 My name is James Pepper on the chair of the Vermont Cannabis Control Board. Today is July 13th, 2022, and I call this meeting to order. So just a few updates. The exciting news today is that we have over 20 applications that are ready for approval today. This is a new record for us. It really is a team effort. Thank you as always to our staff for helping push these through, and thank you to all the applicants for sticking it out. This is of course one of the most highly regulated industries in the country, and these applications are not easy to get through. I mentioned last week, and it holds true today, that we've done the preliminary review of every outdoor cultivator application. I think Brent will show you the chart later on. There are currently a number of outdoor cultivation applications that are incomplete or have been in resubmitted status, and they're awaiting our final review, but this getting through these outdoor cultivators really is a top priority for the board. We have moved on to reviewing the mixed tier applications as well. If this is the license you're seeking, hang in there, and please keep your eye out for any communications from the board. We've gotten a few questions about our market projections and how, now that we've actually started licensing people, how accurate they are. I mentioned last week that the original economist who developed the model is going to be plugging in our data to help give a snapshot of how the market is taking shape. We'll do that publicly in a meeting, and we use that data really to determine things like where backlogs might be developing, and where if we need to open our larger license types or create new license types. So it's an important tool for us. I would say that the cultivation numbers right now look pretty good. We've had a tremendous amount of buy-in from small cultivators, but also cultivators at all, tiers. I did some back-of-the-end below calculations with respect to how much canopy we would have in Vermont if we were to approve every pending application, and it's over 600,000 square feet. The target that our model is called for is roughly 450 to 500,000 square feet. However, this target included a number of assumptions that aren't necessarily holding true. First, it's suggested that we needed that much canopy if there is 80% of our licensees were indoor cultivators. We're seeing a much stronger preference for outdoor cultivation, and if this trend continues, it means we're going to need to license much more canopy in order to meet the market demands. Also, that 450 to 500,000 is assuming all of that is flowering canopy and that every license square foot is used for flowering canopy, and that's just not going to be the case. I think we're actually in pretty good shape. Of course, the picture starts to shift if new things are allowed legislatively. Things like delivery, high THC solid concentrates, special events, and on-site consumption. The model is a very helpful and powerful tool, but it really can't fully predict how this market's going to take shape. On this last note, we're starting to put together for legislative action. Top of the list for us is the medical program. Everyone here at the board recognizes that the laws regulating our medical program desperately need attention. The board did some work on this last year with the help of our advisory committee, but it wasn't enough in the bill that we suggested it didn't actually go anywhere. We're planning to continue our work on this issue during the summer and the fall and really have some concrete policy recommendations for the future of this program. Also, the issue of high THC solid concentrates is a priority for the board. I actually think we got some good traction in the legislature this past session. The conversation towards the end of the session started to shift from whether or not to do this to allow these high THC solid concentrates to how should the cannabis board regulate them. Things like should there be serving sizes or purchase caps? What sort of additives should be allowed and what the health warning should be? We do have a report due to the legislature on this issue in December and we'll be developing that report in conjunction with our advisory committee throughout the fall. I'd like to continue to push for things like delivery and special event licensing on these issues. Again, it's not going to be good enough just for us to ask the legislature to do them. They really want to see what the regulations are going to look like and what sort of safety rails the board can put up to make sure things like youth access and highway safety are addressed. We'll spend some time this summer and fall thinking about those issues. Then there's the vape tax. This tax, to be clear, is really an effective ban on vapes. It puts a intense premium on the cost of vapes. What we saw with the Evoli crisis is that leaving this tax in place can really lead to real world negative public health outcomes. This is probably another area where we should put our thoughts together for the legislature. We also this past week got some questions about fire safety. I just want to remind everyone that the board cannot waive the requirement to comply with building codes