Episode 98

Tiffani Sharp Lifts Women Upward in Cannabis

Mar 2, 2020 | Length: 0h 31m

Sacramento lawyer Tiffani Sharp began advocating for the dispossessed in the wake of 2001’s terror attacks, as a lawyer for immigrants. Today Sharp’s focus is helping women of color to find a place in the cannabis industry. In this episode the attorney advocates for calling weed marijuana and explains to Alex and Donnell what it feels like to be in weed as a woman of color with financial resources. Trigger warning: The word “marijuana” is said multiple times.

WOC Canna
www.woccanna.com

Willow Tree Roots
www.willowtreeroots.org/

Women lack venture capital funding
www.entrepreneur.com/article/324743

The Cannabis Dictionary
weedweekreports.com/the-cannabis-di…-alex-halperin/

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This transcript has been lightly edited for clarity.

 

Podcast transcript

Alex Halperin (00:06):
Welcome to WeedWeek. I’m Alex Halperin.

Donnell Alexander (00:08):
And I’m Donnell Alexander.

Alex Halperin (00:10):
This is the WeedWeek podcast. You can subscribe to our free newsletters WeedWeek, WeedWeek California, and WeedWeek, Canada at www.weedweek.net. And you can find us on Twitter and Instagram @weedweeknews. Got any feedback, write to us at hello@weedweek.net and of course, subscribe and review, or like this podcast on iTunes.

Donnell Alexander (00:26):
Our guest this week is Tiffany Sharp. And you know why Tiffany Sharp’s on Alex?

Alex Halperin (00:31):
Why?

Donnell Alexander (00:32):
She’s on because I was up at my home away from home, one of many, Sacramento, and I came across some dispensaries that really made me think about where we are on the national level, not just an LA thing, it’s really different up there in Northern California. And she’s a lawyer who helps women get into the industry. More specifically, she helps women of color get into the cannabis industry.

Alex Halperin (00:53):
And she’s a cool lady, too.

Donnell Alexander (00:54):
Her background is really unusual, and I think we spent more time than we usually do delving into the background because it was kind of fascinating beyond control. What I loved at the end though, she told us some things about the local scene and women’s approach up there to cannabis, sort of a community approach. It sounded so different. Sounded foreign to our everyday talk about California cannabis industry stuff.

Alex Halperin (01:14):
It did a little bit, sort of a, yeah, it’s definitely a different scene up there.

Donnell Alexander (01:18):
So, before we delve into her, let’s talk a little bit about something you might not expect to hear on the podcast Yelp.

Alex Halperin (01:25):
So, it was a pretty big deal at the beginning of this year when Weedmaps, which is sometimes called the Yelp of weed, stopped twisting unlicensed dispensaries on its platform, at least in California. And that was such a big deal because it was crucial to so many illegal dispensers that was how their customers found them. And so now that Weedmaps isn’t supporting them, those unlicensed dispensaries have had a harder time connecting with their customers. But it turns out that Yelp, which is the Yelp of Yelp, is still mistaking those dispensaries. Although it has a warning.

Donnell Alexander (02:03):
Well, what I find interesting is something I saw on social media about not just them being a facilitator, an alternative, if you will, to Weedmaps or whatever, but they’re also offering discounts through something that you call Yelp deals. What do you think of that? Does that make them different sorts of collaborators?

Alex Halperin (02:20):
These are Yelp deals on illegal products?

Donnell Alexander (02:24):
Yeah. Yeah. There was a report from a store and I’ll just say in Southern California, that was offering it online and you know, it’s like a deal where you buy a $100 worth of stuff and you get $125 if you use your Yelp gift certificate.

Alex Halperin (02:34):
That’s pretty funny.
Donnell Alexander (02:38):
It’s funny. But it’s funny in the sense, like there are people being busted all the time for selling illegal weed and they’re not really selling it, but they’re a participant in the market, right?
Alex Halperin (02:46):
Yeah. It sounds like they are to some degree profiting from it.

