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Tyler Marks & Francis Harkins with Cannaventures of West Virginia joins us on the HempList this week, hosted By Chase Nobles, Founder of Kush.com
West Virginia has become an interesting case in Hemp since 2018. The state has looser delta 9 THC laws than most states, which isn’t always a good thing.. Tyler & Francis break it down and talk about how growing their first crop of Hemp in West Virginia went in 2020. Francis even tells his story about how he went from a CBD Tincture customer, to working for the company!
Transcript (Auto-Generated)
hey everybody chase nobles here founder
of kush.com i’ve got tyler marks and
francis harkins from canterventures west
virginia how are you guys
going good thanks jason all right all
right all the way over there in west
virginia
a place that i didn’t necessarily expect
to have a name of a company called
can adventure so how’s it been operating
in the great state of west virginia
it’s uh it’s been an adventure to say
the least but
i believe it i believe it yeah i believe
it now um
west virginia i could imagine might have
some pretty restrictive
local regulations have you had a run-in
with you know changes in regulations or
clarifications that have had a
negative impact on the business just
curious surprisingly
from the state side uh they’re pretty
loose we actually were one of the few
states that had one percent
total thc uh starting in 2014
they’ve changed that to be compliant
with the federal farm bill
but our department of agriculture is
very open-minded
they help us around every turn and it’s
more of the federal regulations that
we’ve seen
becoming a problem right that’s pretty
surprising one percent
that you guys might be the only state
that have done that because that’s a
pretty high
margin of error and i’m pretty sure
farmers would really appreciate that a
little extra leeway
sounds like you all are doing pretty
much everything growing
extraction all the way through the whole
process
was it a little bit easier for you all
on the growing side with that regulation
prior to the change it was easy
within the state but being competitive
on a national scale
it kind of hampered us because we’re
getting flour from farmers at one
percent that’s legal here
and then once you extract that it
obviously concentrates to a higher
percentage
and it makes it more difficult to sell
nationally
so dilution just basically what we have
to do
to compete or come up with innovative
products and you know ways to use that
oil
right and so i guess that you know kind
of leads to my next question
when it comes to the local market versus
the national market
um how has the local market treated hemp
smokable
you know finished goods all that kind of
product categories that y’all
dabble in what is the local market
response has been compared to you know
kind of the national interest overall
the local market’s been great people in
west virginia love things from west
virginia
uh you know very supportive
francis cannot talk about that a little
bit because he actually started out as a
consumer
of our products and then ended up being
our lab manager you know lead formulator
yeah um i you know it’s been
the facility here um you know we have a
unique co2 system here it’s
sub-critical co2 system that operates
off of
you know much lower pressure ranges and
uh
very low temperatures um so i’m
originally from ohio
um and you know i had all sorts of uh
products and oil samples that had come
through my hands
uh you know during the kind of the start
of this whole
you know kind of cbd movement and uh and
the oil that came from this facility
was extraordinarily unique and high
quality
which is why i ended up uh you know
relocating here
um to to you know help you know put a
team together
and start to really develop some unique
stuff and get things out
um you know through distribution
channels and things like that um
but uh but yeah you know it’s the the
extract from from that system has a very
um
it’s very aromatic um it comes out of
the system with very
low wax content so there’s really not a
lot of work to do to make it usable
if dilution is is going to be the
primary uh
uh technique right um but you know we’ve
also
focused on trying to develop things that
are different um the local market here
is pretty responsive
generally um like he said a lot of
people have
interest in local local products
um and you know the department of
agriculture you know we’re
you know getting on a first name basis
with these guys because they are
um they’re very friendly um you know you
can call them up on their phone and ask
them a question
um so it’s they’ve made it relatively
smooth
um and again you know just kind of
reiterate what he said it’s the federal
regulations that’s you know causing the
department of agriculture to have to
you know try to adapt um and they
they’re somewhat resistant to that you
know they
they have to um but they but they don’t
uh they don’t necessarily
want to have to you know lower the
limits shorten the harvest windows
