 like we're recording. So my name is James Pepper. I'm the chair of the Vermont Cannabis Control Board. Today is November 30th, 2021. It's 6 p.m. and we are doing a board meeting cannabis board meeting dedicated exclusively to public comments. We would like to get started as quickly as possible but I figured it might be helpful at this point just to talk a little bit about the informal rules that we've been kind of following at some of these meetings. We'd like people to try to keep their comments to three minutes. However, you can always get back into the queue after your three minutes is up and I'll let you know roughly when three minutes has passed. If there's people that haven't had a chance to speak and we have kind of a long line of people that haven't or that have provided public comment I'm going to try and filter the folks that haven't had a chance yet to the to the front of the line. Other than that, you know, I know that we get a kind of wide variety of viewpoints here. I would really hope that we can all be kind of respectful to the various positions that people are putting forward and really understand that this meeting in this format is very beneficial to the board to hear directly from people that are going to be most directly impacted or have the most kind of interest in the work that we're doing. I would say before we get started, very briefly, well, one, I am at our physical location, 89 Main Street in Montpelier, please feel free to stop by. We'll be here at least for an hour. And the other thing is that we did file, pre-file two of our four rules with ICAR, the Interagency Committee on Administrative Rules last week. Those are available on our website. And while this isn't the formal comment period for those rules, we do take every comment that we receive both through these forums and through our web portal at ccb.vermont.gov. Very seriously, we consider them all and they all influence the amendments that we will make to those rules. So with that, I'm gonna open this up to public comment. I'll start because there's no one here in the office with the people that had joined via the link. And if you'd like to make a public comment, please just raise your virtual hand and we'll do our best to call on you in the order that you raise your hand. And Julie and Kyle, if no one raises their hand, I'll leave it up to you whether or not you wanna turn your video off. But I do see Fran, do you wanna join us? Yes, good evening to the three of you and everyone else in attendance. And since nobody raised their hand, I'll get up and get my two cents worth in first. I hadn't heard in conversations about expanding the caregiver system. I had a few ideas on that. It goes along with the idea of farm to table. I have been in contact with caregivers in Maine. And to my surprise, all they have is a retail business license to operate. Now they do actually charge tax to patients at 5%, but I'm still hoping that we will not listen to the corporations, the integrates who I understand through what I've been hearing want to redefine caregiver to just a parent who can come pick up meds at a dispensary. So I'm again, emphasizing the fact that patients really need this. It would be detrimental to patients if we go the other direction. And I'm hoping we will expand to five plus patients the way that Maine had done. They had 3,000 caregivers just basically fend off the corporations in Maine who wanted to end their program as well. So this is something that seems to be going on when the larger companies try to own the market. I'll leave it at that for now. And I thank you very much for listening to my comments tonight. And again, thank you all, all three of you for all of your work that you are doing. Thank you Fran. Tito. Hi everybody. Thanks for having this. I'm sorry I missed last week's meeting. I had something I couldn't get out of, but happy to see you guys again. And today I just wanna talk about that vape tax and the need to get a carve out for intent for cannabis. It's something that we've gotta do. And it's only getting worse by the way. Now nationally there's restrictions on shipping anything with the word vape in it. There's completely unmanageable taxes, which we all agree where they're intended to stop the problem of jewels and jewel abuse in high schools, which we all agree is an awful terrible thing. And now for some reason somehow cannabis has gotten super wrapped up into it, even though these vapes are intended for cannabis and not nicotine. So we just need to get a carve out. And also when I was working on this with then Senator Debbie Ingram, she told me that even the attorney who wrote the law said that it was definitely not intended for cannabis. So it seems like everyone agrees. We just need to get that in those acts act 28, 27 and 22. And so if the state of Vermont can hopefully not add to this problem that we have nationally with this vape tax and arguably these vapes are the best way to consume cannabis. So that's all. Thank you. Thank you all so much. Thanks, Tito. I've got Amelia next. Hi, guys. Hi. I wanted to bounce off of what Fran was talking about with caregivers. Obviously a support expanding the caregiver to patient ratio. I'd love to see five patients per caregiver and three caregivers per patient. As far as payment and money goes, I think that in order for caregivers to sell the patients that's a little more complicated. And what I've been thinking about is maybe in order to sell direct to patients you need to already have a resale or a retail license or some kind of whole sale or a retail license. So if you've got, say, hey, go. If you've already got a retail license if you want to add some sort of provisional license like a provisional caregiver license that would give you the ability to grow for those five patients and then sell. But as far as the one-to-one caregiver patient type thing I think that selling gets a lot more complicated in terms of if you're exchanging money for a product I think that it needs to be regulated like any other product on the retail market. And to ask a caregiver to be able to sell one-to-one like that and be regulated in terms of things like testing it's kind of hard to do that. I haven't really figured out all the kinks in that myself just thinking about it, but a thought I did have and an idea I did have was making that caregiver being able to sell to a patient thing available by adding it as like a provision to a retail license that somebody can already apply for because then they're already gonna be regulated and they'll get those, the patients will have that plant count, whatever we end up having it be but they'll get