Alaska was one of the very first U.S. states to legalize cannabis after voters there embraced the reforms in 2014; the market was also the very first to get state-wide regulations for social cannabis use, although some towns have passed stricter local regulations than others. But while Alaska’s cannabis market is one of the oldest in the country, its immense size and inherent isolation make doing cannabis business more complicated than many other state-legal markets.

In the latest episode of the Ganjapreneur.com Podcast, Chris joins our host TG Branfalt to discuss the early days of Alaska’s cannabis marketplace, Chris’ transition from working in cultivation to the retail side of the industry, and strategies he implemented at The Tree House for improving foot traffic and the overall cannabis retail experience. The interview also covers unique Alaskan cannabis industry experiences, like flying on commercial airlines while carrying tens of thousands of dollars worth of cannabis products — because sometimes that’s the only option — and the benefits of getting to know your customer base on a more personal level.

You can listen to the interview through the media player below or through your favorite podcasts app, or keep scrolling down to find a full transcript.

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Cara Wietstock: Hi. I’m Cara Wietstock, culture editor at Ganjapreneur and host of our YouTube show, Fresh Cut. The best way to understand cannabis business is to speak directly to those who work within it and Fresh Cut was created to shine recognition on the people who fill these roles. In this interview series, we focus on those with their hands and the dirt, both literally and figuratively, from cultivators to bud tenders, educators to advocates, activists to lobbyists, we aim to illuminate the workers who keep this industry thriving. Enjoy one on one conversations with me and guests by watching along on the Ganjapreneur YouTube channel and follow our social channels to keep up with the latest episodes. Have a great day.

TG Branfalt: Hey there, I’m your host TG Branfalt and thank you for listening to the ganjapreneur.com podcast, where we try to bring new, actionable information and normalize cannabis through the stories of ganjapreneurs, activists, and industry stakeholders. Today, I have finally completed my near five-year mission to get somebody from Alaska on this show. I’m delighted to be joined by Chris Ray. He’s the general manager of Anchorage, Alaska’s Tree House. Chris has worked in the state’s cannabis industry since August of 2016. How you doing man?

Chris Ray: Good. How are you?

TG Branfalt: I’m very, very well. Like I said, it’s great to have somebody representing Alaska finally on the show. I have a lot of questions that I think a lot of people have been sort of asking me about so I finally get to have answers for them. But before we get into that, man, tell me about out yourself, your background, and how you ended up in the cannabis space.

Chris Ray: Yeah, before we hopped on here, like I was telling you, I started doing the retail thing after I went to college. I went to University of Idaho for a year, tried to figure out what I wanted to do with life. Realized a four year school wasn’t really for me so I kind of bounced around between Washington, Hawaii and then I ended up in Missouri. Just started working retail down there for a few years then I got a call from one of my old basketball coaches from back in my high school days and he said that he was starting a cannabis retail in Fairbanks and he wanted my help. And so August of 2016 rolled around, I moved up there, helped him out in the cultivation and then helped him out in the retail. Got that going October, 2016 and then I was with them until about April of 2017.

And then I went over and joined Grass Station 49 in Fairbanks. They started off with just one location. We expanded to two more in Fairbanks, so three total within the first two and a half years. And then we opened a store in Nome shortly after that. And then once we opened up that store in Nome, I got a call from a buddy of mine here in Anchorage who was starting up a retail and he had already had a cultivation going. He’s big in the local hiphop scene, which really kind of gained my interest and my attention. And then that’s when I came down here and started working for the Tree House. And so we just opened up in July of last year, so 2020. Haven’t been open for a year yet. Just been kind working through the kinks and trying to get everything going. That’s kind and where we’re standing now.

TG Branfalt: You say that you started in sort of the cultivation, retail and now you’re helping sort of build a store as a general manager. What were some of the challenges for you when you were making that transition?

Chris Ray: I think the biggest challenge is it’s never been done before, the cannabis retail. Essentially everything that you’re doing and learning, it comes with taking some L’s here and there. Some learning lessons. I think the hardest part though for me, is trying to find like the right people to fit in. Because I think everyone who smokes and who’s a stoner wants to be in the industry but you’ll notice that everyone that smokes and a stoner usually doesn’t have the work ethic or the know-how’s to show up on time or to do things like that. The little simple things. That was a big eye opener realizing that everyone isn’t going to really fit that mold. But once you get around the whole staffing because we’re in Alaska so there’s not very many people.

There are people but there’s not a whole lot like you would say in New York or in California to pick from. Getting around that, once you get around that, just trying to find the product too because we’re a big state, not a whole lot of people. There’s a lot of cultivations but you’re talking about anywhere from when I was in Fairbanks, for instance, having to get stuff from Valdez, that’s a whole day and a half trip, a drive down six to eight hours and then you’re talking about getting the product there. Well now you’re not going to drive back because you’ve been driving all day. Now you’re waiting for the next day to come back. If there’s any construction, which in the summer in Alaska, they call it construction season, stopping all the time. Wintertimes you’ve got the snow, snow storms where you can’t travel through. It makes it really difficult when it comes to the whole transportation and I’d say the hiring aspects of things.

TG Branfalt: Well, I had read once this very unique story about somebody, it was when the Alaska market was first sort of coming online and I guess a lot of places in Alaska, you can only get to by aircraft.

Chris Ray: Yeah. A lot of those other places like Juneau or Ketchikan. My buddy Jason, he runs Frog Mountain CO2 Extraction. I’ve been working with him for a few years now and he’s got a fly to Anchorage twice, three times a month just to get product to people. At that point, now you’re trying to get on schedule with all these retails to see when you can deliver, when you can’t deliver. And if you know anything about ordering and stuff like that, sometimes you got money. Sometimes you don’t. Someone’s like, “Hey, I’m coming up on the 30th,” but you just put in two huge orders for the 25th. It’s like, all right, now I got to kind of juggle these around because he’s only coming up this one time. The next time you’re going to see him is on the 15th or on the 20th. Flying by air is crazy.

TG Branfalt: Has anyone come into any issues with sort of regulatory bodies or anything because cannabis remains federally outlawed and you have to get on a plane with it? Or is there anything like that?

Chris Ray: From my experience and doing the transports and what I’ve run to with the airlines, as long as you’re straight and up front with them and you have all your paperwork and it’s all manifested and you have it on your persons, they’ll go through, they’ll take you to a room, they’ll check you out, make sure everything’s good to go. As long as your paperwork is correct, they send you through. At that point, when I go through TSA, I feel like they’re looking for explosives. All the necessaries that they should be looking for when I’m trying to do my job and run a business and I have paperwork from the state that says I’m legally allowed to fly through or transport this, there’s nothing they can really do about it. Now of course they can stop us and be like, “Hey, we don’t feel this is safe for you flying today.”

But I haven’t seen that happen with anyone. I popped on one of the local airliners with 20, $30,000 worth of concentrates and, “Oh yep. All good.” And I’ve got families on the plane sitting in front of me and behind me and I’m just loading up all this stuff on the aircraft and it is what it is.

TG Branfalt: That’s unlike any, no one else, no other operator in any other state has to deal with something like that. Can you tell the audience a bit more about Alaska’s cannabis law and what if anything sets it apart from some of the ones in the continental United States?

Chris Ray: I think the thing where we’re very different is in California, for instance, when you have medical, you have shops that are accessible to go get your medicine and to do what you need to do. In Alaska medical passed years, years ago, I want to say 96, I could be wrong but it passed years ago and we have no medical setup to where anyone can go and buy their own stuff. Everything’s like, all right, you’re medically set up. Here’s a card. You can grow. But in the state of Alaska, it’s already legal for you to grow so the only thing it’s really doing is if you’re a minor and you need it, then you can have someone grow for you. But you still can’t be like, hey, I need to go to the shop. Here’s my med card. Do I get a percentage off? Or is there a certain selection that I can go to? We don’t have any of that.

In Alaska, if you’re 21, you have a legal ID, you can come shop. Your medical card means nothing. And even if you have a medical card, you can grow but guess what? Me and my buddy, we’re legally 21, we’re allowed to grow in the house. It’s very different in that aspect, you would think there’d be something set up to where people could actually use that medical card to go use it and do something positive with it. But all they can really do is what they’re already allowed to do. But other than that, the regulations, we’re allowed to buy up to seven grams of concentrate per purchase per day. I know in Washington, you’re not allowed to do that. We’re allowed to get these cool little baller jars with seven grams of concentrate, in Washington they only get these little itty bitty ones.

TG Branfalt: Yeah. In Massachusetts, it’s the same way you can’t get more than a gram.

Chris Ray: Yeah. Which, if you have someone who smokes a lot, you’re going to be done with that gram by the time lunch is over.

TG Branfalt: Basically. Now you say that you grow your own and you have to grow indoors. Is there an outdoor growing season for cannabis in Alaska?

Chris Ray: Yeah. We have legal outdoor grows. There’s one in Fairbanks. What is it called? Fox Creek Farms or something like that. Rosie Creek Farms. They’re outdoor. They only harvest once at the end of the summer. That’s all they do. Entire wintertime they just clean up, process, make six packs, make joints. Me personally, I don’t think it’s very lucrative but then again, I don’t have an outdoor grow, so what do I know? But I just know in Alaska, once that permafrost sets come end of summer and it starts getting cold, if you don’t have that stuff planted in time right now where it’s still getting cold out in the springtime, you’re not going to be able to harvest in time. But some people do have the greenhouses that are enclosed, that get the sunlight and then it’s fixated with the AC inside so if it gets too hot, it can cool down a little bit. There are some assisted grows like that. Lots of people that are just locals grow outdoor if they have a big backyard or autoflower plants on the back deck are very popular. I know lots of people who do that.

TG Branfalt: Are you allowed? In some states you can’t sell clones? Is that something you’re allowed to do in Alaska?

Chris Ray: Yeah. Yep. If you’re a retailer and you have a cultivation, you’re allowed to sell your clones. I know some places do it on the regular. Some places don’t do it at all because they don’t want that risk of you taking a clone and going home and be like, oh man, you gave me spider mites or oh man, I got PM. And I didn’t get PM till I brought home this clone. And then they blame it on the retail or the cultivation for that matter.

TG Branfalt: Got you. We’ve talked about some of the challenges that you face, when I asked you earlier about the flying and that sort of stuff, what are some of the unique benefits to you think running a cannabis shop in Alaska?

Chris Ray: I feel like you get a lot more personable with the customers because you have your select fan base, not fan base, but customer base that like your store. In California, I’d imagine you’d probably have somewhere closer to 500 to a 1,000 transactions a day at a busy shop in town. You’re probably looking at like 200 to 400, maybe. Those people that are coming in, you’re seeing the same faces every day. You’re able to get up close and personal with those people, learn about them, really find out what they’re like and what they’re looking for and really cater to their needs versus just on a huge, corporation scale, buying everything on the map that you can because it sells or because the computer tells you that it’s doing good. I’d say that’s one of the main, big benefits about being in Alaska.

TG Branfalt: Well, and you talk about the computer and you do use data at the Tree House and could you tell me a bit about how you use that data and how that data translates to enhance the customer experience?

Chris Ray: Yeah, so right now we use GrowFlow for a point of sale. I started using it back in, I want to say 2018 is when we switched over at Grass Station when I was there. My biggest thing for a bud tender to come in and to use the system is I need it to be simple and I need it to be like their iPhone for instance or their Android. They can get on it, they can find their text messages, type it out. It sends, it’s done. When we use GrowFlow to find out those analytics and that information that we need for the retail, using their insights tool that they have to tap in to see all right, when are our most transactions going through? Is opening up at 8:00 AM on Saturday, Sunday worth it?

We found out that it wasn’t on the weekends for us but Monday through Friday we have a bunch of early risers that are there right at 8:00 AM as soon as we open up the doors, almost like getting their morning coffee. From that aspect that really helped us tap in with that and get that opened up because we were wasting a bunch of payroll hours on certain shifts and certain days where we had three people scheduled to where we look at GrowFlow and say, “Hey, from noon to 1:00 you’re only doing this much. Maybe you only need two people instead of three.” It’s been really good in that aspect.

TG Branfalt: Was it surprising to you that you had a bunch of people sort of waiting outside at 8:00 AM during the week?

Chris Ray: For me, no, because when I was in Fairbanks, that was one of the first big changes that I did was I was like, “Hey, it’s cool to open up at 10:00. I get that but there’s people who wake up at 6:00 AM that run out of weed the night before, wake up at 6:00 AM and only have a bowl and they got to be at work at 9:00 so when we open up at 8:00 they just got their coffee. Now they’re here. Let me get a couple of pre-rolls real quick.” Or some folks only have a 30 minute lunch so when they get on a lunch at 12:00, they don’t want to spend 10 minutes driving to the shop, waiting in line for five to 10 minutes and then trying to whizz back to work. If they can come in at 8:00 AM and get what they need, now they can enjoy that lunch that they have at 12:00, smoke that pre-roll. All right, I got 10, 15 minutes to eat my food now and to recover and to go back inside.

That was one of my big eye-openers right there and kind of why I knew it would work. It was just on the weekends. People go out Friday night, get hammered or whatever they might do, smoke a whole lot and then they don’t wake up till 9:00, 10:00 AM the next morning, especially if it’s their day off.

TG Branfalt: Yeah, nowhere in New York, we just went legal we don’t have shops yet and so we go to Massachusetts but they don’t open in Massachusetts until at least 9:00, most of them 10:00, 11:00. I wonder how much they might be doing the same thing you are trying to figure out when the best time for them to be open. Is there any other way that using the data has changed your operations?

Chris Ray: Yeah. With the top sellers and the top suppliers, when I first started using it, it was top brands. And then I know I talked, I can’t remember who I talked to within the company, but I was like, “Hey, like we really and use the brands portion. But if you could make it top suppliers, that would be 10 times helpful.” Because everything that pulls in through Metrc is going to pull the supplier name and the cultivation. Off the rip, if you can do something with suppliers that are doing the best, that’ll tell me which ones I need to really order from. And then that really helps out with your whole ordering on a big scale. You know who you need to spend what money with or who’s getting the large orders and who’s getting the smaller orders because a cultivation might have eight strains but only one of them is selling really well in your shop, which there’s nothing wrong with that. I just know that I need to buy lots of that one and have that one so it’s never running out because that’s one of the top five sellers.

Same thing with the products, whether it be a vape cartridge or shatter live resin, whatever it might be. I really might like refined and live resin but if it’s only selling 2,000 to $3,000 worth of stuff in the shop per two weeks, but Frog Mountain or someone else is selling five to six and that’s not my favorite and that still tells me that I need to go with Frog Mountain a little bit more versus what I like, which at the retail side, that’ll kill anyone quicker than something else was just ordering what you like. It’s like going to a restaurant. There’s 20 things on the menu for a reason. You know what I mean? You might not like pasta but someone else might come in and that’s what they’re looking forward to.

TG Branfalt: You’ve been in the industry since, for basically for what? Seven years now or six years.

Chris Ray: Yeah, I was Pakalolo’s first employee.

TG Branfalt: What do you think is or what have you noticed is, through the data, is the most popular sort of form maybe not brand, but is it flowers? Is it concentrates? Because state by state it differs.

Chris Ray: Pre-rolls.

TG Branfalt: Pre-rolls.

Chris Ray: Yeah, I would’ve thought, me personally, I love buying flower and rolling it up myself but there are so many people on go in Alaska, whether they’re going fishing, camping, whether they’re driving on a six hour trip to go somewhere up north or going on a road trip. Because everywhere in Alaska, you got to drive to get there. You’re looking at no less than an hour drive somewhere. I feel like people just traveling a lot and being on the go, those six packs and those four packs that we sell and just pre-rolls and all just take over the market. There’s lots of good flower out there and there’s lots of good concentrates, but people from concentrates there’s only a select few that use them.

TG Branfalt: Yeah. You mentioned people having to travel and as we discussed before we went on here, Alaska’s one of those places that I really would love to visit. Very much considered moving there at one point. What portion of your customers are tourists? And what role does tourism play in your bottom line ultimately?

Chris Ray: When I was in Fairbanks, tourism played I’d say during the summertime about a good 30 to 40% of your customers are tourists.

TG Branfalt: That much.

Chris Ray: Because you got people coming up. They’re trying to just see what it’s like in the summertime, trying to enjoy themselves. In the wintertime, I’d say it dies down a little bit because not many people want to come deal with the cold but they want to see the lights, especially in Fairbanks. Now, when I got to Anchorage, we kind of opened up right before the pandemic so the whole tourism thing, it really hasn’t kicked into full gear or I don’t even know if it will this summer. I know Alaska’s offering the vaccine to anyone that comes to Alaska that wants to get it. That might bring some tourism up. But at the Tree House, I really haven’t seen that in full scale yet but from Fairbanks in that summertime, I’d say a good 30 to 40% in the summertime. And then probably about 20, maybe 25% in the wintertime. But a lot it’s just your diehard locals that want to come through and support local businesses.

TG Branfalt: Do you guys have that corporate culture up there that have sort of permeated in other states?

Chris Ray: We have a couple of shops up here that have kind of taken that bigger, all right, we’re going to take a larger footprint. We want three cultivations. We want four retails. There’s a couple like that. Not a whole lot. I’d say for the most part with us being in Alaska, everything still seems small craft for the most part. But I hope it doesn’t come in here like that.

TG Branfalt: No, you’re super fortunate because the idea of an entire market being a craft market is it’s really unheard of down here.

Chris Ray: Now, there are a lot of cultivations to where I feel like there’s a lot more midgrade weed that it outweighs the good weed that’s out there for sure. And some of those guys that have two, three cultivations, that they’re putting out a lot of mid grade stuff. Those smaller guys that only have the one cultivation, sometimes they get overlooked.

TG Branfalt: And you find them through data, right?

Chris Ray: Oh, you have to, you have to, yeah.

TG Branfalt: You mentioned that the Tree House just opened around the time that COVID hit. The pandemic obviously didn’t change your operations that much at the Tree House. But when that did hit, what did you have to do? What did the industry have to do in Alaska to deal with that?

Chris Ray: The industry actually opened up curbside pickups. They didn’t open up for delivery but they did allow us to do some curbside pickups. Us at the Tree House where we’re at, we didn’t feel comfortable doing the walking outside with product and dropping it off to people. We kind of just went with the whole social distancing, cleaning on the hour, every hour, wiping down everything. Thankfully with our shop, we only have about 10 to 12 employees so keeping everyone safe and healthy for the most part, we were good. We didn’t have anyone break out with any cases or anything like that.

But the industry as a whole, with them doing the curbside pickup, I feel like it helped out a lot of shops because a lot of shops don’t have the floor space that we do to where people can come in and be distanced. For them to walk out real quick and all right, here you go, boom, boom, boom. You already paid for it. All right. Thank you. Make it real quick for them. I feel like it made some of the customers and the consumers feel safer about coming to get their product but once it kind of laxed up a little bit, I feel like people they’re looking forward for things to opening back up and being able to come back in and see the big jars of weed and smell them and have a more hands on experience. Because I feel like that’s why most people come to the shop is to have that hands on experience.

TG Branfalt: Yeah. It definitely had to sort of change the way that people were buying cannabis. Did you notice any sort of?

Chris Ray: Yeah, we thought sales might slow down a little bit because people not wanting to leave the house or whatever it may have been but with us being an essential worker in the state of Alaska, business stayed the same if not got better. A lot of people came out, they were willing to spend more money because they only wanted to come once or twice a week versus the four times they were coming. You had some people who were just at home more so they weren’t going out as much so they were smoking more. I’m sure anyone who’s a smoker knows how that goes. If you don’t have to leave the house or go check in or meet with anyone, you’re just smoking up because it’s there. No, business stayed pretty steady. Pretty good. It was a good time. It definitely had some learning lessons as far as how to pivot when a pandemic hits. That was definitely my first time working through something like that. Just following the guidelines of the state of Alaska and stuff like that.

TG Branfalt: And as general manager, you were the one that basically had to implement all this stuff.

Chris Ray: Yeah. And it’s tough, when some places are going overboard with it to where they’re only allowing five people in store at a time to where some shops were like, all right. people can come in as long as we’re distanced. Kind of putting it on the bud tenders a little bit like, “Hey, if you see it getting packed in here, ask some people to wait outside in the hallway.” But thankfully our bud tenders are pretty good. They’re pretty quick. Keeping the constant flow within the shop and we have an entrance one way and an exit the other way. Just kind of keeping that traffic streamlined and not having a whole lot of people pass by each other was a good thing.

TG Branfalt: Has the pandemic affected sort of your ability to keep, get or retain the employees because down here it’s, everybody is hiring all the time now because the unemployment check is good. Has that been something that you faced as well?

Chris Ray: No. The only thing that we really face is some employees they might get a job offer from a job that offers them medical benefits or something like that, to where it’s like, “Hey, I’m going to go take this job because I need the benefits,” or, “Hey, I’m going to go take this job because I only have to deal with five people now instead of 200.” But never did I have anyone be like, “Hey, I don’t feel safe working because of the pandemic or COVID or anything like that.” Like I said, we have a lot of space in our shop so even the bud tenders, from register to register, there’s a good four to six feet. And then from the customer to the employee, it’s already a good four feet. Just add another two feet to that, I feel like it made everyone feel pretty safe.

TG Branfalt: It’s good to hear that you guys did particularly well, just with health and being able to manage the pandemic. One of the things that I always found interesting about sort of Alaska’s cannabis law was that they were early adopters of allowing or eventually allowing social use. And a lot of states have since then either enacted their own law or included it in their own reforms. How do you think lounges will affect the industry?

Chris Ray: I’m very curious to see how it’s going to go. One of the first ones just opened up in Fairbanks but I don’t know if you know but it kind of varies from city to city with the rules on which you can consume. In Anchorage, they put it out to where, all right if you get an endorsement for the onsite, you’re only allowed to consume edibles. Well, in Alaska, the max for edibles is 50 milligrams per package. Exactly. I don’t see very many people be like, “Oh yeah, I’m going to go over here today and go buy some cookies and go sit down and eat these cookies.” I just don’t see that being lucrative to anyone. But in Fairbanks, they have it to where you can buy up to a gram of flower from that place and you can smoke it there.

The place in Fairbanks that’s open, they have, you can walk in there, there’s a cafe, TVs, it’s an old Chili’s building so kind of imagine a Chili’s. Walk in there, you get you your coffee or your smoothie or whatever, you buy a pre-roll, one gram pre-roll or buy one gram thing of flower and you can roll it up yourself. Smoke that and then leave. I’m just kind of curious though, if cops are going to sit around the corner, like they do at new bars when new bars open up or something like that and kind of camp out. I think it’ll be cool but I’m very curious to see how it’ll all pan out in the end.

TG Branfalt: I love the idea of an old Chili’s being able to smoke weed at an old Chili’s.

Chris Ray: Yeah. It’s got to grow in there. It’s got a little cafe and then they got the retail on the other side. It’s pretty big.

TG Branfalt: That’s great use of space, man. There’s an old Pizza Hut here. I hope they do the same thing here. Are you guys planning? You said you have a big space, are you guys planning to try to get that endorsement?

Chris Ray: I think if Anchorage were to ever change it to where you could smoke flower or consume concentrates, then I think it would be worth the conversation but just how it right now with just the edibles I don’t think it makes sense because you have to have a state of the art ventilation but I don’t know why you’d have to have a state of the art ventilation if there’s only edibles allowed. It just doesn’t make sense right now.

TG Branfalt: Is the beverage game strong up there?

Chris Ray: In comparison to Washington, it’s pretty weak or like California it’s pretty weak. There are a couple of good beverage companies up here, like Fire Eater, they make a few different sodas. Red Run makes a lemonade that a lot of people tend to like but other than that, there’s really not very many drinks. And again, that counts as an edible so the entire soda can only be 50 milligrams. I know most people are looking for a 100, 250 milligram drink because they want to drink half of it and store the rest of it for later or something.

TG Branfalt: Yeah. In Michigan when I was in Michigan, the max was actually 10 milligrams.

Chris Ray: Wow.

TG Branfalt: Yep. On a beverage. And that was actually medical too. But then you could get at the same time, you could also get basically syrup that was 500 milligrams a bottle and that was a good time.

Chris Ray: Yeah. We have the syrup but again, the syrup it counts an edible so it can only be 50 milligrams. There’s a public comment out right now to raise that from 50 to a 100 to see how that goes. I’m hoping they do. Enough people have voiced their opinions about it. I think that’s on the next meeting or the next agenda to see if they’re going to push that through. And if that does, I think that’ll open up the edible game a little bit to where more people want to come in and experiment with edibles and try them. Because I know right now, 50 milligrams to a 200 pound man, it’s really, it’s not going to do much.

TG Branfalt: Yeah. On the flip side though, if you’re worried about police also sitting around outside, you get someone who’s not used to it at all and 50 a hard.

Chris Ray: It’s a good amount.

TG Branfalt: It’s a hard ride.

Chris Ray: For sure. For sure.

TG Branfalt: You’re a young dude in this industry, you’ve been in your position now for a little under a year but you’ve been in the space since 2016, really at the beginning in Alaska. What’s some advice that you would have for someone looking to get into the industry, man?

Chris Ray: Be willing to come in and get your foot in the door any way that you can. When I first came up, I came up to help run the retail so I was the assistant store manager. When I left there, I had to go to a new company and just to get my foot in the door there, I just came in as a packager. If you’re good at your job and you can voice your opinion here and there and the right people are willing to listen, they will. But that would be my biggest thing is just be willing to get your foot in the door some way. A lot of people don’t want to come in and bud tend or package but a lot of the people that I know today that are in their top positions at certain companies within the state of Alaska, they all came in and they bud tended for a year, a year and a half, they packaged or they watered and trimmed for a year.

They did the little things to kind of study the people around them moving and making the bigger decisions so when the time came to where they needed someone else to make those decisions, they kind of already been watching and it’s a lot easier to teach. I feel like a lot of people come in on their high horse and want to be a manager or a key holder, someone of importance right away instead of coming in and just taking it easy and learning a little bit. It’s a brand new industry and a lot of places there’s a lot of room to grow and companies are just going to keep popping up right and left. If you’re doing your job at the one place, and they got nothing but good things to say about you, a lot of these other places are going to come to you, knocking at your door, looking to build with you instead of just having you be someone come in, making 15 an hour, showing up for 30 hours a week and clocking in and clocking out.

TG Branfalt: And maybe have showed up on time, right?

Chris Ray: And you hope so. Man, you’d be surprised, dude. You’d really be surprised.

TG Branfalt: I worked in the bong industry for a very long time, you can’t be surprised.

Chris Ray: Man, it’s just like, people want more and they want to raise or something but you can’t show up on time six out of the six days out of the week, seven days out of the week. It’s really not hard to show up five minutes before your shift. If you’ve got it to where you’re flexible and you can show up whenever, then by all means do that. But usually when you’re a bud tender or a packager, it’s like, hey, your shift starts up 4:00 so be ready to work at 4:00, not show up at 3:59, take your hat off, take your jacket off, go use the bathroom and then by the time you come out in front to count your drawer, it’s 4:10. It’s like, dude, where you been?

TG Branfalt: That will not get you far in the cannabis industry in Alaska or anywhere else I don’t think. Where Chris Ray can people find out more about you and more about The Tree House?

Chris Ray: All of my social medias are @shawnhemp_, that’s Shawn, S-H-A-W-N-H-E-M P_. That’s my weed moniker. I’ve been rolling with it for a little bit now but that’s pretty much where I post anything that I like, local cannabis, lots of buddies of mine that grow lots of rec stuff that I try for the first time, stuff like that. I’m pretty active on there. But the Tree House, all of our social medias are TheTreeHouseAK. And then we have our website, thetreehouseak.com. That pretty much has our deals, our menu, what we’ve got going on. We try to keep that up to date. And then just story on Instagram for the Tree House is pretty active and always shows what’s going on in the store and stuff like that.

TG Branfalt: Well, if I ever make my way to Alaska, I’ll know where to land the plane.

Chris Ray: Yeah. If anyone is coming to Alaska and they want to see some shops or smoke some good weed, come hit me up, shoot me a message on Instagram, reach out. Everyone in Alaska is super friendly, man. That’s the one thing I love about it here. It’s not like going to Vegas or California, there are some sheisty people in Alaska, don’t get me wrong. But for the most part, everyone who is involved with the weed game, they’re pretty good people.

TG Branfalt: Well, I really thank you for taking the time out and coming on the show and giving me this sort of perspective and insight because it’s been a long time that I’ve been trying.

Chris Ray: I’m surprised it took you five years. That’s crazy to me, man. There’s two or three podcasts up here that talk about marijuana on the local scene. There’s 30 shops. I’m just, I’m surprised no one’s reached out.

TG Branfalt: You guys are sketchy of us mainlanders.

Chris Ray: Oh, see man, I learned all my experience down there on the mainland. I was right down between Kansas City and St. Louis for about three, four years down there in Columbia.

TG Branfalt: Columbia. I’ve never been, man. I’ve never been.

Chris Ray: Yeah. It’s an interesting place, man. It’s like a tunnel between Chicago, Memphis, Kansas City and St. Louis.

TG Branfalt: Chicago’s a great city.

Chris Ray: It’s right where the University of Mizzou’s at. A lot of people come through there, a whole lot of different walks of life.

TG Branfalt: That’s Chris Ray. Thank you so much again. Hopefully you can keep me posted on whether or not that push works to get the level of THC in edibles raised. And hopefully we’ll talk again soon, man. I really appreciate it.

Chris Ray: Yeah. Yeah. Reach out whenever.

TG Branfalt: You can find more episodes of the Ganjapreneur.com podcast in the podcast section of ganjapreneur.com, on Spotify and in the Apple iTunes Store. On the Ganjapreneur.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 Ganjapreneur.com app in iTunes and Google Play. This episode was engineered by Trim Media House. I’ve been your host, TG Branfalt.

With nearly one million medical cannabis caregivers licensed in the state, Michigan is an often undersung hub of cannabis culture, cultivation, and industry expertise.

In an interview covering entrepreneurship and the Michigan marketplace, our podcast host TG Branfalt recently connected with Joseph Ori, a career lawyer and entrepreneur who co-founded Michigan’s Six Labs. In the following episode, Joseph discusses his pivot to the cannabis space, the company’s scientific approach to cannabis cultivation, and the advantages of working with a versatile team. The interview also covers Six Labs’ brand-building process, their prioritization of experience-focused cannabis products, and more.

Check out the full podcast episode below! You can also scroll further down to find a full transcript of the interview.

Listen to the podcast:

Read the transcript:

Commercial: This episode of The Ganjapreneur Podcast is made possible by AROYA, a comprehensive cannabis production platform for commercial growers. If you are a commercial cannabis grower, you can use AROYA to level up your production workflow. Featuring a combination of precision instruments and powerful software that help you intelligently cultivate dry and process cannabis, the AROYA cannabis production platform is your ticket to greater yields and consistent quality. Request a quote today online at aroya.io. That’s A-R-O-Y-A.io.

Cara Wietstock: Hi, I’m Cara Wietstock, Culture Editor at Ganjapreneur and host of our YouTube show. Fresh Cut. The best way to understand cannabis business is to speak directly to those who work within it, and Fresh Cut was created to shine recognition on the people who fill these roles. In this interview series, we focus on those with their hands and the dirt, both literally and figuratively, from cultivators to budtenders, educators to advocates, activists to lobbyists.
We aim to illuminate the workers who keep this industry thriving. Enjoy one-on-one conversations with me and guests by watching along on the Ganjapreneur YouTube channel and follow our social channels to keep up with the latest episodes. Have a great day.

TG Branfalt: Hey there, I’m your host, TG Branfalt, and thank you for listening to the Ganjapreneur.com Podcast, where we try to bring you actionable information in normalized cannabis through the stories of ganjapreneurs, activists, and industry stakeholders. Today, I am joined by Joseph Ori. He’s the co-founder, General Counsel, and Government Relations for Six Labs, one of Michigan‘s largest craft cannabis cultivators with a complete focus on quality and precision and a passion for advanced research development and technology. How you doing this afternoon, Joseph? A pleasure to have you.

Joseph Ori: I’m doing great, TG. Thank you for having me. Really appreciate it.

TG Branfalt: As a lot of our listeners know, I actually spent a year in Detroit. I love the city. I was there when they legalized cannabis, but was not there when they actually started sales. I did go to a Cannabis Cup there, which is a story for another day that has been posted to the website, but before we discuss Six Labs and craft cannabis, which is really exciting, tell me about yourself, man. You obviously wear many hats for Six Labs, so tell me about what you do there and your background. How’d you end up in the cannabis space?

Joseph Ori: Well, the cannabis space sort of called out to me, I think, but I have a background. I played sports competitively my whole life, and most of it was spent playing football toward the latter part of my teens, and then I ended up playing college football and I actually ended up with two back surgeries while in college. Back in the ’90s, they were giving out Percocet and Oxycontin like it was candy and we, obviously, didn’t know any of effects of those substances and the addictive quality. I was one of the lucky ones because I didn’t react well to them and I was in an extreme amount of pain all of the time. I mean, I’m talking back since I was… I don’t want to date myself, but since I was 20.

I stumbled upon cannabis in college and, you know… Whereas, most people were using it just recreationally to have some fun. I started to notice that it was mediating my pain. Whereas, you drink alcohol and I’d feel like shit the next day. I mean, I was completely dehydrated. My back would kill me even more. I’d worry it was cannabis. It wasn’t, so I became sort of self-medicating myself over the years. Then, as this industry grew and they started to actually acknowledge that there were medicinal qualities and sort of at the same time the parabola was going downward for opioids and all of the negative exposure that they rightly received, I said, “I’m a believer in this.”

