Tag Archives: mandate

Wyoming Legalizes Hemp, CBD Oil

By Aaron G. Biros
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Governor Mark Gordon signed HB0171/ HEA No. 0110 into law today, officially legalizing the cultivation and sales of hemp and CBD oil in the state of Wyoming. According to Buckrail.com, a Jackson, Wyoming news publication, the bill passed through the state legislature with ease, moving forward in the House on a 56-3 vote and through the Senate with a 26-3 vote.

President Trump signed the Agriculture Improvement Act of 2018 (the Farm Bill) into law late in December of 2018, which removed hemp-derived cannabidiol (CBD) from the Controlled Substances Act in states that choose to regulate it. Wyoming Governor Mark Gordon signing HB0171 means that the state intends to regulate the cultivation and sales of hemp-derived CBD.

Wyoming Governor Mark Gordon

Scott McDonald with the Wyoming Department of Agriculture told Wyoming Public Media that once the bill is signed, the state has 30 days to show their plans for regulation to the federal government. “We were kind of hoping to get something in place this spring for this growing season,” McDonald told Wyoming Public Media. “But we’re not sure that’s going to happen or not. There’s some uncertainty there, so it might be next year.”

McDonald also discussed the next steps that the WY Department of Agriculture needs to take to follow through on the bill’s promises, including figuring out a way to distribute licenses to hemp farmers, licensing laboratories to test hemp, insuring it has less than 0.3% THC and implementing a remediation plan for when crops test above that threshold.

According to Charlotte Peyton, a consultant with 30 years of experience in FDA regulations and experience working in the hemp industry, it is important to keep in mind that as soon as products containing hemp-derived CBD are sold across state lines, the FDA maintains regulatory authority. “If you manufacture and sell hemp products inside of a state with a state mandated hemp program, you are legal and protected under state laws, but the minute you sell across state lines, it becomes the jurisdiction of the federal government and, more specifically, the FDA,” says Peyton.

According to some farmers, this is good news for the local economy. Many say this could be give a much-needed boost to the state’s agricultural economy, citing hemp’s suitability to grow in Wyoming’s climate and a perceived high demand throughout the state.

Cannabis Legalization in Massachusetts: An Interview with Steven Hoffman, Chairman of the Cannabis Control Commission

By Aaron G. Biros
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On February 13 at the upcoming Seed To Sale Show in Boston, MA, Steven Hoffman, Chairman of the Cannabis Control Commission of Massachusetts, will deliver a keynote discussion. Hoffman will sit down with National Cannabis Industry Association (NCIA) Executive Director Aaron Smith to discuss the first few months of recreational legalization, challenges and the path forward for the state. We caught up with Hoffman to hear about some of the biggest obstacles and successes when it came to standing up a regulated adult-use cannabis market.

On November 8, 2016, voters in Massachusetts ushered in a new era for the East Coast, when they passed a ballot initiative to legalize adult-use cannabis. Almost immediately after that, the Massachusetts Legislature put a hold on implementation in order to study the issues and revise the legislation, which was ultimately signed in July of 2017. That September, Steven Hoffman and his colleagues at the Cannabis Control Commission were appointed to figure out how the state should regulate the market, enforce its regulations and roll out the new adult-use program.

Steven Hoffman, Chairman of the Massachusetts Cannabis Control Commission

The Commission was tasked with creating something brand new, without a roadmap in place and developing rules around some very contentious issues. “I think the biggest obstacle was that we were doing something unprecedented,” says Hoffman. “Every state is different demographically and the laws differ state to state, and we got a lot of help from other states sharing their experiences with us, but we were still going down an uncharted path for Massachusetts.”

Hoffman told us the very first thing they needed to do in 2017 was conduct listening sessions in which the commissioners listened to citizens for recommendations and heard people’s thoughts on cannabis legalization. “We did that immediately. We needed to conduct a process that was transparent, thoughtful and inclusive,” says Hoffman. “We then, in public, debated policies around adult-use marijuana regarding licensing processes, criteria and enforcement.”

They debated policies in a public forum for four days and came back the following week to embed their decisions in draft regulations that were submitted to the Secretary of State in December 2017. Then, they had 10 more public hearings, made some modifications to the rules, and promulgated a final version of the adult-use regulations in March 2018, keeping everything as transparent and inclusive as possible. “I don’t think anyone has been critical of that process behind it,” says Hoffman.

Certain pieces of the regulations stand out as particularly inclusive and progressive for Massachusetts’ cannabis program. For example, certain mandates encourage diversity and support communities affected by the drug war. Hoffman says the Commission couldn’t take credit for those completely because their objectives are explicit in the legislation, however, the agency still made sure the state followed through. “The mandate said the industry should look like the state of Massachusetts in terms of our diversity,” says Hoffman. That includes creating a diverse industry with respect to ethnicity, gender, LGBTQ, veteran and disabled participation. Additionally, he added, “it was a very explicit set of requirements that those communities who were disproportionally harmed by the drug war are full participants in the new industry we set up. Those were both legislative mandates, so we take them very seriously and I wouldn’t have taken this appointment if I didn’t think it was absolutely essential.”

