 Let's get going. Today is October 26th, 2022, I'm James Pepper, the chair of the Remind Canada's control board. It's one o'clock and I call this meeting to order. Reminder, our staff is organizing a live Q&A session focused on testing, inventory tracking and product registration. The date for that is November 21st at 7 p.m. We do these after hours to hopefully increase participation by people that work during the day or can't attend our meetings during the day. The link to join will be posted on our website. Please bring all your questions about testing, inventory tracking and product registration to that session and we will do our best to get answers to you. So there's a number of new retailers on the list for this week. I just want to keep on mentioning every week that every product that is being sold to the public has to be registered and approved by the CCB. The product registration form in the payment portal is available on our website under ccb.vermont.gov. I know that product registration is new for everyone, but it is a critical step to ensure that everything that's available to consumers is compliant with our testing protocols, our approved ingredients list, our labeling, advertising and packaging regulations. We're getting through these as quickly as possible. The best thing that you can do to speed things up is to make sure that you are submitting everything that is required for each registration. There is an introductory instructions that you get when you initiate a product registration that tells you exactly what you need to submit for each product type. A link to the packaging that you're going to be using is also very helpful in us being able to process these quickly. We also cannot approve a product registration application until the applicant has paid the $50 registration fee. That link is also available right in the same spot as our product registration. If you have any questions, if you have a pending application, if you have questions about it, you can email us. There's an email specific to product registration that goes right to the team that's approving those. It's ccb.products.vermont.gov. When it comes to packaging, another important thing I just have to keep repeating is that all cannabis products, edibles, tinctures, oils, THC-infused beverages, dipped pre-rolls, et cetera, anything that's not flour has to be in child-resistant packaging. This is not just child-resistance. One time, the package needs to maintain child-resistance for the number of servings contained in the package. If it's a beverage that contains 50 milligrams of THC, that is 10, 5-milligram servings. The cap has to be capable of being re-closed and maintain its child-resistance at least 10 times. The child-resistant packaging also has to be the primary packaging for the product. Putting an edible in a non-child-resistant packaging and enclosing it in a secondary child-resistant package does not meet the federal definition of child-resistance. We do have a lesser packaging standard for cannabis flour, but even that package needs to deter children under 5 from opening the package in a reasonable amount of time. We have a very helpful one-pager that summarizes these points. It's available on our guidance page under packaging materials guidance. None of this should come as a surprise. Every other state requires certified child-resistant packaging for all cannabis and cannabis products. This is a federal government requires it for any potentially harmful household products. There is a register that is maintained by the Consumer Product Safety Commission that has a list of every approved certified child-resistant packaging product. Of course, the only monkey wrench that's specific to Vermont is that in order to achieve child-resistance, most product-packaging manufacturers rely on plastic, which we're trying to avoid in Vermont. We recognize the hardship that this ban on plastic creates when it comes specifically to these child-resistant packaging requirements. To date, we've granted a number of product-specific waivers, which allowed the use of a limited amount of plastic packaging when it was necessary to achieve child-resistance for very specific cannabis product types. We have a team here that's looking through all of our outstanding waiver requests. They made some significant decisions in this past week. Kyle, I was hoping I could turn things over to you to update people on those decisions that were made. All right, before I do that, we only want to see your cannabis products in child-resistant packaging. Sorry, I had to do it. So, our team did make a number of decisions. There are still some outstanding, but out of a lot of these denials, we did decide to move forward with two categorical waivers, and they are good for one year. This will be up on our website later today, if not by the end of the week. One is for plastic or rubber push buttons for cannabis products only to achieve child-resistance. The other is specific for liquids, and so you can use a plastic child-resistant cap for liquids. If we see any child-resistant caps that are not part of the stuff we've already approved on anything other than liquids, we will have compliance issues. But if you're making a liquid that needs to, as the chairman said, needs to be open and closed multiple times, we understand that there's not really a company out there that's making lids for liquids in a sustainable fashion at this time. So for one year, if you're making a liquid, no matter if your size is 28-400, 22-400, 18-400, for liquids only, you can use those products as part of your packaging. So those are the two waivers that will be up on our website later today. There could be a number of denials filling out as well, and we're still considering a handful of the 80-some-odd waiver requests that we've received to date. Great. Thanks for that. And if there's any questions, please contact us. We would love to answer your questions before we have to pull a product off the shelf because it has plastic packaging. So other than those comments, we just have to approve the minutes from our last meeting. I was on October 19th, 2022. Is there a motion? So moved. Seconded. All in favor? Aye. All right. All right. Brynn, I'll turn things over to you. I'll be in corny. I need to be a dead. OK. So jumping right into your adult use and medical cannabis register for this week, starting with the medical cannabis program. Our numbers this week are about half of what they were last week. We've had a little bit of a slowdown with respect to renewal applications and new patient applications. Medical staff are still processing applications received within the last 30 days. Moving on to our adult use license applications. These are numbers as of yesterday. We have about 47 new applications that have come in in the last seven days. Again, most of those are for employee ID cards. Staff have issued about 10 new and 11 new employee ID cards in the last week. And you can see that you've got 10. 