How does one cross over from working in the corporate world to the cannabis industry? What does that journey look like, and what are the common challenges along the way? And how can you identify opportunities to lend your skills and transform a fast-growing but still nascent industry?
Dasheeda Dawson is a global cannabis advocate, award-winning executive strategist, and the author of How to Succeed in the Cannabis Industry, which is now in its third edition. At The WeedHead & Co., she’s parlayed two decades of experience in business development, strategic management, and marketing to educate and empower people who aspire to work in the cannabis industry.
She’s also the host of She Blaze, an award-winning cannabis news and culture podcast, the co-founder of the Cannabis Education Advocacy Symposium and Expo, the founding chair of the Cannabis Regulators of Color Coalition, and was most recently named as the cannabis program supervisor for the city of Portland, Oregon.
Today, Dasheeda joins the podcast to share the story of how she became a patient, an advocate, and a leader, what she learned from her years as a consultant in the cannabis space, and the work that needs to be done to address the lasting and systemic damage created by decades of harmful drug policy.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- How Dasheeda went from working on the corporate side at Target to becoming a consultant within the cannabis industry.
- Why Dasheeda uses stigmatized language in the names of her blog and her podcast–and the marketing trick she’s using to eliminate that stigma through her work.
- Why it’s so important to integrate the legacy cannabis market–and what needs to be done to make this happen.
- How New York’s cannabis law sets a new gold standard that Dasheeda would like to see rolled out across other states.
- What it means to be a cannabis czar, and some of Dasheeda’s policy recommendations in this position for Portland.
- Why Dasheeda thinks federal legalization could happen by 2023.
INSPIRING QUOTE
“The government sees the legacy market as still seedy and dark. And that’s why I stopped using black market because it’s being used by, honestly, sometimes very liberal politicians to be fear-mongering.” – Dasheeda Dawson
EPISODE RESOURCES
- The WeedHead & Co
- How to Succeed in the Cannabis Industry: For Professionals, Contractors & Entrepreneurs
- She Blaze Podcast
- High Times Cannabis Cup
- Minorities for Medical Marijuana (M4MM)
- Minority Cannabis Business Association
- Cannabis Health Equity Movement
- Cannabis Education Advocacy Symposium & Expo (CEASE)
- GW Pharmaceuticals
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TRANSCRIPT
Rick Kiley: Hello, everyone, and welcome back to another episode of The Green Repeal. I am here, your co-host, Rick Kiley, with my business partner, Jeffrey Boedges. Hello, Jeffrey.
Jeffrey Boedges: Hey, welcome from New York City, the new capital of legal cannabis.
Rick Kiley: Oh, nice. I like how you threw that in there already. Priming the episode.
Jeffrey Boedges: I’m just getting it, so I’m keying it up.
Rick Kiley: I think we’re going to talk about that. Today, our guest is Dasheeda Dawson, founder of The WeedHead & Co, global cannabis advocate, award-winning executive strategist, and author of the best-selling workbook, How to Succeed in the Cannabis Industry, and I believe we’re on the third edition. Correct me if I’m wrong, Dasheeda. Cool. As a cannabis educator, an industry thought leader, Dasheeda has pioneered the corporate-to-cannabis crossover. She’s been able to parlay her two decades worth of business development, strategic management, brand marketing experience to educate and empower those who were canna-curious as well as those working in the industry. She is a woman of many titles. Just listen to all this. She’s the co-host of a podcast called She Blaze, which is an award-winning weekly cannabis news and culture podcast. She’s the co-founder of the Cannabis Education Advocacy Symposium and Expo. She’s the founding chair of the Cannabis Regulators of Color Coalition and former Chief Strategy Officer for Minorities for Medical Marijuana. Oh, that’s a good list, Dasheeda. Most recently, she was selected as the cannabis program supervisor for the City of Portland, Oregon. That is everything.
[INTERVIEW]
Rick Kiley: Hello, Dasheeda, and welcome to The Green Repeal.
Dasheeda Dawson: Thank you. That’s an awesome beginning welcome for me. I appreciate it. Thank you for having me.
Rick Kiley: You have a tremendous resume.
Jeffrey Boedges: Does your business card like have a fold?
Rick Kiley: Yeah. It’s definitely one of those.
Jeffrey Boedges: It’s an accordion-like thing. Here you go.
Rick Kiley: Yeah. You know how some people get their resumes on one page and some people two. I think you might break over into three or four. So, that’s impressive amount of work and we’re really excited to have you here today. What I just wanted to get out of the way to start with is your journey from becoming someone who’s working in the corporate world, big Fortune 500 companies, and how you kind of crossed over into the cannabis industry. You’re one of the few that I think have come from that path and I wonder if you could just tell us a little bit more about that journey.
Dasheeda Dawson: Sure. Well, I’m thankfully one of the few that now has become a lot more and I’m appreciative of many people who are making that corporate-to-cannabis crossover. Cannabis is becoming more corporate as a result. There are some good things and some bad things that we’ll talk about but, first and foremost, I’m a cannabis patient. I have early signs of MS. It’s something that I’ve been dealing with for now, oh my gosh, almost a decade. For the first five years, really confused, more so like a cannabis closeted user. Thanks to my mom who supported this decision, she actually encouraged it. She was basically like, “You need to smoke this.”
Rick Kiley: That is a saying that I don’t think a lot of us have heard from our mothers. So, that’s nice that you had that support.
Dasheeda Dawson: Yeah. She was a cannabis user all her life and an educator, I mean, masters and doctorate in education, very, very brilliant woman, no longer with us but she was suffering from cancer at the time. And she more or less felt like it would help some of my ailments I was really struggling. But then fast forward to her passing away about five years ago now, just over five years ago, that really just jolted me into a whole different reality. I was doing well in my corporate position at the VP level. It was really kind of moving and grooving and I love what I did. It just wasn’t as fulfilling without her and I was still also a patient refugee on the East Coast. So, I fled to the West Coast to be able to be a legal cannabis patient in the State of Arizona. And the minute that I stepped into my first dispensary, which is a retail experience and I’m a former retail executive in like Target, I immediately saw right away such a plethora of opportunities for me to lend my skill set to the industry. And I did, starting within like weeks. You know, I started a consulting firm and it’s been on and popping from there.
Rick Kiley: That’s amazing.
Jeffrey Boedges: That’s cool.
Rick Kiley: I want you to say your tagline because you mentioned on the phone that from Target.
Dasheeda Dawson: Oh, from Target to THC.
