A micro photo of the crystallized tip of a large cannabis bud.

Israel Approves MMJ Export Plan

8/14/2017

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Israeli Finance and Health ministers have approved a plan allowing medical cannabis to be exported from the country in a move that is estimated to bring in between NIS 1 billion ($279 million) to NIS 4 billion ($1.1 billion) in revenues, the Jerusalem Post reports. Exported products will include all forms of medical cannabis produced in Israel and so far more than 500 farmers have applied for an export license.

Finance Minister Moshe Kahlon said the plan represents “significant economic potential” for the country “and will strengthen Israeli agriculture in general and agriculture in the Arava region in particular.”

“It will serve as an opportunity for the country to exploit its relative advantage in developing medical products from medical cannabis,” he said in the report.

Health Minister Ya’acov Litzman, who opposes the exportation plan, said he agreed to the request due to “international interest in Israeli medical cannabis” adding that officials “will ensure” that the health sector benefits from the state revenue increases.

The system includes several restrictions – the exports will be closely monitored by the state; exports will only be allowed to nations that have medical cannabis regimes that explicitly allow imports from Israel, and farmers must obtain a license from the Health Ministry to cultivate and export medical cannabis products.

Currently, there are eight licensed growers in Israel who produce about 10 tons per year.

End

A medical cannabis patient's homegrown supply of cannabis plants.

Arkansas Medical Board Chairman Steps Down from MMJ Trade Association Board

8/14/2017

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The chairman of the Arkansas Medical Board, Dr. Steven Cathey, is no longer on the board of the Arkansas Medical Marijuana Association, citing potential conflicts of interest, according to a Talk Business & Politics report.

“Where things changed for me was after I started reviewing my role as the state (Medical Board) chairman, I was fearful there would be a conflict of interest and in my opinion even a perception of conflict of interest would be inappropriate – so I declined to participate,” Cathey said in the report. “That was pretty much the bottom line.”

The neurosurgeon said that he does believe that Arkansas’ cannabis industry “needs a clinician’s voice and input” as physicians are “heavily involved” in the medical cannabis acquisition process.

“I think doctors need to be at the table when we consider medical and regulatory issues surrounding this new industry,” he said.

The shakeup comes less than a week after the creation of the AMMA, which is chaired by Little Rock attorney David Couch, who led the ballot initiative effort to legalize medical cannabis in the state.

After Cathey’s participation with the association had been announced, Gov. Asa Hutchinson said in a Talk Business & Politics interview, that he didn’t think “someone on the Medical Board should be associated with a medical marijuana advocacy group.”

The board is comprised with some former government officials, including former Arkansas Attorney General Dustin McDaniel, and Dr. Richard Douglas, former assistant deputy secretary of the U.S. Department of Agriculture under President Ronald Reagan.

End

Hawaii's official state flag flying off the back end of a sailboat.

Hawaii Dispensary Moves to Appointment Only Amidst Product Shortage

8/14/2017

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Hawaii’s first licensed dispensary must close for two days and change their operating hours after the company’s products didn’t clear state testing certification by Saturday. Maui Grown Therapies opened for the first time last week after the Department of Health granted a license to Steep Hill Hawaii to test medical cannabis products.

“Due to high demand, the company sold out its first batch of certified flowers on Saturday. To prevent patients from fruitless trips to its dispensary, the company will close on Monday and Tuesday, August 14 & 15, and reopen on Wednesday, August 16 at noon,” the company said in a statement. “Due to uncertain product availability, the company will extend its sales by appointment policy until further notice.”

Christopher Cole, director of product management for Maui Grown, said that despite the testing laboratory approval, the company is currently only able to sell flower due to “restrictions placed on the only licensed lab.”

“It’s unfortunate that an administrative hindrance of this magnitude prevents patients from getting the help they need,” Cole said in the release. “We had planned to open with a full range of derivative products such as concentrates, oils, capsules and topical products, but at the eleventh hour we discovered that the State Labs Division had failed to certify a lab to conduct testing of manufactured products.”

Dr. Gregory Park, an oncologist and co-founder of Maui Grown, said it was “ironic” that the “vehemently anti-smoking” Health Department is “forcing cannabis patients to smoke to get relief.”

Neither Cole nor Park could ascertain when the ‘administrative hindrance’ would be resolved.

End

Danny Sloat: Self-Healing Through Clean Cannabis Cultivation

8/11/2017

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Danny Sloat is the owner of Alpinstash, a Colorado cannabis cultivator known for producing premium-quality cannabis with an emphasis on environmentally friendly growing practices.

In this Ganjapreneur.com podcast episode, Danny joins our host TG Branfalt to talk about his company’s emphasis on an eco-friendly production process, the therapeutic value of growing your own cannabis plants, exciting research and cannabis cloning techniques that are being pioneered in Colorado, how the state’s cannabis marketplace has evolved over the years since legalization took effect, and more!

Listen to the podcast through the media player below, or keep scrolling down to read a full transcript of the interview.

Listen to the podcast:

Read the transcript:

TG Branfalt: Hey there. I’m your host, TG Branfalt, and you’re 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. Today I’m really excited. Our guest is Danny Sloat. He’s the owner of Alpinstash. How you doing today?

Danny Sloat: I’m doing real good, Tim, how you doing?

TG Branfalt: I’m great. Like I said, I’m real excited to have you on the show. You have a really, really interesting story. A real motivational story and we want to get into that first. Why don’t you tell us about your background, a little bit about your personal story and how that brought into the cannabis space?

Danny Sloat: Yeah, definitely. Shortly after I turned 21 I had some pretty bad abdominal pain. Went to the hospital, had a stay, tests, all that good stuff. They couldn’t find out what was wrong so I was just put on a regiment of opiates. Then over the years as I still continued testing and tried to figure out what was going on, bouncing from doctor to doctor, the opiates kind of increased and before I knew it, I was taking medication to treat the side effects of the opiates and medication to treat that side effects, so on and so forth. Somewhere in there on about 2005, I developed a nerve impingement syndrome called thoracic outlet syndrome. I was dealing with that, I was dealing with loss of nerves to my arm and, again, more opiates tossed on top of that.

Then in 2009 I was diagnosed with an acoustic neuroma, which is a non-cancerous base of skull tumor. That required surgery. From the age of 21 through about 29, I was in a medical funk in which I was prescribed high doses of opiates. I’m sure, I assume your listeners are familiar with Fetanyl. It was the new scary opiate, but I was prescribed both patches and lollipops. In my point of view, I was blindsided. I have very much faith in the medical world and just kind of did what my doctors had told me to do. Before I knew it, I was in a really bad state physically after years of opiate use and other medications. Nothing was helping and I was just getting worse.

Then I decided as a last ditch effort at the time to try medical cannabis back in 2009. Almost instantly I found relief from the pain, which allowed me to taper myself off of these opiates that I had been on for seven, eight years at that point. Within six months I was off all the medication. I was on, I think, 19 different prescriptions at the peak. Had dropped about 80 pounds, back down to a healthy weight. Reengaged with life. Doing physical activities again. I contribute both the use of cannabis, but almost more important or even more important the growing of cannabis with reengaging me back into life. Then I recognized the value that cannabis had and decided to make that my focus and here I am today.

TG Branfalt: You’re not one of those people who used cannabis recreationally as a youth and then … That’s what I did. I used cannabis as a youth and then as I grew up and the aches and pains started catching up with me, and my own medical problems, and had my own battle with addiction, I started using cannabis as a medicinal way. That wasn’t the path that you had taken.

Danny Sloat: I’m from Boulder, Colorado, so I definitely had my use of cannabis when I was younger in high school and things like that, but between high school and the age of 29, I really didn’t partake very much at all. I found myself just not enjoying it. When I actually started it for medical use I was pretty hesitant because I had some bad experiences over the past few years. I had gotten my card in September and I don’t think I tried it until December when I finally gave it a shot. Yeah.

TG Branfalt: You started with one plant?

Danny Sloat: Yeah. It’s funny, actually back then there weren’t too many dispensaries that were obvious. The first one I went to had a big neon sign and they gave away free clones with purchase. I had enjoyed doing a lot of gardening, specifically container gardening, as a hobby up until that point so I just started growing that plant. Then when I found the benefits of it, I decided to go all in and made a lot of mistakes. A huge learning curve in the beginning there.

TG Branfalt: Tell me about that. Tell me about the experience of going from one plant to now you’re a registered grower, you’re growing a lot of different products. Tell me about going from that one plant to the registered grower. Tell me about what you learned and the obstacles that you faced.

Danny Sloat: Yeah. It’s funny, as somebody that does this as a hobby and then jumping into the commercial realm, there is, and I knew there would be, a huge learning curve. I took some steps to prepare myself. I spent some time going to school for horticulture and spent some time in the hydroponic industry, all while working to make this facility a reality. There’s been some major learning curves. You really have to be on your game when you go from a home grow to a commercial grow. You have to take into account a lot of … It’s much harder to control a bigger space, there’s a lot more at stake and that’s actually been the hardest thing is when you do it for fun and you have a dream of doing it professionally there’s a romanticized version of that. When you get in it, all of a sudden now, everything matters. The plant health, even though it was fine at home, now all of a sudden you care a lot more about it because your financial future and the goal you’ve been working towards for five years is on the line.

TG Branfalt: Well, and the Colorado market, the prices in that market have fluctuated a whole lot since the roll out of the market until now. How have you been weathering that storm?

Danny Sloat: Yes. From the time we started this facility to now, the prices have dropped. In some cases even 50%, while the taxes still remain high. However, it’s been easy for me to weather the storm. The product that we grow is the top of the top shelf. There aren’t very many people that can offer the same quality product we can, so there’ll always be a market for that. The thing that we’ve dealt with though is maintaining until a point where our brand is established and we can start demanding the price that our product deserves. I guess, for us to weather the storm it was more of a long term approach. I’m not trying to get rich, I’m not trying to make money in the short term, I’m just trying to do what I love and stay around. That strategy has worked very well and now we’re seeing the emergence, even more so, of the connoisseur market. You combine that with pesticide scares and pathogen issues. We are actually in a great position.

TG Branfalt: Tell me a bit about your strains and how you came to decide that these were the ones that you were going to cultivate. These were the ones that you were going to offer.

Danny Sloat: Yeah. The way that Colorado works is there’s a system called Metrc, it’s their seed to sale tracking system. In a lot of places and at the beginning before Metrc is in place, you could bring in strains, cuts and seeds from outside sources. If you had them at home or whatever you could do that. Now and when we started that, you can’t do that. You have to get all your genetics from an already existing facility on Metrc. Given how dangerous that can be from a plant health standpoint of pulling material from unknown and untrusted sources, I was really limited to the strains that I had from the initial purchase I made that we had quarantined and gotten healthy. We picked the best there and started breeding them. Since then, we’ve taken in a few more cuts from other facilities, but it’s really, really, really been limited. My passion is in genetics and breeding, so I use that as an excuse, but as a way to focus on making my own stuff so that I don’t put my garden at risk from unclean facilities.

TG Branfalt: You offer four CBD rich strains. This is starting to become a little bit more popular out here in Vermont. We have looser laws than probably not Colorado, but a lot of the rest of the country and it’s readily available. Are you, over there in Colorado, experiencing an uptake in the demand for CBD rich strains?

Danny Sloat: Just a little bit. Those CBD rich strains are something I’m really passionate about and I really believe in their value and in their quality too. I tell people when they’re trying to drink a beer or get buzzed, they don’t go to Everclear. They want a product that delivers flavor and good feeling and all that stuff. The CBD strains is what I think is a great product. A lot of people though are really hesitant to spend their money on something that they haven’t tried, or they don’t think it gets them high, or whatever reason they have, so the popularity of the CBDs as a flower has been increasing, but very slowly.

TG Branfalt: You said that you were passionate about the CBD strains. What drives that passion for you?

Danny Sloat: First of all, they’re really fun to grow. The products are great, very flavorful, good looking. They obviously have a huge medicinal benefit, which I appreciate. The other nice thing about them that I don’t feel like gets talked about lot is that because often they have a lower THC content and because the CBD helped balance out the negative side effects that can arise with THC, they’re really great smokes for almost anybody. More often than not, when I talk to people, especially people that are my parents’ age, they talk about smoking and getting paranoid.

‘Oh, I used to love smoking, but now when I do it, I get paranoid. I take one hit of today’s stuff and I just can’t hang.’ They’re able to try one of these CBD products and they get exactly what they’re looking for from a relaxation and getting stoned perspective, but as well as the medicinal benefits that change a lot of people’s minds. Again, I go back to that Everclear analogy. I feel like that side of the industry is hurting it and is hurting the image of it for a lot of people across the country moreso than it’s enhancing it.

TG Branfalt: I want to touch on a bit more about why you think CBD rich strains are a little more fun to grow and a little more about your grows, but before we do that, we’ve got to take a short break. This is the Ganjapreneur.com podcast, I’m TG Branfalt.

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TG Branfalt: Hey, welcome back to the Ganjapreneur.com Podcast. I’m your host TG Branfalt here with Danny Sloat, owner of Alpinstash. Before the break, you had said that CBD strains were fun to grow. I’m not a grower. I have conversations with them and I’ve never really heard that so could you elaborate on why they’re fun to grow in your opinion?

Danny Sloat: Definitely. I’ll start by saying any strain that does really well, looks good and smells good is fun to grow. What I enjoy about the CBD strains, some of the ones we have, they look dank as it gets. Frosty, they smell great and they’re with great structure. Then you do a test and you come to find out that there’s almost no THC in there and it’s almost all CBD. We’re talking .5% or less of THC and 24% of CBD. I just love seeing the reaction of people that come across that. In their mind, CBDs are ditch weed or hemp. It doesn’t look like something you’d want to smoke. When you grow them, they’re quite the opposite. Some of them turn great colors, they have great structure and they yield really well. It’s always fun to grow something that turns out unexpectedly awesome and a lot of these strains do.

