[POLITICO] Toke-lahoma becomes a target for lawmakers

In this Nov. 30, 2018 photo medical marijuana is displayed in Shawnee, Okla. | Sean Murphy, File/AP Photo

More than 100 marijuana-related bills have been filed, many seeking to restrict Oklahoma's booming medical program.

Staunchly conservative Oklahoma has emerged as an unlikely weed utopia with more than 12,000 cannabis businesses and the nation’s highest per capita rate of medical marijuana patients.

While other states have embraced tight restrictions on weed businesses, Oklahoma has become the nation’s test case for unfettered cannabis capitalism, placing few limits on licenses.

That could soon change.

Republican Gov. Kevin Stitt and state lawmakers in Oklahoma City are trying to rein in the freewheeling market that has proliferated since voter-approved legalization in 2018, introducing dozens of bills that would impose tighter restrictions.

“When Oklahomans voted for medical marijuana, they were sold a bill of goods,” Stitt said, setting the tone during his State of the State speech last month. “The state question was misleading, and it has tied our hands as we regulate the industry.”

Oklahoma’s experience serves as a cautionary tale for other red states, which have seen unprecedented momentum to legalize pot in recent years. When Mississippi lawmakers passed a medical marijuana bill last month, they repeatedly emphasized that they didn’t want to follow the wild west path blazed by Oklahoma.

“We are not Oklahoma, and this program is not going to be Oklahoma 2.0,” Mississippi GOP state Sen. Kevin Blackwell, who sponsored the medical marijuana bill, said during the floor debate.

Republicans have sounded alarms, but cannabis proponents say states with strict rules aren’t exactly models of success. Early adopter states have experienced massive legal fights and allegations of corruption from entrepreneurs seeking a limited number of potentially highly lucrative licenses.

Oklahoma libertarian legalization advocate Chip Paul argues that the problem isn’t the state’s unlimited licensing structure, but rather the failure of state regulators to establish sound guardrails and adequate enforcement.

“You can pretty much do whatever you want with no fear that you’re going to get inspected,” Paul said. “Our state is whistling Dixie and letting it all happen.”

The legislative agitation comes as cannabis advocates are pushing to put a recreational legalization referendum on the ballot this year, but two competing petitions have splintered the pro-marijuana forces.

MARKET RETRENCHMENT

There’s some evidence that Oklahoma’s Green Rush has crested. Over the last two months, the number of licensed businesses has dropped from 13,785 to 12,021 — a 15 percent dip. Roughly 40 percent of that decrease came from businesses failing to comply with a new requirement that they disclose any foreign ownership, according to the Oklahoma Medical Marijuana Authority. In addition, businesses with expired licenses lost a grace period to stay in business.

But most close market watchers still believe there’s a market correction on the horizon. The price of marijuana has fallen significantly due to the glut of product on the market, industry officials say, which will almost certainly lead some businesses to shut down.

“The unlucky and incompetent will not make it,” said Chip Baker, a longtime marijuana entrepreneur who moved his business operations from Colorado to Oklahoma after the medical marijuana market launched in 2018.

In addition, a recent court settlement will allow Oklahoma to move forward with its long-delayed seed-to-sale tracking system. The Oklahoma Medical Marijuana Authority hired Metrc — which runs cannabis tracking systems in 17 other U.S. states and territories — to establish the program in 2020, but that sparked a lawsuit challenging the contract, and a temporary restraining order barring implementation has been in place since last April.

OMMA Executive Director Adria Berry, who was appointed by Stitt to lead the agency in August and has made beefing up enforcement a top priority, believes that putting the track-and-trace system for marijuana products in place will alleviate many of the concerns raised by lawmakers, particularly about product being diverted into the underground market.

“It will completely change the dynamic,” Berry said prior to the court settlement. “I’ll be able to give [lawmakers] metrics and data that they’re asking for, such as knowing how much marijuana is actually being sold across the state from dispensaries.”

But so far that hasn’t done anything to quell the calls for big changes to the program. Legislative proposals include a moratorium on new medical marijuana business licenses, tougher penalties for patients and businesses that divert product outside the regulated market, and eliminating the tax exemption on business supplies for weed farmers.