Rick Kiley: I love it. From Target to THC. I love it. It’s everywhere.
Jeffrey Boedges: That’s your tagline. That’s good.
Rick Kiley: It’s awesome. I think it’s great. I mean, the fact that your mom had so many advanced degrees and was supportive at a time when I think a lot of the country wasn’t, I think that’s unique and not a story we hear very often.
Jeffrey Boedges: And you mentioned she was suffering from cancer. Did she get introduced to it by that or was she already an advocate?
Dasheeda Dawson: She was already an advocate. I mean, I grew up with the smell in the house, didn’t know what it was. I’m from East New York, Brooklyn so we’ll talk about that in New York legalization and, yeah, we knew that good people smoke weed but we also knew that if you got caught with that, then you were instantly bad. There was so much drama with the policing related to it in Brooklyn. And honestly, it was something I stayed away from. I think she her having cancer as the way to tell me, “Hey, you get it for me because you know it makes me feel better. Why don’t you try it?” Because otherwise, I don’t think she would have gotten through my type A personality. She’d call me the general so no.
Jeffrey Boedges: So, really, she said it was…
Dasheeda Dawson: And if it weren’t for my mom who said it, I don’t know that I would have tried it.
Jeffrey Boedges: She said it was for MS but really it was just to help you sort of mellow out.
Rick Kiley: For all the parents out there, who are having kids school at home while they’re working at home, just think about it. Maybe there’s an option there.
Dasheeda Dawson: Definitely, CPD, I listen.
Rick Kiley: Oh yeah. Yeah, absolutely. So, then, I don’t know, I kind of want to talk about New York but I think we need to cover off how you started the WeedHead and how you came to this point being a consultant and working with so many folks through this business.
Dasheeda Dawson: Well, the journey right away hit the races because Arizona was also looking to legalize in 2016 for adult use. It didn’t pass the time but that was one of the first campaigns that I got to work on. So, I understood that my value was not just at the product level or the retail level but it could be throughout the whole supply chain. It could be at political campaigns. There was so much grassroots in even the industry like the actual operations. It made me feel like a ninja a little bit in the market. Like I’m coming from Victoria’s Secret in Target and this is selling to America and people are trying to figure out, “How do I get people who are already consuming cannabis to come over to a legal market and consume here?” And I started to see that there were deficiencies and I started talking about them. The WeedHead was the ability to talk about it. It was about me taking a word that most people think of as derogatory and literally flipping on its head and doing what we call a brand marketing trick, where you take something that has a lot of research value, has a lot of resonance, and a culture but you put a different experience to it. And so, if I was going to come out the cannabis closet, I was going to do so with flair and The WeedHead was born as a blog to chronicle my experiences as a consultant, doing some really wild experiences that from a straight-laced corporate perspective was like, “I can’t believe I’m on a private jet now to go to this big farm. I can’t believe I’m surrounded by all of this flower. I can’t believe I’m doing this and sharing it in a blog.”
Rick Kiley: Yeah. And then you named your podcast She Blaze. So, you’re definitely following this trend of taking these words that I think have stigma attached to them and trying to own them in a new way. Like, that’s a very conscientious choice on your end.
Dasheeda Dawson: Absolutely. I mean, I think that cannabis itself has been so stigmatized that we do have to do some of these antics. They’re a bit of antics. Why? Because the plant itself is just beautiful. I happen to have a degree in molecular biology. That helps me because I understand THC.
Rick Kiley: I got two. Yeah. I mean, we all got them, right?
Jeffrey Boedges: They were buy one, get one free when Rick was going.
Rick Kiley: No, that’s amazing.
Dasheeda Dawson: Probably competitive advantage.
Rick Kiley: You got a degree in molecular biology? How did I miss that?
Dasheeda Dawson: Yes, at Princeton because I was working in fashion and beauty. So, when do you use it? But you use it now and this is sort of the next test for me, taking that retail experience, adding in the fact that I have a scientific background and I get it and I get it so well that I’m able to break it down and lay terms for people in marketing. And that is part of why I’ve sort of taken this approach that, yeah, you could say She Blaze they mean she’s lighting a blunt but she may also just be blazing trails. And I have to credit my baby sis, Ice, for being the creator of She Blaze and really just bringing me along. She said, “Hey, I’d like you to…” we comp ourselves to a couple of sports shows where we were I’m like the boomer, so to speak. I’m older and I have experience but she’s really the talent of the show and brings all of the T about what’s happening in the industry.
Rick Kiley: No. I listened to it a little bit and it’s totally fun, totally upbeat, totally down to earth but a ton of information, and I think you both make it really digestible and fun for everyone. So, it’s cool. Check it out, The She Blaze podcast. So, when you’re engaging someone through WeedHead, I mean you got the sense you’re working with a little bit of everybody but is there a breakdown or is there a type of individual or organization in the industry that you find yourself working with more than others?
Dasheeda Dawson: So, The WeedHead is an education brand. Basically, I wrote a book so that I would be able to stop being a consultant. MJM Strategy was the consulting firm that we built a lot of great insight and contacts, and I was working with municipalities and Native American tribes. To be honest, it was starting to do very next level, multistate operators, international operators, and I took all of that, put it in a book. I put it in a book because I wanted people to be empowered, that they didn’t have to hire an expensive consultant to learn about the industry, that they could do it in a workbook. And so, the WeedHead is really about producing and publishing great content like She Blaze, like the workbook, I have a second one coming out, and to make people feel empowered that they can learn on their own. Because I got a lot of people like very much acted like this was some sort of private club that only who you know is how you get in. I don’t think the industry will thrive that way. We need more regular folks who are curious to just cross over and find their lane.
Jeffrey Boedges: Well, we certainly get a lot of clients and former clients and actually, people that we just know around the industry who want to find their way in. And they say exactly what you just said like, “I don’t know how to do it,” like they think there’s a secret knock.
Rick Kiley: There is.
Jeffrey Boedges: Well, there is?
Rick Kiley: Yeah. I’m not going to tell it to everybody on this podcast.
Jeffrey Boedges: Well, yeah because I don’t know it either. So, there you go. I think that speaks volumes. But I think this book that you’ve written and some of the other things you’re doing are going to be exactly what a lot of people are asking for. So, that’s cool.
