Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Russ Ingalls (Chair)]: Okay, sending our culture back in action. We're running a few minutes behind, lighting up the lights, so we're gonna see if we can make up some ground. We gotta be out of here about 11:15, so we have time. So we're gonna talk about some hemp and adult use cannabis and we're gonna start our conversation out with our friend Graham. Graham knows his way into this room quite well unsure about where the conversation's gonna go, so help us out. Graham, the four doors.

[Graham Unangst-Rufenacht (Policy Director, Rural Vermont)]: Well, hope to be taking up that floor for not very much time at first. Raymond Ixtrifenops, policy director, Rural Vermont. Unfortunately, the director of Vermont Growers Association, which is, you know, the Century Trade Association, the largest Vermont for cannabis and hemp growers, just woke up with a flu this morning. So he can't be here and speak to hemp and then speak to sort of where the market's at on adult use and some of their information. He'd love to come back in next meeting to be in touch. But for now, we do have Jesselyn Dolan from the Green Mountain Patients Alliance. And we have Amy Lenz, also from the Remarkers Association, who can speak a little about hemp. And I guess what I'd like to do is first turn it over to them to talk about hemp, then we can move on to adult use and hopefully find some time for Jeff

[Russ Ingalls (Chair)]: Yeah.

[Graham Unangst-Rufenacht (Policy Director, Rural Vermont)]: Next week. Absolutely. I'll up a second chair for you guys here.

[Jesse Lynn Dolan (Registered Nurse; Vermont Cannabis Nurses Association / Green Mountain Patients Alliance)]: Thanks for having us today.

[Russ Ingalls (Chair)]: You're very welcome. Thank you for coming.

[Jesse Lynn Dolan (Registered Nurse; Vermont Cannabis Nurses Association / Green Mountain Patients Alliance)]: My name's Jessie Lynn Dolan. I am a registered nurse. I was president of the American Nurse Association here in Vermont for the past six years or so. I also am on the forensic board. I was former director of the American Cannabis Nurse Association nationwide. I started the Vermont Cannabis Nurses Association about ten years ago. I've been here testifying for hemp since prior to the inception of the hemp program, specifically around consumer safety and education. I also ran a free hotline for the first two years of the cannabis program, so that anyone could call and ask questions for free of a nurse. What we see is a lot of people who need relief and are on polypharmacy and also moving towards cannabis, so they do need someone to give them a little more safety and education. I was also a budtender trainer for the first two years. I trained over 400 budtenders in the inception of the program. I was a tier two cultivator, outdoor cultivator, and I had a hemp and CBD business for about seven or eight years prior to the adult use market as well. So, really, I'm here to answer a lot of questions. If you guys have any of those, I did want to say a few things and then open up to Amy and you guys' questions. So, I do feel strongly about consumer safety and education. That's why I come here. And I listened to James Pepper's testimony. I completely agree with the CCD's stance on the hemp regulations at this time. I do want to dispel some myths and again, just answer some questions. The number one thing I do like to tell people is from what I've seen from the medical perspective, a lot of people are using cannabis, marijuana, high THC, or hemp for symptom relief, not to necessarily get high. So that's what I am seeing with the patients and people who come to me for education. But as far as that intoxication and the potency of dosing that we're talking about with hemp products, I do wanna be upfront, and from a medical perspective, let you guys know that one to two milligrams of THC is a lot, and that's a good starting dose. I know many people who take two milligrams of THC and feel very sedated, and that's Delta nine THC. This D9, we don't have the research or the length of time to have the anecdotal experience information as well, let alone that long term repercussions. So, I do see it very differently. I'm also the mom, I guess now, of adults. All my kids are out of high school. But having kids go through high school, having kids who are still 21 or 25 with that brain growth development still in place, as a mom, it concerns me a lot that we have things at gas stations and convenience stores that you can pick up that have three milligrams of this D9 without IDing them and without any education around that. So again, if you guys have any questions, I would love to help you answer that. I know unfortunately there isn't a medical professional involved in the hemp or the cannabis program, which is one thing I would absolutely advocate for. So I wanted to quickly just mention a few medical priorities to you and then again, any questions you guys might have. So one of the medical priorities we've been asking is to reestablish the symptom relief oversight committee that we once had. That was the way patients, caregivers, and medical professionals had a voice and an ability to share their expertise and experiences. We don't have anything like that right now, so nobody has had a voice and we have not had medical professionals weighing in at all. With that, we have been asking to have the qualifying conditions moved out of legislation and into the CCB so that they can make those determinations only if they have the support of a symptom relief oversight committee with those other voices involved as well. I would love to see us add a medical professional to the program somehow, even if it's part time, because I do feel that we're lacking that greatly. Overall, we need to increase education, especially the mandated budtender education. It's recently been changed, essentially decreasing the amount of education that people need. A typical budtender watches a forty four minute video with four slides on medical implication. I don't think in any way that's close enough. And lastly, I ask that you guys consider discussing with the CCB and resending the current advertising guidance that disallows and deters medical professionals from working in adult use without fears of that adult use business being fined, even the businesses that have the medical use endorsement and are serving patients. So again, really my focus is safety, education, and I do support the Vermont Equity Coalition, which Graham and Rural Vermont is a part of, pushing or asking for direct market that gives more affordability and a local place patients can shop. I would support ag use and exemption. I'd love to end the opt in so that we can disperse that a little bit. And public consumption, I see that from the point of a legal protection for patients. So if somebody's about to have a seizure or a panic attack and they don't own their property, they're illegally consuming cannabis though they have a medical card. So I'd love to see some support in that direction too. So I wanted to kind of be quick and brief, but mention a few things. So you tell me, I appreciate your time. If you want Amy to go, or you want to jump in with some

[Russ Ingalls (Chair)]: Well, we're probably going to have a few questions too. So Committee?

[Sen. Joseph "Joe" Major (Vice Chair)]: Go ahead. I guess I'm

[Graham Unangst-Rufenacht (Policy Director, Rural Vermont)]: with with any

[Sen. Joseph "Joe" Major (Vice Chair)]: drug, there is constant testing, and and can you kind of explain what what testing, what procedures, what what how how do we get to where we get because we have a federal government that that says, you know, I don't know. But we have state the state does, so, you know, the FDA doesn't necessarily oversee, and so I am all about science, and if the science says that it can help with pain management and things of that nature, then I'm all for it. How do we get there? Where is the science? Where is that coming from?

[Jesse Lynn Dolan (Registered Nurse; Vermont Cannabis Nurses Association / Green Mountain Patients Alliance)]: Great question, and thank you for asking that. As far as testing and safety, that's the main reason I've been here for a decade. Testifying is ensuring and begging mandated testing on products, whether that's hemp or high THC, and not just the potency, because in a way, that's the least of my worries, because you wanna start with the lowest dose possible. My worry, especially with D nine, is we're taking some of the worst crops in the field that are moldy and not good for consumption and processing them, and then making them biased. So ten, I think ten, maybe nine years ago, I did work with the agency of ag and helped create the protocol for the lab testing. And what the CCB is doing now for high THC marijuana or cannabis, I do agree with, and I think they've done a great job deciding how and what to test for. And I would ask that, or I would suggest that that's what we go by, which is actually going back to what we were doing with the hemp program and the agency of ag had it. The way it is now, there's no testing, there's no contaminants, Mycology, like nothing being regulated or assured in any way, especially when it comes to D9. We don't understand what those chemical conversions actually are yet compared to Delta nine THC, which is coming from the plant. And again, I'm with you in science. I worked at UVM Research on cannabis, on opioids. That's a lot of my experience. And I like to see the science and really want to make sure, again, we have the consumer safety, and if we don't have the science there, then let's halt a little bit. Yeah. And that's where we are with B9. We don't have all the science there. I will share personally though, because you've probably heard of D eight, D ten. I'm a medical cannabis patient myself. I've had over 40 surgeries. I am grateful for cannabis instead of eating opioids and things like that. I tried D eight once just to try it. I was asleep for twelve hours, and I'm somebody that knows cannabis and honestly needs a higher dose of edibles to work for the amount of pain that I have. So, it scares me knowing that this is on the market for our kids, really.

