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Business Talk Podcast Special Coverage

We are excited to announce that BusinessWest has launched a new podcast series, BusinessTalk. Each episode will feature in-depth interviews and discussions with local industry leaders, providing thoughtful perspectives on the Western Massachuetts economy and the many business ventures that keep it running during these challenging times.

Go HERE to view all episodes

Episode 194: January 2024

Joe Interviews Meg Sanders, CEO of Canna Provisions

Meg Sanders

The initial ‘green rush’ is over, and the cannabis industry in Massachusetts faces a host of new challenges, as heightened competition has suppressed prices, driven some shops out of business, and made it difficult for others to survive, let alone thrive. In the meantime, a continued disconnect between federal and state law continues to burden cannabis proprietors with onerous hurdles in the realms of banking, taxation, transportation, and more. On the next episode of BusinessTalk, Canna Provisions CEO Meg Sanders talks with BusinessWest Editor Joe Bednar about where the market in the Bay State is headed, and also about her involvement in a lawsuit against the U.S. government, seeking to block federal enforcement of cannabis prohibition against state-legal activity. It’s must listening, so tune in to BusinessTalk, a podcast presented by BusinessWest and sponsored by PeoplesBank.

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Cannabis Special Coverage The Cannabis Industry

What’s Next for Cannabis?

Payton Shubrick

Payton Shubrick says she understood she was entering an increasingly challenging market for cannabis sales when she opened her doors last year.

By the time Payton Shubrick opened the doors to 6 Brick’s Cannabis Dispensary in Springfield last fall, she was well aware of how challenging the business was becoming.

“The market is getting tougher across the board in Massachusetts,” she told BusinessWest. “Gone are the days when you could open a dispensary and just have people lined up. Gone are the days when cultivators could guarantee sales. We’re seeing that you must earn customers’ loyalty and have a competitively priced product and have decent quality to do well in the Massachusetts market.

“I’ve been able to see growth with my company, despite coming online in September of 2022, when prices had just fallen by over 30%,” she added. “So we essentially started with less-than-ideal conditions, but it’s not all doom and gloom.”

Because Springfield set out a long, rigorous process to open a dispensary, Shubruck had time to witness a total evolution of the Massachusetts cannabis market; when she first applied for a permit, the few dispensaries that were open saw an early ‘green rush’ of customers; though the industry’s onerous tax and regulatory burdens and tight profit margins never made it easy money, exactly, the early shops took advantage of a clearly favorable supply-and-demand picture.

“We essentially started with less-than-ideal conditions, but it’s not all doom and gloom.”

By the time Six Brick’s opened, the landscape was considerably more cluttered; prices, as Shubrick noted, were falling; and some shops were struggling.

Those struggles have turned into actual contraction. The first Western Mass. dispensary to close, back in December, was the Source, on Strong Avenue in Northampton, a city with nearly a dozen retail cannabis shops. But it was Trulieve’s departure from the market that will resonate more broadly; the national company closed its three retail locations in the Bay State at the end of June, and is also closing its 126,000-square-foot growing, processing, and testing facility on Canal Street in Holyoke — another city that invested heavily in the new cannabis trade.

“These difficult but necessary measures are part of ongoing efforts to bolster business resilience and our commitment to cash preservation,” said Trulieve CEO Kim Rivers said. “We remain fully confident in our strategic position and the long-term prospects for the industry.”

At the same time, several proposed cannabis facilities in Western Mass., including one planned for the former Chez Josef banquet house in Agawam, have been scrapped due to an inability to secure financing amid dramatically changing market conditions.

“The market is correcting itself,” Shubrick said, reflecting a throughline seen in all states that legalize cannabis. “A lot of folks raked it in during the green rush. But only 24% of cannabis companies in the U.S. are profitable. So you actually have to view this as a business. You can try to increase volume and think that’s going to fix the problems, but the market has matured in a real way. And now, other states are coming online.”

 

High Stakes

Erik Williams, chief operating officer at Canna Provisions (see sidebar on page 20), explained that a typical dispensary needs to take in about $6 million in top-line revenue annually in order to break even. “A whole bunch of companies are not there. They’re sitting on big tax bills without the cash flow, and they’re going to close under the weight of taxes; we’re seeing that right now across the state.”

He also noted the 24% profitability figure, and said anyone coming into the market should be aware of it.

Steven Lynch

Steven Lynch says cannabis businesses doing things the right way and for the right reasons will survive any contraction in the sector.

“There’s a survivability factor we’ve written about from day one. We were the second adult-use-only store in Massachusetts to open [in Lee], and there’s definitely a sort of glory time which happens with every new market, where the demand outstrips the supply, and businesses are just opening their doors and slinging weed,” he said. “They saw pie in the sky, and they have not operated their business with real-time controls over every dollar they’re spending. It’s a tough thing.”

Simply put, too many cannabis businesses in Massachusetts based their business plans on supply-and-demand figures that no longer exist, he added. “There’s a lot more competition. The pie is always growing, but competition is far outstripping the growth of the pie, so you’re seeing price compression.”

Williams agreed with Shubrick that a dispensary must be run like a business from day one, with hard decisions around every dollar spent — or the enterprise will fail.

“If you’re at the point where you have to readjust everything, it’s almost too late,” he said. “Really tough business decisions need to be made across the board. We’re seeing how other companies are failing, and one of the first analyses is what it takes to be profitable as a standalone dispensary. A bunch of different people have run a bunch of different numbers, and when it comes down to it, the consensus is $6 million.”

So, how does one succeed in this environment? Shubrick has some ideas.

“At Six Bricks, we have a clear focus on who the customer is, and we’re focused on our competitive advantages, which are the cannabis experience over transaction, having knowledgeable staff, and being an option for conscious consumers who want their dollars spent close to home,” she explained, noting that the pandemic years taught people the value of spending their money with local businesses, and those lessons could carry over to cannabis. “There’s still a lot of work to be done with social equity for businesses, but consumers can support more a more equitable industry by what brands they support and where they spend their money.”

Erik Willaims

Erik Willaims

“There’s a lot more competition. The pie is always growing, but competition is far outstripping the growth of the pie, so you’re seeing price compression.”

Steven Lynch, director of Sales and Marketing at SaveTiva Labs, agreed about the appeal of strong, local brands.

“I see a lot of parity with when the big-box stores, the Home Depots and Lowe’s, first came to the market. It was great because they had these big stores you could go in, but ultimately, you’re not going to get the service that you’re going to get from your local hardware store,” he told BusinessWest. “So you saw a lot of stores go away initially, but then you saw a whole wave of small mom-and-pops come back into the market because they did things completely from a quality, service, and educational standpoint.

“I think that’s what’s going to happen in cannabis,” he went on. “The people who had no business doing this, or got into it for the wrong reasons, will fall by the wayside, and the people that that are doing it for the right reasons, the right way, are going to continue to flourish.”

 

Blazing a Trail

For Shubrick, ‘the right way’ is reflected in the 6 Brick’s tagline, “people, plant, and purpose.”

“People — how can we help show that cannabis can be a part of an individual’s wellness routine? Plant — how can we make this more of a cannabis experience than a transaction?” she explained. “And lastly, purpose — we want to be a viable option for those in the community that want diversity of price point and diversity of products. I can’t overemphasize the community aspect of it. You can try marketing to pull customers out of Connecticut, but it’s the local community that’s going to show up every day, whether they’re buying a pre-roll or a present for a friend.”

Though Springfield’s licensing process was slow and rigorous, she noted, it’s a plus for operators that there’s not a shop on every corner, as opposed to cities like Holyoke and Northampton that allowed many more licensees.

“We’re the third-largest city and have only four dispensaries; that does prevent what we’ve seen in Worcester and Northampton, which is a race to the bottom in terms of providing a product. Many customers are saying they want it as cheap as possible. The reality is, that hurts the entire supply chain and drives prices so low, it compromises quality.”

That ‘race to the bottom’ has occurred in other states where cannabis was legalized, but the assumption is that the market will eventually level out — and not everyone will survive.

“A lot of folks made the assumption that cannabis companies just open the doors, and people show up,” Shubrick said — and at the earliest-opening shops, like NETA in Northampton, they certainly did. “I never anticipated 100 people show up on day one. I knew it would be a slow climb. The first 15 companies to open their doors, some of them now have to make a comeback because the product wasn’t great or they didn’t have the right people.”

It’s not an unusual track in other business sectors, she added. “Car dealerships and restaurants rise and fall, and the same is happening in cannabis. A lot of naive operators thought they were untouchable because there was this pent-up demand and a thriving black market. But that’s not the case. Couple that with the realities of 280E, and this is not for the faint of heart.”

She was referring to Section 280E of the Internal Revenue Code, which forbids businesses from deducting otherwise ordinary business expenses from gross income associated with the ‘trafficking’ of Schedule I or II substances, as defined by the Controlled Substances Act; cannabis is a Schedule I substance.

According to the National Cannabis Industry Assoc., “federal income taxes are based on a fairly simple formula: start with gross income, subtract business expenses to calculate taxable income, and then pay taxes on this amount. Owners of regular businesses often derive profits from these business deductions. Cannabis businesses, however, pay taxes on gross income. These businesses often pay tax rates that are 70% or higher.”

“Most companies spend a dollar to get $1.10, and you’re ten cents up,” Williams said. “Here in the cannabis business, because of the 280E tax situation, you need to make $3.50 for every dollar you’re spending just to break even. That changes the math in a really big way.”

It also changes the way cannabis companies do business, he added, returning to those earlier thoughts about closely tracking all spending. “Being tight with advertising dollars and watching ROI on every dollar you’re spending is super important.”

Canna’s model, as a vertically integrated company that cultivates product as well as selling it, helps stem those tides, he noted. “Doing cost analysis is a little different, but you also are putting things through your stores at much higher margins. If you’re controlling your supply, you have more control over your business. We’re seeing it happen right now.”

 

Rolling with the Changes

Shubrick said it was worth navigating a thorough licensing process to open a cannabis shop, alongside her family members, in her hometown. “If I wasn’t selected in Springfield, I wouldn’t have picked up and gone to another city or town.”

It’s an example of the thoughtfulness that must accompany entering a very challenging cannabis marketplace in Massachusetts, especially now.

“Companies come in, and they’re not profitable, and they can’t pay back the tax bills. So they have to close,” Williams said, echoing not only the stories of the Source and Trulieve, but other casualties to come. “But their consumers don’t go away; they go elsewhere. So the lesson from the contraction of the market has always been that the survivors are going to do better long-term.”

 

Weathering the Storm: a Resilient Path Forward

By Meg Sanders

 

We are at the precipice of a significant contraction in the cannabis market, not confined to Massachusetts alone, but reverberating across the U.S. and even globally. As business owners navigating this turbulent landscape, it is essential to recognize the imminent challenges — in particular the ones staring down cannabis across the Commonwealth — prepare to face them, and, more importantly, cultivate a hopeful vision for the future.

Let’s begin with third-party vendors, the cogs in the machine that keep your cannabis enterprise running smoothly. We must ask ourselves: how do these vendors weather the storm if they lose 30% of their business suddenly? If a small vendor employing just six people experiences a 20% revenue loss from a key account, what could that mean for the business?

These are not mere speculations. These scenarios are unfolding right now, causing ripples across the industry. It’s a risk-management issue that warrants our immediate attention.

Meg Sanders

Meg Sanders

“It’s critical to identify how exposed our vendors are to the same downturn we’re grappling with, especially if their clientele consists primarily of cannabis companies.”

As we sail through these choppy waters, we mustn’t lose sight of the bigger picture. We need to question the depth and financial security of our vendor base, especially since many struggling businesses might not be able to pay their bills. The aftershocks of such downturns typically hit marketing, advertising, and street teams the hardest. But what does that mean for us, the business owners who rely on these very vendors?

Imagine your vendor pool as a ship’s crew, each playing a vital role in keeping your business afloat. What happens if your vendor’s ship starts sinking? The ripple effect could capsize your own vessel, and that’s a scenario we must guard against.

Indeed, there’s a sense of camaraderie in this industry. We are all in the same boat. When one sinks, we all feel the tremor. It’s critical to identify how exposed our vendors are to the same downturn we’re grappling with, especially if their clientele consists primarily of cannabis companies. The domino effect could span from your point of sale to merchant services, banking, all the way down to your graphic designer.

We have to play the long game, keeping our eyes on the horizon and the changing tides. Let’s envision a situation where you’re sourcing packaging from a company whose revenue is all cannabis-related. What happens when it loses 20% of its business overnight? What does that mean for your buying abilities, purchasing decisions, their supply chain, and your overall purchasing power and profit and loss (P&L) statements?

To chart a path through this storm, we must adopt a three-dimensional approach to risk management, particularly for those selling cannabis products wholesale to local companies. The strain on accounts-receivable departments is a testament to the rising pressures within the industry. Payments aren’t arriving on time, and some aren’t arriving at all, affecting everyone from packaging and label companies to small cannabinoid providers and cultivators.

But amidst this storm, there’s hope. And here’s the silver lining: we can mitigate these risks with strategic planning and robust backup systems. By identifying alternative vendors, knowing their offerings and lead times, we can prepare for any disruptions in our sensitive systems. We need to ensure that we’re not left without a resource simply because we didn’t think far enough down the track.

This contraction isn’t just a challenge; it’s an invitation to innovate. To think differently. To challenge the status quo. Industries shift, technologies evolve, and we must keep pace. We need to think about all the ways a contraction impacts everyone: vendors, landlords, municipalities. The effects when a cannabis company exits a market or closes its doors are far-reaching.

Even as we’re witnessing companies in Massachusetts entering receivership, it’s not a time for despair. It’s a time for planning, for taking stock of where we stand and where we aim to go. Think about your ‘what-ifs,’ and devise your backup plans. Be ready to replace a critical item on your menu if it goes away. Be prepared to find an alternative source if your main provider hits financial turbulence.

This is not a doom-and-gloom narrative. It’s a story of resilience, of weathering the storm, and emerging stronger. It’s about recognizing opportunities amidst adversity, shoring up your P&L, and seizing the chance to negotiate better pricing with your vendors. Many might be willing to partner with you to push through these challenging times in that way, and the worst thing that happens is they say no. That’s just good business practice, no matter the state of the industry. Always make sure you’re checking where every dollar is going, from your expenses to getting quotes on best prices.

So, in these uncertain times, let’s remember one thing: hope is not lost. Even in the face of contraction and economic downturn, there’s an opportunity for those vigilant and ready to adapt. And as we navigate this storm together, we can create a more resilient, more robust industry ready for a brighter future.

We are, after all, in this together.

 

Meg Sanders is CEO of Canna Provisions in Holyoke and Lee.

Opinion

Editorial

 

Earlier this month, Trulieve Cannabis Corp. announced it will be exiting the Massachusetts market by the end of the year, a move that includes the closure of its massive growing and processing facility in Holyoke.

The company, which is also scaling back in California and exiting the Nevada wholesale market, cited changing conditions and slumping business for the moves, which are the latest to signal that the cannabis sector in the Bay State is losing some of its luster amid growing competition from other states.

Indeed, some dispensaries have closed within the 413, and other companies have announced layoffs. Meanwhile, several proposed cannabis facilities, including one planned for the former Chez Josef banquet house in Agawam, have been scrapped due to an inability to secure financing amid dramatically changing market conditions.

Cannabis got off to a fast and quite solid start in this region, with facilities opening in most area cities and towns, absorbing vacant or underutilized real estate — ranging from former mill buildings to the Springfield Newspapers headquarters facility in downtown Springfield — in the process.

This has been especially true in Holyoke, a city that has aggressively courted the industry, with many former mills, some of which had been vacant for years, being retrofitted for growing operations and dispensaries. Trulieve’s Holyoke facility, formerly home to Conklin Office Furniture, will soon be on the market, and given the current downward trends in the sector, there are certainly question marks about whether another large-scale operation will be taking over that space.

It’s been a time of change and turbulence for the region’s cannabis sector as prices continue to fall and competition in Massachusetts and surrounding states continues to mount. This business was never as easy as it looked, given the hurdles that need to be cleared to simply open the doors and the high taxes that operations must pay. But now, it’s much more difficult to be profitable.

It is our hope that those that can survive this whitewater can stay in the game for the long term, because cannabis has become an important part of the region’s economy, one that has provided a real boost to communities like Holyoke, Easthampton, Northampton, and others.

The ‘green rush’ is losing some of its steam, but it is still a potent force within this market.

Cannabis Special Coverage

Growth Pattern

Enlite co-owner Matt Yee

Enlite co-owner Matt Yee

From the start of cannabis legalization in Massachusetts, Northampton was one of the most receptive communities, streamlining the municipal regulatory process and initially setting no caps on licenses. Meanwhile, Springfield posed a more onerous process and set strict limits.

Enlite has experienced both, having opened its first dispensary in Northampton in late 2021 and is getting ready to open a second shop in Indian Orchard this year, Springfield’s fourth dispensary in all.

Matt Yee, one of Enlite’s owners, sees value for business owners in both models.

“Springfield was a longer process getting through special-use permit hearings. Northampton, in comparison, was very, very open and friendly to cannabis businesses, which created the amount of licenses we see here,” he explained. “So in some ways, [Springfield] has been difficult, but that difficulty also creates a bit of a barrier for competition to come in; there’s only a handful of active licenses in Springfield.”

The fact that Enlite is expanding at all is an accomplishment in an increasingly competitive marketplace, one that has exploded with new businesses to the point where the industry is starting to weather its first closures, including the Source in Northampton and Pleasantrees in Easthampton.

And Yee and his fellow owners — who include Matt Cutting, Peter Picknelly, and Nick Yee — aren’t done, with plans to apply for a third license, the maximum allowed by the state’s Cannabis Control Commission (CCC).

“Most customers are shopping with their phone prior to coming in with us, seeing what our menu looks like, seeing what our price points look like, and if they can’t find the specific product that they’re looking for, then they’re going to go somewhere else.”

“We’re still hunting for that third location,” Matt said. “That makes for a more profitable and healthy business model. It’s hard to exist with just one unit. And we chose Springfield because the location fills a niche of demand.”

Specifically, Indian Orchard borders two towns, Wilbraham and Ludlow, with moratoriums on dispensaries, he explained. “We’re very close to both of those. So we saw that location in Indian Orchard as a prime spot.”

Northampton shop’s location right off I-91

Enlite’s owners say the Northampton shop’s location right off I-91, rather than in the congested downtown, has been a plus.

When Enlite opened in Northampton a year and a half ago, Yee and his team saw potential, not only in the state’s legalization of cannabis, but Northampton’s embrace of it. It was the city’s eighth adult-use dispensary, a number which quickly bloomed to 11 and now sits at 10.

“So competition has definitely gone up. But competition is good, especially in this industry. Just like in my former industry, restaurants, competition benefits the customer at the end of the day.”

Considering the experience of the Yee family and Picknelly in that other challenging industry, and Cutting’s business background, the Enlite leadership team felt it had a good chance of success in cannabis, and so far they’ve been proven right. That’s not to say there haven’t been obstacles to overcome, but so far, Enlite is not only staying the course, but setting their sights … well, higher.

 

Rolling Along

Soon after Enlite opened, Yee told BusinessWest that the sheer number of cannabis businesses in Massachusetts — which now tops 265 retailers, in addition to cultivation, manufacturing, and wholesaling businesses — actually makes it easier for the best-equipped players to succeed, because of the cross-pollination. It’s why Enlite has adopted the model of many area dispensaries of partnering with boutique makers of cannabis products.

“We work with about 65 wholesalers right now,” he explained during BusinessWest’s recent visit. “We try to give priority to those who are producing local here in the Pioneer Valley, and also give priority to minority-owned, woman-owned, and veteran-owned companies, and participants in the social-equity program or the economic-empowerment program of the CCC. Anybody who checks those boxes and has a quality product, we definitely give priority to.”

A wide variety of products is key, he added. “We have about 450 to 500 items on the menu at any given time, which is a burden to control inventory-wise, but we have systems in place and experience with that well enough to handle all those SKUs and provide a wide selection to our customers.

“Most customers are shopping with their phone prior to coming in with us, seeing what our menu looks like, seeing what our price points look like, and if they can’t find the specific product that they’re looking for, then they’re going to go somewhere else,” Yee went on. “Our mentality is, if they can find the item here and maybe try some new items too, then they’ll become a repeat customer with us.”

“To kind of wade through the chaff and find the quality product at the right price point that the customer will enjoy can be a little overwhelming.”

He said many customers settle into buying favorite brands, but still appreciate variety.

“Five years ago, there weren’t very many brands, and quality wasn’t the highest, but now, with the level of competition we’re seeing in the wholesale market, there are brands that are definitely excelling. We have a couple of brands in-house that are excellent performers, and people come back for more.”

With competition forcing retail cannabis prices down to five-year lows in Massachusetts, Yee said his time in the restaurant world, where stiff competition also challenges profit margins, has taught him the value of customer service, as well as product knowledge and customer engagement — all factors that make the experience easier and more enjoyable, especially newcomers to the cannabis world. “That’s something we really pride ourselves on and strive for.”

The other differentiating factor is location — not just the strategic second location in Indian Orchard, where competition in the immediate environs is low, but in Northampton, where the flagship store sits right off the Coolidge Bridge rotary.

“Everybody’s kind of congested in the downtown area, which makes it far more difficult because somebody could just walk next door and find a cheaper price and buy there,” he said. “Here, with our location, situated right by the bridge and off the highway, we provide a convenience for people. It’s easy in, easy out, with plenty of parking that’s tough to find downtown. Our consumers want convenience, so that’s the other aspect we try to excel at.”

 

Highs and Lows

That said, Yee was quick to stress that captivating an audience and generating repeat customers is a constant focus, not something Enlite takes for granted.

“I think the other challenging aspect is the amount of wholesale product that’s becoming available on the market,” he explained. “Something I buy this month may be far less expensive two months from now, which would mean another retailer might pick it up for that price point and sell it for that price. So we’re seeing constant fluctuations in the price points of the wholesale product.

“That, along with the sheer amount of wholesalers that are knocking on our door and calling our phone, is pretty overwhelming,” he went on. “To kind of wade through the chaff and find the quality product at the right price point that the customer will enjoy can be a little overwhelming.”

Some cannabis-industry observers have commented on the experience of other states that followed a similar pattern to what’s happening in Massachusetts — exploding competition sends prices plummeting, and many operators focus on competing on price above all else, including quality and customer experience.

“We’ve always been conscious about that. We’re not trying to race to the bottom,” Yee said. “There are some operators here in Northampton who are dropping their prices, and all the other operators are forced to match those prices, which is difficult. But maintaining a healthy economy here in the Western Mass. market is something that we think about a lot. We’re not trying to drive the prices down too low and hurt everybody’s margin. There are definitely some players in town who are playing that game.”

Enlite will be the second minority-owned dispensary in Springfield, after Six Brick’s, which opened in September 2022. Enlite’s Northampton site was also the state’s first Minority Business Enterprise (MBE) applicant to open its doors, and Yee said the process of getting into the industry is still laden with minefields, especially for smaller entities.

“It’s definitely difficult. The requirements to get through the licensing procedure and then the buildout, inspections, and final licenses … it’s strenuous, and a lot of that knowledge is unknown to those smaller operators,” he explained. “So a lot of money can be burned just going through that painful process and experiencing that learning curve. And for those smaller operators who don’t have the capital of the big, multi-state operators or well-capitalized groups, that can be very difficult and sometimes detrimental to the business.”

As Enlite grows and expands, Yee said he’s still learning new things all the time, whether it’s a new product — from fast-acting edibles to new beverage lines — or a new market opportunity. “There’s something new coming out every month, it seems, and the customers are being introduced to those products with us.”

