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Transcript

Alan Silverstein -ATCC-: meeting of the Maryland Alcohol, Tobacco, and Cannabis Commission. I’m the Al Silverstein. and I have us today. Vice Chairman Eric Morsette and Commissioner Durane Rosarian and I have our secretary Mr. Robert Pulo. So we are in good shape. We have a quorum. I ask for approval of minutes of November 21st, 2024 meeting. I need a motion, please.

Alan Silverstein -ATCC-: Second. Okay.

1. Rosarion: All right.

Eric Morrissette: All right.

Robert Poole: I’ll second that motion.

Alan Silverstein -ATCC-: All those in favor signify by saying I. Oppos.

Robert Poole: All right.

Alan Silverstein -ATCC-: Same sign. All right. The eyes have it. Executive director’s report. Mr. Kelly, your mic is muted.

Jeffrey Kelly -ATCC-: and I said the funniest thing, but I don’t think I could queue it up again now. So, sorry about that.

Alan Silverstein -ATCC-: right.

Jeffrey Kelly -ATCC-: But good afternoon everybody. good to see you and sorry about that. and it wasn’t anything very funny. I assure very quickly, I’ll go through the executive director report. We have kind of a full meeting today. so that’s pretty terrific. All right. Regarding our field enforcement work for the past month, the month of November, we had 204 alcohol inspections, 225 tobacco and cannabis inspections. We had seven incidents that require further investigation and more detailed reports. From those seven instances, we seized 19,253 sticks of other tobacco products that generated a tax loss of $17,985. And we seized 330 packs of cigarettes, which yielded a tax loss of $1,650. from the regulatory licensing and administrative services division,

Jeffrey Kelly -ATCC-: the division. I don’t have anything new to report on that this month.

Eric Morrissette: Yeah, That’s right.

Jeffrey Kelly -ATCC-: And pretty much the same for illegal …

Alan Silverstein -ATCC-: Jeff, you back up a little bit.

Alan Silverstein -ATCC-: You were cutting out on us. No.

Jeffrey Kelly -ATCC-: I’m so sorry. did I get to the point the seven reportable incidents from last month? Were you able to copy that? then I’m just going to start with the inspections again from our field enforcement division. They conducted 204 alcohol inspections and 225 tobacco and cannabis inspections. From those, there were seven that warranted further investigation and report. and of those seven, we generated 19,253 sticks of illegal other tobacco products. That generated a tax loss of $17,985 and 330 packs of cigarettes. That yielded a tax loss of $1,650. From our regulatory, licensing, administrative services division, I don’t have anything new to report this month.

Jeffrey Kelly -ATCC-: and from our legal and legislative division. Again, nothing new to report this month except for one big thing, I guess, and we do have two departmental bills that we’ve put in. We’ve met with the chairs of the appropriate committees in the House and Senate, and they have agreed to sponsor our bills, which is great news, and we’ll have more detail about those bills and what’s going to happen and hearing dates, etc., at next month’s meeting. and if I may, Mr. Chair, I’d want to get recognized again during new business to bring up a couple things, but something rather urgent, new and relative has come up and if I may, I’d like to yield time right now to Miss Dana Mree from Maryland Department of Health to fill us in on some pretty important goings on…

Alan Silverstein -ATCC-: Absolutely.

Jeffrey Kelly -ATCC-: if that’s okay, Mr. Chair.

Jeffrey Kelly -ATCC-: Dan, it’s yours.

Dana Moncrief -MDH-: Yep. Okay.

Dana Moncrief -MDH-: Thanks, Jeeoff. so I did just want to bring up and definitely put in a plug if anyone is hearing about any adverse effects related to vaping and cannabis. so please let your local health department or the Department of Health and of course certainly if anyone is experiencing any active symptoms, you call 911 or even the poison center. our office is investigating a couple of instances. So again, we’re just trying to gather as much information as we can. So certainly if you know of anything that’s happened related to vaping and cannabis among young people, please reach out and let us know.

