Elevate July 2020 by Elevate Nevada Magazine

AS THE PANDEMIC HITS, CANNABIS SWINGS INTO ESSENTIAL TERRITORY

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QUEST FOR THE CURE

PANDEMICA!

(or, how I learned to stop worrying and love the coronavirus)

by Danny Axelrod

Gameboard by artist JW Caldwell

july | elevatenv.com 5

night anymore]. imes Then one night, are after an unusually tough lengthy in-house social right distance session, The now. With over Kid came downstairs 130,000 dead [as we with four pieces of went to press] from paper, a die and some Covid-19, doubletoys. She showed us digit unemployment, a game she called and police still killing Fantasia, and we black people with needed to burp when impunity, it can feel we said the name. It like we are simply was already beer:30 beyond hope. Cooped by my watch so I was up in our homes for happy to oblige, but I months, many of us immediately thought are unable to work about how guarded and logjammed in ^^^Download game board at elevatenv.com/pandemica and litigious those a shit show offering Mouse House folks can be about their intellectual property. unemployment relief in mostly theory. We’re pelted with After a little brainstorming we renamed it Pandemica: misinformation and bullshit from all sides. Some of us are Quest for The Cure — since isn’t that what the whole world’s up quarantined with people we would no longer want to be to? [Btw, you still had to burp when you said “Pandemica.”] We anywhere near, but there are no other options at the moment also toyed with Pandemica! or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying so Netflix and chill just doesn’t cut it when there is nothing to and Love the Coronavirus which is a reference to the complete be chill about. title of Peter Sellers’ classic Dr. Strangelove: Or, How I Learned We have found an answer in game night. Yes, that old to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb. chestnut of quality family time and escapism [for my LDS The game consists of four lands for players to travel friends, it’s like a weekly at-home version of Burning Man through and a final challenge. To follow is an “in the moment” that’s literally all hugs, no drugs]. It’s been fun teaching The Kid [my 13-year-old daughter] some of the games my wife and account of Pandemica as our Game Master [The Kid] led us through it. I grew up with i.e. Backgammon and strip poker [kidding]. Also, there are both adult and kids’ versions of Cards Against Humanity, so you can either dial it up or down to whatever THE JUNGLE OF NAPOOWA twisted level of humor your family appreciates. We place our game pieces — a miniature Russian doll, Unfortunately, even family game night isn’t going to get a plushie fish and a Thanos/Avengers action figure — at the you through being home with each other night after night, beginning of the game board. Our journey begins in a dense, week after week. By May our family was running out of games humid denizen of exotic wonders and perils. After a round to play so we began coming up with our own. I was inspired of die rolls, my wife’s Russian doll lands on a bonus square. by the little girl on Twitter singing, “I Wonder What’s Inside Players who land on the bonus square must answer a riddle Your Butthole?,” but in reality that’s a pretty quick game [hint: correctly to get a shortcut through to the other side of the path. its poop, and if it’s anything else, this just isn’t family game If answered incorrectly, the player must start the section of

elevatenv.com | july 6

the map over again. This riddle asks: “I can fly but have no wings. I can cry but I have no eyes. Wherever I go, darkness follows me. What am I?” [riddle answers can be found at the end of this article, but no cheating!]. As we stand there in the thick jungle bush racking our brains for the answer, the sky grows dark. A swarm of mosquitoes starts to set in, and we are barely able to come up with the correct answer and jump through the shortcut just as a wiry puma emerges from the foliage. We emerge on the other side of the jungle and make our way along the sun’s path above us. Within a roll, our group comes across a merchant walking with a horse. The horse says: “Help me! He kidnapped me!” [at this point, the half a gummy I took beforehand is starting to kick in so talking horses are completely understandable]. My Thanos frees the horse and it gives me an actual whistle to move seven spaces when I blow it. I put the whistle around my neck and forge on through the dense thicket of nettles. Eventually we come to a clearing with some lush vegetation bearing juicy looking berries. It is a Bonga berry, and The Kid’s plushie fish rolls and lands on them. Whomever takes the berry will gain 20 health points at the expense of -10 from another player. She picks the Bonga berry and we come to the edge of the clearing only to see a vast desert ahead.

THE DESERT OF HERALUS The air turns dry and the sun bears down on us as we make our way over dune after dune of Saharan barrenness. Vultures fly overhead and tarantulas cross our path frequently as we grow thirsty and weak. We see an oasis ahead and run toward it, only to be tricked by a merciless mirage. There is an old beggar woman lying passed out on the ground, and we give her what little water we have. Reviving her costs me 25 health points, but when she regains consciousness she offers me a golden orb as a reward. I must pick a number between one and three then spin a wheel and if it lands on my number, I get the orb. I choose the number three, the number of members in our family. I spin the wheel and the number is two. I am now cursed to lose 5 health points each move. As we scale yet another sandy ridge, we see…water. Not a mirage, but a coastline! With a village! We move quickly down the slope and I am confronted with another bonus square. The riddle asks: “I am not alive, but I grow. I don’t have lungs, but I need air and I don’t have a mouth. What am I?” The desert heat is beyond inferno levels at this point, which gives us a clue and allows us to correctly answer. We reach the seaside village intact, but my newly acquired curse has diminished my health to half.

