 Technically, you're so clever ahead of the sun. It's so reasonable. It's so refreshing, I think. I didn't think that. I didn't think that. I mean, I brought paper. Good morning, you. Good morning. I'm sorry. I brought paper, Madam Chair. I hope so. Well, thank you for having me. And I feel embarrassed to hand out paper with all this technology. Because we're a green committee today. There's a lot of extra copies. This is basically my floor report on the field. And you're welcome to ask any questions you have. I'm very happy that the Government Operations Committee has invited me to come here and testify. My name is Dick Sears, Chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, and Senator from Bennington County. So with that, would you like me to start? Yes. Go right ahead. Okay. Well, thank you. For adults in Vermont, cannabis is a legal product. Each year, a significant number of Vermont adults choose to spend hundreds of millions of dollars purchasing the product from a listed market. Here are from the neighboring state of Massachusetts where there is a regulated market. Representative Brownell knows that well. We have a store in Williamstown, Main Street of Williamstown, which is about four miles from his home. That's right. Vermont's current law is awkward because it has legalized the product without creating any safe legal access to it. We saw what this leads to in the news about a store on Church Street Marketplace in Burlington being raided for selling marijuana products. The Attorney General recently changed his position to fully supporting the creation of a regulated market citing the need for consumer protection and open, transparent, and smart approach to public protection. The path to cannabis consumer and public protection has been incremental and well-informed in Vermont. Since 2006, we have taken a step-by-step approach to reform starting with the medical marijuana laws, creation of a regulated dispensary market, decriminalization, and finally legalization. S-54 is grounded in the uniquely Vermont approach and benefits from the research conducted by the Governor's Commission on Marijuana. I might add that much of this bill is a part of what was S-241 that we passed several years ago in the Senate. The Governor's Commission report, as well as information, particularly from Massachusetts, which has got a Cannabis Control Board is moving in the same direction. I was watching a public TV show with two senators and a representative, and the senator said, well, this bill is about consumer protection. The representative said it's about social justice. And another one said it's about the strict market regulations. And I thought all three are right. That's what this bill is about. So the consumer protection features of the bill are replacing the illicit market with a strictly regulated market, provide safe access to predictable and consistent products, information tools for informed responsible consumption, mandatory third-party testing requirements. This is particularly important with edibles. We found that edibles are being sold on the street today and nobody has any idea what the potency is with those edibles. So you may hear a lot of testimony about, oh, don't allow edibles. We've already got them. I'm sorry. There's strict labeling requirements showing potency, requirements for child-resistant packaging, bans on advertising that appeals to children and coverage over consumption, and makes false claims. There are rules related to manufacturing of single-serve edible products, a ban on cannabis products bundled with non-cannabis products. That's that, particularly with the CBD oil from hemp that is now being sold widely. We want to make sure that people realize what it is they're purchasing is not hemp-related. It's actually marijuana-related. And there's a ban on cannabis products that include alcohol or tobacco. There's another part of the illicit market today. There's strict market regulation. There's new dedicated and expert regulatory bodies created. A seed sale tracking regulation is required. Constraints favoring a Vermont-scale business model. There's limited regulated business operating licenses. There are criminal background checks for licensing. People have to be at least 21 to gain access to stores to purchase or possess marijuana. The bans on the gifting for sales loophole, which many of you may be familiar with, where you buy a t-shirt for $50 when you are gifted a certain amount of marijuana. That's been going on in Vermont. Actually, I saw something on Facebook Nelson yesterday and somebody who's operating a little club. Membership only, but clearly, in Beddington are planning on charging you a fee, and that is also what's here. The banned marketing that appeals to children and youth provides for criminal background checks for employees and licenses, allows municipalities to opt out of hosting cannabis businesses and this was a great deal of debate in the Senate Judiciary Committee about the as well as Senate government opts about whether they're knocked in or are knocked out. Obviously, we chose the opt process and you may hear some testimony from the league and others about which way they would like to go. The Senate chose the opt. We were afraid that we'd get into situations like they've had in Colorado where many communities won't bring it in but they want the revenue from it. It requires education of cannabis businesses related to enforcement and employment training and rules related to security and health and safety requirements for cannabis businesses. I want to say a little bit about what's not in the bill