 My name is James Pepper. I'm the chair of the Cannabis Control Board here in Vermont. Today is August 30th. It's 1 o'clock 1 p.m. and I call us meeting order. I'd like to do just a few brief remarks. We recently held the first of four of the Act 65 working group meetings around the medical program. Anyone who wasn't able to attend can watch the recording on our YouTube page. This first meeting really was an introduction and a level setting opportunity so that all of the participants understand the parameters of the charge of Act 65, the history of the medical program, including some of the structural challenges it's facing. And we ended by kind of charting a path forward for the next few meetings. I want to thank everyone who was able to participate and share their thoughts. We know how critical this program is for patients and how little attention is received over the years. We've prepared a doodle poll. I think you went out this morning to help facilitate scheduling the next meeting. Depending on people's availability, I'm going to try and tackle some of the direct charges of Act 65 at that next meeting, including which conditions should qualify a person for a medical card. I'd like to talk about a new process for adding qualifying conditions that's evidence-based. I'd like to talk about best practices around treatment protocols and dosing and then also about how to improve patient and provider education. Then at the third meeting, I'm going to, I'd like to dig into what we need to do to fundamentally improve the kind of access, affordability, quality of the program, both from a statutory and regulatory perspective. So we'll keep our calendar up to date with the details of these meetings. They are fully remote. There is no kind of physical location and just keep an eye on our event calendar once we get that scheduled, probably for later in September. I wanted to also just say a few quick words about packaging. As most people watching are aware, our rules do not permit the use of plastic packaging for cannabis and cannabis products that are intended for sale to the public. When it comes to cannabis flour, which does not require child resistant packaging by law, there are a lot of non-plastic options out there to comply with this prohibition. Of course, when it comes to manufactured cannabis products like edibles, which pose a greater risk of accidental ingestion and therefore require more protective packaging, we recognize that there are fewer non-plastic options that achieve child resistance. We created a process whereby a licensee could seek a temporary waiver to this plastic band if they could demonstrate that plastic packaging was necessary to achieve child resistance and there were no other realistic options. I want to be clear. We're not willing to grant plastic waivers for flour because it does not require child resistance and there are plenty of non-plastic packaging alternatives. Over early on, when the industrial supply chains were still partially disrupted by the pandemic and we were in a rush to license people and get this market up and running on schedule, we granted a one-year waiver to a safely lock compostable bag for edibles. The one-year anniversary is coming up on September 4th and the CCB will not be renewing this waiver as it is no longer necessary. There are many other non-plastic options available for edibles and so the original justification for us granting this waiver is gone. I don't think this should come as a surprise to anyone who's currently using these safely locked pouches. At the time we approved the waiver request, we noted very clearly on our website that this was a temporary one-year waiver and anyone who registered a product with this packaging was reminded in their product registration response that this waiver was temporary and there was no guarantee that it would be renewed. But what does this mean for the industry? For one, anyone with these safely locked bags, you can use your existing inventory until it's exhausted and anyone whose products have been registered with this pouch can continue to use it until that registration expires. Number two, we have a number of examples of compliant non-plastic packaging on our website at ccb.vermont.gov slash plastic hyphen waivers. And thanks to Kyle's dogged research on this, it's looking likely that we will be approving a new PHA pouch soon. So stay tuned for that. And then three, more fundamentally, the examples that we provide on our website are not the only packaging solutions out there. Any sort of cardboard or metal container that has child-resistant mechanisms should be fine. And just to clear up a point of confusion, you don't have to ask for a waiver request if your packaging solution is child-resistant and it does not use plastic. That being said, if you have questions about whether a specific non-plastic package is okay before you want to buy it in bulk, you can ask your compliant agent about it or you can email ccb.compliance at vermont.gov. And Kyle, we're running short on time. Yeah, I'll be very quick. And I just wanted to compound or elaborate on a couple of points that the chair made. As we were looking at this waiver process when we first started getting going, it was not intended necessarily to find this holy grail perfect plastic option that would go against what our regulations actually say. We wanted to provide an opportunity for folks to show us what was truly necessary. Reference here is only a part of the equation. It has to be truly necessary. It does look like we're going to make an announcement imminently about a new bag that's a lot more environmentally geared towards how Vermont handles waste. The safely locked bag, while it was the best we could find at the time, it doesn't break down in a landfill setting. Whether we like it or not, a majority of the everyday items that we use as a collective society end up in a landfill despite our best efforts to recycle or reuse or compost or whatever. Industrial composting in Vermont, they don't take bioplastics. There's no method to get it from your doorstep to an industrial compost or either. There's a lot that needs to happen to improve that infrastructure. So from a systems perspective, we want to work backwards. This new bag will do a lot better in a landfill setting and in a home compost setting. I believe it's a cheaper per unit price than the safety lock option. You can screen print directly on this option. I don't want to take full credit for finding it. A member of the community brought it to my attention a couple months ago, but in those couple months, I have spent time with the CEO who is headquartered in Sydney, Australia, their US leads, their cannabis leads. We need to cross one more T and dot one more I, but it's looking like it's a superior option to the safety lock bag. So we recognize this might come as a shock to some, whether or not it should be. The chair already said that it shouldn't be. And again, we're out to take as much plastic out of our industry as we possibly can. It's all about what is truly necessary. And I'll leave it at that. Great. We have one last administrative request team before we turn to the agenda. So we are deep into our first round of license renewals, which is exciting. We would ask that any licensee who may have a question about their renewal should email ccb.applications at vermont.gov in addition to their compliance agent. And that will help facilitate kind of the getting answers out to the team as quick or to the field as quickly as possible. Other than that, just need to approve the minutes from our last meeting from July 19th. You guys had a chance to look at those minutes? Yes. Yep. Is there a motion to approve? So moved. I second. All in favor? Aye. Aye. Aye. Okay. Let's turn to the agenda. We have a guest here from the Department of Health. I know, Julie, you've been working on this issue with them. Can you just kind of introduce the issue for us? Yeah. So I'll just do a little bit of table setting here. So we're grateful to have Roy Belcher here from DSU. I won't steal any of your data or information, Roy. But just to kind of set the intent, I'll bring the group back to our mission as a board, which was to safely, effectively, and equitably implement this program. And in our guiding principles, as a board, we sat down, you all remember, a few years ago now, and developed some guiding principles. And in that, we endeavored to develop a regulatory program that aimed to prevent youth use and also was public education focused. And we also included in those principles that legalizing cannabis and cannabis sales could be a harm reduction if it was done responsibly. And so that's why conversations like this and the partnerships that we have with DSU are important. From a board perspective, I think it's important for us to hear this information and to get all the information about how cannabis is moving through the community and the impact of that. And then from a cannabis business community perspective, I want to make sure that folks understand that when we're talking about accidental ingestion or these numbers and issues that we're talking about related to youth, it's not intended to demonize or marginalize anyone who is legally purchasing cannabis in our adult use system. But from a responsible business perspective, what can we do as responsible business owners and folks who are responsible for this marketplace to make sure that it is in fact safe for the adults that choose to participate in it. So that's the kind of table setting for this. And Roy, unless my colleagues have something else to share, I'll let you sort of introduce the support that you're going to talk about and the project that we've all been working on. Great. Thank you very much, Commissioner Holbert. Again, my name is Roy Belcher. I use he and pronouns. And I am with the Division of Substance Use Programs at the Vermont Department of Health. And the unit that I work on overseas, quite a few different sort of buckets, but one of them is communications and marketing. And that's sort of what brings me to the table here today. So I've prepared a few slides that just give a bit of an overview of our division and kind of the work that we do. And then I'm going to be speaking a little bit about a forthcoming data product. Unfortunately, that is kind of caught up in the review system right now. So I'm not able to share a ton of very specific data points, but I can give the name of the report and as I said, an overview of what's going to be in there so that people can watch for it when it comes out. But based on that report that is forthcoming, we've started some interesting work with our partners over at the cannabis control board. So I'll be talking a bit about that as well. And again, we've been working on this with Commissioner Holbert and Nelly. So if either of you have anything that you'd like to share as I move through the slides, I would welcome that. So let me just, I actually, this is a bit of a, a bit of a interactive. I'm going to play one video. So I want to make sure that I share correctly. I'm going to click the little button. Okay, so as the agenda notes, we're going to be talking about data informed cannabis lock bag pilot project. I do want to make it really clear that this is a pilot project that we're talking