Episode 88 of Utah in the Weeds features Daniel Jones, a war veteran who uses Medical Cannabis for PTSD. Jones says cannabis has helped him retake control of his life.
We started this episode with a discussion of Jones’ decision to join the armed forces at age 18. He says he didn’t see a future in his home town of Rock Springs, Wyoming, so he decided to join up. [02:06]
Jones says he spent about 4.5 years in the service, and he went on tours in Kosovo and Iraq. Jones shared a few memories of his time in the service, including a close call with a land mine. [05:55]
Like many people, Jones’ first experiences with cannabis happened when he was a teenager. He says he didn’t use much cannabis then, but an experience with the VA made him want to revisit cannabis. Cannabis has helped Jones retake control of his life by helping with his anxiety, panic attacks, and other PTSD symptoms. [12:07]
Jones and our host, Tim Pickett, agree that some cannabis strains can worsen symptoms like anxiety. Jone says the cannabis strain “Blue Dream” made his anxiety worse, but “Blue Cheese” gives him the mellow, calm feeling he’s after. [15:25]
The conversation then shifted to Utah’s Medical Cannabis program and Proposition 2, the 2018 ballot initiative for Medical Cannabis. Jones, like many others, is disappointed that the state didn’t pass the proposition as it was originally written. [18:45]
Jones says he wanted to join Utah’s Medical Cannabis program as soon as he could. He says he contacted a company called Truu Med to get his card. Jones says the company misled him, and he ended up paying them thousands of dollars for unnecessary monthly appointments. [20:00]
Jones buys his Medical Cannabis products at Deseret Wellness in Provo. He uses some of the cannabis flower sold there, and he also finds their gelatinous cubes useful for sleep. [30:51]
We wrapped up this episode with a few more of Jones’ insights about the VA, the US Military, and his use of cannabis to replace alcohol and other drugs. [35:32]
Tim Pickett:
Welcome everybody out to Utah In The Weeds. This is episode 88 and I am your host, Tim Pickett. Today’s episode is a discussion with Daniel Mark Jones, a veteran. This is a heavy conversation in two regards. One, his tours… I’ll let you just listen to it. Kosovo and Iraq. This is serious trauma that these… They’re we don’t give enough credit to those in our country, I think, who are willing to do this, right? Willing to go out and serve in this way. Just always very strong and powerful to hear these stories.
Tim Pickett:
But the second piece of his story with his experience getting a medical cannabis card here in Utah and what happened to him, and how he was basically fleeced for thousands of dollars. And just the opportunity that people take, I guess, to take advantage of other people, especially veterans, come on.
Tim Pickett:
Anyway, great conversation. Very, very genuine guy. From a housekeeping perspective, I’m excited release this episode. We’ve got our own [Colin McCann 00:01:26] next week and going to record with him soon. Looking very forward to that.
Tim Pickett:
I’ve also got a product review that I’ve been doing on my own. Sprained my back over the past week and have been just debilitated and unable to walk, really. So been doing some research on my own with what’s working best, trying to just recover a little bit. So stay tuned for that. Utah In The Weeds, download and subscribe on any podcast player that you have access to. I’m Tim Pickett, again, enjoy this conversation with Daniel Mark Jones.
Tim Pickett:
First off so we can get your name right, would you mind saying your full name so we get the pronunciation, right? And tell me a little bit about you.
Daniel Jones:
My name’s Daniel Mark Jones. I was born in Salt Lake City, grew up in Wyoming for 20 years in a small miners town of Upper Reliance. That’s about three miles from Rock Springs, Wyoming. That’s where I joined the 1041st Engineers. I joined them November 13th, 1999. It was living under a bridge, it was a negative 50 and I just couldn’t do it. So I went and joined the service. I walked in the cold up towards the mountains, right over the college, right down to where the mall is and then I joined them. So I was able to join the 1041st, so it was pretty cool.
Tim Pickett:
So what was that like? How old were you at the time?
Daniel Jones:
I was 18. I was 18 working on my GED. Most of my life I was homeschooled. Mom was falling behind on her bills, everyone else was able to go to public school, and I was stuck getting my college… Up at the college to get my GED.
Tim Pickett:
Yeah. What was the service like?
Daniel Jones:
The service, it was different. But for me it was a life changer. I was able to get out and away from people that were going to bring me down. It got me away from the drug scene. It got me away from the basically just destroying my life. It was an opportunity for me to leave Rock Springs, Wyoming, and that was the chance I took.
Daniel Jones:
One of the reasons for that is Rock Springs is called rock bottom. You’re going to be stuck at the bottom of nowhere and you’re going to be stuck on either drugs or end up locked up, and that’s something I didn’t want to be. I wanted something better for my life.
Tim Pickett:
Yeah. Did you ask your parents before you joined up?
Daniel Jones:
I didn’t tell anybody I joined.
Tim Pickett:
What’d they say?
Daniel Jones:
Basically when they found out is when I was in Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri training. They had us all coloring our parents to invite them to graduation. Everyone in my family thought I was dead, even my friends. They couldn’t find me, I just disappeared. When they found out I was in Fort Leonard Wood, my adopted dad, he was stoked.
Tim Pickett:
Was he?
Daniel Jones:
He was.
Tim Pickett:
Because, one, you were alive.
Daniel Jones:
Yes.
Tim Pickett:
Right? And they didn’t know where you were. How long had you been gone before you contacted them?
Daniel Jones:
It was about probably seven weeks.
Tim Pickett:
Holy cow. As an 18 year old, you’re living under the bridge. You joined the service. You’re gone for six, seven weeks. Yeah, I’ll bet they were pretty excited to hear from you.
Daniel Jones:
Yeah, he was pretty stoked. He drove three days to come to my graduation ceremony.
Tim Pickett:
That is awesome. So what was the rest of that like? Did you do tours? How long were you involved?
Daniel Jones:
I did. I did about four and a half years in that gate. That pretty much put me in two different war zones. My first tour was in Kosovo in 2002. I went with 54th Engineers Company, Bravo Company, out of Bamberg, Germany. They were short staffed on the soldiers and they were looking for volunteers and I was the first to volunteer out of my unit out of Hanau Germany. That was an interesting experience there.
Tim Pickett:
Yeah. Talk about that. So it’s interesting, I’ve been to Kosovo, I’ve seen the statue of Bill Clinton in the square. I don’t think it was there when you were there, but talk about that a little bit and what you saw.
Daniel Jones:
We were stationed in Klokot. It’s about probably 12 miles from Camp Magrath, and then about probably four or five minute drive from Camp Bondsteel. We were in charge of checkpoint 417, and that’s the longest checkpoint. You just look down the road for miles one way and one way or the other, it was all flat. It was a church in the middle. We did a lot of our searches right there, vehicle searches. Lot of our main focus was there.
Tim Pickett:
What other war zone did you go to?
Daniel Jones:
Everything around us was a war zone.
Tim Pickett:
Was it?
Daniel Jones:
Most of the people that were living in homes were destroyed by bombs. We were even protecting cemeteries. The Serbs, they would come dig up to Albanians graves and scatter their bones everywhere. They were pretty much ruthless. One race thinks they’re better than the other and needs to annihilate the other race. One of the things that we found there was a couple more massive graves where they lined them up and shoot them, and then just dumped the bodies in one big hole.
Tim Pickett:
Wow.
Daniel Jones:
Kosovo also is a minefield. About 90% of the mine fields that have been planted were never recorded. So wherever you drive, you had to be careful. My unit, we were out doing our regular drive arounds, we ended up on a back road and we ended up in the middle of a minefield. If I didn’t [inaudible 00:08:57] to ask the Sergeant and ask him what was sticking up out of the ground out there and stop the vehicle, we were probably about 10 feet from hitting that mine.
Tim Pickett:
Wow. Is this something that you still deal with? It sounds like you have some pretty vivid memories of this still.
Daniel Jones:
I do, I do. I still remember that was pretty hectic driving in a minefield. I was at the church guard guarding, and that’s when the seven bombs went off. It just constantly went off one right after the other. Sergeant Bergess, Sergeant Mcdevitt, they were injured. They were literally putting bombs on people’s homes and just blowing them up.
Tim Pickett:
So what other war zone did you go to other than in Kosovo in 2002?
Daniel Jones:
After Kosovo in 2002, three months later, my regular unit, the 54 Second Engineers, we end up going to Iraq just three months after I got back from Kosovo.
Tim Pickett:
Oh, wow.
Daniel Jones:
My unit was a combat unit, a multi unit bridge unit. We were the river wraps. We put the biggest world float bridge ever built in a war history, a 98×2 float bridge across the Tigris River there. Which is really funny because the river, it’s not a very big river. It’s like a creek. You can even probably just run across it and jump across. But Saddam’s idea was if he blew the dam that was like 30 miles up the river, his idea was to try to take out the dam. It didn’t work that way. So we ended up putting the float bridge across. From my memories from that, that was pretty hectic. One of our sergeants in the boats, the boat went under and it dragged the sergeant down. He didn’t pop up until 150 feet from the bridge.
Tim Pickett:
Wow.
Daniel Jones:
We’re facing white waters. The river itself had blood disease in it. If you go further up the river from the little town, the Tigris, you could actually see the sewer dumping into it. People fishing, people washing their clothes in this river, just five feet from where the sewage is dumping into it. You sit there and wonder, it’s like, “Wow, can’t you just dump that sewage somewhere else?” But they don’t have what we have, the cleaning facility for it.
Tim Pickett:
Wow. So when did you get out?
Daniel Jones:
I got out November 3rd, 2004.
Tim Pickett:
Let’s switch gears a little bit. When did you first get introduced to cannabis?
Daniel Jones:
Oh, probably about 17, 17 and a half. But I wasn’t a really big user of it. It’s not until about seven years ago from today is when I got really into it. One of the reasons I got into it is the VA likes to give a lot of pills out.
Tim Pickett:
I’ve heard that. I have heard that rumor.
Daniel Jones:
Oh, there’s an escalator. If you ask my old lady here where we first hooked up, she found one of my Tupperware was full of pills. They keep sending me more and more and more. There’s pills I never asked for too that they’re sending me.
Daniel Jones:
When someone with PTSD has a flashback or has a hard time trying to get under control, a pill can only work for so long. It takes 45 minutes to an hour. If you do one hit of cannabis, you’re having faster reaction of calming the person down. That’s one of the things I started using the cannabis for was to help get me back in control of my life.
Tim Pickett:
What was happening in your life that you needed to get control of?
Daniel Jones:
Panic attacks. My anxiety was taken off. I was starting to actually see shadow figures walking across my living room. I always, even to this day, I still feel like I’m being watched. I feel like I hear people walking outside around the house. There’s times where I don’t feel safe in my own home, and with the cannabis, it kind of restores my sanity back knowing nothing’s really there.
Tim Pickett:
Yeah. When you started getting into it, you’re just getting it off the black market, yeah?
Daniel Jones:
Yes, I was.
Tim Pickett:
So did you really have a choice of what you were using? Or it was kind of like, “Hey, I got this indica, I got this sativa.” Or, “Hey, I just got a bag.”
Daniel Jones:
It wasn’t really much of a choice. It was just I got a bag. You’re paying like $50 for a gram.
Tim Pickett:
Really?
Daniel Jones:
For 3.5, you get like $50, $60. But you’re still paying pretty high.
Tim Pickett:
Yeah. Did you run into flower cannabis that ended up making things worse sometimes, or was it always helpful? I guess I ask that question because now you have a little bit of choice in the process here, right? You can choose what strain you buy, who grew it. When you’re buying it off the black market, you don’t really know what you’re getting. I don’t know. I know sometimes strains like a real sativa might make people more anxious. Did you ever run into that?
Daniel Jones:
Yes. I ran into where the certain strains, I would say blue dreams, it left me with high anxiety. It got to the point where even my chest, it felt like my heart was trying to pound out on my chest. Compared to where I did something like blue cheese, which blue cheese has a different effect on me. It has more of a mellow and calmness. That’s something I’m more looking into is something to help with the calmness because I feel I have a battle going inside my own head and in my own heart. I feel like I’m always at war or being in a tug of war.
Tim Pickett:
Yeah, makes sense. What do you do for work?
Daniel Jones:
I work for Love’s Truck Stop. I am a maintenance man. I fix the pumps. I will get down in there, change hoses out, pump handles, diesels, DEF handles. The pumps go down, I go reset the pumps. I make sure the store runs. I’m basically the backbone of the store, keeping it flown.
Daniel Jones:
People have a hard time with running their cards or they can’t get their cards run, I go out and help them. If the elderly need help and they can’t go in the store, they’ll pay me. Then I’ll go in, pay it, come back with their change and their receipt and hand it to them. We show our courtesy to our customers because that’s who we need to keep going because they keep this country going. The truckers, they keep the fuel going. Our job is to make sure everyone’s taken care of and helped.
Tim Pickett:
It’s really interesting to hear your story about joining the service and being 18. You were 17 and you didn’t get caught up in drugs. You left that scene, which ended up being a good choice, but at the same time it caused you a lot of trauma. But staying would’ve caused you a lot of different trauma probably.
Daniel Jones:
It would’ve prolonged it.
Tim Pickett:
Yeah.
Daniel Jones:
That’s what I felt like. Going through two different war zones and seeing a lot of the dead laying around, it’s unnatural. For me, it’s unnatural to take another man’s life. The reason I say that is because when you take somebody’s life, you’re trying to be God or something. It’s not really our choice to take another life unless it’s to really defend your family or your country. But what Saddam did to his own people, it was wrong and he needed to go.
Tim Pickett:
Yeah. So fast forward to the program here. You’re living in Utah, 2018, we legalized medical cannabis here. What are you thinking at the time?
Daniel Jones:
I was excited. I was stoked. But I wasn’t happy with how they changed the people’s vote on the original prop two. That kind of really made me mad because then that’s taking the people both rights away and then dictating another person’s right into putting in what they wanted to believe. I think prop two was destroyed when the LDS church got involved. It’s just wrong. If somebody votes on something and that’s what we voted on, then that’s what it needs to be, not changed.
Daniel Jones:
I was really disappointed on that, but I was still stoked they still passed through the laws. Something when Truu Med came out, I jumped on it.
Tim Pickett:
Yep, yep. And that’s one of the big reasons why we wanted to talk is because this whole experience with Truu Med. Yeah, let’s talk about that. What the hell happened?
Daniel Jones:
So when Truu Med came out, they were about 90th south and I would say 13th and 14th, a hundred west or somewhere like that. That’s where they first started out, somewhere up in there. They were charging a heavy penny. So me living all the way up here, gas was expensive. You’re looking at almost $3.80, $3.75. It took almost $120 just to fill the whole tank up in the truck. The old lady, she has brain damage, so I worked on her too at the same time.
Daniel Jones:
So first appointment, I took about $800. $400 for me, $400 for her to get it going. I seen their doctor and all that. I was excited, I was stoked. I signed a letter from a medical provider. Turns out this medical provider is no longer with them. He pretty much lasted about four months and he quit on them. So they called, whenever they would call me about three weeks to a month and I’d come down and paid them another $300, $400.
Tim Pickett:
This is how many weeks after?
Daniel Jones:
About six weeks. Not six weeks.
Tim Pickett:
Six months.
Daniel Jones:
No, it wasn’t even six months. They were having us come down every month.
Tim Pickett:
And paying them again? What date is this? What’s the timeframe of this happening?
Daniel Jones:
Beginning on October 20, 2019.
Tim Pickett:
Okay. So for context, I’m going to mention what I’m doing at that point. I’m starting to look into becoming a Q&P, I’m starting to think about how I’m going to set up a business, how I’m going to start seeing people, thinking about insurance. I’m kind of looking into this because 2020, we’re going to have a pharmacy open. So Truu Med is ahead of the game so to speak, right? They’re one of the first people out there. The only other person at the time that I know was writing letters was Corey Anden in Ogden. But Truu Med was out there. So you’re going down there every month, you’re having to pay… So what total amount did you end up paying them?
Daniel Jones:
I paid about $6000. $6000 came out of my pocket. Even you got to put the gas in there too, and it gets expensive.
Tim Pickett:
Because where are you driving from?
Daniel Jones:
Salina. It’s about a two hour and a 20 minute drive to Salt Lake City.
Tim Pickett:
There’s no information anywhere else, so there’s no way really for you to get information that tells you, “Hey, this isn’t right. This is something you need to be concerned about,” because there’s no state website up really. There’s no other cannabis clinics, doctors aren’t doing this. Is that right? Am I getting that right? You’re really only getting information from them. And they’re telling you, “Hey, we need you to come back. We need you to renew your letter.”
Daniel Jones:
Yes.
Tim Pickett:
Holy shit.
Daniel Jones:
There’s times where me and the old lady showed up, me and Casey, we did show up a couple times where there was no doctors and they still took the money. He gave us back $40 for gas to get back home. That was about it.
Tim Pickett:
Who was this? Was this the guy who ended up in jail?
Daniel Jones:
It was Troy Martinez. I tried calling them last week and the week before. The number on the website doesn’t work.
Tim Pickett:
Yeah, I think the guy Ramone, he got arrested for kidnapping a woman and beating her.
Daniel Jones:
I didn’t know that. No.
Tim Pickett:
Yeah, so interestingly enough, there was a news article that… And I think this is all allegedly, I guess I should say. This is an opinion of us, right? Utah In The Weeds is a podcast, we’re talking about things that we… We’re trying to get the facts of course, but we’re just people talking. But yeah, Ramone allegedly kidnapped a woman, carved numbered in her hand and has been arrested because, yeah, it was a crazy, crazy story. But he’s the owner, or was the owner of Truu Med, one of the owners of Truu Med. There was a lot about Truu Med came out just in the past few weeks about this, essentially, predatory behavior.
Tim Pickett:
I heard about this as somebody who does medical cannabis and who has been pretty open and honest about what the fees are, what the costs are, what you get for your money, how long you get a card. That just seems reasonable, right? I don’t see how you could charge somebody and take $6000 from them and have you drive and the letters. I can see how, I guess, you would do that, but it is just crazy to me that this happened. You’re not the only person that I’ve heard something like this from. This is certainly the most money I’ve heard of. How has that affected you financially?
Daniel Jones:
I took a major hit. I’m struggling right now. That’s money I could have saved and used because right now I’m at home and I’m stuck with COVID. I’ve been with this disease for about eight days now and it’s really taken an effect on me. I wish they have done something right, something different, because I could have put this money to something, a better use.
Tim Pickett:
Right.
Daniel Jones:
For this problem now, I’m facing criminal charges.
Tim Pickett:
Okay, talk about that. What’s that?
Daniel Jones:
I got hit with two ounces because they didn’t tell me how much I could have. I didn’t get like how I got with UTTHC, I think it is. They gave me information about what I can carry, what I can have or how much I have on my possession. Well, with Truu Med, I never got anything like that.
Daniel Jones:
So when I got pulled over about 30, 40 minutes from home, I showed the cops these signed letters I got from Truu Med. They just looked at me and then they went and talked with each other. The other came back and says, “We never seen anything like this before.” I said, “What?” They said, “These signed letters from Truu Med.” I said, “This is what they sent me and said I would be safe and I would be good.” Pretty much the cop just pretty much looked at me and said, “Well, I’m thinking you pretty much got scammed out of it.”
Tim Pickett:
Wow. And then they still charged you.
Daniel Jones:
Yep. It’s my first offense with it. I don’t know what else I can do with it but talk to the judge and let them know what’s going on.