which is public protection and the roadway safety that we've all heard a lot about. If there are, in fact, as the RAND report cited, 80,000 Vermont is currently using marijuana. I suggest we already have a road safety problem and we should deal with that separately. But Vermont's DUI or impaired law is more of the strictest in the country. It is applicable to all, i.e. prescription drugs, marijuana, legal drugs. It is against the law to drive impaired to the slightest degree. I have to remind folks of that. The slightest degree standard was enacted in 2015 and is a nearly zero-tolerance standard. So while we all assume for alcohol it's .08, it can be a .02 if you are showing signs of being impaired. That's what the zero tolerance means. You can be charged with a DUI. I think a lot of folks don't realize how tough our laws are currently. Social equity and social justice that I spoke of really, there's a priority for small local producers to ensure a diverse marketplace. It mandates one of the control board members have a background in social justice. Priority is given to licensed applicants that provide good wages, benefits, environmental and clean energy programs. Nonviolent drug offenses will not automatically disqualify applicants. Regulatory requirements unique to small growers. And priority for applicants that are Vermont residents. There's consideration of geographic distribution of cannabis establishments to allow for even distribution of cannabis businesses throughout the state. The bill prioritizes women and minority-owned businesses and career-advanced investment. We established a 16% tax rate to help undercut the illicit market, trying to keep it as low as possible. And a 2% local auction tax to help, it's an uptude to help municipalities with implementation. Massachusetts I believe has a 3%. And what they found there was they also had what's called host agreements and they wanted to avoid that. And the host agreements, for example, in North Hampton Mass, somebody applied for a license and they said, oh yeah, if you can donate $100,000 to the Grills and Boys Club we'd be happy to work on you with a license. We did talk to a device chair of the select board in the Berkshires. Was it Great Barrington? Great Barrington. Yeah, it should be on the list. He was fascinating to talk to because he's been through the local government piece. He said their biggest problem really has been parking. People parking in places that they shouldn't. I'm not going to walk through the bill, but I'm happy to try to answer any questions about our bill. Yes, Jim. Thank you, Senator. In terms of the setup and the structure, you indicated that you looked to Massachusetts in terms of the cannabis control board. We've heard and we haven't dug down to a lot of the details, but a number of states have done it differently like under perhaps their liquor control board or some other mechanism today as you know currently we have another medical marijuana under the Department of Public Service. I'm curious as to what made you go in that direction of setting up a new entity. A lot of it was done. A lot of that decision-making was from the committee on government operations, but we were worried in judiciary that if we put it under liquor control that it wouldn't get the attention it needed because there's a lot... I mean, the bill requires a lot of rulemaking and that board is going to have a lot of responsibility to develop the rules for the implementation, particularly in the first year and a half. We felt at least at this point that it should be its own separate control board. Now, there was some discussion about putting it under... actually putting it under agriculture and not liquor control because agriculture, in fact, the hemp is under agriculture. Agriculture will have a role in the testing and so that was one consideration. I think there are, you know, there's a variety of ways to go about it. I don't know that our... it's perfect that we did model it after Massachusetts. We started out with a five-member board and then cut it to three in the appropriation process, only because you're spending the money for the Canada's control board before you have any revenue. So it was a question of how much do you want to spend in anticipation of future revenues? Thank you. Good morning, Senator Sears. I'm curious to know how your vision would be about how this is going to interact with the homegrown component of this and that I know there's been a fair amount of discussion about the black market, the illicit market. One, does this do anything to address that issue as far as will people still be allowed to... People would still be allowed to grow as they are currently. I liken it to my effort to grow tomatoes every summer. And sometimes I am very unsuccessful and I can go to the market and buy tomatoes, but if I were growing, which I'm not going to be doing by the way, growing marijuana, I have to go to the black market currently. If I looked at what I spent to grow tomatoes in the summer versus what I would spend in the market, I'm obviously not making a good financial decision. You know, one of the things... We went to a couple of American marijuana dispensers that we currently have, and they were both pretty clear about that since the passage of the homegrown, they've seen a 25 to 30% decrease in their business, so that would sort of make you think that more people are growing their own tomatoes. Well, I think it's that, now that it's legal, both the illicit market and the ability to go to other states. The ability to go to Massachusetts right now, but it won't be long before