you know all sorts of stuff like that
and we still have no
we still have no protocol for wild and
process
extracts um that that make it
you know clear as to what we can and
what we cannot do
once we extract the oil um so
you know we just kind of uh learned to
adapt you know so we develop
um you know new products that are unique
and different
um you know just for an example you know
we have this
uh this cartridge right here is a
liquefied cartridge there as you can see
there’s no crystallization in that
and that’s 800 milligrams of total
cannabinoids in there so we’ve got 80
in this cartridge uh you know with no
thc
in this specific one um but you know it
can be
anywhere from there to 0.3 um but it’s
basically
you know you’d see something like this
on the medical marijuana market
a co2 oil cartridge that’s been
minimally processed and stuff
but i mean really the problem is that
what the rate of regulations are
you know there’s excessive amounts of
processing that has to go into making a
product which is the opposite of the
direction that you really should be
going
um in the industry so it’s been
interesting but
um all in all it’s a very warm
environment it’s a very
warm community you know in the area here
and the rest of the state there’s only
1.4
million people in the whole state you
know so yeah you know you’re
small tight-knit yeah yeah so that’s it
but it’s you know with that small
tightness i i would imagine
your local regulators have a better
understanding of the process
you know you talk about the means and
techniques of compliance
and how to manage that and most
regulators don’t even know what that
would entail
or what you’re talking about yeah and
that’s something we saw in the very
beginning
and you you know we try to get as
involved as possible with the local
regulators
and be a source of education and and
offer resources to them as much as
possible
yeah and that’s the only real means of
change because you know if the local
regulators uh the people working with
the businesses that are operating in the
space
understand they can have an impact at
the federal level by pushing back
right and so you know west virginia
might be a little honey hole of
opportunity to have an impact on a
federal you know
regulation side now yeah being the state
of one point
you know to 1.4 million people like
y’all were talking about west virginia
is not that big
um so being being kind of a leader in
that state
uh what what is the what what are the
other businesses
looking like are you all working with
other farmers are you guys
completely vertically integrated and
everything you know produced in west
virginia there
so initially we were working with
multiple outside
farmers we had satellite farmers the
real conception of this place was to try
to bring a market
for west virginia farmers you know bring
their biomass here
we purchase biomass the first two years
unfortunately with
the roller coaster of this market we’ve
had to cut back on how much
outside biomass that were that we’re
purchasing um
that is our goal though we want to
involve as many people in this process
as possible
so as we establish you know more
national credit
presence for our leading brands uh being
doc johns and whispering wins
the hope is to you know need more
outside
uh biomass right now francis i got a
question for you you know
tyler mentioned that uh you
were a customer prior to being an
employee
at canna ventures west virginia what was
the product that really made you go
wow i need to go see what they get these
guys are doing i need to check this out
i need to get more involved if i can
yeah it was um you know it was the full
spectrum tinctures you know that were
being produced the um
the i i was manufacturing products on a
really small scale for some other kind
of local customers and from my own
shop that i had up in ohio um prior to
this
adventure um and it was just that oil
you know just as it is with
winterization just a little
winterization
um and some d carbs so that you know
cbda tends to make me
a little tired this is not something
that i can take in the daytime
um you know in high dosages but it just
you know i i had a lot of my own
personal you know
battles that i was fighting um you know
just you know
mental health depression anxiety all
these things you know and arthritis and
stuff
um and it was the first time that i had
come across anything that really sort of
i could really i could really feel
how different you know that oil was
it you know opposed to any of the other
ones um because of the terpene profile
because of
uh you know the potency because of it
just there’s just it has a magic
about it you know and uh and so that’s
what attracted me to it because
you know there’s other there’s other
factors you know for instance you know
the opiate epidemic in ohio is
you know is actually second place to the
opiate evidence
here so there’s all sorts of great
causes behind it that of course we’re
not allowed to market
but um but you know i think that there’s
an attraction for me
to develop products that do serve the
public
