 And it's James Pepper. I'm the chair of the Vermont Cannabis Control Board. Today is September 10th, 2021. It's 10 a.m. I'm calling this meeting to order. So we're going to start with a quick discussion of our mission and strategic vision statement. We put this together at our last meeting and we've received some good public input on it. And we made some edits based on those comments. And so we've now kind of put it, I think, put it up on our website or we'll be up there later today. I just would say that this, we don't find this to be a binding document. It's more of a value statement that the board members crafted to help us understand what we believe our mission is and allow, give us something to refer back to when we're making decisions. We drafted this document based on the priorities that we identified in our enabling legislation, as well as all of the testimony and comments we heard from people who will be impacted by the decisions that are made by the board. And so we consider this a living document. We may update it from time to time as we hear from more people as we learn more. But that being said, it should be up on our website if not now very soon. So before we get to the agenda, I think it's once again important for the benefit of the public to review some of the timelines of our advisory subcommittee meetings. We have a very aggressive reporting requirement based on the enabling legislation and especially considering that our advisory committee was not seated until July. We have two reports due in October, one in November, and we need to have our rules done essentially as soon as possible. These timelines mean that we have a very busy subcommittee schedule for the immediate future. All of the schedules are posted on our website, but essentially the six subcommittees that are staffed by our consultants will meet on Mondays and Thursdays throughout the day. We have two subcommittees, the Lab Testing Subcommittee and the Exploratory Committee, that are being staffed by the board and are meeting on more of an ad hoc basis. However, their agendas will be posted following the open meeting laws at least within 24 hours in advance and all of their minutes and recordings will be posted as well. So just a quick note on kind of the live streaming issue of the subcommittees. I know that it's an area that's caused a little bit of consternation. I just want to say that the board is going to be holding weekly meetings just like this one on Fridays that are dedicated to reviewing all that was done in the subcommittees and really trying to digest the work that the subcommittees have been doing and seek public comment on that. The full advisory committees will be live streams. The subcommittees are also going to open each and every one of their meetings with reviewing all the public comments that have been received through our website. The board, like I said, is going to review their work every Friday and have public comment periods based on that discussion. And the board is also going to be holding after hours meetings once a month dedicated exclusively to public comment. And then there's also just a very significant public comment role to the rulemaking process. And I just would remind everyone that the subcommittees are acting in an advisory role. They're volunteer and they don't have any sort of binding decision making authority. They're providing recommendations to the full advisory committee who will further vet those recommendations and then make recommendations to the board. Whether we ultimately accept those recommendations either fully, partially, or not at all will depend on what we as a board are hearing from our consultants, from our staff, and from the public. And so to me, the comments that you make directly to us are the most impactful comments. So I just want to lay all that out there and let you know that we are listening. And with that I would take, well, are we not going to approve the minutes, do you think, from the advisory committee? Should we wait until we have the full advisory committee back? Okay. All right. So we're not going to approve the minutes from our meeting on 818, but we are going to turn to the agenda. So we've had six subcommittee meetings that were staffed by our consultants. We've had two other meetings of the lab safety subcommittee that were staffed by internally. And the point of this meeting today, again, is to review what was covered in those meetings and then have the board and Bryn and David engage in a discussion to help shape and guide the subcommittees as they move through their tasks. So I will just move straight to the agenda, which is starting with Kyle to review the meetings that you sat in on, which I believe was the sustainability, the compliance, and lab testing. Sure. I'll start with lab testing because that happened on Wednesday. Lab testing is a leg up on a lot of our other subcommittees. They've met twice now and seem to be making really nice progress at this last meeting. Kim and Kerry made contact with folks running labs and various jurisdictions on the western part of our country. Found that on average, full panel testing typically is anywhere from $400 to $600. I think in California, it's as low as $300. They're trying some automated system for lab testing, which can cut out, I guess, some human hour component of what all of that might cost. The $400 to $600 figure certainly was, it seemed to be a little concerning for subcommittee members, recognizing that we don't want lab testing to be cost prohibitive, especially for some of our licensee holders that will be of the craft cultivation variety. So we're thinking through various different ways to potentially cut some lab testing costs. And there was some, a range of ideas that were kind of thrown around. Kerry gave an overview on how his team at AG typically conducts pesticide inspections and various other inspections and what possibilities may exist to do some stuff at that level versus in the lab because pesticide testing is one of the most costly aspects of that full panel testing. From an action item perspective, Kerry was going to start drafting SOPs for Kim's review. Largely, it seemed like they were moving in a direction where they would be taking the current hemp lab testing standards and looking to jurisdictions out west. Oregon was thrown around a lot and trying to incorporate some of what they do. Kerry was going to draft Kim was going to review. They didn't really set another date for their next meeting. I think there's a lot of travel going on between the two of them, but they're going to do that and