Sign Mississippi Banking Purchase Order Template Myself

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[Music] thank you all very much for joining us uh we really appreciate uh folks interest in this important topic and i uh will thank all of our panelists today for their thoughtfulness entering this and and and taking the time to share their experience and thoughts with us i'd also like to thank some of the folks from the denton's team connie sue katie talia for all their good work just to be clear social equity is an important social legal and business reality in the cannabis space right now yet it is often poorly defined poorly designed or executed so today we want to take the time to speak to folks who are so highly knowledgeable about this and related issues to understand the issue and the implications better with a focus on their experiences and possible solutions and implications for some folks who may not even be looking for solutions so um with that let me introduce folks um let me start with wanda could you uh just introduce yourself wanda and and explain um your history and how you end up here today sure thank you for doing this thanks to denton's thanks to spur bridges um and obviously all the panelists that you're getting ready to meet um who are good friends of mine in this space um this is a conversation that happens a lot and as i was thinking about this conversation over the last uh week one of the things that becomes frustrating sometimes with social equity is the idea that we're forever talking about it and it seems like the movement isn't happening in ways that make sense um each of these folks are going to be coming from a really different perspective on where we need to go with what's not working and what needs to start working in a different way of looking at stuff my background is i've been doing this now for 11 years my husband and i were the first african americans legally licensed in a state to be able to sell cannabis grow cannabis and manufacture cannabis let me be clear we were not the first african americans to sell cannabis so it's been a ride and as i think about all of the ins and the outs and i've seen you generations of people of business owners of activists come into this space and the one thing um we talk about sometimes is the youth that kind of comes in and the energy that comes in people really feel like with each step that they've created the way that's going to create that change and i can say that after 11 years of watching wave of wave of wave of people come in um and they've done good work terrific work brought different things to the table and yet 11 years later it seems we're at the same place that we were 11 years ago so now i think it's time to start having these conversations to the point um ad nauseam because people need to hear it they need to really understand what's going on in the space and why it's so important to have african-american latino people of color women involved in this industry because without it it becomes um another industry that was built on the backs of black and brown labor built on the lacks of black and brown slave labor harassment police brutality um and the demonizing of our communities and the breakdown of generations of our communities so in our mind the only payback is to ensure if we could do the prison time we should be able to do the business time and the business ownership time i've heard way too many large companies say things like um you can come work for us well that in itself is one of the major issues that we need to overcome because not everybody wants to come look for votes so once again we've been doing this for 11 years we're here in denver colorado and i'm really looking forward to hearing from the different perspectives of each of these panels thank you wanda and sean did you could you introduce yourself i sure will my name is dr shonda macias i'm a multi-state operator and i've been in the industry starting in 2011 um to the current time by training i am a biomedical researcher but i do have an mba in supply chain management and operational analysis i pretty much studied natural medicines and their efficacy my entire career and now i am doing the same thing just in the form of medical cannabis and so i'm really excited to be here amongst my peers who are industry leaders thought leaders in the space and wanda creating this space for us to begin with so thank you thank you and thank you for all the expertise you bring and i'm not going any particular orders kind of calling out folks but kareem can you introduce yourself yeah certainly i'm the ceo and founder of a company called fourth movement which was really stood up in this space to address social uh uh social equity and to you know help assist people who um qualify for social equity to compete at the highest level in this industry and at a sustainable level um yeah i've got a lot of thoughts about what social equity is and what it's not and and um you know uh and how we're doing so far and colleagues certainly with wanda uh who is you know the dean of kind of black cannabis um so uh glad to be able to be a part of this conversation around fairness and equity and really parity and and where you know how how much farther we have to go and how we get there thank you queen and uh soon hey guys uh my name is sharon with data g i'm the founder and ceo of elevate cannabis we're a multi-state operator with locations in oregon and massachusetts i've also been known as the youngest african-american man to open a retail dispensary in the united states um it's truly an honor to be on stage with my peers like um and and uh to as an honor to be on stage with wanda um the first to really do it to really set the stage for us um to have young entrepreneurs like myself i call her almost every other week but have young entrepreneurs like myself to give us hope and know that it was possible so this uh social equity is really dear to my heart and to be on the call with amazing entrepreneurs like wanda and kareem and shonda's um it's truly amazing so i'm excited about this conversation thank you and we're honored to have you as well and last but definitely not least lorraine and you come from this not really from the cannabis-specific space but for providing capital to particularly black-owned businesses right yeah correct thank you eric uh yeah so my name's laureen hamilton i am lead partner for a fund called portfolio rising america fund we invest in companies that are diverse led uh we are founded uh a fun founded the team of all black and latino women uh we're the first fund in the country that's led by such a diverse team and we will we've looked for the best-in-class world-class companies that have these founders that are often overlooked by traditional vcs as an example only one percent of vc dollars goes to african-american uh founded companies in