they can go to Connecticut, Rhode Island, New York, perhaps New Jersey, maybe New Hampshire, Harvard and Maine, so I think it's going to be all around us. So that's going to cut into the medical dispensary. One advantage of being a medical card recipient would be you're allowed under another bill, you're allowed to grow a little bit more, but you don't pay the taxes. So if I happen to grow some of my own, I have the space and the inclination, and you're a good friend of mine, and would it be illegal for me to work something out with you or whatever you give me goes towards my tax bill? Nope. I cannot charge you for it. It's, you know, and it has to be under an ounce. So it wouldn't be, it would still be illegal. I mean, you can share. There's nothing such as you can't share. It's the sale or the gift in person, some other thing, if you said. Thank you. Any other questions for the senator? Morning, senator. Morning. Welcome to the literature. Thank you. They've elected after, or appointed after a few of us that have already been elected. Thank you. My concern is about children, young people, and with the potency of cannabis today, it certainly has a very negative impact when young users are involved. So how important do you think it is in terms of educating young people about the impact of using, with the hope of them, consider using later when their bodies are able to handle it? Well, I think we all should be concerned about youngsters, particularly the younger they are. Referred evidence even under 25 is probably in their brains still developing and there's problems. I answer that in two ways. One is tremendously important. However, if the governor, with all due respect to the governor, if the governor thought it was critically important, he would have put $6 million into his budget for prevention. That's what his health commissioner has suggested for prevention. And I think you, it's fine to talk that way and I have no problem with spending that $6 million. The commission actually recommended, I believe $23 million on prevention and treatment from the cannabis sales. So, you know, I totally agree. But it's here today. And ignoring that it's here today is a mistake to me. And as you know, there's very little the legislature can do to come up with $6 million of new money. So, you know, that's my response to it. I totally agree with everyone who thinks we should be putting more into prevention. On that topic, I happened across a press conference yesterday where the secretary of human services was talking about the need for a comprehensive prevention program. Not just the, you know, do not do this, not do that, but what are the alternatives for our youth? And I think I can appreciate that we should all be thinking about how we are prioritizing the things that we want to provide for young people as healthy alternatives and not just the, no, no, no. Appreciate that. Bob, you have a question and then we should probably let Senator Sears go on with his way. In the context of Vermont marketing its brand, in some sections of the country, Vermont is already known. Has there been any discussion with the administration or marketing or anybody else whether this is going to end up being an issue? I think we're hopeful that the regulations and the social justice portion of the bill will result in something similar to the crap brewery industry in Vermont. And as an interesting anecdote, Senator Ash was in Seattle visiting a friend and went into one of the CBD stores. And there was a Vermont product, Vermont made product there and they said that was one of their best sellers. I think the Vermont brand could be used in many ways in this. And that's where the importance of testing potency comes in to me. I don't, people talk to a lot of people about the illicit market and they have no idea what the potency is and the product they're buying and no idea what it might be like. But I think there's, you know, we have to recognize that the market is here. People are buying it. The people that are selling it are not necessarily the most ruthless people in our state. I appreciate the work that you all have done on this bill. Thank you. And I also very much appreciate the way you've laid it out to help us understand your focus on consumer protection and market regulation. Again, you know, we always know there will be differences between the house and the center and how we do it as long as the goal is the same and that is to bring a product, bring social justice, shoe protection, product that people don't want to use. Thank you very much, Rob. Thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you. We have Graham and Stephanie here now to go through the fiscal note on S54 and so, Jim, you're going to need to fire up that iPad again because I'm guessing Stephanie is electronic. Okay. Stephanie is human. Her presentation is electronic. Thank you. So I am the sort of drive, what's the cost of the board, the cost of three-year period, estimate person. And Graham is the tax revenue estimate person. Okay. Oh, no. So the board was structured in a certain way when the bill came out of the Judiciary Committee and then it was restructured in the Senate Appropriations Committee. That's why there's two estimates in the fiscal note. The board was a five-member board at a lower pay structure in the Judiciary Committee and was decided to be a three-member board member, three members of the board as it came out of the Senate Appropriations at a higher salary level. And so I can give you a little bit of detail about the cost estimate of the board. The first-year cost is not a full-year