 My name is James Pepper. I'm the chair of the Vermont cannabis control board. Today is October 6, 2022, and I call this meeting to order. Just off the bat, the staff has recommended a denial for social equity status for one of our applicants. So we're going to have to do an executive session to hear about the issue and the rationale for the recommendation. We're going to do that at approximately 145 after Bryn has reviewed all of the staff recommendations and before we vote on them. It's very exciting to see the opening of retail cannabis in Vermont and really to have it happen with such a sense of community. Thanks to everyone who made this moment so successful as regulators, our biggest concerns are around public safety, consumer safety and ensuring an adequate supply chain. We didn't see any issues with respect to public safety or consumer safety and when it comes to the supply chain. I know that the kind of diversity of products and cultivars was limited, but the supply held. You know, of course, our early focus on getting outdoor cultivators license means that more product is in process. And on the way. This week, our applications up for approval contain a number of new product manufacturers. In fact, it looks like we have applications at all five of our license types cultivation testing wholesale manufacturing and retail. So there's a lot to look forward to as this market starts to take shape and innovate. Julia, Kyle, would you like to maybe reflect on some of your early impressions? Julie. Sure. Yes, thank you. Saturday was a really big day. I personally visited two of the open retail shops on Saturday and one on Monday and, you know, as you were saying, Chair Pepper, while I was waiting in line, I had an opportunity to reflect on just how much has been accomplished by our brave little team in this last 18 months. You know, we early on acknowledge that equity would be the thread that stitches together good policy and business practices and staying true to that we charted a path for a sustainable market that prioritizes inclusivity in its framework. And I could see that, you know, in in the businesses that opened. We've all said several times in the last week, but probably worth saying again, getting to this point wasn't easy. And there were lots of sleepless nights and I just want to echo my appreciation again for the tireless dedication of our staff, most of whom hit the ground running so fast that they were flying. So from my bottom of my heart, thank you all for that hard work. And then we had some partner agencies in our advisory committee that worked with us and collaborated with us. All of those folks had full plates before they were collaborating with the board. And so the time that they've spent is also much appreciated. And then I think, you know, this industry could not have taken off without capable entrepreneurs who had some serious hustle. And I could see that as well this past weekend. You know, cannabis industry, you now have a thriving industry and a business community in its own right. And I'm looking forward to watching that continue to grow. Much more to come. Yeah, I'm not sure if I can phrase my thoughts any better than Julie just did. I visited two of our retail shops on Saturday as well. It was really cool and exciting to see just how happy everybody was. There were so many different walks of life in line with me and I waited in line just like everybody else for an hour and a half at one shop and for 20, 30 minutes at another shop and the excitement was palpable. It was very exciting. And, you know, as Julie alluded to, I've kind of been thinking about this as, you know, the board itself has kind of been training for a marathon the last 18 months. We finished the marathon. We started it on Saturday and so we're running it now and a lot more work to do. I think obviously some folks have concern about pricing or whatever the case may be. I think it's really exciting that some of our small cultivators are actually starting to see a return on their investment and getting that money flowing back to them and all the hard work and hustle that they have done. As our supply demand looks more like what we think it will be, you know, prices will stabilize and look like other markets, but, you know, opening day, it's hard to expect much else with limited supply and over demand. But as alluded to, nobody ran out completely out of anything. I know that some things did run out, but hey, you know, I think if we're talking about minor compliance issues and not product safety, consumer safety issues about a week after opening, I think, you know, this is a win for Vermont, at least as it looks right now. And that's a credit to everybody listening, everybody here and everybody who's helped get us to this point over the last better part of a decade, if not more. So that's all I got. Great. Thanks for that. Turning to just a few other more administrative issues. You know, I know a lot of people are waiting for their license. Just a reminder that the board will not approve your license until your operation is essentially turnkey. The consequence of the board issuing a license is that you can begin to operate immediately. And maybe you are the last stop on the train before your business can possess cannabis or cannabis products on site, or you can open your doors to the public. This means that we will not approve an applicant whose location is under construction, or the safe hasn't been installed yet, or your security measures aren't operational. What we've been seeing some delays is in obtaining certificates of occupancy. It's my understanding that fire safety has met their target of moving 95% of their applicants through the pipeline within 30 days. So very grateful to land in and the team over there for the work they're doing to help move our projects. What we are seeing some delays is in towns that have municipal inspection agreements with fire safety. These towns require additional coordination with local inspectors. Of course, anytime