 All right, I think we're live. Okay, great, we'll get started then. My name is James Pepper, I'm the chair of the Vermont Cannabis Control Board. Today is February 22nd, 2022. And I call this meeting to order. So today we are gonna be reviewing public comments related to rules three and four and making adjustments to the rules as appropriate. David, you're gonna walk us through that process. Just a quick note, we do have our kind of public comment, general after hours public comment meeting tonight from six to seven. The link to that should be available on our website. This is just kind of our traditional after hours public comment period. Everything is on the table. Feel free to join that and comment about whatever it is that we're doing or whatever's on your mind. And then on Thursday we're having our social equity economic empowerment networking event. The topic for that one is gonna be just banking and financial services information. We have three guests, Greg Heisman, who's the director of business lending and services at VSCCU is gonna join us. VSCCU has been banking cannabis money for about a decade now. And they have kind of all the FinCEN protocols baked into their system so they can kind of give us a perspective of a financial institution about what's gonna be required. And then Matt Shragg from the Vermont Patients Alliance that's the Montpelier dispensary. He's gonna give us his perspective from someone who is a licensee, a cannabis licensee, the kind of hoops that they've had to jump through from a banking and insurance angle and kind of just describe his experience with banking. Then we're gonna have here from Sahar Ayanasazian, who's from Vincente Cedarburg. And she literally wrote the book on banking and cannabis banking. And she'll kind of give us a national perspective. And then at the end, I'll just give us a walkthrough update on the pre-application and pre-approval process and take questions on that. So that's again, gonna be on Thursday from five to 7 p.m. And the link to that should be available on our website as well. So that's all the updates I have. Unless you guys have anything else. Town meeting day is a week from today. Town meeting day is a week from today. I think there's at least 20 towns that have this on their ballot. I think so. I thought it was like 40. I don't know. I thought it was more like 20, but. I thought it was closer to 20, but I'm not sure. All right, I'll quote us. Yeah, so that's exciting. Should have some new towns that have opted in after town meeting week, which is exciting. We just had a chance to review the minutes from our prior meeting. Yes. Yes. All right. Take a motion to approve. Seconded. All in favor? Aye. Aye. Well, why don't we just jump right into the agenda then? Again, we, the public official kind of public window for comments closes this Friday. We'll start the process of reviewing the public comments we received. And just like we did with rules one and two David will walk through them and we'll decide to make amendments as appropriate. Sounds great. Should I jump into it? You're up for it. I'm ready. All right. So as we had with the last set of rules that did a few general comments that are sort of generally applicable in the document the board is looking at. I'm actually going to skip the first one because that comes back again in a more specific section and we'll get to that related to plan accounts. But one general comment we got a couple of times was about the medical cannabis market being insufficiently regulated. Now there's not enough testing. Products are tested only the, or to the extent products are tested it's only about potency. There's no third party testing for potency. So there's a number of issues that a couple of commentators spoke about that. I'm not sure that there is a lot for the board to do with that other than to say that there will be, you know our system will have significant impacts for integrated licensees. To the extent that any dispensaries remain independent or new dispensaries come on data that are independent and not integrated licensees. I believe there is a legislative fix working its way through that will require independent third party testing integrated licensees. You know, by the nature of their operations are going to have to have an intestine because anything they're doing for the adult use market will that will be required. So I think as this thing gets up and running some of these concerns that will be addressed and there's some legislation that will more specifically address some of these concerns. Well, but obviously I'd open it if you all have any other thoughts, ideas, comments. Thank you for that. You just remind me of the section of the law it says something to the effect that no rule that we create can be more restrictive than the current rules that are in place. Oh, I don't have the citation memorized but it's in both chapter 35 and 37 of the statutes of the governor. So the 35 BDS, the medical registry 37 being dispensaries both of them say that you can't have rules that are more restrictive than the current set of Department of Public Safety rules. Yeah, I think it's important for us to have that as an overlay to all these conversations because, you know, we have been asked to become to be more restrictive, I would say than the current set of rules around education, around testing, around any number of issues. So yeah, and it's challenging because that statement in of itself is a little ambiguous depending on who you're right and talking to but it makes our job significantly more challenging. We may get to this later but didn't we though in the regulation of the dispensaries kind of largely tie it to rule two? Yes. Yeah. So it's very kind of rule two except where there's some specific comments in there. And people didn't have many comments about those basic structure. We good on that one? Yep. All right. And again, this will come off again in various ways. A commentator recommended that basically Vermont adopt mains medical cannabis law and just noted that chapter in its entirety. Of course, that is a legislative decision on a board decision and the board can't write new laws. So I don't think there's much to do with that but that is a preference that folks have or at least this commentator had around adopting mains medical cannabis law but we have to work within the statutes that have been passed by the Vermont legislature. Yep. And then a sort of general comment which I don't think is necessarily a rule issue but could certainly be a guidance type of area that the board assists people with. Somebody commenting, a number of people commenting there should be better networking and educational opportunities available for medical patients in Vermont. I don't know if you had further comments you wanted to make on that. I mean, I agree with the comment. I think one suggestion that we've heard over and over again is having kind of a medical hotline where people, patients can call an on-call nurse they can kind of help walk them through what their condition is, what sort of medicinal cannabis might be beneficial for those who are therapeutic for those. I mean, it's a great idea. I don't think it's something that we address in this rule. No, I agree. That sounds good. And with that, that is the end of the general comments and we'll move on to some specific comments. So moving on to section 3.2 which is about the registration of patients for that registry. A commenter, a number of commenters said that plant counts should be raised in terms of what patients can grow or at least the immature plant counts should be raised or eliminated. And another commentator in what was effectively a similar argument noted that we should look to Massachusetts law with respect to allowing for hardship cultivation which allows for a 60 day supply for personal use. And I think the effective result of that would be raising plant counts. Again, this really is a statutory issue. This is a legislative issue. The legislature set out what the plant counts are. The board doesn't have independent authority to change those. Moving on to 3.2.4 which is about patient registration and issuance of registered patient identification cards. A commenter notes in subsection A of that although it says the board shall register patients when they meet a set of criteria that's laid out there. It doesn't identify what a reasonable timeframe is from application to registration. And the commenter recommends that we identify a timeframe. I would just note for the board in other areas we have not given ourselves timelines except in the adjudicative process when there's dispute. We did give ourselves timelines there. The board didn't give ourselves timelines in other places but obviously this is a policy decision for you all to make. You know, just from my experience working with the medical team for this past few months there's a lot that they do on the back end. There's a lot of patients just don't realize it's not just looking at an application making sure it's complete. They're required to follow up with physicians. That process in and of itself sometimes takes weeks to get a response from the physicians. I don't see that we can reasonably put a timeframe on this nor should we. But at the same time I haven't heard of anyone having an unnecessary delay. So, you know, I don't know if this solves if this request would solve any problem or addresses any real problem. Yeah, I don't think it's to be addressed in rule so much as I think that they're making some changes to the way that they operate, like putting on the website, like where they're at with, you know, processing certain applications or the date that they're processing. I think those are customer service things that they're doing that are really good that don't need to be addressed in rule. I would agree. I love it's just beyond what we can control in the office. Absolutely. All right. Sounds good. Moving to 3.2.5, first two comments are related. I'll read them both. One comment says medical cards should be permanent for those who have permanent conditions. And the second comment says that talking about subsection A says the time period of a single year should be extended by requiring annual or no, the regulation is not just a burden to patients whose maladies might make such an effort disproportionately difficult, but it also has the potential to post strain on the state's own verification system. Most importantly, it could results in patients not having access to their medication in times of great need. A couple of points here. One is that as subsection A of this section 3.2.5 notes, this is a time period that is set by the legislature. So again, we don't really have the authority to change that time period. And subsection B2, the board did try to accommodate some of this, or reduce some of this burden by saying that the healthcare professional verification aspect of renewal will only be required every other year. So there is sort of a, that should make every other renewal really quite simple. It's not going to have to produce very much to do it. So those are the two things I'd note. I don't know if we have a whole lot of flexibility here, but we did try to build in some accommodation. Yeah, I mean, we struggled with this the first time around. I think we came to the spot that gives us exactly what you described, some flexibility, but working within the statutory framework that was given to us. And thinking about this, I realized, I don't know how to decide what a permanent condition is. Right. I mean, like I... Right. I think the ones that we kind of just said might not be permanent or chronic pain. Right. I said, everyone else is somewhat incurable or... Right. So I know it's tough. Yeah, no, I agree. Anything else from us on this one, Dave? No, thank you. I think it's, you know, this role is challenging because we hear a lot of concerns that we can't address without the legislature, you know? So I think we're keeping track of those. And over time, as we find our footing with this role across the street as well, maybe we can, you know, have those conversations more substantively than we are. Moving to subsection D of the same section, 3.2.5, commenter asks about subsection D, which though, so let me back up and say what subsection D is here. Patience, the subsection D says the patients who submit renewal forms prior to the expiration of their registration, but who do not get a response from the board prior to the expiration date shall retain their prior registration until such time as the board grants her tonight. Commentator points asks, how will this be proven? Patient presents an expired registry card at the dispensary, how do they prove that the dispensary state hasn't responded yet? And they note that, you know, there could be a dispute about whether the patient's telling the truth or not, and what should we do to address that? This feels like staff procedure. Yeah, like guidance. It seems like the dispensary could call us. Yeah, or if they're, I don't know what the application process looks like, but if there's like a, if you send it online or something and there's like a, we've received it sort of page that you print out that you