cost because the members are anticipated to come on late August, September, and then the executive director and the executive assistant a month or two later. So that's the reason that there's, and then there's also some other components of the board cost. So would that be helpful to the committee just to understand the component pieces of that? Okay. So three members of the board, the chair is paid about $107,000, $80,000. It was pegged to 66% of a superior court judge and then the other two members at 50%. So those would be about $80,000 of a salary. I'm just talking the salary, not the fully loaded cost of the position. The executive director and the executive assistant are both anticipated to not be entry-level type positions. So the executive director position is comparable to the chair in salary. And the executive assistant would be around the $70,000, $71,000 salary. So that's an experienced executive assistant. And that's the salary structure in the Senate appropriations estimate. In addition to the salary, there's employees with full benefits. And that's at a 40% estimate. That's an estimate that assumes people pick the family health plan. That's the biggest driver of a benefit, low cost. In addition to the salaries of the board, I've estimated operating costs because it'll meet some space and computers and filming, et cetera. And what I did is I looked at several boards around the state. The natural resource board operating expense had been consistently about $500,000. I looked at the size of their sort of operation versus a five-man operation and proportionally allocated that. So I have about $125,000 a year for operating expenses for the board. And I know the commissioner of buildings was wondering if there was a piece included in that for fee-for-space and rent. And I did inform them that that would be probably in the $47,000 a year range as a part of that estimate. The other two pieces that I'm including in that estimate are some general counsel assistance, not necessarily position, but some general counsel assistance across the three years that's declining, heavier at the front part. And then also some contracting, ability to contract that's also declining over the three years. That's why even though the salaries roll out full, it steps down a little bit over the three years. So that's the source of what is in the bill as it passed out of the senate an $810,000 operation estimated to be in that 960 and then actually dropping because of the contracting costs and some of the general counsel falls off in the third year more. Two other pieces that I wanted to speak to about the bill as it came out of the senate. So these, as it's structured in the senate, it's spending in anticipation of receipts into the cannabis special fund. So there are no receipts in it against which to lodge the $810,000 in $20,000. We think there will be some receipts related to fees in $21,000. There is language in the bill that allows that fund to be made whole by the tax revenue in the event of the timing so that you actually end FY22 with that funding balance so that you can only anticipate receipts if there are really going to be the receipts that you're spending into there. And so that was the mechanism by which we would cover that event. If the fee revenue estimate is off then those receipts would be there but at some point the tax revenue comes in and so that tax revenue would be making the special fund whole so that fiscally you are sound in the structure. That's the, at the other point I wanted to make sure that I was, the joint fiscal office, me, it was adamant about it in the Senate Appropriations Committee because you need to actually have when you're spending, you're essentially going to be deficit spending into that special fund early on and you want to make sure that you have a plan to come back to balance over time. So you're saying that if the licensing fees don't cover the spending then the tax revenues from the sales will make up the difference at least initially. And it's especially because you're spending you're spending in a year when you don't have so you have to actually pay, the licensing fees have to pay the ongoing and the payoff of the sort of one-time debt that you start out with. And so if that doesn't come to equilibrium on its own the tax revenue helps to get that there. Jim. So Senator Sears talked about the recommendation that you've received about $6 million for education. Is that in here? No, there's no, this is, only this fiscal note only speaks to the cost of operating the board. The proposals related to like the health department requested for expenditure those are not part of this fiscal note. And so the Senate did not include any forward appropriations or recommendations about how the tax revenue, aside from this fiscal, make the special fund fiscally whole, aside from that they did not recommend anything regarding how the tax revenue is expended in this bill. And aside from the cannabis bill in the governor's recommend was there an increase in funding for after school programs or backfilling what we used to use the tobacco fund for in terms of prevention activities in school? I mean that's not in the 20 bill as it's, as it's either proposed by the governor or passed in the House right, passed by the House right now. So getting back to the board part which is in a lot of time and obviously going from a five member to a three member or it really is a change in salaries. I mean there's not a significant change in the total cost. There was not a significant change the salary structure and I didn't bring my detail on the judiciary