Oklahoma cannabis is full of hot stories right now. Most of them have been covered in depth already by state-and-local news outlets and national cannabis sites.

So let’s explore a lesser-noticed Oklahoma cannabis story: The prosecution of Cannabless honcho Victor Ngo. 

On August 17, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Western District of Oklahoma issued a press release announcing that 33-year-old Ngo had agreed to a major plea deal.

His crime? Ngo for a period of several months in 2019 maintained an account with the mainstream bank JPMorgan Chase to run his cannabis business in newly state-legal Oklahoma. Ngo, according to prosecutors, wasn’t entirely forthcoming with JPMorgan about the fact that the business sold cannabis. 

He instead told JPMorgan that the business was “a wellness and fitness company,” which could just as easily be how Gwyneth Paltrow described her latest line of cannabis-lifestyle products. Federal drug enforcers and prosecutors were not amused, however.

On August 2, just 15 days prior to the plea announcement and two years after the targeted conduct, federal prosecutors in Oklahoma City filed a single charge against Ngo for making a false statement to a bank.

Two more charges for money laundering were filed against the business entity Ngo used to make the false statement, Friendly Management Group. (I’d be obligated to write “allegedly used” if Ngo hadn’t agreed to a plea deal so fast.)

As part of the plea agreement, Ngo would forfeit $622,000 in cannabis earnings and be sentenced at a later date to as many as 30 years in prison. Ngo and Friendly Management Group would additionally face $1.7 million in fines.

The Justice Department presser consciously adds a vague statement almost as a gesture to further justify the severity of the penalties in Ngo’s case: “At the time, Cannabless was not in full compliance with Oklahoma’s medical marijuana laws.” 

No evidence of noncompliance is presented in the press release or the court record of Ngo’s case. Either way, the federal government formally interprets cannabis as a prohibited substance, which is the very reason banks are reluctant to do business with state-legal cannabis operators in the first place.

Is the federal government saying that Ngo would not have been prosecuted for lying to a bank if he’d been fully, demonstrably compliant with Oklahoma’s state cannabis laws? 

It’s almost as if the Justice Department knows that the penalties in this case look more like what federal prosecutors would seek for violent kingpins and narcos at the height of the nation’s war on drugs.

These charges don’t look like what state-legal cannabis operators deserve, even if they aren’t entirely state-compliant at a given moment. It’s pretty easy to slip into cannabis noncompliance in any state, even with a small army of expensive lawyers and consultants.  

Interestingly, none of these developments have affected Cannabless today, which continues to operate numerous locations in and around Oklahoma City.

The email address evictorngo@gmail.com remains on several fully active dispensary and cultivation licenses from the Oklahoma Medical Marijuana Authority. The name Victor Ngo remains on several active licenses with the Oklahoma Bureau of Narcotics. His name is not, it should be noted, on any state business-registration records for Cannabless or Friendly Management Group that I could find.

Prosecutors say Ngo made almost daily deposits and was careful to keep each below $10,000 to evade detection, which probably didn’t help his case. The aggressive prosecution of Victor Ngo nonetheless stands out for several reasons. A leading reason is that attempts to open accounts with mainstream banks are commonplace in the cannabis industry.

What typically happens is that behemoth banks eventually discover a business is involved in cannabis and shutter the account. What’s far less common is federal prosecutors announcing $2.4 million in fines and forfeiture and the possibility of three decades behind bars.

As one cannabis banking expert pointed out in response to the Ngo plea deal, this is only a single instance of bank fraud and money laundering where it’s likely systemic given that there are more than 50,000 cannabis businesses between the United States and Canada. 

There are a few more additional facets of the Cannabless case that I think make it more than just a one-day story and press release and worth a deeper look:

• The U.S. Justice Department for three presidential administrations now has observed a general rule of standing down on rigid cannabis enforcement in legal states. Since Oklahoma voters authorized medical marijuana in 2018, press releases from federal prosecutors in the state announcing major cannabis-related prosecutions have become rare for all the right reasons, which made Ngo’s case all the more noticeable.

• The August 17 presser from the Justice Department goes on to say that the investigation of Cannabless and Victor Ngo was joined by the Drug Enforcement Administration, the U.S. Marshal’s Service, and the Oklahoma Highway Patrol. It’s odd for any these four agencies to be involved in what seems like a crusade in a legal state to send an unclear message at the expense of one actor in a universe full of them.

• Federal prosecutors in Oklahoma did not charge Ngo until August 2 of this year, well into the presidency of Joe Biden and well into 2021, a year in which there’s arguably been more enthusiasm and momentum than ever before in the United States for comprehensive federal cannabis reform. Attorneys general are independent of presidential administrations, and that independence is crucial, as we’ve learned now from too many presidents. But AGs are appointed by presidential administrations and confirmed by elected members of Congress. The attorney general of the United States sets the tone for what federal prosecutors choose to make a priority in any state, and Ngo’s prosecution sets an ugly tone.  

• The eight-month period of transactions targeted by investigators and prosecutors in Ngo’s case falls squarely within the term of former Trump Attorney General William Barr, who according to one brave federal whistleblower, had a “personal dislike of the marijuana industry” and ordered “politically motivated” investigations of cannabis-industry mergers. This occurred despite promises Barr made during Senate confirmation hearings that he wouldn’t use the Justice Department to unfairly hunt state-legal cannabis businesses. 

• Victor Ngo felt compelled to lie to JPMorgan for the same reason that so many other cannabis operators feel compelled to not be entirely truthful with their banks. Plenty of cannabis operators in Oklahoma don’t even know better and just open small-business accounts oblivious to what could happen. Fortunately for them, all that happens is their accounts get suddenly closed, and they don’t face decades in prison. 

• Select lawmakers in Congress from legal states have tried and failed since 2013 to remedy this by granting banks greater permission to do business with cannabis. Congress could today pass the SAFE Banking Act without taking any other action on cannabis reform and prevent future Ngo prosecutions. There are technical reasons for why even the SAFE Banking Act may not have saved Ngo. But the point is that if Congress was where most Americans are on cannabis right now, the prosecution of Victor Ngo likely never would have happened.    

The dissonance between where federal law enforcers have placed their priorities in Ngo’s case and shifting public attitudes toward cannabis in Oklahoma and now three-dozen other states is perplexing to say the least.

Federal prosecutors would likely argue that Ngo’s prosecution is about the fact that he lied to a bank and not the fact that he operated state-legal cannabis businesses.

Yet it’s the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Western District of Oklahoma that loudly broadcast the case’s ties to cannabis in its press release and listed the Drug Enforcement Administration as a lead agency in the investigation.  

The United States government believes that Victor Ngo committed a felony act so egregious to the public interest that it justifies as many as 30 years in prison and $2.3 million in forfeited earnings and fines. 

But I can still drive to any Cannabless location in Oklahoma today, legally purchase cannabis, and even get 20% off as a first-time patient, because I’ve never been to a Cannabless location before. I prefer the gritty, working-class dispensaries with one location that would fit naturally into a Tom Waits song. 

Select coverage of Oklahoma’s new ‘cannabis czar’

Go on vacation, Dr. Williams. God forbid, smoke a quality pre-roll of cannabis made in the great state of Oklahoma and attempt to be less intense. I, too, am often haunted by not achieving what I set out to achieve in my career. I have lots of plastic journalism trophies, and none of them will ever be enough.

Then I recall one of my favorite comedians of all time, Bill Hicks.

Further coverage of Kelly’s (sorry, “Dr. Williams’s”) abrupt departure:

• “Stitt appoints leading SQ 788 critic to head Oklahoma Medical Marijuana Authority” The Lost Ogle

• “Medical marijuana authority gets its fourth director in three years” Tulsa World

• “Stitt announces new medical marijuana director, Oklahoma's fourth in three years” The Oklahoman

• “New Oklahoma medical marijuana administrator says op-ed opposing measure that legalized it was about question language, not pot stance” Yahoo News

• “Concerns about Oklahoma Medical Marijuana Authority oversight renewed with new director's appointment” Tulsa World

• “‘It’s never been anti-medical marijuana. Ever.’ New OMMA executive director says she’s not anti-marijuana after 2018 opinion piece resurfaces” KFOR

• “Oklahoma names former oil lobbyist to medical cannabis regulatory agency” Ganjapreneur

• “Oklahoma taps new director to oversee thriving medical cannabis market” Marijuana Business Daily (The better, bolder alt-weekly headline: “OK recruits another weed hater to run its weed circus”)

• “New director appointed to lead Oklahoma Medical Marijuana Authority” Cannabis Business Times

• “Governor Stitt takes action to address challenges caused by growing marijuana industry” Press release from Kevin Stitt's office

More from Oklahoma and beyond

• In a new editorial, the Tulsa World says that it’s time for Oklahoma state lawmakers to accept the fact that legal cannabis is here to stay: “We had our own qualms before the vote, but the measure passed by a substantial margin, and it’s now state government’s duty to live with the results. To do anything else would be breaking faith with the voters of Oklahoma.”

• The former legal secretary of a prominent Oklahoma cannabis law firm, Jones Brown, is now suing her past employer alleging that she was used to stand in as a lawful state resident on behalf of outside applicants for cannabis-business licenses. Competing Tulsa weed lawyer Ron Durbin wasted no time reporting the lawsuit to Instagram. Oklahoma cannabis operators are struggling to stay afloat. but Oklahoma’s weed lawyers — billing by the hour — seem to be doing just fine. A friend called me tonight and asked that I go easy on this particular subject. Love you, homie, but fuck that. No one would trust me if I did that. Perception is everything. The legal secretary, Kathleen Windler, alleges that the aforementioned conduct from Jones Brown led to her facing felony criminal charges in a separate case. According to her civil suit against Jones Brown: “[Windler] owned none of the hundreds of businesses whose licenses were sought and obtained by the defendants legal handiwork. Plaintiff exercised no control over any businesses; plaintiff received no profits of the businesses; plaintiff did not interact with any day-to-day operations of the businesses; and plaintiff had no access to any bank accounts, assets, or liabilities of the businesses.” 

• There’s more news from around Oklahoma’s melodramatic cannabis legal community. Noisy Tulsa weed lawyer Ron Durbin mysteriously missed a court hearing in his ongoing legal challenge to Oklahoma’s plan for tracking every cannabis plant seed to sale. The state’s contractor for the program, Metrc, asked that the case be moved from Okmulgee to Oklahoma City. A judge agreed to the request with Durbin nowhere to be seen.

• In related news, Metrc’s contracts for cannabis tracking in three other states have been renewed: Alaska, Michigan, and Nevada.  

• Meanwhile, the Oklahoma Bureau of Narcotics is hiring a criminal intelligence analyst for its marijuana enforcement division. Someone from Oklahoma cannabis should pursue the job and teach the agency how to use its databases to avoid issuing search warrants against perfectly legal cannabis grows.

• The small, downtown Tulsa location of the Eufloria Dispensary inside the long-standing Gypsy Coffee House (I’ve been going there to write for many years) suffered a “brutal” robbery back in January. Eight months later, police now believe they have solved it and connected one suspect to four other dispensary robberies.

• Oklahoma is inching closer to generating more taxes from cannabis than cigarettes.   

• There’s been a burst of new stories from national news outlets and Web sites in recent weeks that variously called Oklahoma cannabis the “wild west” or compared it to a gold rush:

  • “While Oklahoma was the 30th state to legalize medical cannabis in 2018, it now has one of the largest programs in the country. And it’s still growing.” Cannabis Business Times

  • Oklahoma is the new ‘Wild West of weed’ -- and Colorado marijuana entrepreneurs are helping fuel the green rush Denver Post

  • “Given the volume of licenses already issued to cannabis entrepreneurs, you would think that a moratorium would happen. On the contrary, Oklahoma believes that more is more.” MarijuanaDoctors.com (This particular piece is loaded with inaccuracies.)

• High Times writes that an important strategy for cannabis businesses to avoid having their social media accounts suspended or shuttered is to treat themselves more like “a lifestyle brand, using their channels to start the conversation with followers rather than generate sales.” I wrote a freelance piece earlier in August about this and other techniques for communicating a cannabis brand online while lessening your reliance on social media. (Sponsor a race team or kickball league! Be authentic! Be clever!)

• Politico has extensively covered cannabis and cannabis policy in recent years, including a major profile of Oklahoma published late last year. In a new story, two Politico reporters say the nation’s patchwork of cannabis laws is making the cultivation of cannabis “one of the most energy-intensive crops in the nation.” The issue, they say, “is going essentially unnoticed by climate hawks on Capitol Hill.”

• Two legal scholars argue in a provocative new paper that Congress should at least temporarily continue to prohibit the sale of cannabis between states after federal legalization. The reason is it could enable smaller cannabis businesses and those owned by people of color more time to prepare for rigorous new competition from a national market. Sudden national competition “could spawn a race to the bottom among states as they compete.” On the other hand, as The Fresh Toast points out in response to the paper, interstate cannabis commerce could be a boon for states like Oklahoma: “Areas that have lower costs of labor and electricity will see an uptick in job creation and business volume, whereas areas with higher labor costs and fixed costs will see growing and harvesting jobs to cheaper states.”

• A reality show about cannabis in Oklahoma called “Cowboys of Cannabis” could be coming to cable and streaming services soon. A production crew has already shot over 100 hours of raw footage. Said one media executive who was involved: “So much of what we have captured seems larger-than-life, but it's all real and it's happening right now throughout Oklahoma.”  

• A first-of-its-kind look specifically at the pre-roll industry involved the surveying of more 130 pre-roll companies. Based on their answers, researchers estimated $1.1 billion in U.S. pre-roll sales during 2020 alone, a jump of more than $400 million over the previous year. Demand for infused pre-rolls has surged since 2018 and now makes up almost 32 percent of the pre-roll market. 

• The cannabis market in neighboring Missouri is beginning to experience what’s already been underway here in Oklahoma for some time. Prices for cannabis there are beginning to drop as new businesses enter the Missouri market. The Show Me State still has only a fraction of the number of cannabis operators as Oklahoma. 

• The cannabis industry already had an unfortunate general visual aesthetic. Cannabis brands often look like they were conceived hastily by a roadie for Insane Clown Posse. While that’s changing with time, cannabis is still being dragged kicking and screaming into the future. Fast Company reports that where some mainstream cannabis retailers at first adopted the sleekness of Apple stores, they’re now devolving into something that better resembles Jimmy Buffett’s Margaritaville.

• Unlike Oklahoma, New Jersey is an “opt-in” state where local governments can decide to ban cannabis businesses entirely. More than 70 percent of the municipalities in New Jersey have opted out of allowing cannabis businesses there.

• The fastest-growing segment of cannabis consumers is women from Generation Z.

• The lottery system in Illinois for new cannabis-business licenses is a mess of lawsuits and frustration.

• Legal cannabis businesses are suing to stop illegal cannabis businesses in San Diego. Attorneys for the legal operators believe their suit is a first of its kind and that they are setting “a precedent other private operators can use to combat the black market.”     

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On January 10, 1982, subscribers to The Oklahoman newspaper awoke to the first of two Sunday feature stories about the Oklahoma State Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs Control and its then-director, Warren Henderson. The second installment was published on Sunday, March 28, 1982.

In an editor’s note appended to part one, The Oklahoman described how reporter Paul Scott Malone embedded with the bureau for two weeks. What followed was a narrative that framed Oklahoma as a war zone. 

The bureau relished it, and so did Malone:

“‘Even when I go to church every Sunday, I take my gun,’ said one young agent called ‘Blue,’ a graduate of a Baptist college. ‘You never know who you might run in to.’ Such a life induces a ‘sort of moral desolation,’ said [senior OBN agent Fred] Means, adding that the divorce rate among agents is high, and the incidence of alcoholism is probably greater than they care to admit. ‘How long do you keep sending these guys back in there when you know they could get killed at any time?’”

I’ve peeled myself away from the cannabis news cycle to get into this state’s history a little more. History has a bad habit of repeating itself. More so, the axiom that never leaves reporters: “The road to hell is paved with good intentions.”

Prison capital of the world

Bless America’s library system. I have a Tulsa library card and use it with conviction. I wanted to study and research more deeply into Oklahoma’s past relationship with the Drug War but dedicated the first several months of this site to the legislature’s reactions to legal medical cannabis. 

Now I’m stepping back. Kris Steele was and is right. The liberal-leaning Oklahoma Policy Institute has done great research around this. The state’s leading conservative think tank, the Oklahoma Council of Public Affairs, has also done a lot of great research and writing around this.

I know Oklahoma’s lawmakers roll their eyes when people start talking about what voters initially were transmitting to them with State Questions 780 and 788. But y’all saw those margins.

There isn’t a ton of survey data on this. My sense, however, is that voters here had all been touched by the Drug War in some way. It’s still a state of fewer than four-million people. We all know each other. Even if you leave for years, people still know you and your family.

“Hey, aren’t you George Schulz’s son? PwC?”

“Yeah.”

“How’s he doin’?

“He went on to work at the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board, which I’m still pretty proud of. He helps me with my taxes every year, too. Vietnam vet. Stays connected with those guys and rides motorcycles. Hell’s Accountants. His biker name is Audit.”

In Oklahoma, we’ve lost a loved one to cancer who couldn’t keep their food down. Or we’ve lost someone to life in prison or years of probation or parole that would trigger a new violation and land you back behind bars.

Over and over. 

And it cost us a physical and figurative fortune. 

The Henderson show

Oklahoman reporter Malone begins describing in the first installment of his series how OBN Director Henderson and his drug-warrior cowboys would go about recruiting criminal informants. A better way to put it is Oklahoma drug warriors would threaten people with life in prison if they didn’t snitch. 

Pretty effective strategy when you’re looking at life in an Oklahoma prison:

“The pilot, a rotund narcotics agent sometimes called ‘Bird,’ slipped off his headphones and fired up a cigarette. ‘Is that him?’ he asked the agent sitting next to him, as a white-haired man wearing dark glasses stepped from behind a fence at the edge of the field and strode, warily, across the airport's taxiway toward the plane. Over each shoulder he threw a glance, checking what was behind him. ‘This guy's got a heck of a story to tell,’ answered [OBN Chief Henderson]. The man [was] wearing a white-leather jacket and bedecked in jewelry, two rings, one the size of a commemorative-postage stamp, and a watch -- all bubbling with diamonds -- was playing a role in the sinister game of crime and detection.”

The sinister game of crime and detection.

Sound like a Steven Seagal movie yet?

The Reid Manual

There’s an interrogation handbook. It’s called the Reid Manual. The earliest lines in the manual warn not to use the techniques unless you -- as a law-enforcement investigator -- have evidence first, with which you can then make a sound, constitutional arrest.

You want suspects to confess to avoid an expensive public trial at the cost of taxpayers. You already have the goods on them, is the idea. These techniques are not supposed to be used when you don’t have existing evidence first.

But for generations now, that’s how the Reid Manual has been used in the Drug War -- railroad people, so you can go to church on Sunday and be the crusading lion of public safety. 

Oklahoma bled itself sending people to prison over weed and every other drug for decades. What we needed to do was be there for our community members, our neighbors, our loved ones, our own family members who were suffering. The world doesn’t need another drug-probation officer or juvenile-justice center. We have enough of them already. 

What reporters see is politicians competing with each other to be tougher on crime. U.S. Sen. Tom Coburn understood this. The byline here is Carrie Johnson. But me and an old reporting partner had some good sources in Coburn’s office. He didn’t mind that we were crusading journalists. We didn’t mind back that he was a crusading GOPer. He was honest, and his people were honest, and we respected that. I can talk now about it, because Coburn is deceased.

The second installment

Oklahoman reporter Malone literally didn’t know how to open the second story on March 28, 1982: 

“Warren Henderson. Let's see now. He likes to laugh. His beard is graying, and he now wears ties to work sometimes, but he still likes to laugh. And tell jokes. He usually laughs at his own jokes. ‘I mean, you only live once,’' explains Henderson ... ‘I mean, hey, if you can't laugh, life's not worth it, you know?’' Then he goes into a weak impression of Groucho Marx or Henny Youngman saying something like: ‘Now take my wife. Please, take my wife.'’ He chuckles. … He howls. ‘I love it.’ His eyes dart back and forth to see if you're sharing his moment of hilarity.”

Malone writes on:

“Here's a picture of ‘Buzzy,' as he was called then, catching a pass in some high-school game. There's a letter from a college coach trying to recruit him. Here's another photo of him in uniform at the University of Tulsa. Look at this — an essay he wrote his sophomore year at Ardmore High School about the makeup of an intelligent man. ‘Hey, I was pretty deep back then,' he muses. ‘I wonder what went wrong?’ Henderson laughs.”

This post is dedicated to Cynthia Fairchild, Alex Fairchild, and Mathew Dustin Schulz. Love y’all. We’re still writing and fighting.

Listening to: 13th Floor Elevators “You’re Gonna Miss Me” Reply with an email or sign up to receive alerts. Follow Green Country Monitor on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Instagram. If you appreciate this work, consider leaving a tip.

Holders of cannabis-patient licenses in the small south-central Oklahoma town of Pauls Valley would have to undergo local inspections and obtain special permits in order to grow cannabis at home, a clear violation of the state’s medical-marijuana laws where they seek to protect patients from just such attempts.

