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hi everyone uh welcome to our webinar on post election opportunities in the cannabis industry i'm just going to give everyone a few seconds to filter in here and we'll get going well i want to waste people's time so uh without further ado i'm going to get to our introductions here um so i'll start with uh we'll go we'll go into order here so uh jennifer cabrera council of vicente cedarburg uh based in our new york office but uh physically located in new jersey today hey john how's it going good thanks for having me uh we'll get steve fox uh president of via strategies uh washington dc office but i i suspect he's in maryland today i am and happy to be here uh sally ken peebles from our jacksonville office also in florida right now that's him and jericho perez from the denver office all right so let's let's get into it this is just a brief brief blurb about the law firm we're 100 focused on the cannabis industry we've been doing it for 10 years got offices denver boston la new york austin jacksonville uh we've worked on the transfer of hundreds of licenses and have won licenses on the merit side in at least 22 states as well as dozens of localities across the united states and canada i'm pretty involved with the campaign this year as well um on the cannabis side in the past as well but let's let's let's hit the uh the big news here um and i'm going to turn over to steve here to talk about the federal update but the headline as i'm sure everyone knows at this point is that uh cannabis won the election right all right i'll i'll take it from there charlie even though i'm doing the federal update since there's a nice broom here i believe that is suggesting that we had a clean sweep for the cannabis related ballot initiatives with victories for adult use in new jersey arizona south dakota and montana and medical cannabis initiatives passing in mississippi and also south dakota where they had both on the ballot so in terms of the federal impact we think that will just continue to build upon the momentum that there's been really for a couple decades now but especially since 2012 when colorado and washington became the first states to pass legalization measures on the ballot um that really changed uh the tone of things in congress and um you know with an example being the the rohr barker amendment that protects state medical cannabis laws from federal interference that first pass in in 2014 in the wake of the the 2012 um initiatives we also had the the coal memo back in 2013 that i'll touch upon in a moment that established priorities for the department of justice so there's been a lot of momentum and we expect that the successful initiatives will just build upon that um sorry for not knowing that the next slide was going to lay all of that out um we have here what i what i just described we've also noted that that there were other drug policy reform measures uh that passed in oregon as as well as washington dc so in terms of the federal update um let's start with with with the good news um and and by good news i i'm just talking about the the big picture which has existed really as i noted before since uh the wake of 2012 and the the coal memo that was issued under the obama administration basically saying that that the federal government would not have as a priority the prosecution of individuals who are acting in compliance with state cannabis laws um that that existed throughout the obama administration um while some folks were certainly nervous um when donald trump was elected president and appointed jeff sessions as his attorney general who was no fan of cannabis that non-interference policy has really remained throughout the trump administration and now with the biden harris administration coming in we don't see any reason to expect that that anything will change there and what what we can expect i don't think is specifically cited here is that it is likely that there will be a new a new memo by the department of justice detailing uh what their policy will be moving forward and that may um end up being a reissuance of the the coal memo with with some tweaks here and there but i think we would expect that but the but taking a step back um although we we will have a democratic administration we are likely to still have divided government uh that's not guaranteed we could have two democratic wins in the georgia senate runoffs and that if if the democrats won both then with the vice president voting in their favor they would have control of the senate and and that could open up a number of opportunities but i'll get to that in a moment because i think we talked about congress after this um so focusing first um on the biden administration um we would expect to see some some changes um you know obviously for for major changes it will take acts of congress so um so we may not have major changes but but i think we will we will see changes um they have talked about uh both uh president-elect biden and vice president-elect harris have talked repeatedly about expungements so uh there could be good news there in terms of pardons and expungements for individuals who were convicted of cannabis related offenses in the past um they've talked about decriminalization um which you know is is a little uncertain exactly what what they mean to be honest uh decriminalization as most of us know is is um usually related to uh non-criminal punishments for possession of cannabis so um you know there there could be that kind of change but but even that would probably require an act of congress so we'll we'll see what we'll see what that means but they've signaled support for medical cannabis which would be a good sign for research there have been applications to manufacture cannabis for research that have been held up for years the obama administration um sort of set it up to move forward in their in the tail end of their administration but but it's been held up for four years since um and a big issue may be uh the rescheduling of cannabis which has been brought up on the campaign trail by um by former vice president