The State of Craft - Episode 2

The State of Craft is a webinar series focused on the legal craft cannabis industry.

The rollout of cannabis legalization in Canada has been full of ups and downs. The craft cannabis industry in particular has been immensely affected by a myriad of challenges and missteps in the years following the Cannabis Act and Cannabis Regulations.

In The State of Craft, Sami Majadla, CEO of CertiCraft, facilitates conversations with leaders in the legal craft cannabis industry to explore what is going well and what is going not-so-well. We'll discuss what can realistically be changed at different levels of government and industry alike to address major issues the craft cannabis sector is facing, and hopefully inspire stimulating ideas of all sorts. Every episode will end with a 15 min live Q&A with our audience.

In Episode 2, Sami will be joined by Tamara Follet.

Tamara Follet is the founder of Sunleaf Microcultivation Consulting and Sunleaf Farmacy. Here is what she has to say about herself:

I earned a Master’s of Science in Computer Science from Steven’s Institute of Technology in 1983; my early professional background is in integrated real-time electronic countermeasures systems development; I was programming in 8-bit Assembler. Pharmaceutical Regulatory Compliance was my second profession -- in my first profession I developed and tested state-of-the-art defense systems conforming to the world's most rigorous systems development methodology: the Military Standards. So demanding are the Mil-Standards that the Food and Drug Administration in the U.S. has yet to adopt the level of rigor or compliance required by their sister agency, the Department of Defense, though the gap continues to lessen. My validations have enjoyed an exceptional "shelf-life", because in an environment of ever-tightening regulatory controls, I validated at a level one notch above where the FDA currently was. Knowing where they were headed, it was a small matter to anticipate their next step.

Decades later, I was enjoying my retirement in Canada, on the eve of this country being the first advanced nation in the world to legalize recreational cannabis. Once again, my skillsets in Regulatory Compliance were needed – not by multi-million-dollar pharmaceutical firms, but by Canada’s many small cannabis growers. The government of Canada has laid out a pathway for craft growers to transition from the black market to legal production, and they did it with a swamp of regulations, guides, charts, tables, and questions answered via email. Typical of government documents, they are cryptic and vague allowing for maximum flexibility in interpretation. But microgrowers need details. The success or failure of their transition into the legal cannabis market depends upon it.

Now we enter an arena where book-learning and/or experience with growing cannabis cannot help, where only in-depth understanding of Regulatory Compliance and Quality Assurance are of value. The best Microcultivator consultants will be those who began their careers in pharmaceutical compliance and have migrated into consulting as a natural consequence of being good at it. These people then have an insight that cannot be instilled through training courses or by books; it is a knowledge born from familiarity with the very nature of the beast. And there is no substitute. This is the benefit I bring to the Microcultivation table. I hope you will benefit from it through my SOPs, and remember to “pay it forward” to others…

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CertiCraft is a compliance software system that helps small-to-medium licensed cannabis producers stay on top of their regulatory requirements. The platform has a focus on ease of use, minimal training time (<15 mins), and incredible time savings. Find out more at certicraft.com.