Today on the show we welcome Genine Coleman!

We discuss documenting the Legacy of California Cannabis.

Proposition 64, the California cannabis legalization ballot initiative passed in 2016, created cannabis-specific taxes. A portion of these cannabis tax revenues are used to fund cannabis research initiatives through California’s public universities. On April 25th, 2023 the California Department of Cannabis Control awarded $2.7 million dollars to a group of academic researchers, scientists, and community based organizations to develop a multidisciplinary, community-based participatory research (CBPR) study that will identify, document, and help to preserve the history, value, and diversity of California’s legacy cannabis genetics and the communities that steward them.

Genine Coleman is the founder and Executive Director of Origins Council, a nonprofit education, research and policy advocacy organization that serves some 800 members of California’s legacy cannabis growing regions. Origins Council is dedicated to sustainable rural economic development within legacy cannabis producing regions and establishing nationally and internationally recognized, legally defensible, standards-based, geographic indication systems for cannabis. A former grower, Genine has over 20 years of cannabis cultivation experience. In 2012, she stopped cultivating cannabis to take up cannabis patient and policy advocacy. She is the co-founder of the Mendocino Appellations Project, which is now a regionally sponsored project of Origins Council, and serves on the Board of Directors for the 420 Archive which is devoted to collecting, preserving and sharing the history of cannabis culture and prohibition in the United States. Genine is also a founding board member of the Mendocino Cannabis Alliance, formed in 2019. From 2017–2020, she served on the Board of Directors of the California Growers Association.