The opportunity presented itself to… You know, I’ve been an investor in cannabis separately before Six Labs, and so an opportunity presented itself that Six Labs, I’m sorry, that Michigan was opening up to a new set of rules and they were going to open up larger cultivators and go recreational legal, and my partners and I saw an opportunity. We bought some land out there and we got it approved locally. We raised tons of money and got this thing off the ground. We’re all in our… The challenge we had was… I tell people this a lot is that we’re all in our 40s, so we’re seasoned businessmen, and one of the things that comes with that is that you know what you’re doing, how to run a business, and by that point in time in your life you know some people who’ve got some wealth.

We were able to raise money and we were able to put together this company relatively easy in the sense that we all had a role. The challenge was that once it started to take off, we all had to leave our careers. My main bread-winning background was that I’m a trial attorney for 25 years and I’m also, again, a restaurateur. I’ve owned record labels, been a sports agent. I’ve done a lot of things in my life, but this was basically saying, “Okay, you have to sort of take a step back from what we’re doing every day.”

My law firm, I’ve had to put some people in place because I’m the founder and owner of that law firm, but I’ve had to put some people in place to sort of help me out and bring some younger attorneys up and make them partners and share the piece of the pie, so to speak, so it’s been a journey. I mean, it’s exciting and we’re really happy with where we’re sitting right now, but obviously, we say that in cannabis every year is like a dog year, I mean, every month is like a dog year, so we’ll see how it goes.

TG Branfalt: No, I mean, this is a really incredible journey. Going back a little bit, you said that you were an investor in cannabis companies before you launched your own. Tell me about the… maybe not the companies that you invested in per se, but what drew you to those companies in that early stages.

Joseph Ori: Well, so what happened was is that Illinois got in the game. I’m not going to say they were the first ones, but the medical aspect of cannabis in Illinois was pretty early on. I was approached by several entities that was a couple of which are massive companies now and trying to get me to invest in their company, which I did. Then, I got approached by some other groups that actually wanted to do what we did, which is actually take a role in the company and get it off the ground and get licensed in Illinois and sort of see where it took you.

I at that point in time was too ingrained in what I was doing professionally as a trial attorney and I had some very… I represent people who can’t represent themselves, so I do catastrophic injury and I represent a lot of people who would never be able to pay me if they had to. I work for free unless I win, representing infants that are injured at birth and things like that and construction workers who are severely injured on the job. And I was ingrained in a lot of big cases. I couldn’t walk away.

I kind of had that itch back then, and then sort of as I found myself five, six later with this opportunity in Michigan, it just made sense to do that at that time because I had surrounded by partners. My partners are guys I’ve known for many, many years and it was really odd because one of the things as an entrepreneur as I’ve learned is it’s one thing to have a great idea.

It’s one thing to have a great plan and to get funded, but to have yourself surrounded out of the gate with people who you know and you trust… Also, I mean, if I tell you this you probably wouldn’t believe it, but so what do you need to run a business? You need, well, we need an attorney. You’re going to build something, you need a builder. If you’re going to have finances, you need an accountant. If you need operations, you need a guy in those operations.

Well, all five of my partners, my other partners, had these. One of my partners is a certified accountant. He’d had a background in banking. I’ve got another partner who was a builder and left his career as a builder to [crosstalk] build our facility. We’ve got other guys who fell into place that were also key critical roles in the company, so we didn’t really have to go outside of us to sort of have at least the nuts and bolts of building a business.

Now, learning cannabis space, totally different animal, and we needed to bring in the right people to sort of roll the cannabis and know what the market was. Funny thing is we have most of our partners are in our 40s. I actually turned 50 recently, but we have a young guy who’s like 30 years old. He started with us when he was 27 and he’s our cannabis guy, you know, so [crosstalk] he’s our cannabis expert.

TG Branfalt: When you were searching for that cannabis guy, was the majority of the people younger?

Joseph Ori: Yeah, so one of the things that we learned right out of the gate, and this goes along with some of the things you and I were discussing before the podcast just separately, the image of this industry has changed. We started going out to find head of cultivation and head flower managers and veg managers. We first went and what we did was an immense amount of due diligence. Before we even stepped foot into this industry, we toured all over California, Colorado, Oregon. We went to… We knocked on doors. We went into all the facilities we could get into, the cultivation facilities, crossing facilities, dispensaries. We wanted to know what was working and what wasn’t working.

I’m not going to name any names, but we saw some pretty deplorable situations out there and we said, “Okay, so how are we going to separate ourselves from all of these people?” We took notes and said, “Okay, these are the things that seem to be working, and then let’s look at where the new frontier is going to be in this industry.” One of the things we were leaning toward was possibility, still exists, of the federal government legalizing it. We thought, “Well, if the federal government legalizes it and the FDA gets involved in as much as it addresses the medical side of this product,” I don’t even know if we call it a product, I guess we can call it a commodity, “Then, we’re going to have to meet certain standards.”

We basically said, “Let’s build a facility that’s forward-thinking and it may cost us more money than we want and most of these other facilities would cost us, but let’s build it with forward-thinking technology. Let’s build it. It could be retrofit with futuristic technology if need be.” That’s what we did. We did an extraordinary amount of homework and to be able to create and… I brag about this because we haven’t been told anything differently. I mean, we have people come through our facility from other states and guys who know cannabis way more than the five of us when we started out, we’ve been in the business for 10 years or so, they’ve never seen anything like our facility. We continually get these accolades from people.

It’s helped us because we’ve landed some big licensing deals just based off of our operations and the way our facility appears. We’re saying basically, to sum it up is, if the FDA gets involved and our cannabis doesn’t pass whatever those regulations may be, then no one else’s is, and we said, “So that’s what we wanted to do,” and then [crosstalk] you know, that’s what we’re trying.

TG Branfalt: To your point with the FDA, I mean, I’ve always sort of maintained that everyone’s, “Oh, we want federal legalization,” but I believe that they’re just going to make it more onerous and a much sort of harder for current operators in states because federal regulations are going to be far behind those of the states at that point.

Joseph Ori: Yeah. I think it’s really odd because I thought maybe with this new administration there was going to be a major push right away to do something and it’s a little bit lagging more than I thought it was going to be. What I thought it was going to be, you know, federal legalization, I think what they’re going to do is just they’re going to ultimately reschedule it and they’re going to leave it up states to do what they have to do, what they’re currently doing, which is allowing their inside operations, the companies that are in their state, to build their industry. Then, I think it will be somewhat like… The real question will be interstate commerce, you know?

TG Branfalt: Yeah.

Joseph Ori: If you have Illinois, which is weird because we’ve actually talked about this, so we have Illinois and Michigan, but we’re not contiguous except unless you cross Lake Michigan. You have to go through Indiana to get to Michigan-

TG Branfalt: Yeah.

Joseph Ori: … and Indiana’s not, you know, not going to go legal anytime soon. We’re like, “Okay, if we open up interstate commerce, are we’re going to be able to cross over into Illinois through Indiana? Or can we take boats across Lake Michigan and go to Illinois and sell product? I mean, those are legitimate questions that-

TG Branfalt: Yeah.

Joseph Ori: … we have no idea, you know, what what’s going to happen because barring true federal legalization where they just say, “Okay, we’re taking over control of this and here’s what’s going to happen,” you don’t really know how it’s going to play it’s self out.

I mean, alcohol sales have been largely kept outside of federal preemption. I’m not trying to get too legal with you, but federal preemption basically says federal laws preempt state laws. Now, there’s been exceptions to that. One of those has been alcohol. If you compare cannabis to alcohol, at least from a recreational standpoint, it would follow that they’re going to leave it up to the states. This state says it’s 18 years old, that state says it’s 21, this state has restrictions on… and local municipalities on what can be sold, what times it can be sold, who it can be sold to and when and where. It still looks like it’s always going to be maintained within the confines of each state, at least from my perspective.

TG Branfalt: No, and they’ve done the same thing with cigarettes now in New York. It’s 21, so to your point, I do want to sort of switch gears a little bit and talk to you about sort of craft cannabis. Tell me how Six Labs and yourself defines craft cannabis.

Joseph Ori: That’s a great question, so it’s not synonymous with top shelf cannabis. Craft cannabis, we feel, is defined by four qualities, which is smell, flavor, experience, and appearance. Top shelf, usually we say the top shelf cannabis has to have at least high, high rankings on three of those fours. Whereas, craft cannabis, we’ll have all four of them. The most important one, I think, is experience, and there’s other distinguishing features that will make craft cannabis separate itself from top shelf, which is the terpene profiles, the potency, the cannabinoid profiles, and tolerance. When you get into tolerance is where I really think the difference is, is craft cannabis we say is like a craft wine. It’s got different features.

Now, what we try to do is we say, “If you can create batches of cannabis that are consistent in smell, flavor, appearance, and most importantly experience, and also try to create profiles that will keep the user from growing a tolerance to it,” so meaning if you take it… if you are an edible fan, you’re taking a 10 milligram edible that’s from flower. It’s born of flower that it was craft flower. Or, you smoke a half gram pre-roll. Are you going to get the same effect and the same level of experience today as you will six months from now? Or, are you going to have to start smoking a whole gram? Or are you going to have to take two edibles?

We’re trying to… We’re basically saying the craft cannabis is always going to be, we believe, that it always will be special. It’ll always have its own place, so what we kind of set out to do is said, “You know, we’re going to try to spend and we have the ability with our facility to do that. We’re going to try to make craft cannabis at a larger scale. We’re going to try to compete with the guys who are making… who have a 3,000-square-foot grow or 5,000-square-foot grow, focus on a couple of strains and say, ‘This is the craft cannabis, the best quality that you can possibly have.”

We said, “We’re going to try to do that in a larger scale. We’re going to get that much attention. We’re going to give it that much time, energy, and create a climate and an environment where we can do that at a larger scale.” It’s very challenging. We’re trying to make it precise and as clean as possible, and precision is the main goal of our company.

TG Branfalt: You’re the first person that I’ve ever spoken to who put such an emphasis on experience. When you have these conversations with people, which you must do in order to be meeting these sort of goals, when you ask them, “What experience are you looking for?”, something like that, what’s the response that you get most often?

Joseph Ori: I guess to answer that question, it’s like if you’re at a dinner party and you’re with some friends and the subject of cannabis comes up, you’re likely not talking about strain names because it gets confusing. One of the things, and I can say this, I’ve been a customer for years and I was like, “Okay, what does this even mean?” It’s basically trying to say, “Okay, do we have the ability right now to say that you will have this specific experience from this strain?” No, and what we’ve learned, too, is that sativa, indica, and hybrid is really… There’s no true sativa [inaudible]. Everything is sort of a hybrid. There’s no true indica.

To say, “Okay, well, one’s going to kind of make you sleepy or tired and chilled out, the other one’s going to give you energy, will allow you to maybe focus better,” just based on strain is not really the truth. What they’re realizing is the entourage effect of certain levels of terpenes and ratios of cannabinoids. THC is not necessarily the main thing. It’s like it’s still I see that there’s… You can grow THC, high-potency THC product and you’ll get tons of money for it even at the wholesale level. Everybody wants 28%, 30%, and I don’t think that this industry’s moving toward that. I think it’s moving away from that. I think, you know-

TG Branfalt: Right.

Joseph Ori: … people don’t want to get blown out of their minds necessarily. They would prefer to have an experience, so while we can’t say that we have reached the point where I can tell you, “Hey, buy this and you’re going to feel this,” I think that what we are moving forward and we’re working on a product line that’s coming out.

We’re a house of brands, so we have five products and we’re working on a sixth. One of our products we’re saying is going to be geared toward allowing you to select it based on what you want to do and to heighten that experience. If you’re going to go… If you want to be creative, we’re going to say, “This is going to help you be more creative. If you want to just chill out and watch a movie and not think, then this, this a strain… this is a product, not a strain, but this is a product that will heighten that experience. If you want to explore, this is a product that will heighten that experience.”

Frankly, I think that there’s something to be said for the possibility that there would be heightened sexual experiences with certain products. What we’re trying to do is not tell because you can’t, I don’t think you can yet, like you tell the end user, “You are going to feel this way,” every single one of them. I do think that we’re at the point where we can say that, “If you’re going to do this occasion-based, occasion-based, this is the product. You will have a better time doing this with that.” That’s what we’re aiming for.

TG Branfalt: How do you R&D this, man?

Joseph Ori: Well [crosstalk] so you do… You know, you test it on your many employees. You sample a product. That’s what we do, and it’s not just simply that. We’re… Israel has got a lot of research that comes out of there. They’ve very, very passionate about it. More toward the medical, I’ll be honest, but-

TG Branfalt: Yeah.

Joseph Ori: … but you learn a lot from the medical that you can garner and sort of follow the process of if you have a particular strain that is more leaning towards sativa and you can combine the terpene profiles and the CBD ratios because those work against each other, and you can combine them together and consistently grow it with that ratio. You’re going to… Like I said, you may have eight out of 10 people who use it and say they had a bad experience, and to be fair, it’s like, okay, when I gave you my example with my opioid experience, I’m one of… They’ll give you a million things what the drug can do to you. Most people are just going to feel what it’s supposed to, and they didn’t tell you that a vast majority of people become addicted, but they also… Some people just don’t feel well and some people have nausea and vomiting.

I don’t think there’s a single substance out in the world that’s even been tested and approved by the FDA that can guarantee a specific feeling, but if you can do it to the extent where there’s a vast majority of expectation, that you’re likely to have this sensation when you utilize this particular product and you can rely on that and it works for you. I mean, let’s face facts. The one beauty is that I think I read something recently that there’s still not a single account of anyone dying from overdosing on cannabis.

TG Branfalt: Yeah. No, it’s basically impossible.

Joseph Ori: Basically impossible, so you may have to try it and you may have to go out and buy it and say, “Okay, well, hey, Six Labs is telling you they’ve got this line of cannabis out here and this is what this is for your occasion-based.” You say, “I’m going to try it.” We think your result will be satisfaction. I think that’s we’re aiming for,

TG Branfalt: Moving things on a little bit, when I said at the top I’ve been in Michigan and it was still medical and I went to a Cannabis Cup and I did get blown out of my mind by somebody with dabs. To your point, I do think that we are moving away of that sort of high-test stuff. I’m a guy who’s been smoking… using cannabis since I was 15, 16 years old, and now I much prefer five-milligram, 10-milligram edibles. Either I’m getting old or I don’t like to be as fucked up anymore.

Then, they legalized in 2016 the first Midwestern state to legalize recreationally. Obviously, they didn’t get up and running before Illinois because Illinois just… Pritzker was like, “We’re doing this, we’re going it now.” Tell me about Michigan’s industry seven years after voters have approved the reforms. Is it where people think that it should be as an operator? Is it a satisfactory business climate?

Joseph Ori: You know, that’s a tough question to answer and is broad of a term. Legal cannabis particularly in Michigan has in the initial stages struggled under the weight of pressure of scaling cultivation and led to quality issues on the larger cultivation level, which allowed caregivers to sell to dispensaries directly because they were the only ones who were making cannabis, creating cannabis that was available and that could be used.

It took a while to get the cultivators up and running, the larger cultivators, and the entire sector was slow to deliver the results that they expected. A lot of it… I think at one point in time not so long ago, about 70% of the larger cultivator cannabis wasn’t passing testing, so [crosstalk]-

TG Branfalt: 70%?

Joseph Ori: 70, yes-

TG Branfalt: That’s unreal.

Joseph Ori: … so while the challenges were most pronounced then, I think today there’s a difference. It’s different now. THere’s a lot of larger cultivators online. It’s robust competition, but Michigan is like… Nobody understands this, man. Michigan has a long history rooted in cannabis. I mean, you know, when you-

TG Branfalt: Ann Arbor itself, I mean-

Joseph Ori: Yeah. It’s unbelievable, man. It’s almost like California. It’s wild how deep-rooted cannabis use is in Michigan. The funny thing is like we’re being challenged by a black market. There’s the seizures at the border. I give it a little bit of fact. The seizures at the border in 2019 and 20, I’m sorry, in early 2020 to late 2020 increased like 1800%. They were seizing massive truckloads of commercial-grade cannabis at the border coming in from Canada because Canada can’t get their shit straight.

They have so many companies out there that have so much product because they have a huge black market problem that they’re shipping their high-quality packaged goods through the United States, the border of Michigan in Windsor. They’re getting seized and guess what the penalty was in 2020? I don’t think it’s any different, not, man, in 2019. It was $5,000 fine per ton.

TG Branfalt: Per ton?

Joseph Ori: Per ton, so I mean, I like my chances. All right, if I’m up in Canada, I’m like, “Well, you know what?” Nobody was arrested according to these accounts I’ve read and they were just sent back up to Canada and their passports were revoked to come to the United States, so I’ll take my chances all day. That’s what you’re competing with, but you still see the sales going through the roof. We kind of look at it and we’re like, “Man, if they could just,” so it’s like everybody says about 70% is still black market cannabis being sold in, you know, in the United States in general, and then pretty close to that ratio in Michigan.

You’re like, “Okay, if we could just chip away 10% of these people,” and the sales are still robust. Imagine what it would really be. We’re hoping that with education will come people saying, “Okay, we’re going to shift. We’re not going to buy it from this black market dealer down the street. We’re going to buy it from a licensed entity where it’s highly tested, highly regulated and, oh, by the way, this company Six Labs says, ‘Hey, we might have stuff that’s more sensation… more occasion-based for you and you can rely on it and you can always know the consistency and you can always know the cleanliness.’”

That’s what we’re hoping changes, but it’s going to be some time before that changes. We look at alcohol. We’re like, “Okay, after Prohibition, there were still people making whiskey, moonshine.” It took a long time and some government regulation and brands to really come out to do away with that type of mentality. I think we’re a ways away, but it’s growing in the sense that there’s… I mean, I think in Illinois we’re actually waiting for our grow license award, which has been over a year since we had it pending and COVID and a bunch of host-

TG Branfalt: Yeah.

Joseph Ori: … of other issues in Illinois have north allowed us to find out whether we want our grow license here. I mean, their taxes on cannabis, and granted their taxing the hell out of it here, which doesn’t help to fight the black market, either, but in 2020, the taxes of cannabis beat alcohol sales taxes [crosstalk] you know, it’s amazing.

TG Branfalt: Well, I understand your frustration as an operator about the illicit market, but part of the problem is taxes because I can go to my boy down the street, get an ounce for $200. If I go to Massachusetts, I’m dropping 450.

Joseph Ori: Correct.

TG Branfalt: That’s a hard pill to swallow.

Joseph Ori: Oh yeah, so we actually have some friends on the border of Indiana and Michigan, which is really… They only drive through Indiana for about 30 miles to get to Michigan, so from Illinois. You make that turn around the east part of the lake and you’re in Michigan. We had guys who were and still are going taking the drive to Michigan to buy commercial-grade tested cannabis rather than buying it in Illinois because Illinois’ tax is like 40% almost and Michigan’s isn’t that bad. Michigan I think… Actually one of the beautiful things that separates Michigan from a lot of other states is that the tax isn’t as great, so that helps us, but you’re still… If you’re budget conscious, no matter where you’re at, I think you’re doing exactly what you just said.

You’re going to go buy your cannabis to get a higher quantity rather than quality to save yourself some money, and especially if it’s something you’ve been doing for years. The funny thing is, TG, is that I kind of tell people this all of the time. It’s like all the years of consuming cannabis and you’re just like, “Okay, we didn’t know where the hell it came from half the time,” and it was all probably grown outdoors. Who knows what they were using and are still using on it to kill the infiltrates and to get rid of pests. I’m thinking to myself, “Because of what we’re doing indoors, we can control all of the climate. Every single aspect of everything is dialed in.”

It’s still challenging to do it the right way and keep it clean. It’s not like just pushing a button, man. It’s a lot of work. It’s a lot of attention to detail, and so I tell people, “I can’t imagine what was in the shit that we were smoking when we were younger.” I mean, and I went to school in New York City and there was… Who knows where it was coming from? It could have been coming from any one of 10 different places. I can’t imagine that they were caring too much, you know, that Rafael Cantana down in Mexico or somebody out in Humboldt County was caring too much about what they were using to kill the pests. I just… I don’t know.

TG Branfalt: I mean, growing up, for sure, I definitely smoked some mildew-y products.

Joseph Ori: Yeah.

TG Branfalt: When you’re 18, it doesn’t matter what you put in your body anyway, does it?

Joseph Ori: Yeah, yeah.

TG Branfalt: We talked briefly about sort of the history of cannabis in Michigan. We didn’t really get into it, but if I’m not mistaken, Ann Arbor was one of the first cities in the United States to legalize it medically and-

Joseph Ori: Yeah [crosstalk]-

TG Branfalt: … part of the history. Some people have began calling Michigan The Second Emerald Triangle, and so I’m wondering if you could sort of speak to why it’s gotten this moniker?

Joseph Ori: Well, I think, like I said, because of how deep-rooted cannabis has been in the state and there’s been a lot of private growing and there’s 30,000 caregivers who many of them who are very, very highly experienced growers and been doing it for… some, for generations, I think, prior to becoming legal. We have a robust set of strains that can compete with any state and, obviously, we don’t have our enfamed Humboldt County as California has for The Emerald Coast or whatever, but we do have every bit of the competition that California does. I mean, we have… That I would say is one of the greatest features of Michigan which separates it is that because there’s such competition, that the quality of the strains and what people are trying to do and the innovation that’s coming from that is I believe for Michigan at the forefront of the Midwest at a minimum.

I can’t necessarily say that we will overtake California, but I do think that we have a very strong hold on number two at this point based on those factors. I think that as… We’re only a little bit over a year and a half, two years into recreational, the strides that the state has made are amazing compared to other states. I don’t think it’s an unfair moniker to place on it.

TG Branfalt: Do you think eventually it’ll be they may change the name of Detroit from The Motor City to The Canna City or something?

Joseph Ori: I mean, if the car companies continue to do what they’ve been doing over the years, which is pulling out, coming back, pulling out-

TG Branfalt: Yeah.

Joseph Ori: … I think that that possibly could be the case. There’s… One of the things that Michigan has that’s a little strange is that there’s a lot of municipalities that haven’t opted in, so-

TG Branfalt: What’s the ratio there? I know in Maine it’s pretty out of control. It’s like 2:1.

Joseph Ori: Yeah. It’s pretty close to that. I haven’t checked the numbers, but I know that there have been… There’s I don’t want to say numbers because I haven’t checked in a while, but there were some 300 municipalities that still hadn’t-

TG Branfalt: Wow.

Joseph Ori: … opted in. Yeah, and only 200 or so that had. That’s the numbers that stick in my head, but like I said, I don’t want to…

TG Branfalt: Well, I’m sure that also affects the illicit sales. I mean, when you have all these communities that have no access, right?

Joseph Ori: Yeah, exactly.

TG Branfalt: You obviously are really passionate about this. You go from being a successful trial lawyer to being a successful cannabis entrepreneur. What advice would you have for entrepreneurs and especially people who had careers before they decided to enter the space?

Joseph Ori: I write on this a lot and I published some articles recently about different subjects. The first thing I would say is that you’re never too old to be an entrepreneur, and the only thing that the difference is between a younger entrepreneur versus an older one is that younger guys, in their minds they have less to lose. It’s sort of the youthful exuberance of blind, you know, understanding that. I started my law practice the day that I graduated law school and I read a book while I was studying for the bar exam called How to Start Your Own Law Firm and Not Miss a Meal. I read the book and I’m like, “Wow, I could do this. I could do this. I could this.”

Then, I get to the last chapter and the last chapter basically tells you, “Okay, so I’ve been practicing law for five to seven years now. Go out and do it.” I’m like, “Holy shit, wait a minute.” I was  because it was basically assuming that you knew a little bit about being a lawyer, that you were going to do that. I was like, “Oh, I was like, “Shit.” I said, “I can’t go do this,” but you know what I said? I said, “Listen, I can figure this out. I’ll out how to be a lawyer along the way.” I went and applied the same equation in how they told you how to go about getting to that point of opening your own law practice. I did exactly what it said, and so in the beginning, I had to co-op a lot with older lawyers who I met and said, “Okay, I’ve got this case. I’ll give you a cut of this if you help me with it.”

I made it work, but I could see how now that same guy is like… If I’m reading that today, I’m like, “Damn, that’s super risky. You know, I’ve got a good job.” I’m like, “Am I really going to be able to pull this off?” When in reality, you have a way better shot at pulling it off because you know about being a lawyer. You actually know how do the cases yourself. A lot of it depends on your risk tolerance, and I read an article the other day in Psychology Magazine about resilience.

Resilience is something that people think is you’re born of it. Sure. Are there some character traits that you might be born with that make you somewhat… give you the ability to be more resilient? Sure, but resilience is based a lot upon your social setting and your surroundings and who you are in bed with, sometimes literally and figuratively. Who is your support group? Who are you surrounded by? Who’s going to pick you you if you fall? Entrepreneurship is an incredibly cool concept and everybody wants to talk about it, but the reality is is that you have to be able to pivot, man.

That’s the one thing that I will tell you, anybody who’s doing it. If you have a plan, you say, “This is my plan. This is what I’m going to do. This is what the book said.” Shit doesn’t go that way, man, and if you don’t have the ability to say, “Okay, that didn’t go exactly how they book said it was going to go. I’m going to figure it out, though.” If you don’t have that ability, if you’re somebody who’s just linear, you’re going to have a tough time being an entrepreneur because very, very rarely, and I’ve yet to see anyone who says, “I read the book. I applied what it said, and it worked out exactly how it said it was.”

You have to be able to be resilient and you have to be able to pivot, and if you’ve got those qualities and you’re not afraid to lose and to pick up the pieces and try to keep it going, then you’re built for it. That’s what I would tell people.

TG Branfalt: I… That’s really, really great advice, man, and you can just sort of tell even before you read the book when you get injured playing football and that doesn’t really work out and you still end up going on to be successful. I mean, being an attorney and then a sports agent and all of these sort of things. I mean, it’s a really, really incredible story and I’d like to definitely get into those details with you at some point a little bit more, man.

I really thank you for sharing your story, and I know that we may not have gotten… talked too much about craft cannabis as it were, but it’s a really incredible story and I loved having you on the show and appreciate you coming on. Where can people find out more about you and more about Six Labs?

Joseph Ori: Just go to @sixlabscannabis and we have all of our updates. We have several brands that are out right now. We have Six Labs Flour we sell direct. We have Candela, which is a line of solvent lists concentrates that we recently just won the Michigan Cannabis Cup. We have MI6, which is your no frills quality brand available in larger quantities. Popcorn and shake. You can get strollers, which are mini, mini high-quality pre-rolls that are smaller than your average one, because that’s why they’re called stroller. Or, if you take a little walk on the beach or walk your dog. We definitely thought that’s the perfect one where you can actually smoke the entire thing and finish it-

TG Branfalt: Dog walkers.

Joseph Ori: … and yeah, yeah, dog walker. In fact, with… Then we have… We’re working still to bring out what we discussed earlier, which is ritual, which would be the occasions/sensation-based. We’re hoping to have that to the point where we can say, well, what discussed earlier that you can rely on this giving you this for this particular occasion.

That’s where we’re at and, you now, obviously, six-labs.com and, obviously, six-labs.com. I’m on Twitter and Facebook and LinkedIn and all those places. I publish a lot of articles. I do a lot of these podcasts. So hopefully your listeners will start following us.

TG Branfalt: That’s Joe Ori, man, and really, I appreciate you coming on. I had planned to make it back to Detroit one day and we’ll definitely take it… Be on the lookout for the lockout for the dog walkers, especially-

Joseph Ori: Yeah, sure

TG Branfalt: … that dog likes to walk.

Joseph Ori: Well. Yeah, for sure, and if I make my way up skiing in the Lake Placid area, I’m going to definitely hit you up.

TG Branfalt: Oh, it’s a… Then, by the then, cannabis should be completely legal and what I grow in my backyard is no longer a crime. He is Joseph Ori, the co-founder. General Counsel and Government Relations for Six Labs, one of Michigan’s largest craft cannabis cultivators with a focus on quality and precision and an obvious passion for advanced research, development, and technology. Joseph, thanks again, man. We’ll talk soon.

Joseph Ori: All right, TG. Thank you, buddy. Thanks for having me. Bye, bye.

TG Branfalt: You can find more episodes of the Ganjapreneur.com Podcast in the podcast section of Ganjapreneur.com on Spotify, and in the Apple iTunes store. On the Ganjapreneur.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 Ganjapreneur.com app in iTunes and Google Play. This episode was engineered by Trim Media House. I’ve been your host, TG Branfalt.

As cannabis becomes more and more ubiquitous in social circles and even in public spaces, it’s important for new cannabis products to collectively drive the industry’s innovation and acceptance by more mainstream audiences. MyHi is especially in tune with that fact as a company and has dedicated a significant portion of its launch and brand identity to centering the conversation about social and convenient cannabis use.

In this episode of the Ganjapreneur.com Podcast, our host TG Branfalt connects with MyHi’s founder and CEO TJ Stouder to discuss the inspiration behind MyHi’s patented stir STIKs, the benefits of being able to add its fast-acting and nano emulsified THC powder to any beverage, and how the product is changing perceptions of social cannabis use and the role cannabis should play in social drinking circles. The pair also discuss emerging cannabis markets and trends from around the country, strategies for building a brand in the whirlwind cannabis industry, tips for entrepreneurs who are considering their own cannabis venture, and more!

Listen to the full interview below. You can also scroll further down to find a transcript of the interview.

Listen to the podcast:

Read the transcript:

Commercial: This episode of the Ganjapreneur Podcast is made possible by AROYA, a comprehensive cannabis production platform for commercial growers. If you are a commercial cannabis grower, you can use AROYA to level up your production workflow, featuring a combination of precision instruments and powerful software that help you intelligently cultivate, dry, and process cannabis. The AROYA cannabis production platform is your ticket to greater yields and consistent quality. Request a quote today online at aroya.io. That’s A-R-O-Y-A.io.

Cara Wietstock: Hi, I’m Cara Wietstock, culture editor at Ganjapreneur and host of our YouTube show, Fresh Cut. The best way to understand cannabis business is to speak directly to those who work within it, and Fresh Cut was created to shine recognition on the people who fill these roles.

In this interview series, we focus on those with their hands in the dirt, both literally and figuratively, from cultivators to budtenders, educators to advocates, activists to lobbyists. We aim to illuminate the workers who keep this industry thriving. Enjoy one-on-one conversations with me and guests by watching along on the Ganjapreneur YouTube channel, and follow our social channels to keep up with the latest episodes. Have a great day.

TG Branfalt: Hey, there, I’m your host, TG Branfalt, and thank you for listening to the Ganjapreneur.com Podcast, where we try to bring you actionable information and normalize cannabis through the stories of ganjapreneurs, activists, and industry stakeholders. Today, I’m joined by TJ Stouder, he’s the founder and CEO of MyHi, a line of water-soluble calorie- and sugar-free THC powder stir STIKs.

This is a product that I’m really excited about as somebody who doesn’t really consume much alcohol and have used many different products to try to bridge that non-drinker gap with my drinking friends. I’m really excited to have TJ on the show to let me know more about himself and this product. How you doing this afternoon, man?

TJ Stouder: Very well, TG, TJ, thanks for having me. This is going to be fun.

TG Branfalt: Hey, and I’m screwing it up already.

TJ Stouder: That’s great.

TG Branfalt: I’m really stoked to have you on the show, as I said at the top and as we were talking about before, I don’t really drink that much, so to have a product that is water-soluble, it can be mixed with most anything. But before we get into all that, man, let me know about yourself. You have a really interesting background.

TJ Stouder: Awesome. Thank you. Yeah. In a nutshell, I was a kid born in Indiana that was a cannabis consumer for most of my life. I like to call it the home of the stigma to put it simply. Not a good place to be a cannabis consumer. Left Indiana, grew up professionally at Procter & Gamble working on a myriad of big brands and kind of around the world on different budgets, brands and marketing of building consumer products.

I learned one big insight throughout that entire experience, which brand consumer connections go a lot deeper than a point of sale purchase. I like to use the example of throughout quarantine we still wash our clothes with Tide because it’s part of who we are, not how we wash our clothes. That’s how P&G thought about building a brand and really how, let’s call it, I grew up thinking about brands.

Left P&G on a mission to find something closer to home, a product or something that would work closer for me. As I said, long-term cannabis consumer, didn’t think that was the answer, believe it or not, despite the green rush and everybody going that way. I ran into some close family issues that needed CBD and/or any form of cannabis that they could get into and saw light basically in my mom’s eyes that she needed a root, like a brand, like what I just discussed, to open up that world of cannabis to her.

It’s, as I said, the home of the stigma. It runs very deep and people are afraid of this plant. That nice branding, that approachability, the product design for your life has really become crucial to people discovering this plant and really what I dedicated myself to and all of my skills, and now I’m in cannabis for the last three years. Super excited to be here.

TG Branfalt: You talked about your time at Proctor & Gamble, can you tell me a little bit about moving from the more corporate culture at a multinational company to the cannabis space and what some of your challenges were?

TJ Stouder: Definitely. It was a fun journey. I’ll say it’s not as far as it would seem apart. The biggest challenge is really … it’s been built bottoms up on how corporate structure works. However, it works really well. It’s just … Let’s call it, P&G they call it proctoids and you learn exactly how to be a P&Ger from day one to the end, which is impressive and it works and good teams, strong teams. You get brilliant people across all their roles.

Stepping out of that, we walk into cannabis where it’s a very differently trained environment of corporate world, however motivated, ambitious, sticking to the things that work and really focusing on blocking and tackling of getting stuff done. You see a lot of parallels. I’d say biggest challenge is timeliness of meetings. You ask what I’m doing today, I have no idea.

I hope I have at least 10 important meetings coming up after this, but it’s always fluid and you got to adapt. I think we share an awesome passion for wellness for consumers that drives us all to work 24/7, work harder than any industry I’ve ever worked in. Again, super excited about the momentum of cannabis, but some of the blocking and tackling we’ll still have to work on.

