Multistate cannabis operator Cresco Labs announced last week that it had hired Greg Butler, a former marketing executive for Molson Coors, to fill the newly created position of Chief Commercial Officer and to help scale the company’s U.S. market presence.

Butler, who has a background in driving brand growth for consumer packaged goods (CPG) companies such as Pfizer, Johnson & Johnson and Walgreens, will be responsible for commercial strategic planning, bolstering Cresco’s sales and marketing teams with new talent, leading the launch of new products, and M&A strategies and integration.

Here, Butler discusses how his CPG experience will benefit him in this new role, as well as what he hopes to achieve as Cresco’s first chief commercial officer.

Cannabis Business Times: What does the new Chief Commercial Officer position entail, and what are some of your key responsibilities in this new role?

Photo courtesy of Cresco Labs

Greg Butler: [This position is responsible for] scaling how we operate, but also building the right teams [and] the right go-to-market strategy to compete in the different regions we operate in.

I oversee all of our own brands—Cresco, Mindy’s, Remedi, Reserve—and how those brands not only start to build at a national level, but also [how they] operate locally. Our retail brand, Sunnyside*, [recently launched] here in Illinois [when] Illinois went adult-use, and that brand will be rolling across our footprint, as well. [I will be] managing that brand and how that brand comes to life across all our retail stores and across states. For my team, we think about partner brands, so M&A integration, whether it’s acquiring companies, which we just concluded with Origin House in California, or other potential assets we may want to acquire. That all now sits within my team, as well as the review of what we’ve acquired and how we integrate them into Cresco Labs.

Then, it’s also commercial planning. Commercial planning is the lifeline of all big CPG [companies]. It’s the thing that tells you, what brands should you be selling? How much of those brands? How much supply is necessary to support those brands? That commercial planning function is a key component of this role, as well.

CBT: How will your background as a marketing executive with Molson Coors and other consumer packaged goods companies such as Pfizer, Johnson & Johnson and Walgreens benefit you in this new role with Cresco Labs?

GB: I always joke that [cannabis is] probably the one industry that I think all of my previous experiences are applicable to. Starting my career at Pfizer, I was very focused on medical marketing. How do you drive patient education and patient trust and healthcare professional trust within your brand? And in cannabis today, a big chunk of the market across multiple states is a medical patient. How medical patients and the healthcare market engage with brands is [different from] how consumers want to engage with brands when it’s for personal or recreational use.

Then, I moved into capital markets and did a lot of work advising private equity-owned companies [on] how to scale or restructure, which also is at play at Cresco Labs. We’re thinking about scale and building our business for the future.

At Molson Coors, it’s the experience of, how do you build brands that consumers love?

Cannabis is a fascinating product where, if you think about it, it’s one of the very few products where the same product is used for a medical use but also can be used by an everyday consumer for personal use. How [do] you build brands to connect with those two very different consumers who have very different needs?

CBT: How is the cannabis industry different from the other industries you’ve worked in? Is there anything that is particularly unique?

GB: The state-by-state regulations are fairly unique. The challenges we have in cannabis [are] to build not only national brands but also a national company operating within the unique specifics of state regulations. That’s different, I think, from traditional CPG. While it’s probably the most extreme version of state-by-state [regulations], it’s not that different from how states regulate the three-tier system in alcohol or how you have to think about messaging and what you can and can’t say in medical markets. So, it is unique in that we’re operating in a collection of states but adhering to the regulations of each state is not a huge challenge that CPG companies don’t see.

The second thing is that we have to constantly remind ourselves about the different consumers of cannabis. How we’ve structured our portfolio strategy is we build the occasion-based segmentation, which looks at, what are the different occasions in which cannabis is being used? What are the unique needs of those occasions, and who is the consumer of those occasions? Unlike pharmaceuticals, where it’s a prescription-led product which is being [prescribed] for a specific medical condition, cannabis can be used for a medical condition, for supporting general health and wellness, [but] cannabis can [also] be used as a personal escape—same product, very different occasions, very different consumer needs. Our jobs as marketers is to make sure these brands are designed with an understanding of who the consumer is and what they’re looking for.

CBT: What are you most excited about as you take on this new role?

GB: I think [another] component of cannabis, which I think is probably the most unique, is we’re at the very beginning of this industry. We’re thinking about where the industry needs to go, but also starting to focus on education and building trust with consumers, patients, stakeholders and customers. I think you can’t take any of that for granted. This is the very beginning. This industry is already large, it has many facets to it, but we are at the very beginning of new consumers entering cannabis, trying to understand how to use the product [and] what product is right for them. We have regulators understanding how the industry needs to be regulated. We have business stakeholders trying to figure out, how do the financials of cannabis work? So, with that level of newness comes a real impetus for us to really focus on education, transparency of our operations and building trust with all stakeholders that we engage with in a much more emphasized way than in perhaps traditional CPG where the ways of working, how to evaluate a company and how to rethink a product are already down.

Most people who consume a Miller Lite know how a Miller Lite impacts them and they know how many Miller Lites they can consume before they’re impaired, and that doesn’t exist for many consumers in cannabis today. So, how do we educate people to become more comfortable, more aware and more informed about what goes into their products is something I’m very excited about as we pioneer the next chapter of this industry.

