Sorry Matt, join us please, Waltz, I think you know everybody at the table. This is Gordon Gordon, and this is one of my law students. Oh, right, oh. I've got Gordon Gordon every day. I've got Gordon Gordon this year. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. Southern Ramoners, only Southern Ramoners here right now. Go ahead Matt, please. Thank you Senator Seass. Committee it's great to see you again for the record, Matt Simon. I live in Manchester, New Hampshire. I work for the marijuana policy project, and I support this bill to legalize, well it's already legal, but to regulate the tax, the production and sales of cannabis for adult use. A lot has happened in the last couple of years since I spent so much time with you in 2016. We have two more years worth of data from the states that have pioneered these policies. Two more years for our opponent's fears to materialize. In fact, they were going to do so, and I would argue that that data is overall very reassuring, that supports what we've been saying all along. The prohibition doesn't work that it produces terrible negative consequences and that we can produce better results through a regulated market. So, as evidence for that being the case, I would suggest that the fact that every state legislature in this region is now seriously considering this has kind of proved that Vermont has been right all over the last couple of years to be moving in this direction. The main message is that it is sensitive. Correct. Yes, thank you. Thank you for that clarification. There are colleagues in the House who've been lacking coverage. I had noticed. What is this?  So yes, I would say that voters in Massachusetts and Maine got it right in November of 2016. That progress in Maine has been forted by the executive branch, Governor Powell Page, was not willing to implement that. The regulated aspects of that law, so in Maine it's been legal to grow and possess but not a regulated market. Maine does have a new governor, so hopefully by this time next year there will be a robust retail market happening in Maine as it's already beginning to happen in Massachusetts. I expect you saw that the first two months of sales were very successful. They're still fewer than 10 stores open but they've done it. We actually heard yesterday from a guy from Great Barrington who's on the select board there about the experience there and the opening I think was the first one of the Berkshires. Very interesting. So certainly the location of Massachusetts adjoining all of these neighboring states has helped to provide a catalyst for neighboring states. So I thought I'd just give you a very brief overview of what is happening. Connecticut's new governor, Ned Lamont, pledged to support legalization and regulation in this year's legislative session. He said that would be one of his top legislative priorities and the leaders of both the Senate and the House in Connecticut have said that they agree that should be a priority. So it appears. Just an aside, Ned Lamont used to live and work in one of the Black River Tributals. Really? I know that. I know I do. Let's go right to Connecticut. Malloy actually opposed legalization. He did for many years. That's right. So I have to say something. So at some point can you address the issue that we kept hearing about a couple years ago with regard to the states, the feds being really aggressive about the states that had it with Colorado allowing people to buy from it and letting it flow over to the next state that didn't have anything. I'd be happy to comment on that. I could say that. Why don't you just say that for a little bit later? I think you would do okay. And if I forget, please remind me. We were at Massachusetts, I think. Where in New York? Anywhere you want to go. You just finished Connecticut. Yeah. I think Massachusetts and Maine have been covered. Connecticut is looking very likely to do with this legislative session. I'll go to Rhode Island next. The governor there has been not enthusiastic, but now that stores open in Massachusetts, she came out a couple of weeks ago and said, well, now it's happening all around us. We should do it here in Rhode Island. So she's actually including in her budget proposal. She has the same exact same position on the roadside safety as Governor Scott, I believe. I've heard comments along those lines as well. So Rhode Island appears likely to happen this year. New York, I'm less involved in New York, but certainly aware of the big turnaround there. Governor Cuomo has strongly opposed it until a few months ago, and the New York Health Department published a detailed report outlying many of the reasons for a regulated system, so. The emotion is still criminal in New York. I'm sorry? I'm correct, the possession is still criminal in New York. So it is with an asterisk. New York is one of many states that passed a form of decriminalization back in the 70s. It's a very, there are a lot of loopholes in that law. For example, if the marijuana is publicly displayed, it becomes a criminal offense, and that's why stop and frisk was subcontroversial in New York. If somebody gets stopped and frisked, the second the cannabis comes out of their pocket, it becomes a criminal offense. So it is decriminalized. Actually it was a discussion of people in Great Barrington, which is right under New York border, coming over from New York behind the marijuana there, putting it on their front seat, driving it back to New York. Obviously not smoking it, but if it's public it can stop discharging the crime. I believe that's right. So it looks like New York is moving in that direction. New Jersey, a lot of people thought that bill would be done by now. There have been, between the legislature and the governor, some back and forth on the details, but there's overall support in New Jersey for doing this, and everybody seems to expect it will happen within the next few months. I think I've left New Hampshire, my home state, for the last. So, yeah, we're lagging behind a little bit in the so-called with-free-duck-state. Don't they keep lagging? Ha ha ha! Yes. Well, I prefer that they didn't, but... On the Connecticut border, we prefer they didn't. Well, I'm pleased that we at least finally decriminalized possession so that the monitors passing through our state no longer have to risk arrest for... But your point is well... Everywhere around us is already in the process, or is already... Yes. And I believe the New Hampshire House and Senate will pass a bill this session and then our governor will veto it and that it will come down to whether or not we have two-thirds of those chambers. I'm not gonna criminalize Decade on that, but... Certainly, the mood is on everywhere. Everywhere policy makers are asking all of the same sorts of questions, trying to make sense of this on a detail level, trying to understand what's happened in the states that have gone first, how to make good policy around this going forward. I really thank the folks in this building are in a much better position than their counterparts in other buildings simply because you've spent years on this already, and you've already worked through so many of these problems. So, that's the big picture. I'd be happy to comment on any aspect. Senator Nickeleton would like to comment on the federal response now. Right. So... If any changes. The federal response, so as I believe we all have heard previously that during the Obama administration, Justice Department issued a memo called the coal memo that provided guidelines for federal prosecutors. They outlined what their priorities were. One of them was the one you mentioned of not having out-of-state diversion. So, states did their best to comply with that. That memo was rescinded by Attorney General Sessions and a lot of people feared that in the wake of that memo being rescinded, there would be a widespread crackdown. In reality, what it did was it simply left these decisions to the U.S. attorneys. There's never been any question that this activity is illicit under federal law, but the U.S. attorneys have determined that it's not the best use of their limited resources. They typically only get involved in marijuana cases when it's large-scale trafficking and when it's an effort by a state to regulate that commerce. No yes, attorney has yet deemed state businesses that are operating in clear compliance with state law. They've never been a priority during the time the coal memo was in effect and they haven't been a priority since. So I can tell you on that front as well that just a couple, I think just last week, the new Attorney General nominee, Mr. Barr, was asked about this in his confirmation hearings. I know I have it right in front of me, I hear this, yeah. So he actually put his responses in writing to Congress and he said, I discussed it my hearing. I do not intend to go after parties who have complied to state law in reliance on the coal memo random. So ultimately, I think there's a real chance that Congress is gonna take some actions this year to clarify federal law and hopefully clarify that states are in fact free to make their own choices in this regard. But absent that, we have many states moving forward and have not been interfered with in any, as long as they're complying with state laws by the Department of Justice. One thing we heard yesterday from a guy who's just a select board, I think he's the vice chair of the Great Barrington Select Board, was parking was a problem because of the crowds. And the other problem was evidently in Massachusetts and this is Senator White was unable to be with us yesterday, one of the problems that he felt could be a problem. I'm not sure where he stood on it, but evidently in Massachusetts, if you wanna set up a license, you're being asked to make huge donations to local charities. For example, in Northampton, there was a request for $10,000 to a donation from the licensee if they wanted to set up business there. And besides other money that goes to the municipality through a sales tax and some of the growth, I think 15% of the growth revenue. I found that to be quite interesting that that would happen in a state like Massachusetts, but long known for its honesty in handing out licenses for alcohol. Have you run into that in any other states? Well, first of all, the parking issue. I think the parking issue is somewhat unique to Massachusetts being the first mover in the region. There were people from all over. I drove by the store in Northampton the first day it was open. I stood in line for about 15 minutes and chatted with people. It would have been three hours for me to get in the door, but there was a guy there from Kentucky who drove to be part of history.  So people came from all over to experience the novelty of buying retail cannabis and being part of history. I think we've seen the lines and the wait times diminish as we're now to, I think, eight stores being open.  I don't think that's gonna be a huge issue for the states that follow Massachusetts regionally, although if the business is expecting large volume and it's a tiny town, that's a local law enforcement and zoning issue could be dealt with as it arises. The issue of host community agreements in Massachusetts has been pretty unique to Massachusetts in my understanding. The idea of the host community agreements is to let municipalities get some buy-in on the businesses and are able to, but what happened in the Massachusetts legislation? It's supposed to be clearly capped at what those agreements are allowed to entail. Is there a language that you could either get to Senator White or Michelle to prevent that from happening in Vermont? Yeah, I believe so. If it's my understanding, I don't believe the current legislation would authorize host community agreements at all, so you wouldn't have that issue. So there are multiple ways that municipalities can be incentivized, and this is the way that Massachusetts chose to do it, both with the local option tax and with these host community agreements. But in reality, because the caps weren't enforced, towns were free to negotiate whatever agreements they could have. I guess it's probably 50,000 or something. Yeah, I heard a number larger than that. I don't know if it's true, but if nobody was enforced, part of it was a problem of the commission said, well, we don't have the authority to enforce this. The legislature said, yeah, you do. We gave you that authority, so there was a big question. They're clearly violating the law. Well, those seem to be the two issues, and you would not have expected those to be the two issues. Given the conversations that we've had, particularly with those colleagues in the governor's office. Well, I'm not surprised by the parking in the long wait times at a small number of retail stores in Massachusetts. I was surprised by the trouble with the host community agreements, and it's been very frustrating. So if you are going to include anything like that, I don't think that's going to be done. In GovOps, on Tuesday, we're going to take testimony on three things, the board, the public records, how it's impact public records, and the municipalities. Right, but I think that either you're a committee or the finance committee or could end up in somewhere in that area, and we want to make sure they don't, that's all. Right, we will. Right, so the state, the referendum that passed and mass-required was the host agreement. In order to get a state license, they had to have a host agreement with the local news outlet, which you guys don't have anything. I problem with that. Well, but if we get into the revenue sharing idea that Massachusetts has, that goes there too. I'm adding, I would merely say that if you are going to go the route of allowing host community agreements, that they'd be very clearly defined and it'd be very clearly enforceable that those contracts can't exceed certain limits. A number of witnesses have spoken to the issues of social justice. Have you got any information on what's going on in our other states regarding that issue? In the Maryland bills. Absolutely. The history of the war on drugs and enforcement thereof is very well documented to have had disproportionate impacts on certain communities. Some states, such as Massachusetts and their legislation, chosen to do social equity provisions, attempting to somewhat redress those damages and make sure that individuals and communities that are harmed do have advantages in the licensing process and some help to, that they're able to be part of this business. So Massachusetts has one. Massachusetts does, and this has been a point of emphasis, and it's actually those host community agreements have been the major thing that have undermined this. Of the first 99 applicants, the licenses that have been approved, none of them, I believe, are minority-owned businesses. And in part, that's because the towns and cities are saying, give us $100,000 and we'll approve your license so you can take it to the state. And equity applicants tend not to have access to that kind of capital, much as small farmers aren't going to have access to that kind of capital. But there is language in Massachusetts, a lot of it addresses that. There absolutely is, and some other states have included things along those lines. Happy to present the ideas. Well, actually, what's helpful to me is rather than us reinventing the wheel. Right. Given the testimony from Lori yesterday, I think some others will continue to hear that testimony. Examples of how other states have dealt with social justice issues. I'm trying to fumble along and try to get it right. There is one group that, particularly in Vermont, that I believe has been discriminated against, and I'll control at least maybe even today, but I can remember dealing with Senator Snowing several years ago, recognized the Abinacian tribes. So there's one group