those plants and the patient will still have access to quality medicine that's being grown. The caregiver can be compensated for it but I feel like it just kind of helps in terms of licensing and regulating the cannabis that's being grown in that sense. Thanks, Amelia. And I will say, I think our meeting on Friday is gonna be dedicated to the medical program and some of the recommendations that came from our subcommittee and some of the kind of direction that the board is gonna be moving in. So I'd encourage you to join that if you can at 11 on Friday. Just for the folks that have joined since we started this is a meeting dedicated to public comments and we'd like to limit our public comments to roughly three minutes. I'll let you know in three minutes has elapsed. If you haven't finished your comment in three minutes you can get back in the queue and we'll try our best to get people that haven't commented that have raised their hands in. But other than that, if you have a comment please raise your virtual hand and we'll try and call on you in the order that those hands are raised. And as a reminder, we have filed the first two of our four rules. They're available on our website and we would encourage folks to take a look at those and give us comment specific to those rules as well. And again, Julie and Kyle, if we don't have anyone raising their hands feel free to turn your cameras off. Fran? Yeah, I just thought I'd come back with one more idea on caregivers. And oh, I lost it. Oh, good. It basically, we don't need to complicate it and we do need to expand the patients. So I think that with what Amelia was saying was okay but I don't think we should force a caregiver to get a retail license and a caregiver license. I think it should be combined. So it's a caregiver license that allows the retail just like in Maine again. What I said is 3,000 caregivers there managed to send that off and attack to knock them down. We don't have that many here but we do have, and here was my point we do have a lot of people that have been working for free that have been helping patients over the years when the dispensaries were not providing what they needed for whatever reason. And at this point we need to bring those people in so they can make a small living at it or at least break even with what they're doing to help these people because they've been doing it for free for this long. And I have never heard and I've listened to a lot of people, a lot of patients I've never heard one person say anything that a caregiver that was either licensed or unlicensed in this state in the last couple of years has ever provided anything to a patient that wasn't clean, affordable and effective. Thank you. Thanks Fran. Next on my list is Dr. Antley. Can you hear me? We can hear you, yes. Okay. Yeah, so my name is Catherine Antley and I'm a member of the Vermont Medical Society physician here in South Burlington. And I just wanted to make sure everybody is aware of the new resolution that the Medical Society has passed in November of this year. And I'm just gonna read the press release that came out today, representing over 2000 Vermont physicians. The Vermont Medical Society, which represents 2,400 physicians and physician assistants across Vermont has adopted a policy resolution urging the Vermont Cannabis Control Board and the Vermont Legislature to require that all cannabis grown, produced or sold in the state contain less than 15% THC. The Vermont Medical Society policy also opposes all cannabis advertising and advocates for all cannabis products and advertising to list the evidence-based health risks associated with cannabis use including psychosis and suicide attempts, suicidality in persons with no prior mental health history. Also uncontrollable vomiting, dangerous driving of course, addiction as we know, harm to fetus and nursing babies. These public health and mental health risks are of immediate concern as Vermont currently has the nation's highest past month cannabis use, including use of high potency greater than 15% THC products and evidence shows that cannabis use, especially potency is greater than 15% THC, which is the definition of high potency THC is associated with increased urgent and emergent, emergency department, psychiatric visits and increased mental health disorders, including psychosis. It's associated with increased urgent non-psychiatric visits for respiratory distress, cannabis hyperemesis syndrome, which is uncontrollable vomiting and poisoning. What we found particularly concerning is the gap in between the symptoms that we're seeing in the ERs, in urgent care, in our population in Vermonters, and which is increasing and the decreasing of perception of harm in the population. In Vermonters is a significant and inappropriately low perception of harm of cannabis use. Many Vermonters associate legalized cannabis sales with marijuana from the 1990s, where the THC levels were less than 2%, yet in states like Colorado and Washington, where commercial cannabis sales have already been legalized, THC potency has dramatically increased in averages 17 to 28% or even up as far as 90%. These are percentages that have never been described really before commercialization to any significant degree and therefore human beings are encountering them for the first time with adverse effects. The Vermont Cannabis Control Board is currently drafting, as you know, the proposed regulations in order to implement Vermont's commercial market for cannabis sales, which is supposed to begin in 2022. And last week we're concerned because the released proposed rules, which include draft warning label language, leaves out all mention of serious mental health effects associated with cannabis use, including the risk of addiction, anxiety, psychosis, suicide attempt, or self-injurious behavior, particularly in those with no personal or family history of mental health disorder. And this is occurring not just in teens or youth, but also in adults. GMS president and psychiatrist, Simi Raven stated, at a time when Vermonters are facing filled hospital beds, crowded emergency departments, and prolonged wait times for inpatient mental health treatment, Vermont's medical professionals believe Vermonters deserve accurate information about the risks of cannabis use and should not have commercial access to high risk, high potency products. Dr. Annalie, that's about three minutes. It's informed decision makers, and these warnings will increase the likelihood that they are accurately informed of the risks for the drug before they buy the drug. Thank you, Dr. Annalie. And I appreciate all the information you've sent to