then hope to review them more broadly with the public and with at the full subcommittee meeting. And next time they meet, they need for early to mid-October. Sustainability committee. These were the first subcommittee meetings. A lot of introductions. Trying to get a lay of the land. I know Jacob was really trying to see from the agriculture perspective, the natural resources perspective, various different programs that kind of make up our robust environmental regulations to kind of get a starting point. We don't want to reinvent the wheel, but how can this program slide into what's already existing? And Jacob's going to do a gap analysis once he kind of understands that process at ANR a little bit more substantively to see where we might need to do some more light work to slide this program into what's already going on in our existing environmental regulations. I think the subcommittees conscientious of not setting an environmental floor too high because there isn't various incentive programs. Through different state agencies and efficiency Vermont that really prioritize going above and beyond the regulatory floor. So making sure we get that right so folks can still take advantage of incentive programs, grant programs offered by the state to really help them move the needle forward. Compliance and enforcement. You know, again, a lot of introductions. I think the subcommittee is really understanding the brevity and the magnitude of all what's been assigned to the subcommittee. If you're looking at it all at once, it's kind of hard to conceptualize how we can actually get to a finish line but taking it in small chunks and recognizing we've got a lot of state agency partners with a lot of expertise and we can really lean on from certain perspectives. I think gave a little bit of a calming, you know, sense to some of the committee members. They prioritize certain stuff based off of, you know, what we need to address first. So model local ordinance and fees was discussed. I think that that's going to be discussed in multiple committees. Maybe not as much on the fee aspect of things in the compliance and enforcement subcommittee, but especially local control local ordinances and that interaction between local municipalities and the cannabis control board. C to sale tracking systems was brought up. Retail compliance indoor cultivation outdoor cultivation and enforcement that was kind of where we got to in that meeting starting to understand those ideas. I had shared that I have talked with the agency of Agriculture's enforcement team kind of get an overview of what they do and how they do things. And we have a charge in 164 to work through existing state agency partnerships to the extent that we're able to. I've also shared that I talked to the current lottery to see how they do retail inspections. So that's kind of where we ended things and good first meetings. How are towns do you think going to decide what is a reasonable fee for them to charge? I mean, what are the, and is that something that can happen quickly enough to match our deadlines in Act 164? I mean, you have pretty significant time experience. Yeah, it depends on the town. I mean, there are towns that have, you know, fully fledged police forces and, you know, full-time fire and rescue. And there are towns that are relying on the state for police force. So in terms of the cost, you know, it's very, very different. It'll also depend on the density of potentially, you know, if you have four or five retailers in a small town, it might be more than if you have one retailer in a large town. So it really depends on the structure of the town and then sort of the concentration of the businesses in the town. Yeah, Tim Wessel, a member of the subcommittee, pointed to the alcohol tax and how that's not sufficient to cover a lot of what's required of a town to actually enforce the laws of the state as it relates to police, fire, so on and so forth as it relates to alcohol consumption and alcohol sales. And I know that he is interested in trying to come up with costs that can help cover, you know, money that the town spends on ensuring that this program is done safely within the bounds of the town. But, you know, we never really got to what that number may or may not look like. I think Kerry Jigar, another member of this subcommittee, said he, when in his experience setting costs, they looked to just set the cost of from the state level, keeping the program that's being regulated, funding that program specifically, and not all of these ancillary costs like fire department, police enforcement, so on and so forth that will inevitably come when you're, you know, even if it's a special cannabis event that requires you to close streets, so on and so forth. So, I think that there's a wide range of opinions on how to best set those costs, but, you know, we'll look to future meetings on how that's actually going to happen. I'd like you guys, or whoever's in that, to just focus in on what exactly those actual costs are. I mean, are they worried about increased traffic? Are they worried about, like, repaving their roads more quickly because of that traffic? Like, are they worried about, like, public disturbances or, like, public consumption that is going to require, like, you know, police enforcement? I just, to me, I just would like to know what's reasonable and why, because ultimately, we're the ones that have to make that determination and recommend something to the legislature. And I know whoever has to make that recommendation is going to be asked, well, what is this actually funding? So, some of those questions will come up through this municipal engagement process that we've started. So, one of the questions on the survey is, does your talent anticipate that doing a licensing or doing the zoning for this is above and beyond what other businesses require? And sorry, I forgot to mention that in my overview of that meeting. Julie did put together a survey that went out to every municipality in the state of Vermont that's going to ask them questions ranging from, are you planning to put this on the ballot? And if so, you know, what are your thoughts and vision for this looking like in your respective town? The second step of that process is to add some qualitative information to the data that comes in, which is where I think we can add some of those questions. Yeah, I do worry about a little bit of the timing because, you know, the fees, I think, will have to be approved. And if, you know, the towns aren't giving us the feedback in time for our fee bill, then there's going to have to be