you involve more people and more coordination, the timeline to approval can be extended. Currently, there's 10 towns in Vermont that operate under a municipal inspection agreement. These are Berry, Bennington, Brattleboro, Burlington, Hartford, Montpelier, Putney, South Burlington, St. Alvins, and Winooski. Every prospective applicant should get in touch with fire safety as soon as possible. But that is doubly true if you plan on operating in one of these towns. There's more information about these municipal inspection agreements, including the contact information of the local inspectors for each of these towns. And that's available at the fire safety website. When it comes to product registration, just a reminder that the form to register all products and the payment portal is live on our website at ccb.vermont.gov forward slash forms. This is a key component of our consumer safety mandate. And you can upload all the information about your product, including the labeling, the packaging and the test results. This only has to happen once per product type and can happen by any licensee. But really, generally speaking, it's going to be the responsibility of the licensee that's putting their name on the product to get that product registered. And when it comes to flower, we need a registration for each individual cultivar. If you have any questions about product registration, feel free to email us at ccb.products at Vermont.gov. Other than that, just need to approve the minutes from our meeting on September 28th. I guess I had a chance to look at those. Yep. Yep. All right. Is there a motion to approve? Motion to approve the minutes. Second. All in favor? Aye. Aye. All right. Next on the agenda is a review of the inventory tracking forms. You know, we did a little bit of this last week with Kerry. He has further refined them and put together some guidance. It's my understanding that we're going to send an email out next week to our licensees for their first report. And it's going to be using the forms that are available on our website. And the guidance will kind of help prompt you as to how to complete the form accurately. But Kerry is going to come back one more time today to kind of review any of the updates and hopefully clarify some of what we're looking for. Thank you, Pepper. You may have to keep time on me here. Well, put together sort of a guidance document, if you will, for the forms. Last week, we previewed what those forms look like. Getting to this meeting is a heavy lift. So after this meeting, Natalie and I will work together and have those forms posted online so folks can preview them. But I wanted to go over some specific terms. Help facilitate folks fill out those forms. And can you see my screen? Yes. All right. Well, we'll walk through. So inventory tracking guidance since the primary prime. This is primarily our license holders at this point are cultivators. Cultivator is on top. And this is where the sort of terms we introduced a few weeks ago are going to really, really matter. Harvest lot. When we talked about what testing needed to occur, we introduced the term harvest lot. And here's sort of our working definition of harvest lot. Cannabis grown in the same manner, same fertilizer schedule, same pesticide application schedule, and on the same flowering schedule. Harvest lot can contain one or multiple cultivars of cannabis. Each harvest lot will need to be tested for pesticides and pathogens. Depending on, unless it's all going for extract, sorry, I'll amend that sentence. A grower decides how many harvest lots they have depending on what works best for their individual business practice. And when you see our reporting form, the harvest lot is basically the key to us tracking your flower or cannabis as it moves through the process. In harvest lot, in later iterations of our software, this number could be assigned by the database itself. But for right now, when you're looking at the form, the harvest lot is your license number and then a sequential number. And in this case, it's 001 would be the first harvest lot for a cultivator. And then to continue to track as that harvest lot gets broken up and sold to different retailers are offered for extraction or discarded as waste. Each of those process lots will have their own numbering sequence. And again, it's just the harvest lot number with another sequential number after it. So your process lot equals the harvest lot number with another sequential number after it just for tracking purposes. And again, this can be system generated once we launch our Salesforce system, but currently in the forms, we're going to ask you to put that in yourself. And once it's in, it's locked with that process lot. And to further sort of refine the definition of process lots, process lots of smokable flower will need to be tested for THC potency and pathogen testing. The moisture analysis that we've asked for is generally part of this testing because the labs need to drive that product in order to test it. And for smokable flower offered for retail, your potency level is 30%. And a topic that's come up as we move flower to market is a Aspergillus positive cannabis can't enter the smokable flower market, but can be offered for extraction. And sorry, I didn't read the definition of process lot, but process lots are whole or partial harvest lots that follow different paths toward market or diverted into waste. And we do have a few manufacturers currently licensed and the tracking these will be separate forms and hopefully folks will be able to get into it sort of what form they need to fill out. But manufacturing, manufacturer tracking for concentrates all concentrates must be tested for potency concentrates being sold that are not decarboxylated must also be tested for pathogens on THCA and THC are required. The other cannabinoids are optional depending on what's guaranteed on the product label. And solvent extracts or extracts further process with solvent must also be tested for residual