 All right, I'll get started. My name is James Pepper. I'm the chair of the Vermont Cannabis Control Board. Today is September 28th, 2022. It's one o'clock and I call this meeting order. See, we are on the cusp of our first retailers opening in Vermont. I thought I might just do a very brief recap as to how we got here. I know we're all trying to collectively forget the pandemic, but this agency was born at the height of COVID. One of the many consequences of that timing is if there were significant delays in appointing the board members. Instead of starting on January 1st, 2021, we started on April 19th. And I know people might think of four month delay, what's the big deal? The problem is, is that so much of our early work could not proceed until it was blessed by the legislature. You know, the fundamental questions about our market structure, our fee structure, our budget and our staffing request. We didn't even have an office or an executive director by the time the legislature had left town for the year, let alone a solid idea of what this market should look like, what our staffing needs were gonna be, or whether we would need to cover our budget entirely with the fees that we collected from our licensees. And once the legislature adjourns for the year, there's no way to call them back and say, hey, can you approve these plans for us? We had to wait until earlier this year, and even then it took some time for the legislature to feel comfortable with what we were proposing and give us permission to proceed. There's a metaphor you often hear when talking to other cannabis regulators about building a plane while it's taking off. I think our situation was much more in the realm of building a parachute while we were in free fall, hurtling towards this May 1st date for licensing cultivators. It's hard to imagine, but until July of 2022, we literally only had four full-time staff members and the medical team. But boy, they moved mountains. I live through the days of the Vermont Health Connect. I can tell you that building an online application portal sounds simple enough in the abstract, but can be quite challenging in reality. We built ours in a matter of months and while the early iterations were a little bit clunky, they worked and they've gotten much better with each iteration. A huge thank you to our director of licensing and our partners at ADS for standing that up. Our general counsel, David, has set the bar for how all other agencies now need to measure themselves with respect to rulemaking. The secretary of state's office is responsible for the administration of the rulemaking process. And so early on, when we were preparing them for our rule filings, I happened to ask, and it was the quickest they'd ever seen a rule move from its initial filing to final adoption. Their answer was something along the lines of, for a non-controversial and relatively straightforward rule, maybe five months, our rules are about as complex and controversial as they come and they were done in less than four months. This feels to me like one of those sports records that will never be broken. When it comes to licensing, I know there's a lot of frustration with the pace of issuing licenses and I empathize with that. People have put a lot of time and money on the line to move out of the legacy market and participate in this industry. My message to you, if you have a pending application, is stick with us, we will get to you. We're doing something completely out of the ordinary in Vermont. The path of least resistance for the board would have been to give licenses to a small number of large operators. This makes our job easy. It's a fraction of the cost and time to license and regulate one 50,000 square foot cultivator as opposed to 50,000 square foot cultivators. We could have proposed a market structure that handed this market over to large corporations by making licenses inaccessible through fees, regulations, startup costs, or license tiering. Instead, we designed our rules to allow small operators to take full first advantage of this market. I know everyone feels the sting of each regulation so this point might not feel pertinent but we did wave about a third of our rules for tier one cultivators. The result is 179 of our 222 licensed cultivators, our tier one small cultivators. We have exactly five tier five cultivators. This market belongs to small growers in a way that no other state market does. We are committed to further reducing the cost of compliance for you and increased market access but we need to do it in a measured way and we need to demonstrate success at every stage. We know that we are requiring a lot of everyone, even the tier ones but every single regulation we propose is tied to a statutory mandate whether that's insurance, banking, environmental, testing, or public safety. For those, we can't remove rules until we change statutes and we can't change statutes until legislators start seeing this industry embrace the core mission of consumer safety, youth prevention, and equity. Anyway, our staff has done a tremendous job in getting us to this point. We're back on track to where we were supposed to be issuing retail licenses by October 1st. I have no idea how anyone in the legislature expected us to issue licenses by this point but somehow everyone here stepped up. And when I say stepped up I mean that our staff has worked through family vacations, they've worked night and weekends, they've worked through sicknesses. At least four of us have had confirmed cases of COVID. None of that has slowed us down. And no one here gets a bonus if they get through 10 applications instead of five or if they spend an extra hour on the phone with the person who needs help with their application. Our staff has been hustling because they feel the urgency and importance of the work we're doing. It's a dedication to the mission and a belief in Vermont that drives us to do more and push harder here. But I say that in full recognition that this pace we've been operating at is not sustainable. 