Noel Barry has been extracting cannabis for about 15 years and has watched two lab incidents happen in front of him. One took a person's eyebrows off. Neither, he says, happened because butane is inherently unstable. They happened because somebody ran a heat gun next to a collection pot, or combined equipment rated for the room with equipment that was not. His view is blunt: the accidents are an operator problem, not a solvent problem, and most facilities create the conditions by staffing nineteen extractors on rotating shifts where nobody was ever properly trained by a master.

Noel is the founder and CEO of Dab Science. He started in biotech manufacturing at Genzyme, spent about a decade moving up, and moonlighted on extraction after overnight shifts until he left entirely. He took no outside investors, pulled his

401k, and has spent four to five years putting concentrates on shelves in Massachusetts and now New Jersey. In this conversation with Jason Reposa he walks through the real cost math on distillate, which went from roughly $3 a gram to $7 in two years, why toll processing is the bread and butter if you run it properly,how he won 75 product competitions with essentially no marketing budget, why he pays operators on deviation from a standard yield, and why he believes flower survives on ritual rather than performance.

21+ where legal. This is a business conversation, not medical, legal, or safety advice. Figures are as stated by the guest. Watch the full episode at highfunctioning.show.

CHAPTERS

00:00 Cold open

00:57 From biotech manufacturing to extraction

13:20 Hemp, conversions, and the boogeyman problem

20:15 The real cost of a gram of distillate

25:39 Fewer people, paid better

35:27 75 awards with no marketing budget

47:11 Why extraction labs actually explode

57:00 Why he thinks flower's days are numbered

Signature collectors stood outside Massachusetts shopping centers telling people to sign a petition to end fentanyl. Cannabis workers signed it. What they had actually signed was the petition to repeal the adult use program that pays their bills. Tim Swain started getting the phone calls. He led the court challenge to keep that question off the November ballot, and his team lost. In this episode he walks Jason through what the challenge argued, why two other ballot questions were struck on the same reasoning while this one survived, and what is actually buried inside a single yes-or-no vote.

Tim Swain is a trial attorney and chair of the litigation department at Vicente LLP. He came to cannabis after seven years at a top New York firm ended with a stress-triggered illness, surgery, and a fight to get off painkillers that shaped how he thinks about the plant. He explains the social equity program and trust fund that disappear if the question passes, why he believes Massachusetts was chosen as a national test case, and what a cold bench in an appellate courtroom tells a litigator about their odds. In the second half he breaks down the federal DEA rescheduling process from the inside, including why the agency argues as the moving party and why only seven opposing parties made it into the room this round.

Statements about the campaign, signature collection, and pending proceedings reflect the guest's account and opinion, and nothing here is legal advice. 21+ where legal. Listen to the full conversation on High Functioning.

CHAPTERS

00:00 The signature collectors

2:06 What litigation actually means

3:59 What the ballot question hides

10:09 Inside the SJC argument

30:06 The ground game

35:32 Why Massachusetts first

47:50 How DEA rescheduling works

1:02:26 Talk to your lawyer early

He opened a store selling hemp goods and glass on Newbury Street in the era when saying the word bong could get you thrown out. When the police told him to pull the pipes, he took every one out that night and walked them back in the next morning. Thirty years later, Jon Napoli runs five stores, helped write the 2016 legalization language that won at the ballot with 53 percent, and is now spending his own money to fight the November repeal.

Jon is Founder/CEO of Quincy Cannabis Company and the Quincy Golf Lounge, and the founder of The Hempist and Vanguard Cannabis, a tier-eight grow in Leicester. He and Jason get into the billboard bet most operators call a waste and why nearly all his marketing spend goes there anyway, how Quincy Cannabis stayed number one after competitors opened, the Amsterdam-style consumption lounge he is building next door, and why he thinks operator apathy is a bigger threat to legal cannabis in Massachusetts than the repeal campaign itself.

21+ where legal. This is a conversation about the cannabis industry and is not medical, legal, or investment advice. Listen to the full episode and subscribe to High Functioning at highfunctioning.show.

In January 2028 a new Massachusetts rule takes effect. Fall 60 days behind on a payment and you can be cut off from every supplier in the state, unable to buy product, sell your business, or transfer your license. Todd Sullivan thinks about a third of the roughly 400 stores in the state will not survive it. He is not worried about that. He is shopping. Todd runs a debt free, profitable operation that has not raised outside money in years, and he is using that position to buy distressed assets while most operators are panicking.

