BioTrack - NYS and Seed to Sale
Download MP3Welcome to joint session, Diverse Voices in New York State Cannabis, the podcast where policymakers, legislators, thought leaders, licensees and advocates come to discuss the evolving landscape of cannabis in New York and beyond. I'm Herb Barbeau, former Director of Operations in New York's Office of Cannabis Management. Each episode, we bring you in-depth conversation with key voices shaping policy, business and advocacy, plus expert insights on the latest developments impacting the industry. And now for the
Speaker 2:episode. This is Herb Paul Beau, and in this episode, we'll speak with doctor Moe Afana, BioTrack's chief operating officer and New York's seed to sale vendor. But first, let's take a spin around this week's news. The city of Los Angeles has collected more than $600,000,000 in cannabis tax revenue since legal sales began in 2018. California has the biggest legal cannabis market in The US, and Los Angeles makes up a huge part of that.
Speaker 2:Let's hope these are revenue numbers we'll be seeing in New York City within the decade. This week, we learned that the National Cancer Institute has flagged controversial topics in an internal directive, and surprise, surprise, that includes cannabis. ProPublica got its hands on an internal NCI memo that flags controversial, high profile, or sensitive topics that would receive enhanced oversight by federal officials. These topics range from autism and vaccines to marijuana, that's their word, to marijuana, environmental justice, gender ideology, and even fluoride. The member cautioned that depending on the nature of the information, additional review and clearance by the NCI director, deputy directors, NIH, and HHS may be required.
Speaker 2:The National Cancer Institute is, of course, part of the National Institutes of Health, which is itself part of the U. S. Department of Health and Human Services and is the nation's medical research agency, which as you all know, is now headed by famed medical researcher Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Research by the AAA Foundation sheds light on cannabis impaired driving and what messaging may actually deter driving.
Speaker 2:In a topic we covered last year in episode eight, Chuck D on cannabis and traffic safety, researchers looked at what motivates consumers to get behind the wheel after consuming and what types of messages might help curb these behaviors. The AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety conducted two studies on the topic of cannabis impaired driving, one on perception and the other on messaging. For the study on perception, researchers conducted interviews and surveys of nearly 3,000 participants. Results showed first that forty seven percent of respondents didn't think law enforcement could detect cannabis impairment, and another twenty four percent were unsure. The results demonstrated high risk driving patterns in most cannabis users, and that was defined as driving within one hour of use.
Speaker 2:There was generally a low level of knowledge about cannabis laws and regulations, researchers concluded. Cannabis users were most responsive to the public safety messages, which were factual, respectful, and avoided stereotyping. The report concludes with detailed recommendations for public policy stakeholders, law enforcement, and public health professionals. For the study on messaging, researchers held 11 focus groups with subgroups of cannabis users that had a history of drug driving. Discussions there also suggested that the most effective messages would be those that were A, positive B, realistic C, avoid the stereotypes and D, reflect the diversity.
Speaker 2:Understanding what motivates cannabis consumers to drive under the influence can be helpful in developing effective safety strategies, David Yang, President and Executive Director of the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety, said in a statement. With insights on perceptions, decision making, and behavior, we aim to inform policies and interventions that make our roads safer for everyone. Swing State Ohio is trying to swing back at voters with a number of bills to roll back adult use protections. In 2023, by referendum, Ohio voters approved adult use cannabis sales. Now two Republican backed bills moving to the legislature this year would reverse or change several provisions related to penalties and tax revenue allocation.
Speaker 2:SB 56 would essentially replace the voter pass measure, which is called issue two, with a far more restrictive approach. It would, for example, prohibit cannabis consumption anywhere outdoors, even in someone's own backyard, and reduce the homegrown limit by 50%. It would also repeal the cannabis social equity and jobs program. Further, any tax revenues that would have gone toward things like legal and youth programs would instead be redirected toward law enforcement. Finally, it would also cap legal cannabis shops at three fifty rather than the current approach, which requires regulators to assess demand and license accordingly.
Speaker 2:Many of these changes and other ones proposed in Senate Bill 56 are also included in HB 160, which was just introduced in the House. It would be basically a minefield of recriminalization, said Karen O'Keefe, the director of state policies at the Marijuana Policy Project. Kat Packer, Director of Drug Markets and Legal Regulations at the Drug Policy Alliance, added that passage of these bills would make Ohio an outlier among adult use states. Packer said, I cannot overstate how dangerous it would make Ohio for cannabis consumers. So anyone with family or friends in Ohio, please share this information with them.
Speaker 2:Thanks to Cannabis Wire for that news. Check out Cannabis Wire at cannabiswire.com.