some kind of language in there about the local fees. Yeah. But, all right. Well, that's good. We'll take that with me as I sit in on Monday. Yeah. How far down the road did you guys get on C2Sale? Not really. Anywhere. I think the model local ordinances and fees and that structure did take up a majority of the time yesterday. Tim had a lot to share from his perspective sitting on the Brattleboro select board, is that correct? And you know how it's different for him. He's got a hundred so give or take employees working for Brattleboro, but recognizing that's different than smaller towns in Vermont that don't have that same luxury. So, but we didn't arrive at any specifics in the first meeting, but we'll continue moving on that. Yeah, I mean an hour is quick. Yeah. There's a lot to cover in this one. On the testing, was there any discussion about expanding state capacity to kind of have subsidized testing for small operators? There's been discussion on it. I know that that service is not a fee for service is not offered through the program. I know Kerry has considered it. There's been other, you know, whether it's sliding fees to, you know, processors and larger cultivators to help offset costs to smaller cultivators was also discussed. I'd say that's not out of the realm of possibility, but I think that doesn't seem to be the direction that they're zeroing in on at this point in time. And really what we've tasked them with is coming up with the standards, not necessarily how to expand capacity. Correct. And you know, it's my understanding that Vale and Randolph does have some capacity. Do they have capacity to be that player for the entire industry? That's a question for Kerry. I don't know the answer to that. But they're certainly focused on keeping fees as nominal relatively as they possibly can. Yeah. Finding ways to short circuit the traditional full panel testing system that exists in other states. Are they discussing, you know, the things that absolutely need to be tested for consumer protection versus the things that maybe we would like to have tested for, you know, marketing purposes and things like that. So if people want to market that their product has a certain terpene in it, you know, are they talking about that sort of? So full panel testing includes potency, pesticide, solvents, microbials, metals, water activity, moisture percentage in foreign matter, terpenes would be optional. So terpenes aren't included in that $400 to $600 figure. That's an additional cost that, you know, depending on how you want to market your product, you might look to include. I think we've heard from Kerry or Stephanie that these licenses should be issued as soon as possible, pretty much, because you don't want this to be a bottleneck. You need to know how much testing capacity there is going to be. Yeah, I know. My perspective is I know that there is a sequential order of licenses laid out in our authorizing legislation, but moving this to the front of the line if we're able to, we'll give a lot of folks clarity on what is to be expected from a testing perspective before, you know, they get to the point of having to go get tested. Right. And I think I understand correctly, right, that people can vertically integrate, but not horizontally. So like, You couldn't have multiple lab and each license is intended to be one location. Okay. Yeah. I think that's right. We can double check that. But yeah, I think that's right. Yeah. So you're saying, I wonder if an exception for labs might be a way of having more labs, either expand or having more labs open. It's a great question. I know, I know Kerry's of the opinion and we as a board have not reached out to every single lab that's, that's working in our hemp industry to find out their intentions for this. Market. I think we have anecdotal evidence that they're planning on stepping in here, but we don't know that for sure. So we should probably do some outreach to labs to get their, get their intent to service this, this new market. Great. Well, do you need any more direction from us? I mean, I feel like, you know, I think, I think, I think we're good at this point. I'm more to report next week. I think the compliance and enforcement subcommittee is definitely feeling like they have a lot on their plate. So I think that's going to be a tag team approach from the three of us to keep that on the rails. Yeah. I mean, I think that the idea was once some of these other subcommittees somewhat wrap up that we can move more and more people in the compliance and enforcement. And I think Tom did a good job of setting out what we need first versus kind of if we're going to do kind of rules on a rolling basis to a certain extent, then, you know, what we need first and what we need to next. I agree. I think, you know, the market analysis that first deadline is going to really snowball effect a lot of these other subcommittees work. And I think if you look at the list of what's required of this subcommittee, it's extensive, but it's also where we can leverage the most agency partnerships throughout state government. So I think if you start thinking through it from that lens and we can work through some of these with other agencies and understand how they would approach this. It's not going to seem as, you know, oh my gosh, as it did to some of the subcommittee members when they first looked at the list yesterday. Great. Well, Julie, you sat in on the social equity and the public health subcommittees. I did. I'll start with public health. So I think Kyle sort of talked about this a little bit. This is really a table setting day. So there were a lot of introductions, review of the relevant portions of Act 164 and Act 62 and kind of a framing of goals for the public health subcommittee. They have sort of a three phase process where they're going to talk about first the marketing and advertising and packaging. And their goal is to sort of limit youth interest in those products and misuse among adults. The next phase goes further into packaging and labeling and the standard symbol for cannabis that will be on packages and then the dates in the shop line. And then of course the POS flyer, point of sale flyer that will be handed out at retailers is also part of their conversation. So they really spent time framing the conversation and looking a little bit about what's happened in other states and talking about how the process will roll out, looking at sampling packaging. One suggestion from I think it was Dr. Lagina was providing examples of marketing that's acceptable or advertising that's acceptable and then