The Cole Memo

In this episode, I speak with Adam Terry from DrinkCantrip.com

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Adam welcome to the cole memo it’s it’s a pleasure to be able to speak with you again uh we’ll tell folks where we met in a moment but first you know I’m seeing all this chatter on Twitter and I’m hearing all about it people are seeing THC Beverages and uh cannabis products pop up on shelves across the United States uh briefly can you tell us what what’s going on here why is how is this able to happen uh this is able to happen because in 2018 Mitch McConnell and Donald Trump legalized cannabis in the United States under a a specific set of circumstances but deao legalized Edibles in the US that is very well put folks you’re listening to 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 within that description you’ll find a link which which will take you to our website which will display the transcript and the platforms where you can find the episode in audio or video formats if you’re unable to locate the episode description on whichever platform you’re listening from I get it every platform is different simply note the episode number and visit the co memo.com from there you can find the corresponding episodes and then you’ll be able to find the audio video or transcript version of that episode you might also find any links that we reference during this episode we will be referencing a few so that you might be able to do your own research or purchase some tasty products if you’re not listening to this episode of the coal memo on patreon then you’re listening to this episode later than our patrons to become a patron go to the memo.com patreon it’s a great way to support our show one of the best ways to support our show is free subscribe to follow or share our show your engagement and support is appreciated today is November 8th 2023 and I am joined by Adam Terry from canant trip I got your name right um I’m surprised with myself I’m generally bad with names drink cant.buy is with his pen his hemp pen um really I didn’t I know that existed that’s great yeah yeah he was proud he signed the bill with his hemp pen here he is signing the finalized Farm Bill he was very proud of that um so as he should be he did a great service to this country he just didn’t realize what that would mean right right and so uh before we get into to what you might have just meant by that uh tell us a little bit about uh drink can trip yeah so thank you for that it’s great to be here uh cantrip is a uh cannabis beverage we actually started out in the dispensary system in Massachusetts I’ve been working in cannabis for quite a while always wanted to create a beverage we started out with some lowd dose offerings here in the dispensary system and just last year in 2022 uh we started making the same products from hemp and uh selling them in Minnesota Tennessee Texas New Jersey Minnesota and you know a broad set of uh States if you order from us directly online uh we make uh a pretty broad array of products we have lowd dose seltzers 3 milligrams of THC or 5 milligrams of THC we have sodas in 10 milligram and 50 milligram formats and we have an energy drink in 10 m format as well so we really trying to be the Cannabis drinks company trying to have a broad set of products to you know really meet people where they are rather than try to force them into either a low dose or high dose kind of format and you know um bring uh I think of it as drink uh accessibility for drinks by creating a wide set of drinks you can meet more people where they’re at very cool very cool and uh it’s always interesting to hear about folks it’s not the first time we’ve heard it but I always like to to make sure to uh acknowledge it you just said you know you’ve uh were in dispensaries and now you know you’re operating in the hemp space I even think I saw a a viral article uh that maybe your products were featured in am I wrong and thinking that you were in that article that went viral about the the liquor shops in Minnesota that that is caring oh the yeah total so Total Wine and More which is a national retailer yeah uh for beer Wine and Spirits one of the biggest in the country just started carrying THC beverages in Minnesota only but you know um since Minnesota cified the farm bill loophole in in law in 2022 there’s now hundreds of brands in Minnesota and elsewhere that have been uh working their way into that market so I’m I’m particularly proud that kantri made it onto that set it’s really just a big news for the category as a whole that National retailers are finally taking this seriously yeah yeah like I say it’s I saw it go viral I didn’t really understand the significance of it but it’s it’s apparently that it’s a pretty big well-known chain that’s carrying these beverages yeah you know there’s not like a direct comparison to like Target or Walmart or something just because this country is such varied and different liquor laws which is actually one way that liquor laws are similar to hemp laws um but the you know total wine is one of the largest retailers of beer wine alcohol in this country uh they are also you know they’re well known for you know it’s similar to how Walmart became well known for trying to put Mom and Pop shops out of business Total Wine is kind of that for uh for the liquor industry it’s not it’s not really beloved by a lot of local retailers but they are pretty serious when it comes to moving volume um they have one of the most bizarre pricing structures I’ve seen so far for any retailer um because you you probably know that in like dispensaries typically stuff is priced about how much thc’s in there um this the total one is decid to price based on the sum total of THC and CBD which has actually made cantrip I think the cheapest thing on the Shelf because cantrip is one of the few that doesn’t have CBD in most of our products and so you can get uh canri at a total wine for $10 for a four pack which is the cheapest place in the country um to purchase it but I mean it’s just kind of a test I think a test thing for them they