CBT: What are some of your shorter- and longer-term goals in this new position?

GB: In the short-term, as we are scaling across states, [one goal is] ensuring that we are building the commercial backbone here at Cresco Labs to ensure that our patients and our customers have access to quality products. [We are] building that infrastructure now, as we enter California through Origin House, to ensure that we have our cars and trucks and [that our] sales teams have the right portfolio to service those customers. Here in Illinois, we are scaling our operational footprint to ensure that we are supplying the demands of this market, which is pretty unique. How do we ensure that all of our medical patients have access to products? And then how do we offer the right products to consumers who might be trying adult-use cannabis for the first time? There’s quite a big lift that we are currently undertaking to make sure that we have those operating structures and standards to ensure we are meeting those needs.

The second [goal] is to continue to build our brands. We have a portfolio of incredible brands that have all been uniquely designed for unique occasions. We’ll continue to scale those brands across the states we’re operating in.

The third [goal], now that we’re building a national retail brand under Sunnyside*, is ensuring the locations in which we rebrand [or] build a Sunnyside* deliver on the promise we made on what Sunnyside* stands for in every market where we operate.

Longer-term, I think it’s continuing to ensure that as we look at our geographical footprint, we have the most strategic footprint of any cannabis operator—that’s access to consumers and access to patients. [We are focused on] building the right infrastructure of our operations to ensure that we’re delivering products of the highest quality that are consistent and are standard across our footprint.

I think long-term, anyone who’s taking a leadership position in cannabis has to be focused on our collective goal, which is to help normalize this industry and professionalize how we operate in this industry. There are a lot of things that we’re going to be bringing to market which either help to continue to normalize cannabis use for those who want to use cannabis, and then also [to] professionalize how cannabis operators must engage with customers, consumers, government stakeholders and all community groups that are connected to the industry.

There is so much opportunity that exists for cannabis. I think so many patients and consumers are just starting to understand how this could fit into their life. I hope my addition to this industry also [offers] even more confidence to those who are looking for a career in cannabis, that it makes them really believe in where this industry can go and how exciting a job or career in this industry can be. We’ve never seen anything quite like what this industry has the potential to be. I think that the smart minds and creative minds that we can bring into this space is what’s going to drive this industry to its full potential. I’m hoping that they come to Cresco, that many more join in what we can build.

Editor’s Note: This interview has been edited for style, length and clarity.

New Mexico renewed its push to legalize adult-use cannabis this year, but efforts ultimately stalled when a Senate committee voted to block a legalization bill from advancing. However, Marissa Novel, chief marketing officer for Ultra Health, one of the state’s licensed medical cannabis businesses, says this might not be a bad thing.

While Ultra Health supports adult-use cannabis legalization as a basic policy position, the company had several issues with S.B.115, this year’s legalization proposal.

“I think that was an outgrowth of how the bill matured over time,” Novel tells Cannabis Business Times.

RELATED: New Mexico Lawmakers Introduce Legislation to Legalize Adult-Use Cannabis

After two competing adult-use legalization bills stalled last year, Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham recruited policy experts to serve on a committee tasked with providing recommendations on legalization in the state. The work group submitted its recommendations to the governor last fall, and many of these suggestions were incorporated into S.B.115.

“They had a whole host of recommendations that wasn’t necessarily representative of the industry,” Novel says. “I think there were maybe one or two industry operators in that work group among people from all other industries, so I think the bill did have some major issues from an operator’s standpoint. As the session went on, we found ourselves disagreeing with more of the amendments that we saw. It was a case of too many cooks in the kitchen it seems like—everyone had different asks for what the legalization bill would do and in that, we lost sight of the bare minimum of making sure that a regulated industry is passed.”

Under the legislation, adults would be allowed to purchase up to 2 ounces of cannabis or 16 grams of cannabis extracts at one time, she says, while patients enrolled in New Mexico’s medical cannabis program are only legally able to purchase 8 ounces of flower in a 90-day period.

“We had a primary issue with not addressing what patients can purchase because if an adult can purchase up to 2 ounces of cannabis a day and they’re not tracked, then that would be unfair to patients who enroll in the program, go through all the necessary administrative steps to get certified, and yet they can buy less than an adult on the adult-use market,” Novel says. “That was a major area that we found was unaddressed, and to leave it unaddressed would obviously cause issues for medical cannabis patients.”

Another point of contention in S.B.115 was vertical integration, she adds. New Mexico’s medical cannabis law mandates vertical integration by requiring that licensed businesses produce, manufacture, distribute and dispense medical cannabis products, but the adult-use bill would have created 10 different license types, which no longer allowed cannabis businesses to be vertically integrated.

“There are currently 34 medical cannabis operators, and we did about $130 million in sales last year, so you’re not going to get a lot of agreement if you’re advocating for dismantling the current business structure that exists today,” Novel says. “[From] a policy standpoint, we do support vertical integration because we think [it] allows for more innovation on the operator’s side. We can typically price goods at a lower cost to the patient or consumer, and we will need these larger operators to really absorb a lot of the adult-use demand.”