have. Like I feel like this is something that our staff can probably work on. That sounds good. And I feel like over time, if this becomes an issue, there can be amendments to this. Cool. Moving to 3.3, which is the registration of caregivers, some general comments about the section. Again, a plant limit comment. The plant limits should be raised for, is it the exact same as the patient comments around plant limits should be either raised or eliminated, especially with regard to the immature plant counts. And again, this is not something, this is set in statute and the board doesn't have the authority to override the statute. One commenter notes that plant counts should be per person. So plant count for caregivers should be per person, not per caregiver. I actually think that there's an argument that the statute already is per person. So for, for personal use, when you're not a caregiver and you're just a person in Vermont growing your own, there's a clear possession cap. I'm not, I think this is ambiguous. It is arguable that a caregiver is operating under a different set of statutes where they are any caregiver is allowed to grow up to their maximum plant count. But this isn't really something that we can change either way. The statute is what it is. There may be arguments in the future in court about it, but we can't, regardless of bad interpretation, we can't change what the statute says. But there's an argument that possession limits are different for caregivers and they are for your ordinary person in Vermont where the statute clearly says you can't possess more than this, where the statute here is a little different and says that any caregiver can grow up to this amount. So that's the matter of it. I don't want to test that theory yet. Nobody's tested it. I don't know what a court's gonna say if somebody tried to test it. But my point is that regardless of whether that's true or not, we can't change what it says. Moving to 3.3.2, which is 3.2B, which is about the information that a caregiver's application is gonna ask of a person who's trying to become a caregiver. 3.2B, be asked for a number of sort of a variety of basic information, name, address, phone number, email, et cetera. This commenter says the caregiver should also be required to give the patient's registry identification number or to indicate that the patient is applying contemporaneously. And of course the CCB will need to verify that the patient is approved before approving the caregiver. That's a decision for you all to make. I think when this was drafted, the understand, I think it was drafted with the intention that yes, of course, they're gonna have to identify the patient who you will be a caregiver for. And it is definitely not only possible but likely that caregivers will be doing this contemporaneously with patients, especially for a patient who's entering this system. And we could ask for a registry identification number but I think we left that out or when it was drafted, left out purposefully because if they are applying contemporaneously, it's just gonna be something that you're gonna have to say, well, I don't have it yet. And it's gonna be a step that's unnecessary as long as we can verify that there is in fact somebody who's going, the patient matches your info. And yes, of course we'll have to approve the patient before I approve the caregiver but that feels like a process issue, not necessarily something that needs to be in rule. But we had to move forward to make a final decision on it. We have a process later on in the rules about if you're a caregiver, can you be a caregiver independent of who your patient is? Can you change, like if your patient says I don't wanna use this person as a caregiver anymore, is that person still a caregiver? So you can be a caregiver for, well, I don't remember right now, but there, yes, you could, even if a particular patient drops off, you could still be a caregiver, I forget the one. Six months, I thought, do we do it? Yeah, we built in some flexibility on that in response to a comment actually. But ultimately you have to have a patient. You do have to have a patient. You can't have zero patients and be a caregiver. So, should we add patient? So I don't see any other registration number on this. They're identifying the patient. The comment is just, do we need a registration number as well? That's basically what it boils down to. It seems as if there's enough info in there to kind of reconcile patient and the caregiver without requiring another step, where again, it could be like a chicken or the egg. I mean, the only reason I would say yes is that if this makes this process, processing the application faster for the staff, maybe that would be helpful. Easier to find someone by a registry number. I don't know if that's true. I don't either, but I don't imagine it would make a significant difference. I haven't heard that from staff. I don't either. It could also be another process piece where we say, just it doesn't matter if it's in the rule or not, but in the application, if your patient has a registry number, and you know it, put it down in the card, otherwise you just need the date of birth on the name. I just wanna pull up the caregiver numbers, but I'll get to that in a minute. Right, so that, yeah. So right now, I remember that this is a point of discussion, but just to remind the board, because I didn't have the answer right at the moment, but a caregiver shall only serve one patient at a time, and a patient shall only have one registered caregiver at a time, with an exception for somebody who's under 18. That's the rule right now. I know there's a lot of discussion about changing that, but again, that's in statute, not something that we can alter. Moving on to 3.3.3, which is about the criminal history records. A commenter noted that background checks should be required for family members. I would just note a couple of things. One, they are required for family members under this rule. It's just that a temporary caregiver registration can be given out prior to the completion of the criminal history record check. And I don't think we really discussed this just to remind the board, when the first time around, just to remind the board of the reasoning behind this was that my understanding is that it is not infrequent that somebody gets a diagnosis of potentially an acute diagnosis, doesn't have any real knowledge of how to handle this system. And so it's typical that in that situation, somebody does ask a family member to serve as the caregiver and often for it to be useful, it needs to come online fairly rapidly because it's an oncology course of treatment. So that we were trying to accommodate that hypothetical, not hypothetical, we're trying to accommodate that set of circumstances that does happen in order to allow people to be given those caregiver cards right away, ending the record check, but a record check will still proceed. I think that that's a better approach than just, I think we've accommodated this request essentially. Yes. Same. Okay. That sounds good. Moving to 3.3.5, which is the renewal period of caregiver registration, caregiver application card, somebody again recommends that the renewal period should be extended beyond the year. And again, this is in statute as subsection A notes. Moving to, any comments on that? Moving to 3.4.3, which is within the licensing of the dispensaries. So this is about the education and training piece. And several commenters talked about how education and training should be standardized and mandatory across the state. Could be either a state mandated curricula or a state approved curricula, whatever that might end up being. And another commenter noted that perhaps also social equity training should be there and should be standardized. And in subsection B of 3.4.3, the board already did decide to mandate that there has to be plans to educate employees, interact with patients. But this, I think the commenters are requesting something a little more than that with respect to standardized plans. And I'd open it up to board discussion. But again, this could be a guidance versus rule question as well. But obviously, up to you, this is a policy question. So just the recap of where we started, the dispensaries, the law says we can't be more prescriptive. Yeah, thank you for, yeah. And there's no rule on education in the current set of rules. If a dispensary decides to enter into the adult REC market, then the rules one and two apply to them. And so they will have standard curricula for all their employees. They decide not to and be a standalone dispensary only then this rule applies to them. So I don't know what more we can say. I mean, this is an area where we decided to push a little bit on that kind of bright line of no more restrictive or no more prescriptive by requiring plans, you can issue guidance, but I think, you know, I'm comfortable with where we landed on this the first time, just noting the kind of box that we're in. And then, you know, for all of those kind of dispensaries that are seeking an integrated license or just in a retail license on the adult REC side, they'll be subject to the kind of standard curricula. I mean, I'm not comfortable where we landed, although it is where we landed and I'm not gonna ask to change that, but I'm not sure that I guess I really struggled to believe that when the legislature put that in the bill that they really meant there would be education on the adult use side and really no requirement on the medical side. I'm not, I mean, I think we're just broadly interpreting legislative intent. I think that's the challenge with how they were to do it, it's ambiguous. Yeah, I mean, there's things that we can do beyond this. You know, again, I go back to kind of the hotline with the nurse, there's things that we can do for the patients that would supplant what's required of the dispensaries. But you know, to me, that's kind of, that's how you thread this needle, not by. By putting in a rule. Not by blatantly going against what the rule says or what the statute says. We're trying to kind of supplement what's required of the dispensaries on our own. Yeah, Julie, I totally agree with you, but I think threading the needle is where we've got to do it in rule. I think, you know, through guidance and us having to approve plans, we can kind of set a different standard as they come to us. And we just got to hold ourselves to a high standard with respect to that and make sure that there's not, that it's procedural as we possibly can get. And so folks understand what's to be expected. It does leave a little confusion for me though in 3.5, which I realize is jumping out a little bit. Because it's, in 3.5.1, we talk about except for a board vote who conflicts with 70SA, is that, I mean, I just, where do we carve out the different, the exceptions? Is it further down in the rule or is it? Yeah, so there are carve outs, both in those particular statutes, if you look at them there are specific things that dispensaries are permitted to do that are clearly not permitted for regular adult use, in particular the types of products. There's basically no limitation on the types of products whereas there are in adult use. And then of course delivery and things like that are allowed. And then within 3.5, yeah, if you go further down, there's differences in terms of delivery requirements and things like that. But those were all taken from what was already the case. In other words, we didn't, we looked at the DPS rules and said, here's where DPS is more permissive than following rules who would have been. And the statute says we need to go in favor of what was more permissive. And so that's where we drew most of those carve outs by rule. Yeah, okay. And those two, some of you say 971 and 973, those that repealed in March, right? No, those are the ones that take effect. Those are the ones that take effect in March, okay. Or not in March. Well, we'll see what happens. I live right now. Right now, when there's some legislation that may push that back. Will that likely push that back? Yes. There's so many moving parts. It's written in the bills that are under active consideration in the legislature. Okay. I just, I just feel like we need to keep talking about it. Not today, but I'm done. Okay, thank you. Let me recognize that though. 