On Friday, December 4, 2020, the US House of Representatives passed the Marijuana Opportunity Reinvestment and Expungement Act of 2019 (the MORE Act), which would effectively legalize cannabis by removing it from the Controlled Substances Act. The bill (H.R. 3884) has several key components:
Most importantly, the bill would remove cannabis from the list of controlled substances in the Controlled Substances Act, as well as other federal legislation such as the National Forest System Drug Control Act of 1986. This would effectively end many of the obstacles created by the federal illegality of cannabis such as the lack of access to banking, tax consequences such as 280E, adverse immigration impacts and threats of federal criminal enforcement.
Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-OR) donning his cannabis mask as he presides over the Congress
Second, not only does the bill preclude future prosecution for cannabis-related crimes, the bill is designed to be retroactive and would provide for the expungement of past non-violent cannabis offenses.
The bill creates a prescribed excise tax on cannabis and cannabis products. The funds collected from the taxes would be channeled into opportunity and reinvestment programs.
A Community Reinvestment Grant Program would be established aimed at the provision of services for “individuals most adversely impacted by the War on Drugs,” such as job training, education, literacy programs, mentoring, and substance use treatment programs;
A Cannabis Opportunity Program would be established providing state funds for small business loans in the cannabis industry targeted at social equity candidates; and
An Equitable Licensing Grant Program providing funds for states to implement equitable cannabis licensing programs aimed at minimizing “barriers to cannabis licensing and employment for individuals most adversely impacted by the War on Drugs.”
The bill would require all cannabis producers to obtain a federal permit. Cannabis businesses would need to be licensed at the state, local, and federal levels to operate.
This MORE Act is a substantial step in cannabis legislation. Reactions to the proposed legislation have been mixed. While the bill does include some measures aimed at social equity, critics of the bill claim it does not go far enough. Similarly, while the bill includes a federal permitting provision, this would be the beginning of a nascent federal regulatory scheme.
What does this mean for your business?
While this bill passed in the US House of Representatives, it would still need to pass in the U.S. Senate this term, which by most accounts does not seem likely. However, the passage of this bill signifies the progress that has been made and provides insight on what further legislation may look like.
It is obviously not just at conferences but now on the ground in Germany and across Europe that Americans are heading to the industry here. And it is not just the “new” cultivation guys at Demecan in Berlin (currently hiring), or in Guernsey, but in truth, throughout the industry.
Wish you were here? Here is the broad skinny to actually getting (and keeping) a job in the industry in Europe.
Get A Job Before You Come
By far, the easiest and safest way to come to a new country, like Germany (or the UK for that matter) is to have pre-arranged employment. That is also beginning to happen, as large companies set up grow and manufacturing facilities throughout Europe. That said, these are hard to come by (there are many Germans and other natives vying for the same jobs). However so far, certain kinds of experience in the U.S. (or Canada) beats anything that has gotten going here so far from the cultivation side and many other aspects of the biz.
But – and this is a big one – you have to have the kind of experience that counts. Regulated industry participation is a must on your CV if this is your preferred route of travel. Pharmacists in particular, could have a fascinating career path here not open in the United States at all yet. So will doctors – but that certification has to be earned here to practice.
It is also far easier to deal with the paperwork that is required than it used to be ironically – in that there are new qualifications being set out for the same in both the UK and Germany at the moment. Understanding them, however is another matter, and interpretation at the immigration office is not something you want to sign yourself up for. In any language.
Member states of the EU, pre-Brexit
However, immigration law is just the beginning on the regulation front. Regulations across the cannabis industry are also changing fast – and not just under the heading “cannabis.”
Nothing, really is “easy” about being an expat. You have to want to do this.
There are now starting to be numerous European job postings in the industry on Linked In. It is a great place to start. Having B1 Deutsch (third level, very hard to pass, intensive German language certification) is usually a must for employment (not to mention getting around in the country).
Disclosure: This journalist failed A1 German in Germany (introductory level) twice. Starting from scratch is not recommended, because the rest of your class (usually with previous German training) will kick your butt in numbers bingo by the end of the first week. Learning – including punctuation and spelling 50 new vocabulary words a week is pretty standard. And that is before the grammar. All taught in German too! Four hours a day, five days a week.
Yes, your class will laugh at you, even if they think you are otherwise cool as a North American.
It also helps if you have taken at least one German language course (as in college semester level) before you come. Otherwise you will hit unbelievably intimidating compound words that take up a great deal of space on a page and four different tenses that even native Germans do not really understand by the end of the second week (and it is mind-blowing). You learn to appreciate Mark Twain’s humour about the dratted language very quickly, not to mention that the umlaut is really the only thing you have any freedom of expression with.
Be prepared to sign up for language courses when you land with the local VHS (Volkshochschule) – which is sort of like German community college for anything you want to take classes in. It is also the cheapest deal on language courses around. The private ones are pricey.
That said, master the lingo, even passably, and Germans are super pleased about the same. No matter how badly you mangle the language, they are just happy to hear you try.
Student Visas and the Educational Path
By far, the easiest path to starting your journey overseas, is luck. The second one however, is actually one way to go if you are prepared to work yourself to the bone, and do it while learning German intensively. Plus get a university level or graduate degree along the way.
If Cannabis Europe is your dream job and vocation, you will make it happen. Just don’t expect it to be easy, or just like anywhere else.Go first as a language student. That gets you two years, fairly easily, as long as you have €8k in your bank account at all times, and do not work at a German job. That is verboten. However, as an American, particularly in Germany, you still have the right to come here and learn.
