Representative-At-Large
Treasurer

John Copeland has 27 years of experience in various areas of taxation including high-tech, coal, real estate, investment, franchising, retail, manufacturing, service professions, nonprofit, and small construction contractors.

Responsibilities include all areas of tax compliance for corporate, partnership, nonprofit, fiduciary, and individual tax returns, including multi-state tax compliance and federal multi-state tax research.

John chose a career path in exit planning because of his passion for helping people. He feels that one of the best ways to do so in this business is to assist his clients in transitioning their businesses — whether it’s a sale to an outside party or a family transition.

Many times, John has worked with business owners for more than a decade. We become their trusted business advisors, and often know their post-business wishes as well as anyone.

John believes one of our best opportunities to really help a business owner is in the exit planning process. The BVA team, along with our peers at Blue & Co., LLC, bring myriad skills to the table — tax planning, trust and estate planning, valuation, and investment advisory services.

When John is not busy tending to the success and well-being of his clients, he enjoys spending time with his wife, Tammy, and kids Katie, Evan, and John Mason. He also has a scruffy mutt named George. John’s hobbies outside of work include traveling and being a stellar golfer.

Representative-at-Large
Director

Christopher Ware has a careered experience built on developing multi-latitude life science testing labs across the U.S. and International markets – spanning the nutraceutical, natural products, and regulatory drug testing industries. Prior to moving into the cannabis industry, he consolidated the fractional network of equine anti-doping labs under a national uniform program and an industry specific accreditation. In 2019, Chris founded KCA Labs, serving as a third-party analytical chemistry lab focused on advancing the science of hemp, cannabis and beyond – an effort that now serves clients that span across 49 states and 30 countries. KCA Labs is ISO 17025 Accredited, licensed by numerous Federal and State agencies including DEA, USDA, KDA, and holds International licensure with ANVISA in Brazil and the Ministry of Health in Japan. More recently KCA Labs was awarded the first medical cannabis license by the state of Kentucky. In addition to the US Hemp Authority, Chris also serves on the Board of Directors for the National HIA and the Kentucky Hemp Association.

Representative-At Large
Director

Elijah Haahr is the host of the top-rated afternoon political talk show in Southwest Missouri. He formerly served as Missouri’s Speaker of the House from 2018-2021. He is also an attorney licensed in Missouri and Oklahoma, the owner of 72 Consulting, and the Co-Owner of Red State Sign company.

Representative-At-Large
President

The founder and CEO of High Spirits Beverages, Fontes is a dynamic individual with a rich history of innovation and leadership in the cannabis industry and beyond. His entrepreneurial journey spans several successful ventures, including Trojan Horse Cannabis, Project Hemp Flower, and Hemp Exchange, all of which played pivotal roles in shaping the U.S. hemp industry. Fontes’ visionary leadership led to the development of the industry’s first hemp-derived delta-9 THC products, and the launch of Trojan Horse Cannabis and High Spirits Beverages.

In 2024, the US Hemp Authority launched a new certification program for adult cannabinoids – specifically delta-8 and delta-9 THC products that have the potential to impair the consumer.  The program was launched to meet the growing public demand for the product in a retail climate with no federal regulation. For the first time, adult hemp product consumers, retailers and policymakers will have the confidence to know that products boasting USHA’s new adult seal meet quality control standards, in contrast to the bad actors in the industry.

Representative of Hemp Farming Organization
Director

Representative of Industry Related Trade Organization
Director

Annie Rouse was nominated to serve on the Authority Board by the Hemp Industries Association, for which she serves as Secretary and Director. Annie has been at the forefront of the US hemp industry since 2009 with experience across the three industry sectors: grain, fiber and cannabinoids from farm to finished product. In 2013 she received a US Fulbright Scholarship to study Canada’s hemp supply chain. Annie is a serial entrepreneur, with start-ups across the CBD sector including Overcome (formerly Nature’s Hemp Oil), a US Hemp Authority Certified lifestyle CBD brand as well as Anavii Market, an e-commerce retailer for verified CBD. In 2019 she co-founded OP Innovates, a hemp formulations company dedicated to delivering the world’s most effective cannabinoids.

