If security compliance isn’t top level, your business could be shut down

One of the biggest concerns for anyone involved in a leaf-touching business is security.

Jack Teitelman, a former Drug Enforcement Agency agent who now helms Titan Group, a security agency focused on the cannabis industry, said the best practices have grown from the experiences learned in states where cannabis was first legalized.

Topping the list, according to Teitelman, is the highest level of security compliance — because lapses can get your business shut down.

Jack Teitelman Jack Teitelman

Cannabis businesses shouldn’t “cheap out” on security cameras or try to hide them, he said, as everyone should know they’re being recorded at all times.

“In the cannabis world, specifically in most states, your video is chain of custody,” Teitelman said. “So, it’s not just for external threats but for internal.”

Insiders say businesses in states where legalization has occurred typically need to record every location where their products are handled from seed to sale — 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days per year — and then maintain terabytes of security footage for three to six months, depending on the jurisdiction.

“It’s a massive amount of data and servers,” Teitelman said. “It’s like having a server farm.”

And if a camera goes out for 30 minutes, Teitelman said, an owner needs to contact the state immediately. Failure to promptly report an outage can get a facility shut down when the next state inspector comes to visit, he said.

Personnel, according to Julio Valentin, a former police officer and the owner of Greenleaf dispensary in Montclair, is another area that needs to be stringently vetted.

“The first thing you have to worry about is who you hire,” he said. “You need to go through a vetting process, a background check. Once you hire them, then you have to train them in security. To be observant about who is approaching you. To be aware of your surroundings.”

That’s in addition to making the facility itself secure through cameras, motion sensors, alarms, panic buttons, one-way security glass and secured locations for the crop and money.

Teitelman noted that many of the features that exist at a CVS or a bank will be needed in a cannabis dispensary — CCTVs, single entry/exit point, biometrics, GPS tracking of people and products.

And in the event employees divert or attempt to divert product, Teitelman said, businesses need to take more substantial action than having them sign agreements never to work for them again — they need to prosecute. It will demonstrate to the state that the business is taking its responsibility seriously, he said.

Other methods for preventing diversion include separating the duties of personnel — so no single person is in charge of the crop and the money — and to assign barcodes to crops so that each plant can be accounted for throughout the grow cycle.

“We run into that in the healthcare industry,” Teitelman said. “The person who’s ordering is not the person who should be receiving the inventory at the same time. That’s just totally ripe for diversion.”

And when it’s time for a customer to come in, dispensaries should use either a single entry and exit point, or have customers move from the entrance through the retail location while engaging one-on-one with a budtender before they’re lead to the exit.

“The only time when there’s more than one person with an employee is when the patient has a caregiver, usually if they’re elderly,” Valentin said.

—Justin Zaremba