Howie:
Ah, KT 93 9 oh, the lake. Hello.
Cody:
Happy. Hello.
Howie:
Hello.
Cody:
Happy Halloween.
Howie:
I want to go trick or treating at your place. I want to fill up my bag with all sorts of really good stuff over there. What have you got?
Cody:
Oh, we’ve got all the things you ever need to have a happy Halloween,
Howie:
But
Cody:
No trick or treats.
Howie:
Have you ever had a Halloween party at your place? Obviously just for adults. Have you had a, because that would be a kick ass party. We’ve been, man,
Cody:
You got to come by tonight. I mean, it’s a little late, 10 30, but we’re having one, so you better be here with all the bells and whistles.
Howie:
Wow. Is it in costume? Of course. It’s in costume,
Cody:
Of course. Oh yeah, it’s cool. We got a good costume contest.
Howie:
Wow, good one. I’ll have to run that by the, that sounds like fun, man. Have you ever seen somebody in a costume that you either couldn’t figure out or it just kind of freaked you out and left an unsettling feeling in your mind?
Cody:
Well, last year actually, yes, most definitely. And there was some good ones actually out of Freaker Bowl, I have to say. The lady that was in the hospital bed was pretty intense this year. There was some good costumes out. I didn’t see you out there, Howie. Were you a Freakers Ball?
Howie:
No, I didn’t go this year to the Freakers Ball. I was going, I went to another private gig performing, I had to do a show, but I did a show in costume, but it was a private show, a corporate, not like some type of dancer or something like that, but it was like a kind of a corporate thing. It was a lot of fun, man. Had a good time. But I missed the Freakers Ball this year. Was it packed? I heard it was really pretty well attended.
Cody:
Yeah, it was well attended, definitely. I’d say that it was a little different. They didn’t open up the bigger room and things, but it was good. It was cool to see everybody out, costumes and it was a good time Freak’s ball. Things have changed I think. I don’t know if it’s whether I’ve gotten older and you just remember things so different when you’re younger, but it was still great.
Howie:
True.
Cody:
I can remember kind of the Freak’s Ball 20 plus years ago, and I guess maybe it’s just getting old. I think that’s probably more what it is, but yeah, it was still great. Good to see the community out. Good to see everybody in the character that they would rather be.
Howie:
Yes, I really truly believe that when somebody dresses up in certain costumes for I think a high percentage, that is like their alter ego.
Cody:
Exactly, yes, definitely.
Howie:
That explains a lot. One year I was Edna from Hairspray and then what was, I think it was the Flying Nun, so I’ve got some issues, haven’t really,
Cody:
Well, the Flying Nun, I mean, I got to figure out exactly what that part means, but
Howie:
For a Jewish boy, why are you being the Flying Nun? So I would think you probably have a, I don’t know if you ever have Halloween specials at TWC there, but I’m sure there’s all sorts of things that were, there’s a lot of treats, let’s just put it that way.
Cody:
There’s a lot of treats. Definitely. So we definitely have all the different treats and different specials that go on today for sure. It’s one of the things we always tell people, you’ve got to make sure to keep the candy in the cabinet locked away from the kids, especially during this time of year. That’s a major thing. But yeah, we’ve got cookies, brands that are on sale today that is one of the better known brands in the state. Right. Labs, you can get a cart, get a 50% off a different cart, all sorts of different specials. Cushy punch that you can buy a recovery cushy punch, you can get a select for a buck. So yeah, there’s a ton of different specials to come check out today, but again, we definitely always try to, during this time of year, make sure to keep the candy separate. Right. Children getting into the medicine cabinet.
Howie:
Exactly. Now, where do you get a lot of trick or treaters because you’re in a nice neighborhood back there where we have hardly any trick-or-treating because we don’t even have streetlights out in the county or in Myers. But not too many people come out with the kids for Trick-or-treating out there.
Cody:
Yeah, I think Tahoe people kind of pick the certain neighborhoods. My street is just kind of one street, so we’ll get a few, and we always have full-sized candy bars. Really? So bring the kids on by
Howie:
Why you don’t,
Cody:
I mean, I always remembered the house for that full-sized candy bars. That’s the one I didn’t wrap in toilet paper, so I tried to remember what the kids think. That’s funny.
Howie:
Oh man. I was trying to think of some of the Halloween costumes that you would have. I was trying to think. It’s been a while since I saw you in costume, but there was one time I do
Cody:
Remember. Yeah, I’m still trying to figure out this year’s costume and who knows. But I’ve gone everything from a monkey one year because I was born in the year of the monkey.