biden and that that is something that could be done on the administrative level um it may take a while to take effect there could be big differences between different schedules if it were rescheduled whereas schedule 2 would not really make much of a difference practically um but moving it to schedule 3 could fix 280e the tax provision that that prevents cannabis businesses from deducting standard expenses so that that'll be interesting to watch i would note that some people have concerns about rescheduling because it could mean greater involvement from fda so it'll be an issue to watch um and then a couple other uh notes is that um you know vice president biden has said that his work on the 94 crime bill where was mistake and and that gives some impetus to trying to try to push reforms through and he's also talking about treatment um instead of incarceration which is certainly good at the at the broad level um but but much of that is um takes place at the state level so it's not necessarily um something that will be changed in a significant way on the federal level um and then i would note that um vice president-elect harris uh was the lead sponsor of the moore act in the senate um which was really expansive and still is something the house is considering um an expansive bill uh that would provide for expungements um ensured that individuals weren't denied federal benefits for cannabis use and would deschedule cannabis entirely removing it from the controlled substances act so it'd be good to have her her around so i know my my time is short here so let me let me try to finish up with the with the senate uh some of this i mentioned before all eyes on uh who will control the senate and and where things might go if the democrats take control there certainly is an opportunity for significant progress um since they would have we would have more friendly chairs for the committees um as things stand right now um you know we've seen with the safe banking act but uh what an unfriendly chairman like senator crapo who's the chair of the senate banking committee uh what someone like that can do to hold things up um we noted that senator cory gardner um of colorado republican uh had been the real republican champion uh he was defeated so so we've locked that support so we'll need to uh recruit some new sponsors um and champions um with all that said it's quite possible that even with the republican control there could be movement on state banking and we've seen relatively positive comments from uh senator toomey uh who appears to be the incoming chair of the senate banking committee so quickly on the house side the majority has narrowed we will have to see whether that has any impact on progress there is a vote on the moor act which i mentioned before um that has been announced it seems likely that it will occur um in early december and um and a number of groups are working in coordination to build support for that bill with the hopes of passage on the house floor um and that would obviously be a positive sign and then i would just expect um even with a narrowed majority that we have seen more and more activity uh every every session of congress since 2012 and um and one way or the other i am sure that there will be significant progress um whether it's on banking uh the more act uh appropriations amendments to uh protect states on the hemp cbd side um on research and so on so so i think it'll be an exciting time but um but not not the slam dunk um we we might have been hoping for depending on the outcome of the senate so um i think i'll probably touch on this and i've hit my time limit um so i will just pass it to charlie because i i'm looking through these topics and i have covered them already so basically yeah so just just a few housekeeping notes here um one we're going to send the slides around to everyone so you know we have to move fast to cover a lot of ground so you'll have the slides to refer to afterwards and two i'm going to try and save some some time at the end for questions if you got any questions type them into the chat function and we'll we'll try and uh get to them at the end um so that's that's sort of uh the update here i'm just going to talk generally what we think might happen um and i think we're already starting to see happen from a corporate perspective is you know we have seen a you know an uptick and this is anecdotal um in terms of inbound calls about investment about new deals i think it sparked renewed um positive spirits in the industry and in the investment community uh you know in the new states revenue opportunities are probably in the medium term as as you'll see as we get into the details of these states uh it's not as if you're gonna be able to start selling immediately so it's gonna take a little bit before we see cash flow uh and then i think you know i think we'll start to see some institutional investors circle around the edges and look at you know maybe testing company investments maybe um ancillary tech company investments which we've already seen but i don't think until you see some action at the federal level you're going to see the institutional investors you've been sitting on the sideline take any definitive steps um you know let's see here yeah existing issues with the industry in terms of banking access access to to loans you know the ability you know getting cut out of your facebook account for advertising i don't think anything like that's going to change in the short term um unless you see a federal policy position move but i do think you know the positive trends are going to continue it we're getting closer to normalization um and then of course you know the the broader world is a big unknown and we're not going to speculate about it here but that obviously will dramatically impact the cannabis industry so i'm just going to outline sort of a few thoughts here about what we how we think about new markets and that'll kind of structure our discussion of the next states so you know first question is you know how do you get into these new states uh this is what we call apply versus buy uh in