Saphira Galoob & Ed Conklin: Merging Power to Move Cannabis Policy
When it comes to moving federal cannabis policy forward, progress requires coordination, persistence, and strategic advocacy. In this episode of The Ganjapreneur Podcast, Edward Conklin, Executive Director of the U.S. Cannabis Council, and Saphira Galoob, Executive Director of the National Cannabis Roundtable — join host TG Branfalt to discuss the historic merger of their organizations into the U.S. Cannabis Roundtable. This conversation dives into what commercial entities are doing to lobby Congress for meaningful reform, including the uphill battle to pass safe banking legislation, the real implications of cannabis rescheduling to Schedule III, and the importance of building trust with lawmakers. Galoob and Conklin also share insider perspectives on why some legislation stalls, how policy change actually happens in D.C., and what entrepreneurs can do to get involved at the local and national levels. Listen below or wherever you get your podcasts, or scroll down for the full transcript! Listen to the episode: Ganjapreneur · Saphira Galoob & Ed Conklin: Merging Power to Move Cannabis Policy Read the full transcript: Editor’s note: this transcript was generated automatically and may contain errors. TG Branfalt: Hey there, I’m your host, TG Branfalt, and this is the Ganjapreneur.com podcast where we try to bring you actionable information and normalized cannabis through the stories of ganjapreneurs, activists and industry stakeholders. Today I’m joined by Edward Conklin. He’s the executive director of the US Cannabis Council and Saphira Galoob, executive Director of the National Cannabis Roundtable. The USC and NCR announced plans to combine their organizations to create the US Cannabis Roundtable. How are we doing this afternoon, folks? We’re great. Ed Conklin: Excellent. Thanks for having us. Saphira Galoob: Thanks for having us on. Tim. TG Branfalt: Really excited to talk shop and in this case, public policy. As most of my listeners know, I’m a bit of a public policy nerd, and so these are some of my favorite conversations to have. But before we get into that, Edward and Sphera, thank you for being here. Tell me about yourself and how you ended up in this part of the cannabis industry. Saphira Galoob: Ed, I’ll let you go first. Ed Conklin: Ladies first, Saphira Galoob: Please. Well, if you insist, so Tim, I’ve been doing this work specifically focused on federal advocacy work in the cannabis space since November 7th, 2017. And when I came into the space federally, it was the year I remember it because I’m from Oklahoma and it was the year that Oklahoma legalized. And that year, seven states actually came online and I remember doing an analysis, there were two lobbyists at the time in the federal walking the halls of Congress. And I assessed that there were at that point 113 Republican congressional offices that now had legal cannabis in their state. And so before I even started my business, I just started making meetings with these offices and visited 83 offices and five of those Republican offices had ever even heard that cannabis was an issue. So given the trajectory of states passing legalization movements and the number of congressional offices that now had constituents who live in states with legal cannabis and the fact that there were two lobbyists on Capitol Hill, I knew there was an opportunity to be had. And so I launched my career at that point. TG Branfalt: How did you first get those meetings? It is not really every day that someone just walks in. Saphira Galoob: Well, I am a lawyer and a lobbyist by career. I had a 25 year career in DC and had done a pretty decent amount of lobbying in other areas, and so I knew the drill. So a lot of times when you’re starting a new business, and I’m an entrepreneur at heart, I haven’t had a job working for anybody since 2006. So you just basically start as if you’re already successful and you make a meeting, you make a meeting request. These offices, particularly in an issue that is a bit unknown, they’ll take a meeting even if it’s 15 minute phone meeting. So it is more accessible than people understand, but it requires more work than people appreciate. TG Branfalt: So how about you, ed? How did you end up in the cannabis space? Ed Conklin: A good question. I used to work for McDonald’s. I worked for a clown, so in the hamburger side and did government relations there for 20 some plus years and retired and actually got a phone call from Joe Ardi at CAF and asked me to come over work for him, and I decided to start that route there. So I was used to lobbying state, federal, international at the time period, but just like sfia when my first trip to dc It’s interesting, and she is absolutely right how she approached it and she was fearless at the time, I got to tell you. So was fearless on this stuff. I started fumbling around in DC with some friends and lobbyists going to these meetings, and a lot of these offices wouldn’t even take your meeting when you talked about cannabis. I mean, there was a long time ago when they’re like, thanks, but no thanks. Prefer not to meet on this until it’s normalized or whatever word you want to use there. But now compared to leap four today, you can go in every office and Sophia is absolutely right. We did a lot of meetings, a lot of discussions, and a lot of talks. So started off small and grew into where we’re at today. So it’s a wonderful industry, some great people to work with, some great entrepreneurs and couldn’t have more fun. TG Branfalt: Can one or both of you describe to me sort of the difference now, the actual difference now than when you first started lobbying these lawmakers on the cannabis issue? Saphira Galoob: We probably have similar stories. I’ll start and let Ed fill