about. So we'll, I'll be anxious to hear feedback from the people that are on this call or anybody that watches the recording of this meeting. But this is a collaboration of our division at the health department and the cannabis control board. So a little bit of information about the division of substance use programs. DSU formerly known as ADAP, the alcohol and drug abuse programs division. We changed our name in the last couple of years. We're one of 11 divisions at VDH at the department of health. We have around 50 staff in our division. And we have eight different units, including clinical services, quality management, performance management, harm reduction and recovery, prevention services, planning and community services, which is my unit, policy and operations. And so we're part of a big ecosystem over here at the health department. The messaging that our team that my unit oversees that relates specifically to cannabis are primarily fallen to these five campaigns. Let's talk cannabis is our flagship campaign that relates to cannabis. And it really focuses on the way that we often frame it is we are not anti cannabis in our division, but we're pro brain health. And that stands true for kind of all substances. So we just really want to make sure that people have the information that they need to make healthy choices that are within the bounds of the law. So the let's talk cannabis campaign really does that. And the video that I'm going to be showing on the next slide kind of, I think we'll sum that up nicely. We also have our parent up campaign, which is really excellent. That spans all substances, but cannabis is one of the primary ones. And it really seeks to give parents the tools that they need to be able to have fruitful conversations with their children about substance use and making choices and healthy choices therein. We have our healthy at home campaign. And this is actually overseen by our division of environmental health, but all things related to substances fall to our division for healthy at home. And it's really about how much we're talking about today, which is, and I heard a little bit back there. I hope people can hear me, is about safe storage and making sure that everything from substances, be they over the counter, legal substances, illegal substances, we're starting to talk more about safe storage of firearms under this campaign. So just making sure that people understand that they have a lot of opportunities within their home to take that next step in terms of keeping their occupants safe by safely storing these potentially dangerous things. One more conversation is a campaign that we developed that focuses on people that are pregnant and healthcare providers to help facilitate what can often be difficult conversations when we're talking about substance use and substance use disorder, but making sure that that's an open and free flowing conversation between people that are pregnant and their healthcare providers. And then the fifth campaign is Outlast. And this is actually an interesting one. It really focuses on people that are age 13 to 17 who identify with kind of the snowboarder and skateboarding community. And it aims to speak about alcohol and cannabis use prevention in particular. And this campaign is of interest, especially because our research has shown that this messaging loses efficacy when it comes from an entity like the health department. So this is actually very much intentionally not branded as coming from the health department, but it's through the magic of social media, it gets into the hands of that age group and people that identify with those cultures. So that's just a little bit of an overview of the campaigns that we have that touch on cannabis. Now, I wanted to talk a little bit more about the Let's Talk Cannabis campaign because that's really where we initially were able to connect with the Cannabis Control Board. So early on, of course, as retail cannabis came to our state, we recognize and I think the Cannabis Control Board, to your credit as well, recognize that we really, this is a cross-cutting issue and we all want to be on the same page and we all want the same goal and that is we want to have a healthy state and people making healthy decisions. So beyond the mandates that are written out in legislation for our entities to actually interact, we were able to connect initially with Nellie and then also with Commissioner Holberg and our first kind of collaboration was this asset for our Let's Talk Cannabis campaign and our office had realized that there wasn't, the messaging that was getting out there around cannabis and retail cannabis was fairly siloed. You know, like we were talking about health impacts, you all were talking about legality and kind of the rules around it. AOT was talking about driving, you know, so we really wanted to present something to our consumers about that was cross-cutting and so we developed this short video which I'm just gonna play here, it's about 20, or sorry, it's not 20 minutes, it's about one minute. It's legal in Vermont, so let's talk cannabis. First, if you're 21 or older, you can buy and grow cannabis within the legal limit but keep your butt in Vermont. It's illegal under federal law and don't cross state or national borders with it or use it in public spaces or on federal lands. Also, landlords, employers, cities and counties may have stricter rules than the state. Now be aware, cannabis use comes with risks. If you're pregnant or breastfeeding, don't use and when it comes to young people, it's not okay. Their brains are still developing and cannabis use can have lifelong consequences. Adults, if you choose to use, do it responsibly. Store all cannabis products where children and pets can't see or reach them. Today's weed is a lot stronger than it used to be. It affects everyone differently, especially edibles. They can take hours to fully kick in and never drive while under the influence of cannabis or other substances. You could hurt someone or get a DUI. There's so much more to talk about. Let's continue the conversation on Let's Talk CannabisVT.com. And so as I said, and as Commissioner Holord mentioned earlier, you know, we were really trying to take a tone with that that was in no way sort of sliding people that are using cannabis within the legal within legal bounds and that are of age. You know, we're really just trying to provide information in a non-sigmatizing manner. So the forthcoming report that I mentioned earlier, I want to move on to talking a bit about that and then our next project that we're working on with Cannabis Control Award. So the current title of this report is Ingestion and Non-Fatal Overdoses in Vermont Youth and Young Adults. And that it's not specific to cannabis, obviously. The substances that are included in this report include over-the-counter grubs, prescription medications, stimulants, opioids, and cannabis. So they're all included in this one report. And the report pulls from data from our essence system, which is the electronic surveillance system for the early notification of community-based epidemics. And what we're looking at there is our emergency department data of non-fatal overdoses that involve those substances that I mentioned among Vermont youth under the age of 25. Now these are classified as non-fatal overdoses. That just has to do with how things are reported at the emergency department level. And it differentiates from poisonings caused by drugs as opposed to other toxic substances like cleaning agents or pesticides. So overall, the reporting that we're looking at notes increases in unintentional non-fatal overdoses or overdose ED visits among that age group between 2018 and 2022. When the report comes out, you'll see that there are some, there were some increases in 2020 and 2021. Some are starting to return back to pre-pandemic levels. But at the time of the reporting through 2022, we're still seeing things elevated. We anticipate that this report will be out in October of 2023. And so we're, I apologize again that I'm not able to get into more of the specifics of the data that are there, but I'd be happy to come back and present again when the report is actually released. While we are waiting for the report, we do know the direction that the data are going to take us. And so we've been working with the Cannabis Control Board on this safe storage collaboration, this pilot project that we've been talking about. So a few months back, we were able to identify $20,000 in one of our marketing contracts. It was savings in licensing agreements that we had had. And we connected again with our partners at the Cannabis Control Board and asked if we, because something that we had discussed on a previous meeting was the importance of facilitating and supporting safe storage in homes. So with that $20,000, we were able to secure 3,000 lock bags. There are pictures here, the images that you're seeing on here, the two sides of the brochure that will be inserting into these bags here, but they're pretty simple bags. They are, they're lockable. They have a locking mechanism that you can change the three digit code on to whatever you like. They are intended to be smell-proof and they're a fairly good size, a bit larger than like a pencil case or something like that. So our partners at CCB have identified some retail partners on your end that would be willing to make these bags available. We're going to be making them available to customers of retail establishments free of charge. And in each bag, we're going to include the instructions on how to use the locking mechanism and then this really simple brochure. And the brochure just on one side, there's a link to a survey so that we can kind of evaluate the efficacy of the pilot program and see if it's something that we'd like to invest in going forward. It asks questions about the actual product itself and whether or not it meets the needs of the consumer. And then on the backside, we have a link to our Healthy at Home campaign to provide more information about safe storage in the home. So we really wanted to keep the resources. It was very tempting, of course, to pack these full of lots of different information and different campaign assets that we have. But we really wanted to keep it very simple for the consumer and just provide them with the bare minimum that they would need. And we're going to, we're in the process of developing displays that will promote these bags, specifically to retail cannabis customers who have young children and or pets because that's really the demographic that we're targeting with these bags. So that is pretty much everything that I wanted to share. I encourage people to reach out again if they have thoughts on the project or questions. But I can stop sharing. And if people have questions, I guess I'll hand it back over to the control board side to try to do next. But thank you all for your time. Yeah, thank you, Roy. I know you have a hard stop in four minutes, but are there questions? I just had one. The video, I saw that a lot, I guess over the last summer. Is it still out there? Is that still playing? Or is that? It's still, yes. We have a few 15-second derivatives. So we're working with our marketing vendor, MediaBiz. It will be, it will pop up when you least expect it. I