Rachel Roberts of the Kentucky Cannabis Industry Alliance

In episode 4 of the Talent in Cannabis Podcast, Rachel Roberts, Executive Director of the Kentucky Cannabis Industry Alliance, former state legislator, and 16-year yoga studio owner, joins David Belskey, CEO at FlowerHire. 

As someone who spent years championing the legislation that ultimately made medical cannabis legal in KY, Rachel is uniquely positioned to know what building an industry from zero really looks like. She dives into:

• The unexpected KY political dynamics that made medical cannabis possible in one of the most conservative legislatures in the country
• What the first 16 months of a brand-new state program actually look like on the ground
• The hidden barriers keeping patients out, and how KCIA is fighting back
• Why well-intentioned regulations are creating unintended problems for operators and patients alike
• What Kentucky’s timeline looks like for adult-use, and why the window may be shorter

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Talent in Cannabis is the Flower Hire podcast featuring candid conversations with leaders and professionals shaping the cannabis industry. Each episode goes beyond job titles to humanize executive careers, exploring real journeys, lessons learned, and what it truly takes to build and lead in cannabis. Flower Hire, talent in cannabis. We have Rachel Roberts with us today. Rachel is the executive chairman of the Kentucky Cannabis Industry Alliance. Rachel, thanks for joining us.

SPEAKER_00 1:05

It's my pleasure. I'm excited to be here. Nice to see you, David.

SPEAKER_01 1:08

Was I was I wrong? Executive director, executive chairman?

SPEAKER_00 1:11

You know, director is the title, but I'll wear whatever job you assign to me. That's the joy of being a part of a startup organization, right?

SPEAKER_01 1:19

Yeah, you you wear all the hats. I mean, uh I know you have uh uh at least one other team member though, full-time. I've I've met.

SPEAKER_00 1:27

Yeah, we have a coordinator. Her name is Catherine Meffer, and she's fantastic.

SPEAKER_01 1:31

Well, talk to me about uh KCIA and and and and all the hats you wear for that organization and what it does.

SPEAKER_00 1:39

Yeah, so I'll start at the beginning. So Kentucky went medically legal um at the beginning of last year, so at the beginning of 2025. And uh there were some people who got licenses, were a limited license state, and some of the people who were awarded licenses in our straight lottery system um had worked in other states and had seen how helpful it is to have a strong association or alliance. So they had the foresight to sort of be willing to, you know, build the plane before anybody was ready to jump on board, right? So they decided that an alliance was needed before anybody had opened their doors, um, and they did a search and they found me because of my background in the General Assembly, which I'm sure we'll talk about. And so I came on board. And so we've been around since the day the program launched, so just over, I guess, uh almost 16 months now. And we've seen it go from you know, just the licensees getting their licenses to identifying their properties, their land, building things out, starting to hire. Um, and now as we sit here at the you know latter part of March, we have 19 of our 72 licensees who are fully operational.

SPEAKER_01 2:41

Progress. Um in forefront of history, you know, medical cannabis in a in a state like Kentucky. Um I can't wait to dive into it more. But um the effect the importance of an organization like yours for for for a state's industry is it is it is it for industry players to come together to make sure that all the challenges of of of in this industry are are being addressed and then and then lobbying and defending the the license holders' interests um with the state regulators? Like um what is the uh what is the big impact that you've already seen?