3.4.4 is the next comment. This is about dispensary renewals. So one commenter noted that dispensaries who get integrated licenses should be able to renew both dispensary and integrated licenses at the same time. And I would just note that that is certainly the intention of subsection A, which is basically to say that if you get the integrated license, now that's the set of regulations you're following for everything. Your dispensary license isn't a separate thing. You are now an integrated licensee, which includes the ability to be a dispensary and you're gonna follow those, that renewal pattern. So I have been interpreting subsection A to do exactly what this commentator requests, which is to have the renewals be at the same time. I think that's what the effect of it will be. Okay. Sounds like a thank you style. I think that's right. Yeah. We can just be clear on that as we move forward on this. And then for subsection B, this is really a drafting issue saying that the beginning of subsection B says such dispensaries, but it's not real. I don't think that that's particular care what they're referring to. What it's intended to refer to is the dispensaries that had licenses on the day that this set of rules takes effect. And I think just a slight rewording there is gonna be better for everybody. So assuming the board has no objection to that, I'm gonna go ahead and do that. 3.5, we're now on to the regulation of dispensaries. And first kind of, there's sort of a general, two general comments about 3.5 and the regulation of dispensaries. One is that several commenters noted that all dispensaries should be required to be full panel third party testing. We already did talk a bit about this at the beginning of this, noting that there's legislation in the works around this for dispensaries in particular. And again, any of the dispensary that becomes into trade licensee is gonna end up being subject to a lot of this anyway, but I open it to Ann Pepper's point about our limitations on what we can do as valid here too. But I open it to any discussion you may have. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, this one seems like an obvious one. You know, our medical patients are the most susceptible to moldy or bad cannabis. I don't know how we've been operating this way up to this point. I think, you know, the dispensaries do, I think that's their own product. That's the extent they can, but I don't know if there's much we can do in rule other than if you get your, if you're gonna get your adult rec license in any form, you're gonna have to be subject to those rules. So. This is the same problem we just discussed. Yes. Here's language specifically addressing this at the legislature right now. So again, that's not a given them. Anything can happen, you know. Moving to the next general comment, which is that patients should be able to access adult use retail stores and purchase product there without paying the adult use taxes. And I would just note that under the statutes that govern the tax portion of this legal scheme, I do believe that that is outside the board's discretion to make that change. That will have to be a legislative change. The stat, the legislation, which is in 7VSA 7902, 7903 does make it pretty clear that the taxes shall be collected at adult use, you know, at the, at any cannabis establishment. And the only carve out that the legislature chose to make was specifically as two dispensaries that are authorized under 7VSA chapter 37, which is the dispensary section. I think the legislature made a pretty clear choice here that those are the only folks who get to not impose this excise tax. And if we, if there is a policy preference that that change, which I totally understand the argument there, that's gonna have to be a legislative fix. Can you remind me our retail establishments allowed to discount cannabis? They can't advertise. There's limitations on advertising for a certain amount of discounts, but there's no, I do think that they have discretion to make discounts as they see actually appropriate. To your head, to your head turning. Well, I was, you know, right out there. I think that's what I'm putting down. I know we had a robust conversation around this. Right. I think that's another avenue. They're going to 3.5.3 is around dispensary visitors. This is really a 3.5.3 C specific. And this is about records of visitors. This commenter says, what purpose is the record requirements serving? This is more restrictive than for adult use retail establishments and by its own terms, it won't apply to dispensaries that are also adult use establishments. So only capture a small portion of people accessing legal cannabis in the state. So that's a policy question for you all. This is 3.5.3 C, right? That we're talking about. That's right. So the purpose of this is it's similar to the adult use, right? This is not related to, wait, or is it related to going into a retail dispensary? It is specifically about dispensaries and it does come, it's adapted from the DPS rules. I will say that it would be within your discretion to eliminate this if you wanted to because you'd be less restrictive than the DPS rules if you were to be so. But then we wouldn't necessarily have record if they're serving people with cards or not. Well, dispensary by law cannot serve somebody who doesn't have a patient card or carry it with card. Is that who would we know if there was no record that that law was being followed? I mean, you'd have to have enforcement effective. I mean, any other thing I would just, that the commenter points out is that we're already exempting integrated licensees effectively from this saying that if you're doing both, you don't have to keep the record. Did the two ounce per month purchase cap carry forward? Was that in statute? It's a possession cap, not actually technically speaking. It's a possession cap. It's saying that you can't possess more than this per month and yes, I do believe that carried forward. There isn't specifically a purchase cap in statute. We did say that you can't sell more than two ounce per transaction because I think the reasoning there is that if you did, you would be putting somebody in violation of the law by doing so. But there's technically just a possession cap not a purchase cap. The new title seven on the dispensaries doesn't have the two ounce per month. It does have the possession cap still, I believe, but it doesn't, let me just check that, but it does not have a specific transaction cap in the way that there's a transaction cap for adults. What are you thinking? Just wondering if that is some reason tied to this maintaining a record. Are you maintaining a record and also maintaining how much they purchase in a month? I don't have a strong feeling on this one. Yeah. And yes, just to complete, it is a possession cap, not a purchase cap. It's in section 952, sorry. All right, yep. So I'm finally getting rid of it, but why don't we, we don't have to vote on this today, right? The public window, public comment window, I was even closing it. It's still Friday, I think Chris was right. So why don't we just ask Lindsey why this was put in there and whether they use this? And then if they, if it's just kind of like no longer relevant, let's just get rid of it. That's good. Moving to 3.5.4A, somebody notes that everybody now has a 30 day minimum. Nobody has some longer than that. So we can just delete the second sentence of that provision. I think that's the person's correct. There's no need to have that there. 3.5.5 quantity limits. Somebody notes the quantity limits should be raised. And then, well, let's cover that one first. We'll take this one at a time here. Again, here it is. There is not really a, as we just said, no cap in the statute on transaction limits. It's a cap on possession limits that is still in statute. And I think this was addressing that issue. But it's up to you. You can always just rely on the statute if you want. I mean, that's an option that is open to you if you don't want to say something about it. So that way, if the statute gets changed, then that would automatically change this rule. I think, so that's a good thought that you're moving towards here. And one thing that might make sense is to say that instead of naming the amount in the statute, or sorry, in our rule, it might make sense to just do it by reference to any existing cap. So say, instead of saying two ounces, say may provide no more than any existing possession cap or patience in statute. And then if that gets eliminated down the road or raised or whatever might happen, you don't have to do that. Our rule automatically accommodates that, which we did in many places, and it has to be out here, but that's up to you all. I think it's a good idea. Yeah, yeah, I think it's a good idea. Certainly understand and respect the thoughts that folks want that raise. Again, only do so much by ourselves. Great, that sounds good. Yeah, and that says you all know that we've done a lot of that throughout our rules is just to rely on the statute. So if the statute changes, our rules will essentially change automatically. Somebody notes that equivalencies may be a problem. It may not make sense to compare the weight of flour to the weight of a concentrate. I would just note that there's nothing in this rule that says exactly how the equivalencies are going to be done. I think the plan was to rely on guidance and there's models from around the country on how equivalencies are done elsewhere. So the commenter may be entirely correct, but I don't think there's anything that directly conflicts. That being said, it's up to the board as to how exactly you want to talk about this, or if you want to talk about it at all in the rule. I would prefer to address this in guidance. Yeah, same here. So do you want to eliminate any mention of equivalency in the rule? I think it's fine the way it is, honestly. We say that there is going to be an equivalent between two ounces of flour and the equivalent amount of concentrate. And we haven't figured out whether we're gonna do the kind of Colorado equivalency chart or the Nevada one. So I think, and it could change. So I think it's good to just leave it the way it is. Okay, sounds great. Moving to 3.5.6, this is around the transfer to adult use market. And so the first question is, should there be an explicit allowance for dispensaries to purchase from adult use cannabis operations? Just a lawyer note there, I do, it has been my interpretation that they certainly are allowed to, dispensaries certainly are allowed to purchase from adult use cannabis operations. And you could imagine a lot of the focus on these is around those five that are eligible for integrated licensees, but you could imagine integrated licenses, but you could imagine somebody brand new starting up and say, hey, I wanna do a specialist dispensary operation. So patients, it has, I believe the rules currently allow for that. And it was the intention behind this drafting to allow for purchase from adult use. It's the other way that's prohibited, but it might make sense to make that clear. I think that might be a fine thing to do if we wanna be clear on the rule or that can be a guidance issue too. I think that's probably better handled than guidance in terms of like if you're opening up the brand new dispensary, here's the things that, yeah. Sounds good. And then somebody notes that by the terms of this rule, this section, and let me, the commenter says this provision seems to apply to both dispensaries that are part of integrated licensees and dispensaries that are not, but should it apply to standalone dispensaries that are not integrated licensees? And I'm just rereading the section to make sure I understand what the commenter was getting at here. I think what they're trying to say is exactly what you just described. Okay, that's good. Well, or is this about being able to do multiple lines of business, being able to cultivate and manufacture and dispense? That would, I mean, a standalone dispenser in my mind, I imagine that it's being just a place where people purchase integrated, which can do all of those things. I think it gets back to what David was trying to articulate, which did a great job, David, in my opinion. If you're opening your own, let's say, Julie, you're opening a dispensary, you can still source cannabis from folks that are otherwise sourcing for the adult use market. But can I also get a manufacturer's license and a cultivator's license? I think so, sorry. I didn't read it that way, I'm just reading it. Maybe that's not it, that's how I interpreted the question, but I might. I mean, I think that the dispensary, by the terms of the statute, plainly can do all of those things. So I think that that's clear under the law. I think what this person may have been saying, and hopefully this is getting at something that's something vaguely correct, is that this section 3.5.6 is really about, and I think we don't have to, I think it's by its terms, this is clear, but I think I see what they're getting at. They're saying that if your dispensary operation of an integrated licensee, you can't transfer from your dispensary operation into the adult use. And the point of that was to prevent dispensaries from having this big market advantage where they could grow a huge amount beyond what the normal market participants could and have this advantage. So we're saying you'd still have to abide by those rules if you're operating in the adult use market. I think what this person is saying is what if you're actually an independent dispensary, you have no integrated license, either because you choose not to get one or because you set up shop as a dispensary after these rules take effect. Could that entity that is not at all an integrated licensee, could they sell to the adult use market? Like to a retailer? I think that's what this person is saying. They build their own integrated. Well, no, the way I see it is what Dave is saying is you have this, your dispensary so you can grow unlimited canopy. Then you also