this country and so we launched this fund to get dollars to black and brown founders uh because we think you know you have having economic capital is is really important for the growth of the company so thank you very much and and we are honored for all of you to be joining uh dentons on this platform and again thank uh wanda and her dispensary and that's for bridges for their support of this um wanda let's turn back to you uh i think if from from hearing from the panel i'd be remiss not to start with you since you started it all and i'm going to start with kind of a difficult question which is for you and your mind what does social equity mean what is its purpose and and who should be included and i know you could speak for the rest of the week on those subjects so they're very broad but but if you could share with us what your thoughts are on those but wait do we have you on mute there we go so you know what we have seen from state the state is they're defining social equity differently um you know it comes down to those that have been harmed by the drug war uh and being able to make it an equitable space for people to get involved um that in in a nutshell i think is is what we've discussed the issue becomes at the states i'm just going to lay this out there and make a lot of people upset as we go through this um social equity unfortunately has been taken advantage of by what we have seen in the space by white female founders white female cfos when we look at licensing on the state level we see more and more of that demographic being able to keep more licenses than we have seen the black and brown people in which um in our minds when we started social equity that this that's what this was about clearly was making black and brown owners um unfortunately because so many states have language that is restrictive of saying you know the next group of licenses that are coming out will be given to only black and brown licensees and people that are doing it it becomes this odd juggle of words that we have to dance around and play around on the licensing level that waters down what the true effect or social equity licensing um has been about and then we find that when you do get licensed the issue becomes funding um and then it becomes a race almost to the bottom of who can devalue your or devalue your evaluation of your business giving you less money than what you need to be able to start an equitable business and being able to compete and because you can't go to the banks you are left in a situation where you have to raise this money from personal relationships friends and family which once again black and brown people would tend to be at a disadvantage with because we don't always have friends and family that can loan us you know one million two million five million dollars so i think the idea with social equity as we move forward needs to be talked about in terms of how states are issuing these licenses and how we're funding them as and let me just ask one follow a question on the licensing some of the licensing litigation that we've seen over social equity is on these um [Music] scoring of the applications on inconsistencies that go and for example in illinois we have ongoing litigation on that and no applicants have been granted licenses because it's all stuck in litigation it seems like that competitive process with special scores for social equity applicants has not done that well for a few things including the point you used as to who's availing themselves of it do you have a feeling as to what would be a better application process to get at the goal of social equity so i think um karim webb has just you know gone through a number of different processes in a couple of different states with numerous um folks and i think that this is something right up right this alleyway we're going to absolutely discuss what has been positive and what has not sure yeah please jump in yeah i think i think um you know listen i think that what wanda began to explain in the beginning around you know acquiring a license and then having to capitalize a license is um and attract competitive capital or attract capital in order to you know stand up a competitive business is something that's left out of the consideration um you know in a in a feasible way around the policy and so um you know what happens is because of the kind of prop 209 in california or the you know tawanda's point um you know the lack of specificity around um who the policymakers are really targeting policy for people who um what weren't intended to be the beneficiaries of the policy are oftentimes become the beneficiary and that in and of itself is the impetus for a lot of litigation so part of it sounds like what you're describing is mission creep although it's not in that it's it's just that the objectives have not always been clearly and clearly driven to with that yeah i would agree you know i think with what what happens oftentimes is um we get to your point is what way i would say it is lost in the sauce it's it's you know uh wanda's definition of social equity is absolutely right i mean i think when you when you make it simple is that you know 70 80 of the ramifications of criminal justice have been experienced by black and brown people and that taking people away from their homes has created um outcomes that are uh you know you know let you know worse outcomes than otherwise would have been the case and it has made people and communities and family less competitive that than otherwise would have been the case and so what we've seen is that there are policymakers specifically progressive policymakers who have advanced this idea of trying to create some fairness through cannabis as it becomes legal making certain that the industry doesn't end up looking like you know most other industries in our economy and so if that's the case then at the end of the day what has to happen is that people the right people who come from these communities who have the right the ability to stand up competitive businesses have to get access to the opportunity to do business the license then they got to be capitalized in a way that allows them to stand up sustainable businesses right and that produces the outcome that we need which is the resources right like so cannabis is is is um it you know is not the issue around social equity it's the money so it's the limited license and then the ability to leverage that limited license to get the money or the resources to then go repair the damage that was caused by the disproportionate impact of criminal justice and so the policy doesn't reflect that goal sometimes the policy is about okay how can we help folks get a license um how can we divert some of the capital which is the right thing to do on the tax side to repair some of the damaging community but the policy really is not intended or designed to be able to help