Ethan Nadelmann: How Drug Policy Shapes the Cannabis Industry

11/24/2015

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Ethan Nadelmann is the founder and executive director of the Drug Policy Alliance, the leading organization in the United States promoting alternatives to the failed “War on Drugs.” He is also serves as a drug policy advisor for several prominent philanthropists and elected officials, and is arguably one of the most influential voices contributing to the global conversation about cannabis legalization. Recently, Ethan joined our host Shango Los to discuss the current state of legalization, how people can contribute to effectively change laws at the federal level, how he balances ideal outcomes against the real challenge of getting a bill passed, and more!

Listen to the full podcast below, or scroll down for the transcript.

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Shango Los: Hi there, and welcome to the Ganjapreneur.com podcast. I’m your host Shango Los. The Ganjapreneur.com podcast gives us an opportunity to speak directly to entrepreneurs, cannabis growers, product developers and cannabis medicine researchers; all focused on making the most of cannabis normalization. As your host I do my best to bring you original cannabis industry ideas that will ignite your own entrepreneurial spark, and give you actionable information to improve your business strategy and improve your health, and the health of cannabis patients everywhere. Today, my guest is Ethan Nadelmann. Ethan Nadelmann is founder and Executive Director of the Drug Policy Alliance, the leading organization in the United States promoting alternatives to the war on drugs.

He received his BA, JD and PhD all from Harvard, and taught at Princeton University for seven years. He has authored two books on the internationalization of criminal law enforcement and has written extensively for academic policy and media publications. His many media appearances include the Colbert Report, the O’Reilly Factor and Real Time with Bill Maher. His TED Talk on ending the drug war has been viewed over a million times. Ethan plays a key role as Drug Policy Advisor to George Soros and other prominent philanthropists, as well as elected officials, ranging from mayors, governors and state and federal legislators in the United States, to presidents and cabinet ministers outside the US. Welcome Ethan, glad you could be in the show.

Ethan Nadelmann: It’s a pleasure, Shango.

Shango Los: Ethan, to start out, let’s get right where the heart of the matter, to the regular citizen, federal drug policy seems to have evolved behind the scenes somehow, being the result of smoke and mirrors, and deals that all happen before we even hear about what’s going on in the press. Do you think that there’s a role for an individual citizen to participate in drug policy at a federal level?

Ethan Nadelmann: Well, it depends what you mean by individual citizens. Individual citizens who’ve got a billion dollars to their name, have no problem participating in the process. When it comes to ordinary citizens who don’t have that kind of money, yes, there’s still a way to do it. I mean a lot of this just involves being highly knowledgeable about the issue and then being connected with the right networks or advocacy organizations so that you know when and where weighing-in will make that much more difference. For example, there’s about a quarter million people signed up on Drug Policy Alliance’s internet communications. What we do is let people know when a vote’s coming up and when they can contact their senator or their representative on a particular bill.

We’ll let people know how their representative voted, so that they can send him a follow-up, either to thank them or to criticize them. It’s things like that. Then of course there’s the things like just simply showing up at candidate forums, going to visit your legislator, if they’re accessible, things like calling up on talk radio; especially the ones that have contrary opinions, and offering an informed opinion. There’s always things if you’re an ordinary citizen, can do.

Shango Los: When comparing working at the federal level, versus working at the state level, we did a show recently with John Davis where we talked about going to actually sit down with your state representatives and voicing your opinion and doing so in an educated way. It sounds like doing that at the federal level, you almost need to be working within an advocacy group that acts as a force multiplier so that you can actually have some sort of impact in lieu of having a million dollars.

Ethan Nadelmann: Look, anybody can write or email or call their own member of Congress or Senator and get through that way. Anybody can drop by their representative’s office when they’re in DC, and at least talk with a staffer. If somebody has a personal relationship, or is one step removed from that Member of Congress, it always helps to use that contact, because obviously the Member of Congress is going to be that much more receptive if it comes from somebody they already know, or somebody who knows somebody they know. I’ll tell you something Shango, upcoming in a few weeks … I’m not sure if it will already happen by the time this runs, but November 18-21 in Washington, DC, is the Biennial International Drug Policy Reform Conference.

The day before that conference happens, we’re having Lobby Day, when hundreds of people who are coming to the conference will show up a day early, and then we’re arranging for them to go meet their Members of Congress, during the course of that day. That’s the sort of thing that can have a very significant impact.

Shango Los: I think it’s probably a good time for us to mention to folks too, that if they do choose to go visit their federal representatives, that they shouldn’t feel slighted, just because they’re talking to an aide, because more often than not, it’s the aides that are helping write the position papers and are coalescing the feedback; so just because you don’t speak to your specific representative, this can still be a win for whatever point you want to get across.

Ethan Nadelmann: Exactly, and it goes in there, one can always look on the website of Drug Policy Alliance or Marijuana Policy Project, or Americans for Safe Access, or NORML, and download the fact-sheets that are on our websites and use those to make sure that you have an informed opinion, and then also to give those to the staffers you’re meeting, if you actually succeed in getting a meeting with a Member of Congress, it helps to touch base with somebody at my organization. Drug Policy Alliance has the most robust lobbying operation on Capital Hill of any drug policy reform organization. We’re working in partnership with other groups. We’re very good at mobilizing state-based organizations, as well. The more coordination, typically the better.

Shango Los: The great majority of our listening audience are cannabis entrepreneurs themselves, and some of them have already established businesses, and some of them are even looking to start doing interstate commerce. Do you think that if we were to escalate my first question about being a common citizen trying to participate, let’s say instead, we’re talking about a business that’s already making money in legal marijuana and they want to ply their cash in a way that will move forward their own policy objectives. Do you think that the answer becomes any different? Do you think that it’s still ally yourself with a lobbying organization, or are there some strategies that an individual business owner with some money to spend, can do to help themselves?

Ethan Nadelmann: Shango, I say it’s a bit self-serving for me to say this, but by and large somebody who’s in the industry or wanting to get in the industry and wants to try to move, for example, federal legislation, the best way to do … Or state legislation, for that matter … Oftentimes the best way to do that, unless you have very strong and good contacts directing legislature, and even then, is to work with an advocacy organization like Drug Policy Alliance. I’ll give you one significant example. Last year, when we were working on the medical marijuana billing in New York, and we’d spent an enormous amount of resources, grassroots, grasstops mobilization, public media, behind the scenes, out front mobilizing the patient networks, meeting with almost every legislator in the state, meeting in the Governor’s office, you name it.

What we saw was a whole host of folks in the industry went out, started hiring lobbyists for five and ten and even more thousand dollars a month, and landed up as we heard, getting essentially nothing for their money. They were, basically thought, “This is the way to do it,” but it didn’t work. Meanwhile, the ones who brought it home and shaped what the legislation was, was Drug Policy Alliance. I see the same thing coming up right now with this issue of trying to change federal laws regarding the banking issue, so that folks in the industry can have access to legal banking. Once again, your best investment is to invest in Drug Policy Alliance.

I realize it sounds like a fund-raising pitch, but I think bottom line is it’s true. I should be very clear, DPA, Drug Policy Alliance, we do not lobby for the industry, but when our interests coincide with folks in the marijuana industry, which they do far more often than they don’t, the single best investment, dollar for dollar, is putting money into Drug Policy Alliance, so that we can step up our efforts on that front.

Shango Los: Given that, is there such a thing as shopping around for a lobbying organization? Obviously, people want to go with an organization that’s got proven records. How do you determine the best … choose a lobbying organization? Does the lobbying organization itself have its ideals and you just need to find one that falls with yours?

Ethan Nadelmann: It depends. Part of this is you can talk around … Look, there’s a range of organizations that we work with, with Marijuana Policy Project, the Americans for Safe Access; NORML; NCIA, the Industry Association; a range of others. One could just do your own due diligence to find out who’s doing what, or who has a reputation for being more or less successful. That’s one way to do it. The second thing is that if somebody’s looking to put any sort of real money into this … By real money, I mean, tens of thousands of dollars, or more … Then one would call the organization and say, “Look guys, here’s what I’m interested in. Here’s what affects my interest. What’s the work you’re doing on this, and what kind of work could you do with greater resources?” That’s the best way.

Shango Los: That’s great. Thanks, Ethan. We’re going to take a short break and be right back. You are listening to the Ganjapreneur.com podcast.

Welcome back, you are listening to the Ganjapreneur.com podcast. I am your host, Shango Los. Our guest this week is Drug Policy Alliance founder, Ethan Nadelmann. Ethan, everybody’s really excited about having normalization sweep across the country, and a lot of people talk, like, “Oh, will President Obama make the change and unschedule cannabis before his time is over?” What do you think the likelihood of it happening, either by congressional vote, or by the sweep of President Obama’s pen, before the end of his time in office?

Ethan Nadelmann: I think it’s scant. I think that by and large, President Obama has been much better than expected during his second term in office. During the first term, thank God, he did one very good thing … or two good things, which is basically to pull back on some of the federal enforcement on medical marijuana when he first came in. Then it bounced around for awhile, but he’s actually been pretty good in the second term. Simply giving that qualified green light to Colorado and Washington to implement their legalization initiatives and not getting in the way then, when Oregon and Alaska followed suit, and basically letting foreign governments know that they’re moving forward on marijuana decrim, or even legalization, no longer represents a challenge to US national security and political interests.

All of those have been, I think, quite good things. I think that the White House and the Justice Department have been quite good in that area, while we’ve seen a more problematic role played by the drug czar’s office and National Institute on Drug Abuse, and some of the other administrative agencies like that. I could see President Obama issuing an edict reducing marijuana scheduling from Schedule 1 to Schedule 2, but I’d be stunned if he were to use his power — and there’s disagreement about whether he actually has the power — to deschedule marijuana unilaterally.

That’s the subject of a bill which Senator Bernie Sanders introduced, I think, last week, or announced that he was going to introduce. My staff in Washington, DC, have worked closely with his staff in terms of designing that bill, but I would say that come election day or January 2017 when Obama leaves office and we have a new president and a new congress, I don’t think anything monumental is going to come out of Washington, between now and then. I think the 2016 election … Well, we’ll get to that in a minute … But that’s looking to shake up a lot, especially if most of those initiatives win then.

Shango Los: That’s the same place that I was going to go. It’s pretty astonishing to hear presidential candidates talking about cannabis at all. All the elections into my life, there may have been a mention of it by Reagan back in the day as far as the drug war goes, but to have presidential candidates actually talking about the possibilities of implementation, is really shocking. What do you think about the civil forfeiture aspect of it? We’re watching so many law enforcement agencies who have traditionally gotten paid by essentially taking possessions that were in the homes and businesses of folks that were in cannabis, and then selling that and using that to fund their organizations.

As cannabis becomes more normalized, this income is going away for these law enforcement organizations. Do you think that it’s more likely that these organizations will just shrink, or do you think that they will shift and find something new to enforce so that they can start getting asset forfeiture a different way?

Ethan Nadelmann: It’s hard to say. It’s an interesting issue you raised, Shango, because Drug Policy Alliance, we’ve been deeply involved in the issue of asset forfeiture forum. Back in the year 2000, we drafted and put on the ballot, in Oregon and Utah, two initiatives to reform asset forfeiture laws, basically to say that people could not have their properties seized and kept by the state unless they’d been criminally convicted. The second, was to say that when property was legally seized that the money had to go, not to cops and prosecutors departments, but go to the general treasury. We won both those initiatives by two to one margins, back in 2000.

Then they were somewhat gutted by the law enforcement lobby thereafter. We’ve once again reengaged on this issue in a big way … It’s got a lot of traction. We had a major victory in New Mexico earlier this year, almost eliminating civil asset forfeiture. I think that the cops are basically going to have to find new ways to fund their operations. I think that it’s not going to result in any massive layoffs. I think that this money represents an important source of revenue for some police departments. It’s coming not just from marijuana seizure, or for cash related to marijuana and property, but other stuff. I think it’s a variable. I don’t think it’s a dominant variable in the whole debate.

Shango Los: You’ve spent a lot of time consulting with all sorts of different folks, whether they be in the legislature, or philanthropists, or corporate sponsors of bills. What role do you see, have cannabis money playing a role in this upcoming presidential election? It’s certainly playing a big role as far as soundbites go, and getting the base excited, but to what degree is there cannabis money involved at this point?