the board. I mean, I read it all the last time you sent it. I know Kyle and Julie at least had it. I assume they read it as well. If you wanna get back in the queue to finish the rest of the comment, we just have a few hands raised and I wanna kind of respect just the kind of equity of letting everyone have an equal amount of time. So I would jump next to Libby Stout. Thank you. Thank you very much for allowing me to speak to you. My name is Libby Stout. I actually am a board certified addiction psychiatrist from Colorado. And I'm trying to help people see what they can do to help prevent the really serious public health problems that we are seeing in Colorado that are mainly because of the very hypotency THC products that are available. And we've had such a problem with things like psychosis and suicide and people filling up the emergency rooms with cannabis hyperemesis syndrome that we were very successful in passing a law, this past session to actually start decreasing some of the problems that we were seeing with the high potency concentrates. And one of those was for a mandate for the School of Public Health at Colorado University School of Public Health to do a very systematic scoping review of the literature. Because many people, especially in the industry have said, well, we don't have enough research. What we don't have research on is the high potency products if they're safe and effective for any medical reason. We have a lot of research from all over the world and they have identified over 50,000 studies that they are using to then try and narrow it down and extract to get all the information about the dangers of high potency THC. So how effective it is in terms of causing these problems. And I would start with talking about addiction. This is, the only reason to increase the potency of a substance is to increase the addictive potential because you increase the high, of course, but it also increases the addictive potential. And we know that for all other substances. And we have seen this as a problem with the opiates. I know you've had a problem with the opiates. And people that are using regularly on a daily basis definitely become dependent on it. And they start having withdrawal, which means that they have to keep using in order to keep the withdrawal symptoms at bay. And so the higher the potency, the more likely ours people are gonna become addicted to it. And if they're starting during the time their brain is developing, which is during adolescence or early adulthood, that makes it increased risk of having addiction. And it's addiction that's driving all the other problems because we haven't seen the amount of problems that we are experiencing now in the past when the THC was less than 2%. I have seen such dramatic psychotic symptoms in young people, including severe delusional systems that are worse than methamphetamine and are very difficult to treat, having to use multiple anti-psychotics to try and control the psychosis. And we have seen this in people that have no family history, no personal history of psychosis. There have been many studies, especially in other countries like the UK and Europe, showing that anything greater than 15% puts you at risk, three times risk for psychosis. If you use it daily, it's five times risk for psychosis. There's even a study in Europe showing that it was 10%. And we really don't have any research on anything higher than 10% that shows it's effective or safe or anything. Medical. Dr. Stout, thank you for that comment. And I know this format isn't perfect for trying to make effective points, but I appreciate the comment. If you'd like to continue, please just kind of re-raise your hand. I'll call on you again, of course, but there are just a few other people in the line. Thank you. Absolutely, thank you. Yeah. Jim, Dumont. Hi there. Can you see me and hear me? We can. Oh, good. Thank you. My name is Jim Dumont. I practice law in Bristol. I'm here on behalf of the physicians, Families and Friends Education Fund. I wanna start by saying that I submitted to the board Dr. Stout C.V. earlier today. You may not realize it, but the person who just spoke to you is an incredible worldwide expert on these issues. She's not just any psychiatrist. She has published and spoken widely on this and she really knows what she's talking about. And hopefully she'll be able to continue later this evening. Thanks for listening to us. I've submitted yesterday a lengthy letter commenting on rule two, in particular looking at the lack of any mandatory disclosure in advertising. That gap is simply astounding to us. It is totally unacceptable and it does not carry out the purpose of the statute. Having some mandatory disclosures on packaging is nice, but it's not anything more than nice because people don't read the warning on the packaging until they've purchased the product and even then they may not read it. I'm quite sure that the concern that you have about possible First Amendment issues is what lies under the failure to impose mandatory disclosure in advertising. The letter I submitted yesterday quotes extensively from the chief US district judge for the district of Vermont who rejected that argument in the genetic engineering case. The constitutional basis for mandatory disclosures for cannabis is far, far stronger than for genetically engineered foods. It was constitutional there, it's constitutional here. We really urge you to reconsider what you've got in the draft rule, which is totally inadequate. I wanna add one more thing, which is I understand some of you may believe that you can add mandatory disclosure on a case-by-case basis when you're approving of advertising, you cannot do that. It has to be in the rule. If you try and mandate speech on a case-by-case basis, then you will have a First Amendment problem. It has to be universally applied, it has to be in your rule and it's not. Thank you for listening. Thank you, Jim. Jessica Lee Smith. Yes, can you hear me? Yes, we can hear you. Hi, okay, I'm sorry if I'm repeating something that you guys said, I'll try to make it extremely brief. I just wanna quickly say that I do think that there's a lot of fear associated with it when you don't know as much about it. There are other factors that tie into why maybe somebody had a psychosis and also at a certain age. I think it more brings out the state of mind you're already in. But I wanna know the same people that are worried about the regulation are those people for the legalization of drugs and mushrooms and all that stuff. When you're sending out needles, do you also say what's wrong with it when you're giving people mushrooms? What about