Donnell Alexander (02:50):
And that instance is 20%? I don’t know my math very well. And you know, you can go bust people up North with their makeshift farms and that’s easy pickings. And I think it’s a little harder to go after you all. So anyway, we have a great guest and let’s have her on because she talks a bit, we let her happily here is Tiffany Sharp.

Alex Halperin (03:19):
Thanks so much for joining us on WeedWeek.

Tiffany Sharp (03:21):
Thank you for having me. I appreciate the opportunity to talk about some important topics.

Donnell Alexander (03:27):
We’ll start talking about your background in international law.

Alex Halperin (03:30):
Yeah. You’ve had a wild career. Tell us a little bit about it.

Tiffany Sharp (03:33):
That’s the best kind to have, right? If your career and your life isn’t wild, what’s the point? So I’m an attorney, I actually have a business degree before I became an attorney. I got it from Sac State. Sacramento’s my hometown. I’m all about Sacramento. Went to SAC State. Truth of the matter is my parents agreed to pay for college, but they said, “You need to stay close to home.” So, I took that compromise and took the free education by my parents who accumulated some generational wealth to pass on and got that education. So I have a degree in business administration, and then pursued a law degree with a specialization in international law. My primary goal for getting that was to practice international business transactions, which is a far cry from what I’m doing now, but that was the intent and purpose. So, I started working in the international field primarily.

Donnell Alexander (04:29):
So, what were you doing?

Tiffany Sharp (04:30):
I graduated law school shortly after September 11, so it’s been almost 20 years. And at that time, I had actually gotten a job offer in Germany. I spoke German at the time, I don’t anymore, and was getting ready to pursue that. And my brother had a child. It was the first child in the family. And I decided I didn’t want to miss that opportunity and decided to stay in the US and then September 11th happened and I was scrambling for a job and just picked up doing some immigration representation because I really I liked representing underrepresented populations and found out I really, really loved it and really loved that sort of advocacy. And so that’s how I got into the field that I’ve been in for almost 20 years. But what that did is that really gave me a sense of what it is to work with people who are underrepresented and how I could use my degree and my education and my voice to advocate for a change for the better.

Donnell Alexander (05:36):
Wait I’m sorry. I have to stop. Change for the better, you were specifically thinking about underrepresented people. What does that mean when you say change for the better?

Tiffany Sharp (05:45):
I started out my legal career lining up black and brown men from Muslim countries for what was then called special registration after September 11th, at the INS.

Donnell Alexander (05:56):
I don’t know what that is.

Tiffany Sharp (05:57):
So what special registration was, after September 11th happened, the Bush administration implemented a policy in which men, between the ages of, I think 18, and I can’t remember the gap age, but something like 75, I don’t remember from certain countries, again primarily black and brown countries, Muslim countries, had to go and register with the INS and had to check in. We forget that this has been doing the targeting of black and brown populations. It has been so widespread for so long that a lot of the history of it we forget.

Donnell Alexander (06:34):
When you started talking about that, I realized I hadn’t thought about that in easily a decade. And it was a thing that we were upset about and we were even quicker at being upset and forgetting now than we were back then. It’s really disturbing.

Tiffany Sharp (06:47):
That’s right. We very easily forget our own history, which is why we’re sort of in the position that we’re in now. It is like this stuff happens to this day. So I was appalled as well. I saw these community members having to line up at, you know, it’s still in the same, it’s now people are still having to line up and check in, but back then it was INS. And this is months after it happened. So that’s how I started out my legal advocacy career.

Donnell Alexander (07:21):
How does this get to be a career that’s about cannabis?

Tiffany Sharp (07:24):
Well, yeah, let’s go down this 20 year road. So, during that time I started doing a lot of international volunteer work. I opened my own practice because I kept getting fired from legal jobs. I opened my own law practice.

Donnell Alexander (07:35):
You can’t just bullet past that. Why were you getting fired?

Alex Halperin (07:39):
insubordination?

Tiffany Sharp (07:40):
That’s exactly why. How did you know?

Alex Halperin (07:43):
Okay. It takes one to know one.

