Are you ready to ditch the hazy stereotypes and get educated on the diverse, ever-evolving world of cannabis? We're publishing our team's knowledge base and, taking you on a deep dive into the cannabis industry, one state at a time. Every Thursday, our
On May 1, 2023, OpenTHC, Inc. responded to a State of Georgia Access to Medical Cannabis Commission Request for Quotes. The purpose of the RFQ was to "establish a contract with the lowest priced responsive and responsible supplier who can clearly perform
On October 4, 2023, in coalition with BKN Management Solutions LLC, and CodeBuilder LLC: OpenTHC, Inc. responded to a Commonwealth of Massachusetts Cannabis Control Commission Request for Response (RFR) as the Prime contractor. The purpose of the RFR was
On April 6, 2023, OpenTHC, Inc. responded to a State of Vermont Cannabis Control Board Request for Proposals. The purpose of the RFP was to "implement software solutions for web portal, public facing database, reporting, document and case management,
Today, our team is releasing our questions directed to the Washington State Liquor and Cannabis Board's Request for Information WSLCB RFI K1873 "Cannabis Traceability", issued July 10, 2023. We formulated these questions based on our team's
Today, our team is releasing our response to the State of Massachusetts’ Request for Information: "Cannabis Application and Database Seed-to-Sale System", issued on December 13, 2021. We feel that we made a solid case to the State, however, we could
Today, our team is releasing our response to the State of Vermont’s Request for Information: “Adult-Use Cannabis Application Portal and Database System”, issued on October 05, 2021. We feel that we presented ourselves well to the State. However,
Deli Style cannabis is dead. Well, maybe not yet but it's dying. ## Deli Style? Back in the day folk bought loose cannabis in baggies. There were these medical dispensaries, which had large containers of cannabis which would build-a-bag on demand. They
It's not getting much better. The LCB has active messages about delays in processing and asking providers to hold of on uploads so they have time to process the backlog. The longer we wait to upload, the more we'll have to upload. ## 0800h Upload
CCRS is not fully operational. This page will be actively updated today. ## 0700h Current Status The required Variety uploads from launch (yesterday) have still not processed. Manifest files from yesterday have not processed. The *Contingency Manifest*
No surprise here but this launch did not go well. ## 0600h Contingency Manifest Early in the morning of this launch it was observed that the CCRS page had been updated to include new file called "[Contingency Manifest Form
In about six calendar days the Washington State Liquor and Cannabis Board will launch an update CCRS platform. The notable changes in this update are two fold: * The Product Category and Type information has been scrambled. * A tedious web-form process
## TL;DR **Haha, we don't know!** CCRS is a closed-source system. Without visibility into the components that make up CCRS, we can not analyze why they work the way that they do. OpenTHC's only recourse is to observe and report the behavior to identify
One of the needs of cannabis software is an interface to various back-end service platforms such as compliance reporting engines (CRE). In Washington the system is called (CCRS)[/blog/tags/ccrs]. It's a very simiplistic CSV upload based system, attempting
## TL;DR CCRS is awesome because the State actually owns the technology solution. CCRS is a failure because the technology performs very poorly. The Cannabis Compliance Reporting System (CCRS) in Washington State is a state-built system to upload Comma
In the Cannabis space, many (most) of the businesses in the USA are using some Government run technology platform such as BioTrack or Metrc. One of the benefits of these systems is that data can be magically shipped from one license to another. This makes
With the launch of the CCRS platform on December 6th also comes a web-form for licensees to fill out at https://lcb.wa.gov/manifest. Due to the tedious nature of this web-form many vendors had automated this process. And then the LCB told us that is not
**Background:** The [WSLCB](https://lcb.wa.gov/) has moved away from [Akerna/MJ Freeway/Leafdata](https://leafdatasystems.com/) to a CSV based upload only method called CCRS. It's a move widely viewed as "terrible" by the industry; and in typical LCB
Yesterday the LCB announced the removal of Akerna/LeafData as a central, real-time, reporting tool for cannabis. It will be replaced by CSV file uploads. Just gonna riff on some first impressions here... ## Nomenclature It's odd that with this process
Webhooks are big deal and are used by literally thousands of companies for communicating between systems. Since OpenTHC is web-enabled software that communicates with external systems we also have to do webhooks. Incoming and outgoing webhooks. One nice
The WSLCB announced on 2021-08-27 that they would be moving away from LeafData to their own agency designed and built custom system called Cannabis Central Reporting System or "CCRS". The announcement included these claims as logical reasons for this
On July 12th, 2021 the LeafData system in Washington suffered a severe outage. The system was offline for fourteen (14) hours. Times are given in UTC, followed by (local) which is *America/Los_Angeles* ## A Redis Blip At 2021-07-12 05:59:56
This is the SECOND issue with LeafData License Scramble. The LeafData system makes identifiers for *all* items in the system by constructing them from the License Code and a serial number. > WAJ425xxx.INQNFHM That seems OK, I guess. But what happens
