When it comes to moving federal cannabis policy forward, progress requires coordination, persistence, and strategic advocacy. In this episode of The Ganjapreneur Podcast, Edward Conklin, Executive Director of the U.S. Cannabis Council, and Saphira Galoob, Executive Director of the National Cannabis Roundtable — join host TG Branfalt to discuss the historic merger of their organizations into the U.S. Cannabis Roundtable.
This conversation dives into what commercial entities are doing to lobby Congress for meaningful reform, including the uphill battle to pass safe banking legislation, the real implications of cannabis rescheduling to Schedule III, and the importance of building trust with lawmakers. Galoob and Conklin also share insider perspectives on why some legislation stalls, how policy change actually happens in D.C., and what entrepreneurs can do to get involved at the local and national levels.
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TG Branfalt:
Hey there, I’m your host, TG Branfalt, and this is the Ganjapreneur.com podcast where we try to bring you actionable information and normalized cannabis through the stories of ganjapreneurs, activists and industry stakeholders. Today I’m joined by Edward Conklin. He’s the executive director of the US Cannabis Council and Saphira Galoob, executive Director of the National Cannabis Roundtable. The USC and NCR announced plans to combine their organizations to create the US Cannabis Roundtable. How are we doing this afternoon, folks? We’re great.
Ed Conklin:
Excellent. Thanks for having us.
Saphira Galoob:
Thanks for having us on. Tim.
TG Branfalt:
Really excited to talk shop and in this case, public policy. As most of my listeners know, I’m a bit of a public policy nerd, and so these are some of my favorite conversations to have. But before we get into that, Edward and Sphera, thank you for being here. Tell me about yourself and how you ended up in this part of the cannabis industry.
Saphira Galoob:
Ed, I’ll let you go first.
Ed Conklin:
Ladies first,
Saphira Galoob:
Please. Well, if you insist, so Tim, I’ve been doing this work specifically focused on federal advocacy work in the cannabis space since November 7th, 2017. And when I came into the space federally, it was the year I remember it because I’m from Oklahoma and it was the year that Oklahoma legalized. And that year, seven states actually came online and I remember doing an analysis, there were two lobbyists at the time in the federal walking the halls of Congress. And I assessed that there were at that point 113 Republican congressional offices that now had legal cannabis in their state. And so before I even started my business, I just started making meetings with these offices and visited 83 offices and five of those Republican offices had ever even heard that cannabis was an issue. So given the trajectory of states passing legalization movements and the number of congressional offices that now had constituents who live in states with legal cannabis and the fact that there were two lobbyists on Capitol Hill, I knew there was an opportunity to be had. And so I launched my career at that point.
TG Branfalt:
How did you first get those meetings? It is not really every day that someone just walks in.
Saphira Galoob:
Well, I am a lawyer and a lobbyist by career. I had a 25 year career in DC and had done a pretty decent amount of lobbying in other areas, and so I knew the drill. So a lot of times when you’re starting a new business, and I’m an entrepreneur at heart, I haven’t had a job working for anybody since 2006. So you just basically start as if you’re already successful and you make a meeting, you make a meeting request. These offices, particularly in an issue that is a bit unknown, they’ll take a meeting even if it’s 15 minute phone meeting. So it is more accessible than people understand, but it requires more work than people appreciate.
TG Branfalt:
So how about you, ed? How did you end up in the cannabis space?
Ed Conklin:
A good question. I used to work for McDonald’s. I worked for a clown, so in the hamburger side and did government relations there for 20 some plus years and retired and actually got a phone call from Joe Ardi at CAF and asked me to come over work for him, and I decided to start that route there. So I was used to lobbying state, federal, international at the time period, but just like sfia when my first trip to dc It’s interesting, and she is absolutely right how she approached it and she was fearless at the time, I got to tell you. So was fearless on this stuff. I started fumbling around in DC with some friends and lobbyists going to these meetings, and a lot of these offices wouldn’t even take your meeting when you talked about cannabis. I mean, there was a long time ago when they’re like, thanks, but no thanks. Prefer not to meet on this until it’s normalized or whatever word you want to use there. But now compared to leap four today, you can go in every office and Sophia is absolutely right. We did a lot of meetings, a lot of discussions, and a lot of talks. So started off small and grew into where we’re at today. So it’s a wonderful industry, some great people to work with, some great entrepreneurs and couldn’t have more fun.