think right now we're doing some broadcast, but it's probably not showing up so much in like your online media. But I'm feeling a little bit of a media strategy, so I will show up again. Okay, I saw it on YouTube a lot. I feel like I've seen it on Hulu for some of them along those lines. I don't have any questions. Thank you so much. And just for everybody listening, we can, we have jurisdiction to the point, mostly we have jurisdiction to the point with which these products leave a retail establishment. We cannot control how you store these in your home. So if you have young kids, if you have pets, obviously we all know young kids don't, if they ingest cannabis flower, they're not going to feel a psychoactive effect. My brother's a veterinarian, and I know firsthand that that is not the same with pets. They process, metabolize, whatever flower differently than humans do. So I think it's a good point. And thank you, Roy, for being here today. Roy, this, I really appreciate the partnership here. This question might take longer than the two minutes you have left, so I can certainly follow up. But are there best practices from other states or strategies that we use around tobacco that helps kind of decrease ease of access or increase perception of harm for cannabis that the Department of Health is looking at? Yeah, I mean, we're always, we're always looking to our sister agencies in other states for what's working. We recently did some collaboration, you know, vaping is an interesting intersection of tobacco and cannabis. And so we recently infused cannabis messaging into a tobacco control program campaign called Unhyped to kind of bridge that divide. So we're always looking for those opportunities and anytime we're at national conferences our primary marketing vendor, the rescue agency on behavior change, they, we actually licensed, let's talk cannabis from California. So that campaign originated in California and we adapted it for Vermont. So, you know, we're always looking for those opportunities, but we welcome feedback and insights or if you would like to have a more substantive conversation, I'd be happy to hop on a call. No, I mean, we have, our goals are aligned, you know, we have a public health mission, but, you know, we've said it from the beginning, we're not really the experts on what messaging works or what the appropriate, you know, and so I'm just glad that, you know, you're, you're on top of it and that you're doing this work with us. So really appreciate everything you're doing and it's 1.30 now. I don't know if you have to jump, but I really just thank you for being here and working with us. Yeah, I do have to head off, but I'll just close by saying, I really appreciate Nellie's support. She's been a wonderful partner to work with and Commissioner Holbert has given us a lot of time, so we also appreciate your efforts with all of this and yeah, as the project evolves, we'll share information and they can report out to you all. Thanks again. Thank you. Thank you. Hey, moving down the agenda, we wanted to invite some folks from the administration to talk about opportunities for flood relief that might apply to cannabis licensees. I think we have, I think I saw Tim, yep, Tim, and is Mary on as well? Hi, I'm on, hello. Great. So thank you for being here. You know, I know that in the immediate aftermath of the kind of July 11th, I think it was flooding in Montpelier and around the state really, and it hasn't really stopped since then, but we sent out an initial survey, FEMA and the SBA were here in Vermont saying cannabis is not going to be eligible. Cannabis business is for any sort of the FEMA or SBA loans. We've subsequently heard that we think that maybe some of the state money might be. We sent out a survey. We, I think he had just slightly under 20 responses of various business types that have been either fully or partially impact, you know, destroyed by the flood. And the problem, of course, is that at that time, a lot of people were still trying to dig out and clean their plans and weren't sure whether or not that kind of root rot or some sort of other, to try to some mold or whatever else might kind of set in. And so that number probably will grow over the next couple of weeks. And so it's really great to have you here to talk about some of the maybe state options that our cannabis licensees have access to. And I don't know if that was an appropriate introduction to you all, but I'd love to hear your thoughts on that issue. Well, I guess I can start. It's good to see you all, by the way. So as you, yes, great to see you guys. So as you know, we started this business emergency gap assistance program where there was $19 million set aside for businesses and then a million set aside for agricultural businesses and farms. And since then, you know, a lot of people have applied. We had to put together an application pretty quick. I know our department, 75% of us have been repurposed to review grants and work the administration of those grant applications that have come in. We've set it up where it's a first come, first serve. As far as the cannabis side of things, we did have a question on the original application and it was decided that it wasn't necessary because they decided it's a non-factor. Only the only factor was if it was an agricultural that was grown, we actually, someone, they could check the box and then our agency of Ag would then handle those applications. But we have it on our review sheet, but it's kind of a moot point now. So it's too bad we don't have that stat alone. I also, but I did go through our database and right now I know that there's one more pillar of dispensaries that has been an applicant. That's what I know so far without going through and doing a whole name search into this platform that is being designed. We definitely are building it as we fly here, building the airplane as we're flying. But I can give you some stats on 688 applications were started, but we've received 542 that have fully been fully submitted. A lot of those folks, there's 150 that are incomplete as of last night. I mean this is the changing numbers as of today, it's changing, but we're sending them back for a variety of reasons. A lot of it is either they don't have enough detail on their itemized cost estimate, but the majority of it is just form issues as far as the W-9 is signed in the wrong place or they checked the wrong box or the wrong tax classification. So really no big deal. We're sending it back as three or four times if needed for every applicant. They don't lose their place in line, it is a first come first serve, but I can tell you we've already paid out, we've already approved 35% of the applications with a total of $1.7 million over that. We've already approved and more today. Six have been denied for a variety of reasons. Some folks actually have received enough relief where it covers their losses. So that seems to be the most typical or they're not in the state of Vermont, that has been one. You know they were in New York, that didn't really work out too well. But only six denied and that's why they're coming in still and we're still reviewing them. And I know that I believe Mary has some updates on how many ag has received and how that's going. Sure, thanks Tim. So from the agricultural side, some of the cannabis growers are coming over to the agricultural sector that is eligible under the agricultural sector. And this is a very rough estimate because similar to what Tim said, we don't have a tabular checklist of like is this cannabis or not. But I did look through, this is very unscientific data analysis, but I did look through the legal business name and I saw about nine or 10 applications that had associated with growing cannabis or hemp, which I know there's a distinction there, but we have about eight or nine applications there. And so just as a refresher, this program is for property damages. And those property damages include real estate, machinery, equipment, or inventory loss. And one of the eligible things under inventory loss is crop loss. So that's where we're seeing a lot of our agricultural applications claiming damages is that they've lost their crops, they can't harvest them, they can't sell them anymore due to the flooding. So it looks like those nine or 10 hemp cannabis operations have been claiming damages under that inventory loss. And they've ranged between $11,000 and $500,000. So this is all very preliminary. This isn't official because we haven't made it through a lot of these reviews yet. So it's unverified. But I just wanted to give that update just to sort of a ballpark that we do have these growers that are applying to the program. And they are in our queue to review. We just haven't made it to all of our applications yet. And then high level agriculture, we have received about 110 applications under the agricultural sector. And we're about a third of the way looking at some of those applications. But similar to what Tim said, we have a lot of applications going back incomplete because they're got incorrect W-9s or insufficient documentation. So it's really a very fluid system. So we've received a good batch of applications, but it's really a you know, we're reviewing them as soon as we can. We're sending them back for additional information. And so it's it's continually evolving. Yeah, any other questions? Yeah, Tim and Mary, thank you so much for being here. And you know, I know firsthand because I work for both of your respective agencies during the COVID grant process, how hard and how resources are diverted to focusing on issues like this within the BED and AGDEV and the broader, you know, BAFM family as it relates to relief. I think, you know, we've we've got a number of folks on that are listening, that are either cultivators, manufacturers, retailers. And I know that distinction might point somebody in the AG or ACCD direction, but I think it might just be, you know, just generally like where should folks go if they think they might qualify? What type of information should they look to provide? Including other opportunities, as you mentioned, other, you know, grants or forgivable loans that they might already be looking at in relation to the flooding. And you know, what's the payout look like? Is it a set figure? Is it kind of reflective of your individual property or inventory loss? You know, or is it just a set? I'm going to make up a number 10 grand for each applicant or just kind of those details. You know, I know things are still fluid if you have any kind of expected turnaround time for if somebody does get a complete application before you, what that kind of process looks like for communication between the agency and the applicant and, you know, before that dollar hits their bank account. Yeah, I'm going to give it a shot. Mary, interject anytime when I sound stupid, okay? Yeah, so I mean obviously going to ACC.vermont.gov is the first place to go. That's where you're going to find the application portal for the BGAP program. And there's also, you'll indicate what kind of business you are and it'll go to the appropriate place when you do so. You know, the reality is that, you know, we're doing it up to $999,000 in losses. You're going to receive $20,000 max and that's pretty much and then under that it's 20% of