Ep4 Dr. Marianne Bays - From Business Expert to Cannabis Pioneer: How Organization Skills Transform the Industry

Marianne Bays  0:00  
I really hope that the psychedelic industry does benefit from some of what we've been through, and can look at, you know, what you're facing, and communicate with the legislators. No, that would be a bad idea. Let's look at how that rolled out over here.

Dr. Sandra Dreisbach  0:17  
Welcome to psychedelic source where wisdom meets practice in the evolving landscape of psychedelic medicine. I'm your host, Dr Sandra Dreisbach, and I'm here to help you navigate the complex intersection of ethics, business and personal growth in a psychedelic space, whether you're a practitioner, therapist, entrepreneur, or simply curious about this transformative field, you found your source for authentic dialog, practical resources and community connection. In each episode, we'll dive deep into the stories, strategies and ethical considerations that matter most to our growing ecosystem. Let's tap in to our inner source of wisdom and explore what it means to build a sustainable and ethical, psychedelic future together.

VO  1:10  
The information shared on this podcast, our website and other platforms may be triggering for some viewers and readers and is for informational, educational and entertainment purposes only. It is not a substitute for professional medical, legal or therapeutic advice while we explore topics related to altered states of consciousness, we do not endorse or encourage illegal activities or substance use. Always research your local laws and consult qualified professionals for guidance. The content provided is as is, and we are not liable for any actions taken based on the information shared. Stay supported and informed. Act responsibly and enjoy the podcast

Dr. Sandra Dreisbach  1:41  
on this episode of The psychedelic source, I talk with Mary Ann base, who is a cannabis industry business entrepreneur, consultant, analyst and advocate and a lifetime resident of New Jersey, a Jersey girl, as you'll hear her stay in this episode. She's been studying and working in the cannabis industry nationally since 2008 and she's been in the consultant on cannabis business license application projects in eight states, including the District of Columbia, helping to win licenses for clients in six of these locations, including one of the first medical cannabis business licenses in New York State. Doctor base performs ongoing cannabis industry analysis and understand state regulatory requirements, business issues and opportunities across the United States. Founding operations, member of calyx development, a real estate investment trust in the cannabis industry, and also a managing director of mingle Ridge business resources LLC, providing consulting services to the industry. But right now, she's currently planning to launch a new jersey cannabis project, product manufacturing business inspired a lot of by like inequity issues that she encountered in the space, in her experience in the northeast, in the cannabis industry, that will hope to provide and produce a wide variety of branded products for the New Jersey market, working with brands from other states, as well as brands with roots in New Jersey legacy cannabis market. Dr Bayes brings such a beautiful combination of business strategy and operations knowledge and experience in the cannabis industry and industry knowledge, and adds to her role of a CEO of Northeast Corridor provisions, a licensed contract manufacturers of cannabis projects and with lean the regional aspirations. And I'm also proud to say that she's she's also a friend, and she gives us a little bit of insight about some of her journey. And both just as a business organization expert and how you can still have that sort of ethical mindset in the cannabis industry, and how important these business practices are to doing good ethical work, but also in terms of like, what we're focused on, a lot of times, a psychedelic source is relationships, being in community, being in relationship with one another, and how supportive that is. So I hope you enjoyed this episode and hear the adventures of Mary Ann Baze and where she's going next. Well, welcome Mary Ann to psychedelic source. I'm so grateful to have you here in relationship, to be able to talk about your work in the cannabis industry, as well as a bit about you and your relationship, not just with your your work, but, um, I think a lot of people wouldn't necessarily assume just by your appearance, you know that, that you know because you look, you look like, you know, like you know. I mean, this is the most lovely way possible next to her. Yeah, right, you know, it's like, you know, wait, um, I thought she was making cookies, not cannabis cookies, right? You know. And I'm not saying that's what you're doing, but, um, but maybe you can tell our audience a little bit more about you. Like, how did, how did you end up coming into the the plant medicine community? Um. Because, you know, I understand you do have that organizational business expertise.

Marianne Bays  5:05  
Yes, it really I've always had a relationship, not always. I mean, I was a young adult when I developed a relationship with cannabis. But cannabis has been in my life, recreationally for many, many years and and so I was interested. When I learned that cannabis, medical cannabis, was going to be legalized in New Jersey, that's what caught my attention. I was at a point in business where I wasn't really happy with what I was doing. I was getting bored. And so I looked around and New Jersey was getting ready to legalize. We finally did legalize in 2011 so 2009 we were in the let's get the law passed mode, and I began working with the activists on the medical side. There was an organization here in New Jersey that had been working for a decade or so before that, they are the the Coalition for medical marijuana in New Jersey. And that was like that was the group that I found, the people who were actively involved in making good law pressing for regulations that would make sense. And they were they were medical professionals. They were patients. They were family members of patients. And at that point, I had recognized, although I was not a medical patient myself, I recognized the value of it for people that I knew and loved, friends and family, and so I thought it was an important thing to do. I thought it was an interesting thing to do, and I really got involved as an activist initially, because that's all there was. And then after the law was passed and regulations started coming up. Then everybody turned attention to the practical how's this going to work? You know, is there business possibility in it? All of those questions were being asked. And I was in a position where I was known by the Coalition for medical marijuana. They were working with the senator who sponsored the law, Senator scatari, and his office asked for an ideal rewrite of the regulations that were drafted that point. And so the coalition, the the executive director, Ken Wolke, called me and said, I don't know anything about business. He's a nurse. He's a nurse, and he knows a lot about cannabis, but he didn't feel comfortable reviewing the business regulations, and so he asked me to take that on, and that was really what led me into the business, the businesses that I've been involved with since then, the business community was all around it. You know, we had lawyers, we had doctors, we had people who wanted to be able to launch compassionate care. I think three of the companies that were were given licenses had compassionate in their names and the and the bill itself did too, yeah, so that's what everything was about. But from my perspective, if we had regulations that didn't allow a business to succeed, we weren't going to have an industry now,