You can expect to hear more from Hoffman on this and other matters related to implementing cannabis regulations at the upcoming Seed To Sale Show in Boston, MA, February 12-13, 2019. On November 20, 2018, the first adult-use dispensaries in the state opened their doors for business and began selling cannabis. Hoffman says he is most proud of their rollout of the program as well as the transparency and inclusiveness through which they conducted the process. “I think this is a very controversial issue; the voters approved this issue by 53-47%,” says Hoffman. “No matter what we do, we won’t make everyone happy, but we’ve done everything possible to allow people to participate and feel like they’ve been listened to. We made our decisions publicly and transparently.”

Beyond that, the Commission wanted to take their time to make sure things were done the right way the first time. “From day one, we decided we were going to do this right rather than meet an arbitrary timeline,” says Hoffman. “It’s gradual, it’s maybe slower than some people would like, but our rollout has been well-received and relatively smooth. I think a gradual and thoughtful process, not focused on a deadline, went very well. Hopefully we have given other states a model when they plan their own rollout.”

Hoffman wouldn’t comment on whether or not he would encourage other states down a similar path, but he did say they could probably learn a thing or two from them. “I expect other states will do what we did,” says Hoffman. “They will talk to other states ahead of them like us and hopefully will benefit from learning from our experiences. I don’t know what the laws will look like but I expect other states need to make it work for them specifically.”

You can expect to hear more from Hoffman on this and other matters related to implementing cannabis regulations at the upcoming Seed To Sale Show in Boston, MA, February 12-13, 2019. Make sure to check out his keynote discussion with Aaron Smith on Wednesday, February 13 at 10:30am.

BioTrackTHC To The Rescue: Contingency Plan for Washington

By Aaron G. Biros
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According to a press release published this morning, BioTrackTHC successfully implemented their Universal Cannabis System (UCS) in Washington State, a temporary solution for the state’s seed-to-sale cannabis tracking system, while the new system is yet to be deployed.

BioTrackTHC had a contract with Washington State for four years, which expired just weeks ago at the beginning of November. Back in June, after a few minor hiccups, the state announced that MJ Freeway would be the successive software platform used for the state’s seed-to-sale traceability system.

The deadline for the new software to be ready for deployment was set for November 1st, when the BioTrackTHC contract would expire and the MJ Freeway contract would begin. Between when the contract was awarded and the deadline for implementation, MJ Freeway made headlines for a series of security hacks and systems failures. Subsequently, MJ Freeway said they could not deliver the software platform until January of 2018, leaving a two-month gap where businesses have no state-mandated software to use for the tracking system.

The contingency plan that the state laid out consisted of business owners manually inputting data in excel spreadsheets. When first pressed for a Band-Aid solution, representatives of BioTrackTHC cited security concerns related to MJ Freeway’s hacks as reason for being hesitant to extend their contract through the interim period.

In an open letter to the Washington cannabis industry back in October before the end of their contract, Patrick Vo, president and chief executive officer of BioTrackTHC, laid out an explanation for what went wrong and provided an alternative solution, essentially a private sector version of their government-mandated traceability software system.

The open letter to the Washington cannabis industry, written by Patrick Vo

Announced this morning, the new system, UCS, is being used by over 1,600 of the 1,700 cannabis licensees in Washington. The UCS has so far submitted 39,000 individual excel spreadsheets to the Washington State Liquor and Cannabis Board (WSLCB). “After the WSLCB announced that their replacement system would not be ready in time and that the only other option was for all 1,700 licensees to submit their seed-to-sale data via manual spreadsheets, BioTrackTHC created the UCS—a privatized clone of the government system—within a few days and deployed it minutes after the termination of the old system to minimize the impact on all licensees,” reads the press release.

The UCS allows business owners to streamline data recording, instead of manually entering information into spreadsheets. It is also integrating with 3rd party software competitors such as WeedTraQR, GrowFlow, Mr. Kraken, TraceWeed, GreenBits, S2Solutions and DopePlow. “After the WSLCB’s announcement, we knew that we had only a few days to provide a universal system to which the whole industry could submit compliance data and enable communication across the supply chain between licensees and their seed-to-sale system,” says Vo. “Our priority was to ensure that licensees could continue to operate in the absence of a government seed-to-sale system. Not having that system in place could have left Washington licensees vulnerable to noncompliance in a variety of ways, not to mention the potentially crippling volume of extra work needed to manually track a business’ entire inventory.”

Washington State’s new traceability software system by MJ Freeway is expected to deploy in January of 2018.