Story continued online at elevatenv.com/pandemica where you can also download the Pandemica game board

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CBD SAVES THE DAY “Waldo on Weed” tells the poignant story of family’s cannabis quest to fight baby’s cancer battle By Josh Bell

july | elevatenv.com 9

Brian Dwyer is pictured with his son Waldo.

Tommy Avallone just wanted to make a pizza documentary. The filmmaker behind the lighthearted documentaries I Am Santa Claus and The Bill Murray Stories: Life Lessons Learned From a Mythical Man was living in the Philadelphia area and interested in local pizzeria and pizza history museum Pizza Brain, co-owned by Brian Dwyer. But when Avallone reached out to Dwyer about the possibility of featuring Pizza Brain in a movie, he discovered that Dwyer’s focus couldn’t have been further from pizza. For many months, Dwyer had been immersed in the world of medical cannabis, transporting thenillegal medication from California to Philadelphia to help treat his infant son Waldo’s rare form of eye cancer. “I had no knowledge of cannabis,” Avallone says. “I’ve never smoked, ever.” But as a parent himself, he was immediately drawn into the story of the Dwyer family (Brian, his wife Danielle and their son Waldo) and decided to pursue a film about their journey. “To me, I really connected with the story as what a father would do to save his son,” Avallone says. “It was, what would a family do to save their son? Cannabis just happened to be the thing that they did.” It helped that Brian had been documenting the family’s everyday life since Waldo’s birth with his “dadcam,” and had plenty of footage that could be used as a foundation for the film that became Waldo on Weed. The Dwyers had been exploring the idea of a movie with other filmmakers, but Avallone became the driving force. “I had started helping as a producer, but one thing led to another, and I became the director and finished it from there,” he explains. Avallone started with the “dadcam” footage and then spent nearly two years with the Dwyers, through a second round of treatments for Waldo (who remains cancer-free now, at age six) and a cross-country move for the family from Philadelphia to Washington state. “These were just home videos that you’re going through, people having personal moments and all these sort of encounters,” Avallone says of the initial material. “And to go through that is a lot of work. But Brian was really helpful having me filter through some of the footage.” Born Waldo James Mysterious Dwyer (a reflection of his parents’ offbeat personalities), Waldo was diagnosed with retinoblastoma at just six months old, and immediately started on chemotherapy. Thanks to a pair of Brian’s friends referred to as Waldo’s “uncles,” the Dwyers learned about the potential benefits of medical cannabis, to alleviate the side effects of chemotherapy and to help shrink Waldo’s tumors. In a suspenseful sequence in the movie, Brian and a friend travel to California to buy cannabis oil for Waldo at a local dispensary, and then ship it back to Philadelphia (where medical cannabis remained illegal until 2016) hidden among kids’ birthday party supplies. That level of dedication is what drew Avallone to the story, and it’s what audiences have responded to since Waldo on Weed premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival in May 2019. The movie went on to play numerous film festivals before its VOD release in March of this year,

elevatenv.com | july 10

and Avallone says that every Q&A session was lengthy and engaged. “It was really great to see people connect to the Dwyer story,” he says. “The conversations that happened, and the way the audience connects with the Dwyers, is like nothing I’ve ever been a part of before.” That same connection also allowed Avallone to bring on a big name as an executive producer, getting Whoopi Goldberg to lend her name and expertise to the film. “We went after her because we knew that she had opinions on cannabis that were positive, and she’s done documentaries herself,” he explains. “When she came aboard, her and her production partner Tom Leonardis were amazing with looking over cuts and giving us notes. When someone who’s an EGOT winner gives you notes, you do tend to listen.” The result is a movie that’s both a powerful family story and one of the more effective cannabis advocacy documentaries. Avallone’s outsider background helped give the movie a more inclusive perspective, and he even included a dissenting voice from a representative for Citizens Against Legalizing Marijuana (CALM) as part of his holistic approach. “When Brian and Danielle are going through all this stuff and secrecy and traveling the way they had to—I wanted to show

what they’re up against as far as what other people thought,” Avallone says. “I didn’t want [viewers] to be going, ‘What’s the big deal?’” Avallone’s own preconceptions about cannabis (“my relationship with cannabis was watching Cheech and Chong movies or Half-Baked”) have evolved, although he’s still not a personal user. “You have this idea of what a ‘stoner’ is or someone like that,” he says, “but when you’re speaking to doctors from Harvard, and they’re telling you that there’s something there, and a couple years down the line, we’re going to see the extent of what this plant can do— I think that’s really interesting, the fact that the hope is there, and the science is starting to get there.” Avallone’s hope for the movie is that it will have the same eye-opening effect on viewers, no matter what their attitude is beforehand. “To me, I just wanted to tell this story about my friend and his family and what he went through,” he says. “The idea is just to look at a topic that you see in the news, maybe just a little differently, now that you know a family that went through it.” Waldo on Weed is available on VOD via all major digital outlets.