[Sen. Joseph "Joe" Major (Vice Chair)]: It sounds as if it's

[Graham Unangst-Rufenacht (Policy Director, Rural Vermont)]: a bit of the Wild West,

[Sen. Joseph "Joe" Major (Vice Chair)]: and that is scary, but let me stop there.

[Sen. Brian Collamore (Member)]: Thank you. Nurses

[Sen. Joseph "Joe" Major (Vice Chair)]: right now are in very short supply. The fact that you are doing that, I I wanna thank you, and I I wanted to get that out of the way. The but I that is scary. I mean, we just have no regulation or no, you know, so you're making me even more scared. Thank you.

[Jesse Lynn Dolan (Registered Nurse; Vermont Cannabis Nurses Association / Green Mountain Patients Alliance)]: I don't mean to do that, but yes.

[Sen. Brian Collamore (Member)]: Thanks, Mr. Chair. So I've got two or three questions. You mentioned an oversight committee. Where, how did that go away? How long was that in existence?

[Jesse Lynn Dolan (Registered Nurse; Vermont Cannabis Nurses Association / Green Mountain Patients Alliance)]: Great question too. So that, as far as I know, that was in existence since the inception of the medical program. And for a couple of years, I attended every meeting and we, the idea of the committee was to give an annual report to the governor Mhmm. That they've met four times a year. These are the concerns. These are the things that are happening, and the overall idea. Yep. The last two years before the CCB took over, there was no, reports submitted. Once the CCB took over, the whole program just went away and disbanded. James Pepper, in my understanding, the rest of the CCB has advocated to reestablish and even gave recommendations as to who should be on that committee. We also gave, the Green Mountain Patients Alliance and the Vermont Cannabis Equity Coalition also gave recommendations who we feel should be on that committee, from a nurse to a doctor, to a psychologist, you know, who do we need that can support the CCB and also be the sound board for patients and caregivers. So my hope is that with the recommendations that the CCB already put in, we put in, that that is something that we could reestablish pretty easily. And then that is the board I would feel most comfortable helping the Cannabis Control Board decide on things like qualifying conditions moving forward or appeals for not getting their medical card or just anything that comes up medically. I will share, James Pepper and I had a wonderful relationship. In the beginning for the first couple of years, he called me almost weekly He'd thank me because they didn't have a medical professional to talk to. So that's why I feel strongly, especially now that adult use are serving patients Yeah. And we're seeing more patients start to sign up again because we had a big decline in the medical program. I think we also though need to recognize a lot of people are not patients and are using cannabis without the support and education behind them. The number one person coming to cannabis is over 60 years old, and they don't want it to get high, but only about twenty percent of primary care doctors actually feel they even have the education to talk to them. So we're missing a big piece here, and that relief oversight committee is a part of that.

[Sen. Brian Collamore (Member)]: Was the committee fairly expensive to run or was it just a push in it per DM?

[Jesse Lynn Dolan (Registered Nurse; Vermont Cannabis Nurses Association / Green Mountain Patients Alliance)]: I don't think so. I think honestly it was all volunteer.

[Graham Unangst-Rufenacht (Policy Director, Rural Vermont)]: Okay.

[Jesse Lynn Dolan (Registered Nurse; Vermont Cannabis Nurses Association / Green Mountain Patients Alliance)]: And the one doctor and nurse that were a part of it at the time may have had a stipend or something.

[Russ Ingalls (Chair)]: Yeah, okay.

[Jesse Lynn Dolan (Registered Nurse; Vermont Cannabis Nurses Association / Green Mountain Patients Alliance)]: But that's, I think that's all it was financially.

[Sen. Brian Collamore (Member)]: And I certainly share, Senator Major sentiments regarding science, just having somebody take a look at something objectively and making decisions. So the next question we have will make it obvious. I don't really have a good understanding of the differences between It's one plant, Yes. But it seems like first of all, I think you could agree or not. If it didn't smell, you guys would be in a whole different world of of because people wouldn't even understand what was going on next door to them. But because of the odor, it really, really, really offends people. And I don't know what the answer is, but anyway, we can't change the fact that it smells. But help me understand, if you could, the difference between someone, because you made a point of saying that a lot of people don't use the high THC product to get high. So how is hemp different in terms of relieving pain than just smoking a joint? I don't understand the differences, I guess.

[Jesse Lynn Dolan (Registered Nurse; Vermont Cannabis Nurses Association / Green Mountain Patients Alliance)]: Great question. They work a little bit differently on your brain receptors. So we have cannabinoid receptors in our brain. We have CB one and CB two. One of those No. THC lodges more to and gives us the effect. The other one, CBD attaches more so to and doesn't give us that same intoxicating or high. So it really comes down to our brain receptors. But the combination of the two, which most plants have a little bit of one or the, you know, the other one. Right. The combination works better and mitigates some of the more concerning symptoms, like psychosis or getting too high. That's why the synthetic version is more dangerous and scary.

[Russ Ingalls (Chair)]: Because

[Jesse Lynn Dolan (Registered Nurse; Vermont Cannabis Nurses Association / Green Mountain Patients Alliance)]: it doesn't have that natural kind of protection in a way.

[Sen. Brian Collamore (Member)]: Yeah. That's a great explanation, and one I didn't know.

[Jesse Lynn Dolan (Registered Nurse; Vermont Cannabis Nurses Association / Green Mountain Patients Alliance)]: And we can go So

[Sen. Brian Collamore (Member)]: there's kind of like different sensors all

[Jesse Lynn Dolan (Registered Nurse; Vermont Cannabis Nurses Association / Green Mountain Patients Alliance)]: And if you wanna geek out on science, anytime

[Russ Ingalls (Chair)]: you Okay. Need

[Sen. Brian Collamore (Member)]: So my third question is,

[Sen. Steven Heffernan (Clerk)]: what exactly is a budtender?

[Jesse Lynn Dolan (Registered Nurse; Vermont Cannabis Nurses Association / Green Mountain Patients Alliance)]: Good question too. I didn't know they used it after the name bartender, so it's kind of the same idea. They're serving a drink, they're serving cannabis.

[Russ Ingalls (Chair)]: Oh, okay.

[Jesse Lynn Dolan (Registered Nurse; Vermont Cannabis Nurses Association / Green Mountain Patients Alliance)]: I didn't know that. Was taking Oh, a thought it

[Sen. Brian Collamore (Member)]: was like growing it

[Sen. Steven Heffernan (Clerk)]: and looking at the blood every day and saying, you need some more or something.

[Jesse Lynn Dolan (Registered Nurse; Vermont Cannabis Nurses Association / Green Mountain Patients Alliance)]: It's the retail staff that is selling products to the community.

[Sen. Brian Collamore (Member)]: Okay.

[Jesse Lynn Dolan (Registered Nurse; Vermont Cannabis Nurses Association / Green Mountain Patients Alliance)]: Just a fun name.

[Graham Unangst-Rufenacht (Policy Director, Rural Vermont)]: Thank you.

