We recently had the pleasure of interviewing Dr. Michelle Sexton of PhytaLab, a cannabis testing lab serving medical and recreational cannabis businesses in Washington State. Dr. Sexton founded PhytaLab in 2010, and she has also served as a consultant to the Washington State Liquor Control Board on the implementation of I-502, the state’s bill which led to the legalization of marijuana for recreational use. She is a member of the International Cannabinoid Research Society, the International Association for Cannabinoid Medicines, and the Society of Cannabis Clinicians, and she is also an avid surfer and rock climber.
In this interview, Dr. Sexton discusses how she wound up specializing in medical cannabis, what she thinks of the current state of the legal market in Washington, and why it’s important for commercially-produced cannabis to undergo scientific testing.
Read the full interview below:
How did you first get involved in cannabis testing?
I became interested in the potency of cannabis when I was working as a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Washington. I was learning to measure endogenous cannabinoids in human serum and studying the role of this system in neuroinflammation. My research project hypothesized that Cannabis was a potential “supplement” to a deficient endocannabinoid system in patients with Multiple Sclerosis.
During the time of my studies, medical cannabis use was becoming increasingly prominent. By gaining understanding of the pharmacology of plant cannabinoids in humans, I became curious about the quality of the product that was being dispensed, and their health effects. It occurred to me that, as a doctor, I could be more effective to patients by understanding potency and by learning how to work with milligram doses. A start on this would be to measure percent potency in flower or other products and build on that.
At the time, hardly anyone was providing cannabis analytics (two laboratories nationwide), and conventional laboratories would not handle a schedule I drug, and there was no lab offering this service in Washington State. So protocols were non-existent from a business perspective. I took what I had learned in the laboratory about assay validation and Good Laboratory Practice and applied it to plant analytics, which I already also had some experience in (other paper). I wanted to expand my knowledge about the Cannabis human relationship.
Were there established protocols and methods at the time?
There were methods published in the scientific literature, but it was a little difficult to get my hands on reference standards, which still are not certified. I was able to learn from a couple of reputable people and went back to the lab and replicated their method.
When did PhytaLab come into existence, and what led to its inception?
Phytalytics, now PhytaLab, came into existence in 2010. I knew that my postdoc would be over in the fall of 2011 and I was thinking a lot about my career path. Because I really wanted to focus on whole-plant cannabis research, and seeing that it would be practically impossible under the current Federal laws, I decided to embark on a ‘private’ research initiative by collecting plant data in the private sector. Because I am also a practicing doctor and can recommend Cannabis in Washington State, I had the unique opportunity to have a very intimate “window” into both the potency of what people were using and the clinical effects. I set out to do to his and by learning from people like Arno Hazekamp who were already doing it, and through a couple of laboratories where he had consulted. Arno’s doctoral thesis was on the topic of cannabis and analytics.
What has been one of the greatest obstacles that you have faced while growing the business?
I think one of the greatest “obstacles” has been what is known as “citizen science” and in the case with Cannabis, the extension of the concept to include “citizen medicine”. Due to the federal status, crowd-sourced science has virtually replaced clinical research, being “loosely” conducted without the usual controls or theoretical frameworks. I think that the Cannabis community was really skeptical of analytical laboratory work in the beginning, particularly when the result did not come back as they would have hoped! And in this information age, everyone is armed with data and evidence so often it seems like professionals have no platform any more. So labs are still under extreme scrutiny and all of the citizen scientists are out there conducting their own proficiency tests across labs. I think I would prefer if clients came to our lab because they see where our expertise has come from and it speaks to them. The industry has a long way to go to bring black market labs to a level of proficiency of academic scientists. Another major obstacle has been my gender, which is always difficult in science. This would mirror the general gender issues in the cannabis industry. I think my credibility was questioned because of being a woman scientist.
Was there a particular event that served as a catalyst for cannabis testing to come into the public eye?
One particularly memorable event occurred in the spring of 2013, when the WSLCB brought together the handful of labs on the West coast, to discuss the analytical sector of the emerging legal landscape in WA. We formed a core of consultancy, and intimately involved in that process was the publishing of the American Herbal Pharmacopoeia Cannabis Monograph. I had been acting as a technical advisor and editor on the preparation of the monograph. The LCB adopted the Monograph to guide the quality assurance testing of the retail product in WA State. Later I was hired to write a laboratory certification checklist for the LCB and the industry was really waking up to the need of greater professionalism and proficiency. So, the publication and subsequent adoption of the Cannabis Monograph by the WSLCB and this meeting that has come to be called the “summit” were a real turning point. It resulted in the first time that a State stepped up to create standards for testing and quality control of Cannabis.
Not only testing has been affected by alliance with the herbal products as an industry. The American Herbal Products Association also developed a Cannabis Committee, where industry leaders came together from many States to write regulatory guidelines for producing, processing dispensing and testing Cannabis. This has led to a certification process, Patient Focused Certification, that was industry-driven and informed, and has been adopted in Washington DC.
For states looking to create regulated cannabis markets, what would you say the most important considerations are regarding mandated testing?
I would say “don’t overthink it”. It is after all a plant, not a pharmaceutical and not necessarily a dangerous substance, based on toxicology data. I think Cannabis should be clean and people should know the potency with reliable accuracy as well as anything that was applied to it during the growing process. If people want to claim that it is “medicine”, it would probably be best to conform to the standards of other herbal products that we are allowed to make claims about. I think that informed choice is always in the best interest of people in general.
For consumers, what are some of the greatest risks related to a lack of quality assurance testing?
Concentrates, or a food product, “edibles”, that have had flower extracted into butter, or made from a concentrate are the riskiest items in my opinion. It is imperative to know how potent an edible product is, and to be fully informed about the potential short and long-term consequences of high dosing. From a pharmacologic perspective, typically there can be “too much of a good thing”, with opiates serving as a good example. For example, from inhaling a rolled joint of about 15% THC you might inhale about 10 mg. Inhaling a concentrate “dabbing” might provide about 50 mg THC delivered directly to the blood stream. Although tolerance does develop, who knows if it is in the best interest of our endocannabinoid system. Additionally, “results may vary” across individuals particularly with edibles because liver enzyme metabolism will play a role in the potency.
Additionally, anything that has been applied to the plant is likely to be concentrated during an extraction process, such as pesticides, fungal toxins and even the naturally occurring terpenoids. So particularly with concentrates, there needs to be a high level of scrutiny and anything that was put on the plant during the growing process needs to be reported and quantified. Terpenoids are known to be toxic at more than “drop” doses.
Is there anything in Washington’s regulatory framework with regard to testing that you would change?
There are probably a number of things that could be improved upon and we are addressing these items with the State currently. However, without any enforcement, it’s hard to say who in the Industry will comply with the states rules. 1) There has to be standardized sampling. 2) Proficiency testing is an imperative, for every test that is being performed. 3) It would be in the best interests of the Industry for labs to agree upon some processes and their validity, such as microbiological testing. We of course need more research to inform these things, which is very difficult under the current legal frameworks. It is great that now professional organizations are taking an interest, such as the American Oil Chemists Society (AOCS), the Association of Official Analytical Chemists (AOAC). These are preparing to validate methods and provide proficiency testing. This is very much needed for an industry that is coming out of the black market and into the light. There are a lot of what I term “black market practices” in the laboratory sector. It will be in everyone’s best interest for the professional community to shine their lights into the processes.
If cannabis were to be re-scheduled at the federal level, should testing regulations ultimately come from the FDA, or should they be left to individual states or independent organizations?
Once scheduling change happens, it will be a game-changer with regard to professional organizations getting involved, such as the ones I’ve already mentioned. The US Pharmacopoeia would step in, the AOAC would participate, and standards and methods would proceed down the paths that other standards and methods take. This would affect all of quality control. The FDA only gets involved if something is being developed as a “drug”, or for the purpose of marketing it to treat a specific condition. So I think commercial labs could still function under State laws, but large commercial and pharmaceutical grade labs would become involved.
What do you think the future of medical cannabis looks like?
My personal vision is the same as for all botanical medicines: enough for everyone, without excessive government intervention. I hope that Cannabis will continue to be a “Gateway Herb” to other natural medicines and continue to drive a healthcare revolution. I think patients should have whatever variety of Cannabis they like or find effective, and that it can be be grown in their own backyards and processed in their own kitchen, should they choose. Should someone want to make a medical grade product and sell it to others, it should be subjected to the same rigorous standards as other herbal products manufactured under Good Manufacturing Processes (GMP). If someone wants to make a claim about a product (“cures cancer”, or “treats anxiety”) it should go through the same FDA process that other medicines must endure to validate such claims. I also envision pharmaceutical grade products that can be administered IV in the emergency room, such as CBD for traumatic brain injury or stroke. Cannabinoids for all!
