The Cole Memo

In this episode, I speak with Caleb Teske and my friend Phil.

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go check one two this is the Cole memo I am your host Cole Preston every episode is released in audio video and transcript format to find the transcript audio or video version of any episode please refer to the description of the episode that you’re listening to now within that description you can find a link that will take you to our website which will display the transcript for this episode and the platforms where you can find this episode in audio or video formats if you’re having trouble locating the episode description on whichever platform you’re listening from Simply note the episode number and visit the co memo.com you can find the corresponding episode from there and then you’ll be able to access the audio video and transcript formats you might also find any links that we reference during the episode so that you might be able to do your own research if you’re not listening to this episode of the Cole memo on patreon then you’re listening to this episode later than our patrons to become a patron go to to the memo.com patreon once again that’s the memo.com pat n it’s a great way to support our show but one of the best ways to support our show is absolutely free subscribe to or follow our show leave us a positive review from wherever you’re listening to us from favorite this episode give it a thumbs up leave a comment or post a review your engagement and support is appreciated enjoy this episode of the Cole memo once again I’m your host Cole Preston today is October 30th 2023 it’s just about 7:45 p.m. I’m cracking open in ice cold beer with my friend Phillip Phil you want to say hi hi let’s get hi Phillip we’re joined today with Caleb tesy Caleb this is your first time on the Cole memo you want to go ahead and not only introduce yourself but tell people where they can find you online if they like what you got to say today oh and you’re muted somehow oh you’re still muted that’s right I I muted myself yeah my bad yeah that’s okay um I just want to say thank you for having me on here Cole um I am a freelance independent journalist uh from Vermont I’ve been covering the Cannabis industry here for the better part of two years coming up on two years in December um you can find my work um defined print look for the purple black and white asterisk there’s a couple other fine prints on YouTube um but I’ve got a YouTube channel I’ve got um about 200 interviews that I’ve done with people from various sectors of the Cannabis industry over the last um almost two years and maybe 300 350 hours of content that people could check out um you know we’ve had uh hey look at that there you go that’s uh Amy Leaf that’s one of my best friends from from growing up Tom dery he moved up to Canada started a dispensary Dan pom Rance from Rebel grown the guys from Smoke Ranch Redemption uh Matt llant uh really good guys I Defiance electric that’s an electric company where we were talking about some of the work it takes to to power these uh facilities so I’ve got a I feel like I have a pretty good mix of of stuff up online for people to check out lawyers and legislators and I’ve interviewed everyone here on the Cannabis control board in Vermont so a little something for everyone I’d like to think yeah very cool like you said it’s the purple black it’s got the star you can see the fine print folks I’m sharing it right now once again if you look in the episode description if you’re listening and want to watch the video version so you can see these visuals I think we’re going to be sharing some stuff today so it might be a visual episode be sure to watch the video version Caleb I’m seeing here does it say soft little ho ass [ __ ] yeah that’s the fine print in the background and um you know I used to do standup comedy for five years so I decided to just write some some ridiculous [ __ ] in the background it does it does say soft little ho ass [ __ ] that’s exactly what it says yes I was gonna say I thought I saw that well anyways that’s the fine print I like I’m glad you I’m glad you noticed you’re the first one that’s noticed that thank you yeah well I was reading the words I was like this has got to something that he designed himself and then I yeah saw soft little ho ass [ __ ] and I was like whoa so yep well I’m sparking up weed now I cracked up a beer sparked up weed um where do you want to start today Caleb you know like I told you the great thing about the coal memo I don’t well I didn’t tell you this uh I told you the floor is going to be yours but the great thing about the coal memo I think is that it my goal with this show is that it’s going to be better than a television time slot and of course we don’t have any advertisements but this episode is brought to you by Kors no I’m joking um we don’t have any advertisements that are going to you know interrupt us at all so that’s what’s I think great about podcasting in in this show particular so the floor is yours dude where do you want to start I’ll try to chime in from time to time but for the most part I want to let you lay this out and then I’ll you know kind of jump in with questions cool um where I’d like to start it’s it you know really um I put this story out in April I think it was the 25th or something like that and this story is about Ben Cohen’s new um cannabis company and for anyone who doesn’t know Ben Cohen is the Ben from Ben and Jerry’s I I feel like most people know about Ben and Jerry’s and this is Ben that we’re talking about here and um you know when I when I saw that he was entering the Cannabis industry it really pequ my interest so I started doing some digging about it you know I met um and maybe some historical context would be good here too uh you you know U Ben and Jerry’s was sold off to Unilever back in 2000 2001 somewhere around there and Unilever is a massive multinational corporation who has also uh bought up some other companies here in fromont 7th generation some of our other uh really uh prominent Brands um you know and um so also if if you include cabat right cabat cheese which is another one of our big Brands yeah I was just showing Ben and Jerry you and you know I want to be clear about this Jerry is not involved in this new company at do you know which one is which Ben is the guy with the light blue shirt okay so this guy in the back that’s got his yeah Jerry has the Hat on okay yep and um I want to be clear Jerry is not involved in this new operation at all from what I can tell so I I I don’t want to include him but um this is It’s called Ben’s best Blends that’s the name of the company and you know between so between the selloff uh part of the point that I was trying to make about these guys entering the Cannabis industry is Maybe some of the damage that has been done to our agricultural industry here in Vermont um after cabit was sold and that was maybe mid 90s and then Ben and Jerry’s was sold in 2000 or 2001 and those are two of our uh most prominent Brands here in Vermont that bankrupted like 40% of Vermont Farmers over the course of two decades which you know um I’ve had a couple of these people on my show who have talked about how that deal really affected their family farms and and you know as anytime when you sell off to a giant multinational corporation there’s like it it Consolidated our a industry in a way that um really negatively impacted a lot of Vermont Farms here and so that’s really why I started looking at this um and one of the one of the things I’d like to point out which I said before we started recording is that I’m not trying to prove a crime here yeah that’s sorry to keep doing visuals but I was like no please D this is um Vermont is very well known for our cheddar cheese and cavat is the biggest brand here and you notice like it doesn’t say Vermont on there anymore there was a lawsuit way back when because they started sourcing a lot of their Dairy from other states stes and had to take Vermont off of the logo and us see yeah they got the flannel there and that’s and now this says New York New England that’s right that’s yep correct that’s because they blew up really fast and uh well I don’t know if it was fast but they blew up so much that um they had to start getting milk from other states they couldn’t U they couldn’t meet the demand here in Vermont and and those guys you know hey uh I I want to say this too I feel like these guys started with good intentions you know it was a cool company and they were like hippie cat or Ben and Jerry’s uh both of them both of them yeah yeah absolutely um and then they were sold off to companies that maybe don’t have our state’s best interests in mind and a lot of those profits are leaving the state which is another feature that we’re going to see here in Ben’s company um so you know um again I’m not trying to prove a crime here I one of the main thrusts of my work is trying to show that people that are wealthy and that are politically well connected are getting the leg up in this industry and what we were told was that we were going to help people that were negatively impacted by the war on drugs and uh you know from what I’m looking at that’s not what I’m seeing um and so you know um that deal with Unilever as you know Unilever doesn’t care about Vermont they’re they’re not good companies and along with this sort of consolidation of our a industry has come the you know consolidation of dairy farms and now they’re all 94% of the Corn being grown in Vermont is GMO corn along with the associated pesticides that come with that that round up ready seed and and things of that nature which is really really having a negative impact on our um our water quality our soil quality things of that nature so um that that’s also troubling and and I’m going to tie Ben in with some of these guys at at hofor um who are partnered with Monsanto who’ve ushered in this new era of consolidation and you know sort of chemical based uh farming here in Vermont which is kind of a new feature over the last 30 years um so you know I I first met Ben at um Nan 2022 last July um he had a table going I I went up I tried to get an interview I gave him my card um they were handing out empty packaging which I thought was kind of U bogus when they talk about environmental concerns and then you’re shipping over packaging from China to hand out empty to people just to uh so to get your name out there I didn’t love that you know Ben Cohen and Vermont these guys are royalty Ben and Jerry here are that’s royalty they could start a weed company tomorrow and open up and people would just go buy it just on the name itself so I I thought that was kind of week I saw some of their packaging into the garbage before I left nikan um so you know and the environmental stuff is really one of my uh the things that bugs me about their company a lot like I don’t know uh do you want to pull up the website what website I can pull up uh it’s benb best.com Ben’s best I was gonna say I got it here yeah if you want yeah I mean I I’m happy to share it but if you know where you’re going there we go uh cool okay cool does that work yep I can see it yeah benb best.com it looks like it’s kind of cut off there and I also have a a picture up in the background but um yeah this their I was just gonna say we just see the website we don’t see the picture in the background I don’t think so you’re good cool if I scroll around does it show you like here I’d like yep yep cool um there was something side is trippy yeah and it’s you know borders on in my opinion uh marketing children but that’s uh my opinion and I want to be clear about that uh where is this guy who we are um what makes you say that because it’s colorful yeah blands bln z uh I mean it just um it’s it’s a similar to uh Ben and Jerry’s U which I thought was always marketed to kids and that’s again that’s my opinion where is a social they gave out one loan which is something I really wanted to talk about and I’m I’m not oh man it’s it’s somewhere on here did you say social Mission because I see a there’s a button there that says social yeah yeah and is that okay um there was one loan they gave out and I remember the dude’s name and boy that’s not here we go Grant and Loan recipients Co this guy um Karen Ali Ali I’m not sure exactly how you say that so they created this program right um to to invest in Social Equity sort of applicants and things like that um and this is before they’ve even made a dollar you know they said hey we’re just getting started so we don’t have any profits to put into our grant program yet however we have made one lwi interest loan and we have made a commitment to invest at least $100,000 in Black cannabis entrepreneurs by the end of our first year in business so this guy’s a man named Karen Ali and um so if you pulled up his LinkedIn page which I did before I did this story um this this is not um the thrust of social Equity right was to help people that were negatively impacted by the War on Drugs people that really uh marginalized communities things of that nature um but what I’m seeing is people who have wealthy friends um giving them loans so this guy worked in the natural gas industry for 15 20 years somewhere in there um natural Mystic is a Texas based minority owned company producing you know they make uh rolling papers so they already have a rolling paper company in Texas right and this guy’s got