Brian Scott-Smith spoke with Rino Ferrarese, President of Affinity Grow in Portland, about the cannabis industry and Connecticut’s first two years allowing the sale of recreational marijuana.

TRANSCRIPT: Brian Scott-Smith: We’re talking to Rino Ferrarese of Affinity Grow. Rino, ever so many thanks. We spoke to you a while back. When we did the original interview with you, it was to do with the fact that you’d become the state’s first micro cultivator. Is that still the case or have you grown and changed?

Rino Ferrarese: We continue to grow every day. That’s our industry. We’re still a micro cultivator. We operate 10,000 square feet of flowering space here in Portland, Connecticut. We have not expanded that space yet. We want to see how the taking a wait and see approach to see how many additional operators join the market before we decide to invest into further expansion of our growers.

Brian Scott-Smith: So, let’s delve into that. We’re going to have a state of the state talk about legal cannabis here in Connecticut. Of course, as you’re well aware legal recreational use was authorized as far back as July 1st, 2021. And then of course the purchase through retail sites started January 10th, 2023.

So still relatively a young market, I suppose one could say for that medical marijuana, of course, back in 2012 a much older and more established market. What do you see at this point, three and a half years in, as it were, for legal recreational use? What are you seeing as the challenges?

Rino Ferrarese: The program is not growing at a rate that we’re accustomed to seeing adult use states it’s not growing at the same rate that we see other states grow.

And I think that’s a complicated phenomenon to unpack. There are a couple of factors working against our program. I think the most prominent has to be the fact that Massachusetts. Became an adult use state in 2018. And launch sales and they’ve been very successful at producing product and supplying really the Northeast of the United States.

And from where we are here in Connecticut, you can be over the Springfield border in 30 minutes. It’s a pleasant drive. There’s no traffic. Once you get through Hartford, it’s just a straight up, straight shot up from 91.

And I think a lot of people got accustomed to taking that trip, take a ride up to mass on a Saturday afternoon, it’s something to do and buy your weed. And I think we’re still, even now that Connecticut is an adult use state. We are still losing out on the majority of customers going over the border , to continue to buy their products.

And it’s not because the products are better in one place or the other. I think it really comes down to that because Massachusetts is now a mature market, you get this phenomenon, it’s called price compression, where , just the prices of the products start to drop down. , the operators have been operating for a long time, they don’t have as much debt, they don’t carry as many loans, and they’re able to be much more financially competitive than operators in a brand new program like we are here in Connecticut in our second year.

So, we’re seeing a lot of sort of mass exodus of customers going up to buy their cannabis like they have been since 2018 and they’re bringing it back and they’re consuming it here. So, we are a new adult use program in the sense that it’s a new Connecticut law, but as far as cannabis being here and present, it’s been here since at least 2018 when they first started buying it in mass.

If you can go up to Massachusetts any day of the week, but really on a Saturday and a Sunday. And if you go to any of the dispensaries in Springfield or the surrounding area, probably, I don’t want to exaggerate, 60 plus percentage of the vehicles have Connecticut marker plates.

Brian Scott-Smith: It’s not unfair to say recreational adult use cannabis in Connecticut is way more expensive than Massachusetts.

And when it comes to something like adult use cannabis, price clearly is a big factor for people. And as you said, the Massachusetts a select drive is not difficult because of the size of the state. You made a comment that you said, their stuff isn’t necessarily better, but they do have.

More choice as well. And that’s another thing that people get used to maybe a certain strain That may not be available here in Connecticut because of the way that regulation works here. Is that correct?

Rino Ferrarese: Yeah, I think you hit it on the head there. We got there pretty quickly, huh? In this conversation.

 I’m going to show you something when you go to a dispensary and you’re going to buy one of these pre roll products.

 This is from a Massachusetts operator. This is from New York. This thing is like so cool, it flips open. It even has a little place for your matches to get stored. Matches in there, your pre rolls in here. It’s really cool packaging. And then you got, Brand X.