[Russ Ingalls (Chair)]: So thank you. I agree with both senators as far as where we're going with the questions. I agree very much with Senator Major that we're in a little bit of a wild west, and also Senator Collamore is help us understand. We have gotten into this role of cannabis and hemp and marijuana, and we make a lot of wrong word choices because we don't understand, and we're getting there. I think it's important for us to get to these level of discussions because we need to understand. What we're trying to get to is to make sure that anybody that wants to grow these products are treated like farmers, and they're able to deduct and all of that. But then we get into, as if you were in here when a council was in, Collier was in, and said, Well, we've to be very, very careful with the marijuana part of it because we've got $31,200,000 coming from the federal government to combat flood recovery, and now you're investing in something that could jeopardize that. We're walking that fine line as well. Ultimately, I think it's very important that we are involved because other than one other committee in this building on the Senate side, nobody's paying attention to this. We have a great relationship and I do believe a great relationship with the Cannabis Control Board. They don't see us as a threat. We are working with them and getting educated by them as well and trying to get to the point to where farmers are asking hemp growers especially, show us the rules. Show us the maps. Just give us clarity about how we are to operate. So thank you for line. I also want to thank you for bringing the science into it, but also recognizing that this isn't your father's marijuana anymore. And because there's a lot of people who want to pretend that it is. There are important safety aspects that we need to be aware of. Again, we get all of that stuff. We're not in here to try to dispel that marrow no matter where our thought process might be, and I haven't even asked the board about it, but whether you like marijuana or whether you're not, it's here. We're dealing with it, but we want to be safe with it, but we also want to understand it because at the end of the day what we're here to do is to help farmers be prosperous in raising our product. We don't really care if it's carrots or marijuana, we just want them to be able to make a living and put their hands in the soil. So kind of a long winded little explanation about where we are as a committee.

[Jesse Lynn Dolan (Registered Nurse; Vermont Cannabis Nurses Association / Green Mountain Patients Alliance)]: Can I comment one thing? Of course. I love that you say that because that's how I speak with medical professionals is it's here whether you like it or not. So we need to drop the stigma and go by education. And we don't see a lot of educated providers in the state, unfortunately. The other thing I think it's important to know with these drinks that we're talking about, that are three milligrams of this d nine, most people think of a drink or an edible as taking an hour or two or maybe three till it actually These affects drinks, the way they're processed, they're called nano, they work immediately. So if somebody cracks that thinking it's not gonna affect them for an hour or two and drives home, within ten, fifteen minutes, that could take full effect. So again, the education's not there, and this new product is that much more dangerous because of the speed at which it works in the body.

[Sen. Brian Collamore (Member)]: And those are synthetic, correct? Correct.

[Jesse Lynn Dolan (Registered Nurse; Vermont Cannabis Nurses Association / Green Mountain Patients Alliance)]: There are naturally derived from the high THC plant ways of extracting it that also now can work quickly in the body, but those are being sold at the THC store with hopefully the information and the warnings and everything like that.

[Russ Ingalls (Chair)]: Okay, so you've opened up a little bit of what's that last point that Senator Collamore had said. You've got to spend a little bit of time, I think, to tell us that word synthetic.

[Jesse Lynn Dolan (Registered Nurse; Vermont Cannabis Nurses Association / Green Mountain Patients Alliance)]: It is through a chemical conversion, and I'm not a chemist, so I don't do the extraction. It's a chemical conversion, taking the compounds in the hemp plant, like CBD, and changing that to the D nine, where the plant already has the natural delta nine THC, it's not a chemical conversion, it's just an extraction, if that makes sense. And I, that's about it. I was

[Amy Lems (Vermont Growers Association; former Tier 2 manufacturer)]: gonna say I'm about a chemist. May I add to that? I think it's easy to Tell

[Russ Ingalls (Chair)]: us who you are.

[Amy Lems (Vermont Growers Association; former Tier 2 manufacturer)]: I'm sorry. My name is Amy Lems.

[Graham Unangst-Rufenacht (Policy Director, Rural Vermont)]: I'm part

[Amy Lems (Vermont Growers Association; former Tier 2 manufacturer)]: of Vermont Growers Association and the Coalition BCEC. I'm also a CBD topical manufacturer and have been for several years, and I'm a former tier two cannabis manufacturer as well, as well as medical patients. So, D8, D9, and D10. D8 and D10 are fully synthetic. D9 is semi synthetic. All of those are derived from CBD that comes from the hemp plant. Completely unregulated. All of those are completely untested and unregulated, which is where a lot of the danger's coming from. THC delta nine comes from cannabis. That's what we deal with in the adult use industry. So there is a really big difference between the two. Does that explain it a little bit?

[Sen. Brian Collamore (Member)]: Yeah, no, does. This is great education for me, me too.

[Sen. Steven Heffernan (Clerk)]: Unfortunately, that side of the doesn't affect ag, so it's nice that we can get an understanding of it.

[Sen. Brian Collamore (Member)]: How is it we allow it to be sold? Yeah, that's,

[Amy Lems (Vermont Growers Association; former Tier 2 manufacturer)]: the So, D9 products are allowed to be sold and they're regulated at one point five milligrams per serving and a maximum of two servings per container. Those are under the CCB. And so those are currently allowed, dehatened and purveyors. However, they can be produced in the state and sold outside the state, not in the state of Vermont. So based upon my former tier two manufacturing license, I think I can speak very directly to a couple of issues here. One is the ability to go direct

[Sen. Steven Heffernan (Clerk)]: to

[Amy Lems (Vermont Growers Association; former Tier 2 manufacturer)]: consumer. It's absolutely needed at this point. We don't have an oversaturation of the market. What we have is bottleneck. We have areas that have opted in and they are oversaturated with retailers and then the rest of the entire state is a cannabis desert. So people who can't get cannabis near them typically do one of two things. They either travel a long distance to get it or they buy it in the black market. So when we have, and Jeff, we can speak much more clearly to the exact stats to this, but the statistics currently are that in Vermont, only 30% or slightly less than 30% of sales of THC products are in the regulated market. So 70% is not in the regulated market. It means that people are not having things that are tested and necessarily safe. We don't know what they're getting. And also, state of Vermont is not getting its excise tax. One would assume that we would want to expand the market into these cannabis deserts by opening up the ability for small cannabis manufacturers and growers to be able to sell direct to consumer. In Vermont, we have a very farm to table approach, and this does not change with cannabis. People like to know the grower. They like to know where their product is coming from. Even better if it's your neighbor and you can purchase it nearby. And it's not out of the realm of possibilities to do. Just like if you want to grow a business, you have to scale and make all of the requirements necessary. Scaling down some of the requirements, but allowing for direct to consumer sales by having the security, by having the point of sale system, by having reporting, by capturing the excise tax and sending that. All of this can be done on a smaller level. And it allows these farmers who are exiting the market at this point at a very alarming rate because they can't keep their heads above water, they're not able to get their product to market. It's just much more difficult for these small producers. They need another access.

[Sen. Steven Heffernan (Clerk)]: How many growers would, if they went from farm to table, how many are out there? Do you have a rough number maybe?

[Amy Lems (Vermont Growers Association; former Tier 2 manufacturer)]: Ma'am, do you have

[Sen. Steven Heffernan (Clerk)]: those numbers?

[Graham Unangst-Rufenacht (Policy Director, Rural Vermont)]: I'm sorry, great evening, Strufan Act on Paul Sriftaroma. I don't have those numbers. I do see here that Jess said over 170 producers have dropped out since the market formed, but I think Peppernan wasn't here with numbers, and I don't have any of the other beef.

[Sen. Steven Heffernan (Clerk)]: But there was 170 that have dropped out. The problem would be, and again, as soon as we go from, as soon as they pick the product and it goes for sale, leaves our realm because now it's a controlled, except hemp is not correct.

[Russ Ingalls (Chair)]: Right, I suppose it helps kind of where they are as far as their chemical composition of it, right? So And if we could do it for

[Sen. Steven Heffernan (Clerk)]: hemp, then it kinda isn't our realm. Problem is, if you had 170 that dropped out, say that is half, so you have 300 something growers, is having enough people to regulate, and that's gonna cost, say, more money at that time to bring up a system like that. So I hear what the growers want, but until laws change, I don't see how Vermont's gonna be, you know, unfortunate, you know?

[Amy Lems (Vermont Growers Association; former Tier 2 manufacturer)]: I see.

[Sen. Steven Heffernan (Clerk)]: Because I, you know, my brother actually did hemp and he did it in a large scale and it kind of didn't work out the greatest, but he, you know, it was a learning curve that he's like, wow, you know, there's a lot more to it than people realize. And then he just did hemp, but if you have one cannabis plant, it's a male plant, is that female plant? They always have trouble. Exactly. But that can ruin the whole field from what I understand. If they don't put the plant down.

