 Can folks hear me now? Yes, thank you. I'll try and be brief and not rehash everything I just said. I'm Kyle Harris. I grew up on the Eastern Shore of Maryland on a small red Angus farm. My dad's a veterinarian. I'm a dietitian. Always really loved the intersection of environmental issues and agricultural issues. I went to Vermont Law School. That's when I first came to Vermont, fell in love with it. Moved back to the DC thing for a number of years. I worked as an associate counsel for environmental affairs for a trade association in DC. I came back to Vermont. I work for the agency of agriculture. I was an ag development specialist focusing on emerging issues and economic development. Business liaison to the HEM team did a lot of policy development within that division of the agency of agriculture. I felt this is a lot of over-aggression. That was my interest, both personally and professionally. Not too often you get to kind of help foster a program from a foundational level up. And something that I care about, I'm passionate about and fortunate to be here. Great. I'd like to just briefly introduce our staff at the cannabis board. Just so that you all can kind of put faces to name. I'll start with our executive director, Bryn Hare. Good morning, everyone. My name is Bryn Hare. I'll just give you a brief background. I grew up in Oregon. I'm a lawyer. I started my legal career in New York working as a patent litigator at Robson Gray. I moved to Vermont about 11 years ago and I spent most of that time working for the general assembly as legislative counsel, working primarily on criminal justice reform. Me too. That's great. Nellie, could you just introduce yourself? Yeah, absolutely. I'm Nellie Marvel. I'm the administrative services coordinator here for the board. Now I come here from a background, doing a lot of environmental policy work and also similarly, most recently, I was with the State of Vermont legislature as well as a committee clerk there for a while. I have my master's degree in environmental studies, concentrating and advocacy for social justice and sustainability. So I have a really strong, passionate belief in making sure that we set up this system in a way that is just equitable and sustainable. So glad to be here. Great. And Kimberly? Yes, hi. Good morning. My name is Kimberly Lashkla. I'm on day number two. And so I'm very excited to be here. I grew up in Montpelier. I spent some time in Texas shortly after I graduated from high school. And back I came, I spent in the nonprofit world for 10 years prior or after, excuse me. From there, I joined the Natural Resources Board and worked there for the last almost eight years. And so I'm very happy to be part of this team and to help get us up and running and put some great systems in place. That's great. And we also have now hired a general counsel. I don't know if he's ready to kind of talk to us about that role or his background, but it is David Scherr, who's also an advisory committee member. So you know anyone with a criminal justice background, please let the attorney general know. That's right. We'll be, a couple of positions we'll be shifting here. So great to be here, really excited. I'll be starting next Wednesday, sorry, out next, the Monday after this coming Monday. And I grew up in Vermont, went away for school, came back about, also about 11 years ago and worked at a firm for a while in Burlington and spent a number of years as a public defender. And for the last about four and a half years, I've been working at the attorney general's office doing criminal justice policy work of all kinds, everything from work on issues of racial disparities on criminal systems to things like bail reform and spending expungements. So that work has been really great. I've really been grateful to be able to be involved in those issues. And I'm really excited to take some of that expertise and knowledge and commitment to equity that others have mentioned. And I'm grateful to hear and bring that to the board and begin working on setting up this market. So I'm really excited to join this board and all of you here today. We're very lucky to have you. I mean, your resume, we can go into deeper, but we won't today. But so if I could, I'd like the advisory committee members to just briefly introduce themselves and either talk very quickly about why you decided to take on this very important responsibility or what issues are of most concern to you as we kind of embark on this new venture and to help facilitate that. I'll call your name and you can, and I'll say what your statutory position is and who appointed you. So Stephanie Smith, are you on the call? Stephanie Smith is the Secretary of Agriculture, Food or Markets, Designee. Hi, I'm Stephanie Smith. I work for the Vermont Agency of Agriculture. I'm currently the manager of the Vermont Hemp Program within the Agency of Agriculture. Why I took on this responsibility is because I'm working in the hemp world and knowing that at least a portion of our registrants will be involved in the legal cannabis market. I thought I had some connections to offer, maybe some information to offer as well. What is most important to me as a member of state government is that the process and the permitting and the systems and the licenses we design are accessible to all users and that we provide great customer service and that the products that are produced in the state of Vermont are of quality that represents the state of Vermont. So that's my interest, thanks. Thanks, Stephanie. Kim Watson is a member with expertise in laboratory science appointed by the governor. Hi, I'm Kim Watson. I've been interested in the cannabis industry since about 2015, working with the state of Oregon on training samplers in how to get representative samples and also have worked 19 years for stone environmental, recently retired and worked 20 years for environmental labs. So that's my interest in laboratory testing and the quality assurance thereof. Thank you, Kim. Nader Hashim is a member with expertise in systemic social justice and equity issues appointed by the speaker of the house. Nader, are you here with us? Yep, I'm here. Thank you. So I came to Vermont in around 2010, served as a Vermont state trooper for about seven and a half years. After that stint with the Vermont state police got elected to office, served as a state representative on the Judiciary Committee and currently working at a law firm in Brattleboro, primarily on civil rights cases. Social equity and criminal justice reform are the bigger parts of my focus on this and I'm looking forward to contributing. Thanks, Nader. Ashley Reynolds, a member with expertise in women and minority owned business ownership appointed by the speaker of the house. Good morning, everyone. Yes, hello, everyone. I'm the president and co-founder of Elmer Mountain Therapeutics. We were founded in May of 2017 with a heavy emphasis on safe access and education for women and mothers. We've grown our cannabis business from the ground up. We know what it takes to have excellent sourcing at every link in the supply chain. We've developed one of the most comprehensive testing programs for quality assurance and safety for any CBD consumable product coming out of Vermont. My company's huge focus and our mission statement is on wellbeing, economic development, social justice and environmental sustainability. I was recently just named 2021's VBSR Young Changemaker Award and our company definitely aligns extremely with VBSR's values and growing a business that is really tangible for the Vermont people and the Vermont market. Why care so deeply about wanting to be on this committee? I need another job like I need a hole in the head trying to run a cannabis business in a brand new market. But I think that Vermont has something really unique to offer. I think that we're the crown jewel for the US cannabis market. And I feel really strongly about bringing the voice of someone who's been in the trenches of it for the last five years and what I can offer for what it's really like for boots on the ground, people like me. So thank you so much for having me. Thank you, Ashley. Dr. Levine, are you on? He was just on end of the year. Who's on over here? Yeah. I was just gonna wanna drive. Yeah. All right. I'll skip. Are you here? Yeah. Oh, great. So Dr. Levine is actually filling two positions currently while one of our advisory committee members is out on leave. But I think you're here mostly as the chair of the Substance Misuse Prevention and Oversight Advisory Council. Great. Like I needed a lot of job too. But my main interest really is in the public health aspects and in the preventive aspects. And I think they could all be summarized as protecting kids' brains. So that is where my strongest focus will be and in making sure that all the public health guidance that we provided throughout the cannabis programming, et cetera, does truly get integrated into the system that's developed. Thank you. Thank you, Dr. Levine. Thanks for all your service to this state over the last, well, your entire career, but thank you. Chris Walsh is one member with expertise in cannabis industry appointed by the Senate Committee on Committees. Chris, are you with us? Yes, I'm here. Can you guys hear me? Yeah. Hi, everyone. Pleasure to be here. Honored to be involved in such an esteemed group. I moved up to Vermont from New York City in 2003 and purchased Nectars, which gave me 15 years of experience in another regulated market. In 2015, I segued into cannabis by starting the first growth store in Burlington, Vermont, and also a CBD company, Upstate Elevator Supply Company, which was kind of spawned out of Green State Gardener. I then was asked to run one of the MSO's assets in Brandon, Vermont, Grassroots, was the name of the dispensary for the vertically integrated license that I am this run. I did that for two years and did not enjoy it at all. I call myself an escapee of MSO's. I segued that into a, I spent the last year and a half in Jamaica consulting on a cannabis and hemp grow in conjunction with the University of West Indies. And that was doing a lot of studies on terpenes and cannabinoids in their medical school. And from there, I took a job with my old COO from Ianthus, who started a really ground changing agricultural technology company that can wipe out pathogens in an organic non-toxic matter way. And I took that job because I think it's such a noble cause. And I've also simultaneously been consulting with Ben Cohen on his new pre-roll company, which has a strong social equity, social responsibility angle where it's all the proceeds from the company are gonna go to expunging minority cannabis records in each state that we have accounts in. So that's just a quick overview. Thank you, Chris. Siobhan Kodil is a member with Extrudes in Business Management or Regulatory Compliance appointed by the Treasurer. Hi everyone, Siobhan Kodil. My first career was in finance and business in New York. I spent the last decade here in Vermont running two distilleries. I was the COO, CFO of Whistle Big Whiskey and then the co-founder of Stone Cutter Spirit. And over that decade, I was heavily involved in Vermont's alcohol regulatory policy, including the rewrite of Title VII, a lot of work on the legislature. So I think Treasurer's point in me for keeping a perspective on regulatory matters and really trying to keep things, my personal view is trust them practical. Whatever we decide, there's no right or wrong answer, but it needs to be useful in the real world that people who are applying for licenses can easily understand what they need to do, that things are clear, that they're actually reasonable and can be consistent. So that's really a perspective I'd like to bring. Thank you. Tim Wessel, one member with an expertise in municipal issues appointed by the committee on committees. Hi everybody, nice to see everybody. Yes, my name is Tim Wessel and I'm on the fifth year of the Brattleboro Select Board. I've been elected three times and served as chair and vice chair throughout that time. And I'm here to represent the interests of interests and concerns I should say of municipalities. Vermont towns have direct interest in how these effects will roll out on the ground when we get to this marketplace. I have no real personal interest in cannabis, but I think my service as a local liquor commissioner will inform a lot of my comments and decisions making as we move forward with how local governments are gonna interface with state government on the ground. Thank you. That's great, thank you. Next we have Ingrid Jonas, is a member with expertise in public safety appointed by the attorney general. Hi everyone, happy to be here. I grew up in Vermont and my first career was working with survivors of domestic and sexual violence and also those who had committed those types of crimes. I then became a state trooper and just recently retired after 23 years with the Vermont State Police. So I was honored to be asked to be part of this great group. My sort of, I think what will inform my participation is really sort of safety impairment and that type of thing. I did spend quite a bit of time in state police as a detective and also doing work to ensure racial equity and access to safety services. So I'm very happy to be here. We're happy to have you. We've already spoken to David. He currently is a member with expertise in criminal justice reform appointed by the attorney general. I'll move to Billy Coster, the secretary of natural resources, Designee. Good morning, I'm Billy Coster. I'm the director of planning for the Vermont agency and not the resources. My work focuses on land use and energy planning policy, legislative and regulatory matters. I also have a background in working farm and forest land conservation. My main interest here is just to share the resources and capacity of our agency and ensure that we develop a industry that is sustainable and to the greatest extent possible as beneficial to our working land owners and managers. Thanks. Thank you, Billy. Next is Jim Romanoff, the chair of the Cannabis for Symptom Elite Oversight Committee. Good morning, I'm Jim Romanoff. I have grew up in Southern New England I've lived in Vermont for coming on 30 years. Most of my career has been in the publishing business as an editor, mostly in New York City and up here most recently for Eating While Magazine for a long time. I've been the chair of the marijuana for Symptom Relief Oversight Committee for the past year and I've been a board member for the last five years. It's an amazing program. I have a medical card. It's helped a lot of people. Run smoothly. It's safe. My goal this year with our board has been to continue oversight into the future with the new adult use marketplace. It can be a perilous time for medical programs. So we're really encouraged by everything that's been done to make sure that we're part of this conversation and that we can have continued high-quality products and safe products at a fair and equitable price that anybody who's got a medical card can get their hands on into the future so that Vermont continues to be sort of a state of the art medical program. That's great. Thanks, Jim. And finally, we have Meg Delia and she's a member appointed by the Vermont Cannabis Trade Association. Hi, thank you, of course. And I grew up in Vermont. I have been in Massachusetts for the past five years. I've been here for five years. Prior to that, I was in Massachusetts where I did my master's in public health. That's actually where I got started working in the cannabis industry. I worked with a research startup. Now I work with VCTA and kind of like Jim, our focus is absolutely just on a sustainable medical program, one that ties well into the adult use and is supported by it rather than wandered by it. That's great. Thank you. That is our full advisory committee. We have one person who's on leave, Shayla Livingston. She's an expert in public health and she'll be joining us later in the fall until then Dr. Levine is gonna fill in for that position as well. We have two consulting firms that we've hired to help us craft the kind of basic contours of this new industry. I think you'll find as they review kind of the subcommittee structure in the next step that there really are endless complexities and permutations to how this market might look. And as much as we really want to kind of, we might, there might be a desire to just copy and paste from other states, wholesale. I think we should push back against that desire. One, we have a number of priorities that are in our bill Act 164 and we'll walk through those a little bit later and we wouldn't really be honoring those priorities. We just kind of took what other states have done. And two, Vermont really needs to focus on its competitive advantages and our values as we kind of move towards federal legalization and our state borders will no longer be a barrier to the importation of cannabis from these mega grows in Oregon or Colorado or Massachusetts. So we hired two firms that are made up of former cannabis regulators, economists, subject matter experts and the various facets of cannabis policy. They are gonna break you up into subcommittees and they're going to provide you with all the background and expertise and comparison charts from other states and other jurisdictions and help you develop recommendations for the board and then help stress test those recommendations and make sure that they could work within our state and our agencies. So there I'm gonna pause. I'm not gonna get too far ahead of them and I turn it over for them to introduce themselves. I think I'll start with VS strategies and since I see it over strategies because NACB has a presentation for us and I think it makes sense for you guys to start and then kick things over to the National Association of Cannabis Businesses. That sounds great. Thank you so much. And I just wanna say how excited we are to be working with the board, to be working with all of these great members of the advisory board that we're introduced today and to be working with NACB on all of this. I think we all share a common goal that's been brought up a few times so far that we're trying to create an inclusive cannabis system in Vermont that recognizes and emphasizes the things that make Vermont unique and special. So we're really excited to be going forward working with you. I'm a little bit more about who we are. VS Strategies is a policy and public affairs consulting firm that specializes in cannabis policy. We think of ourselves as experts in cannabis policy although some people just call us policy nerds. Our clients include governmental bodies, trade associations, businesses and other organizations seeking to shape public opinion and implement the most effective cannabis policies and laws and regulations. Personally, I guess I should introduce myself first. I'm Dan Smith. My specialty at VS Strategies is basically working on state level policies around the country. I work in many different states and trying to figure out the best way to advance cannabis policy in a dynamic, equitable and responsible manner. The team that we put together here though isn't just limited to VS Strategies. We also have pulled in folks from Vicente Cedarburg which is our affiliated law firm. VS has been at the leading edge of cannabis law and policy since the first regulated markets came into place in Colorado. They pride themselves on not