Tim Pickett:
Yeah.
Daniel Jones:
I got a court date. My first court hearing on it is on February 9th in Nephi, Utah.
Tim Pickett:
Wow. Well, we will all be in support. You got a community now, and hopefully if you need something, this gets cleared up because it sounds to me like you’re the reason, you’re literally one of the reasons why this program exists. So it seems tragic that somebody like yourself can be taken advantage of in such a horrible way financially. And then on top of that, get charged for possession in a state where you have legal product. And two ounces is under the legal limit of what you can possess. You can legally possess up to four ounces of flower and plenty of concentrates. So hopefully this works out in your favor.
Daniel Jones:
I did get my card, my cannabis card.
Tim Pickett:
Yeah, good.
Daniel Jones:
What I was really impressed with HTT was that they stayed there, made me stayed there until I got everything done and make sure it was done correctly. And that’s something that Truu Med never did. They got me all email set up with EBS and all that. So when I’m looking on the EBS, there’s no doctors that I actually met with in Truu Med. There’s not a record on it. When I looked up the BBB reports, there’s someone filed a complaint on Truu Med and that turned out to be a big mess. From what I read is that has never been resolved.
Tim Pickett:
Yeah. I don’t know that it ever will be, but I guess here’s hoping. But I don’t know whether or not we want them seeing patients anymore at all. At this point I think there’s been multiple red flags kind of come up in my opinion on that whole organization.
Daniel Jones:
I think the course really need to do a thorough investigation of these people because a lot of people, I feel like they’re taking advantage of people who really need the cannabis. There’s a lot of people who can’t afford a lot of this money. And whatever they come up with, they’re taking advantage of them and robbing them. They need to be put a stop to it.
Tim Pickett:
Yeah. Couldn’t agree more. So question on your use too, now that you have Utah product, what’s your favorite pharmacy?
Daniel Jones:
The one I’ve been going to so far is the one in Provo.
Tim Pickett:
Deseret Wellness, Josh Fitzgerald is the pharmacist down there. I like that place. Nice, easy access off the freeway, pretty cool people.
Daniel Jones:
And they were very, very helpful and they took care of us, took care of me and the old lady. It’s the best place to go.
Tim Pickett:
Cool. I’m glad they got a good recommendation from you. You’re buying mostly flower there?
Daniel Jones:
I bought the flowers, but I’m also buying the edibles for sleep.
Tim Pickett:
Yeah.
Daniel Jones:
I have sleep apnea. I got a sleep problem.
Tim Pickett:
Nice thing about cannabis is it doesn’t make you breathe worse like opioids. I think it’s safer than Ambien, too. And the gummies last all night, right? You got a favorite?
Daniel Jones:
Oh, I got a favorite. This one I bought, it’s called Calm, True North Organics.
Tim Pickett:
Yep.
Daniel Jones:
It is one of my favorites because if I need to, I could take half of it and I sleep like a baby. I don’t wake up during the night.
Tim Pickett:
Yep. And with somebody like yourself, the nice thing about edibles is they suppress dreams too. They not only make you sleep a little better, but they suppress a little dreams so you actually sleep better, especially if you suffer from PTSD or nightmares, and with sleep apnea. Do you wear a mask?
Daniel Jones:
Yes, I do.
Tim Pickett:
Yeah, so you need to shut it down at night.
Daniel Jones:
There’s times that mask gets on my way and then I feel like I got a chemical mask on. It drives me nuts.
Tim Pickett:
Yeah. I could see how that’d be hard.
Daniel Jones:
Yeah, it is.
Tim Pickett:
So what’s your favorite strain to use in… We’ll call it vaporize, right? Smoke or vaporize. You’ve got a favorite strain of flower?
Daniel Jones:
My favorite strain is probably more of sleeper. I pretty much like something that’s going to calm me and relax me down more. I already feel like I got enough hyperactive during the day, so at night when I’m wide awake and sitting there laying, I feel like I’m hyperactive because my ears are listening to everything. They hear every little creeks in the boards all the way down to hearing something walking on the gravel around the house. So it makes me get up and want to go out and look, feeling like I’m back on guard duty doing my fire watch.
Daniel Jones:
But at the same time, it’s also taking care of the pain and the joints. It’s taking care of the pain in my back. It’s been a miracle helper ever since.
Tim Pickett:
That’s cool.
Daniel Jones:
Like I said, it’s a lot better than taking the pills.
Tim Pickett:
Yeah. It sounds like you’re able to control it better, right? You’re choosing. You’re in the driver’s seat.
Daniel Jones:
Yes.
Tim Pickett:
Where before it didn’t sound like you felt like you were driving.
Daniel Jones:
But it kind of sucks because with the VA, half the VA’s for it, the other half of the VA’s against it. They’re still split on that decision. So you sit and wonder. It’s like half the doctors say, “If it’s working for you, then continue using it.” The other half says, “Well, you’re a bad person for taking it.” I’ve run into doctors like that.
Tim Pickett:
What do you say to them?
Daniel Jones:
I say, “Well, at least I’m not getting hooked on something. At least cannabis you can quit and not affect you in any form like an opiate does, or like an Ambien.” I was on Ambien for a while. Ambien hit people differently. You could take it the night before, wake up in the morning fine. Two hours later down the road, you could be sleep driving from your Ambien from the night before and not realize it.
Daniel Jones:
One of the things I think they don’t like people on cannabis is because they are losing their money in their pharmacies.
Tim Pickett:
Yeah, I hate to say it. I guess it could be. I hope that’s not true, but it certainly could be true.
Daniel Jones:
The VA has an escalator going straight to the pharmacy and home.
Tim Pickett:
Do they?
Daniel Jones:
Yeah. There’s times where I sat waiting for two hours just to pick up my medication because the pharmacy’s filled with vets waiting for their medications.
Tim Pickett:
Wow. Do a lot of vets who smoke weed?
Daniel Jones:
I know probably like 10 of them.
Tim Pickett:
Do you find that your family and friends are pretty supportive of your cannabis consumption? What’s going on with you?
Daniel Jones:
Yes. They prefer me doing the cannabis. One of the reasons for that is I’m not on opiates and I’m not a raging alcoholic. Because if you actually look at the statistics, a lot of vets are alcoholics. They drink and drink and drink. When you’re in the service, what did we do? We drink and party, drink and party.
Tim Pickett:
Yeah. And the only options are not marijuana, not cannabis, so you got alcohol.
Daniel Jones:
Yep. And they’re big supplier of alcohol, the military is.
Tim Pickett:
Are they?
Daniel Jones:
Oh, yeah. When I was in Germany, in Hanau, Germany, my wall locker, I had like six, seven cases of beer, four bottles of Jack Daniels. It was always stocked in there. We’d drink every single day, every night. One of the things I’m happy is I don’t drink.
Tim Pickett:
Congratulations.
Daniel Jones:
The cannabis helps out with that.
Tim Pickett:
Is there something else that you want to talk about, you want to bring up, you want to make sure everybody hears?
Daniel Jones:
Yeah, I just want everybody to know is that they need to stay away from Truu Med. Those who’ve gone through Truu Med and been screwed over by Truu Med, they need to come forward and put a stop to it. We do better as a group than one single person trying to take them on. If everybody who’s had a problem with them, if everybody came together as a team, we can do something about it.
Tim Pickett:
Well, absolutely.
Daniel Jones:
That’s what I really need to let people know.
Tim Pickett:
Well, if you’re listening to this podcast on Utah In The Weeds and you you want to make a comment or you want to share an experience about Truu Med or another clinic that took advantage of you in the system in Utah, let’s do this. Let’s go to YouTube, our YouTube channel. It’s called Discover Marijuana. This podcast is posted on that YouTube channel. Make a comment there on this episode and we’ll start a little group of people there. If there’s people who have stories, make a comment. Again, Discover Marijuana. This podcast with Daniel Jones. Daniel Mark Jones, this has been a great… I am glad to get to know you, man.
Daniel Jones:
Same here, Tim. It’s really good to be seeing you, to meet you this time.
Tim Pickett:
Yeah. If we can do anything for you and help you in any way, you reach out to us. Shout out to Deseret Wellness who’s helping you get your medicine. I love those guys down there. Stop in next door. We’ve got an office right there and we’ll hook you up a sweatshirt, Utah In The Weeds sweatshirt, next time you’re up there in Provo.
Daniel Jones:
Sweet.
Tim Pickett:
All right, everybody. Exciting times in Utah as the legislation gets kind of underway, and appreciate you listening. This has been great. Stay safe out there.
Episode 87 of Utah in the Weeds features Blake Smith, Chief Science Officer at Zion Medicinal. Blake frequently collaborates with us in educating the public about Medical Cannabis, and we were happy to invite him back for another episode of Utah in the Weeds.
Tim and Blake reminisced about the last couple of years working in Utah’s ever-changing cannabis industry. [02:17]
Blake talked about Zion Medicinal’s growth over the last two years and some of the products they’re producing now. [05:22]
They talked about the customizability of a Medical Cannabis treatment plan. Patients can experiment with different ratios of THC, CBD, CBG, and other cannabinoids to tailor their treatment. [11:30 ]
Blake responded to recent research about cannabinoids and COVID-19. He says the research isn’t quite as exciting as sounds, and he explains why. [13:44]
Tim noted reproducibility has been a challenge in the cannabis research field, and for science as a whole. Blake explained some of the challenges in conducting pharmaceutical research. [16:12]
Both Tim and Blake appreciate the enthusiasm with which Utah’s Medical Cannabis patients have provided feedback about their treatment. [21:32]
Next, they talked about the current state of Utah’s Medical Cannabis program and the changes they’d like to see. [25:12]
Blake talked about entering the retail space in Cedar City and his philosophy of making a wide variety of products available. [33:14]
He also spoke about the plans for Bloom Medicinals to begin a delivery service. [39:16]
Blake is also involved in cannabis-related projects in other states and even in other countries. One project involves producing hemp-based products for pets. Blake says cannabis products for pets should be made with the same high-quality materials used in making products for humans. [40:54]
The pair reflected on the quality of Utah’s cannabis products before shifting to a discussion about Medical Cannabis legislation. [44:13]
Blake talked about Delta-8 THC and another lesser-known synthetic cannabinoid called HPP. [45:27]
Blake says it’s “silly” to define hemp according to a low THC percentage. A hemp producer, he says, could still legally make a product with several milligrams of THC. The key to making that type of product legal is basing it around a dense food product. [50:06]
Tim and Blake then discussed potential legislation regarding cannabis, and the continuing need for quality assurance in cannabis products. [51:07]
We wrapped with a quick discussion of a new video series to help Discover Marijuana viewers get to know Tim and Blake. [57:18]
Tim Pickett:
Hey, everybody. Welcome to Utah in the Weeds. I’m your host, Tim Pickett. And I’m excited for this episode, an interview with Blake Smith, the chief science officer, as you were, for Zion Medicinal, and just a good friend of mine and somebody that I’ve wanted to bring back on the podcast for quite some time. We talk a lot about a lot of things in this episode. So, I’ll let you listen to it all. Again, Blake Smith, he knows pharmacokinetics, he’s very, very interested in minor cannabinoids and how those interact in the body, and just making good medicine. So, some housekeeping; also, we just wrapped up the month of January, and again, raised over $6,000 for the Uplift subsidy program for medical cannabis patients here in Utah. We’ve added two more partners that will be starting to contribute in February. So, if you have not donated, we are going to match your donation. I believe it’s eight times now; eight times those donations to Uplift at utahmarijuana.org/uplift.
Tim Pickett:
Stay tuned, we have upcoming episodes with Daniel Mark Jones, a veteran of basically, two wars, was in Kosovo, was in Iraq. And you’ve got to hear his story about how he was basically fleeced for $6,000 in Utah, trying to get medical cannabis access. You’ve got to listen to that story. That’ll be coming up in a future episode. We’ve also got [inaudible 00:01:44] from the department of health coming up, and we just have a line of guests now, as we dive into the winter and the spring. Subscribe to Utah in the Weeds on any podcast player that you have access to, stay up to date with the conversation on YouTube. Discover Marijuana is the channel. Leave a comment there, and we answer all of those comments. We want to engage with you. So, I’m excited to have you with us, and enjoy this episode with Blake Smith. Cool. Well, Blake Smith.
Blake Smith:
That’s me. The one and only.
Tim Pickett:
Do you remember, the only real-time we’ve had you on the podcast was in the very beginning, right? So, you haven’t been on the-
Blake Smith:
Yeah.
Tim Pickett:
This is going to be like episode… We’re high 80s now.
Blake Smith:
Holy crap. Awesome.
Tim Pickett:
…Episodes, right? And maybe a few more people are listening to the podcast than were when we had you on before. I remember sitting in the room when we were recording. We were in our Mill Creek office, we had like these cheap Amazon desks, and we were talking, and man, things were so different. We’re talking episode one, two, or three. We’re talking-
Blake Smith:
Yeah, I think that was episode three or four. Yeah.
Tim Pickett:
Yeah. So, since then, holy cow.
Blake Smith:
The world is very-
Tim Pickett:
Are you tired?
Blake Smith:
Yeah, I’m exhausted.
Tim Pickett:
Because just remembering a couple of years ago, it just makes me tired.
Blake Smith:
This industry, more than anywhere I’ve ever worked, is accelerated. A year in this industry is like five in any others. And so, anyone who’s in here too long will age and age significantly.
Tim Pickett:
Yeah. I mean, I guess they talk about how being president of the United States is just really, really stressful and it ages people. Of course, Biden’s into his administration, what? A year. But he already looks a lot older. I feel bad for the guy in some ways, but in the cannabis space, yeah, it’s like that; it’s just a rocket ship.
Blake Smith:
That’s right. Well, because every day is different. Every day, something is happening. I mean, just yesterday, we were up at Capitol Hill, and then the week before that, there’s people who were interested in doing different things with their licenses. And the day before that, the state comes by. And then the day before that, there’s an announcement in Mississippi, and then the next day… It’s just nonstop all the time.
Tim Pickett:
Yeah. It’s nonstop. It is an industry… I feel like the medical programs, it’s still really… For any other industry, this would be in its infancy. So, we’re two years into the program. And when we were talking to you before, we were barely getting tinctures out, lemon dream, your vape cart lemon dream. Wasn’t that the first vape cart you made?
Blake Smith:
Yep. It was the first vape cart we made.
Tim Pickett:
And one of the first-
Blake Smith:
It may have been the first vape carts created in the state.
Tim Pickett:
In the State of Utah.
Blake Smith:
That’s right.
Tim Pickett:
And there was hardly any flower at the time.
Blake Smith:
Almost nothing.
Tim Pickett:
And now there’s quite a bit of flower in the state. So, take me from before, take me from Zion Medicinal, when we talked two years ago, to today. Give me just an overview of some of the stuff that’s changed.
Blake Smith:
Oh, wow. Well, all eight licenses are growing now. And so, there was about a year period where several licenses were not activated, and we started off with zero patients. So, when the program first started, they say, “Okay, everything starts March 1st, and we want products available, and then we’re going to be getting our first patients, and we’re going to be doing this.” Boy, that’s a real hard way to start planning how much you’re going to grow, how much product to make.
Tim Pickett:
Right. This is back when we were thinking, “Oh, there’s going to be 6,000, maybe 10,000 patients the first year. How much operation do you need? How many plants do we grow? Can we afford it? Because we’re maybe not going to get our investment back for a long, long time.”
Blake Smith:
Yeah. I’m mean these are the issues. So, a lot of people, also even if they got their grow going… And you remember, we started off in our own warehouse. We had grow tents and stuff [crosstalk 00:06:48].
Tim Pickett:
Oh yeah. I recorded with Sean in, now what is your processing facility, and there were like three grow tents back there.
Blake Smith:
That’s right. And it’s because we had no idea, plus, creating a clean grow space in a warehouse was challenging. I mean our isopropyl costs alone were outrageous. I mean, it’s just one of those crazy things. And now, I’ll speak to Zion, we have two grows going. One, we’ve maximized our license. We produce a lot of biomass, we produce massive amounts of products and distillate. We have all kinds of different products out there. And we continue the science, figuring out mechanism of action of specific cannabinoids, and tried to create specific medicines for specific conditions. But now, we have a lot more cannabinoids to actually do that with. There’s like the 1:1:10 tincture for pain. We’re right in the middle of the 1:1 tincture with CBN.
Tim Pickett:
Tell me, what’s the 1:1:1 for pain?
Blake Smith:
It’s a 1:1:10, and it’s one part THC, one part CBG, 10 part CBD. And then we’re about to do one for sleep, which is a 1:1:10, but instead of CBG, it’s CBN. And we’re also looking at doing some vape carts that are going to be some mixes like a 1:1:1, something along those lines [inaudible 00:08:16].
Tim Pickett:
Yeah. Because there’s no vape carts in the Utah market with other cannabinoids that I know of.
Blake Smith:
Their White Widow had CBG.
Tim Pickett:
In a vape cart.
Blake Smith:
In a vape cart. There’s a couple. What I would say is it’s been lacking a little bit. And part of that’s because if you don’t get your ratios right, the other cannabinoids, other than THC, will crystallize in the cart, so you got to get it just right with the right amount of terpenes, with just the right amount of agents in order to get it to keep from crystallizing. So, that’s just science. We can figure all that out.
Tim Pickett:
Yeah. So now, would you say you have an abundance supply of biomass and flower for what Zion needs to do?
Blake Smith:
Yeah. I mean, I have enough flower and biomass to produce pretty much anything anybody wants. I mean, we’ve started now producing concentrates, [crosstalk 00:09:18].
Tim Pickett:
Which takes a lot of biomass.
Blake Smith:
Which requires a lot of biomass and it requires a lot of good flower, quite frankly. And so, good flower was always at such a high demand. There was not excess flower to put into the market in this other products. So, you talk about raws and carts and things like that. There’s just not enough material to make that worthwhile, considering that flower will all sell. We’re getting to a point now in the industry where there’s enough flower to start seeing some other products come out, and that’s cool. That’s a cool place to be.
Tim Pickett:
Yeah. Have you landed on things that you really like over the past couple of years; the products that you feel like are kind of your favorites so far from Zion? What are those?
Blake Smith:
Yeah. I think, a little bold on this one, I think Zion makes a lot of cool products, but I think the tincture market is probably our strongest. And the reason I say that is because we specifically put a lot of different types of cannabinoids and very specific formulations for very specific conditions. We make a really nice delta-9 cart. The delta-9 cart is designed to really help you get the head change and mask pain. We make some cool delta-8 carts which are good as antiemetics. They’re really nice in terms of helping with nausea and things like that, nice flavor profiles, and they’re all cannabis-derived. But our tinctures, without trying to sound too bold, we’ve seen miracles with some of these. We’ve seen people stop having seizures, we’ve seen people who cannot sleep, all of a sudden, their back pain goes away. And so, I mean, we produce some cool flower too. Our Mad Max flower is one of my absolute favorites. It’s always a high percent THC, but also a high percent CBG. So, people are happy to make their own and splits with it.
Tim Pickett:
Yeah, the Mad Max, it is a favorite strain and just because it’s kind of different. As you get into this and you learn a little bit about it, start keeping a journal as a patient, and you start to experience these different cultivars, different strains, different products, you start to think or you start to realize what the difference is. I know CBG, I’ve seen it marketed as a bubble bath for the brain, and it is kind of that way. It’s like a little different… The head change is a little different. And so, for patients who are experimenting with THC and CBG, and THC and CBD ratios, I’ve had people come back to me and tell me, “When I needed the chill, then I really just go to the THC, CBD, but when I don’t need that, there’s just something different about the CBG.” So, from a medical standpoint, it’s as if we’re manipulating our own drugs for our own effects, and it’s working. It seems like it’s working for people.