Other provisions of an ordinance passed July 27 by the Pauls Valley City Council would impose numerous new restrictions on cannabis dispensaries and outright ban cultivators and processors. Those segments of the ordinance appear to have a greater chance of surviving legal muster. 

Retail dispensaries under the ordinance could not locate within 300 feet of any library or playground, public park or recreational center, child-care center, halfway house, jail or prison, drug-rehabilitation center, or other cannabis shop. They would have to close at 9 pm and be closed entirely on Sundays, Christmas, Thanksgiving, and New Year’s Day.  

With respect to home grows, state law is unambiguous. It was the legislature itself that beefed up these protections for patients after the initial decision from voters to move ahead with medical cannabis.  

Title 63 Section 427.8 says in no uncertain terms:

“Municipal and county governing bodies may not enact medical marijuana guidelines which restrict or interfere with the rights of a licensed patient or caregiver to possess, purchase, cultivate, or transport medical marijuana ... or require patients or caregivers to obtain permits or licenses in addition to the state-required licenses provided herein.”

An assistant city manager for Pauls Valley nonetheless declared that patients “need to grow it in their home, not out in the backyard, not on the front porch.” The state’s cannabis laws say only that a home grow must be operated in a way “so that the marijuana is not accessible to a member of the general public” and not visible “from any street adjacent to the property.” 

The other provisions of the Pauls Valley ordinance affecting cannabis businesses aren’t so simple, thanks in part to the passage of Senate Bill 1030 in 2019. Under that law, retail dispensaries cannot be banned entirely, but they can be restricted by local governments beyond what state law prescribes. 

Cultivators and processors have even fewer protections and can be completely prohibited. Senate Bill 1030 was led by a frequent critic of cannabis in the state legislature, Sen. Lonnie Paxton (R-Tuttle), who also sponsored a controversial bill this year that would have effectively re-criminalized cannabis in Oklahoma by making those accused of diversion eligible for severe penalties. 

The Pauls Valley ordinance largely mirrors another in Yukon, Oklahoma, that still stands today. Following a challenge filed there in 2018, a judge ruled that the portions of the ordinance addressing commercial cannabis businesses could stand, including an outright ban on cultivators and processors. But the ruling also enjoined Yukon from enforcing the provisions related to home grows. While those provisions still exist even now in Yukon’s city ordinances, officials have promised not to enforce them. 

The small town of Heavener in southeastern Oklahoma attempted a similar ordinance earlier this year that included numerous new restrictions for cannabis businesses, as well as local permits and inspections for home grows. Most of the restrictions were rescinded after local cannabis advocates began meeting and talking with city officials. After hearing from cannabis stakeholders, the commissioners even revised away the dispensary rules that otherwise appeared legal. 

The latest move in Pauls Valley comes following several high-profile actions taken by local law enforcement and the Oklahoma Bureau of Narcotics against illegal and black-market cultivation operations in the state. 

A pair of April raids near Pauls Valley carried about by local authorities and state drug enforcers uncovered at least 6,000 plants. Those actions led to charges against five people. Among them was the legal secretary of a cannabis law firm who some believe (including rival cannabis attorney Ron Durbin) was used as a “ghost owner” for innumerable licensees.   

Rural residents have steadily complained to lawmakers and officials that outside bad actors and criminal organizations are taking advantage of the state’s comparatively low barriers for becoming a cannabis business. Despite the steady stream of headlines and statements of grave concern from officials about an international criminal influence on cannabis in Oklahoma, however, few of the raids so far have netted major arrests and formal charges. Or at least there hasn’t been a high enough number of arrests and charges to be proportionate with the alarmist language often used by authorities to characterize the threat to public safety.  

Cannabis in the hype machine

The Oklahoman and the Tulsa World have each published several in-depth stories in recent weeks about legal cannabis in Oklahoma. They’re covering what is undoubtedly a big story in the state right now: the campaign by regulators, political officials, and law enforcement to oust cannabis black marketers and address worries from residents that medical marijuana is attracting criminal elements. 

Major regional newspapers have a tendency to influence the story choices made by area TV and radio stations and smaller local newspapers. This kind of publicity around cannabis, for good or ill, can be a powerful force that drives public opinion and the actions and reactions of government.

Many of these stories attribute information to statements made by officials with little effort made to independently verify what’s being said. To be fair, newsrooms in Oklahoma -- and everywhere -- have been thoroughly disrupted and decimated by the arrival of digital online advertising. All newsrooms have a fraction of the reporting capacity they once did.

That said, Mark Woodward, public information officer for the Oklahoma Bureau of Narcotics, often breathlessly describes in frightening terms the threat of criminal organizations in cannabis here. He does so while simultaneously taking pains to say the agency is unconcerned with legal operators. Other times, he describes serious allegations like labor and human trafficking but says the agency merely has its suspicions about them with little in the way of evidence. 

Woodward doesn’t seem to go very many days lately without being quoted by a newspaper of TV station. Many of the stories I’ve seen don’t give the cannabis industry a chance to speak until well after Woodward was quoted or summarized at length. Some stories manage to only showcase the views of Woodward the Oklahoma Bureau of Narcotics with no perspective from cannabis at all. 

No doubt black-market cannabis is occurring in Oklahoma, and there likely are worrisome labor issues. But it’s still the case that few formal arrests have been announced, either for growing illegally or mistreating workers. Here’s a snapshot of the major newspaper coverage: 

• The Oklahoman -- June 28 Oklahoma passes $1.5 billion in marijuana sales. But how is the marijuana tax getting used?

  • “If the growth continues at its present rate, Oklahoma's cannabis sector is poised to become a billion-dollar-a-year industry based solely on retail sales. That doesn't account for the value of farms, distribution, and business services offered throughout the industry.”

• Tulsa World -- July 7 Foreign investors, crime among concerns as cannabis booms in rural Oklahoma

  • Quoting Rep. Josh West (R-Grove): “We have so many grow operations. ... The free market should have taken care of it but hasn't ... because of the black market. You've got the cartel; you've got the Chinese drug ring; you've got the biker gangs. Pretty much every criminal organization is operating in the state of Oklahoma right now.”

• Tulsa World -- July 12 Cannabis cultivation booming in Delaware County, with boutique grower offering peeks inside medical marijuana operation

  • “By population, [Delaware County] is only about a tenth the size of the city of Tulsa but not far off in terms of the total number of licensed growing operations. Located in the northeast corner of the state, Delaware County is not far from the Arkansas, Missouri, and Kansas state lines. … Chicken houses once dotted the landscape, but many of the abandoned poultry operations are now known by locals as the ‘pot houses.’” 

• The Oklahoman -- July 19 Black market cannabis investigations open door to labor trafficking

  • Quoting Mark Woodward: “It’s possible, absolutely, that some [workers] could have been smuggled here inside cargo containers weeks ago, and some of them could have been here for generations. We don’t know what we don’t know about a lot of these workers.” 

• The Oklahoman -- July 23 Marijuana is Oklahoma's latest boom industry. But can it be sustained?

  • “When he's speaking to industry forums and conferences, Bud Scott often mentions Oklahoma has more dispensaries than McDonald's, Starbucks, and Walmart stores combined. ‘And just from a pure market-demand analysis, that is completely unsustainable,’ said Scott, head of the Oklahoma Cannabis Industry Association.”

• Tulsa World -- July 26 Legal cannabis industry funds more enforcement efforts as criminals ‘make us look bad’

  • Quoting a grower in Garvin County: “It needs to happen. The industry needs to regulate itself. We need to make sure bad actors are not here. For those of us who live and breathe these rules every day, it makes us look bad.”

More from Oklahoma and beyond

• Another day, another grow raid in Oklahoma with a noisy press release from law enforcement to accompany it. Sheriff’s deputies in Love County near the state line with Texas rushed to Facebook July 22 to report that along with several other agencies -- including the ever-present Oklahoma Bureau of Narcotics -- they had seized some 2,300 plants and $64,000 from “an illegal, Chinese owned-and-operated marijuana grow.” Seems like the only part that should matter here is the illegal part. If it was perfectly legal tomorrow to sell cannabis over state lines, and someone did so fully licensed, would it be illegal if the owners were Chinese? Meanwhile, after looking at tax figures for the state back in March, I realized that small Love County and its little over 10,000 residents were generating more in cannabis tax revenues per person at over $100 each than any other county in the state. My guess is Texans are dashing into Oklahoma and using straw buyers. This is an outcome Oklahoma could have prevented if two-year temporary patient licenses for out-of-staters had passed during the 2021 legislative session. House Bill 2022 was sponsored by representatives Scott Fetgatter (R-Okmulgee) and James Leewright (R-Bristow) and died in a state Senate committee.

• The town of Weatherford, Oklahoma, is worried about the cannabis industry leading to an excessive foreign ownership of Oklahoma land. According to the Weatherford Daily News, disagreement sparked by the rise of cannabis in Oklahoma hardly compares to when pork became a major industry here in the 1990s. Complaints over sludge from production prompted the state to issue a moratorium halting further expansion until the issues could be resolved.

• A local resident complained to the Custer County Board of Commissioners July 26 that the area was bloated with cannabis grows: “We are producing way more marijuana in our county than the dispensaries can sell.” (Oklahoma also produces way more wheat than it can eat. We sell the rest. It’s called a cash crop.)

• A new study says that cannabis legalization actually turns out to be great for home-property values. The reason is new tax revenues driving improvements to public services and infrastructure.

• Speaking of, the city of Lawton is using $440,000 in tax revenues from cannabis to make sidewalk improvements. You’re welcome, Lawton.  

• Oklahoma cannabis cultivators have reason to worry about their new neighbors, too. Pesticides used on traditional Oklahoma farms are threatening to drift onto cannabis grows: “It’s weed against weed in parts of rural Oklahoma, as the state’s medical marijuana growers clash with traditional agriculture producers over the use of herbicides and pesticides. … The [federal Environmental Protection Agency] has not approved or designated pesticide thresholds for cannabis, so Oklahoma, like other states, has adopted the position that there is no allowable amount.” 

• I didn’t honestly know Oklahoma even had a secretary of public safety. Turns out we do, and she, too, says Chinese and Mexican criminal organizations are converging on the state and that “drug trafficking is becoming an international problem in Oklahoma.”

• The number of cannabis licensees in a three-county area around Oklahoma’s Grand Lake has more than doubled since August of last year to 370. “According to real-estate professionals, many of the former poultry operations, as well as farmers who are retiring, are selling their land to marijuana growers who offer as much as $10,000 or more per acre. The largest number of growers, 88, [is] in the Jay zip codes [and] up from 22 a year ago.” (The Grove Sun -- paywalled content) 

• A guy in Oklahoma City got caught with more than 1,200 pre-roll joints, and when authorities asked him about it, the man said simply that he had a medical-marijuana card. Police weren’t impressed and charged him with possession of a firearm and illegal cultivation.

• Turns out a handgun from Oklahoma is worth about as much as one or two pounds of quality California cannabis. Federal prosecutors say members of the Oklahoma street gang Squeeze Team for two years made trips to California to swap guns for weed by either driving their own cars or taking long-distance bus lines and using fake names.

• Black-market cannabis operators are as much of a lightning-rod political issue in California as they are here. A crusading Republican congressman in Siskiyou County near the northern state line with Oregon posted videos of himself in late July triumphantly bulldozing an illegal grow operation. “I love the smell of diesel power in the afternoon. It smells like victory,” he says in one of the videos, quoting the 1979 movie “Apocalypse Now.”

• Three illegal operators in California’s heavily regulated cannabis market spoke to Marijuana Business Daily about why they continue on without licenses in a legal state. One cultivator tried for a year to go legit before giving up. “Every time it seems like we get close, they got something to trip you up,” he said of the compliance process.

• Online commerce surged in popularity during the pandemic and is further killing the American brick-and-mortar shopping center. Some commercial landlords are recovering the lost revenue by ignoring the stigma of cannabis and moving in dispensaries as tenants. Said one real-estate owner who added a cannabis shop to his portfolio: “This is not a dispensary, in my opinion. It is retail.”

• Ray Breer, 29, found himself back in jail after testing positive for marijuana while on probation in Missouri despite having a medical-cannabis card. His previous charges that led to the probation were also cannabis-related. Marijuana Moment reports that weed offenses are happening elsewhere in the state and landing people back behind bars. Missouri’s cannabis laws state that “the possession of marijuana … shall not subject the possessor to arrest, criminal or civil liability, or sanctions.”

• A Missouri cannabis business managed to launch and operate eight clinics and then close them all in one year due to “significant … competitive and financial difficulties.” 

• A major difference between the House and Senate versions of proposed cannabis legalization bills is the excise tax rates. In the House, the federal excise tax would climb from five to eight percent over a period of years. On the Senate side, it’s 10 to ultimately 25 percent. Both are steep enough when added to existing state and local taxes. But it gets worse. In both bills, the tax would hinge not on the price set for an ounce at your local dispensary. It would instead be based on the average price of an ounce across the United States at a given time, even if one market was far more expensive than another. 

• Included in both federal bills to legalize cannabis would be the repeal of the obscure federal tax rules known as 280E. They result in major payments being due to the IRS from cannabis entrepreneurs that are not required of most other businesses. These federal rules were first created to punish drug lords. Ironically, lawmakers in Washington are now trying to figure out how to replace the revenue flowing in from state-legal cannabis businesses. Repealing 280E could mean a loss of as much as $400 million in the first year to federal coffers and $5 billion over 10 years.

• Sana Packaging was one of 20 companies I mentioned back in May that are working to address excessive packaging in the cannabis industry. The company recently announced that it has succeeded in creating a lid for concentrates made entirely from reclaimed and ocean-bound plastic.

• Tulsa cannabis attorney Ron Durbin is again suing the Oklahoma Medical Marijuana Authority, this time for violating the state’s open-meetings laws. His first lawsuit over the state’s plan for tracking every cannabis plant from seed to sale is ongoing.    

Listening to: High on Fire “Snakes for the Divine” Reply with an email or sign up to receive alerts. Follow Green Country Monitor on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Instagram. If you appreciate this work, consider leaving a tip.

I had a bunch of rough copy and notes written up around the new rules from the Oklahoma Medical Marijuana Authority and the status of the Metrc lawsuit. But it’d be re-writing a lot of stuff I’ve already researched and written in this space. 

That’s part of the problem. I’ve been watching the weed news cycle but been checked out of formal Green Country Monitor posts for days. Turns out I didn’t miss much. State-legal cannabis is more confused than ever before about what all levels of government want and expect, now featuring half-steps from Congress once again. 

Kelly Williams, director of the Oklahoma Medical Marijuana Authority, says to anyone who will listen that her primary concern is the safety of patients. Kelly Williams has many masters, including the Oklahoma State Legislature, which has political concerns of its own that transcend mere Kelly Williams.

She’s not powerful enough to make patients her primary concern, even if they sincerely were her primary concern. Ask me about the nightmare that was my patient-license renewal, and I’ll show you a hopelessly befuddled bureaucracy.

Just completed a move back to my beloved hometown of Tulsa after a year stretch in Oklahoma City that included working at a grow for five months. I haven’t mentioned it to very many people. It was a fully legal grow, but I wasn’t rushing to blab about it online and name people and post photos. I sure as hell learned a lot fast about this business while there.

Above is my new card and $10 I plan to spend at a Tulsa dispensary I’ve been excited to check out.  

In the meantime, I needed to offload my alerts. I’m aggravated at the moment that legal, Oklahoma cannabis and its positive entrepreneurship stories are virtually nowhere in the news narrative. You can see my frustration in the tone below. Law enforcement and regulators are firmly in control of the story, and that should concern Oklahoma cannabis. 

We’ve come so very far. Yeah, black market is a problem. But Oklahoma is also no longer the prison capital of the world, and legal cannabis is pumping money into local coffers. Don’t let the haters forget that.

-G.W. Schulz

From Oklahoma and beyond

• A man named Matthew Brumley in Foster, Oklahoma, south of Oklahoma City and near Pauls Valley, posed as an agent from the Oklahoma Bureau of Narcotics and attempted to extort thousands of dollars from a woman trying to be a compliant cannabis operator.

• The city of Cherokee near the state line with Kansas wanted to ban smoking cannabis with a patient license on public sidewalks. I first got this tip from Kalin Bellmard at the Oklahoma Cannabis Industry Association. Glad to report the city of Cherokee looked at state law and thought better of the ordinance. I wrote earlier this year about attempts in Heavener, Oklahoma, to mandate local inspections and licenses for home grows. I forgive small communities with equally small government infrastructures if they can’t get their meeting minutes online fast enough to comply with Oklahoma’s open-meetings laws. But hey, everyone’s trying to be compliant with burdensome government rules, now aren’t they? I’m less forgiving if I know you have a city attorney paid to review these ordinances before they get rammed through and labeled emergencies.

• This is a bold headline from a TV news station that covers Oklahoma but is operated by Texans: “Illegal international drug operations harm local dispensaries.” Perhaps. Thanks, though, Texas. We’ll decide that for ourselves. You’re still laughably unenlightened on cannabis. Note that KXII doesn’t complete Belvin’s grammar in his quotes and lets the stoner image linger. But they clear Woodward’s Okie drug-warrior drawl from the Oklahoma Bureau of Narcotics. I could write a whole PhD dissertation about the latent cognitive bias contained in this story.

• Medical weed rules are so strict in Louisiana, advocates there fear they’ll run out of flower when new laws kick in that authorize smoking it. We’re sitting on mountains of great cannabis in Oklahoma. And people are stunned that black markets are flourishing.

• Speaking of, Schumer’s legalization bill sucks:

  • A 25% excise tax is insulting

  • States will still be in control

  • Complete de-scheduling dooms it politically

  • Cory Booker isn't an enemy of cannabis, even if he gets money from Big Pharma. Everyone in Congress gets money from Big Pharma. He’s mad, because the bill is junk after months of Schumer promising this great, big cannabis-reform package after repeatedly throwing red meat to a key constituency of the Democratic Party, which is you, cannabis, like it or not.

• Here’s the Tulsa World doing an adorable business-trend story about a thing that happens in Oklahoma cannabis everyday: Outside companies using inside growers to expand their brands.

• Police in the city of Edmond issued an arrest warrant seeking information about a guy who grew illegal weed. “This kind of thing, unfortunately, can happen anywhere,” Emily Ward, spokesperson for the Edmond Police Department, told Oklahoma City’s KOCO. Don’t be so melodramatic, PIO Ward. The guy’s not wanted on child-sexual assault charges. Let’s dial back the drug-warrior tone.

• On the other hand, I have an enormous amount of regard for the Los Angeles Times. Some of my very favorite journalists built their early careers there. Black market is undoubtedly creating huge headaches in California and here in Oklahoma. I just don’t trust drug warriors being designated to fix it. All they want to do is lock everyone up and give each other regional trophies for it. We tried that, PIO Ward. Unfortunately, it didn’t work and cost Oklahoma a fortune and an untold number of wasted lives. 

• The mother of an epileptic child started a support group for other families in Tulsa considering cannabis as a treatment. But you won’t see PIO Ward from the Edmond Police Department calling epilepsy treatment an unfortunate thing that could happen anywhere.

• The Marijuana Policy Project estimates that cannabis has generated $8 billion in tax revenues from adult-use states alone. “This does not include local taxes, revenue from medical marijuana, application-and-licensing fees paid by cannabis businesses, corporate taxes paid to the federal government, or income taxes paid by workers in the cannabis industry, all of which also bolster the American economy.” Before you know it, PIO Ward, cannabis could, unfortunately, be paying your salary and benefits.

• Stiff weed regulations are pushing prices through the roof in some states and leaving poorer people unable to get decent cannabis for what ails them. And we wonder why there’s a black market. I was once on Klonopin for crippling anxiety that manifested nastily in my professional journalism career as near-paralyzing panic attacks. I still have difficulty talking about it but happily haven’t touched Klonopin in over two years. Shit is Satan. I took a single Xanax bar earlier this year ahead of some professional stuff when my patient license was still awaiting renewal. It stupefied me. Hated it. Way better off with cannabis and maybe a little of Hunter Thompson’s cough syrup from time to time for bravery. No pills.

• I’ve used this space very little to talk about my brother, Mathew Dustin Schulz, who passed away from leukemia at Saint Francis Hospital in 2005 after a long, painful battle with it. Someone recognized me in Tulsa recently and remembered my brother. Chemo wrecked him. I regret everyday that we couldn’t get him better cannabis. He remains one of the smartest, funniest people I’ve ever met and had killer taste in music and art. He couldn’t keep the food down and writhed in pain. It was my old man’s second loss — after he made it back from Vietnam.

• Every weed trade publication on the planet re-wrote the Jim Inhofe press release requesting $4 million to fight black market. This guy sharts billion-dollar Defense budgets before getting out of bed. Four million is federal pocket change and a tweet from one of his handlers. Ol’ Jim probably already forgot about it.

• This guy in Ohio nearly became one of the only people on earth to die from ingesting weed, and it was because he choked trying to swallow it to avoid getting busted. Trooper had to give him the Heimlich. There’s dash-cam video and everything.

• A Mississippi man must serve out a life sentence for an ounce-and-a-half of weed, according to a state appeals court there. Complicating matters is that the defendant had a not-insignificant criminal record and was actually popped with far more than an ounce and a half. But weed was the triggering offense for life, which raises all kinds of fairness questions. Among them: Was it the weed’s fault, or the system’s objection to it the fault? Meanwhile, Mississippi officials are getting advice from Oklahoma about how to not be so insufferably punitive with weed.

