 Start to kick things off. So good afternoon, Vermont. I'm calling this meeting of the advisory public health subcommittee to order. I'm Tom Alasio. I want to take a role for our subcommittee members. You can just stay here at present. This meeting is being reported and or transcribed. I'm back here on mute. I'm here. I'm here. Dr. Mark Levine. Present. Tim Wessel. Present. Thank you. Thank you. Ingrid Jonas. I'm here. Thank you. And just quickly, if I could get those of the, the CCB veteran attendance as well. I heard chairman Pepper. Are you there? Pepper stepped out, but Julie is here. And so is David share our general counsel and Nellie will be coming in and out. Great. Thank you. Gina. And Megan, are you on the line as well for the minute? Yes, I'm here. Okay. Thank you everyone for your attendance and reinstall of you that are also in the room in Vermont and have made the effort and have the interest to attend the subcommittee meeting. Since this is the first subcommittee meeting, I want to do brief and I want to emphasize the word in the concept of brief because we have much to do and discuss brief intros for the members of the subcommittee before moving on with our agenda. I'll be speaking very quickly because of the time constraints. We have back to back to back meeting. One starts another subcommittee meeting starting right after this. So again, my name is Tom Nalasko. I'm general counsel for the national association cannabis businesses or the NACB national trade organization specializes in creating standards and best practices for the cannabis industry. Our goal is to legitimize and elevate the growing cannabis marketplace and part of our function at the NACB is to consult with various state legislators and regulators as we are doing with this engagement. My brief background, I'm now a 20 plus year attorney specializing in business or commercial litigation. I've been in this space for seven or eight years beginning with cannabis lawsuits that led into compliance issues, employment, real estate, all the issues that good startups have, whether they're getting into an industry. I've been serving on panels for the Arizona State Bar where I'm based out of and then that led to panels throughout the country on issues like licensing, 280E, social equity, and the like. So it's my privilege to help coordinate these very subcommittee meetings and create good policy for the state of Vermont. So before we get into introductions to our very knowledgeable and accomplished advisory subcommittee members, I want to introduce the two members of the NACB that will be leading this public health subcommittee meeting, Mark Borman and Denika Scott. Mark, do you want to give a brief intro? Sure. Thanks, Tom. Can you hear me? You can. All right. Okay, good. I've been with NACB for about a year and a half. Before that, I spent a good 20 years as senior vice president leading government relations at the Distilled Spirits Council where I did have the chance to come up to Vermont meet with the control board and so forth. The DL, the liquor control board. So a little bit of experience with annually regulated industries that find there's a lot of similarities in some instances between the alcohol regulation and the cannabis regulation and look forward to contributing to this project. That's very exciting. Thanks. Hi, good morning. I'm Denika Scott. I am leading marketing communications and strategic initiatives for NACB. I entered cannabis back in 2018, but on the payment side, which is still very much so an emerging market. I also have over 21 years of experience in heavily regulated markets, including financial services payments, which of course touched banking, 30 year marketer, excited to be here. A lot of the items we're going to be discussing in this committee are very much so in tune with both mine and market experience in the past, especially when it comes to providing the public with the information that they need to make decisions about where to be informed. So we're excited to be here. And with that being said, I'll let you come back or our mark as we get started, unless you're ready for me to move to this slide. Denika, let's just allow our advisory committee members. Oh, I'm so sorry. I'm so very sorry. Dr. Levine, if you're ready, if you could give a brief hello and introduction. Hello, and I could be very brief. I'm currently commissioner of House of the State of Vermont. While I have been commissioner of health, I've had a number of priorities and initiatives with regard to substance misuse. Governor's advisory commission on marijuana and shared the prevention and education subcommittee, which you've probably seen the report of at some point and seeing all the materials prior to this body meeting. I'm an internal medicine physician and practice for many, many years continue to still be involved in academic medicine and teach and glad to be here. Thank you, Dr. Ingrid Jonas. I'll also be brief and a positive of driving so maybe some background noise. Let's see, I'm going to just exceed from the attorney general's office. I've retired as a major for the Vermont state of the state just in time today. It's been 23 years and we're going to have to learn a little bit about how we can do this. Thank you, Ingrid. Tim Wessel. Hi, everyone. I'm Tim Wessel. I was appointed by the Senate Committee on Committee to put the attention before the board of the