we're recording great my name is James Pepper I'm the chair of the Vermont Cannabis Control Board today is November 12th 2021 call the meeting to order so before we get to the agenda today I'd like to talk a little bit about social equity and its foundation in our work this is not a new topic for the three of us or for many of the people who watch us regularly or have been fighting to end prohibition for cannabis for years I think given the pace that we've been working at and all the decisions we made in our recent meetings it's important for the three of us to take a moment and recenter ourselves around what really is a core tenant of Act 164 and Act 62 as someone who worked on this issue years ago I can tell you that we wouldn't be here right now as a board or as a state if it wasn't for the promises that were made in those two pieces of legislation one to prioritize the people that have been directly harmed by the failed policy of prohibition and two to commit our time and resources to stopping the ripple effects that prohibition has caused on certain selected communities from accessing education employment political participation healthcare and just general economic opportunities this directive in Act 61 64 and 62 was not embedded in some of the state's ballot initiatives or legislation that went before us but it is for us so I think we need to just remind ourselves that we should be viewing social equity and all of our decision-making we should be looking at kind of all of our decisions through a lens of social equity and doing so very intentionally you know if not our own implicit biases will kind of push us back towards business as usual which business as usual has not led to systemic change in the cannabis industry or in the communities that have been hardest hit by the war on drugs so I personally think that we've done a good job of trying to consider equity and the decisions we've made to date we look at you what we decided on our use of criminal history records I think it is the most permissive in the country our provisional licensing structure that structure will save money for our licensees and avoided rental costs our decision around security requirements and licensing fees were all made through a lens of social equity that was all work that we had to do and we needed to do it quickly but we don't want to rush our establishing the more specific benefits that are exclusive for exclusively available to social equity applicant we've had a number of recommendations from our social equity advisory subcommittee Julie Kyle and I will be reviewing those later today but this is really not work that can be done in a bubble certainly not by the three of us you know I've never been arrested for a cannabis offense I don't come from a family or a community that's had people torn away and thrown in jail because of this plant and Vermont really does have its own unique history with the war on drugs and we need to hear from the people who wrote that history lived through it and that are still feeling the harms to tell us whether what we're talking about with social equity would help and if not what we should be doing instead so we are going to be holding two town hall meetings next week to discuss recommendations for our social equity benefits in the cannabis industry one is at the VSEC conference room in Winooski on Thursday November 18th at 6 p.m. the other our location because of COVID concerns just canceled on us we were going to do Bennington College on Saturday November 20th at 11 a.m. but so the location that is DVD but really the goals of these meetings are to hear how cannabis prohibition has impacted you how it's impacted your community and what the board can do and frankly what the legislature can do to attempt to repair some of those harms again we have some ideas that we'll be discussing today these can provide a framework for discussion for these meetings but I'm sure that we're missing things I'm sure that the solutions that kind of rise up organically will be a nice addition to what we're talking about and if these meetings prove to be fruitful then we can do more of them too we're not locked into two we're not locked into these locations a few programming notes on these in order to encourage a more frank and open discussion we won't be recording them and they'll be run by our consulting group National Association of Cannabis Businesses and then also just given the surge in COVID cases recently we will be requiring well we will have remote participation available at both and we will be requiring proof of vaccination and mandatory masking if you are planning to attend in person anything Julie Kyle you want to add to either to any of that before we move to the agenda thank you so we do have to approve the minutes from November 5th and have both you had a chance to review those and I take a motion to approve second all in favor all right so moving to the agenda we're gonna start by reviewing the social equity recommendations that were worked on by our advisory committee our advisory subcommittee on social equity I'm trying to do this with my glasses on this time so I can actually see it and not be guessing it what I'm looking at so as chair Pepper said you we have these town halls coming up and I think it'll be really helpful to sort of run through all of the recommendations of the social equity subcommittee and then probably include in that conversation the other places that we've talked about social equity as we've gone through our rulemaking process just so that when people are coming to the town halls they have a sense of what we're always framing the conversation with our mission and I've included in the slides here the relevant statute so that it's up on the website when we're done with this meeting I don't know that we necessarily need to run through all of this in detail I think we've probably done that in a lot of different places but for folks who are interested this is that discusses social equity and sort of frames this conversation and then you know was the directive for the social equity so just to kind of give a sense of like how we got to where we are now back when we started as a board at our very first meeting we included the executive director of racial equity Susanna Davis and we heard from her at that very first meeting and then we had a series of meetings that were focused on the priorities that we identified as a board and social equity was the focus of a meeting on June 17th what we heard in those meetings and then what we gathered from other conversations help us build a vision for how we will execute our mission as it relates to social equity that's included here also then we had our advisory committee stood up and we divided it into working groups including a social equity subcommittee and that's what I'm going to talk about here and you can see here was included in that social equity subcommittee and sort of their milestones their first recommendation was that we create two programs a social equity program that addresses the harm related to disproportionate impact cannabis prohibition and the second is a diversity equity inclusion program that's aimed at creating a more inclusive industry in general we have a unique position here creating a new industry and I don't know that any other industry has been created with the idea of equity and inclusion in mind so that was the purpose of that second recommendation the social equity sub committee also provided us with a recommendation for the criteria for social equity candidate this is the what they provided to us as a recommendation we then discussed this at length talked a lot about opportunity zones and what that meant for this recommendation we talked about the intent of social equity applicants and social equity criteria and talked about that it was meant to provide access to those who've been historically disproportionately impacted we talked about the data that supports that and understood that socioeconomic status wasn't necessarily included in that data so we took that out of that recommendation but it's discussed again later in the DEI program so we haven't forgotten about that group of people and there is some in our sectionality I think between socioeconomic status incarceration rates and race as we've discussed it in this context so this is the social equity applicant criteria that was approved by the board so a person of color anyone who can demonstrate that they are from a community that has been historically or disproportionately impacted by cannabis prohibition or a person who has personally been arrested convicted or incarcerated for cannabis related offense or has a family member that has been arrested convicted or incarcerated for cannabis related offense and I think that we intend to include adjudicated minors right in this as well and we did not include a residency requirement other than when somebody applies as a social equity applicant on that day they have to resident and document residency if a month they don't have to have been here for a certain period of time so the social equity subcommittee also defined family member for us they included domestic partner after getting some some comment and feedback and they also defined or gave us a recommendation on how to define domestic partner and this is how domestic partner is defined in other policies and data from us so it's a useful definition and they also made a recommendation regarding the documents for application I think for the second recommendation those might be things that are are attainable the first one there was a lot of conversation about what happens when someone's had you know a conviction expunged in another state how will they get that documentation so in terms of our