 

Business in Bloom

Yee has said Enlite’s biggest competitor is the black market, but analysts have pointed out that the leveling out of prices in the legal cannabis market may mitigate the illicit market’s advantage somewhat — while bringing on a whole new set of headaches in an industry where profits are already very tight due to onerous taxes.

He hopes, as consumers find more options in their price range, that stores that focus on quality, education, and customer experience will maintain an edge. And he said dealing with those customers, and hearing their stories, is his favorite part of the job.

“On a daily basis, we have first-time consumers come in, curious about cannabis and wanting to learn more. I have so many stories of first-time consumers coming back in and saying, ‘wow, that really helped me. That got me to go to bed more regularly. I got more sleep. I’m less stressed out. I have more fun with my kids — thousands of stories like that.

“Every day, somebody comes in, and we have a great conversation, and we can introduce them to a new product that they didn’t know existed, and we’ll see them back here a couple of days later. And there are still a lot of people who are just wading into this industry and finding these products.”

And finding them at a shop that continues to navigate an ever-changing, always-challenging landscape for business owners, with not just survival in mind, but continued growth.

Business Talk Podcast Special Coverage

We are excited to announce that BusinessWest has launched a new podcast series, BusinessTalk. Each episode will feature in-depth interviews and discussions with local industry leaders, providing thoughtful perspectives on the Western Massachuetts economy and the many business ventures that keep it running during these challenging times.

Go HERE to view all episodes

Episode 140: December 12, 2022

George Interviews Meg Sanders, CEO of Canna Provisions in Holyoke and Lee

Meg Sanders

Meg Sanders, CEO of Canna Provisions in Holyoke and Lee, is the guest on the latest installment of BusinessTalk, and she gives an candid, eye-opening appraisal of the state of the cannabis business in Western Mass. and where this intriguing industry can, and probably will, go moving forward. In her talk with BusinessWest Editor George O’Brien, she touches on everything from competition to profit margins to “women selling weed.” It’s all must listening, so tune in to BusinessTalk, a podcast presented by BusinessWest in partnership with Living Local 413 and sponsored by PeoplesBank.

 

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Cover Story Women in Businesss

Grass-roots Effort

 

‘Buy Weed from Women.’

That’s what is printed on the back of the coat

Meg Sanders

Meg Sanders

was wearing as she led BusinessWest on a tour of Canna Provisions’ Holyoke dispensary recently.

Those words cover a lot of ground. They’re a request, as well as a statement. They’re also an operating philosophy. And in some respects, they constitute hope for what people will be able to do more easily in the future.

Indeed, buying weed from women — as in women who own or co-own the dispensary in question — is not something easily done. The startup and operating costs for such an operation are extremely high and, for many people — and most women — simply prohibitive. And once one is in, it’s a challenge to stay in.

Sanders, CEO of Canna Provisions, is one of the rare exceptions.

She shifted her career from compliance in financial services to compliance in cannabis while living in Colorado at the time the industry was simply exploding and turning into what she called ‘the wild west.’ She is now a prominent player in the not-so-wild but very intriguing Western Mass. market, overseeing, with her partner, Erik Williams, two dispensaries (the other is in Lee) and a cultivation facility in Sheffield.

Moving forward, she envisions one more dispensary in Western Mass. — she and Williams are looking at several options for acquisition — and the buildout of another manufacturing facility in Lee. And from a bigger-picture perspective, Sanders is looking to hone a business model that will create more profitability in an industry where only a third of all busnesses are profitable.

“ I still believe the best thing in cannabis still has not been invented. We find new cannabinoids every single day; there are new ways to consume this product, new delivery methods, new formulations. Those are all really important parts of where this industry is going. Science is in it, and I am psyched to see the products we come up with to help people.”

When asked about what separates those who are profitable from those who are not, Sanders said it comes down to being smart — with everything from which products (and how much inventory) are carried to the training and development of employees.

“We invest in humans, and we train them,” she said, adding that people are the biggest and most important investment for a company in this sector.

It’s an investment she takes very seriously, and it’s one of the many reasons why she believes Canna Provisions is successful and on the cutting edge when it comes to everything from how products are displayed and sold in the dispensary to how employees are trained, groomed for advancement, and ultimately retained (more on all that later).

“I’m really proud of it — I think it’s the coolest dispensary in America,” she said of the Holyoke facility as she led the tour. “And I’ve been into a lot of them.”

Canna Provision’s dispensary in Holyoke

Meg Sanders says Canna Provision’s dispensary in Holyoke has been designed to resemble an art gallery — and even features works from local artists.

And as she surveys the scene, at that Holyoke location and within the broad cannabis industry, Sanders, who has been quoted in publications ranging from the Wall Street Journal to Northeast Leaf, sees a number of converging forces and trends, but especially innovation, the sector’s deep impact on the local economy and the local landscape, cannabis playing a growing role in the health and wellness of people of all ages, and the promise of much more of all of that in the future.

“Cannabis is a giant vote for freedom — it’s a giant vote for ‘you know what’s best for your body; it’s not the government’s job to tell you what to put in it, on it, any of that,’” she said. “From everyone that I know that uses cannabis, customers I talk to every day, their life is better. A recent study showed that 60% of Millennials use cannabis for wellness, and when you ask them to define ‘wellness,’ it was stress, relaxation, sleep, and anxiety. The fact that people look at cannabis as wellness is huge.

“And I still believe the best thing in cannabis still has not been invented,” she went on. “We find new cannabinoids every single day; there are new ways to consume this product, new delivery methods, new formulations. Those are all really important parts of where this industry is going. Science is in it, and I am psyched to see the products we come up with to help people.”

The wording on the back of Meg Sanders’ jacket

The wording on the back of Meg Sanders’ jacket is both a request and a bit of hope for what people will be able to do more easily in the future.

For this issue, BusinessWest talked at length with Sanders about her business, her industry, the words printed on the back of her jacket, and what she expects to come next with all of the above.

 

Joint Ventures

That aforementioned tour of Canna Provisions came the Wednesday before Thanksgiving. It was late morning, just before noon, and the traffic in the store was still relatively light, with a handful of customers exploring the myriad product options or talking to customer-service providers, both behind the counter and on the floor.

But Sanders was expecting a huge day because cannabis, in her estimation, is becoming a growing part of Thanksgiving, especially to contend with the week’s large doses of stress.

“People will be in to get their coping mechanisms and their celebratory pieces so they can deal with Uncle Bob, who might be talking politics at the Thanksgiving table,” she explained. “We all have families, and they’re all very interesting and come with a lot of stuff; this is one way to cope, and it’s not new.”

Meanwhile, she was expecting even bigger crowds for the upcoming Black Friday and the holiday season in general. And such expectations, born from experience in both Colorado and this market, are evidence of the growing influence of cannabis — on the economy and in people’s lives.

Turning back the clock nearly 15 years, Sanders, as noted earlier, was working for a small financial-services company handling a few dozen traders when she approached a friend who was getting in on the ground floor of the exploding cannabis scene in the Centennial State and asked if he could find a place for her.

“I had definitely hit a glass ceiling — there was nowhere else to go and no more money to be made there,” she recalled. “That was happening at the exact same time as this brand-new industry was starting to explode; I reached out to my friend who was creating this cannabis business and said, ‘I’d love to help you guys; what can I do?’

“It took a while for us to find the right place, but I went basically from compliance in the financial industry to compliance in cannabis, and that’s how I got started,” she went on, adding that she became increasingly more involved and eventually become CEO.

Sanders would eventually exit that company — primarily because its board wanted to focus solely on Colorado, while she had larger aspirations for the venture — and work, along with Williams, as a consultant to states, municipalities, and individual businesses as they entered the cannabis business.

“We were helping companies and state regulatory bodies and local governments come up with ordinances that made sense, regulatory frameworks that made sense, and helping people get licensed all over, from Florida to Illinois to Nevada — everywhere,” she recalled. “And then, Massachusetts legalization happened, and we were intrigued by the model in that it wasn’t going to be this massive gaming of the system in a limited-license structure, where if you know the governor, or have the right lobbyist, or if you make donations to the right legislators, you get a license.”

Sanders and Williams eventually consulted for a venture called Canna Provisions and were invited to become part of its operations team. They became CEO and COO, respectively, and guided the company as it gained just the second license issued by the state for a standalone dispensary in Lee, right behind Caroline’s Cannabis in Uxbridge — where she bought her jacket from owner Caroline Frankel. The Holyoke facility, located on Dwight Street in a former paper mill, opened in July 2020, at the height of the pandemic.

In her role, Sanders is involved in all aspects of the business, obviously, but devotes much of her time to staff development and that broad term ‘culture.’

‘At Canna Provisions, we really believe that we’re not just growing plants and growing a business, we’re growing humans,” she explained, adding that the company invests considerable amounts of time, money, and energy to train and develop employees, and then give them opportunities to do different things and advance within the company.

Canna Provisions invests heavily in employee training and development

Meg Sanders says Canna Provisions invests heavily in employee training and development — and the customer experience.

She said she’s currently serving as a facilitator and working with a group of seven employees at the company on a course of leadership training.

“I’m reinforcing my skills by teaching them their skills in hopes of growing humans to become better leaders, which creates happier employees,” she told BusinessWest, adding that most all of these employees have experience in business and customer service but are new to this industry.

“We work really hard to train employees, we spend a lot of money training them, and it’s ongoing,” she went on. “We’ve been told multiple times by people from this industry, and also not from this industry, that they’ve never been to a company that invests so much in training, and they appreciate it.”

 

Down to an Art

While Sanders is certainly well-known within the industry and probably recognized by many she encounters (especially when she shows her ID), she still calls what she does ‘secret shopping.’

These are regular visits to dispensaries across this region and beyond, during which she is always looking at the product mix, the presentation, the staff, and how they interact with customers — all with an eye toward making her own operations better and her own employees ever more responsive to what clients want and need.

“I shop everybody — everybody,” she said, “so that we’re more accurate in our differentiation. I’m able to see what competitors around us are doing, and I can say, ‘that’s one business model — it’s not a bad business model, it’s just not my business model.’”

“We’ve been told multiple times by people from this industry, and also not from this industry, that they’ve never been to a company that invests so much in training, and they appreciate it.”

These secret shopping excursions are just a small part of a broad operating formula aimed at continuous improvement, setting the bar higher, and then clearing that bar.

Sanders believes Canna Provisions does all this in all aspects of its business — from product selection to presentation, but especially with how those on the floor and behind the counter interact with and effectively serve customers, some of whom may suffer from what she called “dispensary phobia,” and a fear of going inside.

And this is a product of all that intensive — and expansive — training that Sanders talked about earlier.

“People have to be on point because your customers expect a certain level of service — they have to know the products,” she said. “It’s training and role playing and practicing and coaching on the floor — teaching them to be more aware of the people who are in front of them.

“This is not a cheap spend, “she went on. “Our average ticket here in Holyoke is close to 100 bucks a pop. When I’m spending $100 or $200 at a location, I do have a bit of expectation to be treated well.”

Overall, she likened the cannabis-buying experience, at least at her dispensaries, to jewelry shopping in many respects, from the high cost of the products to the way that many customers need guidance, or education, on what they’re buying.

Overall, Sanders believes she and Williams have created a different kind of cannabis experience in their locations. The one in Holyoke resembles an art gallery in the way products are displayed, and there are even works of art on the wall. Meanwhile, it pays homage to the property’s roots as a paper mill by putting some of the equipment and office furniture to work in displays.

 

Impact Statement

As she talked about the broad influence that cannabis has had on the local landscape, and will continue to have moving forward, Sanders again flashed back to the early days in Colorado, which came in 2009, the middle of what became known as the Great Recession.

“They just ran with cannabis, and it was crazy,” she said of the rapid growth of the industry and its impact on real estate, cities, towns, and individual neighborhoods. “And this started right after that massive crash and its impact on real estate and mortgages … it was a nightmare. But in Colorado, the opposite happened because all these growers, all of these dispensaries, ended up leasing more than 1 million square feet of warehouse space that had been off the tax rolls for years, just in Denver.

“So, it immediately just infused the city with vibrancy, and it happened all over,” she went on. “It was just one of those interesting economic moments where Colorado did not feel that economic downturn, the bottom dropping out, nearly as much as other states; it was fascinating. And then we kept adding all these jobs, and we kept adding jobs, and building, and then science was involved; the industry just came a long way really fast.”

It continues to grow and evolve, and now, much of what was seen in Colorado is being experienced in other states and other region, including Western Mass., she said, adding that cannabis is having a profound impact on communities like Holyoke and Lee, where she has chosen to put down roots, especially the former.

Indeed, this was a city that rolled out the red carpet for this industry, with its former mayor, Alex Morse, jokingly — although it was no joke — wishing it to become known as Rolling Paper City, a twist on its original nickname, Paper City.

Few actually call it that, but Sanders said there is no disputing the profound impact that cannabis has had in this city, where hundreds of thousands of square feet of unused or underused former mill space has been converted into dispensaries and cultivating facilities.

“Bringing more people to Holyoke is the goal for all of us,” she said. “And I think Holyoke and its bones often get overlooked; I’m so excited that there’s a new art gallery opening on High Street, that there’s several restaurants that we frequent and another new restaurant going in across the way. We have Gateway City Arts, which does concerts all the time. So, there’s momentum, and we’re hoping to be a part of that and help a city that’s been struggling for a long time.

“Together, we’re all going to make Holyoke a better place, with more jobs, more places to live, more restaurants to go to, more shopping, art,” she went on. “I absolutely love this town, and that’s why we came here and spent $1 million to open this dispensary.”

Looking ahead, Sanders wants to see a day when more women can become business owners in this sector.

“It’s very much a closed door, and the numbers are actually going down, which is unfortunate,” she said, noting, again, the sky-high costs of opening and then operating a business in this sector, and the challenge to turn a profit when 70 cents of every dollar earned is returned to the government in taxes.

“Through initiatives at the state level and maybe even at the federal level with safe banking and other things they’re talking about, we need to give minorities and women an opportunity to win alongside all the rich, white money,” she told BusinessWest. “As a female leader in this space, I am super proud to be in this space as a leader and an owner, and I would say it’s one of my biggest motivators to talk about this and do something about it.”

 

George O’Brien can be reached at [email protected]

Cannabis Special Coverage

Cannabis in Flux

Aaron Vega

Aaron Vega says cannabis has been a definite economic driver in Holyoke’s downtown and canal district.

 

According to the Cannabis Control Commission (CCC), legal marijuana is now an annual $3 billion business in Massachusetts.

The communities that have embraced it from the beginning, like Holyoke, can attest to cannabis as an economic driver in terms of commercial real estate, jobs, and other opportunities. The city now has four dispensaries, three grow facilities, and a testing lab up and running, with dozens of other applications at various stages of the permitting process — a process, city Planning & Economic Development Director Aaron Vega said, that was always intended to be easy to navigate.

“This community voted in favor. The mayor was in favor. As a state representative, I was in favor. And we didn’t want to make it more difficult. It was challenging enough with the regulations coming down from the state. We saw this as an industry that could take over some vacant and underutilized buildings, and that’s what informed how we went forward.”

That has indeed occurred. “We’re very excited about the investment that has happened — tens of millions invested in these downtown buildings because of cannabis, and 500 jobs that didn’t exist three years ago,” Vega said, noting that the cannabis enterprises themselves aren’t an endgame, but a way to spur even more investment.

“What do you do with 500 people? You make sure they’re going to your concerts, going to your restaurants and events, utilizing your local food trucks. And then there’s the ancillary businesses to the cannabis industry; how do we lure them to the city and make it even more beneficial for companies to do business in Holyoke?”

Other cities and towns have, to varying degrees, told similar stories. But the host-community agreements they’ve put forward have not always been well-received, and that was one of several issues addressed last month by a multi-faceted cannabis bill passed overwhelmingly by the state Senate and House of Representatives and signed into law by Gov. Charlie Baker.

“We saw this as an industry that could take over some vacant and underutilized buildings, and that’s what informed how we went forward.”

Among its main elements, the law clarifies the host-community agreement (HCA) process by authorizing the CCC to prioritize social-equity program businesses and economic-empowerment priority applicants for expedited review.

It also clarifies the scope of HCAs and adds new criteria, mandating that no host-community agreement can include a community impact fee that is beyond the business’s eighth year of operation, the community-impact fee must be reasonably related to the actual costs required to operate a cannabis business in a community, the CCC must review and approve each HCA as part of the license application and renewal process, and all host communities must establish procedures and policies to encourage full participation in the regulated marijuana industry by people from communities that have been disproportionately harmed by marijuana prohibition and enforcement.

“Communities of color across our country have historically been criminalized, prosecuted, and left out of the conversation in regards to cannabis legalization,” state Sen. Adam Gomez said. “When cannabis was legalized in Massachusetts, those same communities continued to be barred from the conversation table and left behind, with historic barriers preventing them from growing small businesses in meaningful ways. The legislation passed by the legislature will remove those barriers.”

The law also expedites the expungement process, Gomez noted. For individuals seeking to expunge a record for previous offenses that are now decriminalized, the law requires the court to order the expungement of the record within 30 days of the request and expunge records for possession or distribution of marijuana based on the now-legal amount.

“It is incomprehensible that anyone who was charged with a marijuana-related offense still has that on their record in our state, especially when you can drive down the street to a dispensary to buy the same product that that person was arrested for,” Gomez said. “I was proud to support this legislation and can’t wait to see cannabis businesses run by BIPOC owners flourish as a result.”

 

Growing Pains

The law makes other major changes as well, including a clarification of the local social-consumption approval process.

The advent of what’s known as cannabis cafés will give renters, public housing tenants, and tourists a legal place to use a legal substance. Under this legislation, a city or town may allow for social consumption sites through the passage of a bylaw or ordinance.

The legislation also creates a trust fund to make grants and loans to social-equity program participants and economic-empowerment priority applicants, which will give entrepreneurs from communities that have been disproportionately harmed by marijuana prohibition and enforcement better access to grants and loans to get their businesses off the ground.

In addition, 15% of the revenue collected from the sale of marijuana and marijuana products must be transferred to the Cannabis Social Equity Trust Fund, which will be administered by the Executive Office of Housing and Economic Development in consultation with a newly created Cannabis Social Equity Advisory Board.

“It is incomprehensible that anyone who was charged with a marijuana-related offense still has that on their record in our state, especially when you can drive down the street to a dispensary to buy the same product that that person was arrested for.”

“This legislation will create a more equitable cannabis industry in the Commonwealth,” said state Sen. Jo Comerford, noting that lawmakers “approached this issue with expertise and compassion, and the resulting bill will bring more diversity and equity to this industry.”

House Speaker Ronald Mariano added that “the passage of this legislation will help to ensure that those who have been historically impacted by marijuana prohibition can find new opportunity in the emerging industry. This legislation will help to support folks who have faced generations of inequality secure the needed capital to launch a cannabis business.”

The loan fund highlights one of the challenges of starting a business that’s technically illegal under federal law. Although there have been rumblings that the U.S. Congress could move to decriminalize cannabis and open up traditional financing to such businesses, nothing has been done so far.

“It’s still a hard-money business,” said Tim Sheehan, chief Development officer for the city of Springfield, and that affects both entrepreneurs and property owners. “That’s challenging from a real-estate standpoint. If that were to change, it would provide a more stabilized financial underpinning for the industry itself, and obviously, that would translate into folks that have space feeling far more comfortable in terms of the security they have relative to leasing and everything else. It would be accepted in the mainstream financial market.”

While Springfield didn’t embrace cannabis in the unfettered way Holyoke did — the city has put forward two rounds of retail applications and one for a grow facility, but that project, by Page Cultivate LLC in East Springfield, was derailed by the City Council in May over a site-plan change and other concerns — many of its leaders recognize the economic value of the burgeoning industry.

“Once it was legalized, there was clearly a focus on it becoming an economic benefit for the city,” Sheehan said. “Much like when gaming was legalized, we looked to see what the economic potential of the cannabis industry would be relative to both city finances and economic impact in terms of the marketplace.

“Much like when gaming was legalized, we looked to see what the economic potential of the cannabis industry would be relative to both city finances and economic impact in terms of the marketplace.”

“Obviously, the industry has had an impact on storefront and warehouse space, and I would quantify that as a positive impact,” he went on, adding that it remains to be seen what kind of impact the cannabis trade will have on the surrounding residential real-estate market.

“Caution is the watchword. As an industry, it remains to be seen what the saturation point is, and I really think that needs to be factored in through the process with regard to how many of these establishments you’re going to allow, whether it be a grow facility or how many retail establishments you’re going to allow. There is a limited market.”

 

In the Weeds

The cannabis industry’s potential is still unknown, though the early results in terms of new businesses, tax revenues to communities, and jobs have been positive.

But Sheehan is right that no one really knows what the saturation point is, if there is one. And the Legislature’s sprawling cannabis bill last month was an admission that plenty about the permitting process — especially for traditionally disenfranchised communities — needs to be addressed.

As Senate President Karen Spilka put it, “I am thrilled we were able to reach a deal on this bill, which will take meaningful steps toward ensuring communities who have historically been harmed by marijuana criminalization can access resources to enter this industry.”

 

Joseph Bednar can be reached at [email protected]

Cannabis

The State of the Industry

Michael Kusek

Michael Kusek says the cannabis industry is in what he calls “a first bout of growing pains.”

“Our first bout of growing pains.”

That’s the phrase Michael Kusek summoned after being asked to describe the state of the cannabis industry in the Bay State more than five and a half years after its start.

“We’re still very much in the early stages of this industry,” said Kusek, who launched the quarterly publication A Different Leaf, with the subtitle ‘A Journal of Cannabis Culture’ to essentially chronicle this business and tell the many stories that define it. “It took over a year to sell the first billion-dollars-worth of cannabis, and then it took eight months to sell the second billion. Those billions are going to come faster; the market isn’t shrinking, it’s just being spread out over more locations.”

Elaborating, he said the numbers of dispensaries and other kinds of businesses is growing rapidly and profoundly, and soon — how soon remains to be seen — there will come an answer to the question ‘how many of these is too many?’

“Competition has come to the market — quickly,” he explained. “In some places, dispensaries that were the only game in town — those that had first-mover advantage — are no longer the only game in town. That has come quickly as the Cannabis Control Commission has become faster and more efficient at licensing businesses.”

Meanwhile, there will soon be more competition from other states, including New York and New Jersey, which will likely have their first dispensaries by the end of this year, developments that will certainly impact regions like the Berkshires. And there will be companies based in other parts of the country that will want to enter this state and likely partner with existing ventures to do so, he said, adding that all these factors go into that phrase ‘growing pains.’

Overall, the state’s cannabis business continues to grow, evolve, and influence the regional economy in many different ways, said Kusek, listing everything from the profound impact on commercial real estate, with dozens of formerly vacant or underutilized properties finding new life as homes to different kinds of cannabis businesses, to the introduction of new kinds of ventures, such as home delivery (see related story, page 20) and social-consumption sites, to the infusion of tax revenue from these various ventures.

And the stories in the latest edition of the publication — the Spring 2022 ‘Cannabis and Culture’ issue — speak to all this. They punctuate how the industry is evolving and influencing the region, and how there are many subplots to the larger story. Indeed, there’s a piece about how the cannabis industry can help cities and towns like Holyoke revitalize their economy. There’s another piece, in the ‘how-to section’ where experts talk about communicating with children about cannabis use. And then, there’s a story about entrepreneurs Phillipe and Ashlan Cousteau about their new line of “ocean-infused” cannabis products.