Blake Smith:
Yeah. I mean, the thing is we’ve learned enough at this point, that we can draw some actual dose effects, like we know about, for the typical person, how much THC will affect… a masking element for pain and create a head change. We know about how much delta-8 is required. We know about how much CBD is necessary to cut into if you’re overly high, but also how much CBD is necessary for helping with pain management. We know enough about CBG, how many mgs of CBG are required to do things. But now we’re also in the fun world of like, “Okay, well now, let’s start mixing more of these together.” And then you get these entourage effects where you get heightened effect from any of the individual cannabinoids, by putting them in certain ratios. And that’s this whole other world that’s kind of awesome, where individual patients get to figure out what their right dose is that’s working for them in this mixture of cannabinoids.
Tim Pickett:
Yeah. I wonder what, once you get through the CBN, the CBG… Oh, okay, totally going to change this topic here. What about CBGA and CBDA. This is your COVID study article? What about those?
Blake Smith:
Yeah. Well, I mean, somebody may try to come and hang me after I say this. They’re not as exciting as I think people want them to be. Here’s the thing. In vitro, you’re putting in a Petri dish, you can get the same effect out of coffee, actually, with tannic acid. It inhibits proliferation of viral load. That’s not to say the CBDA and CBGA don’t have a physiological effect, but how are you going to get your CBGA? How are you going to it in? Are you going to smoke it? Well, guess what, the second you light it on fire, you decarboxylated it.
Tim Pickett:
You’ve decarboxylated it.
Blake Smith:
That’s no longer CBGA. So, what are you going to do? You can do a crude. Well, crude oil has other health implications. I don’t know that you want to be delving into armfuls of crude. So, that may not be the right answer either. And we also know that with the acidic forms, you’re not going to get into CB1 receptors. You potentially will get into CB2 receptors. Cellular uptake for the as acidic form seems to be a thing. We don’t have tons of data on it yet, but there could be medicinal value with both of those. Could you get a protective index from them? How about this? Maybe.
Tim Pickett:
I’m glad we’re bringing this up.
Blake Smith:
[crosstalk 00:15:23]. We don’t have CBGA and a nebulizer, so it’s not going [crosstalk 00:15:27] viruses.
Tim Pickett:
Right. And you don’t have… Okay, so what about this other issue with the reproducibility problem that we have with this data? So, there was this study, the CBGA, CBDA study, there was another study that was done, retroactively looking at CBD patients, seizure patients, and looking at their incidents of COVID, and saying that, potentially, CBD had this protective effect. Some confounding factors, certainly, one being that maybe people with seizures were not in the public and getting exposed to COVID as much as the general population, but that all being aside, it also seems like, in general, in science… And I want to hear your opinion about this. We have kind of this reproducibility problem. We have these studies, and then we’re having a very hard time reproducing the results of a lot of science. Not just in cannabis medicine, but even outside of that. What do you think about that?
Blake Smith:
So, I’m not going to speak directly about cannabis for one second. I’m going to just talk about science and science process in general. So, I got a bunch of degrees. I started going and working for a contract research organization, and my first boss I had there said, “Hey, you got hired in this contract research organization because of your background and your degrees. However, we’re going to now teach you real science.” And I was like, “What? What does that even mean? Man, I studied my butt off, I passed my test, I’m a scientist.” And they, very politely, were just like, “Well, there’s a difference between getting N of 20 people and getting 10,000 people, and reproducing it with 10,000 people.” In fact, there’s difference between that, and then six months after all your tests are done, randomly picking a thousand of those 10,000 samples, pulling them back out of the freezer, running the same method, and being within 2% of your original value.”
Blake Smith:
That’s hardcore science. I mean, that’s reproducible science, where we know that aspirin has a dose-effect because we now have so much data and have done this so many times that we know what aspirin does. Now, we have that much data around THC. We know about how much THC it takes for a head change. How many science experiments do we have with THC in two different hundred types of cancer? And how many variables? So, this part of the whole science and medicine stuff is still nascent, it’s still new, we’re all of this stuff. Could THC, CBD, CBG help with COVID? Maybe. Scientifically, can we prove that yet? Do we have an end of 10,000 that show that? No, we’re not-
Tim Pickett:
And not only do we have an N of 10,000, but we can we take another N of 10,000? And when you say N, that means just the number of people treated.
Blake Smith:
The number-
Tim Pickett:
Right. Number needed to treat, but then can you then take another 10,000 people that kind of match those first 10,000 and do this again, and then do it again? Then you get into this issue where… And again, another kind of rabbit hole, but you look at SSRIs for example, and there’s so many studies, and some of them didn’t get published because the results didn’t match what the drug companies needed. So, you end up somewhat biasing the publishing of some studies over the… It’s not that you’re withholding data in those cases. You’re just not promoting some of these things. How does that fit in with cannabis? I don’t feel like we have enough of those studies with cannabis to even make that argument.
Blake Smith:
It’s an interesting point though. And I think it’s actually probably very relevant to what we’re talking about, because, in the cases where you have some drug companies that aren’t releasing all studies to the public, what I would say is this, it’s not that those studies don’t ever get released, because what does happen is those studies do get released to their peers, other companies, FDA, and so that’s where you start getting your contraindications. I mean, you, as a doctor, know what the side effects of most of these drugs are, not because the drug company initially came out and said, “Hey, we saw this in a study, but it’s like, upon full scientific review, we know this is a contraindication of this particular SSRI or whatever it’s.”
Blake Smith:
And so, that scientific process is the part that needs to continue to play in cannabis. Because what I hear a lot in the industry is this sort of war against synthetics versus non-synthetics, or this war of whole plant medicine versus non-whole plant medicine. And I don’t think we need to war at all. What I think we need to do is have qualified individuals talk about the data, and then we need to peer-review all of our data, and then come up with conclusions that we either can agree or we don’t agree on, and that’s okay. Scientist don’t always agree, but one thing we will agree on is, this data is here and this is what the data itself sets. So, that’s kind of my feeling; I just feel like we’re so new in how we even think about the science on all this. It’s really hard to get real hard conclusions. Having said that, we’re getting there. We’re getting a very good understanding of CBGA and all those [inaudible 00:21:29].
Tim Pickett:
Yeah. Or we’re certainly better of. Well, and we have 40,000, here in Utah, we’ve got 40,000-plus patients that are using cannabis in various forms and types and delivery methods and products, and they’re responding to questionnaires that we’re giving them. And what’s nice about the cannabis population, the cannabis consumers, is they seem interested in providing this feedback. Like, “I want to prove to you what’s happening. I want to legitimize what I’m doing as a patient.” There’s a lot of that in cannabis.
Blake Smith:
Cannabis is awesome because it involves the enthusiast around the medicine they’re taking. I don’t usually see somebody who’s like, “Man, I can’t wait to go home and take my Warfarin,” but somebody who’s like, “Look, I can’t sleep because of my pain, and this flower or this product, I sleep with this. My life is better and I want you to have a better life too. Let me tell you about it.”
Tim Pickett:
I haven’t heard one human being, in my lifetime, say to another, “Hey man, I couldn’t sleep. You know what you need to do, you to get on Ambien.” Like, “Oh, I just started Ambien last week, and it is so awesome. I sleep so good, and I’m now…” That never happens. I hide the fact… Most people would be hiding the fact that they take this, but cannabis is the opposite. “Sally, you know what, I have been using these Gummies that my sister brought back from wherever, and now I got my card and I’m using the tincture and it has changed my life.”
Blake Smith:
Yeah. That’s right.
Tim Pickett:
That’s what’s happening.
Blake Smith:
And part of that is the stigma. There’s a stigma around it, so people are trying to break the stigma, but I think you can also run into the other problem too where people can be so over-enthusiastic that it comes off as being hyper drug culture. And here’s the thing; personally, I don’t really care about any of that, but somebody might be like, “Oh man, how much Mescaline do you take? Do you follow the White Rabbit? And that’s going to be the best high you’ve ever had. Let alone, don’t worry about the cardiac palpitation, don’t worry about the [inaudible 00:23:57], don’t worry about… But if you’re trying to get lit, man, it’s the only way to fly, whatever.” So, I think there’s this balance that you got to play out. “I use this medicinally or I use this for this purpose.”
Blake Smith:
And look, here’s my experience. And please correct me if I’m wrong. And viewers or listeners out there, please correct me on this. But even most recreational or adult use is still usually centered around treatment of some kind. I very rarely have somebody who’s just like, “Man, I just light up all the time because I like to just be lit all the time.” I mean, there are people that do that, but almost everyone I know who even use it as an adult-use product, they’re like, “Man, I just sleep better. I feel better. I have this pain, I’m just off. I’m not in my right place, and this helps center me or whatever it is.” And so, they’re taking it medicinally even if they’re not identifying it with a card saying, “This is my condition. This is why I’m doing it.” And that’s why medical programs become [inaudible 00:25:02] because you can bring them in and say, “Yes, what you’re complaining or what you’re sensing is a real thing. Now come onto the white market and let’s do this in a way that makes sense for everybody.”
Tim Pickett:
Is the program in Utah getting better, getting worse, staying the same? What do you think?
Blake Smith:
That’s a great question. Despite what I think detractors will say, Utah is a pretty good program. That doesn’t mean it’s all right, but overall, I mean, we are allowed a lot more concentration forms and different things than many states have allowed on the medicinal side. We have a lot more producers producing lots of different types of products, so even the number of products is pretty wide in terms of what we can do. I mean, we haven’t got there yet for everything we need, obviously, but we’re moving in that direction. Legislatively, our legislature’s been pretty open to changing things that needed to be changed. And that’s been really, even in this session that’s going on right now. We’re looking at changing a couple of things to make the industry better. Do I think we’re there?
Tim Pickett:
What types of things…
Blake Smith:
No, but we’re getting there. I think we’re continually trying to improve.
Tim Pickett:
What types of things is Zion interested in changing or is the “Industry in Utah,” trying to change?
Blake Smith:
The biggest thing, I think, everybody in industry can agree on, no matter… Because there are different companies that have different philosophies about how we think about medicine, and that’s okay, there’s nothing wrong with that. But I think universally, the industry can all agree that we need more patients. Patient counts have got to go up because that helps fuel innovation, it helps fuel business, it helps fuel getting rid of the stigma. I mean, there’s so many advantageous… And so many people who still just need help who are still on their opioids, or still on their Ambien, or still taking all these other drugs, that could be helped by cannabis, and so we need to increase patient counts. So, I think that’s a universal thing we all agree on. I think the other thing we would agree on as an industry is we need to get the right amount of licenses with real data. Because if you go back originally and you look at eight grows, 14 pharmacies, and now there’s a 15th pharmacy, I mean all these numbers are sort of arbitrary.
Tim Pickett:
Sort of arbitrary. They’re like literally arbitrary. Somebody could say they’re correcting me and they have data around how many pharmacies there could have been, that… bullshit. It’s just arbitrary. [crosstalk 00:27:53].
Blake Smith:
Tim. I like you because you’re bold. I was trying to give a little bit more of the benefit of the doubt, but [crosstalk 00:27:57].
Tim Pickett:
I know, but like it’s… [crosstalk 00:28:00].
Blake Smith:
You’re right. The numbers were arbitrary. Now, does that mean the numbers are necessarily wrong? Well, how do you know right or wrong without the data. So, the whole point would be, I think the industry would all be okay with getting data around it and saying, “Look, how much do we really need?” I mean, because right now, even if you look at the amount of flower, there’s now enough flower for the most part. Almost every pharmacy has flower in stock. Does it always the best flower? No, I think we still have strides to make there. And we need to lower prices. Prices need to come down, but generally speaking, we’ve made huge advancements.
Blake Smith:
Over half companies still aren’t utilizing their full license either. So, if everybody has flower in all their pharmacies and so forth, and we can start lowering prices, maybe we don’t need more grows. But the only way to do that is to start doing a real assessment. And then I would say the same thing on the pharmacy side. How many people are not being served because they can’t get access to it? And so, we need to have data had to suggest how many pharmacies we should have. I think the industry is okay with those ideas, but we should make all decisions based on data.
Tim Pickett:
Yeah. And at least I can see, I think, Ray Ward is trying to do maybe an appropriation for some industry questionnaires, asking the QMPs and the patients, how the program is going, what’s happening, what’s good, what’s bad? I can support that from my side, from the medical provider side, that we need practical data, on my side, on how the program is being used. On my side, it’s more of a question of who’s providing the recommendations? Who does the legislature want to be providing the recommendations, versus who is actually making those recommendations and helping the program grow?
Blake Smith:
Yeah, that’s right. And we’re still lacking in education too. I mean, one of the biggest challenges, I think, with the government, in general, is that they stepped into this without actually knowing how the cannabis industry actually works. And then not only that, but then there’s always this standoffish like, “Well, of course, industry is going to suggest things because they’re so self-motivated that the industry can’t be trusted.” Well, the industry’s the only one who has all the knowledge that’s necessary for everybody to know everything, so it’s a very weird stance to say, “I’ll be ignorant and make rules based on my ignorance, but I can’t trust industry who does know the answer to this because they’re only going to do it in their own interest.” I mean-
Tim Pickett:
You’re exactly in the same spot that I am too. Nobody trusts me as a QMP that that owns a cannabis specialty clinic, because, “Oh, you have all of your interests. Utah Therapeutic, their interests are in seeing more patients and doing more evaluations.” But on the other hand, just like you, but yet, I’m the one seeing all the patients and doing all the evaluations.
Blake Smith:
Right. I’m the guy who’s making medicine, so like-
Tim Pickett:
Right. You’re like, “You’re the guy who’s making medicine, so you’ve got to listen to what people are buying, what people are using, how people are responding, what’s the accessibility.”
Blake Smith:
And this is the science of what we do know.
Tim Pickett:
Yeah. This is just practical. It’s that practical knowledge that’s hard. And it is hard for a state… Ironically, you have a state that’s very libertarian and right-sided on the political spectrum, and yet, they have got their clauses deep in regulation on this side. So, it’s a very interesting place to be. I’m glad you feel that same way. And it’s…
Blake Smith:
Tim, I always laugh. I laugh about this a lot because I have been told to my face that, “Well, we wouldn’t want to trust data coming out of a cannabis company because it’s going to be self-serving in terms of doing the research.” I worked in pharma for a good portion of my career. Every study we did, we paid for, and it was promoting our material we were making from pharma. The difference was it was okay because it was being peer-reviewed, it was going through this regulatory process. And so, why is cannabis any different? Zion, I think I have done clinical studies, I know how to do this, but if Curaleaf gets a study done and they open up the data and everybody can review it and scientists all can weigh in, that’s good for everybody. It doesn’t really matter that it was Curaleaf or Zion or whoever, it doesn’t really matter. Good data is good data, and that will win out at the end of the day.
Tim Pickett:
How do you… Switching gears a little bit on Zion’s portion, so you applied for the 15th license, Dragonfly ended up with the award. Sounds like they’re going to put a pharmacy in price. You fought hard, Zion fought hard, I know.
Blake Smith:
Yeah.
Tim Pickett:
You and I talked for that license, but you have a retail establishment. How did that play out? Talk to us a little bit about that because not a lot of people understand or even know.
Blake Smith:
Yeah. And that’s been… I mean, that was pretty intentional on our end. I mean, there has been differences of opinion in the industry about different companies and different things. I mean, I’ve heard people say, “Well, Zion, those are those lab guys, and they’re full of chemists and scientists, and they’re doing weird stuff.” And so, people are entitled to the way they think about it. I would like to think that we make good medicine and we follow good scientific practices as a result of that.
Blake Smith:
But what ends up happening is, because of these differences of opinions and different things, that we had an opportunity to acquire the business, which included the license for pharmacy 127, which is the one that’s in Cedar City, and that became important. I mean, it’s important for us for a lot of reasons, but we need to be able to give all different patients, access to all kinds of different medicine. But we also wanted to make sure that we didn’t want people to not want to get us products because it was going to be a Zion affiliate in some way, shape, or form. Because if you go to Cedar City, what you’ll notice is that pretty much every company is represented there. Every company.
Tim Pickett:
Yeah. You buy products down there from everybody. We have a clinic in that same building, and it’s one of the things that our staff… And when I ask my staff about loyalty programs and which pharmacies they like to shop at, which pharmacies they like to get their medicine at, always, the availability of all the products at Bloom at the Cedar city location, is one of the things that comes up. Always stopping by that pharmacy on the way to St. George, that’s what I’m hearing people are starting to do, because, the variety’s good, the prices are as good as you can get around in the state. And that variety isn’t the case in all of the pharmacies.
Blake Smith:
That’s correct. Yeah. So, to that point, Tim, I mean, we purposely have lowered prices on all products a little bit. I mean, I would like to do more, but at the moment, it is what it is, but I think we’re one of the cheapest pharmacies in the state for the daily price. I mean, there are pharmacies that run some specials, that do a little bit better than that, but on average, the daily price is cheapest, and that’s very intentional on our side. And the other thing is we want to carry everything. Because here’s the thing. And again, I’m going to be bold, Tim. You know I like to get bold.
Tim Pickett:
Yes.
Blake Smith:
I think I produce some of the best products there are. I believe that. I come from a background of making medicine, and I think I’m really good at this. And some of my products, I think are better than others. I think we produce the best tinctures. I just think that that is the case, but having said that, that doesn’t mean there’s not room for other tinctures in the market. And in fact, I would make the argument that says, everybody should be able to make the things that they think and hold value. So, for example, if somebody thinks that it’s better to have whole plant medicine, where they don’t pull out certain terpenes that have sulfurs, and they think that’s valuable, that should be available to patients.
Blake Smith:
Patients and providers should be able to start talking about what types of medicines are going to be the best fit for that individual. And even though I think I make great medicine, there are plenty of other processors and people who make good medicines as well, that may be a better fit for an individual. And as a result of that, it’s our philosophy at our pharmacy, at Cedar City; we try to carry everything. I mean, we don’t always have everything, but we try to carry everything because we want patients to have the biggest selection they can possibly get.
Tim Pickett:
Well, you don’t go to Walgreens and expect that, “Oh, they don’t carry that brand of my thyroid medicine.” Like, “Oh, can’t get that one because I don’t order that.” That’s not the case. We write prescriptions, expecting that no matter where you go in the pharmacy world, you can get what I write for.
Blake Smith:
That’s right.
Tim Pickett:
Now, that’s not happening… It’s not the same in cannabis, but what you’re talking about is essentially that same thing. You should have… If what you need is this flower that is grown at a processor in Garland, then we’re going to need to carry that stuff because you’re not driving to Garland or Brigham City to go get it’s.
Blake Smith:
That’s right.
Tim Pickett:
You’re in Cedar City or Southern Utah.
Blake Smith:
I think almost every company now is producing gummies of some type, gelatinous cubes of some type. You should have the ability to choose. I mean, “Am I going to get the Kroger’s brand of aspirin? Am I going to get the Walmart version? Am I going to get the one from Bear?” Look, there’s a price point differential for all of them, and that’s okay. Give the patient the ability to make that choice, and that’s valuable. So, that’s how we think about it.
Tim Pickett:
Do you guys plan on doing delivery out of Cedar City?