alcohol? Is it enough that they put it on the bottle? I mean, isn't it so much worse than alcoholic? I mean, I'm just trying to say it's no different than anything else. There's a lot of ignorance towards it and has a lot of healing properties. Okay, I'll leave it at that and I know that you know more than me, Miss. I know that you've studied it, et cetera. But it's just my opinion from knowing people who have used it and knowing all different ages, et cetera, and different reasons. The last thing I wanna say is if it does come to the retail market, I really think it belongs in the hands of the locals and not the state because the locals need that attention. They need that focus and need the money to come back into them. That's mainly what's hurting here is the locals, not the people who don't live here. So I do think that the state already gets everything. They don't need to take that too. They can give it to the people and let the farmers grow it as they want to help them grow it. If they don't have the money to do it or they have a plan that's failed, help them do it again so they can make money so we can become self-sufficient. Thank you so much. Thank you, Jessica. Amelia? Yeah. With respect to the medical professionals who I'm sure know much more about what they're talking about than I do, I do wanna point out that a lot of the research that we cite when we talk about the health effects of cannabis is federally funded. And the only current federally funded research is that on the negative effects of cannabis. There is no current federally funded research on the positive effects of cannabis. And that's why we can't say that we have solid proof of the positive effects of cannabis. That doesn't mean they aren't there. And my other point would be that I agree that there are negative effects of cannabis. Obviously we don't want you using cannabis because it does affect your brain's development for the age of 25. But the solution to that is I think more in the realm of education than more prohibitive measures. We already know that these products exist on the black market. We already know that they're being made and we already know that if we continue to prohibit these products, they're still going to be available on the black market. They're still going to be accessed by the people who want to access them. And so the solution here rather than saying you can't have THC over 10%, you can't have concentrates like this. You can't have this product. If we keep doing this, it's not going to make the problem any better. And if we're seeing these negative mental health effects from certain products, then that research needs to continue to happen. We need to continue to see the results of that research and we need to educate people. Because that's the only way that we're going to see long-term positive changes through education, not prohibition. I think the drug war has already taught us that that was my two cents. Thank you, Amelia. Sam, Sam Bromberg, do you want to join us? Hi, good evening. Can you hear me okay? Yeah, we can hear you. All right, great. Nice to see all of you. I hope you had a happy Thanksgiving and have a happy, healthy holiday season. I wanted to talk briefly about tracking trace. It is pretty open-ended, the language behind it right now. And on the smaller business side of things, it could be a pretty heavy cost associated with the system depending on what that system is and how it is selected. So I don't have a great answer for it, but please, while you're selecting the requirements, make sure that the cost of implementation is reasonable for the small-scale producers and smaller operations. I've seen inventory control systems that are $25, $30, $50, $100,000 to implement when you include the technology required, printers, scanners, tablets, networks, everything like that. So please just make sure you're considering that when you are talking about the specifics of what the requirements are for the businesses. I don't know if it's a good idea or not, but maybe the state having a base system that people could use if they wanted to, so they didn't have to set up their own as an option. I don't know how wanted that would be, but it's very expensive software, generally speaking. That was my primary comment. You guys are making some real progress there. Thank you very much. Look forward to seeing what comes next. Thank you, Sam. For the benefit of the folks that have joined, since we started, this is our after-hours meeting dedicated exclusively to public comment. If you would like to make a comment, please raise your virtual hand. I do would like to pause right now and just notice that there's one person who joined by phone. If the person who joined by phone would like to make a public comment, please hit star six to unmute yourself. Otherwise, we will go to Phil Schilling. All right, I just wanted to give it a second if the person who called in wanted to comment. And thank you to the board. Watched the last few meetings and it's pretty clear you guys care about what you're doing here. So thank you very much. Wanted to comment on the advertising specifically to social media section. I know it was brought up in the last board meeting. Just wanted to reiterate the point there. The comment or the specific is that any images or text regarding products is otherwise prohibited on social media. Just wanted to talk about craft and how that specifically is gonna be where craft advertises and just taking that specific into consideration would, or the specific text there in consideration would be greatly appreciated. That's all I got. Thanks again. Thanks Phil. Jesse Lynn. Hi, thanks so much for having me and having public comment tonight. My name is Jesse Lynn Dolan. I'm a registered nurse. I'm the acting president of the American Nurses Association here in Vermont. I'm also a board director for the American Cannabis Nurse Association. And the way I became and got into cannabis work is through my work as a nurse specializing in opioid use disorder specific to the maternal child health population. I also spent a long time doing research on opioid use disorder at the University of Vermont in their behavioral health program. And I just want to kind of second what Amelia said as she's mentioned, she's not a medical professional but from a medical professionals, both viewpoint and opinion and work experience. I want to second what she've said. And unfortunately with cannabis being the status that it is, we don't have the federal research to pull from the only research that is available and that has been pushed over and over is finding the negative aspects of cannabis. If we go