a touching backstory and and really now they’re going to give him this loan to start a rolling paper company in Indonesia um and they’re already have they’re already natural Mystics products are handcrafted in Indonesia this company funds meals and financial support to the crafting team made up of primarily women and um you know I I don’t like to make accusations man but you know when people start businesses in Asia they’re usually trying to save money by finding cheap labor this guy worked in the in the natural gas industry for 15 years and here’s um hold up uh let’s see stop share bang I want to put up this other here we go this is the um so he worked for a company called freep Port liquid natural gas this is the the Gulf South pipeline which they control if you look through some of these areas of Louisiana this is what they call cancer alley and they call it cancer alley because your risk of cancer goes up 95% because the air is so polluted from extracting all these gases and and you know that’s a very extensive pipeline there and you know so when I hear these guys talking about um environmental concerns and um especially youo um Ben Cohen has an an award that he created for journalists who investigate the Pentagon and their ties to the fossil fuel industry because it’s powering this fossil fuel industry and you know meanwhile he’s giving out loans to a gentleman like Karen ali um who worked in that industry for such a long time to so they can operate in Asia and and bring packaging over here which and I don’t know most of those boats are still powered by fossil fuels when they come over here from China yeah and what did he do at the gas company sorry for let’s let’s see I mean I have to pull up his LinkedIn is that a thing I I was only saying that like because like you know I could work at like a gas company you know what I mean but if he was like an executive I or something like that yeah yeah well it looked like he would he wasn’t uh he wasn’t pumping gas sure it looked like he and um I’d have to pull that up again but I’d be happy to do that for you after um it looked like he he was uh managed in the corporate offices or something yeah um yeah he wasn’t digging Wells and [ __ ] like that okay but that that bothers me know um especially when you talk about you know one of the the big PR pushes for Ben and Jerry’s has sort of been this environmental um stuff and world peace and all of that but you know their packaging wasn’t even recyclable in Vermont till like the last couple of years here because they put a weird coating around the outside of it and uh it was recyclable in every other country but just not the state where it came from which so do you guys have like higher standards in Vermont or something for yeah well if you have a waxy paper um if it was just paper um it would have worked but um which they use in other countries from what I understand but in Vermont um I I don’t know I I’m I’m still I got to read about that one a little more cool no problem I just it just you it was interesting that you said like it not in Vermont but in other places I was like yeah in Europe in Europe it was recyclable the whole time uh from what I understand if I’m wrong about that I’ll apologize later but that’s what that’s what I read yeah I just pulled up Karen Ali’s LinkedIn page um I think I might see what you’re talking about what did you say the company was again Freeport yeah Freeport LNG that’s the one that yeah and also the gdf zuz energy I believe that’s in Central America responsible for implementing managing and executing key commercial responsibilities for the flng liquification project this role oversees the management of three key functions within the flng commercial team feed gas power consumption and LG lifting programs for the entire facility as the commercial director sorry I’m just that’s okay dude yeah have a peak dude I I should have pulled that up there was just so many um websites and Linkedin Pages associated with the story I it was hard to get them all online yeah yeah and I clicked on this other guy Karen Ali and I was like that doesn’t look like him um so sorry other Karen um but uh okay interesting stuff two different gas companies yeah he worked for a couple yeah and and that one beneath that um commercial analyst for Atlantic that’s another LG company below commercial director commercial manager commercial analyst yeah he wasn’t pumping gas I’ll tell you that it’s five years six years two years you know and Cole all this talk about social Equity really you know has left me with a a kind of a pissy taste in my mouth you know because the social Equity was was for people yeah I mean dude my dad was arrested by the FBI on the channel 3 news when I was seven years old and I watched that [ __ ] with my sister sitting right next to me with my mom you know that social Equity bill was written for people like me who are actually negatively impacted by the war on drugs and black people and Hispanic people who are uh obviously disproportionately targeted by police for this [ __ ] um you know so when I see I see uh and you know what we’ve been calling it is tokenization where you find like a a guy like Killer Mike right who’s on the board of Ben’s uh of Trustees there Mike doesn’t Mike doesn’t need a social Equity license so but uh go ahead yeah if I could just really quick because I like like I actually agree with what you’re saying here um but this is like so interestingly in Illinois there are these cases where people are like what the [ __ ] this guy’s not social equity for example there will be like ties to like GTI or Phil you can think of a few restaurant here Phil Stefani the the first social Equity dispensary that opened here is partially owned by a for former Chicago cop so you know there’s things like that and but hear me out Caleb people will validly say I don’t that doesn’t seem like social Equity a cop right but by the letter of the law they did qualify as a social Equity candidate so it’s like how how dude well in Illinois I can tell you because there’s yeah but that’s the thing that’s the point I’m trying to make really quick is that Illinois has a different different definition of social Equity compared to New York compared to me and you I mean we have our definition where we agree that yeah the actual people that were impacted but so to answer your question in Illinois it has to do with certain zip codes that were selected if you had I know right so if you lived in an area for the last five years you didn’t even have to really be from there necessarily I I think that was right Phil right the last five years or something like that anyways the point is is that it’s you meet criteria it’s not zip code is one of the criteria for social equity in Illinois yeah actually one of the criteria now is if you’ve been shot right so they’ve changed the criteria if you’ve been shot you you qualify as social Equity right so but yeah zip code if you’ve been shot so the ZIP code thing if I could really quickly explain that they did research to determine which zip codes are Dia disproportionately impacted areas so that’s where this ZIP code thing the rationale behind it you know obviously there’s holes in that logic here’s a big one Caleb that they what the reason that it’s possible to do that is like in a place like like a lot of the folks done in Chicago the Chicago area it’s very segregated so you can you could say hey this ZIP code has a really high rate of cannabis ARR us we’re going to designate that but really you’re like the state was pretty much trying to Target black and brown communities without like explicitly doing like a race map here’s the biggest though and I think you’re going to laugh at this one Caleb there was one called and they didn’t call it this literally it became infamously known as the slave master Clause it’s where you like o it’s like where you hire you put like five or what’s the number how many black people have 10 people hired and on payroll so you just have them on payroll and then you’re a social Equity lensy so do you get my point it’s not that your definition of social Equity is wrong it’s not that my definition of social Equity is wrong it’s that states have defined what social Equity is in the application process and I think we can all agree that that’s wrong because it’s like you know you can’t really legislate that [ __ ] can I pull up the where’s the Ben’s oh website do you get why I brought that up though really quick while you pull that up like because I sit here and Phil and I we like look and we’re like is this social equity and it’s funny because we asked that and it’s a valid question but the state of Illinois’s answer is yeah because that’s how we wrote the law even if you don’t think that those people what I’m say it’s it’s legal yeah go ahead Sor sorry and even the the whole conversation of social Equity being about business you know yeah um like the whole conversation gets directed and focused around business Illinois centers the whole conversation around who is in business and not in business while we still like give out felonies for cannabis possession Contin drug war like like real social Equity is stopping like just get rid of the the cannabis laws right deschedule it let everybody grow yeah that’s what social Equity is i that’s where it gets frustrating when it’s like when you look at I get what you mean though because if I could wrap it up and I’ll bring it back over to you pH or uh Caleb uh my apologies but for making the I just felt like it was important to make what I think of when I think of social Equity is like my first few pot dealers like they should be allowed to do what they did for me all those [ __ ] years and guess what they still can’t in this legal world it’s still a criminal offense that’s not social Equity well and in the legal world that we’re setting up they also don’t have a job anymore either so their work has also been taken away yeah anyways no that bothers me man you know the people who helped build this entire industry that who took all the risks who developed all the genetics who did all the home growths and dealt with did the jail time and had their houses raided those people are not getting the help that they need and instead you know we’ve got you know people like Ben Cohen getting it who doesn’t even have a weed company this isn’t even a weed company this is a licensing company they license their packaging and they’re branding to a someone who’s actually doing the work and they make money off it and in my opinion that’s modern day sharecropping or or something you got a guy who’s not doing anything making money off of people who have maybe taking these risks in their lives and I [ __ ] I don’t like that and here look look check this out illino Illinois would probably make you want to like hang yourself yeah and I do want to be clear I do want to be clear I do think Vermont has some of the most favorable conditions in the country from all the states that I’ve looked at anyway um I’ve talked to people in U 25 or 26 different states and and it does seem like we have some of the best rules and when I look at them it’s what are the what are the like criminal penalties that remain in Vermont like is there like enforcement do they arrest people w we just trained a whole new round of drug recognition experts uh even though the commissioner of the Department of Health here Mark Lavine said on camera and I this is a direct quote he said unfortunately there’s um no scientific consensus for what constitutes impairment from Cannabis but they’re still trying to train cops to detect I’ll pull it up in a second I’ve got a very short video You’re Gonna I could I could get you the no you’re gonna love this [ __ ] video dude because Illinois actually made the per se standard that you’re talking about and uh or at least really pioneered so but you’ve been you have like do you have like a nanogram limit there no but if the cops if the cops think you’re high they could drag you into the hospital and take your blood oh but is there like a threshold or do they just like they’ll they’ll take that number and or is it zero tolerance or if your eyes are red they could tell you you’re driving under the influence you know um you know how cops are right they could just tell you they smell alcohol and get you out of the car and then they could tell your eyes are red and and quite frankly um we were also supposed to really significantly reduce the um civil asset forfeiture piece of this where you know a business could lose everything they could uh you know if you’re in I don’t know if you guys are familiar with the Civil asset forfeiture stuff but basically you know if cops think like your car has been used in the commission of a you know ferally scheduled narcotic drug deal or something like that they could take everything you own and they were supposed to eliminate that and what happened was it got turned into a study I’m like yo if you’re going to legalize weed this should not be a study we should get rid of those rules Al together right now because this is now legal and you shouldn’t be stealing people’s [ __ ] like you have been for decades you know that [ __ ] continues in Illinois too and they use odor as the reason odor is actually that’s not that’s not allowed anymore in Vermont oh nice good deal dude good deal I just wanted to show a quick funny it’s like 15 seconds 20 seconds I think at most just