TG Branfalt: You had said too that going from Proctor & Gamble you didn’t exactly see yourself going into cannabis. You mentioned briefly your personal story. Was there something personally that you saw preventing you from getting into the space or what was your thinking at that time?

TJ Stouder: Good question. I’ve never answered that one. I’d say honestly, I never worked on spirits for a reason. I believed in the products I worked on and that they truly brought wellness or some better good to the consumer’s life. I saw cannabis like I saw spirits. It’s recreationally okay to go out and exit work, throw out some stress, have a party on a weekend, go to a concert, whatever it might be, but it’s not a way of life.

I don’t drink alcohol as part of who I am. It’s not something I do as you said, as a non-drinker. We evolve from our college days of how much can I drink? Versus, okay, I’ll have a social beverage with a friend or a business meeting, something like that. I think what I learned through my family members and my mom’s wellness journey was there’s a lot more to this plant. I was a recreational consumer that didn’t see the downside of it.

I was more than excited to consume cannabis myself, but I didn’t see the upside and how in important that can be as a product to consumers and really bringing this product into their everyday life. That’s where I really saw it as a career when I learned about the wellness upside of this plant and frankly, the recreational side is wellness.

As I watch states look at medical versus rec, it’s a happy hour is wellness for a consumer. It’s stepping out of your stresses from the day and getting ready to go into your evening and hopefully enjoy your family time, whatever that may mean. It’s more than getting as drunk as you can get at a bar.

TG Branfalt: Yeah. I mean, that’s something that during my tenure covering this industry, I realized that yeah, I consumed recreationally. I never had an interest in getting a medical card, but then realized, “Well, I’ve been medicating this whole time.” To your point, I mean, I think even for people who have consumed cannabis for a long time, that we end up there in that thinking, if you know what I mean.

I want to talk to you about MyHi. When I first saw this product, the first thing I went to personally as a guy who really loves candy and sugar was Pixy Stix, man, just THC Pixy Stix, and that excited me. Then obviously I started reading a bit more and I was like, “Wow, this is sort of a game-changer in many ways.”

Because as a non-drinker, I go to the bar, I order a soda and then I have to go outside, smoke a joint, or rip a vape or eat 30/40 milligrams of edibles before I get in there. It was something that excited me. Tell me and the listeners a little bit more about MyHi and what really differentiates it from other edibles in the space.

TJ Stouder: Awesome. Well, and thank you for telling a bit of the story through your own experience, because it’s exactly MyHi, how you said it. We like to say MyHi, my way. I am a cannabis consumer who finds a lot of points in my day that are tough to consume. Products don’t fit, as you just explained. I’m out with my friends for a drink and stepping outside to smoke a joint takes me away from my friends.

I miss a couple of toasts. I miss some news update, friend’s pregnant, et cetera. I’m outside smoking a joint. I take that edible before I go in. I’m not high when I get to the bar, an hour later I’m too high and it’s managing that experience. For me, it’s a product that fits in between all the others for those moments where you can’t consume for the cannabis consumer.

Secondly, and as you get to Pixy Stix, it’s that experience for a consumer that differentiates our product and bringing it back to like a cocktail, mixing up a drink at the table when your friends are having an alcoholic cocktail or elevating your alcoholic cocktail as you prefer. It’s that experience of stirring it in that makes cannabis cool to everybody at the table and you don’t have to separate to smoke.

You don’t have to eat the gummy under the table. You’re back in the middle. Lastly is that nanoemulsified powder is crucial to that experience. I choose flower as a consumer because it’s manageable, controllable. I know exactly where I’m going to go and how far. That’s why I like flower and I find with other discrete products, it’s often tough to manage some of that curve. With the nanoemulsion, it hits in we say 15 minutes conservatively.

Some of our consumers come back with faster, really like a cocktail would. You can have one every 30/45 minutes as you’re out or have one quickly on the go and you know exactly how far you’re going to go. Really MyHi, my way puts that experience back in the consumer’s hands to enjoy the product at their pace out and about.

TG Branfalt: Well, I mean, as most people know and you know, and I know, is the average edible, I mean takes 45 minutes to an hour, especially somebody my size, 6’3″, over 200 pounds, it can take a while. What type of cannabis consumer is MyHi aimed at? I know you say MyHi, my way, but for older consumers generally we say start low, go slow. Start with little 2.5, five milligram edible, if you’re going to go there. You talked at the top about marketing and brands, who is the end-user in your opinion for MyHi?

TJ Stouder: Awesome. A lot of people, I think. I like to say America drinks and I want to make that mean something different.

TG Branfalt: Interesting.

TJ Stouder: I mean, right now I have three beverages in front of me on my table that fits into my routine. It’s a water, a coffee and a juice from my breakfast that’s sitting here ready to be infused. I think the target demographic is really somewhere between the non-canna curious and I’ll explain what that means to me, and what we obviously know, the canna curious.

Non-canna curious to me is I live in Colorado and 75 to 90% of my friends don’t go to a dispensary more than once a year. That’s concerning for me as a category participant, investor and believer in the growth numbers behind this category. A developed market like Colorado, and I have a pretty good group of friends, that don’t see the need to go into a dispensary.

That for me, we get super excited about the current cannabis consumer. We all have friends that say, “I don’t smoke, or, eh, I had an edible one time and I was glued to the couch for the next three days. I’m not trying that.” I think encouraging that non-canna curious, who’s seen so many barriers about why to go in dispensary or really the intimidation about the products there, it’s approachable, it’s branded, it’s fun.

It’s something they can do that’s more like other things they consume in a beverage and a cocktail. I think that differentiator for the non-canna curious is most important for all of us to share what we believe are the upsides of this category with the new consumer. However, again, the flower I buy announced, and I don’t look at any other products.

I believe this stick elevates that experience in a way that me, as nearly that consumer, I put one of the sticks in the water, and enjoy a bowl or a joint next to it, really elevating that high to another level from an experience standpoint and because of that nanoemulsion, fast-acting, getting the high more elevated than it would’ve been on just a joint.

I didn’t even get to the caffeine element, which I should mention, but we do 30 milligrams of green coffee bean extract that truly elevate the experience versus I think many disappointments with sativa.

TG Branfalt: Yeah, and we are going to talk about the recipe a little bit later on, but I do want to just touch onto your point that I’m one of those people, I mean, I live in New York. We don’t have dispensaries. When I go to dispensaries, I’m primarily looking for edibles, metered-dose edibles so I know what I’m going to get.

So to have a drinkable product which are not … or a product that can be mixed with drinks, in an immature markets such as Massachusetts that doesn’t have a strong canna beverage presence, I think is something that I personally, a long-time consumer who really does like edibles would gravitate toward to that product. To your point about the non-canna curious, how overall does your product fit into the canna beverage market, which I said is mature some places, immature other places?

TJ Stouder: Super excited for canna beverages across the board. I think the category speaks to a lot of what I’m looking to … excited about on our product and how it hits the demographic. A lot of them are ready-to-drink beverages, which I think for a consumer has a place and a time and you know what you want to drink. I’m at a convenience store in a normal beverage, I pick my favorite juice and I’m ready to go.

What our product provides is the ease and convenience of infusing whatever you’re drinking, wherever you’re drinking, which I think the biggest benefit for consumers is it doesn’t have calories and it doesn’t have sugar. If I put it in a water, it’s a refreshing water that gives me my dose without anything else. If I want to make a hightail, I can get creative and make whatever I want.

I think as I look across the beverage markets, a lot of them are ready to drink and exciting and I think we’ll have a great place in that consumer’s refrigerator. We’re hopeful to be in every pocket, in their hats, behind your ear, easy, ready to go, convenient because our consumers are on the go. They live multitasking lives everywhere they go.

TG Branfalt: I’ve never heard the term hightail before.

TJ Stouder: That’s new. We’re working on coining it. The thought is replacement for a cocktail or elevating another mocktail and really MyHi-tail.

TG Branfalt: I like that too. What do you anticipate or expect the beverage market to look like when it’s fully mature?

TJ Stouder: Great question. I think full spectrum, the markets we look at today, beverage is small and growing rapidly. The rationale for that in my mind is they’re nascent markets with consumers like me that are hard to convince to change their product. I have my flower in my cabinet. I’ll check something else out here and there but I know my routine at the end of the day.

I think the emerging markets are super exciting from Las Vegas to New York, let’s call that the emerging side of the country, not fully developed, where new consumers aren’t used to smoking flower. They don’t understand concentrates. They’re a bit more connoisseur, whatever it might be. I think the new products and especially beverage are going to have a big way.

Then lastly, as I mentioned, markets like that, social lounges will be game-changers for cannabis. It’s the fact that happy hour at a cannabis type bar with no alcohol is going to be a new concept that I’ve experimented a lot with, but I know most of the country has not.

That’s the most exciting part for me, because waking up the next day at 5:00 AM to run and go to work is a new feeling for an alcohol drinker himself when you’ve had a long night out. I think that’s the growth market and I think it’s going to be a much larger portion of the national category split.

TG Branfalt: Well, and if I’m not mistaken, Colorado just recently passed social use legislation, is that accurate?

TJ Stouder: Correct. But it’s small and there’s a few licenses. Again, in a nascent market, I know how to consume at home. It’s bringing me out into the … And again, look where alcohol is. It’s everywhere from the ballgame to the park, to the kid classes on the weekend, alcohol has found its way to be our social life. Cannabis is not there in any market with social use. It’s separate from what everybody else is doing.

TG Branfalt: Have you had any potential social use licensees reach out to you yet?

TJ Stouder: Not yet. We’ve talked to a few that are working on plans for the back half of this year in California. We’ve only launched in California to date, but writing’s on the wall coming very soon. We are talking to some people in New York that are … It sounds like they’re going to aggressively move to the lead in social use. I think things are going to come in 2022 for sure.

TG Branfalt: I have to ask you this question and recently there’s been other products that have gotten a little bit targeted for their marketing practices we shall say. I’m not going to name names here, but what your product is essentially, it is a powder. Do you anticipate, or have you experienced any pushback for a powdered cannabis product?

TJ Stouder: It’s a great question and nowhere you see the risks of powders and I know why some of these companies are receiving backlash, at least in my opinion. We try to tailor our entire experience around that beverage delivery and it all starts with our stick itself, which is it’s designed off the Mai Tai umbrella. MyHi, you start to see ordering a bar and a drink, it sits nicely on top and looks like an umbrella in your drink.

Really everything we communicate is about infusing safely above 21, 18 with a medical card, beverages and really even we stay away from alcohol trying to manage that experience. As you said, with microdosers, learn how you infuse four ounces of water, learn how that 15 to 30 minutes goes and really learn how it works with your body first.

Really again, we’re a wellness-focused company that sees a recreational high as part of a wellness routine and everything we do in our product follows that nature. I’ve seen some of the others that are going different roots with powders that frankly, again, because I believe in cannabis as a category, I believe in the wellness nature, I think we need to be overly cautious with everything we do ensuring that people are consuming safely.

As a company, we believe in that. We continue to push. I’d say the biggest backlash we receive is really from buyers and dispensaries that are learning the category and new formats and how the science behind the actual pattern itself delivers to the consumer that is an educational curve for the category that we think we can get around with great marketing, a great delivery device that really differentiates versus that crowd.

TG Branfalt: In the three years that you had said that you’ve been in this space, how much of that has been focused on educating people about your product?

TJ Stouder: A lot. We do it very simply because we do it via trial. We sell all of our products in one, singles. So you can try it first and assume it works for you. Biggest for us is check this out. We do it as cleanly, safely and with this technology very transparently as possible, give it a shot. It’s a lot of people, like you said, are exploring beverages in the early days, even the more connoisseur consumers, but it might be the first beverage they’ve ever tried.

It’s really experiencing that first stick is what we try to get everybody a chance to do via everything from events to sampling. Education is transparency in my book because I think the category in total is learning by the day. We give that consumer promise that we’re going to stay ahead of the curve and really vet the right technologies and ensure your experience is top notch.

TG Branfalt: Talking about the experience, we spoke briefly about the recipe earlier. Tell me about the process of coming up with that recipe, which includes green coffee bean extract, L-theanine, theanine. I’m not a science, man, and monk fruit, which I think is very interesting. Your background isn’t necessarily in food, beverage, so tell me about your experience coming up with the recipe and what that process was like.

TJ Stouder: Awesome. Number one is transparency and know your lane. I never try to be smarter than I am and I find somebody smarter than me when you need something like formulation. However, it started with an insight and as I mentioned earlier, better than a sativa. I’m disappointed by sativas and I think we all know the … or at least the more experienced cannabis will know the seeds aren’t what they used to be and sativas and indicas are mostly a myth.

There’s mostly hybrids available and the mix of terpenes on that plant will greatly affect your experience, especially state to state, et cetera. A lot of those challenges of flower. Sativa, I always find myself grabbing a coffee next to a sativa to actually give myself energy, “That’s not what you promised sativa,” is what I say as a consumer.

Really what we did, we picked a hybrid extract to really capture the essence of that THC nanoemulsion that goes into your bloodstream faster, really delivering a more elevated experience naturally. Then green coffee bean extract, which is pure all-natural green coffee bean, 30 milligrams. That’s about a third a cup of coffee. It gives you a nice social awake high next to your THC and it’s really energizing, productive.

It’s funny, the influencer is coming back to us when they run out of samples saying, “I got so much stuff done while I have my MyHi.” It’s a new category of high. We’re saying that kind of asking people to prove us wrong, but it’s a different experience versus other products we personally have tried. It’s energetic, it’s awake, it’s social and it’s buildable as you have a couple of them next to each other.

Green coffee beans, the core that you’re actually going to feel, the next one is L-theanine which really is anything negative anyone gets from coffee, jitters, drowsiness coming down, things like that, L-theanine kind of balances that out and really L-theanine means balance, focus in general, an all-natural let’s call it brain supplement.

It’s a nice next to that caffeine and THC, keeps you balanced and focused, which a lot are feeling, especially on those longer evenings of enjoying MyHi. Lastly, monk fruit is critical for the no sugar piece and no added artificial sugars, et cetera. Monk fruit … I don’t know how it was discovered recently.

I just wanted to learn more about monk fruit myself, but I’ve been using it in everything and anything I can. It’s all-natural sugar. It doesn’t spike your sugars for diabetes. It is a super fruit that we’ve been missing to sweeten nicely. It’s only 10 milligrams, but it gives a nice little sweet refreshing edge on the end and keeping that no sugar, no artificials.

TG Branfalt: Interesting.

TJ Stouder: I didn’t actually answer your question. I got all that from Google. I started with literally the insight and I said, “What’s the best way to naturally do this stuff?” I think it’s funny that we work so hard in a lab to come up with complex long formula cards that the consumer can’t understand, and that’s how the consumer actually finds wellness.

For us, we’re starting very simple. THC is at the center of our product. Everything else is to help that feeling along, but innovation path is strong and we’re planning on doing minor cannabinoids, other formulas, terpenes, et cetera, to really bring different moods, different taste profiles and whatnot to MyHi. It’s just a start, let’s start with energy.

TG Branfalt: Is there a particular terpene that you’re more excited to work with or a specific cannabinoid? I mean, you seem like you’ve done a whole of thinking about this.

TJ Stouder: Lots and lots. I’m excited for cannabis. I mean, what we don’t know is what I’m most excited for. I’ll give you an example on the terpene front. We study about 40 terpenes out of over … I’m not even going to quote a number. I’ve heard over a hundred thousand as the safest number I’d say known terpenes on the planet, most concentrated in cannabis as a plant.

For me, what was destroyed over years of stigmatization and prohibition of cannabis is too sad to think about and what’s yet to be discovered because we’ve only really started researching the depth of this plant is too much to dream of. Really crafting that experience with some of the scientists who actually do the work behind me being a googler with insights, there’s huge upside.

It’s just really tailoring that experience up to fast-acting and long-releasing that can do it 15 minutes by 15 minutes where you’re going to go all via this stick.

TG Branfalt: Again, I hate to harp on it, but it’s one of these products and you’re just so interesting in the way that you present it, that a lot of times I don’t really get to … What’s the word I’m … I don’t want to say excited again, but I’m normally not super stoked on these things. Now that New York’s legal, I do hope that it is something I am able to find on the East eventually.

What states are you most excited about entering? You said that you’re right now only in California, what’s the future look like?

TJ Stouder: We have a small team that’s very focused. California’s the largest market with the most brands, frankly, is why we’re starting there. We want to prove it against the big guys and again, that we can grow a cannabis consumer’s basket size, the guy who’s buying flower concentrates and edibles already, plus a MyHi.

As well as drive new traffic into every one of those stores to look at cannabis for the first time, because they saw a product like this or see that’s something that might be approachable to their world. We believe after proving that in California, looking at a multi-state operator that has multiple states quickly, three to five to 15. We provide a unique standard operating procedure that gets up and running quite quickly.

It’s the patented delivery device of the stick itself, the consumer brand that’s ready to plug and play into any market and really hit that demographic provides a differentiator versus cannabis. There’s, as you say, kind of … And I don’t know how to put this in the nicest way. I’m a consumer that loves going into dispensary and I see the excitement of every consumer in there. The products we got to step it up.

As I look at the counter and I see one after another of things that look a lot alike and don’t motivate me to consume it, it’s … I love cannabis. I’m happy to buy it because it’s something there, but how do I find which product’s going to change my life? How do I find the one that if I’m going into quarantine, I need to stock up for a year and a half because there’s no chance I’m running out of this product?

I think we, as a category need to continue to push ourselves that just because the consumer’s willing to buy it, doesn’t mean it’s our best effort. We got to push for better and better and better and more innovative. I get excited about as more states come on board, as federal legalization looms, better and better products are coming.

It’s exciting to see the innovation for me as a consumer, beyond our product, and I say this to all of us as motivation. It’s exciting to see new products, new consumption, new consumers.

TG Branfalt: I mean, I really appreciate your insight. Your background’s very different than a lot of people who enter the space, and you’ve obviously chosen a very successful team. One that shares your vision, which you’ve clearly stated and I think is very worthwhile in this space at the very least. What advice would do you have for other entrepreneurs looking to enter the cannabis space?

TJ Stouder: Excellent. I think number one is find what you do best and find how to do it in cannabis. I think the world we see in cannabis today is a very small portion of what it will be in the future. I talked about things like social lounges and hospitality. They don’t exist yet in cannabis. I get a lot of people that come and they do something completely different from what cannabis today looks like, which I felt like that person.

I’m a consumer brander that came from P&G and worked on fine fragrances down to detergent and it’s, how do I play a role in cannabis? There’s no brands, there’s no scaled consumer products, et cetera. Ah, this is a consumer product that we need to scale and the industry needs you with your well-meaning mission to come aboard.

It’s finding how cannabis grows into the world you live in because it’s going to, as legalization comes in, as more consumers come on board as part of their daily routine. Find what that is and put your all into it. You really want in, there is plenty of space to grow this category.

TG Branfalt: Finally, my man, where can people find out more about MyHi and maybe find out more about you?

TJ Stouder: Awesome, getmyhi.com, G-E-T-M-Y-H-I.com, that’ll be in the show notes, is the best place, check it out. Now, all of our information my team’s done a phenomenal job with the website in our early days of launch. There’s plenty there.

TG Branfalt: The marketing is really something special.

TJ Stouder: That’s where we start obviously, and then come to California. We’re starting there, but hey, get out there this summer. It’s the summer of ’21. People are traveling again. I think we’re hopefully past this pandemic. Check us out in California. Would love to hear your thoughts if you get some product. If not, ask your local budtenders, write to your governor wherever you are in cannabis. We’ll come to your state hopefully soon.

TG Branfalt: Brilliant. That’s TJ Stouder. He’s the founder and CEO of MyHi, a line of water-soluble, calorie- and sugar-free THC powder stir STIKs. Thank you so much my good man for being on the show and I really look forward to one day finding MyHi in New York or Massachusetts, or basically anywhere on the East Coast now that we are opening up. Thank you so much for being on the show.

TJ Stouder: Awesome. Thanks TG.

TG Branfalt: You can find more episodes of the Ganjapreneur.com Podcast in the podcast section of ganjapreneur.com on Spotify and in the Apple iTunes Store. On the ganjapreneur.com website, you will find the latest cannabis news and cannabis jobs updated daily, along with transcripts of this podcast. You can also download the ganjapreneur.com app in iTunes and Google Play. This episode was engineered by Trim Media House. I’ve been your host, TG Branfalt.

For decades, cannabis research in the U.S. was hindered by steep federal requirements, foot-dragging enforcement agencies, and an archaic rule limiting the source of research-grade cannabis to just one cultivator in Mississippi. But thanks to a lawsuit against the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) by Dr. Sue Sisley MD, a doctor who spent years trying to get federal approval for her study that sought to investigate the therapeutic effects of cannabis for veterans with PTSD, the path for real cannabis research has never been more clear.

Shane Pennington was the attorney who worked pro bono with Dr. Sisley to see that lawsuit to fruition. In this podcast interview, our host TG Branfalt returns to discuss those developments with Shane as well as other significant rulings. Shane also discusses his background before joining the cannabis cause, his current work with Vicente Sederberg LLP, his advice for lawyers or law students who are interested in cannabis, and more.

You can listen to the full interview via the player below, or keep scrolling down to find a full transcript.

Listen to the podcast:

Read the transcript:

Kevin Lance Murray: This episode of the Ganjapreneur Podcast is brought to you by The Sesh, a new podcast from the Outlaw Report, the essential news source for cannabis politics, business, and culture in the Mid-Atlantic region. I’m Kevin Lance Murray, host of The Sesh, and you can listen to all our episodes on Apple Podcast, Spotify, or by visiting the outlawreport.com/podcast.

TG Branfalt: Hey, there. I’m your host TG Branfalt and thank you for listening to the ganjapreneur.com podcast where we try to bring you actionable information and normalize cannabis through the stories of ganjapreneurs, activists and industry stakeholders. It’s been a long time since I’ve hosted an episode of the podcast, but recently I had the opportunity to interview Shane Pennington, the lead council for New York-based Vicente Sederberg LLP, which is a cannabis-focused legal practice, about a letter that he had written to the DEA that sort of sparked this controversy about seeds. But before we get into that, how you doing, Shane?

Shane Pennington: Doing great. Thanks for having me.

TG Branfalt: It’s a pleasure. Like I said, we had spoken about the seeds issue a couple of weeks ago, and we started sort of jawing about your history and how you got into the space. And I was really fascinated by that. And so I was like, “Let me host another podcast and get this on record.” So let’s start with you, man. What is your background?

Shane Pennington: Yeah, so I graduated law school in 2010 and went very kind of square route for several years, that I clerked for several federal judges, had a above top secret clearance with the federal government where I was doing FISA, which is like Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act stuff in DC, and then went and joined a Supreme Court practice of a big law firm in Houston, where I’m originally from. And after several years of doing Supreme Court cases for companies like Halliburton and Valero and that kind of thing, I decided… I got offered this pro bono gig to help a scientist named Dr. Sue Sisley try to get her application to grow cannabis for research out of a delay hold at DEA. So it was kind of just stuck and DEA wasn’t getting back to her. And I knew nothing about cannabis policy, I knew nothing about the Controlled Substances Act, I had zero background. I mean, my dad’s a Methodist minister. I grew up very straight laced.

And there was no judgment, I’m actually kind of a libertarian politically. So I had no judgment, but just my life, it had just had never been an issue for me. But since what Dr. Sisley was doing was for vets, she was trying to research cannabis for veterans suffering from treatment resistant PTSD and chronic pain, I thought, “Well, I’ll try to help her,” and dug into it and ended up beating the DEA in a series of lawsuits from 2019 to 2021. And now she has a license to grow her own cannabis and her studies are going forward. And in the process of doing all of that, I became obsessed with… I mean, learned all about it, realized how meaningful the work was and so I was like, “Man, these cases for Valero and Halliburton just aren’t as interesting or as meaningful. I mean, to me.” And so I left the big firm and came and joined Vicente Sederberg and now do impact litigation for cannabis reform full-time.

TG Branfalt: So you say you had no experience in cannabis, what in your background did you draw from most to sort of enter this space or get really acquainted with it?

Shane Pennington: That’s a great question. So turns out cannabis law, and this is kind of nerdy, but I mean, it’s not really its own thing. People think of it as cannabis law, but it’s not. It’s actually administrative law because administrative law is the law of agencies, it’s how agencies regulate people. So your car is regulated by the Environmental Protection Agency, the food you eat is the USDA, the Department of Agriculture and so forth, your taxes are by the Internal Revenue Service, which is a federal agency, right? And so I specialized in suing those federal agencies on behalf of regulated parties, like Halliburton often has to deal with the EPA and the SEC and all of this. And even pharmaceutical companies, I would help them as well with FDA and FTC and all these different agencies.

That’s what I specialize in, it’s a very nerdy, very nuanced, very complex area of law. And it turns out that cannabis is governed by federal agencies, the Drug Enforcement Administration, the Food and Drug Administration, Alcohol Tobacco Firearms, Customs Border Protection, which is Homeland Security. So you just go down the list and I was like, “Man, that’s right up my alley.” Now the laws are different for each regulated industry, but it turns out that I was a specialist in exactly what these substances, the laws that govern them, and so when I got involved in it, even though I wasn’t familiar with the particular regulations and so forth, I was very, very, very prepared to sue the DEA. And that’s why… DEA’s not used to getting sued like that. I mean, I guess they get sued a lot, but it’s no offense to people who are practicing in this space, it’s just that I’m a specialist in this.

Most people who get a cannabis case are the ex-prosecutor or the guy from some local Bar Association who takes a traffic ticket case and then they do the best that they can with it and they… Look at what they do, they kick the shit out of me, but this is what I specialize in and I don’t think DEA was used to getting fastballs coming over the plate like that and so we got a series of quick victories. And I should say, I should add quickly, that I wasn’t doing this alone I had a lot of help from a lot of different people, but the point is it was really exhilarating to get to apply skills that I’d been using on behalf of refiners and Fortune 500 pharmaceutical companies to help a scientist struggling to do research for vets.

TG Branfalt: Is that why you made the switch, because to you it’s a bit more… I don’t know, friendly?

Shane Pennington: I mean, it’s a lot more meaningful to me and I don’t mean to say it’s not meaningful to help big companies, it’s just that there’s so many lawyers. I knew when I left the firm I was at, I was at a firm called Baker Botts, which is a great big Am Law 100 law firm, it’s a great law firm, great people, very, very, very talented lawyers there. And I went to another law firm called Yetter Coleman, which is a top boutique firm, it’s a few lawyers and they’re all very, very talented, very well compensated too and a lot of they’re all still my good friends. And look, the work they’re doing is tip of the spear of legal work, no doubt about it. But I knew when I left, there would be 20 very talented lawyers there to fill my spot, you know what I mean? Harvard and University of Chicago, et cetera, are going to keep pumping out lawyers and they’re going to keep filling those spots.

Whereas there was nobody really doing this work, that level of work, in this space because the federal government hadn’t been enforcing the law. So there’s no demand for it. Everybody was trying to avoid the federal regulators, not engage them. But Sue Sicily was this exception, because she’s this scientist who’s trying to do everything by the book. And she was getting stonewalled by the federal agency. And they’re not used to having people fight back against them cause nobody wants to screw with the DEA. But under these particular circumstances, we definitely did want to throw down and we did. And that was very meaningful. I felt like I was doing something that nobody else was doing at this particular moment in history and with federal legalization around the corner. And of course it’s a bigger corner than I thought at the time, it’s taken longer than I realized when I came in as a newbie.

Yeah. But I mean, like I said, I didn’t know that much about the politics. Anyway, I knew that it was coming and so I thought, “Man, I could get in here and start shaking things up right before legalization and maybe I’ll be able to have a practice out of this on the other side.” But it was worth it just to do all the impact litigation, all the pro bono work was very meaningful. It meant a pay cut for me, but the compensation in terms of bringing meaning to my life and making it possible for me to use my skills in a way that no one else was there… no one else was doing this. That was very exciting.

TG Branfalt: So when you get the call or however you get in touch with Sue Sisley, what is your initial sort of reaction? What’s your gut tell you?

Shane Pennington: Yeah, so it’s actually funny how I got the call. So I said I was at this firm Yetter Coleman just before I made this switch, and there’s a guy there named Matt Zorn, who is… he’s a very talented, very, very skilled litigator at this firm, too, in Houston and he went to Columbia Law School, brilliant guy. And we had never worked together on a case, but he went to South by Southwest in Austin and I didn’t go, he went. He met Dr. Sisley there, she gave a talk and she was like, “Nobody will represent me. My application to DEA is stalled out. Nobody’s going to help me. I can’t get a lawyer. I don’t have any money.” And Matt’s like, “Man, I know the guy who sues agencies, he’s the guy two doors down from me. That’s all he does is sue federal agencies. And he’s really good at it. I should go see if he’ll take it on.”

So he came back and he was like… I mean and he and I had talked and we got along pretty well, but we had never worked together, we had never spent that much time together, but he came into my office and he was like, “Hey man, there’s this scientist that I met at South by and she’s a cannabis scientist.” And I’m like, “Okay.” And he’s like, “Yeah, and she’s got this case and her thing is stalled, her application is stalled at DEA.” And so when he said that, I was like, “Look, man, it’s not going to work.” Because basically when you sue an agency, the first thing the court’s going to ask is, “What is it that the agency did that you’re saying they did wrong?” And if your answer to that is, “They haven’t done anything and I want them to do something.” In other words, it’s their failure to act that is illegal, you’re fight…

I mean, that’s like, it’s hard enough to sue the government when they’ve done something clearly wrong, right? They took your house from you because they said that it was on waters of the United States or something like that with the Clean Water Act. Even if it’s clearly wrong, it’s still very difficult to sue the federal government. When the federal government’s up against you in court, there’s a presumption that the government is right and you’re wrong. That’s just how it is and you’re fighting that uphill battle no matter what. But when you’re saying the government should have done something and it hasn’t, that is three times as hard. And the reason is because the court doesn’t want to tell an agency how to prioritize its duties. So say an agency has lot, and they do, they have lots of things to do, they have a limited budget, no court wants to tell them, “You’ve got to do this first and that second and third,” because that’s considered an agency’s decision, they get to decide. Even if they have to do it, they get to decide when they do it and how they do it.

And so I told him, I was like, “Look, dude, that’s a losing battle. You’re not winning that.” He was like, “Will you just look at it because it’s been years that they’ve been sitting on this. They won’t talk to her.” I was like, “I’ll look at it, but I’m telling you, it’s going to be very, very challenging and I don’t think we’re going to win. And that’s why she hadn’t been able to find a lawyer.” So I started looking at it and I knew it would be very, very difficult, but her story was just so compelling. I mean, she is a legit scientist, she’s never broken a law, she’s straight down the middle, trying to… I started looking at it’s like the government is saying cannabis needs to be in Schedule I because there’s no research. And so then she’s trying to do the research and they won’t let her.

TG Branfalt: And, I’m sorry, but if I’m not mistaken, this was during the period of time where they’d said that they were going to open more licenses.

Shane Pennington: Yeah. Yeah. In 2016, that’s right. Now, that’s a very important point. They actually solicited the application. And here’s the deal, it was at the tail end of the Obama administration. This is 2016, they solicit the applications as Obama is on his way out the door and in comes the Trump administration in Jeff Sessions and all of a sudden they slam the door shut, it’s radio silence and as somebody who works on these cases all the time, of course, I mean, you don’t have to be a rocket scientist to see this. It’s like, that’s obviously political. And so that didn’t look good and even though the standard was going to be very difficult to overcome, I felt like it was worth a shot at least to raise awareness of the issue. And so we went to court over it. And as soon as we did, we wrote a really scathing opening brief. And we went to a court I clerked on so I knew how things worked there and-

TG Branfalt: That’s smart.

Shane Pennington: Yeah. And pretty soon the DEA folded. They didn’t want to fight it, they just went ahead and started processing her application.

TG Branfalt: Really?

Shane Pennington: Yeah. Yeah. And actually a series of dominoes fell, man. It’s insane. I don’t know how much we’ll be able to cover, but suffice to say… Let me just give you the punchline first, okay? By the time it was said and done, it turned out, everybody wanted to know why were they not processing these applications? What was the deal? They said they wanted them, why are they not processing them? And they’d actually gotten letters from senators on both sides of the aisle and other lawmakers, right? Democrats, Republicans, what is going on? Tell us the explanation. They had hauled multiple acting attorneys general in front of different committees of the Senate saying, “What’s up, we need this. There’s a veteran suicide epidemic. We have heard that this cannabis is helping these vets, but we don’t know what the risks are, if it’s helpful. You guys say we need the research, what’s going on?”

And DEA would say, “We’re processing the applications as fast as we can. We’re doing everything we can.” For years this was said. So everybody wanted to know what the answer was. Well, our lawsuits uncovered the answer and it’s unbelievable how it all went down. But the answer was that there was a secret memo from the office of legal counsel, this like Jedi council of secretive legal ninjas that operate in the executive branch, and their whole job is to settle disputes within the executive branch. So if like DEA disagrees with FDA or something like that, they will send it to this OLC and this OLC is just very, like I said, most people haven’t even heard of them. And it’s this little group of brilliant attorneys who just sit in this room and write opinions that govern the executive branch. So no matter what any agency says, if OLC says it’s X, Y, and Z, that’s the law on the executive branch.

And so what happened here was… And oh, and all its opinions are secret unless they decide to publish them. So it’s this, if you remember-

TG Branfalt: Or they get leaked.

Shane Pennington: What’s that?

TG Branfalt: Or they get leaked.

Shane Pennington: They do get leaked. So if you remember the Torture Memos under Bush, that was OLC. When the Russia stuff was going on, the Mueller investigation, OLC got involved there. They’re in the background of all the biggest stuff that’s happening in the executive branch. I mean, this is very spy versus spy type stuff.