all the way back to Nixon, even when he put together a medical, a group of medical professionals trying to find the negative aspects of cannabis he was not able to. It took work to make them able to prove research that cannabis is dangerous or attempting to prove that. But again, we have no research to the contrary. So it's really a disservice overall for us to look at that research as the end all. What we do know is dare didn't work. Abstinence doesn't keep people from getting pregnant. So the idea of prohibition as Amelia said, maybe isn't the best idea. And I think we know that at this point in the world. We know that we need that education. And I just want to remind medical professionals we don't get education on the endocannabinoid system in medical school. So when you're looking at this research and reiterating the stats, what are your thoughts in the endocannabinoid system and endocannabinoid system deficiency? Because what we're seeing in the last seven to 10 years in medical research, and we will get there once this legal status has changed and the research is able to happen, we will see different research. So if a doctor or nurse isn't recognizing that we have an entire endocannabinoid system that we didn't know existed 20 or 30 years ago, we're going on some antiquated research, some antiquated fear-based thoughts and the only availability again of that research specifically proving the negativity or attempting to prove the dangers of cannabis. What we also know, and especially while I've been specializing in opioid use disorder for a very long time here in the state of Vermont is that I haven't had a lot of people come to me and say my doctor recommended medical cannabis and I went to a dispensary and then they also offered me cocaine, ecstasy, and opioids. What we do know is people who are buying or trying to get cannabis off the street are often offered other drugs besides cannabis. So again, that prohibition mentality, what good is that serving when we look at the overall picture and not just the fact that we have federally funded research specific to give us that answer. The one thing I've learned as a research nurse at the University of Vermont and I appreciate my time and my research there is that we need to understand who's funding the research, what the hypothesis of that research is and what we're doing with that intended research because I have a great example of my research at UVM at the on cannabis and human milk feeding or what people call breastfeeding has not been published for two years because their concern is that it's two pro cannabis but it's the same exact research study to a T that was published and accepted seven years ago pre legalization when people had more stigma and bias than they do now. So that is a wonderful example locally here at UVM research we are unable to get published because there is a concern that it's not negative enough for the cannabis research world and what cannabis research allowed. So I just wanted to share some of my experience and kind of piggyback on what Amelia had mentioned as far as not having that medical expertise but she pretty much nailed it. So thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Jesse Lynn. I just pause here. I know someone else joined via phone. If anyone who joined via phone would like to make a public comment please hit star six to unmute yourself and I'll just give it a second. Okay. So we're gonna circle back Dr. Anley you're next on my list if you'd like to continue your comment from before. Can you hear me? Yes, we can hear you. So, yeah. So the medical society has reviewed enormous amount of literature. The resolution that was passed came with a number of pages of references many of which were gathered by Dr. Stout. And I encourage you to read those carefully. I know the Vermont law tasks you with evaluating how much or whether CBD should be added to THC to decrease psychosis. I think this is a challenging question for a medical doctor or a lawyer to grapple with. I put that question out to a number of faculty members at Harvard and Boston Children's and also some international experts in the field. And they said this is a type of question which would take a year or minimum and probably a couple of million dollars to come up with an educated answer to. So I'm just hoping that when you address that part of the Vermont law that you engage medical experts and the research community in trying to get some input on that one question. Gosh, a lot of different things have come up the opioid use issue. We do know it's new literature is being published all the time obviously. And if you look at the peer review literature as opposed to anecdote, we do know that teens 13 to 17 are actually about as addicted to marijuana as they are in that time period as they are to opiates. So for the youth it's a quite dangerously addictive substance for whatever reason at this point. We also know that Dr. Allen Budney who is a professor at Dartmouth gave a lecture sponsored, I think it was sponsored by the Vermont Health Department and he showed that he reviewed a number of different studies and in these teens who have substance marijuana misuse addiction and they get treatment. A year later, only 10% are abstinent. So you have a double whammy where you've got a drug that's really quite addictive for these youth and when they get treatment they're actually having a hard time putting it down. So I think what's happening is the perception of harm in Vermont is obviously going down. We obviously have a lot of corporate interests that are interested in creating addiction but these sorts of the literature out there around addiction and children and teens is really not being published as much. We also do know that cannabis use increases the risk of developing a use disorder and the predominant predictor of adult opioid misuse is having used marijuana before the age of 18. The number one risk factor for adolescent and opioid misuse is having ever used marijuana lifetime and that's the YRBS from 2020. I just wanna talk about the advertising issue. In Vermont, we don't have any billboards supposedly that's not allowed but somehow we did that. We think in the medical society that this is something that the CCB could do for Vermonters, it's still gonna be available. People are gonna be able to buy it but we don't need to increase addiction through advertising especially to children. We do know that 20% of people consume 80% of the product and because of that, according to the Rand report which was done at the beginning of this story in Vermont, their testimony said that this industry won't make money. In other