230-ish licenses in five months is incredible but it's not something that we can keep doing under our current staffing regime. We have three full-time employees dedicated to the adult use licensing program and five compliance staff. I would challenge anyone to present me with a cannabis board that's done a better job in getting licenses out more effectively, efficiently or equitably than our team has done. I say that in the same breath that I'm saying that I'm directing our staff to slow down to a more sustainable pace. We are in this for the long haul. We can see supply chain bottlenecks developing that we need to address. We will continue to work through our pending licenses but I suspect the number of approvals each week might slow down as we focus on a broader and more complex set of work. Julie, Kyle, is there anything you wanna add? Just on the verge of this market opening at this point. I agree with the thing you said, Mr. Chair and I appreciate your comments and I just wanna add my thanks to the staff. It really has been an incredible thing to watch. People take words that we put on paper and turn them into action and setting records and putting those boards on paper. So I appreciate all of the hard work that's gone into this, thank you. Yeah, ditto likewise. I can't look around at the people looking at us enough with a sense of gratitude. I think for folks listening, I remember back to our first couple of board meetings and nobody was really familiar with the three of us and I think we've spent at least at the beginning and continuing over the last 18 months a tremendous amount of time trying to get the trust of folks that are interested in this community and trust isn't built overnight. Trust isn't built in 18 months. But I know a lot of folks are frustrated out there but we're gonna do everything we can to help folks who want to be in this marketplace find their footing. So remember that the next time that you're frustrated, don't be so quick to react that the sky is falling. Remember, everything that we've done has been to help small cultivators find their place here instead of big businesses coming in and as the chair alluded to, that would be a lot easier for us to do internally and it's not the direction that any of us wanna see this market take place. So thank you for bearing with us. So product registration, just a few notes about that the product registration form and corresponding payment portal will be live on our website by the end of the day at ccb.vermind.gov forward slash forms. This is a key component of our consumer safety mandate where licensees will be providing information to the board about labeling, packaging, testers in the test results of the individual products that they're gonna be bringing to market. This only has to happen once per product type and it can happen at the cultivator, the wholesaler, the product manufacturer or the retail level. But generally speaking, it will be the responsibility of the licensee that's putting their name on the product to register that product. It should be fairly straightforward with respect to cannabis products. When it comes to flour, you need a registration for each individual cultivar. Each cultivar only needs to be registered once but if there is a different cannabinoid profile that needs to be registered on its own. The form is a Microsoft form. This is a temporary solution while we build this functionality into our primary licensing portal. And speaking of Microsoft forms, I did wanna turn things over to Kerry to do some additional guidance on inventory tracking. We've included in our agenda today a Q, a question and answer period so that people can ask questions directly and get comfortable with some of the terminology we're using and the data points. But before we turn things over to you Kerry, just wanna approve the minutes. You guys had a chance to look at those? Yep. All right, is there a motion to approve? To move. Seconded. All in favor? Aye. Aye. All right. Kerry, are you with us? I am, yep. Yep. Are you ready to get going on the cultivation inventory tracking? Sure, yes, we can do that. I'm going to have to share my screen here and thank you for the floor chairman. This might take a second, but for the folks at home, I wanted to sort of introduce some topics that we've come up with to sort of help us put this all together. That's not the one. All right, so. My technological challenge here, one sec. Let's go. There, I wanted to start here before I delve into the process for growers for inventory tracking. And one of the terms I wanted to highlight is harvest lot. A harvest lot is in our rule, it's sort of described, it's separated by strain or cultivar, but that's not what we're doing here. That's a relic from the hemp program. In this case, we're going to divide, or define harvest lot as any cannabis that was grown in the same lot. So regardless of cultivar, if you planted it at the same time, it's on the same flower cycle, it received the same inputs and was harvested around the same time. I know plants mature at different times, but in the same sort of week, we're going to call that a harvest lot. And primarily for the sake of testing, so that one harvest lot receives the pesticide test. And then that harvest lot will be broken up into process lots. And if folks think of a better term, that's fine, but right now we're calling them process lots. And the process lot is whatever you break that harvest lot down into. So if you are selling the entire thing as fresh frozen, it's one harvest lot. If you're selling trimming and selling premium flower to directly to a retail operation, that batch of premium flower is a process lot. If the trim from that lot is being sold to extraction, that is its own process lot. If you've got multiple sort of cultivars in that field and you want to sell them separately, each one can become its own process lot, but you can recombine the trim and sell that as a process lot. And this flow chart that's up sort of dictates when and where the consumer protection testing needs to occur. But I wanted to start there before we move into the form and did my screen switch? Yeah. All right. This is the Microsoft forms that we will be posting online at the end of the week. And I'll walk through, this is for outdoor cultivators. And I'll fill this out so folks can see what's happening and ask questions at the end. So name of the establishment, license type, mixed outdoors. So this is a dropdown list for all the cultivation types we currently have listed. Tier six is on there, even though we don't have any tier six, but this is for all the outdoor types, we have a different form for indoor and it's basically the same, but it asks more questions about when you initiated flower and then your license number. And we're asking you to report on a bi-weekly basis. So I'm a little bit behind here. I'm gonna say the reporting period that I'm reporting on is from the third to the 17th. And then for harvest lot number, this is, I'm gonna use my registration number and just put a sequential number on there. And then for the process lot, I'm gonna use the basically the same number as the harvest lot. And then an additional identifier. We're going to add another question to this form that will let you say that this process lot is trim, it's flower, it's waste, whatever it is, you'll describe the process lot, but I'm just gonna call it A. So and A in this case is, A is my premium flower. And I didn't, I wasn't licensed till June. So June 4th is when I planted that and harvest I harvested last week. And it asks about growing style. This is sort of an important question based