Among the legislation making the recreational use of cannabis legal in Connecticut is a provision to create a small business facilitation program.
Open to people who have been granted a cannabis social equity license, the idea is to provide knowledge about running a cannabis business to help get businesses off the ground.
“Social equity applicants, if they are approved by the council, they are eligible for this first program,” said social equity council spokeswoman Kristina Diamond. “The program does all the technical business assistance. They go over the soup-to-nuts of a cannabis business, what they need to know, how to launch a program, how to attract funders to your business.
The state went through an RFP process and settled on a California-based school called Oaksterdam University, where Dale Sky Jones is the executive chancellor.
The one-year $1 million contract was ultimately signed with Oaksterdam and Hartford-based reSet because, Diamond said, “We felt it was important to have someone from Connecticut, as well, as part of the process.”
Oaksterdam, Jones said, started as a nickname “because the founders went to Amsterdam, saw the dual use, saw the convenience, the decriminalization, that it worked, and Oakland was the first city to allow the selling medical cannabis,” he said. “That one on Broadway, in 1996, was the first one to start.”
The founder, Jeff Jones — who later married Dale Sky Jones — “forcefully retired from the distribution of medical cannabis,” he said. “He became a teacher and also helped patients find their medicine.”
“He terminated the contract with the county,” Jones said. “He trained the city’s tax department, the police department on how to identify qualified medical patients and what those transactions looked like.”
Since then, cannabis has become legal. Jones said he was “the first to be a spokesperson for a statewide voter initiative that your mom wants you to be like.”
“The only people who are willing to talk about cannabis legalization, destigmatization, are the Cheech and Chong types, and I respect Cheech and Chong because they’re crazy rocks, but they always try to themselves in a positive light,” he said. “They didn’t hurt anyone in any of the movies. Everyone had fun. It was very intelligent writing that got them that, but it still created a stigma of ‘Don’t copy them.’ And, you know, Carl Sagan was a rock at the same time as Cheech and Chong. He could have just lost his NASA contract.
Fast forward to 2023, and the school is working with officials in Florida, Missouri and Los Angeles, as well as Connecticut, where so far 32 participants have started the nine-month program.
“Some are ahead, some are behind, and there is a time limit on how long they have to stand in their business,” he said. “Sometimes we’re a cheerleader or just holding their hand and saying, ‘Wow, this is tough. It’s OK to feel overwhelmed.’ And just keep them holding on to get through that hole. ‘Don’t stop. Just go to the next goalpost, and we’ll get through.’”