some states you're gonna need to buy a new license because the the rules basically give a head start to the existing operators um in other states you're gonna have to apply and sort of applying for a license the competitiveness will vary dramatically from state to state and also from locality to locality uh because in certain states it's not the state licenses are competitive it's the local licenses so address that then we'll talk about next steps um you know there is a big difference in terms of how ballot initiatives are structured some are self-executing and some will require the legislatures to pass legislation so that will really impact you know what we know now and the timeline um sort of second of that it's just legislative alteration uh the ability of a legislature to alter the vote passed by a voter initiative varies between states and that will of course impact how the state operates and then you know the big next step in most of these states um other than new jersey right where you got to pass legislation is the rules on the devils in the detail and the rules are going to tell us a lot and then we're going to look at timeline you know how long does it take um which is a big question we get it very much varies between states i'd say between one and four years maine is sort of an outlier in terms of the time it took from passage of adult use to first sales but a lot of that was due to governor lepage the governor at the time who was very hostile to it and you see a hostile governor and legislature can really dampen uh one of these new systems um yeah so anyway these are these are kind of the key questions to ask yourself you know will existing medical operators be given a first bite at the apple and you'll see that's gonna be the case in arizona uh and you also gotta think about the size of the overall market you know obviously there's the the general size of the state the size of the state economy matters a lot and we can also look at how many adult cannabis consumers there are we used some specific sets of data that are referenced here uh to come up with these numbers and those are we'll break them down state if i say and then finally regulatory notes there's all sorts of unique things that vary state by state for example a residency requirement which we'll see in montana um so that's that's you know the big ticket items right you want to understand the states but the next question is all right you're an investor you're an operator maybe you're another service provider you're thinking well what can we do now right um if i'm not going to get adult use sales for at least a year maybe two years um do i just sit on my hands until then well the answer is you know the people that are making those first that don't use sales on day one weren't sitting on their hands for two years i mean they're working very hard uh to get to that point so you know these are kind of my four big takeaways i think is if you're in one of these new states uh particularly from the state without any cannabis market you're trying to figure out how to get into the game you know this is what i would say to start thinking about one start thinking about real estate um locking prime real estate locations uh can be difficult to obtain oftentimes locking down real estate is the hardest part of a licensing application now you may be limited uh in what you can actually do right now because unless you have the final rules and you know the zoning rules you may not be able to definitively know what uh locations will work but you can start that process two start thinking about the team who's going to enter a team you can start building now three if you're not in cannabis if you're one of these new brand new states you can start developing industry expertise um you know probably not the best time to move to another state but you can start working remotely and then four you want to get involved in the regulatory process a lot of times when people develop rules there's a comment process and you can provide comments and you can you lobby the regulators to influence the rules and i it's a legislative process like new jersey we're going to talk about you can get involved on the lobbying side there because the way the rules and the laws shape out shake out will dramatically impact you know the winners and losers in that state's economy us without further ado i'm going to turn over to jen to talk about new jersey thanks charlie and with that the sun came out in new jersey so isn't that nice it's been very cold here for a few days so welcoming that all right so new jersey um the voters of the garden state turned out um to overwhelmingly support adult use legalization and they passed it by a margin of two to one which is where it was consistently polling for the past few months which is great news um big picture the ballot question is not self-executing the legislature needs to enact enabling legislation um this is something that i've been talking about with clients quite a bit over the past week and i've um it's sort of a slow process um right now there is a draft bill making its way through the new jersey legislature there was a very long assembly committee hearing meeting today that went on for about three hours but further amendments are being made to this bill as we speak however there is hope that a bill will pass before the end of the year after the implementing legislation passes then the there is a cannabis regulatory commission that's going to be set up and it needs to start issuing regulations um so just big picture there's the the current state of the market in new jersey we have had a medical program that was first created in 2010 it was one of the last bills that was signed by governor corzine before he left office the his successor chris christie was not in favor of the medical program and it really did not flourish it's an understatement um during his tenure um our current governor phil murphy came into office i want to say in early 2017 and he has really made an effort to increase the size of the medical program since he came into office the number of medical patients