In a different voice, on the pending closure of Medical Cannabis in Washington

Dr. Corva at Seattle Hempfest 2014.
Dr. Corva at Seattle Hempfest 2014.

by Dominic Corva, Social Science Research Director

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The opinions expressed in this editorial analysis belong to Dr. Corva, and do not necessarily reflect organizational consensus.

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As the July 1, 2016 deadline for Medical Cannabis markets in Washington State draws near, I would like to offer a few observations about how and why this phenomenon is nearly impossible to address, politically. There can be no focused essay, as a result, so I’ll offer a few openings on the closure of an 18 year trajectory in which patients in Washington State gained more access, until now.

First, a disclaimer. Our organization’s mission is to facilitate a peaceful human-cannabis relationship, which we cannot do by denigrating, stigmatizing, or dismissing any individual that grows, distributes, consumes, authorizes, tests, legislates, or regulates the plant. Nonetheless we have to deal with the fact that many if not most of the above people do this, to others, and that the coming re-creation of the Recreational Cannabis system into Boss of Medical Cannabis Access is the direct result of this happening. It was not necessary, but it’s what happened. My position is that this is the opposite of peaceful policy, and congruent with the extension of Prohibition culture into Regulation policy. And that we need to continue to work peacefully to get those “two steps back.” It all starts with accurate, reliable, and unpoliticized information.

  1. The WSLCB cannot fulfill their obligation under 5052 to ensure that patient access in Washington state is not disrupted on July 1. It has already been disrupted. I have personally had to scramble to make sure an older friend could replace the product she could no longer get, and have directed many, many inquiries towards the few Access Points that remain open.
  2. There is also the matter of physical geography, product diversity, product availability, and affordability. The I 502 system won’t even get close to the kind of geographic access, access to diverse and specialized products, access to the amount and diversity of CBD rich products available in the access point system, and of course nowhere near the amount of access points previously available including delivery. And while cheap flower prices have arrived in much of the I 502 system, concentrate and edible prices remain far above those of their flower counterparts — and these are often widely preferred ways to consume for patients, for many reasons.
  3. Responsibility for reduced patient access in Washington State should be apportioned widely — the legislature, the LCB, the big money lobbyist, the monopoly-hungry trade association, the previous governor, the Majority Whip, the I 502 architect, the death-threatening activists, the patient advocates, the disorganized and fractured industry groups, the prohibition culture addicted to punishment, the law enforcement lobby, the UFCW, and more. We do not call for punishment, but responsible assessment of reality and its alignment with policy. And nothing responsible can be done unless people take responsibility for what has been done.
  4. Responsibility is something to which every one of these stakeholders seems to be allergic. Nothing that ever goes wrong is their fault, and everything that goes right has a raft of people ready to take credit. “Legalization” is an inflection point, historically and geographically; which means it’s both a continuation of what came before and the beginning of a new process that remains connected to all of the other processes that made it possible. No single organization or individual should be proclaiming victory, and there is way too much more work to be done. Legalization is not an endpoint.
  5. People often ask me about the black market. Even Clark County called me to ask about the black market. I told Clark County that their black market was now called “Oregon.”
  6. “Cartels” haven’t had much of a market share in the Pacific Northwest, maybe ever. This State is the birthplace of indoor cannabis. The original owner of Fremont’s Indoor Sun Shoppe wrote the first indoor grow guide ever published. It was 1972, and his shop was located on University Avenue across from the campus. Also I don’t think we call Southeast Asian-Canadian organized crime from BC “cartels,” but their dominance went into terminal decline at the turn of the century.
  7. The Washington black market, “domestically,” can be found on every college campus in the state and all of its music festivals. Access points hit lots of “middlemen” hard, but perhaps the dorm room dealer most of all. Things are looking up for dorm room dealers, street dealers, and small personal network dealers. That might be a good thing, since it’s a windfall for economically marginalized populations.
  8. NSDUH statistics show that people under 21 (read: college students especially) constitute the biggest cannabis-consuming demographic there is. As long as cannabis is legal only for “over 21” adults — as opposed to people who can vote, get a credit card, and join the army as “over 18” adults — the State will hit a wall in its efforts to eliminate the black market, no matter how low prices go. The U.S.-American higher education system will welcome cannabis culture and markets until the last dorm room gets turned into a prison cell.
  9. The black market that the State doesn’t address by shutting down “gray market” access points is called the export market. It’s been going on for decades, and closing medical does nothing at all to those exports.
  10. There’s a new black market, and it’s called diversion from the I 502 market. No one wants to talk about it, but somehow I still can’t avoid running into it. An interesting irony: I can hear folks talk all day long about state, interstate, and global black market developments but the minute anyone accidentally or on purpose mentions seeing I 502 diversion they shut up completely. It’s more dangerous to talk about than normal felonious activity. Disclaimer: the previous sentences in “point number 10” are hypothetical, I’ve never heard of nor seen diversion from the I 502 market. I don’t know what I was talking about.
  11. SB 5052’s new “four person cooperative garden” provision is a mystery. It has to be located in people’s domiciles, which would indicate that whatever happens there is protected by privacy laws, so … are there supposed to be cameras? where are registered patients supposed to get their plants? Is it a 15 day window 365 days a year? Has anyone signed up for this, a little over a month before “collective gardens” become illegal? In fact, how many patients have signed up for the registry so they can save 10% sales tax on their “medically endorsed” purchases? I’ll let you know as soon as I hear back from my public information request.
  12. Will there be a Kleiman-recommended huge crackdown, by Federal and/or other law enforcement agencies, immediately after July 1? Mark Kleiman has in many places recommended a big crackdown to “break the back” of the black market as soon as a regulated system is in place.
  13. I suspect there won’t be the budget nor the political will to make examples of home growers, but I do expect unregulated warehouse grows to be targeted and Federal investigations that have been pending for a few years to conclude.
  14. A legislative home grow option, especially if pitched as a “home brew” provision, would deal with many of not most of the problems caused by the hostile takeover of medical cannabis markets by the State. It will happen eventually — every other state has one, and California’s direction will steer the national policy ship once either AUMA passes or, if it doesn’t, once its legislature takes on the task of legalizing and regulating. But here in Washington, I keep hearing “some time in the next couple of years” from lobbyists and legislators.
  15. The I 502 system is never going to be a failure — it’s a conspiracy to sell weed without fear of enforcement, how could it be, but it is going to be full of individual failures, especially from small businesses. I’m aggressively uninterested in “$X billion sold” headlines and extremely concerned that X out of that X billion will go to a very few people rather than support small farmers, who will cash out and sell to investment groups as the rules and rule implementations evolve away from what used to be an advertised State concern — the protection and promotion of small businesses.

Thanks for reading! Again, the opinions expressed in this editorial analysis belong to Dr. Corva, and do not necessarily reflect organizational consensus.

 

Merit and the Second Wave Application Process

By February 2015, about 120 of lottery-allotted 334 retail stores had opened across the State.

by Dominic Corva, Social Science Research Director

This blog post skips the politics of 5052’s legislative process and focuses instead on how 5052’s mandated “merit process” for approving new I 502 retailers, ostensibly as a window for existing Medical Access points, was defined and implemented, between July 2015 and February 2016. It’s a post about an unfinished process, given that three of our interview subjects aim to be part of that transition but their individual processes are not completed. Dockside has two locations open from the first application window and three from the second wave in process; and Herban Legends transitioned to a new I 502 location almost as soon as the second wave application process achieved lift-off in January.