TG Branfalt:
Can one or both of you describe to me sort of the difference now, the actual difference now than when you first started lobbying these lawmakers on the cannabis issue?
Saphira Galoob:
We probably have similar stories. I’ll start and let Ed fill in. So I think depending on the point of reference of the lawmaker, their relationship with the issue is either connected to a criminal justice, social justice, economic justice perspective, or it is a freedom perspective, a state’s rights perspective. Many of these lawmakers, in addition to having those two perspectives also have personal use cases in their families or personal use cases with constituents whose children or family members, sick family members were impacted by cannabis. And so one of the unique things about our industry, it’s not unique to our industry, but I think it is unique about our industry, is that a lawmaker’s relationship with our issue and our policy can really come from a lot of different vantage points and we can leverage those perspectives in a really important and impactful way if we do so strategically,
Ed Conklin:
I think absolutely right. And so what I found out and my first member meeting in the US Senate, I can’t tell you the person’s name just because of the conversation, but it was funny because just like Shafi said, she got as supportive of medical cannabis because her neighbor’s daughter had epilepsy and her neighbor’s daughter and the mother would always talk about how the seizures would go away when they had medical cannabis and the problem of how they got to that point and how they had to secure it. But I think every member has a different perspective, some of that stuff. And I think a fair and ideal with day in day out is old tapes and it’s a war on drugs crowd. They just haven’t understand the difference now, and they have their opinion, even if the state goes legal, I mean even the state goes legal, you still have a lot of folks out there who are just, they have their opinions and that’s what we work on day in, day out, not only in DC but back in their districts, trying to make sure that we educate folks about what cannabis is and isn’t and try to get them to understand the benefits of it.
TG Branfalt:
Do you find that members of Congress are more open to having the medical cannabis use conversation than the adult use conversation
Saphira Galoob:
Ubiquitously? Yes. And I will also say it doesn’t even matter on, there are some folks for whom economic justice, social justice, criminal justice is their motivation, but even their most progressive members, I mean you have, and I say a handful, I mean you can argue about what a handful means in Washington, but adult use cannabis comes with additional complications for lawmakers that cause them to have some vulnerability. I mean, just look what happened with the opioid crisis when Congress realized the misstep and the colossus step where with tobacco, and we’ve seen the numbers on alcohol, both abuse and deaths and members of Congress, whether you agree or disagree with it, their perspective or their policy position, they take public safety, consumer safety, patient safety very seriously. And so having adult use cannabis for many of them is one, they’re not quite there yet. Two, they’re concerned about the lack of data to be able to put the guardrails on for product safety, consumer safety, driving safety, all of the elements of safety elements. But medical cannabis is a much more ubiquitously accepted concept.
Ed Conklin:
Agree. Yeah. I think the number one thing you’ll find between Sophia and I promote is consumer safety, consumer safety, consumer safety. And that ranges from testing the verification to age gating to making sure this product, it isn’t toxin. We got to make sure it doesn’t fall in the hands of minors. And that’s something we always have to look out for. So when you’re talking to senators, staff, congressmen, staff or regulators, that’s a lot of their focus is consumer safety, consumer safety, and they want the testing and the loop we’re stuck in the feedback loop is right now with schedule one drug, it’s hard to do a lot of testing because a lot of these universities can’t touch the actual drug themselves. So it’s a lot of subjective type of tests. So that’s why we’re encouraged on this. President’s push for schedule three and we’re hoping to get there so we can get a lot of research done. And I think Tim, that will change the tone and tenor in DC on lobbying too. There’s a lot of elected officials, they’ll tell you, it’s a federal one right now, come back to see me when it’s not a federal one, schedule one drug. It’ll make it a lot easier to approach these offices when it’s schedule three.
TG Branfalt:
Do either of you hear lawmakers talking about the sort of international treaty issue at all? Because we know that many nations have signed this international, these treaties to prevent legalization of drugs. Obviously Canada in 2018 went ahead with it. And so also in addition to that, do they talk about the success that Canada’s national federal legalization has been, or do they even think about it?