has tripled to around 90 000 so much smaller than the number of within new jersey of active users um which is estimated to be around 700 000 um also though the current operators within the medical system are called alternative treatment centers or atc's they um currently there are 12 of them of which nine are operational they currently serve the medical market um there was a request for applications in 2019 a number about 200 applications were submitted the results of that have not been um determined it just has been put on hold because of court action um we were anticipating results at the end of 2019 it just hasn't happened so that's an additional 24 licenses i want to say that will come online if that if the court case is resolved and the department of health is able to issue those licenses however once those licenses are issued and that's resolved under the adult use legislation the department of health is no longer going to be in charge of the program and instead it'll transfer to this cannabis regulatory commission so i covered some of this i think in the last slide but the enabling legislation okay it's called um the bill is named s21 or a21 if it's in the assembly and it is moving quickly there is hope that um among legislators that it'll pass before the end of the year once that bill is passed let's say the best case scenario for the sake of argument that it's passed by december 15th the cannabis regulatory commission then is expected to issue regulations within 180 days of that so we'd be looking at may 15 2021 before regulations actually come out then big picture we are going to have a number of new licensing opportunities in new jersey the current atc's will be able to convert to selling adult use cannabis from day one the 2019 winners when they are finally announced assuming this happens one day they'll be able to start selling adult use cannabis and will be in the same boat effectively as those original 12 atcs under the new bill we're anticipating six new classes of license grower processor wholesaler distributor retailer and delivery there are restrictions on um at least for the first 18 months on an entity concurrently holding a retail license and any other kind of license so you could you can't have full vertical integration for that first period and actually 18 months is no longer correct um the amended bill that was that came out this morning actually increases this time period for 24 months so it is it is happening live folks moving on the cannabis regulatory commission it is a five-member commission um of those five members um three have been appointed the governor governor murphy has the right to appoint three then one member will be appointed with the i think on the advice of the senate president and then another member on the advice of the assembly so um governor murphy has appointed diana ueno as the chair jeff brown as the executive director jeff brown is currently the um runs the medical marijuana program for the department of health so there is a degree of continuity there which is good um and kristin nash was formerly with the aclu new jersey and is i believe um senator sweeney's chosen pick so we have three of the five members appointed two more to come the commission was contemplated actually in our most recent medical bill so why does that matter it matters because there's been plenty of forewarning that we were going to have a cannabis regulatory commission this was contemplated since 2019 the commission's regulations were supposed to issue by the beginning of this year it all got pushed back because of that lawsuit i was describing so presumably some version of these regulations exist um on a department of health computer and will be issued sometime in within six months of the um bill passing big picture um one thing to consider is that within new jersey health i'm sorry hemp is regulated by the department of agriculture and right now the bill doesn't contemplate all that much in terms of joint regulation of cannabis and hemp you see that in new york for instance new york's proposed plan um anticipates cannabinoid hemp meaning attempt for cbd being regulated by the cannabis commission that's not anticipated in new jersey right now though this is something that i think is being actively debated um within the halls of power so we could see for more coordination between these departments going forward in the future um big picture um and i will come to some of the questions that i see popping up i promise um s21 the bill so there is a social equity program um it's these are a lot of the same measures that have been in past bills that we've seen over the past um two years that the legislature had been considering there is um i think 15 percent of licenses um well let me backtrack there will be an office uh um that will of the commission that will look into basically ensuring that there are regulations helping uh to make sure that a certain number of licenses go to minorities women and disabled vets the idea is that 15 of licenses need to go to minorities 15 to women and disabled vets then there's another 30 of licenses i want to say that are supposed to be conditional licenses which are more for like a better word easier to get um they're you're restricted to be earning less than i think two hundred thousand dollars a year or 400 k if you're filing married filing jointly to get one of those licenses so there are um measures in this bill to try to create a social equity program however there isn't there hasn't been much provision for money um tax revenue going to um the social equity causes there the new amendments contemplate some money going to it but it's very unclear how how much um while i'm on the subject of tax the constitutional amendment um limits the tax rate at the sales tax in new jersey i think that's 6.625 on top of that municipalities are allowed to impose a 2 tax um on licensees within their borders and that's it i mean it's in the state constitution so it's very hard to amend however the new amended version of the bill contemplates an excise fee not a tax an excise fee that will be