SPEAKER_00 3:19

You know, at the very beginning, it really was just figuring out who everybody was because these kinds of license processes, these lotteries, people apply under LLCs. So, you know, even if you do an open records request and you get all the LLCs, you still have no idea who the LLC is, right? So I'd say the first several months we're really just figuring out who all the licensees were. We had a very strict lottery process, uh, but there wasn't any real guidance or guardrails around selling of licenses afterwards. So the first few months we're figuring out who the LLCs were, and then figuring out who they may or may not have sold to, and then still to this day, you know, there's still a few that are trading hands. So one of the first things was just figuring out who all the players were and then connecting them with one another when they needed to be connected. We kicked off right away in January of 2025 with a meetup. So we got lucky in that the state required all of the licensees to come into Kentucky for a training session. So we capitalized on that mandatory day, and through our first meetup right afterwards, I got all the licensees in a room. You can imagine, you know, all these people had just won licenses, but they didn't know who the other players were. So it's really fun for them to come into a room. Some of them figured out that their friends had won one too or companies they've worked with in the past, and then they start talking, you know, because if you're a cultivator, you're gonna need pretty quickly to figure out who your processor is gonna be and who you might be able to sell to dispensary dispensary-wise. We don't allow for vertical integration in the state, so in a state like Kentucky, that can be, I think, even more important. So that was the beginning, right? Um, and then beyond that, you know, we definitely hold the events to bring everybody together regularly. We operate as a three-legged stool. So KCIA, Kentucky Cannabis Industry Alliance, is myself as the executive director with Catherine, the administrator. And then we have a partnership with a law firm, McBr, uh, and then a partnership with a lobbying firm, MML and K. And McBrare and MML and K are very well known for working in the fun industries or the sin industries, heavily, heavily regulated industries like bourbon, sports wagering, horse racing, those kinds of things in Kentucky. So they're really the right partners for us to have, and anybody who's a member has access to those um assets as well.

SPEAKER_01 5:23

Uh that's fantastic, and I love that you just created that space for the early sort of operators, pioneers of the Kentucky medical industry to come together and start building those relationships that we're gonna need. They're gonna need to source product, they're gonna need to to sell product, they're needed to figure out how to get product finished into the hands of consumers, and um and you so the whole everyone came to Frankfurt. Right? And and I'm I bet it was uh what percentage of the early licensed winners of their first time ever being to Frank being in Frankfurt, you think?

SPEAKER_00 5:58

Uh the vast majority. So there definitely are some licensed winners who are Kentuckians who had been to Frankfurt beforehand, but the vast majority, um, if they'd been to Kentucky, they probably hadn't been to the Capitol beforehand. You know, Frankfurt's really uniquely, our state capital is really uniquely poised in between our two largest cities, Lexington and Louisville, but it doesn't have an airport, it doesn't even have public transportation to it. So when we've held events in Frankfurt, we always have to tell people don't expect that you're gonna be able to get an Uber home from the restaurant. It's a it's a small town with a big capital in it.

SPEAKER_01 6:27

I was there um this last summer, never ever been there before. Um, you know, Buffalo Trace is there, and there's some other things. I think it's the third smallest state capitol in terms of population, and the state capitol building like literally is the middle of a neighborhood. It's a beautiful building, you know, classic, you know, marble dome. But uh but no, it's uh it's uh it's different. But at the same time, you get people to come there, they have nothing else to do. You can definitely get some stuff done.

SPEAKER_00 6:55

Well, you know, the as you mentioned, bourbon trace is a bit of a distraction for people. There are a few bourbon distilleries around there, but otherwise, it really it's the seat, you know, it's the seat of government in the state. Most everybody who lives in Frankfurt works in the government in some way or another, so it's definitely the place we go to educate people up. Uh, we had our second, so our first party that I told you about when we kicked off, we call the Founders Party. Our second annual one just happened this past January, and we tied it into our first lobbying day. So we took our members to the Capitol for the day, set up meetings for them with key lobby, uh, with key legislators, had our lobbyists there to help them. We, you know, we have a policy committee as part of the association, and the policy committee had identified our four key policy points for the year, and so we helped train up our members on how to talk about those points. It didn't need a lot of training, it's things that they obviously know they need for their business and for the patients of Kentucky. But for a lot of them, it was their first time getting to meet with lawmakers. And so you mentioned how beautiful the Capitol is. If you're not used to doing that, you know, it's it's hallowed ground. You know, you walk in and it it's there's a lot of gravitas there. So, you know, it was, I think, great for them to get to have those conversations together, to have been trained up by the lobbyists and by me so they felt secure going in and had authority in their voices and they were talking to the lawmakers, and they were really well received. And as everybody in the cannabis sphere knows, you know, I think the lawmakers expected a long hair, a lot of long-haired hippie kids and Tiny to come in, and you know, that's not what the cannabis industry looks like. So they were um they were really well received by lawmakers, and it was really fun to get to see. And at the risk of sounding condescending to my members, I was very proud of all of them. They did a great job.