Dr. Sandra Dreisbach  8:41  
though, maybe a couple quick questions here for people, especially our listeners who may not like what? What would compassionate care usually indicate like? Why? Why is that word compassion so important in terms of the legislation and the advocacy?

Marianne Bays  8:54  
Well, the history of of cannabis law in the United States, you know, evolved a compassionate care program for certain patients. I was fortunate enough to meet the widow of one of the original legal patients in the United States and and she, she talked a lot about, you know, what it took to get there. There were people who were finding that cannabis worked for them. Her husband had glaucoma, which was not not responding to any of the available drugs, and he'd been told that he was going to be blind by the time he was 30. I mean, it was, it was Wow, progressing, and there was nothing that doctors could do for him. And then one day, now, his wife says that, you know, friends from college came to visit, and they brought some marijuana with them, and and after smoking it, he noticed. That his vision improved, the halos that he was seeing went away. And so he began researching, has anybody looked at this? You know, to see whether it would help glaucoma. And he found that there were doctors working on it, and one of them was willing to testify and to work with him to make it so it was a compassionate use program that was developed by the United States, and it still exists to this day. To this day, there are a couple of patients left who still receive pre rolls, not the best quality cannabis. I'm told there's seeds, seeds and sticks in it, and that the cannabinoid levels rather low. I doubt whether they actually are great cultivators. It's been one place it's had the exclusive ability to to grow for this program and for research in the United States. And so it's, it's a problem. But anyway, that's where compassionate use comes from, and and the and there's a, it's the term that was used determining the medical necessity, right?

Dr. Sandra Dreisbach  11:25  
Medical use, compassionate use, compassionate care, right? And and I find it interesting, like, even though, obviously, recreational cannabis, recreational psychedelics and plant medicines have been around for a long time, and even therapeutic use has been around for a long time that that the legislation, at least in the United States, has has been more open to pivoting across the board, whether it's psychedelics or cannabis, in relationship to documented medical and therapeutic use, even though it's

Marianne Bays  11:57  
taken some Pretty smart politicians and activists to get there. And the use of these terms is a part of it. Who can, who can say, No, we're not going to be compassionate.

Dr. Sandra Dreisbach  12:12  
Well, I mean that people, people say like, well, it's just not the priority, but, but let's not go down the compassionate wormhole. Because, like, you know, compassion

Marianne Bays  12:19  
there are, there are many, many cases where cannabis is the best treatment available.

Dr. Sandra Dreisbach  12:24  
See now, and I love that, like, that's, that's the thing. Like, sometimes people are open to considering, like, plant medicine, psychedelics as a possible treatment, but a lot of times they don't recognize that sometimes it really is, in fact, the best treatment, or the only like in often, there's this term called, you know, that best standard of care, right? And that our standard of care is, is, you know, based on the idea that this would actually be the best practice and and for a lot of these sort of taboo or things that have been legislated out of our access and now coming into access often are the best therapy, the best option first, depending upon things like, you know, we're not going to do carte blanche here and say everything but, but even things that you know just to not not just be open. Don't start with just like being open to therapeutic use or just or just compassionate use, but be open to the fact that this could even be the best solution for certain ailments that people are encountering. And I think when people

Marianne Bays  13:30  
have a combination, a combination of of traditional treatment and cannabis might be the best, right? And that's the case with with a lot of cancer treatment the medical professionals will tell you you should still have chemo. You should still have you know, but add cannabis, because, in addition to it dealing with side effects, right, there's some evidence that it eats cancer cells.

Dr. Sandra Dreisbach  14:04  
There is. And I want to go about this because I remember, like, the dose documentaries talk about about some of this, at least in dose two. But I don't want to detract us too much. I want to make sure we're focusing because, like, you're based in New Jersey and and could you tell us a little bit about you as a person, like, Are you from New Jersey originally? How

Marianne Bays  14:24  
a lifer? Yeah, I am a third generation Jersey girl.

Dr. Sandra Dreisbach  14:30  
May be concerned, no doing an intervention,

Marianne Bays  14:33  
but often when I say I'm a third generation Jersey girl, it has been kind of received and understood as a faint threat.

Dr. Sandra Dreisbach  14:46  
I think, I think as a qualified and a couple generations of that identity, I think, I think I understand that, and I've never been to Jersey boom and and you. Even more so that you would be involved in this space, so, like, you know, so as a Jersey girl, right? I mean, what were you taught about cannabis growing up, right? Well,

Marianne Bays  15:09  
honestly, I'm, you know, a child of the 60s. So cannabis was readily available, not very strong, not very good, and it was clearly because of what we saw around us, not scary, not harmful. I never got into any other kinds of drugs. I'm a weenie when it comes to that. I tried cocaine once, but I never wanted anything that would incapacitate me. You know, I enjoyed the relaxation and the and the giggles and even the even the munchies with cannabis, yeah, one of the, one of the first experiences that I had. There was a very large fruit salad served, and you could match, you know, like this fruit with that fruit or that fruit, and get different flavor combinations. And it was like an extrusion in my mouth. No, so cannabis really was was around me and probably this, you know, hashish, and exposure to that was my only kind of foundation for concentrates, which, you know, it's stronger you use a tiny little bit. And it was fun. I've even made water hash so but I really wasn't tuned into the medical. And I tell people this that, you know, the first time somebody told me that they were using cannabis right before they went to sleep, because it helped them sleep. I thought, what a waste of cannabis.

