A cannabis plant tilted sideways from the weight of its heavy cola, pictured inside of a licensed cultivation center in Washington.

High-Powered Lobbying Firms Hired for Cannabis Policy Advocacy in D.C.

The New Federalism Fund, a Denver-based nonprofit dedicated to state’s rights issues, has hired consulting firm Trimpa Group to lobby Congress on issues related to the legal cannabis industry, including banking, taxes, appropriations, and law enforcement issues, according to a report from O’Dwyer’s.

Members of the NFF include Scotts Miracle-Gro Company, Arizona-based medical cannabis provider Tryke Companies, Seattle-based cannabis private equity firm Privateer Holdings, Colorado-based dispensaries Medicine Man and LivWell Enlightened Health, and cannabis product manufacturers Native Roots and Dixie Elixirs & Edibles.

Trimpa Group was founded by Ted Trimpa, a Democratic strategist who The Atlantic called “Colorado’s answer to Karl Rove.” Trimpa, who will personally oversee the NFF account, has been credited as a key architect of the Democratic takeover of Colorado’s legislature in 2004 and 2006.

Earlier this year the NFF also retained lobbying firm Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck for cannabis advocacy on Capitol Hill. The NFF’s spending on lobbyists comes as Congress prepares to decide the fate of the Rohrabacher-Blumenauer (formally Rohrabacher-Farr) amendment in the Fiscal Year 2018 Appropriations Bill. The amendment prohibits the Department of Justice from using federal funds to crack down on state-approved medical cannabis operations and is the only barrier between medical cannabis programs and Attorney General Jeff Sessions.

Last month, Sessions sent a letter to legislative leaders asking them to oppose the amendment and allow the Justice Department to enforce federal drug laws in legal states.

End


The back of a billboard found on the side of a road.

Weedmaps Billboard Removed in South Boston

A pro-cannabis billboard advertisement from Weedmaps has been removed in South Boston following complaints about its content and its location near schools and places of worship, according to a Boston Globe report. The ad, which read “States that legalized marijuana had 25% fewer opioid-related deaths,” was placed in a neighborhood hit hard by opioid abuse.

Sheila Greene, one of the residents who contacted Clear Channel over the billboard, said the ad’s placement violated the company’s own “exclusionary zone” policy. According to Clear Channel’s website, “advertisements of all products illegal for sale to minors that are intended to be read from places of worship, primary and secondary schools or playgrounds” are barred from those zones.

“The ad was placed in error at a location not meant for the content displayed,” said Clear Channel spokesperson Jason King in the report.

Similar billboards are reportedly displayed in Lynn and Quincy – which both have high opioid-related death rates. Lynn had 47 deaths in 2016, up two from the previous year, while Quincy reported 42 deaths in 2016, two fewer than 2015.

Greene called those billboard placements “insensitive.”

“I’d like to say moronic, but advertisers are smart; they know exactly who they’re marketing their products to,” she said.

Chris Beals, president of Weedmaps, denied the allegation that the ads are targeting certain neighborhoods or demographics.

“We basically take billboards on a space-available basis,” he said. “We have little to no say in terms of the [location of the] billboards,” adding that the ads are designed to “promote dialogue.”

“We want to be sensitive about the way we present those facts. . . . But I think it’s also important to talk about the benefits and research coming out of marijuana,” Beals said. “There should be an open discussion. We’re not putting up giant pot leaves or photos of people consuming marijuana.”

Billboards have emerged as one of the few advertising vehicles available to cannabis companies. Last week, six licensed cannabis companies had their company pages removed by Facebook; while lawmakers in Michigan are mulling a ban on billboard advertisements for the cannabis industry. A bill introduced last month in California seeks to outlaw cannabis companies from advertising on clothing, websites, and traditional publications.

End


Stephen Gold & Andy Yashar: Pioneers in Cannabis Tech

Stephen Gold and Andy Yashar are co-founders of The Daily Leaf, a technology company that has partnered with dispensaries to find and list the best cannabis deals throughout Oregon cities — with plans to expand to Seattle, Las Vegas, and beyond.

In this episode of the Ganjapreneur.com podcast, Stephen and Andy join host TG Branfalt to talk about the technology aspect of the cannabis space, launching a tech startup on a minimal budget, the importance of creating and maintaining a company image, and how — by focusing the efforts of a small, dedicated team — they have been able to create a truly effective service that benefits cannabis companies and consumers around their state.

Listen to the interview through the player below, or scroll down to read a full transcript of this week’s 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 and normalize cannabis through the stories of Ganjapreneurs, activists and industry stakeholders. Today I’m joined by Stephen Gold and Andy Yashar, founders of The Daily Leaf, winners of the Best Tech Product at the 2016 Dope Magazine Industry Awards. Welcome to the show guys, and congratulations on that.

Stephen Gold: Oh, thank you very much. An honor to be here, thanks for having us on. Steve Gold here. We actually won 2016 and 2017, Best Tech Product at the Dope Industry Awards. So here in Oregon we’re definitely making strides to become a buzz, to help people around town find information about what’s going on with deals, and all that other good stuff.

TG Branfalt: I didn’t know about the 2017, so double congratulations guys, that’s really, really good stuff, that’s incredible. Before we get into the product though, I want to talk to you guys about what you did before you got into the cannabis industry, so if you guys each want to tell me what you did, and how’d you end up here?

Andy Yashar: This is Andy. I was in web development, and really helping dispensaries back in the day, before recreational was even a thought, of doing internet marketing and getting out there. Building a web presence, and showing people what they had in stock, where they could find them, and a little bit about the background of each person that worked there.

Stephen Gold: Myself, I came from the fashion industry. I was working in New York City, and I saw the opportunity for the recreational market to explode. I had always had ailments that lent itself to marijuana, even though I wasn’t a medical marijuana patient. So I came out to Oregon to get involved in the scene, to see what was going on, to get my medical marijuana card, and to really engulf myself in what was a blossoming industry, it still is. About two and a half years ago along the way, I met Andy and we joined forces to bring The Daily Leaf to life.

TG Branfalt: That’s one of the most interesting career jumps that I’ve gotten, is from the fashion industry to the cannabis industry. Could you briefly tell me some of the similarities between the two, how you brought over that experience to this space?

Stephen Gold: Sure, so I’d say the personnel, both industries are absolutely crazy. The people that work in it, we all work in the fashion industry, everything was last minute. I was getting called literally five minutes, the day before something had to go into production, “Steven, we need you.” Here in marijuana it’s kind of similar, we’re all working and we’re all trying to catch up, and work these extremely busy schedules, and work in different things. So in that essence things are the same with the personnel, it’s always crazy. And then also I’d say that one of the things that helped us in getting our name and getting ourself in the foot was my sense for design aesthetic.

Working in the fashion industry, we had attention to detail, wanting to make sure things were beautifully presented, because the end product was putting them on garments to go out for the world to buy, so you couldn’t have any mishaps. And just my eye for that has helped us craft this into something that Andy and I have been able to build into something much larger than we even thought when we first met each other.

TG Branfalt: So now, why don’t you tell me more about The Daily Leaf? If you look at the website, it is really nicely designed. It’s very use friendly, and so I’m assuming that that’s really an amalgamation of both of yours backgrounds kind of meeting and developing this, right?

Andy Yashar: Yeah, this is Andy, I would say that Steven and I work really good as a team. I tend to work heavily on the back end, making sure that people can find us when they search for certain products and certain search phrases on the internet, and Steven really brings a good eye for colors and the way that things should be presented, so it was a good marriage. Essentially, Steven really works on the front end, and I really work on the back end.

TG Branfalt: Describe to me what your service provides, and how dispensaries benefit from working with you guys.

Stephen Gold: Sure, so what we really set out to do when we first started The Daily Leaf, was to create a platform that helped dispensaries advertise deals, specifically one focal point in getting information out about what the best products are out there, and how cheap you can get them. Not necessarily saying that everything on The Daily Leaf has to be a $5 gram, and a $15-$20 eighth, but we found that people are always looking for deals. Furthermore, people are looking to find out what a product looks like before they get into the store. So by simply advertising deals and offering the consumer a way to see that flower before they actually drive 20, 30 minutes to a store, we’re finding that we’re able to drive people from all across town to a dispensary.

So while dispensaries will use other marketing/advertising platforms to help them advertise and have people find out where they are, and are location-based, The Daily Leaf is strictly product-driven. So it allows each dispenser an equal playing field to kind of say, “Hey, we have this product, are you interested in it? This is what it looks like,” and we’re able to drive people from … If you live 30 minutes away from a town, we’re getting people that are driving to those areas to go purchase it, simply based on the product and the image. Furthermore, we’ve really built a niche for ourselves through our newsletter. We’re currently reaching about 10,000 people in Oregon and surrounding areas that are looking for deals, emailed to them.

So what we do, a couple times a week we’ll curate all of our deals that come onto our platform, and we’ll push them out. People can literally go on there, the easiest way to sign up for that newsletter is to just go to our website, Dailyleafdeals.com, and then literally a popup will come up and say, “Hey, do you want to get all the latest deals?” You put your email in there, and you get the information. We found that that, directly to people, and essentially just in their inboxes is the best way for us to differentiate ourselves, and to get information out quickly and easily.

TG Branfalt: You started as this Groupon for cannabis, and the current product, now you guys provide information on, among other things, product launches, events. Can you guys explain to me when you decided to evolve your service to these other aspects?

Andy Yashar: This is Andy. I used to do huge promotional events for larger corporations. Maxim Magazine, Red Bull, Coors Light, back when I was just getting out of college, so I have a lot of event experience. When we actually launched The Daily Leaf, we threw a huge event, and we gave away probably five to six thousand dollars worth of marijuana products. Not stuff containing marijuana, but accessories, essentially, and we had a huge response from it. So fast-forward six months later, we did a huge 4/20 party where we had over 1000 people show up. It’s something that’s not foreign to us, to do events, but it’s a great way for us to showcase what The Daily Leaf is, and what we do on a day to day basis, and present that to the customers directly without … Essentially making them go to the internet and finding us, we can present that to them face to face, and show it to them live.

Stephen Gold: And then beyond that, as we were building our reputation in town, and as dispensaries were using our platform, consumers were using it, we found that there was a lot more people out there. A lot more brands, producers, processors, wholesalers that started reaching out to us and saying, “Hey, your platform’s amazing, how do we work with you, what do we do?” So we had to integrate it beyond on the web, where first we had just the deals, and just the abilities for the dispensaries to log in, and all of their specials. Then we decided, since we had a bunch of brands wanting to get involved, we developed these micro-sites through The Daily Leaf. We already had a name that was building a presence, and a lot of brands don’t necessarily have that footing online.

Us being a credible source allows these brands to get a foothold on the internet. So by allowing brands to 1) just advertise on The Daily Leaf, and to have their own dedicated page, it gives them an area to further push and get information online, and also gives our consumers a way to learn the back end of what these brands are all about. So just giving people content about, “If you’re a Co2 company, how do you make your oil?” There’s so many different techniques out there, and the elementary user who’s maybe just going to a dispensary the first time doesn’t even know the different methods. They don’t know the difference between shatter or oil, or BHO over Co2 vs. RSO, all these different terms that, being in the cannabis community you know, but the entry level user doesn’t. We wanted to give them a back end into, so if you like the brand, Truly Pure, a CO2 company here in Oregon, if you like these guys you can see a back end video about their process to making their oil, from the trim down to when it gets into a cartridge, and into your hand.

So we found that that information was 1) valuable for the brand, but also valuable for the consumer, to learn and educate themselves about what’s really going on.

TG Branfalt: How important has the multimedia been for your engagement? Not just with the YouTube videos, but also the images that are used to promote a product on your website?

Andy Yashar: This is Andy. I think that being as interactive as possible in this day and age is necessary for any business to survive. I think that a lot of people that are in the 24 to 35 year old rage spend a good time on their cell phones each and every day, so the more content that we can produce, is another customer that we have the potential to land as a lifelong user. So I think as much content as we can push out, the better it’s going to be for us.