amendment but the salary structure for all five members was first of all five are the same and it was a lower salary structure I think in the $50,000. Okay so on the staffing we've got an executive director and an executive assistant. Is that it? For the staffing there is an allocation of dollars in my estimate for general counsel. I don't anticipate a position of a general counsel to the board but for purchasing some additional legal assistance because they're very heavy on the the rulemaking and things so but I don't, there are only five positions created. It just seems a little top heavy to me. You've got a three member board and two people doing all the work. But maybe I'm reading it to it. So the nature of the work is the policy forming and the rulemaking and then also setting up the registry. So, and that was the choice of the way the Senate's working. Thank you. Moving back to the deficit spending what agency or department would the deficit spending come out in other words? So it would, this bill sets up a special fund and the appropriation of 810 is out of that special fund so that appropriation in FY20 there's no revenue anticipated into that special fund in 20 so it's got zero revenue and 810 of spending so it ends FY20 at negative 810 and that is essentially floated on the treasury of the state. So out of the cash flow of the state? And then, you know, there'll be an additional thing because it has to carry the interest on that and then it has to pay it back over time and that's the structure. Okay, thank you. It's not something that we really think about all that often. John. I have two questions. The first question, you looked at the fees being collected in Massachusetts to develop this analysis. For the fees side of the revenue and I'm going to turn it over. Did you look at it in other states or just Massachusetts because the senator Sears said this bill is partially modeled on Massachusetts law? The fee structure is on Grand Campbell joint fiscal office. The fee structure bears significantly from state to state so in the absence of actually creating a fee structure within the bill itself and our concern is the joint fiscal office about spending in anticipation of receipts. The fee structure in the bill I don't believe is actually modeled. There's no fee structure to speak up but the actual receipts would be similar to what if the state decided to go with a Massachusetts style fee structure that we anticipate would come to fees. It could be a lot less than that if you went with other state models or more than that if you went with some other state models but I think the bill itself says it has to generate at least the amount listed here. If you did in Massachusetts style the fee structure that's what we estimate would get you there. So it's setting a minimum amount for the recommendation to come back on the fees? So the board wouldn't necessarily have to choose the Massachusetts style they would just have to get to the number here. So my second question is you estimated out three years to FY22 so that's basically standing up the cannabis control board but it's really not having a take on a regulatory position. For example if you compare it to the liquor control board I mean they have law enforcement licensing staff things like that. I mean you're not just going to have an executive director an executive assistant starting to do enforcement as well as licensing. Did you look beyond FY22 at costs? So there is a requirement in the bill for them to come back with what should be the structure of the board looking at that. And so we did not say this is what the world will look like after it stood up and what the costs need will be. There was some question about whether or not you have three full-time employees that are board members but for the liquor board those are paid the $50 a day. So look at other structures and say is this the structure that needs to continue. So we did not that report would be coming and then that would be sort of the next phase of understanding what that would need to be. Thank you. So I'm going to be showing the committee the money from the tax. So the Senate bill has 16% state excise tax with a 2% local option. Our office only estimated the potential revenue from the 16% excise tax. You can see in the table there this is what we estimate will be the revenues beginning in fiscal 22 which will be year one of implementation. We put a range around this because there's quite a bit of uncertainty about how quickly the board will get up and running and how quickly we don't retail stores. And so as you can see it sort of ramps up as you go into year two and three and that's consistent with what we see in other states. So that's sort of the headline summary and I can speak more in the details as the committee wishes but essentially this model is a kind of a model of working together with other states. We work, so when I say we myself and the tax department work together to develop a model in November, December of 2018 as part of the Governor's Marijuana Commission and this model was based upon Colorado's model for estimating their first year receipts which came within 1% of their actual receipts. They estimated 67 million for their first year and they actually received 67.5 million. So they were very close. So we thought that was a pretty good model and we also relied a lot on speaking with our colleagues in Oregon and Washington. So we use Colorado because Colorado is a relatively high usage state like Vermont and it's a relatively high tourism state like Vermont and we use Washington and Oregon because those two