Annie is a thought-leader on the theories behind cannabis prohibition, which she has unfolded through years of extensive archival research and published within her podcast series, Anslinger: The untold cannabis conspiracy – an interview-narration style podcast.

Annie also serves the industry in various capacities including as President and Founder of Friends of Hemp, an industry non profit, as well as serving as an Executive Committee Board Member to the Hemp Industries Association where she assists as ASTM liaison to the D37 Cannabis Committee, State Chapter Task Force Co-Chair and US Hemp Roundtable co-liaison.

Beyond start-ups, research and organizational work, Annie is a published author and an experienced public speaker on hemp, with her most renowned engagements on the Today Show, at Natural Products Expo East & West and DEFCON.

Annie received her BS in Economics and holds a Masters in International Environmental Policy and an MBA. To explore more about Annie and her journey visit her blog, Think Hempy Thoughts.

Representative of Retail Industry
Director

Representative-at-Large
Director

Representative of Law Enforcement
Secretary

Richard A. Badaracco, Secretary of the U.S. Hemp Authority, is an accomplished law enforcement professional with nearly four decades of service in public safety and law enforcement, and nearly two decades of executive, command and supervisory experience. Among his varied roles and responsibilities, Rich served as an Assistant Special Agent in Charge for the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) in Detroit and Louisville, the Staff Coordinator at DEA Headquarters in Washington DC, the Interim Chief of Police for the Corpus Christi Police Department, the Commissioner of the Department of Criminal Investigations for Kentucky’s Attorney General, and the Executive Director of Appalachia High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area.

Representative of Industry Related Trade Organization
Director

Luis Vega is the CEO and Founder of Wepa Farms, a growing venture dedicated to quality American Hemp farming in Connecticut.

Vega is positioned to empower hundreds of farmers, and thousands of families interested in consuming hemp for wellness purposes and beyond. In addition to growing and processing high-quality hemp, Vega is an active member of the advocacy group, CURE CT aswell as Minority Cannabis Business Association and Minorities 4 Medical Marijuana, He is a founding member of the CT Cannabis Consultants, which works to establish a thriving industry entrepreneurs in the United States and the CT Cannabis Conference, an event dedicated to creating connections and encouraging social networking within the industry.

Vega’s entrepreneurial success extends back to 2003, ranging from the Hospitality and Restaurant industries to content creation, leading eventually to cannabis education for patients, caregivers and entrepreneurs alike. He is the Co-Founder of CannaCreate, a high-end meal and experience for adults interested in creating unique culinary art while tastefully experiencing cannabis too.

At the root of Vega’s business success is his Puerto Rican heritage and entrepreneurial drive. He is a true advocate for people of color, especially encouraging people from Latin America and those who identify as Hispanic, to get involved in ownership positions in the rapidly growing cannabis and hemp market.  Luis was the only Latino to receive an industrial hemp license in Connecticut. Founder of Wepa! Hemp Farms, producing thousands of pounds of hemp flower for CBD products and stalk for construction, he is also co-host of Cannabis Corner: New Haven on 103.5 FMWNHH Community Radio. He is a member of Lambda Alpha Upsilon Fraternity, Inc. Alumni of University of New Haven and a member of Cosmopolitan Lodge, New Haven CT.

Representative-at-Large
Director

Jena Murray is the Director of Quality and Regulatory Affairs at Medterra. She is an experienced Quality and Regulatory Affairs professional with a demonstrated history of working in the dietary supplement, CBD, and pharmaceutical industries.

Leadership of the Kentucky Hemp Industry Coalition (KHIC) determined that it was essential to develop a self-regulation organization (SRO) for the industry. Not only was it important for any agricultural commodity to promote high standards, best practices and self-regulation; hemp had a particular burden because of its association with the more controversial marijuana. For policymakers to support full legalization, and for bureaucrats to reject over-regulation, an SRO was a necessary
step.

The KHIC hired David Bossman – a veteran of SROs in the agricultural space with no financial ties to the hemp industry – to develop a process to establish and credential such an organization. Bossman held dozens of conversations with industry leaders – from companies representing the crop from seed to sale, and from organizations that represented grassroots activists who had been advocating for legalization for decades. He also held in-person meetings at the HIA conventions in Denver and Lexington, where dozens of industry leaders participated.

