Public Commission Meeting #56
Meeting Transcript
ATCC Public Meeting #56, AUGUST 2025 at 3:00pm – 2025/08/21 14:45 EDT – Transcript
Transcript
00:10:00
Alan Silverstein: Jessica, can you hear me? Testing.
ANDREW WATERS -ATCC-: Hey, I can hear everything working well with Mike, I think Al was checking to see…
Jessica Honeycutt -ATCC-: What’ you say, Andrew?
ANDREW WATERS -ATCC-: if his mic was working. I can hear him.
Jeffrey Herndon -ATCC-: We can hear you now.
Alan Silverstein: Testing one, two, three. Can you hear me? I can’t hear anybody else. So, this is going to be interesting.
Jessica Honeycutt -ATCC-: We can hear you.
Alan Silverstein: One, two, three. All right. Will somebody speak to me, please?
Jessica Honeycutt -ATCC-:
Jessica Honeycutt -ATCC-: Yes, we can hear Al, I just tried to call you,…
Jeffrey Herndon -ATCC-: Can you hear anything,…
Jeffrey Herndon -ATCC-: Testing. One, two, three, four, five.
Jessica Honeycutt -ATCC-: but it went straight to voicemail.
Alan Silverstein: It’s kind of testing.
Dourakine Rosarion: Good afternoon everyone.
Alan Silverstein: One, two, three. Best mic. Okay. Why can’t I hear anybody?
Jeffrey Kelly -ATCC-: The hell, can you hear?
Alan Silverstein: Still can’t hear anybody. Jeff, I’m going to get on the phone and call
Alan Silverstein: You hear Just check what? I can’t hear anybody on the other end.
Jeffrey Kelly -ATCC-: Just saying.
Jessica Honeycutt -ATCC-: Perfect.
Alan Silverstein: Just a minute.
Alan Silverstein: Lower my volume How about I just can’t hear I’ll just leave it on the phone and I should be able to hear you guys. Is it going in and…
Jessica Honeycutt -ATCC-: No. She
Alan Silverstein: It’s not interfering. Your microphone’s off on yours.
Jeffrey Kelly -ATCC-: Can you hear me out?
Robert Poole: Good afternoon.
Alan Silverstein: All right. Is everybody hear me?
00:15:00
Dourakine Rosarion: Yes. Here we go. Second.
Robert Poole: Yes, sir. Can you hear me?
Alan Silverstein: So, it’s 3:00 August 21st, 2025. I’m going to open the meeting of the ATCC.
Jessica Honeycutt -ATCC-: Yes.
Alan Silverstein: Roll call. Commissioner Robert is here, and I’m here, Al Silverstein. We have a quarrel. I need approval of the July 17th,…
Robert Poole: I motion to approve.
Alan Silverstein: 2025 meeting minutes. Need a motion. Raise your hand, please. Okay, Robert, need to A motion, a second.
Robert Poole: All right.
Alan Silverstein: All those in favor say I.
Alan Silverstein: Hi, hands up. executive director’s report.
Jeffrey Kelly -ATCC-: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Before I start, just want to on a technical note here. We can hear you loud and clear. Are you able to hear us?
Alan Silverstein: Not through my speaker for some reason. Yeah.
Jeffrey Kelly -ATCC-: I’ve got my phone on the side, so maybe some of that’ll bleed over for you and you’ll be able to hear that. thank you very much. Welcome everybody. Hard to imagine it’s August. My little personal theory is once August hits here, everything happens so fast. the schools start, the Halloween’s here, it’s Thanksgiving, and then it’s the whole December holiday season, and then the general assembly is in session, and that’s when it seems to slow down and trudge a little bit because that’s a very busy 90 days. So, next stop, April something, I think, from this point on. I hate to rush that through, but again, welcome everybody. What I’d like to do is turn it over to Jeff H. Hearnden, director of our field enforcement division to give us a rundown of the alcohol, tobacco, and cannabis inspections for the past month.
Jeffrey Kelly -ATCC-: Jeff, please.
Jeffrey Herndon -ATCC-: Thank Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. we’ll go over some statistics with the field enforcement division, what we’ve been up to for the last month.
Alan Silverstein: Hi. Good job.
Jeffrey Herndon -ATCC-: We’ve conducted 187 inspections for alcohol, 279 tobacco inspections, and 232 cannabis or THC product related inspections at retail locations. From these inspections, we were able to pick up 15 reportable incidents.