“My constituents, they’ve been complaining about the marijuana business and how out of hand it’s gotten,” said GOP state Rep. Rusty Cornwell, who introduced the moratorium bill and represents a rural district in the northeast corner of the state that’s seen a huge influx of marijuana farms.

Cornwell emphasizes that legitimate existing businesses would not be affected by the moratorium, that it would initially be in effect for just two years, and that the OMMA could lift it at any time before that if state regulators conclude that the enforcement issues have been adequately addressed.

“If you talk to the good players in [the medical marijuana industry], they’re fine with the moratorium,” Cornwell said. “They want everybody to be in compliance, because they’re having a hard time doing legitimate business because of all the ones that are the bad actors in the industry.”

There’s a broad coalition of groups advocating for tighter guardrails around the industry. The Oklahoma Municipal League, which wields considerable influence at the Capitol representing cities, is working with the Association of Oklahoma Narcotic Enforcers and Oklahoma Faith Leaders to push a trio of bills being carried by state Sen. Lonnie Paxton, who chairs the Senate Public Safety Committee. The legislation would heighten penalties for businesses and individuals who illegally sell or transfer marijuana, as well as increase OMMA’s authority to strip licenses for businesses that violate state laws.

“When the state question passed, I think people in Oklahoma — and people across the country for that matter — didn’t think that we would be the forefront of the marijuana industry,” said Daniel McClure, the Oklahoma Municipal League’s deputy general counsel. “So we weren’t ready from a regulatory standpoint at the city level or the state level.”

All three bills cleared the Public Safety Committee by 11-1 votes last month and are headed for floor votes.

ADVOCATE INFIGHTING

The backlash comes as advocates are preparing to push for a referendum on full legalization. Two different referendums have been filed with the secretary of state’s office. The biggest difference between the two measures is that one would enshrine the right for adults to use marijuana in the state’s constitution, while the other would change state law. But both face legal challenges to their constitutionality.

In fact, the petition challenging the statutory referendum was filed by the individual leading the campaign to pass the constitutional referendum. That infighting among legalization advocates could undermine efforts to pass either petition given the backlash that the industry is facing.

“I think eventually it’s going to happen nationwide,” said Cornwell, noting that younger generations are more comfortable with marijuana use. ”Do I think the timing is right for Oklahoma right now? No.”

[Denver Post] Oklahoma is the new “Wild West of weed” — and Colorado marijuana entrepreneurs are helping fuel the green rush

Lax regulation and low barriers to entry have triggered cannabis’s explosive growth in Sooner State

OKEMAH, Okla. — Chip Baker surveyed a vast field on the outskirts of an old hay farm an hour east of Oklahoma City, his ponytail waving in the thick, humid air, his voice growing excited.

“This is probably the largest collection of Squirt in the world!” he boasted, pointing to an array of neatly plotted cannabis plants before him that will soon flower pounds of the popular strain.

Baker would know. From the time he planted his first marijuana plant at 13, he’s been all about growing weed. A dream formed in the Georgia fields took him to Humboldt County, California — the nation’s earliest pot epicenter — then Colorado, the country’s first recreational market.

But it’s here in rural Oklahoma, down a dusty dirt road along the banks of the North Canadian River, where true cannabis cowboys — including droves of Colorado entrepreneurs like Baker — are buying mammoth properties to grow mammoth numbers of plants, all in a quest for mammoth stacks of kush-derived cash.

It’s a place unlike virtually any other in America.

“Other states grow patches,” Baker said with a grin, taking in the 90-acre, 40,000-plant cannabis farm before him. “In Oklahoma, we grow fields.”

The Sooner State, as deeply red as the American political palette will go, has almost overnight become the hottest place in the country to grow marijuana. It’s an unprecedented look at what happens when the government stays largely out of the picture and lets the free market run wild.

And Colorado businesses are pumping their sizeable dollars and cannabis expertise into the state, hoping to cash in on what Baker and others in the industry call the next green rush.

“It’s the Wild West of weed,” he said, “in all its glory.”

Read Full Interview with The Denver Post

[NEWSNATION NOW] A surprising oasis for medical marijuana: Oklahoma

OKLAHOMA (NewsNation Now) — When you think of Oklahoma, marijuana is probably not a thing you associate with the state.