One of our other three applicants remains unapproved to transition and has a lawsuit pending against the WSLCB over whether there was in fact a merit process; another has fought to remain open in their current location until a Jul 1 switch over, and the fifth interview subject has closed her Access Point down while working to open in another location by July 1. All three in this group received letters from the WSLCB in January 2016 stating that they would remain open at their peril, since they were too far down the Priority I merit list to expect to be approved for Seattle. A flurry of media coverage ensued, as well as a different lawsuit, and about a week later two of these three applicants were informed that they were approved for Seattle, after all.

Which is to say that our Transitioner sample had a very diverse experience with the second retail application round. One of them made the top of the Priority I application list for Seattle; one of them and each of his two other business partners cleared the approval bar right away (two in Seattle and one elsewhere); and the other three have had to fight for Transition approval for different reasons with one of those still fighting.

Now that you know the current status of the results, let’s review the context for these highly variable outcomes.

SB 5052 directed the WSLCB to create a second retail application window based one merit criteria, which the WSLCB would also develop. This process began early summer 2016, not long after the bill was signed by the governor. Interestingly, the merit language appears to have been developed in the legislative process by UFCW, who intended merit criteria to include stringent labor standards. Those merit standards were recently folded into the renewal process, after closed-meeting pressure from the UFCW. It would have been bureaucratically difficult, if not impossible, to triangulate labor standards when the LCB’s main legislative obligation was to re-create Medical Cannabis access for the State by July 1, 2016.

So the initial challenge faced by the LCB was to define merit criteria that was focused on defining what criteria could plausibly be used to identify Medical “good actors” who deserved a chance to get into the I 502 system — especially since the previous window’s lottery process made such qualifications irrelevant.

However, the lottery results were still active — all of the lottery applications from the previous window had numbers, and had been promised that if their numbers came up, their applications would be processed. A second window had to fold the first window in to avoid lawsuits from hundreds of still-pending applicants further down on the lottery draw.

As a result, the LCB settled on two merit criteria that would define three Priority Tiers. The first criteria was, did you apply in the lottery round? And the second was, had you been paying taxes since before January 1, 2013 — roughly, the timeframe in which I 502 had become a reality. Priority I was the list for applications that met both criteria; Priority II was for applications that met the second criteria without the first; and Priority III was for applications that met neither criteria.

Effectively, the primary merit consideration became, did the application include someone who had applied in the lottery round. The secondary merit consideration had to do with whether someone on the application had belonged to an Access Point collective garden, evidenced by tax receipts. The prioritization of lottery applicants meant that every existing I 502 retail store had in hand the primary merit consideration. And that every access point that hadn’t applied did not. Those with the easiest route to Priority I status were access points open and paying taxes before 2013 AND a lottery application in hand. Four of our five Transitioners met those criteria.

A marketplace developed for applicants that had one of the stated merit criteria and not the other. This became especially clear when most of the new retail allocation went to existing I 502 recreational stores, all of whom partnered with a criteria-eligible access point business partner or collective garden employee to meet both merit criteria. Applications were cobbled together to meet both criteria, usually in exchange for business partnership or payout, to such an extent that by mid-November more than 800 retail applications had been received by the WSLCB. That number increased considerably through the March 31, 2016 closure of the second retail window. In the book, we will look more in depth at merit criteria and the way it affected who was able to transition and who was not.

Parallel to the development of the merit criteria, the WSLCB found its retail window process challenged unexpectedly by another powerful State political force, the Association of Washington Cities. The new window was originally conceived as uncapped and indefinitely open: applications would be accepted, assigned a Priority Tier, and then approved on a rolling basis, at LCB discretion. Jurisdictions revolted en masse, individually and through the AWC, citing concerns about clustering and not willing to leave it to the LCB how many could open in each jurisdiction. Even Seattle pressured the LCB for a capped process that would specify how many per jurisdiction would be available, and to close the window sooner rather than later. Some of this pressure was amplified by a new I 502 trade association representing existing I 502 retail stores that clearly didn’t wan’t more competition. But jurisdictions backed up their concerns with a promise to limit new retail stores by zoning them out of possible locations and establishing minimum distance to existing retail stores.

As a result, the LCB initiated a process for determining how many new retail stores could open, and in mid December announced specific allotments per jurisdiction as well as an end-date to the window process. That’s a story for another post, but the takeaway point to this narrative is that the second window application process was shaped considerably by political pressure on the LCB after 5052 was passed. The messiness and discontinuity of that process can’t be laid at the feet of 5052 itself, nor the bureaucracy charged with its implementation. The difficulties with defining merit and the ease with which existing I 502 retailers gamed the system to grab new stores at the expense of possible Medical Transitioners is not strictly the fault of the legislature, nor of the LCB, but broader political and economic developments concerning I 502 in the rest of the State. In the book, we address the complexity of these power relationships as they were experienced by our interview subjects.

 

Caution: Approaching Legislative Vehicles

State Medical Cannabis tax revenues July 2013- November 2014. Source: Washington Department of Revenue
State Medical Cannabis tax revenues July 2013- November 2014. Source: Washington Department of Revenue

by Dominic Corva, Social Science Research Director

NOTE: this excerpt is from a work in progress, as indicated by the first paragraph. We will adjust our analysis going forward, without a doubt.

This post addresses a section of the retail chapter that is a recently discovered blind spot, and for which we have just begun to re-envision, through focused archival research and a few phone calls out. Until recently, Dr. Corva has understood SB 5052, the Rivers vehicle that ended “parallel” cannabis systems as of July 1, 2016, as coming a bit out of the blue due to Senate capture by Republicans in November 2015. In fact neither parts of that narrative are true, although they aren’t completely false either. This post provides a starting point for revising that history, that will be developed completely in the book.

First, let’s start with why it matters. The approximately biannual (because in Washington, bills have a two year life-cycle) tradition of Senator Kohl-Welles’ amendments to RCW 69.51.A since the 00s produced amendments in 2007 and 2010, but generally those amendments were aimed at increasing and/or improving patient access. For example, the 2010 amendment that liberalized authority to write authorizations may have had a great deal to do with the explosion of retail access points, in two ways. First, authorized patients were necessary for medical access points to function in compliance with State law, and now there could be a lot more of them. And second, for collective gardeners (some of whom were vertically integrated into retail spots), there was a surge of demand through less underground “off the street” outlets. Patients could be authorized to grow their own, but that didn’t mean they had the skill, time, or inclination to do so.

Senator Kohl-Welles’ 2011 bill, SB 5073, was a comprehensive reform of the Medical Cannabis legislation in that it sought to improve through regulating the increased and improved patient access to which her previous efforts contributed. There were a LOT of other factors, and it’s impossible to say what percentage each contributed, but here are a few: the election of “choom gang” veteran Obama to the presidency; the financial crisis that had most of our country trying to figure out how to pay mortgages and bills; the Ogden Memo and its successor Federal memos of which the Cole Memo is only the most recent and clearly spelled out; the bankruptcy of State and local budgets including for law enforcement against a plant; the widespread availability of information on how to grow cannabis on the internet; the completion of years-long prosecutions in favor of Medical Marijuana defendants that set a more liberalized precedent; and so forth. If not perfect, it was a hell of a storm for evolving social and policy conditions. And our subjects, along with many others, certainly found those conditions amenable to choosing Medical Cannabis livelihoods.

