 Chair of the Vermont Cannabis Control Board. Today is Monday, February 27th, 2023, and I call this meeting to work. You brief remarks before we get started. The CCB has noticed through our inventory tracking and product registration that there are maybe a handful of businesses that were approved for licensure by the board. Those businesses didn't take the final steps to actually get their license. And yet they might be operating as if they are a license. Just to briefly recap our internal processes, the staff here reviews applications and recommends that certain applications be approved by the board once they're deemed complete. Board approval alone is not sufficient to begin operating. You need to actually get your license. And there's usually a few final steps for licensure that are not required at this initial approval stage. For instance, payment of fees, proof of insurance, proof of bank account, permits from a local cannabis commission. These are the things that we don't want applicants to necessarily pay for. We don't require at the approval stage, but they are required in order to operate. So when an applicant is approved by the board, an applicant receives an email with these remaining contingencies that they need to satisfy before we issue them a license. And if you don't provide proof of these contingencies to the board, you're not licensed and you cannot operate. It should go without saying, but if you're a product manufacturer or a wholesaler or a retailer, you can only purchase cannabis and cannabis products from licensed entities. You should ask the seller to see a copy of their license, not just an approval letter, purchasing from an approved yet unlicensed entity, and then selling that product is either a violation of board rule or a crime or potentially both, depending on the circumstances. Now we know this is a new industry and that these rules and regulations are new. We strive to take an education first approach, but intentional ignorance of our rules is no excuse for not abiding by them. And while we tend to take an education first approach, law enforcement doesn't have that kind of discretion when they have evidence of unlawful dispensing. On a related note, all products being sold to the general public must be registered and a product is not registered just when you hit the submit button on your application. A product is registered when you're notified from the CCB that it's been approved for product registration. We're all aware that the process for registering products has been challenging and that there is a backlog. We are systematically tackling this backlog and updating our internal processes in a way that should get these turned around much more quickly. For instance, we've integrated product registration into our licensing portal. We've subsequently migrated all the submissions from our temporary system into this new system and we've shifted more staff to product registration and review. Just like when we add a backlog of licensing applications, we take a first in time, first to review and approve approach. Though we will take into consideration certain exigencies like perishability in our review priority. We've also made a decision that this fall we're gonna be shifting our testing protocols to require pesticide and pathogen testing of each individual strain or cultivar instead of each harvest lot. We'll be updating our testing guidance documents and there will be more to follow on this, but it's a very important change to keep in mind as you start to plan out your growth for this upcoming season. So I don't have anything else, but Kyle, I know it's been a big month for the heresies. Do you have a, maybe just a quick announcement you wanna make? Yeah, thank you, Pepper. For those of you that have tried to reach out to me via phone or email, I may have been slow to get back to you. My wife welcomed a baby boy earlier this month and I've been out of the office doing some paternity leave and just getting comfortable with Finn. He's an awesome little guy and I should be back in the office next week, but I've joined Team No Sleep, all you parents out there, I get it now and to all you future parents, it's awesome. I will say that, so thank you, Pepper. Yeah, thanks, Kyle. Has everyone had a chance to review the minutes from our last meeting on January 30th? Yeah. They're a motion to approve. So move. Seconded. There's a second. Yep, all right, all in favor? Aye. Aye. All right, let's move down the agenda. So next on the agenda is discussion and vote on seasonal closure of outdoor and mixed use cultivator license application windows. So we have the authority in our statutes to open and close licensing windows kind of at our discretion. I think we all remember last year when we were fighting against the calendar to get outdoor cultivators licensed in time to hopefully eke out at least a partial harvest. You know, it was a tough situation for us. It was unfair for the cultivators and it's something that we're actively gonna try to avoid this year. So we have a proposal that has been given to us from the staff to have a seasonal closure, a temporary closure of outdoor cultivation and mixed year cultivation for a certain period of the year so that we don't get into a situation where people haven't had their plants start to flower or get ready for harvest when the snow starts to fall. And so that's the proposal. I think the dates that we're thinking of are close the application window for new outdoor cultivators at the end of April and then reopen it at the beginning of November, I think is the motion. Go ahead. Yes, it's actually the first day of December. We'll reopen it and I'm gonna send this motion to cut. And so I think if there is a motion on the table we should wait for discussion until it's been made and then seconded but that's the general rationale for what we're thinking. And again, this would be for new applications. So if you were, for instance, an outdoor cultivator and you were licensed last June, you could still renew in June but this would be for new applicants. And again, it would just, you have to get your application in by a certain date. It'll still take us some time internally to review and approve it but there would be a cutoff when you can get it in and then a cutoff when we reopen the window. So is there a motion? You're muted. I'm