The Cannabis Regulators Association (CANNRA) and Key Regulatory Issues, Initiatives and Trends

All right, all right, we've got, uh, attendees still logging in here. Welcome everybody who's in the room and who can hear me. Give it about 20 more seconds and then I'll start it. All right, well, welcome everybody. Happy Wednesday afternoon. My name is Jason Klein. I am your host. This is the latest installment of the Cannabusiness Key Thought Leader Speaker Series that has been running for over 5 years now. Welcome to everybody who's joined one of these webinars in the past, and certainly welcome to anybody who's new here. We are very excited to have two guests here today with us: the Executive Director of CAMRA, the Cannabis Regulatory— Cannabis Regulators Association, Jillian Schauer, and the President— do I have that right?— the President, Andrew Brisboe. So I'm going to give them both an introduction here in a moment. But as usual with the webinars, a little bit of housekeeping. If you're not familiar with the Zoom program here, what you're looking at, you have the ability as guests, and we really want to encourage you to ask questions. So there's a chat feature and a Q&A feature. Really, the Q&A feature is going to be a little bit easier for us to see what you're typing in. Go ahead and If you want to ask Andrew and Gillian questions, if you have, you know, particular issues that you want to make sure that they hit on during the next hour, please go ahead and just, you know, start typing them in there. We'll be monitoring those throughout the presentation for the next hour, and we'll try to get to all of them that we could possibly fit in. This webinar is being recorded, so if you have questions but you have to leave, just go ahead and write your questions in now, and we can come back and hear how we, how we address them later. If you have questions that you think your friends or family or colleagues may enjoy hearing responses on, certainly you can share this recording with them later. So yeah, just go ahead and use that feature liberally. We're going to be, you know, talking about a few different topics here, but certainly as you will learn. Andrew and Gillian have a great depth and breadth of knowledge about cannabis regulatory issues. So we're gonna get into all of that today and invite you to make sure you get your questions asked. The next webinar in this series is going to be on April 27th. We are now doing these generally the last Wednesday of every month. Previous years we did the last Friday. We've moved this over to a Wednesday schedule, so it's noon Eastern time, same time. If you're logged in here, you, you'll get an invitation for the next one. Share it with your friends. And we're going to have two guests again, two guests from the Safe Harbor Financial Bank out in Colorado. We'll be talking about banking cannabis industry businesses and those— the issues that those businesses face and banks face here in 2022, particularly emphasize lending as that starts to ramp up a little bit more. So that's going to be, uh, that's going to be April 27th, and, uh, you'll get a— you'll get an invitation and go ahead and sign up for that one so that you have a reminder and you have it on your calendar. And, uh, With that, let's jump into, into this webinar. So as I mentioned, we have two guests here from the Cannabis Regulators Association. This is, uh, we're going to use the term CANRA, and we'll get you their website. If you aren't familiar with the Cannabis Regulators Association, they're a national nonpartisan organization of cannabis regulators that provide policymakers and regulatory agencies with the resources to make informed decisions considering whether and how to legalize and regulate cannabis. So they have a really broad membership of cannabis regulators from across the country. Many different states' regulators participate in this. They're not a cannabis advocacy organization, and they don't take formal positions for or against cannabis legalization, but they provide these regulators and legislators with good actionable useful information on how and, you know, how to proceed when it comes to regulating cannabis in their home states. So we have, as I mentioned, Gillian Shower, who's the executive director of the agency, of the organization, and Andrew Brisboe, who's the president of the organization. Welcome to both of you today.

Thanks, Jason.

Thanks, Jason. Happy to be here.

Gillian, maybe you can start here and just give us a real brief background of who you are and how you came to this position.

Yeah, so I am a public health scientist by training, and I had been working in tobacco control policy for about 10 years when legalization first happened in my home state of Washington and Colorado. And initially, so I was at the time working with federal agencies on tobacco policy with CDC, And I, I took a couple meetings in Washington and Colorado to sort of understand the implications for other drug policy that would come from legalization of cannabis. And it took all of, you know, one meeting in Washington and one meeting in Colorado for me to go back and report to federal agencies. There's a lot of work here and states need a lot of help from federal agencies and federal agencies are generally absent from the scene and states are in the process of trying to create their own mini FDAs to do, you know, regulation and their own mini EPAs and their own mini CDCs. And so I, in my contracted role at the time with CDC, had sort of carte blanche to work with states and primarily state health officials in understanding policy change in their states and the implications of that, understanding the science, understanding the data, et cetera. That resulted in subsequent work with a bunch of different federal agencies on cannabis policy. And then transitioned to states. And my transition to state work was around the time that states were starting to come together as regulatory agencies to exchange information. And I had had some experience helping state health officials do that and, you know, lent my same skill set to the regulatory arena. And that very group, which we called the Regulators Roundtable, has become CANRA. So it's been really exciting to be here to see the formalization of that. To get to work with such a talented group of regulators from across so many different jurisdictions with different policies. So that's my background in a nutshell.

Great. Andrew, how about you?