Saphira Galoob:
I would say that’s not on the majority of their radars. I mean, you may go into an office that’s very, very sophisticated, but they’re more concerned with, I’m going to use the word more cursory, but things that lie a little bit more on the surface. We have our eye on that. In fact, I was just in Zurich having the conversation about the treaties this past week because it is an issue with the 30 plus countries around the world that have advanced legalization. Switzerland actually was the host country. They’re actually advancing adult use cannabis pilot program. And Switzerland’s a pretty conservative place. France is going to have a very robust system starting in January. Of course we’ve seen news on Germany that’s got a whole issue around its impending change in government. But I do think the momentum around the world is going to impact the US government’s perspective, particularly this administration’s perspective on what our status and stature is on this plant.
TG Branfalt:
Before we talk a bit more about some of these federal policy issues, why did your organizations decide to combine your efforts?
Saphira Galoob:
Ed, do you want to take this one?
Ed Conklin:
I think this is, it’s a great fit, right? Fair’s organization, NCI does a wonderful job top notch first in class USCC, same exact thing. And by coming together you bring all the best of the best together. I mean, you’re going to have a really very dynamic lobbying group. You’ve got great communications, we’ve got great membership, we’ve got great board members and allows us to do a lot more together. It really is one plus one equals three or four. I mean it’s going to be a terrific addition and it allows for better coordination with all our member companies. A lot of ’em shared actually are members of both groups, but there’s a bunch that weren’t. So I think it’s a dynamic change. And with this change, we’re getting a lot of inquiries. We’re getting a lot of new members, so it’s great to have more help to help us in dc but I think it makes all the sense in the world, and I couldn’t be more excited.
Saphira Galoob:
And Ed talks about the importance of combining great teams. I also remind listeners there are 535 plus members of Congress. There are 535 members of Congress. Depending on people’s, the number can change if somebody is taking an administrative position they haven’t building yet. But just think about the number 5 35 in both chambers. That’s a lot of membership to meet with on the Hill. And last year, I think NCR, well the number I need to refresh my recollection specifically, but we did like 434 meetings.
But imagine if knowing that you need to meet, which with each office eight to 10 times, I mean just in the course, you’re obviously not going to meet with each one, but just imagine the amount of, we call it shoe leather lobbying that needs to be done, the number of meetings that need to happen. It is so, I mean it’s enjoyably onerous, but it is a lot of effort to establishing the relationship, curating the relationship, developing the relationship, advancing a relationship, coordinating relationships, and it’s all very much human to human. And so being able to join these two lobbying efforts into one allows us to cover more ground, gets deeper and advance momentum in a way that we were, I don’t think we were able to do as effectively when we were individual organizations.
Ed Conklin:
Well said. It does, Tim. It takes a ton of work to meet these offices. It really does. It is not because you’re trying to meet 535, I mean, let’s think all those people in times like Sophia set of, but there’s a lot of staff there and you’re doing a lot of education now. Some of those officers, they walk in, there’re high fiving, Hey, we’re with you. Let’s go. Let’s charge other ones. It takes a lot of work and you got to build trust and the US Senate, you still need 60 to pass something. So it’s going to take a lot no matter who’s in charge of the US Senate and our job is to get us 60 votes.
TG Branfalt:
Let me ask you this. Why is something as, how do I put this logical as the Safe Banking Act that’s been supported by members from both parties. It was not passed when there was Democrats in charge. Why can’t they get something this simple done right? I mean, this isn’t a huge overhaul of policy. This is allowing people to not have to operate in cash. And if they’re worried about the safety factor, then wouldn’t that take, I mean what 70% of the risk out? I mean, what prevents this from happening?
Saphira Galoob:
So I’m so glad you asked that question and the way you asked that question is a big compliment to you. I will not infrequently have to say to a host, you’re asking me the wrong question, but in this case, I’m telling you, you’re asking the perfect question.
TG Branfalt:
Thank you.