And when customers walk in, as far as variety, I didn’t care. I bought this in New York City and Manhattan. Gotham City? Something like that. They might have carried six pre roll brands. I didn’t care cause this was the coolest box I’d ever seen. And I was buying this.

I didn’t care what the potency was. I didn’t care about anything. I wanted this product. So, I bought it. Same thing in mass. You can see the products in the display case. You can pick what you want. You can talk to the to the bud tender and make your purchase and you can be on your way.

You can bring your friend in your friend. Isn’t buying today, but they’re with you. And it’s a social experience. It’s pleasant. It’s positive. Connecticut is different first of all, when you first enter, you can only enter the space if you’re purchasing product, and you have to have an ID.

You can either pre order on your phone. Through an app, or you can go over to a kiosk and place your order at that point, and then you’re allowed to enter the dispensary proper, and you’ll be called over to a station to a checkout, and they’ll have your product, it’ll be in a bag, it’ll be stapled, and they’ll hand it to you, and that’s the experience.

So, when you’re given, really, your only option is to evaluate THC. What’s the THC potency? You’re not really even looking at branding or anything because it’s all the products look like this there’s really not much to take in When you’re in a Connecticut dispensary, so the few things that are variable potentially probably carry a lot more weight.

For example, the THC or maybe the terpene concentration. I think that definitely factors in.

Brian Scott-Smith: It’s clear that Connecticut has taken a position of how they choose and wish to regulate this market. You’ve shown us a piece of product from your organization, which clearly is labeled in a similar way to all of the others.

It’s quite a bland package with lots of writing on there. And frankly if anybody. chooses to read it, I’d be very surprised, but obviously it has to be placed on there. The department of consumer protection is the organization here in Connecticut that is overviewing not only the medical marijuana market, but the, this, as we say, there’s still relatively new adult recreational market.

What conversations have you may be personally, or as an industry had with them about How you can move this forward, because clearly, they’re not making the money either. Not only are you not making the money that you want to, and as you’ve said, you’ve decided to put on hold any form of expansion until you know what’s happening here.

Do they get that they need to maybe review the situation, especially when there is such strong competition, literally, as you say, a 30-minute drive over, the Connecticut border?

Rino Ferrarese: That’s a tough question to answer because I don’t know. I don’t know who is directly responsible for the decisions on the labeling and the packaging.

I do know that the DCP is beholden to the legislature. I’ve seen our elected officials come out either in support. Nobody’s really been overly supportive of cannabis. I don’t think, I don’t think anybody. In the current legislature has really been overwhelmingly positive on it.

I think people accept it and they’re glad that it’s here and it’s serving a purpose, especially helping with social equity, and generating revenue for those initiatives are crucial objectives. As far as other programs, typically when an adult use program happens, even a state like, like Rhode Island or Delaware, the adult uses is passes and a commission, a regulatory body or commission is created, and they are tasked with rolling out that program for that given state and they have their objectives, .

In Connecticut, our Department of Consumer Protection Drug Control Division, they were responsible for rolling out an enforcement and overdosed, duties for a medical program. And now they’re also responsible for the adult youth program. , it’s the same leadership.

They have a lot more agents because there are a lot more registrants. It was just a different approach to how the rollout happened. And I don’t know who decides when you need to create a whole new commission or if you let , your drug control division handle it or your alcohol division or your

Department of Taxation It’s different from state to state. So again, I don’t know who makes those decisions.

Brian Scott-Smith: But it sounds from talking to you that clearly you and probably others in Connecticut feel frustrated about, these restrictions on how you do your business, especially when we’re seeing things like a hemp growers exemption for seltzers with THC levels that I know cause a lot of consternation within your industry.

Talk to us about that.