uh in a way that is not just you know
hey look at this
cbd gummy hey look at this you know
product um but something that’s going to
have a little bit more impacts not an
isolated product or
you know even a lot of times distillate
i’m not a huge fan of you know i like
the full spectrum oil i like
the whole plant extract um so we’ve
really tried to retain as much
as much of that throughout the process
into the end product as we possibly can
um so that’s you know that’s what we’re
all about here there’s a small batch
craft you know the least amount of
processing necessary
um you know even though the regulations
force us into
uh extensive and you know sort of
unnecessary or redundant processing uh
just to deal with that
arbitrary 0.3 you know number right you
know you can only
only cry in your cheerios about it so
much so until you just learn how to
adapt you know
right and i think everybody’s had to
deal with it whether it’s on the payment
processing side whether it’s on the
processing right
the material side whether it’s on the
farming side you know there’s been a lot
of farmers that have had to
cut down their entire crops probably not
there in west virginia but
a lot of other states they’ve had some
pretty major issues now
tyler you mentioned impact on the
community and francis you kind of talked
about that as well
um you’re out there creating jobs and in
west virginia and small
you know kind of tight-knit communities
that has a real
tangible impact what is the er what is
the expansion of can of interest west
virginia look like
um when it comes to you know jobs and
product
uh distribution things like that how has
growth been for
for the business recently we’ve been
growing very quickly uh there for a
while
you know when we were finding our way in
the evolving market
it was uh francis myself and and one
other employee
you know holding it down uh since then
in the past
you know five six months we’ve brought
on four
four employees in the lab setting three
employees in retail markets
several employees in the farming efforts
especially around you know planting
season and harvest
and then not even to mention all the
people that sell our products that you
know are thriving
with their own retail locations um can
adventures also
functions as a white label uh
manufacturer of products
so we’ve helped create you know a number
of brands
we do the graphics in-house we work very
closely with
with uh with the customer to create
something that represents
you know how they feel about cbd and you
know what they want to provide to their
their customers yeah there’s a great
deal of medical interest in the area
um you know body university um and you
know buy some independent you know
uh for instance we have a a local
um physician here that focuses on
integrative
medicine and so you know we he said you
know i want
something you know for my office you
know so we custom formulate the product
for him you know he gives us a logo you
know
and that’s how that’s how it goes but
there’s been some interest from the
university
um we’ve had a couple of meetings with
them here um to try and develop
uh you know some some research driven um
you know information because um there’s
just so much out there we haven’t even
really you know scratched the surface of
uh with
um you know cannabis medicine um
and you know there’s a lot of interest
from some other larger companies that we
supply
um i’m not gonna name drop but you know
we have a couple of really really good
distribution
channels that we’ve picked up in the
last you know few months
um and i think that’s going to lead to
you know to expansion
either in partner facilities um or even
jobs in the local market here
um so it’s it’s it’s it’s exciting you
know it’s very
no i believe it you know i hadn’t
thought of it before but west virginia
is actually in a really good location
when it comes to regulations it sounds
like y’all have a great relationship
with the regulators
when it comes to being that close to the
east coast
and you know all the mass industry and
distribution
of um you know really large companies
especially in the northeast
you’re right there the amount of
agricultural land
um the amount of available workforce
right there so
i could see west virginia being a pretty
big pioneer in the hip space and y’all
are at the helm of that so
congratulations on everything that
you’ve been able to do tyler francis i
can’t wait to see
what comes down the pipe uh and uh it’s
been a pleasure working with you guys on
the platform so
thank you guys so much for being a part
of the community and uh holding down the
fort there in west virginia for us
yes sir thank you for everything you’ve
done and coach.com has been
you know massive help in our efforts to
get our name out there and
and you know reach the market
i look forward to continuing the
partnership for years to come
congratulations on all the success and
good luck over the next couple of years
i’m sure we’ll see you here soon
thanks sir thanks thank you all right
tyler francis congratulations we’ll talk
soon
all right thanks bye have a good one