in Vermont that has been discriminated against, certainly the Abinacian, the castle legislation, I can't remember the year was Senator Snowing and I introduced to recognize the Abinacian. And they have been certainly, there's one group that I've identified, really obviously there's other minorities, but that one is one that I would, I hope we could not forget. We support any reasonable effort to help create an equitable industry and we're more than happy to be part of that conversation. Other questions from Matt? Matt, thanks for making the trip over from Manchester and glad to hear it. My pleasure. Always good to see you. Don't explode, it's very deliberate on this. Do you have, do you have chair of referendums? We do not. Citizen of referendums. No. But you're smart too. It's a man of the only states in the Northeast that can do this by ballot. Okay. Rest of them all have to go through legislation. It's been interesting to follow the comments in Rhode Island though from the governor. They're almost an error of what our governor, Tom Anderson spoke to yesterday. The next witness is by phone, it's Mark Hughes from Justice for All. It's Dick Sears, joined by the Senate Judiciary Committee and a number of other interested parties and witnesses. And hopefully you're feeling better and sorry you couldn't be with us in person but I recognize that. So we're happy to have your comments by phone. Thank you very much for having me. Go ahead if you'd like to start comments. I think you know everybody on the committee, Senator Maruth Sears, Senator White, Senator Hickert, Senator Benning. Good morning. Good morning. I will start, I think that first I just want to thank you. Again, I put a record of Mark Hughes, my name is Mark Hughes. I am the Executive Director of Justice for All and we are also the anchor organization of the Vermont Lacial Justice Alliance. We've all been in this previously known as the Racial Justice Reform Coalition. Again, thank you for having me in touch with me today. This is a very difficult one because I am faced with a challenge of our conversation about political and economic power and white privilege to about 430 years of whiteness. And for that reason, it's difficult. It's also difficult because the power lies where you sit and I find myself again coming back to you asking for your help to advance something for folks that don't look like you. And I think what that means is that it also means that there's already a blind spot and I understand it's going to cool you. I've listened to the testimony of yesterday with Attorney Seuman and I've got some feedback there. The positive piece of it is we've been here before and we will affect it. So please, the disadvantage that I have is that I'm not able to see you. But if there's, at any given time, is there anything that I'm saying that you just need to interrupt, please just talk over there and I'll hear you and we can just transition because I think most people would be, exceptions of who's or may be rude understand that I can't be verbose. Couldn't understand that. He said that most of us understand, except for maybe Senator Verruth, who hasn't had as many dealings with him that he can't be verbose. Well, Mark, you and I have been together in Burlington. I wouldn't say that means I know you can be verbose, but we are familiar with each other. And welcome to this year. Welcome to this year. I'm so proud to have you represent us. I am your constituent. I was one in Burlington now. So I'm welcome and thank you for representing us up there. Thank you. Also, just to mention that I have had the opportunity to review some of your work and to take a look at some of the things that you're doing, notably the dream of White VISTA, White Village. So I wanted to start the conversation with just kind of giving you an overview of where I want to take you over the next maybe 20 or 30 minutes if I'll be allowed, Mr. Chairman. I'd like to do it in about 15 to 20. I've got about 10 other witnesses this morning, if you could. I don't have 40 minutes. Let's make it 20, please. Get right to it, please. I'm happy to hear that. So what we've got is, I'm taking a look at the background of a Burmese White VISTA. This entire interpreter, and it looks like after the statewide tour, there were three reports we came in. I told you there were 70 recommendations. There were no recommendations. It had any reference to racial equity or diversity of the 70 recommendations that 70 or recommendations range from beginning education, roadway safety and training and regulation. I do understand that this train is already on the attraction to take down the road. I just wanted to take a brief pause and just lay out a couple things and try to connect them from thoughts surrounding what it is that we're really trying to address. One would think that what we're talking about here is the war on drugs. And I think that though that is partially true, what I'd like to do is I'd like to connect the war on drugs to the challenges that we've had politically with some of the strategy. I'd like to connect the war on drugs to the civil rights movement as well. Going back to the next few years, 50 years ago, I'd like to connect that to the challenges that we've that is continuous to the the different roads south, which is continuous to ranging in the south, as well as segregation, the conflict leasing as well as connecting these challenges to sharecropping and then also slavery. And I'll just pause there for a moment and just say that what we're talking about we're not really talking about those who are against this maybe 70 or maybe it's like there's nearly 100 folks inside this petition requesting your attention on this matter and as well as this alliance the thought process that we come into this discussion with is not a very narrow focus just on looking at what this language means in this particular document specifically as it pertains to a very narrow group of individuals those who say we're we can empirically identify as being affected but what we're talking about is the nation because obviously we are a part of the fabric of a larger societal challenge so that's why when we start to come into this it's just to say this is a very broad discussion this is not about marijuana or regulation in taxation only in the state of Vermont this is about a history a national history of white supremacy okay and I think that to view it as otherwise I think this is severely the the sentiments of me and also the intention here I'm just briefly if I could in your just to read one thing here from the report on Act 54 the senator from the senators have noted but yes so the report I would imagine that senator gaining a new member of the HRC you probably wouldn't imagine writing something like this but here Richie did it says the civil rights movement of the 50s and 50s saw enormous progress on issues related to race additional laws were enacted to protect the rights of people of color including Tyler Stefan of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was prohibited employment discrimination based on color race, color, national borders and religion excuse me, religion four years later housing discrimination made those new categories with outlaw about a fair housing act of 1968 while these laws and theories provide remedies for intentional discrimination or discrimination that has an adverse impact on particular protected classes they do not change the underlying racial oppression this is because white people continue to control literally every power structure in the country including federal state and local government and their agency corporation business school and etc when coupled with racial bias whether it is explicit or endless this power of the majority was open to oppression of those in the minority we live in a white supremacy culture as if the white privilege or white fragility we began to see how difficult it is to escape the current cycle despite of the lease and that inequality it acts as an opportunity so again this report released the 17th of December 2017 right Assistant Attorney General David Scherr in HRC Executive Director Karen Richardson's reflective of a statewide tour in information that they will be able to pull in from 3,000 across the state in consistent with that and thank you for the work S5 from the special session last year the legislative intent of S5 is I quote the intent of the general assembly to promote racial justice through throughout the state by mitigating systemic racism in all systems of state government and creating a culture of inclusiveness this is probably clearly obvious we have a very actually I'm not that bright Mark so it's not clearly obvious to me how it relates what would you like to see in S54 that would help you to deal with the social justice issues and I think you posted several times on Facebook where we are friends Mark things about reparations and I really like you to get to that so we can connect S54 to what you would like to see I think we are in agreement that there needs to be um things about social justice in there to make clear how we are going to deal with it but I would love to have your thoughts about S54 I understand your concerns about racism systemic racism implicit bias explicit bias etc but I'm really not that bright I'm sorry what was the last thing you said I'm not that bright I don't understand I really need Mark my friend I need to understand what you would like to see in S54 how it relates to S54 absolutely so moving on to the notes that I have on S54 one of the things that I think is really important is obviously the if you go down there I'm going to start over in section I don't have to build in front of you but I do have some notes I think that there is a a section nine or three um there's priorities surrounding um uh let's see disproportionate disproportionate impact impacted rather I think that you're page twenty seven page twenty seven right and I think that one of the views that being expressed here is that um there's a concern about offering um a level plan to the folks who could be impacted I think that question is about who to impact but I'd like to see but I'd like to recommend there is that if there is an error that it would be um that you would care towards making the mistake of overcompensating what I mean by that is that um get there I think there should be a a conscious effort to extend to not over extend to make sure that folks who are impacted what does folks who are impacted mean I know there's a lot of conversation about I don't know the aid or so folks that are here in the state um but I think the reason why I laid out when I laid out at the conversation is that there are there are policies that exist always as a result of any history not just drugs um there are families that are impacted there are friends that are impacted there are many folks who we know with the uptake of folks coming into this state from out of base there will be a whole other level of challenges to deal with this is a this is not just a black and brown issue this is not so so I would recommend that this session would be addressing not so much surgically those folks who are people who are impacted um people just why a a criminal record um but I would suggest that this session would be reflecting on folks who have come from a an ethnic background that was followed within this category and folks who come from an economic background who could potentially follow this category so we're not just looking at black and brown people we're looking at poor people I agree I agree we can uh improve on this language but I mean I think the concern here is that you know and I think to uh Senator the roof point with yesterday is you know what if this person and they're trying to take advantage of this system and I understand that they're being concerned um but I think that largely um no point in changing I think that category would be a minority I really don't I really don't believe that I think that when we're considering this legislation you know if we take and make a stretch and use the presumption that is highly unlikely and I think because most black people are poor and most poor people are white yeah so in terms of licensing uh in second I believe it's kind of a one there's some I think there's some discussion on um the size of the business and so forth and I'd like to see some links about prioritizing the presumption category in terms of whose data will be in the white I don't know if there's going to be a number of um there's going to be a limitation on the number of licenses there's going to be a staggering of the introduction of winning licenses that's going to be available but I'd like I'd like to see black and brown and poor people standing there to bring that line I think we all would and and Native Americans and local farmers black black and poor people what were their last comments? I said I said Native Americans and I said local farmers let's do my notes I think that the um I think those are some of the major points in terms of oh how we how we could um how we could um address this I know there's a huge challenge um um Mr. Chairman I've learned a huge challenge okay well this is a tax to regulate bill um we don't want to get mucked down we got to get this thing moving and can't just put everything in I understand that I think it's unfortunate that that we did a thing where I told we came back for three reports and there's not one word in any of those reports about equity or or uh diversity um in line with the fact that this history is this rotation that I own and go back and fix history is we've done this before we've done this before we've done this just recently where we've taken off and we've done something and the folks that were impacted by it were still impacted okay and I think that's a huge concern you know it's not to call out the shame or anything like that but we we've got to think that we've got to understand that it's just not right for to make laws um that enable them to be privileged but when there are other folks who are hard critically you know by the the exact instrument that we're legalizing so I think it's just so important that we just be mindful of that and I know that those who are civil and committee are are painful aware of that and I understand the challenge that you have and I just wanted to chime in as a person who comes from a place of community of you I can say it is to please urgently remind you now I do know that there are things that you can do that are outside of this particular piece of legislation and I know historically although I haven't been around long I know that historically that there have been situations for certain bills and even if certain certain initiatives are moving forward and because you put the kibosh on one thing so something else can move around what you do it's your you at least balance it out and say oh wait a minute chronologically wouldn't we want to do first it may be separate bills so I know that there is a I believe there's 17 of Mr. Chair the reparation bill I have no idea okay I know that there is a lot of talk about various weaknesses and strengths in these types of approaches and I know there's also a lot of difficult even culture having lists it shouldn't be for just there's a lot of shouldn't be some type of non-bio low grade misdemeanor type crime that is I strongly urge you stronger committee if you could please take into consideration that it is critical that we get we get that unappealed before such time as we get fit particular people legislation all the way out out of the door I think I think that I think that's very important I agree it's very important but I'm not sure that it's just just said Mark yesterday the chairs and vice-chairs of the House and Senate Judiciary Committee met to decide who was going to take up what and the House would like