Speaker 1:1 of the most critical topics in New York State cannabis at this time is the implementation of OCM's seed to sale traceability system. BioTrack is a software vendor the state has contracted with to guide the entire industry through this next step in the development of the market. Our guest today is BioTrack CEO, Mo Afena. Doctor Afena is the chief operating officer at BioTrack and All Leads. With a doctorate of pharmacy, he brings over twenty years of experience in the pharmacy and cannabis sector to his current role.
Speaker 1:Doctor. Alfenner has been instrumental in leading BioTrac for more than eleven years, overseeing numerous product launches and integrations. That experience will most definitely be put to the test as New York prepares to kick off its seat to sale tracking effort. Welcome, doctor Fenn.
Speaker 3:Morning. Thank you, Herb.
Speaker 1:Well, thank you. Thank you for agreeing to do this. I I know how busy you are at this time. So please just tell us a little bit about your background and especially how did you come to work in cannabis? You're a doctor of pharmacy.
Speaker 1:That's an impressive thing.
Speaker 3:Yeah. So I kind of started my road into cannabis about 17 ago or so. We were working on technology for helping kind of catch doctor shoppers in the in the pharmacy world. And along the way, we were showing off our technology to regulators and different policymakers around the country, and we end up in California. They said, the pharmacy thing is pretty well wrapped up here, but if you can help us with the cannabis problem we have, that's kind of where we need something.
Speaker 3:So the light kind of went off and we we pivoted from there. We we started learning everything we could about cannabis. And, you know, this is 02/2007, '2 thousand and '8, '2 thousand and '9 kind of timeframe. Denver and Colorado or Colorado and and California were the two kind of hot topic markets at that point. We you know, we picked up and we moved shop to to Denver and we kind of moved in with with about two dozen operators and said, teach us about cannabis.
Speaker 3:What do you have to know? What do you have to report? What does the state care about? And, you know, we kind of cut our teeth there in the in the Colorado market very, very early days. And the system kind of evolved over the years.
Speaker 3:And 2013, we won our first government contract. And from there, we just we kept winning more and more business and learned a lot along the way.
Speaker 1:Alright. So now it's it's 2025. Tell us, what is a track a a track and trace system? What does it do?
Speaker 3:Sure. So what in a nutshell, the the goal of track and trace is the ability for the government department agency entity to have visibility into what's kind of happening in the supply chain. And I think the simplest example is, like, in the event of a recall, you know, grandma purchases an edible. She looks at the package. There's a little bit of mold on there and says, something's wrong here.
Speaker 3:Mhmm. She can pick up. She can call the 800 number with the state and say, I bought this package. Here's the ID number. The state then has the ability to freeze, recall, put a hold on that specific batch.
Speaker 3:They can go to the intermediate that it came from. They can identify everywhere that that package has been sold or is currently sitting on a shelf somewhere. And that allows them to then take further action. So track and trace is designed to really give the the regulators visibility and transparency into what's happening to supply chain. And it also serves as kind of what I look at is kind of like the shield that allows all of us in the cannabis industry to conduct business.
Speaker 3:Right? So without level of track and trace, regulators and the naysayers are gonna be standing at the sidelines saying, well, how do we know this is safe? And how do we know it's tested? And and how do we know where it came from? And that's what track and trace solves is it it gives us all those check boxes that allows us to operate.
Speaker 1:Right. And so it's it's also referred to as a seed to sale system. Right? So so so how does that work? So you you you're the farmer.
Speaker 1:You're the cultivator. You know, you you're you're about to start, you know, planting. So how does that work?
Speaker 3:Sure. So the way the system works is it issues a globally unique identifier. Right? So it it issues this ID number. And let's say that the the farmer in this scenario has a bag of seeds.
Speaker 3:That bag of seeds has 10,000 seeds in it. That bag gets a unique identifier. He pulls out a hundred seeds. He puts them into a tray of clones. That tray of clone gets an ID number that now tracks back to the bag of seeds that it came from.
Speaker 3:Mhmm. Those clones grow up. Some of them live. Some of them die. He plants a 80 individual plants.
Speaker 3:Each one of those plants gets an ID number that tracks back to the to the tray of clones that goes back to the bag of seeds. Those plants grow up. They get harvested together. They get a unique identifier for that harvested flower material and the other material in the waste as well. That gets an ID that goes back to the plant that goes back to the clones, that goes back to the seeds.
Speaker 3:The in the simplest conversion, we produce a bunch of prepacks from that flout. Right? So they take a sample from that batch of flour. They send it to the lab. The lab says it's it's good to go.
Speaker 3:Here's a testing profile, and they produce a 500, whatever number of prepacks. They get a master batch ID, which then gets sublotted into case quantities, which gets an ID that then goes to a bunch of dispensaries. So along that entire chain, we track backwards to the point of origin or to the point of inception.
