Member Blog: Off The Backburner – Compliance During COVID-19

by Mark Slaugh, CEO and Co-Founder of iComply, LLC

Operational cannabis compliance has been a vital but often ignored part of many owners’ guides to success. With the hustle and bustle that is the ever-expanding nature of the cannabis business, most owners and operators want to believe they are compliant 100% of the time.

However, anyone who owns a cannabis business and is honest with themselves knows that to understand the constantly changing regulatory updates is a constant challenge. Often, the needs of the business outweigh the time it takes to assess the best ways to remain compliant. Too often, the distractions of growing the brand, networking, and conferences distract us from what’s happening with staff, procedures, and operations behind the scenes.

This has become alarmingly evident during COVID-19.

The pandemic began affecting how different operators in different States had to adjust various emergency procedures and restrictions on how cannabis could be bought and sold. From there, pandora’s compliance box released a torrent of issues to look at.

In our experience, 95% of the industry has a reactive approach to compliance management and will scramble to take time and pay expensive attorneys fees to dig them out of trouble once they are caught.

And what you resist, persists.

During COVID-19, owners are already making procedural adjustments to remain compliant and are staying at home for a change – which has allowed them and their teams more focus and less distraction by avoiding conferences, travel, and in-person meetings as much as possible.

What they are finding is that the compliance train has been off the tracks for a while.

Naturally, as the industry grows, so does the responsibility of mitigating liability and staying on top of the backburner projects in dealing with compliance. It is not the sexiest or most fun aspect of the industry (if you aren’t compliance nerds like us).

People tend to resist being honest about it, managing it appropriately, or holding others accountable until it’s too late.

COVID has at least provided some breathing room for owners and operators to put on their facemask and dust off their SOPs or untangle the strings around poor inventory management.

Some cannabis companies are asking themselves how they can use the boredom of COVID-19 (to some degree) and the extra time saved from travel, conferences, and meetings to re-examine their operational compliance infrastructure.

We are finding that owners in the cannabis industry are lacking a transparent cannabis compliance plan that can be easily adjusted to stay ahead of regulators, rules, and to mitigate product liability. They lack accurate employee training to specific procedures with accountability and wonder why turnover is so high. They are starting to realize that inventory, books and records, and daily compliance management are creating more risk than is tolerable for a tangible reward.

The word “decimation” comes from the Roman times and was considered a military punishment in which squads of 10 (deci) would draw stones from a bag. One black stone among the white ones meant beating that soldier to death by his fellows. While extreme, the lesson was an important one and is still relevant in the cannabis industry today.

Out of every inspection by the MED, in Colorado, around 10% of licensees were found in violation and administratively punished. Having come from a banking risk management background, it is shocking to see that level of risk be “ok” with most operators.

No other heavily regulated industry tolerates such a high level of risk. Cannabis, in fact, tolerates 10x more risk loss on average than is acceptable in banking (less than 1%).

Some of the biggest backburner projects in compliance coming to the forefront are:

SOPs and Employee Training Manuals

It is crucial to have compliant procedures that are accurate to current operations. One cannot effectively and proactively run a cannabis company without valid and accurate Standard Operating Procedures and related documents. They are essential.

What we find is that most established operators have to dust these SOPs off from whatever shelf they placed them on when they finally come around to looking at them.

Inventory and METRC

Another big problem area is inventory inaccuracies which require regular reconciliation and clean up. As we all know, once the snowball effect of inaccuracy happens, it simply gets more entangled and difficult over time.

During COVID-19, regulators are doing fewer in-person visits and are relying more on their ability to look at seed to sale tracking systems to identify potential non-compliance to conduct their inspections and request specific information from operators.

Books and Records

Most cannabis companies think SOPs, audits, and inventory are compliance management in a nutshell. The detailed accountability over files, logs, and forms often escapes their mind as soon as the file is saved or placed into the file cabinet.

Like dusting off SOPs, opening the file cabinet to ensure the accuracy of these documents can be best done during COVID-19 as well. Insight to this helps improve procedures and ensure accountability of staff members from visitor logs, to pesticide applications, incident reports, and manifests.

Staff Knowledge

For many of our medium to large clients, COVID-19 has affected their staff members. When one person is infected, many others may not want to come to work, and companies are forced to hire in additional labor to meet operational demand. If this hasn’t happened, consider you might want to be prepared for it as it takes away employees for a minimum of 2 to 4 weeks.

COVID-19 is causing a wide gap due to faster training requirements and creating more risk for non-compliance, product liability, and workplace safety without proper education, knowledge and accountability for staff.

Challenges like COVID-19, rule changes, and human nature are greatly mitigated and proactively managed when cannabis companies commit to taking compliance off the backburner and putting it at the forefront. Taking the time now to do so may be better than any other time for experienced operators to better prepare for “normalcy” when it returns.

An ounce of prevention is literally worth pounds of cure. And, during COVID-19, cannabis companies would do well to prevent the “decimation” of their very valuable licenses and operations by taking advantage of the extra time and energy to do the heavy lifting necessary to take compliance off the backburner.

Mark Slaugh, CEO and owner of iComply, works in the specialist sector of compliance for the medical, retail, and hemp industries and has over 12 years’ experience in cannabis industry development, consulting, and operational compliance and over 21 years’ experience in regulations and risk management.