to take the lead on the expungement bills we have our own views we believe that most crimes that don't involve serious violence should be expungible but that you know I don't know what the House will do but they're going to take the lead on that I totally agree that most we did have I don't know if you heard the testimony yesterday about the number of people who are under the corrections department but purely from marijuana possession charges that there are eight of them five of them people who possessed amounts above two ounces three of them who possessed between two ounces so it's a very small number all are in probation nobody's incarcerated which is good news but on the other hand I understand what you're saying I'm just again you meant when you said reparations you meant expungement is that I'm going to talk about reparations later to conversation I've got about nine more minutes so I need to I've got I've got four other witnesses five other witnesses waiting here I think we can be done in less than nine minutes okay please yep we also got copies of the Massachusetts rules which we can inflict in here into the not inflict but add to S54 you don't want to inflict them no go ahead with the reparations please I will just I will just say that you know to the comment that you made earlier I did back here the the number that you opened with yesterday with with the with the testimony of of the lowest children and both numbers those eight numbers I think it's part of the reason why that you chairman opened with especially the way that I did because first of all those numbers would be reflected and this is with actually a little bit likely here but I but I kind of say that is that those numbers just reflect of you know who's currently under under the system right now okay we've got you know the the world is a 50-year war okay and the history of black and brown people being oppressed in this nation is a 400-year story okay and there are 49 other states so I don't think once again that's an exceptional problem of the state of Vermont because we're not exceptional and it's probably the national problem and it's also a problem that is endured throughout our entire national history okay so that of also the intent will yield a product that is at the end of the day what you're trying to get to and that is I'm sure it's fair okay so that being said I just want to turn the page and just close out with just a couple of thoughts first of all thank you for your time because I really appreciate just having the opportunity to get out and running and have that conversation I want to honor Senator United Life I was specifically calling her home because I'm an Iowa native but I just want to honor what you're doing in your committee this afternoon at 2.30 as you for the first time in 242 years take up the constitutionalization of slavery as an issue in your committee so I would essentially applaud you for what you're doing here because that's a big deal it's totally related to what it is that we're having a conversation about today also in addition to that I do want to close and have that conversation Senator bidding on I do want to so it just occurred to me that I hadn't addressed you in this yet and I I do recall a conversation that we've had about 50 years ago in the lounge about that very issue about that constitutionalization of slavery so this is that and I appreciate your support and I've seen that you've actually supported that as a proposal the in closing I would just say that there is a challenge Senator Begum with 25 folks and causing them to and expecting them to be the folks who who actually oversee this whole business if you will I think it's the way we would expect to get up to that of cannabis while it's they can't be expected to play a role and reparation to overseers okay but you're right it's not quote doable as you said and I think that it should be noted I don't want to go on record as saying as to that there is a reparations bill in the legislative council right now and it's the same reparations bill also exactly the same as the reparations building that our United States a representative from the Michigan John Connors put forward in the United States House of Representatives from 1989 until the time that he left the United States House in 2017 that was never taken up not once and it's also not been it's not been introduced by our senate here and our state either and the brief details on it and I'm almost done here the brief details on it are just that it was just a point of commission for folks to look at the idea quickly and to come back with a report in about a year and to provide to December recommendations if any or what they think about how we might want to proceed with the state now it's unfortunate that I haven't been able to find a senator in the assembly to call that consulate and say yes I would like to sponsor that bill so I would like to leave that with you the five of you today if you could please once you were considered doing so because I think that that is a component of what it is that would work well that would here and do our right information all day long we need to build a tent it's just a warning fucking it's a fucking no it's just it still has been taken it will be introduced in the House because there has been one House who has agreed to do so so we'll see how far that goes again thank you so much for your time thank you for allowing me the opportunity to come forward today I don't think I honor the work that all of you guys are doing I think you guys are amazing I've been seeing hundreds of years of experience that you guys bring to the table it's a powerhouse sitting around in the table and I'm looking forward to seeing great things that you're doing in this discussion thank you Mr. Chair thank you thank you Mark appreciate it hope you get well enough to come and join us soon thank you very much we'll talk to you later I'm sure pleasure's mine the next witness is sorry I didn't realize you had a question I didn't oh the next witness is Graham and I can't pronounce your last name alright I'm Brandon this is my whole life welcome you're a few of the organizers I am so to thank the committee for having me here today my name is Graham I'm a field organizer for rural Vermont which largely means that I work both in the field and in policy so you'll see me around the state house but also doing events and grass roots but also grass tops kind of organizing around issues for rural Vermont so I don't think I've testified in this committee before I don't think so it might be worth just talking to you about who rural Vermont is and the work we do briefly well as quickly for those who may not know we're a 30 year old organization started during the dairy crisis the 1980s which as many of you know is continued to today more or less as a group of community organizers helping to get farmers voices represented and listened to and over the years this organization has transformed and worked in a lot of different ways on a number of different issues from very local food sovereignty issues such as on farm slaughter the chicken bills raw milk but also larger national international issues like NAFTA, GATT RBGH the GMO issue and campaign and this year we have a number of issues we're looking at both outside the state but also in the state house and this is certainly one of the issues which we've been tracking and concerns about and also just some opinions about that we share with you so I guess an overview of our perspective on this bill and our approach is looking at equity access and comprehensive criminal justice reform and as Mark was saying reparations are redress for this history of war on drugs and the effect it's had on folks who've gotten embroiled in it from our perspective this bill should embody a response to the war on drugs sort of recognizing its history of racism and classism and massive and also be responsive to the consolidation and concentration of the pharmaceutical agricultural industries and what we've seen in other states in relationship to legalizing marijuana in terms of it becoming essentially a commodity crop much like many others we see one of the crises in the area right now has to do with oversupply and then also issues of water quality and I think that we can see a lot of these same issues with cannabis if we're not careful in this state as we've seen other states I was able to make it some commission meetings and some tax and regulatory committee meetings also I've talked with some growers in the field and some folks in the processing and distribution and others who would like to get into that rural Vermont's also done a lot of work at hemp over the years and as much as these are two very different issues I think you're all probably aware of too that a lot of the processing and distribution and other infrastructure is there's also cross-purposed there potentially so we were relatively happy with the bill you have worked with yet so I'm largely going to be speaking about what we saw there and I look forward to continuing to look at this bill and make time for that but what was particularly important we felt about the commission bill was that they really went through an effort of prioritizing small growers distributors and processors and offered suggesting at least for the first year and potential for first few years an unlimited number of small growing licenses one of the points I remember again in Roe Vermont is the need for direct market access for small farmers small farmers historically presently that is a niche that we enjoy we cannot compete at a price point or often at a scale of economy that other size growers can only rely I just want to make sure I understand what you mean by direct access could you further explain direct access does that mean selling at the local farmer or does that mean selling to the local like a CSA or like a CSA you mean direct market access like a CSA a farm stand a farmers market booth where people can have a direct relationship with their customer that is we talk about craft I think in this industry where it's been thrown out a lot sometimes people throw out that is not in the commission report the commission did however based on I think our testimony put in a provision recommending a direct marketing consultant how they were trying to address that with that position I wasn't able to get many answers so I was really curious to hear if you all had looked into that further or understood that but my point with that is that this is how small growers are able to maintain viability in a very competitive marketplace it's also when you talk about craft some people have mentioned certain beer companies but the reality is this is a product that's grown on a farm and it could be directly sold from a small one you're dealing with a much more dangerous product it is currently allowed to be sold at farm stands in farmers markets and excuse my laps there for a moment when we talk beer products often are grown out of accumulation of products from all over the country and world this is something like I said just from the farm when you're talking about a craft product you're talking about they have an identity associated with it and that's what brings people to their farm that's what gets them buying other farm products that's what brings them into small communities to increase the viability of those communities I'm dumbfounded by this discussion frankly and I realize there are people who would like to do this but I understand tax I understand how you can tax somebody at that but how do you regulate how do we regulate to make sure the quality of that department of health dropping by the local farm stand to check on the lettuce actually they do if you want to do this I mean they do but they do they've closed down some people at the Brown River farmers market so the health department does check the local farm stand and just to be clear actually I think that you'll find that we're actually calling for we're not trying to minimize the amount of regulation in fact we think that the centralized distributors being the medical marijuana facilities which have not been regulated in terms of testing that we actually think third party testing is incredibly important for all kinds of toxic herbicides pesticides as well as phytochemical constituents and that anybody should have to submit their product for third party tests that should be a prerequisite to sale so it's not I'm not suggesting that those folks shouldn't be regulated and that different the realities of the farm economy are sort of acknowledged and that we try to work with this dynamic that exists if I could so you mentioned I did my first few years and I sent it on ag and worked with raw milk and custom slaughter and game birds being exempted from the inspection regime in certain situations and to my eye those were all incremental moves so it was convincing state government that this was safe it was convincing consumers that it was safe so we made moving moves each year and we eventually got to a place with the more direct relationship between the producer the farmer and the customer where they could buy without so much in the way of state middle man so that's the way I see this it's a it's a big first step it's an indigestible first step for a lot of people so I think ultimately we can get to the place you're talking about to go along with Senators here is I don't see a way to do that from the get go where we would have farm stands selling directly to consumers because part of the rationale for this building and security from seed to sale so I hope you don't see the efforts of the committee as completely hostile to what you're talking about but it might be a question of an evolution over time rather than yes or no forever and I hear that this is clearly a huge indigestible piece of legislation for lots of folks and for lots of reasons and I think that's a fair way of looking at it it's clearly going to try to get to a better place for this over time carrying it to the on-farm slaughter rules etc I think we're definitely not satisfied with where on-farm slaughter is right now at Royal Vermont we don't need to go there but just to say that these are things that have been age old practices that have been existing they're both things that have been existing in the dark just so that future witnesses are clear my interest is in passing tax and regulated justice I don't mind having things but expungement farm sales that sort of stuff you know is a future discussion my goal is to get a tax regulated bill through the senate that doesn't get dragged down by a discussion about roadside safety and education and if I drag it down by having discussion about roadside sales I get into the roadside safety I get into the education by keeping it away from kids blah blah blah so I'm happy to put something in there that looks to the future to just senator Baruth just said but I really don't want to weigh this bill down with more controversy than is already here I hope that makes sense but I hear your concern well it's not a concern it's a reality if I put in what you've just asked for not passed and if even in past it would not it would get immediately vetoed and we'd be right back where we started from could I ask a question well first of all I agree with the CSA model not farmers markets necessarily but the CSA where you're only selling to a group of people that you've already identified and that's the way CSA is but I'm just curious how you would you suggested at the beginning of your testimony that we should address the impact that the war on drugs has had on disparate communities and how to how would you put that we tend not to do findings in bills because what happens is that people disagree with the findings not the content of the bill and then you end up in a fight over the findings not the content of