town halls I would suspect that that would be a really good thing for us to hear from people on their experiences with that and what they might be able to obtain and what they might struggle to get documentation of so was there any discussion in the subcommittee about documentation for that first point was there like a in Vermont we created a expungement registry that keeps very basic data on expunge records it's only accessible to the court or the person who's received the expungement but prior to that being created there is a lot of expunge records that just don't exist anymore and of course juvenile records are sealed and then expunged as well so was there any discussion about the proof of conviction whether it's an attestation or an affidavit that you can sign they left that to us okay which is why I think it's good to hear from and the town halls for us to hear like what what does that mean for people how attainable is that is an attestation something that they can get is there a document or an article in a newspaper that they can provide there might be other things that are easily attainable that we haven't thought of right they also recommended that a business that is applying as a social equity applicant must have at least the social equity applicant in the business must have at least 51% ownership and be involved in the daily operations of the business and of course must meet the requirements to open the business and the date we touched on this a little bit when we talked about our baseline application requirements because we talked about a business plan and I think that this is something that could be identified in that business plan and that's a that's an and that's linking those two yeah yep and then they also recommended a fee structure for social equity applicants which some of which we accepted and included in our October 15th report the top part there and then the other pieces were considered but I think required additional consideration so in terms of the top part of this page the licensing fees waived for a year and then sort of the steps up to five years in terms of how much one we pay and then the provisional license application was proposed to be waived and we've passed that on to what is our recommendation as well the other pieces I think you know for the local fees in particular we made a couple of different recommendations so how how we would be able to waive those sort of depends on what the legislature does with that and I assume that will be part of that conversation and the same is true with the employee identification card those weren't included in our October 15th report but we've also then subsequently talked about removing that from you know making that something that someone achieves independently versus through an employer so how that kind of ends up and the legislature's hands will probably determine what we do with that or what we might recommend in that process and we will be the cannabis board will be meeting with ways and means next Tuesday afternoon to discuss our October 15th recommendations and hopefully we can get some sort of at least getting the dialogue and conversation going with the ways and means committee about any sort of concerns that they have with our October 15th proposal and this can be on the agenda yeah so one of the questions that sort of came up for us as a board when we were doing those October 15th recommendations was if we're making these few recommendations then what happens with those businesses so the social equity subcommittee also made some recommendations related to the transfer of social equity licenses this is their recommendation they recommended permitting transfer of licenses but if someone if it's transferred to a new social equity owner then it must they must take over that fee structure and then if it's to a non-social equity licensee within five years they need to pay the cost savings to that was their recommendation and then we'll go into the social equity fund they didn't discuss that I think that would be something that either well I think we have to make that recommendation to the legislature right we have to further discuss that I think so and we talked really about transfer of other types of licenses we haven't right I think the only reason why we talked about this because there's a there's a potentially a financial benefit these applicants are getting that the other one I know I think we've talked about it just very generally in the sense of right needing to understand if any director and direct owner ownership has changed at the time of reapplying for a license but not I'll think haven't dedicated a majority of our meeting to discussing transfers specifically right I wonder I'm getting hung up a little bit on the word transfer of the license and maybe I shouldn't be but it seems like you could sell your business but does the license go with the business so that was a question that the social equity subcommittee had and I think that's probably something that we need to talk about related to policy and how we execute this but because I don't know you could potentially sell your brand right but it may not we talked about it last Friday because I was hung up on on that and David helped clear clear up that separation and understanding that the license won't necessarily follow the business without us understanding exactly what's going on right so I mean somebody could build a successful brand and sell the brand but not the license and we can put something in one of the rules to have some more clarity around that at the board okay great yeah and then they also recommended the program benefits including priority of licensing which we've talked about quite a bit and then the other benefits that they propose really are things that we would need to pass on to ACCD because they're related to the cannabis business fund yep so those conversations are beginning at the end of this month and you know we'll pass those on and make sure that these are central in those conversations the recommendations that we've received you just walked around sure so educational courses cannabis certificates so that includes in my mind this is like certifications of value so in higher education we talked about certifications of value that don't necessarily require associates or a bachelor's degree but something that you can get that makes you more marketable as employee add some knowledge and can help you move up in employment it also talks about their recommendation was receiving training and technical assistance which I think we've talked about quite a bit as being a priority and of interest to the board and then access to low interest loans which is part of legislation so they essentially confirmed most of what was in the legislation as something that they agree with but then also added these educational courses certifications of value so the social like we said committee also made recommendations related to exclusive licensing for social likely applicants this is something that we would have to work with the legislature on it's something that we support and want to move forward as a as a board but they recommended a co-op and and the way I think this was envisioned was as a pooling of resources and a co-op that's actually a learning co-op so that social likely applicants could participate but also learn to cultivate process and sell cannabis and then that would be a licensed premises and then of course the other we've talked about in a couple of different places which is the delivery I think the way that this was proposed from the social likely subcommittee was kind of the way they envisioned it and it's it's here and this is copied from their slide it's kind of like pizza delivery so that the delivery person would be employed by the entity I think we need to have a further discussion about that proposal as a board I'm not sure that that's and I would like to hear I guess from the town halls would be another good thing to hear on it what structure of delivery license would actually be helpful for social equity applicants is it being employed by another entity or is it having your own standalone business what can you eat or what you know the big economy sort of standalone business the by entity you mean a retailer yes yeah yeah so that in this proposal the delivery person would be licensed but an employee of a retailer and they would have to be a social equity they would have to meet the social equity criteria yes there could be some so depending on how this is done if it's a contractor this may not be true but as if it's an employee it could run into employment law issues in terms of saying that you can only employ one kind of person right um and again I'm not really sure that this is this is most helpful it's probably the least flexible um for an individual who wants to start a business at the independent right so this would exist with no other options for delivery like a third party delivery service like using the food model like uber eats or door dash or something like that that wouldn't they're not suggesting that we go in that direction they didn't that was not the favorite recommendation it was one of the ones that they considered that this was their this was their favorite recommendation yeah and I'd like to hear more through the town halls and everything something to me feels a little uh off hiring a person of color to deliver this federally illegal drug you know what I mean versus allowing them to create their own business doing so and there are some you know there were some additional concerns that were brought up through public comment so if we're asking Eric we're making this exclusive to social equity applicants are we putting them at risk and then what do we need to do in