Stephen Gold: I think it’s everything. Going back to my first point, we created The Daily Leaf because we wanted a place to find out what something looked like, seeing the picture before you even went to the store. So defining that, in order to drive a customer to go to a shop, you need to show them what they want to purchase before getting there. So that media is definitely very important, it drives our sales. That’s one of the things where we coach our dispensaries that we work with, because you can tell if a dispensary puts up a product on The Daily Leaf, then they don’t really take much time. Maybe they don’t take the best picture, you can’t really make out any detail, and it kind of looks sketchy. More than likely, the customer’s not going to want to click on that ad and see what that deal’s about.

But then if you have a dispensary that takes a few minutes to take a nice picture, curates a deal really nicely, you’ll see that that deal gets a lot more play. So yeah, it means everything to have great media.

TG Branfalt: So I want to talk to you guys a bit about the experience as a startup. 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 Stephen Gold and Andy Yashar, founders of The Daily Leaf. So tell me about the startup experience in the cannabis space, specifically for your tech product. How’d you find funding?

Andy Yashar: Well, I had some money saved up, so I spent … I wouldn’t say a large amount of money, because I already knew what I was doing, but I think that we spent, I’ll say a few thousand dollars getting business going, and really working, and trying to save as much money along the way as possible.

Stephen Gold: Yeah, we actually haven’t raised any money to date yet, we have done this all just through ourselves, and working lean. That’s been real important to us. Having a team that’s very dedicated, Andy and myself both wearing many hats, working many hours to just nail this down and build a product that actually has traction. Because for us it’s everything, so we don’t want to go and get funding too soon and give away too much booty, we want to make sure that we’re able to keep our … There are partners out there for us, and we’re starting to get down that line where we’re about to get funding to push ourselves into new markets.

But it’s been very hard the last year and a half, two years, working towards this so that we can be in this position where we now have a product that is somewhat successful here in Oregon, we have built traction, and we have been able to do this really on a shoestring budget, I’m telling you.

TG Branfalt: What about the initial reviews and reaction? You start with three grand, you have this idea … So what was the initial response, and what has your growth been like thus far?

Andy Yashar: Starting out was tough, because I say that the tech part of marijuana is getting flooded with more and more people trying to join every single day. So essentially what we wanted to do, is we set out to create something different. We wanted to be really separated from everybody else and really be for the people. I think that that’s one our biggest advantages, is that people really know that we’re looking out for them, as far as presenting the product, making sure that they know what they’re buying before they get to the store, finding them the best deals. Not only do we encourage dispensaries to post deals, but we’re going out, we’re negotiating deals for our users. We’re meeting with brands and meeting with dispensaries, and we’re actually negotiating deals between the two so we can actually have a really good value for people that visit our site.

Stephen Gold: To get started, what we really did to build our traction was just utilize our core skill set. So Andy with SEO and being able to get the website to be where we’re searchable online. Myself with building a buzz on social media, and getting people to think, again going back to the design aesthetic of the fashion industry. Our Instagram account and what we put out, it looked like we might have had a staff of ten to 15 people, when there was just two of us sitting in the office. So by portraying an image that we were bigger than what we are, allowed people to really gravitate and really get behind it. Furthermore, we had those events that we did that Andy touched on, where we brought the industry together, and we were able to piggyback off of other situations where we can build a crowd.

Our first event, we weren’t even launched yet, because we launched on Green Friday in 2015, November 25th, and this event was in October, and we had people lined up around the block to get in to get that free swag that Andy was talking about, where we were giving away five, $6000 worth of products. I’d say it was a combination of getting into the industry at the right time where there wasn’t anyone like us. There wasn’t anything going on, no-one was able to capture that buzz and be in town, and be able to show face, and really ignite the industry and get people behind them. It was just by stance of luck that we were able to do this at that current time. Because right now, if we’re looking at the industry right now and how it looks, it’s completely different. Those events that we had are somewhat in Oregon not maybe so legal anymore.

The rules had changed when the regulations came in, and a lot of things changed up. Because we entered the market before the recreational market hit yet, it was still just medical. So we got in right at the right time.

TG Branfalt: What’s your growth been like with the migration to recreational?

Andy Yashar: We’re gaining 20% new users every single month, so this last 4/20, we did triple the amount of traffic that we did they year prior, because of the fact that our website’s really ranking really well, and we had probably 2-300 different types of deals on our website for 4/20. We got picked up by a lot of media outlets, and we had a huge buzz going into 4/20, so it was really beneficial to capitalize on the market and make sure that we had everything, and we were the one-stop source for everything 4/20 in Portland.

TG Branfalt: Moving forward, do you guys have plans to expand into other existing or newly legal markets?

Andy Yashar: Yeah, so we are formalizing a plan right now to where we’re going to be going into Las Vegas, which I think our deals platform is really what people look for when they visit Las Vegas, is to save as much money as possible. So Las Vegas is a huge market for us, we plan on going to LA, San Francisco. I think that Arizona, as soon as they are a little bit more open to recreational marijuana, is going to be another huge market for us. I have clients that I do website work for down there currently, and they’re telling me that they’re ripe for The Daily Leaf, that people would drive 45 minutes just to save $15 on some shatter. So I really believe that our expansion is going to be something that’s going to be very popular throughout different cities, even though there is current existing tech in those markets.

We plan on rolling out an app that’s going to be all deal-based. We’re also going to have featured brands on there, so people can read about all of their favorite products, find out where they can buy them at, and how they can save money on it.

TG Branfalt: So why the decision to focus on cities instead of the state as a whole?

Andy Yashar: We really believe that really dense markets are really beneficial for us, and word spreads. So when we go to a huge metropolitan area and we do really well there, the outer lying cities really pick up on it, and we start to expand slowly to those areas. If we started a huge reach and we focused on an entire state instead of a city, we would be overwhelmed with what to write about, who to cover, what video content to generate first. If we focus on the cities and really build that network in, then the smaller cities are a lot easier to penetrate.

TG Branfalt: So far, what are some of the barriers to entry in some of these markets for your product specifically?

Stephen Gold: Barriers to entry,

Andy Yashar: I would say manpower right now. If we had a larger staff, which we’re hiring very, very slowly, and we’re being very meticulous on who we pick, I think that as we grow our staff it’ll be easier to actually go into these markets and have a very good presence.

Stephen Gold: Yeah, it’s say it’s a double edged sword. We touched on not wanting to get funding too soon, which we strongly stand behind, but then again you don’t have the large marketing dollars that some of our competitors would have, and do have. So when you go into new markets and you have a small staff, being able to show value to people who don’t know you from anybody … Because you talk to a dispensary owner, and they’re probably getting 50, 70 calls a day from people trying to sell them something. So that’s why building a buzz was and is so important for us. Because if we have a buzz, if we win those awards and people are talking about us, and we’re doing things differently, then that word will spread out. For example, we’re based in Portland, surrounding towns of Salem, of Eugene, of Bend. Those towns are starting to hear about The Daily Leaf, we’re working more and more into those towns and building a presence in the whole state of Oregon from the buzz we’re able to build just in Portland.

Andy Yashar: I’d say right about now, 20% of the dispensaries in Oregon are our clients. So we really want to build that up to the 50% mark, and then we’re going to move into Washington and really build a huge presence down there. I think that if we really conquer our home territory first, and really make sure that we have a very, very good network of people, then going into say, a Las Vegas and bringing testimonials with us, and letting them know that, “This is what our clients are saying,” that’s going to give us a little bit more credibility when we go and we actually ask for money.

TG Branfalt: I want to discuss some of these events that you guys have hosted in the last couple of years, but before we do that, we’ve got to take our last 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 Stephen Gold and Andy Yashar, founders of The Daily Leaf. So why don’t you tell me about some of the outreach events that you guys have had? You’ve had a gold tournament, a bowling. How did you come up with these things, and how’d you reach out to sponsors and businesses?

Andy Yashar: So we have a partner in the event space, and his name is Matt Enos. And Matt Enos approached us with a gold tournament. He has a huge passion for golf, he was a caddy for 15 years of his life at a country club down in California. He really wanted to grow this company really bad, but he just didn’t have the right people and place to make that happen, so he approached us and really, really wanted to build his brand. So we started doing the 4/20 golf tournament, and essentially it’s pretty much a mixer for all of the brands, dispensaries. A lot of the people that are in the network in Oregon, to kind of meet on a sunny day during the summer and play golf. It’s been a very successful event for us, so what we did was, is we came up with a bowling tournament called Canna Bowl.

Canna Bowl was something that I had the idea of one day when some of our clients and us, we went bowling one night and we said, “There should be a cannabis bowling tournament.” So we launched it a few months later, and High Times came down and really loved it, and did a huge write up about it, and it’s been very, very successful. We have another tournament coming up on June 29th, as far as golf goes. We’re praying for a sunny day there, but it’s been raining almost every day here in Oregon, but we’re really praying for a sunny day so we can get together and network a little bit more.

TG Branfalt: When you decide to hold these events, do you get any pushback from the venues at all?

Stephen Gold: With cannabis events, in each state there’s different rules or different regulations. When we first launched, I think I was touching on this a little bit earlier, when we first launched and we had some of these events, consumption was open and allowed. It was something where we can have sponsors come in, and if you’re an oil company you can dab out people that come by and let them try your product. This is a great way to interact with consumers, and it’s a great way for us to position ourselves, to bring those consumers and bring those brands out of the dark and have everyone meet. So those events were great. Just recently in Oregon, the rules changed a little bit. So the act of consumption is not necessarily allowed, so it’s moreso I’d say on us, as being responsible hosts, to know the rules and regulations, to make sure that we speak with our lawyers to know exactly what we can do, so that we’re not putting anyone in a situation where they’re opening themselves up to not following the rules and not having the regulations.

When it comes to these events, with Canna Bowl, we didn’t have people smoking inside the event, because that’s not allowed. We didn’t’ have any smoking anywhere near the event, because you can’t mix alcohol and marijuana. But what we did was we had a additional component that was separate from it, where we had people go and if they wanted to smoke, it was a safe and it was a legal place for people to smoke and try different products. So we’re able to continually understand the laws, and be able to then further make sure that the events we put on are fun. There is some sort of component of consumption because everyone likes that, but if it’s not allowed obviously we’re not going to go down that route. One other thing to touch on with the events is, we always try and work in some sort of component where we can give back, because that’s important to us as well.

Being able to build a name is important. Building a presence and brand is very important for us, with 4/20 Sports and The Daily Leaf, but also we want to make sure that we’re giving back to the community, giving back to people that will benefit from it. So our 4/20 event last year, we gave 10% of the proceeds to Grow For Vets. With the golf tournaments last year, we were able to do Mulligans for the MS Society. So that’s really important to us, to make sure that we work in that component. Not every time, but where it affords itself, where we could, we like to work a charity effort into the equation.

Andy Yashar: Yeah, even though we’re broke there’s people out there that are more needy than we are, so I really think that helping others out is a huge component to 4/20, and we want to continue that with each event that we do.

TG Branfalt: I think that that’s one of the most overlooked parts about this sector, is the type of charitable acts that a lot of the businesses do. Unfortunately, some of them, I don’t know if you guys have had any trouble doing this, but they sometimes get donations actually sent back, because the foundation or the charity can’t accept drug money, essentially.

Stephen Gold: Interesting. We’re in an interesting place where we do not touch the product at all. We never put our hands on it. While we do advertisements for it, we’re just a media marketing company, so for us we luckily haven’t had that issue, but I can see, I mean banking is a huge issue, and I know there’s tons of barriers for our clients. It’s a struggle. Being a small team, think about this, we’re a small team and we do take credit card payments, but we’re going around collecting cash every month from clients and making sure we make the rounds, and catching people the right day and making sure the owner is there, I mean it’s …

Andy Yashar: Someone actually Western Union-ed us $100 yesterday. For me, I’ve been in this industry for a long time and I’ve never had anybody Western Union us $100 before, so every day it’s something new, right?