Thank you, Michelle, for providing such great insight on a part of the industry that doesn’t get enough exposure! We’re looking forward to hearing more from you about PhytaLab’s continued growth and success in the future.
If you have questions for Dr. Sexton, please feel free to post them in the comments below or to get in touch via the PhytaLab website.
When Indiana lawmakers passed the Religious Freedom Restoration Act last week, they appear to have inadvertently opened the door to legal marijuana consumption — but only if it’s used as part of a religious act or expression.
The nuance in the new law was first caught by Indiana lawyer Abdul-Hakim Shabazz, who also identified several religions that rely on cannabis for various rites or rituals. “I would argue that under RFRA, as long as you can show that reefer is part of your religious practices, you got a pretty good shot of getting off scott-free,” Shabazz writes.
Furthermore, in a timely development for Indiana weed smokers, there’s a new church coming to town: “On Friday, the same day Governor Mike Pence signed the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, the First Church of Cannabis sought and received approval from Indiana’s secretary of state to operate as a church,” VICE News reports.
The RFRA’s stated intention is to protect religious freedoms, but one direct result is giving businesses the right to discriminate against the LGBT community. This may have been a form of retaliation against the state’s 2014 gay marriage law. The political fallout surrounding the law, however, seems to have caught lawmakers by surprise: people around the nation are angry. Some states have already enacted bans on state-funded travel to Indiana, and several sports organizations — including the NCAA and NFL — are being pressured by the online community to take their business out of Indiana until the law is changed.
Ganjapreneur, an online business resource dedicated to the cannabis industry, has expanded its business directory to include seven new categories of industry services. The directory focuses on companies that provide B2B services to cannabusinesses, as opposed to medical cannabis dispensaries or retail recreational shops that target actual cannabis consumers.
New categories have been added to include investment groups who support start-up marijuana businesses, political organizations who advocate on behalf of legalization and drug policy reform, and trade associations who work to educate and organize business owners. There are also now sections of the directory dedicated to cannabis testing labs who test for contaminants and potency in samples from state-licensed growers or producers — and to laboratories that offer premium hash and cannabis oil extraction services. Providers of commercial grow lights, seeds and soil, and other equipment used for both indoor and outdoor agriculture can also create business listings. Finally, the directory has added categories for marijuana industry job boards as well as publishers who report on marijuana news and culture.
Ganjapreneur’s business directory was launched in 2014 in an effort to help professionals, investors, and entrepreneurs connect with service providers who specialize in the cannabis industry. Since then, businesses have been able to add a listing for free as part of a limited-time offer. Currently, a listing displays the company’s name, location, a brief description, a link to the company’s website, and contact information such as an email address, phone number, and various social media accounts. There will be options available soon for an upgraded registration.
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 which aggregates daily cannabis industry news, business profiles, and other information.
Country music star and legalization advocate Willie Nelson is taking his relationship with cannabis to the next level. The musician and his family have announced plans for the next retail marijuana brand to be tied to a major celebrity: Willie’s Reserve.
Hemp and marijuana lobbyist Michael Bowman, a representative of the new brand, spoke on the subject in a recent interview with The Daily Beast:
Willie has spent a lifetime in support of cannabis, both the industrial hemp side and the marijuana side. He wants it [the brand] to be something that’s reflective of his passion. Ultimately, it’s his. But it was developed by his family, and their focus on environmental and social issues, and in particular this crazy war on drugs.
The company plans to open stores in states that have legalized marijuana, with the first stores coming as early as 2016. Stores will offer Willie’s Reserve brand cannabis, as well as products from other producers that have met the brand’s quality requirements.
Bowman calls this the “anti-Walmart model,” and says there will be “a certain standard by which growers have to account for carbon and such, in a way that empowers small growers who are doing the right thing…. It’ll all fall under that umbrella of ‘here’s our core beliefs, and here’s our mission statement,’ and they will be a part of that, to be a part of us.
Willie’s Reserve is not the first marijuana brand announced with a celebrity’s name and reputation behind it: Privateer Holdings and the family of Bob Marley unveiled plans earlier this year for Marley Natural, which is expected to be shipping out products by the end of the year.
Data released by the Arizona’s Benchmark Commercial Real Estate (BMCRE) shows that the state has approved far more square footage than necessary for the cultivation of medical marijuana, Marijuana Business Daily reports.
In 2014, the state’s 60,000 medical marijuana patients bought just 20,000 pounds of cannabis, less than a fifth of the Arizona’s current yearly production capacity of 106,000 pounds. This production takes place on the current one million square feet of completed cultivation facilities, but the state has approved more than 26 million square feet of land for possible future cultivation sites.
Even if Arizona voters were to approve a recreational ballot measure next year, market demand would increase by only about 50%. If this were the case, producers could meet the demand with only an additional 500,000 square feet of facilities.
It’s likely that the the vast majority of the 26 million square feet approved for cannabis cultivation will not be used as such. The risk, however, is that cannabis industry investors may be tempted by the availability of land to build facilities that aren’t needed. Furthermore, Arizona’s Department of Health Services doesn’t release data regarding cannabis facility locations and square footage, making it difficult to get a good sense of the market.
Recent events in Washington State should serve as a warning regarding the downsides of flooding a market with unneeded supply: unpredictable prices and downticks in profitability harm investors, producers, retailers and buyers.
Both of Texas State Representative Joseph Farias’ (D) bills relating to industrial hemp in the state were heard by the Committee on Agriculture & Livestock on March, 18 – the possible first step to the bills being moved from the committee and to the floor for a vote.
HB 557 would allow hemp cultivation for research at Texas colleges while HB 1322 would allow hemp to be grown and processed by farmers in Texas. According to Farias’ testimony the Texas Department of Agriculture would adopt rules and administer fees for licensing and farmers would have their license revoked for growing marijuana.
During the hearing, at which testimony from farmers and business owners was heard, Rep. Drew Springer (R) questioned why licenses would be necessary because no other crop requires a license in the state and hoped that the process would not require fingerprinting.
Farias said the license would prevent marijuana growers from potentially disguising their crops as hemp and said the Agriculture Department would be responsible for rules regarding fingerprints, but that he “hoped” that would not be involved.
During his testimony Farias told the committee that in 2014 Texas imported $621 million in industrial hemp products, including “clothing, paper, auto parts, building materials, hemp foods and body care.”
“Hemp is the next great Ag-product in Texas,” Farias said.
Shelia Hemphill, Policy Director for Texas Hemp Industry Association, testified that the Texas statute is patterned after Tennessee’s legislation and that, contrary to popular belief, hemp production is allowed under both federal and Texas state law.
According to Hemphill, the 2015 federal budget includes language prohibiting the Drug Enforcement Agency from interfering with hemp manufacturers in states where hemp production is allowed. She also said the Texas statute that outlaws marijuana includes language excluding hemp from the definition of cannabis sativa.
Hemphill was also questioned by Rep. Springer who suggested that TDA reports show that hemp would not have a yield to match cotton, a staple crop for Texas farmers. Hemphill pointed to documentation from the 1930s showing a yield of “200 pounds per acre in a 60 to 90-day growing cycle” easily rivaling cotton production.
Two fourth-generation Texas farmers also testified that hemp could change the course that their respective farms are on; noting that droughts have plagued their family businesses and hemp is drought resistant.
Will Shuman, of Shuman Farms, testified that cotton has become “risky.” He said a 50-pound bag of cotton seed, which covers 10 acres, costs $400 and the chemicals that he needs to help grow the cotton eats into the margins from the crop.
“I don’t see any reason why Texas farmers cannot produce this,” Shuman said.
Austin Rice, of Rice Ranch, told the committee that he presently has “hundreds of acres of dormant fields” and he is looking for alternatives as his production prices are going up while commodity prices are going down.
Several Texas business owners testified that Texans prefer locally sourced products and they were already in talks with potential Texas-based hemp producers to source their needs.
Derek Cross, representing both Hemp Solutions and Colorado Hemp Tea, said that he has already started a seed bank for potential farmers in Texas. Cross, a resident of Frisco, Texas who grew a small hemp farm in Colorado, said that his hemp seed repeatedly tested at .02 percent THC (the psychoactive ingredient in marijuana), falling under the threshold allowing for seed to be classified as hemp.
Cross testified that his small farm — less than one acre – would have been worth $20,000 had he been able to make profit from it. However, because his is a pilot farm, he was unable to sell what he produced. He was able to keep the seed which he will, eventually, be allowed to sell to farmers in his home state. Cross also explained that hemp would help farmers remediate soil subjected to chemicals, such as those used to help cotton grow, through a process called phytoremediation.
Phytoremediation uses green plants to help stabilize contaminated soil.
Christopher Brown, owner of Canyon Lake Texas-based cosmetic company Hemp 360, explained that he imported 600 gallons of hemp oil from Canada in 2014 which cost him $30,000 and testified that his neighbors could making that profit instead of it being exported.