muted, Kyle. Yep. Okay. So based upon the board's authority to open and close acceptance periods for applications that sit out and roll 1.10, I move that the board close the application window for outdoor and mixed cultivation licenses beginning at the end of the business day Friday, April 28th and ending at the opening of business day Friday, December 1st, 2023. There a second? Second. And so any discussion about this, we as a board have not had a chance to really talk about this together. I think the rationale that I laid out makes sense to me but I'd like to hear any thoughts that you might have about this motion. So just for clarity, right? Closing it in April means that most folks who are outdoor growing are well underway, right? They'd be growing throughout the summer and then opening in November means folks who want to grow for the next summer beginning at that point, be starting their growth, starting, setting up all that kind of thing. So really what we're closing it for is a period where people are well underway and operating. Yeah, I think last year as you acknowledged we were willing to work with folks and allow them to get things going before they actually had their physical license in hand. And we need to move away from that. As a board, in my perspective, we need to give folks certainty that they are licensed and can grow. So if somebody is looking to submit an application in July, they probably wouldn't get on the docket till September. I'm trying to think logically about this. What's really the point if you can't have any plants in the ground until you actually physically have your license? I think this makes an incredible amount of sense. And just for the folks listening, this is temporary. You still have what, two or three months to get your license application in. And if as long as it's in the system, it's my understanding, as long as you had submit, we'll work with you to try and get you licensed. But this is a recognition that our growing season is finite here. And we want folks to have a license in hand before they put plants in the ground or get them started. Great. Any other discussion about this? No. All right. All in favor? Aye. Aye. Okay. Product registration overview and update. Yes. I am glad to provide a little bit more information. I think the chair's remarks at the beginning may, I don't want to be redundant, but I will talk a little bit about where we are with product registration. I will also talk about it in the executive director's report. I'll keep this brief. But essentially the way that we've built the product registration process here at the CCB is designed to support consumer protection and quality control of the regulated market. And we are confirming that products meet requirements related to a number of factors, including testing parameters, serving in packaging size limits, potency limits, packaging and labeling. And by undertaking this review, we are ensuring that we are keeping the safety of products that are available to the public and the sustainability of the cannabis marketplace. So we did create in order to meet our statutory deadlines for retail opening in October, we had to create an interim system to support that function prior to opening of the retail market. Unfortunately, that interim system was somewhat cumbersome. It took us a while to review those applications in that system. So while we were doing that, while we were processing those interim applications, we built a current system, our current system, which allows us to process much more efficiently. So CCB staff have been processing applications both in the interim system and in the new system simultaneously. But now that the new current system is live, we migrated all of the applications from the interim system into the new one to expediter review process. So as of last Friday, all of the data from the interim system has been migrated to the new one and we have been processing oldest and newest those submissions from the interim system. We anticipate that by the end of the week, every applicant into the old system will be notified whether or not their application is missing any information. And also by the end of the week, we should have our first report available on our website which consists of a catalog of all of the registered products. So that will be eventually a public portal for people to access and see all of the products that are registered in the state until we have that functionality, we're going to be producing a report, probably a weekly to post on the website and the first one should be up by this Friday. So that is what I have to say now on product registration. There will be more in my report. Until those reports are in real time, are there things that retailers should be doing before they're putting products on their shelves? Yes, they can, for every product that they want to stock on their shelves, they should ensure that they have the letter that the CCB has issued indicating that the product is registered and that letter goes to whatever licensee registered the product. So if the cultivator is registering their own flower, retailers should ensure that they have that message from the board to the cultivator before they stock that product. Okay, the next thing on your agenda is my report. It is? No, I think it will. Figure out how to drag it over and come in to find my mouse on my screen. I think it's- You can move it. Yeah. Yes. Yes. Suspense. I know, just so exciting. Okay. We did it. All right. So here is February's CCB ED report. Before I get into the licensing data that I normally start with, I have a couple of updates on some other things. So first, this slide is a summary of our public engagement that we've engaged in in the first couple of months of 2023 and then a preview of what we have coming up in March. So all of these events that are listed there are after-hours events that our staff put on and that are open to the public and that are live-streamed and appear on our YouTube page. So this is all resources for our licensed community. So in February, we had three after-hours events, social equity and economic empowerment networking event for new businesses and one on energy efficiency requirements. And we also had a Q&A session on advertising. In February, we had a networking event on tax compliance and the Q&A session on product registration. And