TG Branfalt: So what in your opinion is the most pressing issue facing the industry? Is it banking, it is the threat of federal interference?

Andy Yashar: I honestly think that Jeff Sessions is a lot more talk than he is bite. There’s something that came out yesterday that said that they’re giving him no money to fight medical marijuana.

TG Branfalt: Yeah, the Roebuck farm and Hickenlooper said he had a meeting with them last week in which he came away not believing that any sort of crackdown was forthcoming.

Andy Yashar: I really think that Trump, whatever your thoughts are about him, he really wants to leave state regulations up to state leaders. I really think that after the Trump administration is gone, I think that there’s going to be somebody that comes in with an actual good head on their shoulders, and is going to know that cannabis is going to become legal whether the federal government wants it to or not, and the first thing to do would be to put regulations in place so everybody can benefit from recreational marijuana, not just states.

Stephen Gold: Yeah, and I think the biggest issue right now is probably the whole banking issue. The idea that because it’s federally illegal that there’s that whole 280e situation where you can’t write anything off, it’s hurting a lot of businesses and it’s making it very hard for people to do regular business. Even where we are you can’t even do regular marketing and advertising, whereas a regular business can take ads out on Facebook or Google, and that’s just worked into your marketing course because that’s what you need to do as a business. Where in marijuana, it’s illegal. You do advertisement, you get shut down, so people need to … The federal law is a big problem but there’s nothing that’s going to change in the next year, in the next two years, but maybe in the next five years we’ll be looking at something different.

TG Branfalt: So finally guys, what advice do you have for entrepreneurs, specifically those interested in entering the tech sector of the cannabis space?

Andy Yashar: Do your homework. Really get out in the market and meet people, and ask people what their needs are. Good ideas are great, but what’s actually functional and what the industry needs, that’s the homework that needs to be done in this market.

Stephen Gold: Yeah, and for people who think that they could probably enter the space without having knowledge of marijuana, without being involved in the actual city or the state that you want to do business in, because it’s very grassroots. Everyone’s very connected. Here in Oregon, even sections of Oregon, Portland has it’s own market where we all stay very close. Then there’s Southern Oregon where there’s a lot of growers that have a close-knit relationship. So you’re not necessarily just welcomed because you have a good idea, you’re welcomed because you’re a part of the movement. So if you want to get involved, you might have a great idea, you might be the most amazing developer or the most influential person, but if you’re not really engulfed in marijuana, you don’t understand how it works, then it’s going to be very hard for you to get any traction.

Andy Yashar: And save your money. Definitely save your money, because you can run though money really fast in this industry, so be careful.

Stephen Gold: Yeah, and not to say that, but today it could be all nice, we’re all smiling, we’re all having a good time. Tomorrow something might come out and the whole world turns to shit, you know what I mean? So it’s very volatile, so it’s not for the weak-hearted, or however you want to say.

TG Branfalt: Well, I want to thank you guys for coming on the show and turning $3000 into a great product, especially for people in Oregon who are looking for the best deals around.

Stephen Gold: Thank you, thank you.

TG Branfalt: Before we go, could you just tell us where they can find out more?

Stephen Gold: Yeah, the best place to get information is through our newsletter, so you can go to Dailyleafdeals.com. Down at the bottom there you can enter your email address, or a pop-up will probably come up there. Enter it in, we send out updates, once, twice a week with whatever is going on around town, whether it be deals, whether it be brands doing parties, events and things like that. So whatever is going on in Oregon, currently only in Oregon, whatever is going on in Oregon, you can find out through The Daily Leaf at Dailyleafdeals.com.

TG Branfalt: Thanks again guys, for coming on the show.

Andy Yashar: Thank you.

Stephen Gold: Thank you, have a good day you guys.

TG Branfalt: You can find more episodes of the Ganajapreneur.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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A pile of painkiller medication sitting on a clean, white surface.

Opioid Sales Manager Accused of Drug-Pushing is Denied MMJ Access for Opioid Addiction

A former employee of Insys Therapeutics – the makers of opiate sub-lingual spray Subsys who donated $500,000 to the campaign to defeat recreational cannabis legalization in Arizona – has lost a bid to use medical cannabis while on bail to kick his opioid addiction, according to a report from Reuters.

Jeffery Pearlman, a former Insys district sales manager, had sought to modify his bail conditions so he could continue using cannabis as recommended by a New Jersey doctor. Pearlman is one of several former Insys employees accused of paying kickbacks to physicians to prescribe Subsys.

Pearlman’s lawyers argued that if he was forced to give up his medical cannabis regime, which he uses to treat pain from a spine injury, he would have to return to opioids which would impair his constitutional rights to fully participate in his defense and to due process.

In the denial, U.S. Magistrate Judge Sarah Merriam said the argument that Pearlman would have to go back to using opioids was “a faulty assumption,” adding that defendants out on bail are required to follow federal law and that cannabis possession – even for medical purposes – is federally illegal.

“Other reasonable treatments exist; indeed, in states with no medical marijuana law or more restrictive laws, patients with defendant’s condition must use other forms of treatment,” she wrote in the ruling.

Pearlman is one of six former Insys executives and managers accused of paying doctors, physicians assistants, and advance practice registered nurses to prescribe the spray through a sham “speaker program” where the company paid fees ranging from $1,000 to several thousand dollars.

Last month in an interview with NBC News, former Insys sales rep Patty Nixon said she was instructed to get Subsys to patients who should not have had access to it. She said her responsibilities included lying to insurance companies in order to get them to believe the drug was “medically necessary” by making up false oncology records and providing the insurance company with specific diagnosis codes, whether or not the patient had the condition.

Pearlman has pleaded not guilty to the charges.       

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Utah Ag. Department Considering Expanding Hemp Research to Farmers

Utah’s Agricultural Advisory Board has given initial approval for a new rule that would allow some farmers to grow hemp for research purposes, the Salt Lake Tribune reports. The state Department of Agriculture and Food still needs to approve that program, which would allow farmers to submit a research plan for state approval and obtain a growing permit.

Melissa Ure, policy analyst for the Agriculture Department, said projects could include research on hemp fiber production; hemp seed as a protein source; improving cultivation methods; and the production of cannabinoid-based oils for medical purposes.

Colleges and universities in the state have been allowed to cultivate hemp for research purposes since the passage of the federal Farm Bill in 2014. Farmers could partner with those institutions for their research. The commercial sale of hemp products remains illegal under Utah state law.

Potential program participants will need to show in their plans how they intend to prevent unauthorized access to the crops and how they will dispose of the hemp after concluding the research.

The rule will be under review through the summer and, if finalized in the fall, the department could begin issuing permits in January. During a Utah Farm Bureau Federation meeting last summer, some farmers expressed interest in growing the crop which they believe could be a financial boon to the industry.

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An indoor grow site licensed under Washington's I-502 adult-use cannabis marketplace.

MassRoots to Acquire Cannabis Compliance Firm Odava

Cannabis social media and technology platform MassRoots, Inc. has agreed to acquire regulatory compliance firm Odava, Inc. for cash and shares of MassRoots common stock. Currently, Odava offers its point-of-sale and end-to-end regulatory compliance services to dispensaries in Oregon, and MassRoots plans on expanding those services to Colorado and Alaska this year, and to California and Florida in 2018.

Additionally, the company anticipates rolling out the platform in Nevada, Massachusetts, and Maryland.

MassRoots CEO Isaac Dietrich said the company plans on using their current resources and relationships to “grow the number of dispensaries utilizing Odava from dozens to hundreds by early next year.”

“This acquisition expands MassRoots’ offerings to dispensaries to include point-of-sale and regulatory compliance software, consolidating the most important operations for cannabis businesses into one central platform,” he said in a press release. “In the near future, we believe a significant percentage of all transactions occurring in the regulated cannabis industry will occur on our platform.”

The deal will see the two founders of Odava, Scott Kveton and Steven Osborn, paid $35,000 in cash and move into roles with MassRoots, where they will receive a $50,000 bonus after one year of continuous employment, according to MassRoots’ July 5 corporate overview documents. Current Odava shareholders will receive 3,250,000 shares of MassRoots common stock.

MassRoots’ Board of Directors has approved the deal.

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A young cannabis bud inside of a California medical patient's grow room.

Former NFL Players Seeking Ohio MMJ Dispensary License

Two former NFL players and the father of a current player are seeking one of Ohio’s 60 medical cannabis dispensary licenses, Cleveland.com reports. Former Heisman Trophy winner and NFL quarterback Troy Smith, ex-Cleveland Brown Eric Metcalf, and Ted Ginn Sr., father of New Orleans Saints wide receiver Ted Ginn Jr. and longtime football and track coach at Glenville High School, have partnered with Jim Buchanan, a Seattle recreational dispensary owner, on the project.

The group is eyeing potential locations in South Euclid, Cleveland, Lakewood, and Warrensville Heights. Both Lakewood and Cleveland currently have moratoriums banning medical cannabis dispensaries. However, Buchanan explained that a moratorium “is saying they want to see [the industry] unfold.”

“I can’t see Cleveland locking out medicine for a large community like that,” he said in the report. “That would create a huge problem.”

Smith, who was coached by Ginn at Glenville High, said he began looking into medical cannabis due to his own trauma from his football career, which spanned six seasons: three in the NFL, one season in the now-defunct United Football League, and two in the Canadian Football League.

“Sports is a great thing to watch when you’re snacking on chicken wings, but it’s dead serious,” Smith said. “We need to pay more attention to it and be more delicate.”

Last year, an ESPN survey of active NFL players found that 61 percent believed fewer players would take pain-killing shots if the league would allow medical cannabis use, with 41 percent saying it would be more effective at controlling pain. The NFL Players Association has said they are seeking to amend the league’s cannabis policies and last year convened a committee to look into allowing players to use cannabis as a pain management therapy. A number of team owners have also indicated support for “decriminalizing” cannabis use for players.

Smith said he is certain medical cannabis can be useful to people with brain injuries. Ginn said a dispensary will serve the community by providing jobs and helping people alleviate symptoms of medical conditions.

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The underside of a cannabis leaf silhouetted in front of an indoor LED grow light.

Last Brand Standing: Creating an Authentic Cannabis Brand

Apple. Nike. Disney. The most famous brands in the world all have one thing in common; their brands are authentic. What does that mean exactly? How can you build an authentic brand for your own company and why is an authentic brand essential in the cannabis industry?

Your brand is a way to immediately convey a story, an emotion, or a feeling to your audience. It’s the foundation of your business, the backbone of your company. Having an authentic brand is the most important first step you’ll take in setting the tone for your company — and one of the costliest missteps businesses bring upon themselves when they get it wrong. Inauthentic brands lose power and the trust of their audience, resulting in lost time, energy, and profits.

Your brand is a living, breathing piece of your company. It is the message that represents you and building that brand requires meticulous attention to detail, intense passion, and time. Let’s look at some steps in creating an authentic brand and how it will help you stand out in the cannabis industry.

Building a new brand from the ground up takes a lot of creativity and determination, so set yourself up for success by planning ahead.

Know who you are and who you serve

How do you begin to form an authentic brand? You get personal. Who is your audience and what story are you trying to tell?

Nike believes that anyone can be an athlete, and their brand promotes finding personal greatness so you can “Just Do It.” There is a fearlessness in each aspect of their brand. Disney is focused on creating magic for any age, and this comes across in every ad, commercial, logo, tagline, and event.

What do you want your company to “feel” like to your customers? This stage in the brand building process is time consuming but reaps great rewards. Understanding both who you are and who you serve will help define your mission and drive your company forward:

  • What is your company’s purpose?
  • How can you best execute that purpose?
  • How can you best serve your consumer?
  • What does that consumer look like?
  • Where would you find this consumer?

Having specific answers to these questions is essential to building an authentic brand. 

How do you fit in and how do you stand out?

