so be available to meet face to benefit from i'm ten waltz the executive director of the coalition for medical marijuana new jersey i'm here in the princeton community t v studio today with lori and scott albert from anna share insult lori an since birth and i'll let her kind of comment tell you her story in a second but myself i had two different knee operations on both of my knees and i became addicted to a low level opiate called and i went for a point where i was like six years or so on on this low level opiate and then i moved we moved from seattle where we have resided at that time to oregon to where we opened can assure a consulting company and between doctors i didn't have that prescription available to me for a good couple of weeks i wanted to withdraw symptoms so once i was able to get in touch and have a consultation with a doctor i went ahead and made the decision to go ahead and wean myself off of opiates so lori help me out it took me like four months to wean myself away from like taking four pills a day to one what three and a half three two and a quarter and we most off completely off of it after about four months and now i just use cannabis as you know medicated every night before bed a few hours and that's take care of my knee pain to the kind of help with the weaning process absolutely i did i had very few so the whole time i was wean myself off of this four month period time i had like two or three different episodes and even when i was down just like a half a pill that i was taken from the original four per day one night i woke up and i was on the bed and i was still in cold sweats loria to come and put washcloths on me but it was just to a minimum i say the whole the whole time in four months i had maybe two or three episodes like we drive to so and so you know we're hoping to have opioid use disorder as a qualifying condition for marijuana therapy here in new jersey was that we we already got initial approval for it so it's very encouraging to hear your story and thank you so much for sharing that and where you have epilepsy i have severe migraine headaches and then i have epilepsy and my whole a loss for words so my whole thing was i wanted to get off of prescription drugs and i wanted to medicate more naturally my doctor for my migraines he had me on medication for depression you know just using me as a guinea pig just trying all different kinds of medications on me that did not work and so finally i was just tired of it you know because i've started to feel like a zombie but took myself off of all of you know that medication i started medicating with cannabis oil at night and under you know i am religious about it every night you i am still on you know prescription medication for my epilepsy you know but you know we're still you know trying different dosages as far as you know what what i need to replace that prescription medication and that's as everyone knows that's very hard right now trying to figure out what that you know proper dosage is right right and what kind of oil do you see use  make it together for each other i take that as well we'll take the flour and we'll put it in a jar and a glass jars that we're not getting the kind of smell or anything using plastic and we'll use grain alcohol so whatever clear that's like one hundred eighty proof and we'll fill it up well let it you know sit for maybe ten minutes fifteen minutes so we don't get a lot of chlorophyll in there as much corporal as if you would have a long so and then we'll drain it we will strain it and drain it back into we'll put in a green oiled machine and then you know we basically the machines really easy it's easier than the way it used to be like when you did it with like a caulking burner but we just set the machine to one hundred degree temperature with spikes at like one hundred five we turn it down to burn off all that some some people say it makes it worse when it's already started or it might depend on the the strain of hands on the strain usually what i will do though is you know i continue to take my  come down that headache and not make it s severe if i you know while i have it some people also say that it really depends on the timing too if they if they can catch the migraine right when the aura is beginning you know that a cra both patients essentially now we're in the medical marijuana program in oregon this man and then also in seattle washington in washington state were also in the program as well and then what we did that kind of led us into act getting started in our own business and then led us to the consulting next was we donated this oil the state of full traction cabs oil in washington state and in oregon to medical patients what we do is what lori and i initially when concurrently when we were doing our consulting we owned cat in the city which was the spencer we own and we you know we operated out on a daily basis and what we would do is you know we were already have  relationships with the vendors so a lot aside from the business that had nothing to do with our business on our own personal time these vendors would donate the trim from their harvest to laurie and i and we would take the trim with this oil  specials we were involved with and like i said we just recently sold our interest product six months ago and both of those ventures now were they simply medical or were they also recreational so on ken in the city we started off as strictly a medical dispensary and then once in oregon when they brought on the recreational program what they decided is they in the year to get the rules and regulations developed and implemented in the licensing in the whole process they don't want to drive the trafficker or the customer base and it's not illegal to the black market so what they did is they said if you have a medical dispensary as of october first you can now service recreational market temporarily and that way you know we're not driving that base to the black market to get medical and recreational and then initially at first the state of oregon said well when you get to that point of time when we do have the rules and regulations for recreational will make the business owner choose you can either stay medical or you can stay recreational but you can't be both but obviously as i saw the model worked you know that they could coexist together in the same space recreational and medical they allow it to continue and right now to date so one that has a recreational dispensary also services the medical community as well that's involved with the medical you know medical has a medical card the only difference is is that the dozing in regards to the product the actual milligrams on the spur serving are more on the medical side than on the product that's available to the recreational side and this regards to pricing the pricing is less expensive for the medical patients versus what the recreational patients pay for their product yeah you know where we're considering that same approach here in