solvents. So you're getting layers of inventory tracking and testing guidance in this document, but manufacturers who so manufacturers who coming up product will also have develop a manufacturer lot number and a manufacturer lot is a single lot of extract produced either by solvent or mechanical extraction and can be a combination of one or multiple process lots from one or multiple cultivators. The manufacturer lot number mirrors the harvest lot number in that it's just your manufacturer license number followed by a sequential number. The manufacturer lot number is traceable back to all harvest lots that went into that manufacturer a lot. And the mirror the cultivation once it makes it to a manufacturer. We have manufacturer process lots and some people have been sort of referring to those as batches. So in your head this is sort of a batch where manufacturer process lots are whole or partial manufacturer lots that follow different paths to market or go to different manufacturers to produce different products and the manufacturer process lot number is just just like the cultivation harvest lot process number in that we've added a number another sequence on it. Once extracted or infused manufacturer process lot number must trace with the product being offered for retail sale. So those the products the gummies or other edibles made from an extract either at that specific manufacturer or a different manufacturer that bought extract to must sort of the product must have that manufacturer number in its on its label somewhere. Other forms we have for inventory tracking include the transfer of cannabis form transfers will be reported by all license type when cannabis or cannabis products change owners. So as we said last week when we're introducing inventory tracking what we're tracking is whenever channel cannabis change changes form or hands or based by hands. And there are there's a form to track those transfers that will also be posted and will be tracking by process law or manufacturer process lot or registered product and basically what the form is going to ask for the amount that was transferred. The data was transferred who it's being transferred from and who it's being transferred to manufacturers will be required to report what's coming into their facility. And from which license as well as what was manufactured in number of registered products either weight. Number of registered product or weight of extract and this can be done when the products or are produced or or it can be reconciled every two weeks. We did hear comments last week about especially for cultivators tracking when when it's done but we we did have a discussion about that and I think we're going to prompt you even if nothing's changed with your Harvest lot to come in and touch base with us every two weeks at least until we get Our Salesforce solution up and running in Salesforce is just the name of the database that we're using And I know this is going to cause some heartburn but retail reporting during our interim reporting period and we are set to have our Salesforce system up and running by the end of the year but until then retailers are going to struggle a little bit because during the interim reporting period Retails report aggregate sales of each product sold in a two week period transfer reports will reckon style inventory still on site and this can be done At any time during the reporting period as long as the same two week reporting period is identified the interim reporting firms can only facilitate 10 products at a time so multiple reports Will probably be necessary for our retailers In the interim solution will not facilitate a direct connection with your point of sale sauce software The CCB in partnership with the agency of digital services hope to move forward with the system that will have the ability to integrate with point of sale tracking software But at this time those services aren't available so you're we are I all going to struggle here together One in receiving and reviewing that data and the other is the amount of work it's going to take for folks to report it and The bullet I don't have on here is wholesale but wholesale will will have a reporting form and it will be the very similar to the retail reporting form and you'll be tracking What you got when you got it and who you got it from and when it leaves the system who it went to what it was and what date that was So that very similar to the retail for the manufacturing form for wholesale and there's also a loss of cannabis form loss of cannabis report form in all licensees Report any loss of material or product on the loss form and this form captures losses of plant material or product on plant material by weight and product and product by number of products lost Please use the form to report any loss including sample sent to laboratories samples sent to perspective retailers wholesalers or manufacturers or loss from contamination or adulteration In any tract waste And that That's our like I said it's a living document but that's the guidance that we're offering Thanks Gary So You know we're going to require reporting At regular intervals starting you know I think next week is when we'll send out an email to our licensees about reporting their inventory and I'm sure there will be additional questions will have information in that email that goes out about how to get your questions answered and And again this is kind of a stock gap solution until we have a more permanent system in place which I think is November You know I forget the exact date but it's being built as we speak earlier Kyle any questions about that No thank you Carrie No thanks Carrie Alright Bryn why don't I turn things over to you for recommendations on social equity and license licensure Okay Sounds good Can everybody hear me okay Yep Yep okay So Kyle is graciously agreed to Project your register for this week so I don't have to Share a screen remotely which might not go well So here you have your weekly adult use and medical