Jeffrey Herndon -ATCC-: And of those incidents, we made seizures of products or other tobacco products was 21,531 sticks.
Jeffrey Herndon -ATCC-: That represents an estimated tax loss to the state of just over $18,000. Our guys picked up 570 packs of cigarettes that were either wrongly stamped with out of state or…
Alan Silverstein: What I learned?
Jeffrey Herndon -ATCC-: with counterfeit tax stamps. and that yielded a tax loss to the state of 2,850. they picked up 50 gallons of alcohol products that were brought in from other than licensed wholesalers.
Alan Silverstein: My god.
Jeffrey Herndon -ATCC-: And then with the THC, July 1 started new laws for us.
Jeffrey Herndon -ATCC-: So, we were able to actively enforce the unlicensed THC product sales in other retail establishments. We ended up picking up 13,000 packages of illicit product from there. And along with the packages, we picked up the loose bud or flower portions of the alleged hemp plants, but it was product that was containing THC levels that were too high. And we picked up almost 9 lbs of the loose flour.
Alan Silverstein: Stand up.
Jeffrey Kelly -ATCC-: Thanks, Jeeoff. that’s really something. And to say this is all relative to the labeling law that passed and…
Alan Silverstein: I can hear you.
Jeffrey Kelly -ATCC-: mandates. I’m sorry, Al, you might have to go on mute and man I need you to go on mute.
Robert Poole: Jeff, you’re getting a lot of reverberation.
Robert Poole: So, you’ve got probably two devices now.
Jeffrey Kelly -ATCC-: So all of this I’d say it’s safe to say is because of our labeling law that went into effect on July 1 and really requires certain labeling and if it doesn’t meet the labeling standards it’s all subject to being seized. So our agents have been running with that. So Jeff, can you give us a sense? I appreciate these numbers.
Jeffrey Kelly -ATCC-: Can you give us a sense of…
Jeffrey Kelly -ATCC-: what the retail value of this product is that we’ve seized? I know you mentioned 13ish thousand pounds items rather and close to nine pounds of flour, but what’s the retail value approximately of that stuff?
Jeffrey Herndon -ATCC-: We’re looking at an estimated retail value based on the products that were seized and…
Jeffrey Herndon -ATCC-: based on comparative pricing out of legitimate sources. It’s almost $380,000 worth of retail product for the month of July. And that was for the entire month. And that was our first month of enforcement. And I can tell you in August the amount of seizures have already surpassed our July numbers. and…
00:20:00
Jeffrey Kelly -ATCC-: Wow, that’s amazing.
Jeffrey Herndon -ATCC-: we still have a few days left.
Jeffrey Kelly -ATCC-: And comparing what we’ve done in a month, a month and twothirds now, how does that compare to…
Jeffrey Kelly -ATCC-: what we did for the first two years of this law being in effect from July 1, 2023 to June 30, 2025?
Jeffrey Herndon -ATCC-: Basically so far with the products we have now seized to date…
Jeffrey Herndon -ATCC-: since July 1st. So call it 6 and a half 7 weeks 20,000 packages of illicit product and 24 pounds of flour totaling almost $564,000 worth of retail. And we can compare that from through July 1st 25…
Jeffrey Herndon -ATCC-: where we had nothing. It was zero because of
Jeffrey Kelly -ATCC-: Yeah. …
Jeffrey Kelly -ATCC-: I just appreciate that. I wanted to draw that out to show you that The way this law is structured is really impactful. Commissioner P eventually there are processes still that we have to go through.
Robert Poole: Quick question.
Robert Poole: And this product is all destroyed, correct? No,…
Jeffrey Kelly -ATCC-: So, it is subject for destruction. with anything there’s processes that people can request hearings and…
Robert Poole: I understand.
Jeffrey Kelly -ATCC-: other things.
Robert Poole: But ultimately,…
Robert Poole: it’s slated for destruction or incineration. Correct.
Jeffrey Kelly -ATCC-: That’s correct.
Jeffrey Kelly -ATCC-: And as you may or may not be familiar with, I’m looking out my window and I see this stack of inrn the infirmary that we use here, the incinerator rather that we use. It’s just right there. So, it’s an easy ride. But that’s exactly correct. and…
Robert Poole: Yes. Okay.
Jeffrey Kelly -ATCC-: thank you, Jeeoff. and just, one other thing about these cases that we’ve been doing, roughly how many cases resulted in these seizures? do you have that?