and fire safety. This is a critical piece of our overall public safety mandate. I just want to repeat a few points on this. If your place of business is in a public building, you need a certificate of occupancy before we can grant you a license. If you're not in a public building, we need a letter from fire safety certifying that your location, your operating location is not in a public building. Landon Wheeler is your point of contact at fire safety. He really has done a tremendous job moving people through the pipeline. But if you haven't spoken with him yet, please reach out. Department of Fire Safety, Division of Fire Safety responds to inquiries and permit requests in the order that they're received. So it's really important to reach out as early as possible. His contact information is landon.wheeler at vermont.gov. His phone number is 802-639-0949. He also attended a board meeting, a cannabis board meeting on May 31st, to discuss the kind of process and next steps, the second you reach out to them, and what you can have ready to go in order to kind of help facilitate the process. If you haven't seen that, you should watch it. It's on our YouTube channel. It will recap some of the high-level points he made. He can do that threshold analysis about whether you're operating in a public building offsite and he can do it relatively quickly for the most part offsite. It doesn't always require a site visit. However, if you are a public building, you need to apply for a permit, which you can do at the Division of Fire Safety website, which is firesafety.vermont.gov. He did also mention that fire safety has a very good clearance rate. He said they get through roughly 95% of their applications within 30 days. So that's good. Finally, staffing update. We've completed our interviews for our licensing staff and our compliance officers. We're in the process of extending offers and onboarding them, these folks. Once they're here, I think it would be a good idea, especially at least the compliance team, to introduce them at a public meeting so that people can really put a face to a name. But it's exciting. That's it for me, Kyle. I was wondering if you might just kind of give us a status update on packaging waivers and where we stand. Yeah, absolutely. Don't everybody fall asleep on me? No, I'm just kidding. So we've got about 16. Actually, I think it is 16 because one was clearly, we have 17, but one was testing it out and talking about dinosaur plastic. I think that they were messing with us. But we've got 16 waiver requests, and these are everything from DRAMs. The flower comes in to the vessel that liquid concentrates come in, the big cart, to droppers for tincture, to inserts inside of a container for shelf life stability, meaning a little think about you buy fruit snacks from the store and they come in a little package. You would put that inside a different package. So we've gotten a lot of different parts of the packaging supply chain that we're looking at. I wanted to run through how we're looking at these because we're not making decisions by the seat of our pants or out of thin air. We do have a scoring matrix that we're putting all of these through. And there's five major buckets in this scoring matrix, and each one is weighted the same. But I want folks who are going to be submitting waivers in the future to just understand how we're going to be looking at and anticipating some of these rubrics. So the first bucket is the effort that you're putting into your waiver request and taking what we're trying to do seriously. Do you clearly state the need for a hardship waiver? Are you demonstrating you've done adequate research to see that there are no reasonable alternatives out there other than the need for plastic? Have you considered the environmental impact that the cannabis industry has on our natural resources and our landscape? Not just in Vermont, but across the country and across the world. So those are the three main areas in that first bucket. The second bucket is plastic percentage. Does this product intend to work with other products like wood, cardboard, metal, bamboo? Or does it possess qualities to break down in a landfill quicker than your traditional petroleum-based plastic? And I know from folks that have submitted waivers that there is some cool technology out there. There's at least one company that's inserting microbes into a plastic that allows that plastic to break down in a landfill 75 to 80 percent quicker than a traditional plastic. And so if nothing else, this exercise is bringing these new innovative plastic concepts to the forefront of everybody's mind. Is there a clear need for plastic or rubber or something to achieve shelf life stability? We recognize that more often than not, it is. But is there that clear need based on this packaging and this specific project? And the last part of this bucket is, is it truly de minimis? And de minimis is a legal term of art. It means a little bit something different to everybody. But if you look at this on the whole, is it truly de minimis? Or does it possess certain qualities that get away from how we typically view plastic and plastic breaks down under one percent over a four to five year span in a