a funny clip from a representative in our state who just it’s funny how he says we literally made this up you’re gonna love this Caleb um there’s still an element and it continues to be major problem of uh intoxication driving well intoxicated with cannabis because we don’t have a 0.08 nor do we have technology to even enforce that if we did have any kind of standardization so there’s no there’s no per limit illino actually has a per se limit but we literally made it up we made up the per limit it’s not based on 50 60 years of driving while in toxicated with alcohol that we right so that’s it I ha I hate that there is no you know this the science behind driving drunk is very clear the science behind driving on cannabis doesn’t exist so they did just make it up oh God that makes my blood boil a little I I I keep wondering every time I see that if someone could just show that to a judge and be like what am I doing here he said he literally made it up and that’s a good precedent yeah maybe maybe you should send me that so in case I ever get pulled over again tell people they’re just making it up because that that’s exactly what they’re doing I mean this isn’t based on any type of scientific scrutiny or standard uh and yeah and it’s a unfortunate that a lot of our tax dollars are going to fund these cops to take these drug recognition expert trainings when we really don’t have a standard for that it it seems like a waste of money in my opinion you guys have uh home H grown Vermont because that’s what was it for a long time there was no like retail right yeah we got hom grow uh we got uh you know I think six plants four six it’s not a lot uh but we do have home grow we’ve got a little caretaker program um I think caretakers have the same uh plant count stuff as the hom grow um I wish it was more than that I see in Colombia you can have 20 plants on a on a home grow I’m like how is the cocaine country more [ __ ] liberal than Vermont which people think is you know a progressive Paradise or something it’s really not man our governor did not want legalization Phil Scott is in my opinion a prohibitionist he’s he’s he kicked the can down the road for five years until the political pressure built up so much that uh he was basically forced to do legalization um and let it pass without signing it by the way um he he didn’t want that I’d like to if it’s okay with you Cole I’d like to tie in some of Ben’s board of directors here for it my friend so we’ve got um you know I already talked about Killer Mike do they have like pictures on his website that I can pull up or do you have the pictures yes yes if you go on there um hold on a second I’ll pull up who we are okay or who are these guys so cool who are these people people who are these guys yeah please I was just on the Karen olly thing um where is it again who are these guys oh who are these guys right there in front of me this will be his Board of Trustees here and and as you can see here this is the part where they explained that they’re not even a cannabis company and one thing that really bothers me man is that every other cannabis company in Vermont has to go through a federal background check cost $500 for 75 something like that and they scrutinize your entire background your whole life uh that is for every cannabis business owner in the state and their employees have to also go through the same thing which costs less for your employees but because this is a nonprofit they don’t have to go through any of that same level of scrutiny they’re just licensing out and I think that’s [ __ ] in my opinion I think that anybody who’s making money in the Cannabis industry should have to go through the same set of steps this allows to Sid step that so um man wait so it’s how does it allow them to sidestep it sorry because they’re just collect as you can see uh lenses pay us a royalty in exchange for the use of our formulas packaging and trade marks these guys do not have a cultivation license they don’t have a manufacturing license they don’t have a retail license they don’t have a wholesale license they don’t have a Testing Lab they yeah this is that’s pretty standard though I would say for can like Whiz Khalifa for example he licensed his [ __ ] out you know to cure Le yeah but I but like I think oh yeah or all the companies like a company like cookies you know like unless they’re the actual license holder like a lot of the time they’re just licensed like they are in Illinois like cookies doesn’t have any license in Illinois they’re just licensed they’re yeah and absolutely that is pretty standard I’m you know as far as licensing goes this does seem like it’s pretty normal but in an industry where you’re making um people pay 500 bucks for a background check and the fed the FBI is is poking around in their background I think everybody should have to go through that I don’t think you should be able to avoid that by starting a nonprofit and Licensing out your packaging and that’s that’s my opinion but um I think it allows people to to avoid doing that and I don’t like that yeah there you go yeah Ben yeah yeah and um someone’s missing there it’s uh there’s there he is Jesse Horton okay cool and you know um Killer Mike another big thing that really bothers me is that you know they say 100% of our profits are going to fight the wrongs of the War on Drugs okay not 90% of those profits are leaving the state and none of those people you’re looking at right now live in Vermont Derek doesn’t live here Phil doesn’t live here Killer Mike doesn’t live Ben I think lives here sometimes Nita Turner also was a senator from Ohio um you know I’m not sure how bad they had it on the war on drugs and Jesse Horton he doesn’t live here either you know um so 80% of the profits that these guys make are going to go to a non prophet in Oregon called New Leaf which is run by Jessy Horton’s wife um Janette Horton I feel like I saw that somewhere but where did you see that at the new Leaf thing was that on the page well I found that no that was a little um side work I did I don’t know if it’s in the blurp when you I swear I saw it somewhere on here earlier we’ll try to find it in a bit Yeah and and you know if you go out there you’ll find that new Leaf is parted up with all kinds of these big MS El Wana kookies parallel which was the bo Wrigley [ __ ] wild did I say wild already yeah um Dr bronners which is weird and you know um so part of the reason I I ever tied shellene title in the parabola Center in with this was because they claimed um you know their forward- facing position of their um thing tank is like we don’t want these big corporations in cannabis industry it’s like okay well you know this the 80% thing you said sorry there it is New Leaf 80% yeah 80% of of Ben’s best profits are going to new le which is and also tied up with Hawthorne and Hawthorne as I said earlier that’s Hawthorne is the investment vehicle for Scott’s Miracle Grow okay which is run by the Hagadorn family here in Vermont now we just we just made a few leaps here so new Leaf is owned by Hawthorne which is owned by um sorry um let me slow down a little so yeah no my apologies to um New Leaf is run by Janette Horton who is okay Jessy Horton’s wife Jessy Horton is the president of the Board of Trustees for Ben’s company here um they her nonprofit New Leaf in Oregon is partnered with Hawthorne um Hawthorne is the investment vehicle for Scott Mir CC grow which is owned by the Hagadorn family Jim Hagadorn I think his son is Chris they have also just started a um wholesale company here in Vermont and those are the guys uh Scott’s Miracle Grow has been partnered here in Vermont with Monsanto for the last 20 years that is where um hey hold up do I got the screen share with the stupid charts about the pollution I meant to be showing I had this real quick Caleb I this thing up with on New Leaf or new Leaf’s website that yeah does mention Jess she Horton yeah that’s her husband oh that’s her husband right here yeah okay thank you sorry you can share your screen now um let’s see somewhere I got a picture of the blate usage here in Vermont um let’s see if I can get that up there yeah where’ I go sorry I haven’t used Zoom for a while here it’s all good gives us time to roll more joints did that pop up there we go a graph of common ingredients yeah and as you can see atro usage has also been on the rise here in Vermont um some go ahead I was just wondering how does this tie what were you saying so the guy no the guys from hawthor Jim Hagadorn the CEO of Scott’s Miracle Grow has partnered with Monsanto for the last 20 almost 25 years here in Vermont and what we’re seeing is and I’m again I don’t want to make accusations but what we’ve seen since that deal went down is a massive increase in the use of some of these types of pesticides um you know there’s glyphosate again uh most common active ingredients used in forestry management gate like um you know this is used in Highway and Railway I’m not sure why they’re spraying this type of [ __ ] on our highways and Railways I assume it’s to keep the grass from overgrowing the tracks but uh you know these are the kind of people and uh I should stop that Make It Stop um yeah these are the kind of people doing business in Vermont and it’s it to me it’s deeply concerning um I really you know I don’t need a lot of pesticide sprayed on my highways or my Railways or corn fields I don’t like all the MSO or um sorry um GMO corn moving into to Vermont here um it just to to me is it’s unsafe it’s it’s uh showing up in our waterways and our soil uh and I wouldn’t be surprised if it start showing up in our cannabis here soon and so you know one of one of the other guys who who’s not shown on that website by the way is a guy named Chris Walsh and Chris Walsh uh used to own nectar here in Vermont it’s one of the most popular nightclubs in Burlington and he worked for ananis which is one of the companies who bought up all five of our medical dispensaries here in Vermont have been bought up by out of state msos the one who bought Grassroots and Brandon was called ianthus uh which was run by Randy masau and Hadley Ford Hadley Ford was forced to resign from the board of his own company for uh pocketing $150,000 of investor funds and uh his sister actually sold the license off to him I’m not sure how that went down but Chris used to work for them and somehow got a job on the advisory committee to the Cannabis control board here in Vermont and uh you know just another example of how you know people with the connections are getting the leg up and not the people who need it or you know Bill Loy and Dan Chang who run cry Botanicals they got I believe the second tier three manufacturing licenses in Vermont which is the largest tier you can get uh Bill Loy was the former Chief of Staff or Peter sh who was our former Governor um you know so when I see these type of people getting this leg up um as opposed to you know I I knew all this social Equity talk was [ __ ] when I first heard it it sounded like [ __ ] the government doesn’t usually care about poor people or black people and when I heard them um just repeating this stuff over and over it really I have notes from the first time I went to a control board meeting last February and said social equity and look into this and you know I I just and Ben has done the same thing he HED fir he hired five black people to be on his Board of Trustees you’d be hard pressed to find five black people in Vermont it’s really hard this is one of the whitest states in the country somehow and you know to me that’s um yeah we’ve been calling that tokenization and I you know I know black people in Vermont that could have used a loan um to help them get their business off the ground um and meanwhile he’s given his loan to a guy in the natural gas industry who starting a rolling paper company in Indonesia I just I don’t love that and I think it undermines really their entire credibility I mean yeah uh you know yeah I think that’s a Salient point the only thing like and I’m not even saying this as a like a question to you Caleb I’m just thinking out loud so Phil and Caleb feel free to join along um but like what is so you think like I think that like Ben are you saying instead maybe Ben would like set up a hiring board or something in Vermont and like look for locals or I mean we could we’re just spitball in here so we could bring you know anything is better is basically what you’re saying right sure that’d be a great idea you know there are people here that need jobs that some people that have been displaced by his deal with unb there are Family Farms that have gone out of business because of the the deal that they did why don’t you reach out to some of those people and see if they need some help you know um that’d be a great start in my opinion yeah you’re not I mean you’re not wrong you’re not wrong I wonder how you get you know you get him to hear that I know you’ve been trying to reach out to him and stuff they’re not GNA talk to me they know better what do you what do you mean you could be an asset I look at you like uh Talent acquisition like you just said earlier maybe did you say it earlier where it’s like you you know you like kind of no I think uh I don’t know if you said it earlier like when you know you look into people right like you know that’s a good skill and to to be able to do so and you’re holding them to their own values so like what’s the