TG Branfalt: So was it your case that brought these memos to light?

Shane Pennington: A settlement in a case that we brought actually forced DOJ to release the OLC opinion, but explained why they were delaying the applications, were refusing to process them and the answer, get this. The reason they weren’t processing them was because DEA’s policy, called the NIDA Monopoly, had been violating international law for 50 years.

TG Branfalt: And you’re talking about the farm in Mississippi?

Shane Pennington: Yep. Yep. In particular, there’s a treaty called the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs and it says that a single government agency has to govern marijuana cultivation if a country’s going to allow marijuana cultivation. This is ’61. So this is back when international… and it still is, this still is international law. But it sounds crazy because all these countries now allow marijuana cultivation, it’s obviously happening. That’s still the law under this treaty that the US and all these other countries are signatory to. It says a single government agency has to govern, but in the United States, NIDA and DEA, NIDA is the National Institute on Drug Abuse and DEA, which is of course two agencies, violates the convention and so the OLC said, “We are not in compliance with this treaty because of your NIDA Monopoly and so we can’t move forward with anything until you fix that.”

So DEA had to make all new rules. That’s why these new rules came out in 2020, or I guess it was 2021 by the time they actually were final, and then they got the process going. But they were just sitting on it because DEA… Nobody was very eager to tell Congress, “Yeah, we’ve been violating international law for half a century.” And what’s crazy about it too is… but that’s true. You can look it up. You can look it up, it’s on DOJ’s website. It’s called Licensing Marijuana Cultivation and Compliance With a Single Convention. If you Google that, you will find the OLC opinion that they publicized as part of a settlement. I’ll send it to you. I’ll send you the settlement.

TG Branfalt: This is unbelievable.

Shane Pennington: Right. Yeah. No. And I mean, it’s one of those things where you just start pulling the thread on the sweater and you just keep pulling it and pulling it and pulling it, and finally the emperor’s just standing there naked.

TG Branfalt: Were you just floored by all this? I mean, you’ve been doing administrative law, was there anything even close to this that you’d ever…?

Shane Pennington: That’s why I quit my lucrative, high-powered job to come do this all the time. I was like, “Listen, if it’s low hanging fruit like this.” And there is. There is a lot of stuff. And I mean, dude, this was a secret opinion. So what’s crazy is no one will ever understand this is such nerdy stuff when I try to explain it to people that their eyes kind of glaze over, but for me as an administrative law nerd, this was like… I’m sitting there, Matt and I are in the office and I honestly can’t remember which of us… how it happened… what the exact conversation was, but we’re sitting there and we’re trying to figure out what the answer to this question was. And one of us, and I don’t remember whom, said, “It’s got to be an OLC, I think.” Because it’s…

TG Branfalt: So you just knew that in your gut?

Shane Pennington: Because that would be the only thing that could be secret that they wouldn’t want to tell that could cause DEA not to move forward because they can’t, because PLC said so and yet it wouldn’t be public. And so what we did was we sued under the Freedom of Information Act and we said, “Listen, if you’ve changed the policy that’s governing our client, you’ve got to tell us that policy.” Which is true. And so we sued them and we said, “And also we need to do it on an emergency basis because we shouldn’t have to wait.” And at first the DOJ attorney on the other side was like, “You guys are insane. This is not happening. I don’t know what you think you’re talking about, but nobody gets…”

TG Branfalt: Really?

Shane Pennington: And then a week later, two weeks from the day we filed the lawsuit, the FOIA lawsuit, Freedom of Information Act, two weeks later, the guy called us and he was like, “Okay, yeah. We’re ready to settle it. We’ll post it on the website.” And we were like, “Oh man.” That’s like zero to 60 instantly. That never happens. And yeah, we were totally floored. I was like… I thought we were going to… Honestly I was like, “Dude, we’re going to be famous, man. This is big time.” But of course it happened during COVID and nobody cared and that’s stuff that I think people care when you tell them, but it’s so hard to understand it. And the federal government did everything they could do. They didn’t go to Congress and say, “Hey guys, remember all those times we testified to you and told you we didn’t know what the reason was. We’d like to correct the record.” Nobody ever did that. Nobody ever followed up.

TG Branfalt: Well, and from… I mean, a settlement’s also a lot quieter. You don’t go through all the motions of a trial and dates.

Shane Pennington: And we didn’t want to go blow the lid on it too much at the time, because we were trying to get our client her license. I mean, at the end of the day, this was cool for us. It’s like the little tiny highlight reel that my mom plays at family reunions or whatever about her son doing cool stuff or whatever. It is cool for me, but ultimately we have a client, we wanted her to get her license. So the settlement was we’re not going to press this. You published it, we get access to it. We’ll move forward. And our client got the license, but now years later, obviously it’s… Not years, but a year later, I can talk about it and it’s not violating the settlement agreement.

But another funny thing about it, the guy who wrote the OLC opinion, his name is Henry Whitaker. This guy is now the Solicitor General of Florida, he clerked for the same judge that I clerked for on the DC Circuit so I’d see him at law clerk unions and stuff, and the judge that we clerked for, David Sentelle, he’s this legendary DC Circuit judge, and one day we were out, he smoked cigars in DC with his clerks, and it’s the chance to get to talk to the judge, ask him for life advice or whatever. So one day I asked him, I was like, “Who’s your best clerk ever? Who’s the best, the smartest, the brightest, the best writer or whatever?” He’s like, “Henry Whitaker by far is the best clerk I’ve ever had.”

So when I saw Henry Whitaker wrote this thing, I was like, “Oh my God.” And of course it’s brilliantly reasoned, it’s perfect and it says, yeah, “DEA, since the very first day the NIDA monopoly ever existed, it was illegal and it caused the United States to be out of compliance with international law for half a century and it’s got to be corrected.” So yeah, I mean, that’s just insane. And I actually was giving a talk to a bunch of solicitors general last week about cannabis policy because all the states are very interested now in what’s about to happen, right? And so I was talking to them and I was talking about this case and I was looking out, I was like, “Man, is Henry Whitaker here?” Cause that dude still… He still intimidates me because this is legend to Sentelle clerks everywhere. But yeah, pretty crazy.

TG Branfalt: So what’s interesting is that the reason we sat initially was for your letter and about the seeds and I’m not going to rehash that, but that seemed to have got sort of a lot more traction than the sort of mind-blowing OLC opinion and that sort of thing.

Shane Pennington: Which is crazy. What does that say about our industry and the law? Everybody notices more a seed letter than they do this OLC thing, right?

TG Branfalt: Yeah. And I mean, one of the things that really struck me when we first talked was you had one very, very straight message that you wanted to send. Why was it so important for you to make sure that it was out there the way that you wanted it out there?

Shane Pennington: Well, because… So that seed letter… I mean basically long story short on that was after the 2018 Farm Bill, we figured out that seeds, tissue, cultures, genetics, because they’re below 0.3%, they’re hemp, not marijuana and their federal law, therefore at least at the federal law part, there’s no barrier to interstate shipment of them, which is a huge deal to people out there who, everybody under the state legal markets who are having to… they can’t get IP and genetics. There’s no way if you have genetics in California to get them to New York, for example, without breaking federal law, the assumption was and so you had to have all these work arounds. So we knew that was a big deal and so we wanted to let people know, “Hey, federal law is not a barrier here. I wrote to DEA, got them to say on the record that seeds are hemp and therefore they’re not marijuana under federal law.”

And that created this big splash, but I also knew that the law is incredibly complicated. And so just having DEA say that about federal law doesn’t mean that you can now just go put a bunch of seeds and clippings in a box, take it to Amazon and have them ship it all over the country and advertise it online. That is a much more complicated question cause you have to look at state law and all this, it gets incredibly complicated. But I knew as soon as we let that drop about what DEA had said, that all the folks out there who that was big news for were just going to immediately start shipping stuff and ignore all of the complexities and just say, “Yay, we can ship things everywhere.” And so I wanted to get it out there that that’s not true. There’s a lot more to it than that, you have to be very careful.

We let it drop, I said it a million times every time we would publish something, I’d be like, “Listen, this is complicated. This only resolves one piece of it.” And still the next day I wake up, I’m drinking my coffee and I’m looking at the news, and of course I have a lot of Google alerts for cannabis, marijuana, whatever, and I’m looking and sure enough, the first thing up there is One Simple Trick to Mail Cannabis. And I was like, “Oh no. The plane is crashing into the mountain.” And so I was glad that when we got to talk, I was able to tell people, get a bigger megaphone to be able to say, and let me say it again now that we’re on this podcast, do not think that you could just open up a seed business and start shipping interstate. It may be possible, but you need a very, very talented team of lawyers to help you do that. And I’m not just saying that because I mean, I got plenty of work, it’s not that, it’s just you will get arrested probably so be careful.

TG Branfalt: I do want to ask you too, because we only have a couple minutes, what role do you think that you and other cannabis-focused attorneys have in sort of relegating in some way information and disinformation in this industry?

Shane Pennington: Yeah. I mean, I think that right now, unfortunately, and, dude, it sounds like I’m bashing on other attorneys, I do not mean to do that at all, but I do need to say that attorneys need to know how to stay in their lane. I stay in my lane. I’m not an IP attorney. I told you my buddy Matt Zorn is and he’s an intellectual property attorney. I don’t tell him how to practice intellectual property. He doesn’t tell me how to practice federal administrative law.

In cannabis though, there has been no federal stuff going on for so long that there have been these shops that have opened up that are just do-it-all kind of attorneys. And frankly, the people in this industry are not risk averse and their attorneys have an appetite for risk too. And so these are the type of people who will be like, “Yeah, we can do it. Let’s do it.” There’s an F1 car sitting out there on a track and they’d be like “I can drive it, just give me the keys. I’m sure I can handle it.”

Whereas I come from a different way of thinking where I’m never going to go outside my lane. And I think that as the industry-

TG Branfalt: No F1’s for you?

Shane Pennington: What’s that?

TG Branfalt: No F1’s for you?

Shane Pennington: Not without a lot of lessons, man. Do you know how expensive an F1 car is? I think they light on fire easily, too, like, nah, that ain’t for me. So anyway, I think that as we get more sophisticated, more money pours into the industry, things start to open up, there are going to be a lot more attorneys with more areas of specialization who are going to come in and they’re going to discipline things. They’re going to tell their clients what I’m telling them, “Pump the breaks, let’s think this through.” And that’s going to be very important as things get more sophisticated.

I mean, that was a shock for me coming from big law where every client I have has a general counsel’s office with a hundred attorneys in it who then hire outside council for specialized things. Here, it’s just like everybody’s just Wild West, “We want to sue the government. Okay, let’s just do it. Let’s just write the complaint and just throw it out there.” And I’m like, “Man, we should think about this.” And I think there’s going to be a lot of that kind of self-regulating, learning to think before we leap more as the industry progresses and becomes more above ground, basically.

TG Branfalt: Dude, this has been so much fun and I know that you have very important lawyer things to do. So I don’t want to keep you too much longer. But let’s say that a law student who’s interested in taking sort of… going into the cannabis side of law, what would your advice to them be?

Shane Pennington: If you’re in law school and you’re wanting to do this kind of stuff, get in contact with me because I need help. And what I need is… Well, what I need is I need people who can write and I need hard workers. That’s the main thing. And I guess that if you’re not in law school and you’re thinking about doing this, or if you’re early on, I guess there are a couple of things. First thing is, you need to know your business and you need to have a business sense, because this is an up and coming industry and it’s going to start getting plugged into new things like the Amazons of the world are going to start getting involved, all these new regulators are going to come online. You need to learn economics, you need to learn business, you need to be kind of a Jack of all trades, but you really need to know your business.

We need people who understand this plant and how it works, and frankly, better than I do. I don’t know anything about it. That’s my weakness. That’s why I went to Vicente Sederberg where there are all these experts who do know. But that’s something you’re going to need to know. And then you’re going to have to work on writing. Writing is going to be a premium. I mean, I’m a pretty good writer and we need a lot of good writers and we need people who have experience in the federal government, too. So taking a few years to be a prosecutor, taking a few years to work at DOJ or being a public defender and then coming back would be very helpful because all my years clerking have helped me to understand how things work inside the government. That way, now that I’m on this side, I’m able to have thoughts like, “Oh, that’s probably an OLC opinion,” and then how to get it.

So I guess the bottom line is there’s no straight line to success as a lawyer. Everybody kind of takes all their experiences and they use them all and we all have different things we bring to the table. And so I would encourage people who want to do a practice like the one that I have to go do something else, honestly. Go get other experience and then come back to this. Because, again, I mean the biggest lesson that I’ve learned and the secret that I know that a lot of people don’t, is that there’s no such thing as cannabis law. There’s just law. And everybody who wants to do it because it seems cool or whatever, I mean, this is a complex area of law. You need to screw your thinking cap on tight and you need to really dot your Is and cross your Ts.

Cause I’ll tell you, one thing you’re going to find is that courts are very skeptical of cannabis cases. Every lawyer needs to look legit when they walk in the room, they need to look very professional. But if you’re representing a cannabis client, you need to look four times more professional. If the person on the other side of you has gold plated credentials, yours need to be platinum, you know what I mean? Because it’s almost like there’s still this stigma, especially among federal judges, some of whom are older. I’m not saying that they’re…. I don’t think they intend to do anything corrupt or unfair, it’s just there’s this latent bias that I think people have. I had it, man. When that case came across my desk, I had my eyebrow raised from the get-go cause I was like cannabis, what? What is this Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure or something. We take serious lawsuits here at this law firm. What is this all about?

And I had to read for a long time to realize that there are kids with epilepsy, there are people terminally ill with cancer, it’s not all… There’s a lot more to this and that the federal government for many, many years was blocking science, which is insane to me, science on things that could help people. And I think that once you get to where you can communicate that message in the right way, that’s when you can start making progress. But in order to do that, you need to work hard, get your grades right, get your experience right and then get hooked up with the right mentor, which would be me. So holler at your boy whenever you’re ready.

TG Branfalt: If people were trying to holler at your boy, Shane Pennington, how would they get in touch with you?

Shane Pennington: So they could email me at S.Pennington@VicenteSederberg.com, that would be the easiest way. And you can just go to Vicente Sederberg’s website, look me up, Shane Pennington, you’ll see my phone number there and all that. So, that’d be the easiest way.

TG Branfalt: Awesome. Dude, it’s been a pleasure. I’m really delighted that we got to do this after, cause when we were hanging up the phone last time I was like, “I want to talk to this guy for like another 45 minutes to an hour.” So I really…

Shane Pennington: Yeah. No, I’m glad you did it. I really am. I mean it’s important stuff and I appreciate you shining a spotlight on it.

TG Branfalt: No, thanks so much for being on the show and I’m sure I’ll find something with your name on it in the future come across my desk.

Shane Pennington: Absolutely. I hope so. If not, then something bad’s happened to me.

TG Branfalt: I’ll be in touch to make sure nothing bad happens to you.

Shane Pennington: All right, man. Good talking with you.

TG Branfalt: You can find more episodes at the ganjapreneur.com podcast in the podcast section of ganjapreneur.com on Spotify and in the Apple iTunes store. On the ganjapreneur.com website, you’ll find the latest in cannabis news and cannabis jobs updated daily along with transcripts of this podcast. You can also download the ganjapreneur.com app in iTunes and Google Play. This episode was engineered by us. I’ve been your host TG Branfalt.

From transitioning out of a self-described “boring” career in finance, to heading one of the East Coast’s biggest multistate operators to eventually moving to California to focus on team- and brand-building for Lowell Farms, few people have experience in the cannabis industry like George Allen.

In the latest Ganjapreneur.com Podcast interview, George and our host TG Branfalt discuss George’s exit from a Wall Street finance career to join the cannabis industry, his time as the President of Acreage Holdings (during which he approached the former Republican Speaker of the House John Boehner about endorsing the cannabis legalization movement), as well as the eventual transition from working for an MSO to joining up with the California-focused Lowell Farms. The interview also covers advice for building a strong team in the cannabis space, the differences between medical and recreational cannabis markets, the importance of being passionate about the industry, and more!

Listen to the podcast interview below or through your favorite podcast listening platform, or scroll further down to find a full transcript of the episode.

Listen to the podcast:

Read the transcript:

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Cara Wietstock: Hi, I’m Cara Wietstock, culture editor at Ganjapreneur and host of our YouTube show, Fresh Cut. The best way to understand cannabis business is to speak directly to those who work within it. Fresh Cut was created to shine recognition on the people who fill these roles. In this interview series, we focus on those with their hands in the dirt, both literally and figuratively. From cultivators to bud tenders, educators to advocates, activists to lobbyists, we aim to illuminate the workers who keep this industry thriving. Enjoy one-on-one conversations with me and guests by watching along on the Ganjareneur YouTube channel and follow our social channels to keep up with the latest episodes. Have a great day.

TG Branfalt: Hey, there, I’m your host TG Branfalt. And thank you for listening to The Ganjapreneur.com Podcast where we try to bring you actionable information and normalized cannabis through the stories of ganjapreneurs, activists, and industry stakeholders. Today I’m joined by George Allen, he’s the chairman of the board for Lowell Farms, founder of cannabis industry investment firm, Geronimo Capital LLC, and former president for Acreage Holdings. Allen has been involved in multiple financing rounds, dozens of acquisitions, executive recruiting, and an initial public offering. How are you doing this afternoon, George?

George Allen: Hey, great. Thanks so much. I’m really grateful for the opportunity to talk to you today and really have enjoyed your podcast. So thanks for having me.

TG Branfalt: Thank you so much. You have done a lot in this industry, man. I’ve had a lot of guests on this show. I’ve been doing it since 2015. Somebody with your sort of breadth of knowledge, I’m really delighted to have you on. Before we get into sort of all these little things or big things that you have done, what is your background, man?

George Allen: I got to say it’s a little bit of a crime of fashion I got involved. I got involved in the industry after a pretty boring career in finance on Wall Street. I spent a lot of time, started out in finance and then moved into private equity. I did some fun stuff in software. I did a software roll up in a public company. And then more recently before getting into the industry, I ran a family office for a group of high network individuals in New York. And that’s when I first started getting exposed to cannabis because the family offices were the only investor group that was looking seriously at cannabis back only as short four, five years ago. And that’s when I started getting into it. I really saw the scale of the opportunity and how much blue sky there was. That’s what drew me in. And from there I was hooked.

TG Branfalt: So you described your life sort of before cannabis as boring and in finance. What are some of the biggest differences sort of culturally that you had to sort of deal with moving from something as boring as finance as you put it to the cannabis space?

George Allen: Well, I got to say the biggest challenge you’ve got in cannabis, there’s really two that I point to, but first is there’s no precedent for how to do things in cannabis right and how to do the med scale because it’s such a young industry. I don’t know that you’ve got a lot of precedent for that in other businesses where there’s a big industry that happens overnight but it has no analogs to it. And I think that’s the first challenge.

The second challenge that is just crazy is you just only have to walk 2 or 3 feet in this business before you find another stumbling block that is imposed by the federal policy in this business. That’s just super strange working with banks and trying to figure all that out, as well as employees and employment practices. There are a whole bunch of service providers that are available to most businesses that cannabis can’t avail themselves to. It’s a workable problem, but it takes clock cycles for sure.

TG Branfalt: Tell me about sort of the learning curve, right? I mean, you talked about these stumbling blocks. Maybe can you tell me about a specific instance sort of early on in your career that you had to sort of navigate through?

George Allen: Well, I’ll tell you, I’ll give you one that was kind of fun. Back in the early days at Acreage, the precedent of Acreage was a company called High Street Capital Partners then. It was very challenging to raise money. Back then Donald Trump had just been elected president. He put in a pretty anti-cannabis attorney general named Jeff Sessions. And Jeff Sessions had come out with a pretty militant view on cannabis. Raising money in that environment just to pay payroll was very challenging. I think it was about one year to Trump’s presidency where Jeff Sessions had come out and he pulled down a document called the Cole Memo. The Cole Memo had been some resting piece for cannabis entrepreneurs who were trying to make sure they weren’t going to jeopardize their career and their net worth by being involved in the industry.

And so, when he pulled down the Cole memo, it created a whole bunch of problems for everyone in the industry. That was actually when we first approached John Boehner about being on the board of a cannabis company, because I felt that you had to fight fire with fire. If Jeff Sessions was coming out arm swinging against cannabis, that we had to show the world that it was going to be okay to participate and invest in cannabis businesses.

It felt like we could do all the arm wave when we wanted to, but if we really wanted to punctuate that point, we had to bring somebody in that people knew and understood. Convincing Boehner to be on the board of a cannabis company was the best way we felt to do it. That was a fun conversation trying to get John to do it. But it really did save our schemes back then at the company, because it had made it a lot easier. In the wake of making that announcement and going on Good Morning America and doing all those stuff we did, it really did make it a heck a lot easier to get financing for a cannabis company.

And so that’s just one of the many stories we’ve had fighting this fight. In a lot of respect, it’s made the businesses better. It’s made the business a better because we’ve all watched what’s happened in Canada and the excess cause by capital euphoria that we haven’t seen that kind of capital euphoria in the United States. I think that’s made it harder, but it’s definitely made the businesses healthier and the industry healthier.

TG Branfalt: I just want to go back to a minute. This John Boehner thing, I wrote that when that broke. It was a big story at that time. I don’t know how much detail you can give me, but can you just tell me what was his reaction when you approached him with this?

George Allen: Actually to be honest with you, he was leaning pretty heavily in favor of it. He’d been trying to figure out his position on reconsidering where it was, where he wanted to come out on it, because he saw the shift. I mean, John has always been… He’s always been a center-driven Republican. I don’t think you can be Speaker of the House without doing that. And so I think he saw the writing on the wall, saw the shift, saw 64% of Americans in favor of legalization one form or the other. But largely, I think that there are many aspects that they convinced him to do it. There was the veteran angle and how much relief it was bringing veterans who were desperately in need of some relief from PTSD, from just a horrific amount of PTSD haunting our veterans, to the opioid epidemic and how much relief cannabis could pose for the opioid epidemic.

So it was a series of discussions that we had sitting down with John and walking him through the data and walking him through where he felt there was sufficient science and sufficient sort of public support. And eventually he said, “Yeah, I’ll lend my name to this cause and this in this journey.” It was a ton of fun. I’ve never experienced anything like it in my career and it was really exciting.

TG Branfalt: And I think to your point, it did help sort of change some of the rank and file more centrist, sort of maybe not the people in Congress, but certainly people that I know that are older than me that are sort of your moderate Republican. I think that changed their thinking a bit to see sort of one of their own somebody that they admire and in some respects enter the space.

You’ve been in this industry since 2017, which to a lot of people doesn’t seem like that long. I mean, if you think about it. But I mean for the cannabis industry, it’s a lifetime if we just sort of look at what’s happened with legalization since 2017, how many states have gone online through the legislative process, that sort of thing. Can you tell me how the industry in your estimation has changed since your entree into it?

George Allen: Yeah, that’s a great question. And it’s not that long. It’s not that long. There are people who have been doing this for a long time. And frankly, our success has really been on the backs of people who have fought a much harder fight for a much longer period of time. But you’re correct in saying the industry’s also shifted a lot, because acceptance has changed. I think there’s a couple things that are really going on in the industry that I find sort of investible trends. I think the first is, if you really look at what was going on cannabis, medical was the sort of the horse that everyone rode in on, right? It made a ton of sense. There’s a ton of injustice around the medical side. It made a ton of sense to wrap ourselves in the medical story originally because it really exposed the hypocrisy and the insensitivity that 75 years of terrible policy had implemented.

But I think we’re past the medical story now. I really do. And I think the consumer adoption and consumer acceptance is really migrating across the country where there’s much more willingness to be open to trying cannabis, there’s much more willingness to accepting the fact that cannabis can be a part of somebody else’s life even if it’s not only part of your life. I think that changes behavior patterns in a way that is something that we, as as a service provider in the industry, we need to pay attention to.

One trend that I find really particularly interesting is that smokable flower in California is the fastest growing category by dollars in California. And that’s really interesting. What’s interesting about that is I believe it’s telling you that the consumer is moving from formats that we’re really good at hiding cannabis consumption to moving to formats that are no longer concerned about hiding cannabis consumption. And I think that’s super enlightening. I think the raw plant here is put by far the most interesting form factor for consumers. It offers a ton of variety selection and choice, which a recreational consumer cares a lot about, right? But if you listen to an MSO, most of the time they’re going to talk a ton about consistency, right?

Consistency is a great sort of end objective if what your business is medicine. But consistency isn’t necessarily what you’re looking for in consumer offering of recreational cannabis, because recreational cannabis consumers, they love the journey, right? They love sampling different products and different strains and different plants. They’re not loyal to one stream, right? If you’ve got chronic back pain and you found the stream that’s going to relieve you from back pain, then you’re very likely to be loyal to that. But in recreational cannabis, which is I believe the more exciting and larger market, we don’t pray to the same God of consistency. What you pray to is quality, right? You need to have the quality in the product offering that consumers want.

That’s something that I’ve really learned from coming out here to California and sort of skinning my knee on the market out here, because it’s a market where consumers have a couple thousand choices of SKUs than a typical dispensary. If you go into a New York MSO dispensary, you might see 12 SKUs on the menu. And so you’ve got to go to the place where consumers have several thousand options to really understand what they’re looking for and what they want.

TG Branfalt: I mean, and to your point too, I think that we’re starting to realize also that people who have been using recreationally their entire lives, a lot of times are actually using medically. I don’t think it’s wrong to say that just because something makes you feel good, I believe that’s a sort of medical purpose.

George Allen: No, I couldn’t agree more. I couldn’t agree more. By the way, I don’t think it is right for any of us to judge why people use it. I think that it’s no different than any time in the past. Everybody is responsible for their own individual behavior. But the choice of how you recreate, I think that’s something we’ve shown the science behind cannabis. The social costs relative to the social benefit is profoundly in favor of normalization, so I’m right there with you.

TG Branfalt: You spoke a little bit about MSOs, which we’re talking about multi-state operators. You’d mentioned earlier there’s a lot of people who have been in this industry a lot longer than I have, you have. And so one of the things that I see quite a lot is a lot of blowback against the multi-state operator. I mean, here in New York we have that monopoly system and there’s a lot of sort of progressive stuff that was in the bill. I mean, we can smoke anywhere we can smoke cigarettes, which is pretty fantastic. But I think a lot of the sort of, let’s say stoner community at large, has a problem with a lot of these big companies coming in. They take over. Not to say that it’s a green goop kind of takeover of what’s going on. But I got to ask you, what role should multi-state operators have in the cannabis space?

George Allen: Well, boy, I could talk a long, long line for that. I’ve been on both sides of the fence, right? I ran a multi-state operator for quite some time and then I decided to head out to California and focus on California because I really wanted to build a brand and understand where the consumer was going.

Now, if you really want to deconstruct what the multi-state operator’s all about, it’s really at its essence these limited concession rights that almost like gambling casinos the states have given out. The premise originally was that cannabis has just an enormous amount of social danger to it. You got to be very careful about how much wildfire you start with cannabis. So the idea was to keep it very narrow and contained because with 10 operators, a regulator can guarantee that he knows where every throat to choke is if something goes wrong, right?

TG Branfalt: Gotcha.

George Allen: And I think that was originally the premise here of how they started with these limited license concessions. The reality is though, I think we’ve seen where the social cost and where the risk is in cannabis. I think that experiment is showing us that there’s less inherent risk here in having more of an open market approach to cannabis. Now, I know that’s not popular because that has a major impact on margins and that has a major impact on pricing in the marketplace. But that’s probably why you hear from so many consumers that it’s frustrating, because as I said, it’s not that interesting to go into a dispensary where you got 12 options like the MedMen store on Madison Avenue. That’s kind of boring relative to the MedMen store that’s located on North Hollywood. So in my opinion, the market sort of learning it… And there was never any promise to the MSO model that these concessions were going to be enduring forever. No single statute does it prohibit the state from issuing more licenses over a period of time. And so I think what you’re going to see is a more open market approach.

I also take the point of view that the federal government when they legalize or they decriminalize the product, you’re going to see more of an open market approach here regardless of how the individual states behave, because consumers aren’t going to wait for state by state permission to enjoy the cannabis that they want when the federal government decriminalizes this. So I think in a lot of respects, the states are going to lose a fair amount of strength and negotiating leverage at the table as the market matures here and decriminalization happens in Washington.

TG Branfalt: That’s a super insightful sort of response, especially from you being on both sides of it. You had said that you had shifted your focus to California. And so I want to ask you a couple questions about California is, what have you found that a company has to do in that state to reach success? Because it’s so competitive. And then not just reach that success, but maintain that success.

George Allen: Yeah. It’s all people. It’s all 100% people. You need to have a great team. That doesn’t necessarily mean have like IEP between the ears of a grower who’s a “master” grower. It means people that are willing to really shed blood for the business. I mean, it takes that type of dedication in a competitive industry like this where there’s so many people that get into the business because of passion but don’t necessarily have the execution skills or the business skills to succeed. But you have a constant flow of people that thinking they can. And defending against that in California requires that you build a really, really solid team that can fit, can work cohesively together because there’s no way that one single individual can do it on its own. It’s just too competitive of a market and too large of an opportunity. So I’m very focused on team recruiting, building culture, keeping with working on retention. There’s a ton of other aspects that sort of make up California, but if you don’t have the right people, you’re not even checking into to the airport with a ticket.

TG Branfalt: And so what are some of the challenges when recruiting the sort of high level executives that you need to sort of help lead that team? What attributes do you look for when recruiting high level positions?

George Allen: I think it’s hard. I wouldn’t say that there’s attributes. A lot of people early on thought cannabis looked like alcohol, so let’s look for alcohol. A lot of people think it looks like CPG, so let’s look for CPG. I don’t think that there are attributes from a sort of like a resume standpoint. What I do think is desire and passion and ability to really commit themselves to a goal and a vision. I think that’s something that we look for. It’s hard to look for as a screening process, but you can find out pretty fast after the fact. I also think, from my standpoint, it’s very hard for people who don’t have any experience with the plant, although we’ve got a number of extremely talented people on our team who play roles in the organization who don’t have a personal relationship or the plan.

And so I’m constantly surprised by that, but in lot of respects, I think what motivates them isn’t necessarily their loyalty to the all the green goodness that’s inside a cannabis plant, but rather their loyalty or the thing that drives them is the excitement around building and creating. That’s an opportunity that you get in cannabis. Cannabis is more of a blank canvas then you tend to get in other industries, and that’s been really exciting. So some people respond to that really well and some people respond to it as, “Wait a minute. You mean there’s no building plan or there’s no roll out plan that I can just look to and implement?” But rather we have to be creative and create it ourselves. And that’s right for certain people and not right for others.

TG Branfalt: I mean, I’m sure that you find yourself in situations where you’re looking at resumes or recruiting people who don’t have that experience, that background in cannabis. What businesses in industries do you see a lot of sort of people you recruit or that or that apply to you come from?

George Allen: So a lot of it’s geographic, like where are you? We’re in Monterey, which is in one of the most prolific areas in the country for growing, so growing anything from leafy vegetables to tomatoes. You tend to see a lot of people come from agriculture who are interested both back office as well as out in the field who are interested. In a lot of respects, cannabis is pretty interesting in that some people are just bitten by the bug in one form or another. And just by virtue of the fact that they submitted their resume is enough of an indication that they’re curious and they’re committed to learning about a new industry. And I think in a fair amount of respect as I said before, there isn’t necessarily like a ministry that we say, “Hey, we want to recruit everybody from this CPG or beer or liquor space,” but rather it’s more about their individual story and what they’re seeking and what motivates them.

TG Branfalt: So I want to switch gears a little bit and talk to just about some financing stuff. You’ve done an IPO, which again in the cannabis space is not super common. What are some of the challenges for doing an initial public offering in this space? How does it differ from more traditional industries?

George Allen: Well, I think a couple of things. Not to be overly technical about it, but what we did at Acreage was a reverse public takeover. So we basically merged into an existing shell. In a lot of respects, there’s many parts of it that are similar to an IPO, but technically speaking it RPO. I actually don’t think the differences between cannabis and other industries really exist, but I think I’m in the minority there. I think you actually need to communicate your story to investors with the same amount of clarity and transparency and honesty that other businesses hold themselves accountable to, or other successful ones do. And if you’re not going to do that, but rather you’re going to expect that investors are more tolerant or more lenient with sort of grievances so to speak than they would be with a mainstream industry, eventually you’re going to get burned.

The self-correcting mechanism that exists with investors is that management teams and owners, they’re the last guys who get paid. And so it’s not about how you start your journey. It’s about the full extent of your journey and where you end up. The mistake that many people make in cannabis is the journey’s over once you get the company public. That is just the very, very beginning. The promises that you make, people are going to remember those for a long period of time. Investors have a very long memory. Depending on where the cycle is and where capital markets are at the moment where you’re trying to go public, the amount of benefit that they’re willing to give you of the doubt changes. But that doesn’t really change how they’re going to look at you in arrears. They’re always going to hold you accountable for what you said and what you did.

TG Branfalt: And what, in your opinion, makes for a good company that can raise money? What do investors… You have a capital company. What attribute to a business do you see, and you say, “This is a good bet right here?”

George Allen: Well, the bet to get involved within this was really around the team and the infrastructure that they had. And I think it really changes situation by situation, but ultimately we’re looking for is the ability to build enterprise value over a long period of time. Enterprise value is a function of profitability times multiple. And so it’s really your perception of where those ingredients are sort of going to be harvested in the landscape. There’s one approach to just go and try to maximize profitability by going to a limited license marketplace and selling hotdogs inside the hotdog stadium for as high price as you can for as long as you can until the concession runs out. My challenge with that is I don’t think there’s a lot of terminal value there. I don’t think there’s much at the back end. Instead, we’re focused on building a brand that consumers embrace and associate with the use of recreational cannabis in a way that nobody has done before. And that’s where I see the highest enterprise value over the long term.