Ethan Nadelmann: It really depends, Shango. The place you’re really seeing it is at the level of the states, and it’s the ballot initiatives in the legislation. You and I are talking on November 2nd, the day before Election Day, 2015. We’re all waiting to see what happens in Ohio, where there’s a ballot initiative that would legalize marijuana. If it wins, there’s a counter-initiative that would negate the legalization. It’s an initiative which is very good in a lot of respects … Which my organization helped draft … But which unfortunately includes one offensive provision; which is a provision that says, “Only the 10 investors in the ballot initiative, or the technically the properties they own, will be allowed to produce marijuana commercially, in perpetuity.”

This is the first case in Ohio where we’re seeing a ballot initiative that’s almost entirely funded by people within the industry driven primarily by their interests in making a profit, and most of whom don’t care all that much about the broader principles. You jump forward to 2016, when you’re going to have marijuana legalization on the ballot, in California and Nevada, Arizona, Maine, Massachusetts, maybe Michigan. You’re going to have medical marijuana on the ballot probably in Florida, Missouri, maybe Arkansas, and for all I know, a couple of others could pop up between now and then. 2016 is looking to be sort of the year, the marijuana year, the presidential election year where marijuana really hits it big.

If you look around the country, you’ll see that in California, there’s some money coming to the table from the industry and it’s going to be in the millions of dollars. You’ll see in Arizona, the marijuana industry playing a significant role. In Maine right now, we just were involved in getting two groups, one backed by Marijuana Policy Project, one involving local activists, to develop a unity campaign, so we didn’t have two initiatives there. What I would say, is that 2016 will probably be the last election year when marijuana initiatives were driven primarily by people who are interested in this for reasons of civil rights and civil liberties, and not primarily by their interest in making a profit.

Come 2018 and beyond, I think that the profit seekers are going to play more and more of the dominant role. The upside of that is that when it comes to putting a nail in the coffin of marijuana prohibition nationally, it means that people interested in this primarily so they can make a buck, are going to end up producing a very positive social consequence.

Shango Los: It’s really interesting to listen to the national news to see some traditional pro-cannabis activists actually coming out against the Ohio law because it is so closed off to these 10 producers. It’s very common to read these blog articles, like, “You know, I’m pro-cannabis, but this setup is not going to work,” and to hear people talking against it. How are you seeing that play out at the federal level, where people want to move normalization forward, but at the same time, there’s some really serious questions in Ohio about the framework that they’re using?

Ethan Nadelmann: I’ll tell you something, first of all Shango, I’d say people who want to get a read on this thing should read the op-ed piece I published on CNN.com a few days go. Just pop my name, Ethan Nadelmann and CNN.com and you’ll find it. I kind of lay out the pros and cons of the Ohio situation and why I’m sort of rooting for the thing to win, even though I don’t like this provision in there, and also why I think we’re not going to see a lot of states imitating that oligopoly model. Quite frankly, the people who are upset by it, are not just the traditional grassroots activists in Ohio, it’s also people in the industry.

Everybody in the industry likes to get a leg up by getting a government preference of one sort or another, but the notion of going to the point of actually writing into the State Constitution, that only the 10 investors will have the right to produce marijuana wholesale, in perpetuity, I think most folks in the industry see that it as simple overreach, and in some respects, almost un-American. I don’t think that issue is going to play out that much in Washington, DC, Capitol Hill, right now. I think there what people are looking at is, “What’s the way to allow states to experiment with their own regulatory models?”

We’re now in a time when even the Republican candidates who are open to this are saying, “Look, I’m not opposed to legalization, as a state’s right’s issue,” even if they still say they’re opposed to it on grounds of principle, or broader policy.

Shango Los: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. When you were saying that, the phrase that kept on being in my head was, “What’s going on in Ohio seems Un-American,” and there you were, you took the words right out of my mouth. We’re going to take another short break, and be right back. You are listening to the Ganjapreneur.com podcast.

 

Welcome back. You are listening to the Ganjapreneur.com podcast. I am your host, Shango Los. Our guest this week is Drug Policy Alliance founder, Ethan Nadelmann. Ethan, here on Vashon Island where I live, we experienced a great deal of rural economic development during medical marijuana. We’ve had over 15 years of small mom and pop producers being able to produce a high quality, low pesticide product and move it into the dispensary market where it was then sold to patients. Now, with the passing of I-502 in our state, over the next year, all of those medical dispensaries are being phased out, the producers are going away, and the trade organization that I started here on Vashon Island, we’ve gone from 156 growers to 5 growers, and those are the 5 that have got licenses on our island.

All those other people, those are real families. The money from the sale of the medical marijuana was going to pay for kid’s field trips, and the vacation, and getting caught up on back house taxes; all of these things. Do you see there being any chance with the changes at the federal level to start to include those type of artisan simple,  family growers again, or do you think the writing’s on the wall, that heavy capitalized interests are going to take over, like they did with liquor?

Ethan Nadelmann: Oh gosh, Shango it’s a great question, and I have to say, it’s the most bittersweet aspect of the advocacy I’ve been involved in, for decades now. On the one hand, we always knew that when you get to the point of full legalization of marijuana, it was going to involve something that was going to look like the alcohol, or tobacco or consumer goods companies, with major players ultimately dominating. We live in America; it’s a society of dynamic capitalist culture. It’s very hard to write in protections for the smaller growers into all of this.

Now of course we’re dealing with that reality, and especially you guys in Washington State are dealing with that reality. I don’t know much as we can do about it. That said, my organization is morally committed to doing whatever we can. What we’ve tried to do is to try to, when we have influence over the drafting of initiatives, to write in some provisions that at least lower the barriers to entry, that allow small growers to have a chance to compete, and also trying to write into these initiatives that people, whoever suffered a felony conviction because of their involvement in the marijuana industry, will not be excluded.

Those are the small things we can do. The toughest part about this in a way, is that if you think about it, there’s a coincidence of interest between the biggest players in the industry, who have the money, mostly to get their way, and the people in government who are going to be charged with regulating the new industry. From their perspective, it’s easier to regulate a small number of large entities than a large number of small entities. The third factor which makes it difficult, is that the swing voter, the voter who’s ambivalent about legalizing marijuana and who you need to persuade in order to win legalization, the swing voter will vote to legalize to the extent they see this as being about control, and about regulation.

Once again, that’s a group that’s going to prefer big over small. I’m very clear that I’d much rather see the marijuana industry evolve like a microbrewery industry or the vineyard industry. I tend to incline ideologically, as does most of Drug Policy Alliance, towards a “small is beautiful” model. We’re looking for those opportunities, but I have to say, I’m not in a position to make any commitments to anybody on this stuff, for the simple reason that I understand enough about the dynamic nature of capitalism in America.

Shango Los: While you’ve got your crystal ball out there, Ethan, what do you think is going to happen with these folks all across the country who have been set up and learned their business as medical marijuana producers, and then state by state, they are not going to be allowed to participate anymore, and thus they will more than likely either shut down or divert to the black market. Do you think that we’re going to see the DEA enforcing against folks at the local level, or do you think they’re going to keep their hands off, and any kind of an enforcement is going to be local county sheriffs?

Ethan Nadelmann: I think the DEA is going to focus primarily on the bigger players operating outside of state law. I think the DEA is probably going to be inclined to collaborate with local law enforcement in terms of people operating without a license. Now, I also think that California, I’m hoping California will offer a model that will be more attuned to the sorts of things that you and I are talking about than we’ve seen in Washington State and some other states. The other thing I would say, Shango, is I look at the history of alcohol, post-alcohol prohibition. After alcohol prohibition was repealed, tons of people who were involved in the industry, like the medical marijuana providers, growers are today, they tried to stay in, they tried to compete.

Depending upon some places in America, they kept a hand in selling alcohol illegally for a decade or two decades. Ultimately, I think many of them were pushed out, because consumers, it was easier and simpler for them to go to a licensed outlet, rather than buy from the neighbor who is making the home brew in the backyard. Then I think there’ll be a phase, once people have relaxed about these hyper controls, over supply. I think we’ll begin to see the reemergence of the small growers down the road, like we’re seeing the microbreweries and the micro-distilleries, and things like that. That’s my guess about the way it evolves, but I’m no expert in this industry, so I can’t say for sure.

Shango Los: Right on! Thank you for that, Ethan. Believe it or not, that’s all the time we have for today. Thanks for being on the show, Ethan. I’m really glad that you were able to offer us some time, especially the day before they vote in Ohio.

Ethan Nadelmann: Thank you very much, Shango, and good luck with everything on Vashon Island, and also in Washington State.

Shango Los: Thank you. Ethan Nadelmann is founder of the Drug Policy Alliance. You can find out more at DrugPolicy.org. You can find more episodes of Ganjapreneur podcasts in the podcast section at Ganjapreneur.com. You can also find us on the Cannabis Radio Network website and in the Apple iTunes Store. On the Ganjapreneur.com website, you will find the latest in cannabis news, product reviews and cannabis jobs updated daily, along with transcriptions of this podcast. You can also download the Ganjapreneur.com app in iTunes and Google Play. We’re also thrilled to announce that you can now find this show on the iHeartRadio Network app, bringing Ganjapreneur to 60-million mobile devices. Thanks, as always, to Brasco for producing our show. I am your host, Shango Los.

Photo Credits: Gabriel de Paiva (portrait) and Gage Skidmore (event photo)

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Vancouver, B.C. Police Apologize for Mistaken Warnings Over ‘Shatter’

11/24/2015

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Vancouver police found themselves backpedaling after they published a series of tweets regarding the horrors of “shatter,” a concentrated form of marijuana. The B.C. force appears not to have been aware that shatter, also known as “wax” or “dabs,” wasn’t a drug other than cannabis.

One tweet read:

“Parents!!!! Please educate your children on the dangers of ‘Shatter’. We cannot lose any more young people to senseless overdoses.”

Another, with an attached photo, claimed that shatter “can cause temporary psychosis. Looks like toffee. This was seized in a traffic stop tonight. BEWARE.”

Fortunately, the police released another tweet noting that they were mistaken:

“While well-intentioned, our tweets about #Shatter weren’t accurate & have been deleted. Our apologies. We will do better in future.”

Police in Illinois also recently (and mistakenly) warned that shatter could cause “hallucinations and other types of psychosis.”

Perry Kendall, a B.C. health official, noted that while it “could make you very stoned,” there’s no evidence that you could die from an overdose.

Some note, however, that the production process, if done in a home setting, can lead to explosions. Speaking with VICE News, Kevin Fisher, a Colorado dispensary owner, said that “if you do it in industrial setting, you can do it perfectly safely. It’s about moving it from the black market to the regulated white market to do it.”

Source:

http://www.vice.com/read/vancouver-police-had-to-apologize-after-freaking-out-over-shatter?utm_source=vicetwitterus

Photo Credit: Jay Siggers

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Sarah Palin Says Legalizing Cannabis Is “No Big Deal”

11/24/2015

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In an interview she gave on the conservative Hugh Hewitt talk show last week, Sarah Palin had a moment of clarity, stating that marijuana legalization is “no big deal.”

The former Republican vice-presidential candidate and ex-governor of Alaska stated:  “I look on the national scene and think, wow, of all things to be fighting over and battling over, especially when it comes to medical marijuana. I think, hmm, this is just not my baby.”

Hewitt, without any apparent evidence to back up his claim, stated that he resides in Colorado, “where marijuana is now legal, and it’s impacting the state dramatically and terribly.” He asked Palin what Alaskans were thinking when they legalized cannabis, to which Palin replied:

“We’ve got that Libertarian streak in us, and I grew up in Alaska when pot was legal anyway, it was absolutely no big deal… when it comes to picking our battles, for many of us, legalization of marijuana just was never really a bright blip on the radar screen so it didn’t surprise me when the voters of Alaska went back to legalizing it.”

Sources:

http://www.marijuana.com/blog/news/2015/11/sarah-palin-agrees-marijuana-legalization-is-no-big-deal/

http://www.hughhewitt.com/sarah-palin-new-book-sweet-dreams/

Photo Credit: Gage Skidmore

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Awaken America Hosts Medical Cannabis Conference in Sacramento

11/23/2015

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On Saturday, Nov. 21 Awaken America presented a conference in Sacramento focused on cannabis therapy for seniors, cancer patients and their caregivers. 420 Insight and Mindful Cannabis Consulting organized the event as a place for experts in the field to share information and resources about cannabis and its medical uses.

