote and then we can continue to be successful because we have those tenants. And that is not my doing, that’s our doing. That’s every single employee, every teammate being dedicated and committed to that. And that’s when it works. In the moment it doesn’t work. One or two start going off, man, the whole thing comes off the rails real quick. And so really hiring the right people, not the best people. There are plenty of smart people in the world, but the right people, the real people, that’s who have joined the mission. And man, that’s the reason why we are where we are. It’s completely because of the people and the shared space that created for one another.
Jon Purow:
I think that that’s fascinating. So you have an all hands on deck. So help me picture this meeting in terms of how many people are on remotely and how long this meeting lasts. It gets everybody on the same page.
Socrates Rosenfeld:
Everybody on the same page, every single employee every Friday. So about 200 employees on a Zoom call for an hour. And here’s the beautiful part. A lot of people, I’m divulging secrets, interview secrets, and what goes on the curtain at Jane, we share our update, business update. Then at the end of every Friday, closeout, we call it one employee gets the mic. And for a certain amount of time, that employee shares what they are grateful for. And that’s the prompt. What are you grateful for? And it’s a wonderful exercise. And then what we do is we start, because I’m of the belief that you can’t be grateful and afraid at the same time. This tradition started during Covid when it was nuts. We didn’t know if we were going to live or die, really just to be real. We all pretend like, oh, that was so annoying. But there was a moment there where we were like, oh my God, is this it?
And so we started to share our Friday gratitude and the exercise of going through it as the individual is one thing. It’s beautiful. I love my mom, or I love my dog, or I love traveling, whatever that is. But what we come to realize too is that we are very similar in what we are grateful for. No one has said they’re really grateful for their Rolex watch or their Mercedes-Benz. We are grateful for the things that make us human, family, food, music, that type of stuff. And even though we’re remote, even though most of our employees have never met one another, the moment John, you start talking about what makes you human, connects with my humanity. And now we’re more than just employees on a zoom call. Now we’re human beings on a shared experience on the trip together. And that is how you can make beautiful things. And I’m just really grateful that we’ve created that space together here at Jane. And so that’s our Friday closeout, and that’s a tradition that I hope remains for a while. I hope it does.
Jon Purow:
I mean, I think that it’s very, very cool, right? Because think about it as a team building exercise. What more would you ideally want a team to realize that they sink on, then the things that matter most to them that they’re most grateful for? I mean, we’re all just looking for common elements, common themes. The things that I find astounding are like, no, whatever. You go to a cannabis conference, everyone’s there for one reason. They love the plant, right? It’s just like how I think I would say one of the most religious experiences of my life was going to the Yankees ticker tape parade in 1996 and seeing a million people from every background, every demographic, everything united in their belief of one thing that was a religious experience to me, I got chills watching. These people could not have been more different in certain interactions where I think that they would probably be at each other’s throats, literally just going nuts for the Yankees.
Socrates Rosenfeld:
John, I love that even though it’s a Yankees reference, and I’m from Boston, but I love that because can the cannabis industry, I would argue in the world, but let’s just focus our aperture here a little bit in the US right now, we’re so divided.
Jon Purow:
You
Socrates Rosenfeld:
Are this, I’m that, she’s this, he’s that in the industry. When we were starting in 20 15, 20 16,
Oh my god, man, that was the religious experience for me of everybody I talked to was here. Okay, some people really want to make money and they wanted to help people. Some people wanted to get people out of prison and they wanted to provide this plan for people. There was an and to it. And just like normal business, this is the capitalist game we play. There are competitors, and now it’s started to be us and them versus we. I think if we could unite as an industry, even this hemp stuff that the media’s, I was just
Jon Purow:
Going to say,
Socrates Rosenfeld:
Just us them. Can we just take a step back? We all want the same thing. We all want to put this plant into the hands of people that need it around the world. Can we just start from there? And I’m not saying we can’t disagree. I’m not saying we can’t compete, but can we just not forget about that whoever they is wins? Can we just stay tight on that and celebrate the fact that no matter what company is number one versus number two, we’re all advancing this plan, hopefully in the right way. That’s what we should be celebrating and never forget. But I’m not going to forget that story of thinking about John’s religious experience at the 1996
Jon Purow:
Yankee. Yeah, after I broke my, I mean, cliff jumping was one of my quasi spiritual experiences. That’s out. But then I would say that going to an Olivia Rodrigo concert with my daughters and watching what one person created writing in their room, turning into a thing with what, close to 20,000, mostly tween girls jumping up and down. And when I went to the bathroom, I feared for the structural integrity of Madison Square Garden, which the floor was shaking. I was in a frat party back in college. That was a religious experience for me. That was my redefined religious experience. And by the way, I find it funny that when you’re talking about all the reasons and arguments for legalization, you touched upon something that occurs to me that’s just like our world is scary and polarized and wouldn’t it just be nice if everyone just chilled out a bit, right? Because people on both sides of every single fricking aisle, we’re at 70% consistently across the country and the older demographics that are against it, they’ve been through the war on drugs for more decades. They come round as soon as they realize there’s nothing better for pain and sleep, right?
Socrates Rosenfeld:
Right. Yeah, I’m with you. It is one of the most unifying, bipartisan, whatever you want to call it. A lot of people will disagree on many issues. Cannabis legalization is not one of them. And I would argue even to take it, your spiritual guide, John, even though you like to maybe pretend that you’re not, but what’s going on around the world is someone who has fought in war. I think I have the right to say this. I remember flying in what I call my metal chariot in the sky removed from everything you talk about, the drawing, the doodles that you had on your notebook, I flew those. It was a weaponized aircraft. Here I was flying in the desert and watching people, human beings, going about their day trying to stay human, even though an Apache helicopter, a war machine was flying overhead then. And we had our cameras that you could zoom in and I’d watch, I’d fly on a certain schedule and I could see this guy in a certain neighborhood every day at the same time, walking with his kids.
And he had his wife and he was just, I didn’t know where he was going, but I remember thinking, I bet that guy and me have a lot in common. And if we could just sit down and talk about and share maybe our gratitudes, Hey, what are you grateful for? I’m grateful for my family. Me too. What else are you grateful for? Man? I’m grateful for a really nice home cooked meal. Oh man. Me too. We start to realize as much as we would love to, like, Hey, everybody should smoke some weed and chill out, man, let’s just at least get in touch with what we’re grateful for. The weed part can be icing on the cake. And at that point in time, man, we realize at the end of the day, all of us want the same things we do. And then we have been duped into thinking that the other side. So at the end of the day, we’re all human beings. And I think if we can start at Jane with Friday gratitude, maybe go out to the rest of the industry, go out to the country, go out to the world, then let’s start with gratitude and see where that takes us.
Jon Purow:
That’s awesome. I dig it. So now, here’s a question. Right now, with the role that you play in the industry, do you consider yourselves to be reactive to constant, I call it the reefer regulatory roller coaster, right? That we’re all riding the reefer roller coaster. And do you consider yourselves reactive according to the strictures of what you can and can’t do? Or do you try to be on that side of the active participants, whether you want to call it like a Steve Jobs and tell the people what they want kind of thing or not? How do you view Jane in that
Socrates Rosenfeld:
Lens? Yeah, there are natural limitations to what we are, can and cannot do. And that is defined by the law. And I love touching on this subject where there is a difference between risk and uncertainty.
In the army, anything uncertain was risky. Oh, hey, we don’t have a satellite image of this. You can’t take off. We don’t know what it is. Well, not knowing doesn’t necessarily mean it’s bad. In the army, not knowing was risk. It was guaranteed to be bad. They had to be overly conservative. Now, in the business setting, risk and uncertainty, in my opinion, should be treated differently. Risk is a known negative. Oh, okay. Hey, if you start selling weed from California and ship it into Massachusetts, that is a major risk. That is not an unknown. That’s a known A something. You’re going to be penalized. But a lot of business deals in the uncertainty. Oh, I don’t know, actually, and this is just the beauty of being in an industry that’s trying to figure out what it is.
And so we view uncertainty as neither good nor bad, but as an opportunity to learn more. And so there’s this old, I’m sorry man, that sounds so cliched, but these are the books I read. And a friend, actually, I didn’t get this in a book. This is a friend called me, he’s a zen Buddhist. Now, if he’s listening, he’s going to be smiling because he would never call himself that. But he called me and said, you know what? So not knowing is most intimate. And I had no idea what he meant. Not knowing is most intimate when you don’t know, you stay curious. I don’t know if you have kids, John, but you have kids, right? How old are your kids?
Jon Purow:
Nine and 13-year-old girls.
Socrates Rosenfeld:
Okay, nine and 13. Here we go. I love it. When they were 2, 3, 4 years old, the world was fresh when they were babies, even younger than that, just being out there, they didn’t know a bird was a bird. So when they saw a bird, they were tripping out. Or when they tasted ice cream for the first time, they weren’t like, oh, this is ice cream. They were like, my God, what is this thing? And then you start, and you’re going through it now, where they’re going from the unknown to the knowing and they’re like, oh, this is so boring. Or this is that or
Jon Purow:
This.
Socrates Rosenfeld:
We do that as humans, and you’re smiling. So I can only imagine you’re in it.
To do that in business, to be like, oh, that’s this. That’s to me that this is what’s going to happen. Wow. How limiting is that? And so what we like to do is we like to say, I don’t know. I stand in front of the company. It must drive my other teammates nuts because the CEO stands up there and is like, Hey, I don’t know how this is going to go. But if we go with the intention of, oh, this is exactly how it’s going to go. We’re going to be in a reactive state when it doesn’t happen that way. So we like to respond instead of react. We like to be in what we call in the surfing world, in the pocket of the wave. It’s going to go up, it’s going to go down, it’s going to go left, it’s going to go right.
Let’s, when we make decisions and take action, let’s think about how that’s going to set us up for the volatility. Not to say, oh, we saw the volatility. Here’s our play. We want to stay open. We want to actually not know because that’s most intimate. And if we can do that, we become less reactive and more responsive. We can start seeing opportunities and really where others might see risk, we see an uncertainty. And then slowly, slowly we have a way of getting to the uncertainty and making it known. And then from there, we can take our actions. So
Jon Purow:
Yeah. Do you have a hard stop in two minutes, by the way? Because there are two questions I want to ask
Socrates Rosenfeld:
Way, dude.
Jon Purow:
All good. Because we’re flowing too well, right? We’re flowing almost too well. It’s amazing. Now, this is just a question I like to ask, is like a dank dork, ganja geek, if you will, with the unique data that you have access to. What are some of the most surprising things that you see? What are some of the most interesting trends? What do you guys get to see that the rest of the industry would say,
Socrates Rosenfeld:
Huh? We’re starting to see different archetypes of cannabis consumers emerge, and I’m probably not telling you anything that’s groundbreaking. The one thing that I think we assume, but I’ll confirm it with data, is the number one search term on Jane is sleep.
That’s how this plant is going to enter into the mainstream, in my opinion. It’s like, man, I can’t sleep. I’m going insane. Not literally going insane. I need some help. The bottle of wine every night’s not doing it for me anymore, or this sleeping pill is making me feel literally insane. And so is there something that’s not addictive that I can use? And it’s sleep. These sleep gummies are amazing. So that’s one. But we’re starting to see the emergence of, we have folks that are really into THC that is becoming less and less of where it was five years ago. We’re now seeing people become, develop affinities towards certain brands now. Oh, I love filling the brand for vape cartridges. Oh, they just came out with an edible line. I’m going to go and buy that. I think for packaged goods, brand affinity is growing significantly. Like, oh, I like my wild gummies. That’s my gummy. I’m just going to order this. Rinse or repeat, get my auto replenishment. One day flower is music, man. Flower is like, cool, I got my brands, but ooh, let me try this strain. Or man, I’m geeking out on a brand. I’m going to give them some shine, even though I know I’m scared that they’re going to sell out. They’re called a farm cut out in, do you know them up in
Jon Purow:
No, no, no, not familiar.
Socrates Rosenfeld:
Humble. And now I want to be low. THC sun grown, so it’s cheaper to manufacture. They don’t trim it down to where they get rid of anything. So they keep the crystals, they keep the herb intact, in my opinion.
Jon Purow:
And
Socrates Rosenfeld:
Man, it sells for a quarter ounce, like 50, 60 bucks. That’s where we’re seeing people gravitate. There’s an emergence now of people like you and me, John, that are like, okay, I’m less so into, it has to be over 30% and more into, Hey, what other cannabinoids and terpenes are here? How have you grown it? What soil is this in? Similar to how we think about anything that we go put into our body. I, I’m in California, so everything is like, Hey, it’s organic or
Jon Purow:
Yeah, not being able to say organic with respect to it. Asurs is absolute ridiculous.
Socrates Rosenfeld:
Exactly, exactly. So we’re seeing now, if you asked me five years ago, every cannabis consumers probably shopping the same way, now it’s completely different. Some are store, Hey, I love my store. What do they have? Some are deal hunters, some are low, THC, high THC. Some are brand affinity. So it’s really cool. And that’s why we just come back to how do we create a platform that is personal, individual and not kind of whitewashing this plant for, hey, this is the thing for everyone on Valentine’s Day. Try this. It’s like, man, some Buzzfeed stuff. We want to develop a real tool where people can develop a relationship directly with the plant. And it’s cool now that we’re starting to see the market develop in that way, which is really exciting for us. It allows us to develop the product in our vision of where we always thought it was going to
Jon Purow:
Go. I think it’s so interesting when we have that revelation that’s like when Aaron Miles and Verano was like, I called it mature markets, and he was like, John, John, there’s no such thing as a mature market in cannabis. Even California is still significantly changing the regulations
When we remind ourselves that we’re still such early days. So for you to say now is when brand affinity really seeming to finally take hold, come up. Yeah. It’s crazy to think that, but right. I mean that’s really where we’re at. I mean, is there one brand? Maybe there’s only one brand that SA is a national brand that has national recognition and that’s crazy. And so, alright, so I always like to end. I need to get your vote. I can never decide this, right? So it’s time for you to predict the future. You’re going to play Toker dus or Smoker dus. You’re going to put on your wizard hat stylized like a J, right? And I just want you to predict something macro, micro, near future, distant future about the industry with that incredible, authentic voice of yours, my friend,
Socrates Rosenfeld:
When, but when cannabis, from a regulatory standpoint is treated as we all believe it should, on parity at a minimum, just treat it like alcohol. We all know science has proven that alcohol is a lot more destructive than cannabis. So assuming that to be true, cannabis will be an order of magnitude larger in terms of volume consumption, revenue usage than alcohol is in this day and age. I don’t know if I’ll be around to see it, but I hope that for generations, your daughter’s generation, they see it because the world I think will be a lot better off because of it. It’s a healing of the nation. So that’s my big, yeah, yeah. Tous
Jon Purow:
It. I do similar things where I talk about the scale of it. When they say, how many dispensary should there be? I said, well, how many alcohol stores are there? Right? There should be more. So with that, I’m about to turn off the recording, but I just wanted to thank you so much. I mean, what a fricking pleasure this has been, man. So you are a true, you’re part of the fam now, I like to say when you’re in the podcast. So I really appreciate it.
In this episode of The Ganjapreneur Podcast, host TG Branfalt is joined by Regina Smith, founder and co-owner of The Plant, a licensed dispensary in Yonkers, New York. Regina shares her journey from a background in retail and baking to navigating the challenges of the cannabis industry. She discusses the complex social equity licensing process in New York, how The Plant is building trust and community in a competitive market, and the importance of education and customer service in the evolving cannabis landscape. Regina also touches on the role of legal dispensaries in the community, and how creative partnerships with local businesses are key to success. Tune in below to hear her inspiring story and insights on the future of cannabis retail, or scroll down for the full transcript!
Listen to the episode:Ganjapreneur · Regina Smith: Lessons from New York’s Emerging Cannabis Industry
Read the transcript:Editor’s note: this transcript is auto-generated and may contain errors.
TG Branfalt:
Hey there, I’m your host, TG Branfalt, and this is the Ganjapreneur.com podcast where we try to bring you actionable information and normalized cannabis through the stories of ganjapreneurs, activists and industry stakeholders. Today I’m joined by a fellow New Yorker. She is Regina Smith, founder and co-owner of the Yonkers based the Plant dispensary. How are you doing this afternoon, Regina?
Regina Smith:
I’m doing amazing.
TG Branfalt:
That’s good to hear. Amazing. Amazing is not something I get very often. So before we get into your role as a founder and co-owner of the plant, tell me about yourself. Tell me about your background and how you ended up in the cannabis space.
Regina Smith:
Well, my background, I grew up in a military family. I’ve lived all over the US and overseas. I got into the cannabis industry because of my husband. He is one of those people that have been in the legacy markets, I guess you could say. He was arrested for cannabis when he was 19. Spent about nine months in prison for it. He’s definitely a fan of the plant and everything that I’ve learned about cannabis is because of him.
TG Branfalt:
So tell me a little bit about how getting arrested for cannabis in New York. I mean, it was decriminalized for a long time. How did that affect his life in your life with him?
Regina Smith:
Well, that was when he was 19 and he actually got arrested in California. But I always tell him that doesn’t define you. He’s completely turned his life around. He’s a business owner. We’re actually business partners and all the businesses that we do. And for him to make that such a life change, it amazes me the person that he is today. I don’t think people thought he would where he’s today.
TG Branfalt:
And so New York, so obviously he’s one of these social equity licensees and a lot of people I think have a lot of misconceptions about this program and the processes and sort of what it all entails. So can you tell listeners about that licensing process? How long did it take from start to finish and what were regulators looking for?
Regina Smith:
I would be lying to you if I didn’t say it was emotionally and financially draining. But we had such a passion for what we wanted to do. We had to stay persistent. We found out about being able to own and operate a dispensary back in 2018. It was just an idea. So when 2021 came around and cannabis became legal, we were like, let’s do this. So we got in touch with a very good friend who happened to be a cannabis lawyer, and he guided us through the process for a grueling three years. But you know what? It was a great process. We learned a lot, met a lot of great people, and I’m just happy to be where we are today.
TG Branfalt:
So tell me about operating in New York City. I mean, it’s a very competitive market. What are you doing to set yourself apart and make yourself a destination in such a again, competitive region?
Regina Smith:
Right. So we’re in Yonkers, New York. I would say it’s about 10 minutes outside of New York City, and we do have a lot of dispensaries popping up right next to us. But I think what sets us apart from everybody else’s is just that we are in Yonkers, New York and we are Yonkers natives. My husband is born and raised in Yonkers and we have a community. We want to build a sense of community in our area. And a lot of other towns have opted out right next to us. We have Scarsdale, we have harsdale, and we have another business that’s about three minutes up the block, a cupcake shop. And we just wanted to touch everyone. And we also want people to know that we are a trusted legal brand. So we’re not here to just be on top of the world. We want everybody to feel like they’re tangible. Our employees know what they’re talking about, they’re educated. And I think that’s what separates us from the rest of the pact because the people that we have working for us, they know what they’re talking about and their fans of the plan and it’s a great store.
TG Branfalt:
So obviously one of the things that have been pock, we should say the early New York market was unlicensed dispensaries. How have these dispensaries affected your business and what steps do you think the state should take in curbing illegal operators?
Regina Smith:
For me, I try not to think about unlicensed shops. I feel like I’m a competitive to myself and I try to make myself better each and every day. What can I do to my business to set myself apart from everybody else? And what can make me better? Me worrying about the next person? Is it going to get me money? I got to just think about us. But I would say that in Yonkers when the licensing was going on, our mayor did put out a, what do you call it, a moratorium I think you would say. So that new smoke shops could not open up. So that kind of helped us. And then also with the OCM and their regulatory boots on the ground, I would guess you could say they are doing their job in shutting down these illicit shops. And you know what? I don’t have a problem with that.
TG Branfalt:
So in your estimation, officials are doing everything they can.
Regina Smith:
You know what? I couldn’t assume that it’s a hard job to do. So with that, you’re going to get a lot of aggravation and opinions, but I think that they’re doing the best that they can do with the resources that they have. I mean, it’s a new industry. New York is new. So eventually I believe we’re going to get there
TG Branfalt:
And we are seeing the enforcement go up. And I think that there is some concern about criminalizing. Is that something that does maybe enter your thoughts a little bit about the criminalization that may be occurring?
Regina Smith:
Yeah, I think that’s trying to navigate it. You know what, you had people arrested for selling marijuana, but then you can’t ret people for something that’s now decriminalized. It has to make sense. So I get it.
TG Branfalt:
So I want to switch gears a little bit and I want you to talk to me if you would, a little bit about being a black woman in the cannabis industry. Now women represent, I think it’s less than 1% of cannabis business owners and operators. And of that percentage, the percentage for black women is even less. So can you talk to me about what your experience is in this industry?
Regina Smith:
Yeah, I was telling you before I got into this industry because of my husband, he teaches me pretty much everything that I need to know. So sometimes I do feel like I have this imposter syndrome. I feel like I walk into the room, I don’t really see a lot of people that look like me. So you do get this feeling of do I belong here? Do I know what I’m talking about? But I try to learn as much as I can each and every day about the cannabis industry. I do love it and I’m passionate about it, but I may not know everything, but I do enjoy being in this space.
TG Branfalt:
Do you think that there’s other things that the state could do to increase, or even counties leaving localities or even the cannabis industry to increase opportunities for women and women of color in the space?
Regina Smith:
I think the social equity applicants, that was a great start. But for me, I do see a lot of trailblazing women in this industry that are doing great things. There’s a lot of industry events that are going on in New York, a lot of black coalitions that are educating people about what the black community is doing in the cannabis space and a lot of black owned cannabis products that are going to be hitting the market. So yeah, I think time is going to tell that we are going to be one of the people to watch out for.
TG Branfalt:
And how important are those networking groups and events like that? Because I do follow them on Instagram and that sort of thing. And I do see the sort of community that has been built by women in this industry.
Regina Smith:
I think it’s very important to go to those industry events because you don’t want to set yourself apart from people. I think for me, when you’re being competitive against another person, it doesn’t help you when you’re talking to other people in the business and you get to bounce off ideas with each other, it’s all love. I think the plant brings people together. It doesn’t separate us. So you smoke the plant anyway. You consume the plant, you got to be chill. Let’s be chill, let’s get together, let’s connect with cannabis. That’s our slogan. Connect with cannabis, because that’s what this plant does for people.
TG Branfalt:
And so you’ve talked to me about your experience so far and how there’s been a bit of a learning curve. How did you overcome these challenges or this imposter syndrome as you sort of get your footing into this industry?
Regina Smith:
Oh, repeat that question one more time.
TG Branfalt:
So talk to me about some of the learning curves in the cannabis industry and what some of the challenges that you had to overcome and how you overcame them as you’ve gotten your footing.
Regina Smith:
Oh, okay. That’s a very good question because although it’s a retail business and I have experience working in fashion retail, and my bakery is a retail store, this market is just very regulatory and you have to be compliant. So it’s always like eyes are always watching you type of thing. So that’s something that I’ve had to learn to be very careful from A to really ZI mean, there’s so many steps along the way that you have to take to make sure that when you’re selling the product, that it’s being handled in the proper manner. Go ahead.
TG Branfalt:
Well, I mean bakeries, you require the health department’s watching you all the time, right?
Regina Smith:
I mean, the health department comes once a year. The Ooc M could be knocking at your door at any moment, at any time of any day. It’s kind like you have to be on your P’s and Qs. There’s no skipping a beat. You have to just do what you got to do.
TG Branfalt:
So how have you taken your previous experience from your bakeries, small cakes to your role as a fashion and retail brand ambassador to the industry, the cannabis industry?
Regina Smith:
Well, I told you before, I’ve been a military brat. So I grew up in the south, and I think with my southern charm in coming up to New York, I became New York savvy. So I think that’s a great mix. I’m all about customer service. So what we’ve implemented at the plant is great customer service. Our customers love us because we have conversations with them. We know about the product. We educate our employees about what we’re selling so they can be able to sell it to our customers and create pretty much a great customer experience. We also partner up with other local businesses so that we can have a great overall experience. We partner with Walters Hot Dogs, which is a very popular food truck in our area. And you shop with us, you get hot dogs or snacks. Some small cakes would be there, you get a cupcake. Ice cream. Like I said, we’re just building a sense of community at our store. And I think people love that.
TG Branfalt:
I mean, people love hot dogs and cupcakes. I mean, it seems like a win-win. And lemme ask you a little bit more about that. One of the biggest things that when I talk to New York business owners is the rules on advertising, which is obviously far different than doing fashion. It’s all advertising and retail, it’s all advertising. Baking is baking and also advertising. So how are you advertising in New York?
Regina Smith:
You just got to be creative. We can’t say we’re doing percentage off or nothing like that. So to bring in customers, you do have to build those connections with other businesses so that you can succeed. And you know what? If I can help another business and another business can help me, so be it. A little bit of money spent there is worth it.
TG Branfalt:
And it’s money going back into the community rather than to Google or Instagram.
Regina Smith:
Exactly.
TG Branfalt:
So you talk about the sort of link to the community. Do you think community service is more of a requirement for cannabis businesses, especially in New York than for more traditional businesses? And why or why not?
Regina Smith:
Absolutely, because you know what? People look at it as a substance and you have to build trust. I mean, we are not selling illicit cannabis that you’ll buy off the street, which before this became legalized, people were doing and you couldn’t trust some of the product out there because you don’t know if it’s placed with something. Here. We want to build trust and know that you can trust our products. It’s very potent, it’s trusted, it’s tested, and it’s important for your customers to be able to come to you to be able to like, Hey, it has this many milligrams in it. I am going to fill this. I can come back because I know what I’m getting.
TG Branfalt:
And how much of a role do your employees play the people that you hire in connecting with your clientele or the community at large?
Regina Smith:
I mean, they are the heart of our business, and without them we would not succeed. But that’s on us to be good leaders so that they can resonate what we’re telling them to the customers. And I think they’re doing an amazing job at that. They are a great team. I mean, you got to come see them.
TG Branfalt:
I could see the sort of joy in your face when you talk
Regina Smith:
About them.
TG Branfalt:
It’s remarkable. What advice would you have for somebody coming from a more traditional space and entering the cannabis space? What advice would you have for them?
Regina Smith:
I mean, patience. That is what I’ve learned in this process because it was a very long process. You do it again. Absolutely. I met some of the most amazing people in this industry, and to me, I just can’t believe that I’m here. I really can’t. If you would’ve told me when I graduated college that I’ll be selling marijuana for a living, I’d be like, where did my life go? Wrong? But here,
TG Branfalt:
But no one life’s going to take you. I mean, you also have a baker. You’re also selling cupcakes. I mean,
Regina Smith:
Yeah. Yeah, I am.
TG Branfalt:
So where can people find out more about the plant, find out more about Regina Smith, find out more about small cakes, just where people find out more about you.
Regina Smith:
Well, you can find more about my bakery at Small Cakes NY on Instagram and the Plant You can visit us at fan of the Plant com and the Plant Yonkers on Instagram. We’re doing events, education sessions for our customers every week. So follow us for doing big things.
TG Branfalt:
I’m very delighted to be able to have this conversation with you. Thank you so much. That is Regina Smith. She’s founder and co-owner of Yonkers based dispensary, The Plant.
Ganjapreneur is pleased to introduce our first syndicated episode of Highly Enlightened, hosted by Jon Purow. With this show, Jon interviews cannabis business leaders and investors to shed light on what it takes to survive and thrive in the tumultuous cannabis industry. You can find more episodes of Highly Enlightened on Buzzsprout. In this episode, Jon welcomes the multi-talented Tiffany Chin, head of cannabis for Snoop Dogg.
Tiffany Chin has 13 years of experience in the entertainment space, working with world famous talent including Snoop Dogg, Eddie Murphy, and Martha Stewart. She has helped artists and talent traverse out of their traditional lane(s) of fame by way of strategic branding partnerships, including brands such as Adidas, AirBnB, Reddit, Tanqueray, Netflix and HBO.
In working closely with Snoop Dogg, Chin co-founded Casa Verde Capital in 2014, as well as Leafs By Snoop (LBS) in 2015, the first widely available celebrity cannabis brand and Snoop Dogg’s first venture into the branded cannabis space.
Chin guest lectures at UCLA for MBA marketing classes, and has consulted with many cannabis agencies and brands – and most recently debuted the Death Row Records Cannabis line in California in 2023. In 2024, Chin launched two cannabis shops alongside Snoop Dogg named S.W.E.D. – which stands for Smoke Weed Every Day (one in Inglewood, and a coffeeshop in Amsterdam). She received her business degree at the Wharton School of Business from the University of Pennsylvania.
Listen to the episode:Ganjapreneur · Highly Enlightened: Tiffany Chin, Head of Cannabis for Snoop Dogg
Episode sponsored by eBottlesThis episode of Highly Enlightened is made possible by eBottles. If you’re in the cannabis business, you know that quality packaging isn’t just important—it’s essential. That’s where eBottles comes in. Whether you’re just starting out or scaling up, eBottles offers proprietary top-of-the-line packaging products built for cannabis. eBottles is a market leader for a good reason: they are experts in the field. Six patents, five warehouse locations around the country, a network of exceptional distributors. Get eBottles and Grow Boldly.
Read the full transcript:Jon Purow:
Welcome to an interview episode of Highly Informed I’m your host, Jon Purow. Now, before we get to an interview, I’m particularly excited for, I want to note that any opinions I express or my own now as I always like to do, but has been less successful recently, I like to do a quick prayer to the video chat. Gods may. Our wifi connections be sturdy. All dogs and children like my 13-year-old upstairs remain quiet and may Amazon Prime another time. Amen. Now, with that, I have the pleasure of introducing Tiffany Chin, AKA Snoop Dogg’s head of cannabis. I mean, what titles do you like to roll with outside of the best possible title in the history of the universe? In terms of being Snoop Dogg’s, head of Cannabis, which I’m not jealous of whatsoever,
Tiffany Chin:
That’s definitely been an issue in the last two or three years. People call me CEO of Death Row Records Cannabis or Head of Cannabis and Hemp for Snoop Dogg or Head of Cannabis Ventures. I think it doesn’t really matter to me, I just work with him and manage this portion of his business for him. I lean into more like Head of Cannabis and Hemp for Snoop. Yeah.
Jon Purow:
Okay. So whatever it is, hey, head of cannabis and hemp there. I just want to thank you for taking the time out of your very busy schedule, trying to figure out what your title is to join me for this joint endeavor, so I appreciate that very much.
Tiffany Chin:
Of course, Jon. Anytime.
Jon Purow:
Okay. So as usual, I’m going to get started immediately with a hardball question that’s extremely serious. This is my serious face for the people who are watching rather than listening. Now, do you consider it kind of a shame that you can’t use the inevitable brand death row records in other countries for cannabis because they might think that it refers to killing murderers rather than ridiculously good classic hip hop?
Tiffany Chin:
It’s interesting because we’ve done quite a few studies around the recognition and understanding of what Death Row records is versus what death row is versus even shorter what death is. Obviously everyone knows what that is, but the United States very much on its own island when it comes to putting people on death row, capital punishment, all those things. As well as on the other side of the coin, doing really cool things with marketing with the word death for certain products. My favorite example would be Liquid Death, right? It’s just a water product, but when it comes to any illusions to death or harm or anything with a vice product, it is often looked down upon, I would say. Have you seen any products like that in the alcohol space? Probably not. I know that my personal and other individual’s opinions or thoughts are that this is just a brand, not so much a reference to prisoners or murderers or anyone on death row.
It still conveys that notoriety even from the nineties and when we had a little bit more of that contention between the coasts, between the gangs, between certain hip hop artists. What Snoop has tried to do with the brand is actually revitalize it and notarize it in terms of making it not notorious as opposed to what it used to be. So bringing the light, the love, the transparency, and the group and the team back together. I think something he likes to say a lot is all Coast love as opposed to necessarily West Coast, east Coast. He’s a fan of everybody. He’s an everyday man and it’s not so much about Death Row, but we do have to work with the countries who are allowing us to sell product and bring product that Snoop would smoke to them. And a lot of times we do pitch the idea of death row records, cannabis and always we talk to legal teams and different governmental bodies or governing bodies, and they’re always like, yeah, we’d give you a 50 50 shot at that.
And that doesn’t even go into the process of actually having to apply or do the things, which then if we get down the road and we get on the other side of the 50, then we’ve done all this work for nothing. So instead, we’ve kind of leaned into the idea and the persona of Snoop internationally because as an individual he is so recognizable and actually bringing back the old brand that was, if you guys remember, leaf Spice, Snoop, LBS, which we had always intended to be stylized in lowercase so that it would be colloquially referred to as pounds. So now additionally he has a brand called Dog Pounds, which is spelled D-O-G-G-L-B Bs. So it’s funny, a lot of people in Canada think of it colloquially as dog labs or dog libs. So we’ve had to reeducate them and be like, Hey, there’s a reason why all of your weight in flour is at three and a half 14 these
Jon Purow:
Brand. Yeah, exactly.
Tiffany Chin:
It’s based on ounces and pounds. Right. So yeah,
Jon Purow:
So I appreciate it by the way, when you’re talking about to de notarize because of course with also referencing East Coast, west Coast, in my head I had Biggie playing no Notorious. And then here’s the other thing that occurs to me, and this is just me spitballing my ideas that I can’t help my brain box from coming up with. But I mean if it’s called Death Row Records, you could almost flip that on its head because of the criminal justice element in the cannabis industry. And the unfairness I remember covering in the podcast, I can’t recall if it was someone on death row or being put in life in prison because of a Three Strikes Law. It was an inmate in Mississippi, I’m almost positive, who because of two, one, what I think was a violent crime thing 30 years ago, his third strike was having a certain possession of a certain amount of marijuana that I don’t remember.
And I don’t like to call marijuana because of the racist origin. So I’ve been calling it HTC for high THC cannabis. And so I almost feel like there’s something that you could kind of do there, right? There’s an association. You could be like death row keeping drug people off of death row. That’s actually what we’re for. So boom, that’s for free. I gave that to you right now. So when we were talking and linking up about speaking, I was really, really heartened. I think that when you are talking about Snoop and how he cares or whatever about doing the right thing, and I think that I like to say always in this industry that we could smoke our cookies and eat them too. And by that I mean that it is so nascent in this industry that we are still building it together. One of my other podcast guests, when I said What was the surprising the industry, he said, no one has any idea what the fuck they’re doing. Pardon my French, that’s a legal term. Fuck. And then that we could smoke our cookies and eat them too, that we could prosper while doing good. Can you talk a little bit about how doing good motivates Snoop and an endeavor is inside and outside cannabis?
Tiffany Chin:
Yeah, for sure. So I don’t know if this is common knowledge, but his dad is actually a veteran from the Vietnam War. Got it. And we are actually doing something for him and for veterans coming up during Veterans Day at the store in Los Angeles. Yeah, we are going to be honoring him as well as any profits that come from sales for that day. We’ll be going towards, I need to double check on what entity it is or what organization it is, but it’s definitely going to a specific veterans organization. We’re
Jon Purow:
Working a good one. It’s going to, the Good guys is only
Tiffany Chin:
Exactly working Cordell, who is Snoop’s son, so the grandson of Papa Snoop. And that’s something that Snoop obviously cares a lot about, but that’s only one portion. And obviously cannabis we are working on doing, in almost all of our deals, we have a matching requirement for any amount that we make together that year to donate to a specific cause of Snoop’s desire. Usually, if not always, the cannabis sector is for keeping individuals out of prison or helping them expunge their records or in a more identifiable way, donating to their commissary, making sure that they get legal help, making sure that the family members that are not inside are getting the help they need for basic things like groceries and putting gas in their car if their breadwinner of the family is now incarcerated, who is helping them with their childcare. So all these things around recidivism as well.
We want to make sure that they’re not just out, but that they’re kept out for nonviolent crimes on the other side of things. And in general, Snoop is just such a magnanimous person. Before I started for him and I started, when I did start, I realized every Thanksgiving he hands out turkeys in Inglewood himself. It’s not like he rolls up with a van and then stays in the van and has other people. He hands them out himself and he posted up in Inglewood, which I learned about this, but apparently it’s blood territory and he’s a Crip. And so it was definitely a little strange for him to post up there, but he has so much more jobs, community, everything around that Inglewood space. I would say that he brought the community backup right before SoFi Stadium and all these other things, and Inglewood started getting built up about five, 10 years ago. On top of that, he has been doing the Snoop Youth Football League or the SYFL.
Jon Purow:
I saw it for
Tiffany Chin:
Years. And a lot of the kids that he started out with are now in the NFL or went on to play college ball. And then his wife is amazing too. She was like, why are these only for boys? Let’s do something for the girls too. So if you got the young men here from age five to 18, why not the ladies? So she started a dance group for the girls who would do cheerleading or more physical and interesting dance for the, and cheering on the boys who were playing. So the family in general is just, they want to give back. They know how fortunate they’ve been and how lucky they’ve been, and they just want to give back. I mean, there’s so many other things. There was this time when, back in the reincarnated years, that was in 2012, and he was really upset one day when the police came in and his daughter’s young at this time, she’s probably under 10 years old, and they went in and raided his home for guns, but he didn’t have any guns. He had felony convictions. So he was like, I’m not carrying guns. And at that point, he realized he didn’t want this type of lifestyle to be exposed to his children. And so I think this was back in 2014 or so, Diana nyad him the quarterback of the 49 ERs, God, what’s his name? The old one
Jon Purow:
At the time, Joe Montana or Steve Young,
Tiffany Chin:
Joe, Montana. Thank you. So the three of them, and also Hammer, it was a really, really great hodgepodge of when I was young, all the different stars and athletes that I knew coming together in San Francisco at the Airbnb offices and throwing an auction for Mc Hammer would auction off a dance lesson. Joe Montana is auctioning off a signed helmet and assigned football and his gloves, right? Snoop is auctioning off his shoes or some paintings he did. And they raised so much money for a program called No Guns Allowed. And it’s not necessarily being no guns ban all guns, but rather the process of becoming a more peaceful individual, being more mindful, as we talked about earlier, as well as being a grandfather. He’s now a grandfather to at, I can’t remember, at least six children, six grandkids. And so I just know that this is who he is now, and he just cares a lot about his community and making sure that he’s not the only one that’s winning. Right.
Jon Purow:
Yeah, no, I think that that’s awesome. So I mean, look, obviously he’s doing so many of these things, but look, he occupies a completely unique position in this industry because he is likely the most famous person, famous for an association with cannabis possibly in the world, right? Yes. And so his name opens doors that otherwise don’t open and wouldn’t open for virtually sometimes any other person in the industry. So do you feel a little bit, and any reference to a comic book is a good reference in my book. Do you feel a little bit like Spider-Man in the movies when they say with great power comes great responsibility because Snoop kind of needs to be, and I always intend my pot puns a trailblazer for the industry
Tiffany Chin:
He blazes the trail of. Yeah. It’s funny that you should ask that question because I don’t feel as though, again with the Spider-Man reference, I love it by the way, with great power comes great responsibility, I would say that I don’t necessarily feel like I have great power, and with that lack of feeling, I then don’t take advantage of my position, if that makes any sense, right?
Jon Purow:
No, no, exactly. If you don’t feel self important because of where you’re at, you’re not going to No. So if you come in as a genuine, and look what I say this is having family members dealing with the sports and everything. When you meet people and you find out the behind the scenes scoop that someone in Snoop’s echelon is a good person, it’s like Chicken Soup for the soul in an unsteady world is the way that I try to put it. And so I think that you just answered the question already. If you are a modest person coming down to earth, right? It’s like, oh, these doors are opening for me and you’re just someone who’s out there to do good. And so it’s only really if you consider yourself at that different level that it gets into your head to the point where you start being like, oh shit, I got to do something for all of us kind of thing. Sure,
Tiffany Chin:
Yeah. And it’s definitely, I will acknowledge that this is not an easy job, but when you think about I am working for the number one guy in terms of recognition in the world and I’m doing this job for him, the amount of deal flow, and like you said earlier, the doors that open the responses, my response rate is a hundred percent okay. It’s not So in that sense, yes, it is easier because I get access to that door, that individual, that team, that lawyer, whatever it is. But at the same time, I then have to sift through what could be 10, 20, 50 times as many opportunities as anyone.
Jon Purow:
Everybody wants something, right? And so your role changes in that you need to sift out the weed wheat from the kind of chafe or Yeah, you saw what I was going for there. I didn’t quite stick the landing, so no. So I mean, I get it, right? It’s like sifting through everything and let me just do a girl dad interlude because my water bottle disappeared. But this Barbie one was remaining here, and so we got to hydrate. It’s very important,
Tiffany Chin:
Hydrate, drink your water, eat your protein.
Jon Purow:
So I also think in a macro scale as a trailblazer, as someone who the door, and by the way, could we just rewind a second and talk about how it’s not just a function that you were lucky enough to work for the number one guy, it’s that he pursued you, right? You were like, no, no, sorry, I’m snoop. I can’t come back and work for you. I have a contractual commitment. And he’s like, no, Tiffany, I’m more like Tiffany, please, I can’t do a great snoop. And you were just like, come on. There has to have been a little moment there where you were just like, you looked in the mirror and you’re like, yeah,
Tiffany Chin:
Definitely. I wouldn’t say he did pursue me, but not to the extent. He’s a very cool person. So
He’s being earnest, but at the same time, not at all desperate or anything more So just who I have right now is not working. I’ve seen what you’ve done in the past, and I also like you, so I’d like to bring you back. If you don’t want to come back, that’s fine. Then I need to find somebody. I know his schedules, I know the way he thinks. He probably didn’t, this wasn’t top of mind for him until every three or four months or two or three months. And that’s when he would be like, Hey, oh yeah, I remember that business is kind of doing middling. Let’s see if we can hit Tiffany up again. And it was a moment of after two or three follow-ups that I was like, okay, I’m going to do this. And that was a large anxiety moment for me because I wasn’t sure how I was going to support my family.
I wasn’t sure. When you have a corporate or a startup job, everything is very laid out and contractual. In my previous experience, not working directly for Snoop, but working for another individual or company that wasn’t contracted by the Snoop engine or machine. I had been burned and I felt like, is that going to be the same moving forward? On one of our first calls, he basically was just like, don’t worry about it. Got you. Just invoice me. Just do this. I need you to get started. This is great, blah, blah, blah. And he actually did me one better and actually gave me a little bit more money than I had initially requested. So he is just great. He gave me the opportunity. I think I’ve proven myself over the last two and a half years, so I very grateful to him. Yeah,
Jon Purow:
That was great. I’m going to send over formal adoption papers after the interview. So speaking of being a trailblazer, I think that the industry, you are highly intelligent. You engage in complex ery to use a very dated SNL George W. Bush reference. Now, I kind of feel like the industry could learn a little bit from your moves, just like how investors look at what the big hedge funds do and to kind of parse and understand why they’re doing what they’re doing. What are the big initiatives? I know you mentioned Swede, which being a lover of puny and alliteration, I’m also a fan of acronyms. So to be clear for everyone, it means smoke weed every day. Speaking of, I always thought that Nate Dogg had the best job ever. I was, may he rest in peace, that wonderful, velvety, velvety voice. So a swed, what are some of the initiatives that you’re working on? What are some of the hedges that you’re doing that people might find interesting?
Tiffany Chin:
Yeah, sure. So we launched the first Swed store in Inglewood, which is Snoop’s backyard, and less than 10 or 15 minutes away from where he works mostly. And then that was back on July 14th, July 15th, he went to London and Paris to do the Olympics. Then on August 1st, we opened our first suite coffee shop in Amsterdam.
Interestingly enough, I think most people understand that a coffee shop is a place to consume cannabis. But just to make sure, in case there are any people on this podcast that don’t realize a coffee shop is not an actual coffee shop in Amsterdam. You can drink coffee there, but you can also purchase grams, ounces, whatever of weed and smoke it, roll it up, do whatever you want. Yep. Okay. Now that we’ve got that clarified, subsequently, our plan with Swede as a retail operation is not just going to stick with the brick and mortar. So everywhere that we do any type of e-commerce or retail type of sale that will be cannabis related, smoking related, that will all be under the Swede name. My favorite thought about this, and we did this branding exercise and Snoop loved it, was we really wanted to bring the California vibe, branding and understanding of this is good weed.
This is California bud to the rest of the world. And obviously the first one was in our backyard in Inglewood, but we utilized, and I’ll just show you right here, we utilized a standard California license plate. But if you guys realize the California license plate has so many different variations that we’re able to make those variations and then give them exclusively potentially to other retailers. So the one in LA is this one, the black and yellow one, right? Snoop really, really enjoyed those colors. Raiders fan, yay. Right? And in Amsterdam, he was like, that’s where we need the classic California, the current license plate, because that is what is recognizable now. And the International Sea needs that taste of California, and that’s logically so brilliant. And then you can just imagine branding, why all the different types of apparel, different types of rolling trays made of actual metal within BOS lettering that
Jon Purow:
You can
Tiffany Chin:
From this, right? And it’s no longer a, this is very, how do I say it? It’s cool, but muted in terms of nothing like colors and drippy and cartoons and whatever else that you’re seeing a lot on packaging and apparel nowadays, but rather something simple, basic. And now, right? If you don’t know, you’re going to ask, Hey, what does that stand for? Is it sweat? Is it swed? And we’ve basically told everyone, you pronounce it swed because it rhymes with weed. And then if you don’t know, it’s smoke weed every day. Yeah.
Jon Purow:
If you don’t know now, next word, I’m not going to say. Yeah, right was No, no, I appreciate it. I think it’s a very clever idea. So just to be clear, by the way, the rolling trays are like California license plates.
Tiffany Chin:
Yep, yep. They will be that height emboss and everything. So that’s not a format that’s been done before. And I think we just really want to make sure everyone understands California lifestyle is getting exported or revitalized.
Jon Purow:
I mean, California weed’s been getting exported for decades and lifting up the rest of the entire country. One of the funniest stories ever to me that I covered on the podcast is when they did a $600 million bust in the Oklahoma medical market and it was traveling all around the country and they did the list of the 17 states that it went to, and the last state was California. And I was like, what schmuck in California didn’t go to the Emerald Triangle and imported from Oklahoma? Where’s your state pride? You moron. So now let’s talk about, so by the way, just a belated marleau on opening the Swedes store and the Amsterdam one. Let’s talk about another kind of strategic initiative that you’ve worked on. What’s your strategy with respect to hemp products? And is there anything that you would like to discuss that will be live by the time that this interview airs because we don’t have a time machine? Sure,
Tiffany Chin:
Sure. So the hemp market is very interesting. I think there are a lot of differing legal opinions as well as just general opinions that are not legal or from a legal source about what might happen in November in 20 25, 18 months after the decision’s made, two
Jon Purow:
Years
Tiffany Chin:
After it’s made, whatever it might be. I’m of the opinion, and I’ll say I’m 85% strong in this opinion, it cat’s out of the bag. And it’s not just one cat, it’s 10 cats. It’s a hundred cats. You can’t get them back in the bag. And the best way to make things happen rather than ban it or only do the regulated market, is to, I would not prefer this, but this is what I think it will happen, is that the regulated market will expand to include hemp. And the farm bill will then specifically close the loophole around their initial intention, which was to create and grow a lot of this crop for textiles and paper and other manufacturing products like plastic, which I’m very excited about. Hemp plastic biodegradable instead of hempcrete
Jon Purow:
Hempcrete. Very exciting.
Tiffany Chin:
Have you seen that Porsche that was made out of hemp? That’s pretty cool,
Jon Purow:
But it sounds amazing.
Tiffany Chin:
And then Henry Ford back in the 18, 18 hundreds built a car out of hemp. So there’s really actual industrial applications for this other than women of the humans around the world. And what I hope to see happen is with the added regulation, I hope for two 80 to go away, obviously that’s the lowest, that’s
Jon Purow:
Low hanging fruit that should
Tiffany Chin:
And then alleviate a lot of the business operations, cashflow, bottom lines, all that stuff. And then subsequently, why wouldn’t the country or even any individual state want to see nine figures a year in added tax revenue for the rest of their state? Right? The states hate it the most are the ones that are most rejecting this plant.
Jon Purow:
I mean, Texas, Delta hemp-derived cannabinoids are killing in Texas because it’s ridiculous that they’ll never legalize adult use because they have such a shitty constructed government, no, no offense Texas,
Tiffany Chin:
But they don’t have the structure to collect the taxes on these things. I mean, the numbers that you and I are probably hearing in Texas are probably wide ranging from anywhere from two, three, 4 billion to maybe eight to 10 billion. All those numbers, even if you take the lower end and you just tax it by 10%, that’s a billion dollars, a hundred million dollars that Texas could be using to help build a better energy grid. I’m using Texas as a, but Mississippi, Alabama, all these places,
Jon Purow:
No, exactly. Why turn down free money that 70% of your population is four
Tiffany Chin:
Pretty consuming. So why not just help them get it in a safer way? And that’s the other problem with hemp. And this might just be my understanding and not really true, but if you are taking product that has 0.3% THC, let’s not even talk about THCA flour when they cut it a week or two before it that way. But if you are getting THC at 0.3% weight or lower, and then you are distilling it in high concentration to make a gummy, for example, that shit better be organic because that stuff ppms is now becoming PPTs, PP h, I don’t know. So you’re ingesting all these things that may be super harmful for you. So that’s why we do need regulation on those things. What we do is we identify and specifically find organic and organic farms are organically grown technically
Jon Purow:
Because they’re not Yeah, we can’t say organic because of Yeah, exactly.
Tiffany Chin:
G-M-P-N-S-F, all of those certifications are extremely important to us. We never wanted Snoop Dogg fucking got me sick. No, no, no, no. That’s not happening here. We are extremely tight around the products we put out. We test ’em all. Some combination or permutation of Snoop’s team, his homies from the days like Snoop himself. We all test the product. So if one of us dies, then yeah, we’re not going to put it out. We’re getting the COAs, we’re getting all the testing and everything. So that’s something that I can proudly say about our products. But yeah, that’s my long-winded answer to my thought about where hemp will go. Probably not my desire, but it is definitely not the worst thing. Yeah,
Jon Purow:
I think we need to talk this out as a thought experiment because I haven’t necessarily heard that model before and I think we need to talk it out. I think it’s very, very interesting. And so I agree with you with the overall proposition that I think that the cat’s out of the bag and it’s not going to go back in. And that’s a function of, I refer back to law school when it clicked in my head that the teacher said, you don’t just make the laws, you have to enforce them to. And so when you have the DEA that rightfully and deservedly is focusing on fentanyl and crystal meth and doesn’t have the capabilities of also caring about something that’s legal to over half the adult US population, I get that. And with how dysfunctional congress is, I mean the latest that I heard from certain people, I think that essentially nothing ends up happening.
And so I think it just maintains status. And I think that the hemp market almost needs to self-regulate, but the idea of it being encompassed in the state license market is fascinating to me because covering everything on the podcast, the states that have started to try and doing that, they had all sorts of different reactions. So Michigan was the first state that put something out in terms of a draft bill where they’re going to have to sell hemp stuff in dispensaries and the state license market flipped out, which is really interesting because you kind of would want them playing on the same field. I know it’s so tough, but at the same time, they could get purchased in any single gas station out there and you want them restrained to the same shelves as you to some extent. And I thought that that was fascinating.
But I like the idea of look, every state stepping in, there’s this whole new wave of, they came in waves in terms of delta eight and everything. And I agree with you that it is terrifying to think about what could be in these different things where there’s synthetic conversion and we have no idea about the health consequences of some of these, but I find it fascinating. I mean, I lost my train of thought, which is what happens, it’s an occupational hazard of a lawyer who talks a lot and then sometimes and then in this particular industry. So let’s just roll with that. But you also were saying that in terms of how you’re going to be bringing these products to market, is there something that we can be looking forward to that will be launched in the semi near present or future?
Tiffany Chin:
So that’s a great question. So following up the two stores that we’ve launched, we are launching our swed.com. So that’s just as I said it, SW d.com. It’s essentially our e-commerce website as well as supporting the smoke weed everyday lifestyle. I’m a daily consumer, I assume you are. Snoop is, there’s so many people who consume every day, but what that looks like for every person is different. You have a 13-year-old, she’s probably getting curious about this kind of stuff. Probably
Jon Purow:
I wish a little bit more. No, I’m
Tiffany Chin:
Kidding. Do you have a teenager at home? You probably want to have conversations with them about yourself.
Jon Purow:
Exactly, yes.
Tiffany Chin:
Leaving it around. Whereas I don’t consume until at seven or seven 30 after I put my kid down about two four. But other people, some people on my team, they smoke throughout the day and they’re fully functional and if not, if anything, they actually operate better. And so there are different types of smoke weed everyday people. And so how do we cater to these everyday? There are different products and types of things. Snoop has been a long time backwood smoker and before that he used to smoke Swishers or he used to wrap his weed in these blunts tobacco blunts. And so what we’ve done is we’ve essentially created the same, if not better quality products from Pennsylvania, the Dominican Republic. So we basically have a cigarillo dupe, a backwoods wrap dupe, and a flat wrap dupe.
And they’re all at extremely competitive prices and only in his favorite flavors. So it’s very much like a Snoop product. He is an everyday man. I love working for him because while he is a very recognizable individual and celebrity, he is also very down to earth, right? He is like, I’m not trying to sell a hundred dollars eighth or even a $50 eighth. I want that shit to be 35 to $45. And I’m like, that’s actually, I love that. I love that. And he’s like, but it has to be fire. And I’m like, okay, well let’s make sure.
So there’s some stuff that might be super fire that is pricier for us to buy and source or grow, but we’ll make that the $50 one, but the majority of your products will be at 35. And he’s like, I love this. And the same idea around our infused pre-rolls, all of the products that we have, we are not pricing at celebrity prices because at the same time, I would not necessarily consider death row records like a celebrity brand. It’s a confluence, it’s an umbrella of many, many different artists and a movement rather than Snoop Dogg. It just happened. He bought, there’s little record label, but more so because he wanted to start paying people the right amounts of money. He was like, how is this possible that I’m not getting paid? But also every one of my homies that got signed onto this label are not getting their splits. So he bought the catalog back and he’s extremely, extremely transparent about these things. I remember when I talked to him about Web3 technology, which I know very little about. And he was like, whatever about the NFTs, the Web3 technology is what’s really interesting. You can track every single time he makes a change.
I’m educated not in the music production, licensing anything business. So he, he’s teaching this to me and he’s like, so Shaggy, he’s our sound engineer. He comes in for 45 minutes and he makes these changes. Great. Tiffany comes in for 15 minutes and she does this that other, well, now we know that your contribution was literally 33% of Shaggy’s contribution. So if he gets 3% on
Jon Purow:
The split,
Tiffany Chin:
He now gets 1% on the split. And I’m like, he’s, because you can track that and you don’t have to count on John or Tiffany being honest about the actual time they inputted. This is how the future of making sure that things are fair is. And I just love that. And his transparency and fairness and desire to make sure everyone is lifted up. I feel like it’s very palpable to the public, but if not, I am here to try and make it that way.
Jon Purow:
And it’s cool that he’s into Web3 0.0 stuff and the level of accountability and how that could equate to a more fair way of calculating royalties. I mean, I talk about thinking forward on something now. I was going to go to the next question and then I just looked at it and saw that it was the joking question that I sent just to mess with you. It said, who would win in a fight between a shark and a bear? So I’m not going to ask you that, obviously the shark answer, but I say that just because I saw Jaws when I was eight and it ruined me and it back-to-back double feature with Arachnophobia is the way I pictured in my brain because sharks and spiders not cool. I mean spiders that swim even more terrifying now. I always like to, there’s some of these questions now that I really kind of enjoy asking and asking more of my guests because to try and make things constructive and a learning experience for people watching.
So you already were talking a little bit about your experience, say like a startup versus what you’re doing now of all the experiences or skills that you brought from the past, whether it’s your time at Watton and I just arbitrarily make fun of Boston Accents being a New York Yankees fan. So sorry, I mean I know Walton’s in Pennsylvania, but I got to use it’s just the R. Yeah. And also working with Snoop in other endeavors now, what do you think was the most kind of constructive thing that you brought with you to the cannabis industry?
Tiffany Chin:
Yeah, so cannabis is very interesting in that the workforce in cannabis is perceived as either or You are either a chatter Brad buttoned up wearing your Patagonia sweater vest or some shit, or you’re a total fucking amateur. You smoke all day, you’re a stoner and maybe you grow good weed, maybe you process good shit, but you don’t know anything about structure and business operations and doing deals. I like to think that I am a combination of both while also not being too much of either and to make people comfortable when I am speaking with ’em. It’s definitely been an interesting line to toe.
But I would say that outside of my direct experiences, the way that I converse and interact with individuals I think was definitely ingrained into me. High school, college, treat everyone with kindness, always lend a listening ear. I will always take a conversation whether or not I give you a second one, that’s another question, but I will always take at least the first conversation. And that is something that I know a lot of other individuals in this space just don’t do. They don’t feel like it’s worth their time or it’s not necessary. Now if I don’t get back to you on email or phone, that might be because I looked at your message, made a mental note to get back to you, and then that mental note went away. So there might be times when you have to text me a couple times,
Jon Purow:
That’s collateral damage in the industry with our wonderful memories.
Tiffany Chin:
It’s by far definitely not intentional. So in that sense, I know a couple people that have been like, Hey, I kept calling you and I’m like, I’m so sorry, I’ll call you back. And then I do. And so they do know that I do follow up with them. But I would say on the other side of the coin, the actual more physical experience that I’ve had was at Target. Target has a very, very target corporate right in Minneapolis, has a very specific structured, which is very, very not the same to cannabis
Or talent in any way. Program I worked through there, did their rotation, ended up doing a good amount of time in the entertainment department, which I asked for. And they usually don’t grant requests, they just say, you’re going to baby, you’re going to grocery, you’re going to electronics. So I got to be in the video games, the movies and the music, which music was the most important thing to me. So it was really interesting to see how we would strategize for in stocks to deplete as well as the number of facings for certain artists albums or even genres. So we got to work on this really cool multicultural project where we found and looked at different data to determine the retail locations that had a higher percentage of Hispanic and black shoppers. And so then we appropriately, instead of having a bunch of Taylor Swift and whatever else we had, or hip hop or r and b or some Kino or all these really great different things that they’re the ones that are looking for that, not for Britney Spears or I’m using really dated examples, but
Jon Purow:
I do that for all my references. Please don’t feel my memory was preserved in time when I started using cannabis more in college. So all my references are like the mosquito held in Amber from Jurassic Park. Everything is like 20 to 30 years old. That’s my memory. So please don’t feel self-conscious referencing Britney Spears. You’re amongst friends.
Tiffany Chin:
And so I would say I’ve really been able to implement some of those experiences in the retail exercise that we’re doing right now and the adventure that we’re going into retail. But I would say CPG is my bread and butter, and it’s been really exciting to be able to create in this new category of CPG and understand my most exciting and famous thing, not famous. My most exciting thing right now is beverages just because it’s saturated market, but our beverages tastes so good. And we’re in DoorDash, we’re in total wine, we’re about to be in goPuff. So it’s like the access to these beverages will be greater than the access to our flour or even smoking extension. And so it’s just, sorry, there’s just so much excitement around doing and how we’re moving forward. So
Jon Purow:
I want call credit where it’s due. So in asking you about something that you brought that helped you in this industry, I’ll tell you one thing that you keyed upon that I think is so important that people don’t do. You asked for something that was atypical. You asked to be put in a specific division, and I think I always used to roll over the expression fortune favors the bold in my head trying to really understand it a hundred percent. And the fact of the matter is, if you hadn’t had the courage to ask for something that was atypical, you wouldn’t have obtained an atypical result. And so I think that that’s something admirable that you just threw in there that I think should be called out because it’s not ask, right? Ask and be able to hear the word no. And I also believe that something that’s got to be very, very useful for you in your position, like you said, where you’re a nice person, so you take that meeting and everything. For any of us, the ability to say no is an incredibly important life skill, and it’s got to be well time’s a thousand for you. You probably have to say no a lot more because sometimes it’s time constraints, sometimes it’s resources. Those are the most limited things. But I got to think that that’s also very, very important to your day to day, right?
Tiffany Chin:
Yeah, I am so glad you brought that up because I have had to advise. It’s interesting, most of the people I do advise are women, and I tell them, and I think women have an issue with this, is you can’t get something you don’t ask for, right? You’re not going to get handed stuff, that’s fine. Maybe you do, that’s great if you do. But the majority of people, and also women are not going to get handed things. No. The worst thing you can hear is the word no. And where are you? You’re at the same spot that you started. That’s it. There’s nothing. If anything, you get more information from that answer. Are you still happy working for this person or do you want to continue doing this? Maybe it’s time to move on. Maybe it’s time to catch a bigger fish. If anything, asking that question results in more knowledge, more confidence, or the courage to break free and do something else.
Jon Purow:
Yeah. Yeah. No, I agree about it. It reminds me of a quote that one of my abs one fed me that said, what’s on the other side of fear? Nothing from the very famous 21st century philosopher, Jamie Fox. I love that one.
Tiffany Chin:
What’s the other one? Fear and anxiety and excitement are the same energy, but it’s just your preparation for what is about to happen. So
When I got reframed that I was like, anytime I would get anxious, I’d just be like, okay, okay, you’re actually excited, you’re excited, concerned. The outcome might be less than. And if anything, lemme tell you, John, I would say anxiety. I know it’s not a great thing to feel, but with excitement, there is that almost guaranteed outcome that it’s less than what you expected it to be. Like, I’m excited when I was in seventh grade. I’m excited to go to that dance with the middle school boys and girls. And then whatever you expect to happen doesn’t happen. Or it does and it’s not that great. But then if you have anxiety and you’re like, ah, this is going to suck. If it sucks, expectation is met. But if it’s any better than that, even by a percentage, you end up happier because your anxiety is now gone and you experienced something that was better than what your expectations were.
Jon Purow:
Yeah. No, no. Look, I try to maintain mindfulness because I feel like my brain goes down non-constructive cycles if I’m getting towards anxiety or anything, right? But it’s also funny because you’re talking about excitement and everything, and I’m thinking about breaking my back. I’m thinking about the fact that I am now more excited than I’ve ever fricking been to do everything. But I actually need to modulate myself because every single little moment, I don’t need motivation ever again for the rest of my life. I have fuel because I could look down at my legs and say I was as close to not being able to use them. And that’s why I’m going to be the first one on every dance floor for the rest of my life. And you could hold me to that, dear listener slash viewers. You could challenge me to a dance off at any time if you could take the hit to your ego when you lose, unless it’s country music. I’m kidding. So I appreciate everything that you’re saying, and I love how these interviews can end up getting a little bit philosophical and stuff and talking about meditation or the hypnosis that really got me through the recovery just as much as medical cannabis. So here’s another question for you that I always love asking in the reefer regulatory roller coaster that is our industry. What are some of the biggest surprises to you in the industry?
Tiffany Chin:
Surprises. That’s a good question. I would say the speed at which we are moving, and I think we’re going too slowly. I don’t know if you are
Jon Purow:
Agree. I don’t think we’re innovating fast enough. I think that we are so immature in just even product diversification that it blows my mind how much more is left to be done.
