In this episode, I am joined by Bill Panagiotakopoulos. Bill is the founder and CEO of Safe Supply, a Canadian company that invests in the future of the legal drug trade. During this episode, we speak about the current state of drug policy and discuss what the future (legal) drug trade could look like.
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29th 2024 thank you for listening to the coal
memo well Bill thank you so much for sitting down with me today on the coal memo I wanted to give you the space why
don’t you go ahead and tell us who you are and what you do my name is Bill penny at the copess I
am the CE o of safe Supply we’re a publicly listed company that trades under sply and the Canadian Securities
Exchange and ssf uh on the OTC awesome and is that uh the way that
somebody would be able to support safe Supply through the Canadian Stock
Exchange or or their other avenues well it was a lot of work to take this idea
and this movement to the capital markets um a lot of scrutiny a lot of questions
um yeah absolutely just like GameStop just like a lot of these other companies the best one of the best ways to support
is support the Venture uh Market that’s trying to bridge the gap between amazing
policy that’s coming out and ultimately a business that should exist awesome and folks we’ll have the
link to safes supply.com which includes the ticker and and you know investment
information if if that’s what you’re looking for it also includes I’m displaying it on my screen right now it
also includes social media uh so that you can get connected online and other
information so that you can learn more and ultimately get involved and I think that’s likely what we’ll be talking
about today so uh maybe we’ll wrap back around to that idea of getting involved I think people are already sort of
involved by turning on and tuning in to this episode so good start right um if
you don’t mind telling me how did you get how did you find yourself where you are today I’d love to hear that
story um so Cole I started uh very conservative Beginnings you know um I I
I steered clear of a lot of the more risky activities uh Young when I was young in life then I went on to study
biology at York University was fascinated by how the human body actually works uh got into
Venture investing really early on and started to see um the the the the I
guess the light uh turning on moment for me was Cannabis um here’s something that I’ve been
taught that is the worst thing in the world you cannot touch it it’s awful and you know after educating myself on it
it’s like hold on a sec how does that make any sense at all you’re talking about a a plant here that’s been you
know at our fingertips literally for Millennia and now I’m being told by somebody that oh in the last you know
100 years or so it’s not a good thing okay I’m not buying it but really when I
saw the evidence of people that were suffering with uh you know uh Cancers
and some other terminal uh diseases and saw just the relief just the the power of this um just kind of woke me up and
said well what are we doing here like we’re actually we’re kind of abusing
Humanity by taking out all these amazing these these incredible substances that
we’ve been enjoying and and and helping us evolve um you know I don’t know a rock
band here that hasn’t used you know some sort of substance to and I’m talking about the big ones I’m I don’t know of
any of the the artists that don’t use some kind of Escape some kind of a mind
um uh accelerating substance to make them uh more creative more relaxed more
more what more of what they should be and that’s when I got into cannabis and I was one of the first guys to invest in
uh and open up a cannabis company back in 2012 uh when cannabis started to become a
thing and I was one of the first companies to go public and actually build a facility one of the first
companies to get a federal license in Canada one of the first companies to do medical research one of the first
companies to get uh medical sales uh one of the first companies to get our actual
growing and processing facility you know up and running and it was it was a trip
I mean I here I am I’m a Pioneer in cannabis and you know up in until
University I was definitely not even allowed to go near it smell it look at it because it was the devil’s lettuce
you know it was was an awful thing it’s going to corrupt me it’s going to this me it’s going to that me and here I am I
have SKS going out all across uh the country so that was exciting for me I was proud of that moment and um you know
on the heels of that I went into the Psychedelic trades and into that market
I put together some uh IP um I patented a couple of uh compounds using a celoc
cybin to treat F bromyalgia and to treat IBS and um you know I truly believe in
that I think that psilocybin and you know ketamine and all those amazing
compounds that again you’re not allowed to touch you’re not allowed to use but are some of the most incredible um I’m
going to say medicines even though I’m not qualified to say that we make that clear uh out there so here I go uh you
know I get kickstarted into cannabis I’ve grown plants and more cannabis plants than most people you’ll ever meet
and I’m proud of that I was I’ve gotten more poundage out of cannabis than most people legally federally and everything
um I’ve advised more com a lot of companies I’ve actually advised some countries uh under cannabis regime which
was exciting for me in 2017 2018 one of the first people to really
look at the psychedelics and their power and their value and then uh I felt you
know what it’s time you know British Columbia up here in Canada decriminalized all drugs and when I when
I was LE reading up and being a part of that uh release and that that moment I
knew that there’s going to be a big movement it’s going to come people are going to get behind this people are
going to get go against it how do I position myself uh my friends my
investors my my circle to to help support that and also monetize that
because the reality is is that you got to you got to build something into a business whether it’s you know
renewable energy or whether it’s cannabis if it doesn’t have a taxable
component to it it’s not going to work that’s just the reality of it and you know I’ve become a little bit of a
capitalist to be able to to see that so uh we got together we put safe Supply uh
company into the capital markets which took a really long time with a lot of objections a lot of push back a lot of