Saphira Galoob:
And I understand why listeners are both frustrated and furious about the seemingly stalling of this legislation. The first thing I will share with everyone as a reminder is it takes an average of 10 years to get anything through Congress. And that is simple things. So yes, safe banking has a widespread support and has passed out of the house many, many times, eight times now out of Senate banking. But the reality of the way we’re going to get this bill into a law is that we cannot go on our own the way that the calendar works in the Senate and the amount of floor time available for these members to do their prioritized work, there’s no way we can do it alone. And if anybody ever wants to get really in the weeds and talk about why that’s the case, we can do it, but just take my word for it.
We have to ride on another piece of legislation. So then the question becomes what are we going to ride on? And if you look at the number of bills that actually pass through Congress, it is very, very small, particularly those that share some sort of jurisdictional oversight because we don’t want to be in another committee of jurisdiction. We only want to be in the senate banking or financial services. So we’ve got a super careful, and there are even fewer number of bills that pass on that and those committees. And so we are limited on the rides that we can catch. Imagine being in the desert and there’s only one car coming once or twice a year. How are you going to get on that car? And so that then depends on the politics and the policy of that car. And so we’ve been working on a banking strategy, we’ve been working on a crypto strategy, we’ve been working on an access to capital strategy. Every strategy you can imagine, we are activating and operating and we are getting closer. I realize that this is not darts or hand grenades or mini golf, actually, I don’t even know if mini golf counts, but the win is the win. And anything less than the win is not the win, but we are getting closer to the win.
Ed Conklin:
Yeah, the only thing I’d add on there, Tim, is it was a good question is there’s still people in leadership in the Senate up until last year and even this session that aren’t fully on board yet. And once again, I said it is kind of what goes first. And there’s a lot of people that say, well, the arguments against safe banking, which are few and far between. I mean it is really not a vote for campus. It’s vote for safety. That’s all this is really about is voting for safety because unfortunately people are getting robbed. People are getting killed in dispensaries. It’s a horrible situation and nobody wants that. But when you break it down, there are still a lot of people in the Senate and others who are not broke cannabis and some of those folks are in leadership positions. And it takes a lot of discussion to get through that.
And as Sofia said, is there’s two cars coming and you’re trying to get everybody lined up. We had last session, and I’ll go with 67, 68 votes on safe banking, but we just couldn’t get Leader Schumer and minority leader McConnell to agree on what to attach it to and go through the process. So it’s just a frustrating part and it’s just part of the job. We deal with it all the time. And it can be very frustrating for CEOs and people in charge. We get that. We understand that, but it’s something we’re dealing with. And I think with the merger happening here and all the resources that we have now together in the focus that it changes everything for us. And I feel real positive where we’re at. Of course, I feel positive every time because in this industry you got to be positive because if you’re a negative person, you’re not going to last this industry and you won’t do it. But
Saphira Galoob:
Generally,
Tim, I want to bring up something really important that Ed said, and particularly for listeners, because again, we’re talking about the logic, why can’t it get through? So one of the things that people on the outside of DC don’t, and when I say it failed to realize I’m not suggesting, I mean, I don’t speak languages in other people’s industry and I don’t expect ’em to speak dc, but messenger matters. So someone will hear of an individual on one side of the aisle, one side of the chambers, senator of the house, this person loves us and they’re going forward for us. And I’d be like, well, that doesn’t really matter because that person one doesn’t sit on the right committee. Two is not in the majority, three doesn’t have juice in their caucus, and four doesn’t really have a negotiating stature to actually be able to get us momentum.
And so frequently I will go be at odds with folks in the industry about who should introduce the bill, not what the bill is, but who should introduce. And so we need more of the right champions. We have a lot of support, but we don’t have enough support with people with a lot of juice and we’re developing. But it takes a really long time. And when I say a really long time, I’m not talking about months, I’m talking about years. It took us four years to get Senator Danes to agree to step into the banking. And it came through his admiration of the veterans issue and his relationship with Cory Gardner and Cory Gardner’s then exiting the Senate and him taking the mantle then and things going on in his state. But I can tell you, Steve Daines, Senator Daines stepped off committee and we absolutely would like to have another champion take the Safe Banking Act in the Senate.