The past several issues and the one coming next provide more insight: winter 2021 was the ‘medical issue,’ while fall 2021 was the ‘annual’ (the third) ‘Edibles Issue.’ The summer issue, meanwhile will be the first devoted to ‘cannabis travel and tourism,’ said Kusek, noting that he’s always wanted to do one of these, but couldn’t until COVID subsided sufficiently.

“This is the first summer we thought we could do travel and tourism,” he said, adding that the issue will include pieces on traveling with cannabis — what’s legal and what isn’t, according to the Transportation Safety Administration; cannabis spas; and a broad piece on just what is cannabis tourism.

“There’s two ways of looking at it,” he explained. “People are going to destinations where there is cannabis, and that’s why they’re going there, places like Jamaica, where they may be able to visit a cannabis farm. Or, if people are traveling in California, they may want to visit dispensaries — like a brewery tour; cannabis becomes the destination.”

While cannabis is certainly changing the local and national landscape — literally and also figuratively — the overarching questions are: ‘what’s next?’ and ‘how big can this industry become?’

In a candid interview, Kusek, whose magazine is now national in scope but still pays close attention to what’s happening in this region and the Commonwealth as a whole, provided some perspective on the state of this emerging sector and what we can expect in the months and years to come.

 

Where There’s Smoke …

Kusek said there has been considerable change in the landscape since the cannabis industry was born in 2016, and also since BusinessWest last spoke with him, just as he was launching A Different Leaf in the summer of 2019.

Perhaps the biggest change, and this has led to more competition, has been quicker action on the part of the CCC when it comes to issuing licenses.

“Early on, the commission was taking their first tentative steps toward licensing, and licensed very slowly, from 2018 on,” he explained. “They were not licensing dozens a week; it was in the single digits. And that created some tension within the pool of people waiting for licenses, and there were many kinds of businesses within that pool of applicants — locally grown companies, businesses coming into Massachusetts from other states — MSOs (multi-state operators), and a pool of applicants under the social-equity provisions of the law.
“The state was not speedy in granting licenses, and you had a fair number of businesses who burned through their capital waiting for licenses. It’s not like opening a restaurant, where you find a space, and you rent it, and you go to the town and you get your food permits and then you acquire a liquor license; it could take a while, but it’s not that long a process,” he went on. “With cannabis, early on, you had people who had to rent a storefront, because you needed a license to get the host-community agreement with your town. There are people I talked with who had their host-community agreements and had rented a building, and they never opened their doors til three years later.”

He said there are more than a few examples of entrepreneurs who burned through their money, with an emphasis on their money, because one cannot get bank financing for such businesses, because cannabis is still illegal federally. But the situation is improving, he noted, and this is leading to more ventures opening their doors, thus changing the competitive landscape, at least in some communities.

Indeed, there are several cities and towns where cannabis has a huge presence and large impact on the local economy — Holyoke, Northampton, and Easthampton are on that list — and others where it has little if any, such as West Springfield, where a moratorium on such businesses still exists. Many lie somewhere in the middle, he said, adding that their status depends largely on how ‘friendly’ these communities are to the industry.

The varying degrees of friendliness leave entrepreneurs with some choices, said Kusek, adding that they may choose to wage a more difficult campaign to locate in a community where there are few such businesses, or choose to join the growing number of players in communities like Northampton.

“Do you try your luck with the city of Springfield and burn through all of your money on rent, or do you go to Northampton, where you can get a host-community agreement and hopefully get through the state process much quicker, and at least get your doors open?” Kusek asked rhetorically. “You may not make a dollar, but you might make 50 cents.”

Another interesting dynamic was the state’s willingness to grant licenses to dispensaries, but not to the cultivators that would provide product to those facilities, said Kusek, adding that over the past few years, it has essentially caught up, meaning that there is now both more competition and more product.

“In the fall and winter of 2021, I had more than a half-dozen phone calls from people asking me if I knew where they could buy flower — if I knew anyone who had cannabis flower to sell wholesale,” he explained. “I don’t grow cannabis, I don’t sell cannabis, I write about cannabis. But the marketplace was so tight, and people were having such a hard time finding product, they were calling people like me looking for product. That has stopped happening.”

And that is just one of the many developments contributing to the growth and evolution of the industry, adding that as the sector emerges here, takes root in other states, and becomes more national in scope and reach, there will be many fronts to watch.

These include the ongoing debate about whether to make cannabis legal on a federal basis, what Kusek calls “the next big shoe to drop,” because of the huge implications of such a development — on everything from inter-state commerce to use of the banking system and all those ramifications — should it come to pass and how it might come to pass.

“There are lots of competing and complementary interests helping to develop legislation, and there are advocates for smaller businesses who don’t want this legislation to be dominated by MSOs or Big Tobacco, or InBev, or whoever else wants to get into the cannabis industry when it becomes federally legal,” he explained, adding that it will be a very complicated process to take the regulations put in place by the three dozen or so states that have legalized medical or adult-use cannabis, and overlay that with federal policy. “They don’t want the federal regulations to squash small business, and they don’t want federal regulations to squash social-equity provisions at the state level.”

Overall, he said this White House has not made legalizing cannabis a priority, and he does not expect that to change anytime soon, although he certainly leaves the door open to that eventuality.

 

Joint Ventures

In the meantime, the local landscape continues to change, with new businesses, new business types, such as delivery and social-consumption sites (which Kusek predicts will be the next ‘big thing’), brands developing their identities, businesses identifying customers, and much more.

Kusek said these are all contributing to growing pains, which, overall, are a good thing to have. They convey that a sector is expanding and evolving, so much so that the growth and evolution are creating issues, and, in his case, things to write about it.

There will be no shortage of such things for the foreseeable future, which is good for Kusek, and very good for an industry that is, in most all ways, very much in its infancy.

Cannabis Special Coverage

Delivering on Business Promise

partners in Budzee.

From left, Kevin Perrier, Volkan Polatol, and Erza Parzybok, partners in Budzee.

Volkan Polatol didn’t actually speak the words, but he strongly implied them: ‘If this was easy, then everyone would do it. Or at least try.’

The ‘it,’ in this case, is delivery of cannabis products — Amazon-style. Polatol, teaming with Kevin Perrier and Ezra Parzybok in a venture called Budzee, has created such a service, believed to be one of the very few in this region, and the country, for that matter.

As the partners talked about their business, they addressed that logical question about why they are the first and why there are not more ventures addressing what appears to be a logical need within the marketplace.

And the simple answer is that this isn’t as easy as it looks. And it doesn’t even look easy.

Indeed, there are complex licensing issues to overcome, software programs to develop, logistics, myriad expenses — from buying dedicated, unmarked vehicles to outfitting them with special equipment, to staffing each vehicle with two people (one of many requirements to be followed). And now, gas costs more than $5 a gallon.

“All of this is incredibly expensive, and it’s very difficult; we had to create the model,” said Polatol, who summed it all up by saying that a roadmap had to be in place for such a unique venture.

Parzybok agreed, and elaborated — on the many challenges facing this venture and all businesses in the cannabis sector.

“There’s a strain put on these businesses when the state invents all these rules that make it difficult to run a smooth, profitable business,” he explained. “The rules for cannabis are more strict than for pharmacies that sell opioids; they’re more strict than those for the delivery trucks that deliver alcohol. All that costs money.”

The partners who created Budzee, all veterans of this industry in one capacity or another, have chosen to take on all these challenges — they opened their doors this past spring. And that’s because, despite all these hurdles and expenses, they see real need for what they’re doing. They also see a path to profitability — not right away, but certainly some day, and perhaps soon as word of their venture grows and more people decide that it’s easier to have cannabis products delivered to their door than it is to travel to an area dispensary.

“There are people who can’t drive to a dispensary,” said Polatol. “Meanwhile, even though cannabis is legal in this state, there is still a stigma out there; some people don’t want to be seen in dispensaries. There’s still a great many people who want to be home, and they like the convenience of things being delivered to them.”

“There’s a strain put on these businesses when the state invents all these rules that make it difficult to run a smooth, profitable business. The rules for cannabis are more strict than for pharmacies that sell opioids; they’re more strict than those for the delivery trucks that deliver alcohol. All that costs money.”

And that brings the partners, who have invested more than $1.2 million to move Budzee off the drawing board, to the major challenge that remains for them — educating the public about this service and the convenience it brings.

“There’s considerable work to do to educate the public about this,” said Polatol, adding these efforts are ongoing. “Once we get established, people will understand; there are so many non-cannabis models out there — from Domino’s Pizza to Amazon. Once they understand it, it clicks. To get it out there, though, will require marketing, marketing, and more marketing.”

Parzybok agreed, and said that in time, consumers will come to understand, appreciate, and embrace the convenience just as they have in many other industries where home delivery has become an important part of the business model.

“It’s a new industry, so you assume that most licensed categories are going to be profitable,” he said. “You can look at the numbers for retail establishments or see the lines coming out the door when retail was opening, so you just assume that people will also embrace delivery. But when Amazon first came out, people were like ‘why should I buy something on the Internet when I can just go get it at the grocery store?’ But now they realize that they never have to bring it in from their car again.”

ideally situated off I-91

Budzee’s location in Easthampton is ideally situated off I-91

Getting the word out, and creating a comfort level with home delivery of cannabis products is essential, because with this model — where Budzee is charging the same price for products as one would pay if they went to a dispensary (there is a $100 minimum) — relies on volume. And creating it will be the primary assignment moving forward.

“It’s all about scaling up,” said Polatol, adding the goal is to eventually serve the entire state and build a large portfolio of new and repeat clients.

For this issue and its focus on the region’s emerging cannabis industry, BusinessWest talked with the partners at Budzee about the venture, what it took to get it off the ground, and how they anticipate that it will continue to gain altitude in the months and years to come.

 

Creating a Buzz

As they offered BusinessWest a quick tour of their facilities — dominated by signs that read ‘authorized personnel only’ or ‘Do Not Enter — Limited Access Area’ — on just about every door — the partners stopped in the large vault area where the various cannabis products are stored and then gathered for delivery.

There are literally hundreds of different products on the shelves — a selection larger than what is to be found at most dispensaries, said Polatol — with names ranging from Rootbeer Float to Blue Sunshine; Purple Pineapple Express to Sundae Driver.

Putting such a portfolio of products together has actually been one of the easier aspects of this enterprise, they noted, adding quickly that just about everything else — from the software to the business model; from the licensing to the logistics — is difficult and, in many ways, pioneering.

Turning back the clock roughly two years, Polatol said the three partners came together behind the idea that the region needed a service that would ‘bring cannabis to your house like a pizza,” as he put it, and conviction that this team had the expertise, determination, and patience (a key ingredient to be sure) to make this happen.

There were some courier-like businesses working on a DoorDash model, said Polatol, but the concept they had, for a warehouse, Amazon-like model, was totally unique for this region, and the country, as far as they knew.

The vault at Budzee

The vault at Budzee holds a wide variety of products for delivery to customers.

The partners already knew each other well. Polatol and Perrier are the owners of the dispensaries Dreamer Cannabis in Southampton, and Honey in Northampton, and Parzybok served as a licensing consultant on those ventures. United in their vision for this new kind of business, what they put together a checklist of everything that was needed, and then a roadmap for taking the concept from the drawing board to the marketplace.

The first item on the list was a license, which was somewhat problematic, because the state was, and still is, awarding cannabis-delivery licenses exclusively to those who qualify for the state’s social equity program — meaning they were previously harmed by the nation’s war on drugs.

Enter Parzybok, who was arrested in 2015 after federal agents raided his home in Northampton and eventually seized dozens of marijuana plants; he received probation for the offenses.

The license-application process was lengthy and complex, mostly because of the new ground being broken, but also because the Cannabis Control Commission has historically been methodical when issuing licenses, said Perrier, adding that this bridge would eventually be crossed.

The partners also needed a location, and realized that they actually had one in property that Perrier owned in Easthampton that was ideally situated less than a minute from an exit onto I-91, positioning the company to deliver to the four counties of Western Mass. and beyond.

They also needed software for taking orders, vehicles, specialized equipment, drivers (a challenge when all companies are looking for help), and a system for safely getting products into those vehicles and then into the hands of customers.

All those hurdles were cleared early this year, and the company commenced deliveries in early April.

Most of these have been in and around Springfield, but there have been some farther east; the territory attached to the license is essentially everything west of Worcester. And the two-person teams (one drives, the other brings the items to the door) are delivering the full spectrum of products, from flowers to edibles to accessories.

Deliveries come on three levels: ‘express’ (within two hours, but usually less than that); ‘same day,’ where the customer picks a time slot, and ‘scheduled,’ where the customer picks the day and time.

Thus far, business has been good, but the venture is still very much in the ramping-up phase as awareness of the service builds, the public becomes more comfortable with the notion of having cannabis delivered to their doorstep, and it understands (at least with this company) that delivery is not more expensive than going to the dispensary.

And there are obstacles to building this awareness, they said, adding that state and federal laws limit where and how such a venture can advertise its products and services. For example, cannabis companies can only advertise on vehicles that can prove that 85% of their audience is 21 or older, said Perrier. Meanwhile, because cannabis is still illegal federally, such platforms as Google, Instagram, and Facebook “won’t take our money,” he noted, adding that television stations will not take it, either. They can’t even advertise on the vehicles delivering the products — those must be unmarked for, presumably, security reasons; this is a cash-only business.

“You’re really handicapped in how you can advertise,” said Polatol, adding that the company is using some billboards and a digital campaign to draw people to the Budzee website. But that’s just half the battle. Once there, consumers need to become comfortable with the products and procedures, and place orders.

Despite these challenges, the partners believe they have the right concept at the right time, and as awareness and comfortability grow, they will achieve the volume they need to be profitable.

“Once Budzee becomes known as a household delivery option for cannabis, things will snowball and we’ll get bigger numbers,” said Polatol. “And we’re seeing that right now; the numbers are going up every week, and we’re getting a lot of regulars.

“There are some people who can’t leave their house for health reasons, and they’re ordering from us three times a week,” he went on. “They love it, and it’s rewarding for us; it’s a model that’s working.”

At present, the company is making maybe 20 to 30 deliveries a day on average, he said, with the goal being to take that number past 100. Other goals are to go statewide (more licenses will be needed for that) and then perhaps to other states, he told BusinessWest.

 

Budding Proposition

None of that will be easy, of course. But as these partners have shown, they are willing to assume challenges and clear some high hurdles to get where they want to be.

And right now, they are where they want to be — the first to be out the door (and to your door) with delivery of cannabis products.

They know that it will take some time to scale up, as Polatol noted, and reach the volume level they need to be successful, but they believe they have a model that works and a foundation to build on.

 

 

George O’Brien can be reached at [email protected]

Cannabis Daily News Events Luxury Living News Sports & Leisure The Cannabis Industry

NORTHAMPTON — HONEY, a recreational cannabis dispensary, located in the former home of Sierra Grille, will stage its grand opening on July 9 at 1 p.m.

Visitors can enjoy all day music, fresh popped kettle corn, and performances by the local hula hoopers, wing dancers, stilt walkers, and aerialists. There will be a fire performance at 8:30 p.m.

HONEY is owned and operated by Volkan Polatol and Kevin Perrier. In opening HONEY Northampton, Polatol and Perrier have teamed up with HONEY Brands, originally founded in California, which produces full spectrum, distilled cannabis oil in vape cartridges.

“We are thrilled to partner with the HONEY brand,” Perrier said. “It’s telltale black-and-gold packaging has become synonymous with the best cannabis hash oil on the market today. And now, consumers on the East Coast can try it for themselves. We’re also proud to be able to make the HONEY hash oils from our own facility at Wemelco Industries in Easthampton.”

In addition to HONEY vapes, the dispensary also carries the highest-testing flower and a huge selection of brands from across the state. The location’s innovative LED tunnel, color-changing displays, and chill playlist all create a relaxed, club vibe, and budtenders are on hand to give expert advice on all products.

Business Talk Podcast Special Coverage

We are excited to announce that BusinessWest, in partnership with Living Local, has launched a new podcast series, BusinessTalk. Each episode will feature in-depth interviews and discussions with local industry leaders, providing thoughtful perspectives on the Western Massachuetts economy and the many business ventures that keep it running during these challenging times.

Episode 91: December 6, 2021

George Interviews Matt Yee, a principal with Enlite, a Northampton-based adult-use cannabis dispensary

BusinessWest Editor George O’Brien has a lively, wide-ranging discussion with Matt Yee, a principal with Enlite, a Northampton-based adult-use cannabis dispensary. The two talk about that this new business venture, the state of the cannabis industry in Western Mass., and its prospects for continued growth.  It’s a compelling discussion and must listening, so join us on BusinessTalk, a podcast presented by BusinessWest in partnership with Living Local.

 

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Cannabis Cover Story

Rolling Along

Matt Yee and Mark Cutting of Enlite in Northampton

Matt Yee and Mark Cutting of Enlite in Northampton

Massachusetts had already legalized medical marijuana when voters were faced with another question in late 2016: whether to legalize cannabis for recreational use. The vote wasn’t close, sailing through on talk of jobs, tax revenue, and, well, people wanting to light up legally. Reality doesn’t always live up to promise, but in this case, it has. Yes, the industry is still facing growing pains, particularly when it comes to creating a level playing field for entrepreneurs. But when it comes to this new industry’s impact on jobs, real-estate investment, municipal tax revenue, and more, these are truly high times.

 

David Narkewicz wasn’t just a supporter of cannabis coming to Northampton. He was the first customer.

That was three years ago, when NETA opened on Conz Street and became the state’s very first dispensary for legal, recreational cannabis. Today, with cannabis businesses proliferating in the city and across Massachusetts, the outgoing mayor believes his initial enthusiasm was justified.

“We saw the experience of other states, and a lot of the Massachusetts law, when they were trying to put together the regulatory framework, was based on looking at laws in other states,” Narkewicz said. “First and foremost, I supported legalization just as a public-policy meaure, but I also saw an opportunity for investment in the community.”

Elaborating, he said the city is known as a destination with a vibrant retail sector, arts and culture establishments, and plenty of restaurants and bars. “So my sense, and my hope, was that this would be a new investment in the community and a new source of jobs and revenue, and another reason to come to Northampton. I think we took a pretty forward-looking approach to this.”

Today, Northampton is home to eight retail dispensaries for adult-use cannabis, seven manufacturers, four cultivation facilities, and a testing lab. Those numbers grow seemingly by the month.

Meanwhile, three years of excise taxes on adult-use cannabis have brought in more than $4.3 million. “That helps us continue funding schools, police, fire, DPW, all the services we provide as a city.”

Mark Cutting and Matt Yee certainly saw potential, not only in the state’s legalization of cannabis, but Northampton’s embrace of it. Just last week, they opened the city’s eighth adult-use dispensary, Enlite, just off the Coolidge Bridge rotary — and they have a long-term vision for it based on the idea that this is a still-evolving industry.

“Our getting into cannabis was really just another attempt on our part to find jobs that people can get into at the entry level, or get a better job. It’s imperative that we find people who are unemployed, underemployed, those with limited education, limited work history, and get them into employment and on a career track.”

“We thought that, with our background in business and the Yee family’s background in restaurants and entertainment, there may be potential beyond even the retail space,” Cutting said. “There may be opportunities to have some type of dining or some type of entertainment along with cannabis partaking at some point in time — though that’s not legal here yet.”

Yee noted that the sheer number of cannabis businesses in Massachusetts — almost 190 and counting, not just in retail, but in cultivation, manufacturing, and wholesaling — is making it easier for all players to succeed, because of the cross-pollination. It’s why Enlite has adopted the model of many area dispensaries of partnering with boutique makers of cannabis products.

“Early on, it was difficult because [product] availability was so low, you had to be vertically integrated to supply yourself,” he noted. “But Western Mass. has been really kind to small-scale producers, and we’re really happy to showcase them here at this location.”

Cutting added that “a lot of the multi-state operators don’t necessarily like companies like that to sit on their shelves. But we’re basically an open market for some of these producers to share shelf space and advertise their product here locally.”

With each business open, total sales in Massachusetts increase — crossing the $2 billion mark, in fact, earlier this month, a number even proponents might not have expected so soon after voters approved legalizing recreational cannabis in November 2016, four years after giving a similar go-ahead to medical marijuana.

Jeff Hayden

Jeff Hayden says cannabis has created fertile ground for hundreds of new jobs in Holyoke — and an impressive diversity of them.

And those businesses mean jobs, said Jeffrey Hayden, vice president of Business and Community Services at Holyoke Community College (HCC).

“We’ve experienced high levels of unemployment during the pandemic; both Springfield and Holyoke unemployment have been ahead of the federal and state average. In both communities, we see a strong need to connect people to the workforce,” Hayden told BusinessWest.

That’s one reason HCC became a lead partner in the creation of the Cannabis Career Center in late 2019. If HCC exists to give people the skills they need to get into jobs, he reasoned, then the potential of cannabis couldn’t be ignored — especially in a city rivaled only, perhaps, by Northampton in its full-on embrace of this new industry.

“Our getting into cannabis was really just another attempt on our part to find jobs that people can get into at the entry level, or get a better job,” he explained. “It’s imperative that we find people who are unemployed, underemployed, those with limited education, limited work history, and get them into employment and on a career track.”

But cannabis is changing Holyoke in other ways, too, notably in its canal district, where long-neglected mill buildings are springing to life with cannabis cultivation, manufacturing, and sales.

David Narkewicz

David Narkewicz

“We put in place zoning regulations that were not onerous; we’re essentially allowing retail cannabis anywhere we allowed retail, and it was generally the same for manufacturing.”

“The private investment in Holyoke as a result of this industry coming to Massachusetts has been extremely significant,” Hayden said. “Cannabis companies are buying properties that have been long underutilized — and it’s not like acquiring a building and leaving it as is; they’re investing significant dollars to improve it and create new jobs in the city, literally hundreds of jobs already. And, obviously, the tax revenue generated for the city is significant. This is a growing industry in Massachusetts.”

That’s true — literally and figuratively. Five years after that critical vote and three years after businesses started opening, cannabis has proven to be a hardy economic driver, one that not only survived the pandemic, but thrived throughout it. And no one really knows what the ceiling may be.

 

Ironing Out the Issues

Not everything has been smooth in what is becoming a hyper-competitive market. Enlite is the state’s first Minority Business Enterprise (MBE) applicant to open its doors, and Yee concedes that the Cannabis Control Commission’s stated commitment to MBE and social-equity opportunities — with the goal of helping communities and demographics negatively impacted by the war on drugs to access entrepreneurship opportunities in cannabis — has met with inconsistent results.

“It’s a really big topic in the industry. We’ve had a lot of commissioners change out in the last year or so, and a lot of people in the program saw CCC failing them as far as getting those applicants to the finish line,” Yee explained. “It’s a combination of things: operators with not a lot of resources can be an issue. Obviously you’ve got your multi-state operators with a million dollars allocated to their lawyers and legal teams, so they’re able to have the resources to get them pushed through a little bit faster. Those are big issues.”

Holyoke’s mill district

Holyoke’s mill district has become a promising location for cannabis cultivation for companies like GTI.

But things are changing, he added, with new commissioners “really focusing on those applicants and assisting them, figuring out where the pain points are and getting them to the finish line and open. We’ve been seeing some traction on that.”

The process can be a tricky one (see related story on page 22).

“The biggest issue — because it’s not federally legal — is access to capital,” Cutting said. “It’s a journey getting through the CCC, and if you do make a mistake and don’t dot your I’s and cross your T’s, it gets rejected, and you have to start all over again, and you don’t necessarily go back to the same queue you were in — you may go to the bottom of the pile. And it can be a long, painful process to get back to the top of the pile. And God forbid you make a mistake again.”