Rino Ferrarese: It did. I think that a great example would be the, Oh my gosh. What had just happened recently in the state of Florida with their adult use vote, , it went to a ballot initiative. I think it was question three. Something like that. And Floridians had the opportunity to vote to legalize adult use of cannabis or they could vote against it.

I thought it was a home run because all the older folks in Florida were, it was the hippie generation. I said, I thought this was a layup. This was going to happen for Florida finally. And it actually lost. It didn’t pass.

They got a lot of votes, but not the number that they needed. And you scratch your head, and you wonder why who’s still opposing cannabis today? Especially since it’s everywhere. . It’s present through the black market. There are hemp growers who are growing THCA from hemp, which is a misnomer.

THCA is THCA. It’s the same stuff we grow, except these guys are saying that it’s hemp, nobody’s challenging it. And these guys are getting away with selling it. It’s not necessarily tested by an in-state laboratory. There are no restrictions on, so if you go to any legal dispensary operating within a state program, they can’t use credit cards.

But these hemp shops that are selling THCA, you can use credit cards. They use the United States Postal Service FedEx to mail product all over the country. And so , you, find that we’re competing with this hemp, these farm bill operators who are not selling hemp.

They’re selling the drug variety, the same stuff that we sell. So then when you look in Florida and you start peeling back the layers of the onion, you realize that, oh, there was this huge presence from the hemp guys that didn’t want to see the medical guys necessarily licensed. To sell adult use because the hemp guys were selling it.

But that story I don’t know how many folks know that. It’s amazing. I think because I’m in the industry, I think that people just walk around thinking about cannabis news and policy and perspective all day long. But I’m surprised when I find out that most people, it doesn’t really even compute or it doesn’t end up on their radar for the day, but that’s what happened there and that’s what continues to happen.

We’re seeing it. If I had to estimate in Connecticut of all the cannabis users, there might be a billion-dollar market here. And I want to say today, the state might be seeing close to 300 million in total sales in a given year. But I want to say that other 700 million, it’s easily divided up between black market operators who are importing it from all over the place both within the United States and abroad.

In addition, we’re getting the hemp, the farm bill guys growing hemp and selling hemp in these bong shops. And I think that’s really what the market looks like. And we’re this little piece of it, I think, compared to what is really here. And then , the folks who are maybe going up to Massachusetts or down to New York to purchase it, and they’re bringing it back and consuming it in Connecticut.

Brian Scott-Smith: We also saw earlier this year as well that the Department of Consumer Protection said to a lot of package stores and liquor stores that if you were selling these spiked seltzers, et cetera, that there was going to be so like limitations placed on that like the THC limits and that they were giving them An ability, a time limit in which to sell it and then they had to register with the state and then if they didn’t register then clearly they weren’t allowed to sell it.

Again, feels like it’s not really dealing with a problem, it’s just exacerbating one.

Rino Ferrarese: Yes. We saw the hemp, the high THC hemp beverage, is a misnomer but these high THC beverages are five milligram beverages. I think the law went into effect and it dropped the THC to not more than three milligrams.

For container, the container had to have , a fixed volume of solution in it. And then there could only be, I think, two cans per pack. You can buy a two pack; you can’t buy a six pack. And I don’t know where the market is today. I know that prior, maybe the law went into effect October 1st.

Prior to October 1st, you can go into any package store a lot of the super package stores, and even some of the supermarkets, and everybody was carrying these beverages, and they were selling tons of them. But I haven’t been in a package store to look. But I’m not too sure that there are too many operators around that are doing three milligram beverages in a two pack.

Which might be a good opportunity for the newly licensed food and beverage manufacturers in our state. This might be their opportunity to come up with a product that meets all of the Connecticut criteria and then, move to a distribution. But I’m not sure If a registrant of the program is permitted to sell directly into a package store, , I don’t know the answer to that.

They might not be able to, they might only be able to sell to a dispensary, but I could be wrong.

Brian Scott-Smith: One of the other things that’s happening as well as again, the Department of Consumer Protection is seeking or allowing public comment on changes to medical marijuana wording. To bring it more in line, I understand with like adult recreational use wording.