just helping clients navigate the laws and regulations but also shaping those laws and they share that same goal of advancing equitable and responsible policies across the country. So I think one thing to note just about the team that we put together and I'll let everybody introduce themselves in a second but the team that we put together here has four out of the five members came from a government background before. So I think we know the sorts of problems and questions that the board's gonna be facing and that the advisory board needs to answer. So I came to the board, I mean, I came to VS Strategies from the Massachusetts legislature where I was kind of the main staffer on the adult use bill on the Senate side. So I had to shepherd that kind of through the Senate negotiating with the house and all of my other colleagues on this team, Jen who I'll probably introduce in a second was also in the Senate at the time and then went on to work at the Cannabis Control Commission. So we kind of faced these same problems that you're gonna have to answer now. And so I think we can help pull in best practices from around the country but make sure that we can tweak and tailor them in a way that works best for Vermont. So I guess that's probably enough from me right now and I'll start turning it over to the rest of the team to introduce themselves. So why don't we start just, we'll start with Jen since she's the first one I see on camera and then we'll move around the horn. Thank you, Dan. So my name is Jen Flanagan. I am a former regulator with the Massachusetts Cannabis Control Commission. I was the governor's appointee as the public health commissioner. You may know that Massachusetts has a very prescriptive commission. Each one of the five members had to have a specific background. My specialty was public health prior to that. I spent nine years in the Massachusetts State Senate where I was the chairman of the Mental Health Substance Abuse and Recovery Committee. Also the vice chairman of the Ways and Means Committee and held various roles in public health. Prior to that, I spent four years in the House of Representatives and 10 years prior to with 10 years before that I was a legislative staffer. So my entire career has been in government understanding that what happens on Main Street is really the important piece of any legislation. I started with BS as the director of regulatory policy. I work with various states on really enacting best practices. I think as each state continues to legalize adult use cannabis, it's been really important to understand that while there are distinct differences between the states, there's a lot of similarities. And so best practices that can be used are very helpful. Also as a side note, I will be up in Vermont on September 23rd, presenting at the Vermont Youth Cannabis Conference up in Montpelier. So we're doing a lot of work and substance abuse throughout my entire career and really wanna make sure that we can help Vermont do what they need to do to stand up this agency right, to make sure that the market is regulated, but also the fact that we can get it right and we can do it for the people in Vermont. And maybe Jordan next. Thanks, Dan. I'm Jordan Wellington. I'm a partner at the firm VF Strategies. After serving as a bill drafter in the New Jersey state legislature, I moved to Colorado and kind of through a series of accidental circumstances ended up being put in charge of implementing the first ever adult use cannabis system. First on behalf of the Colorado General Assembly and then on behalf of the Colorado Marijuana Enforcement Division. So I carried legalization through the legislature and then the regulatory agency. In 2014, I left public service for the first time in my career and joined first the Vicente Cedarburg Law Firm and helped create a lot of regulatory practices there and then shifting over to VS Strategies so I could do public policy work full-time. I oversee both our national strategic kind of clients who and do government affairs work all across the country and then work very closely on a lot of different things here in Colorado. And I'm happy to talk out about all kinds of regulations and all the stuff that I do. But I think what I really wanna share is having grown up in New Jersey, I grew up going to Vermont all the time as a child. My brother went to the University of Vermont and I just have a tremendous and deep passion for the state, for the people there and really for the vision behind the legalization and bill that was passed and the way to make something that is really uniquely Vermont and cannot begin to even express how excited I am to work on creating a regulatory system that is designed in that name and not just a copy and paste stuff from other states but to make something that uniquely fits the culture, the community, the economy and the geography in Vermont and really I'm thrilled to be a part of this and thank you. And Michelle, you can jump in next. Thanks Jordan. Hi, Michelle Bodian, I'm an attorney with the law firm side of things, Vicente Cedarburg out of our Boston office currently, well, currently my home office, but you know what I mean. And I came to VS from Massachusetts Department of Agricultural Resources was with the state for about five years. Before that I was with the traditional environmental law firm in Connecticut and here at VS, I really work on the intersection of all things hemp and marijuana. It's one plant. There's a lot of lessons that can be learned. There's a lot of issues of using a hemp ingredient and a marijuana dispensary. Hemp farmer is very excited about growing a new crop, growing marijuana but a lot of considerations about land that is protected with federal dollars or is zoned in a particular way and really helping to understand that intersection. Very excited to help support where I can and work on all things Vermont. So I'll turn it over to my colleague, Andrew to round out our crew. Thank you, Michelle. And thank you to the board as well. So my name is Andrew Livingston. I'm the director of economics and research at Vicente Cedarburg. I also do quite a bit of work for VS strategies as well. My background is in economics and environmental studies but really I've been researching analyzing cannabis markets my entire career having worked at the law firm for the last eight and a half years, studying cannabis laws as they develop assisting clients and public entities, localities with all sorts of different ranges of needs when it comes to market sizing, demand and supply analysis navigating the complex patchwork of different state cannabis laws. And so really, looking forward to assisting the board as well as the advisory groups on all sorts of different things when it comes to comparative analyses of different state laws as well as understanding the different nuances of cannabis laws and how those affect market size and structure. And I will be putting together a relatively robust market analysis for the board, which hopefully will be coming soon. Thanks so much. So. I'm happy to turn it over to the NAPB or... Oh no, you can go. I was just gonna turn it over. But yeah, that's the team. Thank you very much. We're really excited to be working with all of you. Awesome, thanks so much. You guys really give us a lot of comfort that we're gonna do kind of make good decisions and great to have you on board. I see Gina and I see Tom, who are the two principals at the CEO and the legal counsel at NACB. So I'd like to hand things over to them. Well, first of all, I just wanna say we are so excited to be here. NACB can't wait to get started with the subcommittee groups to really go over the scope of work and help to make recommendations of what Vermont law for cannabis should look like. We're really enjoying this process. Vermont is a really unique state and we get to work on some interesting projects that are unlike any other states with some cultivation or farm to consumer ideas. So this is really gonna be a passion project for many of us. For those of you who don't know NACB, we create best practices for the cannabis industry with industry experts. We provide a blueprint to a lot of legislators out there to say what would be some great work that they can add to their cannabis legislation industry that they have right now. And we play a lot of leading roles in researching and recommending social equity to benefit the individuals on this war on drug. Also, just to give you a little bit of background on how we create a standard, it's very similar to what we'd be doing here in Vermont, which is the initial one is just identifying the issue and the topic, getting an industry expert to start helping us along with our research and comparison analysis of different states, different industries, or even sometimes different countries, collecting a panel of experts in order for us to really start that collaboration. How can we fully comprehensively design this? And then when we have our first draft, we go to our standards governance board, which is made up of all of our members, but also our own advisory advocacy board. We have over 700 members right now stemming from all parts of the industry, all different sectors, but also different groups. One of the things that is very important to NACB is to ensure that all voices are heard. A lot of community groups right now in Vermont had been on calls with us because that is one of the things that we want to ensure that these regulations are geared for that. And then once we have reviewed on that, we have an open public comment period for two weeks. And then we will revise based on that open comment and then have all of our members vote everything into law. So very similar to the process that we will be doing here in Vermont. And it is going to be done really quickly. I know that we have a lot of standards and scope of work that needs to be completed in the next few months. I met a lot of the board yesterday. I'm really excited. All of the experts for the advisory committee have amazing experiences, a wealth of information to obtain and all of the NACB consultants that will be on each of the panels are really excited to meet them. And I will send this over to Tom to give us an introductory of what those subcommittees will look like and our staff that will be leading the way on that. Tom? Thanks, Gina. I'll keep my introductions as brief as I can because I think I've met most of the folks that are on this call. Tom Nalasko, general counsel for the NACB or the director of legal strategies, yet another attorney in this group this morning. I draft the standards for the NACB and along with Mark and Gina and some others we consult with various state legislators and municipalities. What we have done and we've started working with BS Strategies and Dan and Generati is based on Act 164 and what we're charged with and they quickly approaching deadlines, we've kind of distilled what needs to be done into seven different subcommittees that you'll see here. Social equity, market structure, licensing, sustainability, public health, compliance and enforcement, medicinal, product safety, and then we'll also speak about exploratory as well. And Gina and I through the board and through Chairman Pepper and Bryn, we were able to meet with I think most of the advisory committee members on each section. The purpose of today is to help everyone understand the other groups, the other subcommittees that are out there that exist because eventually all of these reports and recommendations are gonna have to be approved by the advisory committee and the board as a whole. So we'll probably go through these pretty quickly just to start off the first subcommittee, social equity, Danika, if we could get to that slide. And I'm sorry, if we could go back Danika, I will go through and introduce the team. Gina, you've just met Jeffrey. Everyone should be on the call. Another attorney, a research attorney and all of our subcommittees are marked under there. Mark Horman, also on the calls are our Chief Government Relations Officer. His background is from discus from the alcohol spirits industry. Danika, who most of you met on the calls yesterday is our Chief Executive Marketing Communications Strategy. Dr. Mary Clifton, also on the call, will be on medicinal. She's a doctor, also licensed in Vermont, helping out with medicinal and does a lot of programs for the NACB that you can also attend. Jacob Pulitzer, also on the call, will be doing sustainability. I'll let him introduce himself when we talk about that subcommittee. Asha Manning, our COO, will be on compliance enforcement, has a lengthy background in the cannabis industry and Eli Harrington, who most of you might know is also in Vermont and will be consulting with us as well. So the first subcommittee that we wanna talk about is social equity. Gina, if you wanna discuss what you and Jeffrey and the rest of the team will be handling. Definitely, thank you, Tom. I'm Jeffrey, can you just say a quick hello? Just want the board to view you since we'll be dealing with them a lot in the next few months. Hello, my name's Jeffrey Gallegos. I'm an attorney in California, Los Angeles and a career musician. And so I have experienced, mainly through music, cannabis has a way of finding us musicians. So I have experienced just like a ground level and then I've spent a good chunk of my life living in what would be considered a disproportionately impacted area of cannabis prohibition. And so I bring kind of more of a ground level expertise in that area. And I'm looking forward to help collaborate and create a sustainable and inclusive cannabis industry. Thank you so much, Jeffrey. And Jeffrey will be great on these phone calls. When they get a little bit too heavy, he can turn on some music for us. He has a great soundtracks for us every day and he also does our blazers and blazers as our hosts where we are trying to create the cannabis industry with the finance industry. So just to note on social equity, we have quite a great team. We have Nader who's gonna be on there, Ashley and David, I know you will only be there to the end of the year. I've heard some great things about you. So can't wait to meet you. And we have even more resources within the state of Vermont who we will be consulting with in creating social equity. So Susanna Davis, who is the executive director of racial equity and diversity for the state of Vermont and Lindsay Curley. Both of the people we have met last week and we'll be also meeting this week as well. Who's been very helpful in giving some ideas around social equity and what they're thinking about. And also what has been done in Vermont so far. So this, what we'll be primarily in charge of for this subcommittee is the program design. You know, who are the social equity licensees? What does a disproportionate impact or impacted person looks like a group? You know, what should their fees be? What should their tax structure look like? But also the ongoing program. And one of the things that we hope to do in the subcommittee is not just to look at a licensee candidate, but how can social equity be involved in the industry and its totality? You know, how do we get level entry positions for social equity candidates? How can cannabis tax revenue help these disproportionately impacted areas? And so I'm truly, truly excited, you know, getting to the root cause of any problem and be able to help that shift. It's just such an amazing reward to be able to partake in. One of the things that I have greatly seen by Vermont with everybody that I speak with from the cannabis control board, the advisors, the community outreach that I've seen, the state of Vermont, they are so concerned about their social equity program and they really want to get it right. They want to help people and are willing to take the necessary steps and design a program that will do so. So that in my mind is, we've already accomplished the first step in making change. So it's gonna be really exciting to see. We have some quick due dates. October 1st, we have to, is our first due date, you know, what is that social equity applicant look like? You know, are we reducing or eliminating the fees? And also what are tax structures? October 15th is definitely more in depth on there. You know, what is this loans and grants from the cannabis business development fund that has been established for social equity going to look like? What's the percentage who's gonna get that? And then in November, once we have written a draft of what a social equity program looks like, you know, really going out into the community and, you know, discussing with them what do these social equity candidates need in order to be successful in the industry and, you know, meet and greets, you know, having maybe some co-design around if we give tax revenue back, where it's the best placement. You know, meeting the people, hearing their story, really being able to have a really wide develop change and bringing those people along and showing our support to them. So I'm truly, truly excited and blessed to be a part of that subcommittee. Thanks, Gina. If we can move to the next subcommittees to market structure, licensing, taxes and fees. Before I, Dan, if you wanted to just give an overview on this, I'm happy to do that or I can take it. But before I do that, I just want to introduce Mark Gorman as well, who will be assisting myself and Jeffrey. Mark, you just want to give a little intro about yourself. Yeah, thanks, Tom. I'm Mark Gorman. I'm the executive vice president and the chief government officer for NACB. Did not grow up in Vermont, but did go to college just two miles south of the border in Massachusetts. And it's a beautiful place. I really look forward to working with the board and the advisory committee on, you know, an overall program that works for Vermont. And we're of course taking our lead on this subcommittee from Dan and Jen and we'll have an opportunity to make our input based on our own experience and knowledge of the industry and look forward to that process. It's underway now. Thanks, Mark. And as I said, we've started working with VS Strategies, Dan and Jen and their team on this. Dan, would you mind just giving a quick overview? Yeah, I can just go ahead. Yeah, I'm happy to do that for a second. Yeah, we're in the process of doing right now and this is mostly led by Andrew on our team is completing a full market analysis to try to estimate the size and scope of the Vermont market going forward based on a bunch of data, both public data and then the board and others in Vermont have been great about providing information that will help try to make this analysis more accurate. So Andrew's been hard at work at that and is hopeful to have that wrapped up relatively soon, which we will share with everyone on the call and the advisory board. And so we're kind of using that as the baseline to try to figure out kind of what the fee revenue will be, what the tax revenue will be, how to structure the licenses properly based on kind of what demand in Vermont will be. So I guess my update right now is that we're working on it. Hopefully we'll have something very soon because we've been working on it for the last few weeks. And as soon as we have kind of that piece done, that's when we can really dive into the substance of figuring out the market structure and the licensing structure. So we'll keep you all posted and share everything as soon as we finish it up. Great, thank you, Dan. Obviously