Certainly, the choices made by more and more people to practice civil disobedience against a racist, unjust and genocidal Federal prohibition meant more and more storefronts becoming visible in the landscape. They not only served a burgeoning number of authorized patients: they channelled cannabis markets off the streets and into a space of visibility that itself may have served to discipline violence associated with street corner dealing and turf warfare. They served to employ an army of unemployable people in the middle of the greatest financial crisis of our lifetime. In the book, we go into more detail about the social benefits of visible access points and the commercialization of domestic sinsemilla. But the point of this paragraph is to highlight the social conditions that, indisputably, made cannabis markets much more visible to policymakers and the public.

But prohibition culture did not recede as rapidly as the post-prohibition economy. Some lawmakers chose the old fashioned response to “seeing cannabis like a prohibition State” (see anthropologist James Scott on “seeing like a State“). Cannabis could be tolerated as long as it remained in the social closet, but the emergence of retail access points in the urban landscape began to promote a politics of “moral panic” that joined with other political currents (I 502 being one of them) to demand something be done. Senator Kohl-Welles SB 5073 caught the State legislature at a moment when the politics of regulation were just beginning to sort themselves out, when those politics could only be framed in terms of reforming the current system rather than attempting to re-create it via not just “recreational” law (I 502, one year later) but the subsumption of Medical into a Recreational legal framework (5052, four years later).

What seems clear is that SB 5073 represented a reformist turn for Senator Kohl-Welles, for which the legislature was ready (but not the Governor); that the Medical Cannabis community had started to go its own way via Representative Appleton in a “improve patient access” vehicle that went nowhere but siphoned energy from the previously unified Kohl-Welles Medical Cannabis front; and that power in the State legislature shifted away from Democrats (and therefore towards Republican lobbyist-recently-turned Senator Ann Rivers. Legislative focus shifted definitively away from “increasing patient access” towards “regulating patient access,” ostensibly in order to “improve patient access” via quality control.

At this point it is obligatory to state that the objective of improving patient access via quality control was always necessary and could have been a focus of legislative energy starting in 1998. It’s not the basic meaning of the discourse that became a point of major social conflict, it’s how the discourse was mobilized in a way that could not improve patient access because it was busy tearing up the access system that had evolved organically over 15 years, through Senator Ann Rivers.

In 2013, Rivers successfully killed Kohl-Welles’ efforts to resurrect SB 5073 and introduced her own vehicle, SB 5887, that definitively shifted how Medical Cannabis would be handled in the legislature right through to 5052’s radical re-writing of what it meant, legally, in Washington State. SB 5887 was introduced late in the 2013 session and re-introduced for the biennial 2014 session, when most of the legislative work that ultimately proved futile was done. It died when revenue sharing disagreements in the context of the ongoing State budget crisis proved irreconcilable. The end of the two-year legislative cycle meant that legislative reform efforts would begin again in 2015 with a clean slate.

Senator Rivers’ majority party advantage established through the “Majority Caucus Coalition” formed with two renegade Democrats 2012 was cemented by the November 2014 elections, when Republicans gained an outright majority. Any cannabis legislative vehicle would have to go through her, and thus the 2015 session began with a radical one: SB 5052. It was economically radical because it sought to re-create cannabis markets in Washington State, rather than align the old with the new via regulation; it was politically radical because it accepted no input or amendment from the political representatives and stakeholders that had been increasing and improving patient access since 1998; and it was culturally radical in that it relied on a campaign of “moral panic” to characterize the Medical Cannabis policy experiment in Washington State a total failure because Medical Cannabis people were “Bad Actors” creating a “Wild West,” “unruly,” and “out of control” environment. Collective gardens were unredeemably greedy, patients were 90% fakers and gamers of the system, and so forth. The only verifiable fact associated with this discourse was that yes, the State could finally begin to see Cannabis culture out of the closet and, over more than 20 years, totally invested in Medical Cannabis in all its definitions, and these just weren’t the people it wanted to regulate. Well, maybe some of them — but just a few.

 

Continuity, Discontinuity, and Contingency between Legal and Medical

Active_Pending_Medical Seattle Map 07162014
July 2014 map by Steve Hyde, of then-pending Legal retailers and advertised Seattle Medical access points

by Dominic Corva, Social Science Research Director

Legal Cannabis Phase I, for our interview subjects, overlapped with another State legal regime, Initiative 75, which was codified as RCW 69.51.A in 1998. Washington State medical cannabis laws were first passed by citizen initiative in 1998 and amended legislatively multiple times until 2011. The 2011 amendment, SB 5073, was a legislative bill requiring the State to regulate and tax commercial medical cannabis. It was the culmination of over a decade of then-Senator Jeanne Kohl-Welles collaboration with Washington State medical cannabis patients and stakeholders. Those efforts continued for four years, until SB 5052 swallowed them up by folding medical cannabis regulation into the I 502 framework in 2015. First, let’s clarify this timeline, and then let’s discuss how this is relevant to our study of Legal Cannabis Phase I.

The timeline goes something like this.

  1. Medical Phase I: 1998- April, 2011. Key legal framework: affirmative defense for possession; evolving criteria for authorizations; and evolving plant counts.
  1. Medical Phase II: April 29, 2011 — July 1, 2016. Key legal framework change: commercialization tolerated in policy, especially in Seattle and King County, via a noncommercial clause, “collective gardens.”
  1. Legal Phase I: I 502 (December 2012/13 — April 28, 2015/July 1, 2016). Key legal framework: an explicitly non-medical system regulated by the WSLCB.
  1. Legal Phase II: July 1, 2016- .  Key legal framework: a single integrated medical and non-medical system regulated by the WSLCB, plus other reforms to the 502 law. 

      5. Overlap: April 28, 2015-July 1, 2016. Medical Phase II and Legal Phase I co-exist.

This timeline could easily be broken up further. For instance, the 2008 liberalization of authorization authority had a significant impact on the availability of authorized consumers for access points. And the 2011 legislative vehicle was the first of Senator Kohl-Welles’ reform efforts that sought to regulate patient access, rather than improve patient access. Between 2008 and 2011, something or some things happened to centralize legal reform efforts away from “more cannabis and more patients” to “discipline unruly State cannabis markets.” This is the subject of another book or chapter, however.

Instead, we want to understand the dynamics of Medical policy and markets as continuous and parallel to the dynamics of Legal policy and markets. And to do that, we have to unpack the evolution of both processes in relation to and separate from each other. We want to use Medical Phase I to break up and analyze Legal Phase I as the upstart — or start-up — framework with messy and unanticipated dynamics, not a homogenous legal time in which one thing logically followed another until it was time for Legal Phase II in Washington State.

In fact, the reason they evolved separately had less to do with the passage of I 502 than the way the WSLCB chose to implement it. And the way they chose to implement it was to create a completely different system rather than to use State Medical markets as a foundation. This is probably the defining characteristic of the “Washington model,” since no other state has chosen to do it that way.

The WSLCB took about 10 months to go from figuring out what cannabis was at the most basic level to implementing a “starting from scratch” model. For the first six months or so, that process was dominated by public and private meetings across the state so the Board could learn from existing cannabis market stakeholders a few things about the commodity they were charged with regulating. Starting in about April 2013, that process overlapped with a more academic exercise, in which BOTEC was contracted to estimate the size of the cannabis market, its potential environmental impacts, and so forth.