people stand up competitive businesses and get those resources or else the policy policymakers and cities would be um um creating policy differently if they if they understood and were and were intent upon that um outcome number one and had the business acumen to really understand capital markets and how to incentivize the interaction between capital and opportunity and intent and as well as um acumen of the license holder so uh can we raise a ton there uh and i'm gonna circle back to some of it including uh something that's inherent there which is the the balance of what do you do with money should it go to the individual to support capital back into communities all of the above so i'm going to come back to you there soon let me turn to you and and you are a young hustling entrepreneur and you probably see you know lots of impediments but in terms of the challenges that you see as a young african-american entrepreneur what do you see there that's kind of uh unique to that of of coming to business and being successful there some of the challenges that you see in addition to the capital maybe your answer is it's mostly capital yeah i i think it's two things for me um you know capital is big for everyone uh secondly i think that removing real estate as a criteria of entry is also a big deal um when we look at states right now when we look at states like massachusetts we look at cities like boston and the average lease cost right now is a hundred thousand to about two hundred thousand a month to pay on a building that you are not operating a business out of right a licensing process on average takes close to three years to go through the process city state process to get your license right so when you take that into conclusion into account it's cost a lot of money just to uphold these properties just to go through a process now to for social equity to me is like i want tangible line items that these legislators can really work on and really make effective now like i want results now so i think one thing that's tangible is for any social equity applicant we need to remove real estate that's one first and foremost it shouldn't be secondly if we are not looking to give money out which i am an advocate for this is what we need to do we need to have some type of two-phase license process where there is if there is face with limited license this is what we got to do i'm working with the current systems i don't agree with it but i'm just trying to put solutions out there if we have states with limited license let's have post-provisional license where you know you if you're a social equity you get his license right and what this does is we look at license evaluation the cost of license alone could go from one million to five million if we look at florida that's a different case it could you could sell yours at 50 to 100 mil because the florida license gives you uh the ability to have multiple retail dispensaries right just for one license so what i'm pitching is if we give these people the ability to obtain the license social equity people that have been affected by the war on drugs and we give them these license even if the state doesn't want to give them money right we give them the license the license alone in massachusetts could be at 5 million 10 million they can raise capital against that now we see a lot of predatory loans that goes out to minorities and the reason why we see those things is because they don't have leverage they don't have leverage now another thing that we see that states like massachusetts have done really well is sitting aside a licensed type for minority owned businesses so for example in the state of massachusetts for the first three years we have um delivery license only for minorities we have the uh the uber eat model and we also have the the model where you can actually buy from wholesalers repackaged and sell it that right there gives minorities an opportunity because of supply and demand you're giving this limited license out to only minority owned business they can now go out and raise capital they look more enticing to big mso some big vc ventral capitalists because now you're giving these minority a face you're giving them value with just this piece of paper so i think that for us to continue to drive social equity topics we have to continue to drive um the ability to give these people an opportunity to make them that you like that unique what makes us unique is having the ability to get those license and going out to uh raise against that i'm in support of states using a percentage of the license of revenue from licenses um from active licenses um and and giving it back to um minority-owned business i love what uh what illinois did they made all the old grandfathered in medical stores this is they've done a lot of things wrong but this is at least one thing you can compliment illinois on and these big multi-state operators to continue business they have to pay into these funds to give back to minority-owned businesses and they have to continually pay in this fund which now gives illinois the ability to rate give give like 30 million dollars and fund that they're going to look to give to minority-owned businesses our social equity on businesses but illinois is a [ __ ] show right now excuse my language but hopefully once they figure it out we get the right uh minorities um to take advantage of this capital thank you for all of that and um i would just add on illinois that one thing that has been i think at least a quasi success and we can talk about more is that they've taken a lot of the tax dollars kind of excise dollars and given them into uh particularly non-profits working in communities that have been hurt but we can talk more about that i saw wanda made a face so i'll come back to her but shonda uh tell us a little bit about kind of your views on this and and some of the challenges that you see in operating in the space particularly as someone who has all the education experience that you have yeah definitely so one thing i could say is that i always stay true to who i am i'm a patient advocate um just because my whole life and career has been around biomedical research cancer studies infectious diseases and what i see in my perspective on social equity is the simple fact that a patient um became a prisoner and so um when i think about that and to make that make sense for people who are like what does that mean if you were limited in your ability to acquire a high paying job and you use cannabis which we know have medicinal benefits today and it helped you with your element and condition if you were arrested with possession of that you went to prison so today for me you know social equity is addressing that community or that patient that became a prisoner and making sure they have equal access to medicine and so when i think about um changing that pipeline