Due to his extensive background and education, Mark knows what it takes to move markets forward at political, policy, and operational levels. He has developed small and large startups, improved existing operations, and has protected some of the top companies in the field.

iComply provides operational compliance services and validation of over 200 cultivation, manufacturing and processing, and dispensing facilities since 2011 and iComply consults for a variety of communities, organizations, and governments. Engaging in legacy projects over the long-term, iComply builds trusted relationships to ensure industry integrity, standards, regulations, and best practices are implemented and adhered to within organizations.

Guest Post: Commercial Cannabis Compliance – The Key to a Golden Age

By Mark Slaugh, Founder and CEO of iComply, LLC

As I call another contact in Colorado, the knowledge of the latest Denver Post article is still fresh in my mind. The headline reads, “Denver approves plan to increase staff to enforce marijuana regulations.” Our client, busy as usual managing plants, product, and people, sighs in desperation as I tell her about the additional $3.4m in Denver being added to the $25m budget of State regulators.

Exasperated, she says, “man, it seems like they want to regulate as few of us as possible.” She knows the horror stories etched on the tombstones of businesses now shut down due to regulatory enforcement. Forfeit in the grave are dozens of jobs, thousands in investment, and millions in opportunity.

I know the struggle of marijuana businesses to reach the high bar of compliance that has been set in Colorado for commercial cannabis operators. When I started iComply in 2011, it was with the operational understanding of early rules at an initial stage of medical marijuana regulatory framework. At the time, my work had been facilitating the operations of new dispensaries and directing a Southern Colorado industry group making its way through local laws and state legislation.

Back then, we all knew about cameras, about locks, about badging, about tracking sales. What we didn’t know was how long the arm of the Marijuana Enforcement Division (MED) was. Up until last year, the industry and regulators we still figuring it out. Many people viewed enforcement like a Sasquatch; sightings and rumors abound but with very few inspections ever conducted and even fewer enforcement actions taken.

Typical in new markets, about 60% of the industry went out of business in the first 18 months and the Division had over-projected revenues and under-projected budgets. In short, they were down to 12 employees and very little bandwidth in the field to regulate over 1,000 facilities.

To no real surprise, a scathing audit of the MED found they were inefficient and ineffective. However, shortly after Amendment 64 passed, legislators took action. The Division was robustly funded to make up for years of enforcement gaps. The industry, for the most part, rejoiced over the possibility of removing bad actors from the playing field and leveling the standard for compliant cannabis commerce in Colorado.

The only reason anyone in the national industry is allowed to blatantly violate Federal Law is if they can show clear, unambiguous, compliance with State regulatory regimes. These regulations cover the eight Department of Justice Guidelines outlined in the 2012 Cole Memo. As new states bring regulations online from CBD only, to medical and retail marijuana, the signal is clear: expect enforcement to hold businesses accountable to the law.

For experienced and novice operators alike, compliance is a challenge that is difficult to take on alone. Qualified labor shortages are the nature of the market place and budtenders and growers seldom read legalese and are able to fully comprehend the regulatory expectations of the industry. Managing compliance details is crucial and standardizing best practices is far from complete. As the industry matures in Colorado and expands nationwide, owners and operators must keenly hone in on what the future will look like:

State-wide seed to sale tracking using RFID technology, real-time analytic reporting to law enforcement, standard operating procedure requirements, laboratory testing, manufacturing safety protocols, and product homogeneity under certified processes are just a few of the high level expectations likely to govern any cannabis market in the US.

As operators expand the marketplace by opening more facilities amid multiple states, we must contend with a slew of regulatory nuances. Colorado owners are hiring a scarce qualified workforce as compliance officers to internally manage reporting, tracking, and deadlines. Rules change frequently, and interpretations vary from attorneys to individual enforcement agents in the field – making a complex operation even more difficult.

We have clients who, due to missing the filing of one form, have had over 20lbs of product sanctioned by enforcement. For 6 months, they have simply awaited action by regulators with no clear end to empty shelves and disappearing customers in sight.

States who miss the reality of rubber hitting the road are faced with the question of establishing reasonable enforcement procedures inherent to licensing. In Colorado, a record number of application denials, enforcement actions, and administrative hearings has taken the industry by force and surprise since Retail sales came online Jan 1 this year.

A few words to the wise for the Responsible and Compliant vendors of the future.

Do everything you can to mitigate the risk of non-compliance.
Document, whenever possible, the activities of your facilities.
Be pro-active rather than reactive to changing regulation.
Support industry organizations to negotiate your rules based on best practices.

Preparing against non-compliance is the first step to ensuring a compliant operation and to reducing scrutiny from Law Enforcement. How we operate will determine our fate and the whole world is watching. Our brave new world still hangs in the balance and any single operator is either an asset or a liability to the overall industry and movement. Compliance is key to unlocking the golden age of commercial cannabis as expectations rise and the industry grows.

Mark Slaugh is the founder and CEO of iComply, LLC, and has more than four years of experience in the regulated cannabis industry development, consulting and compliance business. His successful startup provides valued services to clients on starting operations, production/manufacturing/retail management, and compliance consulting, training, and certification. Additionally, he served as the Colorado Springs Medical Cannabis Council (CSMCC) industry membership and executive director, and as the Southern Colorado Regional Coordinator for the Campaign to Regulate Marijuana Like Alcohol (Amendment 64).