• Cannabis Now told the back story recently of the federal government’s notorious cannabis patent from 2003. I wrote about cannabis patents early in Green Country Monitor and receive email alerts anytime a new cannabis patent is filed. I’m endlessly fascinated with weed ingenuity. 

• Cannabis cultivation isn’t sucking up as much water as we thought it was, according to a new study from the University of California Berkeley, which is pretty much ground zero for sustainability. It’s Berkeley. A very funny media friend who knows the Bay Area well once said Berkeley was the only place on earth that DIDN’T need more democracy.

• In addition to black market being bad for the image of Oklahoma cannabis, regular gun play at cannabis businesses is also bad for bidness. I’m starting to see security and surveillance companies I used to cover as a homeland-security reporter eye opportunities in cannabis. I don't think they’re wrong to eye those opportunities. I’ve been watching this consultancy for awhile. ISAO is an old homeland-security acronym that means “information sharing and analysis organization.” The only thing protecting cannabis from ransomware right now is the fact that so much of it is mired in cash-handling. That won’t be the case forever.       

Listening to: Floor “Sister Sophia” Reply with an email or sign up to receive alerts. Follow Green Country Monitor on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Instagram. If you appreciate this work, consider leaving a tip.

I’m not thrilled with the audio. It’s high-trebled and tinny, and I’m a bashful mumbler already. But I loved doing a TEDx Talk, and I’m passionate about criminal justice. Fairness matters. Text below. -G.W. Schulz

The Truth About True Crime

How much is it really teaching us about justice?

By G.W. Schulz

Karl Allen Fontenot was born on Aug. 10, 1964, in Ada, Oklahoma. For more than 35 of his 56 years on earth, he’s been better-known as Oklahoma Department of Corrections inmate #148909. The state of Oklahoma convicted Fontenot in 1985 of raping and killing a young woman named Donna Haraway.

Police interrogated Fontenot upon his arrest in 1984 for nearly two hours. Then they switched on a video recorder. The investigators urged Fontenot on as he confessed to abducting Haraway with two other men. 

In this videotaped portion of Fontenot’s interrogation, he confessed that the three men first drove Haraway to an abandoned house. There, they raped and murdered her before burning her body. 

I’ll tell you more about Fontenot in a moment. Let me step back. 

When each of us is presented with any type of media or communication, our minds take cognitive shortcuts or leaps in judgment-making, so we can decide how to react. These are sometimes called biases.

As communicators reliant on storytelling to share ideas, we frame people like Karl Fontenot not as proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. We frame him as a character in a story. Each character in any story has a role to play -- the hero, the victim, the perpetrator.

Karl has been each of these characters for us now. First he was the villain-defendant during the 1980s in local TV and newspaper media. Over time, his case was extensively documented across three books, a Netflix series, and true-crime podcast episodes. What he hasn’t been is treated fairly by our democratic institutions.

In order for there to be a crusader of justice in popular entertainment, there must be a corresponding villain in order for us to perceive law enforcement as inherently good.

News reporters are responsible for considering the perspective of everyone across the spectrum of a given story. Yet we rely on storytelling shortcuts everyday -- suspense, conflict, drama -- to convey important information to our audiences. 

We do this all while trying our best not to frame people like Karl Fontenot as the “good guy” or “bad guy.” Much of the time, journalists fail miserably at this task.

You may have heard the expression “Perception is everything.” It is. We must seek to become more intelligent consumers of media and messages by understanding how framing and media biases cloud our perceptions.

When Karl Fontenot was sentenced to death in 1985, Oklahoma authorities had not found the body of Donna Haraway. There was no physical evidence at all, in fact, linking Fontenot to her killing. 

No one could say for certain when he was convicted that Haraway had been murdered in the first place. Juries in Oklahoma nonetheless determined on two occasions that Fontenot was guilty beyond a reasonable doubt of taking Haraway’s life.

I wanted to know more, so I studied Fontenot’s case. He hardly had a chance to develop emotionally between a horrific upbringing in Ada and decades in prison. His youth reportedly included witnessing his alcoholic and abusive father have sex with animals in front of the children. His mother was run over and killed by a car as she crossed a highway on foot to meet him. 

He roamed the streets of Ada with no real home or family until his arrest in 1984. For years, he received virtually no visitors other than legal representatives.

Much of the remainder of his life has been spent in the most unforgiving of Oklahoma’s correctional institutions. Fontenot’s story has been told many times now in popular culture. But it remains a story that’s full meaning has escaped us all along.

There’s nothing sinister about our love of true-crime entertainment. In fact, we’re hard-wired to love it. But it’s critical to know how we perceive characters in a story when their lives are at stake. We can do this and still love true crime, drink wine, and be in bed by nine.

Part of what attracted me so much to Karl Fontenot is that from a distance, he didn’t seem to cleanly fit into the cultural framework we’ve assembled for ourselves of wrongfully convicted people. 

Despite the books and podcasts and Netflix series, it remained difficult to tell if he was a victim or villain. Fontenot didn’t easily meet our needs as storytellers. But he did tell an important story about fairness.

For criminal justice to work in the United States and here in Oklahoma, whether Karl Fontenot neatly fits as a character in his own drama doesn’t matter if so many people now question his conviction. That list of critics includes a federal judge in his case.

Fontenot was twice sentenced to death before being resentenced to life in prison. The Oklahoma Innocence Project took up Fontenot’s case when the law clinic was first formed at Oklahoma City University in 2011. By 2019, Oklahoma police and prosecutors had admitted that they never found any evidence to corroborate what Fontenot had described in his confession.

In fact, newly discovered evidence that was previously withheld from Fontenot by Oklahoma law enforcement contradicts his own confession. According to the federal judge, this new evidence provides “solid proof of Mr. Fontenot’s probable innocence.”

In the judge’s nearly 200-page ruling, one statement reaches to the heart of Karl’s case: “No rational juror who was able to set aside the tragedy of Mrs. Haraway’s death could find beyond a reasonable doubt that Mr. Fontenot should be convicted by his own words.”

That extraordinary statement only occurred after Karl had exhausted his appeals in Oklahoma.

I’m not trying to dissuade you today from consuming true-crime entertainment. We rely upon storytelling and loosely shared understandings to simplify and act upon media messages and events in our lives. 

But the courts we also share are not responsible for assigning TV roles to each of us. They’re responsible for ensuring that each of us is granted fairness, due process, and equal protection under the law.

Fontenot was released in December of 2019 after being declared innocent of the crimes for which he was accused almost 40 years ago now. But his time on the outside could be short-lived. Even now, he has never been exonerated by the state of Oklahoma. 

[Edit: Former] Oklahoma Attorney General Mike Hunter has appealed the federal judge’s ruling and maintains that Fontenot is guilty and not entitled to a new trial. He must return to an Oklahoma courtroom and could wind up in prison all over again, perhaps for the rest of his life. 

So while the Netflix series and the books and the podcast episodes are over now for us, Karl Fontenot’s horror story never ends for him.

Thank you.

Listening to: Public Enemy “Harder Than You Think” Reply with an email or sign up to receive alerts. Follow Green Country Monitor on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Instagram. If you appreciate this work, consider leaving a tip.

Eighty percent of this post was ready to publish by Sunday night with the headline: “Dispute over Metrc and cannabis tracking in Oklahoma goes before judge.” 

My plan was to drive up to the Okmulgee County courthouse early this morning, shoot some photos of the inevitable Oklahoma cannabis riff-raff protesting outside, capture some tit-for-tat color between the lawyers in the courtroom, and then post from a nearby hotel lobby with free wifi. 

I was even looking forward to scooping the local TV stations for old time’s sake on behalf of my 150 email subscribers. I trained student reporters in local TV broadcast news during grad school at UT Austin. I know how precious little they grasp. Saw one twenty-nothing at a local station this morning that shall go unnamed mightily struggle live on-air to sound authoritative on weed policy.

Fake it ‘til you make it.   

Oklahoma cannabiz woke up this morning in the meantime with no promised hearing and virtually no official insight into how to proceed from state regulators on electronic inventory tracking. By the afternoon, I had little to add to the 80 percent I’d already written other than splashes of newsy snarkiness in my lede grafs.

Left adrift

After months of planning and deadlines for the inventory-tracking system first mandated by Oklahoma legislators in 2019, the ongoing court dispute over its implementation has left the state’s $1.5 billion cannabis industry still unsure of what the future holds. 

It’s making my head hurt just thinking about how to explain this accurately and concisely without being a lawyer. But let’s try. Fundamentally, the Oklahoma Attorney General’s Office, state cannabis regulators, and a private company selected by those regulators here to implement a system for seed-to-sale surveillance want a legal challenge to it tossed. 

But Metrc and Oklahoma state officials realize at this early of a stage that the entire case can’t be so readily dismissed. Like him or not, Ron Durbin has a bar license. Once he filed suit, a court protocol had to be followed to ensure due process.  

In separate pleadings, Florida-based compliance company Metrc and Oklahoma weed regulators make similar arguments for why the lawsuit from Durbin, cannabis operator Dr Z Leaf, and other medical-marijuana businesses should not be allowed to impede the progress of real-time cannabis surveillance in Oklahoma.  

Metrc and state officials are asking an Okmulgee County judge to dismiss several of the claims made by Dr Z Leaf and to deny a temporary injunction that would further delay the monitoring program’s rollout until the underlying legal matters were resolved.

The Okmulgee County judge agreed to continue the case until a later date, but seemingly the last people to find that out today were cannabis licensees.

Durbin just went on vacation, and state cannabis regulators appear terrified to utter anything on social media or online anywhere, lest it be used against them as part of one of Durbin’s central legal arguments, which is that the state never formally articulated agency rules for the implementation of seed-to-sale tracking.

Plans dashed

State officials had hoped the cannabis industry would be using Metrc’s proprietary software and tracking tags by April to meet demands from lawmakers that medical marijuana be monitored in real time statewide to ensure public safety and keep bad actors out. 

Until now, those plans have been on hold under an agreed-upon temporary restraining order between the parties in the suit and the Oklahoma Cannabis Industry Association. The suit was filed shortly before a crucial industry deadline in April when Oklahoma cannabis licensees were expected to have fully adopted the new tracking system. 

During the restraining-order period, however, attorneys for Metrc began accusing Durbin of boasting in a public interview that he’d strategically filed the lawsuit in Okmulgee County intending for an upper hand. 

Assistant Solicitor General Randall Yates from the Oklahoma Attorney General’s Office piled on by blasting Durbin in one motion for “impugning the judiciary” and “bringing into question the integrity of this court” as a result of comments Durbin made during an interview with the cannabis advocacy group OK4U Approved. 

This morning’s hearing was scheduled to occur just one day before the restraining order on seed-to-sale tracking in Oklahoma was set to expire.

That left the state’s cannabis industry largely lost at sea about how to proceed and stay fully compliant at the same time. Some 7,000 operators have already integrated Metrc’s software and tags into their operations in anticipation of the April implementation deadline. 

Complete solution

The tracking program, Oklahoma regulators say, “hinges” on the use of Metrc’s proprietary radio-frequency identification tags. A temporary injunction, let alone a permanent one, would frustrate and disrupt years of work in Oklahoma toward real-time cannabis tracking. 

Many cannabis licensees have embraced Metrc’s system for streamlining their operations and are continuing to use it despite the lawsuit. LeeAnn Wiebe, CEO of Apothecary Extracts in Beggs, Oklahoma, says that Metrc is a small fraction of her business costs, according to High Times:

“Any time you have a new system, it can be overwhelming or cumbersome, and it’s a bit fearful because you don’t know it. But shortly after it was implemented, everyone could see the value in transparency and everyone using the same system. … Based on working with hundreds of growers at this point and our challenge in getting license verification, test results, or batch information, nine of 10 places we can’t work with because they can’t provide us that information.”

(Edit: High Times appears to have actually plucked from an Oklahoma Watch story without giving them credit. -G.W. Schulz)

Metrc is arguing in its own pleadings that Oklahoma in the first place intended to hire “a single provider of a complete solution” to meet the expectations of the state legislature. The goal was for the system to verify compliance with state cannabis laws and to spot and remove poorly or illegally made cannabis that could pose a threat to public health. 

State cannabis regulators selected Metrc over several other bidders in September, and it performs similar services for numerous states with variations of legal cannabis. The company says Dr Z Leaf and the other plaintiffs have no standing under the state’s public health code to bring the lawsuit and that state agencies are immune from charges of enabling business monopolies.

Dr Z Leaf and the other plaintiffs counter that Oklahoma created a “financial windfall” for Metrc by mandating that the entire industry exclusively utilize Metrc’s software and radio-frequency tracking tags at their own expense. They want cannabis licensing fees and tax revenues to be used for financing the tracking program instead. 

Venue change

Metrc was not initially named by Durbin as a defendant in the case, but a judge granted the company’s request to intervene. It’s now asking the judge to move the case entirely from Okmulgee County to Oklahoma City. Their lawyers accuse Durbin of “venue shopping,” or selectively filing the lawsuit in a court district he believed would be most favorable. 

Included in Metrc’s filing is a transcript of the interview Durbin gave to OK4U in which he says a county was “picked out” for where the suit would be filed. Durbin also seemed to say he knew what judge would hear the case.

Elsewhere in the transcript, Durbin throws a not-small amount of shade on elected judges generally for being unable to “hack it” as lawyers.

From the Metrc motion: 

“This is a case of significant public importance. To have a lawyer choose this forum and then deliberately communicate to the general public that this forum was hand-selected to afford some type of advantage raises the specter of judicial partiality. … These factors are amplified by the uniquely public nature of this litigation.”

Scorched earth

Durbin is less-than-apologetic about his abrasive style. In a live June 24 Facebook video, Durbin said he was unafraid of even his own clients firing him as long as he still felt his cause was just. 

He frequently takes to Instagram and Facebook to make his case to the public. Last week, he posted photos and videos of the director of the Oklahoma Medical Marijuana Authority, Kelly Williams, being served with a witness subpoena in the lawsuit.

While mildly amusing, I can honestly say I’ve never seen anything like that before as a reporter, and I’ve covered some true wildcat ambulance-chasers. Durbin said in the later Facebook video that he once had a good relationship with senior state cannabis regulators. That diplomacy had soured:

“I had no protest to [seed-to-sale tracking] and the plan. But as more and more time went by, no OMMA regulations came about. The Department of Health didn’t pass any regulations related to Metrc and the implementation of the seed-to-sale tracking program. So I started reaching out. I’ve had lunch with Kelly Williams many times. I’ve had evenings where I had a drink with Kelly Williams and [former OMMA director] Travis Kirkpatrick. We talked regularly, and quite honestly, [I] thought we worked well together. So I’m not really sure where things went off the rail[s].”

Durbin’s tone had noticeably cooled by the time of a shorter Facebook video posted yesterday. He and the cannabis plaintiffs are seeking to make the suit a class action. In their own court filings, they do not dispute that the 2019 “Unity bill,” which established a legislative and regulatory infrastructure for medical marijuana in Oklahoma, required eventual cannabis inventory tracking roughly from “seed to sale.”

They also acknowledge that state officials are generally free to contract with private companies to meet their own needs, which is what cannabis regulators did when they chose Metrc to meet their own tracking obligations under the Unity bill.

Yet cannabis businesses don’t have to be the ones to pay for it, Dr Z Leaf and Durbin argue. The state can’t mandate that cannabis businesses exclusively utilize only products sold by Metrc to achieve compliance with the Unity bill.

Durbin and the plaintiffs say a temporary injunction is necessary in part because seed-to-sale tracking can’t be implemented until the state marijuana authority has formally crafted rules for it in a process that includes outside scrutiny.

Without a temporary injunction, Dr Z Leaf and the rest of the industry will suffer “irreparable harm” that is “nearly impossible to calculate” by having to pay for Metrc’s software and tags, as well as the cost of hiring workers to deploy the technology.

They’ve estimated that Metrc could make as much as $20 million during the first year alone in licensing fees along with per-tag costs of $0.45 for each plant and $0.25 for each packaged product. Cannabis businesses would have to slow or cease operations to dedicate existing staff to complying with Metrc or train new workers to do it: 

“Plaintiffs cannot calculate the extent of these damages with a reasonable degree of certainty but do anticipate that these costs would be substantial. … Without the injunction, plaintiffs will be forced to incur these exorbitant costs, and because of the state’s immunity, will not ever be able to recover those damages.”

Real time

For their part, state officials respond in pleadings from the attorney general’s office that Oklahoma had always envisioned inventory tracking since voters authorized medical cannabis. Attorneys for the state argue that the technology being deployed by Metrc in Oklahoma integrates with over 200 other systems used by cannabis companies. Several dozen of those programs are being used here in Oklahoma. 

Setting Metrc aside, the state says, cannabis businesses must already use a tracking system, either the one chosen by the state or another that smoothly interfaces with it.

Licensees are fundamentally required either way to “keep records for every transaction with another medical marijuana business, patient, or caregiver” and to report inventory changes “after each individual sale.”

Appended to the state’s request to deny the temporary injunction from Durbin and the cannabis plaintiffs is an affidavit from marijuana-authority Director Williams:

“A seed-to-sale system gives OMMA the ability to track where potentially dangerous medical marijuana or medical-marijuana products came from and to whom it was sold. … Currently, the only way to obtain this information is from records of the commercial licensee, which are often hard to obtain and incomplete. … It is only once a commercial licensee’s data makes its way into Metrc that the OMMA can view and track that inventory.”

Listening to: Black Flag “My War” Reply with an email or sign up to receive alerts. Follow Green Country Monitor on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Instagram. If you appreciate this work, consider leaving a tip.

I realized this week that more than one person was under the impression Green Country Monitor had a team of contributors. Uhm, no. It’s just one scumbag former journalist with a ton of student debt from grad school and a carefully maintained collection of Liam Neeson-grade media and reporting tools. I don’t have the confidence or even patience at the moment to think about paywalling or advertising. There is a tip jar, though. -G.W. Schulz

Merely emitting the scent of cannabis during a traffic stop is grounds for police to search not only your vehicle but also your hotel room, according to a new ruling from the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals. The decision reverses a lower-court determination that such searches were improper since Oklahoma today permits some 385,000 people to use cannabis with a license.  

After the smell was detected, 38-year-old Brandon James Roberson told police during the 2019 stop in Tulsa that he possessed “possibly half a joint.” That prompted a search of both his SUV and hotel room where police netted other drugs.      

The five-judge Oklahoma criminal appeals court found that the basis of the initial search was valid and that the numerous charges against Roberson for drug trafficking and possession could stand. The fact that cannabis is legal with a medical license in Oklahoma “in no way affects a police officer’s formation of probable cause based upon the presence or odor of marijuana.”

Under the state’s core cannabis laws authorized by voters, possession of up to one-and-a-half ounces without a license is a $400 fine when the individual can state a medical condition.

A law passed during the most recent legislative session and signed by the governor goes further. House Bill 2646 specifies that cannabis possession without a patient license and below the threshold is a misdemeanor offense “not subject to imprisonment.”

But the appeals court also cited “the totality of all the circumstances” in Roberson’s case, pointing out that he had reported Irish Mob gang tattoos and an extensive criminal record that included drug convictions: 

“That marijuana possession is legal in Oklahoma for those who are issued a valid medical-marijuana license does not change the fact that marijuana possession otherwise is generally a crime in Oklahoma. Several states have determined that decriminalization of marijuana does not equate to blanket legalization and thus, the odor (or presence) of marijuana remains a factor indicating criminal activity despite statutes which decriminalize marijuana possession in certain circumstances.”

Republican state Rep. Scott Fetgatter (Okmulgee) told the Tulsa World that he remained troubled by the ruling. “When 10% of your population has a medical-marijuana card, we know that a lot of cars are going to have the smell of at least unburned marijuana.” State law makes it illegal to drive with any amount of a Schedule I substance in one’s blood, including cannabis, which can remain in the body for weeks following ingestion.

More from Oklahoma and beyond

• Retail dispensaries in Oklahoma and elsewhere continue to be vulnerable to burglaries and robberies, and allowing them greater access to traditional banks could help solve the problem.  

• A federal judge in Missouri confused everyone in the cannabis industry this month by blocking that state’s limit on how much of a cannabis business could be owned by non-residents. A federal judge here earlier this month had allowed similar residency rules to stand.

• Cannabis compliance company Metrc, operator Dr Z Leaf, and the Oklahoma Attorney General’s Office have all filed briefs ahead of a court hearing June 29 in the ongoing dispute over electronically tracking plants and products.   

• Amid the confusion over cannabis-inventory tracking, some licensees are happy to continue using Metrc’s software and tags to streamline their businesses, while others have stopped using it until they get more answers.

• Following fighting and gunfire at a promotional event for the Oklahoma City location of the dispensary chain Cookies, police say they are searching for one man and another is in custody.

• I wrote two in-depth posts last month about what everyone in cannabis can see every day: Wasteful weed packaging is costing operators a fortune. Vessel Brand was one of 20 companies I listed as among those working on alternative-packaging solutions. They announced a partnership with select East Coast retailers on June 23 to offer recycling for vape-pen batteries through collection boxes at dispensaries. 