Blake Smith:
We do. One of the things that’s becoming important to us is trying to figure out if there’s a way we can do broader delivery out of multiple locations. Since we have a pharmacy, we can do delivery anyway, but the way the rule is currently written is, I would need to have a delivery vehicle leave from Murray to go down to Cedar City, then Cedar City, potentially coming back to Salt Lake to do a delivery, and it could be the same medicine. That’s a little odd. And so, legislatively, we would love to be able to say, “Look, as long as you have a pharmacy and a pharmacist who is actually reviewing every single thing going out, then it should be able to come from any of the locations that have the right licensure.”
Tim Pickett:
Yeah, it seems silly that you would have to-
Blake Smith:
And that’s a difference for most of the industry, by the way. That’s something that Zion cares about, but I don’t know that everybody in the industry would care about that, but that’s something we care about.
Tim Pickett:
Sure. What… I lost my train of thought there.
Blake Smith:
That’s because it was so groundbreaking. Just playing.
Tim Pickett:
What other projects do you have going on? What other projects does Blake… You’re involved in… I mean, I’m sure you’re involved in other states and their scientific process, working on bills, to pass bills.
Blake Smith:
Yep.
Tim Pickett:
What else are you involved in right now, what other projects?
Blake Smith:
We have some projects that we’re working on in multiple states, all cannabis-related. We have some ventures that are actually outside the United States, in Europe and New Zealand, and some other places, that are actually more on the hemp side. We have a whole hemp side of our business. I’ve started developing specialty in cannabinoid science for animals, specifically mammals. And so, we’re doing a lot of work and we’re doing some clinical studies with another company. And I can mention them, I’m sure. [inaudible 00:41:39] pharmaceuticals. They’re producing animal cannabinoid therapies. And so, I’m their chief technical officer as well. And we have a study at University of Sydney and a study going on at UPenn, measuring arthritis and elbow joints for dogs. And CBG and CBD are far superior than the gold standard.
Blake Smith:
And that’s awesome. That means not only is your life better through cannabis and cannabinoid, but we’re going to start making pets lives better through cannabinoids. And one of the biggest failings in the industry right now, on that side of things, is people think, that’s for an animal, we should be using substandard materials. We treat them just like we treat everything else. We use medical-grade everything because like in the case of my dog, that is for my daughter and so forth, I’m not giving it subpar material. I want it to have the best.
Tim Pickett:
No, and this is billions of dollars. The pet industry’s billions of dollars a year. I mean, people are willing to spend the money on the right product and get good products for their pets. Why would you do… I don’t know, it does seem odd that you would use low-grade products for pets, but I guess-
Blake Smith:
Because it’s cheap.
Tim Pickett:
It’s because it’s just cheap.
Blake Smith:
If we’re going to be honest, it’s the same thing with anything. Why are some products better than others? Well, can we make it cheaper? I mean, if you think about medicine even, like the different brands of medicine for aspirin, what is the real difference? If they’re both 25 milligrams of acetylsalicylic acid, then they’re both 25 milligrams, well, what’s the difference? Well, what are they using as the filler for that pill? And so, your fillers, all of those different types of things, have different cost value. And so, the biggest issue, I think, in all of cannabis, whether it’s hemp or medical or even adult-use, is who’s out there trying to make hay while the sun is shining and they don’t care about the product, they’re just trying to move it as quickly as they can and as much as can, and consumers buy it, versus who’s trying to make something that’s going to have a lasting effect and be a quality product?
Tim Pickett:
Well, I think in the medical market here, we’ve done a pretty good job. I don’t see any real bad actors making, for lack of a better term, really just shitty products in Utah. I don’t see that either.
Blake Smith:
Look, I think Utah is a great place with great producers. I don’t have any complaints, but I can tell you this, having done business now, looking at things outside of our state, not all places are created the same, not all bills and legislation are created the same, and not all processors are created the same, especially, as you start to follow cannabis around the country and what the black market’s doing and different things, some people still are using dirt floor radiator hoses, and hexing to do a bunch of business. And that, I don’t know, seems a little sketchy to me.
Tim Pickett:
What on the hemp side is changing in the legislature now? I know they’ve combined the Utah Department of Agriculture with… They’ve made their own department up there for the hemp and the medical cannabis that’s going to be combined, I guess, at the department.
Blake Smith:
In legislation, we’ll see if it happens.
Tim Pickett:
Okay. What about what other hemp things that are happening? Do you know?
Blake Smith:
The biggest thing is getting like delta-8 and other THC analogs out of the general public and moving them into the medical industry.
Tim Pickett:
Do you think that’ll happen?
Blake Smith:
Yeah, I do.
Tim Pickett:
It seems like there’s a pretty good appetite in the system and in the legislature for that.
Blake Smith:
Yeah. I think so. I mean-
Tim Pickett:
To remove delta-8 from the over-the-counter products.
Blake Smith:
And what I would say is delta-8 is only one part of that. I mean, if you look at delta-8, the rules around delta-8 is it has to be significantly pure to be in the medical market; 95%-plus. So, the response to delta-8 now being eliminated out of general circulation, is people are moving to HPP, which is basically another THC analog. And, oh my gosh, if you were sketched out by delta-8, you should be really nervous by that, because, the way that you make it is you end up usually combining sulfuric acid, hydrochloric acid, an acetic acid because you actually have to donate carbons. We’re no longer moving a single covalent bond. We’re literally changing the molecule, adding things, taking stuff away, and manipulating the molecule. And what does it do? It gets you high, but I haven’t seen any that’s really pure. So, it has just-
Tim Pickett:
I’ve seen some of this on the market. I’ve literally been given a vape cart of this because it’s the new thing. It’s the new thing. You should-
Blake Smith:
And it’s sketchy. I’m going to be honest, it’s sketchy because I have not been given any material or created any material that I can throw on the mass spec and show that it is extremely pure. I haven’t seen any yet. I mean, there’s some stuff that’s not bad, but people were complaining about delta-8, that like, “Well, what’s the other 5%. If it’s 95% pure, what’s the other 5%.” AJ, HPP, I haven’t seen anything that’s better than about 82%, ever.
Tim Pickett:
I mean, how do we adjust for this? Is the black market and the hemp side just going to always be one step ahead, are we always going to be chasing?
Blake Smith:
[crosstalk 00:48:01]. Yeah. I mean, the legislators could fix this real quick. “Okay, any analog of THC is now going to be regulated.” Done. It’s over. Because this is just another analog of THC. And so, if you do something like that, then it falls into the same category as spice and some of these other things. And so, let’s not do that. Let’s not go down this rabbit hole. I mean, there’s ways for us to cap CBD molecules. And what I mean cap, I mean literally binding the ends of these molecules so that it will sit in your stomach long enough, so that it’s subjected to warmth and acid. We can get it to convert in your liver to 11alpha-hydroxy. And so, we can get you high on CBD.
Tim Pickett:
Which will get you high.
Blake Smith:
We can figure that out. I mean, in fact, we know how to do that. Let’s not play that game. That’s a silly game to play. We’ll just keep doing this over and over again until somebody at the legislative level says, “Look, if we’re going to regulate THC, then we should regulate.” And even if this were to become adult-use market, even if that happened, I would still want to regulate these rogue analogs because they’re not shown to have be safe. Typically, if Joe’s growing it in his backyard or in his basement or in his bathtub, and the local-
Tim Pickett:
And then converting it in the garage.
Blake Smith:
Yeah. But even if the neighbors just goes and buys weed from Joe, it’s probably pretty safe. Joe’s probably not spraying it with arsenic, he’s probably not getting lead or cadmium in there, and he is probably not dousing it in hydrochloric acid. Okay. Joe’s brother, who’s out on the farm, who ends up having massive amounts of hexane hydrochloric acid, who just starts taking all their hemp and dumping it in there, and then is like, “We got some of it out. Let’s go ahead and make a bunch of vape carts,” that’s sketchy, that’s weird. We shouldn’t allow that in the system even if you are a pro adult use. It’s just the way that you think about processing things.
Tim Pickett:
Yeah. It’s just not safe. What about also, the… I’ve made a gummy that is 0.3%, but I’ve made it so big that it’s got eight milligrams of delta-9 in it. Is there a legislation to fix that?
Blake Smith:
So, here’s the trick. Here’s how to beat the federal government. Everybody, are you ready? What you do is go buy some Kashi, which is sticks and stones and berries cereal. And that’s going to add density. Just pour that into your party gummy, and you can get about 20 mgs of THC in there, and by weight, it’s still going to be below 0.3%. So, you could eat that whole party pack and get 20 mgs of THC and be legal. Look, the whole thing that’s craziness too; to define things by percentage is a real silly way to think about this. Just because, from a weight density perspective, look, I could just add denser and denser materials to my gummy, so I can up or increase the amount of THC that’s in there.
Tim Pickett:
And is that part of the bill… If we limit analogs of THC, are we going to limit total milligrams of delta-9? [crosstalk 00:51:19].
Blake Smith:
I don’t believe [crosstalk 00:51:21] now.
Tim Pickett:
You don’t think so.
Blake Smith:
I don’t think it’s in there. I mean, I haven’t seen the draft yet.
Tim Pickett:
I haven’t seen the language either on any hemp side or medical side.
Blake Smith:
I would love if it was in there. Because here’s the other thing-
Tim Pickett:
I just don’t want people… Look, the reason why you come see a medical provider is so that I can help you just adjust the dosage, plus I can make sure the pregnant woman, breastfeeding woman, and the kid who’s under 21, doesn’t get access unless they absolutely need it through the Compassionate Use Board. There’s a system of access for these folks. I get that. That was what we designed. We’re going around it. We’re actually making the medical market kind of look foolish.
Blake Smith:
Yeah. Well, and the other thing I would say is, I’m pretty pro-free market when we think about things like this. If somebody creates something innovative and so forth, then they should be able to have a right to sell it. But I don’t think this qualifies as innovative. This is not like… If somebody went in their backyard and threw in a bunch of seeds and you did this hyper mix of boswellic acid and all these type of things, you don’t know anything about it. And it’s like snake oil in some way, shape, or form, but it happens to be a high-demand snake oil. And so, you’ll sell it, but there’s no guarantees about anything about it. Could it kill your liver? Could your kidney suffer failure? Maybe. Does the person making it even know that? No.
Tim Pickett:
Nope. Nor do they really care.
Blake Smith:
Nor do they probably even care.
Tim Pickett:
And they know that it’s only going to last so long. And we’re going to get a ton of comments on this, the people that disagree with me on this. And I get your point, I get people’s point that we should have access, but if you want that, then create an adult-use program and get it done legislatively so that it’s legal, and that’s the right way to do this. You don’t-
Blake Smith:
Even if it’s an adult-use program, Tim, it’s still going be sold at a dispensary.
Tim Pickett:
Yes. It’s still regulated.
Blake Smith:
And still [inaudible 00:53:32] rules.
Tim Pickett:
Rules and processing and testing. That’s what we want. We need safety.
Blake Smith:
That’s the point. If Joe’s making cereal… Sorry, if there’s somebody listening that’s named Joe. I keep using Joe. We’ll call him Bob.
Tim Pickett:
It’ll be fine.
Blake Smith:
If Bob is making cereal in his kitchen or in his bathtub, and he says, “Look, it’s just like Marshmallow Mateys,” I’m not sure that I want to eat Bob’s Marshmallow Mateys out of his bathtub. I don’t think that’s the right way to think about cereal. And so, because, at least the general meals has rules, and GMP is good manufacturing practices. There’s rules around how to do it. And so, I just think it’s the same case for all of these things. I don’t trust somebody just dissolving some willow bark and making aspirin on their own. I think that’s a weird thing to do.
Tim Pickett:
No, but alternatively… Okay, this brings up a good point. And about home-grow and flower, and what you said before about Joe growing a plant and then providing it to his neighbor, that’s probably reasonably safe.
Blake Smith:
Sure. Yes.
Tim Pickett:
So, Joe grows his vegetables, takes them to the farmer’s market, sells them, reasonably safe. Joe starts manipulating and doing gene modification on things, and now processing in the garage, that’s where this breaks down. So, there’s a very big distinction for me on flower and safety, of flower and potentially home-grow and that type of stuff, versus processing THC, which we need regulation.
Blake Smith:
And I’ll take it further. Do I have a problem with Mary taking willow bark, making her own aspirin, and then Mary taking the aspirin? No.
Tim Pickett:
Yes.
Blake Smith:
That’s fine. Look, that’s your deal, you get to decide what to do with you and your individual family. Do I think you should start making that in pill form and giving it to the kids on the street, or selling it to all your neighbors? Nope. I’m out. That’s where we have a problem. And so, it’s the same thing. Look, if you want to make your own HPP in your garage and take it just yourself, well look, man, go do your thing.
Tim Pickett:
Yeah. I guess that’s something because you should-
Blake Smith:
But you put it in a kiosk in the mall, and you’re telling me to trust you that it’s all safe and done the certain way, yeah, man, I want to see the certificate of analysis. And it needs to actually come from an accredited lab, and it needs to have a full profile, and I want to see the mass spec. That’s the point. Where it’s individuals doing their own thing, I don’t know that I care that much about it. I think people should do whatever they need to do for them. But the second you try to commercialize that and you don’t have a safety profile, you don’t have GMP, you don’t have any of those things, I’m out. I can’t support it.
Tim Pickett:
So, back to… You and I can go down the rabbit hole a little bit.
Blake Smith:
Okay. I’m in.
Tim Pickett:
No, we just did.
Blake Smith:
Oh yeah. I get that a lot. I’m like a wind-up toy. You just wind me up and let me off.
Tim Pickett:
Yeah. I love it. Okay, so we’ve got Bloom… Well, Cedar City, which is retail, we’ve got bills at the legislature that are happening. We haven’t read the language yet. We’ve got hemp stuff. We’ve got multi-state projects going. I mean, when do you… Oh, and I should mention this. For those of you who listen to the end here, congratulations, because, you’re going to get a preview. Blake and I, we just spent the last week videoing ourselves. Okay. That was a little awkward for me. Was that a little awkward for you?
Blake Smith:
It was sort of terrible in some ways. I know I talk a lot, but I don’t necessarily actually like the sound of my voice that much, and I certainly don’t like talking about myself.
Tim Pickett:
In a way that they were trying to really get us to talk about ourselves, because, you and I kind of try to thread this needle between all of these different things; our kids, our involvement in the program, the fact that we deal with cannabis for a living, our own use. All of that sort of stuff is just a little awkward.
Blake Smith:
Well, one part was pretty upsetting, actually. I mean, so the question got asked to me, how do I balance my work life?
Tim Pickett:
Yeah, me too.
Blake Smith:
I don’t.
Tim Pickett:
I know. They were like, “Well, but you make it to all the soccer games and all the dance concerts and all of that sort of…” And I’m like, “Well, yeah, I do that, but it sure doesn’t feel balanced. It feels like I work all the time. I love it.” What do you think?
Blake Smith:
Yeah, I like my job. I wouldn’t spend so much time doing this if I didn’t think it had value.
Tim Pickett:
Sure.
Blake Smith:
And so, I have this weird dichotomy that I hold my family… My family’s like my number one thing, and then work is also important to me because I feel like I’m doing good things. I’m doing good things for lots of different people. Okay, so now I have two competing things. And so I try to do both, but what that does also mean is I don’t take good care of myself very well. There’s all these other things that happen as a result. And the thing that was hard during the interview, was like it was kind of a little bit of a slap to my own face. Like, “Oh, I don’t do a good job at balancing everything in my life. I don’t do a good job of taking care of myself.” And I don’t talk about that very often because I try not to think about myself or talk about myself very much. And so, saying it out loud was like, “Oh my gosh, wow, do I need to reassess how I think about things?”
Tim Pickett:
Right. And what I’m prioritizing for me. And I’m very, very excited and terrified at the same time. For listeners, Ramble Content does a lot of our video production. And great guys. Dave Trevino, friend of mine, and very, very talented organization. We’ll be putting these videos together on our YouTube channel, Discover Marijuana. If you’re not subscribed to that channel, you should just go there right now. YouTube, Discover Marijuana, hit subscribe right now, because, in the next few weeks, you’re going to see these videos of Blake Smith, close-up look at Blake, close-up look at Tim Pickett too.
Blake Smith:
You got to find out, I guess, what makes me tick, I guess.
Tim Pickett:
I’m interested to see how they put it together. I think that they’ll certainly do a better job than you and I would’ve. And I think what’s good about having other people involved, is they see what’s happening for the industry, they see what’s happen for you and I, and I’ll bet they put together something that’s true in a way that you and I wouldn’t have seen.
Blake Smith:
Oh, I guarantee that. Yeah. That’s absolutely. And you and I, when we sit and talk, we tend to be able to… We enjoy each other’s company and we can talk about anything for a long period of time. Having somebody else come in and view this objectively… I don’t know that you and I are always fully objective about the way we do that.
Tim Pickett:
No, certainly not.
Blake Smith:
Having somebody else do that for us, I think is valuable.
Tim Pickett:
Yeah. Well, I’m looking forward to those and I’m looking forward to the new content on season four, frankly. Well, I think there’s going to be a lot of… We had a meeting about that today. There’s going to be a lot of really amazing content coming out, and a redo of some of the stuff that we’ve already done on that channel, that’s just, let’s just step it up a notch. We know more, we can do better, so let’s do better.
Blake Smith:
Yeah, absolutely. Do better.
Tim Pickett:
Just do better.
Blake Smith:
Better.
Tim Pickett:
Just do better, work more. One year, my motto was, go to bed later, wake up earlier, show no mercy.
Blake Smith:
And how did that work?
Tim Pickett:
It was awesome. This year, it is, let’s do that again. And it has a thumbs up with it too. Let’s do that again.
Blake Smith:
Do it again.
Tim Pickett:
Let’s do it again.
Blake Smith:
I don’t have anything, quib or anything, saying that’s awesome like that.
Tim Pickett:
You can use mine; “Let’s do that again.”
Blake Smith:
Okay. Let’s do it again. Hey, let’s do this again.
Tim Pickett:
Let’s do this again, Blake. Okay. Well, there you go. Okay, well, I guess that’s it. Anything else you want to talk about?
Blake Smith:
No, you’re awesome. Look, it’s really fun to be in this industry. It’s really fun to see patients get benefited from this, and it’s really fun to be able to be part of making history in some way, shape, or form. I mean Utah, cannabis, medicine, treating people, it’s wild. This is all wild.
Tim Pickett:
It’s really wild. All right, everybody. Stay tuned, thanks for listening to Utah in the Weeds. If you’re not subscribed to Utah in the Weeds, please subscribe on any podcast player that you have access to. This has been a great conversation, Blake, and I look forward to talking to you again. Stay safe out there.
Blake Smith:
You too. Thanks, buddy. Bye.
Combining multiple mind-altering drugs is something our culture generally treats with caution. Such is the case with the practice known as crossfading. The practice is one of combining cannabis and alcohol in order to maximize the effects of both drugs. Though it can be dangerous, crossfading is also a common party practice. How much do you know about it?
It might seem like crossfading is not an issue in Utah given that our cannabis landscape is medical-only in nature. But using Medical Cannabis does not prevent one from also using alcohol. Medical users can still participate in crossfading in the privacy of their own homes. The question is whether they should.
A 2018 survey among young people showed a general familiarity with crossfading. According to the study data, 87% of the nine hundred survey participants had at least heard of the practice. Approximately 43% described it as combining alcohol and cannabis while 25% said that a person is not crossfading unless they have consumed enough of the two drugs to be both drunk and stoned.