Dana Moncrief -MDH-: We’re working closely with ATCC and MCA and all the agencies as we’re looking into some of the cases that we’re hearing about. Thanks, Jeff.

Robert Poole: Can you be a little more specific about some of these cases?

Eric Morrissette: Yeah.

Dana Moncrief -MDH-: I can’t it’s all under investigation, but there were adverse illnesses caused from vaping and cannabis.

00:05:00

Jeffrey Kelly -ATCC-: And if I could,…

Jeffrey Kelly -ATCC-: Mr. M Mr. vice chair, this is just happening. this is all very very current information. So, it’s really in the very early stages of finding out what’s going on.  But this is really just to let everybody know there may be something going on and you should be aware and alert and contact authorities if you think something is astray or maybe someone’s fallen ill to this. So, we’re trying to get our audience involved as well as anybody else.

Robert Poole: Do you suspect that it’s been doctorred in some way or do you think this is  Okay.

Dana Moncrief -MDH-: We just don’t know at this point in time.

James Hock -State Police-: I guess it’s being implied…

James Hock -State Police-: then that is this illegal conduct? Is somebody doing something illegal or we don’t know?

Dana Moncrief -MDH-: We’re getting the information as it’s coming in. So, unfortunately, we don’t know. Yep. So,…

Eric Morrissette: instances kind of illness.

Dana Moncrief -MDH-: nausea, vomiting, agitation, slurred speech.

Dana Moncrief -MDH-: These are presented in the emergency room. So, we just don’t have all the information. We’re working on this now.

Robert Poole: What would prohibit you from discussing this further outside of a HIPPA violation?

Jeffrey Kelly -ATCC-: I think we’re talking like hours old information here in some instances.

Jeffrey Kelly -ATCC-: We just spoke Dana and I ju just a couple of hours ago and said, “Hey, do you think we have an audience and we have some ability to get out there.” So, we’re really just trying right now to get the word out from a public safety standpoint because we thought that was most vital understanding there’s not going to be a lot of answers right now,…

Robert Poole: Got it.

Jeffrey Kelly -ATCC-: but just to make people aware, just to say there might be something going on and if there is, let’s start gathering data and make sure the public health concern is addressed.

James Hock -State Police-: So, I guess it’s fair to say then that there’s nothing about this that’s legal or was happening legally and it went south. Is that a fair statement? In other words, shops that places that sell marijuana legally are not smelling vaping products for marijuana.

James Hock -State Police-: Is that accurate?

Dana Moncrief -MDH-: Yeah.

Dana Moncrief -MDH-: Go ahead, Jeff.

Jeffrey Kelly -ATCC-: if it comes from a dispensary. But what I would say is what we do know is products lawfully sold through the dispensaries go through extensive testing and overwhelmingly what we find and what we’re dealing with is and I’m going go out on a limb and say while there’s a 100 dispensaries in the state, there are thousands of places that distribute a variety of THC product that we have authority over. and that product isn’t tested. It’s not properly labeled. It’s not tested. Who knows what it is? So, my guess it would be more of the illicit market product than it would be the legal heavily tested and, as much as possible determined to be safe product that comes through our dispensaries.

Robert Poole: so will the state then take the lead in doing conducting toxicology testing on these products and making determinations as to whether they’ve been doctorred in any way

Dana Moncrief -MDH-: As best that we can.

Dana Moncrief -MDH-: We are trying to get the products. if we’re able to get them, yeah, they’ll be testing good. Yep. Absolutely.

Alan Silverstein -ATCC-: Okay, any other questions on this subject?

Alan Silverstein -ATCC-: If not, we’ll move on to new business. Jeff, you want to talk about the staff volunteer day today?

Jeffrey Kelly -ATCC-: I do so proud of our crew here.