This frustrating issue continues to haunt the Akerna / LeafData system in Washington. The reuse of their primary identifiers `global_id` for modified license **codes**. By reusing their Primary Keys for what are functionally new licenses in the system is
# Blockers: Cannot Trasnfers Type X from A to B Was Schedule for Version 1.40; which has been held back by LCB because they do not have conficence in their Vendor to deploy without making the problems
When B2B Sales are filed with the State reporting system, the receiving party must connect to the system to view the incoming details and accept the material. There is an observed lag-time between status changes that frustrates licensees. This issues is
Somehow, in some cases, the LeafData system changes, or permits to change inventory quantity to a negative value. Naturally, one cannot have a negative quantity of physical goods. Some times the system blocks this effect, many times it does not. Other
Repeated guidance by Washington State LCB reduces the ability of licensees to keep their reporting data accurate and makes it easier to game the system. Data visibility and reporting ability are reduced leading to increased burden on licensees and
The LeafData (aka: Akerna, MJ Platform, MJ Freeway) platform in Washington is leaking B2B sales data. In this scenario a B2B sale from *LicenseA* to *LicenseB* has become visible to *LicenseC* who is completely unrelated to either *A* or *B* We sent a
In many states[0] that have regulated cannabis those businesses have been deemed critical or essential and are allowed to remain open. Sometimes there is a claim that it's because people need to get their medicine. Our theory is that is just due to the
Why are my sales numbers in System-X not the same as in our Track-and-Trace software? This question continues to pop up for our clients and I'm sure others. * Why is my revenue report so crazy? * Why does 502data show the wrong numbers? * Why does Top
Maine is progressing towards their regulated **Adult Recreational** and **Medical** cannabis track-and-trace program. The [OMP](https://www.maine.gov/dafs/omp/) will be the agency regulating this environment. The state has selected
The Akeran/LeafData system in Washington is full of phantom waste materials. Literally, millions of bogus, stuck, in-accurate records. There is a bug that's been open for ages in LeafData (ES-4514) where new Inventory Lots are created on *Plant
Both Cannabis and Hemp are in a semi-regulated grey area across the globe. Due to the vast and varied legal issues surrounding these products many channels of advertising are off-limits. However, w/o being too blatant it's possible to ensure your brand is
A flaw in LeafData is scrambling API keys for users on a daily basis - and has been for over four weeks. Every time a user would like to use LeafData, or to use their third-party software connection, they must reset their API key. For many this adds an
In the Cannabis industry, across more than a dozen states, three primary service providers, hundreds of secondary providers and thousands of cannabis businesses we all deals with **Products**. And sadly, we all do it slightly differently. Today we are
One of the difficult things when building software for the cannabis space is the lack of standards. This is very visible across the laboratory space. Each of the software vendors (BioTrack, Akerna/MJPlaform/LeafData, METRC) has their own way of
Even though we thought we were done with all the issues of LeafData 1.37.5, it's not true! Over the weekend in Washington at least 75 licensees had their identifiers change in the system. Some of them lost access to MJF/LD, some still don't have access a
It's getting confusing now, but let's back-track one step first. LeafData is the software system built for Washington by MJ Freeway -- who now calls themselves Akerna. It's the same actors, with the same problems -- on their third or fourth name (don't
Attempted to document as well as possible. Most of us are small shops, don't have BigCo like resources to fight-fires, take dilligent notes, participate in meetings and run communications. This post-mortem is also very brief -- as there are still
This is perhaps one of the funniest bugs we've found in LeafData. ## What is a Batch These things called a *Batch* are a component of LeafData. Batches are logical data-containers for Plants and Inventory Lots. In some cases the Batch also attempts to
Ever wonder how the BigGuys do it? How can major retailers like QFC receive truckloads of inventory with only a few quick scans? **Standards**. Manufacturers and distributors like Kroger, P&G and Unilever recognize that standardization throughout the
The pending release of LeafData v1.37.5 in Washington is about like their previous releases. It's late, it's still got bugs and the Washington State government is still wasting money on a system that is missing critical functionality. Let's look at
The State of Missouri started only a few weeks ago, is already having the lawsuits drop. The rollout process here [started back in
On March 26th, 2019 LeafData suffered yet another major data-access/security issue. Retail class licensees were able to modify records of inventory from the supply-side licensee they purchased materials from. This issue became known as LW4821. ##
.figure { border: 1px #c0c0c0 solid; display: flex; flex-flow: column; padding: 0.5em; max-width: 240px; margin: auto; } ## Washington The LCB provides a central list for resources here: https://lcb.wa.gov/laws/labeling-resources and the law is
