Gabe Perlow
Company: Pure Penn
Title: CEO
Age: 32
For the past 12 months, the editorial staff at Marijuana Venture has compiled a list of candidates for our third annual 40 Under 40 feature. This year, we narrowed our list down from hundreds of worthy candidates to come up with a cross-section of personalities across the U.S. and Canada, from salt-of-the-earth farmers to tech savants. All of them have unique stories, successes and ambitions and all represent the excitement and promise of the cannabis business. We feel honored to share their stories and look forward to watching them push forward in our ever-evolving industry.
Pure Penn is one of 12 licensed medical marijuana producers in Pennsylvania. It could also be a perfect two-word description for the company’s CEO, Gabe Perlow.
“As a lifelong Pennsylvanian, the passage of Act 16 in April 2016 was an opportunity to apply my skills in real estate, law and business to the Pennsylvania medical marijuana industry and bring much needed relief to patients,” Perlow says.
A Pittsburgher through and through, Perlow is a graduate of the University of Pittsburgh and Duquesne University School of Law, a member of the Association of Corporate Counsel and he’s on the board of directors for the Pittsburgh Downtown Community Development Corporation. With a resume like that, the next logical move for him was to bring cannabis to the good people of his hometown.
“For too long I had seen friends and family suffer from serious medical conditions and the prevalence of the opioid epidemic that I could no longer sit on the sidelines as a bystander,” Perlow says. “To effectuate change, one needs to take action, and this industry gave me that chance to bring change to the Commonwealth and relief to those I care about and those who I have come to care about through my association with this industry.”
Pure Penn achieved several milestones in 2017: the company in April established a partnership with Moxie to bring its medical marijuana products to the state, then it was licensed for cultivation on June 20, 2017 and its facility was deemed operational by the Pennsylvania Department of Health on Dec. 22. As those victories for the company begin to bear fruit in 2018, Perlow has already aligned the company to tackle its next venture.
“We see great potential in the hemp industry as the studies on CBD begin to show results,” Perlow says. “We have over 5 acres on which we can expand our facility. We are also closely watching the states surrounding Pennsylvania and Pennsylvania’s hemp program.”