that's a quick deadline coming up as well. Some important decisions on the licensing and the structure and the amount. And obviously they'll be working with social equity because those licenses will be dependent on that market structure and licensing as well. So to the next subcommittee, we have Public Health with Danica on a team and Mark from the NACB. He spoke with Tim Wessel yesterday about the importance and the interest in this section. Looking forward to working with Dr. Levine and Ingrid on this as well. This will cover items such as the marketing and advertising packaging and labeling which the NACB has some best practices that are available on our website. And then obviously edibles and oversight. So that's also coming up quickly as well. And we look forward to diving into that just in the next couple of weeks and getting the subcommittee meetings going. The next subcommittee is Sustainability and we are working actually with Jacob Pulitzer on this who I don't think many of you have met yet. So I wanted to give him an opportunity to give an introduction and a little bit about what we are gonna be covering in this subcommittee group. Jacob, is that okay with you? That's perfect. Thank you so much, Tom. Thank you to the board and all the advisory handles for having me here today. So I'm Jacob Pulitzer. I'm the co-founder and director of Science and Strategy for the Cannabis Conservancy. We focus specifically on sustainability and environmental impact mitigation of cannabis cultivation in the cannabis industry. We've been doing that for the last seven years. My background is in urban agriculture, wildlife conservation and sustainability for international companies. I have my master's in environmental science, policy and management through European Union Consortium of universities. And yeah, before I got into looking at sustainability in the cannabis industry, I also worked for the South Water Water Management District looking at agricultural pollution and ecosystem service benefits. And then also did a lot of permaculture and urban agricultural work. And yeah, I've been focusing specifically on sustainability, energy, water, waste, cultivation practices in the cannabis industry for the last seven years. We currently have standards on sustainability, carbon conscious, so carbon emissions and carbon mitigation, as well as regenerative practices looking at worker rights on par with fair trade, as well as community engagement and best practices with that. Really looking forward to working with Billy, Kim and Stephanie and all these esteemed colleagues, your backgrounds are very impressive. And what we'll be focusing on with the sustainability subcommittee really is looking at kind of energy, water, waste, cultivation practices. I'm really keen on finding Vermont solutions to this and looking at the 2020 Global Warming Solutions Act and looking at how the cannabis industry will can sequester carbon and enhance ecosystem services. Knowing that kind of 16% of Vermont's emissions currently is from the agricultural industry. So making sure that we're not contributing more than we need to. And then hopefully in fact, having a mitigated properties with that. And then with energy as well, looking at kind of equipment efficiency, building envelope efficiency and clean kind of heating requirements. And specifically with kind of the urban landscape that we see in Vermont, finding solutions to kind of the split dilemma of between the building owner and operators that we see kind of across the country and finding a good solution for that. With water, it's definitely the servicing groundwater extraction, water quality testing requirements and then the discharge epiline potential with the nutrient load that may come from some cultivation facilities as well as extraction. And then with waste, I think there's definitely a big opportunity in Vermont to look at the kind of pre-waste generation and aligning kind of the public health concerns with the child restraint packaging as well as kind of the landfill diversion that we would hope to see for that. And then as well as like kind of biomass collection and reuse and recyclability of all products and then kind of end use extended to say producer responsibility. Yeah, and then as well as just in general looking forward to creating kind of best practices and acting it into law in regards to kind of the testing requirements that were discussed previously. And I would say kind of on a whole what we're looking at for sustainability is to kind of keep it on bar with all of the other committees. And it's just ensuring kind of clarity with the expressed intent processes and implementation of all regulations that recommendations that we come up with. Hand it back to you, Tom. Thanks Jacob. And I know if we had more time we could go on for days on a lot of this but Jacob's obviously abundantly qualified as our Billy Costner, Kim Watson, Stephanie Smith who enjoyed our conversations yesterday. So looking forward to seeing what this committee can do in the short timeframe. Janika, if we could go to the next subcommittee what I also call the Goliath Committee in my own head at night. So this is Compliance and Enforcement and Ashley, Mark and I from the NACB. Ashley, if you just wanted to give a quick introduction I'm not sure how many of the advisory committee members or board members have met you yet. Sure, thank you Tom. I'm Ashley Manning, I'm the COO of the NACB and been in the cannabis industry for about five years now in the past two and a half years I've spent with the NACB prior to the NACB I've worked in each vertical during the transition in California market from medical to adult use and with my experience during that time I realized that regulation sometimes is not enough and wanted to work outside of the supply chain and work to improve the industry overall. And that's where I took my experience of what I've learned, what I saw and applied that to the work that we're doing at the NACB. So I'm very excited to work along with Tim, Ingrid, Ashley and I believe Kerry Gigwire as well. So that is my brief introduction to who I am very unique I think to bringing my experience to the forefront in Vermont. So thank you. Thanks Ashley. So you can tell just by the sheer number of items and the breadth and scope of this this is really where a lot of the regulations are going to come from and it's become, I mean, a little bit of a kitchen sink. And some of these, I think I'll have more additional conversations with the board and the timing of this and leaving some flexibility. But a lot of important items in here that are going to be the backbone of the regulations going forward. But this is, we've got a little bit of a later date on it but we need to start a lot of these now. And with the help of Tim and Ingrid, Ashley and Kerry we'll start to tackle this. The next subcommittee, the medicinal cannabis from the NACB we have Dr. Mary Clifton. Doctor, if you're still on the line if you could give a brief introduction and then we'll discuss the slide and the subcommittee. Yeah, thank you for, I'm looking forward to working with this very extensive and impressive Vermont team. I'm an internal medicine doctor of 25 years and work in education and also in product development and formulation. And I'm happy to contribute to this committee. I've been a telemedicine doctor and have done medical cannabis cards for about five years now and 25 years of internal medicine practice. So I'll be working with the NACB team to think about best practices for the delivery of medical cannabis in your state and the completion of medical cannabis cards. Thank you, doctor. I had good conversations with Jim Romanoff, Meg and looking forward to working with Dr. Levine. Jim Romanoff's report and Meg's knowledge on this subject and background are pretty extensive and we're aware of that. And this is an opportunity not just to ensure that the medicinal patients aren't going to be marginalized with the legalization, but also to make improvements and make sure we're steady the art of the medicinal program for issues, you know, everything ranging from supply to importance for these patients. So looking forward to working on this subcommittee and getting this right as well. And I think, Danique, is it the final? No, we still have product safety with Kim Watson and Kerry. We're talking about lab testing standards, potency, is a big issue and pesticides. So this is another subcommittee we'll be working with Kim and Kerry on. And then the final subcommittee which I think really is the brainchild of being more forward looking and looking at the other neighboring markets. The exploratory committee on some cutting edge issues, not necessarily cutting edge, but important ones for the vitality of the program going forward. Different license types concentrate. You can see the list here, delivery, but a lot of these items on here, as Chairman Pepper has said, will hopefully help continue to distinguish the Vermont market and make sure that it's able to grow and prosper in the future. And you can see who the advisory committee members, Nader, David Sharer, Jim Romeroff and Meg, they're on this committee as well. So those are the seven subcommittees I'd be remiss if, Danika, if you could just give a quick introduction, everyone, I think most people have met you, but operationally, you wouldn't be able to do, especially virtually, a lot of what we're doing without Danika and you'll see her face. So Danika, if you could just say hello. Hi, I'm Danika Scott. Thank you so much for allowing me to be here today. I am a communicator and I've also worked in very highly regulated industries, including banking and financial services. So I sincerely appreciate being able to serve the people of Vermont and this committee while working with the NACB. Thank you so much. Thanks, Danika. So those are the subcommittees. I wanted to express that I share everyone's enthusiasm on this project and working with Vermont. I wanted to get to the substance of the slides first and I'll just repeat what I said in the last public meeting about my philosophy and the importance of this project. And as I said before, in spite of what's happening on the federal side and what insurance bill and the rest of that, which I'm skeptical of passage in the near term, the importance of what we're doing is because this industry, as all of you know, is state led. And for those of you that followed the Warren Act, the States Act, that was an explicit acknowledgement of, listen, federal government will get out of the way and as long as you're complying with your state law, you'll be fine. And so it's really a 10th amendment issue. There's obviously good analogies that we can draw from the alcohol industry and how it became legalized. But this is a different animal because it's really state led, which means Vermont has a vital role to play not only with legalization going forward, but really putting Vermont on the map because those of us in the industry know what the good state legislations are, what works, what the good regulations are, you can build upon some of the mistakes of the past. So we all know the eyes of the entire industry are upon us here in Vermont. And we think we've got a great opportunity, especially with this team and the expertise of everyone that's contributed on the call today. But to really make a mark on this industry and create some good policies and regulations. So Tom, one additional item, would you mind introducing Eli Harrington? He is on here on camera, please. Sorry, Eli, I didn't know you were on. Eli, if you can give an introduction as part of the team as well. There we go. Yeah, thank you very much, Tom. I appreciate it. I've been a big fan of the NACB since I first started working with these folks over a year ago and really impressed and happy to be able to bring these worlds together. So look forward to providing feedback and expertise from on the ground here in Vermont with a lot of the other folks. The advisory board, who you pointed out, a lot of old friends and familiar faces. So yeah, I really appreciate the opportunity to work with you all. And I know Vicente has got a great track record. So just the amount of expertise with this group is impressive and excited to get to work. So thanks for letting me be a part of this and look forward to getting going. Thanks, Eli. So I'm not sure if the board had any questions or advisory committee members had particular questions, but we're prepared to answer. Tom, I was wondering if you might wanna just pull up the slide on the timeline. Is that something that you're willing to share at this point? I know you've reviewed it with a lot of the members, but for those who didn't have the benefit of being on the calls that we did yesterday, I think folks might wanna know what they're in for. Okay. They're gonna get to know the NACB and VSS teams very, very well in the next upcoming months. So the dates are on here with their calls with the advisory committee members. Yesterday, we talked about the Monday, Thursday meetings and the other dates in here. I will tell you also that it's gonna require our communication and efforts probably beyond this. And we discussed the nuances with public meeting and the communications. And obviously the success of any group and any project is going to be based on how well our communication facilities are working. So I wanted to encourage everyone that my contact information was shared yesterday. You can reach out to me and then individually. It's probably best or the other NACB members or BS strategy members that are on your particular subcommittees. But yeah, thank you. Here is that schedule slide again for those that you didn't see it. So I'll hit some highlights here, which are that we have some very pressing reporting requirements starting with October 1st on our fee structure. It's very hard to separate out what our fee structure is gonna look like without understanding some of the additional issues around social equity and environmental compliance. And so a lot of this work has to happen simultaneously. The basic structure that we've been talking to folks about is having two meeting, E-subcommittee meeting twice a week for the near future. Some, I know that that's a challenge for a lot of people. We all have other commitments and other jobs and family commitments, but we're gonna work with you. We're hopefully going to do meetings on Mondays and Thursdays for an hour along each. The timing will be based upon people's availability and flexibility. I have in my kind of housekeeping notes how we're gonna comply with open meeting laws. I guess I can go into that right now. Essentially the executive order, the emergency order has been lifted. So we're operating under the traditional open meeting laws, one VSA 310 through 314. These require 24-hour notice of a meeting. They require an agenda posted. We'll cover internally some of the administrative details around posting and getting agendas prepared. NACB will be staffing these meetings. We need a physical location for each meeting where members of the public can attend. We've been working with BGS to locate various office spaces around the state to facilitate that. So we'll work with you on getting physical spaces and have a person there to be there to let members of the public participate. You as advisory committee members can participate remotely. NACB will be in charge of taking minutes and we'll be posting those minutes. We'll have to have public comment periods at each of these subcommittee meetings. We can have that at the end and allow people to participate, members of the public. And then we're gonna go one step above and beyond the kind of requirements of the open meeting laws. We will be recording these meetings, these subcommittee meetings and the full advisory committee meetings. We just really don't have the staff to manage the kind of flow of traffic and do the kind of zooming in and out or microsoft teams in and out of members of the public. But we will report and we will post the recordings and that'll allow members of the public to go back and watch them. And then the cannabis board is gonna be meeting once a week, probably on Fridays to review all of the work that's been done. And those meetings will be live streamed. People can participate remotely. Members of the public can participate remotely. That's not an additional meeting for the advisory committee. That's just a purely a board meeting to kind of consolidate and review all of the work from the week for the benefit of the public, for the benefit of the three of us. So that's the plan for open meeting laws. Are there any questions or concerns around those? Either from people here or anyone, any of the advisory committee? Well, is there any other questions or concerns you'd like to raise with our consultants, either NACB or VS Strategies? No? Well, I'm happy to cut you all loose and I know you probably have things that you need to do. Thank you for that incredible introduction. Thanks for the work you've already done and thanks for partnering with Vermont as we kind of move forward in this exciting new world that we're in. Yeah, thank you. Thank you so much. Great. So I'm just gonna keep moving down the agenda, keep things flowing. We have a general housekeeping update. We just covered a lot of information. There's some very aggressive timelines. I know it can feel a bit daunting. We are here as a board and our consultants to help you. NACB and VS, I think are the two most prolific cannabis consulting firms in the country. And they really know and have a proven track record of understanding the industry, developing policies, helping us get the information we need. They are there as a resource for you. If you need to talk to people from other states, other regulators, if you wanna see if there's evidence or just studies that you need or any data, please talk to Brent, talk to VS, talk to NACB. They're there to support you. We have a very nimble team at the cannabis board. We're gonna try our best to kind of sit in on your subcommittee hearings individually and we're not there to kind of look over your shoulders. We're really there to help you if you need our help. It's gonna be, we're kind of making this up as we go. The analogy is always, we're building the fire truck on the way to the fire or building a parachute as we're in free fall. And it kind of feels like that sometimes, but I think that we'll get through this together. I just wanted to have a quick word on media requests. We will, we do anticipate that there is going to be media interest in the work that you all are doing. And you're going to get requests either for comments or interviews. And we really, as a board, don't wanna be overly prescriptive in how you deal with these. But we would like you to notify us beforehand just so we can have an opportunity to discuss, what you're feeling, what you wanna say. And again, we're not trying to be overly prescriptive, but we think that it's a good idea that we all kind of know that we're speaking with one voice to the extent that we can. And are there any questions or concerns on that either from us or on the screen? Okay, so we also expect there to be a number of public record acts requests that come in, for the state, for the folks that are familiar with the state, you're probably used to the Public Records Act request. There's a lot of nuance to the public record statutes and the subsequent case law. We