needs of the municipalities, concerns of municipalities. And I've served for five years on the broader board, having served as vice chair and then chair as recently as last year. And my expertise is certainly not in public health, although like everyone recently I've been asked to become an expert in things like masking. If you follow the news and vaccinations and all of those things as related to COVID-19. Very excited to be a part of this committee and lend whatever help I can to some decisions, especially from the framing of how it affects everybody in the towns, individual towns, municipal governments of Vermont. Thank you. Thank you, Tim. And thank you all for your time and service to this subcommittee meeting. And I understand from Nellie or Julie in the room, we have at least three others from the public, and then that number might have grown since I first got on here. And I want to make sure that everyone knows that written public comments can still be submitted electronically via the web form on the CCB website and have been since May 2021. I also want to ensure everyone that your comments have been received reviewed and considered by each and every subcommittee member. And of course we appreciate your input. There will also be time for public comments and questions at the end of this hour towards the end of it as there will be for each subcommittee meeting. In addition, the Cannabis Control Board will be hosting dedicated meetings for public comments, both at a Friday board meeting via the public link or at the CCB's public comment evenings, which will be posted on the CCB website as well. So your voice will be heard and considered, but pressing deadlines are upon us for each of these subcommittee meetings and is critical of constructive communications between the board members to meet those deadlines. So I do not want this hour to be dominated by public comments, although there will be time for it at the end of the meeting. And again, those can be made into deaths addressed through those different avenues. Okay, I will turn this over to the leaders of the subcommittee meeting, Mark and Danika, if you want to take it from here. Danika, you're on. I got it. The statement of the year. Thank you everyone for coming up to get just a brief set up for those of you who are subcommittee members, Dr. Lozini, Tim and Ingrid. This discussion guide follows the documents that you were provided in an email from us. I will also say our goal is to give you these documents a little bit ahead of time that each of you received differently, but this is almost identical to what was there. And so I'd like to give that as some setup. I'm going to be very quick on this. We also recognize the public comments. I'm going to skip over those, but I do think it is important to note that these will be a part of the final package that the cannabis control board will be putting out there. So we do have also where to submit your public comments. I'm sorry, did someone say something? Okay. So I did leave an opportunity if the advisory committee has any comments regarding public comments. I certainly capture those and if not, I'm happy to move on. And that's this is a working document. So you may see me typing or taking notes in here so that we can capture everything appropriately as we discussed it. Mark, you want to jump in and add anything before we hit the next couple of slides? No. No, I'm just looking forward to getting down to the meeting. Okay, excellent. If there are no comments regarding anything that was sent via public comments, I'll move on. So is that okay with Ingrid and Tim and Dr. Levine? Okay. Excellent. Thank you so much. All right. Mark, do you want to go ahead? Yeah. I think you've all seen what the scope of work or the direction for the subcommittee is. We thought it was, it made sense to break it down into three components and because there are a lot of issues in front of us. So phase one, which we're beginning today is the advertising and marketing rules. And that encompasses, you know, the guidelines that the legislature gave to the control board. It encompasses warning statements for packaging and labeling and licensee materials that will help guide the licensees on a sort of a self regulatory process. Although the control board does retain obviously all the regulatory authority. So, you know, the next after we, I think this is going to be an introduction to the whole thing, the whole process today. And probably our next meeting will be much more about the substance of the these issues. But after that, we'll follow on with packaging and labeling and get into other things like, you know, cannabis. So warning statements, warning labels, you know, other things that need to be on packaging such as when the product was made, what the shelf life is expected to be, what the serving sizes are and so forth. And the last phase, which is important is edibles and, you know, and the Department of Health's oversight in that area. So any questions about that? We just thought it was a decent way to break it down into meals. I mean, they're not bite-sized pieces. They're like daily meals. So, phase one, advertising and marketing. We can go to the next slide today. Excellent. Okay, we wanted to also your briefing materials are organized in this way. We take a look at what the legislature's objectives were. And it's basically making sure that the industry is