SPEAKER_01 8:27

Um well you teed it up and and made it happen. You had a big part in that. So you mentioned being uh being a state-elected representative. The honorable, the honorable Rachel Roberts. Talk to me about your career before um, I guess before cannabis, before coming becoming a state representative, and how that whole journey came to be.

SPEAKER_00 8:51

Yeah, so it's not a linear path by any stretch of the imagination. My uh my other day job is that I own a yoga studio and I've owned a yoga studio for 16 years now. But because I owned a business and I built my business, I had become more and more ingrained in the community, yeah. And as a business owner learns quickly, you need to understand zoning and your local politics and all of those things if you want to be able to build and thrive in the ecosystem, you've set your business up. And so as I got more ingrained in the community through my business, I got more and more frustrated with uh the politics of Kentucky and uh had a you know momentary lapse in better judgment and decided to run for office. And uh I didn't actually win the first time, I ran for state senate the first time, and this is absolutely true, right? So if anybody listening has ever considered running for office and you think you need to know everything before you do, you don't. Uh I had no idea. You know, I I I think most people know pretty well what your federal government does, but most people don't understand really what the state level government does. Maybe cannabis is different because every state obviously has its own overlay for what you can do. So this may be a you know a better educated group on state government than most, but nonetheless, I didn't know back then, so I literally Googled what does a state senator do? And what does a state rep do? What do all these jobs do? And state senator was the one that I felt like I had the most aptitude for. So I ran for office, I didn't win, but I did really, really well for a first-time candidate. And then about a year later, the state representative had got an appointment by the governor, and so there was a vacancy, and I was tapped and asked if I would consider running. And I did, and I won in a special election. Special elections are are special because in Kentucky they're only 45 days long, so you don't have a lot of time to second guess your snap decision there. Um I won. I was seated uh the very beginning of March 2020, and then 10 days later the world shut down from COVID. So it was a really um oh to call it a whirlwind experience uh is a gross understatement, but I, you know, I was very honored to win, and um that initial uh landing in the General Assembly and then having COVID hit, while I have, you know, I learned a very unique brand of legislating in COVID in a global pandemic, which I hope I hope is not useful to most people in the future, right? I hope we don't have to go through that again. It gave me the opportunity to have like a lot of quiet that first year that I served. There weren't a lot of members that I could meet with who were whispering in my ear, like, this is how it's always been done, don't rock the boat, like you should don't go for these topics or whatever. I just sort of sat down and went, well, I want to be good at this job, so I better take this time and this quiet space to learn how to do it. So I really dove into how to be a decent legislator, and um one of my uh colleagues was retiring and he had carried the full cannabis bill for years. He was kind of the only person really beating the drum of cannabis legalization in the state, and he asked me if I'd be interested in taking up the bill, and I was, and uh yeah, that's kind of how it got started.

SPEAKER_01 11:43

Wow, what what what a time of just so so full of excitement and and idealism, and then the world shuts down, and and you know, you you you meet um an outgoing representative senator who has been the champion of legal cannabis, which hasn't gone really anywhere, but they've been beating the drum for a long time. Rachel, would you carry the why would he ask you? What's your cannabis story?

SPEAKER_00 12:07

You know, I'm not really sure why he asked me, other than that, I think he you know took a shine to me and knew that I I was willing to take on complicated subject matter because cannabis legislation is super, super complicated, and I'll get to that in just a second. But my background in cannabis is that um I grew up with a father who was a substance use disorder counselor my whole life. His private practice was in the ground floor of our home. So um so I was always aware of what substance use disorder looks like, but also what responsible substance use could look like. And my father, my entire life, has been a huge proponent of decriminalization of all drugs. So that was really my background in it. Also, Kentucky is uniquely poised to be really, really good at cannabis. We have an amazing history of growing cannabis, not legally in the state, but we were one of the first states to really, you know, develop strains. We have a great history with this product here, and we have a great place to grow. We have tobacco farmers, but there's it's just a it's a natural tie-in for the state. It made all the sense in the world to me. From a purely political standpoint, nothing in the state of Kentucky pulls higher or more bipartisan than cannabis. So if you were to look at it from a cynical landscape, um every every politician in the state should be running on cannabis. That said, Kentucky is a very religious state, and there are several members of the General Assembly who serve very conservative, very religious areas that may not be willing to support this, but those of us who served in more urban areas or more densely populated areas, it just pulled through the roof, right? Like medical cannabis was pulling in the 70s and recreational cannabis was pulling in the 60s, and this was like five years ago. So it made political sense. It's a cause I care about, it's something I knew about my whole life. I think it makes sense for Kentucky. Kentucky is a poor state, so ways that the state can generate revenue were always things I was looking at. We're a medical state. Right now we don't generate revenue other than from license fees and so on, and property tax, employment tax, things like that. Um, but if we went recreational, uh, we would stand to make several hundred millions of dollars from this.