Currently just 21 states have regulations in place that allow the cultivation of industrial hemp. Neither of the Texas bills would have any fiscal impact on the Agriculture Department if passed.
Kevin Griste, president of K-Global Fibers located in Bryan, Texas, called hemp “one of the most amazing plants [K-Global] has come across.”
“This is something that would grow throughout the state of Texas,” Griste said. “Not only is it an investment in us and hemp but an investment in Texas.”
The committee did not hear any testimony against either of the measures. Both bills are still in the committee.
A new report from the Department of Justice has revealed that DEA agents posted in Colombia engaged in private sex parties with prostitutes provided by local drug cartels. Some of the involved individual’s corruption ran even deeper: three supervisory special agents were reportedly “provided money, expensive gifts and weapons from drug cartel members,” USA TODAY reports.
The issue was never reviewed by the DEA’s Office of Security Programs, and the involved agents only received suspensions for up to ten days — an incredibly mild punishment, considering the DEA’s unforgiving crackdown on American citizens for drug-related crimes that has spanned generations and torn apart countless American households, particularly in communities of color.
The report was conducted by the DOJ inspector general as part of an investigation into federal law enforcement agencies and their handling of sexual misconduct and incidents of harassment.
According to the report, “Most of the sex parties occurred in government-leased quarters where agents’ laptops, BlackBerry devices and other government issued equipment were present … potentially exposing them to extortion, blackmail or coercion.”
To make matters worse, “If these special agents had served as government witnesses at the trials of these defendants, their alleged misconduct would have had to be disclosed to defense attorneys and would likely have significantly impaired ability to testify at trial,” the report reads. The defendants settled for a plea agreement and a trial was avoided.
Lawmakers in Italy signed a motion last Monday to legalize marijuana throughout the country. The proposal’s main support came from the dominant center-left Democratic Party but was backed by some on the right as well.
Sen. Benedetto Della Vedova, who introduced the bill, is a former member of Italy’s Radical Party, which has campaigned for marijuana legalization for more than four decades.
Speaking with reporters, Della Vedoza stated that the bipartisan support for the motion “shows that even in Italy, a pragmatic approach, based on a rigorous cost-benefit analysis, is now increasingly popular in the political and cultural debate, not only outside but also inside the parliament.” He promised that the proposal would be made into a bill soon.
Italy has already passed decriminalization, and a medical marijuana law was passed in 2007.
Last year, in response to human rights groups protesting the country’s swelling rate of imprisonment, Italy’s highest court overturned a 2006 law that classified marijuana alongside cocaine and heroin.
Ganjapreneur, a website dedicated to cannabis business news and culture, has recently published the first episode of their new podcast, featuring Kristin Nevedal of the Americans for Safe Access Patient-Focused Certification Program. The podcast is hosted by Shango Los, a cannabis industry brand strategist and PR consultant who founded the Vashon Island Marijuana Entrepreneurs Alliance in Washington State.
The podcast series was created to educate and inspire cannabis industry business owners and aspiring entrepreneurs. In each episode, Shango Los will interview a prominent business owner, activist, investor, or other player in the cannabis industry about a topic relevant to “ganjapreneurs,” or entrepreneurs who are pursuing opportunities in the legal cannabis industry. Featuring Kristin Nevedal, the first episode is geared toward certification programs for medical and recreational cannabis providers, and the importance of standards and self-regulation in an industry which tends to receive contradictory and constantly-changing directives from the government and official regulatory bodies.
In the interview, Nevedal discusses how the ASA’s Patient Focused Certification program came into existence, what its goals are, and how she has contributed to its development. Nevedal explains, “The motivation had a lot to do with bringing product safety protocols into the medical marketplace and also establishing cannabis as a botanical medicine, as opposed to moving it into more of a pharmaceutical realm. Our executive director at Americans for Safe Access, Steph Sherer, had this great plan and facilitated the partnership with the American Herbal Products Association and the American Herbal Pharmacopoeia, which allowed us to work within the botanical industry and with cannabis experts to create guidelines that were modeled after what we see being used and approved by the FDA today for botanical and nutraceutical products in the US.”
The interview also covers Nevedal’s experience as a community organizer in Humboldt County, California, with the Emerald Growers Association. Describing the group’s growth and progress, Nevedal says, “It’s great for us, because we bring all of this information together from all over the state and then we understand better what kind of programs we need to develop to help move sustainability forward. […] We’re sharing these messages about best practices and sustainability at a much broader level than when we started. That really is changing a larger conversation about cultivation.”
The full podcast is available via Ganjapreneur’s website.
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.
A Toronto-based company has become Canada’s first publicly-traded recreational marijuana firm. Nutritional High International, Inc., which produces oils and extracts as well as a variety of edibles, began trading Monday on the Canadian Securities Exchange.
The firm raised $1.6 earlier this month before closing its initial public offering, and on Monday it ended the day trading at 8.5 cents a share.
Nutritional High is in an unusual position as a publicly-traded company in a country where the recreational use of marijuana remains illegal. Canada has a medical marijuana market, but the production of oils, extracts, and edibles are illegal even for medical marijuana companies. Canada’s public health department, Health Canada, restricts the use of marijuana for medical patients to the dried plant, due to the lack of research concerning other products. Canada’s Supreme Court is currently hearing a case challenging this restriction.
In light of restrictions at home, Nutritional High has created a business model that aims to take advantage of the increasing number of state recreational markets throughout the U.S. The firm will focus on producing infused edibles and oils, which it sees as having the biggest profit margins.
Currently, the firm is most active in Colorado, but may eventually expand into Washington, Oregon, Nevada and Minnesota.
Legalization advocates in Washington D.C. have been getting creative in their attempts to overturn an act of Congress that blocks their ability to conduct marijuana business. Last week, members of the D.C. Cannabis Campaign dressed in tricorner hats and other iconic “patriot” costumes and stormed the office of Congressman Jason Chaffetz, the Republican Representative of Utah who blocked the voter-approved Initiative 71. Chaffetz — who threatened D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser with jail time if she implemented the legalization law — was offered a glass pipe as a peace offering.
On the same Tuesday, D.C. Brau Brewing unveiled their “Smells Like Freedom” beer, a green-tinted IPA that both smells and tastes like marijuana (yet does not contain actual cannabis). Chief executive and co-founder of D.C. Brau Brandon Skall says his company released the beer in solidarity with efforts to tax and regulate marijuana sales, so that residents of the District can enjoy the infrastructure revenue from that market.
“There’s no reason we shouldn’t be able to benefit the same way they do in Colorado,” Skall told The Washington Post. “You walk into a D.C. public school, you see empty bookshelves, you seen underfunding, you see teachers going out and spending their [own] money to buy kids supplies. We should be able to benefit the same way that other states do. . . I’ll tell you straight up, I don’t smoke pot, but I believe 100 percent in people’s freedom to do so. I think that if we didn’t have people standing for the end of prohibition . . . this business would not be here today.”
Last year alone, the state of Colorado reaped $76 million in taxes and fees from its recreational and medical marijuana industries. While D.C.’s voter approved ballot initiative technically “legalized” marijuana, Congress has forbade the selling of the drug, which cuts the local government out of any potential tax revenue from sales.
Due to the control Congress has over D.C. spending, efforts to reform marijuana policy in the District have often been squashed by federal lawmakers, who stalled the city’s medical marijuana program for over a decade.
Mason Tvert of the Marijuana Policy Project co-directed the campaign in Colorado to legalize marijuana in 2012, and says that he’s optimistic about D.C.’s ability to overcome the Congressional block against marijuana sales. According to Tvert:
“There appears to be strong support among D.C. officials for regulating and taxing marijuana. We believe they have the ability to do so this year by using reserve funds, which federal law allows them to use to take actions in the interest of public health and safety. Using funds to remove marijuana from the underground market and start controlling marijuana cultivation and sales could not be a better example of an expenditure being made in the interest public health and safety. We hope the mayor and council members will continue to stand up for the voters and take this course of action. We expect to see the District to adopt a system of regulating and taxing marijuana within the next year or two, if not this year.”
The Internal Revenue Service has stated that it will refund a Denver medical marijuana dispensary that paid its taxes in cash.
The IRS had fined the dispensary, Allgreens, for paying its taxes in cash after rejecting the dispensary’s claim that its inability to access banking services forced it to do so. The IRS requires companies to pay its employee retention taxes electronically or pay a ten percent fine, except in certain cases.
In response, Allgreens challenged the fine in U.S. Tax Court, claiming that the IRS rules were unfairly applied to a compliant company that had paid its taxes on time.