It helped, he said, to deal with a city that didn’t limit the number of application approvals. “We sat down with the mayor, and it was the most seamless, easiest process you can ever imagine, versus other cities that either opted out, or there’s a lottery, or they really capped the number of cultivators or retailers they’re allowing.”

In Narkewicz’s eyes, Northampton’s voters approved cannabis — first medical, then recreational — at a much higher percentage than the state average, and the city’s leaders took their cue from that.

“We put in place zoning regulations that were not onerous; we’re essentially allowing retail cannabis anywhere we allowed retail, and it was generally the same for manufacturing,” the mayor said. “And I think we saw a pretty strong response — lots of people wanting to locate here in Northampton.”

He does hear questions from people wondering if the market is too saturated, and has a quick response. “Northampton has 17 liquor stores. I have yet to hear anyone complain that we have too many liquor stores. To me, this is a legal industry, and it’s the free market, which is why I opposed caps on liquor licenses for years, because they hold back economic development in a city like Northampton and only drive up the cost of those licenses and make it harder for entrepreneurs.

“There’s opportunity to get in on the ground floor and also opportunity to grow in these occupations. It’s not like we’ve got 100 people in Holyoke who are cultivators, or 50 people who have strong customer-service experience in retail dispensaries. No one has 10 years of experience in this area. So in Massachusetts, for the job seeker, it’s all about what they bring to the occupation.”

“In an industry like cannabis, which is trying to focus on equity and economic empowerment, particularly for populations that were disproportionately impacted by the criminalization of cannabis and the war on drugs,” he went on, “putting up barriers like that defeats the purpose and works against the goals of this new industry.”

Narkewicz also noted that each new business may be 20 or 25 new local jobs as well.

In Holyoke, cannabis means hundreds of new jobs in a short period of time. And the variety of jobs is appealing to us,” Hayden added, noting that someone with strong customer-service skills could become an effective patient advocate, while someone with an agricultural background could work in cultivation, and someone with a knack for science could work in extraction and infusion.

The appealing thing, he noted, is that companies are looking for workers with broad skills who just need, and want, to be trained in the intricacies of this field and their specific roles.

“There’s opportunity to get in on the ground floor and also opportunity to grow in these occupations,” Hayden said. “It’s not like we’ve got 100 people in Holyoke who are cultivators, or 50 people who have strong customer-service experience in retail dispensaries. No one has 10 years of experience in this area. So in Massachusetts, for the job seeker, it’s all about what they bring to the occupation.”

Kathleen Proper, chief Human Resources officer at Canna Provisions in Holyoke, said as much at a panel discussion that preceded a recent Cannabis Career Fair at HCC, titled “Cultivating an Industry.”

“Our biggest thing is providing outstanding customer service,” she noted. “So if you’ve got experience doing customer service, whether you’ve worked retail, worked in a restaurant, waited tables, tended bar, all of those skills work out really well. Even though cannabis retail is a different animal than other retail … we tend to do really well with people who have waited tables or tended bar.”

 

Word on the Street

Yee isn’t worried about the ninth dispensary that will open in Northampton, or the 10th or 11th. Like Narkewicz, he believes the legal cannabis industry is thriving, with the saturation point well in the distance.

“I always say our biggest competitor is the black market. Many consumers are still shopping on the black market because the pricing is far better,” he said, noting that an eighth-ounce of cannabis may cost $50 in a store and $30 on the street, with no tax.

“A lot of folks who are stuck in their ways, they know the brands they like on that market, they know the cultivators they want to work with … the black market is still very, very strong,” he went on. “As we see more interesting products hit the shelves here at a commercial dispensary and prices begin to drop — and we are seeing a little more of that — we’ll see folks moving over from the black market to the commercial market. So there’s still a massive untapped customer base out there.”

Cutting agreed that, as the legal cannabis industry matures and deepens, the sheer volume of product will lower prices, and that — as well as the aesthetic and educational experience that many cannabis shops tout — will draw more people in.

“Additionally, all the product on our shelves has been tested; you know what’s in the product. On the black market, you don’t have test results and don’t know what metals or pesticides or mold or yeast are in their product. They don’t have to test — they just roll and sell their product from whatever location they’re growing in.

“Here, it’s a safe, friendly environment,” Cutting went on. “You’re not looking over your shoulder buying something off the black market. And I think that market will eventually snuff itself out. Not entirely, but I think, over time, you’ll see it. The question some will ask is, ‘hey, do I want to be safe, or roll with this and take the risk of an untested product?’ I think most people will want to be on the safe side.”

As for public safety, Narkewicz said concerns from cannabis opponents — regarding surging crime and diversion problems — simply haven’t come to pass. And looking back, he’s proud to have been the first customer in the city’s newest growth industry.

“Obviously, in the early going, we had a little traffic crunch and parking crunch, but I don’t know many mayors worried about too many people wanting to visit their city,” he told BusinessWest. “It’s a good problem to have.”

 

Joseph Bednar can be reached at [email protected]

Cannabis Special Coverage

Growing Concerns

Meg Sanders says the state’s onerous regulatory hurdles have made the cannabis space an unfair playing field

Meg Sanders says the state’s onerous regulatory hurdles have made the cannabis space an unfair playing field, especially for smaller shops and social-equity applicants.

Everyone has seen the dispensaries and other cannabis businesses sprouting up in communities across Massachusetts — and the long lines of customers often stretching out the door. And they might think this business is easy money. But that’s far from the truth, thanks to an onerous tax situation, the illegal nature of the product on the federal level making it tough to enlist financial and other partners, and the slow march from stigma to acceptance of this still-new industry. All of that, however, could be changing, although it will take federal action to loosen some of those shackles.

Meg Sanders is a cannabis-industry veteran, most notably in Colorado, the nation’s first regulated market for legal cannabis. So she’s no stranger to the growing pains the industry is now dealing with in Massachusetts.

But as a local business owner — as CEO of Canna Provisions in Holyoke and Lee — she’s frustrated by them, too.

“We’re limited on what we can do with advertising, and the amount of product we can sell to a customer at a time,” she said, citing just two examples of regulations set forth by the state’s Cannabis Control Commission (CCC).

“The whole idea was to regulate cannabis like we regulate alcohol, and we’re not doing that. Actually, they’re going way above and way over the top, and I don’t think that’s helpful to the industry. I don’t think it’s helpful to individual businesses, and it’s definitely, in my opinion, not in the spirit of the CCC, which is supposed to promote social-equity and economic-empowerment applicants. But the bar for entry is really high, and the bar to stay out of trouble with the CCC is really high.”

“The whole idea was to regulate cannabis like we regulate alcohol, and we’re not doing that. Actually, they’re going way above and way over the top, and I don’t think that’s helpful to the industry.”

In other words, despite the number of cannabis businesses currently operating across Massachusetts — 267 and rising every week — this is a tough field to enter and a tougher one to succeed at, Sanders told BusinessWest.

“I think of people who are bootstrapping, mom-and-pop stores, teams that are working with a limited amount of cash, and it’s not a level playing field,” she went on. “And a lot of things we worry about in this industry are things that really do not matter. The amount of money this industry spends on packaging alone, that just goes in a landfill, is awful, and it’s driven by these rules and regs — it has to be childproof, it’s got to have 57 warning labels on it. I feel ethically horrible about the mounds of packaging in landfills. And the burden it puts on mom-and-pop manufacturers who are trying to make a really cool chocolate bar and the expense that’s going into that packaging … it’s really tricky.”

It doesn’t help, she added, that many state regulations can be challenging to interpret, mainly because the CCC is going through the same growing pains businesses are.

Scott Foster says federal decriminalization of cannabis has gained momentum

Scott Foster says federal decriminalization of cannabis has gained momentum, but the timeline is still uncertain.

“I’ve seen this in other states — the agency tasked with regulating and monitoring the industry has a very steep learning curve,” Sanders said. “One investigator will tell you one thing, and another investigator will tell you another thing. So they’re not always on the same page for specific rules.”

Many of those regulations address diversion of product, she noted. “We’ve spent millions of dollars building this business. The last thing we’re going to do is flush it down the toilet trying to sneak a pound out the back door. It’s just absurd.”

So are onerous background checks to get into the industry, keeping out some of the individuals — from communities that have been inordinately affected by the Drug War — who should be able to enter and prosper, she added. “Regulators and business owners should be partners to build a better business and correct things that need correcting, understanding everyone is doing their best.”

Those challenges are strictly state-level, but others on the federal level are just as burdensome, and boil down to the fact that the U.S. government still classifies cannabis as an illegal controlled substance. That means most banks and credit unions have avoided doing business with cannabis operators, though that’s slowly changing.

“In the early days, there weren’t a lot of professionals willing to take the career risk to enter the industry, so it was hard to find talent to come in and help grow the business. But, again, you’re starting to see that shift as more states legalize and you see the social proofs play out.”

“The federal illegality is a big challenge, and it doesn’t stop with the banking issue,” said Patrick Gottschlicht, chief operating officer of Insa. “That’s been extremely detrimental to us, but that carries across to other companies that we can work with — payroll processors, ERP [enterprise resource planning] companies, any big national or international software companies, accounting firms, security vendors … they can’t work with us because of that federal illegality.”

That has started to shift as more professional services and banks are opening up to this industry, though many still won’t, and many that do are startups themselves, with less at stake, said Peter Gallagher, Insa’s CEO.

“There’s no playbook for this industry,” he added. “There’s been a lot of trial and error to get to where we are. In the early days, there weren’t a lot of professionals willing to take the career risk to enter the industry, so it was hard to find talent to come in and help grow the business. But, again, you’re starting to see that shift as more states legalize and you see the social proofs play out. People’s friends are getting into it, talking positively about it, and they see the success of the industry, and you’re seeing more willingness to work with cannabis.”

Some bills have been introduced in Washington to, if not legalize cannabis, at least decriminalize it.

“Those bills would make it easier for us, and also de-risk the industry around the margins for a lot of partners,” Gallagher said. “The trend is definitely there, but in what time frame will that happen? From our perspective, it’s been happening a lot faster than we ever expected. When we got into this, we thought the legal conversation would take 20 or 30 years to play out.”

 

Taking No Credit

Sanders is hopeful, too. “At the federal level, we have big challenges. We can’t even take credit cards. That’s so silly. We can take a debit card and cash, and that’s it. That alone would be a really big help.”

Scott Foster, a partner at Bulkley Richardson and one of the attorneys in that firm’s cannabis practice group, believes sentiment is growing that Congress will act sooner rather than later on some degree of allowing banks into the cannabis space or remove the threat of federal enforcement against entities that partner with cannabis operators.

“That will help create some stability. And the biggest thing it’ll do is allow people to use credit cards at the facilities; it’s largely cash right now. If Congress changes that law, boom — you can use your Visa card, you can use your Mastercard. And the reason that you can’t now is not because Visa and Mastercard have a particular ethical or moral problem with it — they’ve just got a legal problem.”

Patrick Gottschlicht (left) and Peter Gallagher say cannabis is a much more challenging business than it seems — but it’s a rewarding one.

Patrick Gottschlicht (left) and Peter Gallagher say cannabis is a much more challenging business than it seems — but it’s a rewarding one.

Some federal bills have bipartisan support, he added, “but Congress has a lot of other things going on.” Still, with almost 40 states and territories having legalized medical cannabis and more than 20 giving the OK to adult-use cannabis, “I think the tide is definitely turning on this; it’s just a matter of how far it goes, and how quickly.”

Even without a change in the law, Foster explained, “the banking situation is getting better. We’re seeing some banks and some credit unions more willing to lend into the cannabis space now — much more than a couple years ago. They’re becoming more comfortable with lending for real-estate purposes — not for buying things, necessarily, but for buildout and for creating a space, including cultivation spaces. So that’s a change. A very small change, but the fact that it’s happening at all is a big deal.”

The other federal law cannabis operators want to see changed is Internal Revenue Code Section 280E, which severely limits tax deductions for business that deal in controlled substances prohibited by federal law. In short, businesses can deduct the cost of goods sold, but are not allowed any other deductions or credits on their return, including for wages.

“The taxes are crushing — you can’t deduct wages, rent, or other ordinary deductions. Most of these companies are looking at an effective tax rate of 70% to 90% in that, of their profit at the end of the day, 70% of it goes to pay federal taxes.”

“The taxes are crushing — you can’t deduct wages, rent, or other ordinary deductions,” Foster said. “Most of these companies are looking at an effective tax rate of 70% to 90% in that, of their profit at the end of the day, 70% of it goes to pay federal taxes. And this is after they pay state and local taxes. So the federal government is making a lot of tax money off of cannabis companies across the U.S.

“It’s been challenged multiple times in multiple states,” he went on, “and every tax court and every appellate court has said, ‘Congress can change it, but they were unequivocal in what they said.’ It’s a completely constitutionally valid statute.”

Decriminalizing cannabis federally would neuter the impact of 280E on the industry, which would be massive news for cannabis businesses that are already paying higher-than-average state taxes, while their host communities get a cut of between 3% and 6% as well.

But decriminalization would open many other doors as well, like broadening the market for insuring these businesses.

“There’s a risk that your insurance company could, almost at any point, say, ‘well, what you’re doing is a violation of federal law; therefore, we’re not going to insure you,’” Foster said. “The companies are getting insurance — they’re required to get insurance by the CCC — but they’re not the traditional companies; they’re not the Allstates or the companies you see advertising. They’re smaller, specialty, boutique insurance companies that have figured out it’s worth the risk to them to get into that space because the premiums are appreciably higher than they would be for a comparable business.”

So, again, the lack of federal legislation to decriminalize cannabis is increasing the cost of doing business, he went on. “If that happened, I think the cost of insurance would go down because you’d have more competition overnight in the space.”

Another barrier to continued growth that is slowly coming down is stigma surrounding the products themselves.

“For decades, it was drilled into people’s heads that this was a bad thing,” Gallagher said. “It’s going to take time to change that, and the most powerful tool is social proof and people seeing their friends and relatives using it to either treat various ailments or enhance their lifestyle; they see they’re successful, healthy individuals, and this is just a way to improve their lives. But I think it’s going to take time.”

For example, Gottschlicht added, “we have a bedtime edible to help you sleep, and we’ve seen people who were non-cannabis users start using that and come into the space because of that. It’s incredible how many people have gotten off standard pharmaceuticals and gone to half a gummy every night. The feedback has been, ‘it doesn’t make me groggy; it doesn’t give me the melatonin hangover I’ve gotten in the past. I feel normal in the morning, and it helps me sleep through the night.’”

Hearing those testimonies from friends and family is often how the stigma barrier falls for people who have been nervous about stopping by, he noted. “They think, ‘hey, there’s some good benefit to this.’ Or as an alternative to opioids after surgery — we’ve had a lot of people come in who just don’t want to take opioids for pain after surgery; they want to try cannabis because it’s not as addictive as some of the opioids out there.”

Sanders agreed. “I personally think the biggest move you can make to convert non-cannabis users to cannabis is this one-on-one experience, people telling people, or people coming in and finding relief from something — maybe sleep issues or aches and pains. And when you convert one person, they tell someone, and then they tell someone.”

 

Business Is Blooming

It’s been fulfilling to see the industry grow, Foster said — not to mention a boost to his own professional practice.

“The big uncertainty now is what consolidation in this industry is going to look like, and when is it going to happen. Everyone knows big players are going to come in and buy up companies and create brands that stretch across the nation; it’s already occurring, though not a lot … yet.”

But as more investors become comfortable with industry — there’s that idea of breaking through stigma again — that consolidation will happen, he went on. Drawing on the beer industry, he noted there’s no Anheuser-Busch in cannabis yet — it’s all microbreweries, so to speak. But even when large, national companies spread across the space, there will always be room for the boutique experience, for small companies that continue to research and promote the effects of new and different strains.

Research that is not currently happening to the degree it could because much research, especially clinical research at universities, is dependent on … wait for it … federal funding.

But once that research takes off and the cannabis industry escapes the shackles of federal illegality — a development that industry players generally agree will happen at some point — the products will continue to become more legitimized in the public eye, and the potential customer base will expand.

“People are asking, is the industry tapped out? No, I’m not seeing that,” Foster said. “Every business that opens up has a line out the door, and every facility that opens up can sell everything it makes. So, we have not reached a point of saturation by any means.”

That ever-expanding competition is another challenge, Sanders said, but one that should benefit all players because it further legitimizes the products in more people’s minds. But it also means individual businesses need to work harder to stand out. Canna does that with a strong focus on the individual experience and locally sourced products — including its own brand, Smash — with interesting, local stories behind them.

“There’s more good people than not in this space, and we owe it to consumers who are cannabis-curious to put our best foot forward and make sure they have as much information about our products as possible, so they don’t have any unexpected reactions,” she said. “Our commitment is to great products we can tell a story about, that we understand and respect and can get behind and provide the best experience we can possibly provide, and educate our customers.”

Insa, which has a production facility in Easthampton and four dispensaries across the region, including a flagship store in Springfield, has also expanded nationally, with a production facility in Pennsylvania selling to about 100 dispensaries and a Florida license to build a production site and medical dispensaries. And Gallagher embraces the growing competition in all those regions.

“The way we look at it, this is a much bigger industry than exists today,” he said. “If we all do a good job and operate responsibly and create good quality products, it will encourage more people to enter the industry and experiment and try it, and this will get much, much bigger. A rising tide lifts all boats, and as long as you have good, responsible players in the market, it’s going to be a benefit to everyone.”

Still, he added, “it’s a tough business. One of the common misperceptions is, people think it’s going to be easy. But it’s probably the hardest thing I’ve had to do. You have to be on it every day. And when you’re dealing with any biological product, the number of variables to control are immense. So it’s extremely challenging.

“But it’s been great,” he added. “The relationships we’ve built along the way have been fantastic. I wouldn’t change it for anything.”

Except, of course, for some pesky federal laws.

 

Joseph Bednar can be reached at [email protected]

Accounting and Tax Planning

Where There’s Smoke…

By Kristina Drzal Houghton, CPA, MST

 

Kristina Drzal Houghton

Kristina Drzal Houghton

The production and distribution of cannabis, once known to many only as marijuana, is the newest and most variegated industry in America. Some would even say it is one of the toughest industries in America in which to do business. This article will discuss a few unique challenges from a financial perspective faced by the industry.

The first complexity starts with the difference between cannabis and CBD. When you look at a cannabis plant and a hemp plant side by side, the plants themselves look identical to an untrained eye, making it a bit challenging to identify, as the real difference lies in the chemistry of the plants.

CBD can be extracted from hemp or marijuana. Hemp plants are cannabis plants that contain less than 0.3% THC (the compound that creates the ‘high’ sensation), while marijuana plants are cannabis plants that contain higher concentrations of THC. This article will refer to all products containing more than 0.3% THC as cannabis, while products with less will be referred to as CBD.

So, basically, the only difference from a scientific standpoint is the level of one chemical. However, things are much more complex from a legal and tax perspective. Under the 2018 Farm Bill, CBD and hemp are now legal, and not on the schedule I list of controlled narcotics right up there with heroin and LSD. In 2016, Massachusetts passed a law making all cannabis legal, and all but five other states have passed laws making it either fully legalized, decriminalized, or medically authorized. While cannabis is federally illegal, the Internal Revenue Service is perfectly willing to collect taxes on companies that handle the product.

Federal tax law is very punitive on the cannabis industry. Internal Revenue Code Section 280E is a very short part of the tax code (just one sentence) and states:

“No deduction or credit shall be allowed for any amount paid or incurred during the taxable year in carrying on any trade or business if such trade or business (or the activities which comprise such trade or business) consists of trafficking in controlled substances (within the meaning of schedule I and II of the Controlled Substances Act) which is prohibited by federal law or the law of any state in which such trade or business is conducted.”

Under 280E, you’re not allowed any deductions or credits on your return, but you can deduct the cost of goods sold, as that is part of the definition of taxable income. A cannabis farm will only be allowed to allocate various costs, direct and indirect, into cost of goods sold and inventory. Section 280E will affect only cannabis entities. CBD companies, since they are legal, are allowed all normal business deductions and credits available to other non-cannabis companies. This provides many more opportunities to reduce taxable income to a hemp/CBD company.

It is not only the federal tax difference which significantly attributes to the disproportionate cost of cannabis versus CBD. Due to discrepancies between state and federal law, legal cannabis businesses are forced to operate almost entirely in cash, with very little access to financial services, since most banks are federally insured and therefore unable to establish accounts for this federally illegal business. This leaves thousands of dollars stored in backroom safes and transported in shoeboxes and backpacks, creating a prime target for crime. Another banking challenge that cannabis businesses regularly face is exorbitant monthly account fees, or banks that take a percentage of each deposit.

The industry faces many other challenges as well. For example, most states have a mandated ‘seed to sale’ software-tracking system that must be used and accurate (daily), and must be reconciled with POS (point of sale) systems and accounting systems. Additionally, because this is a new industry, many of the tools other industries use are simply not readily available, including a cannabis-tailored chart of accounts, QB POS systems, reliable inventory software, and common merchant service platforms.

There is an opportunity for dispensaries to separate some revenue streams outside of the cannabis division, meaning normal business deductions are allowed for the non-cannabis division. These might include clothing, paraphernalia, coffee, CBD, and other goods. While this is good news for the industry, it only creates even more complexities when allocating selling and administrative expenses.

A recent report from the U.S. Treasury inspector general for Tax Administration recommends increased audits by the IRS of cannabis businesses to identify potential non-filers and returns that are not 280E-compliant. For this as well as the above reasons, cannabis businesses need to find an accounting firm that really knows what it’s doing. The cannabis accountant has to not only understand Section 280E, but also know how to treat a business that deals strictly (and necessarily) in cash. Many cannabis companies have bad books because their bookkeepers do not understand the special accounting and therefore didn’t properly categorize expenses. It can be time-consuming to fix them.

So, while the many layers of regulatory control and reporting may be of utmost importance to those operating in the cannabis industry, overlooking the complexities in the finance area of the business can lead to the proverbial perfect storm — or the business going up in smoke.

 

Kristina Drzal Houghton, CPA, MST is a partner at the Holyoke-based accounting firm Meyers Brothers Kalicka, P.C.

Cover Story The Cannabis Industry

Creating a Buzz

Every week, it seems, brings news of another cannabis establishment opening its doors or planning to set down roots in Western Mass. So, how does one stand out in an increasingly crowded field? For this issue, we talked with three women who own or co-own new enterprises in the region. By emphasizing facets of the business from sustainable growth to community gatherings to social equity, they make it clear that not all ‘pot shops’ are the same — that, in fact, there are many ways to make a mark on an increasingly robust cannabis ecosystem.

Helen Gomez Andrews and Chris Andrews of the High End

Sustaining a Plan

The High End Takes a Natural Approach to Edibles and Much More

Stephanie McNair of Turning Leaf Centers

Budding Connections

Turning Leaf Centers Plants Itself Firmly in the Community

Charlotte Hanna of Community Growth Partners and Rebelle

Charlotte Hanna of Community Growth Partners and Rebelle

Hire Calling

Community Growth Partners Builds on Model of Social Equity

Opinion

Cannabis Business Is Riding High

Back in November — only two years after adult-use marijuana became legal in the Commonwealth — the Massachusetts Cannabis Control Commission reported sales had surpassed $1 billion, and the state had collected some $200 million in taxes from the adult-use windfall. At the time, employment in the adult-use cannabis field in Massachusetts was approaching 6,000. It’s likely significantly higher now.