not promoting cannabis use. It's limiting the exposure of advertising and other marketing to eligible consumers over the age of 21. So it can't target people under 21 minutes, not unlike how alcohol advertising is regulated. And ensuring consumer protection and public safety. I think consumers have a right to expect, and they do expect from past experience, to be notified appropriately of hazards and, you know, appropriate consumption guidelines and that sort of thing. So the legislature also, because this is advertising, there are certain constitutional free speech rights that businesses do have. And they want us to be mindful of what these constitutional protections are for commercial speech and how that might apply to the cannabis market. Interesting concept for sure. Sure, absolutely. Before we go into Act 62, the intent of this is not to read to anyone. So because these are readily available to the public and other folks. So if we feel like we need to define anything as it relates to advertising or marketing, we can certainly come back to these. But I want to be sure before we do move past this, Dr. Levine, Tim or Ingrid, is there anything in particular in here that you'd like to discuss? I'm sure everybody's had a chance to at least look this over. None at this time. Thank you. Okay. Okay, fantastic. So from there, I do think it's important that we just briefly go through what the rules are that are by Act 62. I'm going to read fast. They don't want any cannabis establishment to contain anything that's false or misleading or deceptive, promotes overconsumption, represents the use of cannabis has curative effects, offers a prize award or inducement for purchasing cannabis or a cannabis product, except that price discounts are allowed that offers free samples of cannabis or cannabis products and depicts a person under 21 years of age consuming cannabis or cannabis products or is designed to have the effect of being appealing to anyone under the age of 21. Very straightforward, not unlike what Mark and I have seen or anyone else have seen in the U.S. and states that have passed cannabis rules. Any questions or discussions on the advertising rules on this page? Okay, I'm going to move on. And then also, Vermont now has adopted one of the strictest rules of mediums for advertising. The state wants 85% of the audience to be over 21. They want everything to contain health warnings in advertising. And then also, currently the way that Act 62 is written is that any marketing or advertising will have to be submitted to the board for approval. So with that being said, that brings us to a lot of the meat of specific guidelines that you're going to see that the NACB has put together to give a framework. And the way that we really view this is it's a starting point and a jumping off point to give all of you on the subcommittee something to react to and give you the opportunity to see how this might shake out together with us for the state of Vermont. So knowing that these particular, you know, disclosures are in here, they're going to be required, and also that there may be changes, you know, that are going to be asked of folks who submit their marketing materials if they don't follow what would necessarily be the rules or the guidelines. So I have an opportunity for any comments here on 164 and 162. We'll also be covering a point of sale flyer that is specific for health warnings for each of the establishments momentarily because it has some specific stipulations that may also help in the drafting of any language. Okay, Tim, good. All right, you can just do a thumbs up if you need to. I was just going to say I'm practicing a little bit of ketchup just because I got these materials yesterday and I just haven't been able to review as much as I'd like to. So I'd rather than be off the cuff, I'd rather just review first. No problem at all. And you'll each receive this deck as well. So this is good. And any discussions we figured today was really going to be that starting point for all of us in that. Pretty much all this material is in that four or five pages. It is. And we'll try to get you a little bit earlier the notification of some of these things, but this will probably continue to be the substance of our discussion through the next meeting as well. So then what we put forth for the subcommittee is some starting considerations for ensuring compliance. Again, also in the packet that was sent to each of you individually. I'd like to start this by saying I had a discussion with an advertising executive who deals with cannabis. And I asked him, would it be helpful to you and your team if you were given branding requirements or at least legal disclaimers that were issued by the state? His comment, that would be super helpful. To be honest, we've seen different attorneys have different opinions in the same state in the past. So I think that from my career and having been through this in financial services and banking, if I know the rules of the road, I can follow the rules of the road and I can stay within compliance for marketing my program. So that's really, I thought that was an important statement that people do. While some people feel that maybe there's too much regulation around certain areas, if we know the rules, we can follow the rules. So I want to also put out there the different types of advertising mediums that may be available to a cannabis