examples of things that are absolutely prohibited to make it very clear for folks. And then we also talked a little bit about the thing that the board may charge for reviewing advertising but that was really sort of ancillary to the discussion of how it will all be regulated. And then in social equity, again it was a table setting meeting but there was a lot to unpack in terms of what's happened in other states. And they looked a little bit at what NACB's standards are. And if you think back to the meeting that we had on the 18th, NACB spends a lot of time building our standards and so they went through and introduced the standards that they have. And really what they did was start defining the questions. What will be a social equity applicant? How will that be applied? What are the criteria? And then talked about the difference between advancing social equity applicants and then broader diversity equity inclusion programming. So that was sort of where that committee began. So back to the public health and this is just something that came up in the sustainability committee. We didn't really get too far into any environmental mediums like water, air, energy, so on and so forth, but waste was kind of discussed. And from a sustainability perspective, waste in the 50 milligram packaging limit that we have, I think the subcommittee talked a little bit about the 50 milligram packaging limit. That limit isn't found in very many other jurisdictions. I'm sure that that limit was put in for public health reasons, but it also will create a lot more plastic waste as we looked to unfold this market. So just wanted to share that point to the public health committee. So on this social equity, I mean, it's a very aggressive deadline. Again, I hate to keep saying that, but it really is. And to me, that kind of flies in the face of an inclusive process, inclusivity and equity. Do you feel like they're on track and do you feel like there's not going to be enough opportunity for public engagement? At this point, I would say I feel like they're on track. But as always with social equity, there's so much to unpack. So it may be possible that they get further into this conversation and find that there's more to unpack than can be unpacked in three or four weeks in order to do this in a way that's really going to be effective. One thing that they talked a lot about was the point of the social equity program in cannabis is to repair harm. And if we speed through too much and we gloss over repairing harm, have we really done something effective? So I'm not worried about it yet, but I'm keeping an eye on that as well. Yeah. I think part of their charge was creating a public engagement plan. And I know that Jean has talked to us about that a little bit, but I wouldn't want that to fall by the wayside in order just to meet a deadline. Yeah. Any in-depth discussion about constitutional issues with this? Oh, yes. So they talked a little bit about Ohio. And it was the Dormit Commerce Clause that came up in the conversation about residency requirements. Can you have residency requirements? If you're too restrictive in your social equity programs, what does that mean constitutionally and legally? And then, you know, the time and attention that the board might have to spend on, you know, looking at legal attention versus actually rolling out a program. Yeah. I sat on this meeting and those are issues that we're going to have to work through and make sure we're confident enough in our social equity program that we're comfortable rolling out knowing that some folks might seek to challenge it coming in from out of state. So, you know, I wonder if there's going to be objective criteria, like if you have a criminal conviction or a family member does for a drug offense. And if there's going to be subjective criteria as well, like kind of explain how you were harmed by the war on drugs or prohibition. And how we would, the objective criteria is somewhat easier to deal with. But if there is going to be a subjective criteria section, how we as a board are going to score those or consider those. I think it would be also important for this subcommittee to give us a recommendation. I would also love to see the subcommittee give us a recommendation on how we approve social equity applicants in general. Yeah. Should it just be the three of us or should there be an additional process that's a little bit more inclusive? Right. Yeah. That's a good one. And I know it's on their list, but also the transferability of these licenses and what that means for that kind of has ownership changes hands, what that means for, you know, the benefits of social equity applicants. Okay. Great. Anything else you want to bring up? Anything you need from us? No. Okay. Well, we actually all sat in on the market structure subcommittee. So, but essentially this was, you know, introductions, this committee is tasked with looking at licensure, what types of licenses we need, what sort of demand there is in the state and what that means or how much canopy we're going to need and what that decision means for how many testing facilities, product manufacturers, retailers and other types of licenses. VS Strategies, Andrew Livingston has put together a very impressive model to kind of estimate demand, but it does certainly a lot more than that. And it's demand both in state demand, it's tourism demand and it's bordering state demands. And he has been kind of collecting data in state and out of state data using the national drug use and health survey, tourism data, dispensary data and census data. The model also includes any number of these adjustable assumptions related to kind of what products people are going to be interested in, when cultivators are putting their seeds in the grounds or clones and how that impacts our initial supply, how much indoor cultivation there's going to be versus mixed ladder outdoor and all of these kind of impact what the supply is and what the potential bottlenecks along the supply chain and value added chain might be. I know it goes into much more depth than that, but I think this was really kind of an overarching kind of preview for us. He's suggested that we all kind of dig in and kind of play around with the model. And just for the folks watching, this model is pretty big data wise. So we're working on getting it up on the website, but right now if anyone wants an email to them, you can email nelly.marble.fermont.gov and she'll get it to you. So I mean, this is kind of an incredible resource that we have how what it means kind of a little daunting to really wrap our heads