• It wasn’t much of a story last week, even in cannabis circles. But a courageous dispensary in Denver made it to the doorstep of the U.S. Supreme Court with a tilting-at-windmills challenge to federal rule 280E, which results in epic tax burdens for weed entrepreneurs. After months of awaiting an answer, the justices declined to hear the case.

• The governor of ruby-red Kansas commuted the sentences of several people there, including three who were convicted of cannabis offenses. One former California medical-marijuana patient had been serving four-and-a-half years after being caught in Kansas with less than an ounce. 

• The CEO of Apothecary Extracts in Beggs, Oklahoma, told High Times that the “vast majority” of her wholesale clients were not yet using Metrc’s cannabis tracking tags and software. She believes many of them prefer to manipulate the current system of manual data entry.  

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One of the hottest stories in Oklahoma cannabis took just hours to achieve that status -- 24 to be exact. With the 2021 legislative session now over, state cannabis regulators are speeding to write new agency rules and change others in some 100 pages of existing administrative edicts involving medical marijuana in the state. 

The cannabis industry, experts, and advocates were given just one day to review the new rules before a lengthy meeting to discuss them last week. 

Known as administrative rulemaking, the process occurs after elected lawmakers tell a government agency to do something specific or to promulgate rules for doing something specific. It’s also an opportunity for government regulators to enshrine in requirements their own wishes or preferences that go beyond directives made by the legislature in newly written laws. 

The cannabis bills from this year’s legislative session have various deadlines for going into effect that range from soon after the governor’s signature to November later this year. When they go into effect depends on how urgently state legislators believe -- or claim -- the law is needed.

For any stakeholder in Oklahoma cannabis, what matters is knowing when new laws officially apply, how they’re being applied, and where they have the biggest chances of cutting into time and revenues or risking licensure. The public will have an opportunity to comment on the rules in the future. For now, the rules already have critics. The Oklahoma Cannabis Industry Association began detailing its own worries to members in an email last week. 

They and others point to several rule revisions or additions that are either troublesome or involve new requirements that lawmakers are gravely serious about seeing enforced. Putting off any one of the new requirements or not making them a priority could quickly lead to your cannabis business license being revoked. Here are some highlights from the proposed rules:

• Who pays for inventory tracking 

  • The Oklahoma Medical Marijuana Authority insists that as a matter of agency rules, it won’t be paying for the industry to maintain compliance. 

• When tracking tags are unaccounted for

  • If radio-frequency tags affixed to plants and products are lost or misplaced, cannabis operators must report them as such in 48 hours.

• Quantities that must be tagged

  • Each wholesale package requiring a tracking tag may be no bigger than 15 pounds of dry flower and 50 pounds of material for extraction. Everything within each package must come from the same harvest batch.  

• Proving you’re actively operational 

  • Businesses will be required to prove that they’re operational within 180 days of a license being issued. The agency defines “working towards operational” below.

• Disclosing foreign ownership

  • Operators must complete an affidavit revealing the existence of any foreign owners within 60 days of July 1 or risk license revocation.   

More than just edibles

A key component in the rulemaking process for Oklahoma cannabis is an advisory board created when voters first authorized medical marijuana in 2018. It’s made up of experts, agency officials, and cannabis stakeholders, including from the industry. 

It’s formally known as the OMMA Food Safety Standards Board, but that’s confusing, because its recommendations go far beyond just edibles. So to reduce that confusion, we’re going to call it the OMMA advisory board or the advisory board.

The board’s job is to formulate recommendations for how to ensure safety in the processing and handling of cannabis and cannabis products in the state of Oklahoma. Among its tasks is providing crucial input during the administrative rulemaking process. 

Two new additions to the board are Blake Cantrell from Oklahoma City’s The Peak Dispensaries and Mike Ervin from Oklahoma Producers, which makes concentrate products. Both are also on the board of the Oklahoma Cannabis Industry Association and had one day to settle into their new positions and examine the proposed rules before June 16’s meeting. They still managed to critique the rules and ask questions in key areas where the outcomes could be felt statewide.

Lawmakers during the session weren’t always particularly helpful. Major bills affecting everyone in Oklahoma cannabis -- from patients to businesses -- were undergoing changes until literally the session’s final hours. 

To illustrate just how confusing the legislature can be about its intent, consider the distance rule between schools and dispensaries, also known as a setback. Senate Bill 1033 and House Bill 2646 prescribe two different methods for determining the measurement, the difference of which could significantly alter location options for cannabis retailers.

Yet both were signed into law by the governor. Regulators in their draft rules are going with the second of the two to be signed, which happens to be the less-restrictive measurement contained in SB 1033.    

Who pays for inventory tracking 

Here, the agency asserts that the cost of Oklahoma’s program for tracking every cannabis plant and product will not be subsidized by the Oklahoma Medical Marijuana Authority or its parent agency, the Oklahoma Department of Health. 

While the state’s cannabis laws require Oklahoma to have a tracking system for cannabis, they don’t require that the cost be borne by the industry, nor do they explicitly bar the state from using its swelling cannabis tax revenues to cover the cost of tracking cannabis for regulatory and enforcement purposes.

As worded, the state cannabis industry association believes the proposed rules lead to operators being required to use only Metrc tags and that OMMA is seeking to head off potential legal challenges to program mandates. 

Board member Mike Ervin from Oklahoma Producers and the state cannabis association asked Williams to specify how the paragraph tied to a bill or directive from the legislator, and she was unable to fully do so. In other words, the language was coming from agency regulators and not lawmakers specifically.

Williams could only say that it more broadly stemmed from the legislature’s 2019 “Unity bill.” That’s when lawmakers, advocates, and others had to determine the how, what, when, where, and why of cannabis regulations in Oklahoma once voters had given their approval.

“It was the Unity bill that established seed-to-sale requirements, tracking requirements,” Williams said at the meeting. “Now that we know what that process looks like, we’re able to do rulemaking that reflects how we actually implement the laws that were put together prior.”

Ervin wasn’t satisfied. 

“I guess I’m curious as to why it’s in this emergency rulemaking process from a bill two years ago. ... I guess I’m just curious as to why this language is even necessary.”

Williams: “For clarification.” After Ervin pressed further, Williams went on:

“As I said, now that we know more about what implementation of the system looks like, we’re able to better articulate what those requirements are. Without knowing the nuances of the systems and how to implement that legislation, we weren’t able to write rules specifically to implement that process, because we didn’t know what all that process entailed at that time.”

Board member Blake Cantrell from The Peak Dispensaries said that he and many in the industry never assumed the cost of seed-to-sale would be shouldered by the state. But mandating the use of the state’s contractor “financially marries us to the whims of Metrc and their balance sheet, effectively. … The mandate to utilize on Metrc’s terms is a very important distinction.” 

The Unity bill generally required that cannabis businesses use a seed-to-sale tracking system. It could either be the one used by state regulators for their own quality-and-safety purposes. Or they could use a system of their own choosing, as long as it effectively integrated with what Oklahoma had chosen to achieve its goals.  

Eighteen months after the bill’s passage, Florida-based Metrc became the company Oklahoma cannabis regulators selected to meet their own mandate from the legislature. The plan called for licensees to pay Metrc $40 per month in subscription fees, plus $0.45 for each cannabis plant and $0.25 for each cannabis product. 

But the Unity bill had stopped short of saying cannabis licensees can only achieve compliance by fully adopting the system Oklahoma chose for itself, in this case Metrc. It does not require that the cannabis industry absorb the cost of the program, nor does it call upon the agency to declare a prohibition on the use of cannabis tax revenues or any other revenue source for covering the program’s price tag. 

Neighboring Missouri, for example, has a fixed-price contract with Metrc in which the cost of the tracking tags is included and the company is unable to separately charge for them (although it tried and lost in court). Board member Ervin pointed out that using public dollars to subsidize the compliance requirements would likely already require permission from the legislator. So a declaration from the agency that it unequivocally won’t pay seems altogether unnecessary. 

When tracking tags are unaccounted for

Under the proposed rules, when cannabis operators are “unable to account for” lost or misplaced tracking tags, they must be reported within 48 hours.

“We were going to say ‘lost,’ but then what accounts for ‘lost’?” said Williams at the meeting. “Did I just put it in the wrong room, etc, etc? You’ve got two days to figure it out, or you’ve got to report it.” 

Large outdoor growers with tens of thousands of plants worry this rule may simply not be practical where Oklahoma’s unpredictable weather could tear one or innumerable tags away. Following a ripper of a plains storm, a cultivator could quickly fall into violation by being unable to account for all of the missing tags within the required 48 hours. 

Ervin said Oklahoma’s agricultural history made it distinct from other states with legal cannabis and seed-to-sale tracking requirements. Given how the state stands apart, Ervin wondered if Oklahoma should completely revisit its approach to meeting the Unity bill’s requirements.  

“We’re much more of an agricultural state,” Ervin said, “and there are many growers that grow outdoors. … You know the weather in Oklahoma. We all live here. It rains. It’s hot. It’s cold. It snows in October. … If you have 50,000 plants, 100,000 plants scattered across 30, 40, 50 acres, how do you even know if these have fallen off [or] if they’re even working?”

Williams responded that she understood the concerns and had heard them from cultivators already. Her challenge remained balancing those interests with the agency’s obligation to shield patients from unsafe cannabis, and Williams said she was unsure of how to do that without the tracking information contained in the unique tags.  

The quantities that must be tagged

Elsewhere in the proposed rules, the agency instructs that each package being sold for wholesale rather than retail must have a radio-frequency tag affixed to it during transfer and storage. Everything within the package must come from the same harvest batch. 

Under House Bill 2646 passed this year, which goes into effect Nov. 1, “harvest batch” is defined as every 50 pounds of cannabis material an operator plans to dedicate to extracts and every 15 pounds of dry flower. 

The state cannabis association calls these numbers for determining what quantities must be tagged “arbitrary” and says they’d apply even where a large-scale grower planned to dedicate most of his or her crop to extraction. Having to add a new tag for every legally defined harvest batch could needlessly push up costs without a clear trade-off of improved public safety.

The association also noticed that the rules as proposed would require the industry to use the medical marijuana authority’s chosen Metrc tracking system to generate manifests when cannabis and cannabis products are transported. Statutes, OCIA points out, do not require that Metrc be used for generating transport manifests (state officials believe they do).

Proving you’re actively operational

Cannabis businesses after Sept. 1 of this year must prove to be operational or working toward it within 180 days of their license being issued under House Bill 2272. State regulators will conduct inspections to verify that a business is actively operating and not merely a shell for passing through illegal product. 

If a new licensee flunks the site visit, they’ll be granted a grace period of another 180 days. Flunk again, and the agency can choose whether to give you additional time or move to revoke your license. Under the draft rules, working towards active operation would mean you are:

• Onboarding and training initial staff

• Performing construction or making other material changes to a premises

• Applying for permits and licenses other than those required by OMMA

• Awaiting or in the process of purchasing tools, equipment, or materials

• Anything else the agency decides should be needed  

Disclosing foreign ownership

This requirement comes directly from the demands of lawmakers, specifically House Bill 2272. 

Don’t doubt that lawmakers fully intend to brandish it to constituents as evidence that Oklahoma is mindful of international or criminal organizations overtaking the state through its radically tolerant cannabis laws. Because it will be brandished in such a way is why cannabis operators should take it seriously.

Within 60 days of July 1, all cannabis-business licensees must complete an affidavit confirming or denying whether they have foreign investors or owners. Lawmakers in their wisdom did not define “foreign.” The law also does not go so far as to say foreign ownership is prohibited or even that it would prompt deeper scrutiny from state officials. But not completing the requirement or lying on the affidavit could nonetheless lead to serious trouble.  

Ironically, in Senate Bill 1033 during the session, legislators made it perfectly legal for an Oklahoma cannabis business to be 40 percent-owned by a publicly traded company, even if it’s from Canada. No clear reason is given for why the state shouldn’t go ahead and allow any number of additional countries around the world to invest in Oklahoma cannabis the way they do in other of the state’s industries every day.  

“It’s a benefit for the state of Oklahoma to have outside investors who want to bring money into Oklahoma in the form of purchasing cannabis businesses,” said board member Blake Cantrell. “It’s puzzling to me that there would be this framework that sets seemingly arbitrary percentages and eliminates every country in the world but the U.S. and Canada.” 

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Cannabis cultivator LaRue Bratcher is free on a $400,000 bond paid for by the organizational arm of Oklahoma City’s Black Lives Matter protest movement, which says he is being treated unfairly. Bratcher had been in jail since May of last year after shooting a white intruder named Daniel Hardwick, whom Bratcher said was attempting to break into his property for a second time. 

A black 34-year-old Army veteran, Bratcher’s time outside of custody lasts only until his trial begins in October. He was not arrested and charged with first-degree murder until a week after the shooting once prosecutors had reviewed the case and learned Bratcher’s cannabis licensing was expired.

For prosecutors, Bratcher is not shielded by Oklahoma’s stand-your-ground laws if he was simultaneously manufacturing a controlled substance without a license. Employees at Oklahoma cannabis dispensaries with active licenses have shot and killed armed intruders on two other occasions in recent months, and no charges have been filed in those cases.

I wrote earlier this month that while Bratcher has one of the best defense attorneys in the state, his case faces major hurdles. Prosecutors plan to show that Bratcher’s cultivation license had been expired for six months, he had no compliance certificate from Oklahoma City, and he had no additionally required cannabis license from the Oklahoma Bureau of Narcotics. They’ll also point to a previous Texas weed conviction that followed a 2019 traffic stop. 

Bratcher and his wife had been operating legally in Oklahoma City during the first year after voters approved medical marijuana in the state. Vicky Bratcher says the couple was contending with tens of thousands of dollars in expensive facility upgrades needed for their cultivation license to be renewed. Marijuana Business Daily published a profile of the case today:

“Bratcher’s attorney, Clay Curtis, said he believes Bratcher’s race and his work with cannabis are why the district attorney filed criminal charges. … ‘I think the truth is that … the (district attorneys) are not happy about these changes in marijuana laws,’ Curtis said. ‘Marijuana is big business for law enforcement: Civil asset forfeiture, not to mention the arrests and prosecutions and costs and fees they collect. That’s a big source of revenue for them. Not only have we taken that away, but we have empowered people they have treated hostilely for years and years.’”

• ALSO Oklahoma City’s KFOR reports that dispensaries in Edmond are looking for ways to better protect their stores following recent burglaries. Citing armed robberies here and in Oregon, The Fresh Toast asks if budtenders should be allowed to carry guns. Forbes says that budtenders are already carrying them. 

And the weed busts continue

State drug enforcers and local authorities are not relenting on a campaign to push black-market cannabis operators out of Oklahoma. Lawmakers, rural residents, and the industry itself have variously praised the ongoing raids and seizures. 

Constituents cite a too-rapid influx of new cannabis businesses that smaller communities are unable to sufficiently control and regulate. Cannabis businesses cite the inherent unfairness of operators who play by the rules having to compete with those who don’t. 

Undoubtedly, the recent busts and raids also confront rising fears in the state that outside and international business interests and criminal organizations are exploiting the state’s lax cannabis laws and cheap land prices at the expense of Oklahomans.   

• June 17 Several state and local agencies along with the Oklahoma Bureau of Narcotics seized 27,000 plants in the small south-central Oklahoma town of Gene Autry. An area sheriff says the raid never would have happened if the property owners had paid licensing fees they owed. 

• June 15 A team of local law enforcers led by the district attorney for Pottawatomie and Lincoln counties raided a 10-acre property with dozens of grow houses and what officials estimated was $17 million worth of cannabis.

• June 14 A forty-acre property with some 24,000 plants was raided by the state bureau of narcotics in Muskogee County. A spokesman told the media that the operators had no licensing at all and that the workers were suspected of being trafficking victims.

• June 9 Local officials and state drug enforcers seized 10,000 plants and some 100 pounds of processed cannabis in southeast Oklahoma’s Haskell County. A local sheriff told the media: “When you start exporting it [over state lines] we’re going to eradicate your marijuana and hopefully vacate you from your properties.” 

• June 8 Local authorities in the small town of Walters, Oklahoma, and with help from the state bureau of narcotics served a search warrant and seized 700 plants plus 400 pounds of product they say were grown without a license.   

• June 1 Again joined by the state bureau of narcotics, local authorities in northwest Oklahoma’s Major County took and destroyed more than 4,000 plants after determining that the growers were operating without a license.   

Local govs want more action

In the meantime, local governments are responding to resident complaints and headlines about the raids and seizures and taking their own action where they see the state’s efforts falling short. These are just some of the headlines that have turned up in my Google Alerts since the beginning of the year with similar themes:  

• The city of Shawnee earlier this month issued a temporary halt to all new local permits for cannabis businesses. Officials say a saturation and density of operators in Shawnee “imposes a risk to the health and safety of its citizens.”

• Also this month, Pottawatomie County commissioners approved $80,000 for a special program to investigate illegal cannabis operators. The local district attorney, Allan Grubb, told officials it was a pilot program and that neighboring Lincoln County had committed the same amount.

• A commissioner in Cleveland County containing Moore and Norman said he wanted the state legislature to investigate whether cannabis-production facilities were a magnet for organized criminal activity.

• A vice mayor from south-central Oklahoma’s Pauls Valley says she doesn’t want grow facilities in the town at all. 

More from Oklahoma and beyond

• State Sen Bill Coleman (R-Ponca City) writes in an op-ed for the Pawhuska Journal-Capital that new cannabis laws passed during the most recent legislative session will enable the state to better tackle black-market cannabis. “There has been tremendous foreign interest in this young but thriving industry.” 

• The Cookies dispensary chain based in Miami and with locations in Oklahoma City and Tulsa tried to host a hip-hop show to promote the brand here. It reportedly turned into a parking-lot brawl and indiscriminate gunfire.

• The Tulsa World reports that weed taxes are booming in Oklahoma. Recent legislation that would beef up the ability of state tax enforcers to audit and investigate cannabis businesses that are dodging payments could fill state-and-local coffers even further. 

• The Nirvana cannabis brand familiar to Tulsa residents for its dispensaries and billboards has been rapidly expanding into other areas of the industry. It announced a new line of cannabis-infused beverages earlier this month.

• Here’s a good roundup from stellar Oklahoman reporter Carmen Forman of cannabis bills passed during the most recent legislative session. 

• Here’s a similarly good roundup of cannabis bills from the similarly good local news and policy site NonDoc Media. 

• The real-estate giant Power REIT based in New York bought nine acres in Craig County at the state line with Kansas where the company is planning a $2.65 million cannabis operation. It wants to bankroll the renovation of 40,000 square feet of greenhouse space and use 100,000 more square feet of fenced, outdoor growing space. Oklahoma drug enforcers should probably poke around to make sure liberal Yankees aren’t also trying to subdue Oklahoma through its wild-west weed laws.

• A federal judge upheld Oklahoma’s residency laws designed to protect the state’s still-fledgling cannabis entrepreneurs from bigger, out-of-state chains with more resources.

• The cannabis brand of comedy legend Jim Belushi is coming to Oklahoma.

• Critics in California are worried that recent raids there are unfairly targeting Asian cultivators and could amount to an “unequal enforcement of [the state’s] complex cannabis laws.”

• Republicans in Connecticut say the campaign there to pass legislation legalizing adult-use “has the stench of corruption” and want an investigation.

• Police in the UK thought that evidence of massive amounts of stolen electricity would lead them to an illegal cannabis grow. Instead, they found people mining energy-intensive Bitcoin. 

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Oklahoma cannabis regulators want a request for a temporary injunction denied on the basis that “vital public interests” are at stake in implementing the state’s program for digitally tracking cannabis plants and products.

In a new court filing, the Oklahoma Attorney General’s Office argues that the state’s initiative for the real-time tracking of cannabis is essential for blocking diversion to children and unauthorized people and for more rapidly removing contaminated products from the supply chain in order to protect consumers.

State officials are responding to a legal challenge first filed in April by the northeastern Oklahoma cannabis operator Dr Z Leaf and related business entities. Since the suit was filed, Green Culture Processing and several additional entities from the area have sought to join Dr Z Leaf as plaintiffs.

They’re being led by high-profile Tulsa attorney Ron Durbin who’s made a name for himself not only representing cannabis clients in Oklahoma but for being active at the statehouse on cannabis laws and regulations. 

Durbin and the cannabis plaintiffs say state regulators enabled a monopoly when they picked the private Florida company Metrc last year to exclusively implement and maintain its proprietary technology for monitoring every cannabis plant and product in the state. 

That technology takes the form of special Metrc software and radio-frequency tracking tags that Oklahoma’s thousands of cannabis licensees would be mandated to purchase and utilize. This, Dr Z Leaf and the plaintiffs say, would create a “financial windfall” for Metrc at the expense of Oklahoma cannabis entrepreneurs.

Licensees would be required to pay Metrc $40 per month in subscription fees, plus $0.45 for each cannabis plant and $0.25 for each cannabis product. The plaintiffs and Durbin are asking the court to determine whether the Metrc contract and the mandated use of its proprietary technology constitutes an unlawful monopoly.

They also allege that by imposing Metrc’s system and the cost of it on the cannabis industry, state regulators are violating the due-process clause of the Oklahoma Constitution.