is changing it in all three sectors you have to change it from the health care perspective meaning that we have to open up our minds and hearts to education and research about the plant two we have to change policy that created mandatory minimums for people who were incarcerated and not even people patients that were incarcerated for using the medication and three for those that want to pursue commercializing cannabis use in terms of a medicinal product or for just the use of it overall i think that they should have an equal opportunity to do so what i can say that though the rubik's is not uh equal one so even though um we can look in the business sector and say well i haven't managed you know eight million dollars a budget of 8 million but as a small business owner in my community i was the largest and so i was able to keep a sustainable business opened and operated for x amount of years now i didn't have the opportunity to go into a big corporation and to head up a team of 100 but what i can do is what's in my realm and i've been doing for years and i think that this is the voice that we're trying to create as well for our community is that within our community we're doing great it's just that in the sense of the rest of the world they're like oh well they want to undermine our efforts but if i was given a million dollars in the loan to build my business in what i did pre-cannabis then i would be just as successful as everyone else but i wasn't given that opportunity i mean if you think about just the loan industry itself i can't get a loan if i open a bakery today and i'm an african-american woman with three degrees and probably the most educated in the room it doesn't happen for us so this is really what i think changes for me and what social equity means for me and i fight for people like me i fight for my community i fight for those that need access to health care and you know the truth is is that if i take you through all steps of these meeting health care policy reform and also commercialization my patients need to have access for medicine that is subsidized for the government just like they needed otherwise and so and i say that is that cannabis is um there's no insurance that will subsidize it so you're saying that someone who can afford it has access to medicine that other people can't that's creating a health care disparity in our communities again and this is where our voice needs to be most vocal and i think that when um as cannabis business continues to expand and we think about corporate social responsibility we need to think about those vulnerable populations that are impacted by this health care disparity you're a mute eric you're a mute thank you i want to make it i want to make sure i wasn't interrupting what you said shawna thank you very much um and i think it shows a little bit of how all encompassing some of these issues are right i mean we're talking a lot about ownership and capital but these kinds of issues permeate even down to the patient level and of course you talk about those are patients and consumers who choose where they buy and everything like that so it all feeds so irene i don't mean to put this all on your lap but you heard a lot about capital into these businesses and communities and you're in a position to deploy capital in in various ways uh and obviously targeting uh uh i think black owned businesses right and women as well what what's the philosophy of how to properly allocate capital and and i'm going to ask you an even larger question of is uh putting capital into business what's your judgment as to you know why you're spending your energies doing that yeah no i mean i think it's incredibly important for all the reasons that um the other panelists have stated uh for us the challenge um you know i personally was interested in investing in cannabis as well as my other partners uh but the challenge is that because it's not uh cannabis isn't uh legal on a federal level um you know like that like people like entrepreneurs we actually have to raise funds for our fund and so some of our um what we call limited partners or investors in our fund um were not um you know in order for us to get funding from them we can't invest in you know cannabis types of companies unfortunately so you know that in itself is a challenge and we're a fund where we're looking at you know investing in diverse founders and that's really important that said um you know what i am seeing um in terms of investors it's really interesting i have a friend she has a she started a company called legend legends investment group and it's basically uh pulling together professional athletes and entertainers um who have well and a lot of her members are actually african-american and i know that they've come together they've made investments in the cannabis space and so um i think really what is going to have to happen i think i mean you know certainly policy changes and all these things need to be looked at of course but i do think we are going to have to when i say we as african-americans kind of pull together our money and people have wealth and and you know cannabis is obviously you know a fast-growing industry it's profitable it can be profitable um just kind of you know pulling together resources and making investments in these founders who are on the panel and other other founders i think you know because you know i mean i would love to invest i can't you know obviously there may be funds that can uh but the reality is because of the you know the it's not legal where that's a challenge but i think you know getting capital you know kind of creating an opportunity for ourselves i think and there are people who have the money and the resources to do that and i'm seeing it happen um so in that way it's good um but yeah i mean it's it's a very large problem i mean i'm you know even with entrepreneurs that aren't in this kind of space who have a company uh it could be a fintech company it could be you know a b2b sas company if they're african-american or black or brown it's an incredible challenge for them to raise money um and so it's a it's a larger you know larger issue just generally it's really fantastic to me in looking at raising money clearly like i said you know it's mind-boggling that we've been at this now for over a decade and raising funds has been an issue i had a conversation with um another group that wanted to help us with our current raise and you know the advice was well why are you asking for so much money why don't you go with less money let me be really about clear as i can be on this the idea of raising money in corporate america is based in systemic racism it is amazing to me that people and i'm not going to call it any names of some of these big organizations that are criminally indicted right now the owners have done a bunch of ridiculous stuff bought all kinds