Alex Mendez is an attorney from Quincy spending his own money to win a Massachusetts State Senate seat that pays less than his current job. In this episode he explains why, and the answer starts with a $20,000 hospital bill for one night to deliver his daughter. Massachusetts spends over $35 billion a year on healthcare, and Mendez argues most of it disappears into insurance middlemen instead of care.

Mendez is running as an independent against a 15-year incumbent he calls a career politician. He breaks down how the State Senate actually works, why he wants state-run free health clinics, his case for greater Boston rail to fix car dependency, and where he stands on the November cannabis repeal. Jason and Alex also dig into the Massachusetts cannabis market: why revenue is flat at $1.6 billion despite record volume, how new rules on store caps and 20% equity could open the door to private equity, and why flower prices tripled from $2.50 to $7 a gram.

This is a real conversation about what it takes to run for office and what is actually broken in the systems most people never question. 21+ where legal. Cannabis policy discussion is opinion, not legal advice. Listen now wherever you get your podcasts.

Oregon's wholesale flower market fell to $50 a pound, less than it costs to grow. Whole farms sold entire crops for $25 to $50. People who left six-figure jobs at Intel to grow cannabis lost their life savings. Samantha Seagaard watched it happen in real time, and she is telling Jason Reposa why she thinks Massachusetts is walking the same road. Two years ago she stood in front of the Cannabis Control Commission and warned them to cap the canopy. The state just voted to freeze new cultivation licenses.

Samantha is the co-founder and CEO of Fresh Connection Boston, a small batch craft cultivator that recently took over two dispensaries in Cambridge and Somerville. She came up in Oregon's medical market, spent 15 years learning to grow, make hash, and hunt genetics, then moved the operation to the East Coast. In this conversation she breaks down the real cost of going recreational, why she runs organic soil over coco, what actually separates craft from a marketing label, and what changes when a grower finally owns the retail shelf.

21+ where legal. This is an industry conversation, not medical or legal advice. Listen to the full episode and follow High Functioning for more real conversations with the people building legal cannabis.

Everyone hears "synthetic" and thinks fake. James Winokur, CEO of CitraChem, explains why 99.9% of FDA-approved drugs are synthetic, and why a plant-inspired molecule has a 45% shot at approval while a fully novel one sits at 10%.

We get into what Schedule III actually changes for operators, why lab-made doesn't mean fake, the FDA botanical route almost nobody clears, and where hemp beverages, the November repeal, and Big Pharma all collide.

James spent 12 years in cannabis as the former CEO of Berkshire Roots and a product leader at Mary Med. Now he's building a life sciences platform that synthesizes botanically identical cannabinoids for pharmaceutical research.

(00:00) Cold Open

(01:35) Synthetic Doesn't Mean Fake

(07:54) Schedule III and What CitraChem Does

(13:37) The FDA Math: 45% vs 10%

(15:23) Why Lab-Made Doesn't Mean Fake

(18:31) What You're Actually Inhaling

(21:05) The R&D Platform Play

(23:34) Building the Molecule Library

(30:00) Hemp Beverages and the November Repeal

(36:48) Microdosing and the Education Gap

(39:55) The Repeal Fight and Race to the Bottom

Host: Jason Reposa

Guest: James Winokur, CEO of CitraChem

New episodes drop Tuesdays at 10 AM ET.

The founder of Massachusetts' first cannabis testing lab says 50 to 60 percent of the product on retail shelves would fail the state's own mold guidelines. He knows because he tested it, off the shelf, in a free program he eventually had to shut down. The bigger problem is not contaminated weed. It is that the labs catching it are losing business to the labs that pass everything.

Chris Hudalla is an analytical chemist with a doctorate in the field and the founder and chief scientific officer of ProVerde Laboratories, the first lab built for cannabis testing in Massachusetts back in 2013. He walks through how testing actually works, why PCR passes more product than culture-based methods, how one suspended lab's failure rate jumped from under 1 percent to 27 percent under oversight, and how he can spot synthetic and CBD-converted THC that the state says is "not prohibited." He also explains, using the thalidomide story, why isomers that look identical can behave very differently in the body.

21+ where legal. This conversation is for information only and is not medical, legal, or safety advice. Listen and follow High Functioning for real conversations with the people shaping legal cannabis.

A Harvard-trained primary care doctor got addicted to Vicodin in his thirties, lost his medical license, and got sober. Twenty years later, he is board-certified in addiction medicine, prescribes cannabis at Mass General, and just published Aging Well with Cannabis. Jason Reposa sits down with Dr. Peter Grinspoon to talk about what the cannabis industry still gets wrong about harm, why budtenders should not be giving medical advice, how cannabis is helping seniors come off five and ten medications, and the cost problem that flips patients back to opioids. Educational, 21+, not personal medical advice. Get Good Feels at getgoodfeels.com

Michael Marinaro and Tara Hopper raised $600,000 in one weekend and then paid $20,000 a month for five years to hold a building before Bada Bloom! could open. Now they are fighting for the rest of the capital while the Massachusetts cannabis industry consolidates around them. In this episode of High Functioning, Mike and Tara walk through the real cost of a social equity license, why investors keep saying no, the helicopter story, the delivery law flip, and Mike's theory on who is going to fund the MSO repeal campaign. For Massachusetts cannabis operators. 21 and older.