Rick Kiley: Yeah. And I think what’s also interesting, you’re the second person who we’ve had on who has said you grew up with it in the house, that it was normal. So, sort of the baggage I think that a lot of us came through and like when I’m dating myself again but through the period the war on drugs and all those things we heard in our heads I think those are barriers that we have to like work to escape from, to shed from, and they’re deeply rooted. And you’re the second person who came in. The first one was a gentleman, Chris Ball, who was out in Southern California who found the Ball Family Farm, grew up with it in the home and it was normalized, and it’s really interesting to see you and he kind of taking a leadership role in there because it’s, I don’t know, it’s just interesting to know.
Jeffrey Boedges: I have friends now that do it just blatantly with the kids around. You know, I haven’t made that jump yet.
Rick Kiley: Yeah. So, I mean, it’s just great. And I think we’re going to find it is as the industry builds, there’s going to be an authenticity associated I think with those who’ve come up in through the legacy in traditional market. I think consumers are going to be looking for that authentic connection that may not be there with everybody. So, I think that’s really cool that you have that story to ground yourself in everything that you’re doing. Okay. So, where are we going next? So, we talked about the book.
Jeffrey Boedges: Yeah. I think that we’ve got services and I think we want to talk a little bit about that. I’m kind of curious like who are your clients? You don’t have to tell us by name but give us a couple of examples of the clients. When they come to you, they engage you to do what exactly?
Dasheeda Dawson: Well, I stopped taking clients in 2019 when I released the third edition of the book. Clients will come to me and engage around a number of different things. For example, I helped a Native American tribe scope out the concept of changing over a fishery to have a processing and production facility.
Jeffrey Boedges: Those seemed like vastly different things.
Rick Kiley: Yeah.
Dasheeda Dawson: Well, you know a space, right? They are vastly different things but sometimes it’s about how much are you making on your fishery and what that cost-benefit analysis is. So, it’s not just about changing over the building and what those details are. It’s also about assessing the market. I’ve written a lot of white papers for large Fortune 500 companies that are exploring the cannabis space. That’s partly why I wrote the book. The book is written in a format where I go sector by sector, and that’s kind of how white papers are in internal to corporate structure.
Jeffrey Boedges: So, without telling us any of the Fortune 500 companies exploring it, can you tell us what the names of those companies rhyme with?
Dasheeda Dawson: No, but I will say is that that’s probably why they hired people under NDA. They don’t want anyone to know…
Jeffrey Boedges: Yeah. Well, that’s what I’m saying. You just say, “Hoca hola.”
Rick Kiley: Fall Apart. Yeah. Bapple.
Dasheeda Dawson: But I’m not a consultant anymore. I mean, I think it’s hard for people to understand I am building my own tables at this point or doing the work within the government. We can talk about it but the reason why I made that switch is because I was building other people’s tables and there was still a diversity and equity issue. I worked with a lot of predominantly white male C-suites or private equity firms, and sometimes I went from the office pet to the office threat and I didn’t appreciate that. We can be real about it but I’ve always been very vocal about the fact that there’s a real responsibility and privilege of participating in the legal market as a first mover. And what are we going to do with the responsibility and the privilege? The government has quite a bit of it, and that’s partly why I switched to the public sector to hold up a little bit more accountability within my hands. But private sector, absolutely, they’re not going to win with this what I consider to be really culturalist weed like let’s be real. They’re not going this way. That don’t happen.
Rick Kiley: Yeah. I mean, I think you’re right. I think Jeff and I have spoken to a bunch of folks and coming from where we come in the alcohol beverage industry, there’s a real shift to people looking for authentically grounded brands and those that don’t have a good story to tell, they’re not going to be used. And even as much as the product that you create, I think people are also making choices about what they consume based on what the companies are doing. So, I think in particular in this industry, an investment in supporting of social justice and inclusivity is extremely important, and people are going to choose with their wallets. I mean, it’s not just how the government sets up the legislation to support equity, which is necessary, but I think people are smart now with their shopping decisions and they have all this information. So, I think you’re right. It’s going to be people that are making authentic choices and believe in the brands, not just their quality but what they stand for as well.
Jeffrey Boedges: Yeah. In spirits, it’s always been craft or it’s been history, you know, it’s been this authenticity established through these long-held credentials that some of these brands had. You don’t have that really in cannabis too much unless you happen to be the one guy that was doing it on the black market for 95 years before it went legal. You know, I think this idea of culture, though, you’re the first person to really sort of say that as being a differentiator. That’s exciting. I think that’s really a cool way to put it.
Rick Kiley: Yeah. And again, you should be writing taglines for a living because I love from office pet to office threat. I mean, it’s good but you are describing what I imagine is a real challenge. Have you run into others that sort of have started in this industry and feel the same way they’re being brought in and to, I guess, helped shape the message and the sort of social equity and exclusivity but then are iced out? Is that kind of what you’re describing?
Dasheeda Dawson: Yes. Well, not necessarily I start. I’ve always been included. I think the part is that I don’t want to have to be the person that’s constantly bringing up I’m the yellow flag or the red flag on the play in the meetings that are about money and about commitment to the work beyond a flash like equity moment. You know what I mean? I also won’t be taken as a token. The fact of the matter is that no one thinks anything about five C-suite executives that are all white male but they’re shocked when I walk in with my all-black team when I was a consultant and I have three sisters. So, three people of that team are black women too automatically because we’re all talented and have our own expertise across various areas. So, I don’t know. I think I want to normalize that too but I also felt it was like a little bit of a front. A lot of these people, they’ll talk all day about their tequila, their wine, but then you ask them about cannabis and it’s like hamuna hamuna hamuna and I’m like, “How are you selling to the masses? Or you want to redefine cannabis but you don’t understand its culture?” The last thing I’ll say is the legacy market or what we used to call the black market unregulated, it is truly the part that people are missing. It is a real economy of supply and demand. And the only reason that a lot of politicians initially started to go down this route, if you try to eradicate it or you try to act like it doesn’t exist, you will lose. You need to integrate it. And you probably still will only get about 40% or 50% penetration but that is enough to elevate the legal market’s culture status if you will. And without it, I think it’s going to suffer.
Rick Kiley: So, what is stopping that from happening right now? Again, I keep recalling Chris Ball but I think he was the first in Los Angeles to receive a social equity license. So, it’s on his mind a lot. What is getting in the way of and I don’t know if it’s the states or the federal government but what’s getting in the way of them making it so that it’s easier for people who are making a living in the legacy market to transition? Like it seems quite complicated and hard.
Jeffrey Boedges: We need like the dreamer. It’s like a DREAM Act so welcoming people who are doing it illegally into the legal world.