TG Branfalt: I was at an event here in Vermont and they had jars of CBD flower. I opened the jar and I was really shocked with the overwhelming smell of citrus.

Danny Sloat: Yeah.

TG Branfalt: Is that something very common with these strains?

Danny Sloat: Yeah. I definitely find that. They definitely have a citrusy smell. Some of them have a little bit of almost like a cough syrup citrus, too, for whatever reason. I can guess, but it would be just purely a guess. It must be a shared lineage somewhere, but the majority of CBD strains that I come across do have that smell. Not all of them do, but a lot of them do.

TG Branfalt: Tell me about your approach to growing. It’s described as environmentally responsible, eco-conscious. Tell me about that approach and how you are incorporating these techniques.

Danny Sloat: Sure. The laws in Colorado, when I started, were such that an outdoor grow was very hard to do, so we do indoors. We use Nectar for the Gods, which is a sustainably sourced, natural nutrient system that is handcrafted in Eugene, Oregon. They have the second largest rain water reclamation facility in the state, so all the water used for the making of the nutrients is rain water. Most of the nutrients come from the byproduct of organic and sustainable farms, such as bone meal or the byproduct of the fishing industry. Crab meal and shrimp meal and things like that. We start with the nutrients being environmentally sustainable and well sourced. We also use low wattage lighting techniques or lightings. I’m able to achieve what is kind of considered an industry standard for 1,000 watt light, I’m able to pull that yield off with 315 watts. Less power going in, less energy required to cool that.

We also use a type of an a/c system that is a water cooled a/c system, which is up to 30% more efficient. We recycle our soil and we reuse our pots. Because we’re using organics, we don’t have to flush and collect a bunch of water that’s been wasted. One of the biggest impacts that the growing industry has is when you have salt-based fertilizers that can cause a build up and a toxicity, you have to continually flush those out of your grow media and then you have that salt nutrient rich water that you’re pouring down the drain. That gets into the ground water, that gets into the soil. They’re having big problems with that back east.

Then another thing is the use of synthetic nutrients. Most of those synthetic salts are strip mined out of the earth in a very negative way. Sometimes they come from all over the globe. I’ll give you an example. Phosphorous, which is a main nutrient used in flowering, is strip mined out of Morocco. There’s a finite supply of phosphorous in the first place. It comes out of the ground radioactive. Morocco can’t have radioactive material so they actually send it to the U.S., where we clean it of radioactivity, send it back to Morocco where they then bag it up and then send it back to America, where we then use it. That whole process is very bad for the environment in and of itself.

TG Branfalt: You obviously did a lot of research on the environmental impacts of these things. How important was it for you to have an environmentally responsible facility and practice?

Danny Sloat: To me, that’s very environmental. Sorry. I’ll redo that one. To me, that’s very important. The place that I grew up in the country is just by nature most people are pretty eco-conscious. As time goes on and factory farming becomes more prolific, you just see the problems associated with it. I felt like our industry does create waste and does create a carbon footprint, but it doesn’t have to be anywhere near what the industry standard is. There’s a lot of good growing practices, techniques and, these days, equipment that you can use to really be as environmentally sound as you can be and still have a successful business.

TG Branfalt: You’ve mentioned a couple of times how the industry has changed in Colorado since you’ve been a part of it. Now there’s even more new rules in Colorado, such as reducing the number of plants allowed for home grows. How have these new rules impacted the industry and what was the reaction by your colleagues to these changes?

Danny Sloat: Well, I kind of go against the grain of the industry, as I see it, in a lot of ways. I, and my company, was totally for patient and caregiver rights. I don’t believe in a plant count. I don’t believe that home grows or caregivers take anything away from my business in any way. Actually, I encourage anybody to grow a plant. Not only is it therapeutic, and it’s fun to do, and you can get as clean a product as you want it to be, but you also see the effort that goes in. One of the battles we face is we have giant corporations that are growing the equivalent of factory farming cannabis and here we are, everything we do is done by hand, there’s two other people besides myself that touch the plants. We take all of the steps to deliver the finest quality product, but they’re all done by hand.

Really, for people to appreciate that, one of the things they can do is grow it. I don’t see that as an issue at all. The industry, there was a lot of lobbyists from some of the corporations that were there pushing these plant count caps. They see it as a threat to their business. I I look at it from their side, I can see where they’re coming from in a way that they’re scared that their business is at risk, because the products they deliver are achievable by almost anybody. That’s kind of the situation we’re in, but it doesn’t bother me at all.

TG Branfalt: You go against the grain on that issue. What’s your take on the social use proposals in Denver?

Danny Sloat: I’m 100% for that. I would love to see that be available. First of all, because there’s no reason it shouldn’t be. Second of all, because of how available other substances like alcohol are and accepted socially. Another really important aspect is, we have tourists coming in from out of town. They can’t smoke in their hotel, they can’t smoke in their car, they can’t smoke out in public, but they’re here to enjoy Colorado. They’re here to enjoy cannabis. Where are they going? What are they doing? There should be a good option for that. It just makes sense. I can’t see why anybody’s opposed to it except for fear tactics.

TG Branfalt: I want to talk to you a bit about your partnership with Front Range. We’ll get into what that is, but before we do that, we’ve got to take a short break. This is the Ganjapreneur.com podcast. I’m TG Branfalt.

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TG Branfalt: Welcome back to the Ganjapreneur.com podcast. I’m your host, TG Branfalt, here with Danny Sloat, owner of Alpinstash. Before the break I had mentioned about your partnership with Front Range. Tell me what Front Range is, tell me about this partnership. I think it’s super cool, but I’ll let you explain it.

Danny Sloat: Sure. Front Range Biosciences is a startup bioscience tech firm. They have a few things that they’re trying to bring to the market. The first is a type of cloning known as plant tissue culture. That’s different than traditional cloning in that you take a very small piece of plant material, you essentially grow it in a Petri dish and before you put in that Petri dish you clean it and you sterilize it so that there’s no problems on the surface. One of the interesting things though is when you put plant tissue into culture, if there are any diseases within the plant, within the vascular system, those will come out in culture.

What they’re finding is that a lot of material that they bring in from other places has bacteria and fungus within the plant tissue. It still remains to be seen, there’s not a lot of research to say whether or not these are beneficial bacteria or fungus. Some of them certainly are not, but what they’re able to do is clean that out of the plant system. What you get back with plant tissue culture is a clean, healthy clone that’s been essentially sterilized and reinvigorated. That’s a great technique there, which by the way, is used in much of commercial agriculture production for many other crops.

The other thing that they’re looking at doing is some genetic and sequencing work down the future. Looking at the cannabis genome, identifying genetic traits that are responsible for certain aspects of the plant of the finished product and then being able to breed based on those genetic traits. You’re able to bring a plant to fruition much sooner and have it be much more stable. Then eventually a goal for them is to be able to do plant tissue culture, but combine that with cryo-preservation. You’d be able to take a sample of a plant tissue, put that on liquid nitrogen and essentially keep genetic material from which to clone from indefinitely in a clean state. The idea is that you could have a small freezer filled with every strain that you ever come in contact with and be able to pull those out, grow them and then put them back into storage as you need.

TG Branfalt: It’s futuristic. Cryogenics and these are things that you never think about entering the space. Why did you decide to enter into this partnership with them?

Danny Sloat: They approached us. They pitched that to me. I love science. I love seeing where the future is going. I love these new techniques. It was an exciting opportunity, not only to be able to have access to that, but just to watch it happen and be not so removed from it. How could I say no?

TG Branfalt: I see a lot and hear a lot when people bring up biosciences. People automatically think this is big pharma, these are people that are going to come in and take over the cottage industry. These partnerships are really important, especially for research, which is obviously very little of and hard to do. What do you think is the importance of these types of partnerships?

Danny Sloat: Well, I think the research is a huge key for many reasons. Anywhere from proper pest control and management, to sustainable and better growing practices, to disease diagnosis. All these things that are common place in every other crop, a tomato. There has been millions and millions of dollars in research done on tomatoes. That needs to happen in the cannabis space. Certainly, some people will use that, go towards the more GMO, Monsanto side of things. Unfortunately, I think that’s inevitable. Given the way industry runs and the way agriculture runs, some people will go that direction. From my standpoint of being just a small grow that’s trying to produce a high quality product, having access to some of these techniques can help me in the areas I’m lacking. I don’t have a huge facility in which to keep a ton of genetics. Instead, what I’m able to do is keep clones in a smaller state and keep a wider selection, so that can help me get to where I’m going.

TG Branfalt: I can tell that you’re super passionate about this and the path that you took to having your own facility and entering these partnerships that will help us understand the cannabis plant a little bit more, it’s really incredible. What advice do you have for other entrepreneurs looking to enter this space?

Danny Sloat: That’s a really good question. First off, I would say, think of what scale you want to be at and be realistic with that. I use the craft beer industry as an example of this. Here in Colorado there’s a ton of craft breweries. We also have Coors. If you want to exist as a craft brewery … Or if you want to make beer in Colorado, you can either go one of two ways. You can either be a small batch, hand crafted brewery that charges more per can than a 6 or a 12-pack of Coors. You survive because you’re great at what you do. Or if you have a billion dollars, you can be Coors. Most people don’t have that much money and even if they did, that doesn’t guarantee success. Really identify what you want to do. For people that haven’t ventured into the cannabis space, do a ton of research and know exactly what you’re getting into.

So many people come in here with a wad of money thinking I put a million in today, I’m going to get two million out next year. The realities are quite different. This is an industry that is cut throat. It’s an industry that is, in some cases, saturated. It’s an industry that has a ton of regulation and takes a ton of hard work and knowledge. Really, really spend your time researching. Spend your time vetting investments. Spend your time vetting people that will work for you. What I’ve found is the people that you employ matter so much. I’m very fortunate. My fiancee works for me and we’ve got two really close friends that work for me and that’s it. It’s a team that I trust and they’re willing to put up with the growing pains. They’re willing to give maximum effort because this is a team approach. If we all do well together, as a business, everybody succeeds. That’s really important. At the end of the day, there’s a lot of regulation, there’s a lot of hard work. You need the right people for the job and those people are hard to find in the cannabis industry.

TG Branfalt: Well, I want to thank you for taking the time for this interview. It’s really, again, your story is really motivational. I wish you guys the best of luck and hope to see what comes of your research with Front Range. Thank you, again, for appearing on the show.

Danny Sloat: Yeah. Thank you. It’s been a pleasure. I really appreciate you letting me have a chance to talk about something I’m very passionate about.

TG Branfalt: Where can people find more about you?

Danny Sloat: Our website www.alpinstash.com. I have YouTube channel, Alpinstash. I give growing tips. I believe in complete transparency, so I share everything that I know. We’re on Instagram, @alpinstashco. We’re on Twitter, @alpinstash. Yeah. If anybody has any questions, they can watch my YouTube videos, they can email me, Dan@alpinstash.com. Yeah. You can find me there.

TG Branfalt: Well, Dan, thanks again for being on the Ganjapreneur.com podcast.

Danny Sloat: Yeah. Thank you so much.

TG Branfalt: You can find more episodes of the Ganjapreneur.com podcast in the podcast section of Ganjapreneur.com in the Apple iTunes store. On the Ganjapreneur.com website, you will 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 Jeremy Sebastiano. I’ve been your host, TG Branfalt.

End

Inside of a legal, licensed cannabis cultivation site.

Rohrabacher-Farr Amendment Blocks Federal Prosecution of California MMJ Producers

8/11/2017

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A U.S. District Court has blocked federal prosecution of two Humboldt County, California growers charged with conspiracy to manufacture and possess cannabis with intent to distribute, concluding the defendants were in compliance with the state’s medical cannabis laws, LA Weekly reports. Anthony Pisarski and Sonny Moore had previously pleaded guilty to the federal charges.

District Court Judge Richard Seeborg stayed the prosecution due to the Rohrabacher-Farr amendment included in the federal budget; however, he said the case could be reopened if the amendment is not included in the passage of this year’s federal budget currently being drafted by lawmakers.

Ronald Richards, the attorney for the duo, indicated the decision was the first time in his 23-year career that he has “had a case stopped because of an appropriations rider.”

“What the court did in this case may be used as a blueprint for other cases,” he said in the report. “It opens the door for people not to get scared.”

Seeborg cited the 2016 U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals United States v. McIntosh case which affirmed a medical cannabis defense for state-approved operators facing federal charges.

“[The defendants’] conduct strictly complied with all relevant conditions imposed by California law on the use, distribution, possession and cultivation of medical marijuana,” Seeborg ruled.

Dale Gieringer, director of California NORML said it was the first case he was aware of that cited McIntosh to its full effect.

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New York Health Department Expands Allowed MMJ Products, Still No Flower

8/11/2017

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Medical cannabis patients in New York could soon have access to a wider variety of products, including topicals, chewable tablets and lozenges, under regulations proposed by the state Department of Health. However, smokeable products are still banned.

Additionally, the new rules would permit non-patients to enter a facility in order to get information on the program, so long as they are accompanied by a registered patient, and allow medical practitioners to take a shortened two-hour program training course.

“This is yet another positive step forward for New York State’s Medical Marijuana Program,” said New York State Department of Health Commissioner Dr. Howard Zucker in a statement. “These regulations will continue to improve the program in several ways, including making new forms of medical marijuana available and improving the dispensing facility experience.”