around how we use it best. I think essentially what I mean one of the big takeaways that I got, and I might be a little bit off on this, but it sounds like we need in order to ensure that we meet demand and not in our years have a large overstock over supply is to have between 300 and 400,000 square feet of canopy roughly. And so, of course, that led one of our advisory committee members, Savon, to ask that what I consider to be the most important question is, if we had only medium and small cultivators, can they meet that 300 to 400,000 square feet of canopy? Are there enough of them going to come forward in order to do that? So to me, that was one of the big takeaways. We didn't get a real opportunity to dig into that question because reviewing the model took the entire time. And so I think that that's going to be the starting point of next week's discussion. So it's, I don't know, you both are in there. Is there anything you want to add to that? Not really. I think playing with the model and after we got the overview, letting the subcommittee members Savon and others kind of play with it and try and... Another thing I heard from him was zoning in on the right assumptions to make sure that we do the best that we can in getting these predictions right. The first time, so how do we take assumptions and turn them into something that's less assumption, a little bit more predictable at various points throughout this process. I'm also interested in that model, certainly favorite indoor cultivation. I get that. And the outdoor components of it, obviously, because you're more tied to specific growing seasons peaked at certain points throughout the year. And is there opportunities from an outdoor perspective to kind of not be so concentrated at points of the year and spread that out? I don't know. Can we take shelf life of a product into consideration when it comes to an outdoor growing modeling perspective? But I was impressed with the model. I thought it's a good starting point for us and I'm excited to see the work that the subcommittee is going to do in honing in on what's going to make the most sense for us. You know, it's interesting that model even can predict supply and demand as states like New York come online and what that means for the future. It's not just straight up supply demand that takes all of those ancillary impacts of Connecticut, New York, so on and so forth. Folks that might be coming here for tourism, you know, related purposes but might be bringing their own product. One thing that I thought about last night I didn't see represented in that model is Canadian tourists coming into the United States. They aren't going to be able to, it's legal in Canada and you can buy at a dispensary in Canada, Quebec, but you can't cross the federal border quite as easily as you can state borders. And so I didn't see that data represented in the model and I don't know if it was and we just... You know, I think it's because he was using this national survey drug use and health about the border in states and the regions and I doubt that they just have the data. Yeah, there's a lot of Canadians that come here to ski, so I'd like to see that data represented if it's possible to do so. I'd also like to see the next step in the supply chain related to retailers because we have only 26 towns-ish right now that have voted to include retail and I think it's great that we're trying to figure out the supply and demand in terms of the product but how we're going to get it then to market is the next step. And I know that we talked about in our prevention meeting about the concentration of retailers in certain areas, so I'm mindful of that. But the model even, you know, predicts if something's on the shelf life for too long, it needs to be turned into a concentrate, product lost in manufacturing and, you know, packaging, stuff like that. So it gets pretty granular. It was impressive. My experience with Excel is I could never in a million years come up with something like that. I'm glad there's people out there that can. I think I stepped out of this one early to get ready for the next one. Have they talked about employment data at all in terms of how the, you know, where employees are going to come from for various different types of establishments? No, they did not talk about that. And I know, you know, we offered to put them in touch with the Department of Labor, but I think for the purposes of this model they were just focused on the supply and demand. That's kind of an ancillary question that should be certainly considered. Yeah, all right. Well, it's a fascinating model and the more we can play around with it, I think the more educated it will be is that, and of course it changes depending on concentrates. You know, he had a very low percentage of products sold over to concentrates because of the 60% limit compared to other states that don't have that. And so, you know, all of the numbers change based upon how the assumptions are entered. So that 3,000 to 400,000 might not be accurate. It might be more if concentrates at greater than 60% were allowed. Is that a, let's say that that 60% did change in the future? Does this model have the ability for us to change that assumption? Or is that kind of ingrained in the model? I don't have an information. I think he had concentrates at 4% of the market whereas in Massachusetts they're closer to 20%. So I think you can just change that. I didn't know if that was kind of built in or if that's something that you can play around with as well. You can make the assumption that they were more sold. You did mention it's a lot more complicated than that because people that can't get the concentrates are going to potentially buy more flour or bring them from other states. So it's hard to, he said, it's not as easy as that but you can make some basic assumptions. The medical subcommittee, Matt, the real theme of that subcommittee is how to protect the viability of the medical program once the dispensaries which are now a for-profit and once they're allowed to participate in the adult use market. Because the kind of economies of scale on the medical side are much lower and yet there's a number of really specialized products that need to be made for a small number of people. And yet if you have kind of a large segment of the population that's going to adult use, how do you ensure that kind of conduit of services and products to the medical folks. I think that was really kind of my overarching theme and takeaway from that. But then they went into the kind of specifics about expanding access which includes