big You’ think that like as far as that goes they’d be all for it you know you’re no I was I was too aggressive off the top you know and I’m still learning how to do this and you know I’m gonna scare some people away and I wish I didn’t do that one but you know that’s fair enough Le learning how to um approach people especially on a story like this like hey I’d like to get you on my show to talk about some [ __ ] that might not make you look very good sure that’s it’s tough dude and I’m still learning how to do is that why you put that sign up behind you oh yeah that’s a remind that’s a reminder for my guest and also very much for myself yeah I’m just absolutely that’s also uh that’s also part of my purpose here sometimes for Cole is I can say things like Pam alof is the wicked witch of Illinois cannabis or was and he actually reaches out and does an interview with so he doesn’t get to say stuff like that and that’s what I need I need a PR uh interviewer someone someone who could say what I’m thinking without my face on the smart move dude yeah it’s like a V you know ventriloquists it’s like the best secret the V the the puppet can say whatever the [ __ ] they want you know B my puppet I’m just joking Cole can I can I um can I tie in the parabola center link here why not go ahead yeah yeah so um you know when I was putting the story together all these people seemed connected in interesting ways and I really didn’t know how to I felt like there was a missing link so I ate some mushrooms one day and I was sitting on my backyard as yeah on the picnic table trying to put it together I remember I hit up Lal I said I think shellene title is gonna be the missing link in this whole story and then bam the next day she posted an interview with Ben Cohen I said wow that’s interesting and then I went back I found interviews with Killer Mike and panels she spoke on with um Derek Hamilton and it seemed like she tied the whole thing together and you know I’ve tried to get shayene on my show three times she didn’t go for it um at one point she told me one of my guests was kind of being a little racist or something or maybe I should be more careful with my guest selection and I offered her a spot I said hey if if this woman said anything that was incorrect please come on and correct it if something was wrong I will issue a correction or a retraction um she never went for it um cracked a couple jokes on my expense her her intern um Grant Smith Ellis was accusing me of being wanted for sexual misconduct in Vermont which is way over the line in my opinion and I sent that to her she didn’t do anything about it uh you know and some of her friends have just been super rude to me I’ve interviewed a couple people I interviewed Mor Maurice Stringer who was um attacked by a couple of the parabola Center Partners at nikan the Big Hope project guys um attacked him on camera and then were from what I saw anyway appeared to be stalking him on the street um some of the some of the folks that these people work with are are not they don’t seem to be good people you know and um you know uh we’ve asked shene about her connection ction with Forefront um we know we know she worked for Forefront that’s documented and she was a a minority shareholder at the beginning and uh you know I got muted for saying this the other night on a podcast but you know 10 months after after she worked for Forefront she worked for the Massachusetts cannabis Control Commission during her time on the Massachusetts cannabis Control Commission she they issued licenses for every MSO in the country they did a cure relief on like their second meeting they did Tru leaves and medmen and Bist and all all these type of msos and so for them to like start a a think tank and suddenly say oh we’re against the corporate cannabis like okay well why did you issued licenses for literally every shitty um corporate cannabis company in the country during your time when you were on the board there um but they’re not like they’re not like against corporate cannabis in general right right go look at the parabola CER I thought their thing was more like like antimonopoly like just trying to prevent anyone from NE from like becoming way too big well you know this is Phillip what I would describe in my opinion as pulling up the ladder behind you all go ahead continue I was just want I really want to explain who we’re talking about for folks that have no idea because I let you go I I wanted I wanted to like get what you were saying out but uh you mentioned names so shellene who’s this individual shellene title part of the parabola Center just background for folks real quick and then we can i’ I’ve just never heard her talk about stuff like when I’ve have like I’ve watched interviews with her and many things there’s nothing that she like has advocated for that to me is like a red flag yeah well you got to go back further than that man well I mean there’s you know I mean Cole just talked to someone who has like you know pictures of her as like a college student like holding up a canop sleeve you know like I I think she certainly back then was just in it for totally benevolent and well I got pictures of her doing panels with the people from kir Leaf so I mean well right but that’s what I’m saying it’s like her thing I thought was more like antimonopoly not necessarily like yeah if it’s anti monopo if it’s antimonopoly why are they issuing licenses to all the folks that are trying to monopolize this industry is my question Philip sorry to interrupt you too by the way well but that’s just it it’s like you’re can you deny you know like like in Illinois we have like this limit of like 10 you know you have limits you have like caps on how much you can own which you know who who knows how that’s enforced because the stuff is confidential anyway right but like uh yeah like that was the kind of thing I Envision her pushing so I don’t see her being like oh this company shouldn’t be licensed but it’s like you know how much market share does that company have you know is more was more her concern I thought well and you know hey um their Public Image is a lot of stuff I agree with her previous background body of work is stuff that I very much don’t agree with and you know um I maybe she learned from those mistakes no I I think maybe they’re correcting their um their image you know because yeah look they start in Colorado Colorado’s turned to a mess now they’re in Massachusetts Massachusetts is a mess now all of these and part of the point of this story is also that the people that were listening to to guide the policy on the Cannabis industry are not people that know a lot about cannabis they’re lawyers and there uh I think someone pointed out cops um you know and these are not in my opinion you know all the rules and regulations were written by people who spent the last several decades [ __ ] people over and and authorizing police to harass motorists take your [ __ ] and things like that and I feel like what’s happening now is that we are taking instructions from the same people who brought about all that Madness and expecting that we get a different result and I think that what we’re seeing in a lot of these states even Vermont which I said earlier I think has some of the most favorable um regulations in the country even some of the [ __ ] here I look at and I say I’d never start a [ __ ] business here the packaging regulations the you know they didn’t drop the Civil asset forfeiture piece uh you know and it it’s just it it’s wild to me that we’re listening to lawyers and policy wonks instead of people who actually grow weed and people who know about the plant and that really kind of drives me nuts yeah I’m getting my week sparked up too it’s this one of those awkward silences where yeah thanks thanks Phil yeah it’s a it’s a great Point man and look I don’t like to just [ __ ] on shelene title but like this Vicente cedarberg model you know I found some lawsuits involving Vicente cedarberg where she used to work Brian vente is on paper talking about how they take advantage of people to gain licenses and then don’t actually sometimes hire those people after they get the licenses they’ll make one company whose job is to go acquire the license and then they’ll transfer it to another company that actually operates under the license and they don’t they take advantage of black people and brown people to go get those licenses and they also it said he said hey um go uh use an instate name or someone with an instate address because it looks better on paper you know and also this rule they’ve invented about if you own less than 10% of a license you don’t have to put your name on it you know that allows people to get Equity into companies and in Vermont what happens right we have two law firms here in Vermont what happens is if you want to start a company in Vermont you pay 10 fair $3,000 or whatever their fee is they get you the license and that’s it what Vicente cedarberg did was say hey we’re going to go into these states with the super high cost of entry and you’re going to want to experience Law Firm to help you navigate the challenges of this and that and the other and then they take an equity stake in your company which came out in this lawsuit in Maryland where we find out that they have a 6 and a half% equity stake in this company and and Brian’s using instate names to make it look better and taking advantage of people to acquire licenses um and and that whole model has been used around the country they started in Colorado which was the first legal State and they have spread that model um across the country in in my opinion you’re talking about tax and regulate yeah and I’m also just talking about some of like vente strategies is their consulting firm and they were hired to work here in Vermont and I watched some of those meetings where they were in and it was a joke man they clearly don’t know about cannabis they know they’re lawyers they know about making laws and [ __ ] and a lot of the no no my my apologies for cutting you off continue no I think I was about out of [ __ ] I just you know I H you know viente cedarberg was the law firm viente strategies was the consulting firm and it almost looked like they just sent their consulting firm out in front of their Law Firm to you know pitch ridiculous rules in my opinion you know I was listening to them argue about the font size and um you know the color and the different type of fonts some fonts look more appealing to Children it was a joke man we should be talking about how we can make cannabis businesses successful and not talking about font sizes and you know colors that it was just silly yeah so to Phil’s Point um I’m gonna make to your point Caleb and to Phil’s Point let’s start with your point Caleb on their about page they do say the parabola Center is a nonpartisan think take of professionals and drug policy experts coming together to protect people not corporations so they do mention corporations there you know and that they’re not protecting corporations but at the same time I think Phil has a great point when one of my favorite papers by shellene tidle I love these suggestions here it’s not only by shellene tidle I think other people maybe she collaborated with it collaborated with people on it one allow people to grow a reasonable number of cannabis plants for personal use I think reasonable means uh no limit but anyways um one of the things that Phil was saying earlier sorry I’m high and just lost do not cap the number of business licenses available but limit how much of a market anyone person or entity May control so it’s not the idea that cure Cresco uh [ __ ] what is the one you said earlier Forefront Ascend what was the bo Wrigley one parallel I’m just naming all the I can think of it’s not that they can’t get licenses but they can’t it’s the idea that they can’t dominate the market you know again no Monopoly back to Phils but they but they are dominating the market aren’t they I mean they’re certainly trying to oh yeah absolutely they invest in limited licens markets I’ll quote Ben kovler he says why go why go to a knife fight when you can just sit at the beach in other words don’t go to like an open market where you like have to fight people when you could just go to a limited market and reel the [ __ ] money in right yeah well and you know the talk about the corporations just bugs me because you know if you’re going to partner up with someone like Ben Cohen who’s sold out Vermont Farmers to a gigantic multinational corporation that’s where you start to lose me man you know like a lot of the policy positions at the parab center I would probably agree with if I didn’t know any of this other [ __ ] they have a very nice a forward- facing position that I like but you know and you also go I mean I would also just say like you know like Parabola Center one of their Partners is Chicago normal who supports license caps no I but but I just think like you’re a group that big like you just you have to make uh friends with powerful people and you know like probably pick you probably don’t agree with everything that all of your partners do or say or believe you know what I mean yeah and if I own an organization like this I’d kick those [ __ ] right out of there if Big Hope project attacks Maurice stringer at Nan I’d kick them the [ __ ] out you wouldn’t be my partner anymore well because like doesn’t like cannabis