on the analytics that we will be applying to your answers, but I'm an outdoor cultivator. I grew it in, in ground and I'm only going to have one process lot. So I grew 125 plants and this final weight is in grams. So I've got about, you know, I did all right. I got about 45 pounds of flower, which is, you know, a little bit over 20,000 grams. And we're asking for in grams because I didn't want to necessarily get into issues with significant figures as far as pounds are concerned. So if we keep it all in grams, that makes it easier for us. And these questions will become optional. So I said that was, this is, this is this process lot is my premium flower and I'm only reporting on that flower. The trim, and I didn't sell fresh frozen to a processor, but so the trim will be the second harvest or process lot from this harvest lot. And I'll do that on a successive form when I get down here to process a lot. So these questions after 12 are specific to how you sort of marketed your cannabis. I basically say, yes, I have a second process lot. And what I would do is fill out the information again. And it's, and then when it's, this second process lot is the waste. So I had, you know, 40 or 40,000 or 40,000 grams of waste. And then I didn't have another process lot. And then there's an app test station at the end of that form. Then I would hit submit and your information comes to the board. So I need to put in the process lot and sorry, I was trying to go quick. And then that information comes to the board and ends up in our database. And we have these forms for indoor growers. In the mixed tier folks would have to fill out either indoor or outdoor based on whatever that harvest lot is. And the rest of the inventory tracking forms are will also be available. And what we're adding will add instructions on how to fill those out as well. But I'll stop at the cultivation form for now. And our goal is to have those available next week. One other topic that I sort of did want to make sure we covered because retail is opening and folks have asked is, let's see, the weight equivalence. I thought we could go over this briefly. Can you see that screen? Yes. So your sales, your sales can be up to the equivalent of one ounce of flour. And it didn't bother with the decimal points after 28 grams because there's a lot of assumptions. So we use the regulatory level of 30% for flour and I didn't convert between THCA, I didn't use the whole theoretical calculation but at 28 grams, 30% flour is 8400 milligrams of THC at 30%. So equivalent, see for that, for concentrate would be 14 grams of concentrate at 60% or 81 gram weight cartridges at 100% will bring you about 8,000 milligrams of THC or edibles packaged at 50 milligrams per package is 168, 50 milligram packages is equivalent to one ounce of flour or any combination there of as long as your customer is staying at or below 8400 milligrams of THC will consider that equivalent to an ounce of flour and I will stop sharing now and open up. Yeah, we put on the agenda some time for Q&A with you. Are you prepared for that? I am, maybe Bridget asked part of the question, so we'll see. Ellie, could you help us with the order that people are raising their hands? Yep, just do this like public comment. Yes, please. Okay, so Bridget is up first. So the opportunity to ask questions. I just was a question about the process slots there when you were going to them. So if you have a harvest slot and your process slot, you're only getting one process slot out of that that you're actually going to market with. So you're only going to market with your A flower, but you have waste from those plants. Is that a second process slot or it seemed like in the form there was actually a process slot or it seemed like in the form there was actually a place for waste in the first process slot that, hey, I'm harvesting these 125 plants. I'm only taking flower and market. The rest is waste. And so it looked like you went down to a second process slot there and so a little bit confused by that. Yep. So we do have a form for just documenting your waste on and at this point you can either, you can take either route. You can use the reduction form, your reduction and inventory form to report waste, or you can do it right there on the process slot form. I don't feel like it's a process slot, especially if it's root balls and stems that are waste, but either way we can capture that information, whether it's done in the reduction form or as a process slot and you're calling the rest of that waste. Okay. I had one other quick question if I'm able to do it. Just wondering, as you collect this data, are you going to be kind of making publicly known how much product is actually becoming available into the market? So we have a sense of, you know, as a consumer what's available and as an operator, as a retailer, what is actually out there and available to sell or at least coming into the market because it's been registered as a lot that's in process. Yep, that's a goal, Bridget, and as we move forward with, we're working with a couple different IT vendors right now. This is an interim solution. In mid-November we should be going live with a more permanent solution that will have data analytics from a company called NCS, and you'll be able to sort of see all of that on our website in a dashboard form. But between now and December, you may not have that information available. We'll do the best we can. Great. Thank you. Appreciate it. Orban's Finest. Orban's Finest, are you there? Now, why don't you move on and if they take their hand back up. All right. Sounds good. Yareem is next. Hello, everyone. Yareem Plantillas, Rick Lover Analytics. I actually have two questions in the comments. The question is, correct me if I'm wrong, but I still have not seen anything that states how much of the harvest lot is to be tested. Say, tier one it's fine and dandy, but tier five are going to be a little more difficult because if you're saying, you only have to test the harvest lot, tier five can grow a thousand plants in a tier five at the same time of several cultivars or the same cultivar. You're telling me they can only have to have one test or whether a thousand plants are in that area. So it needs to be a little bit more clear how much of the harvest lot we can test. The other one, if you want to answer that or do you want to... Sure, I can... If they are... If the tier five is not... If that tier five is broken up into smaller grow rooms, each grow room will be a separate harvest lot and we will provide sampling guidance on the website similar to what the hemp program uses about how to take a representative sample. But if that tier five is growing all in one big room and like I said, when I define harvest lot, if that is getting all the same inputs, whether that's pest protection inputs or