kind of, there's a provision in the medical law that says you have to have a three month relationship with your doctor before they can make a referral. And you know, does that really make sense when we have an adult use marketplace operating alongside of this? You know, expanding the qualifying conditions, there's a lot of discussion about whether or not qualifying conditions should just be based upon a doctor's recommendation. Yeah, there's no defined list. It's just the doctor thinks that this could be helpful and you can try it out. The designated dispensary rule doesn't seem to make a lot of sense when you have, you know, there's no designated adult use retailers. So what, you know, when you think about expanding access, that seems like an easy one. The purchasing caps, I think it's one ounce per month at the dispensaries. There's a decent amount of talk about homegrown caregivers. And I think that there needs to be more discussion on that. I think, you know, sure, you know, not everyone who is on the dispensary can just grow their own. But I do think that there are ways where people that have expertise in growing should be allowed to grow from just more than one person. And I think that there was some confusion on that about whether or not that was a good idea or not. But I think that, you know, I mean, we've seen Jesse Lin talk about this and, you know, how she, you know, can only grow for one person. So, you know, she kind of has more people coming to her. She kind of can give them some clones or something. But that's about all she can do. There is definitely a theme around more diversity of products. You know, there is some frustration amongst the patients that the dispensaries are very limited in the amount of strains that they have. I think it was very much an introductory meeting. But, you know, we do have a report due in November to the legislature around the makeup of the marijuana for symptom relief oversight committee and what their mission should be as they continue to engage with the board. And we, of course, are taking on the medical program January 1st. And then the rules are set to expire on March 1st. So, again, we're going to need to have kind of a plan in place for both November, January and March. And everything is through the lens of, to me, everything is through the lens of if the current dispensaries are now operating in this other field, you know, how do we make sure that they, I mean, how do we make sure that they continue to provide the services and products that the patients need? So, this group will eventually talk about the composition of the oversight. Symptom relief oversight. Yeah. Is there any discussion about adding other medical professionals, chiropractors or other types of, or do you think there will be any? Yes. You know, I've been sitting in on the medical, the symptom relief oversight committee meetings also, just because they're kind of, they're operating outside of our advisory committee, but they have to make a recommendation to us, I think by October on this. And so, yes, that is, you know, they want it to be patient and physician-led, medical professional-led, and that includes naturopaths, chiropractors, but also just patients of various interests, because they're not, you know, their interests aren't all the same. Like, some patients can't afford the dispensaries and yet the current makeup of the Maryland symptom relief oversight, all of the patients are people that use the dispensaries. You know, people with terminal conditions have different interests than people with mental health conditions. The only mental health condition currently is PTSD. So, you know, I think that they're really looking at how do you make their representative board or committee so that when, you know, when we're hearing from the chair on this advisory committee or when they're giving us recommendations, we can feel confident that, you know, all interests are being represented to the best that they can. So, they're in the midst of that work. I don't know if it's led over into this subcommittee quite yet, but I think when we have that recommendation from them, it can be kind of an agenda item for this, for this subcommittee. Sounds good. So, any direction for this committee that you want to see? I mean, I think the main question is the one that I've posed is how the long-term viability, and what does that look like? I think expanding access, I mean, expanding kind of the amount of people that can participate, not thinking it's such a narrow kind of passageway in order to get onto the registry is one helpful way to do it. You know, you can kind of increase the number of patients, increase the market size, it's never going to be able to fully compete with all the adult use. I just agree with one of the comments or suggestions that you had when it comes to caregivers and home grow and making sure that's a part of the conversation, and that we're not strictly focusing on the medical dispensaries. I think that needs to be understood, that's what the board wants at the subcommittee level. I think ensuring access for, and maybe this is furthered in the road, like you were talking about expanding access for those who are using cannabis for substance abuse as a treatment process, I think that's really important. That and sort of some sort of standardized knowledge-based or education, whether it's an access to a nurse or a nurse hotline or something like that. I don't know that that specifically relates to medical or just anybody who is using cannabis for a medical reason that maybe it's just to sleep with access to information. Yeah, I mean of course on the access piece, there is always the default that some states do that you can use your medical card and adult use recreational dispensary and you don't pay tax. I don't know what the implication is for your family to credit card to have it exactly to do that or a debit card. But of course the problem with that is that adult use dispensaries are limited in the products that they deliver and some of the products that they're prohibited from doing are the ones that are most important for patients. And so it's not like key to this. It can help but it's not the key. Well, I left, I think that's good for the kind of review. I did leave some time on the agenda for David and Bryn to give us any comments that they might have or any questions that they have for the board, any things that you need from us as we move forward. Yep, so I do have a couple things. The first is that I really, as we all do, have my eye on meeting the deadlines that are laid before us. And to that