progressive and go up as the price of cannabis goes down and that money will be used to fund social justice initiatives again i have had that bill for a very short period of time and haven't been able to look at it carefully we'll just honestly have to see how it plays out as far as municipalities go and i'm conscious of the time charlie let me know when i have to stop talking um municipalities a number of municipalities in new jersey have passed ordinances either banning medical cannabis opera establishments or especially saying they welcome them those ordinances do not apply after the effective date of this bill they are going to have to pass all new ordinances to expressly address this bill so if you are looking to get involved in new jersey one of the first things you need to do is figure out do you have a property do you have connections to a specific locality does that municipality have an ordinance one way or the other what does the township or city say um this is going to be a really hot issue over the next few months so there are number of sites tracking this information license caps right now there is a proposed cap of it went up from 28 to 37 37 grower licenses within the first 24 months um it's not clear if that'll be in the final bill but with the where things stand right now it will be tough for new jersey to meet the current demand with that amount of supply so either the current atc's are going to have to really increase their canopy size or they'll have to increase the cap on licenses but right now it stands at 38 grower licenses for the first two years um and i wasn't i'm not aware of any other license caps also you're expected to enter into a labor peace agreement with a union and i will wind this up just big picture um we have nearly nine million people in our state it is not a very big state geographically but it is jam-packed full of people and um we have something like 560 town municipalities within this small state so so much depends on what they actually decide um the medical program has been consistently supply has not met demand so for adult use there's just going to be so many opportunities for new operators coming in um before i move into arizona charlie shall i redress these questions now or do rather i wait till the end let's wait to the end see if we make sure we have time by the way everyone if we don't have time you know we'll have our emails attached to this shoot us an email if we can answer the question um that said uh turning it over to jericho for arizona alright everyone great to be with you all let's talk arizona um so arizona as you all know existing medical market prop 207 passed for adult use should you apply or should you buy arizona is one of the markets like charlie said where existing medical operators do have a significant advantage um we're gonna see we're gonna talk about timeline here in just a bit but the adult use cells and progression it's going to move pretty fast currently that means buying would be the only way to get into the market right now we are going to talk about these 26 social equity licenses that are reserved and there is opportunity in what are what are going to be rural counties that have fewer than two current medical operators um as far as next steps go we are waiting on rules those should come out around june 1st um and you should consider applying as a social equity applicant we don't know what that's going to look like yet they left themselves quite a bit of discretion as far as in this proposition proposition for social equity applicants and licensure and it's probably not going to happen until late 2021 as well but it's certainly an opportunity if you're not already a medical operator in that market so timeline like i said arizona is going to move fast right beginning january 19th and through march the department is actually required to accept applications from existing medical operators that will transfer to adult use operations and they'll be dually licensed those applications must be approved within 60 days that means we could see adult use cells beginning as early as february 1. um outside of that if the department hasn't actually approved or licensed any adult use operators that were existing medical operators by april those medical operators automatically get to transition to adult use we should see rules by june 1st and then within six months of those rules they are required to license the 26 social equity applicants in between that during this early applicant period we may see a random process for licenses that become available through the license limit cap which we're going to talk about in a second it's related to pharmacy licensure and that will be done by a random lottery process everyone will have a 60-day announcement and notice before that process begins so new licensing opportunities like we've discussed it is limited and the department can only issue one vertically integrated adult use license per every 10 pharmacies that are licensed in the state uh this is like your cbs is your walgreens not dispensaries it's the same limit that existed previously medical operators which is why those medical operators have such an advantage and there's currently 130 registered non-profit medical marijuana operators and assuming all of those uh switch to adult use it's unlikely there's going to be additional licenses open those licenses if they were open would be issued through a lottery process but again if that happens we're not going to see that until at least mid-2021 um there are two exceptions to the pharmacy license limit and like we previously noted the first one of those is the social equity licenses and so no later than six months after rules and again rules are required to be effective by june 1st so no later than december would be the latest we're probably looking at those 26 social equity licenses have to be issued and those are reserved for individual ownership and operation of businesses for individuals from communities disproportionately impacted by the enforcement of previous marijuana laws unfortunately this is this is the only information we