Jeffrey Herndon -ATCC-: We’re at a U plus or…
Jeffrey Herndon -ATCC-: minus 40 to 45 retail establishments. Thanks.
Jeffrey Kelly -ATCC-: And these are peppered across the state. I also just want to make that point. It’s not focused in any one area. These are our agents across the state doing this. they’re all over. And the early results are promising. the seizures are significant,…
Alan Silverstein: I’m back.
Jeffrey Kelly -ATCC-: and we hope we’re starting to be impactful because it’s a lot of dollar cost to these things. And secondly, we’re already starting to see court cases be assigned. So we have dates as soon as this month.
Jeffrey Kelly -ATCC-: There are already seven cases that are engaged. So it’s kind of nice to have that, already happening. I’m sorry.
Robert Poole: And Jeff,…
Robert Poole: those are criminal cases or…
Jeffrey Kelly -ATCC-: Bear with me.
Robert Poole: Excellent.
Jeffrey Kelly -ATCC-: Those will be criminal cases probably for the labeling for or it might be some licensing issues as well. I’m not sure what the mixture is, but they’re all criminal cases.
Jeffrey Kelly -ATCC-: Yeah. Yeah, they all are. So, we just have tools with us now that we didn’t before this, as you may know or recall, we are severely handcuffed by the Washington County Circuit Court injunction. And what we can do and in those instances where we could act under that original law without what’s happened July 1, We make an undercover purchase. We identify eventually the person who made the sale. We bring it back. We test it preliminarily and get a sense that it’s a THC license warranted product. We send it off to our lab in Philly. 45 days later, we get the results. Long and short is we’re two or three months into this before somebody’s getting charged and then it’s one person and we’ve taken one thing off the shelf. Now, with this law, because of the labeling requirements, we’re able to go in, identify the product that is subject to labeling but is mislabeled and it all goes.
Jeffrey Kelly -ATCC-: So we’re able to make this impact immediately. So it’s just very very helpful and as I said, it’s sprinkled across the state and we’ve already got about seven cases that are slated for some court proceeding now. So it’s so far very positive. We’ll be interested to see…
Robert Poole: And I apologize…
Robert Poole: if you’ve already answered this question.
Jeffrey Kelly -ATCC-: how the court there is no license revocation for this…
Robert Poole: This also includes the license replication as well, correct? Okay.
Jeffrey Kelly -ATCC-: because these are unlicensed establishments to begin with.
Robert Poole: So, this got it.
Jeffrey Kelly -ATCC-: None of the places that we go to are licensed establishments. Typically, we wouldn’t go to those anyway. That’s left under the opices of the Maryland Cannabis Administration. If they ask us to come in, we would if we develop some information about nefarious goings on,…
Robert Poole: Yeah, we got
Alan Silverstein: We have new business. There’s
Jeffrey Kelly -ATCC-: we could look at that. But they are well regulated by the Cannabis Administration and their product is already subject to all these labeling laws. In fact, the labeling laws have been extended to these unlicensed locations as well. So, if you’re going to sell it, that’s one thing, but you better label it properly. So, any other questions on that before we move on? I’d like to great. I’d like to introduce, you all know him, Andrew Waters. and he’s going to give us a rundown of where we are with our licensing and perhaps some of our trade practices work as well.
ANDREW WATERS -ATCC-: Absolutely.
Jeffrey Kelly -ATCC-: Andrew, please take it.
ANDREW WATERS -ATCC-: Hey, good afternoon everybody. as we are heading out of August, into September, we have our ongoing October renewals and luckily with the new one-stop system. We’ve been exceedingly effective at getting those permits renewed, we’ve already processed about a thousand of our 5,000 total and we’re still about 2 months away from our expiration date. So, we’re processing anywhere from 90 to 100 a day. for a threeperson crew, that’s exceptional.
00:25:00
ANDREW WATERS -ATCC-: that we are leagues ahead of where we were last year through our old paper and check methods. so it’s been a great success. I’m also happy to announce, as far as our trade practice unit,…
ANDREW WATERS -ATCC-: we are very much ramping up our compliance inspections both of our manufacturers and wholesalers. Happy to say we’ve done a few MSA inspections as well of our tobacco cigarette wholesalers this past week which all went very successfully. so it’s a good time. Do you have any questions?
Alan Silverstein: You’re welcome.
Jeffrey Kelly -ATCC-: And just to clarify for people, MSA, what that means is master settlement agreement. It’s a tobacco issue.
