Meetings
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[James Pepper, Chair, Vermont Cannabis Control Board]: And great to
[Rep. Matthew Birong (Chair)]: see you. All right. Thank you everyone for updating that brief recess while we waited for Chair Pepper to arrive. Chair Pepper's in the chair. How are you, sir?
[James Pepper, Chair, Vermont Cannabis Control Board]: Doing well. Thanks for having me. This is like Groundhog's Day from last year.
[Rep. Matthew Birong (Chair)]: I actually remember. It's Trevor. I remember. Earned in this very same sound cut. Yes. It's almost like you and I do this together. Yeah.
[James Pepper, Chair, Vermont Cannabis Control Board]: Well, for the record, James Pepper. Are we live?
[Rep. Lisa Hango (Vice Chair)]: Oh, yeah.
[James Pepper, Chair, Vermont Cannabis Control Board]: For the record, James Pepper, and I didn't get to catch all the testimony from this morning. I'm happy to answer whatever questions you think I can answer. Happy to kind of talk about how these things might look from a regulatory standpoint.
[Rep. Matthew Birong (Chair)]: Yeah, so I think one of the things that we were hoping to get clarity from you in the rulemaking process about how the vendors would be able to dispense product, quantities, caps, serving sizes, things of that nature. I know it's a rulemaking process, but
[James Pepper, Chair, Vermont Cannabis Control Board]: Yeah. Yeah. So what you see in the language and I don't have it in front of me, but what you see there is two separate authorities have complete control over vendor training, law enforcement presence, transportation plans, the size of the events, the types of products that would be allowed to be consumed, whether it's just beverages only or whether it was just inhaled products that have immediate onset. It's us at the Cannabis Control Board. But first and foremost, it's the town. The town can decide this can only have 100 people at it, no more than 100 guests or 50 guests. The town can say it can only happen between the hours of 5PM and 6PM. They have total time, place, manner restrictions and total control over the nature of the event. And then that approval then goes to the board and we can further condition the license. And you've essentially just given us carte blanche to make these as tight as the town wants and as tight as we want. At a minimum, because we already do this for retailers, we're going to demand that people have liability insurance. So for the kind of dream shop liability, we're going make sure that the insurance policy says that anyone who's driving away from one of these things needs to be in a DD car or a bus or have some sort of transportation option. There's going to be a, just like we do now, a vendor trainer training. So the budtenders are spotting intoxicated people or keeping track of how much they've served to people, making sure that there's already a prohibition on co mingling of alcohol and cannabis. So I just wanna stress that these are happening across the country. We're not the first state that has special events. California has been doing them for decades. Massachusetts just started having social consumption lounges, and they've worked through all these issues. And we have insurance companies. I called one last year and then earlier this year just to make sure that this type of event could be insured from a liability perspective. And they said, of course, we do this all the time. So there are insurance companies that understand the risks inherent with one of these and know how to minimize them.
[Rep. Matthew Birong (Chair)]: Right, I go.
[Unidentified Committee Member]: Yeah, I'm glad you clarified that because what I heard earlier was that the CCB made the rules and then the towns could tighten them up. So you're telling us the opposite. The municipalities make the rules and then bring it to the CCB with the permit ask, whoever's asking for the permit. We
[James Pepper, Chair, Vermont Cannabis Control Board]: are going to have to develop rules that help just govern this structure of how people apply and what's necessary from a CCB perspective. But if you look on, I don't know if you guys, I'm on draft 2.1, page four, line seven around eligibility. The first requirement is that the establishment has received written approval from the local cannabis control commission or the local municipal legislative body if no control commission exists, which may include conditions and limitations appropriate to protect the public, manage traffic, and abate nuisance. So they can, that is a broad authority and they already have time, place, manner restrictions. That's just inherent in municipal authority. So, I mean, they can literally say, I want an EMT at the event. I want a deputy sheriff on call in case anything happens. We need people managing traffic flows. I know at the Burlington Beer Festival, they have undercover DREs there. I don't want to make this sound scary to everyone, but have the DREs or drug recognition experts that are just making sure people aren't getting over intoxicated and hopping into a car. I imagine these being very small because we have resource limitations at the board. So we're not going to we have total control as well as the towns over the size of these, how many people can participate, how many guests can be invited, what the transportation plans, getting people to and from these events are gonna look like. So it's not perfect because it never is. People are gonna find ways to break the rules. But I would just note that I've never been to a concert where people aren't consuming cannabis everywhere. I've never been to a wedding where people aren't walking off into the woods using a vape. So this activity is happening. Any ability to regulate it, to put guardrails around it, I truly believe will be a net benefit to highway safety. But, you know, it's your guys' choice to agree with that.