only have three stores they’re doing this in I think that’s because at in Minnesota there’s so many states or uh cities that have put moratoriums on selling uh hemp hemp dve TC products that only three of the Total Wines actually could sell these products but we uh we’re pretty confident that this is a precursor to them doing that in other states Tennessee is a pretty permissive hemp law for instance that uh that pretty well covers hemp Drive THC and Tennessee also happens to be a pretty big state for Total Wine um so every state that cantrip currently retails in is a decent Total Wine State and so we’re hopeful that we will make it into all of those Total Wines within the next you know 365 days or so yeah it’s a little interesting that this Arena this is one of the areas where federal law is I would say ahead of state law would you agree with that yeah although not completely on purpose um the uh sure I mean it’s it is really interesting that um that the far the US farm bill you know if we if we want to talk like that just for a second and kind of like what the basis of all this is so in 2018 the uh what is it I think it’s called the the actual name of it was like us agricultural act or something like that uh known as the US farm bill it’s renewed every five years it contains all sorts of things like you know the crop subsidies and farm subsidies and um you know food benefits all sorts of different things are important to our our agricultural system and in 2018 they added a a part of it that legalized hemp for you know the the point of that being that it was going to be there for industrial purposes hemp is a really verstile plant as many know it can be used in making concrete and Plastics and all sorts of stuff because with the amount of lignin in it most famously it was historically used for to make rope back in the day you there’s lots of references to hemp and rope um from uh you know the the founding father’s times so they they put this standard in the farm bill which says uh to paraphrase because I don’t know if I have the exact language you G have uh Delta 9 THC you can grow hemp as long as the Delta 9 THC content is not above 0.3% on a dry weight basis and that is kind of the extent of the language they put in there um it’s really really not comprehensive in terms of what you can cover with that but what they what they effectively did is they managed to legalize this you know the cannabis plant under these specific conditions um and the intention of that was to to be able to have CBD and I don’t know if I actually attend to have CBD but to have these these Industrial Products without creating a system where you could smoke flour right if you’re buying flour and 0.3% THC it’s probably not getting you anywhere or at least not very far kind of like the equivalent of non-alcoholic beer but the fact is not a single one of the Senators had any had any sense of like what happens when you do the math on Edibles Edibles weren’t you know I think on their radar when they made this and turns out an edible you know can be pretty large by weight so your absolute concentration of THC doesn’t need to be very high in order to deliver an effective serving like just on the the the most frequent example I use because I’m from Massachusetts well actually from any is that uh you can have only up to five milligrams of THD in a adult use marijuana edible uh or at least in a serving here in Massachusetts uh in a most gummies are around three grams so if I was going to go by the farm bill standard I could have up to 9 milligrams of THC in a 3 g gummy which is more than I can actually put in a d use gummy in Massachusetts So based on whatever the weight of your actual finished product is you can put quite a bit of THC um and then they really didn’t do themselves any service by putting the words dry weight basis in there because that’s very confusing language to be honest especially when it comes to beverage uh but you know by that token they essentially legalize Delta 9 THC in this country um you know the the short version of the story after that like what actually happened was uh the FDA had no idea what to do as soon as that happened because CBD became a giant question earlier in 2018 actually is when epidox which is an epilepsy treatment for Pediatric patients the first uh uh FDA approv therapy that had CBD in it uh was approved six months before the farm bill came out which meant that immediately CBD became legal and immediately became questionable as an additive to supplements and food products because the FDA has a rule which says if it’s in a drug it can’t be in food I mean like the simplest level of that and so the FDA then spent five years saying we’re gonna consider this question and see what we can do about it only to earlier I think this year may was like the beginning of 2023 said we have no idea what to do about this Congress is gonna have to act and you know Congress isn’t doing much of anything these days uh it was there were a few companies that were making Delta n products from tht I actually personally didn’t even it didn’t even occur to me to make an edible from hemp until I went to apply for a trademark for my company and it was denied on the basis that we were above 3% THC by weight which is not true on his face was not true um and then I realized you could maybe do this and I realized there were a couple companies doing it but no one really took it seriously until Minnesota legalized you know essentially cifi this Loop Hill loophole in their uh uh in their state law on July 1st of 2022 the way that came about is is its own funny story about Republicans just not reading the text of legis ation but once that happened and sort of there was this this this air support from a state that was basically saying this is our interpretation of the F Bill we believe this to be true and we’re making this true in state law everything just kind of broke loose there and since then that was the real starting gun for cannabis beverages because I think a lot of us were actually having trouble finding our Market in the dispensaries and so