did send a link to a presentation that the Attorney General's Office provided to us on the Public Records Act. And some of the nuances there. The key takeaway is that almost everything that you do related to your work on the advisory committee, not your personal lives, but on the advisory committee, including your emails and the notes that you're taking right now, are considered public records and can be requested. Some will be considered transitory and you can just throw them away if you want to, but others you need to keep. And we can go into a little bit more nuance on that, but really I think the best thing for you to do if you receive a Public Records Act request, there are very strict deadlines and there are some kind of penalties built in if you're not compliant with them, is to send them to us. Just whenever you get one, as soon as you get it, just send it to Bryn and we'll figure out how to deal with it. We'll work with you about what records are responsive, which ones might be exempt from inspection and we'll just make sure that we're complying with all the deadlines there. So any questions about that without getting too detailed into what is a public record and what is not? That's one thing, yes. There is, so just so everybody knows, there is a function on our website that allows a member of the public to make a formal public records request. And if those do come in depending on what they're requesting, we might be opposite of what Chairman Huber just said, be your making request of you to kind of gather certain information that it might be relevant to a certain request. Any questions from anyone who joined the link from the advisory committee on that? Nope, okay. So just, I wanted to talk quickly about ethics. Larry Novans, who's the Executive Director of the State Ethics Commission is gonna be talking to us later today, doing a deeper dive on some of the considerations around conflicts. I mean, you all, I mean, the state folks, again, they probably don't have an interest in a cannabis business or a license, but for some of the private folks, if you have that, I think Larry's gonna go through kind of how to disclose those, how to mitigate them. But we do, just for, you know, something that he might not cover is, we do expect you to be asked to attend public events and do public engagement to discuss your work on the advisory committee. It's already happened a few times and we expect it to kind of accelerate as more focus comes in onto what we're doing. We don't have any concerns about you guys participating in this. I would note that if there is a quorum of you participating at a meeting, talking about the business of the board, that that would be considered a public meeting and we would need to, you know, do all the other steps that we talked about to comply with the open meeting laws. So just be very cognizant of how many of you, and a quorum, by the way, is a simple majority. So there are 14 advisory committee members. So what is that, is that seven or eight? Eight. Eight. So if there's eight of you in one place at one time and you're talking about the business of the board, just be very mindful of that. We'd asked also that if the event is specifically being built around your participation, if you're on the flyer, if someone's inviting you in your capacity as an advisory committee member, that you not accept any sort of gifts or honorariums for participating. That includes free meals. We've been advised against kind of participating in events to provide free meals, whereas other events might not and you might feel like you're, you know, it could lead to kind of just the feeling that you're not accessible or you're picking favorites. And we also asked that the event that you attend be free of charge, no cost of admission, and open to the public. And again, these are for events that are built around your participation, not just an event that you might happen to be attending. So let me know if you have any questions about that. Can't you accept up to $25? I thought in most, you know. I think in the code of ethics. It's not in the code of ethics, but the application. I mean, yeah, I just know with other states, they accepted up to $25. I don't know what Vermont has. Larry Novans might know the answer to that at our ethics training. So that would, if that was the price of the meal. Yeah, yeah. I do remember, I think the legislators have that as... Yeah. But I can't quite remember where the $25 figure came from. Some states specify an amount and some just say no guess. Yeah, yeah. So those are really my housekeeping concerns or things that I wanted to raise. I'd like to talk briefly about what the board has been up to since we started and just give you a progress report. So the board was seated in mid-April. April 19th was our first day. Well, those of you who are, you know, keeping track on Act 164, that's about four and a half or five months later than we were contemplated being set and that delay, which really was the result of the pandemic. You know, the bill, which was supposed to take effect in July, didn't take effect until October and then every subsequent and a milestone along the way was pushed back. But that had the result of us missing our original reporting requirements, which was our fee structure. That date got moved to October 1st in a bill that passed this year. But of course any fee structure needs to be approved by the full general assembly. And so we're not gonna have any sort of approval on our fee structure until January at the earliest. However, we do expect that the relevant committee, the two finance committees and the GAVAAS committees will take up our fee structure in the off session and give some sort of tacit approval to it or tell us to kind of come back with something new. So we do feel that we can kind of tee up that fee structure for a very early movement in January. So in the meantime, we are going to, as you know, start drafting regulations based upon your recommendations to us and we're gonna kind of have our rules and regulations drafted and hopefully ready to go for as soon as we can have some understanding whether our fee structure will be approved. So that's the kind of vision for the next couple of months. You've seen the kind of timelines for getting those recommendations to us and kind of the full board approval. So I just wanted to tell you quickly about what we as a board have been up to in the meantime. So in addition to kind of getting the nuts and bolts of a staff in place and creating this new state agency, we did a early deep dive into the two pieces of legislation that created the board and gave us our directives. Those are Act 164, 2020 and Act 62, 2021. So at a very early meeting, we sat down with the legislative council to draft those pieces of legislation and some of the lead sponsors of those bills to really distill what they and we believe are the core principles that underline this policy shift. So we held weekly meetings after that dedicated to those specific priorities and we heard from, you know, Vermont and national other state agencies about their experience. We heard from local organizations, national and international experts and interested stakeholders around the state to flesh out how we can effectively achieve the priorities that are in Act 164 and 62. So last week, we wrapped up those meetings. We had our final one and we compiled all of the information that we had. We compare it and notice with one another. You know, we're subject to the same open meeting laws and so now there's three of us. So anytime the two of us are together talking about the business of the board, it has to be in the context of an open meeting. So we actually don't really get a chance to talk to each other about cannabis policy all that much except, you know, on our weekly meetings. So we created a mission statement for the board and I'd like to pull it up. I know Nellie was going to pull it up for us. She had a copy of it saved. I don't know if you can do that, Bryn. Let's find out. Okay. I think it's important. It's really kind of a North Star kind of document for us. It's the seven priorities that we believe are the way to achieve our mission which as data by a legislature is to effectively, safely and equitably create rules for adult candidates to provide medical use. So we kind of think that these are the ways that we can do it. I have it here. How do I get it there? And we of course, in coming up with these in the kind of supporting paragraph have a lot of data and testimony to back up each one when we tried our best to kind of consolidate it. So while we try and get this up, we consider this to be somewhat of a living document. We're not tied to the language that's in there currently. If there are recommendations from this group and we've reached out to some other interested stakeholders about how to modify the language, we'd be open to those suggestions. I don't know, it's showing up on a, I think everybody else can see it but us, because I have it right here. Well, I'm happy to read them to the people that are in the room. If you wanna pull it up on the screen one more time. Sorry, so we can't see it in the room but I'm gonna just read them to you. So the first priority is around the legacy market which for those aren't familiar with that terminology. It really is the current Vermont cultivators, the people that are growing currently. And so the legacy market and small cultivators. And so the board kind of has met with a number of small cultivators and talked about the barriers to entry for them. One of the key priorities is to shift a lot of the legacy market into the regulated market to kind of try to have a regulated space that's welcoming for small cultivators. And so we said the board seeks to encourage small cultivators and entrepreneurs in the legacy market to enter the regulated market by reducing barriers to entry and facilitating innovation. The next priority is around social equity. So the board acknowledges the disproportionate impact of the government led policies created in the war on drugs, particularly those that impacted BIPOC and economically and educationally disadvantaged communities. The board aspires to play a part in mitigating the harm created by the prohibition of cannabis by building a program that is equitable and accessible. To this end, the board will prioritize inclusivity in its process of building the program and endeavor to collect data on the program to inform course corrections. So the next priority is around energy, environment and land use. Vermont can be a trailblazer in the national market by establishing a program that prioritizes environmental stewardship as a foundational principle. As a result, the board has a fundamental responsibility to encourage and facilitate outdoor and mixed light growing over a controlled environment indoor cultivation. The board will endeavor to educate stakeholders on the goals and intent of the regulatory framework and support industry participants to achieve these goals. The next is around youth prevention and education. The board acknowledges the effects of cannabis use on the cognitive and socio-emotional development of youth and young adults. To this end, the board will endeavor to develop a program that focuses on the prevention of cannabis use among youth and educates consumers on the risks involved in cannabis consumption. The fifth is on consumer protection. It's imperative that Vermont cannabis users have the option to purchase cannabis and cannabis-derived products that are tested, labeled and free from harmful contaminants. To achieve this goal, the board will rely on the expertise of the Agency of Agriculture to ensure that consumer protection standards are achieved in both the adult use and medical use programs in Vermont. The sixth is around medical program services. The board will ensure that patients maintain a continuity of access to the existing medical program services and will endeavor to reduce the regulatory burden impacting patients and caregivers, ensure that medical cannabis meets quality standards and facilitate the development of educational programs for healthcare professionals. And then the last one is on public safety. And I would just say this one seems a little short compared to the others, but it's really because the public safety elements have not been delegated to our jurisdiction. There are certain consumer protection and advertising and youth prevention, but as far as I think state banking is really and keeping an eye on highway safety are really the two areas that the board needs to be focused on. So for public safety, legalizing cannabis and cannabis sales can be a harm reduction policy if done responsibly. So those are our guiding principles. And again, as I mentioned, we would welcome input to this both from members of the public, interested stakeholders and the advisory committee. But those are the things that both the legislature and we identified as the kind of key priorities that we need to focus on while we develop regulations. And we'll send that around so that everyone has that. And that's kind of what we've been up to for the last, I guess, since April. And we do have all of our meetings recorded and posted on our website. If anyone wants to go back and look at who we've been talking to and what sort of information we've received at the board. So that is all I have for our kind of general housekeeping. I'd like to just insert a quick public comment period for members of the public that have joined. If you would like to provide the board public comment, we ask that you raise your virtual hand if you join through the link. And I guess we'll start with David Silverman. Thank you, Chair Pepper. I was, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. Chair Pepper, I was more of a question than a comment which is, is there any update on whether subcommittee hearings will be accessible via live stream? I just following up on the various comments you got at the last meeting about that. Yes, so the update is we will have the capacity NACB has volunteered to record the meetings and post them to our website. But we just really do not have the capabilities to kind of manage the flow of people coming in and out virtually. So we will record them and post them but we won't have kind of remote participation at the meeting itself. We'll have of course a physical location or for members of the public to join physically. And if there is a change to the emergency order the state of emergency, we will comply with the open meeting law changes that come along with that. So I see Amelia as our hand raised. Yeah, just to respond to the medical priorities that you guys just laid out. I do think that what you have there is really great. I would like to also see along with accessibility affordability included there because I do believe that affordability starts with instruction and guidance from the regulatory body. And that's all I had to say. Thanks, Amelia. Anyone else who joined via the link if you could raise your virtual hand? Jesse Lynn. Hi, thanks so much for having me and for everything you guys are doing and all the advisory board members and all the work you're putting forward. But I did just want to quickly mention one thing if I could as a female identifying person in the cannabis industry here in the state of Vermont. I just want to mention and ask that you guys please consider using more inclusive language when speaking of women and mothers. So language, such as female identifying persons and parents isn't as exclusive comparatively. And I just feel it's crucial to mention some of this more supportive language especially within the advisory board and the advisory board folks representing feminine cannabis community here in Vermont. So if we could just, you know, please consider changing and using different language, I would be much appreciated. Thank you so much. Thank you, Jesse Lynn. Anyone else would like to make a public comment please raise your virtual hand. And if anyone's joined by the Jeffrey, feel free. Good morning, everybody. Can everyone hear me and see me? Yes. Excellent. For the rest of your time, my name is Jeffrey Flo. I'm the executive director and co-founder of the Vermont Brewer's Association. That is the trade association for the cannabis professionals in our state. Thank the Vermont Brewer's Association. I thank everybody for introducing themselves. My name is Jeffrey. AC Board to meeting all of you. We are also members of the Vermont cannabis equity coalition with other esteemed nonprofits across the state. And we just wanted to make a point to, well, first of all, thank NACB for reaching out to us. We've had a couple of meetings with them so far and we look forward to meeting with them privately as they work with everyone around that table and virtually to arrive at equitable and fair legislation for our state. We have not heard from the SS and we have not heard from Eli Harrington who we are understanding as a subcontractor of NACB. It would be great to meet with those entities as well. So I'll put out a public invite to those organizations. And I just want to say that there are some concerns that our coalition has with some of the appointees. There are members on the advisory committee that hold active professional affiliations and associations with multi-state operators. Some of them are large business actors that operate in our state. And so we understand that this is a small state and people need to do what they do from a business perspective, but we also understand that from the optics alone that can be a disqualifier for some of these appointments. And so we wanted to stress that we do have some concerns about some of the appointees on the AC and we'll leave it at that. Thank you. Thank you, Jeff. Jeffrey. Anyone else? Jesse-Lynn, is your hand back up? There it is. Oh, I think I'm unmuted. Now, can you hear me? Yes. Oh, great, thank you. Just also wanted to throw out there as we talk about having representation for patients and I appreciate Jim Romanoff being there to be that beacon. Just mentioning that we could use and benefit from finding a way to make sure we're including and hearing from all patient voices. Jim is a fantastic guy using the dispensary system very successfully. So I'm grateful for that for him, but just to mention and to put on record as we're in this meeting that there are a subset of both cultivators, caregivers and patients who can't afford the dispensary system that don't feel that they have a voice of representation. And if the symptom relief oversight committee, I believe is hopefully working towards that to be able to have larger perspective of other Vermont voices as well. So thank you. Thank you, Jesse-Lynn. Any other public comments? Okay, well, we're gonna take a break right now. We are gonna just kind of keep things moving. You know, we've got lunch that's on its way here and then we're gonna start up again at 12.30. So I'll take a break for now and we'll be back at 12.30. Okay, we're back. It's 12.30, which is the Vermont Candidate's Board Advisory Committee inaugural meeting. And next on our agenda is to hear from Susanna Davis about equity in the Candidate's business. And she's an informal advisory committee member. She's been by statute given the honor of helping us develop our social equity programming, our definition of social equity applicants, making sure that we're considering equity in every decision we make. So I know we have