your loss under $100,000. So the big thing is we're trying to get people is to actually get cost estimates, get invoices, get quotes. We actually have a contractor tool on there because we realize that some people, the contractor is so busy it's hard to get quotes but there's a tool with average prices that people can actually put together. We will accept those figures within that contractor tool when you do an estimate of damage. You have to prove that you either own or lease. And obviously a lot of landlords are picking up certain things in a lease and the tenants are others so we just want to make sure that that's appropriate. And also, you know, that you are a, you filed your taxes and you were in business before July 10th in 2023. And obviously there's a lot of details to get everything together. Filling out the W-9 is a key factor. But that's basically, I mean I can tell you the average figure so far that we're handing out is about $12,600 is the average award that we're doing right now of all the ones that have actually been paid. We've had like 51 that's, it's gone through the whole process of being paid and about $12,600 is the average award. But obviously if you're over a million dollars that's called an enhanced award and we actually have 12 of those and I know they're reviewing those today. So that means if you have over a million dollars in net damages after relief, after insurance, you still have a million dollars, they're looking at that as a case by case because those are bigger and they might, those most likely will receive larger awards to make themselves whole. I mean that's the whole idea, is that this is not going to make anyone whole, it's just going to help in a small fashion and realize that the cost of things are pretty high and even getting your contractors and the cost after COVID of materials has gone up too. So this is all big snowball effect. But like I said, this is just the way to get a little shot in the arm and see what we can do and trying to get it done as quickly as possible. What I miss, Mary? I think you covered it pretty well. I would encourage if there's any business owners or anyone on the call that hasn't applied yet and thinks, okay, maybe I should apply to this program, the ACCD website's a great place to start and there's some great frequently asked questions on there. If you are a cultivator or fall into that growing category, I might not have my terminology, right? But and you think you can call under that agricultural sector, there is a link to the agricultural web page which has almost the same information as the ACCD, but we do have a frequently asked questions that's more tailored to agriculture. Some questions around how do I document my crop loss and what type of documentation we might find acceptable for that, because as Tim mentioned, the documentation piece is it is important for an application to have that, so it asks you to estimate your loss. And if you say, for example, you have $100,000 crop loss, we want to know what was the crop? What are the units that were lost? What's the value per unit lost? We need a little bit more detail than just I lost $20,000 worth of my crop. So we have some examples on our frequently asked question and then for the real estate and machinery equipment stuff, they do have a nice ACCD has on their website now, a nice kind of cost contractor calculator that can help you get to those estimates as well. And I also want to say that we have a contract with the Vermont Professionals of Color Network to provide technical assistance and they're providing technical assistance to help with this application as well will provide any translation services for folks in any language as well that's out there. And I think we've had three applicants have utilized that service so far. So one thing that I alluded to earlier is that a lot of our cultivators are actively trying to salvage whatever they can of their crop that was either damaged and they're going to get partial harvest because of it. They're trying to actively take out the dead plants, the damaged plants to put in new seedlings or clones which aren't going to fully mature. So their loss is going to be 20% less than what I should have gotten if I was growing for a full year or full season. And I know that this is a finite pot of money and it's first come, first served. And if you just do the 688 applications that you receive times 20,000, you're closing in on 20 million already. So these people who don't know what their damage is yet until they harvest, did they go ahead and file an application? Is there a, have you identified a closing date? Obviously you're saying yes, but have you identified a cut off date yet for this? I mean, I know that it's probably going to be money expended or I mean, I think that's what's, but I mean, I would say yes, because you want to get in there, you want to get on that list and then actually do your best guesstimates. I mean, that's what we're saying is, you know, it's being truthful and honest as possible. We're going to, you know, we're going to research this, but I mean, and Mary, please, I mean, because I think this is more on your end, but when we know realize that it's very hard to indicate the true damage and loss. So it's best attempts, you know? I mean, this is supposed to be helpful. I mean, and that's all we're, so we're trying to get people benefit of the doubt on I think a lot of this. And this is, you don't have to have an answer for this, but there's a very kind of bright line legal distinction between indoor and outdoor with respect to whether it's kind of treated as agriculture or not. Do, you know, do indoor cultivators that are using kind of lights or hydroponic systems or, you know, controlled environment agriculture, do you, Mary, do you want to see them kind of slotted in the agriculture lane, or would you prefer to see them, Tim, in the kind of commercial lane? I don't know if we have any yet. Yeah, I'm going to be honest. I'm not sure how to answer that question. Do you have hydroponic growers for like tomatoes or lettuce or anything like that that have seen that are applying under agriculture? I haven't seen any hydroponics under agriculture, but I do want to say, though, that the applications when they come in, we do have the ability to reassign them to the appropriate sector, or while we work with the applicant to make sure they're in the appropriate sector. So if someone applies under manufacturing and they should actually be under agriculture or vice versa, we can work with the applicant to make sure they're in the right sector because it's the same application, it's the same process, same workflow. So I wouldn't, I guess what I'm trying to say is we can adjust as we get once we look at the information. I just had one more, if you don't mind. We know of a number of impacted businesses that are in the process of getting licensed. They haven't been licensed by us yet, but they have their LLCs, they've got their, they've signed leases, they've got, started the kind of process of getting, of applying, but they're not technically allowed to operate yet because they don't have a license. Are those people included for this? Again, you don't have to have an answer because it's probably not something you guys have to say. You know, if they were, it started business before that date, and that means they were actually involved in getting that business going, they're going to be eligible. I mean, we're probably going to ask for a few more details from them, but they will be eligible. And actually the proof that they've started the process of applying to you, I mean, that's all. I mean, we look for a little proof that they existed. Yeah, and I'll just add to that. We actually did have one of our applications that we have made through and recommended for approval was a cannabis grower, and this person had just started. So we asked for some additional information, but they weren't even listed on the website yet, which was what prompted the additional questions, but they were able to provide some information to show that they had started preparations and that their business was establishing, and we considered that eligible. Yeah, Marian, and I have connected Abby with our licensing team to help with some of those questions. Great. Any other questions? No, this is a great conversation. Thank you so much for what you guys are doing at, you know, might be a shot in the arm, as Tim said, but, you know. Yeah, fantastic. And, you know, I know I don't know what kind of agenda shots you are, but I mean, I don't know if you want to talk about any of our other programs that we work with you, as well, while I'm here. Absolutely, for sure, yeah. I mean, I have some data on the cannabis business development fund and the social equity beneficiary payments. We've given out $138,000 to 28 folks so far, and that means 26 asked for the $5,000, received the $5,000 maximum, and two folks requested less. So, but I just got that figure today, so that's the latest on that, and I believe there's a new since the new fiscal year that I think there's going to be some more social equity applicants coming our way. So, we're looking at that. Also, our roads, our contract with roads that we're providing technical assistance, they're almost have fulfilled at least the monetary portion of this, and I think we'll be talking to you all about what our next steps are. So, hopefully put another technical assistance contract out there. Yeah, that's great. I really appreciate the help. I mean, again, this is an industry that doesn't have access to traditional banking, doesn't have access to financing or loans because of our kind of one license penalty rule. There's very little kind of outside money coming into the state to help support this industry. So, it's really helpful that you guys are doing all this work with our licensees. So, thank you. Good health. Thank you, Tim. Yeah, no problem. Nice to see you all. All right, take care. Take care. Yeah. Okay. Moving down the agenda, we're going to have just a quick discussion around lab accreditation and ISO certification. And this is something that has been on the table for discussion from the outset. I know that ISO certification, there is a certification for cannabis testing. And I think the question comes down to is the benefit of us requiring ISO accreditation for cannabis testing, creating a cannabis certified lab through ISO, is the benefits of that worth the kind of detriment, I guess, to the labs or even a prospective lab that might want to come to start in Vermont. And I don't know, Brent, I know you've been doing some digging into this issue. I wonder if you want to maybe lay out some of the benefits for us. Sure. So I think that this was a topic that came up in the first iteration of your rules, whether or not you wanted to require ISO certification for any testing labs that were to get a license. And we put it off initially, given the timelines that we had to work with. But now that we have labs online that are coming up for renewal, we have, I think, a better understanding of what is required in order to certify that these labs are meeting the criteria that they need to meet in order to be licensed. And what they really essentially have to do is to provide months and months of method validation