Jeffrey Kelly -ATCC-: As all of you should know, I’m incredibly proud of this team that we have here and who we work with. this morning we attended our second volunteer staff day of service where we went to the Franciscan Center in Baltimore who has a wide variety of missions providing clothing, providing a variety of social resources to help people who need it, homeless or down on their luck people who just need it.

Jeffrey Kelly -ATCC-: and we had the privilege today to help in serving meals and busing tables and that’s what we spent our morning doing. Hence the garb we’re wearing. those of you who are commissioners will be receiving something like this in the mail very soon. A couple of pieces of very nicely embroidered clothing. so you’ll be able to identify yourselves as part of our team. But I just have to say I’m very very proud of our entire team. Kudos to Jessica Honeyut who put this together for us again this year.  It’s a lot of work. And she put together a drive where we took certain supplies in with us and then told us really our whole crew to go over there today. Did all the interfacing with the organization. it’s an enriching period of time and a wonderful time of year to be able to do this as well.

00:10:00

Jeffrey Kelly -ATCC-: And I also want to give a tip in the cap to our chair who came all the way from east in Tolit County early this morning to go to this with us and very proud of him for that as I hope we all will be and I just have to say a lot of times it’s easy to do things when it’s a photo op. This wasn’t a photo op. There was no media there and it was several hours on your feet wiping up tables and cleaning trays and dishing out food. there wasn’t anything luxurious about it except for the immensely rewarding feeling of having provided service to other people. So kudos to Mr. Chair for coming all the way up here and doing that with us today. In fact, he’s broadcasting today with us. he’s two offices behind me. So he’s up here kudos to that. Again, tip of the cap to Jessica for getting us all together.

Jeffrey Kelly -ATCC-: And for this crew that one stayed behind and took care of business for us while the others of us were privileged enough to go and for that team that went and even one of our young ladies, she was working from home today and this meant so much to her to be a part of this and to help serve that she came into the middle of town to spend those hours with us. So I’m just real proud of them and I’ll stop saying that. But we got a crew here. We got a great crew here and I just want to make that that’s part one, Mr. Chair. Part two, just to let everybody know FYI, will be closing down the year in another week and a half or so. But that means in the beginning of January, the general assembly will back in session. It’s always the second Wednesday of January that they start, which is January 8th. So there will be a variety of activities for those activities that you may be interested. We’ll get you notices and that sort of a thing. but we get started pretty hot and heavy and things move, fairly intensely for the next two and a half months.

Jeffrey Kelly -ATCC-: really the last month is still pretty intense as well, but at that point we kind of have an idea of…

Jeffrey Kelly -ATCC-: where we are. And then Mr. Chair, the last order of business, I’ll give you the honor and privilege of introducing our guest speaker for today.

Alan Silverstein -ATCC-: Thank you very much.

Alan Silverstein -ATCC-: We have a public health 101 presentation by Dr. Remy Ec and I think it’s going to be very helpful and I look forward to hearing it. Dr. E.

Raimee Eck: Thank you so much to all of you. I really appreciate being able to be here with you again. Some of you may recognize me from times past. I’ve known Jeff for a very long time. We’ve had an opportunity to work on things together legislatively wise and just learn I’ve learned so much from him and his incredible knowledge of working in the state for so many years.  So today I’m going to give you sort of a I call it alcohol and cannabis 101 because there’s people who spend their whole lives like myself that do this and we have a few minutes and really what I wanted to do is hit some of the highlights and provide sort of a framework for why we do the things we do and give you an opportunity to see where some of the resources are. A lot of this may be you already know things you’ve heard before.

Raimee Eck: But again a lot it’s just I appreciate the opportunity to come in front of you. So let me share and there’s all sorts of popups here. I’m used to using Zoom So, can you all see it as now as a presentation form?

Eric Morrissette: Yes.

Alan Silverstein -ATCC-: Yes.

Raimee Eck: And let me I have to go back there. So, I am the chair of a group called the Alcohol, Tobacco, and Cannabis Network. We came about in 2018. I was one of the people who sat on the task force that the ATCC came out of. And so we formed a network that really is a communication tool for people who are working across the state and at the time alcohol and tobacco and then we tacked on cannabis at the end because a lot of this is the work that all of us do or at least need to know about. So people who are in our health departments join these calls once a month.

