The Dutch researcher Arno Hazekamp was the master of ceremonies of the first conference organized by the Legal Cannabis Coalition (LCC) at the Centro Cultural de Belém (CCB), in Lisbon, on the 20th of April. The event sold out to the maximum capacity of the auditorium, having received more than 100 professionals from the medical cannabis industry, especially from the part related to cultivation and processing.
Arno Hazekamp was in Portugal at the invitation of PTMC – Portugal Medical Cannabis, in 2019, at the Sheraton Hotel, in Porto, where he dedicated a lecture to cannabis biochemistry.
We spoke with Arno, the main organizer and co-founder of the LCC, to find out how the coalition was born and to take stock of the event.
How and why did the LCC – Legal Cannabis Coalition come about?
It was a way of keeping knowledge together. It started with about ten companies that wanted to know more about their cannabis-related products: Does it work? Which one is the best? Do I need this lamp or that, this nutrient or the other? So these companies work together with Wageningen University, which means they pay the research costs and Wageningen is neutral, but they needed a scientific consultant and they asked me to help. But when the research ends, companies go their own way, and I thought “well, isn’t that a waste?” We learn to communicate, we meet every month, we get to know each other's company, sometimes we visit each other's company, we know about cannabis and then we go our separate ways… that's too bad. So how can we keep together? And that's when we thought – “well, what if we create a group”? A group needs a budget, so we pay for a membership and from that membership we do things. Organizing events, doing other studies, visiting other countries to learn from each other and from each other's customers… That's how the LCC core started and other companies said – “hey, that's interesting, can I join? I add something different!” So this is our group. The answer to your question is, how do we keep the good vibes together when the research is done and then we don't want to part and say “bye, see you later”.
How many members does the LCC have now?
I think we have twenty.
Are partners just companies?
It has to be a service provider, because if you grow cannabis and if one of our customers is also growing cannabis, they are in conflict. Imagine, if I'm a cannabis grower and I go to LCC and I say “I have a problem and I want you to help me solve it”, and then I see that my competitor is on the table, of course I go somewhere else… it would be weird, so it has to be a service provider. We don't grow cannabis and we don't sell it, we just help. It also has to be Dutch companies, because we are based in the Netherlands and we want to get to know each other, so that everyone can come to a table and speak in person, otherwise we are all looking at Zoom screens and speaking English, and we all hate Zoom. … We started at the beginning of Covid, so it only got worse, but we said – we want to unite, we want to understand each other, look each other in the eye and understand “who am I dealing with?”. It also has to be unique, which means we don't have two companies of the same type, because otherwise they would compete. “You built the last greenhouse, so now it's my turn” but that's not what the customer asks for, he doesn't care, he wants the best greenhouse. So a greenhouse company, a lab, an irrigation system, a nutrient, and there's always a little bit of overlap, or trying to keep that separate so that out of the whole toolbox you always know who to ask. And if everyone is different, they will also be much more open to sharing customer data, because a greenhouse company is not going to steal customers from a lab. We can really be open, we can share and there's no harm done, and I think that's the recipe for total collaboration.
Why Portugal for this first Conference?
This is the first conference for us, it's also a new thing, because we all think we're really fun and smart x 20, but we didn't know that we could make a whole day fun, interesting, engaging. We chose Portugal because everyone likes to come to Portugal. Lisbon is a very friendly city, the food, the people, the weather (not so much today, it's very windy), but also because it's a very mature market. There are a lot of LPs, we are also talking about recreational, exporting, there are international LPs, there are some local LPs, the government is supporting it with the right kind of regulation, not always as fast as we would like, but the structure is there. We have local representatives of our members, some people have a local business, others have a lot of customers here and we are connected through, well, people like you, we have connections all over the world and local people to tell us how to do an event like this. So, on the whole, for us it was very clear: we are going to Portugal first and, if it works, maybe Denmark will be the next country on the list, maybe Canada, maybe England.
The room was full and your press officer said he had to turn people away. Are you happy with the result?
Yes. It could be more crowded, but if you want to interact… I think we all have the experience of going to a conference and for the two or three days of the conference you're always chasing your favorite speaker and he's always talking to someone else. With a smaller number of people there is more room to breathe, not everything is completely full, there is a little more space for coffee and there are also more opportunities to actually talk to the people you want to talk to. It's not about being the greatest. We had it in our heads that XNUMX was a good number, so when we got close to XNUMX we stopped. Also because we couldn't order more food, because then we would drive the CCB crazy “Ten more coffees! Ten more coffees!” (laughs)
That was also our experience with PTMC. In Lisbon we had almost 400 people and in Porto we had 200. In the end, we found 200 better than 400.
Yes, more is not always better. And it's not to make a profit, it's just to cover costs, so XNUMX was the turning point. Cost and benefit were guaranteed, so that's when we said enough was enough.
The topics you chose for discussion here today were more related to agronomy or cultivation. Do you also plan to address other topics, such as the benefits of cannabis for patients?
We can do that, convene a symposium on that particular topic and ask the speakers to do that, because we want to learn about these things too, but we have twenty companies with twenty core competencies, we start there. Talking about the benefits of cannabis as a medicine means we need a member who is a medical research company or something, right? And we could cover that, but actually we try to stay close to ourselves – that's what we know, that's what we have, and if they like it we'll talk more, but we don't want to convince people that cannabis is a good medicine or not. If it's allowed, if you want to produce it and your government allows it, then we'll help you make the best of it. It's like when we help grow tomatoes, we don't have an opinion on tomato ketchup. If you want to make ketchup, great, if you want to make pasta sauce, great too. It's up to you to decide, as long as you're doing it the right way. (laughs)
But today the twenty members weren't here...
No, but all the speakers were members and some of them just didn't have the time, are busy or focused on other customers, or the person responsible for cannabis at that company wasn't available or something. But under perfect conditions twenty members would have twenty speakers.
How do you feel now, with the success of this first event?
It's like having a birthday party, where you could say – well, this is a big party, because there were a hundred people, but if a hundred people were bored, it wouldn't be a big birthday party. So I always look at the coffee breaks, how people are behaving, how open they are, how much interaction there is between people who don't know each other… And I think it worked very well here. It's not about what I think, it's about what I see around me, and I feel emotion, I feel flow, a very open atmosphere where people are happy with the connections that are made. I think it was a success.
How do you see the global cannabis landscape and what do you expect for Europe?
I think we need to collaborate more, we need to share stories to have best practices, we need to benchmarks, standards, not just standardization, but we need to know what is normal because there are a lot of great stories out there where people can claim whatever they want about cannabis and we need to check. I think the best check is not to say you're the expert or to say you're good or not, but to check it out as a group. We have to ensure that the right information floats to the top and that everyone has access to it. So, then, I'm sure we can all find it.
