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After over 15 years as a police officer, Ralph Miller took up a new job. In some ways, it’s familiar work: driving around with a partner and staying alert for potential threats.
But his new ride is an unmarked van filled with cannabis.
Every week Miller pulls up to a cultivator and loads up the van with prescription-grade containers of medical marijuana to take to dispensaries across Pennsylvania. He works for Talaria, the largest cannabis transporter in the state, which hires former law enforcement to haul around $1.5 billion in product a year.
“It’s not that big of a transition,” said Miller, a former police officer for Baldwin Borough in Allegheny County. “A lot of the skill sets that police officers have transition very, very well into this industry because the bottom line is, as a police officer, it’s service oriented.”
Cannabis transportation is a relatively new industry for Pennsylvania, carved out of regulations signed into law by former Gov. Tom Wolf when medical marijuana was legalized in 2016.
And as Gov. Josh Shapiro pushes for recreational legalization of cannabis to bring in more funds for the state budget, companies transporting cannabis stand to gain from the expansion of the industry.
Dispensaries often opt to use a transportation company instead of an in-house team to ensure a higher level of security. Talaria drivers are armed and every one of their vans is equipped with cameras linked to a control room.
Because cannabis is legal in some states and not others, it has an “outsized value to criminals,” said Aaron Smith, co-founder and CEO of the National Cannabis Industry Association, a trade association for the industry.
The nature of the work provides a career opportunity for former law enforcement and veterans. Talaria CEO Ari Raptis estimates that the company will employ about 300 retired law enforcement officers by the end of the year in its multistate operation.
Titanium Security & Surveillance, a security and consulting firm that also transports cannabis in Pennsylvania, prioritizes hiring former law enforcement and military, who make up around half of the regular roster of 10 to 15 drivers.
“They understand being on the road for long hours, they understand the need to meet your time constraints, they understand the abilities to complete this task,” said Tyrone Tate, CEO of Titanium Security & Surveillance.
Since cannabis is regulated by state, transportation must stay within state lines. Because of Pennsylvania’s size, drivers might need to go from Pittsburgh to Philadelphia and back in a single day. Miller works over 30 hours in his three-day work week.
Each state sets its own rules on how transportation is conducted. Pennsylvania requires two drivers to be in every vehicle, limits delivery hours from 7 a.m. to 9 p.m., and requires products be stored in a secure lockbox.
Often, that means companies only operate within one state to simplify compliance, but exceptions like Talaria, which operates in 30 states, exist.
Talaria started in Pennsylvania shortly after the commonwealth's legalization of medical marijuana.
Right now, there are a limited number of cultivators and dispensaries companies like Talaria can service. The state only licenses 50 dispensaries with up to three locations each and 25 growers. That limited number of businesses reaches a limited number of customers eligible to buy medical marijuana.
“We’re talking a very small percentage of consumers,” Smith said. “You go adult-use, then you’ve now expanded the regulated market to anyone over 21, which could be an eight- or 10-fold increase.”
Raptis sees the future of cannabis regulation to include space for home deliveries, something Talaria does in Utah with hopes to expand to other states. In Pennsylvania, only caregivers can deliver cannabis to their patients.
Shapiro’s budget proposes legalization by July 1 and regulated sale beginning in 2026, which he estimates will bring in $1.3 billion in the first five years.
If lawmakers heed Shapiro’s call, Pennsylvania would be the 25th state to legalize recreational marijuana, six of which directly border the commonwealth. The only neighboring holdout, West Virginia, has legalized medical marijuana.