to be able to produce in a single place distribute essentially nationally with traditional retailers and traditional Distributors has entirely changed the game for the the category yeah and some of the things you’ve said I’ve heard others say you know like uh this came about by accident some people also call this a loophole do you think it’s fair to say that and I think this isn’t it’s not like this counters what you says but said but do you think it’s fair to say that this this is a result of legislators not understanding what they’re legislating yeah I mean I think that’s that’s pretty fair to say it’s not just legislators either I mean Regulators even in Mar I’ve been in like the marijuana industry you could say for since 2015 and I hate to use that term but we now really have to make a distinction between marijuana and hemp because cannabis is both of those at least scientifically speaking right um and funny if you ever talk to somebody from Canada they’ll just look at you like you’re crazy because they don’t make a distinction there um but the uh uh uh the right like you look at every single state law every state law has like weird loopholes and ways to bypass things that the even people who actually do understand what they’re trying to regulate it’s hard to craft language that excludes things in such a specific way I mean look at Massachusetts people are now Massachusetts has very specific language that says a beverage may not be more than five milligrams but it also says a tinure can be up to a thousand milligrams and it doesn’t give that much distinction about what the difference between a beverage and a tincture is a tinure is something that you can delineate a serving for very clearly to meter it out that’s the guidance issued by the CCC but you know does a cap count like if you put like a dosing cap or give somebody a shot glass does that count and can what’s the difference between a beverage and a tincture when it comes down to it there really isn’t that much um because the the definition of tincture has been warped by the Cannabis industry tinure used to just meet herbs extracted into alcohol now it’s got a much broader meeting and so you know I’ve seen competitors launch these more than 5 milligram beverages into Massachusetts they just don’t say beverage on them and so you know there’s that wasn’t intended by The Regulators either but when there’s consumer demand for something people will find a way and frankly I’d rather see Delta 9 products being sold everywhere than Delta eight products or thco or hhc or thcp or any of these other four or felter designer acronyms that we don’t have any you know any historical knowledge of yeah and to your point uh yeah I that’s one of the main reasons I’ve been very excited to speak to you today um you you make prod products that I will unselfishly plug once again you know 50 mgram of THC I do like that I read a little bit into the fine print I do like that technically speaking it’s a can that has five servings in it and you can reeal it for folks that maybe uh aren’t ready to take a wild s ride on the Wild Side like myself right um you know they could just add a little bit to their drink is 50 milligrams wild for you I have a feeling it’s not no but for most people I think it’s like you know with starters they may not there’s there’s a couple things I know to be true after being in this in first of all there’s some people who like even I know people who are not frequenc consumers who can drink 25 milligrams no problem I have been consuming cannabis for 15 years and I can’t drink more than like 10 milligrams without having kind of a problem personally and I used to smoke eight times a day you know like sure I’ve cut down quite a bit in the last few years ironically since joined the can industry I just had less time than I I you know before when I didn’t have as many jobs but the um uh the dosing profile to me is like it is important to be able to meet people where they are and offer somebody something that you know they actually want or that actually works for them there are people who just have higher therapeutic thresholds or just higher tolerances or their body doesn’t process it that well we’ve all heard the stories of people who just say that Edibles just don’t work for them no matter how much they take or they need to take like a thousand milligrams um so offering 50 seem like the best way to go there we consider so we made an internal standard at canant trip that 5 milligrams is a standard dose anything below that’s a micro do anything above that is multiple serving so we put 10 we put like lines on the side of the can we have reclosable lids on everything above 5 milligrams that actually do fully reclose and like seal in you know the the carbonation and everything and so about like for the 50 milligrams it works out to about a shock glass is going to be like a single dose so we have kind of like a Spirits anal ology as well right so we we do as much as we can to communicate uh but I’ll be honest I think most of the people buy the 50 milligrams are just down in them I mean I actually consume them the way that they’re intended I’ll be you know perfectly clear about that when I you know the way I like to consume is like I’m on a SAT say it’s Saturday I’m breaking leav so I’ll go to the fridge take a swig and then you know come back like an hour or two later take another Swig kind of like you know somebody might hit a bowl but I really smoke cannabis anymore all that much just because it it doesn’t fit with you know having you know a young baby and a wife that doesn’t smoke and all sorts of stuff like that just doesn’t make as much sense for me um but the 50 milligrams I just take a swig I don’t need to drink a whole can of liquid and and just get on with my ring that’s really cool yeah that’s really cool and like I say uh it’s it’s so cool to hear that like like you said earlier these products it’s almost like the question that I started with it seems like uh we’re ahead of state law again in this sense at least in my case in Illinois and it sounds like you gave an