words, their profit depends on creating those folks who are consuming 80% of the product addiction. And that's part of what's driving, quite frankly, the higher and higher potencies because it's much more addictive. We know that with every drug as you increase the addiction, the increase the potency, you increase the addiction. Another concerning thing that we've seen is- Dr. Hanley, do you mind if I just kind of, you're at about four minutes right now and we just have one person new that's joined the conversation that's raised their hand if you don't mind. Sure. Sorry for the kind of formatting of this. We're just trying to keep things equitable. Laurie, if you'd like to unmute yourself and join the conversation, that's L-O-R-I. Laurie, I see that you've unmuted yourself but we can't hear you. Laurie, I'm sorry, we still can't hear you. It might be that your settings are set to a different microphone. If you can mess around with that for a little bit, I'm just gonna move on. I see old growth organics. Hello, could you take my video off? Oh, there we go, I can do it now. Sorry, I am wired shut so it's easier if you can also see me. I was not going to speak up today because I have my bands on but I think I was surprised to hear the direction this conversation is going with some of the medical professionals. So I thought it is just worth my voice also. Seconding what Jesse said in Amelia, I think it is important to say that, sorry to be such a deliberate, I am an opiate addict, six years in recovery and I am abstinent from all substances including alcohol, marijuana and nicotine. Yet I am in the marijuana industry and again I second what Amelia and Jesse said is what we have learned from the war on drugs is that people are going to do what they want and it is clear that a high THC is what people are after. Prohibiting that and putting limits on it is never a good thing. The government should not be regulating these kinds of things. I think anyone in the addiction recovery community can say that nothing is going to stop you when you want something. Yes, I guess that is all for now. It's so difficult with my mouth. So I will just say I absolutely second what Amelia and Jesse has been saying. I do not think the government should be overstepping and regulating these things. It is all about education. Always about education, not about prohibiting when it comes to these things because we see them also in video games, addiction, sugar addiction, people are trying to, especially the youth, are trying to escape because we have a bigger issue in society. Probably arguably because of technology and its changes in society, people are seeking ways to escape, period. So thank you for bearing with me and thank you guys for all the work you're doing. Thank you. So can we try to go back to Lori? Lori, I see your hand is still raised. I saw you trying to get on and off mute a little bit. Can you try one more time? Okay, so we have someone who's raised their hand that joined by phone. Phone number is 802-399. Do you want to join us? Okay, we'll go to THC analytics. I'm sorry, is there a screen? No. 399, okay, yeah. Hold on, THC analytics, we'll go to 802-399. Thank you, I appreciate that. So hi, it's Barry from Hinesburg. Once again, really, really appreciate you guys publishing the rules. I got a chance to read them today. It was awesome, but real quick, I'm forced to address the good doctor. I come at this at the point of view of somebody who was on opioids for decades for pain use prescribed. And you know, you guys, one of the things the Hippocratic goes right, do no harm, well, opioids did a lot of harm to this country, okay? Opioid use disorder does a lot of harm to this country. And cannabis, cannabis extracts helped me become opiate-free for a while now. I take issue with your use of the word addiction, okay? And I want to thank Jesse Lynn for bringing up the Schaefer Report, which was appointed by President Nixon and was the national commission on marijuana and drug abuse reform. And Republican governor Schaefer could not whitewash it. And in the public comments after this, I'll put a link to it. And I sincerely hope the good doctor reads it. And I'm still waiting for her to publish her links in the public comments to these studies you keep citing because I would love to investigate the sources and the funding and publish those as well in the public comments. Hey, you know, yeah, just, yeah, go ahead. I'm sorry, it's okay. Go ahead and I would just say that Dr. Antley did submit public comments. I don't know if they came directly to the board members, but we will certainly post them on our website. Just, you know, just to kind of... I might have missed them. Okay. I've been looking for them. So I appreciate you guys putting in the mix here for a thousand foot indoor and 50 foot or 50 plants outdoor. I think that's great benefit for people. I was looking through the definitions of indoor and outdoor today. And I just want to suggest that you guys think about adding a mixed light greenhouse, something because the way it is now it has to be indoor. It has to be outdoor. You have to be classified as one or the other. And the outdoor is classified as open field and not in structure at all. And a lot of people are going to start, you know, wanting to do mixed light, you know, greenhouses with supplemental lighting. And that probably shouldn't be considered indoor. And that's all I have for the rules. Thank you for your time and really, really appreciate all of the work. Thank you. Thank you. THC analytics. Good evening. Thank you for your time. Now you might hear a cooing in the background. I have my baby with me currently. I just wanted to second what Jessalyn and Amelia were talking about, both on the patient and also on the limits. When you're talking about limits, it's really hard to, again, if you're talking about concentrates, you're talking about either having to add to your concentrate a diluent in order to make it, it reach that limit or you have to go to extremes to actually reach those limits. The other thing I wanted to mention, it's education. Some states require you to go through a class before you become a bartender. I believe it should be just like alcohol. In every state, you have to go to an alcohol tending class before you become a bartender. It is important, the states believe it's important because you want to avoid certain things like over-serving per se. Same thing with THC limits. I do believe there is a risk of it, especially for people who have never been used it in the past. For somebody to come across with something that they have per se, there's 80% THC in it, for a