By keeping the focus on a specific medical concern or population, Awaken America’s targeted workshops are able to go into more depth than is possible at larger conferences. Forums and workshops in Sacramento were presented throughout the day. The question and answer sessions drew engaged audience participation and open networking sessions were also scheduled.

Ashley Woodbury of Mindful Cannabis Consulting orated the event. With an emphasis on education, one of the inspiring speakers included Dr. Jonathan Cachat of Conscious Cannabis Ventures, who presented an overview of the history of cannabis prohibition. Dr. Mollie Fry, who was arrested along with her husband in 2001 for growing cannabis, spoke about of her life’s work advocating for cannabis and its important role in the medical field.

strictlytopicalleslie

Local sponsors demonstrated the wide range of cannabis therapies available for seniors and cancer patients. Dutch Farms Organics creates a wide selection of unique tinctures individually crafted to address a wide range of ailments from insomnia to indigestion. They also offer high quality balms and edibles. Strictly Topical’s Sweet ReLeaf body butter is a creamy blend of cannabis trichome-infused oils and butters. Local collectives and consulting services were also represented.

Dr. Emily Earlenbaugh of Mindful Cannabis Consulting said, “It was great collaborating with 420 Insight on Awaken America. We were excited to support the Awaken America cause because cannabis education is incredibly important; and 420 Insight shares our passion for it. Cannabis can make a life-saving difference in so many cases, but many don’t realize this.”

Recordings of some of the sessions will be available on the 420 Insight website.

Photos: Dutch Farms Organics produces tinctures, balms and edibles. Didi Davis of Strictly Topical says their company is exclusively for cannabis-based skin care products.

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Cannabis Genetic Patents are Coming Soon, Expert Warns in Ganjapreneur Podcast

11/23/2015

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In a recent podcast episode for Ganjapreneur.com, Reggie Gaudino recently joined show host Shango Los for an interview to discuss the science and politics behind cannabis breeding, the realities of patenting cannabis strains, and how “Big Marijuana” is going to change the landscape of cannabis business when Federal law changes. Reggie Gaudino is Vice President of Scientific Operations and Director of Intellectual Property at Steep Hill, a California-based laboratory that has arguably set the standard for quality cannabis testing services.

According to Reggie, cannabis patents are not only on the horizon, but they’re actually closer than most people would imagine. He predicts that the moment cannabis shifts away from its current Schedule 1 restrictions, major corporations like Monsanto and Dow Agrosciences are going to step in and attempt to overtake the market.

“The message that Steep Hill is trying to get out is… if you’re a breeder, the best thing that you can be doing right now is breeding your butt off,” Reggie said. “The only thing left then is to put your stake in the ground and to really protect your strains so that when everything that’s on the shelves now becomes open source, you have something better to offer the community.”

The full podcast episode is available via iTunes and at Ganjapreneur.com, where there are also full transcripts of this and previous episodes.

About Ganjapreneur:

Ganjapreneur launched in July 2014 and has since established a significant presence in the cannabis business world. The website regularly publishes interviews and commentary from leading minds in the industry, and has also launched a B2B business directory, a live feed of job listings from marijuana job boards, a domain name marketplace for start-ups and venture capital firms, and a mobile app for Apple and Android devices.

Source:

http://www.prweb.com/releases/2015/11/prweb13084859.htm

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Alaska Regulators Are First to Allow Method of Public Cannabis Consumption

11/23/2015

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People 21 and older in Alaska will be allowed to consume cannabis on the premises of certain stores that will sell it, according to a ruling made Friday by the board tasked with writing rules for the state’s recreational marijuana industry, the Associated Press reports.

The Marijuana Control Board voted 3-2 in favor of such a move, making Alaska the first state to both legalize marijuana and include a legal method of public, social consumption.

“This would put, I think, Alaska in the forefront on this issue,” said Chris Lindsey of the Marijuana Policy Project.

Alaska’s cannabis regulations are expected to be finalized soon, and the state is set to begin accepting applications for marijuana business licenses sometime in February. The first licenses are expected to be awarded in May.

Source:

http://www.usnews.com/news/us/articles/2015/11/20/alaska-regulators-are-1st-to-ok-marijuana-use-at-pot-shops

Photo Credit: Richard Martin

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Why Do Some Cannabis Plants Turn Purple?

11/23/2015

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If you’ve ever wondered what causes some cannabis strains to turn purple as they mature, you’re not alone. Writers from the Cannabis Genomic Research Initiative recently explained the issue in detail. Ultimately, there is a lot more to it than the simple “nature vs. nurture” argument people will often fall back on:

  • Physical traits in most plants are a result of both nurture and nature.
  • Most cannabis plants are green, not purple. Purple qualities are passed genetically from parents to offspring.
  • Some strains have the potential to turn purple, but must be grown under specific conditions to do so.
  • More research into cannabis genomics would allow growers to emphasize other genetic qualities, such as an earlier flowering stage.

To read the full story from the Cannabis Genomics Research Initiative, click here.

Photo Credit: Insanity Strains

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Cannabis Legalization Becomes Mainstream Topic in New Jersey

11/20/2015

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When news outlets discuss which East Coast state will be the first to legalize recreational marijuana, most reports suggest Maine or Massachusetts as the likely East Coast cannabis pioneers. One often overlooked — but not altogether unlikely — option is New Jersey, the small Mid-Atlantic state whose governor has been vocally opposed to legalization efforts since he took office.

In November, the discussion of a bill that would legalize, tax, and regulate recreational marijuana use in New Jersey gained mainstream traction. In a hearing before the state senate’s judiciary committee, Committee chairman Nicholas Scutari, the bill’s sponsor, opened the floor to legalization proponents.

“It is time to update our archaic drug laws to finally address the detrimental effect they’re having on our residents’ lives,” he said during the hearing. Scutari, a local prosecutor, went on to suggest that recreational marijuana could bring $1 billion or more to the state through tax revenue.

Speakers at the hearing included J.H. Barr, president of the New Jersey Municipal Prosecutor’s Association, Richard Smith, president of the New Jersey NAACP, Udi Ofer, executive director of the ACLU in New Jersey, and Dr. David Nathan, a psychiatrist from Robert Wood Johnson Medical School.

State senate president Stephen Sweeney said he is open to examining such a bill, but did not explicitly state whether he is in favor of passing it, stressing the importance of examining relevant data before making this type of crucial decision.

But a hearing of all the potential benefits that legalization could bring does not mean it’s on its way for the Garden State – at least not yet. No immediate action was taken on the bill. Critics were quick to point out that Scutari failed to invite opponents to the discussion. Opponents are scheduled to state their concerns to the state senate at a later date.

Right now, the biggest obstacle for marijuana legalization in New Jersey is Governor Chris Christie, who has been vocally opposed to it throughout his years in office. Despite signing New Jersey’s medical marijuana program into law in 2010 and recently signed a bill that allows students who use medical marijuana to take their medicine in school, he continues to hold the position that marijuana is a gateway drug and legalizing it would be harmful to the state’s children. In a recent visit to Colorado while campaigning for the 2016 Republican presidential ticket, he stated that if elected, he will enforce federal prohibition laws even in states where recreational cannabis use is legal.

But Scutari is not giving up on his goal of bringing cannabis legalization to New Jersey within the next few years. “I think we need to change the entire ballgame and legalize it, regulate and tax it, so we can ensure the safety of our citizens as well as garner the tax benefit,” he said shortly after the hearing.

Photo Credit: docmonstereyes

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Denver Orders Social Media Alerts by Retail Cannabis Stores During Product Recalls

11/20/2015

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Denver health officials are requiring marijuana companies that have been forced to recall products to alert consumers of the recall via social media.

The city has seen nine recalls of marijuana products so far for the use of banned pesticides. Health officials are concerned that many consumers are not aware of the recalls; only three companies affected have contacted customers directly.

The other companies relied on the Department of Environmental Health press release, which is difficult to locate on the city’s website (officials say they plan to make it easier to find).

Lisa Boliva, of the watchdog group the Cannabis Consumers Coalition, stated:

“This is public safety. We need to be looking out for consumers’ best interests. It strikes me as irresponsible and greedy. When the government issues press releases, it does not reach everybody. A company posting about its recall on social media would ensure consumer confidence.”

Businesses contacted by the Denver Post noted that few to no consumers have returned products affected by the recall.

“Consumers brought none of it back,” said Larry Nassau of TruCannabis. “We had some calls from folks, but most times it was already consumed, or they just weren’t particularly interested in bringing it back.”

Source:

http://www.thecannabist.co/2015/11/20/denver-requires-social-media-announcements-pot-pesticide-recalls/44161/

Photo Credit: Dank Depot

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Michigan Law Enforcement Spends Medical Cannabis Funds on New Trucks, Toys, and Clothes

11/19/2015

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Though much of the money collected via the Michigan Medical Marihuana has remained untouched by Michigan law enforcement, a recent report from The Compassionate Chronicles has shed light on an alarming misallocation of medical cannabis funds.

The Michigan Medical Marihuana Fund is a collection of the fees charged patients and caregivers for their enrollment in the program. The Fund has been gathering resources since 2009, the year after voters passed legislation to establish the state medical cannabis program. The money was originally meant for local law enforcement’s “operation and oversight of the Michigan medical marihuana program… operation and oversight grants are for education, communication and enforcement of the Michigan medical marihuana act…”

It appears — according to a state report released in September — that of the $3 million made available to Michigan law enforcement from the state’s Medical Marihuana Fund, only $167, 038 was handed out to police, and only $116,090 was actually spent. Only four county agencies actually applied for the money, and all of the grants were approved.

But where was the money actually spent? Significant portions went to paying officer salaries, as well purchasing as new trucks, trailers, iPads, tasers, and various clothing (including formal wear for presenting to the public and also more rugged, raid-worthy outfits). Only one of the four police agencies in question actually took the time to attend educational classes about medical cannabis.

Source:

http://thecompassionchronicles.com/2015/11/17/cops-use-pot-money-to-buy-i-pads-truck-shirts/

Photo Credit: Nick Allen

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Bizarre South Dakota Law Casts Doubt Over Tribe’s Plan for a Cannabis Resort

11/19/2015

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A strange South Dakota law is drawing renewed attention this year amidst confusion over how Native tribes can grow and distribute cannabis. Passed in 2001, the South Dakota law prohibits the “internal and physical possession, distribution, and manufacture of marijuana” by all non-Natives within the state, with exceptions for Natives consuming on tribal land.

The law was challenged and brought to the Supreme Court back in 2004, when police stopped a man in traffic, found him in possession of a scale, and pressured him into consenting to a urine test. He failed the test and was slapped with a criminal charge for internal possession.

The court has traditionally held that once a substance is consumed, it no longer falls under the realm of “possession.” But the South Dakota legislature explicitly amended the law with a new definition of a controlled substance to make prosecuting for internal possession possible.

In the face of all precedents to the contrary, the Supreme Court upheld the lower court’s judgment. To clarify the law, Justice Steven L. Zintner wrote, “Possession may now occur if a person knowingly possesses an altered state of a drug or substance absorbed into the human body.”

According to the ruling, you could get slapped with a possession charge just for having enough marijuana left in your system to fail a urine test.

But that was 2004. Now, this bizarre law returned to the forefront when South Dakota’s Flandreau Sandee Sioux Tribe embarked on its first pot-growing venture in June — despite warnings from Republican state Attorney General Marty Jackley about the potential consequences of the internal possession law. Specifically, he warned non-Natives who might go onto tribal land and consume marijuana that having marijuana in your system, anywhere within the state of South Dakota, was illegal.

The law goes on to say: “The violation … exists in either the jurisdiction in which the substance was ingested, inhaled, or otherwise taken into the body, or the jurisdiction in which the substance was detected in the body of the accused.” Essentially, law enforcement can choose the jurisdiction under which to prosecute you: where you ingested the marijuana, or where it was detected. And if it’s detected within the state of South Dakota? Congratulations, you’re now a criminal.

However, the potential ramifications of the law extend far beyond cannabis growing and distribution operations on Native land. If someone consumes marijuana legally in another state — recreationally in states like Oregon, Washington, and Colorado, or medicinally in states like Nevada or Minnesota — that person could, theoretically, get slapped with a Class 1 misdemeanor just for crossing state lines with trace amounts of marijuana in their system, even if it was prescribed by a doctor.