Every cannabis business in the state was expected to be fully compliant with Metrc and the state’s seed-to-sale tracking system by April 30. The lawsuit was filed shortly before, and an agreement was struck to put off the required deadline for industry implementation until June 30 until the legal questions could be further resolved.

The next court appearance in the suit is scheduled for 10 am at the Okmulgee County courthouse just one day prior to the new June 30 implementation deadline. Click below for an anchor folder on DocumentCloud of key filings in the suit that can be viewed anywhere.

OK seeks to stop temporary injunction

In an attempt to block Durbin’s request for a temporary injunction, the Oklahoma Attorney General’s Office is arguing that the state’s medical cannabis laws as passed by voters in 2018 envisioned that “all marijuana being grown is accounted for.” 

Officials say later updates to those laws from the legislature clearly state that the Oklahoma Medical Marijuana Authority “shall implement an inventory tracking system” for all cannabis sold and disposed of in the state.

According to Section 427, they argue, each cannabis business must “use a seed-to-sale tracking system or integrate its own seed-to-sale tracking system with the seed-to-sale tracking system established by [OMMA].” 

Even without core legal questions in the suit yet settled, attorneys for the state argue that a temporary injunction is unnecessary since over 7,000 Oklahoma cannabis licensees have already begun using the Metrc system or integrated it into their operations in anticipation of the previous April 30 deadline. Even then, the state says:

“Regardless of which tracking system they choose, businesses licensed to grow, process, or dispense medical marijuana must ‘keep records of every transaction with another medical marijuana business, patient, or caregiver’ and track, update, and report their inventory to OMMA ‘after each individual sale’ to allow for real-time tracking in the inventory tracking system.”

Oklahoma cannabis businesses, the state argues, may choose not to integrate with Metrc and use it to streamline their own business operations. As an alternative, they are free to still meet their legal obligations for tracking and tracing cannabis by manually logging transaction information into the Metrc system while the lawsuit is still being adjudicated.

But the list of business activities that must be tracked and reported to the state is by no means short and would surely be made more laborious by manual entry. Required information includes:

• Notice of when you plant seeds.

• Notice of when you harvested or destroyed plants.

• Notice of when your plants or products were transported, stolen, or lost.

• A complete inventory of all seeds, plant tissue, clones, plants, usable marijuana or trim, leaves and other plant matter, batches of extract, and concentrates.

• All samples sent for testing, any unused and returned sample portions from testing, any samples used for negotiating a sale.

• The type of product received, the batch number, date of the transaction, total dollars spent, and the collected excise taxes.

Top OK cannabis regulator weighs in

Attorney’s for the state say that focusing on which company was chosen by regulators for seed-to-sale implementation misses the point. Cannabis businesses, they argue, are still not relieved under state law from reporting to Oklahoma regulators in real time through the system the state has chosen to receive this information, whether Metrc’s tags are used or not. 

In a sworn affidavit, OMMA Director Kelly Williams added that “It is only once a commercial licensee’s data makes it into Metrc that the OMMA can view and track that inventory. In other words, the contract with Metrc provides the OMMA a cloud-based system that gives it visibility in real time to perform its auditing and regulatory function.” 

Williams argued in her affidavit that Metrc served the state’s mission in several ways: 

• No cannabis recorded in the Metrc system can be transferred without being tested first for safety and quality.

• Radio-frequency tags are difficult for cheaters to counterfeit and are globally unique. They also more efficiently match testing results to the plant or product.

• Lab results are uploaded directly to the system by the lab itself thereby reducing the potential for the manipulation of test outcomes.

She said that seed-to-sale tracking systems in general:

• Ensure every step in the supply chain is historically tracked for traceability in the event of a needed recall for consumer protection.

• Ensure cannabis is only transferred between active licensees and that operators not in compliance can be more readily spotted.

• Provide data analytics that can alert regulators to potential instances of diversion and noncompliance.

Then in a separate recent filing, the state of Oklahoma is also seeking to have four of the allegations from Durbin and the cannabis businesses dismissed on numerous grounds. Many of these arguments are similar to the attempt to halt the temporary injunction.

But the second filing contains a noteworthy addition:

“The [seed-to-sale] tracking system hinges on the use of proprietary ‘[RFID] tags supplied by Metrc.’ … These tags look like stickers with chips and antennae. They are common across many industries on account of their ability to instantly and accurately track and record volumes of information. … After nearly a year of planning and implementing the statutorily required system, once it was in place, OMMA gave marijuana businesses until April 30, 2021, to have their inventory tracked into the Metrc system.” 

Metrc wants in on the party, too

The initial lawsuit over seed-to-sale tracking in Oklahoma didn’t name Metrc as a defendant. It instead targeted state regulators responsible for hiring Metrc and implementing seed-to-sale cannabis tracking. Metrc is nonetheless seeking to intervene in the lawsuit. A Metrc director of external affairs denied the company was a monopoly and told Oklahoma City’s KFOR in May:

“We intervened to defend ourselves. … Metrc is actually named in the lawsuit, but interestingly, we’re not actually party to the lawsuit, and this obviously affects our company and our employees and most importantly our work with Oklahoma. … The whole idea behind Metrc is actually to make things more efficient.”

Metrc COO Lewis Koski additionally wrote a recent letter to the industry explaining why the company was intervening in the suit:

“While the litigation clearly involves our work with OMMA and licensees, we were not a named party in a legal action that directly affects our company, employees, and services to Oklahomans. … Despite the recent confusion, cost, and delay, we are confident that seed-to-sale — and the creation of a safe, transparent, and efficient legal-marijuana market — remains a top priority for Oklahoma.”

Metrc also points out that state regulators specifically said they were looking for a “single provider of a complete solution” when they sought a system for tracking cannabis seed-to-sale in Oklahoma.

Dr Z Leaf and Durbin respond to Metrc

Dr Z Leaf and Durbin, as you can imagine, filed a response to Metrc’s attempt to intervene. In addition to not naming Metrc as a defendant, they also do not challenge the underlying contract with Metrc or the right of state bureaucrats to enter into contracts for various public services with private companies.

But the plaintiffs do want to know whether state officials have overseen and managed certain Oklahoma cannabis revenues well enough that they could have been used to pay for the Metrc contract rather than the industry.

After all, since Oklahoma’s cannabis program began in 2018, the state has generated roughly $248 million in excise taxes and state and local sales taxes through May.

According to Durbin in a Facebook video June 9, Metrc was nonetheless allowed by the court to intervene in the suit. He told KFOR: “We don’t believe Metrc has any interest in this case. Our position is about the fact that the state agency -- the Oklahoma Department of Health and OMMA -- has failed to do its job in adopting regulations.” 

He added that using Metrc won’t entirely stem bad actors in the industry. State regulators, Durbin argued, must conduct more inspections, and recent legislative changes will aid in that effort. From his filing that contests Metrc’s attempt to intervene: 

“The underlying transaction at issue is whether an Oklahoma agency behaved in a procedurally and legally proper way when it implemented a vendor contract and whether that agency has properly managed monies which plaintiffs allege could, and probably should, have been used to fund the [Metrc] contract. … [Metrc’s] permissive intervention would burden this suit with extraneous issues. [Metrc] has requested the court grant its intervention ‘in order to protect itself’ and ‘its contract rights.’ … The sole issue here is whether a government agency implemented that contract in a manner inconsistent with law.”

The lawsuit further argues that due to the extraordinarily high number of cannabis licensees in Oklahoma, Metrc could make more than $5 million every year from the software subscription fees of $40 per month. The plaintiffs also give what they call is a “conservative” estimate of $7.5 million more flowing to Metrc each year from the cost of the radio-frequency tags. 

Neighboring Missouri also hired Metrc for the same services in its medical cannabis program. But unlike in Oklahoma, Missouri regulators awarded a $5 million contract for tracking and tracing cannabis with the intention of the Metrc tags and software falling within the scope of the contract amount.  

Metrc objected after winning the contract and went to court in Missouri with their own lawsuit. They argued that Metrc had the right to charge cannabis operators for the radio-frequency tags in addition to the $5 million contract.

The case eventually made its way to a Missouri court of appeals this past January where Metrc lost and was barred from charging for the tags as part of the state’s mandated tracking program. Metrc is now selling its tags more directly to Missouri cannabis businesses, but critics wonder whether even this is allowable under contract terms and the recent Missouri court rulings.

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Clay Curtis was declared Oklahoma’s leading defense attorney in 2019. But Curtis has a tough case ahead of him in the first-degree murder trial later this year of 34-year-old LaRue Bratcher, an Oklahoma City cannabis grower who shot and killed a man attempting to break into his facility last year. 

Filings in the case are not viewable online. But I had a chance recently to visit the Oklahoma County Court Clerk’s Office and take a look at the case file in person. I had to stand at the clerk’s counter to view the file and then quickly determine which records to copy and how many of them I could afford at $0.50 per page. 

Other cases of cannabis businesses being robbed or burglarized in recent weeks and months have begun to attract state and national headlines. In some instances, cannabis workers at businesses with active business licenses have shot and killed intruders and not faced charges. 

What I did manage to get from the clerk’s office provides new details about a similar but complicated case that’s drawing its own state-and-national attention. The filings also tell us that defense attorney Curtis faces major challenges where Oklahoma and its long history of tough-on-crime weed laws are still adjusting to legal cannabis.  

The night of the shooting

According to court filings, Bratcher says he was at his cannabis grow on Southeast 22nd Street in Oklahoma City late one night in May of last year when he noticed someone enter the hole of a fence and onto his property. 

The intruder matched a man Bratcher had spotted previously trying to break into a storage container on the property. Bratcher says that on this second occasion, he watched the man in surveillance images proceed to a south entrance of his building.

An Army veteran, Bratcher retrieved a firearm. Standing at the barricaded metal door, Bratcher says he could hear someone on the other side trying to pry it open. Bratcher squeezed off what he says were three warning rounds at the door’s waist level.

He did so not knowing that the man -- 42-year-old Daniel Hardwick -- was crouched on the other side, rather than standing. One round struck Hardwick’s head and killed him. According to a filing from defense attorney Curtis:

“[Bratcher] eventually notices the burglar lying on the ground unresponsively. He calls the police shortly after and was cooperative with the police, even waving his Miranda rights and giving multiple interviews and statements to police. The police did not arrest him that night. Charges were filed more than a week after detectives staffed the charges with [Oklahoma County District Attorney] David Prater.”

Authorities learn grow license was expired

Bratcher’s cultivation licenses are where the case becomes complicated for attorney Curtis. According to county prosecutors, Bratcher said the night of the incident that he had a state-issued grow license. After a detective pressed him, Bratcher revealed that it had expired.

Bratcher’s wife, Vicky Bratcher, has told the media the couple was facing tens of thousands of dollars in costly new required renovations to their facility before getting their annual grow-license renewal completed with state regulators. That’s when the attempted break-in occurred. 

Police also say they seized hundreds of plants and over 1,000 grams of bud at the time of the incident. Bratcher has been in the Oklahoma County jail for a year now. His trial was initially set to begin May 24 but has since been pushed back to October. 

Prosecutors intend to present witnesses at Bratcher’s trial who will say, among other things, that his cultivation license had been expired for six months. They’ll also say there was no certificate of compliance from Oklahoma City allowing Bratcher and his company, Premium Smoke, LLC, to operate a grow at the address. Nor had any required cannabis license been issued by the Oklahoma Bureau of Narcotics for Premium Smoke’s address, prosecutors say.

Bratcher is today charged with first-and-second degree murder, unlawful cultivation of cannabis, possession of a controlled substance with intent to distribute, and possession of an offensive weapon while committing a felony. 

Next you may ask yourself why Oklahoma’s stand-your-ground laws didn’t apply. Couldn’t Bratcher argue he was defending himself at his business, even though his operating license had expired?

There’s a critical exception in Oklahoma statutes where the shooter defending him or herself is also engaged in an unlawful activity. By cultivating with an expired license, Bratcher was illegally manufacturing a controlled substance, as far as prosecutors are concerned. 

Furthermore, a conviction for first-degree murder in Oklahoma would typically need proof that Bratcher deliberately and maliciously intended to take Hardwick’s life. But such proof is not required where the defendant was also committing a crime at the time of the incident.    

Bratcher was cooperative, but it may not matter

Attorneys for Bratcher, on the other hand, point out that it was Bratcher himself who first called the police after the shooting. He’d been cooperative, waved his Miranda rights, and gave statements and interviews. Bratcher and his wife are Army veterans. He’d only wanted to fire warning shots and recognized the intruder from a previous attempted burglary.

Bratcher’s uncle has said at public rallies that he wasn’t looking for trouble. He was simply trying to defend himself. Despite the difficulties in Bratcher’s case, supporters believe he is being treated unfairly.   

Wife Vicky Bratcher told Yahoo News earlier this month that prosecutors argued LaRue was a “threat to the community” because of his Army weapons expertise and combat training. The family says Bratcher’s charges were upgraded to the more-severe first degree only after Bratcher had refused to accept a plea deal. Said Vicky Bratcher:

“I feel deflated ... my heart is broken. This whole year has been very hard. I am still managing the warehouse, taking care of the kids, and making sure that everything at home is good for his return. But it’s been hard to know that I don’t know what’s going to happen.”

Master Sgt. Gary Knight of the Oklahoma City Police Department said to Yahoo News police were merely responsible for gathering all of the available information in a case and that it was ultimately “up to the [district attorney] to decide from there.”

But Knight added that the men were on opposite sides of the door and Bratcher had no legal standing to shoot Hardwick. “This is not ‘stand your ground,’” Knight said.

Defense attorney Curtis told Yahoo News that such arguments may not matter:

“The evidence shows Mr. Bratcher acted reasonably under the circumstances. I think anyone would be in fear for their life in that circumstance. ... This case isn’t about us growing weed in terms of the homicide. It’s about whether people think he acted reasonably under the circumstances.”

Dispute over previous weed offense   

Then there’s a new wrinkle in Bratcher’s case that further complicates matters for Curtis. Bratcher, it turns out, had previously been convicted in a cannabis-related offense while driving through Texas in October of 2019.

It happened just months before the Oklahoma City shooting. Prosecutors intend to call a Texas sheriff’s deputy as a witness at trial who pulled Bratcher over in Oldham County, Texas. Bratcher seemed nervous during the traffic stop and had containers in the floorboards of his car baring the word “bud,” prosecutors say.

He refused to consent to a search, so a K9 dog was used to inspect the vehicle and alerted to a narcotic odor. Authorities say they then found 20 vacuum-sealed pounds of cannabis in the trunk of Bratcher’s car. 

Defense attorney Curtis counters, however, that the Texas case was reduced to misdemeanor possession of less than four ounces of cannabis. Indeed, Texas cannabis prosecutions have plummeted in recent years since lawmakers there legalized hemp making it costly to conduct expensive laboratory tests that distinguish between hemp and THC.  

Curtis wants the previous Texas case excluded from the current Oklahoma trial altogether. Defendants, he said in a filing, are to be convicted on the charges facing them at a given time, not previous cases. While there are exceptions, they don’t apply in the current case, Curtis argues:

“The prosecutor’s bare assertion that possession of marijuana charges in [Texas] is ‘visibly connected’ to Mr. Bratcher’s current charges is woefully inadequate. … Because the prosecutor has not and cannot demonstrate a ‘visible connection’ between possessing marijuana in Texas and Mr. Bratcher’s present charges, such evidence is inadmissible.”

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State lawmaker Scott Fetgatter said something in a press release last week that caught my attention after the cannabis-infused Senate Bill 1033 managed to pass just as the 2021 Oklahoma legislative session was coming to a close:

“In 2018, we bought the ticket and took the ride when it came to medical marijuana in Oklahoma. There weren’t many regulations, and stakeholders on all sides of the issue have been looking for structure. This industry has blossomed over the past three years, and we have been working to make sure there are structures in place to regulate and help give guidance to those working within it.”

Buy the ticket, take the ride. 

That was a favored expression of the late political journalist and noted substance enthusiast Hunter S. Thompson. An ex-girlfriend and I in Texas were once such superfans of Hunter Thompson that we got a little tipsy and had the expression tattooed on our forearms, which is what you see above.

She has the other half. Fortunately, we’re still pals, so I don’t have to go on one of those tattoo reality shows where they cover up your regret with something that may be only mildly less regrettable.

Hunter Thompson meant a few things by this expression. One was that if you accidentally take too many illicit substances on a given occasion, you may just have to ride it out. 

He also meant that politics and public life are a wild carnival ride every minute of every day in a nation that seeks to maximize fairness and liberty to the greatest number of people possible.

Cannabis policy in Oklahoma is no exception to the carnival ride. And few people seem to know that better right now than Republican representatives Fetgatter of Okmulgee and Jon Echols of Oklahoma City.

They’ve emerged since 2018 when voters first passed State Question 788 as among the most active lawmakers in the Oklahoma statehouse on how, whether, and why to regulate medical cannabis here. 

I can’t say their task is enviable. On the one hand, there’s a loudly buzzing fear across the state that international business interests -- namely Chinese -- are taking over Oklahoma through it’s porous weed regulations and enforcement.

On the other hand, sales of medical cannabis in the state since it began had topped $1.3 billion by earlier this year. More people reportedly work in Oklahoma cannabis now at an estimated 17,000 than there are construction workers in the state. Oklahoma cannabis is creating entrepreneurship opportunities for many people that never existed before in this state.

The endless carnival ride Hunter Thompson referred to shows itself in the final tally of Oklahoma weed bills. Eight proposed by Fetgatter himself never made it across the finish line. 

But Fetgatter and Echols both had key wins at the final hours of the session with major implications for cannabis consumers and the industry in Oklahoma. The failed cannabis bills that didn’t make it into law are just as noteworthy where they could appear again next year or proposed loosening rules on cannabis consumers and the industry.

Let’s start with the biggest bills that did pass and what they contain.     

Senate Bill 1033

Negotiations over what this bill should include went on so late into the session that it became the very last bill to pass before the entire session ended May 27. Senate Bill 1033 began the session seeking only to establish how close cannabis dispensaries could be to schools and to grandfather into the law businesses that existed before a nearby school was established. 

By the time Fetgatter read it on the floor last week, it contained much more: 

• Allows the Oklahoma Medical Marijuana Authority to enter into agreements with other state agencies for enforcement and compliance purposes. As Fetgatter described it on the floor, SB 1033 would enable OMMA to join forces with the Oklahoma Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs in order “to go shut down the nefarious, illegal activity in the [cannabis] industry in the state of Oklahoma.”

• Allows for the Oklahoma Tax Commission to beef up the enforcement of cannabis tax collections by using a fee from gross tax proceeds. Fetgatter said this would enable the tax commission to “perform audits on marijuana businesses to make sure they're paying their taxes. In recent months, we had one business that was bragging on social media that they were not paying $300,000 a month in sales taxes.”

• Allows for an unlimited number of cannabis waste-disposal licenses in the state.

• Allows caregivers only to grow for up to five patients at one time. There was previously no limit on this number. 

• Establishes that the 1,000 feet a dispensary must be from a school is measured from the school door nearest to the front door of the dispensary. Operators are grandfathered where schools are built after the cannabis business was established.

Sen. Lonnie Paxton (R-Tuttle), a frequent critic of cannabis in the legislature, has worked in the past to expand the ability of local governments to regulate cannabis businesses. He grumbled about the final measurement standard contained in HB 1033, according to Fox 25 in Oklahoma City: “You can put a medical marijuana dispensary right next to that football field as long as it's a thousand feet away from the primary campus. I don't know who's in favor of this.” 

House Bill 2646

By the close of the session, this omnibus bill had become among the most closely watched cannabis proposals, because of the numerous rule changes it sought. Several of the other weed bills asked for only one thing at a time. This bill took a beating as it made its way through conference committee between the House and Senate chambers. Changes were still flying at the close of the session. 

Here’s what HB 2646 contained by the time it reached the governor’s desk:

• Removes language that would have created a three-day temporary cannabis license for nonresidents of Oklahoma.

• Permits dispensaries and cultivators to package and sell their own pre-rolled joints. May not be infused with kief or distillate or weigh over one gram.

• Allows customer interaction at retail dispensaries only with cannabis samples that are not for sale where the product is otherwise not in a sealed or separate package. (This language changed from previously seeming to ban all bulk flower display in jars at dispensaries.)

• Allows growers to separate cannabis for quality-and-safety testing in 15-pound batches, rather than 10. If the cannabis is destined for processing, rather than retail, it can be separated into batches of 50 pounds. 

• Removes language that would have allowed growers and processors who achieved validation of their production processes to sell certain products.

• Specifies that cannabis possession without a patient license “shall constitute a misdemeanor offense not subject to imprisonment.”

• Allows state regulators to issue emergency orders without notice or hearing where they suspect violations from cannabis businesses. Operators could be fined $10,000 per day if they continued conducting business or otherwise violated the emergency order while it was in effect.

House Bill 2904

Fetgatter had lost his own attempt at an omnibus bill stuffed with desired rule changes earlier in the session in the form of House Bill 2004. But he says now that some of the intent of that bill was salvaged here in House Bill 2904.

It directs OMMA to hire 60 new compliance-and-enforcement inspectors and to outfit them promptly with effective inspection tools. Said Fetgatter to Tulsa’s KJRH last week: “The presence of OMMA having boots on the ground in our counties is going to help tremendously.”