new jersey as we look to expand our medical program into a recreational program as well  the five alternative treatment centers we have a new jersey or being considered as for expansion into the recreational program too so curious about how that works in orlando and so thank you and you also have a home cultivation in oregon and washington right absolutely correct so basically for the recreational program what they put on law and which is currently the way it's set up in washington there is no home grow right now they're working on t in oregon you have any idea can you make it in regards to the numbers of people that home grow right i would say i would say probably thirty percent thirty percent their equipment twenty five to thirty percent thinks like the typical you know customer age of the demographic would be someone younger it's really not that way the younger people tend to be the ones that would at least in oregon a good percentage of the younger people would be the ones that grow or grow at home yeah we're still utilize the black market in some way to where our demographic would be like thirty five to like sixty five seventy that was a demographic there so you find that consumers are actually people that are not in that typical demographic that the rest the country would stereotype and say that's going to be your customer base and one thing that's kind of interesting with the recreational market as well is you find a lot of the customers that come in that are recreational customers are truly were medical patients that didn't want to spend the four hundred dollars to go through and get it or they didn't have that four hundred they couldn't afford it to get the card which when also done to go to the doctor you pay the state it was for fifty we have a customer come in recreational there are what have a backing so even though there recreational quote unquote patient i mean customer the really a medical patient i just never went out and paid money for the things that you have the same problem we have here in new jersey the doctor visits have to be paid in cash and have to paper an id card through this organ medical marijuana program all right so you know that that brings up the prices up despite the fact that the the marijuana may be cheaper for medical patients approximately how much it costs for an ounce and in oregon you know so when else right now you can get like if you wanted unlike in what i mean it's i wouldn't say a lower grade but something a lower percentage of t can go buy a pound of something that test out let's say it's you know sixteen percent t h c something they would be able to get a top dollar for in the spencer into the customer base that they can go ahead and buy that at a here in new jersey the medical marijuana runs four to five hundred dollars an ounce and l wow it's the only medicine that's taxed in the state of new jersey too so these are you know we have a lot of work to improve our program here in new jersey and one of the ways that w is to advance this legalization bill for tax regularly for adults over twenty one because as you said many many patients may have subclinical conditions you know so that they don't it bothers them to a certain extent but they don't go to a doctor and have an actual diagnosis but right now less they find that marijuana can be very helpful with their mental or physical or emotional problems or situations that they live with but when you were when you were running  the can in the city you also had a couple of programs going parents for pot small and and it compassion jar so that this was also a way that you gave back to the community and scott yeah abs actually the compassion says that was something that we came up with just one evening when we were sitting around talking and at first i wasn't quite for it because you know you would have my whole view on it was well how are we going to be able to that you know people as right is it actual need that somebody is meeting or are they just trying to get free medicine from us right so what we decided to do  s you know anyone who is on like s s i or any kind of public us that the public assistance you know they would have to actually show us the paperwork some way shape or form and then we would put them in our system as you know they would be somebody that we could help out once the funds are had enough cash in it and the way we would do it is you know people who would come in and buy medicine or you know product from this you know say they would put in a five dollar donation into the jar well then we would match that same five dollars so now we would have ten dollars in the jar and then usually after we let it build up to say like fifty dollars or so we would go down our list of people who had brought in their paperwork requesting assistance and we would call the first person and we would say ok this is it we've got fifty dollars and we can you know contribute to your you know your health and you know we would always also to sit down and ask them what are your element you know that you're going to be using this for just to try to figure out the you know the best strain or the best medicine because you know we don't want to just you know give them in anything we want to be able to actually help them with whatever their elements are and then we also did another program that you just mentioned parents for pot and there are there a national organization is so i'm not sure if they're in new jersey but i know there are massachusetts multiple in many states here in the east and what they are is for example let's say you're here in new jersey which we know there's been several and you have a child all the child has severe epilepsy and you can't you know help your child in the in the state in the jersey because it's the legal the regulations are so stringent you can't get the medicine they need so you go to another state  colorado or oregon or washington state to get them the help in the medicine they need while we call those in terms cannabis refugees so parents propose actually helps cannabis refugees multiple states or in the state that they reside in and gives them a motional support moral support let's say their lower income will help them with clothing for the children and their christmas time toys so what are what can the city did with our dispensary is we've got a ball they do a christmas program and we had a christmas tree in the spencer and we have little paper christmas balls and has a child's name and they would pull the child's name up and same thing we had another donation jar for that so anyone that made donations we would match one hundred percent and at the end of each day we would go back if with all the balls that were pulled off and go on to amazon and these kids would create and their families would create a wish list for christmas that their children wanted we started working for somebody else and as consultants and we just got lucky that we had the right company come come to us a canadian company