Raimee Eck: we have liquor board staff that we communicate with, researchers, prevention coordinators, just all sorts of people that want to know what’s going on with these issues and also to allow everyone to sort of speak with the same voice. If you have 10 people telling you 10 different things on how to move forward on a bill or a policy, it gets very confusing. And so we try to reduce some of that confusion by going with the best practices all as a single voice.  So, we’re using research, and we’re translating that research, which oftentimes can be extremely complicated. If you’re reading it, you get into the weeds, you don’t understand how this applies to real life. And that’s what we try to do. We try to translate those results from research into something that actually makes a difference in our state. We also act as a connection between state and local decision makers just through some of our relationships we’ve developed over the years.

00:15:00

Raimee Eck: we like to promote high-quality leaders to advisory boards and councils, people that we know that what they’re talking about and just may have no opportunity to get in front of these decision makers. And also probably the thing we do the most is providing testimony and assistance to policy makers in the state, especially during our incredible 90-day session. So we really like to focus on what’s missing from the legislative conversation. one of the big things is additional burden on administration enforcement. It’s easy to pass a law and say, “Hey, it’s a great law, but if there’s no resources that are put towards administrating it, enforcing it, and things like that, analyzing it, evaluating it, then it may not be a good law because there’s no way to tell. So, you can see some of these groups that are part of it. Northern Lights Against Substance Abuse, this is a community group.

Raimee Eck: The National Council on Alcoholism and Drug Dependence. We have a Maryland chapter that’s very active. Maryland Collaborative, they actually work with university and colleges across our state. The Network for Public Health Law, which most of you probably know are awesome public health lawyers. Maryland Alcohol Licensing Association, you probably have heard of them, An incredibly wonderful resource there.  So there’s no question I think we all know alcohol is not an ordinary commodity and that’s why there are so many resources and effort and structures put around towards regulating it. It’s a legal product. we do sell it across the country.

Raimee Eck: However, we do have parameters that allow this legal product which has significant harms to exist in our marketplace in a way that is hopefully the safest it possibly can for the people who are using it and for the people who are not using it but may experience harms from those who do. It’s not laundry detergent, drills, books, convenience factors, bread.  These are all things that I’ve heard it compared to in hearings that I’ve been in because it’s just not a product like that. If you had a store that sold laundry detergent on every single corner, it might be a little weird because you’re like, that’s who needs it that much, but at the same time, it would not have the same kind of effect that a liquor store on every single corner has.

Raimee Eck: So another reason why we do these things, alcohol has been around since the beginning of recorded history and likely even before that. However, alcohol control is also ancient history as I like to call it on the code of Hammurabi. It indicates ways to use alcohol.  And even in one of these large amphitheaters that you can see in ancient Greece, there’s inscriptions that say there’s a five drama fine for anyone anyone who is found bringing wine into the stadium. So it has been around for a very long time, both the alcohol and the controls around alcohol. So the highlevel framework, a public health perspective, why do we make the recommendations that we do? What is our goal?

Raimee Eck: And it’s really a framework for preventing disease and injury and not only preventing it but mitigating the type of disease and injury that we know and we know with pretty good accuracy because of research that is coming down the line. Public health has great achievements. these are some of the things that have been seen that has changed and been very successful over the last hundred years.  And the thing that I put this in almost every presentation that I do 25 of the 30 years of life expectancy that was gained in the 20th century were due to public health interventions. And that’s why public health itself is so important because medicine and individual interventions are very important. However, it’s this high level making our communities safer for all that really give us the greatest gains in society.