terms of policy because they would be the people who are driving around with this as you said right federally legal substance what do we need to do um as an awareness to our local police are you know what what do you need to do to make sure that we're not putting them at risk and creating additional harm it's something else that I think I want to make sure I understand clearly that you kind of I think just hinted at so for this model that was recommended only social equity retail establishments who are in as part of our social equity program would have the ability to deliver not every retailer if they hire a person of color I hope that makes sense so so is it every retailer as long as they hire a social equity driver to make delivery or just social equity licensed retailers having that ability the first piece that I believe is what they were getting at so moving on yeah the co-op model who would actually own the co-op is that a social equity company that owns it and then or is it could it be anyone and then but all of the members have to be social equity license holders so the way that it was talked about in the subcommittee sounded like a state model I'm not sure yeah it owns the land and then the co-op operates on the land I'm not sure I mean that I feel like I feel like it would take us longer to set up this right through the you know through various different processes yes um and it would be we could be doing more good in that time so I think that's what you said the second thing that you said you know could we have a co-op that's licensed and this is what they're licensed to do I also think another topic of conversation for the town halls I think that there is some of this already occurring naturally as people are starting to build their plans for the market you know I've heard from some retailers and other folks that that they are looking to do social equity either to do classes for social equity applicants or ensure that they employ social equity applicants there there's already some of this is naturally building in the market and I think we need to be aware of what that is because why build two separate systems if these two systems can work together right so they're suggesting that if you know we're hearing a lot about co-ops lately um it's on our list of things to figure out an address but they're suggesting that that license type would only be available to social equity applicants at least initially or you know I think we would have to figure out and understand who's going to be involved with the co-op and how many members might be a social equity applicant of that specific co-op I don't know but I guess that's what they're that's what they're yeah I think that's what their recommendation was because they also they they suggested that we have some timeline for the exclusivity of these licenses so there's a period of time when they're open to everyone else so the suggestion for both of these was that they initially be only for social equity you know it seems to me and maybe I'm wrong because I have been thinking about co-ops it does somewhat seem to me that unless we explicitly prohibit co-ops that they could form naturally you know I don't you know unless we add regulations it would prevent the formation of one somewhat organically then um I don't see why they can't just naturally form a co-op and then as long as every individual member has a license or is an employee of a licensee that that a co-op could exist and so I don't know if we need to I think it's in our legislation we have to recommend whether we want to have a specific co-op license but I just don't know if we necessarily need to go down that path unless we wanted to prohibit it except for but for social equity right and I agree I think the only reason we need to have further discussion on it is if we wanted to allow multiple licenses to grow at the same place right right I was gonna I was gonna mention right that so on us on one parcel of land can you have multiple thousand acre you know operations are we gonna allow you know one one parcel one deeded you know attractive land to have one specific license type and when when there's only one license allowed for owner of a business I think we're just going to have to figure out how we can finesse that without running a fallow there is a benefit for smaller growers for that and that you if you can operate all in the same place you can share certain resources right equipment I'm for figuring it out it's just can we so I'm looking at David but and the co-op model doesn't require co-location either of course you know cabinet you know right you know they send their trucks around to any number of different dairy farms and they have a central location for processing yeah I mean coming from the ag world there's a lot of different producer style co-op models that we could we could look at share farm equipment then probably right if you want to get the kind of volume discount sign applicators that's right overall so I would like to hear if either one of these is actually useful or what you know what might be a better model to work with yeah I think it's an interesting concept for us to purchase land I think I agree with with you though that that's going to take a considerable amount of time for us to actually be able to to do that recognizing the worst entity you know and where else could this time and energy be sold for social equity right so the social equity subcommittee also made some recommendations related to the cannabis business loan fund so this this fund has an initial five hundred dollar or five hundred thousand dollar allocation from the general fund and then fifty thousand dollars from each integrated license and they recommended that because they they saw as they talked about various different options programs education what could be done you know the social equity subcommittee identified that there might not be enough money to really fund the programs that they were talking about or really what what needs to be funded so they made a recommendation that five percent of the cannabis excise tax go towards the social equity programs and they also recommended the creation of a of a trust both of those things require legislative action so those are things that we would need to discuss further and they also recommended some expenditures from the fund which again we would need to share with accd because really that fund is under there if I understand correctly um I think New Jersey has a social equity tax that they impose on every license holder or um or maybe it's just at the point of sale it looks like that five percent of the tax revenue um could be achieved this similar but did they talk about New Jersey at all when they were talking about this um I don't remember specifically if they talked about New Jersey I know we talked about New Jersey in Massachusetts quite a bit for this specific they don't remember but sure is that like a tax at the point of sale by customers or like a product registration tax that they almost feel like it's a fee honestly I feel like it's a fee that every license holder has to pay and it goes to a fund very similar to this so ultimately you know it's getting passed on to the consumers but um all right but it is a dedicated revenue stream towards something like a social equity development fund yeah and I think their goal is that this five percent would allow this to continue and be funded over time um so they also made some recommendations on social equity application what should be in the application and the processing of it uh most of this might be discussed as part of our baseline application um discussion so proof of residency um you know at the time of application documentation indicating conviction some of that would even just come through the background check process if it's a licensee that's applying the ownership pieces um and the role in the company that would all be identified or could all be identified in the business plan um and then the identity of the person we talked about that as in our baseline application process we talked about that as something that's separate but for social equity applicants obviously we would need that identification as part of the application um and then something I asked them to look at was how these applications are processed because there's there's the three of us who I think were intended to be the ones who approved licenses but do we need other input on the social equity applicant licenses um and so they suggested that there be well I think they were already going to suggest that there be a social equity board that oversees some of the programs and gives input on the programs that are social equity programs but they recommended that they have involvement in reviewing the application and making sure that it's complete and I think that that could be helpful and then if there's somebody if we set up that board so that they reach out and help people you know with some of the technical assistance that could be useful and then ultimately the CCB would approve the application based on their recommendations um just to frame that a little bit the board that they create or that they're recommending um this would be the responsibilities so um they would oversee and continue to seek sustainable funding whether that's looking for grants and so forth and looking for educational opportunities um they would oversee the funding of programs that go to disproportionately impacted communities which I'll talk about in a second um they would have a hand in approving the social equity applicant and they would do they would support community outreach and education so that was what their sort of thought were on the board and then this is the um composition of the board