Tiffany Sharp (07:45):
Yeah. And it was actually in subordination. Before I started my law practice in 2004, I got fired from five jobs in one year in subordination, pretty much.

Donnell Alexander (07:56):
You realize that everybody comes on this podcast, hyping their stuff, but you’re the first one to come on to talk about being fired five times, but go on. I love it.

Tiffany Sharp (08:04):
See, it’s the road to entrepreneurship. I think that there’s a certain mentality when it comes to entrepreneurship, just in general where you probably get fired a lot. Like the only people that would hire you is yourself. So here I am. You know, I haven’t had a “real job” working for the band since 2004. So, I’m pretty happy about that. But what it did is afforded me an opportunity to actually do a lot of volunteer work. And I started going two to four times a year working in remote countries. So, Kenya, Peru, Nepal, Morocco, all these different places, volunteering and primarily working with women and working in economic development, trying to help them economically, also children. Then my daughter was born nine years ago, I stopped traveling so much, but then when she turned 5, she told me I needed to get my own life because she was going to kindergarten and I couldn’t follow her around anymore. So, I started a nonprofit working internationally to help women be empowered to and through entrepreneurship.

Donnell Alexander (09:11):
Is this Willow Tree Roots?

Tiffany Sharp (09:12):

That’s exactly right. Willow Tree Roots, my daughter’s name is Willow. And so, it’s named after her. We had a project in Kenya, Peru, Nepal, and then more recently here in Sacramento. This is how I come into cannabis. Here in Sacramento we’ve worked with the most underrepresented women around the world, empowering them to and through entrepreneurship, in Kenya I was working with HIV positive mothers, Peru domestic violence survivors, Nepal human sex trafficking survivors. And in Sacramento, locally, it’s women of color in the business world, and started an entrepreneurial incubator for women of color called The Power of She. We were lucky enough, I self-funded the first cohort and then the city of Sacramento through a rails grant thankfully funded the last two cohorts. But it was through that program where I started to see a lot of women of color coming through the incubator, trying to get into the cannabis business. And so that posed several different areas of uncertainty and needs for advocacy. So here we are talking about women of color. There’s one sort of area of advocacy in the business world of entrepreneurs. That’s expectant of the whole different realm. And then you start talking about the cannabis industry and particularly the history of cannabis when you’re talking about just Black and Brown populations and how marijuana came to be illegal in the United States. Anyway, it’s just a base. It was totally based on xenophobia and racism. And then you add sexism to that trying to get into this industry, the cannabis industry. And there was just so many women that were so frustrated by not just the obstacles of being a woman of color entrepreneur, but then trying to enter this industry that’s historically criminalized because of xenophobia and racism, and then trying to overcome, you know, the sexism portion of it. My friends tease me because they say that any sort of gaps in the system I have to run at it. I saw a real gap in the system for advocacy, for women of color, trying to get into the cannabis, to the legal cannabis field as entrepreneurs.

Donnell Alexander (11:24):
I’m still interested in the last ten drills of your journey here. As you came into all this as a person who had generational wealth behind her, how did you find that your trip was different from the people that you were working with? Is it just money? I mean, you’re all women of color, but there’s a different thing happening.

Tiffany Sharp (11:41):
So let me give you a little bit of history. My parents are from the South, like not Southern California, but the South, my father is from Montgomery, Alabama, my mom is from Texas. They met at Tuskegee and my father was the air force. He retired as a major in the air force of the B-52 bomber pilot. And so they really understood. They instilled upon, at least me, I don’t know about my brothers. (inaudible)

Donnell Alexander (12:09):
I think you’re going to stop talking. Right there. I sense that.

Tiffany Sharp (12:13):
Yeah. But really you know, my father said to me when I was 13, I’m the only girl. And I’ve always been sort of advocating for something. I used to pass around PETA petitions at my junior high school to stop animal testing for cosmetics. I’ve always been into something. And when I was 13 he said, “You know, if you don’t get an education, you’re going to have to have some man take care of you for the rest of your life.” So I really focused on getting an education. So, I wouldn’t have to be told what to do. I mean, that sounds funny, the whole reason I went to college is I don’t want anybody telling me what to do. So that gave me an advantage of understanding that education was my way of doing whatever the hell I want to do, basically.