SPEAKER_01 14:15

So you you inherited something that was a bill that was more around decrim decriminalization, and you and you decided like the path forward for Kentucky, like you wrote out a whole a game plan towards even getting it towards recreational, but was it a was it a phased approach, like you started with medical, and and I can imagine getting that done still getting medical across the line with you know so much uh so many conservative, probably long-term you know, state elected representatives was was incredibly challenging.

SPEAKER_00 14:46

It was definitely challenging. So while the state wanted this, the General Assembly did not. So trying to get the the first couple of years I had the bill, I couldn't get anybody to co-sponsor. I couldn't even get my progressive colleagues to co-sponsor, which made no sense to me, especially because of politics of it statewide. Nonetheless, um it was because I had that quiet space during COVID, I decided that this was really gonna be my cause to force and I was gonna figure it out. Because prior to my taking on the bill, as you mentioned, it was just a decrim bill, right? It was a very short couple-page bill that just said we're decriminalizing cannabis possession of the state. Um, but in order to really create a marketplace for this and an industry for this, a lot more has to go into it, right? How are you gonna tax this? How are you gonna use the funds that you generate from the taxation of this? Are you going to try to earmark some of those funds to undo some of the harms of the war on drugs? Are you going to do a pure lottery system for licenses? Are you gonna do open licenses? So, you know, those are all things I didn't know much about at the time. So I reached out to other states to see what worked, did a lot of research on what other states had done. Kentucky had the luxury, I guess, of being the 38th state to legalize cannabis in some form. So we had a lot of history to look at for what worked or didn't work right. I talked to people in the industry and heard what they thought would work best. I heard from people in law enforcement to figure out what they thought would work best. I met with hemp farmers in the state, I met with the president of Sullivan University, which was the first university to do a cannabis program, and really tried to bring all the stakeholders in. You know, I would always say when I was in office and people would come to talk to me that I'm an expert in exactly one thing, and that was owning a yoga studio in Newport, Kentucky. And everything else I needed expert input on, right? And I would listen to the voices in the room, I would I hope ask thoughtful questions. I took that information and I built it into a giant bill. Now, if I look back as Rachel, the head of the state association in 2026, there's a lot of that bill that goes, oh, oh, I would cringe at, right? Because I know more now. But what that bill did was build a lot of conversations. Conversations like should there be some kind of a points-based system in the lottery, right? Should we build in some kind of equanimity within the lottery system? Should we favor Kentuckians, for instance? And by the time we ended up with the medical bill, we didn't do that. We just did a straight lottery because the goal was to get medicine to patients as fast as possible. And when favoritism was built into any lottery system or any licensing system, it always ended up in lawsuits and then it would slow down the process, right? So it we you had to contemplate all of those levels of it. So some of the stuff that I definitely worked on was applicable to when we got to the medical cannabis bill. Because I served in the hyper minority, I happened to be a Democrat, there were 20 Democrats in the House and 80 Republicans, so that gives you an idea of the disparity between the parties there. This was always going to have to be a Republican-led effort, a majority party-led effort. And so a lawmaker took it up. I will say he did a great job getting the bill through, but this bill really happened because of the advocates, because of the patients who had been coming to Frankfurt year after year, diligently telling their stories to lawmakers and building the credibility for this as a medicine and the necessity of it for their families. And so the medical bill was put forward in the House for a couple of years, and it would always pass the House, but the Senate would kill it. So the final year, uh, which was 2023, uh, there was a decision made to have it start in the Senate. So they found a senator to sponsor it in the Senate. Once it passed the Senate, we knew we could get it through, right? So it passed the Senate. It actually was one of the very last bills to pass that year. Fun fact, the state of Kentucky passed sports wagering and medical cannabis uh on the same day. And I don't know if everyone could just hear or if they could see, but this uh behind me are the those two bills signed by the governor. So it was a very fun day where we passed two things of sin and the state, and everybody had a great time with the bill signing.