landfill? The next bucket is your business, your, the licensee or the prospective licensee who is submitting this waiver, your sustainability efforts as part of your business. Are you doing other things as part of your business model to offset the need for plastic? Have you demonstrated positive impact as part of your community and your business other than, you know, you might be required based on our regulations to do certain positive impact criteria. You might not be, but I want to see, I think we all want to see that, you know, you're looking to do above and beyond in some areas what our regulations account for at the floor level. And, you know, building off of that, are you building in triple bottom line benefits to your, to your business? Are you holding others in the supply chain accountable? Are you looking at social benefits, environmental benefits and economic benefits that kind of carry the torch and what we're trying to accomplish forward versus just kind of staying, you know, with the status quo and how some of these issues have been treated by other states, which is not, not at all. And I know that there's some major markets out there that are looking at what we're trying to do here with, with open eyes to see if we can make any type of dent in the plastic issues that surround cannabis. The next, the next major bucket is product or brand sustainability. So the product, the brand that you're bringing to the conversation. I've had lots of conversations with a lot of different brands at this point. And I'm still waiting on samples from some of them. But, you know, a lot of very smart people, you know, the industry has either moved towards biobased plastic, hemterite plastic or PCR ocean plastic. PCR means post-consumer use. I can't remember where the R stands for, I've taught my head, I'm sure something could correct me. But, you know, it's post-consumer recycled plastic. That's what it is. And so that used to be a cheaper option than traditional plastic. But because consumers preferences change, we're not relying as much on plastic at that point of consumer sales as we used to, you know, those costs are going up. So we know that these PCR ocean plastic is more expensive per unit. But at the same time, that's where the industry's going. We're trying to recognize that because we're going beyond where the industry has kind of moved off the first generation of how cannabis is packaged at a retail storefront. So is the brand looking to move away from traditional petro-based hard plastics? Are they focusing on waste reductions through biobased feedstocks or like, you know, microbe injections? Like I mentioned about at least one specific company that's looking to do certain things out there. Do they carry any certifications, either like an ASTM or TUV standard? TUV is a European certification that will certify a product as backyard compostable or biodegradable. There's some interesting biobased polymers that are considered biodegradable and will degrade in a landfill, just like it would in your backyard under very quick timescales. And those are the type of plastics, because they are still plastic, even though they're kind of next-gen biobased plastics, they still would meet our definition of plastic that I think I would feel comfortable having in this. And I don't want to single out any specific companies. If you do your research on PHA, sure you could find some, you know, we don't want to play favorites to certain companies, but we want to see the packaging that you're bringing into our market carries, you know, certain values that are representative of what we carry here at the cannabis board. And the last major bucket is the need for this product in our marketplace. We recognize that this, again, is beyond potentially where a lot of the market currently is. If you have a dropper top for a tincture bottle, there's not really an alternative other than rubber and plastic to that, or, you know, the rubber part of a plunger for a syringe or something like that. We recognize there's some stuff that we can't put our heels in the sand and really dig in here. And we want to work with folks and recognize that. So, you know, does our staff agree that no reasonable alternatives exist? If this waiver was not granted, would this, would a product essentially be mooted out of the market here? We don't want that to happen. And, you know, does this product on its face or in effect reduce plastic and landfills? And so that's really how we make up that last major bucket. And all of this is scored. And we have a certain threshold that we want to see things scored. We don't want to pit products against each other. We want to, you know, look at a set of facts, do our research, get samples of it ourselves, and really look to, you know, put it up against certain things. Like I can say that we're still debating on internally how we feel about ocean plastic, you know, how that ocean plastic is sourced and tracked. There's some companies out there that do it a lot better than others. And at the end of the day, we might be taking plastic out of the ocean, but we're putting it into a Vermont landfill. And so we're still kind of working through the motions on, you know, how these would stand