One of the biggest mistakes I see business owners make in the cannabis industry is trying to build a cannabis brand as opposed to building an authentic brand in the cannabis space. Creating your brand is a “gut experience” and includes decisions made with passion and what “feels” right. Too often, I see companies incorporate a cannabis leaf in their logo or add some scientific symbolism to their brand and think they are finished. Wrong… branding goes so far beyond that. 

Your logo — the most important visual aspect of your brand — needs to feel iconic to YOU. Your logo is your calling card, the visual representation of the promise you make to your consumers. Take the time to print out your logo options and spend time with them in different scenarios.

Does your love for your logo accrue with time? Your logo is like art — the more time you spend with it, the more you should appreciate it. Test your logo in different mediums: how does it look on a business card versus a billboard? The visual representation is the cornerstone of your brand and should be crafted with meticulous care.

An authentic cannabis brand shouldn’t scream “marijuana,” but should demonstrate forethought and sophistication. Photo Credit: Sarah Climaco

I challenge you to create a folder and continue to add visual and verbal items to it. Over time, you will begin to recognize a pattern in the items you gravitate towards. The art, fonts, colors, and patterns you choose need to feel authentic to your company and what you stand for.

This will also help you communicate your wants and needs to the artist you hire to design your brand. Developing brand guidelines in a style guide will help your company identify key colors, taglines, and visuals for your brand — here is an example from my own company. It will also help you police your brand, give you credibility, and help the media share your story while keeping your brand strong. These are the guidelines others will look to when using your brand.

How do you know it’s working?

So you’ve done the research, you’ve created a logo you love, and you’ve created your style guide. What’s next?

It’s time to live with it for a bit and try it on for size. This is the moment your brand starts working for you. How do you feel when you engage your brand throughout the day?

Ask others around you how they feel about your messaging and logo. Is your story coming across the way you intended it to? While feedback is essential, I encourage business owners to “trust your gut” on this one. Your brand is like your baby — you know what’s best.

The most important advice I can offer is to get started. You will discover throughout your journey that an essential component of a successful business is staying true to your mission and your brand. People buy into what “feels” right, and the story you tell will determine the authenticity of your business. So trust your gut and go for it.

As J.P. Morgan said, “Go as far as you can see, and when you get there you’ll be able to see further.”

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A man's silhouette hunched over in front of a Washington DC metro map.

Cannabis Arrests in D.C. Climb Following 2015 Legalization

In 2015 voters in Washington D.C. approved a ballot initiative to legalize cannabis in the nation’s capital; however that didn’t stop cannabis arrests from tripling between 2015 and 2016, according to a Washington Post report.  In 2015, 142 people were arrested for cannabis possession; that number jumped over 400 in 2016. As of April 5, 78 people have been arrested for possession in the District.

Arrests for distribution – which was not legalized by the 2015 referendum – also climbed from 80 in 2015 to 220 in 2016, according to police arrest records outlined by the Post. As of April 5, 79 people have been arrested for distribution. The data includes arrests by D.C. police and other law enforcement agencies operating in the District.

Dustin Sternbeck, D.C. police spokesperson, said that legalization has led to more arrests for public consumption and that the rise in arrest rates for distribution is due to the department focusing “its drug enforcement effort on illegal sales.”

Jonathan Smith, executive director of the Washington Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights and Urban Affairs, called the figures “very troubling,” and that they suggest “a return to failed practices of over-policing and underserving communities of color” while crime levels drop to historic lows in the District.

At least 12 people were arrested during two cannabis-related protests in D.C. on and around April 20, however, it’s not clear whether all of those arrests were for cannabis-related crimes. The police data for this year obtained by the Post does not reflect those dates.

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The San Juan Colorado Beach in Puerto Rico.

Puerto Rico Gov. Signs More Comprehensive MMJ Bill

Puerto Rico Gov. Ricardo Rosselló has signed a bill legalizing a more comprehensive medical cannabis system in the U.S. territory, which will allow people with cancer and 14 other qualifying conditions broader access to medical cannabis products, MedicalXpress reports. The previous governor, Alejandro García Padilla, legalized medical cannabis through an executive order; however, Rosselló said the new regime creates a more effective legal framework for patients and the industry.

Rosselló, who holds a Ph.D. in biomedical engineering, said the legislation “recognizes medical cannabis as an alternative medical treatment, while maintaining all safeguards to protect the general public.”

“As a scientist, I know firsthand the impact that medicinal cannabis has had on patients with various diseases,” he said in an AztecaAmerica report. “It is time for Puerto Rico to join the flow of countries and states that have created similar legislation.”

Additionally, Rosselló said the act “emphasizes the role of research and development of cannabis as medicine” which he hopes will promote economic development on the island. Puerto Rico is $74 billion in debt – bankrupt – and the 3.2 million people unemployed equates to a rate of 12.3 percent. The governor estimates the government could see $50 million a month from sales and use taxes from the industry.

Under the law, 10 percent of the proceeds derived from the industry will go to the Hospital de Trauma del Centro Médico de Río Piedras, a major hospital facing severe financial problems. The University of Puerto Rico will receive 50 percent of all funds raised through fines imposed under the new regime.

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Aurora Cannabis Graduates to Canada’s Flagship Stock Exchange

Aurora Cannabis Inc., a licensed medical cannabis supplier in Canada, has received conditional approval to graduate from the TSX Venture Exchange and list on the Toronto Stock Exchange. The advancement follows a series of recent development for the firm, including expansion into Germany, investments in Australia, and construction of their Aurora Sky cultivation facility – capable of producing more than 220,460 pounds of cannabis per year.

Aurora CEO Terry Booth said the “exciting milestone” reflects the company’s “remarkable pace of growth and expansion both across Canada and internationally.”

“Having uplisted from the [Canadian Securities Exchange] to the TSXV in October, 2016, we believe that now graduating to the TSX will enable us to address an even wider investor audience, both domestically and internationally,” he said in a press release. “We remain focused strongly on building shareholder value, and look forward to reporting on our progress as a member of Canada’s flagship stock exchange.”

Aurora will continue trading under the symbol “ACB” on the TSX and, in conjunction with the listing, the common shares will be voluntarily delisted from the TSXV prior to the commencement of trading on the flagship exchange.

As of June 29, Aurora surpassed 16,000 active registered patients – less than 18 months after its first product sale in January 2016.

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Australia Approves MMJ Research Licenses to Two Firms

Australia’s Office of Drug Control has issued medical cannabis research licenses to two firms allowing them to cultivate and manufacture products for medical studies. The licenses were awarded to Canndeo LTD., a wholly-owned subsidiary of The Hydroponics Company (THC); and to a partnership between AusCann and Tasmanian Alkaloids.

According to a report from the Examiner, Tasmanian Alkaloids currently produces about 40 percent of the world’s opiate crop.

Primary Industries Minister Jeremy Rockliff called the license a “significant step” toward the cultivation of medical cannabis in Tasmania.

“This is a major milestone for the strategic partnership and represents significant progress in our joint strategy to become a leading producer and supplier of high quality medicinal cannabis to Australian patients,” said AusCann managing director Elaine Darby in the Examiner report.

Dr. Andrew Beehag, Canndeo CEO, said the license “effectively paves the way forward for future domestic supply” of medical cannabis “targeting multiple markets with high purity cannabidiol and enabling THC to continue its rollout of high quality imported products as well as locally produced medicines.”

“With Canndeo, THC will now advance research into medicinal cannabis to undertake both its own research exploring optimal cultivation and production methodologies and strain development, and look to implementation of THC’s epigenetic technology as a key innovation in the field,” said THC Chairman Alan Beasley in a press release.

The license will also allow Canndeo to build its exclusive plant breeders rights protected sativa strains. The company anticipates it will begin bringing products to market next year.

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Nevada Rec. Dispensaries Running Out of Product

Nevada’s adult-use cannabis industry has been online for about one week, yet dispensaries permitted to sell to adults are already running out of products, the Reno Gazette-Journal reports. The coming drought has led the Department of Taxation to propose a “statement of emergency” rules that would open up distribution licenses to applicants beyond alcohol distributors.

Gov. Brian Sandoval has endorsed the proposal.

“Based on reports of adult-use marijuana sales already far exceeding the industry’s expectations at the state’s 47 licensed retail marijuana stores, and the reality that many stores are running out of inventory, the Department must address the lack of distributors immediately,” said Tax Department spokeswoman Stephanie Klapstein in the report. “Some establishments report the need for delivery within the next several days.”

Thus far, the state has been unable to license any cannabis distributors in the state due to a lawsuit against the department by the Independent Alcohol Distributors of Nevada who claim that the department’s plan to issue distribution licenses to non-members of the organization violates the letter of the voter-approved law. The law provides exclusive cannabis distribution rights to alcohol transporters for the first 18 months of legal sales.

According to Klapstein, the department has received seven applications from liquor wholesalers to distribute cannabis to the state’s dispensaries, but “most don’t meet the requirements that would allow us to license them.”

“Even as we attempted to schedule the final facility inspection for one of the applicants this week, they told us their facility was not ready and declined the inspection,” she said.

The Tax Commission will vote on the statement of emergency regulations on Thursday, July 13.

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Washington Hall and Courtyard stands in the center of the University of Maryland campus dormitory section.

Maryland School of Pharmacy Offering MMJ Certification Course

The University of Maryland School of Pharmacy will begin offering medical cannabis training for prospective industry operators in an effort to bring educational standards to the sector amid uncertain legal standing and ever-changing science, the Washington Post reports.

The school joins the University of Vermont College of Medicine’s Department of Pharmacology in offering a medical cannabis course. The City College of San Francisco in California is also developing a course on the legal cannabis industry, while the Cleveland Cannabis College in Ohio began offering classes pertaining to the medical cannabis industry in the state earlier this year. In 2007, Oaksterdam University was founded in Oakland, California as the nation’s first cannabis college. Some higher education institutions in Canada – where medical cannabis is federally legal and lawmakers are currently considering nationwide legalization – are already offering, or considering offering, their own courses.

Maglaly Rodriguez de Bittner, a pharmacy professor and executive director for Maryland School of Pharmacy’s Center for Innovative Pharmacy Solutions, said the school “wanted to be a resource” and began signing up potential industry employees last month for the online certification program. The certifications are required for cannabis industry employees under the state’s medical cannabis law. The school is partnering with Americans for Safe Access on the program.

“If you’re going to be dispensing let’s make sure your staff is trained in best practices to do it safely and effectively,” Rodriguez de Bittner said in the report.

Courses will include instruction about laws and regulations; pesticides; sanitation; evidence for medical cannabis therapies; plant and product consistencies; labeling, inventory control and record keeping; and operating procedures.

The 30-hour certification course costs between $450 and $750.

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The American flag and Michigan state flag flying in front of the Michigan Capitol Building's dome in Lansing, MI.

Michigan Lawmaker Seeking Federal Clarification on Cannabis Industry

A resolution in Michigan’s Republican-controlled House of Representatives is asking the federal government to both decriminalize cannabis federally and allow states to implement their own policies, or enforce federal law, according to a report from news talk radio station WSJM.

The resolution is sponsored by Macomb Country Rep. Jeff Yaroch, a Republican, who indicated that part of the state’s medical cannabis industry reforms include a patient database and, without clarification by Congress, that database could be used by the federal government to target enrolled patients in the event of a crackdown.

“What do we do if the federal government decides this year to change its position?” Yaroch said in the report. “We’ve kind of had a bury the head in the sand kind of attitude. So, the resolution is to try to put some pressure on Congress. Just make a decision so we know how to legislate in our state.”

The move comes as advocates in the state are collecting signatures to put a recreational legalization question on state-wide ballots next year.

Several bills have been introduced in Congress to reform the nation’s cannabis laws, ranging from descheduling to removing CBD from the federal definition of ‘marihuana,’ to allowing operations in legal states to access services such as banking.