Dasheeda Dawson: That is exactly my point and you hit the nail on the head that it needs to be facilitated. First, it was completely like, “Hey, let’s put all law enforcement, previous law enforcement in charge of these regulatory agencies. Let’s lead with fear and…” To be honest, “Let’s lead with fear and eradication as the goal.” And so, eradication means you keep people out. Colorado’s first laws on the books where if you actually had a previous conviction, you could not be in the industry, which just changed last June. That now is now your prioritize. So, we’re changing the narrative. We had to first do that. So, it took ten years of changing the narrative, making sure that we understand, “Hey, this was racially biased and it’s prohibition,” so we need to reverse that in a different way. And now we’re approaching it better but I still think, by and large, the government sees the legacy market as still seedy and dark. And that’s why I stopped using black market because it’s being used by, honestly, sometimes very liberal politicians to be fear-mongering. But, yes, we need facilitation. That means government programs that allow for it so equity programs do that. But I also think I’m doing a Legacy To Legal event this Friday with the majority leader in New York, Crystal Peoples-Stokes. It’s the first of a series of events with CEASE and that is really important. It’s about educating the legacy market and doing so with people who risk their lives and their career to be advocates all this time but still were operating and finally saying, “Hey, I’ve been doing it. I am you. You can make this transition.” You have to put real people in front of them. And I’m not even there. I mean, I’m from the hood and I can break it down for them. They know I’m smart but I was not part of the legacy market in that way. So, yeah, I think it’s important for them to see themselves in the market.
Jeffrey Boedges: I have to imagine, though, as a legacy market operator because once you do get into the legit market, there are so many regulations that you have to abide by that if the regulators catch you kind of fudging those rules then you can lose your license. So, I think I imagine it’s a little bit of a tricky situation because you kind of almost have to turn it on and off like a switch if you really are going to do it if the regulators are actually able to see what’s happening. Does that make sense?
Dasheeda Dawson: Totally. I mean, every market is different and I’ve been encouraging some of my plugs, if you will, to head over to Oklahoma. They only have a medical market. It’s 2,500 to get a license. It’s pretty much like, in my opinion, one of the better regulatory frameworks because it isn’t about jumping over these artificial hoops that are, again, created primarily by fear. It is about can you pay to be operating in the state? They do have some minimal requirements similar like if you’re getting a barber’s license or if you’re getting a driver’s license. That’s also a regulatory process.
Jeffrey Boedges: You’ve seen some of the haircuts in Oklahoma? I don’t think it could be that difficult to get a haircut license in Oklahoma. Sorry. I interrupted you with my bad joke.
Rick Kiley: Can you say the end of that one more time, Dasheeda?
Jeffrey Boedges: Sorry, Dasheeda.
Rick Kiley: And then, Jeff, you can give that joke.
Jeffrey Boedges: Yeah. No. I’m done.
Dasheeda Dawson: Jeff, you’re hilarious but no, I was just saying that the driver’s license is something that that’s how normalized I would like getting a cannabis license to be. We have children and we look forward to when they’re going to get their driver’s license. Honestly, I think that’s part of the problem. We’re not thinking about it as sort of common space and some markets do. Some markets like Georgia want you to prove that in order to get one of them six licenses, you have to be able to put your weed in a prison, essentially. You have to have that much security like that’s necessary.
Jeffrey Boedges: Well, let’s not get into that.
Rick Kiley: Well, I mean, I think it’s interesting that this conversation also I would assume that the individuals who make up the legacy market have also developed a long-standing mistrust of the authority, police. And even when we talk about people who aren’t coming from that market trying to work in this industry with the sense that the federal government could potentially come in and shut them down at any point, like there’s already that. That risk is already out there. So, you add that to just distrust of local authority, I imagine it’s not an easy transition for someone.
Jeffrey Boedges: No, but I think you’re on it, though, Dasheeda. I think let’s just say you have an established called illicit business in New York but you’re like, “I do want to make that transition,” it would be easier maybe than to go to a different state as long as that was within the rules and start something in a parallel fashion. Again, I don’t know why I’m trying to solve how people go from the illegal to the legal thing but I think you want to create that avenue.
Rick Kiley: Well, I think it’s an important recipe for this whole industry to take off like what we do about the individuals who have been harmed by the war on drugs is like one of the key drivers of this legislation that needs to be passed in every state. And I think if we don’t solve that, it’ll never be federally legal like it just won’t. So, I think my follow-up question to you because I know you work with a lot of these different folks in different states is who’s doing it right? Who’s doing a good job on the legislative side? And who has to improve? And then I want to come around to New York and because I’ve read a little bit about the laws there, especially when it comes to social justice and do we feel that New York is going down the right path? So, it’s a multipart question. What do you got?
Dasheeda Dawson: Awesome. Well, first, you hit the nail on the head in New York, actually, bypassing the MRTA which is a bill that the majority leader held for eight years so well before it was popular. It actually is now the new gold standard and every state hopefully will create a new one but the new gold standard on what equity center legislation looks like. So, there’s on paper. On paper, Illinois was that prior but its actual execution and implementation has been a real struggle. They have their entire legacy market basically boycotting the legal market right now, as they should in some ways because there is no inclusion. And they fumbled on the execution of the licenses, even though, again, best intentions behind the legislation, it has caused a lot of backlash within the market, around the big MSOs. The big multistate operators are still putting forward this equity-centric conversation in their marketing but behind closed doors where they think people aren’t paying attention, they’re still lobbying for things that are wholly inequitable. And that is where I think Illinois is really struggling.
Jeffrey Boedges: Can you give us an example?
Dasheeda Dawson: I talk a lot because they came online – what did you say?
Jeffrey Boedges: I just was looking for an example of something they would be lobbying for that would be basically discriminatory and intentionally so.
Dasheeda Dawson: Well, for a long time, there was a lobby against home grow. I mean, the idea that they should produce all of the legal cannabis that people are allowed to consume, even though anyone can grow a plant in their house is a little insane and home grow is an equity issue. I shouldn’t have to drive to a store to get the medicine I need. Whatever High Times Cannabis Cup, whatever is popping there shouldn’t dictate what cultivars or strains are available to me either as a medical patient. And they were lobbying for that in the medical market and adult-use market. There are also some labor agreements, things that allowed them to be more sort of a sharecropper model, allow them to qualify for equity simply because they have managers who are from a certain impact zone. These are all things that are largely inequitable.
Jeffrey Boedges: Got it.
Rick Kiley: So, then let’s talk about the New York law that you’re saying is setting the new gold standard. So, in sort of lay people’s terms, but what are the specific regulations associated with this legalization law in New York that you’d like to see rolled out into other states?