South Dakota law enforcement is fully embracing its duty to police the internal possession law. Though officers can’t force someone to submit to a drug test, they can request one once they have probable cause. And while legally police need voluntary consent in order to extract a urinalysis, South Dakota law enforcement is not above threatening and intimidating detainees to get one.

In 2003, Dave Johnson of Huron, South Dakota was arrested for possessing paraphernalia in the form of a small pipe. He was then coerced into taking a urine test, which he failed, and was hit with an additional charge for internal possession.

“The cops took me downtown and said if I didn’t piss for them, they’d … take it by force,” Johnson said. “They were going to take it forcefully — that’s what they told me. So I said okay.”

But attorney Don Covey warns citizens not to consent anyway. “You make them get their warrant. Maybe they won’t get it, or maybe by the time they do get it, the substance is metabolized.”

The advice to stand your ground against police demands was reiterated by Johnson’s attorney, Ron Volesky. “If you refuse to consent and they get a court order and take a sample against your will, you can challenge it. You can file a motion to suppress the evidence for lack of probable cause.”

Source:

http://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle/2015/nov/11/south_dakota_law_can_get_you_bus

Photo Credit: Leslie J. Clary

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Colorado and Washington State Urge Caution When Considering a Marijuana Investment

11/19/2015

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The Colorado Division of Securities has issued an investment advisory for three industries: marijuana business, digital currency and ‘binary options,’ a type of stock trade that securities commissioner Gerald Rome said is “closer to gambling” than it is to investing.

In a statement, Rome said: “Marijuana investment opportunities could be particularly susceptible to scams, such as ‘pump-and-dump,’ in which promoters use misinformation to pressure investors to get in on the ‘ground floor’ thereby inflating the company’s share prices before being sold by the promoters.”

“Before you consider investing, make sure you understand what these products are, their benefits, and their risks.”

Both Colorado and Washington State released warnings using the same language. Below are the four key points from the section regarding marijuana investments:

  • The emerging marijuana market is highly volatile and only semi-legitimate because regulations for medical and recreational use vary greatly between states and jurisdictions. For this reason, the secondary market for these kinds of investments is limited and investors may have difficulty recouping their money. In some cases, the business may be forced to cease operations by law enforcement, leaving investors with no recourse to recover their funds.

  • The standard information investors use to make informed financial decisions is limited for many marijuana investments. For example, since this is an emerging market there would be no specific data on historical trends, making all forecasted profits extremely speculative.

  • Due to marijuana’s questionable legal status, there are limited traditional financial avenues for day-to-day and necessary business operational transactions. For example, most banks refuse to open business accounts for these companies, forcing them to transact on a cash-only basis with suppliers and other service providers.

  • Marijuana investment opportunities could be particularly susceptible to scams, such as “pump-and-dump,” which use misinformation to pressure investors to get in on the “ground floor” thereby pumping up the company’s share prices.

Sources:

http://www.westword.com/news/why-colorado-is-warning-people-against-investing-in-marijuana-7350304

http://www.dailycamera.com/boulder-business/ci_29107485/colorado-division-securities-investors-should-be-wary-next

Photo Credit: matchfitskills

 

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New Report Highlights States Most Likely to Legalize Cannabis by 2017

11/18/2015

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A new report spotlights the U.S. states that are the most and least likely to legalize cannabis by 2017. The 270-page report by the Anderson Economic Group was published to estimate future market demand for legal marijuana.

Anderson CEO Patrick L. Anderson stated that “American opinions about marijuana are changing and it’s time that voters and investors have a sober and realistic look at the potential market for these products in each state.”

The report cites Arizona, Maine, Michigan, Missouri, Nevada, Rhode Island and Vermont as the most likely candidates to legalize marijuana in the next couple of years. On the flip side, it highlights Arkansas, Idaho, Indiana, North Dakota, Texas and West Virginia as the least likely to legalize pot.

“This was no small task, but we believe our state-by-state approach provides readers with the best picture of the market for state-sanctioned cannabis products in the United States,” said Jeff Johnson of Supported Intelligence, an analytics firm that contributed to the report.

Source:

http://www.thecannabist.co/2015/11/17/legalize-pot-states-most-least-likely/43986/

Photo Credit: Tony Webster

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Jonah Tacoma: Spectacle Marketing and Cannabis

11/17/2015

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If the cannabis industry has produced any rock stars, Jonah Tacoma is one of them. Jonah is the founder of Dabstars, a marketing and lifestyle brand born of the social media age. Since its inception, Dabstars has grown into a cannabis entertainment and digital media powerhouse.

The company recently gained particular notoriety for their video “Drive Through Dabbing” in which Jonah recorded a video of himself paying for fast food with dabs. The video went viral internationally and has been seen millions of times, inciting criticism from all corners of the world as well as from within the cannabis community itself. Jonah recently joined our host Shango Los to talk about the video, how Dabstars got started, how he has utilized social media to amass an audience of millions, and how he selects and approaches the clients he wants to represent in the industry.

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Shango Los: Hi there and welcome to the Ganjapreneur.com podcast. I am your host Shango Los. The Ganjapreneur.com podcast gives us an opportunity to speak directly to entrepreneurs, cannabis growers, product developers, and cannabis medicine researchers, all focused on making the most of cannabis normalization. As your host I do my best to bring you original cannabis industry ideas that will ignite your own entrepreneurial spark and give you actionable information to improve your business strategy and improve your health and the health of cannabis patients everywhere.

Today my guest is Jonah Tacoma. Jonah Tacoma is founder of cannabis marketing and lifestyle brand Dabstars. Appealing originally to dabbers all over the world and reaching almost 1.5 million Facebook followers Dabstars has now expanded into cannabis retail, podcasting, and other new ventures. Jonah’s bombastic approach to hype and spectacle marketing makes him truly a cannabis rock star. Welcome Jonah. Glad you could be on the show.

Jonah Tacoma: Thanks for having us.

Shango Los: Jonah, let’s start by getting a handle on what exactly Dabstars is. What was your original intention for starting Dabstars and what has it evolved into now?

Jonah Tacoma: That’s exactly what it has been, is kind of an evolution, because what we saw was that people were developing kind of a fame within the cannabis industry and we had jokingly labelled it cannafamous. We had gone out and we had … The Dabstars was originally just a little sticker that people would hold up and we would take a picture. We would do a small baseball card style biography about why they were cool and what they were doing in cannabis. That concept took off. When we started reaching tens of thousands of people we realized that we needed to monetize and this is something that we really wanted to make into a business.

Shango Los: Actually those cards sound like a lot of fun. Did you actually print them or was it primary social media so they were graphics that were put out?

Jonah Tacoma: We were born on Facebook. This is something that we started as a Facebook page. I have a created a small .com behind it just because I felt like everything needed a web page, we were coming out of the .com bubble, and it took off from there. Social media really opened up a market for us. When we saw what was there and we saw the reaction that people had we were able to develop into something bigger.

Shango Los: You’ve obviously had a huge success with social media. Do you have a background in social media yourself or have you been figuring out as you go?

Jonah Tacoma: I went to University of Mesa in Grand Junction Colorado for computer science. This was a long time ago. I started there in 1997. I had dreams and aspirations of conquering that field. For me to end up ultimately working in cannabis is light years away from where I started, but it’s certainly applicable.

I saw cannabis go legal and I had been part of the cannabis scene my whole life. I had been growing and selling pot and doing my thing. I had actually gotten bumped off campus for being the pot guy. So I saw an opportunity to take something that had always been a stigma, it had always been a bane to my existence, I had lost plenty of jobs and opportunities as a result of cannabis and I walked right into the world famous Cannabis Farmers Market and I said, “I want to volunteer.” I dropped a business that was doing great at the time and literally took a volunteer position with no money and kind of floated until I had some traction.

What ultimately happened is I took over the Facebook page for that Cannabis Farmers Market and I quietly developed some fame for being able to cultivate the following on social media and ultimately I had five or six big companies that turned over their social media presence to me. When we took on DabStars it was a no brainer to knock one out of the park for ourselves.

Shango Los: I think that that idea of being willing to volunteer to get your foot in the door is something that we should highlight right there, because our listeners, our cannabis entrepreneurs or soon to be entrepreneurs, and sometimes you can’t walk into an industry that may be new to yourself and demand a fat paycheck, especially when we’re all pretty much just running startup companies right now. Would you speak for a moment to the idea of being willing to volunteer and put in sweat equity to earn your stripes before you can start charging?

Jonah Tacoma: I think the reality is that cannabis is evolving and you really have to look at this as a business paradigm. In business that’s kind of the way of it. There’s internships. There’s sweat equity. You have to earn your stripes. In cannabis especially because this is a community where you had to be brought in, because for a long time it was illegal, and if you weren’t vetted in then you couldn’t be a part of this. The people that did ultimately land here are a tight-knit group. I think that’s helped the people that are successful get to where they are, because the community really lifts you up if they know you’re a part of them.

Shango Los: Obviously you’ve had very quick success once you got your hands into cannabis social media. I mean breaking a million Facebook followers is a big accomplishment in any industry, but to do it in an industry that’s technically illegal is astonishing. What do you do so differently from other cannabis brands that makes everybody want to follow you? I mean, your social media stuff is so sticky. What do you think is different about your approach?

Jonah Tacoma: There’s definitely a recipe for it. Part of it is having a good team. Dani Green Fox, the current Miss High Times 2015 worked a shitty job at night so we could do this for a long time, because I understood that this was going to be something but I wasn’t getting paid to do it, so there’s a lot of people that put in time to make this happen. Ultimately what really made us succeed is that we made our page interactive. DabStars isn’t about us. We’re a company that recognizes people, products, and businesses that are excelling in cannabis. We’re like a food critic that only gives positive reviews and it really allowed us to gain a lot of headway in the industry.

Shango Los: As far as your business model goes are you recognizing these great products and companies and inviting them to become clients for you so there’s a paid relationship between them, or are you repping these other folks to create original content that people aren’t getting elsewhere so they come to you to find out the best stuff?

Jonah Tacoma: It’s a mixture of both with the glass artists and the farmers that may be living a little closer to the bleeding edge. We don’t charge them a thing. We feature their content for free. There’s companies that we recognize have created a niche and we’ll approach them. I think we share a couple of sponsors in common. Dr. Dabber is a great sponsor of ours. We didn’t pick them up because we wanted to add another pin company. We picked them up because when we do DabStars giveaways on the ground, they would bring us thousands of dollars on merchandise. We developed a relationship through their giving back and our own little one of altruism that we do on the ground.

Shango Los: That’s another good example for our listeners that you are like Dr. Dabber giving you something to give away to your audience, which makes your audience like you more. That warmed you up to them where you want to do a further relationship with them. A lot of the companies in cannabis, they’re kind of chintzy about their giveaways and stuff because they want everything paid for. But this is a perfect example how by Dr. Dabber hooking you up in the end paid for them many times over.

Jonah Tacoma: Oh yeah, and I think that’s the reality, is that it’s reciprocal arrangement. They’re not giving us stuff for no reason. They understand that the crowd is here and that they have ability to reach out to the people that support their business. In America we vote with our dollars so when you buy a Dr. Dabber pin you’re saying I want your company to succeed, I’m voting for you, because you have another 100 choices to make. They have a responsibility to stand out and they have a responsibility to promote cannabis and do this service that they do. If you smoke pot and you pretend that you don’t then you’re doing a disservice to the plant.

Shango Los: As far as who you rep do you rep competing folks who are in the same section of the industry, or do you only choose one flavor of each product?

Jonah Tacoma: We traditionally pick one company in each niche. As we get bigger it gets harder because it’s a very limiting business model. We’ve branched out a little bit, but our idea is that we don’t want to be a company that you can just hire because you have money. We have to approach you and say, “We like what you’re doing, we like what you contribute to the cannabis scene, and we want to represent you.” By doing that we maintain a quality for our page.

Because we touched a little bit on developing social media for a cannabis company, and the reality is there’s some very severe restrictions that come into play when you’re a company trying to create a social media presence. One, it’s very important to do. Every modern business has a social media presence. Your name should be established on everything, whether it’s Snapchat, Instagram, you have to own these spaces, or when you start to take off someone else will own them in your name.

The restrictions on advertising, Facebook will not let you advertise a cannabis company or a cannabis related product, even if it’s completely ancillary, something like nutrients. We saw Remo lose a substantial follow on Facebook page because he did a single nutrient advertisement. Our 1.2 million followers is 100% organic. We don’t do a single paid ad. So it’s very important for us to generate fresh content that’s engaging and to do it in a way that is different than what everybody else is doing.