Currently, legal programs have little federal protection, and the Trump Administration – namely Attorney General Jeff Sessions – is seeking to undo what protection they do have by asking Congress to rescind the Rohrabacher-Farr Amendment which prohibits the Department of Justice from using federal funds to enforce federal law in legal states.

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Official flag of Zimbabwe, featuring a soapstone bird and a red star.

Zimbabwe Official Says Nation Considering MMJ Legalization for Economic Reasons

A cabinet minister in Zimbabwe has announced that the African nation is considering legalizing medical cannabis partially in an effort to attract investors to the country’s forthcoming Special Economic Zones, according to a state-run Sunday News report by cited by AllAfrica. Investment Promotion Minister Obert Mpofu said the idea was formed when a Canadian medical cannabis firm inquired about the possibility of cultivating cannabis in the zones.

At first, Mpofu thought the company wasn’t serious, but soon realized that medical cannabis production was big business.

“We have received numerous inquiries from investors who want to participate in the SEZs and one of them is a big international company that wants to be involved in the production of cannabis,” he said in the report. “This company is from Canada and it’s one of the biggest conglomerates in that country and they are producing cannabis for medical purposes under strict conditions.”

Mpofu said that he doesn’t “see anything wrong” with legalizing medical cannabis. Under current law, cannabis possession or cultivation is illegal in Zimbabwe punishable by jail.

The Special Economic Zones will offer investor incentives, including exemption from portions of the labor laws and black economic empowerment rules. They are currently being set up in Harare, Victoria Falls, and Bulawayo.

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A Confidence Analytics scientist inspects a cannabis sample in their Redmond, Washington testing lab.

Confidence Analytics: Peeking Inside a Cannabis Testing Lab

Confidence Analytics is an I-502 cannabis testing laboratory in Washington state. Their 9,000 square-foot facility is located in Redmond and has been in operation since April 2014. They were the second lab in the state to become certified and performed the first tests of product samples under the I-502 adult-use marketplace.

We recently had the chance to tour their facility and sit down for a talk with Nick Mosely, Chief Science Officer, and Bobby Hines, Chief Technology Officer, to learn more about what their company is all about.

Nick Mosely (left) is the Chief Science Officer for Confidence Analytics and Bobby Hines (right) is the company’s Chief Technology Officer.

Confidence Analytics offers a range of cannabis testing options to producer/processors. They perform tests on products such as green plant material (flower, trim, keif and bubble hash), solvent-based extracts (concentrates extracted using ethanol, butane, propane, or supercritical CO2), and edibles (which are only tested for THC potency). They are required to test for potency, microbial contaminants, and pesticides — but also offer other voluntary tests like terpene profiles.

“When we are testing for state compliances, we are entering them into a seed-to-sale traceability system,” said Mosely. “The state basically gets to decide when the producer gets to retest depending on the threshold.”

The tests conclude in two types of test results — either pass/fail or a number output — depending on the type of test. For example, potency profile and terpene profile tests would give an output number.

Samples of cannabis products submitted to Confidence Analytics for analysis.

“In any other industry, quality testing is commonplace, but it tends to be fairly invisible,” said Hines. That’s actually part of why cannabis is such a unique industry: quality assurance testing is more visible to consumers than in most other industries.

“Our goal is to provide business intelligence and compliance tools specifically to these producer and processors,” said Hines. Both Hines and Mosely worked in healthcare prior to starting this company. Mosely was doing research at the UW Medical Center in Seattle, Washington and Hines worked as a programmer for the billing department.

UHPLC and HPLC models sit next to the fume hood, used for cannabinoid analysis.

Another reason why cannabis is unique in regards to quality assurance testing is that it varies state by state, whereas other consumer products have federal regulations to abide by.

“What’s happening is new states, as they are coming on board, are taking [Washington state’s] rule set, and adding to it,” Mosely said.

Confidence Analytics advertises a three-to-four-day turnaround time for lab results, which — compared to other industries — is very fast. In a given month, their lab serves about 150 different licensees.

“For what the producer/processors are getting when they are going to a 502 lab, they are getting it very fast and very cheap,” said Mosely.

Employee Levi Boss looks inspects a large culture plate of fungus on the monitor as part of the testing lab’s process of investigating product samples.

The lab is set to handle challenges and changes in regulations as they come with confidence. “Our method and the fact that we hire people with scientific education, alongside our custom built technology-stack, has allowed us to be quite nimble in responding to changes,” said Hines.

But that’s not their biggest challenge, they can handle the changes when it involves science. The difficult part is explaining test results, whether positive or negative, to their customers. It’s all based on education and understanding the many variables that may lead to a failing test.

“We spend time explaining the technical parts of the scientific process to get them to understand the picture that they are seeing,” Hines said.

Levi Boss checks a culture on a slide under the microscope.

Additionally, they are also working against a market standard based on the common misconception of THC’s importance in test results.

“We have a market that is kind of exploiting the idea of THC being the sole chemical agent that has any influence or value in the product,” said Hines. “The grade and quality of a product isn’t dictated by the THC number — that has been a big challenge.”

This is where labs and other license holders have the power to educate consumers about the different numbers on the labels, explaining what actually matters.

“Our philosophy is that we should be taking some sort of personal responsibility in educating the consumer for the long-term sustainability of the market,” said Hines.

This is why Confidence Analytics offers educational courses for budtenders, who work as the acting frontline and voice to consumers, so they can have a better understanding of the products they are selling and be more qualified to assist with purchases.

Like many others in the industry, the team at Confidence Analytics is proud to be on the front lines of Washington’s cannabis marketplace, that they are able to provide a quality service to a needed industry, and that they are pioneering the way for future testing labs.

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A judge's gavel rests on a desk inside of a U.S. court room.

Florida Attorney Sues Over No-Smoking Provisions in Legislature-Approved MMJ Bill

As promised, Orlando, Florida-based attorney John Morgan has sued the state over the no-smoking provisions included in the medical cannabis law approved by lawmakers, the Miami Herald reports. Morgan is the author of the voter-approved law, and was a key financial backer throughout the successful campaign last November.

In the lawsuit, Morgan, and his lead attorney former Democratic House Speaker Jon Mills, argue that by banning smoking the legislature is “redefining the constitutionally defined term ‘medical use.’”

“…The Legislature substitutes its medical judgment for that of ‘a licensed Florida physician’ and is in direct conflict with the specifically articulated Constitutional process,” the lawsuit, filed on behalf of Florida for Care, states. “Inhalation is a medically effective and efficient way to deliver Tetrahydrocannabinol [THC], and other cannabinoids, to the bloodstream.”

The constitutional amendment approved by more than 71 percent of Floridians allowed the legislature to ban smoking in public places, but Morgan argues that the legislature’s smoking ban is an overreach in violation of the state Constitution.

“The [constitutional] statement unambiguously says that smoking medical marijuana in a private place in compliance with the provisions of the amendment is legal,” the suit says.

Language included in the legislature-approved bill defined “medical use” of cannabis to exclude “possession, use or administration of marijuana in a form for smoking,” which the lawsuit contends “redefined and narrowed the definition of marijuana in direct conflict” with the Constitution and will of the voters.

Morgan argues that if the legislature was interested in keeping people safe from smoking they would tax tobacco “to the hilt” and accuses the politicians of being driven by nothing “other than money and donors” – including “Big Pharma.”

Morgan said if lawmakers don’t allow for smoking as a delivery method, he would back a constitutional amendment to legalize recreational use in the state.

End


Facebook Shuts Down Pages of 6 Alaskan Cannabis Companies

The owners and employees of at least six retail cannabis shops in Alaska claim that within the last week Facebook has either deleted or taken down their pages, leaving them with one less advertising option, according to an Alaska Dispatch News report.

The affected businesses include Arctic Herbery, Enlighten Alaska, Frozen Budz, Pakalolo Supply Co., Dankorage, and Alaska Fireweed.

Bryant Thorp, the owner of Anchorage’s Arctic Herbery, said the social media platform represented “almost all” of the shop’s advertising and that he has had issued with the page for a few months. Since the shutdown on Friday or Saturday, Thorp has focused on building his Twitter and Instagram following; however Instagram is owned by the social media giant.

Ruchika Budhraja, a spokeswoman for Facebook, said that the company has community standards that outline what is, and isn’t, permitted on the site and “anyone can report content…if they think it violates standards” and those reports are reviewed to determine if there was a violation.

Under the “regulated goods” section of those standards, “marijuana” is among the items listed as prohibited.

Oddly, the pages went dark around the same time Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg visited Alaska for the Fourth of July weekend.

Rich Beezley, chief operating officer at AK Frozen Budz, whose Facebook page was unaffected by the weekend shutdown but has been targeted four times in the past, called it “a weird coincidence” and speculated that his page might have been saved because the shop was closed for the holiday and the Facebook page wasn’t active.

Budhraja said she “wouldn’t think” the shutdown and Zuckerberg’s visit are tied.

End


Ohio Receives 185 Applications for 24 Available MMJ Grow Licenses

Ohio’s Department of Commerce has received 185 applications for the 24 available medical cannabis cultivation licenses in the state, according to a Fox 8 report. The state will license 12 cultivators for up to 3,000-square-foot grows and 12 for grows up to 25,000 square feet.

Regulators will award the licenses based on how businesses plan to grow, staffing and security plans, and how they plan to comply with state regulations.

Ohio’s medical cannabis regime was signed into law more than a year ago, but progress has, so far, been slow which has forced some patients who have already received a recommendation from doctors in Ohio to cross the border into Michigan – whose program allows out-of-state reciprocity – to procure their medicine, despite it being federally illegal to cross state lines with cannabis.

Under the state’s final cultivation rules adopted in April, the Commerce Department could make more licenses available or increase the square footage of grows beginning in September 2018.

Final rules regulating processors, laboratories, and dispensaries in Ohio are still being crafted by the department. Under the law, finalized versions of those rules must be completed by Sept. 8. All of the proposed regulations must be reviewed and adopted by the Joint Committee on Agency Rule Review.

End


Study: MMJ Reduces Migraine Pain Intensity, Reduces Attacks Like Traditional Treatment

A study presented at the 3rd Congress of the European Academy of Neurology has found that medical cannabis might be useful in treating migraine headaches. The study was conducted by a team of Italian researchers led by Dr. Maria Nicolodi.

Phase 1 of the study found that oral doses of 200 milligrams of THC dropped acute pain by 55 percent, compared to doses of less than 100 milligrams which produced no relief.

During Phase 2, 79 patients who experienced chronic migraines were given a daily dose of either 25 milligrams of amitriptyline – an antidepressant often used to treat migraines – or 200 milligrams of a THC-CBD combination for a three-month period. Another group of patients who suffered from cluster headaches was also given the medical cannabis product or a 480 milligram dose of the calcium channel blocker verapamil. Patients still experiencing acute pain from either migraines or cluster headaches were administered an additional 200 milligrams of the cannabis solution.

After the three-month period, the medical cannabis compound yielded slightly better results than amitriptyline, reducing attacks by 40.4 percent compared to the antidepressant counterpart which reduced attacks 40.1 percent. However, the cannabinoid solution reduced pain intensity 43.5 percent. Similar reductions were experienced by some of the cluster headache sufferers, but only in those that have experienced migraines during childhood. In those that didn’t report childhood migraines, medical cannabis had no effect as an acute treatment for patients suffering from cluster headaches.

Patients reported side effects such as drowsiness and difficulty concentrating, but interestingly, female subjects reported a decrease in colitis, stomachache, and musculoskeletal pain.

End


Dr. Allen Miller: Using Cannabis to Kick Opioid Dependency

Dr. Allen Miller is the founder/owner of Doctors Cannabis Consulting and, in addition to being a chiropractor and a consultant, is an enthusiastic patient and supporter of cannabis medicine.

In this episode of the Ganjapreneur.com podcast, Dr. Miller joins our podcast host TG Branfalt to discuss using cannabis therapy as an exit strategy for opioid addiction, how Dr. Miller’s own experience using medicinal cannabis shapes his conversations with patients, how the MMJ industry is beginning to interact with insurance companies, and more!

