Victoria Cvitanovic, Of Counsel for Rudick Law Group – Interview Series

While former prosecutors routinely branch into various fields of law—most notably criminal defense—transitioning from the state prosecutor’s office to representing cannabis and psychedelic companies might seem like an unusual trajectory. Yet, it is more common than one might expect. Firsthand, positive experience with the therapeutic and commercial potential of these substances can significantly deepen an attorney’s understanding of the space, making for particularly effective legal counsel.

For a closer look at cannabis regulations at both the state and federal levels, as well as evolving psychedelic laws, mycannabis.com spoke with Victoria Cvitanovic, Of Counsel at Rudick Law Group.

What fields of law did you mainly study while attending the Paul M Hebert Law Center? What law school courses proved to be the most useful?

The Law Center was unique in that we learned civil and common law to prepare us for both Louisiana’s civil legal system and national work. I took a variety of basic legal classes like contracts and criminal law, advocacy-based classes like appellate law, and practical experience classes like the Louisiana Supreme Court clinic. I also spent a lot of my time working outside of school.

I find myself using a lot of what I learned in contracts, sales, negotiable instruments, and all the classes that touched on healthcare. While my practice areas—psychedelics, cannabis, cybersecurity, data privacy, and AI governance—are unique, the fundamentals remain useful.

What types of cases did you handle as a state prosecutor for the State of Louisiana? Were there some types that were more common than others?

I handled a variety of matters, including drug cases, violent crimes, complex crimes, and juvenile matters. While some truly awful random acts showed up in cases, most commonly, cases involved people with pre-existing health, economic, or societal problems. I grew to believe that understanding the gaps in our healthcare, monetary, and technical systems was essential to preventing crime.

How did your role as state prosecutor make you witness firsthand the many issues regarding the criminal justice system?

You cannot sit across from someone and tell a judge that they deserve to be in jail without thinking about them. I thought about how they got there, why this situation happened in the first place, and what I could do about it. Ultimately, I wasn’t satisfied with the answer. I saw cases where a child was paralyzed by another child. I saw cases where children were killed by other children. I saw kidnapping, rape, and homicide cases, and, over and over, I saw a system that focused on punishing that conduct instead of preventing it. Nothing prepared me to answer when a mother asked why her child wasn’t able to walk anymore, or when a husband asked why he had to bury his wife. No amount of punishment can fix that. I saw cases get “won” while victims and their families were left in agony. If that’s the kind of victory the system delivers, we have to do better.

From your experience, how did diversion programs, addiction treatment options, and hybrid sentencing options help reduce recidivism and the other unfortunately common criminal justice issues? Especially with the Juvenile Division, how effective were those programs?

People can’t get better without resources other than those they had when they got sick. Diversion and addiction treatment can provide the resources necessary to avoid the circumstances that lead to criminal behavior in the first place. I saw many people take advantage of being given access to another way of being, embrace the opportunity to heal trauma, and move forward without the baggage that caused the problem. Children especially deserve the opportunity to change. If you aren’t the person you were when you were 16, you can understand that children are still forming an identity. That identity can be shaped by lack of resources or supported by access to resources. Often, in juvenile justice, such programs are the difference between a healthy adulthood and a very hard, lonely one.

When it comes to your duties as an attorney, what were the biggest differences between serving as a state prosecutor and representing large technology companies? What are the largest changes in general between criminal law and business law?

Instead of simply applying the law, I now get to help clients consider how to create the world that they want to live in. Ethical technology and ethical criminal legal practice have much in common, but business law gets to look forward where criminal law is often simply reactionary.

Criminal law is fact-finding focused, whereas businesses are often creating their reality within a range of legal possibilities. It’s largely the difference between looking forward and reconstructing the past.

When did you first become involved in cannabis and psychedelics law? What professional and personal experiences led you to being a lawyer in those fields?

I started representing ketamine clinics, cannabis medicine doctors, and psychedelics providers after I injured my back. Psychedelic-assisted therapy helped me tremendously, and I wanted to bring together my work in criminal justice, healthcare, and technology to help others provide the very care that changed my life.

Based on your time with Rudick Law Group, what are the most common legal or regulatory issues that your cannabis industry clients face? How do you and the team at Rudick offer solutions to those complex issues?

Licensing, renewal, and compliance issues are often most common, followed by real estate, transactional, and healthcare law issues. We help clients by providing preventative legal strategizing, client education, operational connections, and access to a network of amazing clients. Our solutions focus on preparation and education over reaction.

On the natural psychedelic front, what are the biggest legal challenges facing further psychedelic research and decriminalization? What would it take for those legal obstacles to be overcome?

Schedule I is called a “black box” for a reason. Things go in and (usually) don’t come out. It will take tremendous sustained public advocacy to see widespread decriminalization, along with investment into both pharmaceutical developments and psychedelic tourism, wellness, and other non-medical systems. Psychedelics are medicine, but they aren’t just medicine. Normalization is a pre-requisite to decriminalization, and that doesn’t happen without widespread education outside of the medical system.

Moving forward, what are some effective ways that cannabis and psychedelic producers can put consumer wellbeing at the forefront of all their operations?

Producers need to recognize that their obligation to patients isn’t just to produce high-quality plants, fungi, and other products. Consumer wellbeing means making sure consumer data isn’t used without consent, stolen by threat actors, or fed to an AI model without consumer awareness. Cannabis and psychedelics are still stigmatized, making consumer data particularly sensitive. If you aren’t secure and compliant with applicable data privacy laws, you aren’t respecting the consumer.

What do you envision will be the most widespread reforms that will occur for cannabis and psychedelics in the upcoming years? Are there certain federal or state reforms that advocates should be aware of?

I think we will see a number of states conduct small scale, limited pilot programs with ibogaine and other psychedelics. I think we may see a few psychedelic medications become FDA approved. I also think we may see quite a few states consider or implement medical psychedelic programs. Advocates should be considering that medicalization doesn’t release prisoners, pardon convicted people, or prevent the criminalization of people who use psychedelics. Decriminalization, de-prioritization, and legalization advocacy is just as important as medical advocacy.

Thank you for joining us, Victoria! For more information on Rudick Law Group, please visit its website.