SPEAKER_01 18:30

But but but the the sports betting Kentucky's poised to make makes money from. Like like medical cannabis outside of normal business licensing fees, there's no like excise tax or anything at the moment.

SPEAKER_00 18:40

That's that is absolutely correct. So sports wagering has blown through all of the projections of what the state would earn from it. Uh like I said, hundreds of millions of dollars the state of Kentucky is leaving on the table by not making this adult use.

SPEAKER_01 18:52

Well, uh in and to get um well PTSD is one of the because a lot of the con the conservative states that first rolled out their medical programs, like like you have to be, you know, uh end of life almost to qualify from a condition perspective. But but again, veterans are are one of the sort of the early advocates of some of the one of the some of the biggest constituents of of of that really benefit from medical cannabis and are vocal and and so getting that included was was huge to increase the patient count and obviously continue to get value and medicine to the right people.

SPEAKER_00 19:28

Yeah, so we are uh very limited in our permissible diagnoses. It's cancer, MS, epilepsy, chronic nausea, chronic pain, and PTSD. And PTSD was not there. There was no there were no behavioral health issues at all involved until um the last time it came through the House, I was able to get an amendment on there for PTSD, which then ended up staying in the Senate version. So thankfully we did get that. Obviously, chronic pain is the largest bucket of patients that we're seeing now, but PTSD is um is up there as well. And that was another one where I just really didn't understand the hesitancy of the members of the General Assembly because, like you said, it's a veterans issue, it's a first responder issue, and you know, those are parts of the community that we're always trying to find ways to help.

SPEAKER_01 20:08

Right. Um so some facts about uh the Kentucky Medical Cannabis Program. First off, how much money has been invested into Kentucky so far, estimated, to build out the first and operationalize the first licenses?

SPEAKER_00 20:23

We're already over $200 million of investment in the state. It will be well over a half a billion probably by the end of the this year, beginning of next year. You know, we are over 200 employees already with just and that was when we only had, I think, eleven open. We haven't what we last told our our members were only eleven licenses operating, we're up to nineteen now. So, you know, we're creating jobs, we are absolutely contributing to the financial health of the state. Um, and obviously our number one goal always is to serve the patients of Kentucky. People in Kentucky were lamenting how long it was taking to get product because they saw that we went legal on January 1 and they didn't have any product in November. But anybody who's done this in other states understands the the lead time for building out your facilities from the plants, all of those things. And and we had to build from the ground up, right? Like our hemp operators weren't those facilities, most of them were greenhouses. We you know no one's growing in greenhouses, so there weren't really any turnkey operations. Everything had to be built from the ground up. So to be able to provide some product to patients before the end of the first calendar year of the program is something I'm really, really proud of. And our members did a fantastic job. And then we've just been, you know, opening after opening after opening since.

SPEAKER_01 21:40

And and and right now, um, there's uh how many retail stores open, and you anticipate statewide there should be 70 by the end of the year.

SPEAKER_00 21:50

Yeah, there's 72 total licenses, but that's all levels of licenses. So right now we have nine dispensaries open. There'll be 48, I believe, by the time the program is complete. Filled out. We have 120 counties in Kentucky, which, like if anybody's in California, I think California has like 50, we have 120. We love our counties in Kentucky, but there will only be 48 dispensaries. And no county can have more than one dispensary, so they'll be spread out throughout the state, with the exception of our largest population centers, Louisville and Lexington, they each get two.

SPEAKER_01 22:20

Is there like a cap on canopy size or or amount of of grow? Um how does how does how does that work and how how much total sort of you have any idea of how big the the total sort of canopy size will be one if all the licenses were opened and built out to their fullest?