example of Massachusetts where yeah you’re not well actually I take that back you can find some syrups and I think maybe a soda here in Illinois that’s that’s like 100 milligram you guys have more loose interpretations of what like a multiple serving product is like Massachusetts was the first state I know that had like specifically said a beverage may only be a single serving that’s like an actual line in the regs right whereas like California said okay 10 milligrams is a serving and you can have up to 100 milligrams in a bottle and there’s not much more past that so like Uncle AR is a super popular beverage out in California it’s 100 milligrams it’s 8 ounces they also do like reclosable caps and dosing guidelines on the side um and you can do that in California you can do it in Colorado you can do it in a lot of States I’m sure to be honest I don’t know all them off the top of my head but the um Massachusetts was like you know my market and was the one market I couldn’t make more than five milligrams and I used to go you know do all the tabling at dispensaries myself you know I’m the founder of the company always helps me with product to go in and we would taste people on uninfused product and the number one thing I got asked all the time is when are you guys going to make something stronger than 5 milligrams and I said what Massachusetts changes to their laws because there’s not much else you can do and dispensary you know first it’s more expensive to make stuff for the dispensary system because the licenses are harder to work with it’s the dispensaries all Mark stuff up more than other businesses because they have to cover more overhead so these things were going like $7 on the shelf for a 5 milligram beverage when everything launched in mass and you know that’s just not sustainable for anybody who has anything above like a a regular tolerance and even for people that are drinking one of these a day that’s you know that’s pretty expensive so to get both the price point down and to get you know a more expansive set of um of products that could help more people you know working in hemp is kind of the only way to do that yeah and I’m about to pull up a uh graphic that box Brown made I’m sending it to myself because I’m having trouble pulling it up on my computer so I’m about to email it to myself funny logic there um but uh can you you know we talked on Twitter about like the potential of this and obviously you said there were there were maybe some shortcomings but just hypothetically speaking just to really lay this out for folks what this hemp uh Farm Bill allows you to do you could hypothetically have like you said up to like a th000 milligram soda right it may not taste great but the hypothetic actually well I’m glad you asked that question because I think that’s actually not totally clear um because the language of that the farmbell actually says remember I said it’s the dry weight basis is kind of a confusing piece of language so the reason it says dry weight basis is because what it meant was after cure uh cure and dry in a plant now I so I used to actually do a lot of extractions so I know a fair amount about drying cannabis that was a big part of what we did and after a like a regular dry cycle for cannabis you typically the you have like 70% water weight after the Harvest like the the FL like the plant itself might be around 70% say like the buds we’re talking about after your dry cycle uh say your your two week hang or however you’re doing it probably up about 30% water weight and so when they’re considering it they’re considering on a dry weight basis means 30% now I’m not a hemp cultivator so I’m not sure if there are additional steps that the USDA looks at which is like when I would dry it for extraction purposes sometimes we would dry stuff in a crucible to get it all the way down to 0% water weight just to do some you know kind of a research and so they could be considering that but you know what does dry weight mean for a beverage if we’re going to go by like the most literal definition you could take You’ have to say okay you boil off all the water and then measure it and is it still below. 3% let dry weight for a wet product part of my products are actually you know they are if you boil them down still below that that uh limit on a dryway basis but say you have like a sugar-free and very light flavoring beverage say you like just had a straight Selzer with th seeing it if you boil that off we still be under 3% I don’t know and so if you had a th000 milligram beverage and 355 gram uh you know which is a standard like uh beverage weight for like a 12 ounce you might be comping or you might not that question has never been tested in court um and so that is kind of an an open uh interesting question for the farm bill that applies specifically to beverage in an interesting way yeah and I don’t think the industry has like a consensus around what that means most people just take it to me like be straight up 3% on a weight basis but I don’t know dude it’s hard to say when stuff hasn’t been tested in court and there’s really no uh precedent to to go off of right but I guess just a good visual representation again we love box Brown I love this panel he’s fun he Cyber Bullied me once on Twitter but he then you know we made up after that oh okay S I don’t actually remember what it was about that was a couple years ago but uh he’s an intense guy but I really like his Comics yeah yeah yeah I think that’s a that’s a fair description of him intense guy but we like his comments Comics anyway uh this uh panel here I think is a good graphical representation for folks like until I saw this it wasn’t clicking for me and and I know that based on what you just said maybe this isn’t completely accurate this is good that’s perfect I mean gummies have the one weird thing where they also have like bonded water in them I won’t get too much into like the science of that but like that’s a perfect representation like ignoring that same it would be the same for like a chocolate but yes as long as that THC is under. 