Rae Russell runs customer success for PAX in Massachusetts. She treats field marketing as a sales job, not glorified event staff.

In this episode, she and Jason Reposa break down what separates a brand ambassador who moves product from one who just shows up. They cover how she knows which budtenders sell before she walks in, how to measure whether a pop-up worked, when an activation wastes money, and why good people quit the role.

Rae came up through ten years of Verizon retail and dispensary floors before taking the brand side. This is the field marketing playbook nobody writes down.

Topics: field marketing, brand ambassadors, customer success, pop-up ROI, retail cannabis, budtender training.

21+ where legal. Nothing for sale.

Full episodes: https://highfunctioning.show

Most dispensaries run on broken data and never find the leak. Socrates Rosenfeld, co-founder and CEO of Jane Technologies, built a decade of infrastructure to fix that. In this episode he breaks down the protocol Jane built to unify fragmented SKU data across every POS and CRM in the industry. He explains why online average order value runs nearly double in-store. He reveals how Jane Gold lets brands fund consumer loyalty without touching retailer margin. He makes the case for open ecosystems over walled garden tech stacks. If your store revenue is flat or dropping this episode is required listening.

Topics covered: dispensary data strategy, cannabis ecommerce conversion, Jane Gold brand loyalty, Dutchie, Flowhub, Treez, Alpine IQ, cannabis attribution, discount strategy, open ecosystems, AI in cannabis retail.

21+ where legal. Nothing for sale.

Full Episodes: highfunctioning.show

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Michael Mulkern built and sold a CBD company, lost his investment in a bad acquisition, got laid off with a newborn at home, and launched MAVZ Naturals the same week. He now runs 34 dispensary accounts across Massachusetts with zero ad spend.

In this episode he breaks down the sample jar tactic that wins retail floor space, why he bought his own product back off dispensary shelves during his rebrand, how he keeps manufacturing lean enough to survive market swings, and what independent hemp operators need to do now as the 2026 federal hemp deadline approaches.

If you sell into dispensaries or manufacture hemp products, this is the operational playbook.

Topics covered:

• How he rebuilt from a failed acquisition with no outside investment
• The sample jar strategy that converts buyers without paid media
• Why he targets 10 to 20 core accounts instead of chasing volume
• Skincare and New York distribution as hedges against the hemp cliff
• Writing a children's book named after his son as a legacy project

21+ where legal. Nothing for sale.Full Episodes: highfunctioning.show

A cannabis label company asked Adam O'Day to design their packaging. He said yes — until he saw the rest of their branding was AI-generated. He walked.That decision is the center of gravity for this episode. Adam O'Day (muralist, fine artist, 13 years full-time) and Allan "Alz" Sousa (fine artist, gallery director at Black Walls Gallery) sit down with Jason to talk about what authentic creative work costs, what AI is actually doing to both the art world and cannabis branding, and why the intersection of cannabis and the arts in New England is an opportunity nobody is moving on yet.Alz lays out a direct argument: if a cannabis company has enough capital to bring a product to market, it has enough to pay a local artist a few thousand dollars instead of prompting a model. He's already building he framework to connect cannabis operators in Massachusetts with real artists — and explains exactly why that matters for brand equity, not just optics.They also get into the pay-to-play reality behind Art Basel ($80K to get in the door), why Alz deliberately makes certain pieces unsellable, how Adam's daughters outsell him at a Provincetown gallery, and what it actually takes to run a community art program inside a dispensary without the drama. No theory. Two working artists, one B2B cannabis host, zero filters.Chapters below.Adam O'Day: @adam_oday | SCAPES solo show at Black Walls GalleryAlz (Allan Sousa): @alz_next | Gallery Director, Black Walls Gallery | alzandkitty.com1:49 What Makes Someone an Artist6:25 The Real Artist's Day16:15 The Business of Art: 13 Years Full-Time Without Selling Out29:01 Social Media Is a Trap If You Need the Validation41:49 AI Art in Cannabis: Where the Line Is and Why Adam Walked Away47:15 The Cannabis–Arts Pipeline Nobody Has Built Yet56:34 Don't Make Painting Your Only Income1:04:00 What's Next: Shows, Books, and Art Basel21+ where legal. Nothing for sale.🎧 Full Episodes: highfunctioning.show🔔 Subscribe: tr.ee/highfunctioningsubscribe🎙️ Listen on Spotify: tr.ee/highfunctioningspotify🍎 Apple Podcasts: tr.ee/highfunctioningapple