end, I think it's really important that the subcommittees are able to hear from who they need to hear from. I heard in a couple of the subcommittees that it would be helpful to them to hear from some of our partners in state government or other stakeholders. So if I'm making a note of those and facilitating that, if I'm not in a subcommittee and you are, if you could please let me know so I can facilitate that process because I think that will go along the way to helping them make the decisions they need to make in a timely fashion. Bryn on that, I think you were in a couple of the subcommittees where that was certainly brought up. I think, I don't know, I can't remember if you were in compliance and enforcement, but Kerry brought Dave Huber, who's the head of enforcement for the Agency of the Ag. And we never got to a point where I thought he could really have a substantive conversation on his approach to, you know, inspections at least of the outdoor cultivation perspective. It'd be great to have him back next week to dig into that a little bit more. So I think that's just communicating through Kerry that Dave's available Monday or Thursday. I don't want to get ahead of Tom and the moderators or NACB in what they have planned for the agenda, but I think hearing from some of our partners on how they approach certain things will be very helpful. And that's just what I mean, because if you let me know, I can let the consultants know that we need to build the agenda around who a committee gets to hear from. Yeah, he joined and never got an opportunity. So I want to be respectful of his time, obviously, but bringing him back would be very helpful, I think. Okay, great. And the other thing is that as you're, you know, listening to the work that the subcommittees are doing and you're thinking about policy, if you could also think about, like, the building of the staff of the board. Because I've just, you know, I heard it in a couple subcommittees, obviously in compliance and enforcement, but also in social equity, I think there are, depending on the policy decisions that are made, that's going to inform the staffing of the agency. And all these things are going to need to be happening at once. So if you could keep a special eye on that as well, that would be helpful to me, and I will do the same. And the last thing I have is just, I know that we are going to provide that model by request, but I just wanted to note for the public that we will not be in a position to answer questions about that model. That's an important note. Yes. And that's all for me. Great. Do you want to add anything? I don't have a lot to add. I think the board, you know, as the board was right to note some of the constitutional questions we're going to have to work through. And I'm certainly something I have my eye on and will be discussing further. And that's social equity, but a broader comment as well. I think that's right. Yeah. Great. Well, we have about 10 minutes for a public comment. We have a few members in the room. I feel like I should prioritize the people that showed up. So why don't we do that? Do you mind sitting in this chair so you can get on the camera? Oh, yeah. Sure. We'll just do the last chance for public comment in the meeting. For this meeting? Yeah. For this meeting? Yeah. Great. I'm a member of the Vermont Cannabis Equity Coalition. And thank you for having us here today. Very exciting that the subcommittees are underway. After listening to the piece of the meeting I was able to hear just now, spending some time with our coalition and the community. I think I just want to underscore some of the concerns again around access to the market and that social equity is not something that can live in its own little bubble. It really ripples through all the decisions. And, you know, basically every subcommittee that meets probably should talk about social equity and how it applies to the job that that subcommittee is doing from a lot of different angles, from racial equity angles, from agricultural angles, from just considering, you know, local Vermonner rights versus multi-state, multinational corporation rights to access the market. This is going to, this is a theme for our coalition. It's a theme in the conversation around cannabis in general. And, you know, the more, I think, that this board can do to protect the interests of Vermonners and, you know, for lack of a better word, the little people in the market versus the larger corporations and entities, the better results we'll get for Vermonners and for the health of our consumers and the state and for the market as a whole, which will translate to success across the board, whether that's talking about tax revenue or participation in transition from the illicit market. And I just want to underscore that opportunity because Vermon did hold off for many years before launching this legal market with the justification being we can learn from other states and we can see what they do first. We don't want to be the first state to charge into the unknown. And now that we're here, there is a lot of feedback about what does and doesn't work. It's pretty clear the way the equity programs have been done up to this point have not worked great. It's pretty clear that the way local small businesses have been fostered through entering the market has not been great. And I just don't think that it is Vermon's ethic to sell an industry like this out to the highest bidder. It's more important to stand up for what's right, stand up for our local communities and acknowledge that part of legalizing cannabis is acknowledging the injustice that was perpetuated for over a hundred years, just about a hundred years of people across the country, especially Black and Brown folks as well. So I'll leave my public comment at that. Thank you. Thank you. Jeffrey. Sure. Hello, everybody. Jeffrey Pizzatello. I'm going to see everybody once again. Vermont Gourds Association and Vermont Cannabis Equity Coalition. Josh is a colleague of mine in that coalition. Three quick points. I'll be brief. First point, with regards to cannabis size and analysis of demand for the state, we have a EGA as an annual policy survey. The first year we issued our survey, we fielded over 350 unique respondents. And in one of those questions, we asked what the average canopy size is. They returned 1,200 square feet. So just thinking about those numbers and other metrics that we have as well in our organization, over 300 respondents averaging over 1,000 square feet themselves that they admitted to. Protecting our current legacy market robust is