In terms of who actually participates in crossfading, research data suggests that just over 60% of users had experienced it at least once. Just 13% viewed it as a positive experience. Some 59% reported a negative experience. Finally, 45% of the respondents reported believing that crossfading was moderately risky; just over 33% said it was very risky.
The data shows that alcohol and cannabis users are aware of crossfading as a practice. It also shows that the practice is common, though not desirable in the end. We advise being extremely cautious with it. Even though you may use Medical Cannabis to alleviate the symptoms of your qualifying condition, combining it with alcohol could create problems you are not interested in dealing with.
Both alcohol and cannabis can affect cognition and coordination. They can alter your emotional state. The two drugs can lead to fatigue, slow reaction times, etc. Using either drug makes driving a dangerous proposition. Unfortunately, crossfading amplifies the effects of both drugs. When a person crossfades, they feel the effects of both drugs more intensely than they would have by using one of them alone.
Crossfading can also create side effects above and beyond amplifying what is normally experienced with alcohol or cannabis. For example, it can create a profound sense of confusion. It can also lead to nausea and vomiting, serious sedation, and a prolonged high that could ultimately prove very uncomfortable.
Though rare, the most serious cases of crossfading can result in passing out, blackouts, dehydration, and dangerous slip and fall accidents. Patients have been hospitalized with serious injuries associated with crossfading.
As a Medical Cannabis patient, you use cannabis to help alleviate your symptoms. We think that this is a good thing. We hope you will continue to do so by consulting with your QMP and PMP. As for crossfading, we don’t think the practice is worth the risk involved.
Though there are no guarantees you would have a bad experience with crossfading, the possibility exists. To be quite honest, crossfading could also negatively influence the therapeutic benefits of using Medical Cannabis. Finally, why take the chance of making your qualifying condition worse?
Continue using Medical Cannabis as directed by your PMP. Should you choose to use alcohol as well, do not mix the two. Your PMP or QMP should be able to help you figure out how to use both without crossfading. That’s the best way to go.
Episode 86 of Utah in the Weeds features Kylee Shumway, Pharmacist In Charge at WholesomeCo Cannabis in West Bountiful.
Shumway is also the Medical Director for the Utah Patients Coalition, a cannabis advocacy group. UPC led the signature-gathering initiative that brought Medical Cannabis to Utah’s midterm election in 2018.
Like many people, Shumway’s first experiences with cannabis happened when she was a teenager. Growing up in Lindon, Utah, she noticed cannabis seemed to be more popular among her religious classmates than it was for people outside of the dominant religion. [3:33]
Kylee told us about her education and early career as a pharmacist. Her first job out of college was at a Smith’s pharmacy. [05:54]
Shumway says she was interested in becoming a cannabis pharmacist as early as 2012. When Utah passed Medical Cannabis legislation in 2018, she knew it was time to take her career on a new path. [12:24]
Kylee’s passion for Medical Cannabis began while she was in pharmacy school. Her father, a cancer patient, had lost 80-90 pounds during the course of his treatment. But cannabis helped to restore his appetite and his ability to swallow. [13:44]
In January 2020, the Utah Dept. of Health announced the recipients of the state’s first 14 Medical Cannabis pharmacy licenses. Kylee immediately started to apply for work as a cannabis pharmacist. [17:21]
Kylee is very interested in cannabinoids and how they interact with the body. She and Tim agree there is a vast amount of research about cannabis yet to be done. [24:09]
The conversation turned to Utah’s Medical Cannabis program. Kylee says it’s “astonishing” that Utah has Medical Cannabis. She’s glad to see healthcare providers working to educate each other, and their patients, about Medical Cannabis. [27:38]
Kylee is heavily involved in educating patients and her fellow healthcare professionals about Medical Cannabis. She says WholesomeCo enables her to research cannabis and put together educational material as she sees fit. [33:25]
She told us about her involvement with Utah Patients Coalition and her duties as their medical director. She spends a lot of time with UPC at the Utah State Capitol, where they continue to advocate for patients’ access to Medical Cannabis. [36:47]
Shumway is also interested in the therapeutic uses of psilocybin, the active ingredient in hallucinogenic mushrooms. She’s involved in a political push to form a task force for Utah to investigate psilocybin’s medical potential. [37:42]
Tim and Kylee are keeping a close eye on the Utah Legislature’s 2022 session, and any Medical Cannabis legislation that could be passed in the session. We expect to see better protections for patients, including some who are public servants. [43:58]
Kylee talked about her favorite cannabis delivery methods: tinctures and edibles. She likes them because they’re discreet, effective, and are available in a variety of cannabinoid ratios. [47:34]
If you’d like to get in touch with Kylee, she recommends reaching out to her via the Utah Patients Coalition’s social media channels. [53:13]
Kylee Shumway:
That is actually why I’m up there, is I’m helping the Utah Patients Coalition with whatever they need. Essentially I am their expert on cannabis and patients, and we are doing some stuff with a psilocybin task force still, and so I’m also their expert there.
Tim Pickett:
Okay, just stop right now. Let’s talk about psilocybin. Welcome everybody out to Utah in the Weeds. My name is Tim Pickett and I am your host. Today is episode 86, an interview with Kylee Shumway, a friend of mine in the cannabis industry and medical cannabis space. Somebody with whom I share a lot of familiar opinions with, frankly, as you listen to this episode. Kylee Shumway is the pharmacist in charge at WholesomeCo Medical Cannabis Pharmacy, here in Bountiful, Utah. WholesomeCo is one of the growing medical cannabis pharmacies in the state of Utah and they currently offer delivery services to every corner of Utah for free. I want to mention that, because they’re the only pharmacy to do that. And Kylee runs their medical program as a pharmacist. Here in this interview, we talk about her background, how she got into cannabis and what things are really important to her with regard to the patients here in Utah in her patient care.
Tim Pickett:
Kylee is also the medical director for the Utah Patients Coalition and activist group here in the state of Utah, and along with Desiree Hennessy, the executive director of that Utah Patients Coalition, is very, very involved on the Hill during the legislative session now, that’s in session here in Utah, working for patients, working for us, right? Patients and providers, trying to increase safety, increase access, decrease costs, make those tweaks and changes that we’re all hoping, hoping that the state will move forward on. Additionally, she is working with the Utah Patients Coalition on a psilocybin bill, which we talk about here in the interview, so make sure you listen to that as well.
Tim Pickett:
We talk all about her background and how she got into pharmacy, what she loves about THC and compounding cannabinoids. Very, very fun conversation to listen to. From a housekeeping perspective, stay tuned. One of our next episodes will be with a veteran who has experience with Truu Med. Now you may be familiar with them, because their owner and operator was recently arrested for kidnapping and torturing a woman. We are going to talk to a veteran who was a patient of theirs and had that experience, and listen to what he has to say about that whole thing, how he feels like they were very unfair to him in that didn’t really take care of him. If you’re not subscribed to Utah in the Weeds, go ahead, download it on any podcast player that you have access to. Again, my name’s Tim Pickett. Enjoy this episode with Kylie Shumway. Okay. Kylie, what started this all, your journey into cannabis? When was the first time you were exposed to cannabis? Tell me about that.
Kylee Shumway:
I think-
Tim Pickett:
And don’t lie. Your mom’s not going to listen to this.
Kylee Shumway:
Yeah, my mom’s never going to hear this. I had friends that used cannabis when I was in high school. I wasn’t as into it. I definitely did use cannabis in high school, but-
Tim Pickett:
Did you grow up in Utah?
Kylee Shumway:
I did. I grew up in Lindon, Utah.
Tim Pickett:
Wow. We’ve met a lot of people on the podcast who have actually used cannabis in high school, and frankly I’m surprised, because I didn’t think it was that prevalent, but evidently it was a bigger deal than I thought.
Kylee Shumway:
It was really prevalent with more of the religious kids. They actually seemed to use more cannabis than maybe the kids that were outside of the dominant religion.
Tim Pickett:
Cool. Used it a little bit in high school, but didn’t really love it?
Kylee Shumway:
I tried it, but I didn’t love it for a whole lot of reasons. One being that I had a lot of anxiety when I was younger, so it just made me more anxious. And so I was like, I don’t love this-
Tim Pickett:
Classic. This, to me, is like… My experience was pretty similar. I did it a little bit, but honestly, the funnest part about smoking weed in high school is the moment right before you actually get high. Right before that, because then you’re like, I’m doing thing that I’m not supposed to. It’s really exciting, you’ve got all that adrenaline and then you get high and you’re just paranoid. Right? This is not fun.
Kylee Shumway:
Yeah, and then paranoia kicks in and then this is awful. I’m not having fun, but yeah, you’re right. The time leading up to that, the camaraderie and with your friends and you’re having so much fun and then you’re not having fun.
Tim Pickett:
Yeah, then all of a sudden you’re really not having fun. Kids, don’t smoke weed. It’s really not really worth it.
Kylee Shumway:
I did not have fun.
Tim Pickett:
Because it’s just not fun.
Kylee Shumway:
I did not have fun. I didn’t actually find any medicinal benefit from cannabis until I was an adult and I could make more well-informed decisions with my pharmacy knowledge, with the background that I then had.
Tim Pickett:
Ah, really? When did you go into pharmacy?
Kylee Shumway:
I started my… In 2011 was my first year of college.
Tim Pickett:
2011?
Kylee Shumway:
Yeah, so 2011. And I knew, I was pretty sure that I wanted to be a pharmacist. I tried some other things. I took some programming classes and just some other stuff to make sure that that’s what I really wanted, but after my first biology and my first chemistry class, it was like, that’s it.
Tim Pickett:
You’re like, “Wow, this is really cool.”
Kylee Shumway:
This is exactly what I want.
Tim Pickett:
Why pharmacy?
Kylee Shumway:
I thought about going to medical school, but when I started college, I was actually 25 and I was concerned about how long medical school takes. I felt a little rushed, which wasn’t true. I should not have felt rushed. But at 25 in Utah, I was like, I’m too old. I didn’t start soon enough, which was all a fallacy. That was all not true, but that’s how I felt. I was like, “I’m going to be a pharmacist, I can do that in between five and nine years, instead of 15 years. I can get done with it.” Because I wouldn’t need to do… It’s not required to do a residency or anything like that, but you can do a residency if you want.
Tim Pickett:
You can do a one-year intensive-
Kylee Shumway:
I think they do two-year residencies.
Tim Pickett:
Oh, they do?
Kylee Shumway:
Yeah, uh-huh (affirmative).
Tim Pickett:
With PA school, there’s only a couple of what they would consider residencies in the nation, right? And they don’t make you more money. There’s a few. There’s one trauma program at IHC for PAs.
Kylee Shumway:
Oh, interesting. There’s quite a few residencies now for pharmacy school, but again, I just had this idea that I was in a hurry and that I needed to hurry up and pick a job and hurry up and do something with myself.
Tim Pickett:
Yeah, hurry up and do all the… Yeah, right.
Kylee Shumway:
Hurry up and be an adult.
Tim Pickett:
Yeah, hurry up. Geez, Kylee, 25.
Kylee Shumway:
I was 25 and I was-
Tim Pickett:
Come on.
Kylee Shumway:
… in such a rush.
Tim Pickett:
2011, you go back to school?
Kylee Shumway:
Yeah, that is when I go back to school. I had graduated years earlier, but I just knew I wasn’t ready for college when I graduated from high school. I still had all that anxiety that I was working on and I still had this idea that maybe I wasn’t smart enough, which was also a lie, but anxiety makes it hard to see what’s true.
Tim Pickett:
Yeah, I could totally see that. Then did you work in retail pharmacy?
Kylee Shumway:
Yes, that was my very first job out of college, when I graduated in 2016. I rushed through college. I actually, at the end, I think I was taking 37-and-a-half credit hours a semester or something, in two-week blocks.
Tim Pickett:
Oh wow, yeah, uh-huh (affirmative). You were really in a hurry.
Kylee Shumway:
I was really in a hurry.
Tim Pickett:
You were really in a hurry. Do you feel like you’re in that big of a hurry now?
Kylee Shumway:
No.
Tim Pickett:
Not quite? You’re busy though.
Kylee Shumway:
I’m busy.
Tim Pickett:
You’re really busy now. We’ll talk about that in a second. But so 2016, what was your first job as a pharmacist?
Kylee Shumway:
I was a retail pharmacist at Smith’s and I actually enjoyed it. I got a lot of patient interaction and it was really a way for me to become comfortable with myself as a healthcare provider. I had a lot of really good pharmacists around me to help me out and I was really glad that that’s where I started. Though pretty soon after that, I think I was a retail pharmacist for about a year, and then I got into compounding pharmacy. I loved retail pharmacy. It was great, but there are some problems at the corporate level that have come to light actually, recently. There’s a big movement all over social media right now. I think it’s called. She Waited, and then Pizza Is Not Working.
Tim Pickett:
Oh, okay. Describe that. What’s happening?
Kylee Shumway:
There was a pharmacist in a retail pharmacy chain that got sick, called corporate and said, “Hey, I need somebody to cover me. I’m really sick.” And they’re like, “Well, we don’t have anybody.” And they had all these excuses. “You can’t shut the pharmacy down. You have to wait until somebody else gets there,” because she was the only pharmacist and the pharmacist can’t leave the pharmacy or the pharmacy has to shut down. She waited, and while she waited, she had a heart attack and died.
Tim Pickett:
Oh man!
Kylee Shumway:
It was so bad. And I’m pretty sure it was CVS.
Tim Pickett:
Interesting.
Kylee Shumway:
Yeah, there’s some stuff in retail pharmacy that I think needs fixing and it needed fixing while I was a retail pharmacist.
Tim Pickett:
Did you like compounding better?
Kylee Shumway:
Much better.
Tim Pickett:
Compounding, the difference is with compounding pharmacies, you get a lot more providers calling in and then saying, “Hey, I need you to mix up this.”
Kylee Shumway:
Yeah, or-
Tim Pickett:
That’s like mortar and pestle, the whole… Did you do that?
Kylee Shumway:
I actually used mortar and pestles all the time, and capsule machines. It’s so fun. It’s so fun and I love to bake as well, so it’s right up my alley. I was just like, “This is great.”
Tim Pickett:
You’re like a drug baker.
Kylee Shumway:
This is everything that I could have ever wanted and I loved it, so I specialized in bioidentical hormone replacement, and that’s a lot of what we were compounding. I loved it. I loved it so much. I worked there for years. I did compounding pharmacy for years in a couple different compounding pharmacies, and it was so fun. And then I got to the point that I was really confident, I was doing really great and I really knew what I was doing, and then the law passed in Utah for cannabis, in, what was that? 2018?
Tim Pickett:
Yep.
Kylee Shumway:
And I started telling everybody around me, I was like, “That’s what I want to do.” And that had started. Me talking about being a cannabis pharmacist started in probably 2012.
Tim Pickett:
Interesting. That is… Because in Utah, there wasn’t any discussion about really even the law at all, passing before that big push in 2018, when it passed.
Kylee Shumway:
Yeah. I would tell people that I was going to move out of state to become-
Tim Pickett:
To become a pharmacist?
Kylee Shumway:
A cannabis pharmacist.
Tim Pickett:
There’s a couple of other states that require pharmacists in their programs. It’s Connecticut, I think?
Kylee Shumway:
Yeah, Connecticut does, because we had looked at Connecticut’s program for this program. We were looking at some of the similarities, and then I think Columbia Care keeps pharmacists on staff, no matter what state it’s in.
Tim Pickett:
Uh-huh (affirmative), and I think Curealeaf does a very similar thing. They like pharmacists there in their programs, even in states where they don’t require one.
Kylee Shumway:
Yeah, yeah. There was there was that going on, and then I would tell people that that’s what I was going to do. And then in pharmacy school, my dad got sick. While I was in pharmacy school, my dad got cancer and he got really sick and the chemotherapy was so hard on him. He was on cisplatin, which is the one that makes you the most nauseous, and then he was on doxorubicin and vincristine, and those are really hard on your body, especially the doxorubicin, so he was really sick all the time. We had to leave the state to get cannabis for him, because he had lost so much weight.
Kylee Shumway:
He had lost 80 pounds or 90 pounds, or something crazy like that. We finally took him out of state and he started eating again and the sores in his mouth weren’t so bad and he could swallow, because he’d lost the ability to swallow, and when he started using cannabis again, he could swallow. We couldn’t tell anybody, because he’s at the VA. We can’t tell anybody that we’re using this, but the nurses were like, “Oh, I can’t believe how great you’re doing. You’ve totally turned around. This is wonderful.”
Tim Pickett:
Wow. And it was all because the cannabis he was using, and all of a sudden he’s got a little appetite.
Kylee Shumway:
So he could eat. Mm-hmm (affirmative), some pain relief.
Tim Pickett:
Is that where you learned all your real cannabis medicine, really?
Kylee Shumway:
I think that’s where my passion came from for it. I saw my dad do a 180 and I was like, “I could do that for people.” I had joked about it in 2012 and be like, “I’m going to be a cannabis pharmacist. Ha ha. So funny.” And then that happened and I was like, “I know really I could do this.”
Tim Pickett:
Yeah, now all of a sudden it’s real. I feel like sometimes, with my experience, in the textbook you assume it is real and you believe it and you know how it makes you feel and you know it stimulates your appetite or it makes you relaxed or it helps your back pain, but you don’t really see the benefits for other people until you actually see them have benefit. There’s a difference in reading it in a book and having-
Kylee Shumway:
An experience.
Tim Pickett:
… and experienced… Yeah, or by your patients even too, right?
Kylee Shumway:
Uh-huh (affirmative), oh yeah.
Tim Pickett:
Having your dad… Wow, no, this isn’t just… This is actually real.
Kylee Shumway:
This is real and I knew, once my dad had finished his chemo and he was doing great, and he’s still alive and he’s still doing so good-
Tim Pickett:
That’s so amazing.
Kylee Shumway:
I was like, I could do this for somebody. I could be that person that helps somebody like that and then helps their family too. Because to have my dad get better didn’t just have him get better. It was better for my mom, because she was his main caretaker. It was better for me, because I was helping. It was better for everybody involved, because he had a better attitude. He didn’t hurt so bad, he could get up and move himself around better, because he wasn’t just in so much pain and so sick.
Tim Pickett:
Yeah, he was able to disassociate with what was physically happening.
Kylee Shumway:
Yeah.
Tim Pickett:
That’s really great.
Kylee Shumway:
It was amazing. All of that, and then becoming… Yeah, so all of that, I was a retail pharmacist, a compounding pharmacist and then the bill passed and I was like, “I don’t have to move. I’m going to stay here.”
Tim Pickett:
When did you get your job with Wholesome?
Kylee Shumway:
I started emailing as soon as they announced who had got the licenses in January of 2020.
Tim Pickett:
Yeah, I remember that. I remember I was lifting weights at the time, with Sean Hammond, who had applied for a license and we were waiting, waiting, waiting, waiting, waiting for those to come around. Yep, yeah, that was fun. That’s a fun time. Then you become a pharmacist at Wholesome and now you’re in charge. You’re in charge of the place.
Kylee Shumway:
I am in charge of a lot of things. Some of the stuff I’m in charge in, I’m actually going to split it up with Kelly now, because my job has gotten to where it’s three or four people’s job. I am going to get some help. Kelly has been really fabulous, so she’s going to help me out and I’m going to take over much more of a… I’m going to do less of the day-to-day, writing the schedule and checking on people’s consults and stuff like that. I’m going to be working-
Tim Pickett:
And now you have to check every transaction number.