Equity Illinois Coalition I think they also support license caps don’t they and they’re not like V opposed to them and some of these people here’s a quote from Jeff Pella who’s another yeah whatever um you know some of these people like um kany if you go to the nor the national craft cannabis Coalition um inside of that you have um kany which is the Cannabis Association of New York those guys actively clap when people get arrested like uh Legacy guys and part of the um sorry I’m looking polic POS yeah it’s okay um it’s it’s under n you gotta go down to n but National craft cannabis Coalition but you know some of those people uh she says that we don’t work with people who like to call cops or um you know people who take money from Big tobacco and if you go into the national craft cannabis Coalition you’re going to find kany and if you look on their Twitter page they just clap when people get busted um and I don’t [ __ ] with people like that at all I don’t deal with police I don’t like that [ __ ] and also the origins council with Janine Coleman um who has U collaborated with cir which in my opinion is a front for big tobacco um from what I’ve seen anyway and so you know you know and shene say she I think doesn’t doesn’t she say that about CP I mean I think the first time I heard about them was something she had said about them well hey we asked her about this man and she never wants to answer these questions and you know I’ve invited her on my show three times and including after I did this Ben con story where she reached out to Mike Crawford and asked if she came on my show if I would be fair to her like I’m fair to all my guests I’ve done 200 interviews in the last year and a half I’ve never had a problem and I’ve had cops on the show I’ve had people that I really disagree with and it always goes well and so I’m not sure why she’s reaching out to Mike for that you know I’ve offered her a spots multiple times and I was a little rude last time I talked to her but you know she I didn’t appreciate the way she approached me telling me I need to uh check my guests better um and then not coming on for rebuttle if you’re going to tell me that my guests are being slightly racist then um you should clarify that you know who were they no dude and the guest was Lissa bolivard I’ll tell you about it it was number 106 or something um and Lissa came on the show Lissa was the one who really put me in touch with all this viente cedarberg stuff and tied in a lot of these people and everything Lissa has told me has checked out except for one fact she said um shellene maybe stole pieces of her social Equity um bill that she was drawn to propose and I’ve never been able to confirm that I’ve also never been able to disprove that which U so that’s still open but I’ve also had another gentleman tell me the exact same thing and um you know whether or not that’s true I don’t know but I was told that on two separate occasions from different people um who didn’t speak to each other gotcha yeah and you know shelene was a smaller part of this story I just she was the tie in there and it is odd that to me also that Forefront announced a [ __ ] $55 million expansion 10 minut uh 10 months after she got off the board in Massachusetts um you know and again like I said at the beginning I’m not trying to prove a crime but these are facts that’s what happened um and you know I think think it’s odd that regulators and lawyers and all of these type of people are getting their friends these great deals while I watch other people um who have been doing this their whole lives struggled they can’t get a [ __ ] loan to get a business open and then that thing right there really bothers me um it it’s wild to watch you know the people who not to say shelene was involved in this but it’s wild to watch the the people people who scrutinize you for growing a plant now uh making a tax revenue off it I really I really don’t like that at all sorry who was the one that scrutinized for growing the plant oh I’m saying the the legislators the lawyers the the criminal justice system I’ve seen a lot of cops now involved in the Cannabis industry I’m seeing a lot of lawyers I’m seeing a lot of Judges who are getting spots on the the Vermont uh for example the Vermont marijuana Commission in 2017 there was at least one judge on there and uh you know a bunch of lawyers and it’s cool to have a lawyer in the room you should have a lawyer in the room to make sure that you’re not doing anything too crazy but we don’t need like one out of every two people to be a [ __ ] lawyer in the room you know that there was there’s three people on the Cannabis uh control board here in Vermont and 14 people on the advisory committee and they don’t know [ __ ] about growing weed you know they didn’t think to hire any uh weed growers even though you know I had a guy on my show John Rogers who was a senator for eight years who was a house rep for eight years who is a hemp farmer um it’s like a eighth generation Vermon who applied to be on the control board they didn’t even interview him instead we got uh James pepper who was a lawyer for the State’s Attorney’s office and the sheriffs you know so we got a cop lawyer in charge of the control board instead of a dude who actually knows about cannabis and in my opinion that’s why U state to state we’re seeing uh just a a trail of dumpster fires excuse me sorry if I just uh coughed right into your ears um yeah dude I mean I can get down with that I like it it is unfortunate that the [ __ ] legal cannabis industry seems to be all about regulation it goes back to something that uh Phil was saying earlier where it’s like we just need to drop all of the criminal penalties and you know like it’s it is tax and like the Cannabis regulation and tax act in the ill in Illinois but I really think it comes down to yeah regulating and taxing cannabis instead of removing the criminal penalties for cannabis which is really what needs to happen because how do you address social Equity without ending the [ __ ] cycle that perpetuates it and as long as criminal enforcement is the main enforcement mechanism for cannabis like yeah I have seen people applaud in New York uh the closing of those shops when you said canny earlier can I find anything about canny You’ have to scroll away that you’d have to scroll away back through their Twitter I don’t use Twitter very much anymore but that was you know you mean X I’m just joking Twitter yeah yeah whatever the [ __ ] it is now um um yeah this was this was like last year or maybe December I don’t know a while back um uh it was just disturbing to see and I’ve seen other groups doing this too and I just don’t support that at all man I don’t [ __ ] with the police and um I don’t [ __ ] with people who who call cops other people especially if some of those people are the folks who help build this entire industry yeah yeah like I say I I totally agree with that I’m trying to pull up their Twitter see if I can pull up you know what they like said approximately no it just well they they post a lot of stories and they would just um dude I have screenshot somewhere okay cool I mean yeah if you I’ll pull them up for you yeah yeah um it’s gonna we’re gonna have to do that later but I I have that it and I’ve talked to a number of people about it and you know I will also I can also get you the cir stuff with our connections to the origins Council okay that’s way back I’m gonna have to scroll a okay I understand if you want to do it right now I probably could but it would take me [ __ ] 20 minutes to scroll back there yeah [ __ ] and their search function online sucks sucks so bad so try on my phone right now it actually is better on the phone I just want to like be able to pull some of this [ __ ] up you know because like oh think cany is what the [ __ ] the handle is that’s why I’m not pulling it up so do what did they say like uh unlicensed shops or do you can you think of any buzzwords that’ll get me something I know I’m really right now those were definitely some of the stories yeah it was about the unlicensed shops getting busted in New York which uh yeah I don’t I would have to go back and I wish I had a Jamie yeah dude me too I need a secretary and a Jamie yeah so okay so I just looked up unlicensed on think canny um CCB chair see I wish this [ __ ] is [ __ ] that Twitter you can’t I’ll go back dude and get you some it’s way back there it’s like I can pull it up on my [ __ ] phone and I can’t pull it up here I wonder if I can connect via zoom on my phone and share my screen um we’ll try this out because I did find them saying stuff about unlicensed but let’s just take a look um I I mean I see the Miss CCB chair Tain 4ny so that’s the CCB chair issued a warning today that unlicensed adult use cannabis sales including those that involve the sale of an item accompanied by a gift of cannabis remain illegal and those who engage these sales quote run the risk of severe Financial penalties uh this was on October 21st 2011 at 3:24 pm I’ll actually send this to myself so that I can just share it on the screen because Twitter’s a [ __ ] piece of [ __ ] uh interface but there’s one I think that is that kind of what you were looking for yeah I mean and again I have screenshots of this it’s just so far back dude and I it would take me forever to [ __ ] find it right now yeah but I I’ll get you that after we’re done if if you really want it and I mean it’s just and I see a lot of people doing this and you know some of it seems kind of casual but you know some of the people that are being targeted by these arrests now oh you know what this is really easy there are three TW tweets by them that mention unlicensed but you probably have others sorry I feel like I just cut you off no no that’s good that’s yeah u i just it’s been a while you know I I stopped using Twitter so um the only reason I hopped on Twitter was to follow these investor groups because I like watching people get fleeced on their Investments and uh there’s so many [ __ ] [ __ ] investors on there it’s fun to watch yeah so um they’re replying to somebody Draft rules for they’ve got a thread trem oh yeah so they’re recapping what was said on a meeting in 1020 one and they say that train stress that any retail recreational Cannabis cells happening in NYS are not authorized or legal said that unlicensed cannabis is not tasted tested for safety and remains illegal address the illegality of cannabis gifted at the same time an item is sold so but they’re recapping in that case don’t you love how in the world of legal weed we still have illegal weed right it’s so [ __ ] stupid that’s what I’m talking about Phil you know and that [ __ ] really bothers me man that’s not people don’t even people don’t even question it for the most part though yeah so these three tweet fun these three tweets at least they’re quoting somebody so they’re not like advocating for anything on unlicensed but yeah give me those things and I’ll add them in I guess like post prod or we could even do a post call and like chop it in right here at this moment you know maybe we can get KY on my show we could talk about it yeah yeah I mean yeah I’ll be happy to I really don’t play around with cops man I cops have ruined they can you recall like did they say like you need to call the police if you see these like what did you mean that calling for dude I don’t even want to say it because I really don’t remember but I have yeah I don’t want to speak out of turn here but from my observation they seem to be um Pro enforcement against clearly unli uh unlicensed businesses and um I’m just not into that at all you know a lot of those unlicensed businesses are the reason that people have licensed businesses to begin with and I really just don’t think that we should be wasting law enforcement time and [ __ ] tax dollars to continue to bust people’s balls if this [ __ ] is legal to your point Phil yeah yeah it’s a strange world we live in yeah I’m about sh about out of [ __ ] too yo the Delta a stuff if you want I got a couple lab scientists out in uh California that I’ve been talking to that uh are super well schooled on the that’d be cool yeah dude I’d love to the creation of um synthetic canabo and um yeah the byproducts that are created yeah it’s way over my head but I got some good uh people on Deck sweet dude well hey check out the fine print folks anyways he said you got a little bit of stuff I don’t mean to get in the way of that um thank you I want to say thanks dude thanks for letting me talk and um you know I know I got a lot to say and U I’m kind of a heated prick sometimes but I appreciate the space to speak man um thank thank you both man yeah absolutely thank you try not to break anything over here so what you got yeah I think one of the things one of the things with cannabis too like the the industry in itself just seems so small when you look at it a lot of the time because like you know like Cole and I will always joke that we look like that Charlie Dame meme drawing like red lines from people to people like but it’s also just such a small new business and industry like it just doesn’t surprise me when like it just doesn’t surprise like when you do look at someone like a shaning title and she worked for like a Vincente cedarberg or Forefront or things like this it’s just like I don’t know it’s just like people just they get into it somehow and I don’t know that like they necessarily