So, like all the statute wording that they had for adult use, the medical marijuana side is they’re going to bring that in line with the adult use wording.

Rino Ferrarese: Oh, yes. So, the medical marijuana, it was medical marijuana, was a term defined in the regulations as marijuana that was manufactured.

Under the auspices of 21 CFR Part 111, the Dietary Supplement Regulations, and where every product is manufactured according to a standard operating procedure that had been approved by the Commissioner. Of the Department of Consumer Protection, that sort of language, has been now moved over into the RERACA Bill, or I guess the Bill of Regulations, and I don’t know that they’re defining medical marijuana as being manufactured under 21 CFR 111 anymore which is unfortunate because that’s, those are the CGMPs, those are the regulations that the FDA mandates, for any company that produces food, drugs, cosmetics, medical devices, there are a set of best practices that operators are obligated to comply with when manufacturing a product. It means that you do in process testing, you have critical to quality specifications along that manufacturing process.

Dob Traveler they took some of that very specific language. Expanded it somewhere and condensed it in other places. I would need to take a look at it to see what stayed and what went. Basically, the gist of the regulation is still the same. It’s just, it’s actually expanded a lot more because they had to make a greater detail for delivery, product delivery, product transport.

They had to take into account the pharmacist in Connecticut was the gatekeeper forever. A licensed pharmacist or licensed by consumer protection, they carry professional insurance. They’re basically, it’s a managerial position. They run a pharmacy, so you can trust them to run the dispensary and dispense cannabis, but now what happens if you have a regular cannabis dispensary, we don’t have a pharmacist, you have, non-pharmacists managing the operation and how do you secure that operation to the same level?

That the dispensary facilities were regulated. And I think that DCP did a good job with developing the criteria to make sure that we have responsible managers and management of these facilities and that it maintains the same level of professionalism and compliance that has been historically associated with the medical program.

Brian Scott-Smith: But let me put this to you if medical marijuana was may be manufactured to possibly a slightly higher degree because it’s being used medically rather than recreationally. And one could argue that the people who are using it would want to, it’s a medicine like anything else.

So therefore, they would hope that it’s as good as it possibly can be. Doesn’t this mean that possibly medical marijuana moving forward in Connecticut may not be of the same quality or veracity as it was in the past?

Rino Ferrarese: Good question. . Yeah. So, where the rubber meets the road is on the compliance testing, the quality testing and all of those specifications have remained the same or they become more rigorous.

. They become tighter. So, microbiology testing under adult use, regardless if the product is manufactured for adult use or for medical, it still has to meet the same requirements for quality, identity, purity, composition. None of those regulations have changed.

There was one change where the yeast and mold limit was increased from 10,000 to 100,000, and it was the most misunderstood thing that has probably happened in the good old state of Connecticut in probably a very long time. There were individuals who either misunderstood it or wanted to misunderstand it.

And nowadays everybody has a voice on social media and most of the time that’s good, but sometimes it can cause confusion. And in this particular case, Connecticut raised the limit from 10,000 to 100,000 for yeast and mold. Because sometimes you can have normal. Microbials that are present in the environment all the time they fluctuate throughout the year, that the quantity that is in the air in the wintertime, there might be fewer of them.

And in late summer, there might be more of them but they’re not human pathogens, but you might end up with a whole bunch of these non-human pathogenic microbes on a plate and you read the plate and all of these nonpathogenic microbes. . Are all combined. I could have no, no ill or adverse effect on a human being.

So should the product be rejected because it has an excess amount of microbial that are nonpathogenic, or is it okay to use? So, there are highly specific methods that can be employed to detect the presence of human pathogens. For example, aspergillus, let’s say this, there’s four subspecies of aspergillus.