documentation to us in order to demonstrate that they have sufficiency in their testing. And that can take us really quite a long time to review. Also, we don't have many staff that are capable of reviewing this type of documentation and have the education to understand it and to certify that these results are sufficient for our purposes. So I think that requiring a third party to conduct these types of analyses will both relieve our staff from the review process but it will also put the board in a position of being better able to understand where our labs fall in their proficiency as compared to labs across the country because the proficiency tests that are required for renewal once you've been accredited by one of these third party businesses provides that data, provides validation data that shows where one lab's test results fall in comparison to every other lab that's been accredited across the country. So I think it could improve things both on the staff side but also perhaps improve the data that's available to the board to understand how well our labs are doing in comparison to each other and in comparison to labs across the country. Does that decrease the incentive to lab shock? I would suspect so, yes. I was going to ask a similar question because I know that's a huge topic in other states with a lot more lab options than we have. I don't know if it's been a huge problem for us yet at least but do other states require this? Yes and I don't have that prepared for the board right now. I have been sort of putting together a list of other states that require the ISO certification but it's not unheard of certainly and so we would do it first. And again you might not have the answers yet but from a if I was a lab that needed to go through this process how intense or exhausted is that process? I think that it is a long somewhat onerous process and I think it also depends on how if you're up and running already or if you're brand new I think that if you've been up and you must be up and running for at least six months before they can start the accreditation process. So depending on whether you're up and running that will that will sort of change the timeline for getting accredited but I think in general it takes around a year maybe a year and a half for accreditation given the amount of time that it takes for the full process and that includes like the auditor coming and doing the audit providing the results of the audit to the lab the lab responding to any issues that were arose during the audit and then the final accreditation. So I think from a timing perspective it's onerous a year a year and a half and from a financial perspective I don't know what every third party charges but I think in general an accreditation is around $5,000 maybe a little bit less for the first accreditation renewal around the same. Is the renewal a similar process where there's an audit and then there's tend to cure if there's an issue? Yes you just might that's yes although my understanding is that the audit doesn't happen every year it happens every couple of years. Do we think that our state lab will go in that direction too once it's fully established? That I think that if we were to require it of our that's what I'm getting at. I think that would be the goal for the state lab eventually then certainly it would be the goal if it were required of our licensees. Yeah no and I mean we can save up a discussion on whether or not or vote or whatever we want to call it and whether or not we want to do it for the next meeting or a meeting thereafter I think what would obviously be important is if it's going to take that long and we've got labs coming up for a real license sure soon just ensuring or checking on them to make sure they're following through with that obligation versus not allowing them to test anything until they receive that accreditation or else we're not going to be labs for a year. Yeah but sure we could figure that out. Is it required about Ross? No I think that this might I think that this is sort of the beginning of the conversation I think that we would likely want to do this in rule if it were a requirement so obviously the timing the time has passed for it to to be a part of the rule minutes that you just voted on but given that it would be a significant change for what is required now for the labs it made sense to put on the agenda sooner rather than later. Can I imagine this wouldn't be a shock to our current labs? I don't know I don't think so just especially given that it was a part of the conversation at our first iteration of the rules okay sounds like there's some interest in it though maybe I can find out some more information for you for the next board meeting we can look at other states that require it we can continue to think about it. Are there other accreditation services other than ISO? That's a good question I'm not sure I would imagine so but I think this one maybe has the most legitimacy because it's really high everything. Well I shouldn't say everything but many things. Any process oriented things. Can you remember us having this conversation with Kerry back before Brenny or even with us when we were meeting agency agriculture? It seems to me that he was saying that they are required for him testing and I think the rules have changed so strongly that they needed ISO certification or you needed to be substantially moving in that direction or something yeah so I think that's like the bridge we do to get there so okay yeah that bridge is what I was trying to I guess poorly articulate bridge is a more concise way to describe it great all right anything more around ISO certification this is really meant to just be the initial conversation we get the ball rolling yep yep okay coming back over to you Brenny or the executive director's report. This is this month's executive director report we're starting out again like we did last month with a summary of the flood impact assessment survey results that went out since the last month since the last board meeting we really only received I think seven or eight additional survey responses so not a huge number more but this is more reflective of the entire pool of responses that we've gotten so of that 157 responses that we got 16 of them reported having some impact due to the flood nine of them were tier one cultivators two were tier two cultivators one was a tier three one a tier five one was a tier two manufacturer and then two retailers reported some impact from the flood so just a high level summary of the damage that was reported by these licensees the cultivation impact was primarily described as oversaturation or standing water in grow areas which crop cause root rot scented growth powdery mildew among other impacts and the overall losses from those impacted licensees were reported anywhere from between 20 to 90 percent of of the licensees crop so pretty significant damage to those people that did have an impact and then the retail and the manufacturing I reported on last month the retail impact was that one licensee had to move their operations entirely and another reported some loss of sales due to road closures around their business but there was no reported product loss and then the one manufacturing licensee that was impacted lost $15,000 worth of equipment and then the licensees that were impacted of those 16 licensees that were impacted six of them were priority status so four were social equity licensees and two were economic empowerment so any questions about that before I move on so our public engagement summary here is has been limited over the last month to the medical program study committee so as the chair mentioned in opening remarks we have the first medical program study committee meeting on August 8th there's a link to the video recording there and our next one that date should be set pretty soon as this the doodle poll went out this morning so move on to our adult use program licensing data so this data is as of the 23rd of this month so we're starting off with a little bit of demographic data on our licensee's principles and controllers so just some some new data that our licensing team pulled for this meeting so this one is based on gender so this is the gender of our of all licensee principle and controllers so you can see that the majority left that question blank and then the 31% reported to be reporting themselves as male and 15% female and nobody reported themselves on the binary or other average age of our principles and controllers and our licensee is it's 47 and then we split this out we dig a little bit deeper by looking at the social equity licensee demographic numbers so for again for principles and controllers of social equity businesses looks like we're about 45% reporting themselves to be male 31% reporting themselves to be female 23% leaving it blank and then no one reporting themselves to be non-binary and 1% reporting themselves to be other social equity licensee's principles and controllers average age is 41 so a little bit younger than the full group so I'm going to move on to our license licenses data unless there's any questions about the demographic thank you for sharing okay so this slide is a little bit looks a little bit different than what you've seen before it shows the number of licenses issued for based on tier and license type and just it starts to give a picture of how the renewals are flowing for each of the cultivation tiers so that first column after the tier is the number of how many issued licenses there are and then for the issued licenses in the next column it shows how many of those issued licenses have renewed and how and then the next column is how many renewals are in progress now and then the final column shows the percentage of those total licensees that have renewed or are in the process of renewing so far and the reason we say so far there is that as we all remember we started issuing the cultivation licenses in May of last year and we didn't close that application window the way we did this year so we were accepting applications and issuing licenses to cultivators throughout the the fall and the winter that 94 for example is not the initial licenses that are due for renewal right now it's people who will be due for renewal over the course of the year that's right that's the total number of licensees so the reason the reason i'm sort of framing it this way is it's a little bit early to look at renewal data because we really don't have a complete picture of everybody since not everybody is up for renewal yet so the numbers that are that percentage that's reflected over there is you know only it's only reflective of who's up for renewal so far so again it's not a complete picture but just as we're starting to get into the renewal cycle here we're trying to figure out ways to report renewal data that will give the board a picture of how the how the industry is changing with renewals yeah so they they certainly will change over time but it's just a starting to get a little bit of a picture of what it is looking like so that first slide was outdoor cultivators next slide is indoor cultivators and we've got our mixed cultivators here and this you know could be could this is sort of one example of how this early data could show us how the industry might be changing given