cannabis register We start as always with the medical cannabis program So you can see that it's been a really quite a busy week for our medical staff They've issued 130 patient cards between September 28th and October 5th And we've received 145 renewal applications and nearly 60 new patient applications so quite a busy week for the medical program One thing I wanted to point out is that you can see there that medical staff are processing applications received on or after September 7th So we have worked through the backlog and we are now processing applications within that 30 day required timeline so that is great news I will move on now to the adult use license application data So here are your numbers of the application statuses for all of the applications in the queue As the chair mentioned this week you do have quite the assortment of applicants that are up for board approval I think the only license type that is not on the list for board review is a mixed cultivation license We've got an indoor and an outdoor and we've got four manufacturers on the list Testing lab, several wholesalers and a retailer so it's a great week for our staff The numbers I wanted to point out are down along the bottom if you look at the total numbers Under submitted and received and under review which are kind of the early stages of the application process The numbers are really quite small The most popular status this week is our incomplete status We've got 185 applicants in incomplete status The bulk of those applications as you can see on the very top row are employee ID card applicants So we've got 112 employee ID card applicants that are in incomplete status And as a reminder for everybody what incomplete status signifies is that our staff have received your application and reviewed it And they have sent out to the applicant a list of things that are required for them to finish up their application So they've identified all of the things that are missing or deficient in the application And they've notified the applicant of what they need to do to finish up So it signals like the numbers in the incomplete status signal like a really huge amount of work on behalf of the licensing staff So I wanted to point that out to everybody I think that was all I wanted to point out. Oh there's one other thing, sorry If you look at the row for retailers you can see that we've got 20 in incomplete status and 15 in resubmitted status So you've got 35 retailers that are in the queue and on their way to the board for approval So quite a number of retailers that are in process I think that was the only thing I wanted to point out. You do have a testing lab up for approval this week and one more that's in the queue You can move on unless there are questions Okay, so I'll go over the list of applicants that staff are recommending the board approve for a license So as is true every week, this list of applicants have been reviewed by our staff And have been found to meet the requirements for a cannabis establishment license that are set out in the board rule and also in statute So the list this week includes only NVT LLC applying for an outdoor tier one cultivation license Apex Arboretum applying for an indoor tier one cultivation license Lindy's Kitchen applying for a tier two manufacturing license Apex Arboretum also applying for a wholesaler license Big Intelligence Group applying for a wholesaler license Vermont Cannabis Distributors applying for a wholesaler license The Cannabis Collective applying for a tier two manufacturing license Northern Craft Cannabis applying for a wholesaler license Low Cannna applying for a manufacturer tier two license Apex Arboretum again applying for a retail license Steep Hill Vermont Labs applying for a testing lab license Altitude Drops tier two manufacturing license And lastly Passion Fruit Farms applying for an indoor tier one cultivation license So that is your list of applicants that staff are recommending that the board approve for licensure this week Alright, and social equity Yep So We just have our license amendment numbers there you can see we've got six License amendments that we've issued so far and six that have been dismissed That's just a status update for some of the other work that the licensing team is doing And then we've got our social equity applications Submission status there So we've got 16 and incomplete eight and resubmitted Three pending board review and then you can see the numbers for that have that have been through the process and that are approved or issued Total of 112 right now and again the reminder for the board about these numbers is that these numbers reflect everybody who has applied for social equity status So anybody who submitted their application and indicated that they were social equity applicant are reflected in these numbers If you scroll down to the next table That identifies all of the applicants that have not yet had their status determined so we've got 10 people in the queue Who've identified themselves as social equity applicants but have not reached the phase of Board approval of their status So We have three applicants up for social equity status approval this week We've got submission number 1165 Submission number 1155 And submission number 1203 The first one meets the criteria for a social equity individual applicant as that term is defined in board rule And the second to meet the criteria for social equity business applicant as defined in board rule I did not get there into the detail Yeah And then if you scroll down to the next page we've got two applicants That our staff is recommending that the board deny social equity status for these two applicants That is submission number 1301 and submission number 1172 And as the chair mentioned there one of these applicants The staff is recommending a denial of social equity status for this applicant and we should probably discuss the the circumstances of that applicant in executive session Okay. Well, why don't we go ahead and do that now Any sense