Dasheeda Dawson: Well, it’s the first really big state to have home grow. New Jersey legalized home grow, still a fight. There’s a medical bill for home grow that’s being looked at but it’s still a fight. And New York, for a while, it didn’t seem like the governor was going to support that because, again, the big multistate operators were trying to push that back. So, medical home grow starts six months from the signing of the bill, which is September 31st. If you’re a medical patient, you can home grow. And then adult-use is intended for 18 months after the first adult-use retail stores open. The second thing is, I love that New York calls it an adult-use cannabis legalization and not recreational. So, they are moving the lexicon for it. Recreational implies that that is why everybody is shopping that market when we know that the data shows that the top three reasons are medicinal, sleep, pain, and anxiety. And so, they are in some ways leading the way on to see how we’re referencing the market but there’s also a 40% cannabis tax revenue community reinvestment fund. My city in Portland was the first city to have a grant fund tied to cannabis tax revenue and I testified in 2018 before I even became in charge of Portland about what they were doing and I’m happy to see that in New York still. That’s a lot of cannabis tax revenue that’s going to go back to largely black and brown communities that were disinvested and overpoliced during the time that it was prohibited in New York.
There are going to be some incubator programs for people who are looking to transition. They have an equity designation which gives priority processing and a goal of 50% of the licensing is going to the equity designation. And here’s the thing, I really feel like they’ve also put in place some things that allow for the everyday people to figure out how to get in micro-businesses but also not putting people in a situation where they have to be vertically integrated, which a lot that way. You can pick if I just want to do delivery or I want to have onsite consumption. Those will impact the legacy market because largely in New York, legacy market’s the last thing I’ll say. It’s mostly a distribution network. It’s a really large distribution network, not as much on the cultivation side. There are some cultivators but everybody for the most part knows that the New York market is distributing or getting it in California flower and goods. That’s what we work with.
Jeffrey Boedges: Yeah. You can tell just by the brand names. I mean because a New Yorker would never name that like come on.
Rick Kiley: Alright. Alright.
Jeffrey Boedges: Who in New York would name anything kush? No one.
Rick Kiley: True. True. It’ll all be about…
Jeffrey Boedges: I have another question for you based on the same thing. How would a company that started or an example of a company doing it right who may not be minority-owned but wants to lean into equity initiatives, how can they support it?
Dasheeda Dawson: Support the work that’s being done. I have to shout out Columbia Care because their Director of Public Policy, Ngiste, is just awesome and they’re lucky to have her but that’s one of the few MSOs. The other ones are creating their in-house programs and they are, in my opinion, directionally making those moves since last year. 2020 changed a lot for folks but that’s also why I think we started moving towards the public sector because I wanted to create public-private partnership opportunities where we could amplify what some of the private companies want to do. Sometimes what they’ll do is they’ll reinvent the wheel, create their own thing, and there are organizations like M4MM, MCBA, Cannabis Health Equity Movement, CEASE, we’re all doing it and we really need the support in doing it as opposed to competing against internally-derived programing. I think they should support the people who are actually within the community’s for-us-by-us model.
Rick Kiley: Got it.
Jeffrey Boedges: That’s great. Awesome.
Rick Kiley: So, I want to follow up on a couple of things with New York just to clarify. The home grow piece that you mentioned, is that for anyone with adult-use or is that just for people within the medical program?
Jeffrey Boedges: Six and 18 months? So, it’s six months for…
Rick Kiley: Oh, it’s just a different timing?
Jeffrey Boedges: Yeah.
Dasheeda Dawson: Yeah.
Rick Kiley: So, if I have a medical card, let’s say somebody that has a medical card in New York, I can grow a plant in my home this coming September.
Dasheeda Dawson: Yes, starting in September. Yes. And the Control Commission and the Office of Cannabis Management is basically tasked with coming up with all of the rules around it before that timeline. Now, again, bills can be even post-passing amended just based on what I’ve experienced but it’s supposed to be six months from the March 31st signing of the bill.
Jeffrey Boedges: How much can I grow? Can I grow like 20 pounds?
Rick Kiley: It’s probably by the plant.
Dasheeda Dawson: If your plants can yield that much, then…
Rick Kiley: Yeah. It’s the number of plants, right?
Dasheeda Dawson: It’s the number of plants. So, it’s a four-plant limit, and depending on the way you cultivate, it could be very, very low yields or it can be pretty exceptional. And I believe it’s like for mature or immature. You can tell, though, that those types of things in the law, anything about weights and grow limits, often it pains me because it shouldn’t be statutory law. It should probably just be regulatory policy because that would change with the market a bit as opposed to have to go in and change legislation but that’s what it is. It’s in the legislation about how much you can carry on you, up to 3 ounces you can carry on your person without having any issue, and how much you can grow. And if you’re a family, I think you can grow up to 12 plants in your house as a family.
Jeffrey Boedges: I think I see your future as the federal weed czar, Dasheeda. I think you’re going to be the one setting federal policy.
Rick Kiley: I’m just wondering if, like in Brooklyn, like at Grand Army Plaza on Saturday at the farmer’s market, is someone going to be selling plants that I can take home and plant in my garden? How are people going to go about starting their…
Jeffrey Boedges: That’s in between, right? The seeds, because we talked about seeds before because I was always like, “Where do all the seeds come from?”
Dasheeda Dawson: You got to get the seeds.
Rick Kiley: So, we got to get seeds. We’re not going to get saplings?
Dasheeda Dawson: No. You’re not going to get baby plants but, no, seeds are a big issue, Jeff because, in Illinois, they allowed home grow but guess what? They don’t have any seeds to buy and so home grow in effect doesn’t happen. And so, New York is hopefully working around that. That’s part of what the Office of Cannabis Management will have to figure out. And if you want to sell baby plants or be a nursery, it probably won’t be out of the farmer’s market, although not very quickly. I hope they will eventually be that because that’s to me the way I feel like it will be an integrated market. If you one day will be at a farmer’s market, I can pick up some baby cannabis plants.
Jeffrey Boedges: At the nursery. It’ll be at the nursery. Exactly. Give me some of those hydrangeas. I’ll take some of the Sativa and we’ll call it a day.
Rick Kiley: Yeah. And I want the little like card that says, “This needs direct sunlight.”
Jeffrey Boedges: Yes, exactly.
Rick Kiley: Put the little stick in.
Dasheeda Dawson: You’re doing the marketing strategy right there.