Alan Silverstein: I’ve got my microphone off. Okay.
Jeffrey Kelly -ATCC-: Yeah. I need you to go on mute. it’s a tobacco settlement issue in which the participating manufacturers, think the big ones, Reynolds, think Philip Mars, Altraa, they give certain amount of money to the state each year that goes to tobacco prevention issues. Yeah, for some reason it keeps copying back. It sounds like it’s reverberating. Sorry about that, but in any event, it’s a lot of money. it’s upwards of over a hundred million dollars. maybe 100 as much as 100 and a half million depending on the year. So, it’s a really important thing and the office of the attorney general enforces that. This tobacco unit specifically enforces it, but we play a vital role in that as well. And part of that is inspecting these tobacco wholesalers. So, it’s just something we stay on top of. So, thank you for that, Andrew. and if I could just a moment of self-indulgence here.
Jeffrey Kelly -ATCC-: Andrew mentioned about how well our automated system seems to be working, our portal where people can take complete control. Just yesterday morning when Jessica first came in the office, the first three phone calls she got, I could over hear them were from people who wanted a transportation permit. Previously, they’ve got to come here to Baltimore, park out front, and get their permit. But she was able to offer them and even walk at least one of them I overheard her walk them through the process online of getting this permit immediately and not have to come in here and make payment online and get their permit online. So it’s really working. But just let me read just a couple very Unsolicited comments from people who’ve been using our system. and these are all people who are in the business either as our license holders specifically or these are law firms or other processing firms who get licenses permits on behalf of people.
Jeffrey Kelly -ATCC-: their clients. First one,…
Alan Silverstein: Are you
Jeffrey Kelly -ATCC-: we were missing just some of this going to sound silly. This is in response to us telling them, they maybe had a question. We explained something to them. and we’re missing out on just one. I’ve successfully renewed online. How simple. You all should teach. And I’m going to say here other Maryland agencies, how to make an online system and portal. What a breeze to use. Thanks for keeping us updated on our permits. We really appreciate it. That’s a great success there. the emails have been coming so fast with a half hour of submission. I thought the process was entirely automated. We still have people checking these things, but it’s just happening that fast. You guys rock. I will watch the last three email approvals to arrive. It sounds like they may have not processed yet. Amazing efforts by the Maryland team and super impressive to update the overall submission processes. Nice job to all. so again, a nice compliment.
Jeffrey Kelly -ATCC-: And then the next one. Hi, just a quick note to thank you for a userfriendly portal in onetop. It’s a breath of fresh air compared to other states. Not this isn’t bragging, just this is what we always wanted to be able to do, what we were always hoping we would do. And it looks like we maybe struck that right balance now where got the industry is getting what they want, what they need, and it’s working really successfully. So kudos to Andrew and the entire licensing crew that have worked so hard to make this happen because he said right now there’s three people processing all that. And that’s true. But those three people are running around crazy to make sure the system was built out properly and…
ANDREW WATERS -ATCC-: Thank you, sir.
Jeffrey Kelly -ATCC-: that all of the errors were fixed or that all of anything that could be an issue or…
Jeffrey Kelly -ATCC-: problem was addressed in advance of kicking this thing kudos Andrew and team amazing. really proud of them. So Mr. Sure. that would be my report and I turn it back over to you.
Alan Silverstein: Okay. …
Alan Silverstein: first of all, I want to thank the staff. I looked at the website. I’m very impressed with what we’ve done with our website and how we’ve made it easier for our customers to get licensed and do the things that are necessary. So I know you guys are working hard and we appreciate that very much. Any other commissioners have a comment? Not I’d ask for a motion for adjournment.
00:30:00
Dourakine Rosarion: I second. I
Alan Silverstein: Mr. P. Okay.
Robert Poole: I make a motion to adjurnn.
Alan Silverstein: Darcane second. Okay, I have motion to second. All those in favor signify by saying I.
Robert Poole: I thank you guys.
Alan Silverstein: I oppose. Same signs.
Alan Silverstein: I apologize for my technical stuff. Hopefully I’ll get it fixed up and ready to go for next time. Have a great All right.
Jeffrey Kelly -ATCC-: You don’t have anything else going on right now.
Jeffrey Kelly -ATCC-: So, yeah.
Alan Silverstein: Thank you.
Robert Poole: Have a great day.
Jeffrey Kelly -ATCC-: Thank you all. Bye-bye.
Meeting ended after 00:30:57 👋
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