The DCP implemented more specific test method requirements that are looking for human pathogens versus going for just the general number of microbials present on a plate. So, they went from 10 to a hundred thousand on the total number that can be present on a plate, but they implemented very strict requirements for detection of Microbials that could be harmful to humans.

And that’s a very common standard in our industry. Lots of state programs have a hundred thousand, but you also need to test for these organisms. And that was misunderstood somehow. And people questioned intentions and its old news. And I hope it doesn’t come up in the story.

Cause it’s like from 2020 and it’s finally behind us, I think. But yes, the question, and I just wanted to say that was the only real material change as far as the specification for testing. The other thing is, we did add a heavy metal to the heavy metal test requirement. They added chromium, we didn’t have chromium before.

chromium is now one of the heavy metals that we test for.

Brian Scott-Smith: Going back to the yeast and mold, just for a second, you mentioned about the raising of the level. Is it not fair to say though that there isn’t as I understand it, and please correct me if I’m wrong, there is no universal actual standard level, is there, in the United States?

Because every state can be different depending on what they want to do by way of levels. Now, as you said, Connecticut raised from 10 to 100,000. Other states could be different. So, there is no actual set standard here, is there?

Rino Ferrarese: Correct. There are some states that have no level, have no max. There’s some that have no max, but they say you have to declare what your results were on the label.

You have to declare it. How many microbes were present? Best estimate where the specification came from, , a lot of people don’t know where it came from. There was a publication by the American herbal pharmacopeia. It’s called the Cannabis inflorescence.

Monograph. And it might have been published in either 2012, 2013, 2014. It was it’s a compendial method and it basically talks about cannabis, it’s a monograph. It talks about, how to identify cannabis. The taxonomy, the morphology. It talks about how to detect different cannabinoids and terpenes and talks about growing methods.

 They did a great job. And the microbial limit that they came up with was based on, and I want to say it was based on a non-sterile pharmaceutical preparation. So nonsterile pharmaceutical product, which is cannabis flower. That’s something that you combust.

Is that a non-sterile pharmaceutical? I don’t know. Maybe it is. It might not be. I don’t know. What would you treat it like a cigarette? What’s the limit for cigarettes? Tobacco. I don’t think anybody really knew how to classify it. The American Herbal Pharmacopeia came out. They published their monograph and most of the state programs at that time latched onto that as a standard in the way the industries went.

And as the new states came online, everybody had their own version of how they were going to set their specification limits.

Brian Scott-Smith: leads me into the next phase of this particulars subject, which is remediation, because we know for a fact that there are certain operators here in Connecticut that have taken and have been open about the fact that to resolve this particular issue, they’ve irradiated their products, which effectively should do away with that problem.

But there seems to, and again, happy to be corrected by you here, there seems to have been possibly some resistance from the industry about stating whether or not the product has been remediated in some way so that the public are able to make their best choice when they are purchasing

Rino Ferrarese: It’s sticky because when we go to the grocery store and , we purchase spices and you buy bay leaves or rosemary or black pepper, those spices have been treated with x ray. The same. Treatment that some operators choose to treat their cannabis with there is a little nuance. If an operator processes the batch with x ray in response to a failed lab result the batch failed for high microbial counts. The operator processes the material through an X ray that’s considered remediated, but what about if the operator routinely passes as the last step of processing, they pass all their flower through an X ray. It’s not remediated.

It’s remediated would be in response to the contamination. , it becomes a routine processing step. So, is it remediated? No, it’s been treated with x ray, but it’s not remediated necessarily. So, there is that nuance and, does the consumer want to know if their flower was treated, sure.

And do they have a right to know? Definitely. I think that’s where sort of the discussion happens. How do you document that the material was processed through an X ray as a routine part of the manufacturing process versus. having to send the flower back and process it through an x ray as a remediation step.

Brian Scott-Smith: Let’s talk about the new cannabis ombudsman. She came into force as it were six months ago in 2024. Why do you think the state decided to have, and she, as we understand it, is the first of her kind in the nation, why do you think the state of Connecticut opted to have an ombudsman? And it’s only to do with medical marijuana.

