In The Trenches Video Series
Cannabis Industry and Security Cameras
Today, we are discussing regulations around securing your marijuana production, cultivation or growing facility
Our speakers today are:
- > Matthew Nederlanden
- > Benjamin Larue
- > Micah Shearer
- > James Campbell
Video Transcription
Matthew Nederlanden:
All right, let's talk about weed.
Ben Larue:
Yes.
Matthew Nederlanden:
That sounds super fun.
Ben Larue:
What?
Matthew Nederlanden:
All right, so let's talk about it like you're either selling cannabis products or you're growing them. What do you have to do from a security standpoint? That's actually pretty complicated because every state has a lot of their own regulations for this particular industry. So you got to be concerned about what you're doing to secure your facility from your own security perspective, but you've also got to make sure that you cover all of the legal requirements that your industry faces.
Ben Larue:
Absolutely, and I think that's important to note there, Matt. We're talking about legal marijuana production, cultivation and growing today. Although we do supply security cameras and security equipment to all people, whether or not ... What you might be doing, that's up to you. But we're going to be mainly talking about the legal aspect of marijuana and some of the requirements there might be in regards to security for your facility, which we'll tell you from experience, is pretty strict, not surprisingly. So I'm excited to dive in.
James Campbell:
All right. So we do know that this is an industry with a lot of legal requirements that vary state by state. Ben, do you have some general info, or what are some of the first questions you even get from cannabis grow ops?
Ben Larue:
Yeah, absolutely. That's really great. I think it's important for us to tackle it. It being a heavily regulated industry, there's all these requirements in regards to how the facility is to be laid out, where there's specific security equipment, who has access to that and so on. First and foremost though, you need to consult with a lawyer, we're not lawyers or attempt or act like them by any means. So please consult a lawyer or an attorney and then also consult your local municipality. They're going to have the most up-to-date regulatory requirements for you and your facility, for your state, and depending on what license you hold, too.
So there's a lot of things at play there, but normally when people reach out to us, they've checked a lot of those boxes already. They're really looking to us to get advice on, of course achieving those legal requirements, but then also if they should consider other aspects either from a security standpoint or just from a data intelligence standpoint. So that's typically where we start and we'd like to start with what their state or their municipality requires, and it'll vary depending on where you are. Some examples would be like Oregon, there's certain storage regulations and things like that. So we can dive in.
Matthew Nederlanden:
There are a bunch of states who've legalized cannabis both on the production and the sale, and your legal requirements fit into three big broad categories that I think every state has one of these things, and then a fourth category of just stuff that's really unique per state. And so the three big categories are going to be where the cameras are. So almost every state that's legalized marijuana production or sale wants to dictate where you put the cameras. And those sort of things are usually where it's being produced, where it's being sold, entrances and exits.
There's a couple of states that also have regulations about distance from the building. You've got to make sure that you can see somebody's face at least 15 feet or 45 feet or whatever. And that's pretty standard across all the states. There's also usually some sort of storage requirement saying that, "Hey, you've got to be able to retain the footage for 15, 30, 60, 90 days." Again, it varies by state and what laws they have passed, but that usually is more storage than you would typically put in a lot of surveillance systems. So you generally need more hard drives. The other big thing ... Yeah.
Micah Shearer:
If I can interrupt, it's also often a little bit tricky because they'll have these really extensive storage requirements, but these very odd resolution requirements. So the resolution requirement will be very, very low relative to what you would typically want, but the storage requirement will be very, very long, which kind of makes sense if you're recording very low quality footage, you can fit that in economically. But if you're recording the kind of footage that's probably actually useful, you end up in this situation where storage gets really expensive.
Matthew Nederlanden:
And some of those pixels definitions that they have don't actually match anything in the industry. Now they are minimum requirements, so as long as you go higher than them, that's okay, but it does seem a little strange sometimes, what numbers they pick in terms of resolutions and-
Ben Larue:
To your point, Matt, numbers so much that you wouldn't see in today's marketplace, right? Specifically in regard to resolution, frame rate is another aspect of this, legality sometimes, they'll have specifications on 15 frames per second.