Tiffany Chin:
And it’s wild to me that not just in the products and consumables themselves, but also the research is irrefutable that this is a way better substance for you than any pills you could pop or any drink that you could ibi other than water. Water’s the best. Okay, so actually cannabis actually has a lower LD 50 than water does. So I think we all know that. But anyway,
Jon Purow:
I think we all know that
Tiffany Chin:
For the audience, LD 50 stands for lethal dose 50. So that means that it half 50% of the population at this amount of concentration, so that of water actually more deadly. The LD 50 is higher than cannabis. You would have to smoke a veil of hay and then eat a brick of it, and you still would’ve dry anyway. So in that sense, because of all the things I’ve just said, it’s wild to me that more countries have not at least fully opened the medical side of things. Charlotte is my favorite example. When I met her, when I met the Stanley brothers and they told me their story and I watched their
Jon Purow:
Videos, she
Tiffany Chin:
Went from 600, 300 seizures a week to
Jon Purow:
Five,
Tiffany Chin:
Right? Unfortunately, she has passed away rest in peace. But her life and quality of life was extended and improved drastically because of CB, D, not any mentally intoxicating anything, which let’s not even talk about how mental health is just as important as physical health,
Physical health. Let’s just talk about that. If you just want to talk about physical health, Israel’s doing a great job in terms of all the research they’re doing and isolating the cannabinoids and realizing you can’t do that. You got to combine these two or these five and whatever else. I don’t know everything that they’re doing, but I do know that it’s extremely important. But for countries like Singapore, I love Singapore. I’ve been there only once, but I remember when I went there, my husband and I, when we do travel, we’ll be a little sneaky and bring some chocolates and make ’em look like you’re a deli squares or whatever else. And Singapore was
Jon Purow:
A, that doesn’t sound familiar at all.
Tiffany Chin:
And so Singapore, I was like, trash everything before we enter, we have to trash everything. We can’t go there. We can’t do it. And he’s like,
Jon Purow:
Oh, yeah, yeah,
Tiffany Chin:
I would say it’s worse than China.
And I am suggesting something that we have done by saying that. But anyway, so Singapore, after I went through immigrations and they stamped my passport, customs, whatever, I went to the other side of that yellow line where that officer is, and there was this a three piece of paper. I grew up internationally. So a four is about the size of a letter, and then a three is about double that. So double a size of standard paper, and it had a dead baby, a skull with a marijuana cigarette out of it and a syringe. And I couldn’t read Chinese. So Singaporeans have Chinese. There was also a little English that was something around like marijuana. So they’re using the more old racist word for
Jon Purow:
Racist, racist
Tiffany Chin:
Marijuana, deadly, blah, blah, blah. You’ll be fine and killed or something to that effect. And I, being so entrenched in the space and also using this product, I giggled, I took out my phone and I was ready to take a picture of this really amazing poster, and immediately three customs agents descended on me and were like, one of them took the phone out of my hand. Another one stood in front of the poster. And so why, maybe the policy is no cameras at all there. That probably was the policy, but subsequently, it’s like, is it maybe the content of this poster that you don’t want international people seeing? Because this is wild, right?
Jon Purow:
I know. It’s absurd. And
Tiffany Chin:
The thing is a smart country, they do amazing things, and it’s wild that they don’t. So that’s what I mean by the speed at which this is happening. New Zealand and Australia are medical, but it’s extremely difficult to get your product in Germany, I
Jon Purow:
Think. Yeah.
Tiffany Chin:
So anyway, that’s my thought about, that’s what surprised me about this space.
Jon Purow:
I think that I care deeply about the medical side and the pharmaceutical level deployment of it. The more I understand how little we know, look, I think Singapore is an outlier. I think that they pride themselves on people being able to cook on their sidewalks if they wanted to, that they’re that clean. But that just sounds absolutely absurd to me. But to respond to multiple points in terms of the medical stuff. And I think that, well, one, we’re going to get medical benefit out of it without the psychoactive components. I was at some point, I understand that the THC is THC, and there’s THC distillate, and it does the same thing to everybody. What makes the cannabis plant unique is the fact that it has combinations of anywhere up to like 26 terpenes rather than one or two of the most plants have. And so you could have these effects. And lo and behold, I purposely geeking out being a dank dork, right? I was making sure to smoke hemp with certain types of terpene profiles, and it helped with the pain and it didn’t have the THC. And lo and behold, what happens, and the podcast news aggregator feed, that study comes out and it says, terpenes without THC versus opioids for pain, who wins terpenes.
Terpenes wins. And so we’re going to get to this point when I say about the medical benefit as to why I’m here in this industry, besides being the black sheep lawyer and a family full of Jewish doctors and maybe some semblance of regret. But outside of that, it’s like the capacity to good is we’re not talking about Marinol, we’re not talking about THC for chemo induced nausea. No. We’re talking about deploying very, very specific cannabinoids to potentially cure incurable forms of cancer. And you may get to these points without the psychoactive component. And so that’s the thing that I think similarly excites me so much. And you want to facilitate these renegade scientists who are brave enough to discover the endocannabinoid system during the middle of the war on drugs when no one internationally could do research on it. We know so little. There’s 625 phytocannabinoids in the plant that could be tested to see what they do, and yet somehow we’ve only played with five. But I learned at some point that NIH, and I want to know the specifics of this in terms of how they phrase this, but that NIH since 2015 has been funding over a hundred million dollars a year for cannabis related research. Right?
Tiffany Chin:
That’s great.
Jon Purow:
They know, and they have issued calls for specific applications of cannabinoids like CBG, with respect to specific cancers. And so they know that the frontier is there in terms of where the medical benefit’s going to be. So I don’t want to run too long, as much as I’m loving every single second of this, but now is a very special time for you, Tiffany. You get to one vote in the contest that I can never resolve between. Do we like the term Toker dus or smoker dus better for predicting the future? And two, now picture yourself with a wizard hat on stylized like a J, right? You got your joint hat on. You say Announce yourself as Toker dus or Smoker dus, and then please make a prediction for what you see, whether it be the Mara Macro or the Mara Micro level in the near or far future fern future in the industry.
Tiffany Chin:
I think Toker dus is a little bit more descriptive of who you would be referencing or what you’re saying, because Radus could be a volcano, right?
Jon Purow:
Sorry, no one said that. It’s amazing. Smoke radus the volcano. Thank you for that. Thank you. You made my month. No joke.
Tiffany Chin:
Burning smoking, right? Oh, it’s telling me it’s about to settle. So Toker is specifically someone that’s token in terms of what I think might occur. I think there’s going to be a lot of, I mean, it’s already happening. A lot of alcohol companies, beverage companies buying up, and this is not just alcohol and beverage companies. Actually, cannabis companies too are buying up beverage distribution. So why they have solidified what it means to distribute in the United States. On top of that, they get to command 40% of the price because of who they are and the fact that they are the conduit between the distilleries and the producers down to the BevMo or the local liquor store. So there is no way that r and DC, there is no way that Southern Glacier are not going to take advantage of this industry while their industry is currently in decline.
Jon Purow:
Yep.
Tiffany Chin:
They are already getting into it in the sense of they’re starting to carry D nine products. They’re starting to carry functional beverages with mushrooms. They’re getting out of the ethanol, not getting out. Don’t get me wrong, that’s still big money, but ethanol is taking up less and less percentage of their portfolio. And functional beverages or cool beverages are taking up a bit larger percentage. And so with that movement, you’re going to see a lot of cannabis focused, or even tobacco companies or pharmaceutical companies start trying to really buy up all beverage distribution because once things go legal or are a little bit easier federally for, or are descheduled, reschedule, whatever it might be, these large distributors are going to take their money. They’re not going to sit there lying down and just be like, oh, okay, the cannabis space is fine. No, they’re going to in California anyway.
They’re going to run, I’m sorry, herbals already out of business. They’re going to run KSS. They’re going to run navis. They’re going to run them out of business, and it’s just costs, economies of scale. It’s going to be their reach of being able to access 6,000 stores instead of just 600. Right? Probably not true, but I just think that that is going to be something people are maybe paying attention to. Maybe not so much, but if you want to get into an interesting space and you have a lot of money, but you don’t want to get into cannabis, cannabis, buy a beverage or a liquor distribution company. That’s the answer.
Jon Purow:
Yeah. Let this be telling you are the second podcast guest this week that particularly focused on alcohol distributors and distribution as something that will be a hugely determined factor in the future of the national industry. Now, I just got to ask, I’m going to end in one last question here, right? Tied to that, in terms of these other fields coming in, do you think that there’s going to be any opportunity for product diversification if the tobacco companies do get in here? Do you think that we’re going to see anything where it’s like vaping technology that has both nicotine and cannabis, like an e spliff, if you will? No.
Tiffany Chin:
Oh, you just used my word. So
Jon Purow:
Someone planted the inside joke. I got you. In an insight, someone planted it that I spoke with
Tiffany Chin:
When my husband and I are trying not to smell or be obvious, we bring our nicotine vape and we’re like east lip or like we do it together Anyway, I do believe it will happen. I believe it’s happening already in the sense that there are products that you can buy separately from the Altria, from the VAs, from the whatever, and you can buy something from your local dispensary, from your suite or whatever. And there is a magnet. I’m actually referencing a product I know that will boop put them together and then result
Jon Purow:
In. Oh really?
Tiffany Chin:
Yes. And it’s fascinating. Has terpenes all stuff. There are suggestions on which pair best with the other flavors. If you want a completely neutral clear flavor, if all these things. It’s really interesting. I think that Chersky actually brought the idea into the general sphere with the double and that was the like, oh I just want a hybrid. I want an indica and a sativa or I want two flavors mixed together. I think then a lot of people’s minds started rolling and they were like, we are just restricted by right rules and regulations where we can’t do this. But all the people that are in nicotine vape, their eyes are laser focused on the cannabis vape industry and then vice versa is not true as much. But you’re seeing a lot of cannabis companies venture into the THCA vape, the nicotine vape, all those spaces. When we go to a liquor store, when we go to a seven 11, I can buy a beer and I can also buy a pack of smokes. Why can’t I buy cannabis there? Why can’t I buy cannabis and smokes or cannabis and
Jon Purow:
Alcohol?
Tiffany Chin:
And I understand the logic. Getting cross faded, get to on whatever you want to call it. Not necessarily the greatest thing, but if you’re responsible about it, spliff is, it’s fine. That’s the wheel.
Jon Purow:
Look, I mean Minnesota has proved that you could sell a cannabis beverage and an alcohol beverage in the same establishment and Rome isn’t going to burn. Right. I mean ultimately is what it comes down to. But yeah. So look, I need to thank you so much for taking your valuable time to join me before I stop recording, but that was awesome. Any remaining thoughts you want to tack on?
Tiffany Chin:
There’s one other thing that you mentioned earlier.
Jon Purow:
So
Tiffany Chin:
You said, I’m the black sheep lawyer in a family of doctors. Okay, so in Asian culture there are three jobs. You’re either a doctor, you’re a lawyer, guess what I am, I’m a loser.
Jon Purow:
You see, there’s so much in common between our cultures. I was like, is she going to go with business or finance? Because after 2008 that kind of dropped off in acceptability. That’s hysterical. That’s a
Tiffany Chin:
Pulled that from entrepreneurship professor that I TAed for three years. He was always like, yeah, engineer. My parents were like, there’s three jobs. Lawyer, doctor, loser, you’re a loser. And I’m like, oh Larry.
Jon Purow:
That joke easily just ports right over to Jewish culture as well. So I’ll be the bridge and I’ll give you credit as an IP attorney. I got this joke from Tiffany from the Asian side. Can we all relate to it?
In this episode of the Ganjapreneur podcast, host TG Branfalt is joined by Brandon Wyatt, Esq. and Todd Hughes, co-founders of BCB Mastermind, an executive training program designed to propel minority-owned cannabis and hemp businesses to new heights. In this episode, they discuss the critical barriers that entrepreneurs face in the cannabis space, from access to capital and regulatory challenges to the overlooked potential of industrial hemp. With backgrounds in law, engineering, and advocacy, Brandon and Todd bring a holistic approach to business strategy, emphasizing community-driven solutions, policy reform, and the power of sustainable innovation. Tune in below for a deep dive into the intersections of social equity, business leadership, and the future of hemp beyond consumption.
Listen to the episode:Ganjapreneur · Todd Hughes & Brandon Wyatt: Accelerating Minority-Owned Cannabis Businesses with BCB Mastermind
Read the full transcript:Editor’s note: this transcript was auto-generated and may contain errors.
Commercial:
The Ganjapreneur Podcast is made possible by over 500 cannabis industry service providers in Ganjapreneurs Cannabis Business Index. At some point, every plant touching brand experiences the stigma that many industries still have to toward cannabis going strong. Since 2015, our business index is the most comprehensive and frequently visited directory for cannabis friendly services on the internet, saving you the time and hassle of sifting through uninformed and unwelcoming providers with categories for everything from business financing, to extraction equipment to interior designers and public relations. You’ll find every kind of specialist and business service you could ever need. Check out the business index today at ganjapreneur.com/businesses.
TG Branfalt:
Hey there, I’m your host, TG Branfalt, and this is the Ganjapreneur.com podcast where we try to bring you actionable information and normalize cannabis through the stories of ganjapreneurs, activists and industry stakeholders. Today I’m joined by Brandon Wyatt, Esquire. and Todd Hughes, co-founders of BCB Mastermind, an Elite Executive Training program designed to propel minority owned cannabis and hemp businesses to new heights. How you doing this afternoon, fellas?
Brandon Wyatt:
What’s up? How you Hey,
TG Branfalt:
Hey, hey. So I’m real excited to have you guys on. I’ve read a lot about what you do and it’s really compelling stuff. I’ll just start with that. But first tell me about yourselves. How did you end up in the cannabis space?
Todd Hughes:
I guess I’ll start. Background is mechanical engineering, went to Howard University. This is Todd Hughes here. Everyone a pleasure to be on. First and foremost, thank you for allowing us to be on the call.
TG Branfalt:
It’s my pleasure. My pleasure guys.
Todd Hughes:
This means a lot to us. I’ve been doing a lot of work and it feels good to be recognized, but I’m Todd Hughes, background mechanical engineering and working in the federal government for a long time and a lot of friends of mine thought, Hey, I was the definition of success because I had a good paying job that’s pretty secure. But then they asked me for help and it was pretty difficult for us to do so. And so one challenge came about, a friend got kicked out of school for less than an ounce of cannabis, and I called the only savant I knew at the time, and it was still one of the only major level savant, Brandon L. White, Esquire, to help me come up with a solution. And I think the work speaks for itself now. Numbers of events, conferences, music festivals, and now businesses in the cannabis space that we’ve been able to be a part of or lead has led to us starting this mastermind and getting things done. But I’ll let Brandon talk about his flows and how he got to the space because it’s much different and much more dynamic.
Brandon Wyatt:
Oh man, Brandon, who is that guy? That’s me. I’m Brandon Wyatt. As far they say at the end, because I did a lot of school, I guess to start, I’m a functional person even though I have a formal title. I think there’s a big difference in this world between function and form. And that’s what I saw about cannabis being able to solve a functional problem and human rights, not just civil rights related to the arrest rates, not just medical disability rights related to the patient causes, but human rights even as we look at our environment for what the hemp plant can do in the manufacturing paralysis that it possessed. And as Todd mentioned, I don’t consider myself in a savant, but one of the things we educate on is thinking deeply is hard work. And to really take the time to dissect a problem from all angles, you might need a couple of lawyers or a couple of engineers, a couple of great hosts that run wonderful grounds renewal podcasts they’ve been waiting to get on for years and years and years and did the functional work to do it and work with students to do that.
So Brandon, I’m a disabled combat veteran. I’m a Howard Law graduate. I’m a kid from North Carolina that fell in love with a plant in his community. Pretty simple.
TG Branfalt:
I mean, those are really unique backgrounds for anyone who’s really in this space. Can you tell me a little bit more, Todd, about what you learned from the sort of electrical engineering aspect of your life and you brought into this industry?
Todd Hughes:
Yeah, mechanical engineering, mechanical, it’s more about program project management and figuring out processes to get work done and moving teams of individuals that are working on complex, maybe highly regulated industries and making sure we stay in compliance and move forward. So those skills are definitely transferable. And I’m not a cannabis expert by any means or any stretches, but I also try to leverage organization, project management and making sure we stay on track to deliver. So that’s what is transferable for sure.
TG Branfalt:
And what about you, Brandon? Did you go to law school with this expectation in mind that you would work in this industry in some form or fashion or in some sort of regulated industry?
Brandon Wyatt:
Right. I went to Howard University for law school, which is huge, right? We’re the number one civil rights civil liberty school in all time, forever and ever and will be great. Folks like Pauly Murray, who’s actually a woman came from our school and designed frameworks to help move civil rights and civil liberties forward. And so when I went to school, the question was what problem do I want to solve? And the problem, how do I make money? The problem was for me, how do I help others remove barriers and access to their employment and that help them move forward in life? That could come in a form of healthcare, that could come in a form of job creation, different things that could come in just being actual friend to someone that doesn’t know what they want to do or how they want to solve the problem.
So when I came out of law school, I was absolutely focused, but by that time I was a patient. I’m a hundred percent disabled combat veteran. I used to jump out of planes for a living and really got injured. And even more so seeing other people injured. And that hurt me mentally to the point I really felt broke. And if it wasn’t for Mary Jane, the wonderful thing, the plant that she is in, its purest forms in the most beneficial forms, not just off the street, but a medical format. I would not have been able to heal myself in a capacity to be functional to this world at all. So absolutely, I owed her a favor and I owed my community the favor of being the lawyer that actually changed the demographic of, no, I’m not here for criminal law. When I say I’m a cannabis attorney, I’m here to rewrite policy. I’m here to work with a wonderful award-winning engineer to design programs and policies that get functional businesses stood up that can get medication to patients. And we’ve been dedicated to that.
TG Branfalt:
What an unbelievable story. Guys, can I ask how you met?
Todd Hughes:
I fell out the sky and he caught me.
Brandon Wyatt:
We both smile. It’s a podcast so you guys can smiling at each other through the thing. But yeah, Ty’s a guy saying, we’re also fraternity brothers. So in the terms of him always seeking improvement in his relations and friendships, Todd is truly one of those younger fraternity brothers. If anybody is in organizations that you love to see, seek interest in your organization because you’re going to move forward faster and better. And so when he met and he came to me for help, it was super, super humbling. But I also was very serious like, Hey, you got to listen to what I say. I’m a barred attorney. I have multiple bars, federal bars. I go to court all the time at that point. And being able to really transition the entirety of my life to realistically the streets, man streets, getting out here, getting in people’s faces, throwing large conferences, die-ins with other veterans, throwing thousands of bottles at the White House, giving away hundreds of thousands of joints alongside other activist groups riding nationwide policy, sitting in Congress.
I mean, this has been the ride of my life for 10 years. And to capstone it by saying the blessing of being able to educate and working with a wonderful company. Let me tell you guys about this company, Satara Parallel Netta in Massachusetts. They have this leader there, her name is Lynette French, and she is a lions, I mean truly, truly, truly dedicated to making sure that barriers are removed for access in the industry, not just as patients receiving medicine, but by ensuring fair market competition. I haven’t met many people like her. I challenge other sponsors and other companies to be more of that nature because she received the benefit from that tenfold. And I would be remiss if we didn’t bring them up because finding them along this way in the journey is how BCB itself, the training side of what Todd I do came about.
TG Branfalt:
So maybe you can hook us up and get Netta on the show potentially, huh?
Brandon Wyatt:
I think that might be something we can for sure do.
TG Branfalt:
So I do want to talk to you guys, jump right into it about the BCB Mastermind program. Tell the listeners about the program and what are the goals?
Todd Hughes:
Yeah, it’s an executive MBA training program, taking the experience from all of our lifestyles from before, the training, the education, the teams, the sports, everything that we’ve been a part of. And then the friends that we’ve made along the way who have experience in the industry to help folks that are black and brown diverse groups, and not just black and brown, but diverse groups of people to come in and have access to this knowledge, right? Knowledge is something that’s within you and we’re just here to uncover it and bring it out. And so when folks are participating in the mastermind, they receive an ecosystem. This ecosystem has been systematically destroyed and broken by bad policies and laws and such, and we are not going to sit back and just complain. We’re going to do something about it. So the mastermind was something that parallel and Netta and ourselves got together and said, these entrepreneurs need scaffolding. They need support, they need the access to resources, the knowledge network and capital as you can always see us saying is imperative. And so that’s how the program has come to be. And the goals of the program are literally just to be there to be your best friend along the way. As Brandon mentioned, our life has been a dynamic crazy journey to this point and it is good to be able to share that with other folks along the way.
TG Branfalt:
When you mentioned the scaffolding, you mentioned the resources. What are the sort of, I guess, biggest barriers to entry for the cannabis industry among the people that end up in a B, CB mastermind course program?
Brandon Wyatt:
Well, I mean the question that you just answered is simply too deep for the user. And it can break down to is the barrier your state is the barrier, your municipality, right? Is the barrier, your composition as a human, right? There are many good people who the barrier is that you did too well in life. You might’ve came from a hard circumstance. You might had parents who were arrested for on drugs. You might’ve went through everything. You might’ve been a patient the whole time, but because you succeeded and your net worth is over a certain amount, you’re not qualified regardless of if you were minority, small business, whatever the case may be, disabled, veteran doesn’t matter. So there are so many barriers in trying to normalize what is the reality of each individual is why that mastermind exists, right? To bring people together to address these barriers so they can do something about ’em because you can either go up under or around or over it or we can take the time to try to remove it.
So really helping someone come to clarity on what their particular barrier is in the industry is important because that also exists. And dare I say on the hemp side, which we’re on, I know it’s in your notes to talk about, but I think this is a part, some people’s barrier, they’ve been scarred. People got into this hemp industry, 20 19, 20 20, seeing things run up, $4,200 for leaders of distillate, things like that. Put their whole life savings, their farm on it, got state legislation to get licenses and whatnot. And then this stuff has been sitting in the barn riding or they had a bad processing deal because they were strictly focused on flour. And then for us to be able to come back as thought leaders and remove a barrier, which was one people’s mind, that this plant is only good for consumption of your human body and not as opposed to what is good for the environment, building manufacturing processes along with other sustainable biomasses and also carbon sequestration and remediation for the planet. So many of the barriers that exist are those that also are new for the industry, which came because of money. People got scarred because of money and they lost their purpose. And that’s just the reality.
Todd Hughes:
Basically what Brandon is saying, thinking deeply is hard work is really not necessarily a barrier. It’s what you’re going to do about it. And so as he mentioned, the plant folks waste 80% of the plant on just focusing on the flower. And it can create shelter, it can create clothing, it can create medicine, it can fight or remediate the land. It can also clean air, take carbon out of the air. And those are such beautiful things. It has 10,000 uses. And so we’re only talking about one. And a lot of people come into the mastermind with the expectation that, Hey, I got a beautiful product and it’s going to have this brand and it’s going to do all these great things, but it’s not about what you do, it’s how you do it. There’s a whole bunch of brands out here. There’s a whole bunch of people in the cannabis space. How are you going to really execute your business and make it scale? And so we make people think hard and deep about it. It sucks. It’s like, man, I thought I was here and I’m all the way back here. And so that’s the experience of folks as they come in, we help them remove the barriers in their mind
Brandon Wyatt:
Or they’re ahead. They might’ve thought they were behind like, oh man, I didn’t have nothing. I was mine. My little lane over here, I ain’t have enough. And in fact, they’re the missing piece. They’re the key to everything.
TG Branfalt:
Exactly. I mean, it sounds like you guys take a very holistic approach to this, which a lot of people might not expect coming from something that describes itself as an executive training program. I mean,
Brandon Wyatt:
I guess they’ve never built executives before. And that’s probably the side as I sit back and say it, the truth of actually working and knowing what keeps a CEO up at night, you might have to be a lawyer to really understand that, and you might have to have a functional understanding of business to underpin it. And then on the other side, you might have to be an extreme project manager and engineer, diversely able to run into walls and problems solving things and teach someone or support someone to be comfortable enough to know that that’s actually a form of success and change that paradigm and give them the proper tools, networking, capital knowledge, networking capital, excuse me, for them to accentuate those goals. And so actually working with CEOs, if you look at most CEO eTraining here, honestly, it’s on a resort in Tahiti and they’re trying to calm them down because they ain’t seen their family in two, three weeks. And it’s a difference between a CEO and an owner and an investor and an artist. Some things that we have to make functional understandings of to fit a formalistic title.
Todd Hughes:
And some people come out of the program and realize, Hey, I’m not cut out for C EShip, but I am a great team player. I do fit this role. I can be a artist and if you only let me be an artist, I’m going to be at my greatest. And so we call it icky guy, right? What the world needs, what you love to do, what you can get paid for, and what your vocation is, what your profession is, how do those intersect, right? Sometimes you’re like, man, I don’t know if I have it all. And it means we need a team. A lot of the entrepreneurs that come through the program are solopreneurs, and that’s cool. You can definitely do that, but you don’t have leverage if you don’t have ability to automate, delegate, or eliminate any of those things that come about on a day-to-day basis. Financials and accounting. Do I know that my money is where it needs to be, when it needs to be, and these people are paid and I’m not getting sued and all these different things. Other things. What is an operating agreement? What are the key things in the oa? What is a cap stack?
Brandon Wyatt:
I think we got to take a step back. What the heck is a icky guy? That sounds like a bad date. I went out last night with an icky guy like, girl, please. No, just joking. We incorporate culture. What’s real culture? That’s a Japanese word. As Todd said, the way of living. How many words do our listeners know that have three eyes in it? I’ll give you a second. How many people thought of Mississippi? Okay, well, we got to move past that, right? Because when you look at business and you look at who you are and the purpose of yourself, there is a dual eye. There is a triple lens of how you have to look at it. So the word masses, the thing, functional understandings of business in a formalistic process, and having a sponsor like Satter and working with some of the other folks to gain new sponsors who want to bring this type of energy to their community does something amazing because their client base becomes more diverse.
And diverse means more revenue. And all of us are taught to diversify our revenue stream. So now let’s tie that back to the other CEOs and business who think investing in disparate communities is an important, well, you’re even overcoming different business capitalism concepts on diversifying portfolios by solely investing assets in one thing. So even being able to approach the larger leaders and give people true functional business conversations that they can have, and really a protocol that works for us to get a high level of attention, high level of marketing, high level of touches, that gives a functional reason for even the next step of things, which we really do, is create strategic partnerships. How do folks access this talent? The talent has to be prepared. And so does the talent seeker to know what exponential growth feels like.
TG Branfalt:
Y’all are thinking in the fourth dimension, man,
Todd Hughes:
Six D baby.
TG Branfalt:
So what can people expect who attend a B, CB mastermind program? Walk me through just sort of how it goes.
Todd Hughes:
Spell it out for you. LOVE, straight love, compassion. People that come in with open hearts, open minds. Everybody checks their ego at the door and are not afraid to share where they currently are in business and open the learning, like I said before. And every mastermind ends up in tears, right? We’re like, let it out. And this is love. And I got a whole team and network to support me going forward. I ended up in tears one time when I was back home. We were in Pittsburgh doing in operation out there and shout out to Tena and their other brand good blend that allowed us to do that. But ultimately, it is an immersive experience. So you come in not just it’s music, it is information, it is sharing. It’s a Socratic method where the students teach the class and we kind of give them prompts and allow them to duke it out on what’s real and what’s not, right?
We tap all learning styles to make sure that the people leave one with experience. One, they’re actively engaged the entire time. There’s no point where it dies out. The enthusiasm is there, the energy is there, and the information sharing and knowledge building and learning about the other people in the room who has a skillset that I could tap into. I have a shortfall. Maybe I could help them and solve a problem that they have. That’s the experience over two days. And then the second part, I let Brandy go into the mixer and how we award folks that have been doing great things in the space.
Brandon Wyatt:
Yeah, it’s two days in person at the current disposition because of the wonderful sponsors and outreach and because of the vast marketing and data touches that we get, as you said, there’s a lot of articles, a lot of ways for people to be seen as doing the most good in their communities. So being able to actually touch in and have two days in person and do something that’s rare, which is reengage the vigor for education. All business owners are lifetime learners. The best ones are the ones who continue on in business. I think being able to have folks that commit to that, to work with that as designers, partnerships is a key element of what I learned during my MBA program at the George Washington University. And so having an MBA and law degree and all the things, formalistically tied being everything but doctorate, there are a lot of elements that we can speak about easily, but they’re the result of millions of dollars in education that we’ve sought and has been poured into us that we’re reformatting for others to reinvigorate themselves to move forward.
I mean, to be honest, not everyone has a college degree. Some people have vocational certificates, training certifications. And to be even more direct, some of the folks that we are recruiting and are being in the program have to have criminal records depending on their state. So they’ve been disenfranchised and they need a way to access their greatness and their genius. So we do that. But also connecting their network, we have a good opportunity to meet trailblazers in each community and work with them to award them. And Lord, what we understand is the diverse needs in getting the policy reform and also some of the groundwork in cannabis. It’s a selfless industry in a lot of ways. A lot of businesses aren’t making as much money as they would like, and they’re sucking down wind. So it’s nice to be able to be recognized, to be re-motivated.
We work with that and then we have six weeks online. Of course. Now you got to really get into it and being able to have the time, make the time during the work week, one day on the weekend, meet diverse entrepreneurs and learn from them in a format that structure in a way that you can learn from. And being able to also apply that in a way that allows folks to go out and get some of these grants, get some certifications that matter. Because realistically, the ability for businesses to realize and develop inroads to have positive government relations. The biggest companies have huge GovCon departments as a small startup, did you even know? And it is not a if you didn’t because shoot a lot and it’s not written somewhere. So actually getting to know what you got to do and to getting the function understanding of how to do it, and then actually having maybe a couple friends that are of similar minds that of similar training. I think training is important. They go and do that with you helps a lot of folks. That’s imperative. So six weeks through, they finish up, they go off and continue to be great.
TG Branfalt:
Do a lot of the people who complete the program or go through the program for that matter, do they keep in contact with you guys?
Todd Hughes:
Yeah, we got an alumni WhatsApp, right?
Brandon Wyatt:
They don’t like us. They talk to each other all the time. They all to each other every day. They have competitions and doing things. They can call me some more. I miss y’all. If y’all listen, call me. I mean,
Todd Hughes:
Yeah, every once in a while they hit us up like, oh, I’m running into this, or you got any advice on that? But they have, like I said, they created the ecosystem. So they have WhatsApps, they have fireside chats and such that they bring folks from parallel on. They kind of give them advice and they keep it flowing. They even showed up at BCW, the black Cannabis Week, shout out to Brandy and Sharon out there, black cannabis week in Philly. They showed up in droves to support with their mastermind attire and support saying, Hey, we’re here to support this and continue to grow. So it’s always a beautiful thing when you see another mastermind that’s not in your cohort and you’re like, yo, you know what that means? Icky guy. Yeah. Don’t, it’s a family. I don’t want to call it a brotherhood or a sisterhood, but it’s a family. And that’s kind of what happens in the whole flow.
TG Branfalt:
So I know that you had said that the barriers thing is sort of complex and a bit not, you can’t really nail that down, but can you tell me about some specific challenges that maybe a majority or a slim majority, maybe it is, of problems that people are trying to solve?
Brandon Wyatt:
I guess one of the best things that I could do is kind of even ask you a question back, right? Because out of all the articles that you see about the cannabis industry, what do you think the number one problem is that they’re trying to solve?
TG Branfalt:
It’s money
Brandon Wyatt:
And it is not. That is exactly what come in thinking and we come out helping them understand, I mean everybody, and when they leave and the reason why folks are successful, it is kind of that secret sauce of what does it take to really reeducate yourself and understand that money is a symptom of a barrier. Money is a symptom of a problem of business. That’s not the problem itself. And to really get down to the brass tacks of what specific problem I’m facing, so many people are getting information, bad information, not knowing how to properly orient the information. And they’re putting problems for themselves that don’t exist for them. So that’s a barrier, right? Because they think they don’t have enough money. It is just starting there. So if
Todd Hughes:
You say access to capital, is that really a problem that folks face or is it how they think about capital or who’s in their network that they can access and tap into, or how much have they really reached out to their personal friends and family and others in order to get small increments, in order to make the amount of money that you need in order to get things going? Money’s a lifeblood of a business, but that’s all it is, right? You need that. You got to put that in the tank to keep it going, but how you get to it is your own creativity.
TG Branfalt:
I guess. I was trying to get a sort of quick answer there. What I’ve heard from a lot of entrepreneurs, people entering the space, people have been in the space a long time. It’s that they can’t store their money anywhere, that they have too much cash. And that is something that I’ve heard sort of time and time again that we can’t have access to banking.
Todd Hughes:
Send it to me, I’ll store it for you. No, but when it comes down to storage, and there’s a couple good banks out there that are aware, but there’s fees that are associated with it, right? There’s fees that come about and sometimes you have to do the search and find the bank that’ll work with you, right? To get you where you are. In certain states, there’s different regulatory barriers, but ultimately we do have experience in a list of those companies, those banks that are willing to work with. So I think in 2024, it’s not that big of an issue, but you still got to work through what the deals are with each organization entity.
TG Branfalt:
And how do you guys keep up with the regulations? I mean, you’ve mentioned several states. You’ve already that you hold these things in. So how do you put those in boxes to make sure that you’re giving the right information to the right people all the time.
Todd Hughes:
We make them tell, right? We ask hard questions and make them think deeply. So it’s not always me keeping the tabs on all things. If I’m working with an entrepreneur in a specific state, what does your control commission say about X? What are the banks doing? Oh, I don’t know. Okay, we’ll find out. Come back. Let’s keep it going. Right? So it’s not necessarily us having to key tabs, but yeah, we got Google alerts articles that come up. We keep track of legislation as it flows, but each entrepreneur should have a lobbyist or be able to activate and operate as one, right? You should be a politician if you’re in the cannabis space because laws control everything. Regulations control everything. So we teach that as well.
TG Branfalt:
Could you guys maybe tell me a story about somebody that came up through the BCB mastermind program, something that sort of sticks out to you?
Brandon Wyatt:
We thought about this, and this is, I want to jump in there. We thought about this, and this is the part where I’m not a parent, but I’m pretty sure folks are parents tell me this because I have parents and it’s like, well, which one of us is your favorite kid? And I’m not relating any of these professionals to kids or nothing at all, but each one of their stories is so dynamic and the measure of success for each human, each individual is not something that we proponent. Being able to look and check out the page, we can rattle off names, but to say that what it meant for someone to come from the streets with nothing to a functional business versus who had somebody who had a functional business and now they’re just expanding, doing great, great, great. There are two types of success there. One is, to me, they’re both measurable. And so we didn’t want to tell a story on that. That was the one thing we were kind of like, huh. And I know the folks may be listening, want to hear that, but we encourage you to just search b, c, b, mastermind and cannabis and articles of different students will come up. Stories of different people will come up. Their stories are out there. They are successful in so many different ways. Man,
TG Branfalt:
I respect that, man. I really do. I mean, coming up with questions for you guys proved to be kind of fruitless because the conversation that I’m having I didn’t think would be the conversation that I would be having. Because when you read MBA training program and these, I mean, I have a master’s degree, I teach at a college, and people think that that’s some sort of elite of thing that I do. But you guys, I mean, you think about it differently. You guys think about this whole thing differently, which I think is, I don’t want to say jarring, but it’s unexpected. I will say that
Brandon Wyatt:
It is to look at a single mom who has maybe a medical issue, let’s just say seizures or different things that many of the folks and people who have pitched to us have managed standup of functional business from bootstrap and trying to compare that to someone else’s success. What we try to do is make sure people know how not to be preyed upon. Make sure people know where they are special, where they are elite at, and take the time as educational professionals and also operating business owners to help people accentuate the best of themselves. And that’s the gap that I’ve found in education. I do say I found it a little bit in the military, but it came with a lot of yelling and you get to see people break, but man, being in cannabis, I’ve seen a lot of people break too. You’re talking about the war on drugs, whether it was you’ll say a Caucasian brother, a white brother who saw all his friends because he grew up in a poor community because that’s the best he could provide, get hooked on opioids and have to go through to methadone clinics and dedicating his time and saying, no, no, I believe in this.
I want to give back. I saw my community damage to say that, yeah, that’s somebody who came through the program and they run major multi-state operations that transferred between major multi-state operators right now. And being able to give that love back, that community building back, that support back that, hey, I saw what happened to different folks in my community when they didn’t have access to medication or they were criminalized for. It is another type of success too, getting someone to see what actually this is. And this is not like anything else that we’ve had. And we are the, according to Strauss and how generational theory of folks want to study a little bit of psychology. We’re the hero generation. We have to save this whole thing, man. Have you looked at the news? Shoot?
TG Branfalt:
Unfortunately I have.
Brandon Wyatt:
Yeah, man. And so really sticking to the old ways of this is just what elite, this is just what’s not. Most children want to be social media influencers. 77% of children polled last year said they wanted to be somewhere around the number social media influencers. So even then, understanding what is or is not elite or what we’re trying to put on folks is really, as you said, living in the fourth dimension, which shoot, last time I checked 2024, cannabis is legalized in how many states and still not federally. We’re dealing with what kind of banking patchwork people are keeping money in what mattresses. So there is a real reckoning that kind comes with this type of education. And my schooling traditionally, even though I went to one of the best in the country, it didn’t totally prepare me for this endeavor.
TG Branfalt:
So I do want to switch gears a little bit. And you did mention that you do work with people who would be social equity applicants in those states. Is there a state that has done particularly well with social equity in your estimation?
Brandon Wyatt:
Is a hierarchy? It’s a hierarchy. And I’ll pass it to you real quick, Todd, but it’s an iterative learning process, and so whatever answer that we can give you, the state that’s going to do it best is the state that’s going to listen to the last state that did it great, which played upon other states who may have did it well, who over the last 10 years have now developed to deal with whole other criteria. So it is a moving target. States need to keep shooting towards it. But Todd, what do you think?
Todd Hughes:
Yeah, I mean, I’ve seen regulators and lawmakers fly from here to California and meet with those folks and try to understand what were the benefits. We get emails and messages from folks from different states saying, Hey, we’re working on our legislation. I’ll say upfront, we help craft Minnesota’s legislation. So that’s going through the process and hopefully it works out there. We have the opportunity to be operators in Maryland. Maryland allocated significantly over 40 million to social equity applicants to get up and operational and just awarded more licenses. But there are some restrictive covenants and things in their agreements. You got to be operational in the next 18 months or rescinding your license, right? That’s tough. That’s hard to hear because some of the other operators that originally got up, it took ’em two years.
Brandon Wyatt:
And that’s not the only thing that qualifies because states that maybe have skewed towards open markets, not limited licenses and then purport to have social equity programs have really shot themselves in their state members in the foot. And whether you’re a huge MSO or not, I think a lot of folks realize it’s not limited model state is why so many predatory things are happening in some of the states that have it because folks are trying to run away from that. Well, it just so happens that a few of those states that have some pretty cool social equity access points also don’t have a cap on the other side of what can actually happen. So the licenses are functionally useless or not value in a way that if you don’t have your own capitalization method that we talked about earlier, you can actually turn it to a functional business.
So realistically, there is a lot of meat on that bone in regards to whether there’s a pairing. If your state has social equity, I think you’re doing well, you’re moving forward because you recognize even down to the tribes that there is a disenfranchisement, there is an original even ownership of some of this land, especially when it comes to hemp too, right? Industrialization and hemp licenses. We don’t want to forget about that. And the mercantilism that can happen from having industrial hemp markets set up well and states backing those and putting funding in there and then versus, well, do you not have any social equity provisions in your state or versus do you have social equity provisions, but it’s an unlimited licensed state so that you can just go down and apply anytime? Yeah, it might be an access point, but the value of the businesses aren’t there. Can
Todd Hughes:
I quick piggyback on that? What Brandon is saying is, one, as diverse entrepreneurs, you have to get active politically and force the system. Sometimes power versus force is a big thing, but if you have social capital and you’re in these different jurisdictions, then people want to get reelected. So if you have that power, access it and use it other ways. You have to work with as a group come together collectively get with organizations. Minority Cannabis Business Association is one of the top, I’ll say advocacy organizations out there and we have minorities for medical marijuana, we have others that are doing that work. And so you have to learn the political system and push things through. And if somebody did say in law that they have social equity provisions, then there’s precedence to move forward in different ways. And so you could look at a state like Florida that has at first seven operators and now 20, not really social equity at all, but that limited licensed state creates tons and tons of value. But then you go to New Jersey and it is like a liquor store. So now it’s harder for a social equity person to gain access to what they need to be.
Brandon Wyatt:
I think it is worse than a liquor store. Actually, I think it is way worse in New Jersey than a liquor store. It still has more restrictions. So I won’t comment there, but going back to Florida, Florida has a chance now coming up with their elections to really change that ballot to get adult use on the market, which is a huge thing. Stated 22 million people, still medical users, most of our grandmas and grandparents from east coast side or some relation are down there in Florida hanging out or wanting to go, and they couldn’t even get their medicine down there if they wanted to, not without some extenuating circumstances. So that’s a big thing. But once it does turn, because we hope it does, then how do those regulations get formed to ensure that out of that 22 million, you have some fairness so that women applicants can hold some licenses, minority applicants, hold some license, disabled folks, veterans. How can we work with that if we don’t have folks that are down there understanding what they need to ask their legislators for? Because once it passes, I think it just goes to the governor’s office. I don’t know what that governor is going to do, but I trust in the people and the people they elect to be able to make sure that they have some parameters on that and they need to know that they should do that.
TG Branfalt:
Well, I mean just to remark about Florida a little bit, I mean they were sued because they were basically blocking the one black farmer hemp farmer from getting a cannabis license. I mean, Florida’s not a super friendly state. You guys. You said that you had worked on the Minnesota regulations, but what would you guys advocate for as part of social equity rules that may not be included in most states or any states at all?
Todd Hughes:
I mean, it is hard. And so I think it’s worthwhile to do studies. I would ask people to do studies in their states, right? Disparity studies and understand economic situations of how the war and drug impacted the people that live within those communities and who are the people, find them, go out and find those people that were impacted and create the policies associated with that. What you end up getting is, okay, this zip code, well, if your governor lives in that zip code and lived there in this year, then they’re eligible for that. So that’s one piece. Otherwise, if you’re going to award social equity applications to people who are disenfranchised, don’t have a lot of capital, don’t have real estate, all those things, then the restrictions that you put on them being able to sell and all that kind of stuff also limit their ability to raise capital to get their business functional and operational or even just get to get rent just to
Brandon Wyatt:
Lease. So if you’re going to do all that, if you’re going to restrict their sales, if you’re going to restrict the sale license because you want to be held, then you got to have a state system that’s actually providing bonds and low interest loans and reinvesting in this citizens because it’s obvious to see from not studying that from banking not being available, that you’re disenfranchising members of your state if you don’t allocate a state fund to be able to provide and empower your comptroller, provide low interest loans to folks with businesses that have shown they’re best qualified. And that’s where you run into the issue when you don’t have a state that has an limited license, right? Because now they don’t want to have that because they’re like, oh, well this is unlimited. How are we going to get it back? Or this, if you limit the licenses and there’s a certain level of market share, you can do a better deeper dive into it.
But everyone has their reason, and I’m not the end all be all. I’m glad I don’t have the power of the all omnipotent, right? These are deep thoughts that people have to come together and have conversations about and make the best decisions for. I just feel like unfortunately before a lot of legislators took the time to do it, they made decisions and that’s not fair. And it is okay as a legislator if you did, but if you are listening, be fair, be fair to your people. Take the time to learn a little bit more. Ask for a study because there’s a lot of revenue and a lot of things that can be used to build communities. And as they said in the war on drugs, take these monies out unquote other streets and create impact and change in communities that need it. But if you take that money out of the streets, you need to take and put jobs back there, otherwise you’re going to create other problems.
TG Branfalt:
You guys might be the smartest guys in cannabis. Nah,
Brandon Wyatt:
We’ve just been listening for a while, man. We listen and we are willing to talk and we are willing to work. And we do have a high data hit and a lot of connectivity to help businesses who are like-minded, access a better client base so that they understand how to acquire more customers. I mean, how many CEOs out here think their clients and their customers are the same thing? You’d be surprised.
TG Branfalt:
So I do want to ask you guys, you guys have A-U-S-D-A hemp grant. What did you get that grant for? What’s, what goes on with that?
Brandon Wyatt:
What is two grants? So one is the EPA grant. I would say we more so have that one right where we work with the Hemp Building Institute. And I’ll let Todd talk more about that. But another grant that we were able to add thought algorithms on and be participants in actively, right for the last three years was the USDA climate smart commodities brand, which focused on innovative ways to industrialize many fields, but all these fields had to relate to some level of carbon reduction, sequestration and circular economy. So being able to add a thought algorithm to a major player out here who has been really, really dedicated, I guess they’ll say to developing minority farming capacity in the industrial hemp space is something that we have access to can help folks onboard into and manufacturing. So when you have that type of inroad and that type of work, we work to create a software that measures carbon sequestration for the growing of hemp using conservation methodology.
I’ve worked with some major universities to do that to get that done. And then so on the other side of that, once you have all this feed stock, have all these wonderful climate pots of land and things in measure, you got to put it into the market. And what is the market asking for green building materials? And there’s some thought algorithms that tide, I want to say standing up him and really a great guy, Jacob Waddell, really took one hard situation that was going on in Todd’s world and made it a positive man couldn’t sleep. So he stayed up all night and won another 10 million grant from the EA to help design environmental product declarations so that we can move the industry and the world forward in a way that’s just more sustainable. So I’m going to let Todd Mitch talk about it more, but I wanted to make sure I gave him his flowers on this call about that EPA grant and yep, we want to work on and won a big part of the USDA grant, but even more so my brother, my friend, congratulations, you and Jacob for going out here writing all night and winning something with the EPA that helps guide how people build construction materials going forward.
Very, very proud of you, bro.
Todd Hughes:
Yeah. So Jake was previously the US HBA, the Hemp Building Association’s president and executive director. He ultimately left and created the Hemp Building Institute to do research. One of our great mentors and partners or mentors for the students in BCB Mastermind is counselor Cheryl Murray Powell, attorney out of New York. You might have heard of her. She introduced me to Jake. And so during that period, there was a opportunity green building materials focused on creating lifecycle assessment tools for biogenic building materials. And it was really just to understand how to reduce carbon outputs from cement, concrete, glass, steel, wood, everything else except industrial hemp. But on one of the calls that was leading up to the grant, they noted that someone asked a question, Hey, is hemp involved in this project? And they said, maybe. So I took that maybe on a whim, spent about two weeks with Jake writing this grant.
Got it in on time. And ultimately we’re working with Alabama State University and a couple LCA practitioners, which do lifecycle assessments and create this thing called a product category rule, which allows for a calculation to be done on how much carbon toxicity, pollution, and other elements are put out there from not just the building, the manufacturing of the part, but from the seed being planted in the ground to it growing to it be harvested, to it being transferred to a processor, to it being incorporated into a product and then shipped and installed at the manufacturing site. So we call it cradle to grave, understanding the carbon emissions along the way. And hemp is probably one of the only building materials hemp straw be, and a couple others are the only biogenic building materials that can get you to a carbon negative level.
Brandon Wyatt:
Todd, didn’t you just come from Japan studying this for like a week?
Todd Hughes:
Yeah, I was in Japan. I just got back a day ago with the National Industrial Hemp Council. Shout out to Pat Athi for allowing us to travel out there. We to go to Golden Hemp, which is a manufacturing and cultivation facility. I’m talking about old school hemp growing in the field. They hand harvest and they can’t peel the fiber off and they put it in a machine and trim it up into its herd. But ultimately, I didn’t realize that hemp was such a part of Japan’s spiritual culture. There’s a tribe or there’s a religion called Shinto, and they use industrial hemp across a thousand shrines in Japan and they refresh it every year. And that’s the only source of the product that they have is these small family run farms that are providing them with this stuff. And I’m like, you let the United States create some bad policies and said, if you want to do business with us, then you got to stop growing your crop. That is your food, housing, shelter, clothing, medicine, everything. And they did since 1940s. Right?
Brandon Wyatt:
Let’s talk about social equity, man. Tim is different. It’s different than what people think thinking deeply. It’s hard work, man.
TG Branfalt:
So when you go to Japan then and you start learning about this stuff too, I mean, how does that sort of change? It’s got to be kind of life changing, right?
Todd Hughes:
Yeah. I want to make sure that folks that look like me have understanding that 80% of the plant is being wasted most of the times and that there’s a trillion dollar industry on the other side. And it’s not all about money, but it’s about having the ability to be a part of something in its nascent stages as is burgeoning along is the opportunity to use your artisanal skills and your business acumen and your creativity and apply it to something that has 10,000 uses from textiles to bioplastics to vital remediation and carbon sequestration, construction materials and all those things. Opening people’s minds up to it knowing that I was in the room when Japan and Thailand signed an agreement MOU to work together to build out the industrial hemp space in that country. So I may be going to Thailand in November on Thanksgiving. They don’t celebrate it there. So they’re like, we got a conference on Thanksgiving and we would love for you to be here to meet some of the folks that are in our industry. And knowing that Japan is a wide open field, they are slowly rolling out legislation that focuses on just hemp no TAC, right? You got to be 0.0001 parts per million THC. And
Brandon Wyatt:
It’s doable. And the plant can do it. The plant can take it, it’s a plant. And I’m all about the American made side of things. So I love my business partner to go to other countries to study. But one of the greatest things about this here, experiment of America is the diversity of thought. And it’s under attack right now at many ways. And there are many people that are maybe beg to tell you that our class of human shouldn’t even be able to speak right now. And in fact, due to all those understandings and the collective nature of knowledge, we’re actually able to speak and not only speak, but lead and teach. And being able to teach on an international level is where our impact has been felt for years. And just speaking towards then bringing that home and fortifying our borders with a plant that has so many abilities to grow around here, to deal with problems from classic six well injection to help rebuild some of these communities that are devastated by the last less hurricane.
My heart goes out to North Carolina and Tennessee and Florida and folks injured and hurt because they’re going to need new homes and they’re going to need homes that don’t just mold after they’re rebuilt, right? And that’s some of the principles that hemp can be. But if not for folks asking for these things and being aware of it, it doesn’t meet the economy of scale. And to meet the economy of scale, him as other plants has to undergo a government sedation as has been done for sugar grown corn, barley, other building materials and foundational blocks, corn for the last hundred or some odd years of the farm service. And so working with those policy folks in the Farm Bill and really being active to make sure that minority farmers, small business farmers, and even those, like you say, Asian American farmers that have come over and given their time, dedication and talent, know that it’s not just about consuming this plant for smoking here, that when we really talk about masterminding, we really are asking for the diversity of thought to come aligned so we can help put people in motion at their best time to go acquire these grants, to go push this legislation forward that does the things that it’s done for other plants in this economy so that we can save our planet a little bit here.
P pouring down all this new concrete, pouring down all these things really is affecting our planet and our way of life. And there’ll be folks who will argue and say, no, it’s not well, let’s meet in the middle and at least try to build something more sustainable.
Todd Hughes:
Last thing I’ll say is 50% of the earth is desert. Why? Because of cutting down trees, right? Reducing low pressure systems and transpiration. And so hemp in and of itself grows three to five times. It grows in three to six months compared to 20 years like a tree. But the tree does a lot for the environment, a lot for the earth. And this is an opportunity for us to kind of right some of the wrongs and ensure that farmers are taken care of and as a full value chain of new business, new opportunities associated with an industrial hemp, and obviously people need medicine. So we’re going to continue focusing on both and pushing those efforts forward.
TG Branfalt:
I would love to pick your guys’ brains for another hour, but we do have a time limit here. Where can people find out more about you? Brandon, Wyatt, Esquire, Todd Hughes, co-founders of BCB Mastermind. And where could they find out more about BCB Mastermind,
Todd Hughes:
BCB Mastermind on all social platforms. Brandon is at the rough map, right? I’m just Todd LL 87. And we have a website, bcb mastermind.com. We’re available. We’re monitoring LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, all those. So anytime you want to reach out, please do.
TG Branfalt:
Brandon White, Esquire and Todd Hughes, co-founders of BCB Mastermind, an elite executive training program designed to propel minority owned cannabis and hemp businesses to new heights. Thank you guys so much for being on the show, and I really cannot wait to see what you guys do next because you’re blowing my mind over here.
Brandon Wyatt:
Thank you for having us and Ganjapreneur is one of our favorites. You guys have been supporting us since we were doing Dianes down at the National Capital to ensure veterans healthcare wasn’t impacted. I appreciate you guys for the coverage for seeing us. It’s really important that as we create other humans, know the value of being seen in your creation. So I thank you and your network. You guys are truly at the forefront,
Todd Hughes:
TG, wherever you live, we got to come get you one of these awards, man, allowing us to have this platform. So let us know where you at.
TG Branfalt:
That’s an undisclosed location. You can find more episodes of the Ganjapreneur.com podcast in the podcast section of ganjapreneur.com and wherever you get your podcast. On the ganjapreneur.com website, you’ll find the latest cannabis news and cannabis jobs updated daily along with transcripts of this podcast. You can also download the entrepreneur.com app in iTunes and Google Play. This episode was engineered by Wayward Sound Studio. I’ve been your host, TG Branfalt.
In this episode of the Ganjapreneur Podcast, host TG Branfalt is joined by Josh Wurzer, co-founder of SC Labs, one of the longest-running cannabis testing laboratories in the industry. In this episode, they explore the evolution of cannabis testing, from measuring cannabinoids and terpenes to detecting contaminants like pesticides and mold. Josh shares insights into regulatory challenges, lab fraud, the importance of terpene profiles, and how the industry can better educate consumers to prioritize quality over THC percentages. It’s an enlightening look at the critical role labs play in ensuring cannabis safety and integrity. Listen to the full episode below, or scroll down for the full transcript!
Listen to the episode:Ganjapreneur · Josh Wurzer: The Realities of Cannabis Testing and Industry Integrity
Read the transcript:Editor’s note: this transcript was automatically generated and may contain errors.
TG Branfalt (00:52):
Hey there, I’m your host, TG Branfalt and this is the Ganjapreneur.com podcast where we try to bring you actionable information and normalized cannabis through the stories of ganjapreneurs, activists and industry stakeholders. Today I am joined by Josh Wurzer, the co-founder of Multi-State operator SC Labs. How are you doing this afternoon, Josh?
Josh Wurzer (01:13):
Excellent. How are you doing?
TG Branfalt (01:15):
Cool, man. Cool. I’m excited to get to what we have to talk to. There’s a lot of stuff in the testing space that I’m hoping you can shine some light on, but before we get to that, tell me about yourself and how you ended up in the cannabis space.
Josh Wurzer (01:30):
Alright, well, so I’ve been in the cannabis space, I guess one way or another since I was in high school. But I always had a love for the plant. I always kind of in one way or another have either added as a part-time job or made a little bit of a living out of cannabis. Went to school though to be a chemist, left school, moved out to California from Wisconsin originally and had a little bit of a grow always on the side that back then it was in the medical marijuana industry. This would be like 2005. But I was working normal jobs, worked in the pharmaceutical industry doing small molecule synthesis for drug discovery. Then worked for Samsung for a long time doing electronic materials, research and development, sort of developing the materials that computer chips and different electronic materials are made out of. And then was one day thinking about maybe what else is out there, just kind of browsing through job postings.
(02:30):
Back then it was Craigslist that people looked for new jobs on in the Bay Area was Bay Area, California, and was reading through a job posting that was for a laboratory director at an analytical law. Looked like a normal job. And then the very end said, must be comfortable working with medical marijuana. Now that was, at that time there was no, certainly no regulated testing industry. Everything was medical, there’s no legal states and there certainly weren’t any cannabis laboratories out there, nothing like there is today. So I just saw that posting. It just piqued my interest just because I kind of always had this interest in cannabis on the side. And so stayed up late that night filling out my resume just so I could get an interview. I wanted to see what they were up to. I had images in my mind like the movie Half Baked, what are these guys doing?
(03:19):
So stayed up late that night, filled up, updated my cv, sent it in, and then went to work the next day and didn’t think too much of it without very much sleep. I think it was up till two in the morning updating my CV and then got a call first thing the next morning, Hey, can you come in for an interview? So went up to Oakland on my lunch break, I was working in San Jose at the time, shout up to Oakland on my lunch break. And what it was is it was the very first testing lab in the country or the world I guess, that focused on medical marijuana. They were just about to open up. It was a couple entrepreneurs and then Steve DeAngelo from Harbor Side
(03:51):
Had gotten together and said, Hey, we need a testing lab. We want to be able to quantify the cannabinoids in the products. We’re selling on the shelves. We think this is a good idea. We’re going to open a testing lab. They kind of set everything up and they were about to open up. And the one science person, they had sort of walked out and they didn’t have a science person, they didn’t have a lab director, so they needed someone with a chemistry background to actually run the lab side of things. And so they’re kind of in a pickle and offered me and gave me the interview. I was into cannabis, I was a scientist, so I think I checked all the boxes and they were in need. So they offered me the job kind of right there. And I didn’t have much time to think about it.
(04:34):
I was kind of thinking about looking for something new in my current job. So I said, I’ll take the job. I never really thought this would be a career. I thought, okay, I’ll do this. Then I’ll start looking for a real job. Of course, I’ll never put this on my resume because I’ll never be able to get a real job if they found out I was working in cannabis. And so now I was the first lab director that was Steep Hill Labs, that was basically the first lab that tested marijuana, medical marijuana, and did that for about a year. And then over the course of that year thought, Hey, this is a great idea, but I think this can be so much more than just testing cannabinoids. And so left there and founded SC Labs. And so we were founded in 2010 and now Steep Hill’s gone in the handful of labs that opened up right after Steep Hill are gone now. So SC Labs is now the oldest operating cannabis lab out there. So we’ve been doing it longer than anyone else that’s still in business.
TG Branfalt (05:33):
Yeah, that’s a crazy story. I’ve interviewed DeAngelo and people from Steep Hill on this podcast several, several years ago. So for people who may not understand, what do cannabis laboratories do and where do they fall on the production chain?
Josh Wurzer (05:54):
Alright, so what we do is we test, first thing is obviously testing the active ingredients in cannabis. So those are the cannabinoids. THC is the one that most people are aware of on C-B-D-T-H-C is the most psychoactive or one of the more psychoactive of the cannabinoids. That’s common in the cannabis plant. The cannabis plant can produce literally dozens of different cannabinoids and most of them are bioactive, interact with your cannabinoid receptors. Some of them are psychoactive, some of them are not like CBD or at least intoxicating. CBD is certainly psychoactive, but it’s not intoxicating. And then also there’s the terpenes which give cannabis it’s flavors and it’s aromas. And actually the cannabinoids themselves are specialized terpenes that only cannabis produces, but cannabis also produces all these other terpenes that other plants produce, like pinine, which is in various pine trees and stuff like that gives its pine smell lemon, which is in citrus fruits that give it that kind of lemon citrusy smell.
(06:54):
And then a bunch of other ones, which is in hops, a bunch of other sort of aromatic compounds. And that’s why cannabis can have such a variety of flavors. And then some of these terpenes are also bioactive on in their own and potentiates sort of the high of cannabis, which is why sort one variety of cannabis will maybe be really sedative. The next will be more uplifting. And so that’s why cannabis is so interesting because it’s got all of these bioactive compounds in it that all interact with your body in slightly different ways. And in cannabis has such a variety of concentrations of these compounds. So one variety of cannabis might have a lot of mercene and a lot of THC and then another variety of cannabis may have very little THC and no.
(07:38):
So it is such a fascinating plan. It’s not like other things like say alcohol, which basically has ethanol one compound that gives you a buzz or whatever. And so basically if I drink tequila, if I drink vodka, some people say, well, I get drunk differently. It’s not very much the case, it’s going to be the same. But with cannabis, that’s not the case. Such a variety of effects it can have. And so that’s what makes it so interesting. So that’s obviously one of the primary things we test for. And then we also test for contaminants a lot of things like pesticides, heavy metals, chemicals that can come through in the processing of cannabis into other products, microbiological contaminants like e coli or salmonella. And so depending on the state we’re working in, they’ll have different tests that are required before a cannabis product can make it to market to ensure that it’s free of some of these contaminants.
(08:37):
And since a lot of forms of cannabis are consumed through inhalation, it’s much more important to be much more stringent with the contaminants you allow in the product because they go directly into the bloodstream, they go through your lungs rather than say maybe something you eat where it goes through your intestines. And there’s a lot of things in your body that can filter those contaminants out. So that’s what we do. And early on, before there was any testing requirements, we sort of did this voluntarily. So we tested for retailers or dispensaries who just wanted to make sure that the products they were putting on their shelves were safe. But now with regulations, this stuff is required to be tested before it ever makes it to the retailer. So now we’re testing either at the manufacturer or the grower part of the supply chain or in California, everything has to flow through a distributor. So we test at the distributor.
TG Branfalt (09:45):
Tell me about, I mean you operate in multiple different states. Is there a typical licensing process for laboratories that is sort of state by state? Or is it something you kind of have to play catch up on or learn about with each state that you decide to enter?
Josh Wurzer (10:02):
Both. So yeah, each state has its own regulations and it has its own sort of regulating body. Sometimes it’s multiple different regulating bodies in a particular state. And then there’s also these international accrediting bodies that accredit laboratories. So for instance, in California we have to hold an international, an ISO 17 0 2 5 accreditation, which is just a standard laboratory accreditation. But then we also have to be licensed by the state and have to meet the state’s requirements for testing laboratory as well. So we have different audits from both of these. We’ll have an audit from our licensing body, and then we’ll also have an audit from our accreditor, either yearly or bi-annually or depending on what it is. And then each state is going to have different requirements of the laboratory, different sort of criteria we have to meet as a laboratory. And then you’re going to have different requirements on each of the tests we perform. And we’re going to be testing for different things in each of the state as well in each state. So state by state, it’s a completely new ball ballgame. Every time we go into a new state, we have to kind of start from square one and build a laboratory just to meet that state’s requirements.
(11:19):
And so yeah, it gets confusing. There’s a lot of overlap, but it still, there’s kind, each state is doing it differently enough where it definitely is, it is tough. And then also on top of that, there’s hemp testing now as well where hemp can cross state lines. So we can test, for instance, we can test hemp from pretty much all 50 states in our California laboratory. But still to meet each of them of those states’ needs, we have to maybe hold different accreditations for that test in that California laboratory to meet the needs of each of the states that we’re going to be testing that hemp for. So yeah, it is confusing. It is also kind of really interesting and is a scientist or someone who likes to solve problems, it can be, it is challenging, but it’s also, that’s where some of the reward is, I guess, in how complex these laboratories have to be, much more so than say a food testing laboratory or an environmental testing laboratory. Cannabis testing is probably one of the more difficult fields to be in if you’re going to be an analytical ems.
TG Branfalt (12:29):
Well, from what I’ve noticed when licensing opens that a lot of times there’s not a lot of licenses filed for or applications for testing labs. Why do you think that is? Is it because of the complications that you just sort of mentioned
Josh Wurzer (12:49):
And we’re an ancillary business and certainly right now in the cannabis industry, people aren’t making money as quickly as maybe they’d hoped five or six years ago. And so when we’re sort of down the food chain on that, so our customers are certainly feeling the financial squeeze. And so there’s a lot of pressure on us to do these really complex tests, meet all of these really complex regulatory requirements and do it much more cheaply than say, a comparable lab in the food or environmental testing arena. And then there’s a lot of companies going out of business and stiffing us with big bills and stuff like that.
TG Branfalt (13:26):
Really.