And it’s very, very difficult. And the reason difficult is because for many of these senators, they don’t get any kind of push or any kind of improved support by supporting an issue, say thinking for example in their district. And for many of them, they actually risk being, I don’t use the word beaten up a little bit, but they actually risk losing support or having some challenges by leading on an issue that’s not super popular amongst their constituents. So it’s way more delicate than people outside of DC appreciate. We have a lot of money morning quarterbacking on what Eds and I do all day every day. And I would invite anybody to come in and see it real time. You would change your tune if you had to sing the song and walk the halls with us.
TG Branfalt:
I really do appreciate your candor on this because I think for a lot of people, the term lobbyist is a dirty word. And I think that this is sort of evidence of the tenacity of what you’re actually doing. I mean, I hate to say it’s almost a little thankless, but in this conversation
Saphira Galoob:
It’s completely thankless now. Thankless. It’s completely thankless. And Ed and I honestly, ed and I hasn’t had a lot of disagreements, but the one time we had a disagreement is he said, oh, say thanking that nothing has passed. So we failed. And I said, I refuse to accept that word failure. We may have not gone over the finish line, but I mark my success by progress made. And I do think there is that you actually charted, you actually charted the progress and you show the documentation of how close we get from year to year. I mean, I realized that the win is not the win until it’s the win. But you don’t get to the win until you do all the things that we’ve done and more. You just don’t get there.
Ed Conklin:
And while lobbyists might be a dirty word to sum, Tim, everybody’s a lobbyist. I’ve given this presentation to colleges as classes. How many times have you ever gotten pulled around a confidence speeding ticket? You ever try to lobby yourself out of that speeding ticket? Yeah, you have when you’re a kid, you wanted your allowance, you wanted a new iPhone. Yeah, you lobby or Yeah, we’re all lobbyists. I mean, we lobby for an industry, that’s what we do.
TG Branfalt:
Y’all go to dc so I don’t have to What expectations? Do you have any expectations for any policy reforms this session?
Saphira Galoob:
Yes, yes. That president is going meet the promises he made on the campaign trail. That is our expectation and that is what we are focusing on 100%.
Ed Conklin:
President Trump has come out in support of schedule three. He’s come out in support of safe banking, he’s come out in support of state rights and all those are critical. And this president keeps his promises. So both of us are in our trade groups. We’re working very hard to support him. It’s going to take time. I mean, I know you’re getting the same phone call as I, this should be done by now. He’s got other issues he’s dealing with. There’s a lot of other issues that he’ll get to this issue and we are doing all the right things. We’re doing the polling super packs, we are doing the fly-ins. We’ll do all the stuff that we do, but we’re going to work very hard to make sure we are there to support him with his promises.
TG Branfalt:
I mean, even with the nomination of RFK Junior as head of HHS, you think that this administration is better for cannabis than maybe the previous one.
Saphira Galoob:
I mean, holistically, if you look at the way this president has engaged with our issue both pragmatically and publicly, this president is actually much better for our industry, even in a criminal justice perspective, the commitment that this president has shown towards clemencies and expungements to people who were incarcerated because of cannabis. I mean, we have more to show on the criminal justice side for people who have criminal justice decades in the system because of cannabis, more so than with Biden, because Biden did extend commutations, but not for people. I mean, I think there’s a handful, less than a handful for cannabis incarcerated people were incarcerated for cannabis. So the other thing is that this president made a commitment on the campaign trail very, very specifically towards two of the things, three of the things that are most important to most people in this industry. And we didn’t hear that level of diligence or dedication by then President Biden or president nominee vice president candidate Harris. So we are in a promises made, promises kept trajectory, and that is where we’re focused all day every day.
Ed Conklin:
And I think too, I think this president is showing you his cabinet and his people that he has direction fluence over are going to follow his lead. And when you think about schedule three, the key person there is the attorney general Pam Bondy. And we’ve been very open that she can go right to rule on schedule three. And so there’s a lot that she can do by, she doesn’t need everything else. I mean, she’s ready to go. And we’ve done a lot of work. We’ve had some great attorneys that have been working on this issue since the last administration initiated it. So 30,000 plus comments in and of that 90 some percent or I don’t know exactly percent, but it’s a huge percent is positive, right? So they’ve got everything they need to go forward. So as Sophia said, promises made, kept promises said, promises kept. So we’re going to keep going with that process and work it very hard.