stalls and a lot of delays but we finally got there we started trading on uh the Canadian Securities Exchange
under SS sorry sply and then we went made it to the Frankfurt exchange which was an amazing feat and then uh on to
the OTC and here we are um you know looking at the world and seeing what amazing things are coming in this this
New Horizon awesome well Bill you covered a lot of bases I want to try to see if I
can’t uh dig deeper and some of the things that you mentioned um I guess one
of the last things you mentioned I’m just curious I think I know what you meant because I’ve heard other act Advocates and activists say the same
thing but I’m just curious if you could unpack it if I heard you correctly you said if there’s not a taxable component
to it or of it it’s not going to work can you just tell our listeners like what you meant by that look here in
North America we regulate eggs cheese
milk um we regulate uh cannabis obviously we regulate tobacco we regulate alcohol in
Canada we regulate suicide we regulate everything and
that’s the government’s way of allowing things to to move forward if there’s no
regulation on drugs on cocaine on ecstasy on fentanyl on all this stuff
that’s out there it’s it’s not going to go and the regulations need to be enforced so that means that in cannabis
uh there’s there’s regulations and there’s a taxable component to it so that they can enforce that in fact your
facility is licensed and operating clean and you know with respect to what the person is going to consume it’s not
going to hurt them well if you go to the third wave now and you say okay well we believe that you know uh MDMA and
ecstasy and cocaine should be um legalized or yeah legalized to a point
where you can actually go and get a you know a pure gram of cocaine or a pure ecstasy well there’s going to be
oversight needed that’s going to require Capital they’re not going to they’re not going to pull resources from you know
alcohol and tobacco or from Cannabis or from the school fund or from the highways fund to go and and fund this
there has to be a tax comp so you’re saying the taxes would be used to make
sure that it’s a a well regulated product well regulated and also help for
people that have gone to the addiction side so yeah there’s a mechanism where
the government can actually bring in resources in in the form of taxes or
duties or however they want to do it now they can not only oversee it but also help people and by the way we regulate
gambling online gambling was illegal up until a couple years ago now and there are hotlines you can call if you’ve got
a problem AB absolutely right yes and of course that comes from the revenue that the taxation of this uh activity uh
yields yeah well cool thank you for diving into that and um if I have any
other thoughts come come up on that but one of the points that you had made at the at the beginning that you kind of just touched on is
that you you hesitated to call them medicines I think it easier for us to just everybody agrees they’re drugs and
one thing that I think some people have yet to kind of get in their mind is that drugs are tools that can be misused or
abused or used properly like there and maybe even another option I don’t know um but but just to my point you know
with a tool let’s say with a hammer I’m I’m hammering a nail in if I accidentally
hit my thumb You could argue that so one could argue that I misused the Hammer by
not making sure it’s a common mistake but I misused it I should have hit the nail not my thumb right I I could abuse
a hammer by hitting you in the stomach with with a hammer right that’s not the
proper use of a hammer right so again back to the to the point and I think
this is a good place to start because some people get really and I’m glad that you mentioned you know the taxing
component isn’t only for regulation but also like if people get help or or need help because that’s one of I think the
number one concerns when this topic comes up is not only do they do people not understand that drugs are tools that
can be misused or abused um but but also that like just because we’re saying safe
Supply and that drugs shouldn’t be illegal doesn’t also mean that we’re not here to help you to support you in fact
that’s EX exactly what safe Supply is all about abolutely I agree there you go
and um with uh with anything out there I think we’re I think most people are passed should this be accessible or not
because the AR there’s no argument I mean any 15-year-old in any major city and anywhere in North America can access
literally any drug they want like it’s not to say that you know well we need to make it illegal we need to R we’re all
past that the War on Drugs didn’t work we tried you know uh it was an amazing
attempt it was a a boondoggle of a wasted amount of money but they tried to say hey say just say no and don’t do
drugs and all the rest of it yet every single day people are getting whatever drugs they want as often as they want
the only difference is that we’re Society has pushed them to the underworld uh where people that are
sadly often too often opportunistic and have decided to push and maybe
uh contaminate and maybe do some some nefarious things to it instead of saying hey look you know as a society I think
we’ve been using drugs since the beginning uh one can argue that it helped us evolve one can help us argue
one can argue that it help us be more creative and all the amazing things that some of these uh drugs do but okay so
now for the last 100 years or so we’ve said no you can’t it’s bad it’s illegal but but but cool you can buy drugs they
just come from a factory so don’t cannabis don’t use ecstasy don’t use
cocaine but you know what we’ll we’ll flood the market with all these other
versions of it the methamphetamines the the atols quite literally everything else so a logical
person would say hold on a sec so this’s War on Drugs that we spend billions of dollars of taxpayer money on every
single year oh by the way we also spend billions of dollars on health care and
addiction and everything else because people are getting duped into you know instead of doing cocaine it’s cocaine
and Fentanyl it’s cocaine and xylazine it’s cocaine and a little bit of something else now you’re seeing fentanyl in in weed and all the rest of
it and some people that Hey listen I want to go out let’s say and and and party on a weekend and have ecstasy I
don’t want to have Ecstasy with a little bit of fentanyl because that’s going to make me an addict so again we’re