3% in that graphic you we I think like of a drink too so like in the case of the drink we were just talking as long as you know the the amount of the you’ve got your drink here but then you’ve got this as long as this is under three right right and so if you want to make you know a 10 milligram gummy instead of a five milligram gummy just you know double the size of your gummy that’s really all it takes and people might not be hate that they might be like all right I get more gummy too yeah no that’s that’s hilarious I was just about to make that point yeah so if you need more THC well then just double the volume so that yeah you’re keeping you’re keeping yourself to that point three so it’s interesting times very interesting times I wanted you to uh take something on that that you already kind of addressed on Twitter uh but but I think it’s important because this is what seems to come up when this conversation is had people say this is a big threat to the Cannabis industry what say you um it’s only as much of a threat as they want it to be I mean like let’s be real and look at the numbers right 15% of dispenser sales are Edibles and edible based products so that’s first of all we’re talking about it’s not the vast majority of what dispensaries are making and selling um the threat to them on those I guess would be like Delta eight flow and stuff like that but 13 states have already banned Delta eight maybe 14 now and uh I think we’re going to see a lot more Crackdown on like designer cannaboids and synthetic cannaboids as well Minnesota is an interesting State pill but when it comes to the edible side of it it’s like it’s interesting because Edibles are really where Brands Thrive at msos like think about Incredibles for GTI right that’s an incredibly successful um brand that they carry uh and it’s entirely based on Edibles they could launch that tomorrow on the hemps side they already know how to make them um I don’t think it would take them a tremendous amount of effort and I’m sure they have enough money and people to pay the resources to find like the right co-packers or just even like a warehouse space that they could move equipment into um and you know Source the T the THC it’s not that complicated the only reason they’re not doing it is is out of an assessment of risk profile because there is you know there’s always a risk to doing it that I don’t know the FDA wakes up tomorrow and says that this is a problem that they’re actually going to take seriously or you know I think honestly what it comes down to for a lot of these msos might be like the fact that they’re publicly traded stocks and they don’t want to risk anything that could be ConEd as breaking federal law um but the ironic Parts they’re already breaking federal law every day so I I I really am not super clear on the risks I think when you look at like the my category specifically the beverages there’s a couple beverage brands that are owned by msos I haven’t seen any single one of them actually make the jump into the hemps side like levia for instance it was a used to be an independent competitor to us Massachusetts was a acquired by a wellness I have not seen them launch on the hemp side of things I think the only one that I’ve really seen that I I was I’m pretty sure owned licenses on the Cannabis side or on the marijuana side was Keith Cola they’re now in the hemp space and I think they actually had their own marijuana licenses they might the almost everybody else I know they never held a marijuana license so cantrip for example we never held a license we worked with licensed producers to get our product made in their facilities and then sold through the dispensary system but essentially we were licensing IP same with can Keef Cola I think had their own manufacturing but honestly I couldn’t say that for sure and so I know a lot of the msos are sniffing around it I’ve talked to some of them about it um I think they’re really intered I think the opportunity for them is you know this is the real branding opportunity they could say put Incredibles you know GTI puts Incredibles in all these stores they launch it nationwide people know it now they have a better reason to go to GTI retailers and I think it’ll happen eventually I think they’re just waiting for a little bit more clarity or maybe even just the farm bill to get renewed because once that happens you know we have a few more years of clear Runway but also if you’ve ever worked inside an MSO and I have things do tend to move pretty slowly sometimes um like you get into this uh you know these larger companies and things can move kind of slow in terms of getting you know initiatives done who’s going to do it and how does the compliance team feel about it spoiler alert they hate it um and you know I guess it kind of just fly in the face of like what they they do generally speaking but you know it’s a myth that hemp is unregulated like hemp is a regulated industry I still have to test every one of my products I actually test them to higher standards than most hemp because I do test by batch for all the same stuff that I test for in the marijuana uh side of things but uh you know there’s a lot of regulations across the country just different kinds of regulations than you see in the marijuana side and there’s like there’s less enforcement uh of those regulations I suppose would be the biggest change so it’s interesting I believe emsos will enter this space I think it’s too juicy an opportunity not to but it’s not threatening the core of their business which is flower Vapes and concentrates yeah yeah and like you say yeah I just I don’t view it so much of a threat as I do an opportunity if they’re trying to like get their brands in the hands of more people because that’s really what this this allows that’s what this is allowed for really is like products to be sold outside of a dispens I mean kind of blunt about it the big honestly the bigger threat to these dispensaries are is federal legalization like generally speaking interstate trade would kind of crush most of the models of these businesses because you know think about a