have a product manufacturing location on site. So you create all these concentrates. Can you sell those to an adult use retailer for sale to the general public? I think the answer is clearly no, right? They wouldn't be allowed to do that. I do think that under the terms that we've created, I do think that that was not allowed. I think you're right. Yeah. Okay. Yeah, it's not hard to read that at all, but that's a good comment that we try to figure out. I acknowledge I'm doing the, I don't know for sure what... Dispensaries are only allowed to sell the patients, so they can't sell it to an adult use recreational licensee. And I think the other reason why you would not want to open that door from a policy standpoint, which is your purview, but I'm just trying to think through the implications of the question here, is that you could then have a dispensary operation that's like a manufacturer that sort of like has a bunch more permissions, but it's really just selling into the adult use market and takes advantage of its dispensary, sort of separate dispensary status, but it's making money from non-patient customers in a way that would arguably be unfair to the normal adult use market and canopy requirements too. Yeah, exactly. Do we need to clear that up anywhere? I think it's pretty clear if you read the rules as a whole and not just this section. I agree with that. And I think the commentator understands that too. I think they were getting at, should we open the door in the way that, because the commenter says the provision seems to apply to both dispensaries that are part of integrated licensee dispensaries that are not, and I would agree that commentator is correct in their interpretation. And I think our answer is it should not, we should not open the door in the way that they're suggesting. We allow integrated licenses to transfer into the adult use market. I'm just trying to put this together in my head now that I understand what the question is. And you can, someone could get a dispensary license soon, right, that when the 18VSA expires, right? When is that, is that now? It's either market first. It could be now. It's either market first, it's either in a week or in several months from now. I'm assuming the legislation takes it that passes, which it seems like it's going. It will be July 1st. Okay. All right. Nevermind. Right, moving parts. Well, I was just thinking that that what could potentially happen is that if it were March 1st, additional dispensaries could open and then happen early, enter into the market and have small groups, have early entry into the market that way, which is probably what this commenter was getting at, but if it's not going to be till July then it doesn't matter quite as much. I'm sensing the consensus is not to make any change. That's right. Yeah. Okay, if we get into that. Yep, yep. Sorry, that was a little bit, that one was a little bit confusing. Section 3.7, which is a de-registration of patients or caregivers. Somebody, a commenter says, what seems to have a caregiver who serves multiple patients needs to get different caregiver ID cards for each patient. Right, make more sense to clarify a process by which a registered caregiver can add additional patients to their registration and their caregiver ID only gets canceled if their last patient stops using them. I do believe, as I mentioned before, that under the statute, you cannot, that is just not the case. In other words, there cannot be caregivers who serve multiple patients. I think if that changes I do think the rules are flexible enough to accommodate this issue, which is that we could decide as a matter of process whether or not somebody needs multiple ID cards per patient. I don't think there's in the rule. I don't interpret either this section or the caregiver specific section to say that you have to have an ID card per patient if that were to be permissible at some point. Yep. It is changing things. Do we have a section that says just that the caregivers have the onus to kind of keep their information current with the board? I mean, I think the renewal effectively accomplishes that. There may be, I actually don't remember up the top of my head if we have that. We could add a, if we just make a note and we can decide if we want to do that in our last suite. Yeah, you're right. And I don't think that there, in the other two sections, you're right that we did have specific obligations for staff. I don't have that to. Moving to 3.8, which is where we have our next comment. 3.8 is about the dispensaries ongoing duty to disclose. A commenter noted, and they put this in this section. They said that this should include a duty to disclose lab testing requirements. My understanding of what they were really getting at there was just about the more general concept that they wanted to have, that many commenters have noted that there should be equivalent strict testing standards. I don't think that anything about testing specific really belongs in this section. I don't think that's really what this is doing. This is actually doing exactly what Chair Pepper was recommending we do for patients and caregivers, which is to say that if something changes, you gotta update the board. So I think that comment and we've already, lab testing in general, we've already covered in a couple other places in this discussion. But if there's anything else anybody wants to say, obviously, you can open that up. I don't think so. Okay, and then purely technical correction in 3.8.1, because rule one has changed, that section reference needs to change to rule 1.17, as opposed to 1.15. Dude, somebody's really reading it with a legal eye here. I had a sense of it. So that's rule three. That's all the rule three comments. All right, do we want to take a break before we dive into rule four? Should we just go right ahead? Keep going. David, are you ready to go? All right, so let's go to the right top. All right. So we had a couple of general rule four comments. And I'll go through those first. The commenter says, I would like to see a fair plan to address and reduce driving into the influence of cannabis. I'm concerned we will see a dramatic increase in cannabis used with commercialization and that health consequences and driving fatalities will result. I would just note from the legal standpoint, this is very much in the purview of our policing agencies around the state. The board was given no specific authority with respect to roadside testing or that type of enforcement, that type of enforcement against individual citizens as opposed to against market participants like cannabis establishments. But I know you've spoken about this a bit. Yeah. And you're welcome to make a few more comments on that. So I served on the governor's marijuana commission on this highway safety subcommittee. Rand did a pretty deep dive on this exact issue. Are there dramatic increases and driving incidences related to those increases? And the answer is somewhat inconclusive, but the answer for the most part is no. There's a number of studies out there, one that just looks at highway incidents and the answer there is clearly no. It has a much more dramatic impact on highway issues is the price of gasoline and the miles driven and not anything related to cannabis legalization. There's another study that looks at insurance incidents reports that does show a very slight uptake in insurance reports in adult use cannabis states. So essentially there's no more kind of police responding fatalities, certainly. And, but there might be a slight increase in kind of underbenders and traffic incidents. That being said, the state has been prepared for adult use cannabis for a long time. They added A-Ride training as a mandatory module on the police academy curricula starting in 2015. So now every officer who has graduated since 2015 is trained in advanced road sign impairment detection and enforcement. And we have probably more DREs per capita than any other state. And there's a nice geographical disbursement of them. So I don't see it as the board's role to reduce driving under the influence of cannabis other than with our advertising restrictions that we have in place. That sounds good. Climbing down off of my soapbox. Any other comments on that? Nope. All right, next general comment. Should rule four generally be clear about the board's authority with respect to cannabis establishment identification cards? The rule is geared toward the regulation of cannabis establishments, but doesn't really talk about regulating individuals who have ID cards to work at the establishments. And I would just note from a technical standpoint, I think the commenter is basically correct on that. The rule does not really contemplate enforcement against individuals. And in rule one, where we talk about the ID cards, we do talk about how prior behavior could mean that somebody doesn't get a new one, but we never really provide anywhere for taking one away from somebody who may be diverting, for example, or something like that. So I think the commentator has a fair point here. I open it to the board. We can certainly, we can certainly add something in that would cover that. And I want to open it up for discussion. I think it's a good idea. I think it's a good idea too. I think it probably takes some nimbleness considering that we're trying to, or the legislature's looking at language, right? Tying it to the employee, not the employer. And so I want to make sure we don't trip ourselves. If that does get changed. I'm sure you know that though. So I think especially if that is the case, then individuals need to be responsible for their use of that card. Okay, sounds good. We'll add that in. The commenter said, where do towns fit in with respect to rule four? Should we tie into rule four? Some more clarity about how towns can perform enforcement. And on this one, this was one of the spoken comments and there was some response the board had to this already. I would just note that I think the statute lays out what's permissible and what's not permissible. And we referenced this a little bit in rule two. And we have a lot of guidance on this, but I'm not sure that there's, I'm not sure rule four is the place to address this. This is really about cannabis establishment, what the board can do with respect to cannabis establishment. It's not what anybody else can do. And I'm not sure it would make sense to try to do more here, but certainly we've been working a lot on this sort of clarity generally. And if there's more that folks want to say, we can open it up. Girl logic makes sense to me. I agree. Another general comment is that manufacturers should be required to demonstrate acceptable homogeneity. And they reference some testing standards around the thresholds within which a lab could be able to tell the differences between homogeneity within products. I would just note that this feels very much like a rule two issue around and homogeneity that is not, it was not part of the, we have limits on serving size, homogeneity within those servings is not something that the board has rules on and I don't think that this is the place to do it. Rule four is not the place to deal with this type of issue. That being said, if it's sort of a more general thing you want to speak to, you're welcome to do that. I agree with you. Yeah, and I would just say, this certainly is, well, I'll speak for myself. Certainly not within my world of expertise, but I think what Carrie and Kim and even Dr. Ham did is looked at action levels and parameters and would shy away from necessarily getting prescriptive on certain methodologies and instruments that needed to be used. And this commenter looks to be asking us to make that determination. But I don't think we're in a position to do so right now. Yeah, I mean, just like a lot of this, we relied on the people that have lived and worked in this industry for decades on those actionable levels. And I think it's the best we can do. Yeah. Sounds good. The final general comment was from somebody who represented themselves as a renter and who noted that the current restrictions around consumption and formal law can make it very difficult for renters to consume. To say from the legal standpoint, I think that person's making a fair point, but this really is a statutory issue that the board can't change within its power. Moving on to specific comments. Going to 4.1.3 on the definitions, commenter points out that the definition of cannabis license agent can be deleted and all uses of it within rule four can be revised to reflect the changes made to rule two, which now for, which eliminated the cannabis license agent category. I think the commenter's correct. Yeah, we did look at those. Yeah. Commenter notes that in subsection J, the description of the wholesaler's physical side of operations is too narrow, product storage. In addition to storage, a wholesaler, wholesalers engage in processing and packaging at their physical side of operations and the legislature could include or could expand wholesaler rights to include sales of seeds and clones. I would just note from a legal standpoint, this is a change the board could make, but this is a definition that is