It’s got nothing to do with the adult use markets. She had no statutory powers, but she has been brought on to look at the medical marijuana situation here in the state. Talk to us about that and have you met with her?

Rino Ferrarese: Yes. Erin Kirk.

 She is a professional person. She has got a wealth of knowledge and experience, and we’re fortunate to have someone like her. And she’s also deeply passionate about cannabis and patients, and she’s in it for all the right reasons. And she takes her role very seriously.

 I took the , ombudsman role to feel as if our program needed a little extra attention that, it wasn’t enough that we had regulators, we needed another person to keep an eye on us because , I didn’t perceive the ombudsman being added to the program as something positive.

I saw it as a negative reflection on our industry and having worked in the industry for almost a decade now, I can tell you, sure, nothing was perfect, but we were creating a new industry and everybody was really trying to do a good job and everybody did the best they could. I can’t speak for any of the other operators, but the folks that I got to meet with the other producers, they were all stand up people.

And I don’t imagine anything nefarious or going on within their walls of their organizations. That said, I wasn’t there physically every day, so I can’t say definitively, but when the ombudsman was brought in, it was right around the same time that the mold.

Misunderstanding news broke and it was just, the new stories just kept coming, Connecticut mold, and the producers. At the time, we didn’t come out and make any sort of definitive statement because it was just a couple of people who kept banging the drum of this issue, and it’s amazing how misinformation can catch on and take hold and take root and becomes almost a fact, a generally accepted fact, because now if you look it up, you can find news articles talking about the problem with the mold in Connecticut, right?

And Connecticut cannabis, cannabis is a plant. It’s an article of botanical origin. It’s grown indoors. In the absence of pesticides mold it’s a fungus. , it’s an organism. So, it’s almost like a plant. It grows. And why wouldn’t you think that some would grow in the room with the plants?

It’s natural, just like you get algae in a fish tank, you’re going to get some mold and some growth. And instead of a cannabis room grown indoors it’s inevitable, especially when you’re not spraying heavy chemicals and pesticides. But there was definitely not more mold in Connecticut than in any of the best states around.

And we routinely tested the product. No one was ever. that I’m aware of. There were no reports and mortality, or morbidity related to using contaminated cannabis. So, I was frankly surprised when, to hear that there’s this issue. However,

Brian Scott-Smith: let me just interrupt you if I can. I just want to put this point to you, Reno, because I’ve interviewed her on two occasions.

And when I interviewed her the first time, she made it very clear that she is a medical marijuana user herself and has been for many years. And she personally felt as well as receiving, she says comments from other medical users, that they felt that the medical marijuana quality had gone down in the state ever since adult use had come online because they felt that obviously the operators were obviously looking at the bigger market, which was the adult recreational use.

The medical marijuana market, as we know, is a smaller market, has always been a smaller market and has been shrinking as well consistently over the last couple of years as well. She made those comments that she felt that she had to have, a word with the industry because medical marijuana patients in the state of Connecticut felt they were being left behind.

Rino Ferrarese: Yeah, I had Erin come here and I told her, I said, the caveat was yes, you can come to our facility, open door anytime you want we want you here. I said, and if you find one fleck of mold, I want you to bring your camera because I want you to videotape it and I will stand there with you and I will explain why there’s mold in my facility.

She came, she brought her phone, and she didn’t find any mold and she has been very. She’s a woman of her word, she’s has declared that she was here and. The place is immaculate, the product is beautiful, and the place is very clean. Nothing but positive. So, I’m happy about that.

We’re proud of what we do. But to answer your question about the products for the medical patients, we manufacture products because we want to sell it. If there are individuals out there who want to buy our product, we want to make it for them. But the reality is that the medical market mirrors the adult use market.