By the fall of 2013, the WSLCB had decided on a course of action that may or may not have been understood by the bureaucracy itself as a model for starting from scratch. There would be a one month window for applications, some time to process producer and processor applications, and then a lottery for retail applications, then some time to process those, and then by June 2014 Legal Phase I would open for business. This is a well-known timeline, but we emphasize two things about it that are poorly understood.

First, the applicant pool was much larger and different from what the WSLCB expected. Instead of a few hundred experienced applicants, they received a few thousand applications, many of whom were “gaming the system” by forging real estate claims and creating rings of applicants from friends, family, or straight up business associates to maximize their odds in the retail lottery or gain control of more canopy than they could otherwise.

And second, applicants to the 502 system were applying to a system that was legally forbidden from making any medical or therapeutic claims about cannabis. Although some of our interview subjects anticipated that this would change, it was a great disincentive to existing Medical Cannabis stakeholders against joining the I 502 system. This applies especially to retail access points, whose products and customer base revolved centrally around making those claims. But it also applies to producers and processors, since medical markets themselves continued to evolve away from simply growing high THC sinsemilla flower, towards CBD-rich cultivars, extracts, and edibles of much greater potency and diversity than would appeal to “recreational” consumers in the new system.

The takeaway for this post is that while the WSLCB may or may not have intended to “start from scratch” with I 502 stakeholders that were overwhelmingly new to cannabis, that’s how it worked out. This is most clear for the retail side of things, in which the lottery system could have by chance favored existing Medical Cannabis access points, but the odds were pretty slim given the amount of applicants and the way they gamed the system.

This is how it shook out for our interviewees. One of them “won” a lottery position outright, but was derailed repeatedly over real estate and business partnership issues. One of them acquired a Shoreline lottery position very early, and once a few of the winning lottery positions failed to take advantage, had their Seattle number come up. They have a Sodo location now. Two others drew extremely low lottery numbers whose numbers never came up. And one did not apply at all, figuring that the two systems would remain separate given that the 502 system was not allowed to be medical in any way. We will address who these are, and how this process shook out, in the book.

Including excluded voices

Screen Shot 2016-05-18 at 4.21.38 PM
Screen shot of the twicebaked blog, taken Wednesday, May 18, 2016, by Dominic Corva

by Dominic Corva, Social Science Research Director

A suboptimal effect of writing a book about medical transitioners is that we exclude medical non-transitioners, reproducing a structural problem associated with the dawn of Phase II on July 1. This post is offered as some small amends: a link to CASP podcast interviewee Pam Dyer representing that voice in a recent post on her twicebakedinwashington blog.

https://twicebakedinwashington.com/2016/05/16/cannabis-mamas-will-be-criminals-july-1/

“I’m fresh from the monthly NORML Women of Washington meeting held on the second Saturday of each month at Uptown Espresso in Westlake, Seattle.

I felt some very real anxiety during the meeting when we were talking about what happens to cannabis patients in July. As far as we knew, there are only a few stores that will be set up to provide to cannabis patients when the new laws take effect.

This informed group of cannabis patients, caregivers, and mothers to patients was unable to give a good answer as to where they will be getting their cannabis medicines, come July 1. Correction, they knew where they would be able to get it still but they would become criminals if they did so.” Read the rest here. Her voice is clear, responsible and well-spoken.

Introducing the book in progress: Why Medical Transitioners?

Photo by Lisa Buchanon. Dr. Corva presenting at the Alliance May 12, 2016, at the Swedish Cultural Center, Seattle, WA.
Photo by Lisa Buchanon.
Dr. Corva presenting at the Alliance May 12, 2016, at the Swedish Cultural Center, Seattle, WA.

by Dominic Corva, Social Science Research Director

Last Thursday, Dr. Corva gave CASP’s first public presentation of our book-in-progress, “Washington State Legalization Phase I: An Ethnographic Report from the Perspective of Medical Transitioners.” We will be rolling out pieces of it on this blog through August, and this post introduces the book by explaining up front why we focus on stories of Medical Transition.

The unique value of the book project is its focus on the experiences of Medical Cannabis Transitioners, people and businesses that established livelihood identities as Medical Cannabis stakeholders before deciding to become Legal Cannabis stakeholders. For most, this means becoming a business licensed under the I 502 system. We have conducted 18 in-depth interviews ranging from one to seven hours long, since February. These interviews were transcribed, coded, and we are now in the process of writing four chapters. I’ll talk about those in a moment.

The choice to focus on Medical Transitioners is a calculated one. Here is a short list of reasons, in no particular order, which when put together make a powerful argument for the relevance and salience of this approach.

  1. Our interest in cannabis legalization is continuous with our interest in the historical arc of cannabis policy reform. Law and Policy reforms have built on one another over time, and formal legalization is but the next step in a process whose social dynamics require past progress. No single entity or moment can claim singular responsibility for legalization: it’s the outcome of a social movement, not a campaign that breaks radically with the past. Transitioner stories make this abundantly clear.
  2. Our interest in successful transitioners excludes both non-transitioners and new market actors. These two groups deserve careful study and research, but given the infancy of our State Legal Cannabis policy experiment we find that official efforts (such as the annual WSIPP report) focus almost exclusively on I 502 as a New Market/Policy; and that State actors are indifferent-to-hostile to non-transitioner stakeholders. Transitioner stories help us identify what kinds of knowledge are or can be transitioned into the new system.
  3. Transition knowledge comes from a fundamentally different cultural reality than New Market and Policy knowledge. Transitioner culture is post-prohibition in that it proceeds from civil disobedience to Federal Prohibition, from medical and underground cannabis values in which the plant is not, fundamentally, a threat to society. New Market and Policy culture remains tied to the “social threat” meaning of cannabis in a lot of ways, but chiefly through compliance with the Federal Cole Memo.
  4. There is a fundamentally practical side to examining Transitioner knowledge, since these are the people have far more experience with the plant, its markets, its cultural identities, and even the practice of regulatory compliance with local and State officials than New Market actors. They are the ones who have worked with policymakers and the public to get open as licensed businesses in the absence of central licensing law and policy. They have developed relationships with their communities, police, fire inspectors, and City and County officials, in a way that New Market actors have not. They have developed an organic local legitimacy necessary for sustainable businesses, and translated that legitimacy to the state by becoming licensed I 502 businesses.
  5. The system needs them, therefore — needs that experience and knowledge that comes from creating social trust in the absence of State endorsement. It’s clear that State endorsement doesn’t lead to social trust, necessarily, as evidenced by the Bans and Moratoria that make our State Policy experiment a rather uneven one, geographically. The knowledge about he plant is vital, too, as evidenced by SB 5052’s intention to “protect” medical access through the I 502 system past July 1. The recreational system was literally not allowed to make any kind of claims about cannabis as medicine for Phase I, and desperately needs stakeholders with experience and knowledge of cannabis as medicine to comply with SB 5052’s mandate.
  6. Transitioners have a nuanced critique of our State Policy experiment that is necessary for a robust understanding of not just the outcomes of our State Policy experiment, but the process of designing it. Annual WSIPP reports will provide fantastic information on the results of the experiment, but they’ll never provide a productive and transparent critique of its design and administration. “Productive critique” here does not mean criticism, it means analysis of the power relationships that steer the ship, to mix metaphors, in the direction it says it wants to go: away from prohibition. Transitioners aren’t hamstrung by prohibition culture, so they don’t have to discipline what they say to reflect the Cole Memo’s prohibition values.
  7. Finally, CASP as an organization has spent most of its research efforts on Medical Cannabis organizers and organization. Thus, this ethnography is the outcome of three years in the field for Dr. Corva and Dr. Sexton, not just 18 processed ethnographic interviews. The legitimacy of the interviews as a basis for research reports rests on this fieldwork “embeddedness”: we knew what questions to ask because we were there and often part of it. There is a “participant-observation” aspect to this ethnography, which in the social sciences comes with its strengths and weaknesses. We will address those at length in the methodology section of the book.