fertilization inputs, soil amendment inputs, as long as they can get a representative sample off that harvest lot, we're comfortable. Perfect. That's what I was asking. We need to have a percentage sample because we need to know how much out of a thousand plants we can test. The other one is I did not see anything on the reporting part on labs. Are we part of the reporting on their portraits? You're going to be captured as a loss for the cultivator. So they will submit how much they sample, send it to the lab as a loss, but you won't be required since you're not actually producing cannabis, you're producing results. So as long as your lab has internal inventory tracking and sample tracking through a limb system, we're comfortable. When we come in and audit your records, we'll be able to see how long you retain a sample and how you discard it. Other than that, you won't be responsible for tracking inventory through this system. Well, I kind of thought so, and I kind of hope that that was the case. My last one is I have reached out to you to get a few things in line for what you guys need from us to our license, and you still have not gotten back to me. It's been almost a month, and I really need to get moving with all this stuff because we are being held back by several things and be able to get a license is one of them. But that's it. Thank you very much for your two answers you gave me. All right. Jason Powell is next. Hi, thank you. I'm just curious about the timing on reporting a process law. I guess we wait until everything's dried and then we're able to report on weights and everything. Yes. Yes, absolutely. Yep. Just keep track of the number of plants in that harvest lot. And once it's broken down, you'll be able to fill out the form. Thank you. Keith. Hello, Keith. Oops, Keith. I think I accidentally muted you again. I'm sorry about that. Sorry. Oh, are we there again? Yes. Okay. Thank you. I have one question. Who is the company? Do you have a contract with us now? How much is that contract costing you? Keith, you can submit that as a public records act request. This is really about answering specific questions. I never get an answer. Sorry. This is public knowledge. I never get answers from you guys. I've sent you so many emails. You never respond. Nobody responds to me. Keith. You can send me an email as a public record act request and I will respond to you. Okay. I'll bring the other question back. How are you going to track 125 plants from seedling all the way through the chain of command all the way up through to retail sales to go out the door? What's the chain of command there? So when you have planted seed in the ground, there should be a tracking number from that seed that follows that single cultivator from that spot all the way through. Every single plant should be tracked for safety. I have one more thing. Metric.com. Titan security market simplifies the recall. Docs chain of custody ensures proper tax accounts, eases inspections and auditing, repairs, burdens, and maintenance. I'm going to start in 2011 in Colorado. Standard in the cannabis industry in 21 states and two countries. 300,000 people. Keith. Can I just interrupt you for a second? This is not about people explaining things to the board. This is the board trying to help cultivators understand our tracking requirements. It's not about people that actually have to deal with this system. I've been in another state and done it through metric previously. It is so much easier than what you guys are offering the state of Vermont. This is very complicated, but thank you for your time. Thanks, Keith. There are not other states. John. Next, John Cronin. Can you hear me? Yes. Okay. Thank you. So I had a question about the final weight in weighing the food waste. For example, I was thinking about weighing the RuPaul's, but I mean, I could do that. But initially, I just, I harvested a couple of plants and I weighed them out of the ground. And then I weighed them once they've been blocked and all the fan leaves and stuff are off. I'm going to weigh them once the buds are removed and trimmed. I'm going to weigh them once they're cured. Am I on the right track there? Yes, you are. And the sort of RuPaul and stem is legacy from what the medical program was required to do. We're not necessarily going that far. If you're leaving the roots in the ground, don't take them up and weigh them. But your hanging plants, just the most important thing is the number of plants versus pounds of flower. But we're asking you to report that in grains. That's fine. So the, in terms of the waste, I'm now starting to, because of the wet weather, I'm now starting to go through and defoliate everything. All those leaves are on the ground and that's waste. I don't have to worry about that. Okay. You don't. You don't. No, once you've got it hung and dried, the waste is going to vary, but really the analytics that are being applied really are based on number of plants and pounds of dry usable flower that are produced from that number of plants. And while we were capturing waste, like you said, it's getting to be a tough time of year. You might scrap a plant or two entirely from that harvest lot and that would be good for us to know. So if you have previously reported that you had 125 plants in the ground and you only harvested 120, we're going to wonder where those other five plants are. So that's why that sort of reduction in waste is available for you guys to report to us. Did I answer your question? Yep. I'm listening carefully too. It's way simpler. I just want to say. You broke up a little, John, but yeah, primarily keep track of number of plants harvested and weight of flower and weight of trim. Those are our most important tracking pieces. So we're not going to have to sign up with the company to do any tracking and tracing at a large fee to us. Correct. That's why we're building this system. Some folks may in the future choose to do that. As the reporting will be seamless. But we're designing a system that won't require that because we have so many small, small scale growers. Thank you. I just want to say I am so grateful for the way that you guys are doing this. You started this thing. I know it had to be really difficult. But what you're doing, I've never felt that you were have our best interest to heart here. I've never lost confidence in that. And I really appreciate the small grower work, the thought that has gone into this. And I do feel like you're helping us with our brands in the future with this good start. So thank you. Thank you. Yes. Here. You hear me? Yes. I just wanted to thank everyone for all your hard work. And I do also appreciate the focus on small growers. That said, I did have a question about on that first screen where you were selecting your tier type. As a mixed grower, say I was reporting an