up on our scoring rubric, recognizing that it is, they are trying to accomplish something, but the devil is typically in the details. So I can say that we're getting close to kind of getting back to some folks. The interesting thing here is recall my first bucket, which was effort in our waiver. We've had at least one example where we've had two individuals, businesses, request a waiver for the same product. One might get a no because their effort wasn't very clear. They didn't demonstrate adequate research, although the product itself scores very well. Somebody else might have put a little bit more effort in, demonstrated that they've done the adequate research, provided us with facts that feel sufficient and grant the waiver. A person who got denied would still be able to use it. So we might see some of those kind of situations happen, but again, every time we approve a waiver, we'll put that brand, that model number, and hopefully a picture if we can do it on our website so folks can kind of see exactly what's going on and what's been approved. And again, I'm having lots of conversations every day with certain packaging companies trying to get the route to the root of what they're doing, what type of certifications they have and reminding them that, hey, I know you're looking at this language, we need a licensee or a prospective licensee, not the business to carry the flag forward for your product and request a waiver. And I've talked to, I'm sure, a number of folks on our call already about this, and I'm pleased with where things are. And hopefully by the end of the week, if not first thing next week, we can get some responses to folks. So I'll get off my soapbox now. Thanks for bearing with me, but just wanted to remind folks that we do have a process on how we're looking at these, and there's just a lot of research that we're doing. We're not taken for granted this requirement that we're asking of folks. So thank you. Yeah, it's great. It's a really complicated area of kind of our regulations. Yeah. And I think the challenging part is that none of the 11 composers in Vermont are willing to take these, whether it's because they won't break down on the timeline that they can turn their compost background into a consumer product or changes the acidity of the compost that renders it not as valuable to some folks that are using the compost. And traditional bioplastics like PLA made from corn break down the same as a traditional plastic in a landfill. So if they can't be composted, do they have a place here? And so we're kind of trying to take everything on its face and plug it into our rubric and we'll start making decisions here soon enough. Yeah. And just people are looking for that waiver form. It's on our website, ccb.vermont.gov slash guidance. And so you can just submit your waiver request. It is helpful for us to have packaging, a physical sample of the packaging, but it's not required, but it does speed up our review. Julie, I was wondering, I know that our point of sale flyer is almost done. I was wondering if you could just kind of give an update on where things stand with that and sort of the process that you went through to develop. Sure. It's gone to the Department of Health for one last past comment. We've worked with the Department of Health on this. So the process has been that I looked back at our public comments that we received about this. I looked back at the conversation we had in our advisory committee and our public health subcommittee and then worked with some members of the prevention community and then also folks from the New England Poison Center to sort of develop the language because I felt like they would be, you know, they had a lot of experience coming to the general public. So the flyer was developed with the idea that people have already gone into a retail space, they've already chosen to consume and they have likely are in the process of or have already made a purchase. And so that is sort of the basis of the flyer and the way that the communication is written. We've worked with the Department of Health, I've worked with some other members of the public health subcommittee and advisory committee on tweaking the language and I think that we are almost there and I think the plan is to go over it at a future meeting. Great. All right. Well, why don't we approve the minutes and then move to the agenda. Have you guys had a chance to look those over? Yes. Yep. Is there a motion to approve? So moved. Seconded. All in favor? Aye. Aye. Okay. I'll just send things over to you, Bryn, for the kind of licensure review. Great. Typical adult use, pre-qualification and licensure register looks a little bit different this week at the outset because we've added some point in time data for the board to review regarding the medical program. So this is sort of a first, you know, first attempt at providing some useful information to the board and to the public about what is going on with the medical program. And we can tweak this or change it however we see fit. But this is a set of data that comes from the medical program just last week. So in the five days of last week, the number of new patient applications that were received by the CCD was 26 and 49 