This is the first in what should be a summer-long release of different parts of the book as we fill out the chapters from the interview evidence collected. We hope to have a full draft done by August 1, 2016. Our next post will focus on the structure and process of the book, which is more the production of a collaborative research network than any single author. For now, let’s acknowledge authoring collaborators — later we will acknowledge our interview subjects themselves. Our interns are Hillary Bernhardt and Paul Jamison; Dr. Michelle Sexton and Brad Douglass of the Wercshop are primary contributors to the Lab chapter so far, but Dr. Jim MacRae will be getting his crack at it once Brad sends us his comments; Dr. MacRae is also a substantive contributor to the Producer/Processor chapter. And of course Dr. Corva is cat-herder in chief of the project.

What is the environmental impact of cannabis legalization in Washington?

Hybrid Greenhouse structure alive with December trichome-harvest plants in Santa Rosa, California.
Hybrid Greenhouse structure alive with December trichome-harvest plants in Santa Rosa, California.

by Dominic Corva, Social Science Research Director

This may seem like an odd question, and it’s certainly not answerable given that we were never really able to tell what the environmental impact of cannabis prohibition was in Washington. However, we certainly can describe ground conditions set by Phase I of cannabis legalization here, roughly from December 2012-July 1, 2016 (when changes to I 502 from last year’s legislative session fully take over from I 502). Once we know these, we can begin to track the environmental impact of cannabis legalization going forward.

This post does not do that, although it is inspired by progress towards doing that in our forthcoming book, “Phase I of Cannabis Legalization in Washington State: An Ethnographic Report from the Field.” Instead, this post highlights our methodology for describing those ground conditions. It’s pretty simple.

First, we start with the BOTEC white paper from September, 2013, linked on the WSLCB web site, which identifies the main environmental impact policy concern: indoor production.

We find that the predominant environmental concern in marijuana production is energy use for indoor production (less importantly for greenhouse production) and in particular the climate effects of this energy use. We then turn to the main opportunities for growers to reduce these environmental consequences, finding that the most important is substituting greenhouse and outdoor production for indoor operations, and managing indoor production for reduction of electricity use and especially electricity use during the day. We also sketch some ways the Liquor Control Board (LCB) can encourage better environmental practice in this industry (4 of 32).

If indoor production is “the predominant environmental concern in marijuana production,” then our methodology must be to identify how much of Washington’s production market created in Phase I is in fact indoor production vs greenhouse or outdoor.

One thing must be clear: this is not an indictment of indoor producers, some of which are subsidized for using LED lights; some of which are subsidized by local jurisdictions keen on re-industrializing a busted economy; and some of which intend to bootstrap into greenhouse production sometime in the future. As a result, this is not an indictment of WSLCB policies and rules. It is an objective assessment of the field given the analysis laid out by BOTEC’s WSLCB-endorsed white paper.

This is, therefore, a review of what happened in Phase I, in terms of what kind of cannabis production became possible at the very creation of our state’s legal market. It is subject to continual revision as Phase II develops.

At the moment, the actual data compiled by our sources is not ready for public consumption for a number of reasons. But here’s a rough sketch of what I see, for now.

  1. Washington State legal cannabis production is overwhelmingly indoor, driven especially by the development of highly capitalized warehouse operations especially on the West side of the state.
  2. Greenhouse production is minimal at best so far, but highly capitalized greenhouse operations on the East side of the state loom like expiration dates for Western warehouse production.
  3. Full sun outdoor production is, as you might expect, concentrated on the East side of the state. These operations are mostly devoid of Light Deprivation approaches, which means to me these operations are breathtakingly uninformed and shooting themselves in the foot every season that they delay implementing Light Deprivation crops — multiple ones, not just one.
  4. Indoor dominance in the first two years of production was pretty much sealed when the WSLCB failed to approve enough producers in the Spring of 2014, choosing instead to focus on approving Retail before swinging wildly back to producers in July 2014 — too late for any outdoor producers to get in a full season of experience and production.
  5. Thus, we are looking at only our second full season of outdoor and greenhouse production. It’s a massive ship to turn around, as indoor capacity has overwhelmed retail capacity by itself in the meantime; but it won’t take too many more full seasons before outdoor production overwhelms indoor production — not just with cheap “oil crops” and material for rolling joints, but boutique, indoor-competitive Light Dep product.
  6. And then there’s the pesticide phenomenon: is there an indoor-outdoor aspect to problematic pesticide use in Washington’s legal market?

I’m going to leave that last question dangling. But now you have an idea of how this particular question can be, and is being, answered.

A Brief Review of CASP and introduction to CASP 4.0

by Dr. Dominic Corva, Social Science Research Director

This post reviews the evolution of our nonprofit think tank since we earned our own 501(c)(3) Federal designation last July, after being fiscally sponsored by Americans for Safe Access Foundation (ASAF) between Fall 2013 and July 2015.

Since founding the organization in May 2013, we have gone through three major organizational structures, all part of bootstrapping an idea about a nonprofit service into an actual, functioning think tank with a focused identity. Since January 2016, we have been busy nailing down that sustainable identity, which you can read about in our new About page. The web site itself is a bit behind, but we will gradually catch up as bandwidth permits. The constant process throughout this time was Dr. Corva’s ethnography of cannabis agriculture especially as it relates to legalization in Washington state, where the Center is centered; and Dr. Sexton’s ongoing academic research and presentation to many national and global audiences especially the International Cannabinoid Research Society.

CASP 1.0 was the rough draft, the seed from which our possibilities could be assessed for further selection. Primarily, it was comprised of Dr. Michelle Sexton, myself, and Dr. Sunil Aggarwal as founding Board members, meeting a few times a month on Google Hangout and exchanging information about the field as we saw it opening up amongst us. Dr. Sexton had a particular vantage point as a state subcontractor on cannabis rule development before and during this period; Dr. Aggarwal was finishing his NYU residency and had a more East Coast and global perspective on developments. And Dr. Corva’s perspective was informed especially by his then three-year ethnographic project on policing cannabis agriculture in Humboldt County, California. For this period, our main focus was on learning the new landscape, especially in Washington State.