spending billions on the War on Drugs doesn’t work we’re spending billions on Health Care from people that in large
part are getting tricked into doing things that they don’t want to be doing and that levels they shouldn’t be doing that with no education so me as a
taxpayer in the middle would argue that guys this doesn’t work this just doesn’t work do you w to do you want to stop the
illegal sale of anything like alcohol make it legal regulated clean
legal I don’t think there’s anybody in this world that wants to go and find somebody on the street unregulated and
buy aasy or cocaine if they can go to a store where it’s completely overseen
regulated clean legal yeah yeah absolutely and you
know where so with Oregon for example Oregon kind of reversed course where do
you stand on on that topic do you think they’re I know it’s a pretty large topic
uh but where do you stand on that being that they did decriminalize all drugs like I think you said British Columbia
did but I believe they’ve recently reinstituted uh criminal some criminal
penalties well what they did is they went it’s a half measure okay so you
just decriminalized great what have you done other than giving a Payday and a
you know a bonanza for all the drug dealers what did you do did you offer them another uh Source hey did you did
you maybe say well look we’ll decriminalize at home or maybe even overseen or maybe prescription use so
people aren’t getting high and and and freaked out in the middle of public parks or on the side of the road no I
think doing hard anything whether it’s drinking a lot or or or doing hard drugs
shouldn’t be done in the public shouldn’t be allowed to be done on the street so you guys the crimm in a way
that was Reckless and you have you probably potentially hurt a lot of people now Portugal decriminalized 20
years ago their model seems to kind of work but it was a you know a lot smaller population a lot I think um I think back
then it was just easier to manage um a lot of stigma and all the rest of it but even in BC okay well if you’re going to
decriminalize put put up some guard rails give people options don’t just decriminalize and say you know have fun
let’s see where the the dust settles was I think that was I think that was um again it was just a half measure it
needed to be thought out a little bit further more support and more guard rails needed to be a to put in place to
actually see the benefits of what decriminalizing can do right so as far
as support they had uh drug rehabilitation support I think which was
good like you had mentioned earlier but I think what I had heard some of the problem is is that people weren’t seeking it out so their idea is that by
Ma forcing them to seek it out which I just tend to agree disagree with because I feel like if somebody doesn’t want
help sometimes forcing them into that doesn’t always work uh but I’ve heard anecdotal reports that you know
sometimes people can’t get out of a cycle and then being forced out of it is the best way I don’t know where to land
on that but I guess what what I wanted to ask you uh again and I know this is kind of a big topic but like what are
what are some other guard rails or other ways to deal with it I think notably one thing that was lacking in Oregon was a
safe the concept of safe Supply as you just said it was decriminalized but there was no place to get these drugs
meaning that people could be consuming enormous unmeasured quantities of these drugs um again though the question is
what are some of the the guard rails that you think maybe would have made it
stay the course and not get derailed well I think if we take a step back and look at who are the vulnerable
people there’s a lot of levels of of addiction there’s a lot of levels of drug use um I would like to just because
I’m not qualified to focus on another group I would like to focus on the um
the the soft user the first user the the not the habitual everyday um addict that
has a very very difficult uh case to treat I want to talk about the college kids that are going out trying stuff for
the first time or maybe they do it once or twice a year um I want to go to the uh the electrician the plumber the the
the the the lawyer the doctor the the the teacher who you know what uh their mortgage has now tripled they’re they
they can’t sleep and they’re going to start using something to help them whether it’s uh cannabis cocaine whether
it’s ecstasy whether it’s psilocybin they need some relief or somebody’s trying to celebrate somebody’s trying to
you know celebrate a milestone as we saw up here with some college kids that ended up dying give them an off
option you’re not going to have a a one size fits-all give them an option if I
want to use cocaine or ecstasy and I have the ability to go and get a
prescription and say speak to a professional and say look I want to kick this habit or I’m
going to continue using this I don’t want to go to the street because I don’t know what I’m getting and I don’t want to play Russian Roulette and I don’t
want to get addicted to fentol I certainly don’t want to die from fentol not a bad guy this is just aice that I
have help well now you’re talking to a professional they can help you they can guide you they’re not going to force you
one way or another but what what I think is important for us as a society I don’t want to say government I want to say us
as a society which includes government and policing and everything is to be there for one another you know what
somebody has somebody’s using cocaine okay you’re using cocaine how do we help you first of all don’t send you to
somebody who’s probably going to trick you or there’s a chance they can trick you and number one and number two guys I
want to go to somebody who can I can actually talk to I want to talk to a doctor I want to talk to a psychiatrist I want to talk to somebody and say Hey
listen you know what I’ve got a family I’ve got a good job this is something that I’m dealing with right now can I get help or you know what I don’t want
help I just want to make sure that I don’t die that as a society we should
give people that right and then we can want to judge or not judge what the person’s doing if it’s right or if it’s
wrong first of all let’s get them out of the streets let’s get them out of the alleys where they’re they don’t know
what they’re getting how they’re going to get it and what the outcome is going to be because there’s a lot of people I think that are in these encampments that