So I've, I've been with the State of Michigan since 2004 and have worked in a number of different regulatory programs, starting in gaming regulation, issuing driver's licenses with our Department of State, and then eventually doing occupational health licensing and regulation. And at the time that we saw legalization in Michigan, As with a lot of states, it moved very quickly and then had a short timeline for implementation. So I was right place at the right time, and they needed someone who could stand up the program and just kind of developed a passion for this policy arena. And it's so rare as someone who works in government to get to do something new and interesting that isn't already built. And to sort of merge into what Jillian said, I relied completely on counterparts in other states to understand what they were seeing on the ground. And I think a lot of the basic tenets of why we formed this organization were that we had to rely on each other, and we saw as new states were coming on board, they dealt with all of the same issues that every other state did at implementation, but also every issue that has arisen since and every issue, every novel issue that states that were more mature were dealing with at the same time. And so there needed to be a cohesive way that they could find information, get insights into things, get engaged with regulatory partners on a more consistent basis in other states. And the timing of formalizing our organization just worked perfectly in that with burgeoning federal policy shifts, You know, it's important that we're at the table. We can help federal agencies understand what we went through at the state level. So, yeah, I'm just very excited to be working in this space. We have a great team in the state of Michigan. I love collaborating with partners across the country on these issues.

Wonderful. So, yeah, I mean, it really sounds like CAMRA has sort of come together and, you know, a lot of different regulators have expressed that interest to join in. CANRA and sort of signed on to the mission of CANRA. Jillian, maybe you can just sort of tell us a little bit more about it and what the current state of CANRA is.

Yeah, I'm going to share a slide. We're not really using slides for this informal conversation, but I want to share the slide in part so people can see the map, and I'm sure many folks listening to this webcast are interested in finding out if their state's a member or not. So I think you covered our background pretty well, Jason. We now have— I think we're up to 42 states and territories that are members or associate members. We also have Guam and the US Virgin Islands and DC. Those are our territories. And I think one of the neat things about CANRA is we've always envisioned it as a big tent. So you'll see when you look at the map, you know, we include all of the adult-use states as members. We include most of the medical states. We also include a number of states that have low-THC CBD programs. And we include a couple states, Kansas and North Carolina, where they've not legalized any, you know, cannabis marketplace, even, you know, low-THC. And they are included as associate members because we've always wanted to provide the exchange of information for any government agency that wants to learn about this. So, you know, in those states, there are a couple government agencies that have had the foresight to say, we want to understand the complexities of regulation so that if and when it comes to us, we're already plugged in and can hit the ground running. As Andrew said, we also work a lot with federal agencies. We don't have any federal agency members, but, you know, we hope that We can provide education where it's helpful to federal agencies. And while we're not international, we work a fair bit with Health Canada and our colleagues there as well who are regulating. I think you covered it that, you know, our goal is not to advocate for or against legalization. Our goal is really to facilitate the exchange of information. We want to identify and share best practices, and we do that through committee work and through white papers and reports, most of which have been internal for our members And really, we're focused on safeguarding public health and safety, promoting equity, and promoting regulatory certainty for people who are in the industry. And we're funded by member agencies. We don't have any non-governmental members. We're also an affiliate of the Council of State Governments, which may be an organization that folks know about as well. So I think it's, you know, it's been great to see this move from a couple meetings a year of regulators to an organization that really has a in-depth structure. Our committees are staffed by the folks in state regulatory agencies who are doing this work every day, and many states have joined at a broader level than just their regulatory agency, so we're also able to bring in agencies that tangentially touch cannabis policy: departments of transportation, public health departments, departments of agriculture, so that they can be part of the exchange as well. Anything to add, Andrew?

No, I think that was a great summary.

I agree.

And I put our website in the chat also so folks on the webcast can see.

Yeah, right. So if you haven't heard of CanRA before but you're in the industry, you know, it's, it's most likely that the places where you're operating or you're invested in, or the states, the jurisdictions that you're interested in our members. And so, you know, this would be a great opportunity to sort of get Andrew and Gillian's take on whatever issues you may be curious about from a regulator's perspective. And that's really great to have you here on this one because oftentimes, as you know, Gillian and Andrew, we focus sort of on industry issues. So it's really nice to have the regulators perspective on, you know, how— what these best practices are and to see what, you know, what it's like from that angle. So, I see we've got a few chat messages and Q&A coming in already. That's great. Go ahead and add some more in. But let's start here because, Gillian, you had mentioned that you do sort of interface with some federal agencies, and I know You know, cannabis, as anybody knows who's been operating in cannabis, you know, it touches every aspect of the law and regulation. And it's not that only cannabis regulators need to understand how cannabis works or how cannabis medicalization or legalization can affect their subject matter. But let's just sort of talk about you know, what, from a state regulator's perspective, how, you know, federal changes in federal law or changes in federal regulation or the approach that federal agencies have to states, you know, what would state regulators like to see as far as developments from the federal act?