Donnell Alexander (13:03):
I’m not sure you’ve answered my question. I mean, you came in with money, right?

Tiffany Sharp (13:06):
Not a lot of money. I would rephrase it and say resources. I think that’s different. I think there’s a difference. There’s a difference between money and resources. So, my family didn’t come from money. They accumulated generational wealth. My parents paid for my college education, but when I went to law school, he said, I’m not paying for law school. That wasn’t part of the deal. So I actually worked full time and went to law school, mostly full time to make my own money. My parents were very strict. I had a curfew at 20 years old, I had an 11 o’clock curfew and I was 20 years old. Try to answer your question. How did that change my trajectory? It was expected. It was sort of expected of me that I was going to have some sort of education and career, not to the extent that it is, but that’s what it was expected. At least of me, not necessarily my brothers, because I was the girl, the youngest. So, I don’t have a history of criminal encounters, with law enforcement. So, for me that I sort of think of it as like an obligation that I was able to have these resources available growing up. But now this is my obligation to use those resources and try to help other particularly women of color. That’s my focus.

Donnell Alexander (14:16):
Do you learn from them? What do you learn?

Tiffany Sharp (14:18):
Absolutely. What do I learn from them? I have to say this, when we had the incubator for women of color going on, I think I really realized how powerful we are as a group. It’s an inspiration, women of color and the innate business acumen that I think we have let itself to be advantageous across many boards. What’s been confirmed and you know, the World Bank studies have shown this. We saw it in our international programs, when women make money, we turn it right back into the community. When women make money, it betters the community. We make sure that children are educated. The infrastructures are taken care of, the environment is taking care of our elders are taking care of. In my opinion and from what I’ve seen, women empowered in a business sense are better stewards of the community. So, when you start talking about cannabis or legalize marijuana, I want to call it marijuana because that’s the name it was given when it was criminalized.

Donnell Alexander (15:24):
That’s really interesting that you choose to do that. Is there a reason?

Tiffany Sharp (15:28):
Yeah. Let me, share with you a little bit of the history of the criminalization of marijuana.

Donnell Alexander (15:34):
You know that we do this like every week, because everybody feels like they have to introduce our audience to it. So, you don’t have to do that.

Tiffany Sharp (15:40):
Okay. Let me not “educate you” because you probably know more than I do. Specifically the term marijuana, the bureaucrats at the time after prohibition ended really focused on the Spanish sounding name of the plant because after the Mexican Civil War, a lot of Mexicans were crossing over into the border, bringing marijuana with them also from the Caribbean Islands. And so, when they started talking about taxing it, it was the first attack on it. They should call it marijuana and really emphasizing the sort of foreign Spanish invasion “sound” of marijuana that is the Spanish name for it. It was specifically the term marijuana, the name for it, marijuana. The Spanish name of it was specifically used to invoke fear in the white population that this is what you have to fear from people coming in from different countries. And so now that it’s legal, we’re trying to clean it up and call it cannabis and forget about the history of it. Cannabis doesn’t just involve marijuana. It’s also includes hemp, but we’re specifically talking about marijuana.

Donnell Alexander (16:56):
I want to interrupt for a second because I want to ask Alex because Alex has a book coming out next month, The Cannabis Dictionary. Do you touch on this? How do you deal with this issue?

Alex Halperin (17:04):
Yeah, I’ve always been put off by the idea of using the word and I’m a white guy.

Tiffany Sharp (17:13):
I like how you preface that.

Donnell Alexander (17:16):
Well, it didn’t need to be announced. He sounds like a brother at first.

Alex Halperin (17:20):
That, marijuana is a racist word. I think the people who say that tend to be the people who are trying to sell products to middle aged affluent, often white people, and they’re trying to sort of rebrand it. And that’s what they’re actually involved in.