So I’m committed to that journey and that mission. I’ve communicated that to all my investors. I’m grateful to have an investing group behind us that knows what we’re trying to do and is extremely supportive. I think the fundamental pillar of maintaining a relationship with your investors is giving them transparency. It’s something that I think people miss out a lot. I think the perception is that investors only want to hear good news. What happens when investors only hear good news is their bullshit meter starts climbing and they know that no company is made up of only good news, and so they start to doubt it. And it’s only a matter of time before their doubts get proven accurate.

TG Branfalt: I mean, you have such an insight into… I mean, I didn’t go to business school, but the economy of scale and that sort of stuff. I mean, a lot of people I don’t think that I’ve spoke to anyway, don’t sort of take this really pragmatic approach and I really appreciate that. What advice-

George Allen: Well, it’s been a lot of fun. Yeah. Sorry, go ahead.

TG Branfalt: No, no. What advice would you have for entrepreneurs who are looking to enter this space either as an investor or a high-level executive looking to enter a sort of exciting space? What advice do you have for those people?

George Allen: Just get involved. The honest to God truth is, get involved in any way you can. Learn about the business in any way you can. What’s going to happen… Because if you’re looking from the outside, it’s hard to be constructive. In a lot of respects, this industry is so immature that it shocks a new entrance into it, is to how many corners of this sort of like this new world haven’t been explored. But you don’t even see that from the outside until you get involved. So find an opening. Take a job, take a role. It’s not going to be a role you’re going to be at forever, but get involved. If you can get involved in a leadership capacity, great. If you can get involved in an employee capacity, great. It doesn’t mean that’s where the journey ends, but certainly you got to start somewhere.

TG Branfalt: What excites you most about sort of the future of the industry?

George Allen: Wow, there’s so much to that question. There’s so much to that question. Truth be told, I see… Cannabis is really fascinating. It’s a product that for the most part delivers on its promise. There are very few products out there that do that. I think it’s really fun to be engaged in the industry like that. It’s also a challenge. It’s also a challenge to build a brand in an industry where pretty much all brands and all products at some level are delivering on their promise, right? There’s so many businesses out there that really fail to deliver on their fundamental promise. And when you look at those, then it’s easy to differentiate the ones that’ll be successful because they are delivering than the ones that won’t. But cannabis in the most part does deliver on its promise. And that’s a challenge, but also what makes it so exciting. How do you get through to consumers on a brand basis where the product itself does such a great job of delivering?

I personally think that there’s a huge opportunity here to capture at the moment where everybody goes from being somewhat discreet about cannabis consumption, to being more open and casual about cannabis consumption, to build a brand that is really sort of about that transition and about that moment in history, because I think that’s an indelible brand that will be around for a long, long time. And that’s what I believe we’re trying to build it Lowell.

TG Branfalt: I will say that when it comes to branding, I think that it’s especially hard for cannabis companies, because I mean I’ve been smoking cannabis every day since I was 16 years old and I’ve never had to rely on a company. I had to rely on my boy who I guess could be a brand. But I think it’s going to be really hard when we’re not used to even making those considerations for 30 years, 20 years.

George Allen: Yeah, I couldn’t agree more. And I think that’s going to change over time, how it’s going to change. As I said, it’s going to be more of a journey. The brand is going to be… It’s going to be really fun. For me, the reason why I get so excited about Lowell and the reason why I was so drawn to the brand from early days, it was one of the first brands that in my opinion gave permission to the consumer to show off cannabis to everybody.

TG Branfalt: Interesting.

George Allen: You know your experience with cannabis as a user, you understand that for you, you feel a certain way about cannabis. But what Lowell is about is telling you that the world is going to look at you as mainstream and normal and as beautiful as you feel about the product itself. And that’s really what I think Lowell does so well. It makes everybody accept cannabis in a way that you and I have accepted it for so long. And that’s not easy to do. And so that’s a starting point for what I think is a really great brand equity.

TG Branfalt: This has been a really fascinating conversation. Not exactly what I would’ve expected just because of your background. And I’m not saying that as a detriment. It just went in a different direction than I had thought, which is really excellent. Where can people find out more about you, more about Lowell Farms? Give us the socials and that sort of thing.

George Allen: Well, I would generally say if people are trying to find out more about me, they’d be real bored. But I’d definitely point them to Lowell Farms. We’re on all of the major social media platforms. We got one of the largest footprints on Instagram in the industry. We’ve got a lot planned for the near future and super excited to keep moving forward. The way I view it is everything that we can do for Lowell, we’re going to do as well for the cannabis industry and for people who’ve been working real hard on this promise for a long time. I think we’re a good mouthpiece for it. We’ve got a great team that’s dedicated to the mission. We have lowellfarms.com. It’s got all the goodness around our financial reporting, which is fundamental to any investment decision. I think it’s all out there. And I look forward to talking to investors. We’re grateful for anybody who’s interested in either employee or investing in the business. We always love to hear from you.

TG Branfalt: Thank you so much. That’s George Allen. He’s the chairman of the board for Lowell Farms. He’s also the founder of cannabis industry investment firm, Geronimmo Capital LLC. Thanks again, George. I hope to hear from you soon and maybe we’ll see you out here in New York in a year and a half.

George Allen: We’ll be there. You can count on. Looking forward to it.

TG Branfalt: You can find more episodes at the Ganjapreneur.com Podcast in the podcast section of Ganjapreneur.com on Spotify and in the Apple iTunes store. On the Ganjapreneur.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 ganjapreneur.com app in iTunes and Google Play. This episode was engineered by Trim Media House. And after what? Seven years of being the host of the Ganjapreneur.com Podcast, I am moving on to Cannabias where I will be helping to demystify some media bias coverage in the cannabis industry pertaining to the cannabis industry. Thank you so much for listening to me, rattle on for these seven wonderful years. I have been your host, TG Branfalt.

This episode of The Ganjapreneur Podcast features Tara Rosenblum, an investigative reporter for News 12, who has recently released a compelling documentary titled “Cannabis Contest.” The documentary offers an in-depth look at the social equity aspects of cannabis licensing in New York City, showcasing the challenges and triumphs of hopeful licensees within the evolving legal landscape — including another previous guest on the show, Jeremy Rivera. With nearly two decades of investigative reporting experience in the New York City market, Tara explores the community dynamics and the critical issues affecting residents and aspiring entrepreneurs. This episode dives into the complexities of cannabis policy, personal journeys of license applicants, and the broader societal implications as cannabis goes from underground economy to regulated business. To listen to the full episode, use the player below or stream via your favorite podcast app! (Scroll down for the full transcript.)

Listen to the episode:

Transcript:

Editor’s note: this transcript was auto-generated and may contain errors.

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TG Branfalt (00:49):

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 Tara Rosenblum. She’s an investigative reporter for News 12. Rosenblum’s recent documentary Cannabis Contest was released last month and focuses on social equity cannabis licensees in New York City. How are you doing this afternoon, Tara?

Tara Rosenblum (01:17):

Hey, TG. I am excited to be with you. Thanks for having me.

TG Branfalt (01:20):

I am delighted to have you. I watched the series that you released. We’ll talk about that in a minute. Before we get to that though, tell me a little bit about you, your background, your career, and how your investigative work set the stage for this documentary.

Tara Rosenblum (01:35):

Sure. So I am a longtime news veteran of the New York City market. I’m now approaching my 20 year anniversary at News 12. Congratulations wise, when you’re having fun, right. But yeah, I got my start working at some of the national networks and I was behind the scenes, and then I wanted to be on camera myself and do some of my own reporting and did that steady parade through small markets throughout the country and then found my way to New York, worked at a couple of stations in New York and then wound up at News 12, 20 years ago. And since then, I’ve worn a lot of hats. I’ve produced, written, reported, I do a lot of politics hosting. I was an anchor for a majority of my time. And about five years ago I became a full-time investigative reporter. And I feel like that’s my sweet spot of journalism. I really, really get a lot of satisfaction out of being a full-time investigator.

TG Branfalt (02:34):

Well, and as a media studies professor, one of the things that I know and I’ve studied is that people tend to trust their local news anchors and local news outlets far more than they do national outlets. With that said, why did you choose to do this documentary and focus on this segment of your community?

Tara Rosenblum (02:58):

I think what has made my team, I think a majority of our success in recent years can be attributed to the fact that my team and I, we know the pulse of the Tri-state. We know what people are talking about. We know what they care about. We know what they think about, we know what has deep impact in their lives. And so my intuition kicked in when I heard about this story, and it felt like every time I went to the supermarket, people were coming up and talking to me about this whole cannabis legalization thing and what’s it going to look like in my neighborhood and what’s it going to mean for my downtown and is it coming here? And when you start to hear about that weekly, daily, we knew that this was a topic that needed to be covered in a more comprehensive way than just splashing out the headlines. And I decided to go for it and really go a couple layers beneath the surface here. And how do we do that? Well, let’s tell it through the lens of people who are going through the process.

TG Branfalt (04:00):

And that’s what I found really interesting about the series was that you focused a lot on New York state policy. You told the stories of the individuals who were being affected, at least a couple of them out of hundreds, and you didn’t editorialize, which I think is very important as we’re in the nascency of this industry. And we’ll talk about that too in a couple of minutes. But how did you identify the people to include in this documentary?

Tara Rosenblum (04:30):

And I think you touched on something really important, and I hope we circle back to that, is that whole editorializing of news in general and how we avoided that with this project, but how we found the applicant. So that was the biggest challenge. So I decided that I wanted to take on this project. As far as we know, we are the only news outlet that followed this process so intensely soup to nuts through the lens of the card applicants. And so how do we find those applicants? I obviously wanted to find people who are outspoken and passionate and deeply impacted by the social equity process. And so at that time, people weren’t putting it on social media. Hey, I’m a card applicant. There was no list. There was no database out there. And so I said, geez, how am I going to find these people? No luck. I went on Facebook, I went on Reddit. Wasn’t having much luck there. So what I decided to do is I spent a few weeks on making a list of every single cannabis lawyer I could find in the news.

Tara Rosenblum (05:35):

And started cold calling all of these big firms, Hey, I’m calling from News 12. Do you have any card applicants? And then at first we were facing people who were like, why are you calling me? Why do you need this information? And then when we walked them through the process, I told ’em about my unit, sent them other documentaries I had done, we were able to convince them to give us access to their clients, and then we wound up with more than we could have dreamed of. And it was a matter of finding the three that characters that I felt were going to be the most compelling to share this journey. And the other part was interesting about it, TJ, was that of course, it was a gamble. We had no idea whether these applicants were going to be successful or not. And how would a documentary turn out if I had three applicants and none of them made it to the finish line. So we just spent a lot of time getting to know them and their backstories, and I was really comfortable that we picked three people who came from really diverse backgrounds and just representing just three entirely different journeys.

TG Branfalt (06:43):

Now, do you think that maybe you hit some of those early roadblocks because of maybe some hesitancy among applicants on maybe interacting with the press? I mean, let’s be honest, the press, whether it be local or national or in general, hasn’t always been really friendly to the cannabis industry.

Tara Rosenblum (07:02):

And again, I came into this as a cannabis novice storyteller, so I was learning as I went. So I can’t speak to the national tone of cannabis coverage, but certainly it was very evident. One of my three applicants was a former female cannabis marijuana dealer on the streets of New York. And she told me from the get go, Hey, listen, this is a story that you are not going to hear frequently. I am one of very few female dealers who was going to share this story in such a public fashion. And when we asked her why that was the case, it’s because they had really, she said people like her have felt really disenfranchised along the way trying to get their message out.

TG Branfalt (07:49):

And you had said that you’re a novice covering the cannabis industry, and one of the things that really struck me is you and I believe it was Jeremy in this field of cannabis plants. What was that experience like for you as somebody who doesn’t have a background in the space of probably, have you ever toured a cannabis farm before?

Tara Rosenblum (08:08):

My first time was for this project and what an experience, right? Yeah. So that was a little daunting going into all of this. And I’m googling words and slang words after every interview. I really came into this as a blank slate. But I think that’s what made the experience so cool is you can see us going on that journey. We take viewers along and you can start out with me knowing nothing. And I feel like by the end of our documentary, you really have a strong taste of what this process has been like and what’s at stake. So we really just learned with every shoot and every interview and every day that we got to cover this story. But on the other hand, I say it was daunting, but that’s just what we do. I feel like every time I take on a big societal project, I come in at an elementary school level and graduate with a PhD on the subject.

TG Branfalt (09:03):

So you’ve been reported for 20 years, and obviously you watch just as much as everyone else, probably the coverage of a cannabis legalization in New York, it was a fraught process as you point out in the documentary. Then there was the rash of illegal dispensaries, especially in New York City that got a lot of sort of bad press. Could you tell me about how News 12 and maybe some other local outlets covered cannabis legalization in New York, and did you particularly see a focus on negatives or positives in that coverage?

Tara Rosenblum (09:41):

So you have to realize, ironically, TJ we’re having this conversation yesterday. It was the three year anniversary. Yeah, I saw that. And I was like, oh my goodness, it’s been three years. So you go back to 2021. And at three years since they passed the legislation to legalize marijuana in the state of New York. And so when you go back to three years ago, what were we dealing with in New York? We were dealing with the pandemic. We were dealing with significant protesting on all types of important issues. There’s been so much in the news cycle that unfortunately I feel like a lot of the cannabis rollout and the legalization process was never front page a one unless something catastrophic happens in the process or unless there was a major piece of legislation passed or when the applications opened. But after that, it was very much something that was thrown in a newscast here or there for 30 seconds. There was not a lot of comprehensive coverage of it because of all the pressing issues of the day. And so that’s why I felt even more responsibility to get this story and really give these people just the airtime that I felt that they deserved. They’d all been through so much and it was such a passion project for them.

TG Branfalt (10:59):

One of the other things I found interesting was the way that you framed it as this game. And because I speak to a lot of entrepreneurs, people who did get licenses, people who didn’t get licenses for a variety of reasons, and that’s a narrative that I heard over and over again that they feel like they’re sort of playing the lottery, playing a game. How did you come up with that sort of framing for the documentary of the license rollout?

Tara Rosenblum (11:25):

Are you ready for this? Absolutely. So I wear a lot of titles, but my proudest one is Mama and I have a daughter in elementary school. And this was all percolating in my brain that I really wanted to do a deep dive on this. And as I was walking through my daughter’s playroom, I saw a board game Candy Land, and at the top of it, I saw the castle and I saw a cannabis dispensary, and then I saw gummies and I’m like, edibles. And we were going to go more down that rabbit hole in our storytelling, but rightfully so, my managers and my team were like, let’s be more serious with this. This is really impacting a lot of lives. So we kind of ditched the whole, I had cartoons I was going to build in. We didn’t go down that route, but that was the genesis of how we called it cannabis contest.

TG Branfalt (12:13):

And what were some of the challenges for you not having the sort of experience covering policy or the industry and what parallels in investigative journalism helped you enter a new category of reporting that continues to serve up obstacles with no changes, with changes in policy, rule, legislation, et cetera?

Tara Rosenblum (12:31):

So as an investigative reporter, I live in data. I can’t avoid data, I can’t avoid freedom of information requests. We call ’em foil requests for people. I’m sure you’re well aware, tj, as a journalism teacher, I’m sure you’ve filed your fair share of foils in your day. We file foils every week. We have filed so many for the story, but this was one of the first investigative projects of my career where I took all the data and you know what I did with it? I kind of threw it out the window for this one. And I said, this is investigative storytelling. I really wanted our characters and not my voice to be the dominant voice in this piece. I wanted you to hear, we had just the most compelling, if we’re sticking with the game narrative players that we had selected to engage in this process with. And I gave them all the air time and I let them be the lens in which our viewers saw this whole process play out.

TG Branfalt (13:30):

And just to give listeners an idea on the length of time that goes into one of these, how long did it take you from start to finish to get this to market?

Tara Rosenblum (13:43):

What a great story, tj, because people see the half hour documentary that’s airing. It’s airing again appropriately. So on April 20th, by the way, if you missed the first one at seven 30 and 1130, so I hope people will get the chance to check it out, but a little shameless plug there for our news 12 re airings. But we, I’m sorry. Lost my, you know what? I completely lost my train of thought there, tj. We’ll do a re-edit there, but repeat the question.

TG Branfalt (14:11):

How long from,

Tara Rosenblum (14:12):

Oh, how long did it take? So I’ll start that again. It’s a great question, tj, because we, the full documentary that people see that went to our airs, and that’s airing again, by the way, for a repeat on April 20th appropriately so was a half hour show. But what people didn’t see were the hundreds and hundreds of hours of footage on our editing room floor. So we literally spent two years covering the story, two years staying in touch with our three applicants and going on dozens of shoots. And so it was very, very labor intensive to tell this story, but we didn’t want to miss a moment of action along the way. If there was a setback, if there was a success, we wanted to be there and we wanted our cameras to be rolling. And one of the beautiful silver linings of the pandemic is that we discovered zoom.

(15:10)
So the days when we weren’t able to be there in person, we were able to capture some of the magic over zoom. But a majority of it was us there in person from the Hudson Valley down to Queens, hyper-local in our local neighborhoods shooting this on the ground. And one of the daunting challenges for me when it came time when we finally had one of our card applicants successfully open a dispensary, we knew it was time to start editing. And I put my hands up in the air and I said, my goodness, this is going to be the challenge of my career boiling these hundreds of hours down to one 30 minute show with commercials. It’s about 22 minutes. So we were able to do it though it was difficult, but very rewarding.

TG Branfalt (15:54):

And you talked about the sort of localities, and you had mentioned that you do have people who come up to you in your role as an investigator reporter who’s on television. What other issues are you hearing from citizens about cannabis legalization in your conversations with them?

Tara Rosenblum (16:14):

So I think the one thing that I hear about all the time that’s really frustrated people are the explosion of these illegal shops. And so you see through our documentary, you learned how hard people had to fight to do this the right way. And I don’t know the count as of today, April 1st, we’re talking how many legal dispensaries there are because a few more have open since we did this documentary, but we know it’s a handful compared to the thousands of illegal shops that we know, not just down here where I live in the Tri-state, but all across the state. And so it is an issue that’s purple. We know lawmakers on both sides of the issue are upset about this. We know the governor’s upset about this. We know legislation has been proposed to tackle this, but is it going to work? That’s the next story. As journalists, we need to be along for that ride to see if it’s going to be enforced and if it’s going to do what it’s intended to do, because it is just really, really a huge detriment to the people who are doing this the right way,

TG Branfalt (17:22):

Way. And can you briefly maybe give me some insight as to your personal feelings about cannabis prior to doing this documentary?

Tara Rosenblum (17:35):

I leave, part of the reason why I think people trust us with their stories, be it cannabis or trafficking or any other societal topic we take on is I really leave my opinions out of it. And I fight really hard to do that because I want people to trust me who feel all sorts of ways about the issue. And it is such a polarizing issue in our local communities. And so I think if you watch, you referenced this earlier, if you watch my project, I hope you walk away not knowing what my personal feelings are. I pride myself on that

TG Branfalt (18:09):

And just watching it, you have these characters, you have this game narrative, if you will, which again, I think is what drives a lot of what made it really sort of fascinating in a way. Those, how did you sort of prevent yourself from editorializing? I mean, obviously you’re a professional and professional journalists don’t editorialize, but I’m sure even with the production process, the post-production process, how did you sort of walk that line? So well,

Tara Rosenblum (18:46):

And so we normally do a story as investigators, and we might work on it a few weeks or a few months. It’s rare that I spend two years

(18:56)
With a subject. And you could see there was a moment at the end and I debated whether to keep it in the show or not. Where you referred to Jeremy, he was the applicant that found early success in our project and was able to successfully open in Queens a few weeks ago. And you saw this moment where I walk up to him, and we had been together for two years doing this. I remember the day we met him on his front stoop and here we are. We had been there for his lowest of his lows when he thought that he couldn’t survive another day, that he didn’t have the finances to make this work after dumping everything. He had his heart, his wallet. He invested so much in this, and there were days where he was literally crying when we were interviewing him, and then we were there.

(19:43)
The moment that I was in, it was a great story. I was in Florida on spring break and I was supposed to not be working, of course, but my producer Jean sent me, we got the list and we found out that Jeremy was on it, and we were the ones that broke the news to him. And so I was zooming with him from my bathing suit in Sun Cap in Florida in New York, and we hopped on a quick zoom, and I’m like, Sherry, guess what? I remember it was around April. I remember saying to him, this isn’t an April Fool’s Day joke, but we found out that you made the list. And you see just his whole face. He’s like this proud macho guy, and you just saw him just completely the emotion overcome him. And it was a beautiful moment. And there we are two years later, and so I’m walking into the store and you just see us hug each other and he’s like, can you believe it’s here?

(20:35)
My favorite reporter? And I was like, do I keep that in? Do I not keep it in? And I kept it in because that was the realness of the journey. And so even though we’re rooting for them as characters and we care about them as people, it doesn’t mean that I have the strong opinion on the whole cannabis legalization process. Again, we were focusing on three characters and their journeys. And I think you cannot spend two years with someone who’s a really great person without rooting for them at the end. And I don’t think that makes me biased. I think it makes me real.

TG Branfalt (21:09):

I mean, it makes you human. That was a natural response. And to be honest, I noticed that very specific moment when I was watching it and I was personally touched because somebody who has that background who may not be trusting of authority and may not be trusting of the press and all these different things, I mean, it showed that he trusted you, which I think says a lot about your character and how you approach this. And the other thing I want to ask you is when I talk to people who are in this industry or have been covering this industry, we know the process. We know that it costs a million dollars and insurance policies and two months of getting rejected by landlords and so on and so forth. When you saw this process play out, as someone who didn’t know what this process is like maybe from other states, and I’ve been covering this since 2014. Oh wow. What was your reaction to this process?

Tara Rosenblum (22:12):

I think what shocked me the most was just how troubled this process was, how flawed it was, how frustrating it was. And tj, I’ll tell you, one of my early concerns between us was that, and your viewers was early on. I thought, okay, I have this great idea. I think it’s an important story to tell. Am I going to pick these three applicants and then they’re going to do a little construction, a little spackling, set up some shelves, and then they’re going to open and is that going to be an interesting documentary? I thought it was going to be this flat line, and I had no idea just the depths of the roller coaster ride. I mean from the lawsuits, from the setbacks to even early on, I remember we were with one of our applicants at a cannabis convention, a networking convention. He thought he was there to learn about mortgage and make other friends doing the same thing, and all of a sudden we’re in the hallway and he finds out that the funding that they were going to get for the setup disappeared and that the banks weren’t going to be loaning the money that they had set up.

(23:21)
And you had people who literally poured their last dollars and cents even to just paying for the application fee, and then they find out that they’re on their own to pay for the setup and just the trials and tribulations. I think the severity of the setbacks and the successes and how polar opposites those were, that’s what really took my breath away in this process. And that what people don’t realize, they might see a headline, oh, a dispensary opened in Queens today, or a dispensary in Westchester. But what people don’t know is the sweat that went into opening those dispensaries. It was a really intense journey. And so it was not for the faint of heart and the people who made it to the finish line were people just diehard passion for this industry. It’s not a profession, it’s a vocation.

TG Branfalt (24:12):

And to your point, somebody like Jeremy, for example, I mean, he had been incarcerated. I mean, he had started his own business. I had spoken to him a couple of weeks ago. But there is no, I mean, if this fails for these entrepreneurs, it’s game over. I mean, to keep it with the game sort of wordplay here. What surprised you most during the course of doing this documentary?

Tara Rosenblum (24:39):

I think it was that. I mean, I think it was just the severity of the setbacks. And we are seeing it now. Honestly, I just finished a documentary on the Downstate casino process, which is New York’s Gold Rush race. They’re saying it’s going to turn out to be the most lucrative economic prize ever awarded in New York State is which three casinos in the New York City area get a full scale Las Vegas style gaming license. And we’re seeing now that process drag out that now we just found out last week, it probably won’t be until 2025, the casino operators who have the world’s largest developers and gaming operators involved, and they thought that was going to happen last year. So it’s the same thing we saw with the cannabis rollout. And it’s not me editorializing here, the governor has called the process of disaster. And I thought that that was such a poignant moment when she said that. In fact, if you saw the documentary, the last line I put in the entire piece was, governor Hoel recently called to describe this process as a disaster. I don’t know how you could refer to it as anything else given the delays and the setbacks that the applicants had to go through, but hopefully now people are saying it’s better late than ever. The governor just issued a top to bottom review of the OCM. And so I think people are hoping they’re optimistic that that will finally streamline the process here.

TG Branfalt (26:12):

One of the questions that I really want to ask you, and this is more of an opportunity that I’d like to be able to share with my students. What advice would you have for young reporters who are interested in doing investigative long projects such as you’ve done in this case, and I’m sure many others

Tara Rosenblum (26:33):

Besides packing the patients? I think there’s a couple of tips I would give there. I think when we start out, and I know when I was starting out as an investigative reporter later in my career, I was always an anchor and political reporter. I always wanted to try to prove how smart I was by getting in the data. And I went and I stormed the castle and here’s my foil request and here’s a 50,000 line Excel sheet. Don’t be afraid to ditch the data sometimes and let the people tell the story, because at the end of the day, I always say, it’s not the press conference. You got to look behind the press conference and see who’s standing behind it. Those are the real, that’s the lens in which you want to tell a compelling story. So just giving up the ego and letting their sound bites tell the story. You hear very little of me in this piece. It’s the least I’ve ever put myself in a story as in cannabis contests because you just got to let those sound bites breathe. You got to let the characters tell the story.

TG Branfalt (27:39):

And what about advice for young reporters who are facing a changing regulatory legal social landscape as it not just relates to cannabis, but gambling, like you mentioned, potential psychedelic therapies that may be legalized and coming online. I mean, how are you adjusting to this sort of brave new world, if you will, and what might you tell young reporters who are also having to adjust?

Tara Rosenblum (28:04):

I think investigative is where it’s at. And I think I’m blessed to work at News 12, and my bosses are very big on hyper-local impact journalism. I say, we don’t do hit and run journalism. We don’t show up. And this is why as younger journalists pick shops that have this philosophy, we don’t just show up that old saying, if it leads, it bleeds. If there’s body bags after a tragedy or something horrific happens, that’s not the only day we’re in your community. We’re going to be that. We live here, we work here, we’re a part of the fabric of the community, so we’re going to stay on a story. In this case, it was a two year commitment. So young journalists find newsrooms who believe in investigative storytelling, who will give you the time and the bandwidth that you need to stay with a story and see it through.

(29:00)
And the other thing is, yeah, it’s great again to stay on your computer and Google experts and stuff like that. Get out in your communities, go out to your community boards. In this case, I found some of our applicants from going to the Harlem Business Alliance, and that’s kind of a New York City, a hubbub of where people meet and greet, and we’re working on this cannabis legalization process, the organic way and networking. So don’t stay behind your computer, go out and talk to people, join local forums and groups and stuff like that because there’s no substitute for grassroots journalism and storytelling,

TG Branfalt (29:39):

And it’s wild. We live in this big tech age where everyone sort of espouses the tools, the technological tools that we have. And you had mentioned you had struck out on social media trying to find sources, and it was the shoe leather reporting that got you the sources, which is commendable to a media studies professor who focuses on media bias and often and tells my students generally it isn’t. If it bleeds, it leads a sort of mentality. Where can people find more of your work and the cannabis contest specifically?

Tara Rosenblum (30:22):

Sure. I’ll give a little plug for our project and if anyone wants to follow my work and we’re going to continue, that’s the thing, just because the documentary aired, my reporting on the card applicants and the cannabis journey here in New York, which is first of its kind in the nation, is far from over. We stay with these stories and we want to find out where is Jeremy in a year from now? What kind of impact did those illegal shops have on him? Did he meet his projections? So we stay with stuff. So if you want to continue to follow my journey, I’m at Tara Rosenblum on Instagram and on Facebook, and the cannabis contest is airing on four 20 on News 12 regional channels and News 12 New York, and it’s also streamed because people say, if I can’t watch News 12 at home, where do I catch it? We’re also streaming on Optimum Stream, Samsung TV plus Pluto two B, Amazon Fire tv, LG Channels, local now, Vizio, tj. Is that enough places to catch us

TG Branfalt (31:23):

And more? Yeah, and more.

Tara Rosenblum (31:25):

And my best work, my most successful work has always come from people just walking up to me at the grocery store or shooting me a random message on social or email. I love the stories I get from our viewers because those are the experts of our communities.

TG Branfalt (31:44):

I’m very thankful that you are able to join me today and tell me more about the process S, excuse me, the process of producing the cannabis contest. Tara Rosenblum, she’s an investigative reporter for News 12. Cannabis Contest was released last month and will re-Air on Saturday, April 20th on News 12 regional channels and on the various streaming platforms that Tara mentioned. Thank you so much, Tara, for coming on the show today.

Tara Rosenblum (32:19):

Thank you so much for having me, and I’m going to be following your work closely. I think you did a wonderful job interviewing me, and I’m sure your students are super lucky to have you as a force in their early

TG Branfalt (32:33):

Careers. Some of them may disagree. You can find more episodes of The Ganjapreneur Podcast in the podcast section of Ganjapreneur.com and wherever you get your podcasts. On the Ganjapreneur.com website, you’ll find the latest cannabis news and cannabis jobs updated daily along with transcripts of this podcast. This episode was engineered by Wayward Sound Studio. I’ve been your host, TG Branfalt.

Brian Applegarth is the founder of Applegarth Strategies, an agency that operates at the intersection of cannabis and travel. He’s also the head of the Cannabis Travel Association, leads the Cannabis and Task Force for the California Travel Association and Destinations International, serves as an industry consultant, and holds a certification as a Ganjier cannabis sommelier—a man of many talents and extensive expertise. In this episode, host TG Branfalt connects with Applegarth to explore the evolving landscape of cannabis tourism, delve into the unique challenges and opportunities within the industry, and revisit how the landscape has transformed since Brian’s last visit to the show. Listen to the podcast below, or scroll down for the full transcript!

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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 normalize cannabis through the stories of ganjapreneurs, activists and industry stakeholders. Today I’m joined by Brian Applegarth. He is the founder of Applegarth Strategies and Agency specializing in the intersection of cannabis and travel. He’s also the founder of the Cannabis Travel Association and leader of the Cannabis and Task Force for the California Travel Association and Destinations International, an industry consultant and a certified ganji cannabis sommelier guy with a lot of titles, a lot of experience. Brian, how are we doing?

Brian Applegarth:

Doing great, TG. Thanks for having me on.

TG Branfalt:

Real excited, man. I mean, you were one of the earlier guests on the podcast, probably back in 2020, 2021, so a lot has changed since then. But before we get into that and how that’s affected the cannabis tourism industry, tell me about, remind listeners about you and what you do.

Brian Applegarth:

Yeah, I mean, essentially I’m a cannabis travel and tourism subject matter expert starting with data. So my work revolves around the cannabis travel audience in the United States, which as of last year accounted for about 72 million Americans. And I work with destinations. A lot of times I’m working with the travel economy, so typically destination marketing organizations will bring me in to help develop strategies that can really cater to this cannabis travel audience that exists today. So yeah, I’m pretty much just passionate about cannabis tourism and travel and moving that conversation forward.

TG Branfalt:

In the couple of years since we’ve last talked, what is new in cannabis tourism? I know different states have gone online and each have sort of different laws and have include any provisions making tourism easier. What’s been going on?

Brian Applegarth:

Yeah, well, I mean, I believe we’re at an inflection point of really the coming alive of the cannabis travel economy or the experience economy. And I really do look at cannabis travel and tourism as its own industry. For example, the travel industry in California is about 140 billion industry. The cannabis industry of California today is about a 6 billion industry. So as cannabis experiences start taking off in this new kind of legal landscape, what does that mean for the tourism and travel economy and how is cannabis integrating into that visitor ecosystem from marketing to hotels, to airports, to rental car companies and beyond? So really where we sit today are cannabis lounges. I prefer actually cannabis consumption spaces, I believe is more accurate. We do have, of course we have lounges. Many times people think in terms of smoking and inhalation, but the truth of the matter is it’s rapidly evolving with cannabis consumption spaces, including beverage bars, infused culinary dining.

There’s a cannabis spa that exists in California today. There’s different cannabis retreats, wellness retreats. There’s of course cannabis events, which are a really important part of travel. So it’s really expanding in a very innovative way. And the exciting part is you’re seeing this come alive in these more mature adult use recreational legal destinations, and you’re seeing buy-in from both the travel industry and now you’re getting in the cannabis industry. Some more sophisticated brands, shops, lounges and beyond that are really starting to buy into that tourism economy and understand the difference between a resident spend versus a visitor spend and why that matters.

TG Branfalt:

Well, there’s a couple of things that I’ve noticed here in New York. One, they do allow for sort of social use spaces, but haven’t rolled out any regulations or anything like that experiencing. Is that something that a lot of states and cannabis companies are experiencing these late roll-outs?

Brian Applegarth:

Yeah, I think people are finding their footing. I think depending on the destination and just depending on the landscape from a local state level, there’s this kind of patchwork, which we’re all familiar with in the cannabis space. I kind of call it the wet county dry county model and what that looks like for cannabis. I live in California, so here I would guess that we not guess, we have approximately, I’d say between 60 and 80 cannabis consumption spaces now in the state of California. And again, that runs the gamut from a cannabis spas to lounges, indoor places, outdoor places, there’s lounges that have food service, there’s lounges that have this little oasis area with ponds and parrots in the back, ones that have, there’s a lot of stages. So you’re seeing programming starting to come alive, like with everything from poetry to music performances to burlesque to comedy and beyond, which is a really exciting space to watch, evolve.