patient renewal applications. We issued 70 patient cards so you can see how quickly we are able to process those renewals and some of the applications as well. For caregiver applications, 16 were received last week and renewal applications, 25 were received. We approved five caregiver applications and two dispensary employee cards. So this was all just in the span of five days last week. And then just a few facts about our staff processing. First, we have that the medical staff is currently processing applications that were received on June 21st and later. So our backlog is really not very long at all. And then some point in time data showing the difference in the number of applicants, the total number of registered patients this year as opposed to last year. So as of July 11th, there were 4,321 registered patients, which is a little over 200 less than last year at the same time. So July 11th of last year, there were 4,556. Some additional point in time data about registered caregivers. So this year, there were 376 registered caregivers on July 11th last year, 504. So again, about 130 decline as of this year compared to last year. So that's a little bit of information about our medical program. Happy to hear feedback on that and what else the board would like to see in a weekly register. Any questions about that before I move on? Well, I remember that you did a survey a few months ago. Did that capture why the difference in the numbers between last year and this year, why there are 130, 200 less? I don't think that the survey data drilled down that deeply. It did demonstrate that there was overall pretty high satisfaction with the program. So I think that we can count on the bulk of that loss not being due to any dissatisfaction program. But I don't believe there were any additional questions that kind of identified specifically why people were dropping out of the program. I think with every adult, adult youth state coming online, there's historically a difference. People on the medical registry, but it took a first reaction. My assumption is that it's a combination of things. People either no longer have the symptoms or are no longer ill for whatever they've passed away or could be a number of things. So I'll move on to pre-qualifications. We don't have any pre-qualification applications up for approval today. But here's a picture of our total numbers approved for pre-qualification where 216 ultimately. I don't think we're going to see many more. I think we have completed all of our stragglers up. Sounds like we might have two more stragglers coming in. I think maybe the next week. I'll move on to license applications. So you'll see this is our dataset here. Looks a little bit different because we've split out now our cultivation tiers. So they're no longer combined tier one and two. And we also have employee ID cards up here at the top. So we have some new information and also some additional statuses. You can see we've added the withdrawn status to the table as well. So see here we've got 21 outdoor cultivators pending board review today which is quite impressive. And this is the total picture here at the bottom. We'll hardly fit it all on the screen. You can see that we have nearly 60 applicants that have been either approved or had their license issued up to 58 there. And we've got another 29 applications that are up for the board's review today. So I'll move on to that portion of the register. As always, this list of applicants that staff is recommending for licensure have all demonstrated compliance with the requirements for a cannabis establishment license that's contained both in our rules and also in statute. So I will go through them. So first up we have Birdman Incorporated. Second is Cleary Farm Cannabis LLC. Third is Life Horizons Farm. And I will mention the license type in tier two as I go through. So the first was an indoor tier one, second outdoor tier one, third outdoor tier one. Number four is Bud Bird Farm which is an outdoor tier one. Fifth is Dirt Rich Farms LLC, a mixed tier one. Six is 1958 LLC, a mixed tier one. Seven is Highly Rooted, an outdoor tier one. Eight is Field Buzz LLC, an outdoor tier one. Nine is Trichome Vermont, an outdoor tier one. Ten is Grass Queen Incorporated, an indoor tier two. Eleven is Vermont LTC Grow, an outdoor tier one. Twelve is Peanuts Garden LLC, an outdoor tier one. Thirteen is Encore Herbal LLC, an outdoor tier one. Fourteen is El Pasik Farm, an outdoor tier one. Fifteen is Backwoods Cultivation, an outdoor tier one. Sixteen is Sunroads Farm LLC, an outdoor tier one. Seventeen is Highnoon Cultivators, an outdoor tier one. Eighteen is Montwood Hollow, an outdoor tier one. Nineteen is Last Minute Farm, an outdoor tier one. Twenty is Midnight Farm, a mixed tier one. Twenty one is Big Buds LLC, an outdoor tier one. Twenty two is Phytophysics LLC, an outdoor tier one. Twenty three is Cannamentals, an outdoor tier one. Twenty four is Tea Time Herbal Company LLC, an outdoor tier one. Twenty five is Green of Green Farms LLC, an outdoor tier one. Twenty six is Forty Five North Nurseries, an outdoor tier one. Twenty seven is Serene Products, an outdoor tier one. Twenty eight is Hiddenly Homestead, an outdoor tier