states have legal marijuana and they also have cross order issues like we would have with Massachusetts. So these estimates are based upon a slew of different data here including population information from the legislative commas the U.S. Census Bureau the usage of marijuana from the National Survey of Drug Use and Health we estimated the price of cannabis using a scientific website called priceofweed.com but that's actually what Colorado has used and used in their model. Rob, as a question. So the very first screen that you saw about the revenue licensing. Yes. And then this one is around just the retail sales correct. The tax. Yeah. Thank you. Sorry. The National Survey of Drug Use and Health was using this which showed that Vermont has the highest usage rate in the country and higher than Colorado. There are various reports put up in Colorado, Oregon and Washington about post-legalization of open usage in those states. So there's two terms we talk about when we estimate revenue. The prevalence will help percentage of your population if you used it and then consumption which is for those people who do use it how much do they consume and so those are the two variables that we try to estimate we use other states data for. So I just want to clarify. Were the highest on the medical marijuana or were the highest on recreational marijuana? Were the highest. So the survey says have you used marijuana within the past month or three months and the percentage of our population that has said yes to that question is the highest in the country. So that's answering the prevalence question. They didn't ask me. So it's answering the prevalence question. So we know that it's something around 35, 37% answered yes to that question but we don't know whether they're heavy users or whether they use it just a little bit. So that's why we use information from the other states to get a sense of in a legal market how much were they seen in their states. And then we had to make some of the following assumptions here. We estimated that consumption by residents so bar models broken down by both resident usage and travelers who would come to the state of the month that residents would consume between five or six ounces a year. Colorado, their estimate was about they did a study about six ounces per year and Washington was around just over six I think. We, in all the other states the price of cannabis fell precipitously upon legalization. However, the revenues continued to grow which sort of means that you know even when the price is going down as the market goes more and more mature you see more and more sales and more and more revenue. With that price drop were they aware of how that affected the black market? Yeah, so the next bullet point there Oregon saw their black market fall off a cliff when that happened. Our estimate is that our market would be still 20% of the market yet in a fully mature market so this is year two we say of legalization about 20% of the market. Oregon's about 15% right now. Yeah, how many of these states have also legalized people to grow their own and process it in a home when you're doing this type of price? You know, I'm not sure whether what the status of legal home growing is in our model we estimated that 10% of remotors will continue to home grow. Oregon's is about 8% right now so we think ours a little bit higher because of that fact that we legalized on a home growing basis we legalized that possession before actual retail sales and so we thought that ours would be a little bit higher if you assume the higher home grow rate then it would be lower revenue. So I'm guessing that possibly legislative council has a sense of that. So all of the states allow home grow except for Washington state you also have and you have a chart with whatever the certain limits are in terms of the states that allow home grow remot has the either equal to or the smallest number of plants that we allow for folks to grow I think we also have to factor in that a number of these states that are all passed by battle initiatives what predated the recreational the adult use commercial market was medical initiatives and so a lot of those states also have very loose kind of medical laws that predate the commercial so you can so you have what you can maybe talk about about kind of the gray market so you have like the illegal market and then you have this other kind of fuzzy space where there are a lot of people who are able to grow under the medical provisions and some of that is closed up since they brought on the commercial but there are still some things that are different between like what Vermont has which is a very very controlled medical program versus what they have in some other states that probably affect some of the numbers the floor is here where's the ceiling in terms of authorization for a number of home grown how large capacity did other states do other states I don't have to look and see but I know that Colorado and I think that somebody I can take a look at it but it used to be able to used to be able to grow for a lot of plants and for a number of people same in Maine so I'd have to go back and take a look at what's kind of closed if they've closed some of that up but some of it has been quite quite large and I think that's one of the issues around how much you move the illegal or illicit market into the targeted market John and then Rob so, Graham please you said that Oregon's black market sort of declined fairly dramatically do we know why? when I spoke to their analysts they said it was because of the price drop of that not just the actual dollar price