In an outdoor amphitheater at a former Boy Scouts\u2019 camp in the Mendocino County redwoods, Lori Ajax, chief of California\u2019s Bureau of Cannabis Control, is addressing a crowd of business leaders from all aspects of the California cannabis supply chain. In the audience, many people are openly enjoying cannabis as they listen closely to the responses she provides to the moderator and event organizer, Meadow co-founder and CEO David Hua.<\/p>\n
Attendees to Meadowlands are used to trying to navigate through the paperwork associated with a complex set of cannabis regulations in motion, but don\u2019t often have an opportunity to hear from the head of the BCC directly. It\u2019s a tense time for the California cannabis economy and this weekend at Meadowlands is about decompressing and recharging for the immense work still ahead. Ajax herself notes the outdoor setting is relaxing. Who would have thought, she says, that she\u2019d be speaking at an event where attendees were smoking cannabis in the audience.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is what we do,\u201d Hua says with a wide grin. \u201cHotels don\u2019t allow us to. We\u2019re good people.\u201d<\/p>\n
Held over the course of three days at Mendocino\u2019s Camp Navarro, Meadowlands<\/a> was a unique networking event for the California cannabis industry. Hosted by Meadow<\/a>, a San Francisco-based software platform for cannabis businesses<\/a>, the event was a weekend camping retreat for the state\u2019s marijuana producers, sellers and facilitators that included presentations from California lawmakers and regulators alongside fireside chats, archery lessons and dips in the river off a rope swing.<\/p>\n Here we go! Celebrating Pride week at #Meadowlands2018 with an official retired Castro flag. Feeling proud. @meadow.sf<\/a><\/p>\n A post shared by Isamarie (Isa) P\u00e9rez<\/a> (@isamarie.perez) on Jun 15, 2018 at 5:16pm PDT<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n The event came at a crucial moment for the California cannabis industry. On July 1, 2018, all licensed medical and adult-use providers will have to conform to new testing and packaging requirements. This means that many companies are planning for blow-out sales for products, followed by product shortages<\/a>. California State Senator Kevin de Le\u00f3n jokingly alluded to a \u201cbonfire\u201d in reference to the looming deadline before telling the Camp Navarro campers about his desire to increase the economic growth potential of cannabis alongside clean energy as a part of a \u201cgreen economy.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWe need to fight for legalization on the federal level,\u201d said de Le\u00f3n, who is currently campaigning to represent California in the U.S. Senate. \u201cThe green economy is knocking at the door.\u201d<\/p>\n Ajax went further in addressing the looming July 1 deadline in her keynote address. When she was asked about potential remediation for retailers having to potentially destroy non-compliant products, she relayed a conversation she had had with a retailer a few days prior who told her stores are not ready to transition and said 60 percent of their current products would go away coupled with an inability to get enough compliant products in the door.<\/p>\n \u201cI wasn\u2019t expecting these numbers,\u201d Ajax said.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n Ajax said the BCC<\/a> was under the impression that retailers were depleting their products and acknowledged the state should have been asking more questions to stay on the same page as the industry. She then threw a few hypothetical solutions out \u2014 possibly allowing non-state tested cannabis to go to compassion programs and possibly allowing retailers to go backward in the supply chain to have cannabis that has not gone through the still upcoming track-and-trace system<\/a>, tested for sale.<\/p>\n \u201cWe all have to be a little bit crazy to be doing this\u201d \u2013 Lori Ajax #meadowlands2018<\/a><\/p>\n A post shared by The Emerald Cup<\/a> (@theemeraldcup) on Jun 16, 2018 at 2:35pm PDT<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n \u201cUsually with success you have a constant, like the North Star, but we have no constant,\u201d Ajax said in response to a question about measuring success. She noted that she understands many cannabis companies are struggling to get licenses, while others who do have them are struggling to survive. \u201cHow do you prepare as a business when you\u2019re not even sure what we\u2019re going to put out there?\u201d she said.<\/p>\n Ajax went on to speak about the numerous challenges of creating new systems to regulate medical and adult-use cannabis in California. The BCC has re-adopted and extended<\/a> emergency regulations that allowed them to issue temporary cannabis licenses on Jan. 1, but now has a 180-day window to adopt final regulations. There will be no additional set of emergency regulations \u2014 this is it, she said. In response to a question about what keeps her up at night, Ajax said she is committed to the tight timeline to implement the Medicinal and Adult-Use Cannabis Regulation and Safety Act.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re running out of time, we\u2019ve got 180 days to get this done,\u201d she said of the process to establish permanent licensing. \u201cI do not sleep well anymore and I\u2019ve heard you\u2019ve got something for that.\u201d<\/p>\n Ajax provided other lighthearted moments, including when she seemingly discovered how many cannabis companies are bearing large legal and consulting costs to become state compliant, before joking that she was a \u201cblonde\u201d and that the BCC would make a spreadsheet helping to define the regulations that were intended to be easy to follow.<\/p>\n But Meadowlands also included some stark facts. Meadow\u2019s poll of attendees said that 88 percent were at a loss or the same place in terms of profitability from a year ago and many were either downsizing or not hiring. In addition, the Meadow poll showed 55 percent of attendees don\u2019t believe the state\u2019s medical marijuana program is still viable. Questions from the audience included talk of potential changes to packaging \u2014 \u201cThe plastic is honestly more harmful than the cannabis,\u201d writer Elise McDonough<\/a> said \u2014 as well as debate around how the state plans to take more information from adult-use consumers than they do from alcohol consumers at a bar.<\/p>\n After Ajax\u2019s speaking time was over, she joined in a group photo before departing the event, which continued with fireside chats from industry leaders such as Frenchy Cannoli<\/a>, Seibo Shen <\/a>and Lanese Martin<\/a>. The weekend\u2019s activities also included ganja yoga,<\/a> night hikes and s\u2019mores around the campfire for the roughly 300 attendees staying together in the woods of Mendocino. While meals were provided, the cannabis was on a bring-it-yourself basis and there were no booths for sales of cannabis or related products.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m still brimming with energy and excitement from the magic of this event,\u201d Brad Bogus, the vice president of growth and marketing of Confident Cannabis<\/a> said via a Facebook post on Monday. \u201cTo think that here we were, a bunch of professional adults, playing at summer camp and smoking weed with normalcy and abandon, with legit legislators engaging with us while we were happily consuming and asking them thoughtful questions \u2014 to try and put into words what a paradigm shift this was, fails me entirely. It was like nothing you could have ever imagined.\u201d<\/p>\n TELL US,<\/b> are you hopeful for the future of California\u2019s regulated cannabis system?<\/p>\n The post Meadowlands Mixes California Legislators with Public Consumption<\/a> appeared first on Cannabis Now<\/a>.<\/p>\n
In an outdoor amphitheater at a former Boy Scouts\u2019 camp in the Mendocino County redwoods, Lori Ajax, chief of California\u2019s Bureau of Cannabis Control, is addressing a crowd of business leaders from all aspects of the California cannabis supply chain. In the audience, many people are openly enjoying cannabis asContinue Reading<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":46,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"false","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[148,50,2456,69,2025,754,386,3297,4497,105],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27029"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/46"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27029"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27029\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":27030,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27029\/revisions\/27030"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27029"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27029"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27029"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n
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\nRead More: Meadowlands Mixes California Legislators with Public Consumption<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"