RUNNING OUT OF SHOWS TO WATCH? A SLATE OF NEW CANNABIS DOCUMENTARIES EXPLORE FACETS AND FACES OF THE INDUSTRY Green Light (VOD via greenlightmovie.com) Although cannabis is legal for medicinal purposes in Australia, access to it is still extremely limited, and Ned Donohoe’s documentary Green Light follows Luke and Nick, a pair of genial activists who work full-time to provide medical cannabis to patients in need, outside of the officially sanctioned system (hence the use of only their first names). The wellcrafted film is as much about the emotional and physical toll that this work takes on the two men as it is about the efforts to change cannabis laws in Australia, and that grounds the story in personal experience, even if it sometimes feels a bit limited. Pot Luck (VOD and DVD) Narrated by Robin Quivers of the Howard Stern show, Jane Wells’ documentary Pot Luck takes a look at the pros and cons of five years of legalized recreational marijuana in Colorado. Although it highlights dispensaries, cultivators and consultants, Pot Luck also devotes a substantial amount of time to anti-cannabis activists, and the overall tone is a bit more negative than the filmmakers may have intended. Still, it’s rare to see a cannabis documentary interested in presenting a range of perspectives, and the acknowledgement of growing pains and lingering problems provides a welcome contrast to the boosterish approach of many movies in the genre. Unprescribed (DVD via allegiancefilm.com) Director Steve Ellmore is a military veteran who clearly has a strong connection to this movie’s subject of combat veterans turning to cannabis to cope with the symptoms of PTSD. Unprescribed is a compassionate and often powerful look at veterans whose lives were changed by using cannabis to replace the addictive pharmaceuticals frequently prescribed for them by Veterans Affairs (VA) doctors. It tackles the stigma that veterans need to overcome in order to ask for help and to embrace cannabis, and the legal and bureaucratic obstacles they face. It’s a straightforward, honest look at a complex problem.

july | elevatenv.com 11

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Ice-skating canine discovers magic of CBD by Beth Schwartz

An ice-skating dog. It’s kind of hard to wrap your head around such a feat. But when Las Vegas welcomed an NHL hockey team to the desert a few years ago it suddenly seemed as though just about anything was possible. Enter Benny the ice-skating pooch. Having most recently skated at the U.S. Figure Championships in January, the seven-year-old yellow Labrador rescue has become a sensation in the world of ice skating with his ability to perform multiple jumps in a row, do forward crossovers, and undercrosses—all while wearing ice skates that were custom made for him. Benny’s rise to fame started two years ago when the Vegas Golden Knights were playing in the Stanley Cup Finals. Benny’s “mom” Cheryl Del Sangro was approached by photographer Rick Vierkandt of Bark Gallery to have Benny appear in a Golden Knights cheer video. Vierkandt knew Benny could do lots of tricks and so thought he would be a natural on the ice carrying a hockey stick in his mouth and standing in front of a hockey net. Del Sangro agreed and while filming the video she discovered Benny loved the ice. “He loved it when I would skate around and he would

chase after me. So, the cheer video kind of went nuts. It was just posted on my Facebook and Bark Gallery’s Facebook page and it got 40,000 views during the first two weeks,” says Del Sangro, who was a competitive ice skater for 16 years and has also coached. Del Sangro decided she could probably teach Benny to ice skate. “I taught kids from three years old all the way up,” she explains, thinking at the time, “he’s much more coordinated than a three-year-old. I bet I could actually get him to skate.” Her instincts were right. “The first day that I took him, and he tried it he could skate. It was incredible. We were screaming and yelling, it was just unbelievable. He could skateboard already, so I thought he would just put his front feet like they are on a skateboard and push his front feet around. That’s what I thought he would do. But, no, he actually moves his legs and skates with his front feet. He just doesn’t glide around, he skates with his front feet. Since then he has just gotten better and better.” But Del Sangro shouldn’t have been completely surprised by Benny’s athletic prowess. “From the day we