Speaker 1:And even even the the the plants that were destroyed get get traced. That gets reported as well to the state, doesn't it?
Speaker 3:Yes. So
Speaker 1:why is this ability to to track the entire lifespan of of this plant from seed to sale. Why is that of importance to the state?
Speaker 3:Well, a, it it gives the state the ability to make sure that all the product being sold at dispensaries is safe. It's tested. They know where it came from. It also prevents against black market activity. Right?
Speaker 3:So it it helps prevent and die against diversion and inversion. Right? Because they have the ability to audit these facilities. They have specific what we call red flag reports that will quickly identify anomalies. For example, you harvested a plant after three days.
Speaker 3:Right? You your wet weight coming off of a plant is abnormally high or abnormally low in comparison to the rest of the market or to your region. Right? So it gives them tools to be able to monitor the supply chain because most people in this industry are very good actors. Right?
Speaker 3:And that is an unfair advantage if they're competing against people that are doing, you know, bad acting behavior.
Speaker 1:Yeah. And can you can you describe, you know, what what what is diversion and inversion? And because there there's been a lot of talk, especially of inversion in the state recently.
Speaker 3:Sure. So inversion is where you are bringing in illicit product into the legal supply chain. So for example, a farmer says, I harvested, you know, a hundred pounds from these plants. Well, he also inverts. He brings in black market weed that he bought at a fraction of the price because it's unregulated and it hasn't gone through a level of of scrutiny.
Speaker 3:And he says, you know what? Instead of a hundred pounds, it's now a 50 pounds. Right? So he's inverting. He's bringing in illegal product into the legal supply chain, Whereas diversion is we produced a hundred pounds, but we're gonna tell the state we only produced 50 pounds, and then they're gonna siphon off 50 pounds and push it into the black market.
Speaker 1:Alright. Terrific. So what how is the the state and all the players in the supply chain, how are they accounting for this today prior to the kickoff of, BioTrack?
Speaker 3:Yep. So everybody's running some sort of local system at this point, right, which does a level of of tracking and and gives them visibility not only from a business perspective, but it checks a bunch of kind of compliance boxes. What the state track and trace system is gonna do is integrate or their those systems will integrate with the track and trace system, and they'll just start reporting certain activity along the way. So in the kinda simplest fashion is anytime inventory or plants are created, they're harvested, they're destroyed, they're adjusted, they're moved, they're transported, they're tested. Those are the things that get reported to the state system.
Speaker 2:Mhmm. And and how
Speaker 1:does this also affect the the the taxing, part of this entire, effort?
Speaker 3:Well, this is gonna give the state a lot more visibility into, are they collecting the correct amount of tax? They'll be able to audit what people are paying to the tax authority versus what they're actually selling and and and conducting business with.
Speaker 2:Alright. Can you talk a
Speaker 1:little bit about the educational efforts? I know I know BioTrack and all leads have been involved in a lot of education around the state. Could you describe a little bit about, you know, what what that has looked like?
Speaker 3:Sure. So we've done integrator trainings, right, where we've walked through the different modules of the system. What is what is kind of integration look like for cultivators, for manufacturers, producers, distributors, the dispensaries. We've also been at a lot of community town halls and outreach programs and any organizations or associations that have reached out to us and said, hey. We want you to come kinda talk to our our members.
Speaker 3:We've been kinda front and center trying to be involved and and speaking with as many different groups as possible. And, obviously, answering questions, we we have our own dedicated support specifically for New York operators. We have a dedicated phone number, and we're constantly kinda putting out material into the market as well as augmenting and and working with other organizations to kinda support them. And, you know, I I live in the the reality of the situation, right, which is what is important, right? What happens on day one?
Speaker 3:And that's kind of what we kind of tend to harp on is like, these are lessons learned from other markets. Focus on these things. Don't fight the tide. Like, adopt the changes that you need to do and and kinda move forward.
Speaker 1:So if you're a licensee today, what is it that you're supposed to be doing at this point to be ready whenever this goes into into effect?
Speaker 3:So I would be communicating with whoever my cultivation software is or point of sale software is and saying, what is your rollout plan? When do you expect your integration to be done? What does the training process look like to train me up on the integrated system? What are things that I need to do in my local system today in preparation? So I I can kinda speak from from our commercial products perspective.
Speaker 3:So what we do is we start a reach out program that says, okay, your cultivators, your producers, you should start looking at your inventory types. Right? Like, here's the state defined inventory types, start kinda mapping those and getting them to adhere to that kind of standard. If you are kind of cutting some corners on labeling or packaging, now is the time to make those changes. The state has an official labeling and marketing guide.