The COVID-19 impact? Not much, really. Except during those weeks from March through early May 2020, when most businesses of all kinds were closed to the public, dispensaries have reported steady revenues right through the pandemic. While the supply-chain issues and other economic impacts that followed in the wake of COVID did slow the pace of progress at some projects in various stages of development, customers are still lining up to get into the shops currently open.

In short, some industries are more resilient amid shifting economic tides — and public-health emergencies, it turns out — than others, and cannabis has proven, so far, to be one of them.

One lingering question, however, is how the rapid proliferation of dispensaries and other cannabis businesses will impact sales at each individual shop — in other words, will supply begin to outstrip demand and make this a riskier or less desirable industry to enter than it was a year ago?

To hear the business owners themselves tell it, the answer is no. Take Northampton, for example. Both Noho-based business owners we spoke with for this issue’s cannabis focus say that city has become such a destination for cannabis that each new enterprise just adds a little more texture to a robust ecosystem — and draws in even more customers from outside.

After all, if a city is known for its restaurants, no one ever says there are too many, or that it’s a bad idea to open another.

The heightened competition has, of course, forced new business owners to think critically about how to best stand out from the crowd, and the stories starting on page 29 are good examples of how they’re doing exactly that.

Cannabis has been a boon for the state’s coffers, no doubt about it. But it continues to be a strong driver of employment as well, one with a still-undefined ceiling. And it’s begun to add real vibrancy to the economy and lifestyle of communities that have been welcoming hosts.

In short, this is still fertile soil. After a year of economic news that hasn’t always been bright, that’s something to celebrate.

The Cannabis Industry

Hire Calling

Charlotte Hanna of Community Growth Partners and Rebelle

Charlotte Hanna of Community Growth Partners and Rebelle

 

Charlotte Hanna calls it “moving from bullets to buds.”

That’s how her company, Community Growth Partners (CGP), has characterized the renovation of the former Yankee Hill Machine plant in Northampton, once used to manufacture rifle silencers and accessories, into a cannabis cultivation and manufacturing facility.

But it also signifies something even more powerful, she said — an ongoing partnership between CGP and Roca, an agency that helps young men traumatized by urban violence to build emotional and workplace skills and forge a new path.

CGP has been employing Roca clients for more than a year at its flagship cannabis retail store in Great Barrington known as Rebelle, and will create about 50 more such jobs at the 23,000-square-foot building on Ladd Avenue in Northampton later this year.

It’s a way, Hanna said, to create pathways into a fast-growing industry for populations that were negatively impacted by the marijuana laws of the past.

“I like to call it just and equitable capitalism,” she added. “It’s a for-profit venture, but we’re trying to do things in a way that positively impacts people. I think the cannabis industry is the perfect industry for that. Our country put a lot of people in jail because of cannabis; a lot of wrongs need to be fixed. It seemed like a perfect opportunity to build this social experiment to see if we can have a company that does well, but also does good.”

 

Growth Opportunity

Hanna was seeking a career change when she began researching opportunities in the cannabis field.

“I’m a relative newcomer to the business,” she said. “I started exploring the industry in 2018, figuring out where the licensing opportunities may be. I’m based in New York City, and my home state, at the time, was very restrictive, with no opportunities to get into the business — so I turned my attention to the closest state to my hometown, where licensing was just opening up.”

Early in her career, she worked with grassroots organizations on social-justice issues, but found it difficult to live in New York on a nonprofit salary, so she pivoted to Wall Street, where she worked in finance with Goldman Sachs for a decade, followed by ventures in real-estate development.

Cannabis is what she calls the third phase of her career — and one in which she can once again work for social justice, this time in the form of social equity through employment. She was familiar with Roca from time spent in Boston, but didn’t know the organization was active in Western Mass. until, while driving in downtown Holyoke one day, she spotted a man wearing a Roca T-shirt, pulled over, and asked him about it. As it turned out, Roca had recently opened an office in Holyoke, and she stopped by.

“I’m excited to be very transparent about what we are and what we do, and I hope we find values-driven consumers who want to buy from a company that’s trying to do good.”

“I said, ‘how about entrusting your young people with me to work in the cannabis industry?’” she told BusinessWest. “I was surprised with how enlightened they were. They said, ‘we can’t believe no one has come to us before. We think it’s a great idea for our young people; we don’t have a problem with cannabis.’ That’s how I found them, by coincidence. No, kismet — it was meant to be.”

She’s a believer in supporting diversity in the cannabis business for the same reason the state established social-equity guidelines intended to bring opportunities in the industry to populations hard-hit by the U.S. government’s war on drugs that began in the 1970s.

Charlotte Hanna and members of Roca celebrate

Charlotte Hanna and members of Roca celebrate the start of construction at CGP’s Northampton facility.

“The war on drugs disproportionately impacted people of color,” Hanna said. “Great Barrington isn’t the most diverse place in the world, but I think we have good people who come from all backgrounds.”

For some of the Roca workers, it’s a long commute to that corner of the Berkshires, and some don’t have cars, so Hanna pays the agency to drive them back and forth. Northampton, as a second CGP site in Western Mass., may provide some flexibility in that regard. “The commitment at Roca runs deep,” she said. “They feel good about what we’re doing.”

So does Northampton, she said, praising the city for being especially friendly to cannabis businesses and not requiring a special-use permit as an additional layer of bureaucracy, simply a host-community agreement and a building permit. The site is also located in an opportunity zone, which confers additional tax advantages to businesses that invest economically in low-income neighborhoods.

“We’re going to be creating a lot of jobs here,” she said. “We’ll be staffing up with a lot of entry-level jobs from Roca, but also opportunities for management jobs; we’ll be building up our skilled extraction and manufacturing and processing teams as well.”

 

Taking Control

Hanna said she’s a fan of the Roca model of training, one that puts clients in lengthy, simulated work experiences and stresses job-readiness skills, so they’re ready to enter any work environment for further training in that field. In other words, Roca is teaching young people how to learn and be adaptable, so their opportunities are unlimited.

Cannabis seems to be an industry of unlimited growth as well — or, at least abundant growth, if the continuing proliferation of cultivation, manufacturing, retail, and other types of businesses is any indication.

While COVID-19 slowed the pace of fundraising and business development last year, Hanna said, she’s looking forward to opening the next phase of the CGP network. Besides the Northampton expansion, current growth initiatives include a wholesale and delivery license in Massachusetts, a pending craft-grow license in Illinois, and Rebelle’s new lifestyle-focused line of cannabis products and accessories that will launch in 2021.

“We always wanted to be vertically integrated,” Hanna said of the ability to control her own products from seed to sale. She pointed to the pandemic-fueled supply shortages in many industries last year as a good reason to take control of her own supply chain.

She added that opening the retail side of the business before the production side also helps the company learn what types of products customers want before they start making them.

“We live in a more transparent world than ever, and I hope consumers are more educated than ever,” she said. “I’m excited to be very transparent about what we are and what we do, and I hope we find values-driven consumers who want to buy from a company that’s trying to do good.” u

 

Joseph Bednar can be reached at [email protected]

The Cannabis Industry

Budding Connections

Stephanie McNair (left)and Nicole Desjardins say they want customers to stay, learn something, and enjoy the experience of buying cannabis.

It’s called Budstock.

As the first major community event staged at Turning Leaf Centers in Northampton, Stephanie McNair believes the three-day event — slated for April 16-18 and boasting the cheeky tagline ‘stock up on your favorite bud before 4/20’ — will help raise the new dispensary’s profile in a city that has rolled out the welcome mat for numerous cannabis enterprises.

Saturday will feature several music artists, as well as a food truck, in the large parking lot behind the King Street building, while inside, local artist Rodney Madison will display his works, and at the dispensary’s ‘craft bar,’ a series of workshops over the three days will teach visitors the finer points of concentrates, edibles, vapes, joint rolling, and more.

In short, it’s about education, entertainment, and community, said McNair, who opened Turning Leaf along with co-owner Mary Anne Gonzalez last month with the goal of not only inviting customers in, but asking them to stay a while.

“The cannabis industry in Western Mass. is evolving at a record pace, and with more and more cannabis retailers entering the market, it’s time to ‘turn the leaf’ to more of an experience, instead of the cattle-in, cattle-out type of doing business,” McNair told BusinessWest. “That’s why we have the craft bar, which is a place where customers can take time to educate themselves about our ever-changing products, gather with their friends, attend demonstrations, have rolling parties, and so on.”

As more dispensaries and other cannabis-related business spring up throughout Western Mass., McNair said it’s increasingly important for new enterprises to set themselves apart through price, product quality, and in other ways.

“We wanted to create a place where everyone can feel comfortable and have a good time and stay a while.”

At Turning Leaf, that means an emphasis on community and local connections, from events and craft-bar experiences to partnering with local growers and manufacturers to bring products to customers they can’t get at every shop.

“We’ve gained strong relationships with local craft growers and innovators, who are making more elevated products every day,” she said. “We’ve taken the time to cultivate a very eclectic menu with every product category, at every price point, with every type of cannbis consumer.”

It also means bringing needed exposure to local musicians and artists through indoor and outdoor performances and exhibits.

“Supporting our local community is something that is very important to us as a company,” she added. “We are looking to display and promote local artists and have event demonstrations and educational seminars in our space.”

 

Comfort Level

With a background in real estate and community-relations marketing, McNair found a business partner in Gonzalez with a similar vision for a cannabis business. “Being a Western Mass. native, I knew this was a place I wanted to be. It was just an easy fit for me.”

Central to that vision is a highly personal approach to product sales. “We wanted to create a place where everyone can feel comfortable and have a good time and stay a while. We have great parking, it’s easy to find, you can go sit at the craft bar and talk with our dispensary staff, and we want to make sure every customer leaves feeling completely satisfied with the products they’ve purchased.”

Nicole Desjardins, marketing manager at Turning Leaf, said they want to demystify cannabis use and, for newcomers, take away any anxiety.

“A lot of it is addressing the stigma through community — to find out what you don’t know with other people and have fun,” she said. “You don’t know how to roll a joint? We make that accessible in a fun way. Instead of just walking away with what you purchased, why not walk away with knowledge from some people you shared an experience with?”

McNair said her own experience with the city of Northampton has been a positive one.

“They’ve just been so welcoming for us as a local business coming in, giving us their support,” she said, adding that Mayor David Narkewicz and city boards have been extremely helpful, as has the Greater Northampton Chamber of Commerce. “Our host-community agreement and our outreach with the city was just a really happy experience for us. Everybody in Northampton really wants to help you make your business successful, and it shows.”

Meanwhile, customer support has come from all over, including visitors from Connecticut and New York, McNair added. “They’re intrigued by looking at our craft bar and our space, talking to us about cannabis and local art … we’ve been well-received in the past few weeks.”

She’s not worried about the number of businesses setting up shop in Northampton and neighboring communities; in fact, she sees it as a plus, generating a growing energy in the local cannabis trade that promises to lift all boats.

“Northampton is definitely making its mark, just as they did with the restaurant industry. More is better, and people want choices. They’re making Northampton a destination for cannabis.”

Desjardins agreed. “Every business has a different profile, a different flavor. I think Stephanie is absolutely right — I don’t see it as competition; there’s enough for everyone. Northampton is a destination city.”

 

What’s on the Menu?

McNail said Turning Leaf will continue to hone its product offerings, always with an eye toward an eclectic menu of options culled largely from area producers — again, in an effort to build a local-first model.

“We’re really committed to supporting our local community,” she noted. “We want to highlight local growers as well as live music and artists, and we also have made a commitment to have all of our sales associates certified with responsible vendor training before day one, which is no small task. And we continue to provide them with education so they can give you the very best service when it comes to what exactly it is you’re looking for, or perhaps not looking for.”

And if you’re not sure, just belly up to the bar and ask.

 

Joseph Bednar can be reached at [email protected]

The Cannabis Industry

Sustaining a Plan

Chris and Helen Andrews

In Holyoke, Chris and Helen Andrews found a cannabis-friendly city that shares their passions for entrepreneurship and sustainability.

Helen Gomez Andrews and her husband, Chris Gomez, have been, as she tactfully put it, “cannabis enthusiasts for longer than we haven’t.”

But when their 5-year-old daughter was diagnosed with epilepsy in 2015 — and became one of the first medical-marijuana cardholders in New York — their interest in cannabis became intensely personal.

At the same time, Helen was starting to feel uninspired in her finance career; she spent 13 years growing a career in private wealth management at Lehman Brothers, Barclays, and Morgan Stanley.

Inspired by the triple-bottom-line approach to impact investment she had become increasingly aligned with, she was looking for a different sort of investment — and found it in cannabis, where the High End, a cultivation, production, and retail enterprise now under development in Holyoke, became the first cannabis company in Massachusetts to be certified as both a minority business enterprise and a women business enterprise.

During her last few years at Morgan Stanley, “I was looking for passion in my work life, and not finding it,” Andrews said. “The confluence of that and my daughter’s diagnosis, and my husband itching to do something different, really pushed us to take the plunge.”

To call it a major leap would be an understatement; the couple sold their home in Brooklyn to buy the historic Eureka Blank Book building on Winter Street in Holyoke and begin the long process of renovating it. A second site on Dwight Street will become the retail face of the business, as well as a coffee shop.

Oh, and they’re not taking any shortcuts, aiming to use a sustainable growing process known as organic living soil.

“People told us we’re totally crazy to do something so labor-intensive when there’s so much great technology around automatic cultivation, focused on the highest THC and highest yield,” she told BusinessWest. “But that’s a departure from what’s really important to us, which is low impact to the environment and the sustainable, clean growing of a plant, staying away from synthetic nutrients. We’re trying to create as natural an environment as we can.”

 

Feels Like Home

In seeking out a host community with abundant real estate and a business-friendly attitude toward cannabis, Holyoke was an obvious choice.

“It was five times cheaper the next-cheapest town — and then we discovered the history of Holyoke; it was so amazing how it was the first planned industrial city in the country, largely built by Irish immigrants,” Andrews said, which was appealing to her Irish husband. Now, this multi-cultural couple — Helen was born in the Philippines — is feeling right at home.

Also appealing is the city’s abundance of carbon-neutral energy generation. “It makes perfect sense in the cannabis industry, and perfectly aligns with our values. We’re building a truly sustainable company in a welcoming city.”

“As we learned about vertical integration and the economics of cannabis and edibles manufacturing, it made perfect sense to pursue cultivation. So we pursued the full vertical.”

Chris’ background is in restaurants and retail, and the couple’s initial vision centered on marijuana edibles, but has since expanded significantly.

“As we learned about vertical integration and the economics of cannabis and edibles manufacturing, it made perfect sense to pursue cultivation,” she said. “So we pursued the full vertical.”

As for the spacious former mill, “we put all our eggs in this basket,” she said. “We’ve been in Holyoke since January 2019, working to build this business and really embedding ourselves into the Holyoke community, which has such a strong entrepreneurial spirit.”

Indeed, Andrews serves on the EforAll Holyoke advisory board, helping other budding entrepreneurs find their way. “There’s such a rich, diverse history here, and Chris and I both feel very grateful to be a part of this community, and have found this to be a great city to build our business.”

The economic impact of COVID-19 certainly set the project back, but the extended timeline helped the couple streamline and become more “laser-focused” about their priorities. They’re licensed for 30,000 square feet of cultivation, as well as manufacturing and retail, and plan to apply for a research license as well.

“Last year was rough, but it’s finally starting to pick up some momentum,” Andrews said, adding that the hope is to open the dispensary and coffee shop by the end of 2021, and the cultivation and production facility later in 2022, with the first harvest arriving months later.

Until the cultivation and production sides of the business come online, Helen and Chris are pursuing “a very differentiated, curated inventory according to our core values of ethical and sustainable cannabis,” she said. “So we’ve spent the better part of the last year and a half building relationships with individual farmers and small businesses. By the time our doors open, we’ll have some products from some amazing businesses that we can introduce to this market.”

Those products will include commonly sought-after items like cannabis flower to edibles. In regard to the latter, “the plan is to make some things everyone likes — chocolates, gummies, and mints — but also do something more elevated,” Andrews noted. “My husband has a network of culinary talent partners working on limited-edition chocolates. And, of course, we’ll have vapes and pre-rolls and all those other things.”

 

Have a Seat

Another reason for opening a coffee shop, she said, is to avoid the scenario she’s noticed at many dispensaries, with lines of customers circling the building, waiting patiently to get in.

“We thought we wanted to change that experience and be more welcoming with the coffee shop, to give folks in line somewhere welcoming and comfortable to wait, but also provide education.”

She wants the shop to be a place people can find information, as well. “They can stop by, collect some literature, and have a great cup of coffee or a delicious pastry — and Holyoke needs a coffee shop.”

It’s a city that also wants to continue growing its reputation as one of the region’s most cannabis-embracing communities, and this couple is happy to oblige, Helen said. “We’re excited and eager to go.”

 

Joseph Bednar can be reached at [email protected]

Cover Story

The Plot Thickens

Even in a normal year, Feb. 29 is an odd date to open a business.

“We really won’t have an anniversary for another four years,” Thomas Winstanley, director of Marketing at Theory Wellness, joked about his company’s third cannabis dispensary, which opened in Chicopee on that leap-year date almost six months ago.

Of course, 2020 is no normal year, and a couple weeks after opening, Theory closed its doors as part of a statewide shutdown of ‘non-essential’ businesses due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

“It’s been an interesting six months, to say the least,” Winstanley told BusinessWest. “We had a brand-new team in place, the final approvals had come through, and that team was just getting their sea legs on the retail side when the shutdown came.”

When dispensaries were eventually allowed to open, it was only for medical marijuana at first, while the vast majority of business — recreational sales — remained shut down.

And now?

“It’s dynamite,” he said. “A lot of money is coming back to the market, and our team hasn’t missed a step since coming back — and we’ve seen the team continue to grow. We’ve come back a lot stronger.”

The line that forms outside the shop each morning testifies to demand that certainly didn’t go away during the weeks when product was unavailable.

It’s a story taking shape across the state, with cannabis businesses continuing to launch and grow even as the pandemic still rages and the economy nowhere near returning to its 2019 condition. Take Holyoke, for example — a city whose leaders fully embraced the cannabis trade from the start, and where two more businesses opened in recent weeks, Canna Provisions on Dwight Street and Boston Bud Co. on Sargeant Street.

“It’s been an interesting six months, to say the least. We had a brand-new team in place, the final approvals had come through, and that team was just getting their sea legs on the retail side when the shutdown came.”

“I’m not going to lie — I was very nervous as the economy took a downturn,” said Marcos Marrero, Holyoke’s director of Planning & Economic Development, about the cannabis hub city leaders have worked to cultivate, one that now includes a handful of cultivation, production, and retail businesses, with more on the way. “Oddly enough, we haven’t seen a significant stoppage in stores’ actions at this point. I can only speculate why that is.”

One reason, quite simply, is that some sectors do better than others during recessions. Marrero compared it to when prohibition was lifted during the Great Depression, and smart entrepreneurs immediately saw the long-term (and pent-up) demand for alcohol, even during tough economic times.

Theory Wellness in Chicopee

Theory Wellness in Chicopee closed in March just a few weeks after it opened, but customer traffic has been solid this summer.

“Today, we have a very robust alcoholic-beverage industry,” he said, reflecting demand that has never subsided over the decades. “So I don’t think there’s anything remarkably special about cannabis in that regard.”

Another apt comparison is the financial crisis of 2008, when the fundamentals of the economy were coming apart — a different story than in 2020. “Now, the economy is tanking because there’s no consumption, and the labor force is contracting.”

Those investing in the cannabis sector, however, are looking beyond that; they know demand for these products is likely to remain high — no pun intended — in the long term.

“This may be as good an investment as anything,” Marrero said. “We’re still seeing investments going forward at the local level; it’s a very positive outlook, even during the pandemic.”

Creating a Pipeline

The proliferation of cannabis businesses across the region, with the promise of more to come, means jobs, and that potential isn’t lost on area colleges and universities.

First, Holyoke Community College (HCC) and the Cannabis Community Care and Research Network (C3RN) announced the creation of the Cannabis Education Center last fall, to provide education, training, and other business resources to individuals in the region who want to work in the cannabis industry.

HCC and C3RN are designated training partners through the Massachusetts Cannabis Control Commission’s (CCC) Social Equity Vendor Training program, which was designed to provide priority access, training, and technical assistance to populations and communities that, traditionally, have been negatively impacted by the drug war.

Soon after that, American International College (AIC) dipped a toe into the sector by launching a three-course certificate program called Micro-Emerging Markets: Cannabis, offering an overview of cannabis entrepreneurship, business operations, and law and ethics.

This fall, AIC is launching a master’s program in Cannabis Science and Commerce — with a one-year online program or a two-year hybrid model — that takes a deeper dive into preparing students to work in this field, said Jennifer Barry, AIC’s director of Continuing Studies and Special Projects.

She cited some striking statistics — 15% job growth in the legal cannabis industry in 2019, $404 million in legal cannabis sales in Massachusetts that same year, and 245,000 full-time-equivalent jobs created nationally by early 2020 — to explain why the program is necessary.

JENNIFER BARRY

Jennifer Barry

“We want to provide opportunities to connect students with an industry where there’s a lot of room for employment growth. The idea is to connect students with experts in the industry.”

“We want to provide opportunities to connect students with an industry where there’s a lot of room for employment growth,” Barry told BusinessWest. “The idea is to connect students with experts in the industry.”

To that end, the program will be taught collaboratively by faculty members, cannabis-industry professionals, and occasionally guest lecturers, either in person or by video.

“We’re taking the academic rigor of an AIC course normally taught by faculty members and keeping it current and relevant by pulling in industry experts,” she explained, noting that classes cover topics from law and policy to the chemistry of cannabis.

“It’s hard for people who work full-time in the cannabis industry, which is such a demanding field, to make time,” she added, but quickly noted that they recognize the need to create a pipeline of talent in the region so the sector can continue to grow and avoid a skills gap. In that way, she noted, this master’s program is a win-win — helping graduates access a solid career while helping area businesses grow.

“That’s the real benefit of our program,” Barry continued, noting that it’s the first program in the U.S. that blends business, science, and the legal aspects of the trade. “What we’ve found, speaking with cannabis professionals, is you have to understand the chemical components of the plant to be prepared to sell it, package it, speak about it intelligently in the field.

“That’s why we have a chemistry course, and one that talks about cannabis from seed to sale, how it makes it through the pipeline, giving students a broad understanding of the process. Then, through individual courses, they can dig through each individual element.”

The goal, again, is to support both opportunities for job seekers and business growth, and Marrero sees elements of both in Holyoke’s enthusiastic adoption of the cannabis sector. He said Holyoke officials don’t “game the system” with host-community agreements, trying to squeeze as much from license applicants as possible. Instead, it’s a standard template that can be approved in a day.

“The CCC does its due diligence on businesses; we regulate things like land use and how businesses are integrated into the community,” he said of the city’s approach to license approval. “For us, it’s been about how to create jobs, how to help businesses get into the cannabis industry.

“It’s about creating a cluster,” he went on. “We’ve made a concerted effort to make it smooth, to work with industries to create a cluster. What it gets us is more than the sum of its parts; it’s how many jobs are created by these companies — and we have a dozen already special-permitted.”

Those services run the gamut from plumbers and pipefitters to security, delivery services, cleaning services, lawyers, and more.

“Any new company produces opportunities for other types of other businesses, and those businesses have to employ people. It’s that economic contagion that’s also attractive,” Marrero explained — one of the few times one might hear the word ‘contagion’ these days in a positive light.

A Social Contract

Winstanley said Theory’s experience setting up shop in Chicopee went as smoothly as it could have, considering the built-in rigor of the process, especially at the state level.