Andrew, do you want to kick it off or do you want me to? I think he asked you the question, Gillian, so I'm going to make you answer. Okay. Yeah, I mean, you know, as I mentioned, our members have a diverse diversity of policy, but we, we have been monitoring carefully the federal landscape. In addition to providing any education that's asked of us by federal agencies, we've been monitoring the kinds of bills that have been introduced, and we did put in a comment on the CAOA draft bill, which you can see on our website. But that comment was a result of a lot of consensus building among the diversity of our members, and I think we've landed on some things that will hold true for any legislation that's introduced, not just for the CAOA. Some of the things that regulators expressed as being important in federal policy. You know, federal regulations should set a floor, not a ceiling. I think we've seen in the wake of things like the vaping lung injury outbreak and some of what we're seeing now with hemp-derived products that states really need the ability to understand their own environment and react quickly. And we can't have federal policy that precludes that. So that's been a big tenet of what I think we've heard from state regulators in our membership. There's a need for minimum standards in a number of areas, especially lab testing, ingredients, additives, packaging, and labeling. As I said in my intro, you know, every state's had to create their own mini federal agency to do that, and state regulatory agencies are just not funded to have the capacity to, to do that in full, and there's really a need for some federal support there, and again, some, some minimum standards that states can choose to go above and beyond if they want. I think, you know, there's been an emphasis throughout our work with CANRA on a need for data monitoring and research. Almost every regulator I talk with wants to make sure that their policy is guided by the data from their state, the data that we're seeing nationally, and by research. And we've just had a gap in what's been happening in that space. So it was heartening to see the Senate recently pass the research bill. We definitely need to see advances there. I think we've had some discussion about taxation and sort of the revenue that's been generated by cannabis legalization in states, and regulators have expressed, you know, some trepidation that federal legalization could overlay a huge tax that would cause them to have to lower their state tax, and the state taxes are paying for a lot of important programs, some of which are very interrelated with cannabis legalization, programs for, you know, community investment and reparations, if you will, programs for substance use treatment, research, etc. And then finally, you know, I think it's really important, and we're going to talk more about this, that any federal policy identify a path forward that brings hemp into the fold, because right now we really have two parallel regulatory systems, and that's created a lot of headaches for state regulators, and any federal legalization needs to acknowledge that and consider how regulations can have more parity. And Andrew can fill in kind of, I think, the details and perspective from, from the state regulator vantage.

Yeah, I think the big picture thing I consider when we talk about federal policy is that we're not here to dictate how we think policymakers should do it, but we lend an interesting perspective. Every state that's done legalization has went from prohibition to legalization and has had to figure out how to get from point A to point B on these, you know, what, 42, 43, 44 micro levels now. So we think it's imperative that federal policymakers and federal regulatory agencies learn those lessons that we have learned. And if you want subject matter experts on how that's done, as I just described on the state level, no one exists at the federal level that's done that before. So we can lend a perspective and help understand how and why state regulatory systems are set up as they are. Obviously, we have some authority to do pieces of that on the administrative side, some of us on the policy side, but we're also subject to ballot initiatives in many cases that we are required to implement. So we know that may be the law of the land in the states we come from, but that doesn't necessarily mean we think it works well, and we can share that perspective, what the pitfalls have been, and give an honest assessment of where we are and how we got here and how we think things could be done better at the federal level. And I think Jillian's absolutely right, some of those resources in other industries I've regulated that we look to the federal government to set baseline standards, uh, don't exist here. So we're all trying to figure it out on our own without the necessary infrastructure in a lot of cases to do it. So we rely on what other states came before us who relied on what states came before them, and it becomes a long game of telephone I can tell you, Michigan, we made one critical interpretive error trying to base a standard on another state and had to quickly rush in and fix it because we are trying to be, you know, pharmacists and scientists and regulators and policymakers all at one time, and it stretches us pretty thin. And in a lot of cases, had very short timelines to do it. But we've learned so much over the last several years about what's effective and what's not that we want to be in that conversation to share those perspectives.

Yeah, absolutely. It'd be contributory in a lot of ways. And as the federal government continues to sort of be involved or involve itself in cannabis industry in various ways, it'd be nice if they could benefit from the perspective of all these state regulators who have been through and learned important lessons and sometimes hard-fought lessons. We have a bunch of questions coming in. I want to make sure that we get to all of them. So Sort of, if we could start here, and I see Nurse Laura here on our chat, so Laura, thank you for joining us. Laura asked a great question about Delta-8-THC, which is a novel cannabinoid. Well, novel meaning sort of, you know, it exists in nature, it's not unnatural, but it's one of those cannabinoids that wasn't on the forefront of most regulators' minds when they were— or lawmakers' minds when they were creating legislation around medical or adult-use cannabis. A lot of Delta-8 THC, which is derived from hemp, is added into or created as a new product to sell to the general public or to medical patients. So these sort of, you know, other cannabinoids which may be a little bit outside the scope of state regulations or need to be sort of incorporated into. Maybe you can just sort of touch on novel cannabinoids in general or Delta-8-THC, which is obviously one of the sort of more popular ones or growing in popularity these days, and how state regulators are thinking about those.

Yeah, I think— go ahead, Andrew.