[Jesse Lynn Dolan (Registered Nurse; Vermont Cannabis Nurses Association / Green Mountain Patients Alliance)]: So you should have said a male can ruin everything.

[Sen. Brian Collamore (Member)]: See, I

[Sen. Steven Heffernan (Clerk)]: was confused, thought it was the female. It's the male taunt that it'd be. It comes up in a field, can ruin everything.

[Jesse Lynn Dolan (Registered Nurse; Vermont Cannabis Nurses Association / Green Mountain Patients Alliance)]: Yeah, right.

[Amy Lems (Vermont Growers Association; former Tier 2 manufacturer)]: They must be killed immediately.

[Sen. Steven Heffernan (Clerk)]: Yeah, yeah.

[Russ Ingalls (Chair)]: And for a

[Graham Unangst-Rufenacht (Policy Director, Rural Vermont)]: lot of people,

[Sen. Steven Heffernan (Clerk)]: so that makes it hard for one, our state laws to make it easier for the growers. And I don't, I'd love to facilitate, but it's such a- I just roam. The go to center lines. I think what happens, it

[Russ Ingalls (Chair)]: crosses the road from us and goes to the next. I do have some kind of opinions of it going to the farmer's market. And I get that there are a lot of people that have been lost through the industry of, and there's a lot of people feeling there's too many people that are in the marketplace. I don't know if my comments on that were very are gonna be very helpful. Yeah, go ahead, Grant.

[Graham Unangst-Rufenacht (Policy Director, Rural Vermont)]: Do you mind if I join my colleagues at Please, I sort of cast out a little bit. You're partially managing family and adult use of the speech.

[Jesse Lynn Dolan (Registered Nurse; Vermont Cannabis Nurses Association / Green Mountain Patients Alliance)]: Do you want one of us to rule, Grant?

[Sen. Brian Collamore (Member)]: Or you want No. I'll apologize.

[Graham Unangst-Rufenacht (Policy Director, Rural Vermont)]: I'll apologize. No. We we all have We're cool. You are all experts in our different realms here. Thanks. Are you able to pull up that document I shared with you in the screen so

[Sen. Brian Collamore (Member)]: I can show that Yes, ma'am.

[Graham Unangst-Rufenacht (Policy Director, Rural Vermont)]: That. Thank you so much. If we do wanna stick to this direct market question for a minute on the adult use side, let's let's go there.

[Russ Ingalls (Chair)]: We like the education.

[Graham Unangst-Rufenacht (Policy Director, Rural Vermont)]: Yeah. I do just wanna say, like, I really appreciate Justin and Amy speaking to him. I know Jeff would love to have some time too. He can give you all those numbers. I just wanna say, think part of the system really oversights, and correct me if I'm wrong, say that the legislature wanted to maintain the decision over what were qualifying conditions themselves.

[Jesse Lynn Dolan (Registered Nurse; Vermont Cannabis Nurses Association / Green Mountain Patients Alliance)]: Yeah.

[Graham Unangst-Rufenacht (Policy Director, Rural Vermont)]: And not allow separate entities to do that anymore. Maybe part of it was like, where is the power to be helped make these decisions?

[Jesse Lynn Dolan (Registered Nurse; Vermont Cannabis Nurses Association / Green Mountain Patients Alliance)]: Yes. But there's been also feedback from legislators that they don't feel they're the appropriate person because they don't have the education So behind

[Graham Unangst-Rufenacht (Policy Director, Rural Vermont)]: Or the timing committee. Right. And the second thing is, this sort of gets to the direct marketing thing, the THC and the CBD working well together from a medical perspective. What we're hearing overwhelmingly is that the diversity of the market is consolidated and that retailers are purchasing high THC products, the products that have lower THC and a greater diversity of other phytochemicals, CBDs, and other other phytochemicals, maybe you

[Amy Lems (Vermont Growers Association; former Tier 2 manufacturer)]: can reconcile. G, C, B, N, etcetera.

[Graham Unangst-Rufenacht (Policy Director, Rural Vermont)]: Those products are not able to make it to the retail shelves. So people who want less intoxicating products or products that affect other conditions, they are not able to find them as easily anymore. And during the direct sales universe, producers could produce products. We have a producer, a general producer in Southern Vermont. She started producing cannabis for her husband, who is a veteran who experiences chronic pain. The varieties she grows, she cannot find a market for because they are not super high THC. So part of this is also about what products can be on a market when only retailers and wholesalers are essentially making those decisions and they're aiming for the most intoxicating toxic and buying because consumers know THC is what makes something intoxicated, that's what they're hearing.

[Jesse Lynn Dolan (Registered Nurse; Vermont Cannabis Nurses Association / Green Mountain Patients Alliance)]: And just to add, there is viable, real concern that the medical program in the next couple years isn't gonna even be here. We don't have many dispensaries, it's not necessarily lucrative, so with that, we're gonna have thousands of patients who do not have access to those lower THC products.

[Graham Unangst-Rufenacht (Policy Director, Rural Vermont)]: And lastly, I just wanted to say, like, one of the reasons I'm excited to have Jesse Lynn in here and the other committees, I think sometimes we come in a coalition. We're advocating for things like direct sales and public consumption, and we're sort of viewed as, wow, you all must be at odds with the prevention community, or you all are sort of, like, way out there. I think I just wanted to make the impression that I think more than anything, we are very much aligned with prevention. If not, some cases, have more stringent or strict guidelines that we would prefer for certain products, as you've heard for hemp to hash, certainly not advocate for underage consumption, in some cases for the age range to be higher than it is for certain products. So just I wanted to communicate that and make sure people understand that we're not approaching this from an unscientific perspective or from a cavalier perspective. We're really trying to come in with science and use the whole expertise that our whole coalition brings in.

[Amy Lems (Vermont Growers Association; former Tier 2 manufacturer)]: Are you ready?

[Graham Unangst-Rufenacht (Policy Director, Rural Vermont)]: I'm ready. Thank you.

[Russ Ingalls (Chair)]: But I also think, Graham, to help with that some, what I was gonna say earlier, is that a lot of you knew what you're getting into when it first started. And I get that rules could change and all that stuff, and there was a structure, and it was sold to the legislature saying, Okay, yeah, we're going allow this, but here's the rules and here's what we're coming for. And there's where it's at. And I think that they're like any business, like the hemp business, for instance, all the people that got in the hemp business, they really thought that they were just going to get rich and that they forgot. Or, and I don't want to put it all into them because it wasn't all their fault, but they just thought that they could put a plant in the ground and they were going to make tons of money. Never mind that there's all kinds of other things that worked against them, the markets dried up or whatever. I think there's a lot of people that misunderstood that just because you want to be a marijuana grower that you're going make a ton of money. It is a business model. You've got to run a business like anything else. I think there's a lot of that going on as well. I'm being very, very general about it, but I'm trying to explain it as well where some of the hangs on this side comes from that, okay, yeah, we agreed. Here's the box that we put you in, but it's also your job to try to expand that. I get that as well. Yes.

[Amy Lems (Vermont Growers Association; former Tier 2 manufacturer)]: Could I speak to that?

[Russ Ingalls (Chair)]: Of course.

[Amy Lems (Vermont Growers Association; former Tier 2 manufacturer)]: I have an MBA. I got into this as already a business owner, couple of businesses, and I had a business plan and I knew the risks, absolutely, but you also are entering an emerging industry with a lot of unknowns. Absolutely. What was put in place for market structure had a lot of unintended consequences. Mhmm. Very specifically, I can speak to mine as a manufacturer. You make a product, you do your cost accounting. If I make it for $10, I wholesale it for $20, and then typical retail is $40.

[Russ Ingalls (Chair)]: Mhmm.