In late March the state added chronic pain to its qualifying condition list and, since then, patient counts have grown 77 percent. As of Aug. 9 there are 26,561 enrolled patients and 1,155 registered practitioners.

Last week, the department licensed five new companies to cultivate and dispense medical cannabis in the state. The new producers include Fiorello Pharmaceuticals, Citiva, Terradiol, PalliaTech NY, and Valley Agriceuticals.

The state now has 10 total licensed producers who are allowed to open up to 4 dispensaries each.

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Bruce V. Rauner, governor-elect of Illinois, waves to the audience during his introduction at his inauguration ceremony in Springfield, Ill., Jan. 12, 2015. As Illinois' governor, Rauner will serve as the commander in chief for the Soldiers and Airmen of the Illinois National Guard while they are not under federal activation. (U.S. Air National Guard photo by Staff Sgt. Lealan Buehrer/Released)

Illinois Gov. Allegedly Traded MMJ Program Expansion for Dissolving Cannabis Advisory Board

8/11/2017

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Last spring Illinois’ Medical Cannabis Advisory Board was disbanded and it appears the move was part of a deal between board members and Gov. Bruce Rauner to extend the program three years and add post-traumatic stress disorder and terminal illness to the qualifying condition list, Chicago magazine reports.

Michael Fine, a former member of the now-defunct board, said the members were “sold out” and “the trade-off” for the program’s expansion, “but a good trade-off.”

“We raised no stink because the program was much more important than our positions on the board,” he said in the report.

In June 2016, Joseph Wright, the then-head of the Board, resigned just one month after the legislature passed the law to extend the program. At that time, Wright indicated he had stepped down to pursue other opportunities; however now other former members are opening up about the details surrounding the shuttering of the board.

Last March, the state Department of Public Health rejected petitions to add intractable pain and autism to the qualifying condition list, and state Rep. Lou Lang, who championed the state’s medical cannabis program, accuses the governor of “directing the Department of Health to reject [those] conditions,” claiming that Health Director Nirav Shah told him that the only way new conditions would be added to the list is through the legislature.

According to the report, Rauner’s office declined to comment on the claims but Laurel Patrick, a spokesperson for the administration, confirmed that “the board no longer exists.”

In June, the legislature passed Senate Bill 10, which included language to recreate a medical cannabis advisory board, but former board member Leslie Mendoza Temple indicated she applied for a position on the new board but never heard back. Patrick did not comment on whether the new board, authorized by SB.10, will be convened.

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Inside of a licensed cannabis grow site near Bellingham, Washington.

National Hispanic Caucus of State Legislators Call for Cannabis Reforms

8/11/2017

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Calling prohibition “unconstitutional,” the National Hispanic Caucus of State Legislators has penned a resolution demanding the federal decriminalization of cannabis and expunging of criminal records for “behavior that is legalized” in some states.

The resolution tracks the history of prohibition, beginning with the 1937 testimony to Congress of the first U.S. Treasury Department Federal Bureau of Narcotics Commissioner Harry Jacob Anslinger. In that testimony, Anslinger testified that “Spanish-speaking persons” were “low mentally” partly due to their cannabis use and that Mexicans sold “loco weed” to “mostly white high school students.”

Anslinger’s testimony led directly to the prohibition of cannabis in the U.S.

The caucus points out that the DEA spends $10 billion annually to fund anti-cannabis enforcement laws; while Colorado raised $76 million in tax revenue in 2014 and the overall crime rate in the state has dropped 10.1 percent since cannabis legalization in the state in 2012.

“… Decriminalization of recreational marijuana will ease the burden off the criminal justice system and law enforcement agencies, allowing police officers, judges, and prosecutors to focus on violent offenses and other criminal activity more deserving of priority, and freeing-up space in prisons and decreasing the budgetary impact from keeping marijuana users incarcerated,” the resolution says. “Whereas, regulated marijuana retailing greatly hinders black-market drug dealers, prevents marijuana’s (unproven but widely alleged) use as a gateway drug, and directs much-needed revenue to legal business owners, states and local governments instead of organized crime.”

The resolution is the second this week by state policymakers seeking to reform U.S. cannabis laws; on Tuesday the National Conference of State Legislatures passed their own resolution calling for removing cannabis from the Controlled Substances Act.

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A nighttime photo of the Miami city skyline.

Florida Medical Cannabis: Coming to a City Near You, But When?

8/10/2017

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The Florida medical cannabis industry is growing by the day. As a result of Senate Bill 8-A, Medical Marijuana Treatment Centers, or MMTC’s, are subject to additional regulations compared to their Low-THC predecessors. In the state’s formative medical cannabis program, MMTC’s were referred to as Dispensing Organizations and were only permitted to dispense a very Low-THC product, except to terminally ill patients who could receive full-strength THC products.

Here are some key questions that people are asking when it comes to Florida’s medical cannabis program and its implementation timeline:

What’s currently happening in the legislature?
The implementation legislation for Amendment 2, titled SB 8-A, has been signed by Governor Scott. The Florida Office of Medical Marijuana Use is tasked with creating the program around these laws and is also responsible for crafting final rules and regulations, as well as awarding business licenses.

What are we waiting on? What’s next?
The Florida Office of MMJ Use will release its final rules and timeline for the MMTC application process very soon. Businesses are already in the process of submitting license applications to the state, with several having already received local permits and authorizations. An applicant will need to present a designated location and be able to prove that the property is permitted by the municipality for the use that it is intended. In order to receive a license from the state, you’ll first need to prove full compliance within your local municipality in which you choose to operate. The Florida Department of Health has until October 3, 2017 to issue patient ID cards under the conditions listed in the Amendment.

Does my community allow MMTC’s?
Cities and Counties across Florida are in the process of developing their own ordinances regarding medical cannabis production, processing, and distribution. Under current law, local municipalities must regulate MMTC’s in the same manner that they regulate pharmacies and are also allowed to create their own sets of rules governing how they must operate. That includes the option to impose a moratorium, or outright ban. Municipalities are taking varied approaches, with some already permitting dispensaries from the Low-THC program to open in cities like Tallahassee, Tampa, Orlando, Miami, Jacksonville and more coming.

If I want to start a licensed MMTC, where do I start?
There are several prerequisites for seeking an MMTC license. Securing property, compiling a team that has experience in cultivating, processing, and selling cannabis in a regulated market, background checks for all applicants and their employees, among several others. Applications for an MMTC license can be found here. An organization seeking an MMTC will first need to apply for and receive a state license. Prior to applying for a state license, you’ll first need to ensure you have local permits and zoning approval to operate each component of the business; produce, process, dispense/sell. The requirements for local approval will vary slightly from municipality to municipality, so you’ll need to get familiar with your local requirements if you want to be seriously considered for state licensure.

What’s the tax rate in FL?
Medical marijuana is not taxed in Florida!

Are there purchase limits?
Yes. Patients can purchase up to three, 70-day supply limits prior to needing a renewed recommendation. The purchasing limits in Florida are based on the patient’s recommendation from their doctor. A patient can receive a recommendation for up to 3, 70-day supplies. This is tracked in real-time in the state’s compassionate use registry. So, if a patient were to make multiple purchases in a given day, each individual purchase would count against their 70-day supply and that would be reflected and tracked from location-to-location in the state database.

What is one, single day supply?
The law is written in terms of what a patient is legally allowed to possess and the total amount that can be prescribed for a 70-day period. A patient can be issued a recommendation and purchase that amount either in a dispensary or via delivery. So, if a physician recommends that a patient consume 100 mg, 5 times per day, then the single day supply for that patient is 500 mg, or half of one gram. 500 mg/day x 70 days = 35,000 mg able to be purchased before you require another recommendation to increase your supply. This system is intended as a safeguard to prevent overselling to patients who can then divert product into the black market.

What kinds of products will be available for consumption?
The plant material of cannabis will not be permitted for sale or use; however, you’ll be able to purchase oils for vaping and products such as edibles, which will all follow strict potency guidelines. Florida will not permit the cannabis flower in a smokeable format.

Can I grow my own flower?
No. Home grows are not permitted under Florida law.

Is adult use being discussed at all?
There is an effort by Regulate Florida to have an adult-use initiative on the November, 2018 ballot.

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A cannabis worker scoops up two handfuls of trimmed cannabis product.

Uruguay Registered Cannabis Buyers Exceed 11,500

8/10/2017

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The number of registered recreational cannabis purchasers in Uruguay has topped 11,500 and four more pharmacies have begun the application process to sell the two adult-use cannabis varieties known as Alfa I and Beta I, according to the Instituto de Regulación y Control de Cannabis, the regulatory agency overseeing Uruguay’s legal cannabis market.

“The number of registered users as purchasers to access the psychoactive cannabis of non-medical use in pharmacies doubled, amounting today to 11,508 qualified,” the IRCCA wrote in a statement. “New requests for adhesion of pharmacies to the system are being processed, so that the number of access points in different parts of the country will increase progressively.”

According to a press release from International Cannabis Corp., at least 10 other pharmacies are interested in selling cannabis. ICC has so far distributed more than 141 pounds to participating pharmacies, which translates to 12,800 5 gram packages of the Alfa and Beta products. Buyers 18-and-older registered with the state can purchase up to 40 grams per month.

ICC is one of two licensed producers in the state, along with Symbiosis.

Alejandro Antalich, ICC CEO, said the company is “very pleased” at the market’s growth thus far, which has required the company to increase its cannabis production space by 21,500 square feet.

“ICC has quickly transitioned from being a development stage company, to becoming a fully licensed and approved recreational and medical cannabis producer in Uruguay,” he said in a statement.

The company expects to produce more than 11,000 pounds over 12 months.

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North Dakota Health Officials Accepting Applications for MMJ Testing Labs

8/10/2017

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The North Dakota Health Department is seeking non-binding letters of intent from laboratories interested in testing medical cannabis products once the voter-approved system comes online, the Associated Press reports. Health officials anticipate qualified patients will have access to medical cannabis products by late spring or early summer 2018.

The state’s law allows two “compassion centers” to grow and produce medical cannabis products and eight others to dispense it. Earlier this year nearly 100 companies applied to the Health Department to produce or dispense medical cannabis products. The law requires that all products be tested for molds, pesticides, and THC levels before being sold to patients.

“We issued the letter of intent (requests) to spur some interest and meet a critical need to keep the medical marijuana program in North Dakota heading in the right direction,” said Kenan Bullinger, director of the Health Department’s medical marijuana division, in the report.

The Department has estimated that they will need at least $2.7 million over the next two years to implement the program. The laboratory application period closes on Aug. 25.

Advocates in North Dakota are also circulating petitions to legalize adult-use cannabis use in the state. If approved, the measure would expunge the criminal records of low-level, non-violent cannabis offenders in addition to creating a taxed-and-regulated adult-use market.

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MMJ Trade Association Launched in Arkansas

8/10/2017

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The Arkansas medical cannabis community now has a trade association, as a coalition of businesses and individuals have formed the Arkansas Medical Marijuana Association, which has tabbed Little Rock attorney David Couch as its executive director. Couch led the efforts to put the medical cannabis issue to voters, which was approved last November.

The association also counts former state Attorney General Dustin McDaniel among its board of directors members. McDaniel, who is now in private practice, was the attorney general when the initiative was approved by the office.

Other board members include Dr. Steven Cathey, a neurosurgeon and chairman of the state Medical Board; Dr. Richard Douglas, who served as the former assistant deputy secretary of the U.S. Department of Agriculture under the Reagan Administration and as a member of President George H.W. Bush’s Export Advisory Council; Kris Kane, president of 4Front Ventures, a holding company which includes medical cannabis dispensaries, who also serves on the boards of the National Cannabis Industry Association, Students for Sensible Drug Policy, Common Sense for Drug Policy, and Marijuana Majority; Don Roda, general counsel and development head at Rock Capital Group; and owner of Sale Capital Partners Stephen LaFrance, the former executive vice president of USA Drug which sold its 157 pharmacies to Walgreens in 1992.

“Arkansas voters made clear that they want sensible, safe medical marijuana policy in this state, because they recognize the clear evidence that cannabinoids are effective in pain relief and treating a number of chronic illnesses,” Couch said in a press release. “Our association will be a partnership of all those with a common interest in ensuring the state stays true to the will of the voters and medical marijuana operations are run safely and legally.”

According to the release, the association plans on engaging with the policy-making process and providing public-education to patients throughout the state.

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A red brick building on the New Brunswick University campus.

University of New Brunswick Creates Health Research Chair in Cannabis

8/10/2017

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Canada’s University of New Brunswick has announced that it is creating a Health Research Chair in Cannabis which will help expand the university’s commitment to innovation and research in the natural products, biomedical, and health and life sciences fields, according to a press release. The chair will receive $1 million in funding from New Brunswick Health Research Foundation and Tetra Bio-Pharma Inc., at $500,000 each over five years.

The announcement follows the creation of the Health Research Chair in Cannabis at St. Thomas University in May, which was also given $1 million in funding from the New Brunswick Health Research Foundation and Shoppers Drug Mart, at $500,000 each.

Dr. David MaGee, University of New Brunswick acting vice-president of research, called the chair’s creation “a key example of the university’s commitment to discovery.”

“We believe in the power of research to advance innovation within New Brunswick,” he said in the release. “With 75 percent of the province’s publicly funded research taking place at UNB, we’re thrilled to play a central role.”

The recruitment and nomination process for the tenure-track faculty member position is expected to begin immediately, while the funding will be in place beginning in the 2017-18 fiscal year.

Dr. Bruno Battistini, president, CEO, and scientific director for New Brunswick Health Research Foundation, said the two chairs “clearly signifies New Brunswick’s intention to be at the forefront of cannabis research.”