Josh Wurzer (13:27):
So financially it is been a really tough road to host since we’ve been around so long and we’ve reached a certain scale, we’ve been able to weather the storm. But there’s been a lot of cannabis testing labs that opened up early on and said, oh, well, there’s going to be a ton of money in cannabis. It’s this new industry. Sky’s the limit, got in invested millions and millions of dollars and then went belly up a year or two later. And so it is been tough. And then also there’s all this pressure since now too, a lot of the value of cannabis on the wholesale market is determined to buy our test results by how concentrated the THC is specifically that one thing. And so there’s been a lot of pressure on the laboratories to basically not necessarily return the most accurate results, but return results that are more favorable to our customers, the people requesting the test that to give them a higher THC score that a lot of laboratories just to stay around have played along.
(14:29):
And so there’s been sort of a lot of, for lack of a better word, fraud in the testing industry. It’s different from state to state depending on how tied to wholesale prices that THC concentration is or how strict the regulators are in looking over our shoulders. But that’s certainly been an issue too for labs that aren’t willing to play that game and want to hold their integrity. You’re a being really kind of pressured to perform these tests much cheaper than they should be. And also you’re sort of losing business to laboratories that are cheating, for lack of a better word. I guess
TG Branfalt (15:13):
Mean that’s one of the major issues in the space right now is this inflating THC. And so it’s not in your estimation, I mean, as the person doing the test, it’s not inaccurate testing so much as it is labs trying to meet this high THC testing result demand. Is that correct?
Josh Wurzer (15:31):
Yeah, yeah. And again, it is been so tough financially for labs. I get it. You invest millions and millions of dollars and then someone says, well, I need my THC to be five points higher than it should be. And really our focus to try and fix this has been to try and educate the consumer that the concentration of THC in your say, cannabis flower is not that important if it’s a 30% versus a 20% when you inhale cannabis and then you exhale, you exhale almost all the cannabinoids you just took in. If you inhale and exhale and you don’t hold it in for a long time, there’s a study out there where they measured these concentrations and you basically exhale about 98% of the cannabinoids that you breathe in. So if you wanted to get higher, all you would have to do with that 20% versus that 30% is just hold it in your lungs a little bit longer and give it more time to absorb. And you would basically get the same amount of THC into your system. What really determines the quality of cannabis is the flavor and the aroma.
TG Branfalt (16:44):
It is
Josh Wurzer (16:45):
Kind of this old adage that I’ve been saying for years. You don’t judge a wine on its alcohol content. You judge it on its flavor, its terroir, all that stuff. And hopefully as the cannabis consumer gets more sophisticated, they’ll start looking at things like the terpene concentration and which terpenes are there and what concentration, how much terpenes are left, did they dry it quickly and then throw it in the back of a van with no refrigeration driving it around in a hundred degree weather. And by the time it reaches the retailer, it basically tastes like hay or did they dry and cure it under refrigerated conditions and transport it under refrigerated conditions and make sure it gets to you the consumer with a lot of flavor and aroma? Well, we can measure that too. And that’s much more important than sort of whether it’s a 30% THC or 20% THC. And really early on when we did this testing, most strains we saw were 15 to 20, 25% was a really strong strain.
(17:42):
And a lot of these strains have gone away because they did test higher. But those are some of the more interesting strains. A lot of your purple grapey strains or your Bubba Ks, your Confidentials, these strains that were really popular back in the early two thousands that are pretty much disappeared because they just don’t test really high. It is a shame because that’s not really what gives you quality cannabis. It is that flavor in sort of that unique effect of an interesting terpene profile coupled with an interesting cannabinoid profile. So it is a shame we’ve seen that. But yeah, it is been a major problem with the industry is sort of this hyper focus on that THC concentration. And then also too, there’s also a lot of pressure on the laboratories to maybe look the other way if they see a certain pesticide contaminant or whatever. So laboratories that aren’t maybe as accurate or sensitive on detecting those contaminants also tend to do better with certain customers who would rather just look the other way than address maybe a problem with contamination. So yeah, it’s an issue.
TG Branfalt (18:49):
I think that the problem with the THC and that being the sort of focus also has to go hand in hand with regulations because for example, here in New York, all they require on the packaging is T-H-C-C-B-D content. You can’t smell the products in the store, right? I mean, you’re just going to a screen and you’re picking a brand name or an alleged strain, which I mean, you and I could probably talk about strain names, the problems with those, but that’s not the case in all states. Some states do require that terpene profile to be on the packaging, is that correct?
Josh Wurzer (19:29):
Yes, some do. Some do. And then it is voluntary. So it is something that consumers, I think should look for and sort of demand. In California, it’s not required, but you still see a lot of your high-end brands will include that on the packaging. And I think that’s what a consumer should be looking for. And we’re really encouraging dispensaries also to make it that information more available at the point of purchase rather than just maybe on the packaging after I purchase something, now I can take a look at it. And because like you said, with strains, there’s so many, that whole strain game is kind of fraught with all kinds of different issues. Is it really the strain name that it’s listed at? And then there’s so many new strains all the time. Even me as someone who’s been a cannabis connoisseur for years and years, I walk into a dispensary and I maybe know half of what the strains are, but I know I like pine dominant varieties.
(20:29):
So if I could go into a dispensary and say, Hey, show me all of your pine dominant varieties, I would be happy with most of what I picked and I would be much more apt to try something new that I didn’t know what it was, and I don’t recognize the strain name, but I know it fits into this class. So that’s what we’ve been doing a lot of work on is sort of in our results, is focusing too on these kind of broad categories and developing ways to categorize cannabis based on its chemical signature and sort of put it into categories similar to, again, I’ll use the wine analogy, I don’t need to know every brand of wine, but if I know I like cabs, well then I will go to the cabernet section and then I’ll try a new brand or I’ll try a new kind of cabernet, not necessarily knowing what it is, but knowing that I like Cabernets well, if I can do that with cannabis and I can go beyond just kind of like, is this an indico or sativa?
(21:24):
I can go, I’d like pining dominance. I’m going to go in, I’m going to look through all your pining dominant varieties, and I’m going to try something new. I’m going to try a new brand, I’m going to try a new strain. It is going to make me much, it’s going to help all up the supply chain so that way the grower can be more innovative and put new things on the market and know that they’ll find their consumer. So I think it benefits everyone from the grower to the dispensary to the consumer to start looking at cannabis in these kind of broad flavor and aroma categories rather than just kind of indica sativa or again, what’s the highest THC? Because then otherwise you’re not going to get people being adventurous and exploring and trying these new strains. And like you said, you don’t get to open the package and smell it before you buy it, and you maybe don’t even get to see it.
(22:16):
But even if you see it, you can at a nugget and say, that looks good, but a lot of times the nugget isn’t that appealing, but the flavor is going to be great. And then again, not only all of that, it’s very important how that cannabis was stored, how it was transported, and then how it was stored at the dispensary level to make sure that the aroma sticks through. So maybe we test it as a 3% right after it’s harvested, but it’s possible that it was driven around in a hot van, sat in a dispensary on a shelf and the dispensary doesn’t have good air conditioning. It sat there for six months, and so maybe it had great terpenes when it was harvested, but by the time that consumer opens that package, all those terpenes have boiled off and are gone and it tastes like, hey.
(23:01):
So I think we need to get much more sophisticated, much more advanced in how we treat cannabis, how we treat it from the time it’s harvested to the time it reaches the consumer to make sure that we’re not ruining the product in that process. And I don’t think we do a good job as an industry yet in sort of caring for that cannabis. It is a perishable good. And what makes it desirable are these sort of volatile aromatic compounds that if you don’t treat the cannabis are going to disappear by the time the consumer ever gets a chance to try it.
TG Branfalt (23:32):
Have any dispensary owners or brand owners sort of had this conversation with you and kind of sought out your advice on this? Very,
Josh Wurzer (23:46):
Yeah. We do our best to try and educate ’em early on. Like I said, we almost tested solely for dispensaries because the growers and the people making edibles were still kind of in as quasi legal gray area, so they weren’t as likely to want to come to a laboratory and give us their ID and pay us with a credit card. So we had much more interaction with the actual retailers to help steer it this way. And then for a long time, once legalization happened, all of our customer base shifted up the supply chain. And so we had less interaction with the retail outlets. But with a lot of this lab fraud, now we’re interacting much more at the retail outlet, at the retail level because the retailers are looking to sort of verify the information they’re getting because there’s not as much trust in certain lab testing.
(24:38):
So now we’re testing again, a lot of times for the retailers and the dispensaries to verify the results that they were given when they actually bought the material. And so yes, there’s, in California here, we work with a lot of dispensaries and elsewhere where we’re located and sort of helping them design their shelves around these broad flavor categories. We test for the Emerald Cup and a lot of these other contests, the California State Fair, where now they’re actually judging these cannabis sample strains in their events based on these categories, based on these flavor categories so that they’re not comparing a cabernet to a merlott
(25:20):
So that they’re comparing kind of samples. If I’m a judge and I tend to more of these fruity strains and I get a tline dominant strain, I might downgrade that just because that’s not my favorite. But if I’m comparing that trapline strain against other tline strains, well now they’re all competing on an even playing field. And so we do now have some retailers out here that will sort out their shelves based on these broad flavor categories, but it is been a slow road. And then we also have been really preaching this sort of mantra about how you manage your supply chain and how you make sure that when you harvest this cannabis, it’s as close to that kind of flavor and freshness six months from now when a consumer actually buys it. So how are you harvesting it? How are you drying it? How are you curing it?
(26:16):
How are you storing it until you get it to the retailer? And then how is that retailer storing and how are you transporting it on the way to the retailer? And then how is that retailer carrying for it until it actually goes to a consumer? So more and more I think people are starting to understand these concepts and incorporate them into their supply chain. But yeah, it’s been slow and I think ultimately we will start seeing a lot more sophistication in this regard, and it’s going to benefit the consumer because by the time they get their cannabis, it’s going to be in a lot better shape.
TG Branfalt (26:51):
Well, and I think you’re thinking ahead of the curve here because the cannabis industry is maturing the people. It’s probably when the first one goes online, and probably my late twenties and my tastes have changed as a consumer, and now I would prefer to have the shelves of the dispensary I go to set up in terms of terpene profiles. And so I think it’s very forward thinking and would like to see in more states. I do want to discuss mold and pesticides and sort of those issues because I’ve spoken to growers and brands and distributors who have said that the states often impose a regulations on these things that aren’t necessarily right for the industry. So I wanted to get your take on that, whether or not you think that that’s an accurate statement or if it’s just them with sort of sour grapes.
Josh Wurzer (27:53):
Well, okay. So there’s a lot of different factors to consider when discussing this topic. First of all, the unique way that cannabis is consumed. So again, like I said earlier, when you consume cannabis through inhalation, it goes directly into your lungs. Your lungs don’t have any type of mechanism type filter out contaminants before allowing whatever you breathe in to get into your bloodstream, so you breathe it into your lungs. Your lungs are first in of themselves, very important organs in your body and very sensitive to contaminants. So for instance, if there’s pesticides on that cannabis flower, they can damage your lungs. And even if they don’t, they go directly into your bloodstream. If I eat some pesticides, say in my food, it goes into my digestive system. My digestive system has all types of mechanisms, whether it’s in my stomach, stomach acid or gets into my intestines, these bacteria and stuff to sort of break down those contaminants before they ever enter my system.
(28:53):
But then even still once they get into my system, they go through a first pass in my liver before they even enter my bloodstream and my liver or your liver. Our livers are designed to again, break down contaminants in what we eat before allowing those contaminants to get into your bloodstream. And so you’ve got all of these mechanisms to filter out contamination when you eat something that aren’t there when you inhale it, when determining what is in a safe, safe, or allowable limit of pesticides to be on your food. And we can debate if those tolerances are even appropriate. A lot of those were determined long time ago, and you can make the case that pesticides are poisons, they kill things, and we allow very low level, or we allow lower levels of them in our food. So that way it is cheap and easy to manufacture food and kill pests that would damage crops, but they’re not good for you.
(29:49):
You can’t make that case. But at least we’ve studied them in sort of their effects when consumed orally and have theoretically determined a relatively safe concentration to allow on our foods, but that can’t be sort of transferred to something that we’re inhaling because it’s a completely different route into your body through inhalation. And no pesticides really have been studied for their effects on your body when you consume them through inhalation. So something that’s approved for strawberries, you can’t say, well, then it should be safe on cannabis because it’s apples and oranges. It’s not comparable. And so until these pesticide manufacturers do these studies and determine safe allowable limits for sprain on cannabis through inhalation, and then you also have a thing where these pesticides are one thing when they’re on your cannabis, but also we’re smoking them, so we’re heating them up and breaking them down into other compounds that have completely different toxicity profiles. And so you’d have to study all of those profiles as well because that’s what’s actually reaching your bloodstream.
(31:07):
So certainly what most states have taken is a sort of pretty stringent approach to the allowable levels of pesticides on foods. They are on cannabis, and so they either have very low limits allowable on the cannabis products or they basically say any amount that’s detectable is not allowable. And so certainly though we can grow cannabis organically without the use of these pesticides, and people have figured out how to do that. And pretty quickly before any of these regulations were in the book, and when we were testing this stuff at the consumer level or at the dispensaries, we would see disgustingly high amounts of these pesticides on these products because growers had, no one was looking or they didn’t think anyone was looking, and they would just spray them willy nilly. So you’d see way higher residue limits than it’s even allowable in food end up on these cannabis products, we’d see two or three different pesticides on everything we tested and concentrates.
(32:09):
It was way worse because not only are you concentrating OIDs, but you’re concentrating the pesticides and you’re running from batch to batch to batch in the same equipment. So if you run one pesticide, now you’ve contaminated every batch. You run in that equipment after that with that same pesticide. So we would see seven or eight different pesticides in every concentrate tested at really high limits. And so now that as soon as the regulations came into effect and the government sets limits, people really quickly figured out how to do it without, and so I think cannabis should be an example to the food industry that, hey, this can be done and we can stop putting poison on our food as much as we stopped putting poison into our cannabis products. Now with things like microbiological contaminants, like aspergillus, e coli, salmonella, things like that, these are microbes that when they’re on your cannabis and then you inhale them, can get into your lungs and cause all kinds of havoc, especially if you have a compromised immune system.
(33:08):
Now, you can debate that some of the states might’ve set two stringent rules on some of these microbial contaminants and that, Hey, we’re inhaling microbes all the time with every breath we take and cannabis, we don’t see a ton of these microbial infections from cannabis consumption. And so maybe some of the states have gotten a little bit overzealous and the limits they’ve set for sort of total yeast and mold or things like that on cannabis. But I think by and large, these limits are attainable and you just need your producers to have good hygiene. And really when we see a grower come in and they say, have an aspergillus contamination, which is a fungus that can infect your lungs, it’s real easy. We go onsite at their facility, we go in with swabs, we swab all their services, we find where this aspergillus is growing.
(34:03):
It’s similar to black mold, it’s the thing that we see in houses and stuff like that, and we find where the source of the contamination is. There’s a ton of ways to basically kill those microbes in your facility and bam, the problem solved. So it just takes good coordination between the grower and their laboratory to identify the source of the contaminant and address it rather than just continue to look the other way. And then you’re just going to turn out contaminated product, but it’s not difficult to address. And I think it just comes with the territory in growing cannabis on the legal market these days. And it’s certainly addressable by the producers and the growers, and cannabis is prone to having a lot of pests on it, but there’s organic ways to address these things. And so I tend to think that the good growers aren’t the ones complaining. The people who know what they’re doing can address the problem, and if you’re going to get into this business, it just comes with the territory.
TG Branfalt (35:05):
So how does it end up on dispensary shelves to get recalled? Because I mean, there was a recall in Missouri a year ago, it was like 75,000 products or something like that. And these are massive. I mean, they affect patients in medical states. When we get these recalls, they affect the average consumer who then has to pay kind of higher prices because there’s less supply. So how does it get to that point?
Josh Wurzer (35:31):
Well, so again, work with the reputable laboratory, don’t work with a laboratory that’s giving you the results you want, work with a laboratory that’s giving you accurate results, vet your laboratories because yeah, the producer is going to have to bear the cost of this recall. I would say it’s the cost of testing is really minuscule. In California, a batch of cannabis products is really large. I mean, even flower batches aren’t super large, but even say a 50 pound flower batch, a full panel of testing is going to cost you around three, $400. And then you have a 50 pound flower batch that’s less than 1% of the value of that batch is going to go into testing.
(36:21):
And there are costs that go into producing cannabis without the use of chemical pesticides and stuff like that where it makes it more expensive to produce that batch. But at the end of the day, with wholesale prices on flowers where they are, I would argue that the consumer isn’t paying the cost of a high cost at the retail outlet because of the extra cost of producing the cannabis organically or factoring in these recalls that are starting to happen. I think it’s a lot of other things. There’s sort of inefficiencies with the regulatory bodies. I think regulatory, the states need to ease up on some of their other licensing requirements, ease up on their taxation of cannabis, because that’s the retail price of a pound of cannabis is $500 in California, and we’re still paying $50 an eighth for a top shelf flower. Why is that?
(37:22):
It’s because of all the inefficiencies created by this overregulation in other places in the cannabis supply chain and over taxation, that consumer is still paying such a high price at the retail kind of point where that grower is only getting less than $500 a pound at wholesale and losing their ass, sorry, or losing a ton of money and going out of business. They can’t get more than $500 a pound. But then the consumer is still paying through the nose and is getting driven to the black market. It’s not because of testing, it’s because of all of these other regulatory inefficiencies and over taxation.
TG Branfalt (38:06):
Is there anything though to be said? I mean you and I mean, I don’t know what your age is, but I mean, we spent a lot of years smoking untested cannabis that may or may not have had mold in it. And I mean, I don’t know of really any issues that may have occurred. You mentioned the overregulation. How does a regulatory body balance keeping people safe versus common sense regulation, how would we jive that?
Josh Wurzer (38:41):
I think we’re all figuring it out. I think the regulators need to constantly reassess these sort of panels that they require for testing. So you bring up micro, I think there’s probably ways to walk back some of those micro requirements. I again, would push back that they’re not too hard to meet in most places, but there’s certain, I would say the regulators should be looking for specific species and organisms that are going to cause infection rather than maybe say the overall total yeast and mold. That’s one test that we do in some states we don’t do in California for that reason, we lobbied against that test in California when they were sending their regulations like don’t look for the overall total yeast and mold on that product because most of those yeast and molds that are on a product are natural. Some of them can be beneficial and they’re not going to get anyone sick.
(39:27):
Look for the specific species and organisms that are going to make people sick like aspergillus and specific species of aspergillus. There’s certain species of aspergillus that are totally benign, but then there’s some of them that, yeah, they can get in your lungs and they can cause an infection. And we see them very rarely, maybe less than 1% of the samples we test. And we have the technology now where maybe we didn’t have it 20, 30 years ago when a lot of these food testing regulations were put in place where they just say, well put it on a plate, see how much yeast or mold grows on that plate. And if it’s too much, well then it’s probably contaminated with something and so deny it. Well, no, let people do that because a lot of the sort of organic ways to keep pests off a crop involve using beneficial microbes that keep pests away.
(40:15):
So I think that’s one way you can do it is sort of be more targeted in your approach to these contaminants and which contaminants you allow. We don’t have to use petri dishes anymore. We can go and take a cannabis sample, extract all the DNA in it and look for the specific DNA fingerprint of these specific organisms that are known to make people sick. Same thing with e coli. E coli is on every surface we touch every day, but there’s certain e coli, like e coli oh 1 57 that causes food poisoning and makes you really sick. Well, so rather than look for the overall bacteria on a cannabis product, look for those specific species of bacteria that we know are going to make you sick, and in some states are doing it that way. Some states are taking this kind of more shotgun approach where we’ll just measure the overall yeast and mold contamination, and if it’s too much, we’re going to deny the cannabis from reaching the market.
(41:10):
And I think we’re seeing that issue. Michigan’s a state we work in where they have these total yeast and molds or Colorado, these total yeas and mold requirements, and it’s hard for these growers to make to meet. So then what they do instead is irradiate all the cannabis, which is putting it through a rad source, sort of zaps all the terpenes as well and makes the cannabis just kind of dried up and ruins it when it probably wasn’t contaminated with anything that was going to make you sick in the first place. So states need to constantly kind of, I think go back and reassess these regulations they put in place, make sure that they’re targeted and they really are maximizing the sort of safety to the consumer because putting regulations in place that aren’t making people safer are only increasing costs, are only making it more difficult for the cannabis growers to make a living.
(42:01):
But they also need to constantly reassess and see, do we have the right pesticides on this list? Are people now if we have a list of 60 pesticides that the labs have to test for, well now our growers just going and trying to find pesticides that aren’t on that list and still spraying the crops. And that’s a problem we’re seeing in a lot of states too now is where we just did a piece with the LA Times where they pulled samples off of shelves throughout the state, and we found we tested for not only the pesticides that were supposed to be tested for before those products made to market and found it at a lot of labs were allowing stuff through onto the shelves that were contaminated with the pesticides that they were supposed to be testing for. But then we also tested for pesticides that weren’t on the list required by the state and found that a lot of these growers were using these really gnarly, sort of illegal, banned in the United States, pesticides from China that aren’t on the list that we’re testing for.
(42:57):
And we found these in a lot of these products that were there in just really high levels because they’re like, screw it. We know the list that the labs are looking for, so we’re going to stay one step ahead of them and just put other stuff in there. And so now again, we’re doing a lot of testing at the retail outlets for these pesticides that the state isn’t requiring we test for, but the retailers, we don’t want to give this stuff to our customers or our patients. And so the states need to be more nimble, I think, in developing their regulations. And again, and same thing with taxation and some of these licensing requirements. It’s like if you want to be partners with the industry and you want to make money off of the industry through taxation, well, you can’t choke the industry out at the same time. At some point it gets to be too much. So you have to allow growers to be able to make a living in this business and labs like ours too, that rely on growers to be financially solvent to make our living. And if you just sort of overtax overregulate, then you’re just sort of choking out the industry and driving everyone back to the black market.
TG Branfalt (44:03):
So when you did this study or we partnered with the LA Times and you get these results, I mean, what is your reaction to this? Were you shocked or were you like, yeah, I knew it. I kind of knew it.
Josh Wurzer (44:16):
We’ve known it all along and we’ve been complaining because it’s choking out. It’s choking out the good laps if you’re sort of not doing a good enough job regulating the laboratory business and shoot, I don’t want it is a huge cost to me. It’s a huge burden. It makes me worried that at any time, if I do something wrong, the state’s going to come in and shut me down, but I need it to be there to keep it fit. If you’re into sports, you don’t like it when the referee throws a flag on your team, but if the referees aren’t there, then it’s a free for all. And then the sports ruined. You need referees in the game to keep it fair. And so if the regulators aren’t doing a good enough job looking over our shoulders as laboratories, well then they’re disincentivizing honest, reputable laboratories and you’re incentivizing the cheaters. And so you start to see all the reputable laboratories out of business. The cheaters are the only ones who can make a living, and the consumer is the person that ultimately suffers.
(45:20):
The brands that want to put out contaminated products are the ones that thrive, and the brands with an ethos and who want to make it a good, clean, healthy product for their customers are the ones who go under. So I wasn’t surprised. We’ve been complaining about this for a long time. We’ve been doing everything we can to educate the consumer to look and to vote with their dollar and spend money on quality producers, quality products that are safe, and to try and change the laws as best we can and maybe work with media outlets to shine light on the story. I also come from the cannabis industry before it was legal, and I also am not trying to try to be a narc, for lack of a better term. So we try and work within the system to change things for the better and maybe not try and shine a light. I also understand a lot of these brands are just trying to survive. A lot of these lab operators are just trying to survive. They’ve stuck their life savings into this business. And if everyone else is cheating, either I cheat and I survive or I go under. So you
TG Branfalt (46:26):
Mean it’s the Barry Bonds argument to go back to sports, right, exactly. I got to take steroids so I can be as good as the other guys. I do. With a few minutes that we have left, I do want to ask you about the remediation processes because I’ve heard that products can fail tests and then be put through remediation and then put back into the market, and I’ve never been able to get a clear picture of what that process is. Are you able to elaborate on that at all?
Josh Wurzer (46:59):
And it’s different depending on the contamination. So for a microbiological contaminant, you have to kill that microbe, and then it’s not going to make people sick for the most part, except for some microbes produce toxins, like certain aspergillus strains produce what’s called mycotoxins, which are super toxic compounds. So it’s hard to remediate those. But for instance, Abbi in a product, well, I can just kill that e coline and then I can put the product back up in the market and it shouldn’t make people sick. So you can either irradiate it and sterilize it, you can do some sort of extraction process on it that uses some sort of chemical solvent that, again, will kill the microbes. So there’s different things you can do to either sort of kill the microbes on the product and then put the product in market or turn the product into something else, will then sterilize it.
(47:48):
But now you have to take this flower and turn it into a concentrate if maybe you didn’t want to do that. If it’s a pesticide, there’s ways to sort of filter that pesticide out, say from a concentrate, but those for the most part are not financially viable solutions. So what people usually do is dilution is the solution to pollution is what we say in chemistry. And so what they’ll do is they’ll extract that product and then they’ll put it into an edible where now instead of consuming a hundred milligrams of the cannabinoid in a serving, the consumers only consuming 10 or 15 milligrams and they’re eating it rather than inhaling it. So a lot of times with pesticide contaminants, you just see people basically turn it into edibles.
TG Branfalt (48:34):
That’s super interesting, man. This has been a super insightful conversation. Where can’t people find out more about you and SC Labs?
Josh Wurzer (48:44):
Alright, well, you can go to our website, it’s SC labs.com. We have a lot of educational material in there too. So if you’re just a general consumer and you want to learn more about the science of cannabis and what we’ve been doing over the years, it’s a great place to start. We’re on all the socials, either myself personally or as SE labs. We put a lot up on Instagram and Facebook and LinkedIn. I am trying to be more active in the socials personally, and so I’m trying to put more content up in LinkedIn. And we have a blog on our website. I just tell people to look us up there.
TG Branfalt (49:21):
It’s Josh we, he’s the co-founder of Multi-state operator SC Labs. Man, it’s really been a pleasure and I hope that we get to do this again in the future and that the landscape is a little bit different. Wouldn’t that be nice?
Josh Wurzer (49:33):
Yeah, yeah. Well, we’re learning, we’re still a young industry and I think we’re just trying to get better, trying to figure it out, and it will be. We’re getting there.
TG Branfalt (49:41):
Thank you so much, man. I really appreciate it.
Josh Wurzer (49:44):
Likewise.
In this episode of the Ganjapreneur podcast, host TG Branfalt is joined by Witt Rabon, co-founder and COO, and Jamar Brown, co-founder and President of Brand Development for DRO, a Colorado-based cannabis lifestyle brand that has been redefining cannabis culture since its launch in 2014. DRO stands out by weaving authentic storytelling, cultural identity, and bold design into its clothing and cannabis products. In this episode, Witt and Jamar share the origins of DRO, reflecting on how their personal journeys—from professional sports and corporate branding to a shared love for cannabis—helped shape the company’s unique voice and vision. They delve into how DRO transitioned from an idea sparked during their time as coworkers to a thriving lifestyle brand blending cannabis and fashion.
Other topics discussed in this interview include:
- The importance of connecting with consumers through authentic, relatable stories
- The role of design in bridging cannabis culture with mainstream audiences
- The importance of advocacy, social equity, expungement, and using their platform for cannabis education
- DRO’s approach to licensing deals, and the challenges and opportunities of entering big-box retailers
- And more!
This conversation offers a compelling look at the intersection of cannabis, culture, and business, highlighting DRO’s journey as a brand that honors legacy culture while helping shape the landscape of the legal cannabis industry.
Listen to this episode via the player below, find it on your favorite podcast app, or scroll down for the full transcript!
Listen to the episode:Ganjapreneur · Witt Rabon & Jamar Brown: Building DRO, a Cannabis Lifestyle Brand
Read the transcriptEditor’s note: this transcript was auto-generated and may contain errors.
Commercial (00:03):
The Ganjapreneur Podcast is made possible by over 500 cannabis industry service providers in Ganjapreneurs Cannabis Business Index. At some point, every plant touching brand experiences the stigma that many industries still have to toward cannabis going strong. Since 2015, our business index is the most comprehensive and frequently visited directory for cannabis friendly services on the internet, saving you the time and hassle of sifting through uninformed and unwelcoming providers with categories for everything from business financing, to extraction equipment to interior designers and public relations. You’ll find every kind of specialist and business service you could ever need. Check out the business index today at ganjapreneur.com/businesses.
TG Branfalt (00:49):
Hey there, I’m your host, TG Branfalt, and this is the Ganjapreneur.com podcast where we try to bring you actionable information and normalize cannabis through the stories of entrepreneurs, activists, and industry stakeholders. Today I’m joined by Witt RayBan. He’s the co-founder and COO and Jamar Brown, co-founder and president of Brand Development of Colorado based cannabis lifestyle brand DRO, which first launched in 2014. How are you guys doing this afternoon?
Witt Rabon (01:18):
Oh, we’re doing good, man. How about you?
TG Branfalt (01:20):
Cool, man. Cool. I’m really excited to have you guys on. You’re the first sort of cannabis lifestyle brand that I’ve had on the show, so a lot of questions that I have for you. But before we get to those, tell me about yourselves. What’s your background and how’d you end up at DRO? I’ll let you go first. Jamar.
Jamar Brown (02:00):
My background, basically it is how I ended up in Colorado. So I actually went to school at CSU Pueblo and I played probably professional 10 years. For 10 years, and I just ended up staying in Denver. So while I was in Denver, I was up at MusclePharm. One of my friends introduced me to MusclePharm, and this is how I met Witt. And then our other business partner that was with us and Whit just came with me with an opportunity for Dr, and I thought about it, it’s my lifestyle. That’s how I was raised. I’m from Cali, drove life. It was supposed to be even. It was supposed to be no matter what. Like my mom, my dad, the background, marijuana, hydro, it’s me. It’s always in me.
TG Branfalt (02:58):
What about you? How’d you end up at DRO?
Witt Rabon (03:03):
Kind of similar story to Jamar’s. Basically we started out, we were both all working at MusclePharm together, and then me, Jamar and our other partner at the time, we were like, this is a facility filled with, I don’t know, it was filled with a bunch of Mormon meatheads. So us three with Jamar being from we all three kind of liked weed. And with weed, right, you pick up real quick in any sort of work environment or social environment who’s down, right? And we figured out the smokers. Yeah, we figured out that us three were kind of down with the weed stuff a lot more than everybody else there. So we kind of all latched onto each other a little bit more. So we were all just really good work friends and our partner at the time, like I said, we were all working at MusclePharm and saw the, it was kind of going from its pinnacle to, its more of a, I wouldn’t say a downward trend, but just definitely was not as hyped as it once was. And we were like, man, we can really do this. And once we saw DRO and the opportunity to jump on, me and Jamar are both like, this is us. We love weed, we love branding, we love marketing. We’ve had a lot of success in the sports nutrition field in the MMA industry with the clothing. We were like, we can do this ourselves. So that was pretty much just being at MusclePharm and seeing other brands while we were working there and basically learning how to build a brand was really what brought us all together.
TG Branfalt (04:45):
And so MusclePharm, it’s like you said, it’s a sort of sports lifestyle, sort of MMA lifestyle type brand. So then in your opinions, what defines a cannabis lifestyle brand?
Witt Rabon (05:00):
I would say just a brand that people feel like they’re connected to through the brand’s story. And that’s because everybody wants to hear a story and be attached to a story. And in cannabis it’s a bunch of just product. And these guys are like, oh, look we’re “Leaf Company” or whatever. And you’re like, okay, well outside of your dad gave you some money, what’s your story? Why is this weed special? It’s all just a bunch of warehouse weed at the end of the day. And whether it’s good warehouse weed or mediocre or bad, it’s all out of a warehouse. So how do you make this lifestyle and connect your customers to your product? And that’s, one, through your story. And then also through cultivating certain strains that actually have a little bit of a story behind them as well. Because if you go back to the beginning days of drug dealing before legal cannabis, the really good stuff always came with a story. You remember that the good stuff always had a story about the certain grower who grew it up in the mountains in Humboldt or what in Kentucky or wherever this shit came from. Nobody just sold it to you. Hey, it’s a bag of weed, it’s this price, buy it. They probably did, but at least when I was doing it, man, we always have a story behind that shit. Like I said, where it came from, who grew the shit, how it made it into your hands,
Jamar Brown (06:40):
That’s the bigger story because how it made it to your hands, that’s a story behind the story. And it’s all about being organic and people love to watch people. That’s not trying hard, not to say not trying hard, but being their self and being organic within the culture.
TG Branfalt (06:58):
Well, and I think it speaks to what you guys are sort of creating, because if somebody clicks on about section on your website, it’s a story. It’s esoteric. It’s very, very different.
Jamar Brown (07:11):
Yeah. Yeah. So
Witt Rabon (07:15):
Go ahead.
Jamar Brown (07:15):
Yeah. Oh my fault. But yeah, it’s different. And then it’s different stories within, because I play basketball, I smoke weed all around the world. I come from a heavy marijuana culture back home and you just keep building that story.
TG Branfalt (07:33):
So let me ask you, Jamar, what did you take away from that previous life before DRO? I mean, it’s one thing, the sort of MusclePharm aspect of it, but to be a professional international basketball player, I mean, that’s an entirely different sort of path.
Jamar Brown (07:51):
Yeah, it’s a different path. And then how social media is today when I was playing, I wouldn’t even talk about weed. I wouldn’t wear a weed shirt because it’s a business at the end of the day and I need a contract to provide for me family, et cetera or whatever. So you’ll be, they know you smoke, but they don’t want to know that you smoke. So I got a story where I went to Turkey and as soon as I landed in Alia, they tested me and the team manager came to me and he was just like, yo, make sure you just don’t smoke out here no more. I be don’t smoke out here. So they knew previous when I took my test, it came up dirty. They knew I was smoking, so I just waited till the end of the season and me and one of my teammates, so we had a soccer club too, so it was like 50,000 people, and we were just at his condo looking at the stadium, and he barely knew English. I definitely barely knew Turkish, but we both smoking a joint looking at the game, trying to figure out how we could win a championship for basketball. It’s just like the weed for me, bro. The world is full of hellos.
(08:59):
So the previous life, it’s easier now because when we first started, me being in that industry, I had players in there, it was just hard to get to players to wear DRO or whatnot just because, and now it’s a lot of players that are aware it represent it, it opened up, they’re not getting tested no more. So it’s a lot easier now.
TG Branfalt (09:25):
And so why are these sort of lifestyle brands important to the broader cannabis culture, which is really what we’re talking about here.
Witt Rabon (09:33):
Yeah, so I think the reason why is because one, it’s helping it become more acceptable and also helping it become more mainstream. Because if you’re just looking at cannabis itself and you’re telling some old guy like, oh yeah, it’s this dried up plant and you grind it up and smoke it, they’re thinking, oh, that’s devil’s lettuce. But when they get it presented to ’em, have you ever taken your parents in a cookie store? I mean, dude, they’re so overwhelmed. They’re like, look how professional this is. Everything’s all bright and colorful and dude, my parents don’t smoke weed or eat edibles at all. They bought shit in the store because they felt so comfortable with the branding and the way it was product was presented to ’em, right? I don’t think my dad would ever buy a bag of flower in a Ziploc, but when he saw it presented as a real nice pre-roll with some gold foil packaging, he was a lot more curious about the product and he wanted to try it.
(10:41):
And then he starts identifying the brands and seeing what’s what. And I don’t know, I think like you said, the brands really, really helped. The people that were not buying Ziploc bags of flower be a part of this. And what’s funny is eventually those people move from the branded packaging in stores, and once they start smoking, they’re like, oh, I want some street shit too. Then they start going backwards and wanting the Ziploc fire because it’s just funny to watch the natural progression of everything. But like I said, and even how everybody’s branding the product now, right? Too is everybody’s branding products. That’s not a hard thing to do is come up with a logo and brand yourself, but it’s just the fact of what brands we’re seeing now the people latch onto and gravitate to. And those are the ones that have a story behind them, like I said, where the people can actually relate to the company owners.
(11:42):
Maybe they can relate to the grower or even the story behind some of the genetics that they’re growing. Whereas like I said, a lot of these brands are just like, oh, my company’s called “Ocean Leafs,” buy my product. We grow weed. And you’re like, what else do you do? But yeah, I think that’s why lifestyle brands are important is because it’s the gateway to education really is what it is, and it gives people something to stand behind. I mean, if you look at any industry, like alcohol industry, people have their go-to beverages and there’s people that they don’t drink shit else, but Coors Light, they’re diehard Coors Light fans. And some of that’s the same thing is somehow at some point in time, Coors Light spoke to that person and made them a lifetime drinker. Whether it was just maybe the old Coors Light commercials where that just heavy were marketed towards the blue collar working man. Same thing with a lot of flower brands too. Look at that brand old pal, right? They were always known for giving you a little bit more. It was just grounded up weed in a tobacco pouch, but it’s actually one of the bigger brands in cannabis today. We might not know about it because we’re not that old dude buying that, but at the same time, they have that market cornered.
TG Branfalt (13:14):
Interesting. What about for you, Jamar? What are lifestyle brands? Why are they important to the broader cannabis culture?
Jamar Brown (13:25):
For me, the reason why it’s important because say if I go in the store, I see five different brands, one of them brands going to relate to my lifestyle, and if the weed is good and everything’s on point, I’m going with that brand. So it might be two strains I really, really like, but they might introduce me to a third strain that I really, really love. But it’s got to be within my lifestyle. I can’t just go smoke to the left because it’s cool. I got to smoke it. I like it, I want it, and I’ll pay for it,
TG Branfalt (14:06):
And it’s got to be different. It sounds like one of the things about your designs, your clothing designs that really struck me was they’re very interesting. They’re different. Again, this sort of esoteric-ness comes up. I’m a guy who, 40 years old, watches adultswim, and the shirts, the designs, they speak to me and I want to know what does that idea’s process look like? You’ve got a Calico cat holding a weapon, and it’s great. It speaks to me as different and a bit charming, if you will. So what does that process look like?
Witt Rabon (14:50):
So basically what we come up with the clothing designs is we try to do themes. Each collection where it sort of speaks, we might do a summer theme that was just related to, we did a whole beach club line where this whole entire collection was just dedicated to, it was almost like the lifestyle of lounging at a resort every day and the lifestyle that these kids that live on beach towns get to live every day where they just wake up and roll out of bed, throw some board shorts on and go kick to the beach with a bunch of chicks and have bonfires and parties. So we just try to do designs based upon different themes of what we feel like at the moment is cool and fun. Some of those other designs like the Coleco T and a lot of the ones you see on the website now, we do have some more classic based designs that we’re, we like to bring back in different colors or put it on different mediums, which the one you’re referring to is one of those that it was actually part of a collection dedicated to El Chapo that we did, and that was a piece that went with some Florence prison kind of themed year that we did.
(16:07):
But we brought it back in those new colors this summer because we wanted to do a whole drill classics line in new colorways for this summer just because now we’re at that point where we can go bring back shit from eight years ago. So yeah, that’s one of the design processes. I guess the creative process in coming up with these is a little bit more, it’s really based upon whatever the designers feeling on their pop culture vibes.
TG Branfalt (16:35):
And Jamal, you’re the president of brand development, so what role do you sort have in all of this
Jamar Brown (16:42):
Placement? Product placement, getting stuff to artists, making shit cool.
TG Branfalt (16:50):
You’re the guy responsible for making shit cool.
Jamar Brown (16:53):
Pretty much being at the right time at the right place, luck, it all comes together being six foot nine being a bully.
TG Branfalt (17:05):
I guess if you walked into Rube, I’d feel compelled to work with you in some form or fashion or else you’ll dump.
Jamar Brown (17:12):
I’m not coming in to break no legs or that, you know what I’m saying? I did all smiles. That’s what I roll with.
Witt Rabon (17:20):
It works because when JB walks in the room, he’s six nine and he’s got a drill hat on. What’s the one thing you’re going to see? You’re going to remember from that event, that networking event you went to? You’re like, that’s all I remember is this big guy with a drill hat on. But I don’t know, we’re going to do some business with him,
Jamar Brown (17:36):
Walking billboard, walking billboard.
Witt Rabon (17:42):
So it works because it’s, like I said, jb, it works well because JB is somebody that people want to talk to and immediately like, I got to hear this guy’s story, so it works well. I walk into a room or whatever. I kind of have to push it a little bit further. But it’s cool because it all works. Everybody can go in different rooms and come out with different results and it can all come together in the end.
TG Branfalt (18:14):
It’s hard for any company, clothing company, cannabis company, small business startups to stay in business for as long as you guys have going on 10 years as a company. How have you maintained the success for that long?
Jamar Brown (18:32):
Consistency? Pretty much. I mean, sleepless nights, early mornings, just being true to the brand and once we are the brand, so people gravitate around us, it’s a lot to deal with, but at the same time, I wouldn’t switch it up for nothing.
Witt Rabon (18:58):
I would say as far as being around for this long, it’s learning to deal with the ebbs and flows of the apparel and cannabis industry really is just knowing in your mind that, Hey, summer 22 might not have been that great. You got to stick with it and because summer 23, you’re going to be doing 10 times as much as you were. So I think that’s really a lot of it is just persistence, being consistent like JB just said, and just being willing to not give up when it’s not going your way. Really the hardest part is the discouragement because you can do everything in the world, but when you’re dealing with partnerships, licensing deals, third party manufacturers, somebody somewhere’s going to mess up and you got to figure out how to pivot from that really quickly and keep going and not just roll up in a corner and cry.
TG Branfalt (20:00):
How much have you guys had to learn on the job?
Witt Rabon (20:04):
Oh, everything.
Jamar Brown (20:06):
Everything’s hands on
Witt Rabon (20:09):
Every day. We learn something new every day. It changes too. Every single day in the cannabis industry is a new rule, a new law, a new packaging formulation you have to go and follow. So yeah, there’s a lot of that. It’s a lot of fires to be put out all the time, but that’s just part of it. There’s not a single industry in the world where I don’t think this goes on.
TG Branfalt (20:38):
So you guys have partnered with a variety– you had a variety of partnerships. One of the ones that I particularly like is that Riot Society line. How do you identify partnerships and what qualities do you look for in a partner?
Witt Rabon (20:55):
A lot of times it’s honestly just our relationships is who you end up partnering with because all humans, so we all tend to grab the low hanging fruit. So you just start, we were friends that have known the guys from Riot Society since we started the company, and we’ve been ping ponging back and forth a collaboration idea for damn seven years prior to doing it.
(21:22):
And then finally one day we were just finally one day planets aligned. Everybody had enough time at the moment to sit down and actually execute it. So that’s kind of how the Riot Society thing started. We obviously like and respect Riot Society in terms of their practices as far as being able to penetrate big box stores and be successful in those stores, their speed to market capabilities. Like I said, there’s a lot of partnerships we turned down. Unfortunately, it’s just because you talk to ’em and you just don’t vibe with each other and you’re like, man, I don’t know if I could work with them. But Riot Society was a very easy project to work on. We work a lot with Waka fka, he’s one of the owners of the company as well. So I knew Waka from a previous, I used to work for Live Nation and be in the concert business, so I knew Waka before this. And the second I saw DRO, I was like, I know who’s going to be a part of this is Waka. I was like, this is made for him too.
TG Branfalt (22:30):
Bit of serendipity.
Witt Rabon (22:32):
So that’s pretty much how the partnerships happen is just through people. And a lot of times too, man, it’s like you get hit up randomly by a company on the internet and you just go partner with them because there’s old saying that strangers will make you rich. I mean, not necessarily saying strangers have made us rich by any means. We’re still trying to get there, but at the same time, we’ve seen a lot of support from strangers. People come out of the blue, big time people and they’re just like, yo, I mess with this. This speaks to me. What can we do together? And it just works out. So I would say that’s how collabs are determined really is through our relationships. And then if the right person hits us up at the right time, sometimes the magic happens.
TG Branfalt (23:28):
And Jamar, when do you know things are going right? When you’re talking to a potential partner,
Jamar Brown (23:34):
When they’re interested, very, very interested in the bread, it speaks volume, and that’s what they locked on there. But then I know when it’s right, the vibe between us and a potential partner because you could have somebody come in and it could just be a money grab for them while we’re working a company, which we done seen it before, and you catch that red flag. But it is the vibe, how passionate they are about the brand. If you’re passionate, I’m passionate, let’s get on some paper and let’s dance pretty much because yo, I use it as a speed bump. Either take your time going two miles an hour or go 90 and crash everywhere. There’s a lot of Crashers out there. I used to be one, now I know how to take my time and figure it out.
TG Branfalt (24:31):
And so you guys have penetrated Zumiez?
Witt Rabon (24:37):
Yes. So we were in Zumiez back in, we actually got into Zumiez in the middle of Covid. Ironically, probably not the best timing on our part. Lesson learned. You get hit up by a big box store, man, I don’t care what time, there’s never a good time. I mean, obviously there’s better times than others, but you’re just like hindsight. We should have waited till after Covid was done where people could go in the store and shop. But now it was a good experience to be in the store to learn how these hangar programs work and how these big box stores need their stuff delivered and accomplished. We’re not in Zumiez right now. We’re still in their matrix, so I’m not saying you won’t ever see it in there again. Hopefully you will. We’re actually in Tillys and PacSun right now.
TG Branfalt (25:29):
So how did those deals come about? You said that Zoomies found you.
Witt Rabon (25:35):
No, we solicited Zumiez. We, once Waka came on board and then once we knew W’s TV show was going to be on Netflix, that was just the perfect storm to go pitch Zumiez. One of our sales manager actually used to be, he used to sell for Boulevard Last Kings, a bunch of bigger streetwear brands that were in Zumiez. So it was fairly easy to use his past relationships to enter into Zumiez because it was the same business model as before, rinse and Repeat. But yeah, like I said, these big box stores, I mean, they’re really cool. They’re fun to deal with, but man, you better be prepared to spend a lot of money on marketing to make sure that’s very successful in the store. And other than that, I think it’s, we’re very happy to be in Tillys and PacSun right now.
TG Branfalt (26:36):
How important is that for the company’s growth?
Witt Rabon (26:41):
I would say it’s pretty important. It puts your brand into the mainstream audience of people that might not have ever seen it before, as most people that are in shopping malls are not really the counterculture people.
Jamar Brown (26:55):
No. So you get
Jamar Brown (26:56):
Different demographics of people, and it’s a little, I do say it’s a little similar to how Nike always wants to give all the people and all the kids in high school, Nike, they supply all the football cleats, they supply all the, they’re planting the seed early, right? Because when you leave college and you have your own money, you’re like, yo, I remember Nike always gave me stuff all through high school and college in my sports career, when I go in the store, what are you going to buy? You’re going to buy Nike.
TG Branfalt (27:29):
Well, most famous brands, examples of Jordan’s, not a shoe. Jordan’s not a sneaker.
Witt Rabon (27:41):
Yeah, no, it’s a complete lifestyle.
Jamar Brown (27:43):
It’s a lifestyle for sure. It’s a lifestyle. But Jordan’s a lifestyle to the point where used to watch, what was that movie Come Fly with me with Michael Jordan after I finished watching that, I wanted to go put on some Jordans, go outside and work on my game. So now it’s a part of my lifestyle.
TG Branfalt (28:06):
Well, and you mentioned the sort of demographics, Jamar, is it something that you do is identifying the sort of demographics and doing that sort of work?
Jamar Brown (28:16):
Yeah, because even with the demographics, say we got a “Delta nine” shirt, and I could have somebody that come up probably like I’m in a grocery store and I got a hoodie on or something, and that person, it could be like 60, 65, and tell me a story about that. Tell me a story about that. Tell me a story about the triple beam and everything. Because back in their day, that’s what they used. So if I got somebody coming up to me 65 years old, it’s like it is culture of marijuana, but it’s different demographics, but everybody have a story, so this person might be real preservative or whatever, but oh, let me tell you about my story. Boom. Oh, then it opened up more doors. That’s what it does.
TG Branfalt (29:09):
I saw the triple beam design and I thought that it was fascinating that you are young guys and to have this sort of relic, it sort of speaks to that. Did that actually happen to you or somebody came up to you because you had that shirt on?
Jamar Brown (29:27):
Yes. Oh yeah. Every shirt I have, it’s a story behind it or loose lip sink shifts that relates to life. It look cool as hell and relates to life. So you might get a story or somebody walked by was like, ain’t that, that’s the damn truth. And I’m like, yeah. Then I might get into a story about it. Different avenues of life that you in corporate at the bottom, in the middle, it doesn’t matter and it relates. So everything we pretty much do relates one way or the other.
TG Branfalt (30:03):
So how does your brand continue to evolve and how in the next sort of few years as more states go online with legalized cannabis, how do you plan to evolve to those markets as well?
Witt Rabon (30:19):
So we do that through licensing deals. So we have our own line of genetics, so we’re able to, we just actually got a license deal in Florida, so you’ll see drove Florida, I would say, in stores by December. So yeah, we have, it’s just basically through licensing. You can start, unless somebody wants to give us a billion dollars, who’s listening to this? That’s about the only way to start penetrating other states really, really fast is basically you have to figure out your way to get in there and licensing, licensing is what we’re good at and what we know, and it makes perfect sense because now we can go to grows and alleviate their marketing burdens. Like, Hey, you guys want to go try and create a brand yourself and go through the 10 years of brand building it takes, or do you want to just latch onto us and alleviate your entire, give your marketing budget to us and let us do it, and now we all win. You can just focus on growing your product and making it the best possible, and you don’t have to worry about the sell in and sell through.
(31:41):
We come in and focus there, and nine times out of 10, as long as you have a good operating partner who has good intentions, it works,
Jamar Brown (31:55):
Makes life easier.
TG Branfalt (31:59):
And finally, what role can specifically cannabis lifestyle brands play in the broader conversation of advocacy?
Witt Rabon (32:12):
I think as far as brand kind of relating to earlier, as far as advocacy goes is like you said I was getting to is brands make these naysayers, I guess, or people fighting legalization a little bit. I feel like it makes it more comfortable for them and it makes it easier for them to accept and digest that this is a business and this is actually a real, there’s a lot more to this. It’s not just somebody growing some weed, a basement and trying to sell it in a book bag. It’s actually like now these people can look at these companies like, oh wow, there’s entire marketing teams, web developers, there’s a lot of stuff going into this other than just the plant,
Jamar Brown (32:57):
Just from pumping it out the basement to the streets, now you got a whole team, marketing, sales, ambassadors, partnerships.
Witt Rabon (33:13):
And then also we can kind of also bring more, because we have an audience, so we can also bring a little bit more education to our audience as well through last prisoner project type stuff. Or just telling people what’s going on in the industry that they might not be aware of. Like, oh, hey, do you guys know there’s a vote upcoming in this November where they want to lower your THC limit or they want to lower your amount you can purchase. And we can actually go and put stuff out there saying, Hey, vote no on this proposition because this is going to destroy your industry or our industry that we all love. Or we can come through with the positive things and be like, Hey, there’s a bill right here that’s going to help everybody. Safe banking, that’s going to help everybody win. Let’s make sure that you guys are aware of this and want this to move forward. Make sure the ones that want to tell your politician.
TG Branfalt (34:15):
DeMar. Do you find yourself doing a lot more of advocacy in your role than,
Jamar Brown (34:23):
I mean, yeah. Yeah. Even from the way how I grew up, my mom and dad, my mom and dad sold drugs. My mom had tremors runners, my mom had testers, house being raided, everything. And I used to just be a sponge on the wall, played basketball, but it always was in me. So me to transition to a legal business. And then even for reform, expunging, it’s a lot of people still in jail. I’ve been in jail for marijuana, and it’s just like now I have a company, but the thing is to keep spitting the knowledge, keep helping. Even the youth that’s coming up, this Gen Z and everything, it’s just different right now. But just to keep getting the knowledge out there and helping people and really identifying with these people. I’ve been through it, what these people been through, probably not at the certain extent what they’ve been through, but on the same path, I just chose to go this path to make your path easier. So it’s just more of getting out there, knocking on doors or kicking doors down. Because that small space, if you could get through that small space, it’ll open up for a lot of people. Not only you, but the people behind you in front of you, right or left
TG Branfalt (35:51):
Jamar. When you started in this industry, you said you grew up sort of around your parents selling weed and that sort of thing?
Jamar Brown (36:01):
Yeah.
TG Branfalt (36:03):
What was their reaction?
Jamar Brown (36:06):
My mom
TG Branfalt (36:07):
To it sort of coming full circle.
Jamar Brown (36:11):
I remember my sister came out here. I wasn’t even at where we’re at right now. I just showed my sister a little something, something. Next thing you know, my sister told my mom to the point, JB out here, you got a whole grow or whatnot. Then my mom was like, I used to make a hundred thousand a week doing this. Well, I’m like, okay. I learned from you. I just figured out how to transition it to a legal business. But the one thing that I take from my mom, she passed two years ago. I was in New York at Times Square. We had a billboard at Times Square. No way. And I happened to Facetimer at probably 5:00 AM and the billboard popped up and I showed her, and then she was just like, God damn that marijuana, your dad is turning in this grave of how far this shit will go.
(37:06):
I just got to be straight up. That’s just how she was. But she was proud. And my mom, once everything went down and my dad went to jail, my mom was going to jail on the weekends, so I think my mom was visiting my dad on the weekends. She was actually turning herself in. So once my mom stopped, she stopped. It was to the point she started calling Weed dope. I’m like, mom, this is not dope. And then when she was sick, I’ll send her stuff. And gradually, I think the older the people get and they get in situations, they start accepting some things, but I’m like, mom, you’ve been through it, but it was different back then, so I get it. So she proud when she was proud, for sure. She told me. So
TG Branfalt (37:54):
The advocacy side of it probably hits you a little harder than other people in your position, I reckon.
Jamar Brown (38:02):
Yeah, because bro, you ever, my auntie, I was young, but I seen it. But the way my auntie told me how the house get raided, she putting muddy in our Pampers, they throwing pounds out the window. The swat, catching the, that’s a real story. They catching the fucking pounds laughing, but that’s a real story. But the thing with my mom, once she got in trouble, she stopped. So I wish she was still here just to see how everything transitioned into legalization, everything and how she was alive when marijuana became legal, even in Vegas and Cali, but just so she could see the process and everything. I’m like, mom, I don’t got to look behind my back or left and right or meet somebody in a dark alley or get robbed or go to jail. I could drive with 30 pounds in a car, get pulled over. Oh, here’s my paperwork, sir. Okay, Mr. Brown, you can keep going. Well, thank you. Today’s not your day for that big bust. Peace.
TG Branfalt (39:09):
I would love to sit here and hear all of your stories about towns being thrown out of windows, but we got to wrap it up here. Where can people find out more about you guys, more about DRO social media, that sort of thing?
Witt Rabon (39:29):
So they can go toro life.com if they want to peep out some of the clothing we have, and then also follow us on Instagram at @DROLife. That’s more of the lifestyle aspect of everything. If you want to go dive into the cannabis aspect of it, DROflower.com or @DROFlower on Instagram,
TG Branfalt (39:50):
That’s Witt Rabon, the co-founder and COO and Jamar Brown, co-founder and president of Brand Development of Colorado based cannabis lifestyle brand DRO, which first launched in 2014. Thank you guys so much for being on the show. Really appreciate it.
Jamar Brown (40:04):
Thank you. Welcome. Appreciate it.
TG Branfalt (40:06):
You can find more episodes of Ganjapreneur.com podcast in the podcast section of Ganjapreneur.com or wherever you get your podcasts. On the Ganjaprener.com website, you’ll find the latest cannabis news and cannabis jobs updated daily, along with transcripts of this podcast. You can also download the Ganjapreneur.com app in iTunes and Google Play. This episode was engineered by Wayward Sound Studio. I’ve been your host, TG Branfalt.
In this episode of the Ganjapreneur Podcast, host TG Branfalt speaks with Tom Lauerman, better known as Farmer Tom, a longtime cannabis advocate, organic cultivator, and educator. As the founder of Farmer Tom Organics, Tom has worn many hats in his cannabis career, from medical grower and policy advocate to consultant and federal educator. In this insightful conversation, Tom reflects on his decades-long journey in the world of grassroots cannabis activism, including being arrested for cultivation in California, connecting with early pioneers like Dennis Peron and Brownie Mary, teaching federal scientists about organic cannabis farming, and more.
Tom also dives into the future of cannabis, offering his thoughts on the potential impact of federal rescheduling, the rise of pharmaceutical involvement in the industry, and the importance of patient rights and home grows. Whether you’re a home cultivator, medical patient, or curious about how the federal government is preparing for a change in policy, this episode delivers a wealth of knowledge: find us in your favorite podcast app, listen via the media player below, or scroll down for the full transcript!
Listen to the episode:Ganjapreneur · Farmer Tom Lauerman: Grassroots Cannabis Advocacy and Planning For the Future
Read the transcript:Editor’s note: this transcript was auto-generated and may contain errors.
TG Branfalt (00:52):
Hey there, I’m your host, TG Branfalt, and this is the Ganjapreneur.com podcast where we try to bring you actionable information and normalize cannabis through the stories of ganjapreneurs, activists and industry stakeholders. Today I’m delighted to be joined by Tom Lauerman. He’s the founder of Farmer Tom Organic’s, a medical cannabis cultivator, federal policy reform advocate, hemp educator and industry consultant. How are you doing this afternoon, Tom?
Farmer Tom Lauerman (01:18):
Pretty good, TG. How are you doing, buddy?
TG Branfalt (01:20):
I’m great, man. I’m real excited to have you on the show today. We have a lot to discuss. You’re a man who wears many hats. So before we get into that though, tell me about your background and how you ended up wearing all of these hats.
Farmer Tom Lauerman (01:34):
Wow, it’s been a long road. I’ve been consuming cannabis for 50 years. I started in San Diego. I was selling weed so I could take care of myself, was never really much of a drug dealer because I like to smoke my own. I did it so I wouldn’t have to purchase so much cannabis. And we started growing at a young age there in 1994 and five. We worked along with Dennis Peron and the people from San Francisco and San Diego to get Prop two 15 on the ballot, which we were successful in doing. And then that led into our collective garden shelter from the storm where we had 20 patients. You bought a light, paid 50 bucks a month, patients got to take what they wanted. I was the grower. Steve McWilliams was kind of the head of the group and he supplied the phones to make it all happen too.
(02:40):
So that was good. And then we got arrested for 448 plants in 99. We were real active in the community down there in San Diego. We used to go to the townhouse meetings all the time and bring our four inch pot plants and tell ’em how safe marijuana was after the law passed and they continually rolled their eyes until they arrested us and we went back with the media and the mayor, Susan Golding wouldn’t come out of her office. Her husband owns like Jack in the Box, and she was horrified that her police arrested us and they already knew us all really well. They gave us back our grow equipment. So we popped up, they got us kicked like they usually do. They got us kicked out of our space. They threatened the landlords. That’s when these things go down. That’s the kind of model they use.
(03:34):
We’re going to take your property if you don’t get rid of these guys. So we popped up a little four by eight grow room and one of our patients, Michael Bartel, quadriplegic, good friend of mine, and we popped up in there and then other patients throughout the county gave us little starts and we grew ’em out. And our court date was so high profile that NORML gave us a free lawyer. So in the process when they raided us, we all had a media list back then. So that’s when I really got in tune with the media Brownie Mary back in the day. She got off of her charges because she had NBC there. So we knew we needed to buddy up with the media people in town and all the news stations and the newspaper and stuff because if we did, if any of us got busted, they wanted to know right away.
(04:30):
So we had all their pager numbers and we all have media lists. And when they raided us, my wife got all the trim out of her apartment, put it into a neutral space, and then got on her cordless phone and called all the media within 10 minutes. They were all there at the gate. And so it was really well documented, super high profile. We went to jail and then NORML gave us a lawyer. It was so high profile for free, and they decided not to charge us not to drop the charges because they were expecting us to at least one of us to make the mistake again. And so they didn’t charge us. So it was kind of hanging over our heads. And we moved a couple years later to San Diego. Wasn’t the cool little beach town I grew up in anymore. It was turned into Los Angeles and traffic all over the place and I was doing landscape construction and it just one development looked like all the rest of the developments.
(05:36):
I couldn’t tell where I was. So we moved to Williams, Oregon where we lived for a couple years. I was a farm manager, organic seed farm down there. Did some growing down there. Williams is kind of like the Garberville of Oregon. It’s kind of the main hub there, tucked way back in the woods. Very cool community. We had no idea when we moved there that it was that kind of community. But everybody at the health food store at obs, people’s co-op, you say, oh, you guys are going to love Williams. You’re going to fit right in. So that kind of got us up here. We stayed there for a couple years. I was a farm manager, organic seed farm, and then we bought our own farm here in Brush Prairie, Washington, which is on the outskirts of Vancouver, really in the Portland metropolitan area. So I’m like 20 minutes from the airport, half hour from downtown Portland, five minutes from the I-5 that goes from the Canadian border to the Mexican border.
(06:38):
So it really, for doing advocacy was ideal. So we grew for patients and then eventually I left my regular job and dove in full-time growing for patients here on our farm. We wrote a book Cannabis Consumers Guide that we put out. And I used to go to all the farmer’s markets. So before legalization happened, we had a medical marijuana farmer’s markets up here in Washington State. So like every weekend I would do a different farmer’s market selling weed and promoting my book and being out there in the community knowing I really, after being arrested and take it through the gauntlet in San Diego, I really wanted to take my advocacy to the next level and normalize cannabis. And we were fortunate enough that Washington and Colorado were the first two states and not California because then they would’ve just bulldozed the over as far as media attention and normalization.
(07:46):
And they have such a stronghold there and such a big economy too. So we had a bunch of media attention up here. I was on dozens of different local, I worked with Cuomo News a lot, NBC out of Seattle, did a bunch of pre cannabis stuff and then Markovich from Como News called me and said, Hey Farmer, all these people are blowing themselves up and blowing their houses up and people are getting maim producing BHO, butane Hasell. We all know that the butane puddles up on the ground close to the ground. You plug any device in little spark, boom, the whole place goes up. Hot water heater, pilot light on your stove or on your oven, the whole place can go up. It was happening regularly. And I said I knew that the legislators, we were very active up there too in Olympia, Washington kind of laying out the cannabis and we wanted to really keep patients rights in there, which they kind of destroyed, but that’s another story.
(08:56):
But anyway, so we put on, I go, sure man, let’s do it. I’ll do the open blast outside the total Safeway, we’ll show you how to do it. And then we’ll do closed loop inside and we’ll talk about CO2 and we’ll talk about bubble hash and water hash and we’ll talk about RSO because legislators traditionally know nothing about cannabis at all, like zero. And I don’t blame ’em because they got so much coming across their plate every day. There’s so much going on in every community. So I took the opportunity to educate them. I said, Matt, we’re going to put on a three hour symposium and we’re going to help them make the correct decisions because my talking point was, and I put it all together. So I made like everybody take off their big hats and just say, we’re going to come across as legitimate as possible on our message we want to get across is if you don’t tax it a regulator, you can continue to have these explosions.
(09:59):
It’s like a hundred dollars fix for the tube, some Pyrex, a little heater, coffee filter, zip tie, and a couple cans of butane and they’re blowing themselves up. And we explained to ’em that we are creatures of habit. We’d much rather go to the store and buy the beer than make it ourselves. And the same thing’s going to be with concentrates and BHO and concentrates we’re really taking storm across the country. And so two weeks later, a week and a half later, they changed their mind, changed the laws and made all concentrates legal at that point. And that really put me on the map. Previously, I’ve been on the cover of Northwest Leaves activists this magazine along with Grandma Kat and Jonah Tacoma from Dab Stars and Joy Beckerman Hemp like Ace Lady. And that got me out there. And then the opportunity came to work with the federal government and they knew that me and my wife were traditional medical growers.