[Amy Lems (Vermont Growers Association; former Tier 2 manufacturer)]: My goal was to put out a product that was financially as accessible as possible because that's my ethos. The retailers took my product at $20 and jacked the price to $60, is a very nice profit margin for them, which slows the sales of my products. Right. It's a lot of what put me out of business, that kind of behavior. So those are unintended consequences that we identified, we brought to the table the last couple of years and let people know, and that was all but ignored. So, yes, you do have people who have jumped into this believing that they can do well. Right. And you also have people that jumped into this fully eyes wide open. Right. It's what allowed me to know where the line in the sand was and exit before I lost my house or my kids' college money. Right. But I am concerned that we're taking a cavalier attitude about these cultivators simply because they are marijuana cultivators.

[Russ Ingalls (Chair)]: Yeah, and I don't see it in that way, but I do appreciate it and I do understand where you're at. I do see some fixes that are trying to happen, not issuing any more licenses businesses to retail to come up and letting that market adjust itself. You're right, are a lot of unknowns and there are a lot of adjustment periods. I don't think that this committee will, we like to hear about it because we want to know about, we want to be the education part of it, but I do believe that this committee, when it's all said and done, really isn't going to be able to, really isn't going to have the interest as far as once it crosses that road into marketplace. I think it's important that we understand what the product is and what's going on and all that stuff so that we can help our farmers if they ask us to help, but I think that once it gets passed there, I'm very comfortable to say it's a cannabis control issue after that. Well, I actually think

[Graham Unangst-Rufenacht (Policy Director, Rural Vermont)]: that we might be in some alignment on our proposal for direct sales. Lade, if you would share that document. I'll go back to our number one, which is equity funding excise tax allocation, but it's a 100% in alignment with the CCB's act 56 report twenty twenty five. It just report this. So that's all in there, and I'll go back to that. But PC number two, it says direct markets and value added for small tiers of cultivators manufacturers. And what we're proposing, if we go down to page I'm get on page two, the bottom, you'll start to see some statutory language and a and some explanations about this. So we've we've included if we're able to keep going. Yeah. Maybe I should

[Russ Ingalls (Chair)]: there we go.

[Graham Unangst-Rufenacht (Policy Director, Rural Vermont)]: So number two, if you keep going down a little bit, I don't have to read all of this, but we put a number of reasons. They took an extract from Vermont's farm to plate food system plan about direct markets, which essentially says, if you want small farms, you need direct markets. It's from an agricultural perspective, we don't really think there's we don't have to have a lot of discussion around the facts of that matter. But if you go down a little bit lower,

[Russ Ingalls (Chair)]: here's our proposal.

[Graham Unangst-Rufenacht (Policy Director, Rural Vermont)]: In addition to the authorized blah blah blah, tier one, tier two cultivators with a supplemental directory retail site license may sell cannabis, cannabis products using cannabis produced by the licensee, cannabis plants, etcetera, based on rules and regulations developed by the Cannabis Control Board. It goes on to say the manufacturer can do that as well. And it says that the Cannabis Control Board has finalized rules for this license to be scale appropriate, accessible, and affordable, accounting for the limited production and sales of smaller tier licensees through a public rulemaking process by 10/15/2026. It must allow for delivery, on-site, off-site sales, and then we put a number of parameters that must address security, taxation, point of sales requirements and training, traffic, inspection, transportation. We put a fee in here as well. So I would just say that there's nothing in federal law that makes it any more right or wrong or legal or less legal for people to have a sale at a licensed retailer versus a licensed, ultimately, as a supplemental direct retail license, if that were allowed under state law. And number two, we are more open with providing the cannabis control board with resource support that they need. We've included a a fee here for licensees. It's not automatic. People would have to apply. And we're going through a whole rule making process. Provided public comment in the CCB, articulate rules that could then be approved. So we're not, again, not trying to be cavalier. This is something that we shop around. The Cannabis Control Board has said they came to cultivator groups meeting twice the summer, James Pepper did, and he said, if you have cultivators coming here, that the CCB has always ordered direct sales for cultivators that they think is necessary for a functioning market. That's sort of different from what they say in the coming here. So that's what we're putting out in this proposal.

[Sen. Brian Collamore (Member)]: Mhmm. So

[Graham Unangst-Rufenacht (Policy Director, Rural Vermont)]: I'm curious to hear your thoughts here. We've seen some statutory language and and perhaps understand that we the whole process is deferring the CCB rulemaking process, certain parameters, very small scale producers who would be able to apply for this license to begin with. I I would also say these producers are already traveling around the state. They are driving from Derby to Brattleboro to Rutland and back again, oftentimes making no sales, sometimes dropping off free product. For retailers, they need every day a callback. These people could be doing the same thing, making sales, having points to sales, having ID, having it all taxed, doing nothing different than they are already doing right now, except that that sale could be going directly to a consumer.

[Russ Ingalls (Chair)]: I know Steve's got something. I just want to say something first. I am not going to stop any committee member from commenting on this. Want them to do that, but I think as a committee in itself, for us to even try to take a position on any of that would be getting ahead of the cannabis control board. I am unwilling to do it in a committee, but I certainly don't mind the Echoing basically what the language you got in

[Sen. Steven Heffernan (Clerk)]: that wrong committee to have that be, you know, that's, again, that's sales and stuff. It's not from the field, field, so wrong committee. Well, at least to introduce and to try and get that law changed. Not that would or wouldn't support this, I definitely give a look at after they run it through the testimony and fact finding, you know, it's, then it comes to the floor and we vote on it. As a, you know, we, as ags, still are going, we want from the ground, and as soon as you produce it, now off our hands. So we're not stopping

[Russ Ingalls (Chair)]: We wanna support you. Yeah, we wanna support you.

[Graham Unangst-Rufenacht (Policy Director, Rural Vermont)]: But none of cannabis adult uses in your hands, then right? Isn't that all in the CCD students?

[Sen. Steven Heffernan (Clerk)]: Right. With the law, to get it changed to what you want, it's not this committee. Which committee would you all,

[Russ Ingalls (Chair)]: are you recommending? I would say right next door.

[Graham Unangst-Rufenacht (Policy Director, Rural Vermont)]: We would definitely be sending it

[Sen. Steven Heffernan (Clerk)]: off the ballot. That's where

[Jesse Lynn Dolan (Registered Nurse; Vermont Cannabis Nurses Association / Green Mountain Patients Alliance)]: you Do you think your support is paramount though, just saying that you support And from a medical perspective, always love to just throw that in there too. If someone can purchase from the local farmer, like Amy said, they might not be taxing it up, so it might be half the cost for a paycheck, which is huge for accident.

[Graham Unangst-Rufenacht (Policy Director, Rural Vermont)]: That's twice the amount of profit, but producing.

[Russ Ingalls (Chair)]: Again, to be fair, for myself to be comfortable with it, as an individual and not as a committee, I'd want to include a cannabis control board. I would know more than I'd want to get out ahead of agency of agriculture and some of their policy stuff. And that's where the relationship has been very great with Pepper and his crew, is that we've stayed in our own lane. We've been very clear about, as Senator Heffernan just described, you're in the field, you cross that road, you're under the next part of it. But again, as we've said, we don't mind the education of it either.

[Sen. Steven Heffernan (Clerk)]: After the fact finding and testimony, that's when I'll make my decision. As of right now, I have no issue with it, but I wanted to go through committee and have the gamut that it goes through and what our fellow senators relay back to us. We appreciate the opportunity to give you

[Amy Lems (Vermont Growers Association; former Tier 2 manufacturer)]: guys the big picture so that you understand the situation and where we're going at it, and we do appreciate the feedback with where we need to focus.

[Sen. Brian Collamore (Member)]: Appreciate the knowledge of the goodness of Thank the you.

[Graham Unangst-Rufenacht (Policy Director, Rural Vermont)]: And I'm gonna say,

[Sen. Steven Heffernan (Clerk)]: I see your passion, Griffin. It's like, you have a lot of passion for it, so, and we hear it, the problem is that No, I understand.