they they um recommended 15 people um from various different I won't read this whole list but from various different um sort of sources and interests I think having a a board that supports the social equity pieces is important for me I would rather look at how we've comprised our advisory committee personally just rather than creating a board I think it's hard to find folks to volunteer for board I think it'd be better if we tried to figure out how to leverage the use of our our existing advisory committee instead I know they are using this term disproportionately impacted communities um do they are they using the definition from age 414 they didn't define disproportionately impacted communities they left that to us okay I mean as we looked at opportunity zones and other things that can be very kind of tricky to be in a small state not overly inclusive um and also under inclusive leaving certain communities out and what is a community is a community a group of people or is it a location right right is it a geographic location right or is it are you talking about communities of women or communities of right so they did identify some of this in that um with their DEI programming they talked about including women and LGBTQIA and other groups of folks beyond what was included in the social activity I'll get to that in a second so um related to community reinvestment they recommend that um 20 percent of the excise tax be allocated to some programs that are intended to be reinvested in community and they talked about what that might be including mental health services and community grant programs that could be used if they talked about it in terms of um being used for land access which I know um I think you talked about a little bit Kyle and I think is also included in two pieces of legislation that already exists so um that was their recommendation but they left the definition of disproportionately and this would of course require you know the legislator so to their DEI program so um back at the beginning I said they've recommended two programs a um social equity program and the DEI program and this is intended to create a more inclusive and diverse industry in general as a whole they talked about including women people with disabilities, LGBTQIA, the immigrant population, refugees and people who face discrimination and they also talked about socioeconomic status which is something that we just pulling that back to that piece of that conversation they identified that as as someone whose income is at 135 percent of the federal property level and you can see here where they sort of talked about what the benefits of that would be so we talked about the priority processing a little bit um they also recommended educational programs they recommended uh waiving the intent to apply fee we just they made this recommendation after we've done our um October 15th report so it's not included in sort of our funding proposals um and it's otherwise like the education programs for DEI specifically is otherwise unfunded so we would have to consider you know how we would do that and whether there is some partnership that we can create and it's just I November 5th we talked about having priority processing but priority processing this cohort would be second second priority correct with social equity being first priority correct yep so that's really the end of my slide that's all of it well except for what we've talked about otherwise like I know that the sustainability subcommittee talked about yeah we did we did talk about environmental justice in the context of what we're trying to accomplish and access to land and you know there's been suggestions that you know when the time is appropriate if folks are trying to to rent land to cultivate on or open a business on whether you're social equity applicant a DEI applicant or or any type of applicant asking us to hold conversations with you know landlords landlord associations to the extent I don't know if there's a specific association for that in Vermont I suspect that there is there's an association for everything um but just how can we educate those um that may be looking to allow folks to do this on their property but you have some consternation or reservations about doing so and really demystifying a lot of of what we hope to accomplish so that amongst business and technical assistance now I know at the start of of what we were doing about six months ago I made some context through my um ag supply chain to business and technical providers asking them their interest a lot of them seemed interested there's just the need to compartmentalize federal funding around helping us because we don't want folks federal funding to be in jeopardy by by helping you know this market kind of emerge um recognizing that it is federally illegal so all that's kind of you know in the works and we're hopeful I'm hopeful that we'll see uptick once folks get a better sense of what we're hoping to accomplish um and I didn't mention it throughout but a lot of this was you know amended and changed and redirected through public comments that occurred through the social equity subcommittee meetings which I think is really important in terms of the town hall coming up and we should probably maybe talk about what it is we're really hoping to clean from those town halls and then we talked about a little bit through this conversation but is there anything else that we haven't touched on that we're really hoping to to gather from those yeah the major thing that I think is missing from all of this and I think this is a good foundation for the town halls is not everyone is going to be a social equity applicant not everyone who's been impacted by the war on drugs or prohibition wants to be a cannabis license holder and I think what's important is that we think about what we're going to require of non-social equity applicants in order to kind of fulfill the promises of act 164 you know what other states do they require a diversity plan or social impact positive impact plan that includes you know how you're going to hire your staff how you're going to contract with other businesses are you going to have an incubator program or an accelerator program that helps social equity applicants or you know just people that have been harmed with access to the market and I think that that it's kind of missing from these slides I really don't want that to be lost in the town halls is that we can we can require certain things of our other licensees that can contribute to mitigating the harms of prohibition and I think we should and you know creating some minimum standards for license holders did you mention ancillary businesses just now too well that's I know in the contracting process you know if you're going to install a bunch of lights maybe you should look for a social equity company to do that or you know minority owned business women owned business to try and help with that you know Massachusetts they require you to reinvest in certain communities too they've gotten into trouble with that a little bit but you know there's the community reinvestment could be a part of our application process or a commitment to community reinvestment so I mean from the town hall perspective I think having Gina and NACB walk through some of these recommendations getting feedback on that seeing what other ideas come out of those discussions community discussions but also really focusing on the other applicants as well the non-social equity and what we're going to require of them as far as commitments yeah I think it's important I think how we set the foundation really creates the culture of what we're trying to accomplish here you know I know in ancillary businesses like you know marketing agencies are planning or you know technical and business assistance they want to know if you're going to come and work with them what your plan is to be involved in your community so how we set the table really helps you know those other businesses empower themselves to ask this you know for above and beyond what we might ask for when they're going to be working with an individual client and then following the town halls I think we ought to think about what we will do with that information and I thought about this a little bit we've received some public feedback about having cohorts or peer-to-peer networks and in terms of hiring social equity applicants or contracting with minority owned businesses those would be things that we can sort of kick off and start that would probably take off on their own after a while that's great yeah so thinking if we need to give NACB any further direction as to what we're hoping to get out of these town halls it's my understanding that the time frame is a little open-ended they're not kind of they started a specific time but they don't end at a specific time so there can be a kind of dialogue and conversation that occurs yeah well I think we know that the answer to that question better than me but Gina did facilitate this subcommittee so I'm sure she's familiar with the recommendations that have been given to us but I think just making sure that that everybody is understanding of the component that you felt isn't represented in the recommendations and how other businesses that might not be a social equity applicant can can really help foster this this type of culture throughout our throughout our supply chain and what would be most helpful you know of this number of recommendations what should we focus on first right yeah I mean we know fees is it not necessarily easy to attack right but um it's just cracking the door that's really the beginning of the conversation not the end of it we need to know what's going to be the most helpful all right um should we keep