(11:12):
We lived the lifestyle. We grew vegetables along with our cannabis. We were educators. We really wanted to set the stage. So the union guys thought it would be great if we did it. So they picked me out and I got on the phone with 10 agents from the CDC scientist agents from the CDC, and I asked them, where are you getting your info? And they said, oh, we’re getting it all off YouTube. And I kind of said, ah, that’s kind of, that’s really not fair to our industry. Why don’t I give you a tour? The lawyers and the DOJ said, no, we’re not doing a tour to these illegal operations, but we can make your pharma location where federal agents can learn touch and steady cannabis. So they said, well, we’re going to have to do a thorough background check. And me and my wife, we’ve always just played by the rules.
(12:04):
I’m not a baller, I’m not running stuff all over the place. I’ve got enough to take care of with my patients and my farm and living a good life as opposed to doing all the other stuff. A lot of people were partaking in at that time. So I said, dig in. So they came for two days in August. We had seven agents from the CDC there, all top scientists. Cton was in Africa studying Ebola victims. And he flew to my farm for the two day. We had set up a little popup using my veggies on the farm, serving him food, and we educated him. So I knew at this time that I had one chance to do this. I had one chance to normalize cannabis and teach these heavily PhD scientists about cannabis, not only cannabis, but be around people who are smoking cannabis all day long.
(13:01):
And so we started on the first day of education, we started smoking weed around it them well, somebody had to do it right? And if they don’t, you got to educate these people too. Like this isn’t heroin, we’re not meth out, we’re not fentanyl out, we’re not drooling, we’re not drunk. We’re none of those things. We’re we’re cannabis patients when we’re taking care of our health. So not only did we do that, we did dabs in front of ’em, we rolled joints. We really wanted to show ’em the whole consumer side. And then in between we had BHO hydrocarbon demonstrations. We had the top lab guys here to explain what’s going on in the laboratory and what they’re testing for. We did trimming, I mean trim machines. We had the whole gamut for two days. They went out with us for pizza and beer at night.
(13:57):
When they came out of the farm, we hugged, we gave them a big hug because I’ve been working with them on the phone. So I gave them a big hug and they welcomed them into our farm. And usually when they go out on these things, they’ve told me since they go, man, we usually met with lawyers and other tech people. Wherever we swab, they swab. Everybody’s documenting everything. And we really didn’t do any of that stuff. My goal was just to educate them as best possible. So when they come back for this study in October, they would have some knowledge on cannabis.
(14:35):
They saw my organic inputs, they saw how we grew our vegetables, they, how we grew our cannabis. I had two collectives at the time where we had over a hundred plants. So it was federally legal and just like with BHO thing, everybody think it was thought, I got so much shit for it. Unbelievable for educating the state government to make decisions. Oh, you’re showing them all of our secrets. You’re letting all this stuff. And then the same with this, oh, you’re bringing the feds on. They’re going to bust you all this stuff. But I got to know these guys and I trusted ’em. So we became, I still work with them today. They’ve got me looking for a hemp processor out there who’s willing to work with them. They want to collect some dust out of the corners and maybe put up some sniffers in there and collect the dust so they can go analyze it to look for any kind of allergic reactions, any of those type of things.
(15:35):
This is all our workplace health and safety stuff. So when they, in October, they came for the official HHE Health Hazard Evaluation. It’s a federally funded study. So we were one of the first to do a federally funded cannabis study on our farm where they did harvesting one day, big leafing another day and trimming. And the trimming day. That hooked us up with the cyber glove where they tracked the repetitive motion of our hands. And not long after that, the CDC put out a public service announcement stating that tremors can have carpal tunnel, can get carpal tunnel because of the repetitive motion. And it kind of went on from there. It was hard getting it into my hands and into the public because it went up on the website first and it was 2016 in election year, and the Democrats didn’t want to look like they were favorable to cannabis.
(16:43):
So they pulled it off the website and then Trump got elected and they brought in a new department head for Health and Human Services, and I guess they just go through and signed these things. So they had a backlog of ’em. So they stuffed mine in the middle. The guy went through and signed them all and then am delivery like six 30 in the morning. The next day the box arrived from UPS full of all these health hazard evaluations printed and ready to go because they knew if they got it to me, the public, then the cat when they couldn’t turn it back. So it was a big deal. We got the federal government to use the word cannabis instead of marijuana. James, one of the scientists I still am good friends with and work with, he said, Tommy never used the word marijuana once I go, I did it intentionally and I got flack from a lot of the old advocates for getting these scientists to use the word cannabis instead of marijuana.
(17:46):
They’re all like, we fought to use the word marijuana. What are you doing telling ’em it’s cannabis. I’m going, I use my own better judgment. These are the top scientists in the world for workplace health and safety. They ride all the reports and then OSHA makes laws out of them. So they’re highly esteemed. My message to ’em was, look, you don’t want to look like fools out there. You want to use the proper terminology so the rest of the world respects you. If you go into this scientific study with marijuana all over the place, people, these other scientists around the world, they’re, they’re not going to look highly on you. So we convinced them to do it. They used the word marijuana once. In the first paragraph it says cannabis, also known as marijuana. And then through the rest of the study, it can be found on my website on farmer tom organics.com, or you can go to farmer tom.com.
(18:44):
That’ll get you over there too. But the reports there, the educational days there, we took a bunch of pictures. So that’s been a really great experience. I’ve helped them with other projects along the way, and I’m still their go-to guy. If they need anything for hamper cannabis and want to do some studies, they call me up and ask me, Hey, do you want to do this? And I’m always up to helping ’em out. It’s not a paying gig, but it’s good communication and I found it very beneficial for me to still have a good rapport with them and work with them, especially since we’re moving into schedule three. I think that’s where my focus is right now. So I want to
TG Branfalt (19:32):
Ask, you kind of had a rocky start being arrested early in the nineties. Are you surprised that in 2024 we are talking about federal rescheduling?
Farmer Tom Lauerman (19:48):
Oh yeah. We never thought it’d be legalized Back in the day. We knew medical went in California, but we knew that was a slow road. California and the West Coast are usually ahead of things and just like storms sweep across the country, cannabis swept across the country from west to east. And that’s the kind of way I look at it. And I was blessed to already have my farm here and living here for over, well, in that time, almost 10 years I’d been here on this farm and that it all came together. So I talked with the media all the time. Most people weren’t talking to the media. Well, everybody was too. They knew the end was coming and they were getting as much money for their black market stuff as they could. And I’ve been more of an advocate as opposed to a major producer. So
TG Branfalt (20:46):
Your company, you have your obviously hands in a lot of different baskets. You’re spinning many plates. Can you tell me about your growth as a company as more states have gone online with medical and then later adult use programs?
Farmer Tom Lauerman (21:00):
Yeah, we’ve just been doing consulting. We did the first outdoor cannabis tours in the world here with Kush Tours back in the day. And this was Washington State, so all of the people who wanted to get into the cannabis came through my farm. They were money people and a lot of Chinese Mafia and Mexican mafia. And I didn’t care. They were paying Kush tours of me to have ’em on the farm. And I’m an eager educator. I probably a little bit too much to my demise or at least cash in the pocket. I like to spell it all out and give everybody good solid information. So we had a ton of people come through our farm where we educated them. And that kind of started it off. And then when other states came on board and then me working with the federal government, it kind of built me some cloud in my own way. My taught classes at Clark College here in Vancouver, I’ve been a keynote speaker. I’ve been an educator in cannabis for a really long time, and we were able to educate the federal government for the first time on production of processing cannabis on my farm.
TG Branfalt (22:19):
Well, I want to talk to you about that. I mean, you are a trailblazer. You’re the first to educate scientists in the federal government about our cannabis production. The first outdoor cannabis crow tour with Kush Tours was being first your goal when you set out on these projects?
Farmer Tom Lauerman (22:34):
No, I just knew I had the window to do it. I didn’t really think about the first so much. I knew that California, as soon as California goes legal, I’m going to be not the guy anymore. You know what I mean? I was the guy with the beard and the farmer, and then it went to California and all of a sudden it was Swami. He was the, but I knew I had a short window and then that we would be the first. So I always answered my phone. I always invited the mediocre. I always had. I’ve had a couple, two, maybe three documentaries done on me. I’ve been in 50 plus magazine and podcasts, and I was on NBC Nightly News, squawk Box, business News Weekly. I’ve been in Time Magazine, I’ve been in all of them starting off with this tourist stuff that kind of brought me into the national spotlight. Tourism and cannabis was a big deal when Colorado and Washington first came in to the game. Nobody else was doing it. People were coming to Washington and Colorado to buy legal weed, go to a store, get that whole thing that we’ve all been dreaming about for decades, upon decades is actually come to fruition. And you can go into a store, buy some weed and go, go smoke it or whatever consumption methods you want to do.
TG Branfalt (24:05):
I mean, you’re also the first federally recognized cannabis farmer processor in the us. What does that mean? What did that actually mean?
Farmer Tom Lauerman (24:18):
Well, the federal government during their backgrounds and had stuff and having me on their farm, having them on my farm, they recognize me as a cannabis producer and processor, and still to this day because they utilize me and what the strength it brings in, especially going into schedule three, I’ve already been vetted by the federal government to grow and process cannabis. I already have deep connections into the federal government to help businesses work their way through the next phase because cannabis, it’s a moving target. Anybody who thinks cannabis is going to stay the way it is for very long hasn’t been in cannabis very long because we all have to be like Gumby. We can’t set up and say, this is my business model and we’re not going to stray for it from it. We all have to. And they put new laws in and we’re like the work around experts. Cannabis people know how to, well, how can we work around it and what can we do to make sure that we can still do what we’re doing without too much interference?
TG Branfalt (25:27):
So I want to know more about advocating at the federal level, which again, you’re probably, what one, if not a handful of people who have probably taken this that’s not a paid lobbyist. Did anything surprise you that they knew the scientists that you met with? Is there anything that surprised you that they didn’t know? And ultimately, how were you received?
Farmer Tom Lauerman (25:53):
I was received great from them. We became buddies with them. I mean, we still text each other on the holidays. I’m friends with these guys and I’m the guy, we smoked weed around them and we went to the pub and drank beers. And then I would go out. I always do halfway through my meal burn one down, come back in. I just wanted them, I really wanted to normalize cannabis and break the stigma.
TG Branfalt (26:20):
Was there something that they knew that you were like, oh, this basic stuff, or were they all completely
Farmer Tom Lauerman (26:27):
Blank? They didn’t know anything. They were getting all their information from YouTube,
TG Branfalt (26:33):
Which is ridiculous on its face,
Farmer Tom Lauerman (26:35):
Which is totally ridiculous. That’s why I said, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. What can I do to educate you before you come and do the study? So you have some base about cannabis in general because for me, they went to the Mayo Clinic who does Minnesota, takes care of all of their edibles and products there. They’re made by the Mayo Clinic people. So they went for me. They went up. This is only going to happen once. We’re only going to go to one small farm and then we’re stepping up into the big leagues. I felt very blessed and honored, and I respect them and the work that they do. I don’t believe in everything governments do, but the civilian people that work there, the civil servants who are doing the day-to-Day science and protecting workers and stuff, man, they’re just people like us really. They just go by what the higher ups they’re telling them to focus on at each point along the way.
TG Branfalt (27:37):
So since the rescheduling sort of news, right, it’s still a proposal since that’s come out, there’s been a sort of, people have been speculating about what is going to happen to the cannabis industry as it sits. What’s rescheduling to schedule three would actually do. You’re somebody who has spoken to federal regulators, essentially. What do you think rescheduling cannabis federally would actually do and the potential impact on the current cannabis industry?
Farmer Tom Lauerman (28:08):
Yeah, it’s a hot topic now, but we were talking about it back in the nineties. We were always, everybody’s rescheduled. We were always, no, no, no. We want to, we want to make it like tomatoes. I could have it on my farm stand, a bag of wheated or a bag of fresh leaves for juicing or whatever. I want it to be a regular commodity. And so rescheduling what it’s going to do, it’s going to be a handoff to the pharmaceutical companies. Schedule three. You need a prescription for it. So you can see the writing on the wall. People don’t want to talk about it. They don’t want to talk about two 80 e and how great it is and how great it’s going to be for ’em. But I’m not really seeing it that way. I’m seeing it more once it goes federally legal, it’s going to be like Viagra or any other drugs that are in schedule three where you need a prescription and there’ll be TV commercials out there. Amazon’s already pouring money into the federal government for them to be able to ship it around. So it’s going to be like that. You are going to see a commercial. We have doctors on hand. They will write you your prescription for medical cannabis. Call us now. And then it’ll be discreetly shipped to you in a discreet packaging. And I think the way that’s the, it’s going to go.
(29:35):
Government follows certain things and they’re always set up to help the big corporations out at the end.
TG Branfalt (29:44):
So you think it’ll end up in the hands of the big pharmaceutical companies like Merck and so on?
Farmer Tom Lauerman (29:49):
Yeah, exactly. Or the bigger players that are in the game already who have the funds to do it because it, it’s a big as. But right now, the regular market, all they’re really focused on is high THC numbers. There’s some obscure products out there with CBD and CBG and different minor cannabinoids in there. But all of ’em are really just focused on how high this stuff will get you. And these people are, they’re capitalists, American capitalists. What they want to do is they want people to be able to smoke all the time. Like my strains that I grow, they’ll get you high for three or four hours, medicated for three or four hours. The strains they want is going to get you high for 15 minutes to a half an hour, and then you’re going to smoke more, right? They want to put that addictive thing in there.
(30:43):
Well, I need more to keep my high where I want it or whatever they’re looking for, whatever relief. So they’re not always straight up. They really don’t. As we’ve seen in every other business, they’re not looking out after really the consumer at all, or the regular people mean just look at our food supply, totally adulterated all these chemicals in it. They cause all these things. And then on the prescription side, on the pharmaceutical side, you see ’em on tv, it’s going to cause diarrhea and death and eczema and rashes, but it’ll help you with this one tiny thing, but it’s going to contribute to all these things. But what cannabis does in that is there’s all these different cannabinoids, there’s all these different terpenes, there’s all these different flavonoids. So there’s endless amounts of different therapeutics is what they like to call it these days.
(31:42):
Get these therapeutic blends out there and they don’t want to go away from their chemical based. These are all petroleum-based derivatives that create all the medication out there. And way back when, I think the Rothschild or whatever, once they went over and they kind of took over the colleges for medical school, and when you go to medical school these days, you learn a little bit about the body, but your main thing is to learn how to prescribe properly and to use our medicine. So cannabis can relieve all these different symptoms. It is great therapy for so many different things, but they don’t want it because it takes ’em away from what they’ve built decades to do. And it kind of smashes it all. And when you could do with terpenes of different cannabinoid compounds and flavonoid compounds address a lot of these issues therapeutically, then you really don’t need their expensive concoctions that they’ve made up that do all this other harm.
TG Branfalt (32:53):
I do want to go back a little bit to something that you said, talking about the trend of really THC, seeing how stone something can get you, and this is something that I’ve kind of pondered for a while, that there’s all these reports that cannabis is much stronger now. I don’t know how much I necessarily believe that, that sort of reporting, but it is true that when I started consuming cannabis in the early two thousands, you could get flour concentrates, you could get some hash here and there, but concentrates didn’t really exist in my world. I’m sure they existed, but not in my world. RSO, that sort of thing. Does that trend of these cannabis products, legal cannabis products being really potent, is that something that worries you as an advocate, as somebody who views it as a healing plant as opposed to a quote party drug?
Farmer Tom Lauerman (33:46):
Well, I think it’s going to be beneficial to have schedule three because the hemp side of it all, they’ve really focused on all the minor cannabinoids and they’re worlds ahead. They’re already federally legal out there, so they have to be GMP certified, they have to do all this thing. And there’s so much more advanced in the healing modalities or the healing components of cannabis than they are about profits and selling and getting people as baked as possible. So I really think the hemp, if we could concentrate on the hemp side of it and take the legalization that’s already happened and pull that model in, which is much less restrictive. They have to pay taxes, they have to do all the things that do a business, but being hemp, they can take the tax benefits too from it. So I just think that they’re way ahead.
(34:44):
I think the overregulation and the greed from the states, they really kick the patients to the side. And it’s all about making money for the states, mainly making money for the states. If you can’t ride off all these different tax exemptions and all the money’s just pouring into the different government agencies then. And really, I’m on the board of directors of a couple different medical groups, cannabis patients northwest here locally, and the Coalition for Patient’s Rights, which is a national organization based out of Nevada. And we look at all the different states, and it all started with medical, but now it’s all recreation and it’s all about money. So I learned when I was a kid, man, follow the money. Follow the money where it’s all happening. And if you follow the money in cannabis, it’s pretty much he tells the story.
TG Branfalt (35:46):
So I want to talk about your role as an educator. You launched the Hemp Farming Academy. You co-construct a cannabis and your health course at Clark College. Was education a natural progression for you?
Farmer Tom Lauerman (36:01):
Yeah, I always wanted to normalize and educate people and de-stigmatize the cannabis. I mean, that’s why we educated people here. When we did the tours originally, the book, I put out educated people, we educated the, I took the initiative. It was all my idea to educate the federal government. I said, well, let’s bring them in and teach ’em what’s really going on and let’s smoke weed in front of ’em and let’s show ’em how it is. And I can only assume that these are the same scientists from the Department of Health and Human Services that just recently made it said that cannabis has medicinal benefits, which has never been before, which is monumentally huge. It’s been downplayed, but what they’re doing now is monumentally huge, huge, huge. It just says that cannabis has medicinal benefits. That alone is crazy. So I’m all about get away from the rec side and let’s go back to the medicinal side and let’s force these pharmaceutical companies, these big companies, to focus on all the medicinal therapies that can be creative with terpenes and different cannabinoids and flavonoids, and let’s bring it all together and do some real medicine here.
(37:23):
Plant-based.
TG Branfalt (37:24):
Just as an aside, there are a lot of recreational consumers. They’re actually using cannabis therapeutically. They just don’t have to go through that medical sort of process, which for some people, maybe due to their job, they may work in a safety sensitive position or due to their owning of firearms, for example. I think that’s what keeps some people out of, because you do see, when RET goes online, you see a decline in patients. That doesn’t mean less people are using cannabis therapeutically. It means that less people are choosing to sort of register with the government. Do you think that that’s fair?
Farmer Tom Lauerman (38:10):
It’s what’s been going on. And people, they already know the products they’re after, they just can go buy it at a store without paying the extra fees, without being on a list is a big deal too. Who knows how these lists get opened up and then what could happen if a different administration comes in and they decide to clamp down? They got a list of all these patients if they really want to go. But I just don’t think, first of all, I don’t think the government, the federal government has the forces to regulate it, heavily regulated it anymore. The states definitely don’t. Every state has huge homeless populations, huge, huge step rings, like all, it’s kind of like our world’s just falling apart out there. I mean, I live in Portland and I was just in Portland and Portland yesterday, and the homeless problem there is huge still to this day. And they’ve made homelessness illegal, but it’s still all over the place. They don’t have the funds to control it. So I think people are out there. They know when they buy from the stores, they know what they’re getting. They want to make sure they get the right products.
TG Branfalt (39:30):
Tell me about your role as a consultant, which is I guess the sort of amalgam of everything that you’ve done in the cannabis industry and kind of in your life to this point when it comes to cannabis. What typically do people reach out to you for as a consultant?
Farmer Tom Lauerman (39:47):
Oh, I’ve been doing a lot of hemp consulting around the world. Did some in South Africa been helping out? A lot of different growers get started, and I think it’s more beneficial to bring somebody, it’s more beneficial and honest. Not that capitalistic businesses are honest. They want to bring in that best grower and then they want to have them there for a year and they want some kid to follow ’em around and learn everything that’s going on. And then they dump ’em for the $16 an hour, $20 an hour kid who’s learned the chops on growing cannabis and continuing it on. I think it’s better to bring on somebody like me. We walk you through, we educate you through the whole deal. You’re not screwing anybody over At the end of the day, your business doesn’t get black marked or looked down upon because you took advantage of people who, who’ve been in the cannabis industry for 20 plus years, or born into it from Oregon or Humboldt. Their parents grew cannabis too, and you get stained.
TG Branfalt (41:02):
So you said that you did some work in South Africa. What are other countries doing, or maybe the way that they regulate or maybe what some of the people that you are sort of working with, what are they doing that may be different than the United States or entrepreneurs in the United States?
Farmer Tom Lauerman (41:23):
Well, as far as South Africa is, the way they have their system set up is ideal. Everybody gets to grow their own weed and smoke their own weed, and there’s no recreational out there. It’s basically neighbors taking care of neighbors. I’m growing the corn, I’m raising the pig, I’m raising the cow, you’re growing the weed. We do a little exchange community, a community effort, and I think that’s really got the government, it’s all governments a little bit worried because they want to control everything and make as much money out of as possible. Basically, at the end of the day, it’s all about money.
(42:04):
Like South Africa, the government there knows nothing about cannabis. The inspectors, the police who come out to look at the fields, they really don’t know what they’re looking at. They have no idea what’s going on. There’s so much education that needs to take place in all of these countries. Now, if we look at Thailand now, Thailand went fully legal, but they saw that Schedule three popped up in the United States. And so we all want to keep America happy. So we’re going to get rid of our legal and we’re going to go back to medical. Sure, these stores are going to be open, but there’ll be a doctor in these stores or right next door. Yeah, go next door, see the doc next door. He’ll get you your paperwork. Then you can come and buy your products. So I think my spidey sense is that that’s what happened in Thailand. And if you do the math and look at the dates, as soon as the US government says we’re going to schedule three, which is back to a prescribed product, almost instantly the Thai government said, oh, we’re going to do the same thing.
TG Branfalt (43:16):
Do your Spidey senses tell you that we’ll see full decriminalization in your lifetime and possibly mine?
Farmer Tom Lauerman (43:25):
I don’t know. Well, yeah, on the federal level, I’m sure you won’t be able, I mean, people won’t be going to jail for it. The things that we really have to hold onto is home grow is huge and then medical patients’ rights to grow their own. And it’s been sad to see some people in the industry, even here in Washington in the early days, who had licenses to have a regular recreational license to sell, saying that, oh, we can’t have patients grow on their own. Oh, it’s too dangerous. They’re, they’re going to hurt themselves or somebody else, which is like a bunch of garbage, man. It’s a plant. If you can grow tomatoes, you can grow your own cannabis. Believe me,
TG Branfalt (44:11):
It may not be that good because I can grow tomatoes and I’ve tried to grow cannabis and it did not go well. What advice do you have for people looking to enter the cannabis space as it currently exists?
Farmer Tom Lauerman (44:28):
Well, I’d say be prepared for three. I’m really encouraging all of these groups to go. If you want to make the next move, bring somebody up like me who’s got experience working with federal regulators inside, I can get some inside information. I’ve already been vetted by the bring somebody in like me who can help you guide you through all the different things that are going on. Hold on one second. Since this is on tape, I don’t have to worry about it too much. But yeah, there’s going to be what’s coming down the road with Schedule three that’s going to bring both opportunities and challenges for all these businesses, right? They’re going to have to know about regulatory compliance, and I can help ’em with that. Dealing with the federal government and DEA and the F FDAs, all their rules and regulations. We can put in customized training programs to educate all their employees on a proper way to do GMP certified facilities and get up to date to play in that federal realm where it’s going, licensing, permitting.
(45:51):
I can help out with all those things. I can assist with federal licensing and applications and local stuff. Also operational audits and SOPs. I’m pretty, my SOPs through the work that I did with the federal government are the foundation for all workplace health and safety standards in the cannabis industry, and also my advocacy and representation. The work that I’ve already done carries a lot of weight in the federal laws that are coming aboard. And I think if you bring me on board, you have a better chance of participating in what’s coming because like I said, it’s a moving ball. Cannabis has always been a moving ball. If everybody thinks it’s going to be the way it is right now, it’s five, 10 years from now, I think you’re wrong.
TG Branfalt (46:44):
I would have to agree with you there. It sounds though like we would need for all the businesses and we would need a team of yous. Do you have any anticipation of training a team of yous in the future?
Farmer Tom Lauerman (46:59):
Yeah, definitely. I’ve got a group of people who are good educators like myself who have been around the plant for a long time. And yeah, I am looking forward to building a nice team around myself, a really well qualified educators and people who know the rules and what’s coming down the road.
TG Branfalt (47:22):
Tom, really, this has been a fascinating conversation. You have one of the most unique, interesting, and the longevity in this industry is really second to none. So I really appreciate you coming on the show and your candor throughout the course of the show. Where can people find out more about you? About Farmer Tom Organics? Yeah,
Farmer Tom Lauerman (47:48):
Go to farmer tom.com. That’ll shoot you over to the Farmer Tom Organics page. You can Google me. There’s a ton of information out there. You can just get on the phone. I answer my emails. I get back to people. I’m eager to help people ease into this new industry. It’s going to be a couple years, but the time to get started is now. And don’t dilly dally around because it’ll be here before you know it, and then you’ll all be scrambling and not being a part of the party. This is where it’s really going to be. And me, I really haven’t, I’ve turned down a lot of opportunities over the years because I listened to the people in my group who knew what was coming down the road. They knew it was going to be a race to the bottom. They knew all these startups, 90 something percent, just like any new industry that comes out, there’s endless amounts of failures out there.
(48:46):
So we own all of our own ip. I own all of my art. I was one of the first people to put his name and like this on a cannabis product by a guy named from a Nike artist, somebody from Nike, and then a guy from Marvel columnist did a full line of cannabis trading cars. So when you’re out there and just happened to be the first, you get all this influx. Everybody wants to jump on your ship, and that was cool. I got a lot of good, and we own our name. I’ve never taken any money, and I’m ready to work with any team who really wants to be a part of the next phase of cannabis, which is going to be pretty big, and it’s going to be some big dollars that are needed to be invested in to get to that place.
(49:35):
But with all of these cannabis companies and hemp companies that started off, there’s all these facilities out there right now that can be picked up for pennies on the dollar. So it’s a great time to jump in. It’s a great time to invest in some of these facilities that are fully functional, ready to go, but they’ve gone out of business and literally can pick those whole operations up for pennies on the dollar. I also have a genetics that I’ve been collecting and seeds that I’ve been collecting for years. Not only do I have the high THC ones, but I’ve got all the minor cannabinoids and all the terpenes covered. I have some high ling seeds that were collected from a friend of mine who recently passed away. He was a drug smuggler in the sixties, seventies, and he collected all these seeds and then he started breeding them and then he got sick.
(50:32):
So he had all these seeds and he started sending them to me. But he goes, I really want to get these good ones up and going again, so I’m going to send them to you. So he gave them to a mutual friend, and then he called the mutual friend and said, I need to go to the hospital. And then the next morning he died after the package was come into my house. So I have all these really old genetics and these really stable genetics with all of the cannabinoids and all the terpenes covered, not just the high THC one, but all the minor ones. So not only do I bring into your operation getting ready for schedule three, which is all going to be about therapeutics, and I have all the genetics that come with me. So not only are you working with the federal government being vetted all these things, but you’re also getting great genetics to start the process of creating great therapeutics.
TG Branfalt (51:35):
Tom, thank you so much for being on the show and for telling people not too dillydally because changes are coming soon.
Farmer Tom Lauerman (51:59):
Yeah, I want to thank everybody, at Ganjapreneur. You guys have been super good to me over the years. I appreciate getting to know you guys and supporting you. It’s definitely my go-to place to get cannabis news on a daily basis, kind of what’s breaking and yeah, it was pretty interesting to see what was going on with the DEA, getting their feedback, the public feedback. Nine out of 10 people want reform, want Descheduling want rescheduling, and then there’s only a handful of middle state attorney generals out there who really don’t want it. They’re still stuck in the caveman days and don’t want to budge. It’s too lucrative. It’s a money source for them. For all law enforcements, when they raid somebody, they can take your house, they can take your boats and your car, whatever you got, and that funds them. It’s money into them. So when cannabis became legal, they’re losing money from it.
TG Branfalt (53:07):
Money is also the only reason Smart Approaches to Marijuana exist, which is the opposition group who did a sort of form letter campaign against the federal rescheduling proposition and were one to every 100 was in opposition. Tom, thank you again so much for being on the show. That is Tom Lauerman, founder of Farmer Tom Organics, medical cannabis cultivator, federal policy reform advocate and educator and industry consultant.
The DEA’s public hearing regarding changing the classification for cannabis is scheduled for December 2nd, but what would Schedule III really mean for the industry as it exists today? In this episode of the Ganjapreneur Podcast, host TG Branfalt sits down with Morgan Fox, Political Director for NORML, one of the nation’s leading cannabis advocacy organizations founded in 1970. Morgan brings over a decade of experience in cannabis policy reform to the conversation, discussing the Biden administration’s announcement on cannabis rescheduling and the real-world impact it may—or may not—have on the cannabis industry, consumers, and criminal justice.
Morgan also sheds light on the intricate political dynamics that influence cannabis policy at the federal level, from potential barriers in the rescheduling process to the ongoing battle for meaningful reform in Congress. Whether you’re interested in cannabis law, industry tax issues, or the future of cannabis legalization, this episode offers deep insights into the current state and future possibilities of cannabis policy in the United States.
Find the episode wherever you listen to podcasts, or listen via the media player below! (Scroll down for the full transcript.)
Listen to the episode:Ganjapreneur · Morgan Fox: The Symbolism and Reality of Federal Cannabis Rescheduling
Read the full transcript:Editor’s note: this transcript was auto-generated and may contain errors
Commercial:
The Ganjapreneur Podcast is made possible by over 500 cannabis industry service providers in Ganjapreneur’s Cannabis Business Index. At some point, every plant touching brand experiences the stigma that many industries still have to toward cannabis going strong. Since 2015, our business index is the most comprehensive and frequently visited directory for cannabis friendly services on the internet, saving you the time and hassle of sifting through uninformed and unwelcoming providers with categories for everything from business financing to extraction equipment to interior designers and public relations. You’ll find every kind of specialist and business service you could ever need. Check out the business index today at ganjapreneur.com/businesses.
TG Branfalt:
Hey there, I’m your host, TG Branfalt, and this is the Ganjapreneur.com podcast where we try to bring you actionable information and normalized cannabis through the stories of entrepreneurs, activists, and industry stakeholders. Today I am joined by Morgan Fox. He is the political Director for NORML, which has advocated for cannabis policy reforms since 1970. How are we doing this afternoon, Morgan?
Morgan Fox:
Doing great. How about yourself?
TG Branfalt:
Cool, man. Cool. We are recording this interview’s on the heels of the Biden administration announcing that they would reschedule cannabis from a Schedule one drug to a Schedule three drug. But before we get into that, my man, I know you’ve been on the show before, but just remind people about your background and how long you’ve been at NORML and what your job entails.
Morgan Fox:
Sure. So I’ve been involved in a cannabis policy reform professionally since 2008. Started out at Marijuana Policy Project as an intern with basically just a backpack, a guitar to skateboard, rolling down to DC from Cleveland and was offered a full-time position shortly after that. Spent about 10 years at Marijuana Policy Project finishing up there as their director of communications before moving over to the National Cannabis Industry Association as their media relations director, and then spent a little under four years there before pivoting to NORML and working primarily in federal policy and lobbying. Although these days I wear a lot of different hats within the organization, but I really wanted to move more towards a consumer advocacy perspective and NORML was a perfect opportunity for do that. So really happy to be at this organization doing the work that’s been going on for more than 50 years now, as you said, a very momentous time.
TG Branfalt:
Yeah. So let’s talk about that a bit. There’s a lot of punditry going on, a lot of what will this do in your eyes as political director for NORML in NORML’s eyes? What will Federal do sort of broadly and for the cannabis industry at large?
Morgan Fox:
Before we get into that, I think it’s really important that we talk about the timing.
TG Branfalt:
All right.
Morgan Fox:
And because I think a lot of people might have the misconception that because of the Biden administration announcements and because of a lot of the rumors that have been swirling around on the internet, et cetera, that this is a done deal and it is not. DEA has final jurisdiction over this call unless Congress acts. Now, obviously, the administration can put pressure on federal agencies to enact the policy changes that it wants to see, but unfortunately, the Biden administration is not really in a position to do that with an election coming up with increasing partisan ranker going on within Congress and just generally in the United States, but also when we’re seeing pretty much daily hearings in Congress about weaponization of federal agencies for political purposes, the Biden administration really isn’t in a position to put too much pressure on the DEA to either expedite this ruling or to rule in any particular way despite all of the research that backs up this move, this is one of the problems with calling for complete descheduling. So when this process began with the formal announcement from the DEA and the Department of Justice that there was a notice of prose rulemaking, the White House office had 60 days to approve that and move it further down the process, they did that within a couple of days, which was not entirely unexpected, but still a really good sign that the administration supports this move and that is willing to throw its way behind it. Bureaucratically now we’re entering into the public comment period, which starts officially tomorrow, supposedly and will last
TG Branfalt:
May 21st. May 21st,
Morgan Fox:
Exactly. And will last approximately 60 days normally. And our allies are going to be trying to flood the comment section with information that the DEA really needs to make a decision on this because if you noticed, and the notice of proposed rulemaking was almost a hundred pages long and essentially laid out all of the reasons why they are going to ignore the information that HHS sent them, which a lot of people are saying is binding, but as soon as the public comment period begins is no longer binding, it has to be given significant deference. But that’s a very subjective term.
TG Branfalt:
Lemme just ask you real quick is how much of a difference would, I guess, as you put it, flooding this public comment? What kind of impact could that have?
Morgan Fox:
Well, I think it could have a significant impact because all this stuff goes on the record, and we’re going to be working with physicians, with patients, with average citizens, with advocacy groups to try to get the best information submitted during that public comment to make sure that people are seeing the real science and also seeing the real impacts that rescheduling could have or that rather not that rescheduling could have, but that keeping cannabis in Schedule one will continue to have. But that’s a very important point, but that process only lasts 60 days, so that’s going to be starting on May 21st. Supposedly there might be a delay of a couple of days, but it seems like the process is moving already after that 60 days. There is an administrative review process, so for the first 30 days of the comment, people can request hearings. I am fairly certain that those hearings will be granted because DEA wants more opportunity to show why it disagrees with the recommendations based on scientific information to not reschedule cannabis.
TG Branfalt:
And DA thinks that they have that scientific information,
Morgan Fox:
They think they do, and they want every opportunity to show it. And because they are the sole arbiters of the administrative judicial review, they can make that last as long as they want in previous attempts. And NORML has been involved in rescheduling petitions since basically 1972, and this period has always lasted much longer than we thought it would. We’re talking years. So the DEA has the ability to make this period after the public comment last for as long as they want, and then after that, there’s an initial period of rulemaking and debate, and then once they make a final recommendation, there’s 30 days until it becomes law, at which point it is then able to be challenged through litigation before it really becomes a law. So we’re talking about a process that despite the fact that the Biden administration fast tracked its portion of it could potentially last years. So I just wanted to temper everyone’s expectations that this is something that’s going to happen immediately because it’s a long drawn out process that everybody that wants to see these changes happen is going to have to be involved in some fashion.
TG Branfalt:
I mean, but with your explanation, it doesn’t sound exactly like the monumental decision that the administration sort of pegged it as I
Morgan Fox:
Well, symbolically, I think it’s very, very important. This is the first time that any administration or HHS has said that cannabis does not belong in Schedule one, which we all know is the case. And it’s definitely the first time that the administration has fast tracked its portion of the review process after the notice of proposed rulemaking has happened. I think that solidly shows that the Biden administration is behind this change, but again, it’s going to take a while. So I think that we have to temper our expectations in that regard, but also we really need to think about what sort of practical changes a switch to Schedule three would actually have on both the industry as well as consumers and criminal justice.
TG Branfalt:
I do want to get to that, but let’s go back a little bit here. In layman’s terms, what would federal rescheduling actually do?
Morgan Fox:
Really the most notable change is that it would resolve, at least in theory, resolve the two 80 E tax issue for licensed cannabis businesses under the current two 80 E tax code. Legal cannabis businesses cannot deduct a lot of the same normal business expenses that any other industry can, resulting in an effective federal tax rate of sometimes up to like 70 or 80% if not more, in addition to all of the state taxes and local taxes and regulatory compliance costs that they have to deal with. Two 80 E is a big reason that most cannabis businesses are operating in the red right now and will continue to do so. It’s not the be all end all solution to their financial problems by any stretch of the imagination, but it does take a significant amount of heat off that. I think most importantly though, it’s to talk about what it doesn’t do, which is it does not harmonize state and federal cannabis law.
It does not all of a sudden make cannabis legal medically because in order to be in compliance with Schedule three, cannabis would have to be approved by the FDA. This is a process that could take 10. Well, first of all, it’s a process that the DEA or the F FDA A is not set up to handle. Cannabis is relatively unique and there’s no history within the FDA of approving a substance that has adult use purposes. It has medical purposes. It comes in many different forms. It’s a botanical substance, so it’s notable in any sort of a consistent manner. Basically, the FDA is not set up to deal with things like cannabis as it currently exists. It is definitely set up to deal with cannabinoid drugs that have been developed pharmaceutically such as Dronabinol, Marinol, ros, Epidiolex, et cetera. But in order to get those sort of specific cannabinoid pharmaceutical products approved takes tens to hundreds of millions of dollars and many years of approval process.
So it’s pretty clear that cannabis is not going to be approved as a plant medicine or just as a recreational plant or as a plant in and of itself by the FDA under its current structure, there is a lot of talk at the FDA to create a specific lane for cannabis or for specific cannabinoid products that would really encompass all of its different uses and all of its different formulations, but that has not really come to fruition yet. There’s congressional legislation that is looking at that, and I think folks at the FDA are also looking at that. But all that is to say that in order for even medical programs at the state level to be in compliance would, first of all, cannabis would have to be approved by the FDA, which is not going to happen under the current structure. And then if it was then all existing state systems regarding medical or even adult use would have to be completely broken down and start from scratch because cannabis would have to be sold in pharmacies instead of dispensaries.
It would have to be by prescription only. This is what Schedule three means for drugs from a consumer perspective, I think it’s also important to point out that Schedule three doesn’t really remove any significant barriers to research, which I know a lot of people have been talking about. It doesn’t do anything for the criminal justice aspect of cannabis at the federal level in terms of people continuing to get arrested or in terms of either pardons, expungements, clemency, sentencing, relief of any sort. And also there are a number of federal policies in place regarding employment suitability, security clearances, et cetera, that are specific to cannabis and are not related to the schedule whatsoever. That would also have to change. So a simple schedule change is really, I think, only going to impact the two 80 e tax code in any sort of a practical impact in the near term should it be approved, which is not a guarantee. And also that the time in which it would get approved is not a guarantee either.
TG Branfalt:
So I do want to ask you about the timing. Let’s say that this went beyond the whole process went beyond the election, and let’s say that Donald Trump, the Republican presumptive nominee were to be elected could with a sort of swipe of his pen, could he just say, no, we’re not doing this.
Morgan Fox:
I mean, he could certainly direct federal agencies to deprioritize it and in a different political environment might have a whole lot more power over exactly what they do. In particular, threatening to terminate the heads of agencies and organizations within the federal government. If they don’t comply, then the Biden administration currently has. So yes, I think it could get shut down or slowed down significantly. I think in that particular scenario, it really depends on whether or not a presumptive president Trump recognizes the political usability of allowing the process to go forward.
TG Branfalt:
Forward. And so you did mention that medical cannabis program, state cannabis programs would have to be broken down and start from scratch. Do you think that this is something that we really aren’t talking about? Because it is one of those things where when this was announced and I started talking to my friends who own shops and that sort of thing, and they said, oh, we’ll be able to two 80 E, and they talked about that, but I said, listen man, this could put you out of business effectively because of how schedule three, what’s under schedule three? Is that something that we are not talking about enough?
Morgan Fox:
I think we only have to worry about that if the federal government in particular DOJ and FDA decide that they want to really start enforcing it. DOJ has a current policy now of non-enforcement for people that are in compliance with state medical cannabis laws. That’s actually adjudicated by Congress in a recurring appropriations bill that actually prevents the Department of Justice from spending any money to go after people that are in compliance with state medical laws. And we’re in the process of trying to expand that to adult use programs. But aside from the medical part for adult use, DOJs policy has been since the Cole Memo and even after the recession of the Cole Memo from acting or then Attorney General Jeff Sessions to withdraw the Cole Memo, federal prosecutors have behaved relatively the same as under the Cole Memo, but there’s just a little bit less of an organization wide enforcement on that that could change if there is a change in administration and a change of Attorney General as we saw during the first Trump administration. But the bottom line is that unless there’s a huge uptick in enforcement from DOJ and FDA that states are going to continue doing what they have been doing, which is operating in violation of federal law.
TG Branfalt:
So regardless of this rescheduling proposition, the situation for cannabis businesses is still going to be precarious. Is that correct?
Morgan Fox:
I mean, as precarious as it always has been, it’s still in violation of federal law. There are going to be a number of factors that come into play regarding exactly how precarious it becomes over the coming months and over the next couple of years. But really it does not change things on the ground outside of the tax issue.
TG Branfalt:
And were you and NORML as an organization surprised at this action?
Morgan Fox:
I was surprised at how quickly the wheels of bureaucracy moved within the White House to approve it, that this is a major issue for the Biden administration and in particular vice President Kamala Harris, probably a little bit less so to the president himself, but it’s also an issue that the administration as a whole is really trying to make a standout issue to help attract younger voters. So I mean, I think that aside from the rescheduling conversation, it’s really important for us to continue putting pressure on the administration to do the things that it can do unilaterally, which is expand the scope of the pardons that it has already issued, start making stronger public statements about the need for descheduling and about the need for Congress to start enacting expungement provisions and things of that nature. But as I said, politically, it’s going to be very difficult for the administration to pull any levers in terms of the actual administrative process of schedule review after this point. The fact that they did so quickly I think is a really good sign that they’re in our camp and that they want to try to move this process along as quickly as possible, but now it’s not really in their hands anymore.
TG Branfalt:
And let me ask you about the impact, the overall impact of the, pardon that the pardons that President Joe Biden has given to federal cannabis people convicted of federal cannabis crimes. How much of a sort of was that revolutionary? I mean, how much of an impact did that really have because there’s not a whole lot of federal cannabis convictions for possession?
Morgan Fox:
Well, the estimates about how many individuals were impacted varies because in order to actually get the certificate, you had to individually apply. But all those pardons are in effect. It’s just that they might not necessarily impact somebody’s ability to get a job or to get housing or education unless they have the certificate and they have to go and try to get the certificate themselves. And so I think that additional promotion of the fact that a lot of folks that have these charges is really incumbent on the White House to do, and they’ve been doing a pretty good job of talking of this move and the president went so far as to then extend it a little over a year over or after the initial announcement in order to bring more people under the auspices of the pardon. But the pardon announcements have a very set date.
So anybody that gets arrested after the issue of events of the pardon is not eligible yet. We’re hoping to get expansion on that. But also it’s important to note that a pardon is not an expungement. So your arrest record at the federal level for a low level offense that may have been pardoned by the president is still going to show up in a background check. And you need to have that certificate there to show that it has been pardoned. And even then, it’s not an expungement, but we are talking about thousands of people that are eligible for this and that have been pardoned. Only a few hundred of ’em actually know about it yet and have gotten the certificates.
TG Branfalt:
So you’ve been in DC working on cannabis policy for the better part of a decade. Is this the most weed friendly administration during your time in Washington?
Morgan Fox:
Hands down.
TG Branfalt:
Hands down,
Morgan Fox:
Hands down.
TG Branfalt:
Is that a surprise?
Morgan Fox:
Do President has done more for cannabis policy reform than Joe Biden. Now there’s a lot more that he could do. There’s a lot more that he should do. But in terms of friendly administrations, this is really like a night and day change. During the Trump administration, we saw a few limited public statements and we saw a little bit of movement on criminal justice reform like the First Step Act, but a lot of it was really not focused on cannabis outside of a few pardons and clemency actions specifically directed towards some people that really, really, really deserved it. Folks like Walton Angelos and Alice Johnson. But in terms of mass actions, not really. And the first person that he put in charge of the DOJ was an avowed anti-cannabis drug warrior in Jeff Sessions. Admittedly, he fired him pretty shortly after he rescinded the Cole Memo and he put in somebody that for all of his potential faults and for all of his disagreements with the Trump administration, had made several statements that cannabis enforcement in legal states was not going to be a priority, which I think is a huge step in the right direction.
But yeah, if we’re really breaking it down, even if you go back to Obama, I mean during the first years of the Obama administration, we were still seeing massive raids in California of medical cannabis providers, violent SWAT raids. We never saw any public statements from the Obama administration that cannabis should be legal or that nobody should be put in jail for cannabis. I would like to see the Biden administration now that it’s admitted that nobody should be in jail for cannabis to extend that to nobody should be arrested for cannabis. But that being said, despite the fact that there’s a lot of things that the Biden administration can do in the next couple of months, and if it happens to win reelection for the next four years to improve upon its record, still more than any sitting president has ever done for this issue.
TG Branfalt:
And I want to talk to you about one of the bills in Congress that would legalize cannabis federally, the more act, again, you’re in Washington, you’re there in the sort of dirt of the Capitol. What are the odds that the more act could pass both chambers?
Morgan Fox:
Very good, but not in this current Congress. As I’m sure everybody listening knows, Congress is pretty dysfunctional at this point.
The idea of being able to pass comprehensive descheduling and regulatory legislation is slim to none. We might have some opportunities to be able to pass more incremental legislation like Safe Banking or Bills Protecting Second Amendment rights for lawful cannabis consumers or bills, protecting housing rights for lawful cannabis consumers, legislation that could potentially provide federal funding to states and localities that want to help expedite the expungement process at the local level. Because obviously most arrests happen at the state level. They don’t happen at the federal level. So providing resources to help expedite and move that process along are absolutely necessary, especially since a small amount of dollars go really, really far once you get the system automated. But in terms of passing standalone descheduling legislation, it’s just not going to happen in the current Congress. However, we do have an opportunity to try to get as many co-sponsors as possible on both the Moore Act and on the Senate side, the Cannabis Administration Opportunity Act, so that we can roll into the a hundred 19th Congress with a broader base of support and with enough support that we can actually get these bills introduced very early in the session and start fast tracking them.
TG Branfalt:
And you had mentioned the sort of incremental steps that we could take. In my sort of estimation, I believe that it’s going to be another 50 years before we get full federal legalization in Descheduling, and I think that we will get the maybe incremental steps like you mentioned. Is that me just being grim or what do advocates think about that?
Morgan Fox:
I think we’re on a much shorter timeline than that for Descheduling either administratively or through Congress. But I do think that it’s going to have to come through Congress, but I don’t think it’s going to take another 50 years. I am loathed to estimate exactly how long it could take because unfortunately cannabis is subject to a lot of political realities that are completely unrelated to cannabis that either lower its priority on the consideration scale or that cause people that might be supportive of cannabis policy reform to use it as a cudgel against people across the aisle or to try to attack their political rivals. And we saw a perfect example of this last year where a relatively innocuous veterans related study bill was passed in the Center of Veterans Committee. And then when that bill along with a bunch of other non-cannabis related veterans bills were brought up for a cloture vote to try to skip the whole process and just bring them to a vote. People that were on the Veterans Affairs Committee that voted in favor of that measure and others that were in the package voted no on bringing it to a cloture. And Senator John Corny from Texas was on record as saying that the reason for that was because they did not want to give Senator Tester from Montana who is a Democrat, a win when he was leading up to an election year. So unfortunately, cannabis is often the victim of things that are far beyond our control.
TG Branfalt:
And you had mentioned the Safe Banking Act, which the sort of short version is would allow cannabis companies access to traditional financial services. That legislation has passed the house, and I may correct me if I’m wrong here, six times, 7, 7, 7 times. Anyway, what is stopping it in Congress is it’s still just this politics sort of issue as you just alluded to.
Morgan Fox:
There’s a little bit of that, but also because in order for this to become law, I mean I think that if it were to come up for a vote in the Senate, it would probably pass, but there’s no solid pathway for it in the house right now because standalone legislation regarding cannabis or really related to anything other than appropriations is having a really hard time getting through the house just in terms of getting space on the schedule. As we get closer to the election, that time that’s available is going to be less and less. And also the focus on issues that are not purely political is going to be less and less.
TG Branfalt:
And even with, do you think that the odds are better? Were Democrats to have control of both chambers or because if they had a slim majority like the Republicans do now in the house, they maybe end up in the same sort of position where they’re again trying to, as you said, get standalone legislation through and they’re just not able to do it?
Morgan Fox:
Well, I mean the facts are on the table. We know that we have less co-sponsors in the GOP for any cannabis related bills than we do in the Democratic Party, with the exception of the Second Amendment bills, which me as a nonpartisan guy, but also as a Second Amendment fan are very much in favor of, because I don’t think that you should be treating people differently because they’re cannabis consumers, especially if they’re not medical patients. But by and large, there’s less support in Congress among the GOP than there are among Democrats. But even Democrats have been guilty of deprioritizing this issue when anything else that they feel is more important either politically or policy wise comes up. I think democratic control, both chambers would probably speed things along. But I’m curious about exactly how much I think that getting standalone legislation passed in any GOP controlled chambers in the next Congress is going to be difficult but not impossible, largely because I think that people are much more coming around to the idea that not only are these sensible policies, but also that they’re increasingly popular among their base regardless of political affiliation or political leanings.
For the last couple of years now, we’ve seen that a majority of Republicans support ending cannabis prohibition, and those numbers are climbing, especially among young voters. I think that if you’re looking at retaining power in either chamber or of the presidency, you really have to look to young voters because they’re the ones that turn out during presidential elections, which they will be doing in November. So changing, I’ll basically break it down like this. I think people that are opposed to cannabis policy prohibition or are trying to obstruct its path through Congress are going to increasingly see negative potentialities come true because of those decisions that are going to affect their ability to get reelected.
TG Branfalt:
So let me sort of switch gears a little bit here, but would the election of Trump change NORML’s game plan in 2025? And if so, how?
Morgan Fox:
Well, I mean there’s not a ton that we can do administratively, but politically I think it does kind of change the game plan a little bit and it would require us to put a lot more emphasis on the administration just because Republicans in Congress would largely be following Trump’s lead. That being said, I think that obviously this is not going to be a priority administratively for the Trump administration. So we have been traditionally focusing on Congress and taking the administrative changes as welcome changes and putting pressure on the administration to do what it can as we have with every administration before the Biden administration. So I think that that portion of it would probably stay the same. What it really means is a potential change in the nuances of how we go about trying to push this in Congress and trying to elevate this issue to a priority one and one that from our organizational perspective, protects consumers and public safety as its foremost.
TG Branfalt:
And just lemme ask you sort of personally, again, you’ve been in Washington for a long time working on these issues in different capacities. How has the anger politics or the way that the complete partisanship and sort of gridlock, how has that sort of changed your perception or your job in Washington in that role? It must have gotten harder.
Morgan Fox:
It has. It has because primarily legislators are not super interested in legislating, and that’s a problem when you’re trying to pass standalone legislation. But across the board, I think that a lot of folks are viewing this issue more through the lens of politics than they are through policy. And when it comes down to it, this is sound public policy, but we’re in a situation where a lot of people are acting reflexively on both sides of the aisle where if someone from party A says X and someone from party B says Y, then a lot of people just line up along those lines and don’t really think about what this actually is going to do for the American people.
TG Branfalt:
I mean, it is kind of wild too, to think that someone like Matt Gats conservative has tried to do a bit on cannabis policy, if you ask me anyway.
Morgan Fox:
Yeah, I mean there are a lot of folks, it’s a very, very big tent. People that want to see cannabis policy reform. A lot of it gets down to some of the nuances of it because unlike just a few years ago, lawmakers and their staff are much more informed about the nuances of cannabis policy and about its various effects on society and things like that. So they’re asking a lot harder questions, some of which we don’t have the research for, but we’re also seeing a lot less interest in moving these things unless they can be attached to some form of a political win for them. And if they can’t than the prioritization of that legislation starts to drop. We’re also seeing former bedfellows across the aisle. It’s probably a bad word to use for that, but former partners across the aisle sometimes getting into all sorts of issues with each other or potentially not pushing legislation that their major co-sponsors on or original sponsors on because of other political issues. I can think of a couple of examples right now, but there are some that even intraparty where if certain members that are considered problematic for basically either the establishment or that are burning bridges left and right are also on the bill, then there’s very much less likelihood that you’re going to get a whole bunch of sponsors from their party on that bill.
TG Branfalt:
And you mentioned that it’s that legalization or cannabis policy, I should say reforms are a big tent. What role, if any, do you think that sort of broad state laws, state law reforms have had on bringing people into that tent?
Morgan Fox:
They’ve definitely been useful, and I mean I think it’s really important that whether or not a federal lawmaker supports or opposes legalization, the simple fact of the matter is that once their state passes something, then it’s incumbent upon them to look out for the best interests of their state. In practice, that doesn’t always happen, but in theory that’s exactly what should happen and it does give us a little bit more of an in. So I mean as well as I do that states have always been leading the way on this, and we are getting close to, I mean, we’re already over 50% of the US population living in adult use states. Once we get to 50% of the states themselves having adult use, we might be in a slightly better position, but it’s certainly not guaranteed. I mean, a lot of people have been saying for the last 20 years that as soon as we get 25 states, then we’ll be able to flip this issue in Congress. And that’s just not the case. There are plenty of lawmakers that do not like legalization despite the fact that their state did it that are not only not necessarily going to vote for something that would help the cannabis consumers in their state or help support the laws within their state, but that also might not prioritize those issues.
TG Branfalt:
The insight on this is really great, and I really appreciate you being so forward with what you’re thinking on this. What is on or what legislation is on NORML’s agenda for next session? Regardless of the outcome of the election,
Morgan Fox:
All of it, every single piece of legislation that has been introduced in the hundred 18th, we want to see be reintroduced in the hundred 19th as soon as possible so that we can start having a substantive conversation about it in a new political paradigm. If one exists, I mean no matter what, it’s going to be a little bit different. So I want to see all those bills get reintroduced, but in particular, obviously the bigger descheduling bills as well as the incremental bills that we can maybe move a little bit more quickly while we’re talking about the larger issue of Descheduling at the federal level. Personally, I’m very invested in the housing legislation that was introduced by DC’s Delegate Holmes Norton and Senator Cory Booker. I’m very interested in the firearm and Second Amendment legislation. I’m very interested in the Veterans Access legislation and we’re seeing a lot of opportunities to be able to pass this legislation not just through the normal order as standalones, but also through appropriations, things like the Cure Act and improving suitability requirements for past cannabis users.
Obviously, we’d like to see that expanded to include current cannabis use in a rare moment of bipartisan support. We saw last September that a bill that was sponsored by Jamie Raskin and Nancy Mace the Cure Act, which as originally written, would have eliminated both past and current cannabis use from suitability for either federal employment or security clearances be cut down to just past use. But the trade off for that was that it passed through House Oversight Committee with flying colors in a hugely bipartisan vote. It was like 30 to 14 in a Republican controlled committee with a fairly staunch Republican Jim Comer as the head of that committee. So this is just an indication of what we can do through Compromise and bipartisan negotiations going forward. No matter who’s in charge, we can get a little farther down the road. Unfortunately, that Bill hasn’t moved since then, largely because the house has been tied up in all sorts of craziness. But we’re still seeing that Bill get additional. We’re still seeing Safe Banking get additional co-sponsors, and I think that if we can continue along this path of developing bipartisanship in the name of Sound public policy and avoid the politicization of cannabis, then we might be able to get a lot done in the next Congress and maybe a little bit done in this Congress.
TG Branfalt:
Morgan Foxman, I really appreciate you coming on the show as you are a wealth of knowledge and information. Morgan Fox is the political director of NORML, which has advocated for cannabis positive reforms since 1970. Where can people find out more about NORML and maybe get in touch with you?
Morgan Fox:
Well, you can go to NORML.org if you want to learn more about the issue or the organization. Feel free to send me an email at morgan@norml.org if you have any questions or just want to discuss the issues at hand. But I highly recommend people go to normal.org/act so that they can contact both their federal and state legislatures in support of sensible cannabis policy reform.
TG Branfalt:
Morgan, thank you so much for coming on the show. I appreciate you, appreciate all the work that you do in DC so people like me don’t have to go there.
Morgan Fox:
It is rough and super hot right now, but always happy to help out and anytime I can ever be of assistance, please lemme know.
TG Branfalt:
Appreciate you, man. You can find more episodes of the Ganjapreneur podcast and the podcast section at Ganjapreneur.com and wherever you get your podcasts. On the Ganjapreneur.com website, you’ll find the latest cannabis news and cannabis jobs updated daily along the transcripts of this podcast. You can also download the Ganjapreneur.com app in iTunes and Google Play. This episode was engineered by Wayward Sound Studio. I’ve been your host, TG Branfalt.
In this episode of the Ganjapreneur Podcast, host TG Branfalt sits down with Jessica McElfresh, Chair of the Cannabis Law Institute and board member of the International Cannabis Bar Association, to explore the evolving landscape of cannabis law. Jessica shares her experiences practicing cannabis regulatory law in Southern California since 2010 and provides insights into the critical role attorneys play as the industry grows and federal rescheduling looms on the horizon.
Jessica also discusses the Cannabis Law Institute conference, which took place in Chicago over the summer, where legal experts tackled pressing issues like state and federal cannabis policies, social equity, and the potential impact of rescheduling on taxes, financing, and business operations. Whether you’re a legal professional or cannabis entrepreneur, this episode offers valuable perspectives on how to navigate the complex legal landscape of the cannabis industry and what could be in store as federal policy changes.
Editor’s note: this episode was recorded in June, before the event. To sign up for updates about the 2025 event, visit the International Cannabis Bar Association’s website: incba.org
Listen to the episode using the media player below, find it on your favorite podcast app, or scroll down for the full transcript!
Listen to the episode:Ganjapreneur · Jessica McElfresh: How Federal Rescheduling Will Impact Cannabis Law
Read the full transcript:Note: this transcript was auto-generated and may contain errors.
Commercial:
The Ganjapreneur Podcast is made possible by over 500 cannabis industry service providers in Ganjapreneur’s Cannabis Business Index. At some point, every plant touching brand experiences the stigma that many industries still have to toward cannabis going strong. Since 2015, our business index is the most comprehensive and frequently visited directory for cannabis friendly services on the internet, saving you the time and hassle of sifting through uninformed and unwelcoming providers with categories for everything from business financing to extraction equipment to interior designers and public relations. You’ll find every kind of specialist and business service you could ever need. Check out the business index today at ganjapreneur.com/businesses.
TG Branfalt:
Hey there, I’m your host, TG Branfalt, and this is the Ganjapreneur.com podcast where we try to bring you actionable information and normalized cannabis through the stories of ganjapreneurs, activists and industry stakeholders. Today I’m joined by Jessica McElfresh. She’s the chair of the Cannabis Law Institute board member of the International Cannabis Bar Association, whose conference is considered the preeminent annual conference for cannabis law practitioners and takes place next month on July 25th and 26th. How are you doing this afternoon, Jessica?
Jessica McElfresh:
Oh, I’m doing all right, Tim. Thanks for having me. Yeah, we’re very excited about our conference. It’s going to be on those dates you said in July, and it’s going to be at Northwestern Pritzker School of Law in Chicago, Illinois, kind of near the lake, so that’ll be exciting.
TG Branfalt:
Chicago’s a cool city.
Jessica McElfresh:
Yeah, we’re looking forward to it. Yeah, it’ll be our first time in Chicago.
TG Branfalt:
We will talk some more about that. Before we get to the sort of details of the conference, purpose of the conference, that sort of thing, tell me about yourself. How’d you end up sort of in the cannabis law space?
Jessica McElfresh:
Oh, wow. Well, I have been practicing what I would call now cannabis regulatory law in Southern California, primarily San Diego County since roughly 2010. So we are somehow heading up on nearly 15 years, which is kind of crazy in terms of why, well, it was there. I had graduated during the great Recession and I had always thought the cannabis should be legal, and I just increasingly thought the whole broader drug war and drug policy in this country was a farce, and I thought it would be an interesting thing to work on. So that’s the really short version.
TG Branfalt:
So did you work in the sort of early California medical cannabis sort of industry
Jessica McElfresh:
Mass? Yes, I did.
TG Branfalt:
And what did you do that during that period of time?
Jessica McElfresh:
Well, let’s see. I’d say 2010 was a really interesting time to get into it, especially when you look back now, because back in 2010, there was this sense in California that an appellate court was going to rule that cities and counties had to permit medical cannabis collectives to have storefronts in some form exactly how that would work. We weren’t quite sure. That turned out to not come true, but that was interesting to me. One, because I felt that the way the laws worked, which were an exception to criminal laws, which is just not a great way to regulate an industry, was a mess, really hurt a lot of people. It didn’t protect as many people as we had hoped. I also had a bit of a background in land use and permitting, and I could sort of see, because just how we do things in Southern California, sort of where that was going to be going.
And I thought, well, this is an interesting way to work on something that’s of interest to me that I think may have a positive influence on people, and had some combination of areas of law I had some experience or familiarity with. So that was why I was attractive and what I worked on. As I said, that sort of turned into helping people try to operate their collectives of various shapes and sizes, lawfully watching laws. It was changing. I lived through the federal reversal and policy in 2011, which was something else, and eventually we started to come out the other side and the city of San Diego around 20 14, 20 15. We finally got zoning regulations passed. I represented some of the very first permitted storefronts in the city of San Diego, which were medical marijuana consumer cooperatives at that time, and eventually we got two state licensing, and it’s just sort of proceeded from there. That’s the nice version.
TG Branfalt:
So it seems to me, and a lot of the attorneys that I’ve spoken to, they have experience and expertise in various parts of the law that they then apply to the cannabis industry. Is that what you’ve seen during your tenure?
Jessica McElfresh:
Yes and no. I’m of the school, or let me put it this way, I’d say that was honestly even true of what I was doing back at the time. I had familiarity with land use permitting, and I had familiarity with criminal defense. It was an odd moment in time where knowing both those things were very useful simultaneously. So it was interesting, and of course, every lawyer learns on the job in the moment with every client assuming they’re doing their job right. But yes, I’d say that’s true. I would also say it’s my advice always has been when say law students have reached out, oh, I really want to be a canvas lawyer. It’s like, well, that can mean a lot of things and that’s great, but what you’re really saying to me is you want to have an area of law or something that you have an in or you’ve worked in that then you want to bring a cannabis aspect to your practice, and that might become your entire practice. It may become a portion of it. It’s good either way. But yeah, that’s somewhat my standard advice. I’d say back when I started, it was a little more, there were only so many of us who were working in the space or willing to even talk to the clients. So it was a little different back then. It was more predicated on a willingness, but I always felt that to be successful in it, yes, you needed to bring something other than simply a willingness to work in the area.
TG Branfalt:
So it does bring me to my next question. It’s going to be the same question that law students have asked you. What is a cannabis attorney and how has that role changed in the wake of broad legalization in the United States?
Jessica McElfresh:
Well, the good news is that it’s changed in a way where there’s a lot more lawyers working in it, and there’s a lot more opportunity for lawyers and clients have a much greater need for a much wider variety of legal services. For example, back when I started, there really were only so many ways you could possibly set yourself up or set your collective up legally in terms of formation. Now how you operated it and how that worked was a bit of a game of whack-a-mole and hard to define. But as one colleague said to me recently, who’d been in it back then, like, well, it was simple. You basically had about two entity structures that you could choose from. That was it, and a lot of it didn’t go beyond that. Obviously today, there’s significantly greater need for more expertise in how you’re going to structure a business, how you’re going to do funding.