one. Twenty nine is Full Circle Farm LLC, a mixed tier four. And that is your list of applicants that staff are recommending for licensure this week. Awesome. It is awesome. So that you can see the impact of staff getting through the entire list of outdoor cultivators last week. I have a whole bunch up for licensure. Not as much resources devoted to pre-qualification, yet I think it's thanks for moving through the process a little easier for staff. Okay, so I'm going to move on to the social equity portion of our register. So we have our numbers here. You can see one social equity applicant is their license is pending the board's review. Their application is pending the board's review. And we've approved 11 and 13 have been issued. So the majority of our social equity applicants are in either incomplete or resubmitted status. So this week we have two recommendations for social equity status. And we have two recommendations for denial of social equity status. So I'll start with the recommendations for approval of social equity status first is submission number 462, which is an indoor tier three cultivators. Staff is recommending social equity status for this applicant because they meet the criteria for social equity business applicant as defined in board rule. And second is submission number 536, which is an indoor tier two cultivation applicants. And staff also recommend this applicant for social equity status because they meet the criteria for social equity individual applicant as defined by board rule. And here are recommendations for denial. So first is submission number 442 and that is a mixed tier two cultivation applicant. And second is submission number 467, which is a mixed tier five cultivation applicant. And staff are recommending social equity status denial for both of these applicants because they don't meet the criteria for social equity individual applicants as defined in board rule. The second submission number on this list is an applicant that we denied for social equity status at a prior board meeting. And we are reexamining this applicant's case for social equity. And staff has put together some information for the board for your review. And the board may want to consider this applicant an executive session today. Great. So why don't we do that? Any idea how long? You know, our executive sessions tend to take a little longer than we think they will. So I would say about 20 minutes. 20 minutes? Okay. When we say 25 minutes, you come back at 2 o'clock. Is there a motion to go into executive session? I move that the CCP go into executive session to consider confidential attorney client communications made for the purposes of providing professional legal services to the body. And that executive session is required because premature general public knowledge regarding such communications would clearly place the board as substantial disadvantage. I further move that the board invites Susana Davis, Executive Director of Racial Equity for the State of Vermont, into executive session. Seconded. All in favor? All right. Okay. So we're going to move to executive session. Our goal is to be back at 2 o'clock. Again, we're going to hear some further detail from our staff regarding our referral to the board to deny social equity status for one of our prospective licensees. Susana Davis is going to join us for that conversation. So Nellie, if you're ready, if you wouldn't mind putting up our way message or our executive session away message, and we will turn off our camera and video and have that conversation. Yep. I'm just getting that up now. Yeah. Just we won't make any decisions in that executive session. We'll hear the kind of advice and the reasoning behind the referral. And then when we come out of executive session, we'll vote on whether we accept that recommendation or not. Okay. So we're back from executive session. For the record, it's 2 o'clock PM on July 13th, 2022. So really what happened there is we had an applicant apply for social equity status under the criteria that the applicant was from a community that had been disproportionately impacted by cannabis provision and the applicant himself had been disproportionately impacted. And so the board heard the staff recommendation. We heard some rationale. And I think we're ready to make a decision, but I would like to just in case there is a split vote, I would like to just focus on approving the full license applications first. So is there a motion to approve the staff recommendations on licensure? I move that the board accept each of the recommendations for licensing approval as presented to us by staff in this meeting. Seconded. All in favor? Aye. And applications. It's a big dober. Now is there a motion to approve the staff recommendations on social equity status? I move that the board accept each of the recommendations for approval and denial of social equity status as presented to us by staff in this meeting. I'll second. In favor? Aye. Okay. Great. So the last thing on our agenda for today is public comment and we will do this the same way we always do. We'll start with the folks that joined by the video link and you can raise your virtual hand. We'll try our best to call on you in the order that you