the bill so we don't do findings like the house does so the only place where we do findings so I'm just curious how you would just putting something like that in you mean like a recognition of the history of the law we're going to consider next week what Massachusetts did and their their commission actually set the rules guidance for equity provisions and just some of the things that are done in other places in agriculture at least in terms of trying to address reparations things are specific grants historically disadvantaged communities what's that I said that isn't in this bill we're not talking about how to distribute money or anything I'm just trying to give you ideas for how some of these considerations might work but I agree with Mark too that you know I'm not a person of thought I'm not one of these impacted communities and I think they're going to a commission made up of those impacted communities to determine what this looks like might be a decent idea to move towards or to at least bring some of those folks into the community with those communities as well so again just prioritizing small growers historically disadvantaged folks and people who have been impacted by the war on drugs reducing barriers and providing opportunities for the current economy to come into the open I thought that the report did a job of acknowledging that this isn't a new economy this is an existing economy and the goal is to really bring it into the light and provide those people the opportunity to come into the light acknowledging that these folks have financed all kinds of businesses, a lot of the skills and understandings we noticed also that certain people were forbidding from participating in this economy in the bail I believe folks have felony histories in the committee recommendations at least and this isn't the commission recommendations I'm sorry maybe not in your bill from the commission recommendations I believe folks with a felony history were prohibited from engaging in this and that was something we had concerns around I mentioned third party testing and this gets a little to the ecological impacts we have and concerns around that and I think the recommendations in the commission report around scale we'll go towards addressing some of our immediate concerns or ecological impacts even speaking with Kerry-Gig Ware in the past he said to me that it's really the large grows that are going to be using pesticides and herbicides a lot and that's to me an indication that in order to be ecologically sensitive we might want to prioritize smaller growing operations and really test that and the commission report and just want to reiterate our appreciation for that one of the concerns we have is this rural urban divide and this class divide if I'm not sure of your bill but the commission was not providing places to indulge and without that you're left with a situation with those who are a certain category of privilege they have the space the ability to do so but those without that I agree we decided introducing the bill to take out a provision regarding cafes I don't know what we'll do with that as the bill works its way through but you're correct or even you're pointing out one group another group might be tourists who come here to visit the lawn twice in marijuana or have no legal place in smoking right pretty soon yep it's more of another excess issue I guess I think the question of towns abilities to approve or not approve at a local level is a very interesting question we're certainly an organization which supports local governance but there's also got to be limitations on this and we see issues already with zoning in Vermont affecting how different businesses are operating and ultimately certainly create an impact on that and it's something for the committee to consider I think is what would be the effects of a town forbidding or outlawing the growing have on farmers in that community versus farmers in other communities is there a sentence in here or a section Michelle that deals with the inability of a community to zone the facility out even though they have an opt in or opt out and if there isn't there should be anything to talk about in this initiative like it came up yesterday in discussions I brought it up before and I think we talked about it a little bit and some of the options today afternoon and they're going to be working on the municipal part on Tuesday and we'll look at doing some language for that to make sure because I think they have the ability to do the zoning but I understand you're concerned which is that you don't want them to basically use their inherent municipal authority to essentially ban it without going through the voting process to clarify is your objection mostly or exclusively about growing licenses being denied or is it about towns being able to opt out recreational sales I think it's about that intersection you know and how that affects small business viability and we see this not for the farming community we don't see this as a primary crop like I said we're not going to be the commodity scales that come from out west even though that's clearly not legal in Vermont it's still coming in and we know that but we're also if we look at unlimited small growing licenses for example we're not giving larger growing licenses then this is going to be a sort of a side project of a lot of farm it's going to be like hey we can go 500 feet of canopy space this will actually make us this much more viable this year but if you and similarly stores are going to work so it's harder for you to talk about that it may be it may need to be some sort of co-operative arrangement for the storage and distribution in other words the small farmer a group of small farmers doing together have small plots that they control and then the group if they can come to an agreement would then distribute the whole sale to distribute to the retailer retailer I would how I would envision that working probably wouldn't be economically viable for a five small farm to if it's part of their crop to just grow it without joining with several other farmers in every area I guess that's part of the concern we have is that farmers tend to get pennies in the dollar industries that are part of and we don't want to make sure that's not the case with this well if they are the co-operative then they I don't know how it all works I've never been never been a farmer and I've never sold crops so I have no idea how it would work I know in the milk field it's pretty it's the large corporation so that's not a good example there must be examples in that I think the co-operative model in the milk field is not what we want to look towards this example at this point but I hear you that co-operative structures are what we want to look towards in terms of the future pretty soon the farmers will be listening to the futures report on marijuana it's already out they already do a futures report on but part of my point is to what we don't want to speak about sure just being concerned about this becoming commodity crop versus a small crop that exists in Vermont actually helps farmers in local communities and just to I think lastly just to go back I think when I mentioned direct sales it wasn't necessarily to say that it needs to happen everywhere at once but it's more like you were suggesting senator that what are models at which we could create this possibility for people and create those lines of access such that more of the dollar does actually return to the grower and there's a relationship there between them and their farm and the consumer and again as Mark said it's not just about the people who are currently facing consequences history of consequences and impact that people have experienced around this particular substance in our criminalization over time and how do we redress that but thank you all very much for your time I you know if I would appreciate being invited back in the future as this goes forward and I would love to provide more of that farmer voice and input over time so we can give you some of that because it is those of the folks who are going to be the heart of this in terms of producing the crop we're talking about. Okay I'll press come I'll press I'll press it's actually unencated oh what that came from you know we'll get to you after the break can we get back at 20 minutes after so that we can clean up get back in and crack here on the schedule so and so we'll take any minute of the break that's what we're taking okay for the record My name is Eli Harrington, and I am testifying as co-founder and COO of Heady Vermont. I'll start by just giving a little bit of background about our company. We are coming up on three years old, start up to 20-somethings in Vermont, who are friends living in Burlington, saw cannabis conversations happening, and thought there was a need for people to get more news and information, as well as access to the political process. So I am now a registered lobbyist, and my charge for Heady Vermont is to make this process accessible to our partners and members. So that's why I'm here. I think reporting is probably more journalism than advocacy, but we are trying to change legislation that would rather be radically transparent. So that's kind of really the main agenda that we have as Heady Vermont, is access and information, not a specific target. So I want to talk about kind of what our company, we are media, we are events, we are also membership and organization. So we have now over 500 individual members and over 55 legal Vermont businesses who pay us an annual membership fee. I work for two and a half years at the Lake Champlain Regional Chamber of Commerce, and so I would compare our business kind of as a de facto chamber of commerce. We're just not offering insurance. We're offering low-cost advertising and promotion and events for really what are mostly start-up businesses and small farms at this point, and a lot of them are CBD and sort of hemp. So related to events with putting out information, there was an interest in people connecting. So our first event was April 2016. We had a panel at the Skinny Pancake. Since then we have literally done over 100 different events, ranging in size and scale. We started the first Vermont HempFest, which we are very proud to note on any K-Day. Happens up at Bird Mountain. This is the second. I just want to ask, just so you know your clock here is fast. We know that. We're going by Peggy's. We're gonna get VGS to fix it once they figure out how to fix the parking. Are still there. Are still there. Are still there. Are still there. Are still there. Are still there. Okay, so go ahead. Sorry, we didn't want to. No problem. With our time, Peter. So I wanted to know with the events, because I'm gonna talk about what our company does, and that's really median events. And then I want to answer questions and maybe talk about what's happening in other states and some lessons to learn, and a little bit of feedback on this. But I mentioned sort of some of the range of events that we do, the Vermont HempFest. We are confirmed. This will be our third year in September. First year we had over 500 attendees and over 30 businesses. Last year we had over 800 attendees and over 50 businesses. Both times sold out the Burke Mountain Hotel. And very proud to bring that event to a place where rural economic development needs to happen. So beyond that, we also put on the Vermont Cannabis and Hemp Convention. Last year it was at the Sheridan. We had over 1500 people show up for the weekend. This year we're doing it at the Fairgrounds because the interest is exploding and that is really a straight trade show and convention, and business convention. Ranging to our other sort of larger signature event which we recently had was the Heddies, which is the first Vermont Cannabis Growers Cup. Now I emphasize all these events are legal events and we spend a lot of time and energy making sure that we are both staying within the letter and the spirit of the law with how we execute these events. Most notably I think on July 1st and I wanna point to this experience, we hosted the legalization celebration in Johnson. This was meant to be an event that acknowledged the social and legal change that had happened and for the first time acknowledged that people would be able to consume legally. We did not provide cannabis for people there, it was not sold on site. But that idea of having an event where consumption of what was then became a legal substance was kind of groundbreaking and led to some difficulties. Our first venue was the Lang Farms, the Barnes and Lang Farms. Very popular wedding venue, there's a golf course attached and the owners were very happy. It became clear in our conversation with the town of Essex because for us, if the neighbors don't want you there, it doesn't matter what the police think. This is always when we're going in planning an event, kind of the orthodoxy and as we're monitors how you have to operate. So it became very clear that the town of Essex, mostly through their attorney's liberal definition of the word public place, which is something that we can certainly clarify with this legislation. That we were not going to be welcomed, they were gonna ask for a special permit to have amplified music and worried about the smell on Route 15 and Department of Transportation permits that have cars going in and out of a state highway. So we quickly learned that they didn't want us there, we didn't want to fight that fight and moved our event to Johnson. A farm, Willow Crossing Farm, actually owned by somebody who has been disproportionately affected by the war on drugs and has served time for cultivation of cannabis. Through that process, we learned a lot and really developed a very positive relationship with the Lamoille County Sheriff's Department as well as the state police. I personally spent over 60 hours first with the Johnson Select Board getting a noise permit, not something that we needed, but something that we wanted to have so the town knew that we were going to be actively involved and could ask me questions about our event and what it would and would not be. With these cannabis events, there are a lot of assumptions and most of them we've disproven and it's through diligence and through just working harder and spending more time. So I did not, I will reach out to Sheriff Marku because I think that our process really demonstrated that not only can you do a cannabis event legally and safely, we did this on July 1st, the hottest day of the year. We did this in a place without cell service, without a ton of electricity and infrastructure and I'm very proud to say that we had zero instances of people having to be removed. Nobody lost consciousness even, which I would challenge any other event with a thousand people on a 110 degree day. We jokingly say everybody gained a lot of consciousness, right? But we're seriously very, very proud of that track record and I think that it happened because we worked with Sheriff Marku, we worked with Fire and Rescue, we worked with the local hospital and ambulance service and went through a lot of work and so as this committee, and I know this committee spent a lot of time, but as the text of the legislation considers where people can consume, I will suggest that clarifying the definition of a public place or something that's very much not to my financial interest, creating a cannabis event permit similar to what we do with alcohol. As the former director of events at Burke Mountain, plenty of times we got an alcohol permit.  