A spokeswoman for the IRS refused to comment on the settlement, and it’s unclear whether the court’s decision will extend to other dispensaries that have been similarly fined for paying in cash due to a lack of banking service. Allgreen’s attorney, Rachel Gillette, thinks that it will: “Not applying (the penalty) to other businesses uniformly would be as ludicrous as having applied it in the first place.”
The agreement with the IRS marks the first federal concession to the cannabis industry since issuing guidelines to bankers on working with dispensaries in February 2014.
With the recent push for legalized marijuana in many states across the U.S., a plethora of cannabis-themed ancillary businesses have seen explosive growth in anticipation of a boom in the new industry. One such business is a Tinder-style dating app known as “HighThere!” which matches cannabis consumers based on their preferred method of consumption and what they like to do while smoking marijuana.
Todd Mitchem, co-founder of the company, recently discussed the app’s rapid rise in popularity with Ganjapreneur, a website dedicated to cannabis business news and culture. According to Mitchem, the HighThere! app has gained more users in its first six months than Twitter. “We are starting to see the mainstream acceptance take hold,” he said. “HighThere! is getting so many users so quickly, more than Twitter had in the first 6 months of their operation, in fact.”
In the interview, Mitchem also discusses his career prior to getting involved in cannabis and described how the free app plans to eventually turn a profit. He says that he does not plan to emulate the monetization strategy of other similar apps, because “charging a user is like inviting a bunch of people to your exclusive party then at the last moment charging them a cover to get in. Not cool dude.”
In order to find matches for a particular user, Mitchem says, the app asks “a few very specific onboarding experience questions. Our entire algorithm is based on experience matching so that people enjoy time with each other.” The method seems to be working, as Mitchem says it attracts roughly 2,000 new users each day.
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.
Former news reporter and marijuana activist Charlo Greene, who caused a minor sensation on the internet last year by quitting her job on live TV last September, has made the news again, albeit not of her own volition. Police raided Greene’s Alaska Cannabis Club last Friday and served search warrants after having received reports of illegal marijuana sales.
Anchorage police confiscated marijuana and impounded a Dodge Dakota and a Jeep Liberty. The search warrant states that marijuana plants and derivatives, including “resins, oils, hashish or other THC derivatives, concentrates, [and] edibles” were being concealed in the cars and the club.
Despite the raid, Greene, whose legal name is Charlene Egbe, said she reopened the club the next day.
In an interview with KTVA, Greene defended the club as a medical dispensary: “We don’t sell any recreational marijuana. We don’t sell any medical marijuana. This is a place for cardholders to come and share their own cannabis.”
Alaska voters approved a ballot measure last year legalizing the recreational use of cannabis, but its sale remains illegal. The Anchorage Assembly also passed an ordinance in February that made it illegal to produce marijuana concentrates with flammable solvents without a valid license.
One of the most common misconceptions about cannabis is that it has the same effect on everyone who consumes it. This, however, couldn’t be further from the truth: some people are social smokers, some people want to work out when they are high, and some people would rather cozy up in front of a movie on Netflix with a bag of gummy worms (or kale chips). With modern technology helping people find companions for virtually every other type of activity they might want to partake in, it seems only natural that an app would emerge to help people find companions for smoking weed.
We recently had the pleasure of interviewing Todd Mitchem, the entrepreneur behind the Tinder-esque dating app “HighThere!” which launched recently. HighThere! is a free-to-use mobile app which connects cannabis consumers based on their preferences for consuming cannabis and how it makes them feel.
Read the full interview below:
Ganjapreneur: When did you first conceive of the HighThere! app?
Todd Mitchem: Last summer all the co-founders got together and came up with it as we discussed the complex connection problems people who use cannabis face.
How does HighThere! connect cannabis consumers?
We built a cool platform that connects people based on experiences they wish to share instead of petty things like age, weight and hair color. Those are surface things. We believe the cannabis consumer cares more about experiencing things with others. So we ask you simple questions that build an experience-based profile with everything from how you consume cannabis, to your energy level while you’re high, to the types of things you like to do while high. The algorithm connects you based on this and then you tell your story (in 420 characters or less of course) and off you go! We want people to connect to chat, go out, stay in, etc, but more importantly we want to build an amazing social connection app for all cannabis consumers.
Interesting! What kind of questions do you ask your users?
We ask a few very specific onboarding experience questions. Our entire algorithm is based on experience matching so that people enjoy time with each other.
Roughly how many users do you have currently, and how quickly have you been getting new users?
We have seen amazing growth. As I write you the last count was getting close to 20k NEW users in less than 2 weeks. To put this in perspective, other apps in the space took 6 months to reach this level. We grow roughly 2k users each day.
Were you involved in the cannabis industry at any level prior to working on HighThere?
Before High There! I was working in the cannabis industry first as the chief revenue officer for a brand of vape that I helped catapult to national brand status both with PR and a robust licensing structure. When that contract ended I then went on to consult in the industry and actually re-branded the company now called Mindful (seen on 60 min). When I met my business partners in HighThere! it was perfect timing as I also had co-founded two other companies, CannaSearch (with Ashley Picillo) and I Choose Cannabis, a dedicated mainstream cannabis organization.
Prior to cannabis, as the Senior Vice President of Business Development for a culture and management consulting firm called Eagle’s Flight, representing major brands, I worked to coach executives on dynamic leadership, structural excellence and strategic business applications. This included companies such as Anheuser-Busch, Microsoft, H&R Block, Purina and Yum Brands. My role had me managing large teams of brand change, management, and leadership experts to target and solve key performance issues within the companies we represented. I learned my leadership skills from a person who was a nestle executive for 17 years.
Did you fund the business yourself, or did you seek out investors?
We funded ourselves. 300k so far.
How many employees does HighThere! currently have?
Currently 10 including our development team. We are actively searching for a top CTO (chief technology officer) to work side by side with me on developing our next phases. This person will need to live in Denver and be ready to keep our mind-blowing success moving.
At what point did you come up with the brand name?
It just sort of made sense and happened. I have worked with top brands and this is the kind of brand that will become a lifestyle brand. It’s simple, fun and cool. We love it.
Did you need to acquire the domain name HighThere.com from a third party, or was it unregistered at the time?
We bought it from its previous owner.
I understand the app is currently free to download. What is your road to profitability with the company?
We have a philosophy that companies charging their database is a cash grab and not appropriate. I dropped Match because they were charging, I am no longer on Tinder, but I would drop them also with their pay to play platform. Instead, we have built a robust 2.0 money making strategy that will not compromise user private information or ask them to pay. Instead we will be utilizing a proprietary technology to build something unique to the app connectivity space. We believe our users will value this beyond other models. We love our users and we want them to enjoy the experience of High There! Charging a user is like inviting a bunch of people to your exclusive party then at the last moment charging them a cover to get in. Not cool dude.
What do you think the next five years look like for legalized cannabis?
Honestly I am not a predictor, but I think we will see a decriminalized federal system within 3-5 years. I think a full legal system will be based on state by state involvement as it is with alcohol. We are starting to see the mainstream acceptance take hold: HighThere! is getting so many users so quickly, more than Twitter had in the first 6 months of their operation, in fact.
What is one piece of advice that you would offer to aspiring ganjapreneurs?
My main advice is to stop thinking of cannabis and the “cannabusiness” world as fringe. The industry is expanding and the opportunities are non-stop. Pick your specialty. Look to ancillary business ideas that will appeal to a mainstream consumer. And ALWYAS show respect for the hardworking activists who got us here. NEVER treat the traditional “stoner” with disrespect. We are all stoners, including my mom!
Thank you, Todd, for sharing your story with us: we look forward to seeing HighThere! gain more traction and we wish you continued growth and success with your venture!
If you have questions for Todd, feel free to post them in the comments area below or reach out via the HighThere! website.
Lawmakers in the North Dakota Senate gave final approval Monday to a bill allowing the farming, processing, and sale of industrial hemp.
House Bill 1436 passed the Senate by a vote of 46-1, with the one dissenting vote coming from Republican Sen. Oley Larsen. The bill passed the House last month by a vote of 87-5, and goes now to Gov. Jack Dalrymple’s desk.
The bill eliminates the need for federal approval for hemp farming in the state and creates a framework allowing the state’s agriculture officials to establish the farming program. In particular, the bill reads: “A license required by this section is not conditioned on or subject to review or approval by the United States drug enforcement agency.”
If Governor Jack Dalrymple doesn’t either sign or veto the bill within three days of its arrival at his office, the bill becomes law automatically.
The New Mexico Senate voted Saturday to pass a bill that would ease penalties for adults found in the possession of small amounts of cannabis and drug paraphernalia. The bill now moves to the House.
Senate Bill 383, which passed with bipartisan support by a vote of 21-20, would make those found in possession of up to an ounce of marijuana or any kind of drug paraphernalia subject to a $50 fine. The conviction would be classified as a penalty assessment, which is not a criminal conviction.