Listen to this week’s Ganjapreneur.com podcast episode via the media player below or continue 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 are 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 Doctor Allen Miller. He’s the owner of Doctors Cannabis Consulting. Welcome to the show Dr. Miller. It’s a pleasure to have you today.

Dr. Allen Miller: Hey, Tim. Thank you very much. I really appreciate you inviting me. I’m just really honored and I’m pleased to be able to get the latest news out that I think that’ll make people happy.

TG Branfalt: I’m real excited to hear it. Before we get into kind of the latest news, that sort of thing, why don’t you tell me about your background, your medical background and how you get started in the cannabis space.

Dr. Allen Miller: I got into cannabis really very late. My father was a Los Angeles police officer and I remember going to the jails at the age of seven years old watching people go through withdrawals and my father would say, “This is what drugs do.” I’m of that baby boomer generation. It scared the living hell out of me so I didn’t even touch cannabis, thinking that all the things that would go wrong would and, subsequently, until very late in life. I played football and sports. I was a bodyguard for some stars. I did my own stunts which means I was hurt constantly. I rode horses, broke my back, feet, you name it, I broke it. I lived in chronic pain and I was taking opioids because I’m in the medical profession. I work with US track and field so those things were not foreign to us. We just used them and I used them to, much like any other athlete, to be productive.

Now that things are changing and they’re harder to get, it was necessary for me to come off the drugs and I wasn’t about to go to rehab. Wasn’t going to happen and one of my associates actually worked in a dispensary, was quite knowledgeable about it and she actually helped me. Goes, “Why don’t you just go and do marijuana? Why don’t you just do that?” She took me down, helped me get my first recommendation card and that’s what started me on the journey through medical marijuana, CBDs and all these other products, which later turned out, as what we’ll discuss, into what I’m currently doing. It was completely by accident.

TG Branfalt: That’s really the first thing that I want to talk to you is the use of cannabis as an exit drug. I’ve said this on the show a few times, how I use cannabis and I just want to kind of give you the breakdown. I haven’t used alcohol in three years and I credit much of that success to cannabis. I use cannabis throughout the day in small amounts to mitigate my own pain. I microdose with edibles to ease anxiety but at night and the weekends, I certainly consume more and more potent cannabis. I basically replaced getting blackout drunk with upping my cannabis intake and when I really want to drink, I smoke and the urge passes. Admittedly I was never hooked on opioids but for me, it has helped me get off of alcohol. I know that alcohol and opioids, they’re not the same thing, but can you tell me more about the studies that have been done and your experience with patients helping them use cannabis as an exit drug?

Dr. Allen Miller: Yeah. You and I use it very similar. I shattered both feet and I got a tremendous amount of pain and regardless of the severity of the injury, pain is pain. I like to say that it decreases your focus and your productivity because you’re concentrating on pain. You aren’t able to do what we do. Opioids were great for that but they also sped you up, too. If it weren’t for opioids I don’t think I could’ve spent nine years trudging with the Olympic teams in Africa. Be that as it’s said, the hardest thing about being in pain or severe pain, and this is for anybody, is you feel like you’re walking through mud … but your brain keeps going faster so you need something that’s going to take away the pain so your body can keep up with your brain and not be exhausted all the time. That’s the feeling I had with opioids.

Cannabis, I had to really work hard to find the correct measure of THC to CBDs to get the almost the same effect and I went through a plethora of products that I was able to bring to my patients. The nice thing about it is I’m able to speak at first experience and say, “Yeah, been there, done that. This is what works for me,” and then make the adjustments and go from there but very similar to what you’re doing. I do the same thing.

TG Branfalt: There’s not a lot of research out there. Why do you think that cannabis works as an exit drug?

Dr. Allen Miller: The one thing I think that everybody needs to understand is the one thing that the brain wants to be is happy. That’s its job in life is to make you happy. It fights off pain. It fights off. It cleans you. It does all those things but at the end of the day it looks for things to make you happy. Opioids make you happy. The brain can even manufacture more pain to increase your drug intake. That’s how powerful it is. What’s nice about cannabis is it fills up those receptor sites and makes you slowly transition. In my case, I didn’t know what to expect so I really did this DIY. I really kind of invented it up as I go. As you said, there was no research. There was really nobody around to coach me and teach me how to do this so I kind of made it up as I went, failed and then succeeded, so on, so forth.

I found that it made my brain happy and when my brain was happy and I felt good, I just would forget to take the opioids and then sooner or later I thought, “Okay, I’m now down,” and I wasn’t having any repercussions for it. I wasn’t having any bad effects, withdrawals, anything like that. Again, I’d love to tell you this was planned, buddy, but it was really by accident. I kind of fumbled my way through it. I kind of like to say I just bumbled and fumbled my way through this thing and found what worked and it’s worked on the other patients. If you’d like me to describe that I’d love to tell you about it.

TG Branfalt: Oh yeah, absolutely. I’d love to hear the process that you go through with patients.

Dr. Allen Miller: What we do is we have some similar problems here is I own functional medicine clinics. My expertise goes back to functional medicine which, for your audience, is probably the best way. If you’re searching for a doctor look for a functional medicine doctor because they will use natural products over prescriptions but they’re going to use prescriptions, too. They’re really up to date with bioidentical hormones, all the things that you’ve never heard of. That experience, nutrition is a big part of it so I changed my nutrition and one of the things I found hard about edibles was one of my doctors stated it’s just junk food with pot in it. We had to really find organic pieces and thank god that’s getting better. What I’ve found is, like I said, if I took enough where the CBDs where I could almost mimic the opioid feeling of no pain or acceptable pain, something that I could deal with, then I could do my daily work. It only took me about a month to get off the opioids which is pretty amazing.

TG Branfalt: Wow.

Dr. Allen Miller: What I did was this, and this is completely contrary to what you usually hear. You’ll know the minute I say it, I just bombarded my system with as much CBDs as I possibly could and THC to find out where the balance was. I just shotgunned it. I kept a journal, found out which dosages worked and then continued from there. As I said, I was not concentrating on the opioids. I wasn’t concentrating on the pain, I was more concentrating on how to get off of it and do this, that I would literally forget to take the opioids and that’s how I got off of it. I’ve had absolutely no compunction to go back and I lead a fairly active lifestyle and I’m 61. Not bad.

TG Branfalt: No, that’s really incredible, a month. That’s almost unheard of.

Dr. Allen Miller: It really wasn’t difficult and I got to tell you, I’ll be very transparent with you. I had been on these things off and on for 30 years.

TG Branfalt: Wow.

Dr. Allen Miller: My first broken back, I got stabbed with Jerry Garcia way back [inaudible 00:09:16] broke my back in a concert so yeah. I was body guarding Jerry Garcia so I’ve had my share of, I do my own stunts is probably the best way to say it. About a month, I was off. You know what’s most important about people, and I’d like to say this and speak to those people in pain. It’s not so much the pain as the fear of the pain and the fear of being stranded and unable to move. That is the biggest fear that I felt as a chronic pain patient. I used to carry pain pills in my pocket. I was scared to death that I’d get to a point where I’d be incapacitated. That scared me more than anything else.

TG Branfalt: As somebody who does experience pain and whose back has locked up on him and left him bedridden for days, that is a very real fear. When you can’t go anywhere because you’re afraid, “Oh, I’m not going to have my medicine,” and it really does impact your life incredibly.

Dr. Allen Miller: Oh, it shaped your life, Tim. If you think back, look at the things it stopped you from doing because of the fear of being incapacitated somewhere. “Oh, I’ll do that, my back will lock up.” It now becomes a lifestyle issue.

TG Branfalt: Have you mixed in, this is probably kind of a stupid question but have you also adapted a workout regimen to go along with the cannabis therapies?

Dr. Allen Miller: Oh god, no. No, only because I should and I recommend my patients to do that and work out this. I still work with horses. I lead a pretty active life. I’ve been meaning to but I’ve been on the road for like the last four weeks. I just haven’t had a chance to do it. My biggest suggestion for patients is Pilates. I think Pilates is probably one of the, it got me walking again after one of my accidents. I think Pilates is probably one of the best stretching all around exercises you could ever do for your body, bar none.

TG Branfalt: I’m going to have to remember that.

Dr. Allen Miller: I’ll get you some great news. It’s the easiest. The story behind it’s fascinating and I won’t take up the time for that but for an overall individual to do anything in this world, I found that that’s the best that works.

TG Branfalt: I want to kind of go back to the opioid thing a little bit, ask you about the statistics. A recent University of California study published in the “Drug and Alcohol Dependence Journal” found a 23% reduction in opioid-related hospitalizations, related to abuse and dependence in states with legal cannabis and a 13% decrease in ER visits for opioid overdoses in those states. To what do you attribute this correlation?

Dr. Allen Miller: I work with this in the insurance department and there is a percentage of people that became addicted to opioids, and I can say that I’m one of them, out of necessity. I had a job to do and that came first and subsequently we sacrifice our bodies by taking this. That population base is, again, looking for quality of life. Remember at the end of the day, in my opinion, this is a quality of life issue. Do you want to be drugged out of your mind or possible die or do you want to be productive in some way, shape or form? I think cannabis allows that to happen. People are seeking out the alternatives because the patients nowadays are so much smarter than a lot of the doctors that I see. I recommend this for everybody. Know your body, know what it needs, know what it has to do because you’re the only steward of your body. You really shouldn’t put it in the hands of everybody else. You should put it in the hands of a doctor that’ll actually listen to you and come up with some sort of solution that works within everything that you want. That’s the best way to look at it.

To of your statistically taking more, in Utah where we’re just rolling out our program, we have six dying a day. 94% of all doctors give opioids on the first visit. We’re seeing addictions start within a week and here’s what’s funny about this, it’s ironically funny, is that opioids actually retard your healing process. They’re given post surgical for a lot of different things. Let’s just say it’s broken leg. That’s very common. They actually retard bone growth so what happens is is because the bone growth is retarded you’re not healing up, it sets off the brain so it sets up the scenario for chronic pain for which what do we do? We take more opioids. I gets into this long circle, this never ending circle that the person’s in pain, never heals up right and so on and so forth until the opioids are stopped. Then the body can pick up and start healing again.

TG Branfalt: Would you say that in these states where we’re seeing the statistics where we are seeing reductions, do you think that that’s a combination of doctors being more versed on cannabis as well as more informed patients?

Dr. Allen Miller: I think it’s more informed patients. The doctors in this, remember this is still technically illegal and nobody wants to lose their phony bologna jobs but off the record, they will say, “I recommend it. I don’t get in the way of it.” For instance, I know the team doctor for the Giants, New York Giants, and like I said, he’s a neurologist so CTE is a big issue. He doesn’t get in the way. He recommends it. He doesn’t dispense it. He doesn’t do any of that but he’s not going to stand in the way because look at the anecdotal evidence. The insurance company I work for, same thing. We have nothing to lose. Let’s try it. If it doesn’t work, it doesn’t work. It’s not going to cause any harm. I think more doctors are going in that direction but I think the population base and really thank God to the population base moving this forward, almost like crowdfunding, that doctors are picking it up and doctors are saying, “Okay, I’m not going to get in the way. Let’s just monitor it,” and I think the patient is more teaching the doctor than the doctor is teaching the patient, in my experience.

TG Branfalt: I mean, nobody wants to be a drug addict.

Dr. Allen Miller: No! They don’t. Again, go back to the simplest, and I said this earlier, but we need to look at this. The brain needs to be happy and we are being bombarded. We are constantly in an inflammation process due to the environment, food, water, outdoor stresses. We’re working much more hours than we did before. We’re just constantly being bombarded. There’s a great book, one of my favorite books is about being antifragile by an author by the name Taleb. These factors are making us more fragile. More fragile means we’re in more pain and we’re looking for a better life. That’s what human beings do. We look for a better life. Some people give up and some people just keep going, much like you do. You just keep going and then you found a solution that works. Hopefully that’s what prevails.