Special training for the people working it? Well, it's tied usually to a license of somebody that already has that training. But that's what I mean, there's a requirement to get the special events permit that one way or the other, the people serving have training. Right. But it's basic, as somebody who's been certified bartender, the training is relatively simple. I've also been stung by DLC and happy to say pass that successfully. So ID verification is not rocket science and something that we've got pretty well down. And if you wanna get it a permit to do an alcohol event, it costs less than $50 and takes a few minutes. You need a local stamp and you need a DLC license that it's tied to. But I would suggest that as we consider where people are going to consume this legally and try to regulate the safety of the greater community around them, as well as the people at that event, there are ways. And we'd be happy to participate. Another example we just had, I mentioned the Grower's Cup. We had an awards party. And at that awards party, this was something that happened in Essex Junction. Once again, we got a call from the Essex authorities. This time there was no outside music and there was no question of whether this was a private or public event. In our mind, in our attorney's minds, we rented it out. We paid them a tidy sum for one degree weather in the middle of January for a wedding venue. Pretty good business opportunity for events, places. And then through this process, we, same thing, ID checks were in place by people who were registered servers. We had a ticketing process that ensured everybody was of legal age. And again, I'm very proud to say that at the end of the day, there were zero incidences of public safety in the state police. There were zero that happened locally. There were zero complaints. So I don't think that every event planner, I give us a lot of credit in our team and the people around us in the amount of time we spend, but we've successfully pulled off these events that have welcomed thousands of people through and since July, acknowledged consumption. Now, the definition of public consumption as private consumption is something that we've wrestled with and has come up kind of a discretion of what our attorneys have told us and the way we set things up. We go through, like I said, a lot of extra process with having a hiring outside security. We get insurance when we do events and getting an insurance writer for a Canvas event is really expensive and a pain, but it can be done and then making sure the hosts, the neighbors, the local communities, if necessary, are aware and have a chance to engage because people should not have to hide and should not have to be treated separately. And in fact, these events that I mentioned have all had economic development. When the Ended Essex gets an extra 14 rooms because we do our Grower's Cup down the street or the Hotel at Burke, which has had a lot of issues, gets an extra 25 rooms on a soft weekend, that's real economic development. I don't even need to make the joke about how well all the restaurants do around us with the munchies and all that stuff, but that's real too. So I want to mention that and also that is an opportunity. So that's an opportunity of how people can consume this legally and we can set pretty strict parameters, but I think with all this looking at alcohol relative and I know that we've got a long way to go to change the paradigm and alcohol in this state is kind of the sacred cow and our economic driver. We heard yesterday our health commissioners say that there was an alarming increase in the use of cannabis because it went from 22 to 24%. Well, last year in that same period, the use of teenage alcohol went from 30 to 33%. So that means alcohol increased 50% more than cannabis through that same time period. And yet not only do we celebrate and me personally, probably too much, our Vermont alcohol industry, we actually allocate state funding. We as taxpayers fund the creation of media that tells you where you can buy vodka cheapest in this state and when. So I really think it's important to put things in perspective and to really look at, especially economic development opportunities to open this business up and start treating this as a plant and as an economic driver in this state and not as a toxic, dangerous, risky substance. I appreciate the comments and touching them on you. I want to say something just to, you know, it's not just this legislation, it's all kinds of legislation. And when I first got here in the legislature, I thought we were going to do great things quickly. And I slowly learned that we do great things slowly and slowly and much slower than perhaps the public would like and much slower than many other people would like. And then on the other hand, much faster.  I get emails from people saying you haven't done enough. So if I look back when I started this being involved, it was in the medical field. That was 2002. And Governor Dean was adamantly opposed to medical marijuana. So you look at where medical marijuana is today compared to where it was back in 2002. We started out with great opposition to legalizing marijuana, decriminalizing marijuana. That was what your bill, you introduced. 21. 21. Well, no, 21. But when you first introduced the bill was 2011. I believe 2012. So when you start there and you look to where we are today with the legal product and what's happened and what Matt described all around us. So I say that to all of the advocates. I've got dozens of emails, and as I pointed out, some of them ask us to not legalize. But I've got dozens of emails from people saying slow down. If you don't take care of traffic safety, you're making a mistake. If you don't take care of prevention, you're making a mistake. And while I may agree with everything you've said, and I agree that we should look at some form of how do we publicly consume. We may not be ready for that this year. That may be something that comes in the future. So I look back on Senator Nicker and I had an experience. It's called Civil Unions back in 2000. And you look where that's come today as where the discussion was back then. And we were the first state to do it. And I look back on that. And I say, how backwards we were and some of the views we had. And we took what year did we do marriage? 2009. 2009. So it took nine years. So I think that just does a caution to everybody here who wants more in this bill than maybe the legislature, and I'm talking now about the House, the Senate, and the governor are willing to buy. Just given this conversation and the conversation that we had before around farmers, could we just, and if somebody suggested it, I'm not sure if it was Michelle or somebody else, could we put in here that the board could consider other types of permits as they go through the rulemaking process that, I mean, they clearly have to come back for, yeah, like one day event permits or CSA type permits, but that they could consider other types of permits other than the five we've defined. My plan is to get information from you, your committee on government operations, maybe other committees, and hopefully we can spend next finished testimony on the bill next Wednesday. So those of you who may still want to speak on the bill, please sign up for next Wednesday. Now on Thursday, go over what are the outstanding issues of the cell, and what are the things we flagged, and then start to mark it up and hopefully get it out of here the week after next. OK, now I would agree with Senator White in terms of, in the rulemaking process, asking them to consider something like this, the special event permit route, I see that as potentially a way to mitigate the problem we've been talking about of tourists coming into the state. We're facing the industry toward them, and we know from other places where it's legalized it has increased tourism. So giving them some route, if the hotel they're at has a special event permit where they might be able to consume on the grounds of the hotel where they're staying, I think we can get eventually to a point where we'd have smaller special events. The reason I like that route is it seems to me it goes not perfectly in sync, but more or less hand in hand with secure from sea to sail, because there are safeguards all the way through from training for the personnel to the insurance coverage that then. One thing we could do is ask for interim recommendations that we could take up, because it's going to take till April 21 before it's actually sold. So you could ask the board to look at interim recommendations for the report to the legislature on some of these issues. And I'll say with those, and I thank you, and I appreciate your point. I'm an older millennial, but we want instant gratification and part of why this state is great. This is a deliberate. Yeah, welcome. Well, we have, even speaking about longer term and types of licenses, a lodging establishment. If you're the Highland Inn in Greensboro and your guests want to be able to consume safely, hey, guess what, lounges are great, but you've still got to get to and from. We let people consume in lodges and lodging establishments, then they are presumably less likely to be out on the roads. They've already done all their stuff for the day. So that's a longer term kind of pie in the sky. I'll bring it down and conclude with this particular legislation on the table today. As I thank you, I think that bless you. I think that as we look at other states and look at breaking down this process of how we regulate effectively and tax cannabis with THC in it, it's helpful to break it down to its components and think about what it takes to accomplish these steps and learn our lessons from Massachusetts and other states. So right now, if we have approximately, with our medical program, we're serving about, let's say, 6,000 patients in the state of Vermont presently with a theoretically regulated, not presently taxed, but at least a formal sort of overseen process that's defined. So about 6,000 patients, if we think about legal consumers, if we think about increasing that to 60,000 consumers of THC, which is maybe on the low end of our domestic population consumption, or 600,000 consumers of THC cannabis, which represents some of our population and a tiny percentage of our tourists, we don't have anywhere near the supply. How do we increase our supply by a factor of 100? And that's a very real challenge that we're going to have to think about. I think the commission is an excellent place to start, and I think the composition of that and how long those terms are, three-year terms for a two-year election cycle, I think that's going to be very important to keep an eye on. So I think that in 2019, if we can create this commission and we can create a cultivator license, maybe in 2019, those people sell to the dispensaries. Our medical program, they've acknowledged that they're open to that. They would like to support those small farmers as well. And we do have a pathway in which you could be a small cultivator. Now, it's not a perfect economic system when you only have a select number of buyers, but that's something that we could do now. A cultivator license could even be a medical bill if this tax and regulate becomes a behemoth or gets delayed. But I think that question of the commission, a testing protocol where it is not overburdened. So we talk about this a lot in terms of hemp, $600 test for every single batch that you have to sell becomes way too expensive for the small farmer we say we want to advantage. So I think that having some sort of testing protocol that does, consumer safety is not, I think the major concern with the public, it is for medical patients if you have immune deficiencies, keeping in mind that this is not objectively a dangerous toxic substance. And so consumer safety is a concern, but for our Vermont standards, making sure that labels are accurate and that products are quality. I think that these are things that we can realistically tackle in 2019. And I know from other states that process of licensing and regulating if there's a 20 page application, if there's a 50, a 100 page, somebody's got to read all those applications. And if we want 100 small farmers to be involved in this, we need to start reading those applications in 2017 to be prepared. So I would just end on that and say that I know there's a lot of detail to be worked out and that a lot of it's gonna happen in the other chamber, but I think that there's a very positive step here and especially combining getting medical and getting adult use into the same body is really valuable because it is taxonomically the same plan, even if the demo's different. So I'm happy to answer more questions but appreciate your time. Took the piece of advice. Yes, sir. I had a wonderful lunch there with Chief Justice Rehnquist one day, I don't think in your presentation, you wanna use the Highland Lodge as an example of one of the indicators. Sure, fair. Well, I didn't miss quote Ethan Allen this time, at least in front of you, so you know, generally improving. All right, thank you. Thank you, Eli. Now, can you do that, Dr. Nathan? Is he from Vermont or somewhere else? I got him from New York, Vice President Jersey. Oh, so he's the Prince of New York. I should have known him. He's from Jersey. Is he from Vermont? No. Oh, see. Are there any Vermont doctors? Not going in. Are there any Vermont doctors in that? Yeah, but we do have a Jersey boy on the committee. That's where they call him. I know. The Jersey boy. They do call him the Curtis boy. The good thing about him is he's a Patriot fan. You're right, I've heard of that. I should be able to hear from you, sir. What was his name? I don't know. I don't know. We won't, I can't, we'll have to talk about New Jersey. I know, but you can't find any tomatoes in it. At sound, please leave a message for Dr. David Nathan. Record your message at the tone. When you are finished recording, press down. To cammo, press start. Thank you, Dr. Nathan. That's the Senate Judiciary Committee. We were scheduled to talk with you. I'm sorry you're not available right now. We're going to go to our next witness and hopefully we can catch up with you shortly. Try Andrew Friedman. I think he's from Colorado. Boston, right? I thought he was from Colorado. He used to be a Colorado regulator. He used to be a legislator in Colorado. Regulators. Excuse me. Regulator, not legislator. Didn't we hear from him? Yeah, he was good. No, consultant. Andrew, this is Senator Dick Sears. I think you may remember us. The Senate Judiciary Committee. And we're here talking about S54, a tax and regulate bill. And I understand you're now a consultant on these issues. And if you have a few comments to make about S54 or you're ready for questions, we're ready to listen. Okay, great. I've had so many of you at S54. I've read through the bill. I'm off to talk to you. Thank you. First of all, I think it was a well-bought deal. I'm a regulatory assistant for my mom. On my side, I think where I best fit in is now. I work for 17 different governments from Canada to California and Massachusetts, Maine. And so I think I'm better off taking questions and learning my expertise to however you might want it. Okay, a couple of questions. Things that have come up during testimony on the bill. One is the issue of social justice in the bill. Are there examples? We did get some information from Massachusetts, I'm wondering if there's something in the other 17 states addressing that issue. So, then create, so first of all, people have thought about equity in various and three different buckets, but I think so far. One is equity in ownership. One is equity in the workforce. And third is inequity in the distribution of tax revenue. I assume here you're talking about the first two. There's been no data that's come out on anything yet. So everything is still theoretical systems. That being said, California is devolved into the cities and the city came up with a number of varying degrees of complicated schemes for making sure that there's quite a bit of equity at those things. San Francisco has come up with