in all of the rules. I think if we change it, it should be changed everywhere. I would say that that's certainly something could try to do. We are in the L-CAR process for rules one and two. It's kind of gonna be a last minute squeeze to get that done, but it's not impossible yet if you do wanna make the change. But if we do do it, it should be made to all the rules, so it's consistent. I also would say that I think that as a practical matter, the current definition can accommodate the sort of general activities of a wholesaler, and I wouldn't view this as a piece of leverage that the board would use to hamstring a wholesaler's permitted activities. They're permitted by law to do something. We're not gonna say that our definition of a location is gonna stop you from doing everything else that you're allowed to do. To that point, the statute controls, the statute supersedes rules, right? So there's no sense in us having to go back and change all of our rules. We can do it next year if we want to, but at this point, it's too late. I think I basically agree with that, and I also agree that, yes, our definition of where a wholesaler is located could never restrict our permitted activities. Well, it's just your sense of that. They're permitted to do all these things, and I'm sure they will do that. Yeah, and I certainly respect product storage being too narrow, but I mean, product storage, again, can be pretty ambiguous, right? We can interpret that a little bit broader than what the commenter is. Yeah, yeah. I think that's right. We can interpret it to accommodate the realities of what a wholesaler is doing, and I think maybe one of the things that gets added to the list of changes as we revise these rules in accordance with how the market actually rolls out. Sounds good. Subsection C, somebody knows that in subsection H, the definition of patient includes that they have a registration card, and they note that for consistency, we should do the same with subsection C where in the definition of care gets. I think that makes perfect sense. I take that almost as a drafting issue as much as any substantive changes. I think it's fine to do that. Sure. The board agrees. 4.2.1 is the next comment. We have these two comments are really quite similar, and I'll try to read them quickly because the concept is the same, but the commenters noting that the board should expand its investigative authority beyond those who engage in the sale or transfer of cannabis products to include those who engage in manufacturer cultivation and transportation of them. And also the rule seems to suggest that the board has investigative authority over unlicensed sales. Oh, I'm sorry, I misspoke at the beginning of this. This is a substantively different comment than the second one, my apologies. Just noting that. So we will address this one first. Further, the rule seems to suggest that the board has investigative authority over unlicensed sales. This is criminal activity that is also subject to investigation by police agencies. I think it's appropriate for the board to have some investigative authority over unlicensed sales. I imagine the board would have to coordinate with law enforcement and suggest the rule clarify that so as to not suggest that the board will only act alone in those investigations. A couple of points here with respect to the first point. I think it would be fine. It's fine to add that stuff in. I do think that sale or transfer will necessarily include. I mean, if somebody is, you know, people can, if somebody is doing these things as part of the market, they will then be transferring them to other people. So I think it kind of effectively includes all of these activities that are regulated. That being said, if it will provide clarity, I don't think there's any harm in putting that in and we can certainly do that. And then the second point I would make is that I agree with the commentator that the rule does suggest and I think it is the case that it is true that the board does have investigative authority over unlicensed sales. I think that's in the nature of a regulatory body. It is, and it is within the power vested in you by the statute, which is to regulate all sale and transfer of cannabis in the state. And if somebody is doing that without bothering to get a license, that is within your purview to address. Under rule four, the only real leverage you'd have on that person is to find them, obviously, since they don't have a license, you couldn't take away. I do think it is within your authority to find people who are engaging in that behavior. So I think the commentator is correct. We could, this next piece is a decision for the board clarification. So it suggests the board will not act alone. That's up for your discussion. I think that that is something that the board could just do as a matter of practice, could make decisions on a case-by-case basis, or you could put it in the role if you want. My assumption is that we're not the only agency that could take action, like we could find someone for not following our rules, but a police agency could do another investigation. Is there a criminal aspect to that? I believe that under our current statute, yes, there will continue to be a criminal aspect to sale the above one ounce, even after this takes effect. In the illegal diversion, so my question is, we do an investigation, we find something that's clearly a crime and a violation of our rules. We can do the violation of our rules. Are we allowed to, do we have a provision here that allows us to share everything from our investigation with law enforcement authority or a bank for that matter? There's no provision that prevents you from doing that. And you do have provisions in rule one that note that there will be sharing of information with respect at least to licensing information. But certainly for an unlicensed individual if containing this to this hypothetical, there's certainly nothing that would prevent you from sharing information with law enforcement. So essentially we see a crime, yeah, we're not gonna be the ones that are imposing criminal or doing criminal investigations, but we will be referring those. If we know, if we see crimes occurring. It would be within your discretion to do that. And you could do it in conjunction with choosing to act as the board and find somebody or you could do that in lieu of using your authority if that will be up to the board on a case by case basis. So this comment has two parts as you noted. We want to include the engage in manufacturer cultivation of transportation. I tend to agree with David. Those are encompassed in the sale of transfer cannabis and cannabis products. I think we just need to address how we use those boards and guidance. Okay, yeah. And I don't think we need to change anything about the kind of the criminal investigation aspect. Do we have a responsibility? I mean, you're asking if we can do, are we required to, I guess it'd be my other question. I'd know, I don't think there's any requirement either in statute or elsewhere that would require you to do that. And the other thing I just noticed on the manufacturer cultivation transportation piece of it, people are permitted under our statutes to grow some amount of cannabis and cultivated and do whatever they want with it. Use it, turn it into cookies. As long as they are not putting that into the stream of commerce, then I actually don't think that that's within the board's authority to regulate. Home uses, home grow and home uses is permitted and that's not in our, as long as they are not actually trying to turn themselves into unlicensed kind of establishment, I think that that is permitted not within the board's, it is not within the board's purview. As soon as somebody like that tries to sell it now, it is. Or transfer it. Yep. So moving on to the next comment, this is somebody comment about the basically a definitional issue, I'd say. This section meaning to address the ability to conduct inspections, quote unquote, of all persons engaged in sale or transfer of cannabis and testing labs. An investigation is conducted for cause and inspection is routine. Random inspections can result in an investigation and enforcement regulations are not met. I think that this is largely definitional issue, which the board can always choose to put something in about that, but I think it's pretty clear throughout our rules that inspections are going to happen. I do think that this provision was really about investigations of issues that you hear about, but I'm not sure if we need to sort of tease out the differences there. I'm not sure that's necessary either for the board or a person, but I think people have a general notion of what inspections are and what investigations are. I agree with that. Moving to 4.3, this is about the duty to cooperate with the board on these enforcement issues. The duty to cooperate in subparts one and two is limited to licensees, but perhaps would be more appropriate to expand this to also include any persons to whom a cannabis establishment ID card is issued, which would include owners, principals, and employees. I, it's up to the board. I think that makes sense. No harm in doing so, but up to you all. I agree. I think we should help others too. On 4.3.2, this is the same comment as before around inspections versus investigations, which I'm not sure we need to belabor the definitional issue here, unless anybody has different ideas. 4.4.2, the commenter says the CCB may want to add two new subsections to this, and this is the subsection that deals with what the penalties are. A prohibition on license renewal, which is mentioned in 4.5, and F, withhold license issuance, also mentioned in 4.5. This could be an incomplete application in conjunction with 4.5.1 subsection A, a description of what constitutes a complete application may be provided in other rules. I mean, one thing to note, rule one does already have language about prohibiting, or not a complete prohibition, but a waiting period for those who have been, who have had a license revoked under this rule, and that's a one-year period that they have to wait before they can reapply. And with respect to the withholding of the license issuance, again, I think unless, and I'd be happy to hear a commentary if the person's listening who put this comment in. But I do think that all of those issues around the license issuance process and the license renewal process is dealt with in rule one, and appropriately references rule four, where it needs to, including for, if your license is incomplete, if you are undergoing an investigation under rule four or you've had a disciplinary action, that is also discussed in rule one, how we'll handle that with respect to license renewals or license, I guess, license issuances potentially, if you're trying to vertically integrate with a new license. So I think that that's addressed, but again, if there's some concept that I'm missing here, I'm certainly happy to hear from anybody here or somebody else. All right, I'm just looking at this again. I also would, I don't know where there is language around withholding a license issuance, so I could be, I could just be a space here, let me see. Well, would we withhold a license if, I mean, it seems like we would either revoke it or suspend it, it wouldn't withhold the renewal, right? Or would we? Well, we could, yeah, I think, you know, someone's within that one year period where we've said in rule one, like you're not allowed, you're like on a probation, you're on a waiting period. Our response might be, you know, withhold your license renewal for a certain amount of time. We don't have anything, David, that categorically denies a person from ever getting a license again. We don't have that. But we also do mention in rule one that if there have been issues around honesty, you know, lack of a better term, we have more technical language in rule one, that can weigh against somebody or has reason to believe that there's something that's not being told to them or there's not complete disclosure in the application. That does, you do have permission not to issue a license, you have discretion rather, not to issue a license. And I would note again, I think what we tried to do is really separate the disciplinary process from the renewal process. So if there is an issue, we'll deal with it in rule four, renewals will move forward unless, you know, there's some issue with your renewal. If you're revoked or suspended, that's gonna be a sort of rule four issue that you've gotta take care of. Yeah, that makes sense to me. I mean, is the fear here that someone is in this one year waiting period, they apply, and because it's not spelled out in rule four that we can withhold the renewal application that we don't have the authority to do that? Is that the kind of general gist of this comment? That you don't have the authority to say, you know, one of our actions can't be, well, we're gonna withhold the renewal of your license. I mean, I think that you are limiting, so in rule one, it basically says that assuming you meet the other requirements for renewal, you're gonna go forward. If you have some sort of correction, corrective action