If you want, you can look up on the Massachusetts cannabis control commission, they have a beautiful data set and you can actually see what products are selling each week as a percentage of the entire sales and for adult use and for medical, and they mirror each other. The majority of folks buy flower.

They buy pre-rolls. That’s probably 55 to 60 percent of the market. And another 20 to 25%. That’s vapes. So now you’re at what 75 80%. Then you get your gummies, another 10 plus, you’re at 90. And then that last 10 percent might be concentrates tinctures, maybe some tablets, some gel caps those types of products.

I think when we hear medical, we think that we’re not making lotions and tablets and capsules anymore. That’s not the case. I can tell you baked goods have gone away. Baked goods are difficult to manufacture. , not everybody likes the same baked good. They have calories,

So, it’s difficult to make a baked good that has universal appeal. A gummy is five milligrams of THC. It’s not high in calories. You don’t have to worry about gluten. It’s really an ideal way to deliver a known dose of THC to either a medical. patient or to a customer. But beyond that, I don’t know what products they’re missing.

High THC flower, we manufacture high THC flower. I can tell you that the THC potencies have come down in the Connecticut products and that’s because we calculate total THC differently. In the past, typically in cannabis the calculation, when the sample goes to the lab, it comes back, the lab reports THC and THCA.

So, the way that you get the total THC is you take THC plus 87 percent of your THCA and you combine them and you get total THC. Historically in the Connecticut program back in our medical, we didn’t do that 87 percent of THCA. We just did THCA plus THC equals total THC. So, it was basically 13 percent higher on the THCA side than it is today.

So, it gave the illusion that we had higher potency in our flower at that time than we did to the tune of about 13 to 15%, let’s say, but that’s really. The extent of it. So, I don’t know what products we don’t have on the market, but I’m happy to manufacture them if somebody could tell me what we’re looking for.

Brian Scott-Smith: I suppose the other point to make as well is with the advent of adult recreational use, more dispensaries retail have opened up. So, one could say that medical marijuana patients, instead of having to go to their traditional dispensary, now have the opportunity to go somewhere else and obviously purchase from there.

And, when we’re talking about convenience and price, I suppose that’s , again, one of the things that factors into even somebody who’s on the medical marijuana patient plan, as it were.

Rino Ferrarese: Yeah, that’s a great point. I forgot about that. We had patients registered to a single dispensary for years.

You could change dispensaries, but it was a bit of a process and it took maybe a day or two, I don’t know, might have taken longer, might have taken less, but I remember that and patients were going to their dispensary and they were getting their medicine with their pharmacist. So, there was that relationship.

I don’t know if that exists that way. But don’t forget the original six dispensaries that opened in 2014. They were all owned and operated by pharmacists. I can probably name you all six of them. And they were pharmacists who did patient intakes. When you were a new patient in the dispensary, they sat you down for an hour.

They went over your medicines. They went over your lifestyle. They went over your needs. They made sure you understood what cannabis was, how to take it, the different types of different producers. They covered so much ground. I don’t know that pharmacists are sitting down for an hour anymore with new patients.

And even if a patient transferred to a new pharmacy, they did a new patient intake. Back in the olden days dispensary owners were part of the Academy of Dispensaries that was a subgroup under the Connecticut Pharmacists Association, CPA. What happened was the Academy of Dispensaries They lasted from 2014 up until probably 2019, 2020.

And I think what really caused the erosion of that professional association was, it was originally only pharmacists working with pharmacists. And then we had non pharmacists come in. And then some of these operators had more stores than others. And next thing everybody had a slightly different priority.

Didn’t meet their business needs and ultimately the organization dissolved, and everybody went on their own way. But I think we lost something when we lost that academy because it was this unified voice of pharmacists that could speak on behalf of a medical program, behalf of patients, what they all see, they’re all trained the same way.

We don’t have that anymore. As far as even as, as far as an industry association. There are there are the legacy producers, they are involved in their groups, we have the new operators, but it’s not a cohesive sort of industry the way it was back when there were only four growers and six dispensaries.