raise your hands. We don't generally answer questions directly during these but we do appreciate hearing people's questions because it helps kind of build our guidance and you know oftentimes we'll address them at questions that we get at the next meeting. But we'll start with people that joined by the link. Please raise your virtual hand. Nellie will call on you in the order that you raised it and then we'll move to people who joined via phone. First we have MT. MT if you want to unmute yourself. All right. We can move on and look back to them. Dave is next. Hi. First kudos to staff for getting through 29. I can tell by the emails that I'm getting that these folks are working super hard long hours. So you know just it's noticed. It's appreciated. Thank you staff. On the on Kyle's discussion earlier regarding package approvals what I'm getting from this is that you guys are going to be approving specific packaging like manufacturer and model numbers. And I'm wondering whether like substantially similar equivalents can also be assumed to be approved. So if you know you know brand X and brand Y but it's really the same darn thing with the same specs whether that's something that the board could consider also allowing. I'm throwing that out there. I didn't think of this myself until just now when Kyle was going earlier. So something to think about Kyle. Maybe we can talk about it later. But I feel like there's maybe some burden on the regulators that could be lifted as well as some benefit to the industry at large. So I'm throwing that out there. We'll talk to you later. Thanks Dave. Peter. Hi there. Can you guys hear me now. Yes. Can you guys hear me. We haven't hear you yet. Oh good. Talk about that. So I just wanted to talk about the Vatex real quick since it came up and how it never was and is not intended for cannabis. And furthermore the current dispensaries don't pay it on the exact same items that are sold in other stores. I was working with this with Debbie Ingram years ago and she thought it was going to be as simple as just a rewording and then an attorney which she still may be Rebecca Wasserman. She also confirmed that this was never intended for cannabis and then right before she was about to change the wording Debbie Ingram didn't get reelected and then everything just fell apart. And it was incredibly frustrating. And since then also there's been this nationwide ban on jewels. I realize that's held up for a minute. But you know that's what this was really intended for anyway. So it's almost like the law that this was intended for the product this was intended for is already being dealt with separately. This is not intended for cannabis but short of running for office. I just don't know what else to do. That's all. Thank you. Thanks to you. Ben. Good afternoon. Can you guys hear me. Yes. Yeah. Great. Well hey thanks for keeping up all the good work you guys. Much appreciated by everybody. My comment today is about some testing requirements. So I've started a certification agency for cannabis growers in the state called Green Star Vermont. And I've had some clients approach me. There is at least one other certification agency which I will not name that is claiming that if you are part of its program and you do get your certification that after you've gone through your pesticide testing and you're all of your heavy metals testing that with that you will not need to get on every single cannabis sample the whole panel for pesticides and heavy metals if you've gone through that program. And I communicated with you guys need to hold me that such a thing does not exist. And I was just kind of looking for further clarification on this point for myself and the clients who are asking me about this. Thanks so much for everything you're doing. Yeah thanks Ben. Anyone else who joined via the link just feel free or raise your virtual hands and you know once we get through you we'll move to the folks that joined via the phone. Yareem. Yes hello. Yareem Plenty is with Rayclover Analytics. One thing with the THC caps and other amuletion that you can bring to the state is that the THC caps again it's going to put on unnecessary burn on any manufacturer because if it comes up if they bring the product to our testing lab and it's over 60 percent we're going to have to turn around tell them that this product has to be treated to lower the THC amount. And then they're going to have to come back and then we're going to have to do a full panel testing again on that same product because the product that they added to the THC high product to lower it may not have been tested before for these things that we're looking at. So we are looking at double testing everything that is over 60 percent which means that we're talking about a thousand close to a thousand dollars per product that it's manufactured. The other thing I want to touch on is I do I was looking myself for some clarification about the green certification as I know you guys have nobody yet certified to be able to have a green green green green grown certification through you guys yet. But that's all I have but thank you very much. Thanks here. So anyone else who joined via the link just raise your virtual hand but we'll