SPEAKER_00 22:40

Yeah, so the way the 72 licenses break out, the 48 dispensaries, we have 10 processors and then 16 cultivators. And the cultivators are tier one, two, and three. One is our smallest, they're 2,500 foot canopies. Two is um, I believe 5,000, it might be 10,000. I'm having a momentary lapse there. It's either five or ten thousand, and then the largest is 25,000. And there's only two of the 25,000. Now we, you know, we're seeing about 18,000 patients who have fully gone through the process and gotten their cards right now. So we have more available canopy statewide than we need right now. But that will just start to grow up as the program matures. Like I said, we have tier one, two, and three. There is a tier four, which would be a 50,000 square foot canopy. Nobody's in it now. So the state isn't planning to release more licenses, but they will bump up the canopy levels and the tiers to when when the market demands it.

SPEAKER_01 23:32

Got it. Um fascinating. How do you how about getting so you think you were talking about earlier 50,000, 60,000 medical patients once access is there with under the current list of conditions?

SPEAKER_00 23:46

Yeah, that's what we're expecting. We have some unique challenges here as far as getting patients into the program. And unfortunately they're written into statute, right? So I think it's always important to understand what's the law and what's a regulation. So what you can work with the regulators to try and work around or change over time, and what you have to actually go back to your General Assembly to have change. And a lot of this is built into the statute, unfortunately. But one of the big challenges we have right now is that we don't allow telehealth from the beginning, right? So if I'm a patient, I am a patient. If I want to obtain my medical card, it's a dual diagnosis. I have to have a primary diagnosis from one of my regular doctors. I take that then to a licensed medical cannabis provider in the state of Kentucky who agrees with my diagnoses and uploads a certificate from them to the state. Then as the patient, I have to go online. All of this takes place online, which is very challenging for rural Kentuckians. We don't have broadband everywhere in the state. We are sometimes seeing at patient drives, 25% of the people show up who don't even have an email address. So then I as a patient have to go online with an email address, go to the state's website, download an attestation form, print it out, sign it, and have it notarized. And then take that notarized attestation form, upload it back to the state, and then wait however long it takes for the state to verify all of that and for my card to appear in the portal and then download a picture of the card. So that is really challenging for a lot of Kentuckians. That notarization step is it's frankly just it's not needed. It doesn't provide any level of protection to anyone, and it adds another cost and another barrier. You know, I live in a rural or in an urban area where I can run up to the UPS store or to my bank, but if you live in rural Kentucky, it may be really hard for you to find a notary. Um, and it's another expense for folks. So that's one of like the policy things we're really working on this year is doing away with that unnecessary.

SPEAKER_01 25:35

Making it somewhat streamlined. And you're so you but you're running your organization's running patient days then, like like registration drives. That's a big part of serving the uh licensed operators in the state, is is increasing patient count.

SPEAKER_00 25:49

Yep, so we have created an offshoot of the Kentucky Cannabis Industry Alliance. It's called KY Patient Drives. We built a website around it. We do patient drives, we have a patient fund to help offset the cost for patients. All the education is there to help patients move through the entire process. We try to partner for the patient funds with practitioners who will help them with the notarization process and all of the other steps as well. So we are actively trying to remove as many of the barriers as we can for qualified patients in the state.

SPEAKER_01 26:14

Well, that makes a lot, it's a lot of work. Um definitely make an make an impact there though. What about speaking of impact, what about on jobs and creation of jobs and and uh and and and what has been the receptiveness to people working in cannabis within the state?

SPEAKER_00 26:33

So you know, I people are really excited about the idea of working in cannabis, especially in some of these rural areas where the cultivation sites and the processors are going in, where you know we have job deserts in the state of Kentucky. There's a great story out of Richmond, Kentucky, where one of our tier three, one of our biggest canopies is one of our biggest cultivators, um, right before they finished their build-out, um, like a uh an armory closed down, putting hundreds of people in the region out of jobs. And so they did a job fair specifically geared to those people who had just lost their job and were able to bring a lot of those people over to work in the cultivation site. So, you know, Kentucky is a place in my area in northern Kentucky, we are very blessed in that we have more jobs than bodies, right? We can't get enough people to move here. But in other parts of Kentucky, it's a very, very different story. And so anything you can do that builds good jobs close to people, you know, these are the wage range here, average wage range for someone coming into the industry is $15 to $18. But all of our members who've responded to our recent surveys are providing some level of benefits as well. And you know, if you live in a rural Kentucky where your other job offerings are the the Dollar General or something that's at the end of the year, or odd odds or odd jobs, just doing whatever you can pick up. Yeah, so I mean this is great. Any any job in those areas is really amazing, and this is such an interesting industry, and it opens people up to upward mobility within it because you know we really want to hire Kentuckians here to the extent that we can. So, you know, that's really that's really great for these communities. So, like I said, over 200 jobs already filled, and that's a pretty stale number because that was from about two months ago when we did our last survey. So my guess is that it's well over 300 jobs now, and and when this builds all the way out, you know, we're only not even a third of the way through our licenses. So if you expound upon that, then we'll have uh tons of jobs in the state that wouldn't otherwise be there, right? This is a totally different industry than we've seen in Kentucky before.