of how long bring this executive session my list I give this one I'm going to guess That 10 minutes Okay When we do No more than 10 minutes Yeah, so Now we got you we got you back. So you think about 10 minutes. All right. Is there a motion to enter into executive session I moved at CCB going to Executive session to consider confidential attorney client communications made for the purpose of providing professional legal services to the body and the executive session is required because premature general public knowledge regarding such communications would clearly place the board at a substantial disadvantage I further move that the board invites us on the Davis executive director Of racial equity for the state and Jay Green racial equity research and policy analyst from that department Into accession executive session with us Great is there a second Second All in favor hi Hi Okay, so Nellie if you wouldn't mind putting up the away message just indicating we'll be back at 145 We're back And James Pepper chair of the Vermont Cannabis control board today is October 6 2022 it is 151 we're ex we've exited executive session No decisions were made in executive session What we did there is there is a staff recommendation to deny social equity status The applicant applied as being from a community that has been historically Disproportionately impacted by cannabis prohibition We tried we heard the staff recommendation As to what that community was Whether it was sufficiently defined and whether that community had been disproportionately harmed by cannabis prohibition There was more than just the kind of general threat of suspicion or prosecution that All Communities that are even tangentially associated with cannabis experience And I think we are now ready to vote on all of the recommendations that the staff provided to us today I moved at the board except each of the recommendations for social equity status and licensing approval as presented to us by staff in this meeting Second All in favor hi hi Okay The last thing on our agenda today is public comment If you joined by the link would like to make public comment please raise your virtual hands And we'll try and call on people in the order that you raise your hands and then we'll move to folks that joined by a phone Dave is first Hey So first thank you to Julian Kyle for coming by flora over the weekend It was great to see you and you're you and the rest of the team are always welcome Second Shout out to all the great cultivators who've been filling our shelves We'd love to hear from or reach out any time My comment for the board relates to the inventory tracking the interim system I'm concerned with just how error prone this is going to be We have a very sophisticated tracking system Employee at our store. We are using duchy. They are You know very popular in the industry nationwide We can generate for you pretty much any report that you could ask for we could do Same day next day for you For any period of time and any product or product category or even the customer by customer if you wanted to have that To have to Export our data onto a spreadsheet and then upload it manually line by line into a Microsoft form that's limited to 10 products per form It's not just that it's time-consuming. There's gonna be errors Errors that are really unnecessary if I could just give you a CSV file an actual export of the information that you need So I'm asking slash begging for you to consider A process by which people who are using a sophisticated inventory tracking system Can give you guys reports upon request Rather than this clergy system of typing in You know data into a Microsoft form But I'll leave it at that and I thank you all for your hard work Thanks Dave on W Hi, this is actually Zachary Tyson. I'm watching with my team So good afternoon. Like I said, my name is Zachary Tyson and I'm the CEO and co-founder of mr. Z craft cannabis We're a social equity business that received our approval for social equity status in May We are black-owned business and a majority black invested We submitted all of our materials including the certificate of occupancy from DFS the final requirement to date After fulfilling these requirements We hope that we be in the queue as you've promised priority review for applicants like us We are incredibly concerned as to why we have not been awarded our license and have had little communication from the CCB as to why Thanks, Zachary Rose Hello Thank you for listening. This is Riley Amarosa also known as Rose Something I wanted to bring up in regards to pesticide testing is it was mentioned earlier and something that I've been Thinking about and a little concerned about is the fact that you can do pesticide testing on your entire harvest instead of plant by plant If you know anything about growing plants each plant will have a different Needs some pesticides are very dangerous and that's why we're doing these testing but again some plants don't require those pesticides So there's some you're gonna have people picking and choosing individual Plant products that they want tested that they won't have On each strain and it is it is something that is very important Each strain needs to be tested individually because each strain is going to require different things You can't really say that it's safe if you're just picking and choosing one strain per field if it has six different strains again They're gonna all have different requirements So I asked the board to take another look at that and really kind of dial that in as far as testing each strain for pesticides per harvest Thanks Riley Hi everybody I'm definitely concerned about this reporting as well The reporting feels overbearing and in the end it feels ineffective Also wondering how long the interim period is And basically I agree with Silverman I think there just must be a way to use our POS systems to accomplish this Thank you guys Thanks Tito Hello Hi Keith Keith it looks like you may have muted Sorry there I am Yep there you