The document summarizes a presentation given by Debby Goldsberry at the 2011 NORML conference about the history of cannabis law reform activism and her involvement in establishing dispensaries and advocacy groups. It discusses the formation of a new non-profit dispensary called the United Cannabis Collective, which aims to operate dispensaries providing medical cannabis and social services while advocating for drug policy reform and the legalization of cannabis for industrial and personal uses.

1. Cannabis Commerce,
Coming of Age
NORML Conference, April 20-23,
2011
Presentation by Debby Goldsberry,
United Cannabis Collective

2. Debby Goldsberry -
Biography
• 25 years of experience in cannabis law reform activism
• 11 + year history as co-founder and director of
Berkeley Patients Group medical cannabis dispensary
• Co-founder of Cannabis Action Network and
Americans for Safe Access, and former board member
of Marijuana Policy Project
• Twice awarded High Times Freedom Fighter of the
Month
• Recipient of the NORML Paula Sabine Award for the
Importance of Women in Leadership
• Steering Committee Member for the NORML
Women’s Alliance
• Columnist for High Times Medical Marijuana
Magazine
• Co-founder of the United Cannabis Collective, a new
non profit medical cannabis dispensary

4. Short History of Projects
• Co-produced and managed the “Hemp Tours” in the
1980’s and 90’s, coordinating events across the U.S.
• Coordinate the grassroots “Get Out the Vote
Campaign” for Prop. 215 in CA
• Co-developed “Guidelines for Sensible Cannabis Use”
• Directed the Berkeley Cannabis Consumers Union
• Helped design and implement ASA’s “Know Your
Rights Campaign”
• Co-chaired Berkeley’s medical cannabis ballot
measures R, JJ, and T.
• Coordinated a winning recount campaign for
medical cannabis in Alameda County
• Was one of the “silent seven” who refused to
testify against Ed Rosenthal in his federal trial

5. Remember the
Magic Words:
“I choose to remain
silent and want to see
my lawyer.”
“I do not consent to a
search.”

6. Berkeley Patients Group
Accomplishments
• Celebrating BPG’s 12th Anniversary this October.
• National model for services based collective
dispensaries
• Survived DEA raid on sister group and asset forfeiture
• BPG’s 10th anniversary, October 31, 2010 was declared
“Berkeley Patients Group” by our city council
• Donated close to one million dollars to drug policy
reform groups including NORML, ASA, DPA,
DPFCA, SSDP, and Flex Your Rights
• Support local nonprofits including the Berkeley Free
Clinic, CEID, Public Library Foundation, the Berkeley
Education Fund, and Random Acts/ Oakland and
Berkeley Fire Departments
• Provide direct services to about 15,000 member each
year, including dispensing safe medicine and other life
enhancing services
• Financially sustainable organization paying livable
wages and benefits to more than 70 people

7. “They that can give up essential
liberty to obtain a little temporary
safety, deserve neither liberty nor
safety.”
- Ben Franklin

8. Mission, Vision, & Values
We are all here at NORML to fight
for cannabis law reform.
We are not here just to get involved
in manufacturing and distributing
cannabis.
We want people to stop being
arrested for cannabis.
As cannabis becomes legal, we want
to be in charge of creating,
implementing, and regulating
these new laws.

9. Happy Jack Herer Day
April 20th
Hemp for
food, fuel, fiber, and medicine

10. United Cannabis Collective
Mission, Vision, Values
Mission
United Cannabis Collective (UCC) will operate
dispensary clinics where patients and caregivers
can obtain medical cannabis, in all of its varied
forms, and essential life services that improve the
health, housing, and safety of all collective
members. UCC will use all funds in support of
such programs, its financial sustainability and to
help end cannabis prohibition.
Vision
UCC envisions an American society where patient
and caregivers have an inalienable right to use,
manufacture, and distribute medical cannabis, and
where cannabis is legalized for all other rightful
purposes as food, fuel, and fiber, as well as for
spiritual and personal uses.