I get to go first this time. This, I think this really underscores something Gillian said when we talked about federal policy shifts and the need to integrate hemp with marijuana, because this is an issue that I think with the federal Farm Bill in 2018, a lot of us, including myself, looked at that and said, okay, so now we're going to see this divergence between hemp and marijuana. They're going to be in two different places, and if anything, they get more and more integrated as innovation occurs and the industry advances. Faster than regulation. And this was such a fundamental shift for a lot of us because it challenged the way in which we defined these terms at their, at their core. Because now with Delta-8 specifically, we have an intoxicating cannabis-derived product that is not covered under the Federal Controlled Substances Act, is not addressed by state regulatory agencies at all, and is now pervasive in the hemp space. When I think when we look at why we're regulating marijuana differently from hemp, it's because of this intoxicating factor. And so now we're trying to evaluate the processes by which it occurs, all at a state-by-state level, and doing it very quickly to try and avoid a public health crisis potentially like we saw with the Bali. And it's not just about intoxication, and it's how is this being made, how is this being made, what are the byproducts, what's going to come next. And so in, in that reaction, I think we saw state-by-state is now we have disparate definitions of what is hemp and what is marijuana across the country, many of which now conflict with federal policy as well. So the longer this waits to pull everyone to the table and figure this out, the more of these issues are going to exist. In many states, and I think this is contrary probably to what industry would want to see, in the absence of knowledge and data to inform policymaking, just move to ban it. The quickest thing to do is just to prohibit it, and that way you can make sure that none of this is occurring. But you almost then shift into a different mode of a prohibitionist era where now you are creating, you know, criminalizing it or making it unavailable when people may be consuming it, it is readily available and in a gray area. And we've seen a shift in how oversight from a law enforcement perspective occurs in the cannabis space where they're, they're just sort of hands-off because it's legalized in many states and it's too, it's too confusing. And so now we run the risk that some of these things that are marketed and available to people that are cannabis-derived, right, and destigmatizing some of those issues when it comes to cannabis now results in some of these synthetic or converted or unnatural products are being manufactured, and no one's really sure what byproducts might be there or what sort of chemicals went into this synthesis process.

And it's not just Delta-8. I mean, you know, we had our first meeting of regulators about Delta-8, I want to say, 2 years ago, maybe even more than that. But now it's HHC, it's THCO acetate, it's, you know, every, every month there's a new novel cannabinoid coming out. And I think that's been a challenge for regulators to try to stay ahead of that and protect consumer safety. And that's one of the reasons that adult use markets in particular have been structured the way they have been, with required lab testing, with required standards for how products are produced. It's for consumer safety issues. And in general, that's been so different for hemp. I think hemp is generally an example of what happens when there's federal legalization without really stringent regulation at the federal level and interstate commerce is allowed. Even states that have taken action to try to protect consumer safety and prevent youth access to these products, you know, they can't control the online marketplace that's booming, and it's— you can go on Google, you know, and find the latest derivative, you know, pretty much any day, and I think the challenge on the science side is many of these are brand new molecules that, you know, humans are the test case for them. We have no safety profile data. Most states are not equipped to be able to do lab testing to understand the potential consumer safety concerns. We know these have byproducts from the process of deriving them that are also not understood for consumers. So I think the consumer safety challenge to states has been really tough. And I think there has been a trend of states, you know, creating a pathway where these products can come under the cannabis regulator and, you know, could be allowed with certain oversight and approval for the process of deriving them, you know, but trying to put some safeguards in place to protect consumers.

And just sort of tying this back to the federal angle on this, it would be wonderful if the federal agencies that have the resources and the budgets to really do the science on these cannabinoids and understand the, you know, how they're derived and what they— what it means and what it means inside of a human body when it's been consumed in various ways. And, you know, what pesticides are safe or what aren't and all that, you know, all those sort of difficult questions that require budgets to really come up with good answers on. It'd be helpful if they provided some minimum standards, you know, to help guide these states.

Yeah, and even some safety profiles, right, on some of these new things that have never been seen. You know, federal labs have much more capability to look at them than state labs do, so it's been a challenging area to say the least for regulation.

Sort of in the absence of some, you know, real hard in-depth knowledge about these novel cannabinoids and even sort of the rest of but, you know, all the cannabinoids we do know. There's a good question here, you know, maybe we don't have all the background that we want, but then we can certainly require testing. And a lot of states have, you know, very solid sort of broad and, you know, experienced testing protocols that they have in place. Now, I've got a question here from Heather about about one state in particular, that Maine currently doesn't require testing of medical marijuana. Do you know if there are any states besides Maine that does not have sort of independent testing, or is there a position that CANRA takes with regard to recommendations about testing, you know, establishing testing protocols in various states?

Yeah, well, it's not a formal position. I think most regulators would tell you that testing the products is very important, and one of our most active CANRA special committees is the special a committee on lab testing where people are regularly exchanging information about analytes and approaches there. I don't know offhand if there are other states that don't require testing, but I know medical marketplaces have struggled a bit more to set up the testing regime that's needed for testing because there's no federal engagement and most medical programs have much smaller budgets than adult use programs. But, you know, I— setting aside sort of the CANRA perspective, I think medical patients have potentially underlying conditions. And in terms of of the breadth of consumers, in my opinion, they're the ones that need the most well-tested products, the safest, most regulated products, because again, they may have underlying conditions where some of these contaminants could interact or cause problems. So, you know, I think it's a challenge for states to figure out the right way to do testing. All states pretty much have set up third-party testing systems, and we know there've been challenges with that. It's been a struggle because of the Schedule I designation of cannabis for states to set up reference labs, which those would be state-run labs that could really help provide oversight and quality assurance of that testing system. And that's just a challenge given the current federal scheduling of cannabis. Andrew, I don't know what your experience in Michigan's been like. You guys have done a lot of work on your testing programs.