of luxury items on the company and people are still throwing money at this particular company it's fascinating to me and yet when somebody that's been in the business for 11 years that happens to be african-american that runs a good company comes on board then i get advice like well why don't you just raise you know one or two million dollars instead of 20 million dollars well let me be very clear about that through this process over the last 11 years we have looked at raising one or two million dollars or five million dollars and then the advice then was well nobody wants to invest in one or two million dollars or five million dollars why don't you raise 20 million dollars and so at every point everybody has another reason as to why an african-american team should not be raising what they're raising and people come at me and i don't want to sound arrogant by any stretch of the imagination here giving me advice on how to run my company which is really rich given the fact that they have never run a company never planted a plant never opened a dispensary and they walked into you know some hedge fund back company and they think that what i need is business advice there is nobody on this panel right now that needs business advice the only thing that we need is the ability to put enough money into our companies to be able to compete and compete fairly and you know there's lots of reasons for that and i'm not saying that raising money isn't hard no matter who you are but we need to deal with the systemic racism of this entire industry um and that needs to start on the lobbying level because let's be very clear all these big msos these multi-million dollar hedge fund back companies are already lobbying in texas they've locked down florida in a way that makes it you know extremely difficult to get through for the folks on the line that don't know what um shamil was talking about earlier you can spend up to a million dollars in just trying to get a license with no guarantee of getting the license 250 000 have somebody buy it for you another five hundred thousand dollars to keep the property under your control for you know one year to three years depending how long it takes to keep that license and there is still no guarantee so i mean it needs to be changed at the lobbying level and the equity needs to start there like here's who we're giving licenses to period and ironically maybe we need black organizations to start to sue these states long before it happens so that the lobbying effort um is is tilted in the behalf of the african-american or latino owner because that's where the issues meet thank you and i want yeah go ahead please and and i just want to make sure everyone on this um you know zoom meeting understand that because we're still federally legal there's a lot of things that we can't take advantage of still bank loans we still can't take advantage of um and when we look at properties too i go back to properties property is one of the biggest things i lobby to remove and here's my reasons right another reason is in the cannabis industry you have to be a thousand thousand five hundred square footage from the k to twelve grade you have to be a thousand to a thousand five hundred square footage from another existing dispensary now the city's determined the zoning in which you could put your retail dispensary now diving into that a lot of um retail storefronts um are uh you know the they go to the banks to get a loan to purchase those so the landlords have some type of uh bank loan associated to that property and most of the banks are federally backed so when you're a cannabis company and you try to lease those properties you can't lease them out unless you're willing to pay off you know make a negotiation deal with the landlord or buy the landlord out so forth and so on so the capital become more hefty i just wanted to throw that out there in in this conversation and why i really push for us to get real estate removed as a criteria for anyone that's social equity for the applicants uh for when you're applying nafta includes uh real estate would it would it work to have to give uh landlords tax write-offs meaning if they're willing to lock up the property for a social equity candidate they won't lose the income because the state will give them basically a write-off what i'm saying is the state should just remove that criteria all too entirely right entirely there should not be a reason why you should be paying for a property that you are not generating any revenue from there is no other industry that they're requiring that from so why are they requiring it from us that i know of let me just say that so i think that it should just be removed altogether um and for people that are social equity they should have that opportunity because now it decreased your operational costs they decrease the cost that you have to go out and raise capital um it it makes a lot a lot of things more easier when you have this licenses on hand and i will agree with that um just to speak my truth is that that's how i lost my house i had to decide on paying on rent in dupont circle washington d or when i was waiting for my license to get awarded or to to pay my mortgage um i come from humble beginnings and you know we definitely had um you know a lot of financial um we didn't have financial backing but we had education we had perseverance and we i i believed in me and my team and so when we came down to it um that was a hard decision i had to make on behalf of me and my husband and my four children and you know i gambled with it and we won the license and then my landlord pulled my lease and everything that i worked hard for was gone at that point because our regulations were written that i couldn't relocate and so i was stuck without neither one uh a medical cannabis license nor um a house our home and so it was tough and and i just get it and and you're so brave thank you so much for sharing your story that is so freaking powerful and um i just want to throw it out there for anybody getting into the cannabis industry guys it is not easy it is not easy at all i've lost a lot yeah y'all are seeing me now but like when i first started i only have 50 000 i got rejected for two years i slept in my shop for a whole year i work from 8 a.m to 10 p.m every single day i was married for six years i lost my six years marriage there is a lot of things that people talk about you want to get into the cannabis industry it is tough it takes a lot you know you have to sacrifice and and you know the the hurdles for the africans americans that are in here the reason why i respect them so much is because i might not know their story holistically but for them to be in the position they're in as an african-american man woman lgbtq whatever it does not matter they went through a tremendous amount of of obstacles trials and tribulations