Todd is the President of Cannapreneur Partners, the holding company behind Joint Operations Dispensaries and Pioneer Valley Extracts. He came up as an entrepreneur and hedge fund manager before going all in on cannabis. In this conversation he breaks down how he acquired stores for almost nothing, why most operators fail on capitalization and the price war, why he bets on the bud tender over discounts, and how rescheduling could bring institutional money rushing back into the industry.

This is the money side of cannabis, told straight. 21+ where legal. Nothing here is legal, financial, medical, or investment advice. Listen to the full conversation and follow High Functioning.

There is a ballot question in Massachusetts this November that could close every adult-use cannabis store in the state within a year. It is funded largely by out-of-state money, and the panel argues most voters have no idea what it really does. Question 8 would repeal adult use while keeping medical, and because of how the market was built, that would wipe out most operators, tens of thousands of jobs, and billions in tax revenue that currently flows to schools, substance-abuse programs, and city budgets.

Jason Reposa sits down with three people fighting it: Ryan Dominguez of the Massachusetts Cannabis Coalition, Tito Jackson of Apex Noir Cannabis and former Boston City Councilor, and Caroline Pineau, owner of Stem in Haverhill. They break down how the initiative was written, how signature gatherers collected names, and why "keeping medical" is a trap for an industry built on vertical integration. They also get into who loses access first, what the fight looks like on the ground, and where the polling stands heading into November.

21+ where legal. This episode is for information only and is not legal, medical, or voting advice. If you build, work, or shop in Massachusetts cannabis, this is the conversation to hear before you vote. Listen now and share it with someone who does not know Question 8 is on the ballot.

Alex Mazin could not raise the $20 million he needed to build a vertical cannabis operation, and he now says that failure protected him from years of headaches. He raised early, pivoted to a single store in Worcester, and has not raised since 2018, funding Bud's Goods' growth from cash flow while much of the industry leaned on investor subsidies to survive. In this conversation he lays out the contrarian playbook behind that: skip cultivation on purpose, curate instead of grow, and treat a dispensary like a grocery store rather than a traditional retail floor.

Alex is the President and CEO of Bud's Goods & Provisions, a Massachusetts retailer and manufacturer that recently expanded into New Jersey. He walks through the pre-roll matrix built from monthly customer surveys, the automation win that made party-pack production 21 times faster, why he keeps his wholesale team at two people to go deep on the 70 accounts that make up 80% of the market, and the hard reckoning he sees coming for what cannabis stores are actually worth. He also makes the case that the whole industry needs to stop racing prices to the bottom and start raising them.

21+ only, for adults in legal markets. Nothing in this episode is for sale. Listen to the full conversation on High Functioning.

Everyone in cannabis is trading the same doom narrative: markets are cooked, exits are dead, small operators are done. Seth Yakatan, who has sold 22 companies and raised over a billion dollars across 30 years, sits down with Jason Reposa to argue the opposite. His frame is simple and uncomfortable. Profit solves everything, sales solves nothing, and the operators quietly winning are the ones nobody wants to talk about.

Seth walks through the state-by-state door economics he tracks every week, from Maryland stores clearing $11M each to the Arizona market conventional wisdom keeps calling dead. He explains why Massachusetts is about to become a buyer's market, where the real M&A money will actually come from, and the one question he asks every founder before anything else: why did you do this? Along the way he covers schedule three, Chapter 15 bankruptcies, the unicorn companies defying the odds, and why the exit most founders are waiting for does not exist.

21+ where legal. Nothing in this episode is investment, legal, or financial advice. Listen to the full conversation on High Functioning.

A cannabis-native operator stopped at a North Georgia gas station, saw 1000mg THC gummies on the shelf, and knew the unregulated hemp market had a real problem. Thomas Winstanley spent six years scaling Theory Wellness from a single Bridgewater store to a seven-state operator. Then he went quiet for nine months to build a national hemp THC marketplace inside the company that owns Edible Arrangements. With a federal ban looming, he's doing the opposite of most operators: doubling down.

Thomas is EVP and GM of edibles.com. In this conversation he breaks down how a 25-year-old brand with real infrastructure entered hemp, why the name "edibles" is both the biggest asset and a blacklisted ad term, what legislators actually say when he visits Capitol Hill, and how he reads the November deadline. He and Jason also get into why cannabis and hemp operators keep treating each other like the enemy, and the case that alcohol, cannabis, and hemp can all win at once.

21+ where legal. Nothing here is medical, legal, or investment advice. Listen to the full conversation on High Functioning.

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.