Shango Los: Right on. We’re going to take a short break. When we get back we’re going to talk about some of the spectacular stuns that you do to get that organic attention. You are listening to the ganjapreneur.com podcast. We’ll be right back.

Shango Los: Welcome back. You are listening to the ganjapreneur.com podcast. I am your host, Shango Los, and our guest this week is DabStars’ founder, Jonah Tacoma. Before the break we were talking about your 1.5 or so Facebook followers and across social media, and that it’s organically gained, because people are really interested in the content you create.

You’ve got this reputation for making these grand spectacles. Your marketing style at Cannabis Cup is really go big or go home. You’re usually on top of a stage or a shipping container or a scaffolding with the mic in your hand, hyping the crowd and everybody is getting … It’s getting to be a fervor. You’re throwing out shirts and joins and products and all those kind of stuff. What do you think about that? What do you think about doing that gets people so hyped up? What do you think it is about that, that back and forth between the crowd that works so well for you?

Jonah Tacoma: It’s very visceral. You just gave me goosebumps describing it. I think that it’s very easy for me to tap into that energy, because it’s one thing to stand in a crowd of people and watch a guy do his thing. It’s entirely different to be the guy doing your thing in front of that crowd of people. When you see that the interaction, when you see 10,000 kids enjoying what you’re doing and vibing and reacting to what you’re saying it’s indescribable. That’s fuel for me and that kind of involved on a whole different level.

We started out with the online presence and we had gained a lot of traction on that. We were already the world’s biggest dabbing page pretty much from the jump because it was a new movement. Other companies started picking us up and bringing us to these shows because we didn’t have a budget for this.

In the beginning we had one guy whose mom worked for the airport. We got $150 stand-by tickets and we all slept in one hotel room. We did a lot to get by. By the time we started getting to the point where we could demand payment and we had people flying us to the shows we saw a different side of cannabis that most people don’t get to see.

It’s really a crazy community of companies and people and supporters that come together to celebrate what we’ve created. That happened for me with Happy Daddy. They brought me to a small show and they put a tiny little megaphone that you would give to a kid at a football game. I had a crowd all day long and I’m like, “This is something,” and we’ve been doing it ever since.

Shango Los: Well you obviously crush it when you’re doing it. I mean even when I see you I like am smiling ear to ear, I’m this like crush of bodies. Everybody is feeling the vibe. I mean it’s an experience. Is that something that you trained for in advance, or is it just naturally in you because of your personality and so when you’re given the mic in a crowd you just know what to do, you’re a natural at it?

Jonah Tacoma: I think we all have hidden talents, and for me that was one I found very late in life, because that certainly wasn’t something that I had done previously, and it just came. But like I said, I think it was the crowd that built it. Once you get that kind of reaction and you start tapping into it it’s just natural and we’ll get up there for an hour and a half. I think we did an accounting at one point. We’d given away well over a quarter of million dollars’ worth of products and none of them are our own.

Shango Los: Holy smokes. That’s one way to really garner favor with an audience, you’re giving away free stuff that somebody else gave you, because yeah, they like the Dr. Dabber or whatever the brand is that you’re promoting, but the fact that you are the one giving it to them you get credit for it and that’s a really great feeling.

Jonah Tacoma: Yeah. I call it a conduit for free shit. I don’t know if I’m allowed to cuss on this show, but …

Shango Los: Yeah, actually you can so you’re all right.

Jonah Tacoma: That’s the kind of arrangement that we’ve created, and that has really blown up on its own to the point where we now get boxes and boxes of stuff sent to the studio. When we show up at these cups they bring the stuff to our booth. It’s really cool to see it happen. Now they’ve kind of allowed it to grow and we’re having a lot of fun with it.

Shango Los: That’s one of the things I enjoy actually from your Instagram feed is to see these days, you’re like, “Oh man, look at these boxes of swag we just got.” It’s just like covering your conference table. It’s like wow, you just want to dive in like it’s a pool. The role that you have in front of the crowd it’s a pretty unique role. Not a lot of folks get to do that. I bet you got some crazy stories, probably more than we have time for. But do you have one you had to be there kind of story that you can drop on us?

Jonah Tacoma: Yeah, I do actually. It’s pretty crazy. We did the last Seattle High Times. There hasn’t been one since because the city hasn’t given them a permit since, so they’re having some issues setting up here but we had a great cup. We had our own little booth. We had two booths next to it that were set up as lounges. We did what we do. We get up there and we give away free stuff. But we also talk about cannabis and how it’s a topical, it’s a textile, it’s so many things besides what we traditionally take it for. We talk about how easy it is to get involved in cannabis.

I’m off set. We had a great day. I’m super excited, but I’m also dead tired. This guy walks up with this giant bottle. It looks like the biggest tincture bottle I’ve ever seen. He hands it over to me. I pull out this giant sword of a dropper and I squeeze it all the way full because it’s been a really long day. I squeeze it under my tongue and I’m holding it there because I want it to absorb. I know how tincture works. I screw the bottle back together and I’m holding it under my tongue. I look up at the guy and he has just these wide eyes and he’s starting at me straight out of Cheech and Chong. He says, “You’ve just took the most acid I’ve ever seen.”

He calls me out in front of everybody and I’m like, “Acid? My God,” now it’s like 200 hits what I had just taken. I spit it out on the ground instantly and I start rinsing my mouth, but it doesn’t work like that. Once it’s in it’s in. I got on the mic and told everybody it was going to get weird and it got very weird. The Seattle Times took me back to the hotel and I swam in the sheets and it was a crazy night.

Shango Los: Wow, that is a crazy- That’s a good story. Thanks for sharing that. Actually it’s also a good note to don’t take stuff folks without knowing what you’re taking. Dose yourself.

Jonah Tacoma: That was the last thing I said on the mic, was stay away from the High Times tincture and then it was bye-bye from there.

Shango Los: We got to talk about the drive-through video of course. Probably the biggest thing that a lot of folks know about you is this amazing YouTube video that you’ve got out of you going through a drive-through and you offered to pay for your meal with a dab. You give these guys a dab through the window. It’s pretty hard core. Then you take a dab yourself and you drive off.

This just lit up the internet. People had a reaction to it, whether or not they thought that it was totally the sickest thing they had ever seen somebody do and like you were a hero, or they’re all like, “What an ass,” because the guys eventually got fired and you’re driving after you dab. So people were either loving it or hating it. But from a marketing point of view it was freaking brilliant.

Can you share with us the backstory about that because there’s lots of rumors about how it happened, but since you’re here like what is the story behind that video?

Jonah Tacoma: To start off you’re right, it was extraordinarily divisive in terms of how the cannabis community reacted to the video. Our YouTube is very small in terms of our stature on Facebook. We were born Facebook and we decided later on that we had own these other mediums, but we weren’t set up to produce video at the time. Our YouTube is much smaller and our videos would get 1000, 2000 views and the people that watch them were hard core dabbers.

When we did the drive-through dabbing video it happened on a break. It was a random thing. We went through there jokingly. They were aware of the fact that we were recording. We told them it would be a week before we released the video. No one thought that it would be seen by anybody that would matter. We posted the video and it just took off.

The manager was alerted to it and the employees were let go. The news got ahold of the fact that the employees were let go. I’m in Portland opening the new DabStars shop, the first DabStars dispensary, and I get a call from Matt Markovich KOMO 4 News. We do regular work for him. They call us and we go on and do little pieces about dabbing and we explain why it’s safe and why it’s relevant and why it has to remain a part of the market. We’re used to doing sound bites for him so I didn’t think anything of it.

He says, “Hey, I want to do a piece with you real quick about this drive-through dabbing thing.” I’m like, “Well, I would love to but I’m in Portland.” He says, “Let me see if they’ll let me come down to Portland real quick.” I knew that something was wrong because they’re not going to come from Seattle. I’m already getting nervous. He calls me back and says his sister station in Portland is going to cover it. They come by and they do it. Now I’m really nervous because at least I know Matt is a cannabis friendly reporter.

What ultimately happened is the piece was played internationally. It was nationally syndicated so Fox picked it up, everyone picked it up locally, even Munchies played it and VICE did a much better portrayal than probably anybody else did. But it played in China, it played in Europe, it played everywhere. It probably got 30 or 40 million views in totality and it got so much press for our little tiny YouTube that it got half a million views on our YouTube, which to us isn’t a big deal because our video is on Facebook at half a million views, but it was big deal for YouTube and it was a big deal to the press. At the end of the day there’s no bad press.

Shango Los: Yeah, and I guess that’s a good thing to point out that you’ve got to try lots of these little things as far as social media goes to wait for something to hit a home run. You probably did a whole bunch of different ideas and 1000, 2000 views, but like you said, you did this kind of on a whim during a break and boom it goes big and is a reminder to people in social media to don’t expect their first or everything to hit, but it’s about continuing to try and try new things and then something eventually will hit.

Jonah Tacoma: It explains that there’s a double edge sword at play there. You can hurt yourself in a single blow as easily as you can help yourself. There’s a lot of videos that we put a ton of production time into, I mean flights, crews that were hired, camera teams, and they were seen by 1000 people, and then you take a cell phone video in a drive-through parking lot and the whole world sees it.

Shango Los: Right on. Well thanks Jonah for explaining that. We’re going to take another short break and be right back. You are listening to the Ganjapreneur.com podcast.

Shango Los: Welcome back. You are listening to Ganjapreneur.com podcast. I am your host, Shango Los, and our guest this week is DabStars’ founder, Jonah Tacoma. Before the break we were talking about Jonah’s clients and how he puts them in front of his overwhelmingly large audience of cannabis enthusiasts.

Jonah, when you get a new client what do you think about to yourself about how best you can represent them? I’m sure that I’ve watched your different clients and you rep them in different ways. There’s probably some method to your madness about what you decide you’re going to do for a client. How do you think through that to give a picture of it to our audience?

Jonah Tacoma: I think every company has a core aesthetic. What’s important to remember is not to comprise that, because at the end of the day it’s what got you the client to begin with. You have to have control over the material that you put out. In our case particularly we have complete control over the advertising concept. We don’t allow them to generate ads per se. We take on a client and we start to sculpt their image and we create a base for them, and we take the temperature as we go and we develop it.

Our contracts are based on performance delivery, so there’s no hard feelings, there’s no expectations that aren’t met. We have hard numbers that we’re going to hit and we have expectations for where we’re going to take you, and if we haven’t hit them in our contract period then we continue to work on them until we have. We have a very straightforward relationship with our clients and we’re so particular about who we’ll work with that it allows us to pick and choose the companies that are out there.

Shango Los: If you look across the country into states that are beginning to normalize we’re starting to see these little boutique marketing companies, who they’ve got the vision of doing what you have already done. What kind of words of advice would you offer to these up and coming cannabis marketers from you, somebody who has already found their way there?

Jonah Tacoma: I think it all starts in the trenches. You have to be willing to get out there and just become a part of the community. We’re very close-knit, but that also means that the door is not open to strangers. You have to get out, you have to put a little bit of yourself on the line and let people meet you, and I think the rest of it comes naturally. You see these new companies pop up. Every time there’s a High Times cup or a new event you’ll see a new company. Some of these guys come really hard.

The reality is we’re in the branding phase now. Phillip Morris and Camel, the Marlboro-Camel battle that happened when we were young, those guys fought to establish their brands. Then the federal government came and said, “Your product can’t be advertised.” They said, “Fine, we’ve established ourselves.” For anybody else that wants to enter that space, they can’t do anything to get into that space. We’re seeing the same thing happen in cannabis. The people in Colorado that have gone recreational aren’t allowed to advertise their products, they’re not allowed to attend these events and give away any product. They’re very restricted in what they can do to advertise. The idea is to build your brand first and monetize secondary if you have the ability to do it.

Shango Los: You have diversified DabStars in lots of different ways over the years. Now it seems like you’re going through another big rush and a push right now. What is next for DabStars? What are some of these new projects that you’ve got coming for the brand?

Jonah Tacoma: You know what, at the end of the day this is real business now, so I put together a business plan and prospectus on DabStars and I went to a venture capitalist meeting that consisted primarily of real estate guys from New York. I said, “Look, these are the numbers that make people rich. I need someone else to understand where to go from here.” One guy raised his hand in the back. They were from New York, I was from Washington, so we started meeting in Las Vegas.

