A High-Falutin Affair | Hemp & Weed | Hudson Valley

Click to enlarge Actual and potential cannabis industry insiders gathered in Saugerties on June 19 to network what organizers have dubbed the Hudson Valley’s first “A-list corporate cannabis networking event.” Those in attendance included Steve De Angelo (with the blue hat), “the father of the legal cannabis industry, and to his left, Norman Birenbaum, Governor Cuomo’s medical cannabis tsar.

The sun is just beginning to sink over the aggressively manicured grounds of Fortune Valley Manor in Saugerties. In front of an elegant cone barn in a bowl at the foot of a steep, winding driveway, couples check in and briefly pose for photos on a red carpet in front of a banner with the names of corporate sponsors. The smell of meat – actually Wagyu beef – charred on an invisible grill carries a light, almost summery breeze over the grounds. It’s an event.

It’s an event that a few decades or even a few months ago could have resulted in federal agents chasing the grounds, jotting license plates, or covering the red carpet with a telephoto lens from a hunting curtain in the fields of tall grass and wildflowers that passed the bordered venue. It is, after all, a gathering of people who grow, sell, finance, insure, and otherwise make money from marijuana. But these are different times, and the only police officer present is Saugertie’s Police Chief Joe Sinagra, who makes a brief appearance to see what will be billed as the Hudson Valley’s first ever “A-list cannabis networking event.” To pose on that red carpet with Steve De Angelo, a former marijuana trafficker and legalization advocate who became the “father of the legal cannabis industry.”

The meeting is the idea of ​​the Saugertesian Ruben Lindo. Lindo’s marijuana lifestyle brand Herbn Couture, a retired professional football player and corporate cannabis booster, hosted the event as a coming-out party for New York’s adult marijuana market. Lindo, who is Black, has chosen to join the soiree with the first federal holiday in June as a recognition of a kind of freedom that is different at the same time and the same given the demographic reality of the war on drugs.

“This is not just about money or building a new industry,” says Lindo. “This is about justice, it’s about justice.”

Green gold rush

It’s also about making money and building a new industry. The tent terrace behind the barn is as good as any other place to enjoy the breadth of this industry. The scene could be a network meeting of trade associations. Business cards are exchanged, names are exchanged, and elevator pitches are delivered with a touch of laser-focused friendliness. Lindo compares the development of the New York cannabis industry with the California gold rush. A couple of lucky prospectors encountered large breaking rocks along a muddy stream. But the real money was made by the people who sold picks and the bankers who provided the credit they needed to buy in bulk. The pre-dinner mix is ​​an idea of ​​how many ways there are to make money from cannabis without your hands getting sticky. One participant, a proponent of medical marijuana education, lamented the sad state of medical literacy among staff at a California pharmacy she recently visited (prominently). “I told them I needed something for my joint pain just to see what they’d say,” she says, still acutely dismayed by the experience. “They just looked at each other and said, ‘Let me get the manager.'”

click to enlarge Event organizer Ruben Lindo speaks to attendees at the cannabis networking event in June.

Daryl Miles heads PPSGCann, a South Florida-based payment processing company that enables credit card transactions in the cannabis industry. The trick, Miles explains, is to process the sales as cash advances, avoiding entanglement with federal laws that still treat interstate funding of marijuana sales as a crime. There are business cards from insurance agents, surveyors, and a security firm that specializes in threat analysis of disgruntled employees. There’s former Atlanta Falcons player Clint Johnson on behalf of Athletes for Care, a nonprofit promoting cannabis as an alternative to opioids for chronic exercise-related pain. There’s a guy who owns a fish farm in Greene County.

The space also includes people who will be instrumental in determining what the New York adult market will be like. The law, passed by state legislatures and signed by Governor Cuomo in April, is a framework. The meticulous details of how, where, and under what restrictions cannabis is grown and sold in the state rests on a 13-member cannabis control committee appointed by the governor and state lawmakers. This regulatory structure will be built bit by bit over the next 18 months and everyone present believes that the market will rise or fall because of your decisions. Several candidates for the position are represented at Fortune Valley Manor, and there is much news about their suitability for the role of developing an adult market estimated at $ 4.2 billion.

“He’s going to be on the board and he’s anti-THC!” hisses a participant about the alleged clumsiness of a potential cannabis czar.

Tip your budget tender

As a nod to the end product of all that entrepreneurial energy, there are indeed cannabis products available for sampling. On a mezzanine floor above the main hall, James and Gabe, a couple of locals in their twenties, have just completed a crash course in budtending and got put into service at a table full of flowers, rubber worms, candy bars and vape cartridges, and other goodies. Guests can exchange tokens issued at the door for a product and exchange money to purchase additional tokens. But for most of them, the sales table is a minor matter. More than a year after Massachusetts legalized adult use drawing thousands of New Yorkers and tens of millions of their tax dollars across the border, the simple thrill of legally buying professionally packaged weed seems to have faded.

And then there is the salad dressing. Along with piles of buttery Japanese beef, grilled shrimp, and a casual mix of grilled carrots and broccoli, there’s a cannabis-infused lemon vinaigrette. For Lindo, the infused salad dressing is a potentially unstable element in an otherwise artfully designed networking event. If there is one overarching theme in its message, it is that cannabis is a perfectly respectable industry based on a plant with proven physical, emotional, and spiritual benefits. An overdone guest panicked by over-indulging in lemon balsamic vinaigrette could destroy the mood. After extolling the virtues of Wagyu beef, he adds a precautionary measure and advocates moderation. “The world of edibles is not for everyone,” Lindo tells his guests. “We don’t want anyone to be wasted.”

But the evening goes by without any unpleasant waste. On the terrace after dinner, the laughter is a little louder, the smile a little warmer, and the delicate joints and arches of a barn built without a single nail are much more fascinating. Joints are rolled on Herbn Couture ceramic trays and passed to an 80s pop hits soundtrack. DeAngelo, whose keynote address includes a pitch on behalf of the Last Prisoner Project seeking to free those who still have time for marijuana crimes in states where the plant is legal, holds court while holding a fork digs into a (unpoured) cupcake.

Meanwhile, Lindo picks up the crowd with a satisfied expression. One hundred and fifty would-be and actual industry players have gathered a mile from his home to party, network, and plan. And it’s a mixed crowd – white faces predominate, but not overwhelming. As a member of the board of directors of the Hudson Valley and the New York City Cannabis Industry Association, Lindo campaigned with state lawmakers for social justice in the new law. tinted terrace on Juneteenth. “This meeting is a snapshot of what this industry should look like as a whole,” says Lindo. “Black, white, Asian, Hispanic, gay, lesbian, straight business owners come together to create a new, inclusive industry.”