one-for-one teams that say that for every equity applicant, for every general who applicants, there's an equity applicant that should come through. Those have ended up creating quite a few potential ownership licenses. I don't know if I would suggest that to a state that may be a lot more complicated to bring in on a state level. I think California eventually settled on creating an equity fund that provided cities and counties with technical assistance and ways to access capital for equity applicants that the cities and counties could tap into if they did have an equity program. That is the only other truly implemented equity program out there on a state level. Again, I don't know if I can say that there's any evidence from that it works or not. In fact, I can tell you that there isn't any evidence that it works or not because everybody's so new. Pretty new. I'm wondering, another issue that I would wonder about is we're looking at a timeline of having, if this all goes well, we would start to open retail sales in April of 2021. Are there any examples? We already have a regulated medical. Are there any examples where you would allow the medical distributors to start a retail earlier? Because they're already up and running in several communities. That would be a concern that if you did that, that creates some monopoly, although on the other hand, it allows sales in several communities ahead of time. Are there any examples of that? Whether people in the audience disagree or agree, it's fine with me, but I was only asking a question. So Colorado had 13 months after the passing of the amendment, the confidential amendment that allowed for adult use, to implement the adult use system. So it was 13 months of putting up a number of new rules, going and getting implementing statutes from the Colorado General Assembly and the first at least six months, the moment five months of Colorado's regulated system. Only the establishment of the licensees apply for adult use licenses. And that was a little bit just a worry about volume coming through the Department of Revenue and a little bit of, well, we know these players, we know they can be up and running and they can be marijuana on the shelves and the phone shelves starting January 1st on the 14th. I mean, that specific concern, so there's a couple of things that are one, I think it was helpful that there was a pretty short timeline that medical had this kind of leg up on adult use. It wasn't like they were around for two or three years by themselves. And then second, the rules were already established by the time that happened. So I think it would have been a worse dynamic if the medical had been allowed to be adult use and they could have come in and started lobbying us to not change the rules, posts, limitations. And then I would say the other thing that ended up happening is so much capital came into the game off the sideline. And these were, this was the early days of there's a lot of people that were just interested in setting up a bill to use the first in the world that they'll use shocks, but that I would say the real complaint ended up being that the original people that were in the regulated system ended up being pushed out by all of this capital cutting. And I would say you don't see a lot of the people that were around at the beginning are no longer as industry members. Interesting. The third question I had, and I'll turn it over to other committee members, we've had some testimony about either allowing public use in special events or allowing, I'm going to use the word cafe for lack of a better term, where people can use. And we have the disconnect here where tourists come to Vermont, they might buy the product, but there's no place that they can use it legally because there's always staying in a hotel or whatever that doesn't allow it. Are there other states that have public use? Yes, there are other states that have provided some that are language about public use. What have happened is that the locals have been very slow to roll them out. So California has what they call commercial consumption. So ways in which to set up current retail stores to be able to allow for use. It's not been implemented so much on the local level at this point in Nevada. And what they also have some places where you can have commercial consumption. This is really still a pre-open policy question for all of the United States. So it's very much not so to Vermont that you haven't really seen a bar type, well the type, legal, available use for the situation in Rwanda or Canada. We're all feeling that there will be in time and everybody just doesn't want to be the first to do it. There's certainly a compelling reason that if you're a tourist state it is actually a problem that people go back to either the hotel or they don't have anywhere to smoke in so they end up using edibles. And I think edibles or edibles and tourists they're not exactly a big combination. So I do think there's a different point where you can really think true and see if you might be one of the pioneering people in this. But it would be the first to actually implement such a system. Edibles and tourists not a big combination. Andrew, thank you. I don't know if other committee members have questions. Senator Nitkin. I wonder if you could just speak to the issue of some of those states with regard to do they have a residency requirement for persons who get licenses or is that an issue in place? Can get one or two? Yeah. So I might need to ask the question about residency requirements. Yeah. To purchase. No. No. Just to get the license. All to all. Yeah. So yes. Most states do have residency requirements. Some say that 50% of the ownership structure has to be followed with the residents. Some say, you know, Colorado for the first two years was 100% for the residency has to be in Colorado. California, I believe it's escaping at this time, but I believe that it's a much smaller percentage. I will tell you that the real problem from an implementation standpoint is whether or not you're going to allow complex corporate structures. Because if you allow the complex corporate structures, then kind of no matter what your residency requirements are, there's a lot of ways to, a lot of ways to get money into the system and the factual ownership by running through a couple of corporations and suggest on that is if residency, even if residency is not, but if residency is an important issue for you guys, but you would only initially allow for individuals or closely held corporations to invest or to own the owners of cannabis licenses. Over time, there'll be a pretty big pushback from that is people teach capital and you probably will have to loosen those regulations because you will, I think, over time, choke the system from capital, but at least initially it's a good way of knowing exactly who owns the source. One of the things that comes up, particularly from the administration, yesterday we had the Commissioner of Public Safety and the Commissioner of Health then, both criticized the bill because we didn't have a section regarding, I think he wanted roughly $6 million for prevention and public safety wanted a provision that would allow for swabs, oral fluid testing, roadside to determine whether somebody had marijuana in their system. F-54 has neither initiative in it. Can you give us any comments about those issues in other states that you're working with and how they've either been dealt with or how, if they haven't already implemented what's happening with that? So starting with prevention and services, I think the state set of implemented prevention and services or prevention programs from Canada's tax revenues have, I think, been a fair bit of success. It's hard to, and this is correlation versus causation, but both Washington State and Colorado have put the most percentage tax revenue to date into the prevention programs also saw the most significant drops in youth use during those time periods. Now, they both came from a really high place and so they had further to drop at that point, but I certainly see it as a bright spot both in Colorado and in Washington State but in some service flat lines and some service specifically that you could decrease in youth use. And I'm a big fan of proven prevention programs. I think there's also, you know, those should be double boring studies, those should be rigorously trapped youth prevention programs because there are also a lot of fat youth prevention programs that are people's favorites but have never been proven to work. On the oral fluids, many times I don't know of any on the state level. There have been on the state level money for creating drug recognition experts particularly through the program called A-Ride and there has been money for general enforcement. There have been some smaller grant programs for ways of testing such as oral fluid testing but I've got $100,000 into it but they didn't really lead anywhere but that was not a lot of money. You know, the problem with all of that testing is that it doesn't show any creation and I don't know of any other, other than the blood drawn test I don't know of any other test that is gone all the way through the court system and so I acknowledge them and I might be wrong in Vermont law but I imagine what an oral fluid test would be good for is having something real inside so that they have probable causes to take somebody to the hospital or the blood on the wrong location. I think in Vermont, if we were to approve something like that the blood test requires a search warrant so I suspect you're trying to... and I'm the position that if you wanted to do a oral test you should also have a search warrant. We'll see where that goes but you've been extremely helpful I think to the committee I wonder if there's any other final questions from committee members or from legislative counsel for Andrew. Just a double check Andrew when we first spoke with you weren't you a resident of Colorado? I'm the resident of Colorado, yeah. You've moved to Massachusetts I understand. You know I moved to San Francisco I've always had the 71 number that they got that got my phone number when I was at Tufts University. Now we were hoping you were a Patriots fan. Right. So... Patriots doesn't move to bring me those points on Mr. Rebson. Okay. Except for Missouri by the way Missouri and New England are with the Patriots Missouri for some reason. You had a question Michelle. Andrew this is Michelle I just wanted to check in with you I'd like to circle back with you about the residency and the corporate structure if you don't mind just I'll give you a call and we'll try to set something up if that's all right. Absolutely. And just so you know this is another one of those audience questions publicly allowing some publicly created companies allowing for different types of corporate structures is a pretty complicated one but I'm happy to offer them with you. Thanks. Thanks so much again Andrew. Appreciate it. Be well if they won't. Thank you. Do we try the doctor again? Try the doctor again. I had two numbers for him there. Okay. I thought you meant now. He spoke to him years ago. Yes. We did an interview. What is the term of the Patriots and the Broncos? Right. The Patriots. Obviously because the St. Louis Ram won the Los Angeles. Please tell me you can hear me. I can hear you. Yes. Okay, great. I apologize. That's all right. That's all right doctor. Thank you for being with us. I'm fixed here to state senator from Bennington County in Vermont and chair of this committee. And we have senator White. Senator Baruth. Senator Nicker. And senator Benning.  Interested parties. And reporters. So please go ahead. You're representing doctors for cannabis regulation. I'm going to hear from doctors against cannabis regulation next week. Absolutely. This is timely. Indeed. So thank you. And good morning senator Sears and members of the Vermont Senate Judiciary Committee. As you said, my name is David Nathan. I'm originally from the Philadelphia area. I attended Princeton University. Received my MD from the University of Pennsylvania. And completed my residency in psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. I'm a board certified psychiatrist. And for the past 20 years I've maintained a private practice in Princeton, New Jersey where I live with my wife and our two teenage children. I am a clinical associate professor at the Rutgers Robert Wood Johnson Medical School and a distinguished fellow at the American Psychiatric Association. Most relevant lead to today I am the founder and board president of Doctors for Cannabis Regulation or DSCR. And with a prestigious roster of physicians including former surgeon general Joyce Lynn Elders and the integrative medicine pioneer Andrew Weil, DSCR is the first and only national medical association dedicated to legalization taxation and, above all, the effective regulation of cannabis in the United States. As team members, the time has come to regulate the retail sale of cannabis in Vermont. The legalization of personal possession and cultivation of cannabis in 2018 was a major step forward in the move away from the failed prohibition to preceding 80 years. Although it lacked many of the essentials of full legalization and regulation that are necessary to serve the interests of public health and social justice, which are the two main objectives of DSCR. Alcohol prohibition was repealed after just 13 years because of unintended consequences, organized crime, increased use of hard alcohol and government waste. We have seen the same consequences from the 80 year prohibition of cannabis, organized crime. Vermont is not very different from that of alcohol prohibition. And that is because what we call alcohol prohibition with actually, by today's definition, a form of decriminalization in which usual retail sales and points of access were restricted even though there was still honorable to contamination and adulteration. In Vermont today, any points of access of cannabis and of criminals who will sell cannabis will be able to continue with criminals who will sell cannabis potentially along with other dangerous drugs to underage users. Cannabis cultivation has led to the development of more potent strains, as I mentioned. To the extent that illegal cannabis today is often five times stronger than it was 30 years ago, and when you hear from the opponents of legalization next week, you will hear them emphasize that point. And so I'd like to address that in anticipation. The cannabis current system prevents regulation of labeling, rendering consumers unable to judge the potency of cannabis, which is essentially like drinking alcohol out of an unlabeled bottle that doesn't indicate its strength. That alcohol is extremely dangerous in the case of cannabis where overdoses aren't legal, it can be extremely unpleasant and lead to panic and trips to the emergency room. The cannabis is to doctor's or cannabis regulation a medically sound argument not for prohibition or decriminalization. So the products are properly labeled with potency ingredients and serving information. And the drug illegality serves as a price support mechanism that only profits the illegal producers and dealers. And again, that should remind us all of the 1920s when prohibitions fuel the rise of a price support mechanism makes it more lucrative because the supply is constricted while the demand is the danger is more violent. Imposed at 54, there's not adequate provision for prevention of assessment of drug driving under the influence of cannabis. You can stop me now if that's not true but that's what I was reading in the media coming out of Vermont. I think that's true. It may also be the House of Representatives that would approve it without tax. Interesting. Well, so I can actually speak very well to that. First, let me just say that we don't know