“This competitive chair will further develop the science toward implementing proven and safe innovative cannabis-based therapies for the chronic treatment of various disorders (chronic pain, PTSD, etc.),” he said in a statement.

Potential areas of research include the medicinal and biochemistry analysis of cannabis, preclinical pharmacology studies, and a review of the existing cannabis literature in an effort to identify future research needs and inconsistencies.     

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Vanessa Corrales: Infusing an Edibles Brand with Personality

8/09/2017

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Vanessa Corrales is the founder of San Diego, California-based B-Edibles, an infused edibles manufacturer that creates infused sugar products and is particularly well-known for offering medicated cotton candy.

This Ganjapreneur.com podcast episode features Vanessa and our host TG Branfalt in a discussion about how being a medical cannabis patient led to Vanessa pursuing a career as a medical cannabis entrepreneur and how B-Edibles’ bubbly and colorful branding plays to her desire to express uniqueness and her own personality in the cannabis space. The interview also covers a brand new project that Vanessa has taken up that is aimed at bringing a modern education about medical cannabis and the truth behind cannabis culture to native Spanish-speakers — and much, much more!

Listen to the interview via the player below, or you can keep scrolling down to read a full transcript of this Ganjapreneur.com podcast episode.

Listen to the podcast:

Read the transcript:

TG Branfalt: Hey there, I’m your host, TG Branfalt, and you’re listening to the Ganjapreneur.com podcast, where we try to bring you actionable information to normalize cannabis through the stories of ganjapreneurs, activists, and industry stakeholders. Today, I’m joined by Vanessa Corrales, founder of B-Edibles out in San Diego. How are you doing today?

Vanessa Corrales: Hi. I’m doing great, thanks for asking. Thanks for having me today.

TG Branfalt: Oh, it’s a pleasure. I’m real excited to get to know you, get to know your products, but before we get into the products and B-Edibles, tell me about yourself, you know. What was your path to getting involved in the cannabis space?

Vanessa Corrales: Excellent. Yeah, so cannabis … It’s funny to hear all the stories that people have and what brings them to the cannabis space. I come from a background of food and beverage. I’ve managed hotels, I’ve been part of opening teams for restaurants, I’ve managed local breweries and local coffee shops, as well, here in San Diego. I really wanted to dive into the food side of cannabis with a twist of getting, also, the Hispanic aspect of it or bringing cannabis in Spanish and getting that Latino culture in there, because if my Spanish speakers are listening out there, we don’t have a lot of information of cannabis in Spanish. So, I know I wanted to jump into cannabis and my forte is food and beverage, so that’s where I kind of focused my energy on.

TG Branfalt: And that led you to the creation and formation of B-Edibles, where you make cotton candy, which, let me tell you, that’s a mind-blowing premise, cotton candy that’s medicated. So, tell me about coming up with the cotton candy idea.

Vanessa Corrales: Okay. So, being in the food and beverage background and being in the industry and managing restaurants, I’ve always looked at Australia for new and upcoming trends. Looking at Australia … Australia has fairy floss in everything. Fairy floss is the traditional name for cotton candy. It started as fairy floss. So, fairy floss was in everything, and I was just thinking, “Wow, we don’t have that here in the states.” So, I started a fairy floss company, not medicated, that was about a year and a half ago. I really thought, “Okay, this is awesome.” I never thought I was going to infuse cannabis into cotton candy, I mean, that’s mind-blowing to me just thinking about that, like really? Cotton candy and cannabis? Is that even a thing?

But, in order for me to really want to dive in into the cannabis industry and into this market, I knew that I needed to create a product that wasn’t a chocolate bar or wasn’t a brownie or a cookie because there’s already amazing companies doing that right now. So, I knew I needed to stand out and create a big boom, and say, “Hello, I’m here. I’m colorful and I’m proud,” and cotton candy just made sense.

TG Branfalt: I was really struck when I was thinking about this when we landed this interview and thinking about cotton candy in addition to how delicious it probably is, but as a delivery method, it’s got to have benefits over other edible methods, right?

Vanessa Corrales: Correct. So, because of the nature of cotton candy and how you consume cotton candy, it disintegrates, it completely melts on your tongue, so it acts a sublingual. You will immediately feel, well 15-20 minutes, you’ll feel the effects of it. For me personally, it’s amazing. If I want to smoke in public, I consume it, and a lot of people have the idea of cotton candy being a lot of sugar, “Oh my gosh, it’s so much sugar,” but it’s mostly air. When you spin sugar, the process of creating cotton candy, you use less than a tablespoon of sugar, the machine melts it, and it creates this big cloud of fluffy, sweet, infused-cannabis cotton candy. So, it’s really not a lot of sugar. But, when you consume it, you don’t need a lot of it to feel the effects of it.

TG Branfalt: So, tell me a little bit about your own medical cannabis use. You have a condition, endometriosis, and that’s not something I specifically see covered in many states, so can you give us an idea of what that is and how cannabis helps you and how you utilize it?

Vanessa Corrales: Absolutely. So, endometriosis is one of those diseases that, not a lot of people know about it, or not a lot of women talk about it. Endometriosis is … The tissue that lines our uterus, as females, begins to develop outside of our organs. So, it can develop in our fallopian tubes, in our intestines, in our appendix, wherever. It could travel to our brain. And that tissue is called endometrium, which is why it’s called endometriosis. It acts the same as the lining that we have in our uterus, so it sheds during the monthly menstrual cycle.

So, now you can only imagine, if that tissues travels to your intestines or to any other organ in your body, and every month it acts as your menstrual cycle and it starts shedding blood but there’s no place for it to release or to go, you start creating these pockets, these cysts, or these chocolate cysts, or these tumors, that have nowhere to go and that create this excruciating pain. I mean 24/7 pain, you can’t get out of bed, it causes nausea, crazy inflammation, and it affects a lot of women. A lot of women don’t talk about it because it’s one of those diseases that you don’t know about until 10 years later when it’s too late, and infertility kicks in, like myself. I suffer from infertility, I’ve had seven surgeries, I’ve had endometriosis in my large intestine, my small intestine, my colon, my appendix, fallopian tube, ovaries, everywhere, and the pain is ridiculous.

TG Branfalt: Unbelievable.

Vanessa Corrales: Of course, the doctors give you hormone therapy, and they give you all these medical narcotics. I was on Percocet and Dilaudid and Morphine for many, many years, and not once was I introduced to cannabis. And that has a lot to do with me being Hispanic and not being socially accepted in my culture.

TG Branfalt: So, how do you use cannabis? Do you smoke it, do you use edibles? What delivery method helps best with your symptoms?

Vanessa Corrales: So, an interesting thing with endometriosis, the main thing that doctors give you with endometriosis is a hormone therapy. They either give you Lupron, which is like a hormone replacement through an injection in your stomach, which creates blood clots. So, if you smoke cannabis, it increases your risk of blood clots, which is why I try to not smoke cannabis, because of that, because I’ve been through hormone therapy for many, many years. So, I like edibles, I like vaping, which is why I love the cotton candy because it’s that sweet tooth in me, and it’s fast-acting. I can really dose out how much I consume, as well, because it’s fast-acting.

TG Branfalt: Do you have any concern as a patient in California that the new rules will have a negative effect on the medical cannabis program currently in the state?

Vanessa Corrales: That’s an interesting question and a great question because the regulations were just given to us a few weeks ago and, of course as a medical patient that consumes cannabis on a regular basis, with the new proposed regulations you can only buy prepackaged edibles from all the manufacturers in packages of 100 milligrams, which, if you talk to a cancer patient or someone that suffers from seizures, 100 milligrams does nothing. I’m afraid that, as a manufacturer, it’s going to be an issue. For cotton candy, there’s no way for us to dose out 10 milligrams for patients, so cotton candy, I’m afraid, is not going to exist come 2018 with the new regulations.

TG Branfalt: That’s really, really unfortunate. Is there any light at the end of the tunnel with regard to these regulations because these are still proposals, right?

Vanessa Corrales: Correct, they’re still proposals. June 13th was the last day for the community to speak up and talk, give their opinion, regarding … But again, they’re just proposals, and we’re thankful for that. There’s still time to change all of these and I know there’s a lot of people working towards changing that, the dosage, and the details that are missing in these proposed regulations.

TG Branfalt: I want to talk to you a little bit more about the regulations in a little bit broader term, but before we do that, we’ve got to take a short break. This is the Ganjapreneur.com podcast, I’m TG Branfalt.

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TG Branfalt: Welcome back to the Ganjapreneur.com podcast. I’m your host TG Branfalt here with Vanessa Corraless, founder of B-Edibles. So, before the break, we were talking a bit about the new rules, California’s, as they roll into rec. You had said that there’s a possibility that your product, the cotton candy, might not be available under the new regime. What are your plans if that happens?

Vanessa Corrales: So, I’ve been soul searching. I think, “Okay, so what’s going to happen?” I’ve been working so hard and diligently in creating a product that’s safe, the quality is there, people are like, “It is cotton candy?” I’m like, “Yes, but it’s still clean meds, we still lab test, and we still have a sweet, clean medication for people.” So, I started thinking, “Okay, so what can we do if cotton candy is out of the question, and still keep the integrity of what B is and the quality and the consistency behind B?” To make cotton candy, we first infused sugar, that’s what we do, we infuse sugar. So, that’s the new sect for B-Edibles, we are going to have infused sugar for the cannabis community that is lab tested, that can be micro-dosed.

We currently have sugar cubes that will be going out to the community, to, hopefully, dispensaries pretty soon. They’re micro-dosed at 10 milligrams each, lab-tested, all organic. I didn’t mention that earlier, but all of the products that we use, all the ingredients that we use, are 100% organic ingredients. No artificial flavors, no artificial colors, no preservatives or additives. So, I see B-Edibles as being the manufacturer of infused sugar, which is a staple in everyone’s home.

TG Branfalt: I love how entrepreneurs, man like … You guys are able to overcome almost any roadblock. “You’re not allowed to bank.” “Oh, we’ll make this service and-

Vanessa Corrales: You’re right.

TG Branfalt: “Have that service. We’ll form these coalitions.” I mean really, it’s really incredible, really heartening for me to see, especially when your product’s on the verge of not being allowed in California, which is sort of crazy. So, in California, where Latinos encompass the largest racial or ethnic group, legalization there provides a big opportunity to break old traditions, clear the path to have the industry dominated by others besides the white male. Women, they hold 36% of leadership positions in the cannabis industry. What does all this mean for Latinas? You had said earlier that there’s a stigma attached to it, I am not a Latina, so-

Vanessa Corrales: Are you sure?

TG Branfalt: So, could you explain … Could you explain to me what that stigma is and what legalization in California does mean for that segment of the population?

Vanessa Corrales: Absolutely. So, interesting. Here in San Diego, we’re so close to the border, we’re so close to Mexico, we’re 15-20 minutes away from Mexico, from a completely different country where cannabis or marijuana is still seen as this gateway drug that only tweakers use. I get seen as, “You’re going to Hell. You smoke cannabis, you’re a bad person. You should be in the streets begging. You’re worthless.” That is still the stigma surrounding it. No question about it. People still don’t use the word marijuana, my grandparents, my aunts, don’t use the word marijuana, really, out in public, because they don’t want to be that person talking about it. Being at the border, oddly enough, we don’t have the information out there yet, the information of, “Cannabis is okay. Cannabis is healing a lot of people. Cannabis is opening the minds of so many. We’re getting creative people and artists. Doctors are using it and lawyers are using it. It’s not just for a bad person.”

The opportunity that cannabis is giving in the cannabis community here in California to really shed the light, because, whether Mexicans like it or not, we as Mexicans follow what California does, or what the U.S. does. The U.S. is legalizing cannabis. So, now Mexico is going that path. The Senate just approved medical use in Mexico, which is insane, insane.

TG Branfalt: I’m just wondering what does the legalization mean for the Latina population?

Vanessa Corrales: For Latinas-

TG Branfalt: In California.

Vanessa Corrales: It’s amazing that we can enter this space without having a person, or established corporation or company, saying, “We male,” or “We Hispanics don’t have room in this.” There’s so much room for us Latinas to really spread the knowledge and the love and the … How can I say it? The passion that we have for this plant. It is giving us a platform to shine, because we are on the same level. It’s all the same playing ground for everyone. Me as a Latina woman and my neighbor and their neighbor, we all have the same ground, we can all be super successful in this industry, which … You can’t say that in other industries. That’s what cannabis brings to, not only the Latinas, but Latinos and other minorities, which is amazing that I am able to say that I am living and growing, and my career is growing and my passion is growing in this industry with this amazing community.

TG Branfalt: You had mentioned that your parents and grandparents don’t even mutter the word marijuana. What was their reaction when-

Vanessa Corrales: They didn’t understand.

TG Branfalt: You started this company?

Vanessa Corrales: They didn’t understand what I was talking about. I’m like, “I’m going to be working with marijuana.” They don’t know the word cannabis. Cannabis is not a thing in Mexico. I’m like, “Yeah, I’m going to work with marijuana.” They’re like, “What?” I kept saying, “Yeah, mota.” I’m not sure how more clear I can be. But, because … They didn’t. And do you know why they didn’t?

Maybe if it was another cousin. Maybe. I’ve been a girl that has always loved books, that is always in school. I graduated from college, and I’m one of the only cousins from my Mexico side that has been to college. So, they know that I wouldn’t make a crazy decision that wasn’t well thought-out, or that I would harm my family or myself. They didn’t disown me, I mean, they were a little confused and they did need a little education. All they know about marijuana is. “If you’re a bad person, you smoke it. You probably smoke it and then you also, probably do other drugs. You probably also rob people or do crazy other stuff.” So, when I was telling them, you could see their heads turning. You know, like a little puppy, when their head turns like, “I don’t understand.”