have on this social equity process we don't know what the application or licensure process will look like and it could be december before we see those licenses issued so that's almost a year advantage that existing medical operators may have the second exception is operators who are seeking to locate in a county that currently has less than two medical operators so the department can issue up to two licenses for establishments that are applying in counties that have zero medical operators or one license for counties that have one existing medical operator if these exist you can assume that it's probably going to be in very rural counties where non-profit operate medical operators have kind of avoided setting up shop again these are vertically integrated licenses and you know most of the dispensary operators want to be close to a metropolitan area however if you're interested in cultivation or processing primarily it could be a very good opportunity definitely want to start identifying these now and like charlie said locking down property early these actions these licenses are actually included in the early applicant timeline so january 1 through march you should be able to apply for these licenses in counties with less than two current medical operators and there could be another opportunity for these licenses after the early applicant round but again we're not going to see that until mid 2021. quick regulatory notes the medical program is currently non-profit um dual licensed businesses so those that convert to adult use they'll be able to convert to for-profit entities um also quick note that it will the proposition does allow for delivery rules passed in 2023 but no later than 2025 arizona will allow delivery um and then this is a dual licensing state so municipalities do have power to limit and ban adult use for if they have actually already banned medical so it's interesting because for medical operators another reason they have such a significant advantage is municipalities that haven't alre dy banned them or that have existing medical operators cannot ban adult use otherwise they are able to limit licensing through zoning and other measures and then the quick snapshot of the arizona market population of state 7.28 million almost a million adult use consumers and the size of the market currently for medical sales 715 million in 2019 we have you know economists have assumed that this could be up to a two billion dollar market it could be a great market again though with a limited licensure opportunities are going to be limited starting out but hopefully we'll see some great social equity license opportunities open up and then as the population grows new adult youth businesses can enter the industry in due time all right charlie thanks so much mississippi thanks turn it over to sally from mississippi hey everybody um i just want to start off and say being from the south i am so excited about mississippi's initiative 65. it is um certainly the most open and comprehensive medical marijuana program in the south and really in my opinion in the entire east coast initiative 65 did pass by a very large margin about two-thirds majority and it created an open license structure and by that i mean if you pass certain criteria if you have a clean background and you have a properly zoned location you're pretty likely to get a license and this is in contrast to the more competitive merit-based application processes that we generally have been seeing in the south and the northeast so how can one get a license in mississippi um there is no existing industry there so you will need to apply you can't go buy a license and as for next steps the department of health will be overseeing the program will need to draft rules and adopt rules to implement the program so the mississippi law has a very nice timeline within the law itself and i really like to see that um because it really helps propel the program forward in a timely manner and also prevents the regulators from dragging their feet which we have seen a lot of regulators do in the south um so july 1st 2021 that's the date the state must adopt final rules and regulations to implement the program and then in mid-august we'll see patient identification cards and mmtc medical marijuana treatment center licenses issued around that time so here are some highlights of the law itself so most critically there is no cap on licenses at the state level this is very similar to what we see in colorado and oklahoma and oregon um that's one of the biggest differences between mississippi and other states that in the in the vertical integration will be permitted but not required again this is great news this means if you just want to get a cultivation license you can just get that one type of license if you want to just focus on extraction you can do that it also makes it much more affordable to enter into the market because you're not having to pay to operate an entire seed to sale operation local jurisdictions do not have the ability to ban businesses while this may have upset some of the local jurisdictions in mississippi it's great to see from a patient point of view because this means patients can access medicine all over the state and from a business perspective this is good news for those of you looking to you know what can i do now to get a license well you can start looking for real estate anywhere in the state to open up an mmtc license there are setback requirements you'll have to comply with but as to where you're going to be located you won't be restricted additionally the qualifying conditions do include chronic pain and why is this important well about 20 to 25 percent of the general population in the us suffer from chronic pain so this means that more patients will be able to sign up for the medical marijuana program in mississippi and the market will thus be larger we do want to point out that there is an ongoing lawsuit regarding then the initiative right now but we're very optimistic that it won't be a hurdle that we cannot overcome so we do throw out some market estimates um but let me provide a