We have, and we have what I think is considered some of the strictest testing standards, which, but to your point, Gillian, that we have a lot of control over how things are sampled, how they're tested. So even those processes by which products are tested, even if you have two states that have the same sort of analytes and acceptable levels that they test for, the chain of custody and how things get there may be completely different in different states. So I don't know if anyone's quite figured out the perfect way to do it. And as Gillian said, depending on the size of your state market, if you are expecting independent businesses to run these tests, but because cannabis is still Schedule I, that they sort of stuck to just do this, that's a lot of investment to set up to just focus on this narrow scope of operation. And then you still have potential concerns when you have market participants based on fees trying to run a business who are supposed to be that control point, this critical control point in the supply chain. So it's a very challenging topic. And sometimes you're forced to deal with policy that doesn't allow you to have that level of control either. I don't know specifically about the Maine situation necessarily, but I think a lot of us have ideas as to what the perfect scenario might be, but we don't always have the tools to make that happen.

Yeah, and that's— I just want to jump in, Jason, because I think that's an important thing when we're thinking about the federal landscape. I'm often asked, well, when are you going to harmonize policy in states? Isn't that what CANRA is going to do? And it's not as easy as a regulator saying, this is the right way to do it, so we're just going to do it. We all know there's a legislative process. There are, you know, pre-existing statutes. Some states had ballot measures, and that creates a really challenging political system to make the changes that that, you know, I think some regulators would like to see in their states, but it's, you know, a longer on-ramp to make those.

So we're not debuting the national model cannabis code tomorrow?

No, I think we have a lot of exchange of information, and one of the things CANRA would like to get into doing is maybe some model policy for new states that come on board, but I fully expect that that model policy will be something that, you know, maybe no state's been able to completely execute on. It's pieces of what regulators have learned within their parameters and structures.

Yeah, absolutely.

I think that—

I think testing is a, you know, is a really critical component to really giving consumers confidence that what they're getting, you know, and putting into their body is safe, you know, and and is, contains what it says on the side of the package. It's a really important way to ensure that people continue to choose the safe alternative and don't, you know, go into the black market where they get something that's completely untested, no idea what it is, and obviously can be dangerous for people. Along these lines, we have a question from Matt. Whether CANRA works with standards development organizations like ASTM or AAOC to inform state regulators on the newest testing methods, standards, and best practices.

So we, we have relationships with all of the standard-making organizations, and that's really important that we're able to keep in touch with them and hear what they're working on. CANRA has not formally engaged in any of their standard-making processes, though we do have some state members that are particularly engaged And I think there's a really important role for regulators as standards are being made and understanding the implications that those would have for state markets and the reality of being able to implement them. So we've had a lot of discussions about it, but, you know, not picking a formal entity to sort of endorse, more trying to keep our members up to date and follow what's going on and, you know, activate our members to engage where they feel they want to.

Yeah, I think the work being done by those, those groups is important as they, you know, play a role in, in state regulatory programs. You know, in my background, I've worked in multiple fields where we adopt different types of standards that are made by those organizations, and those can be a really good complement and supplement to state policy where you don't have to reinvent the wheel. You can adopt pieces of that, and I think multiple groups working on that front, you know, creating sort of a competitive atmosphere and focusing on different nuanced aspects of this new industry are really helpful helpful as they start to evaluate. They bring those stakeholders to the table to discuss those things.

I'm going to move away from the sort of substantive topic of cannabis for a moment and just sort of talk about from a regulator's perspective. We have an interesting question from, from, from our friend Laura again, and she's asking basically how is the best way to talk to regulators, like from a, from an industry operator's perspective? Is there a particular professional educational background that, you know, or way to go about sort of communicating with regulators about, you know, your needs as a business? Do you have any thoughts on that, or do you— have you found, you know, better experiences, you know, taking certain approaches?