then tomorrow, we are having another networking event on licensing renewals and staff will be there to walk through the process of renewing your license. And then in March, we've got three additional events coming up. So developing a plan for your positive impact criteria that is one of the requirements both for a new license and for a renewal, cultivation technical assistance and navigating local licensing. So just a summary of the work that we've done just in 2023 so far and what's coming up. As I mentioned, staff are available at all of these and they're all held after-hours and attendance is pretty variable but we're always at at least 30 participants per event and normally it's much more than that. So we're getting some good engagement for these events. Next is an update on hiring activity. So lots of hiring activity over the last couple of months. We've got two new compliance agents that were hired and on boarded in January and that's Duane Tomlin and Andy Schever-Phils. They I believe were introduced at the last board meeting. We also hired and on boarded Gabe Gilman, our new general counsel please. Here, there he is. And Olga Fitch is our new director of operations also on boarded this month. And we are in active recruitment for three positions currently for licensing agent for the adult use program, for a medical program technician and for a financial manager for the agency. So always lots of hiring activity going on at the board. This is just a synopsis. Next is a legislative update. So these are three bills that are currently under consideration at the legislature. The first is H270 and its companion is S71. This is a miscellaneous amendments to the adult use and medical cannabis programs bill. The house government operations committee is her testimony on H270 last week. And I believe we'll hear more this week. Senate Judiciary Committee her testimony last week on S72 and H145, which is an act relating to budget adjustments for this fiscal year, I think was just assigned to conference committee. So each of these bills has some potential impacts on the board. I thought I would review them quickly. So the miscellaneous bill H270 is the house bill that's moving does a number of things that would impact the Kansas control board. It sunsets our advisory committee. It amends are the statute on advertising so that CCB staff are not in the position of making judgments about a licensees subjective intent when we are reviewing ad submissions as we are required to do. The bill also addresses some interest supply chain issues by allowing licensees to sell and transfer product to other licensees, which is, I think some licensees would indicate that's been somewhat of a problem. And it also creates a propagation license type to allow license holders of that propagation license set amount of canopy with which to grow vegetative starts. And the bill also makes a number of adjustments to the medical program, number of changes to the medical program. And it also removes the dual jurisdiction of the CCB and DLL over cannabis establishments that are selling at retail paraphernalia that could be used for consuming cannabis. S72 is an actual age lift in the potency limits on concentrated cannabis products. What that bill does is that it removes the 60% THC cap on solid concentrate products. And lastly, H145 is the budget adjustment bill. And what that bill does is, I don't know about that, is it contains an authorization for the board to hire staff and an appropriation, corresponding appropriation for the board to create essentially a state reference lab for the cannabis industry. So the appropriation would support the acquisition of equipment, lab equipment, and the authorization for hires would allow us to hire a lab director and two chemists. And that would be quite a significant change. If we did have our own state reference lab, that would allow our compliance team to do investigations much more quickly than we're able to do them now. And also allow us to do some auditing of lab results of our licensed labs. And it would ensure that we are able to meet our objectives to make sure that we are overseeing our marketplace with quality products. So that is a summary of the legislative, those are the bills that are moving right now. So I'll move on now to our licensing data. So all the data that's included in the following slides is current as of about Thursday of last week. So first we have our average days from submission to approval. So the first time I think we reviewed this data was at our last meeting. These numbers are pretty comparable to the numbers from last month. So the purple 88 days is the average days from submission from when an application is submitted to us to when we are presenting it to the board for approval for all of our applicants, standard applicants. And just under 40 days is the average for social equity applicants. So not much of a change from last month there. I wanted to give the board a little bit of a sense of how those numbers compare to other states. So before I go through these comparisons, I'll just note that our licensing team is working on reporting that would show us how long what our average numbers are from the date that an application is submitted as a complete submission to the date we're able to recommend a decision on that application. So we don't have that data yet. So the numbers that I'm giving you that 88 days and 40 days is from the time the applicant hit submit to the time that we are actually recommending them for approval, but all of these dates that you'll see on the slide are days from complete from when the application is actually complete. So this is a sampling of other states that have adult use and medical programs. And these are sort of their statutory requirements for how quickly the agency needs to issue a decision on an application. So you can see it goes from 90 days to 120 days all from the time that that submission is complete. So this, depending on the state could look like anything from four to seven months of review time. So we are processing applications much more quickly than other states are. So again, this is not a comprehensive like audit of what other states are doing, but it is a good sampling of what review times look like in other states. Grundy, do you know the size of the licensing teams in those states? So