little bit of context for you so that middle number the adult cannabis consumers that it's about 205 000 for the state but we have to keep in mind in these more conservative markets there is large amounts of under reporting you know people in conservative markets don't often feel comfortable checking um some sort of written document saying yes i i consume cannabis um so you can we can expect that the reality is that that number is actually much higher so really when we're trying to forecast the size of a particular market it's actually good to look at other states that are geographically and politically similar and along that vein if we look at oklahoma and arkansas both southern states and both conservative states those two states actually have the fastest growing patient populations in the united states right now so that really bodes well for those looking to enter the mississippi market there'll be no cap on licenses it's not a competitive process and we can expect the market to be very robust i don't have anything else to add except to say i hope that other southern states do take note and replicate what mississippi does and please let us know if you have any questions or want to enter the mississippi market thanks sally i'm going to quickly go through montana and south dakota and provide a few more updates and then i will open it up for questions here um montana apply versus buy the issue as you'll see in montana is that there's a residence requirement to own a license so there's a few challenges there um one ish you know so there's a couple couple ones one is that the existing operators basically have a first bite at the apple for the first 12 months and the other the big one is that you have to be a one year montana resident had a minimum to own a license in the state uh it's three years under the medical system so while we're expecting the timeline to open up jan 1 2020 too uh unless you're par unless you are moving to montana shortly you may not be able to participate directly in the industry um first things to note is that in a lot of states you're able to sort of structure a way that complies with the residency requirement and still sort of participate in some of the uh upside of the business through a licensing arrangement of management services arrangement you know i would hesitate to to provide advice there until we see the final rules that's the kind of thing with the rules are quite important um there's been some big changes to the market over the past few years the biggest one in june 2020 was the untethering of patients from their designated providers which allow them to shop at any of the approximately 250 dispensaries in the state um unlimited licenses population relatively small looks like a decent number of adult cannabis consumers and there's the size american 2018 45 million dollars so apologies to anyone from montana on this uh presentation but uh i want to give some time back to my colleagues i just want to move quickly here uh south dakota south dakota is very interesting because there are two two things here right there's measure 26 and amendment a measure 26 um we'll talk about second amendment amendment a is an amendment to the constitution so it's going to require passage of legislation and it's pretty interesting because here we have a state that didn't most times you see someone pass medical and then it goes operational and then they pass adult use here they went straight to adult use uh though that's not how it's gonna work in the timeline but they pass both at the same time there's no existing mark in south dakota so you're going to have to apply here we're expecting medical rules in the summer and also rules legalizing hemp um you know they actually sent out an email blast um they wanted everyone to know that these these measures come from july 1st 2021 um uh works in medical they need to have rules by october 29th 2021 and adult use april 1st 2022 but we don't actually have legislation there so um i would not consider that timeline um locked in it is a constitutional amendment but it's important to note that if you have a legislature and executive who are not friendly to the industry you know there's a million things they can do to slow you down um several license types that are finalized with the rules department of revenue determine the number and localities can ban adult use so uh zoning will be a limiting factor so what we've seen in other states is that even in states that are perceived as very cannabis friendly like colorado at least initially most localities banned adult use so you had a tremendous concentration of the businesses in places like denver so if you were looking at a map of the state of colorado you know it looks a bit like an election map right where you've got a small patch uh that is that zone appropriate that's so allows don't use and then huge patches which don't but what you can't see from you know the geography doesn't show you the population density uh another big one here in south dakota it is that chronic pain is not a qualifying condition only severe debilitating pain um sally was pointing out this is a huge issue because a huge percentage you know it's a uh you know unfortunately large percentage the american population uh suffers from chronic pain uh and if you look at what people are granted medical cards for a large percentage that ties to chronic pain so um until the department of health can add that as a qualifying condition i think it may provide some limitations on the size of the medical market um of course that will mean there will be a bigger jump when when adult use goes live if it hasn't been added previously so notes on the south dakota market i think this might also play into what sally was saying earlier sort of a reticence of people to acknowledge their cannabis use in a place like south dakota where it's uh that the rules are particularly harsh there may be more um social uh downsides to admitting it okay um some other good news here this bonus material and theogens we had a couple good things right the first one is oregon measure 109 so this is the first