over 500,000 square feet currently and has been for a while. So just some numbers to share with you guys. We're heartened to hear about outdoor cultivation and considering that as an item in successfully leading our marketplace. We think we did a really good job and you guys will see our proposed recommendations in defining unique allotments for outdoor cultivation. For instance, in our definition of commercial cultivation we include a ratio, a one to four ratio. So for every 1,000 square feet indoor, that's 2,000 square feet mix light and 4,000 square feet outdoor. That addresses things like seasonality and other concerns that were brought up. Lastly, with regard to medical, this was brought up yesterday. The notion of patient to care given for allowances is finding success in other states. So this is nothing new. It's no longer consider innovative or too edgy. We would urge you guys to consider that for decentralizing the medical marketplace. Thanks. Thank you. All right. So anyone who is joined by the link, please raise your virtual hand. I think I saw Dave's hand go up first. Yes, Dave is first. Thanks, James. I'm fascinated by the market analysis and I look forward to diving into it, but I'm a little confused, I guess, as to how you're planning on using it and whether you're planning on setting a cap on the number of licenses to be issued to growers. And if so, I'd love to understand what your thoughts are on where in the enabling statute you think you're drawn your authority to set that cap because I don't see it. And James, as you recall from your history of working on cannabis legislation, S241 had specific numbers of licenses to be issued and would have granted the regulator under that bill authority to expand the number and determine a number of licenses. H490 in 2017 would have done something similar, but Act 164 doesn't have a set number of licenses and in my view doesn't ask you to determine a number of licenses. Instead it asks you to determine qualifications for licenses and issue licenses to qualified applicants. And so I'm just a little unsure as to where you're heading with that and I was hoping you might be able to clarify. Thanks for the comment, David. I would say stay tuned to the subcommittee structure as they start to dig in on that. I think Tito is next. Yes, Tito's next. I'd like to talk today about some really, really disturbing advancements on the marijuana for symptom relief oversight committee meeting that happened on Wednesday. And we really missed you being there, Chair Pepper. And it seemed as though some of the board, some of the panel members seem extremely, extremely motivated to keep licensed caregivers out of the conversation and to not, and to keep them from having a seat at the table. One of them even seemed to have an extremely heavy bias and even used derogatory insults towards me and other licensed caregivers, which I was personally insulted by. It was really something else. And it went so far that some of the, it seems like the MSRoc committee actually wants to change the definition of what a caregiver is from somebody who drove a medical cannabis for a patient and actually switch it to just mean a parent or guardian. It was really fascinating and really disturbing and to anybody else out there listening, any caregivers out there now, you've got to come to these meetings and let your voice be heard because it's going in a really bad direction in my opinion. And I just needed to shed some light on that. Thank you. Thanks Tito. Yeah, I'm sorry I missed it. Amelia next. Amelia? I just wanted to make a couple points really quickly. I know James you touched on medical patients being able to get their products from adult use dispensaries and how we don't really know how that would look right now. And I think that the complications around that are super valid. So if we get to a point where we can't really make that work, where we can't get these THC caps raised, things like that, then what we need to turn our focus to is looking at the fact that Vermont will not allow another medical dispensary to open until there are 7,000 registered patients on the registry. And that needs to be changed. Clearly competition is what's going to allow affordability. It's going to increase the quality of products. It's going to increase accessibility. And it's going to increase the, like you said, the dispensaries don't have a great variety of product. And if there were more competition within that medical space, that amount of product choice would increase by a lot. And then the second thing I just wanted to say that I think I said to you James, but I just wanted to say it to everybody, is specifically on my end with regard to the medical subcommittee, just be very, very aware of where the recommendations and suggestions are coming from within these subcommittees, because the advisory board is not a group of people that you guys chose. Like each one of these members was recommended by a different person. It's not like a group that you guys put together as cannabis experts and everybody who was, you know, the best person for that job. And it really concerns me that our patient representative on that subcommittee who is Jim, who has I think been doing a great job from the oversight committee, he was selected by the same dispensary that Meg also represents. And so that's two people who essentially represent same dispensary and then two doctors whose expertise is not necessarily in the administration of cannabis or symptom relief or even the cultivation of cannabis to be used in a medical context. So the amount of knowledge within that subcommittee or the amount of experience and patient advocacy, in my opinion, is limited. So I just think that's something to keep in mind when you're receiving recommendations from these subcommittees is the personal expertise and experience of the people that are on them. And that was all I wanted to say. Thank you. Thank you, Amelia. Anyone else with a public comment? Please feel free to raise just your virtual hand. Okay. We have two joined by phone. Oh, sorry. If you've joined by phone and you'd like to make a comment, I think it's star six to unmute yourself. All right, well, thank you all for joining us. We'll keep doing these on Fridays. We're going to be posting our subcommittee meetings. They were all recorded yesterday. We'll be posting them as quickly as we can. We've been working with Orca Media, who has kind of secondary backup to post those as well. So there's no more public comment. I will entertain a motion to adjourn. Move to adjourn. Seconded. All in favor? Aye.