High-profile Oklahoma cannabis attorney Ron Durbin praised the passage of HB 2904 on social media in his characteristic all caps and exclamation points and said that newly hired personnel for OMMA would be good for everyone:

“This is absolutely HUGE for patients and businesses!!! We have long worried that the Department of Health was happy to sit by and let the program fail by allowing un-inspected and unscrupulous businesses to ruin our image across the state. So far, that has proven to be the case as the industry’s reputation has been tarnished, and patients have no faith in a lot of the medicine being sold. It has caused a ton of problems in the legislature because of the complaints from rural Oklahoma.”

Although Fetgatter’s own omnibus HB 2004 mentioned above did not survive, there was an attempted early provision in it that’s worth mentioning here. Fetgatter wanted to grant cannabis operators the right to choose which software and radio-frequency technology they used for complying with Oklahoma’s track-and-trace program. 

State weed regulators last year hired the Florida company Metrc exclusively for implementing the seed-to-sale tracking program. The idea was that cannabis operators would then be required to utilize Metrc’s software and tags at their own expense and at the rates charged by Metrc. 

OMMA and Metrc reportedly disliked Fetgatter’s idea of cannabis businesses being permitted to choose what they used for compliance, so he removed the language from HB 2004. Said Fetgatter at a February committee hearing about the matter:

“It’s my understanding that OMMA and Metrc are not really happy about the language in this bill, even though neither one of them has personally come to me and discussed that. So we are going to strike this language out, so we don’t shut down negotiations on this particular issue with the [radio-frequency] tags.”

Since that time, ironically, the state’s mandated seed-to-sale program and exclusive use of Metrc products have wound up at the heart of litigation between cannabis attorney Durbin, a group of cannabis operators as his plaintiffs, and state weed regulators who selected Metrc as the exclusive tracking-compliance vendor. The lawsuit is ongoing.

House Bill 2272

Like Senate Bill 1033, this bill looked dramatically different by the time it crossed the finish line. Rep. Josh West of Grove and Sen. Casey Murdock of Felt, both Republicans, had initially wanted to cap the number of cannabis business licenses handed out by state regulators with HB 2272.

West said his constituents asked for the bill after complaining about black-market and noncompliant cannabis operations in his district. The bill was controversial among cannabis reformers, however. Fetgatter and Echols worried in committee hearings that it would unfairly hamstring the cannabis industry and possibly run afoul of the Oklahoma Constitution. 

By the time of HB 2272’s passage, the proposed cap on licenses was long gone owing to an earlier amendment. Instead, it now states that:

• Cannabis businesses must reveal any foreign financial interests to state regulators.

• Cannabis businesses shall be inspected for compliance within 180 days of licensure.

• Licenses may be revoked where operators have not become operational quickly enough.

Here’s a tidy translation of HB 2272 from cannabis attorney Durbin on Facebook: “If you have been lax on compliance, if you are not getting the message already, now is the time to catch up!!!”

Despite the passage of this bill and others, Fetgatter nonetheless told KJRH he believed the state still wasn’t going far enough to regulate the cannabis industry: “We had some definite wins for the citizens of Oklahoma this session. But in my opinion, because I understand the business, we haven’t gone far enough. It's very frustrating for me at this point.”

This weed bill wasn’t the only one during the session that created a furor among cannabis reformers by what it initially sought. Cannabis critic Paxton of Tuttle had earlier proposed Senate Bill 445. It seemed to re-criminalize cannabis in Oklahoma by boosting criminal penalties where cannabis patients and businesses illegally diverted it to unauthorized people. The bill passed the Senate but ultimately died in the House.

House Bill 2674

Here’s yet another weed bill that took a wild turn at the final hour. 

Echols had desperately wanted to ramp up enforcement of the state’s cannabis industry by creating an Oklahoma Department of Marijuana and Alcohol. It would have merged OMMA, currently contained within the Oklahoma State Department of Health, with the Oklahoma Alcoholic Beverage Laws Enforcement Commission. 

But suddenly by last week, the language contained in the bill for making this merger happen had vanished. Instead, the bill at passage focused on rule changes for alternative tobacco products, i.e. tobacco vaping. In fact, the final bill didn’t contain the word “marijuana” at all. So OMMA stays at the health department for at least another year. 

Echols described at an early May committee hearing what he was trying to achieve with this bill and the omnibus HB 2646 described above: 

“We have unsafe [cannabis] product. We have product that is not being tested. We have product that is coming in from other states. We have products that are being grown in this state and sold out of state. It is ridiculous and absurd. … When we have people who are trying to play by the rules, and we are not doing enough to enforce those rules on everybody, it hurts the citizens and hurts the legitimate people who have put their personal fortunes on the line -- whatever they have, their equity. To not enforce those rules is just not fair.”

The graveyard of Fetgatter weed bills

Finally in our analysis, there are the numerous failed attempts made by Fetgatter in 2021 to aid cannabis consumers and the industry by loosening rules while still working to confront bad actors, which no one doubts exist aplenty. Said Fetgatter to KJRH: “The citizens of Oklahoma are not going to be satisfied with what we accomplish. We haven’t gone far enough to help legal businesses, and we haven’t gone far enough to shut down illegal businesses.”

Here are key Fetgatter proposals that bit the dust earlier in the session:

• House Bill 2022 Authorizing two-year patient licenses for nonresidents of Oklahoma who do not have a card in their home state.

• House Bill 1909 Permitting cannabis businesses to pay less in state taxes by allowing them to take more business deductions not currently allowed under federal tax rules.

• House Bill 1960 Enabling dispensaries to deliver purchases to consumers located within 10 miles.

• House Bill 1961 Presenting fully legal adult-cannabis use as a state ballot question to voters during the November 2022 election.

• House Bill 2023 Authorizing cannabis business licenses to be transferred from one person to another for $500.

Here’s a chart of the final winners and losers of the 2021 Oklahoma weed bills.

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I hope to meet some of y’all at CannaCon this week. I’d say look for a tall, white, kinda hipster-looking dude in Vans and a cheap, gray Target blazer. But probably look for my faded, old jean jacket instead. It’ll be nice to not have to dress as stiffly as I once had to as a reporter at not-weed professional conferences. I may even wear my Green Bloc shirt:

When I used to report on cops and homeland security, I would beg my editors at the Center for Investigative Reporting to pay for me to go to regional and national homeland security and police conferences. The reason is because they brimmed with scoops. I got endless leads and sources out of them.

I’d set my alarm and iron my shirts at the hotel the night before. Look sharp but not too flashy. NEVER miss the early sessions when you’re a reporter at the cop conferences. Listen closely. Take notes. Invite but don’t force opportunities to talk to cops, attorneys, felons, or all three at once off the record, or on the record.

Trust but verify.

I broke stories around license-plate readers and high-altitude police surveillance in Compton, California, by just listening and doing my homework. Go here to see the Los Angeles Times getting the holy hell scooped out of them by me and my old reporting partner in 2014.

Mercifully, cannabis doesn’t keep rigid, military hours for the most part. I can sleep in a little for weed conferences.

See y’all there.

*****

Y’all are big time and know everything there is to know about running a weed business after three whole years of it in Oklahoma. But just in case, write Murphy’s Law in ruby-red lipstick on your bathroom mirror:

“If it can go wrong, it will go wrong.”

“But my boy said I had all my taxes done!”

Your boy was wrong. Trust but verify.

*****

My plan for years was to be a journalist and actually get paid to do it for the duration of my career and retire someday with a small garden, and bird feeders, and stray cats and dogs, on a few acres at the edge of Tulsa County.

I envisioned my dusty, old book-and-record collections resting in dark-wood shelves I built with pals. I envisioned a lightly screened back porch through which I could see, hear, smell, and feel my absolute favorite thing in the entire world: Oklahoma thunderstorms.

I envisioned retiring in my beloved home state as a cranky, old journalist and obnoxiously opinionated scholar who smoked Oklahoma-grown weed and tobacco from old-man pipes, wore stuffy but vaguely handsome cardigans purchased from thrift stores, taught night classes at the local community college, drove a well-rated, sensible Subaru with a “Magic City Books” sticker on the rear window, and contributed modestly to my local NPR affiliate twice a year.

But alas, I started training for a new job in the Oklahoma weed industry this week. I’m nervous but hopeful. GCM has hella student loans from grad school that are hounding him. I haven’t bought new socks in years. I’m wearing pink, candy-striped socks right now that one of my nieces left in my car five years ago when I lived in Austin.

I’m selling some flower through this new job at insane prices per pound, because it has boatloads of seeds in it. Great for low-tier, processing, and cultivators. I’d say DM me, but hilariously, I don’t have to say that. This is email and Substack. Not social media.

If you get a call or a dispensary visit from a guy named George or G.W. Schulz, go easy on me. That’s me tryin’ to sell you weed and/or weed products and be an honest player and get my ass moved back to Tulsa by the end of June when my lease is up in Oklahoma City.

Dare one of you to be my first client.

Now on to Metrc, Snoop, and first-degree murder.

OK’s lawsuit over digital weed tracking

Everyone loves Snoop. I love Snoop. I’m jamming “Lodi Dodi” as I write this.

Even if you don’t actively listen to Snoop, you’re charmed by his appearances in Corona ads and authentic friendship with Martha Stewart. You’re impressed by his general ability to move in and out of pop-culture established orders with ease.

It made sense to me when one of Snoop’s investment vehicles, Casa Verde Capital, announced in 2018 that it and Tiger Global Management were pumping $50 million into the cannabis-compliance startup Metrc based in Florida. Said a Case Verde manager when the deal was announced:

“Compliance is the backbone of the cannabis industry.”

Perhaps. But is Metrc the exclusive future of cannabis-compliance in America and Oklahoma? Are flyover-country weed entrepreneurs who are just trying to keep the lights on responsible for proving that Snoop’s investment was worth it?

These are just some of the questions at the heart of Oklahoma’s ongoing class-action lawsuit over digitally tracking and tracing every weed plant and product that moves in the state. Metrc is seeking to intervene in the lawsuit from which it was initially excluded.

Go here for an anchor folder of key filings in attorney Ron Durbin and Tulsa cannabis business Dr Z Leaf’s case. More cannabis businesses are joining the plaintiffs. I’ll keep adding to the folder as new items are filed. Particularly interesting is Metrc’s argument for intervening. Note that like Durbin and Dr Z Leaf, Metrc is carefully placing the ball in the court of Oklahoma weed bureaucrats:

“Metrc vigorously denies breaching the contract or engaging in antitrust actions and further states that it has been given every indication from [the Oklahoma Medical Marijuana Authority] that Metrc is performing well under the contract.”

Metrc also added that state regulators specifically said they were looking for a “single provider of a complete solution” when they sought a system for tracking cannabis seed-to-sale.

That resulted in cannabis businesses being mandated to exclusively use Metrc’s software at a cost to them of $40 per month, plus $0.45 for each cannabis plant and $0.25 for each cannabis product. Metrc now wants into the suit. Metrc COO Lewis Koski wrote in a recent letter to the industry explaining why the company was intervening in the suit:

“While the litigation clearly involves our work with [the Oklahoma Medical Marijuana Authority] and licensees, we were not a named party in a legal action that directly affects our company, employees, and services to Oklahomans. … Despite the recent confusion, cost, and delay, we are confident that seed-to-sale — and the creation of a safe, transparent, and efficient legal-marijuana market — remains a top priority for Oklahoma.”

Durbin and Dr Z Leaf, as you can imagine, have their own response to the Metrc filing. They say their suit was intended to be narrowly focused on Oklahoma regulators and want the intervention attempt from Metrc denied.

Update on LaRue Bratcher

I wrote recently about LaRue Bratcher, who is facing first-degree murder charges after shooting a man to death who was attempting to break into Bratcher’s grow last year. Bratcher was not protected under the state’s stand-your-ground laws, because his cannabis business license had expired. He was working on renewing it.

Bratcher’s trial was scheduled to begin on Monday of this week. His wife announced on social media over the weekend that his trial had been pushed back to Oct. 11. That means 15 months in county lockup before Bratcher gets to tell his side of the story in court. In the meantime, everyone online seems to be spelling his name wrong. His wife spelled it LaRue online Saturday, so I’m spelling it LaRue until I learn otherwise.

Don’t miss these other Substack writers

1. There’s a super-smart writer doing a weed Substack similar to what I’m trying to do here. But she’s the opposite of strict policy writing. She’s vastly more courageous than I’ll ever be as a writer. Jackie Bryant is part of a small crew of stringers at Forbes who are probably the best weed writers in America right now. Her and her partner put weed in their butts recently and then hilariously wrote about it.

2. A dear pal named Kim Zetter who wrote about hackers for years at Wired is now part of a small Substack crew that’s been carefully picking apart the ransomware attack on Colonial Pipeline. Sovereign journalism is what us ink-stained wretches have begun to call Substack. On a related note, I wrote about homeland and border security, civilian-police militarization, and digital government surveillance for a long time. There’s a new boutique security consultancy focused on unconventional security protocols for an unconventional cannabis industry.

GCM Roundup | Oklahoma and Beyond

• Oklahoma City’s Stability Cannabis endured a brutal episode this week just as it was getting a big boost of confidence. Hang in there, y’all. I bought a Perfect Ratio shirt there the day I got my last stimulus check to make sure I was spending some of it local.

• Mark Woodward from the Oklahoma Bureau of Narcotics is still talking to local TV stations like a drug-warrior D.A.R.E. instructor from the 80s.

• Don’t give up. “You don’t know if the feds can come in at anytime and shut down your operation. You don’t have a bank, so you can’t necessarily get loans for these kinds of things. So it’s a little bit challenging. But we saw an opportunity and are trying to make it work.”

• Two arrested in connection to Guthrie dispensary robberies.

• Four dispensaries burglarized in Oklahoma County.

• Grow facility in Durant burglarized.

• Missouri just finished its biggest-ever weed processing facility. The Show-Me State also just recently surpassed 100,000 licensed medical patients.

• No one tell the Texas legislature that Dallas is investing tons of money in weed.

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The public details of what led to cannabis cultivator Larue Bratcher being accused last year of first-degree murder by Oklahoma County prosecutors are frustratingly slim. His trial is scheduled to begin May 24. I’m hoping to attend if I can manage it and report back here. 

None of the filings in Bratcher’s case at the moment are viewable to the public online. Not even the charging papers. But it’s quickly become an important Oklahoma test case in my view. 

There have been several instances recently of Oklahoma cannabis businesses being robbed and burglarized. Cannabis entrepreneurs are already major targets due simply to the fact that they’re forced to handle so much cash.

Confusion over when they can defend themselves with force and not face life in an Oklahoma prison seems only like it would lead to more trouble in the future.

“What Larue Bratcher did was reasonable, and God forbid any one of us ever find ourselves in that situation,” his defense attorney, Clay Curtis, told Oklahoma City’s KFOR in March.

A 34-year-old black Army veteran, Bratcher says he was firing warning shots as a 42-year-old white man named Daniel Hardwick attempted for the second consecutive night in late May of last year to break into Bratcher’s grow facility on Southeast 22nd Street in Oklahoma City.   

Bratcher’s business, Premium Smoke, LLC, had been operating legitimately after receiving approval for a cannabis-cultivation license from the state of Oklahoma in November of 2018. Bratcher and his wife had somewhere between 450 and 480 plants underway at the time of the attempted break-in last year, according to press accounts. 

Their state cultivation license had expired by that time, however, and Larue was working on getting it renewed. Local officials wanted upgrades to Premium Smoke’s facility that hadn’t been required when its license was approved the first time.

Defense attorney Curtis told the media Bratcher was doing everything he could to maintain the cultivation license and stay compliant. Bratcher insists today he was only trying to fire warning shots and that Hardwick was struck as the two men stood on opposite sides of a door. Police in Oklahoma City do not dispute that Hardwick was trying to break into the facility. 

Oklahoma’s stand-your-ground laws permit someone at their place of business to use force to defend themselves if they reasonably believe someone is attempting to commit unlawful and forcible entry.

Oklahoma County prosecutors accused Bratcher of murder only after authorities learned his cultivation license had expired. He was also accused of illegally growing cannabis, and Premium Smoke’s plants were seized. Bratcher has been in the Oklahoma County jail since last year.  

His initial charge was second-degree murder, which is far less severe than first degree and can result in as few as 10 years in prison. Bratcher’s charge was later upgraded to first-degree murder, which in Oklahoma can lead to the death penalty or life in prison without parole. 

First-degree would ordinarily require proof that the defendant maliciously and deliberately took the life of another person. There’s a critical exception in state law, however. Proof of malice is not required where the defendant was also committing a crime. In this case, Bratcher’s crime was manufacturing a controlled substance with an expired state cultivation license. 

In last week’s GCM roundup of headlines, you may have seen the story of a dispensary with an active state license in Ardmore that was robbed at gunpoint in early May. An employee retrieved a firearm and shot the intruder to death. The only charges filed in that case to my knowledge are against the intruder’s accomplice who was waiting in a car outside. (Her charging documents are viewable online, for the record.)

Without having more access to the Bratcher case filings, it’s hard to know whether drawing parallels between these two cases is fair. But the contrast on the surface is notable. Some national news sites that cover black culture and politics are seeing race dynamics in Bratcher’s case that can’t go ignored. 

The reason we generally try in the United States to make court records accessible to the public online with some exceptions is so the public can watchdog the courts, police, prosecutors, and defense attorneys to ensure everyone’s being treated fairly. Some forgiveness is granted to smaller jurisdictions where they don’t have a lot of money. Oklahoma County is not a smaller jurisdiction without a lot of money.

Only Bratcher’s family is speaking publicly for the most part. The office of Oklahoma County District Attorney David Prater isn’t saying much. Oklahoma City police also haven’t said much other than to acknowledge there was a break-in. It was Bratcher himself who called the police after the incident. Stay tuned. It feels like there’s an important story here. We just can’t see all of its contours yet.

GCM Roundup | Oklahoma and Beyond

• You’ve no doubt heard and seen the rumors online that Chinese Communists are using Oklahoma’s lax weed laws to take over America. Chinese Communists are pretty damn smart. If they wanted to take over America, they would do so using a Stuxnet-like computer virus and wait until we were distracted by an election the way Putin does. But don’t let logic ruin a good ol’ fashioned, utterly ridiculous and racist conspiracy theory. The only way to shut down shady cannabis businesses equitably in Oklahoma is to do so when they’re violating the law or not compliant. Without actually knowing the nationality or heritage of the people involved, the only thing you can know is whether or not they’re violating the law or staying complaint. Besides, I guarantee Oklahoma is a boring target for Beijing. Your average Okie is no more likely to be able to locate the Xinjiang Province on a map than most of China’s intelligence analysts can locate Oklahoma on a map. Nonetheless, here’s Oklahoma House Speaker Charles McCall (R-Atoka) tip-toeing around what I just said to News 9 in Oklahoma City.

• The BBC even published an exhaustively reported story about the whole China-and-Oklahoma-weed thing.

• This company says they can help Oklahoma cannabis businesses make more sales to other Oklahoma cannabis businesses. I believe them. They have a smart strategy. It’s young and bold. 

• Perhaps it shouldn’t. But it annoys me to see a cannabis vaping brand not based in Oklahoma tell Benzinga that Oklahoma needs caps on its number of available cannabis business licenses. Mind your own business, bro.

• Two elementary students in Edmond Public Schools gave Oklahoma’s pearl-clutchers a good scare when they had to go to the hospital after consuming edibles. Young ones, this is why we need you to wait to make these decisions separate from doctor’s orders. Elementary school is just too damn young. It was middle school in 1993 or so before I tried some shitty Tulsa weed for the first time. It was another 20 years or so before I realized weed could actually be good.

• The small town of Clayton, New Mexico, hopes revenue from cross-state legal cannabis purchases made by Texans will help it to revitalize. 

• The second-generation head of the Oklahoma Bankers Association says it’s time for Congress to pass the SAFE Banking Act and make it easier for cannabis entrepreneurs to not have to handle lots of dirty money. 

• It should surprise no one that poor people eligible mostly for only low-wage jobs would prefer working in the cannabis industry than in the kitchen of a Burger King.

• South Dakota wants to prohibit law enforcers from using legal medical cannabis. Fun fact: Law enforcement is not on the official Oklahoma list of occupations considered to be “safety-sensitive” under the state’s medical marijuana laws. Firefighters are on the list and have been lobbying to be removed from it.

• I haven’t been in a position to buy an $800 bong at any time in my life. It wouldn’t hurt my feelings to have one, though. In fact, I haven’t smoked out of a bong once since I got my Oklahoma patient license two years ago. I really must correct that in 2021.

• AdWeek stated the obvious recently: Cannabis consumers would like to be able to buy it online and have it delivered. Stunning revelation.

• The Drug Enforcement Administration says cannabis arrests and plant seizures were up in 2020 over the previous year. Congress and Joe Biden in one afternoon could decide to make next year look a lot different. Whenever you’re ready, Washington. We’re waiting for relief out here in flyover country.                  

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This is part two of two posts about product packaging in the era of cannabis reform and regulation. Today, we look at sustainability as a “megatrend” that crosses generations of consumers. We also examine 20 companies and startups offering packaging solutions. Go here to read the first post where we sized up the booming market for cannabis packaging and the patchwork of state rules and requirements helping to drive it. -G.W. Schulz

Sustainability is a consumer ‘megatrend’

The Minnesota-based Fortune 500 company 3M is one of the biggest makers in the world of packaging, adhesives, medical products, laminates, and more. Don Davidson, a 3M manager, described at the National Hemp Symposium in February how the company was exploring the use of hemp fibers and oils across its tens of thousands of products.