[Rep. Matthew Birong (Chair)]: Reptiles, did want to answer?
[Rep. Lisa Hango (Vice Chair)]: No.
[Rep. Matthew Birong (Chair)]: No, I had Hooper beat you by a nose. I
[Unidentified Committee Member]: think you said, I don't want to scare you. Unrecovered DREs, I think that that satisfies the question to me. That is drug recognition experts who are hidden specifically-
[James Pepper, Chair, Vermont Cannabis Control Board]: They're just in plain clothes. They're just in
[Unidentified Committee Member]: plain I know that's mean. They're anonymous. What their job is, is to make sure that this problem doesn't happen.
[James Pepper, Chair, Vermont Cannabis Control Board]: Yep. Yep.
[Unidentified Committee Member]: That's their whole purpose, to make sure that these problems do not arise. So how many would there be? It'd be up to
[Rep. Lisa Hango (Vice Chair)]: the town, it sounds like.
[James Pepper, Chair, Vermont Cannabis Control Board]: The town could have conditioned If the town said, you need to have a deputy sheriff on call just at all times, and the event organizers say, well, I can't afford that, well, then they don't get the permit to do it. And you've given the towns broad authority to demand essentially whatever they want.
[Rep. Lisa Hango (Vice Chair)]: And they can limit the size of the crowd. And limit the size of the crowd. Yeah. Which you can do that mathematically with the DREs. So many people require so many DREs. And, okay, so that's nice that, you know, you brought up the DREs, and I understand that. But we'll go back to the towns have the right. CCB will can write the rules as stringent as they like. That also means they can write the rules as loose as they want. There is that opposite side of it. Just because we're talking about DREs in this room doesn't mean they will incorporate that. If they can write the rules as tightly as they want, they can write them as loosely as they want. They may not consider all of that. And then again, it goes to public sake. So, again, I'd say we bring this amendment to the floor, and let the full body decide, as we did last year.
[Unidentified Committee Member]: Is Rutland still available?
[Unidentified Committee Member]: I have no idea.
[Unidentified Committee Member]: It's very clear. If you take a break, you should We'll
[Rep. Matthew Birong (Chair)]: take a position on this. Yes?
[Unidentified Committee Member]: I would like to call question and vote on this amendment so we can either send it to the floor or put the conversation to rest. So on that note, I move that the Tagliovia amendment be found favorable. Are we did we do an official role, or did we do a? We do a movie.
[Rep. Lisa Hango (Vice Chair)]: An official role. What? It's up in the chair.
[Rep. Matthew Birong (Chair)]: Yeah. I think we could
[Unidentified Committee Member]: do I'm a sure we could
[Rep. Matthew Birong (Chair)]: do a verbal, but it is not a
[Unidentified Committee Member]: cheat Okay.
[Rep. Matthew Birong (Chair)]: Because we do not have a special bill.
[Unidentified Committee Member]: Whatever you want.
[Rep. Matthew Birong (Chair)]: We're taking a committee.
[Unidentified Committee Member]: Okay.
[Rep. Matthew Birong (Chair)]: Alright, I'm going to take us offline until we can get reps on down here and have everyone who's present.