Furthermore, the bill would remove the possibility of jail time for those convicted of possession of up to eight ounces of marijuana. Current law in New Mexico considers possession of up to an ounce as a petty misdemeanor with the possibility of jail time. Possession of between one and eight ounces is considered a misdemeanor with the possibility of large fines or up to a year’s worth of jail time.
The New Mexico House passed similar legislation with bipartisan support in 2013. The bill eventually failed because the Senate did not vote on it before the year’s adjournment.
According to a 2013 Sanderhoff poll, 57% of New Mexico residents were then in favor of decriminalization. Last year, Sante Fe decriminalized the possession of small amounts of marijuana.
We are excited to announce the first episode of our new podcast with host Shango Los of the Vashon Island Marijuana Entrepreneurs Alliance! In this series, Shango will interview cannabis industry entrepreneurs, activists, investors, and legislators about their experience and their take on the current state of the industry.
In this episode, Shango meets with Kristin Nevedal of ASA’s Patient Focused Certification program to discuss the program and its goals, as well as her personal experience related to community organizing and activism. Kristin is a proponent of cannabis as a whole-plant medicine, and she works to foster safety, consistency, and sustainability in the medical cannabis industry with the Emerald Growers Association in Humboldt County. She is also an instructor at Oaksterdam University, and teaches classes on sustainable horticulture.
Shango Los: Welcome to the Ganjapreneur.com Podcast. My name is Shango Los and I will be your host today. Kristin Nevedal is director of the Patient Focused Certification program from Americans for Safe Access. Before joining ASA she co-founded and is presently vice chair of the Emerald Growers Association in Humboldt County, whose mission is to promote the medicinal, environmental, social, and economic benefits of lawfully cultivated cannabis in California by advocating for public policies that foster a healthy and sustainable cannabis industry.
As chair of the American Herbal Products Association, Cannabis Cultivation Committee’s working group, Kristin assisted in the development of cannabis cultivation model regulations and best practices for agency consideration. Kristin is also an instructor at Oaksterdam University, teaching classes on environmental sustainability and best management practices. Kristin’s broad policy and advocacy experience also includes serving as a board member for the Coalition for Cannabis Policy Reform, Californians to Regulate Medical Marijuana, Americans for Safe Access’ Patient Focused Certification program, and the 420 Archives.
Welcome, Kristin. Thanks for joining us today.
Kristin Nevedal: Thank you for having me.
Shango Los: First let’s talk about Americans for Safe Access, and then after a while we’ll talk a little bit about Humboldt County specifically.
Kristin Nevedal: Sounds great.
Shango Los: What was the motivation for Americans for Safe Access to establish the Patient Focused Certification and how has it developed?
Kristin Nevedal: The motivation had a lot to do with bringing product safety protocols into the medical marketplace and also establishing cannabis as a botanical medicine, as opposed to moving it into more of a pharmaceutical realm. Our executive director at Americans for Safe Access, Steph Sherer, had this great plan and facilitated the partnership with the American Herbal Products Association and the American Herbal Pharmacopoeia, which allowed us to work within the botanical industry and with cannabis experts to create guidelines that were modeled after what we see being used and approved by the FDA today for botanical and nutraceutical products in the US.
Shango Los: Do you see this as a precursor for it to move towards pharmaceutical or is the intention to hold it firmly in the herbal realm?
Kristin Nevedal: It’s to hold it firmly in the herbal realm and this is largely part of the motivation here, is to keep this plant as a botanical medicine. We know that there’s going to be spin-offs or side development in the pharmaceutical realm, but cannabis as a whole plant medicine has advantages that we’re never going to see happen in the pharmaceutical realm. So this program acts to anchor the plant itself as a botanical and nutraceutical product for the future. A second huge component to this is that, when we look at the history of botanical medicine in the US, in the late 70s and early 80s as the botanical and nutraceutical market really exploded in the US, there weren’t guidelines in place for this market.
So companies started to get into trouble with product liability, because they didn’t have product safety protocols; they didn’t have proper labeling protocols. It really took down some of the larger companies that were developing. Secondly, it created a pathway, or an incentive, for the FDA to really try to remove our ability to have botanical and nutraceutical products over the counter, and there’s some fear that we could see the same thing happen with cannabis. So, learning from what similar products have experienced is really what launched the merger and the partnerships for ASA, AHPA, and the AHP.
Shango Los: So, specifically with the Patient Focused Certification, explain to me a little bit about the standards and what that means to earn that certification.
Kristin Nevedal: Right. Back in 2010 this partnership developed and these working groups were housed largely within the American Herbal Products Association, and they were a combination of botanical experts and cannabis industry experts from all over the country. About ninety companies joined, a few from Canada. We had some input even from the Netherlands. What we did is we developed these recommendations to regulators that actually created so-called pathways for policy development, but also best operating practices for everything from cultivation and processing to manufacturing, labeling, packaging, and folding, also for distribution and then for laboratory testing facilities. The American Herbal Pharmacopoeia developed the Cannabis Monograph, which really focused on quality, purity, and testing methodologies, also what kind of contaminants or adulterants might not be suitable and at what levels for human consumption.
Coming into the Patient Focused Certification program as a certified company means that you’re compliant with local and state regulations, but you also have these product safety protocols in place; you have written standard operating practices, or SOPs; you have employee manuals, and your employees are well-educated and trained. You’re using appropriate tracking procedures, using lot and batch number tracking; you are properly labeling and identifying the parts of a plant that are being used in the products you’re making and developing; and that you can do a product safety recall, should you have to, at any time in a product’s lifespan.
Shango Los: It’s interesting, because here in Washington to become certified as a lab, for example, you don’t have to prove proficiency, just you have to do enough of the certification. It sounds like this added layer of the Patient Focused Certification adds more of a competence in the proficiency of whoever the certified person might be.
Kristin Nevedal: Yeah, absolutely. We have two labs here in Washington that are Patient Focused Certified. We have both Phytalab and The Werc Shop. That’s great, because they’re testing both adult use cannabis and medical marijuana, or medical cannabis, for patients here in Washington. They’ve gone through a rigorous audit, which verifies both their standard operating procedures, their employee handbooks, but also the methodologies that they’re using on-site with the products and the raw cannabis that they’re testing. It’s more likely that there’s going to be a consistent result coming out of those facilities. Suddenly they’re a standardized lab. It provides a standard for testing, a standard methodology, and the machines are calibrated to a standard, so it really is a game changer for standardizing medicine here.
Shango Los: With the adoption of medical cannabis across the country being ahead of the recreational legalization, are you finding that the certification is being adopted all across the country?
Kristin Nevedal: It’s the guidelines that we’re releasing being adopted. Many states have taken the American Herbal Product Association’s recommendations to regulators in the four categories we just mentioned and they’re adopting them as regulatory policy. We see a good portion of that work be included in Illinois law, or regulations, Maryland’s regulations, Nevada’s regulations. They’re spreading. I think that’s reassuring. These are really very sensible recommendations for regulations.
We’re also seeing the American Herbal Pharmacopoeia Cannabis Monograph be referenced for laboratory testing facilities, even in 502. Portions of the AHP Monograph are referenced in I-502’s law. We also see them referenced in Oregon, again in Maryland, again in Illinois, and in multiple states. I think we’re really moving towards more of a standardized product and a standardized testing regimen for these products.
Shango Los: I can imagine that the legislators who are trying to figure this out in their home states are probably pretty grateful that you have put in the time to make these recommendations first so that they can just grab what you have built and use that as a starting place instead of reinventing the wheel at each state level.
Kristin Nevedal: Right, and reinventing the wheel because of so many decades of prohibition is what regulators tend to do. Yeah. I think these have been very, very helpful, and really what these do is they look at cannabis, again, like a botanical product. Cultivation, say, those recommendations are treating it like a crop that’s produced for human consumption. So we’re taking those considerations into account in the regulatory framework that was developed.
These by no means recreate the wheel. They put cannabis in the botanical realm. They treat it like a crop that’s produced for human consumption. They look at how the Department of Agriculture would work with it at that level. They look at what kind of processing would be required if it was recreational or any other crop, what kind of protocols would be in place for that or [inaudible 00:10:19] might be in place or required for that. We need to do the same for manufacturing all the way up to distribution and then laboratory testing. So, really, it’s not a reinvention of any wheel. It’s just putting cannabis into its place as a botanical and herbal product.
Shango Los: Like finding an appropriate framework for it.
Kristin Nevedal: Yeah, yeah, with minimal adaptions.
Shango Los: With some states beginning to blend medical and recreational, like we’re doing here in Washington, what role do you see for the Patient Centered Focused Certification and the merging of medical and recreational markets?