Dr. Sandra Dreisbach  17:10  
I love, I love this story. I love, I love, you know, even like how like, because a lot of the the prohibition against, you know, the war and drug of the United States, which included cannabis. You know, happened during, you know, during the 60s, right? And we also

Marianne Bays  17:24  
saw, you know, things like the research that clearly said cannabis should be legalized. It is not a harmful substance and it can be medically useful. We saw those results, and we knew that our government was simply ignoring them, not that the study was wrong. Yeah, and now and now, it's perfectly clear what they were doing, because they've told us they were basically trying to disenfranchise people who didn't like them.

Dr. Sandra Dreisbach  17:55  
And I don't have to talk about Nixon right now, but, but I think it's saying like, you know, in terms of your own journey, right, having the recreational exposure, seeing, you know, getting banned by the government, right, having a primarily recreational relationship with it being a Jersey girl in relationship,

Marianne Bays  18:17  
and having A very good friend develop multiple sclerosis that was also pivotable. You know, a pivot point in my thinking about it, because she was on opiates and the quality of her life was degrading. And when we were able to shift her to cannabis, she was delighted. In fact, she thrived during the early years of doing this, coming to meetings with me, speaking as an activist. It was actually, I think, a really valuable activity for her. It gave purpose and meaning to what could often just be difficult, you know.

Dr. Sandra Dreisbach  19:05  
And so is this part of the story about how you ended up perceiving it more in a therapeutic lens, like what? What would you credit as your shift from seeing it as just recreational to it having more of a medical purpose and and being more of an seeing,

Marianne Bays  19:18  
seeing people like my friend Sandy, use it, need it in order to have a decent quality of life. Because, you know, and she, she, she was very she could do sound bites interviews that were just wonderful. And one point she was describing the difference between, you know, the opiates and cannabis, and she said, You know, I guess I didn't feel as much pain, but it made me drool and forget who my mother was. You know, this is not quality of life, okay? Right? Right? So she really needed and she was nauseous all the time. Had very, you know, great difficulty eating, sleeping. That was the main driver that got her to cannabis. She said she remembered in college that she hadn't liked cannabis because it made her sleepy. And when that came to her, after being deprived of sleep for quite some time after she developed the multiple sclerosis, it was an amazing, you know, change for her that she could actually occasionally sleep through the night, you know, and you don't, you know, when you're young, as I was when I started using cannabis, you you, you don't worry about things like that. You know, I never had any trouble sleeping. It wasn't a concern. But as I got into this, more and more, I found patients who had really been harmed by the medicines they'd been put on, they had were experiencing organ failure because of their treatment for pain, and that's, you know, You're gonna die. Basically, they had to do something, and they still had excruciating pain, but the cannabis allowed them to get through it. You know, still go out and do things. It's kind of not and, you know, I have seen evidence of what it can do in cancer, but it's very hard to talk to people about that, because we don't have the research that we'd like to have on it right.

Dr. Sandra Dreisbach  21:55  
And now naturally, psychedelics have has similar, similar challenges. You know, the the amount of guess you know what the ban in the United States right? And as it is for many countries, that included a ban on research. And I think a lot of people don't appreciate that, that we couldn't even look at option, the

Marianne Bays  22:13  
United States both built this, this schedule, and said these substances should never be legalized, you know, because they're harmful and people will get addicted to them, which has really very little to do with cannabis and very little to do with psychedelics. Yeah, heroin, yeah. Okay.

Dr. Sandra Dreisbach  22:35  
And I'm curious to hear a little bit more, because, like so here, in terms of your employment, you are doing work with business organization, right? And you said that you started getting into advocacy a little bit. But what was, what was the final, you know, switch that that made you to pursue this as your your full time passionate

Marianne Bays  22:58  
that was, I have a passion for business, okay, so as I began looking at what was happening from from, from a business, weenie point of view, this is fascinating, watching what's happening in this industry, and looking at who's succeeding, who's failing, who started how and how are they doing today? All of that's been really interesting. So in the northeast, okay, quite different from California. We have a great shortage of a variety. Okay,

Dr. Sandra Dreisbach  23:44  
you mean strings. I

Marianne Bays  23:46  
mean products, cannabis products.

Dr. Sandra Dreisbach  23:49  
And I know, before you say more about this, I want, I want to go back a little bit so that, because, like, it's important, I think people to understand that. You know, as things have gotten legalized, piece by piece, state by state, region by region, the way that looks is qualitatively different, even if many of the same arguments are being made, like compassionate care, right, and medical access and therapeutic access. And I find it really interesting what happened in New Jersey, in particular about how that could you speak a little bit about how, how did this go down in New Jersey specifically?