to get to that point so i'm just want to say you know shonda thank you so much for not giving up for being hope for for everyone for everyone on here it's super amazing but i i just want to throw it out there it has not been easy even us going to the state of massachusetts um we we were supposed to open in 2019 we didn't open until um this year uh last year uh the q4 of last year and that took us three years so three years no revenue coming in the same thing that happened on shonda happened to me when we went out to renew our release with our landlord in eugene oregon she pulled it from us because she wanted to sell her property that's not her fault right because she wanted to sell her property the people that wanted to buy her property went to the bank to get a bank loan the bank refused to give them the capital to close on the building so we had no property we had a dispensary but we now have to relocate so for a whole year my shop in oregon was closed we had to find a new property we had to go through the whole state process again and it took us a year to reopen i just want to let people know like it's not like i've made a lot of mistakes which i call lessons it's not easy to get into this industry um whether you know so we need assistance in the sense that we're not asking for anything that's not reasonable we're asking for tangible things that can be executed on due to the injustice one just remove real estate you remove it it's there's no need for it um and and and um you know the license are not guaranteed you have cities like boston where they're giving out 80 license i know people who who uh mortgage their homes just so we saw properties in boston and didn't get the license they lost everything everything just to pay for a building just to sit on it spending hundreds of thousands of dollars to come out empty-handed so i'm gonna stop right there thank you karim we hear through this discussion this is such a large issue right i mean and and and this is a challenging industry and particularly challengingly you don't have the pool of resources that many other people or at least some other people have i have said that in terms of cannabis in so many states looking at it for revenue and to fix social equity that cannabis is no more the cure for everything than it was the problem of everything previously and one question i have is there's so much that can be done and there's so much that needs to be done and i look at for example the more act that has job training and placement re-entry services criminal services literacy program youth recreation or mentoring programs health education programs all those are vitally important for those communities most of them don't help you all with capital for your businesses so where do we it's a big question uh but where do we balance all that uh moving forward in your opinion i think it starts with conversations like this and the people that are on this call and our ability to be you know on one accord with respect to our advocacy especially when we're talking about federal policy because our federal policy makers congressional black caucus the hispanic caucus are are looking for us to tell them what's what what what ought to happen um and the more act has some amazing things in it and it's got some things in it that are very concerning you know uh you know and we have a new president where you know by most of us would would be aligned with a lot of his philosophy and and where you know especially from an equity perspective his installation of um cedric richmond who's basically the chief equity officer of the administration uh you know i that's all good but the president believes in research which means that the pharmaceuticals would have a leg up in the you know given the more act and uh you know that's a threat to anybody that's a small business owner white black or otherwise um you know who wants to have a license to be in this space and be able to access the capital when it becomes available if we get federal legalization or descheduling um so yeah i think there's some pros and cons with respect to the more active things for us to specifically be leery of um whereas the states act has you know um less in terms from a social benefit perspective but certainly like you know from uh what would be in our interest and not getting the big pharmaceuticals involved because you know we we're already dealing with msos you bring the big pharmaceuticals involved we're really going to be cut out so um um you know that that's what i think listen we have the ability to um you know as the first movers in the industry generally you know it is the i've been to the congressional black caucus um you know uh think tank um in mississippi is where i met wanda right so like i i know that these policymakers the karen basses of the world and um uh are are interested in what we have to say want to learn from us and our point of view um will be taken into consideration as the policy is crafted and um and that's our job is to make sure that that we advocate thank you wanda i have a question for you a little bit off the field interstate commerce when you look at the opportunity of the country will likely eventually be opened up to interstate commerce do you view that as a good bad or indifferent aspect for social equity and interstate commerce is going to be good for business but it's also going to be good for big business it's going to be good for the big msos you know there was a quote and i'm gonna butcher it and i can't remember who said it but well we're all fighting for equity well we're all fighting for it to get our foot in the door these other companies are gaining market share and market share so a good example is colorado just did a social library program 11 years into it we just funded a social equity program for 4 million here in denver they're allowing eight new dispensary licenses to come on board um yet denver is completely maxed out with a thousand square feet piece so there is nowhere to put eight dispensary licenses so now all of the big white farms are touting you know oh we've done this in colorado vincent colorado well it's a joke because there's nowhere to grow in colorado the only thing that you can do in colorado is come up with a fun large enough to go out and buy 89 dispensaries you know and and trust me some of these big msos have got you know 80 dispensaries 65 dispensaries you know five different facilities you know 20 growth facilities so yeah is interstate commerce going to be better is it better to be able to have one facility in colorado that i can ship product to you know michigan maine and california sure it's a great idea um if we don't have our foot in the door and we're still fighting for equity when when legalization finally drops it's going to be a situation of putting us further behind um the eight ball unless the sba and banking are