um first of a kind here in the sense that you know up until recently we had no equivalence of cannabis with psilocybin meaning that it is legal under the state system but it will still be illegal under the federal system so psilocybin like cannabis is a schedule one drug um but oregon has gone ahead and created a licensing system um for psilocybin um mushrooms um a couple points here is they've got two years to develop the rule so we don't know exactly when we're actually going to get to uh licensure um and that the use of the product is going to be limited to people with proof of a two-year oregon residence so you're going to keep an eye on this for the rules um or again you know there's no market for this it has a substantial cannabis mark in a decent population but obviously no no information on the market um decriminalization oregon has decriminalized all drugs and washington ski discriminalized psychedelics so you know we're not going to expect much in the way of commercial opportunities from this um but it is good news in terms of ending the war on drugs in terms of other countries states and local measures um this is the kind of stuff that didn't really hit the headlines at the same level but it there are a lot of jurisdictions that will now permit adult use that didn't previously in both california and colorado so that's going to create new business opportunities so i didn't have a chance to sort of schedule it out here but if you just click on that link you'll see some california towns that we've outlined so there's going to be more opportunity for licensing in california because again california the limitation on licensing is really at the local and not the state level rhode island we think we're going to see action um the house speaker lost his uh his election he was a major impediment to reform the new senate majority leader is a supporter of legalization new zealand unfortunately we lost um and yeah and then before i turn it over to questions here i just want to hawk our book the cannabis business uh it's a book on cannabis law that i wrote with cassie furman all our author profits go to the last prisoner project uh it does a good job i think of getting an outline of the industry and it's it's a good reference if you're sort of in the industry that said i'm now going to open up for questions here let's see what we can get um pending medical applications in new jersey jen do you have an update here i don't i don't think we actually know what's going on there yeah um the i was able to actually get a little bit of information on this the um those have all been the doh's review of those pending applications has been stayed by a judge that stay was renewed in july um basically the doh and the applicants that are suing just haven't been able to reach a settlement and from everything i'm hearing they just won't the doh is not a position to do so um the that means we're waiting for a hearing to be scheduled and then for a ruling to come down from the court and from that i hear from the doh they are happy to go with whatever way the court actually rules but the prospects of settlement look very slim um that said it does have to happen at some point and under the current um wording of the bill those applicants would be treated is the same as any other existing atc's so once this happens it'll be good news for those operators yeah just we just got the question here so we are going to send the slides out afterwards um along with i think some links that the articles that we wrote pre-election that provide a little a little summary as well we're also going to post this on our youtube channel so uh please go ahead and click subscribe on that um you can see some of our other presentations there and then we've got uh just a little bit of time left um sally a question for you can we find those setback requirements for property in mississippi yet i don't think we can right no it's 500 feet oh okay and this is going to be the state setbacks um so it's 500 feet for um daycare's churches and schools right now um and they have to be pre-existing but the word pre-existing hasn't been defined yet so we're hoping that the rules will flesh that out um we'd like to see pre-existing tie to the date that initiative 65 passed and sally i understand that in mississippi a lot of control was taken away from localities is that right yes so the local governments were not allowed to ban as i noted um and as for zoning they did exactly what florida did which is to say you can place an mmtc um in any pharmacy zone and they could not restrict it any further this um just like it did in florida this upset the local jurisdictions because they feel that the they can't regulate those businesses at all they have no control of over the place and manner of those businesses so um that is probably the reason we're seeing that lawsuit because the mayor of the city that's suing feels he's out of control cannot regulate it so he's you know i i can't stay for sure but it seems that he's upset about that aspect of it so he's trying to invalidate initiative 65. so it sounds like in mississippi at least you know you have a pretty good idea of what kind of real estate might work absolutely that's as i noted it's great news for people interested um and there is there are a lot of people calling right now and talking about where they're interested in setting up shop and we're having these discussions actively with people and helping them locate good spots making sure they're compliant so you want to look in pharmacy zones and you want to look for that 500 foots of that okay that's very helpful thank you all right well um i think that sort of runs out of our time here uh thanks everyone for joining and uh thanks to my uh my colleagues uh for for presenting and as always you know uh we're here to help legalize it and to help uh help everyone do cannabis business so please don't hesitate to reach out here are all our numbers and and like i said i guess our starting our email address is not our numbers and we're going to be foll wing up with uh with the slides and posting this online