Marianne Bays  24:26  
Well, it's not just New Jersey. And my and my business vision right now is regional, because it's not, you know, because it really is in the whole northeast. Okay, the way that we have legalized, we legalized for medical use first, and when we put a business structure to that, we, in our great wisdom, this very sarcastic required these businesses to be vertically integrated. That is, they had to be able to cultivate the product. But. Had to be able to manufacture the products, and they had to be able to retail them. They had to have all legs of that business, and it all had to be, you know, confined within the state. You can't cross state lines. So the way that the initial medical businesses set up, they were vertically integrated. They were trying to do all of that. And not only that, we put pressure on them to get it open immediately. Because, after all, we're trying to get access for patients. So we pressed for that. It had been part of what we were saying all along. You're taking too long to get this done. We have people who are dying out here, you know, so using that argument, they were pushed into situations where they had to commit to, like starting up in a timeframe that was totally ridiculous. New York State is a great example of that. They wanted, not only you, to be a cultivator and be a manufacturer, but you had to have three retail operations. Three couldn't be located in the same area of the state, okay?

Dr. Sandra Dreisbach  26:11  
So three different regions, and they said, do in all parts of the process. So yeah, to grow, you had to make the product and you had to distribute, and you had to do it in three and you had to have three different areas where you did this and in the state.

Marianne Bays  26:30  
But what they came down to, on their on their do it within six months, is you have to have a product and you have to have a retail operation open, even getting to that was almost Well, it might have been possible, but only if you had a facility ready to go. You know, I was working with some cultivation experts out of Colorado who gave me a wonderful Gantt chart that showed me, you know, step by step what was going to happen and when you'd be able to plant and when you'd be able to harvest. That was a year, okay, you were building the facility, and you were starting the product, and so it was going to be a year. And, and I said, Okay, great job. Great job. Guys now do it in six months, and they're like, are you crazy lady? You know, actually, they were very polite. They were like, Do you know anything about culture? And I was like, Yes, I know that this is totally unreasonable, but I also know by regulation we can't apply and get a license unless we tell them we're going to do this in six months. So the young man like, Great, okay, let's see building permits. We don't need those. Just dive in, you know. And started from seed because they grow faster, stronger, you know. And you know. And they skipped manufacturing. They went straight from flour to retail, okay? And you know, the state seemed happy with that. But then we also restricted them in forms we said, unlike the real word of medicine, where, where, where? We're informed by Mary Poppins that a spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down only the most basic forms medicinal forms were allowed. They weren't allowed to make, you know, beverage. They weren't allowed to make a good tasting gummy in New Jersey, we had lozenges that was the only edible, and basically that was a bad tasting gummy.

Dr. Sandra Dreisbach  28:50  
And all that sounds like, really, you know, prohibitive, like, I mean they, and I've seen this with other legislations around psychedelics, and as it's emerging in different areas in the world, and different areas in the United States, for instance, this, this desire, like, often, like, the sort of like, okay, we want equity and access. So like, in your case, you're like, we're gonna do it in six months, right? But not, not informed, right? There's this, there's often this pattern of, you know, legislators not having the appropriate education information to be able to to implement correctly. It sounds like that. That may have been part of what's also happened, you know, in cannabis.

Marianne Bays  29:33  
Well, we also have this thing state to state, where every state knows it's different, and we can't just learn from what the state next door did we have to invent our own here? And well, to some extent, that's not bad. New Jersey did some things at this point that I think are innovative, and did recognize some of the problems that we were building by doing this. But. We made mistakes, too. Yeah,

Dr. Sandra Dreisbach  30:02  
and I want to hear about the positive aspects, but I think it sounds like to me, at least knowing you in relationship, that a lot of it was actually inspired in your involvement and coming into business, is the fact of the errors that they made around equity and access,

Marianne Bays  30:21  
equity access and business, business structure. I mean, I chose manufacturing because it got skipped over. When we when, when New Jersey put out its application requirements for the first medical licenses, the vertically integrated ones, they didn't ask one question about manufacturing,

Dr. Sandra Dreisbach  30:48  
not one. And if they had, I'm

Marianne Bays  30:51  
not sure we would have known how to answer them.

Dr. Sandra Dreisbach  30:54  
So we I'm like, why wouldn't really understand this. So what do you mean? They didn't ask any questions about manufacturing? People

Marianne Bays  30:59  
got a license that enabled them to manufacture even though they'd never been asked, you know, what are you going to manufacture and and what processes are you going to use when you had to give standard operating procedures for things? But they were focused on the cultivation and on the dispensing in terms of of control, that's really all of the original regulations were really aimed at over controlling the substance.

Dr. Sandra Dreisbach  31:33  
So, so it sounds like both from a business perspective and from, you know, an access perspective this, you know, and even from your professional perspective, obviously, as someone who knows about organizations and business, right? What was the results of this? You know? The