the life, they vary quite a bit depending on the state and the size of the market in the other state. But our licensing, our ratio between our licensing staff and the number of licensees is around average for the staff to licensee ratio in other states. Thank you. So, and then I'm gonna go through these average days to approval based on license type just, and I'm only giving you the types of licenses that we have reviewed in the last 30 days. This is probably information that I'm gonna present to you quarterly from now on, unless the board would like to see it more frequently than that, but there's not a huge variation in these numbers, I think, months to month. So this for cultivators, all types of cultivators, we're looking at an average of 93 days from submission to approval, and that number is up three days since the last reporting. Manufacturers submission to approval is on average 85 days, that's up about two weeks from our last reporting. Wholesale 73.7 average days from submitted to approval, that's the same as the last reporting. Retail 62 days, and that's up about six days since our last reporting. And then lastly is our employee ID card, which is 59 days, and that is also up about six days since our last reporting. So the numbers are either the same or a slight increase, and that slight increase is likely due to the fact that we are down a staff member in our licensing team. I'm gonna move on now. We've got a couple of interesting slides about employee ID card demographics. So the licensing team was able to pull some information from our employee ID card data to show you what the staff look like in the industry right now. So this is gender, self-reported gender on employee ID cards. You can see we're at about half male, 36% female, and then a smattering of others there. 1% are identifying as non-binary. So race, vast majority, 81% are reporting as white, and then some small percentages of non-white or blank or other. And then the average age for the employee ID card applicants is 38. So again, that's just demographic data that I probably won't present that every month, but we were just able to pull those reports. So I thought it would be interesting for the board to take a look at that. So next, we're looking at the new license applications by submission status. So in the last month, we've gotten 38 new submissions. That's up about 12 from the number of new submissions that we received in January. And the breakdown among the statuses. So this shows you breaks it out by status and this status breakout has shifted a little bit since last month. So social equity is up a little bit. Last month, it was at 27% or seven applicants. We've got 11 social equity identifying applicants this month. Economic empowerment applicants are down a little bit from 31% or eight applicants last month. And then the standard group stayed the same but their number increased a little bit, but percentage stayed the same. So here's our submissions, our new application submissions by a license type. So just like last month, the social equity applicants are distributed pretty evenly across the different license types. You can see the majority are indoor applicants and outdoor cultivation applicants. And then manufacturer tier three and tier twos and retails. A few of other things too. Here's the number of issued licenses by license type and tier. So we've got 346 issued cannabis establishment licenses as of last week and we issued 78 employee ID cards since our last board meeting. So licensing staff, always quite busy. So this is the slide where we make some estimates, some very rough estimates based on what our field staff are seeing during the inspection. So this is the calculation of where we're at for indoor and outdoor canopy size. So you can see the license numbers for indoor canopy. Our staff are estimating about 75% of that indoor canopy is being utilized currently by growers and about half of the outdoor and mixed canopy is being utilized by growers. And again, it's likely that that number, that utilize number is gonna change significantly over time as our outdoor cultivators enter, as all of our cultivators enter their second year of growing. Here's our retail location map. I'm gonna talk about the retail areas of density next, but this map is a reminder that this appears on our website and it's updated after every board meeting. So you can go and take a look on the website to see where retailers are and where they are coming. So the blue pins are licensed retail establishments and the red pins are applicants. And just a reminder that those red pins don't reflect an exact location. They're just dropped within the borders of a municipality to give an idea of where the density is going to be for retailers. So here's the list of areas of density for retail locations. There's no real significant change to this list from last month. There's one additional licensed retailer in Burlington this month, but the overall number remains the same. So it was 11 last month and it remains 11. One of the applicants in the queue for Rutland was withdrawn, so that number actually dropped one. And then the total numbers for Brattle Bureau and Morrisville and Derby remain the same. And I included Waterbury and Waterbury Center there because I'm just including any municipality or cluster of municipalities that has three or more pending. So back to product registration. Here's the total number of product registration applications that have been submitted as of last week. It was 1,564. So you can see that quite a number, 645 are awaiting their review, but 246 have been deemed incomplete, which means that the applicant has been notified that their registration application is missing some information. And 422 products have been registered so far. And this is a sort of a visual representation of those numbers. So, and this includes applications for registration both in the interim system and the new one. That's a huge variety of product. Do we know what other states, like how many product registrations they have? How many other states do product registration and do we know like how varied their products are? Yes, so I know, I don't know exactly how many states do. I know at least two other states do. I do think their review process looks a little different than ours. I think that the review that we're undertaking for