Florida’s Fluent responds to Reddit whistleblowers

Cansortium Inc.’s (CSE: TIUM.U) (OTCQB: CNTMF) Fluent brand is facing fallout after an employee and others shared videos and images on social media allegedly showing poor growing conditions at its Tampa, Florida, cultivation facility, in addition to labor accusations.

A video, posted last week on Reddit’s r/FLMedicalTrees forum, appeared to show withering cannabis plants infested with aphids. The post quickly gained traction, bringing in more than 500 upvotes and nearly 300 comments.

“Ma’am this is an aphid farm, we feed our aphids live cannabis to keep them happy healthy and thriving!” the self-identified employee who uses the handle “Old_Length4214” wrote sarcastically in the comments section.

In response, Fluent CEO Robert Beasley confirmed that the video came from the company’s facility, but noted said there are quality control measures to address them.

“As preventing pests and pathogens entirely is not possible, we rely on our quality control program to catch these issues and eliminate them before they move on to the next stage of processing,” Beasley said in an email to Green Market Report on Tuesday.

Beasley outlined a multistep quality assurance process, including daily plant inspections, maintenance trimming and pre-harvest quality grading. He said that plants not meeting quality standards are removed or sent for extraction.

The CEO also addressed the challenges of growing cannabis in Florida’s climate.

“Cannabis does not like excess moisture in soil or in air, and Florida has both,” he explained, noting that these difficulties are factored into pricing and margins.

Another self-identified former employee, who said they worked at Fluent from October 2020 to May 2021, painted a wider picture.

Speaking on condition of anonymity, the former employee, who later worked in compliance for a cannabis testing lab, told GMR that these types of issues are problems for many operators in the state – but called out Fluent as one of the worst offenders.

“Every cultivation has issues … I remember swabbing MedMen’s (before Sunburn bought it) air vents, I remember Curaleaf had a huge issue with mold, Trulieve kept failing for pesticides even though their grow is indoors.”

The Florida Department of Health, which oversees the state’s medical marijuana program, did not respond to GMR’s requests for comment, but Beasley confirmed the agency conducted a routine quarterly inspection on Sept. 12.

“All Department inspections of medical marijuana treatment center facilities are unscheduled,” he said. That the inspection resulted in “one finding regarding waste logs, which the site team has corrected.”

While Beasley downplayed the issue to Green Market Report, the situation appears to have escalated internally. A self-described current Fluent employee, posting anonymously on Reddit as “smokechecklafleur,” described a tense work environment last Friday, two days after the original post.

“A large amount of my coworkers and myself included are considering leaving the company due to how bad things have gotten,” the employee wrote. They detailed new restrictions, including a ban on phones “whatsoever” at work and prohibitions on discussing the grow issues or a “random” visit from the state’s health department the day before.

“Morale is through the floor while management is scrambling to do damage control,” the employee added, “and we’ve been threatened with being terminated every day since the first post for more reasons than I can remember.”

The user also reported that four people had been terminated within an hour of their post.

“These are not new but rather an existing policy that was not being strictly enforced,” Beasley said about allegations that management is trying to stem information flow in response to the increased scrutiny.

He added, “The rationale is that it allows for greater efficiency and safety in the workplace environment. It also prevents incidents such as this where a former employee took pictures of plants being trimmed or disposed of and are claiming they represent the final product output.”

Regarding personnel changes, Beasley said, “We are not able to disclose the details of employment matters, however, we can confirm that if an individual violates Company policy by posting misleading and derogatory information about the Company online, it can lead to termination.”

The CEO said management’s planning a town hall meeting to discuss working conditions “in a professional and respectful setting.”