Rick Kiley: I’m all for it. I’m all for it. So, that’s great. I mean, we talked about New York a lot. The one thing that I just had a question on because I saw that within the law, I believe that anybody who has been prosecuted and imprisoned as a result of a cannabis-related offense that would not be considered illegal under the new law is going to have their records expunged and they are going to be released. Am I correct in that reading of that?
Dasheeda Dawson: Yes, Rick. I was probably remiss in not including that first but automatic expungement is in this, and that’s a big deal in New York.
Jeffrey Boedges: Huge.
Rick Kiley: Big deal.
Dasheeda Dawson: It’s a big deal. And so, yeah, that is part of what I call the must-haves in a true equity center legalization bill.
Jeffrey Boedges: Do we have any idea what kind of numbers that people were talking about, who are going to be getting a new lease on life, who are going to be released from prison that have been serving silly three-strikes-and-you’re-out bullsh*t?
Dasheeda Dawson: That’s a good thing for me to dive into. I don’t know. And I probably have to ask the majority leader because I’m sure she knows it because she’s been fighting for it. New York is the number one state in the country for cannabis possession arrest. And in New York City, almost 80% of those arrests have been…
Rick Kiley: I know.
Jeffrey Boedges: Is it really?
Rick Kiley: The whole stop-and-frisk era, it was like 12 years of people being picked up on possession of like a gram and being tossed in the pokey. Yeah. It wasn’t talked about a lot but it’s there. I think it’s going to be a big number. It’s going to be a big difference-maker for people.
Jeffrey Boedges: Well, it’s a difference-maker for people. It’s a difference-maker for even the system which is broken just to release all these nonviolent criminals. It just needs to happen. Sorry.
Dasheeda Dawson: There’s also one more piece if I could add that there are collateral damages of criminalization and that is with Child Protective Services, some of the people who are what we call post-prison supervision so parole, probation. These are places that even if you had a medical cannabis card, you’re still not allowed to test for THC. So, New York still has a little bit of work to do but there are some of that baked in the bill. And in New York City, they got to ban no pre-employment drug testing with THC. There’s quite a few things that we still have to unravel back that really impact people’s lives negatively.
Rick Kiley: Yeah. And I actually just saw this only loosely related but I think the NFL is not going to test for THC during the off-season and that’s like new news evidently also. Things are changing.
Jeffrey Boedges: They’re also changing the kickoff again, I think, which is just terrible.
Rick Kiley: So, Jeff, he I think either wittingly or unwittingly led us to a segue here, mentioning that he wants you to be the federal cannabis czar but that is actually a title you hold in the state of Oregon. Is that correct, the cannabis czar?
Dasheeda Dawson: Well, it’s an unofficial title, the czar.
Rick Kiley: I’ve always wanted to be the czar of something.
Jeffrey Boedges: Yeah. We’re like bizarre…
Dasheeda Dawson: By definition, that just means the highest a government official overseeing a particular area. And so, for the City of Portland, I’m the highest government official overseeing cannabis specifically.
Jeffrey Boedges: Wow.
Dasheeda Dawson: And so, yeah, that makes me the Portland cannabis czar. So, when it comes to policy, regulations, everything, licensing, compliance, education, equity initiatives, I oversee all of it and I have an awesome team. I inherited them. They were already pretty awesome. That’s why I was testifying about it. That’s why I went. Yeah.
Rick Kiley: That’s great. So, when we spoke prior to this interview, you mentioned that you actually felt that the State of Oregon had a very effective model that other states could be following. Could you talk about a couple of the specific things that are being done in Oregon that you think would have impact in other states if they were to adopt it?
Dasheeda Dawson: Sure. So, Oregon is a state that I feel adopted sensible regulation and had a thought that they wanted an equitable market but they were primarily focused on the small business, the craft cannabis. They really are focused there. They still are lacking a true equity model at the state level. And so, the House bill 3112 is actually a cannabis equity bill intended to kind of bring that to the forefront. So, I think it’s a great model but still missing that. At the city level, Portland’s been leading the way with a cannabis tax revenue that gets allocated into a grant fund. The Social Equity and Educational Development or SEED Initiatives is the program that I launched last year to really just brand something that have been around for a few years where we’re able to give back to black indigenous and Latinx communities through the money from the cannabis tax revenue or a certain portion of it. I think that’s a great model and it’s working. We’ve been able to see it start to be implemented. Illinois has their RRRs and they raised quite a bit of money from their cannabis tax revenue that go back into communities. New York also has that in that bill. And then I really love that it’s an open market. This false competition is really a problem. That’s part of what caused the Illinois issue. They decided, “Oh, we’re going to do 75 equity licenses and just having it even at 75 was like why? Everybody should be able to have access to the market.
The cap is something that creates an artificial competition. It limits product diversity and innovation. And so, Oregon has the most diversity you will see in a legal market. Things that you would see in the illegal part of California is actually legal. There’s also new delivery mechanism. You have to keep being innovative if you’re going to be in a competitive space that is open to any new person coming in, and I think Oregon does that. But it also means that more small businesses and more smaller players get to also participate in the market because it’s open. They don’t have to jump over an artificial hurdle to get in. So, I love that as an equity play, as that should just be an open market, no caps.
Jeffrey Boedges: And how is Oregon’s pricing working? I think probably one of the biggest challenges most states that have gone legal have found is that we’ve already kind of talked a little bit about it, that the illicit market continues to thrive because the prices are relatively high in the legal market. Is that something that Oregon is ahead on or is that an issue there as well?
Dasheeda Dawson: I think it’s definitely always a struggle a bit but Oregon actually is still one of the lower prices for cannabis flower and sometimes that is to the detriment of the operators. There’s still a lot of diversion meaning I don’t believe that Oregon excess product is being sold in Oregon’s legacy market. It’s being shipped out and being sold in New York like I said. And so, I think that reality is that…
Jeffrey Boedges: You’re welcome, Oregon.
Dasheeda Dawson: Hey, listen, sometimes I see things that I’m like, “That’s an Oregon brand,” but that was before. But it’s only because I’m traveling. I think that there’s room for both. At the end of the day, there are a lot of protections that come with participating in the legal market, consumer protections, the ability to technically sue if you have a bad experience, things that you can’t do. And I go back to getting your haircut. You can do that with your friend or your homie in his kitchen or her kitchen and if it’s jacked up, it’s like good luck, chuck. And if you do it at an establishment that’s licensed, if it turns out to be not as experienced, there’s at least some recourse and some protection as a consumer. And that’s the best, you know.
Jeffrey Boedges: That’s the name of my new flower. Good luck, Chuck.