drop but also just the theoretical costs you don't risk being caught by going and purchasing the legal substance in a store and so they said that the legal market had competitive prices it didn't have the cost of potentially having a fine or even going to jail and so that was their explanation to the extent that the full story I was just wondering if there's some distinction between Oregon and how they chose to regulate marijuana in Colorado and Washington state and some of the other states that have regulated Massachusetts just I'm just interesting because obviously you know curbing the black market I think is important to do in this bill so if there's any lessons to be learned from other states that would be great yeah I mean Oregon's tax rate is 17% I believe so it's quite close to this but they also charge their sales tax to it as well so they would have a higher tax rate than you would have and so do we have data on all the states taxation of marijuana both full tax is not just a special marijuana tax but if there's a sales tax charge if there's a local option tax just for comparative purposes you will okay great yeah I think it's worth having us remember that in addition to the levers around taxation that the illicit market can be reduced by intentionally trying to bring those growers above board you know giving them an opportunity to to come into the legal grow framework and I don't know I don't know how far you all have gone in terms of trying to understand what the marijuana market looks like in your own home districts but and who knows whether they would even invite you in but start asking around because it's kind of interesting to understand how some of these operations have been have been developing they don't want legalization yes right they might not want to because they might like to be able to continue doing what they're doing on the other hand if we're looking at a regulated product that is safe and predictable for consumers I think it's a good idea to figure out how to how to bring those folks above board Rob had a question then Nelson I have to blame my question on Senator Sears because I never thought I would be comparing marijuana to tomatoes but my question is what is the shelf life let's say that I am one of those homegrown types that grows my own marijuana how long is that product good for do you have any idea I have no idea you have a sweet answer depends upon how well it's dried or processed I think that's a question we could ask our dispensaries because they've been working in this marketplace for a while thank you Nelson tell them how you can it's preserving my question is what impact did you see in these other states and other type drugs when they legalized this that's a very good question that's not something we asked like you're talking about alcohol consumption or even other illicit drugs that's not something we looked at that's something that we considered at least for the revenue that we'll use marijuana more that they drank less we might see less alcohol related revenues but in the experience of the other states that I asked Colorado about it they didn't they tracked actively where they saw a specific decline but they didn't see like their alcohol their alcohol taxes fall off a cliff but they couldn't definitively say that they didn't want to have an impact on their tobacco or sorry they're what I'm looking at is other illicit drugs that have been sold out there once you legalize what impact does it have on the dealer that's probably selling the motor to the stuff yeah I don't know if I have a good answer to that hard to have a fiscal analysis of that yeah well how's the crime rate changed I think those are probably best answered by people you know in public safety you know we can do some exploration of that so put that question in your parking lot and we'll make sure that we come back to it Bob maybe another part of my question we had discussion about the security of our voter lists some of the things we're doing in other states where they have done this to the Fetch Committee that's a good question that's a policy question so we should actually let them get back to their their fiscal analysis but put that on the list of questions to ask legislative council I think those are all really good questions they're there to help you with that there's one more assumption I wanted to add that we assumed remember I talked about prevalence and consumption we assumed that although Vermont has high prevalence that our consumption was a little bit lower than other states because our population is older we have our median age I think is 8 years less than Colorado's and it's I think 4 or so years less than Oregon and Washington so under the assumption that older users consume a little bit less and modestly less we're not talking a huge cutoff but and then finally so the question is how does this estimate compare to what other states did and this is someone that we go to Steph and I go to these fiscal analysts conferences they say figure out ways to show your results or whatever in interesting ways so this chart what it attempts to say is okay what if Colorado Oregon had the same population and tax rate as we are proposing in S54 based upon their actual revenues that they've brought in and their taxable sales what would that equate to Vermont so what this is showing you so the Vermont estimate range is that high low you see and you can see year 1, 2 and 3 what we're saying is that we're going to be relatively similar to these other states the high end so the high end of year 1 basically says that we'll be a Colorado we'll be a