that there were only two two or three mixed licenses in year one but so far that number looks to be doubling which could mean that people are growing their their mixed cultivation business from a tier one or a tier two to a tier three so obviously we this this data will evolve and become more meaningful over time but just an early an early picture of what the renewals are looking like so far so only did only split out that data for the cultivation license types given that we didn't start issuing other license types until later in the summer and fall of last year so it really isn't isn't time yet to look at the renewal data for other types of licenses and then this slide again just trying to give sort of an early picture of renewal this is the list of licenses that have confirmed that they will not be renewing as of Monday so we've got 13 confirmed non-renewals so far out of about 365 license cultivators and again these are just cultivation license so are these people this excludes people that are switching tiers excludes switching tiers these are folks that have confirmed either with the licensing team or with the compliance team that they will not be seeking a license or renewing their license so of 13 of 365 is about three and a half percent so this obviously again is not sure because it only includes people that either pass their renewal deadline or are coming up for renewal it doesn't include everybody but an interesting early picture here so seven of these 13 are either economic empowerment or social equity and given that we are currently around I think we're hovering around 60 percent of all of our licensees are in standards status and 40 percent are either social equity or economic empowerment as of this month it does demonstrate that our attrition rates for licensees with a priority status is higher than our standard licensees so take this for what it's worth it's early information doesn't reflect the full picture of who's up for renewal yet but the licensing team is going to continue to think about how to report on the renewal data and really ask what do we survey these folks and ask why I think we talked about that at one point I don't know what's happening yet that I think that conversations are happening both with the licensing team and also the compliance team I don't have like a summary of that information yet but I would be happy to do it for another board meeting I think particularly for the social equity and the economic empowerment because they had priority status and then social equity because they you know had a reduced licensing fee intentionally to help them succeed I'm interested to know what and I've talked to so many people with so many different goals right exactly no one story I know a guy that just wanted to repay this driveway yep other people you know want this to be their full-time gig for the next x amount of years so there's a lot of I'd be curious to see the why I think it's important to know I mean somebody was just testing it out and somebody who intended to commit and then couldn't for some reason yep so we do have a an exit interview that we're conducting that the compliance I think it's the compliance staff is conducting that interview with any licensee that is confirming they're not going to renew so that will be data that we can compile for the board to look at ready to move on yep thank you um so here we have a little bit of a different picture of what our licensed canopy capacity looks like it used to be a great big wall chart and we put it into sort of this bar graph format instead so these numbers reflect all issued licenses and not approved licenses and includes the canopy size of all issued licenses as of Monday I believe so it's a pretty up to the up to the minute reflection of what our licensed canopy capacity looks like and in a minute I'm going to compare it to what we are what it looks like our utilized canopy and this is also total canopy not flowering canopy that's right so total total license canopy size does the indoor make any assumptions for multiple harvests this is just like the canopy they're licensed to grow at one given time so no it doesn't so now here's a bar graph that shows our utilized license canopy and these numbers are based on a subset of our licensees so this is not every licensee that factors into this picture so the information is based on our cultivation site visits and the compliance team has visited this year about a third of all of our cultivation licensees so this is accurate data based on just a subset a third of all of our cultivation licensees and those cultivation site visits for the indoor redone march and april and for outdoor they were done may through june so that's what this data is based on so you can see our you know our indoor cultivation utilization of their canopy is is less than 50 percent um outdoors are around a little bit above 75 percent and this chart just does a comparison of what the utilized canopy looks like in comparison to the licensed canopy so licensed canopy is the light green on the bottom utilized to start green on the top so it is somewhat of a prediction since it doesn't reflect the actual data based on every single licensee but i think it offers a good prediction for what the full market utilization looks like if you factor in those 13 hopes that are not going to join us next year i think as we get more renewal data that's something that we should continue to get an update on every month to decide if we're inching too close to our ceiling or our projected ceiling any other questions about those slides i'll move on to some other um so this is the slide that uh summarizes the total kind of number of submissions that um that the licensing and compliance teams have received since the last board meeting so 66 new um licensing applications that i believe includes renewal submissions yes it does um so not just new licenses but also renewals um 318 product registration submissions and 206 employee ID card application submissions just since the last board meeting um next is our areas of density chart for the retail locations um this looks largely the same burlington hasn't changed um since the last board meeting rutland has gained two retail establishments that are in the queue and then um morrisville i think went up because they've got one more in the queue than they had last month didn't give the map to you guys this month because mostly let's see the pictures look in the same it's on our website right it is yes and that is yep always kept up to date so here are some product registration numbers based on status so as of monday there were um just over 3500 total product registration applications that were submitted and 2651 registered products um so of those sort of the fall in between the majority of them are a three-year fleet which means that um the staff have reviewed them and sent them back to the licensee with um information about how to complete their submission so looking looking like um our response time on these is is pretty similar to the way it was last month if someone grows a particular cultivar do they have they have to reregister or they have to register each time they harvest and and test and so forth and package right they have to reregister every time they harvest that cultivar no they have to um resubmit their test results but product registration per cultivar is good for a year okay so we theoretically have 2600 products like out there on the market now is that what this slide is showing theoretically yes and here's a little bit of a picture of what those products look like um so by product type we've still got the majority as flower i think this has dropped a percentage point maybe or a couple percentage points um over the last couple of months um edibles and extracts are grown and other as a reminder about three percent other includes things like transformal patches these columns okay moving on to the compliance data um so this is a summary of our advertising responses since the beginning of time so um we've received in total 130 advertising submissions since we started accepting them in November of last year and our approval and denial rate is hovering just around 60 40 so it's it's improving a little bit as time goes on i think it was about 50 50 in the spring so our reasons for denial are primarily or still primarily that folks are not providing sufficient data to demonstrate that the ad venue meets that 15 use audience composition threshold um 35 missing the health warning 11 didn't provide enough information for the staff to review nine percent offered a prize or a giveaway of cannabis and the advertisement four percent were considered to be appealing to children and four percent other so moving on um total number of inspections since the last board meeting was 126 so we continue to be pretty steady doing about a hundred um site visits inspections a month so there's a breakdown again obviously most of them are happening at cultivation sites those are routine or surprise or all all of the above okay primarily routine um so this is this slide just does a little bit of a summary breakdown of the sort of work that the compliance team has been doing since the last board meeting um there have been 18 new complaints received since the last board meeting um we've undertaken four new investigations since the last board meeting those are the topics of those investigations listed there um compliance team has issued three letters of warning um has offered compliance assistance in the realm of licensing um for four licensees that what that means is that there are four licensees that have been operating without their license issued they are sitting in approved status but they have begun operating so compliance team has been out to assist folks in understanding that they need to have their license issued before they can operate um and then six licensees the team has been out to give some flood related guidance too so a little bit of an overview the work of the compliance team in the last month this is obviously just a small subset of the work that they actually do um doesn't include product registration or lots of other things okay moving on to the medical program data unless there are any other questions about that um so here's your picture that you see every month um and here's the close up unfortunately um we do see a little bit of a further decline over the since the last board meeting um we now have third 3,110 registered patients and 160 caregivers so that represents a loss of 165 patients over the last um month and a half but a small gain of two caregivers so just continuing to provide the charts so you guys can see the trajectory here yeah I mean obviously we have a lot of work to do on the medical program still but I was curious to see if anything would kind of start to change that downward trajectory just give caregiver ratios and a lot of it's yeah it's interesting that the care the rate of caregivers is declining at a slower rate than the patients tells me that most people are relying on the dispensaries right for the people who are not renewing are relying if they're continuing to use medical cannabis or use cannabis they're relying on the dispensaries okay at least from the folks that are registered with us and how they go about their medical use yes yeah