How People Make It In the Legal Weed Business

[Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] and then down here I don't know everybody out here then we'll few you out here many of you have always considered yourself soldiers of this war on drugs I myself I still say I'm a front running so I'm right [Music] my whole 20 years when all the people getting together no matter what color you are you will bleed green [Music] if you guys want to be somewhere on 4/20 this is what this is about 420 okay April 20th the state capital on the steps [Music] I think you'd have to go back to the starters chemistry and how many people that don't know the history about 420 I want to say it's just a national time to smoke weed and I don't really know who invented it who came up with it but you know it's been like that I'm gonna be 32 years old and ever since I could remember I remember 420 since a kid 421 II manage everything though it means more than Christmas to me as Macaulay he's definitely a holiday I love to celebrate I was more so fascinated by 4/20 because it really began where where I grew up in a little town called San Rafael which is up in Marin County of Northern California but there's a group of kids and after school every day at four-twenty they would meet and they've tried to search out into the foothills to find this supposed kind of lost marijuana farm that was out in the hills they did this day in and day out and I'd never found it but it came to be that you would meet for 22 to get to get the marijuana to get the gun so the history is quite interesting it's just morphed into being the norm I mean just short of being an official federal holiday who maybe when the feds recognize it'll get there here in Denver it's a rally to bring awareness to racial profiling all of it I have understood for a long time that the policies of prohibition that the country has had for decades were total failures we've seen that it essentially has been billions of dollars spent millions of people incarcerated and very little impact on actual health and safety outcomes in the cannabis industry there's issues that need to be addressed one of the big ones in Colorado right now is public consumption we are seeing record number of tourists coming to Colorado it's illegal to consume anywhere in public or in most hotel rooms I mean in the last apartment I was leasing it was illegal for me to come home and smoke a joint I could be evicted for consuming this perfectly legal product and that's a real issue that the industry is facing right now and the legislators are facing I don't think it's a derogatory term a lot of individuals call themselves you know I'm a STONER guy I'm a STONER chick those are the kind of individuals that really embraced 4/20 that really this is this is me I'm proud of it this is a lifestyle it doesn't mean that I'm not as smart as anyone else or I'm not as motivated as anyone else about it downtown I'm gonna smoke peace love and peace of mind and relax 4:20 today we're gonna celebrate like everybody birthday today [Music] [Applause] the cannabis is a website dedicated to the news and culture reporting around legal marijuana everything you need in marijuana news views reviews spend a lot of time thinking about [Laughter] [Music] we didn't know what it was going to look like what it was going to feel like we didn't know what legalization was going to look like but that's the whole point behind the the cannabis I started the website in November of 2013 after former Denver Post editor Greg Moore asked me to start a website about weed at the Denver Post we are the largest news gathering operation in Colorado it's somewhere where you can go and you can get a little bit of culture but really what you're getting is you're getting the journalistic approach to this industry which really doesn't exist people think of pot and they think of Jamaican Flags and High Times magazine and all these other very advocate based journalism groups and there's really no newspaper group and that's how we approach it we report on culture the same way we report on pesticides the people who are anti legalization have very valid concerns fearing that this is going to find its way into children's hands more prevalently now john hickenlooper who's our governor our former mayor our current mayor of Denver Michael Hancock neither of these individuals were pro marijuana were pro recreational for pro-legalization they did not want this but the people did and so Hancock and Hickenlooper both took it upon themselves to implement the the will of the people and that's what we've seen if I had children I wouldn't want them smoking weed and or using marijuana until their their brain was fully developed they always think oh you're the weed editor the coolest job and while it is the coolest job and we want to be the authority on cannabis journalism we've been covering weed for a very long time going back to medical legalization in 2000 and recreational legalization in 2012 and then kind of in between when they finally regulated the medical system in 2009 which was when the dispensary boom happened and when we suddenly found ourselves with more medical marijuana shops than Starbucks every journalist has an opinion on anything that they're going into and anything that they're reporting on and while we're journalists we're not advocacy journalists you're dealing with prejudices on both sides and you have to find that that true honest center like this isn't this isn't a bad industry but it's not always a great industry either and you have to always check yourself and just remember you're not friends you're the watchdog when is the brain fully developed is it 18 is it 21 some even say 25 but it's a part of the conversation that absolutely needs to be heard and when you look at the regulation that's happened in