cure relief uh it’s F I used to work for an MSO I think I’ll just leave that one in name this small one like a regional one and we had production and cultivation facilities that were literally an hour away from each other they just happen to be in two different states and you know once you built all this like kind of subscale infrastructure to service only individual markets it’s actually kind of expensive to switch then to a nationally Consolidated infrastructure at least in the short term or you have to build now one big cultivation facility because you can’t really just take all your old equipment let like smash it all together into a single facility and then distribute it effectively there’s also not really National Distributors for these things like that expertise isn’t even in the marketplace yet like I who’s who knows if Federal legalization happens well FedEx you know ship stuff you know well they ship stuff already but that’s a whole other story my point being that you know the the limited license structure was created by the government or by you know all these state governments and then people went out and raise money build companies specifically around that limited license structure some of them are more prepared than others to make the conversion for federal legalization but I think it’s a real tell that when they filed that lawsuit against attorney general Garland a couple weeks ago that that was specifically arguing that you should legalize trade inside the states but not between the states because it really uh you know takes away their tax burden but leaves intact the system that they already know how to leverage effectively it’s kind of shortsighted but I mean that’s just most businesses are just trying to make it through the next two to five years you know it’s hard to be you know be thinking 30 50 100 years out um and there’s some better better than others that I’d say you know true Lea terrist they’re thinking about the longterm maybe cure leaf but anyway I’m not in their highle conversation so I’m just speculating at this point yeah yeah like you say though it that if there were ever to be a conversation about a threat that’s where it seems to come from like I hosted a debate between you know proponents of these types of products and they didn’t necessarily paint themselves as opponents of them but they definitely are supportive of what you would call a crap down so I would say in other words they believe that all of these types of products these Farm build products should only be allowed to be sold in a dispensary this is in Illinois and I’ve heard of different things happening in different states and where that seems to come from like you just say if there there ever was you know um I guess some feelings it would be it seems to be about yeah the limited license nature of these markets and kind of instilling that ensuring that their market share is not threatened and they they view it seems as a threat if if you I’m sure if you could dig up all their original pitch decks when you know Ben kovler went to go raise for GTI the first time a big part of that deck was there’s only four licens because GTI is from Illinois originally aren’t they um yeah yeah I they’ve probably said something along the effect of like there’s four medical licenses in Illinois and we’re going to go get them all and we’re going to own the entire Mar of Illinois and here’s how many people live in Illinois and here’s how easy it is to get a Meo yeah like it’s not the thing is the government is the one that created that system and like the you know the the that was the result of years of activism that just got us to like the best we could get to and I was so I was actually in like an activist group in college and that would have been back in like 2010 uh you know around cannabis and there was a lot of talk of like if we talk about this you know regulating it the way that we’re talking about regulating it we’re going to create a system that is going to create corporatism and so like I think it’s it’s really hard for me to fa msos who built a business around what the business the only way the business could be the fact that the matter is though dispensary the existence of dispensaries themselves is prohibitionist nonsense like you don’t need to have a specialty retailer to contained cannabis you could put it right in a convenience store right next to the cigarettes or you know you could put beverages in a special fridge you know or just put them in a liquor store where people generally you know have to be 21 plus you don’t need to have a lock in key you know what the the security requirements for a dispensary in Massachusetts are it’s insane I’ve been a part of a few of these build outs now it’s like 100% coverage everywhere 90day storage of high defition cameras backup generators everywhere facial recognition and car recognition technology and then the police on one of the dispensaries we did made us mount an extra camera so they could look across the street at the Red Roof in in case because all the crime happening at the Red Roof in and so like these build outs I’ve talked to security contractor for them who say it’s it’s more intense than building something for the dod and so why do we need all that for cannabis we don’t uh and when I talk to MSO leaders it you know they don’t seem to really think about H all that much to be honest many of them are barely even aware that you can sell Delta 9 dve from hemp they’re more familiar with Delta 8 or maybe they’ve heard minor cannaboids but they’re not calling for that to be moved to dispensaries the enforcement they want is to shut down the black market or the illicit Market or the traditional Market however we want call it but everybody’s pretty pissed about what happened in New York and you know my answer for that is the same thing is to be honest I’m kind of on IDE when it comes to something like New York because the the thing that the government almost always gets wrong and Missouri I think is the only one that ever really did it right is time is such a factor once you legalize cannabis