move on to people that joined by the phone. If you joined by the phone and have a public comment just hit star six to unmute yourself. Now are you seeing anyone unmute. I am not. No. And we will close the public comment window. Kyle did you want to respond to any. Yeah I can respond to the plastic conversation and David's point well taken. I think it's a you know and we can talk here but we can we can talk offline too. I think it's a careful balance on on doing as you're suggesting as you're suggesting for instance let's say somebody puts for the mason jar with a screw top with a little bit of plastic to seal or it has a buckle. Another person puts for the ball jar with the same type of set of facts and situations. I can see that being something that you're you're pointing to and wondering if it's necessary. But if we're thinking about you know more plastic being used than that and even if it's the same feedstock a lot of the you know sourcing of that resin or you know there's a lot of proprietary information that goes into making a lot of these next gen products. It's kind of hard to kind of situates a similar similarly situate you know two products but but I think your point is taken at points of the supply chain and I think we can we can make that determination um you know when it's necessary. I haven't seen any kind of duplicative I've seen the same product come through on the waiver form. I haven't seen two that are so similar um you know from a mason jar ball jar kind of you know example um come forward yet. So I guess you know I'll give you the lawyer answer back it depends. On the on the pesticide language you know and and we put that language into our rags to kind of help alleviate some some costs and I've talked with some experts and some certifiers um that work in the cannabis space and and those that work outside the cannabis space to kind of understand what we should be looking for because I don't want to steer anybody to one specific company. I will say nobody has achieved that certification um Ben. So whatever is telling folks that I hope that they they stop until they actually get that um okay or that green light from the board but it's going to come back to what ISO you know certifications you either have or work towards you know your your background your expertise your demonstrated you know ability to succeed in doing so and I know that you're saying you're starting a company and that's really exciting and I'm not trying to move you out of that conversation by any stretch but we're going to need to see you know what what your company's mission is and what certifications you have are working towards um to to give us that trust to to know that it is pesticide free um and a lot of it will boil down and you know I'm hopeful that you can talk with Kerry Jigar when he starts on Monday a lot of it's going to be boiling down into how we really um I think define and look at the word pesticide and what that actually means because even organic pesticides depending on how broad you how broad strokes you want to um you know utilize that definition um and it'll be hard to be completely a pesticide free in some in some cases but again it boils down to some guidance decisions that we have to make and we'll have some guidance hopefully coming out of our compliance team on how to achieve that certification because I I full know and I'm sure everybody else does that's listening that that's one of the most expensive parts of of getting your product tested so um you know more to come but nobody has achieved that that standard with us yet all right um well we're at the end of our agenda any final concluding thoughts I think there are final I think there might be another licensee that was left off the list okay and inadvertently okay one that's being recommended for approval yes yes okay yes okay how to bring left what kind of can you give that information if you are okay with that mr chair that's so we have so yeah essentially um I'm getting word that we uh inadvertently left one application and off the list that is ready to go and so if you can just give us the basic name of the company and um the the tier um the type of license and uh where that's where it's located we will go to approve or deny based upon the staff recommendation and outdoor cultivator tier two in iris burg and the business name is ventures llc for montawanna ventures llc it's a standard application okay um and the recommendation from the staff is to approve okay uh is there a motion I move that the board accept the recommendation of the staff okay I second all in favor hi hi okay so that is not reflected on our registry right now correct but it will be before we post it for our on our website it also makes an even 30 right yeah for all you folks still listening got 30 today and not 29 all right and is that we didn't have to call on no it was part of the agenda was already approving the staff's recommendation so it's fine okay well thank you to staff for flagging that so we can get this person moving through the process um today instead of next Wednesday so that's exciting 30 is the new I won't say it no all right well I won't have anything else so I will adjourn this meeting thank you all for attending