yet whether the legalization of cannabis increases or even decreases traffic accidents or fatalities and I can address that potential going either way in Q&A. What we've learned from other states is that while cannabis can impair driving in individuals, especially if they are naive or they consume a very large quantity, the risk of harm is not nearly as great as it is for alcohol. For drugs including pain killers and cannabis across the board, the increased risk of accident in general may be something like two to three times the baseline risk of accident. That's actually similar for a hands-free cell phone. Alcohol increase in risk is 12 to 15 times. It's not to say we want people driving under the influence of opioids and sedatives or even stimulants. It is to say that there does not resemble that of alcohol. As cannabis use was widespread prior to end following Vermont's legalization and there's no reason to think that the implementation of retail sales of cannabis would necessarily change any risk of DUI cannabis, especially accompanied by better public education about responsible use. You can only really have a serious conversation with adults and especially with minors when the law reflects the actual risks of harm. The fact that we don't want people driving under the influence of private use of cannabis is okay. That sends a better message than saying well it's bad for everybody under all circumstances and therefore we're not going to allow it. Greater regulation breeds greater respect for the science and I believe for the law. So to me the best approach to DUI cannabis is the use of drug recognition experts and we have a lot of experience about that here in New Jersey where we have the second largest number of drug recognition experts in the country, second only to California in a much bigger state. And here in New Jersey the drug regulation sorry the drug recognition experts organization is very robust. They have 400 I believe 500 trained drug recognition experts is a less than one week training period and officers all over the state who are better trained to identify impaired driving of any kind. Not just with cannabis but also with like I say opioids and we've had actually quite a bit of testimony on the DREs and their value and I believe Vermont has 55 currently one of the problems right now is geographic distribution of the DREs and some areas have more than others and so that's created some issues. If you ever want to be connected to Lieutenant Chris Dudzik who is here in New Jersey and really on the ball he's the president of the NJ DREs I would be happy to make that connection and talk about how it is they're trying to get officers from all departments because really you meet people everywhere. You can't have some people getting the usual relatively crude field testing in one place and you know other places have better circumstances and of course for I don't think that Vermont is considering a per se offense with the blood level but it would be an oral fluid roadside test. You just said we should not. That's what the proposal from the Public Safety Commissioner is. Yeah well it's not reliable. That's the problem and I don't know that we're going to get a test. Trust me it would make my life a lot easier in my organization if we had something like we a breathalyzer for alcohol but that doesn't exist. You know you will come up with a positive which recently and are not impaired at all and you will come up with people who are negative even if they have very recently continued. If you could give Peggy Delaney who you've been working with the name of that lieutenant I'd be very happy. Absolutely. I will make a note of that. Not by saying I thank you for your time and attention. I'd be happy to answer your questions and address any of these issues or any others you may have. If you have a if your organization or you have prepared remarks if you could also send them that would be helpful because I thought that your comments regarding prohibition were especially helpful. You were right to the point and frankly that's helpful to hear. Great. I will send along exactly what I said and if there's particularly your topics you want greater detail on we have a wealth of resources here. I appreciate that but I thought your comments regarding prohibition were particularly helpful. I've been talking about this for a while and I'm finally catching up on Boardwalk Empire which living in New Jersey is actually quite fun because you see all these places mentioned my dad grew up actually Atlantic City and knew who Nuffie Johnson was back in the day. It was quite the wild west back then. I remember that. I remember hearing about Nuffie Johnson. Senator White has a question. So my question is are there any physicians in Vermont brave enough to belong to this group because the Vermont Medical Society has come out opposed to it. We have the same issue with law enforcement. We have only a couple law enforcement people who are brave enough to actually support this. Is there anybody in Vermont that belongs to your organization? As I recall there are you know the small size of Vermont may be an effect but we have physicians and I think 45 of the states and I don't think Vermont is one that we're lacking while we're talking actually I'm going to our membership list and you know I can say this that you know we've got people I know we have folks people in New Hampshire who are actually going to be testifying I believe next week in New York upstate New York we have people we certainly have them nearby and I'm sure we have members but not all members who are willing to have their names out there feel comfortable with actually giving testimony. No I understand that. Yeah so let's see according to our list here the FDR has been that we've made it safe for doctors to speak up because they've got the backing of respective academic physicians all around the country so it's no longer that political third rail used to be for physicians. It still would be in Vermont probably so we don't need to I just wonder we don't need to know it's good to know that there are some Vermont physicians yeah I'm seeing here Arlington Richmond Burlington Arlington is right now Burlington is Senator Baruch's district there are so few physicians in Arlington I could probably identify the person with them it's a very small community funny. Dr. Nathan thank you so much for your testimony very helpful it is my pleasure please don't hesitate to let me know if there's more information I can provide and back on the DUI issue if you guys haven't connected with Paul Armonton of why regard as being the nation's biggest expert on this question that could be a really good idea because of the importance it seems to have in Vermont. If I could get him next Wednesday that would be helpful maybe David knows who he is too so that would be helpful. Alright well thank you very much. My pleasure I'll be following up and let me know if you have any other questions. Since I know the Attorney General and I don't see the Attorney General here is he out there Gwen do you want to jump in to the fire so to speak would you send in the message to the Attorney General? I know he's running from somewhere at 11 so well 20 past 11 hopefully he's not running too far go ahead. Thank you for having me. Gwen Zacca Gwen Zacca Vermont gets a decent town so I'll dive just right into the bill because I feel like everybody else is talking a lot of things that we have interest in but I'm just going to get down to the nitty gritty and identify some of the things that might need a little bit more focus or things that we really like and I'll start off sort of by saying that this has been a long discussion going on for many many years and the longer you learn about the rollouts of these sorts of tax regulated marketplaces in other states the more questions you have and the more I reach out to other municipalities and the states that have gone through this process you learn a lot of what to watch out for and what issues to identify early on in order to prevent those issues from happening to a place like Vermont so I think the first issue I want to touch upon is the timing of all of this rollout I think that everyone's familiar at the table how Vermont is this sort of Dylan's rule state where municipalities can't really do anything until they get direct authority from the state and we would be the first state to legalize and have municipalities in that position every state that has legalized so far has municipalities that are homeral states so they have this sort of flexibility to anticipate things and prep for things and zone for things and regulate things even before they're given authority to do it unless they're prevented from doing it our municipalities just don't have that flexibility right now so the importance of how this gets how the rollout is timed is critical it's not just about the timing of adopting ordinances and having the public hearings or amending zoning bylaws that's I see that it's kind of further down the road I see the first big timing issue is being the time you need to really talk to your communities your community members whether it's teachers students, business owners residences zoning administrate anyone anyone in the community that wants to really understand what the subject matter is and understand the implications that takes time and again going back to the Dillon's rule issue is that until there's rules that are in play at the state level it's really hard to anticipate how you're going to zone for something if you don't know exactly what you're waiting for it's really hard to say oh I'm going to adopt an ordinance and put these time place regulations into something when you really don't know what the rules are going to look like so that being the backdrop zoning and the implementation not just the zoning but the ordinance implementation that's already on on page 16 of the of the bill we at the very end of the implementation date it says July 1st 2019 that it goes into play that's a really short window of time for rollouts and I would hope that the committee would think a little bit more about how this logistically would roll out and what would happen July 1st 2019 in terms of voting to opt in or opt out or amending regulations updating ordinances that might be in place thinking about new ordinances that you want to put into place so there's that can you go back and say where it is what rolls out on page 20 oh sorry page 16 sorry I know I'm on page 16 so at the very back of the bell when they talk about the implementation dates this section 8 9 I can't remember what section 8 it's the regulation by the local government it's put in as a rollout July 1st 2019 there's a there's been rolling that section takes effect early on but the way that the permitting it has to in order for the rulemaking for the board to get going there's no actual applications for licensing until the rules adopted all that stuff so there's at least one potentially two town meeting days where there can be votes for opt out prior to any retail selling so that takes effect but it doesn't but you still you don't have but there's still like a two year almost like a two year rollout yeah and if the statutory language were to really highlight what those establishments looked like so they could start doing the work of zoning and saying okay now we know what we're zoning for even if the licensing and what not and the rules were coming later on you really can't zone until you know what the rules are going to say about what you're anticipating do you see what I'm saying so it's hard to plan for something you don't know what it's going to look like I don't understand because there are five already here there are five kinds of establishments it may be correct me if I'm wrong so in other words we're saying cultivators licenses but we haven't nailed down exactly how big or what the limits on the space will be so that's going to come about with rulemaking and I think what we're hearing is that that leaves their decision to zone until they know exactly what it is which will be much less than the two town meeting day cycle so yeah because we've heard so many different things about what to expect it's going to be rural operations, downtown operations it's going to be this side this is going to be that side so until you kind of understand how to like right now if you look at zoning bylaws they might define industrial pretty broadly or they might define retail really broadly if someone handed me if I was a zoning administrator and handed me in preparation for getting a license a permit to get a retail operation and there was no legal reason for me to deny it even if it wasn't marijuana you know establishments I have to approve it and it doesn't really give the community the time ahead of time to sort of think about if they want to amend what the definition of retail is or what the definition of I believe that the government operations committee will look at that sure on Tuesday we're going to make sure if I don't if you wouldn't mind sure if we could go to the attorney general on a tight schedule and we'll call you back if that's okay I'm sorry no it's okay I'm always here so while you're just getting started thank you senator we appreciate it coming over I appreciate it senator thanks for having me thank you T.J. Donovan attorney general I support S54 it's time to have a regulated system for the sale of cannabis in this state my position has evolved on this I supported the legalization of possession I thought that was the right thing to do but we've seen that we can't tell her monitors that they can possess marijuana and be silent and how you obtain it because the black market exists and capitalism is only going to grow in this area we dealt with this issue this past summer when the issues of gifting came up and why we need regulations is for that very reason for consumer protection we saw that I think in Burlington earlier this week so I want to thank the committee for their work on this bill some of the aspects of the bill that are most important to me are number one providing access to products which have been tested that are child resisted packaging and that are labeled for potency second providing bans on advertising that make false claims appeal to children or encourage overconsumption third providing rules that regulate edible products that ensure that cannabis isn't combined with alcohol or tobacco fourth providing educational materials and information about safe consumption to help reduce the potential for harmful impacts of cannabis use from a law enforcement perspective I think S54 provides some important components I think requiring the seed to sail tracking to prevent diversion of products to children is incredibly important providing criminal background checks for employees and license holders to prevent criminal elements from getting involved in these businesses make a clear ban on the gifting loophole that the office addressed earlier this summer and I just want to know and I know Eli Harrington is here Tim Fair we talked to these guys in the summer and most of the folks I think shut down the operations after we put out the guidance but as I think I said to a news organization I'm not naive enough to think that the market completely stopped and again reinforces to me the need for consumer protection regulations I think educating license holders on enforcement and security procedures to prevent diversion is important and implementing rules related to health and safety at cannabis businesses I think S54 makes a really strong attempt of creating a Vermont style regulatory system and I think this committee should be commended for its work we look forward to working with you but I don't think we have to have a regulated market I just I don't think we continue to go and be silent on the issue