Kylee Shumway:
Yeah.
Tim Pickett:
I haven’t really talked to a pharmacist since that’s happened. I think we talked about, like with Rich last year, that it happened. And what I’m describing is the, for those of you who are listening, is there was an update to the legislation last year in Utah, where a pharmacist has to now verify that a patient’s dosing and purchasing ability is matching with what they’re purchasing, meaning they can’t go over their limit. And that has to be verified at every transaction.
Kylee Shumway:
Yes. And then along with that, what the pharmacists are also verifying is that what is in the bag is what’s on their receipt. It’s a lot like doing the final check in an actual retail pharmacy, where we’re making sure-
Tim Pickett:
And that was why it was passed. That was… Right.
Kylee Shumway:
Now we’re making sure that, just like we do at a retail pharmacy, where I’m looking, I’m physically looking in the bottle and making sure that those pills are what they say on the screen, because sometimes they’re not.
Tim Pickett:
Interesting.
Kylee Shumway:
And I don’t know how many times I’ve either caught the wrong pills in the bottle, the wrong strength is in the bottle or the wrong medication has been typed in from the prescription, or that the prescription actually has the wrong drug name on it. The prescription from the… There’s a lot of things to catch. But the big thing is, is that I’m actually checking and seeing what’s in the bag is what’s supposed to be in the bag, and it’s just another way… It’s that final check to make sure that everything is in there is in there, but I think it’s also a way to… Everybody’s really worried about diversion, and it’s just one more way of not having-
Tim Pickett:
Yeah, looking the patient in the eye and saying, “This is for you. This is not for somebody else.”
Kylee Shumway:
Yeah, yes.
Tim Pickett:
And I think diversion… What do you think? I think diversion’s a bigger issue than… Nobody really wants to talk about it, but-
Kylee Shumway:
No one wants to talk about it. I was even nervous saying the words. I was like, oh-
Tim Pickett:
I know, because let’s be honest, your sister, your brother, your mom, your son, they need to try something. You’re like, “I’m a patient. I’ll just run down there and you can try some of my tincture.”
Kylee Shumway:
Right?
Tim Pickett:
That is against, not just state law, that’s against federal law and state law. That’s really dangerous. But I don’t know, it’s like it’s no big deal almost.
Kylee Shumway:
Yeah, and nobody wants to talk about it.
Tim Pickett:
Yeah, nobody wants to talk about it, but people, it’s a real thing. People divert. It’s called diversion.
Kylee Shumway:
It’s called diversion.
Tim Pickett:
It’s essentially like… In fact, it’s probably worse, from a legal perspective, to divert cannabis than it is to divert opioids. I don’t know. It may be-
Kylee Shumway:
Because they’re more illegal.
Tim Pickett:
It’s less dangerous to your health, but they’re more-
Kylee Shumway:
It’s a schedule one drug, which-
Tim Pickett:
Weed’s more illegal.
Kylee Shumway:
… I think is going to change.
Tim Pickett:
I think that’s ridiculous.
Kylee Shumway:
Yeah.
Tim Pickett:
Right, yeah, okay. Let’s not go down that rabbit hole yet, but-
Kylee Shumway:
Yeah, that’s a dangerous road for us to go.
Tim Pickett:
Okay, now you see patients at Wholesome, you come all this way from Lindon, and every time I see you, you’re really happy. You seem like you really like your life right now.
Kylee Shumway:
Well, honestly, I cannot believe that this is what I get to do. I can’t believe it. I’ve been talking about it since I started college, “I want to be a cannabis pharmacist. That’s what I want.” And here I am. Who gets that? Who gets to have that in their life?
Tim Pickett:
There’s only 10 of you. Actually, maybe there’s 30 of you now in Utah.
Kylee Shumway:
Yeah, I get to have my dream job.
Tim Pickett:
Right. You get to literally… What I tell people is I literally teach people how to use cannabis. I literally teach people how to smoke weed for a living. It’s pretty awesome. Pretty fun.
Kylee Shumway:
It’s incredible. And I have the chance to do all the research that I want and look at anything that has anything to do with patient care and have a real impact on how patients are taken care of in the cannabis space. And it has been incredible. I love it. I love it and I feel like sometimes outside of medical programs, my patients are forgotten. My true medical patients… Not true, all of them. Everybody’s a medical patient, really, in my opinion, but sometimes they’re forgotten when the medical programs go away, and I get to make sure that they’re taken care of here.
Tim Pickett:
Yep. In Oregon, there’s been a 70% reduction in the medical patients. And there’s certainly going to be a reduction in any adult use program, but I do like that it’s medical here first. I think legitimizing it first, it was the right move.
Kylee Shumway:
Yeah, and making sure that people have good information and that the QMP and the PMPs, we’re doing all we can to educate patients on what’s true, because there’s so much misinformation on the internet. You can just go on the internet and find whatever you want, and there’s a lot of it that’s wrong.
Tim Pickett:
You can really find whatever you want.
Kylee Shumway:
Yeah, yeah.
Tim Pickett:
You really like terpenes. This is your thing.
Kylee Shumway:
I like terpenes. What I-
Tim Pickett:
Or is it cannabinoids?
Kylee Shumway:
Cannabinoids, that’s really… There’s studies on terpenes, and we think that they do the things that we think they do. There’s more science on the cannabinoids, so I’m actually more focused on them. And recently, I don’t know how recently, we have found a whole bunch of the receptors that they interact with outside of the endo cannabinoid system, which has been fascinating for me.
Tim Pickett:
Oh, describe what you’re talking about.
Kylee Shumway:
They interact with GABA receptors. They interact with the TRP receptors, serotonin receptors, so receptors that we would think of classically as outside of the endo cannabinoid system. They are involved in a bunch of pathways in our body, which is so incredible, and it’s why we get the effects that we do. But terpenes, we don’t know if they interact. Well, we know they don’t interact directly, most of them, with the endo cannabinoid system, but we don’t know how they interact with these other systems now, that we’re finding that cannabis interacts with.
Tim Pickett:
Yeah. I love the science of cannabis, but I also… A lot of times we say, “Yes, there’s plenty of evidence. There’s plenty of evidence.” And there is for certain things. Does it work for pain?
Kylee Shumway:
Yes.
Tim Pickett:
Yes. Does it work for this? Yes. But there’s so much that it’s kind of daunting how much we don’t know.
Kylee Shumway:
And the more I learn, the more I know, the more I know how much we don’t know, which makes me more careful now, speaking about cannabis, than when I first started, because there’s so much minutia that we don’t know. There’s a ton of mechanisms of action that we don’t even understand yet. We don’t know how it works. We just know that it does work. Which is true for a lot of medications, so it’s not something that’s overly concerning, but it just shows me how much we don’t know and how much more research we should be doing. We need more, better science.
Tim Pickett:
We need better science in a lot of fronts too, but cannabis is… There’s just a glaring hole in side-by-side studies. The double blind, randomly controlled stuff, then the side-by-side, does cannabis work, does THC work against Ativan? Does THC work against Prozac? Does THC work against… Where there’s-
Kylee Shumway:
I don’t know if we even have anything like that.
Tim Pickett:
Where there’s side-by-side stuff-
Kylee Shumway:
Yeah.
Tim Pickett:
No, I’ve never heard of anything like that. And there needs to be stuff like that so we can say, “Look, in these types of patients, comparing these two medication modalities, this tends to work better or this doesn’t.” Yeah, that type of thing we’re really missing. I don’t even know if we’ll ever get there.
Kylee Shumway:
I believe that we will. I just wish it was faster. It’s hard for me to have to wait on something that I know is important and we need the information, and just because it’s a schedule one drug, I can’t get the information that I need.
Tim Pickett:
Are there things about the program? Could you say what’s your favorite thing about program, or what might be working well with the program? I see you kind of smirking. Don’t smirk. And then, or, alternatively, we can talk about what is not working in the program, what we think we want to change.
Kylee Shumway:
I think there’s a long list of both of those questions. I’m glad that we have a program. The fact that we have a program here in Utah is astonishing. That is good. I think the program being so focused on education and having medical providers and healthcare providers working together the way we are is so important. I love that about the program. There are fiddly bits in the program though, that are so hard to work with. MJ Freeway is so hard to work with.
Tim Pickett:
This is the software program that does seed to sale tracking, and it also is, there’s a sister of it that’s called the electronic verification system, where we house all these patient deadlines and certifications, and then MJ Freeway’s also tied into the retail.
Kylee Shumway:
Yeah. It’s access to point of sale. And I don’t know if it’s robust enough for a medical program.
Tim Pickett:
How about the limited medical provider program? Have you interacted with that program yet, since they launched it last week?
Kylee Shumway:
All of my pharmacists are signed up to do and work in the EVS with the limited medical providers, but I have not had a single patient come to me with a limited medical provider-
Tim Pickett:
With a letter?
Kylee Shumway:
Yeah.
Tim Pickett:
You’re the second pharmacist… Here, it’s been launched for a little less than a week. At the time of this recording, we’ve been a little less than a week for the limited medical provider program. There are 16,000 controlled substance licensed providers in Utah, who basically received the ability at this to authorize 15 patients with medical cannabis. That’s a lot of providers, it’s a lot of patients. There are 14 pharmacies and I have not talked to a single pharmacist who’s interacted with that program one time yet. I’m not saying it’s a-
Kylee Shumway:
I’m not surprised.
Tim Pickett:
I’m not saying it’s a bad program, but it is, and I am saying that, I guess, but I don’t know. I don’t think it’s going to do what they think it’s going to do.
Kylee Shumway:
I am not surprised you haven’t seen anything, because how… I know, I’m sure they sent an email to all the providers, saying this is available, but how many of those provider are actually going to sit down, truly read that email, understand the implications of the email and then act upon it. They don’t have any resources. They don’t know where to go to start. They don’t what pharmacies to call. They probably-
Tim Pickett:
I think there’s still people that come into my clinics who don’t know weed is legal in Utah.
Kylee Shumway:
Exactly.
Tim Pickett:
Let alone a provider who is knee deep in COVID and medical practice and all this stuff now-
Kylee Shumway:
And a million of-
Tim Pickett:
Thinking, okay, I’ve got to learn all this stuff so I can write a letter, when I didn’t yesterday and I was just fine.
Kylee Shumway:
Yeah, and then-
Tim Pickett:
Yesterday, I was fine without it. Today, I’m probably fine without it. I just-
Kylee Shumway:
Exactly. And some of them aren’t going to want to write the letter and hand it to the patient. They’re going to have to track down a pharmacy that they can then fax it to. I think there are just some logistics of the program that make it difficult and very… Maybe not as accessible as they had hoped it was going to be.
Tim Pickett:
Well, to me-
Kylee Shumway:
That’s the diplomatic way-
Tim Pickett:
Last Monday… Yes, thank you. And on Monday, I talked to a patient who was having a bad trip, a very bad experience. We care for a lot of people in once in a while, somebody has a problem. And as the program grows, the number of phone calls we get about this actually grow too. Surprise, surprise. And I thought after this phone call, she was headed to the ER-
Kylee Shumway:
Oh my goodness!
Tim Pickett:
This patient was headed to the ER, “I am freaked out of my mind. I took an edible. I know I took too much, but I’m headed to the ER.”
Kylee Shumway:
Oh my gosh.
Tim Pickett:
I was thinking to myself, as an LMP, what would I do? Where would I-
Kylee Shumway:
You would send them to the ER.
Tim Pickett:
What would I even do? Yeah, I’d just send them to the ER. I wouldn’t even know the questions to ask. That part of it, to me, worries me for patients, because I want my patients to have a good experience and so I want the providers to be educated. I know we’re spending a little time on this and I’m on my soapbox now, so I’ll stop and we’ll get back to the real thing, but you and I… Kylee and I, for those of you who are listening, Kylee and I talk every couple of weeks. We’re involved in a medical cannabis advisory group that’s semi-related to the Utah Cannabis Association and this is important stuff to us, right?
Kylee Shumway:
Yeah. To me, this is important.
Tim Pickett:
Together, we see a lot of people.
Kylee Shumway:
Holy cow, yeah.
Tim Pickett:
Okay, so that’s Wholesome, and Wholesome, I love… The whole outreach side of Wholesome is good, and I can see that they’re really encouraging you to do research and videos and talk about this stuff, right?
Kylee Shumway:
Yes. They give me almost total free reign to do the research that I think is important, to put together educational material that I feel like is important. They really have allowed me, they have deferred to me on all of these things, that I’m like, “Patients need this. QMPs need this. Other PMPs need this. And then patients’ caregivers need this information.” And I have been allowed to do whatever I feel like is important for the… Because I see so many patients that I was starting to get a really good idea of what people know and what they don’t know, or what more information they would like to have, or information for their spouse or someone like that, that maybe isn’t going to take cannabis, but is going to be with them on this journey.
Tim Pickett:
Yes, and you’re repeating yourself over and over, and then finally saying, “You know what? We should have a handout.”
Kylee Shumway:
I should have handout for this. And I’m happy to repeat it over and over, but maybe if I have this handout, they can come to me with other questions, more in depth questions for themselves, that are more relevant for them If they have some information up front. Now we have a booklet that we hand out, we have tons of educational material. We do cannabis night school, we try to do other educational videos. I go out into the community and do education. And not just for patients. I’ve done it for QMP’s offices, I’ve done it for healthcare providers that just have questions, that aren’t QMPs.
Tim Pickett:
Yeah, and here’s a plug. A plug for your education is twofold; one, Cannabis Night School, if you missed Kylee and I talking about terpenes at Wholesome’s Cannabis Night School, check that out.
Kylee Shumway:
That’s fun.
Tim Pickett:
And two, Kylee is on a ton of videos on Discover Marijuana on YouTube, and if you are not subscribed, as everybody loves to say, slam that subscribe button on Discover Marijuana on YouTube and you can watch Kylee and I talk about all kinds of things on those videos, that were just wrapping up that season, season three of that channel. That was really fun.
Kylee Shumway:
I enjoyed that so much. And I still get text messages from people that are like, “I saw you on TV. I saw you on YouTube.” But, “Oh my gosh, I saw you. I loved that.” And I get text messages all the time from people that I used to know from school and stuff.
Tim Pickett:
Oh really? That’s great. Yeah, it’s just a fun project. It kind of puts you on the spot to be videoed and then have a question asked, now all of a sudden you’ve got be like, whoa, I got to know what I’m talking about here.
Kylee Shumway:
I’m glad we did it. It got me ready for some other things that I got myself involved with. It was-
Tim Pickett:
Talk about those, because you’re involved at the legislature now. We were talking before we started recording, every Wednesday, it seems like you’re up there during the session, all day.
Kylee Shumway:
Yeah, last Wednesday I was up there a ton, and I was trying to balance being at the Capitol building and doing all the things that I need to do up there, with some meetings and some stuff that I needed to do at Wholesome. It was-
Tim Pickett:
Yeah, what’s your role at the Capitol?
Kylee Shumway:
Actually, while I’m at the Capitol, I am now the medical director for the Utah Patients Coalition, and that is a volunteer position. I don’t get paid for that, but-
Tim Pickett:
Got it.
Kylee Shumway:
That is actually why I’m up there, is I’m helping the Utah Patients Coalition with whatever they need, essentially. I am their expert on cannabis and patients and we are doing some stuff with a psilocybin taskforce bill, and so I’m also their expert there.
Tim Pickett:
Okay, just stop right now. Let’s talk about psilocybin. I have never experienced psilocybin.
Kylee Shumway:
Psilocybin?
Tim Pickett:
Psilocybin, but there’s some really cool research. There’s some really cool research about it.
Kylee Shumway:
It’s some amazing research coming out. They actually were able to do a blind… A double blind or just blind, head-to-head study with escitalopram and psilocybin. Escitalopram is an SSRI. It is an antidepressant, for those of you who don’t know. They did a head-to-head with it and psilocybin was outperforming it on a whole bunch of different scales that they were using to look at it. I don’t want to get too into the study, because I haven’t memorized the study, but I did read it and understand it. It was amazing. And they had done one last… Johns Hopkins is doing a bunch of research on psychedelics right now.
Tim Pickett:
Yeah, PTSD, smoking and addiction research.
Kylee Shumway:
Depression, anxiety.
Tim Pickett:
The depression, the death, dealing with death, I think, is another big issue-
Kylee Shumway:
Cancer patients, that was the big one.
Tim Pickett:
Cancer patients, mm-hmm (affirmative).
Kylee Shumway:
Death, yeah acceptance. Accepting that you’re going to die. The results that they’re having are incredible. Sometimes I’m reading it and I’m like, how did we miss out on this for so long?
Tim Pickett:
This is different than cannabis, because this is specific and extremely accurate, seemingly extremely accurate, data-driven science on something that [crosstalk 00:39:42]-
Kylee Shumway:
On hard science, the real-
Tim Pickett:
It’s not wishy-washy. This is legit stuff.
Kylee Shumway:
No, and this is the kind of science I want to see done with cannabis.
Tim Pickett:
Yes, but they’re not doing it, but for some reason… Okay, what’s the bill that is proposed? There’s a psilocybin bill at the Utah-
Kylee Shumway:
What we’re trying to propose is we’re going to put together a taskforce. A bunch of healthcare professionals, people at the Huntsman Mental Health… Oh my goodness. A bunch of people, a bunch of professionals-
Tim Pickett:
Yeah, the Neuropsychiatric Institute.
Kylee Shumway:
Thank you. We’re going to bring together this taskforce where they will meet almost all this year, look at the research on psilocybin, see who, what, when, where and how, and hopefully, in October, we would have them presenting what their findings were, what we envision… I guess not we, I guess the taskforce, what they would envision that that would look like in Utah. What the clinics would look like, who would need to be involved, what kind of laws would need to be written, and then hopefully a bill would be in the works after that to pass it medically, possibly.
Tim Pickett:
Basically, we’re looking at a taskforce that would study it, get the experts, do a big report for maybe the Department of Health, where they say, “Okay, here’s the research, here are different programs that exist, here’s what it might look like in Utah, based on current law-
Kylee Shumway:
Here’s our opinion on what it should look like.
Tim Pickett:
Here’s our opinion on what providers should be licensed to do this, what the visits might look like, what the patient qualifications would look like, and so we’re essentially maybe two years away from a bill. If you get a taskforce passed and some money to do the studies, you’re looking at a couple of years to get something done.
Kylee Shumway:
Yes, it’s a few years out.
Tim Pickett:
It’s fascinating though.
Kylee Shumway:
It’s fascinating. I don’t even know where to start. There’s so much good information, there’s so many things to be excited for about it. It’s almost overwhelming, but the taskforce bill hasn’t passed yet, as far as I know, not as of today, but I’d love to see it pass, so at least we could look at it, the possibility of it. This is just looking at the possibility. This isn’t a bill to legalize anything. We should just look at it.
Tim Pickett:
Yeah, this is just a little bit of money to look at it, and so what… Have you seen any language on a bill or proposal to update the medical cannabis program up there?
Kylee Shumway:
There is some language on… There’s a lot of language going on. There’s a lot going on, and I’ll know a little bit more tomorrow. This is just the first week, and there was not a lot of people at the actual Capitol building. It wasn’t as crowded as it usually is. But there’s some stuff-
Tim Pickett:
There is a pandemic.
Kylee Shumway:
Yeah.
Tim Pickett:
COVID’s not real up there.