Drive about 40 miles northeast of Oklahoma City and you’ll land on Chip Baker’s hundred-acre farm.

At first glance, it looks like any plot in rural Oklahoma. Spacious fields studded with work sheds and tarped greenhouse tunnels. Roosters roam freely next door.

Throw open the barn door and the golden light doesn’t reveal amber waves of grain but a different kind of cash crop.

It’s a marijuana operation and it’s all “baker’s brand.”

“Tokelahoma, cushlahoma, weedlahoma [and] gongelahoma” Baker says are just a few of the brands he sells.

“I think Lester Grinspoon said it best when he said “I smoke marijuana every chance I get.” and it’s true! Every chance, I do! ” exclaimed Baker.

Baker has grown weed around the world since he was 13. From the woods of Georgia and the lakes of Switzerland to Colorado and California.

“I love California weed, I love California growers. But there’s a certain snobbiness and we’ve done it all,” said Baker. “But like Oklahoma it’s this newness, adventure, that’s partly why we’re here.”

The 48-year-old and his wife Jessica moved to Oklahoma a couple of years ago after 57 percent of statewide voters literally greenlit medicinal marijuana through state question 788.

David Lewis is a lifelong Oklahoman and coo of Stability Cannabis, one of the state’s largest indoor grow facilities.

“I think people underestimate how much of a culture shock this was. This was a state where you couldn’t buy wine in a grocery store, yet we passed medicinal marijuana,” explained Lewis. “Born and raised in Oklahoma, I never would have thought we’d have almost 400,000 patients consuming medical marijuana. It’s shocking.”

According to the Oklahoma Medical Marijuana Authority, there are more than 380,000 Oklahomans with active medical marijuana cards, about 10 percent of the population. That’s more than any other state in the country and double that of New Mexico, which comes in second.

In a state whose politics are as red as its dirt, the numbers almost seem wrong.

“Oklahoma and Texas are the home of outlaw country, right? Just because people are conservative or work on the land, or fish or hunt as relaxation, or even go to church, doesn’t disbar them from using cannabis and enjoying it,” said Baker.

“What I would say is look around the congregation at your church, and that’s our customer base,” added Lewis.

They’re consumers who get to come out of the shadows like Taly Frantz-Holly.

“I’ve been on the black market, as far as cannabis, as a smoker and everything from the time I was 19,” said Frantz-Holly.

She suffers from PTSD and says certain prescription pills left her suicidal. She found relief in cannabis.

“I went from taking 8 pharmaceuticals—8 medicinal pills every day. And now I’m down to 2. I only have panic attacks once ever few weeks and I was having panic attacks every single day,” stated Frantz-Holly.

Frantz-Holly says, without a doubt, the plant saved her life. So enamored by its medicinal powers, she now grows it herself.

“I literally got drug charges when I was 21 for a joint. And did 30 days in county jail. For a joint! And now I’m picking up 75 marijuana plants to go home to my commercial grow,” said Frantz-Holly.

She’s not alone. There are 7,000 other commercial growers across the state. Baker says it’s never been easier or cheaper to break into the business.

“Oklahoma just made it so easy to get involved that the average and normal person could,” said Baker. “There just no boundaries here.”

The application fee for growers, processors, dispensaries and transporters is $2,500. For patients, it’s $100. $20 for disabled veterans. Baker says it took him 15 minutes to apply in other states? He’s waited two years.

“Well if you look back at the political cycles, Oklahoma is the reddest of the red states. And I think what that translated to in medical marijuana was a free market approach,” said Baker. “The government wanted the free market to settle out who the winners and losers would be, and as a result you saw very limited restrictions on getting into the market and a lot of people participated.”

And many doctors, especially during a pandemic, have signed off on cards for patients suffering from anxiety, depression and insomnia.

“Oh COVID was a boom to the industry! Turns out if you’re trapped at home I guess with your kids and your in laws, you might have to medicate a little bit more every now and then,” said Lewis.

“The other thing is people aren’t sharing cannabis as much because of COVID. So people have been having their own bowls and their own joints,” stated Baker.