do you want to cut your conversation sure no okay staff recommendations is next so um this month we have four applicants the staff is recommending for socializing status approval we've got submission number 4637 um staff is recommending approval of social equity status so they meet the criteria for a social equity business applicant submission number 4452 recommending social equity status as they meet the criteria for social equity business applicants submission number 2918 again this applicant meets the criteria for social equity business applicant and lastly submission 3109. Also meets the criteria for social equity business applicant as defined in board rule so staff is recommending approval of social equity status for these four applicants. Moving on to the staff recommendations for licensure all of the applicants on the following several pages have demonstrated compliance with all of the requirements for their licenses contained in both board rule and statute. So staff is recommending them for approval of their initial license or of their renewal. So the list this week is combined new license recommendation for a license for new applicants and also for applicants that are seeking to renew their license. So I will click through the slides here. I think there are 4 of them but we've got 13 applicants up for their license for the first time so 13 new licenses for indoor tier 1 cultivators, 1 tier 1 manufacturer, 2 I'm sorry 4 tier 2 manufacturers and then 4 new retailers. And of those 13 applicants up for approval of their new license 3 of them are economic empowerment and 1 of social equity and the remaining are renewals. So we've got 34 renewals up for your approval this week and 13 new licenses. So here is the list and we will post this on the website so everybody can see it. There you have it. Thank you. Go through it slowly one more time. Sure. So 13 new and 34. Was anyone on the email blasts? It doesn't appear here. There is one applicant that we listed on the agenda that was up for approval that we did have to remove because their fire safety was not completed in time. And that applicant was a retail applicant. Thank you, Bryn. Sure. Any questions for Bryn? Nope. Is there a motion to approve? I move that the board accept each of the recommendations as made to us in this meeting. I second. Any discussion? Nope. All right. All in favor? Aye. Aye. Okay. I think public comment is next on the agenda. So if you've joined us and would like to make a public comment, if you join and invite the video link, please raise your virtual hands. We'll try our best to call on you in the order that you raise your hand and then we'll move on to people to join by the phone if there are any. Jesse Lynn. Hello. Thanks so much for having public comment. My name is Jesse Lynn Dolan. I am a registered nurse for a very long time of my career. I specialize in opioid use disorder both in teenagers, pregnancy, and infant withdrawal, as well as research at the University of Vermont. I appreciate the Vermont Department of Health speaking to us today, but I would like to just please comment that asking them to consider changing their language would be very supportive and help us educate the community rather than continue to offer a fear based approach. We know the word overdose appropriately comes with a lot of fear and misinformation. And as I mentioned, as somebody who specialized in opioid use disorder for a very long time in my career, and I'm now working to help educate Vermonters and bud tenders as a Vermont vendor trainer educator for cannabis, I do think it's very helpful for us to use different language in our approach as you guys have chosen to use the words cannabis instead of marijuana. I think it's the same idea of us using the word overconsume instead of overdose. When we think of overdose, we often think of opioids or fatal overdoses. So if they could consider please looking at changing their language from an education purpose, we need to help reduce fear and stigma and misinformation to then actually give people the correct supportive information and differentiating the word overdose versus overconsumption I think is extremely important in that. So thank you. Thanks, Jesse. Robert. Can you hear me? Can you hear me? Yes. Hey, this is Robert Ronsi at Garcia's Tobacco Shop on Church Street. So we were the one retailer, I think, that was in the agenda, but it didn't get listed possibly based on a fire safety thing, but I'm kind of confused about that because we actually have the approval from the fire department and I just we didn't get any word from you guys. So it was a shock or a surprise. I mean, was there further details, essentially? Well, why don't we get through public comment and when we close public comment, I'll ask about it. Okay, cool. Yeah. So we have, I mean, we have an existing business that's running and everything's compliant. So that's why I was just kind of confusing, but I will look forward to hearing from you. Yareem. Hey, guys, nice to see you again. Like you say in Inclantias, I'm a red clover analytics owner. I was going to open a lab in Vermont and to encounter a predatory landlord. And that was pretty bad. Anyways, with that said, I was going to comment with your ISO certification. To be completely honest, I was very surprised that you guys didn't ask for it right from the beginning because it's a thing that it's mostly needed in most states. It's one of the things that you have to have to be a laboratory in most states. But with that said, sorry, it does not, the certification does not supersede the lab shopper. The certification, the only thing that does is it goes through your processes, through your methods and signs off on how you do it and whether you can replicate the results consistently. So it does not supersede lab shopping. The lab shopping comes into play if the lab itself starts to play with the results that are coming up. Okay. And that's where it comes out. And you start seeing people favoring one lab over the other because of the favorable results that come out. It also is not very exhausting for the lab to do it. Like I said, I was going to actually have about $2,500 deposited with Perry Johnson to be able to come in and do it for me. And it was going to take them a total of three weeks to do the back and forward. Not only that, it was going to be another about $1,500 for traveling fees, but only if you had to go like in the boondocks of places. So it's not very expensive and it doesn't, and it doesn't, it's not very exhausting for the lab either. It's about six months of building your methods and making sure that, like I said, they are replicatable. I can't say that word, sorry, English second language. And when it comes to it, I think it's a better venue for you guys because, again, you guys lack the knowledge to actually look at the sheets and say whether they are, you know, honest results, I'm going to say. But nonetheless, if you do a little more research, if you guys like to, I can send you everything that I have on it. And there's several organizations that do it. And the main one that you are looking for is the 17-0-2-5, the ISO 7-0-7-1-7-0-2-5. But thank you for listening, nonetheless. No, yeah, yeah, I mean, thank you. I know you've been very kind of helpful in guiding us especially early on. I'm sorry to hear about your situation. Nick Smith. Hi, everyone. Thanks for, thanks for everything you've been doing and all the work that I know you'll be continuing to do for the industry. I know a lot of it goes unthanked, but many of us do really see all the work you put in. And we couldn't be here without you guys having made this such an attainable market for all of us to get into unlike so many other states where you have to be a millionaire and spend 25,000 plus on licenses. But with that said, I just wanted to address the canopy of what's been so far. We have about 30, you said 36,000, 363,500 square feet of indoor and crunching some numbers with the assumptions of 16 square feet per light or canopy or planting unit and two-thirds of the canopy being used for bloom versus a third veg and using the conservative number of one pound per light, which is very low, and that 42 percent for how much is being utilized so far for the indoor. It was a little less for mix, but that brings us to 31,488 pounds per year that we can produce for indoor cultivators and mix. That's at five pound or five crops per year as well. So I mean that's looking like a lot of weight for such a small state where in the past I've seen a number as low as 38,000 pounds per year being the total demand in 2025 or so. And that doesn't even take into account the 71,419 plants. I like to ignore the canopy for the outdoor because most outdoor growers would probably look more at the plant count, not the canopy. 71,419 plants have been issued, well, the ability to grow and that 75 percent utilization. That's 53,564 plants and let's even call it half a pound per plant. That's 26,000 pounds. So we're looking at like over 50,000 pounds of production already. And my concern is that all of us want to continue to grow and just like kind of grow as a business. So we can't just assume that we're all just going to stay at our low utilization. We've upgraded our tier and no one really wants to have a tier two license and stay at 1,005 square feet of canopy. We're all going to hopefully try to grow. So I'm just saying, I think that long story short, it'd be great to consider closing the tier four indoor window so that maybe more of a small grower can have a chance to get into the industry versus the not attainable tier four multi-million dollar operations that really, it's not for that average remonter. But yeah, also, yes, everything you guys have been doing is great and not trying to criticize what you're doing. Just wanted to throw in a little numbers that have been concerning to me and a lot of other growers. Thank you very much. Yeah, thanks, Nick. Stephanie. Hi, everyone. Thanks so much for the opportunity to comment. My name is Stephanie Waterman. I am the owner of White River Grow Pro. I just wanted to comment today on like an administrative glitch. We had two emails from Nellie in July, July 13th and July 27th that were her informational emails that noted a compliance check deadline of 821 for today's board meeting. Both of those emails noted 821. And it wasn't until the August 3rd email from Nellie that it mentioned the move up of the August 9th deadline. And I realized maybe that was moved up in meeting or something, but I wanted to just sort of put it out to your universe that moving the deadline up two weeks can cause a lot of stress and strain on small businesses that are trying to meet your targets. I was thankful to meet mine and got approved today for my tier one indoor. And I thank you all for that. But it took some flexing and I know cultivators who didn't meet that and weren't able to flex. And so it set them back again. And I just want you guys to be aware of that situation in the breakdown of communication. Thank you. Thanks Stephanie. MC. Yeah, hi everyone. My name is Megan Calla from Stillmore Farms, tier one mixed cultivator. I was doing my inventory tracking last week and I just ran into a problem with the website and reached out to Nellie and I apologize to Nellie for clogging