business. There's print, so that's really at any, I'm sorry, go ahead. Somebody say something? Yep. Okay, excellent. There's print, so that's any advertising in printed form, including TOF flyers in store, brochures, posters, newspaper magazines. There's digital, which would include things like email, online search engine optimization, both paid and organic keywords, sponsored ads, social media, Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, Twitter, YouTube. For the subcommittee members, each of you received some supplemental materials including Pew Research on digital advertising that I think will be immensely helpful if you have questions, especially surrounding demographic. Also, I will say that digital is a big complex given that it's against some social media guidelines in cannabis. So it becomes an interesting platform. Then there is direct advertising, things like direct mail, postcards, letters, leaflets. LSM stands for local store marketing. I'll make sure to spell that out, or guerrilla marketing. It's literally the guy standing on the street corner handing out a flyer. So those are things also to be considered, or even in person. There's broadcast, TV, radio, online channel, YouTube, and then of course sponsorship. So this is not to be all-inclusive, but it is to say it's a big, complex world of advertising out there. And so if we're going to give guidance, then there's some opportunity to at least know where that guidance would apply. So one of the first things that we did as we get into the meat of discussions, and this was in supplemental packages, and again each of you will receive this, and this will also be online, is California has done a nice job of putting together advertising or promoting commercial cannabis. Really kind of a rule of the road, it's a one-page flyer. Then also I supplied the NACB advertising checklist so that anyone who is putting an advertisement together would have the opportunity to go in and make sure before they print or before they post does it meet the requirements. So there is opportunity for something to be similar for Vermont, and that would be our recommendation, is that we again provide guidance. Yeah, I think this is going to become a very interesting subject of our discussion because having the control board in a position of having to approve all advertisements before their run or print it or what have you as well as help labels and packages is going to put quite a responsibility on the shoulders of the board and whether fees for doing this can begin to pay for the staff that might need to be hired and that sort of thing is something worthy of a lot of consideration. So that's the nature of this discussion we think. So before we move on to the next, are there any questions of the subcommittee members about the items we've just spoken about? No. Okay, thank you. I think it'd be important to have not only examples of the approval but of the absolutely positive question. I think that is excellent, Dr. Levine. I will tell you from my days in financial services that was part of the branded guidelines. We would say you may do this, but don't do this. So especially when it came to items that were falsely misleading, because it's not just cannabis, there's also federal advertising laws as everybody is aware. So we want to very much align this around making sure people can do business and we don't want to prevent this. So completely agree with you. So I will move to the next. And this is the point of sale flyer that I apologize was not in your information packet this additional item, but it will be in your follow up. So can everyone see that? Okay. It may be a little bit small, but basically it is at retail point of purchase where a customer can at least be informed. They don't have to take it. When I read this, I feel like it's kind of like HIPAA. You don't have to take it, but at least you acknowledge it in some ways. But it's definitely there as something to be considered and may give us the opportunity to help us draft some of the additional language. Because it does talk about things that are important. I'm not a climate case effect risk of driving under the influence potential health risk symptoms of problematic usage. So I do believe that there is almost a marrying of this particular item, even though it is not necessarily advertising. It is for public benefit that it's important that the languages are the same or almost identical when it comes to some of the warnings here. Any thoughts on this particular item? I'm sure we'll get into this more. Can I just throw out a thought that that last statement in there is kind of a zinger. When you look at it from the perspective, you know, kind of like saying, there's all these things to watch out for. Oh, and by the way, this is illegal. I think that that is very important to note. I also would like to add that part of our recommendations will be to say, will we make recommendations like what you just noted, or at least to note those items? I think that is also very important, so thank you for bringing that up. Anyone else? Yes, go ahead. I was going to say, you and I noticed kind of an odd statement in the statute that says that the board has to review advertising and has to call out the advertiser if it's a violation of say, you know, or prooffulness or making health claims and what have you. And it also says that the board may require