Marianne Bays  31:54  
result was very fragmented market. There wasn't like I started looking in Massachusetts, which also followed this path. I started looking there during the pandemic, New Jersey had not yet gotten to the point where it fully legalized and was issuing licenses, so I already had the business plan and already thought it should be regional. And I went up and looked at there. Well, they had the same kind of limitations, where people were not making a wide variety of products yet, and the biggest players in every state in the Northeast were what we call the multi state operators. Okay? They say, we say MSOs, as if being a multi state operator is a negative, okay, but in a sense, it always was, because think about the consumer product industry. Well, think about Johnson and Johnson say, do they have to set up their operations in every state in order to make sterile bandages? You know, in order, they don't they can ship cross state lines. We can't, okay, and so that forced the companies that wanted to dominate this industry to set up duplicative operations in every state they went into, that's just a money suck. I mean, it's not the way you would do it if you had the option of of crossing state lines and setting up what you wanted to set up, where you wanted to set it up, when you wanted to set it up. But we've controlled this to the point where you don't get all of those choices often, in most states, we have operated from perspective of, we've set up the program to operate from a perspective of of scarcity, you're only going to get five licenses, and everybody's applying for five licenses. In some states, they've made it a lottery. Okay? In New Jersey and Massachusetts, they looked at it and said, every time we run a competition, we give an advantage to the multi state operators, because who else can say I've got operations already out there in multiple states. I've done that before. Who else can say that? Yeah,

Dr. Sandra Dreisbach  34:39  
and this has been part of the criticism, and maybe even someone you know who I think there's just in general in psychedelics and plant medicines, because of what's happened in cannabis in relation to corporations, and how it's ended up pushing out a lot of small business owners, a lot of people who who actually were the growers already, who had the. Expertise and the knowledge just simply by how things were legislated and how it was doled out right?

Marianne Bays  35:06  
You also have to have to recognize that some of the people with the legacy experience were much more knowledgeable, but they had a hard time presenting their qualifications in a way that got their treatment

Dr. Sandra Dreisbach  35:22  
now, and I love that point, right, like that. You know, that legacy, even if they were the higher quality growers with the more experience with the certain expertise, they couldn't communicate possibly as effectively to the structures, governments or, you know, you know, in a way that helped them to be understood,

Marianne Bays  35:41  
right? Actually, especially when you have we had one of the final medical licensing actions that we did in New Jersey had a requirement that you show financial stability, and the way that they asked you to do that was presenting your last two years of tax records for the business. And so I've said, and you can find this, a published thing was on the CRCS website for a very long time, but they never responded to it with anything sensible. I said, if what you are trying to do is assure that on this criteria, the only people who get the high ratings are the multi state operators who are already operating in another state, thereby pushing out all new entrepreneurs, then you've done a good job with this criteria. And they, they chose not to change it. They they offered us, well, you can show it other ways. So I mean, I was working with a bunch of people who had launched a cannabis real estate investment trust. We had great paper on that company, and it was, you know, a lot of overlap between the two, and we presented that even they didn't even staff the selection process in a manner that was consistent. I mean, what I found in the end, and I had the process yielded ratings. You could look at the differences among the raters, and the differences among the Raiders, at a glance, told you they had no idea what they were doing. You'd get, you know, on a scale of one to five, you'd get a five from two and a zero from one, and you're like, that person didn't understand the question, okay? But not only that, all that inconsistency was after they'd already announced who the winners were.

Dr. Sandra Dreisbach  38:06  
So so this, of course, you know, like, and we care very much about talking about ethical issues around here, and we try and touch on them both, you know, making sure we're connecting to resources as a person and doing that in integrity. And I know, no we, you and I know each other because of our work in in ethics, but what this seems very clearly an ethical issue. Well,

Marianne Bays  38:29  
government ethics is an interesting thing, and I and I, all I can tell you is repeatedly in state actions, there were shenanigans.

Dr. Sandra Dreisbach  38:45  
So Jersey girl, yeah, when you say shenanigans, could you be a little bit more direct? Yeah,

Marianne Bays  38:56  
um, in the New York action, we actually saw remedial action taken. I led, I was the project manager for a company that went in big Fiorella pharmaceuticals. They had done an enormous amount of work to assemble a team that was really knowledgeable, and they brought me in to manage it. It was a huge application process, like, I don't remember how many pages, but we are talking 1000s of pages of application, multiple volumes had to be printed, of this too. And I think, I think one application was something like seven binders, okay? It was a massive undertaking to do this right. And we, you know, we did our number and, and I'd worked with a number of different companies before, and I knew that this one was very strong. I mean, they're the quality of the people. They had associated was quite high. The ideas they were putting forward were high. The CEO was a rather remarkable guy, but the first action happened, and we were told that we were less than half a point below the first five that were selected.

Dr. Sandra Dreisbach  40:21  
All right, that's interesting. Now

Marianne Bays  40:23  
we knew, you know that, that that's what can happen when you make it a competitive action. All right, so now I have other friends who were part of the action who scored high, maybe not quite as high as us, but it's high enough to be concerned how the action went down. And they had people in the room where the results had been reported, and they knew that we were one of the five, first five in the ratings. But somebody walked into the room and said, Now you have to change it around, because these two have to be in the first five now they never wanted that story to come out. And even now I'm telling it so vaguely, it's not really coming out, right? But there was enough known about it so that they pressure was put on New York State, and they finally came out and selected five more from the list. And those of us who had been passed over by what they did in the first did get our licenses, not in the first wave, but just a beat later. Okay, New Jersey was a different thing, and we'll never really know, but it did cause commissioner and a deputy commissioner to resign. Interesting, when you were I was involved in the first New Jersey action, so we submitted an application. We weren't asked anything about manufacturing because I wrote that application and I never it took quite some time. It was not until individual manufacturing licenses were being offered in states instead of the vertically integrated ones that they actually focused in on what manufacturing was and how we could do it better, and, you know, things that they should have been looking at now,