11. UCC Core Believes and Values
SOCIAL EQUITY
• Collective dispensaries are health clinics and community centers;
• UCC will apply accepted methodology to establish purity and potency of all cannabis medicine;
• UCC will provide essential life services to members;
• UCC strives to end all sanctions against medical cannabis;
• UCC will educate members and the public about the many uses of cannabis and the harms of
prohibition;
• UCC will train activists to fight the cannabis prohibition effectively and efficiently;
• UCC wants all those people in prison for cannabis “crimes” to be freed;
• UCC will help protect families harmed by the current cannabis prohibition;
• UCC believes the war on cannabis is unfairly targeting minorities and low-income people, and will
help protect those who face this injustice;
• UCC will advocate for drug policy reforms;
• UCC will listen and be responsive to the concerns of members and our community.
ECONOMIC VITALITY
• UCC works for the sensible implementation of California’s Compassionate Use Act;
• UCC helps to build a vibrant cannabis industry with superior performance and financial standards;
• UCC leads the charge to classify cannabis as an herbal plant medicine and not a pharmaceutical
drug;
• UCC advocates for reasonable taxes and licensing fees;
• UCC will cultivate and manufacture cannabis medicines with the highest standards of quality;
• UCC will build a financially self-sufficient organization;
• UCC promotes transparency throughout the medical cannabis industry;
• UCC works to strengthen local economies, by developing unique public-private partnerships in each
community;
• UCC fights to reserve the rights of all members to cultivate and manufacture medical cannabis;
• UCC supports members’ self-sufficiency;
• UCC promotes being good neighbor;
• UCC is resilient.
ENVIRONMENTAL STEWARDSHIP
• UCC believes that Hemp can save the Planet, and educates people about the uses of hemp for food,
fuel and fiber;
• UCC is a socially responsible organization and runs in the greenest manner possible;
• UCC educates members about our personal responsibility to preserve the planet and about green
methods to employ in their homes, schools, and businesses.

12. Backlash Against
Canna-business
• We do not want to be the
MacDonald’s and Burger King of
medical cannabis.
• Each community is different with
different laws and needs.

13. Two Types of
Business Models
Socially responsible businesses – for
profit businesses that form for a
mission and donate excess funds to that
purpose
Nonprofits that have a strong
business plan - medical cannabis
organizations will not survive without
understanding the basic principles of
business

14. Private - Public Collaborations
• The medical cannabis industry is expanding due to
partnerships between stakeholders, local governments, and
community organizations. This helps Cities fill budget
deficits, creating jobs, and funding nonprofit organizations.
• In places like Oakland, CA, as schools recover from
bankruptcy, where the Police are understaffed, and nonprofit
groups are left with huge funding gaps, Cities are moving
forward with another medical cannabis ordinance.
• At Berkeley’s 2010 budget hearings, the City spoke about the
need to expand the medical cannabis industry. Facing a 14
million-dollar deficit in 2011, Berkeley fast tracked a process
to create permits for one new medical cannabis dispensary
and for six collective manufacturing facilities.
• Partnering with local nonprofit groups is essential. The
Center for the Early Intervention on Deafness and the
Berkeley Free Clinic depend on annual donations from BPG.
BPG’s active membership in the Chamber of Commerce lead
our chapter to call for medical cannabis to be excluded from
workplace drug testing.
• Become union employers, as groups like UFCW 5 (Local
420) make sure workers will get single earner wages. and
that Cities implement these ordinances and create level
playing fields for potential applicants.

15. United Cannabis Collective -
Co-Founder Biographies
Ali R. Kashani has over 25 years experience in both the nonprofit
and private sectors primarily developing mixed-use real estate
projects in the Bay Area. Mr. Kashani is the founding executive
director of one of Bay Area’s premier nonprofit developers of
service-enriched affordable housing for low and very-low income
families. After receiving his MNA (Master of Nonprofit
Administration from the University of San Francisco), Mr. Kashani
founded Affordable Housing Associates (www.ahainc.org) and led
AHA into a financially viable, resilient and entrepreneurial
developer of a range of housing products including emergency
shelters, transitional housing and permanently service-enriched
housing for families in extreme poverty.
Mark Rhoades, AICP, has over 20 years of experience as a
land use planner in both public and private sectors. Between 1998
and August 2007, he served as City Planning Manager for the City of
Berkeley. As Berkeley’s City Planning Manager and Zoning Officer,
Mr. Rhoades was responsible for both policy development and
implementation. Mr. Rhoades had final review and approval
authority for Berkeley’s three medical cannabis dispensary
applications in 2000, the first of which was Berkeley Patients Group.
Subsequent to those approvals, Mr. Rhoades established the process
and standards by which the City considers new medical cannabis
facilities. Mr. Rhoades is a former a member of Berkeley’s Medical
Cannabis Commission, one of only a few such commissions in the
United States.