an hour. I know there's not enough time. Susanna, this is her second time with the board and hopefully second to many. And I'll hand things off to you. All right, excellent. So I'm gonna do a screen share. Oh, welcome. Take a while. And also for those in the room, I'm gonna stand. I wasn't gonna tell you this, but the reason I was excited to come here in person is because I get to use the clicker again. So if I'm in front of a computer, I can't really, I'm gonna be back here, so I'm in. This is it. Okay, so, hi, everybody. I'm Susanna Davis, racial equity director for the state. Very pleased to be here with you again today. And today I'm gonna talk a little bit more about equity. So first we'll recap a little bit of what we heard in the last meeting with May 27th, the last time I joined the group. And then today we're gonna focus specifically on the state equity impact assessment tool and also a little bit about communication and messaging. There's a lot more to say about communication and messaging. We're not gonna cover it all today. I'll probably send you all more materials afterwards, but it is a primer within a primer to a primer. So let's start it. Okay, so last time we talked about the difference between equality and equity, right? The image you're looking at shows bicycle parade, right? On the top, everyone's got the same bicycle. They're receiving the same treatment. And that's not working out well for the very tall person, the very small person, and the person who uses a wheelchair. Reflected on the bottom is equity, where everyone is afforded the resources and tools necessary for them to be able to enjoy this figurative bike parade we call life in a way that is most meaningful to them, right? So we talked a little bit about the ways in which equity and equality were different. We also talked about this big monstrosity, which is some of the very many ways in which equity presents itself in our society, things like fell into some franchising, voter suppression, discipline measures in education, segregation and zoning and the ways in which that creates high performing school districts and not so high performing school districts. We talked about Vermont's history with things like eugenics and the impact that have on today's indigenous community in the state. We talked about Tuskegee, substance use, the opioid crisis compared to the craft epidemic of the 80s. We talked about redlining and neighborhood amenities, right? Who gets investments, who gets disinvestment, right? So those are some of the things we covered last time. Today I wanna talk a little bit about messaging and communication. And the reason I wanna talk about that is because so much of the discourse around cannabis has to do with antiquated views of who are its users, who are its producers and purveyors and what does it mean to be a member of the cannabis community if that's a thing, right? So part of that lore, part of those stereotypes are really deeply rooted in messaging to which we have all been exposed for many, many years. Some of us our entire lifetime, right? This goes back decades. I could get into the history of how the term marijuana comes from an indigenous word from Mexico and was hyped up by American policymakers as a way to further distance Americans from it because it was racialized because we use the non-English word, private, which is true, but I'm not gonna say it even though I kind of sneakily just did. So these are some of the really sneaky tactics that are used by and through policymakers to normalize or stigmatize certain social and legal ideas or things, right? So I'm gonna give you some examples of coded messaging. And for those of you who've seen my presentation in the past, I have a lot because everything is coded. Everything is a lie. How was your day? It was great. That's coded message, right? So I'm not gonna go through all the examples that I usually do today, but we'll just touch on some of them. The images you're seeing right now are the cover and an inside panel of one of the Tintin books, right? Market is to Children, Wholesome, you know? But on the right, you see one channel where Tintin appears to be negotiating with the unusually dark person, highly caricaturized in the sort of minstrel way that used to be done in media. This person responds back with yes, master, and the dog makes the insightful comment that this person does not appear to be very bright. This is what children are given, right? It's very blatant, it's very in your face. And if you say anything bad about it, then people will get mad and buy every copy of this book in protest. Here's another one, again, aimed at children. We're looking at a page in one of those books where you trace the dotted line so you can practice writing your letters. The images title of happy and proud are associated with light skin, children's faceless faces. Sad and angry, get dark skin. Because only brown people have negative feelings. Oh, sorry, I should pause for an intro this. What I'm gonna play for you now is a clip that's about one minute long. This is a recording of the doll tech by a show of hands of the people in the room who has heard of the doll tech. Okay, a good number of you. For those who haven't, I'm gonna give a quick explanation. Kenneth and Manny Clark, they are husband and wife duo and they were actually pioneers in American psychology. Oh, thank you, Kim, I see hands digitally as well. Pioneers in American psychology, they were the first African American presidents of the American Psychological Association and they devise a series of experiments through which they sat children down with a white doll and a black doll in front of them and asked the children a series of questions, which doll is smart, which doll is pretty, which doll is poorly behaved, which doll is ugly. And it showed the ways in which children have absorbed the positive and negative messaging around race and color and the way that they reflected back when being asked to say preferences or ideals about dolls. So what you're gonna watch now is a short clip showing some of these experiments and I hope the audio works, because you know, hybrid meetings are rough. No, we're gonna pause. Let me see if I can unmute, okay? Okay, we're getting closer. Everybody who might be able to hear it, we just got started. Okay, for those who are on the phone or in the call, I would so appreciate if you could just give us some kind of reaction to let us know whether you did just hear that little audio clip. Okay, thank you. So I will turn up my volume for those of you in the room, because for once you all are the ones that are disadvantaged. Did I have it on or off? You had it on, I think once we get this rolling, we'll be able to just hear it. There's no audio for those of us on the call. Okay, speaking, I had that go. You're locked up. Stop mute yourself. You have to mute the computer. All right, so we're just gonna pretend that never happened for those of you on the call. I'm sorry for not being able to get the text correct for you, but I will fill you in on the audio that you did not hear. So the children were asked questions like, which doll is pretty? Which doll is ugly? Which doll is bad? Which doll is good? At one point, a child is asked, why is this doll pretty when he pointed at the white baby? And his answer was, because she's white and has blue eyes. So the purpose of this video, and this has been reproduced and replicated numerous times. If you've got 10 minutes, I strongly encourage you later on to send you a web search for doll experiments. This has been done in different countries, different languages, children of different age groups. I think Anderson Cooper did one at one point. I mean, it's been replicated so many times and the tragic result is the same. Children have internalized negative attitudes about skin and hair and size and everything else you can imagine. These are things that are fed to us from very early ages, not just in the US, but around the world. And for that reason, we end up later in life using those same biases to inform our actions, both socially and through policymaking, which leads us to things like this. No, not to the sketch. Which leads us to things like this. The idea that black boys as young as 10 are more likely to be mistaken as older, right? Think of Tamir Wright, the 12 year old, who was described by police before they murdered him as looking like a big man. They're more likely to be perceived as guilty and to face police violence if they're accused of crime. They're also more often viewed as being responsible for their actions at younger ages when white boys still benefit from the assumption that children are essentially innocent. We see this all the time, right? Adult man boys who get described as he's just a kid. It's just boys will be boys, right? But young teenagers who have the audacity to exist in a world with skittles are murder because they look like, quote, son. So these are the ways in which the coded messages that we receive throughout our lives shape the ways we interact with the world. Now, I've talked a lot about negative examples of messaging, right? These are the things I really want you not to do. But let's talk about a couple of the ways in which we can do this correctly. So as a lot of you know, in my last job, I worked for the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene. And one of the things that you know about, and for that reason, we have a lot of people with a lot of cultures and we've got to find and feed information to all of them. So the city health department used to do messaging around nutrition and they would use images like what you see before you. Campaign billboards, subway ads, advertisements on the sides of buses that show a so-called healthy plate. And it's fine, it works, whatever, who doesn't like broccoli, but it wasn't quite reaching certain target audiences, particularly Asian New Yorkers. So the city partnered up with a local health giant, NYU, and did a little revamping of the healthy plate, which was great because I mean, look at the oranges, right? I'm gonna go back to the first one. Who really eats oranges like that? You can do it, it's a thing, but why? So they revamped the plate a little bit, made it a little bit more modern, but they didn't just stop there. Here's another version of the same plate. This is the Korean version. Notice it's written in Korean. The oranges look normal now. And if you look at the items that are on the plate, they're much more culturally responsive. They're representative of the foods that you might encounter in that community. You've got the soup. You've even got the correct utensil layout, right? This is something that demonstrates that time has been put into this campaign so that we can reach everyone with a basic message. You may not be eating foods that more Americans who are white eat, and that's fine. But whatever you're eating, let's balance your macros this way, right? So these are ways in which you can use marketing in a way that is effective, culturally responsive, and respectful, and it's easy to do. Now, I want to talk a little bit about how messaging has gone wrong in an area that you all are working on right now. You'll see on the left a headline that talks about so-called marijuana moms who have come together, they're largely white women in America, who have come out and been brave enough to say that pop makes us better parents, and we should end the stigma. And I heard it so succinctly put by some, you know, user on, I don't know, Twitter or whatever. And I think I should just quote that person who in response to this said, yeah, well, we'd probably make black men better fathers too, but we'll never know because there's stuff in jail for it. On the right, you see another headline from fourth, cannabis takes the world stage at the Tokyo Olympics with a little bit of a blurb below about Megan Rapinoe and her involvement and the inclusion of cannabis products in her and other elite athletes' training routine. Can you hear me? Okay, sorry, because for a second, I couldn't hear myself over the deafening absence of Shakari Richardson from the Olympics for her cannabis use. As we think about who gets rewarded and profiled and quoted and called brave and who does not, these are some of the long-term messaging practices that have been put upon us that have created an environment in which we have allowed certain members of society to feel comfortable admitting to something that is still technically scheduled at a better level and other people to have had their lives ruined and families broken because of it. Here's another example of selective messaging and these are gonna be examples of exculpatory language. LAPD tweets that when officers arrived in the area, they saw a male matching the description armed with a handgun. At that time, there was an officer involved shooting. The man was struck by gunfire and transported to a local hospital where he has died. There's a lot of words to say, we kill the guys. It's written in an incredibly exculpatory manner. It's very passive language. And look, I've worked in government for some years now. That's how government talks. And that's why government has been hurting communities for so many years because that's still how we talk. Here's another example. There was another so-called officer involved shooting and the NYPD commissioner states, he was an NYPD officer that discharged his firearm as a result of that discharge and individual was struck in the head and killed. Did I get struck or did you shoot me? Here's the last one. Really just wow, this one. There was a raid where VEA and local police they burst into this home. Turns out they had the wrong family but they didn't know it at the time. So they took a 13 year old girl in the house. They pulled her out of her bed at gunpoint. The dogs were but she had an asthma attack and also vomited and then she passed out from fear. The dogs were barking and they said, if you don't silence your dogs, we're gonna shoot them, all of this stuff. They had the wrong family. And then in their press release afterwards, they said, quote, we sincerely regret that while attempting to execute an arrest warrant for a member of this drug trafficking organization, the innocent McKay family was inadvertently affected by this enforcement operation. Inadvertently affected. You scared a child into an asthma attack and you call that inadvertently affected. What does this have to do with cannabis? When we talk about creating policy, when we talk about amending statute, hearing from people with lived experience, defining what is a social equity applicant, everything that this body will produce is gonna have words on it. It may even have pictures. We all love a good picture book, right? The words and the images and the colloquialisms and the mannerisms and everything that we do and use to communicate to the public. It communicates not just our intentions as great as they may be, but it also communicates every bit of unconscious information we've ever received throughout our lives. And if those bits of information, audio, visual or otherwise, are still laced with the coded messaging around culpability and age and color and drug use and what is even considered a drug, right? If we're still producing a work product that is laced with those things, we will continue to produce work products that further those biases and stereotypes. If one, yes. So, let's get practical. And I forgot, I actually, that was a little section. So I need to hurry up. So, I've said this before to you, you know this already, structural problem requires structural solutions, not individual solutions, right? So, if we know that we have an issue that is broad, maybe poverty or maybe drug enforcement or I don't know, the electrical system in the building, right? That is a structural thing. If the system fails us and our building goes dark, it would be improper to say to everybody, hey guys, new rules. From now on, walk around with your cell phones as a flashlight because the lights are out and you've just got to go for stuff. That would be an individual solution to a systemic problem. The systemic solution is let's fix the lights. Let's pay the bill or whatever it takes to get the lights back on, right? So, we have a structural problem. We need a structural solution for it. Now, we know that when we apply an equity lens to our work, yes, we're looking at things like physical impact, operational impact, economic impact, which I guess is physical impact. I was looking for a third example. But we're also needing to look at the equity impact. That is the only way that you can make stable policy that is going to benefit everybody. So, let's talk a little bit about intense versus impact. So, usually, policy gets made based on the needs and the preferences of people in power, people in dominant groups, right? Our rules are our rules because they've been made for and by people who have either power or clout or whose opinions we care about, right? This usually creates disparate impacts for historically marginalized groups. I will give an example. There's some buildings somewhere, I don't know the details, leave me alone, but it's like some tech startup and they thought it would be cool in their modern building to have certain sections of the floors in the hallways just be glass panes, like see-through floors, right? Oh, hey, cool, there's Brian on the seventh floor, right? Oh, look, there's McKenzie up there, right? If there's a Brian or a McKenzie here, I'm not singling you out, I made these up. That design tells me nobody who wears a skirt or kills what's in the room when you decided to do that. I'm not walking on a floor that's see-through under those circumstances. So who's in the room, who's at the table? If you don't have the right voices present, you will create disparate impacts for historically marginalized groups. So if you build a brand new building and your doors are not 36s, I can't fit my wheelchair through there. It's 2021, we don't need to keep making that mistake at this point, right? So we do have sometimes well-meaning policies and they are really intended to be neutral, but they end up having a disparate impact anyway. We don't always intend for that. Sometimes it happens, right? So it's not the intent, it's the impact. Now in 2013, the federal government added a new level of analysis to its policy-making and it said, we're not just gonna look at what we intended to do, we're gonna look at the impact too, because sometimes, and try as you might, you still end up creating things that may have disparate impact. In 2020, that same federal government said, you know what, we don't care about that. As long as we can plausibly argue that we didn't intend to create a disparity, we're just gonna remove that standard so we don't really have to do anything about it. Now, that means that a rule theoretically could proceed even if it did cause a disparity. Now that rule change was never made, but it is first of all scary that it was ever proposed by the federal government in the first place. Now, what that means is that in order to avoid creating disparity, whether intentionally or unintentionally, one of the things that we should be using is an equity impact assessment tool. This is something that I mentioned at the last meeting, so this may seem a little familiar to some of you. And this is a tool that we use in the executive agencies that is supposed to be accompanying every budget and