You know what the great thing about it, is that when I spoke to them about this project, and I started with cotton candy, it kind of broke the ice, which is what I love about cotton candy, is that it allows me to preach, per say. It allows me to talk cannabis without, really, that wall of, “Oh, no, no. I don’t want to talk about cannabis.” It really broke the barrier. It’s like, “Oh, cotton candy? What? Tell me more. How does this work?” Then, it allows me to educate them, which, at the end of the day, if we don’t educate our community, if we don’t educate and pass that knowledge of what we know … Again, we don’t know much in this community because we’re writing the laws, we’re doing the research, we’re doing everything right now, but if we don’t spread the knowledge that we currently have, there’s no way that we’re going to break the stigma.

The Mexican culture is really stubborn. So, when you come to it with a very bubbly and colorful way, and being a female that they don’t really expect that, they really embrace it and they open their ears and they open their mind and their heart, which is amazing to me. I really didn’t think that they were going to be okay with it. I was going to do it regardless, but it was great. It’s been great.

TG Branfalt: As we’ve been talking, and I said this to you during the break that, you’re a very bubbly personality. And the photos of you, you have multicolored hair. So, how important was it to you for your brand to represent that bubbly, colorful personality?

Vanessa Corrales: It was everything. It absolutely was everything. When I first decided that this is the path that I was going to take, I really struggled with what did I want to call it, how was the feel and the colors. Because, what was out in the market at that time, I really didn’t identify with anything and I really wanted to scream individuality and to be colorful and to be unique. Working in food and beverage and working in restaurants and hotel, whoever is listening that has been in that industry, you have to be a certain way, you have to talk a certain way, you have to dress a certain way. I really wanted to step away from that. I wanted to embrace people’s individuality, but I also really wanted to bring color to the cannabis community by really pushing about being yourself.

I kept on telling myself, “I don’t know what I want to call it, I just want it to be colorful. I want it to be unique, I want it to be love, I want it to be creative.” I kept on saying this, I’m like, “I just want it to be.” Literally. I just want it to be. So, I kind of just stuck. Some people are like, “Oh, it’s ‘Bedibles.'” I’m like, “Well, sure. If you want it to be ‘Bedibles,’ sure.” But, it’s about being B, and that’s the beauty about B, it can be whatever you want it to be. Bubbly, serious, creative, you could be elevated, you could be high, you can be whatever you want to be, and that’s what cannabis does to me personally, as an individual, as a medical marijuana patient. It allows me to be myself and that’s why I love cannabis.

TG Branfalt: So, you sort of had, the, what you wanted …

Vanessa Corrales: Correct, absolutely. 110%

TG Branfalt: What message you wanted the business to have before you had the product.

Vanessa Corrales: Is that weird?

TG Branfalt: That’s really kind of shocking. It is sort of weird. I mean, in my experience, I’ve done dozens of these interviews, and nobody has said to me, “Yeah, I knew what I wanted to call it and I knew what message I wanted it to have before I knew what I was actually going to make.” No, that’s … So, you’re unique even in that way. I want to switch gears a little bit, move back a little bit. We were talking about California, and California’s really interesting as they go into legalization because of the equity provisions that are being outlined, not just by the-

Vanessa Corrales: Right.

TG Branfalt: State legislation, but also by individual legislation in San Francisco and Oakland. They were putting together equity provisions for the industry months before. They knew it was coming. Do you think that those equity provisions in cities like San Francisco and Oakland, do they do enough to remove the barriers to entry for minorities in California?

Vanessa Corrales: I mean, if you talk to the Latina in me, I’m going to say it’s never enough. But, it’s a start. And I’m thankful and I’m happy that we’re at least starting somewhere. I know the equity details in Oakland and San Francisco, I’m not super familiar with them, but I know that there’s … 50% go to minorities with convictions and some income thresholds, or something like that.

TG Branfalt: Yeah.

Vanessa Corrales: Am I correct saying that?

TG Branfalt: Yeah.

Vanessa Corrales: Yeah. And I know that there is very little written in the proposed regulations for us over here. Again, I think whatever we do to move towards that is amazing. We have to put it in writing. These social equities need to be in writing because it is true, it is a fact that we are the minority. But, like I said earlier, we are on a level playing field. We need to get out there as Spanish speakers, as Latina and Latinos, we need to get out there and really talk to other people and spread the knowledge in order to get where we want cannabis to be. These social equity programs are only going to help us get there.

TG Branfalt: Well, I want to talk to you, too, a bit more about what other products you’ve got in the works. Before we do that, we’ve got to take our last break. This is Ganjapreneur.com podcast. I’m TG Branfalt.

At Ganjapreneur, we have heard from dozens of cannabis business owners who have encountered the issue of canna-bias, which is when a mainstream business, whether a landlord, bank, or some other provider of vital business services, refuses to do business with them simply because of their association with cannabis. We have even heard stories of businesses being unable to provide health and life insurance for their employees because the insurance providers were too afraid to work with them. We believe that this fear is totally unreasonable and that cannabis business owners deserve access to the same services and resources that other businesses are afforded, that they should be able to hire consultation to help them follow the letter of the law in their business endeavors, and that they should be able to provide employee benefits without needing to compromise on the quality of coverage they can offer.

This is why we created the Ganjapreneur.com business service directory, a resource for cannabis professionals to find and connect with service providers who are cannabis-friendly and who are actively seeking cannabis industry clients. If you are considering hiring a business consultant, lawyer, accountant, web designer, or any other ancillary service for your business, go to Ganjapreneur.com/businesses to browse hundreds of agencies, firms, and organizations who support cannabis legalization, and who want to help you grow your business. With so many options to choose from in each service category, you will be able to browse company profiles and do research on multiple companies in advance, so you can find the provider who is the best fit for your particular need.

Our business service directory is intended to be a useful and well-maintained resource, which is why we individually vet each listing that is submitted. If you are a business service provider who wants to work with cannabis clients, you may be a good fit for our service directory. Go to Ganjapreneur.com/businesses to create your profile and start connecting with cannabis entrepreneurs today.

TG Branfalt: Hey, welcome back to the Ganjapreneur.com podcast. I’m your host TG Branfalt here with Vanessa Corraless, founder of B-Edibles. So, you had mentioned, before we got started, that you’re working on something in Mexico. Why don’t you tell me about that endeavor. I’m sure there’s not a whole lot of people working out there yet, so why don’t you give us an idea of what’s going on.

Vanessa Corrales: Oh my gosh. Just thinking about me talking about it with you is amazing. I’m getting little tinglies all over my body. Because we have no information out there in Spanish, which is why I’m super passionate and super excited about this project. So, it’s Cannabis En Español, which is a platform of blogs, video blogs, or vlogs, and a website, that brings articles that are currently written in English translated into Spanish, as well as a blog by me, and a vlog by me as well, in Spanish, talking about cannabis, talking about what’s going on.

TG Branfalt: That is genius.

Vanessa Corrales: We don’t have that, and how are we going to get our community, our Spanish-speaking community, to really embrace this cannabis movement? Because, there’s a shit-ton of us out there, right? Our schools teach in Spanish. Why aren’t we teaching in Spanish over here? So, I was super excited to be part of the first cannabis, or club cannabico, the first cannabis club in Tijuana last week. It just came from the sky. I was contacted by a doctor that researches the endocannabinoid system in Mexico, he was an old friend of mine. He said, “We’re doing this cannabis meeting, the first one. We’re just going to get together and see what’s going on. What do we want to do, where do we want to take this?” I got invited and it was the most surreal thing. We were in this beautiful home in Mexico, I was surrounded by 11 men, and I was the only female there.

TG Branfalt: Wow.

Vanessa Corrales: It was just insane. It was amazing. I felt just … In shock, and in awe, and happy with life at that moment, saying, “Yes, we are doing this. Yes, this is happening right now.” Mexico … You have cartels and narcotics and the war on drugs, that’s all we think and breathe over there, which is crazy, and that’s all that the news tell us. So, I was so happy to be part of this group of men, and I was so happy that they included a woman to go there and to be part of the movement. I was just ecstatic. So, Cannabis En Español, and the club has its own name, they don’t want to release the name yet because, again, legal implications in Mexico currently. They’re trying to get all that squared away, but it’s coming and it’s going to bring a lot of cool stuff to our Spanish speakers over here.

TG Branfalt: So, what sort of issues came up in this meeting?

Vanessa Corrales: So, first of all, because we’re at the border, most of them come to San Diego, cross the border frequently, like myself. So, we sat down and like, “Okay, well this is what we want to do. We want to inform our people, we want to get the community together, we want to show that cannabis, or marijuana … I say marijuana because cannabis isn’t a word that is used in Mexico yet.

TG Branfalt: Okay.

Vanessa Corrales: So, we’re like, “Okay, what are we going to do with marijuana?” Oh my gosh. I was a little … hearing this word right now, this is so cool. But, we were talking about, “Okay, how are we going to get the community together? How are we going to get the community to see us, this group of crazy ass people trying to create this movement of ‘Cannabis is safe. It’s not a gateway drug?’ How are we going to get the community to really see us as legit? Not just a group of people that just want to smoke all day.” That’s not what we are. So, they had some ideas that they were proposing to the group that was there, “We’re going to get people together. Because it’s still super illegal in Mexico, it’s invitation only. We’re going to clean beaches, and we’re going to do private events. We’re going to go on radio and do interviews in Spanish and help the community. Feeding the homeless, feeding foster care kids.” There’s just a list of things. “Doing concerts to raise funds to help this community and to help this nonprofit.”

The range of people that were in this meeting, we had someone that works at a radio station, we had some lawyers, we had doctors, we had a few artists that paint and some others that do digital art. We just had such a unique dynamic going, and then me that brought that feminine side of cannabis. When I was talking to them … And I started with not only men smoke weed. They kind of looked at me like, “Yeah, I guess you’re right.” I just started talk to them. “We need to start talking about marijuana to women, to moms, to ladies that are going, maybe, through endometriosis, or through infertility, or through this pain.” It was just amazing. I am very, very happy and excited for this project and to bring it to the community.

TG Branfalt: So, where can people find this blog? What’s the web address for the blog?

Vanessa Corrales: So, it’s CannabisEnEspañol.org or CannabisEnEspañol.com is the URL that we have. Again, we’re barely recording and starting it next week, so it’s literally in it’s infancy. We’re barely starting. I have some awesome collaborations that are coming together, some marketing gurus here in San Diego that really want to invest in this project, that have very, very big rapport. Some videographer up in Oceanside that volunteered their time, as well, to record them. It’s just coming together so beautifully, and that’s something that I really love about this cannabis community, is that we’re all about collaboration and really spreading the love, that I do not see in other industries.

TG Branfalt: That’s a really super cool idea. As somebody who … I try to cover international news as I can, but I can’t speak Spanish. So, when I see what’s going on in Mexico or other Spanish-speaking countries, it’s not as well covered in the U.S. media and I mean, sometimes, we have to rely on sketchy translations. So, it’s sounds like a really, really great project, even for us members of the media who want to stay on top of international cannabis news.

Vanessa Corrales: Absolutely. I was talking to other websites like Medical Jane, and talking to them about the project, just because they have a lot of articles, to see how we can collaborate and get those articles translated. We have doctors in Mexico that would back up any translations. Obviously, when I translate some of the articles, you don’t know what bullshit I can be saying, right? So, we want to make it as transparent and as truthful to the original article, or whatever it is that we’re translating, and the information that we’re giving in Spanish. We really want to make it as clear and the best information as possible, out there. Obviously free for the Spanish-speaking community.

TG Branfalt: Well, that’s really exciting stuff. I’m really stoked to see how … As you said, it’s early, to see how it all comes together for you. Finally, where can people find out more about B-Edibles, about the company that you’re currently operating?

Vanessa Corrales: So, our Instagram is @bedibles or ‘bedibles’ like a lot of people like to call it.

TG Branfalt: So no dash?

Vanessa Corrales: No dash on our Instagram, but we do have a dash on our website, which is www.B-Edibles.com. Yeah, that website is in the process of being revamped, but you currently can go there and see the bubbly colors that B-Edibles is and probably a picture of me and my colorful hair, too.

TG Branfalt: Well, I want to thank you so much for taking time to appear on the show. You’re a really fantastic resource and taking a point position on trying to educate Spanish speakers and your own culture on cannabis, that’s a huge project to undertake.

Vanessa Corrales: Yes.

TG Branfalt: It’s really incredible that somebody’s doing it. So, thank you so much for being on the show and taking on that responsibility.

Vanessa Corrales: Thank you, thank you. I think that any person in the cannabis industry really has a lot of passion and it’s on us. We are the ones getting all this knowledge, we are the ones writing all these laws. So, it’s on our backs to really put all this information out there for people, the correct information, out there, and the correct image out there to the community. And cannabis is about being unique and it’s about embracing individuality, and we need to do that. That’s what I’m trying to do.

TG Branfalt: Well, again, I thank you for coming on the show and we’ll keep an eye out for the new site for sure.

Vanessa Corrales: Absolutely. Thank you so much for having me, it was a blast.

TG Branfalt: You can find more episodes of the Ganjapreneur.com podcast in the podcast section of Ganjapreneur.com and in the Apple iTunes store. On the Ganjapreneur website, you will 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 Jeremy Sebastiano, I’ve been your host, TG Branfalt.

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Bird's eye view of Waikiki Beach in Honolulu, Hawaii.