[Graham Unangst-Rufenacht (Policy Director, Rural Vermont)]: I think, actually, to me, just to be quite frank, it's really hard for us to closely understand how to get things done on campus and State House, because, like, as you said, communities want to make the time to see this. We're very grateful for some economic development. They will be, but the House has also been really challenging the committee of jurisdiction saying they will not let any other committees hear testimony on this, and they don't want to take testimony on it, so we're also, we're trying to do testimony where we can and leverage where we can.

[Russ Ingalls (Chair)]: Well, I don't know if we've run into that on this side of it. No,

[Graham Unangst-Rufenacht (Policy Director, Rural Vermont)]: the Senate.

[Russ Ingalls (Chair)]: Yeah, I think that we currently have other committees questioning about what we're listening to.

[Graham Unangst-Rufenacht (Policy Director, Rural Vermont)]: The Senate is very popular.

[Russ Ingalls (Chair)]: Well, we want to, again, Up until this year, or maybe a little bit last year, we hadn't really taken the position ofbecause I don't know that we really understood it enough to where we even wanted to stand, but I think now we're just trying to figure out how to help farmers best, whether they're going to for cannabis. Yes. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Yeah, I think, Graham, you

[Sen. Brian Collamore (Member)]: appreciate the openness that we've tried to exhibit in this committee, but throughout the, the senate, I think, in general. Obviously, maybe not obviously, it seems like the federal government is beginning to move in a little bit different direction than they had at one point, reclassifying some of this from, whatever the term is, title one Schedule Schedule three. To Schedule one. I don't know what that's gonna mean in the end. Obviously, if, I'm saying obviously, if it became legal nationwide, a lot of what we're talking about kinda goes away. I think we're still in this state in a opt in or no, an opt out. Opt in. Opt in, yeah. I'm not necessarily advocating for changing that, even though it seems to me if you're talking about direct sales, that flies in the face of that local decision. I'm a big believer in that local community making a decision whether somebody can do something or not. Then I'm kind of wondering, I'm from Rutland. We've got five retail shops, from what I understand. Again, I don't necessarily know where they all are, and I'm not worried about that. I mean, the sky hasn't fallen in since all this started to happen. But I'm told at least that they're not doing as well as they thought they might be doing. When this whole thing came about, and what is it, six or eight years now that we've we've made the decision, David could probably tell me, you know, the the expectation from some quarters was, jeez, there's gonna be a $100,000,000 in excess taxes that we're gonna generate from this, and all of a sudden, it it began to get lower and lower. I don't know what the state at the moment is making from our decision. But it doesn't seem like everybody that's in Rutland is, I think five's probably I mean, that's a supply and demand, as the chair said. It's a business, and if there's too many people doing the same thing and too few customers, it doesn't work. I don't know where the sweet spot is. In Rutland, we have, what, 17,000 people maybe in the city. Is two enough? Is three enough? I don't know. I don't drive by and see lines of people waiting to get in. That doesn't you know what I'm saying? So I think there's a lot of different things happening here.

[Russ Ingalls (Chair)]: I want to take your question, but I want to add on to that is that maybe at some point in time, because we do have time, maybe you guys could give us some more education. If you don't mind, we're asking you to tell us what that decision would mean from the federal government from three to one and that as you know.

[Amy Lems (Vermont Growers Association; former Tier 2 manufacturer)]: Just wanted to weigh in and reiterate the point that less than 30 of THC sales

[Russ Ingalls (Chair)]: Legal.

[Amy Lems (Vermont Growers Association; former Tier 2 manufacturer)]: Are in the adult use market.

[Sen. Brian Collamore (Member)]: Yeah.

[Amy Lems (Vermont Growers Association; former Tier 2 manufacturer)]: So paying for regulation and and making sure that the small cultivator manufacturer is doing what they should, I think that between the excise tax that they would gain from even another ten, twenty, 30% of sales being in the adult use market would offset that con completely. Not to mention the fact that, yes, we only have, We we might have over saturation in Rutland, but we have a campus desert everywhere else. It seems pretty clear based on the numbers that people are either staying in or reverting to the black market, which we don't want. We want this regulated. We want it safe. We want everybody to be able to do okay with this. We want the tax. We want the taxes.

[Graham Unangst-Rufenacht (Policy Director, Rural Vermont)]: Yeah. Yes. I'll just my comment. Yeah. I think the supply and demand equation is a little porous here, to say the least. If if this national so this study that Amy is referencing, Jeff Jeffrey can talk more about, it's a national study by a very well renowned firm. It I'm not sure if it looked at Vermont, but it's saying on average, fewer than 30% of the sales. So we're talking about supply and demand. Supply being offered in the regulated space is the demand is far greater. It's that people are choosing to choose a different space for product, for personal reasons, for for medical reasons, or otherwise. And that's sort of what we're pointing at, and we're not against towns having a choice. Again, when we opt to end the opt in, we are saying we are putting in opt out. We're saying towns want to affirmatively say they do not want to have a retail location, they can still do that, But we would rather have them take that step than have to affirmatively say we want them in our town. And to answer your question around the direct sales of cultivators, we wrote into that that provision saying that they would not be subject to the opt in contingency, meaning, if you're a cultivator, The opt in rules don't apply to you, and you have that direct supplemental retail sales license.

[Sen. Brian Collamore (Member)]: And you don't feel that flies in the face of the opt in out

[Sen. Steven Heffernan (Clerk)]: opt situation? Well, we don't support that either.

[Graham Unangst-Rufenacht (Policy Director, Rural Vermont)]: We're we're asking to retaliate. Oh, I understand. And I think it's played out in such a way that, like I said before, in community, think some of the regulations are creating the very problems we're looking at. Yeah. Okay. And I I I guess I just I'll say, I think part of the reason that we come to this community too is we some of the some of our actually, the biggest progress we made on cannabis evolution happened in this committee. Like, the the rights of farm was brought in in this committee and and given to cannabis producers. And maybe that's a good good chance to, like, move into the agricultural use of exemptions recommendations. So right below this number two, the number three is the agricultural use of exemptions. And this may be more relevant to your community, but given what you're saying, it still might not be. This is certainly about the field side of things. One, we'd like to I mean, number one is around bringing what are currently agricultural wetlands exemptions into the outdoor cannabis space as well. And you can see there's language there. And we have one producer down in Southern Vermont who's ran into tens of thousands of dollars issues running into these problems, and it's been a big issue for them. They've worked with their local agricultural people, but they're sort of saying, if you were given if you were a farmer, this wouldn't be a problem at all, and it's it's really challenging to how to support you Mhmm. In this. I think we can bring her in to speak directly to this. And the second is strike these municipal cultivation districts and setbacks for outdoor cultivators, one sixty six, which were put in place a couple years ago. This gets to what you're talking about, just the smell. Right? There was, like, there's not much we can do about this. We don't feel like these setbacks setbacks are actually functional. We had there was a whole working group convened about this that a number of us spent a number of hours in two summers ago, and we had cultivators from towns, for example, Williston saying, I am grateful when we have an outdoor cultivator. Because I can say agency bag listen. We were under the agency regulations on the side of this. This isn't a municipal thing. Like, outdoor growers are exempt municipal zone. This sort of, he was saying that these setbacks actually don't affect smell, right? Smell's gonna persist through these setbacks. There are other things that could put in place. So we don't necessarily think these are actually functional setbacks, and they actually have more of a, they more have the effect of of putting people out of business than they do actually creating the conditions that we're we're looking for.

[Sen. Brian Collamore (Member)]: So, Graham, are there other methods to mitigate the odor problem? I agree with you about the and I don't know what's 50 feet or 100 feet, whatever that setback is. You could have it be a thousand feet. That wouldn't make any difference. It's still you could still smell it. But is there any other way to mitigate for a neighbor who's experiencing discomfort, if you will, from from the smell?