You see a lot of lounges that are trying to figure it out. There’s a lot of focus still on the transactional side of cannabis, and we understand why. Obviously there’s a lot of taxes and barriers right now to having a successful business, but we are seeing learnings and people starting to develop more compelling models to really serve that visitor experience. And as that happens, you’re seeing the travel economy with the massive size and reach starting to wrap their arms around not all cannabis businesses, but the cannabis businesses and brands that are investing in that visitor economy into the travel economy. And they’re looking at themselves not just as a retail shop selling weed, but as an attraction, providing an experience. And that obviously dips into this consumption lounge space, but then it goes into the private kind of models where people are having these getaways, these infused culinary dinners, which is a really exciting kind of space as well.

TG Branfalt:

And you had mentioned marketing and it’s very limited, and I’ve just had this discussion with another operator on this podcast about marketing and how disparate state laws create a sort of challenge for businesses to market. How are cannabis excursions just the sort of destinations, if you will, how are they marketing within these frameworks?

Brian Applegarth:

So I mean, the most sophisticated people that are engaged in this visitor economy strategy space are one, starting with the data. Who is the cannabis travel audience? What are the four different archetypes? And the four different archetypes that I’ve been measuring in partnership with MMGY travel intelligence since 2019 are the canna curious traveler, the cannabis wellness traveler, the cannabis connoisseur, and then the ceremonial traveler. So people that use cannabis in specific ritual and ceremony, which is a really fascinating archetype. I believe that’s the biggest differentiator for cannabis as a travel experience product in the long term because it really focuses around wellbeing and what does it mean to have an entheogen and be microdosing cannabis to enhance that destination travel experience. So it starts with the cannabis travel audience data, and then it’s understanding that you have these standalone cannabis experiences which happen in cannabis shops and lounges and cannabis, let’s just say those three are kind of the three temp poles right now.

But then you have of course, these private events that are also kind of these confused, culinary, et cetera. But then you have cannabis as it integrates into the greater destination brand and the greater destination experience. So the more sophisticated cannabis brands and operators are looking at what destination am I in, what is the power of the travel economy and what is the destination brand, right? Because every destination has a brand that they promote for visitation, like in Palm Springs, it’s find your Oasis in San Francisco. It’s got a different bend in Sonoma County or in Mendocino County. It’s got a different brand with literally brand guidelines. So the more sophisticated cannabis brands and operators are starting to look at what is the community I’m a part of? What is the brand, what is the tourism ecosystem, and what does it mean for me to play a part as part of that community?

And what are all the benefits? And it’s really exciting to see this happen. If you actually look at the history of prohibition with alcohol, and you look at the brands that really excel, it was brands that invested in visitor economy strategies, travel industry strategies, look up the history of the alcohol bottle on the trains and what that did for Jack Daniels, Jim Beam and some of the big brands today. And it’s that cross industry strategic partnerships and marketing strategies where that visitor economy, it’s not just the travel audience, it’s all the partnerships that exist in the travel economy that are going to propel the brands that have the appetite for that kind of investment and attention into building that. So as far as that standalone experience, now, another way that cannabis is integrating into the travel economy, the data is showing as of last year that the cannabis travel audience, about a third of ’em, are really starting to understand the concept of pairing cannabis with destination experiences while in market.

And this trend is increasingly known as effect pairing cannabis, essentially pairing cannabis effects with food, art, nature, et cetera. So it’s cannabis as a precursor to your setting or to your environment or to your travel activity. And increasingly the sciences coming out of those cultivars that have an abundance of lemonene versus myrcene and what that means for the consumer, the traveler, as a precursor to a hike on the coast or a precursor to a Michelin star meal. I often say cannabis is the new vermouth, right? Cannabis, the right kind of cannabis can accentuate your palate flavor, taste, and fixture, as well as stimulate your appetite. And that’s not all cultivars, that’s only certain cultivars. So those are increasingly going to be the pre-dinner aperitif. And I believe that we’re entering into that era of not just cannabis experiences and lounges and events, but the notion of pairing cannabis to enhance your travel itinerary or your travel experiences. So that’s really exciting.

TG Branfalt:

What of consumers are you seeing? Is it predominantly young people? Is it predominantly older people? What does that look like?

Brian Applegarth:

Yeah, absolutely. Well, the cannabis travel audience, the short version is when you look at the cannabis travel audience versus the average active leisure traveler, the cannabis travel audience travels more often, stays longer, and spends more while on a destination. And this is something that the travel industry is watching closely, right? Because this is economic impact at the end of the day, and on the cannabis through the cannabis lens for shops and lounges, this is an opportunity to capture that economic impact. And I’ll tell you, when you’re in a visitor mindset of when in Rome, you’re going to drop that extra spend because you want to smoke that blunt from the Emerald Triangle with the best weed in the world, or you’re going to buy that premium hash and you’re going to sit and look at the ocean and smoke some weed while the sun goes down, or you’re going to get a great cracked beverage that is locally made.

So it’s all about placemaking. Also, the average spend that we’re seeing with the average cannabis traveler is about 2,500 bucks a year. So that’s kind of the money on the table. As far as the generational breakdown, we see a very strong attraction to this with Gen Z, right? Surprise surprise, where about 70% of Gen Z say they have an interest in participating in at least one cannabis related activity while on vacation. No kidding. So they’re choosing destinations where cannabis can be a part of that destination experience. About 56% have kids about 28%, which I think is an interesting data point. And again, we’ve been measuring this audience since 2019 with MMGY Travel Intelligence year over year. It’s part of their report that’s the portrait of the American traveler. It’s one of the modules that we consistently are working with. So as far as interested in cannabis activities, what they’re looking at this cannabis interested travel audience, again, in the US it’s about 72 million people, about 37% of the active leisure travel audience.

Number one is they want to visit a dispensary. They look at visiting a modern day cannabis shop as an attraction. And I work with Planet. I kind of cross over with Planet 13 because Travel Santa Ana is one of my clients. And when I visited their shop out in Vegas, I chatted with some of the staff out there and they were saying that 30% of their visitation will come in and not even buy, but they’re just there to look at the scope of what exists. So the then becomes how do you convert a spend from those people and not leave that money on the table? A perfect example of visitor economy strategies and how to capture that. So visiting a cannabis dispensary is the first activity of interest. The second one is trying A THC infused edible. The third one is trying A CBD infused edible, really, right?

Which shows that can of curious, that can wellness traveler. The fourth one is visiting a cannabis lounge or consumption space. And then the fifth one is having a spa treatment. What a concept to actually visit a cannabis infused spa. And I don’t think it’s surprising because the best highest form of cannabis travel and tourism today is going to reflect the capacity and the capabilities of the cannabis plant itself, which is a therapeutic ancient medicine plant that manifests in all kinds of ways, from topicals to beverages, to edibles to culinary, to the nutrition of a hemp seed, and yes, premium hash and amazing flour. So it’s super exciting because I still think on the travel side and on the cannabis side, people are finally starting to wake up to the expansive toolkit that cannabis and quite frankly, hemp is, and how that’s going to integrate into the global travel economy, which is an incredible industry to tap into if you’re a cannabis brand shop lounge event that has that vision and that recognizes to integrate into a mature industry is going to benefit your growth. So that’s where my agency works is at that intersection.

TG Branfalt:

And so what about, you mentioned the sort of worldwide and growth in the tourism industry. How are you and others focused on tourism connecting with non-cannabis businesses to get them on board? What have been some successes and some challenges in that role?

Brian Applegarth:

Sure. Well, I mean, I jumped into this in 2013. I just hit like 10, 11 years in focusing on cannabis travel and tourism, and it went from crickets in the room to now today. Well, that last kind of seven year stretch, six, seven year stretch was all about case studies, basic education about what is cannabis, really kind of debunking all the reefer madness stigmas and talking in a very fact-based way about cannabis and how it was part of the US medical Pharmacopia, and it was found on pharmacy shelves talking about the research and study of O’Shaughnessy and what those findings were early on when cannabis was studied over in India using ancient kind of cannabis case studies to reframe and actually bring out the truth of what kind of this plan is capable of and why it matters in travel and tourism today. So a lot of education data and case studies, the data really hit an inflection point in 2019. That study we did at the national in the United States, it was a national scale, was the first ever study globally on the cannabis travel audience, which is where the conversation begins. So now there’s an audience to reach, how do they choose their destinations, how do they spend and how do they move about a market when they’re visiting a place? So it’s an industry, it’s a business about how do we engage this audience and how do we evolve to meet the moment and to integrate these experiences within the travel economy.

Obviously the evolution of trends like this effect pairing trend and the data showing that the audience has this IQ that goes above and beyond, Hey, let’s go to a cannabis event, where now they’re looking at it as it gives you a dotted line to the other segments of travel, like arts and culture. So now there’s data that shows that cannabis has a relationship that drives economic impact and interest to other parts of the travel economy, whether it’s arts and culture or restaurants and culinary, right? It’s that cannabis as a precursor to the Michelin Star meal, which is very different than the cannabis infused dining experience where you’re sitting there with the plant being integrated into the meal. So understanding how those are different is a really interesting development of trend. The beautiful part is policy is slowly inching along too. In California this year, it looks like we have two bills that could really move the needle.

We have the Cannabis Cafe bill, which will basically bring in some food capacity as well as ticket sales and a few other things that really elevate the retailer above and beyond shop or a lounge above and beyond a lounge where you have to kind of play and figure out creatively how to make this interesting. So hopefully that Cannabis Cafe Bill will pass. We also have the Cannabis Catering Catering bill that actually the origin of that bill is the Cannabis Travel Association. We worked hard to look at the Alcohol catering license in California, and the first draft was doing a cannabis version of that. And the reason that that is so important is because it gives the hotel industry of California and the hospitality industry of California the ability to have a relatable license where they can be like, okay, I understand that that’s a very clear legal pathway to having cannabis catering at a wedding on my property.

So it kind of takes all that guesswork and that gray area out and normalizes cannabis and makes it accessible so we can keep normalization and create a new distribution point in hospitality and tourism specifically. So the policy evolution’s awesome. A lot of my work in the past four or five years has been with what I think, well, I mean probably biased because it’s where I live and breathe day to day, but it’s with destination marketing organizations like San Francisco Travel Visit Oakland, visit Mendocino County. I’ve worked with about 20 destinations at this point doing different scopes that all center around the cannabis travel audience and what is the strategy. And typically, there’s a few phases to that. There’s of course, the foundational education data. Let’s go ahead and get everybody singing, understanding what this is in a real factual way and the data behind it, and then there’s some destination development that needs to happen.

Sometimes that comes in the form of an experienced product, like if you look@thecannabistrail.com or if you go to the Visit Oakland website, you’ll see a trail that is an expanded version of the cannabis trail itself. You could look at Visit Modesto has a cannabis passport. So you see these different experience products where the destination is investing. Now, unfortunately, the cannabis industry and a lot of ’em are buried and stressed and trying to figure out how to survive, but they haven’t been able necessarily to really show up and meet the moment. There’s a handful that do. I’m kind of surprised with all the complaints about marketing and cannabis when these opportunities come with this powerful partnership that shops and lounges don’t make the space to really understand the gravity of what that means. Interesting. But there was a big inflection point this year where now we have the first ever cooperative marketing campaign happening in California between three different destinations that are coming together to market and to promote and to uplift the cannabis trail, which is a nine county trail in Northern California.

That is a cultural trail that kind of celebrates how cannabis has been part of California history and culture. The last thing I’ll mention that I think is exciting is, and I don’t think a lot of cannabis brands and businesses know this, but about two or three years ago, visit California basically awarded a poppy award, which is a big deal in the travel industry of California to visit. Modesto was a top three finalist for basically a marketing strategy that had to do with the cannabis passport last year visit. Oakland was a top three recognized destination for their cannabis trail and their cannabis program, specifically their campaign that was this four 20 choose equity travel, the Oakland Cannabis Trail, and that was a US travel award. So you’re seeing whether the cannabis industry is aware of it or not, the travel industry is picking up on this and understanding the importance of integrating and guiding and supporting the growth of cannabis brands, businesses, and experience creators that have the IQ and understand the travel industry and want to be part of that as an attraction. And that’s not everybody. So it’s figuring out, is your cannabis brand business interested in tapping into that tourism economy?

TG Branfalt:

And I do want to ask you, I know that organizations like Visit Modesto and Visit Oakland. Those are run by municipalities, but do you get any pushback or anything like that from say, chambers of commerce that in many states initially push back against cannabis legalization and oftentimes, typically don’t want to work with cannabis businesses once it is legalized?

Brian Applegarth:

So I mean, I’ve witnessed some of this in my world too. I mean, reefer madness is real, right? And there’s some super conservative people and some super conservative destinations. That being said, I think that I always approach it with meet ’em where they’re at and bring the data, the fact-based education and the case studies of people that they can look at their peers of the industry. And that is the formula that I have found in travel is that moves the needle. So it’s not about me trying to convince ’em, it’s me being a resource of information. And then as they continue seeing this evolve, they’re going to step into it when the time is right or they won’t. And I mean, I would argue that that is a poor decision as a destination because you should be promoting public safety, and that just doesn’t mean visitor safety.

It means safety of your hospitality industry. You should be supporting your hotel frontline staff, your hospitality frontline staff with understanding how to respond when visitors show up, or if visitors have potentially over-consumed, what’s your best practice as a hotel? This is like, I think it’s essential from a travel hospitality industry point of view to invest in the safety of your destination. I actually equate it to what happened during Covid Covid destination stepped in and took an amazing role in providing information on what was happening, how to deal with it, what are the guidelines today, all the masks, the little window shields, all the non-touch. There was a huge exercise in serving as a public service to your destination stakeholders. I believe at the most foundational level of cannabis travel and tourism, that information provider and public safety role is something that every destination, if you’re in a legal cannabis state, that means people are using consuming, buying, carrying cannabis, which means that your hospitality, your travel economy needs to be ready for whatever that means, right?

And we all know cannabis has this altering effect for the THC rich products. Yeah. So that reform, madness, stigma, it doesn’t bother me. I understand it’s there. I just think you got to be in service and really just bring the fact-based information and data to help move the needle. And then you’ll have the destinations raise their hand that really see cannabis as a differentiator or something that’s really going to become part of their destination brand visit. Oakland is a great example of this. So is Visit Mendocino County. I’ve also started working with Humboldt County Visitors Bureau, so the Emerald Triangle is obviously key. I’ve done some work with Hello Burlington, doing some education out in Vermont. So these destinations are definitely starting to look at this audience and the opportunity, and I think it’s a great time for any cannabis brand or business listening this podcast to start really thinking about what’s your plan?

There was a study that came out, a data point that came out from Whitney Economics. Beau Whitney does great data, and essentially it came out through Forbes in May, 2022. So it’s a little dated, but I think it’s worth bringing up here today, basically of the 25 billion of cannabis spend and revenue in the United States back in 20 22, 4 0.5 billion of that. So let’s just say 2020 5% was attributed to the visitor spend. Now, what’s interesting about that is for every dollar spent in the travel world, we talk about an incremental multiplier because visitors, they’re going to restaurants, they’re going to art galleries, they’re going on canoe trips and rafting, and so they are experiencing the destination and they’re spending in a very different way than a resident. So for every dollar spent in a cannabis shop, Bo quoted that about $2 and 80 cents multiplier is injected into the local economy. That’s significant, significant man. And it means that the cannabis tourism opportunity was a 17 billion opportunity for destinations. So if you’re a retail shop, knowing how much of that spend is a visitor spend and making some sense around that and how you’re going to partner with the travel industry and keep growing that and or maximizing the basket size in your shop that already exists. These are all strategies worth considering today because we are at an inflection point here.

TG Branfalt:

I do want to ask another question about barriers, because in many states, if you are a tourist or even countries, I go to Canada quite frequently where cannabis is legal for adult use, but there’s no real great place to consume. You can’t go into hotels, motels, even some RV parks that I’ve been to get a little salty when you light a joint. Are you seeing any evolution on this front with regard to just hospitality, just your sort of mainstream hospitality organization or companies?

Brian Applegarth:

Yeah, I mean, I really, I promote having a plan, right? Because there are people that like to inhale, whether that’s smoking or whether that’s vaping, which are both a little bit different. And then of course, all the other products that are beverages, edibles, all the other ways to consume topicals, et cetera. So I encourage hotels and resorts to say, are you cannabis friendly? And if so, what does that mean? Are you inhalation friendly or not? Do you have a dedicated place on your property where you can communicate in a very clear way to your hotel guests so they know what is and isn’t allowed? I’ve worked with a couple hotels where we’ve actually done bespoke programs where they offer cannabis delivery as a service amenity in their hotel.

And some of these hotels, the menu that we curate for the hotel approved menu are products that are five milligrams or less, and they’re all non inhalation. So now you have a product, and instead of turning it into a weird conversation where it’s all about where do I smoke? And now I’m cleaning the room and there’s an extra fee and it’s a negative, maybe there’s a bad Yelp review. This is all brand tarnish from a destination brand perspective or a hotel perspective. So if you work with a hotel to actually have a clear plan, partner with a lounge, make sure you pick a lounge or a shop in town that’s on brand for your hotel guest. I’ll remember one hotel I was working with, I was in there kind of secret shopping and talking to the valet and being, Hey man, we can I get some weed? And he was recommending a delivery that was unlicensed. And then of course, and this was before I worked with them, so I was identifying all the risks and gaps.

And the worst thing is you have a hotel where you have your frontline staff recommending a black market delivery or underground delivery that’s not licensed delivering untested products. I would actually say that the risk for you in that capacity by putting your head in the sand is your risk is exponential and unknown. Because if that unlicensed delivery is now delivering untested products to your guests that was recommended by your staff and something happens there like vape gate, how does that play out for you as a business that serves guests? Another problem I saw was you have deliveries show up where they walk in the lobby shop and they’re off brands. Let’s just say that they’re not part of a four or five star hotel and they’re parking their car in front of valet and throwing the hazards on. There’s no, so not having a plan is a route you could take.

I would argue that the risks are exponential and unknown, including brand tarnish on your hotel as well as your destination and potentially the health of your guests. So at what point do you start making a plan to be train your staff in this kind of thing? So yeah, I mean, those are some of the things that I saw. Another thing I saw was you’d have people that would use the cannabis in the room and they would leave their products on the table or whatever, and then of course, housekeeping or somebody would eat the chocolate, and all of a sudden you’re dealing with, so having a disposal program where you clearly tell people, if you don’t use your cannabis products, make sure you please dispose of them in the trash in this way or in this container is just another thoughtful way to put up the guardrails to make sure that you’re ensuring a safe place of work, a safe visitor experience, and you’re kind of mitigating all the risks and negative impacts that can come when you don’t have a plan or you’re not addressing it.

TG Branfalt:

So on your website, you have endorsements for many travel industry CEOs, you’ve mentioned many of them, such as Visit Modesto, visit Oakland, hello Burlington and Travel Santa Ana. Was it an uphill climb getting those organizations and organizations like those on board with cannabis tourism?

Brian Applegarth:

I wouldn’t describe it as an uphill climb. I knew that it would come. I just didn’t know when. So when I started in this, when I started jumping into cannabis travel and tourism, I knew that I was one of the first, if not the first, doing this in the travel side of the industry especially. And I knew that I needed to follow where leadership directed me, where they wanted me to apply my energy and my efforts and my brain power. And that was data and information and education. And over years, I’ve been attending travel industry conferences and been supporting the travel industry in navigating the cannabis and hemp discussion for 10 plus years now. And over that time, you develop relationships and trust. And also I understand how that industry operates, right? It’s very different than the cannabis industry, the travel industry. They literally have an annual marketing framework that the whole industry looks at through Visit California in this instance.

And the destinations international, they have membership from around the world, from Japan, a lot through North America, plenty of representation out of Canada, all across the United States. And they literally roll out a cannabis, or excuse me, a travel industry lexicon every year to talk about what’s being said at the national and international level. And this is because it’s a mature industry with leadership at the top that’s steering a really big ship. The legal cannabis industry is nascent, burgeoning, and still trying to figure out what we do as an industry to help guide the cannabis industry voice, and what is that connective bridge or that connective thread to an industry like travel where that cannabis experience economy is intrinsically linked. And you even see this in manufacturing. I want to bring this up too. I think that the cannabis industry will be able to have better representation and more influence if we have more and more beyond shops, consumption lounges, consumption spaces, sampling rooms, spas beyond all those kind of very, there’s also this manufacturing capability. Think of the Coors Brewery factory in Colorado, or the Launi has an amazing tourism strategy in Sonoma County,

TG Branfalt:

Ben and Jerry’s outside of Burlington.

Brian Applegarth:

There you go. So I used to live in Sonoma County, and when I was up there, I sat down about five, six years ago with the team up there, and they told me they put through about 30,000 people a year that by swag, they go on tours, they become evangelists and walking, talking billboards of the brand and the culture, and they enroll, they subscribe. It becomes part of that consumer identity through travel and tourism and experience creation. So I think manufacturers starting to think in these terms. Lounges starting to really think outside the box as consumption spaces. And how do you curate that experience where, I mean, just imagine it’s a 90 minute experience when people leave there, they feel full of information and surprise and delight moments and joy. Think of how can we start creating an incredibly robust cannabis experience economy that serves the plant, all the capabilities of the plant, and how do we work together to make sure that we’re building that in a way that is really sustainable and we’re kind of letting it be its highest expression. We’re being guides and stewards as an industry, as cannabis industry, to bring this forward in a way where we’re really partnered with the travel industry in a very strong way, and we’re serving, again, the plant in the ground. I find that with my work, typically if you look at the biology of the plant, you understand the history, the case studies, there’s a lot of tools there that you can help bring today into the current kind of tourism and travel ecosystem.

TG Branfalt:

The other thing that I want to really sort of get at is you are the leader of the cannabis and hemp task force for the California Travel Association. Is there a cannabis and hemp task force in any other state travel association that you know of?

Brian Applegarth:

The only other one I’m aware of is the one that I run similar. It’s called the Cannabis and have task force, and it’s for Destinations International. So the task force members there are all pretty much CEOs of destinations, whether it’s Hello Burlington, whether it’s their leadership level, travel industry, CEOs that are trying to learn about this and also listen to each other of what are the fires, where are the pain points, where are the success stories? And those peers trade information, and I’m kind of their guide. I sit here with data information. If I hear something said that’s not accurate, I just kind of bring up some other fact-based education for it. And then I’m really excited now that of course, me and my team are being brought in to create cannabis programs and strategies and even manage marketing budgets that are dedicated toward that cannabis travel audience, which is maybe different than the wine traveler or a different travel segment. Actually, let me actually correct that. The data actually shows that the cannabis travel audience skews higher as a wine enthusiast than the average active leisure traveler, which is another myth I see a lot of battling between the wine and the cannabis industries. And I’m like you guys, we’re catering to a similar audience here. It’s people who love good food, they love good weed, they love good wine, they probably like craft beer. These are people that enjoy being on vacation and enjoy imbibing with effect products that really color out that experience in that way.

TG Branfalt:

Well, I mean, not for nothing. There is some evidence showing that alcohol consumption rates of wine and craft beer have gone down in states that have legalized cannabis. Do you think that other adult use states should have somebody like you a cannabis culturist on these boards? And how do we get individuals into these roles? I mean, you do a lot, but I don’t think you can do it all there, pal.

Brian Applegarth:

Yeah, I would totally advocate for that. I think that having representation is important. I mean, for me, having a well-rounded, well-balanced round table where you have all of your community represented that are business license holders and taxpayers. Now what I would warn the cannabis industry, what I’ve seen been the kind of Achilles heel is it is man, it’s cutthroat. And people are showing up with just their success in mind. They’re not, for some reason, the cannabis industry has a problem sitting down and putting the hat on of, I’m going to represent the cannabis voice in this room and not just my business or my brand. So you got to come at it from a way of stewardship representing the cannabis piece of the pie in the travel vertical, in the travel ecosystem. And I find that that’s really hard for cannabis people right now, cannabis business holders and brands because everyone is fighting in this foundational level still of this young industry.

So I would encourage people that are community minded and that have the time to gather up your data. Feel free to email me, find me on my website@brianapplegarth.com, get some data, get some case studies, and become a resource for your, let’s just say it’s your marketing committee under your destination marketing organization. Understand what that means. A great way to get started is to start following your local destination marketing organization on Instagram and go to their website. Usually you can download their strategic plan, their brand guidelines, start thinking beyond just your brand at least 20% of the time. I mean, looking at the data that Beau put forward, I would argue that, I mean, if you’re a shop, at least 20% of your attention, awareness, marketing budget should go toward tourism travel and the visitor economy and the cannabis travel audience strategies. I did an economic impact study on cannabis travel and tourism in the visit Greater Palm Springs region in partnership with tourism economics.

And they found that certain shops and lounges in this valley up to 50% or more were tourism spends. Now, if your shop is getting 50% from visitor, you better be focused on not just the cannabis travel audience marketing and why that’s so different than resident marketing, but also that travel industry partnerships like in the visit Greater Palm Springs region where I live now, part of the year, the travel industry is an $8 billion industry. It’s a bigger industry than the entire cannabis industry of California today. So if you’re a shopper lounge in this valley across nine cities, Coachella Valley, so get educated, study your DMO website, father Instagram, look into if they have a marketing committee, and make sure that you’re doing it authentically for the greater good of the cannabis industry at large. And again, you can hit me up on the email if you want some collateral that might help point you in the right direction of getting started. But you got to look at yourself as part of an ecosystem that includes airports, hotels, rental car companies, attractions, resorts. Think of yourself as a cannabis attraction, a cannabis experience creator, and do it in the spirit of supporting your whole industry with understanding that in a deeper way.

TG Branfalt:

Is there a way for somebody to maybe do this outside of some sort of official system that allows them to work with legal businesses in providing similar sort of experiences, be it dining excursions? Is there any great advice you would have for anyone who isn’t interested in doing that?

Brian Applegarth:

Let me make sure I understand your question. So people who are interested in starting to create to create their own experience offering, is that what

TG Branfalt:

You’re saying? Yeah, working with other businesses to do that sort of thing without the backing of maybe their local travel organization.

Brian Applegarth:

Yeah, no, I mean sometimes I use the phrase the coalition of the willing and isn’t in terms of if you find those restaurants, those art galleries, maybe it’s an event that’s coming to town that’s not cannabis, but it has this data-driven dotted line. For example, let’s just say it’s a food and art festival where you’re like, man, cannabis food and art that pretty on the nose. I like that. So then you reach out to the festival producer and you start exploring of how can we collaborate around this? And the beautiful part about that proactive approach as well is if you’re marketing it and messaging it correctly to the travel industry stakeholders of your destination, the destination marketing organization will take note. They’ll see the cannabis brands and the cannabis experience outposts, or whether that’s a shop or a lounge or something else that are actively integrating with the community in a way that’s very experiential and very storytelling rich.

And as you become one of those trusted partners, you will enjoy the benefits of that, which is increased foot traffic from the cannabis travel audience, increasing your spend in shop. If you’re investing in your internal, in shopper, in lounge strategies or in consumption space strategies, you’ll have really amazing partnerships that very few other cannabis brand shops or lounges or partners have. And as long as you invest in continually being one of the shining kind of lights for the experienced storytelling, you’re going to widen your kind of cards in your deck when it comes to creating a successful business. And I would argue that there are cannabis shops and lounges and consumption spaces where it is vital that you integrate. And if your travel economy is the biggest economy in your destination, then you better be looking and giving that attention and investment and thinking about real sustainable replicable strategies year over year where you could continue to grow and engage the travel industry in that way because that’s going to be a differentiator that sets you apart.

TG Branfalt:

I think that’s really, really astute sort of advice, and I appreciate you answering the question. I do want to ask switch gears a little bit and ask you about being a cannabis sommelier. There may be a lot of people listening to this podcast who have no idea what that is or what you do in that role. So could you explain that a bit?

Brian Applegarth:

Absolutely. Yeah. So basically I took the GANJI certification, which is a cannabis sommelier course that was developed in California with about 25 just luminaries. And that’s what got my attention was twofold. I was very aware when it was in development. The people that developed the Ganji, the crew that they brought in to do this was very well orchestrated. And also, obviously a cannabis sommelier is an incredibly important role in travel and tourism. So I knew early on once this thing got launched, I wanted to get the certification and understand what it was because it is an absolute bullseye when it comes to tourism and travel, and I don’t think I have to expand beyond that, but just think of Napa Sono wine Country wine sommeliers and how robust that is in tourism. So basically it was a course that was very rich with education, everything from cannabis history and culture to the ability to analyze and assess concentrates and flower.

You use a jewelers loop to see how ripe the trichomes are, and then of course, being able to analyze and assess terpene profiles, cannabinoid profiles, assess trimming, the quality of the trim, and then of course the effects of the smoke. So it’s really understanding that raw flower. We also do get into topicals and some of those things as well and how that’s used. So obviously with cannabis, there’s a lot to unpack. I would highly recommend that people look into the ganji. It’s a fantastic knowledge base. And what I really like about it is I see all the other Ganji graduates that we’re a part of, and each one has their own specialization and expertise. And there’s some people that are super hardcore concentrate people and other people that are more into beverages and edibles, and now there’s people being hired to be reviewers and other people are trying to more to be in charge of purchasing in cannabis shops to really assess the quality and kind of price, the price of the, and what the consumer is getting.

So yeah, I mean, for me, my kind of niche in that ganji world is I am definitely a culturalist and kind of an amateur historian. I love telling that story of cannabis as a plant that has co-evolved with human beings and pointing to the biology of the endocannabinoid system and the flower and how it’s one of the most evolved intelligent plants that we have access to and how we should be utilizing that. I also am more of a flower guy. If I’m smoking, it’s straight flour and hash. I don’t like it infused with anything I like, either nice, pure hash or pure flour. I’m definitely a sungrown person. I want my flour grown outdoors in an Appalachian, in a terroir, because for me, with travel, it’s all about placemaking. And if you could tell a story about a farm and not just a farm that maybe was running from camp during the war on drugs and has an amazing cultural, historical past of legacy, but also today is growing terroir, microclimate, sungrown, beautiful cannabis flowers, and why that makes that specific place or that specific slope or ridge or that soil special that is tourism.

So definitely drawn to more of the legacy regenerative outdoor sungrown craft, and then the craft products that are made from that sungrown flower. And if you look at the science as far as the cannabinoid expression and the terpene expression, if you look at the full spectrum of sungrown, it’s impossible to replicate the sun, the wind, the natural elements, and the way that the cannabis expresses itself will show you that. So in my opinion, sungrown is the highest quality, and it comes down to the science and having the fullest spectrum of therapeutic properties and compounds.

TG Branfalt:

I mean, you can absolutely, I’m not a sommelier or anything, but you can absolutely tell the difference between something that was grown indoors and something that was grown outdoors. To your point, what to you is the most exciting thing about the maturation of the industry?

Brian Applegarth:

I mean, the most exciting thing for me is I really do feel like cannabis and hemp are coming forward at a critical time in human evolution and the evolution of a global culture. We have technology at our fingertips in the last a hundred years. We have airplanes and transportation, and now we have this ancient plant that has all this capacity to help be a vehicle to facilitate hopefully a more sustainable, tolerant, compassionate, healthy world. And in my instance, I look at travel and tourism as my platform to try to do my best every day, to be a guide for the plant, to be recognized for what it is. Really, it’s just being a vessel and a vehicle to make sure that cannabis travel and tourism as it gets adopted and integrated into the global travel economy, that we’re not just thinking about smoking weed and lounges.

We’re also thinking about how hemp integrates into hotels and into the travel economy to uplift sustainability. We’re thinking about flowers of cannabis that are grown in a regenerative way, right? We’re thinking about what cannabis meant and the war on drugs meant for urban communities that were negatively impacted by the war on drugs and why equity license shops is a really important lesson that we should look closely at and not forget the roots of and why restorative justice is a pathway toward a more sustainable global culture where we all are able to work together to really make a better, healthier, happier world and a more tolerant, compassionate, global society. And it’s a really interesting time through a lot of flowery words out there, but that’s genuinely what drives me is I do believe that hemp and cannabis have immense power, and we need people at the top of the cannabis industry and the travel industry and other industries where there’s intersections that are doing the right things for the right reasons, that aren’t just driven by more is better, and that are just focused on certain gains that are not having long lasting impact on really making things better for people.

And planet.

TG Branfalt:

Brian, man, it’s been a couple of years. You’re even more somehow a fountain of knowledge than you were during our first episode a few years ago. And I really appreciate you taking the time, coming on the show again and updating us on the state of cannabis travel and tourism and the whole thing. Where can people find out more about you and all of your many hats?

Brian Applegarth:

Yeah, absolutely. The best website, well, there’s two websites. One is brian applegarth.com, that’s Brian with an I and the other website I would encourage everyone to take a look at who’s interested is the cannabis trail.com. That is a project that’s near and dear to my heart. I’ve been working on that for about six, seven years now. It’s a nine county trail and it’s really coming alive, and we’re creating an app at the moment that we’re going to be launching next year. So the cannabis trail.com, check it out. And if you want to learn more about Apple Garth strategies and what myself and my team offer for services for destinations, but also cannabis brands, we are starting to work with cannabis brands and businesses that want to start investing in the visitor economy and the travel economy. So if you see something that has interest, check out those websites and reach out to us and we look forward to hearing from you. And tg, I really appreciate you bringing me on. Thank you so much for what you do.

TG Branfalt:

It’s always a pleasure, man. Always a pleasure. Hopefully next time it won’t be a couple of years between us connecting. It’s Brian Applegarth. He is the founder of Applegarth Strategies, an agency that specializes in the intersection of cannabis and travel. The founder of the Cannabis Travel Association, leader of the Cannabis and Hemp Task Force for the California Travel Association and Destinations International. He’s also an industry consultant and a certified Ganji cannabis sommelier. You can find more episodes of the entrepreneur.com podcast in the podcast section of entrepreneur.com or wherever you get your podcast. It’s 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 with Engineered by Wayward Sound Studio. I’ve been your host, TG Branfalt.