Dr. Sandra Dreisbach  42:34  
now I want to bring it back to you. Okay, so I mean, now that you weren't involved in this process, obviously, you brought this into the Administrative Court, and you look and from that, you're sharing that. And I well, and I

Marianne Bays  42:44  
worked with a lot of other states too, so a lot of my clients did well and got licenses, but where they didn't quite get what they expected, a lot of it was attributed to decisions made. You know, at the state government level, it's very hard to have a straightforward, you know, start to finish process where you get a license, but we have gotten better at it in New Jersey and Massachusetts, where we're not pitting everyone against each other, because it's a new industry, it will take care of settling itself. If there are too many dispensaries, they won't all succeed, you know, if there are too many cultivators, the price of cannabis will drop. You know, it's going to drop anyway, because we've had hardly any in the program, you know. So we expect that there will be a drop in the price of the flower, which will benefit a manufacturer. So I'm positioning as a manufacturer, because that's a weakness in the whole area. In California, what I've seen are a lot of products that came out of the era where people were. It was, it was a co op model. People were supposed to join together, grow for each other, make, make products for each other, okay? And money would just be, you know, cost of things, not which evolved into a full fledged, you know, retail program and a lot of unlicensed manufacturers, but creative manufacturers who develop great products. And we never had that part in our part of the country. So it's a whole

Dr. Sandra Dreisbach  44:35  
because of that manufacturing gap, because of the manufacturing gap and and I know like, you're very much inspired by trying to address a lot of these inequities that you've noticed. And I don't think a lot of people would think like, oh, we need a someone who has business organizational skills to help us with this. I don't think that's the go to it. And if anything, like, people feel it seems like there's like, a an inclination like, okay, no, that's part, of course. Separate. That's part of what we're trying to change. That's very capitalistic.

Marianne Bays  45:05  
It's it's very funny, and from the first time I got into that, people have been going, really, it's like business, yeah, it's like business, yeah.

Dr. Sandra Dreisbach  45:15  
So maybe you can speak a little bit too about that, because there is a lot of these sort of like, especially in the psychedelic and plant medicine community and space, this bias against, you know, business organization, business practices in the traditional way and and yet, obviously you come with that expertise and and being more informed, and it sounds like it may actually lead to better outcomes in terms of the ethics that people are aiming for. So, so tell me more about that. Okay, so

Marianne Bays  45:50  
there are number places where, where there's games that get played in the industry, where a sheer business perspective tells you that's not the right way to go testing. You hear a lot about states that are having the testers are being motivated to show results that aren't exactly true, because they want to keep the brands that are being tested as their customers. And so if they're doing what they call lab shopping, and taking their product to six labs and saying, I'm going to go with the one that gives me the result that looks like I've got the best product, even if it's not, you know, you've got a problem. I uh, I, you know, there's a couple of things that motivate me. One is giving an opportunity to people who have been in the industry, but who may not have the wherewithal to be able to launch a business in the regulated industry. And it's not usually because of their records. It's usually because they don't have the money, they don't have any business training. They, you know, they don't compete. Well, I've had clients coming out of, you know, a community that don't know anything about a spreadsheet. I mean, if you are silly enough, as I was, to hand them one that's not protected, they will mess it up in like seconds. They're not going to be able to get into the industry without having people that have more sophisticated business knowledge around them, and that then led to we're trying to offer.

Dr. Sandra Dreisbach  47:46  
Is it more sophisticated? Or is it that, you know, the sort of inequities around education.

Marianne Bays  47:52  
It's inequities around education. It's, it's they don't compete well because the language skills aren't as as high they have a lot of weaknesses that make them somewhat frightened of going it alone. You know, I what I wanted to do, and so what I've done in the manufacturing business is provide a facility that could make someone's existing brand Okay. Instead of having to set up manufacturing in every state in which you want to manufacture, you can bring your product here, and I will charge you a fee to manufacture it for you. And that's just copying the consumer product industry. It's not rocket science. It's the way Pepsi works. It's the way General Mills works. I mean, they have co packers, okay? And

Dr. Sandra Dreisbach  48:53  
can you just describe co packing? Can you describe co packing? Because, I mean, I expect, even though, obviously we we want to appeal to people who are interested in in supporting and making their business practices better. A lot of these terms are are foreign to people who in the public

Marianne Bays  49:09  
in fact that I call us a contract manufacturer, because that is we're going to manufacture an existing brand under contract with the brand, so the brand gets revenue from it, and we have different arrangements and different amounts of of of of work that we'll do with some products. We will take them all the way to market. We will sell them. We will distribute them for other products. We'll make them and then help the brand arrange for someone else to sell and distribute, whether it's the people in that brand which could be badged so that they'd be, you know, legitimate cannabis industry employees in New Jersey they could then sell on behalf of the. Brand, but they'd be on my, you know, employment roles, or we're going to have wholesalers, okay? So they might arrange to sell their product to a wholesaler, and the wholesaler will handle sales and distribution. There are different ways it can work. But what I'm trying to do is provide the support for someone who's making a good product to be able to continue to make that product, but have access to the market, to the legal market,

Dr. Sandra Dreisbach  50:36  
and that sounds really amazing. I mean, just simply, you know that this manufacturing gap as it were, or fulfilling a need because of certain expertise and understanding of, you know, manufacturing organized, or just simply having distribution channel access, right?