that if you wait too long to allow dispensaries to open you will just create a really robust elicent Market that makes it impossible for even you know that smaller operators who you want in the marketplace if you want these small businesses to thrive you can’t give two years for the elicit Market just to be able to sell Without Really any enforcement and that’s where New York screwed up bad and that’s where Missouri went really right you know Missouri is crushing it when it comes to the actual overall numbers and they’ll probably be a better at getting smaller businesses off the ground as a result yeah I don’t remember what the question was at this point oh no uh well we were asking I was asking about you know should these people view the uh hemp should they view hemp as a threat you know I think so I really don’t I don’t I don’t think we’re there yet I just don’t think the the market size is like the potential is there in the long run but like I said these people aren’t thinking about like the really long run they’re trying to figure out how we sell more cannabis avoid price compression and make sure that you know the I can maintain these limited license structures for as long as possible the msos if if they were smart they’d spin up small like offshoot companies uh that were like hemp divisions of their companies they’d put you know some amount of equipment into a small space uh and then they start going at it because honestly if you had a separated business you could probably also get the regular tax deductions that any company uh should normally be able to get and you could run even more profitable like sub business segment you could get your distribution out there you could spread your brand but I think the reality is that most msos are really kind of in the business of retail in the long run uh as much as they try to build Brands and some of them have been successful again GTI kind of jumps to mind as one of the few that has like a nationally successful Edibles brand uh you know their real success is that they have the right retailers in the right places they build retails uh retail locations that people actually want to go to and that’s why they do so much money at this I mean you Massachusetts once we opened up you know we have like over 300 dispensaries in mass now but when I launched cantrip they were only 60 but still even when we got to 300 most of the business was still going through the msos or at least the Legacy players many of which in Massachusetts are single state operators like rev clinics or insa um but you know those Legacy businesses that had been in the market before legalization happened and had those medical licenses they already had like the the retail brand name where people were knew where their stores were they were showing up to those stores and they sold a lot of product through them so honestly I think in the long run msos are kind of retail businesses I don’t know there there’s so many varying opinions on the on the cultivation end but most people just generally seem to think that MSO weed is all garbage I don’t know if I would call it all garbage but um certainly does not hold up to a connoisseur’s uh I think quality standards but they seem to be they seem to be very good at retail and mixed at everything else and so I think that’s kind of long run where they’ll end up so I I don’t see the hemp industry as a threat yeah and I’m just curious to to close I want to be mindful of your time I know you said you had an hour um just to close uh you you know H since I agree these are mostly retail and I’m I’m curious I’ve been asking this question what do you think makes I almost asked the question what do you think gives cannabis operators the audacity but but honestly what I’m what I’m trying to ask is what do you think separates this industry why do you think people even argue for license limitations in this industry like what do they where did that even come from because to to use another example like uh restaurants or even retail like retail is brutal you know let’s just use retail retail is brutal like good luck trying to open up like a tech store or a bookstore you’re going up against the likes of Best Buy and Barnes and Noble um but restaurants you know we just accept 80% of restaurants go out of business within the first five years but nobody’s arguing for uh license limitations on restaurants or trying to fight price PR compression really I mean they are trying to fight price compression but not by limiting the right well the price yeah the price compression end is like just something that happens when you have an entirely new essentially commodity introduced to a marketplace right the price compression happens because you open up stores in Massachusetts and there’s two stores for like that are open in the entire East Coast for two months uh you know and so the weed is very expensive because there’s it’s a supply demand problem so price compession is just kind of a version of the mean you don’t have that in food because food is generally sold in most places so um there’s already kind of like the you know a supply demand match the price compression just happens because you have a a mismatch in those but the the reason we have dispensaries or we have limited licenses is not because of the msos the msos are the result of having limited licenses now the msos then are further incentivized to keep it that way so they do Lobby a lot for it but they’re not the original reason that these existed at least not to my knowledge I’m sure somebody on Twitter is going to Tweet a very long Thread about you know who was originally there for lobbying for these laws in the first place but the way I remember it going is basically this is the best pitch we could get into the end zone as an activist Community early days it was regulated like alcohol make it insanely secure we’re going to make sure that nobody diverts it sorry I was about to say no yeah nobody diverts it because of the co memo right so they were trying to yeah yeah they were crying keep it in check and that’s to your point that’s the reason what