James Campbell:
So what I'm hearing is there's a difference between what's minimally required for you to pass your inspection and be within code, I guess, and there's also what you really should do from a security standpoint. Is that correct?
Matthew Nederlanden:
Yeah, exactly. I would largely say that the requirements for resolution for most of the state requirements, you're going to exceed just by having a decent quality system. And for your own security needs, you're going to want to go above and beyond what they're recommending for resolution because, some of the states, it feels like they took a law that was passed in the 80's and just copied the resolution, and didn't update it in any modern capacity. That's number one.
The other thing that I think we should mention is that some of these regulations include things that are not normally thought of as, "This is my camera system." So for example, New York requires you to have a printer with a 960 DPI or greater on location so you can print from the security system. And that's not something you might initially think to yourself, "Oh yeah, let me go buy that," when you're thinking about a security camera system.
Micah Shearer:
Could we do a blooper? You know how we do our terrible security and sales caught in the wild? Go through the weirdest regulations related to security systems.
James Campbell:
Yeah. I like that.
Ben Larue:
That's right.
Matthew Nederlanden:
There's some really strange ones. Did you know you need a voice dialer on ... I don't even know ... That's the alarm-based product that would call the cops. It feels like stuff that the industry hasn't used for a decade. As another example of this, Nevada requires you to have battery backup that you connect to your security camera system, and so if you lose power it'll continue to operate. There's a bunch of these odds and ends that you can tack on to the security camera system, and you do need to think about when you purchase it.
But in general, when it comes to cameras, they generally want you to have them in specific locations, they generally want them to be sufficient resolution, at least in some of the terms that they thought about that in the 80's or 90's, whenever they first wrote these laws that they just copied and pasted. And they generally want you to have a decent amount of storage, so you can go back and look through footage for a relatively long time.
James Campbell:
What is the general ballpark? Is there a terabyte minimum or is it by day?
Matthew Nederlanden:
It's usually by day-
Ben Larue:
And type of recording. So normally it'll be 24/7 constant recording, and usually anywhere between 30, 60, 90 days. Just given the requirements of camera location and what the camera needs to actually be covering, certain parts of cannabis production and processing need to be covered, areas you typically probably wouldn't cover in a normal production facility, let's say. So the sheer camera count is much higher already than a traditional system or production facility of the same size or square foot.
So we're usually already classing NVR sizes much larger than we typically would. And these larger NVRs, the class that we're stepping into as our imperial models, they have these storage capabilities, or ability to expand their storage capabilities to meet these requirements.
Matthew Nederlanden:
Yeah. You're probably going to combine this to create a solution that is having enough storage for you. You're probably going to pick one of our larger units that has something like up to 24 hard drive bays inside of it. You might be connecting the eSATA separate device with several more hard drive bays than that, you might be new using a NAS, or Network Attached Storage. So there's multiple ways to accomplish this in terms of getting the storage that you need, but it can be a lot of hard drives.
James Campbell:
How do you even calculate that out? Is there a way to do that?
Ben Larue:
Yeah. So we actually have a really awesome link on our website to a storage calculator where you can adjust a lot of the different specifications or settings that you would want to adjust that affect storage, and to speak back to some of the other requirements and regulatory specs, this is why camera resolution and frame rate matter so much. The lower resolution that you're filming or recording in and the lower frame rate, the longer you're able to store footage, or the less amount of hard drives you would need and the less amount of hard drive bays you would need.
Again, those are minimum requirements, so we usually find ourselves somewhere in the middle between what we would typically recommend and the requirements. But yeah, there's a calculator on our website which is really, really helpful.
James Campbell:
Good to know. So essentially, regardless of however many cameras you have and however many days you need, we can quote something out for you and make sure we have the solution for you. Is that what I'm hearing?
Ben Larue:
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. You bring us the requirements that you need, and we'll ensure you have ...