We’re getting more and more into what is and is not a securities issue. That’s just a basic example of something that’s changed, but we’ve also experienced a huge explosion and in work for intellectual property attorneys. We deal far more now with day-to-Day employment attorneys, assisting clients. I mean, there’s just so many examples, but I’d still say my advice to law students hasn’t changed that much. It’s not. It can a general practice to help clients with their various needs and help them at times also get connected with appropriate experts in law. But honestly, the best thing you can do for yourself and for your clients is to be able to offer them some area of law that you have some expertise or experience or want to develop some expertise or experience in and bring cannabis into your practice accordingly. But to be candid, other than wills and trusts, I think we’ve found an application for nearly everything at this point.
TG Branfalt:
So what is featured at the Cannabis Law Institute conference?
Jessica McElfresh:
Well, it’s going to be a two day event on our first day. It’s what we call our plenary day, which is a fancy of saying the sessions tend to be all in one room, and we have some of our more interesting guests that day, such as say, some state regulators or former state regulators are going to be talking about enforcement approaches, and when I say enforcement, I mean when and if it is appropriate to use more punitive measures. How are they effective? Do they work at all? Some of those sorts of questions. We’re also going to have an overview of the current international development and how possibly us and Canadian companies can expand overseas and what that looks like in terms of how does it work, and also how some international countries are dealing with some issues that we may wind up dealing with here in the next several years, such as import export issues such as that.
We’re also going to have a panel about meeting the cannabis press where we’re going to have various journalists who work on cannabis stories, talking about what is significant to them, and also offering our attendees some information about useful ways to possibly get featured or quoted or what’s of use to them. On day two. That is going to be an all continuing legal education credit for attorneys day. We run a grand total of 12 sessions through that day. We have two tracks running simultaneously in the morning, we’re going to have a track I’m calling the classics, which is going to focus on the current state of medical cannabis access and how some of those laws are changing, particularly in light of rescheduling some of our new laws regarding employment discrimination, which I jokingly refer to as employment protections for normal people, meaning people in normal garden variety, mainstream jobs as opposed to not employment issues within cannabis industry, but normal people, I jokingly refer to ’em.
We’re also going to have a panel in that morning talking about what is going to happen post rescheduling, what’s going to be changing at the federal level, how may investment opportunities be changing the fate of the dormant commerce clause in terms of influencing cannabis policy and licensing and what that may look like. And then in the afternoon, we’re going to have a panel. We’re going to have two tracks again, one is going to sort of be focused on state and local expansion. We’re going to be talking about D eight and D nine cannabinoid litigation. We’re going to have a panel that’s going to talk about possible visions for states that may be coming online and what maybe they want to do differently or learn from, well-intentioned, but less successful experiments we’ve had recently in some states. And then we’re going to have a panel two focusing on issues for attorneys. We’re going to have one on the Corporate Transparency Act and how that’s going to affect people’s practices as well as how to counsel their cannabis clients within it. We’re going to have one on the ethics of attorneys trying to offer services beyond being an attorney, say consultant or real estate broker. It could include your dry cleaner, but that one just doesn’t seem to pose any ethical issues.
That’s just some of the sessions. There’s a few others, but those were some ones I wanted to highlight.
TG Branfalt:
I mean, it sounds incredibly in depth, intense.
Jessica McElfresh:
You can say wonky. It’s okay.
TG Branfalt:
How many people are you expecting to come to this event?
Jessica McElfresh:
Well, it varies, but we are hoping to get, I’d say at least a hundred, maybe more. There must be something very wrong with me wanting to hang out for two days with a hundred lawyers, but I’ll be honest, it’s always one of the highlights of my year professionally. It’s a lot of fun.
TG Branfalt:
So you brought up the elephant in the legal room, federal cannabis rescheduling, which still as we speak hasn’t been fully finalized, but how are attorneys, yourself and those that you’ve spoken to broadly viewing potential federal reforms?
Jessica McElfresh:
I would say that the range of reactions among attorneys pretty much matches the range of reactions in the broader cannabis space. Some people think it’s going to be the greatest thing since sliced bread or the invention of the plant itself. Others think this is going to be never ending gloom and doom and nothing will ever be good again. Some think that we will be taken over by large pharmaceutical companies within two minutes. Others feel it will stop any further social justice momentum and further change. And then there are people in the middle who think, and this probably includes me, that it’s significant and overall in my family, you don’t really look at gift forces in the mouth, but it’s really more about what happens after this and where we go fit from here, and for example, not letting it stop movement for more social justice change, not necessarily getting caught up in losing what momentum we are having.
How do we, for example, use this to make the world better for medical cannabis patients as opposed to having it more, maybe even limit their access in some states and limiting them to simply eventual products that may come on the market that are actual schedule three? To me, it’s more about what do we do with it then? It’s not a cure all by itself. In fact, initially it was sort of interesting to list of people all the things that it was not going to automatically do all by itself. That made me real popular for a few weeks because a lot of people wanted to celebrate. I’m like, no, it’s not going to change all of our federal criminal laws. No, it does not necessarily mean your insurance is going to reimburse you for your medical canvas. No, it doesn’t necessarily mean banks are going to start giving you regular loans. Like, no, I’m sorry. It doesn’t automatically mean these things, but look, let’s not, let’s not throw too much cold water on the most significant change in federal cannabis policy since, oh, I don’t know. It was put in schedule one in the first place. A lot of things happened after that, some of which were envisioned when it happened. Some say it was only supposed to be a placeholder and it just went south. Maybe we need to look at this the same way. It’s about what we do with it and where we take it next.
TG Branfalt:
So do you think of all of the sort of things that federal scheduling could impact, do you think it’s going to have the biggest impact on financing on mergers and acquisitions on two 80 e on social equity?
Jessica McElfresh:
Well, this is speculation, but if I were inclined to rank, probably the biggest change is going to be on two a DE. It does appear, though I always am the biggest, the devil’s in the details person. It does appear that two 80 E only applies to drug trafficking of a substance that is schedule one or Schedule two. If conceivably this moves to schedule three, though we do not know at this point exactly how long rulemaking will take at the federal level, which I usually describe rulemaking because we experience it at the state level as well, is you have an idea. Then the government spends a lot of time figuring out what the rules are going to be. It’s very creatively named Tim, but it takes time and there’s a lot of hearings and there’s a lot of opinions. So we got to get through that, and I know that there is some optimism including by the Biden administration that they will get this done before the election. I would be very pleasantly surprised if that occurred. But I do agree they’re going to make a good faith effort at getting the ball rolling and moving quickly, and that’s excellent. We certainly wouldn’t want this to be announced and then just sit there like some dying house plan on my desk.
But that is going to take us some time, and in the meantime, hopefully, yes, the biggest change probably initially will be two 80 E. With that not being applied anymore, what I don’t know is whether we’re going to wind up, and don’t get me wrong, I mean that would be massive. I mean, if you really want to blow somebody’s mind at a cocktail party who doesn’t know much about cannabis, even people who, it’s really a fascinating thing to talk about because even people who don’t like cannabis, it turns out that they dislike double and triple taxation even more. Sure do. And a lot of consumers don’t like finding out how much of the price they pay at the retail outlet is ultimately in taxes. It’s an interesting thing to talk to the general public about those normal people, but obviously that is going to be a huge change in how much capital businesses have.
It’s going to simplify how their taxes work. It’s going to put them in line to really conduct their tax policy more like normal companies, for lack of a better term, companies that do not deal with this. So the potential to free up a lot of capital and enjoy a normal sense of deductions to not run around. I mean, at times trying to ask, it’s been clarified, but in the early days, trying to figure out what was the cost of good sold expense versus an overhead one. There was a real how many angels can dance on the head of a pin side, except for there was a lot of money involved. So this could be absolutely tremendous financially by itself. As a result of that, yes, a lot of people are expecting we’re going to see a return to investment in cannabis. I’ll be honest, that was kind of already occurring. It was so high for a few years then it went way down, but it was starting to come back on. But this definitely has the potential to turbocharge it. It’s not a directly associated result. It’s not an automatic cause and effect, but it’s probably also going to make banks more comfortable. It’s probably going to make a variety of private lenders and investors feel more comfortable, which hopefully as there’s more opportunity and more competition, we will also stop seeing quite some of the absurd financial costs and conditions associated with it.
TG Branfalt:
Will it have any impact on the fine send rules
Jessica McElfresh:
On the what?
TG Branfalt:
The fine send rules that, oh, the
Jessica McElfresh:
Can send.
Again, this is the classic. It’s not going to happen automatically, but there’s a very good chance that those will also be reexamined and adjusted. But that’s kind of what I mean. This does not automatically make it totally legal for banks to say bank adult use cannabis companies under federal law. It doesn’t, but it may bring them far greater comfort in relying on the current fiend guidelines as something that they can put some stock in as opposed to solely focusing on that paragraph at the end that says, we may really mean this, but we really may not. It could change at any moment and proceed at your own risk, and we think we mean this, but we’re really not sure because we’re lawyers and we have to write these sorts of things and that’s why no one likes us.
TG Branfalt:
How are attorneys preparing prior to this sort of potential federal action? How are you preparing? What are you telling people?
Jessica McElfresh:
Probably a lot of what we’re talking about here, which is one, we’re going to have to see how long this takes and what it ultimately looks like in terms of a topic that’s probably spurring a lot of discussion for preparation would probably have to do with two 80 E. Some people, the great debate right now is, is this hypothetically going to be applied retroactively? I would be quite shocked if that occurred because one, we don’t usually tend to apply changes retroactively that involve giving back estimates range from hundreds of millions to billions of dollars.
TG Branfalt:
Yeah. Rest isn’t that
Jessica McElfresh:
Business. That’s not really the norm. That’s not a cannabis thing. That’s just not the norm. So I’m a little skeptical of that. However, there is I think a far more vibrant debate over whether say for example, it may be reasonable to start calculating and doing your tax return for 2014, or sorry, 2024, excuse me. Apparently I live in a time warp that way. We’re not sure yet, but people are definitely having that debate and it’s definitely made people feel very optimistic about the future and really enjoying a far more normal balance sheet and return. So I’d say that’s probably in terms of preparation, people are really debating when and how and at what time. You mentioned social equity.
I think we’re already, I don’t know that rescheduling is necessarily going to again, have a direct cause and effect on those questions, but we are already seeing a great deal of litigation in federal court based on the idea in one form or another that social equity programs are violating the dormant commerce clause. Sorts of other things. I would expect, again, it’s the classic, no direct, but it will happen. We’re probably going to start seeing people feeling more and more comfortable bringing various claims in federal court predicated on federal law to challenge programs within cannabis. So right now we’re seeing dormant commerce clause, which of course is going to apply not only to a social equity program, but even a residency preference program. There really are at core about that, but we could wind up seeing programs that challenge or alleged discrimination under other theories in federal court in the future. I would be surprised if we didn’t.
TG Branfalt:
So one of the things that I’ve heard from patients and sort of read on the internet on blogs and groups and this sort of thing, is the idea that federal rescheduling could decimate the medical cannabis program basically that states have enacted because schedule three drugs are only allowed to be dispensed by pharmacies. You have to have a license to do that. Is that a founded fear, do you think?
Jessica McElfresh:
Everyone really depends on who you ask. On one hand, it’s a reasonable enough question because yes, that could happen. There could be states that may have said, I’m tremendously sympathetic to people who have illnesses, but I really don’t see any anymore why we have to take on having a medical cannabis program in our state. There’s going to be schedule three drugs brought by reputable pharmaceutical companies and they can finally be sold in a pharmacy. The way I would’ve preferred we could have done cannabis except for everybody told me that wouldn’t work. We could hear those dialogues and discussions, yes, but at the same time, there are others who feel that the products the pharmaceutical companies have brought to market so far that have more been at to et cetera, Epidiolex being example, they haven’t really proven to be the blockbuster runaway successes that they were hoping.
So there’s some thought that this may not be the world’s most attractive business proposition and qualified patients will more enjoy access in other ways. I would point out that this is probably also something where we’ve already had feedback, for example in California from some qualified patients, that the current market serves adult use sales primarily. It’s not really doing enough for them, and I’m not saying that there isn’t some truth to some of those criticisms, but it’s also hard to say that there isn’t access to cannabis in a state that has an adult use program. It’s really more about how do we tweak that program and tweak our laws to continue to make what’s needed available for qualified patients. We can still do that in this post rescheduling world. It’s again, it’s the classic, what are we going to do with it? This can be good, but what are we going to do next?
There is also some hope that this will assist in loosening and promoting more research, which will probably be good for everybody. There’s also some hope that physicians will be a little more comfortable talking about this or dealing with this too, really to know if that’s the case. And we are going to have a panel. These are going to be some of the issues we’re going to talk about during the medical cannabis law panel at the conference. They’re going to be about physicians and questions of insurance coverage and drugs coming to market. I mean, we’re going to be talking about some of this then. So that’s kind of the initial take is it’s really going to be what do we do with it?
TG Branfalt:
So you did mention this sort of potential international implications of these federal reform in the United States, and recently we saw Canopy Growth, a Canadian based cannabis company, complete a merger or a takeover of acreage holdings in the us and a lot of people have sort of, again, I’ve read that this is even though federal scheduling in the US hasn’t happened yet, this is sort of a preparation for looser federal laws. Do you think that we’ll see more transactions like this if the government does reschedule it to three, these international sort of acquisitions?
Jessica McElfresh:
Possibly, possibly not. Three is not an automatic path to straight ahead import, export or anything that might be more business efficient. But again, I think it will certainly, again, it’s about what comes next. It’s a signal that we’re probably going to go in those directions. We don’t know when. We don’t know exactly how, but investors, particularly ones who think they can predict the future, which are all the ones I’ve ever met, they read the signals, the tea leaves, the crystal balls. This is a really big crystal ball, so to speak. It’s a big signal. What it’s going to mean, what that timeline’s going to look like, who knows? But it definitely means a lot, and that is part of why we are expecting a broader infusion of capital period, and also with two 80 E going away, these companies being profitable in a way where you can get a decent return instead of just hoping and thinking this will probably happen sooner rather than later will occur. So we’re going to have to see.
TG Branfalt:
So what are the most pressing challenges that you hear from clients, from cannabis business owners sort of broadly and looking at the sort of next stage of their business?
Jessica McElfresh:
Well, I’m going to be honest. Most of my clients day to day, they’re certainly aware of this. They’re certainly interested in it. They’re certainly above all, I think looking forward to the possibility of a simpler tax return. But most of their day-to-day concerns are more about operating their businesses now, which means how high are the current state and local taxes and when are those possibly going to go down? Am I overregulated and how am I going to pay for that? Or what’s something where maybe I would like the state to do a bit more to assist me and assist consumers or to create this what city or county is going to open up next? I think that there is this luxury enjoyed by some companies that are extremely large where they can spend the majority of their time talking about rescheduling. For most people who are, and then there are people who work there who handle the day to day. Most cannabis companies are handled by people who are still very connected to the day-to-Day, and so they care about this. They do, but they’re honestly just as focused on what, say I’m in California, what the California legislature’s going to do. I bet if you were to take a straw poll of potential licensees in New York, they’re more concerned about the next head of their regulatory agency and what that person may do and how that’s going to go.
It’s great stuff. It’s a day I’ve been waiting to see for a long time, but we still got to pay the mortgage day to day, so to speak. This is a great financial planning tool for my retirement, so to speak. It’s not going to get MasterCard off my butt today.
TG Branfalt:
So how can clients, business owners identify the best attorney to help them navigate opening a cannabis business or expanding their business or a merger and acquisition sort of path?
Jessica McElfresh:
Well, I think that overall, I’ve always tried to live my life for advice on this topic by the idea that not every lawyer is for every client, and to be totally honest, not every client is for every lawyer. Sometimes it’s about a personality fit or a way the two of you work. Some people prefer clients who are very hands off and they do everything for ’em. Other people prefer to more work with their clients day to day and tackle some of the issues together or have that understanding. I had say, my other main pieces of advice are try to talk to a variety of them. Far too many people just hire the first person they meet or the person that their friend is using without really looking for what is out there and who may be the best fit for them. The other idea that there is only one attorney who’s going to do everything for you, there is no other business in the world that approaches things that way. So the cannabis industry should be no exception. I usually have a bad joke, which is one of the happier days of my legal career was when I didn’t have to try to give people employment law advice anymore, but I’m really not joking.
It’s been a tremendous virtue for me and for clients to connect them with people who can help them with other specific needs. Another bad sign for hiring a lawyer is they tell you that all of your ideas are great and everything is achievable, and it’ll be done super quickly because of what that really tells you is they just want that retainer check and they’ll tell you anything to get it, and that’s not a good sign for your future.
TG Branfalt:
Jessica, this has been a really fascinating conversation. It’s the sort of thing I wish that I could attend the conference next month. Where can people find out more about you, your practice, about the conference?
Jessica McElfresh:
Well, if you want to find out about me, you can find out more@wwwmcelfreshlaw.com. Man, if I could do it over. I keep my difficult last name out of this, but I didn’t. So it’s going to be M like Mary, C like cat, E like elephant, L like lamb, F like Frank, R like Rick, E like elephant, S like Sally, H like hat law.com, and yes, I spelled my last name all day. If you want to learn more about the International Cams Bar Association, you can find more about us at our main website, which is going to be IN cba.org, and then you can also find more information about the conference there. It’s the Cannabis Law Institute of 2024. Again, it’s going to be July 25th through 26th this year, and we’re going to be at the Northwestern Pritzker School of Law in Chicago, Illinois, and you can learn all about us there.
We’ve got a variety of pricing programs going up to the event. Our current one’s going to end on June 14th, but there’s always more, and also, we always have a lot of really sweet deals about getting a membership. For example, if you join for not much more than the price of coming to the conference itself, and personally, I think you’d be a fool not to take advantage of that because we have other events. We also always do a day of attorney programming and a nice party in the evening at MJ Biz Con. We’re planning to be back there again in early December at Associations Day in December. We have an entire catalog of CLEs social events throughout the year, an enormously useful listserv, a member directory. There’s just, oh, so much fun and there’s so many great opportunities to get involved and do work too. So if you like to do work and you want to meet more cannabis attorneys, it’s the best place to be.
TG Branfalt:
Jessica, I really, really appreciate you coming on the show, talking through the conference with me, running me through the paces, if you will, on rescheduling. Thank you so, so much for taking the time to be on the show today.
Jessica McElfresh:
Totally. Thanks for having me.
TG Branfalt:
That is Jessica McElfresh. She’s the chair Cannabis Law Institute and a board member of the International Cannabis Bar Association. You can find more episodes of the Ganjapreneur.com podcast and the podcast section of Ganjapreneur.com and wherever you get your podcast. On the Ganjapreneur.com website, you’ll find the latest cannabis news and cannabis jobs updated daily along at transcripts of this podcast. You can also download the Ganjapreneur.com app and iTunes and Google Play. This episode was engineered by Wayward Sound Studio. I’ve been your host, TG Branfalt.
In this episode of the Ganjapreneur Podcast, host TG Branfalt is joined by LJ Dawson, the Editor-in-Chief of The Outlaw Report, a Washington, DC-based cannabis news outlet covering the dynamic cannabis landscape in the DC, Maryland, and Virginia (DMV) region. LJ shares her journey from criminal justice reporting to leading an independent cannabis-focused publication, offering unique insights into the intersection of cannabis policy, business, and social justice in one of the most politically charged regions in the country.
LJ discusses the complex challenges of reporting on cannabis in a region where local, state, and federal laws often clash, creating a complicated and ever-evolving market. She also delves into the ongoing efforts to expand DC’s medical cannabis market amidst competition from unlicensed operators, and the broader implications of cannabis enforcement across the DMV. For anyone interested in cannabis policy, journalism, or the intricacies of the DMV cannabis market (regulated and otherwise), this episode provides a nuanced inside look at the current state of the industry.
Find this episode in your favorite podcast app, or listen via the player below! Scroll down for the transcript.
Listen to the episode:Ganjapreneur · LJ Dawson: Reporting on the Evolution of Cannabis Policy in the DMV
Read the transcript:Editor’s note: this transcript was auto-generated and may contain errors.
Commercial:
The Ganjapreneur Podcast is made possible by over 500 cannabis industry service providers in Ganjapreneurs Cannabis Business Index. At some point, every plant touching brand experiences the stigma that many industries still have to toward cannabis going strong. Since 2015, our business index is the most comprehensive and frequently visited directory for cannabis friendly services on the internet, saving you the time and hassle of sifting through uninformed and unwelcoming providers with categories for everything from business financing, to extraction equipment to interior designers and public relations. You’ll find every kind of specialist and business service you could ever need. Check out the business index today at ganjapreneur.com/businesses.
TG Branfalt:
Hey there, I’m your host, TG Branfalt. This is the Ganjapreneur.com podcast, where we try to bring you actionable information and normalize cannabis through the stories of entrepreneurs, activists, and industry stakeholders. Today I am delighted to be joined by LJ Dawson. She’s the editor in chief of the Washington DC based cannabis news outlet, The Outlaw Report, which focuses on cannabis news and policy in the DC, Virginia, and Maryland region. How are we doing this morning, LJ?
LJ Dawson:
I’m good, TG. Thanks so much for having me on today.
TG Branfalt:
We have a lot to talk about. There’s a lot of recent happenings in the area that you cover, but before we get to that, tell me about yourself and how you ended up editor at the Outlaw Report.
LJ Dawson:
Well, I always joke I’m the least weed smoking cannabis reporter ever. I actually have a background in criminal justice reporting. I had my own criminal justice news outlet. I’ve freelanced reporting on the justice space and protests actually across the country. And I landed in DC right before January 6th, so it was a fun time to show up. I actually came here first in 2019 and did some political reporting. But yeah, I was here in DC and I reported on cannabis in Montana and Colorado a little bit. I’m originally from Colorado. We legalized weed when I was still in high school, if that gives you a little age. Dated myself a little bit there. But yeah, I reported on cannabis. I was always interested in the industry, and then the Outlaw Report reached out to me while I was still freelancing and trying to survive as all of us journalists are in this economy, which is not kind to anyone, especially not US reporters. And so I ended up at the Outlaw Report almost a year and a half ago, and it’s been a really exciting journey since then.
TG Branfalt:
So if you’re not the cannabis reporter smokes the least amount of cannabis, what drew you to reporting on cannabis? Even as far going back as Colorado and Montana,
LJ Dawson:
Cannabis is a fascinating intersection of alternative communities and thought processes. It’s always a great group of people to talk to. I think everyone who does drugs is always more interesting than people that don’t do drugs, obviously. But in all seriousness, cannabis is a really great intersection of criminal justice, business, the economy, legislation, politics, corruption. I mean, every single beat that you can think of is a microcosm in the cannabis beat, and it’s always something going on, something interesting. And cannabis has been criminalized, obviously for a very long time. It was very interwoven into the war on drugs, which obviously came down harder on black and brown people. And I had a history of reporting on injustice, and so I always wanted to cover cannabis in that way. And then also, I definitely believe that plants are the best way to heal ourselves, even if I don’t imbibe in smoking the good herb all the time, or regularly, as some of my good friends do. I definitely respect and believe in the scientific backing that it is a medicine for a lot of people, whether it’s mental health or actual chronic illnesses, et cetera. And so, yeah, I think it’s a great space to look into stuff to report on. So that’s what drew me to it.
TG Branfalt:
So one of the things obviously being in DC that you’re going to have to sort of focus on is the sort of nitty gritty, the legislation, that sort of policy stuff. So explain the current laws in DC as it relates to cannabis, because they’re different than any place else in the country.
LJ Dawson:
Glad you asked TG. So we are the only district in the whole United States. We are not a state, which means that we do not have state rights. So we are actually not allowed to set up anything, pass any legislation without congressional oversight. So that means that if the city council wants to pass the law, it goes into effect, but then it actually has to get reviewed by Congress. And at any point of a time period, some legislator in Congress can say, yeah, we don’t feel good about this, and they can pass a bill, get enough people, colleagues together to pass a bill to actually stop that legislation. And that is what has unfortunately happened for us. So we were able to legalize medical cannabis. DC legalized medical cannabis in 2013, and then we were immediately afterward stopped by a certain Republican, Andy Harris from Maryland,
TG Branfalt:
The Harris, the notorious Harris Rider,
LJ Dawson:
Harris rider that has something against DC. And that rider has basically prevented DC, which is a very liberal jurisdiction from actually setting up a recreational market. And so shortly after we were squashed in that area, there was an initiative passed called the I-71 Initiative, and that basically allowed decriminalized weed for the most part and allowed some home growing and then also allowed people to gift small amounts of weed to each other. I could give you up to two ounces of weed TG, as long as you weren’t giving me any money, I wasn’t receiving any money. And this was tested in court and actually stood as well. And so what happened is people kind of saw this as a little bit of a loophole, and were like, we aren’t going to have recreational weed. There wasn’t recreational weed in Virginia. There still isn’t. There wasn’t adult use in Maryland that just passed last year.
And so people saw this as a little bit of a loophole that they could start to exploit and started setting up actual stores. It started as popups actually, where people were coming together. They had a lot more weed than two ounces, which is the limit. They might’ve had pounds of weed, but they were gifting it. They were breaking it down, gifting it at popups. They were gifting it in stores, but they were actually setting up brick and mortars. And that all started around 2014 and just continued to blow up. And when it first started, police were raiding these places. I mean, they were not okayed by the city officials at all. They were getting raided, but they would, it’s like a cockroach. You squish it, and another one pops back up. And so these people were setting up stores just trapping out of them under the guise of gifting.
I would come in, they’d say, you have to buy this wristband. It’s $50 and oh, you wanted that Tropicana Cherry eighth, here you go. And so it kind of set up these pseudo dispensaries. And obviously Virginia and Maryland didn’t have access to weed. They certainly didn’t have access to underground strains that were getting pushed in through the underground channels into DC. And so people were going to these gifting stores and they were making tons of money. And it started with local entrepreneurs that were already in the cannabis, underground cannabis industry. And then as the years went on, it kind of expanded more to, as we know, the California markets started crashing. There were these large dispos in Cali that were setting up highways, underground highways to DC, to New York, to all these different markets to backdoor their weed that they had to get rid of.
And so it started getting a little bit more influenced by the big players in the cannabis industry that we think of that are a little less interested in the good of the patient, the good of the client. This isn’t your small Humboldt grower that’s working with a small seller in DC. And so anyways, we had an explosion of stores and in 2022, our medical market was still going. So we had a very small medical market, but people, you can go get weed at a gifting store without registering, just walking in, they have access to all the strains that you’re seeing on Instagram that the rappers are smoking, you’re going to go there even if it’s not tested most likely, rather than going to a medical dispensary that’s going to charge you a lot more. And so we had about half dozen medical dispensaries that were still serving patients, but there was a small sales, they weren’t doing numbers at all.
And so in 2022, DC Council had tried to keep passing recreational weed, and that just kept getting squashed by Congress. And in 2022, they were like, all right, we got to figure something out. So they actually passed an expansion of the medical market that we have in DC and they were able to say, okay, we see that we have all these unlicensed operators and we know that people in DC don’t want this illicit economy going on, so we’re going to try to fold unlicensed operators into the legal market, which has been done nowhere else in the US. No one else in the US has extended a peace offering to people that were operating illegally and said, we want you to come into the legal market.
TG Branfalt:
They ban them more than they would let them in.
LJ Dawson:
Right, exactly. You’re penalized basically. So they passed this expansion to do multiple things. They wanted to expand the market. They wanted to open up more licenses for people to grow, manufacture and to sell weed. And they also wanted to bring these unlicensed operators into the legal market. But again, it’s the legal medical market. It can’t be the recreational market because Congress has kept us from passing something. And so they passed this legislation and we’ve been in a whirlwinds since then, and I can update you on that as we go along. But it’s been just a crazy, crazy period as they’ve tried to transition us into a more expanded pseudo recreational, but still medical market.
TG Branfalt:
And one of the things, correct me if I’m wrong, is they allow self-certification. And I don’t know if that was included in the most recent reforms, but for patients, right?
LJ Dawson:
Absolutely. So that was included in the most recent reforms. One of the things that our government acknowledges in DC is that we have a barrier to people accessing legal cannabis. We can’t have any random person off the street, of course, 18 plus 21 plus access adult use cannabis. And so they said, alright, if we still have to have people certified as medical patients, we’re going to make it as easy as humanly possible. And so now in a manner of a few minutes, and you can actually do it for free until August 1st, if you’re a DC resident, you can actually self-certify yourself as a medical cannabis patient.
TG Branfalt:
And so what does that actually mean? What does this program look like? And so far, has it been effective in bringing people into the more regulated market?
LJ Dawson:
It’s a great question. So we also offer temporary registrations too, which I want to mention because it’s an acknowledgement that we have a lot of tourists in this area and that there were already people coming in from Florida, North Carolina and shopping in our medical market. Of course, there’s many more people going and shopping in our unlicensed market, but this program has helped a little bit, but there’s a key part of this Maryland legalized adult use last summer, we’re almost on a year of Maryland having adult use cannabis for everyone that’s 21 and over. And so DC had really bad timing with this, right? We started trying to expand our medical market when Maryland just ripped the rug out from under us. So it’s been somewhat successful TG, but we are seeing a slight rise in patients, but we don’t have that many yet, or we have continued to not have that many, and we haven’t seen an increase that you would expect maybe if this was really a great program.
And at the end of the day, it comes down to the fact that people don’t want to register. We are in a place where a bunch of people are federal workers. Cannabis is still stigmatized by many people. Of course, there’s this idea that your medical records won’t be released, but who knows if you’re applying for the CIA, I’m not, don’t worry. But if you’re applying for the CIA, they’ll probably find your records. So there’s this idea that people don’t want to register. I’ve been hearing from the legal medical dispensaries that are in the city right now that 30 to 70% of people are walking out every single day because they don’t want to register. And this is something that’s so easy, it can be free. And a lot of the dispensaries know this is a problem. So they’re actually helping people register right there. So you could walk in and be registered in minutes and people are still saying, no, no, no, I don’t want to do that. And they’re going next door to the unlicensed operator.
TG Branfalt:
That’s really, really interesting that people would choose. And again, I mean I think that that speaks to the region that you’re in where there are so many federal workers and government workers, and there are, we know some sort of slippery slopes when it comes to cannabis use and even applying to the federal government. I mean, you can be found lying on a federal form and things of that nature. And so tell me about some of the challenges covering cannabis policy in DC, Maryland, and Virginia, and how do you tow the line between local and national? Because so much of what comes out of DC is national news.
LJ Dawson:
I try not to get caught up in the hubbub on the capitol. There is constantly a cannabis news outlet, and I love all of our colleagues dearly. I appreciate everyone’s work, but there’s constantly people chasing after every single vote change, every single breadth of rescheduling. And the fact is that all of that stuff, whether it’s rescheduling, decriminalization, any of the legislation that’s working its way through Congress is very unlikely to pass, in my opinion, one. And then two is years away from actually impacting the person that is a medical patient or just a normal person trying to go smoke some weed and get a regulated clean product. And so I actually ignore a lot of it. And I’ve been on the hill, I’ve reported on the hill. I’ve great friends that are on the hill every single day. But I think that there’s an over diversion of resources spent reporting on the capitol because it is overcovered, a lot of the stuff that comes out of there is actually not newsworthy.
It’s only newsworthy because we’re giving it saying it’s newsworthy. And there’s so many stories in Virginia, in DC, in Maryland that need coverage, that is actual policy that’s currently in place impacting business owners, people of color patients, everyone that is most disenfranchised by big business, by politics, they’re actually getting impacted right now. So I always make sure that in any of the coverage we’re doing, I am prioritizing those people. And then I’m also prioritizing the small business owner that is either in the hemp industry or the cannabis industry that is trying to have an impact or start a business in this really crazy market.
TG Branfalt:
And I do think, to your point, that it speaks to a broader issue of journalism in general, which is a whole other conversation we could talk about where everything has turned into sort of horse race coverage and game coverage and is covered more like sports than policy. And not to say that I’m not guilty of it myself in terms of poll stories, it’s just the score. It’s just the score. Switching gears a little bit. You had said that you had covered sort of justice topics primarily for a while or had a keen eye on that for a while. How important are the pardons for Maryland Governor Wes Moore, and how important are the optics of a governor? Pardoning a record of people. I mean, this is the broadest pardoning by a governor so far.
LJ Dawson:
I’m really glad you asked this question, TG, and I think you used a key word, which is optics. Public opinion and public political energy is very crucial to the efforts to decriminalize cannabis or to get any movement on Capitol Hill. I do not want to undermine Governor Wes’ action in this case. I mean, it was almost 200,000 people that are being affected by this effort that he’s done. However, it’s not decriminalizing cannabis and these people are pardoned. But I was looking at the application to go through and get your pardon and it’s 27 pages long and every part of that needs lawyers on it and everything. But you’re talking about people that have been screwed over by the system over and over again. The system has never been their friend. And the governor does this and gets a lot of PR attention on the national scene.
He’s saying he hopes other governors join and do this. But I always think there’s a disconnect between the top of the government and actual impact on people. And so it’s great that this door is open for people to pursue expungement, right? Because if you get a pardon, then you have to pursue your expungement and you the cleaning of your record. But this does not fix anything. This doesn’t fix the decades potentially that someone has been refused jobs spent in prisons because of cannabis charges that they faced. I also want to highlight that the difference between nonviolent and violent charges. There’s a really big push on all criminal justice reforms to do nonviolent, nonviolent, nonviolent charges. And of course that’s easier to stomach for everybody. But the truth is, is that if someone was forced to go into the drug game, we’re not talking about people that were pulled over with an eighth of weed or a pipe, but we’re talking about people that had to participate maybe because of the place they grew up in, the economic opportunities they were afforded.
They had to participate in the drug industry. And if they had to, that’s very rarely going to be a nonviolent charge. You’re usually going to have to have a gun on you. You’re usually going to be caught up in the other parts of being in the drug game. And so there’s people who are impacted by the war on drugs that are not going to be nonviolent offenders. And so those people sometimes get left behind. And then there’s also still tons of people, thousands of people federally incarcerated for nonviolent cannabis charges, including Jonathan Wall, who was recently sent to federal prison in Maryland actually on trafficking charges just a few years ago. And so there’s still people currently incarcerated in Maryland, federally. Obviously the governor can’t impact that. He only has a jurisdiction over his state. But I think it’s important that we stay realistic when these things happen and don’t get caught up in any PR or optics that is pushed on us.
TG Branfalt:
I mean, I think the coverage that came out after the fact was similar to when Biden issued those pardons, which really had an effect on what 200 people. I mean, again, I’m not trying to downplay it much like you weren’t either, but the optics were kind of more important than the actual policy that it implemented and the reforms that it implemented.
LJ Dawson:
Yeah, and tj, I feel like a lot of the advocates and people that have been impacted by cannabis criminalization, they’re taught to kind of be grateful for breadcrumbs, right? We’re taught to just be like, oh my gosh, thank you so much for doing this. When it’s like, Hey, this is still not enough and we should be okay being able to say thank you and you need to do more and we need more.
TG Branfalt:
So what are the challenges for the region’s cannabis policy when on one hand you have more progressive, and then on the other hand, you have Republican governor Glenn Youngkin in Virginia who has done everything in his power and along with the legislature to block the implementation of cannabis adult use cannabis in Virginia as approved by the previous democratically led legislature?
LJ Dawson:
Yeah, I’m really glad you brought that up. Virginia is a very interesting case. It was literally legalized to have adult use in a democratic controlled legislature. And then Youngkin came in who’s a Republican and has blocked the market. The law has already passed, but he is not allowed the actual implementation of a legal adult use market in Virginia. And they have some of the highest medical costs actually. We see people in our patient counts in DC, Virginia patients are the second highest register people that come over and shop in our medical cannabis market. And also, I’m sure they’re shopping in the illicit stores a lot in DC. And so this has a real impact on Virginians. Not everyone in Virginia is close to DC. They’re not close to Maryland. And so we are kind of at a loss of hope for Virginia until Youngkin leaves office.
That means that we could be looking at 2027, 2028 before an actual adult use market is set up. So there’s also other things going on with hemp in Virginia. So I’m kind of reporting on two opposite spectrums, right? Because there’s Virginia where it’s still the dark ages. There’s Maryland who just legalized adult use last year. The market opened up last year again, but being critical, keeping them in check. The only operators that have been able to sell weed to in the adult market are previously licensed medical dispensaries. And so we have a lot of MSOs, a lot of previously established dispensaries, not small guys, not social equity candidates necessarily making millions of dollars in Maryland and the adult use market, but Maryland also has a lot of cool programs going on to try to engender and cause a growth of social equity or people that were the small guy in the cannabis industry there.
And then we have DC, which is federally controlled and kind of in the middle of the road. I just try to keep up to date with everything. Obviously we have a lot of different things going on, but each state has its own power imbalances. It has its own players, and we just try to make sure that we’re paying attention to all of the major stakeholders so we can accurately report and get the information that each of those states need. The last thing I’ll say is that the markets impact each other too. So Virginia, DC and Maryland are very close together, and the big city centers are very close together. So even if Maryland’s a whole state, Virginia is a whole state DC in the middle, we have a lot of big cities that are all near DC. Baltimore is not too far from us. And so if there’s a market change in Maryland that could push patients into DC if there’s the market change in Virginia that could push patients into DC or out of DC and vice versa. So we try to make sure that people know how the other state next to them or district is impacting their market.
TG Branfalt:
Are you seeing in the region, are you still seeing a lot of, how do I want to put this cannabis enforcement in Virginia? Meanwhile, the surrounding states in the district have legalized, so are we still seeing a lot of harms in Virginia despite the neighborhood being broadly kind of adult use?
LJ Dawson:
Virginia is still pulling people over with pounds of cannabis in their car, and Maryland is too, and DC is actually kind of the only place which I can get into after the only place that is actually not focused so much on cannabis enforcement. But Virginia is very much still focused on cannabis enforcement. They’re very much still a state that is doing traditional policing. They have rural areas there. Manassas, Virginia is tiny. There’s a bunch of rural areas in Virginia that are– it’s a more conservative-run state in all ways down to the police departments. And so you have people getting pulled over in Virginia that are getting busted with cannabis, but that’s still happening in Maryland too. Just because you have an adult use market does not mean that illicit or underground cannabis transportation and selling is not getting enforced as well. And so in Virginia, we actually have a little bit of a replica of dc They’re doing adult sharing, so their shops actually getting sped up that are adult sharing cannabis, right?
No, I 71 initiative in Virginia. It’s they’re trying to create a loophole that doesn’t exist, and those shops have been getting raided. Those shops have been getting shut down and people are forcing or facing jail time and charges for that. And in Maryland as well, people I see every other week someone getting arrested in a news article about someone getting arrested for a pound of cannabis or vapes, et cetera. So there’s still enforcement going on. I would not drive through Virginia if I was anyone with a pound of cannabis. That would be at least make sure your taillights are all working. Do not get pulled over in Virginia. They’re not going to be kind to you.
TG Branfalt:
Have any portions of the law taken effect such as allowing people to possess an ounce personal use, or is that still blocked?
LJ Dawson:
Yes. So you can possess, that’s why I said a pounds. Okay, okay. Yeah, you can possess cannabis in Virginia, right? But yeah, you got to be careful about the amount that you have.
TG Branfalt:
So we talked about, you had mentioned enforcement in Virginia and Maryland. What about enforcement in DC?
LJ Dawson:
So we’ve seen quite the seed change in dc As I had mentioned, there was a proliferation of unlicensed shops towards the end of 2016, probably till 2020. They were getting rated almost weekly, monthly. The cops were allegedly taking the weed and taking the money, and then they were arresting people and then letting them go and letting people just reopen somewhere else. However, in 2022 when they passed the medical cannabis expansion, part of that was actually a safe harbor that starting last year in January, gave unlicensed shops a year to do what they had to do because they were opening up applications and technically saying the doors open, unlicensed applicants or unlicensed operators can apply to become a legal medical dispensary in dc. And this was really unique. In DC we had multiple application periods for different types of businesses, but there was actually specifically an unlicensed operator retail period at the beginning before social equity and before standard. And they gave unlicensed operators 90 days to apply to become part of the legal market, and they actually had to prove that they were operating illegally, paying taxes as a gifting business to qualify for these licenses. It’s quite wild. There were definitely a lot of people who were like, there’s no way I am going to submit any government document saying that I was gifting
TG Branfalt:
Breaking the law,
LJ Dawson:
Right? I was gifting weed, and it definitely wasn’t two ounces. It was millions of dollars. And I was filing taxes saying that off of T-shirts, I made $10 million last year, right? So this was very unique, and they said they weren’t going to enforce, and that safe harbor period ended in January. However, we have not had more than four dispensaries, new dispensaries open, and we’ve had no new cultivation centers and no new manufacturers open. So the council gave them another until September. So another, I think it was four months if they applied to keep doing what they were doing, acknowledging that there’s a lack of supply in DC and that there were patients that weren’t going to be able to be served. So if you’re an unlicensed operator who applied during the licensing period and said you were gifting and they approved you, and you’re in the process of turning into a legal medical dispensary for the location you applied for, you can keep gifting out of it until September of this year.
However, in March, they started enforcement and that enforcement was against shops mostly that had not applied shops that were gifting, which are now most shops don’t even gift. They’re open dispensaries at this point elicit open dispensaries much like you have in New York. And they started enforcement. And the enforcement started very delicately with just letters that said, you’re warned this is what you’re doing. It came from our cannabis regulatory agency. It did not come from the cops. And there have only been a few raids, and most of those raids seem to be because of mushrooms, mushroom products being sold alongside cannabis. Well,
TG Branfalt:
Isn’t that another sort of layer to this? Because DC voters approved psychedelic medication therapies, I should say in 2016.
LJ Dawson:
So we have another initiative called I 81 that’s often mistaken to be just a replica of the I 71 Cannabis Initiative for mushrooms. And what it did actually was decriminalize a possession of a certain amount, and it also deprioritized enforcement of psychedelics. It did not do any gifting legislation or any gifting initiatives such as I 71. So it’s still very illegal to even share mushrooms technically even, and especially to sell them in dc They’re still obviously a federally controlled schedule one substance.
So after they started enforcing in March, they laid off a little bit. They started delivering warnings, and those warnings have not really stopped any unlicensed shops from being open. They got the warnings and most of them stayed open or open the next day, kind of this idea that we’re going to go until the wheels fall off. We’re going to make as much money as we can until they literally kick us out. And this actually started impacting the forecast of the new medical market. There’s over 50 stores that should be opening in DC that’s over a 900% increase. We’ve only had a half dozen stores that were medically licensed retail stores, and now there’s over 50 that should be getting licensed and open in the next three to four months. And the medical market’s not doing well because there’s still an unlicensed market that’s thriving in dc.
And so the medical community, a lot of them are pushing the DC Council to do more, to be able to kick these unlicensed operators out, because every time you put a medical dispensary next to an unlicensed operator, that unlicensed operators always going to win. There’s less barriers to shop. It’s better product in a lot of people’s opinions, even though if it’s unregulated and it’s often cheaper. So we are waiting to see what happens, but they just passed emergency legislation to start being able to padlock unlicensed operators to do the same thing New York did. To seriously try to clear these dispensaries that are unlicensed out of DC so the medical market can actually have a chance.
TG Branfalt:
It’ll be interesting to see how well that works because I live in New York, not the city, obviously very upstate, but there are still quite a bit of illegal dispensaries,
LJ Dawson:
Absolutely TG. I’ve literally seen Instagram ads where unlicensed operators, which Instagram ads is a whole nother conversation, but unlicensed operators have literally been saying, DC’s closing I-71 stores. Don’t worry. We still will have a delivery sign up. Now we’re offering you a percentage off sign up, get in the door, get your number in. And I mean, DC, there’s so much going on in the city. The cops have so many other problems. They do not want to get dragged into cannabis enforcement unless there’s a shootout going on. It’s a big crime like making money to them. It would’ve been maybe some years ago a priority, but right now it’s not. And they do not want to get caught up in the legislative mumbo jumbo that has been caused by the federal oversight in DC.
TG Branfalt:
So I want to you a question that I find myself asking myself and also asking my colleagues and people that I’ve worked with, and as you said at the top, you’re a believer in sort of plant medicine and things of that nature. How do you as editor in chief remain objective? Because most of us covering cannabis have a bit of bias towards cannabis. I’m a lowly podcast host and staff writer, and I believe that that gives me a little bit more leeway, if you will. But as editor in chief, I think that there’s a different responsibility there. So can you talk about that a little bit?
LJ Dawson:
Absolutely. We’re already assumed to be biased, obviously, because we’re called the Outlaw report. We report on cannabis. And there’s an idea in the journalism world that if you’re even reporting on cannabis and a little alternative independent publication, that you’re obviously going to be like smoke weed, everybody. But that is not how we are. I think that it’s very important that we’re still a journalistic news outlet, and our job is to hold everyone accountable. That does not just mean the government. That doesn’t just mean the businesses. That means people too. So we know that cannabis is evolving. We know that cannabis is getting stronger. We know that there are new products coming out. We know that there’s little research on those products. We’re not talking about grandpa’s cannabis getting grown in the backyard anymore, and we need to remind everyone that. And so it is our responsibility to talk about studies.
It’s our responsibility to talk about testing, to report on the cannabis industry as if it was the food industry, as if it was any big industry that people are consuming. I mean, cannabis consumption is now acknowledged that it’s incredibly high. This is something that’s happening. People smoke weed. That’s a PSA for all of us. We always have, right? People smoke weed. People are still smoking weed now, they’re eating weed. I mean, they’re doing everything. And so it’s our responsibility to stay non-biased and focus on both the negatives and the positives of the cannabis industry and hold everyone accountable, whether that be at the top or the bottom.
TG Branfalt:
So one of the interesting things that Outlaw Report has done is launched a map of the progress and locations of DC cannabis licenses. What went behind that decision and how important is that map to stakeholder engagement?
LJ Dawson:
TG, I’m really glad you asked about this. This was a map that organically came up because I was trying to keep track of all of our applications in this last period. And so in our cannabis expansion of our medical market, just in DC, we have had hundreds of businesses apply as manufacturers, cultivators or dispensaries, retail locations. And this map is incredibly important. DC is a small place. Real estate is a high commodity. It’s rare. It’s even rarer to find real estate that you can rent or buy as a cannabis business. And so our map is a really great visual breakdown tracking where all of these cannabis businesses are in the process of getting open. Just because someone gets a license, someone gets their application in, that can mean they’re still months away. And so our license map is a way for people–it’s color coded–
It’s a way for people to keep track either of what’s happening in their own neighborhood, what’s happening in the neighborhood, that they want to open a business where they can actually go buy legal weed that will soon be tested in a lab in DC, we don’t have testing quite yet, and it’s a way to just keep track of what’s going on. It’s not the only offer or perk that we offer to our subscribers. We’re also offering real-time legislative updates, and we hope to expand that to the Maryland market within the next four months. This is our goal to become a sustainable news outlet. All of our articles are free. We will keep them free, but some of this more labor intensive data stakeholder information that we take a lot of time out of our reporting to create, we are asking people to support us and subscribe to get access to that.
TG Branfalt:
Well, hopefully the next time that we chat, we can talk more about how you build the actual subscription model and that sort of thing. But in the meantime, where can people find out more about The Outlaw Report? Where can they find this map and maybe find out more about you?
LJ Dawson”
So come to OutlawReport.com to see all of the most recent news stories we’ve been writing, covering the DMV area, and subscribe to get access to our map. You can find me at @LJreports on Twitter and Instagram, and my email is also on our website. If anyone has any tips, tidbits, or hot takes they want to share.
TG Branfalt:
That is LJ Dawson. She’s the editor in chief of the Washington DC based cannabis News outlet, the Outlaw Report, which focuses on cannabis news and policy in the dc, Virginia, and Maryland region. Thank you so much for being on the podcast today, lj. It’s been fun.
LJ Dawson:
Thanks, TG, and hopefully you will have us back.
TG Branfalt:
Definitely. There’s a lot more ground to cover here. You can find more episodes of the entrepreneur.com podcast and the podcast section of Ganjapreneur.com and wherever you get your podcasts. On the Ganjapreneur.com website, you’ll find the latest cannabis news and cannabis jobs updated daily, along with transcripts of this podcast. You can also download the Ganjapreneur.com app and iTunes and Google Play. This episode was engineered by Wayward Sound Studio. I’ve been your host, TG Branfalt.
In this episode of the Ganjapreneur podcast, host TG Branfalt is joined by Dr. Sean Myles, an associate professor of agriculture at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, who brings a wealth of knowledge on plant genetics. While Dr. Myles has made significant contributions to the study of plant varieties in apples and grapes, today’s focus is on his groundbreaking work in cannabis research. Within the unique intersection of agriculture, genetics, and the culture and policy of cannabis legalization, Dr. Myles sheds light on how cannabis labeling, genetic diversity, and breeding practices are shaping the future of the industry.
Find the episode on your favorite podcast app, listen via the media player below, or scroll down for the full transcript!
Listen to the episode:Ganjapreneur · Sean Myles: Studying Cannabis DNA to Move Beyond the Indica/Sativa Binary
Read the full transcript:Editor’s note: this transcript was auto-generated and may contain errors.
Commercial:
The Ganjapreneur Podcast is made possible by over 500 cannabis industry service providers in Ganjapreneur’s Cannabis Business Index. At some point, every plant touching brand experiences the stigma that many industries still have to toward cannabis going strong. Since 2015, our business index is the most comprehensive and frequently visited directory for cannabis friendly services on the internet, saving you the time and hassle of sifting through uninformed and unwelcoming providers with categories for everything from business financing to extraction equipment to interior designers and public relations. You’ll find every kind of specialist and business service you could ever need. Check out the business index today at Ganjapreneur.com/businesses.
TG Branfalt:
Today we’re joined by Dr. Sean Myles. He’s an associate professor of agriculture at Dalhousie University. He’s done countless, countless studies on cannabis, agriculture, a lot on apples, which I find very interesting, but that’s not where we’re here to talk about today. How are you doing this morning, Sean?
Sean Myles:
Doing great. Thanks for having me on.
TG Branfalt:
I’m real excited. We have a lot to talk about. Before you get into it, man, tell me about yourself. Tell me your background and how you ended up a doctor, associate professor, and all that good stuff.
Sean Myles:
Sure. I’m really passionate about food. I think that’s kind of where it ended up sending me is to learn more about where our food comes from, how it’s produced, how it gets to the table and gets on your plate. I studied genetics, so I look at DNA for a living, and I did my PhD. I actually worked in human genetics and human medical genetics kind of stuff first, but switched gears there in order to chase my wife. My wife is a winemaker and I always figured if I wanted to live somewhere where she lives, I should probably just study grapes. So we figured that out. I started a postdoc in grapes at Cornell and continued on that path. And then we moved back here to, we live in Nova Scotia in Canada, in rural Nova Scotia. It’s a beautiful place to live, and we’ve got lots of apples here. So I switched my research to focus on apples after a while and working on plants and genetics around the time when cannabis was becoming legalized in Canada. It was a real obvious choice to go and start looking at cannabis because such a fascinating crop.
TG Branfalt:
So what interests you most about genetic research in general, whether it be human genetic research or agricultural genetic research?
Sean Myles:
Yeah, I think a lot of my interest stems from an interest in better understanding our past, knowing where our food came from, how domestication and breeding has really taken place and shaped the food that we consume today and what effects that’s had on the food that we eat. It’s a really fascinating thing to be able to do, is to sort of read history by looking at DNA. You can learn quite a bit. So we’ve learned a lot about what we are and how we became human from looking at DNA and fascinating stories by sequencing genomes of Neanderthals and all that kind of stuff. It’s not that different when looking at the DNA of food so we can learn things about where our food comes from and how the different strains of cannabis, for example, are related to each other and how much diversity there is for us to use, which is tremendous. And then that gives us a guide in a way of where we should be going in the future. So the other portion is what do we do with this information and how do we more efficiently and effectively breed new varieties of food that are going to require less chemical input to grow and are going to be healthy for you? So that’s the real motivation.
TG Branfalt:
So we’re talking about the past, I mean cannabis—because of prohibition worldwide essentially—we don’t know a ton about it. And so, what big questions did you set out to answer when you started researching cannabis?
Sean Myles:
Yeah, in general, we were interested in knowing what we call as sort of the general genetic structure of cannabis. So one of the big questions of course, is how different are hemp and cannabis that’s consumed for psychoactive effects. And so one of the first things we did was we collected, we got our hands on some samples of hemp and we got our hands on some samples of cannabis psychoactive cannabis, and we took a look at that. There’s been a lot of theory and theory and hypotheses about, well, hemp is just basically cannabis that doesn’t have any THC, so it’s probably just like one gene that’s turned off, but otherwise there’s a lot of overlap in the way they look and the way they behave. But when we looked at it, we actually found that the hemp and what we call marijuana in the paper, but I believe more appropriately is just called cannabis for, what do you call recreational cannabis, if you will, or medical cannabis.
Yeah, there’s differences. There’s systematic differences across the entire genome so they can be sort of understood as two kind of different genetic groups. So that suggests it may be worthwhile if you see a trait in a hemp line that you’re interested in and you’re a cannabis breeder for recreational purposes, it may make sense to cross it with some hemp at some point and try to use that genetic diversity in your breeding program and that kind of thing. So those are some of the, and just in general is the big question that kept coming up is the use of the terms indica and sativa because these are botanical terms that have been kind of co-opted by the recreational users to mean something, but it’s not really entirely clear what indica and sativa really mean and people have different ideas about it. So we thought looking at the DNA of these large diverse set of samples could shed some light on that.
TG Branfalt:
Do you think that we’ve sort of adopted those terms or accepted those terms as cannabis consumers and the industry at large due to the sort of lack of research and lack of understanding about the planet?
Sean Myles:
Yeah, yeah. No, absolutely. I think it’s become unclear what the terms mean because the industry has operated in a clandestine fashion for so long and underground. So there haven’t been the kind of controls and policies and strict protocols in place that you would see in other crops. For example, in a strawberry, when they release a strawberry to the public from a breeding program, you can’t just say that it’s this kind of strawberry. I mean, it has to be that kind. You can’t put in a bottle of wine a bunch of Cabernet Sauvignon and call it pinot noir. That’s not allowed, and you can’t get away with that. But in the cannabis world, in the underground cannabis world, you can get away with a lot if you want to sell the stuff and the person walking in, they like indica, all of a sudden your stuff is indica. So I think it’s been kind of co-opted and got a little messy, even though cannabis sativa and cannabis indica originally are kind of terms from botany where that described the structure of the plant its use today is arguably not a very good indicator of the genetics or the chemistry of the plants is what we found in our research.
TG Branfalt:
So tell me about the results of the 2021 paper. Cannabis labeling is associated with genetic variation in terpene syn genes. I’m probably mispronouncing that penultimate word there. And additionally, 2015 genetic structure of marijuana and hemp study. Tell me about each of these and it is one sort of link to the other in some way.
Sean Myles:
Yeah, so I think we’re trying to address similar questions in these studies, and the very first study in 2015 was one of the very earliest studies of a genetic analysis of cannabis. And in that study we took a look. We got samples from one of the earliest licensed producers in Canada who were growing cannabis for the new burgeoning industrial market that was opening up in Canada because it’s been legalized. So that was early days. And all of these licensed producers, they were like, okay, where are we going to get our seed? Where are we going to get our plants? And it was basically find people who are growing it underground and bring it into the legal market. There wasn’t some gene bank they have in other crops that you can just go order up a whole bunch of seed and start out. So this one collaborator we had, they had a decent amount on the order of a hundred samples or so, or 80 to a hundred samples of various lines, and they were named.
So you can see in the paper there’s the lemon skunk and white widow, Alaskan Ice, Bubba Kush standard strain names with, and each of them, they have a reported percent indica or percent sativa. So I think they were either like a hundred percent indica or 25% or 50 50 hybrid or the other way, a hundred percent sativa or 75% sativa. So we had a good number of samples, and then we had a bunch of hemp samples too. We wanted to see if hemp was different from the cannabis. They were growing for the legal market here in Canada. So we did that genetic analysis and what came out was that the genetics don’t really align very well at all with whether they’re labeled as indica or sativa. So whether something, if you look at how closely related things are, for instance, a cannabis strain that is labeled as a hundred percent indica is frequently more closely related to something that’s labeled as a hundred percent sativa than it is other indica labeled strains.
So we know that then the labeling isn’t matching up with the genetics so that the label of indica or sativa is a very poor indicator of what the genetics of the plant are, which suggests that it’s also a poor indicator of what the plant actually looks like when it’s grown, which means that this isn’t really telling you much. So that’s the first indicator we had of like, okay, this whole legal market is going to explode in Canada here coming up. And one of the main things these marketing departments are using is this label of indica and sativa because it’s so widespread its use in the underground world. That’s how people identify their stuff and they have strong beliefs about whether sativa is uplifting and indica is supposed to give you couch lock and a lot of that. So we wanted to see does that really line up?
And unfortunately from our sample, we can’t say for everyone, but from our sample, the genetics were not a good indicator of the indica and sativa labeling was a very poor predictor of the genetic identity of the plants. So then we thought, fine, maybe labeling them as indica and sativa doesn’t tell you much, but does it tell you much if they say it’s lemon skunk? Does that tell you anything? Is white widow really a unique genetic identity, which in the other worlds, like a Honeycrisp apple is a unique genetic identity. Every single honey crisp apple tree is genetically identical to every single other one. And that’s what we do in horticulture. This is the way it works in strawberries, peaches, pears, plums, apples, cherries, all of it, right? You breed new varieties, you release them to market. And the ones when they end up on the shelf, if it says Pinot noir on the bottle, it’s pinot noir grapes in the bottle, and we’re finding that we’re getting white widow from one producer and we’re getting white widow from another producer and we’re looking at their genetics and they’re not the same at all. They’re not even closely related. Often one of them is more closely related to a strain with a different name than it is to a strain with the same name. And about a third of the cases we saw, so the strain names, the strain names are also not reliable indicators of what you’re getting. So you think you like white widow, but every time you’re getting white widow, you’re getting something different. So it is not really telling you much. Basically the conclusion is it’s a goddamn mess.
The whole thing is a mess. People are telling you things that are not true, and as a scientist, it’s our responsibility to say, okay, this is how not true it is. This is the degree of untruth in here and for an agricultural crop, it’s through the roof. With cannabis, there’s no bigger mess of any crop on the planet.
TG Branfalt:
There’s no sort of effort by the Canadian government, which has federally legalized cannabis to fix this at all. In your knowledge?
Sean Myles:
No, my words are generally ignored and that I’m not a policy pusher. I’m not the guy who goes and stands before parliament and tries to get things changed. Look, if people want to call it indica and sativa, whatever, naturopaths give you all sorts of sugar pills too, and then people believe in that. So I think you got to pick your battles. And we’ve published in the literature, we talk about it on podcasts, we’ve let people know that the evidence so far suggests that these labels that we’re applying to products are highly misleading when we talk to the marketing. I’ve had conversations with people who work in marketing and promotion in these cannabis companies too, and off record, they’re fully willing to admit, it’s like when we come out with a new strain, we just ask the breeders, just ask the marketing department, should we label this one incar or sativa?
What do we need more of? Right? There’s no holy shit. Yeah, there’s very little. So we wanted to see whether this was really the case across the board. In science, we always have a sample and we make an inference, but that doesn’t mean that it applies to everything in the world. So if you go and you measure how much people like bananas and you’ve got a sample of 12-year-old kids in Hawaii, it’s going to be different than how people like bananas elsewhere. So was our sample representative. So we got another set of samples in the 2021 paper. We went and worked with Bedrocan. It’s the biggest medical cannabis producer in Europe, and they’ve been collecting strains from the Dutch coffee shops for ages and propagating. And so that they would have this sort of base of genetic variation to breed from, and they were great to work with.
And so we also had over a hundred different strains, and they’re all, not only did we look at genetic information, but we also chemically analyzed them so that we could see, especially for these terpenes and these aromatic molecules, what kind of differences are there among all these strains? And so the same conclusion comes out in general that indica and sativa labeling are not good predictors of the genetics. They’re also fairly poor predictors of the chemical identity of the plant. But there are a few things that are correlated with the labeling, and they do line up with what people believe the differences are between indica and sativa. So generally people believe that indica strains are a little more sort of dank and skunky, little more forest floor kind of aromas kind of stuff. And we do find actually that on average the indica strains had higher levels of mercene, and that’s a molecule that’s often there’s an earthy aroma attributed to high mercene content.
And there’s also some evidence that there’s a sedative effect to mercene, which would go along with the couch lock that people talk about when it comes to indica strains. So there’s a little bit, the signal’s not strong. Look, there’s lots of sativa strains, things labeled as sativa that had high levels of mercene, and there’s lots interesting, lots of things labeled as indica that had very low levels of mercene. But on average, in our sample, we did find that the things labeled as indica, the more indica you had on average, you had more mercene. So that does line up with what people believe is also like indica labeling was correlated to with the amount of guil, gamma ol and beta ol. So if you had more of these, and those are also, they’re associated with plants from Afghanistan actually in original botanical literature, which is considered the region of origin cultivars.
So that kind of lines up too. Then on the sativa side, we looked at the sativa ones tended on average to have more bergin, and they have sort of tea and fruity aromas. They’re associated, those molecules are associated with fruit and tea, which is also in line with what people believe sativa cultivars to possess. So the first study basically said, this is a big load of hogwash and everybody should ignore the labels. The second study was like, ah, you know what? There are a few chemicals that are associated with whether you’re indica or sativa, the signal is not strong, but maybe that’s driving people to label the cultivars in the first place. You’re breeding stuff, mixing stuff up, like doing crosses. You get one that smells pretty skunky, you’re going to call it indica.
That’s basically what we’re saying is that the labeling is probably driven by a small number of aromatic molecules and their concentrations and what people associate with that. But it’s not the genetics of the plant in general. It’s not like there are two populations of plants, indica and sativa and never will the two mix, or that’s not the way it is. It’s probably that we’re labeling them because you sniff it, you go, whoa, man, this is skunky. I’m going to call this indica. Or Hey, this has got a bit of both. I’m going to call it a 50 50. So that’s what came out of those.
TG Branfalt:
Did the findings surprise you? Because for me, as somebody who’s come to the industry for 10 years, it’s not surprising to me. I did a podcast one time with a guy who went and did mass spectrometer analysis of cultivars, found blue dream in one dispensary in Las Vegas, Nevada, and then another dispensary in Las Vegas, Nevada, and found these are not even close to the same plant. But for you did, was it surprising to you?
Sean Myles:
No, I think it lines up with what we understand from the history of cannabis breeding. It was interesting though. I did present these results at CannaCon in 2020 maybe or something like that. I was at this cannabis conference, and of course there’s a whole bunch of people there have been involved in breeding cannabis for a really long time, and I got one of two responses. The one response was from people like you who were reasonable, rational people who were like, yeah, of course. I mean, we’ve been shuffling this stuff all over the place forever, and this indica sativa thing is probably, there’s not much to it. And then there were the others, or strain names too. They were like, ah, strain names. I wouldn’t trust them. But then there were quite a few people who found that the results of our study upsetting or disagreed with it so much that they approach you afterwards and they’re like, dude, I have the real white widow man. You don’t know what the hell you’re talking about. I have the real white widow, and was like, that doesn’t make any sense, man. White widow isn’t a thing. We just demonstrated. I just showed you that the name white widow is associated with all sorts of different genetic profiles. So there is no original white widow. I don’t know. Maybe there was at some point or something, but you wouldn’t be able to prove it. There’s no plant breeders rights. There’s no patents. There’s no way of verifying this stuff. There’s no genetic marker that you can use to go and say, this is that we do in other crops. So I found it funny, and I don’t think that also indicates that it makes sense that the amount of confidence they have in their breeding material is inversely related to their ability to keep track of their material.