policy proposal that comes out of the admin. An equity impact assessment is a systemic examination of how different marginalized groups might be affected by a proposed action or a decision. We use it mainly to minimize unanticipated negative consequences. I mean, it maximizes the investment because we're able to say, hey, you know what, if we really wanna reach the people who need it most, maybe we should do it in these three regions instead of this region that always gets funding and support. Or, hey, you know what? We've omitted something really important that actually puts us out of compliance with federal law. Let's not get sued and let's fix that, right? So if you conduct an equity impact assessment during your decision-making phase, when you're still forming your process and your policies, that is the best time to be using it. And what I'm gonna do right now is very quickly walk, don't laugh, I mean quickly, for real. Walk you through what the sections look like. If I have, I think I've shared, this is something that I have shared with this group. I hope that you all will consider using it in your work. It is something like I said that's already mandated by the executive agencies, governance office has confirmed to everybody that they will not green light a budget or policy proposal that comes out of the admin if it does not have this attached to it. And it's something that we're also looking to assist with the legislature to create as well, one for them. So really quickly, the sections of this are the background and intent, stakeholders, multi-sectoral collaboration, benefits and burdens and data collection. So this is what you see at the top. It's a nice blurb about how we like equity and it instructs people to complete the form and submit it. We've got certain questions that are required for a first round of analysis, but eventually this entire form is required for a final green one. You don't need to know that, but it's just there on the screen. So the first portion is the proposal background. It asks the respondent to describe the proposal. What problem is this intended to solve or the intended outcome? Is it evidence-based, et cetera. The next session is strategic plan, metrics, goals and indicators. As you all know, there is a statewide strategic plan. We take it very seriously. And so this section asks the respondent to state clearly how their proposal fits in line with the strategic plan with its metrics, goals and indicators. The next section looks at inter-agency or multi-sectoral collaboration. So it's asking what other agencies are you involving? Are you prioritizing MZLPBEs, for example, as minority and women-owned business enterprises? Are you encouraging investment and collaboration with people from other sectors? This is really important because in Vermont, oftentimes policy, well, in all states, oftentimes policy is made in a very top-down way, but by being able to bring in people, ignore the org charts and just say, who needs to hear this and do this and see this? Bring them in, right? Next section, stakeholders and impacted populations. So the respondent is being asked to describe the target population, which includes demographic information, geographic areas that are going to be most impacted, whether public written materials are going to be generated and if so, into which languages will they be translated, et cetera. Next section, benefits and burdens, describing whether there are anticipated disparities for any group and how you can mitigate those disparities. Is there going to be a funding cut? If so, who's that going to harm? If they're going to be a funding boost, if so, is it going to boost in the areas and the demographics who need it most? Then there's the glossary, which defines just a few very basic terms. Now I want to talk to you about two use cases for this tool because it is a lot of work. I've breezed through these questions, but they're going to require that somebody really, or multiple somebody sit down and spend all the time answering them. And that can be burdensome, I get that. And you know what's more burdensome, systemic racism. But anyway, here's one use case for this tool. This is one case in which we did not do an equity impact assessment and it did create a racial disparity. A few years ago, the state of Vermont passed tobacco 21, which among other things prohibited possession of tobacco by any person under 21. Now, the thing about that is that there was no religious carve-out in that bill. And as a result, indigenous people have a Naki-Vermont or under 21 and that community views tobacco in a sacred plan. It's using rituals like purification and sorry, conveyance of prayers. So with no religious carve-out, it means that young indigenous people in Vermont cannot even possess something considered sacred to their culture that grows out of the dirt because it is illegal because we did not do an equity impact assessment that would have surfaced for us this disparity. Now, if they had used this tool, which admittedly didn't exist at the time, but this tool as it exists now, here are the questions that would have surfaced that disparity. How will the proposal incorporate cultural concerns of a specific group, including use of traditional healing practices, et cetera? Did you meaningfully consult with community members in developing the proposal? Did those community members include persons of color? Could a disparate racial impact or other unintended consequence results from this? What steps are you taking to mitigate? Is there a disparate impact for any other marginalized group, including we're not limited to national origin, religion, orientation, gender identity, et cetera? Those are the questions that likely would have surfaced that important issue that our indigenous people are still waiting for us to correct. Here's a second use case. This is a situation in which we sort of did do an equity impact assessment and we're able to mitigate racial disparity. So we didn't do the formal, formal assessment, but we followed the spirit of the EIA when we were allocating recovery money, post COVID. Oh, I guess it's not really post COVID, but so there were some business grants that were issued a lot of recovery money in downtown, small biz and all of that. And one of the things that we did was have an intentional set aside of $5 million for minority owned and women owned business enterprises. We know that oftentimes businesses led by women identified people and by people of color are often last to know about opportunities, particularly in Vermont where everything is the right closed network. And if you're not plugged in to that early information, you're basically last in line. We know that a lot of times these materials are promulgated in English exclusively. And so if I'm a business owner who's limited English proficient by the time I found out about it, it's probably the day before the deadline. We also know that generally speaking, I think earlier on during the recovery efforts up to about 85% of business owners of color in America were unable to access or utilize PPP funds. So even when something is alleged to be accessible to us, it often in practice is not. So being able to have this set aside, this carve out allowed us to ensure that there was a dedicated pool of money that wasn't going to be, I don't want to use the word with a negative connotation, but that wasn't going to be dipped into before underrepresented business owner had the opportunity to participate in the program. Those are two examples where an EIA either did or could have mitigated an unintended racial disparity. Now you may have a few questions. I'm going to try to predict some of those questions and answer them here. First one, okay, we did an analysis and oops, we ended up having a disparity in our proposal after all. Well, what do you do? The wrong answer is let's just do it anyway. Because we like the idea and we spend a lot of time working on it and I made a really nice glossy brochure and I don't want to change it. And there's only two black people anyway so it doesn't really matter. That's the wrong answer, right? The correct answer is go back to square zero, workshop it and do it again. Second one, well, we sort of already, oh, well that's actually not for you. This has to do with state agencies that already do an equity analysis so don't worry about that. Stereotyping, somebody asked us, isn't this kind of stereotyping? Well, no, right? If I'm building a brand new building, I don't know who's going to live or work there but I know that if anybody who is going to live or work there uses a wheelchair, I need to make my doors the minimum width that can support that. It's not stereotyping, it's quite the opposite actually. It's ensuring inclusion by reducing the barriers that have served to exclude people. I'm gonna give a short anecdote here. When I was in New York at the health department, we were partnering with our housing and buildings agency to do a series of community conversations about infrastructure and zoning and all of that. And we were doing some of those in different offices around the city and my colleague at Department of Building, she called me and she said, hey, can we do the next one in your building at the health department in Long Island City, Queens because we need a building that's accessible. We're gonna have some community residents joining and they use motorized wheelchairs. And I said, yeah, oh my gosh, yes. Our building is great. It's LEED certified, green, whatever. You've got wide doorways, everything's fine. It'll be great. And as I was saying that I was looking out my window and I had to stop myself and say, you know what, actually, no, I'm sorry, we can't. Because in that moment, I had seen the seven train roll in and I remember that even though our building was accessible, the local train stop was knocked. And in a city like New York, that matters because people don't drive. So the moral of the story was you can do everything in your power to make your little corner of the world inclusive, but if the broader structures upon which you rely are not inclusive, they will undermine and thwart your effort, which is why we call this systemic. My building can be LEED certified for green excellence and all that stuff, but if the train stop you operate that's 100 years old, it's still not accessible, then who cares if I'm having a dinner party, right? So next, what if we don't have data that speak to this that are on point? Some of the questions ask them for any data that they've relied on to ensure that this policy is going to be equitable. What if there aren't data? Yeah, you know what, in Vermont, there often aren't. And so the next thing to do is, one, we can extrapolate from some national data. Vermont is a lovely and unique place, but it's not so unique that we're that different from the rest of rural white America. We can extrapolate from some other jurisdictions, number one. And number two, another thing that we can do is make it an explicit goal and part of your initiative to collect those baseline data. If you don't have it, but you know you could have used it if it did exist, either one's to implement it. Next, do we use quantitative data alone or can we use or should we use qualitative data? I have been told by people in this state, well, one, this particular person who told me that all qualitative data is bad. She said it's useless and the only thing that matters is numbers. This person in the same breath also told me that I was forgetting about systemic racism. So I am skeptical of her assessments of things, but the question about whether we use qualitative and or quantitative data is a simple one. Absolutely use those qualitative data. And this group has already been doing that. You've heard from people with lived experience. You've heard from people who have either gone through the justice system or who are small business owners or you've heard from agency folks about the raw numbers, et cetera. And so my advice to you is to keep doing that because oftentimes people fall through the cracks because they are let loose in the numbers. I didn't phrase that well, but what I'm trying to say is numbers don't capture everything. And even when they do, sometimes everything is a little too accurate. And what I mean by that is I, just as an example, in the building structure house where I live, I am the only Hispanic person. If I move out, that is a 100% reduction in the Hispanic population of my little thing. Now, 100% is a big number, right? And granted, I'm a big person, but still the point is that data are helpful, absolutely. And yet the stories behind the data, the lives behind the data and the possibilities beyond the data are of such great value to us that it's a missed opportunity. And in fact, in some cases can be dangerous for us to rely only on the quantitative and not the qualitative data. What else do I have for you? Oh, yes. So I was starting to feel bad because I'm depressing you so much, which I always do. I just go into a room and make people feel uncomfortable all the time. And that can get draining. So normally I end these with a quote and I am going to end it with a quote, but that quote is also depressing. So before that, I am going to give you a comic strip. You're welcome. This is an example of two individuals who did not perform an equity impact assessment and it is having a disparate impact on their friend. Now, I know a joke is less funny when you have to explain it, but for accessibility's sake, I'm going to explain it. We have two individuals who have apparently planned a party and they thought we should invite Drew. And the blue one says, he always has an excuse. So they call up Drew and invite him to the party, but Drew is a beautiful flower and he says, I can't because I am rooted to the ground. And then they say he can't come. I told you. And so the point is, if they had done an EIA, they would have realized that their party was not accessible to anyone who have no legs. And that is the point. And that's why Drew can't go to the party. I want to talk to you. I want to give you this quote from John Ehrlichman, who you might remember as the Nixon advisor slash Watergate co-conspirator, who in 1994, after repaying his debt to society, he stated, quote, the Nixon campaign in 1968 and the Nixon White House after that had two enemies, the anti-war left and black people. We knew we couldn't make it illegal to be either against the war or black. But, and by the way, just as an aside, we don't use black as a noun. So black lives. Just in case anyone was ever curious, don't do that, please. We knew we couldn't make it illegal to be either against the war or black. But by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and black heroines and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. Now, the speculation about whether he was really serious when he said this or whether he meant it because some people thought that he had a bone to pick because he was mad about the whole Watergate candle and that he might have overstated the intent here. But you know what, I don't buy it. I think he bent it. I think that's what they did. And remember, we talked about intent versus impact. Whether they intended it wasn't the point. These are the highest, some of the highest paid advisors in the country. They're supposed to be the cream of the cross. And yet, this was the impact they ended up having, even if we questioned whether that was really the intent. I believe it was the intent. But what do I know? I'm just a guy in Vermont. Either way, that quote and that behavior and that marvel that was rolled, that started being rolled by the Nixon admin and even before that, led to a war on drugs that grew and grew and grew, swallowed up people and families and communities and led us to a point that you're looking at on your screen, which, and I keep showing this image because so telling is the lottery line in Chicago for Illinois cannabis program. So whatever airless men and them wanted to do at the time is irrelevant. What they ended up doing was creating a circumstance in which that is what the lottery line looks like in America for something that brown people have been incarcerated for, lost their children and jobs for for decades. But suddenly, if you have the startup capital and the gumption to intend to start a business around it in a newly legalized market, and if you're white, then congratulations, please sign up. This has been great. I am shocked that I am under time, personal best. And next time what we have for you is I'm gonna talk a little bit about process equity, right, as opposed to outcomes equity. What does it mean for a process to be equitable? The importance of using data and being data reliant, but not being data hostage. And then of course anything else as the board is fit. So with that, if there are any questions in the room or virtually, I'm more than happy to answer. Otherwise, thank you so much for your time. I've got one. Yeah. And the equity impact assessments, who fills out an EIA and how do you bring in outside perspectives to cap this? And yeah, you think about the back of 21 part, if Vermont legislators are all white and we're not aware, then how do you get extra voices in to help them cap those things before they write a law that ends up disbanding vision and opposition? Yeah, excellent question. I'm gonna repeat it in case folks didn't hear it. The question was, who fills out equity impact assessments at the state level? And how do we incorporate voices of people with lived experience or from marginalized groups, particularly in a legislative setting when you have people who are writing a bill? And the answer is that in the executive agency, is the people who fill out the equity impact assessment tool are usually the same policy people and budget people who are putting forward the proposal. So if you're a person in your department and you're in charge of, I don't know, the clean water policy, right? If you're the person who normally makes proposals, then you're probably the person who's also filling that out. However, it's not, it's something that should be a team effort and so we encourage people who work with each other to get the work done. And there's also a sort of regular chain of review that happens with proposals before they make their way to governor's office or to the agency of administration. So anyone who's in that chain of reviewing policy proposals is responsible for reviewing and contributing to the EIA. The other thing is that, of course, I always tell them that I'm available to help them if they need that, so does that. And so is the governor's policy person. And the last thing is we have a team of equity liaisons around the state, which is basically a point person in every agency or department who is an additional point of contact on equity matters. So that person, one of their roles in their respective agencies and departments is to assist with the filling out of EIA. Now, that's often the exact branch. On the legislator's side, we are aware that a number of legislators have been trying to put together something similar to this. It's not clear to me that it would be as detailed, but it follows the spirit of an equity impact assessment in the sense that it asks the question about who are we helping, who are we harming, and how are we getting it done. Now, it is trickier in a legislative context because a lot of times, first of all, they're time bound. They have