Matthew Nederlanden:
Even beyond that, we try and publish the last known version to us. So maybe they changed it since then, you should always talk to the person doing your inspection, because we're based in North Carolina, so we don't grow cannabis. So-
Micah Shearer:
Additionally, we're not lawyers. So your consultant is going to work through the document to the best of your collective judgment. You should always be reviewing these things with inspectors, local jurisdictional authorities, the people who are making the decisions.
Ben Larue:
Definitely. Your license is on the line, so don't get this wrong, don't rely on anybody else. We're not your answer and we're not your silver bullet.
Matthew Nederlanden:
And if you can, don't wait till the last minute to get the regulatory body involved.
Micah Shearer:
Yes, please.
Matthew Nederlanden:
Try and get them involved early. Like we said, some of these regulations don't make any sense. Like having an auto dialer in New York for your alarm, alarms haven't used that in years. You need to make sure that you show them that, "Hey, we've got a modern alarm that uses Wi-Fi, uses a 4G connection, 5G connection," and making sure that they're okay with that, because the regulation actually doesn't say that you can use that, it says you have to use an auto dialer. But again, that's crazy old tech that nobody even uses anymore. So you want to get them involved early.
As another example for this, Alaska has a resolution requirement that I don't think has been used in the industry ever. It is so low quality that I don't think anyone has ever made a camera as bad as this.
James Campbell:
Let's talk about that, then. So you have the minimums, and maybe you guys can correct me, are people approaching us with, "Hey, I need the minimum to pass this."? or are more people interested in, "Okay, I need to have a security camera system by regulation, but it should also be valuable to me and my own personal needs as well."? Let's talk about the difference. We already talked about how low some of the resolutions are. What can a security camera system bring to cannabis beyond just, "They need it, and it's required."?
Ben Larue:
To address the first part of your question there, James, I think most people come to us nowadays, I would say in the past 12 to 14 months, before their building is actually erected and built, or before the building is completely done being renovated to be their facility. A lot of jurisdictions are now requiring your security plans to be signed off on by whoever in your jurisdiction has authority before the building can be complete or have occupancy. So usually we're very, very early in the process for that, and so a lot of people tend to ... in those times, might just have been awarded their license, now they want to get going with product. They want to do what is required first.
And then I've spoken to several that want to circle back, want their facilities done or finish building, and so forth. We're working with a client right now who actually just stood up a temporary building to meet requirements and is going to go back after their real production facility is done being built and do it ... that's what he called it, the proper way, based on our recommendations.
James Campbell:
That's a good point, because going back to when Colorado first allowed it and Oregon was, I think, next, it was almost like the wild west. People were just jumping into it, didn't quite understand the regulations as much, and now that we're going down to states like South Dakota, I just talked to a client over there that's starting one, there's a lot more people who realize this is not happening for a couple of years, but they're already planning this out to make sure they meet all of the requirements, not just for video surveillance but for everything else. So we-
Ben Larue:
I was just going to say, James, to your point, to piggyback off that, usually when it's a regulatory industry that is license-required, it's first to market wins. And so most people will come to approaching security in that lens, "What do I need to be the first to market?"
James Campbell:
So what else can a security camera system bring beyond just that I need this as part of my requirement? What kind of value can they get out of it beyond that?
Matthew Nederlanden:
Well, I think like any sort of business, if you suddenly lose all of your inventory, you have a massive amount of risk that your business goes under. The protection of your own assets ... And then this one is a little bit more complicated because it takes quite an amount of time for you to regrow your supply. It's not like you just reorder something. So if somebody comes in and empties your supply out, you're a cash-based business in most regards. So a lot of cannabis are cash-based if you're a retailer or have retailing as part of your operations, and people love to steal cash, so that's the other aspect about it.
Ben Larue:
I would love to talk about maybe non-camera security options that might be even more beneficial to your facility. So cameras for sure, and all the reasons that Matt just mentioned. And even some of the newer models that have advanced analytics can act as deterrents. So think of your cultivation fields, you might want cameras that can flash lights, sound sirens, those type of things. That's what a camera system could do. But in regards to other security or physical security, really I think access control is the place that you could benefit the most from planning ahead and having this early on to completely control, restrict, and from a data intelligence standpoint. And in fact some states require the ability to buzz people in and out.