are always working for people that they like agree with or are super like just like all on board with you know 100% I agree with that sentiment like here in Illinois like like here in like here in Illinois like to me I mean I don’t I’m I’m not looking to work in the Cannabis industry but like to me I would feel weird working in any Regard in the Cannabis industry as it exists in Illinois because I think it’s so disgusting and tainted and awful but like I don’t judge people for working in it but anyone who’s going to be like an activist in the space or like turned on to the issue in Illinois is probably going to be in the industry in some regard so they’re going to be working for for a company like Cresco or you know whoever fny mention you know like so yeah like I think that’s also like that’s part of the issue when you like look at all this stuff it’s like it’s easy to like see it as some Grand conspiracy but this is the meme that Phil was referencing earlier by the way I always do this for myself because this is no I yeah that’s why I did this yeah oh you’re yeah yeah I got a thing here hold up hold up what we got look is that showing this is this is a bill that hold on it’s showing the your file explorer but it’s not showing the um picture I think that you clicked on it’s all good there we go there we go this is a bill that shene title worked on this is the mcba model bill um with the generous support of Avon calari who is the COO of Cresco as you had mentioned there Phil um you know and we tried to ask her some questions about this you know about generous support um usually when I describe someone as generous it’s because they gave me something and sometimes something is money um i’ really like to know about that and the work that went in there you know when we try to ask her about this she she got very dodgy and we still never got a straight answer on that um keep that up if you could oh [ __ ] oh sorry there we go another group I recognized on there though is the THC Staffing Group which I just had uh Danielle who was also a part of the parabola Center on my show yeah well didn’t Chene start the THC Staffing Group probably probably with Danielle they went to college together dude and N ssdb which is yeah with and that they were there they’ve been there though since like the 80s and stuff the 70s it’s crazy I’ve been F finding newspapers SSD leap normal yeah leap which is another group I don’t yeah back to Phil’s point no it’s okay I I heard you you said you to recap for folks if I accidentally cut you off can I take that down sure you said uh you don’t [ __ ] with leap law enforcement action something no no and I’ve interviewed some cops that are in the Cannabis industry one of them’s here in Vermont and I I just don’t think law enforcement has any place in this industry whatsoever at all or or dictating policy I I would say certainly not at least for like a couple you know two decades at least you know too soon too soon fair fair too soon if you’re a cop in two decades you likely weren’t arresting that many people for weed yeah damn I forgot I almost want to pull up if I can pull up the captions I forgot what we were saying here full transcript um oh man this is long it’s okay uh you were saying leap oh yeah all these people they’re they like back to Phil’s Point sorry my bad I’m high uh these people it’s almost like you got a point here they’re all there and like khik kabari he’s in my document as well he was sued for some like uh I think he set up cbai Phil he was one of the people that kind of set up CBI and that or something before that maybe I think it was it was something before that it was like a slightly different but same concept was the Illinois Relief Fund I think it was MCI but anyways we’re getting into the sand yeah no I was Cur I was curious about that yeah no I can provide you my document you’ll be able to if you do a little search of KH uh that guy’s name you’ll find it K Kavon Kavon sorry I’m saying it wrong um Kavon so anyways but back to Phil’s point that I think is a good point like yeah there’s it’s like the Charlie Day meme again like they’re all there they’ve been there like I’ve got pictures of them at these protests back in the day when they’re smoking weed in front of the cops when they shouldn’t be and yeah leap was there normal was there sstp was there um I’m sure other people that went to in fact Phil one of the uh hash Wednesday interviews I just did he was like oh yeah my buddy he works at KPMG now I was like uh it was just kind of funny connection that’s what I’m talking about yeah yeah yeah yeah so there’s all so KPMG by the way uh Caleb is the licensing company that totally botched our Lottery and you know there’s all these weird connections even somebody from KPMG was tied to license they’re like an accounting firm I think is what they they actually do yeah they’re an accounting firm so they’re you know they’re all over the place but they do you say one of them one of them had a tie to a license in Illinois correct they were a social Equity candidate but oh of course yeah right you get it so uh but they also just apparently botched George was it Georgia or who was who was I talking to the other day Phil uh it was fun Alabama I think Alabama we heard about Alabama and it sounded so much like Illinois I was like who did your licensing and he’s like oh KPMG I was like oh my god um you know and then well and KPMG doesn’t even do it KPMG got the no contract and then they outsourced it to another company for a fraction of that money and then that company hired a bunch of recently graduated uh college students or you know a bunch of recent college graduates and paid them you know probably like super shitty 20 something bucks an hour to I can provide all that to you as well Caleb it’s in that same document crazy [ __ ] and it’s all all these ties right did you say it was a no bid contract yeah yeah I see a lot of that happening in Vermont not not just with cannabis lot lot of other areas yeah wild boy yeah and you know boy our state hired a consulting firm called Ro consulting which has a former CIA agent on it like I don’t know if uh weed companies really want uh Spooks poking around their [ __ ] business but to me that was wild you know and I was the only one that spotted that and uh you know nobody really the board never addressed my concerns about it but I thought that was a legitimate concern man if I own the weed company right now I don’t want no former CIA agents coming into my know looking at my books or Consulting me in any way like stay away from me there’s uh there’s one cannabis company here in Illinois well they’ve done a couple weird things but their dispensary brand is called alus and they either it’s I don’t know if he’s just a consultant that they hired to do security part he might be part of their ownership it’s like um the guy used to be like like The Bodyguard for the drugs are and they like took they like took PPP loans out um and I’m you know I’m pretty sure they got their social Equity license by paying the like 10 people to be on the payroll so I would just love to know if any of the PPP loan money was used to pay those people’s wages I you know what’s funny is that I found alas in yours because I was looking at another company with the same name here in Vermont which is owned by Chris Hagadorn who is the son of Jim Hagadorn who is the CEO of Scots Miracle Grow and and runs the Hawthorn Investment Group um so I think the PPP thing is that the company Phil that did the PPP thing that is the craziest thing dude I can try to pull this up right now but one attorney said that it this if it’s not sheer negligence either way even if it’s negligence it’s a federal crime what they did did getting these PPP loans maybe it was another company G yeah because there were multiple rounds because there was multiple years of the pandemic so in the first round a bunch of cannabis companies applied and got money and then they were told to give it back uh and that they shouldn’t apply in the future and this company applied after that statement right and just got some [ __ ] money and then again back to but there’s also that other dispensary that has a cop among its ownership that was the first Equity dispensary they also took out a PPP loan it was for much less it wasn’t for 200 Grand it was only for like 44,000 or something like that their explanation was that they weren’t a cannabis company yet because they didn’t have a license Y and that goes back to my point about Ben’s company they’re not a cannabis company either it’s a nonprofit that licenses out their packaging and [ __ ] and you know so they they’re not subject to the same rules and regulations necessarily yeah so um according to federalpay.org on May 1st 2020 Vice Partners which I believe is tied to this Altius company we’re talking about if I’m not mistaken am I wrong in that alus is like the is like you know it’s like Cresco is to Sunny Side I believe okay so it’s like a brand yeah this I think this one’s though the gri Holdings which is a different company in Illinois so I might be that’s green Rose that’s that oh green Rose they in Connecticut too I don’t think so I think they’re only in Illinois at the moment oh we follow a little story in Connecticut with a company called Green Rose maybe we have to Circle back to that one Phil yeah I mean the these people don’t give a [ __ ] about cannabis so it doesn’t surprise me that their company names are not creative so um I just realized that these are two different stories so I said on May 1 there’s Vice Partners so that might be the altest tie but then I said similarly there’s gri Holdings but anyways whe whatever the cases regarding PPP loans plant touching companies that received federal aid from PPP as a result of the economic term oil must should return the funds immediately an attorney who leads the Cannabis Practice Group at Dickinson Right Said and um you know he basically said initial PPP loan did not have specific guidelines but if they were made on or after the April 15 guidelines he said quote I don’t know how this literally doesn’t rise to the level of fraud whether you do it with intent to deceive or it’s done with Reckless disregard with respect to what the rules said still trying to figure out how cannabis companies are publicly traded they like oh we list them in Canada where it’s federally legal it’s like yeah but that money’s coming back here right you’re trading companies that are operating in the United States you know all the big msos are listed on the Canadian exchanges and right you know that sure seems like uh you know if you or I did it we would be arrested for um you know moneya laundering or some kind of um racketeering or something it’s very strange to me how they skirt these federal regulations and make everybody else abide by them yeah I mean for to an extent they do have to comply with some federal regulations like they’re always bitching about 28 and all that [ __ ] you know but none of them pay their taxes anyway that’s a good point yeah I mean what is that story where they said they don’t even pay their taxes because they’re just like I can’t remember what I like Phil it was on marijuana word up Phil yeah they don’t they don’t pay their taxes wasn’t that on marijuana moment they said they just don’t even pay their taxes I’m trying to think where I saw that story and they have options to restructure their debt which I talked about with um David rabinovich which I thought was a really good interview where he talked about refinancing some of these um bad real estate deals and things of that nature which is over my head but you know a a lot of normal people don’t have those type of options available to them where these big corporations uh you know can yeah Kick the Can down the road if if you can’t afford your taxes yeah it would just R structure that [ __ ] and yeah so I did find a reference on MJ Biz daily it says close readers of cannabis company financial statements have realized that many marijuana ENT Enterprises are financing themselves through non-payment of federal taxes it’s very funny way of saying it evasion we we save money by not following the law yeah yeah I mean to the to their point it does the taxes do [ __ ] [ __ ] suck they get pay tax like what 80% or some [ __ ] like that the 280 it’s like an Al it’s a res residual from the alcapone days if I’m not mistaken it is some well you have to wonder if uh like social Equity operators are going to have to pay their taxes like I know Illinois already Illinois uh like did away with the 28 thing at the state level it was like a big thing the companies that operated here wanted but yeah I wonder if like you know just be another way the new operators would be disadvantaged and you know from the when I interviewed Tim Fair way back last year he’s one of the two law firms here in Vermont that handles cannabis he said yeah that 280e tax code if you are running a um dispensary could raise your effective tax rates to 70 75% which is I I I don’t even know how you [ __ ] run a business under those those kind of conditions especially with the property values here in Vermont just going up and up and up and the taxes and you know the regular property taxes and [ __ ] like that it’s crazy yeah it is nuts well we and we didn’t even have a lottery yeah neither did we really no Oh I thought you guys I thought you guys had a lottery out there supposedly