TG Branfalt: I want to talk to you a bit more about the role of cannabis as sports medicine but before we do that we got to take our first break. This is the Ganjapreneur.com podcast. I’m TG Branfalt.


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TG Branfalt: Welcome to the Ganjapreneur.com podcast. I’m your host TG Branfalt here with Doctor Allen Miller, owner of Doctors Cannabis Consulting. Before the break, we touched a little bit about the role of cannabis in sports medicine. Previously on this podcast, I interviewed Jim McAlpine, who’s the founder of the 420 Games, about this very thing and he said that cannabis can be used during all phases of working out but especially useful for cool down periods. As somebody who has worked in sports medicine, what’s your take on using cannabis as an athlete and what might you recommend for athletes as well as Weekend Warrior?

Dr. Allen Miller: One, I know Jim really well and Jim’s completely right. Jim’s brilliant. What he said with the 420 Games I think is fantastic because it shows a look at the quality … the biggest problem we have in the cannabis industry tr not, from baby boomer standpoint, is the stigma. We’re all scared to death because we all had, at some point in our past, we had somebody that did 20 years for a roach and I remember those days. They’re very afraid. Back to this, I just had a great discussion in Colorado on this, on is it a performance enhancing drug? I want to bring it back to Shaun White who got a gold medal, theoretically stoned out of his mind and tested positive for marijuana. Okay. I’d like to throw that in the mix for a minute but look what it does and let’s break it down.

I wrote an article about this. Here’s what it does. When cannabis comes in it opens up the blood vessels. You’re able to tap into your glycogen stores and that’s your energy. That’s one. Two, it’s an antiinflammatory so it helps you repair yourself faster than you would normally. Think of cannabis as kind of like lube for bodies. It makes it work. It makes everything work in this wonderful organism we call a human body. It makes everything work right. It opens up the alveoli in the lungs so you’re getting more air in and the more air in, obviously the faster you can go. If it takes away the pain and helps you recover faster, then your focus would be better, correct? You don’t have to waste your time on am I hurt? Am I up to par? You feel great and obviously that gives you confidence and every sport is mental. Where the mind goes, the body follows.

Jim and I hold this same philosophy is that it should be used. I think it should be used from the time you’re born to combat every other environmental issue out there, frankly, but I think it should be used for cool down for sports, for any activity, for the industrial athlete out there, for the guy that sits in the cubicle for 10 or 12 hours a day staring at a computer. If you don’t think that’s stress, you got to try it. I think all industrial athletes and conventional athletes need this to have their body work right, to have a better quality of life. That’s what we’re all here for.

TG Branfalt: You’ve mentioned a couple of times about your projects in Utah dealing with worker’s compensation insurance. Can you really get into the details of this? Because I’m absolutely fascinated at this whole program, the whole prospect of it.

Dr. Allen Miller: I’d love to and I appreciate the opportunity to do so and I got to compliment my counterpart, an individual by the name of Dave Oakton of SNC Claim Systems in Nevada. He and I have been friends for, oh god, 25 years and I’ve been their forensic soft tissue specialist for that amount of time and we go hunting and fishing together and so on, so forth. We know each other and he knew of all the injuries I had and I recently had lunch with him. I guess it goes back two years and this is how this started. He goes, “Hey, you’re walking better. You look better. It looks like you’re feeling better. What’d you do?” I said, “You’re not going to believe this. I got off the opioids and I’m using medical marijuana and CBDs.”

He goes, “Really? We’d be very interested if you’d put a program together and we’d influx it into our chronic and opioid dependent patients, chronic pain for worker’s comp injuries.” I said, “Okay, great. I’ll just copy mine.” and that’s how it started two years ago and we put together the program and now we’re rolling out in five states, New Mexico, Nevada, California, Arizona, up into Utah and we’re going east. This is paid for by the insurance company for people with chronic pain, using very similar methods to what I did, very similar products to what I’ve discovered and found out and it’s working very, very well. We’re seeing an excellent rate. We haven’t really released it yet you’re actually getting the exclusive on this. This is really the first time I’m talking about it. What’s exciting here is the insurance company is going, “Wait a minute here, it doesn’t cause any harm. We got nothing to lose.”

TG Branfalt: We’re talking insurance companies, we’re talking corporations.

Dr. Allen Miller: You’re right.

TG Branfalt: For something that’s federally illegal, they’re not concerned about losing licensing or …

Dr. Allen Miller: Here’s the issue. Let’s look at New Mexico for a minute. This has happened very, very recently. New Mexico passed a law about an individual who sued. He was an injured worker that sued the insurance company for repayment for the amount of money that he spent to self medicate using marijuana and the court agreed. The insurance company had to reimburse him. That’s landmark. Think about it for a minute. That’s landmark. They paid for his medical marijuana. Now, yes, it’s illegal federally but it’s legal in the state of New Mexico.

The insurance company came to me and said, “We have two ways to go. We either ignore it and just let Allen do it or we got to come out and then let him take the fall,” which, fine, “or we figure out protocols and figure out the best way to handle this for everybody because this is the future.” They’re way ahead of the game here. I really got to commend the insurance company because, and you sad it really very, very well. It’s not just one insurance company. We got insurance companies behind that. We have corporations behind that. We got company presidents. We have attorneys and everybody agreed on this, which still seems to amaze me. Again, it was out of luck, completely by accident.

TG Branfalt: What is it going to take to get more? These are worker’s comp insurance companies that you’re talking about. What’s it going to take to get your other insurance companies, your consumer insurance companies onboard? What’s it going to take?

Dr. Allen Miller: Boy, is this a great question and this is my pet peeve and this is what I found in, let’s call it the marijuana industry and then we’ll call it the medical industry. Here’s the biggest issue. The marijuana industry loves to talk about anecdotal evidence. It saved this, it reduced this tumor, it had this issue. I don’t mean to be trite by saying what I’m about to say but from speaking from my insurance executive consulting side is we don’t care. That is third on the list of the hierarchy of things that we want. First is we don’t want to hurt anybody and cause more pain. Secondly we don’t want a liability program. Thirdly, we want to save money. If it gets you better, that’s fourth, fifth on the list. No offense.

Coming to the argument, when I was originally looking at this and the marijuana industry was saying, “Oh, it does this. It helps me there. It does this,” really that was not the argument for me. How much money am I going to save? How does this work? What are the downsides? We’ll take the downsides. I just had an argument with somebody this the other day that brought a product to me and said, “Oh, it works 100% of the time.” It was on a completely different subject. Works 100% of the time. No, it doesn’t. Just give me the facts and the truth of what I can do and then we can put it into a language for the insurance company and that’s what they want to know. Is it, one, is it going to cause anybody harm? No. Nice thing about the natural part of this is it won’t. You can’t OD on it. You know everybody knows they can’t OD on it. It will do everything positive a body that it can do, provided it’s given all the tools.

TG Branfalt: You had mentioned the cost aspect of it. Is it cheaper than-

Dr. Allen Miller: Oh god, yes. I’ll tell you what. You have no idea the we pay in the industry for things and I’ll give you a great example. Our cost for opioids, let’s just say 30 Oxycontin is on average $450 a month for 30 pills.

TG Branfalt: Okay.

Dr. Allen Miller: Oh yeah, we just get raped and pillaged on this. It costs half the amount but here’s where the biggest savings comes. You have to remember that these things out there, the cocktail that was given to people, whether it was an industrial injury or it was just an injury period, you got four things. You got an antiinflammatory, you got an opioid, you had something to make you go poo-poo and then you got something that settled your stomach. All that’s great. We already know opioids stall the healing process. The antiinflammatories tore up the gut along with all the other things which caused leaky gut which made an inability for the person to even absorb the nutritional supplements that they were given in their food. Subsequently they had this chronic inflammation that went on forever. They couldn’t possible heal because it’s being inhibited to heal by the very drugs we’re giving them to make them feel better. Little ironic, huh?

TG Branfalt: Yeah and the things that you just described, you don’t need five pills with cannabis. You just need cannabis.

Dr. Allen Miller: Right! We were made to be, you know, I have an older rancher philosophy. Excuse me, I’ll slip on the cowboy boots because I am one. It’s there because it’s supposed to be there. Our body is made to take it. We have receptors for it. Whenever we do take it from a scientific standpoint, it makes the body work better. It’s one of those integral things in this massive chemicals like vitamin C and zinc and all the things that make us up, makes it work better. How? Not quite sure yet but it does and it’s natural. In its natural state, in fact 5,000 years ago, in recent times we have found a prehistoric man carrying it in its bags. It is the most complete food on the planet. You could actually eat this and live without anything else. Seriously. It has every nutritional thing that you could ever possibly eat. Prehistoric man, it’s not like he could go to Arby’s and get a brontosaurus burger if there was no food, okay? It’s not going to work.

Looking back and taking the simplest things, oh, that was a box lunch. He could live on that and he was able to hunt and gather and do all the things that they did. Our body is made to take it, just like vitamin C, zinc, everything else. Our body reacts positively to it. I guess my philosophy is why don’t we just get out of the way and let the natural stuff work and see what happens from there?

TG Branfalt: I want to talk to you a bit more about some of the barriers that exist in the traditional medical system, insurance companies, doctors, that whole thing but before we do that we got to take our last break. This is the Ganjapreneur.com podcast, I’m TG Branfalt.


At Ganjapreneur we have heard from dozens of cannabis business owners who have encountered the issue of cannabias 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 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 andwell-maintainedd 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 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 Doctor Allen Miller, owner of Doctors Cannabis Consulting. Before the break we were talking a bit about kind of the more, your work in the insurance companies to cover treatments throughout the US, in legal states I should say. What I want to ask you now is what do you think is the biggest barrier for skeptical doctors? Is it federal illegality or the lack of research? The same goes for insurers. What is that barrier?

Dr. Allen Miller: The barrier is this, is that the medical profession likes ease of use, likes consistency. Good or back, it likes consistency. We know if you take an opioid you get one every four hours. Everyone produces what’s called CP450. It’s an enzyme in the liver and what CP450 does is it breaks down and metabolizes any and all drugs that come into the body, whether it’s natural, unnatural, whatever. The body knows. Within that CP450 you have 100 different enzymes. Those enzymes, for me personally, it’s just like a fingerprint which means that yours are completely different than mine. You metabolize things completely different as does everybody on the planet. There’s no two that are similar or alike. That’s the biggest problems in this is that it reacts different to everybody else. Again, I go back to it’s a natural product so it fills the need and whatever the body needs. It gives the body really more autonomy, doesn’t it? It reacts more on the innate possibilities of the body to run itself and why are we getting in the way of that?

The medical profession loves consistency and they’re very focused and I’ll cite a great one. GW Pharmaceuticals just made a CBD synthetic that works on epilepsy. Great. It’s very focused to that symptom. Problem. Six kids died.

TG Branfalt: Wow.

Dr. Allen Miller: I know Tracy Rhine real well of CannaKids. She gave it to her kid. It reduced the tumors in the kid, her daughter Sophie and I can take those till the cows come home. Nobody died. The medical profession, it doesn’t fit the medical profession. That’s the problem with this. You’re trying to take a very round product and put it into a very square hole with a lot of regimentation. They don’t understand it. They want research because what they’re asking for is, “God, tell me how to use this. Tell me how I use it on this guy as opposed to this woman as opposed to this child.”

TG Branfalt: Your views obviously differ from traditional physicians. Do you think that as a practitioner of a more alternative medicine, that you are more open to using cannabis therapies?

Dr. Allen Miller: Oh, I’m open to anything that works. There’s equivalent to marijuana in Africa. I was over there for nine years. These plants are all over the world. This is not a new concept. Marijuana’s been around for, we can trace back almost 5,000, 6,000 years. The Arabs used to trade it and take it with them way back when. It’s a staple. It was just a staple like green beans and salad and all those other things. It was just part of the diet and we worked well with it. We got away from that about the turn of the century after the Civil War and when industrialization in the United States came in and we became pseudo sophisticated. As we became more sophisticated and relied on our doctors and science started to take off, I think the human population kind of let go of their responsibility to the body and gave it to the doctor, said, “Okay, tell me what I need,” because we’ve got all this fancy new tech coming out we call pharmaceuticals.