just started innocently you know they were doing their Molly they were rolling xasy when they went out they were
celebrating or they were escaping whatever the case is you know between getting you know nudged into maybe
something harder and harder and now they find themselves without a family without a home without a job that’s where I
would start and that’s what I mean by guard rails pick the segments that you can help maybe a little bit easier than
the other segments and start from there and then just start chipping away at it that is a good point because you know
I’ve heard stories like I can’t think of it now and and I I don’t I’d rather not Google it but folks
can try to with this description just because it’s kind of a sad story but it’s this idea of a kid I I believe I
read about who you know was feeling anxiety about something coming up in his life he asked one of his friends for a
Xanax pill they gave it to him he thought it was a Xanax pill you Google it it looks like a Xanax pill but what
he didn’t know was that it was pressed by somebody who you know doesn’t make XX
and there happened to be fit and all in it and that’s a sad story because as you said this is a person that just wanted
some temporary relief from anxiety and they will never breathe
again I have another story if you if I can tell absolutely up here in uh in
Toronto um four girls just passed their bar which means they were becoming
lawyers they went out the party they got
ecstasy that night one of them died from fentol overdose one of them was in uh I
think two of them were in the hospital uh one of them I think went into a coma and one of them didn’t have any and
these are just you know just College grads that passed the bar they wanted to cell they wanted to use you know a drug
to do it which a lot of people do and they weren’t looking to go on fent and all they weren’t looking to die they
weren’t they weren’t desperate they were just kids that were trying to celebrate
that that that that kills me that’s Somebody’s Daughter sister that’s somebody’s you know that’s somebody’s
family that this all this could have been prevented right and what sucks is there
are these half measures and I’m not I want to be clear that I’m not denigrating these these these options by
calling them half measures but there are options where you can get your drugs tested but of course you and I know the
problem is and maybe even people know there’s this very popular graphic online where it shows like a dime and how small
of a speck of fentanyl will kill you and I guess my point is I’m not saying drug testing isn’t a like a good start a good
responsible step to take it’s unfortunate that it’s even needed and it’s very unfortunate that it’s possibly
not effective due to the concentration of fentanyl right yeah and and that brings me to that brings us to a really
good uh Point here that safe supply has invested in a company called Safety strips safety strips.com and what
they’re doing is bringing fentanyl test strips xylazine test
strips um the date rape drug G uh test strips they’re addressing the
fundamental problems with drugs out there with a test strip and what a lot of people don’t know is that up and
until last August those strips were drug paraphernalia the Fenton the xylazine
they were drug paraphernalia in the US so if you got caught with a fentol test strip that was a felony Char that was a
felony charge you could go you’d go two years to jail like it was it’s it’s bananas that something like that would
even exist now they they’ve repealed that I think in almost all the states this company is poised to enter into a
multi-billion dollar market because it’s a land grab and and they’re coming out I I from we invested them in them a couple
of months ago and they’re talking to Walgreens and CVS and all the rest of it and from what I’ve been told is they’ve
all come back and said yes we need this we want this um put this on our shelves
we’ll push it this is the right uh the right thing to do and up and until uh what a couple months ago we found out
that now we’re seeing fentanyl in weed well that’s terrifying imagine going to relax with a
joint smoking it and finding yourself either addicted to fentanyl or dead like
it’s it’s it’s absolutely crazy that this happens and and at safe Supply what we do is we go and find those uh
companies out there that are pushing the envelope and getting ahead of it one of the other companies we’re looking at
right now is an AI mental health and addiction app uh where you can get onto it it’s an app it’s an avatar and you
can talk to it and get the some help that that most people need a lot of people don’t want want to go and see a
doctor a lot of people don’t want to go and see a psychiatrist there’s a cost to it that is prohibitive there’s a stigma
to it a lot of people want to text their AI uh buddy I call them and say hey look
you know what I’m thinking of this and this and getting some good positive feedback because I don’t think we’re getting enough of that in our
society yeah we’re just to peel the page back a little bit and take us to a slightly separate topic but you did
bring up cannabis so I guess it’s kind of related uh you said you were one of the first companies to sell cannabis in
2012 what was that in like an adult youth state or something or in Canada no
the company started in 201 end of 2012 2013 um we were the first purchase order
for the OCS which is the Ontario cannabis store here in Canada and that was back in
2018 um April I think uh 20th um yeah
April 20th and um that’s when uh it was it was legalized here for uh recreational use
before that we were selling into the medical Market uh too so all the Cannabis sales that that that I was
doing was through a publicly traded company was during the whole cannabis boom and um like I said we were one of
the first out there and and by the way back then when I wanted to take the company public and find investers and
VCS and all the rest of it nine out of 10 people asked me to leave their office
I was was told I was crazy I was told I was going to go to jail I was told you’re going to ruin your name I was
told some pretty uh aggressive things you know and then that became one of the
biggest uh Financial trades of uh of our economy right and now you look at it and
in Canada alone we have $6 billion dollars a year worth of legal cannabis
sales that’s a big business for Canada yeah I’m sure I’m sure New York state
