I have some Ideas for businesses I would like to discuss with those involved in creating policy, since these ideas, if implemented, would be major impacts on the current scene.

1. I hear that with the upcoming reallity of legal (recreational) adult use across the board in NY state, governor Hochul is going to allow medical patients or caregivers to grow enough medical cannabis for themselves to lower the cost of medical marijuana per patient. The way I see it now the current dispensaries are not cut out for selling seeds, seedlings, clones, or small plants, lights, supplies, etc. I propose creating a "franchise sublet" model where participating nurseries (yes regular plant nurseries anywhere in NY state) could sublet a portion of their store to another business (partly owned by them or some other arrangement) that would serve the 21 and above cannabis growing community of patients and caregivers. (because some patients are too sick to grow their own cannabis). We could conduct a pilot program somewhere on Long Island in a convenient place. I would be more than happy trying to raise money and establish the first garden center with a psychoactive plant section for adults only. I use “psychoactive” and not “cannabis” since in the future it may contain psilocybe mushrooms, peyote, etc. and other unknown plants, fungi, toads, and chemicals etc.

2. Some patients are unable to grow their own medicine so I envisioned the creation of a nonprofit (I'm a musician so I'll use ASCAP and BMI as analogy examples) monopoly that would be a network and a marketplace. Each medical patient would receive a certain amount of space allotted for growing cannabis (cubic, square feet, etc.) and they can opt to use it themselves personally in their own garden or offer shares of their allotment for "crop sharing" (as opposed to sharecropping) where their medical plot credits would be matched to entrepreneurial growers -- giving preference to those who are smaller in scale. Big companies can fill in any leftover demand. The computer system would match a patient who cannot / doesn’t want to grow their medicine with a competent grower who can accomplish the task in exchange for a portion of the harvest. Novice growers can be overseen and mentored by expert growers, etc. to guarantee quality control, all with compensation through harvest or revenue splits. I would happy to seek to establish such a system. Top growers should be made employee or consultant inspectors to make sure the system works well.

3. I really hope we do not permanently create a system in NY based upon number of plants being cultivated. I'd rather grow a few smaller plants of different varieties, or maybe even breed a new strain. Growing the biggest cannabis tree ever is not my main goal, (it will be with only 3 or 6 mature plants! It could be a fun competition too…) besides ego and cashcropping it’s not for me — I’m a connaisseur / pot snob. So I favor an area or volume and weight based system of estimating harvests. The starting number of plants should be irrelevant since many males will be destroyed / harvested or isolated prior to the main harvest and there will be some weaker plants weeded out. Also patients should be allowed to have multiple smaller sites to grow instead of one bigger garden. This would allow me and other patiets to plant one or two plants at my home, a few at my mother's, a few at my friend's, a few at my sister's, etc. without having to worry that deer, kids, vandals, theives, or a pestilence etc. destroyed my entire garden site suddenly.... there would be viable alternate backup locations. Better to be able to divide up the eggs into a couple of baskets.

4. How will inspections work and what will the qualifications for an inspector be? I assume they will have to be expert growers and understand all the variables, as well as be able to work with a computer or tablet to enter in all the relevant data to keep track of everything for health and taxation purposes. This could be integrated with the marketplace and credit system I described above.

5.How much will we be able to gift to how many other people tax free from our grows? I'm curious, as there must be some mechanism for free samples to try things out and also to give presents to good friends.

Who is a person I can talk to who is interested in shaping cannabis policy with me? I am interested in seeing ways that the recreational use community can have synergies with the medical community to lower costs for patients and meet demand for all categories of users. write me at stashmaster@stashmaven.com! (Shostakovich DSCH)