Now it’s interesting that we’re going back to the old ways and that’s what works best. We got so sophisticated we screwed ourselves up, in my opinion. In my opinion, it caused us to be fragile and now we’re going back to that and is this the silver bullet? I don’t think anything is but it’s obviously needed in the body because we have receptors for it and we know that it works. Somebody, whatever your religious persuasion is, something or somebody decided that we needed to have this. Who is it to anybody to take it away from us? Is my personal opinion, if our body is made to use it in a positive way. How could that possibly be bad?

TG Branfalt: Do you think that we will ever see cannabis as a mainstream therapy, as something that you go to your doctor, you don’t get a recommendation but you get-

Dr. Allen Miller: I hope not. I hope not.

TG Branfalt: You hope not? That’s interesting.

Dr. Allen Miller: No, I hope not and this is why. It has nothing to do with wanting to have the product. That’s immaterial. Let’s take that off the table for a minute because you know what my feelings are. The medical profession is based on synthetics. The pharmaceutical company only makes synthetics so it doesn’t sell natural products. It’s not this works. Again, round peg, square hole. You’re taking a natural product that now they’re going to have to synthesize, they’re going to have to add things to for symptom based focused attack on a problem. Therein lies the problem. The minute that you change a natural plant, natural anything and synthesize it, the body looks upon it as a toxin. It’s not the drug that’s the problem within pharmaceuticals. It’s the fillers that’ll kill you. It’s completely two different philosophies.

Do I think it’s become mainstream? Yeah and I don’t know if the MAs going to change on that. They’ve been around for a while but I think from a patient population base they’re going, “Look at the mothers that are treating their children.” I have to commend them. Look at the strength that they went through to take what was then an illegal drug and give it to their child, risking their literally safety on this. They could’ve gone to jail, a lot of different things. From a population base I think, oh yes, do I think it’s going to be mainstream? Yes, I do. We’re paying for it at the insurance company level so it is mainstream. Granted, we’re in the baby steps but there’s going to have to be a change somewhere in this medical market because it’s completely different and doesn’t fit their philosophy, you follow?

TG Branfalt: Absolutely.

Dr. Allen Miller: Does that explain it.

TG Branfalt: Yeah. What advice would you have for listeners who may want to broach the subject with an ailing family member, aunt, uncle, mother, father who, like you, grew up in that era of this is the evil weed, that sort of thing? What advice would you have for those people looking to help their family members with cannabis?

Dr. Allen Miller: You know, it just amazes me. I’m in the patient model and this just amazes me. I have cancer patients that won’t even consider it and they’re stage four, because of the stigma. They don’t want to look like, they call it, the doper. I find that fascinating. You’re not going to get stoned. I make a joke about my mother and I went through this with my mother with Alzheimer’s. I said, “You know, mom, you’re not going to be sitting on the freeway with a sign, ‘Will work for drugs.’ That’s not going to happen.” It’s really getting into it and having a doctor that says, “Yeah, it’s okay. Let’s try it in baby steps. Let’s see if you feel better. Nothing’s going to happen,” but that PR program that the government put on was extremely, extremely effective in scaring the living hell out of baby boomers.

The younger generation, the millennials are now growing up with their grandparents taking it, it’s normal so we’re not going to see those issues. This’ll, for lack of a better term, die off as we but the biggest thing is really it’s safe. Get them to somebody that’s experienced it. I think this is what I bring to the table and the people that I work with bring to the table is, yeah, we understand. You’re fine. I have a pretty good resume. You’re not going to go into the depths of despair and end upon, our worst area in town is called Skid Row. You’re not going to be on the streets. This is going to help you. This is no different than vitamin C or something other else that makes the body help and heal itself. It’s a tough conversation.

TG Branfalt: Would you mind telling me how you approached this with your own mother?

Dr. Allen Miller: Yeah. My mom has Alzheimer’s, dementia. She has COPD. She smoked for years so you can understand the damage and I went to my mom and I said, “This is what I’m doing and this is what I want you to take.” My mother and my dad are divorced so I think part of my mom’s drive to use this was to get back at my father because I think that was part of it. The other part was and I said, ‘Mom, this is going to work. It’s not going to hurt you, not going to make you … You’re going to feel better. Let’s see if it works.”

She tried it, she did. She became more clear of the body pain and what was most interesting that I saw right away is I said she has COPD which means that she had trouble pumping the air and blood through her lungs and her heart. It opened up the lungs and helped her breathe better and she’s on oxygen. It’s amazing to watch how fast her capillaries filled in her fingers. She has 99% capillary fill in her fingers. That’s amazing for somebody that’s 83 years old with COPD and that’s what this product did. She’s breathing better. She’s getting more tissues. Her brain is healing. The swelling is going down. We’re chasing symptoms and she’s feeling better and she’s able to be more functional.

She recently fell and had some compression fractures low back and killed the pain. I had her walking right away with it. It was really, “Yeah, I trust you, Allen, but … ” I’m still her son. I’m not anything other than her son, yeah the son with the doctor thing but I’m still her son. It was a tough conversation and it took a couple weeks but finally, and I was the example that I used. I said, “Mom, you knew how bad off I was and this is how I, I’m not on the streets so it worked,” and let’s just give it a shot. I can still speak I think articulately about an issue. By example, it made it easier but it was a tough call, tough.

TG Branfalt: That’s really incredible, Doctor Miller. We’re about running out of time but I really, really want to thank you for the opportunity to speak with you at length about the projects that you’re working on and the experience that you’ve had. I had had said before when we were in break, just how enlightening this was for me and I just want to reiterate that how fascinating this conversation has been and how, again, how illuminating your knowledge base is for me. I appreciate it so much.

Dr. Allen Miller: Oh, my pleasure and thank you so very much. I love talking about this but don’t underestimate where you play in this big information rush. Things like this, the fact that you’re going out and meeting people and getting people to talk about it like Jim and I and some of the other esteemed guests that you have, hopefully by example a lot of people will, and this was a great statement. I’ll segue with this. I was sitting on a panel with Brandon Lloyd, an NFL player, and he made the greatest statement of all time. He said, “I don’t know yet. I’m doing all the research. I don’t know if it’s right for me. I’m doing the research.” That’s all I want. Take a look at the research, talk to people like us, listen to people like you and make your decision. We’re all out there to help you and the part you play is instrumental. You are the conduit. You’re the core that bring everything together to change this and it is working. Look at the statistics you just cited. It’s working. It’s not as fast as we’d like but it’s working.

TG Branfalt: I really do appreciate that and before we go, could you tell people where they can find out more about you and what you’re doing?

Dr. Allen Miller: Sure. Right now, believe it or not, this happened so fast we’re putting up our website now. In fact, like I said, this is an exclusive to you. We’re just now coming out but my email address is, and please, welcome to email me on this but my email address is DR like in doctor, Allen, A-L-L-E-N M-I-L-L-E-R at Gmail.com and I’m on LinkedIn as Allen S Miller. Please, friend me, come on and I’d be more than happy. On Twitter on DRASMiller and I answer all the questions that you may have. I think it’s whatever I can do to help.

TG Branfalt: Brilliant. Thank you again, so much, for taking the opportunity to speak with us and your kind words. I appreciate it and we appreciate it at Ganjapreneur.

Dr. Allen Miller: Hey, Tim, you’re doing a great job and your questions are great and have allowed me to get the message out and thank you. Sincerely appreciate it. Hey, man. You help people. What better thing is there than that?

TG Branfalt: I really do do my best and I couldn’t do it without the great team that I have behind me so shout out to you guys, too.

Dr. Allen Miller: Thank you. Thank you. Nice meeting you. Any time you need me, give me a yell.

TG Branfalt: Absolutely. You can find more episodes of the Ganjapreneur.com podcast in the podcast section of Ganjapreneur.com in the Apple iTunes store. On 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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A large, trimmed cannabis nug lying sideways on a wooden surface.

Nevada Rec. Sales Reach $3M in Four Days

Cannabis sales in Nevada are already booming, as retail sales have exceeded $3 million during the first four days, according to a Las Vegas Sun report. That equates to nearly $500,000 in state tax revenue putting the state on track to achieve $30 million over the next six months of sales, the Nevada Dispensary Association estimates.

The tax rate for recreational cannabis sales in Nevada is 33 percent to 38 percent, depending on the municipality.

“We had a higher demand than everybody initially thought,” said dispensary association director Riana Durrett in the report. “It shows this market really exists.”

Nevada was one of four states to legalize adult-use cannabis during last November’s general election, and thanks to Early Start provisions by the Tax Department, the state is the first of the four to roll out the new regime.

California’s Bureau of Medical Marijuana Regulation Chief Lori Ajax, whose agency is responsible for devising regulations for the industry, said that she fully expects to meet the Jan. 1, 2018 deadline set forth by Proposition 64.

Lawmakers in Maine passed legislation in January to delay the rollout of the voter-approved program by three months, from January 2018 to April 2018. Despite the legislature-approved delay, other lawmakers have introduced legislation to allow early sales at currently licensed dispensaries. The personal possession and home-grow provisions included in the recreational law, however, were unaffected by the legislative action and took effect on Jan. 30.

Massachusetts lawmakers also passed legislation delaying the implementation of the voter-backed regime from January to July 2018, and have been crafting changes to the law ever since. As of June, at least 81 Massachusetts communities have considered or enacted bans on the industry, including moratoriums and zoning regulations to prevent cannabis business operations. However, portions of the law allowing adult cannabis possession and home-grows took effect Dec. 15.

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A DEA officer walking down a sidewalk next to where a raid has occurred.

DEA Doubles Down: CBD Illegal

The Cannabist has published a series of statements by the Drug Enforcement Agency that further muddy the waters of the legality of CBD products, claiming that the products are “being illegally produced and marketed” in violation of the federal Controlled Substances, and Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Acts.

“However, it is generally believed that the material is an extract of a variety of the marijuana plant that has a very high ratio of cannabidiol (CBD) to tetrahydrocannabinols (THC). Because this extract is a derivative of marijuana, it falls within the definition of marijuana under federal law,” the statement reads. “Accordingly, it is a Schedule I controlled substance under the CSA.”

The DEA contends that while the 2014 Federal Farm bill authorizes colleges, universities, and state Departments of Agriculture to cultivate industrial hemp, it “does not permit such entities, or anyone else, to produce non-FDA-approved drug products made from cannabis.”

“Thus, the CSA and FDCA restrictions mentioned above remain in effect with respect to the production of ‘Charlotte’s Web’/CBD oil for human consumption,” the statement says.

According to the statement, any individual or company producing or distributing CBD-based products must obtain approval from the DEA to do so and all CBD products must be obtained from an entity that holds a valid DEA authorization.

The statement takes aim at Charlotte’s Web specifically, claiming that because it “is reportedly being administered to pediatric research subjects, the potential dangers are even more pronounced.”

Last year, the DEA published a rule change creating a new Administration Controlled Substances Code Number for cannabis extracts. On its face, the move was not an enforcement action, and at that time the DEA reaffirmed its position that any substance derived from a cannabis plant that contains more than 0.3 percent THC is illegal; however in 2001, the DEA released a statement explicitly permitting the use of hemp-derived products that do not cause THC to enter the body. The FDA considers industrial hemp-sourced CBD to be a dietary supplement.

The DEA is currently embroiled in a lawsuit with the Hemp Industries Association, Centuria Natural Foods, and R.M.H. Holdings over the rule change. The plaintiffs contend that the rule change conflicts with the Farm Bill and actually moves hemp-derived CBD products into the definition of “marijuana extracts.”

The recent statements to the Cannabist appear to confirm the accusations in the lawsuit, which the DEA has denied in the court proceedings.

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