Hawaii Dispensaries Coming Online After Testing License Approval

8/09/2017

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Hawaii’s first medical cannabis dispensary has finally opened its doors one week after the Department of Health granted a license to Steep Hill Hawaii to test consumer products, KHON reports. The approval for Maui Wellness Group’s Maui Grown Therapies Kahului location was granted by the Health Department on Tuesday.

In the report, Teri Freitas Gorman, Maui Grown Therapies director of community relations and patient affairs, said the dispensary would launch a “soft opening” after doing intakes for about 400 patients prior to gaining Health Department approval.

“We want to make sure our patients and our staff and also our neighbors here in the Maui Lani Village Center that everybody has a positive experience with us opening,” she said in the report.

A second dispensary, Aloha Green in Oahu, expects to open its doors today.

Dr. Virginia Pressler, director for the Department of Health, said that while implementing the program was challenging, the official rollout of the program marked “an important day for qualified patients and caregivers on Maui.”

“With legal guidance from Department of the Attorney General, the DOH team paved the way for this new industry in Hawaii and has set a new standard for dispensary programs other states can emulate,” she said in an interview with KHON.

Under Hawaii’s medical cannabis law, patients and caregivers can purchase up to four ounces of medical cannabis during a consecutive 15-day period and up to eight ounces over a consecutive 30-day period.

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Indoor cannabis plants inside of a cultivation site licensed under Washington state's I-502 adult-use cannabis marketplace.

Butte County, California Bans Adult-Use Cannabis Industry

8/09/2017

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The Butte County, California Board of Supervisors has temporarily banned commercial cannabis operations, despite the support of the majority of residents who attended the meeting and one supervisor pointing out that the county has fallen behind many others in the state in terms of tax revenues due to previous bans, according to a Chicoer report. The ban does not include medical cannabis deliveries to the county.

Among the supporters was Mike Lewis, a member of the Inland Cannabis Farmers’ Association, who suggested the board form a committee to write an ordinance for the industry to move forward, urging the board to take their “foot off the brake.”

“This is the beginning of the end of the black market,” Lewis told the board during his comments. “(There are) people who want this to be legitimate.”

However, Bonnie Masarik, speaking on behalf of opponents, raised concerns about the odor from farms and the use of pesticides, noting that Proposition 64 was only approved by voters in the county because of Chico – the most populous city in the county of 255,000. She warned of a “mass exodus” if the county allowed cannabis operations to commence.

Supervisor Maureen Kirk said she believed “delivery is a way of life in Butte County” and backed a plan for the supervisors to revisit the plan in six months after the board had an opportunity to see how other counties regulate the industry.

The board is expected to issue a report on the possibility of permitting the industry in May 2018.

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A leather notepad, pen, and cell phone -- the early tools in an entrepreneurial journey.

‘High Five:’ Branding and Developing Products for All Five Senses

8/09/2017

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In a transient world with instant access and endless options, it’s more important than ever to create a cannabis brand that connects with your consumer on every level. I’ve taught some of the greatest brands in the world to develop their product in the most impactful way using all five senses.

In my last contribution, we discussed the concept of your brand being alive. But what does that look like in the cannabis industry? It’s our senses that keep us alive — incorporating them in how you promote yourself will keep your brand alive, too.

Let’s look at each sense and how you can incorporate it into your marketing to add value and a deeper connection with your customers.

Sight

Did you know over 80% of the information we retain is from visual interaction? This means how your brand looks is a critical piece in your success. This can go beyond your logo and into other elements of your business.

  • How is your team dressed?
  • What does your package look like when it comes to your customer?
  • What visual messaging are you using on social media?

Let’s look at the visual concepts over at Hi ™:

Friendly cannabis branding that makes you energized, excited, and wanting more. Photo Credit: Bruce Mau Design

Hi ™’s packaging is an excellent example of how a strong visual brand can portray a feeling. Their packaging portrays happiness while helping the consumer easily understand how each of their products can be used in everyday life.

From business cards to billboards, your visuals say volumes about your brand. They also promote thoughts, which turn into feelings, which turn into action. What is your look saying about you?

Smell

Smells have an extraordinary way of connecting us to memories. Take advantage of this sense and use it to connect to your audience.

As an example, the company I founded My Bud Vase ™ incorporates beautiful flower pokers to clean out our pieces. We give these out while vending and we know that it’s a natural instinct to smell a flower, so we decided to scent our flowers with hints of vanilla, sage, and lavender. Not only is this a pleasant surprise to the consumer, but it adds a distinctive differentiation to our product line.

Cannabis is often associated with strong smells, but consumers might be pleasantly surprised to find them incorporated into your branding itself. Photo Credit: Post No Bills

Look at your own business and think beyond the product or service itself. What could your packaging smell like? Don’t always work in the obvious choice of a skunky cannabis smell — get creative.

Sound

If your brand had a soundtrack, what would it be?

What we hear while we shop is proven to impact our mood and purchase choices. The atmosphere you create for your shoppers can be as impactful as the product itself. With that in mind, what is the vibe of your brand?

  • Are you creating a pleasant audible experience for your consumer?
  • What music do you play for phone calls put on hold?
  • What kind of mood do you want your customers to be in when they are in the presence of your brand?

Imagine pitching a new product and, when you open the packaging for the first time, you hear a drumroll in anticipation of the reveal. Light- or voice-activated sound chips are available for purchase and can add so much impact to your branding.

A peek inside of the Chalice Farms dispensary in Portland, Oregon. Photo Credit: Amarett Jans

Taste

This sense obviously ranks high in priority in the edibles industry, but think about how you can incorporate it in other ways.

What is the flavor of the city that your brand comes from? San Francisco evokes sourdough bread, Italy evokes pasta, Maine evokes lobster. Use these instinctual associations to create a unique experience.

If you’re a cannabis brand involving citrus terpenes, perhaps offer have some citrus candies on your store counter or at your tradeshow booth. Figure out how can you create a delicious experience and connect your branding with your audience on a completely different level.

Touch

The impact of touch cannot be underestimated. We are driven by the feel of a product.

Touch denotes the quality and worth of an item and many purchasing decisions are made by how something feels. Your business is an exchange of commerce, and this subtle sense has a major influence in the first impression of your product. From the clothes we wear to the sheets on our bed, to the journal we carry — touch speaks volumes. Many companies overlook how this sense translates into a desire to purchase and adds value to your selling price.

The Green Flower Media strain tracker journal has a unique touch and feel to make the product seem more legitimate and accessible.

Creative packaging is one of the most memorable ways to brand your company. The Green Flower Media strain tracker journal has a buttery leather feel, a feature important to the company because they wanted their users to use it frequently. They took the time to choose the right material that felt best when it was in your hand.

Have you taken the time to think of creative packaging options for your product?

People often say they are not creative, but if you can tap into the five senses, your creativity will soar. The senses drive everything we do. We are turned off or on to things that we process through our senses. It’s natural that we incorporate these in our day-to-day lives. It’s our senses that keep us alive, but we often do not incorporate them into our business life.

This is a whole new way to look at your brand — you can create maximum impact on quite often a minimal budget by incorporating the five senses. Make it your goal to integrate as many senses as possible to your cannabis branding and product development.

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A large cannabis cola bent over sideways in an indoor cultivation site.

Separate Polls Find Growing Support for Cannabis Reforms

8/09/2017

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Two new polls have found the majority of Americans support cannabis legalization and criminal reforms related to cannabis possession. In the Aug. 3 Quinnipiac University poll, 94 percent of respondents said that adults should be allowed to use cannabis for medical purposes if prescribed by their doctor – and in the overall demographics surveyed not one group polled below 90 percent in favor.

Moreover, 61 percent indicated they believe cannabis should be legalized nationally; however, support for the proposition varied among age, gender, and political affiliation. The poll found strongest support among respondents aged 35 to 49 (77 percent) and 18 to 34 (71 percent). Support was lowest among Republicans (37 percent) and those 65-and-older (42 percent). Men polled supported legalization at higher rates than women at 64 percent and 59 percent, respectively.

The Quinnipiac pollsters also discovered a supermajority of voters, 75 percent, opposed the federal government from interfering in state-approved medical and adult-use cannabis programs.

The Harvard-Harris Poll, conducted in mid-July, found 72 percent of respondents didn’t believe people convicted of cannabis-related crimes in non-legal states should face any jail time. Further, 57 percent said they believed that “legalizing marijuana makes societies better,” while 43 percent disagreed.

Just 14 percent of respondents in the poll supported prohibition.

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A grey-scale photo of a walkway in Arizona State University.

Arizona State Student Seeks to Overturn MMJ Possession Conviction for Second Time

8/09/2017

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The attorney for an Arizona registered medical cannabis patient charged with possession after officers discovered less than a half gram in his Arizona State University dorm room is urging the state Supreme Court to void the conviction, arguing that lawmakers have no legal grounds to outlaw legal cannabis possession on college campuses, the Arizona Daily Sun reports.

ASU campus police arrested Andre Maestas in 2014 for obstructing traffic after he was found sitting in an intersection. During a search of his wallet, police found his medical cannabis card and Maestas admitted to having a small amount of cannabis in his dorm room. The police search yielded 0.4 grams – far less than the 2.5 ounces medical cannabis cardholders are allowed by law to possess; however in 2012 lawmakers passed legislation banning patients from possessing cannabis on college campuses.

In his filing to the Arizona Supreme Court, Thomas Dean, Maestas’ attorney, argued that the Voter Protection Act outlined in the state constitution prevents lawmakers from repealing or significantly altering voter-approved referendums. He admits that there is an exception for changes that “further the purpose” of the law, but a plain reading of the medical cannabis regime approved by voters shows that the 2012 legislative action does not fit that exception.

Dean, quoting the 2010 state law, said “The purpose of this act is to protect patients with debilitating medical conditions, as well as their physicians and providers, from arrest and prosecution, criminal and other penalties,” adding that the ban on medical cannabis possession on college campuses “obviously” does not further the voters’ intent.

State Attorney General Mark Brnovich contends that the state had to recriminalize medical cannabis use on college campuses because allowing its use would put the universities and colleges at-risk to lose federal funding because cannabis remains a Schedule I substance under the Controlled Substances Act.

In the report, Dean rebuked the attorney general’s claim, pointing out that federal law “simply requires that the school impose an internal disciplinary action against students or employees that discourages them from engaging in conduct that would violate the federal Controlled Substances Act” and that his client had already been punished by the school which made the criminal charges “completely unnecessary.”

Previously, Maricopa County Superior Court vacated the conviction; however Brnovich moved for a review by the Supreme Court.

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National Conference of State Legislatures Call for Cannabis’ Removal from CSA

8/08/2017

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The National Conference of State Legislatures, a bipartisan non-government organization, has passed a resolution calling for the removal of cannabis from the Controlled Substances Act, “thus enabling financial institutions the ability to provide banking services to cannabis related businesses.”

“The National Conference of State Legislatures acknowledges that each of its members will have differing and sometimes conflicting views of cannabis and how to regulate it, but in allowing each state to craft its own regulations we may increase transparency, public safety, and economic development where it is wanted,” the resolution states.

The NCSL members cite a variety of reasons for their conclusions, including the enactment of medical cannabis laws in 29 states plus U.S. territories Guam and Puerto Rico, and adult-use regimes in eight others plus Washington, D.C. Further, the organization argues that the cash-only nature of the industry “attracts criminal activity and creates substantial public safety risks; and … reduces transparency in accounting and makes it difficult for the state to implement an effective regulatory regime that ensures compliance.”

Additionally, the authors point out that forcing cannabis business to pay their taxes in cash is a burden to both businesses and the state, the latter of which must “develop new infrastructure to handle the influx of cash.”

“States have been forced to take expensive security measures to mitigate public safety risks to taxpayers utilizing the system, state employees and the public at large; and … states do not have any control over the enforcement of federal laws and cannot enact legislation that provides banks and credit unions with protections necessary to overcome federal law,” the resolution says.

None of the NCSL executive committee officers come from a state with an adult-use program and just two of the seven come from states with a comprehensive medical cannabis regime.

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Massachusetts Gov. Makes Cannabis Advisory Board Appointments

8/08/2017

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Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker has appointed five members to the state’s Cannabis Advisory Board, including Walpole Police Chief John Carmichael Jr. who in 2012 quipped that it would be “illogical” to believe that medical cannabis dispensaries “will not be fronts for illegal distribution and money-laundering,” the Boston Globe reports. Carmichael also campaigned against the adult-use legalization measure in uniform and said he was “heartbroken” when the initiative passed.

However, in his first interview following the appointment, Carmichael struck a conciliatory tone, saying he would “reserve” his personal opinions and “focus on providing thoughtful, sound recommendations.”

“I’ll try to limit my role to what I know the most about, which is the public safety side of things,” he said in the report. “There’s a lot we can do to make sure we’re preventing youth access and diversion.”

Carmichael has experience providing public safety guidance on cannabis regulations. He previously served as the police community liaison to the medical cannabis program during its implementation.

Baker also chose Kim Napoli, a labor and employment attorney who co-founded the Hempest, to represent minority businesses; Mary Ann Pesce, a former Gillette and Procter & Gamble executive who serves on the boards of directors for several Boston-area companies, to represent employers; Lydia Sisson, co-founder of urban food production and sustainability initiative Mill City Grows, to represent the agricultural community; and Henry M. Thomas III, Urban League of Springfield leader, to represent the interests of low-income communities.

Another 10 members of the 25-member commission were appointed by state Attorney General Maura Healey and Treasurer Deborah Goldberg. The remaining 10 members come from various interest groups, such as medical cannabis patients, named in the voter-approved law. Next, the advisory board will appoint a five-member Cannabis Control Commission that will regulate the industry.

Adult-use sales are expected to begin in Massachusetts July 1, 2018.