july | elevatenv.com 13

YOU CAN TEACH AN OLD DOG NEW TRICKS

elevatenv.com | july 14

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got him I could see he was different from the other dogs we had at the time. We had three other dogs and he was the fourth one I had. He started doing unusual things that seemed more like he was a person than a dog and I have had dogs all of my life and he just did not act like the other dogs,” says Del Sangro. “So, I started taking him to dog training and he was exceptional. He learned everything you could possibly think of. He excelled at everything. He did the rally, he did the obstacles, he did the agility. He just had this innate smartness where you didn’t have to tell him stuff, he just knew what to do.” After adopting Benny from a shelter in Salt Lake City in May 2014 Del Sangro realized the coordinated canine was not only singular in his physical abilities, but he also had a unique medical issue. “He had a recurring chronic rash on his neck and chest area. It was raw and he was losing his fur. It flared up all the time. We went round and round with the rash for years with him. His vet said it could have been an allergy to something,” recalls Del Sangro. “He would wear an ascot, which was a pull-overyour-head scarf to keep his toenails off his neck because you can’t keep one of those cones on him constantly. So, to keep him from clawing at his neck we would put this ascot on him. He wore it all the time for the first couple years we had him because he constantly had this rash.” Del Sangro tried a lot of topicals and nothing worked. “And, of course, the vet wanted to give him an allergy pill, but I try not to give him anything like that. I am really careful what I give him medication wise. I try to stay away from that stuff, so we just tried keeping it clean and keeping his feet off of it with his ascot.” Last August Del Sangro and Benny attended SuperZoo, a national convention for pet retailers, where they visited Source CBD’s booth. Del Sangro shared Benny’s skin problem with Source CBD founder Ian Pedersen and he suggested trying Source CBD’s 200 mg Canine Topical Salve specifically formulated for dry skin, rashes, cracked paws, and dry noses. “We tried it, and in a few days all the red and bumps were gone. And I could see new hair growth starting. It only took a week to work. It cleared up really quickly. Since we have started with the salve, he hasn’t had any problems.” To keep Benny in tip-top condition, Del Sangro has started putting five drops of CBD tincture in his food every day. “I also give him CBD oil in his food now, and that might be keeping it away. He’s perfectly clear now.” Proving you can teach an old dog new tricks, Las Vegas’ favorite ice-skating pooch should be dubbed Benny the Wonder Dog.

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july | elevatenv.com 15

Letâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s talk cannabis.

DISPENSARY MAP A Guide to Cannabis in Southern Nevada 1. Acres Cannabis acrescannabis.com 2320 Western Ave Las Vegas, NV 89102 702.399.4200

8c. Essence Cannabis Dispensary essencevegas.com 5765 W Tropicana Ave Las Vegas, NV 89103 702.500.1714

16a. NuWu Cannabis Marketplace Nuwucannabis.com 1235 Paiute Circle Las Vegas, NV 89106 702.844.2707

23a. Thrive Cannabis Marketplace thrivenevada.com 2755 W Cheyenne Ave Ste #103 North Las Vegas, NV 89032 702.776.4144

2. Apothecarium apothecariumlv.com 7885 W Sahara Ave Las Vegas, NV 89117 702.778.7987

9. Inyo Fine Cannabis Dispensary inyolasvegas.com 2520 S Maryland Pkwy Ste #2 Las Vegas, NV 89109 702.707.8888

16b. NuWu North nuwu.vegas 1157 Nu-Wav Kaiv Blvd Las Vegas, NV 89124 702.844.2438

23b.Thrive Cannabis Marketplace thrivenevada.com 3500 W Sahara Ave Las Vegas, NV 89102 702.776.4144

3a. Blüm LetsBlum.com 3650 S Decatur Blvd Las Vegas, NV 89103 702.627.2586

10. Jardin jardincannabis.com 2900 E Desert Inn Rd Ste #102 Las Vegas, NV 89121 702.331.6511

17. Planet 13 planet13lasvegas.com 2548 W Desert Inn Rd Las Vegas, NV 89109 702.206.1313

23c.Thrive Cannabis Marketplace thrivenevada.com 1112 S Commerce St Las Vegas, NV 89102 702.776.4144

3b. Blüm LetsBlum.com 1130 E Desert Inn Rd Las Vegas, NV 89109 702.536.2586

11a. Jenny’s Dispensary Jennysdispensary.com 5530 N Decatur Blvd North Las Vegas, NV 89030 702.718.0420

18a. Reef Dispensaries reefdispensaries.com 3400 Western Ave Las Vegas, NV 89109 702.475.6520

24. Top Notch THC topnotchthc.com 5630 Stephanie St Las Vegas, NV 89122 702.418.0420

4. Cultivate Las Vegas cultivatelv.com 3615 Spring Mountain Rd Las Vegas, NV 89102 702.778.1173

11b. Jenny’s Dispensary Jennysdispensary.com 10420 S Eastern Ave Henderson, NV 89052 702.718.0420

18b. Reef Dispensaries reefdispensaries.com 1366 W Cheyenne Ave North Las Vegas, NV 89030 702.410.8032