TG Branfalt:
What do you hear from your members about the potential change to schedule three? I’ve spoken to some people in the industry who envision that that’s going to basically get rid of medical cannabis programs because it’s going to put cannabis in the hands of the HHS and the pharmaceutical companies. And what are you hearing from your members and what do you think that Schedule three would do to state industries?
Saphira Galoob:
So first of all, our members, whether they like it or not, they are very educated on what’s going on in DC because we just bombard them with really deep, deep policy. And this is where we’re headed, this is what we’re up against. So if you talk to our members, they really understand the difference. So let’s remind ourselves that moving cannabis from a schedule one to schedule three, that impacts whether or not something has medical utility and it impacts the intoxication affecting the addiction. So it is, we expect for there to be no change on state programs from a Scion perspective, Antonin Scalia, stripped scrutiny, those state programs are still not in compliance with federal law, even under a Schedule iii. Now I say that and I don’t think we’re going to have what I call the black helicopters descending. The state programs will still stay and be deferred to the federal government has long not just had a deference for state level cannabis programs, but a preference for it, both Democrat and Republican Congress in both Democrat and Republican administration.
So a change to schedule three, we do not believe disrupts state cannabis programs. We also believe that whether medical programs are successful in the state depend on the state. And we believe that a pharmaceutical company’s ability to get in is not going to be impacted by a change in Schedule three. It’s whether or not those pharmaceutical companies, either one want to follow a traditional pharma route that Epidiolex followed, or they want to purchase a license from an existing cannabis operator. So whether or not cannabis concedes to pharma likely has more to do with what cannabis decides than what Pharmac decides. And frankly, we are such small potatoes for them in terms of profitability and market share that we are of less interest than other areas where they can extend their investment. I didn’t know if you knew I had an opinion on that, but I’m glad you asked.
Ed Conklin:
I think when you think about what we talked about about the president, you get rescheduling done, which is the fairness outline with that we’ll do plus two 80 E, right? Take care. That will energize everybody. Everybody says it’s a big, big player. It’s not. It’s small, medium, large. Everybody’s going to benefit from that. No matter who you are in the sphere, 80% tax is not a good thing. I mean, you can’t survive on that. We need more regulations. We’re all for more regulations, safety, compliance, all that. We fully support that. You get safe banking done. That’s another key message point. Get them cash out of the system. Let’s get it through the financial system. Let’s make it safe in our dispensaries for not only our employees but our consumers. And then you get states rights and man, if you get capital access, get us on New York Stock Exchange. This whole industry is going to explode and it’s going to be great for everybody. Everybody will do a wonderful, have a wonderful time in this industry, and there’ll be a ton of investment pouring in, and then you’re going to have a real industry. I think it’s going to be fun to be there and watch it happen.
TG Branfalt:
Is there any legislation that’s been introduced this session that you guys are tracking and that could see some movement?
Saphira Galoob:
So the bills that you’re referring to are bills that we’ve seen in the past, and we’re working with those key bill champions. There is a sequencing and a timing for introducing bills. And so while we have not seen the introductions as early on in the Congress, as we have seen in prior congresses, one should not interpret that as negative one should interpret that as strategic.
Ed Conklin:
Very
TG Branfalt:
True. And then we’ve talked about the sort of banking access, the two a DE. You mentioned that as a combined organization, what is your sort of mission statement or messaging going to be sort of broadly speaking to the cannabis industry and stakeholders?
Saphira Galoob:
Do you want me to start with this one? And you can have, sure.
Yeah. Actually we’re interrupting each other a lot less, but we are still learning how to be good dance partners. One voice, one vision, one industry. That’s what a combined effort between USCC and NCR gives us. I know there are folks that are not familiar with either of our individual organizations and not familiar with our combined organizations, but we invite them to get to know us. Washington is a curious place. You want the best players on the field in Washington, even if you don’t like them personally or you don’t respect them politically, you want the best players on the field. And this combined entity gives you an effort that looks at the smallest players to the largest, to folks that are operating in one to dispensary or multi-state that are ancillary businesses or are vertically integrated. This organization represents that collective one voice, one vision, one industry.