They were putting me up these tremendous suites and wining and dining us, but they turned out to be really good guys and they understand that this is a huge growth industry and there’s so many people trying to get in. We established some traction and then we were able to take in a lot of money to do what we want. We’ve opened up a DabStars dispensary in Portland. We have dabstars.com which has a new clothing line that’s launching. We’re going in as many directions as we possibly can.

Shango Los: How big is your company as far as employees go? I’ve seen like four or five folks pretty regularly. How many employees do you have at this point?

Jonah Tacoma: You know what, it started out with just me and Dani and it really took a lot. It was a mom and pop business for a long time so it was me and her. She does all the shipping to this day. It evolved from there. But now we have offices in Washington, an office in Oregon, and an office in Brooklyn and there’s about 20 people that come together to make all this happen. There’s a big group of people that have their stake in this and what it really takes to succeed is career level energy devoted to cannabis. Understand that this is a real gold mine.

Shango Los: I think that it’s a good point to that, how much can be done with just a few passionate people. You don’t have to spend a lot of money if you have people who are passionate and they feel like they belong, and that when the company makes it they will make it too. That kind of loyalty man, you can’t buy that.

Jonah Tacoma: That’s exactly right. I think you’ll see a lot of that in the cannabis community. There’s a lot of people that are hungry just to be a part of what’s going on, because we understand this is our generation’s time to make an addition. Our parents smoked pot and our generation made it legal.

Shango Los: I think that is an awesome way to end this. Jonah, thanks so much for being on the show. It’s nice to talk to another marketing pro. I really appreciated it.

Jonah Tacoma: It was an honor and a privilege. Thank you.

Shango Los: Jonah Tacoma is founder of DabStars. You can find out more at dabstars.com. You can find more episodes of the Ganjapreneur podcast in the podcast section at Ganjapreneur.com. You can also find us on the Cannabis Radio Network website and in the Apple iTunes store. On the Ganjapreneur.com website you will find the latest cannabis news, product reviews, and cannabis jobs updated daily along with transcriptions of this podcast. You could also download the Ganjapreneur.com app in iTunes and Google Play. We’re also thrilled to announce that you can now find the show on the iHeart Radio Network app bringing Ganjapreneur to 60 million mobile devices. Thanks to Brasco for producing our show. I am your host, Shango Los.

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New Colorado Tourism Director Wants to Open Discussion About Cannabis

11/17/2015

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Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper has named Cathy Ritter, former director of the Illinois Bureau of Tourism, as the new director of the Colorado Tourism Office.

In a move away from the policies of the previous Colorado tourism officials, Ritter says she wants to open a discussion on the role of marijuana in the state’s tourism. Previously, tourism officials have made a point to avoid crediting cannabis for the recent surge in visitors to Colorado. Ritter, in contrast, wants to research what part marijuana plays in the state’s tourism:

“Seems to be that the tourism program today is essentially silent on the whole issue,” she said. “I’ve looked through all the websites and visitor materials and not a word. But that’s the first thing everyone mentioned when I said I was moving to Colorado. I think it’s a great topic for discussion and a great topic for more research. It makes a world of sense for the Colorado tourism board to get its arms around the issue.”

Source:

http://www.thecannabist.co/2015/11/13/colorado-tourism-office-cathy-ritter-marijuana-impact/43864/

Photo Credit: TRAILSOURCE.COM

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Canadian Prime Minister Issues Mandate to Begin Cannabis Legalization Process

11/17/2015

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Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has issued a mandate ordering the revision of the country’s criminal justice system. Trudeau aims to create a system that will focus more on rehabilitation, as well as to launch a plan to regulate and legalize marijuana.

Trudeau sent mandate letters to all of the cabinet ministers on Friday. The letter to Justice Minister Jody Wilson-Raybould reads:

“You should conduct a review of the changes in our criminal justice system and sentencing reforms over the past decade with a mandate to assess the changes, ensure that we are increasing the safety of our communities, getting value for money, addressing gaps and ensuring that current provisions are aligned with the objectives of the criminal justice system.”

Trudeau also tasks Wilson-Raybould, alongside Public Safety Minister Ralph Goodale and Health Minisiter Jane Philpott, to create a federal-provincial-territorial process that will result in the legalization and regulation of cannabis.

Trudeau’s move is an about-face from policies instituted by the Conservative party that preceded him, which included lengthier prison sentences and a stricter parole process. The party came under fire regarding reports of prison overcrowding and segregation, as well as the high proportion of indigenous Canadians in prisons.

“Outcomes of this process should include increased use of restorative justice processes and other initiatives to reduce the rate of incarceration amongst indigenous Canadians,” Trudeau noted in his letter.

Source:

http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/liberal-crime-justice-reform-1.3317891

Photo Credit: Cannabis Culture

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Former Narc Detective Trying to ‘Build a Culture’ in Second Career as Cannabis Security Specialist

11/13/2015

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Mike Rego’s path to the medical marijuana industry is unique. In a former life as a Newport, Rhode Island police officer (and later narcotics detective), he arrested cannabis producers – now he protects them.

His career in law enforcement began in 1993 as an officer for the Newport Police Department. In 1998 he was promoted to narcotics detective, a role he served in until 2010 when he was forced to retire following “numerous” knee surgeries. In an effort to treat his injuries he began acupuncture and it was his acupuncturist who ultimately approached him about working on a medical dispensary venture in Rhode Island.

“It started very organically,” Rego, 48, explained. “I was trying to get back to work at the time, he asked if I was interested in being on the board of directors – I said, ‘sure.’”

mikerego
Mike Rego, retired narcotics detective and current consultant for the medical cannabis industry.

During the transition into what would eventually develop into his second career, Rego became a licensed caregiver in Rhode Island. The first individual he treated was a friend’s brother who suffered from multiple sclerosis.

“I saw a remarkable, dramatic improvement in the quality of his life from marijuana,” he said. “It became crystal clear to me.”

At first, he considered the medical marijuana industry to be a job that would “tide him over” until he and an associate got a leadership training business off the ground. But his roles as a caregiver and board member soon morphed into dispensary work and sometimes consultant for marijuana startups. Seeing the health benefits first hand made him more active in the community and soon the benefits of recreational use would become apparent as his two sons, now 23 and 21, reached legal drinking age.

“I’ve seen the devastating effects of alcohol and other hard drugs – but mostly alcohol – and there is no comparison between marijuana and alcohol,” Rego said. “It was a very easy leap for me to recognize that – not only from a purely medical standpoint, but recreationally it pales in comparison to what happens when people are under the influence of alcohol.”

Rego admits that as a law enforcement officer he didn’t believe that marijuana was a viable medical option, saying that the law enforcement “culture” he was in didn’t endorse that line of thinking. Although, he said, during his time busting drug criminals, marijuana was viewed as “more of a nuisance” than other illicit drugs such as heroin, which he considers a “huge problem” in the Northeast.

Recently Rego has stepped away from his caregiver role in order to focus more on his second career – securing medical marijuana dispensaries and cultivation sites, consultation for potential and active cannabis businesses , and outreach with town boards and local police departments in municipalities that could host a cannabusiness.

His first security consulting gig was with Greenleaf in Rhode Island, where he served as the dispensary’s head of security. Rego’s primary responsibility is setting up both the technology, and the people, to secure a site. He says that technology is usually enough to thwart would-be thieves and in the event they successfully enter the site, it’s almost guaranteed they will get caught on camera. He does employ guards, who are not armed because, he says, adding a firearm will likely just escalate a situation. Instead, he trains those working inside of dispensaries and interacting with patients to de-escalate situations. Some of the most prevalent problems, according to Rego, are employee diversion – stealing to sell on the black market – curiosity seekers, and individuals who want to hang out at the dispensary. In New York, where Rego is presently working with Etain, LLC, the medical marijuana products are less desirable on the black market, making security at dispensaries slightly easier.

The first thing Rego looks for in his security staff is an understanding of the culture. They need to be empathetic while keeping a safe and comfortable environment. Historically he has hired people with a law enforcement background because “they are used to dealing with the public in stressful situations,” but instructs his staff to only call the police “as a last step if something goes really wrong.”

“You’re dealing with, often, medically compromised individuals,” he said. “You need to be very mindful of the complications that come along with that… It’s an environment that, very much, needs to be kept in a medical setting.”        

His advice to those interested in getting into the security aspect of the medical marijuana industry is this: become valuable. Rego credits his success to having been a law enforcement officer and working in a dispensary and as a caregiver. Whether the individual has a degree in criminal justice or law enforcement experience he encourages them to “get their foot in the door” at a dispensary or a cultivation site. Since there is no uniform or formal training, yet, the best way to learn how the industry works it by doing, which Rego says might not be the best financial decision at first, but “it’s kind of like school.”

“You’re learning the language, the culture, learning peripherally what it takes to grow – these are all beneficial things if you want to move forward,” he said. “I want, as much as I can, to influence people to look at this differently. It’s not what you see on TV – it’s not a big stoner mentality.”

In order to destigmatize the industry Rego sometimes acts as a liaison between business owners and the police department, trying to educate them on how to handle medical marijuana patients. As a former cop, he often lends “an air of credibility” for police officers, which helps breed the culture he is looking to build in the regions he works.

“You have to have a certain skillset that goes between analytical intelligence and social intelligence,” Rego said. “You get the skillset to know what you’re talking about from the security end and you can also play golf with the CEO, and then maybe grow some plants with the growers, it’s all hands on deck – to me that’s the culture.”        

Photo Credits: Mike Rego, CWCS Managed Hosting

 

 

 

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Colombia Set to Legalize Medical Cannabis

11/13/2015

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Colombian government officials have confirmed that the country plans to legalize the cultivation and sale of marijuana for medical and research purposes.

President Juan Manuel Santos is set to sign an executive order that will regulate all aspects of marijuana cultivation and distribution, from grower licensing to the regulation of exports.

The move marks a shift for Colombia, which has long supported U.S.-backed anti-drug policies in the region.

Sen. Juan Manuel Galan, who introduced similar legislation last year, said that some 400,000 Colombians who suffer from a variety of ailments could benefit from the legalization of medical marijuana.

John Campo, president of the U.S.-based company Sannabis, is currently developing cannabis oils, creams, and other products on an indigenous reservation in Colombia. He said, “our phones are ringing off the hook as we get ready for the next chapter.”

Source

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/the_americas/colombia-to-legalize-commercial-sale-of-medical-marijuana/2015/11/12/5557ad62-8955-11e5-bd91-d385b244482f_story.html

Photo Credit: Julián Ortega Martínez

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Colorado Cannabis Sales Dipped In September

11/12/2015

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Colorado saw its first slump in cannabis sales in September, after four months of steady growth, according to data released this month.

According to Sen. Pat Steadman (D-Denver), the downturn is likely due both to September being an off-season month as well as the marijuana tax holiday that took place on September 16th:

“Sales volumes do increase a lot in the summer months, so some of what you could be seeing is back to school, people getting on with their lives and finally leaving the summer break behind,” the senator said. “And some of that could also be the divot from the sales tax holiday.”

Both recreational and medical sales dropped about $3 million each from August. Although the state lost money on the tax holiday, September 16th turned out to be a major boon for businesses. John Andrle, owner of the Denver shop L’Eagle, told Steadman that “his business alone had saved $50,000 on that day just because he’d been holding inventory back in the grow.”

Source:

http://www.thecannabist.co/2015/11/11/colorado-marijuana-sales-update-september-2015/43676/

Photo Credit: Leslie J. Clary

 

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Senate Approves Bill Allowing VA Doctors to Recommend Medical Cannabis

11/11/2015

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The Senate approved a bill on Tuesday that would allow doctors at the Veterans Administration (VA) to recommend the use of medical cannabis in states where it is legal. The bill was sponsored by Sens. Steve Daines (R-Montana) and Jeff Merkley (D-Oregon).

Currently, the VA does not allow its doctors to approve or recommend the use of medical marijuana.

According to Michael Collins, deputy director of national affairs for the Drug Policy Alliance:

“Veterans in medical marijuana states should be treated the same as any other resident, and should be able to discuss marijuana with their doctor. It makes no sense that a veteran can’t use medical marijuana if it helps them and it is legal in their state.”

The Senate bill will now be reconciled with the House’s version of the bill as part of an omnibus spending bill.