But that’s to be expected when an industry grows. But that’s why I’m glad that Erin’s around because she can speak on behalf of the patients.

Brian Scott-Smith: . Obviously, as we look to 2025, which is now literally around the corner, what does 2025 look like for the cannabis industry in Connecticut?

Do you feel?

Rino Ferrarese: Good question, Brian. I hope that we continue to see growth sales growth. Because if sales are growing, it means that customers and patients are satisfied with the quality and the price of the products that they’re getting here and in our state that means that the industry is thriving.

And, the tax revenue that can drive various initiatives, especially social equity initiatives and there’s continued growth of the program. There are some upcoming legislative issues that I hope we continue to approach with a steady hand and a metered approach that we really evaluate.

If we’re making changes, how those changes would affect the industry as a whole, the customers and the consumers and the ability for compliance and regulation. And we really take in all multiple factors before we make changes. , we have a solid program. Sure. Could it be better?

Everything could be better, but I think we’re doing a good job. And I would like to see, but possibly. Just a little loosening on certain restrictions particularly cannabis is not more dangerous than alcohol. Every time I read an article that talks about, the DUI deaths in Connecticut resulting, either wrong way drivers it always involves alcohol.

 Alcohol related fatalities in the United States. Connecticut’s number five. I read the story. The first paragraph talked about alcohol, and the next five talked about it might probably be cannabis’s fault. Because when there’s a DUI, they test the driver, and if they find alcohol, they stop right there.

They don’t go and test further to see if cannabis is involved. So even cannabis is to blame when it’s not even to blame. So, I’d maybe like to see cannabis at least get the same consideration that alcohol does. And especially on the taxation that we’re paying 20 plus percent on cannabis products and alcohol is not taxed at that rate.

Cigarettes aren’t taxed at that rate. It doesn’t make sense why. And those are not healthy products, alcohol, and cigarettes. Cannabis, I won’t say it’s healthy, but it’s not unhealthy. It’s disproportionate the way that it’s regulated, the way that it’s taxed. I would just like to see it treated like alcohol and other similar age getting products about that.

Brian Scott-Smith: The federal government is considering actually declassifying cannabis very slightly, not to where I’m sure you would like it to be declassified too. But I understand from the last thing I read that it will be reduced down to the equivalent of something like, a painkiller.

will that aid in any way? Because certainly your industry, as you said earlier in the interview from financing, et cetera, because it’s still, federally, it’s illegal will any of that help at all or not? And with the change in administration in 2025, do you think it’s even going to happen?

Rino Ferrarese: It’s hard to say, probably not. If I, you could just take a look at the cannabis stocks, all the publicly traded stocks with the Canadian exchanges. , they’ve set all-time lows. I think that’s because the industry has resigned itself to the fact that nothing’s going to happen for a while so that those dollars have gone and sought investment elsewhere.

Even if it does on the federal level happen, I don’t know that the reclassification gets us anything because that’s only applied to medical. I don’t know how it would work in Connecticut, but potentially it would only be for the 30,000 patients and the products that they purchase in our state, which makes up a small amount, small percentage of the overall industry sales in our state.

I think it’s of limited benefit there. It doesn’t get us to banking. It doesn’t get us to credit cards. That all happens in a safe in some sort of a safe banking bill. And I think that would really move, move the needle. And that’s what we need to look for. But as far as reclassification of Class 3, and I think it’s mired in lawsuit right now, isn’t it?

Is there something going on? Somebody’s finding it somewhere, but. I’m sure they are. Yeah, so banking, we prefer banking over Class 3, or Schedule 3 rather.

Brian Scott-Smith: Reno Ferrarese. Of Affinity Grow. Thank you ever so much for talking to us and giving us a bit of an insider glimpse at the state of cannabis in the state of Connecticut.Rino Ferrarese: Thank you very much, Brian.

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