Howie:
Right.
Cody:
Me and Hunter did Rick and Morty one year, which was a really fun one. And one year I didn’t know what to wear, so I just wore a noose around my neck and I was well hung. And so that one was maybe the one that was,
Howie:
Okay. That’s funny. One
Cody:
One was just off the fly
Howie:
For a couple of years. I went as Ozzy Osborne. I had the black wig and a lot of people said I had kind of the facial features when I didn’t have the beard as going as Ozzy sha. That was a lot of fun.
Cody:
Nice. I don’t know what I’m going to be this year. I’m still actually in the makings and I’ve only got a few hours.
Howie:
Yeah, no, you better get some of the, so I’m curious because I know obviously your hours are the same for Halloween. I heard the background. Hold on. There you go. That’s from a smoky something, a little bit too harsh. But you have any specials coming on that we should be aware of? Because now we’re getting into the colder season and I know you kind of switch it up a wee bit as the season changes.
Cody:
Yeah, most definitely. I mean, as times go, I mean we’ve always day to day got amazing specials going on, but as the winter comes on, Kiva brings back the hot cocoa, which is amazing for the winter time to be able to have the medicated cocoa. And actually we’re going to be seeing a brand of coffee. One of somebody that I’ve known really well has started to produce out of the Bay Area called Origin’s Coffee, which is also going to be something great for the wintertime. And then we’ve always of course got our teas. So yeah, I mean the wintertime is always something. And then tubs of butter, that’s the one thing I always try to let people remember is that we sell butter that you can buy in the tub and put in your favorite recipe. So as you’re making baked goods for the holidays and all those kind of things, you can get a tub of butter and you can really quantify how many milligrams is going to be in a tablespoon or a teaspoon based on the total volume of the package. Because in butter it’s homogenized and therefore you can really dial in. Okay, two tablespoons is going to be 20 milligrams. If I’ve got a thousand milligram tub that totals
Howie:
A total of that sounds so cool.
Cody:
Total 500 tablespoons or whatever, you just need to do the math based on the milligram and the total contents of the package. So water, yeah, there is some great things in the wintertime to use to combine into your wintertime recipes.
Howie:
Now I want to go back to the coffee one. Man, I never even heard of a coffee. It sounds like that’s almost like an oxymoron. Can you get one, a decaffeinated pot or something like that or?
Cody:
No, I think she is making some different decaffeinated stuff as well really. But coffee and cannabis has been a thing for a while now. I haven’t really seen anybody that’s done it in this way where they’re doing it through more or less like the roasting process. A lot of the ways we’re seeing it generally before this was infused into milk because you generally want a fatty to put for the cannabis to be able to combine to. And so this, you’ll still add a half and half or something to it to be able to have the cannabinoids have a fat lipid to come to, but without that, it doesn’t necessarily work. So before this kind of new methodology around it, it was just infusing the half and half that you would put into the coffee or infusing the milk that you’d make a latte with. But yeah, this will be a really cool thing. We’ll definitely be having her come up and do some demos and so she can really let everybody know exactly how it works. But yeah, it’ll be really a great thing to see. And something too when we bring our consumption lounge online, which we got approval through the planning commission and this will now go to the city council on the 21st. But once we get into consumption, we will have coffees there that you can either have medicated or non-medicated. So that would be a great product to bring into the new consumption lounge for sure.
Howie:
A consumption lounge. Now, I only first heard about it through you and your place. When that does get approved, it’s signed off and it’s official. Well, were your consumption labs being the first of its kind not just in our area, but even as far reaching as Northern Nevada and California?
Cody:
No, so Northern Nevada just approved a law. I don’t believe that they at this point of licensed anybody. And as far as California goes, we actually, so Tahoe Wellness, we opened in 2009 and we opened with a consumption lounge and at that time, Berkeley Patients Group and there was a couple in Venice that had done consumption lounges, but we were probably number three, are number four in the entire state to have a consumption lounge. And then as far as right now, there are quite a few licensed that have opened since 2018, a handful in San Francisco. The majority of them actually exist in West Hollywood and Tahoe. We will be bringing back our consumption lounge. What happened is in 2019, we got inspected by the state agency known as Department of Cannabis Control. And because we didn’t have a separation between the dispensary and the consumption lounge, state law made us either quit serving anybody that was purely medical under the age of 21 or separate the two spaces.