Kylee Shumway:
It felt that way.
Tim Pickett:
Apparently.
Kylee Shumway:
I was accosted by one man that asked me why I was wearing a mask.
Tim Pickett:
Well, I don’t even know if I want to get into this.
Kylee Shumway:
I just did, because it felt like the right thing to do. It doesn’t matter what my opinion is on it.
Tim Pickett:
Yeah. It just felt like the right thing to do.
Kylee Shumway:
So I did.
Tim Pickett:
I don’t know, when I work in the ER, I wear a mask.
Kylee Shumway:
I wear a mask all day when I work in-
Tim Pickett:
Surprise, surprise.
Kylee Shumway:
… the compounding lab.
Tim Pickett:
Yep.
Kylee Shumway:
I wear a mask all day.
Tim Pickett:
And if you were working around somebody with the flu-
Kylee Shumway:
Wear a mask.
Tim Pickett:
… it’s a good idea to wear a mask. I would recommend it. As a medical provider, if you’re working around somebody with the flu, it is my medical opinion, professionally, that you should be wearing a mask.
Kylee Shumway:
I love this for us.
Tim Pickett:
That’s all I have to say. That’s all. That’s all I have to say about that. Okay, you’ve got the psilocybin bill and we haven’t seen language on what’s coming up for the cannabis bill, but between you and I, I think we’ve got patient protection?
Kylee Shumway:
Yes.
Tim Pickett:
Right?
Kylee Shumway:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Tim Pickett:
We’re going to-
Kylee Shumway:
We’re working on-
Tim Pickett:
Pretty much a lot of patient protection stuff.
Kylee Shumway:
A lot of patient protection stuff. A lot-
Tim Pickett:
because there was the firefighter up North.
Kylee Shumway:
Yes.
Tim Pickett:
Hey, by the way, we had a firefighter come in and get his card, specifically because he was like, “This is bullshit that guy’s getting fired-
Kylee Shumway:
Good for him.
Tim Pickett:
… and I’m getting my card, because-
Kylee Shumway:
Because you should be able to.
Tim Pickett:
… if they’re going to fire more… Because we all should get our cards as in support. Then fire us all, and they can’t fire us all.” I thought it was pretty cool.
Kylee Shumway:
I love that. Good for him. Good for him. Yeah, we’re going to change some language around firefighters and police. There’s some stuff about caregivers cards in there. The LMP was a big one. There’s a lot of stuff. A lot of it hasn’t been decided, so I hate to say it and then have it just disappear into the ether.
Tim Pickett:
I know. I know. The patient cap thing, we always talk about that-
Kylee Shumway:
Oh, the patient cap thing. Have we heard anything about that?
Tim Pickett:
Not that I am aware. I’m I’m working hard. If anybody knows how to get this done-
Kylee Shumway:
I swear I saw someone post something on social media that was like, “We got it taken away.” I’m like, did we?
Tim Pickett:
Yeah, no. Yeah, we’re definitely having patient caps and we’re definitely going to have a problem this year, because all of the QMPs are going to expire. All of the first year QMPs like me, we’re going to expire and there’s going to be a lot of QMPs, this just happens, that have moved out of state and they’re leaving us with 200 patients and where the hell do those patients go? They’re going to be lost. I think, my proposal is that we allow a QMP to authorize another QMP in their group to take over their patients. I’m the QMP, I saw 200 people. I’m going to move to Oklahoma to take this hepatobiliary job and I’m going to leave, so I don’t want to leave my patients in the lurch, so I’m going to authorize Tim or Adam or whoever in my practice group to take over my patients. They’ll just add them to their… Doesn’t change their patient cap, per se, but it just allows me to see those 200, those specific 200 people-
Kylee Shumway:
Then you don’t have orphan patients.
Tim Pickett:
Exactly. Just take care of the orphan patients, because this year, the orphan patients issue is going to be big.
Kylee Shumway:
It’s going to be a big deal. And there are some… A lot of my patients, I get phone calls and they are like, “How do I renew my card?” If they’re not sure how to renew their card, because it is a little convoluted, how are they going to find a brand new QMP when they’ve been abandoned? And abandoned isn’t even the right word.
Tim Pickett:
Yeah, that’s a bad… But it kind of is. We don’t want them to be abandoned.
Kylee Shumway:
But I feel like they’re being abandoned-
Tim Pickett:
We want to support them.
Kylee Shumway:
… so I use that word.
Tim Pickett:
Yeah, we’re leaving them. We’re leaving them in the lurch and saying, “Hey, well, whoever you went to-
Kylee Shumway:
They’re gone.
Tim Pickett:
… they’re gone, so good luck.”
Kylee Shumway:
Okay, bye. I feel sad for them, because some of them are… Maybe they’re not as good with technology. Maybe they’re a little bit older. Maybe they need a little more hand holding, and a lot of them are going to get left behind.
Tim Pickett:
Okay, back to back to cannabis, back to weed, what’s your favorite delivery form?
Kylee Shumway:
I prefer a tincture or a gummy, because generally I need longer term relief. I also find them to be more discreet and that can be really important when… It’s pretty much just important for my whole life. I’m not going to carry a cannabis vape to the Capitol building.
Tim Pickett:
No, I don’t think that’s a…
Kylee Shumway:
Well, I’m not going to.
Tim Pickett:
I guess you just do what you got to do.
Kylee Shumway:
Well, other people could do whatever their heart desires. I’m not going to.
Tim Pickett:
Yeah. It seems like an odd thing, an uncomfortable thing to put that thing through the metal detector.
Kylee Shumway:
I don’t want to.
Tim Pickett:
Empty your pockets and your vape pens.
Kylee Shumway:
I’m not having that conversation with the guy with the gun.
Tim Pickett:
Nor, we already have to have conversations about the masks, so might as well not add to that problem.
Kylee Shumway:
I had just finished-
Tim Pickett:
That’s a rough-
Kylee Shumway:
It was such a strange interaction. I had just finished the interview that I was doing with Fox 13, and this guy just comes up to me and he’s like, “Who are you? Why are you wearing a mask?” What?
Tim Pickett:
Well, sir, I am a weed pharmacist.
Kylee Shumway:
Oh. Yeah, it was… I’m obviously still shocked by it, because I’m talking about it, but yeah, there’s just… I like a little more discreet usage form and I generally need longer acting, and then I prefer lower quantities of THC and higher quantities of CBG or CBD. That, I can really pick and choose that when I use a tincture, or even a gummy. We have so many good gummies right now that have great ratios.
Tim Pickett:
Name a few.
Kylee Shumway:
Boojum makes some great one to ones. [Q-ga 00:49:41] makes good one to ones. True North, I think they do some, and Standard does.
Tim Pickett:
Yeah, True North is-
Kylee Shumway:
I can think of a bunch of ones that I can use ratio products that way, which is what I prefer.
Tim Pickett:
Yep. Well, as a compounder, you can also, I think pretty soon, you’ll be able to get higher CBG tinctures, meaning you could just buy a CBG, CBD tincture over the counter-
Kylee Shumway:
I can put them together the way I like.
Tim Pickett:
Right, then you could put them together in your body the way you like. And I think that’ll be fun, especially with tinctures going forward, when we have more minor cannabinoids as their own products, because you can’t compound in the THC world-
Kylee Shumway:
Not yet.
Tim Pickett:
At least that’s not in the bill.
Kylee Shumway:
Someday.
Tim Pickett:
Right, we’re not… Maybe someday, but people could. You could design a product for somebody, say, “Hey, go home, take three drops of this, two drops of that, half a slug of that and call me in the morning.”
Kylee Shumway:
And that’s something that I do with the gummy and the tinctures. There’s a lot of great tinctures. There’s one to one to ones, there’s one to one to tens, there’s one to ones, there’s one to fours, there’s one to 25s. You can get a whole bunch of ratios. And I like to put them together with the relief I need, and generally lower THC, because I do have… It makes me anxious. I don’t want anxiety. I’m using this and I don’t want to get anxiety from it.
Tim Pickett:
Yeah, we want anti.
Kylee Shumway:
Yeah, a lot of the times I am using it for evening pain. For some reason, it seems to be this thing where everybody’s pain is worse at night. That’s why I love the tinctures. It’s why I love gummies. They’re just so easy for me to put together the way that I want them to be. There’s not a lot of guesswork for me when I’m using that kind. I think inhaled forms are great. I just can’t seem to get the cannabinoids that I want in them right now. But I think that will change.
Tim Pickett:
Yeah. I hope so.
Kylee Shumway:
I hope so.
Tim Pickett:
I’ve been doing a lot of recommending on layering. Layering a cannabinoid product, like CBG, THC or one to one to one, like CBD, THC, CBN in the oral form, and then adding an inhaled form on top of that.
Kylee Shumway:
I love that.
Tim Pickett:
Plus, you’re getting the cannabinoids. Where you’re not getting the CBN and the flower, you’re getting it in the tincture, so you’re mixing forms, and I think think what I’ve been recommending a lot.
Kylee Shumway:
It’s such a great way for patients to use their cannabis. They can get immediate relief and then long term relief and it’s so… I think it’s almost comforting in a way, that they can have that and use it that way. Because they know that they’ll have something for breakthrough pain, but they’re not going to have to use their inhaled form every two hours or something, maybe the way they don’t want to. I love that.
Tim Pickett:
They can dose it to a way they’re not high all day either, and then if they need to be high-
Kylee Shumway:
They can be.
Tim Pickett:
They can get there, they can be, and that’s not going to last as long. I think this has been really fun. It’s fun to watch people reduce their medication use and it seems fun to be involved.
Kylee Shumway:
I love it.
Tim Pickett:
You and I, we have a lot of that. We’re a lot alike.
Kylee Shumway:
I love when people come back and they’re like, “Oh my gosh, I’m off 15 of the medications that I was taking for my back pain.” And I’m like, “That’s great!”
Tim Pickett:
What’s the best way for people to get involved right now, do you think? Or get maybe even in touch with you, about the legislative effort-
Kylee Shumway:
Oh man, through UPC would be a great way. I am super involved on the UPC’s, the Utah Patient Coalition’s social media, I can see messages that come through there, but you can also send us emails and I’ll do everything I can to get back to you. But I would love to hear from people.
Tim Pickett:
Yeah, but if you go to the Utah Patients Coalition site, you can go to the contact us page and you could reach out there. But social media seems like a great way to go too.
Kylee Shumway:
Yeah, social media is easy. We do have a Facebook page and then we have a public Facebook group that we allow public discourse on. You can get on there, you can put a comment on there, you can ask a question. The page is private, but the group is a public group that you can post to.
Tim Pickett:
Oh, that’s cool. And then you’ll update how the bills are going there, hopefully.
Kylee Shumway:
Yeah, we have quite a few updates on there about cannabis stuff, and I think we posted three times in the last couple days, because there’s been enough information coming forward that we’ve been able to post a little bit more, and I’ve had some really good help with that, from Des and a new girl we’ve been working with. Her name is Haley. It’s been amazing. They’ve been really helpful, because I can’t do it by myself.
Tim Pickett:
I’m sure you can’t, no. It’s too big of a job to do. And especially with you being involved so heavily, full-time at Wholesome, and the program is really just growing so fast. Is there anything that you feel like you want to say, you want to talk about?
Kylee Shumway:
Man, we covered so much. I just want people to reach out, ask me questions, even if you think they’re stupid. I bet they’re not. Let’s talk about stuff.
Tim Pickett:
Yeah, I bet they’re not. And whether you’re a patient or not-
Kylee Shumway:
Yeah, I don’t care.
Tim Pickett:
You’re cannabis curious, that doesn’t matter. If you have a question for Kylee and or you have a question for me, for that matter, reach out on WholesomeCo, their website from the pharmacy standpoint, Utah Marijuana.org. If you have a question for… Even if you have a question for Kylee and the only place you can find is to go to YouTube, the Discover Marijuana channel and make the comment there, we’ll get you the comment. We’ll answer the comment and the question. If you have a legislative priority or something that you think is very, very important, we’re-
Kylee Shumway:
I want to know.
Tim Pickett:
Kylee, she’s right here.
Kylee Shumway:
I want to know about it.
Tim Pickett:
The medical director of the Utah Patients Coalition. This is the person to reach out to and talk about it, so that know. We’re interacting with the program more than anyone else.
Kylee Shumway:
I’ve had a lot of people reach out to me with opinions and I want to hear them all, because I’m just one person and there’s only so many things I’m going to think of on my own. If we don’t have this public discourse, if we don’t have people asking questions, if we don’t have people making suggestions, I won’t be able to think of every single thing.
Tim Pickett:
Right. You’ll only be thinking about the stuff that you see.
Kylee Shumway:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Tim Pickett:
Yeah, yeah. Well Kylee, thanks for coming on. Kylee Shumway, pharmacist in charge at WholesomeCo, and medical director of the Utah Patients Coalition. Congratulations.
Kylee Shumway:
Thank you.
Tim Pickett:
On both. You’re living your best life.
Kylee Shumway:
I’m living my best life. My dream.
Tim Pickett:
Yes. And for those of you who aren’t subscribed to the podcast, Utah in the Weeds, download it on any podcast player that you have access to. Thanks so much Kylee, for coming on and talking to me.
Kylee Shumway:
This was so fun.
Tim Pickett:
Yeah, it was. All right, everybody. Stay safe out there.
Episode 85 of Utah in the Weeds is for anyone interested in using cannabis to treat PTSD. Utah Therapeutic Health Center clinicians Tim Pickett, PA-C and Clif Uckerman, LCSW, hosted an online webinar and Q&A session on the subject.
We started with some details about Clif’s background as a licensed clinical social worker and therapist. [4:18]
He and Tim talked about some of the ways post-traumatic stress order can be defined. [8:35]
They went over some of the most common symptoms associated with PTSD. Clif says anxiety tops the list of the most common PTSD symptoms. “Hyperarousal” or, as Clif puts it, a state of “hypervigilance,” is another common experience among PTSD patients. [10:10]
Clif went over the clinical processes for diagnosing PTSD, and some of the other mental health issues that can accompany PTSD. [13:35]
Tim talked about some of the existing research regarding PTSD and cannabis, and some of the related biochemistry. [17:45]
Clif discussed the use of cannabis in conjunction with a therapy session. According to Clif, some patients find their therapy sessions are more meaningful when they’ve used cannabis beforehand. Clif says a good therapy session can be cathartic, but it often leaves the patient feeling anxious and insecure afterward. This, he says, is another time when cannabis can be very useful. [23:05]
Tim talked about the “mechanism of action” by which cannabinoids like THC and CBD interact with the body’s endocannabinoid system. Then, he talked about some of the most common cannabis delivery methods and their effects. [29:45]
Next, Tim went over the importance of keeping a journal when using cannabis to treat a medical condition. [36:38]
Cannabis has several chemical compounds (cannabinoids and terpenes) useful in treating PTSD. Tim talked about some of the most important compounds and their effects. [37:50]
Tim recommends hybrid and indica strains for PTSD patients. He says the Ice Cream Cake and Do-Si-Dos cannabis strains are easy to find at most of Utah’s pharmacies, and they work well for treating PTSD. For PTSD patients who prefer edibles, Tim recommends Zion Medicinals’ Plush Wild Cherry gummies. Tinctures also work well for treating PTSD. Tim recommends tinctures with THC/CBD ratios ranging from 1:4 to 1:10. [40:24]
Clif says low-THC, high-CBD cannabis products work well for his patients. Most of his patients who use cannabis prefer edibles. [41:51]
Next, Tim talked about finding the right cannabis doses for treating PTSD. He said scientific evidence shows a “sweet spot” for THC dosing between 7.5 mg and 12 mg. Too much THC can worsen anxiety associated with PTSD. [42:44]
Tim answered a question about Utah’s Compassionate Use Board, which can approve cannabis recommendations for people under 21. [44:48]
If you’re interested in talking with Clif about using Medical Cannabis to treat PTSD, call 801-851-5554 to schedule an appointment.
Tim Pickett:
Tonight’s webinar is by utahmarijuana.org. I’m Tim Pickett, a medical cannabis provider here in Utah. We’re going to do just a conversation really around PTSD and I am so happy that we have an expert essentially on PTSD and behavioral health, Cliff Uckerman. Will you introduce yourself, Cliff and talk a little bit about your background and you?
Clifton Uckerman:
Yeah. Well, thanks for inviting me to this webinar, if that’s what we’re going to call it, the metanar. So I’m a licensed clinical social worker. Graduated from the University of Utah, 2010. So since then have been providing substance use addiction, mental health services, clinical services for the last, what now, 12 years.
Clifton Uckerman:
And a lot of different settings, cradle to the grave, all different ages. Where I’m at right now, in my career, I think I’ve gravitated towards treating PTSD, trauma, understanding really what that is, what that can look like for so many different people. I’ve worked with thousands of different people, one on one, in groups, with families, and also gravitating more towards the use of medical cannabis in conjunction with trauma treatment or trauma therapies.
Clifton Uckerman:
So I also teach up at the U of U as an associate instructor and I am currently the senior clinical director and founder of Altium Health which is an addiction and wellness center out in Jordan Landing. But I’m just in the process of really trying to be a behavioral health provider in the medical cannabis industry. Unlike, I think, anybody is doing right now, I think a lot of us are trying to figure out with insurances and philosophies of therapy and trying to break down all the stigmas and stereotypes around marijuana and cannabis, trying to figure out where a lot of us behavioral health providers are trying to figure out how does this work and how can we make this work and be a good thing for a lot of people with PTSD. So I’m really interested in continuing to find the model that works for this in the medical cannabis industry.
Tim Pickett:
It’s cool to have you as part of this, and I think we’ll get into some discussions that I haven’t been able to have with anybody in the clinical setting regarding PTSD specifically and medical cannabis. So topics, we’ll try to go over tonight. What is PTSD? Some symptoms of PTSD. What the effects of THC and CBD are in general, but also specifically four symptoms of PTSD.
Tim Pickett:
We’ll discuss a little bit of the mechanism of action, what we think is happening. There’s some of this we know and some of this that’s assumed, right? You think, “Well, maybe we should know more before we use it, but frankly we don’t know the mechanism of action of a lot of drugs we use in “normal medicine” Right? So then we’ll talk about suggestions and uses of medical cannabis. And at the end, I’m going to make a couple of product recommendations that I think are similar to products that you might want to try or really products you might want to go out and try yourself.
Tim Pickett:
This webinar and more videos can be found at Discover Marijuana. This is a QR code. You can just take a picture of it right now. If you are not subscribed, and you’re somebody who is interested in medical cannabis, there are a lot of videos there. There’s a lot of videos with me and Blake Smith who’s a bio analytical chemist for Zion Medicinal, lot of mechanism of action for other conditions. A lot of discussion around different forms and delivery.
Tim Pickett:
I like this YouTube channel. There you go. Subscribe to that. So let’s talk to about PTSD in general. So Cliff, this is really your wheelhouse, right? What is PTSD?
Clifton Uckerman:
Well, the way that you’ve got it listed up here referencing the APA, American Psychiatric Association. So the DSM, the Holy Bible of Psychiatry where we get all of our mental health diagnoses disorders would say anybody who’s experienced or witnessed a traumatic event or been threatened with death, sexual violence or serious injury.
Clifton Uckerman:
So that’s one way to define it. But when I work with patients and the way that I define it is it’s that negative life event that a lot of us may experience in our lives at one point in time in our life, that kind of leaves a sense of shock, internalized shame, grief, and makes us feel really bad about ourselves in a lot of different ways. A lot of times the trauma is something that leads to detrimental development, and we look at it and we can’t see any good from it. We can’t see any positive coming away from it.