Having a tight integration with your scale is an important component of your cannabis business process. For both harvesting and packaging connecting the scales directly to the software increases accuracy and efficiency. Larger scales on harvesting allows
Today (Thanksgiving) one of our applications [WeedTraQR](https://weedtraqr.com/) was negatively impacted by some configuration issues in CloudFlare. Starting on the evening of the 21st some of our requests into the MJ Freeway system in Washington State
ULID is a method for generating numbers, they are large numbers -- 128bits. And this is the cool part: Any system can generate these numbers themselves and they will never conflict[0] This removes the dependency on the State for these silly numbers. Seco
The Raspberry Pi, with is large set of GPIO options is a great platform to build environmental monitoring and control hardware. An hundreds sensors, controls and scores of existing software libraries greatly simplify the process of building your own. We've
Two months into the operation of the MJ Freeway / LeafData software in Washington State and we're still seeing epic data integrity failures. This is the system that failed to launch on Nov 1st 2017, missed the second launch attempt on Jan 1st 2018 and has
The LeafData API has a pretty serious issue. A request indicates success however, the operation is a failure. This is on top of the gateway-timeout and other service availablity issues they had. ## The Request and Response POST /plants/update { "plan
Yet another failure by MJ Freeway / LeafData in their endavour in Washington. It appears that on March 25th, at 6:45 AM UTC (about 22:45 Seattle Time) there was an update deployed to the LeafData system. This time, they've mangled the date formats so
Today the WSLCB and MJ FailWhale/LeakData have once again demonstrated their incompetence and negligence. Mary Mueller, the CIO of the LCB sent this out today (we received at 18:31 Pacific Time) > Good evening, gang, > I know that we were hoping to get
We could have titled this "LeafData Migration Issue #421" but, it's bigger than just their failure of a roll-out in Washington. regarding the label problems that we've had it since the migration to leave data now that we've switched over someone to the
The LCB (after may delays) finally decided to "launch" the LeafData platform. The first few days have been a epic failure. There are 100s of businesses that cannot even operate now. First, there was the disaster of the *Secure Access Washington* ("SAW")
For the last two weeks the cannabis industry in Washington State has been nearly shut down. The state deployed MJ Freeway/LeafData ("MJF/LD") on Feb 1st (it was delayed from Nov 1st, 2017) and it's been a dumpster-fire since then. The largest issue is
The MJ Freeway / LeafData system will be launching in Washington in a few days (Feb 1st). This is the system that failed to launch Nov 1st, and then failed again to launch on Jan 1st. Third time is the charm, right? ## State of the System What we have
Once again, MJ Freeway/Leaf Data Systems has failed to launch their platform for the State of Washington. Originally they had set a foolishly aggressive schedule of a November 1st, 2017 launch, which they failed. This was followed up by a second,
On Nov 1st the Washington State cannabis tracking infrastructure operated by the [WSLCB][1] went offline, rather abruptly. The WSLCB had issued a contingency plan the week before, however the plan was rough and kept changing day over day with
It was announced today that MJ Freeway, with about 10 days until go-live is not ready. The LCB has offered what they refer to as a “generous” offer to BioTrackTHC who has declined to extend their services. So, now we have a scenario where the
UPDATE: The Traceabiliity system will be offline until January 2nd!!! **Failure: “all critical tasks will not be complete by the end of our contract with the current vendor on Oct. 31, 2017”** The Washington State Cannabis tracking
Just to kind of bring everyone up to date on this one too, it doesn't look like the contract with BioTrack will be extended. The LCB has asked BioTrackTHC for an extension, WeedTraQR and other third party software providers have publicly (and privately)
It's now official, confirmed on multiple accounts and the contract negotiations are proceeding. The replacement for BioTrackTHC in Washington State will be MJ Freeway using their Leaf Data Systems product. MJ Freeway has until October 31st to get their
When it was discovered that BioTrackTHC was on the way out in Washington many of you heard WeedTraQR declare: “it'll get worse before it gets better”. Currently, there is some serious data control issues we're observing in the BioTrackTHC
Here is a pretty serious bug in the Washington State Traceabilty system that is powered by BioTrackTHC. In the object descriptors provided by the BioTrack API there is a field called 'sessiontime'. This value is populated with the time the object was
There is a huge bug in the BioTrackTHC API in Washington (and NM, HI, IL). We've raised this issue with both the WSLCB and with BioTrack and yet BioTrackTHC refuses to address the issue at all. Even worse, if you are affected by the bug BioTrackTHC
Through the Freedom of Information Act we are able to obtain database dumps from the Washington State BioTrack database. Here's a small anomaly we've noticed on this one. Keep in mind, this is a system that is supposed to guarantee unique identifiers for
Yet another data inconsistency in the BioTrackTHC system for Washington State. In this case we see the system indicate an Inventory Adjustment – but there is no corresponding record to the Inventory itself. Either the original Inventory records