this space statewide and in local municipalities as well I mean all of the stakeholders have had of a very big part in that conversation I can honestly say that's been a success of this Colorado model is realizing that what you're putting out there the first time the first time in history that any government has ever tried to regulate and tax these kinds of sales it's going to be imperfect it's going to need input from the community and from stakeholders and hopefully your own regulation and approach can become better through those tweaks the scene in Colorado is really trying to find itself right now we're moving past the stoner stereotypes stoner jokes are old hat nobody really wants to hear them anymore it won Colorado sets its mind to something it's gonna happen and it happens quickly it's very cool to watch if it came down to one thing that I've learned in the last two and a half years it's probably we've been lied to so much on the subject and so it feels great to be a part of you know this this movement it's not a pro-legalization movement it's a pro truth movement pro journalism and that's what we're doing here at the post this is a phenomenally historic time to be witnessing [Music] we carry alternatives to our firearm the last thing we want to do is deadly force but it's very important for us to have one I rather have it not need it than need it and not have it [Music] blue line protection group is a compliance risk mitigation company one of our focus areas is security for the legal cannabis industry here in Colorado and other states in our business we provide transportation for the cannabis product as well as cash [Music] we're heading to one of our clients where they have collected revenue from their dispensaries and they're preparing it for deposit into the banks we're gonna head up there we're gonna pick up their money we're going to track it secure it and then bring it on to the truck and then we're going to do the transport to the bank where they will receive it and deposit it accordingly we've had very good success thus far in the previous two and a half years with hiring military folks and/or law enforcement may seem a little strange but but they're looking at it as well it's it's a legitimate business now I did 18 years of law enforcement as a cop I did a two years in Kosovo overseas in Iraq I did that for about nine years I am a former law enforcement officer I had some very much a death occult issues coming into it because I formerly worked in in the narcotics field and actually made arrests for folks using illegal drugs including marijuana ended up having a friend and and we kind of discussed it did a little Rick you know at one point you took an oath to protect the laws in the Constitution of the United States that was ingrained in me for thirty years but now it is legal so do those folks not deserve the same amount of security and/or protection that every other citizen or legitimate business would our business has grown to the point where we had to have a new building across here as you can see still in the construction phases is a very large Bank raid vault now you have to remember there's a lot of cash involved in in this industry there's the potential of millions of dollars it should be somewhere I'm assuming if everything goes right it's probably close to somewhere near maybe a hundred thousand a seventy thousand it's really cool to kind of be one of the pioneers of the security for this industry let's run good legitimate businesses because the industry is producing a great deal of tax revenue it's important that we do it right from the very beginning and and we maintain that focus throughout as the industry grows I'm the driver well Raph gets out I stay in the vehicle watch over make sure no one tries to come to the vehicle because if something happens it's gonna happen fast you really don't have time for communication you know obviously our life comes first so we're gonna we're going to take care of ourselves you know we obviously want to protect the clients assets but then when it comes down to it he's going to drop a bag and go you know it's that's a liability we can take I'll rather lose the money than lose his life so okay we arrived at the clients location to collect their revenue I'm going to bag it tag it and track it and then proceed back to the vehicle then we're gonna head to the next venue which will be the bank for deposit came out oh man I always smell like dope when I go home [Music] where will the the ugly side or the cartel side are the dark side of the drug industry will it raise its head and say well we're losing a lot of money I think that's the part that I can't predict [Music] it's amazing man I feel happy every time I come to work it's one of the greatest feelings in the world knowing that this is finally happening older generation never thought it would man my grandma is saying still to this day I can't believe you're farming marijuana [Music] so this industry is exactly like anything else and when you come into my facility your eyes will open and and you'll say this is an industry this is not a subculture so when people come into our facility I think they expect to see a whole bunch of stoners around smoking and just kind of watching plants grow and that's not the case I got into this with my brother Pete we've co-founded medicine man in 2009 I went to him I said hey let's go big with this and he said ok and so then the hard part star we had to write a business plan that we could then take to my mother and we first had to break the news to her that Pete actually smoked pot and he was growing in his basement they had been for years and and and then we had asked for money and in somehow she said yes to that we harvest product on a daily basis so it's a real machine and the process goes from genetics so making