You can’t, as a breeder, if you don’t really keep track of things very well, of course you’re going to come out and say you’re super confident about what you have, and it almost goes the other way. The people who are the best breeders in the world and tracking huge corn breeding programs and stuff, you talk to them and they’ll be like, yeah, no, we expect about 5% error rate. We get things mixed up sometimes, for sure. Of course you do. So I found it funny that there was such an enormous amount of confidence about not mixing things up, and you’re like, dude, you’ve been breeding in your basement for 25 years on your own smoking weed. I figure you’re probably making some mistakes, right?
TG Branfalt:
Are you a cannabis consumer?
Sean Myles:
Yeah. Yeah.
TG Branfalt:
So when I go to dispensary and they say, do you look in? I really look at them and go, string names of bullshit. Give me something that smells like this. Right? So how do you sort of buy cannabis with this knowledge?
Sean Myles:
It is disappointing. I mean, the first thing they ask you every single time you go to a dispensary here, it’s sold by the government. So we have government stores. You walk in and there’s someone there, and the first thing they say is, do you indica or sativa? And I’m like, man, there’s no difference. You just wish you could say, I was like, so it would be nice. And some of them do do this. They’re starting to put on the packaging what the quantification of those compounds. I was talking about those monoterpenes, like mercene and guil and different things that people care about bergamot and farine so that you have an idea of like, is this a fruity tea like one or is this a dank kind of earthy one? And that’ll give you an idea. But then there’s that next step they take, which is all about this one is uplifting and this one is sedative, and the jury is definitely out on that. There’s no strong evidence anywhere from the literature that is the case
TG Branfalt:
Isn’t it all individual brain chemistry as well.
Sean Myles:
Pardon me?
TG Branfalt:
Isn’t it all individual brain chemistry as well?
Sean Myles:
Yeah, I mean, there’s differences between human individuals in the way that we’re going to metabolize these different compounds and have experiences that differ in the population. So yeah, it would take a lot of work to figure that out. And it’s true. You’ve pointed out that we are a little behind, right? With cannabis as a given that it is a medicine and it’s consumed for recreational use, our understanding of the plant is still lags far behind plants that are of equivalent economic value worldwide. This is a huge economy. It is just that it’s been underground for so long that we haven’t been able to pay as much attention to it as scientists and government scientists or university scientists because we don’t have access to it and we don’t have, or it’s been challenging to get access. So this is all opening up now, and I think over the next decade we’re going to learn a lot more. I guess the challenge is going to be whether this ever translates into any kind of policy change or any kind of change on the ground, because we know already that indica and sativa labeling is not a good way of labeling cannabis, and we also know that the old strain names are also not accurate, but we’re still using ’em and they’re still out there.
TG Branfalt:
So what could a post- indica/sativa marketplace look like to be more accurate in your opinion?
Sean Myles:
No, I think it could mimic the wine industry, except that these breeding programs would come up with new strains. These new strains would have a name. They would vegetatively propagate them, clonally propagate them properly, so that when you get a package and it says it’s this strain, it really is that strain. So when you buy a bottle of pinot noir, it really is pinot noir. I think it would also be helpful to, I don’t think you really need to quantify the amount of guile and mercene and all that kind of stuff on the back of a bottle of Pinot. It doesn’t tell you how much of these particular aromas there are. They just describe it, right? They say, this pinot exhibits nice aromas of earthy aromas and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, and fresh fruit on the nose. You’re like, okay, great. And I could see the cannabis world moving in that direction where let’s not worry about the indica sativa thing. Let’s just focus on what does it taste like and what’s the name of the strain? And if they can get the strain sorted out so that give them new names from these new producers, new breeding programs that can keep track of their material and actually verify that it is really that strain, then that would be a big step forward, I think, for the industry.
TG Branfalt:
Going back to broader research, how is cannabis research different from the other agricultural research that you’ve done, or even just different from more non-cannabis agricultural research in general?
Sean Myles:
Yeah. I mean, a lot of agricultural genetics, research and breeding, it ties in with the breeding, a lot of the breeding targets. What you want to achieve as a breeder in a lot of crops is shelf life ability to be shipped long distances. Rarely is it, it’s almost very rarely is it aroma, right? Whereas in cannabis, it’s like cannabis has a fascinating profile of aromas. If anyone who’s had the opportunity to go and actually smell diverse strains of cannabis at flowering nice and fresh, it is unbelievable how different they can smell. And it’s not that different from grapes. If you taste a muca grape, a fully ripe muskat grape and compare it to a fully ripe Shiraz, oh, they’re just worlds apart. It’s just completely different. And these are all these metabolic pathways that differ because of the genetics of these plants that breeders have sort of been mixing and matching over time.
It’s really fascinating. So aren’t a whole lot of crops in the world where such an enormous amount of attention is paid to that fine sort of aroma bit where the breeding target is actually an aromatic profile and not just how do we make it last on the shelf longer, which is kind of a more boring kind of thing to target. So yeah, I think that’s what attracted me to it, is that it’s a little bit like we work in apples and grapes and apples and grapes are kind of those kind of crops, right? It’s got to be something special about the crunch of the apple or the taste of the apple or the smell of that wine, that kind of thing. And cannabis, it’s highly similar, right? It’s unlike a carrot. The thing is, there’s really only three crops in the world where we actually name varieties.
And those varieties or that variety names are well known to the public. When you buy a carrot at the store, you don’t know what variety of carrot it is. Nobody tells you, oh, this is the Caesar carrot. Nobody cares. It’s a carrot. And in potatoes, you’ve got a little bit like you’ve got the Yukon potato, you got the russet potato. There’s a bit in tomatoes, they have shapes and sizes, but you really don’t go with the, you got the cherry tomato in the Roma tomato, but you don’t have names of tomatoes. But in wine, you definitely have names. And Pinot noir has been grown for a thousand years. Clonally propagated for a thousand years, Cabernet, souvignon and convert, and Riesling and so on. All of these names are named varieties. In Apple, we have ’em, honey Crisp, Macintosh Gala, so on. And in cannabis we do, but name another crop in the world where we’ve got that it belongs to a very special subset of things that are so intimately tied with our culture and that we have associated names to specific genetic identities. Unfortunately, that all got screwed up in cannabis where it’s not actually really associated with the genetic identity, but we want to, there’s a desire to, and that’s really unique. It stands on a platform with only a couple of other crops in the world where people really do care which variety they get. That’s something to tap into. That’s amazing. It sits in a very, very unique group of crops, for sure.
TG Branfalt:
A lot of people that I’ve spoken to have sort of projected that the cannabis industry should, and as you sort of mentioned already does in many ways mirror the wine industry. There’s cannabis sommeliers now, for example. Is it the estimation as well that this will ultimately be the look and feel of a sort of mature cannabis industry, especially in Canada, which is obviously going to be decades ahead of the US?
Sean Myles:
Yeah, I think I have a very poor ability to predict the future, but if I were to express a hope, that would certainly be my hope that it would move in that direction. So that strain names were reliable indicators of what’s inside your package, and that the description of the kinds of experiences that you would, or the aromatics and the type of flavor that you would get from a cannabis strain are accurately depicted on the package as well.
TG Branfalt:
And I want to ask you, did broad cannabis legalization in Canada change the landscape for cannabis research in the country?
Sean Myles:
Oh, absolutely. Yeah. No. If you think about how cannabis research gets done in the United States, in fact, I was in the United States when I started investigating the potential of doing some cannabis genetics research and quickly discovered that it was going to be impossible to do anything in
TG Branfalt:
Was at Cornell.
Sean Myles:
I was at Stanford at the time, actually, and that was impossible to do. And so I contacted a Canadian up in, at the time was in Saskatchewan doing research on hemp, and they said, yeah, no problem. I mean, we’re growing the stuff here in our federal research station, and it’s going to become legal soon, so this is going to blow everything up. This is the perfect time to get into this. So since then, yeah, I mean, when you want to do research, especially as an academic, like me, a professor at a university, you want to do research into a crop. Generally, your first step is to go and develop a relationship with industry. And previously you couldn’t do that with Gs, right? You couldn’t say, oh, yeah, well, the new sponsor of my research on this next project is the guy down the road.
You can’t do that. So now that there are real industrial players on board, there’s a lot of industry academic research collaborations that leverage government funding. So the government is putting money into investigating all sorts of things about cannabis, a lot on the medical side too, and the effects that it has, and on the public safety side. So at what age, when should people be consuming? What does it really do to your brain? What levels are dangerous? These sorts of things. And this is all necessary. This is good. So I think it’s good for an industry to do that stuff to get ahead of the ball and make sure that you’re the ones pushing that agenda of, we want to know more about this crop, and we want the public to be aware of what it is. And I think that will all lead to more precise information being given to the consumer, which is, that’s the goal.
TG Branfalt:
What are some of the holes that still persist when it comes to the agricultural side of cannabis research?
Sean Myles:
I think better sampling for sure. We’ve done a couple of these small studies. There’s a couple of other studies that have been done on diverse samples of cannabis to get an idea of what the genetic structure really looks like. How well does the labeling actually reflect the genetic identity of the plants? And these sorts, do strain names make any sense anywhere. Just because we do it in a couple of samples, one from the Netherlands and one from Canada doesn’t mean that it’s the case everywhere. So I think just more broader sampling for sure. And then the next step is to implement those kinds of insights that we’re getting from breeding to generate novel varieties that perform better, that require less chemical input to grow. So one of the big things is to try to introduce powdering mildew resistance into strains. There’s a lot of disease damage in cannabis and a lot of challenges growing in indoors like that and spider mites and things like some kind of resistance to some of the main pests. And then there’s also like auto flowering and things like that. But could we get a better generation time? Could we get more energy in the plant going into the bud rather than vegetative growth? So all these things, those are going to be like the breeding targets of the future going to be how, because it’s become industrial, it is going to be very much, how do we generate more cannabis per square foot?
And I think that’s going to be aided by a lot of this genetics research that’s being done.
TG Branfalt:
And finally, what advice do you have for researchers interested in exploring some of these cannabis topics?
Sean Myles:
I think talk to industry members and find out where the need is, right? It’s nice to be able to do academic research for the sake of doing research, and that’s great. If you got money to do it and it’s all from the government, that’s great, but really, you got to find where the itch is and then go try to scratch it. So if you talk to industry members and they say, look, our biggest problem right now is X, then what can you do to go and try to address X? And that’s the next steps are going to, that’s where the big wins are going to be over the next decade.
TG Branfalt:
It’s really fascinating stuff. There’s, again, not a lot of people really on the forefront of answering these questions, so I really do appreciate you taking the time to come and explain some of these things and really sort of enlighten people. I think about this sort of dichotomy, as it were. Where can people find out more about you and more about the research that you do?
Sean Myles:
Yeah, we’ve got a website for the lab. We’re cultivatingdiversity.org. Dot org. You can check us out. We’re a small lab just doing our thing up here in Canada, and all of our publications are listed there. Most of what we do is work on apples, you’ll see. But it’s good to dip our fingers in the cannabis every once in a while. I mean,
TG Branfalt:
The studies that we’ve done have been cited hundreds and hundreds of times.
Sean Myles:
Yeah, yeah. No, it’s obviously it’s a popular plant to work on. If I did this stuff in quinoa, I don’t think anybody would be very interested. So when you do something, you do research on cannabis and reveal something that’s of interest to the public, then it inevitably produces some public interest. Right.
TG Branfalt:
Well, this has been Dr. Sean Myles. He’s an associate professor of agriculture at Dalhousie University. I really, really appreciate your time coming onto the show, man, and can’t wait to see what else you produce in the future.
Sean Myles:
Yeah, thanks, Tim. Thanks for the chat. I appreciate it.
TG Branfalt:
You can find the episodes of the Ganjapreneur.com podcast in the podcast section of Ganjapreneur.com or wherever you get your podcast. On the Ganjapreneur.com website, you’ll find the latest cannabis news and cannabis jobs Daily, daily, along with transcripts of this podcast. You can also download the Ganjapreneur.com app in iTunes and Google Play. This episode was engineered by Way Sound Studios. I’ve been your host, TG Branfalt.
In this episode of the Ganjapreneur podcast, host TG Branfalt connects with the multi-talented Ngaio Bealum. Ngaio is a true cannabis renaissance man—comedian, musician, writer, actor, and activist—known for his work as a host of numerous events and shows, including the International Cannabis Business Conference, and the Emerald Cup. In this engaging conversation, Ngaio shares his journey from performer to cannabis advocate, discussing how his background in activism and entertainment has shaped his approach to cannabis education and advocacy, what role entertainment plays in educating the public about cannabis, and more. Listen to the episode below or in your favorite podcast app, or scroll down for the full transcript!
Listen to the episode:Ganjapreneur · Ngaio Bealum: Building Cannabis Community with Comedy and ActivismFull transcript:Editor’s note: this transcript was auto-generated and may contain typos/errors.
TG Branfalt (00:09):
Hey there, I’m your host, TG Branfalt, and this is the Ganjapreneur.com podcast where we try to bring you actionable information and normalized cannabis through the stories of ganjapreneurs, activists and industry stakeholders. Today I am real excited to be joined by Ngaio Bealum. He’s a comedian, musician, writer, actor, activist, previous host of the Cannabis Planet and host of the International Cannabis Business Conference and Emerald Cup. How are you doing this morning, my good man?
Ngaio Bealum (00:37):
I’m awake, which is the first step. We wouldn’t, it’s first step to most days last night. Yeah. Yeah. Wake up every day is a good day if you’re awake and relatively free.
TG Branfalt (00:50):
Relatively free is–
Ngaio Bealum (00:51):
Relatively way to describe it. We all have minor hangups and problems constraining our true freedom, but we’re doing our best.
TG Branfalt (00:58):
So before we get into your role as basically a cannabis renaissance man, tell me about yourself. Give me a little bit of background on how you ended up the entertainer, the host, the sort of human being you’ve become.
Ngaio Bealum (01:17):
I’m an Aquarius, six foot three. I like long walks from the beach. Any kind of good music, I don’t know, man. I was a comedian and a street performer and I started smoking weed and really looking into why weed wasn’t legal and it seemed like bullshit to me, and I come from a long line of activists. So we just started activating and you have to offer what skills you have, and it turns out I’m pretty funny and I’m good at handling crowds and disseminating information. And so it just worked out like that. So I posted, I host the Oregon Hemp Fest and the Arizona Growers Cup and the Missouri Growers Cup and the old Seattle Hemp Fest and a bunch of different things. I’ve done some High Times Cups, I do the Emerald Cup every year. I do the International Cannabis Business Conference series. We do Berlin, we do Barcelona, we’ve done Zurich and Vancouver. It’s just really nice.
TG Branfalt (02:14):
So first off, what role do you think that entertainers or people in that sphere should have in activism, specifically in cannabis?
Ngaio Bealum (02:26):
I mean, I think every entertainer should be way more, not every, but a lot of entertainers should be more active activists than they are now. I mean, I think that’s just part of the thing you do. You know what I mean? And so for me it’s just kind of a no brainer. And entertainment and education kind of go head in hand if listen to old Ks one albums, the whole ed, if you think of Rocks edu, if you think of even things like, so we were supposed to be entertainment every day and we’re supposed to learn every day, so why not combine the two?
TG Branfalt (03:08):
And a lot of the standup that I’ve seen, it’s very smart, and I think all good standup. I mean, you look at George Carlin
Ngaio Bealum (03:15):
Like standup in general, or my standup in particular?
TG Branfalt (03:17):
Your standup in particular
Ngaio Bealum (03:19):
Did a lot of me standup. I seen, I was like, I’ve seen some pretty dumb standup, which is also great.
TG Branfalt (03:25):
But I think
Ngaio Bealum (03:26):
That I like stupid standup as well.
TG Branfalt (03:28):
The stuff that I really enjoy is the sort of smartest side. Like I said, Carlin, I really enjoy what came first for you. Obviously you probably used cannabis before you were an entertainer, but how’d you work that into your routine?
Ngaio Bealum (03:46):
You talk about what you know, right? That’s what they always tell writers. Talk about what you know. So I have two albums. One is called Weed and Sex, and the other is called Weeder and Sexier, which means, of course, weediest and Sexiest will be probably coming out sometime this year. Next
TG Branfalt (04:03):
What comes after Weediest and Sexiest?
Ngaio Bealum (04:06):
Lemme just get high and look at it. No, so I mean, that’s just how it is. I wanted to spread the word of cannabis legalization and activism and give people good information about cannabis in a fun and entertaining manner. And it just happened to work out like that. It’s interesting because when I first started 30 years ago, everybody was like, oh, well, we already have teaching ch, we don’t really need another pot comic. All he does is talking about pot, which is not true. But now that 30 years later, cannabis is legal in some form between the six different states, and we Why, and Germany just decriminalized now they’re like, oh, we need more pot comics, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So you could have listened to me 30 years ago, I’m not bitter,
TG Branfalt (05:03):
But 30 years ago, I mean more than 30 years ago, we had Cheech and Chong, right? In my sort of lifetime, the big movies were Friday. And so how has legalization changed?
Ngaio Bealum (05:18):
A lot of times, and this is just a thing for me, a lot of times in a lot of those cannabis movies, the stoner’s not the hero, right? Chris Tucker’s not really the hero in Friday. Anna Ferris loses all of her stuff in her stoner movie. Even the Afroman song, he fails repeatedly because he got high, which was bullshit, right? I was going to clean my house, and so I got high not, but then I got high, and so I got high because I had a nice sativa, helps me clean shit, and that’s how I feel about it. You think about Half Baked, he had to give up weed to stay with that girl. So we are trying to make cannabis users the heroes and not just tattoo have problems until they give up weed, which seems to be bullshit.
TG Branfalt (06:04):
Is there anything sort of contemporarily in the mainstream that does in your estimation, paint cannabis consumers as heroes?
Ngaio Bealum (06:13):
Cabin in the Woods? The stoner is correct the whole time.
TG Branfalt (06:19):
It’s not something I’ve ever seen actually.
Ngaio Bealum (06:23):
It’s a good horror movie, but he sees through the whole conspiracy, so he knows the whole, he figures it out right away.
TG Branfalt (06:30):
Wouldn’t that raise some questions though, that cannabis consumers are conspiratorial and thinking?
Ngaio Bealum (06:37):
Well, it’s not conspiracy if it’s actually true.
TG Branfalt (06:41):
That’s true.
Ngaio Bealum (06:43):
And the movie rules, so he just figured it out.
TG Branfalt (06:48):
So you’ve been a journalist For a long time. And currently you’re penning a Dear D column.
Ngaio Bealum (06:58):
Oh man, I haven’t written that one in a minute. So I’ve been a cannabis advice columnist for the Sacramento News Review. I did some for I think the Alternate, and I was the weekly columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle for a long time. And yeah, I think I did. Dear Gabby, for Leafly, shout out David Downs. We just did San Francisco Weed Week. I was the host of mc for a bunch of events out there, and it was fantastic.
TG Branfalt (07:25):
What were some of the challenges to penning a cannabis advice column?
Ngaio Bealum (07:31):
Make sure you have good advice. Call the experts.
(07:37):
That’s really the deal. Being a cannabis advice column columnist is almost like, let me Google that for you, but also I know a lot of people, so somebody has a good question. I’m like, oh, Ed probably knows the answer to that. He grows weed, or Lisa probably knows the answer to that. She wrote a whole book about weed and sex, or you call your homies who specialize in these things and you look up the news and you call an elected official or a police officer or two, and you’re like, what is the real rule on this? And sometimes you just go with your own personal experience, right? Like TSA doesn’t really give a shit. If you have a small amount of cannabis. If you bring a bunch of cannabis and try to be a little sneaky asshole about it, they’ll fuck with you. But if you got a few grams here or there that you can reasonably argue personal use, it’s not going to blow up the plane.
TG Branfalt (08:25):
What intrigued you about doing an advice column?
Ngaio Bealum (08:28):
Advice? It was not really my idea. I was running West Coast Cannabis magazine and it was falling apart. I don’t want to talk about it, but my homie who was working at the Sacramento News and Review, because I called him looking for work, I’m like, Hey man, I need some work. Let me write some stories for you. He was like, Hey, why don’t you do a weed column? And I was like, yeah, why don’t I do a weed column? That’s a good idea. And so we started out with the Ask 420 column of the Sacramento News Review, and I did that for five, six, let’s see, 2000, shit, I did it almost like 10 years, like 2010, 2011 to the pandemic.
TG Branfalt (09:09):
Is there a question that you were asked during your tenure doing that that sticks out to you as just kind of super weird?
Ngaio Bealum (09:18):
No, there’s no weird questions, only weird people.
TG Branfalt (09:26):
Is there any weird people that may stick out to you during that tenure?
Ngaio Bealum (09:33):
I can’t really think of anything. I mean, it’s just the usual, how will this cannabis affect me? I feel weird buying weed for my grandfather because he’s sick and I’m a super deep Christian, but this cannabis is really helping him, and I dunno how to reconcile that. Can I stick this medicated lollipop in my ass? These aren’t, it’s not rocket signs. Yes, you can.
TG Branfalt (10:03):
Not going to hurt in the long,
Ngaio Bealum (10:04):
You probably want one with a different shape. It’s the shape of the lollipop that’s the problem because you want one with the tapered in,
TG Branfalt (10:11):
So you have to mold it in that way for,
Ngaio Bealum (10:14):
You don’t want to get it stuck. So really you should just buy a different, anyway, a different device.
TG Branfalt (10:21):
So I mean, in your role as in entertainment, you had cooking on high, which was on Netflix. How can these sort of new mediums do you think help to maybe challenge the previously held cannabis stigmas? The ones that A, B-C-N-B-C-C-B-S, right? And all these sort of legacy news channels really opposed
Ngaio Bealum (10:42):
Shit, man, they still really oppose it. I mean, YouTube doesn’t like weed that much. Instagram hates me. Snapchat is kind of cool. TikTok is really strict about it. You can’t even say weed, you have to spell it. O-U-I-D. Wait for real, right? Oui’d, like your French. So I mean, I don’t know if we’ve really overcome a lot of propaganda. I’m Ngaio420. I built a lot of cannabis followers because I was on Netflix and all these other things. If I post a picture of cannabis or talk about a brand, Instagram gets super upset. I mean, I guess it’s okay to smoke weed or if I post a little stupid funny cannabis meme, Instagram loves it. They spread that one all around. But if I post some shit like, Hey, here’s some new rules, or here’s the new law, or here’s a new strain I just tried from these guys. They’re like, oh, you can’t do that. That’s promoting for use, and yet there’s people drinking the whole time. It’s still in uphill battle battles never state won.
TG Branfalt (11:44):
So when you post the stuff under your name and it gets, like has your account ever been banned or anything over?
Ngaio Bealum (11:56):
I’ve been shadow banned for sure. I think it’s stemming from the time I tried to raffle off a bong, which, fair enough. I was pushing, I was pushing the envelope a little bit on that. I don’t think I’ve ever been, I think I was locked out of my account for a couple of days once until we figure it out. But I’ve never, they threatened to ban me and I have friends who get banned, not all the time, but they’ve been banned a few times. I try to keep it pretty cool. I’ve tried to follow the rules, but it’s hard because I just want to talk about, that’s my whole thing. If I find some good weed, I want to spread the word. You know what I mean? Or if I find some bad weed, I want to spread the word. Or if I have some good cannabis advice, I want to spread the word and they won’t let me do it.
TG Branfalt (12:40):
So I’ve read,
Ngaio Bealum (12:42):
And it’s weird because if you have a smaller account, you’re kind of under the radar. You can do almost anything you want. But once you get to a certain point, then there’s scrutiny until you get to an even bigger point, and then you can do almost anything you want to hear. So I need like 400,000 more followers. If your listeners are listening, I know you have 400,000 listeners, have them all,
TG Branfalt (13:05):
But then you’ll get real banned because they’ll know what you’re doing.
Ngaio Bealum (13:10):
No, it’s not buying followers.
TG Branfalt (13:14):
No, no, no, no. But because then you’ll be I’ll beg and they’ll know underground anymore. You’ll sold
Ngaio Bealum (13:21):
Out. Listen, high times gets to buy ads on Instagram, and yet I can’t smoke a bong. It’s just the weirdest thing. I don’t understand the rules. I feel like the rules are arbitrary and capricious, and depending on which federal agent you have watching your Instagram account at any particular time, that’s how far they’ll let you go.
TG Branfalt (13:43):
They’re definitely watching everyone’s accounts,
Ngaio Bealum (13:46):
Even as we speak.
TG Branfalt (13:48):
Even as we speak, there’ll be privacy. They’ll be writing this by hand, transcribing this by hand,
Ngaio Bealum (13:52):
Privacy is dead, discretion is forever.
TG Branfalt (13:57):
I mean, it’s given me convenience or give me death sort of atmosphere at this point, right? We’re totally happy to be tracked as long as they’re selling us Nikes, right?
Ngaio Bealum (14:07):
No, I don’t want them to sell me Nikes. They sell me golf things and advice on how to meet thick women apparently is what Instagram thinks that I’m all about. Here’s some golf apparel and here’s some cute, thick girls.
TG Branfalt (14:21):
Are you a good golfer?
Ngaio Bealum (14:23):
I like to golf.
TG Branfalt (14:26):
I like to golf badly On nice days.
Ngaio Bealum (14:31):
I just like to golf. Sometimes I’m halfway decent for a hot minute, and sometimes I’m not a very good golfer at all.
TG Branfalt (14:37):
How does weed help your golf game? I
Ngaio Bealum (14:38):
Still enjoy it. Weed does not help my golf game. I wish it did. I keep trying to find the right strain because I used to warm up and then smoke some weed and then see it goes and try to lock it in. I think it’s better for me if I get a little high on the way to the golf course and then let it smooth out by the time I get to the golf course. But I can’t just smoke weed constantly, then the overthinking starts. That’s the thing about golf. You have a lot of time to think to yourself, and so then it’s like, oh, I want to put my elbow here and my knee here and the thing. No, shut up. Hit the fucking ball. Quit thinking. I
TG Branfalt (15:12):
Do like driving the cart though. Stoned. It’s pretty great.
Ngaio Bealum (15:16):
Oh yeah. I mean, yeah, listen, I like being stoned on the golf course as well. It’s very nice. But if I’m trying to take it seriously, if I have to beat my brother, then I have to pay attention to what’s going on. If I’m just mucking about it, if it’s a practice round, then sure, whatever practice round
TG Branfalt (15:31):
Every round for me is a practice round. My man. I’m terrible.
Ngaio Bealum (15:34):
Amen.
TG Branfalt (15:36):
So I’ve read on the internet every
Ngaio Bealum (15:37):
Day is a practice round get you in on,
TG Branfalt (15:43):
I’ve read on the internet that you have a love for Sungrown cannabis.
Ngaio Bealum (15:46):
I love.
TG Branfalt (15:48):
So tell me about that preference.
Ngaio Bealum (15:53):
I personally think it tastes better. I think it’s better for the environment. The sun is relatively free. Cannabis knows what to do. And I understand we’re doing sungrown. You can get one. I mean, if you’re doing greenhouse now, you can get 2, 3, 4 light death. You can get 2, 3, 4 harvest a year. And I understand people are like, we only get one harvest a year. Some shit happens, blah, blah, blah. But I don’t know. I just like it. I like the whole vibe, right? I’m here for the plant. I’m here for the hippie farmer action. And a lot of times you go to these states where they’ve just legalized weed and it’s all indoor facilities, but you could tell it tastes like commercial pressure. It tastes like we have to get this done in eight weeks. We have to stay on the schedule. What if your cannabis needs a little longer than that?
TG Branfalt (16:42):
Do you think that consumers would be willing to pay more for the stuff that’s harvested once a year, sungrown small farm? Because
Ngaio Bealum (16:52):
You would think, but no, they won’t. We really need to work more on, how would I say, cannabis appreciation classes like cannabis tasting. You do wine tasting. A lot of people just look at, ah, I just want the shit that’s 31% THC because I’m trying to get fucked up. I’m like, well, you’re going to get fucked up, but it may not be the high you want, right? Look for what’s it smell like? Look for the terpene profiles. You, you might do better at something at 19% because then you could smoke that whole joint while you watch the sunset as opposed to just two hits and then one of your friends is freaking out because he’s a lightweight, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So I think more understanding of what to taste for, what to look for, how to vibe with cannabis. The problem of course is people want to treat it like cigarettes, right? Comes prepackaged. Now it’s more like pipe tobacco or a fancy cigar or a fancy wine. Sure, you can get two buck chuck, but you should also be able to buy some bordeaux la fu or whatever.
TG Branfalt (18:06):
Yeah, I mean, I’m pushing 40, right? I consider myself a mature cannabis consumer, and that’s what I look for. Do you think that that’s sort of a demographic thing? Us we’re not 20 anymore. You think that that’s the route that we’re just going to go to? The people that your friends, your friends are probably sort of higher class smokers too, but are you seeing that sort of trend? Personally,
Ngaio Bealum (18:30):
I definitely hang out with a bunch of weed nerds for sure. But I’ve also smoked,
TG Branfalt (18:35):
Maybe it’s just a weed nerd
Ngaio Bealum (18:36):
Swag. I don’t know. I mean, I’ll buy a six pack of Budweiser. Well, I won’t buy a six pack of Budweiser, but I’ll buy a six pack of regular beer to go to the party, but then when I get home, I got to Sam Adams or get it, you know what I mean? So I think it depends on what you’re doing. If you’re just going to show up at a party with a big half ounce, two half ounce of weed so you can roll blunts all day, that makes perfect sense. I try not to make fun of people for having weird tasting weed or for liking chain restaurants that are actually horrible, but they grew up in a small town and that was the fanciest place. I really had to stop making fun of people for that. That’s not their fault. So education more than ridicule at all times.
TG Branfalt (19:25):
And you do a lot of the education kind of focused events, the Hempfest and things like that. And is the response different among crowds as a comedian? Is that response, is that hosting gig different when you’re around those types of crowds than maybe other just standup stuff you do for regular standup crowd?
Ngaio Bealum (19:53):
What I’m hosting, it’s not always necessarily about getting the jokes off, but about creating a vibe and getting some jokes in. But also you can target it more So if you’re doing a grower’s festival or a hemp festival, all your jokes about trimmers, everybody knows what you’re talking about. Whereas if I’m just doing a regular comedy club show and I talk about getting a repetitive stress injury from trimming, it may not be the same. It may not be the same. So I don’t know. You can get deeper into it when you all have the same kind of base of cannabis knowledge. But funny’s funny man. You just got to find a way work.
TG Branfalt (20:37):
So has your, I don’t want to say routine, but how have you been able to adapt your knowledge to hosting in that sort of thing? In the wake of legalization? I understand the repetitive injury from trimming thing that wouldn’t have really made a whole lot of sense 25 years ago
Ngaio Bealum (21:00):
Right now. But also I do different jump now. One of my things is about now that that cannabis is legal and you can have a job in the cannabis industry, that means that it’s not so bad when you show up at the parent-teacher conference smelling a little bit like weed. I just got off work.
TG Branfalt (21:22):
And you do talk about cannabis consumption as a parent?
Ngaio Bealum (21:28):
Yes. Weed made me a better parent for sure. My kids, my adults are awesome.
TG Branfalt (21:35):
Now, I don’t have any children myself. And so I do like to ask this question because I grew up with, it was very open. My mom openly consumed cannabis and she gave me my first bowl as a matter of fact. I mean, truth be told. Nice. I’m 15 years old. Here you go. You don’t know how to roll, take this fucking brass pipe. But what was it for you raising bras?
Ngaio Bealum (21:56):
Bras, pipe.
TG Branfalt (21:57):
Oh yeah, the fucking brass pipe. Boat,
Ngaio Bealum (21:59):
Bro. Pipe.
TG Branfalt (22:00):
That’s exactly what it was. I shit you not I shit, you die
Ngaio Bealum (22:05):
Shit.
TG Branfalt (22:06):
Exactly right.
Ngaio Bealum (22:09):
I had always been on my kids. Some things are for adults like drinking and weed and drugs and some things are not for kids, and that’s just how it is. So you should wait until college and that was kind my whole thing. I always like, if you want to do drugs in college, once you get your shit together and prove that you can be a somewhat semi responsible young adult. If you want to start experimenting with things like smoke some weed, be careful with alcohol, stay off the pills. That’s kind of my whole advice the whole way. Do some mushrooms every once in a while if you really want to, but do it mindfully. Don’t just be taking mushrooms and fucking off white boy. Wasted is a form of privilege.
TG Branfalt (22:46):
That’s very true,
Ngaio Bealum (22:48):
Right? Because you just think everything’s going to work out. It doesn’t always work out like that.
TG Branfalt (22:52):
No, I mean, I also grew up very rurally, so I mean doing, you
Ngaio Bealum (22:57):
Kind of have to get fucked up when you live that
TG Branfalt (22:58):
Far. Yeah, and get away with it, right, because the cops would show up and they’d just tell you to go fuck off. Right? That’s not what happened when I moved to cities and stuff. The disparity is fucking real,
Ngaio Bealum (23:12):
Real, real,
TG Branfalt (23:13):
Real, real. What is your preferred method of consumption? I see you spoke a lot of joints.
Ngaio Bealum (23:20):
I smoke a lot of joints. Shout out DaySavers. I’m asking those white guys for a job, so shout ’em out. They make great rolling papers. I like bones. I like the blunt. Every once in a while, dabs make me quiet. So I don’t always do ’em at public because I can’t be at a hosting a festival. And they’re like, dude, these dabs, they’re like, well, they’re paying me to talk. They’re not paying me to sit in the corner eating snacks, making up backstories, random people that I see. Just in my head, that guy looks like he used to be a senator. He’s probably a high school coach. Good to see you Reverend.
TG Branfalt (23:56):
Has legalization changed your methods of consumption?
Ngaio Bealum (24:05):
I smoke in the street more often. I dunno what you mean by changed my methods of consumption. I mean, I still
TG Branfalt (24:11):
Smoke. Well, prior to legalization, for whatever reason, I didn’t smoke as many joints and then weed was legal. It was relatively cheaper. Somehow I live near a reservation. That probably helps. That
Ngaio Bealum (24:21):
Probably helps.
TG Branfalt (24:22):
And so now I just predominantly smoke joints. Don’t know.
Ngaio Bealum (24:26):
They’re also very convenient. A pre-roll is very easy to buy these days. You can just get a joint on your way. You can roll a joint. I mean, I like joints because they don’t break if you drop ’em.
(24:39):
Right? That’s true. And they’re scalable. If you have a small pipe and there’s 15 people in the circle, but you can just roll a bigger joint or roll three joints and pass them around. You know what I mean? They’re not the most efficient way to smoke weed probably. But also putting a cloud of weed in the air is still a form of civil disobedience. It’s also a call to fellowship. You understand? If you are walking down the street and you smell some people smoking weed or whatever, you see the circle odds are you can step inside, at least say hello, say what’s up. Maybe if you brought a bowl too, you’d be like, Hey, now you made new friends. Right? You stand in the circle. It denotes equality. It’s like peers.
TG Branfalt (25:21):
This interview is coming on the heels of you seeing a phish show in Nevada,
Ngaio Bealum (25:27):
Vegas at the sphere,
TG Branfalt (25:30):
The big ball in the middle of the city.
Ngaio Bealum (25:33):
The big ball.
TG Branfalt (25:35):
Yeah. It’s been Memed a lot. What was it like in Nevada? Are there consumption lounges? Are people smoking on the street?
Ngaio Bealum (25:47):
You’re not supposed to smoke on the street. People don’t really smoke on the strip. They have a couple of consumption lounges now. New W has a lounge. I think Planet 13 has a lounge behind Resorts World. World. The Artisan Hotel has a cannabis springy smoking wing of their hotel now.
TG Branfalt (26:09):
Really?
Ngaio Bealum (26:10):
So you can book a room? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It’s kind of funny. Even though cannabis is legal and you can get a smoking room in a hotel, a lot of hotels don’t want you to smoke cannabis in the smoking room, which is weird because I always think that weed makes smoking rooms smell better. If you’ve ever got a smoking room in a hotel, they smell like nicotine and regret. But sometimes you can make it smell like weed and sex, and that’s better. That’s better for me. So I mean, I think it’s easier to hang out in LA now that cannabis is legal, even though I don’t feel like as much of a dangerous outlaw as I used to. But it still, it’s probably better as we get older and mellow out. It’s still a good time.
TG Branfalt (26:55):
Do you ever miss that
Ngaio Bealum (26:57):
They do a lot of weed things. I do miss that feeling. I miss that feeling. Sometimes I go to Idaho and carry weed around just so I could be nervous again.
TG Branfalt (27:07):
I also miss that feeling quite a lot actually.
Ngaio Bealum (27:12):
But I also got to say, I got to say, maybe you just hot box your car and now you’re standing in the Starbucks and a bunch of cops walk in and it’s not a problem. That’s fantastic. Right? I was smoking a joint on K Street waiting for the bus in San Francisco, and three sheriff’s deputies walked by while I’ve smoking this joint, and it was just like, Hey, what’s up? Oh yeah, hey, what’s up? And that was it.
TG Branfalt (27:33):
I still sometimes get, I got pulled over and I had an ounce in my car, and I was a little nervous still knowing that I’m in New York, I’m straight. Right?
Ngaio Bealum (27:47):
You’re all good. It’s a whole different feeling, man. It’s a whole different feeling. I was just in Berlin for the International Cannabis Business Conference and we’re staying at the extra hotel. And apparently the weekend before our conference, there was a lot of stuff going on in Berlin. There’s all these protests. There’s a big soccer match. So they had brought in some cops from out of town, a bunch of cops. We look like a fucking police convention at the hotel I’m at. And at first I was like, oh, Jesus Christ, this is not what I need right now. But then I realized, hey, they just decriminalized cannabis in Germany and you can actually smoke in the street. That’s part of the rules. I think it’s like before 9:00 AM and after 6:00 PM So while everybody’s in working that’s supposed to smoke in the street, be responsible. But after that, if you’re just walking around, you can smoke. And so I was standing outside the lobby doing my thing and it was not a problem. It was fantastic.
TG Branfalt (28:46):
And you were there right after they passed the bill? It must have been.
Ngaio Bealum (28:51):
Yeah, yeah, yeah. They passed the bill April 1st and I got into Germany April 8th.
TG Branfalt (28:59):
Or what was the atmosphere like among the attendees of the conference?
Ngaio Bealum (29:04):
Everybody’s very excited. But here’s the thing. A lot of the stories you read will say that Germany legalized cannabis and they didn’t really, they just super decriminalize it. So now you can carry 25 grams in your pocket. You can have 50 grams at the house. You can grow three plants per person wherever you live in all the counties. Bavaria has to fucking do it as well. And they can’t, Bavaria can’t be all square like Texas. They have to go along with it, but you still can’t really find a place to buy it. You still got to go to Gritz or Park. It’s so funny, I was at this one nightclub and people kept walking up to me and trying to buy drugs, weed or whatever. All these drugs is Berlin. And at first I was like, man, I think y’all are kind of racist. But then I realized what, I’m also in a town where I don’t know anybody. I also look for a friendly dreadlock person, try to buy drugs from, so sometimes sweeping generalizations to be effective.
TG Branfalt (30:07):
That is actually the exact, I
Ngaio Bealum (30:10):
Lost you. Hold on. Oh, there you go. What’d you say?
TG Branfalt (30:13):
That is actually the exact demographic in which I bought weed from a DJ in France.
Ngaio Bealum (30:19):
Friendly dreadlock person, correct? Yes.
TG Branfalt (30:24):
It was great weed too. It was cheap.
Ngaio Bealum (30:28):
The odd on your side, the on side. I’ve bought good hash with some friendly dreadlock people all over the world.
TG Branfalt (30:36):
Why haven’t we seen a lot of black hash post legalization? You think
Ngaio Bealum (30:44):
A lot of black hash you said?
TG Branfalt (30:46):
Yeah, black hash.
Ngaio Bealum (30:48):
You mean like the old tool, like the Moroccan style?
TG Branfalt (30:50):
Yeah. Yeah.
Ngaio Bealum (30:51):
Go to Europe, bro. Bro. It’s all, all solventless handmade chara style. This is fresher Morocco. This is the Morocco style. This is the French he kno style. They smoke that stuff all the time. They throw it in a tobacco cigarette. Those guys love a little hash. Lisbon loves hash. Spain loves hash. Germany loves hash. London loves hash.
TG Branfalt (31:13):
But it seems a little strange that we have legalization in the states and black hash is still really kind of hard to find. I find
Ngaio Bealum (31:20):
That strange because the weed nerds live rozen, bro. It’s all the terpenes, bro. This is 92%. I’m low temps. I’m a low temp smoker. You’re going to burn off all those vital fucking terpenes, bro. If you’re, your temperature are too high, listen, different terpenes. What strain is it? Because my heat temperature signature is very specific to the strain that I’m smoking at this point. Because people like to nerd out. People like to be fancy, and there’s nothing wrong with that. You can smoke regular good old fashioned Moroccan style hash all you want, but some people are like, oh, this is a live resin razin whip. Check out the diamonds, bro. I’m coming in at 98.65% THC.
TG Branfalt (32:10):
Can you fuck with that?
Ngaio Bealum (32:13):
Like I said, it makes me quiet. I don’t do it. I fuck with it one time. I tell people all the time, the more dabs you do, the more dabs you’re going to do. Right? It makes your tolerance a little wild. And so that’s how people get super up deep into it. I’m like, dabs should always be a sweet, not necessarily an everyday thing. At least for me. I don’t judge anybody for how they use drugs as long as they’re responsible adults.
TG Branfalt (32:40):
I’ve learned from being in my mid twenties when diamonds started emerging and dabbing diamonds and the fear, man, the fear was real. I couldn’t do it.
Ngaio Bealum (32:53):
You can definitely smoke yourself into a panic attack. But I mean, one of my favorite things that we’ve learned from cannabis over the past 15, 20 years is that THC is not the end all be all of cannabis enjoyment, right? There’s C, B, D, there’s CDN, there’s C, B, G, there’s all the cannabinoids, all the terpenes and the entourage effect work to make the experience more pleasant. And so I think that’s the deal is you want to find the combination that works for you as opposed to just being, oh, well this one’s 35% tt. It’s obviously way better than this one is 29% TT it. It’s not necessarily true. I put out a line of three roles one time and they tested it like 18% THC, but I would tell everybody, I was like, don’t let that label fool you because you’re going to be high as hell. You’re going to be high as hell off of this. And then they would kind of laugh at me and then they would take two hits and they’d be like, dude, I’m really fucked up right now. I was like, I told you, because it’s not just about the THC content, what the terpenes do, how they all interact.
TG Branfalt (33:57):
Are you referring to the mothership farms line?
Ngaio Bealum (34:01):
This was the Green Shock Farms line. Oh no. It did come off of mothership. Yeah. So green. So Greens Shock Farms was the farmer. Shout out Mark and the crew. And then Mothership was a distributor. So when mothership presents, when Guile four 20 presents, green Shot Farms’, a lot of hands.
TG Branfalt (34:22):
And I’ve always had this question, how much of a sort of role did you have in choosing the stuff that had your name on it?
Ngaio Bealum (34:30):
Bro, the biggest role. It’s got my name on it, but my whole concept was I’m going to go out into the woods and I’m going to talk my homies out of their head stash. Not the regular shit that they grow for everybody. Like, Hey, I only got two pounds of this, dude, I need a pound and a half of it. No, you can’t listen. I need a pound of this. The people have to smoke this, right? We’re only releasing 600, 700 of these. Because I had to talk about, I almost had to wrestle him to get him to let go of some of this weed that I think you will all enjoy. I’m not just letting you throw some shit out there. I’m calling my homies. I’m going out into the woods and smoking with my boy sticky and smoking with my boy mark and smoking with my other homies. Can I get some of this pink Tanzi cross? No, man, I get it. Come on dog. I got to have so, but people need it. That’s my whole thing. I like to Go ahead.
TG Branfalt (35:20):
If you were looking for, if were going to release another product, would you sort of take the same approach to find another partner? Or would you maybe track down some good stuff that you had maybe not encountered in the woods, if you will?
Ngaio Bealum (35:35):
Well, there’s a couple ways to do it, right? If you have a good distributor, they probably know some people, so you can look at who they’re working with and talk to those guys and be like, I want to introduce one of your, what’s your favorite shape? Maybe not necessarily you’re the best seller because people look for certain names as work, but what’s something you think people would really get a kick out of? And then if I enjoy it, then I can spread the word, Hey, this is my shed right here. Try this chocolate hashberry, try this, whatnot. Get into it. And I think that’s a good way because I don’t know, it’s so tough. Everybody always wants to make a new strain. Everybody wants to be the next cookies or train wreck or things like that. And I think it’s great, but I also think we need to remember to hold on to some heirloom strains. Where did the champagne go? What happened to the AK 47? Where’s the Blue City diesel? Things like that.
TG Branfalt (36:29):
I always tell my friends, and I don’t know if this is something that y’all had in California, beers
Ngaio Bealum (36:36):
BC Bud.
TG Branfalt (36:37):
That’s where it allegedly came from. I missed that shit, man.
Ngaio Bealum (36:41):
Allegedly.
TG Branfalt (36:42):
Allegedly. Of course, it’s allegedly.
Ngaio Bealum (36:44):
It came from there. Those BC Bud used to come flooding that, especially with when the Los Angeles cannabis dispensaries really started to take off in the two thousands. I wouldn’t say the market was flooded with BC Bud, but there was a lot coming down because the supply and demand was crazy at that
TG Branfalt (37:04):
Point. I always really liked that shit. And it’s like gone forever in the ether.
Ngaio Bealum (37:11):
It’s still in British Columbia now. Nobody needs to smuggle it down here anymore,
TG Branfalt (37:17):
But I’m going to go smuggle it down here because I miss, I do. I miss it town.
Ngaio Bealum (37:24):
Go to Vancouver. Go to Vancouver. S smoke some weed. You’ll recognize it.
TG Branfalt (37:30):
I go as far as Toronto,
Ngaio Bealum (37:33):
I love Toronto.
TG Branfalt (37:35):
I also love Toronto. I mean, so Canada’s a civilizes country and all.
Ngaio Bealum (37:40):
I like the all night Montreal bagel place in Toronto.
TG Branfalt (37:44):
Yes, that is a very good place. Post legalization.
Ngaio Bealum (37:48):
There’s a place I’m talking about with the wood oven. Yeah, they got the wood oven. They’re open like 24 hours. And you get that Montreal style bagel,
TG Branfalt (37:55):
That Montreal style bagels. Legit
Ngaio Bealum (37:58):
Bra. Bra. I’m here for it.
TG Branfalt (38:01):
And one more question, sort of going back to sort of strain names and weed nerd stuff. Do you foresee that’s where the industry goes, that we move away from strain names and we start going and buying stuff by like, all right, I want the X amount of this cannabinoid, so on and so forth, and move away from strain names.
Ngaio Bealum (38:24):
I don’t know if the testing is going to be that exact for that. I think what I see, because we were moving away from the deli style where you go in, used to go in, they have all the jars and open the jar. Yeah, that’s the one that they pull out a couple grams for you because the smell, right, the terpenes make your body react. Because weed loves us and wants us to be happy. All the different terpenes have different smells. So you get to, oh, I always like to smell for black pepper. Or if that’s pine trees, then that’s the one for me. Everybody does that thing, so they don’t really do it like that anymore. I mean, they have the little jars you can over, but you can’t always get the full effect. I think really people are going to have to lean on brands.
(39:03):
You have to know that fig farms always puts out good shit, you know that connected almost always puts out good shit. Wild makes great edibles because you can’t smell the weed for yourself. So you really have to trust the brand. You have to find a budtender who smokes like you. Right? When I was a budtender in la, there were definitely some people who we kind of smoked the same. So when some shit came in that I liked, I knew that they would like it. And there were also some people, they didn’t want to be served by me because we had vastly different taste of weed, but they liked my homeboy. They smoke the same and they’re like, oh yeah, dog, this is mine. You know what I mean? So that’s how it goes. So rely on the professionals, find a couple of good, consistent brands you like and grow your own weed. That’s my advice.
TG Branfalt (39:50):
Is there a smell that you know that this is for you? What’s that for you?
Ngaio Bealum (39:57):
Feet, cheese, skunk. I also like pine trees. I like lemons. I like all that. Tropical. Tropical cherry is nice, but it makes me sleepy, but it’s delicious. So I smoke it at night and then I pass out, but it’s so tasty.
TG Branfalt (40:13):
I could Smells like basements,
Ngaio Bealum (40:17):
Dan.
TG Branfalt (40:17):
Yep.
Ngaio Bealum (40:19):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, man. Burning tires, all that shit. I like a stinky weed.
TG Branfalt (40:25):
They say in Nevada that it has the highest miene content among all of the legalized markets. Yeah, that makes
Ngaio Bealum (40:34):
Sense. That makes sense. Because everybody likes that cush. They like that cush. They like those cookies, they like that runts. That’s all that me. Scene action. Yeah. Yeah, it makes sense. Everybody out here is a baller and a gangster, so it’s Vegas, bro. We’re bling, slightly bling almost for
TG Branfalt (40:54):
A day,
Ngaio Bealum (40:55):
Right? By the next
TG Branfalt (40:56):
Day you’re balling
Ngaio Bealum (40:57):
In a totally different way, just one day, right? There’s a difference between B-A-L-L-I-N-G and B-A-W-L-I-N-G.
TG Branfalt (41:06):
Yeah, you’ve lost all your money and can’t buy any mercene in heavy weed. So last question I have for you, man. What advice would you have for young entertainers, people who are maybe thinking about being a cannabis centric entertainer?
Ngaio Bealum (41:26):
First of all, that’s my job. Find your own spot. No, I’m kidding. There’s plenty of space in the world. The pie is always big stop thinking of things as finite. The planet is infinite, and we have to stop creating bullshit, scarcity. There’s more than enough to go around for everybody. That’s just general philosophy in terms of that. Dude, I wish I had taken a marketing class when I was a kid. Interesting. When I was a young college student, I studied music and theater, but I didn’t study marketing or search engine optimization. Well, we didn’t have search engines, right? I was a college in 1990 or goddamn business, but
TG Branfalt (42:11):
Still typewriters?
Ngaio Bealum (42:15):
We had computers, sir. The Tandy, TRS 80 were programming shit in Basic 25 if then, but that
TG Branfalt (42:29):
Class stopped
Ngaio Bealum (42:31):
And have fun, be polite, smoke weed. I don’t know what to tell you. I just kind of hustled my ass off and we got to where I’m, but I’m still hustling. So that’s how it goes. Have fun. Be yourself.
TG Branfalt (42:45):
Where can people find more about yourself and the things that you do and watch you smoke joints on the internet?
Ngaio Bealum (42:53):
Fortunately, there aren’t pictures of me at the post office. You can follow me on the Instagram N ao. I’m also on the Twitter or the X-N-G-A-I two. I have a Patreon that I’m going to start dumping shit into any minute now. There’s some stuff up there, but we’re going to put more stuff up there this week. And then I just started my substack as well. And I will be, I’m traveling quite a bit. I’m doing more travel here. So really the Instagram is the best way. I should get my website. Back up. What do you know about WordPress? Anybody know anything about WordPress? Call me up.
TG Branfalt (43:28):
We use WordPress, at Ganjapreneur, but I only write things in host podcasts. You should go look at my record store website, but it’s basically just three links. I can’t be of any help at all
Ngaio Bealum (43:38):
That’s all I need. I can’t figure out this WordPress ui or I would do that.
TG Branfalt (43:44):
There’s a guy somewhere in this organization knows how to do it. I’m not that guy.
Ngaio Bealum (43:50):
I understand. I’m not that guy. Now. Know your strengths. Play to your strengths.
TG Branfalt (43:55):
Ngaio, this has been a lot of fun.
Ngaio Bealum (43:59):
TG I had a great time. Have me over anytime.
TG Branfalt (44:02):
Most fun. Well, we should do this again next time. We’ll do general philosophy though, because you sort of scratched the surface there now. I’m really intrigued.
Ngaio Bealum (44:11):
Let’s get into it. I’m here for it, man. I’m down. I’m super down. Lemme know brother.
TG Branfalt (44:17):
Our guest is Ngaio Bealum, comedian, musician, writer, activist, actor, Renaissance man,
Ngaio Bealum (44:27):
Friend of small animals,
TG Branfalt (44:28):
Guy who likes Kush. And you can find more episodes of the Ganjapreneur.com podcast in the podcast section of Ganjapreneur.com. Wherever you get your podcast. On entrepreneur.com website, you’ll find the latest cannabis news and cannabis jobs updated daily along with transcripts of this podcast. This episode was engineered by Wayward Sound Studio. I’ve been your host, TG Branfalt.
Brian Applegarth is the founder of Applegarth Strategies, an agency that operates at the intersection of cannabis and travel. He’s also the head of the Cannabis Travel Association, leads the Cannabis and Task Force for the California Travel Association and Destinations International, serves as an industry consultant, and holds a certification as a Ganjier cannabis sommelier—a man of many talents and extensive expertise. In this episode, host TG Branfalt connects with Applegarth to explore the evolving landscape of cannabis tourism, delve into the unique challenges and opportunities within the industry, and revisit how the landscape has transformed since Brian’s last visit to the show. Listen to the podcast below, or scroll down for the full transcript!
Listen to the podcast:Ganjapreneur · Brian Applegarth: How Cannabis Tourism is Evolving With LegalizationFull transcript:Editor’s note: this transcript was generated automatically and may contain errors.
Commercial:
The Ganjapreneur Podcast is made possible by over 500 cannabis industry service providers in Ganjapreneur’s Cannabis Business Index. At some point, every plant touching brand experiences the stigma that many industries still have to toward cannabis going strong. Since 2015, our business index is the most comprehensive and frequently visited directory for cannabis friendly services on the internet, saving you the time and hassle of sifting through uninformed and unwelcoming providers with categories for everything from business financing, to extraction equipment to interior designers and public relations. You’ll find every kind of specialist and business service you could ever need. Check out the business index today at ganjapreneur.com/businesses.
TG Branfalt:
Hey there, I’m your host, TG Branfalt, and this is the ganjapreneur.com podcast where we try to bring you actionable information and normalize cannabis through the stories of ganjapreneurs, activists and industry stakeholders. Today I’m joined by Brian Applegarth. He is the founder of Applegarth Strategies and Agency specializing in the intersection of cannabis and travel. He’s also the founder of the Cannabis Travel Association and leader of the Cannabis and Task Force for the California Travel Association and Destinations International, an industry consultant and a certified ganji cannabis sommelier guy with a lot of titles, a lot of experience. Brian, how are we doing?
Brian Applegarth:
Doing great, TG. Thanks for having me on.
TG Branfalt:
Real excited, man. I mean, you were one of the earlier guests on the podcast, probably back in 2020, 2021, so a lot has changed since then. But before we get into that and how that’s affected the cannabis tourism industry, tell me about, remind listeners about you and what you do.
Brian Applegarth:
Yeah, I mean, essentially I’m a cannabis travel and tourism subject matter expert starting with data. So my work revolves around the cannabis travel audience in the United States, which as of last year accounted for about 72 million Americans. And I work with destinations. A lot of times I’m working with the travel economy, so typically destination marketing organizations will bring me in to help develop strategies that can really cater to this cannabis travel audience that exists today. So yeah, I’m pretty much just passionate about cannabis tourism and travel and moving that conversation forward.
TG Branfalt:
In the couple of years since we’ve last talked, what is new in cannabis tourism? I know different states have gone online and each have sort of different laws and have include any provisions making tourism easier. What’s been going on?
Brian Applegarth:
Yeah, well, I mean, I believe we’re at an inflection point of really the coming alive of the cannabis travel economy or the experience economy. And I really do look at cannabis travel and tourism as its own industry. For example, the travel industry in California is about 140 billion industry. The cannabis industry of California today is about a 6 billion industry. So as cannabis experiences start taking off in this new kind of legal landscape, what does that mean for the tourism and travel economy and how is cannabis integrating into that visitor ecosystem from marketing to hotels, to airports, to rental car companies and beyond? So really where we sit today are cannabis lounges. I prefer actually cannabis consumption spaces, I believe is more accurate. We do have, of course we have lounges. Many times people think in terms of smoking and inhalation, but the truth of the matter is it’s rapidly evolving with cannabis consumption spaces, including beverage bars, infused culinary dining.
There’s a cannabis spa that exists in California today. There’s different cannabis retreats, wellness retreats. There’s of course cannabis events, which are a really important part of travel. So it’s really expanding in a very innovative way. And the exciting part is you’re seeing this come alive in these more mature adult use recreational legal destinations, and you’re seeing buy-in from both the travel industry and now you’re getting in the cannabis industry. Some more sophisticated brands, shops, lounges and beyond that are really starting to buy into that tourism economy and understand the difference between a resident spend versus a visitor spend and why that matters.
TG Branfalt:
Well, there’s a couple of things that I’ve noticed here in New York. One, they do allow for sort of social use spaces, but haven’t rolled out any regulations or anything like that experiencing. Is that something that a lot of states and cannabis companies are experiencing these late roll-outs?
Brian Applegarth:
Yeah, I think people are finding their footing. I think depending on the destination and just depending on the landscape from a local state level, there’s this kind of patchwork, which we’re all familiar with in the cannabis space. I kind of call it the wet county dry county model and what that looks like for cannabis. I live in California, so here I would guess that we not guess, we have approximately, I’d say between 60 and 80 cannabis consumption spaces now in the state of California. And again, that runs the gamut from a cannabis spas to lounges, indoor places, outdoor places, there’s lounges that have food service, there’s lounges that have this little oasis area with ponds and parrots in the back, ones that have, there’s a lot of stages. So you’re seeing programming starting to come alive, like with everything from poetry to music performances to burlesque to comedy and beyond, which is a really exciting space to watch, evolve.
You see a lot of lounges that are trying to figure it out. There’s a lot of focus still on the transactional side of cannabis, and we understand why. Obviously there’s a lot of taxes and barriers right now to having a successful business, but we are seeing learnings and people starting to develop more compelling models to really serve that visitor experience. And as that happens, you’re seeing the travel economy with the massive size and reach starting to wrap their arms around not all cannabis businesses, but the cannabis businesses and brands that are investing in that visitor economy into the travel economy. And they’re looking at themselves not just as a retail shop selling weed, but as an attraction, providing an experience. And that obviously dips into this consumption lounge space, but then it goes into the private kind of models where people are having these getaways, these infused culinary dinners, which is a really exciting kind of space as well.
TG Branfalt:
And you had mentioned marketing and it’s very limited, and I’ve just had this discussion with another operator on this podcast about marketing and how disparate state laws create a sort of challenge for businesses to market. How are cannabis excursions just the sort of destinations, if you will, how are they marketing within these frameworks?
Brian Applegarth:
So I mean, the most sophisticated people that are engaged in this visitor economy strategy space are one, starting with the data. Who is the cannabis travel audience? What are the four different archetypes? And the four different archetypes that I’ve been measuring in partnership with MMGY travel intelligence since 2019 are the canna curious traveler, the cannabis wellness traveler, the cannabis connoisseur, and then the ceremonial traveler. So people that use cannabis in specific ritual and ceremony, which is a really fascinating archetype. I believe that’s the biggest differentiator for cannabis as a travel experience product in the long term because it really focuses around wellbeing and what does it mean to have an entheogen and be microdosing cannabis to enhance that destination travel experience. So it starts with the cannabis travel audience data, and then it’s understanding that you have these standalone cannabis experiences which happen in cannabis shops and lounges and cannabis, let’s just say those three are kind of the three temp poles right now.
But then you have of course, these private events that are also kind of these confused, culinary, et cetera. But then you have cannabis as it integrates into the greater destination brand and the greater destination experience. So the more sophisticated cannabis brands and operators are looking at what destination am I in, what is the power of the travel economy and what is the destination brand, right? Because every destination has a brand that they promote for visitation, like in Palm Springs, it’s find your Oasis in San Francisco. It’s got a different bend in Sonoma County or in Mendocino County. It’s got a different brand with literally brand guidelines. So the more sophisticated cannabis brands and operators are starting to look at what is the community I’m a part of? What is the brand, what is the tourism ecosystem, and what does it mean for me to play a part as part of that community?
And what are all the benefits? And it’s really exciting to see this happen. If you actually look at the history of prohibition with alcohol, and you look at the brands that really excel, it was brands that invested in visitor economy strategies, travel industry strategies, look up the history of the alcohol bottle on the trains and what that did for Jack Daniels, Jim Beam and some of the big brands today. And it’s that cross industry strategic partnerships and marketing strategies where that visitor economy, it’s not just the travel audience, it’s all the partnerships that exist in the travel economy that are going to propel the brands that have the appetite for that kind of investment and attention into building that. So as far as that standalone experience, now, another way that cannabis is integrating into the travel economy, the data is showing as of last year that the cannabis travel audience, about a third of ’em, are really starting to understand the concept of pairing cannabis with destination experiences while in market.
And this trend is increasingly known as effect pairing cannabis, essentially pairing cannabis effects with food, art, nature, et cetera. So it’s cannabis as a precursor to your setting or to your environment or to your travel activity. And increasingly the sciences coming out of those cultivars that have an abundance of lemonene versus myrcene and what that means for the consumer, the traveler, as a precursor to a hike on the coast or a precursor to a Michelin star meal. I often say cannabis is the new vermouth, right? Cannabis, the right kind of cannabis can accentuate your palate flavor, taste, and fixture, as well as stimulate your appetite. And that’s not all cultivars, that’s only certain cultivars. So those are increasingly going to be the pre-dinner aperitif. And I believe that we’re entering into that era of not just cannabis experiences and lounges and events, but the notion of pairing cannabis to enhance your travel itinerary or your travel experiences. So that’s really exciting.
TG Branfalt:
What of consumers are you seeing? Is it predominantly young people? Is it predominantly older people? What does that look like?
Brian Applegarth:
Yeah, absolutely. Well, the cannabis travel audience, the short version is when you look at the cannabis travel audience versus the average active leisure traveler, the cannabis travel audience travels more often, stays longer, and spends more while on a destination. And this is something that the travel industry is watching closely, right? Because this is economic impact at the end of the day, and on the cannabis through the cannabis lens for shops and lounges, this is an opportunity to capture that economic impact. And I’ll tell you, when you’re in a visitor mindset of when in Rome, you’re going to drop that extra spend because you want to smoke that blunt from the Emerald Triangle with the best weed in the world, or you’re going to buy that premium hash and you’re going to sit and look at the ocean and smoke some weed while the sun goes down, or you’re going to get a great cracked beverage that is locally made.