this discussion going we do have other things on the agenda for today that is all I have for today how don't we um turn things over to David um and David is going to provide an overview of what the next steps for the board are through the next uh weeks and months um and uh kind of hopefully give us and members of the public some um sense of where the board is heading and what those uh what the time frame might look like um just making sure this looks here looks like all right um so yeah I thought it would be helpful and the board thought it would be helpful to go through this time frame as the chair just mentioned uh in a bit of a process and and frankly what some of the rules are going to look like uh what all this work is leading towards um so on this slide let me put this in a presentation mode uh if I can um oops that button all the way to the left from beginning amazing very thank you this is my first time presenting so my apologies for the uh technical issues here so as folks probably know act 164 and act 62 uh do require the board's right administrative rules and what does that mean to right administrative rules it means um basically writing something that has the force of law for people who are involved uh in this market in this activity so administrative rules are similar to laws the legislature passes uh anybody who engages in activities that are regulated by a state agency uh has to follow the agency's rules just as they would have to follow law and this happens constantly in state government uh energy is a lot of energy for example is related as regulated to rulemaking financial uh securities issues we know we share a building with the office of professional regulation which does a lot of this and of course the rules bind people who are engaged in the activity just like the law does and then a rule also binds the agency that um promulgates it so when the board sets out these rules it'll be providing direction for the people who are involved in the cannabis market but it also is going to provide a direction and limitations on what the board itself can do and again the rules are sort of the heart of what we're doing from a legal standpoint um this is what's gonna control what happens in the market and how the board regulates to a large degree and a lot of the work the board has been doing over the last you know really since you guys came together back in the spring early spring has been um all about figuring out how you want to construct this and so that includes the board meetings you've had over the summer the advisory committee meetings the advisory committee subcommittee meetings that were happening uh this fall all the discussions you all have had with the public and the board the recent board meetings which have been really been an intensive decision-making uh chunk of work and of course all the public comment that you've received and and reviewed and responded to and and as you know it really made changes in accordance with uh what the input uh you've gotten from folks so I won't bore people too much with the technicalities of a rule writing process it is complex and involved uh there's a bunch of different entities that are involved in it that we have to a bunch of hoops that we have to jump through um if you do want to add some excitement to your life you can go to that uh link that I have up there uh and it goes it provides information in places to go you can find more information about the writing process but I'm going to skip over that and get to what is the most important thing for the purposes of um of this presentation in this process I think is really the notice and comment period uh so every time agency promulgates a rule there is a required notice and comment period and that means that there has to be time for the public and any interested parties uh entities including other state government agencies you might have been put um to comment on what the rule has is that the board is proposing and the rules have to be publicly available which I know the board will be I'm sure we're gonna put them up on our on our website as soon as we get them done um in the notice and comment period uh can't require public hearings it's not required but I know that the board does plan to have public hearings on these rules um so folks will have a lot of opportunity to submit comment both uh in public hearings as well as uh through the website and um the board is required by law to consider all written and oral submissions so that means anything that anybody puts in the board does actually have to think about talk about decide whether or not they want to make changes in accordance with those comments and that's another thing that's really important here to remember is that the board and any agency who does this stuff can and uh you know can make changes like when we promulgate these rules and we'll be doing it we'll do an initial filing fairly soon that is not the end of the process the board will uh it is required to take into consideration uh the comments that the board gets from anybody um and potentially make changes to the rule on the basis of those comments so we have we are uh thinking about promulgating rules as you see here um this I said likely because nothing's been voted on there's no final decisions yet but this is the general outline that we're thinking about in terms of what the rules will look like are we five total rules first one will be about the licensing of cannabis establishments how you get a license the second one will be about the regulation of cannabis establishments which is the rules that a licensed establishment has to follow the third will be about medical cannabis that'll be about dispensaries and caretakers and or caregivers and all the various pieces that go into the therapeutic cannabis aspect of things which is basically the system that exists now that'll be transitioned into rule three rule four will be about compliance enforcement and rule five is about how the board removes a fellow board member which doesn't really fit neatly into any of those other categories but that is the legislature has required that the board create a rule about how to manage issues that the board member has to get removed because this board unlike most boards in state government um the the governor does not have the ability to remove board members it is solely uh board members who have the discretion to remove board members so this is the schedule that we're looking at and again I keep using the term likely because things could change but we are hopeful that this will be the approximate schedule that things go on so rules one two and four which is the licensing the regulation and the enforcement rules will likely be prefiled just before Thanksgiving and prefiled is just the term that we use to uh note the beginning of the process something becoming an official rule the notice and comment period which as I mentioned before is sort of like the key input point uh and one that I know the board is going to take very seriously will run from approximately late December through late January I say approximately because a lot of the how this plays out depends on other actors other state state government actors um making decisions and taking certain technical actions that sort of cause periods to begin and end so we don't have complete control over that um so this stuff is approximate but I do think this is about when it will happen from late December through early January again this will all be publicly noticed put clearly on the website as to when public comment opens and there will be uh public hearings during that time uh presumably we are thinking in January probably mid to late January timeframe um and then the board will consider and respond to all comments and may make changes to the proposed rules in response to the comments that they get and then about a month after the first pre-filing a little bit just out just past a month beyond that first pre-filing will will file rules three and five in early January and those again are the medical cannabis rules and the board removal rule and uh basically the notice and comment period for that will be approximately a month after you know that I should say the month following the notice and comment period for rule one two and four and that'll be February again a little bit approximately but presumably around February and then again same thing board will consider and respond to all comments there'll be public hearings and they may make changes in response to those comments and then for actually finalizing the rule the um the board will make whatever change it's going to make to in response to the public comments and then the legislature gets a crack at it there's a legislative committee that reviews the proposed rule and gives input and then after that review is complete the rule will become final you'll notice I don't have a date on here for that because as I mentioned before we don't control all of the various sort of technical trigger points that happen along the way um but hopefully within I would say a couple months approximately after the notice and comment period is over um you know the legislative piece will happen and then the rule will become final at some point maybe around 60 days after that notice and comment period closes so that's an overview hopefully that's helpful to everybody and if the board members have questions I'm happy to answer them is they um are the rules effective when they are final yes so that at that point um we still need a fee bill of course right yes we will and so the rules are going to be designed to reference fees but not contain them okay so as soon as the board the rules are basically going to say you have to pay the fees as they're set out and