are We hear you I have three comments One is to the CCB to Mr. Byrne and Mr. Silverman About the trackages and to Mr. Kerry Greer Please look at metric.com All of you It is efficient It is very efficient And I will not go into details of how efficient it is because I get cut off as I normally do My other concern is What are the guidelines for manufacturers and do you have any guidelines for manufacturers and procedures in these manufacturing facilities? And are these guidelines any relation to OSHA guidelines that protect workers or anything like that? I have not seen anything like that on the website recently And I do applaud you for being able to open a few dispensaries in the state and you're working on some others And I see some MSOs coming into the state as well that have worked with other companies and are expanding through the New England area And I'm not overly concerned about them because I know they do a good job I'm more concerned about how come you're not addressing anything with the medical cannabis program in Vermont Now that it is kind of dissolved sort of like you have a staff but there's no leadership Or there's nothing to discuss since those two roundtables And I feel that that needs to be addressed because that is part of your job through the legislature is to develop more better criteria for the medical cannabis community to go here Or is it just going to be integrated all into the adult cannabis community and we can walk into them and use our cards and not have to pay tax on it I'm just curious there and because I've heard nothing about it and seen nothing on the website and I would really appreciate some updates or some knowledge or something you guys plan on doing And that could be any statement and I still reiterate a executive report from Brynair that should be telling what is going on, what your agenda is, what your future agenda is And that should be done monthly so all the stakeholders in the state know what direction this cannabis control board is headed in And that's my comments for this week and thank you for trying to do what you're doing. I know it's difficult but there are ways to do some things if we hold a question and answer session from a stakeholder here in Vermont Thank you once again Thanks Keith Jesse, Jesse Harper Hello, good afternoon everyone On behalf of everyone who has Been other lives Upside down Over prohibition And my business partner Ben Lost his house twice Lost his job twice In different states in this country And somehow we don't qualify As a community Of folks who have been Unfairly disadvantaged by prohibition And I would like to comment that both Myself and my business partner Ben Jenkins are white About six feet tall And are from a group who Grants a lot of advantage in life In this regard we are all equal In the regard of people that Use cannabis That buy cannabis that grow cannabis That use this product And we have all been harmed by this And it's not about $10,000 It's about a retail application It's about what's right And we respectfully reject The determination by the review process As a community that has been Historically disadvantaged To be very clear We understand that there are other communities That have been more historically disadvantaged As minority groups in this country Are the majority in the world But in this country are the minority And it just I don't know what the bar is For having your life ruined a couple of times To achieve this status But it doesn't feel right at our core And I guess that's it Thank you for hearing us And we will be appealing this to you Thank you Thanks, Jesse You're welcome Dolan Dolan Dolan Dolan, making Jesse Lynn Yes, this is Jesse Lynn Thank you so much Thanks for hearing me out Again today, guys I wanted to second a couple things That have been said As far as the POS system As a nurse in the medical system Dealing with methadone And other controlled substances That are schedule one The error margin is enormous So I would also continue to Reiterate what everybody has said And please look at considering Using a POS system Which can not only be more efficient For those errors But also when we think of Consuming someone's time And having to pay an employee for that I think that's a disadvantage as well And I want to also thank Keith For what he had mentioned I agree I think it would be great If we have more of an understanding When a time frame As to some, you know Prioritization of the medical program Specifically the Symptom Relief Oversight Committee And how that is going to be formed And where we're at to at least maybe Get the applications rolling So we know who will be on that committee Come the start of January With legislative session I think that would be very important To start working on now And lastly I can't agree more with Riley But I also want to throw in there As far as pesticides We're also looking at mycotoxin So I'm a researcher So one of the things I've done For seven years is do What we call side by sides I run a row of one cultivar A row of another cultivar A row of another cultivar Or strains If you want to use the word strains And every year each row Absolutely has different susceptibility To mold and mildew And that's why we run side by side And do this research And absolutely every strain Has a very different susceptibility And possibility of mold And mildew Or possibility of infestation And disease Encouraging a farmer To possibly treat each strain differently So by testing one field As far as and the only test Instead of strain by strain I think is very risky And is risking consumer protection And safety So that's it, thanks guys Thanks Jesse Josh Yeah hi I'm just coming from a Pure consumer standpoint I've been a medical patient On and off in the program At the state for since 2013 And I'm frustrated many many times It's made me happy many times So one of the things I was excited To do is go down to college street This past weekend And see what they had available Especially for testing Since I've been begging them