Baker says industry-wide, the business grew 50 percent last year.

If you’re surprised by Oklahoma’s booming numbers, Baker says you shouldn’t be. People just haven’t been able to talk about it but singing it.

“Oklahoma has a cannabis history. The cross Canadian ragweed, the famous song from 20 years ago. Oklahoma boys roll their joints all wrong. Its famous! It’s been famous for years!” said Baker.

[POLITICO] How One of the Reddest States Became the Nation’s Hottest Weed Market

WELLSTON, Oklahoma—One day in the early fall of 2018, while scrutinizing the finances of his thriving Colorado garden supply business, Chip Baker noticed a curious development: transportation costs had spiked fivefold. The surge, he quickly determined, was due to huge shipments of cultivation supplies—potting soil, grow lights, dehumidifiers, fertilizer, water filters—to Oklahoma.

Baker, who has been growing weed since he was 13 in Georgia, has cultivated crops in some of the world’s most notorious marijuana hotspots, from the forests of Northern California’s Emerald Triangle to the lake region of Switzerland to the mountains of Colorado. Oklahoma was not exactly on his radar. So one weekend in October, Baker and his wife Jessica decided to take a drive to see where all their products were ending up.

Voters in the staunchly conservative state had just four months earlier authorized a medical marijuana program and sales were just beginning. The Bakers immediately saw the potential for the fledgling market. With no limits on marijuana business licenses, scant restrictions on who can obtain a medical card, and cheap land, energy and building materials, they believed Oklahoma could become a free-market weed utopia and they wanted in.

Chip Baker smokes a joint in his house at the farm where he grows marijuana in Wellston, Oklahoma.

Within two weeks, they found a house to rent in Broken Bow and by February had secured a lease on an empty Oklahoma City strip mall. Eventually they purchased a 110-acre plot of land down a red dirt road about 40 miles northeast of Oklahoma City that had previously been a breeding ground for fighting cocks and started growing high-grade strains of cannabis with names like Purple Punch, Cookies and Cream and Miracle Alien.

“This is exactly like Humboldt County was in the late 90s,” Baker says, as a trio of workers chop down marijuana plants that survived a recent ice storm. “The effect this is going to have on the cannabis nation is going to be incredible.”

Oklahoma is now the biggest medical marijuana market in the country on a per capita basis. More than 360,000 Oklahomans—nearly 10 percent of the state’s population—have acquired medical marijuana cards over the last two years. By comparison, New Mexico has the country’s second most popular program, with about 5 percent of state residents obtaining medical cards. Last month, sales since 2018 surpassed $1 billion.

To meet that demand, Oklahoma has more than 9,000 licensed marijuana businesses, including nearly 2,000 dispensaries and almost 6,000 grow operations. In comparison, Colorado—the country’s oldest recreational marijuana market, with a population almost 50 percent larger than Oklahoma—has barely half as many licensed dispensaries and less than 20 percent as many grow operations. In Ardmore, a town of 25,000 in the oil patch near the Texas border, there are 36 licensed dispensaries—roughly one for every 700 residents. In neighboring Wilson (pop. 1,695), state officials have issued 32 cultivation licenses, meaning about one out of 50 residents can legally grow weed.

“Turns out rednecks love to smoke weed. That’s the thing about cannabis: It really bridges socio-economic gaps.”

— Chip Baker

What is happening in Oklahoma is almost unprecedented among the 35 states that have legalized marijuana in some form since California voters backed medical marijuana in 1996. Not only has the growth of its market outstripped other more established state programs but it is happening in a state that has long stood out for its opposition to drug use. Oklahoma imprisons more people on a per-capita basis than just about any other state in the country, many of them non-violent drug offenders sentenced to lengthy terms behind bars. But that state-sanctioned punitive streak has been overwhelmed by two other strands of American culture—a live-and-let-live attitude about drug use and an equally powerful preference for laissez-faire capitalism.

“Turns out rednecks love to smoke weed,” Baker laughs. “That’s the thing about cannabis: It really bridges socio-economic gaps. The only other thing that does it is handguns. All types of people are into firearms. All types of people are into cannabis.”