year was the co memo uh 2014 just about the time Illinois was coming online which so they they point to they often point to like you say trying to prevent diversion as as to why we had such a highly regulated market I was just trying to prove your point I didn’t mean yeah no no no that’s that’s exactly right you know it was it was really like we’re going to treat this like it’s nuclear radiation so that people feel comfortable I mean it’s literally built into a lot of these Rags that you can’t grow cannabis in a place where the public can see it um like that was a that was why we we didn’t have outdoor farms in Massachusetts for like three years you know fun fact 10% of all commercial electricity in Massachusetts is consumed by indoor marijuana grows in this state is that not an incredible statistic and that’s even after they like mandated LEDs over HPS uh and has been true for basically the last four or five years because no one can grow it outdoor weed because you know the few people who are largely radiating it to pass the regulations again I’m have somebody else yell at me I did a Twitter spaces where I mentioned this and people got really mad at me they’re like you can grow clean weed outside I’m like sure but by Massachusetts standards I don’t know because the regulations are so tight around testing it that like you know you they’re nonsensical when it comes down to it the fact that it’s very difficult to get outdoor weed to pass testing regulations in Mass says to me that those testing Rel too tight because guess what people been grown weed outdoors in Massachusetts for a very long time I used to buy a lot of it because I went to UMass so uh not that I’ve ever committed a crime um the point being that you know these the limit of license States was basically activists they wanted to put together something that could get across the Finish Line cannabis sentiment was not where it is today you know 10 15 years ago to push to get um what was Colorado Washington legue in the same year right I think in 2013 and to get those across the Finish Line was an Inc incredibly it was a herculian effort by a massive amount of activists and a few activists who really working on this for a long time who paav the way and so getting that first the first legal states took telling this the government and telling the public generally we’re going to do this in a way that is so controlled you’re never going to have to worry about it getting to Children you’re never going to have to all of these things which are based on 80 years of Prohibition and you know uh 50 years of the drug war that people were afraid of people had to assuage those fears so we ended up with a system that essentially was advocated for by activists just to get the damn thing done and that is like one of the problems of compromise you get to compromise you end up with kind of a [ __ ] up system excuse my language uh because you because like you know there was the reasonable system which is just grow it normally and sell it normally look I think testing is a good thing I think there’s probably more logical tests to do on cannabis flow I don’t necessarily know if a beverage should be tested the same way is flower that you’re going to smoke doesn’t doesn’t strike me as two of the same things um I think potency testing is important but the way that we do it makes no sense because people are constantly inflating their potency numbers by working directly with those labs and so like all these logical things like the most sensible version of this could never actually happen because politics and that’s just how we end up in this country with everywhere that’s kind of being part of the democracy and so once you have those laws msos are obviously going to build businesses around them because they required to by law because it’s advantageous to and because that’s what their investors want they have an obligation to their shareholders to create the most value and then of course because again this is capitalism once you’ve created that system they continue to have an obligation to their share rers to create the most value and therefore they must Lobby the government to therefore entrench their their positions and further create oligopolies and so like it’s kind of like it’s nobody’s fault because it’s everybody’s fault because this is just how we’re like how the American like we can go back and Trace all this back to capitalism generally speaking and the fact that there is no ethical consumption under capitalism but like this is just the the world we live in and so if you’re not willing to play you know play in that game that sucks but like you know it’s just it’s just the reality of it I I it doesn’t mean it’s right or wrong it just it’s just what it is yeah well um thank you Adam uh for your time today and I just want to say one more time drink cant trip.com folks the link will be in the podcast description they’ve got tons of tasty drinks as Adam mentioned earlier low dose high dose energy drinks everything you might need yeah it’s not catnip by the way it’s can trip canp can’t rip I hope I didn’t say that or were you just no you didn’t I’m just I’m just heading to people off with the p i get a lot of like is that catnip sometimes I wonder if I should name my company catnip I think I bought the domain name uh uh like drink catnip.do but um it it means like a like a mischievous or playful act it is actually a word the te is NOT capitalized um krip interesting yeah so level zero spell on Dungeons and Dragons something that anybody can cast yeah I’ll stop with that thank you Cole I really appreciate uh you indulging me and bringing me on the Pod absolutely absolutely we’ll maybe have you on again and I think I forgot to mention we met at benzinga I think I like teased that at the beginning of the podcast and never said it so we met at benzinga it was a pleasure to meet you in person pleasure to have a long format conversation would love you have you back on sometime in the future so yeah yeah I I’d be happy to be back on thank you so much have a great night yep take care everybody bye