TJ Thompson, a disabled Navy veteran, said:

“On this eve of Veterans/Armistice Day where we remember those who served in the military and the treaty agreement to reach peace concluding WWI, we see this victory as a step toward a peace treaty with the government we volunteered to defend with our lives and as a step toward restoring our first amendment rights and dignity as citizens of the United States.

Source:

http://www.drugpolicy.org/news/2015/11/senate-approves-funding-bill-allows-veterans-access-medical-marijuana

Photo Credit: Jennifer Morrow

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Shane Young: Controlling Pests with Beneficial Insects

11/11/2015

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Natural EnemiesShane Young is the founder of Natural Enemies, an Oregon-based distributor of beneficial insects that serve as natural pest management for cannabis grow operations and gardens around the northwest.

Shane recently joined our podcast host Shango Los to discuss his unique business model, which hinges primarily on introducing growers to the notion that specific predatory insects can be used to root out and destroy pest infestations that threaten commercial crops.

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Read the full transcript

Shango Los: Hi there and welcome to the Ganjapreneur.com podcast. I’m your host, Shango Los. The Ganjapreneur.com podcast gives us an opportunity to speak directly to entrepreneurs, cannabis growers, product developers and cannabis medicine researchers, all focused on making the most of cannabis normalization. As your host, I do my best to bring you original cannabis industry ideas that will ignite your own entrepreneurial spark and give you actionable information to improve your business strategy, improve your health and the health of cannabis patients everywhere.

Today, my guest is Shane Young, founder of Natural Enemies, a distributor of beneficial insects for natural pest management. Glad you could be on the show, Shane.

Shane Young: Hey, how are you today, Shango?

Shango Los: Doing great. Across the country, everybody is talking about pesticides and cannabis right now. In fact, a case was just brought in Colorado last week that carcinogenic chemicals are being allowed in their legal marijuana. Similarly, in Washington State, the WSLCB is not even demanding pesticide testing in the recreational market. Consumers are getting pissed that the recreational market at this point is even less safe than the medical markets, where because at least those growers were holistically-minded.

How can these beneficial insects that you distribute decrease chemical pesticides?

Shane Young: Using the beneficial insects, a predatory mite can actually take out the whole equation of chemical usage. It’s an alternative method of management that not a whole lot of people are accustomed to, but what happens is you learn that it is a sustainable way of doing things. It is an effective way of managing your crop and like I said, can completely take out any type of chemical usage in it.

Shango Los: Does it take out the chemical usage because it’s more of a preventative? How does the dynamic work that the insects can totally take you off the bottle?

Shane Young: What happens is, what I’ve learned in the past being a grower, is that it’s always best to prevent a situation rather than coming in and trying to clean one up. It seems like you’re always coming from behind to take care of things and it costs you more money to begin with. What happens is your plant suffers and plant health altogether. You’re causing stress to the plant with either spider mites or some issue that you have and you’re just trying to keep cleaning it up and cleaning it up.

Using beneficial insects and predatory mites is something that you can do preventatively to where you don’t have to get to that problem. Basically, what growers go back to is just focusing on growing their plant.

Shango Los: Let’s break that out a little bit because a lot of our audience are both entrepreneurs who are running businesses and then the growers themselves. I’m sure they want to hear specifically how the pests work. Let’s take a common pest that we all hate like spider mites. Walk us through your determination and what you would actually do with the beneficial insects.

Shane Young: Sure. Number 1, when I walk into a place or a facility to do a walk-through with a grower, my main thing and what I’ve always learned is sanitation really goes a long way. That’s going to prevent a lot of disease and also, pest issues if you have coming into your crop. Number 2, I’ve always learned that mites or any problem that you generally have, it’s going to come in from your soil, it’s going to come in from your cutting or it’s going to come in from your employees that are working for you; that’s generally the basis of it.

What I try to do is take care of the problem from the root of it. I actually distribute a soil mite. Its main food source is actually fungus net larvae, but what we’ve learned using it long ago and it’s been around for more than 30 years is that it feeds on spider mites and their eggs in the soil. It feeds on thrips, root aphids, pathogenic nematodes, etc. There really hasn’t been anything that it doesn’t control, basically. So sanitation, then you work on your soil. If you have a problem from there, then we have a foliar mite that I sell.

One of them is called Amblyseis fallacis, more of a preventer, but what happens is it feeds on over 60 different types of mites and that’s the best one to use as a generalist. From there, if you run into an issue, I have one called Phytoseiulus persimilis that just feeds on the two-spot and it is really a voracious mite that can really clean up the situation if you can spot one early enough.

Shango Los: The application process is really interesting. Thank you for sending up a couple samples so the staff and I could check it out and be better prepared for the show today. We had a friend-of-a-friend was one of the only people that we knew who had copped to having a mite problem right now. We went over there yesterday and we took one of your canisters. I was actually surprised to find out that the mites are already alive in the container. I thought that they would be eggs or something like that.

We popped it open and there are all these really small, can barely see it guys and they’re all moving around with this medium that looks like cat litter, I guess. You take off the paper insert and then you put the top in and you shake it like a salt shaker over your plant. Some of that medium get on the plants, but what I’m seeing are all these cascading little beneficial mites that are all over the plant. It’s really exceptionally easy.

It actually reminds me of what I have to do when I have to spray, but this is something I’ll only have to do once because I guess the idea is that once I salt-shaker them onto the plants, they set up a residency. Do they actually procreate on the plant or do they only live out one life cycle on the plant?

Shane Young: First of all, Shango, it’s not cat litter.

Shango Los: It looks like cat litter. What is it, though?

Shane Young: I know. Generally, it’s a sterilized vermiculite or sterilized brand that’s used at the insectary. What happens is, it does take the place of chemical applications. What people need to know is that it may need to be multiple applications, but predatory mites are just like me and you. They need a food source in order to mate and reproduce. You can apply a ton of adult mites to your plant, but if there’s no food for them, they’re just going to go and search for it, basically. Sprinkling them over the plant is one way of doing it.

I would prefer to have people do it at the base of the plant because their natural searching method is to go up; basically, they climb up the plant and search for food is what they do. That’s one way of doing it. For you guys to think about it, it takes the place of spraying. You don’t have to suit up. You don’t have to go do it. You don’t have to worry about re-entries and causing phytotoxicity to your plants. They do take up residency depending on the amount of food that you have in your environment.

What we focus on is to eventually prevent that to where there is no food for them and let your comfortable balancing out that threshold of how many mites is too many mites for my plant, basically. It’s really a fine line and it depends on who the grower is and what their operations are like and what their threshold is.

Shango Los: I guess when you first mentioned that they only grow if there’s food, I was like, ”Oh man, you have to feed them,” but actually, technically since their food are all of these nasty pests, eggs and the pests themselves, if they’ve run out of food and they start to die out, it pretty much means that your issue is under control. Am I understanding that right?

Shane Young: Yeah, that sounds about right. In order to prevent everything, they have to have a food source to do that so if there’s no food for them, what I’ve come up with is a type of a program, depending on the grower that I’m talking to on reapplication; a person who would go out there and treat for mites and everybody is different. It could be 3 days or 5 days or 10 days that people do applications.

This has come down to a let’s treat your area, let’s build up a residency, #2 we’ll go from there and maybe it’s 2 weeks, maybe it’s 3 weeks or 4 weeks, we’ll give you another application at that point.

Shango Los: I was thinking about this last night that okay, so I’ve gotten rid of my spider mites and I’ve added these beneficial mites, so what about the beneficial mites now? Now I’ve got a different type of mite in my plant. Aren’t I just swapping out one infestation for another?

Shane Young: Right. What people need to know about this, Shango, is that the only food source that the predatory mites have are your pest mites. Generally, when you have a two-spot or a broad mite or any pest in your crop, what they do is they’re causing stress and everything to your plant. They’re sucking out the chlorophyll. They’re causing or creating webbing for everything. These mites that I send you, their only food is the pests that you have there.

They don’t create any type of webbing at all and basically, they’re just there to eat and clean up your area so that your crop and anything that you’re growing is clean.

Shango Los: That almost sounds magical, man. From all the experience I’ve had using bottle and getting these different infestations, the idea that the bad mites eat the plant, but the good mites eat the bad mites and nothing else, that sounds like a best case scenario. The mites that we were talking about so far were really easy to apply. What would you say is probably the most difficult beneficial insect that could be prescribed?

Shane Young: You mean insect problems to take care of on my end? Is that what your question is?

Shango Los: Yeah. I’ve been through your catalogue and you sell a variety of different types of pests. I’m just assuming that maybe some of them or at least one of them is not as easy to use as the salt shaker technique that I tried out yesterday. If I’m a grower, what’s my worst case scenario for using beneficials? Is it just simply putting out eggs instead of salt-shakering?

Shane Young: Yeah, that’s the biggest thing. I sell things for spider mites and thrip and fungus net and aphids and white fly and all these different things. I think the biggest one or the one that people would be most comfortable or uncomfortable treating is it’s a product called Aphidoletes and it actually comes in the larval stage. All you have to do is you wait for them to hatch out, basically, hatch out into adults before you can release them in your environment and that’s for aphids.

Other than that, everything generally comes to us or you in the starving mode because at the insectary, they culture and then pick up your order on Mondays and then package it, send it to me. I send it to you, but what happens is, you get an insect that is hungry. You get something out there that’s looking for food, basically. When you guys receive it or the end-person receives it, the consumer, when they put them in your crop, they’re basically just looking for food. They’re going to disperse out and they’re going to do the job for you.

You put them out there and they take care of everything from there.

Shango Los: Dude, that’s just great. We’re going to take a short break and we’ll be right back. You’re listening to the Ganjapreneur.com podcast.

 

Shango Los: Welcome back. You are listening to the Ganjapreneur.com podcast. I am your host. Shango Los. Our guest this week is Shane Young of Natural Enemies. So Shane, before the break, we were talking about using beneficial insects to clear a garden of whatever nasty pests you may have. It was actually pretty shocking to find out that the most used insects won’t eat the garden, but will just eat the bad pests and then die off on their own.

As commercial growers are becoming more and more common, we’re not talking necessarily about treating a basement or a garage any more, we’re talking about 20,000 square feet or more of growing space in a warehouse somewhere. How scalable are these beneficial insects?

Shane Young: When you learn the biology of what you’re doing and you become comfortable with it because not a whole lot of people are, nobody know what I do. When people ask me what I do in life, I tell them nobody has ever heard of what I’ve done, basically. If I wasn’t a plant health manager at a commercial greenhouse, I would be in the same boat that they were. When I come into this, dealing with it in a commercial operation, tier 1, tier 2, tier 3 in Washington State… I’m not going to say an easy thing to do just because we’re starting over.

I’m the person that’s trying to transfer all the information and knowledge that I’ve done and the best way of managing a crop. What become difficult, Shango, is when I am not there on a day-to-day basis. I don’t see what these people are seeing every day, but I’m very available on the telephone to work with people. I like to walk into a situation and look at everything and talk with them about what they’re doing and their practices; not necessarily pest management, but what type of soil they’re using, what fungicides, what nutrients they’re adding to their plants and you need to get a feel of what people are doing.

To answer your question, it is definitely possible. I work with some tier 1’s, some tier 2’s in Washington and I’ve had a chance with a couple tier 3’s that we just haven’t been able to nail down the precision on doing this, but I feel it’s going to be very simple in the near future. The more education and the more practice I guess you’d say, I think it’s going to be something that’s just right around the corner from completely changing and taking out chemical usage in cannabis.

Shango Los: Since the primary audience for our show is ganjapreneurs, let’s dig in a little bit to that customer service aspect you were talking about. Not only are you delivering a product, but there’s a lot of education I would think in your sales cycle so that the customer knows how to use it and knows how to use it correctly so that they don’t misapply the insects and then end up not solving their problem. Do you find that the bigger part of your sales cycle is just educating your customer from square 1?

Shane Young: Yeah. I think you hit it right on the head because you know what happened me is it took me a long time to learn how to do this, but educating the customer and learning the biology, like I said the biology of what we’re working with is completely different from what anybody has ever been used to. When I walk into a situation where people tell me that they’ve used it before and it didn’t work and that’s all they say to me, I don’t really take offense to it.

I can really dig in to ask them what predatory mites or what they were using, what rates that they were going at and how they applied it. There’s a lot of background information that goes into this that really, literally took me 2-3 years to figure out; if this wasn’t working, then there was a reason why. That’s the biggest thing in like you say, educating people how to do it. That’s what I’m here for and it’s not one of those things where you’re probably not going to learn the very first time that you do it, but there is people out there that catch on pretty quickly.