sure you have the right plants that you need in order to satisfy demand on multiple different fronts and then you have cloning so you take clones of those plants just like anything else you take a little chute and you grow a root ball and you replant it and then it goes into the vegetative state where it gets big enough and then we move it into the flowering state where it ends up growing the buds that we sell and then they're packaged into a interim bag that we can then ship to infuse products company or down to our own dispensary or whatever so that's what he's doing is he's getting all these patches grouped together into manageable pouches and we usually pack by the pound so in the cannabis industry were highly regulated and one of those things that are regulated or the plants we have to inform the state every time we take a cutting from a mother or every time we pop a plant from a seed so these tags if it's blue it means it's recreational if it's yellow like the one over there it means it's medical and this is the state tracking there's an RFID circuit in there hard to show while it's on the plant and then there's a barcode so if they bring in a hand scanner they can hit a button and all the plants will give their inventory information to their scanner or we use this to take inventory internally just so we have a record of the plant behavior it's currently drying and as you see that tag from below follows the plant wherever it goes from seed to sow so at our current cultivation facility we're growing just over two metric tons of cannabis a year we're looking at about 14 or 15 million dollars a year in revenue the u.s. is sort of unique in that we have a set of laws at the federal level but we also have states that are able to make a lot of independent decisions about their policies drug policy is one that is particularly complicated in that respect and especially now with Marijuana Policy you've got a lot of states that are making the decision to move forward with a smarter approach that involves legalizing taxing and regulating marijuana the federal government has lagged behind on this and marijuana is still considered completely illegal at the federal level the federal laws regarding cannabis has prevented the banking industry from servicing us quite honestly like my brother had had an account with them for 20 years they canceled not only all of the principal's accounts but all of our children's accounts too I'd go to work every day and I kind of peak around the corner when I got close to see if there's a whole bunch of black SUVs out front of our shop ready to take me to prison that's not a joke that that was true I used to have dreams and not seeing my family because I was in prison it was a recurring nightmare is there still a black market yes there's still people that are pushing drugs to kids and and there's still people who are gonna get it you Eagle II maybe they're professional and they don't want their name right now in any way or whatever it might be there is certainly still a black market but it's far far smaller than it used to be Colorado is absolutely booming because of the cannabis industry this market is growing and growing and growing and a couple years you know next year looks like 6.8 billion is what people are predicting and that seems very reasonable to me and in a 45 billion dollar market you know it's gonna be bigger than beer I am a registered medical marijuana patient here in the state of Colorado which means I have a license to be able to cultivate cannabis at home for medicinal use I'm not stoned I'm not I'm not you know I'm not stoned I mean because I don't want to be and I'm medicated I know [Music] so I make a lot of my own edibles so this is actually cannabutter that I've made myself and and then I keep them these are about 2 tbsp chunks and I keep them in the freezer and then I just thought out what I need and I can make cookies or muffins [Music] I use cannabis medicinally to treat the variety of symptoms that I experience from fibromyalgia fibromyalgia is a chronic condition most people think of it as being chronic pain but there's also chronic fatigue insomnia anxiety digestive issues mental clarity and focus because of the way marijuana is classified at the federal level it is considered to have by the federal government no medical value and in fact that makes it almost impossible to get federal funds to research any medical value we have gone for so long with indications that cannabis can have such dramatic benefits on some of our most difficult conditions and illnesses and we haven't followed up on those it's definitely saved the quality of my life probably saved my marriage you know saved my relationship with my grandchildren and my children because I can be more active with them I can participate now pain at that level is completely overwhelming I did use pharmaceuticals I think you know after 28 years part of the reason why I was so excited with cannabis - as it was something that I felt like I could live with for the rest of my life you can consuming an enormous amount and it will be a terrible time but it doesn't actually shut your brain down you can certainly over consume and then make bad decisions that could lead to your death sometimes people go a little overboard and saying no one has ever died because of marijuana and it's technically true but you want to be understanding that there are risks involved I consume in probably every way you possibly can with cannabis I rely primarily on edibles I like the long-acting effect that I get i augment that with smoking or vaporizing sublingual tinctures we also have patches and creams so right now what you see over here is everything that would grow down here for our medical patients they make it in so many different forms you got the lotions so if you have arthritis you