The legislation also lacked clarity on the supply of cannabis in a forthcoming adult-use market, she adds, and plant count has always been a pain point for the state’s medical cannabis businesses.

“There have been misunderstandings about what it takes to achieve an adequate supply,” Novel says. “An adequate supply is a definition in the medical cannabis law that states that patients should have the ability to purchase an uninterrupted supply of cannabis for three consecutive months. We had a lot of supply issues in the state. We actually took the state to court along with a mother of a cannabis patient—she’s a caregiver—to resolve this issue that plant count does affect the supply of medicine that patients can buy and patients should be able to buy what they can on the current market.”

When Ultra Health did not see any language in S.B.115 about how many plants cannabis producers would be able to grow, it sent up a red flag.

“That’s a huge issue because there are a lot of people in the industry now who say that there is a shortage already,” Novel says. “There have been reports of shortages in the most recent patient survey commissioned by [the New Mexico Department of Health] last year. So, when we don’t address how many plants a licensee is allowed to cultivate, that’s inviting a shortage on the market. We’ve seen shortages in almost every state that has legalized cannabis for adult use, and that has really put a strain on patients, [and] on retaining enrollment in the medical cannabis program, too.”

In the end, it was nearly impossible for Ultra Health to support this year’s legalization proposal, Novel says.

“We found ourselves in a difficult situation where, yes, we support legalization from a policy standpoint, but we also realize that you have to have three major parts in place for legalization to work from an operator’s perspective,” she says. “The patient purchase limits need to be equal to or greater than the adult’s purchase limits. Vertical integration needs to be allowed, especially in light of the medical cannabis law mandating vertical integration. And finally, there needs to be specific language that prevents a shortage for medical cannabis patients, and we believe that language should come from allowing producers to cultivate an adequate number of plants.”

Public support for cannabis legalization in New Mexico continues to rise, Novel adds, although, unfortunately, the New Mexico Constitution prohibits citizens from filing petitions to place initiatives on the state’s ballot. Therefore, any cannabis policy reform efforts must funnel through the state legislature.

“If there were a ballot issue in New Mexico today, I think we would already have legalization, but this is the route that we have to take,” Novel says.

Looking ahead, she is hopeful that a more palatable legalization proposal will be introduced next year.

“It was a very long bill—it was over 170 pages with amendments—and in alignment with our policy position, we do believe that cannabis legalization through the legislature does not need to be a difficult thing,” she says. “It becomes difficult when you have different interest groups requesting different language and different items to be included, and it seems like that’s what this bill morphed into. It seemed like there was a good platform for what we needed to do before the session started, but as the bill was drafted and became longer and longer, it was clear that we lost sight of the goal. The goal was to legalize cannabis in this session for adult use, and we can still do that during the next session. It can be done during an emergency session. It can even be done by proposing a constitutional amendment. But I think the process should be streamlined to where we have a robust framework that protects medical cannabis patients and also provides for an adequate supply for both adults and patients, and the rest we’ll have to fine-tune as the industry matures as a whole.”

The illicit market and overregulation are the legal cannabis industry’s two biggest enemies, Novel adds, and she would like to see a legalization bill in the future that works to combat those two areas.

While this year’s bill proposed a tax rate of around 21%, for example, Novel would like to see that come down so the state’s legal cannabis market can more effectively compete with illicit-market sales.

“I think what we need to keep in mind during these conversations and during future sessions is that our biggest enemy is the illicit market,” she says. “The illicit market does not pay taxes, they cut corners and they are lower in price. We need to try to meet that price while also providing for clean, safe and effective medicine.”

Regulators and the cannabis industry should also try to work together to avoid overregulation, as well as regulations that simply do not work for the market, Novel adds.

“There seems to be a great disconnect between operators and regulators in almost every legal cannabis state,” she says. “Some of it is understandable—it is a completely new industry. But I think if the industry and regulators start working together more harmoniously, the regulators will have more contact with and more understanding of the cannabis business, and the cannabis businesses will feel that they are understood and heard if these regulators start to see things from their perspective. What might seem like a good idea in a vacuum may be something that completely wrecks the cannabis industry as we know it.”

In the meantime, until the next legalization push in the state, Ultra Health plans to continue its efforts to expand its operations in preparation of an adult-use market.

“We are continuously looking at the numbers that Colorado provides,” Novel says. “They have a good amount of data, probably the best in any legalized cannabis state. We routinely look at their sales numbers, the volume of cannabis sold, where it’s being sold, how it’s being sold and what form [is being sold] to really forecast what we think the New Mexico model will need to support.”

Ultra Health currently operates more than 20 medical cannabis dispensaries in the state, and it aims to have 30 open by the end of the year.

“We think that setting up the distribution network for adult-use is going to be huge, so that’s something that we’ve been working on for a couple of years now,” Novel says. “We are preparing our cultivation spaces [and] we’re building out more infrastructure, greenhouses, cold frames [and] production buildings because we realize that New Mexico is looking at [needing] least five times the amount of volume that it’s doing now for any sort of adult-use program."