Скачать или смотреть Episode 16: Designing Cannabis Policy In The Age of AI

In this episode of The Hybrid, former regulators Shawn Collins (THC Group) and Erik Gundersen (ERG Strategies) sit down with Mackenzie Slade of Cannabis Public Policy Consulting (CPPC) to tackle a question that keeps showing up in hearings, rulemakings, and board rooms:

What does “evidence-based cannabis policy” actually look like when the evidence is incomplete, politicized, and moving faster than the rules?

We start with the new frontier of cannabis regulatory science, including how AI is being tested as a tool to evaluate cannabis imagery and marketing content at scale. The promise is speed and consistency. The risk is governance, explainability, and defensibility when an algorithm starts influencing oversight.

From there, we get practical about research design. Randomized controlled trials sound like academic territory until you see how they can test real policy levers, including taxes, labeling, and consumer trust. We also discuss Switzerland’s public health oriented adult-use experiments and what U.S. policymakers miss when they treat “pilot programs” as infrastructure for better decisions.

We close with hemp through late 2026. Demand exists. Channels are shifting. Definitions and enforcement will decide who captures the spend, and who gets left holding the bag.

This is a conversation about building policy that can survive headlines, courtrooms, and the next market shock.

Referenced in this episode:
• AI Study (medRxiv preprint): https://doi.org/10.1101/2025.11.14.25...

• Swiss RCT Study Design (Frontiers in Psychiatry): https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyt.2023.11...

• Swiss RCT Outcomes (Addiction): https://doi.org/10.1111/add.70080

• Verasight (representative sampling firm): https://www.verasight.io/

🎙️ Topics: cannabis regulatory science, AI and compliance, cannabis marketing rules, randomized controlled trials, policy experimentation, labeling and consumer trust, hemp derived THC products, market demand, state regulation, evidence based policymaking

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