does it in an afternoon but for canidate is Big yeah yeah uh so I’m curious uh
with cannabis legalization first of all [Music]
um like there’s been this idea like you say of tax and regulate and um in many
states it’s taken different forms right so I don’t know how familiar you are with the evolution of cannabis
in the United States but you know you first started off with California
um and States like that you know I believe Maine legalized and Michigan
legalized back in the early 2000s and it was mostly like caregiver homeg grower markets and in
about 2012 2013 2014 the coal memo was issued which is
not just a a Cheesy reference to my name it was a federal policy which kind of a
lot of cannabis CEOs that have been on my show have credited to like changing the game and ushering in this new era of
uh compliance focused highly regulated limited licensed cannabis and that’s the
part that I wanted to ask you about what do you think about the idea of limiting
the number of licenses I get it I just want to preface before I turn it over to you I get it from an economic standpoint
I get why it’s advantageous to uh like have a certain segment of the market
share that is literally like that it belongs to you I totally understand that
and why you know one that is participating in a market would want there to be limited licenses but at
least with the case of uh cannabis it seems like you know again a lot of new
states are limiting are kind of leaning into the idea that there shouldn’t be an unlimited number of licenses issued
there should be a limited number of licenses what say you Bill on that just concept I’m curious so cool as the
capitalist limit it I’ll find my way to the top and I’ll do well and in Canada
it was like that as a as a as a person as a as a
citizen I say you can’t limit opportunity everybody should have access to the opportunity but I will say this
though in Canada and I watched it firsthand there was limited licenses and there was an industry building as soon
as they went to m licensing literally micro uh Growers and Growers and all the
rest of it there’s so many levels of it the F the bottom fell out of the the whole industry because now how do you
invest you know four five 25$ 35 million into a facility when you when there’s
literally no guard rails to make sure that you can build on that because it takes years to recoup and be able to be
um uh to sustain that sort of thing so I saw I again I I don’t ever want to limit
opportunity out there for anybody certainly not myself uh but I understand why they would want to limit uh and not
make it a free-for-all because it’s also easier for them to to to oversee and manage that uh that new opportunity yeah
that last part I totally get because like here in Illinois for example there are so few that it’s got to make
regulating it pretty easy versus uh you mentioned New York a bit ago in New York
there are so many shops that are just uh operating under the go of legality that The Regulators can’t tell which are and
which aren’t and they actually claim that most aren’t legal stores W um so
that’s a problem that’s a problem the government look the people again I don’t like seeing the government the people
want this out there in some capacity under control yeah you don’t want to
hurt people so if you’re telling me now there’s 10 shops open in a state five of
them are not legally regulated which means that there’s no control which means that there’s risk but the five are
no you got to reward the five that are regulated and playing you know are are coloring within the lines because that’s
what we’re doing this for right we’re doing it so that we get rid of that uh the criminal element that could potentially bring harm and bring um risk
into the people that want to consume yeah I guess I’m curious I I totally
again I totally get what you’re saying and actually that’s what most people tell me and even our Regulators have had Illinois Regulators on the show and they
say that the reason we limit licenses is because if you look at States like Michigan people go out of business the
prices fall to the bottom and that’s really tough um but it’s like I guess
what I’m asking is what makes cannabis different than restaurants which we like
accept that at least in America we seem to accept that 80% of restaurants go out
of business within the first five years but we never I know I’m appealing to your the pitch you said earlier but we
never nobody’s insisting we uh limit those licenses in fact they’re like yeah open a business you know it’s true um I
think the health regulations and requirements for somebody that’s going to take something and combust it and
inhale it um given all the people that have risk factors around that uh that is
different than your uh restaurant inspector coming through I’ve seen some restaurants that have pass fast
inspection that I’ll never eat it that bar is really really low if I’m
uh imuno compromised if I have an issue if I have some psych some some mental
issues and stuff I should be this is I think on just a little bit higher of a
level to say I’m going to consume something whether it’s in a edible form or I’m G to burn it and inhale it or I’m
going to vape it I need to have guard rails because that stuff can really cause damage I mean when you look at in
Ontario in Canada here uh they did a study years back and they found that 69%
of all uh Street grown or sold weed had some toxic uh level of herbicide
pesticide mold milu sulfur on it because the reality is a lot of the people that
are growing the the bud and I’ve seen a lot of these people um if you’re not
regulated where they’re testing on the parts per billion as they do up here which I think is too much but that’s
another discussion um some of these guys are spraying you know uh a pesticide on
it that you have to wear a hazmat suit to spray it on and its halflife is you
know 7even 10 12 days well a lot of these people are spraying it two days
before they’re cutting down uh and then within that week it’s going out well
somebody’s now taking something that should be you know weeks
untouched burning it it and inhaling it that’s got to cause damage that can’t be good for you yeah so my point to all
this is that restaurant you might get sick you might vomit um when you’re
talking about drugs and cannabis is a drug that you’re going to consume you it should have a higher standard which
would mean that the amount of licenses out there because you have to manage them way more stringently should be
less yeah it just seems like those ideas like uh