outdoor, would I select mixed there? And then later, would it ask me for indoor or outdoor? Yes. Yes, absolutely. So there'll be a separate form for indoor and outdoor grow basically because you can control more on the indoor grow. And well, you'll give us information about the time that the plants were in bed and when you started the flowering cycle and how long that flowering cycle was. But you'll select your appropriate license type because that'll be tied back to your license number. Okay. So I can do that. And then the next screen it would identify indoor or outdoor from there. Correct. Yeah. Okay. Perfect. Thanks. Great. Thank you for all that you guys do. I just had one quick question. And that is, will we be able to integrate the inventory tracking system that you guys are putting together to a third party program like leaflogics? Okay. We're having these discussions now. That will be the goal. It will not be true of this interim solution. But like I said, by December or, or so we don't have a deadline for that. The deadline is November or the timeline is November, but I'm, you know, being optimistic that will optimistic that we'll have something in place by December. And we will offer that to different companies to sort of connect to our system automatically. But that won't be true for this interim solution. Okay. Thank you. Tree frog farms. Hi guys. I just had two quick questions. Is there for the scales we use, will there be any calibration requirements or accuracy requirements of the scale down to point zero one grams or anything like that? And as far as I'm understanding, even if we harvest different plants at different times, you would like us to submit these records after everything is in and dried and trimmed. And we have a total for the whole field. Those more questions. Yep. So it's really up to you to decide what you choose a harvest lot is. But as we've defined harvest lot, if you planted it at the same time, they received all the same inputs and it's on the same light cycle, which outdoor is, but you're harvesting over the course of a week or two. Then let us know, and you're calling that a harvest lot to do one pesticide test. The pesticide tests are expensive and sort of we're, we're assuming that that residue will be the same because you've treated that entire harvest lot the same. So yeah, my only thought was that, yeah, I would have a whole field. Everything would be given all the same inputs, but by growing different strains, I might harvest one strain four or five weeks earlier than another one. So I didn't know if I should start reporting as soon as I had that one strain dried or after the whole field is done and taken down. So we're going to leave that up to you. But as this sort of is required every two weeks, you can either update the information that you've submitted or give it to us all at once and just say it's in process. It's drying. Okay. Thank you very much. Justin. Oh, wait, I'm sorry. I missed a question about the scales. Any scale that's used in commerce does need to be a certified scale and sort of weights and measures folks at the agency that can certify your scale. But if your, if that hasn't happened, that can happen at the retail level, certainly, but you should at least be out to two decimal place places with a grand scale. Justin, sorry to interrupt. No, quite all right. My question is regarding fresh frozen, especially with our 60% concentrate cap law in order to do the separations necessary, we require very high quality inputs in our concentrates. And really every processor does. I didn't notice an ability to register a fresh frozen product or a fresh and ever frozen product, which is going to be a serious point of necessity for the solveness market, especially, but even the solvent based market. That's all Justin. So products that aren't offered for retail sale. Don't need registration. I mean, like every products, every harvest lot seems to reference a drying point. So can these farmers register their product fresh because we would never dry the biomass. We'd be purchasing it frozen fresh harvested. Yeah. So that product won't be offered at the retail establishment. They'll sell that product to a processor or a manufacturer. So that product does not need to be registered as fresh frozen, but the concentrate that it produces would need to be registered only if it's offered for retail sale. So if you're doing fresh frozen concentrate and then selling it to somebody who's putting that in a vape cart, those vape carts need to be registered, whatever's being offered for sale in the retail establishment needs to be registered, but the interim, the process, extracts don't need registration. Okay. So farmers will be able to input their harvest as wet weight. Absolutely. And that's, sorry, I went through the forum fairly quickly, but you do have an option for giving us fresh frozen weight. Okay. Thank you. Gary, I'm just going to give you a quick time check. You know, we scheduled 30 minutes. We have about 10 minutes left on that 30 minutes. So Nellie, if you wouldn't mind just kind of prioritizing first time questioners, we can vary it. We can do this again if we need to. I know there are a lot of questions around this and we do have a way for people to kind of ask questions, submit them as a kind of public comment and we can get back to them. Right. And I do think this kind of helps us stand up additional guidance or FAQs, so on and so forth that we can kind of get on our website as well. Jesse. So much first question is the harvest lot number carry. Is that something we choose in a sign? I know you used a registration number, but we don't necessarily have that. Are you a cultivator, Jesse? Yes, I am. And I thought one of the first things you did was put in what was called the harvest lot number. Yep. In the interim while you're waiting for your license number, I would suggest you do have a number that the board has provided. Oh, that's our license number. Is the harvest lot number. Yes. Okay. Very good. So use your license number and then I just for the first harvest lot, I put 001. Okay. So your license number and then a sequential number for harvest lot. As we move forward with developing a new system, those could potentially be auto generated by a system, but I also wanted to give growers some flexibility. So I didn't want to tie it to a date. So just a sequential number after your license number is sufficient for harvest lot. Okay. Very good. And I think the biggest question for me and probably for other growers is just how to organize this. And I hear that you guys are giving us a lot of flexibility and how we orient ourselves to harvest lot versus process lot, but just to try to get some clarification here for testing, not just pesticide testing, but the other required testing from a lab. Is that going to be based off