Donnell Alexander (17:42):
The thing is that it’s what we know. And it’s kind of elitist to talk about cannabis. I’m glad you have that take. Cause it gave us an opportunity to talk about the book, but also because you were, taking it to a bigger point. We were talking about learning from the women that you work with and it’s such an important topic. And I feel like I get so few times to ask it from someone who’s not like on the receiving end of social equity. the lessons that you learned, I know you said that they’re broadly inspirational, but I was wondering if you had an anecdote or something that of someone doing something that made a light go on.

Tiffany Sharp (18:13):
So first of all, all of the women that I saw getting into cannabis or wanting to get into cannabis through this entrepreneurial incubator, they’re wanting to get into marijuana, not to make money, but for the sort of healing aspects of it and wanting to bring that to the community. And what I had seen up until that point, you’re talking about the legal commercial marijuana industry, is particularly in the black and brown communities. It’s not so much the medicinal therapeutic effects of it. We pushed that on those sort of “white populations”, they’re all into the CBD and so on and so forth. But in our communities, we’re not necessarily having those conversations, but these women are talking about how they can help our community heal, not just from physical trauma, but like emotional traumas. And so, what I really started to understand that, learning just from them, the medicinal uses for the plant and the drive to bring it to the community, to help heal the community. You know, it’s almost like I had to convince the women it’s okay to make profits from this business that you’re trying to cultivate because for them it was so much, so ingrained in the nature of woman to want to heal people and heal the community that I had to remind them you can make money too from this because it wasn’t the default, it just wasn’t part of the desire to get into it. What they taught me was so many things, but really to take a step back and say, and this is part of my advocacy now is, look, we’re not just talking about the multibillion dollar financial industry that is now commercial marijuana. We’re talking about a plant that can heal the community, help heal people physically, emotionally, psychologically really advocating for those benefits because our communities have been so persecuted by the criminalization, people like my parents who did come from that sort of, you know, who are kind of bougie, convincing that like they very much (inaudible), I never consumed it until 2000. I consumed it like three times up until 2016, because it was so it was so taboo like, no, we don’t, that’s not what we do. And so trying to really help our populations understand this is an agent of healing, not just financially, but also therapeutically.

Alex Halperin (20:54):
So how are the women you’ve worked with? How are they doing as entrepreneurs in Sacramento?

Tiffany Sharp (21:01):
Oh, it’s a struggle. I’m going to be honest. It’s tough. And this is a daily conversation, a daily frustration when you’re talking about women entrepreneurs in general, it gets it. What I’ll share is in general, women, when you’re just even talking about funding and business resources, women get like less than 1% of funding for entrepreneurial enterprises.

Donnell Alexander (21:29):
That’s a low number. That’s real? Where do you get that from?

Tiffany Sharp (21:32):
I think it was in Forbes.

Alex (21:36):
Is that just for cannabis or for all business?

Tiffany Sharp (21:39):
No. For all businesses, maybe it’s less than 1% or 6%. I’ll get back to you, but it’s very low. And then you start talking about women of color that’s even less. So, then you start talking about the legalized marijuana industry, that is like almost negligible. It’s just a resource thing. That’s really what it comes down to. The resources are already limited. And then you start trying to slice an onion. There are only so many resources.

Donnell Alexander (22:12):
I want to ask a question that doesn’t have to do specifically with women of color. But I know for a fact that it affects women of color. I was up in Sacramento a couple of days, I had bought some edibles that I bought it off the non-government sanctioned weed market. I got 500 milligrams, THC, the legal limit is 100, on the illicit market I got 500 for the same price as the 100. And it just seems to me that prices don’t really mean anything. So how seriously should we take this market and how do you adjust for all that volatility?

Tiffany Sharp (22:43):
Well, I’ll tell you how I personally adjust it. I grow my own stuff. I grow my own. I make my own, I make my own tinctures, I make my own edibles. I make my own oils. I grow my own plants and I grow enough. I got more weed than I consume. People have been doing this for generations. This has been like generational business for many people before it was legalized. I know for a lot of people it’s new, it’s legal. Yay. You can go to a dispensary and spend 60 to 70 bucks for an eighth. But it’s been a lot less for a long time. And you know, people may know it’s good stuff. They trust it. Making home remedies out of them, I think. Okay, let me just put it to you like this. Nobody I know actually goes to a dispensary and purchases product.