For the past eight years For individual batch testing results And I went to the dispensary I talked to the low level person They had me in the iPad They sent me to the next person Up those in the iPad And I went and talked to the manager For about 90 seconds Came back to me and told me They don't have any certificate Of analysis on site They don't have any information for me They asked for my email They wrote it on a sticky note And probably tossed it away So from a consumer standpoint That's pretty frustrating Wondering if that's something That you guys are actually Thinking about and working on Just because this wasn't big Without who shall not be named Company But that's all my comment is Thank you so much for your time Thanks, Josh Yeah, Ian Hello How are you guys again? I want to thank you For all your hard work And everything you're doing To work, you know Work tours Getting us to a better place I want to sign out What Jocelyn said about testing I totally agree with her About how each strain Is actually grows differently Hell, each plan grows differently There is data out in California That says that you Have tested two different plans From the same strain And grown the same way And they test differently Because they draw Nutrients differently The way California does it They put probably one batch 40-pound batches They mix it all up And then they send you The test And we grab that Well, they grab that They grind the whole thing up And they test it as one So it means that anything That 20 flowers had Is going to come up with that one But nonetheless To treat one cultivar The same as 20 others That you're growing in the same area It's a little bit Unconscious to say the least Thank you very much For hearing us out Ari? Yeah, Pepper Before this goes any further I think that's a misnomer That you wouldn't be taking A representative sample From a harvest law We have instructions about How to sample a harvest law In other guidance And in no way, shape, or form Should you be selecting Anything other than a representative sample And that includes A portion of each strain In the sample that gets sent to the lab So I think That first comment Let us down a road That wasn't necessarily accurate In the way things are operating Yeah, thanks, Carrie Russ Are you there, Russ? Apologies Hi This is Russ from Ceres And I wanted to respond to Josh So first of all Thank you for visiting us This past weekend I'm sorry you had That experience I did want to confirm That all of our Test results and COAs are Not only have a QR code On everything that's sold But you can go to our website Now and see Every test result we have On every product That we sell now It's available to anyone Whether or not you purchase From us So, Josh Please take a look At that And if you I'm happy to talk about that Any time offline Thank you Thanks, Russ Hey everybody Yeah, I just wanted to Comment two things really quick One to the person who suggested Using metric I just wanted to say that Metric is a really flawed And corrupted system I really will sound in Every week to not use that I think we can all come up With something much more common sense And second in terms of Lab testing My opinion about the lab testing Pesticides Like I'm a licensed cultivator I would insist that every crop Or every batch sample that I have Should be tested for pesticides And I realize that Cultivators are allowed to bypass Pesticide testing with a third party Certification That doesn't really make any sense to me Most of the third party Certifications are just marketing Scams created by attorneys If a product is going to be consumed By humans It should be tested for pesticides No matter how it's grown So I don't understand why the third party You know, certifications can have Pesticide testing waived The other thing that I thought was really Strange about the way that the testing Works in Vermont is in most other states And we lost you Nellie if Dan comes back Feel free to unmute Looks like actually Dan Dropped off the call He's in the lobby now I'm re-admitting him Dan, I believe you're back Gotcha Hey, sorry about that I'm not sure where I got cut off But what I'll say is the last thing that I thought Is strange about the testing in Vermont Is that the cultivator Themself is allowed to bring it into the laboratory The whole point of testing is It's supposed to be done at random So usually you have The laboratory come and take a batch Sample at random This allows any cultivator to switch up The product or decide which specific product Is going to be tested It seems more likely that The laboratory should be picking up the samples The grower says here's my batch And the laboratory picks and chooses What they want at random That way it seems more authentic It seems like any cultivator Could just put anything they want in testing And say this is what it is So it just seems that there's no control In that part And I'm not sure where I got cut off But in terms of the pesticide testing I think that any product consumed by Vermonters should be tested for pesticides Regardless of any third-party Certificate. Thank you. Yeah, thanks, Dan. Anyone else with a comment To join via the link? Please raise your virtual hand. Chris has raised his hand. Hi there. Chris Vickers. Rootland cannabis. Tier one indoor cultivator. And I've been a caregiver for over 12 years I've also had some experience in growing And creating clean product For patients as well. I've talked about a lot of my frustrations With things and voiced them to you guys And there's a lot of things that are still Getting the kinks worked out of them And I know you guys are doing your best With a lot of this stuff. As far as the testing for pesticides go We can get clean green certified Or equivalents of that And that would give us the ability To not have that pesticide testing And you're talking about lot batches And having those kind of things tested also Maybe the best thing to do Is to do spot checks on farms And having that testing done randomly So