their own deadlines and their own process, and this is something that I can work on for an extended time, but session is only a certain length. So timing is an issue. And again, to that, I always say, don't anchor your timeline. Anchor the need for what has to get done. And adjust your timing accordingly because justice doesn't really care what your schedule looks like. The second thing is that, and I think those of you in the room who used to be legislative counsel or work in any kind of drafting capacity often understand that sometimes an elected will say, don't tell me we can't do it. Just tell me how we're gonna get it done because this is what I want, even if it's illegal. So that can be tricky as well, being able to incorporate equity measures into something when a person kind of has it in their mind of, no, this is what I wanna do. And I'll leave it to you how to handle those situations, but that's a little bit about the process of EIA. Ashley, if you can hear me, feel free to unmute yourself and ask a question. It's a little bit of a question and a little bit of a statement that I just wanna have us all consider when it comes to thinking about equity, especially in cannabis in Vermont, because we are a very different state because diversity is not as much, I think, as other states that we have seen models from. I'm curious in what you have noted in the existing cannabis brands and marketing is what you have seen for women being represented in Vermont, people of color being represented in the Vermont cannabis industry as it stands on its own itself. I don't wanna have Vermont just start patting itself on the back for what it's done in its existing market, but I do think for those who are perhaps haven't closely been watching what brands exist now to really see that 80% of the cannabis brands that are available to customers now in the legal market are owned and operated by women. And I think it's already showing that our state is being so sensitive to that issue. I think that we're so unique in the sense that this is such a huge upfront issue for us that perhaps, we may not have all of the numbers and stats for certain demographics of people here in Vermont, I feel like we're doing the best we can with the people that exist here in this industry as a whole. And then the other thing I wanna mention is that of course we're gonna talk about repercussions as it pertains to discrimination, but as someone who has experienced discrimination myself in the cannabis space as it exists in today's market, someone telling me that they don't have a problem with my products or my brand or my messaging, but they have a problem with me. What are we gonna do to let people know that there are certain people who exist still in the cannabis industry that feel that way? And how are we going to bring those voices to the forefront and punish those who wanna keep us from being successful in flourishing? Thank you. Thank you for that. I will say to your first point, it's really, I'm glad that you highlight the sex diversity in the industry because I think oftentimes when people think I'm talking about equity, they assume I'm talking only about racial equity. And just as you know, we are talking about members of the LGBTQIA plus population. We're talking about women-identified people. We're talking about people living with disabilities, people experiencing socioeconomic disparity, right? These are all people who in one way or another have been oppressed by members of dominant groups in the United States and abroad. And what that means for us is as we build out this market, if we can focus on reducing barriers for all of those groups, everybody is going to benefit, period, end of story, right? And then there's something, there's women-owned and then there's women-owned, right? Or there's black-owned and then there's black-owned, right? Did I put something in my sister's name so that I could get this added credit? Or have I always identified as white my whole life but for the purposes of this application? Yes, in fact, I do have a great, great, great, great, great, great, great grandfather who might have been charity maybe, right? So the ways in which sometimes this system is manipulated is also something that we should be looking at, right? And to the last point about there being discrimination within the industry and how and whether governments should respond to that is a really tricky one, right? One thing I always tell people is, I'm not here to make people not be racist because it's legal to be racist. It's legal to be a jerk, right? I don't intend to stop people for that but I do intend to ensure that people are being treated equitably across racial groups, right? And so that is an incredibly frustrating and fine line to walk which is what is the state's role in feeding that kind of change? And I think Vermont is great because this state has always had a sort of we like local and we like community-owned and shared and there's a certain set of values that I think the state has always stated it values and this is really the time for us to prove it. Do we love women-owned businesses? Okay, great. Well, 80% are here in the industry. What are we gonna do to make sure that it's a hospitable environment, right? So I don't think that was much of an answer but just kind of a ditto. Thank you. Yeah, I agree. Any other questions? Thank you so much. I think one thing that you're probably aware of in that earlier presentation is we have to struggle with supporting social equity which is a founding principle of the legislation and moving incredibly quickly and those things often are in direct tension. Yeah. And so anything that you can do to help us try to achieve the purposes or push back on it. Yeah, one of my favorite things to tell the legislature is we need more time. Stop it. So if you all find that you need more time with something, I will be happy to shout that to whomever will listen. So, and I say that because again, timing matters so much, right? Rushed policy is rarely good policy and it's a waste of everyone's time if we end up with a crappy work product that is just gonna keep replicating harm. So yes, absolutely. I can start. Thank you all. Thank you. Thank you. Okay. We have one agenda item left before our final public comment period. We're gonna do an ethics overview on some very specific topics. Are you ready to go or are we a little bit early? Yeah. Okay, great. So this is Larry Novans. He's a professor at Vermont Law School. He's also the Executive Director of the Vermont Ethics Commission. Julie Holder, for those who don't know, is the former chair of the Vermont Ethics Commission. And we thought that it was important. I mentioned some of the concerns that we have around public engagement and kind of accepting gifts as advisory committee members. I think Larry, we asked him to talk a little bit about a little deeper into those subjects as well as conflicts of interest. You are an advisory capacity. You're not making any binding decisions upon us. So in some ways, your personal conflicts, if they do exist and are disclosed properly are kind of how you mitigate that. But I think Larry is probably the more beneficial to him just over to you before I get out of my depth. Okay. Do you mind if I take off my jacket? Please don't. This is the first time I've worn a tiny year and a half. The jacket's sort of putting me over the edge. I'm waiting for my computer to warm up. My job's a little bit different. My job, I think today, is to make me comfortable. And I want to talk about ethics. Most people, when they hear about ethics, they go, oh God, everybody can tell me what I can't do and how I can get in trouble. And my job is, I think, to tell you with how you can avoid trouble and to make your life working with the state of the model a little bit easier. There are some common pitfalls that we all sort of are exposed to in working in the state government. Before I worked at the Ethics Commission, I worked for the Secretary of State for 16 years. And I was counseled to 15 or 16 different licensing boards. So we had a lot of the same issues that you'll face in your work here. And the bottom line on everything having to do with ethics is one, try and keep it simple. And two, try and be transparent about what we're doing. If you do that, the rest of it will take care of itself. Excuse me. For some reason, I have this, something in the back of my throat that's just driving me in. That would be nice. Thank you. I don't think it's gonna make a huge difference, but if I can have my computer, usually I can do it by the third try. And I do have a little PowerPoint assisting your returns on, I can share with you. So let me thank you for inviting me here today. Appreciate it, the opportunity to share with you. I have a little handout of the Ethics Commission and give you later on, outlining our current code just by way of background. When the Ethics Commission was created beginning in 2018, one of their jobs was to adopt the code of ethics for state government. And they did that. And what we realized quickly is it's wonderful, we have a great code, but it doesn't really apply to anybody if they don't wanna follow it. And so what we've done is we've introduced, we have a sponsor in the legislature and introduced the revised code, updated code that hopefully one day will become law and will apply to everybody in state government. The idea is it'll make it easier for everybody to know what the expectations are for us in state government. And I understand there are three of you on the board and then the rest, I'm assuming either staff or on the committee, right, the advisory committee. And the way the committee is set up is a little bit different because your job is to advise. So some of the things that might be a conflict for you or Julie may or may not be a conflict for you in sort of a gray area. Some of you were picked because of your work in state government. And that makes it a little bit easier to identify conflicts that may arise here. Some of you come from outside state government, come from private industry or the private sector. Thank you. And it's different for you because in your day-to-day activities, people coming to you, there are things that are going on that may or may not affect what you're doing here on the advisory committee. But as long as what you're giving is advice and not really making the concrete decisions, the degree of conflict is diminished. And so what I'm gonna go through today is a brief outline about what is ethics and then talk about the things that we spoke about earlier that are specific to your job as advisors here. And you'll be glad to know this computer is almost warmed up. Thanks for that. Why in this enormous, empty building did they stick even one room where you're all on top of each other? The next thing is enormous. You can all spread that all over the place. Do I need to hook up to... No. Do you need me to turn it off? Please turn it off first. Do I need to hook up to... Probably do. Yeah, I do need to hook up to that. Yeah, please. No, the resident tech person. She's all right. Where's the mini-hats? Probably not. I just thought the one thing I was going to do was... I don't think I'm meeting has ever started where it's like flawless for everybody to get on. Yeah, once we have implants in our brains and we're just chipping in. I have not, I think, ever, even at conferences. No. Let's get to your computers. Probably a couple of Achilles' heels, and this is one of them. We'll get it there. Don't worry. Really, the bilateral Achilles' heels. While we do that, why don't I just start? So, Potter Stewart, who was on the US Supreme Court in the 50s, had a good definition for ethics. And basically, ethics is it's not doing what you have a right to do, it's doing the right thing. And so what we're trying to do is try and find the right way or the right thing to do in a state government. What applies to you, as the people on the board, you are subject to a governor's executive order. They tell you the things you have to do. Those of you on the committee may have seen that order and may have had to sign something similar to that order. So that is sort of the primary thing that should direct to your activities as you serve here. The big thing, I think the biggest problem that everybody worries about or is concerned about is what happens when there's a conflict of interest? Even before that, what is a conflict of interest? Basically, everything in state ethics and governmental ethics comes down to one thing. It comes down to our duty to the state of Vermont as employees or board members or people serving the state in one capacity or another and our own individual interests. And our own interests might be something personal to us, our own financial interests or our own personal interests, or it might be the interest of somebody close to us, a family member, a spouse, our best friend. So what happens frequently is there will be a question that will come up to somebody in state government that involves something that's going to cost them money or involves a member of their family directly or indirectly or involves somebody else. And that's when the light should come up and go on and say, okay, this is a situation where I need to start asking questions and be aware of how what I'm about to do might affect people or myself that I care about. So we have a definition of a conflict of interest if I ever get the rest of the computer I can find to show it to you in the screen. Okay, yeah, give me a second. I just gave the presenting powers. It is. It's in here. You see anything? Is it cannabis? Hopefully everything is always in the place you are. Yeah. No, I can search for it if you would like. I'll give you a file. Okay. One small step. All right. Good. Okay. I'm going to skip through it. Okay. So there's the definition and here are some sources. So I mentioned earlier the Vermont Constitution is the source of ethics for us all. The ethics commission, we have a bunch of stuff on our website and you can get to that quite easily. I'll give you more information on that easier later on. And then there's the governor's executive order that I mentioned before and the statute. The ones that affect you most directly probably are the governor's executive order. The ethics commission which is revised two years ago. And then our proposed statute which is H384 that was introduced last March. And then probably the DHR personnel policies will not affect most of you directly. So here's what a conflict of interest is. And essentially it's an interest director, indirect, financial or otherwise or an interest known to the person regarding somebody close to them. Their immediate family, household, business, associate, etc. In the outcome of a particular matter pending before you or your body or something that's in conflict with the property discharge of your duties. So a conflict of interest doesn't mean something where your interest is no greater than anybody else's or for example, taxes. So if you had the power to levy a tax or make a tax rate and it was going to affect you the same as everybody else in state of Vermont that would not be a conflict of interest. Now what happens when there is a conflict of interest? The general rule is if you have a conflict if you need to make a decision and it affects you then you should recuse. You shouldn't participate in that discussion if you were deciding who should get a license for a dispensary in say the city of Rutland. And it was your application that's that easy. You don't vote on your own application. If it's your best friend from college probably you don't want to vote on that one either. So you need to ask all these questions. There are times as Julie asked me this question the other day well what if something comes to us as the cannabis control board and all three of us have a conflict of interest. What do we do? You have to make a decision. If you all refuse yourself everything grinds to a halt and you can't do anything. There's something in the administrative law called the rule of necessity and that is if you have to make the decision then go ahead and do it. But how does the public know that what you're doing is not for your own benefit? Not for your own good? How do they know? What's the one thing we hear all the time when we're talking about government what's wrong with government? What does it people say all the time? Oh they're in it for themselves. Or they're in it for their donors. Or they're in it where the money is or they're in it for God knows what purpose but they're not watching out for me. So when you're in a situation where you have to make a decision about a conflict of interest and you can't recuse you can't give it to somebody else to decide then your obligation is to disclose the conflict of interest. You say I want to be open I want to be on top of things I want to be transparent and I want to let the world know that I have a conflict of interest and this is my conflict this application involves my brother. This will benefit me financially and there's no way I can recuse I'm obligated to do this. So then when you vote when you finally make a decision on something what you need to do is be very careful to articulate why you are doing what you are. Why is this decision the best for the people in Vermont as opposed to the best for Larry Novitz? So if you're open and transparent about it then the people who are out there who will say they're only in it for themselves hopefully will be assured that you're actually doing the right thing for the people of Vermont and not for yourself or individuals yourself as an individual. So one of the questions is well how do you disclose the conflict? What do you do? Sometimes if you're in a meeting and these things will sometimes come up during a meeting all of a sudden you see the next thing comes before you. That's conflict for me. Then you say I have a conflict on this I need to recuse myself or if it's one where you can't recuse I have a conflict here's what the conflict is and here's why I can't recuse or I don't think I need to recuse and then you would give that to the board the board would keep these records if you did it orally that would be fine. If you have a written disclosure conflict disclosure form you can fill that out. I drafted one that I can give to you all sort of a working draft of what happens when there is a conflict. So that would be a helpful thing to just think about so far everything Larry has told us is sort of what to watch out for and what not to do and I said my job is to make you feel better not worse. The idea of being aware of these things is that if we're open or transparent we disclose any conflicts we have then the people who are out there and would think that they're in it for themselves are either modified or short that actually we're doing the right thing for them so that's really really important. So it's identifying a conflict of interest disclose the conflict of interest and they either recuse or proceed explaining why it's okay for you to proceed. One of the things that you need to worry about is sometimes it's not a conflict but it might look like one. It's an apparent conflict and it's like well that's a little shady I'm not sure that that's really for them to be involved in. So what you would do is it looks like a conflict like there's an application for a license and somebody has the same last name as me that I would say you know what that looks