got you know types of little pains like that you can use it as a topical whether than smoke and you know just like the edibles people who don't want to smoke they can induce it that way another great one is teachers you know that hemp teachers of the CVD teachers this is what the children are moving all across the world for around here you knows this stuff right here this is what the people want you know this is what they're giving their kids that's not getting them high and that's stopping them from doing 100 seizures to three seizures a day the kids that are using cannabis for epilepsy a lot of them are using the high CBD form that's cannabidiol that's what you're hearing about with Charlotte's Web or Haley's hope there are people whose lives have been completely changed by access to medical marijuana are there some people who are maybe exaggerating their claims in order to get access to marijuana sure but at this point the the stories are just too overwhelming to deny if this was your child wouldn't you do anything you know if to save their lives and I am just really grateful that Colorado has been able to play this role to be this beacon of hope and healing for so many people I moved out here because I didn't care for the lifestyle and the pace of life from the East Coast I moved from New York City I have always consumed you know in my life I never expected to be in the cannabis industry [Music] I'm Jeremy Bamford I'm the CEO and founder of pocket comm we were created as a resource for consumers for marijuana tourism in Colorado we're an ancillary business meaning we don't touch the plan we don't grow it we don't sell it we're a strictly informational our website is comprised of business directories showing people where to buy where to stay and what to do and so essentially you know we don't provide any our services ourselves other than promoting these businesses we are hoping to change the way that people view the cannabis industry some people still think that we just come to work and get high or you know we're just going to events and there's often this this different light that I shed upon the industry that really should should not be there anymore really challenging part of the cannabis industry is raising money a lot of these investment firms are very cautious about investing this industry I mean they understand art the growth rate cannabis was the fastest growing industry in the US and 2014 and 2015 I know there's expected to be over 12,000 dispensaries open in the United States by 2020 and so this is a huge industry the stigma that the cannabis industry carries is very interesting and one that we continue to fight every day it took us once a months to find a banking solution and the banks are very concerned about accepting our deposits because they know a lot of our revenue is generated directly from promoting dispensaries and obviously were accepting money from them so we're kind of one one off the chain from the drug money I guess you could say most of the companies are receiving funding not provincial capitalist firms but from angel investors it's the best in our companies they have to be what's called an accredited investor and to be accredited and in regards to the eyes of the IRS you have to have over a million dollars of net worth excluding your primary residence and/or earn a salary of $250,000 per year [Music] we're seeing these larger companies come around and recognize the value that cannabis can bring to their business and so some of those larger names and the ones that we are working with in the very near future are more accepting and realize the potential and obviously the money that could be made there [Music] one of the biggest issues here is is consumption and where do people consume at and especially from a tourism perspective Colorado does not allow social lounges for marijuana consumption very--it there are some gray area businesses operating but there hasn't been a lot of clarity so you're seeing a lot of tourists come out here and they have nowhere where they can actually combust like smoke a joint when it comes down to it people are asking well once we buy PI weed where do we go what do we do we hope to be able to overcome that and be able to provide our users with an answer to that right now Denver and Colorado we're forcing people to break the law that is something that you know as a legitimate cannabis business we do not want to support I mean that leads into this huge issue about driving under the influence we don't have that test yet to accurately determine from a legal standpoint whether or not a person is high that is definitely a topic a huge topic especially in the state of Colorado it's interesting to think about you know when you're on the road who is high and you worry about that with drinking but all of a sudden now you have another substance which you know we believe should obviously be respected but where is that line I saw what you know the investors and what other people are seeing in terms of the potential the industry if you know the green rush as they're calling it this community that we've become a part of in Denver we're leading the way people are looking towards us to establish the start of this revolution [Music] you you

Channel: All 4

Views: 1,276,529

Keywords: All 4, Channel 4, highs and lows of the weed business, weed, cannabis, weed business, weed industry, cannabis business, cannabis industry, behind the scenes, 420, blaze it, denver, denver 420, legal weed, illegal weed, weed laws, weed in usa, legal cannabis, illegal cannabis, how to get weed, how to make weed legal, marijuana, marijuana industry, business, industry, cannabist, the cannabist, legal weed business, legal marijuana business, making it in weed business

Id: xMBKoQg7558

Length: 29min 14sec (1754 seconds)

Published: Sat Jun 30 2018