Speaker 3:I would look at that very closely, make sure that you're adhering to that standard. If there are internal processes that, you know, you've kind of, you know, need to bolster or improve related to how you manufacture goods, how you label goods, how you transfer goods, now is the time to start making those changes. What you don't wanna do is wait to the last few days and then do a mad rush toward it. That is a recipe for a lot of pain for yourself.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Do you have any insight or are you able to say at this point in time when the state is actually planning to to kick this off?
Speaker 3:We get that question at least one time a day. Alright. So, look, that's that's a decision time a day. Yeah. This this is that's a decision by OCM.
Speaker 3:So Right. No. No. I get that. We're we're, you know, they are looking at a lot of different things.
Speaker 3:Right? Like, fast are the integrators gonna be integrated? How fast are the labs gonna be integrated? How much time do we need to give them? You know?
Speaker 3:So they're they're definitely having those conversations. They're they're asking for feedback from different market stakeholders. But, you know, I think they wanna be very thoughtful and make sure that they've given everybody enough time before, you know, that clock starts. Because once that train starts to move, you know, and you're lagging behind, you're gonna be in a world of hurt. Right?
Speaker 3:So they wanna make sure enough people are ready at the right time.
Speaker 1:Right. And for people who don't know, integrators are
Speaker 3:Are your point of sale providers, the cultivation software that you may use, any kind of system that needs to communicate with the state system about what you're doing in your facility. Right? How you're moving inventory, how you're creating plants, how you're harvesting, how you're producing things, how you're selling things.
Speaker 1:So in this process, they're the intermediary between the licensee and BioTrack in the state? Correct. Correct. So when when this system is fully up and running operational, you know, all the tires have been kicked, what can New York state expect?
Speaker 3:So look, generally, what we tend to see is there is this implementation phase. Right? And it takes about six months for most of the market to kind of make all the changes, figure out where, you know, they had some gaps, and then we kind of move into what I look at as the second phase, which is people are now fine tuning their processes, the businesses are growing, Emerging markets are starting to kind of take shape. The wholesale supply chain is getting stronger. So track and trace creates some efficiencies.
Speaker 3:Right? So everybody now is manually entering test results. Everybody's manually entering in the transfers. All that is gonna become streamlined. Right?
Speaker 3:Like, the test results will be automated through the system. When you do a transfer, you click a button, the other side can receive everything. Click, click, click. It shows up in your system. Your products automatically map.
Speaker 3:The prices are already there. So it's it's gonna remove a lot of manual kind of activities. And with that, the businesses can focus on doing what they do best, right, which is either growing or selling or manufacturing or distributing. And I think that the state is gonna get a better perspective on how much inventory do we have in our current supply chain. Where do we have a gap in the number of dispensaries to be able to serve that population center?
Speaker 3:Where do we have too much supply kind of sitting around? Right? So that's just gonna give them the ability to be more strategic on where licenses should be issued, to support enough competition in in a respective region.
Speaker 1:Right. No. And I think that's that's part of the conversation that really hasn't been had is how important this is to a developing market. Right? So licenses are still being issued.
Speaker 1:Areas of of the state are still being, you know, still receiving licenses. So it is critical to the development of the market overall. So any last words for licensees out there that are just concerned about something new to worry about?
Speaker 3:Look. The biggest thing is speak with whoever your software vendor is currently. Figure out what their rollout plan is. If they haven't done this before in a BioTrack state, you know, I would definitely ask a lot more questions. Make sure that your team and by your team, I mean, the people that are doing all the clicking every day are the ones that get the most amount of training.
Speaker 3:That is the the the most understated kind of activity that can happen. That muscle memory. So when day one happens, they know what to do when they have to void a receipt or they need to do a refund or, you know, a vape cartridge broke, like, what do I do next? Like, how do I ship it back to the guy that I bought it from? Simple things like that, all that muscle memory is going to reduce the amount of noise that you're gonna experience on day one.
Speaker 1:All right. Well, you and best wishes to you, to BioTrac and OCM as this rolls out. Thank Thank you. That's it for this episode of Joint Session Diverse Voices in New York State Cannabis. If you found today's discussion valuable, consider leaving a rating and review on your favorite podcast platform.
Speaker 1:It helps more listeners find the show. Better yet, share it with colleagues, advocates and anyone interested in the future of cannabis in New York. Joint Session is produced by me, Herb Wabo, together with executive producer Robert Curtis from Simlev Media. Special thanks as always to Cannabis Wire. You can follow us on Instagram at jointsession.pod and on LinkedIn at joint session podcast.
Speaker 1:If you have any comments, questions or topic suggestions, reach out to me at herb.joinsession@gmail.com. Until next time, this is Herb Wabo. Thanks for listening.