In early 2017, KHIC reconstituted into the US Hemp Roundtable, and it established a formal process to develop a Guidance Plan for hemp growth, cultivation and processing.

The U.S. Hemp Roundtable asked its members, which at that time included about 30 leading companies in the hemp industry, as well as all of its major grassroots organizations – HIA, NHA, AHPA and Vote Hemp – to send representatives to form a Technical Committee to develop, edit and refine the Guidance Plan. HIA and NHA’s representatives were especially involved in the details and nuances of these scientific and policy discussions. AHPA’s standards were employed for critical elements of the program. In-person meetings of the Technical Committee were held in Kentucky and Colorado, and more than two dozen organizations participated in those meetings.

In September 2017, David Bossman presented the first draft of the Guidance Plan at the HIA convention and provided HIA attendees with a timeline and process to complete the Guidance Plan.

In March 2018, the U.S. Hemp Roundtable released the first draft of Guidance Plan 1.0 and emailed more than 20,000 hemp industry leaders, stakeholders and activists, asking for their comments on the draft plan. The HIA and others published this public comment opportunity with a live link through social media channels, and the Guidance Plan was added as a clear link on the U.S. Hemp Roundtable site. The group also reached out to every hemp pilot program participant across the country for whom contact information was publicly available.

After widespread solicitation of requests for comment, the process managed to capture feedback from three critical groups: leaders in the fight to pass the 2018 Farm Bill (represented by U.S. Hemp Roundtable members), grassroots activists with long histories in hemp, and the people who were literally tilling the ground creating this new industry.

David Bossman personally reviewed all of this input, made revisions and improvements to the draft plan, and brought the comments and suggested changes to the attention of the Technical Committee. The Board of the U.S. Hemp Roundtable, which at that point included more than 50 companies and all of the hemp grassroots organizations, then voted to approve the updated plan.

The U.S. Hemp Roundtable released the final draft of Guidance Plan 1.0 in May 2018. Again, the Roundtable sent emails seeking comment to its growing distribution list (now 28,000+), and the HIA and others promoted comments through social media channels. Again, Bossman compiled the comments and used the feedback provided to bring a new draft to the Technical Committee for edits, securing further approval from the U.S. Roundtable Board.

Once the US Hemp Roundtable approved the final version of what is now titled the Guidance Procedures, it provided $200,000 for seed funding and handed off administration of the program to a newly created, fully independent organization: the US Hemp Authority. The Board of the U.S. Hemp Authority was originally constituted as:

• Marielle Weintraub, President, representing the laboratory industry
• Joy Beckerman, 1^st Vice President, representing HIA, an established grassroots organization in the space
• Graham Carlson, 2^nd Vice President, representing the U.S. Hemp Roundtable and the natural foods industry
• Jonathan Shell, Treasurer, a former State Representative, hemp farmer and Mitch McConnell’s campaign chair, representing political and policy leadership
• Richard Badaracco, Secretary, a former DEA agent, representing law enforcement
• Ron Conyea, elected to serve as a Director by the U.S. Hemp Farming Alliance to represent the interests of hemp farmers

The US Hemp Authority’s Board of Directors hired an independent certification body to ensure transparency and lead, without political or financial interference, a third-party auditing process.

On March 1, 2019, the Authority announced the first awardees of its Certification Seal to companies that met the stringent standards of Guidance Procedures 1.0 and successfully passed the third-party audit.

On March 1, the U.S. Hemp Authority® launched Guidance Procedures 2.0, for use in 2020, aimed at applying the lessons of the initial launch of the program and taking even greater input from stakeholders in the hemp industry on how to improve the program and its standards. This effort included in-person meetings in Anaheim with the natural foods industry and with the U.S. Hemp Farming Alliance, as well as a renewed online effort of seeking public comment.

After this initial public consultation, the draft Version 2.0 was prepared by the Technical Committee and released for public comment on July 25, and the comment period ended on September 15.

The U.S. Hemp Authority® received more than 2,000 comments from hemp industry stakeholders, consumers, and academia for additions and corrections to the Guidance Procedures and audit checklists.