Well, when we implemented in Michigan, I think you'll see a lot of us around the country did it this way. That learning process and that learning curve is so steep and you often, like I said before, have critical timeframes you have to meet when you're implementing programs that we've— a lot of us have taken an approach of collaboration. We have to talk to people who are engaged in the industry, who have a history of working in growing plants or consuming cannabis, particularly those that were doing it on a quasi-commercial level even before it was legalized to understand what those those needs are. So I think that focus on stakeholder engagement has always been an important piece of the puzzle, because there's, as I said, that who else would you rely on to understand the needs of the businesses and doing that on an ongoing basis. I can guarantee you, this is my perspective and likely shared by all my counterparts across the country, that what you did on day one versus what you did at the beginning of year 3 are completely different. And you look back and wonder how you did it on day one because you realize how little you knew about how it was going to unfold. Unfold. So the critical piece that I always recommend is engaging with stakeholders regularly, and trying to build as much flexibility into your program as possible, which can be very challenging when you're dealing with policymakers and when you're dealing with folks in industry who start to develop a stake in a certain approach. But there's no way you know how it's going to unfold, and states have dealt with different challenges. And you need to be able to pivot to address some of those things. And even those of us that have been doing it for years, like we spoke about with Delta-8, there there are going to be new unknown issues like a volley. None of us predicted a volley either. So you have to be able to address those things quickly in order to protect consumers and be responsive to the needs of businesses, because it's sort of an odd relationship we have here as regulators with industry. I think historically, if you talk about regulatory bodies and the industries they regulated, those were sort of adversarial approaches and a lot of tug of war happening there. Here we have some, some common goal. We, I think we all view it as consumers utilizing the regulated market is the best approach to keeping things safe and to diminishing the impact of the illicit market. So we have that shared common goal, and that really is beneficial when you build those relationships to keep policy moving things in that direction.

That's a great answer. Yeah, I think there's a lot packed in there that people can learn from and think about when it comes to interfacing with their regulators from an industry perspective. Gillian, you had mentioned in the intro, and I want to sort of circle back to this, that one key components of the CANRA mission is around equity, expungement, community reinvestment, these sort of efforts that a lot of different states are taking in a lot of different ways. And maybe you can just sort of talk about some of, some of the lessons that you've learned through CANRA based on those various efforts in different places.

Yeah, I think for a number of years now, there's been a lot of discussion about equity in the marketplace and in particular more scrutiny about how policy can create an opportunity for that or squander an opportunity for that. And again, that's an area where I suspect many regulators would say, gosh, I wish our policy was set up like this, but they can't just snap their fingers and change it. So I think there's been a lot of important exchange on the sort of equity in the industry side. But what I've seen in the last couple of years is the conversation has really importantly broadened. And while many regulators are probably not in the seat to work on things like expungements or community reinvestment, they are in a position to advocate with their governments for that. And I'll give some examples, but I think those are the 3 pieces that we need to be talking about with equity. Equity in the industry, expungements, which should be automatic, which should be easy for people to get. They should not have to file for them. And that takes an investment of the state to make that happen. And then community reinvestment. And we've seen some of the recent states that have legalized adult use on the Eastern Corridor say that they're going to put a really big proportion of their tax dollars into reinvesting in communities that were disproportionately impacted by the war on drugs. And as a public health researcher, I get really excited about that because I know, you know, that has the opportunity to make a big difference in communities. Not everybody in communities that have been impacted by the criminalization of cannabis wants to work in the cannabis industry. But, you know, many of them have been impacted by the criminalization. And what science shows is anyone who has been arrested, who has had a family member who's been arrested, you know, related to cannabis, is going to have worse outcomes across the board, social, economic, health-wise. And I think my personal view is we have an obligation to repair that damage. So I'm excited to see states investing money there. And I'm also excited that some of the first states to go to legalization are taking another look at that. So my home state of Washington State, for example, did not set up a system with equity in mind in 2012. They set up a system with the, the Cole memo in mind, right, making sure that the federal agencies weren't going to come shut down the market they were developing. But just this last December, the governor allocated $125 million from cannabis tax revenue to community reinvestment. So I think that goes to show that even if a state started on a different course, it's not too late for them to make attempts to have more of an equity lens in their policy. But again, I would say that's one of our more active committees for CANRA, is our Committee on Social and Economic Equity, and really some great ideas coming out there for regulators to hear about and try to bring to their own states.

And that's one of those policy areas where I think CANRA has been effective with new members and new states considering policy shifts and getting in on the front end. You know, in Michigan, for example, we had commercial medical legalization 2 years before adult use legalization, the latter having provisions of social equity, and found ourselves very far behind just in that 2-year period. The industry gets up and running and very established, and it was a very narrow focus. It was all about how do you give licenses and diversify ownership in the ranks. And it was a very narrow scope of conversation and not as focused on community reinvestment and community development for those areas most impacted, which now I think we're starting to broaden that focus. But I was talking to folks from the Department of Health in a deep red state who were just starting to have conversations about medical legalization. And they asked, you know, what should we be thinking about? I said, think about adult use or recreational legalization and social equity, because if you don't think about it at the front end, you're going to be chasing it on the back end and your policy is going to be very tough to to show success. So it really does provide opportunities for newer states. This is one of the examples where dealing with those nascent issues in more mature states can be beneficial for the newer states, though they'll be, you know, drinking from an even bigger fire hose trying to address all of those things. But I think there's recognition now that this, this disproportionate impact of the War on Drugs was prevalent across every state. It's not just in certain states. It's not just in states that legalized earlier, states that will legalize last. And you need to address those pillars, as Jillian discussed.