Rick Kiley: Good luck, Chuk. That’s a good name brand. We’re coming up with a lot of good sayings and slogans and names today. I like it. So, in your role in Oregon, are you in position to make, I imagine you are, you’re in position to make policy recommendations?
Dasheeda Dawson: 1,000%. I have a cannabis policy oversight team that advises the bureau and I work with my director to ensure that we’re all aligned. But one of the best parts about the program in Portland is it’s housed in the Office of Community and Civic Life, which is really odd, generally, because mostly it’s been housing revenue and finance or enforcement type of bureaus. In this way, I think it allows us to be a lot more thoughtful about that community impact and how we should engage with the cannabis business community to be more civically engaged to participate in the policymaking.
Jeffrey Boedges: I think that’s a move that needs to happen for a lot of different policy centers, for a lot of different governments by the state, municipal, whatever level that there is this default to put things into a policing strategy instead of into a more of a community-building strategy. I’d love to hear that.
Rick Kiley: Well, that needs to happen, not just in Canada but overall.
Jeffrey Boedges: That’s my point. But that’s my point. That’s exactly what I said. It just needs to happen across the board.
Dasheeda Dawson: Absolutely. I agree with you. To me, it changes the intent. When you are put and this is me being back the businesswoman, if I was placed in the Revenue and Finance Department, I have revenue and finance goals to achieve and that is the primary focus. I’m willing to do whatever I need to run that business unit to align with those goals. If I’m in Office in Community and Civic Life, I’m more focused on what those outcomes are and I run my business accordingly. And I think that that is a big difference, absolutely, in the approach to policy making and regulations.
Jeffrey Boedges: Today, we’re going to talk about skating rinks and cannabis. That’s our agenda. That when you’re in the civic life, it’s just a different sort of perspective.
Dasheeda Dawson: Right.
Rick Kiley: I mean, I’m just curious, do you feel that there are a lot of layers of bureaucracy that you have to go through when you’re trying to make some changes? Or is it set up in a way where it’s relatively nimble and you can see a problem, make it make a suggestion, and adopt a new policy pretty quickly?
Dasheeda Dawson: I think it depends on what the change is. So, for example, we have a 1,000-foot buffer. That is statutory and so I would have to get a change from the city council to change a law that’s in place around the buffer because it’s statutory. When something is more of a regulatory policy, it falls into our administrative guidelines and as the lead, I can recommend that to be changed. And generally speaking, because I’m the most knowledgeable, usually it should be easy for the council to say, “Yep, agree with that,” or the director to say, “Yep, agree with that.” So, when it’s a regulatory policy administrative piece, like how much we charge for fees and things of that nature, have a little bit more control. When it’s something that we put in the law and that’s what was passed, it is a lot more difficult because you have to change the law.
Rick Kiley: Understand. Got it. Cool. So, I’m just curious, since you’ve come from Target to THC, you’ve gone from office pet to office threat, and you’ve made a very conscious decision to sort of be on the regulatory side. I’m just curious if you’ve ever thought about jumping in on the entrepreneurial front, creating your own product or service, and put it out there in the market, if that idea has crossed your brain, if you’ve looked into it, if you’re thinking about it, is the next book going to be?
Jeffrey Boedges: Yeah. Have you thought about doing it in New York with a couple of guys that have a podcast?
Rick Kiley: You know, maybe.
Dasheeda Dawson: You know, I’m not coming back to New York as a regulator for a reason. New York requires all the regulators to really like give up your life in cannabis. Oregon again is a lot more sensible. It doesn’t operate in Oregon. I’ve been asked multiple times, do I want to create the WeedHead strain and I have some thoughts around some of my cannabis cocktails. I mix different types of flower, including hemp, to make certain penetration or potency levels of the different cannabinoids. I’m very geeky about it. So, if it’s going to be done, it’s going to be one of those things where it’s got a layer of science in it but it’s still cool. I’m more focused on the education and the research part of it now. I think I came to the public side because I want to create the structures that I would be able to use to eventually get my Ph.D. in neuropharmacology with the cannabinoid focus and have government money supporting the efforts to do it.
Rick Kiley: What?
Jeffrey Boedges: Your business card just grew another flat
Dasheeda Dawson: So, I have to build it first. I want to do research. I think that we have a lot of patient equity that we need to resolve. So, many people are suffering from I mentioned MS but it’s like everything from Crohn’s, fibromyalgia, anxiety, PTSD. We have a lot of issues as a community at large and hemp being part of our diet in the 1800s, I think, and then being literally abruptly removed, I think has changed a bit of our physiological makeup and now we’re at more risk. So, I see cannabis health equity as my goal and whenever I think about being an actual licensed operator in the industry I think so from a research license perspective.
Rick Kiley: Got it. So, here’s a question that I’ve wondered before, and you might be in position to answer it. It seems that on the medical side, one of the hurdles towards federal legalization or even recognition of a nationwide medical program is whether or not an insurance company will support cannabis as it would like any other drug that you have to take in order to get pain management with opiates or antidepressants or any of these other drugs out there. Do you have any window into the conversations that are happening on the legal level with insurance companies and if insurers are considering getting involved in this world at all?
Jeffrey Boedges: And why wouldn’t they be? And how much are they in the pocket of large pharma? There.
Dasheeda Dawson: So, Jeff is listening. He is hot, Jeff. Okay?
Rick Kiley: Yeah, man. He’s salty today.
Jeffrey Boedges: Well, you know.
Dasheeda Dawson: But you’re right, that’s part of the issue. Some of the insurance companies have started doing stay focused so like you can’t pass up a state like California and not try to at least test a model. But there is considerable risk because most insurance companies are subject to FDIC and some of the federal regulations and the fact that it’s still a Schedule 1 is really the biggest impediment. That being removed means that floodgate opens and insurance companies can participate. But to Jeff’s point, it’s like they are in bed like they’re a whole couple with pharmaceutical companies. And in some ways, I feel like it’s a triple because the government is in bed too, and it makes it so that we won’t really see cannabis legalization until those three entities or groups really feel like they have a handle on how they’re going to capitalize on it. And that’s sort of in some ways what I’m fighting against. I think there’s a ramp for them, there’s a lane for them, but it definitely is not the only lane. It should not be monopolized in the way all of our other pharmaceuticals are. There’s different levels to this. And I agree. I think that there are insurance companies that are definitely seeing how much money is being made. There will be insurance companies that are only New York because New York has such a large footprint in the market.