16. Medical Cannabis
Masters of Business Administration
• Organizational formation – by-laws, mission,
vision, values
• Accounting and financial management
• Budgeting
• Marketing and public relations
• Government relations
• Human resources management
• Operations management
• Competitive strategy
• Information technology
• Ethics, leadership and entrepreneurship
• Real estate and land use
• Nonprofit management
• Strategic philanthropy and social enterprise
• Corporate social responsibility
• Licensing, permitting, and land use issues

17. Intense Competition for Permits
Laws allowing permits for
dispensing and manufacturing
medical cannabis have passed in
Cities and States around the U.S.
We need to work hard to get good
implementation ordinances.
We need to assure the cost of applying
and the taxation schemes proposed are
reasonable and based on fair market
estimates.
We need to make sure the permits get into
the hands of people who share our
longstanding values.
Collaborations are essential.

18. Self Regulation of the
Medical Cannabis Industry
Many industries are self regulated
by 501-C3 organizations,
including:
• Emergency rooms – Joint
Commission
• Pharmaceutical drugs – United
States Pharmacopeia
• Electricity – Underwriters Lab
• Skydiving, deep sea diving, and
the coffee industry

19. Proposed Areas of
Self Regulation
• Nomenclature – industry terms and definitions,
naming of medicines, labeling, packaging
• Contaminants screening – decide what
pesticides, fertilizers, and ok for medical cannabis and
what pests we are concerned about, and then determine
how we will test for impurities
• Potency monitoring – determine which
cannabinoids and terpines matter for potency and
medicinal effect and how to test for them, but do we need
to use testing labs for potency monitoring
• Safe handling processes – set standards based on
standards for herbal plant medicines and not based on the
FDA model for pharmaceutical drugs.
• Testing labs – how do we assure that medical
cannabis testing labs use standardized processes and that
test results are accurate

21. Driving Under the
Influence of Drugs
We do not want patients busted for
bad laws.
The medical cannabis industry need to
create science based PR campaigns
to promote user responsibility and to
quell the fears of the public.
UCC will work with Harborside
Health Center, NORML, and any
other group interested in promoting
self-regulations for the prevention of
DUID.

22. Beware the Fed’s
Be Prepared In Advance
• Know the magic words, “I choose to remain
silent, and want to see my lawyer” and “I
do not consent to a search”
• Understand your rights before a Grand Jury
• Educate your community about jury
nullification
• Create safety nets to prevent busts and
snitching, and make sure to have a good
attorney
• Only cultivate the numbers of plants that
match the number of years you are willing
to go to prison for because of mandatory
minimum sentencing laws
• Help grow the industry through strength in
numbers
• Support our cannabis prisoners of war

23. Fear of the Loss of
Institutional Memory
We need to make sure that people in
the future do not forget the
atrocities of the War on Drugs,
and that the essential skills we all
developed to fight this oppression
are preserved for history.
Book project with Steve Bloom
from Celebstoner:
“The Fight to End Reefer Madness”

24. In Conclusion
• Hemp is fun, it is good for creativity,
and it helps us not “sweat the little
things”
• Hemp should be legal for food, fuel,
fiber, and medicine, and spiritual
and personal uses
• Stakeholders like us are changing
the cannabis laws, and we need to
implement and regulate these laws
ourselves.
• We need to get cannabis
manufacturing and dispensing
permits into the hands of people
who support our values.

25. United Cannabis Coalition
Fundraising & applying for medical
cannabis manufacturing and
dispensing permits in Oakland,
Berkeley, and Albany, CA.
MANY THANKS TO NORML and
HAPPY 4OTH ANNIVERSARY!!