Former Albany developer Mike Bragg makes radical career change

SILICON VALLEY, Calif. — When the bottom fell out of the Real Estate market during the Great Recession, circa 2008, developer Mike Bragg realized his 14 years in the industry weren’t enough to secure his family’s future.

So Bragg made about as extreme a move as a businessman can make.

With his wife Lisa, Bragg moved to California in 2009 and worked with Comcast for a period, all the while researching what many were calling the state’s newest recession-proof industry. Finally, around 2013, Bragg took the plunge and founded a pair of companies that have him actively involved along the cutting edge of the medical marijuana industry. Bragg, who describes himself as an “expert grower” and an “activist for the cannabis industry,” serves as director of greenhouse operations for his Evolve Therapeutics Inc. and CBD Pharms Cooperative.

Evolve Therapeutics is a biotech startup focused on establishing state licensed facilities for the manufacture of medical cannabis in select U.S. markets, while the CBD Pharms co-op researches and manufactures high-CBD cannabis strains for patients in the San Francisco Bay area. CBD (cannabidiol) is the chemical in marijuana that helps prevent pain without the “high” generally associated with the plant.

“When we came out here from Albany, I started studying the medical cannabis industry and meeting some of the market’s largest growers,” Bragg, a Westover High School graduate, said. “One thing led to another, and the more research I did, the more I realized the viability of the industry.

“The deeper I got into the research, the more I realized there was so much misinformation about cannabis out there. The conspiracy theories were amazing. One thing I did discover, though, was that the government had been growing marijuana for more than 20 years at the University of Mississippi and shipping it to patients all over the country to see what impact cannabis had on them. I had friends in Mississippi who told me a few students would go down to where the marijuana was growing with fishing poles, throw their lines over the fences surrounding the plants and reel in buds. I thought they were lying … turns out they weren’t.”

Despite a general perception that “legal pot growers” are raking in money hand over fist in states like California, Colorado and Washington, where marijuana growth and distribution are legal to specific degrees, Bragg said the poorly regulated medical cannabis industry in California is akin to the “wild, wild West” of days gone by.

“Because of a lack of regulation in California, the industry is just a mess,” Bragg, a champion wrestler at Westover, said. “Instead of registered growers selling their product to the clubs and co-ops that are allowed to dispense medical marijuana, pretty much anyone is selling. You have people growing in their backyards who are illegally selling product to co-ops.

“It’s gotten so bad, even the cartels are selling to the co-ops. There’s a big push for greater regulation in 2016.”

Bragg said his nonprofit cooperative is a “barely-break-even” startup as he controls every stage of the growing operation, from cloning to harvest. He’s encouraged that Silicon Valley venture capitalists have begun to get involved in the medical cannabis industry, saying such investment is a vital next step in the evolution of the industry.

“It takes a lot of money to build facilities needed for a successful operation,” Bragg said. “The challenge is to build an operation large enough to do this on a large scale. I think public-private partnerships will open the potential for huge economic development opportunities.”

Bragg was keenly interested in the Georgia Legislature’s passage of HB1, the so-called “Haleigh’s Hope Act,” named for 5-year-old Haleigh Cox. Haleigh and others like her who suffer from debilitating childhood diseases that are impacted positively by medical cannabis sparked Macon Republican House District 141 Representative Allen Peake to sponsor HB1.

Peake admitted in a phone conversation with The Albany Herald that he never expected to become known as the “Marijuana Legislator” in Georgia.

“Look, I’m a very conservative Republican, and until a little over a year ago I had never even seen a marijuana plant,” Peake said. “But when you meet a 4-year-old kid who’s having between 100 and 200 seizures a day, and you discover there’s something that can help her and others like her, you do what you can. When people questioned my motives (in sponsoring HB1), I just kept telling myself to consider what I’d do if this was my child.

“The turnaround — from ‘No way is this ever happening in Georgia’ to approval — in such a short period of time was really amazing. But you have to credit the families of these kids who told the stories of what their children were going through. It was an issue that needed addressing, and the legislators got it.”

The problem with HB1 — and it’s a problem legislators like Peake and producers like Bragg say must be addressed — is dispensing cannabis in Georgia.

“The challenge right now is getting (cannabis products) there,” Bragg said. “The state legalized possession and use by registered patients but not distribution. If I send some of my legal product to Georgia, I could be arrested for transporting a Schedule 1 drug across state lines.

“There is a strain of marijuana that has such low levels of THC (tetrahydrocannabinol, the element in marijuana that is responsible for most of the plant’s psychological effects), it is being classified as hemp. But the federal DEA has said that type of hemp would be classified as a Schedule 1 drug. Everyone’s waiting to see what will happen when someone ships the product for the first time.”

Peake said state leaders understand that manufacture and distribution are problems that must be addressed.

“Right now, individuals are immune from prosecution in Georgia for possession of medical marijuana,” the state legislator said. “Still, we have to get the product here. HB1 provides for a commission of stakeholders that will, we hope, create a very restrictive, very regulated infrastructure to address that issue.”

The commission authorized in the legislation, to be known as the Georgia Commission on Medical Cannabis, includes six permanent members: the state commissioner of Public health, the director of the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, the director of the Georgia Drugs and Narcotics Agency, the commissioner of Agriculture, the chair of the Georgia Composite Medical Board and the governor’s executive council.

Other members, who will be appointed by the governor, include two members of the Senate, two members of the House, a board-certified hematologist or oncologist, a board-certified neurologist, a board-certified gastroenterologist, a board-certified pharmacist, an attorney employed by the Prosecuting Attorneys’ Council of the State of Georgia or a prosecuting attorney, a sheriff and a chief of police.

Bragg said he knows from first-hand experience how effective cannabis oil can be in treating certain illnesses.

“My father-in-law had lung cancer, and after a lot of persuasion we convinced him to let us treat him with cannabis oil while he was doing chemotherapy,” Bragg said. “We had read that CBD inhibits cell growth of tumors/cancer cells and figured we’d give it a shot. After three chemo treatments, we began treating him with cannabis oil. The chemo and all the meds he took with it made him feel so sick that he initially said he was done with it after only three of his nine scheduled treatments. After using the oil he felt better, even cracking some jokes, had more energy and a better appetite. The next time the doctor took x-rays to look at the cancer, the tumors had shrunk.

“Every time the doctors checked his fluids and did blood tests prior to subsequent treatments, my father-in-law had anxiety, worried that they’d find marijuana in his system and arrest him. That’s one of the biggest problems with medical cannabis. For a lot of people who’ve always had ‘pot is bad’ drilled into them, they can’t get it through their mind that it can be a good thing.”

Still, Bragg and others in the nascent industry are encouraged that states like Georgia have begun to see the benefits of medical cannabis.

“I’ve got to admit, things moved much faster in Georgia than I thought they would,” he said. “You still have that ‘Roscoe P. Coltrane’ mentality of a lot of law enforcement people, but even the governor has softened his stance on cannabis.

“I’ve started talking with people at Georgia Tech and Clark Atlanta University about research possibilities, and we’ve set up a website (www.georgiacbdoil.com) that allows people in the state to sign up for updates on legislation in Georgia. I think medical cannabis will benefit a lot of people in our state, and it can be a huge economic development engine, too.”

Even the most conservative of state legislators agrees.

“Sure, people like Mike Bragg have some excellent economic development ideas for a closely regulated medical marijuana industry in our state,” Peake said. “There is a potential for all kinds of new jobs and a whole new source of income. But, for me, the primary reason I felt like we had to do this was to help sick kids.

“That, to me, was worth risking my political career.”