yeah Phil you want me to try to find the video to show let’s just see like what Caleb thinks when he sees this video if I can find it real quick can you just stuff the boxes and buy as many votes as you want like Phil try not to try not to spoil the real thing real quick but yeah maybe one thing I guess that just to your question you can kind of stuff the boxes you could buy as many licenses as you want or uh applications as you want the first round so the odds were in your favor if you made made more money or if you had more money rather so that you could spend all you know all those applications but there really was no Lottery yeah it was it was fake the fix was in just with the they released a video are you trying to find the video Cole uhhuh I’m trying to find the video when you look at the video it’s like something that you would put out in the Soviet Union to like cover up what you’re actually doing it’s it’s it’s insane some propaganda yeah when he shows you it I’ll say more because I don’t want to ruin it but it’s you already ruined it Phil now I know it’s propaganda yeah pretty wild I’m getting mad that I can’t pull I mean even the fact that they like put it out was just weird like this is the cover up before the crime just so you don’t ask questions yeah that’s good you want to pre cover it up you don’t want to wait till later to do damage control son of a [ __ ] you can never F oh hey I found it folks I found it I just about gave up on it yes we just about gave up let’s actually watch it let’s see it should still be on the actual state of Illinois website oh my God it is let’s look at it I also I also archived it just in case but so yeah if this fails I do have it archived and I can quickly pull it up but here it is just want to see what Caleb thinks about this hi Illinois I’m toy Hutchinson senior advisor to the governor on cannabis control I’m here to walk you through the process for the upcoming conditional adult use dispensary license lotteries three separate lotteries will be held in the coming weeks on July 29th the lottery for the cut score applicants will be held on August 5th social Equity Justice involved applicants will be held and on August 19th the final Lottery will be held for topc scoring tied applicants these lotteries will follow the same process the Illinois Lottery has been using for years here’s how the process will work each applicant that is eligible to take part in the lottery is assigned an ID number these numbers will be available on the idfpr website in advance of the lotteries idfpr will provide the Illinois Lottery with a list of ID numbers that are eligible for the specific Lottery being held that day to Ure the process is completely blind and protect the validity of the results the Illinois Lottery will use an automated system to input the ID numbers and have an independent auditor present throughout the entire process a lottery what is that a company by the independent auditor will then run The Lottery by clicking a button on the digital drawing system using a random number generator the digital draw Matrix randomly draw numbers to select the winning ID numbers this process process will be done 17 times for each Lottery once for each of the so I mean you get I’m going to keep playing this like kind of in the background here but uh see these guys see These Guys these guys are trustworthy though they’re they had they did a so when Illinois first passed wreck all the existing medical operators got a like free license for a wreck only shop yeah they they had to do a lottery for where for where it would be like what region it would be in the state so at least I think that’s what the lottery was for but either way uh they had to do a lottery the existing operators so all like the big MSO companies mostly yeah so the top one was what that Lottery looked like where they let them all sit in a room and watch them pick balls out of a giant thing but for social Equity you just got to trust these two guys white guys with the one this guy’s got a clipboard though that’s what’s important yeah so how how do these social Equity programs go so wrong in every state you know it’s not these guys fault it makes me wonder about the people who proposed those rules in the beginning and you know it’s just kind of a joke to me honestly I qualify for social Equity I couldn’t even afford a [ __ ] background check in Vermont right now it’s $500 get out of here yeah back to you know Phil’s points though like you know at least with the with regard to the law in Illinois you know I don’t want to speak out a term here but I know that the Danielle person that I mentioned earlier that has ties to the parabola Center was behind a competing Bill competing against what happened here in Illinois and it would actually have been a stronger like homeg grow measure and I’d be happy to try and substantiate that a little bit more but you I could start by um just telling people to look into repres representative Carol Ammons here in Illinois she gave a passionate speech which I’ve got on my YouTube channel I’d play it right now but it’s six minutes long you should take the time six minutes and it’s really crazy she had yeah send it over I’ll listen to it yeah absolutely I will send it to you and I’ll include it uh you know in the podcast description folks um as I mentioned earlier um but it’s it’s really good stuff and basically if you look at her law which again was competing with what happened in adult useth here in Illinois again I maybe speaking out of term but I know that Dan Danielle Schumacher who is behind the THC Staffing group has really close ties to the Ammons family and and worked hand inand and has we were at those protests back in the day like I can pull those pictures up of her and shayene back at those smoke weed uh [ __ ] the police protests back in the day here in Illinois yeah that’s okay um show me a picture of them getting arrested for weed I’ll be more impressed but yo I I I believe you you don’t have to pull that they didn’t have arrest those years and I know a lot of people were there and I’m not trying to discredit anybody’s work that they’ve done you know yeah but I’m definitely um you know I look I question everything man and um this would have been easier if she just came on my show we could have done this I probably would have had a great interview how that happened can I ask that is that out of term how what to ask like what what do you think happened there like why did not well um I think what happened was you know I started asking some questions some of my friends also have asked some questions of them that were really uh she got very Dody you know and every time you ask a question it seems like there’s an army of goons this was back when I was using Twitter which I don’t use much but there’ be an army of goons that would just come out for example Grant Smith Ellis who was her intern who was accusing me of being wanted for sexual misconduct in Vermont and I approach jene with that information you know and I’ll tell you right now Cole if you were my intern and you were on the internet um falsely accusing people of sex crimes you wouldn’t [ __ ] work for me anymore you know I approached shelene with that information she never responded to it but you know our initial um um contacts were um you know I I followed her for a while the first thing she ever said to me was after the interview I did with Lissa bolivard where she said you know you you should be more careful with the guests that you have on your show uh you know she just slandered um five or six people of color her and I said okay if she’s if there was some slander there and chalene’s a lawyer she should know the definition of slander the first part about slander is that you have to say something that’s not true so there you go yeah this is just for folks to Google it and I was just explain it for you as well Caleb if you want to check out the speech it’s 7 minutes and 58 seconds long so but she basically you know uh put a no no vote bill in for this bill and everybody should check out this speech because it basically kind of talked on or I think it touches on everything we were complaining complaining about earlier where these laws do not go far enough to address the actual root of the issue the War on Drugs yeah know they never will either you know because that would admit that would force law enforcement and the government to admit that they’ve made a terrible mistake and they just don’t like admitting things like that you know God forbid they had to give you all your [ __ ] back that was stolen yeah they already used that to buy new police cars and and guns and stuff yeah yeah I gotta pee I gotta pee wicked bad Cole dude why don’t you go and we can come back we can come back why don’t you go to the bathroom the came in there got high and then he’s like back Fresh brand new man here we are here we are yeah but yeah dude thanks again for your time uh gentlemen I really appreciate it yeah dude anytime you know I try to like I feel like it’s good to take again I I know this might be a little cheesy so I’ll just devote like 10 seconds to it at most but I do think it’s what’s going to make this show stand out like we’re going to take the time to have these conversations and flesh them out look at things and it’s no rush you know um people can skip through it or look at the transcript to contr F to hear to see what they want to find or whatever you know it’s technology so it’s good you know this good history to put down on the record you know so and I hope you don’t see I hope you don’t see Ben Cohen doing the same thing in the Cannabis industry that they’ve done with the dairy industry because that’s what it looks like to me and that was the main throut of this story was just you know yeah I actually downloaded a little picture to like it’s not perfect because another picture actually that I found made your point even better but I couldn’t find it in high resolution enough but unil lever so there’s this map that I love I’ve like referenced it since I was in high school and uh they like update it regularly you know because it’s just getting bigger and bigger but under unil lever there was that again not on this picture but the other picture there was that brand you mentioned earlier what was it the cheese brand cabit cabit yeah there was the C but then you can see here Brandon Jerry’s kondik Magnum baby and look at these other companies these are the worst companies in the world right here nasle cocacola sent who sent people to Coca-Cola who sent I’m just joking I love Columbian hit squads to [ __ ] murder their employees when they tried to Union on they also have a [ __ ] Monopoly on the cocoa Leaf as a CO as a soda producer in the United States which is interesting even Pepsi wants that like I’ve heard that Pepsi tried in the government was just like nah [ __ ] you and I say I’ve heard I think I heard it on a podcast or something so folks you know do your own research epsi doesn’t have and look at Mars over there with Wrigley you see Wrigley right there and that’s you know I I never realized chewing gum was such a [ __ ] massive Fortune but you know Bo Wrigley was you know the guy from parallel but you know what’s interesting about this is that you’re you know you’re going to see cannabis somehow fit into this because that’s how they’re structuring cannabis too Phil you remember like the Box Brown Maps like this looks like a box Brown map like we could just add yeah Brian’s Brian’s great man um but I feel like that’s what it’s going to be and that’s what they’re structuring themselves after would you agree like these the cannabis companies now you know Phil at least in they talk about all all about brand portfolio and stuff like that so they’re all about you have like this brand but then you have like Brands under that brand or I don’t know you’ve got I mean they just do that they just do that to confuse people they just come out with new brands so someone sees something new on a shelf because they they just yeah yeah true there’s only so you especially here there’s only like you know there’s probably actually producing product most of the product is produced by like seven or eight companies well we could just pull up a menu too just to make the same in Connecticut where 100% of their Market is owned by these msos and that’s all they have there is there really isn’t any small Mom and Pops in Connecticut it’s a like four msos that run the whole show you know and and to get a social Equity license there they got what you call an equity joint venture right where you’re basically forced to partner with an MSO to get a a social Equity license like is that what social Equity is about in some of these states you only have to own like 10% in Vermont for social Equity you got to own 51% of the company some of the other states it’s like 10 and then they just squeeze you out of your Equity a few years down the road and then you don’t have a [ __ ] business anymore so uh I’m just pulling up a menu not that this like makes a crazy point but it’s just kind of funny to look at so you you know you got Cresco flower but these these are like different brands and this one even says like it’s funny because it’s in Illinois but it says fig Farms California Cannabis if I pull it up here which is totally misleading you know but that’s the brand brand and it’s it’s I believe to make the point this this brand