Raimee Eck: So when we look at that, it’s a pyramid, right? So at the bottom of this, the things that have the largest impact, if we’re able to change socioeconomic factors such as poverty, education, housing, inequality, that’s going to have a huge effect on health, but that’s not really where we tend to work. And then at the top of this, you see counseling and education, very individual one-on-one types of interventions such as you got to eat healthy, you got to be physically active.  So where public health really sits is not at the bottom of this pyramid but close to it. And we want to change the context. So when you walk out the door, you leave your house, you get in your car, all the things we do on a day-to-day basis, the context in the environment around you is at its absolute healthiest and safest. So that the decisions that you make, whether you make that decision consciously or unconsciously, it’s going to default you towards a healthier environment.

00:20:00

Raimee Eck: And so things like fluoride in the water, very large impactful interventions, smoke-free laws, tobacco taxes. And when we look at that specifically for alcohol, you can see in that band is where we’re removing dangerous products. So the alcoholic energy drinks with the caffeine in them. that is something that affects sort of society as a whole, taxes, reducing alcohol outlets. Now, it doesn’t mean these other things aren’t important.  You have to have all those things on the pyramid that work together. So you still have to have your education and counseling, you have to have your individual interventions. but in order to change that context to really have the most impact, it’s further down on that pyramid. and again going back to why do we do this is because the burden of alcohol is pretty significant.

Raimee Eck: It contributes to the more than 200 ICD10 codes in terms of disease and injury. It’s the fourth leading actual cause of One in 10 deaths among working age adults are caused by excessive drinking. And then there’s the financial cost itself. the last numbers that we have because it’s an incredibly monumental task for them to calculate this are from 2010 and it was 249 billion across the US. and that’s just from excessive drinking.  So people who are drinking above what the recommendations are, there are still things like cancer associated with alcohol, cancer risk starts to increase with your very first drink. Those aren’t even included in these costs here. and this is 2010 numbers just very go on do a little calculator. If we look at with inflation, that’s probably at least 350 billion.

Raimee Eck: so some of these disease states you may be very familiar with some of these pancreatitis cerosis yes these are things that we could probably name very quickly but other things like cancer I was at the national cancer institute for two and a half years working on the relationship between alcohol and cancer and tobacco and the knowledge that alcohol and cancer are connected is very low 30% or less of  population in some studies. but it’s still something that could be very important to someone who’s maybe your risk of these types of cancers is higher and you’re looking to reduce it. alcohol may be one of those things that you consider. Some of these are alcohol is a primary So, alcoholic liver cerosis, it’s right in the name. You have to have alcohol in order for that to happen.

Raimee Eck: other things like the cancers. You have many things that contribute to the disease state, but alcohol is a certain percentage of the cause of that. And we have the data to show us on most of these disease states how much alcohol actually contributes to those. As I mentioned before, there’s also this idea of the secondary harms to people other than the drinking drinker. And this is what is very similar to secondhand tobacco smoke.  And so you can have secondhand effects from many different things. And in alcohol, this is something that has been studied quite a bit over the last five years. And you can see that there are people who are not the drinker that are paying for this either socially, physically, or financially, even if they’re not a drinker themsel. this slide, I think, is very important, too, in terms of the economic harms of al alcohol.

Raimee Eck: You can see that national average from that initial study, $249 billion. That comes out to be about $25 per drink or $87 per capita. If you look at Maryland, they looked at it state byst state. they said our economic cost was about 5 billion or a little higher than the national average, $2.22 per drink or $860 per person.  And then when you look at what’s recouped in taxes, so that little pile of money at the bottom, 21 cents per drink nationally, we’re a little bit lower than the national average there, 19 cents per drink. That’s what’s offset by taxes. So there’s a huge cost that’s not being offset. it’s not being offset by the industry and the government pays about 40% of what those costs are.

00:25:00

Raimee Eck: So there’s a large gap between the money that’s coming in and the money that’s going out in terms of harms. There’s kind of two stories with alcohol. There’s the simple story which I’ll tell you about really right here. The simple story is that if the number of alcohol outlets increases and this is really talking about physical availability, there’s more competition among re retailers.  GC prices tend to go down, alcohol use goes up, and alcohol-related harms goes up. That’s the simple story. So, more alcohol equals more harms. Shouldn’t be any kind of surprise there. The types of things that allow more alcohol to come into our communities as in this slide, starts with a number of outlets.

