Berner: Rapper, Entrepreneur, Social Justice Advocate To Participate In Benzinga Psychedelics Capital Conference

Berner, the Bay Area artist and entrepreneur recently expanded the VIBES Rolling papers brand empire with an apparel collection that matches the brand ethos, his music, weed, water and clothing empire.  

Berner, formerly Gilbert Anthony Milam, is often credited with the creation of some of the most popular marijuana strains in the U.S., including Girl Scout Cookies, Gelato, and Snowman.

In 2021, Berner also launched an innovative new product line that combines mushrooms – medicinal but not psychedelic, terpenes, CBD, CBG, and CBN for a non-psychoactive, uplifting experience. Dubbed Caps by Cookies, the line debuted with two iterations: Clarity, meant for daytime consumption, and Bed Head, intended for nighttime. “Our products are not psychotropic or psychedelic… yet,” Berner told Forbes. “We're going to ease into the market. Mushrooms are important to us because any kind of alternative medicine is important to us. That's what we focus on. A THC version will follow, and eventually maybe one with psychedelic mushrooms.”  

Serial Entrepreneur

Following the entrepreneurial tradition of his father, a first-generation Mexican immigrant who built a successful taco restaurant from the ground up and his mother who owned a headhunting business - Berner has been praised as a cannabis entrepreneur from legends like Bruce Linton, executive chairman of Gage Cannabis and former CEO of Canopy Growth Corp CGC who once said Berner's focus on genetics and cultivation was essential because consumers want new and better cannabis products. 

Meanwhile, Berner's Keeping It Real

“I’m super blessed because I know where I came from. It always sits in the back of my head,” Berner told Benzinga last year in an exclusive interview.

“I’ve been working non-stop since I was 13 years old,” he said. Berner went from weed dealer to budtender to ultra-famous rapper, investor and entrepreneur. 

Cookies is one of Berner’s most successful cannabis brands, along with Lemonnade and Exotics, which he co-founded with Ivan from Southern California’s famous cannabis collective, Jungle Boys.

Cookies' popularity and profitability are due in part to successful partnerships with the likes of rapper Rick Ross, cannabis companies Slang Worldwide Inc. SLGWF, Green Thumb Industries Inc. GTBIF, Gage Growth Corp. GAEGF and accessories supplier Greenlane Holdings Inc. GNLN.

Cookies Worldwide

Cookies opened its first international retail store in Barcelona in 2020.

Then in August 2021, The Flowr Corporation FLWPF entered into a series of agreements with Cookies Creative Consulting and Promotions Inc, to cultivate and distribute Cookies products in Portugal.

Last December, Cookies signed a multi-year deal with Israel's InterCure INCR that would establish Cookies' stores and medical cannabis pharmacies in Austria and the UK in early 2022. 

In March, Pure Sunfarms Corp., a wholly-owned subsidiary of Village Farms International VFF, and its partner NOYA Cannabis launched Berner's Cookies concentrates in Canada.

Cookies U

Berner actively seeks to empower other minority entrepreneurs to pursue their dreams and succeed. One of his main objectives is to get OG cannabis cultivators and breeders out of the illicit market and into the legal market. 

To that end, Berner joined forces with former NBA star Chris Webber and cannabis investor Jason Wild to create Cookies U, a training program focused on providing resources and creating opportunities within the industry for communities and people who have been negatively impacted by the War on Drugs. 

The initiative is the result of a partnership between the Cookies Social Impact Program and the WebberWild Impact Fund. 

Cookies U is supporting Brooklyn’s historic Medgar Evers College (MEC) in becoming the first City University of New York (CUNY) to offer a cannabis minor degree program. 

“We are so proud of MEC for being a leader in this effort. We hope their bravery and hard work will blaze a trail for other institutions to follow. The work MEC is doing is very aligned with Cookies U, and we hope to partner with them on this meaningful initiative,” Berner said.

Berner will appear via recorded interview at the Benzinga Psychedelic Capital Conference to be held on April 19 at Miami Beach's Fountainbleau Hotel.

Click here for more information on the first-ever psychedelics conference of this kind.