Colorado type state and if on the high end of year 3 it means that we'll be basically Colorado on the low end will be a little less than Washington so Washington in year 1 here theirs was passed by the outlet initiative and there was not a whole lot of thought that went into it but they had a really slow start up time and you can see their line is pretty steeper so the second year they sort of put in the rules and stuff and the licenses and that's when they started seeing revenue so year 1 here the low for Vermont would be that we saw slow licensing and we saw slow retail sales because of that licensing and so it took us a little bit to get going year 1 of high means like Colorado everyone flocked to us because it's a tourism state Vermont has a specific appeal so at the low end year 1 you're saying 4 million for Vermont which once you take out the revenue that you need to backfill the fund you're not looking at a whole lot of extra revenue on that low end to do some of the prevention and public health outreach that we were talking about earlier not with that year year 1 which is 2022 in this picture that would be true if we make the low end and we have a deficit in the fund you're not likely to have much in the way of excess capacity in that attack and so I think you'll hear a lot of talk about oh the other so and so state had made this much money in revenue this many in sales everyone be mindful you have to adjust their population and just by tax rate that's essentially what this tries to do this model was created in mid December there's since been some news reports from Massachusetts and California that their first year estimates have been ambitious they've missed because their licensing is taking longer to get up and going I'm not saying that these we're going to be towards the lower end but the more data that we get that shows other states legalization and their first year process I'm not saying that we would have those issues but it's something that we would keep our eye on potentially revise this and going forward with new data so how did your assumptions account for remarks, demographic shifts in terms of slow population growth becoming a much greater state as you mentioned older people you know consume yeah it's in two areas one is we adjusted the consumption level down relative to the other states for that older population and two the population the sort of cornerstone of these estimates is the population of Vermont and then from there we backed out marijuana users from from the national survey drug use and health that prevalence question had to use marijuana in the past month and so the projections for population which come from the legislative economists aren't incorporated into this model so that would those projections project that Vermont will be becoming an older state going forward so that's how it's incorporated yes has your study focused exclusively on the revenue side or have you taken a look at the expense side as well as far as were there any increases because of public safety education healthcare where did you just focus on the income side so far the revenue side there is no projection assuming the market is up and running on those indirect costs in the future in this fiscal note we were talking about population was there any populations in any of these states and this became real because of marijuana what was the fluctuation I don't know if you can tell unless there was a spike Oregon and Colorado are some of the fastest growing states in the country there are a lot of factors that would influence that those states are emigration they have faster growing economies than Vermont but I mean the analyst I spoke to did not mention any population growth from marijuana specifically and I don't believe I've seen any study that has seen people moving to a state simply because of marijuana tourism for sure that's one of the reasons why we looked at Colorado's experience because they are high tourism states specifically for marijuana we are a high tourism state and we're not even legal yet and so we anticipated we'd be sort of like them and that's why we used their model for estimating what our potential tourism revenue so I think to close the loop on the question about indirect costs there's no sort of indirect revenue impacts either in this fiscal note yes that's true right I mean when we were touring the Milton facility we saw the specialized processing curing room that was manufactured by a Vermont company I happen to have a constituent who has a security business who would really like to be able to tap into some of the market around providing security for grow facilities and retail facilities so you know I think there's a lot more that maybe we would like to be able to predict in terms of what the benefits are to some of the ancillary businesses and I would guess that we could probably find some of that from the states whose markets are a little more fully developed but at any rate is that anything else you would like us to know or understand no that's it the one thing I would add just tangential at that point I hope to Colorado about their experience with any did they count any certain not indirect but a little bit more direct so the very example was does this have any effect on your grand list your municipal grand list he said potentially because a lot of their marijuana processing facilities occupied old vacant warehouses but that's not something they quantified for state revenue purposes we do have a few empty manufacturing facilities great any other questions for these fine fiscal people thank you thank you for coming to join us