In this episode of the Ganjapreneur podcast, host TG Branfalt connects with the multi-talented Ngaio Bealum. Ngaio is a true cannabis renaissance man—comedian, musician, writer, actor, and activist—known for his work as a host of numerous events and shows, including the International Cannabis Business Conference, and the Emerald Cup. In this engaging conversation, Ngaio shares his journey from performer to cannabis advocate, discussing how his background in activism and entertainment has shaped his approach to cannabis education and advocacy, what role entertainment plays in educating the public about cannabis, and more. Listen to the episode below or in your favorite podcast app, or scroll down for the full transcript!

Listen to the episode:

Full transcript:

Editor’s note: this transcript was auto-generated and may contain typos/errors.

TG Branfalt (00:09):

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 am real excited to be joined by Ngaio Bealum. He’s a comedian, musician, writer, actor, activist, previous host of the Cannabis Planet and host of the International Cannabis Business Conference and Emerald Cup. How are you doing this morning, my good man?

Ngaio Bealum (00:37):

I’m awake, which is the first step. We wouldn’t, it’s first step to most days last night. Yeah. Yeah. Wake up every day is a good day if you’re awake and relatively free.

TG Branfalt (00:50):

Relatively free is–

Ngaio Bealum (00:51):

Relatively way to describe it. We all have minor hangups and problems constraining our true freedom, but we’re doing our best.

TG Branfalt (00:58):

So before we get into your role as basically a cannabis renaissance man, tell me about yourself. Give me a little bit of background on how you ended up the entertainer, the host, the sort of human being you’ve become.

Ngaio Bealum (01:17):

I’m an Aquarius, six foot three. I like long walks from the beach. Any kind of good music, I don’t know, man. I was a comedian and a street performer and I started smoking weed and really looking into why weed wasn’t legal and it seemed like bullshit to me, and I come from a long line of activists. So we just started activating and you have to offer what skills you have, and it turns out I’m pretty funny and I’m good at handling crowds and disseminating information. And so it just worked out like that. So I posted, I host the Oregon Hemp Fest and the Arizona Growers Cup and the Missouri Growers Cup and the old Seattle Hemp Fest and a bunch of different things. I’ve done some High Times Cups, I do the Emerald Cup every year. I do the International Cannabis Business Conference series. We do Berlin, we do Barcelona, we’ve done Zurich and Vancouver. It’s just really nice.

TG Branfalt (02:14):

So first off, what role do you think that entertainers or people in that sphere should have in activism, specifically in cannabis?

Ngaio Bealum (02:26):

I mean, I think every entertainer should be way more, not every, but a lot of entertainers should be more active activists than they are now. I mean, I think that’s just part of the thing you do. You know what I mean? And so for me it’s just kind of a no brainer. And entertainment and education kind of go head in hand if listen to old Ks one albums, the whole ed, if you think of Rocks edu, if you think of even things like, so we were supposed to be entertainment every day and we’re supposed to learn every day, so why not combine the two?

TG Branfalt (03:08):

And a lot of the standup that I’ve seen, it’s very smart, and I think all good standup. I mean, you look at George Carlin

Ngaio Bealum (03:15):

Like standup in general, or my standup in particular?

TG Branfalt (03:17):

Your standup in particular

Ngaio Bealum (03:19):

Did a lot of me standup. I seen, I was like, I’ve seen some pretty dumb standup, which is also great.

TG Branfalt (03:25):

But I think

Ngaio Bealum (03:26):

That I like stupid standup as well.

TG Branfalt (03:28):

The stuff that I really enjoy is the sort of smartest side. Like I said, Carlin, I really enjoy what came first for you. Obviously you probably used cannabis before you were an entertainer, but how’d you work that into your routine?

Ngaio Bealum (03:46):

You talk about what you know, right? That’s what they always tell writers. Talk about what you know. So I have two albums. One is called Weed and Sex, and the other is called Weeder and Sexier, which means, of course, weediest and Sexiest will be probably coming out sometime this year. Next

TG Branfalt (04:03):

What comes after Weediest and Sexiest?

Ngaio Bealum (04:06):

Lemme just get high and look at it. No, so I mean, that’s just how it is. I wanted to spread the word of cannabis legalization and activism and give people good information about cannabis in a fun and entertaining manner. And it just happened to work out like that. It’s interesting because when I first started 30 years ago, everybody was like, oh, well, we already have teaching ch, we don’t really need another pot comic. All he does is talking about pot, which is not true. But now that 30 years later, cannabis is legal in some form between the six different states, and we Why, and Germany just decriminalized now they’re like, oh, we need more pot comics, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So you could have listened to me 30 years ago, I’m not bitter,

TG Branfalt (05:03):

But 30 years ago, I mean more than 30 years ago, we had Cheech and Chong, right? In my sort of lifetime, the big movies were Friday. And so how has legalization changed?

Ngaio Bealum (05:18):

A lot of times, and this is just a thing for me, a lot of times in a lot of those cannabis movies, the stoner’s not the hero, right? Chris Tucker’s not really the hero in Friday. Anna Ferris loses all of her stuff in her stoner movie. Even the Afroman song, he fails repeatedly because he got high, which was bullshit, right? I was going to clean my house, and so I got high not, but then I got high, and so I got high because I had a nice sativa, helps me clean shit, and that’s how I feel about it. You think about Half Baked, he had to give up weed to stay with that girl. So we are trying to make cannabis users the heroes and not just tattoo have problems until they give up weed, which seems to be bullshit.

TG Branfalt (06:04):

Is there anything sort of contemporarily in the mainstream that does in your estimation, paint cannabis consumers as heroes?

Ngaio Bealum (06:13):

Cabin in the Woods? The stoner is correct the whole time.

TG Branfalt (06:19):

It’s not something I’ve ever seen actually.

Ngaio Bealum (06:23):

It’s a good horror movie, but he sees through the whole conspiracy, so he knows the whole, he figures it out right away.

TG Branfalt (06:30):

Wouldn’t that raise some questions though, that cannabis consumers are conspiratorial and thinking?

Ngaio Bealum (06:37):

Well, it’s not conspiracy if it’s actually true.

TG Branfalt (06:41):

That’s true.

Ngaio Bealum (06:43):

And the movie rules, so he just figured it out.

TG Branfalt (06:48):

So you’ve been a journalist For a long time. And currently you’re penning a Dear D column.

Ngaio Bealum (06:58):

Oh man, I haven’t written that one in a minute. So I’ve been a cannabis advice columnist for the Sacramento News Review. I did some for I think the Alternate, and I was the weekly columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle for a long time. And yeah, I think I did. Dear Gabby, for Leafly, shout out David Downs. We just did San Francisco Weed Week. I was the host of mc for a bunch of events out there, and it was fantastic.

TG Branfalt (07:25):

What were some of the challenges to penning a cannabis advice column?

Ngaio Bealum (07:31):

Make sure you have good advice. Call the experts.

(07:37):

That’s really the deal. Being a cannabis advice column columnist is almost like, let me Google that for you, but also I know a lot of people, so somebody has a good question. I’m like, oh, Ed probably knows the answer to that. He grows weed, or Lisa probably knows the answer to that. She wrote a whole book about weed and sex, or you call your homies who specialize in these things and you look up the news and you call an elected official or a police officer or two, and you’re like, what is the real rule on this? And sometimes you just go with your own personal experience, right? Like TSA doesn’t really give a shit. If you have a small amount of cannabis. If you bring a bunch of cannabis and try to be a little sneaky asshole about it, they’ll fuck with you. But if you got a few grams here or there that you can reasonably argue personal use, it’s not going to blow up the plane.

TG Branfalt (08:25):

What intrigued you about doing an advice column?

Ngaio Bealum (08:28):

Advice? It was not really my idea. I was running West Coast Cannabis magazine and it was falling apart. I don’t want to talk about it, but my homie who was working at the Sacramento News and Review, because I called him looking for work, I’m like, Hey man, I need some work. Let me write some stories for you. He was like, Hey, why don’t you do a weed column? And I was like, yeah, why don’t I do a weed column? That’s a good idea. And so we started out with the Ask 420 column of the Sacramento News Review, and I did that for five, six, let’s see, 2000, shit, I did it almost like 10 years, like 2010, 2011 to the pandemic.

TG Branfalt (09:09):

Is there a question that you were asked during your tenure doing that that sticks out to you as just kind of super weird?

Ngaio Bealum (09:18):

No, there’s no weird questions, only weird people.

TG Branfalt (09:26):

Is there any weird people that may stick out to you during that tenure?

Ngaio Bealum (09:33):

I can’t really think of anything. I mean, it’s just the usual, how will this cannabis affect me? I feel weird buying weed for my grandfather because he’s sick and I’m a super deep Christian, but this cannabis is really helping him, and I dunno how to reconcile that. Can I stick this medicated lollipop in my ass? These aren’t, it’s not rocket signs. Yes, you can.

TG Branfalt (10:03):

Not going to hurt in the long,

Ngaio Bealum (10:04):

You probably want one with a different shape. It’s the shape of the lollipop that’s the problem because you want one with the tapered in,

TG Branfalt (10:11):

So you have to mold it in that way for,

Ngaio Bealum (10:14):

You don’t want to get it stuck. So really you should just buy a different, anyway, a different device.

TG Branfalt (10:21):

So I mean, in your role as in entertainment, you had cooking on high, which was on Netflix. How can these sort of new mediums do you think help to maybe challenge the previously held cannabis stigmas? The ones that A, B-C-N-B-C-C-B-S, right? And all these sort of legacy news channels really opposed

Ngaio Bealum (10:42):

Shit, man, they still really oppose it. I mean, YouTube doesn’t like weed that much. Instagram hates me. Snapchat is kind of cool. TikTok is really strict about it. You can’t even say weed, you have to spell it. O-U-I-D. Wait for real, right? Oui’d, like your French. So I mean, I don’t know if we’ve really overcome a lot of propaganda. I’m Ngaio420. I built a lot of cannabis followers because I was on Netflix and all these other things. If I post a picture of cannabis or talk about a brand, Instagram gets super upset. I mean, I guess it’s okay to smoke weed or if I post a little stupid funny cannabis meme, Instagram loves it. They spread that one all around. But if I post some shit like, Hey, here’s some new rules, or here’s the new law, or here’s a new strain I just tried from these guys. They’re like, oh, you can’t do that. That’s promoting for use, and yet there’s people drinking the whole time. It’s still in uphill battle battles never state won.

TG Branfalt (11:44):

So when you post the stuff under your name and it gets, like has your account ever been banned or anything over?

Ngaio Bealum (11:56):

I’ve been shadow banned for sure. I think it’s stemming from the time I tried to raffle off a bong, which, fair enough. I was pushing, I was pushing the envelope a little bit on that. I don’t think I’ve ever been, I think I was locked out of my account for a couple of days once until we figure it out. But I’ve never, they threatened to ban me and I have friends who get banned, not all the time, but they’ve been banned a few times. I try to keep it pretty cool. I’ve tried to follow the rules, but it’s hard because I just want to talk about, that’s my whole thing. If I find some good weed, I want to spread the word. You know what I mean? Or if I find some bad weed, I want to spread the word. Or if I have some good cannabis advice, I want to spread the word and they won’t let me do it.

TG Branfalt (12:40):

So I’ve read,

Ngaio Bealum (12:42):

And it’s weird because if you have a smaller account, you’re kind of under the radar. You can do almost anything you want. But once you get to a certain point, then there’s scrutiny until you get to an even bigger point, and then you can do almost anything you want to hear. So I need like 400,000 more followers. If your listeners are listening, I know you have 400,000 listeners, have them all,

TG Branfalt (13:05):

But then you’ll get real banned because they’ll know what you’re doing.

Ngaio Bealum (13:10):

No, it’s not buying followers.

TG Branfalt (13:14):

No, no, no, no. But because then you’ll be I’ll beg and they’ll know underground anymore. You’ll sold

Ngaio Bealum (13:21):

Out. Listen, high times gets to buy ads on Instagram, and yet I can’t smoke a bong. It’s just the weirdest thing. I don’t understand the rules. I feel like the rules are arbitrary and capricious, and depending on which federal agent you have watching your Instagram account at any particular time, that’s how far they’ll let you go.

TG Branfalt (13:43):

They’re definitely watching everyone’s accounts,

Ngaio Bealum (13:46):

Even as we speak.

TG Branfalt (13:48):

Even as we speak, there’ll be privacy. They’ll be writing this by hand, transcribing this by hand,

Ngaio Bealum (13:52):

Privacy is dead, discretion is forever.

TG Branfalt (13:57):

I mean, it’s given me convenience or give me death sort of atmosphere at this point, right? We’re totally happy to be tracked as long as they’re selling us Nikes, right?

Ngaio Bealum (14:07):

No, I don’t want them to sell me Nikes. They sell me golf things and advice on how to meet thick women apparently is what Instagram thinks that I’m all about. Here’s some golf apparel and here’s some cute, thick girls.

TG Branfalt (14:21):

Are you a good golfer?

Ngaio Bealum (14:23):

I like to golf.

TG Branfalt (14:26):

I like to golf badly On nice days.

Ngaio Bealum (14:31):

I just like to golf. Sometimes I’m halfway decent for a hot minute, and sometimes I’m not a very good golfer at all.

TG Branfalt (14:37):

How does weed help your golf game? I

Ngaio Bealum (14:38):

Still enjoy it. Weed does not help my golf game. I wish it did. I keep trying to find the right strain because I used to warm up and then smoke some weed and then see it goes and try to lock it in. I think it’s better for me if I get a little high on the way to the golf course and then let it smooth out by the time I get to the golf course. But I can’t just smoke weed constantly, then the overthinking starts. That’s the thing about golf. You have a lot of time to think to yourself, and so then it’s like, oh, I want to put my elbow here and my knee here and the thing. No, shut up. Hit the fucking ball. Quit thinking. I

TG Branfalt (15:12):

Do like driving the cart though. Stoned. It’s pretty great.

Ngaio Bealum (15:16):

Oh yeah. I mean, yeah, listen, I like being stoned on the golf course as well. It’s very nice. But if I’m trying to take it seriously, if I have to beat my brother, then I have to pay attention to what’s going on. If I’m just mucking about it, if it’s a practice round, then sure, whatever practice round

TG Branfalt (15:31):

Every round for me is a practice round. My man. I’m terrible.

Ngaio Bealum (15:34):

Amen.

TG Branfalt (15:36):

So I’ve read on the internet every

Ngaio Bealum (15:37):

Day is a practice round get you in on,

TG Branfalt (15:43):

I’ve read on the internet that you have a love for Sungrown cannabis.

Ngaio Bealum (15:46):

I love.

TG Branfalt (15:48):

So tell me about that preference.

Ngaio Bealum (15:53):

I personally think it tastes better. I think it’s better for the environment. The sun is relatively free. Cannabis knows what to do. And I understand we’re doing sungrown. You can get one. I mean, if you’re doing greenhouse now, you can get 2, 3, 4 light death. You can get 2, 3, 4 harvest a year. And I understand people are like, we only get one harvest a year. Some shit happens, blah, blah, blah. But I don’t know. I just like it. I like the whole vibe, right? I’m here for the plant. I’m here for the hippie farmer action. And a lot of times you go to these states where they’ve just legalized weed and it’s all indoor facilities, but you could tell it tastes like commercial pressure. It tastes like we have to get this done in eight weeks. We have to stay on the schedule. What if your cannabis needs a little longer than that?

TG Branfalt (16:42):

Do you think that consumers would be willing to pay more for the stuff that’s harvested once a year, sungrown small farm? Because

Ngaio Bealum (16:52):

You would think, but no, they won’t. We really need to work more on, how would I say, cannabis appreciation classes like cannabis tasting. You do wine tasting. A lot of people just look at, ah, I just want the shit that’s 31% THC because I’m trying to get fucked up. I’m like, well, you’re going to get fucked up, but it may not be the high you want, right? Look for what’s it smell like? Look for the terpene profiles. You, you might do better at something at 19% because then you could smoke that whole joint while you watch the sunset as opposed to just two hits and then one of your friends is freaking out because he’s a lightweight, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So I think more understanding of what to taste for, what to look for, how to vibe with cannabis. The problem of course is people want to treat it like cigarettes, right? Comes prepackaged. Now it’s more like pipe tobacco or a fancy cigar or a fancy wine. Sure, you can get two buck chuck, but you should also be able to buy some bordeaux la fu or whatever.

TG Branfalt (18:06):

Yeah, I mean, I’m pushing 40, right? I consider myself a mature cannabis consumer, and that’s what I look for. Do you think that that’s sort of a demographic thing? Us we’re not 20 anymore. You think that that’s the route that we’re just going to go to? The people that your friends, your friends are probably sort of higher class smokers too, but are you seeing that sort of trend? Personally,

Ngaio Bealum (18:30):

I definitely hang out with a bunch of weed nerds for sure. But I’ve also smoked,

TG Branfalt (18:35):

Maybe it’s just a weed nerd

Ngaio Bealum (18:36):

Swag. I don’t know. I mean, I’ll buy a six pack of Budweiser. Well, I won’t buy a six pack of Budweiser, but I’ll buy a six pack of regular beer to go to the party, but then when I get home, I got to Sam Adams or get it, you know what I mean? So I think it depends on what you’re doing. If you’re just going to show up at a party with a big half ounce, two half ounce of weed so you can roll blunts all day, that makes perfect sense. I try not to make fun of people for having weird tasting weed or for liking chain restaurants that are actually horrible, but they grew up in a small town and that was the fanciest place. I really had to stop making fun of people for that. That’s not their fault. So education more than ridicule at all times.

TG Branfalt (19:25):

And you do a lot of the education kind of focused events, the Hempfest and things like that. And is the response different among crowds as a comedian? Is that response, is that hosting gig different when you’re around those types of crowds than maybe other just standup stuff you do for regular standup crowd?

Ngaio Bealum (19:53):

What I’m hosting, it’s not always necessarily about getting the jokes off, but about creating a vibe and getting some jokes in. But also you can target it more So if you’re doing a grower’s festival or a hemp festival, all your jokes about trimmers, everybody knows what you’re talking about. Whereas if I’m just doing a regular comedy club show and I talk about getting a repetitive stress injury from trimming, it may not be the same. It may not be the same. So I don’t know. You can get deeper into it when you all have the same kind of base of cannabis knowledge. But funny’s funny man. You just got to find a way work.

TG Branfalt (20:37):

So has your, I don’t want to say routine, but how have you been able to adapt your knowledge to hosting in that sort of thing? In the wake of legalization? I understand the repetitive injury from trimming thing that wouldn’t have really made a whole lot of sense 25 years ago

Ngaio Bealum (21:00):

Right now. But also I do different jump now. One of my things is about now that that cannabis is legal and you can have a job in the cannabis industry, that means that it’s not so bad when you show up at the parent-teacher conference smelling a little bit like weed. I just got off work.

TG Branfalt (21:22):

And you do talk about cannabis consumption as a parent?

Ngaio Bealum (21:28):

Yes. Weed made me a better parent for sure. My kids, my adults are awesome.

TG Branfalt (21:35):

Now, I don’t have any children myself. And so I do like to ask this question because I grew up with, it was very open. My mom openly consumed cannabis and she gave me my first bowl as a matter of fact. I mean, truth be told. Nice. I’m 15 years old. Here you go. You don’t know how to roll, take this fucking brass pipe. But what was it for you raising bras?

Ngaio Bealum (21:56):

Bras, pipe.

TG Branfalt (21:57):

Oh yeah, the fucking brass pipe. Boat,

Ngaio Bealum (21:59):

Bro. Pipe.

TG Branfalt (22:00):

That’s exactly what it was. I shit you not I shit, you die

Ngaio Bealum (22:05):

Shit.

TG Branfalt (22:06):

Exactly right.

Ngaio Bealum (22:09):

I had always been on my kids. Some things are for adults like drinking and weed and drugs and some things are not for kids, and that’s just how it is. So you should wait until college and that was kind my whole thing. I always like, if you want to do drugs in college, once you get your shit together and prove that you can be a somewhat semi responsible young adult. If you want to start experimenting with things like smoke some weed, be careful with alcohol, stay off the pills. That’s kind of my whole advice the whole way. Do some mushrooms every once in a while if you really want to, but do it mindfully. Don’t just be taking mushrooms and fucking off white boy. Wasted is a form of privilege.

TG Branfalt (22:46):

That’s very true,

Ngaio Bealum (22:48):

Right? Because you just think everything’s going to work out. It doesn’t always work out like that.

TG Branfalt (22:52):

No, I mean, I also grew up very rurally, so I mean doing, you

Ngaio Bealum (22:57):

Kind of have to get fucked up when you live that

TG Branfalt (22:58):

Far. Yeah, and get away with it, right, because the cops would show up and they’d just tell you to go fuck off. Right? That’s not what happened when I moved to cities and stuff. The disparity is fucking real,

Ngaio Bealum (23:12):

Real, real,

TG Branfalt (23:13):

Real, real. What is your preferred method of consumption? I see you spoke a lot of joints.

Ngaio Bealum (23:20):

I smoke a lot of joints. Shout out DaySavers. I’m asking those white guys for a job, so shout ’em out. They make great rolling papers. I like bones. I like the blunt. Every once in a while, dabs make me quiet. So I don’t always do ’em at public because I can’t be at a hosting a festival. And they’re like, dude, these dabs, they’re like, well, they’re paying me to talk. They’re not paying me to sit in the corner eating snacks, making up backstories, random people that I see. Just in my head, that guy looks like he used to be a senator. He’s probably a high school coach. Good to see you Reverend.

TG Branfalt (23:56):

Has legalization changed your methods of consumption?

Ngaio Bealum (24:05):

I smoke in the street more often. I dunno what you mean by changed my methods of consumption. I mean, I still

TG Branfalt (24:11):

Smoke. Well, prior to legalization, for whatever reason, I didn’t smoke as many joints and then weed was legal. It was relatively cheaper. Somehow I live near a reservation. That probably helps. That

Ngaio Bealum (24:21):

Probably helps.

TG Branfalt (24:22):

And so now I just predominantly smoke joints. Don’t know.

Ngaio Bealum (24:26):

They’re also very convenient. A pre-roll is very easy to buy these days. You can just get a joint on your way. You can roll a joint. I mean, I like joints because they don’t break if you drop ’em.

(24:39):

Right? That’s true. And they’re scalable. If you have a small pipe and there’s 15 people in the circle, but you can just roll a bigger joint or roll three joints and pass them around. You know what I mean? They’re not the most efficient way to smoke weed probably. But also putting a cloud of weed in the air is still a form of civil disobedience. It’s also a call to fellowship. You understand? If you are walking down the street and you smell some people smoking weed or whatever, you see the circle odds are you can step inside, at least say hello, say what’s up. Maybe if you brought a bowl too, you’d be like, Hey, now you made new friends. Right? You stand in the circle. It denotes equality. It’s like peers.

TG Branfalt (25:21):

This interview is coming on the heels of you seeing a phish show in Nevada,

Ngaio Bealum (25:27):

Vegas at the sphere,

TG Branfalt (25:30):

The big ball in the middle of the city.

Ngaio Bealum (25:33):

The big ball.

TG Branfalt (25:35):

Yeah. It’s been Memed a lot. What was it like in Nevada? Are there consumption lounges? Are people smoking on the street?

Ngaio Bealum (25:47):

You’re not supposed to smoke on the street. People don’t really smoke on the strip. They have a couple of consumption lounges now. New W has a lounge. I think Planet 13 has a lounge behind Resorts World. World. The Artisan Hotel has a cannabis springy smoking wing of their hotel now.

TG Branfalt (26:09):

Really?

Ngaio Bealum (26:10):

So you can book a room? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It’s kind of funny. Even though cannabis is legal and you can get a smoking room in a hotel, a lot of hotels don’t want you to smoke cannabis in the smoking room, which is weird because I always think that weed makes smoking rooms smell better. If you’ve ever got a smoking room in a hotel, they smell like nicotine and regret. But sometimes you can make it smell like weed and sex, and that’s better. That’s better for me. So I mean, I think it’s easier to hang out in LA now that cannabis is legal, even though I don’t feel like as much of a dangerous outlaw as I used to. But it still, it’s probably better as we get older and mellow out. It’s still a good time.

TG Branfalt (26:55):

Do you ever miss that

Ngaio Bealum (26:57):

They do a lot of weed things. I do miss that feeling. I miss that feeling. Sometimes I go to Idaho and carry weed around just so I could be nervous again.

TG Branfalt (27:07):

I also miss that feeling quite a lot actually.

Ngaio Bealum (27:12):

But I also got to say, I got to say, maybe you just hot box your car and now you’re standing in the Starbucks and a bunch of cops walk in and it’s not a problem. That’s fantastic. Right? I was smoking a joint on K Street waiting for the bus in San Francisco, and three sheriff’s deputies walked by while I’ve smoking this joint, and it was just like, Hey, what’s up? Oh yeah, hey, what’s up? And that was it.

TG Branfalt (27:33):

I still sometimes get, I got pulled over and I had an ounce in my car, and I was a little nervous still knowing that I’m in New York, I’m straight. Right?

Ngaio Bealum (27:47):

You’re all good. It’s a whole different feeling, man. It’s a whole different feeling. I was just in Berlin for the International Cannabis Business Conference and we’re staying at the extra hotel. And apparently the weekend before our conference, there was a lot of stuff going on in Berlin. There’s all these protests. There’s a big soccer match. So they had brought in some cops from out of town, a bunch of cops. We look like a fucking police convention at the hotel I’m at. And at first I was like, oh, Jesus Christ, this is not what I need right now. But then I realized, hey, they just decriminalized cannabis in Germany and you can actually smoke in the street. That’s part of the rules. I think it’s like before 9:00 AM and after 6:00 PM So while everybody’s in working that’s supposed to smoke in the street, be responsible. But after that, if you’re just walking around, you can smoke. And so I was standing outside the lobby doing my thing and it was not a problem. It was fantastic.

TG Branfalt (28:46):

And you were there right after they passed the bill? It must have been.

Ngaio Bealum (28:51):

Yeah, yeah, yeah. They passed the bill April 1st and I got into Germany April 8th.

TG Branfalt (28:59):

Or what was the atmosphere like among the attendees of the conference?

Ngaio Bealum (29:04):

Everybody’s very excited. But here’s the thing. A lot of the stories you read will say that Germany legalized cannabis and they didn’t really, they just super decriminalize it. So now you can carry 25 grams in your pocket. You can have 50 grams at the house. You can grow three plants per person wherever you live in all the counties. Bavaria has to fucking do it as well. And they can’t, Bavaria can’t be all square like Texas. They have to go along with it, but you still can’t really find a place to buy it. You still got to go to Gritz or Park. It’s so funny, I was at this one nightclub and people kept walking up to me and trying to buy drugs, weed or whatever. All these drugs is Berlin. And at first I was like, man, I think y’all are kind of racist. But then I realized what, I’m also in a town where I don’t know anybody. I also look for a friendly dreadlock person, try to buy drugs from, so sometimes sweeping generalizations to be effective.

TG Branfalt (30:07):

That is actually the exact, I

Ngaio Bealum (30:10):

Lost you. Hold on. Oh, there you go. What’d you say?

TG Branfalt (30:13):

That is actually the exact demographic in which I bought weed from a DJ in France.

Ngaio Bealum (30:19):

Friendly dreadlock person, correct? Yes.

TG Branfalt (30:24):

It was great weed too. It was cheap.

Ngaio Bealum (30:28):

The odd on your side, the on side. I’ve bought good hash with some friendly dreadlock people all over the world.

TG Branfalt (30:36):

Why haven’t we seen a lot of black hash post legalization? You think

Ngaio Bealum (30:44):

A lot of black hash you said?

TG Branfalt (30:46):

Yeah, black hash.

Ngaio Bealum (30:48):

You mean like the old tool, like the Moroccan style?

TG Branfalt (30:50):

Yeah. Yeah.

Ngaio Bealum (30:51):

Go to Europe, bro. Bro. It’s all, all solventless handmade chara style. This is fresher Morocco. This is the Morocco style. This is the French he kno style. They smoke that stuff all the time. They throw it in a tobacco cigarette. Those guys love a little hash. Lisbon loves hash. Spain loves hash. Germany loves hash. London loves hash.

TG Branfalt (31:13):

But it seems a little strange that we have legalization in the states and black hash is still really kind of hard to find. I find

Ngaio Bealum (31:20):

That strange because the weed nerds live rozen, bro. It’s all the terpenes, bro. This is 92%. I’m low temps. I’m a low temp smoker. You’re going to burn off all those vital fucking terpenes, bro. If you’re, your temperature are too high, listen, different terpenes. What strain is it? Because my heat temperature signature is very specific to the strain that I’m smoking at this point. Because people like to nerd out. People like to be fancy, and there’s nothing wrong with that. You can smoke regular good old fashioned Moroccan style hash all you want, but some people are like, oh, this is a live resin razin whip. Check out the diamonds, bro. I’m coming in at 98.65% THC.

TG Branfalt (32:10):

Can you fuck with that?

Ngaio Bealum (32:13):

Like I said, it makes me quiet. I don’t do it. I fuck with it one time. I tell people all the time, the more dabs you do, the more dabs you’re going to do. Right? It makes your tolerance a little wild. And so that’s how people get super up deep into it. I’m like, dabs should always be a sweet, not necessarily an everyday thing. At least for me. I don’t judge anybody for how they use drugs as long as they’re responsible adults.

TG Branfalt (32:40):

I’ve learned from being in my mid twenties when diamonds started emerging and dabbing diamonds and the fear, man, the fear was real. I couldn’t do it.

Ngaio Bealum (32:53):

You can definitely smoke yourself into a panic attack. But I mean, one of my favorite things that we’ve learned from cannabis over the past 15, 20 years is that THC is not the end all be all of cannabis enjoyment, right? There’s C, B, D, there’s CDN, there’s C, B, G, there’s all the cannabinoids, all the terpenes and the entourage effect work to make the experience more pleasant. And so I think that’s the deal is you want to find the combination that works for you as opposed to just being, oh, well this one’s 35% tt. It’s obviously way better than this one is 29% TT it. It’s not necessarily true. I put out a line of three roles one time and they tested it like 18% THC, but I would tell everybody, I was like, don’t let that label fool you because you’re going to be high as hell. You’re going to be high as hell off of this. And then they would kind of laugh at me and then they would take two hits and they’d be like, dude, I’m really fucked up right now. I was like, I told you, because it’s not just about the THC content, what the terpenes do, how they all interact.

TG Branfalt (33:57):

Are you referring to the mothership farms line?

Ngaio Bealum (34:01):

This was the Green Shock Farms line. Oh no. It did come off of mothership. Yeah. So green. So Greens Shock Farms was the farmer. Shout out Mark and the crew. And then Mothership was a distributor. So when mothership presents, when Guile four 20 presents, green Shot Farms’, a lot of hands.

TG Branfalt (34:22):

And I’ve always had this question, how much of a sort of role did you have in choosing the stuff that had your name on it?

Ngaio Bealum (34:30):

Bro, the biggest role. It’s got my name on it, but my whole concept was I’m going to go out into the woods and I’m going to talk my homies out of their head stash. Not the regular shit that they grow for everybody. Like, Hey, I only got two pounds of this, dude, I need a pound and a half of it. No, you can’t listen. I need a pound of this. The people have to smoke this, right? We’re only releasing 600, 700 of these. Because I had to talk about, I almost had to wrestle him to get him to let go of some of this weed that I think you will all enjoy. I’m not just letting you throw some shit out there. I’m calling my homies. I’m going out into the woods and smoking with my boy sticky and smoking with my boy mark and smoking with my other homies. Can I get some of this pink Tanzi cross? No, man, I get it. Come on dog. I got to have so, but people need it. That’s my whole thing. I like to Go ahead.

TG Branfalt (35:20):

If you were looking for, if were going to release another product, would you sort of take the same approach to find another partner? Or would you maybe track down some good stuff that you had maybe not encountered in the woods, if you will?

Ngaio Bealum (35:35):

Well, there’s a couple ways to do it, right? If you have a good distributor, they probably know some people, so you can look at who they’re working with and talk to those guys and be like, I want to introduce one of your, what’s your favorite shape? Maybe not necessarily you’re the best seller because people look for certain names as work, but what’s something you think people would really get a kick out of? And then if I enjoy it, then I can spread the word, Hey, this is my shed right here. Try this chocolate hashberry, try this, whatnot. Get into it. And I think that’s a good way because I don’t know, it’s so tough. Everybody always wants to make a new strain. Everybody wants to be the next cookies or train wreck or things like that. And I think it’s great, but I also think we need to remember to hold on to some heirloom strains. Where did the champagne go? What happened to the AK 47? Where’s the Blue City diesel? Things like that.

TG Branfalt (36:29):

I always tell my friends, and I don’t know if this is something that y’all had in California, beers

Ngaio Bealum (36:36):

BC Bud.

TG Branfalt (36:37):

That’s where it allegedly came from. I missed that shit, man.

Ngaio Bealum (36:41):

Allegedly.

TG Branfalt (36:42):

Allegedly. Of course, it’s allegedly.

Ngaio Bealum (36:44):

It came from there. Those BC Bud used to come flooding that, especially with when the Los Angeles cannabis dispensaries really started to take off in the two thousands. I wouldn’t say the market was flooded with BC Bud, but there was a lot coming down because the supply and demand was crazy at that

TG Branfalt (37:04):

Point. I always really liked that shit. And it’s like gone forever in the ether.

Ngaio Bealum (37:11):

It’s still in British Columbia now. Nobody needs to smuggle it down here anymore,

TG Branfalt (37:17):

But I’m going to go smuggle it down here because I miss, I do. I miss it town.