There is also about to be a fairly ground-breaking immigration law that comes into effect as of March in Germany that allows highly skilled foreigners to earn their way to citizenship. There is a list of requirements that go along with this, of course. The path to being able to stay includes getting a higher German degree or special German training. Expect pretty much the same thing from post-Brexit Britain too – just in the same language.
You also have to have health insurance and a lot of other things taken care of. It is not a sudden move or jump. For all the amazing things that come with this, also be prepared to think about looking in the mirror at least a few times and thinking “am I stupid, what on earth have I done?”
Then there is location. A Kreuzburg address may impress the folks back home, but those are not cheap these days, and extremely hard to come by. Rent, in general, and not just in Berlin, is beginning to be a real issue in every German city. Finding an accommodation that you can afford in “starting out” circumstances – is not easy right now anywhere.
But it’s not just about rent or the buzz you might have heard. Don’t just put Berlin on the map (or even Munich, also a growing professional scene). Both cities are far from the center of the cannabis scene in Europe, much less Germany although there is a lot going on all the time there. Dortmund, and the Ruhrgebeit in the former “Rust Belt” of Germany are much cheaper, full of students, and popping with cannabis reform all over. Cologne is also a very interesting city right now. So are Bremen and Stuttgart.
The Differences Are Large Besides the Language
No matter what you think you can expect, the only thing you can rely on is that just about everything will not be the same. Yes, German beer fests and bratwurst are comfortingly familiar to be accepted easily. But when it comes to really immersing yourself in a country well enough to think of it as “home”, let alone understanding the vagaries of this business in particular? Just about everything is different. This ain’t Kansas, (or Colorado, for that matter) Dorothy.
Bottom line? If Cannabis Europe is your dream job and vocation, you will make it happen. Just don’t expect it to be easy, or just like anywhere else.
Marketing cannabis and the products that accompany recreational use is set to become one of the biggest industries in the United States. With 29 states promoting legal medical cannabis, 14 with it decriminalized and 8 having legalized it completely, you might be thinking this will be the easiest ad-campaign of all time. Unfortunately, science suggests otherwise.
The Science of Marketing
You heard correctly, marketing is a science, but almost half of what we know about the process cannot be applied to cannabis. Why? Because cannabis lives in the grey area of the American psyche. How do I know this?
Science.
In 2015, I completed and published The Safe Haven theory, a socio-demographic linguistic analysis of attitudes toward recreational drug use in the United Kingdom. I won’t bore you with the intricacies of the study, but the findings are important.
The study, using theoretical sociological trends, found that even non-recreational drug users in the United Kingdom favor cannabis legalization. A great number of police jurisdictions have chosen to not longer punish cannabis users, meaning that the law is (mostly) on our side – the side of full legalization and taxation of cannabis as a product for recreational usage, not so dissimilar from alcohol.
In the UK, we could easily put a huge billboard of someone’s grandmother smoking a spliff and make a million on the first day.
Unfortunately, the same can’t be done in the United States.
Advertising law aside, Americans just don’t have the same view of cannabis as Brits. In the last two years, I applied the same framework to a host of American demographics, and – as I hypothesized – localism rules the American market.
If you live in a Red town and you’re a recreational cannabis user, stigma will prevail over the scientific data, and changing that stigma is almost impossible without hard scientific evidence to back-up the marketing campaign.
Qualitative research is key when understanding why people buy into particular industries. This might not be the general belief held by most folks in advertising, as stats and numbers are distinctly easier to work with. However, as last year’s General Election and Brexit vote showed: numbers can lie. Therefore, the best means of understanding what people really want is to actually talk to them – and I mean in-person.
Marketing rules are shifting. More and more, the heads of marketing departments are turning to scientific and scholarly data to assess the current trends in social development, molding their campaigns around this data as a means of showing that they are industry leaders in understanding the phenomena, as well as speaking to target buyers in their own language.
Am I being too wordy? Let me put it simply.
Say your new product is an indoor indica strain with sleep/stress aid properties, this is how you should market it to three specific demographics:
Californian recreational smoker in the 50+ age demographic with a moderate knowledge of cannabis strains,“Indoor indica, grown locally with minimal chemical input, good as a sleep aid and positive for stress reduction.”
New York medical user, 30+, business background,“This strain is an excellent sleep aid, can decrease stress without taking off the edge of your day-to-day workload; highly recommended for those employed in a full-time, private sector position.”
Small town with predominantly low-income demographic employed in blue-collar industry, “affordable means of relaxing after a tough day at work that won’t give you the same cancer risk as tobacco.”
We market the same strain to each of these demographics, but the language used in the campaign is more important than the product itself. In the UK, the same strain would be marketed across the country using something like:
“Dank strain with sleep aid and relaxation properties, best for chilling out at the end of the day – definitely not recommended prior to work!”
What this means for the United States cannabis marketing specialist is simple: you need to invest as much as you can in getting scholarly researchers out into the field and figuring out the local socio-demographic linguistic trends for your target buyers. Luckily, this can be a fairly affordable means of research.
Marketing specialists have two options in uncovering this data:
Use students currently enrolled in universities and colleges, either offering paid internships or college credit for bulk research.
Hire an academic consultancy corporation. This is rapidly becoming a norm in for companies looking to expand their marketing by using scientific data, particularly in industries related to sport and the outdoors.
Just like how Pepsi really missed the mark with their latest failed advertising campaign, cannabis companies are at significant risk of ostracizing themselves from a wealth of demographics that would otherwise be open to recreational or medical cannabis use as an alternative to harsh pharmaceuticals, alcohol and even some forms of therapy.
Language is key, and if you can’t talk to your buyers on their level then you’ve already lost your edge over the competition.
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