a warning label on advertising that it is concerned will be misleading to the public. And we're just kind of wondering like, you know, maybe somebody can help us with this, but why would they even approve the publication of an advertisement that is false and misleading for making health claims? And we'll dive into that a little bit more. Yeah, there's a lot of that. Absolutely. So any additional items on this retail point of sale flyer? If not, I'll move to the next slide. All right, excellent. So again, looks like we lost Ingrid and hopefully she's back. So excellent, I think. So I do think we lost her. I'm back. Okay, excellent. All right. Thank you so much. So one of the things that Mark and I did was to carefully consider the experiences that we have had together jointly over the years over 50, if you put it, if you add them up and put together some specific recommendations. Again, this is for you the subcommittee to react to. You don't have to react to them right now. But these are items that we believe are an excellent opportunity to provide guidelines. Everything starts with action. And so this is in the packet that you were provided. Again, you're just seeing it in PowerPoint format. But we do believe whether there is approval by the board or not, that it's incredibly important that those with licenses and those marketers understand what is required of them. If we don't tell them what's required, there's going to be a lot of back and forth and a lot of additional work. Again, just to get them to the point that they can submit a viable document or advertising piece is an excellent opportunity to streamline items. We'll need to also draft what those health warning labels look like for cannabis packaging. We'll be providing examples from other states and possibly also other countries on that to give the board the subcommittee something to react to. We have to specify a means of assuring that 85% of that audience is over the age of 21. There are specific ways that can be done. I've worked in media as part of my marketing and advertising career and there are very specific things that can be done. And then also require age dating for social media sites and related advertising pages. That's the off where age dating is the term used for. If you click a link to say to go to a liquor site, it's going to ask you your age and for you to input your age before you can go any further. Mark, do you want to take this slide? Sure. And I want to mention also that we're going to be identifying for you the kinds of compliance issues here and rules that were required or requested by the legislature. The board was requested to take them under consideration and determine how best to go. And what other issues that we might be discussing that we found to be common in other states that you might want to have drawn to your attention. So we'll try to separate those things out as we go along. One thing that the Vermont statute says is that we should have language for medicinal cannabis advertising. And it would need to decide what that is, of course, and that would be, I'm sure, tricky in some respects. Develop possible sanctions for non-compliance with advertising rules. And what the process might be to deal with non-compliance, the law says that the board can charge a fee for considering advertising applications for advertisement approval. But I don't think it says anything about fines for violating the board's decisions. All right, so developing an educational website for parents and guardians to use in talking to kids about marijuana, maybe not unlike the flyer that was talking about earlier, makes the critical points and expands actually upon the website. Already exists, yes. And finally here initiatives that would distinguish between commercial messages for adult use and medical cannabis. So we want to, you know, it's not a foregone conclusion that rules for adult use and medical would be the same, but we'll have a chance to consider that. So that is the starting point of our recommendations. And as Mark said, you know, we're trying to take these in place. So this will give the three of you something to react to, and then you'll have the opportunity hopefully to speak with each of you one-on-one, or your designee to have a discussion around your thoughts on this and how we can better refine it for the state of Vermont. So I'd like to open it up to the subcommittee members. I know there's a lot here, but to give you the opportunity to give any input or consideration so that we may capture those, especially as we'll be meeting again on Monday. Yeah, it really would include things that people think ought to be off the table, other things that people think ought to be on the table. Agreed. And we'll have another chance after you have a chance to read through all this and think about it and talk about it. So, Tim, were you, I saw your mic come off of anything you'd like to add? I was just going to chime in and say a little digestion would help me with some of these materials. But I'm particularly interested in this idea of no health claims because that's a very much gray area if you think about it. Yeah. How many things? It's unique to cannabis, I think, that you wouldn't see a lot of liquor, you know, regardless of Guinness's successful ads. You wouldn't see a lot of American liquor companies claiming health benefits, but marijuana claims are bound. Yeah. Perhaps