Raimee Eck: So if you have greater density but also things like taxes is if taxes are decreased or taxes don’t keep up with inflation is what usually the case may be the prices will tend to fall and so then you also see alcohol use it also could be lacks enforcement so ID checks not happening so young people having access to alcohol all those things that lead more use directly leads to related harms and an increase in that that’s the simple  story. then that. the complicated story is and again why we spend so much time and focusing our lives on doing this kind of work is that it’s also a product of economic benefit. And so being able to weigh what the economic benefit is with what the economic loss is with these types of harms is something that can be extremely tricky. But as you know we’re all here because we’re really interested in doing that.

Raimee Eck: this is an older slide. 2016 really doesn’t seem like that long ago. U, but the numbers are fairly static when you look at these. and it’s just one kind of blip and an example of the comparisons between the types of retail outlets that we have of one type versus the type of alcohol outlets and how you could see that the access might be much more to alcohol than it is to other types of products.  And so you can do this with most of the other counties that are out there and see what the comparison is. And this is one of the issues is when we’re looking at density, how do we mitigate the density of alcohol outlets versus other types of retailers. The other big issue with this is that harms are experienced unequally.

Raimee Eck: communities and individuals with lower socioeconomic status experience greater related harms. And this is really regardless of drinking patterns of smoking status and other types of chronic conditions that it could be related to. just one example that I pulled out here through deregulation, Ontario saw a 15% increase in alcohol outlets between 2015 and 2018.  When they analyzed the type of outlets that came in, they found that the outlets in the most marginalized areas were greater in density. So there were more of them, closer together, and were open longer hours. So right there, those three things together, when you put those together, that just increases the access to alcohol and then down that line increases the harms that come out of those that access points.

Raimee Eck: product innovations is something that I’m constantly working on. I work with a lot of groups and states across the country and so we’re really aware of what’s coming down the pike. And when we do research, our standard drink is a 12 ounces of a 5% beer, but we know that’s really not what is being served in a lot of places. So many new products are 7 to 9%.  And with my little pictures there, you can see if you have a 16 ounce pint of 8% beer, that’s actually equivalent to over two of our standard drink measurements. So, you may say you only have one. In reality, you’ve had two of maybe something you were drinking in the past. first responders, when they are taking care of people, they say, “I only had one or two beers. I don’t know what happened.”

Raimee Eck: the reality is you actually had two or four beers instead of one or two and you just may not be aware of what the effects of that may be. For loco and some of these other types of products, this 23.5 ounce can is quite a large can. It’s a single serve pop top container, 14% that’s actually equivalent to 5 and a half standard drinks. So, there’s absolutely no reason why any of these should be in serving single serve containers.  So, a lot of the current issues and challenges, again, things that you’re probably very familiar with, you’ve heard before, but constantly we hear these things across the country, just a general ulatory environment in general. characterizations of alcohol regulatory systems as outdated or antique and really a misunderstanding of what the systems are for. you guys of course know what they’re for. That’s why you’re here.

00:30:00

Raimee Eck: And then just problems with terminology what is a tide house? Temperance that sounds so moralistic and old-fashioned. So how do we translate that into more modern language and make people aware of this is what happens and it’s not just because it’s happened before. We’ve done research and when we do research on when changes happen we see those same things happening over and over. We also have the rise of craft brewers and distillers. They really don’t fit neatly into the three tier system.  So, there’s some confusion and some growing pains of what do we do about that? and some infighting that happens. Of course, there’s the crossover with cannabis legalization. That’s probably one of the biggest things where most states are poised to see what’s going to happen federally and things like that. The rise of ecommerce, people are very used to getting things in the mail or at their doorstep. how do we address that as an issue and reduce access to those who shouldn’t have it?