then yes we'll need the legislature to essentially set those out in order for that to become usable and so fee bill passes rules become final at that point and let's just say that it's you know April 1st is approaching um then we could open up an application period yep but we can have the pre-app while this process is going on I advise again against having a pre-application provisional licensing application prior to rules becoming final that's a good question I mean I think that it would be okay because you're not actually permitting anybody to take any action provisional application will not and this will be in the rule also but it will not permit somebody to operate a cannabis establishment um I think it would you'd be outside the statute to say that um uh you can operate a cannabis establishment without having gotten a license in accordance with the rules and and the statute but a provisional license since it isn't actually allowing anybody to do that I think you could do it and sort of indicate to people that um you know that doesn't allow you to actually take action but it shows that you've met what will likely be the rules and then the risk to that of course for both you throughout the board and applicants is that it's possible that those pieces of the provisional application that are required will be changed as the rule before the rule actually becomes final so there is some risk of doing it that way again for both board if you're taking on more work and for people not getting the assurance that they really want it from doing a provisional license but I don't think it'd be outside the law and sort of trying to get people that benefit and the provisional and the intent to apply those are interchangeable terms that we're using or those two different things I just want to be clear because we use both terms I was considering them the same okay so let's do me too okay good um I just want to say thank you David I think from some of the stuff that I've heard in talking with various members of the public I know that we're the last couple weeks have gone very quickly um and a lot of the decisions we've made are directional decisions to inform rulemaking and I wanted to make sure that we everybody was aware that there's going to be multiple steps from here until these rules are finalized to provide more comment and and help us you know really create this this rulemaking environment from here on out this isn't the meetings we've had last time or not final you know decisions can I ask on on this slide in particular um so we're going to have three separate initial filings one two and four if um one if number one is approved and it becomes final and two and three are kind of stuck in the legislative process sorry two and four it seems to me that we should know what's going on with two and four before we open up any sort of application window I think that's correct a couple things on that though I don't think that it might read of the law that um the other entities who have a say in this the other state government entities who have a stay in this can't stop one piece of your rules from going forward they can provide input if they disagree if the legislature disagrees with what you've done it will be a disadvantage in future litigation that's the consequence for that but they can't simply stop a piece of what you're doing from going forward um so I don't see an issue arising where a part of this finishes the gifts to the finish line and the other pieces don't accompany it to the finish line right that being said I I think you correctly identify some risk in sort of doing anything uh even provisionally because you could decide to change something in response to input from the legislative process and that could potentially change whether somebody actually has what would now be considered a provisional license when the rules are final but was the decision to break these up into five separate rules and really um I'll just say the initial outlay of three separate rules was it was it made because to allow us to get going as soon as possible on the piece that needs to happen as soon as possible which is the licensing yes that was one of the main reasons was to be able to I think there was two big reasons but that was one of them which was to be able to do everything we can to abide by the law which is to open these application periods uh at the beginning of April at least for a couple of license types so breaking it up in that way and then submitting chunks of it allows us to get at those essential immediate deadlines quickly and still allow you to have a reasonable amount of time to consider some of the other pieces like the medical cannabis piece and as we've mentioned many times COVID really slowed down the implementation of the act that created you all but the legislature did not also slow down the deadlines so you're operating under extremely tight deadlines and that's sort of trying to accommodate that I will say the other reason for the particular pattern that you see was just usability trying to break the rules up into something that made sense so people just trying to figure out what's going on could look at the titles of the rules and have a pretty quick way to get at the information they need to get at right so can I um talk about that for a second because we just spent time talking about social equity but there's no social equity rule right so I think what we identified in that conversation is if I were on the phone I would be like where's the social equity rule because we just got for all this stuff um I think the reason why there's not a standalone rule is because one the things that are related to social equity that we can make in rule would be included in each of those things like in licensing and medical and compliance and enforcement I remember you talked about the compliance and enforcement approach um so those things are built in to those rules that's exactly right it's not a separate thing it's going to be part of the structure of how this operates and it's going to be because it's going to be part of how this operates it is within these rules that govern everything and there's and I should say putting up five rules uh on five lines is a little bit misleading there's going to be a lot in these rules uh there's going to be many sections so it's not like it's going to be a super short chunk of chunk of regulations but uh I said I add that only to note that yes one of the things that will be within those those rules is certainly going to do social equity and then um you know asking members of the public to comment on these rules which you know Massachusetts 300 pages New Jersey you know very similar um with without kind of the technical expertise is difficult do these are is there any requirement in the rulemaking procedure to have kind of plain language either in the rule itself or as a accompaniment there's there's no real requirement around that I think we're certainly going to attempt to have them read as simply as possible possibly and I think that the rules will be shorter than other states they're still not going to be short but they're going to be shorter than other states rules for a couple reasons one is that things that are likely to change over time will probably be put into policies um which the rule will direct people to follow and the board will be required to give notice before it's policy so you can't like spring something on somebody um so things like fees and things like that which the board doesn't even control it's legislative legislatures retain control of that for um for the licensing fees you know we really can't put that in our rules because that's them and they could change it next year if they wanted to so that will be in a policy but because some of those things are what takes up a lot of space and other rules um I think ours will be a little bit shorter and I think they'll also be a little bit shorter than some of the really long ones we see just because I am trying to write them as tightly and simply as possible right so um this is incredible I would I say that when I when we were all first appointed I thought there was no way that we would be here at this time I thought we were dealing with a whole year delay um and to have a path forward uh that actually meets our deadlines to me is just a really um monument to your commitment our commitment and but Brynn and uh David and Nellie's commitment as well to getting this um done on time um but I would like to say or ask David what's the fastest of rules that have ever been pushed through I mean I've I asked that question of someone at the Secretary of State's office and they said non-controversial rules you know six six to eight months I just kind of is is a typical window and we're talking about a couple of months here yeah like four months basically right process I mean I don't know the answer to that question I don't have I don't have that I do I have talked to uh other folks and one other person in state government who has said that they have gotten a rule through in four months four months so I don't think we're doing the impossible but we are certainly doing the very unusual or attempting I don't want to we haven't done it yet we're attempting the very unusual but the the path that you laid out does get a there is a path there is a path I mean it's within the law you know what I've written down here is within what's possible in accordance with the deadline set forth in the law it does require a huge amount of work frankly from us to do that um most people spend longer than those common periods um or I shouldn't say to spend longer than those common periods but they spend a longer time assimilating yeah feedback I know that it's your intention to assimilate