[Graham Unangst-Rufenacht (Policy Director, Rural Vermont)]: I personally don't have a response to that. I know I've talked to people in Farm Viability too, and Sam Smith is interested seeing he does a of work with small small farmers, and with dairy farmers, people who deal with other complaints around smells. Yep. He's like, I live next to a cannabis cultivator, and we can smell my house. Don't nothing we can do about it. It's just part part of this, part of the air I smell it, part of breath.

[Sen. Brian Collamore (Member)]: You can't sprinkle perfume on my finger or something.

[Jesse Lynn Dolan (Registered Nurse; Vermont Cannabis Nurses Association / Green Mountain Patients Alliance)]: No. And and to that, I would say, as somebody that has a medical condition, if you have Tide next to me in your dryer, I might get a migraine and end up ill and not have to

[Sen. Brian Collamore (Member)]: go Oh, wow. For the

[Jesse Lynn Dolan (Registered Nurse; Vermont Cannabis Nurses Association / Green Mountain Patients Alliance)]: Nope. But cannabis, I can smell that all day long. Even if I don't like it, it's not gonna make me ill because it's not a chemical, so there is a difference for people medically. And then I would also ask, have you guys had people come to and testify asking how can they mitigate the smell of the manure?

[Sen. Brian Collamore (Member)]: Oh, sure. That's a constant. Well, to say

[Sen. Steven Heffernan (Clerk)]: the difference. Like, when my brother, the neighbors were upset, and it's like, if it's an agricultural crop, there's nothing they can say, but it never had been grown there before, and that's what Vermont's running into. It's a product that has, you know, go down south when it was tobacco, and tobacco has a slight odor to it as well, but that's been there for decades, centuries. We're bringing this new product in, it's not a new product, mind you, but new growers in and you're getting feedback from, again, the town that never had to smell this now, but I also brought up the roasting coffee, that burnt smell. Know, Middlebury didn't have it before, and now Vermont roasts there every now and again. What do you do about that? It's a byproduct of making a product that is worth selling. And if the demand's there, I guess we gotta, that bite comes when people are really fed up with it.

[Graham Unangst-Rufenacht (Policy Director, Rural Vermont)]: We do have far larger cultivators of hemp in the state than cannabis, like the scale which you can cultivate adult use cannabis is the scale which you cultivate hemp, especially commodity scale, make a profit off it, is far greater, and Yeah. The smell is just It's terrible, bro. Products. I'm trying to get what else is, some of this is relevant to judiciary. If you go down, Linda, the number, in the opt in opt out, we talked about it a little. The expungement is more of a judiciary question. I think public consumption is also probably belongs in that realm. You know, homegrown allowances are the next one down there, and I think that's something that would fit in these committees. And this is really about currently lever four immature and two mature plants at any given time. And you've asked to move back to six mature and 12 immature plants. And I think you've been hearing a lot about all the different weather contingencies people have been dealing with. Even people growing for themselves at a home scale years with early freezes or frosts. We had a freeze at my house in late August, early September this year. These plants typically can't take below 26 degrees if you have a bad disease year. Just you can very easily have too mature plants that don't result in any good products for yourself at a home scale, and you don't wanna sometimes people using bad products just because it's all they have, the other product's expensive. So we this is similar to, in particular, states, this is the medical homegrown allowance is quite correct. That is something we prove a lot people are advocating for.

[Amy Lems (Vermont Growers Association; former Tier 2 manufacturer)]: Graham, what number are you on?

[Graham Unangst-Rufenacht (Policy Director, Rural Vermont)]: That was number you got it right there in the middle. Yep. Seven.

[Jesse Lynn Dolan (Registered Nurse; Vermont Cannabis Nurses Association / Green Mountain Patients Alliance)]: And there's also, like you said, a lot of people who only grow once a year. It's not often medical patients are affording or able, or any people in general, to grow indoors, so you get one shot a year. Right. As a medical patient,

[Amy Lems (Vermont Growers Association; former Tier 2 manufacturer)]: if I go outside and I lost AcroFarm because of the torrential downpours just snapped them, so That's far. Part of it.

[Sen. Steven Heffernan (Clerk)]: Mhmm. That's far. Which

[Graham Unangst-Rufenacht (Policy Director, Rural Vermont)]: is why we're asking for, like, these more generous allowances too. We need

[Amy Lems (Vermont Growers Association; former Tier 2 manufacturer)]: to be considered farming. Yes.

[Graham Unangst-Rufenacht (Policy Director, Rural Vermont)]: Which we know is beyond here.

[Russ Ingalls (Chair)]: Well, well, I don't I wouldn't say we want it to be considered farming. We do. We do wanna do big, but we just again, once the product is harvested and one of the reasons why we're pretty stuck on that is that we have gotten some very weighty issues with right to farm and some other issues passed, cable permits and some stuff that we were told point blank. Why waste your time with it by other committees or other people who could have squashed it. But we've proven to them over and over and over again, a lot like what we have with the cannabis control board, that

[Sen. Brian Collamore (Member)]: we were willing

[Russ Ingalls (Chair)]: to stay in our lane. And we are willing to help. We are willing to stay in our lane and we are not afraid of much, but we want to be respectful. Are, so we get a lot of stuff done that other impacted events sent by the Pro Tem, agriculture and natural resources actually get along, and they have never got along. Senator Collamore has been here longer than all of us, I don't know that ever. We had worked as closely with them and got stuff done that we did last year that never would have happened before. Not even saying about who was sitting in this chair or who was sitting in those chairs, but just the willingness of all of us working together to understand we're gonna try to do what works right for you and to do that we all have to get along. And so we've been willing to do that. So that's kind of why we are pretty much saying, okay, no, we're not gonna, as much as we might have an opinion on it, but we're willing to stay where we need to stay because at the end of the day it helps you even more.

[Jesse Lynn Dolan (Registered Nurse; Vermont Cannabis Nurses Association / Green Mountain Patients Alliance)]: Do you find that this is within your realm?

[Russ Ingalls (Chair)]: Think it's important for us to understand it, but I think it's out of our realm.

[Jesse Lynn Dolan (Registered Nurse; Vermont Cannabis Nurses Association / Green Mountain Patients Alliance)]: The home of our allowance.

[Russ Ingalls (Chair)]: Yes. I absolutely positively believe that it's out of our realm. We like to know it and love the education of it, But again, I really just think about it at the end of the day, we are, grow that sucker and harvest it. But as soon as it harvests it and gets out of that field, it leads our route.

[Sen. Steven Heffernan (Clerk)]: And if you're getting more traction in the Senate, just get the bill through the Senate than the House has to do.

[Graham Unangst-Rufenacht (Policy Director, Rural Vermont)]: That's what we're trying to do.

[Sen. Steven Heffernan (Clerk)]: That's what

[Russ Ingalls (Chair)]: we're trying

[Sen. Steven Heffernan (Clerk)]: to make sure.

[Graham Unangst-Rufenacht (Policy Director, Rural Vermont)]: Definitely. And I'm gonna say, and I appreciate you also basically saying earlier that we really need to hear from the CCB. Go on direct sales because when they came to the cultivator work group, I eventually said James, need to make that clear meeting as he was saying, you cultivators need to grow up. I'm Okay. But this is we have been doing this for five years. Yeah. And the CCB has been one of our major roadblocks. So we need you to come in and say, you're gonna tell us to cultivators. You need to save to lawmakers too. You can't go and save them.

[Russ Ingalls (Chair)]: Yeah. I spent some time with this with cannabis control board this summer, both on hemp and marijuana. I went to Sam Belovitz's farm up on hemp, then I went to Rutland, to one of your dispensaries down there, and then I went to a grower in Rutland, just between Rutland and Pittsburgh. I think you have to understand all what's there to be talked about. You have to understand it before you can make a position on it and that's what we're trying to do. We're trying to really we're trying to be whatever we can do to be the biggest help to all of you. Yeah, maybe we can't help on the on the farm stand issue, but hopefully we can help you on a lot of the other issues, especially the affordability part of it as far as to kind of what I had said earlier.