Raimee Eck: and then just the deregulation in general can happen through defunding. And again, as I mentioned at the very beginning, if you have a license or you have a permit or you have some sort of new program, if it doesn’t come with funding, it’s very very hard to either have it implemented appropriately or to it have any kind of evaluation to understand what’s actually going on. So that also can weaken systems significantly.  So coming up, it’s a little early. Most of these bills don’t come out this early. They will come out the day of even as we go along. But in alcohol, we know there’s at least one thing coming. You see it in the news. You may have read some of my comments from our group. allowing for the sales of beer and wine and grocery stores to mitigate food deserts.

Raimee Eck: very clearly there is no research to show that alcohol in grocery stores mitigates food deserts or has any impact on them at all. that’s just very straightforward and other than that we look really at what it does to that access. So how does it increase the density? especially since a food desert is going to be in a place that is likely a less resourced area. It’s why it’s a food desert.  Those places also tend to be super saturated with alcohol outlets already. So there’s this mismatch of what we think a solution to a problem will be. And then of course, as you’re very familiar with, there’s lots of local jurisdiction bills to clarify rules, regs, expand license types, and etc. We follow some of those. usually it’s just something that’s of interest.

Raimee Eck: but some of the other ones that have sort of a state impact, those are the ones we’ll get involved with more. Cannabis I do know that consumption sites license is coming. The Maryland Department of Health has done or the cannabis administration did a report that is out there with some recommendations and how to make these sites economically viable while also have the protections that are appropriate in place. and then also legislation that we saw last year related to employee protections for cannabis use out of work hours. This is a really nebulous area and they had a lot of disc good discussion and confusion and what do we do about it last year and that is also going to come up again this year and it’s going to be very difficult but those are the things that I know are coming along and in a month we’ll know what else is coming along too. So resources what do we have here in the state?

Raimee Eck: number one, you all, the Alcohol, Tobacco, and Cannabis Commission. what a great organization that has so much historical knowledge and understanding and people that know what’s going on. They can see what’s coming and make recommendations, help interpret the laws that are already there, help interpret some of the new laws that may coming and how it can impact our system as it is already. we also have the Maryland Cannabis Administration, which also has staff that do these types of things.  the Maryland Department of Health. this is a really cool one. The Centers of Disease Control and Prevention provides grants across the country for alcohol-related programs and health departments. Our state was applied and was actually awarded one I think two years ago and this past year hired an alcohol focused epidemiologist. There’s only maybe 15 of them across the states, but yay, we have one now.

Raimee Eck: and his job is to work on analyzing alcohol data for our state. So, they’ve been doing some surveillance and some other things like that, but it’s really new and I know they’re really looking for ideas in what the state needs and how they can be the most effective in the work that they’re doing. The CDC is a treasure trove of information. They have all sorts of data and you don’t even have to wade through tables and things like that. A lot of them are in easy to access fact sheets.

00:35:00

Raimee Eck: You can see I put one down here. They break it down by state. So you can go to those anytime you want and say, “Hey, give me some basic facts on my state.” And then if you want to dig in further, you have going to the next bullet, alcohol, tobacco, and cannabis network. One of our strengths is we know each other and we know people. And so if we don’t know how to do something, we know someone who does. And so oftentimes we have people coming to us and say, “Hey, do you understand this? Do you know how to do this? Can you translate this?”  and we said yes, we’ll figure it out. We’ll get back to you or here’s the person you need to talk to. we love being able to do those types of things. and then part of that also is the researchers who are working within the state on alcohol, tobacco, and cannabis. We have really really wonderful expertise here in our state. And again, all if you’re a researcher, you have connections across the country, if not across the globe, and people who are doing these types of things.

Raimee Eck: And again, if you’re a funded researcher, exactly the most timely issues in the field are because if not, you can’t get behind that ball. So that is my very quick in a nutshell presentation and love to have if there’s any questions or if there’s anything else that comes up later. Like I said, I’m always available. Yes, happy to share those.