Davidson said public attitudes were firmly shifting. Sustainability had become a “megatrend” among consumers with no end in sight, he said. Manufacturing giants like 3M were paying attention. “Pretty much all across the board, regardless of if it’s a consumer or they’re industrial, health care, transportation, or energy, they’re asking for more sustainable solutions,” he said.  

3M isn’t alone. PepsiCo last year joined a consortium that includes the 100-year-old consumer goods maker Unilever to develop viable, paper bottles. The mineral-water company Evian opened a carbon-neutral bottling plant in 2017. The coffee giant Costa has committed to ditching one-time use plastic straws from all of its stores. McDonald’s wants all of its packaging to come from renewable, recycled, or forest-friendly sources in the coming years.  

After Congress legalized hemp in the 2018 Farm Bill, the Hemp Business Journal boosted its prediction of future demand for bioplastic packaging alternatives to $27 million by 2022. The Farm Bill also sped up 3M’s interest in the plant for meeting the current and future expectations of consumers. 

Ironically, if current cannabis packaging standards and regulations persist, it’s the cannabis industry itself that could become a leading consumer of 3M’s future packaging solutions. A trip to the dispensary these days means walking out with medical-grade packaging and containers, odor-proof exit bags with child resistance, bulky plastics, glass jars, heavy cardboards, foils and wraps, vape batteries and cartridges, and “doob tubes” for pre-rolls.

New York State Assemblywoman Patricia Fahy, a Democrat, said recently after adult-use was legalized there that the cannabis industry was pumping out 150 million tons of waste each year: 

“Even when marijuana packaging is recycled at home, it is often sorted out by recyclers and taken to landfills. While no industry is blameless in the plastic-pollution crisis, New York has a unique opportunity to prevent a new source of plastic pollution as we consider the legalization of recreational marijuana.”

Complicating matters further is the fact that the cannabis industry aesthetically interprets itself through a green prism and champions the healthy cultivation of a plant. 

“It kills some of them to put organically grown, lovingly tended cannabis into mylar plastic bags,” one packaging expert told Mic in April. “They want their packaging to be as green as their product.”

On the other hand, not everyone in cannabis views themselves as sustainability activists and may say they’re the furthest thing from it. Even if you don’t care all that much about the industry’s environmental footprint, consider the breadth of today’s consumer landscape. 

At one end are Boomers who helped create the modern environmental protest movement during the 1960s and 1970s. Following them are X Genners who created punk, hip hop, and Google and increasingly became conscientious consumers as they grew older if they weren’t already. 

Following them are Millennials and Z Genners who are so inpatient and unfamiliar with the inherent wastefulness of many traditional consumer products that the idea of subscribing to a daily newspaper made from dead trees is pretty much absurd. 

The cannabis trade publication Herb CEO even uses the checklist below to determine what packaging companies it will promote online that are pursuing sustainability.

Remember a few years ago when all those Z Genners walked out of their high-school classes around the world to protest pollution and climate change? They remember even if you don’t. In fact, while Millennials and Z Genners both delight in mocking their uninspired grandparents with the #okboomer hashtag, they bear numerous resemblances. 

In one survey, a similar number of Boomers and Millennials reported themselves as “concerned about the impact of climate change.” Large numbers of both also said they considered themselves “environmentally conscious,” were willing to pay for sustainable options, and inspected labels for evidence of eco-friendliness before buying.   

The resemblances continue into cannabis. In another recent survey, the cannabis company Verilife, which has dispensary locations in six states, examined Boomers and Millennials specifically to determine where their weed attitudes overlapped. Both reported spending on average around the same each month for cannabis -- about $76. And both reported preferring to smoke pre-rolls, blunts, and pipes over any other method by a large margin:  

“Both generations also reported consuming to ease stress or anxiety during different social situations and environments. In many areas, there are overlapping commonalities, which shows that despite their differences, Millennials and Boomers might have finally found something they can both agree on.”

The move toward more sustainable packaging could come at a short-term price for your cannabis business. But it could also be an investment in the long-term allure of your brand among consumers young and old. 

The sustainability megatrend demonstrates that many consumers are willing to pay more now where they know a company is committed to renewable, reusable, recyclable, and recycled methods for making and selling their products. If demand for it continues to grow, sustainability could become the standard in packaging and lead to the wider adoption among consumers of more affordable alternatives to non-recyclable, nonrenewable, and nonbiodegradable packaging. 

Who’s trying to fix it?

There are numerous cannabis packaging solutions available, and this list below isn’t fully comprehensive. But it covers a lot of ground. Many of these offerings are viable and even practical for Oklahoma cannabis businesses now. Others need time to develop further or for packaging regulations to ease and become more consistent between states where a patchwork of rules exists now. Cannabis operators can still plan ahead just like 3M and other companies that forecast consumer behavior to make smarter business decisions. 

1. Sun Grown Packaging

   • Products Boxes made from recyclable and compostable paper. 

   • Elevator Pitch Packaging contains patented mechanisms that meet federal standards for child-proofing. Custom designs and branding options. Materials are available with eco-friendly coating that protects against scratching and damage. “We stay on top of all legislation from the local to the federal level, so we can assist with all the nuances of each project.”

2. Paper Tube Co.

   • Products Cylindrical paper tubes for pre-rolls and cartridges.

   • Elevator Pitch Recyclable and reusable. Available in any size and color with custom branding available. Not all are child-resistant. “We help authentic companies thrive in a crowded marketplace through eco-friendly packaging that gets noticed, elevates the unboxing experience, and sells more product.”

3. Ventiv Design

   • Products Jars, tins, pumps, and boxes.

   • Elevator Pitch Specializes in compliant, responsibly sourced, and sustainable cannabis packaging. Existing company that was already working on sustainable packaging alternatives. Hemp and bamboo are among the materials used. “Fifteen years industry experience coupled with 20 years designing and building some of the world’s most successful brands.”

4. Sana Packaging

   • Products Packaging for pre-rolls, flower, cartridges, droppers, edibles, and more.

   • Elevator Pitch Some available containers are made from rapidly renewable and regenerative hemp bioplastics. Others are made of plastics that are reclaimed from the oceans. Also offers compostable baggies and pouches. Several child-resistant options available. “There is simply no reason to use virgin, petroleum-based resins, especially for single-use products like packaging.”

5. Truly Green Plastic

   • Products Depends on the application.

   • Elevator Pitch This company isn’t offering a specific product line at the moment. But the solution they’ve developed is compelling. Truly Green figured out how to make a fully biodegradable plastic out of the plant material left behind by cannabis cultivation. “Our Truly Green Plastic pellets have superior mechanical properties, which means they can be used to make anything from press-and-twist containers and drug-delivery devices to hospitality products and marketing materials.”

6. Nitrotin

   • Products Premium-grade cans for flower freshness.

   • Elevator Pitch Taking cues from the food industry, Nitrotin wants to merge quality, safety, and sustainability with sealed, recyclable packaging made from tinplate steel. Child-proof tops are made from recyclable plastic. “Preserved back stock will be the key to seamless sales and distribution.”

7. Vessel

   • Products Vape-pen batteries and accessories.

   • Elevator Pitch Numerous sleek designs and colors for vape pen batteries. Also makes carrying cases and wireless base chargers. Made to last almost 300 charge cycles with adjustable power settings to reduce the number of discarded cartridges and batteries. Announced a partnership in late April with a green-waste specialist to make it easier for consumers to recycle their batteries by returning them to secure collection boxes at dispensaries. Says the waste specialist: “Our mission is to help operators handle and revitalize their waste in an environmentally friendly manner within this highly regulated market, so they can get back to doing what they do best.” 

8. TINY e PAPER Co.

   • Products Depends on the application.

   • Elevator Pitch Commercial-paper packaging solution made from 100% hemp. LinkedIn posts from the company have generated major interest and led to several signed letters of intent. Founder wants to also use vegetable-based inks and organic adhesives in the future. Her career began in marketing and branding. “If you would have told me I was going to be a hemp-paper expert as part of my career 10 years ago, I would have told you you were smokin’ something and should share.”

9. Hansen Packaging

   • Products Paper tubes for droppers, cartridges, pre-rolls, and flower. 

   • Elevator Pitch Company has been in the business of consumer packaging since 1980. Cannabis products contained within the tube would need to be child-protected where desirable or required. The tubes themselves come from renewable resources and are biodegradable and recyclable. “For over 40 years, Hansen Packaging has specialized in the design and custom manufacture of paper tube packaging for retail and industrial markets.”    

10. Knot Plastic

    • Products Pre-roll tubes and pop-top containers.

    • Elevator Pitch Launched in early 2020, the founders set out to create plant-based alternatives to plastics made from fossil fuels. They pivoted during COVID-caused manufacturing disruptions to boost their ability to make plant-based bags. Began with ethanol from corn but added hemp after an oversupply of hemp biomass in 2019 made it more affordable. Said a founder last fall to Marijuana Business Daily: “If next year the economics don’t make sense [for hemp], we still have a consistent supply of non-GMO corn to make our polymers and our high-density plastics. We’re not a hemp or corn company -- we’re a plant-based plastics company.”

11. HISIERRA

    • Products Exit bags, pre-roll tubes, flower jars, and humidity packs.

    • Elevator Pitch Offers an array of sustainable cannabis packaging alternatives. Glass jars come with child-resistant caps made from reclaimed ocean plastic. Doob tubes are compostable, and containers for edibles, cartridges, and pre-rolls are biodegradable. Exit bags are certified child-resistant and made from plant-based raw materials. “No fossil fuels are used to power our cannabis-product packaging factory, significantly reducing the HISIERRA carbon footprint.”  

12. FunkSac

    • Products Odor-free drying, curing, and storage bags.

    • Elevator Pitch Veteran-owned business making storage bags in the United States from eco-friendly material that’s fully recyclable. Promises that its child-resistant and tamper-evident solutions do not leach plastic smells into the product. “FunkSac’s proprietary and patent-pending green film is engineered to keep your harvest fresher, longer.” 

13. CRATIV Packaging

    • Products Cases and inserts for cartridges, pre-rolls, edibles, syringes, and more.

    • Elevator Pitch Certified child-resistant cases made from food-grade polypropylene that’s recyclable. Additives are used to make the company’s products biodegrade faster. Paper inserts are recyclable, biodegradable, and chemical-free. Company is pushing toward plant-based products. “The flat surface area is ideal for superior branding and regulatory information that can be effectively and professionally labeled.”

14. Original Green Containers

    • Products Twist-top drams for flower, pre-rolls, capsules, and wrapped edibles.

    • Elevator Pitch Products are biodegradable and made largely from starch and hemp biopolymers. Containers are also certified child-proof and were made specifically for the cannabis industry. “This proprietary material has been developed to degrade in an ambient environment with exposure to sunlight and humidity, so even if disposed of improperly, our packaging will not become a permanent roadside eyesore.” 

15. Higher Standard Packaging

    • Products Large and small twist-top drams, exit bags, and wide-mouth jars.

    • Elevator Pitch Numerous high-grade sustainable packaging options available with child-resistant features. The company’s R2 line of eco-friendly containers is made from recycled milk jugs. Several twist-top sizes and designs are available that are recyclable. Large-size options hold up to one ounce of flower. From the founder: “Retirement led to boredom. A desire for doing something completely different and out of my ‘comfort’ zone led me to the legal marijuana industry.”

16. MM Green Packaging Solutions

    • Products Tins cans, tubes, containers, packaging for vape cartridges and pre-rolls.

    • Elevator Pitch This company has decades of experience in the packaging industry and is on a mission to entirely rid cannabis of plastics. MM Green says that consumers are more aware than ever before about how their goods are being packaged. The company only makes products that are compostable, biodegradable, and recyclable. “Enhance your brand and increase consumer loyalty by choosing sustainable materials.”

17. Airfield Supply Co.

    • Products Launched an effort to recycle cannabis packaging plastic into diesel fuel.

    • Elevator Pitch The Airfield Supply Co. cannabis dispensary in San Jose, California, formed a unique partnership with the recycling innovator Resynergi. During the week of 420 this year, Airfield dispensary customers received special deals when they returned plastic cannabis packaging that could later be converted to energy. Airfield says that 250 pounds of plastic packaging waste from cannabis can be recycled into 25 gallons of diesel fuel.

18. Utopia Plastix

    • Products Depends on the application.

    • Elevator Pitch This company is still young but is woman-and-black owned and based right here in Oklahoma. They don’t narrowly cater to the cannabis industry. In fact, I’m not certain if they’ve had a cannabis client before. But founder Sharina Perry has developed a plant-based plastics alternative using USDA-approved crops that absorb carbon from the air at four to five times the rate of trees. “With manufacturers across the country, we have now produced samples of finished goods including straws, bags, spoons, forks, knives, film, and a variety of containers.”

19. Green Dot Bioplastics

    • Products Depends on the application.

    • Elevator Pitch This Kansas company founded in 2011 also does not specifically target the cannabis industry. But it has developed bioplastics solutions that utilize an array of renewable materials including hemp, wood, and starch. “We have seen our raw materials turned into everything from surfboards to toys to wearable fashion to 3D-printer filament.”

20. Nitrogen Cannabis Packaging

    • Products Cylindrical metal and plastic containers for flower, edibles, and more.

    • Elevator Pitch Uses nitrogen to enhance freshness by eliminating light and oxygen in airtight plastic and metal containers. “This step dramatically increases the product's shelf life while also reducing the possibility of contamination.” The company holds several patents for child-resistant containers and lids, resealable containers, containers for longer-life storage, and other innovations. Cans are lined to protect terpenes and block leaching.  

Listening to: Nick Cave and Warren Ellis “Carnage” Reply with an email or sign up to receive alerts. Follow Green Country Monitor on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Instagram. If you appreciate this work, consider leaving a tip.

This is part one of two posts about product packaging in the era of cannabis reform and regulation. Today, we look at the booming cannabis packaging industry and the patchwork of state rules and requirements helping to drive it. On Friday, we’ll look at sustainability as a “megatrend” that crosses generations of consumers. We’ll also examine 17 companies and startups offering packaging solutions to the cannabis industry. -G.W. Schulz

Perhaps it doesn’t trouble you to imagine explaining to a precious child why beautiful Ariel The Little Mermaid had an empty vape cartridge stuck in her gullet and a medical-grade, child-resistant ziploc bag over her head when the life slowly drained from her body.

This is Oklahoma, after all. Know your audience. We’re indifferent to recycling at best and hostile to it at worst. The state’s long-serving Republican Sen. Jim Inhofe remains one of the most strident climate deniers in Congress. 

So let’s consider the money instead. Excessive cannabis packaging fueled largely by over-eager state regulators and lawmakers but also by so-called “vanity packaging” is quickly becoming a booming industry at the expense of you and your customers. 

The market for cannabis packaging reached an estimated $650 million in 2018 alone, according to the consulting and compliance firm Smithers. It’s expected to balloon from that already impressive number to $1.6 billion annually just three years from now.   

Cannabis continues to be interpreted by bureaucrats and politicians as indistinguishable from the powerfully addictive prescription drugs that fueled the opioid crisis in Oklahoma and other states.

Of course, it wasn’t cannabis that caused 14,000 overdose deaths in 2019. But that matters little. Perception is everything. Pearl-clutching lawmakers and regulators here and elsewhere can’t resist continually proposing new and meticulous cannabis controls to protect the public’s health and well-being.

Perhaps nowhere is that more visible than in the packaging. 

A trip to the dispensary in Oklahoma or any legal state these days means walking out with medical-grade packaging and containers, odor-proof exit bags with child resistance, bulky plastics, glass jars, heavy cardboards, foils and wraps, vape batteries and cartridges, and “doob tubes” for pre-rolls. 

Astonishing volumes of it simply flows into landfills and oceans once the weed is gone. Much of that waste is made from nonrenewable resources and doesn’t readily biodegrade. It may also be exceedingly difficult to recycle. 

Some cannabis packaging is so comically dense with materials that it seems capable of being used to construct barns, silos, or coffins that could last generations. One Obama-era EPA administrator called cannabis packaging “a major new universe of plastic waste.”

It’s common for containers to weigh more in plastics than the cannabis weighs inside them. One can make several purchases at an Oklahoma gun show and walk out with fewer packaging requirements. 

To be sure, not all of this is the fault of lawmakers and bureaucrats. As cannabis becomes increasingly competitive and more celebrities and artists sign brand and sponsorship deals, the industry has witnessed a rise of vanity packaging seen in other industries like cosmetics and alcohol. 

Either way, all of this packaging and the costs associated with it are mounting fast. Even if the waste doesn’t concern you all that much, consumers today across the spectrum from Boomers to Z Genners care more than ever about sustainability and love showing it off with their spending.

Can the trajectory of this be changed? If so, can one of the nation’s busiest cannabis markets help lead the way?

The big business of cannabis packaging

Just how big the cannabis packaging industry could get in the coming years is difficult to pin down with precision. The business world is awash in market analysis and intelligence firms selling steeply priced reports that promise all kinds of insights and competitive advantages. Such firms exist in every industry. Now they’re advancing on state-legal cannabis. 

The forecast above from Smithers of $1.6 billion by 2024 is probably the closest to reality given that they’ve been involved in compliance consulting in the United States for decades. I’ve seen estimates elsewhere that are far higher but seem to be based on wild assumptions. One thing’s for certain, however. As Smithers writes: “Packaging regulations will change often and quickly.”    

And that fact makes for major business opportunities. Two cannabis companies that don’t come into contact with cannabis at all announced in early March that they were merging in a deal worth over $400 million. KushCo Holdings of California sells opaque, child-resistant containers, tamper-evident labels, “barrier” bags, and packaging for pre-filled vape cartridges. The other company involved in the merger, Greenlane Holdings, sells packaging along with cannabis accessories like pipes and papers.

Another maker of cannabis packaging -- Advanced Container Technologies -- announced in late April that it was entering the Oklahoma market. The company’s patented “Medtainer” airtight container features an integrated grinder for cannabis flower. It was initially engineered to aid youth and elderly patients with breaking down traditional pharmaceutical medications. The company smartly pivoted the Medtainer to weed with exquisite timing. 

For many businesses in the cannabis industry, high-grade plastics in particular are the most desirable and affordable for meeting regulations and moving product smoothly and safely day-to-day. It’s durable and lightweight. It seals tightly and enables longer shelf lives. 

In highly competitive markets like Oklahoma, more costly packaging alternatives may simply not be viable. Cannabis businesses as it is face higher taxes and banking fees and an array of costly and complicated regulations not endured by other industries. As one cannabis consultant told Vice in 2019:

“A lot of operators are just trying to stay alive. Assume a new, environmentally friendly bottle costs fifty cents, and the traditional bottle only costs fifteen cents. When you’re just trying to keep the lights on, which one are you going to go with? Ninety-nine percent of the time, they’re going to go with the traditional bottle.”

But doing so comes with costs. One worried assemblywoman in New York State issued a memo last month after lawmakers and the governor there authorized adult use:   

“The legal cannabis industry in the United States produces about 150 million tons of waste each year. Even when marijuana packaging is recycled at home, it is often sorted out by recyclers and taken to landfills. While no industry is blameless in the plastic-pollution crisis, New York has a unique opportunity to prevent a new source of plastic pollution as we consider the legalization of recreational marijuana.”

Not only that, loosening overly strict packaging requirements could pump oxygen into first-time cannabis entrepreneurs fighting to become viable themselves. One think tank that studied cannabis packaging regulations argued in an April report that allowing the reuse of high-grade exit bags could “reduce the financial impact for undercapitalized entrepreneurs where packaging costs can be a financial burden.”

Strict rules in Oklahoma and elsewhere

Much of the blame for packaging waste in cannabis falls squarely on state regulators and lawmakers who have the best intentions but not always the best ideas. The phrase “nanny state” is a pejorative sometimes used by conservative politicians to condemn evermore government bureaucracy created by liberals to maximize the health and well-being of the public. 

Resisting the nanny state and perceived government overreach is a general guiding principle in conservative Oklahoma politics. That is until the discussion turns to substances or behaviors viewed as vice or deviance. 

In exchange for the permission to end cannabis criminalization and prohibition, lawmakers and regulators from both major parties and in all states have continually dreamed up new ways to tax and regulate cannabis whether the taxes and regulations made sense or not.

Republicans and Democrats in statehouses around the nation have universally clutched their pearls and created a patchwork of state rules and regulations as cannabis reforms have progressed.

The state of Florida requires that edibles be individually packaged with plain, opaque wrapping. If containers are then used for the edibles, they, too, must be plain, white, and opaque, so the contents are not visible. No images or product depictions can be used on the container beyond a state-approved logo. Washington State has numerous required labeling disclosures including that cannabis may have health risks, may be habit forming, and may be unlawful outside the state. 

Massachusetts and Oregon restrict packaging that’s too neon or brightly colored and could appear desirable to kids. Nevada and Washington specify the minimum allowed thickness for plastic containers. Maryland says that cannabis packaging must “be plain” and indicate that there “may be health risks associated with cannabis use.”   