End

Cards Against Humanity Donates $70K to Illinois Legalization Efforts

8/08/2017

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Through sales of its “Weed Pack” deck expansion, Cards Against Humanity donated $70,000 to the Marijuana Policy Project to help legalize cannabis for adult use in Illinois, Inc. reports. The “Weed Pack” sold for $5 each.

“For us, this is a common-sense issue of racial justice, health justice and criminal justice,” said Max Temkin, co-creator of the game which is headquartered in Chicago, in the report. “State and national politics are incredibly screwed up right now, but it gives us hope to think that we can make progress on these kind of common-sense issues that everyone supports.”

In April, Illinois advocates formed the Coalition for a Safer Illinois, which includes the support of the MPP, in an effort to bolster support for legalization in the state. The American Civil Liberties Union of Illinois, the Clergy for a New Drug Policy, Doctors for Cannabis Regulation, Law Enforcement Action Partnership, and the Illinois chapter of NORML are among the coalition’s member organizations.

In February, state Rep. Kelly Cassidy filed HB.2353, while state Sen. Heather Steans introduced SB.316, which, if approved, would set up a taxed-and-regulated cannabis industry in the state. According to a report by the Illinois Sentencing Policy Advisory Council, the state could reap between $170 million and $305 million over three years by legalizing cannabis use for adults. Neither the House nor Senate has yet voted on either measure.

End

The Virginia state flag flying before a clear, blue sky.

Virginia Lt. Gov. Calls for Cannabis Law Reforms

8/08/2017

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In a letter to the Virginia State Crime Commission, which is studying the topic of decriminalizing simple cannabis possession in the state, Lt. Gov. Ralph Northam, a Democrat, called the state’s cannabis sentencing and enforcement laws “costly and disproportionately harmful to communities of color,” WRIC reports.

In his letter, Northam pointed out that Virginia spends $67 million annually on cannabis enforcement which could be better used to create 13,000 pre-k openings, and that African Americans are about three times more likely to be arrested for simple possession, which could lead to jail and “begin a dangerous cycle of recidivism.”

The letter was sent following a call for public comments on the topic by the commission, which is open until Aug. 25.

A June poll conducted by the Virginia Commonwealth University’s L. Douglas Wilder School of Government and Public Affairs Center for Public Policy found 62 percent of Virginians “strongly” or “somewhat” agreed that adult cannabis use should be legalized, while 80 percent favored reducing simple possession penalties from a misdemeanor to a $100 fine.

In March, Gov. Terry McAuliffe signed cannabis reform legislation allowing pharmacies to produce and sell cannabis oil extracts for epilepsy treatments and eliminating the state statute permitting the suspension of driver’s licenses of adults convicted of cannabis possession.

The commission will present its findings on Oct. 5.

End

Alex Hoggan: Staying the Course Amid Changing Regulations

8/07/2017

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Alex Hoggan is the founder of ChemHistory, a cannabis testing lab based outside of Portland, Oregon.

In this episode of the Ganjaprenuer.com podcast, Alex joins our host TG Branfalt to discuss the early days of Oregon’s cannabis testing landscape, the intricacies of pesticide testing under Oregon’s  strict testing rules, the regulatory switch last October that nearly drove the state’s marijuana industry to a grinding halt, and other issues related to entrepreneurship and running a successful and respectable laboratory.

Listen to the interview via the media player below, or keep scrolling down for a full transcript of this Ganjapreneur.com podcast episode.

Listen to the podcast:

Read the transcript:

TG Branfalt: Hey there, I’m your host TG Branfalt and you are listening to 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 Alex Hoggan, he is the founder of ChemHistory, a testing lab out in Oregon, how you doin’ today Alex?

Alex Hoggan: I’m doing well, thanks for having me.

TG Branfalt: Absolutely, I’m thrilled to have you on the show today, discuss something that … I’ve had a couple of interviews here in Michigan with some testing guys, so I got the base, but let’s kick this off with you. What’s your background? How’d you get started in this space?

Alex Hoggan: Well I’m basically an entrepreneur, I had a son that is a scientist, he was working in a lab, then he got a job actually working for Agilent Technologies, who provide equipment to labs, so they sell the mass spectrometers and a little over 3 years ago, my son had been talking about wanting to open a lab and he was looking for different ways and opportunities for that to happen and we had heard about that there was a rule change or actually a law that had passed in Oregon for testing for cannabis and so we saw the opportunity and we’d be on the ground floor with virtually no competition at that time, maybe one or two other labs that had been in the market for maybe just a year or so and we thought “Hey, let’s go for it.”

And that’s basically what we did. That was about … So we are three years in business as of next month, so it’s been a challenge but it’s starting to finally take hold, which is what we’ve been hoping for.

TG Branfalt: Tell me a little bit more about what you guys do. What do you test? What do you test for over there at Chem History?

Alex Hoggan: Okay, so in Oregon, Oregon has the most comprehensive testing regulations on cannabis, I think, pretty much anywhere in the country, if not the world. We basically test for a full panel of pesticides, about 60 of the most commonly used pesticides on cannabis. We obviously test for potency and we test for residual solvents and terpenes. We do test for all the, when we say potency, all the different cannabinoids, such as THCA, CBDA, CBGA, THCV, CBDV, there’s a whole bunch of different cannabinoids that we test for, but mainly the ones for regulation are THCA, which converts to delta nine. We test for delta nine and THCA and then CBDA or CBD, which are the activated components of … Once you basically burn the plant or the compound, it turns into delta nine, or the activated part of the product.

TG Branfalt: So, in your experience thus far in the years that you’ve been in business, have you been asked more often to test for terpenes? That’s becoming kind of a hot thing that consumers want, so have you noticed a more demand for that sort of testing?

Alex Hoggan: Yeah, it’s been off and on but definitely, there is a huge movement towards terpenes because the terpene profile is basically the aroma of the plant and that is really the signature of what makes something a skunk verses a sativa or indica or a hybrid. It basically is more of a signature something than you would find in just testing for potency. You don’t really know. There’s only other ways is they have some kits I think that have been developed for figuring out the DNA of the plant, that sort of thing, but ultimately, what makes … There’s really no way of saying “This is a sativa or an indica.” Other than you committing time to a terpene profile. The terpenes — the more and more people find out about it, the more popular they become because they do have medicinal values to ’em and it’s really interesting to see … I’m amazed every day at all the different strains that come into the lab of the different smells. It’s crazy how amazing some of ’em smell and how stinky some of ’em smell too.

TG Branfalt: I do want to back up a little bit. You said that your son’s background is … He’s a scientist and so, what was the process of setting up a lab when you personally didn’t have that background yourself, that knowledge?

Alex Hoggan: It was a learning curve. Like I said, I’m an entrepreneur, I’ve come from owning my own business in the past, so it wasn’t like I just jumped into running my own business from nowhere. I’ve had multiple businesses in the last 30 years and so, you go through your due diligence, you write your business plan, you write down your … Your pro-forward all the costs that you’re gonna have to spend, all the equipment, all of this, all of that, and then you decide based on that business plan if it’s viable for you to jump in and at that time, it looked really good but what we found when we first jumped into the market was when you jump into an unregulated market … So there was a law that was passed, but there was no infrastructure from the government to enforce the law and/or to regulate that law.

What you ended up with is you have a whole bunch of people that jumped in at the same time, which is what happened here in Oregon and when we bought our equipment, we bought it based on that law, which says you have to test pesticides at 100 parts per billion, right? You had to go out and buy what they call a triple quad. Most labs that do basic pesticide testing, they have a single quad. In order to get down to that level of detection, you have to have a triple quad for the Oregon law and we were only one of two labs that actually even had that equipment and so what ended up happening was these other labs jumped into the market and they didn’t even have the equipment to even test for pesticides but yet, they were passing everyone when they would come to their lab for a pesticide test, so anyway, it was crazy and it was a really hard time for us because we would see pesticides all the time and we would fail people and they would not be our customer anymore. So they would go somewhere else where they get a pass, right?

We had to adjust to how the market was playing at that time and it was pretty brutal first couple years because when you had labs that weren’t regulated, that weren’t credited, they could literally just rubber stamp stuff, and you hear those stories, I really think a lot of those stories are true. I know they’re true, being here in Oregon for those first couple years, it was kinda brutal with … How can you compete against labs that basically can just shortcut everything and put out a really super cheap test and just kill the guys that are trying to do it right. Luckily voters in Oregon voted the rec law in and then the regulation was funded by the law and so it was about a year of planning through different committees within the government to come up with the laws and they finally kicked in last October, so we became accredited by the state of Oregon through, they call, the T9 standards or they call the Oregon Lab Accreditation Program.

It’s a really tough accreditation to get. It’s even more tough than you would get from a lot of labs that just have what they call the ISO certification, which is like an international certification for labs but you really have to run a tight ship. Anyways, to make a long story short, we were stuck in this market that didn’t appreciate what we were offering at that time because everyone wanted to just basically get the highest number on their test and they wanted to get a pass on their pesticides, so whoever could do that the best basically was winning, but unfortunately, a lot of those dudes didn’t even have the equipment to do it, right?

Now that things have shifted gears, only accredited labs can actually test for the cannabis industry here and we can charge basically a fair price and we can actually make money now where before we, you know, the first two years of business, we lost a lot of money and it really sucked. We thought we were gonna have to go under but luckily we weathered the storm and here we are.

TG Branfalt: With what you initially purchased to set up the lab, was that enough to meet the eventual demand or have you had to expand since you opened your doors?

Alex Hoggan: Yeah, so the first two years, the first year, it just ended up being me and my chemists and we had an assistant and then we … That was pretty much it. There was about just three of us. Three or four of us that just tried to get out there and make it happen and it was tough, because again, you’re competing against a market that didn’t want to pay for a real test and wasn’t even investing in the infrastructure at all. Yeah, we set up our lab … Our original investment was about $250,000, and again, we bought the equipment that was needed to actually support that particular law that had passed, but unfortunately again, it didn’t go down that way but we have just a standard business and to grow the business, three to four times that original budget, and we’re now finally paying back the original moneys that we borrowed basically to get the lab open.

Not all the money is borrowed, and I wouldn’t suggest people borrowing money to open a business in general, ’cause that’s tough to have that hanging on your back and you have … It takes a couple years to get your feet on the ground and get the business rolling, and a lot of times if you strap yourself upfront with the debt, it’s gonna hurt you, so we were lucky enough that we had a wise enough investor that allowed us to stay in the game without having to try and pay that money back right up front.

TG Branfalt: I want to talk to you a bit more about the current industry and testing issues out in Oregon, but before we do that, we’re gonna take our first break, this is Ganjapreneur.com podcast, I’m TG Branfalt.

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TG Branfalt: Welcome back to the Ganjapreneur.com podcast, I’m your host TG Branfalt here with Alex Hoggan, founder of ChemHistory. Before the break we were talking about some of the struggles that you had getting our business off the ground and congratulations that you didn’t go under, especially how important testing has become in the space. I want to talk to you a bit about the regulations that went into effect earlier this year. By all accounts, those regulations ended up creating product shortages because, as you said, there weren’t enough tests, there weren’t enough testing facilities, so what was your experience like during that period when you were going through the initial steps when they rolled out the new rules?

Alex Hoggan: Yeah, so ultimately what happened, which was part of the reason why it created the shortages was … So the state of Oregon decided they were gonna allow the Oregon Lab Accreditation … Or the entity that the state uses for all the labs, the environmental labs here in Oregon, to be accredited through, they were gonna have them do the cannabis part. The only problem was is that again, they didn’t fund that program to really be successful, so they didn’t increase the employee loads or anything, so when we were trying to get accredited by the state of Oregon, it was really a, I don’t know how else to say it, it was a shit show because their people that they had working for them were working so hard and so much overtime and the state wouldn’t pay their overtime so when we were supposed to get accredited, one of the lead people called and said “Well, I’m not working today because I’m not getting paid overtime.” And we’re like “Really? Because we’re losing like thousands of dollars every freaking day and the whole industry’s going to crap because you guys can’t get over here and get us audited and get us going.” Right?

It was really really stressful. Actually as of right now, there is a bill that I think just passed yesterday that’s gonna fund the Oregon Lab Accreditation Program so that there can be more oversight for laboratories here in Oregon for cannabis and that’s really what needs to happen on a national level is, if the states are gonna jump in, they really need to have lab oversight because there is a lot of pressure that’s put on the labs, especially in the cannabis industry because everything is driven by that number, right? Everyone wants the highest number they can possibly get, right? 30%, and they get 12%, they can’t sell their stuff very easily, so everyone is just totally driven to make their stuff, their cannabis 20% or more, so the stuff, I’ve worked with so many growers. And they grow all these different prototypes and if they don’t test over 20%, they just basically get rid of them, right?

It’s really driven by that, which is unfortunate because there’s a lot of strains that test under 20% that are really nice strains and they have really nice terpene profiles and people that smoke ’em, they love em, but when you’re a dispensary and someone walks in the door, they’re looking for the highest number, right? It’s crazy that way. There’s been talk about ways of maybe curving that number thing where there would be like a low, medium and high kinda thing, it wouldn’t be tied to like 21.2, you know. That is the one thing around the cannabis industry that’s a little stressful is people always think their stuff is higher than it is. “There’s no way it could be 14%.”

Exactly, and there is variances in the labs, in the sense of we’re still not totally standardized, meaning yes we do take a proficiency test twice a year and we have to fall within 20% of what that known value is of the people who provide the proficiency test but ultimately we’re a lot at about 20% variance, so if you had a 20% flower, it could easily be 24% or 16% depending on how well or how not well someone extracted and put it on their instrument and then came up with that number for you. There is that. When it comes to pesticides, that’s a whole nother ball game. Pre-October, those first two years; in order to cheat in the marketplace, we offered an extended pesticide product for all of our growers, there was maybe one or two growers that really felt like it was important, and they did it, right? They went went out, they upgraded, paid the extra money, had the profile but in order to compete in that market that I was telling you about with all those other labs, we had to cut our pesticide list down to almost nothing.