they almost conflict with each other you know what I mean where it’s like I get what you’re saying like it it’s as far
as regulating and controlling but it’s like the idea that at least in Illinois the way we’ve seen the primary
enforcement mechanism for our license limitations and it seems like it’s the same in other states where they use the
criminal law to like so it’s not just like a business infraction like when I open up a restaurant and I don’t have a
food license or whatever like I don’t get the impression that I get in a cage
you know what I mean but that’s what that’s what happens in Illinois at least and and I feel like it it causes people
to not even want to play by the rules especially if they don’t have a route to um but it’s like I say it’s it’s a weird
balancing game and uh I I just I guess my my thought here is like within the
context of cannabis and all even lump and mushrooms here cuz I know other drugs it gets a little bit more complicated
it just seems like it’s like organic don’t panic and I I’m not neglecting what you said about the pesticides and
even you mentioned earlier fentol so maybe I’m being a little bit I don’t want to say ignorant but
maybe I’m being a little bit too optimistic because as you said earlier sometimes these people that are selling
many different drugs fentol can get like sprinkled I guess on the weed I don’t think anybody’s purposefully adding
fentanyl to weed I think that people that aren’t complying with regulations might just their supplies accidentally
and so I I get those concerns and everything um maybe I’m being too
optimistic I I guess what I’m the thought I’m trying to work through is like you started with eggs and milk and
everything earlier and I actually was talking to a researcher at the University of Illinois recently and they
were like because kind of about this topic they’re like Cole a black market still exists for eggs and
milk yeah yeah but I was like try selling an egg without a license
true it’s not a hey don’t do that it it’s enforced oh really oh yeah yeah
people can get sick yeah yeah there vanilla there’s and especially with milk there’s all kinds of issues if it’s not
pasturized and this and that but I will say this when I first started selling up here in Canada they only opened up 26 23
stores in all of onar we have so so alcohol sales and beer sales are are are
done through the province here we have we had 8,000 LCBO and Brewers retail that sold
all the alcohol 8,000 and they said well 26 Cannabis stores should be great and I
just wanted to show Ontario Ontario is a lot bigger than I thought it was holy crap it takes a long time to drive like
from here I’ve got my mouse down here takes a long time to drive because I’ve driven here so I’m sure that Ontario is
looks like it’s mountainous too maybe no it’s all flat but the thing is which is
interesting almost all of the population you see where Toronto is so if you draw a line from uh Minneapolis right over to
Montreal uh that is almost all the population of Ontario it’s like 12 million people um yeah from Montreal to
Minneapolis so I mean sorry from Montreal to Michigan see yeah right
everybody’s right down there in the South where we’re actually 30% uh we are
more south than 30% of all the continental United States there so we enjoy some nice weather but the truth is
is that they messed it up at the beginning too they really over uh tightened the rags they only opened up
you know two dozen stores it was a nightmare and what that did is it proliferated all the black market shops
to open because the stigma had been lifted right were looking for weed you
couldn’t find or the the to get into one of these shops was impossible so everybody uh in the black market just
popped opened up shops everywhere and they were busy from day one so there there’s somewhere in the middle there um
I think they overdid at the beginning in Ontario and then they just let the let it open to everybody which of course
caused the price to collapse which caused I think at least half of them are bankrupt now so there’s there’s got to
be a medium in there but again new industry in the regulated world they’re going to have some hurdles they’re going
to have some bumps and bruises along the way they’re doing the right thing by bringing it out allowing people access
which is great let’s just figure it out and there’s a lot of special interest groups that are lobing the the crap out of government right and saying hey less
is better less is better yeah and other open it up open it up right yeah do you think that that’ll
be the um well before I ask that question um I wanted to just quickly
drill down on something else you said that I thought would be interesting because it’s something we can relate to and you were like we don’t have to
devote much time to it but just to round out your point um you said the parts per
billion might be too strict in Canada we have the same thing in Illinois can I just ask is it is it causing producers
to basically have to remediate all their products uh yeah there’s very few people
that can grow something without some microb getting on there it’s almost impossible and and what happens is
people actually go and what we had to do is irradiate Right awful in Canada you have to label
your product if you do that right I don’t think in America you do not yet and then yeah there’s also another
technology called e blast I think and it’s another form of uh sterilization
Which is less I guess um disruptive to the plant but I mean come on guys like
let’s be realistic this is an Agricultural Product at the end of the day sterilizing it I don’t think is the
answer because I think you’re getting you’re losing a lot of the amazing stuff that’s in the plant by putting it through that process I agree with you uh
because I grow my own and I am not a genius by any stretch but every crop
that I’ve ever grown has been better than anything that I’ve ever tried from
a store and I again I don’t color myself to be a genius at all um and so yeah I
agree with you that that that it happens but to just briefly play the other side of it to your point with milk and
everything else we pasteurize everything so maybe maybe with massive industrial
cannabis that is the standard you know maybe maybe with craft cannabis that’s where you get the
experience what we’re talking about but anyways um to break off from Cannabis and just to get back to the to the
overall topic of of drug policy in general do you think that if we were to see safe Supply and Concepts like that