“We’ve always known there were a lot of policies in place at the state level and the local level. It’s a long process,” he told BusinessWest. “But we want to make sure we get it right and operate in ways that are beneficial to the local population, and we want to make sure to set an example for what legal cannabis should look like in this day and age.”

One way Theory — which also has locations in Great Barrington and Bridgewater, and employs about 200 people in its cultivation, manufacturing, and retail divisions — does that is through the kind of social-equity program the CCC made a point of emphasizing.

It recently accepted applications from ‘economic-empowerment’ applicants as designated by the commission and will select a qualified applicant to partner with, guiding and mentoring the entrepreneur through the process of opening their doors, from financial assistance to professional services to zoning and regulatory hurdles.

That financial commitment will total up to $250,000, $100,000 of which will be offered in the form of 0% interest debt financing, with $150,000 worth of initial cannabis inventory to be offered on consignment, providing a boost of capital to help get the operation off the ground. Theory will also connect the successful applicant with professional services like banking, legal, insurance, and HR.

“This is something we felt really strongly about,” Winstanley said. “We felt it’s the future of the industry, to make sure everyone has an opportunity to get into it.”

Barry is well aware of the social-equity component as well, saying it aligns with AIC’s mission to provide access and opportunity to a diverse student population.

“Each course will have a social-equity component; students will get exposure to the business through the lens of social equity, and by the end of the program, they’ll be entrenched in how we can potentially undo some of the disproportionate harm done in the past, while creating a workforce that meets the needs of the industry.”

Because, again, the opportunities appear to be increasing.

“They’ll build a network of professionals they can use as resources as they create their careers, whether they start out working for someone else or start their own business,” she added. “They’ll know it’s not limited.”

That’s true in Holyoke right now, where the next site to open will likely be True Leaf, located near the Holyoke Dam, Marrero said. “They’re a pretty sizable operation — they would be the biggest in Holyoke by square footage, and they’re near completion of construction.”

Winstanley said Theory learned a lot from its original store, in Great Barrington, the first dispensary to open in the Berkshires. Now, competition is springing up across Western Mass., but he says the company still has plenty of room to grow.

“It’s not only the growth of our company, but the significant tax revenue that’s definitely needed,” he said. “Right now, we’re just really happy to see cannabis is back, and hopefully we can continue to contribute, and the industry will provide some much-needed life in these strange times.”

Joseph Bednar can be reached at [email protected]

Features

An Uphill Battle

By Mary Bonzagni

Federal trademark registration is viewed as an attractive form of property-rights protection for most industries. The benefits of such a registration are numerous.

A federal trademark registration serves to recast what would normally be localized common-law trademark rights into nationwide trademark rights. It provides the owner with the right to use the ® designation, to enforce the owner’s rights in federal court, and to file the trademark registration with U.S. Customs to block infringing imports. A federal registration also provides a basis for registering the trademark in foreign countries and jurisdictions.

Unfortunately, members of the cannabis industry have faced an uphill battle when trying to protect their brands on the federal level.

This article will focus on strategies for protecting trademarks used on CBD products, which may be grouped into two categories: marijuana-derived CBD products and hemp-derived CBD products.

Mary Bonzagni

Mary Bonzagni

“Unfortunately, members of the cannabis industry have faced an uphill battle when trying to protect their brands on the federal level.”

Marijuana is still treated as a controlled substance and is illegal under the Controlled Substances Act (CSA), regardless of its legality under certain state laws. As such, trademarks for marijuana-derived CBD products cannot be federally registered. The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) has issued trademarks for goods and services that are indirectly related to marijuana, but the closer the description of goods and services is to the sale or distribution of marijuana, the less likely it is that the UPSTO will allow the application.

Hemp was previously regulated as an illegal substance under the CSA. It was removed as an illegal substance under the Agricultural Improvement Act of 2018, also known as the Farm Act, which federally legalized hemp and hemp-derived products that contain no more than 0.3% THC (by dry weight). The 2018 Farm Act legalized CBD derived from hemp not from marijuana, so, at least for now, the federal government will view the source of the CBD as decisive in determining its legality under federal law.

To recap, marijuana-derived CBD products are illegal under federal law, and, thus, trademarks for such products cannot be federally registered. On the other hand, products infused with CBD derived from hemp, which have a low-THC content, are now legal under federal law, and the trademarks under which they are used are capable of federal registration. Being capable of federal registration, however, does not guarantee registration.

The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office’s current policy is to refuse trademarks for foods, beverages, dietary supplements, and pet treats containing hemp-derived CBD that have not been approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). These goods raise lawful-use issues under the Federal Food Drug and Cosmetic Act (FDCA). Trademarks for the following goods, however, can be federally registered:

• Hemp-derived CBD products that are not consumed (e.g. salves, ointments, and skin oils) which contain less than 0.3% THC on a dry-weight basis; and

• ‘Generally recognized as safe’ (GRAS) products (e.g. hulled hemp seeds, hemp seed protein powder, and hemp seed oil). On Dec. 20, 2018, the same day the 2018 Farm Act took effect, the FDA approved the sale of hulled hemp seeds, hemp seed protein powder, and hemp seed oil, and the use of these products in human food. Therefore, trademarks for these hemp products are eligible for federal registration at the USPTO.

In addition, trademarks for hemp advocacy groups and trade associations, and for services such as consulting and advertising services and the like, can also be federally registered. It is legal for advocacy groups and trade associations to educate the public and advocate for changes in hemp and marijuana laws. Thus, the USPTO is willing to issue trademarks to those groups and to others providing services to the legal hemp industry.

Let’s assume for purposes of this article that your trademark is being used on goods that do not fall within one of the above categories, and thus your trademark cannot be federally registered. Here are some options for proceeding.

Federal Registration for Permissible Ancillary Products and/or Services

The first area to explore is whether you also sell goods or offer services that fall outside the restrictions of the CSA or FDCA. For example, do you sell goods without CBD as an ingredient, or provide a website featuring blogs and publications (e.g. articles, brochures, etc.) advocating for changes in hemp and marijuana laws, which constitute lawful goods or services? By obtaining a federal trademark registration in relation to any such lawful goods and services you provide (i.e. registering around the edges of the CSA or FDCA), you may still be able to protect your brand.

Alternatives to Federal Registration

Whether or not you pursue federal registration, you should also consider proceeding within the common-law and state-law frameworks so that you can protect your mark within your geographical trading area. You may also consider copyright protection to protect your logo or design trademark.

Common-law Trademark Rights

By using your trademark in commerce on select goods and services, you will develop common-law rights in that mark. Common-law rights are based solely on use of the mark in commerce within a particular geographic area. Your common-law rights may be used to stop infringers.

State Registrations

Another option to consider is seeking one or more state registrations for your trademark in states that recognize the legality of your goods or services. While state registrations confer the benefits of registration only within the boundaries of that state, registering on the state level can be an effective way to protect your mark and to prevent third parties from using the same or confusingly similar mark on the same or similar goods or services in that state.

Copyright Registrations

Copyright protection may constitute an alternative route to protecting your logos or design trademarks, provided they contain original authorship and are not just familiar shapes, symbols, or designs. Copyright is a form of protection provided under U.S. law to ‘original works of authorship,’ once fixed in a tangible form. A copyright registration establishes a public record of a copyright claim as well as offering several other statutory advantages.

In Conclusion

CBD-based businesses should start using their trademarks on their goods and services as soon as possible in order to establish common-law trademark rights, seek federal registration for trademark uses that are legal under the CSA and do not raise lawful-use issues under the FDCA, seek state registrations in states where trademark use occurs and where cannabis use is legal, and seek copyright registrations for eligible logo and design trademarks.

Please contact us for further information or to set up an initial consultation. We look forward to assisting you in protecting your valuable IP.Please contact us for further information or to set up an initial consultation. We look forward to assisting you in protecting your valuable IP.Please contact us for further information or to set up an initial consultation. We look forward to assisting you in protecting your valuable IP.

Mary Bonzagni is the IP partner with the Springfield-based law firm Bulkley Richardson; (413) 272-6200.

Opinion

Editorial

In the 21 months since recreational marijuana became legal in Massachusetts, the industry has raked in about $150 million in tax revenue for state and local coffers.

Of that, $30 million — about 20% of the total — has poured in just since Memorial Day, when the state ended several weeks of COVID-19 restrictions on dispensaries as part of its reopening plan.

Talk about pent-up demand.

And talk about an opportunity.

In our cover story this month, Marcos Marrero, Holyoke’s director of Planning & Economic Development, drew a comparison between current demand for cannabis with the lifting of prohibition during the Great Depression. Though times were still tough, alcohol sales surged, and have rarely let up since.

In short, some industries are more resilient amid shifting economic tides than others, and cannabis — judging by these latest tax-revenue numbers, and by the customer lines outside dispensaries even as more competition springs up around the region — may be one of them.

Indeed, cannabis sales in the Bay State have totaled $785 million since November 2018, when adult use became legal here. The tax rate in the state is 6.25%, with a 10.75% excise and a 3% local tax in most areas. It adds up.

“This tax-revenue milestone is a big moment for the Massachusetts cannabis business community because it shows not only the great demand for safe, regulated cannabis, but also affirms the meaningful value this industry brings to cities and towns every single day,” David Torrisi, president of the Commonwealth Dispendary Assoc., noted in a statement following the news.

“We know the hardship that COVID-19 has imposed on local and state budgets,” he added, “and we are proud to help provide steady revenue streams that can hopefully reduce the need for difficult choices and maintain services.”

Such talk cheers Marrero and other municipal officials in Holyoke, the city that, more than any other in the region, has fully embraced the economic potential of cannabis, with a few businesses already open and many more in the pipeline.

And it’s not just tax revenue, although that is critical right now. It’s also jobs and business growth — both in new and growing enterprises that grow, manufacture, and sell cannabis products, and at companies that provide services to those entities, whether legal, security, maintenance … the list goes on.

It’s what Marrero called “economic contagion,” a positive and kind of delightful use of that latter word during this time of pandemic. Holyoke wants to create a cannabis cluster that will boost the entire city’s — and region’s — economy, and other communities might take heed of the lessons learned so far.

The main one is that cannabis appears to be a hardy sector, no matter what the broader economic conditions are. At a time when communities are looking for bright spots, this one ranks high on the list.

Community Spotlight

Community Spotlight

Tessa Murphy-Romboletti

Tessa Murphy-Romboletti says the addition of a Spanish-speaking accelerator program will enable EforAll Holyoke to become an even more impactful component of the region’s entrepreneurship ecosystem.

It’s been more than three years now since Holyoke Mayor Alex Morse told a TV reporter, tongue in cheek (or not), that he wanted to rename Holyoke ‘Rolling Paper City,’ in a nod to its past — and its potential future as home to businesses in the cannabis industry spawned by a ballot initiative in the fall of 2016.

Things have moved slowly as the city has looked to take full advantage of both its red-carpet treatment for the cannabis industry and vast supply of old mill space — ideal for cultivation as well as other types of businesses in this sector — more slowly than most would have anticipated.

But by most accounts, 2020 should be the year this sector begins to, well, light things up in Holyoke.

Indeed, while Green Thumb Industries, better known to most as GTI, is the only cannabis-related business operating in Holyoke at the moment, that is certain to change soon. True Leaf is ready to commence cultivation operations in the large building on Canal Street that was formerly home to Conklin Office, said Morse, and there are other businesses moving ever closer to the starting line.

“Unfortunately, the length of the process at the state level has slowed things a bit, but 2020 seems poised to be the year we see some concrete results from our embrace of and leadership in the cannabis industry,” said Morse, who, while filling his role as CEO of the city, is also running for Congress this fall. “We’re looking at hundreds of jobs between cultivation and dispensing, and we’re seeing the growth in commercial property values as a result of these investments.”

Meanwhile, there are large tracts of real estate either sold to or under option to a number of other cannabis-related businesses, said Marcos Marrero, the city’s director of Planning and Economic Development.

“We have about 20 companies that have approached us for a host-community agreement; a few of those are no longer proceeding, but we have probably close to a dozen that are still in some part of the process, and we expect a couple to open at some point this year,” said Marrero, who noted that, for decades, Holyoke’s problem was that it had far too much unused or underutilized old mill space. It’s certainly not there yet, but some are starting to think about the possibility of actually running out of that commodity.

But cannabis is certainly not the only promising story in Holyoke at the moment. Indeed, progress is evident on a number of fronts, from the development of several co-working spaces in the city to a thriving cultural economy; from the prospects for a new retail plaza in the vicinity of the Holyoke Mall to Holyoke Community College’s culinary-arts center in the heart of downtown; from Amazon’s new distribution center just off I-91, which has brought more than 100 jobs to the city, to Holyoke Medical Center’s recently announced proposal to build a new, standalone inpatient behavioral-health facility on its campus.

“Unfortunately, the length of the process at the state level has slowed things a bit, but 2020 seems poised to be the year we see some concrete results from our embrace of and leadership in the cannabis industry.”

Then there are the city’s efforts to foster entrepreneurship, especially through the agency known as EforAll Holyoke, which last year cut the ceremonial ribbon at its facilities on High Street.

The agency, originally known as SPARK, will graduate its third accelerator class on March 26, said Executive Director Tessa Murphy-Romboletti, adding that EforAll will soon be expanding with a Spanish-language accelerator, something that’s definitely needed in this diverse community.

“Many people can understand English, but to learn in the language you’re comfortable with … that makes such a difference,” she noted, adding that other EforAll locations have offered programs in Spanish. “There is a need for this here.”

For this, the latest installment of its Community Spotlight series, BusinessWest puts the focus on what is still known as the Paper City, a community that has greatly diversified its economy is looking to continue that pattern in the coming years.

In Good Company

Murphy-Romboletti says she won’t be leading the Spanish-speaking accelerator — she’ll be hiring someone to assume that responsibility — but she is taking steps to be better able communicate in that language.

“I’m using Rosetta Stone, and I’m basically telling the people in my life who speak Spanish that they should only speak Spanish to me so I can learn,” she said. “Just growing up in Holyoke, I feel like I understand it fairly well, but I’m still struggling to communicate.”

These language lessons are just one of many items on her plate, including final preparations for the March 26 graduation ceremony, at which accelerator participants will showcase their businesses and many will receive what Murphy-Romboletti refers to affectionately as “those big giant checks” — facsimiles in amounts that will range from a few hundred to a few thousand dollars, as well as some seed money.

Those awards may not sound significant, but to small-business owner, they can provide a huge boost, she went on, adding that they can cover the cost of forming a limited liability corporation (LLC), buy a new copier, or perhaps purchase some insurance.

“Those are the little things that a startup often has a hard time attaining,” she said. “That money is very important to them.”

As for the seed money, provided by an array of sources, it is awarded based on how well businesses meet stated goals for growth and development.

“We have them set goals for each quarter, and the entrepreneurs keep meeting monthly with their mentors,” she explained. “We survey them before we meet, and there’s a peer-ranking process based on the progress they’ve made toward the goals they set at the beginning of the quarter. It’s a combination of mentor feedback and peer feedback, and it’s a good way to keep the momentum going.”

Summarizing the breakdown of the first several cohorts, Murphy-Romboletti said there has been a good mix of businesses, including several food-related ventures, some professional services, a few nonprofits, and some construction-related endeavors. None are large in size or scope, but most all of them have promise, and many are already contributing to vibrancy in Holyoke by leasing real estate, buying goods and services, and providing them as well.

“When an entrepreneur is getting started, it can be a very lonely process, and we want people to know they don’t have to go through this whole thing alone,” she said. “And I think we’re starting to see the impact this has on the local economy, when there’s new businesses registering and they’re getting bank accounts for their business, and they’re doing things the right way so they can be legitimate businesses that will contribute to the economy.”

Marrero agreed, noting that the companies fostered by these efforts to promote entrepreneurship have created more than 100 jobs, most of them in Holyoke.

“Not everything is a home run — there are a lot of singles, but that’s another way of getting into the Hall of Fame,” he said. “We’re continuing our efforts to create a culture of entrepreneurship, and we’re starting to see some results.”

Thus, promoting entrepreneurship is an economic-development strategy in Holyoke, said Morse, adding that, while it’s good to attract large corporations like Amazon, growing organically by fostering small businesses is usually a more reliable path to growth.

But there are several other growth strategies being executed, and the cannabis industry, and the city’s pursuit of it, could certainly be considered one of them.

Indeed, while some communities were somewhat cautious in their approach to this sector and others (West Springfield, for example) decided they didn’t want such businesses within their boundaries at all, Holyoke has, seemingly since the day the ballot initiative was passed, been quite aggressive in pursuit of cannabis businesses — and jobs.

Ned Barowsky

Ned Barowsky

“I’m working with a development group that wants to put in more retail — perhaps a few drive-thrus, a coffee shop, and maybe some fast food, with some traditional retail in back. The plans are still coming together.”

And, as the mayor noted earlier, 2020 is shaping up as a year when many of the businesses that have been putting down roots, to use an industry phrase, will start to see their efforts bear fruit.

True Leaf has been aggressively building out its massive space, said Marrero, and it is expected to employ more than 100 people when it that cultivation and processing operation opens later this year. Other similar businesses are also in the process of readying spaces, including Boston Bud Co., Solierge, and Canna Provisions, which will soon be opening a dispensary in downtown Holyoke.

“Once they open, that will create a lot more economic activity, including hiring, and as soon as they have sales, that will also generate income for the city,” he went on, adding that there will be a ramp-up period for the cultivators as the first crops grow. But when these companies are fully operational, he expects that more than 200 jobs will be added.

Meanwhile, mill space continues to be absorbed by this sector, he said, adding that 5 Appleton St. was recently acquired for cannabis-related uses, bringing the total amount of real estate sold or under option to roughly 500,000 square feet, by his estimates, thus creating speculation, and even concern, that no one could have imagined even a decade ago.

“Eight years ago, the concern was that there was too much empty space,” said Marrero. “The long-term proposition and concern for someone in my position is that we might be running out of inventory, which is funny to think, but it could happen.”

What’s in Store

Meanwhile, retail is also an economic-development strategy, or at least a key contributor to the city’s tax base and overall vibrancy. It remains so, but that sector is changing, primarily because of the city’s new corporate citizen, Amazon, and others like it. The landscape is changing — figuratively, but also quite literally.

Evidence of this change is evident at Holyoke Mall Crossing, a retail center just off I-91 at the intersection of Holyoke Street and Lower Westfield Road. Actually, it’s more a former retail center, said owner Ned Barowsky, who acquired the property in 1996. Indeed, a number of former retail spaces now have different uses, as homes to professionals, healthcare facilities, and service providers, as evidenced by the current tenant list.

It includes Baystate Dental, Rehab Solutions, Ross Webber & Grinnell Insurance, ServiceNet, Vonnahme Eye, Great Clips, and H&R Block. It doesn’t include Kaoud Oriental Rugs and Pier 1, two long-time tenants that became the latest retail outlets to leave that location, leaving 13,000 square feet of contiguous space on the ground floor that Barowsky is now working aggressively to lease with ads touting this as “the best location in Western Mass.” And he expects that there will be more healthcare and professionals in this space instead of traditional retailers.

“Slowly but surely, I’ve been converting my building, which was once 100% retail, into office and medical uses,” he said, adding that he expects this trend, which started roughly a decade ago, to continue. “The only true retail left is Hunt’s Photo and Video, which is doing very well.”

Because of the location at the junction of the turnpike and I-91, he said, the site would be ideal for medical practices and other healthcare-related businesses, and he’s already talked with several interested parties.

While spending most of his time and energy working to fill Holyoke Mall Crossing, Barowsky is in early-stage work on a new retail development on a five-acre parcel adjacent to that property that he acquired from the mall. His primary motivation was to create more parking for the healthcare and service-oriented businesses now populating the Crossing, and he will keep one acre for that purpose. As for the rest, a vision is coming into focus.

“I’m working with a development group that wants to put in more retail — perhaps a few drive-thrus, a coffee shop, and maybe some fast food, with some traditional retail in back,” he told BusinessWest. “The plans are still coming together.”

Meanwhile, at the Holyoke Mall, which recently marked 40 years of dominating the local retail landscape, the landscape is shifting there as well, from traditional retail — although there is still plenty of that — to family entertainment and recreation.

“They’re been very savvy about remaining relevant, not like other malls,” said Marrero, citing recent additions such as a Planet Fitness and bowling alleys, as well as new theaters now under construction in the site once occupied by Sears. “They’re integrating a lot more lifestyle entertainment.”

Barowsky, who, as noted, has been a neighbor of the mall for a quarter-century, said that facility is still thriving because of its ability to adjust and put emphasis on entertainment at a time when traditional retail is struggling.

“They’re doing a lot of entertainment-related things to get people in, and hopefully people will shop while they’re there,” he said. “They’re doing a great job of adjusting — the parking lot is still full all the time.”

While the mall is evolving, so too is the downtown area, said Marrero, adding that several new businesses have opened in recent months and more are in the planning stages, including a restaurant, Jud’s, along the Canal Walk; a high-end salon called the Plan, which describes itself as a “sustainable, mission-driven beauty company” and “a force for positive change”; and the Avalon Café, a lounge and game café expected to open soon on Dwight Street.

Most of the growth involves small businesses, said those we spoke with, noting that this organic growth will likely inspire additional vibrancy across many sectors.

“When a forest burns, the forest doesn’t grow back by planting a giant oak tree in the middle of it,” said Marrero. “You have to organically grow an economic ecosystem that feeds off of itself and allows bigger businesses to come in; it’s the small businesses that start putting together the foundation for a place where people want to work and live and enjoy the surroundings.”

Building Blocks

This is what Holyoke has been building toward, said all those we spoke with — building that economic ecosystem that feeds off itself.

There are, as noted, a number of moving parts, from cannabis-related ventures to the small businesses in the accelerator cohorts at EforAll, to the new entertainment options at the Holyoke Mall.

As with the cannabis sector itself, the pieces are coming together slowly but surely. And 2020 is shaping up as a year when it all comes together.

George O’Brien can be reached at [email protected]

Education

Joint Effort

Jeff Hayden says the Cannabis Education Center is a much-needed training ground that will support the growth of an industry on the rise in Holyoke and across Massachusetts.

Investment, job creation, and tax revenue.

According to Jeff Hayden, vice president of Business and Community Services at Holyoke Community College (HCC), these are the three keys to economic development.

They’re also precisely what the cannabis industry is bringing to the state of Massachusetts, which is why HCC has created the Cannabis Education Center, a new series of non-credit courses that provide skilled workforce training to prepare participants for a career in the cannabis industry.

HCC has partnered with the Cannabis Community Care and Research Network (C3RN) to create the first-ever cannabis training center in the state, and classes and programs are in full swing.

Hayden said the conversation about a cannabis training course started two and a half years ago, when discussion was heating up across the Bay State about the prospects of legal, adult-use cannabis — and how the Cannabis Control Commission would handle an expected proliferation of businesses. Once word got out that the commission would be licensing companies — and, therefore, creating jobs in the state — HCC jumped into action.

“Right now, there are about 75 employees in Holyoke who work for cannabis companies, but the projection is that, within a year of those licenses being granted to them, there will be somewhere between 400 or 500 employees in Holyoke.”

“When we heard that, we started to look around for different resources to try to learn more about what was going to happen, and especially what was going to happen in terms of the workforce training and how does someone get ready for the jobs that are going to come in this field,” he told BusinessWest.

About 14 companies have already applied for 21 licenses, and counting, in Holyoke alone. Two are active, both run by Green Thumb Industries on Appleton Street, and the rest are provisional or pending. But that won’t be the case for long.

“Right now, there are about 75 employees in Holyoke who work for cannabis companies, but the projection is that, within a year of those licenses being granted to them, there will be somewhere between 400 or 500 employees in Holyoke,” Hayden said.