We were only really testing for maybe 10 pesticides because, again, if someone fails, they’re just gonna run over to the other place and get a pass and there were … Now, that’s all stopped. In this market, with the regulated market, everything has to be recorded through metrics, and if you get a fail, you’re done. You basically have to … There is gonna be some chances for people to remediate your products, but ultimately you have to destroy it if it can’t be remediated. It is a game changer and it has worked, so where we would see tons of pesticides pre-October, now the fail rate for flowers is probably about 10%, and then on concentrates, it’s about 26%, where pre-October, if you failed your pesticide test, you would go run and make it into oil, right? And then you’d try a lab that would pass that for you and you get rid of your stuff, but now you can’t do that. You really have to take your grow seriously and you really have to not use those pesticides that are on the list or you’re gonna fail and it’s not gonna feel good and you’ll lose a bunch of money.

TG Branfalt: Does Oregon require the testing of heavy metals?

Alex Hoggan: No, no they don’t.

TG Branfalt: Do you think that’s a problem?

Alex Hoggan: I think it’d be … I don’t see it as a problem but if you’re growing somewhere where there’s a lot of heavy metals in the soil, I guess you might want to do that but I don’t see … A lot of these guys are buying super duper soil and all that kind of stuff. I really don’t see that as a problem.

TG Branfalt: You don’t see a real risk associated with that is what you’re saying?

Alex Hoggan: I don’t see it but, again, it could be out there in different areas of the country where if you’re growing outdoor and you’ve got high levels of arsenic or some other heavy metal in your soil, it could potentially be a problem but generally, I think most people are doing indoor grows and they’re bringing their soil in and they’re bringing their organic stuff, their organic soils and stuff, I don’t see it as a problem.

TG Branfalt: When I toured a lab here in Michigan, one of the things that got the guys there really excited was they had found this strain that had just incredible high levels of CBG, that they had never seen before and so what’s kinda the strangest profile that you’ve seen? Have you seen anything that’s sort of you looked at the number and you’re like “Wow, that’s really different”?

Alex Hoggan: Well, high levels of CBG — the CBG is a precursor for THC, so it could be they harvested the plant too early, and that’s why they’re seeing high levels of CBG, but there are certain strains, obviously there’s the high CBD strains, there are some strains that have high levels of THCV, and they’re still a lot to be learned about THCV. It’s another part of the compound that as more research is done, has some really good medicinal values, there’s the CBDV, which currently has some really good medicinal values as well.

We do see some strains have high levels of that, but generally, there’s quite a few CBD strains that are really good that are producing high levels of CBD like critical mass and there’s a bunch of them out there but what’s happening in Oregon now is they’re allowing the hemp farmers to get rolling so they have a … There’s quite a few strains of hemp that have high levels of CBD and that, I think is gonna be a game changer as well because these guys can grow crap loads of hemp, produce lots of CBD products.

TG Branfalt: And is that gonna have to go through the same testing process?

Alex Hoggan: Yeah, so here in Oregon they did do that, just recently they’re making it so that they have testing regulations that are gonna be covered by the cannabis regulations so it’s a little bit tough because again, the pesticide testing is tough because you can’t really use pesticides at all and 90% of the market when you go to the grocery store has pesticides on it, right? But in cannabis in Oregon, you can’t have it on there, otherwise you’re gonna fail.

TG Branfalt: Are you guys preparing yourself for now an influx of another product that you’re gonna have to test?

Alex Hoggan: Yes. Yup, we are. In fact, we’re already testing for … There’s quite a few people that are out there that are doing this so we’re already seeing a quite a bit starting to test, so that’s cool.

TG Branfalt: I want to talk to you a bit more about public policy and testing, but before we do that, take a short break, this is Ganjapreneur.com podcast, I’m TG Branfalt.

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TG Branfalt: Welcome back to the Ganjapreneur.com podcast, I’m your host TG Branfalt here with Alex Hoggan, founder of ChemHistory out in Oregon. I wanted to ask you. You touched on this a little bit earlier. What, in your opinion, should public policy include in newly legal states with regard to testing? We’ve got Mass coming online, Maine coming online, Nevada coming online. What would you advocate in those states with regard to testing, with your experience having gone through Oregon’s shift and that sort of thing?

Alex Hoggan: Yeah, I would definitely look at your most commonly used pesticides on cannabis and I would definitely include those as part of the regimen for testing because when you figure there is … The wholesale value of most strains are around $2000 a pound and retail is $4000 a pound. If you find yourself in trouble when you’re growing and you find all of a sudden you got spiders all over your plants or you got powdery mildew all over, you’re looking really fast and hard for something to use and a lot of times people are just tempted to do it and unfortunately some of that stuff is not so good for consumers.

Example is Myclobutanil, which is Eagle 20. It works really good, you just dip your clone roots in there and you’re not gonna have any fungus problems, you’re not gonna really have any powdery mildew problems but that is one of the ones that when you smoke it, it does turn into a poison and I think it sits really super similar to cyanide, so you really don’t want to be smoking that stuff and that one particular pesticide, we see all the time and it was really super popular before pre-October. People use pesticides and they kill the neurological of the pest. They go after the neurological brain or whatever of the pest, right? You gotta figure if you’re smoking that, it can’t be good, right?

TG Branfalt: Is there anything else that you see a lot of that maybe aren’t included in … Oregon’s really strict, right? Would you suggest that other states follow Oregon’s example or is it too strict?

Alex Hoggan: Well, I definitely think there could be some happy mediums. There are some considered organic type pesticides that could be used that can’t be used. I do feel like there should be some give and take there, meaning there should be the ability for these growers to use some of these pesticides that are considered organic/not harmful. Some of ’em are just basically like bacteria that just basically work on different things on the plant so that it keeps the plant stronger and healthier, but they can’t use ’em so I will applaud Oregon growers because they’ve innovated and they figured it out, right? A lot of these oil companies, they’re doing extractions now or are testing clean oil and that’s not an easy thing to do. They were saying in California they did some samples off the shelves down there they had ’em tested and like 80% of ’em would fail on the Oregon regulation.

It’s easy to grow with pesticides, right? It makes your job way easier. It really takes a seasoned person who knows what they’re doing in order to really get that super duper bud that doesn’t have to have pesticides on it. I think they just need to get the right minds together so that there can be allowed some of these ones that are considered safe and natural so to speak. Pretty much what Oregon growers are using now are good pests, meaning good bugs, and they’re using cinnamon and garlic and different teas that people brew that can, you can spray it on a plant. That kinda thing. There is a lot of nutritional stuff that they feed the plants that help them stay strong. That’s a whole other topic but we see some crazy good bud come through here that you’re just like “How did they grow that?”

TG Branfalt: Do you think that there’s a way that legal states, maybe industry associations, things like that, do you think that there’s a way that they could create a national standard for testing and would you support that sort of action?

Alex Hoggan: Yeah, I think that’s actually happening right now, and I forgot the name of the organization who’s doing that but yeah, I think that’s actually happening right now. What would be nice is, for instance, right now we have to use these standards that we buy from basically two different companies and the standards are basically the known amount of THC or CBD, or whatever we’re testing for, but they charge us like … I’m talking about racket, it comes in a one mil vile, which one mil is like nothing, right?

TG Branfalt: Yeah.

Alex Hoggan: That’s 160 bucks and 40% of it is basically methanol, right? It’s like “Are you kidding me?” That’s like $60,000 a gallon. We have to use those every day in order to do the testing. Basically if the government, the federal government would declassify it as this illegal thing, then we could get a more potent/standard that we could use to be more accurate in our testing, and it would be so much cheaper because right now in order for us to get anything better we would have to have a license from the state for controlled substances, so we’d have to go out and get all this extra stuff and it would be crazy and you’d have to go through all this extra thing, and no one’s doing that because it’s just ridiculous. If they could get that part figured out, that would be very helpful for the laboratories.

TG Branfalt: Do you have any insight as to the program that’s being worked on presently?

Alex Hoggan: Yeah, it’s a national organization. I’ll have to find who they are. I can’t remember. I can find out though and let you know.

TG Branfalt: Do you know what sort of things are included in that at all?

Alex Hoggan: I think it’s gonna be for potency testing. I’m not so sure about pesticide but potency is the big one, so there’s gonna be standard methodologies that would come about but it is … Most labs, for potency anyway, I know here in Oregon are doing pretty close to the same thing. For pesticides, I don’t really know if everyone’s doing exactly the same thing. I would probably guess no, because we do still see variances between labs on pesticides we’ll do retests for certain labs and they’ll do retests for us. We definitely do come up with different things …

TG Branfalt: Is that a way to keep each other honest?

Alex Hoggan: Yeah. We do it because the growers are allowed. If they get failed, they’re allowed to take it to another lab, but if they get failed twice, they’re done. If they do get a fail, they have to have actually two other labs pass them in order to get a pass.

TG Branfalt: Oh, wow. Well, what advice do you have for cultivators, dispensaries and manufacturers when they are submitting products for testing?

Alex Hoggan: Well, one of the things that we came up with just recently because there was so much pushback from the industry, come October 1, that they were basically gonna gut the Oregon regulations, right? But there has been a lot of public outcry the last two months because they were gonna gut those rules, so what we did in anticipation of that is we created a seal for our product called ChemCheck Approved. It’s a consumers choice seal and we are prepared to offer that in case they gut the law.

We’ve already talked to most of the people we work with now and the reality is consumers want pesticide testing. We’re gonna sell people … In fact, the laws are going to come down tomorrow, so we’re really anxious about tomorrow about what’s gonna happen ’cause they had kept it really tight knit, which is really kind a weird that they would do that when they’re talking about overhauling the whole thing and maybe you could put labs out of business, we don’t really know for sure until tomorrow but that’s one of the things we’ve been kinda stressed out about, that’s why we came up with this program called ChemCheck Approved so we are offering other labs in other states, we can teach them how ’cause it’s not … cannabis is really tough to test pesticides for. It’s such a dirty — I don’t want to say dirty, but it’s such a complex matrix because it’s so sticky that it really messes with the equipment and the instruments and it’s not easy.

That’s why in Oregon, there’s like 20 labs for cannabis but only 6 of us right now are doing pesticide testing because it’s difficult. We spend a lot of money with consultants that do pesticide testing to come help us develop our methods and, like I said, it tweaks the instruments so we’re constantly having to maintain and do maintenance on our instruments because of how dirty the cannabis matrix is, especially for concentrates ’cause you gotta figure concentrates are 10 times more concentrated than flower and it’s that much stickier. It’s so sticky it’s ridiculous. Putting that on your instruments is terrible.

TG Branfalt: This ChemCheck Approved program, can you tell me more about what that is?

Alex Hoggan: Yeah, what we’re gonna do in a lot of the trade magazines like the consumers would find at a dispensary, we will have basically an ad talking about the seal, that they should look for that seal on their product because the bottom line is if you don’t have that seal on your product, there is a good chance you’re smoking stuff that has pesticides on it. If I was a dispensary owner/grower and I was doing it right, I would want that seal to set myself apart from the guys that aren’t doing it right, because especially in these new markets, there’s gonna be a ton of dudes because it just is what it is. They’re gonna jump in, they don’t know what they’re doing, they go somewhere they’re told, that this works, but they’re not told that it has this in it and then they use it, it works good but if someone tested for it, it’d probably have high levels of pesticides in it and then the consumer basically loses, right? And they don’t even know it.

That’s why the ChemCheck Approved would be such a good thing is that if consumers, all they have to do is look for that seal and they have the piece of mind knowing that it’s been tested. Now some of the things that we’ve run into related to that is there’s a trust factor, right? Once you leave that grow site, even now, there’s nothing to say they couldn’t bait and switch the whole product. What we’ve developed is a random shelf test, so we’ll go back in after the fact once or twice a year and buy their product right off the shelf and then test it just to keep people honest.

TG Branfalt: That’s a really really really smart idea.

Alex Hoggan: Yeah. Yup. And it’s what consumers want.

TG Branfalt: Absolutely it is. Finally, can you tell me … What would you tell entrepreneurs interested in getting into the testing side of things in the cannabis industry?

Alex Hoggan: It’s really important to have good employees. That is wow. You really need people that know … Especially the first two years, you need people that are gonna be team players and you need people who are committed that will do it. Like I said, that’s probably your number one deal, right? I don’t know, if I was gonna do it over again, it’s tough because I didn’t have a science background, my son had a science background, so I did have that, but you really gotta get in there and find out what’s going on because you don’t want to be in the dark and you don’t want to have people holding a gun to your head because they know more than you do, right? You just gotta be really careful and really knowing this is what you really want to do and you gotta find the right people ’cause if you don’t have the right people, you have nothing.

TG Branfalt: I really want to thank you for taking time out to join us on this podcast. Really really enlightening stuff and I’m really hoping that the consumer drive for clean product is not curtailed by the legislature with this upcoming vote.

Alex Hoggan: Yeah, me too. We’re praying today.

TG Branfalt: Well thanks again for joining us on the show.

Alex Hoggan: Okay, yeah, well thanks for having me. Good talking with you.

TG Branfalt: You can find more episodes of the Ganjapreneur.com podcast in the podcast section of Ganjapreneur.com and in the apple iTunes store. On the Ganjapreneur.com website, you will 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 Jeremy Sebastiano, I’ve been your host TG Branfalt.

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