product registration is more comprehensive than what any other state does. And I'd be glad to provide the board with some details about what the diversity of product looks like in other states. I would imagine it's probably in more mature states, it's probably significantly larger than what we have. The next slide shows the kind of type of product distribution. I think right now that vast majority, you can barely see it there, but the light green is flower. So the vast majority of our product registrations are for flower currently. And I think that's just given the nasancy of our market. Okay. Was there another question? No. So yes, this is all of our submitted registration applications by product types. So this is not only reflective of what has been registered, but it's all types of products that are either awaiting review or have already been registered. Concentrates includes both liquid and solid. That's right. Yeah, so that would include vaping liquids as well as other types of concentrates. What falls into the, I'm sorry, did you say this? What falls into the others category? You know, I think that those are, I'm, why don't I hold off on the other side? I'm not sure. For my transform patches, right? Yes. I think that we have gotten one submission for a transform patch. But we also have, there are a couple of product submissions that have not easily fit into another category and are awaiting review. Okay. Oh, plants, I think also fall into that category. Bernie just whispered in my ear. And I do think we have some submissions for seeds as well. Okay, I'm gonna move on to our compliance data. I have a couple of slides here for you. So as I noted in my update on hiring activity, we've got an additional two full-time compliance agents now. Those two individuals started in January. So there has been some training that's gone on in the last several weeks. So our total inspections just for the month of, so we're looking at two months now. We're looking at, because the data that I presented to you last month was just our compliance data for 2022. So for January to February, we had 159 inspections as of last Friday. 47 of those were retail inspections. So this is breaking out to around 20 inspections per week or four per agent. But I just wanna point out that this really accounts for having two brand new compliance agents since last year. They've been in training, they've been going on joint inspections. So that number is probably going to change. And again, about three hours per inspection is the average. For February, the enforcement actions, for February alone, we've got four active enforcement actions for category one violations. And we've got 10 closed investigations or enforcement actions across a variety of categories. Moving on to medical program. So this chart is the total patient caregiver registry numbers. Patients are the light green line, caregivers are the dark green line. And this is numbers from 2009 to 2022 to give sort of a visual representation of how the program has changed over time. And then this is our just last 12 months data. So active patients as of last Friday for the month of January was 3,583. And that number dropped 20 for February to 3,563. So a little bit of a drop over the last month. I am gonna note that some of that drop off might be attributable to our, we are down a staff member in the medical program. So we do have a backlog in processing patient renewals. We are processing them as quickly as we can without our full staff necessary for that program. So some of the drop off UC could be attributed to them. If our medical bill passes, by the way, it makes the renewal process just incredibly easy for people that have incurable medical conditions. So hopefully the kind of owners, I would describe it as owner's process and getting a medical card will go away to a large extent, and especially for renewals, not new applications. That bill also proposes to change the dispensary license costs, right? It does. To drop it by about half. So I'm wondering, have we heard anything from folks about entrepreneurial interest in having a dispensary, opening more dispensary? Anecdotally. Anecdotally, sure. I don't even, personally, I don't think cutting it in half. I mean, it's just so expensive. I don't think that's enough. I think it's, what's tolerable right now amongst the legislature is they try and figure out what this new paradigm between having an adult use side parallel to a medical side, what that looks like. Feel like asking them for it to be cut in half is an interim step. Maybe just because there's potentially even more regulation if you're a medical provider, it seems to me like the application cost should be less than a retail. Okay, so I'm gonna move on to our staff recommendations for the adult use program now. We have three recommendations on social equity status. So first is submission number 2958 and submission number 2976. This applicant is applying for two separate licenses and staff is recommending social equity status approval for this applicant as they meet the criteria for social equity business applicant as defined in our rule. And then staff is recommending two submission numbers for social equity status denial and that's submission number 2376 and 2167 as neither one of these applicants meets the criteria for either a social equity business applicant or a social equity individual applicant as defined in board. Next slide is our list for this week. So the applicants on the following slide have demonstrated their compliance with all the requirements for their license that's set out in statute rule. Here is our list this week. I am gonna note that one business on this list is actually our first renewal. So Trombly house of cannabis is a renewal. They have successfully completed a tier change. So in the future when we have, when our renewals are coming in with more frequency, we will have a separate chart for you to review renewals. So our list this week. Bottom farm company, applying for an indoor tier three cultivation license. Good fire is applying for a retail license. The herb closet is applying for a retail license. Giving tree cannabis also a retail license. Silver therapeutics of Bennington applying for a retail license. Hero cannabis applying for an outdoor tier one cultivation license. Sharp family farms applying for a retail license. Edward