Indeed, Oklahoma has established arguably the only free-market marijuana industry in the country. Unlike almost every other state, there are no limits on how many business licenses can be issued and cities can’t ban marijuana businesses from operating within their borders. In addition, the cost of entry is far lower than in most states: a license costs just $2,500. In other words, anyone with a credit card and a dream can take a crack at becoming a marijuana millionaire.

“They’ve literally done what no other state has done: free-enterprise system, open market, wild wild west,” says Tom Spanier, who opened Tegridy Market (a dispensary that takes its name from South Park) with his wife in Oklahoma City last year. “It’s survival of the fittest.”

The hands-off model extends to patients, as well. There’s no set of qualifying conditions in order to obtain a medical card. If a patient can persuade a doctor that he needs to smoke weed in order to soothe a stubbed toe, that’s just as legitimate as a dying cancer patient seeking to mitigate pain. The cards are so easy to obtain—$60 and a five-minute consultation—that many consider Oklahoma to have a de facto recreational use program.

But lax as it might seem, Oklahoma’s program has generated a hefty amount of tax revenue while avoiding some of the pitfalls of more intensely regulated programs. Through the first 10 months of this year, the industry generated more than $105 million in state and local taxes. That’s more than the $73 million expected to be produced by the state lottery this fiscal year, though still a pittance in comparison to the overall state budget of nearly $8 billion. In addition, Oklahoma has largely escaped the biggest problems that have plagued many other state markets: Illegal sales are relatively rare and the low cost to entry has made corruption all but unnecessary.

Chip Baker’s farm in Wellston, Oklahoma. Top left: Plastic coverings are raised to allow air circulation and easier access to the plants. Top right: Alex Knight harvests cannabis plants. Middle image: Chip Baker identifies the cannabis plant that he believes is the best of the entire crop. Baker shares his cannabis cultivation knowledge on a podcast called The Real Dirt. Bottom left: Chris Hayes snips a tie connecting bamboo supports to a plant before harvesting it. Bottom right: The farm uses soil bags Baker designed to efficiently grow and harvest plants.

All of which has made Oklahoma an unlikely case study for the rest of the country, which continues its incremental march toward universal legalization. Oklahoma is struggling with the sudden growing pains common to all booms. As pretty much everyone acknowledges, the market simply can’t sustain the number of businesses currently operating. Meanwhile, state regulators are trying to introduce a seed-to-sale tracking system that many say is necessary to avert a public health disaster without cutting off the flow of tax revenue that they have come to rely on in lean budget times.

“This is a perfect test in front of the world,” says Norma Sapp, who has been waging an often lonely campaign for marijuana legalization in Oklahoma for more than three decades. “How will this shake out?”

Read the rest of this story on Politico

[AP NEWS] Pot entrepreneurs flocking to the Bible Belt for low taxes

OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) — From their keen taste for sun-ripened pot to their first meeting at a pro-marijuana rally in college in the 1990s, everything about Chip and Jessica Baker fits the stereotype of cannabis country in Northern California, where they lived for 20 years.

Jessica, with wavy hair that falls halfway down her back, is a practicing herbalist, acupuncturist and aromatherapist who teaches classes on the health benefits of cannabis. Scruffy-bearded Chip wears a jacket with a prominent “grower” patch and hosts a marijuana podcast called “The Real Dirt.” They started their pot business in rugged Humboldt County when it was the thriving epicenter of marijuana cultivation.

But the couple bid goodbye to the weed-friendly West and moved somewhere that might seem like the last place they would end up — Oklahoma.

They’re part of a green rush into the Bible Belt that no one anticipated when Oklahoma voters approved medical marijuana less than two years ago. Since then, a combination of factors — including a remarkably open-ended law and a red state’s aversion to government regulation — have created such ideal conditions for the cannabis industry that entrepreneurs are pouring in from states where legal weed has been established for years.

Though 11 states have fully legalized marijuana for recreational use, Oklahoma’s medical law is the closest thing to it: Anyone with any ailment, real or imagined, who can get a doctor’s approval can get a license to buy. It’s not hard to do. Already, nearly 6% of the state’s 4 million residents have obtained their prescription cards. And people who want to sell pot can do it as easily as opening a taco stand.