plan, as long as you're following that, that will also go forward. If you've been suspended or revoked, that will be dealt with under the terms of this rule. I would say that if somebody has a suspended license, they can't operate, but they could renew, so that can't operate, but when you come out of that suspension, you have your renewed license ready to go and you can continue, because the point of the suspension is to suspend for X period of time, not to actually indefinitely, oh, not allow them to be a cannabis establishment anymore, so then let's say they have a two-month suspension, it happens to go right over their renewal date. I would say that that person should in fact renew, and they have to renew actually, they don't get an excuse from not having to renew just because they're suspended, and then once the suspension is up, they can operate again. So I think there was sort of a purposeful trying to detach these two things from each other for the sake of clarity, both for us and for people who are licensees, and that if somebody is revoked, then they're revoked, and they can apply again, they have to wait a year to apply again, and then if somebody has revoked, there may be reasons why the board will be reluctant to grant a license, but I think that those possibilities are captured within rule one. Okay. Okay. I think this is good then, the way it is. Going to rule 4.5, which is categories of violations and associated penalties. Some of the commenter notes that it should be clear that these categories are in decreasing order of severity. It's not apparent at the beginning that the category one is the most severe, and category five is the least severe. I think that's kind of a drafting issue. I think that's fine. We can add the language in saying that these are in decreasing order of severity. I can see how somebody reading this might initially assume that one is the least and five is the most. I think that's helpful for the reader. Yeah, it would be helpful for the reader. I mean, think about the federal scheduling of drugs. Scheduling one are the most severe. That's right. Is it necessary? Do other rules do this? This is purely, I really hope far we want to go. Really, it would be accommodating. I don't think it matters much either way. I don't think there's any issue with doing it. I will say when I went back and looked at this again, it took me a minute. I had to look at them all to figure out which was the most severe. But severe is kind of a subjective term. Maybe that's not the right word, but I'm sure David has some vocabulary. He can use that as severe, but I think laying it out like that would be helpful for the reader. But if you look at the sentence, it's not even really about severity of the penalty. It's about what the reaction of the board or what the potential universe of responses are gonna be. And really it's like, this is category one could make you ineligible to participate in this market. And it's not like this is the harshest penalty. It's like, what is the consequence for doing one of these things? So I actually don't agree with this comment that we should label them as severe or not severe. It's kind of like, the way it's laid out now, it's kind of like, here's the board's response. I agree, but if there is some type of statement that we wanna draft that kind of goes over that without using a certain word. We'll use the word severity in the board already. Category one violations are of a severity. I mean, I think if we're already using the word severity, then we're talking about improving, you know. Sounds like FAQ kind of territory to me. But I think if it's adding a sentence and it's not that hard, then we should do it. If it's that complicated, then if it's a really big deal, maybe we don't have to, we can address it in guidance, but. It was like a little bit too much of hand-holding. You know, it's kind of like, if we write them in red. Level two can be orange, and three is yellow. I know, I'm sorry, but it's just like, to me, this is kind of like, these are the offenses that essentially could suspend or revoke your license. Two, these are fines of a certain amount. Three is fines of a lesser amount. I think it's pretty clear what's going on. And it's like, I don't know. Imagine that those are not terms that you use every day though, and you're reading this. Like revoke and suspend versus fine. Yeah, like those are not necessarily like, just like pretend you're me and you're not an attorney, you know, and you're trying to read this and understand it for yourself. That would be the reason to add that level of clarity. I think that that is why we have the kind of guidance, public guidance documents. It's for people that really don't want to kind of dig into the legal ease of the rules. So I would prefer we just put that in guidance, as opposed to kind of changing the language around the kind of strict kind of like cause and effect language that we have here for action reaction language. I'll call that. As long as we draft it down. Yeah, okay. So moving on to, hold on, let me just pull up the right documents again. Next comment, for all the various category penalties, there's a slight change that we might want to comment to commenter notes. Many of the or clauses should become and or clauses instead, both for consistency and for optionality. And we frequently include the possibility of corrective action plans for some offenses, but not other repeat offenses, which seems odd. If someone gets their license suspended after a third violation, for example, we should want a correction at corrective action plan for after the suspension. And to agree with this comment. Yes. Next comment. Generally the violation lists may impact the ability to enforce other potential violations, not included in these lists or limit flexibility for the CCB. I had from the legal standpoint, I'm not sure I agree with that. I think it's, I do think at the beginning, we made clear that these are in their categories, and if there's something that's not listed, it says to the extent of violation is not listed in this section, the board shall have discretion to assign the violation to an appropriate category and issue a penalty accordingly. I think we did leave ourselves optionality, but there are other concerns around that. Okay. Cool. Some aspects of the below violations may be difficult to administer because the standard for compliance is unclear. This may lead to inconsistent application on the regulated community. Certainly we'll open this up for discussion. I would just note that there is a burden that we have to meet that's noted further down. And to some degree, this is the nature of enforcement. Judgments have to be made. And it's, I think it's the obligation of the enforcer to be as fair as possible, but there are gonna have to be some judgment calls. And then ultimately there will be standards that will have to be met both within the board process and then also eventually, if it gets appealed up, the court will place its own, courts will place their own burdens upon the board. For proving that they, in fact, do find these violations. Yeah, to put a finer point on that, there's multiple levels of review. There's the investigation, there's the decision by the board, and there's the kind of hearing officer process and there's an appeal to the Supreme Court. So, people's rights will not be violated by this process. Agreed. All right, another commenter notes the CCD appears to be attempting to enforce rules from other jurisdictions. It is true that we do note in multiple places that any licensee who has operations and other jurisdictions that are essentially the same as what a cannabis establishment is in Vermont has to be within the rules of those other jurisdictions. I don't think it's quite true to say that we are attempting to enforce those rules. We're simply saying that if you are not in compliance, if somebody, if the other regulatory body finds you not in compliance, that's a problem for the CCD as well. I think the next comment, which is about like at what point do you know when somebody's not in compliance? I think there, that's something we could potentially do if the board would like, we could leave flexibility always as an option. We could also say that something more definitive like, you know, after a final, you know, there's like a final decision or something like that of the relevant regulatory body or you could leave it open-ended. I mean, well, so the way it's written now, it could be ambiguous whether in an inactive investigation in a different jurisdiction would trigger a board action. But there's no requirement that it trigger a board action. It's just it could. I think that's, I think that's, I think it's fine the way it is. I mean, honestly, I think it could. If it was an active investigation, the ones, you know, put pesticides, you know, illegal pesticides on their plants in Massachusetts and they operate here in Vermont as well. I think that could trigger action by the board. I would agree. Okay, sounds good. Moving to a 4.5.1. Just one second here. So these are now we're getting into the specific categories going through the specific categories. And this is the category one violations. Somebody notes that the ability of the CCB and for subsection A, the ability of the CCB to monitor and ensure that an applicant receives all required licenses, permanence, regulation, sorry, license permits, registrations prior to issuance of a C cannabis establishment license or penalize post license issuance by revocation due to a failure to obtain those will be difficult to administer. The regulatory process administered by other jurisdictions entities is outside of the CCB's control. I would note that this is very similar to our prior comment and you may want to go in the same direction but I'll give you our discussion. Yes, it will be difficult to administer. I don't know how we can say anything other than what we've already said. But I think that we have to do that. Again, what you pointed out as the chair pointed out you're giving yourselves the ability not obligating any particular level of scrutiny on this stuff. Subsection H, somebody notes that this should be changed to more broadly reference change in control and should use the correct citation to rule 1.17 which I think both of those are fair comments. Certainly the reference is true. We need to change that and it is the case that we have used the term control in place of the term ownership because control is a defined term in the statutes and covers just about any concept of ownership. Yeah, I imagine. So we'll accept that one. And then the next one is a note around, I don't think there's a subsection but it is the case that in several subsections here the rule just says cannabis and the commenter notes that for consistency here and elsewhere, the reference should be to cannabis and cannabis product because those are also defined terms that we need to be consistent about using. Assuming that's okay, I'll move on. Yes, subsections K and L. Commenter says that these appear to address the same issue and I'll just read these through real quick. K says, failing to immediately admit a board designee into the premises of a cannabis establishment or dispensary upon request. And then L is saying that it's a violation to refuse to allow an inspection or obstructing a board designee from performing his or her official duties. I do think that L encompasses K. K is not encompass L but L encompasses K. I think this is, it's up to you. Could go either way. We get rid of K because L clearly the obstructing and refusing to allow I mean, obstructing has a very kind of broad legal definition. Yeah, so L can control this whole thing, I thank you. I'd be comfortable in either way. I mean, yeah, we can get rid of K. I mean, essentially we issue a violation it's gonna have to have kind of a statement effects attached to it and that obstructing will be defined so that you fail to allow us to enter. Yeah. And again, you know, K clearly puts people on notice that not allowing us to enter is a violation. I think obstructing is probably good enough though. Why don't we get rid of K? Brandy, other thoughts? I like getting rid of K. All right, let's get rid of K. All right. Committer says that in subsection M, purchasing or selling, subsection M refers to purchasing or selling cannabis. And the commenter says, should this include transferring or offering to sell, including cannabis? I would just note that elsewhere, we do generally use the term transferring anytime we talk about selling or purchasing. So I think that does make sense. Samples is up to you. I don't think we need to do that. I think that cannabis or cannabis product includes everything, including example. Okay, so we will add the transferring language and keep the rest the same. Subsections E and R comes to the notes that subsections E and R seem similar. Does the CCB wanna be more specific as to the taxes it is talking about, specifically those that are authorized in an adult East market or are they talking about any taxes? And just for our reminder, subsection E says it could be a violation, it could be violated for failure to pay taxes to the