of a strain, a harvest lot or a process lot? So the short answer is yes. And that's only because you get to decide. Okay. So even if we had 300 plants of then 22 strains, we could choose to test all the testing requirements for one. One sample. So if you're going to harvest, if you're going to do that as a harvest lot, your entire field, then that, and it to had all the same inputs, then you only need one sort of pesticide test on that harvest lot, but then depending on where, where that goes. If it's, if that. Flower. Is, is the process lot is flower to be a smokable flower that it needs the potency test, the microbiological test and moisture you'll get from the lab, but we're looking for something below 13% just for, for a shelf stability. And then if it, if it's being offered for extraction, I don't know if you can see the screen. I popped that flow chart backup. If that process lot is being offered for extraction, you'll probably want a cannabinoid test just so you can get paid appropriately. But then it breaks down that processor. Yeah. But really, I think my question is, is just the clarification that you guys are saying one plant is okay to do all of the required testing, depending on the license. A sub. Or a sub sample. A sub sample. Yes. Okay. Very good. All right. And then do we need a separate process lot for flower versus pre-roll or it's just really flower versus concentrate versus edible? So it's smokable, flower is synonymous with pre-roll. Okay. Very good. Yeah. Okay. And then last one, sorry to cut you off, Carrie. I just want to get through these, but I treat your thoroughness. And so the only last thing I'm thinking is just reporting. You guys are requiring that we report bi-weekly, but I'm feeling like it would be more straight forward if once everything is dried and then we get a proper weight all at once. It might be make more sense to then do the reporting, but you're saying if we cut something down, we'll have a space to just say, hey, it's not dry. It was not weighed yet, but we'll do that on the next reporting. This is sort of a conversation that the board has been having and we'll take your input. I agree with you, but we were advised by other folks who do this work that it keeps it on cultivator's radar to have a timeline for reporting. We don't want you to forget to report because then we'll just show up. Okay. Well, my two cents on that and then I'll leave and end on this is that I think just because this is an interim thing and you guys are transitioning in December to something else. As a cultivator, it would be really helpful for me to harvest everything, get it all organized, properly dried, cured, and then weighed, and then report, and then just have the requirement that I can't sell to a retail or anywhere until I report. Then it won't go off my radar, but then I have everything organized instead of putting in a little information here, a little bit there. I feel like there's a lot bigger space to make a mistake if I'm trying to do that in the midst of trying to dry and cure and everything. So that's it. Thank you guys so much. And Carrie, thank you for coming on. You're very brave in the midst of such stressful times. Have a good one, you guys. Thank you, Janice. Thank you. And just two quick questions for you. One, just to clarify about the waste weight for the reporting. Are you saying that we just need to report dry weight? So nothing fresh needs to be reported. I was thinking so, yes. And like I said, waste is not something we're necessarily tracking as long as you have a waste weight. Dry weight is dry weight works. I understand some people buck in the field and the stems just fly out there and they're selling fresh frozen. So we're not going to get a weight for their waste, but if you are hanging a whole plant and you're able to sort of get a weight for the waste, it would help our analytics to have that information. Okay, cool. And then second question is when will the guidance for this be posted or will we be able to access the recording for this? Both are, yes, you'll be able to access a recording and we're hoping for the guidance and the forms to be posted online next week. Perfect. That's it. Thank you guys for everything you do. Carrie, I'm going to stop you there. Everyone who still has their hand up, please, these questions are incredibly important. I can hear, you know, the urgency and everyone's voice and the kind of concern to get this right. Please go to our website, fill out the public input form, put your questions in there, and that'll really help us kind of understand where the, where questions remain, where further clarification is needed. And this recording will be available on our YouTube page, search CCB Vermont and look there. It should be up. I think usually by the end of the day. So you can go back and watch some of the answers to these questions and we'll keep, keep kind of getting good information out there. We need to just continue the agenda. Yep. Sorry, very quickly. This meeting is actually live streamed. So it's already up on YouTube. Oh, great. Okay. Great. Look at that. Thank you, Carrie. That's, you know, I know it's never easy to kind of roll with the punches live like this, but that was really helpful. And can we turn to you for the reviewing of staff recommendations on licensure, social equity status. Okay. So here is the board's register for this week. Starting with medical program as always. You can see here that the staff issued 70 patient cards this last week. So that's looks like about nine more than we're received applications and renewal applications received. So staff is working through our backlog and we're hoping to be operating within those 30 days very quickly. So moving on to our adult use license application numbers. Here is your wall of numbers for this week. Important numbers are down at the bottom. We've got 13 applications up for a board approval for a license this week. And just a couple of things to highlight here. You can see we've got a whole lot of zeros over here in the submitted category and the received category staff are have really done a great job of processing most of the cultivator applications. And they are most of them are in incomplete or resubmitted status. We do have two new applications for small indoor cultivators this week. One new outdoor small cultivator one new mixed cultivator just in this last week. We have seven new retail applications as of this week. One new wholesaler and only one new manufacturer. But the number that's changing kind of the most rapidly is the employee ID card number. And again those are applications that our staff are able to review and approve without board approval. But just wanted to note that we've gotten I think close to between 35 and 40 new employee ID card applications just this week. So that's a big part of the