and this brand I think they’re under the same like company but you know you’d think they’re different companies this is technically a Cresco brand right here you’d think like oh this is uh some other company and in fact it says premium cannabis flour you know and it just it doesn’t look like on its face a Cresco product but it is in the Cresco portfolio of products to Phil’s point this I think these good green and stuff so high Supply is another yeah why does one say why does one say California weed when you’re in Illinois yeah you know what’s funny is Phil did you hear this point uh somebody made this 93 boys it says Chicago made but if you look up where that is grown yeah I’ll just show you this because you’ll you’ll love stuff like this so it says you know it’s a Chicago and they Market themselves as a Chicago based brand and then you when you look up where the weed is actually grown I’m pulling it up right now God Dam it Pakistan yeah right um share my screen here so Anna Illinois right and this is super super close to Chicago granted like I’ll give them that it is pretty close to Chicago so let me show you so here’s Anna there’s Chicago I’m just just joking it’s very far away from Chicago it’s probably as far away as you could get from Chicago with while still buing being in Illinois can’t be a lot of room to grow weed in Chicago growing weed in the city seems incredibly hard I mean finding real estate to to set up an operation like that uh it seems like you gotta kind of do it out of town yeah I mean yeah I agree actually no I I totally agree I’m just saying that uh you know you look on this label and it says Chicago made and maybe it’s just referring to the brand can be misleading you know people think like oh it’s Chicago weed you know well hey look at this can I do a screen share absolutely I got one more for you um where is this where is this picture hold up let me figure this out oh bill you haven’t done a screen share tonight you want to do a screen share I’m just joking there we go um where where do we go tab around okay hold up there we go think I did it we’ll probably wrap up here in the next 10 to 15 yeah cool yeah I’m I’m pretty smoked here um is that working yep I see it cool so this was the flyer that Ben Cohen gave me at Nan last year in July of 2022 or whenever it was and it says great pot all of our cannabis is soil grown by some of Colorado’s most conscientious independent craft Growers and that’s something that really caught my attention because if you go back to the website um you know what you’ll see is it says it’s grown by some of the most conscientious cultivators around yeah a little it’s a little different than Colorado um you know I don’t know if Colorado is around Vermont but it sure looked like um they were getting ready to uh set up for federal legalization and you know bring Colorado weed here and sell it as opposed to maybe supporting some some more local folks in my opinion I was about to say the same thing it seems like maybe they uh were uh gonna make it make a move to Colorado and he was reusing his pamphlets he didn’t want to go to uh what is it uh Kinkos well and actually I think what happened was he put his phone number on the pamphlets if you go through the pamphlet it’s actually blacked out in a couple sections and it looked like they had to like uh redact some information I don’t I don’t know if it’s up there but I have a picture of it from Nan where it looks like maybe he published some of his personal information and had to go through and cross it out but yeah yeah here’s what you were saying you were saying some of the best doesn’t say from Colorado well in this instance it actually does say from bermont oh wow they’ve changed it because that used to say um some of the most conscientious indep dependent craft Growers around uh so okay wow a little update there yeah so you can see the discrepancy though right on the flyer they said Colorado and then you know yeah maybe that was a little typo Ben uh let’s let’s see we can actually prove your point here perhaps I’ve done this before it’s uh Phil you remember when I did this with gifting it was up and then it was down and then it was up and then it was down and people can look into this [ __ ] so do you remember when you started looking into this Caleb when you first maybe saw that yeah it was it was at Nan in July of last year 2022 okay but when did you see it on the website I’m saying you said you updated they updated well I I went home boy i’ I’d have to look through there well I’m looking at November 28th of 2022 let’s see I have screenshots on my Facebook where I posted about this exact [ __ ] I have to go back and dig that up for you too but um problem yeah um the pamphlet that I showed the screen share of was from July of last year um and so I would say the last time I looked at this website was about June or or so this year so or maybe May June because I dropped a story in April late April and um I feel like I double and checked everything on here um pretty carefully and oh I’m not I I hope I it doesn’t come off as me like asking you like that no no no no uh no and I think that is a change dude I I really um I’m glad you pulled that out because now I mean it certainly is I’m looking at it to your point we’re on what oh wait a minute oh I guess I didn’t scroll down far enough here we go and I know uh I know Ben watched my expose some people went into Nan and asked him about it at his table they wouldn’t let me in I got um thrown out of knan you got thrown out literally not thrown out they wouldn’t dude I was nominated for two awards at Nan and Boston for um oh [ __ ] uh best information source and Vermont cannabis activist of the Year even though I’d never described myself as an activist but so here it is oh sorry here it is in October 4th 2022 and it says Vermont still but let’s go back a little bit further is this the oh is this the way back machine yeah yeah I was just thinking find I was thinking could find it yeah maybe I’m um having a bad memory too um but I’m pretty sure it said the most conscientious cultivators around um at one point so yeah here’s a oh look at this it says in Massachusetts oh huh how about that Cole I never saw that one wow so you know can send me over can you send me over the link for that please actually I can um hold on a second I got to think about how to do that well I mean uh I think actually yeah this is the link 2022 yeah because it’s 201228 08220 yeah so I’ll send this to you right now and folks if you you know do what I just did on the Wayback machine you can find it as well thanks for that Cole oh yeah no no problem Oh and here that’s a nice that’s a nice nugget I’m sending you two links I’ve got the link so that that second link it’s important you copy copy and paste the entire thing I know just half of it looks like a hyperlink but it’s important you copy and paste the entire thing and then the first link of course it’s just a YouTube link but um but yeah so yeah I mean but let me go back just a little bit further and we can wrap Massachusetts son of a [ __ ] but you know um I don’t know what my point in bringing up those other brands is I look at this the same way you know like uh uh it seems like he was spreading his net seeing where he could license his brand you know that Phil when I bring up Phil said they Phil said they trying to hide it like or yeah yeah sorry to cut you off man but yeah okay I I agreed with Phil’s point on that one no and I agree with it too it’s trying to yeah you’re you’re putting that’s what [ __ ] white labeling is yeah that’s that’s what I’m the point I’m trying to make you know is like uh they’re they’re definitely they’re doing white labeling which is definitely misleading but I’m saying that I don’t know a lot of people do it and that doesn’t make it right or wrong I’m just saying that it’s like a common practice I see with different brands is all it’s like brands are just [ __ ] misleading yep you know so it’s not really like a a retort to what you’ve said just pH Phil chime in there man you’re right no like uh well it’s like Cole you and I were talking with um that guy at uh that event we were at last week and he was saying that like arise no no no oh like the company arise like the MSO I guess that they’re at least in Arizona and Illinois they don’t actually grow any of their own weed in Illinois it’s this company Wellness Group Farms that actually owns and maintains the license and the grow facility and arise is just um like they’re essentially I mean they have the A license they have many licenses or I don’t know how it exactly is structured but they’re not like growing aeroponic cannabis in the state which is what their like brand is yeah but then like 93 boys and like days off these are all other brands of theirs too it’s just such a [ __ ] mess no and the woman that Ben Cohen has growing for him Le doell has a farm called OG farms and she’s been a junk B trator in Wall Street for the past 20 plus years now moving back to Vermont you’re gonna open a farm called OG Farms like give me a [ __ ] break you know um you guys aren’t OG’s you guys are opportunists and um you know maybe trying to undercut some of their real ogs here who are really passionate about this and you know I I just I can’t get behind a lot of that stuff oh yeah well uh Caleb you know I think that ultimately you know history is going to reflect kind kindly on our efforts I do believe we’re all coming from you know like the same place here trying to make sure that weed is actually [ __ ] legal you know like I think that’s one of the things that underscored this entire conversation like the just enforcement no matter what state we’re talking about criminalization that’s one of the things yeah like Cole and I Cole and I like to reduce it to the level of like the business stuff and the licensing is all so [ __ ] we just have to stop all the criminal enforcement like cuz if you can stop all the criminal enforcement like if you can grow and possess and have as much weed as you want like I feel like a lot of that business [ __ ] will kind of like Get sorted out because you’re you’re essentially then legalizing I mean you’re you’re really legalizing and getting rid of any kind of Black Market because people can just grow their own weed or get it from their friend or so it’s like that that’s the ultimate check and the ultimate like [ __ ] you to all you know any [ __ ] that really goes on in my mind because like you know in a place like Illinois it’s like they can’t fight that rhetoric either because they’re supposed to be these weed companies that are all for legalization so it’s hard to argue with just letting plants be plants and and not [ __ ] with people yeah then just stop putting people in jail for weed period like we we in Illinois we had there was a guy house got raided for nine plants like SWAT raided his house for nine plants thank God everyone’s safe now all the kids are safe that’s ridiculous yeah yo thanks thanks for having me on again guys Phil Co I appreciate it yeah Caleb anytime and uh once again folks it’s the fine print um Caleb I hope you had fun tonight I did yeah I I appreciate this Bas to speak man I did this story in April and I struck out with all 26 newspapers in Vermont and nobody wanted to hear about it so thank you yeah well yeah and you know if anything comes up you know that you know how it is you like step away from one of those conversations you’re like godd damn it I should have brought this up or whatever just reach out you know um we’ll make it we can make it happen again um it’s an open platform so I’ll get you some lab guys too yeah those Delta eight people I would love to speak to because I feel like that’s an example of the continuation of the War on Drugs you know people are advocating for it to be illegal and I just you know whether you like it or not again I think criminalization is not the answer just don’t do it if you don’t like it you know yeah the cannabis companies here were literally pushing to get it all banned when they when they sell it themselves like the first time I ever tried it Delta 8 was from an Illinois dispensary it wasn’t from a [ __ ] gas station like they say well I guess they they were trying to get it banned by by anyone but them right yeah right yeah absolutely it’s dangerous if they’re not making it and they literally said because it competes with their market share and they’re also allowed to buy from random hemp producers anywhere in the country mhm to like supplement their supply right so they act like they’re holier than hemp but then they use hemp you know so anyways well um yeah again though I was trying to just say you know if you step away from here you know I always welcome back and I hope that yeah you had a good time and you felt that I gave you the space it’s cool it’s sad to hear that you didn’t feel you got the space other places but I’m glad to hear you felt you got it here yeah so and I’m still working on this I’m ripping into all the partners uh now so there’s going to be a followup and uh yeah I do I do appreciate your time man it was honestly a little too much time I could have left 15 minutes ago it’s okay yeah I you know the long format thing is kind of kind of the thing and yeah I you know interesting stuff here so folks I hope you found this uh conversation interesting I sure did we’ll see you in the next episode of the COO take care peace guys