Yeah, I think, I think that's, I think it's exactly right. And it goes to sort of the lesson you were talking about earlier with respect to maintaining flexibility and thinking about how you're going to proceed, that your initial sort of effort is going to be an evolutionary process. You're going to learn as you go, and you're going to need to continue to adjust and grow. Because certainly the war on drugs and cannabis prohibition has been around for many, many decades, and this is just simply the beginning of unringing that bell. And it's not something that you can just do in one big fell swoop. There's a lot to learn. So, I mean, that, you know, Andrew, you had mentioned that Michigan was among the states that first had a medical program and is moving and has moved into a recreational program. And one of the challenges in those jurisdictions is, you know, really from a— initially from a lawmaker's perspective, but, you know, do you dual track these programs? Do you maintain the medical program? Does this sort of get absorbed into an adult use program? And so David asked here just a few minutes ago about thoughts on how successful medical programs can continue to persist. When adult use is legalized in a state. Does CAMRA have, have, have positions on that or any particular thoughts on that?

Yeah, we actually have a committee that really focuses on the key pillars of medicinal access and medicinal use and put together some, some really good information for all states to consider. And I think it focuses on a couple of different ways how, how you focus on that in an implementation of a program, but in mature states where you have this inevitable movement from medical to adult use. And it just makes logical and practical sense for the businesses that are operating there. Michigan has a pretty large patient population that's way around 250,000 comparative to other states, but obviously that's dwarfed by the number of prospective customers in an adult use market. So of course, you know, businesses are going to focus their investment on that. Tax structures are often favorable for the adult use side in terms of what municipalities municipalities and other governmental entities want to do because they get more money, more tax revenue generated from the adult use side as well. So I do think it's, it's an important consideration that that's going to inevitably occur. Do you keep policy ahead of that? How do you focus on medicinal access? And I think there are ways, because a lot of states do have this bifurcated system, and I've grown to think it seems somewhat arbitrary. Some states have greater distinctions than Michigan does, but I think by and large What are we focused on at our core, right? It's safety standards for those who are growing plants, that are manufacturing cannabis-derived materials, and that are making sales. And the distinction is really who are they selling it to? And there are some, some differences in the types of products as well. But there are really simple ways you can, you know, improve or maintain at least patient access in markets that are starting to transition to a single stream, looking at tax breaks if you're a medicinal patient, which a lot of states have higher adult use taxes than than medical taxes. The harder part is, is, and this exists even if you have a bifurcated system, the products that are most needed by medical patients are often not the most profitable products. So in what ways, short of just companies agreeing out of the goodness of their heart and their commitment to medical patients making those products, how can you incentivize the manufacturing and availability of those products? And that's a tougher challenge. I'm not sure anyone has quite figured that out because we typically don't We don't force businesses to engage in less profitable activities. And I think a lot of what will help that, as we've talked about before, is a shift in, in research and the federal government making some changes to allow for more medical research, will more hone in businesses' ability to determine what products are most needed and how they can manufacture those, and continue pushes by patient advocates on the types of products that are needed. And figuring out creative ways to encourage companies to continue to make those types of products.

And I think there are some states that are, you know, that have some policies in that space. So Massachusetts, for example, has some incentives for companies that continue to produce products that patients need but may not have, you know, broader appeal. But I don't think we see one model here across the states. As Andrew said, I think we see a lot of different approaches of how states have tried to keep their medical program alive. And that's one area that I think would be really interesting to research and actually talk to patients in states about, you know, is it working? Is the parallel model working? Is the single model like Washington has, where it's just one place, one retail outlet, is that working? You know, how do patients feel about registries? In a lot of states, you know, if you agree to be on a registry, you don't pay the tax. But, you know, if you're not on the registry, you might still pay the tax. So I think there are a lot of policy variables to look carefully at. And this is an area where I think regulators can benefit from some of the groups that are thinking carefully about patient access and working with them.

And I even think with adult use markets, you know, you're looking at how many people are specifically designated as medical patients versus the number of people that are using cannabis for medicinal or therapeutic purposes, right? It's, it's not quite that simple. So having those products available, you know, maybe in both markets, but having research and data and education for people working in the industry available so that they can help give guidance to folks would be incredibly impactful because otherwise people are just kind of figuring it out on their own, and that can lead to, to less than desirable results.

And just to bring it back to the federal landscape, I think this is another thing we flagged in our CAOA response that was really missing, was a discussion of how medical markets will be preserved or medical medical products will be preserved. You know, and the option, I think most regulators would say, is not that all the medical products go to FDA. I think we've seen with Epidiolex, you know, that's an FDA-approved medicine that's botanically derived. It's also, you know, thousands of dollars a month. And so patients are going to go out on their own and get a product, but that product may not be exactly what the FDA's approved. So how do you sort of square that gap and make sure that patients have safe products that match what's needed for their condition?

Right. Yeah. Well, we have just about 10 minutes left here. So if there's any sort of final questions, go ahead and put those there in the Q&A. And we're going to just start wrapping up here in just a few minutes. But before we do that, there's a question about where to find resources and research. And Jillian, you had mentioned the research bill that was recently passed in the Senate. Is there, you know, is CAMRA going to be sort of expanding their website to provide additional resources and research and information? I know there's a sort of a news component, but, you know, do you have anywhere that you may be able to push our audience as far as getting good updates and information and sources of updates from from CANRA and other important things going on from the regulatory perspective?