all the feedback it's just that we're gonna have to do it uh we're gonna put in a lot of work in a very short amount of time to do that just as we're doing right now um but I think that that's just the nature of of the beast the nature of the deadlines and I think you know it's certainly gonna be my intention to um take all the feedback seriously and think about it I'm not gonna let the tight timeline um prevent me from seriously thinking about how the feedback could be incorporated into the rules and giving you all advice on that just means we're gonna be working a bunch of hours right and you know I think the process that we've that we followed since April or May has allowed us to incorporate an assembly feedback into the drafting of the rules as well um I think we have taken a lot of public comment we received a lot of recommendations from various stakeholders and individuals around the state and they form the backbone of what we have approved to date um so I'm not saying that should short-circuit any sort of further consideration but um you know every time we don't just take public comics it's required in open meeting laws we do it because we really care about what people are going to be impacted by these rules think and what what will work and so um this is incredible David thank you um thank you Brynn and Ellie for sticking with it thank you Julie and Kyle thank you thanks everybody that has informed our our thoughts to date um I think uh with that uh we can move to public comment um so I we don't have anyone in the room um but if you'd like if you join via the link we'll start with people who join through the link if you would like to make a public comment please raise your virtual hands um we'd like to limit it to one comment per person to prevent kind of a back and forth between members of the public um so please feel free to make a comment um and try and get all your thoughts out in one comment um so it looks like we'll start with David Dave Silverman okay thanks uh thank you um and excited about the timeline I wanted to comment on uh on co-ops um and I think um you know what you guys presented what what I saw in the presentation and co-ops is is a specific license type uh meant to encourage you know uh participation by by by certain folks who qualify for social equity criteria but um you know as we were working on this all these years you know there was a lot of contemplation that um co-ops will naturally form and and I I'm a little concerned I want to make sure that that we're not saying that you know that co-op license is the only type of co-op that's going to be able to operate in this field for example you know I've long thought of the um wholesale licensed here as something that will um be really naturally uh conducive to to a cooperative model where growers could get together uh form a form a another business get a wholesale license and use that to increase their pricing power vis-a-vis retailers um and you know I just wouldn't want you to accidentally preclude that uh in your rulemaking because you know Vermont has good laws on on cooperatives and how cooperatives are formed just sort of corporate laws and and and you know I just hope that your your rules for general license types will be open to cooperative ownership of licenses aside from this what I see as beneficial social equity cooperative model um that that that you might consider you know with regard to um giving people easier cheaper access to to land and other resources uh thank you very much thank you Dave anyone else uh who joined via the link uh please raise your virtual hand if you'd like to make a comment then hi everybody happy friday uh good to see and talk to you all again um I just want to go back to the topic of the delivery license and just uh mention something that I said during the subcommittee meetings as well which is just a concern that it is in fact and I heard this expressed I think by Kyle um but also by the other members of the board it it's really not a comprehensive enough offering for social equity applicants it's really more of a job than a business um it's something that I do fear after uh any exclusivity on delivery goes away for social equity that businesses would just bring it in-house and maybe just offer those folks jobs so anything we can do to expand delivery um or the licensed options under delivery would be great and then also because you know I have to mention it social consumption I or on-site consumption I know you're going to be revisiting it in january I just want to make sure that I'm bringing it up uh when it feels appropriate so that folks who might be on the call thinking about it know that you have already mentioned you'll bring it up in january but it is something that we believe is really closely tied to social equity so thank you so much for all your work and your time thanks Ben um anyone else who joined via the link please raise your virtual hands if you'd like to make a comment and if you join via phone and you'd like to make a comment uh you can unmute yourself by hitting star six um I will close the public comment period and that was the last agenda item just wanted to remind everyone once again about our town halls um I think the links to rsvp um to get the the kind of virtual attendance around our website uh not yet but they will be okay um so check our website if you'd want to attend remotely um otherwise uh you know we'll be at for now uh you know pending some change uh vsac um on the 18th and then a location tvd for the 20th um and apologize that that hasn't been locked in yet um and uh with that we'll adjourn thank you


Hi everybody and welcome along to the first episode of UCAT Conference TV, I'm Colm Cronin from the Adventures in Advising podcast and today I am delighted to be joined by the UCAT chair Dave Lofty. Dave how are you doing? I'm good thank you, I'm delighted to be here, thank you for having me. Yeah it only seems like yesterday we were talking about the UCAT festival but we are in conference time we're only a few days away and for delegates looking forward now what can they expect? Well I'm so excited to be back here and as you say it does seem like it's come around quickly but we're falling into conference mode now and I'm delighted to see what's in the conference guide and all the details you have on there. There's a full section on getting the most out of the conference and I'm just really excited to see all the things that you can do. There's an advising hub which personally I found really exciting and it takes me back it's a very retro experience of looking at how you can have that experience online of feeling like you're a conference and that's where I get personally the most value is kind of wandering around kind of talking to people so I think what we've tried to do is replicate that full live experience you'd have at a conference through that through a wide range of engaging sessions where you'll be able to to have chat functions and different ways that you can coordinate and communicate with all of the different delegates. I still believe that the greatest strength that we have as an organisation is the full diversity of the delegates that attend the events that we do and the presenters are fantastic you get lots from them and then you get the discussions that come from it so we've got a wide range of different sessions that are featured in the guide that you can have a look through and see which are the the ones which kind of have your interest and I've been working a lot recently on peer-assisted learning the sections on that and there's loads of different aspects of personal tutoring and academic advising that it's broken down to that people can kind of choose from there's the special interest groups as well that I really want to give a big plug to they've come a long way in the last 12 months and so lots of updates from them and times when you can get involved with that and there's a focus on research on professional development and how you can get involved with wider UCAT things beyond and beyond this period and so lots you can do there and to make sure that you get something tangible from it as a CPD record to take away so yeah so much you can get involved with absolutely and a couple of great keynotes coming up loads great sessions and for anyone out there who wants more information definitely check out the UCAT website you can see the links on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube as well and the conference hashtag a great few days ahead Dave thanks for joining me to outline what delegates have to look forward to I hope you yourself enjoy the conference and look forward to chatting to you over the days to come very exciting can't wait


