(Credit: Steve Thurston, 2022)
Phillip Rumsey with the state Office of Cannabis Management speaks to the veterans at VetCon 2022.
A presentation on New York State’s recreational cannabis law and the status of the roll-out of retail pot dispensaries, turned to a discussion of Service-Disabled Veteran-Owned Businesses and the idea that some SDVOB owners feel closed out of the Office of Cannabis Management. The discussion occurred during VetCon, the annual conference that brings together SDVOBs for two days of networking.
SDVOB owners, vendors and officials from state agencies came together Nov. 29 and 30 at The Desmond Hotel and conference center for VetCon. People came from all over the state and country. The presentation covered the outlines of the cannabis law and highlighted the first licenses granted on Nov. 21 to applicants who wish to open dispensaries. The first licenses were awarded to people directly impacted by the justice system.
The reaction to Phillip Rumsey, the manager of intergovernmental outreach in the Office of Cannabis Management who was giving the cannabis presentation, was largely calm and polite, though emotions grew stronger as leaders in the veteran community spoke and asked questions.
“We served this f****** country,” said Carmine Fiore. He serves as the vice chair of the Veterans Committee of CANY, the Cannabis Association of New York. He said he believed that most of what his colleagues were saying would be like “talking to a brick wall” because the OCM has no veteran representation.
“You’re not a service-disabled vet," Fiore told Ramsey, so he and others cannot understand the veterans’ needs, Fiore said. As an example he said that veterans are not considered to be in a community affected by the war on drugs, but he said the lack of access to marijuana and the pain management it can provide, affects the mental health of veterans who commit suicide at the rate of 22 people a day.
“These are the things we need to speak about with the Office of Cannabis Management,” Fiore said.
Rumsey assured him that what was said gets written down and logged for the OCM to see. As well, the state is taking public comment on portions of the final regulations listed as part of the Marijuana Regulation and Taxation Act, the umbrella law that will regulate growing, processing and selling pot. Any emailed comments become part of the public record.
Sarah Stenuf, a veteran and hemp farmer in Fulton, N.Y., said she believes the state was able to parse veteran-owned businesses from service-disabled veteran-owned businesses, a divide-and-conquer scenario that kept veterans from having a seat at the table.
“We have to be our own liaisons and help each other,” she said to the assembled veterans.
Osbert Orduña, the CEO of The Cannabis Place based on Long Island, said in an interview Nov. 30 that neither the state’s Cannabis Advisory Board nor the Cannabis Control Board have SDVOB members.
The state legislature and the governor appoint members of the state’s Cannabis Advisory Board, and OCM has nothing to do with who sits on those boards, Rumsey said.
“You were left out of the Cannabis Advisory Board which is playing a critical role in distributing money,” Rumsey said. “I think it’s something you should be making noise about and making your voices heard as best you can.”
Rumsey said he has heard discussions in the office about this. Still, it requires getting in front of the decision makers.
Orduña agreed with Rumsey that the SDVOB community needs a voice, and there may be ways to get a voice on subcommittees, he said.
“We’ve been forgotten and we don’t have a seat at the table…and we need to have one,” he said in the Nov. 30 interview.
Earlier on Nov. 29 he said he had held one phone call with about 14 SDVOB leaders looking to get into the cannabis industry and the conversation moved toward organization. He told those assembled at the Cannabis presentation that they need to organize.
“We’ve been talking about starting our own advocacy group, our own service disabled veteran advocacy group,” he said to the audience after the cannabis presentation, “so that way we don’t fall under the umbrella of any other organization, whether it’s CANY or whoever else, and we actually have an entity that speaks about us and only speaks about us and only carries our voice.”
He said in the interview that he and others met again at VetCon to discuss this issue on Nov. 30.
Orduña told Rumsey after the presentation that he looked at this process much like the Marines look at taking a hill: you don’t do it alone.