5. Curaleaf curaleaf.com 1736 S Las Vegas Blvd Las Vegas, NV 89104 702.545.0026

12. Las Vegas ReLeaf lasvegasreleaf.com 2244 Paradise Rd Las Vegas, NV 89104 702.209.2400

19. ShowGrow showgrowlv.com 4850 S Fort Apache Rd Ste #100 Las Vegas, NV 89147 702.227.0511

6. Deep Roots Harvest deeprootsharvest.com 195 Willis Carrier Canyon Mesquite, NV 89034 702.345.2854

13. MMJ America mmjamerica.com 4660 S Decatur Blvd Las Vegas, NV 89109 702.565.9333

20. Silver Sage Wellness sswlv.com 4626 W Charleston Blvd Las Vegas, NV 89102 702.802.3757

7. Euphoria Wellness euphoriawellnessnv.com 7780 S Jones Blvd Ste #105 Las Vegas, NV 89139 702.960.7200

14a. Nevada Made Marijuana nevadamademarijuana.com 3195 St. Rose Pkwy Ste #212 Henderson, NV 89052 702.737.7777

21. The Apothecary Shoppe theapothecaryshoppe.com 4240 W Flamingo Rd Ste #100 Las Vegas, NV 89103 702.740.4372

8a.Essence Cannabis Dispensary essencevegas.com 2307 S Las Vegas Blvd Las Vegas, NV 89104 702.978.7591

14b. Nevada Made Marijuana nevadamademarijuana.com 1975 S Casino Dr Laughlin, NV 89029 702.737.7777

22a. The Source thesourcenv.com 2550 S Rainbow Blvd Ste #8 Las Vegas, NV 89146 702.708.2000

8b.Essence Cannabis Dispensary essencevegas.com 4300 E Sunset Rd Ste #A3 Henderson, NV 89014 702.978.7687

15. Nevada Wellness Center nevadawellnesscenters.com 3200 S Valley View Blvd Las Vegas, NV 89102 702.470.2077

22b. The Source thesourcenv.com 9480 S Eastern Ave Ste #185 Henderson, NV 89123 702.708.2222

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THE PANDEMIC PIVOT Nevada cannabis sales take a hit during Covid-19 crisis

by Beth Schwartz

Remember March? Seems like it was years ago now but back in March we didn’t know what we didn’t know. [Social distancing? Wait, what? I thought that was just actively avoiding the co-worker who had halitosis?] We all watched curiously as Covid-19 invaded our lives like a bad reality show we just couldn’t stop watching. As the days rolled on we anxiously tuned into daily press conferences of the White House Coronavirus Task Force starring infectious disease taskmasters Dr. Anthony Fauci and Dr. Deborah Birx or for those looking for a more folksy interpretation of our dire straits there was New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s morning soothe sessions. Either option was highlighted by scads of science, curves that needed to be flattened, and plenty of shrug-shouldered guesstimates of what it all meant. Each day was a test of numbers as we carefully clocked the positive coronavirus cases, deaths and recoveries. We were inundated with daily news reports about the perils of lack of testing, lack of PPE, lack of respirators, and lack of ICU beds in our nation’s hospitals. During this new normal that we were all adjusting to in whiplash-like fashion, Nevada Governor Steve Sisolak announced on March 17th — when we all had plans to celebrate something as mundane as St. Patrick’s Day….ah, those were the days when you could hoist a stein of green beer with friends without impunity — he was shutting down the state. In other words, if your business or line of

employment was not essential, you were now on a homebased vacation courtesy of the ‘rona. The $64,000-dollar question was, who was essential?

DECLARED ESSENTIAL On March 20th the state’s cannabis industry breathed a sigh of relief as Gov. Sisolak designated it essential. He announced that the industry could continue to operate using delivery-only services. Although to many industry leaders it seemed like an obvious move to make cannabis essential, it shows just how far thinking has progressed in a relatively short period of time. As a highly regulated industry still very much in its infancy — Nevada’s first medical marijuana dispensaries opened during the summer of 2015 and the state’s recreational cannabis industry opened its doors to customers in July 2017 — it was a welcome decision. “I think it’s great as an industry to be deemed as essential in as many territories as it was, it shows an acknowledgment that it’s a legitimate industry and its growing and the strive for legalization is becoming more and more realistic,” said Planet 13’s VP of Sales & Marketing David Farris, who added he hoped “we never have to pick between essential and nonessential again.” To many in the industry the medical properties of cannabis made the plant’s designation as essential an obvious one. “The Grove has always advocated the medicinal side of