Kristin Nevedal: I do feel like what we’re seeing happen is … Still states and legislators and regulators are struggling with the product safety components. We’re really hoping, in fact, Patient Focused Certification can act as a tool or a framework to bring better product safety and standardization into these already existing regulatory models. Also in Washington we have the sticky situation where the medical marijuana providers really have no legal protections, as far as licensing or permitting is concerned.
Because of that they’ve been the brunt of a lot of misunderstanding, so we’re really hoping to see these providers move into certification, because then they can show that they actually have right now much better standards of production, processing, manufacturing, distribution than what the I-502 stores have. A lot of them have spent years and years developing very good protocols that they’re using to create very high quality products for patients. So this program offers an opportunity for them to really show that through an audit and certification process.
Shango Los: That’s great. It sounds like one of the first standards that can really truly have medical self-regulate, because in a lot of cases self-regulation is more of an ideal than what’s actually happening. It sounds like this certification can create a standard where we can actually more effectively self-regulate.
Kristin Nevedal: Right, and shows some level of compliance. When you’re in a situation like Washington … California’s in a very similar situation where they have providers that don’t have clear pathways for licensing or permitting … it’s very challenging to show that you’re operating in compliance as well. So patient certification allows these facilities to show a level of compliance with local and state regulation, as well as this higher level of standard of care, standard of production, that I think is very important. Patients rely on it. Patients are getting, for the most part, really excellent care from a majority of their providers, so it would be a shame to really lose that for patients. I’m hoping we can help organize and keep the patient providers that have put so much into being available for these patients’ care at the table as this merger, or legislation, develops here.
Shango Los: There’s a lot of experience that we don’t want to lose by overregulating and pushing these folks out.
Kristin Nevedal: Oh, no, and products … experience and products that patients are relying on. We haven’t seen that same development happen yet in I-502 adult use marketplace. Of course, it’s new. That marketplace is new; it’s developing. It’s had its hiccups as a newly evolved, regulated marketplace. To lose the expertise and years of work and product development that these patients have become reliant on would really be a setback for patients, let alone for the businesses and the folks who have put their life into this. Patients would lose out quite a bit.
Shango Los: That’s why you call it “Patient Focused Certification.”
Kristin Nevedal: Yes, exactly.
Shango Los: Before we move on to talk about Humboldt County, how can our listeners find out more about Americans for Safe Access and the certification?
Kristin Nevedal: It’s really easy. Visiting the Americans for Safe Access website, which is at safeaccessnow.org, you can do both. You can learn all about Americans for Safe Access through that website and you can also link directly to the Patient Focused Certification website, or you can go directly to the Patient Focused Certification website by just going to patientfocusedcertification.org. It’s really long, but very simple. If you can remember the name of the certification program, you can remember the website.
I encourage folks to fill out applications on the website. They’re very easy. They don’t come with a commitment to certify, but it does allow us to open up a conversation with a company or a provider about how to move into a certified framework.
Shango Los: That’s great. You are also well-known as a co-founder and key member of the Emerald Growers Association in Humboldt and you’re presently the co-chair. What advantages do you see for growers across the country to come together similarly and form local cannabis trade organizations?
Kristin Nevedal: I think Humboldt County … It has this unique history of generations and generations of growers. When it originally started as Humboldt Growers Association back in 2010, it was really because we were seeing Prop 18 happen in California and the city of Oakland make a move to only allow for four very large cultivation sites and Alameda County patients would have had to get medicine from only one of those four cultivation sites. There was a sense of panic. This is kind of an economic backbone for Humboldt County. We formed during a time where our community literally was freaking out and wondering what happens after cannabis. Our goal was to make sure that we didn’t lose these small farms that have been providing since … 1997, I think, is when Proposition 215 passed. I guess it was’98, because it was a proposition.
So 1998 Proposition 215 passes, and we were suddenly moving into 2010 and we had … What was that? … ten years, even more, of providers that were suddenly going to be shut out of the market, kind of similar to here right now with what you’re dealing with in lieu of the I-502 and the merging. Our community felt so strong about holding onto that family, sustainable, small farm that we literally formed in a living room. A bunch of friends and community members who were somewhat in a panic, we decided that we were going to get together and we were going use safety in numbers methodology to influence local regulations. We really started to try to influence Humboldt County into creating a permanent system that allowed farmers to have a legal framework to operate in.
We quickly learned in California that we really needed to also focus on what was happening on a state-wide level. We weren’t the only group of farmers organizing. Mendocino was doing the same thing. So, suddenly Mendocino, our neighbor to the south, Humboldt Growers Association was folding into MendoGrown, and the two groups are working together and enjoying the MendoGrown board. After a couple years of playing phone between the two boards, we decided that really what we needed to do was merge and we needed to bring more farmers in from more areas of California and become a state-wide organization that could really, hopefully, have a very strong voice to effect change in the capital, because what we realized we needed was state-wide regulations to help fix the problem and that the local powers-that-be were not really going to be able to fix the problems.
Shango Los: Are you finding that this combined group has got a lot more influence because of all the additional sweat equity brought together as one?
Kristin Nevedal: Oh, absolutely. What it does is it creates a unified voice. Instead of having Humboldt County be in the capital talking about what farmers need, and Mendocino be in the capital talking about what farmers need, and Butte County, or Yuba, or Monterrey, we now have this cohesion. So it’s a lot easier for our legislators to hear the needs of a large group when it’s coming from one organization and one voice. We’ve really expanded our board to allow for regional representation. Our executive director, Hezekiah Allen, is amazing and travels through all of these counties all over the state and meets with our local chapters on a regular basis. We do regular telephone calls, where we’re talking to a legislative committee. We have a membership committee. We have a marketing and development committee. We have an environmental committee.
It’s great for us, because we bring all of this information together from all over the state and then we understand better what kind of programs we need to develop to help move sustainability forward. We’re much more effective in getting those messages out, because we can share them now in … I think we have fifteen counties right now throughout California. We’re sharing these messages about best practices and sustainability at a much broader level than when we started. That really is changing a larger conversation about cultivation.
In California we’ve been pretty rock-hammered with environmental issues because of the trespass grow situation on public lands and large private holdings, timber holdings, especially. It’s been very hard for viewers of the media to understand that that’s not our medical cannabis providers. So, having the broader themes, the larger area of conversation I think has really helped to change and educate also the public about the difference between medical and trespass. Trespass is not even legal. We have these medical providers that are doing everything we can do to be compliant and good stewards of the land. When we share that message outside of Humboldt in a grassroots way, we really get to educate much more on a much more profound level.
Shango Los: Yeah, certainly. Prohibition-era growers have worked in secret for years. Sometimes there are some challenges to growers sharing information and coming together after all the secrecy. What techniques does the Emerald Growers Association use to help lessen competition and suspicion amongst member growers that might be useful to others across the country who are forming their own similar groups?
Kristin Nevedal: I think that when we have leadership in all of these various communities, that leadership is often trusted by their peers, and that has been really a great way for us to expand. As we identify folks, say, in Butte County that really want to engage and have a similar mission to move sensible regulation forward … We’re dealing with a plethora of bans, patchwork bans for cultivation, all over California. One ban over here on the eastern side of the state ripples throughout the entire state and it shows communities next door that, “Oh, we can ban this, as opposed to having to deal with it.” So, really, getting strong leadership in each of these regions has helped tremendously, because the community’s leaders are who the local community is most likely to engage with, and talk to, and rally around, and feel safe with. That’s really been a huge change and advance for us. That’s done a lot of good.
Shango Los: It sounds like you’re addressing the suspicion that sometimes comes with prohibition-era growers by distributing the leadership. Even though you have a central organization, the decision making isn’t necessarily as centralized, so that everyone feels like they are being considered in the whole.
Kristin Nevedal: Yeah. We invite our members to committee calls. We invite them to engage and we love them to engage. I’m here in Seattle today and tomorrow, and then Saturday we’re hosting a brunch to talk about [Ford 00:24:01] updates. That will be in Humboldt County. We’ll be doing a brunch. It’s free to our members. It’s a twenty-five dollar charge to non-members, but all are welcome to come in and hear what it is that we’re working on, what our educational programs look like right now, what our legislative strategy looks like. We’ll talk a little bit about the trends in cultivation policy throughout the US. We’ll do the same thing on Sunday in Mendocino and then we’ll be out doing a very similar program in the eastern part of the state in March, and then again in April, and then we’ll be headed south.
It’s really inviting the community, members and non-members, to have the conversation. We do a lot of radio. Radio’s really great for having the conversation. We try to encourage folks to call in when we have that opportunity, and that’s somewhat anonymous, and they can email us, too, or send us notes. It’s a great way to reach out and communicate. We’re just trying to hold as many events as possible, get people as engaged as possible, and hopefully working with the local legislators, their supervisors, their state council members, to educate them about the fact that this is a crop just like any other crop that’s produced for human consumption. It can easily be regulated like agriculture. We can dispel all of these myths about it being this big, scary, environmentally unfriendly endeavor and just keep pushing, pushing in that same direction.