newcomer will be a really detrimental to their mental perception. But again, that comes with education. If you educate the public about the dangers of what they're using, there might be a, there's a better chance for that person to make a more educated decision about what they are consuming. Again, a bartender at some point will tell you to stop drinking alcohol if he sees you're enabrated enough to see that it's gonna cause a harmful effect on you. Same thing with a bartender, bartenders should not be letting you or showing you any type of product they might be detrimental to you if you've never used the product before. But yet again, I'm just re-expressing myself what everybody said tonight. Thank you for listening. Thank you. So Lori, I'd like to try you one more time, L-O-R-I. I see you're unmuted and hopefully you can join the conversation. Okay, I'm sorry about that. Next is- Quick pepper, Lori. I'm not a tech guy, but simple restart sometimes works. Maybe if you try leaving the meeting and coming back in, we'll be able to hear you, I don't know. Yeah, that does help. And of course, Lori, we do have a big button on our homepage of the ccb.vermont.gov. If you wanna submit written comments, we will all take a look at them. Next is Jim Dumont. I must have raised my hand by accident, I apologize. No problem, that's all right. If you want, Libby's stout is next on my list. I can just go straight to her. Yes, please do. Yeah, Libby, do you wanna continue your comment from before? Sure, I would like to respectfully disagree with the nurse who commented. There currently are hundreds of clinical trials undergoing right now. And if somebody wants the list of those with the government support, I'm happy to supply that. What there are not ever going to be probably are clinical trials of THC higher than 15%. Because IRBs are most likely not gonna approve those kind of studies because we do know that the consequences are pretty severe for people. But like there was recently the highly anticipated study that was gonna prove that cannabis helped with PTSD. They actually did a study looking at high potency versus low potency THC versus high potency CBD. However, I think the highest potency of the THC in that study was like 12 to 15%. So it wasn't considered, but I'm suggesting that we go higher. And what they found was no difference between any of the testing, no different than placebo. And so there are these studies and they are happening. I wanna point out that I don't think putting restrictions on things increases the black market. We in Colorado have the most incredible black market still. Although we have more dispensaries for 100,000 people than any place else. We have many, many dispensaries but we also have many, many illegal gross sites. And they're being investigated almost on a daily basis and reported on a daily basis. So that's not gonna do that. What I do agree with is education, the education and that's why you have warning labels. And that's what we came up with in Colorado with our new law. We have a handout, it's a two-page handout that everybody in a dispensary has to get when they're purchasing a product. And it lists the warnings. So basically the warnings are that using this product may cause psychosis, may cause mental health problems, may cause addiction, may cause cannabis hyperemesis syndrome. So this is kind of like informed consent. People need to know these things when they're purchasing a product. And we also have it on there about the size, like a dab. So it's actually a little piece of a dot because that's the size that's recommended for people when they're dabbing. I mean, that's crazy. But so anyway, that's what I would like to say and I'll stop, thank you. Thank you, Dr. Stout. Next on my list is a phone number. I'll just read off the first couple of digits, 802-598. 802-598, if you raise your hand, feel free to unmute yourself. And if you join by phone, you can unmute by hitting star six. Oh, can you hear me? Yes, we can hear you. Good evening. Can you hear me? We can hear you. Yes. Thank you. And I am Lori. I'm sorry for the glitch. Oh, sorry. I tried to reset it. Thank you for taking my call and my comments. And thank you for all your hard work in drafting these regulations. I've been following them and I'm fortunate enough to be able to do so. Even from work, I work for an agricultural business that's still family owned. And I just have a couple of comments after, for tonight anyhow. After a quick review, I do not see residency requirements for any certain length of time for obtaining a license. And I would ask that residency requirements for at least 50 to 75% of all the licenses, especially for tier one and tier two cultivators be considered at least for the first few years. My suggestion would be to consider similar requirements to those that are used by our universities and colleges for in-state tuition. And I think by doing this, we could help our small farmers and growers integrate into this new territory. My second comment is similar to a few of the others is that to support local farmers, growers, residents, I would ask that more assistance be available to all. I worked with several growers during the hemp. I don't know what you want to call it, like the enthusiastic hemp bandwagon, which kind of soured some of our small, well, many growers. So I would hate to see that happen and have our local growers miss opportunities that they could have to help them survive. So I would just ask that it be considered to have the support for the local growers. And that's it. Just wondering if we could consider residency requirements, at least for the first two tier levels, may be similar to universities and then support to help get through the daunting requirements, especially since the local smaller growers will not have that availability of assistance through like the UVM system that they did with hemp. Yeah. So thank you very much for allowing me to speak and thank you again for all your work. Thank you, Laurie. Riley, I'm Arosa. Yes, hello. Can you hear me? Yes, we can hear you. Thank you very much. I am a 20-year-old person who's in the process of trying to get their medical card. I have chronic pain and I have issues with sleep. Doctors have been trying to prescribe me very addictive and scary medications for a very long time and that's why I'm in the process of trying to get my medical card because I am aware of the dangers that come with using some stronger things to treat some things that I don't believe necessarily do all the time need very, very strong medications. And this listening to this meeting has been very educational for me and I would