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cannabis so to be considered essential from the beginning is important to us, it allows customers/patients to obtain products for medicinal purposes,” said Tiffany Hoven, director of operations at The Grove dispensaries. Mark Pitchford, CEO of Mynt Cannabis dispensaries in Reno, had heard from state officials that cannabis was going to be deemed essential, so he wasn’t surprised by the Governor’s announcement. “I thought there was a chance only medical use might be deemed essential. But not everyone who uses cannabis for medical purposes has a medical card, and I think that’s kept both medical and adult use in the ‘essential’ category,” he surmised. “At the end of the day once the discussions got deeper and it came to light how many vets don’t have medical cards, for example, the state’s and Sisolak’s view of the issue changed.” Richard Estrella, assistant general manager of The Apothecarium, sees the decision as a more financially rewarding one. “In the sense that we just got legalized, I can see how the designation might be surprising. But on the

other hand, we understand we are one of the few avenues generating tax revenue for the state. The casinos weren’t active, alcohol got stunted. I’ve got to think that for the state we were, I don’t want to say a cash cow, but obviously the state needs to generate money to maintain itself.” Estrella’s co-worker Eliot Dobris sees it differently. “Because of the history of marijuana and it starting as medical marijuana — once we were recognized by regulators as medicine, how could you not have us be essential?”

DESIGNATED DELIVERY-ONLY Cannabis’ designation as an essential business in Nevada was the good news. The bad news? Cannabis would be available via delivery only and many dispensaries didn’t have delivery mechanisms in place that could accommodate their entire customer base. This effectively slowed cannabis sales significantly as dispensaries throughout the state scrambled to increase the size of their delivery fleets and operating systems to accommodate moving entire business models to delivery-only.

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vehicles, standing outside the dealership late at night [none of us were allowed inside] paying cash for them.” To effectively pivot, Planet 13 had to increase its delivery fleet. “When cannabis dispensaries in Nevada were told to close, we pivoted to focus on our delivery business, and in only 25 days we’ve ramped our delivery service from five to 28 vehicles and have shifted our customer mix from 15% local area residents, to 100%,” said Larry Scheffler, Co-CEO of Planet 13. The Apothecarium, located near Summerlin had a prepandemic customer base that was 70% local and 30% tourist, rented a fleet of six vehicles, which they utilized from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m.daily, from Findlay Toyota. “We went overnight from being a dispensary with in-store practices to largely our entire staff being retrained on how to process a delivery, create a manifest, which is definitely a change,” said Estrella. “We went from seeing people in-store having a consultation-style experience, which is our bread and butter, to offer that same kind of methodology over the phone. It’s not as simple to do because they are not right in front of you, but they were still receptive to us.” But the transition to delivery-only involved a lot more than just adding vehicles according to dispensary management teams. “In less than two days, we created and continued online at elevatenv.com/pandemicpivot

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Because Gov. Sisolak’s designation of cannabis to delivery-only was announced on March 20 it resulted in a sales lull for the last half of the month as dispensary management teams throughout the state shifted their business models. “Just like everybody else we had an extremely short window of lead time. We received an email basically saying we are operating now as delivery-only — it was shocking, there was no heads-up for us but in the cannabis industry we are used to changing, evolving, pivoting in a moment’s notice,” explained Farris of Planet 13. “To know that in less than 24 hours you have to close everything down and go delivery — it’s a shock to any business.” The Grove, which has dispensaries in Las Vegas and Pahrump, did not offer delivery before the pandemic hit but had intended to implement a delivery platform before 2021. “When Governor Sisolak made the mandate for cannabis dispensaries to be delivery-only our CEO Demetri Kouretas, myself, and The Grove’s amazing team jumped into action and purchased multiple delivery vehicles that same day,” said Hoven, who declined to share a breakdown of The Grove’s tourist/local numbers prior to the pandemic. “Hours after hearing of this mandate, we purchased multiple delivery

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BINSKE DONATES 500,000 MEALS TO FEEDING AMERICA DURING GLOBAL PANDEMIC

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Three Square Food Bank volunteers prepare bags of food for distribution to Southern Nevadans in need at the nonprofit’s drive-thru emergency food distribution site at Boulder Station in Las Vegas. Photo credit: @JeffScheid

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Edible brand Binske prides itself on creating “a complexity of flavors and sensations with every bite, sip or hit.” As the COVID-19 pandemic slowly seeped into our lives in March, the Colorado-based brand’s desire to satiate souls has spread far beyond just a bite. For every Binske product purchased from April to July 2020 in the U.S., the brand will be donating five meals to Feeding America’s COVID-19 Relief efforts. With total donations expected to exceed 1 million meals, Binske’s founders, Jacob and Alex Pasternack, are hoping to help many American families who are experiencing hardship as a result of the coronavirus pandemic. “Giving back is in our DNA, it’s part of who we are. Being a family-run company, it’s easy for us to continue doing what we love to do. The only high I like better than our products is the high I get from giving to those in need,” explained Alex Pasternack, Binske’s executive vice president. The devasting effects of the global pandemic have had a ripple effect on many American families, especially as thousands of workers find themselves without work, especially in Nevada where the unemployment rate was the highest in the nation at 28.2 percent, as reported in April. The Feeding America COVID-19 response fund was established specifically to provide aid to food-insecure families struggling during the COVID-19 pandemic. At a local level, Feeding America, the largest hunger-relief organization in the U.S., supports Three Square, a Las Vegasbased food bank. Binske’s donation efforts kicked off in April and consumers have more than risen to the challenge, already bringing in a half-a-million meals as of mid-June.