Marianne Bays  50:52  
Well, that's, yeah, yeah. I mean, I, I'm finding myself thinking more about, you know how to set up services that can can support this variety of people when we have to have the the manufacturing capability, the extraction capability, manufacturing and packaging. But beyond that, maybe we'll be good at selling. I mean, personally, my my team, will be good at selling one type of product. That doesn't mean we're good at selling all of it. So we have to have solutions for everybody that makes sense and and and the ability to help them thoughtfully get through it. We also have to deal with, I've gotten a couple of of products brought my way recently, where there's a bit more development to do. You know, we don't have most of the products that you've probably seen are, are sweet. Well, sugar is a good carrier of it, fats a good carrier of it. So chocolates, you know, but it's not good for diabetics. You know, right? It's not good for everybody, and too much sugar is is kind of a chronic problem with it. And I've had diabetics who respond very well to cannabis, but edibles don't really work for them, because they're usually gummies or something, you know, that's quite sweet, right, right? So we need to have a variety of products. So pretzels were introduced to me. Somebody sent me a guy who they said, and met this guy at a bar, and his pretzels are great. So I sent them to you. I don't

Dr. Sandra Dreisbach  52:39  
think I've heard of cannabis pretzels, but I know, you know, but, but the concept of it,

Marianne Bays  52:47  
yeah, so, so, you know, he is. He's not really ready to bring them yet. He's ready to bring them personally, you know. But I looked at it and said, Okay, what's a serving? These are pretzel sticks, the skinny kinds, right? What's the serving? We have a, you know, a measure of an adult serving at 10 milligrams of THC, okay. Now, the reason we have that is so the people can know what to expect when they're using a product, you know, a 10 milligram product, they're going to respond to quite differently than a 20 milligram product. Some people need 20 milligrams. If you start with a 10, you know, you need to double it, you know. But we've got this standard so that people can figure out where they are in that and it's a standard dosage that will work for most adults in general. Now,

Dr. Sandra Dreisbach  53:50  
when I go go back to sort of like the average consumer, like the average person in New Jersey, right? Who, who wants to, you know, support this kind of work, or even the average person interested in, like, you know, psychedelics and plant medicines, and doing advocacy, or coming into this, this field, what sort of general advice would you give them? What sort of resources, what kind of support, what kind of wisdom? Okay, so we formed, we formed the

Marianne Bays  54:19  
Canada business association so people could meet each other, but the need is so much greater now. I mean, it's not just, you know, the beginnings of business thought. It is, Who am I going to sell to? Who am I going to buy from? You know, who are the players in this? And so the kind of Business Association has put itself, you know, forward as a you know, we will facilitate meet and greets. We do them monthly, and they're very casual, but you come out and you know, we learn who you are, you learn who everybody else is, and you leave with connections that are going to benefit. You and we've got very active membership from lawyers and from accountants as well as people who are licensed to operate. In fact, at the beginning of the Canada Business Association, nobody was licensed. Nobody was in the industry in New Jersey, it was, you know, medical only and and so we didn't even have we, we have never had a vote for who's on the board. Uh, we've never, you know, set policies involving everyone, because we just didn't have that many people licensed. So if you want to get into business in New Jersey, the Canada Business Association is the best way to meet the most people, and it is also a source of training, like we're doing, I worked with a vendor to get a free training session for people on good manufacturing practices, And that's getting a pretty good response. In some states, they actually required you in your application to tell them how you were going to comply with good manufacturing requirements. Good Manufacturing requirements represent best practice and what FDA looks at to decide whether you could be a certified FDA facility now we're cannabis. FDA is not going to look at us, but good manufacturing practices are still good manufacturing practices, and so I personally have been committed to maintaining all of the documentation that we need to in order to show an FDA, like federal agency, that we have this capability, because when we get to a point where we're deregulated federally or legalized federally, and we can cross state lines, there will be oversight from FDA or someone like it. Some people say there will be a plant medicine department by then that'll include cannabis and psychedelics. And who knows, but

Dr. Sandra Dreisbach  57:16  
I do think that you started with sharing about the cannabis Association, and that, you know, meeting other people in in the community, and being connected in relationship, which is something we talk a lot about here and in psychedelics, or about, you know, building those relationships, building this as a community, finding the other peoples, you know, I mean, even from our throughout our conversation, gain this sense of how, how the organization, how things are structured. You know, how those relationships are built and even built through the organizational structure, are essential keys, right? And, and how good business practices, you know, we're not talking about, you know, abusive corporate bullying, you know, or governmental abuse, or anything like that, just good sound practice often aligns with good ethics and good relationships. You know, I think, I think the the vast majority of the public, and even people who are in the either the cannabis industry or the psychedelic, you know, community that they don't often have an understanding of what it really takes start to finish, you know whether, whether we're talking the government side, whether we're talking about someone who's coming from experience, from industry, you know, from underground practice, or anywhere in between, someone from a different business practice coming into this space. Now, there's this, there's a similarity across the board, of these sort of challenges, these complexities that come up, that are beyond just regular business challenges, beyond regular medical practice challenges or research challenges, that are unique to this space and and I just like really appreciate the the nuance you've you've brought to this conversation, and your commitment to to uplifting a lot of these issues and to try and provide greater equity and access.