Ngaio Bealum (37:24):

Go to Vancouver. Go to Vancouver. S smoke some weed. You’ll recognize it.

TG Branfalt (37:30):

I go as far as Toronto,

Ngaio Bealum (37:33):

I love Toronto.

TG Branfalt (37:35):

I also love Toronto. I mean, so Canada’s a civilizes country and all.

Ngaio Bealum (37:40):

I like the all night Montreal bagel place in Toronto.

TG Branfalt (37:44):

Yes, that is a very good place. Post legalization.

Ngaio Bealum (37:48):

There’s a place I’m talking about with the wood oven. Yeah, they got the wood oven. They’re open like 24 hours. And you get that Montreal style bagel,

TG Branfalt (37:55):

That Montreal style bagels. Legit

Ngaio Bealum (37:58):

Bra. Bra. I’m here for it.

TG Branfalt (38:01):

And one more question, sort of going back to sort of strain names and weed nerd stuff. Do you foresee that’s where the industry goes, that we move away from strain names and we start going and buying stuff by like, all right, I want the X amount of this cannabinoid, so on and so forth, and move away from strain names.

Ngaio Bealum (38:24):

I don’t know if the testing is going to be that exact for that. I think what I see, because we were moving away from the deli style where you go in, used to go in, they have all the jars and open the jar. Yeah, that’s the one that they pull out a couple grams for you because the smell, right, the terpenes make your body react. Because weed loves us and wants us to be happy. All the different terpenes have different smells. So you get to, oh, I always like to smell for black pepper. Or if that’s pine trees, then that’s the one for me. Everybody does that thing, so they don’t really do it like that anymore. I mean, they have the little jars you can over, but you can’t always get the full effect. I think really people are going to have to lean on brands.

(39:03):

You have to know that fig farms always puts out good shit, you know that connected almost always puts out good shit. Wild makes great edibles because you can’t smell the weed for yourself. So you really have to trust the brand. You have to find a budtender who smokes like you. Right? When I was a budtender in la, there were definitely some people who we kind of smoked the same. So when some shit came in that I liked, I knew that they would like it. And there were also some people, they didn’t want to be served by me because we had vastly different taste of weed, but they liked my homeboy. They smoke the same and they’re like, oh yeah, dog, this is mine. You know what I mean? So that’s how it goes. So rely on the professionals, find a couple of good, consistent brands you like and grow your own weed. That’s my advice.

TG Branfalt (39:50):

Is there a smell that you know that this is for you? What’s that for you?

Ngaio Bealum (39:57):

Feet, cheese, skunk. I also like pine trees. I like lemons. I like all that. Tropical. Tropical cherry is nice, but it makes me sleepy, but it’s delicious. So I smoke it at night and then I pass out, but it’s so tasty.

TG Branfalt (40:13):

I could Smells like basements,

Ngaio Bealum (40:17):

Dan.

TG Branfalt (40:17):

Yep.

Ngaio Bealum (40:19):

Yeah, yeah, yeah, man. Burning tires, all that shit. I like a stinky weed.

TG Branfalt (40:25):

They say in Nevada that it has the highest miene content among all of the legalized markets. Yeah, that makes

Ngaio Bealum (40:34):

Sense. That makes sense. Because everybody likes that cush. They like that cush. They like those cookies, they like that runts. That’s all that me. Scene action. Yeah. Yeah, it makes sense. Everybody out here is a baller and a gangster, so it’s Vegas, bro. We’re bling, slightly bling almost for

TG Branfalt (40:54):

A day,

Ngaio Bealum (40:55):

Right? By the next

TG Branfalt (40:56):

Day you’re balling

Ngaio Bealum (40:57):

In a totally different way, just one day, right? There’s a difference between B-A-L-L-I-N-G and B-A-W-L-I-N-G.

TG Branfalt (41:06):

Yeah, you’ve lost all your money and can’t buy any mercene in heavy weed. So last question I have for you, man. What advice would you have for young entertainers, people who are maybe thinking about being a cannabis centric entertainer?

Ngaio Bealum (41:26):

First of all, that’s my job. Find your own spot. No, I’m kidding. There’s plenty of space in the world. The pie is always big stop thinking of things as finite. The planet is infinite, and we have to stop creating bullshit, scarcity. There’s more than enough to go around for everybody. That’s just general philosophy in terms of that. Dude, I wish I had taken a marketing class when I was a kid. Interesting. When I was a young college student, I studied music and theater, but I didn’t study marketing or search engine optimization. Well, we didn’t have search engines, right? I was a college in 1990 or goddamn business, but

TG Branfalt (42:11):

Still typewriters?

Ngaio Bealum (42:15):

We had computers, sir. The Tandy, TRS 80 were programming shit in Basic 25 if then, but that

TG Branfalt (42:29):

Class stopped

Ngaio Bealum (42:31):

And have fun, be polite, smoke weed. I don’t know what to tell you. I just kind of hustled my ass off and we got to where I’m, but I’m still hustling. So that’s how it goes. Have fun. Be yourself.

TG Branfalt (42:45):

Where can people find more about yourself and the things that you do and watch you smoke joints on the internet?

Ngaio Bealum (42:53):

Fortunately, there aren’t pictures of me at the post office. You can follow me on the Instagram N ao. I’m also on the Twitter or the X-N-G-A-I two. I have a Patreon that I’m going to start dumping shit into any minute now. There’s some stuff up there, but we’re going to put more stuff up there this week. And then I just started my substack as well. And I will be, I’m traveling quite a bit. I’m doing more travel here. So really the Instagram is the best way. I should get my website. Back up. What do you know about WordPress? Anybody know anything about WordPress? Call me up.

TG Branfalt (43:28):

We use WordPress, at Ganjapreneur, but I only write things in host podcasts. You should go look at my record store website, but it’s basically just three links. I can’t be of any help at all

Ngaio Bealum (43:38):

That’s all I need. I can’t figure out this WordPress ui or I would do that.

TG Branfalt (43:44):

There’s a guy somewhere in this organization knows how to do it. I’m not that guy.

Ngaio Bealum (43:50):

I understand. I’m not that guy. Now. Know your strengths. Play to your strengths.

TG Branfalt (43:55):

Ngaio, this has been a lot of fun.

Ngaio Bealum (43:59):

TG I had a great time. Have me over anytime.

TG Branfalt (44:02):

Most fun. Well, we should do this again next time. We’ll do general philosophy though, because you sort of scratched the surface there now. I’m really intrigued.

Ngaio Bealum (44:11):

Let’s get into it. I’m here for it, man. I’m down. I’m super down. Lemme know brother.

TG Branfalt (44:17):

Our guest is Ngaio Bealum, comedian, musician, writer, activist, actor, Renaissance man,

Ngaio Bealum (44:27):

Friend of small animals,

TG Branfalt (44:28):

Guy who likes Kush. And you can find more episodes of the Ganjapreneur.com podcast in the podcast section of Ganjapreneur.com. Wherever you get your podcast. On entrepreneur.com website, you’ll find the latest cannabis news and cannabis jobs updated daily along with transcripts of this podcast. This episode was engineered by Wayward Sound Studio. I’ve been your host, TG Branfalt.

In this episode of the Ganjapreneur podcast, host TG Branfalt is joined by Dr. Sean Myles, an associate professor of agriculture at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, who brings a wealth of knowledge on plant genetics. While Dr. Myles has made significant contributions to the study of plant varieties in apples and grapes, today’s focus is on his groundbreaking work in cannabis research. Within the unique intersection of agriculture, genetics, and the culture and policy of cannabis legalization, Dr. Myles sheds light on how cannabis labeling, genetic diversity, and breeding practices are shaping the future of the industry.

Find the episode on your favorite podcast app, listen via the media player below, or scroll down for the full transcript!

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TG Branfalt:

Today we’re joined by Dr. Sean Myles. He’s an associate professor of agriculture at Dalhousie University. He’s done countless, countless studies on cannabis, agriculture, a lot on apples, which I find very interesting, but that’s not where we’re here to talk about today. How are you doing this morning, Sean?

Sean Myles:

Doing great. Thanks for having me on.

TG Branfalt:

I’m real excited. We have a lot to talk about. Before you get into it, man, tell me about yourself. Tell me your background and how you ended up a doctor, associate professor, and all that good stuff.

Sean Myles:

Sure. I’m really passionate about food. I think that’s kind of where it ended up sending me is to learn more about where our food comes from, how it’s produced, how it gets to the table and gets on your plate. I studied genetics, so I look at DNA for a living, and I did my PhD. I actually worked in human genetics and human medical genetics kind of stuff first, but switched gears there in order to chase my wife. My wife is a winemaker and I always figured if I wanted to live somewhere where she lives, I should probably just study grapes. So we figured that out. I started a postdoc in grapes at Cornell and continued on that path. And then we moved back here to, we live in Nova Scotia in Canada, in rural Nova Scotia. It’s a beautiful place to live, and we’ve got lots of apples here. So I switched my research to focus on apples after a while and working on plants and genetics around the time when cannabis was becoming legalized in Canada. It was a real obvious choice to go and start looking at cannabis because such a fascinating crop.

TG Branfalt:

So what interests you most about genetic research in general, whether it be human genetic research or agricultural genetic research?

Sean Myles:

Yeah, I think a lot of my interest stems from an interest in better understanding our past, knowing where our food came from, how domestication and breeding has really taken place and shaped the food that we consume today and what effects that’s had on the food that we eat. It’s a really fascinating thing to be able to do, is to sort of read history by looking at DNA. You can learn quite a bit. So we’ve learned a lot about what we are and how we became human from looking at DNA and fascinating stories by sequencing genomes of Neanderthals and all that kind of stuff. It’s not that different when looking at the DNA of food so we can learn things about where our food comes from and how the different strains of cannabis, for example, are related to each other and how much diversity there is for us to use, which is tremendous. And then that gives us a guide in a way of where we should be going in the future. So the other portion is what do we do with this information and how do we more efficiently and effectively breed new varieties of food that are going to require less chemical input to grow and are going to be healthy for you? So that’s the real motivation.

TG Branfalt:

So we’re talking about the past, I mean cannabis—because of prohibition worldwide essentially—we don’t know a ton about it. And so, what big questions did you set out to answer when you started researching cannabis?

Sean Myles:

Yeah, in general, we were interested in knowing what we call as sort of the general genetic structure of cannabis. So one of the big questions of course, is how different are hemp and cannabis that’s consumed for psychoactive effects. And so one of the first things we did was we collected, we got our hands on some samples of hemp and we got our hands on some samples of cannabis psychoactive cannabis, and we took a look at that. There’s been a lot of theory and theory and hypotheses about, well, hemp is just basically cannabis that doesn’t have any THC, so it’s probably just like one gene that’s turned off, but otherwise there’s a lot of overlap in the way they look and the way they behave. But when we looked at it, we actually found that the hemp and what we call marijuana in the paper, but I believe more appropriately is just called cannabis for, what do you call recreational cannabis, if you will, or medical cannabis.

Yeah, there’s differences. There’s systematic differences across the entire genome so they can be sort of understood as two kind of different genetic groups. So that suggests it may be worthwhile if you see a trait in a hemp line that you’re interested in and you’re a cannabis breeder for recreational purposes, it may make sense to cross it with some hemp at some point and try to use that genetic diversity in your breeding program and that kind of thing. So those are some of the, and just in general is the big question that kept coming up is the use of the terms indica and sativa because these are botanical terms that have been kind of co-opted by the recreational users to mean something, but it’s not really entirely clear what indica and sativa really mean and people have different ideas about it. So we thought looking at the DNA of these large diverse set of samples could shed some light on that.

TG Branfalt:

Do you think that we’ve sort of adopted those terms or accepted those terms as cannabis consumers and the industry at large due to the sort of lack of research and lack of understanding about the planet?

Sean Myles:

Yeah, yeah. No, absolutely. I think it’s become unclear what the terms mean because the industry has operated in a clandestine fashion for so long and underground. So there haven’t been the kind of controls and policies and strict protocols in place that you would see in other crops. For example, in a strawberry, when they release a strawberry to the public from a breeding program, you can’t just say that it’s this kind of strawberry. I mean, it has to be that kind. You can’t put in a bottle of wine a bunch of Cabernet Sauvignon and call it pinot noir. That’s not allowed, and you can’t get away with that. But in the cannabis world, in the underground cannabis world, you can get away with a lot if you want to sell the stuff and the person walking in, they like indica, all of a sudden your stuff is indica. So I think it’s been kind of co-opted and got a little messy, even though cannabis sativa and cannabis indica originally are kind of terms from botany where that described the structure of the plant its use today is arguably not a very good indicator of the genetics or the chemistry of the plants is what we found in our research.

TG Branfalt:

So tell me about the results of the 2021 paper. Cannabis labeling is associated with genetic variation in terpene syn genes. I’m probably mispronouncing that penultimate word there. And additionally, 2015 genetic structure of marijuana and hemp study. Tell me about each of these and it is one sort of link to the other in some way.

Sean Myles:

Yeah, so I think we’re trying to address similar questions in these studies, and the very first study in 2015 was one of the very earliest studies of a genetic analysis of cannabis. And in that study we took a look. We got samples from one of the earliest licensed producers in Canada who were growing cannabis for the new burgeoning industrial market that was opening up in Canada because it’s been legalized. So that was early days. And all of these licensed producers, they were like, okay, where are we going to get our seed? Where are we going to get our plants? And it was basically find people who are growing it underground and bring it into the legal market. There wasn’t some gene bank they have in other crops that you can just go order up a whole bunch of seed and start out. So this one collaborator we had, they had a decent amount on the order of a hundred samples or so, or 80 to a hundred samples of various lines, and they were named.

So you can see in the paper there’s the lemon skunk and white widow, Alaskan Ice, Bubba Kush standard strain names with, and each of them, they have a reported percent indica or percent sativa. So I think they were either like a hundred percent indica or 25% or 50 50 hybrid or the other way, a hundred percent sativa or 75% sativa. So we had a good number of samples, and then we had a bunch of hemp samples too. We wanted to see if hemp was different from the cannabis. They were growing for the legal market here in Canada. So we did that genetic analysis and what came out was that the genetics don’t really align very well at all with whether they’re labeled as indica or sativa. So whether something, if you look at how closely related things are, for instance, a cannabis strain that is labeled as a hundred percent indica is frequently more closely related to something that’s labeled as a hundred percent sativa than it is other indica labeled strains.

So we know that then the labeling isn’t matching up with the genetics so that the label of indica or sativa is a very poor indicator of what the genetics of the plant are, which suggests that it’s also a poor indicator of what the plant actually looks like when it’s grown, which means that this isn’t really telling you much. So that’s the first indicator we had of like, okay, this whole legal market is going to explode in Canada here coming up. And one of the main things these marketing departments are using is this label of indica and sativa because it’s so widespread its use in the underground world. That’s how people identify their stuff and they have strong beliefs about whether sativa is uplifting and indica is supposed to give you couch lock and a lot of that. So we wanted to see does that really line up?

And unfortunately from our sample, we can’t say for everyone, but from our sample, the genetics were not a good indicator of the indica and sativa labeling was a very poor predictor of the genetic identity of the plants. So then we thought, fine, maybe labeling them as indica and sativa doesn’t tell you much, but does it tell you much if they say it’s lemon skunk? Does that tell you anything? Is white widow really a unique genetic identity, which in the other worlds, like a Honeycrisp apple is a unique genetic identity. Every single honey crisp apple tree is genetically identical to every single other one. And that’s what we do in horticulture. This is the way it works in strawberries, peaches, pears, plums, apples, cherries, all of it, right? You breed new varieties, you release them to market. And the ones when they end up on the shelf, if it says Pinot noir on the bottle, it’s pinot noir grapes in the bottle, and we’re finding that we’re getting white widow from one producer and we’re getting white widow from another producer and we’re looking at their genetics and they’re not the same at all. They’re not even closely related. Often one of them is more closely related to a strain with a different name than it is to a strain with the same name. And about a third of the cases we saw, so the strain names, the strain names are also not reliable indicators of what you’re getting. So you think you like white widow, but every time you’re getting white widow, you’re getting something different. So it is not really telling you much. Basically the conclusion is it’s a goddamn mess.

The whole thing is a mess. People are telling you things that are not true, and as a scientist, it’s our responsibility to say, okay, this is how not true it is. This is the degree of untruth in here and for an agricultural crop, it’s through the roof. With cannabis, there’s no bigger mess of any crop on the planet.

TG Branfalt:

There’s no sort of effort by the Canadian government, which has federally legalized cannabis to fix this at all. In your knowledge?

Sean Myles:

No, my words are generally ignored and that I’m not a policy pusher. I’m not the guy who goes and stands before parliament and tries to get things changed. Look, if people want to call it indica and sativa, whatever, naturopaths give you all sorts of sugar pills too, and then people believe in that. So I think you got to pick your battles. And we’ve published in the literature, we talk about it on podcasts, we’ve let people know that the evidence so far suggests that these labels that we’re applying to products are highly misleading when we talk to the marketing. I’ve had conversations with people who work in marketing and promotion in these cannabis companies too, and off record, they’re fully willing to admit, it’s like when we come out with a new strain, we just ask the breeders, just ask the marketing department, should we label this one incar or sativa?

What do we need more of? Right? There’s no holy shit. Yeah, there’s very little. So we wanted to see whether this was really the case across the board. In science, we always have a sample and we make an inference, but that doesn’t mean that it applies to everything in the world. So if you go and you measure how much people like bananas and you’ve got a sample of 12-year-old kids in Hawaii, it’s going to be different than how people like bananas elsewhere. So was our sample representative. So we got another set of samples in the 2021 paper. We went and worked with Bedrocan. It’s the biggest medical cannabis producer in Europe, and they’ve been collecting strains from the Dutch coffee shops for ages and propagating. And so that they would have this sort of base of genetic variation to breed from, and they were great to work with.

And so we also had over a hundred different strains, and they’re all, not only did we look at genetic information, but we also chemically analyzed them so that we could see, especially for these terpenes and these aromatic molecules, what kind of differences are there among all these strains? And so the same conclusion comes out in general that indica and sativa labeling are not good predictors of the genetics. They’re also fairly poor predictors of the chemical identity of the plant. But there are a few things that are correlated with the labeling, and they do line up with what people believe the differences are between indica and sativa. So generally people believe that indica strains are a little more sort of dank and skunky, little more forest floor kind of aromas kind of stuff. And we do find actually that on average the indica strains had higher levels of mercene, and that’s a molecule that’s often there’s an earthy aroma attributed to high mercene content.

And there’s also some evidence that there’s a sedative effect to mercene, which would go along with the couch lock that people talk about when it comes to indica strains. So there’s a little bit, the signal’s not strong. Look, there’s lots of sativa strains, things labeled as sativa that had high levels of mercene, and there’s lots interesting, lots of things labeled as indica that had very low levels of mercene. But on average, in our sample, we did find that the things labeled as indica, the more indica you had on average, you had more mercene. So that does line up with what people believe is also like indica labeling was correlated to with the amount of guil, gamma ol and beta ol. So if you had more of these, and those are also, they’re associated with plants from Afghanistan actually in original botanical literature, which is considered the region of origin cultivars.

So that kind of lines up too. Then on the sativa side, we looked at the sativa ones tended on average to have more bergin, and they have sort of tea and fruity aromas. They’re associated, those molecules are associated with fruit and tea, which is also in line with what people believe sativa cultivars to possess. So the first study basically said, this is a big load of hogwash and everybody should ignore the labels. The second study was like, ah, you know what? There are a few chemicals that are associated with whether you’re indica or sativa, the signal is not strong, but maybe that’s driving people to label the cultivars in the first place. You’re breeding stuff, mixing stuff up, like doing crosses. You get one that smells pretty skunky, you’re going to call it indica.

That’s basically what we’re saying is that the labeling is probably driven by a small number of aromatic molecules and their concentrations and what people associate with that. But it’s not the genetics of the plant in general. It’s not like there are two populations of plants, indica and sativa and never will the two mix, or that’s not the way it is. It’s probably that we’re labeling them because you sniff it, you go, whoa, man, this is skunky. I’m going to call this indica. Or Hey, this has got a bit of both. I’m going to call it a 50 50. So that’s what came out of those.

TG Branfalt:

Did the findings surprise you? Because for me, as somebody who’s come to the industry for 10 years, it’s not surprising to me. I did a podcast one time with a guy who went and did mass spectrometer analysis of cultivars, found blue dream in one dispensary in Las Vegas, Nevada, and then another dispensary in Las Vegas, Nevada, and found these are not even close to the same plant. But for you did, was it surprising to you?

Sean Myles:

No, I think it lines up with what we understand from the history of cannabis breeding. It was interesting though. I did present these results at CannaCon in 2020 maybe or something like that. I was at this cannabis conference, and of course there’s a whole bunch of people there have been involved in breeding cannabis for a really long time, and I got one of two responses. The one response was from people like you who were reasonable, rational people who were like, yeah, of course. I mean, we’ve been shuffling this stuff all over the place forever, and this indica sativa thing is probably, there’s not much to it. And then there were the others, or strain names too. They were like, ah, strain names. I wouldn’t trust them. But then there were quite a few people who found that the results of our study upsetting or disagreed with it so much that they approach you afterwards and they’re like, dude, I have the real white widow man. You don’t know what the hell you’re talking about. I have the real white widow, and was like, that doesn’t make any sense, man. White widow isn’t a thing. We just demonstrated. I just showed you that the name white widow is associated with all sorts of different genetic profiles. So there is no original white widow. I don’t know. Maybe there was at some point or something, but you wouldn’t be able to prove it. There’s no plant breeders rights. There’s no patents. There’s no way of verifying this stuff. There’s no genetic marker that you can use to go and say, this is that we do in other crops. So I found it funny, and I don’t think that also indicates that it makes sense that the amount of confidence they have in their breeding material is inversely related to their ability to keep track of their material.

You can’t, as a breeder, if you don’t really keep track of things very well, of course you’re going to come out and say you’re super confident about what you have, and it almost goes the other way. The people who are the best breeders in the world and tracking huge corn breeding programs and stuff, you talk to them and they’ll be like, yeah, no, we expect about 5% error rate. We get things mixed up sometimes, for sure. Of course you do. So I found it funny that there was such an enormous amount of confidence about not mixing things up, and you’re like, dude, you’ve been breeding in your basement for 25 years on your own smoking weed. I figure you’re probably making some mistakes, right?

TG Branfalt:

Are you a cannabis consumer?

Sean Myles:

Yeah. Yeah.

TG Branfalt:

So when I go to dispensary and they say, do you look in? I really look at them and go, string names of bullshit. Give me something that smells like this. Right? So how do you sort of buy cannabis with this knowledge?

Sean Myles:

It is disappointing. I mean, the first thing they ask you every single time you go to a dispensary here, it’s sold by the government. So we have government stores. You walk in and there’s someone there, and the first thing they say is, do you indica or sativa? And I’m like, man, there’s no difference. You just wish you could say, I was like, so it would be nice. And some of them do do this. They’re starting to put on the packaging what the quantification of those compounds. I was talking about those monoterpenes, like mercene and guil and different things that people care about bergamot and farine so that you have an idea of like, is this a fruity tea like one or is this a dank kind of earthy one? And that’ll give you an idea. But then there’s that next step they take, which is all about this one is uplifting and this one is sedative, and the jury is definitely out on that. There’s no strong evidence anywhere from the literature that is the case

TG Branfalt:

Isn’t it all individual brain chemistry as well.

Sean Myles:

Pardon me?

TG Branfalt:

Isn’t it all individual brain chemistry as well?

Sean Myles:

Yeah, I mean, there’s differences between human individuals in the way that we’re going to metabolize these different compounds and have experiences that differ in the population. So yeah, it would take a lot of work to figure that out. And it’s true. You’ve pointed out that we are a little behind, right? With cannabis as a given that it is a medicine and it’s consumed for recreational use, our understanding of the plant is still lags far behind plants that are of equivalent economic value worldwide. This is a huge economy. It is just that it’s been underground for so long that we haven’t been able to pay as much attention to it as scientists and government scientists or university scientists because we don’t have access to it and we don’t have, or it’s been challenging to get access. So this is all opening up now, and I think over the next decade we’re going to learn a lot more. I guess the challenge is going to be whether this ever translates into any kind of policy change or any kind of change on the ground, because we know already that indica and sativa labeling is not a good way of labeling cannabis, and we also know that the old strain names are also not accurate, but we’re still using ’em and they’re still out there.

TG Branfalt:

So what could a post- indica/sativa marketplace look like to be more accurate in your opinion?

Sean Myles:

No, I think it could mimic the wine industry, except that these breeding programs would come up with new strains. These new strains would have a name. They would vegetatively propagate them, clonally propagate them properly, so that when you get a package and it says it’s this strain, it really is that strain. So when you buy a bottle of pinot noir, it really is pinot noir. I think it would also be helpful to, I don’t think you really need to quantify the amount of guile and mercene and all that kind of stuff on the back of a bottle of Pinot. It doesn’t tell you how much of these particular aromas there are. They just describe it, right? They say, this pinot exhibits nice aromas of earthy aromas and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, and fresh fruit on the nose. You’re like, okay, great. And I could see the cannabis world moving in that direction where let’s not worry about the indica sativa thing. Let’s just focus on what does it taste like and what’s the name of the strain? And if they can get the strain sorted out so that give them new names from these new producers, new breeding programs that can keep track of their material and actually verify that it is really that strain, then that would be a big step forward, I think, for the industry.

TG Branfalt:

Going back to broader research, how is cannabis research different from the other agricultural research that you’ve done, or even just different from more non-cannabis agricultural research in general?

Sean Myles:

Yeah. I mean, a lot of agricultural genetics, research and breeding, it ties in with the breeding, a lot of the breeding targets. What you want to achieve as a breeder in a lot of crops is shelf life ability to be shipped long distances. Rarely is it, it’s almost very rarely is it aroma, right? Whereas in cannabis, it’s like cannabis has a fascinating profile of aromas. If anyone who’s had the opportunity to go and actually smell diverse strains of cannabis at flowering nice and fresh, it is unbelievable how different they can smell. And it’s not that different from grapes. If you taste a muca grape, a fully ripe muskat grape and compare it to a fully ripe Shiraz, oh, they’re just worlds apart. It’s just completely different. And these are all these metabolic pathways that differ because of the genetics of these plants that breeders have sort of been mixing and matching over time.

It’s really fascinating. So aren’t a whole lot of crops in the world where such an enormous amount of attention is paid to that fine sort of aroma bit where the breeding target is actually an aromatic profile and not just how do we make it last on the shelf longer, which is kind of a more boring kind of thing to target. So yeah, I think that’s what attracted me to it, is that it’s a little bit like we work in apples and grapes and apples and grapes are kind of those kind of crops, right? It’s got to be something special about the crunch of the apple or the taste of the apple or the smell of that wine, that kind of thing. And cannabis, it’s highly similar, right? It’s unlike a carrot. The thing is, there’s really only three crops in the world where we actually name varieties.

And those varieties or that variety names are well known to the public. When you buy a carrot at the store, you don’t know what variety of carrot it is. Nobody tells you, oh, this is the Caesar carrot. Nobody cares. It’s a carrot. And in potatoes, you’ve got a little bit like you’ve got the Yukon potato, you got the russet potato. There’s a bit in tomatoes, they have shapes and sizes, but you really don’t go with the, you got the cherry tomato in the Roma tomato, but you don’t have names of tomatoes. But in wine, you definitely have names. And Pinot noir has been grown for a thousand years. Clonally propagated for a thousand years, Cabernet, souvignon and convert, and Riesling and so on. All of these names are named varieties. In Apple, we have ’em, honey Crisp, Macintosh Gala, so on. And in cannabis we do, but name another crop in the world where we’ve got that it belongs to a very special subset of things that are so intimately tied with our culture and that we have associated names to specific genetic identities. Unfortunately, that all got screwed up in cannabis where it’s not actually really associated with the genetic identity, but we want to, there’s a desire to, and that’s really unique. It stands on a platform with only a couple of other crops in the world where people really do care which variety they get. That’s something to tap into. That’s amazing. It sits in a very, very unique group of crops, for sure.

TG Branfalt:

A lot of people that I’ve spoken to have sort of projected that the cannabis industry should, and as you sort of mentioned already does in many ways mirror the wine industry. There’s cannabis sommeliers now, for example. Is it the estimation as well that this will ultimately be the look and feel of a sort of mature cannabis industry, especially in Canada, which is obviously going to be decades ahead of the US?

Sean Myles:

Yeah, I think I have a very poor ability to predict the future, but if I were to express a hope, that would certainly be my hope that it would move in that direction. So that strain names were reliable indicators of what’s inside your package, and that the description of the kinds of experiences that you would, or the aromatics and the type of flavor that you would get from a cannabis strain are accurately depicted on the package as well.

TG Branfalt:

And I want to ask you, did broad cannabis legalization in Canada change the landscape for cannabis research in the country?

Sean Myles:

Oh, absolutely. Yeah. No. If you think about how cannabis research gets done in the United States, in fact, I was in the United States when I started investigating the potential of doing some cannabis genetics research and quickly discovered that it was going to be impossible to do anything in

TG Branfalt:

Was at Cornell.

Sean Myles:

I was at Stanford at the time, actually, and that was impossible to do. And so I contacted a Canadian up in, at the time was in Saskatchewan doing research on hemp, and they said, yeah, no problem. I mean, we’re growing the stuff here in our federal research station, and it’s going to become legal soon, so this is going to blow everything up. This is the perfect time to get into this. So since then, yeah, I mean, when you want to do research, especially as an academic, like me, a professor at a university, you want to do research into a crop. Generally, your first step is to go and develop a relationship with industry. And previously you couldn’t do that with Gs, right? You couldn’t say, oh, yeah, well, the new sponsor of my research on this next project is the guy down the road.

You can’t do that. So now that there are real industrial players on board, there’s a lot of industry academic research collaborations that leverage government funding. So the government is putting money into investigating all sorts of things about cannabis, a lot on the medical side too, and the effects that it has, and on the public safety side. So at what age, when should people be consuming? What does it really do to your brain? What levels are dangerous? These sorts of things. And this is all necessary. This is good. So I think it’s good for an industry to do that stuff to get ahead of the ball and make sure that you’re the ones pushing that agenda of, we want to know more about this crop, and we want the public to be aware of what it is. And I think that will all lead to more precise information being given to the consumer, which is, that’s the goal.

TG Branfalt:

What are some of the holes that still persist when it comes to the agricultural side of cannabis research?

Sean Myles:

I think better sampling for sure. We’ve done a couple of these small studies. There’s a couple of other studies that have been done on diverse samples of cannabis to get an idea of what the genetic structure really looks like. How well does the labeling actually reflect the genetic identity of the plants? And these sorts, do strain names make any sense anywhere. Just because we do it in a couple of samples, one from the Netherlands and one from Canada doesn’t mean that it’s the case everywhere. So I think just more broader sampling for sure. And then the next step is to implement those kinds of insights that we’re getting from breeding to generate novel varieties that perform better, that require less chemical input to grow. So one of the big things is to try to introduce powdering mildew resistance into strains. There’s a lot of disease damage in cannabis and a lot of challenges growing in indoors like that and spider mites and things like some kind of resistance to some of the main pests. And then there’s also like auto flowering and things like that. But could we get a better generation time? Could we get more energy in the plant going into the bud rather than vegetative growth? So all these things, those are going to be like the breeding targets of the future going to be how, because it’s become industrial, it is going to be very much, how do we generate more cannabis per square foot?

And I think that’s going to be aided by a lot of this genetics research that’s being done.

TG Branfalt:

And finally, what advice do you have for researchers interested in exploring some of these cannabis topics?

Sean Myles:

I think talk to industry members and find out where the need is, right? It’s nice to be able to do academic research for the sake of doing research, and that’s great. If you got money to do it and it’s all from the government, that’s great, but really, you got to find where the itch is and then go try to scratch it. So if you talk to industry members and they say, look, our biggest problem right now is X, then what can you do to go and try to address X? And that’s the next steps are going to, that’s where the big wins are going to be over the next decade.

TG Branfalt:

It’s really fascinating stuff. There’s, again, not a lot of people really on the forefront of answering these questions, so I really do appreciate you taking the time to come and explain some of these things and really sort of enlighten people. I think about this sort of dichotomy, as it were. Where can people find out more about you and more about the research that you do?

Sean Myles:

Yeah, we’ve got a website for the lab. We’re cultivatingdiversity.org. Dot org. You can check us out. We’re a small lab just doing our thing up here in Canada, and all of our publications are listed there. Most of what we do is work on apples, you’ll see. But it’s good to dip our fingers in the cannabis every once in a while. I mean,

TG Branfalt:

The studies that we’ve done have been cited hundreds and hundreds of times.

Sean Myles:

Yeah, yeah. No, it’s obviously it’s a popular plant to work on. If I did this stuff in quinoa, I don’t think anybody would be very interested. So when you do something, you do research on cannabis and reveal something that’s of interest to the public, then it inevitably produces some public interest. Right.

TG Branfalt:

Well, this has been Dr. Sean Myles. He’s an associate professor of agriculture at Dalhousie University. I really, really appreciate your time coming onto the show, man, and can’t wait to see what else you produce in the future.

Sean Myles:

Yeah, thanks, Tim. Thanks for the chat. I appreciate it.

TG Branfalt:

You can find the episodes of the Ganjapreneur.com podcast in the podcast section of Ganjapreneur.com or wherever you get your podcast. On the Ganjapreneur.com website, you’ll find the latest cannabis news and cannabis jobs Daily, daily, along with transcripts of this podcast. You can also download the Ganjapreneur.com app in iTunes and Google Play. This episode was engineered by Way Sound Studios. I’ve been your host, TG Branfalt.