take over for example right now in Illinois we’re pushing to deschedule and regulate uh siloc cybin and and we’re
definitely it seems talking about a limited license structure and I guess my question is do you think that’s the
future for at least like the brief future for all drug uh policy like we’re
rolling out like a safe Supply type option like regulated cannabis or regulated cocai Bend that’s the hope
that’s the Hope um the dream is to stop the the hundreds of billions of dollars
globally that flows into parts of the world that shouldn’t be getting this this money and staying within the
country or the state or the the county and uh and helping the people that are there create jobs create an industry and
you know like like I said earlier people have demonstrated that they’re creative and they’ll find what they want let’s
make it uh let’s make it clean for them and and and reap the rewards of it and be able to help people along that
Journey right the the guy that’s trying uh cannabis or trying ecstasy or whatever you know you you want to be
with them on their Journey as as a society and say we’re here for you what do you want this is what you want to do
here oh you want help here oh you want a you want a different option here you
know you want to be supportive you don’t want to have people feel like what they’re doing is evil what they’re doing
is is wrong because you know who’s to say that I have somebody in my office who drinks like six seven coffees a day
i’ call that except exessive and I think it Alters them as a person that’s their
choice you know that’s kind of a weird example but you know what I’m saying right there should be uh you know as a
society we should be helping people as opposed to um you know alienating them
yeah yeah um so I’m
curious with regard to the Future um
how exactly do you position yourself like as an entity or or have you yet
like is it kind of waiting on a proposal to roll out and do you get what I’m asking yeah we’re we’re actively looking
right now in different verticals that we see that there is going to be Revenue which is important because again we’re
business so the um the the Medtech the health testing um business is very
attractive to us um it’s growing exponentially it’s a multi-billion dollar industry there’s a tremendous
land grab there so we’re really honing in on that vertical and also the um the
AI um with uh helping people um we don’t know when and if or sorry when for sure
it’s going to happen um there’s going to be a safe Supply available to people um in shops um and we’re always watching
for that we’re always cognizant of when that’s going to come and want to be on top of it but we can’t pin oursel as a
company to wait for that policy because everything that we do at safe Supply is
under federal law if it’s not federally legal we cannot touch it we can’t go near it so those are the two areas that
we’re finding most interesting right now um and then they they put us in a good position to be able to when the policy
changes be able to segue back into that in that sector of the industry and
really be able to to uh make waves in it absolutely and uh you know forgive me
for harping on the topic of Licensing so much uh but it is just a really interesting topic and if I could just
explain to you why I I find it so interesting is because some of the Cannabis CEOs that I’ve had on my show
refer to it as cannabis 2.0 some refer to it as prohibition 2.0 which I think
is a little bit on the nose because it’s like Bas in my opinion it’s like an underhanded way of saying that we will
use the law to kind of enforce or create a regulatory Moe and maybe those
individuals disagree with me you know on that but I’m just curious what do you think given that that is the
future what what is do we have an answer right now because in Oregon right um and
in BC we’re we’re saying individuals should not be charged for using or possessing drugs um and then it seems
like we’re neglecting like the idea of licensed activity all of a sudden you’re a bad person if if you’re you’re doing
unlicensed activity what do you think the answer is to that look they’re going to I wish I had
one I’d know I I’d have the crystal ball but billion dollar question if I could sell cocaine right
now in Oregon or BC I’d be a billion multi-billion dollar company um and really helping people and
and and I think saving lives um there’s a political war at this there’s you know
the old stance of you know drugs are bad just know to drugs and we’ll be okay and then there’s the new guy saying hey no
like let’s do this it’s it’s going to be fought on a political front we’re going
to be ready One Way Or Another We’re going to go into the soft uh areas of
this industry and amass our book and our our clientele and our base of people
that are actual users um make a business of it and when it happens that they say
hey you know what we actually need to have uh clean and safe Supply we already have a lab uh that has the uh dealers
license to be able to import cocoa leaves and cocaine and aasy and everything else we’re ready to go in the
meantime though we got to capitalize and be good stewards uh of capital and be sorry be be be um respectful to our
shareholders and make sure that we’re honoring their commitment to us and our commitment to them uh but might I tell
you the day they say that yeah we need to start selling uh MDMA legally like by
the way they have in Australia so Australia’s on the Forefront of all of this but as soon as in North America
they say go we’ll be ready and we could move faster than anybody because we’ve made all the relevant uh I guess uh
inroads to the the the places the countries that are actually producing the products the UN sanction products
which is again one of the key things here it’s not going to be just oh hey look we’re allowed to sell cocaine I
know where to get some of that it’s not going to be like that it’s going to be a you know a government overseeing un
sanctioned uh transaction that’s going to happen and interestingly enough legal cocaine for medical use right now is
about $4 billion a year so there’s an actual real legitimate business for
legal cocaine within the Surgical and Medical world the illegal side of it is
over $130 billion that’s just crazy to me governments are look listen there’s
no government in the world that’s looking at that number and not just droing in holy crap we need a piece of that because it’s it’s it’s happening