hash hands applying for a mixed tier one cultivation license. High priestess LLC applying for a tier one cultivation license. Burrington Hill company applying for a tier two mixed cultivation license. Flying cactus applying for a tier two indoor cultivation license. New England cannabis partners applying for a retail license. Trombly house of cannabis, mixed cultivator tier three, and Demeter's DG applying for a tier two manufacturing license. That is your list. All right. Is that the end of the session for this? No executive session today. So why don't we, is there a motion to approve the recommendations from the staff? I move that the board accept each of the recommendations as presented to us by staff in this meeting. I will second. Any discussion about any of it? No. Not for me. Very comprehensive. Thank you. All right. All in favor? Aye. Aye. Great. All right. Thank you so much, Brent. And the whole team, of course. Yeah. I'd like to thank the licensing team who always does quite a bit of legwork to get all the data ready. Thank you. Last thing on our agenda for today is public comment. So why don't we deal with public comment the same way we always do if you've joined via the link and would like to make a comment, please raise your virtual hand. We'll do our best to call on you in the order that you raise your hand and we'll shift people to join via the phone. Maybe Nellie, if you could help us, just make sure we get the order right. Hi, thank you everyone. I'd like to just make my public comment today that I'd like to request that the CCB closes the application window for tier five cultivators and integrated licensees. They are a threat to the market and will encourage corporate interests to try to take hold. Permanently closing these larger tiers will steer our market away from what has happened in states like California, Maine, and Oregon where larger scale growers have flooded the market, pushing small legacy business owners out. We've seen what overproduction can do in our small market when many farming families, including my own, had to sell their dairy farms. So I'd just like for the CCB members to please consider the longevity of our market and let's cultivate Vermont-owned business interests. Let all of us tier one, twos, and threes expand and increase our production and try to fulfill it in a more natural way instead of just trying to fulfill it with a tier four or five or integrated license. Thanks for everything you guys do. Take care. Thanks, Nick. Thanks, Nick. I'm still trying to get ahold of the agency of commerce and community development about this contract with a consulting firm. I've been trying to reach them all week and haven't been able to get a response. I'm really curious why that was passed off to them to make that decision and why they decided to hire an out of state consulting firm with the former CIA agent and their staff. That's all. Thanks, Caleb. Hi, I'd just like to say I completely agree with what Nick was saying about the tier five and those large license. I think that's gonna completely kill the market for any small business. And also, I am also concerned with why we didn't go with a in-state company to do background checks. Then we went with an out of state company. Thanks for the comment, Jesse. Hi, Jesse with Old Growth Vermont. First, I wanted to thank Bryn and Lauren and the team for taking initiative on product registration. Bryn, I owe you an apology because I copped an attitude with you. So I just wanted to offer you an apology. I entered into the meeting thinking it was a social equity networking event. So I came prepared with comments and ready to get into the solution. And it was a Q and A. So it threw me for a loop, but I think it's really important that we keep the good faith between the CCB and all of us business owners. So, sorry for copping an attitude. Otherwise, regarding the closing the licensing, I just wanted you guys to consider already existing licenses and transitioning to a new property. I don't know if you guys have considered this yet, but we were about to close last year on a property because the housing market was so crazy. We ended up on my father-in-law's property and we've been really successful. And I think we've been really good for the community, but it wasn't, this wasn't our plan. We've just worked really hard to make it work. So we actually think we're putting an offer on a property today or tomorrow. Who knows what will happen because the market's so crazy. But anyways, I just wanted to throw it out there. I don't know if you guys have given it any thought yet. I haven't thought too deep about it yet because I hadn't considered this possibility of closing the window. So anyways, just throwing it out there for now and then we'll keep rolling the boat and kind of see where we land and how to move forward. Otherwise, thank you guys. And I'll see you guys I think tomorrow night for maybe a Q&A on the matter. All right, thanks. Thanks, Jesse. Yep, can you hear me? Yes. All right, I just wanted to thank all you guys for all your work. And I just wanted to kind of echo what Nick was saying. I lived in Southern Humboldt for several years and I watched the downfall of the market happen in Humboldt County. And that was directly caused by large licenses, corporate cannabis and MSOs coming into the state. I just, you know, I've seen this happen again and again in every legal market across the country. And yeah, I think Nick's got a good idea. I think Vermont is a very small state and I just don't really see the need for tier five and tier six licenses. So yeah, I just wanted to agree with Nick and I hope that we can all do our part to ensure the integrity of Vermont's market and try to make it a market that's for Vermonters and not for outside interest and outside money and keep the money in Vermont. So that's it, thank you. Thank you. Hi guys, can you hear me okay? Yes. So congrats to Kyle, very exciting. Also, I definitely agree with Nick too. I mean, part of the tier five business model is to put all of us out of business. I mean, how can we help that? Also, thank you so much for putting more attention to product registration. I think that the cannabis sweet spot is like three to six weeks. I know obviously like a longer cures, you know, nicer for people who understand more about the process, but the masses