prepared to stand up with multi-millions maybe billions with a b dollars to give to black and brown businesses and once again i still have to keep coming back to and i need to be really clear that we need to fix this white female loophole when it comes to any kind of action that is fade for black and brown people to level the field because the white female loophole has taken advantage of just about every possibility um and has pushed out almost every black and brown business from taking advantage of that situation so it's time to change that aspect um and it's time to look at the people who have truly been harmed the people who are truly trying to get their foot up but like i said if we're just trying to get our nose in the door and the other folks are developing market share while we're still trying to get licensed well it becomes um once again even a more difficult process but sure um will federal legalization help hopefully hopefully thank you um laureen i had a question i want to come back to you on you mentioned the legends fund for most of the money that you're deploying is it coming from um you know african americans to deploy into african-american communities or is it coming where are you getting your money from because i did hear an interesting theme today of you know some of this uh just uh finding money within the community find you know pulling resources and that sort of thing so i wanted to come back to that question and ask you that it's actually a mixture so we have uh quite a few different types of so we have actually 250 investors across our fund and some are you know family offices institutional investors and some are individuals we actually have four um which i i'm so proud of we have four african-american women each of them um have raised they raised over a million dollars um which is actually less than 100 black women in this country have raised over a million dollars for their startup so i four of those women who raised over a million and they all had exits um so they you know had exits they're wealthy and they invested in my fund so it's a mixture we've got you know you know motley full ventures is a is an investor we've got some family offices we have individuals black white like it's all over the map um but uh basically what we're doing resonated with everyone who invested and you know i'm pleased to say we actually launched the fun uh in october 2019 and so before you know everything that happened you know before the pandemic and then everything that happened uh this summer with you know social justice movement we were already you know kind of doing this and i myself have been an angel investor in this space for eight years and then i decided to launch a fund um so yeah i mean i basically everyone who invested believes in what we're doing believes in it's important to get capital in the hands of black and brown founders and that the way i mean how we talk we talk about the fund is we're going to narrow the wealth disparity by creating more entrepreneurs and having them you know funding these entrepreneurs and i'm my son is fund as a prime example we have four of these black women who are under 100 have raised over a million dollars who invested in my fund because they had the wealth to do so and so we need to create we need to the network effect you know create a ton of those things that are happening and and people who can invest in you know um my panelists and and my fun and i can go out and invest in you know great entrepreneurs we really touched on so many uh important issues and i think this panel did such a great job of explaining what the real issues are and and what they're confronting and perhaps uh some solutions uh we'd like to i know we're really tight on time but kind of like to give folks an opportunity to kind of close out if they'd like to um so in no particular order karim can we start with you yeah absolutely um you know i'll come back to you know the thing that's going to direct the outcomes here is the policy um because the policy you know is what it really is what creates the market and the guard rails for for what's possible how capital um who gets the opportunity how you know um uh the opportunity will meet um capital in a the capital that exists in this space which is limited um you know and extremely competitive so the policy matters and that i would uh just stand up again that our policy needs to be directed toward the outcome that we want that each one of these licenses is very is limited right so we've got a small amount of finite amount of these set-aside licenses and it's in our interest that each one of these licenses is optimized in order to get the most out of it so that we can make the biggest difference to start to to reverse the negative impacts of um the disproportionate application of criminal justice in our communities and that's in everybody's interest not just black and brown people that's in america's interest to have all of our communities be as healthy as they can possibly be yeah i think that's something that we haven't actually stated here but it goes without saying this isn't everyone's interest is is the view excuse my view and um and so everyone should have a vested interest in this uh certainly you've shared a really important point here today on on the real estate and and that's a real tangible thing that going forward folks can do to make a real difference but i'll hand it back to you for some closing comments yeah um i think kareem said it really uh we need to be in a room when these policies are being written a lot of times we have big msos representing us and we don't really have our people representing us when these laws are being written so um more than ever before we just need people that are active members of the cannabis industry that actually operated a cannabis company um we need them in these rooms just as we need our activists in the room um because there's different viewpoints that they bring to the table um that you know some people that have never rent a business might not have so we need the both to really move this forward um and we need everybody uh that supports social equity uh to continue to fight with the white black blue purple um we appreciate you guys uh for the support um and uh let's keep continuing the the fight to move uh in the right direction um shonda you described a lot of just the holistic aspects of this um and i want to hand it back just for some closing comments well i'm going to take it again from a healthcare perspective um which i think that social equity should include some type of subsidy or some type of consideration for our vulnerable populations that can't afford the medicine also i would say that multi-state operators or just operators for their social corporate responsibility has a responsibility to go back and help change policy and um and i take it from my own personal