department of taxes. And R says the failure to properly collect taxes. And that's really the responsibility of the retailers with respect to the excise tax. I mean, I think that these are actually a little bit distinct. Paying taxes to the department, everybody is gonna be, any business has to pay their taxes. Collecting taxes is a different activity, a different task, and it is specific to one of the establishment. So I think they are actually doing something different would be my note. And I don't know if it would be up to the board to decide if you wanna be more specific or not, but I would recommend having both of them in there. And it seems to me also, what this comment is seeking is also if I don't pay my personal income tax, if I don't disclose my second home in Florida or something like that is out of board violation. I think that clearly, you have to be in good standing with the tax department in order to seek a license, but we can't enforce violations of the tax code, right? I think that's right. I think by operation of law, it's not like we can start enforcing the tax department or some other agency's rules or laws. I don't think we need to get any more specific here. As far as an E, I think is what they're, is this in the comment saying, is this talking specifically about those taxes authorizing adult use market or any taxes? I mean, yeah, we could say it, but I don't think it's inherent. Right, I think that's fine. That's what I was gonna say. Subsection N, commenter says, this should be subsection N talks about potency limits that do not match independent laboratory test results. And the commenter says, this should be revised to reflect the tolerance limits specified in rule 2.9. I don't think we really need to cross reference there, right? Yeah, I could see this going either way. I think that, you know, we couldn't violate somebody for doing something that's within what's permissible in rule 2. I think the commenter's saying, well, if you read this highly technically, you have to have a perfect match, but I don't think that we could violate, there's no way I could write up all of the board action violating somebody for doing something that was within the tolerances of the rule. But we could make that more explicit here if we wanted to. Refer to the just less wordy in this. I think it's pretty clear. And I think, again, this is a guidance issue. You know, when we talk, when we have issue guidance on these tolerance windows or action limits, you know, it's anything above this action limit is actionable. You know, I don't think we need a cross reference here. I don't think we do either. I think even with the tolerance limits, something could be slightly off, but again, you've got to look at it all. You've got to look at it together. Somebody says in subsection O, it's concerning that a newly licensed drawer previously operating the legacy market could have their license revoked for their initial inversion of their own seed slash plant stock. Just know a couple of things here, which is that I do think that this language needs to stay as it is because as an operating market needs to be clear about this. And I would just note that two other things. One other thing is that pretty much all other states who have established markets have done it this way and there have been no issues with that. And in terms of enforcement, you know, the board will only know what it knows once the tracking system is up and running. And that's how it's operated elsewhere. And then the second thing I would just note is that, you know, rule one is not where we license is just not going to be any issue around obtaining licenses with respect to this. And so I think we can follow the lead of the rest of the country in allowing the market to start and then enforcing. That's good. Moving to subsection T. This is in the violation section. calendar says, is the 60 day suspension of each of the different types of enforcement mechanism should have a more dramatic effect on outdoor cultivation as compared to indoor or wholesale activities. It might be helpful to play out a couple of scenarios. Think about how to manage multiple license suspensions with varying start and end dates. I think there's enough flexibility within the kind of enforcement that we can do this when real life such scenarios present themselves. It's not a 60 day suspension. It's for not more than a 60 day suspension. That's the other, that's, thanks Kyle, important note. Yeah, the flexibility is there to deal with the issues the commenters talking about. Subsection U commenter says, should there also be a fine option here? That's totally a board decision. I would just, I think the thinking behind this was that because these are violations that are serious and could result in not being able to, as we define this category at the beginning, it says these are violations which may result in not being able to be a licensed establishment anymore. The idea here was that if you do it twice, that's sort of like, we're gonna level this up and a fine is no longer an issue. You've gotta be suspended or revoked. That being said, this is totally a board discretionary decision about whether you wanna add optionality here too. So in T, they're fine, but can continue to operate, right? Or revocation of life, okay. But then in U, that could be suspended or it could be revoked, which has a financial implication for that business, right? So in, it is sort of like a fine. And could it actually be steeper than the fine that we've got in T? Yeah, but if the fine didn't matter to you the first time around, we need to find again, is it gonna change the way you're looking at the situation? I think it's more important to suspend the spoke, right? That's a more hard hitting financial impact. Yeah, what do you think? Yeah, I mean, generally speaking, I like more options, but these are the most severe, harshest penalties that we have. And so I think it's important to be clear about kind of repeat intentional offenses. Most of these are intentional offenses. Mm-hmm. Right. So we don't need to change anything, right? Sounds good. You see the little formatting issue in T, the font. Oh, yeah. All right. Yeah, on my pants. Looks like a free, can I always? Wow, that's so impressive. It's super frustrating to put on the record here to get the formatting right on the list. But anyway, well, then we'll work on that. I'm moving to 4.5.2. This is the category two violations. Amateur says that subsections A, with respect to subsections A and B, these are actions that would be uncovered as part of an investigation to a larger issue and may result in a different violation. So this is about the making false statements or destroying or concealing evidence. I mean, I think that's a true statement, but I don't know if the performance response could do anything more with that. I think they could be, I agree with the comment, but they could also be separate and distinct, you know, violations that happen, right? I guess exactly, yeah. What's the concern? I'm not sure, actually. Because if we were conducting an investigation, we saw violations of this type and violations of other types. We're not limited to just enforcing these. I don't really see the concern here. Maybe we'll get teased out in further public comment. Yeah, let's see if something else comes up on that. I just view this as a true statement. Yes, they could be uncovered. The board has the flexibility to violate on that other violation, whatever it is. And you have the authority to violate for this step as well. On subsection C, which is about verifying ages. Does the board mean to say, the commenter asked, does the board mean to say, quote, provided that patients with registry cards may purchase or be provided cannabis or cannabis products at a dispensary retail operation in accordance with and dot, dot, dot. Let me just check and see here. I think that this is a valid issue, but I just wanna make sure I say it correctly. Yeah, so I think this is a fairly technical point, but I think commenter's right, which is that there could be delivery to a car or something like that. That being said, I think that's all kind of, or it could be delivery to a home or something like that, but that's not really, as long as the person isn't coming in, it's not really relevant. All that being said, I think it's fine to make the change as recommended. Encompasses more of what an under 21 patient, which is a permissible thing in our statutes. Under 21-year-old patients may be dealing, so I think it's not gonna make the change. I think the current drafting accommodates it as well, but I think it's fine to be accommodating with those issues. Subsection D, this is about allowing people under 21, and the comment notes that this should be in accordance to the rule two, which now closely tracks statutory language regarding where a person under 21 can be. I think that's a fair, from a legal standpoint, that's a fair point. Because we track the statute more closely, we actually did provide a little more flexibility, and I think we should, in fact, note that here. Makes sense. Subsection K, which is about laboratory procedures and variances from them. Commenter says laboratory should be permitted to improve processes based on new or improved methods and industry standards. This field of testing is evolving, so laboratory should be permitted to evolve. The check on how labs are evolving could occur annually with registrations. Also labs could be in the course of a year and valuated against their state operating procedures, QA manuals, and so forth as updates are made. I mean, I think that my sense of this is that this is inherent in the rule, which is that we already in rule two provided the ability to allow for evolution and changes to stay standard, and the board will issue guidance on those things, issue policies on those things. So I'm not sure if this, I don't think, I don't see an issue here where we're suddenly making labs, we're getting labs in trouble for stuff that's allowed under rule two, but if you guys feel differently, we can amend to address the concern, we could do a direct reference or something like that. I hope it doesn't need to be a change. No, yeah, I think, you know, the labs, I believe will probably stay in pretty close communication with us if they're intentionally varying from whatever policy we put out, so. I think that's right, you know, I think Kyle said before, there was, this in particular, there's gonna very much be an ongoing thing that the board works on constantly in terms of making sure up to date on testing. Yeah, and I can see the concern from this commenter on just the plain language of K, but it's the culture with which we implement a lot of this that I think meets what the words say, you know, halfway. Because we want folks to innovate, find cheaper and more, you know, quality-driven alternatives, right? And we wrote in the rule two that we will update this stuff and provide suitable warning whenever we do, so. Subsection L, this is about, oh right, failure to notify the board of cannabis products as required by rule two and the commenter correctly thought that in fact, you no longer need to notify the board about certain types, or a piece of rule 2.2.7. So I think just making that clear, although now that I look at this again, it does only say theft, so I think we're okay as it is. Sorry. Clearly. It used 2.2.17 used to say that you have to notify the board about theft or loss. It doesn't say loss here, so I think we're okay. All right. All right. Subsection M, the CCB is creating, this is about unauthorized, using unauthorized pesticide, soil amendment, so forth. Subsection M, the commenter says, is the CCB creating a list of pesticide, soil amendments, fertilizers, or other crop production aids that are authorized related to pesticides, while the CCB regulate other things besides these products such as licensure, storage labeling, and mixing. I mean, Kyle can jump in on this, but if you say in rule two, that we're gonna be following agency of ag on this, so I think there will be clear notification about what's authorized or not, but if you wanna. Yeah, no. And just very quickly, it's a guidance document that I have put some thought into and I'm gonna move it to VAFM to ensure that it makes sense. It's a lot of language on what you need to do, how you need to be certified as an applicator through the agency of agriculture. It also has a whole chart that lists the kind of the industry or quote unquote, slang terms for certain products that have the chemical compositions present as well. So folks who know have a little bit more understanding of what would be considered to be in violation of the approved pesticides that the state of Vermont regulates in teams safe for cannabis use. There's reference to some EPA language in there. Again, EPA isn't specifically allowing, because of its schedule one status, the EPA can't approve pesticides or other soil amendments for high THC cannabis, but I'll look to how things are done in the hemp world. This is how this has been handled another in other states right now. So that guidance document will be up on our website long before folks need to be thinking