about how Vermonters obtain it I think at the end of the day this is about protecting consumers and protecting kids and we need regulations so I support the bill and I look forward to working with you I really appreciate that it's extremely helpful especially from outskirts we were just talking about law enforcement officers brave enough to support the effort and here you are so thank you for that well thank you for me I think the evolution is clear and you know from decriminalization to legalizing possession this is the next logical step and regulations are about consumer protection and that's our job full disclosure when I invited you here I had no idea what you were going to say I appreciate your comments I'm always prepared for the worst I'm glad that more times than now we're on the same page and I think this is common sense I wonder if we can talk a little bit about the current prohibition aspect and the difficulty for your office and state's attorneys around the state to kind of deal with these things and I heard the comments of the chief of the Burlington police department about priority being heroin, fentanyl and other drugs I know that is for your office as well and marijuana slides down and then you have this operation we're ultimately selling it to minors and according to the articles in the press comment a little bit it's incredibly hard because I think the priority is as you said going to be opiates and heroin and I do think that there has been and I think chief del pozo said this the message that we're on the road to a fully regulated legalized system and that's kind of set I think the tone in this state a little bit that perhaps we're not going to enforce it and I think we dealt with this issue this summer on the gifting and again Eli's in the room where we said hey listen, somebody's going to get hurt on this some kid may get hurt and this is why we need regulations and so you try to hope that people are going to do the right thing but I think what we saw particularly in Burlington when we're silent you're going to have an abuse of that system and thankfully somebody didn't get hurt but it raises real issues and for me it reinforces the need to have regulations and to pass this bill because it makes sense and it's the right thing to do and I think the monitor's expected I don't think we can say any longer to folks you can use it but we're not going to tell you how to get it looking on the border in Massachusetts where retail sales were already taking place so question that constituents of mine are headed down there to buy it legally and then bring it back to Vermont in that suit and pay the tax in Massachusetts and the tax in Great Burlington good for them, they're getting the money and Vermont's getting the problem yeah, yeah so I think this is a common sense approach and thank you for your leadership on it thank you thank you I know you're on a busy schedule thank you for having me, thanks for coming to my schedule so I am curious about when you talk about allowing the criminal element to own or be part of it so where do you draw the line on who the criminal element is I mean clearly we don't want the cartels or anybody to be involved but we have a lot of people who've been in the state who've been convicted of some of them felonies nonviolent felonies would you draw the line at anybody who has a record or from being part of the ownership no where would you draw the line I'm not sure I'm understanding your question completely but what I would say is this I support expunging old marijuana convictions I think the system has been incredibly disparate in its treatment towards people so in terms of who could possess a license who had a prior marijuana conviction or any other drug conviction or conviction I mean I think I would draw the line on people who trafficked heroin and cocaine and drugs that kill people I think it's important to understand if you raise an important point to me that's helpful I'm not naive enough to not believe that some of the marijuana that comes to Vermont is fairly innocent grown by Romaners and shared with friends and associates but there's also some of the marijuana that comes to Vermont is coming through with criminal enterprise that is not part of this country or this certainly not part of the state may not even be part of this country and I think there's an important distinction there because that group when you see 8 to 50 pounds it's a little different than what we're you know I just wondered about it because I know we just in GovOps were looking at the notary just something as simple as notary and it says in there that you can be denied a permit if you have any felony conviction which seems to me a little bit outrageous but so I just wondered I mean as Senator Sears knows this committee and the Senate as a whole would work in terms of expunging criminal records because the collateral consequences that attach that make people ineligible what I would say particularly on the issue of marijuana convictions I would say overall I think that we'd have to look back and say most people probably are deserving of that expungement and if they so choose wanted to obtain a license let them go through the normal process that being said I think the facts do matter and I think you have to look at each case and each individual separately because each case is different but I think the fact of the matter is that the criminal justice system historically probably over convicted people that's changed but for many folks they're dealing with old convictions that have kept them sidelined but each case is different I'm talking about the conviction possession of this criminal we have a hard time finding a record of the conviction to respond right TJ in that regard we had an earlier witness today who was talking about the racial imbalance of past convictions and he raised the question of should people of color actually not just be considered in the mixed relationship but step to the front of the line I hadn't thought about that until he mentioned it but you may not have an answer on this right now just to plug it in your rear right now is there any potential for us running a fowl of equal protection which I'm just curious to know if your office can somehow look into that we're happy to I think again when you look Senator you know this as well historically at the criminal justice system the disparate treatment of who's been convicted overwhelmingly has been people of color poor and if there's a way to do it that would cost constitutional muster perhaps as you said allow people a greater incentive I think that's something that should be considered we're happy to work collaboratively with you on that the bill currently allows for consideration the question is whether or not they would jump from consideration up to the front of the line is where I'm beginning to question my own mind is that constitutional I don't know the answer we're happy to work with you on it thanks thank you so much thank you thank you for relinquishing the chair thank you you were I think we finished part of the issue of the rollout could I ask a question to the chair I'm wondering you were pointing to you saw as potential problems in the timeline for municipalities I'm wondering if you have any rough suggestions of how that might be handled have you thought about creating a timeline that works for you that's a hard question to answer because I'm going back to the whole issue of the different types of regulations in place it takes time whether you're amending a small part of your zoning bylaws or a larger part of your zoning bylaws I just be generally speaking you've looked at the timeline you were critiquing the bill's timeline great great great great in the interest of making it work more smoothly for your community if you had suggestions on how to go through the timeline that's a tough one until you have the sort of rules in place to understand how you're going to prepare for something I don't have a good answer for that I just think obviously the easiest way to go about it in the whole opt in opt out whether a community wants in or out that's probably the easy certainly not the easiest question to go through but it's a yes or no answer so it's not like you're going through your regulations with a fine tooth comb so that's the first thing you want to get checked off before you even think about how you're going to deal with ordinances and bylaws so that kind of loops back into my next comment which was the opt in versus opt out model and VLCT feels really strongly that the opt in model would be the ideal model and the reason for that is because that's what we've heard from other states and other communities that have gone through it because what tends to happen I would say and guess that the knee-jerk reaction from many communities and it has a protectionist mode when they don't know what's coming down they don't know what they're going to get things done in a timely manner to change the regulations that they need to anticipate what's coming down is to say no and that knee-jerk reaction doesn't really create good results it is generally based off of fear it's not based off of any real good education or understanding of what they're dealing with and I think that I would argue that that doesn't provide a lot of certainty to the industry in knowing where they stand with the community or whether they're welcome or not maybe there's a way to time it where by a certain date you have to opt in and by that certain date you'll just be presumed to have allowed it so at least they're given some flexibility of saying okay oh my god I don't feel rushed my initial reaction is to just say no until we're ready and got everything squared away and then we'll get back to the drawing board and decide differently that's what I've heard from other communities in other states there's going to be communities that are all for it and that's great and there's the ones that are going to be totally against it there's going to be a lot of communities it's going to be a really tough decision a really tough dialogue in a community and just to protect themselves they're going to say no because that's the only control mechanism they would have in place in order to feel they have some semblance of control over the matter what do we do with alcohol? is that an opt in or opt out? that's an opt out I believe now it is initially from what I understand a time period where you had to make after prohibition there was a time period where they had to affirmatively say one way or the other I'd have to look and see what the records say about that the interesting to find out and Maine is the only other state right now that has Maine is the only other state right now that has that opt in model every other state has the opt out and they had left out controlling it out in Massachusetts partly because of that and I know Clarksburg Mass which is right on the border with Stanford Vermont had a lot of discussion about a cult of victim a cultivation a farm in their borders where they wanted it if I could just say I was out in Southern California for a while they had an opt in model and so I was in the southernmost part of the state what that's produced is San Diego opted for recreational all the beach communities up for another hour opted out or never opted in and so what that's done is to sort of supercharge the delivery business because you have people running up with product so the legislation legalized transporting product from one so you can't ban something coming in by delivery systems I think we're not so hot on the delivery process so an opt out seems like a way of making sure we don't by default create these delivery businesses that will step in to fill the big geographical gaps between communities that opt in I understand why the opt out why people think that it's a good idea but I also see the flip side of it and sort of the realities of the particularly in a place like Vermont where you don't have that you can't preempt anything you're always waiting for direction and the knee jerk reaction for some will just say no until we feel like we have enough information to make a different decision one day we were talking about more work camps and the town of Bennington immediately banned them so yeah had a vote nobody ever talked about putting one there because I said they decided they didn't want not because they didn't like me but because they don't want to work so part of the issue the decision about opt in opt out is related to the timing and not knowing what they might be zoning for or what that's a huge part of it so we should look at alright yeah I mean this is more your Bailiwick we'll we're going to spend a lot of time on Tuesday and Wednesday on this okay so I'll skip over I just have a question too so apparently you believe that a town can ban a business in other words if you can say you don't want a better one to shop in our town at all are you comfortable can you say that that's okay to ban that kind of business currently? yes there is no well you couldn't because they're not allowed under state law okay that's correct but I'm thinking of Ludlow which years ago was told it happened because of the court case I believe that they could not have an adult bookstore from into town so that's right so what they did then was okay we'll have them say they can zone them into the industrial parking parking whatever and so is this at all related to that because subsequent to that Ludlow when there was a vape shop directly across from the town hall they then passed something in ordinance I would guess that you couldn't have that and Michelle told me they also said that you couldn't have marijuana you couldn't have anything but the vape shop was able to continue because it was after that but they have that ordinance now so you can't do marijuana either so how does all that work? I think some communities still have that after the medical marijuana laws came through as well so you're going to see if they do address marijuana it's also how they define it as well so how does that work in terms of the town will have a unique system of creating the adult book shop they burn it down oh well that's cool idea you don't want to burn down a marijuana cultivation shop though how does that all fall together well we just passed a natural resource that says every town must have renewable energy to be able to each town to say where would that be and generally zoning bylaws don't discriminate those book shops there's constitutional law that talks about that sort of speech but generally I use that retail in order to give me a zoning application I'm not discriminating on what they're doing I'm just looking at the criteria of what business they're running and how it manifests itself in the community whether it's parking or noises or hours of operation those sorts of things but I think that because marijuana and alcohol and those sorts of things are seen in a different light than a bookstore they're zoned a little bit differently even in law right now in statute you have setbacks for distances from schools or distances from state buildings it's not even anticipated in this right now so they can go anywhere technically if you want them to but it doesn't say otherwise I take your point about hard discussions occurring at a natural pace in communities and then they're going to run up against the idea that they need to opt out and get the votes for that but it seems to me that communities that are conflicted about it could immediately pass moratoriums on it for a certain period of time while it's considered so they would have that ability so no one's going to be forcing them to allow it in advance of their discussions and sworn votes the way it's written right now it just it doesn't say anything about a moratorium it just said up or down but suppose they opt out have the disc