her inbox. But I don't know who to talk to you about correcting my inventory submissions. Or contact your compliance agent. I think if you do, what is it ccb.compliance.com? You just read forward that. I mean, I think Nellie just having heard this can probably just forward it to the appropriate person. I do. Whenever there's misdirected emails like that, I generally just forward them along. Fair. Our compliance team will reach out. Thanks for mentioning it though. No problem. And is there a place that I can actually check on exactly who my compliance officer is? I had it in a notebook that was damaged. Yeah, it depends on your location. We've divided the state up and kind of assigned our compliance team to various regions. So whoever reaches back out to you about this issue, I'll have them include that information. Wonderful. Thank you so much. Yeah. Gianna. Hi there. Thank you. My name is Gianna Gallucci. I'm the operations manager here at True 802 Cannabis in Burlington. And I just wanted to say we are in pretty hefty need of an inventory tracking training for retailers. I know there was that really helpful one for cultivators a while back, but really looking for that that training for retailers specifically. Thank you so much. Thanks, Gianna. Caleb. Shit. I didn't mean to print the camera on. Can you hear me? Yep. Cool. I wanted to make a couple notes. I talked to a medical patient the other day who has told me that the medical dispensaries have stopped delivering to him. And he can no longer get his meds anywhere. I've been trying to confirm that with some other medical patients and haven't been able to get anyone else on the books. But it sounds like he's in a lot of pain. He's got a traumatic brain injury. He's a really nice kid. And he's no longer able to get his meds now. And if that's true, I think that's kind of a big problem. I also just want to echo some of the stuff that Jesse Lynn Dolan said about the Department of Health, man. I don't know what they're doing with these bags. But you know, I thought that presentation, I really thought the Department of Health is wasting a lot of time and money with their education, which isn't really being run by people that have the education to teach us about it in my opinion. I think that's more of a waste of money. And I really, you know, I watched a lot of Mark Levine's presentations and build up to this. And I really just, I think they're wasting our money with that. And I think a lot of people would agree with me including Jesse Lynn. So that's all I got to say to you guys today. Thank you. Thanks, Caleb. Hi, everybody. Can you hear me okay? Yep. So I just want to say that I agree with Nick about closing the window on tier fours. I think that'll be a good move for everybody. And also, I don't think that medical patients should have to pay the cannabis tax at adult use disposed. That's it. Thank you. Hope everybody's having a great day. Thanks to you. Carly. Hey, everybody. Can you hear me okay? Yep. Great. This is Carly from Northern Craft Cannabis Wholesale, a company based out of Hyde Park. I wanted to kind of echo this Callie from Truiterate to questions about the tracking system, both acquisition and transfers. I've had some issues, a few issues that I'd really love some guidance on trying to submit an acquisition form. The product registration number being transferred can't be found in the Salesforce database, but it is listed on the registered cannabis product spreadsheet. And that's happened for a couple different products. So I'm not really sure how to get past that stage. And then also a little and clear on what options we should select for product type for things like tinctures and oils as those product type options are a little different from the options under product registration. And just a little, yeah, having some hiccups trying to actually submit a form, there are a few things that just aren't functioning on my end. So if there's any clarification or guidance there, I would love to hear that. Thanks for the info, Carly. I think anything related to products or inventory tracking, I should say, we are in the process of developing guidance videos for all of it. And we're actively submitting all of these kind of bug requests to our developer to fix. And I think that there has been just some delays in getting those fixed, but they are kind of in their queue to fix kind of systematically. That is accurate. I would say that we need to not put the cart before the horse and develop the guidance until we've got these issues fixed. So I'd say that is sort of what the holdup is with guidance on inventory tracking is that we need to fix all of the continuing bugs that we have. But we do have a comprehensive list and we are working on it. And anyone that is having issues with it should email those issues to ccb.complianceframon.gov so we can kind of get them in the queue for our developers. Thanks for bearing with us. But thank you for that comment. Jeffrey. Jeffrey did have his hand up. Sorry, I was speaking with my microphone muted. Apologies, can everyone hear me okay? Yep. Excellent. Thank you, board. I just want to take a moment during public comment to highlight a point of data that was raised during the executive director's report. You know, the attrition rate of social equity and economic empowerment licensees comes as no surprise. And I just, you know, this comment is not directed to the agency, but I do want to highlight the fact that we are one of the very few states with a regular market place without funding and perpetuity for these individuals impacted by the criminalization of cannabis period. And we're also including social economic depression individuals. These are individuals that have been lifted up on an ongoing basis beyond simply license fees. To that point, there are two legislative reports, as we're aware of, in Act 65, 2023. One of them is on your plate. I'm just wondering if this board can speak to the one that's on our gas plate and that racial justice legislative report. Thank you very much. Stephanie. Myra. My name is Myra. I'm with Hidden Leap Homestead and I was on the agenda today for approval to have my license renewed. My current license actually expired yesterday. And the emails that I've received from the CCB regarding my renewal, I'll have incorrect dates, like saying my renewal is due 30 days from now, but actually I've gotten everything in to have the renewal completed. I also haven't received the link or information on how to pay my licensing fees. So I was just looking at how I need to go about doing that just so I can get a current copy of my license just in case there are any issues since it did expire yesterday. I did reach out to Chipper, my compliance officer, and he said he would check on it for me, but just wanted to put it out there in case anybody else has been having the same issues. Thanks for raising that Myra. Our whole licensing team is listening right now and so I'm sure someone will be in touch about it. After the board meeting. Sounds like you're doing everything right though, so don't worry. Anyone else that joined via the link, Nellie? I don't see anyone else with their hand up currently. We do have two folks that have joined via phone. So if you joined via phone, I would like to make a public comment. You can unmute your phone by hitting star six. The phone ending, well, both phones have unmuted. One, three, six, one, unmuted first. Thanks, my name is Andrew Roy from the farm at Bolton Dillon. I actually, rather than, you know, I was there and that was just hoping somebody could give me a call. Okay, the phone number ending in 6829 has unmuted themselves. Hey, this is Nate Richardson from Pressure Lab. Can you guys hear me okay? Yeah. Yeah, so I just I wanted to to kind of echo what Nick said about limiting the tier four, five, and six licenses. I just, I agree with Nick. I lived in, you know, I've said this before in a meeting, but, you know, I've lived in Colorado and I lived in Southern Humboldt and, you know, we witnessed firsthand, you know, the collapse of those markets, you know, I lived in Humboldt right when the 215 Green Rush first began, and everything was great. And then, you know, slowly watched it just fall apart over the next several years, just from so many large licenses being issued just daily. We're a tier two mix cultivator. And we, you know, we're at full scale outdoor, but indoor it's going to take us probably a year to get up to our full license production size. So I don't think that we're alone. I know a lot of other cultivators that are tier one, tier two, that are just kind of slowly building their businesses up. And from what I've seen in the dispensaries, there's no lack of product like this. There's plenty of stuff on the shelves. So I just wanted to say that I agree with Nick on that aspect with the tier four, five, and six. And then something kind of unrelated. I'm not really, you know, I don't want to say the names of the companies, but I'm not sure how it's happening, but I've received a couple emails over the past month or two for stuff like product registration for other cannabis companies. And it's, I don't know, it's happened several times at four or five times where I get an email and it'll say, hey, so and so, not me. We just wanted to let you know about this product or that product. You need to do this or that. So I just wanted to bring that to your attention just that I think that there is some mix up with email addresses and stuff like that. But other than that, I'm very grateful to have the opportunity to be in this industry. And I really feel like the Vermont cannabis control board is doing things better than just about every other state that I've lived in or seen. I really feel like you guys are looking out for the small, small growers, the craft cultivators, the legacy growers like myself. And so, yeah, thank you guys for all your hard work. And I'm just happy to be a part of this. That's it. Great. Thank you, Nate. And thanks for flying now. We are aware of that issue. And I think that we're actively correcting it. So, but thanks for raising it. And thank you for being a part of this. And thanks for jumping into this with us. Any other public comments? Okay, I'll close the public comment window. We are actively monitoring the tier four and whether we need to continue to keep that open. Still less than a year into retail sales. And I think we still need to kind of see a little bit how the supply and demand have matched each other. But it is something that we take very seriously and keep a very close eye on. And I think we will certainly it'll be topic of conversation for the board in the coming months. With respect to Robert Bronsy, what I'm hearing from our licensing team is that there was an issue with your certificate of occupancy from fire safety. And I think we will reach out to you about it. And if it was a mistake on our end, if there is no issue, we can try and correct it before the next board meeting. But it sounds to me like it actually wasn't fully complete. The application was not fully complete. Any other issues we want to talk about while still in the meeting? Yeah. Okay. All right. Well, now during the meeting, thank you all for joining. Thanks for staying with us to the end. And thank you for all the comments.