Matthew Nederlanden:
Yeah. New York is one of those states, for example. They require you to be able to limit access and prove that you've limited access to certain areas. And it could be done, I guess, with a lock and key. It's certainly not going to be done very well, but certainly is a lot better with an access control system with an audit log, ability to pull information about who's there and who's not.
Ben Larue:
That's so true. And from a production and manufacturing standpoint as well, delivery and other outside vendors to your business, as Matt spoke about a moment ago and we can all acknowledge, the product that we're talking about here is very expensive, is worth a lot and you can't easily replace it. These are areas where you could look at them as weak points. Delivery schedules, going to the bank, taking the cash places, all these are vulnerable points in your business where you would be able to completely restrict and control the access of who has or doesn't have access to these areas or certain parts of the building then, and I've definitely talked to some clients who experienced some trouble ships in those type of places.
Matthew Nederlanden:
Yeah. This is an industry with far more common crime. It really is. So being able to prevent the theft of your money when it leaves the building to go get deposited and having a clearer idea of who has access to that vehicle or that waiting area or the safe or the cash register or wherever you're putting money is paramount for this industry. It's so cash-based in many regards and can often have trouble with banking, have trouble with finding providers for that. You can really have a far more expensive crime, excuse me, than some other industries where credit cards are far more common.
James Campbell:
That brings up another question I have. I know initially when I was working with a lot of cannabis grow ops on the sport side of the house, and a lot of do-it-yourself folks, they were buying the equipment, installing it themselves, working with us to make sure they get the right storage, everything like that. Are you guys seeing a shift on that? Is it becoming more, "We do offer national install now."? Are we seeing more interest in that on the national install front or are people still participating in do-it-yourself installs with this or is it grown up, I guess?
Matthew Nederlanden:
I think the industry's really grown up. A decade ago when we started publishing information about these regulations, almost everybody getting into this was really doing it themselves because nobody would work with them. They couldn't find a bank to deposit money in. I remember at one point really early in our lifecycle here, when somebody came with a literal trash bag of cash to hand to us that was from this industry, because they couldn't figure out how to open a bank account because the banking regulations wouldn't let them.
Micah Shearer:
We have clients who regularly mail money orders as well, because that's just the only way to do business.
Matthew Nederlanden:
Yeah. So on the flip side, a lot of investment is happening into this now, and it is becoming more acceptable, with so many states having legalized it and with the push for national legalization. It's becoming a little more professional, and sometimes has some cash backing behind it and sometimes they do want installation services to make sure it's done right. It can be really complicated installing one of these, with a lot of variables.
Ben Larue:
And let's face it, getting installation from a professional company versus doing it yourself, maybe the first time you're installing a system like this, the end result's probably aesthetically going to look a little bit different. And as you know, to Matt's point, investment has become a big factor in this industry because this industry is trying to acquire the taste of people who might not normally, let's say partake in this type of product. And so the better aesthetically the facility might be looking, the more likelihood of those type of people entering, potentially. These are all things that I've heard from clients discussing specifically installation in their cannabis facility.
Matthew Nederlanden:
The other part we should mention here is alarms. In a couple of states, alarms are required. Alarms are also a really good product for this industry.
Micah Shearer:
Are they frequently required to be wired, or are wireless alarms still sufficient?
Ben Larue:
From my experience, it depends on the state and the type of license that you hold. If it's a manufacturing license though, I do know they have to be hardwired, at least in New Mexico.
Micah Shearer:
That makes sense.
Matthew Nederlanden:
Yeah. New York is still with that auto dialer regulations for their alarms. They're so outdated, it's silly, but they do require an alarm. And I think this is a really good fit for an alarm. You want to have something that instantly calls the police and gets a response if you are having an intrusion event. This is something where response time really does matter, and making sure that your business is adequately protected and that something happens if there is a perimeter breach.