SPEAKER_01 28:27

Yeah, and you'll you'll have uh, you know, if you you end up getting to a you know 200 200 million dollar market, you know, like with just medical, you'll have thousands of people working in this industry. Which is which is exciting. And and a lot of people don't understand the cannabis' impact for we'll say communities that you know globalization has affected the most in the last couple of generations of ri returning of light industrial jobs to facilities that have laid dormant. Not only light industrial jobs, but j light industrial jobs with benefits, you know, for mobility. To get into the ground floor in these original production facilities and industry like in in like cannabis, learning it and then having to move your c your career forward in it. It's exciting. I'm I'm I'm not surprised that there's uh there's a receptiveness to it, you know. Um, cannabis careers are are something that's become a little bit more mainstream, I think, um over the course of the last, you know, nine years since I started FlowerHire for sure. Um and uh There's something about a cannabis production facility or or a cannabis business where it's like your founder, CEO, and your fifteen dollar an hour worker are excited to come in every day.

SPEAKER_00 29:51

You know, and ancillary businesses are so important and impactful too, right? You know, it's bringing in jobs and security in our state, and um, you know, we have insurance agents who are starting to do cannabis insurance now and and expanding upon their practices that way. Uh the medical providers, we have over 500 medical providers who are cannabis providers in the state now. So it's you know it it has a very big ripple effect out across the state.

SPEAKER_01 30:17

Absolutely. Um anything else that you that you're working on um over the next next several years, you mentioned like making it easier to become a patient in the state's medical program is something you're working very hard on in this in this current uh legislative session. Um anything else that you know other goals for KCIA or or the Kentucky cannabis industry?

SPEAKER_00 30:39

Absolutely. So just making it a more friendly business environment for cannabis businesses, which is just education, right? We need to take the time to have the lawmakers meet more and more people who work in this industry so they understand how serious a business this is, how professional a business this is. I mean, there's nothing better than taking a lawmaker to a really well-run cultivation site and just watching their minds get blown over how scientific it is. And it's medical, right? So, like how sterile it is, how clean everything is, how technical it is, and how intelligent and educated the staff is on the product and how excited they are about it, right? Like it's not like walking into a widget factory where people are like, here's my widget. Like people want to talk to you about all the cultivars and everything that they've been doing and their history in it. So that's a big part of it, just education for the next few years so that the lawmakers really understand how important this industry is financially, uh job-wise in the state, how much it could grow and benefit financially the state. So there's a lot of work to be done there. There's a lot of work to help the um the regulators and the licensees really learn how to work together. So when you have a brand new state like ours, the regulators are learning too. They're they we do a lot of work with them to say we need clarification on these regulations. It's too big, no one knows what they're doing. Or now that we're operating, we can say, hey, for instance, we have a 70-30 cap. No final THC product can have over 70% THC in it. Okay, cool. Well then what's the other 30% in a vape cartridge? You're forcing us to make a less safe medical product for patients because of that. And you understand that when they wrote the law, they were like, oh, we don't want, we want to do potency limits because that'll make this safer for patients. They don't, they didn't know, right? So we have to educate them up on why that might not be the best thing for this industry or why just because it tests plants at higher than 35% potency doesn't mean you have to destroy the plant under our law. We should be able to mitigate it through processing down to something that meets the other criteria that are required for the state. So there's a lot of education there. The next few years will really be spent trying to make the changes that the industry needs to the underlying statute so that the business playing field just functions better and then changes to regulation along those lines as well. And you know, no one's asking for this to be less regulated or in any way for it to impact patient safety. Obviously, we just are looking at the things that were kind of unforeseen that are making it a really hard business environment for the licensees to work within. And these are people who are investing hundreds of millions of dollars in the state. They're here, they want to stay here if if the business environment will allow them to be able to survive and thrive here. And then you know, yeah, sorry, go ahead.