are justified, but some of them certainly are not. No, actually, I think that is excellent. That was a major discussion point that Mark and I had. We provided in the reference material a link to the FDA guidance on that very thing. So, I think that is not unnoted and we will most definitely make consideration for that through this. Everybody good? Dr. Levine Ingrid? Okay. All right. So, I'm going to skip over this blank page. So, really our next step besides allowing everyone the opportunity to digest is that we actually could get started with some tasks. And that would be to look at additional language that already exists in some of these areas and what would be the right thing for the state of Vermont. So, we know that we got to do the health warning labels for especially for packages. You know, and then also draft the language on distinguishing between adult and recreational and then any other general disclosures. I read an interesting article in national one of the national publications about Massachusetts, your neighboring state and how they now have a menu of disclaimers you can pick if you choose, you have to say please consume responsibly. But then you also have to pick two of five that they gave you on impairment, concentration, health risk, 21 years or older, or not used by women who are pregnant or who are breastfeeding. And so, again, while while none of us want to put any burden that is undue or onerous, there are so many opportunities out there for Vermont to craft what works for your state, and also covers the areas of public health that you would like to see covered. So, those are our next steps in here. And so, what will happen from here is there'll be additional materials related to this that Mark and I will provide to each of you. It's not going to be a lot more than what you're already seeing. This will probably be a little repetitious for the next few days. But we'd love any feedback that you might have right now before we move on to allowing any public comment. And if there is an exact opinion. I don't know if this is insightful or naive, to be honest. But when you start looking at health claims and things of that sort, it's hard to just use the word cannabis or marijuana. It starts getting down to ingredients. And, you know, THC and what have you. Is that being factored into any of this subcommittee's work and into what's appropriate and what's not appropriate in advertising and marketing? Because, as you know, there's so much you can buy right now that presumably is free of THC, but have other ingredients that seems to work for everything that ails you. And that you can buy without any reservations whatsoever or restrictions. I just don't know if the work of this committee is getting that granular and looking at that or if it's just big words like cannabis and marijuana. I was going to say that as you'll see from some of the warning labels that, you know, we circulate some and circulate others. Some of it says, doesn't say marijuana, doesn't say cannabis, it says THC on the warnings. But you raise a fascinating point on the difference between medical and adult use. Cannabis and cannabis derivatives that we will have to, I think we'll have to come to grips with decide whether to go down that road or maybe not. And as a subcommittee, yeah, it's your, as a subcommittee member, you know, it's your recommendations that we'll be putting forth. We'll all be working together on them. So I think that's also important to note in here. I know there is the basics, but then you could even also, Dr. Levine, to add on to that when we get into edibles, that's also a food. So then there's the whole aspect of the food piece and what that looks like beyond just the fact of cannabis. So we're probably going to have some fun discussions on this, but at the same time, they're all very necessary. So is there anything additional from the subcommittee members? Because we are actually quite perfectly on time asking what she's given any additional comments to move to the public comment portion of this meeting to hear from the public that's there. Very good. Well, I thank every member of the subcommittee for your patience also for your attention and for being here. We're thrilled to have the opportunity to do this with you. So Tom, I have a spot for public comments if you would like to take that since we are at 10 till the hour. Sure. And we can open it up now to those in attendance in Vermont, if anyone would like to have a question or comment. Now is the time. It doesn't appear that there are any public comment today from the folks in the room. Okay. Thank you, Julie. And again, I'm not trying to put anyone on the spot, but we will have this time reserved at the ending portion of each subcommittee meeting. And you can still submit written public comments through the website. And that's contained in the slide there, the information and the world the other opportunities to comment at the other subcommittee meetings and at the CCB meetings as well. Unless anyone has anything else, I think we can adjourn if I have a motion. I can make that motion. I have a second. Thank you. Thank you everyone for your participation today. The next subcommittee meeting with public health will be Monday at this same time. And we look forward to seeing you then. Thank you. Thank you. All right. Thanks Tom. Thank you. This meeting is no longer being recorded.