CASP 2.0 overlapped with 1.0 to a degree, as it emerged from our fiscal sponsorship agreement with ASAF in Fall 2013. During this period, a melange of volunteer energy pulled CASP in many different directions, depending on what the volunteers wanted to do. This was a period in which, absent resources, we discovered and engaged community development interests to sharpen our understanding of the embryonic field. This period concluded in late spring 2014, when Dr. Aggarwal accepted his NIH fellowship and officially took leave of the organization with our best wishes. At that time we took stock of our network and composed a Board to help develop the organization. Dr. Sexton remained on the Board, but for this period served a similar role to other Board members, as a real economy portal into the State’s accredited lab industry. The other Board members for this time period were Naz Victoria, I 502 producer/processor and drug war POW; Don E. Wirtschafter, lawyer, I 502 prospective applicant, museum founder, general cannabis history participant OG; Aaron Varney, Dockside Co-op (medical and I 502 retail); Joy Beckerman, Hemp Goddess, Woman of Weed, and general cannabis history participant OG; and Rachel Kurtz, I 502 business lawyer and Washington State cannabis organizer and drug policy activist OG. Locally, during this time period Dr. Corva was especially engaged in the Health Before Happy Hour legislative campaign (spring 2014); from which he developed a steady working relationship with the Coalition for Cannabis Standards and Ethics (CCSE, a nonprofit industry self-regulation group); the Washington Cannabis Commission Project (Oct 2014-present); and continues to serve a think tank function with the Cannabis Alliance, a recent integration of CCSE with three other industry standards group. There were lots of talks delivered and meetings held along the way.

In California, Dr. Corva was invited to serve as a cannabis agriculture and policy expert and observer for California Cannabis Voice Humboldt’s explosive and often controversial ordinance development campaign, which was ultimately successful as a County Supervisor-finished process. This meant not just regular visits but formal accompaniment for two CA State official tours of cannabis farms: the first Lt. Governor Gavin Newsom in the spring of 2015, and not long after the CA Board of Equalization (or half of it — Fiona Ma and George Runner).

California Board of Equalization crew, featuring Fiona Ma, at the end of the Light Dep tunnel on the Tour.
California Board of Equalization crew, featuring Fiona Ma, at the end of a Light Dep tunnel on the Tour.
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Ma and Runner visit Wonderland Nursery

At the same time, I served on the informal board of the Humboldt and Mendocino Marijuana Advocacy Project (HUMMAP), a coalition of heritage farmers drawn mostly from the ranks of the back-to-the-land movement that pioneered the domestication of sinsemilla cannabis agriculture — and were the first subjects of its policing — in the United States.

CBD-rich breeding pioneer Lawrence Ringo, may he rest in peace, was a HUMMAP member.
CBD-rich breeding pioneer Lawrence Ringo, may he rest in peace, was a HUMMAP member.
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Christopher Larson, Lawrence Ringo’s partner in Lost Coast Botanicals, was also a HUMMAP member.

These old timers were some of the first people I met and interviewed in Humboldt County; and they also served as CCVH’s main foil during the ordinance push. Their general opposition to the ordinance process was grounded in the feeling that it was insufficiently attentive to the needs of truly small Humboldt back-to-the-land heritage farmers. I saw this as an opportunity to develop and bridge community dialogue, but left he Board of HUMMAP when the decision to litigate the ordinance was made, as I could not be party to formal legal proceedings that pit some of my friends against others. I did try to mediate by providing clear information to both sides up to that time.

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Kevin Jodrey and Reverend Jeff Cannabis talk terpenes and the market at the Terpestival.
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Ganjapreneur content producer and Vashon Island community organizer Shango Los in the audience at the 2015 Original Terpestival.

CASP 3.0 began in July, 2013. This was the month we put on our first popular education fundraiser, the Original Terpestival, which changed our outlook on what was possible both for the focused mission of our think tank and for our annual budget. The event featured Dr. Ethan Russo, the world’s foremost cannabinoid and terpene scholar as well as Vashon Island resident, as its keynote lecturer. The science of terpenes is a significant resource of industry development, both medical and recreational, and the terpene-focused Cup was the first of its kind. The overwhelming show of support from industry for learning real science was incredible, and we raised over $7,000 due to sponsorships and the donation of testing by the Wercshop.

This pulled us out of a serious budgetary hole, almost; and proved the concept of popular education could be practiced through events that combined public and private interest in an uncontroversial fashion. Board members Joy Beckerman, Aaron Varney, and Michelle Sexton were especially key to the event’s success, with special credit to Joy. By then Rachel had moved to Oregon; Don had concluded his I 502 efforts; and Naz was spending most of his time concluding his business interests in his home state of Pennsylvania until the I 502 market matured enough to be worth getting into as a processor.

During all iterations, Dr. Corva continued his work in California and Washington, without much concern for documenting and promoting what he was doing. Until we have resources to do this, Google will have to suffice. These included a paid trip to Berlin for a cannabis legalization conference keynoted by the mayor of the city; Seattle Town Hall appearances; Seattle Hempfest panel moderation, participation, and organization, and many others. I was particularly active as a public intellectual and scholar around issues pertaining to the political economy of cannabis agriculture and policing. Dr. Sexton was also extremely active as a public intellectual and scholar, especially around the subject and practice of cannabis as herbal medicine.

CASP 3.0 provided two major developments. First, Dr. Sexton’s permanent relocation to San Diego and full time commitment to full-time research (rather than running an industry lab) opened up considerable possibilities and focus for organizational restructure. This move has been especially facilitated by her work consulting for other States as they develop new medical and legal regulations.

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Dr. Sexton in Humboldt with Heritage Women Growers after the 2015 Emerald Cup
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Dr. Sexton with her fellow contributors to the American Herbal Pharmacopeia, taken at the 2015 ICRS conference in Italy.
Dr. Sexton presenting at the 2015 Emerald Cup in Santa Rosa, CA.
Dr. Sexton presenting at the 2015 Emerald Cup in Santa Rosa, CA.

Second, Dr. Corva was enlisted at the last minute to teach two courses at the University of Washington in Fall 2015, which actually substitute-paid his salary for the year. This completed our return from budget impossibility, and fulfilled CASP’s mission to provide public sector education. It was a one-off thing, great for the organization financially but difficult to reconcile with continued organizational development. For Winter 2016, Dr. Corva was engaged even before the Fall appointment to teach “Cannabis, Law and Social Change” for the University of Washington’s Evening Degree Program. This was much more in-line with CASP organizational development, and was a sequel to a similar course developed in graduate school with Dr. Aggarwal in 2008. That 2008 class received an award from the College of Social Sciences, and we were delighted to get a second crack in an even more relevant and rich state context. Unfortunately, the University has decided to close down the Evening Degree Program in favor of online classes, and so it is unlikely to happen again unless championed as a regular day class by a tenured faculty member in a Social Science Department. And that is also quite unlikely, for many reasons. The availability of salary from that class for the first quarter of the year opened things up, however, to the engagement of two interns for a four month project. We are halfway through a book about Phase I of Washington legalization (I 502-5052).

CASP 4.0 has a razor-sharp, minimal-financial-overhead focus. Our goal is to finally be able to produce journal articles, chapters, and books based upon our experience in a field that, in practice, stretches from Washington to San Diego, California, where Dr. Sexton is setting up shop as CASP South. For this period, Dr. Sexton and Dr. Corva will serve as co-Research Directors (he’s Social Science, she’s Medicine) and share Executive Director responsibilities as they are needed. This organization will not go out of our way seeking large donors, because we don’t need them and don’t need Big Money Agendas driving our research agendas. See our new About section for more!

We are also pleased to have Dr. Aggarwal and his partner, Dr. Tapoja Chaudhuri, informally back in the circle as they have moved back to Seattle and are exploring research development opportunities. This period will see us further develop our Board, given that it has already been geographically and otherwise dispersed. Dr. Corva is looking for more community-oriented local portals to the real economy, now that Aaron Varney is the only full-time local Board member; and Dr. Sexton will be developing Board members that can support her needs as a medical cannabis researcher in California.