James Campbell:
Is it fair to say that this industry maybe has a little bit more of a target of theft because it's a product that can be moved-
Micah Shearer:
Easily moved?
James Campbell:
Yeah. And it doesn't have tracking or anything like that. If somebody steals an iPad or something like that, there's a serial number, there's ways to lock it out by Apple, and all that kind of stuff. With cannabis I don't have the ability to lock it out remotely, I don't think. So is it fair to say that you're probably more of a target of theft in this industry?
Ben Larue:
Without a doubt. Yeah. And in fact some states are now changing their requirements to include path of product for manufacturing cultivation. So there need to be cameras on the entire path the product moves from field to manufacturing. That's something I just learned last week from a client. So it's definitely interesting.
Matthew Nederlanden:
There are really only a few products that have a preexisting network for organized crime. Guns and drugs are the two biggest. And so that's another big risk that this industry has. If somebody steals a bunch of iPads, organized crime is not really ... they're not set up to offload them. But they're definitely set up to offload this product, and that makes it really attractive for organized crime.
James Campbell:
Anything else you guys think we should talk about? Or ...
Micah Shearer:
Are there any considerations for installation? I know that we've run into stuff in New Mexico specifically where specific camera locations have to be pre-approved, so you end up ... A lot of times with installation you've got some flexibility. You get on site, you get in process, you're like, "Okay, actually it makes a little more sense to move this camera over here." You don't necessarily have that flexibility in all cases. So it creates more of a need to plan ahead.
Ben Larue:
Yeah. To Micah's point, that's really the only thing I would like to cover and summarize, is how important that is. Planning ahead in regards to installation, or even if you decide to do it yourself or maybe you work with a contractor to run the cable, who knows? But all these are options, our team can help you figure those options out. We can only help you do that if you bring it to us early. If we're at stages where things have been approved and were signed and held firm, then our hands are tied in a sense. So I'd say just ... As much as we can plan ahead, the better.
Matthew Nederlanden:
I made fun of the New York regulations a couple of times already, but I think they did a good job on this particular lineup of items. But the places where they're saying you need to have cameras are all approved safes, all approved vaults, all dispensing areas, all marijuana sales areas, all other areas where marijuana is produced, harvested, manufactured, stored, handled or dispensed as well as all entry points. And I think that's really good advice, that every state should really be doing those particular things, in however way that they apply to you. If you're just a resale operation, I don't think some of those apply to you. But those are a really good list of where you want to have cameras on the entire production to sales pipeline.
Ben Larue:
Absolutely.
James Campbell:
So you plan ahead, make sure you cover the common sense, honestly, areas that Matt, you mentioned there and everywhere else you think, store rooms and everything like that. Anything else you think we can add?
Ben Larue:
To Matt's point earlier in this video, pay attention to the small obscurities in some of the requirements. Some states require cable to be running conduit in certain locations and different things like that. Have a keen eye and consult an attorney or a lawyer.
Matthew Nederlanden:
And talk with your inspection agent. So let me give you a little bit of crazy variability in how these laws can be interpreted. There is ... One of the states here has a law that says that the footage has to be offsite. And we've heard regulators go as far as saying, "Hey, that footage is for certain events. If certain events are offsite, that's okay." We've had regulators say offsite means in the building in a different room. So, "You've got your main recorder in this building and your other recorder in this other part of the building and that's offsite for us." We've heard them say, "No, offsite has to be a physically different address." We've heard some regulators say offsite has to be in the cloud. And this is all within the same jurisdiction with the same rule. And so this ... It's really helpful to bring that regulator in as soon as possible so that you understand how they're interpreting that currently.
James Campbell:
Plan, use resources and you'll be a lot more likely to have a successful inspection, for sure. I think that about covers it. Thank you guys for joining us, and thank the awesome panel for talking about this and getting some info. If you do have more specific questions or you just want to learn more about either our access control products, camera products, certainly get in touch with us, getscw.com. We'll be happy to help, walk you through things, storage requirements, everything like that. Other than that, we'll see you next time. Take care.