Today we've observed some serious issues with the BioTrackTHC API in New Mexico. These issues clearly indicate their system is not tested or audited for integrity. If BioTrackTHC cannot tell the difference between New Mexico and Washington State how
BioTrackTHC abruptly changed their API On Saturday, May 28th with zero notice to any of the third party integrators in Washington State. The change this time created a new value for the LocationType field of the Vendor objects. The new value is '9'. BioT
Today BioTrackTHC+WSLCB released another update to the API; again with zero advance notice for third party integrators. At the end of Friday an announcement was provided which details the changes. This leaves integrators (such as WeedTraQR) in the
There appears to be a bit of a discrepancy with how the BioTrackTHC system handles the QA results. Sometimes it shows the results are there and keeps the association with the parent ID. In other cases that relationship seems to be lost and one must know
For integrators in Washington (and other States) BioTrackTHC maintains the list of the vendors authorized in the system and their license numbers. This list is visible from the sync_vendor API call. However, a critical piece of data is kept out of this
Once again BioTrackTHC has modified their API with zero notice to the third party integrator. The API in question this time is `inventory_manifest_lookup`. This API takes only one parameter, a six digit license ID. Prior to May 14th, if one was to query
The BioTrackTHC system in Washington State mis-handles the room data. Once it's broken it is not possible to resolve this issue via the API, nor via the Web-UI. Let's take a look at the data. { "success": 1, "inventory_room": [ {
This industry has an enormous labeling problem. Nobody agrees on a format, nobody agrees on a layout, nobody agrees on required data, nobody agrees on digital-imaging. How the heck is this industry supposed to grow rapidly, while this heavy weight of
Here is documentation about yet another data error we've found in the Washington State Marijuana Traceability system that is operated by BioTrackTHC A client, who shall remain nameless, brought to our attention that a specific product name was being
Since WeedTraQR is directly involved in the regulated marijuana business in Washington State we're able to see first-hand some of the technical issues. One issue that has cropped up recently, affecting two of the last 64 transport manifests our customers
In Washington all marijuana producers and processors are required to report details about their business to the State. Some of this data includes weights. Washington State has, effectively, zero control or accuracy with the weights recorded in this
In the Marijuana Tracking (aka “Traceability”) world there is a need to keep track of all the waste. In the Washington system this Waste becomes an Inventory item which can then be renamed properly, moved into a different room and then
Any traceability/tracking system requires some type of labeling or identifiers to be attached on or around the items in question. These can be Barcodes, Stickers, NFC, RFID or any number of other options for tagging physical objects. In Washington State
The WSLCB has recently published the data from their “traceability” system. What a mess. The data is provided via Box: https://lcb.app.box.com/s/s568feiing1116f132zo1cjodoi24mm5 If you download this data be aware that there is no mapping
OpenTHC is building hardware and software technology for the future of horticulture computing. Many times these processes are referred to as Seed-to-Sale or Track-and-Trace. And for high value crops, technology can offer more than simple regulatory
The design of the Inventory Transfer Manifest system by the State of Washington is causing massive headaches for the Producers, Processor and Retailers here. The core of the problem is the lack of flexibility in the system. The root cause is either in
**Tracking Recreational Marijuana Inventory from Seed to Sale** is very close to being a real situation in multiple states, it's four as of this writing and many more are talking about relaxing their laws around medical use and even starting
In Washington State, we've got three markets for buying marijuana. The dark-market (DMJ), medical (MMJ) and recreational (RMJ). This is causing some havoc in the space for many of the participants. For the dark-market side; where the costs to the
This post is targeted to all you technical folks out there who ever tried to use the BioTrackTHC APIs in Washington State. As you've likely noticed this API is a poor implementation. Here are some details of what makes it so crappy. ## Not a REST style M
For the API that Washington State had BioTrackTHC build they have not provided any documentation on the error codes provided by this API. Most API Providers (read: all others) provide some type of documentation on what kind of error codes could be
In WA, our State & Liquor Control Board (LCB) have created an awesome advancement in the system of Public Government data interaction. The Traceability API. This is a massive improvement over existing methods that business have with communicating
The Washington State Liquor Control Board (WSLCB) just announced they are going to regularly release information about compliance enforcement and also publish revenue statistics from licensees in the I502 legal cannabis industry. This is an
In Washington the Liquor Control Board (LCB) has taken control of the budding Marijuana business. Our Producers, Processors and Retailers – all of them must provide a crazy amount of operational details to the State for compliance reporting.