Donnell Alexander (23:33):
Thank you. That’s 100% true. That’s why I am always bending the focus, the other way we covered the tip of the iceberg in terms of consumers. It’s like a novelty. This is if you think about the weed that’s consumed in America.

Alex Halperin (23:44):
That’s it. That’s amazing to hear. I have one more question on a different topic, but I think you’ll have some insight into it. The Sacramento marijuana community is now sort of adjacent to a major international and political scandal. Can you tell us a little bit about what’s going on there?

Donnell Alexander (24:05):
Wait, should we set this up for people? Because it’s a little complicated.

Alex Halperin (24:08):
Really complicated. The very basics is that I think his name is Andrey Kukushkin and he was one of four people along with two acquaintances or two associates of Rudy Giuliani who was indicted for, I think what it was is was this sort of campaign finance scheme in order to open a cannabis dispensary.

Donnell Alexander (24:31):
That’s exactly what it was. And it was here in Sacramento.

Tiffany Sharp (24:35):
Eight or nine of them.

Alex Halperin (24:36):
So one of these guys, Andrey Kukushkin is an executive in one of the big companies in Sacramento.

Donnell Alexander (24:46):
But you know, we have to stop for a second to say the name, Lev Parnas. That’s the associate.

Alex Halperin (24:51):
Lev Parnas is the best known of the four people who were indicted. Can of give us a bit of the SAC town perspective, what’s going on?

Tiffany Sharp (25:01):
Yeah, sure can. Well, let me give you the SAC town black perspective. Sacramento has a cap on storefront dispensaries of 30 licenses. There are also provisions that say that you can’t have multiple ownership of multiple dispensaries. So the fact that all this is coming out and it’s still being investigated, I would say, we’re going to find out that a lot of hands are involved in this.

Donnell Alexander (25:25):
What do you mean by that?

Tiffany Sharp (25:27):
(inaudible) we are going to let FBI do their thing, but there’s definitely more to it. But here’s the thing. So the city of Sacramento, the Sacramento city council put a cap on storefront dispensary’s of 30. They only will issue 30 licenses. This storefront dispensary licenses, which is at its cap is, but you tapped out. None of these dispensaries are of color. There are no black owned dispensaries in Sacramento. There’s no brown owned dispensaries in Sacramento. Now you have it coming out that almost one third of these dispensaries are held by basically like one person. The question is, how did this happen? When regulations in Sacramento specifically say that one person cannot own more than one dispensary and here you got nine of them. That didn’t just happen on its own. And so now what, there’s been a lot of uproar about it, a lot of questions about accountability, a lot of questions about city representatives and how did this happen? Who’s contributing to whose campaign and how did this happen. But also, the outrage that none of these are black or brown owned dispensaries. So, none of these profits, and again, going back to the high exorbitant costs of commercial marijuana, none of these profits are going back to the community in which they sit.

Donnell Alexander (26:56):
They do go back in the form of taxes that come back to the community, to the general community. You got to say that, right?

Tiffany Sharp (27:02):
The general community. Sure. I’ll say that.

Donnell Alexander (27:05):
We have let you talk for such a long time because it’s entertaining and super interesting, but we need to say goodbye. And before we say goodbye, I’m going to thank you. I’m sure Alex thanks you for saying marijuana. Because for me, at least I came into pot in ’78 the year that Mary Jane by Rick James came out. So, in my head, it’s always embedded as Rick James. I can convert it to cannabis, but when I’m thinking about getting high, I’m thinking about Mary Jane. So thank you for that. Alex.

Alex Halperin (27:31):
Thanks so much, Tiffany. This was a lot of fun.