about it. Great. Section 4.5.3 category three violations, that subsection A got a number of comments. I'm just gonna read that to start with. Subsection A says that it could get a violation if for allowing consumption by any person of alcohol, cannabis or other intoxicants on the premises of the cannabis establishment or dispensary or in areas adjacent to the premises of the cannabis establishment or dispensary that are under the licensee's control except as authorized by the board. So let's go through some of the comments on here. One commenter says, I remain concerned that the board's rules prohibiting consumption at a licensed premises are unduly burdensome to home-based business owners and do not reflect the reality of prevailing cannabis culture. Consider exemptions or consider exemptions or other accommodations for off-hours consumption of employee vendor samples as well as slash vendor samples as well as exempting consumption in areas of home-based businesses where licensed activities are not being conducted. Honestly, I'm fine with it the way it is. I mean, what did we say about under 21? So we tracked the statute, which is basically saying you can't go into places where I'm summarizing now. This isn't the exact words. You can't go into places where the cannabis is being cultivated or manufactured, basically. We could do something to track that more closely if you wanted, but that's a board decision. Are we running up against kind of like clean air laws, public accommodation laws, like public place laws? Like it seems to me like there's a home if you're a home-based provider, we can't really stop you from doing what you want to do in your home. But as far as kind of places of public accommodation and clean air laws, we don't have any authority to kind of change the law here. Yeah, that's true. And the places of public accommodation provision of that prohibition on consumption will capture some cannabis establishments. Do we need to specifically exempt? Do we need to call out home-based businesses and rule or is it just sort of assumed that if this is your home, there are errors in which you can be thanked that are part of living in a private home? I mean, I think I can see how somebody reading this would feel like there's some ambiguity with respect to a home occupancy business. So I can see the argument. I think the chair is correct as a practical matter that home occupancy is gonna be treated differently than people who have a commercial space. But it's certainly an option that you could consider to call out home occupancy separately. And I don't know what you would do with that though. There becomes now a menu of things you could do. Just you could define it more tightly, say that for home occupancy businesses, this restriction is relevant only to the places where cannabis is being cultivated or manufactured or wherever. Or you could be even looser than that. I mean, that would be up to the board to decide what to do if you did want to name that more specifically. But we could address the ambiguity in guidance, right? Yeah, I think so. I think it's better not to complicate the rules and have so many kind of like paths that people have to follow and understand them. I think it's better to do it in guidance. Agreed. That sounds good. So then subsection, the next comment is similar. The commenter says, well, I have no objection to the prohibition of cannabis consumption by customers within the boundaries of a license retail establishment. The entirety of this section overlooks the population of proprietors who are also licensed medical patients. I would guarantee that these business owners are legally permitted to medicate inside their own facilities. The state needs to include a kind of personal office carve out that permits licensed medical patients to take their medication within the bounds of a sanctioned space located inside their business. Like this is something that the legislature has to address, right? If it's something that can happen. I think they should address this, yeah. There's, I don't even know how to really begin to unpack this with all the various kind of intersecting laws and rules around consumption of a... Seems hard to enforce too. Yeah. And now, aren't we saying essentially, you know, under 21 year olds are allowed in these places about cannabis but now we're also saying you can consume cannabis and maybe you can consume it just for your patient. It just seems like there's a lot of intersecting legal questions with this that I honestly just don't know how to address this. Like where does drug free workplaces and ADA intersect? Yeah. It's a tough one. Exactly. How do you kind of work in kind of employee accidents that happen on the job and makes drug testing that results from that? It's just the whole thing is a mess that should be cleaned up but I don't know if we can do that on our own. No, I think you're right. I think it's a legislative address and it would probably include employment protections for the people. Yeah. I understand the predicament though. Absolutely. All right, one more comment on subsection A, which is again, same lines, under what exception? Under, sorry, commenter says under what? I think they're saying, what exceptions would the CCB allow on premise or adjacent premise consumption? Is this distinction related to a special license or some other type of event? And this I believe is talking about that final clause of subsection A where it says accept is authorized by the board. I interpreted that to be an accommodation for future potential license types where there is special licenses, special event type, things happening, but I'm happy to open that up for discussion. Let's see. All right, subsection C, commenter says, so subsection C says it's another violation to fail to respond to a notice of violation or fail to pay a fine. Commenter says a failure to respond to a violation or failure to pay fines would appear to set up a cycle of violations and fines. I mean, I think that's correct, but I don't know. Half of it's on you. Half of it's on the person who is in violation to respond to us. They're the one turning it into a cycle of fines. Why not respond to us? Yeah, fair enough. Don't mean to be blunt, but. And then, you know, I would just on that point just also note that where is it in our rules that somewhere in here that we can take into consideration someone's financial situation or hardship. I don't know if that's personal. No, I don't necessarily agree with this comment fully. And if we're going through certain lengths, whether it's by email or regular mail or phone calls filling up and you're not responding to us, then what else do you logically expect to happen? All right, subsection E, which is about unauthorized products. What are unauthorized products? Commenter says, what are unauthorized products or unauthorized ingredients in the context of this violation? It could be helpful to cross reference the other rule that addresses this. And I think rule two fairly clearly lays out what we did a lot of, I think, good improvement on that through the public comment process. We could do cross references, but that's up to you all. I don't know if cross references are always necessary, but we certainly could. Well, in rule two, one of the unauthorized products is, we're gonna have a maintain an additives list for inhalable products in policy. So a cross reference to that rule, it doesn't actually help us in this instance. So I think it's fine the way it is. Good. Subsection H is basically another cross reference comment saying that we should include the statutes. And I would just note that any, all of this stuff includes the statutes. And I guess we could say that. I think it says it clearly, but if we need to say that clearly, we could, but I would just note for the record that everything here includes statutory violations as well as rule violation. So you're all obligated to follow all of that. I thought it talked about that somewhere. I don't think we need to change anything. Okay. Yeah, I don't think so. I mean, I can add in a word or two up further up, saying like in 4.4.1, we could say any violation of a rule or relevant statute or something like that. But I don't think we need to cross reference everywhere that that would be relevant. Subsection I, commenter says, how is unauthorized being used in this context? I actually think that that's a fair question. And I would recommend that we just delete the word unauthorized. The point is that all cannabis product, cannabis or cannabis product, and I just caught a typo there, it needs to be fact, not just unauthorized, whatever that means. So I think we should delete that word and that'll be a better provision. And then we need to say cannabis or cannabis product instead of saying cannabis product twice. Yeah. Subsection K, commenter asks, is sampling addressing providing samples of product or sampling crops or products for testing? Cross referencing the rule could be helpful here. I do think that this was specifically about the sampling provisions with respect to employees and vendors. I guess we could add something about testing, but I feel like other provisions of the rule are clearly about testing, but it's up to you all what you wanna do with that. We did throw in that language around representative sampling and said we'd establish that in board policy, but if that's covered through some of our other testing violations, I don't know if we need to address it. I was thinking about employee sampling when we wrote this. Right, that's what I understood this to be too. We could just say, yeah, it's up to you guys if you wanna cross reference. We use the term sampling when we talk about representative samples. We do. So maybe some clarity is warranted. Yeah, I mean, if we all are in agreement or not, I mean, is violating restrictions on representative sampling a separate violation? I think I was trying to think really quickly, do we kind of address that in some broader language and then we have our other testing kind of thing. Since we could catch it to other things. Why don't we? But we can always. Yeah, why don't we add just employee and vendor sampling provisions or whatever it is? And then we'll look just to see if people are violating their testing sampling without where that might fall into. Yes. We're uploading on this today, Joe. And there is some stuff about testing for the basket. Yeah, I think, yeah, we'll check on that. We can squeeze it into some of the ones in one, but yeah, good point though. Subsection L, commenter says, this should probably reference transaction limits. And I think that they're right. It's a serving requirements, but I think that that was intended to talk about transaction requirements unless somebody here has a different memory. What happens if we pull a product off the shelf and it's inedible and it contains 500 milligrams of THC? Is that an unauthorized product issue? Yeah, it would be that. You shouldn't be allowed to sell that. Yeah, okay. So then yeah, this could be transaction requirements. If our note taker could make a note of Pepper's point right now about the unauthorized product and make sure that we do cover that, that would be great. Thank you. Subsection M, failing to comply with requirements for employee hygiene, commenter says, are there requirements for employee hygiene? What would be necessary for the CCD to observe and to understand that a violation was committed? There are not specific requirements. We didn't put that out in rule other than to say that you need to maintain proper hygiene. So I'll leave that up to you all if you want to provide clarity or do something with that. Didn't we talk about some point like open wounds? And we did. Yeah, did that make it into our rules? We didn't make it that specific, no. Okay, well, do we say you have that plans on employee hygiene? Okay, well then. Did we leave that in or do we take out the employee hygiene plans? We took out some plans. We took out a lot of plans. I can't remember. I believe there is a general requirement about being hygienic, I believe, but I don't remember. I think it's very general, I'm sure. Well, this could be another juridist. Yeah, this is like another agency or their jurisdiction issue where they could be in violation of OSHA. And yes, it might impact their licensing for justice. Yeah, I think it's fine the way it is. Honestly, I think, and I know that people want bright lines on all this stuff. And I think other regulatory authorities like OSHA have those bright lines. And the idea is that violations of those might impact their cannabis license. Sounds good to me. Okay, moving to 4.7, jumping to 4.7. Aggravated mitigating factors. All right, so the commenter is saying, consider adding at the mitigating factor where the subsequent violations were related to initial violations. And the commenter also notes that penalties escalate for second and subsequent violations, even where those violations are wholly unrelated to each other. So basically saying, look, it could be a mitigating factor that the violation was unrelated is two different mistakes or issues. And therefore that could mitigate that very much a policy decision for the board.