like a conflict but I've never heard of this person before it's a remarkable coincidence that they have the same last name or they live down the road for me but I've never met them before and I don't think I have a problem with that. Because when we disclose we use that criticism. So I think that's really important to know how do you know when to recuse when is the right time to recuse and when is the right time to proceed. Something happens to you you're in a conversation somebody comes up to you and says I know you're on the advisory board I'd really like you to push for this particular proposal to be an individual. And your initial thought is of course I want to hear from everybody and I want to make sure that the board hears a diverse range of opinions before they make any decisions. In that situation there are a couple things you can do. One is disclose to the board I had a conversation with a close friend of mine who shared information about something new and interested and I'm giving it to you in that light so you know about it. The other thing to do and this is what I have told licensing boards in the past if somebody comes up to you with an idea or with substantive information about something that you know you're going to be voting on in the near future or you know you're going to be voting on I would tell them don't talk to me about this we're going to have a hearing on this if you have any information give it to the whole board or give it to the whole advisory committee so it's shared because if you don't do that what happens is you end up sort of being conduit for this person and then other people say why is committee member X saying this where is that coming from but if you refer to the person say talk to the whole board make your comment public don't go through me you've done a couple of things you've ensured that their comment will be heard by everybody whether it's good or bad you've avoided that you're being made a conduit for that person and most importantly I think you have preserved your independence and your impartiality so what I would say to people come to me when I need to make a decision is please don't talk to me because if you do you may lose me as a participant in that conversation I may not be able to participate if I've sort of gone out on a limb for you in this conversation today so it protects you it just allows you to do your job as a board member or a committee member better and it precludes public criticism that somehow you're doing something nefarious when you're having a conversation about something that may come up in front of the board or in the community how do you know which one of those conversations is going to be problematic one of the things that we always say is would you be having this conversation if somebody from VT Digger was sitting there or you're wrong with sitting there or somebody whose judgment or criticism you were really worried about and if the answer is I wouldn't be having this conversation if there was a reporter sitting next to me then that should tell me tell them to go through channels tell them to talk to everybody else does this mean you can't talk to your friends anymore no does this mean you can't ever hear anything and bring it to the committee or to the board but it does ask that you be discreet because as a public servant as somebody working for the State of Vermont in this capacity you're asked to do two things one is to produce the product the legislature told you to produce and the other is to assure the public that you're doing an affair time change this way and hopefully these tips will enable you to do that without any fear of getting sucked into something the last thing you want to have happen is to read in the newspaper so and so said at a party that oh for sure the commission or the committee is going to be doing this you know you just don't want that it looks like you've prejudiced something and you know if they say loose lips and shit so people ask you well what's the committee going to do next what are you talking about this week you know if it's something that's in the public record if there's an agenda and you say we have six things on our agenda here's what we're going to be talking about that's fine but if you start predicting we're saying we're going to do this or we're going to do this then that can be a problem and I'll get to later a sort of general list of government ethics considerations so one of the other issues that comes up is a gift and let me see if I can find this one okay this is going to be going next so sometimes in government people want to give you things for example pop goes into a diner and it's a coffee center or the snow fog drive coffee center or somebody comes into your office and brings a nice box of Lake Champlain chocolate why do they do is it just because they're nice or because they're hoping that by being friends with you, by being close to you that you're going to treat them if not fairly better than other people are they trying to curry favor with you if you see a public a public person if you see somebody on the board if you see a committee member taking a gift from somebody what's the first thing to suspect a member of the public is going to think there's something behind that so in our ethics code in our current ethics code and in the proposed code we have a section covering gifts and it says no gifts let's see if I have slide on this I think I do let me know when we're running out of time I guess I don't there's at the bottom of that no gifts under circumstances in which it can be reasonably inferred that the gift is intended to influence you if you have your official duties or is intended as a reward for anything you've done is allowed so if somebody gives you a gift where it looks like they're intending to influence you or you did a great job in that help last week here's tickets, here are our tickets to the Flynn Theater whenever it opens that should be the clue that is wrong in our proposed code there are some exceptions to the gift rule that were put in there in hopes of making it a little more palatable but the general rule if somebody gives you a gift and it's not intended to influence you and it's not a reward that may be okay but what's the easy rule if somebody gives you a gift just saying it's so much easier and I remember one time I had a meeting with a state official the legal counsel for a state official we went out for coffee and we both looked at each other for a minute and said we need these to pay for our own it either would look like I'm trying to influence them or they're trying to influence me I think a cup of coffee is an extreme example but I think it's a good example just be very aware of how it looks more than anything else it's the parents that will get people in the truck and look at the news anytime and somebody will take something that's fairly innocuous and they'll make it look bad and if you're aware of that and you say I'm just going to be very alert to things that may look bad you're 99% of the way there to being safe can we explore that for a second because you were talking earlier about events that might be a free meal what is your spot on that as it relates to yes I think as in all things I'm going to say it depends if it was there was a meeting of the agency Human Services and they had free lunch there would be a problem if it's a meeting of an organization that has business before you or wants something from you then that can be a problem and I think the better thing to do in that situation is I'm happy to attend your meeting if I buy my own lunch if they're having lunch at some fancy restaurant or fancy hotel some place and it's a 50 or 60 dollar lunch it may be sort of tempting to do it and it would be fun to do but probably the better thing to do is I'll either get my own lunch or I'll come after lunch or I'll pay for my own lunch if the board has approved something that's a little bit different so if you have a special permission to do something that's one thing and there is that clause in the proposed code that if you have permission to do something and that permission is granted because it's being seen in the public interest then that's probably okay but if nothing else if you take nothing from what I have to share with you today it's always ask the question and if you ask the question that chances are you'll be able to work through the answer Mark Twain had this thing that I had in this presentation but I took it out and he said it's not what you know that it gets you in trouble it's not what you think it gets you in trouble it's what you know for sure because chances are if you're sure you're wrong so keep asking the questions and talk to the board or feel free to call our office if we can help you when people call us and ask for guidance on things anybody else and when I get a call I can usually help somebody work through the problem and say okay here's what the questions are I think it implicates these ethical issues work through and then 99% of people reach their own conclusions they don't need a yes or a no answer there we have just about five minutes left do you mind if I did I know do you mind if we just pause for questions sure no I don't mind can you continue any questions at this point for Larry Stephanie yeah hi Larry it's Stephanie Smith of the Vermont Agency of Agriculture and I'm a member of the advisory committee helping the cannabis control board because we're not the advisory committee is kind of a policy committee we're not making any quasi judicial decisions about anyone's particular involvement in cannabis market down the road we're more engaged in policy does the limitation on us being able to speak with the public that you mentioned earlier as I am interpreting it should we not have those conversations I would I mean I like to have conversations with the public pretty broadly so that I understand what their concerns are and I just want a little clarification I think it's a little bit different I mean some of the members of your group are already in state government so technically you don't have a private or personal point of view to bring to the committee or to the board that the reason you're on the committee is because if you're a particular expertise in a particular area so for you it's less of a risk I mean because of where you are and your job you speak to the public all the time and we encourage that we want people to do that but I think it's just important that when you're talking with the rest of the group and you be open about where you're coming from are you speaking for your agency are you speaking for an individual are you speaking for a friend and so have all the conversations you want but just be aware of the situation of what you bring back to the board I think the people who are already in state government it's much easier because we're already bound either by the executive order or by the DHR policies or by the ethics code to the extent it may apply to individuals so I hope that answers your question Yes, thank you Okay, good Any other questions at that point? Okay Okay I have and I can squeeze this in very quickly Other basic government ethics considerations so if you have a conflict and say I have a conflict of interest that there's something involving my neighbor or somebody in my family I can't say to Julie Julie here you do this and I want you to vote for me because it's my brother and I really want to see this happen so you can't delegate a conflict I think everybody knows in state government we're not to give preferential treatment or seek preferential treatment we don't give somebody treatment because they're friends or they're status or anything else we can't use our position for personal gain you can't walk into a party and say hi I'm from the Canada's control board you know and I'd like to talk to you and I know that's a great look in the pile of cookies over there don't use your position for your own personal gain confidential information it may be and I suspect for the advisory committee people this is less likely to happen you may have some confidential information just remember that not only does it need to remain confidential but if you want to make things worse disclose that or use it to your own benefit you know in situations where you see something on your computer and you oh that's great I want to say that and use it um government resources anything that you have at the office you can't go to your copy machine copy your wedding invitation gifts we talked about briefly they can be problematic statements obligating the state of Vermont if you're not authorized to speak for your organization whether it be this board or anybody else don't say it don't give a newspaper interview come on the committee and this and this and this is what we're going to do that can be a problem there is something in most government ethics in a post government employment revolving doors so if you it won't apply to you I don't think it applied to anybody in the committee it's not anything you need to worry about right now um and just the other thing is in a proposed ethics code there are some whistleblower protections that if you blow the whistle on something it's unethical you shouldn't be able to suffer we shouldn't suffer any harm in the process that's basically it so summary um in the little any video that we have is just be aware of what the issues are ask the questions discuss them with your colleagues refer to the sources we have above or call us ask for guidance look at our website and that's that's essentially it I have some little handouts for you I have a sample of this thank you oh it's great thank you so much for your willingness to do that I know that we rushed you but uh we're very grateful for your information um and yes I think that uh this last slide is very important if you feel like you do have a conflict or one starts to arise with your work please reach out to Larry please reach out to Bryn and we'll figure out how to mitigate it how to deal with it how to recuse if necessary etc so I think that's um great advice thank you for being here thank you my pleasure thank you you know where we are feel free to call um the final thing on our agenda today before we adjourn is one more public comment period we'll do it the same way that we did earlier if you have a public comment you're a member of the public and you'd like to say something to the whole advisory committee please feel free to raise your virtual hand and if you joined uh by the phone um you can unmute yourself by hitting star six okay okay Jeffrey thank you everybody can you hear me okay yes okay uh I'll be brief I know everyone wants to wrap up so thank you uh for this final opportunity for public comment um I want to thank Susanna Larry and others that spoke today um I want to make just a couple of very brief points um if you don't mind uh surrounding race and cannabis and then also on licensing equity um just want to bring it back around really an underscore uh Susanna's presentation um we did not catch the audio on that Clark experiment but uh I am aware of it um that is something that my friend and colleague Mark Hughes of the Vermont Racial Justice Alliance a member of our Vermont cannabis equity coalition here in Vermont mentioned uh and brought up in his trading for our coalition back when we formed um I just want to underscore that it's important for uh white people to be aware of that study um and if you are unfamiliar with it or did not catch it when she was presenting it earlier I urge you to seek it out on the internet um thank you for bringing that up um as we talk about social equity uh licensing market access uh enforcement in the adult use space I just want to take a moment and remind everybody listening that racial disparities in arrest rates persist and even have sometimes increased in states with commercial cannabis marketplaces something for us to keep in mind um Leafley social equity research arm recently reported as if I think a couple months ago that um states with commercial marketplaces uh see a um four times the rest rate for black and brown people compared to white people they are four times more likely to get arrested in states with commercial cannabis marketplaces than white people uh and in fact in LA county back when California first legalized their uh black uh arrest rates went up momentarily they went up when they legalized cannabis um I say that for a reason uh when we speak with um advocates organizers and regulators in other states notably Massachusetts and Oregon uh with active in mature marketplaces they always tell us to avoid compartmentalizing social equity avoid compartmentalizing that if you do you uh find yourselves in or outcomes what I mean by that is uh land and capital uh are necessities there are necessities for black and brown people and social equity uh in the immersion cannabis space um racism is systemic uh it must be dealt with in a systemic nature um that's something that we don't want in to repeat in Vermont uh again speaking to Massachusetts our friends often point out that consumption is really important and that crux a lot of these arrest rates uh black home ownership is often uh unbalanced and and and uh the polar opposite of where we want things to be I understand Vermont's a little bit different uh we're not as diverse but we still need to address these issues um something that mark likes to bring up is uh less than one percent of all farms in Vermont are owned by uh people of color less than one percent and nationally of all of the cannabis businesses um in every single state less than four percent are owned by people of color so just keep this in the back of our minds and move forward you guys are at a pivotal point I want to put that on everyone's radar uh very briefly lastly regarding licensing I just want to stress equity and innovation when you guys are thinking about licensing it's a popular myth that cannabis licenses must be issued on a limited basis and that a points based or a lottery system are the only methods for defining parameters for eligibility um other states show that doing so will create again in future outcomes um do we want that in Vermont um for uh time thank you for those points they're all valid and uh we will have opportunities for future public comment on all of these issues thank you is there is there anyone else that would like to provide public comment if you do please just raise your virtual hand okay um anyone uh from the advisory committee would like to make any concluding remarks any questions okay well we do have um Larry brought a few handouts there's actually some good detail about gifts and gift taking and receiving on there um we do have a sample um disclosure form we'll photocopy these for the benefit of the people um that joined via the link and get them out to you um this is a really exciting endeavor and I'm really glad that you're all willing to do this I know this is a long day um we won't be doing this like this again hopefully it will be very judicious with how we use your time we know it's valuable and we know that you are brought here for your specific expertise um we had to do some kind of housekeeping and orientation things today but um I'm really excited that you all accepted this uh responsibility and um are taking it seriously so thank you all and thanks to everyone who joined via the link um I think that's it I would take a motion to adjourn motion to adjourn seconded all in favor