of people, they want that cannabis from that three to six week point where the bag appeal just, you know, you really knocks you out and you open a bag from, you know, a quarter mile away. You can smell it. That only happens during that three to six week point. I know my Gorilla Glue, during that time it pulls apart. It looks like a rice crispy treat. The tricones are so gooey and stick together. It's just, it's delicious. And so as we continue to make this Vermont brand and especially when we go national as when we can, it's important that we keep this process as fast as possible because when you add it with all the other testing and then the product registration and, you know, next thing you know, the product's not getting on the shelves till eight weeks after harvest and then you miss that whole time. So that's it. And lastly, I think that current dispensaries should be able to sell to medical patients with no taxes. That's it everybody. Thank you. Welcome back. Thanks Tito. Hi, this is Wayne here. Can you hear me? Yes. Hi. Yeah, I don't know. I have kind of mixed feelings about the social equity fund being outsourced. I mean, I feel like it's good in a sense that, you know, this company kind of has a lot of resources in-house but I feel like that money should have stayed in Vermont and I feel like that money could have benefited social equity applicants better if it stayed in Vermont. And that's all I have to say. Thank you. Thank you. Unmuting, can you hear me? Yes. Sorry. Just want to go on the record to support the closing of licenses, the larger license tiers. And the one thing that I would point out is that by doing so, you help families to create wealth here in Vermont as opposed to those who already have money, making more money, possibly sending it out of state. And there's an intergenerational effect that happens for Vermonters and that should be considered as well. Thank you. Thanks, Jeff. Like Tito, I also think that the medical market would be well-served if it could be totally served by your existing retailers. Obviously, like Tito, there's some self-interest there. But as a probably former medical patient by now, having experienced the medical system, I don't feel that it was serving Vermont's medical patients needs particularly well. There is a much larger retail footprint now. If the potency cap bill goes through this year, there won't be anything that a licensed retailer cannot sell that a medical dispensary can. And the idea that the only thing left really is appointment shopping, which I mean, some people might want and then retailers could give them that. But I don't think that very many people would. I think it's a not particularly well-loved aspect of the medical system that you can't just walk into a medical dispensary that you have to call and make an appointment in advance. And so I would urge you to maybe do a little bit of patient focus grouping to find out what it is that they actually want instead of just guessing at it, which is what our legislators have been doing for years and years. And thinking about a way to let rec shops be recmed shops and serve the entire community's needs. Beyond that, just real quick on the product registration system, I don't think you really appreciate quite how badly it is operating in practice. It is a major supply choke point to the extent that anyone is fully following the rules. And I suspect there are a lot of licensees out there who are not waiting for approval because that approval can take months. I've seen it. I've seen an application from October get approved two weeks ago. So we got to find a way to fix it. And the fact that we are an extreme outlier among regulated states in doing it this way tells me that maybe we're not doing it the right way. Or in a way that really makes sense from a consumer safety point of view. And we'll be having lots of conversations about that, I'm sure in the days and weeks ahead. Thanks. Thanks, Dave. Good afternoon, everybody. I have my video off, but can you hear me okay? Yes, excellent. Thank you. I hope everyone's doing well. Happy Monday. Congrats, Kyle. So I guess a couple of things and I'll be brief, just sort of responding to what has come up in the meeting thus far. First of all, I will say to the previous caregiver member based on profit called the Green Mountain Patients Alliance. They've been working with lawmakers. This is for everybody for over a year now. I urge you to Google them, the Green Mountain Patients Alliance. There will be legislation this year, hopefully with some of their policy priorities. It is vital that some form of medical market is retained. There are unique needs of the patient and caregiver community that cannot be addressed by the adult use alone. So there is a reason and a purpose for that system. I also wanna add that we, and the regulars aware of this, we are disappointed to hear the seasonal closure of the mixed and outdoor license types. We hear this as a resources and bandwidth concern. As we're aware, as everyone's aware, your agency is sort of shuffling around resources. We do believe you are understaffed and underfunded and we are pursuing, and this is in alignment with the product registration issue as well. We will be pursuing what the agency has asked this year. In fact, we will be in housegov ops tomorrow speaking to expanding appropriations and staff just for product registration. But getting back to the cultivation license type decision, we firmly believe it is too early in the market for the agency to be even considering this. We need to consider the legacy community in addition to the current licensees at this moment in time. And we firmly believe that this decision to temporarily close, albeit seasonally, the mixed and outdoor is a mistake. And we hope that it is revisited in the future. Thank you. Thank you, Jeffrey. So I don't see anyone else with their hand raised. There we go. Yes, yes. I wanted to make a comment regarding the tier fives and a lot of people have articulated the concern that once they're up and running, they'll dominate everything and threaten the smaller businesses, which I think is true. So I'm definitely on the NIC and the tier five bandwagon. What I wanted to understand kind of preemptively is if the CCB considers this and ultimately decides no, we're gonna keep them, we're still gonna allow them, I'd