One final note: we have recently signed our event planner and are now producing the second Original Terpestival, a collaboration with Project CBD, in Hopland, California.

Martin Lee of Project CBD is third to the right; co-collaborator Jerry Whiting of LeBlanc CNE second to the right; and medical cannabis documentarian Michael Scott is fourth to the right. This picture was taken after Martin's guest lecture to Dr. Corva's Cannabis, Law and Social Change class Winter 2016.
Martin Lee of Project CBD is third to the right; co-collaborator Jerry Whiting of LeBlanc CNE second to the right; and medical cannabis documentarian Michael Scott is fourth to the right. This picture was taken after Martin’s guest lecture to Dr. Corva’s Cannabis, Law and Social Change class Winter 2016.

This is both a great opportunity to collaborate with a trailblazing cannabis knowledge nonprofit, and the outcome of Washington State’s criminalization of cannabis events at the end of the 2015 legislative session (this takes effect July 1, 2016, but was in law for our first iteration).

In the meantime, you can look forward to more consistent updates on this web site now that Dr. Corva’s teaching responsibilities are on indefinite hiatus. Also, don’t forget to follow our Facebook page, which has served pretty well as a micro-blog and newsfeed this whole time — we have over 2,000 likes now.

This should bring the public up to speed on our organizational fine-tuning. We are excited about this phase, which clearly defines what we do and how we do it, because the field has developed well enough for us to understand how to provide unique and focused content while maintaining our general mission of public and policymaker education.

A Brief Commentary on MJBA’s David Rheins interview with Mark Kleiman

WAMAP

by Dominic Corva, Social Science Research Director

This post is intended to pick up and amplify a few things from MJBA’s David Rheins’ recent interview with Mark Kleiman, Washington’s former “weed czar.”

First, a couple of comments about Kleiman, who is a bit of a controversial figure amongst cannabis people. Critiques of his perspective circle around two things. First, his cannabis politics are those of an outsider. And second, BOTEC, the organization that he heads, is often not just “back of the envelope” but outright off the envelope and onto the table in terms of its published work. I don’t think it’s controversial or negative to speak to both of these Kleiman properties, so to speak.

First, while the man is no Tommy Chong, he’s definitely a huge proponent and user of psychedelics, which means his “outsider” status is not so clear cut when it comes to queer consciousness. LSD was the original counterculture sacrament, with cannabis playing a secondary and more everyday role in hippie lives after the 1960s. In fact, the Brotherhood of Eternal love sold cannabis to finance their mission of getting LSD to the world, not the other way around, according to Nick Schou’s “Orange Sunshine.”  Kleiman certainly seems more inclined than most (all?) psychonauts to toe the stigma that regular cannabis use is a serious public health risk rather than a marker of cultural identity, but that’s clearly a perspective that endears him to the reformist/centrist wing of the anti-drug war movement.

Second, Kleiman uses this report as evidence they got something right in their first round as Washington State consultants, back in 2013. My critique is that this is probably not well-supported, as a result. Literally, the point is so minor I’m not going to get into it. But for me, that means the interview is chock full of “good Kleiman.” So, to the interview itself and my comments, question by question. To see his answers, you’ll have to go to the interview itself, because it deserves traffic.

“It’s been nearly 2 years since Washington State opened its first recreational marijuana market, how well have your market estimates held up?”

See point the second.

What new insights have you had about the legal cannabis market since you first issued your report?

Kleiman concedes something that was pretty obvious to any observers of the local Washington medical market.

Who is the typical recreational cannabis consumer? How much do they consume?

Kleiman’s answer to this is really, really good.

Washington’s marijuana excise tax is 37% Colorado’s is 25% and Oregon is 17%; why such a wide disparity between the legal recreational states?  What should the right level of taxation be?

Kleiman’s answer to this is really, really, really good. Three efficient statements with clear implications for How to Do it Better, although the third one still has an issue. Can you name it?

What are the greatest challenges to the legal cannabis industry?

I like this answer, although I don’t share his challenge priority or some of the reasons he has it. It’s still good, because (spoiler) it clearly indicts the retail bottleneck, which is something policymakers could fix (and could have fixed, for good, in December).

What is the future of legal cannabis in the US? Will we continue to see legalization happen one state at a time, or do you envision an end to Federal prohibition in the not too distant future?

Great answers! And there’s a lot more to be said about why California is important. The question Washington policymakers and the WSLCB should be asking themselves is not whether the Federal government likes their model or not, it’s whether Californians like the WA model. And the answer to that is really, really clear: they do not. The coming struggle will be between California’s model and the Federal model, not between Washington and other states — although Washington is apparently in favor with the Feds, according to a high level NORML friend of mine.

Thus concludes my analysis of this excellent, focused interview with one of the more influential cannabis policy persons on this planet, in terms of who will listen to him. I’m not on team Kleiman, but I’m interested in common ground as it becomes apparent. Thanks to David R. for making space for this.

 

ROLLING LEGAL: How a Brazilian is Blazing Trails in Uruguay’s Hemp Industry

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All photos by Fabio Bastos

An interview with Brazilian ganjapreneur Fabio Bastos, CEO of Sediña

by Ras Stephen Charles Flohr

10/6/15

Sao Paulo, Brazil

Sometimes the grass really is greener on the other side. At least that’s been the case for Fabio Bastos, 35, a prominent Brazilian journalist who decided to pack his bags and transplant himself in neighboring Uruguay in pursuit of entrepreneurial conquest in the country’s fledgling hemp/cannabis industry. In collaboration with the Brazilian cannabis portal Smoke Buddies, I had the privilege to catch up with Fabio and pick his brain regarding his journey into greener yet unchartered pastures. At first, Fabio was leary about talking with me and responded to my initial journalistic requests with a dismissive if not brash demeanor. “We at Sediña aren’t interested in such partnerships, he replied”. Yet once I reassured him that my intentions were purely literary and not commercial, he quickly warmed into the gracious, forthcoming and charismatic personality that suited his glimmering reputation as Uruguay’s alien hemp pioneer. “You’ll have to excuse me for being so closed and short with you”, he explained. “It’s just that I get so many requests on a daily basis from people wanting personal information just so that they can set up shop and be my competition”. I assured him that I understood. It’s no doubt that everyone and their grandmother is clamoring for a piece of market share in the fertile yet still uncertain landscape of Uruguayan legalization.

 

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Fabio established his corporation Sediña (translated as rolling paper in Portuguese/Spanish) with the launching of a rolling paper which is advertised as the “Paper of Legalization” and is currently being sold throughout Uruguay and Brazil. Fabio recruits local representatives who are interested in furthering his mission of inspiring the legalization debate in his native country, which he sees languishing in the ice-ages of prohibition, and to give inroads to Sediña’s products in the Brazilian market. He made it clear to us that our work as journalists is in direct alignment with his aspirations of expanding the debate to a broader segment of society so that a more common-sense based, socio-political approach towards cannabis, could flourish. May this interview serve as a rallying point for discourse in unpacking the regional intricacies and entrepreneurial challenges posed by nascent markets in the spectre of global legalization.