[Jesse Lynn Dolan (Registered Nurse; Vermont Cannabis Nurses Association / Green Mountain Patients Alliance)]: Thank you for taking the time to do that.

[Graham Unangst-Rufenacht (Policy Director, Rural Vermont)]: Yeah. Appreciate the cooperative, because I think, really, like, our coalition is trying to also demonstrate that. Like, we are trying to bring in all the different constituencies from medical to cultivators to add to equity over time and say, let's all be on the same page, and that's what we've tried to do, bring in here for five And

[Russ Ingalls (Chair)]: I also think it's very important to understand it as well as because at some point in time, we're gonna have to vote on it. Right? Yes. Yes. Absolutely. So we need to we need to know.

[Amy Lems (Vermont Growers Association; former Tier 2 manufacturer)]: And we're happy to get you any information that you would like. Absolutely.

[Graham Unangst-Rufenacht (Policy Director, Rural Vermont)]: I I think the last thing that we were sending a little bit of time on is just number one, And you'll hear about some of CCB as well because it's in their report, but this this overlaps with the economic development and the ag side. And if you don't mind scrolling up to, I think it's on page oh, on page two. Thank you so much. I appreciate you helping me here. So if you're right down at the bottom of that, Linda, the number oh, you have keep going down. Right. Yes. Number one. Can You keep going down. You can just center that section. This is all from the CCDF 59 report, but over the years, we've been really working with the Land Access Opportunity Board and our other partners like the Lawyers Justice Alliance to explore what could be what's the most appropriate use for the cannabis excise tax. As you know, and we talked about this from a grant James talked about this from the Farm Viability perspective. Right? We do not have a lot of grants and services to have the most support available to cannabis producers or businesses that we do for a lot of other businesses in Vermont across the board. So what what the cannabis control board is talking about and what we've what we've supported is this allocating $1,000,000 cannabis excise tax revenue annually for the cannabis business development fund It'd be used for testing compliance relief, business advising and coaching, business improvement infrastructure grants, and market access to public education. So it'd be very similar to what we have to see as the Intervale Center for Farm Viability Program. We're developing a network of sort of providers who can support people based on their needs. And would be expanding the scope of this fund to include tier one outdoor cultivators, tier one manufacturers, and these economic empowerment licensees. And for the second part, is again, directing 25% of that tax revenue to the Land Access and Opportunity Board for things like down payment assistance grants to support homeownership and land access, financing and technical advising, seed and implementation grants, etcetera.

[Russ Ingalls (Chair)]: So now you're into a little bit gray area with us, but something that we would probably be involved with some of that. Because gets back to helping farmers. And so that's where we might have an interest in some of that stuff. And we would end up probably working to the committee next door on that. So, letting them out of the understanding that, listen, this is going to help farmers. Because I think one of the frustrations that I've seen out there on the tour that I went to Rutland and to Sam's Farm up in the Grand Isle was that it's frustrating again for these farmers not to qualify for grants and loans and deductions So and stuff like that would be something that we would be interested in.

[Jesse Lynn Dolan (Registered Nurse; Vermont Cannabis Nurses Association / Green Mountain Patients Alliance)]: Not to mention 280E, a different tax structure where they're unfortunately even less profitable due to that. And with the 25%, I always like to just throw in there just like 1% for the planet. We could always consider 1% for the patients.

[Sen. Brian Collamore (Member)]: Yes. Where is that revenue going now?

[Graham Unangst-Rufenacht (Policy Director, Rural Vermont)]: Jeff, we're the best person to talk about how that that whole equity, that whole stream of funding is being done and broken out in a proportion throughout the government. So was going to, I think, percent is in prevention 30%. Which goes through a lot of things. It goes to after school programs. It goes to a lot of great stuff. Okay.

[Jesse Lynn Dolan (Registered Nurse; Vermont Cannabis Nurses Association / Green Mountain Patients Alliance)]: But it's not going to any education for cannabis support or prevention or anything like that as of right now?

[Graham Unangst-Rufenacht (Policy Director, Rural Vermont)]: The cannabis business development fund itself has survived off of yearly $500,000 allocations, and last year, there was not one of those. So we I don't know where the fund's balance is at right now. Chair Pepper or Jeff would give a copy of answer to that. Can speak tighter to Well,

[Russ Ingalls (Chair)]: as you're well aware, as soon

[Sen. Brian Collamore (Member)]: as we take the money that's going here and put it somewhere else, we create a hole.

[Graham Unangst-Rufenacht (Policy Director, Rural Vermont)]: Well, think we've all we've tried to bring up some ways we think we generate a lot more revenue on because we think there's a high percentage of the market which isn't being captured. I know that there's some things you can't affect, right, like the deductions. Like, there's certain things the federal government has said. We have control over this. If this changed, we can't. And that's why we do come so hard around some of these other regulatory reforms, direct sales, etcetera, because, you know, there's very few levers we have sort of used to affect the situation, but the ones we have, we really

[Sen. Brian Collamore (Member)]: push it hard. Anything

[Graham Unangst-Rufenacht (Policy Director, Rural Vermont)]: else you two would like to bring? Thanks, you guys. Yeah.

[Amy Lems (Vermont Growers Association; former Tier 2 manufacturer)]: Thank you for having us.

[Jesse Lynn Dolan (Registered Nurse; Vermont Cannabis Nurses Association / Green Mountain Patients Alliance)]: And thank

[Russ Ingalls (Chair)]: you thank you for understanding. Thank you for the education that you gave us, communication. We appreciate all of that. We really, really do. We have a great committee that are not afraid. We work well together, and we hope that you see that we are trying to

[Graham Unangst-Rufenacht (Policy Director, Rural Vermont)]: work with these folks. Conversations are always really good.

[Jesse Lynn Dolan (Registered Nurse; Vermont Cannabis Nurses Association / Green Mountain Patients Alliance)]: And I appreciate your gratitude and desire for the educational piece. So that, to me, really weighs and matters so much. And I would ask you just to remember that as we're talking about trying to get this committee, the symptom relief oversight committee back on. Because, really, most people in legislation don't have an understanding of this, but even more important why we need something like that involved.

[Graham Unangst-Rufenacht (Policy Director, Rural Vermont)]: And just for Vermont, I know Steven was in the early community agency, and we're really excited to come back and look at the coalition and talk to you all about the, you know, this broad coalition of ag groups that has slammed in our own language, which is not the same for the agency. It's to address this municipal exemption and right to grow food. So Yeah. Really glad to get involved here in Memphis. We wanna

[Sen. Brian Collamore (Member)]: get a look there and talk with you more.

[Russ Ingalls (Chair)]: Yeah. We're we're gonna I think we're going to get something done on that. Again, if you were to watch us online, you're going to see us into a lot of different areas. You're going to see us on Tuesday, I think I've already said it, talking about protecting prime ag land. It's not just about protecting farm land, it's about protecting farmers. You take a 300 acre farm, you got 100 acres of very valuable land and 200 acres of ants. Well,

[Graham Unangst-Rufenacht (Policy Director, Rural Vermont)]: I

[Russ Ingalls (Chair)]: think that if we were to make sure that that 100 acres of land, which the most valuable is the prime ag land, and then take the other 200 acres that's hemp, we can turn that into more profitable land by restricting on what we allow to happen to that great land. All of a sudden you tell the developers, No, I'm sorry, you're not going to be on those nice big fields. You can go over here, and I think we can help farmers up the value of their properties by just basically saying, Leave our prime ag land alone. That's where we're gonna grow food for our people, but we have all this other land that we used to cast your cows on that we don't anymore because the scope of farming has changed. Yeah, it might be a little bit harder to build on, but it's a bill.

[Sen. Brian Collamore (Member)]: So we have a lot of that

[Russ Ingalls (Chair)]: stuff that we're hitting. Keep watch around. You never know if these guys are gonna come up with us. Or

[Sen. Brian Collamore (Member)]: the chair. You so much. Thank you. Have a great week to help.