SPEAKER_01 33:15

No, but educating the regulators is always something that that needs to happen, obviously, in a new program that rolls out, but then there tends to be a unfortunately a fair amount of turnover in in folks that work in in those departments within state government as well. Um and uh and so constantly you know staying staying on top of of that and and that sort of outreach and and uh the partnership, you know. Um it can be very frustrating to be an operator with the challenges of getting happy plants to grow indoors at scale under specific testing requirements and and and running the business um that's trying to find how to do that profitably in a limited medical market. It can be very challenging. So uh any I'm I I'm sure that work is is always top of mind and very much appreciated by your members.

SPEAKER_00 34:10

Yeah, you're and talking about the turnover, you know, it's not just people leaving a job on a normal attrition phase, but as soon as the uh you know the administration changes, which will happen to us here in the next few years, because our current governor, Andy Bashir, is term limited. So within the next two and a half years, we'll have a new governor, likely from a different party, likely with a different view on cannabis. The governor, current the current governor has been very focused on making this program succeed. So we'll have to, you know, that kind of gives us a timeline, these things that we need to figure out about how to make the industry work better as far as regulation and statutory changes go. We know we kind of have an end date. We need to get as much of that done in the next two and a half years as we can before the administration changes, and we do have a new regulator and all new folks working in the regulatory body. So that is a constant churn that every state association needs to face. Um, and those relationships that you have with the lawmakers and the and the people who stay, right? So not everybody in the regulatory body will necessarily change. So learning the people that will stay put even as the administrative folks come and go, those are really important relationships to foster as well.

SPEAKER_01 35:12

Well, you mentioned Kentucky is in need of revenues. Do you think adult use happens in Kentucky, even with uh you know, maybe a change in party in the governor's seat in a few years?

SPEAKER_00 35:25

You know, if we look in other states, then it tends to take, I think it's like you know, three to five years for states to go from medical to uh an adult use. It would be very helpful if some more things change at the federal level, obviously, but um with the recent changes at the federal level or the recent executive orders around the federal level, that is helpful to us. Um I think the most helpful thing to us will be for lawmakers to see in a year how fully functioning, safe, responsible, um, and healthy this industry is. That's the best thing we can do, right? If we can make sure that they see that our members are very willing to play by the rules, just make the rules clear and understandable for us and even to all, um, let us know those things and help us get the patient counts up so that we can make sure that this is accessible to the patients who need it, then I think that's the best thing we can possibly do. But Kentucky is not a rich state, and we have a tax structure currently that is very likely to not keep up with our demands in the very near future. And so I do think that the state will need to look at other revenue sources in the not too distant future, and this is one that is ripped for the picking. And you know, we we are surrounded by um legal adult use states. You know, I live six blocks from the Ohio River, I can walk over there and purchase if I want to. I prefer to buy products that I know are uh tested, grown, and manufactured in Kentucky, but I could if I wanted to. You know, that's we don't have to look far to see the boon that this can be economically and that it doesn't come with the big boogeyman that a lot of our lawmakers think it does.

SPEAKER_01 37:03

Yeah. Well, we'll keep keep fighting the good fight there. Um Rachel, thank you for joining us today. Um anyone wants to get involved in Kentucky Cannabis, is interested in being part of that of that industry. What is your advice?

SPEAKER_00 37:18

Just reach out to me. I'm pretty easy to find. I'm Rachel at kycana.org. You can go to our website, kycana.org, and find all of that information there. We hold uh meetups regularly. We would love for you to come to Kentucky. Um our meetups are always surrounded around Kentucky things. We have one this summer that's gonna focus on a bourbon blending event and one in the fall that's gonna take everybody to Keeneland horse races. So we we like to make sure that everybody who comes gets to really experience Kentucky and have a memorable experience as well as a really productive one for their businesses.

SPEAKER_01 37:47

Well, I'll see you at the one in the fall. I look forward to that. And uh thanks again.

SPEAKER_00 37:52

It's been an absolute pleasure.