How did this idea come about of you becoming a legal and registered grower of cannabis? Was it something that you envisioned implementing in Brazil following a future legalization measure or did this only occur after legalization took place in Uruguay?
Fabio: The path was natural for me because I am a natural born entrepreneur. When I was 18 years old I was already working as an executive producer and director for television programming. When I created the first season of CurtoCircuito ten years ago, I was already in my fifth television contract and it was just me going at it alone, going there, buying the space and showing what I wanted to the public audience that followed my work without any censorship. Little by little I started dealing with herb-related issues in a time when nobody even thought of dealing with such a controversial issue publically. Well, things started closing up, program managers didn’t want to have anything to do with me, I wound up without any work. It was around this time when the issue started gaining steam in Uruguay, people were taking the streets and it seemed like it was really going to happen in that country. Given the way things were turning out for me as I mentioned, the first thing that came to my head was: I have to be a part of this! So I started to study about growing, reading everything about marijuana, watching all the videos I could, I studied the market, legalization, etc.
I went to Uruguay and I was able to follow the entire legalization process firsthand. I made trips back and forth and ended up meeting many Uruguayans who had the same business goals. I started seeing the growth of the market like growshops for example, you know, watching everything unfold right before my very eyes. Without space and, above all, without motivation to continue in the media sector in Rio de Janeiro, I prepared myself to go live and work with cannabis in Uruguay. That’s how it was and before I knew it , I was already super involved.

What was the first step you took after your decision?
Fabio: Once I went to Uruguay, setting myself up as a legal resident and starting the process of getting all the paperwork together in order to start commercial activity was an adventure. Bureaucracy, that seemed small at first, little by little became more and more tedious, although tolerable (after all, I am Brazilian!), until there came the day of registering the business with the DGI (legal organ authorizing business activity in the country). I went with Gerardo, my accountant, and when we explained our business intentions to the very nice clerk who was helping us, she let out a big laugh, excused herself, and then called some of her colleagues to come help her with the process; the system wasn’t even ready to deal with this new segment of the market that the country just established. After a lot of being laughed at and doubts, Sediña became the first industrial hemp business in South America.
In Uruguay, have you experienced prejudice because you are a foreigner investing in a neighboring country after the change in law?
Fabio: Uruguay has a very large elderly population and the majority are against legalization. The youth are super liberal, free from prejudice and thirsty for life. It’s a very interesting combination that teaches us the lesson of how different ideas and points of view can exist side by side. Montevideo is loaded with foreigners and the people there are more used to it. They are receptive, excellent hosts, and they respect cultural differences while demanding respect for their own traditions. Uruguay is a beautiful country, very advanced in infrastructure and very advantageous in terms of opening a new business. Prejudice in Uruguay, with regards to the current generation, doesn’t exist.
What are some of ‘Sediña Marihuana y Derivados’ products that have or will be presented to the market?
Fabio: Sediña entered the market in 2015, and then gradually came along its’ product line. We started with the rolling paper which is now available and soon we will launch CanabidiOIL (CBD oil with 22% concentration), a line of genetics in partnership with BCN Seeds in Spain, specially developed by Karulo Abelan, founder of the magazine Cañamo (Hemp) and the owner of Barcelona’s first growshop. We will also sell the excess production of hemp to industries.

 

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You are currently in China. Can you tell us why?
Fabio: In China, they produce 50%, that’s half of hemp production globally. That’s why I came here. My main objective here is hemp. Since China is a major producer of so many things like electronics, we are also producing here things like vaporizers and other electronics that we work with. So I opened an operation here so that we can work from both sides of the globe, in Uruguay and China, and facilitate our operations. So here’s what I’m going to do, I am going to plant the hemp in Uruguay, then I am going to send it here to China and have it processed, and from there on we will produce our products. From hemp we can do everything, we can make biofuel, clothes, plastics, all in all a great deal of products, and this is my purpose: hemp and hemp derivatives. Sediña doesn’t work with nor has the interest in working directly with smokable marijuana. Since there exists the cannabis market we use this as a marketing strategy, so we made the rolling papers, lighters, vaporizers and these types of accessories, but this is more of a marketing tactic. Our business is hemp. We have our hemp plantation and the idea is to generate products from it.
Can you speak a little about the role that you and Sediña are playing in Brazil and how you are trying to stimulate the debate here regarding legalization?
Fabio: Yes, I am working hard in the area of activism with regards to legalization in Brazil, however, more from the standpoint of industrial hemp and medicinal marijuana, not recreational. I don’t deal with recreational marijuana. I smoke, I enjoy it, we got our own thing going of course, but we don’t work with a recreational focus. Therefore our activism in Brazil is aimed at separating these two things, to make the people understand that industrial hemp is different from marijuana, that one doesn’t have anything to do with the other, and that hemp needs to be legalized in Brazil in order to generate wealth, to drive the economy, to substitute products, less dependence on petroleum, etc. I believe that soon all Brazilians will be able to grow in their homes and have unrestricted access without being subject to heavy firearms nor will they be considered criminals for seeking out a cure for their illnesses. I defend this right of the people and I work so that people who may not have the time, knowledge or willingness to grow their own, can buy these products from specialized businesses.
What is your opinion regarding the Uruguayan model in terms of its’ cultivation and distribution scheme compared to other models that we see, for example, in the United States? Which would you like to see implemented in Brazil?
Fabio: As far as the Uruguay model is concerned, I think it’s right on the money. It’s not completely liberated, it’s something that is very controlled, yet it is a type of control that leads things in the direction of professional development. On one side it is going to generate resources, it’s going to generate jobs in the field and for the industry. In the end, it’s really going to move the economy of the country. Regarding the distribution of marijuana through pharmacies here in Uruguay, I think it’s pretty cool even though it’s not happening yet. It might happen, it might not. The only detail is that I don’t really see a market for it. Why? Because the market is already being supplied by homegrowing and by cannabis clubs. So I don’t see the possibility of a large clientele of Uruguayans for the pharmacies; I think its small. So I don’t see the opportunity for the people and businesses that are investing millions of dollars to enter into this market to see a return on their investment in the short term. And so I don’t see commercial viability for these businesses that are going to sell marijuana in the pharmacies. But this is only a personal opinion and we’re only going to see what will happen after it’s been put into practice. And so I really hope that Brazil adopts the Uruguayan model and not the American model. I think the American model is too liberal and in Brazil, for our culture, I don’t think it would work. The American model is very open, it has less restrictions, it is more accessible. The Uruguayan model is more closed, it has more governmental control. I think for the Brazilian culture, a more controlled model would work better. The American model in Brazil would turn out to be a mess.

What are some of the difficulties and challenges that you have faced in moving forth with Sedina?
Fabio: The main difficulty that we face is overcoming the negative stigma associated with marijuana, even here in Uruguay. And this is my greatest challenge, making the people separate hemp from marijuana and eliminate the inappropriate drug stigma. Sediña is a hemp business and the idea is to produce hemp products using its fiber and such, and so it’s difficult and we are always struggling with this. In Brazil it’s the same thing, the stigma barrier. But Brazil is very, very, very much behind Uruguay at this moment. The business and market of marijuana in itself is something very simple. There is no mystery to it. The mystery is in the taboo that is created in people’s heads. And so our main marketing objective is to demystify the various uses of cannabis, from recreational to medicinal to industrial. Yet for the most part, people here are very open and want to see it work. We’re still in the very beginning of things and so things need to happen step by step. But everybody who I am in contact with and show our projects to are very excited and want to know how they can help. You need to have the soul and predisposition for this type of thing which is something ancient yet new at the same time.