Ed Conklin:
And if you’re not a member, come join us. Call us phe. Call me. We would love to have you part of the team. We need everybody, Tim, we need everybody’s help on this thing. There is not enough folks involved. And we would encourage everybody to pick up those phones, dial our phone numbers or send us an email. We’d love to hear from you.
TG Branfalt:
Given both of your combined experience lobbying, would you describe this as the most difficult sort of issue that you’ve gone to Washington for?
Ed Conklin:
Oh
Saphira Galoob:
Yeah, cheeseburger. Are hamburgers and cheeseburgers easier than cannabis?
Ed Conklin:
This is a crazy, I mean, it is so much fun to be involved. I mean, you have entrepreneurs, you got businesses, you got people who you got the illicit market, which is just absolutely nuts, right? I mean the illicit market, I mean, who knows what you’re getting, right? So all I can tell you is there’s a lot of this confusion in DC that triggers all this thing. And you have the state markets and you have the hemp industry out there. So you got all these things out there working. And what’s going to help us out immensely is the fact Asir said one voice. It is time to align. We have to align behind few issues. We can’t boil the ocean. We got to align behind few issues, and we got to all speak the same voice, same message, and we’ll deliver a victory. And that’s what we’re going to do.
TG Branfalt:
Of all of the things that we’ve sort of discussed here, what is sort of the top of going to be the priority pile for you? Is it going to be two 80 e? Is it going to be the rescheduling issue? What’s going to rise to the top here?
Saphira Galoob:
Yeah, so I definitely want to ride on Ed’s comment that we got to get really focused as well as yours about what’s the top, rather than choosing, we are going to only do this or only do that. We have enough bandwidth and there’s enough momentum on rescheduling and on access to all financial services. And then really building that base work for the state’s rights to actually do that. There’s that three-legged stool there. And I will say for folks who want everyone to have everything or no one gets anything approached, that kind of all or nothing approach, there is little to nothing in DC where that actually happens. And so while that is that altruism is really notable and inspiring, it’s just not pragmatic. And so if we can achieve the schedule three, that work has been in play, in addition to the 90,000 comments, remember we had a 252 page outstanding recommendation. We had an office of legal counsel memo saying, we concur with that recommendation and we have the Department of Justice recommend a schedule three. So we are winning, we’re winning, we’re winning. We just got stalled in a very discreet issue in litigation. And in order to restart that, we’ve got some really impactful recommendations for newly stated AG Bondi. But getting schedule three, addressing access to financial services is what this industry demands and deserves immediately.
TG Branfalt:
Finally, what advice would you have for entrepreneurs who might want to get involved on a policy level?
Ed Conklin:
Call us, call us, us, email us. I think everybody thinks, from my perspective, and I can only speak what I see, everybody thinks about the dispensary owners. I want to be dispensary owner, but there’s so many other facets. This industry, it’s out there that is available for entrepreneurs to get involved with. So between s Sophia and myself, and between our boards and between all our members, if somebody has an interest to get involved or if they are involved, they want to learn more, contact us. We have a lot of contacts and put you in contact with and help you out. It is one thing that’s great about the business industry. There’s a lot of sharing and caring going on. And Tim, like you and I were talking about before with this snow up there and you helping out your neighbors, that’s what this industry does a really good job at. I mean, there’s a lot of sharing. There’s a lot of people putting their shoulders against the wheel and pushing hard to get this thing moving along. And it’s fun to watch and it’s fun to watch success and there’s some failures happening, but every industry has a little failure in startup and stops. But there’s a lot of great successes out there and a lot of great stories.
Saphira Galoob:
And I would say there are some folks for whom engaging in Washington is just really hard right now for other reasons. And if that’s the case, my assignment to you is as follows, one, do you know who your member of Congress is? You should find that out. Two, sharing what your congress person, what these priorities are, access to safe banking. And they can’t do a whole lot on the scheduling assuring states rights or whatever your point of reference is, are you involved in your local politics? Are you involved with your chamber of commerce? Are you sponsoring a little league team so much about familiarity and reducing the stigma? Do you have a relationship with your religious community so that they know what you’re doing for the community? How are you giving back to your community outside of cannabis? That is the ecosystem of trust. That is the ecosystem of credibility. That is the ecosystem of consistency that we need to be able to bring to Washington. And so I would just invite anybody who is concerned about this to get involved somehow some way someplace.