A lot of it is educating and then just being there for any type of customer service follow-up from there and that’s what I aim for.

Shango Los: I can see how the technical applications like how many mites per square foot and that would take a little bit of time for the grower to grok that, but I also would think that you’d probably have to do a lot of hand-holding just getting them to believe in the first place that the beneficial insects will even work because everybody, including me is so used to chemical solutions that the closer we move along to healthy soils and probiotics and then beneficial pests, you have to get over a hump of just belief in the first place.

Shane Young: That’s funny you mention that because a lot of the time, I bring in and usually the first sentence after I speak with the growers is, “I’m really skeptical about this.” Like I said, people aren’t accustomed to it and getting them to believe, I guess is the biggest hurdle that I have to come over. There’s people that have heard about it, but aren’t educated on it and I think what happens is when you walk into something that you’re unaware of, you’re skeptical from the very beginning until you see it firsthand that it actually happens.

Being a believer of it, it took me, I guess that “aha” moment to actually see something. Earlier in the show you brought up of this type of management being magical and it’s funny that you say that because that’s what I tell people that I work with. I used to use chemicals all the time and I said then it got to the point where I would just put out predatory mites and it would just take care of my problems. I said it was like a magic trick, basically. I was given a lot of leeway and a lot of time to use this and research and look into this.

It’s something that’s educating people to learn how to do it the right way and applying to X amount of plants and your surface space and there’s a lot that really goes into it.

Shango Los: Let’s say that I have got a 20,000 foot grow and I decide to go with the beneficial insects and I apply them to my crop. I guess my goal should be that they eventually die out because that means then, I don’t have any pests. Is the idea that I would hopefully just apply a preventative at the beginning and not get the bad mites and then I would just apply that at the beginning of every cycle? Is that the optimum or should I plan on applying preventative mites and also plan automatically to be including the predatory mites a few weeks in?

Shane Young: What I try to do with people is a preventative measure. It’s a timing thing, as well. Depending on when people start to see them in their operation, whether it’s a clone or in veg with flower, whatever their main concern is, I try to be very specific with people on when to apply it. It’s real difficult. It becomes a guessing game. I tell people apply it a week ahead of time that you normally see spider mites and they look at me like I’m crazy. Once you start seeing it, you generally know when you have problems in your area and you can do applications at that point.

What happens is they don’t necessarily all go away. The predatory mites will feed, they will reproduce, but if they exhaust their food source, then there’s going to be nothing left for them to live in your environment. What I’ve tried to do is build a type of a program for people, whether it be 2-week applications or every 4 weeks, trying to do something preventatively in case there is something there for that 2nd application, that there is some type of food for them to feed on and to maintain in your crop.

I’ve just come up with a type of a pot count is what I do rather than a square footage or a canopy. I like to treat the soil, like I said, and then predatory mites above if necessary. Again, it’s a learning curve on something new and I’m just here to help out with whatever people are interested in.

Shango Los: If I’m the operations person at this commercial grow and I want to make sure that I’ve got the beneficial insects in stock to be pulled for the grower, the master grower in the business, is that something that I can do? Since you ship them live, I would think that maybe I should be more on a subscription that you automatically send them to me instead of stacking them in a supply closet. I would think that if I try to put them in a supply closet they will be dead in 10 days or something. Is that the right idea?

Shane Young: Yeah for the most part. There’s no storage on these and what I’ve learned is depending on where you get your product from, you want to use healthy, thriving, beneficial insects for this. What I do is I don’t grow them on my own. I actually purchase from an insectary. They’ve been in business for over 30 years so this isn’t something new to them. It’s been around for quite some time, but just taken effect. In the last 10 years, it’s been escalating quite a bit.

On a weekly basis, like I said, I try to put programs together for people like you’re saying every 2 weeks or 3 weeks or 4 weeks. It’s not an option for somebody to keep them in the refrigerator. That’s actually something that you don’t want to do is refrigerate these things. I try to deliver them to the end-user, the grower, at the optimal times, like I said when they’re hungry and they need to be released, basically right away.

Instead of coming out on a Thursday afternoon and finding spider mites in your crop and going and spraying 2 days later, you need to wait a week out for ordering from me. That mentality is completely different, as well; using an alternative method of pest management and then also, trying to figure out how to get them to you in a timely manner and again, that’s why I’ve tried to build a program for people on this is about the right time that we need to do this.

Shango Los: Right on, right on; I follow you. Hey, we need to take another short break. We’ll be right back. You are listening to the gangapreneur dot com podcast.

Shango Los: Welcome back. You are listening to the gangapreneur dot com podcast. I am your host, Shango Los and our guest this week is Shane Young of Natural Enemies. Right before the break, Shane, we were talking about how the chain of custody of beneficial insects comes from an insectary, which has got to be the coolest new vocabulary of the week and comes through you, where you help pick which beneficial insects is going to be best for your client, you educate them and then you pass them on.

That sounds to me like a really smart business model move, actually, because one of the difficulties of dealing with natural crops, whether it be cannabis or apples or insects, is that they can die off on you. In your case, you’ve got a third party who has been creating these insects in bulk for years and you’re pushing that risk, their whole colony dies. You’re pushing that off on them and therefore, keeping your risk to marketing and customer service, which sounds like a great solution.

Do you find that having this decreased risk allows you to sleep a little better at night?

Shane Young: Becoming a new business owner does not allow me to sleep any better. No, I’m sorry. Yeah, it does help out quite a bit, but they’re the experts and they’re the ones that have been doing it so to stand behind somebody’s product and be able to refer that to somebody else, I let the experts do what they’re good at. There’s no reason for me to take care of that issue. My part is like we talked about, is educating because I’ve used it before, I’ve done the research on my own; showing people how to use it and make it effective in their crops for them.

Yes, obviously it does help taking, I guess that insurance policy out. It’s not my fault if something goes wrong. I just get what comes out of the top of the bin, basically; what they pull for the week and it’s on them what they need to do. It does help me sleep a little bit, but being a new business owner, does not help me sleep a little bit.

Shango Los: Yeah. Being farther up the food chain is an interesting business model, too. I remember when I was a kid, my younger brother had chameleons and so he raised crickets for them. That wasn’t so hard. I have a suspicion, though, that these mites and other beneficial insects are so small and are so sensitive that it isn’t quite as easy to grow them in a sterile environment as some of the other foods like mealworms or something like that.

Shane Young: Yeah and it’s not. This is something that you have to be an expert on, basically, and they’re not grown in the cleanest environment. They’re very visible by the human eye, but when you culture a predatory mite, you actually have to grow a pest mite, as well with that. Again, going back to the food source type of thing, you have to have a two-spot spider mite if you want to culture a predatory mite for that. It’s a fine line and balance that I don’t ever want to get into. I ask a lot of questions about it, but there’s a lot of secrets in the industry for that. It’s a very small industry.

There’s not a ton of producers that do it, but you want to find that one that really fits for you and works with your company.

Shango Los: Yeah, I would think that being in your position as the entrepreneur, you’d be much more satisfied with doing quality assurance of their product instead of trying to keep big bins or whatever of these mites yourself.

Shane Young: Yeah, yeah. Take all the headaches away, please.

Shango Los: Yeah, right on. We were just talking about diversifying your risk and having the risk be enough for the entrepreneur as you would want. What advice would you have for other entrepreneurs who are listening to the show who are thinking about starting their own cannabusiness or like you, moving from general horticulture over to cannabis specific? It’s not for everybody and here you are, what a year and a half into your new business. What things do you wish you would have known ahead of time or what advice do you have to offer?

Shane Young: I wish I was a wise person, Shango, but one of these things going into it and it might sound cliché, but it was one of those things where I thought I knew people, I knew the limited sources that people had doing this. I knew it was an option for me to go into this and I hate to say it, but you just had to jump in and do it. I knew it was going to be hardship and there was going to be differences at your house, basically, because you’re jumping into the unknown. You’re not funded for the unknown that you have.

Going from a job that you have your salary, you have your insurance, you have everything to something that really makes you feel good about doing and to become successful and to see, I’m not going to say my dream, but to see something that you envisioned actually become a reality. I don’t know how to take it, really. You still become nervous. You still have to work long hours. You have to do more than you ever imagined that you had to do. With people going into business, it’s just one of the things and I hate to say it, but I just jumped into it.

The things is, is I knew I had a solid product to offer people and I knew I had the information and I had the backup to do what I’m doing right now.

Shango Los: Right on; well said. That’s all the time we have for today. Thanks for visiting the show, Shane.

Shane Young: I appreciate all your time, Shango.

Shango Los: Shane Young is founder of Natural Enemies. You can find out more information at NaturalEnemiesBioControl.com. You can find more episodes of the Ganjapreneur podcast in the podcast section at Ganjapreneur.com. You can also find us on the Cannabis Radio Network web site and in the Apple iTunes store. On the Ganjapreneur.com web site, you will find the latest cannabis news, product reviews and cannabis jobs updated daily, along with transcriptions of this podcast.

To get your cannabis news and podcast on the go, you can also download the Ganjapreneur.com app in iTunes and Google Play. We’re also thrilled to announce that you can now found the show on the I Heart Radio Network app, bringing the Ganjapreneur show to 60 million mobile devices. Thanks to Brasco for producing the show. I am your host, Shango Los.

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Snoop Dogg Launches ‘Leafs By Snoop’ Cannabis Products

11/10/2015

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Snoop Dogg has announced the launch of Leafs By Snoop (LBS), his branded line of marijuana products. The line includes edibles (“Dogg Treats”), hand-weighed flower, and concentrates, as well as oil-infused fair-trade chocolate bars.

The products are currently on sale in several Colorado dispensaries.

“It’s a true blessing that I can share the products I love so much with y’all today,” said Snoop at the release party in Denver. “From the flower, to the concentrates, and edibles – it’s all hand-picked by yours truly so you know it’s the hottest product out there. It’s the real deal and you gotta get out to Colorado to try it first!”

According to the press release, Snoop hand-picked the LBS product line himself, and was involved “in every step of the creation of LBS.”

Source:

https://www.merryjane.com/news/exclusive-announcing-leafs-by-snoop

Photo Credit: Bob Bekian

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South Dakota Tribe Suspends Plan for Marijuana Resort, Destroys Crop

11/10/2015

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The South Dakota native American tribe that was planning on opening the nation’s first marijuana resort has announced that it will table the project until it receives legal clarification from the Federal government.

The Flandreau Santee Sioux Tribe had been planning to open its cannabis resort on New Year’s Eve. The tribe’s lawyer, Seth Pearman, said in a statement released Saturday that although the tribe was currently destroying destroying its crop, tribal leaders were confident that the project would resume as planned after receiving word from the Justice Department regarding legal guidelines.

“The tribe will continue to consult with the federal and state government and hopes to be granted parity with states that have legalized marijuana,” he said.

Attorney General Marty Jackley said he planned to meet with the tribe’s leaders this week, and that the decision was “in the best interest of both tribal and non-tribal members.” He also noted that the discussion with the tribe had always been fruitful, and said he would help the tribe as it continues with its plans.

Source:

http://www.thecannabist.co/2015/11/07/south-dakota-marijuana-crop-flandreau-santee-sioux-tribe/43489/

Photo Credit: Insanity Strains

 

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Medical Cannabis Sales Are Finally Underway In Illinois

11/10/2015

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The first eight medical marijuana dispensaries in Illinois received a green light from state officials on Monday to open their doors and begin serving pre-registered patients. The dispensaries are located in Marion, Mundelein, Canton, Quincy, Addison, North Aurora, Schaumburg and Ottawa.

Director of the Illinois Medical Cannabis Program Joseph Wright said that about a dozen dispensaries are expected to have opened by the end of November, and up to 25 could be open by the year’s end.

A total of 60 dispensaries statewide are allowed under the Illinois Medical Cannabis Program, which was first approved in 2013 and is set to expire in 2017. The program’s development faced many political hurdles during its first several years, resulting in significant delays for the rolling out of the program.

Patients must have a state-issued medical marijuana ID and a designated dispensary with the Illinois Department of Health before they can purchase their medicine.

Sources:

http://www.thedailychronic.net/2015/49410/illinois-medical-marijuana-sales-finally-begin-today/

http://abc7chicago.com/news/illinois-medical-marijuana-sales-start-monday/1071791/

Photo Credit: Dank Depot

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