California once allowed dispensaries to choose if they wanted to use individualized child-resistant packaging or place multiple purchases in a single, compliant exit bag. Not any longer. As of early last year, every individual product must be in a child-resistant package.

Oklahoma, like other states, has no shortage of rules and restrictions for packaging, advertising, and labeling cannabis. The state’s cannabis laws articulate ground rules and then pass additional regulatory responsibilities for labeling and packaging over to the Oklahoma Medical Marijuana Authority. 

Between these rules and laws, all retail cannabis and cannabis products in the state must generally be sold in child-resistant containers. That’s defined as packaging that is “designed or constructed to be significantly difficult for children under five years of age to open and not difficult for normal adults to use properly.”

The packaging must be opaque and maintain its child resistance after multiple openings. It must have a “contains THC” sticker affixed and indicate the THC and terpene potencies. According to Oklahoma cannabis regulators, it also must have labels reading:

• “This product has been tested for contaminants.”

• “Women should not use marijuana or medical marijuana products during pregnancy because of the risk of birth defects.”

• “Keep out of reach of children.”   

In addition to the above requirements, Oklahoma also spells out what cannabis is not permitted to do. Cannabis advertising, packaging, and labeling cannot:

• Claim that cannabis has therapeutic, physical, or health benefits

• Contain misleading, false, or deceptive messages

• Violate federal trademark laws or regulations

• Depict minors consuming cannabis

• Use any design that’s obviously appealing to children

• Contain objects such as toys, cartoons, cartoon characters, or similar images suggesting the presence of a child

State law further says that none of the required disclosure information may be substituted with available technologies like QR codes. If permitted, consumers could conveniently scan a QR code with their phones and not only view all required labels digitally, they could also check out the results of available quality and safety tests at the dispensary they’re visiting. 

Some states and local communities are beginning to see the crisis of waste in cannabis and are taking steps to confront it. When New York State legalized adult-use cannabis in March, an assemblywoman there immediately followed up with another bill that would create a recycling program for cannabis packaging. Consumers would be incentivized by paying a deposit on packaging that they’d receive back after returning the empties for recycling. 

In Colorado, consumers can return their plastic cannabis containers to select dispensaries to be recycled with help from the innovative cannabis recycler Green For Green. Others argue consumers should be permitted to reuse glass jars for cannabis the way craft beer enthusiasts around the nation already do with glass “growlers.”

Denver even issued the above list to cannabis consumers and businesses for better-understanding what types of common packaging could be recycled in the Denver area and what would likely need to be trashed. But not all cities and states have the same recycling rules and options.

Don’t forget to check your email inbox on Friday for part two. -G.W. Schulz

Listening to: Siouxsie and the Banshees “Spellbound” Reply with an email or sign up to receive alerts. Follow Green Country Monitor on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Instagram. If you appreciate this work, consider leaving a tip.

I spent much of the last two weeks painstakingly memorizing a TEDx Tulsa talk that was supposed to happen last year about this guy, Karl Fontenot, one of the capital-murder defendants in the Netflix series “The Innocent Man.” Talk is in the can now a year later and streams online sometime next month.

Back to the weed beat. Some legislative and policy notes first before we get to headlines. The Oklahoma legislative session for 2021 began in February with a head-spinning number of proposals having to do with cannabis. The field has now narrowed considerably as one bill after another failed to meet key legislative deadlines required to become law. Follow the latest here.

Arguably the bill to watch closest now is HB 2646 from Rep. Jon Echols (R-Oklahoma City). It was already a laundry list of cannabis rule changes that policymakers have sought in the past, some of them good and others not so good, depending on your outlook. Now the bill has picked up two new amendments that should get the attention of the cannabis industry.

The first would ban dispensaries from displaying bulk loose flower in jars as many of them do currently. Dispensaries would be permitted only to showcase samples of flower that could not be available for retail sale. The product would otherwise need to be contained in a sealed or separate package. (See page 16 section E of the most recent version of the bill to see what I’m describing.)

Another amendment in HB 2646 would end the last chance Oklahoma has in the legislative session to authorize temporary licenses for nonresidents of Oklahoma who don’t already have a medical license in their home state. I’m guessing temporary licenses would be a welcome release valve for Oklahoma’s competitive cannabis market at the moment. 

A conference committee considered HB 2646 during hearings this week at the statehouse. Echols said he wasn’t thrilled with some of the compromises required to keep the bill moving. It’s clear, however, that he’s determined to get the bill passed along with another, HB 2674, which would move cannabis regulation in Oklahoma to a new agency. Here’s what Echols said during a May 5 conference committee hearing about the first more expansive bill:

“This bill is not everything I wanted. This is not how I would have drafted it had I had my druthers. And it’s probably not everything the Senate wanted, either, because they had to compromise with me on some things. But it is incredibly important that we pass it. Let’s first go to the citizens of the state of Oklahoma. We are not doing our job. We have unsafe product. We have product that is not being tested. We have product that is coming in from other states. We have products that are being grown in this state and sold out of state. It is ridiculous and absurd.

“ … There are many provisions I don’t like. But on the aggregate, this is something we really need to pass. When we have people who are trying to play by the rules, and we are not doing enough to enforce those rules on everybody, it hurts the citizens and hurts the legitimate people who have put their personal fortunes on the line -- whatever they have, their equity. To not enforce those rules is just not fair.”

Echols went on to say that as little as 40 percent of the cannabis and cannabis products in the state were being tested for safety and quality. Between House bills 2646 and 2674, Echols wants to toughen up enforcement of the industry in part by creating a new Oklahoma Department of Marijuana and Alcohol that merges the Oklahoma Medical Marijuana Authority with the Oklahoma Alcoholic Beverage Laws Enforcement Commission. 

Elsewhere, the office of Rep. David Hardin (R-Stilwell) confirmed last week that Senate Bill 445 is officially dead for the session. It would have effectively re-criminalized cannabis in Oklahoma by removing a provision of state law that shields patients from criminal penalties for diversion to unlicensed people. It also would have made diversion punishable under Oklahoma’s Uniform Controlled Dangerous Substances Act. 

It wasn’t clear to me earlier in the session what was motivating Hardin and Sen. Lonnie Paxton (R-Tuttle) to sponsor this bill. Then Hardin revealed it in a committee hearing. The district attorneys wanted it. There’s a strong perception at the statehouse and in law enforcement that black markets and noncompliance are pervasive in Oklahoma cannabis, and I doubt that perception is going away anytime soon.

Also dead for the session are three major bills from Rep. Scott Fetgatter (R-Okmulgee), who along with Echols is one of the closest watchers of cannabis policy at the statehouse. The three are HB 2023 (allowing the transfer of cannabis business licenses for $500), HB 2004 (another laundry list of cannabis rules changes similar to 2646), and HB 2022 (temporary patient licenses lasting two years for nonresidents with no medical license in their home state).   

Righting the wrongs of the war on weed

I follow a cool think tank that tracks what states are doing as they institute cannabis reforms to clear festering past drug-arrest records. Called the Collateral Consequences Resource Center, they partnered recently with the Drug Enforcement and Policy Center at Ohio State University to create the above graphic showing where states are beginning to automatically expunge past weed arrests or at least make it easier to pursue expungement. They also published a corresponding paper with their findings.  

As you can see, this is something Oklahoma didn’t do when it authorized medical marijuana in 2018. PBS NewsHour reported recently that as more states legalize and decriminalize, more people carrying criminal records from cannabis are asking for relief.

I’ve tried before to determine just how many people have been handed weed felonies by the state of Oklahoma over the decades. The closest number I’ve seen is from the Oklahoma Policy Institute: Roughly 60,000 people have simple drug-possession felonies. But how many of those are from cannabis is uncertain.

While it’s possible to get nonviolent criminal records expunged in Oklahoma currently, the process is complicated and for the most part requires a lawyer. I wrote more at length about this here on Green Country Monitor. I’ve also written extensively about Oklahoma expungement policy (and DUIs, including weed DUIs) for Tulsa attorney Sabah Khalaf, aka the Tulsa DUI Guy and the Tulsa Expungement Guy.     

GCM Roundup | Oklahoma and Beyond

• The Oklahoma Bureau of Narcotics says that it is “checking into concerns of illegal grows in all 77 Oklahoma counties.” If you spend any time at all on Reddit or the cannabis Facebook groups, you’ve seen the wild range of rumors about Oklahoma’s black markets. Whether based on fact or not, perception is everything. Law enforcers and lawmakers are serious about cracking down on violations and noncompliance. That much is true.

• The bureau raided a grow house last week in Blackwell, Oklahoma, where the cultivator was operating with an expired license. “Agents said the owner made no effort to renew their license and charges can be coming within the next few days. … The owner of the business is facing a long list of felony charges.”

• Earlier in the week, the bureau raided a grow operation in Erick, Oklahoma, that it said was connected to yet another raid late last month in Guthrie. Although no arrests were made at the time of the Erick raid, a spokesman for OBN said on Facebook that it was “all tied [to] criminal organizations moving hundreds of pounds of marijuana onto the black market under the guise of a ‘medical marijuana’ farm.’’ Another message from the spokesman came the next day: “This is not a safe haven.”   

• Commissioners in Woodward County, Oklahoma, this week tabled until a later date two requests from cannabis businesses for certificates of compliance. Said one commissioner as the reason: “I don't feel like the Oklahoma Medical Marijuana Authority is doing their job with all of these applications. … I just think that there's some documentation that we need to be requiring from all applicants, because I don't know that it's been done appropriately down state.” 

• Police responded at 3 am on May 6 to reports of a guy stealing thousands of dollars worth of cannabis from a dispensary on Pennsylvania Avenue in Oklahoma City. After being placed in handcuffs, the suspect then tried to escape to a getaway car with a driver inside while he was still in handcuffs. The two men crashed on May Avenue shortly thereafter and were arrested.

• Here’s a creative fella who tried to traffic hundreds of pounds of cannabis illegally by stashing it in 14 ATM machines.

• The world is full of great cannabis, and breathtakingly stupid people are eating tainted meat to get high.

• Hemp was legally shipped in the United States by rail this month for the first time in 84 years.

• I so want to see “farm-gate cannabis” become an Oklahoma thing in which people can visit a grow and buy directly from a cultivator. Just like making a trip out to the pumpkin patch during fall.

• The National Association of Realtors released a new report showing that commercial landlords dislike having cannabis retailers and cultivators as tenants for reasons beyond federal prohibition. “The smell. You can’t get rid of it.” The fact that you have difficulty getting banked is another reason.

• A major employer in Coldwater, Michigan, is threatening to abandon the town if it’s forced to be located near a cultivation site. The company president in a letter to the town mayor said it would create a “horrible smell” and “destroy” nearby property values.

• Green Market Report says Texas could become the next target for early cannabis investors. I’m skeptical it will happen as soon as people in cannabis would like. The chances of Texas and Kansas both passing significant cannabis reforms bills in their current sessions are diminishing fast. Texas would have to wait another two years for its legislature to meet again. Reform hopes also seem to be fading in Minnesota and Wisconsin. Nebraska may pass a very weak reform bill that would prohibit smoking. Louisiana lawmakers, meanwhile, are poised to allow smokable cannabis. It's policy whiplash out there, y'all.  

• Also in Texas, a top aide to the state’s agriculture commissioner was arrested for allegedly squeezing money and campaign contributions out of would-be hemp licensees. In California, two local officials were sentenced to two years of prison each after they took bribes in exchange for city dispensary permits.      

Listening to: Leon Russell “Stranger in a Strange Land” Reply with an email or sign up to receive alerts. Follow Green Country Monitor on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Instagram. If you appreciate this work, consider leaving a tip.

I have an insane news diet. It comes from reporting for years on security, criminal justice, and technology. Seemingly every Web site and newsletter on the planet does link lists or news curation. But I see the same cannabis stories shared from different outlets in my feeds all week long. Cannabis Twitter is even worse.

So I'm working hard to make the GCM news roundups genuinely enlightening. They’re heavily biased to cannabis in Oklahoma and flyover country with splashes of national where it's interesting or relevant or both. Or I just can't resist the chance to say something snarky. 

There should be several items in each roundup that you haven’t seen elsewhere, or I need to turn up the voltage of my radar systems. I’m a heavy user of Google Alerts already and have other alerts set up for all new scholarship papers and patent applications containing the words “cannabis” and “marijuana.” I haven’t seen a cannabis-related patent from Oklahoma yet. It’ll be a fun post when I do.

Thank you so much to the subscriber who left a tip this week. I couldn’t thank you in text through the Cash app. But that was an encouraging nudge to keep going. And it shows people are reading all the way through. “Listening to” at the end of each post leads to a playlist on Spotify that “grows” with Green Country Monitor. Substack is a curious journalism experiment. But I like curious journalism experiments. They’re the only thing that might save journalism in the digital age. 

GCM Roundup | Oklahoma and Beyond

• An armed employee at an Ardmore dispensary shot a guy to death on Saturday as he was attempting to rob the store at gunpoint.

• The Journal Record is a heavily paywalled business and trade publication that covers Oklahoma from the capital. Their stories are difficult to access online (even with a library card). But they’ve been doing some good reporting on Oklahoma cannabis. This headline alone should be enough to get your attention: “Cannabis franchising on the horizon.”

• Rep. Scott Fetgatter (R-Okmulgee) told KJRH in Tulsa that he believed his three major House bills having to do with cannabis were dead in the Senate. That includes HB 2022 (temporary patient licenses lasting two years), HB 2023 (allowing the transfer of cannabis business licenses for $500), and HB 2004 (a laundry list of cannabis rule changes that’s similar to HB 2646, which is still active).

• I collect examples of bad pot puns in mainstream news stories about cannabis the way other people collect records. I present to you the worst pot pun in a headline for the week courtesy of the Ponca City News: “Legislative options proposed to weed out duplicitous growers.”

• Illinois just joined an elite club that includes Oklahoma of states that are officially generating more taxes from cannabis than alcohol. Oklahoma reached the threshold in January. 

• What was once the police academy building for Flint, Michigan, is going to become a cannabis grow operation. 

• Snoop implies in a new song that he once blazed up with Obama. I’m guessing that never happened, but it’s fun to imagine it did. 

• The New York Times did a great profile of one of the longest-serving cannabis-reform activists in the United States: Dana Beal. “His decades demanding pot legalization have included battles with the authorities, arrests, stints in jail, and the loss of a home.”

• The cannabis technology company Cova Software put a bunch of work into creating a “free guide” explaining to Oklahoma cannabis how to comply with Metrc. They’re plan was to then ask for your email address before you downloaded it, so they could later sell you cannabis software using that email address. Then the lawsuit over Metrc happened. Poor Cova. (Here’s another free guide to Metrc compliance, and I won't try to sell you shit.)

• A contributor wrote for Forbes that cannabis is helping to create a renaissance of American entrepreneurship. I strongly believe that is occurring here in Oklahoma, and it’s really awesome to watch.    

Listening to: Fugees “How Many Mics” Reply with an email or sign up to receive alerts. Follow Green Country Monitor on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Instagram. If you appreciate this work, consider leaving a tip.

Note: Before we start this post, an update on Green Country Monitor. We’re two subscribers away from 100, an important early milestone. Doesn’t seem like much. But it is if you’re doing digital journalism that’s really narrowly focused on something like cannabis policy and business news from Oklahoma. I’ve decided to ditch the newsletter format. It makes more sense to email the posts out as I complete them. So that means more emails from GCM in the future. But I’m just starting to get good at reporting on cannabis, so stay with me. You’ll like it. We’ll have fun. The newsletter format works in a lot of capacities (like, for example, cultivator-to-dispensary, or B2B, marketing). But the Substack publishing platform I’m using lends itself a lot better to the journalism distribution method I’ll be using going forward. -G.W. Schulz

Our long national nightmare in cannabis of using literally dirty money for transactions may soon be coming to an end. The only people in Oklahoma cannabis perhaps not thrilled to see this nightmare’s conclusion are dispensary operators getting a cut of the ATM fees.

Consumers today can buy virtually anything with ease from their phones and have it delivered anywhere. The celebrity Kylie Jenner reportedly used the delivery app Postmates more than 180 times over 12 months, including for a single carrot on one occasion.  

Yet cannabis operators and consumers are still inexplicably forced to handle cash that travels a long journey through general commerce as it picks up COVID and poo bacteria along the way. 

That could change with the SAFE Banking Act passed by the U.S. House in late April. The bill is showing signs it could pass the Senate, too, where it’s stalled in the past. More than 100 House Republicans backed the most recent version, including three from the Sooner State. 

Oklahoma’s cannabis industry arguably has more at stake with the outcome of this bill than any other state in the nation. Mature markets with greater populations in Colorado, California, and Washington State certainly generate more in sales than humble Oklahoma. 

But we have 367,000 patients in a state of fewer than four million people. We have more dispensary licensees than any state in the nation at over 2,200. Combined with cultivators and processors, we top 10,000 cannabis businesses who have a major stake in the SAFE Banking Act.

Not to mention, each of those cannabis operators has an untold number more people as workers, vendors, and investors all also with an interest in the bill.

The SAFE Banking Act generally seeks to stop federal financial regulators from penalizing banks when they conduct transactions with legitimate cannabis businesses. Banks would no longer have to worry about running afoul of anti-money laundering laws even though cannabis is still federally prohibited.

As long as that fear of prosecution exists, most banks will deny you access to financial services that would make it easier and speedier for you to buy and sell cannabis and cannabis products, pay your taxes, conduct deposits, and compensate workers. While cannabis is a booming business in Oklahoma, it’s still a fraction of the size of the state’s legacy industries. Cannabis simply isn’t worth the risk for most banks right now. 

A small number of regional banks and credit unions can legally service cannabis businesses by meeting tough reporting requirements. Some of them exist here in Oklahoma, but they’re few in number. One such institution, Encentus Federal Credit Union, even ceased its Oklahoma cannabis services in 2019 after deciding it was simply too burdensome. Said one expert to the Tulsa World:

“Unfortunately, it’s not uncommon to hear of a bank or credit union that has to sever its ties with the cannabis industry. Banking cannabis properly is labor intensive, and the cost of compliance can be prohibitively high without the right tools.”

The total number of financial institutions nationally that are eligible to do business with cannabis is a mere sliver of the larger banking industry and has actually dropped since 2019. This even as states have rapidly moved toward cannabis reform. Where banks do offer such services to cannabis, you’ll likely pay much more in fees for the privilege of being banked than a traditional business. 

Democratic lawmakers in Washington have filed bills attempting to end these restrictions on banks since all the way back in 2013. A version eventually became known as the SAFE Banking Act, which passed the House for the first time in 2019. Also passed by the House that year was a historic but symbolic bill that would have entirely legalized cannabis at the federal level. 

Both were doomed in the Senate, however, where Republicans remained in control at the time. 

Oklahoma Republicans Markwayne Mullin (Westville) and Frank Lucas (Cheyenne) have opposed both versions of the SAFE Banking Act in 2019 and now this year. Republicans Tom Cole (Moore) and Kevin Horn (Tulsa) joined former Democrat Kendra Horn in supporting the 2019 bill.

Kendra Horn was the only member of Oklahoma’s congressional delegation who supported the historic vote for legalization. She was defeated after one term following a tough, partisan battle with Republican Stephanie Bice in the November election, who supports the SAFE Banking Act.   

Tom Cole says that even though he has supported both versions of the SAFE Banking Act, he continues to oppose cannabis legalization and efforts to allow adult-use. He told the Oklahoman in late April:

“Whether I agree with this new industry or not, its very existence requires a legal framework for banking, business operations, and law enforcement. The SAFE Banking Act provides financial institutions and law enforcement with the tools needed to ensure the medical marijuana industry operates safely and lawfully.”

With Democrats in control of the Senate and a corresponding bill there, the SAFE Banking Act seems to have a better chance at the moment of passing in 2021 than more comprehensive attempts at cannabis reform.

As for Oklahoma’s two senators, Republicans James Lankford and Jim Inhofe, they’ve both said they oppose the SAFE Banking Act on the grounds that cannabis remains federally prohibited. That’s according to the Oklahoma Bankers Association, which supports the SAFE Banking Act and has spoken with the senators about it.

In the meantime, as I mentioned above, there are still banking options available to cannabis in Oklahoma. Here are the three I’m aware of: 

Oklahoma State Bank

• Direct number for cannabis banking: 405-260-2265

• Offices in Guthrie, Norman, Mulhall, Edmond

• Site for cannabis banking: osbbank.com/cannabis-banking

• Bonus: They formally call it “cannabis” instead of “marijuana.” I like them already.

Regent Bank

• Indirect number for cannabis banking: 918-488-0788

• Offices in Tulsa, Nowata, Oklahoma City, Bartlesville, and Springfield

• Site for cannabis banking: I don’t recall them ever having a special page for it.

• Ask for Director of Special Programs Keri Cain, according to this interview (I did a little more sleuthing, i.e. found her on LinkedIn, to confirm she works at their Tulsa branch)

Valliance Bank

• Indirect number for cannabis banking: 405-286-5700

• Offices in Oklahoma City and Norman

• Site for cannabis banking: I also don’t recall them ever having a special page for it.

• I’m not certain of the contact for cannabis banking at Valliance. But if I had to guess, it’d be their executive vice president and chief operating officer in Oklahoma City, Alisha Wade, who’s been really public about Valliance trying to service the cannabis industry.  

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