Ed Conklin:
I can guarantee you what Sophia said is a hundred percent true. And another thing I used to give this class, I could tell you about congressional members, not Senate, but congressional members. They have all these meetings back in the district all the time. It’s breakfasts, it’s lunches, it’s dinners, meetings, just attend one and go up and introduce yourself. You’re going to find out they don’t have a third eye. They wanted to get to know you. They want your vote, first of all, and you probably did vote for ’em. Or if you didn’t, it’s still fine. And just have a conversation with ’em and ask for a follow-up meeting and they’ll be happy to do it. I mean, these folks who are elected are people, people, people persons, and they want to talk to people. And they’re a lot of great elected officials out there in this us, and they’re fun to be with. They have great stories. I can guarantee you, you will have a connection with them because they know a lot of people in your town already. Once you start talking to ’em, you’re going to have all these connections. The next thing you know, you’re off to the races, so please reach out to ’em
TG Branfalt:
If you could peer into a crystal ball. I mean, obviously you had mentioned Shafi that we are in this sort of litigation issue with getting this hearing on the schedule three re-designation Vegas odds that we’ll get that hearing this year.
Saphira Galoob:
Well, I don’t want to, first of all, I’m not a betting person. I have to go to Vegas for MJ Bs, but I’ve never placed a bet myself, so I’m not going to bet. But what I’m going to say is there’s been a significant amount of progress made in the rescheduling and the process for rescheduling that’s statutorily designated. And there are a lot of pathways towards success. And I don’t think it is mean. This is where I’m not saying it’s not a fair question for me or a fair question for the process because there are a lot of different ways to get to success and we are leaving no stem unturned to get to that success.
Ed Conklin:
I would say, say you don’t need a hearing, I’d say the ag could go right to rule three. If she go right to rule pronounce, it’s going to schedule three and then it’s going to end up in court anyway. Right? There’s opposition to everything. There’s always people pro and there’s always people opposite and somebody’s going to complain about, but there is law, there is rules, and the attorney general, Pam Bondy has the ability to go to schedule three. Well,
TG Branfalt:
I hope we could avoid a drawn out legal process here to advance this finally. It’s been a long time since I think, and I think you would obviously agree that federal reform are desperately, desperately, desperately long overdue on this issue. So where can people find out more about your organizations and soon your combined organizations?
Saphira Galoob:
We are still working on our new website, but we do have an email address and it’s funny Ed, because it’s info@uscr.org. Am I saying that correct?
Ed Conklin:
There is that, or you can just go, mine’s ed@uscc.org. ed@uscc.org and ra, you got yours?
Saphira Galoob:
Yep, ra. I have my lobbying firm hat ra@theliaisongroup.org. But what we can do, Tim is in the show notes, we can put some contact information so folks don’t have to be writing madly. If they’d like to get in touch,
TG Branfalt:
We can certainly, certainly do that. Yep. Thank you both so much for taking the time out of your busy schedules trying to save us from dc. I really appreciate it. This has been a lot of fun and I hope that we can touch base and the next time we do that, there’s been some progress made. Right?
Saphira Galoob:
We look forward to it.
Ed Conklin:
We look forward to it, and thanks for having us on.
TG Branfalt:
But is Edward Conklin, executive director of the US Cannabis Council and s Galu, executive Director of National Cannabis Roundtable. The USCC and NCR last month announced they are going to combine other organizations to create the US Cannabis Roundtable. You can find more episodes of the entrepreneur.com podcast in the podcast section of entrepreneur.com or wherever you get your podcasts. On the entrepreneur.com website, you’ll find the latest cannabis news and cannabis jobs updated daily along with transcripts of this podcast. You can also download the entrepreneur.com app in iTunes and Google Play. This episode was engineered by Wayward Sound Studio. I’ve been your host, TG Branfalt.