love to see the modeling that shows how much the market consumes in Vermont, how much of that is being met by tier one, two, three and so on, and justify the room for multiple tier fives and not threatening all the small businesses. Because I think you guys are doing a great job collecting and tracking data, as we saw in some of the reports earlier today. And I think based on what everybody inputs to you through product registration and inventory tracking, I think you have it. I think you know who's making how much of what and can either show, yeah, there's room for it or no, there's not. And I think a lot of us have been doing some back of the envelope calculations and show that they can really just dominate the whole market. But if you guys feel otherwise, I'd love to see the modeling that shows that. Thanks Adam. Anyone else who joined by the link, please just raise your virtual hand if you'd like to make a comment. Otherwise, if you joined by a phone, you can hit star six on yourself. Yes, hello, my name's Kevin. Am I in the queue? Yes, you're up. Oh, great. Thank you. Yeah, I'd like to reiterate the hard work that you guys have done trying to get this whole thing off the ground. I definitely want to cooperate with Nick and the other commentors about the upper echelon licenses and the need for them or the not need for them. And I'm in the not need category. I have a different view on it. More from an economic standpoint. So being from the legacy market, you know, we were able to sell direct to consumer and realize the full retail value of a pound. And now that is maybe half in order that you can only sell it as a tier one grower to another licensed grower. And everybody wants their cut. So I think that the large companies coming in that have a stacked license is going to inhibit from a very real direct economic sense. Your statements in the past of wanting the legacy market to come to play. So, you know, when when you're trying to write up a business plan, is all this worth it for half of what I used to get or, you know, conversely, I have to grow twice as much to make the same money that I don't see the need for the larger ones and it doesn't help the legacy growers come. That being said, I'd like to talk about the license closure window. I'm a lot more familiar with the distilled alcohol industry and they have a flat out April 1st period. Everybody renews and therefore everybody knows if I'm going to be continue operations, I need to start in an appropriate amount of time. And when you go to the T.T.B. website, they right up front tell you, hey, it's going to be one hundred and eighty days for a new licensor license to to be processed and issued. So then as a as a person who is pursuing a new license, you know how to plan appropriately. So I'd like you to consider that for for policymaking or it would seem a little more streamlined to me if if you've moved to that sort of format. Those are the things I have. Thank you. Yeah, thanks for that. Anyone else who joined by a phone? Sit star six on me yourself. You'd like to make a public comment? Yeah, hey guys, thank you everybody for taking the time to come together and present some very good information and and sort of like the up to date minutes of all this hard work. So really quickly, I just want to say as a legacy cultivator trying to forge his way as a small operation in the family business, just a further mirroring of the top tiers and and how that can influence, you know, the success and perhaps the timeline. So kudos to those folks that aired that. And I just sort of want to second that. I think it's very relative. So I look forward to seeing how we decide. Thank you. Thank you. Any other comments? I'll close the public comment window. I really appreciate all the comments. You know, I probably address a lot of them in more detail at our next meeting. However, you know, I think when we created our market structure, we really didn't know how much entrepreneurial interest there was going to be amongst tier one cultivators or tier two, for that matter. We really, you know, we created six tiers of each license type and left the kind of top tier closed because we wanted to foster kind of a multitude of smaller cultivators. You know, our tier five is, you know, a tier three out of 11 in Massachusetts, just by way of example. But I think it was always in our contemplation that we might need to close some of the kind of greater tiers. You know, I think it was also in our contemplation that, you know, maybe a few cultivators would get together and form a co-op with a tier five license type. But, you know, to be fair, I think our licensing structure has only been approved for less than a year. I mean, it was in a bill that was in March. And, you know, I think it was in at least my contemplation it would give this market a little bit of time to settle before we close any of the kind of larger license types. But, you know, that was just some of our thinking when we went into this. You know, I think we tried our best to listen to the to the market to the kind of the legacy market in particular, but all of the kind of needs of this market and we will continue to do that. And, you know, if there's a kind of if kind of like what one of the commenters was saying, if we're seeing that the kind of tier fives are just able to kind of operate in economies that make it impossible for tier ones to operate, then I think, you know, we have this authority to shut them down. I should say shut down the new applications for them. Yeah, I agree, Pepper. Thank you to everybody who raised that as a potential issue now and into the future. And I just wanted to remember which commenter was asking about. It sounded like our supply demand model on how we arrived at certain decisions and that big Excel sheet is available on our website. It can be a beast to download because it is quite smart, smarter than I am, that's for sure. And you can you can work with the model to make a number of different assumptions that you want to make to kind of see how certain things as they change might impact that supply demand model. So I just to that commenter who was interested in that that resource is available on our website. Yeah. All right. Well, again, thanks for joining was able to kind of chime in and we will see you next week and I will adjourn the meeting. Thank you.