work that the licensing team is doing behind the scenes. Right on those. Can you just remind me employees do not need to go through a CSI background check. That's right. That's right. They don't have to go through our vendor. They are able to get their fingerprints on their own and submit them to the FBI to get their own fingerprints for the background check. And we are able to rely on that check to for our process. Okay. Any I'm going to move on to our recommendations for a license. So as always, these are applicants that have met the requirements for their license that are in our rules and also in statute. So as I said we have 13 this week. So I'll just go through the list. Yeah GMT genetics mixed tier one cultivator. Brown Dog cannabis indoor tier one cultivator. Tumbridge roots indoor tier one cultivator. Four turtles farm. Indoor tier one cultivator. Green Mountain cannabis north and indoor tier two cultivator. Green Barn farm a mixed tier two cultivator. Sunnyview farm and indoor tier one cultivator. Mad Hatter cannabis and hemp and mixed tier one cultivator. The clean cannabis company and indoor tier three cultivator. Freya commons a tier three manufacturer. Vermont Bud Barn. Our retailer. And snowbird botanicals for a tier one manufacturer license. So that is your list for applicants that staff is recommending for licensure. And this week you do have your we have one staff recommendation for denial of a license. So that is submission number 145. This applicant has applied for an outdoor tier one cultivation license. And staff is recommending that the board deny a license for this applicant. Because they are not able to meet the requirements of of our rules. So specifically its rule 1.4.9 B has a requirement that applicants have the right to occupy their site of operations and this applicant is not able to meet that requirement. So some detail for the board is that the property is owned and controlled by a person that is a defendant and a criminal federal criminal fraud case. That case is unresolved and the federal court has issued both a notice of indictment and a restraining order pursuant to the property. So because of that the applicant is not able to meet that requirement in rule 1.4.6 in two ways. First the restraining order that's entered against the property imposes prohibitions on encumbering the property or transferring the property without prior federal court approval. The applicant does not have that approval from the court. And secondly the indictment documents indicate that the government intends to seek for future of the property in the event that the defendant is convicted. So under those circumstances the applicant would lose their legal right to occupy the land. So for those reasons staff are recommending that the board deny a license for this applicant. They have not demonstrated an ability to comply with board rule. And we can if the board has questions or would like to discuss the matter with our general counsel we can go into executive session. After I finish. So I'll just move on to the rest of the register. Here's an update on our license amendments. So we've got 12 in the queue right now and as a reminder these are amendments that our staff are processing that have to do with the licensees application that don't rise to the level of the type of amendment that would require a renewal. So it's often things like a change of name a change of business name that's requiring staff to process these types of amendments. Social equity updates. So here is our here are our numbers of social equity applicants and where they fall in the process. We have two charts now the second one provides kind of a pre determination of social equity status review. So this is the number of people who are still have not yet been determined to have social equity status by the board that number right now is 13. And we've got two recommendations for social equity status approval this week submission number 176 and submission number 1517 and both of these applicants need the criteria for social equity individual applicant as defined in board rule. So staff is recommending that the board grant social equity status to these applicants. And that is your list for this week. Any questions for bring. Okay. Is there a motion to approve the recommendations. I move the support of each of the recommendations for social equity status and licensing as presented to us by staff in this meeting. Oh, second. All in favor. Hi. Hi. Great. Okay. Well, let's shift to public comment. We always do if you have a public comment for the board please and you joined by the link please raise your virtual hand. We'll do our best to call you in the order that you raise your hands and then we will move on to the folks that joined via phone. If you could just help us with the order. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much. Really? Mary was first. Hello once again. Thank you again for your time and all the work that you're doing. I'll keep it quick. I just need to make a comment about being able to move forward with our license. when you're a little more established. Which is, to me, really concerning because if we are to move into a market, we need to know what you guys need from us to be able to be licensed. But that is one of my concerns, my comments for this time around. If we're not to be, don't have that kind of guidance, I'm afraid that this is gonna impact when we're coming to market. Thank you very much. And I'm sorry for all about the screening babies, my daughter. Don't worry. Never have to apologize for that. Thanks, Yareem. Dara. This is my first meeting. I just participated in the budget certification. Let's wait just a minute. Some questions, I'm from that, from what I learned. And I learned that terpenes influence therapeutic effect to have medicinal properties. And I just wanted to note that I think it would be really helpful in guiding our consumers as to what to choose for their products. We have information about the terpenes content in the flower that we are distributing. And also I noticed while I'm not professionally trained in alcohol or tobacco sales, I have a little bit of experience in that industry. And I'm just wondering if the information, in those courses, compares to the in-depth requirements of that particular course. Sorry, my voice is a little shaky. For example, recognizing subsistence, we have to learn about not aware of what we have required in those courses, but I am wondering. And then my last comment has to do with concentrate. Concentrate cap, wondering if we could test for T-H-C-A in that category versus test over T-H-C. Thanks, Sarah. We don't generally answer questions during the public comment period. You were cutting out just a little bit there. If you want some specific answers, maybe if you don't mind, just going on our public input