Tiffany Sharp (27:33):
Thank you. Let me just say that, I know this has been entertaining and fun. I really hope that people within that being entertained, sort of start thinking about some of the things that we’ve been talking about as far as, particularly women in the industry and some of the benefits, you know, we didn’t touch upon like what I think women as business owners in marijuana can do for the communities, but that we can, I really hope people take a step and delve into some of that so that we can actually get more women of color entrepreneurs in the legal marijuana market.

Donnell Alexander (28:09):
Okay. On your way out, Willow Tree Roots and the California Institute for Cannabis Equity, are they online? Can people find those?

Tiffany Sharp (28:16):
Yeah. So, Willow Tree Roots is online willowtreeroots.org. We’re actually in the process of the California Institute for Cannabis Equity and it’s going to go through some changes. It’s in the process of getting approval as an advocacy nonprofit and that’s going to actually start focusing specifically on working with women of color in the industry as well. So, there’ll be some changes there, but we’re all online. Also, WOC Cana is the company and soon to be organization, that’s going to be like that deals directly with women of color in the industry.

Donnell Alexander (28:49):
That’s a lot and we’re glad for it.

Alex Halperin (28:52):
Thanks so much.

Tiffany Sharp (28:53):
Thanks so much.

Donnell Alexander (28:53):
Take care.

Tiffany Sharp (28:55):
have a good one. Bye.

Alex Halperin (28:56):
All right. That’s our show for this week, but first here’s a quick tweet. This is about the Weedy Awards. We just hosted the first annual Weedy Awards at the London Hotel in West Hollywood. And this tweet comes from Andrew DeAngelo who’s the brother of Steve DeAngelo, and he accepted the award for Harborside for best dispensary.

Donnell Alexander (29:17):
And he had a kind of amazing speech to go along with the tweet. I know that the tweet is what everyone will see, but you needed to be in the room for that effervescent speech unexpected in these times.

Alex Halperin (29:28):
It was pretty charming, but here’s the tweet approximations. He says, “My speech
@WeedWeekNews Weedy Awards was about our community connection. Cooperation over Competition Break down walls don’t build moats. Share knowledge, don’t worry I.P Lock hands not litigate Relationship over transaction. This high tide will lift all boats!” Well thanks so much, Andrew. And that’s @Andrew_DeAngelo on Twitter.

Donnell Alexander (29:55):
That was very much the spirit of the Weedies. The first one, congratulations, Alex. I hope to see you there listener eventually one day. As always you can find us on Instagram and Twitter @weedweeknews, or you can email us hello@weedweek.net. For more weed news, you can sign up for the WeedWeek newsletter, WeedWeek Canada and WeedWeek California, all 3 @weedweek.net, excuse me, the new www.weedweek.net. What do I say that Alex?

Alex Halperin (30:21):
Because we’ve got a beautiful new website. You should check it out.

Donnell Alexander (30:24):
Beautiful. And if you’ve gone this deep into the episode, if you’ve ventured so far, you’re going to want to subscribe and review. And like this podcast on platforms like iTunes, SoundCloud, and Stitcher, and we should mention our 100th episode we’re collecting congratulations at this moment. You don’t have to give us that, but you can do is send us a note on your favorite episodes or guests. And we’ll try to find a segment that represents them. We have a Dan Savage piece. That’s pretty funny because he thinks about weed and sex. Just like us.

Alex (30:51):
Yeah.

Donnell Alexander (30:53):
He’s had experiences. If I can just do a little bit of digression here, do you remember our guests, the cannabis matchmaker, Molly Peckler and some of the advice I heard on the episode with Dan Savage really mirrored what we had with highly devoted to Molly Peckler in terms of matchmaking and cannabis. So maybe we can pair those up somehow.

Alex Halperin (31:14):
I’m Alex Halperin.

Donnell Alexander (31:51):
And I’m Donnell Alexander.

Alex (31:17):
Our show is produced by Donnie Alexander and engineered by Larry Buhl. Alicia Byer wrote our theme music. See you again here next week.

Donnell Alexander (31:24):
Later.

Alex (31:24):
Bye.