that was looking to get in to the cannabis market in washington state and at that time we knew nothing other than just being little you know what was in regards to our own health and how to medicate for that and so we actually surround ourselves around good people so for example we worked the first project we worked on was a thirty thousand square foot grow facility in washington state so we didn't have any idea how that was the set up so we hired a architect and then we brought on different growers that had grown on large scale for a lot large periods of time and we paid them one hundred dollars an hour to get information and that's how kind of we built our our knowledge base lori and i just surrounded ourselves like with a great team of individuals and like i said won't why we work on this dispensary is on the dispensary is we worked with this group and they just ten ninety nine and so we're right well why don't we form our own company so that's how we got can assure consulting so we really been consulting just going on but six years roughly six years and then how we got here with you today is we were hired by a pennsylvania group and they're just kind of initiating right now the medical program so we came in here mid february and we did the application for three dispensary and for one grow facility and then we you know we  you know in our group can do anything as far as consulting we can just help a group with an application we can just give you some advice if you just need like to talk for an hour or we can do everything a dizzy and what i mean by that is for pennsylvania we came in down the physical jobs with living wages l g b t q group to support the local gay lesbian queer community we also brought in a lot of other groups that were involved with the whether be the afro american group will actually come back to work with the contractors an architect to build up the location through the branding and marketing promotions and so on so like i said we can do little someone wanted us to do and or as large and even though we're from oregon and this we were going to go back to oregon but we see the need for the information that the that these multiple different states don't have access to because it doesn't are pin you know only the east coast is where the west coast is oregon caller out of washington five six years ago so we see a lack of that proper information and we feel this in our opinion why people are actually engages in in these states is because they see that we can for proposal and this is apparently is what you answered and so when new jersey sent out its our face they called him a quest for applications for the alternative treatment centers here in new jersey we thought that the it was over regulated i mean they they required redundant security plan and they required policies and procedures to be written and no training schedules for all the employees it sounds like and silvain it was pretty similar to that  n type of regulations that that they required of you know you know it is and i'll just say in every state in every there are similarities however there are big differences too because every state wants to put in you know their own twist to it so even though you have the similarities you still have those big differences that are really important and i know there's a lot of people you know that look at the rules and regulations and they just you know hold their head because there's so much and i i've come from the human resource that ground and payroll so i've always been a paper pusher and been in my you know little office you know and that's kind of like my my forte i really enjoy that and so you know i've always said if they ask for something and give it to them and even a little bit more because it's better to regards and like laurie just said it's it's definitely over regulated but you know for example in the application you know we just briefly mentioned that diversity play and then you know you needed to have a site plan from the architect and i do think in time that it's you know they're going to back off and they're at the ok well we don't need this this is too much but that's just it you know you try a new jersey they you know they they said they mandated this color of the signs the they were going to be outside property i had the lighting it was going to be asked on the property but on the other hand you know you have thank you have to take those requirements very seriously i work for the state of new jersey for twenty five years and i one of the things that i did was evaluate our appeaser proposals and you do it according to the you know here you take what we sent out here with the bitter comes in with and you want to make that i don't give you exactly what you want we're more than you take points off that be ballpark numbers you have what's it take to get involved in this industry so obviously west coast versus east coast it's two different animals so on the west coast in oregon and washington they made it so an average person like yourself myself or if i had a group of friends or let's say we had a group of friends that had capital i could borrow or credit cards if i had roughly one hundred fifty two hundred thousand dollars i could open to the spencer and get licen we had a booth that meakin about four weeks ago in boston and it's kind of going back and forth we've been the massachusetts since we've been out here we've been to war d c twice delaware delaware maryland so pennsylvania ohio so gauge different medical marijuana projects and out here it's very politically driven which it's not so in the west coast and there mitt and it seems like most markets that we found out here  absolutely pennsylvania is you need a lot of money to play so you need to have pennsylvania you know the group the group that we're working with has millions in an escrow account to get this done that they have to maintain a portion of those monies to show the state that they're liquid to even get the project done so i mean i see the benefit of both method methods because obviously the state wants the program to be successful so they know if you have a large amount of money you'll be able to pull up that that you know  your build out and getting your business up and have working capital and be able to sustain your business to where in the west coast you know we've seen a lot of businesses even though there might you know a group pulled it one hundred fifty thousand the start of the spencer e or three hundred thousand to do a grow a lot of those businesses go out of business because yes they do they have the money to do the build out to get everything up and running but then they don't have working capital so if they hit one bump in the road they're done yeah so well thank you so much attending the meeting a couple weeks ago we look forward to coming the more and how can people get in touch with you what's your web site you know our website is w w w dot kana ca and a share s h a r e e e dot net ne t for