leadership decriminalization is very important um to break up that pipeline so i worked very hard with mayors to help create policy to decriminalize medical cannabis and cannabis usage period because all all cannabis is medical um and so um with that i just say that those that want to be in the industry that are um black and brown minorities like myself that i welcome you into it i encourage you to participate it's not an easy thing because of um institutional racism and unseen barriers that we don't know is um up against us but we're working very hard to push those aside those barriers like we are in mainstream america with our movement like black lives matter and this social movement is going to be important that we do it collectively in cannabis in order o change the trajectory where i don't need to worry that one day my son will get in prison because he has cannabis right and we haven't spoken as much today on the reparative justice aspects but of course they're tied in wanda i want to come back to you just for a final question that we've gotten um and and i i'm recognizing that uh it could be kind of like dropping a stick of dynamite at the end but i'm going to ask it to you anyway which is the question we've gotten is on do you see a fair way uh for social equity applicants to partner with msos right i mean spoken about what msu's are doing at the same time and i know we're not looking to judge intent or anything here but um you've seen some msos kind of try to do something like have incubators or provide money is there some utility there is there something that that could be positive from that or is that a fool's errand um good question i saw that just pop up so you know you're asking large white firms to create their competition to give us enough money to get us up and going but not ever having enough power to be bigger than or take too much market share from those folks that are already um doing these these large deals um i don't know i guess it depends on the on the investment from the mso and who they want to work with but what did we just see in massachusetts and the same thing that we've seen here in colorado the msos that are claiming to help then turned around and sue the social equity applicants or the the state for giving a leg up to the social equity applicants and we've seen some of the same behavior here in colorado i think the thing that we need to look at once again we go back to policy not just federal policy but local policy one of the things that drives me nuts and i keep telling folks keep an eye on colorado because these mso's coming into colorado that own 80 dispensaries 100 dispensaries all the money that they're making here which we sold two billion dollars worth of cannabis last year is all being used to lobby in new york in california in texas in florida so you know that colorado connection is uh changing what's happening across um the united states but the crazy thing that i find here in colorado is and it may have changed recently i'm not exactly positive so importantly but up until about a year ago you could own one liquor store in colorado if you had a liquor license liquor store license you could have one and now it might be up to three so tell me why you could have 80 dispensaries why is that you know and while i don't know that there needs to be a tight limit on it it does need to be some type of limit to be able to allow for the um for the beginning of this industry to start as equitable because as long as i now have there's only 11 or 12 states new jersey just legalized that are licensed right now if i've got 80 dispensaries in colorado the kind of cash flow that gives me to go wreak havoc in every other state which means that kareem before you even get into illinois i already got 24 dispensaries over there before we even get into new york i've already got 17 properties locked up and ready to go so i mean yeah competition sure you know um it becomes kind of an absurd thing when we give people a blank check to run with it and the fact that that force is already out of the pen the only way to stop it is for legislators now to say no to these big msos coming in and limiting when people can grow especially in the beginning of an industry i'd like to have time to add to that i would i'd just like to submit that um social equity is inherently in conflict with the charter of a publicly traded company who is about market share right and so um i don't know that a mso can you know that what is in their interest is in the same interest of advancing the cause of social equity i think that there's an inherent conflict there i think that as it relates to them being vertically integrated on the supply chain side i think there are other ways that there can be synergy shelf space agreements and others um incentivizing investment i think um uh you know rfp processes to incorporate third parties who have the cultural competency in the acumen to maybe supplement some licensees who might not you know as single store operators or as single um unit dispensaries or as micro licensees which are again inherently you know not stood up to be not legislated to be competitive in the marketplace uh you know to to be able to to to group those folks and those opportunities together so that they you know kind of together could be competitive and have the economies of scale necessary to to attract capital and do all the things you need to do to to make the most out of each one of those license opportunities i i just want to add to what wander said in the state of massachusetts what has helped social equity applicant the most um is they put a cap on corporate license so a corporation can only have three retail store license a corporation can only own 9.9 percent more equity stake in any other entity and that has worked really well for the state of massachusetts i know a lot of people don't see it right now but maybe because i'm boots on the ground there is a lot of minority owned business they're about to open their doors in the state of massachusetts before the end of 2021 which i believe is going to make massachusetts one of the fastest moving um most social equity um forward state in the united states but i i see it i'm boots on the ground um and that's has really helped a lot of uh social equity applicant um to get an opportunity to be in business well i thank you all this has been really an outstanding panel and i really thank you for sharing your experience and wisdom and for being pioneers in this area as well so we really are deeply honored to have you take part in this and i hope it's the beginning of a you know a continuation of an incredibly fruitful discussion so i thank you and i thank our audience for joining us who most stayed on after time obviously very interested in what you have to say so i really thank you all and with that we'll close up the program [Music] you