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PROFILE

DB Labs supports cannabis industry during Covid-19 pandemic with introduction of best price guarantees

Q: What has DB Labs done to shift to the new normal during the Covid-19 pandemic? DB Labs: We’ve made adjustments in staffing and processes that matched the additional requirements for safety always making sure that our exceptional customer service is top priority. We have always carried our own PPE for sample pickups and have not relied on our customers to provide that for us. In fact, we have helped local businesses when they ran out of PPE and donated to them during this difficult time. Q: What was your reaction to the cannabis industry being designated as essential by Gov. Sisolak? DB Labs: It was the right decision for everyone, especially for the thousands of consumers and patients who depend on our entire industry. Q: Were you surprised? DB Labs: Not at all, the industry is essential. The state’s leadership understands the importance of cannabis, especially from a medical standpoint, to our citizens and the economy.

Q: In Nevada there was a 32% decline in cannabis sales in April and a 24% decrease in May, both over the prior year. With less product being sold and therefore less testing required, how has that effected the way DB Labs will pivot in this new business climate? DB Labs: We have always taken every opportunity to diversify our business, to improve service and help our customers succeed. Q: Obviously the Covid-19 pandemic has had a huge economic impact on Nevada’s cultivators, production and dispensaries. What is DB Labs planning to do to help ease their pain and pocketbooks? DB Labs: We are providing additional incentives and best price guarantees for all of our services. DB Labs is here to support and work with cultivators and production facilities by cutting testing costs to help them get through this difficult time. We all need to work together as an industry to ensure we come back stronger than ever before. Q: How has DB Labs transitioned its business practices in the age of Covid-19?

DB Labs: We changed our shift schedules for the staff in order to keep them safe and protected while ensuring we continue to focus on our customers. Q: DB Labs had a lab expansion underway prior to the pandemic. What did the expansion involve? DB Labs: We have recently completed a significant expansion of the lab that is ready to meet the demand as it increases. Q: What are you most excited about as you look forward to the second half of 2020? DB Labs: Our New LIMS System, the expansion of the lab that is ready to meet demand as it increases, additional testing opportunities and the continued growth of our industry. We are proud to be a partner with Hero Grown/Save a Million Vets Foundation and honor Roger Martin’s legacy by providing free testing to our nation’s veterans and first responders. RIP: Roger Martin you will be forever missed (June 21, 1952 - June 19, 2020).

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Curaleaf partnered with Las Vegas restaurant 7th & Carson Downtown Kitchen and Bar to provide fresh meals and supply kits to the area’s homeless population during the COVID-19 crisis.

TASTE A SLICE OF EXTRAORDINARY

Curaleaf put its money where its mouth is as the COVID-19 crisis rolled into Southern Nevada. In keeping with its “Curaleaf Cares” philanthropic initiative, the vertically integrated medical and wellness cannabis operator partnered with Las Vegas restaurant 7th & Carson Downtown Kitchen and Bar to provide fresh meals and supply kits to the area’s homeless population. In celebration of the reopening of its retail dispensaries, Acres and Curaleaf, the brand collected money over five weeks via its “rounding-up” exact change payment policy for cannabis delivery service. The funds raised were used to purchase 106 fresh meals from 7th & Carson as well as 85 supply care kits for needy individuals, in collaboration with local charities Food Not Bombs and Caridad. “7th & Carson is grateful to the team at Curaleaf Nevada for what is, as of today, our largest single donation of meals and supply care kits yet,” said Jenn Tramaglino, marketing partner, 7th & Carson. “With the support of our organization partners and our local Las Vegas community, we have been able to feed a lot of our neighbors and we look forward to feeding a lot more.” Added Nicole Silverman, Curaleaf Nevada’s director of marketing, “We wanted to help our community during these challenging times and were gratified to see our downtown neighbor, 7th & Carson, was already reaching disadvantaged individuals. Collaborating with our good friends in the food and beverage industry, as well as local charities, enables us to increase our impact, helping more people more efficiently than any of us could do alone.”

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PLANET 13 TEAMS UP WITH CLARK COUNTY TO FEED RESIDENTS VULNERABLE TO COVID-19

Planet 13’s in-house restaurant Trece Eatery + Spirits’ donation of approximately 7,000 meals in April fed housebound elderly and disabled Nevadans as well as ensured its restaurant workers stayed employed during the pandemic.

