Select Page

More and more states are legalizing recreational use of cannabis.  On April 21st, recreational use of cannabis was legalized throughout New Jersey, allowing anyone 21 or older to legally purchase marijuana.  After taking a backseat to the West Coast,  the Northeast (New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut) are jumping on board with a combined population of 33 million are thought to become the Cannabis capital.  Harry Brelsford sits down with Paul Seaborn to discuss which states are coming on board, and what each states rules will be. 

Video Transcription

Harry Brelsford 

Hey, welcome back to the Canna tech podcast on with one of our speakers at the Canna Tech Expo coming up June 22 through 24th in Fort Lauderdale with Paul seaborne. How’re you doing today, Paul?

Paul Seaborn 

Doing great, Harry, how are you?

Harry Brelsford 

Good, good. So what are you going to talk about at the Canada Tech Expo event?

Paul Seaborn 

Here, I think the timing is gonna be great. There’s a lot happening in the national cannabis scene these days that I’ve been watching pretty carefully, and you will well know even more by June, but it looks like some of the big states on the East Coast, New Jersey, New York, hopefully, eventually Virginia, where I’m joining you today are now getting to the point where they’re going to have an adult use market and kind of the full gates are open to the public. And then obviously, that means to businesses that are either licensed to sell or all the businesses that are going to support those license holders. So yeah, it’s been a long time coming out here, but it’s finally getting closer and closer week by week.

Harry Brelsford 

Yeah, yeah. How? How’s the rollout going? You know, just to kind of take the conversation a different direction. Illinois has had its critics in terms of the roll up, they’ve tried to do what do you what are you seeing New York, New Jersey? Is it smoother, are there still, you know, some bumps in the

Paul Seaborn 

road. Now, there’s definitely some bumps in the road. And I think one source of the bumps is a lot more people have an opinion. Now, when a new state is getting ready to roll this out. Back in the early days, no one really knew, you know, otherwise, they were you know, more patient or more open to whatever the state was going to do. Now you’ve got people on every side, you know, who say that, you know, we want a faster we want it slower, we want more licenses, we want fewer are just constituency, you should be getting priority. And I think that’s just natural, because there’s experience now you can look at what other states have done, including Illinois, as you mentioned, where, you know, I think the story there was the medical market got off to a modest start, no one paid too much attention. But then when they went to adult use, there was going to be this two tier process of well let the medical providers start off just so we get a quicker start. And then we’ll bring in all these social equity holders later. And it’ll be a nice mix. And the first wave of medical holders jumped right in sucked up enormous amount of volume from in state and neighboring states. And then the whole social equity piece got stuck in COVID, and litigation and fights. And so it was kind of the second part, it never really happened. And so, so yeah, those states I mentioned are now going through some similar things. So the big news in New Jersey was they’re also going to prioritize the current medical dispensaries just to get going. And so that wasn’t clear until this past week or so. And they’re talking to as soon as mid May that those stores could be licensed to sell to anyone, not just the medical card holder. So by the time we hit the conference in June, we’ll know a little bit more about what that looked like and how long it’ll be till anyone else gets a piece of New Jersey. And then in New York. Again, I think a lot of people that support the industry that want to sell to the industry, their main question is like who’s going to have the license so I can go knock on their door and the twist in New York is that they’re going to prioritize people who have had a conviction in the cannabis space previously, to get early licenses, they have a term that calling justice involved. So someone who is justice involved would actually get priority for an adult use license. So that’s really interesting. It hasn’t really been done that way before. But it kind of changes who you would be trying to connect with and think about as a as a partner. And then I guess last but not least, my my the Commonwealth of Virginia where I am, you know, we changed governor’s different political parties. So it’s kind of put a lot of things back on the drawing board. And the one thing I would observe here is, there’s another voice now in the conversation, which is people doing the hemp and CBD products. They’ve never really been in the discussion at the state cannabis licensing tables, because it’s not really part of the state system. It’s a different thing under the farm bill more national, but they’re here, they have storefronts, they produce products, they feel like they’re doing a good job for their customers. And now they’re saying what about us? We want priority when Virginia opens up licenses as well. So again, that’s that’s kind of the focus that I have, you know, is is the big picture thinking about which states are coming on how the rules are going to be, you know, good or bad for different parties. And it’s an exciting time right now for me for sure.

Harry Brelsford 

Absolutely. Well, let’s close out and briefly introduce yourself to the audience. So when they come to Canada Tech Expo third week of June, they’ll kind of know who you are.

Paul Seaborn 

Yeah, so they might notice a slight accent and it’s not a Virginia accent. It’s a Canadian accent. So I’m originally from Canada, and passed through the University of Denver as a professor for a number of years and that’s also your alma mater. So that was a great way to connect with you, Harry. But yeah, a couple of years ago, I had an opportunity to relocate to University of Virginia and be here On the East Coast. And so I’m a management professor I study strategy and how businesses and governments come together and what better place to focus on in the cannabis industry. So that’s become a real priority for me. And yeah, back in the in my previous life, I was actually an IT consultant at IBM. So it’s kind of a fun trip down memory lane to hang out with a whole bunch of people who know a lot about technology these days. And that can code circles around me and teach me a lot of new things. I think so,

Harry Brelsford 

there we go. I sure appreciate you being the speaker folks. Again, you can see both Paul and I and some other speakers June 22 through 24th Fort Lauderdale at the Canada Tech Expo. It’s Canada tech expo.com Thanks, Paul. No problem.