anyways yeah yeah well my last question on on licensing and then I want to just
open it up uh I’ve got a few just brief questions to close um what do you think about the it sounds like manto man we
agree on the idea of of and even like from an economic standpoint we agree why people push for uh limited licensing so
on both bases um we on one hand we’re like manto man we’re like
we shouldn’t limit anybody from getting in but on on on the other base for like economically we understand why one would
be you know why one would want to push for that I’m curious and maybe you don’t expect this one um what do you think
about the idea of limiting the number of licenses any individual entity can have because that’s actually one license
limit that I 100% yeah I saw that in Massacre up here
where the the government opened up for a brief moment the ability to open up Sister licenses these multi-billion
dollar corporations rolled up no that’s not fair that’s not fair if you have a
license and you’re a good operator and you need to expand your business we’ll find a way to AC accommodate it but just
because you were first in doesn’t give you a monopoly or sorry it would be an oligopoly at that point come on right on
you you have your license work it let’s say your facility isn’t big enough that was our case you need to either move the
whole facility or expand sure let’s find the session but no you don’t get one
like you’re you’re not Purdue we’re not we’re not redoing that nightmare again are we no let’s open it up competition
is good just controlled competition I think might be a little bit better fa well sorry I lived all of this
real time in cannabis up here in Canada The Limited licenses and what that meant
the wide open and what that meant the one guy getting 10 different facilities
the other guy not being able able to even license one I lived all that up here it’s uh
yeah yeah sometimes very painful yeah well I want to thank our listeners if
you’re still listening at this point and what I want to ask you know aside from Capital which we mentioned at the
beginning of the show and Investments how would like just a normal person that might be still listening right now help
with with uh you know kind of the overall mission that you’re doing I just find good companies like us there’s not
many that are you know trying to bridge good policy with uh uh business because
if you don’t I mean then it doesn’t exist cannabis only worked because the reality is the the business made sense
right people with come in with money government’s not going to put up the money so you got to find companies that
are like us that go out there you know like safety strips an amazing company um safety spot is an amazing company um
there’s a lot of amazing companies out there that we’re looking at and talking to that are incredible just got to
support them yeah well cool um anything that we
didn’t cover today that you wanted to talk about before we go I feel like we covered a lot of bases
we got a lot of bases and uh if you ever ask me if I could talk more boy can I but um no the reality is I think I think
things are moving in the right direction slower than I think I would like but it’s fascinating you know it’s 2024
cannabis is being rescheduled in the US we have legal cannabis in Canada and in
Germany uh and Australia we have uh FDA that’s about to come out with amazing uh
licenses for actual drugs using aciloc cybin n MDMA like we’re we’re literally
in the last decade amazing things are happening and will continue to happen we just got to keep pushing forward
absolutely yeah absolutely one of the things you mentioned earlier the cocaine being like possibly
a un sanction like I think it’s crazy to think that that’s ultimately what this
has involved or what this has evolved into just as my last thought because you know with the drug war aside from the
fact that we we should you know have safe options to you know acquire these drugs one of the main complaints was
just the policies right and honestly like if I would have had it my way like we would
have just removed those policies and then a little bit later on we start talking about how to figure out
licensing but for like even in Illinois we’ve not made it so that you can grow your own and it just seems like a basic
first step and again I’m not saying that licensing shouldn’t happen right
afterwards or anything else I’m just saying first and foremost you have to decriminalize the the cultivation and
possession of these substances entirely you know what I mean and
that’s it it just seems that like as we’ve moved forward we continue to have to like work with the government and it
just feels weird I mean I know we you have to go along to get along but can we just acknowledge right now that it feels
weird it’s a weird partner to have right right after everything they did too and
then it’s like I I keep saying they though it’s kind of we now because we can be in you
know what I mean I don’t mean to make the proverbial day an enemy but cool we’re the we’re the enlightened ones
right we get it we just got a express ourselves in a proper way and get other people to get and understand that even
if they’re not smoking weed or doing cocaine or a or whatever doesn’t mean it’s the worst thing in the world for
the next person to be doing because we don’t know how everybody’s dealing with their lives and we should be there to support them and you know let’s let’s
let’s figure out how to get along and let’s figure out actually now that we I say are I’m a little bit older but our
generation has that power right now and just go out there and kind of assist and push the right policies to get into to
play so that we can have that I think better Society yeah well bill I want to thank you again so much for your time
today and just overall what you’re doing um I think you’re fighting the good fight so thank you Bill I appreciate it
Cole thank you it was an honor to be on your show thank you yeah and uh hopefully this won’t be the last time we
should reconnect in the future and uh to folks that are listening I hope you found as much value in this conversation
as I did as I said at the top of the show uh you can find the link to safe supply.com in the podcast description if
clicking on it is easier for you or just go to Safe supply.com either way
whatever works we’ll see you on the next episode of the Cole memo take care
everybody thank you bye- bye
The Cole Memo 
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