So it’s all about placemaking. Also, the average spend that we’re seeing with the average cannabis traveler is about 2,500 bucks a year. So that’s kind of the money on the table. As far as the generational breakdown, we see a very strong attraction to this with Gen Z, right? Surprise surprise, where about 70% of Gen Z say they have an interest in participating in at least one cannabis related activity while on vacation. No kidding. So they’re choosing destinations where cannabis can be a part of that destination experience. About 56% have kids about 28%, which I think is an interesting data point. And again, we’ve been measuring this audience since 2019 with MMGY Travel Intelligence year over year. It’s part of their report that’s the portrait of the American traveler. It’s one of the modules that we consistently are working with. So as far as interested in cannabis activities, what they’re looking at this cannabis interested travel audience, again, in the US it’s about 72 million people, about 37% of the active leisure travel audience.
Number one is they want to visit a dispensary. They look at visiting a modern day cannabis shop as an attraction. And I work with Planet. I kind of cross over with Planet 13 because Travel Santa Ana is one of my clients. And when I visited their shop out in Vegas, I chatted with some of the staff out there and they were saying that 30% of their visitation will come in and not even buy, but they’re just there to look at the scope of what exists. So the then becomes how do you convert a spend from those people and not leave that money on the table? A perfect example of visitor economy strategies and how to capture that. So visiting a cannabis dispensary is the first activity of interest. The second one is trying A THC infused edible. The third one is trying A CBD infused edible, really, right?
Which shows that can of curious, that can wellness traveler. The fourth one is visiting a cannabis lounge or consumption space. And then the fifth one is having a spa treatment. What a concept to actually visit a cannabis infused spa. And I don’t think it’s surprising because the best highest form of cannabis travel and tourism today is going to reflect the capacity and the capabilities of the cannabis plant itself, which is a therapeutic ancient medicine plant that manifests in all kinds of ways, from topicals to beverages, to edibles to culinary, to the nutrition of a hemp seed, and yes, premium hash and amazing flour. So it’s super exciting because I still think on the travel side and on the cannabis side, people are finally starting to wake up to the expansive toolkit that cannabis and quite frankly, hemp is, and how that’s going to integrate into the global travel economy, which is an incredible industry to tap into if you’re a cannabis brand shop lounge event that has that vision and that recognizes to integrate into a mature industry is going to benefit your growth. So that’s where my agency works is at that intersection.
TG Branfalt:
And so what about, you mentioned the sort of worldwide and growth in the tourism industry. How are you and others focused on tourism connecting with non-cannabis businesses to get them on board? What have been some successes and some challenges in that role?
Brian Applegarth:
Sure. Well, I mean, I jumped into this in 2013. I just hit like 10, 11 years in focusing on cannabis travel and tourism, and it went from crickets in the room to now today. Well, that last kind of seven year stretch, six, seven year stretch was all about case studies, basic education about what is cannabis, really kind of debunking all the reefer madness stigmas and talking in a very fact-based way about cannabis and how it was part of the US medical Pharmacopia, and it was found on pharmacy shelves talking about the research and study of O’Shaughnessy and what those findings were early on when cannabis was studied over in India using ancient kind of cannabis case studies to reframe and actually bring out the truth of what kind of this plan is capable of and why it matters in travel and tourism today. So a lot of education data and case studies, the data really hit an inflection point in 2019. That study we did at the national in the United States, it was a national scale, was the first ever study globally on the cannabis travel audience, which is where the conversation begins. So now there’s an audience to reach, how do they choose their destinations, how do they spend and how do they move about a market when they’re visiting a place? So it’s an industry, it’s a business about how do we engage this audience and how do we evolve to meet the moment and to integrate these experiences within the travel economy.
Obviously the evolution of trends like this effect pairing trend and the data showing that the audience has this IQ that goes above and beyond, Hey, let’s go to a cannabis event, where now they’re looking at it as it gives you a dotted line to the other segments of travel, like arts and culture. So now there’s data that shows that cannabis has a relationship that drives economic impact and interest to other parts of the travel economy, whether it’s arts and culture or restaurants and culinary, right? It’s that cannabis as a precursor to the Michelin Star meal, which is very different than the cannabis infused dining experience where you’re sitting there with the plant being integrated into the meal. So understanding how those are different is a really interesting development of trend. The beautiful part is policy is slowly inching along too. In California this year, it looks like we have two bills that could really move the needle.
We have the Cannabis Cafe bill, which will basically bring in some food capacity as well as ticket sales and a few other things that really elevate the retailer above and beyond shop or a lounge above and beyond a lounge where you have to kind of play and figure out creatively how to make this interesting. So hopefully that Cannabis Cafe Bill will pass. We also have the Cannabis Catering Catering bill that actually the origin of that bill is the Cannabis Travel Association. We worked hard to look at the Alcohol catering license in California, and the first draft was doing a cannabis version of that. And the reason that that is so important is because it gives the hotel industry of California and the hospitality industry of California the ability to have a relatable license where they can be like, okay, I understand that that’s a very clear legal pathway to having cannabis catering at a wedding on my property.
So it kind of takes all that guesswork and that gray area out and normalizes cannabis and makes it accessible so we can keep normalization and create a new distribution point in hospitality and tourism specifically. So the policy evolution’s awesome. A lot of my work in the past four or five years has been with what I think, well, I mean probably biased because it’s where I live and breathe day to day, but it’s with destination marketing organizations like San Francisco Travel Visit Oakland, visit Mendocino County. I’ve worked with about 20 destinations at this point doing different scopes that all center around the cannabis travel audience and what is the strategy. And typically, there’s a few phases to that. There’s of course, the foundational education data. Let’s go ahead and get everybody singing, understanding what this is in a real factual way and the data behind it, and then there’s some destination development that needs to happen.
Sometimes that comes in the form of an experienced product, like if you look@thecannabistrail.com or if you go to the Visit Oakland website, you’ll see a trail that is an expanded version of the cannabis trail itself. You could look at Visit Modesto has a cannabis passport. So you see these different experience products where the destination is investing. Now, unfortunately, the cannabis industry and a lot of ’em are buried and stressed and trying to figure out how to survive, but they haven’t been able necessarily to really show up and meet the moment. There’s a handful that do. I’m kind of surprised with all the complaints about marketing and cannabis when these opportunities come with this powerful partnership that shops and lounges don’t make the space to really understand the gravity of what that means. Interesting. But there was a big inflection point this year where now we have the first ever cooperative marketing campaign happening in California between three different destinations that are coming together to market and to promote and to uplift the cannabis trail, which is a nine county trail in Northern California.
That is a cultural trail that kind of celebrates how cannabis has been part of California history and culture. The last thing I’ll mention that I think is exciting is, and I don’t think a lot of cannabis brands and businesses know this, but about two or three years ago, visit California basically awarded a poppy award, which is a big deal in the travel industry of California to visit. Modesto was a top three finalist for basically a marketing strategy that had to do with the cannabis passport last year visit. Oakland was a top three recognized destination for their cannabis trail and their cannabis program, specifically their campaign that was this four 20 choose equity travel, the Oakland Cannabis Trail, and that was a US travel award. So you’re seeing whether the cannabis industry is aware of it or not, the travel industry is picking up on this and understanding the importance of integrating and guiding and supporting the growth of cannabis brands, businesses, and experience creators that have the IQ and understand the travel industry and want to be part of that as an attraction. And that’s not everybody. So it’s figuring out, is your cannabis brand business interested in tapping into that tourism economy?
TG Branfalt:
And I do want to ask you, I know that organizations like Visit Modesto and Visit Oakland. Those are run by municipalities, but do you get any pushback or anything like that from say, chambers of commerce that in many states initially push back against cannabis legalization and oftentimes, typically don’t want to work with cannabis businesses once it is legalized?
Brian Applegarth:
So I mean, I’ve witnessed some of this in my world too. I mean, reefer madness is real, right? And there’s some super conservative people and some super conservative destinations. That being said, I think that I always approach it with meet ’em where they’re at and bring the data, the fact-based education and the case studies of people that they can look at their peers of the industry. And that is the formula that I have found in travel is that moves the needle. So it’s not about me trying to convince ’em, it’s me being a resource of information. And then as they continue seeing this evolve, they’re going to step into it when the time is right or they won’t. And I mean, I would argue that that is a poor decision as a destination because you should be promoting public safety, and that just doesn’t mean visitor safety.
It means safety of your hospitality industry. You should be supporting your hotel frontline staff, your hospitality frontline staff with understanding how to respond when visitors show up, or if visitors have potentially over-consumed, what’s your best practice as a hotel? This is like, I think it’s essential from a travel hospitality industry point of view to invest in the safety of your destination. I actually equate it to what happened during Covid Covid destination stepped in and took an amazing role in providing information on what was happening, how to deal with it, what are the guidelines today, all the masks, the little window shields, all the non-touch. There was a huge exercise in serving as a public service to your destination stakeholders. I believe at the most foundational level of cannabis travel and tourism, that information provider and public safety role is something that every destination, if you’re in a legal cannabis state, that means people are using consuming, buying, carrying cannabis, which means that your hospitality, your travel economy needs to be ready for whatever that means, right?
And we all know cannabis has this altering effect for the THC rich products. Yeah. So that reform, madness, stigma, it doesn’t bother me. I understand it’s there. I just think you got to be in service and really just bring the fact-based information and data to help move the needle. And then you’ll have the destinations raise their hand that really see cannabis as a differentiator or something that’s really going to become part of their destination brand visit. Oakland is a great example of this. So is Visit Mendocino County. I’ve also started working with Humboldt County Visitors Bureau, so the Emerald Triangle is obviously key. I’ve done some work with Hello Burlington, doing some education out in Vermont. So these destinations are definitely starting to look at this audience and the opportunity, and I think it’s a great time for any cannabis brand or business listening this podcast to start really thinking about what’s your plan?
There was a study that came out, a data point that came out from Whitney Economics. Beau Whitney does great data, and essentially it came out through Forbes in May, 2022. So it’s a little dated, but I think it’s worth bringing up here today, basically of the 25 billion of cannabis spend and revenue in the United States back in 20 22, 4 0.5 billion of that. So let’s just say 2020 5% was attributed to the visitor spend. Now, what’s interesting about that is for every dollar spent in the travel world, we talk about an incremental multiplier because visitors, they’re going to restaurants, they’re going to art galleries, they’re going on canoe trips and rafting, and so they are experiencing the destination and they’re spending in a very different way than a resident. So for every dollar spent in a cannabis shop, Bo quoted that about $2 and 80 cents multiplier is injected into the local economy. That’s significant, significant man. And it means that the cannabis tourism opportunity was a 17 billion opportunity for destinations. So if you’re a retail shop, knowing how much of that spend is a visitor spend and making some sense around that and how you’re going to partner with the travel industry and keep growing that and or maximizing the basket size in your shop that already exists. These are all strategies worth considering today because we are at an inflection point here.
TG Branfalt:
I do want to ask another question about barriers, because in many states, if you are a tourist or even countries, I go to Canada quite frequently where cannabis is legal for adult use, but there’s no real great place to consume. You can’t go into hotels, motels, even some RV parks that I’ve been to get a little salty when you light a joint. Are you seeing any evolution on this front with regard to just hospitality, just your sort of mainstream hospitality organization or companies?
Brian Applegarth:
Yeah, I mean, I really, I promote having a plan, right? Because there are people that like to inhale, whether that’s smoking or whether that’s vaping, which are both a little bit different. And then of course, all the other products that are beverages, edibles, all the other ways to consume topicals, et cetera. So I encourage hotels and resorts to say, are you cannabis friendly? And if so, what does that mean? Are you inhalation friendly or not? Do you have a dedicated place on your property where you can communicate in a very clear way to your hotel guests so they know what is and isn’t allowed? I’ve worked with a couple hotels where we’ve actually done bespoke programs where they offer cannabis delivery as a service amenity in their hotel.
And some of these hotels, the menu that we curate for the hotel approved menu are products that are five milligrams or less, and they’re all non inhalation. So now you have a product, and instead of turning it into a weird conversation where it’s all about where do I smoke? And now I’m cleaning the room and there’s an extra fee and it’s a negative, maybe there’s a bad Yelp review. This is all brand tarnish from a destination brand perspective or a hotel perspective. So if you work with a hotel to actually have a clear plan, partner with a lounge, make sure you pick a lounge or a shop in town that’s on brand for your hotel guest. I’ll remember one hotel I was working with, I was in there kind of secret shopping and talking to the valet and being, Hey man, we can I get some weed? And he was recommending a delivery that was unlicensed. And then of course, and this was before I worked with them, so I was identifying all the risks and gaps.
And the worst thing is you have a hotel where you have your frontline staff recommending a black market delivery or underground delivery that’s not licensed delivering untested products. I would actually say that the risk for you in that capacity by putting your head in the sand is your risk is exponential and unknown. Because if that unlicensed delivery is now delivering untested products to your guests that was recommended by your staff and something happens there like vape gate, how does that play out for you as a business that serves guests? Another problem I saw was you have deliveries show up where they walk in the lobby shop and they’re off brands. Let’s just say that they’re not part of a four or five star hotel and they’re parking their car in front of valet and throwing the hazards on. There’s no, so not having a plan is a route you could take.
I would argue that the risks are exponential and unknown, including brand tarnish on your hotel as well as your destination and potentially the health of your guests. So at what point do you start making a plan to be train your staff in this kind of thing? So yeah, I mean, those are some of the things that I saw. Another thing I saw was you’d have people that would use the cannabis in the room and they would leave their products on the table or whatever, and then of course, housekeeping or somebody would eat the chocolate, and all of a sudden you’re dealing with, so having a disposal program where you clearly tell people, if you don’t use your cannabis products, make sure you please dispose of them in the trash in this way or in this container is just another thoughtful way to put up the guardrails to make sure that you’re ensuring a safe place of work, a safe visitor experience, and you’re kind of mitigating all the risks and negative impacts that can come when you don’t have a plan or you’re not addressing it.
TG Branfalt:
So on your website, you have endorsements for many travel industry CEOs, you’ve mentioned many of them, such as Visit Modesto, visit Oakland, hello Burlington and Travel Santa Ana. Was it an uphill climb getting those organizations and organizations like those on board with cannabis tourism?
Brian Applegarth:
I wouldn’t describe it as an uphill climb. I knew that it would come. I just didn’t know when. So when I started in this, when I started jumping into cannabis travel and tourism, I knew that I was one of the first, if not the first, doing this in the travel side of the industry especially. And I knew that I needed to follow where leadership directed me, where they wanted me to apply my energy and my efforts and my brain power. And that was data and information and education. And over years, I’ve been attending travel industry conferences and been supporting the travel industry in navigating the cannabis and hemp discussion for 10 plus years now. And over that time, you develop relationships and trust. And also I understand how that industry operates, right? It’s very different than the cannabis industry, the travel industry. They literally have an annual marketing framework that the whole industry looks at through Visit California in this instance.
And the destinations international, they have membership from around the world, from Japan, a lot through North America, plenty of representation out of Canada, all across the United States. And they literally roll out a cannabis, or excuse me, a travel industry lexicon every year to talk about what’s being said at the national and international level. And this is because it’s a mature industry with leadership at the top that’s steering a really big ship. The legal cannabis industry is nascent, burgeoning, and still trying to figure out what we do as an industry to help guide the cannabis industry voice, and what is that connective bridge or that connective thread to an industry like travel where that cannabis experience economy is intrinsically linked. And you even see this in manufacturing. I want to bring this up too. I think that the cannabis industry will be able to have better representation and more influence if we have more and more beyond shops, consumption lounges, consumption spaces, sampling rooms, spas beyond all those kind of very, there’s also this manufacturing capability. Think of the Coors Brewery factory in Colorado, or the Launi has an amazing tourism strategy in Sonoma County,
TG Branfalt:
Ben and Jerry’s outside of Burlington.
Brian Applegarth:
There you go. So I used to live in Sonoma County, and when I was up there, I sat down about five, six years ago with the team up there, and they told me they put through about 30,000 people a year that by swag, they go on tours, they become evangelists and walking, talking billboards of the brand and the culture, and they enroll, they subscribe. It becomes part of that consumer identity through travel and tourism and experience creation. So I think manufacturers starting to think in these terms. Lounges starting to really think outside the box as consumption spaces. And how do you curate that experience where, I mean, just imagine it’s a 90 minute experience when people leave there, they feel full of information and surprise and delight moments and joy. Think of how can we start creating an incredibly robust cannabis experience economy that serves the plant, all the capabilities of the plant, and how do we work together to make sure that we’re building that in a way that is really sustainable and we’re kind of letting it be its highest expression. We’re being guides and stewards as an industry, as cannabis industry, to bring this forward in a way where we’re really partnered with the travel industry in a very strong way, and we’re serving, again, the plant in the ground. I find that with my work, typically if you look at the biology of the plant, you understand the history, the case studies, there’s a lot of tools there that you can help bring today into the current kind of tourism and travel ecosystem.
TG Branfalt:
The other thing that I want to really sort of get at is you are the leader of the cannabis and hemp task force for the California Travel Association. Is there a cannabis and hemp task force in any other state travel association that you know of?
Brian Applegarth:
The only other one I’m aware of is the one that I run similar. It’s called the Cannabis and have task force, and it’s for Destinations International. So the task force members there are all pretty much CEOs of destinations, whether it’s Hello Burlington, whether it’s their leadership level, travel industry, CEOs that are trying to learn about this and also listen to each other of what are the fires, where are the pain points, where are the success stories? And those peers trade information, and I’m kind of their guide. I sit here with data information. If I hear something said that’s not accurate, I just kind of bring up some other fact-based education for it. And then I’m really excited now that of course, me and my team are being brought in to create cannabis programs and strategies and even manage marketing budgets that are dedicated toward that cannabis travel audience, which is maybe different than the wine traveler or a different travel segment. Actually, let me actually correct that. The data actually shows that the cannabis travel audience skews higher as a wine enthusiast than the average active leisure traveler, which is another myth I see a lot of battling between the wine and the cannabis industries. And I’m like you guys, we’re catering to a similar audience here. It’s people who love good food, they love good weed, they love good wine, they probably like craft beer. These are people that enjoy being on vacation and enjoy imbibing with effect products that really color out that experience in that way.
TG Branfalt:
Well, I mean, not for nothing. There is some evidence showing that alcohol consumption rates of wine and craft beer have gone down in states that have legalized cannabis. Do you think that other adult use states should have somebody like you a cannabis culturist on these boards? And how do we get individuals into these roles? I mean, you do a lot, but I don’t think you can do it all there, pal.
Brian Applegarth:
Yeah, I would totally advocate for that. I think that having representation is important. I mean, for me, having a well-rounded, well-balanced round table where you have all of your community represented that are business license holders and taxpayers. Now what I would warn the cannabis industry, what I’ve seen been the kind of Achilles heel is it is man, it’s cutthroat. And people are showing up with just their success in mind. They’re not, for some reason, the cannabis industry has a problem sitting down and putting the hat on of, I’m going to represent the cannabis voice in this room and not just my business or my brand. So you got to come at it from a way of stewardship representing the cannabis piece of the pie in the travel vertical, in the travel ecosystem. And I find that that’s really hard for cannabis people right now, cannabis business holders and brands because everyone is fighting in this foundational level still of this young industry.
So I would encourage people that are community minded and that have the time to gather up your data. Feel free to email me, find me on my website@brianapplegarth.com, get some data, get some case studies, and become a resource for your, let’s just say it’s your marketing committee under your destination marketing organization. Understand what that means. A great way to get started is to start following your local destination marketing organization on Instagram and go to their website. Usually you can download their strategic plan, their brand guidelines, start thinking beyond just your brand at least 20% of the time. I mean, looking at the data that Beau put forward, I would argue that, I mean, if you’re a shop, at least 20% of your attention, awareness, marketing budget should go toward tourism travel and the visitor economy and the cannabis travel audience strategies. I did an economic impact study on cannabis travel and tourism in the visit Greater Palm Springs region in partnership with tourism economics.
And they found that certain shops and lounges in this valley up to 50% or more were tourism spends. Now, if your shop is getting 50% from visitor, you better be focused on not just the cannabis travel audience marketing and why that’s so different than resident marketing, but also that travel industry partnerships like in the visit Greater Palm Springs region where I live now, part of the year, the travel industry is an $8 billion industry. It’s a bigger industry than the entire cannabis industry of California today. So if you’re a shopper lounge in this valley across nine cities, Coachella Valley, so get educated, study your DMO website, father Instagram, look into if they have a marketing committee, and make sure that you’re doing it authentically for the greater good of the cannabis industry at large. And again, you can hit me up on the email if you want some collateral that might help point you in the right direction of getting started. But you got to look at yourself as part of an ecosystem that includes airports, hotels, rental car companies, attractions, resorts. Think of yourself as a cannabis attraction, a cannabis experience creator, and do it in the spirit of supporting your whole industry with understanding that in a deeper way.
TG Branfalt:
Is there a way for somebody to maybe do this outside of some sort of official system that allows them to work with legal businesses in providing similar sort of experiences, be it dining excursions? Is there any great advice you would have for anyone who isn’t interested in doing that?
Brian Applegarth:
Let me make sure I understand your question. So people who are interested in starting to create to create their own experience offering, is that what
TG Branfalt:
You’re saying? Yeah, working with other businesses to do that sort of thing without the backing of maybe their local travel organization.
Brian Applegarth:
Yeah, no, I mean sometimes I use the phrase the coalition of the willing and isn’t in terms of if you find those restaurants, those art galleries, maybe it’s an event that’s coming to town that’s not cannabis, but it has this data-driven dotted line. For example, let’s just say it’s a food and art festival where you’re like, man, cannabis food and art that pretty on the nose. I like that. So then you reach out to the festival producer and you start exploring of how can we collaborate around this? And the beautiful part about that proactive approach as well is if you’re marketing it and messaging it correctly to the travel industry stakeholders of your destination, the destination marketing organization will take note. They’ll see the cannabis brands and the cannabis experience outposts, or whether that’s a shop or a lounge or something else that are actively integrating with the community in a way that’s very experiential and very storytelling rich.
And as you become one of those trusted partners, you will enjoy the benefits of that, which is increased foot traffic from the cannabis travel audience, increasing your spend in shop. If you’re investing in your internal, in shopper, in lounge strategies or in consumption space strategies, you’ll have really amazing partnerships that very few other cannabis brand shops or lounges or partners have. And as long as you invest in continually being one of the shining kind of lights for the experienced storytelling, you’re going to widen your kind of cards in your deck when it comes to creating a successful business. And I would argue that there are cannabis shops and lounges and consumption spaces where it is vital that you integrate. And if your travel economy is the biggest economy in your destination, then you better be looking and giving that attention and investment and thinking about real sustainable replicable strategies year over year where you could continue to grow and engage the travel industry in that way because that’s going to be a differentiator that sets you apart.
TG Branfalt:
I think that’s really, really astute sort of advice, and I appreciate you answering the question. I do want to ask switch gears a little bit and ask you about being a cannabis sommelier. There may be a lot of people listening to this podcast who have no idea what that is or what you do in that role. So could you explain that a bit?
Brian Applegarth:
Absolutely. Yeah. So basically I took the GANJI certification, which is a cannabis sommelier course that was developed in California with about 25 just luminaries. And that’s what got my attention was twofold. I was very aware when it was in development. The people that developed the Ganji, the crew that they brought in to do this was very well orchestrated. And also, obviously a cannabis sommelier is an incredibly important role in travel and tourism. So I knew early on once this thing got launched, I wanted to get the certification and understand what it was because it is an absolute bullseye when it comes to tourism and travel, and I don’t think I have to expand beyond that, but just think of Napa Sono wine Country wine sommeliers and how robust that is in tourism. So basically it was a course that was very rich with education, everything from cannabis history and culture to the ability to analyze and assess concentrates and flower.
You use a jewelers loop to see how ripe the trichomes are, and then of course, being able to analyze and assess terpene profiles, cannabinoid profiles, assess trimming, the quality of the trim, and then of course the effects of the smoke. So it’s really understanding that raw flower. We also do get into topicals and some of those things as well and how that’s used. So obviously with cannabis, there’s a lot to unpack. I would highly recommend that people look into the ganji. It’s a fantastic knowledge base. And what I really like about it is I see all the other Ganji graduates that we’re a part of, and each one has their own specialization and expertise. And there’s some people that are super hardcore concentrate people and other people that are more into beverages and edibles, and now there’s people being hired to be reviewers and other people are trying to more to be in charge of purchasing in cannabis shops to really assess the quality and kind of price, the price of the, and what the consumer is getting.
So yeah, I mean, for me, my kind of niche in that ganji world is I am definitely a culturalist and kind of an amateur historian. I love telling that story of cannabis as a plant that has co-evolved with human beings and pointing to the biology of the endocannabinoid system and the flower and how it’s one of the most evolved intelligent plants that we have access to and how we should be utilizing that. I also am more of a flower guy. If I’m smoking, it’s straight flour and hash. I don’t like it infused with anything I like, either nice, pure hash or pure flour. I’m definitely a sungrown person. I want my flour grown outdoors in an Appalachian, in a terroir, because for me, with travel, it’s all about placemaking. And if you could tell a story about a farm and not just a farm that maybe was running from camp during the war on drugs and has an amazing cultural, historical past of legacy, but also today is growing terroir, microclimate, sungrown, beautiful cannabis flowers, and why that makes that specific place or that specific slope or ridge or that soil special that is tourism.
So definitely drawn to more of the legacy regenerative outdoor sungrown craft, and then the craft products that are made from that sungrown flower. And if you look at the science as far as the cannabinoid expression and the terpene expression, if you look at the full spectrum of sungrown, it’s impossible to replicate the sun, the wind, the natural elements, and the way that the cannabis expresses itself will show you that. So in my opinion, sungrown is the highest quality, and it comes down to the science and having the fullest spectrum of therapeutic properties and compounds.
TG Branfalt:
I mean, you can absolutely, I’m not a sommelier or anything, but you can absolutely tell the difference between something that was grown indoors and something that was grown outdoors. To your point, what to you is the most exciting thing about the maturation of the industry?
Brian Applegarth:
I mean, the most exciting thing for me is I really do feel like cannabis and hemp are coming forward at a critical time in human evolution and the evolution of a global culture. We have technology at our fingertips in the last a hundred years. We have airplanes and transportation, and now we have this ancient plant that has all this capacity to help be a vehicle to facilitate hopefully a more sustainable, tolerant, compassionate, healthy world. And in my instance, I look at travel and tourism as my platform to try to do my best every day, to be a guide for the plant, to be recognized for what it is. Really, it’s just being a vessel and a vehicle to make sure that cannabis travel and tourism as it gets adopted and integrated into the global travel economy, that we’re not just thinking about smoking weed and lounges.
We’re also thinking about how hemp integrates into hotels and into the travel economy to uplift sustainability. We’re thinking about flowers of cannabis that are grown in a regenerative way, right? We’re thinking about what cannabis meant and the war on drugs meant for urban communities that were negatively impacted by the war on drugs and why equity license shops is a really important lesson that we should look closely at and not forget the roots of and why restorative justice is a pathway toward a more sustainable global culture where we all are able to work together to really make a better, healthier, happier world and a more tolerant, compassionate, global society. And it’s a really interesting time through a lot of flowery words out there, but that’s genuinely what drives me is I do believe that hemp and cannabis have immense power, and we need people at the top of the cannabis industry and the travel industry and other industries where there’s intersections that are doing the right things for the right reasons, that aren’t just driven by more is better, and that are just focused on certain gains that are not having long lasting impact on really making things better for people.
And planet.
TG Branfalt:
Brian, man, it’s been a couple of years. You’re even more somehow a fountain of knowledge than you were during our first episode a few years ago. And I really appreciate you taking the time, coming on the show again and updating us on the state of cannabis travel and tourism and the whole thing. Where can people find out more about you and all of your many hats?
Brian Applegarth:
Yeah, absolutely. The best website, well, there’s two websites. One is brian applegarth.com, that’s Brian with an I and the other website I would encourage everyone to take a look at who’s interested is the cannabis trail.com. That is a project that’s near and dear to my heart. I’ve been working on that for about six, seven years now. It’s a nine county trail and it’s really coming alive, and we’re creating an app at the moment that we’re going to be launching next year. So the cannabis trail.com, check it out. And if you want to learn more about Apple Garth strategies and what myself and my team offer for services for destinations, but also cannabis brands, we are starting to work with cannabis brands and businesses that want to start investing in the visitor economy and the travel economy. So if you see something that has interest, check out those websites and reach out to us and we look forward to hearing from you. And tg, I really appreciate you bringing me on. Thank you so much for what you do.
TG Branfalt:
It’s always a pleasure, man. Always a pleasure. Hopefully next time it won’t be a couple of years between us connecting. It’s Brian Applegarth. He is the founder of Applegarth Strategies, an agency that specializes in the intersection of cannabis and travel. The founder of the Cannabis Travel Association, leader of the Cannabis and Hemp Task Force for the California Travel Association and Destinations International. He’s also an industry consultant and a certified Ganji cannabis sommelier. You can find more episodes of the entrepreneur.com podcast in the podcast section of entrepreneur.com or wherever you get your podcast. It’s on the entrepreneur.com website. You’ll find the latest cannabis news and cannabis jobs updated daily along with transcripts of this podcast. You can also download the entrepreneur.com app in iTunes and Google Play this episode with Engineered by Wayward Sound Studio. I’ve been your host, TG Branfalt.
This episode of The Ganjapreneur Podcast features Tara Rosenblum, an investigative reporter for News 12, who has recently released a compelling documentary titled “Cannabis Contest.” The documentary offers an in-depth look at the social equity aspects of cannabis licensing in New York City, showcasing the challenges and triumphs of hopeful licensees within the evolving legal landscape — including another previous guest on the show, Jeremy Rivera. With nearly two decades of investigative reporting experience in the New York City market, Tara explores the community dynamics and the critical issues affecting residents and aspiring entrepreneurs. This episode dives into the complexities of cannabis policy, personal journeys of license applicants, and the broader societal implications as cannabis goes from underground economy to regulated business. To listen to the full episode, use the player below or stream via your favorite podcast app! (Scroll down for the full transcript.)
Listen to the episode:
Transcript:Editor’s note: this transcript was auto-generated and may contain errors.
Commercial (00:03):
The Ganjapreneur Podcast is made possible by over 500 cannabis industry service providers in Ganjapreneur Cannabis Business Index. At some point, every plant touching brand experiences the stigma that many industries still have to toward cannabis going strong. Since 2015, our business index is the most comprehensive and frequently visited directory for cannabis friendly services on the internet, saving you the time and hassle of sifting through uninformed and unwelcoming providers with categories for everything from business financing, to extraction equipment to interior designers and public relations. You’ll find every kind of specialist and business service you could ever need. Check out the business index today at ganjapreneur.com/businesses.
TG Branfalt (00:49):
Hey there, I’m your host, TG Branfalt, and this is the Ganjapreneur.com podcast where we try to bring you actionable information and normalized cannabis through the stories of ganjapreneurs, activists and industry stakeholders. Today I’m joined by Tara Rosenblum. She’s an investigative reporter for News 12. Rosenblum’s recent documentary Cannabis Contest was released last month and focuses on social equity cannabis licensees in New York City. How are you doing this afternoon, Tara?
Tara Rosenblum (01:17):
Hey, TG. I am excited to be with you. Thanks for having me.
TG Branfalt (01:20):
I am delighted to have you. I watched the series that you released. We’ll talk about that in a minute. Before we get to that though, tell me a little bit about you, your background, your career, and how your investigative work set the stage for this documentary.
Tara Rosenblum (01:35):
Sure. So I am a longtime news veteran of the New York City market. I’m now approaching my 20 year anniversary at News 12. Congratulations wise, when you’re having fun, right. But yeah, I got my start working at some of the national networks and I was behind the scenes, and then I wanted to be on camera myself and do some of my own reporting and did that steady parade through small markets throughout the country and then found my way to New York, worked at a couple of stations in New York and then wound up at News 12, 20 years ago. And since then, I’ve worn a lot of hats. I’ve produced, written, reported, I do a lot of politics hosting. I was an anchor for a majority of my time. And about five years ago I became a full-time investigative reporter. And I feel like that’s my sweet spot of journalism. I really, really get a lot of satisfaction out of being a full-time investigator.
TG Branfalt (02:34):
Well, and as a media studies professor, one of the things that I know and I’ve studied is that people tend to trust their local news anchors and local news outlets far more than they do national outlets. With that said, why did you choose to do this documentary and focus on this segment of your community?
Tara Rosenblum (02:58):
I think what has made my team, I think a majority of our success in recent years can be attributed to the fact that my team and I, we know the pulse of the Tri-state. We know what people are talking about. We know what they care about. We know what they think about, we know what has deep impact in their lives. And so my intuition kicked in when I heard about this story, and it felt like every time I went to the supermarket, people were coming up and talking to me about this whole cannabis legalization thing and what’s it going to look like in my neighborhood and what’s it going to mean for my downtown and is it coming here? And when you start to hear about that weekly, daily, we knew that this was a topic that needed to be covered in a more comprehensive way than just splashing out the headlines. And I decided to go for it and really go a couple layers beneath the surface here. And how do we do that? Well, let’s tell it through the lens of people who are going through the process.
TG Branfalt (04:00):
And that’s what I found really interesting about the series was that you focused a lot on New York state policy. You told the stories of the individuals who were being affected, at least a couple of them out of hundreds, and you didn’t editorialize, which I think is very important as we’re in the nascency of this industry. And we’ll talk about that too in a couple of minutes. But how did you identify the people to include in this documentary?
Tara Rosenblum (04:30):
And I think you touched on something really important, and I hope we circle back to that, is that whole editorializing of news in general and how we avoided that with this project, but how we found the applicant. So that was the biggest challenge. So I decided that I wanted to take on this project. As far as we know, we are the only news outlet that followed this process so intensely soup to nuts through the lens of the card applicants. And so how do we find those applicants? I obviously wanted to find people who are outspoken and passionate and deeply impacted by the social equity process. And so at that time, people weren’t putting it on social media. Hey, I’m a card applicant. There was no list. There was no database out there. And so I said, geez, how am I going to find these people? No luck. I went on Facebook, I went on Reddit. Wasn’t having much luck there. So what I decided to do is I spent a few weeks on making a list of every single cannabis lawyer I could find in the news.
Tara Rosenblum (05:35):
And started cold calling all of these big firms, Hey, I’m calling from News 12. Do you have any card applicants? And then at first we were facing people who were like, why are you calling me? Why do you need this information? And then when we walked them through the process, I told ’em about my unit, sent them other documentaries I had done, we were able to convince them to give us access to their clients, and then we wound up with more than we could have dreamed of. And it was a matter of finding the three that characters that I felt were going to be the most compelling to share this journey. And the other part was interesting about it, TJ, was that of course, it was a gamble. We had no idea whether these applicants were going to be successful or not. And how would a documentary turn out if I had three applicants and none of them made it to the finish line. So we just spent a lot of time getting to know them and their backstories, and I was really comfortable that we picked three people who came from really diverse backgrounds and just representing just three entirely different journeys.
TG Branfalt (06:43):
Now, do you think that maybe you hit some of those early roadblocks because of maybe some hesitancy among applicants on maybe interacting with the press? I mean, let’s be honest, the press, whether it be local or national or in general, hasn’t always been really friendly to the cannabis industry.
Tara Rosenblum (07:02):
And again, I came into this as a cannabis novice storyteller, so I was learning as I went. So I can’t speak to the national tone of cannabis coverage, but certainly it was very evident. One of my three applicants was a former female cannabis marijuana dealer on the streets of New York. And she told me from the get go, Hey, listen, this is a story that you are not going to hear frequently. I am one of very few female dealers who was going to share this story in such a public fashion. And when we asked her why that was the case, it’s because they had really, she said people like her have felt really disenfranchised along the way trying to get their message out.
TG Branfalt (07:49):
And you had said that you’re a novice covering the cannabis industry, and one of the things that really struck me is you and I believe it was Jeremy in this field of cannabis plants. What was that experience like for you as somebody who doesn’t have a background in the space of probably, have you ever toured a cannabis farm before?
Tara Rosenblum (08:08):
My first time was for this project and what an experience, right? Yeah. So that was a little daunting going into all of this. And I’m googling words and slang words after every interview. I really came into this as a blank slate. But I think that’s what made the experience so cool is you can see us going on that journey. We take viewers along and you can start out with me knowing nothing. And I feel like by the end of our documentary, you really have a strong taste of what this process has been like and what’s at stake. So we really just learned with every shoot and every interview and every day that we got to cover this story. But on the other hand, I say it was daunting, but that’s just what we do. I feel like every time I take on a big societal project, I come in at an elementary school level and graduate with a PhD on the subject.
TG Branfalt (09:03):
So you’ve been reported for 20 years, and obviously you watch just as much as everyone else, probably the coverage of a cannabis legalization in New York, it was a fraught process as you point out in the documentary. Then there was the rash of illegal dispensaries, especially in New York City that got a lot of sort of bad press. Could you tell me about how News 12 and maybe some other local outlets covered cannabis legalization in New York, and did you particularly see a focus on negatives or positives in that coverage?
Tara Rosenblum (09:41):
So you have to realize, ironically, TJ we’re having this conversation yesterday. It was the three year anniversary. Yeah, I saw that. And I was like, oh my goodness, it’s been three years. So you go back to 2021. And at three years since they passed the legislation to legalize marijuana in the state of New York. And so when you go back to three years ago, what were we dealing with in New York? We were dealing with the pandemic. We were dealing with significant protesting on all types of important issues. There’s been so much in the news cycle that unfortunately I feel like a lot of the cannabis rollout and the legalization process was never front page a one unless something catastrophic happens in the process or unless there was a major piece of legislation passed or when the applications opened. But after that, it was very much something that was thrown in a newscast here or there for 30 seconds. There was not a lot of comprehensive coverage of it because of all the pressing issues of the day. And so that’s why I felt even more responsibility to get this story and really give these people just the airtime that I felt that they deserved. They’d all been through so much and it was such a passion project for them.
TG Branfalt (10:59):
One of the other things I found interesting was the way that you framed it as this game. And because I speak to a lot of entrepreneurs, people who did get licenses, people who didn’t get licenses for a variety of reasons, and that’s a narrative that I heard over and over again that they feel like they’re sort of playing the lottery, playing a game. How did you come up with that sort of framing for the documentary of the license rollout?
Tara Rosenblum (11:25):
Are you ready for this? Absolutely. So I wear a lot of titles, but my proudest one is Mama and I have a daughter in elementary school. And this was all percolating in my brain that I really wanted to do a deep dive on this. And as I was walking through my daughter’s playroom, I saw a board game Candy Land, and at the top of it, I saw the castle and I saw a cannabis dispensary, and then I saw gummies and I’m like, edibles. And we were going to go more down that rabbit hole in our storytelling, but rightfully so, my managers and my team were like, let’s be more serious with this. This is really impacting a lot of lives. So we kind of ditched the whole, I had cartoons I was going to build in. We didn’t go down that route, but that was the genesis of how we called it cannabis contest.
TG Branfalt (12:13):
And what were some of the challenges for you not having the sort of experience covering policy or the industry and what parallels in investigative journalism helped you enter a new category of reporting that continues to serve up obstacles with no changes, with changes in policy, rule, legislation, et cetera?
Tara Rosenblum (12:31):
So as an investigative reporter, I live in data. I can’t avoid data, I can’t avoid freedom of information requests. We call ’em foil requests for people. I’m sure you’re well aware, tj, as a journalism teacher, I’m sure you’ve filed your fair share of foils in your day. We file foils every week. We have filed so many for the story, but this was one of the first investigative projects of my career where I took all the data and you know what I did with it? I kind of threw it out the window for this one. And I said, this is investigative storytelling. I really wanted our characters and not my voice to be the dominant voice in this piece. I wanted you to hear, we had just the most compelling, if we’re sticking with the game narrative players that we had selected to engage in this process with. And I gave them all the air time and I let them be the lens in which our viewers saw this whole process play out.
TG Branfalt (13:30):
And just to give listeners an idea on the length of time that goes into one of these, how long did it take you from start to finish to get this to market?
Tara Rosenblum (13:43):
What a great story, tj, because people see the half hour documentary that’s airing. It’s airing again appropriately. So on April 20th, by the way, if you missed the first one at seven 30 and 1130, so I hope people will get the chance to check it out, but a little shameless plug there for our news 12 re airings. But we, I’m sorry. Lost my, you know what? I completely lost my train of thought there, tj. We’ll do a re-edit there, but repeat the question.
TG Branfalt (14:11):
How long from,
Tara Rosenblum (14:12):
Oh, how long did it take? So I’ll start that again. It’s a great question, tj, because we, the full documentary that people see that went to our airs, and that’s airing again, by the way, for a repeat on April 20th appropriately so was a half hour show. But what people didn’t see were the hundreds and hundreds of hours of footage on our editing room floor. So we literally spent two years covering the story, two years staying in touch with our three applicants and going on dozens of shoots. And so it was very, very labor intensive to tell this story, but we didn’t want to miss a moment of action along the way. If there was a setback, if there was a success, we wanted to be there and we wanted our cameras to be rolling. And one of the beautiful silver linings of the pandemic is that we discovered zoom.
(15:10)
So the days when we weren’t able to be there in person, we were able to capture some of the magic over zoom. But a majority of it was us there in person from the Hudson Valley down to Queens, hyper-local in our local neighborhoods shooting this on the ground. And one of the daunting challenges for me when it came time when we finally had one of our card applicants successfully open a dispensary, we knew it was time to start editing. And I put my hands up in the air and I said, my goodness, this is going to be the challenge of my career boiling these hundreds of hours down to one 30 minute show with commercials. It’s about 22 minutes. So we were able to do it though it was difficult, but very rewarding.
TG Branfalt (15:54):
And you talked about the sort of localities, and you had mentioned that you do have people who come up to you in your role as an investigator reporter who’s on television. What other issues are you hearing from citizens about cannabis legalization in your conversations with them?
Tara Rosenblum (16:14):
So I think the one thing that I hear about all the time that’s really frustrated people are the explosion of these illegal shops. And so you see through our documentary, you learned how hard people had to fight to do this the right way. And I don’t know the count as of today, April 1st, we’re talking how many legal dispensaries there are because a few more have open since we did this documentary, but we know it’s a handful compared to the thousands of illegal shops that we know, not just down here where I live in the Tri-state, but all across the state. And so it is an issue that’s purple. We know lawmakers on both sides of the issue are upset about this. We know the governor’s upset about this. We know legislation has been proposed to tackle this, but is it going to work? That’s the next story. As journalists, we need to be along for that ride to see if it’s going to be enforced and if it’s going to do what it’s intended to do, because it is just really, really a huge detriment to the people who are doing this the right way,
TG Branfalt (17:22):
Way. And can you briefly maybe give me some insight as to your personal feelings about cannabis prior to doing this documentary?
Tara Rosenblum (17:35):
I leave, part of the reason why I think people trust us with their stories, be it cannabis or trafficking or any other societal topic we take on is I really leave my opinions out of it. And I fight really hard to do that because I want people to trust me who feel all sorts of ways about the issue. And it is such a polarizing issue in our local communities. And so I think if you watch, you referenced this earlier, if you watch my project, I hope you walk away not knowing what my personal feelings are. I pride myself on that
TG Branfalt (18:09):
And just watching it, you have these characters, you have this game narrative, if you will, which again, I think is what drives a lot of what made it really sort of fascinating in a way. Those, how did you sort of prevent yourself from editorializing? I mean, obviously you’re a professional and professional journalists don’t editorialize, but I’m sure even with the production process, the post-production process, how did you sort of walk that line? So well,
Tara Rosenblum (18:46):
And so we normally do a story as investigators, and we might work on it a few weeks or a few months. It’s rare that I spend two years
(18:56)
With a subject. And you could see there was a moment at the end and I debated whether to keep it in the show or not. Where you referred to Jeremy, he was the applicant that found early success in our project and was able to successfully open in Queens a few weeks ago. And you saw this moment where I walk up to him, and we had been together for two years doing this. I remember the day we met him on his front stoop and here we are. We had been there for his lowest of his lows when he thought that he couldn’t survive another day, that he didn’t have the finances to make this work after dumping everything. He had his heart, his wallet. He invested so much in this, and there were days where he was literally crying when we were interviewing him, and then we were there.
(19:43)
The moment that I was in, it was a great story. I was in Florida on spring break and I was supposed to not be working, of course, but my producer Jean sent me, we got the list and we found out that Jeremy was on it, and we were the ones that broke the news to him. And so I was zooming with him from my bathing suit in Sun Cap in Florida in New York, and we hopped on a quick zoom, and I’m like, Sherry, guess what? I remember it was around April. I remember saying to him, this isn’t an April Fool’s Day joke, but we found out that you made the list. And you see just his whole face. He’s like this proud macho guy, and you just saw him just completely the emotion overcome him. And it was a beautiful moment. And there we are two years later, and so I’m walking into the store and you just see us hug each other and he’s like, can you believe it’s here?
(20:35)
My favorite reporter? And I was like, do I keep that in? Do I not keep it in? And I kept it in because that was the realness of the journey. And so even though we’re rooting for them as characters and we care about them as people, it doesn’t mean that I have the strong opinion on the whole cannabis legalization process. Again, we were focusing on three characters and their journeys. And I think you cannot spend two years with someone who’s a really great person without rooting for them at the end. And I don’t think that makes me biased. I think it makes me real.
TG Branfalt (21:09):
I mean, it makes you human. That was a natural response. And to be honest, I noticed that very specific moment when I was watching it and I was personally touched because somebody who has that background who may not be trusting of authority and may not be trusting of the press and all these different things, I mean, it showed that he trusted you, which I think says a lot about your character and how you approach this. And the other thing I want to ask you is when I talk to people who are in this industry or have been covering this industry, we know the process. We know that it costs a million dollars and insurance policies and two months of getting rejected by landlords and so on and so forth. When you saw this process play out, as someone who didn’t know what this process is like maybe from other states, and I’ve been covering this since 2014. Oh wow. What was your reaction to this process?
Tara Rosenblum (22:12):
I think what shocked me the most was just how troubled this process was, how flawed it was, how frustrating it was. And tj, I’ll tell you, one of my early concerns between us was that, and your viewers was early on. I thought, okay, I have this great idea. I think it’s an important story to tell. Am I going to pick these three applicants and then they’re going to do a little construction, a little spackling, set up some shelves, and then they’re going to open and is that going to be an interesting documentary? I thought it was going to be this flat line, and I had no idea just the depths of the roller coaster ride. I mean from the lawsuits, from the setbacks to even early on, I remember we were with one of our applicants at a cannabis convention, a networking convention. He thought he was there to learn about mortgage and make other friends doing the same thing, and all of a sudden we’re in the hallway and he finds out that the funding that they were going to get for the setup disappeared and that the banks weren’t going to be loaning the money that they had set up.
(23:21)
And you had people who literally poured their last dollars and cents even to just paying for the application fee, and then they find out that they’re on their own to pay for the setup and just the trials and tribulations. I think the severity of the setbacks and the successes and how polar opposites those were, that’s what really took my breath away in this process. And that what people don’t realize, they might see a headline, oh, a dispensary opened in Queens today, or a dispensary in Westchester. But what people don’t know is the sweat that went into opening those dispensaries. It was a really intense journey. And so it was not for the faint of heart and the people who made it to the finish line were people just diehard passion for this industry. It’s not a profession, it’s a vocation.
TG Branfalt (24:12):
And to your point, somebody like Jeremy, for example, I mean, he had been incarcerated. I mean, he had started his own business. I had spoken to him a couple of weeks ago. But there is no, I mean, if this fails for these entrepreneurs, it’s game over. I mean, to keep it with the game sort of wordplay here. What surprised you most during the course of doing this documentary?
Tara Rosenblum (24:39):
I think it was that. I mean, I think it was just the severity of the setbacks. And we are seeing it now. Honestly, I just finished a documentary on the Downstate casino process, which is New York’s Gold Rush race. They’re saying it’s going to turn out to be the most lucrative economic prize ever awarded in New York State is which three casinos in the New York City area get a full scale Las Vegas style gaming license. And we’re seeing now that process drag out that now we just found out last week, it probably won’t be until 2025, the casino operators who have the world’s largest developers and gaming operators involved, and they thought that was going to happen last year. So it’s the same thing we saw with the cannabis rollout. And it’s not me editorializing here, the governor has called the process of disaster. And I thought that that was such a poignant moment when she said that. In fact, if you saw the documentary, the last line I put in the entire piece was, governor Hoel recently called to describe this process as a disaster. I don’t know how you could refer to it as anything else given the delays and the setbacks that the applicants had to go through, but hopefully now people are saying it’s better late than ever. The governor just issued a top to bottom review of the OCM. And so I think people are hoping they’re optimistic that that will finally streamline the process here.
TG Branfalt (26:12):
One of the questions that I really want to ask you, and this is more of an opportunity that I’d like to be able to share with my students. What advice would you have for young reporters who are interested in doing investigative long projects such as you’ve done in this case, and I’m sure many others
Tara Rosenblum (26:33):
Besides packing the patients? I think there’s a couple of tips I would give there. I think when we start out, and I know when I was starting out as an investigative reporter later in my career, I was always an anchor and political reporter. I always wanted to try to prove how smart I was by getting in the data. And I went and I stormed the castle and here’s my foil request and here’s a 50,000 line Excel sheet. Don’t be afraid to ditch the data sometimes and let the people tell the story, because at the end of the day, I always say, it’s not the press conference. You got to look behind the press conference and see who’s standing behind it. Those are the real, that’s the lens in which you want to tell a compelling story. So just giving up the ego and letting their sound bites tell the story. You hear very little of me in this piece. It’s the least I’ve ever put myself in a story as in cannabis contests because you just got to let those sound bites breathe. You got to let the characters tell the story.
TG Branfalt (27:39):
And what about advice for young reporters who are facing a changing regulatory legal social landscape as it not just relates to cannabis, but gambling, like you mentioned, potential psychedelic therapies that may be legalized and coming online. I mean, how are you adjusting to this sort of brave new world, if you will, and what might you tell young reporters who are also having to adjust?
Tara Rosenblum (28:04):
I think investigative is where it’s at. And I think I’m blessed to work at News 12, and my bosses are very big on hyper-local impact journalism. I say, we don’t do hit and run journalism. We don’t show up. And this is why as younger journalists pick shops that have this philosophy, we don’t just show up that old saying, if it leads, it bleeds. If there’s body bags after a tragedy or something horrific happens, that’s not the only day we’re in your community. We’re going to be that. We live here, we work here, we’re a part of the fabric of the community, so we’re going to stay on a story. In this case, it was a two year commitment. So young journalists find newsrooms who believe in investigative storytelling, who will give you the time and the bandwidth that you need to stay with a story and see it through.
(29:00)
And the other thing is, yeah, it’s great again to stay on your computer and Google experts and stuff like that. Get out in your communities, go out to your community boards. In this case, I found some of our applicants from going to the Harlem Business Alliance, and that’s kind of a New York City, a hubbub of where people meet and greet, and we’re working on this cannabis legalization process, the organic way and networking. So don’t stay behind your computer, go out and talk to people, join local forums and groups and stuff like that because there’s no substitute for grassroots journalism and storytelling,
TG Branfalt (29:39):
And it’s wild. We live in this big tech age where everyone sort of espouses the tools, the technological tools that we have. And you had mentioned you had struck out on social media trying to find sources, and it was the shoe leather reporting that got you the sources, which is commendable to a media studies professor who focuses on media bias and often and tells my students generally it isn’t. If it bleeds, it leads a sort of mentality. Where can people find more of your work and the cannabis contest specifically?
Tara Rosenblum (30:22):
Sure. I’ll give a little plug for our project and if anyone wants to follow my work and we’re going to continue, that’s the thing, just because the documentary aired, my reporting on the card applicants and the cannabis journey here in New York, which is first of its kind in the nation, is far from over. We stay with these stories and we want to find out where is Jeremy in a year from now? What kind of impact did those illegal shops have on him? Did he meet his projections? So we stay with stuff. So if you want to continue to follow my journey, I’m at Tara Rosenblum on Instagram and on Facebook, and the cannabis contest is airing on four 20 on News 12 regional channels and News 12 New York, and it’s also streamed because people say, if I can’t watch News 12 at home, where do I catch it? We’re also streaming on Optimum Stream, Samsung TV plus Pluto two B, Amazon Fire tv, LG Channels, local now, Vizio, tj. Is that enough places to catch us
TG Branfalt (31:23):
And more? Yeah, and more.
Tara Rosenblum (31:25):
And my best work, my most successful work has always come from people just walking up to me at the grocery store or shooting me a random message on social or email. I love the stories I get from our viewers because those are the experts of our communities.
TG Branfalt (31:44):
I’m very thankful that you are able to join me today and tell me more about the process S, excuse me, the process of producing the cannabis contest. Tara Rosenblum, she’s an investigative reporter for News 12. Cannabis Contest was released last month and will re-Air on Saturday, April 20th on News 12 regional channels and on the various streaming platforms that Tara mentioned. Thank you so much, Tara, for coming on the show today.
Tara Rosenblum (32:19):
Thank you so much for having me, and I’m going to be following your work closely. I think you did a wonderful job interviewing me, and I’m sure your students are super lucky to have you as a force in their early
TG Branfalt (32:33):
Careers. Some of them may disagree. You can find more episodes of The Ganjapreneur Podcast in the podcast section of Ganjapreneur.com and wherever you get your podcasts. On the Ganjapreneur.com website, you’ll find the latest cannabis news and cannabis jobs updated daily along with transcripts of this podcast. This episode was engineered by Wayward Sound Studio. I’ve been your host, TG Branfalt.
The Ganjapreneur Podcast is back! In this episode, host TG Branfalt welcomes Jeremy Rivera, co-founder and CEO of Terp Bros, a dispensary in Astoria, Queens. Rivera, a beneficiary of New York’s Conditional Adult Use Retail Dispensary (CAURD) program, shares his journey from the legacy market and facing multiple cannabis convictions to launching his own licensed cannabis business. He goes into detail about the nuances of the CAURD program, the competitive landscape of New York’s cannabis market, and the distinctive approach Terp Bros has taken to distinguish itself amid a sea of dispensaries. He also provides first-hand insight into the entrepreneurial spirit driving New York’s developing legal cannabis industry and the ongoing efforts to rectify past injustices. Listen to the full episode below, or scroll down for the transcript!
Listen to the episode:Ganjapreneur · Jeremy Rivera: From the Legacy Market to a Licensed Dispensary in New York
Read the transcript:Editor’s note: this transcript was generated automatically and may contain typos.
Commercial (00:03):
The Ganjapreneur Podcast is made possible by over 500 cannabis industry service providers in Ganjapreneur’s Cannabis Business Index. At some point, every plant touching brand experiences the stigma that many industries still have to toward cannabis going strong. Since 2015, our business index is the most comprehensive and frequently visited directory for cannabis friendly services on the internet, saving you the time and hassle of sifting through uninformed and unwelcoming providers with categories for everything from business financing to extraction equipment to interior designers and public relations. You’ll find every kind of specialist and business service you could ever need. Check out the business index today at ganjapreneur.com/businesses.
TG Branfalt (00:52):
Hey there, I’m your host, TG Branfalt, and this is the Ganjapreneur.com podcast where we try to bring you actionable information and normalized cannabis through the stories of entrepreneurs, activists, and industry stakeholders. Today I am delighted to be joined by Jeremy Rivera is the co-founder and CEO of Terp Bros in Astoria, Queens, New York. Rivera is a conditional adult use retail dispensary or CAURD license holder and Terp Bros’ mission is to serve as a locale for the unique and memorable learning and experiences. Hey Jeremy, how are you doing this morning, man?
Jeremy Rivera (01:27):
Not too bad, bud. What’s going on?
TG Branfalt (01:29):
Dude, I’m real excited. You’re my first guest back. I’m happy to be talking with somebody in New York. The last time that I did this podcast, New York had gone legal, but we didn’t have the rollout of the market yet, so we have a lot to talk about. Before we get into all of that though, man, tell me about yourself. Tell me about your background, just your history with cannabis and how you ended up in the CAURD program,
Jeremy Rivera (01:56):
The program. Alright. Well, I’m one of the owners of Tur Bros. Cannabis Dispensary and Astoria in New York. Obviously because of New York’s parameters to get a license, some justice involved. I spent a lot of my teenage years as a gang member, Crip Street gang. Between 19 and 30. I spent most of those years in and out of prison. I have three state bids and a juvenile bid that I did when I was 30 2018. I came home, I had made a decision that I didn’t really want to continue living the life of wasting away in and out of prison. So I got into construction. I tried to maximize the space there and I got into construction safety. I became an authorized ocean instructor, a New York City Department of Buildings compliance officer and a nationally certified construction health and safety technician, all of which I was denied for and I had to appeal.
(02:52):
I actually set precedent for people with convictions to be able to get these licenses. And I was doing that from about, well, 2018 when I got home, I started my own business also and I was doing that up until about 2021, 2022 when the CAURD program was released. And I didn’t really know much about the CAURD program only because I had no real intention of getting back into selling drugs. And some of my background with cannabis is just like everybody else who was on the streets. You had some homies out in California, Oklahoma, Oregon, they’d send you 10 packs, 15 packs, and you’d distribute them throughout New York and with whatever your circle was. So I was dibbling dabbling in cannabis and even in prison, one of the big smokers is weed. You got somebody to bring you up the bag, you’re smoking a joint in the yard, it becomes a thing. So that’s really my experience just to go back and tell you what my experience in cannabis is. But again, in 2022 when the CAURD program was coming out, my best friend actually came to my house and he’s like, yo homie, I was just watching the news. We’re going to get a weed dispensary. And I genuinely thought he was crazy, bro. I am like, there are no way that New York out of every state in the country is going to give convicted felons. People have been convicted of crimes, nonviolent drug crimes. I mean
TG Branfalt (04:17):
We have history of Rockefeller drug laws
Jeremy Rivera (04:19):
Of course with the early nineties into the mid and the two thousands with stop and frisk all the way into the two thousands. And as early as the Rockefeller in the nineties, there’s no way New York State was going to allow such a thing to happen. But as I dove a little more into it and started researching it, they had two main criteria. You had to be convicted of a cannabis conviction, a cannabis crime, and you had to have a small business positive for two years. And I have three state felonies in a juvenile conviction. Each one of my state prison bids had cannabis in the indictment. So I checked that box off the jump and like I said, when I came home, I made the conscious decision to change my life. So around 2019, 20, I started JA Building Consultants, which was a consulting firm that I worked with insurance companies and I audited job sites. So that checked that box off. Boom, we got with a good lawyer, we who from MRTA law and we just started rocking and rolling. I really liked developed abilities that I didn’t know I had even this to be able to talk on podcasts and really tell the story. So it was amazing. It was a really cool journey and really journeys just beginning.
TG Branfalt (05:35):
So the licensing process was marred by lawsuits. There was at least one that stopped it and then another one that stopped it that dealt with veterans. And I can tell you from experience I was in very shortly after legalization, I was in New York City and there were illegal dispensaries operating sort of everywhere. And I know that you had taken that route, you wouldn’t have gotten a license ultimately. So the patients really paid off for a lot of people. Can you tell me about your experience obtaining a license in the state? What was it like for you?
Jeremy Rivera (06:14):
So you said it right there. The state’s program was hiccuped from the beginning. We had the verite lawsuit, which held five regions in injunction. We had the FII lawsuit, which cos Marte and Kbu and myself were a part of. We filed as interveners on that case and we were one of the three dispensaries that set the precedent for what the Honorable Judge Bryant was opening dispensaries for. But you said it, man, between the illicit dispensaries, we could have gone that route. And you know what, there are some illicit dispensaries that have gone that route and are still getting open. So that’s always like, fuck not, it’s been a hairy rollout. The CAURD program itself, we’ve never codified CAURD. So the CAURD program isn’t in the MRTA, the Marijuana Revenue Tax Act. It’s not in the MRTA. So it’s its sole independent entity. So that’s why it’s so subjective to having these lawsuits brought against ’em. We started this out with a Wish and a Dream and when they started awarding licenses back in November of 2023, I believe it was, no, 2024, sorry, up. My apologies. 2022. We didn’t get approved until 2023. So I left my job, I left working and doing my businesses to pursue this full time and I was
TG Branfalt (07:42):
Did you have to rent a building in the meantime? Just waiting for it?
Jeremy Rivera (07:45):
So no, because originally the parameters were different. Originally we had to take the DASNY program, the Dormitory Authority Services of New York. It was supposed to be a turnkey operation in the beginning. They were supposed to fit us out with a dispensary, find the location, we do the branding together because a lot of us in CAR didn’t have that experience in a mature market. We were individuals that were stepping into this. So the state had originally created a program through dasny where they were going to assist us find the location, work with fit out groups and all that. And as time progressed, everything changed. There were only supposed to be 150 licensees ended up now being 475 people or whatnot were licensed. We were originally supposed to work with the dormitory Authority services and now people like myself were able to get their own locations. So this program, and not to the fault of anyone’s specifically, it’s just been a very difficult and ever-changing landscape.
TG Branfalt (08:50):
Now obviously when people in the industry in New York, when we talk about this, I hear a lot that they don’t like those provisions that are in the CAURD provisions and that they say is what handicapped the rollout essentially, and what, what’s your take on those provisions? It doesn’t seem like in New York City with the dormitory authority, it really worked out that way. And it doesn’t seem like now that there’s four times as many licenses as they’ve anticipated, it didn’t really work out that way. So what do you think about the provisions and how it has rolled out?
Jeremy Rivera (09:32):
I think there should have been more protection for the CAURD program. I think it should have been codified by our elected officials a lot earlier on and now still codified to give protection to these individuals. New York has continued the rollout though they’ve continually, they’ve continued to accept applications and give out licenses. So the program is not stopping. The cannabis adult use program is not stopping, but card seems like to be forgotten about and continuously being forgotten about. And again, it’s no ill intent to anyone specifically. I think it’s just the way the cards rolled out. We have to give credit to New York and the officials that were behind the original MRTA for creating a program that focused on people who were disproportionately affected by the war on drugs. But the truth of the matter is, and
TG Branfalt (10:23):
New York City, I mean, yeah,
Jeremy Rivera (10:26):
I come from CDIA community disproportionately impacted by cannabis. I have multiple cannabis convictions. I, again, as a former gang member and a person who was in and out of prison and was in the streets, we’ve all been affected. Cannabis was that one reason to get you pulled out of a car and searched in hopes that they would be able to find something else. So we have to appreciate the individuals that focused on this and wanted to give us a chance. But the reality is, as we all know in other states, the big corporations really don’t give two fucks. Excuse my language, about individuals like us. And they have the finance and resources to keep on either pausing programs or filing lawsuits that pause programs to honestly, it’s like to break morale in individuals. And a lot of people who were in CAURD were hoping to get a build out. They didn’t have the finances or the resources to open up their own dispensary. So a lot of people who initially applied were only applying in hopes that they would be able to get that chance. So it’s a little difficult. It’s a rough program. It’s had its rough up and downs.
TG Branfalt (11:34):
Lemme ask you another question just do you know if, I know that Holle shortly after she took off, pardoned a whole lot of cannabis convictions. Are you a person that’s included in that sort
Jeremy Rivera (11:47):
Of social justice? No, I wasn’t. No, I’m not familiar with the pardons that she did do. But I’m a three-time pre persistent drug offender, so I can only get what’s called a certificate of relief. I’ve actually been home last year. This year I actually make six years that I’m home from prison. Longest year, five years was the longest I ever been home in my life.
TG Branfalt (12:12):
Unbelievable story, man.
Jeremy Rivera (12:14):
Yeah. So this year I’m actually able to put in for what they call a certificate of relief. And it doesn’t sponge my record because I have so much on top of it, but it puts a little asterisk next to it and it just let’s the officials know if everybody looks at my record that I’m kind of reformed or I am reformed.