Soon, the demand for trained, qualified employees in several different cannabis careers will skyrocket, and there needs to be people to fill those positions.

That’s where HCC comes in.

Growing Like a Weed

Hayden says there are currently five key pillars under the Cannabis Education Center’s umbrella: community education, meaning teaching people all about the cannabis industry; social-equity training; occupational training; custom contract training to cannabis businesses, including communication, leadership, and mentorship skills; and developing different trainings that would be useful for the industry.

Sage Franetovich says there’s a lot of curiosity around the subject of cannabis, and she expects the career prospects to draw people from different backgrounds.

“In all these pillars that we have, we hope that we’re providing a broad-based approach to the industry to either the job seeker or the business so that they can get the training and skills they need either to get on that career track or to be able to be a successful business,” said Hayden. “The hope, really, in terms of what they walk away with, are stackable credentials.”

A few examples of rising careers in this industry are cannabis culinary assistant, cannabis retail/patient advocate, cannabis cultivation assistant, and cannabis extraction technician assistant.

But HCC’s cannabis education doesn’t stop at the center. The college is also soon to offer its first credit-based cannabis-related course, called “Cannabis Today,” through its Sustainability Studies program. While no cannabis will be allowed on campus, the programs will use off-site locations for programs that require practice with the plant.

Sage Franetovich, Biology professor at HCC, will be teaching the class and said she has been working on developing the curriculum for the fall of 2020, and hopefully sooner, in the summer, if all goes well.

“With a response to the growing market and job market, we decided it would be a good fit to offer a course on cannabis cultivation with a focus on hemp,” she said.

The class will target topics such as the cultivation of hemp, indoor growing versus outdoor growing, and plant diseases and pest management.

Franetovich said she has been working with several people in the cannabis industry to develop the best possible curriculum for the class. “I think there’s a lot of curiosity around the subject, and I think that will be a draw for people from different backgrounds.”

All this activity comes in response to what will soon be incredibly high (no pun intended) demand for a cannabis workforce.

“When you start to think about that many new people coming in, that’s the equivalent of some of the large things that have happened regionally, like the CRRC company in Springfield, or MGM,” Hayden said.

And this center is striving to prepare people for careers in cannabis with everything from knowledge of the cannabis plant to knowledge of the industry itself, to understanding the commission’s regulations and how those impact the way they’ll do their jobs.

For example, a culinary technician working with edibles needs to know some of the ways the chemicals impact the edible product, specific measurements, levels of dosing, and more.

In the end, all this training is an investment that will, hopefully, bring the city of Holyoke a lot of jobs, and a lot of revenue.

High Expectations

Hayden estimates that between $20 million and $30 million has already been invested in the cannabis industry in Holyoke alone, despite only two operating licenses so far. He says the taxes going to the state will be significant, but 3% of sales also goes to the municipality. That means $1 million in sales equals $30,000 in taxes for the city of Holyoke.

“It’s a significant amount of money that the town can garner,” he said. “This past year, we’ve already received over $100,000 from cannabis-related companies for the city of Holyoke with only two licenses.”

And, so far, the response to the center has been positive, he noted. One of the first programs, a one-time class on the business and accounting side, drew 15 participants, and more than 100 people have expressed interest in training.

The first occupational training course began on Jan. 25 at the HCC MGM Culinary Arts Institute and will continue for five more Saturdays for eight hours a day. C3RN will then place those who successfully complete the course in internships with local companies.

The ultimate goal of all these trainings is not simply to hand participants a diploma, but give them several certifications that will allow them to thrive in every aspect of the field.

“That’s really what we’re shooting for, someone who’s got multiple pieces of paper,” Hayden said. “It’s not just one diploma, it’s multiple pieces of paper that show to an employer that they’re ready for the job and that they can learn from the employer in terms of the skills they need for the future.”

Kayla Ebner can be reached at [email protected]

Law

Cannabis, Marijuana, and Hemp

By Chris St. Martin and Sarah Morgan

Late last month, the U.S. Department of Agriculture published regulations on domestic hemp production. However, there remains significant confusion surrounding the legality of cannabis, marijuana, and hemp.

Chris St. Martin

Sarah Morgan

This confusion comes from state and federal governments’ shifting approaches to regulating these industries. It is even more difficult to understand the legal framework surrounding retail sales, which include hemp and CBD products, as well as marijuana products sold by state-licensed dispensaries. In this article, we hope to provide some clarity regarding what the laws say about cannabis and how they are being enforced.

What Is Cannabis?

Cannabis is a plant genus, or family, composed of three species: Cannabis sativa, Cannabis indica, and Cannabis ruderalis. The species have physical variations between them that allow them to grow in different environments, flower at different periods during the growth cycle, and contain different chemical properties (see discussion on cannabinoids below) that produce different sensations when ingested.

Strains (think, ‘flavors’) produced from the Cannabis sativa species tend to incite feelings of euphoria, boost energy and creativity, and lead to a more head-focused high. Cannabis indica, alternatively, primarily affects the body, and is often helpful in reducing muscle aches and pains and inducing sleep. For these reasons, strains cultivated from indica plants tend to be more useful for medicinal purposes.

“THC, or tetrahydrocannabinol, is the cannabinoid responsible primarily for producing the psychoactive effect, or the ‘high,’ commonly associated with ingesting cannabis.”

Cannabis ruderalis is somewhat between sativa and indica, and has lower yields, but can often be cross-bred with other species to create medicinal strains. The stems of this species can also be used to make clothing and textiles.

The flowering buds of the cannabis plant produce a resin that contains cannabinoids, which are unique chemical compounds found only in cannabis and interact with different receptors in the user’s central nervous system to produce the effects described above.

The ratio of the cannabinoids in a particular strain depends on the genetics of the plant from which it is derived — in other words, how the plant has been bred by selectively combining sativa and indica plants to emphasize particular cannabinoids over others and create a unique strain with individualized characteristics.

More than 100 cannabinoids have been identified, most notably THC and CBD.

THC, or tetrahydrocannabinol, is the cannabinoid responsible primarily for producing the psychoactive effect, or the ‘high,’ commonly associated with ingesting cannabis. Although THC is most notable for its psychoactive properties, it has also been purported to have medical benefits on the user and can be used to treat a variety of conditions, including seizures, inflammation, pain, nausea, depression, and anxiety.

CBD, or cannabidiol, has anti-anxiety effects on the user and is utilized primarily for its purported medicinal benefits. It does not produce psychoactive effects (in fact, it may lessen the psychoactive effects of THC), and, for this reason, although CBD and THC have similar medicinal benefits, some people may choose to ingest only CBD to avoid feeling the ‘high’ brought about by THC.

CBD can be extracted from the resin of the cannabis plant and can be processed into essential oils, tinctures, and other non-smokable forms. CBD can even be added to body-care products and applied topically.

Marijuana or Hemp?

The term ‘marijuana’ is generally used to identify cannabis that is cultivated for its intoxicating effect on a user. Marijuana was made effectively illegal under federal law with the passage of the Marijuana Tax Act of 1937.

The Legislature later classified, and criminalized, marijuana as a Schedule 1 narcotic under the Controlled Substance Act of 1970, during the nascent ‘war on drugs’ declared by President Nixon. Classification as Schedule 1 — alongside heroin, LSD, and ecstasy — means that marijuana is deemed to have no currently accepted medical use and a high potential of abuse.

Public sentiment has recently begun to reject this classification of marijuana and the total federal prohibition. Although, at this writing, marijuana remains illegal at the federal level, 11 states, including Massachusetts, and the District of Columbia, have passed laws legalizing marijuana for recreational use, and 23 others have legalized the use of medical marijuana. Since 2016 in Massachusetts, individuals age 21 or older may possess up to an ounce or more on their person and up to 10 ounces in their homes without violating Massachusetts law.

The Cannabis Control Commission (CCC), the agency tasked with regulating the state’s marijuana industry, provides further information regarding the Massachusetts law on its website.

Cannabis that is selectively bred for non-intoxicating properties is considered ‘hemp.’ Industrial hemp is one of the oldest cultivated crops in the world and is useful in formulating textiles, rope, paper, plastics, insulation, oil, and body-care products. Because of this selective breeding, hemp plants contain only trace amounts of THC, but their CBD levels are unchanged.

“State and federal legal developments have created a confusing CBD marketplace. Stores everywhere are selling CBD products intended for human consumption and making health claims about such products. However, both types of sales are illegal, according to state and federal agencies.”

Hemp is cultivated to enhance its distinctively versatile qualities, such as longer, more fibrous stalks and shorter leaves, rather than for the leaves and flower buds for which marijuana plants are cultivated. Because of this, hemp cannot be consumed as an intoxicant. Nevertheless, the Controlled Substances Act did not distinguish between marijuana and hemp (since both are technically cannabis) in classifying marijuana as a Schedule I substance; therefore, hemp was swept up in the heyday of the war on drugs and made illegal.

Changing Legal Framework

Under the Farm Bill of 2018, the U.S. Congress, for the first time, legalized the production and sale of hemp at the federal level, eliminating its status as a Schedule I narcotic. The Farm Bill and regulations define hemp as cannabis containing not more than 0.3% THC. Cannabis plants containing any quantity of THC above that amount are classified as marijuana, and remain illegal under federal law. In late October, the USDA published interim regulations on hemp production, which means they are subject to change after a public comment period but were effective immediately.

These regulations also set forth licensing requirements, procedures for testing THC levels and disposal of non-compliant plants, and rules governing other aspects of the industry.

The FDA has taken a more cautious approach, citing concerns about whether CBD is safe to consume in food and supplements. In an April 2019 statement, the agency sought to clarify its position on hemp products. The statement indicated that enforcement resources are directed toward illegal sales of CBD products that claim to prevent, diagnose, treat, or cure serious diseases, such as cancer.

However, it also stated that it is unlawful to introduce CBD-containing food into interstate commerce or to market CBD products as dietary supplements.

This means that effectively all CBD food products, including those derived from legally grown hemp, are unlawful, according to the FDA. The only hemp products that can be legally added to foods are hulled hemp seed, hemp-seed protein powder, and hemp-seed oil, because the seed of the hemp plant contains neither CBD nor THC.

The FDA has undertaken to develop CBD regulations, but despite repeated urging from the USDA and members of Congress, the former FDA commissioner indicated that that the rule-making process around CBD food products would be more complex than conventional products and could take years.

Massachusetts legalized hemp production as a component of the same 2016 law that legalized recreational cannabis. However, after the change of law at the federal level, both the state Department of Agricultural Resources and Department of Public Health issued policy statements on the same day imposing strict rules on hemp products. These two statements echo the FDA’s prohibitions on adding CBD to food products and making health claims about CBD.

What Can We Buy and Sell?

These state and federal legal developments have created a confusing CBD marketplace. Stores everywhere are selling CBD products intended for human consumption and making health claims about such products. However, both types of sales are illegal, according to state and federal agencies. Consumers, retailers, growers, and other stakeholders are looking for information about what is legal, what is not, and why there is so much ambiguity.

CBD derived from marijuana remains illegal under federal law. However, the U.S. attorney in Massachusetts has indicated he will not direct his office’s resources to federally prosecute cannabis companies that are permitted under state law, a move that has allowed the cannabis industry in Massachusetts to flourish. Under this state’s regulatory regime, marijuana products containing CBD, as well as THC, can be bought and sold at cannabis dispensaries that are licensed by the CCC.

Retailers in Massachusetts sell cannabis flower, edibles, concentrates, and other forms of marijuana containing both THC and CBD. CCC regulations do not classify edible marijuana products as food, allowing dispensaries to sell CBD-infused edibles without contravening the state Department of Public Health’s policy.

In contrast, despite the federal and state legality of producing hemp, some of the most popular hemp-derived CBD products — food and supplements — cannot be sold under either state or federal law. Nevertheless, the CBD industry may avoid total extinction, since CBD can be added to topical lotions and other cosmetics without defying the laws.

Non-food CBD products, however, represent a small percentage of the potential uses of CBD, and the loss of a valuable opportunity for introducing additional, more profitable products containing CBD into the marketplace adds further demand for the FDA to promulgate its promised CBD rules. Furthermore, hemp can be legally sold for rope, clothing, building material, and other non-ingestible uses, but hemp farmers have stated that Massachusetts currently lacks the manufacturing infrastructure necessary to process the plant for these purposes.

Chris St. Martin and Sarah Morgan are both litigation associates at Bulkley Richardson; (413) 781-2820.

Banking and Financial Services

Growing Concern

The American Bankers Assoc. argued it’s critical that legal, cannabis-related businesses have access to the regulated banking system as it urged the Senate to advance the SAFE Banking Act in recent testimony before the Senate Banking Committee.

Joanne Sherwood, president and CEO of Citywide Banks in Denver and chair of the Colorado Bankers Assoc., testified on behalf of ABA. Sherwood explained how current federal law prevents financial institutions from banking any money derived from cannabis-related businesses and how a narrow, banking-specific remedy to the cannabis banking problem will reap immediate public-safety, tax, and regulatory benefits.

“Because cannabis continues to be illegal at the federal level, handling funds associated with cannabis businesses can be deemed money laundering,” said Sherwood. “That federal/state divide has particularly severe repercussions for banks and communities like mine, where the cannabis industry is fully operational, but it also impacts banks in every state.”

With limited access to banking services available, large amounts of cash remain on site in many of the cannabis-related businesses, which creates significant safety concerns for the communities where they are located. For example, on average, more than 100 burglaries occur at cannabis businesses each year in Denver, according to the Denver Police Department.

“Providing a mechanism for the cannabis industry to access the regulated banking system would help those businesses and their surrounding communities by reducing the high volume of cash on hand, thereby reducing instances of cash-motivated crime,” Sherwood said.

Additionally, since many cannabis businesses do not have a bank account, they are forced to pay their taxes in cash at local IRS offices. Processing paper-based returns costs the IRS nearly 17 times more compared to an e-filed return — a cost borne by taxpayers. Cash-based taxpayers are also more likely to underreport income than those who receive payment by check or those subject to third-party reporting or withholding.

“Banking the cannabis industry is a straightforward way to ensure that businesses have the means and motivation to remain fully tax-compliant,” Sherwood said.

The SAFE Banking Act, which is currently before the committee for consideration, would help address this urgent problem. The bill specifies that proceeds from a state-licensed cannabis business would not be considered unlawful under federal money-laundering statutes or any other federal law and directs the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network and federal banking regulators to issue guidance and exam procedures for banks doing business with legitimate cannabis-related businesses.

“Although the SAFE Banking Act does not cure all of the cannabis-related banking challenges, it would help the 33 states that have legalized cannabis in some form to make their communities safer, collect their taxes, and regulate their cannabis markets effectively,” said Sherwood. “ABA supports the SAFE Banking Act and urges the committee to mark up and advance this legislation as soon as possible.”

Cover Story Uncategorized

Cannabis Ink.

Michael Kusek

Suffice it to say the cannabis industry in Massachusetts is growing and changing at a torrid pace, and it will continue at this speed for some time to come. There are myriad aspects to this sector, from the many different kinds of businesses within it to the dizzying number of products now on the shelves. Michael Kusek, a veteran journalist, has now made it his business — literally and figuratively — to help the public understand all it needs to know.

$20 billion.

That’s the number Michael Kusek offered — somewhat reluctantly and after some hemming and hawing — when he was asked to try to guesstimate how big the still-fledgling cannabis industry might become in the Bay State.

He was reluctant because no one really knows the answer to that question at this point, and they may not for some time. And Kusek knows that better than anyone, which is why he was asked in the first place.

Indeed, Kusek has established himself as the pre-eminent journalist in these parts when it comes to the broad, as in very broad, subject of cannabis, status earned by starting a publication devoted entirely to that subject.

It’s called A Different Leaf, with the subtitle A Journal of Cannabis Culture, and it hit the streets — that’s an industry term — just a few weeks ago. This will be a quarterly publication, sticker price $7 ($10 in Canada), and it now carries the tagline “Bringing You the Best of Cannabis in Massachusetts.”

It is, as Kusek will tell you himself, just the latest of many entrepreneurial endeavors rooted in (yes, that will be the first of many puns you’ll read) the cannabis industry. And he obviously believes it will be a success.

The first issue provides ample evidence of the fact that this subject matter, and this industry, are now quite broad, and Kusek and his team will have plenty to write about. Story headlines include these:

• “Tale of Two Cities: Cannabis may be legal statewide, but what gives with certain cities?”;

• The Grandfather of Cannabis: If you want to learn Massachusetts cannabis history, start with Lester Grinspoon”;

• “And Justice for All: The cannabis industry holds huge promise for new jobs, but who is getting to start companies?”;

• “The Women of Cannabis: These women are shaping the industry”;

• “Going Gourmet with Cannabis: Chef David Yusefzadah’s gourmet take on cannabis edibles and fine dining”; and even

• “Sex & Cannabis: Strategies for combining sex and cannabis.”

To put out such a publication credibly, Kusek has obviously had to set himself up as an authority on this subject, something few other individuals can claim. And as BusinessWest talked with him, he certainly spoke the part.

The cover of the first issue of A Different Leaf, featuring a piggy bank with the word ‘weed’ on it, sends a strong message about the industry and its potential impact in and on the Bay State.

When asked about the pace of businesses opening and some of the latest additions to the landscape, he rattled off the names of new dispensaries in far corners of the state. He knows which communities have voted to ban such enterprises, and he’s even put together a color-coded map to show people the breakdown, a map he says is quite revealing and shows a different twist on business in the Bay State when it comes to east-west dynamics.

“Start on the Cape, and at Provincetown and work your way west — from Provincetown to the elbow, all legal; from the elbow to the armpit, all banned,” he explained. “You get to the South Coast, there’s a smattering, a few banned, and then you get to the suburbs of Boston: the majority of ‘banneds’ in the state form a giant red ‘C’ around the city of Boston, which is this green dot right in the middle.

“That ‘C’ ends at Route 495,” he went on. “And from there to the Berkshires and the New York border, it’s all green with the exception of a handful of towns. So in a state where the gravitational pull of Boston for industry is so strong, the cannabis industry is 495 west.”

As for that question about how big the industry might get in the Bay State, Kusek offered that number, $20 billion — the high end, he acknowledged — but quickly added a caveat.

“In a state where the gravitational pull of Boston for industry is so strong, the cannabis industry is 495 west.”

“It all depends on what our neighbors do,” he explained, noting that, while Massachusetts is alone in the Northeast when it comes to states that have legalized cannabis and also have mechanisms in place for selling it, this probably won’t be the case for long.

As for how big the playing field might get in terms of locations and how many might eventually become too many, Kusek said the market will essentially determine this.

“Right now, there are only 20 businesses in the state, and they’re all pretty much opening their doors to a reasonably healthy amount of traffic,” he said. “That’s going to change over time.”

For this issue, BusinessWest talked at length with Kusek about his new publication, but mostly about the business of cannabis what dimensions in might take in the years to come and how this ultra-intriguing development will change life in the Bay State.

Stirring the Pot

“I didn’t smoke pot until college, when one night my freshman roommate and a friend sparked up my first joint. Two things happened: I didn’t get high, but my fear of cannabis evaporated. This thing I had been taught would ruin my life didn’t seem frightening — and from there it became part of my social life.”

That’s how Kusek began his “From the Editor” piece that introduced his magazine to the reader on page 3 of the first edition. He would go on to talk about how he found that cannabis helped him sleep better, and a few sentences later, he hit at the heart of what this venture is all about.

“Much of the cannabis media is aimed at people who are knowledgeable about cannabis, work in the industry, and/or are in their 20s. Where was the magazine for the older occasional user looking to expand their horizon now that legalization is real?” he wrote, adding that A Different Leaf is the answer to that question.

This map, indicating which communities have banned cannabis businesses (red) and which ones haven’t (green), shows how Western and Central Mass. are the big players in this emerging industry.

It is, indeed, intended for those who, like Kusek in his freshman dorm room, may have overcome their fear of cannabis (that’s may) but still have questions about this product that until very recently was illegal in this state. And Kusek backed up his assumptions that there are many, many people in this category with some anecdotes.

He mentioned a woman in her 70s who was wondering, as he did, if cannabis might help her sleep better without having to resort to sleeping pills, while a younger man asked him if cannabis might provide some relief for his aching knees.

These are the kinds of questions, coupled with growing certainty that a publication targeted to the people who were asking them would be viable and profitable, that prompted Kusek to greenlight his media venture.

Actually, it’s his latest media venture.

Indeed, Kusek, who told BusinessWest he has ink in his veins, has an extensive background in journalism, a second career launched after years of working as a development professional left him looking for something new and different.

“People started running in the other direction when they saw me,” he joked, referring to the latter stages of work raising money for various institutions, including the Springfield Symphony Orchestra.

He changed course and went into public relations and communications work for several years, and while doing that was recruited to handle marketing for the Valley Advocate.

“I had been on the outside of media for a number of years, but this was my first professional stint inside the media, and I really liked it,” he said. “I thought I liked the journalism side of it, which I do; I’m fascinated by it. But what I really began to get interested in was the business side of media.”

He left the Advocate in 2008 with designs to start an arts magazine for New England, but quickly surmised that 2008, the climax of the Great Recession, wasn’t a good time to start any business, so he put those plans on ice and went back into communications.

When times were better, the start of 2014, he launched Take, an arts and culture magazine that, while well-received by readers and crtitics, “never found its niche with advertisers,” said Kusek.

By 2017, Take was winding down, and Kusek was again looking for another challenge. He found one, eventually, in cannabis and a need he identified to create something for older, as in over 50, audiences.

There is a need to stress eventually, because he Kusek certainly didn’t rush into this. He said he did his homework, in the form of extensive research concerning both the emerging industry and the press devoted to it.

“I went to the Barnes & Noble in Hadley and purchased every cannabis magazine they had on the stands, and then I drove to the one in the Northampton and did the same thing,” he recalled, adding that, by the time he was done, he had quite a pile.

He would break these publications down into three categories — the ‘legacy’ magazines such as the well-known High Times, a huge number of business-to-business magazines, and a smaller number of titles he labeled ‘bro’ magazines, aimed at a decidedly younger audience.

What was missing from this pile, he determined, was something devoted to those 50 and over and not exactly experts on this subject.

Growing Like Weed

He describes what he came up with to fill that void this way: “Wine Spectator meets High Times for the 45-to-50-plus crowd,” an intriguing combination editorially that he was reasonably certain would be well-received.

But he knew that solid content without advertising support wasn’t going to get him very far. So he said his next step was to Google ‘cannabis and advertising,’ and the first thing that came up was a Boston Globe article quoting sources talking about how businesses within the cannabis industry were struggling to find media outlets to take their advertising dollars.

“I said, ‘I can take their advertising dollars,’” he told BusinessWest, adding that laws prohibit such companies from advertising on the Google Display Network, Facebook, and other platforms. “I thought there was some space there from a revenue standpoint.”

The first issue gives some evidence of this space, with ads from a number of recreational and medical dispensaries, agencies such as the Mass. Recreational Consumer Council, a hydroponics outfit, and businesses that support the industry, such as Brigade, a Hadley-based company that has helped a number of cannabis-related businesses with branding.

“I think the biggest threat to what could be a really interesting and dynamic industry is if big money rolls over the small businesses. You have some large multi-state operators that could, with their capital, become like Dunkin, with locations on every corner; they have enough capital to make that happen.”

With enough of these advertisers secured — and it took some time to secure them — Kusek decided to let the presses roll. He’s optimistic about the venture and predicts that, as the industry grows and more businesses across the sector open their doors and then desire to market their goods and services, he will have a sustainable business model. And looking down the road, he said the venture could certainly be expanded into other states and parts of the country as legalization continues to spread.