that nobody really knows What plant's going to get tested Where it's going to get tested I know I would contribute some money Towards that kind of checks and balances To keep everybody in line And if you fail If you got something on your You found having the wrong pesticides On your crop, you're suspended Your license is pulled I mean that kind of threat Is what's going to prevent people From putting crap on their plants And I think that allowing batches Or having to deliver certain products And having all of your stuff Taken to a place where they take a sample from it That's going to be so difficult For people to do And it's just really not necessary I think that we should all be held accountable And the accountability is getting checked So yeah, there's a lot of challenges here I know a lot of things Are still need to get worked out I know you guys are doing your best And I couldn't be more thankful To be in a state like Vermont Where cottage industry businesses Are being promoted and accepted And you guys are doing your best To accommodate everybody So I just want to thank you for that And yeah, have a great day Yeah, thanks Chris Gary, I'll go back to you Chris, you are in fact paying For that sort of system This is a trust but verify system For consumer protection that we are building And the recently sort of launched Product registration system Is going to support that Sampling in the field by the CCB So basically the product registration Supports the quality control And consumer protection program That just went live last week And what that program will support Is field sampling products And flour in the field Both the cultivators field And the retail space Samples will be pulled off the shelf And the test that you've run yourself Will be confirmed by the CCB We're eventually hoping to build our own lab But in the meantime we'll end up contracting I think that's a piece that We can take a deeper dive on later And I know this is all spelled out in statute But as the chair has said We're sort of building the parachute As we're in free fall But that piece has been considered And will be built Yeah, that's scary Any other public comments If you join via phone You can hit star six to unmute yourself The phone ending in five two three zero Has unmuted How are you guys doing? My name is Zeb Overton I'm a grower, licensed grower You guys licensed me in August I'm also trying to open retail The green man cannabis application 1294 I was just wondering if somebody could give me a call And maybe give me an update on my application That's one comment And you know it's just I have a lot, like a lot of other people We have a lot of things going into this People quitting their jobs You know we're running out of money We're ready to go We have product tested And we're ready to open the doors We got inspected last week And I just want If somebody could reach out to me It would be great And that's it, thank you Put me in coach Thanks Zeb Anyone else for a public comment? I'll close the public comment Thanks for all the comments You know when it comes to areas That people have concerns or questions It's very helpful for the board to hear that You know we do try and tailor Our guidance documents And we do try and get back to people Based upon these comments that we're hearing I'll just say a few things Carrie it sounds like maybe we should do Another walkthrough of kind of testing protocols At some point soon Because it sounds like there's some confusion out there About things like representative samples And test side testing And potentially third party certifications I would say that with respect To kind of the point of sale Input Directly into our inventory Tracking you know I think a point That may have been missed is we are building that Into our more permanent solution It's this interim phase Where we don't have the ability To kind of match CVS CSV files with our Microsoft form But you know when this Portal is built And hopefully that is next month It will have those capabilities And then the medical program You know we're Our hands are a little bit tied right now The legislation said we can't make Any more restrictive rules With respect to the medical program Than the ones already in place So until we change some of the statutes Really there's no way To Make the medical program Look significantly different than it looks right now And so You know we had a number of You know listening sessions Around the ideas Medical we proposed some ideas We've been receiving public comment About the medical program For I mean ever since We took control over it And I think that you Will see legislation this year that Moves that makes some changes to the medical Program but it's not something we can do On our own With a kind of stroke of a pen Other than that Julia Kyle any final Concluding thoughts before we adjourn I just want to comment on The third party aspect of Pesticide testing that was put in there For more of a long term view Of what we're trying to accomplish here There's been zero third parties That have been expressly authorized To certify a Registered licensee And to wave Pesticide testing from that third party That's something that we're Looking to do potentially after We kind of filled a couple Cycles To understand where folks are And to help us you know release Some pressure if there are bottlenecks Moving forward and I just want to remind everybody Else that Cary Jagar Our compliance director ran The pesticide program for the state For the better part of the last of this century Everything from golf courses To the HEM program And how pesticides are applied In every way That we use them in the state of Vermont So we're new To this market but There's a lot of demonstrated experience To show how you know a lot Of the concepts we're trying to do here Will work in the state of Vermont context So just a reminder Not to toot your horn Cary But it's important to recognize that All right I guess if there's nothing Else I will adjourn the meeting Thank you all