On November 1, Guidance Procedures 2.0 was released, reflecting several significant policy changes made in response to the public comment. These included:

• Processors, manufacturers and brand owners were now responsible for complying with all relevant FDA regulations for foods, beverages, cosmetics and dietary supplements, to ensure that product safety is the highest priority.
• Genetically engineered hemp is prohibited from the program, and genetically engineered non-hemp ingredients must be identified on the product label.
• Product labeling must include the country of origin of the hemp biomass from which the product was derived.
• Synthetic and biosynthetic CBD and other synthetic and biosynthetic cannabinoids are prohibited from the program, as are cannabimimetic phytochemicals.
• The terms “broad spectrum,” “full spectrum” and “isolate” have been defined for use in labeling.

In December, the U.S. Hemp Authority partnered with FoodChain ID to be the exclusive certifying body for its Certification Program

In 2020 the US Hemp Authority set out to revise its Guidance Procedures version 2.0 (its certification standard) according to Terms of Referenceestablished by the Board of Directors The first round published for public comment in October, 2020, with the recommended revisions published for the public comment period for the second round concluding on December 31^st, 2020. In January 2021, the Technical Committee finalized version 3.0, which was then ratified by the Board of Directors.

Summary of Changes:

The changes from v2.0 to v3.0 are a clarification of the expectations intended by v2.0, with the added insight of another year of experience gained by the program. Operations certified in good standing to v2.0 will therefore find little in the way of new requirements. Changes are summarized as follows:

• An introductory section has been added to the Standard, to describe the intentions, objectives and scope of the program. The scope of certifiable products and operation types is explicitly and intentionally broad.

• The Glossary has been revised to remove terms no longer included in the rest of the text. Definitions have also been adjusted, most notably those of Broad Spectrum and Full Spectrum. The US Hemp Authority recognizes that definitions are a matter of significant stakeholder discourse and has endeavored to craft ones that balance the most current regulatory, industry, and consumer needs. These definitions may be revised in subsequent versions of the Standard as understanding among the sector evolves.

• Requirements around current good manufacturing practices (cGMPs) and government regulations relating thereto are now referenced in the Standard, but the explicit details of applicable CFR sections are not spelled out in the Standard. Rather, demonstration of any given operation’s adherence to applicable laws is required, but the means through which this may be demonstrated is given flexibility. Furthermore, the intended outcomes of all such cGMPs are covered in the clauses of the US Hemp Authority Standard; all certified operations must heed clauses relevant to their type of operation(s).

• Explicit analytical protocols have been specified for ingredients and products that are included in goods certified under the program.

• Rules around labeling of certified products have been updated to heed regulatory, industry, and consumer concerns related to content, formulation, and clarity of messaging (truth in labeling). The US Hemp Authority recognizes that government regulations around labeling are not yet consistent across all regulatory authorities and therefore has attempted to strike a balance between legal necessity, credibility to consumers along the stated intentions and objectives of the program, and the need to retain a certain amount of flexibility.

• Requirements around compliance and qualification of suppliers and their inputs to certified entities’ operations have been clarified, providing flexible options depending on the situation.

• Responsibilities of Brand Owners, especially but not only those who do not physically handle any products themselves, have been clarified.

• An annex has been added to the Standard, which describes the certification process.

Further inquiries about the Standard’s development process may be directed to info@ushempauthority.org.

In 2021, the U.S. Hemp Authority board of directors expanded to include additional industry experts- Dr. Guru Ramanathan and Dr. Andrea Wong. Dr. Ramanathan is a longtime expert in the dietary supplement industry and currently serves as President of Global Healthcare Innovation Advisory Services company, currently serving on Corporate and Advisory Board’s for established and early-stage companies in Global Food, Nutrition, Pharma, OTC, Digital Health and Primary Care Medicine industry sectors. Dr. Wong is Senior Vice President, Scientific and Regulatory Affairs at the Council for Responsible Nutrition (CRN), a leading trade association representing the dietary supplement and functional food industry. She leads CRN’s science and regulatory affairs department, responding to emerging regulatory issues, as well as advocating for science-based nutrition.