While watching for business opportunities, Kusek is also watching the industry as it grows and evolves in the Bay State. And while watching, he noted that things are certainly happening quickly and the picture is changing almost every day, something he finds both intriguing and challenging as a journalist.

“What’s interesting about being in the industry as a relative newcomer is how dynamic it is and how it changes week to week and month to month,” he noted. “There are always new businesses coming into the pipeline, and there’s new people coming on to the scene. As a journalist sort of keeping an eye on that industry, it’s a lot — there’s a lot of info coming in.

“In this business, a week feels like a month, and a month feels like a year because things move so quickly,” he went on. “We’re in a state where highway improvements are measured in 20- or 30-year increments, so the idea that we have a state agency that got an industry up and running in two years is pretty amazing.”

Also intriguing is the high level of transparency in this new industry, something Kusek said is unique within state government — “you don’t see the head of the DMV writing any open letters right now” — which he believes is a byproduct of expectations.

“This is an industry that grew out of a political movement,” he explained. “Legalization was a political movement, so you have activists, even though it’s legal, continue to pay attention. You have patient activists continue to pay attention to the medical program to make sure it’s serving people really, really well.

“And that’s very different from saying, ‘we’re going to expand the alcohol program, and there are a bunch of activists making sure it’s done right,’” he continued. “Lobbyists, yes, but activists? That’s a different story, and that’s been the genesis for the openness you get from the cannabis commission. If you want to follow how this industry grows, you can look in and see how the sausage is made.”

Stirring the Pot

Kusek said he has been struck by, and quite impressed by, the entrepreneurs now doing business across this broad sector.

They are pioneers of sorts, he said, charting new territory in a fledgling industry, and they’re also survivors in what has become a rugged contest to gain a license and open the doors to a business, an assignment far more difficult than it might look to the casual observer.

“I spend a lot of time with people in this industry, and I have rarely met harder-working people,” he told BusinessWest. “The idea of these people being lazy stoners is far from the truth. These people work around the clock to make their businesses work, and you have to give them credit for that, because it’s not easy.

“They got a lot of curveballs thrown at them,” he added, referring to, among other things, the often complex and taxing host-community agreements and the many hurdles that must be cleared on the way to getting a license. “These people just keep slogging forward, and it’s pretty impressive.”

Elaborating, he said it takes at least a year to attain a license, and there are significant upfront costs and expenses to be incurred before one can earn a nickel.

“One of the challenges with opening a cannabis business is that the license is attached to an address,” he explained. “So once you get your host-community agreement and start the application process, you have to buy or rent a building. And it can take months before you get that license; there’s a pretty good burn rate on your capital before you earn any money.”

This hard reality was one of the factors that delayed the first issue of A Different Leaf, he said, adding that many of the businesses he was counting on to support that venture were still waiting to secure a license.

When asked to look down the road and project what the scene might look like in a year or two — or 10 — Kusek reiterated that this is difficult because Massachusetts certainly won’t be the only state in the Northeast doing this for much longer.

At present, large numbers of people are crossing over the borders to the Bay State to buy cannabis products, he said, adding that soon, a relative term to be sure, they may not have to.

When asked about what might go wrong as the industry expands and broadens its influence, Kusek this, too, is difficult to project.

“I think the biggest threat to what could be a really interesting and dynamic industry is if big money rolls over the small businesses,” he explained. “You have some large, multi-state operators that could, with their capital, become like Dunkin’, with locations on every corner; they have enough capital to make that happen.”

At present, the Cannabis Control Commission has governors in place to limit such a threat, he added quickly, noting that entities are currently limited to three stores. But moving forward, the state needs to keep such measures in place to prevent monopolies from developing.

Meanwhile, there is the state’s Social Equity Program, designed to provide a pathway for individuals and businesses in communities of “disproportionate impact” to enter the adult-use cannabis marketplace. That program is laudable, said Kusek, and it provides opportunities for certain demographic populations, but these individuals face stern challenges to enter the growing cannabis marketplace.

“Overall, I think the state is doing a commendable job, from where I sit, trying to balance fostering small businesses, fostering this cadre of businesses that are applying under the Social Equity Program, with the big companies that are coming to Massachusetts,” he said. “It’s a very delicate balancing act.”

What also remains to be seen is how and to what extent the cannabis industry and players within it become part of the business community on a regional and statewide basis, he said.

“Cannabis people are thinking, ‘are we going to be welcome?’” he said. “Traditional industry organizations like AIM [Associated Industries of Massachusetts]… AIM was not in favor of legalization, but now it’s like, ‘we have this multi-billion industry on our hands — how do we make them part of our organization?’ It will be interesting to see how traditional industries embrace this.”

Give and Toke

“One thing I’ve discovered about cannabis in the last year is that it is a topic full of evolution, learning, and change.”

That’s how Kusek chose to essentially wrap up his initial message to his readers.

To some, that might seem like understatement given how the landscape has changed over the past year and how it is destined to continuing changing in the months to come.

But it also a reality.

Kusek now has a front-row seat for one of the most compelling business stories in this state’s history, and he is really enjoying both the view and the challenge of trying to capture it all.

George O’Brien can be reached at [email protected]

Law

What’s Next for the Cannabis Industry?

The cannabis industry is off to a fast and quite intriguing start in the Bay State, and two new categories of license have particular potential to move this sector in new directions: one for home delivery of cannabis products, and another for social-consumption establishments, or cannabis cafés.

By Isaac C. Fleisher, Esq.

We are nearly three years into the Commonwealth’s experiment with recreational cannabis, and the industry is finally moving beyond an amusing novelty.

The Cannabis Control Commission (CCC) reports that retail sales in 2019 alone have already exceeded $190 million, and this is just the tip of the iceberg. To date, the CCC has issued only 72 final licenses for marijuana establishments, but there are currently another 400 license applications that are pending or have received provisional approval.

Isaac C. Fleisher

This all means that, over the next few years, the Massachusetts cannabis industry is set to grow at an unprecedented rate. What we don’t know is how this growth will change and shape the industry.

Much of the excitement and rhetoric around legalization has focused on the potential to create new business and employment opportunities for communities that have been disproportionately harmed by prohibition and for local entrepreneurs. Lawmakers attempted to pursue these goals (with mixed success) through the design of the original regulations, with provisions for local control by cities and towns, special categories for equity applicants, and caps on the number of licenses that a single business could control.

The CCC has recently been grappling with these issues once again as it revises its regulations.

On July 2, after months of policy discussions and hearings, the CCC released new draft regulations for both medical and recreational marijuana, which will be open for public comment until Aug. 16. While most casual observers will not find the draft regulations to be scintillating reading material, there are a number of interesting new provisions that can tell us a lot about what the future of Massachusetts’ cannabis industry could look like.

Two new categories of license have particular potential to move the cannabis industry in new directions; one for home delivery of cannabis products, and another for social-consumption establishments (i.e., cannabis cafés).

Social Consumption

A social-consumption license would authorize businesses to sell cannabis products to customers for on-site consumption. Just think of your neighborhood bar, but it serves cannabis instead of alcohol. Under the proposed regulations, cannabis could be consumed at a social-consumption establishment in almost any form, except for combustible (i.e. smoking it the old-fashioned way), but even that possibility is left open by a provision for an outdoor smoking waiver.

Cannabis edibles would have to be prepackaged and shelf-stable, but there is no prohibition on serving prepared food on site, so long as the food isn’t directly infused with marijuana. That means we could soon be seeing cannabis restaurants that offer gourmet food alongside gourmet pot.

“There is no prohibition on serving prepared food on site, so long as the food isn’t directly infused with marijuana. That means we could soon be seeing cannabis restaurants that offer gourmet food alongside gourmet pot.”

The CCC is taking an incremental approach to this new class of license by including provisions for a social-consumption pilot program that would be limited to only 12 municipalities. Towns that participated in a working group on social consumption — including North Adams, Amherst, Springfield, Provincetown, and Somerville — would be among those able to opt into the pilot program. Licenses would initially be available only to applicants that were already licensed as a ‘microbusiness’ or a ‘craft marijuana cooperative,’ or applicants certified by the CCC as an ‘economic empowerment’ applicant or ‘social equity’ applicant. The pilot program is an interesting attempt to address the demand for new cannabis markets, while still preserving access for small, local, and minority-owned businesses.

Home Delivery

A licensed ‘delivery-only retailer’ could deliver marijuana products directly to a customer’s residence. Advocates for home delivery have long touted its potential to level the playing field between large, well-funded businesses and the small, local entrepreneurs the CCC seeks to attract.

In theory, a delivery-only licensee wouldn’t need much more than a vehicle in order to begin operating. However, the draft regulations include a number of provisions that could create substantial barriers to entry for small-time operators. Home-delivery orders would still need to go through a traditional brick-and-mortar retailer, who would presumably not be particularly interested in providing their product to competitors at wholesale prices.

Additionally, the draft regulations prohibit deliveries to any residence in a town that has banned brick-and-mortar retailers.

Numerous security provisions included in the draft regulations create further costly (and controversial) requirements for delivery-only retailers. Each delivery vehicle would need multiple surveillance cameras, and delivery agents would need to wear body cameras to record the entire delivery, including the customer. This has predictably resulted in a number of concerns about privacy and regulatory overreach.

At a recent CCC meeting, Commissioner Shaleen Title pointed out that, “to the extent that home delivery to [medical-marijuana] patients has been ongoing, there may already be security in place that goes above and beyond our regulations, and to my knowledge there haven’t been incidents … That seems to be an argument that you should not be putting in additional burdens and regulations.”

While body cameras got the most attention at the CCC’s meetings, one provision in the proposed home delivery regulations with the potential to be far more consequential is the option to use a “third-party technology platform provider” to facilitate the ordering process. In simpler terms, we could soon be saying “there’s an app for that.”

While there is still a thorny tangle of federal and state laws preventing a true e-commerce for cannabis, it’s not hard to imagine startups racing to be the first ‘Uber for weed.’ This would certainly make the consumer experience even more convenient, but it would mean yet another blow to the delivery only retailer’s profit margin, and does not seem consistent with the goal of lowering the barrier to entry for small businesses.

Of course, excitement about new markets comes with the important caveat that the rules still need to be finalized and, in some cases, there would need to be a corresponding change in state law. Nevertheless, it is encouraging to see that regulators are willing to consider new ideas for Massachusetts’ cannabis industry. The lines around the block at the first retailers have everybody seeing dollar signs, but with no statutory limits on the number of licenses that the CCC can issue, it is only a matter of time before supply exceeds demand.

In states that are further along in this process there is already evidence of a boom-bust cycle, as oversupply causes wholesale prices to plummet and smaller operators are forced out of the market. In Massachusetts, where the cannabis industry is still relatively nascent, there is still opportunity for regulators, consumers, activists, and entrepreneurs to play important roles in shaping the future of the industry.

Attorney Isaac C. Fleisher is an associate with Bacon Wilson, P.C., where his practice is focused on business and corporate law, with particular emphasis on the rapidly expanding cannabis industry. An accomplished transactional attorney, he has broad experience in all aspects of business representation, for legal matters ranging from mergers and acquisitions to business formation and financing; (413) 781-0560; [email protected].

Opinion

Editorial 1

A year ago — and, actually, long before that — this region was awash in speculation about what the gaming industry might bring to the region and what its broad impact might be.

The industry was new to the state, and there were questions. There was also excitement, some anxiety, no shortage of opinions, and plenty of hope. A year later, most of those emotions are still in evidence, and there remain many questions.

But in the meantime, another industry has emerged that apparently has the potential to have far more reach and far more impact: cannabis.

As several different stories in this issue reveal, the cannabis industry has certainly put down roots in the four counties of Western Mass., and while it’s still too early to know for sure, it appears to have far more potential to change the landscape — in all kinds of ways — than gaming.

Why? Because this is a far-reaching industry with myriad moving parts and potential business opportunities — from cultivation to retail to real estate to, yes, a new publication (see page 6). Also, it is seemingly far more democratic.

Indeed, while the gaming industry is reserved for large, as in very large, players investing $1 billion or more, the cannabis sector offers opportunities for individuals and small groups of investors — not that getting into this business, let alone succeeding in it, would be considered easy in any way, shape, or form.

And, as Michael Kusek, founder of that publication, A Different Leaf, points out, this is one of the few industries in this state where the opportunities are in Central and Western Mass., not Boston and within the Route 128 beltway. That’s because the majority of cities and towns in this region are welcoming of this industry, while most of those surrounding Boston are not.

When Easthampton Mayor Nicolle LaChapelle said her community was “head over heels in love, I would think, with cannabis, and I don’t think that’s overstating it,” she wasn’t just speaking for many of her colleagues — remember, Holyoke’s mayor, Alex Morse, joked to a television reporter that his goal was to rename the city the ‘Rolling Paper City’ — but she was speaking about how this sector can be a real game changer in terms of everything from jobs to tax revenue to foot traffic on Main Street.

The cannabis industry is not an easy one to follow. As noted, there are a lot of moving parts, and the scene changes every month, if not every week, as new locations open, more host-community agreements are forged, and more real estate is acquired for the purpose of establishing businesses in this sector.

But as hard as it is to keep track of all that is going on, it’s a worthy endeavor, because this industry certainly bears watching. No one really knows how things will shake out as more and more locations are opened and, eventually, more states decide to follow the Bay State’s lead.

But it seems almost certain that this sector will bring more impactful change, from a business perspective, than anything this region has seen in decades.

Features

Hopes Are High

After recreational marijuana use became legal in Massachusetts in 2016, the expectation was that retail stores would pop up quickly within a couple of years. That hasn’t happened, as the state — and host communities — have taken a deliberately measured approach to permitting. But with early returns strong from a few shops, and towns reporting solid tax benefits and no real community disruption, the pace of openings should begin to increase — and so will the economic benefits of this new industry.

If Western Mass. was full of people who thought the sky was falling when recreational marijuana was legalized, well, Mark Zatyrka thinks fewer of them are saying the same thing now.

“I knew it would change. But I feel like it’s changed at a more rapid pace than I would have expected,” he said of public perceptions about the new access to cannabis products in the Bay State. “When we held our public meetings, we had a few folks who thought we were going to destroy the world and everything would come crashing down once we opened. But the opposite has been true.”

Take the location of INSA, the cannabis dispensary he owns in Easthampton, which has sold marijuana for medical purposes since February 2018, but began selling for recreational, or adult, use in December. Tucked beside Eastworks at the rear of the Keystone Mills building on Pleasant Street, he said some may have worried about INSA’s proximity to a nearby park where people hike.

“But, really, we bring more people to the area, we have cameras all over the place, it’s well-lit, so it’s actually a safer place to be,” Zatyrka said. “If the perception was that customers are hoodlums who come in, go out back, and get high and do crime, well, look around — we serve almost every demographic you can imagine, from seniors to millennials, rich and poor, and they’re not violent criminals. They’re not here to cause trouble. Yeah, the perception has changed pretty rapidly.”

Perceptions — pro and con — of this new industry have undoubtedly shaped a permitting process, on both the state and local levels, that has moved more slowly than first expected when recreational use became legal in 2016. The state’s first adult-use retail shops were expected to be open last July, but instead, the first two opened in November, and the pace of new shops since then has been leisurely at best.

But they’re coming. And the ones that are open are changing those worst-case perceptions.

Mark  Zatyrka says INSA has attracted a diverse array of customers

Mark Zatyrka says INSA has attracted a diverse array of customers since starting recreational sales in December.

Take New England Treatment Access (NETA) in Northampton, the Bay State’s first retailer of cannabis products for recreational use.

“For us, it’s been a positive experience,” Northampton Mayor David Narcewicz told BusinessWest. “We’re starting to see some of the economic benefits in terms of taxes, and I know our local businesses have been creative in embracing the new industry. Businesses back in November were offering specials to people who came into town and showed a receipt for shopping at NETA. If anything, I think the business community has been receptive.”

He noted that Northampton’s voters were among the most enthusiastic in their support of legal cannabis, both during the 2012 statewide vote to legalize medicinal marijuana, then for adult use in 2016. As mayor, he said, his approach has been to respect the community’s voice.

“So we’ve been very open and proactive; we created zoning regulations that essentially treat this new industry like any other business, and we did not impose caps on the number of retailers like many communities did.

“We also had the experience of having one of the first medical dispensaries in the state,” he added, speaking of NETA’s original business plan. “We had a track record of seeing how they had operated and had the chance to see what the potential impacts were. They’ve been a good member of our business community; they worked with us to make sure their opening went smoothly, and have been working with surrounding businesses to make sure there’s no disruption.”

Stories like this are why, despite the slow rollout of pot shops so far — and state tax revenue well under early projections — proponents are confident that the trends toward greater public acceptance of this industry, and tax revenues to match, will soon accelerate.

“As an industry, we’ve done a good job to ensure that things are done correctly, and the state’s done a good job putting measures in place to help ensure it is a safe industry and people are getting a safe product and it’s dispensed in a safe way,” Zatyrka said. “The state did a lot of things right, which is why we’re seeing a successful rollout. I know some people wish it moved quicker, but I understand why it didn’t. There are thousands of applications, a lot of inspections, a lot to oversee. It takes time. It’s a new industry for everybody.”

Green Growth

As part of its new marijuana laws, Massachusetts imposes a 17% tax — a 6.25% sales tax plus a 10.75% excise tax — on cannabis businesses, while cites and towns take another 3%, plus whatever else they may choose to impose as part of their host-community agreements.

In Northampton’s case, that’s an additional 3%, called a ‘community-impact fee.’ The city received two checks recently: $449,825 from the Department of Revenue representing the 3% tax rate for recreational marijuana sales in November, December, and January, and $287,506 from NETA itself, reflecting the 3% community-impact fee on recreational sales for December and January.

“When we held our public meetings, we had a few folks who thought we were going to destroy the world and everything would come crashing down once we opened. But the opposite has been true.”

Other towns are seeing their coffers benefit as well. Theory Wellness opened in Great Barrington in December, paying $90,000 in taxes to the town in its first month.

“They opened to long lines, which should level off as they get more competition,” Ed Abrahams, vice chair of the town’s Select Board, told BusinessWest last month. “This is new for all of us, but so far, there have been logistically few problems.”

Southern Berkshire County communities that embrace the cannabis trade are sure to benefit from the continued illegality of the drug in both Connecticut and New York, though leaders in both states have been talking about whether that should remain the case. Brandon Pollock, CEO of Theory Wellness, told the New York Post last week that about 15,000 New Yorkers have made purchases there since its Jan. 11 opening.

“I’d say we get dozens, if not hundreds, a day from the greater New York City area,” he noted. “We get people coming up in Zipcars, people carpooling, people who say they hardly ever drive at all — but will drive to purchase cannabis.”

That sort of consumer response is intriguing to towns that see this industry as a new economic driver.

“Some cities have been great to work with, some a little more difficult to work with,” Zatyrka said. “Easthampton is very progressive city, and early on it was very obvious they wanted us here.”

That’s important from a competition perspective, he said, because the application process is already time-consuming, and communities that want to make it even more difficult to move through permitting and craft a host-community agreement can tie up a project for years, while other shops in more amenable towns are opening and picking up crucial market share and customer loyalty.

“Easthampton was great,” he went on. “Everyone wants to find a solution instead of putting up roadblocks. They want us to be successful, to get their name on the map, and they saw the benefits early on.”

He’s seeing a gradual shift, too, in where proposed projects will be located, noting that, when INSA started cultivating marijuana for medical use, most such outfits were setting up in old mill buildings or industrial parks. “Now it’s not so restrictive — people can open up on Main Street, and wind up in locations that are made for retail use, for people to come visit.”

That’s certainly the goal in Northampton, which is looking at myriad applications from cannabis manufacturers, cultivators, testing labs, and retail establishments, Narcewicz noted. It welcomes them because it sees value in how NETA, which isn’t even located downtown, has impacted business.

“NETA has created good-paying jobs in the community, and it’s an important way to expand our tax base and grow our local economy,” he said. “We have a local economy focused on retail, dining, entertainment, and a very vibrant cultural economy. And I think this complements it.”

There have been traffic and parking challenges, he added, “but if you talk to most retailers, downtowns having too many visitors is never a bad thing. We’re kind of equipped to handle a lot of visitors. And NETA has been very responsive in terms of renting additional parking from neighboring businesses, which helps them as well by providing an income stream. So far, it’s been a very positive experience, and there’s no reason to believe that’s going to change.”

Making a Name

BRIGADE has certainly benefited from this new industry. The Hadley-based brand-services company has worked with INSA extensively, including the creation of the designs for all its products and marketing.

“Everyone calls cannabis the wild west, and it is from a branding and design perspective, too,” said Kirsten Modestow, BRIGADE’s owner and executive creative director. “The rules for a whole category are being written overnight. That’s challenging, but it’s also some of the most exciting stuff we’ve ever worked on.”

With some cannabis businesses coming out with 100 or more products, it presents a unique branding challenge, she added, because the goal is not only to create a memorable look, but to help customers, many of whom have little experience with marijuana, navigate the products.

“One of the upsides of this industry is the impact it’s having on our communities, and it’s providing a lot of new opportunities and jobs,” she said. “It’s providing a lot of work for people, even tapping into farmers and other people who have services to offer and know what they’re doing.”

The education aspect Modestow touched on is one that continues in the store, Zatyrka said. The sales associates — he prefers that title to the flip industry term ‘budtenders’ — are the same ones who have worked with medical patients for a long time, and they have the training to dig deep into the science behind the products, so they can effectively explain them.

“We understand it’s a product that needs to be consumed safely, and we take that seriously,” he said. “We don’t want to be liable for someone who doesn’t know what they’re doing and eats an entire chocolate bar and has to go to the ER. We do all in our power to prevent that from happening.”

The coming months and years will see more education (and more tax revenues) as pot-shop openings pick up the pace — including Evergreen Strategies, LLC, which recently inked a host-community agreement with Belchertown to bring a facility to that town as early as this fall.

The Boston Globe recently cited industry analysts who say Massachusetts has a much slower local approval process and a more complex system to navigate than other states, and the state Cannabis Control Commission has placed a premium on an adult-use regulatory structure that supports public health and public safety. The measured pace ensures that stores pass inspections, sell lab-tested products, hire vetted workers, and track their products.

“It’s a growing industry, and will continue to grow,” said Zatyrka, who plans to open an adult-use dispensary in Springfield and has a cultivating and manufacturing license in Pennsylvania as well. Meanwhile, INSA is doubling its cultivation — located directly above the Easthampton store — and is looking to triple it in the future. “We’re still a few years out before we can meet the demands of the state. So it’s going to be hard work until then to keep up our supply with demand.”

The work is rewarding, though, especially for someone who treated his chronic pain for more than 15 years with oxycontin, oxycodone, morphine, and methadone, and suffered side effects that drastically outweighed the benefits.

“Thanks to cannabis, I was able to stop taking them,” Zatyrka said. “Cannabis helped with the withdrawals, and now I only use cannabis to treat my chronic pain, and it works 100 times better than all the opioids. I know firsthand the power of cannabis versus painkillers.”

He tells that story not because it’s unique, but because it’s representative of many people he comes across, with stories about how cannabis has helped them with seizures, Crohn’s disease, arthritis, and multiple sclerosis. And if legal adult use is helping to tear down the last bits of stigma around cannabis, he’s all for it.

“It’s incredibly gratifying to hear the stories and how grateful people are,” he said. “They’re able to get benefits from cannabis, and don’t have to hide it like they once did.”

Joseph Bednar can be reached at [email protected]m