With state approval recently of dozens of medical marijuana licenses, a native Nevadan with two decades in the gaming industry is laying the groundwork for the new industry’s next steps.
Heidi Cook, managing partner of Regulated Employee Resources, is creating an education program to ensure businesses keep up with state and county regulations.
Her company is developing a virtual school that will teach licensees and their employees all the rules to legally operate, relate best practices from out-of-state industry leaders, and provide access to a network of local business lines, from banking to insurance to security.
Cook, who was an account manager with IGT for more than 20 years, said the gaming industry’s evolution in Nevada correlates to medical marijuana now in that the state took a “back-door” business into the “regulatory sunlight.”
“We’ve lived the wild, wild West with gaming and other nontraditional agencies. We know how to do this and make sure that everybody is safe, that everything is professional,” Cook said.
RER — through the website http://www.reresourcesco.com/ — will contain specialized curricula for the four branches of the medical marijuana industry — cultivation, production, labs and dispensaries.
RER “will help Nevada avoid rumor defining the marketplace,” said Van McConnon, a Colorado cultivation consultant who is advising RER. Colorado voters approved medical marijuana in 2000 and marijuana was legalized for recreational use in 2012.
“Everyone deals blackjack the same; there should be similar best practices in medical marijuana,” said McConnon, a senior consultant at Colorado Cannabis Systems, a cultivation company in business since 2008. “We were finally getting these kinds of standards in Colorado after five years. In Nevada, they’ll be walking out the door with them.”
Cook has also partnered with Tisha Black of Black & Lobello. Black, also a Nevada native, specializes in business law and represented eight medical marijuana clients who all received state approval for licenses.
Black and her associates are creating video tutorials that allow a transfer of information mimicking that of lawyer-client, but at significantly reduced rate. Some of her clients have spent $750,000 just in pursuit of a license.
“I was digging around for some kind of education tool or consultant that I could send my clients to that would save me work and save them money. ... There was nothing out there that was specific to Nevada, and the consultants I did find were overcharging,” Black said.
Black said she found consultants charging as much as $300,000 for their services, and one-day seminars that cost upward of $500. RER aims to be “affordable and accessible so that people will use it,” Cook said.
RER will be subscription-based, charging a flat fee of a few thousand dollars plus additional fees per employee of about $200, a price range she said will allow smaller companies to buy into the service.
Scott Gragson, a partner of Cannext Labs in Arizona, recently received approval for a medical marijuana lab license in Clark County. He plans to train his employees through RER as long as the lab training curriculum impresses.
“Anytime you can get a standardized education for employees, you’ll get better service and more protection for the customer,” Gragson said. “These standards will help Nevada be progressive, to give above and beyond.”
But Nevada Sen. Tick Segerblom, a Democrat who sponsored the bill that legalized medical marijuana dispensaries in 2013, said he’s not convinced RER is what Nevada needs, at least not yet.
“I’m not sure there needs to be this kind of standardized education program because there isn’t a uniform view across government of what that looks like,” Segerblom said. “It’s not like alcohol where you’re dealing with a drug that’s open to everyone. People have to have prescriptions; it’s already regulated. Something like a TAM card for medical marijuana may not be necessary.” A TAM card is given to bartenders and servers who complete an alcohol education course and certification.
On Wednesday, RER will host a medical marijuana approval celebration at the Divine Café at the Springs Preserve. Cook has invited state-approved licensees and businesses that will be affiliated with the industry, including First Security Bank, LP Insurance Services and the Nevada Dispensary Association. Cook expects 300 to attend.
“The point of this kick-off event and of (RER) is to elevate the industry, to start it off on the right foot with professionalism and to make Nevada the gold standard,” Cook said.