Rick Kiley: Got it. Okay. Cool.
Jeffrey Boedges: And it seems like something that’ll happen down the line. I think there are so many more things, so many more issues that have to drop before we start looking at insurance stuff. I think that’s going to be way down the road but I could be wrong.
Rick Kiley: Well, I’m wondering like have any pharmaceutical companies, the big ones, are they getting involved in growing and producing cannabis-related products?
Jeffrey Boedges: Just being able to take the derivatives of the cannabinoids, sorry, I just lost…
Rick Kiley: Cannabinoids.
Jeffrey Boedges: Cannabinoids. Yeah. They are super powerful. You would think they must on some level.
Rick Kiley: But I don’t know.
Dasheeda Dawson: Probably in other countries definitely. The multinational farmers are definitely doing that. GW Pharma actually has the only FDA-approved CBD-derived drug in the market. It is derived from hemp grown and GW Pharma is an international pharmaceutical company. I believe that white papers are being written for pharmaceutical companies left and right. They’re definitely sending their best and brightest consultants, strategy consultants to kind of take a look, do that risk assessment and analyze the way that they’re supposed to enter the market. It takes them about three to five years to do that type of work just based on my experiences. And so, yeah, I feel like we’re very close to them starting to figure out, well, what’s the model they want to utilize. The synthetic cannabinoids are very dangerous and so, generally speaking, I hope that that is the route they’re going but I don’t think that them owning big, big greenhouses is the sustainable route for big pharmaceuticals either. So, there’s going to be a middle ground and I hope it’s one that still has the patient’s best interests in mind.
Rick Kiley: Well, we’ll see where the incentives line up for all those involved.
Jeffrey Boedges: When has a pharmaceutical company acted against the best interest of the patients? Never happened.
Rick Kiley: Well, I mean, we make this show.
Jeffrey Boedges: That’s sarcasm by the way.
Rick Kiley: No, but…
Dasheeda Dawson: Yes, I know.
Rick Kiley: I think some pharmaceutical companies, this is an interesting moment in time for pharmaceutical companies. So, as a marketing person, I think about the companies like Pfizer who probably would’ve looked at Big Pharma, potentially bad guy from time to time, they’re riding on this, “We’ve just created this amazing medicine in record time to help solve COVID. We’re getting it out. It’s helping all these people. We’re bringing an end to the pandemic.” Somebody shrewd in a big pharma company I think that’s got a little bit of goodwill built up should take the plunge here. I don’t know. If you’re listening, Pfizer, go for it.
Jeffrey Boedges: Yeah. And you can contact us, Pfizer. We’ll help you develop the brands.
Dasheeda Dawson: I hope they do so with good leadership. And I’m not saying that so they could hire me to run that entire division but they need that person like myself, someone who has some cannabis experience actually respects the plant as medicine but is very scientifically driven in the fundamentals. Yeah. You need someone who got a combination of it that truly understands the market.
Rick Kiley: You are a bit of a unicorn.
Dasheeda Dawson: I like that.
Rick Kiley: Hopefully, there’ll be room for a three-page resume for that job application. So, we’re coming to the end of our time here and I think you might give us perhaps the best answer. We still are looking for answers to the question of when we feel that cannabis will be federally legal. That’s kind of like the path that we’re charting and navigating through here. Obviously, New York passing this law is, I think, a big step on that road, but do you have any insight? When do you expect this country to sort of legalize federally, maybe get rid of this silly IRS regulation that’s keeping everybody from writing off their business expenses and really level the playing field across the country? Do you want to put…
Dasheeda Dawson: It may come in stages. Go ahead.
Rick Kiley: No, no. Just give us the date you want to put up on our big board.
Dasheeda Dawson: Oh, you have a board. Okay. So, we’re in 2021. I’m going to say it’ll happen in 2023. It’s a good guess. Right now, we’re working on it and I think it’s coming in stages. We may have some movement on the banking side of things and that IRS side of things. It’s so funny. The IRS was complaining that they were getting too much cash in payment from the cannabis industry and so they started to work on how to deal with that banking issue.
Rick Kiley: Oh wait, because it’s coming in like boxes and briefcases?
Jeffrey Boedges: IRS, you can store that here. I’ll give you my address.
Dasheeda Dawson: You know, that was hilarious to hear that. That was like a complaint, a legitimate complaint earlier this year. So, I suggest 2023 only because, one, you have a lot of pandering on the part of the administration. We know that the VP, Kamala Harris, supports it and we know that she knows what to do. The cannabis industry understands that. I don’t know about the president and that was a big struggle for me with even wanting to support Biden-Harris administration. I think that Senator Schumer, Representative Earl Blumenauer, who’s from my state, Senator Wyden, Senator Cory Booker, they’re all pushing, though, I think the right direction and we have a lot of federal workgroups so I’ve got a chance to meet with all of them around what works in our states and in our jurisdictions and what are some really bad kind of mistakes to repeat. But we’re not there yet. I still think we are largely seeing bills that would play more into larger big tobacco, big alcohol, big pharma, big CPG, and not so much the current industry.
Jeffrey Boedges: Yeah. I think that was my bet as well, which was 2023.
Rick Kiley: 2023? Yeah. Jeff always says 2023, whatever sounds smart.
Jeffrey Boedges: Well, no but when we had our retrospective that you asked me and I said 2023.
Rick Kiley: 2023? Yeah, that’s true.
Jeffrey Boedges: And then I didn’t explain it. I just said that.
Rick Kiley: Yeah. Jeff guessed and you actually have sound reasoning so now we’re more likely to believe it.
Jeffrey Boedges: That’s why I’m in marketing.
Dasheeda Dawson: That was still an educated guess. I love New York to do more before we get a federal regulation. I really, really do. But I think it’s not going to happen. I think the federal government don’t want to figure this out sooner rather than later.
Rick Kiley: Well, I hope it happens soon. It’s exciting times for the industry. Well, with that, Dasheeda, we are at the end of our time. We are so happy you joined us. You are a wealth of information. I feel like we could talk for ten more hours.
Jeffrey Boedges: Yeah. We got at least two more episodes with you. So, this is going to be the first of three parts like your book. She’s like, “Not in your life.”
Dasheeda Dawson: I love it.
Rick Kiley: Well, we’ll find a time to hopefully get together again. So, thank you so much for joining us today. We really appreciate it.
Dasheeda Dawson: Thank you, Jeff and Rick. I had fun. I appreciate it as well.
Rick Kiley: Cool.
Jeffrey Boedges: Thank you, Dasheeda.
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