Shango Los: When you were talking about the different meetings at the different local levels, I got another picture of another agriculture group. It sounds a lot like the old Grange that my grandfather used to be in when I grew up. In a way you’re making a modern Cannabis Grange where people can come together and discuss what’s going on in their agriculture area and also have social and trade best practices.
Kristin Nevedal: Yeah. I think that’s a great analogy. Even in some areas we use a lot of the local Granges, because they’re friendly, and the spaces are there, and they’re great community meeting centers. It is; it’s very similar to that. In California we’re really also pushing hard for our pollution control. These farmers have been working in their region, in some cases for multiple generations, and they develop streams that are very unique to their region, that, even if I take something from the eastern part of the state and then bring it over to the coastal part of the state, that plant is going to look different; it’s going to taste different; it’s going to just …
Kristin Nevedal: Right. Exactly. We’re really hoping to honor this rich tradition of cultivation and see the state recognize the operations, just like we have for [flying 00:27:16], because it’s a very, very similar dynamic happening here with the environmental influences with cannabis. I think that’s another reason for these regions to engage. It offers an opportunity as we work together to blend all of the wisdom and the years of hard work that have gone into developing those areas. In a lot of these rural communities, cannabis inadvertently has kept the communities economically stable. It’s built schools, fire departments, community centers, and kept things moving forward. I think it’s time we honor that.
Shango Los: Let’s talk a little bit about those community centers and such. What is the relationship between the trade group itself and the community at large, and how do the local residents who are not cannabis enthusiasts respond to the group generally?
Kristin Nevedal: It’s changing. I have to say that when we started in 2010, folks really weren’t sure what to make of a medical cannabis trade association that was focused on cultivation, and sustainability, and best management practices. My little joke is that cannabis farmers tend to be like ostriches; they put their head in the sand. In our area a lot of them moved into Humboldt, into these rural regions of California, because they were a “back to the land” movement. They were getting back to the land. They didn’t want to be part of government control and regulations.
Flash forward to 2010 and suddenly there’s a trade association saying, “We need to regulate, and we need to self-regulate and help guide regulations that we develop,” and there definitely was some resistance and there was some pretty hefty resistance. Over the years our trade association, our board, is largely comprised of community members. So, over the years, giving back to the community, putting out free best management practice manuals, hosting events, working with different legislators in their community, we’ve seen some of that fear or uneasiness fall away.
We’ve also done a lot of work to engage other groups in our communities, some environmental groups, create coalitions, so we aren’t standing up there alone; we’re partnered; we’re moving things forward in coalition. I think that has really helped the trade association, Emerald Growers Association, to be more well-received in the community.
Politically, times are changing. The entire political environment from 2010 to today is an entirely different setting. When we started in 2010 there was kind of a rush of organizing. People were still uneasy. Growers were nervous, and rightfully so: “I’m afraid to sign on to a trade association here, because I’m going to lose my rights as a grower.” We got a lot of that … of course, how could we not have? In 2011 the US Attorney from California came out with guns-a-blazing, literally. They’re going to shut down every medical marijuana facility. Suddenly people who wanted to be engaged were terrified and we kind of had this lull. The political climate said, “Wow. I should go back to my homestead and be afraid.” That’s what people did, and I totally understand that.
Now, after Washington and Colorado legalized, and they’re seeing more and more states … More than half of the US has marijuana laws or medical cannabis laws on the books. People are saying, “Oh, goodness. We really need to be focused on this.” So we’re seeing another resurgence, I would say, of organizing and farmers wanting to be engaged. [Inaudible 00:31:32] the future, and the way to do that is to look at becoming part of the solution and engaging, bringing your voice to the table.
Shango Los: Humboldt has had quite a voice. Humboldt is seen as the Holy Land to most cannabis enthusiasts across the country and, I guess, the world. How do you think it influences the growers in Humboldt County to be seen as pioneers in the eyes of growers and patients all over?
Kristin Nevedal: I think it’s a mixed bag. Humboldt County growers really would like to be on the forefront of sensible regulation. They want regulation that’s going to embrace their way of life, that’s going to embrace the farms that they’ve developed, that’s going to let them operate in a manner that doesn’t create a lot of … They’re craft farmers and they’re heritage and craft farming versus, say, a Budweiser type of regulation. The concern is, really, making sure that we don’t have these overly onerous regulations that in every case the expense and the rigidness of onerous regulations tend to crush small businesses, and Humboldt is the land of small business, small farming.
So, they’re inspired to see them happen; they’re working hard on that. At the same time, that pressure that being the Holy Land, or the epicenter, of sun-grown cultivation or cultivation as a whole, it puts a lot of pressure on. Not only do people look at Humboldt and they say, “Oh, look, all this great development has happened.” Every time we have a [Grow-It 00:33:24], the microscope is on us and it’s really hard not to have that be a big message as well. For example, with the trespass growths our forests have been [inaudible 00:33:39]. It’s been really hard on our environment, and it’s been really hard to separate that message that these trespass growers are not your medical cannabis providers. They’re not our Emerald Growers Association members. It’s a completely different conversation that we’re having. That’s been a challenge that I feel like we’re overcoming finally.
Our legislators, they feel the pressure, too, from both sides. They’ve been regulating medical cannabis cultivation on small parcels, parcels that are five acres or under. They’re very precedent and have been over the years to touch larger independent medical and commercial effective cooperative cultivation for many reasons: economically; fear of federal preemption. Also, if they are overly restrictive, the growers in Humboldt County aren’t afraid to flood the chambers of the supervisors or the city council, whatever it might be. It’s a little bit sticky. We can’t live without state guidance …
Shango Los: Sure. Sure. Sure. You mentioned the trespass grows and some of the environmental issues with them, but let’s talk about some of the legal folks. When done without environmental awareness, cannabis growing can cause serious environmental damage and has been a constant issue in California for a while. What steps has the Growers Association taken to help preserve the local environment and educate growers through the legal members, not by just trying to stamp out the trespass grows.
Kristin Nevedal: We’ve done a couple of things. We’ve been really fortunate to be engaged with some groups that have been doing cleanup efforts … myself, and we’ve tried to get some members out into the force to experience what’s going on out there. That’s a huge lesson in itself. Also, back in … I think it was … 2012, we took on a project with the Trees Foundation and some community members, and we created a best management practices guide. That covered everything from earthmoving to sediment reduction to water use and water reduction, nutrient reduction, pesticide use, so all these best management practices for agriculture. We managed as a community group, including the Emerald Growers Association, to raise enough money to distribute at this point almost ten thousand copies of that guide book for free. It has been online. We’ve been dropping it off in every nursery, garden supply store, equipment rental, heavy equipment location.
We’ve also taken that and we’ve also developed a lot of workshops around it. Last year we worked with another group of environmentalists and we developed an expanded workbook based on our guide. We’ve been doing workshops and we often make them free to the community. So we try to get as many people to come have this conversation as possible. The Northern California Farmers Guide … Part of what we did with that that I think was really fairly brilliant and wasn’t necessarily my idea, is that we decided as a group when we were putting it together to not have it be too technical and to have it be more young, youthful, forward-speak.
Shango Los: It makes it more accessible to folks.
Kristin Nevedal: Yeah. We didn’t want to charge for it and we didn’t want it to be too technical or preachy. We wanted it to be kind of fun and playful. So we left it very simple and we used words like “grower.” We put a big box of produce on the cover with a simple branch of flowers; we put a finished flower on it. We put them in really high traffic places, hoping that people would just pick them up, thinking that it was something cool and inadvertently learn about what not to do.
Shango Los: If people want to check out this grower’s guide or find out more about the Growers Association, how can they do that?
Kristin Nevedal: Oh, that’s a great question. The grower’s guide is on the main website for the Trees Foundation. They have done all of the technical work for us on that, which we just thank them tremendously for doing that. You can always go to the treesfoundation.org and check it out right there online. I believe it’s also available through our website, but you can always email us. Check out our website at emeraldgrowers.org. Also on our website is a calendar, and there’s constantly workshops coming up throughout the state, where you can learn more about the guide and ask questions and get expanded education of the topic.
Shango Los: That’s fantastic. Thank you for joining us today on the Ganjapreneur Podcast, Kristin. Kristin Nevedal is Director of the Patient Focused Certification program for Americans for Safe Access and co-founder of the Emerald Growers Association of Humboldt County.
I am your host, Shango Los, of the Vashon Island Marijuana Entrepreneurs Alliance. Thank you for listening to Ganjapreneur.
Texas lawmakers introduced bills in the House and Senate last Friday that would allow access to medical marijuana for people with a variety of debilitating conditions, including cancer, seizures, and post-traumatic stress disorder.