Alan Silverstein -ATCC-: We appreciate it. somebody had asked if copies of your presentation might be available.

Raimee Eck: I’ll send those over to you.

Alan Silverstein -ATCC-: Thank you very much, Mr. Kelly. Do you have anything else?

Jeffrey Kelly -ATCC-: I just have a question and…

Jeffrey Kelly -ATCC-: this maybe gets into the weeds a little bit about legislation, but Ramy, you made mention of the chain store and…

Jeffrey Kelly -ATCC-: grocery store bill and tied it into the food desert, which I know has been an annual bill citing that. And I’m not hearing the tiein to the food desert so much this year, but I just haven’t heard of it. Are you hearing anything different about that? Okay.

Raimee Eck: So that was sort of in I think the very first comment from the governor was it mentioned food deserts and…

Raimee Eck: so all the conversation after that has just really not even acknowledged that part of it and it really  has focused on convenience. So, I don’t know what the bill itself will look like. As in the past, we’ve also seen it how it was going to cure childhood obesity in one of our bills. And we’ve also seen that it’s going to cure food deserts in some of the bills. And that’s more of the introduction background and then everything beyond that oftentimes just doesn’t loop back to it. So,

Robert Poole: Dr. E, are you the repository for adverse information related to marijuana? I tend to come across a lot of articles that talk about schizophrenia and a lot of other issues for continued and prolonged use. are you the person that we send that to?

Raimee Eck: just do cannabis. So if we come across information like super love Dana, provides here, we also share that with our networks and like I said, we work with the health departments. They probably already have gotten things like that from her, but we have an ear from the liquor boards and some of the staff and some of the law enforcement of what’s happening in some of the jurisdictions. And so we get some of that feedback, too. because that’s really like the boots on the ground, the stuff that’s happening the fastest. So, we wouldn’t be really the primary on any of this. but we do follow it along and if there’s any way that we can actually intervene, it’s probably going to be more either in a is there any research to provide is there anything else going on across the country that we can see or is there any kind of policy that needs to be done and then how could we contribute to that?

Robert Poole: Thank you. and Jeeoff, if you don’t mind, we can speak offline as well.

Jeffrey Kelly -ATCC-: I just need to correct myself in my excitement earlier. I misspoke and I addressed our Secretary as Mr. when our Mr. Vice Chair is actually Vice Chair Morset and I apologize for that. It just kind of hit me as I’m listening to Dr. X’s presentation. I’m like hey idiot you just said this wrong so let’s square it up.

Robert Poole: Jeff, there’s no adverse effect. Trust me. Okay.

Jeffrey Kelly -ATCC-: Just apologizing to all parties involved.

Jeffrey Kelly -ATCC-: My error I apologize I didn’t have it scripted so there you go. That’s what happens.

Raimee Eck: One last resource too is within the cannabis administration.

00:40:00

Raimee Eck: It’s a public health advisory council and it’s within the cannabis administration. I know that’s people who are researchers and things like that specifically focused on cannabis.  So that’s something that actually probably would go to them.

Robert Poole: And chef, you have contacts, correct? Thank you.

Eric Morrissette: a motion.

Robert Poole: Sorry. Hi.

Alan Silverstein -ATCC-: and a second. All those in favor signify by saying I.

1. Rosarion: Bye everyone.

Alan Silverstein -ATCC-: I. Post. Same sign.

Dr. Toyin Opesanmi: O.

Raimee Eck: Thank you for help.

Alan Silverstein -ATCC-: Eyes have it.

JESSICA HONEYCUTT -ATCC-: Thank you.

Alan Silverstein -ATCC-: Thank you all very much for joining us.

Robert Poole: Merry Christmas.

Alan Silverstein -ATCC-: Dr. X, thank you very much for your presentation. See you next month.

Meeting ended after 00:51:38 👋

This editable transcript was computer generated and might contain errors.