like to remind people of the dangers of what happened with the war on drugs and with what happened with spread of misinformation and how that got turned into something that got a really, really negative stigma placed onto cannabis and cannabis related things and we must also be aware that that stigma is probably still impacting us. So with that being said, we should be educating ourselves and I very strongly support the education aspect of this meeting. I'd also like to remind people that other things are going on right now similar to where we should be using critical thinking skills. If we look at Portugal, if we look at what's going on in the South right now, all we can tell is that, for example, we can't prevent people from using illicit substances and we can't prevent people from getting abortions, but we can only criminalize it and we can only make it unsafe for people to do the things that do require more assistance from people like us who we should be taking the steps to educate people and to make it so that what we're doing is safe and so that we know what we're doing because there is a lot of misinformation out there which leads to a lot of approved concentrates and if there's not enough testing it can lead to really, really dangerous outcomes and those outcomes can lead to more misinformation and more stigma so we need to have a crackdown on what is being put out in the market because safe stuff has been proven to only help people and it's really only the stuff that isn't safe and that isn't regulated and isn't tested that has been proven to hurt people and so I'd just like to remind everybody of what happened with the war on drugs and what's happening in other places in the world and other places in the country and remind people that people are still going to do things but the only way we can impact that is by making it criminalized or by making it unsafe for people to do those things so that's, thank you for your time. Thank you. So it's 7.03, we schedule this meeting for an hour we do have Dr. Analy and Jesse Lynn have their hands raised maybe we could just take two more comments Jesse Lynn we'll start with you if you could try and keep it short I know there's not enough time for everyone but if you wouldn't mind just trying to keep it relatively short. You got it, I can keep it quick you know that when I need to absolutely I just wanted to make a quick comment about our language usage I appreciate and want to apologize to that gentleman who did feel a little bit hurt by the language that was used and I do want to remind us that we should be speaking more about substance use disorder and not calling people addicts with that being said so I just wanted to make a quick comment actually relate exactly to words when we look at the labeling on the language I would love us to use the language of human milk feeding rather than breastfeeding that is the more appropriate and up-to-date language rather than using the word breast or we should say breast or chest feeding so I just wanted to kind of throw in there from that language approach same idea of hopefully we're using cannabis instead of marijuana right so just kind of wanted to add my little thought on that thank you so much. Thank you Jesse Lynn would you like to give us the kind of final comment and if you could just kind of try to keep it relatively short if you can for sure yeah yeah thank you for having us today and listening to our thoughts I think that you know one issue that's been brought up is this idea that if we regulate and say you know greater than 15% THC is dangerous because it is associated with psychosis, acidity and other adverse effects that will encourage the black market just like Dr. Stout said there's a new article in ProPublica and it talks about Oklahoma in Oklahoma is a red state they decided they were going to go all in and issued lots and lots of licenses so that they would have lots and lots of dispensaries and made it very easy to get a medical card and the result was that they have an enormous illicit market they have it's out you know completely out of control and I just think that that's a lesson for Vermont I mean I think that the sort of the thing that we've heard a lot about is we're going to let a lot of licenses we're going to let a lot of legal shops and that's going to get rid of the black market we may just end up with you know more pot shops than than Starbucks and McDonald's like they had in places in Denver the other thing that the other issue that you know myth it's coming up is when when other states like Washington on Oregon studied the marijuana in the shops a very high percentage of it has mold and heavy metals so there's this idea that we're going to be able to keep that somehow the shop marijuana is safer is a problem and and I think that I think that that is really important to keep in mind that there was a study in Denver they they sampled many of the shops there 100% came out with with mold in it I don't think anybody wants to buy something that has mold in it so that's that's all I've got I really hope that I really hope that we will be able to have adequate adequate warning labels so that people will know what they're what they're what they may be subjecting themselves to when they when they partake and and I hope that that we will be able to eliminate advertising in Vermont thank you thank you Dr. Anley okay so I'm going to close the meeting it's 707 just remind folks that where we are in the process we have published on our website our first two rules that relate to licensing and compliance and enforcement we do have some more rules coming related to the medical program and a few other issues but I really hope that everyone can look at those provide us comment on those in particular because it really is important for us to consider all the opinions out there especially of people that are on the ground that are living with these issues that are going to be subjected to these regulations so I don't have anything else to say other than we will be meeting as a board this Friday at 11 to discuss the medical program Julie Kyle is there anything you'd like to add before we adjourn? No really appreciate everyone's thoughts and opinions no nothing further thank you everybody for joining us tonight great well I would echo all of that we do really need the input of Vermonters and everyone that wants to participate or is going to be affected by this industry and so I appreciate you taking the time tonight and with that I will adjourn the meeting so everybody feel free to stop the recording yep and I will see you all on Friday if not sooner thank you thank you everybody