SoL Cannabis: A Bright Light in the Pot Industry
written by Bill Kopp
Cannabis (marijuana) has a long history as food, fiber and medicine; some historians trace its use back nearly 10,000 years. Its use as a psychoactive drug has been recorded as early as 500 BCE. Despite its benefits, the plant's fate was caught up in American politics, widely outlawed on the state level from the 1930s onward. A federal ban went into effect in 1970.
Thanks to the work of activists, 21st century legal reforms began to recognize legitimate uses of cannabis, both as medicine and -- an alternative to alcohol -- recreational drug. California led the way in 1996, legalizing marijuana for medical use. In 2012, two more states (Washington and Colorado) legalized it for recreational use. In 2017, Nevada would be the seventh state to legalize it. Today more than half of U.S. states have made marijuana legal.
Even as a highly regulated industry, cannabis/marijuana is available in many forms, and varying levels of quality. Drawing on his long history of personal use, master grower Ed Alexander launched SoL Cannabis in Washoe Valley with a goal of bringing eco-friendly, sustainable and farm-to-table philosophies and practices to cannabis cultivation and sales. Alexander spoke with me about his business, and what sets his product apart.
What originally inspired you to get into this enterprise?
Ed Alexander: I've been involved with cannabis for the majority of my adult life. I had been struggling with why something that seems fairly benign has been criminalized and demonized. That really speaks to a much deeper and more nefarious underbelly: the for-profit rehab and prison system, asset forfeiture that funds a good portion of many law enforcement agencies, and the fear that Big Pharma has about something that you can grow in your backyard replacing their top sellers. And [with regard to law enforcement] there's been disproportionate targeting of [certain] ethnicities and races. It's never been about health and safety; it's always been about something far uglier than that.
I went to my first pro-legalization rally back in 1988. I had two parents who had ongoing medical challenges; they found efficacy in using cannabis as part of their treatment. I gravitated to marijuana when I got sober back in 1992. I found that it provided me with a means of escape, if you will, that was far less damaging for me than alcohol or other substances.
I had been participating in what we now call the "legacy" or traditional market, and I got really tired of looking over my shoulder. So I put together a team of folks who submitted a successful application in 2016. We were awarded a cultivation and production license; later, we were awarded a dispensary license.
Was it a challenge to transition from the underground/legacy market to the above-board and regulated market?
I have 30 years of intense business background, which makes me a rarity in this space. I can sit in a boardroom and hold my own with the best of them, and I can also sit on the side of a mountain and have what I'll call "legacy conversations."
It was challenging, though, as my first real foray deep into the bureaucracy of an insanely regulated industry. The cannabis business in and of itself is challenging enough.
Tell me more about your farm-to-table business model.
SoL Cannabis is based on a farm-to-table model; we have all the licenses that Nevada offers, with the exception of a lab license, which businesses here are not allowed to have.
We grow the marijuana, then we take that product and convert it into all of its different form factors: from cartridges to concentrates to edibles. And we operate a 360-day-a-year retail establishment. Rarely do you see a [vendor] at a farmer's market that also owns a grocery store and a manufacturing facility.
We're what is referred to as a vertically-integrated, co-located facility: our camp houses 10,000 square feet of retail, 40,000 square feet of cultivation and another 10,000 square feet of production. We're the only place in the United States -- and possibly the world -- where you can stand in a retail space, you can look into the cultivation where your marijuana is being grown, and then you can look through another set of windows and see a commercial kitchen where edibles are being produced.
When we started, I looked at this logistically and thought, "If a supermarket could have a farm right out the back door, they would." Because transportation costs are ultimately what most hinders businesses. I never transacted a legacy pound for anywhere close to as inexpensive as the current wholesale market is in Nevada. The average wholesale price per pound is less than $1,000, and there's about $900 worth of built-in burden on that. And in the last five years, retail prices for marijuana have fallen off the proverbial cliff. So if you're not efficient and minding every dime, you're bankrupt.
What kind of volume are you producing?
I'm a patriotic individual; we always grow 1776 plants in the greenhouse. We strive to get four harvest cycles annually. We take every part of this plant and utilize it for something; we're 100% self-sustaining in terms of what we produce: "jarrable" flower and bud, edibles, cartridges and concentrate. Nothing goes unused.
What makes SoL Cannabis' product different from what other retailers offer?
Most marijuana cultivation is indoors. But I thought, "We have this beautiful free light bulb in the sky. Why would I get extorted by the local power company and [inflict] immeasurable environmental damage as a result of my power consumption when I can simply utilize that light bulb in the sky?"
From an energy consumption standpoint, our footprint is about one twentieth of a similarly-sized indoor facility. We have a hybrid, mixed-light greenhouse; 365 days a year, it's lit by the sun. And in times of year when we've only got 12 hours of daylight, we supplement with artificial light for a couple of hours a day.
In cultivation, air conditioning is often a major consumer of electricity. Because when you've got that many lights in a warehouse, it generates a tremendous heat load. But we don't use traditional air conditioning; we use a "swamp cooler." SoL Cannabis has a 150 foot long, 6 foot tall wet wall on one end of our greenhouse, and 15 six-foot-diameter fans on the other end. We have about 300,000 cubic feet of air volume in the facility, and we exchange that air once a minute, constantly drawing cool, moist air in from the outside.
What does organic mean with specific reference to growing marijuana?
We do not use any synthetic fertilizers or integrated pest management solutions at any point of the plant's growth cycle. We grow 100% with organic nutrients in soil. And we use a solventless process called supercritical extraction; [it involves] very high-pressure, very low-temperature CO2, so we extract the plant material the same way that they decaffeinate coffee. It's a very healthy process.
And unlike the majority of the cannabis industry that just extracts the THC, we do a full-spectrum extract. And we use specific strains for specific effect-driven edibles. Those who consume will say, "Man, this just hits differently."
We have made mindful choices. We are one of only two organic marijuana facilities in Nevada. I believe that fruits and vegetables and marijuana that are grown in soil taste infinitely better than when they're grown hydroponically, and with the use of synthetic additives. I'm a keep-it-simple kind of guy. Mother Nature isn't mixing a 27-part nutrient regimen to go out and feed the forest. So why do we believe we have to do that to feed or medicate the population? There's no need in muddling what Mother Nature has already created.
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