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Planet 13’s mission to be a good corporate citizen was served up on a silver platter when the dispensary’s in-house restaurant Trece Eatery + Spirits donated approximately 7,000 meals during the COVID-19 global pandemic. “We are constantly seeking community partners who we can work with to help them raise funds and/or access the services and resources they need,” explained David Farris, Planet 13’s VP of Sales & Marketing, of its partnership with Clark County Social Services. The partnership between the two entities entailed providing meals each weekday during April to aging and disabled clients enrolled in Clark County’s Homemaker Home Health Aide Program. “This was organized during the pandemic,” said Farris of donating meals to vulnerable stay-at-home seniors and disabled residents. “We wanted to find a way to utilize our resources, in this case our restaurant, to make a difference in the community during this difficult time.” The goal of the program is to help clients and their family members maintain self-sufficiency and the ability to stay in their homes to reduce the need for custodial care, a particularly important mandate during Nevada Governor Steve Sisolak’s mandated stay-at-home directive that was put in place during the height of the pandemic. “We are very grateful for Planet 13’s generous offer to provide healthy meals to vulnerable people each day in our community at no cost,” said Clark County Commissioner Richard “Tick” Segerblom, whose County Commission District E includes Planet 13’s dispensary, at the press conference that was held to launch the program.

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Elevating the Conversation

with Pulmonologist Lloyd Del Mundo, M.D.

specialist in pulmonary and critical care medicine, Las Vegas native Dr. Lloyd Del Mundo is the director of the intensive care unit at North Vista Hospital, and he is the respiratory director at several area longterm acute care and skilled nursing facilities. He specializes in diagnostic lung cancer procedures for Pulmonary Associates and is a member of the clinical faculty at Valley Hospital and Touro University Nevada.

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How does smoking or vaping harm lung health? Our bodies have cilia, and those are designed to clear your nose and lungs from any dust or allergens. When you smoke or vape that can highly effect those. So, the clearance of these particles whether they are toxic to you or not are significantly impaired from smoking and that is just when you inhale. That has nothing to do what is in the content of these things but only in the inhalation. What does smoking do to your lungs? In the content it’s much easier to define what smoking does. Smoking can attack the cells that protect your lungs and get those inflamed. In turn, they don’t function as well, you can’t really breathe in and out as well because it affects cells in your body that help you breathe in oxygen and breathe out carbon dioxide. Then the tar can also implant in your lungs, and there’s a lot of carcinogens which we all know can induce cancer. Smoking is well-known to cause COPD, which is the difficulty when you breathe out and you can’t blow off your carbon dioxide and blowing off carbon dioxide is how we breathe. What about the effects of vaping on your lungs? The data on vaping is not as plentiful as with smoking. Vaping in the last year has increased significantly, and it can cause a lot of lung diseases. From 2017 to 2018 the incidence of smoking increased from 12% to 21%, according to the CDC (Centers for Disease Control). It can cause inflammation in the lungs which we call pneumonitis; basically, your lung reacts poorly to whatever fluid you are inhaling causing inflammation in your lungs making it difficult for you to breathe. You can get fluid in your lungs from vaping. The inflamed cells get angry and cause the capillaries in your lungs to start leaking fluid and that’s basically how you retain fluid in your lungs and get pneumonia. A smoker is not necessarily at a higher risk of getting Covid-19 but are they more likely to experience serious complications if they become infected? This statement causes a lot of controversy, but it is exactly correct. If you get Covid and you are a smoker, you are two

times at the risk of a normal non-smoking person to get worsening respiratory symptoms. Meaning you will end up on the ventilator, you will get more damage to your lungs. So, more end stage disease process is more likely to hit you if you are a smoker. Is someone who vapes at higher risk of becoming infected with Covid? In terms of vaping there is zero data right now. What we talk about with vaping is the inability to protect yourself. Maybe sharing the vape, how this disease process is spread through contact and droplets so you can get it by touching your mouth and hands. As far as Covid-19, will a vape user have similar concerns to a cigarette smoker? Vaping in itself is still in its youth, there’s no data and no real research on the effects of it with Covid-19. Your concern would be the same as with any vaping, when you vape and when you smoke your immune system shuts down and you are allowing a virus or even a bacterial infection to come into your lungs because you have a decreased defense system. So, you do put yourself at risk to getting the virus just by the action of the vape, as with smoking, because you decrease your immune system. For diehard smokers is there anything they can do to boost their immunity and lung health? Zinc is a very well-known anti-viral supplement people have been taking for years. For my patients in the hospital, if their symptoms are quite mild, I give them vitamin C and zinc. Studies on vitamin D have shown some type of protection toward the coronavirus. Pepcid AC has become popular during the pandemic, which is curious since not everybody has heartburn. The generic name of Pepcid is famotidine and it’s been shown to have anti-viral properties that could actually protect you from getting Covid. To read our entire interview with Dr. Del Mundo, please go to elevatenv.com/Elevating_the_Conversation