Yeah, so people can subscribe to get notifications from CANRA. Admittedly, you know, we're a small but mighty entity right now, and I'm the only staff person, so we haven't fully built out what I think we'd like to have in that space. I think ideally we'd like to communicate much more with stakeholders. As I mentioned, we have a bunch of different white papers that have been really useful to our members that we've we've generally not made public, but, you know, we'll probably put some sort of teasers on the website about that. I don't know that we'll ever be sort of the go-to place for news about cannabis. I think there are a bunch of other entities that do a really good job there, but for the regulator's take on things and for some of the issues that regulators are thinking about, I think that's definitely a space that we'd like to grow into.

No, I think it's important to be clear that we are a membership of state regulatory agencies, so the content that we put together is in service of state regulators doing their jobs more so than being a public resource for various topics.

Jillian, I'm not sure— oh, here we go.

I just was getting ready. Sorry.

No worries. Yeah, well, let's talk about that for a moment as far as the vision for, you know, where CAMRA is going. Point, you know, sort of in the next year or two. Maybe you can just fill us in on what some of your, you know, what your hopes and goals are for 2022 and a little bit beyond.

I think we're trying to continue to broaden our outreach and collaboration with key partners, continuing to have an influence in federal policy in terms of sharing our perspective, getting more ingrained with the important committees that will handle federal policy shifts, continuing to engage with those federal policy— I'm sorry, those federal regulatory agencies. And I think now that we've seen the majority of states that have policy in place are working with us, as Gillian sort of alluded to, I think we're at a comfortable place now. We can really start working on some model legislation, model regulations for states to rely on. We have a lot of states that that are brand new to this and have recent experiences, but a lot, a lot of states that have been doing this for quite a while that have a good sense of what's worked and what hasn't. And I think that will be helpful to all of us. As Gillian said, I think we have ideas of what's working in our states and what's not, but to have a singular resource that is a collaboration of every state that's doing this would be really helpful for us to point to going to our legislative partners and our executive offices saying, see, everyone sort of agrees, has this consensus that this is a good way to go about things. And will help us make updates that will sort of enshrine some of those best practices of various states all across the country.

And I think, you know, one of our main purposes also is to be a one-stop shop for people that want to reach regulators, for different stakeholder groups, for government agencies, for policymakers. And as Andrew said, especially on the policy front federally, it's really important that regulators have a voice in the room. They thought about these detailed policy questions, in some cases for decades. And, and they thought about all of them. So we want to make sure that we're, we're in the right, we're in the right rooms to provide that education from the ground because it's going to be really important to shape the policy that comes forward.

Well, let's start, you know, let's start wrapping up. We have two questions in here, people who want to reach out to you and get get in touch with the both of you after, after this event. So how is, you know, besides sort of signing up for updates on the website, maybe you can push everybody to your contact information, how they can, how they can interact with you directly.

Yep, I'm adding my email. And then there's also an info email for more general that I can add as well.

Wonderful. Yeah, so for those, I'm not sure if those of you who will be watching this on the recording will be able to see this, but it's Gillian Shower, G-I-L-L-I-A-N period S-C-H-A-U-E-R at canrra.org, and canrra is C-A-N-N hyphen R-A dot org. And same for Andrew with the, as far as the canrra.org with the leader is president@camra.org to reach out to Andrew, or brisboamichigan.gov. So for people who want to follow up with you directly, you know, please feel free to reach out to them if you have sort of specific questions that, you know, that you think they may be able to help you with. If you have specific legal questions, you want to talk to a lawyer about your cannabis business or your investment or any other aspect of that, certainly you can reach out to me. My email is jason.klein@rimonlaw.com, R-I-M-O-N-L-A-W.com. And geez, this has been really great. I've really appreciated both of your perspectives here today. We— this has been really informative. As someone, you know, who spends— I spend a lot of my time talking to sort of, you know, the industry operators and investors. It's really great to hear from the two of you who are over there with the regulators and, you know, working to establish and evolve and continue to figure out these difficult problems that are, you know, problems, issues and opportunities and, and navigate the obstacles as you continue to evolve your programs.

Thanks so much, Jason. And I think I speak for Andrew and myself when, when we say, you know, we love to hear different perspectives. I'm a researcher by training, so I welcome anyone to reach out and, you know, share your perspective, share your vantage, ask a question. I think that can make policy stronger. When we hear all the voices in the room. So if people want to get in touch, I really hope they do. And it's been great to have this platform to share a little bit of the work we're doing.

I would love to have you back.

I was going to say, I absolutely agree. If there's interest in collaboration, reach out to Jillian.

Thanks, Andrew.

She can handle all the emails.

Certainly, certainly. Well, we'd love to have you back maybe next year to hear a little bit more about where Canra has been and where gets going and further updates from that end. We're getting great feedback in the chat here and the Q&A from everything you've given us here today. So thank you again for sharing some of your time with us. We look forward to hosting another webinar in April and every last Wednesday of the month going forward. So please, If you have guests or topics that you'd like to hear more about or particular people that you think would be interesting guests for the series, please feel free to send them over my way. I'm looking forward to everybody joining us here for the next webinar on April 27th. Thank you again, Jillian and Andrew, and I hope everybody has a wonderful week and we'll see you again here soon.

Thanks, everyone.

Take care.

Bye-bye.