10 applications that are pending your review this week. Several of them are retailers. And I have some detail for you this week about who is in the queue. So the numbers here, so this is a little map of the state on the right here with a dropped pin for every retailer that has been licensed already or that is up for approval this week or is really anywhere in the queue as of October 18th. So I think that there are two additional in the queue that are not captured in this map or in this table here. But to be clear, these are all retailers that are anywhere in the queue, including those that have been issued. And these little drop pins are not exact locations. They're just dropped in the town in which the applicant is indicating their retail shop will be located. So the table here shows the breakdown of where all of these potential and existing retailers will be. The total right now is 47. I do think that, like I said, there are two more in the queue. But obviously, the vast majority are proposed to be or are in Burlington. So for the board's consideration. Can you leave this up for just a second? You know, we mentioned at a meeting, I don't know, last week or the week before that we don't have any intention of closing the retail application window. And I actually, when I look at the map, it looks like a pretty decent distribution. However, it is concerning to me that there are nine in Burlington. You know, Burlington, I don't think if this were liquor and lottery, they would not grant nine liquor store licenses to one town, even if it was Burlington. And so I just, I think if we can keep this map relatively up to date each week on our website, anyone who's thinking about getting a retail license should really consider what the population base is, what the customer base is, and how they intend to kind of compete with, you know, if you're thinking about Burlington, nine other locations that are kind of in a very small radius. So we can do that. And we can give some more detail about where that is on the website. But by the end of the week, we should be able to have this map up. And the table needed weekly as we get our new application numbers in. So we'll move on now to the staff recommendations for a license. So as always, this is pushing through all of our applicants that staff has determined to be appropriate for a license given that they've met all the requirements in statute and rule. So for this week, we have Taconic Chronic, applying for an outdoor tier one cultivation license, Vermont Organic Health and Beauty Solutions applying for a tier one manufacturing license, Clovis LLC applying for a mixed tier two cultivation license, Brass Queen applying for a retailer license, Zen Barn Ventures, another retail license, The High Country Retail Applicant, A&R Cannabis applying for a tier two manufacturing license, Magic Man applying for a retail license, higher elevation retail license, and Vermont Kind LLC applying for a tier three manufacturing license. That is your list for this week. Here is our license amendment list. We've got one new amendment in the queue. And then this page is your social equity numbers. So we have from last week, we have an additional four social equity applicants that are moving through the queue. And we have two recommendations for social equity status approval this week. We have submission number 1653, who we are recommending that the board approve social equity status for this applicant since they meet the definition of a social equity individual applicant as defined in board rule. And submission number 1212, recommending social equity status for this applicant since they meet the criteria for a social equity business applicant. And that is your list for this week. Great. Any questions for Bryn? Nope. Nope. All right. Is there a motion to approve the staff recommendations? I move that the board accept each of the recommendations as presented to us in this meeting. All in favor? Aye. Aye. All right. Well, I think the last thing is public comment. We'll do this the same way we always do. If you join via the link and would like to make a public comment, please raise your virtual hand and start with those. And then afterwards, if you join via phone, we'll move to you and you can hit star six on you yourself. They're all stunned by your singing. You know, do a verse if we want. All right. Anyone via the link? And if not, we'll just move to anyone who joined via phone. Again, it's star six. If you want to unmute yourself to make a public comment, I will close the public comment window. Looks like we got one. Eli. Thank you very much. I just wanted to note the testing log jam. I know we've got some other labs in process. And just on the ground, that's a huge challenge for all of us producers. We can't do anything without COAs. So I just wanted to throw some gentle encouragement. I know everybody is working hard over there, but getting through this testing log jam is really an issue for us on the ground. So thank you very much for whatever we can do. Yeah, thanks, Eli. Any other comments? I will close the public comment window. I think we have Steve Hill is on the verge of being licensed if not today or sometime this week. That's one more. I know that's not enough. We are working with other facilities to get them up and running. I think they're licensed, but not yet open. Is that right? Or have not begun testing? So they have conditional approval. That's right. I'm not yet licensed. My understanding from where they are in the process is that they will be ready for your approval next week to begin operating. All right. Well, any other final comments? I'm blouses. I will adjourn the meeting. Thank you.