“Oklahoma is really allowing for normal people to get into the cannabis industry, as opposed to other places where you need $20 million up front,” said Jessica Baker.

Chip Baker shows a flat of plants that have begun to root in the marijuana nursery at Baker's Medical in Oklahoma City. (AP Photo/Sue Ogrocki)

The Bakers have a marijuana farm about 40 miles (65 kilometers) from Oklahoma City, along with a dispensary, nursery and gardening shop in a working-class part of town where virtually every vacant shop and building has been snapped up by weed entrepreneurs in the last year.

When he leased his place, which had been vacant for 10 years, Chip Baker said, “to celebrate, the owner went to Hawaii for a month.”

Unlike other states, Oklahoma did not limit the number of business licenses for dispensaries, growers or processors.

In less than two years, Oklahoma has more than 2,300 pot stores, or the second most per capita in the U.S. behind only Oregon, which has had recreational marijuana sales for five years. Oklahoma has four times more retail outlets than more populous Colorado, which pioneered full legalization.

“Some of these states are regulating cannabis like plutonium,” said Morgan Fox, a spokesman for the National Cannabis Industry Association, the national trade group for marijuana businesses. “And the financial burdens that are placed on licensed businesses are so onerous, that not only is it very difficult to stay in business, but it’s also very difficult for the legal, state-regulated systems to compete with the illicit market.”

Marijuana taxes approach 50% in some California communities and are a factor in some business closings.

California requires a $1,000 application fee, a $5,000 surety bond and an annual license fee ranging from $2,500 to $96,000, depending on a dispensary’s projected revenue, along with a lengthy application process. Licenses can cost $300,000 annually.

In Oklahoma, a dispensary license costs $2,500, can be filled out online and is approved within two weeks.

Arkansas, next door to Oklahoma, also has medical marijuana, but like most such states, it allows purchase only for treatment of certain diseases, such as glaucoma or post-traumatic stress disorder. It also requires a $100,000 surety bond. Louisiana, which also tightly restricts prescriptions, has only nine licensed dispensaries.

Ford Austin and his sister opened the APCO Medical Marijuana Dispensary in a gentrifying part of Oklahoma City after he gave up on plans for a California weed store. “There’s way more opportunity here,” he said.

Sarah Lee Gossett Parrish, an Oklahoma attorney specializing in cannabis law, said about 15% of her cannabis clients are coming from out of state.

“I frequently receive calls from people in the cannabis industry in California,” Gossett Parrish said.

People in some rural towns are worried about the Wild West atmosphere of the boom, particularly where shops with funny weed-pun names, waving banners and blinking signs have opened near schools and churches.

A Republican state legislator, Jim Olsen, has proposed a bill banning dispensaries within 1000 feet (305 meters) of a church. “While I recognize that some people do find pain relief from medical marijuana, with children we really don’t want them to think that when they reach problems in life, that marijuana is a good answer to that.”

But Republican Gov. Kevin Stitt and the GOP-controlled Legislature have shown no interest in reining in the industry since the ballot measure authorizing it passed overwhelmingly. The industry has mostly fought off local attempts at zoning.

Many communities are welcoming cannabis shops because of the sales tax revenue. In college-town Norman and in Oklahoma City, at least a half dozen businesses have joined the chambers of commerce.

“In our community, I think most businesses view them as equals,” said Scott Martin, president of the Norman Chamber of Commerce. “We’ve even had a handful of ribbon cutting ceremonies.”

Marijuana sales generated $54 million in tax revenue last year, accounted for the sharpest ever annual decline in empty mid-sized industrial properties in Oklahoma City, and booked up electricians around Tulsa outfitting new grow rooms with lights and temperature controls.

Even some longtime opponents of marijuana legalization have softened their tone.

Sheriff Chris West in Canadian County, one of many law enforcement officers who decried the 2018 legalization ballot measure, says a number of farmers he knows have decided to switch crops.

“I’ve had them call me and tell me, ‘Sheriff, we’re going to venture into this business and we’d like for you to come out and see our facility, because we want you to know what we’re doing.’ And these are longtime, good, godly, Christian families that see it as an income opportunity.”