TG Branfalt (12:36):
So going back to the community that your shops in, I’m a guy who likes buildings. Can you tell me about the building itself that you’re in? Maybe what it used to be? What?
Jeremy Rivera (12:48):
So it’s a funny story. We’re in North Astoria, Queens Dip, Mars. So we’re across the street from a real famous Greek seafood restaurant. We’re also across the street from a real famous bakery called Martha’s.
TG Branfalt (13:02):
Good place for a dispensary.
Jeremy Rivera (13:04):
Yeah, exactly. Great place. So originally we were working with one of my partner’s friends, Danielle from Fresh Bases. She’s young like us in her thirties, was in the club scene early on. And then as she grew up and had her family, she developed into doing real estate and we hired her to find this locations and she gave us a list of 10. And out of that 10 we picked four or five we wanted to see, and this specific location wasn’t even on the list. We never picked it, check it out. So we go look at the other spots and we’re finishing. She’s like, Hey, I want to show you the place on 36 in Ditmars. You didn’t pick it, but I want to show it to you. So we go over and we look around and I’m like, yo, this is the spot. The problem is the landlord, older gentleman, he’s about 65.
(13:53):
His father had owned the building since the thirties and was a Greek woods craftman. So they had it as a cabinet place. They used to make handmade cabinets. No way. And this is the first time he was ever interested in renting it out to somebody that wasn’t in his family. So bro, when I tell you we had to jump through hoops and have to deal with this guy while we were building out, we were literally, we had to construction crews in here. He was standing here like a foreman. And he would stand here and be like, well, you know, have to change this and you have to change that. And he like, no way, yo. It was crazy to the point we were like, Nick, you got to go to Florida. You had a house in co. He like, yo Nick, you have to go down to Florida. But it, it’s a first floor storefront with apartments upstairs. And again, a story is very residential with small businesses. So all of the small businesses have residential attached to them. So my neighbors, they’re like, oh, we live downstairs from a dispensary. I’m like, it’s really cool. My neighbor next to us is a bar. The neighbor to the other side of us is a brick of an Italian pizzeria. So bro, it’s really cool. There’s not much architectural substance to the building, but there’s so much emotional substance to it. But I mean,
TG Branfalt (15:11):
I saw pictures of it. It’s got that dope awning on the front of it. You know what I’m saying? It’s got character.
Jeremy Rivera (15:16):
Yeah. When we did the design, it was actually my partner who came up with the whole design. We did two murals, one from a local Astoria artist and another from a, excuse me, another from a Colorado and Hawaii based artist. So even our construction, we did it small business from a guy in the neighborhood, our floors, we did small business. Everything in the dispensary, we outsourced to people in the community.
TG Branfalt (15:45):
It’s the way to do it, man. Really. It brings a dollar spent locally or earned locally two or spent locally. I don’t know how the phrase goes.
Jeremy Rivera (15:56):
I know it’s something
TG Branfalt (15:57):
Now. Something like that. Prior to licensing, I just mentioned earlier, New York was a hotspot for unlicensed dispensaries. Are they still proliferating? I mean, you had said earlier that they’re still out there and how are licensed operators competing?
Jeremy Rivera (16:18):
So we’ll start with the first part, right? Are they still proliferating and continuing to open up and that the truth is yes, just within maybe 500 feet of me, I have about five or six of them. So an average of about one for every a hundred feet. New York didn’t really, New York State didn’t create a program where there was a real ability to shut these stores down. Even the other day in the news we saw on the Upper West Side, an elected official had gone and shut a illegal dispensary down and decided the next day to do a press conference in front of the padlock dispensary. Illegal and much to her amazed when she got there, they were open again and operation they had clipped the lock, opened it up, and they were back in business. So if she’s supposed to show you what the temperament in New York City is, it’s like fuck you. We’re going to do what we want. How do we differentiate and how do we work is providing education and understanding of what legal cannabis brings health wise. I know we have to separate ourselves because we’re not medical distribute, we’re not medical dispensaries, but we always have to make sure that we’re understanding these illegal dispensaries are definitely being found. Lace, cannabis, there’s definitely fentanyl, cocaine, heroin being distributed sometimes out of these same places.
TG Branfalt (17:55):
Really?
Jeremy Rivera (17:56):
Yeah, no, it’s crazy. Just the other day there was a raid and they found traces of fentanyl in the cannabis. The NYPD released a statement. So what can we do is market as safe legal providers. We have to get into our communities and show them that we have reasonably priced product, good product, safe product that we can give them. It’s always just the education part of it. These illegal dispensaries aren’t going out and telling you what the fuck’s in the weed. They’re just selling it to you.
TG Branfalt (18:27):
I hadn’t heard that from New York City at all. So that’s super disconcerting. At the very least. Now, broader, aside from the illegal operators that you have to sort of compete with, New York City itself, I’m sure is going to be hyper competitive, just like it’s for any business that decides to open in the city. Do you take the same approach when trying to corner your part of that hyper competitive, sort of broader New York City market? Of
Jeremy Rivera (19:02):
Course, because eventually I don’t believe that the illegal dispensary is going to be here for much longer within the next couple of years. And as the program develops, I think the state will create a protocol in which they’re shutting them down. It’s just not happening fast enough. But when it does happen, there are going to be a lot more legal dispensaries and just like anything else is marketing right? And creating something that other dispensaries don’t have, which is your own personal vibe, your own personal feeling that you give the consumers when they walk in. We don’t have a bunch of screens. We have bud tenders that walk the floor. We talk to you, we introduce a lot of our returning customers know our bud tenders by name. We know our customers by first and last name. So it’s just
TG Branfalt (19:46):
Like you knew your boy back in the day. No,
Jeremy Rivera (19:47):
Exactly. We’re bringing back that feeling of cannabis. We don’t want to over commercialize it where it feels like you’re going to an Apple store, you’re going to some big corporate building. We want to normalize the fact of purchasing cannabis in your neighborhood from somebody you recognize and you feel like. So that’s going to continue to be our game plan as more dispensaries open up as being ter pros, giving back what people feel is the reason they come in and it’s comfortability and the coolness.
TG Branfalt (20:18):
Well, and on marketing too, New York has really strict marketing regulations. I have a small business, a record store, and I wanted to partner. It just so happens record store day is on four 20 and I wanted to partner with our local dispensary on something and he’s like, dude, I can’t do it. I can’t do that type of partnership advertising. So how are you doing marketing and advertising in a space where it’s not allowed?
Jeremy Rivera (20:45):
Well, it’s not that it’s not allowed. It’s very strict and there’s very strict guidelines on how to market, right? We have to make sure that 90% of our viewers are 21 and older. We can’t use certain colors or certain fonts. We can’t insinuate the use of cannabis, I believe we can’t use brands. We can’t have brands market with us because there’s no picking one over the other. You
TG Branfalt (21:11):
Can’t trademark your name.
Jeremy Rivera (21:13):
Well, you can trade. You see, again, there’s ways to do certain things. We’re in the process of trading marketing tur rows, not through cannabis, but as merchandising, because we sell hats, we sell shirts. There are ways to go about it. Even with marketing programmatic out of home search engine optimization, there’s ways to do it organically. And there are companies out there that are marketing that want to break into the cannabis space knowing that eventually this is either going to go to schedule three or BD schedule completely, and we’re going to be playing on the same field. So there are companies out there. It takes a lot of work and a lot of diligence to do your homework on what is legal and not legal, what’s in and not in the regulations, so that you can go to your marketing meetings and you can explain and or your marketing company can explain back to you if you don’t fully understand.
(22:02):
This is what it says, right? Regulations are like law. And when I was going in and out of prison fighting cases, you cite case law and if it isn’t exactly the way it is, that’s what causes mistrials and that’s what gets you. It’s exact regulations are exact. So you have to be able to use those regulations and get as far as you can without violating them. And there are ways to do it even with your record store. It’s not him marketing. It’s you marketing. There’s no regulations that says a record store can’t market for four 20. It’s a cannabis company that can’t. It’s the legal dispensary.
TG Branfalt (22:43):
It just seems ridiculous on its face. It’s
Jeremy Rivera (22:45):
Super ridiculous. And we hope eventually that it’s going to open up. But for now, if we want to stay in this competitive market, we have to learn how to play the words. We have to learn how to work it.
TG Branfalt (22:57):
How hands on are you day to day? Because you seem pretty like you’re just
Jeremy Rivera (23:03):
Like any other small business owner. I’m here, me and my partners are here. We have 14 shifts a week. One morning one night. We’re open seven days a week. And between myself and my other partners, we’re here every day. I’m here Monday through Friday from morning till evening. We are hands-on in all of our marketing meetings, all of our growth and expansion, all of our day-to-Day team meetings. But you have to be, if you want to be a successful small business, I can’t expect anyone else, especially only five months into an industry to care about this as much as I do, knowing how much I’ve already lost, this is more than just a business. This is reparations for so much pain that individuals like myself have been through having to be stopped and searched and ripped out a car, having to go to prison with cannabis on your indictment and living through these traumatic instances. This is reparations for cannabis users and we have to treat it in a respectful manner. This is a real business. This is a real industry. So bro, I’m here every day, no questions asked. I’m at the shop right now.
TG Branfalt (24:10):
I mean, when it goes to marketing too, I just want to ask about your name, because Turt bros, right? Terpenes are not something that’s often an experienced cannabis consumer might understand. So you have weed shop on a hundred feet down from you, and then you have this really unique name that I think speaks to the maturity of your business. So what’s in a name, man?
Jeremy Rivera (24:44):
So this was actually my partner who came up with the name. We originally opened the company under cush culture industry because again, we thought we needed, we thought it was going to be a das and we wanted to go with something like conservative. And as the program evolved, we had created an Instagram page where terp rows was the name. My partner came up with that name. And it’s funny you say that. A mature consumer may know what terpenes is and maybe not the immature consumer, but everybody understands once you explain to them what Terps are and what terpenes are, because it’s the first thing that every consumer does when they check weed, they look at it, they open it and they smell it. So it goes back to the educational purposes of what we’re trying to create here and opening up things that again, the natural consumer may not know but wants to because they do it on a regular habit basis. And then as again, time went on, we DBA TER rows and we are like, that’s who we are. This is the feel. And it’s cool that you picked up on it and I feel you. Not every consumer picks up on it and not every person does. I’m
TG Branfalt (25:50):
A TURP guy, man.
Jeremy Rivera (25:51):
I feel you. But once you explain it to them, they understand. And again, that adds on to the educational purpose that we’re trying to provide here. It’s like teaching somebody something new every day.
TG Branfalt (26:02):
Yeah, I’m sure you have people. Do you have people who come in and say, what the fuck is a Turkey?
Jeremy Rivera (26:08):
Yeah, absolutely. I had somebody tell me because I’m not really a sports fan, but I had somebody ask me if it’s like a college football team. It’s
TG Branfalt (26:17):
Maryland. Yeah, yeah,
Jeremy Rivera (26:18):
Maryland like the TURPs. I’m like,
TG Branfalt (26:20):
Bro, no, I’ll be watching ESPN. And they’ll be like, and the TURPs. And I’m like, the fuck the, what are we doing here? So what is the top selling category at your shop? Is it flour, concentrates, edibles, flour,
Jeremy Rivera (26:38):
Flour, hands down flour? We’re a flower shop. We have a great of eights from 25 all the way up to 60. We have something for everybody. We are a small shop, but we hold a lot of skews. And I know a lot of people who are going to watch this from the mature market is like you’re supposed to have two 50 and 300, but we have like 580 skews. We have a lot of flour. We have a lot of non-cannabis too. We have puffco, we have grab bongs, we have papers and shit. But we have, I’d say about right now, maybe 90 different SKUs of just flour. We’d like to give people an option that’s between eight quarters, half ounces, ounces. But we like to give every consumer a chance to purchase something that’s for them. I don’t think having limited quantities really helps people. I think people need a good choice. And especially if you have good bud tenders that are guiding them to find exactly what it is they’re looking for, you can definitely dial down a TER rows and find something for everybody.
TG Branfalt (27:44):
What do you look for in a bud tender?
Jeremy Rivera (27:47):
So we picked our bud tenders from the community, also from the cannabis New York City community. We want to have people that are, I want to say conures, but understand cannabis, understand terpenes, understand the difference between flowers, understand the cannabinoid systems and secondary cannabinoids, not just THC, so that they’re able to give the consumers a good piece for what they’re looking for, but also personable. We want a bud tender that has retail experience that knows how to sell, but can smile and has a good aura about them. One thing about all of our staff is we’re trying to create the next line of entrepreneurs in the business. So we want bud tenders that have goals. We want bud tenders that want to be owners of dispensaries or owners of cultivation or get into marketing or get into compliance or anything like that. We want to be building the next set of business owners in the industry. So it’s like a little bit of everything. Cannabis, you’re a good flow person. You got a good vibration, you smile. You know how to upsell. You know how to sell. You want to be something you have goals in your life. And if ter pros is the place for you, there’s so many people that come in and out of these doors that there’s a chance for you to fulfill your dreams by working in this store for your future.
TG Branfalt (29:12):
And do you look for people that may have maybe records themselves and
Jeremy Rivera (29:18):
All of our, yeah, I didn’t add that on, but all of our bud tenders either have a conviction or if not have a conviction, have been in a CDI community disproportionately impacted or come from a CD. I got butt tenders and fulfillment from Brownsville all the way to the South Bronx, some from Williamsburg. I got people from everywhere.
TG Branfalt (29:39):
Williamsburg is a little gentrified now.
Jeremy Rivera (29:41):
Yeah, now it’s gentrified.
TG Branfalt (29:43):
Yeah,
Jeremy Rivera (29:44):
They’re still like the south side. Still got some hood blocks to it.
TG Branfalt (29:49):
I want to go back to flower just for a second though. Why do you think flower’s still it? I mean, I was just talking about my buddy about this right before we caught on and I was like, man, I still get flour from my boy. But meter, dose, edibles, concentrates. I mean all that comes from the dispensary and I think that’s because of the age, right? I still got boys. But why do you think flour is still that number one selling?
Jeremy Rivera (30:21):
I think what it is is when you look at the evolution of the illegal dispensaries they put out of business, our boys who had the delivery routes they put out of business, those local dealers who you would call, I’ll be at yours in 45 minutes with two bags, they put that area out of business. But again, as cannabis evolved in New York, they started to see that these corner stores were not giving them product that was suitable for their health or suitable for consumption. So now people are driven to what they’re used to, which is a store type environment, but they’ll rather go legal and especially in a small community like this where it’s not a lot of tourist traffic, it’s not in Manhattan where a customer will come in once and you’ll never see them their whole life. They’re just buying a vape pen in, they’re walking through Manhattan and seeing sightseeing and smoking a vape. These people are buying a bag of weed. They’re going to their house packing a bowl of rolling a joint. They’re buying a pre-roll going next door to the bar and smoking a joint outside. So again, the illegal dispensaries put out business are homeboys who are having the routes. But now that these illegal dispensaries, the cloth is coming over and we’re really seeing what they’re doing. It’s driving the consumer back to legal dispensaries.
TG Branfalt (31:43):
I mean it’s super interesting just from a, now does it sort of deviate by age group for you? Are the younger kids sort of looking for one thing and then grandma’s looking for another thing?
Jeremy Rivera (31:54):
Absolutely. We have a common core demographic of 37 to 41 that’s male and female. We’re starting to see that 21 to 28 start to pick up now that new brands are coming to market and those more recognizable brands that have that marketing and that young feel about
TG Branfalt (32:15):
Them that are on
Jeremy Rivera (32:16):
TikTok one to 20. Yeah, it’s not even the TikTok, but they’re the ones that were like the seven tens and the cookies and all these brands are starting to come. They got boys is going to come to New York. They have brand recognition. The older demographic is looking, honestly, it’s like sleep products, right? They’re looking for edibles that put them to sleep. They’re looking for flour that puts him to sleep.
TG Branfalt (32:40):
Interesting. So
Jeremy Rivera (32:41):
The market is ever developing, and I think the whole demographics of who your consumer is today by three, four months is going to change because all these new brands are now dropping to the New York market.
TG Branfalt (32:54):
What surprised you most about the legal market are going legal yourself?
Jeremy Rivera (33:00):
How much bullshit comes along with it
TG Branfalt (33:03):
That surprises you? You’re talking bureaucracy in New York State bud,
Jeremy Rivera (33:07):
Bro. The taxes two 80 e, I believe it’s 4 71. All these tax codes, the marketing regulations, understanding the independent regulations just for New York state and then understanding cannabis is still federally illegal
TG Branfalt (33:24):
And the city’s got their own codes
Jeremy Rivera (33:26):
And then the city has its own code. That’s really what took me for the biggest loop. It’s that it’s so controlled that you part of what’s going to be the largest infrastructure in New York state. It’s going to bring some of the most money in every than any other infrastructure. But yet we’re so regulated, so heavily regulated and we can’t do anything, right? We would just with our accountant, and it’s like you start to add up the amount of taxes and you’re like 13 and seven plus eight, and then we filed as a C corp. But what most common dispensaries are you get taxed on your personal, you get taxed on your dividend, you get taxed on everything. So that was the most difficult process.
TG Branfalt (34:10):
Do you think that recently a proposed legislation that would get rid of the potency tax, do you think that that would help the dispensaries and the smaller operators?
Jeremy Rivera (34:24):
Well, it depends because if you get rid of the potency tax on one end, it still has to be placed on another end. They’re not just going to lose taxes. No,
TG Branfalt (34:33):
I think they were going to put a flat tax on wholesale.
Jeremy Rivera (34:36):
But what would be the flat tax you get from 13% to what, 23%? Because you want to be lower than any of the other legal East coast states are. I think the highest we are in maybe mass is 24, 20 6%. So what would hoku want to do? Give us a flat rate of 23. We’re at 13% now. We still have a 13% M RT tax that we give our consumer. Our customer gets a 13% tax. So you think, I think it’s not going to drive consumers to want to shop. It’s already hard enough paying 13% tax. Imagine giving a flat rate of 21, 23, 20, whatever it is. I think on the dispensaries end, it’s going to drive a lot of consumers into not wanting to buy legal.
TG Branfalt (35:21):
What do you think would be best to get some sort of normalcy going in this market just because of the illegal operations. There’s a lot of issues in New York’s market. Do you think there’s any sort of panacea or legislation or anything that would benefit
Jeremy Rivera (35:41):
On the largest descheduling right removal? So
TG Branfalt (35:45):
Federal reform.
Jeremy Rivera (35:46):
Federal reform, of course, right on interstate commerce, right? Interstate compact. Seeing if we can start shipping from state to state. California is in a rut. If New York is the next hot market and there’s already brands in California that are dying that have notoriety, why can’t we start shipping them from California to New York?
TG Branfalt (36:06):
I mean, Connecticut has no supply.
Jeremy Rivera (36:09):
Yeah. Oh yeah. And that of course, that interstate movement would help a lot of these East Coast states not only drive traffic, but also relieve the issues that the West Coast states are having. So there’s so much that we can do. It’s just, I guess not lining the pockets the way people want it to on the big end. So they’re not with it really.
TG Branfalt (36:30):
So what advice do you have for entrepreneurs looking to enter this space?
Jeremy Rivera (36:39):
Educate yourself on the history of legalization in cannabis and other states and in your state. The regulations and the market itself. Understand that the whole facade of you driving a Ferrari and you own a dispensary really isn’t true. If you talk to anybody who’s been in mature markets and understands how the cannabis industry truly is, knows you’re going to have to be like me working here every day. Me and my partners are here every day, blood, sweat, and tears. It’s not easy. It’s heavily regulated. Gets back into understanding the regulations of your specific state and city and educating yourself, like just learning your consumer learning, sales, learning business, learning retail, being a good people’s person. There is a lot that has to do with being successful in this industry. It’s not just one thing.
TG Branfalt (37:37):
And just to ask you, man, what drives you to sort of be in there five days a week of this industry, of what you do? What’s the passion?
Jeremy Rivera (37:52):
I told you I’m a three time predicate persistent drug offender, bro. I dropped out of high school in ninth grade. I have no formal education. I left construction safety to do this. I’m not going back to construction. So this is all I have. This is everything, all eggs in the basket. This is what we’re doing. I’m that type of intense person. I don’t have a college degree where if this fails, I can go back to an office or I’m going to go do something. I don’t play basketball, I don’t rap. I don’t play sports, I don’t play football. I don’t do none of that shit. This is all I have. And because of that, and because I have a family that I need to support, I have a wife and beautiful children, I have a dream and a goal. This is what it is. This is what my focus is. And again, goes back to your earlier question before this. You need to focus on that. You need to focus in cannabis if you want to be successful the way I am. Because if you’re not focused and you’re not giving this a hundred percent, you’re not going to get a hundred percent out of it. So you have to be like laser vision all day every day. I saturate myself in legal cannabis, I’m all in on this.
TG Branfalt (39:07):
Bleeding it man. He’s fucking bleeding it.
Jeremy Rivera (39:10):
That’s a fact.
TG Branfalt (39:11):
My man. I cannot wait to my next trip down to the city to come and visit you and meet you and buy some flour. Where can people find out more about you and turp Bros. On the old internet?
Jeremy Rivera (39:27):
So you can go to our website www.erpbrosnyc.com. So that’s terros nyc.com. You can also find us on Instagram, T-E-R-P-B-R os. Do Astoria, A-S-T-O-R-I-A. You got to type the whole thing out because we’re Shadow band. So if you type in just type, you got to literally type the whole thing. Because cannabis is so heavily regulated and marketing is so difficult that Meta doesn’t allow us to have cannabis brands on their platform. But we’re also located at 36 dash 10 Ditmars Boulevard in Astoria, New York. So that’s Dip Mars Boulevard between 36th and 37th, and that’s where you find us at.
TG Branfalt (40:12):
Well man, I really appreciate you coming on the show. My return after a couple of years away, Jeremy Rivera is the co-founder and CEO of Turf Rose in Astoria, Queens. And this has been the entrepreneur.com podcast. You can find more episodes of the podcast and podcast section of entrepreneur.com wherever you get your podcasts. On the website, you’ll find the latest cannabis news and cannabis jobs updated daily along with transcripts of this podcast. You can also download the entrepreneur.com at in iTunes and Google Play. This episode was engineered by Wayward Media. I’ve been your host, TG brand.
For decades, cannabis research in the U.S. was hindered by steep federal requirements, foot-dragging enforcement agencies, and an archaic rule limiting the source of research-grade cannabis to just one cultivator in Mississippi. But thanks to a lawsuit against the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) by Dr. Sue Sisley MD, a doctor who spent years trying to get federal approval for her study that sought to investigate the therapeutic effects of cannabis for veterans with PTSD, the path for real cannabis research has never been more clear.
Shane Pennington was the attorney who worked pro bono with Dr. Sisley to see that lawsuit to fruition. In this podcast interview, our host TG Branfalt returns to discuss those developments with Shane as well as other significant rulings. Shane also discusses his background before joining the cannabis cause, his current work with Vicente Sederberg LLP, his advice for lawyers or law students who are interested in cannabis, and more.
You can listen to the full interview via the player below, or keep scrolling down to find a full transcript.
Listen to the podcast:Ganjapreneur · Shane Pennington: Suing the DEA to Unlock Cannabis Research
Read the transcript:
Kevin Lance Murray: This episode of the Ganjapreneur Podcast is brought to you by The Sesh, a new podcast from the Outlaw Report, the essential news source for cannabis politics, business, and culture in the Mid-Atlantic region. I’m Kevin Lance Murray, host of The Sesh, and you can listen to all our episodes on Apple Podcast, Spotify, or by visiting the outlawreport.com/podcast.
TG Branfalt: Hey, there. I’m your host TG Branfalt and thank you for listening to the ganjapreneur.com podcast where we try to bring you actionable information and normalize cannabis through the stories of ganjapreneurs, activists and industry stakeholders. It’s been a long time since I’ve hosted an episode of the podcast, but recently I had the opportunity to interview Shane Pennington, the lead council for New York-based Vicente Sederberg LLP, which is a cannabis-focused legal practice, about a letter that he had written to the DEA that sort of sparked this controversy about seeds. But before we get into that, how you doing, Shane?
Shane Pennington: Doing great. Thanks for having me.
TG Branfalt: It’s a pleasure. Like I said, we had spoken about the seeds issue a couple of weeks ago, and we started sort of jawing about your history and how you got into the space. And I was really fascinated by that. And so I was like, “Let me host another podcast and get this on record.” So let’s start with you, man. What is your background?
Shane Pennington: Yeah, so I graduated law school in 2010 and went very kind of square route for several years, that I clerked for several federal judges, had a above top secret clearance with the federal government where I was doing FISA, which is like Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act stuff in DC, and then went and joined a Supreme Court practice of a big law firm in Houston, where I’m originally from. And after several years of doing Supreme Court cases for companies like Halliburton and Valero and that kind of thing, I decided… I got offered this pro bono gig to help a scientist named Dr. Sue Sisley try to get her application to grow cannabis for research out of a delay hold at DEA. So it was kind of just stuck and DEA wasn’t getting back to her. And I knew nothing about cannabis policy, I knew nothing about the Controlled Substances Act, I had zero background. I mean, my dad’s a Methodist minister. I grew up very straight laced.
And there was no judgment, I’m actually kind of a libertarian politically. So I had no judgment, but just my life, it had just had never been an issue for me. But since what Dr. Sisley was doing was for vets, she was trying to research cannabis for veterans suffering from treatment resistant PTSD and chronic pain, I thought, “Well, I’ll try to help her,” and dug into it and ended up beating the DEA in a series of lawsuits from 2019 to 2021. And now she has a license to grow her own cannabis and her studies are going forward. And in the process of doing all of that, I became obsessed with… I mean, learned all about it, realized how meaningful the work was and so I was like, “Man, these cases for Valero and Halliburton just aren’t as interesting or as meaningful. I mean, to me.” And so I left the big firm and came and joined Vicente Sederberg and now do impact litigation for cannabis reform full-time.
TG Branfalt: So you say you had no experience in cannabis, what in your background did you draw from most to sort of enter this space or get really acquainted with it?
Shane Pennington: That’s a great question. So turns out cannabis law, and this is kind of nerdy, but I mean, it’s not really its own thing. People think of it as cannabis law, but it’s not. It’s actually administrative law because administrative law is the law of agencies, it’s how agencies regulate people. So your car is regulated by the Environmental Protection Agency, the food you eat is the USDA, the Department of Agriculture and so forth, your taxes are by the Internal Revenue Service, which is a federal agency, right? And so I specialized in suing those federal agencies on behalf of regulated parties, like Halliburton often has to deal with the EPA and the SEC and all of this. And even pharmaceutical companies, I would help them as well with FDA and FTC and all these different agencies.
That’s what I specialize in, it’s a very nerdy, very nuanced, very complex area of law. And it turns out that cannabis is governed by federal agencies, the Drug Enforcement Administration, the Food and Drug Administration, Alcohol Tobacco Firearms, Customs Border Protection, which is Homeland Security. So you just go down the list and I was like, “Man, that’s right up my alley.” Now the laws are different for each regulated industry, but it turns out that I was a specialist in exactly what these substances, the laws that govern them, and so when I got involved in it, even though I wasn’t familiar with the particular regulations and so forth, I was very, very, very prepared to sue the DEA. And that’s why… DEA’s not used to getting sued like that. I mean, I guess they get sued a lot, but it’s no offense to people who are practicing in this space, it’s just that I’m a specialist in this.
Most people who get a cannabis case are the ex-prosecutor or the guy from some local Bar Association who takes a traffic ticket case and then they do the best that they can with it and they… Look at what they do, they kick the shit out of me, but this is what I specialize in and I don’t think DEA was used to getting fastballs coming over the plate like that and so we got a series of quick victories. And I should say, I should add quickly, that I wasn’t doing this alone I had a lot of help from a lot of different people, but the point is it was really exhilarating to get to apply skills that I’d been using on behalf of refiners and Fortune 500 pharmaceutical companies to help a scientist struggling to do research for vets.
TG Branfalt: Is that why you made the switch, because to you it’s a bit more… I don’t know, friendly?
Shane Pennington: I mean, it’s a lot more meaningful to me and I don’t mean to say it’s not meaningful to help big companies, it’s just that there’s so many lawyers. I knew when I left the firm I was at, I was at a firm called Baker Botts, which is a great big Am Law 100 law firm, it’s a great law firm, great people, very, very, very talented lawyers there. And I went to another law firm called Yetter Coleman, which is a top boutique firm, it’s a few lawyers and they’re all very, very talented, very well compensated too and a lot of they’re all still my good friends. And look, the work they’re doing is tip of the spear of legal work, no doubt about it. But I knew when I left, there would be 20 very talented lawyers there to fill my spot, you know what I mean? Harvard and University of Chicago, et cetera, are going to keep pumping out lawyers and they’re going to keep filling those spots.
Whereas there was nobody really doing this work, that level of work, in this space because the federal government hadn’t been enforcing the law. So there’s no demand for it. Everybody was trying to avoid the federal regulators, not engage them. But Sue Sicily was this exception, because she’s this scientist who’s trying to do everything by the book. And she was getting stonewalled by the federal agency. And they’re not used to having people fight back against them cause nobody wants to screw with the DEA. But under these particular circumstances, we definitely did want to throw down and we did. And that was very meaningful. I felt like I was doing something that nobody else was doing at this particular moment in history and with federal legalization around the corner. And of course it’s a bigger corner than I thought at the time, it’s taken longer than I realized when I came in as a newbie.
Yeah. But I mean, like I said, I didn’t know that much about the politics. Anyway, I knew that it was coming and so I thought, “Man, I could get in here and start shaking things up right before legalization and maybe I’ll be able to have a practice out of this on the other side.” But it was worth it just to do all the impact litigation, all the pro bono work was very meaningful. It meant a pay cut for me, but the compensation in terms of bringing meaning to my life and making it possible for me to use my skills in a way that no one else was there… no one else was doing this. That was very exciting.
TG Branfalt: So when you get the call or however you get in touch with Sue Sisley, what is your initial sort of reaction? What’s your gut tell you?
Shane Pennington: Yeah, so it’s actually funny how I got the call. So I said I was at this firm Yetter Coleman just before I made this switch, and there’s a guy there named Matt Zorn, who is… he’s a very talented, very, very skilled litigator at this firm, too, in Houston and he went to Columbia Law School, brilliant guy. And we had never worked together on a case, but he went to South by Southwest in Austin and I didn’t go, he went. He met Dr. Sisley there, she gave a talk and she was like, “Nobody will represent me. My application to DEA is stalled out. Nobody’s going to help me. I can’t get a lawyer. I don’t have any money.” And Matt’s like, “Man, I know the guy who sues agencies, he’s the guy two doors down from me. That’s all he does is sue federal agencies. And he’s really good at it. I should go see if he’ll take it on.”
So he came back and he was like… I mean and he and I had talked and we got along pretty well, but we had never worked together, we had never spent that much time together, but he came into my office and he was like, “Hey man, there’s this scientist that I met at South by and she’s a cannabis scientist.” And I’m like, “Okay.” And he’s like, “Yeah, and she’s got this case and her thing is stalled, her application is stalled at DEA.” And so when he said that, I was like, “Look, man, it’s not going to work.” Because basically when you sue an agency, the first thing the court’s going to ask is, “What is it that the agency did that you’re saying they did wrong?” And if your answer to that is, “They haven’t done anything and I want them to do something.” In other words, it’s their failure to act that is illegal, you’re fight…
I mean, that’s like, it’s hard enough to sue the government when they’ve done something clearly wrong, right? They took your house from you because they said that it was on waters of the United States or something like that with the Clean Water Act. Even if it’s clearly wrong, it’s still very difficult to sue the federal government. When the federal government’s up against you in court, there’s a presumption that the government is right and you’re wrong. That’s just how it is and you’re fighting that uphill battle no matter what. But when you’re saying the government should have done something and it hasn’t, that is three times as hard. And the reason is because the court doesn’t want to tell an agency how to prioritize its duties. So say an agency has lot, and they do, they have lots of things to do, they have a limited budget, no court wants to tell them, “You’ve got to do this first and that second and third,” because that’s considered an agency’s decision, they get to decide. Even if they have to do it, they get to decide when they do it and how they do it.
And so I told him, I was like, “Look, dude, that’s a losing battle. You’re not winning that.” He was like, “Will you just look at it because it’s been years that they’ve been sitting on this. They won’t talk to her.” I was like, “I’ll look at it, but I’m telling you, it’s going to be very, very challenging and I don’t think we’re going to win. And that’s why she hadn’t been able to find a lawyer.” So I started looking at it and I knew it would be very, very difficult, but her story was just so compelling. I mean, she is a legit scientist, she’s never broken a law, she’s straight down the middle, trying to… I started looking at it’s like the government is saying cannabis needs to be in Schedule I because there’s no research. And so then she’s trying to do the research and they won’t let her.
TG Branfalt: And, I’m sorry, but if I’m not mistaken, this was during the period of time where they’d said that they were going to open more licenses.
Shane Pennington: Yeah. Yeah. In 2016, that’s right. Now, that’s a very important point. They actually solicited the application. And here’s the deal, it was at the tail end of the Obama administration. This is 2016, they solicit the applications as Obama is on his way out the door and in comes the Trump administration in Jeff Sessions and all of a sudden they slam the door shut, it’s radio silence and as somebody who works on these cases all the time, of course, I mean, you don’t have to be a rocket scientist to see this. It’s like, that’s obviously political. And so that didn’t look good and even though the standard was going to be very difficult to overcome, I felt like it was worth a shot at least to raise awareness of the issue. And so we went to court over it. And as soon as we did, we wrote a really scathing opening brief. And we went to a court I clerked on so I knew how things worked there and-
TG Branfalt: That’s smart.
Shane Pennington: Yeah. And pretty soon the DEA folded. They didn’t want to fight it, they just went ahead and started processing her application.
TG Branfalt: Really?
Shane Pennington: Yeah. Yeah. And actually a series of dominoes fell, man. It’s insane. I don’t know how much we’ll be able to cover, but suffice to say… Let me just give you the punchline first, okay? By the time it was said and done, it turned out, everybody wanted to know why were they not processing these applications? What was the deal? They said they wanted them, why are they not processing them? And they’d actually gotten letters from senators on both sides of the aisle and other lawmakers, right? Democrats, Republicans, what is going on? Tell us the explanation. They had hauled multiple acting attorneys general in front of different committees of the Senate saying, “What’s up, we need this. There’s a veteran suicide epidemic. We have heard that this cannabis is helping these vets, but we don’t know what the risks are, if it’s helpful. You guys say we need the research, what’s going on?”
And DEA would say, “We’re processing the applications as fast as we can. We’re doing everything we can.” For years this was said. So everybody wanted to know what the answer was. Well, our lawsuits uncovered the answer and it’s unbelievable how it all went down. But the answer was that there was a secret memo from the office of legal counsel, this like Jedi council of secretive legal ninjas that operate in the executive branch, and their whole job is to settle disputes within the executive branch. So if like DEA disagrees with FDA or something like that, they will send it to this OLC and this OLC is just very, like I said, most people haven’t even heard of them. And it’s this little group of brilliant attorneys who just sit in this room and write opinions that govern the executive branch. So no matter what any agency says, if OLC says it’s X, Y, and Z, that’s the law on the executive branch.
And so what happened here was… And oh, and all its opinions are secret unless they decide to publish them. So it’s this, if you remember-
TG Branfalt: Or they get leaked.
Shane Pennington: What’s that?
TG Branfalt: Or they get leaked.
Shane Pennington: They do get leaked. So if you remember the Torture Memos under Bush, that was OLC. When the Russia stuff was going on, the Mueller investigation, OLC got involved there. They’re in the background of all the biggest stuff that’s happening in the executive branch. I mean, this is very spy versus spy type stuff.
TG Branfalt: So was it your case that brought these memos to light?
Shane Pennington: A settlement in a case that we brought actually forced DOJ to release the OLC opinion, but explained why they were delaying the applications, were refusing to process them and the answer, get this. The reason they weren’t processing them was because DEA’s policy, called the NIDA Monopoly, had been violating international law for 50 years.
TG Branfalt: And you’re talking about the farm in Mississippi?
Shane Pennington: Yep. Yep. In particular, there’s a treaty called the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs and it says that a single government agency has to govern marijuana cultivation if a country’s going to allow marijuana cultivation. This is ’61. So this is back when international… and it still is, this still is international law. But it sounds crazy because all these countries now allow marijuana cultivation, it’s obviously happening. That’s still the law under this treaty that the US and all these other countries are signatory to. It says a single government agency has to govern, but in the United States, NIDA and DEA, NIDA is the National Institute on Drug Abuse and DEA, which is of course two agencies, violates the convention and so the OLC said, “We are not in compliance with this treaty because of your NIDA Monopoly and so we can’t move forward with anything until you fix that.”
So DEA had to make all new rules. That’s why these new rules came out in 2020, or I guess it was 2021 by the time they actually were final, and then they got the process going. But they were just sitting on it because DEA… Nobody was very eager to tell Congress, “Yeah, we’ve been violating international law for half a century.” And what’s crazy about it too is… but that’s true. You can look it up. You can look it up, it’s on DOJ’s website. It’s called Licensing Marijuana Cultivation and Compliance With a Single Convention. If you Google that, you will find the OLC opinion that they publicized as part of a settlement. I’ll send it to you. I’ll send you the settlement.
TG Branfalt: This is unbelievable.
Shane Pennington: Right. Yeah. No. And I mean, it’s one of those things where you just start pulling the thread on the sweater and you just keep pulling it and pulling it and pulling it, and finally the emperor’s just standing there naked.
TG Branfalt: Were you just floored by all this? I mean, you’ve been doing administrative law, was there anything even close to this that you’d ever…?
Shane Pennington: That’s why I quit my lucrative, high-powered job to come do this all the time. I was like, “Listen, if it’s low hanging fruit like this.” And there is. There is a lot of stuff. And I mean, dude, this was a secret opinion. So what’s crazy is no one will ever understand this is such nerdy stuff when I try to explain it to people that their eyes kind of glaze over, but for me as an administrative law nerd, this was like… I’m sitting there, Matt and I are in the office and I honestly can’t remember which of us… how it happened… what the exact conversation was, but we’re sitting there and we’re trying to figure out what the answer to this question was. And one of us, and I don’t remember whom, said, “It’s got to be an OLC, I think.” Because it’s…
TG Branfalt: So you just knew that in your gut?
Shane Pennington: Because that would be the only thing that could be secret that they wouldn’t want to tell that could cause DEA not to move forward because they can’t, because PLC said so and yet it wouldn’t be public. And so what we did was we sued under the Freedom of Information Act and we said, “Listen, if you’ve changed the policy that’s governing our client, you’ve got to tell us that policy.” Which is true. And so we sued them and we said, “And also we need to do it on an emergency basis because we shouldn’t have to wait.” And at first the DOJ attorney on the other side was like, “You guys are insane. This is not happening. I don’t know what you think you’re talking about, but nobody gets…”
TG Branfalt: Really?
Shane Pennington: And then a week later, two weeks from the day we filed the lawsuit, the FOIA lawsuit, Freedom of Information Act, two weeks later, the guy called us and he was like, “Okay, yeah. We’re ready to settle it. We’ll post it on the website.” And we were like, “Oh man.” That’s like zero to 60 instantly. That never happens. And yeah, we were totally floored. I was like… I thought we were going to… Honestly I was like, “Dude, we’re going to be famous, man. This is big time.” But of course it happened during COVID and nobody cared and that’s stuff that I think people care when you tell them, but it’s so hard to understand it. And the federal government did everything they could do. They didn’t go to Congress and say, “Hey guys, remember all those times we testified to you and told you we didn’t know what the reason was. We’d like to correct the record.” Nobody ever did that. Nobody ever followed up.
TG Branfalt: Well, and from… I mean, a settlement’s also a lot quieter. You don’t go through all the motions of a trial and dates.
Shane Pennington: And we didn’t want to go blow the lid on it too much at the time, because we were trying to get our client her license. I mean, at the end of the day, this was cool for us. It’s like the little tiny highlight reel that my mom plays at family reunions or whatever about her son doing cool stuff or whatever. It is cool for me, but ultimately we have a client, we wanted her to get her license. So the settlement was we’re not going to press this. You published it, we get access to it. We’ll move forward. And our client got the license, but now years later, obviously it’s… Not years, but a year later, I can talk about it and it’s not violating the settlement agreement.
But another funny thing about it, the guy who wrote the OLC opinion, his name is Henry Whitaker. This guy is now the Solicitor General of Florida, he clerked for the same judge that I clerked for on the DC Circuit so I’d see him at law clerk unions and stuff, and the judge that we clerked for, David Sentelle, he’s this legendary DC Circuit judge, and one day we were out, he smoked cigars in DC with his clerks, and it’s the chance to get to talk to the judge, ask him for life advice or whatever. So one day I asked him, I was like, “Who’s your best clerk ever? Who’s the best, the smartest, the brightest, the best writer or whatever?” He’s like, “Henry Whitaker by far is the best clerk I’ve ever had.”
So when I saw Henry Whitaker wrote this thing, I was like, “Oh my God.” And of course it’s brilliantly reasoned, it’s perfect and it says, yeah, “DEA, since the very first day the NIDA monopoly ever existed, it was illegal and it caused the United States to be out of compliance with international law for half a century and it’s got to be corrected.” So yeah, I mean, that’s just insane. And I actually was giving a talk to a bunch of solicitors general last week about cannabis policy because all the states are very interested now in what’s about to happen, right? And so I was talking to them and I was talking about this case and I was looking out, I was like, “Man, is Henry Whitaker here?” Cause that dude still… He still intimidates me because this is legend to Sentelle clerks everywhere. But yeah, pretty crazy.
TG Branfalt: So what’s interesting is that the reason we sat initially was for your letter and about the seeds and I’m not going to rehash that, but that seemed to have got sort of a lot more traction than the sort of mind-blowing OLC opinion and that sort of thing.
Shane Pennington: Which is crazy. What does that say about our industry and the law? Everybody notices more a seed letter than they do this OLC thing, right?
TG Branfalt: Yeah. And I mean, one of the things that really struck me when we first talked was you had one very, very straight message that you wanted to send. Why was it so important for you to make sure that it was out there the way that you wanted it out there?
Shane Pennington: Well, because… So that seed letter… I mean basically long story short on that was after the 2018 Farm Bill, we figured out that seeds, tissue, cultures, genetics, because they’re below 0.3%, they’re hemp, not marijuana and their federal law, therefore at least at the federal law part, there’s no barrier to interstate shipment of them, which is a huge deal to people out there who, everybody under the state legal markets who are having to… they can’t get IP and genetics. There’s no way if you have genetics in California to get them to New York, for example, without breaking federal law, the assumption was and so you had to have all these work arounds. So we knew that was a big deal and so we wanted to let people know, “Hey, federal law is not a barrier here. I wrote to DEA, got them to say on the record that seeds are hemp and therefore they’re not marijuana under federal law.”
And that created this big splash, but I also knew that the law is incredibly complicated. And so just having DEA say that about federal law doesn’t mean that you can now just go put a bunch of seeds and clippings in a box, take it to Amazon and have them ship it all over the country and advertise it online. That is a much more complicated question cause you have to look at state law and all this, it gets incredibly complicated. But I knew as soon as we let that drop about what DEA had said, that all the folks out there who that was big news for were just going to immediately start shipping stuff and ignore all of the complexities and just say, “Yay, we can ship things everywhere.” And so I wanted to get it out there that that’s not true. There’s a lot more to it than that, you have to be very careful.
We let it drop, I said it a million times every time we would publish something, I’d be like, “Listen, this is complicated. This only resolves one piece of it.” And still the next day I wake up, I’m drinking my coffee and I’m looking at the news, and of course I have a lot of Google alerts for cannabis, marijuana, whatever, and I’m looking and sure enough, the first thing up there is One Simple Trick to Mail Cannabis. And I was like, “Oh no. The plane is crashing into the mountain.” And so I was glad that when we got to talk, I was able to tell people, get a bigger megaphone to be able to say, and let me say it again now that we’re on this podcast, do not think that you could just open up a seed business and start shipping interstate. It may be possible, but you need a very, very talented team of lawyers to help you do that. And I’m not just saying that because I mean, I got plenty of work, it’s not that, it’s just you will get arrested probably so be careful.
TG Branfalt: I do want to ask you too, because we only have a couple minutes, what role do you think that you and other cannabis-focused attorneys have in sort of relegating in some way information and disinformation in this industry?
Shane Pennington: Yeah. I mean, I think that right now, unfortunately, and, dude, it sounds like I’m bashing on other attorneys, I do not mean to do that at all, but I do need to say that attorneys need to know how to stay in their lane. I stay in my lane. I’m not an IP attorney. I told you my buddy Matt Zorn is and he’s an intellectual property attorney. I don’t tell him how to practice intellectual property. He doesn’t tell me how to practice federal administrative law.
In cannabis though, there has been no federal stuff going on for so long that there have been these shops that have opened up that are just do-it-all kind of attorneys. And frankly, the people in this industry are not risk averse and their attorneys have an appetite for risk too. And so these are the type of people who will be like, “Yeah, we can do it. Let’s do it.” There’s an F1 car sitting out there on a track and they’d be like “I can drive it, just give me the keys. I’m sure I can handle it.”
Whereas I come from a different way of thinking where I’m never going to go outside my lane. And I think that as the industry-
TG Branfalt: No F1’s for you?
Shane Pennington: What’s that?
TG Branfalt: No F1’s for you?
Shane Pennington: Not without a lot of lessons, man. Do you know how expensive an F1 car is? I think they light on fire easily, too, like, nah, that ain’t for me. So anyway, I think that as we get more sophisticated, more money pours into the industry, things start to open up, there are going to be a lot more attorneys with more areas of specialization who are going to come in and they’re going to discipline things. They’re going to tell their clients what I’m telling them, “Pump the breaks, let’s think this through.” And that’s going to be very important as things get more sophisticated.
I mean, that was a shock for me coming from big law where every client I have has a general counsel’s office with a hundred attorneys in it who then hire outside council for specialized things. Here, it’s just like everybody’s just Wild West, “We want to sue the government. Okay, let’s just do it. Let’s just write the complaint and just throw it out there.” And I’m like, “Man, we should think about this.” And I think there’s going to be a lot of that kind of self-regulating, learning to think before we leap more as the industry progresses and becomes more above ground, basically.
TG Branfalt: Dude, this has been so much fun and I know that you have very important lawyer things to do. So I don’t want to keep you too much longer. But let’s say that a law student who’s interested in taking sort of… going into the cannabis side of law, what would your advice to them be?
Shane Pennington: If you’re in law school and you’re wanting to do this kind of stuff, get in contact with me because I need help. And what I need is… Well, what I need is I need people who can write and I need hard workers. That’s the main thing. And I guess that if you’re not in law school and you’re thinking about doing this, or if you’re early on, I guess there are a couple of things. First thing is, you need to know your business and you need to have a business sense, because this is an up and coming industry and it’s going to start getting plugged into new things like the Amazons of the world are going to start getting involved, all these new regulators are going to come online. You need to learn economics, you need to learn business, you need to be kind of a Jack of all trades, but you really need to know your business.
We need people who understand this plant and how it works, and frankly, better than I do. I don’t know anything about it. That’s my weakness. That’s why I went to Vicente Sederberg where there are all these experts who do know. But that’s something you’re going to need to know. And then you’re going to have to work on writing. Writing is going to be a premium. I mean, I’m a pretty good writer and we need a lot of good writers and we need people who have experience in the federal government, too. So taking a few years to be a prosecutor, taking a few years to work at DOJ or being a public defender and then coming back would be very helpful because all my years clerking have helped me to understand how things work inside the government. That way, now that I’m on this side, I’m able to have thoughts like, “Oh, that’s probably an OLC opinion,” and then how to get it.
So I guess the bottom line is there’s no straight line to success as a lawyer. Everybody kind of takes all their experiences and they use them all and we all have different things we bring to the table. And so I would encourage people who want to do a practice like the one that I have to go do something else, honestly. Go get other experience and then come back to this. Because, again, I mean the biggest lesson that I’ve learned and the secret that I know that a lot of people don’t, is that there’s no such thing as cannabis law. There’s just law. And everybody who wants to do it because it seems cool or whatever, I mean, this is a complex area of law. You need to screw your thinking cap on tight and you need to really dot your Is and cross your Ts.
Cause I’ll tell you, one thing you’re going to find is that courts are very skeptical of cannabis cases. Every lawyer needs to look legit when they walk in the room, they need to look very professional. But if you’re representing a cannabis client, you need to look four times more professional. If the person on the other side of you has gold plated credentials, yours need to be platinum, you know what I mean? Because it’s almost like there’s still this stigma, especially among federal judges, some of whom are older. I’m not saying that they’re…. I don’t think they intend to do anything corrupt or unfair, it’s just there’s this latent bias that I think people have. I had it, man. When that case came across my desk, I had my eyebrow raised from the get-go cause I was like cannabis, what? What is this Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure or something. We take serious lawsuits here at this law firm. What is this all about?
And I had to read for a long time to realize that there are kids with epilepsy, there are people terminally ill with cancer, it’s not all… There’s a lot more to this and that the federal government for many, many years was blocking science, which is insane to me, science on things that could help people. And I think that once you get to where you can communicate that message in the right way, that’s when you can start making progress. But in order to do that, you need to work hard, get your grades right, get your experience right and then get hooked up with the right mentor, which would be me. So holler at your boy whenever you’re ready.
TG Branfalt: If people were trying to holler at your boy, Shane Pennington, how would they get in touch with you?
Shane Pennington: So they could email me at S.Pennington@VicenteSederberg.com, that would be the easiest way. And you can just go to Vicente Sederberg’s website, look me up, Shane Pennington, you’ll see my phone number there and all that. So, that’d be the easiest way.
TG Branfalt: Awesome. Dude, it’s been a pleasure. I’m really delighted that we got to do this after, cause when we were hanging up the phone last time I was like, “I want to talk to this guy for like another 45 minutes to an hour.” So I really…
Shane Pennington: Yeah. No, I’m glad you did it. I really am. I mean it’s important stuff and I appreciate you shining a spotlight on it.
TG Branfalt: No, thanks so much for being on the show and I’m sure I’ll find something with your name on it in the future come across my desk.
Shane Pennington: Absolutely. I hope so. If not, then something bad’s happened to me.
TG Branfalt: I’ll be in touch to make sure nothing bad happens to you.
Shane Pennington: All right, man. Good talking with you.
TG Branfalt: You can find more episodes at the ganjapreneur.com podcast in the podcast section of ganjapreneur.com on Spotify and in the Apple iTunes store. On the ganjapreneur.com website, you’ll find the latest in cannabis news and cannabis jobs updated daily along with transcripts of this podcast. You can also download the ganjapreneur.com app in iTunes and Google Play. This episode was engineered by us. I’ve been your host TG Branfalt.
From transitioning out of a self-described “boring” career in finance, to heading one of the East Coast’s biggest multistate operators… Read More
With nearly one million medical cannabis caregivers licensed in the state, Michigan is an often undersung hub of cannabis culture,… Read More
As cannabis becomes more and more ubiquitous in social circles and even in public spaces, it’s important for new cannabis… Read More
Alaska was one of the very first U.S. states to legalize cannabis after voters there embraced the reforms in 2014;… Read More
Keith Stephenson is the owner and founder of Purple Heart, the first Black-owned cannabis business to be licensed in the… Read More
As cannabis reforms become more and more widespread, the traditional tourism industry has unfortunately been slow to accept the cannabis… Read More
Luxury cannabis products constitute a peculiar segment for the cannabis industry: where many consumers might scoff at what they consider… Read More
To launch a successful cannabis cultivation facility, one requires a significant amount of planning, resources, and initiative. Launching during a… Read More
With Arizona’s recent switch to an adult-use market, cannabis enthusiasts, entrepreneurs, and investors are scrambling to learn as much as… Read More
New Jersey’s cannabis legalization bid was a long-sought and hard-fought victory, only achieved through the collaboration of advocates, lobbyists, and… Read More
Ryan Douglas is the author of the new book From Seed to Success: How to Launch a Great Cannabis Cultivation… Read More
John McLeod is the co-founder of Michigan-based Cloud Cannabis Co. — which operates dispensaries in Ann Arbor, Muskegon, and Traverse… Read More
Alvin Edwards is the founder of Fruits of Our Labor, which employs former prisoners to provide a variety of professional… Read More
For all the talk of community and cooperation in the cannabis industry, it is an inherently competitive marketplace, particularly in… Read More
Between new cannabis legalization laws, drug decriminalization efforts, and discoveries related to medicinal psilocybin and other psychedelic substances, recent years… Read More
In the notoriously turbulent cannabis industry, 10 years of continuous operation can feel like a lifetime. For the team behind… Read More
For decades, public displays of appreciation for cannabis and cannabis culture were relegated mainly to smoke shops — the one-stop-shop… Read More
In any industry, consumer product testing is a key part of maintaining safe and trustworthy operations. While the cannabis industry… Read More
Between strict regulations that vary from state to state and the long-lasting remnants of anti-cannabis rhetoric and stigmas, cannabis marketing… Read More
Vermont was the first state to legalize cannabis without relying on the ballot initiative process. The landmark bill, however, stopped… Read More
Countless authors, musicians, and artists — and, at times, even some of the world’s top scientific and philosophical minds —… Read More
After co-founding and leading Illinois’ PharmaCann for several years, Teddy Scott departed to found Ethos Cannabis, a multistate cannabis operator… Read More
It takes a lot of courage to found your first company — especially if you are leaving behind a comfortable… Read More
Between regulations and the still-dwindling stigma from decades of prohibition, cannabis companies have an inherently tricky job when it comes… Read More
Noel Abbott, CEO of Ganjapreneur, and Graham Abbott, our Chief Editor, are brothers native to the northwestern corner of Washington… Read More
Cannabis beverages are becoming more and more common as the industry takes shape. As a self-made expert in cannabis beverage… Read More
The Walker brothers were recent guests on the Ganjapreneur podcast. Their conversation with host TG Branfalt covers Dub Bros‘ early… Read More
Jeremy and our podcast host TG Branfalt recently connected for a conversation about cannabis software, where many technology companies in… Read More
David recently joined our podcast host TG Branfalt to discuss the potential of Agrify’s cultivation technology, the important role being… Read More
For his second appearance on the Ganjapreneur.com podcast, Morgan joins our host TG Branfalt to discuss federal cannabis policy progress… Read More
Catharine recently joined host TG Branfalt for our latest podcast episode to discuss the investment strategy behind Vice Ventures, how… Read More
Keegan recently joined our podcast host TG Branfalt for a conversation covering Würk‘s vision for the cannabis space and the… Read More
Andi Novick is a New York lawyer/activist combo and Brian Farmer is co-founder of the Cannabis Conservancy — together, they… Read More
Pamela joined our host TG Branfalt for a discussion in January about the launch of Illinois’ adult-use cannabis program, the… Read More
Chris joined our podcast host TG Branfalt recently for a conversation about GrowEx and the company’s high-tech cultivation capabilities. In… Read More
As the founder of Enlighten Hospitality Solutions and the California Cannabis Tourism Association, Brian recently returned to our podcast for… Read More
For the latest Ganjapreneur.com Podcast episode, Benjamin recently joined our host TG Branfalt to talk about Australia’s cannabis progress in… Read More
Mara Gordon is the co-founder of Aunt Zelda’s, a California medical cannabis brand that emphasizes a scientific understanding of cannabis’s… Read More
Chris recently joined our podcast host TG Branfalt for an interview that ranges from broad entrepreneurialism to the latest federal… Read More
As the latest guest to come on the Ganjapreneur.com Podcast, Marcus recently joined our host TG Branfalt for a conversation… Read More
Brad recently joined our podcast host TG Branfalt for an in-depth interview ranging from cannabis journalism — Brad worked for… Read More
Jason Ambrosino recently joined our podcast host TG Branfalt to talk about the New York hemp and cannabis markets, how… Read More
Meg recently joined our podcast host TG Branfalt for an interview about cannabis dispensary management and the budding Massachusetts market.… Read More
Steve DeAngelo — who is is nothing short of a cannabis industry icon, having co-founded Harborside, Steep Hill Labs, Arcview… Read More
Morris Beegle is the president and co-founder of We Are For Better Alternatives (WAFBA), an umbrella of pro-hemp brands that… Read More
Jonathan, who specializes in trademark counseling and brand protection at Knobbe Martens, recently joined our podcast host TG Branfalt for… Read More
In this episode of the Ganjapreneur.com podcast, Jontae joins our host TG Branfalt for an interview that covers the origins… Read More
Travis Howard is the founder and Chief Strategy Officer for Shift, a Colorado-based cannabis producer and product manufacturer. Travis recently… Read More
Activism, healing, empowerment — these are important foundations for the Sisters of the Valley, a group of self-described cannabis nuns… Read More
Lindsey Mintz is the owner and managing partner of Smokin’ Gun Apothecary, a prohibition-themed and self-described “late-night” cannabis dispensary located… Read More
Peter Vogel is the CEO of Leafwire, a cannabis business-focused social media platform known commonly as “the LinkedIn of cannabis.”… Read More
Kristen Yoder is CEO of cannabis business advisory firm Soil to the Oil and hosts The CannaBS Detector podcast. As… Read More
Dr. Leslie Apgar and career entrepreneur/investor Gina Dubbé are co-founders of Blissiva, a Maryland-based dispensary with a scientific approach to… Read More
Ezra Soiferman is a renowned Montreal-based photographer, documentarian, and worked as the world’s first cannabis artist-in-residence for Tweed. He recently… Read More
Dr. Jon Cachat is the Director of Laboratory Science & Undergraduate Research at Hocking College — the first institute of… Read More
Don Andrews is a serial entrepreneur who owns multiple smoke shops and ancillary cannabis retailers in upstate New York. Don’s… Read More
This podcast is produced by Ganjapreneur, your source for cannabis industry news and insights. Liz recently joined our podcast host… Read More
Morgan Fox is the Media Relations Director for the National Cannabis Industry Association (NCIA), the largest cannabis trade organization in the… Read More
Rick Thompson is a cannabis advocate, citizen journalist, and organizer of the Michigan Cannabis Business Development Conferences. His efforts helped see… Read More
Korey Rowe is the documentary filmmaker behind Mile Marker, a powerful investigative film that follows Korey on a journey across… Read More
Tom Howard is an Illinois-based attorney who specializes in banking and cannabis business, and he is an author who has… Read More
Afzal Hasan is the President and General Counsel for CannaRoyalty, a Canada-based investment firm with cannabis acquisitions in Canada, California,… Read More
Editor’s note (4/8/21): Dr. Jason Pirozzolo is currently being investigated in relation to sex trafficking allegations against Florida Rep. Matt… Read More
Franco Brockelman is the CEO and co-founder of Releaf App, a digital cannabis journal that enables users to record and… Read More
It has been nearly four years since adult-use cannabis legislation took effect in Washington and Colorado, and in that time… Read More
Beth Stavola is a serial cannabis industry entrepreneur who owns dispensaries in Arizona and Nevada; she is also the founder… Read More
Doug Esposito is the Cannabis Practice Leader for Owen-Dunn Insurance Services, a Sacramento-based shared partners brokerage. In the following interview,… Read More
Ryan Smith is the CEO and co-founder of LeafLink, a business-to-business digital marketplace for cannabis retailers, producers, and processors to… Read More
Kristina “Kay” Garcia is the CEO of Women Grow, an international organization created in 2014 to be a catalyst for… Read More
Derek Cloutier is the president and co-founder of the New England Veterans Alliance, a non-profit organization that helps veterans reduce… Read More
Tim Fair is a Vermont-based cannabis consultant and the owner/founder of Vermont Cannabis Solutions, the state’s first cannabis law practice.… Read More
Emma Chasen is the Director of Education for Sativa Science Club, an organization that encourages industry-wide quality standards. She also,… Read More
Brittny Anderson and Brian Farmer are co-founders of the Cannabis Conservancy, a sustainability certification group that helps consumers identify cannabis… Read More
Stacey Mulvey is the founder of Marijuasana, a company that has her traveling between major cities around the country —… Read More
Brian Applegarth is the CEO and founder of Emerald Country Tours, founder of the Cannabis Trail, and founder of the… Read More
Michael Brubeck is the founder and CEO of Centuria Foods and author of Tipping the Scales, a book about cannabis industry… Read More
Ean Seeb is co-founder and partner at Denver Relief Consulting and has been navigating Colorado’s medical and adult-use cannabis industries… Read More
Jesse Peters is the owner and CEO of Eco Firma Farms and is a founding member of the Oregon Cannabis Association.… Read More
Darcy Bomford is the CEO of True Leaf Medicine International, a Canadian company with one department in the national medical… Read More
Patricia Rosi is CEO of the Wellness Connection, a medical cannabis company operating four dispensary locations throughout Maine and which… Read More
Michael Senderovich is the founder and president of Zeyger Insurance Services, a California insurance brokerage working with cannabis companies despite… Read More
Russ Hudson is a cannabis consultant and author of the children’s book What’s That Weed?, which helps parents provide a normalized perspective… Read More
Dr. Perry Solomon is the Chief Medical Officer of HelloMD, a telemedicine firm that connects would-be medical cannabis patients with… Read More
Kyle Speidell is the co-CEO of The Green Solution, a popular cannabis retailer chain in Colorado. In this episode of the… Read More
James Yagielo is the CEO of HempStaff, a cannabis industry staffing agency that offers recruitment services to cannabis companies and… Read More
For entrepreneurs in the volatile cannabis industry, keeping up to date on the market is a must. Due to volatility… Read More
Matt Rizzetta is the CEO of North 6th Agency, a public relations firm based in New York City and Toronto… Read More
Jon Vaught is the CEO of Front Range Biosciences, a cannabis agriculture firm based out of Boulder, Colorado that specializes… Read More
Eli Harrington is the co-founder and managing editor of Heady Vermont, a cannabis news outlet dedicated to Vermont’s medical cannabis… Read More
Molly Peckler is the creator of Highly Devoted, a matchmaking service for cannabis professionals. In this episode of the Spark… Read More
Neeraj Bhardwaj is President of Loto Labs, creator of the Loto Lux, the world’s first magnetic induction-based vaporizer. Neeraj recently… Read More
Patrick Vo is the CEO of BioTrackTHC, a seed-to-sale software giant whose product can be found in dispensaries throughout the… Read More
If you have ever looked up information about a particular cannabis strain online, there is a good chance you are… Read More
Mehka King is a journalist, host of the Cash, Color, and Cannabis podcast, and the filmmaker behind The Color Green: Cash,… Read More
Jason Santos is the CEO of Burn TV, a video/music network that was founded to help bridge and eliminate the… Read More
Hazel Fruitman is the CEO of Cannabis Wallet, a company that specializes in unique mobile marketing strategies and customer engagement… Read More
Ben Ward is the CEO of Maricann, a licensed medical cannabis operator in Canada who recently announced their international expansion… Read More
Danny Sloat is the owner of Alpinstash, a Colorado cannabis cultivator known for producing premium-quality cannabis with an emphasis on… Read More
Vanessa Corrales is the founder of San Diego, California-based B-Edibles, an infused edibles manufacturer that creates infused sugar products and is… Read More
Alex Hoggan is the founder of ChemHistory, a cannabis testing lab based outside of Portland, Oregon. In this episode of… Read More
Jon Gowa is the founder and CEO of Bloom Automation, a company that is designing and creating robots in Colorado… Read More