The happiest place on earth has been closed for about 10 months, and it probably won't be reopening anytime soon. California isn't allowing theme parks to reopen until the counties they're located in have fewer than one COVID infection per 100,000 residents for seven consecutive days. The rate here in Orange County currently exceeds that by about 90-fold. We're going to be stubborn about it, California Governor Gavin Newsom said in October. Newsom's stubbornness is one of a kind. The other Disney property in the world has reopened. In California, some of Disney's retail and dining is allowed to open, but the rides and attractions remain closed. The city of Anaheim, meanwhile, looks like a ghost town. The mouse provides 78,000 jobs and is the center of the local economy. Disney World in Orlando opened in July, as Florida's case rates were climbing. The reopening amounts to a breathtaking effort by a corporation to prove that it can safely operate at a highly dangerous time. As the New York Times observed, YouTubers created dark parodies of the reopening. But the surge never came. This is the tale of two Disney's and two radically different approaches to managing the COVID-19 pandemic. You got a lot of people in your profession who waxed poetically for weeks and weeks about how Florida was going to be just like New York. Wait two weeks. Florida's going to be next. Just like Italy. Wait two weeks. Well, hell, we're eight weeks away from that. The media savaged Florida Governor Ron DeSantis when he and a handful of Southern GOP governors pushed to reopen most businesses in early summer of 2020. DeSantis's strategy from the get-go had been to shield Florida's seniors by issuing executive orders to temporarily ban nursing home visitations and prohibit readmission of COVID-positive patients. In contrast to New York Governor Andrew Cuomo's order forcing nursing homes to accept COVID patients. A couple months later with case rates falling, National Review Editor Rich Lowry asked, Where does Ron DeSantis go to get his apology? Then when cases surged over the summer, Los Angeles Times columnist Michael Hilsik delivered on the requested apology. Sorry, you're even worse than I imagined, he wrote. But by the end of the summer, cases were falling in Florida and rising in areas of the country that were in full or partial lockdown. California, which had the nation's most stringent policies related to COVID-19, began to experience a massive second wave in November. Florida was also seeing a spike in cases and deaths, though it was less severe. While the California and Florida approaches to COVID-19 were vastly different, their outcomes began to look remarkably similar. If some in the media had been too quick to condemn DeSantis, others had also been too quick to declare victory for Newsom. In April, the Atlantic had extolled California's dramatic success in containing the coronavirus pandemic. What's clear about the impact of Newsom's policies is that they've taken a devastating toll on working-class California residents. The Golden State shed 8% of its jobs compared to 5% in Florida. It experienced the fifth highest drop in GDP among U.S. states and a much higher drop in tax revenue. California now has more total cases per capita and is approaching Florida's total deaths per capita despite having a younger population. California residents have been flouting the lockdowns and challenging them in court. A recall petition for Governor Newsom has gathered more than three quarters of the required 1.5 million signatures to make the ballot. There are probably 50,000 people in a three square mile that are out of work right now due to the restrictions placed by California's governor. Here in Anaheim, Fred Brown has been the general manager of Desert Palms Hotel in the literal shadow of Disneyland for 24 years. So far, he's had to lay off 80 employees, including his own daughter. If we don't have guests, I don't know how long some of these hotel owners are going to be able to last without throwing in the towel and going into bankruptcy. I don't think the state of California has done the best job keeping businesses afloat. Mike Afrom shut down his shuttle company in March, laid off 100 employees and has been unable to reopen since. Well, unfortunately, I think a lot of small businesses related to the resort or even unrelated to the resort are not going to survive, but they won't come back. This is a death knell for tens of thousands of jobs. These are working class jobs and hundreds of small businesses in and around the resort. He's asserting precious freedoms away from the private sector and increasing our residents and our workers' reliance on government just to get by. Trevor O'Neill is an Anaheim City Council member. He says tourism accounts for almost $100 million of annual tax revenue for Anaheim. That goes a long way to be able to fund our vital city services, our public safety, our police and our fire, our road repair, everything that a city has to do and allows us to be able to keep our taxes on our residents low. Disneyland as a corporation has been very successful in opening its parks around the world and including the one in Florida and they have proven to know what they're doing and know how to do it safely and securely. So I don't see why it would be any different for us here in California or in Anaheim. Disney is known for its expert handling of logistics and the company drew widespread praise when it brought back the NBA playoffs here in Florida by creating a so-called NBA bubble that successfully prevented any players or staff from COVID infection over a two month span. California is also home to Universal Studios and Six Flags in addition to smaller amusement parks with no giant corporate backer to float them through a 10 month shutdown. The contrast between California and Florida reflects growing evidence that lockdowns are not an effective strategy for managing a viral respiratory epidemic. Our estimates show that lockdown has a really dramatic effect on reducing transmission. A June 2020 paper in Nature claimed that lockdowns would save three to four million lives worldwide. But it assumed without evidence that slowing the spread was due to lockdowns rather than voluntary behavior and that as lockdowns stretched on they would remain just as effective as in the early days of the pandemic. After it was published places with stringent lockdowns including California, the United Kingdom and Italy experienced second waves. A possible theory is that lockdowns become less effective over time because the public grows weary of the social isolation and starts gathering in private households on a more frequent basis. According to contact tracing data in New York 74% of cases were contracted inside people's homes.  Where do people go? They go home, come to my house. Big city mayors who promoted aggressive lockdowns are beginning to change tack even amidst large caseloads. Chicago's Lori Lightfoot and Washington D.C.'s Muriel Bowser have pushed for reopening restaurants for indoor dining and San Francisco NLA's mayors have allowed outdoor dining to resume. A January 5th study by a research team at Stanford compared countries that shut down non-essential businesses with ones that took less restrictive public health measures like only banning large events and discouraging international travel. It found no evidence that the more stringent lockdowns contributed substantially to bringing down the case rate. Economist Lyman Stone told Reason in May of 2020 that his study of the lockdowns revealed no correlation between the timing of a state or nationwide stay-at-home order and the spread of the virus. So we have a couple different data sources that basically track your cell phone, which is a little bit creepy. And what we can see is that policy choices like shelter and place orders have almost no impact on when people began to socially distance. People were already socially distancing before the lockdown. Social distancing works. Stone's early findings are consistent with the Stanford study, which found that exposure to information about the virus and its risks was a stronger driver of anti-contagion behaviors than the specific nature of the government restrictions. Neither California's statewide restrictions nor Florida's more laissez-faire approach have proven effective at suppressing the virus. But various Asian governments and Australia have, for now, mostly accomplished that feat and not primarily through lockdowns. For instance, the densely populated city of Hong Kong has experienced fewer than 200 COVID deaths out of a population that exceeds 7 million. But authorities there imposed only one short-lived lockdown in a single neighborhood experiencing an outbreak in mid-January. Stone attributes the overall low case rate to the city state's aggressive travel restrictions and targeted public health measures, which were enacted early in the pandemic. We should not hesitate to pull the trigger on closing borders. Second, mask early, mask often. Everyone should wear a mask. And they should do so as soon as you know that you have a threat of a pandemic. Information is the most powerful tool, getting people to understand the risk and protect themselves. But after that, centralized quarantine. Anyone who is a positive test in any close contact of a positive test, we need to isolate. California Governor Gavin Newsom lifted his stay-at-home order on January 25th. On the grounds, ICU's will have the required capacity in several weeks, but the state has withheld some of the data they use to make that projection. Theme parks will remain closed. In the meantime, Disneyland has opened one of its parking lots as Orange County's largest vaccination site. So far, California has had one of the slowest vaccine rollouts in the nation. With the rollout of the vaccine, which has not been proven to be the best rollout compared to other states, maybe there is a way we can responsibly sooner open up so that we can get back to business and get back to surviving.


A lot of us got hit very hard financially the past couple of years with the ammo shortage and we saw prices skyrocket. Now we're hearing that this is all going to happen again and we're going to be in that same type of ammo crisis. What is happening today? Well, VISTA Outdoors, the nation's largest ammo producing company, they said that there's going to be a shortage of gunpowder, that's the problem this time, along with other components is the way the CEO mentioned it. Huge hit to the American civilian market. Therefore, we're going to see prices increase. Well, they're saying one to 7% for most types of ammo. Now, this is nothing like it was before. Is this going to be so substantial that we need to panic? I'm not there, I don't think it is.