Marianne Bays  59:05  
Yeah. I mean, my goal is to both. I really want to build a company that people like to work for. That's one thing. I mean, that's a personal product. I mean, you're

Dr. Sandra Dreisbach  59:17  
a great person to talk with, but you know, to work for would be even, you know. I mean, I imagine, like, well, what does that mean for you? Like, how do you know? I love,

Marianne Bays  59:24  
I love coaching employees. I love watching employees thrive. And that's been like throughout my career, some of the most rewarding work that I've done. I was just talking to someone who does coaching, and I was thinking about the couple of times that I took coaching engagements, and it's so personally rewarding to see people grow and succeed. You know, when you build, when you're consulting with organizations, as I was, sometimes you get to see that, but very often it's too far in the future. It's too subtle a thing. You. Don't really actively see it. So supervising people and teaching people gives me great pleasure. It's something that you can tangibly see. And I want to create good career opportunities for people. I sit with my team and think about different areas and say, Well, I don't really want to bring in who I ultimately want in that job. I want to bring in somebody that just came out of college, knows a little bit and can learn, because then they can become a manager in that area and then eventually grow into the top job by the time we've grown to need that job filled. So now, I

Dr. Sandra Dreisbach  1:00:43  
love this, and maybe this is a good part to kind of end on, is like, if someone is is looking for, you know, like they're they're wanting to enter the industry, or they're wanting to learn more, and they need mentorship, and they need greater education, and they need support. What would you what would you tell them to do if the only thing they have access to right now is this episode?

Marianne Bays  1:01:05  
I would tell them to talk to someone like me. I'm we have a lot of people who give time to this industry and help people, and we can steer them, you know, Gage and learn about their interest and where they are, and at least connect them with people who are doing the kind of work that they think they want to do, and help them, you know, find their way into the industry. I, you know, I'm looking for people, but so are others, and right now, I've had a couple of manufacturers come to me who aren't yet manufacturing their product, they've just got the idea, and because I haven't set up yet, I don't want to hold them up, right then you develop that idea. So there's one other they're actually viewing themselves more as an incubator, okay, but they have the same ability that I do, to bring a brand in and manufacture haven't manufactured by licensed people and distributed to the legal market on behalf of someone who can't do it all themselves.

Dr. Sandra Dreisbach  1:02:19  
I love this, and I love that, you know, finding someone else like you being a part of maybe an association where they can find other people. Absolutely, I

Marianne Bays  1:02:29  
tell people to do that all the time, because it's the only way. Right now, we can't even advertise Well, so, yeah, it's the best way is to go to events

Dr. Sandra Dreisbach  1:02:41  
and to be in relationship and building those relationships well. Thank you so much. So thank you so much. Mary Ann, I really appreciate you taking this time to tell us about your work and about your inspiration, and I'm guessing you're not bored anymore. Are you not bored?

Marianne Bays  1:02:56  
No, no, I learn something new every day and come up with a new challenge every day. So no, it's not boring. It's not at all.

Dr. Sandra Dreisbach  1:03:05  
Well, it wasn't boring talking with me today, and thank you again for taking the time and and send you some additional wishes in your in your new manufacturing. I really hope

Marianne Bays  1:03:15  
that the psychedelic industry does benefit from some of what we've been through, and can look at, you know, what you're facing, and say and and communicate with the the legislators. No, that would be a bad idea. Let's look at how that rolled out over here, you know.

Dr. Sandra Dreisbach  1:03:35  
Well, I least I've learned a lot from you, just from talking to you this time, you know. And as someone who does a lot more in the psychedelic than cannabis, and I do feel like there's a lot of support for one another in the space, and there is this desire to learn from cannabis. And I think sometimes people and psychedelics don't remember that the cannabis industry is still very much developing. It's still very much, you know, learning how to to create and do business and to do it responsibly and to work in relationship everything at every country, however, we're showing you. So thank you for showing up, Marianne, and my pleasure

Marianne Bays  1:04:16  
always, and you're

Dr. Sandra Dreisbach  1:04:17  
definitely a good source for me as I reflect on this episode, you know, sometimes we got a little bit in the weeds, and not the cannabis weed, but also, like, the actual weeds of, like, some of the details, and maybe that can be challenging for some of us to, like, you know, really get into the meat and potatoes of but I think it also really shows how nuanced and complex a lot of these issues are that there's this assumption of, you know, simplicity even about what it really looks like to do work in this space and to do so responsibly and effectively. And even our biases against business practices and against certain. Degrees and and business entrepreneurship in general, in the psychedelic and plant medicine space, which actually works against us. But also you can see from from my conversation with Mary Ann like this, this real understanding and real relationship that she has with cannabis and and her friends and people that you know, really inspired her because of their own struggles and and you'll see a similar arc here of people in the West, of how we came from a lot of the the recreational mindset to understanding some of the therapeutic benefits and then turning into advocacy. So I'm just really grateful for for Mary Ann and for this episode, and how, how we're seeing also consistently about the need to be sourced in relationship, and how, you know there are other people who are willing to help you, Mary Ann being one of them. And that it really takes this sort of larger global mindset towards all of us, wherever you find yourself, in the psychedelic and plant medicine community, whether you're a member of the public, whether you're a member of the government, whether you're a business person, whether you're an underground practitioner, wherever you find yourself, it's the relationships that make the difference for ethical Practice. Thank you for joining me on psychedelic source. If you found value in today's episode, please subscribe wherever you get your podcast and share with others in our community. And if you're a psychedelic practitioner, therapist or coach looking to identify blind spots in your practice or determine next steps for moving it forward, take the first step by visiting psychedelic Source podcast.com Until next time, remember, start low, go slow and stay connected to your source. You.