forum on our website and submitting those, and we'll try and get answers to those. Mike. It's appeared to me, you. Hello? Hi, Mike. Hey, awesome. Well, I'm Mike. I am Sunnyview Farm, and my wife and I are Sunnyview Farm. And I just want to thank you guys for everything you've done. Thank you. Yeah, awesome. Have a great week. You too. Jesse. That was so nice, Mike. We're all like, is that really it? That's great. Thank you guys. No, Mike. But I also, I just wanted to thank you guys for allowing Jesse Linn's course to be certified by the state. I signed up my farm to take it, even though we're growers right now, just to stay in the loop and see what he was being taught. And it was a really great course. And it was just so nice because you guys, like you have been doing, are bringing in these legacy people into the fold, which hold generations of knowledge. So that was great. But I think what Sarah was saying, and what I was going to bring up is there were some state requirements that were a little overbearing as far as substance use disorder and human trafficking. And it's just, as a legacy grower, it's just a little weird where you're like, is this the result of the lies we've been told for the better half of a century from the federal government about cannabis being really dangerous? So anyways, I know you guys know this and are trying to do the balancing act, but I just got to throw out the comment just so you guys can make note, like, hey, we feel this way. But otherwise, thank you guys so much for bringing in such great people because same with the inspector. We had Chipper. Chipper was great. So good and Carrie trying to jump in and do this tracking for the seed to sail for us instead of metric. Like, no, I do not want metric. So all these little things, it's great. Thank you guys so much. Jesse. Ben. Hey there, Ben. It looks like you were unmuted, Ben, but we cannot hear you. Ella, do you want to maybe lower Ben's hand and move on? And then if he jumps back in. All right, Ryan is next. I wonder if it's us. Yeah, some people have a problem. Some people are. I don't know. Nellie, are you seeing Ryan unmute as well? He just did. Maybe try Bridget. Yeah, Bridget is up next. Hi, thanks. I just do want to, I appreciate that the state is trying to lower some of the barriers and some of the regulations that make this industry really burdensome and costly. But I do have some concern about wet weight not being tracked because it is from harvest to weighing the dry weight, the final product where diversion and inversion happen. And I just think that those are important data points to have, not just for the state regulators, but also for the producers. And I would recommend that producers do track their wet weights so they can track their efficiencies and track their product effectively for their own purposes. So that's it. Thanks. Yeah, thanks Bridget. And are you able to unmute at this point? Sounds like we're, I think we're still having issues. If you can, feel free to kind of submit your comments on our website. I apologize if this is something that's happening on our end. If you join by a phone and would like to make a public comment, hopefully you can hit star six on mute yourself. And we'll try and hopefully work out any glitches that are happening. Ryan, I think we heard you there. Okay, can you hear me now? I'm really sorry guys. Yeah, no, we can hear you. I just wanna say, Kerry's doing a great job. I'm really excited on your small grower focus and bringing your own system in line. I know some people are really pushing for metric there. I work in multiple states and I don't think metrics dance are honestly. And I think your pathway is great. And I'm really looking forward to what you guys are gonna be doing in the future. And yeah, I just wanted to share my sentiments there with everyone else on the metric front. Thanks guys, appreciate you. Thanks Ryan. Anyone else with a public comment either by phone or by video? Dan? Can you guys hear me? Yep. Okay, yeah, sorry, my internet's bad. Yeah, I just wanted to leave some feedback. Overall, I think that you guys have a really challenging job and have made incredible efforts. Just feedback that I think that I'd like to mention is I think a way that could have made it more equitable for everybody in the state would have been to process one license type at a time. Let's get all the outdoor growers done. Then let's get all the indoor growers done. Then the manufacturers and then the retailers and process all the licenses before anybody can operate. That way, you could have said, okay, this is the final date. And if you're a retailer and you've applied for a license, if you've met the requirements, you've been processed and you can open at the same time. If you didn't meet the regulations and requirements, you don't get a license. But it just seems sad kind of seeing a market where some people will have an opportunity in the beginning to make an impact and other people won't. And so that's just my feedback is if you had just said, let's just take our time to make sure it's fair to everybody and given everybody a chance to participate equally at the same time. That way it would have been a more free market. It's like, we wanna see each other successful. I wanna see other cultivators and Vermont cannabis entrepreneurs successful, but it's like we don't want it to be competitive and there ultimately will be a lot of people who can't enter the market from day one. So that's just the feedback that I have. Thanks, Dan. Jeffrey. Good afternoon, can everyone hear me okay? Yep. Excellent, I'll be brief. I just wanted to, from Jeffrey Pizzatello from Vermont Gross Association, I just wanna take a moment to express our gratitude to Kerry and all of the work that he's been doing on this portal. We see you guys moving in the direction of Washington State. We think that is the ideal approach as of this moment in time for tracking supply chain. And we wanna thank you for the work that you've been doing for licensure. We heard that you may be slowing down some of that operation as you focus on other areas. We think that is fine. We just urge and we wanna impress upon you to keep the licensing window open. We understand you won't be closing it without public notification, but please keep that open and please continue to move forward manufacturing and retail applications, please. Just wanted to underscore that. And again, appreciate everyone's work. Thank you, Board, for what you are doing up to this point in time. And everybody have a good day. Thank you, Jeffrey. Any last call for public comments? All right, I will close the public comment window. Thanks to everyone who joined us. Thanks to everyone out there who put in an application or is licensed. I had a really exciting time for the month. I will adjourn the meeting. Thank you all.