Representative Marisa Márquez (D-El Paso) introduced House Bill 3785, and Sen. José Menéndez (D-San Antonio) would sponsor a companion bill in the Senate if the House passes Márquez’s legislation.
Rep. Márquez criticized the current state of the law in Texas: “The law currently does not reflect marijuana’s legitimate medical use and denies access to patients, such as veterans with post-traumatic stress disorder, citizens suffering with cancer and severe ailments of the aging… We should create paths, and not obstacles, in allowing doctors to recommend medicine that has been shown to work.”
The bill goes further than legislation previously introduced at the Texas capital, which aimed at allowing access to CBD oils that contain little to no THC. According to a February 2014 University of Texas/Texas Tribune poll, more than three-quarters of Texans support the right of seriously ill people to access medical marijuana.
Native American tribes that want to get into the cultivation and sale of marijuana have a new resource for business guidance: The National Indian Cannabis Coalition (NICC).
Because interested tribes can now get involved with the marijuana industry, the National Indian Cannabis Coalition was founded to help provide the resources necessary for a new business.
What the Coalition Does
The National Indian Cannabis Coalition’s stated goal is “to inform and educate tribal leaders on the emerging regulated cannabis markets from an entrepreneurial and operations perspective.”
This means that the NICC is committed to providing accurate information about all stages of cannabis cultivation and sale to tribe members who are interested in joining the industry. This information includes covers the following subjects:
– Startup financing for cannabis-related operations.
– The process of acquiring all necessary operational permits and business registry.
– The construction of buildings for these operations.
Currently, it is free for tribes to join the coalition. The coalition’s founders hope to fund the project through support from vendors who have a history of success in the marijuana industry.
Lessons From the Casino Industry
Since the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act was passed in 1988, Native American tribes across the United States have flourished in the gaming industry. As of 2011, America’s reservation casinos brought in a combined $27 billion in profits. In a recent interview with The Cannabist about the NICC’s official launch, NICC co-chair Allyson Doctor said about the Native American casinos, “we learned that working together to develop policy and regulations that work for all the communities is a good thing.” Later in the interview, she went on to compare the casino industry with the burgeoning marijuana industry, “When you compare the two industries, they’re probably equally as regulated and complex.”
And that’s exactly how the NICC will help tribes that are considering becoming part of the marijuana industry. In any industry, trade groups exist to protect merchants and artisans by promoting business-friendly policies and encouraging healthy competitions among members. With an industry as new as legalized marijuana, it can be easy for aspiring business operators to be taken advantage of by predatory policies and bad market information.
A Guiding Force in Indian Country
“Trust is an important factor in Indian country,” Doctor said later in the interview. As a member of a tribe herself, she recognizes the unique challenges and issues that tribal entrepreneurs face. Protecting tribal interests is a top priority for the coalition, which seeks to empower prospective marijuana business owners and operators on reservations across the American West.
President Barack Obama addressed the topic of marijuana legalization in an interview with VICE News yesterday.
VICE founder Shane Smith raised the issue of marijuana legalization in a video interview with the President, noting that legalizing marijuana would leave a lasting legacy among the nation’s youth. President Obama responded first by noting that, despite the clear popularity of the issue, legalization “shouldn’t be young people’s biggest priority.”
The President went on to draw a clear line between the issue of cannabis decriminalization and the broader issue of legalization, criticizing the failed criminal justice policies of the War on Drugs:
“I think there is no doubt that our criminal justice system generally is so heavily skewed towards cracking down on non-violent drug offenders that it has not just had a terrible effect on many communities, particularly communities of color, rendering a lot of folks unemployable because they got felony records [and] disproportionate prison sentences.”
He also noted that more and more states are recognizing the fact that such policies come with a heavy financial burden, and that this has led in part to an encouraging level of bipartisanship on the issue: “You’re starting to see not just liberal democrats, but also some very conservative republicans, recognize [that] this doesn’t make sense…They see the money and how costly it is to incarcerate.”
President Obama stated that decriminalization at the federal level is conceivable if the trend among states continues: “At a certain point, if enough states end up decriminalizing, then Congress may then reschedule marijuana.”
In a disappointing turn, the President makes several unrelated comparisons of cannabis with harder, more dangerous drugs.
He ended the interview with a final comment on the failure of U.S. criminal justice policies: “Substance abuse generally, legal and illegal substances, is a problem. Locking somebody up for twenty years is probably not the best strategy, and that’s something that we have to rethink as a society as a whole.”
The Oregon Senate approved a bill last week that would allow for certain marijuana-related convictions to be expunged. Filed as emergency legislation, the bill will take effect immediately if it is passed.
Senate Bill 364, which passed the Senate by a vote of 26 to 3, aims to help those convicted of cannabis possession before the law was changed in 2013 to clean up their record. Each of the three dissenting votes came from Republican senators — Alan Olson (R-Canby), Chuck Thomsen (R-Hood River) and Doug Whitsett (R-Klamath Falls).
Until the bill goes into effect, getting a conviction reclassified into a lower-level offense is only possible if the conviction took place after July 1st, 2013, when the law was changed. Under the new bill, when a person requests an expungement of something on his or her record, judges will be required to take into consideration the new law’s reclassification of certain marijuana-related
offenses.
In addition, the bill would put into effect a provision that would allow for the reclassification of Class B felony convictions for marijuana possession as misdemeanors.
Ganjapreneur, a website dedicated to cannabis industry business news and culture, recently published an interview with Brian Westphal, founder of Lotus Boards, a start-up looking to produce the world’s first hemp plastic skateboard. In the interview, Westphal discussed his goals to spread awareness about ecological manufacturing using biological composite materials and 3D printing. The piece was published as part of a series of interviews conducted via Ganjapreneur with business owners and investors who specialize in cannabis and hemp.
Westphal discusses how he originally came up with the idea after learning about industrial hemp on the “Joe Rogan Experience” Podcast. “Joe would bring up the illegality of industrial hemp and the real conspiracy perpetrated by the media during the 1920′s,” Westphal states. “He also would discuss Henry Ford’s Hemp Plastic concept car as a great example of the wide uses of hemp. From there I researched to see what happened to this material? Why is nobody developing with it? And how come bio-plastics and industrial hemp aren’t more prevalent in our society?”
Westphal also discussed his belief that the future of manufacturing will likely hinge on ecological, renewable practices and 3D printing. “Hemp offers many benefits to our current methods of manufacturing paper, textiles, houses, and of course, plastics. Saving the amount of energy used, reducing carbon emissions, and the amount of water used during cultivation,” are some of the ways that widespread implementation of hemp will be ecologically beneficial, according to Westphal.
With Lotus Boards, Westphal’s goal is not simply to produce skateboards, but also to spread awareness about the benefits of industrial hemp and encourage manufacturers from all industries to pursue ecological practices as well. “Our vision is to spread the use of Industrial Hemp and Bio-Based alternatives with every ride. What better way to show people the capabilities of these new technologies than to let them cruise around on it?”
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.
Minnesota medical marijuana businesses are preparing to receive their first harvest in the coming weeks. Two MMJ manufacturers, LeafLine Labs and Minnesota Medical Solutions, have received approval from the state’s Department of Health to produce, process, and begin distributing products in pill or oil form in July.
In downtown Minneapolis, one company has already begun construction on the city’s first dispensary, in the century-old former home of the League of Catholic Women. Several other sites are set to open in St. Paul, St. Cloud and Hibbing.
Minnesota became the 22nd state to legalize medical marijuana in May 2014 with the strictest medical law in the country. The bill does not allow the smoking of the leaf itself, effectively barring those with illnesses such as muscular dystrophy and PTSD from relief.
Some cities have gone further to postpone MMJ’s arrival; Duluth and certain Twin Cities suburbs implemented six-month and one-year moratoria on dispensaries in order to conduct further studies regarding zoning requirements.
In an interview with CBS Minnesota, Minnesota Department of Health Assistant Commissioner Manny Munson-Regala drew attention to widespread concern regarding the program: “I think the folks who want to move forward with this program underestimate the amount of trepidation there is out there… The folks who are so passionate and believe this is what we should do forget there is a sizable number of people that are not sure.”
Despite this apprehension, Minnesota expects to begin patient enrollment by June, and manufacturers are required to open at least one dispensary by July 2015.
We recently had the pleasure of interviewing Dr. Michelle Sexton of PhytaLab, a cannabis testing lab serving medical and recreational cannabis businesses in Washington State. Dr. Sexton founded PhytaLab in 2010, and she has also served as a consultant to the Washington State Liquor Control Board on the implementation of I-502, the state’s bill which led to the legalization of marijuana for recreational use. She is a member of the International Cannabinoid Research Society, the International Association for Cannabinoid Medicines, and the Society of Cannabis Clinicians, and she is also an avid surfer and rock climber.