So that is a big part and really the main part of why we did the remodel is so that we have a separated space between what will be the consumption lounge and what now is our dispensary. So here within, once we get the city approval, we’ll be able to open that up and it’s a real benefit to the community and to visitors. I mean, the fact is a lot of people, especially people visiting, a lot of people local as well need a safe place to consume where it’s not considered illegal, where there’s no worry of having somebody cite them for being illegal or even that they’re here visiting with their family and they need a place that isn’t their hotel room or same person that’s here locally and has three kids at home and doesn’t want to smoke in front of their family. It provides that type of space and it’s very well ventilated. It’s very clean. We make sure that the sanitation across smoking devices are always sanitized and it really opens up this kind of social consumption around cannabis where just the same way that we socialize around alcohol, we will be able to socialize around consumption of cannabis. And there’s a lot of benefits. It’s actually today, it just came out five days ago, but it’s the first study that shows traffic death rates fell in states that legalized marijuana. And this came, or I should say cannabis, but I’m reading straight from the headline,
But it says first headline and it states that legalized cannabis in 2016 saw meaningful declines and traffic fatalities during the years immediately following the policy change. And we’ve, people that use cannabis regularly somewhat know this, that consuming cannabis is not something that impairs your driving ability. It will make you maybe stop and drive slower and stay longer at a stop sign and those kinds of things, but it’s not as the same effect of alcohol, which makes you completely out of your mind and drive twice the speed limit and run through stop signs. So it’s a much different effect and it’s very cool to kind of see now that we’re seeing a lot of science and research take up cannabis as a topic. I think as the years go on, we’re going to see more and more meaningful impacts from the policy of cannabis legalization. And this is just one, yeah, just came out five days ago and has some very meaningful data in it, so it’s great to see,
Howie:
Man, that’s going to be one big consumption lounge, that’s for sure.
Cody:
The whole office. Yeah, no, it’s going to be cool, man. It’s going to have quite a bit of space and we’re going to make it very loungey and somewhere very welcoming. I can’t, somewhere where you want to come hang out.
Howie:
Hey, it’s going to be another ribbon cutting ceremony I can kind of foresee already. It’s going to be kind of a
Cody:
Cold. Oh yeah, no, this will actually be our grand opening. We kind of did a soft opening in April with the dispensary. I mean, I call it a soft opening, but more or less, we didn’t do a party or any type of grand opening, but when we open consumption, it will be the real deal,
Howie:
Man, Cody, I can’t wait. That’s really cool, man. That’s good. I’m still cracking up that you were visited by the cannabis agency, it sounds like kind of like an AB, C kind of thing that checks up on bars and everything. There’s actually a cannabis AB, C version that goes around and goes, Hey, you need separation between that lounge and where you’re selling it. I had no idea. They just make spot visits. That’s crazy. Wow.
Cody:
Yeah, we’re 10 times more than the a, b, C inspects bars. The DCC is much more stringent. The laws that regulate dispensaries are hundreds of pages, actually like 218 pages. And so the amount of things for them to check on is unreal. They come in with about three different guys, and for us, the inspection is about two and a half hours long, and they literally come through and spot check all of our products to make sure they’re compliant and tested to make sure that we have all of the video surveillance coverage. I mean, it’s a very, very in-depth inspection, and I have friends that have bars that have never even really seen the A, B, C in all of their times of serving alcohol. We’ve seen these guys three different times as recent as about a month ago, just over the last three years. So yeah, it’s a different level of it. And what’s wild is that you look at the difference of the two and the amount of impact on society between the two and the amount of fatalities. Cannabis has never had a recorded fatality. I don’t even want to think about the numbers of alcohol fatalities over the last year. And to think about the efforts being put into the controlling and regulating the two, it’s pretty mind blowing.
Howie:
Hey, you just gave me my idea for a costume. I’m going to come dressed up as a cannabis inspection agent and just demand that I need to sample everything that you have. Just put it in my trick or treat bag.
Cody:
There you go. Definitely. I’ll get you the bag. I think that’ll be perfect for the stock.
Howie:
Hey Cody, man, I always love chatting with you, especially today, more than ever, man, this has been a blast. So thanks for making my Tuesday as always. There we go.
Cody:
Yeah, Howie. Well, happy Halloween and yeah buddy, we’ll talk to you next week.
Howie:
Alright, Cody, have a great Halloween, my friend.
Cody:
Happy Halloween
Howie:
Kia Taco.