Clifton Uckerman:
So it just leaves the mind, the body, the spirit in a lot of distress. So we later on, if we don’t talk about it and we’re not processing the trauma in order to reverse the trauma or heal the trauma, then we end up having nightmares flashbacks, lots of anxiety. Anxiety is probably number one when it comes to PTSD in terms of symptoms. So that’s how I would probably define PTSD. You got a list of symptoms right here, again, nightmare effects.
Tim Pickett:
Do you find that there are symptoms that are more common in this list or is everybody really different?
Clifton Uckerman:
Well, everybody’s symptoms express and manifest differently in different kinds of ways, but generally across the board, the common things that I see is lots and lots of anxiety. And that would include social anxiety, sleep problems, insomnia, of course the flashback and nightmares. But essentially, one thing that is common between everybody with a PTSD diagnosis is this kind of state of hypervigilance, being very hyper aroused.
Clifton Uckerman:
So getting triggered from something or someone in some kind of setting or context, and having a really bad, negative, distressing reaction to that. So that could lead to some kind of flare up of blowing up, acting out, getting angry and explosive. Running away, avoiding, shutting down hiding out and isolating from people is typically what I would see between a lot of different people diagnosed with PTSD.
Tim Pickett:
Is this something like with chronic pain, when we look at it clinically, we would say, “Okay, is this pain something that is affecting your ability to do the things that you want to do?” Right?
Clifton Uckerman:
Yes.
Tim Pickett:
So that’s the physical part of you use a physical symptom and then you say, “Well, is this actually harming or keeping you from doing other things like your leg pain? Then I would say, “Oh yeah, you have chronic pain. We need to deal with that because it’s affecting your ability to do things.” Is that one of the criteria when you’re diagnosing somebody with PTSD? It’s not just I’m anxious all the time, or I have these triggers, it’s that I’m actually doing things differently because of the trauma.
Clifton Uckerman:
Yeah. And with PTSD and all disorders in the DSM, you really can’t make a formal diagnosis unless there’s some life domain impairment. So between all of the people that I work with that have an actual precise accurate diagnosis of PTSD, employment is disrupted. A lot of people have a hard time going to work or being at work. Relationships with family, spouses, children, friends, parents, siblings are pretty impacted and there’s a lot of relational distress that can occur and happen.
Clifton Uckerman:
Then so many other life domains can be affected too. Sometimes in an attempt to escape or even avoid a person can start to maybe self-sooth or use different types or forms of medication, whether it be legal and prescribed or elicit and off the street. So sometimes with that kind of use can come health problems, emergency room visits, sometimes criminal charges and incarceration. So anytime there’s a life impairment, that would be one criteria of meeting a diagnosis.
Tim Pickett:
Is typically the diagnosis done with like a paper evaluation. You have of like a questionnaire people fill out and then you score it and then you take that with a behavioral health like evaluation?
Clifton Uckerman:
Yep. There’s so many different instruments, but we use the instruments that were developed and certified by the VA, which diagnosing PTSD originally when it came along to be a formal diagnosis was with military coming from post deployment and combat. So the VA has a lot of specialty in diagnosing and screening for PTSD. So we use what’s called the LEC-5 and then the PCL-5 which screens for the life events and the symptoms. It’s like a symptom checklist.
Clifton Uckerman:
If that has a positive suggestion for PTSD, then we do a full on behavioral health assessment which takes about an hour. And we look at self-reporting, we look at presentation in the symptom. We’re making observations around the information that’s being provided. And then we do a collateral kind of clinical collection of documentation from other providers or history of providers.
Clifton Uckerman:
Now, what we notice is most people that I work with, chances are have some kind of trauma that’s still affecting or impacting them and causing some disruption in life domain. A lot of times we look at a diagnostic matrix, how many symptoms or sets of symptoms come into the picture or with that patient that might indicate a particular mental health diagnosis like anxiety and depression and bipolar and those kinds of things.
Clifton Uckerman:
What we notice is a person that comes in with a history of three or more diagnoses in their diagnostic matrix, chances are that is all falling under the umbrella of a PTSD diagnosis.
Tim Pickett:
Okay. I think in medicine that I have experienced in, it is much more… It’s 15 minutes. I get 15 minutes, 20 minutes with the patient. We’re going to talk about it real quick. And then I’m going to pick a medication to put them on. What you’re essentially saying is that that doesn’t really help people in some ways, right?
Clifton Uckerman:
It’s part of it. It can help and it’s part of it, but it’s not the end of the road for a lot of patients for sure.
Tim Pickett:
Right. Okay. So in Utah, PTSD is the only condition that is in the mental health world, in the behavioral health world. PTSD has to be diagnosed by one of these psychiatrist, psychologist, LCSW, psychiatric APRN. And you also have to be in ongoing treatment, in ongoing treatment. So it’s the only condition in Utah that requires not only the diagnosis, but you must be an ongoing treatment which I think is a good thing. Would you agree with that?
Clifton Uckerman:
Yeah. I mean, I think people have a hard time when they feel like they’re forced to do something. So if a person has choice and control and they’re getting good quality therapy to treat trauma takes a lot of expertise. I think most people probably would want good therapy over the long-term. We screen patients and we say how long do you think you want to be in therapy? And most people with a true precise, accurate diagnosis of PTSD are wanting to be in therapy for a year or more because there’s so much that they need to work through and be able to process.
Tim Pickett:
So let’s talk a little bit about… We’re not going to go through these very much, but there are some studies and I find these are particular ones that I picked out. So some Israeli research is very interesting. They have given a hundred grams of cannabis flower per month to some of their soldiers, right? A hundred grams. That’s a lot of flower. Okay. In Utah, four ounces, 113 grams. So we’re talking more than three ounces, three and a half ounces of flower.
Tim Pickett:
You’re smoking more than not quite an ounce a week. I don’t know how much in this study, the patients we’re actually using, but they’re measuring symptoms before. They’re measuring symptoms after. And they’re showing really good results with access to cannabis flower in this study.
Clifton Uckerman:
Right.
Tim Pickett:
In 2017, there was a really good review too about CBD specifically that it produces an enduring reduction in learned fear expression. So one of the things that we’ll go into, and maybe we have a slide on it, I don’t really know. But what’s happening from a brain chemistry standpoint is you’re building callouses between the amygdala, the emotional part of brain and the frontal lobe, which is your reasoning. You’re building these pathways that it’s hard for the brain to get out of. And that is what we would consider learned fear. Right? If we can reduce that learned fear, then in theory, we can reduce the impact of the trauma to the patient’s life experience.
Clifton Uckerman:
Right. Yeah. Lessening the anxiety, reducing the symptoms so that we can slow things down and lessen the reactivity that a person often exhibits to be able then to do more work below the symptoms of it all.
Tim Pickett:
Yeah. So that makes sense. You’re basically utilizing it to soften the clay so you can mold it a little better.
Clifton Uckerman:
Yep.
Tim Pickett:
Right?
Clifton Uckerman:
That’s a great analogy.
Tim Pickett:
Okay. So the effects of Delta-9, this is kind of a fun little video where Blake talks about it.
Tim Pickett:
What’s happening in the body chemically with depression? Why is cannabis good or bad? Tell us about that.
Blake Smith:
If someone is having depression, this is not going to really inspire you not to be depressed, right?
Tim Pickett:
Right.
Blake Smith:
This is just a chemical explanation about this and really work with your doctor. Everyone deserves to be happy and have joy. It’s not just the interplay of dopamine by itself. It’s melatonin, it’s serotonin, and you have a whole slew of other neurotransmitters that are all oscillating. So what you’re trying to do is get to homeostasis or this natural typical curve.
Tim Pickett:
I show that partly because if you want more information about this, you can go to Discover Marijuana and you can listen to Blake talk a lot about stuff like that. All these different pathways that THC and CBD are affecting, and really not necessarily what we’re talking about here in depth, but that’s the chemical explanation of how these things are helping because CBD and cannabis in general is really trying to get the body back to homeostasis.
Blake Smith:
Yes.
Tim Pickett:
It’s a very, very interesting substance that will stimulate certain pathways in the neurons and inhibit other pathways in order to maintain that balance. It’s what you and I really like about the cannabis treatment in general. We find that the things that cannabis can be really good for is improving sleep, decreasing anxiety to a certain extent if you’re using it correctly in the correct dosing and delivery forms for the patient, having the right kind of intention around the cannabis use tends to help lower anxiety, anger outbursts, and avoidance behavior.
Tim Pickett:
Have you found, Cliff that the avoidance behavior goes down? This is somebody who doesn’t want to interact with that individual because in the past they had a traumatic event with somebody who looked like that.
Clifton Uckerman:
Yeah. Or sounded like them.
Tim Pickett:
Or sounded like that.
Clifton Uckerman:
I said the same things that they said. I think that with the use of cannabis… And lot of times I think the CBD, that’s part of the ratio. A lot of these symptoms are lessened. I think when they’re in session and doing therapy then… Because trauma is really memory. So you have a traumatic memory with a lot of feeling embedded into that memory. So anything that triggers the memory is going to trigger a feeling.
Clifton Uckerman:
So if I have somebody that’s coming in to do trauma therapy and it’s in conjunction with medical cannabis, then they have a whole hour that they can sit without running away and really confront and face the memories and then process the emotions. The trick in the trauma therapy, which is why I love the use of medical cannabis, because it allows the person to be able to release and relinquish themselves from those feelings being calm enough and slowed down enough, and less anxious enough to be able to have a really good cry.
Clifton Uckerman:
A cathartic moment like that releases those emotional molecules, which are just really built up toxins stored in all of those old memories that’s creating disturbance internally. So that’s what I love about the medicinal cannabis. [crosstalk 00:20:27]
Tim Pickett:
Are you specifically having certain patients or are certain patients choosing to use cannabis during their sessions?
Clifton Uckerman:
Yeah. Whether it’s cannabis or an anti-anxiety pill or an antidepressant, typically people who are on some form of medication are taking their daily dose in the morning before they get up for the day and get ready and do something with their life including therapy. So if it’s medical cannabis that they’re using when they get up and before therapy, that’s what they use. And oftentimes if that’s what they do, the therapy session is just a much more meaningful for them and much more quality with the time that we have to be able to work through and process things that they normally would be hyperaroused by, hyperreactive to avoiding, not wanting to talk about being afraid or too anxious to talk about.
Clifton Uckerman:
Sometimes the medical cannabis actually helps restore the memory because a lot of times people don’t remember what there is to talk about and they can’t recall what to talk about in the first place. And that’s just because of that hyperaroused kind of state of mind that they might be in or that hyperactive emotional state that they might be in.
Clifton Uckerman:
So if they take their medicinal cannabis in the daytime and the morning when they get up, they come to therapy, they’re much more able to remember and recall, have an emotional release and then be able to confront and face those fears without all of the anxiety.
Tim Pickett:
I love this, and I don’t think there’s enough of this going on in… Certainly we’re not talking about it enough, and I think people really need to hear that this is an option. When you talk about like the mechanism of action, which is the next slide, which we don’t really… This isn’t something that I want to spend much time on in detail, but we’re… Cannabis enhances the present by disconnecting us from our short term memory a little bit. But you are bringing up that you can access these long-term memories, and it seems like that would be more clear because there’s not so much distortion or noise. There’s not so much noise in the mind. Right? You’re able to really focus like you say and slow down and talk it out. Right?
Clifton Uckerman:
Right.
Tim Pickett:
And like you say, have a good cry. I think there are a lot of us and probably even in the participants, in the audience here that have experienced that. It’s not all just euphoria and giggles with cannabis. There are times when you can have an incredibly meaningful conversation with somebody and learn a lot about yourself and about your perception of reality and very, very meaningful experiences.
Clifton Uckerman:
Right. Getting real with some stuff. The other thing too, that I don’t think most people realize is that in trauma work, even being able to talk about these kinds of things in session, and a lot of times people are sharing things in ways of themselves that they’ve never shared before with anybody else at all, because it’s been so buried and it’s been kind of trapped and contained in shame and secrecy because a person feels like it was their fault. They’re to blame. They did something wrong. They weren’t good enough. There’s something wrong with them.
Clifton Uckerman:
Now, the thing that most people don’t realize is that after that session, because that person has been able to disclose so much in such a vulnerable way, it likely will leave them feeling insecure when they walk away and after they go home questioning, “Should I have brought that up? I shouldn’t have said that. I shouldn’t have told him that. I wonder what he’s thinking about me now.”
Clifton Uckerman:
So there’s a really can be in trauma work after a really good, meaningful, positive session, a whole lot of increased anxiety and securities in the aftermath of it. So that’s one thing that I also think that medical cannabis can help with. Oftentimes, I tell my patients, “Go home and take a good nap and try to sleep really well tonight.” And the one thing that helps them sleep and take a really good nap so that their brain can do pruning after all those oxytocins are released because of that good cathartic cry is use cannabis to help them get there to lessen the anxiety and to help them get to sleep so that their brain can do some repair work.
Tim Pickett:
I think the other thing I would add to that is allowing your… The nice thing about having a therapy session and having a professional that you work with, or a really, really good friend, somebody that you have as a trusted confidant giving you permission to be vulnerable so that you don’t have that. There is this anxiety associated with THC use as well. And a lot of times people have to give themselves permission to talk, and to be open.
Tim Pickett:
And to use and to be a little stony, I guess, for lack of a better word. Nathan has a question, but we’re going to get to that in just a second. And I think we can help with that question. So this slide talks about the mechanism of action of the endo cannabinoid system, which really the keyword there is modulation.
Tim Pickett:
So we’re creating things. We’re consolidating things. We’re trying to get back to a balance. We’re trying to get back to this homeostasis and we’re using the CB1. The CB1 receptor system is in the brain and the nervous system and the CB2 receptor system is in tissues. And we’re using both in trauma therapy and PTSD therapy.
Tim Pickett:
There’s this hypothalamic pituitary… This is emotional brain talking to the frontal lobe. That’s the simple version of that. And then the 5-HT1A, that’s that serotonin kind of pathway. That’s that depression pathway. It’s modulated a little bit, not so much activity with depression specifically with THC and CBD use more help with anxiety and that part.
Tim Pickett:
So let’s move on to some interesting stuff. So the tinctures and edibles, I want to teach everybody, remind everybody that tinctures and edibles are going to be a slower onset to peak effect. You’re looking at, I would say an hour to two hours to peak effect. You’re going to have a slow decrease over the course of four to six hours typically with oral methods of cannabis.
Tim Pickett:
Really good for consistent dosing. And if you’re taking it morning, noon, and night. If you’re taking it at night, tinctures and edibles tend to be really, really good because they last a long time and you can sleep. Then you have flower and vaporizers, inhaled methods, which are quick to action, but they decrease over a shorter amount of time, much more rapid.
Tim Pickett:
So this tends to be good for triggering events, things that you either know something is going to be triggering. So you can dose, or you have a triggering event and then you dose where an edible or a tincture is going to take a little too long to take effect. And this goes to the question, and I’ll read this question out.
Tim Pickett:
So the question is really around, “So there’s edibles before bed, but found myself super groggy in the morning.” And over the last few months, he switched to a dryer vaporizer, usually a one-to-one type strain. So that means a one part CBD, one part THC. We’ll talk about that in a couple of slides coming up, does not have the same effect, meaning not groggy. I’m hoping that I’m getting that right. “Any suggestions on methods might be better that will lead me functional in the morning?”
Tim Pickett:
So using these two slides as your guide, if you’re using a dryer vaporizer, you’re only going to get effect between two and four hours, but if you’re using an edible, you’re going to get effect for a long period of time. So usually it’s depending on the dosing and how long before bed, or how early you wake up.
Tim Pickett:
We can get a little more nuanced than that with absorption. Absorption can happen depending on what you eat, either slower or faster. So if you weigh a high fat meal, you might have more effect because it’s a absorbed with the fat, and that may actually last longer as your gut slows down with these big meals. So you can tend to get an eight to 12 hour sometimes almost high from an edible and leave people groggy in the morning.
Tim Pickett:
So I think if the question is trying not to feel groggy in the morning, then the answer is using shorter methods like flowers. That’s the answer. If the question is you want to sleep as good as you did with the edible, and you’re not getting that effect with the flower, that’s probably strain related or level of dose related more so than the duration of effect. And there’s a couple of suggestions in my last slide about products.
Clifton Uckerman:
Is it also possible too that with the edible before bed that all has to digest and then it has a longer span of time to take effect and stay in effect?
Tim Pickett:
Yes. Because you might only be absorbing one or two milligrams at a time and you might be absorbing clear through the night.
Clifton Uckerman:
Right. Go ahead, Tim.
Tim Pickett:
No, go ahead.
Clifton Uckerman:
I was going to say, so just my part as a therapist, as a medical cannabis therapist because we really want to try to have the greatest and most positive effect of what’s being consumed, be on the most effective of the least amount of things, right?
Tim Pickett:
Yes.
Clifton Uckerman:
So something that I’m seeing here, if Nathan came to me to therapy, I would probably really want to explore, also, what is the antidepressant? What is the anti-anxiety? And what kind of edible is it? What strain and ratio is it? Because I want to understand the interaction risks between all of these things, but I would want to also understand is sometimes if I wake up groggy and still tired, something has been flooded, chances are, and you got antidepressant and an anti-anxiety depending on what types of medications those are and the dosage that he might be on in combination with the edible, whatever that is, could actually be not the best concoction or mixture of medications.
Clifton Uckerman:
So I’d want him to explore that and really then talk to somebody like you, and see if there’s a way to get on the least amount of the most effective. As a medical cannabis therapist, I typically would tell my patients, “Gosh, you know what think about one or the other.” I mean, medical cannabis is very natural, organic. It’s a plant based medicine and the antidepressants and anti-anxieties come from the lab and are based… It’s pharmaceutical based.
Tim Pickett:
Completely synthetic, yep.
Clifton Uckerman:
Synthetic. So you never know, and there’s no recurrent research that tells us, “Hey, this is what happens when you put these things together in your unique body.” So that’s the kind of conversation that I would also probably want to be having as well.
Tim Pickett:
And that brings up Colin’s point, which is here, that it’s best to start low and go slow and then keep a journal. So keeping a journal, not only of your cannabis use, but of your other medications that you take, and maybe even what you’re eating for dinner. I know that these journals… We don’t want these journals to be so detailed that you’re not going to do it, but if you have a set of things that you’re tracking and then a couple hours later, how you feel, especially with cannabis, if you’re tracking how much you take and when you take it, and then how you feel a couple of hours later, then you’re going to… Over time, you’re going to get a sense.
Tim Pickett:
You’re going to be able to go back and get a sense of what’s working and what might not be. But the whole old point of a journal is to keep the record. And like Nathan said, I mean, if you’re tracking too much data, you’re not going to do it. So only track enough data that you’re going to do it every day or do it every session. And over time you find like I definitely have things that I will not take at certain doses. I promise you.
Tim Pickett:
I am very specific at about a couple of things. Let’s talk about that specifically, what to take and what to look for, for PTSD and mental health really. And maybe what to avoid a little bit. So terpenes are found in everything, right? When you go through the forest and you smell, you’re smelling pine. When you eat a lemon or smell an orange, or there’s a lot of limonene in that. Myrcene is the most dominant terpene found in cannabis.
Tim Pickett:
It’s up to, I think, 4% in some strains, but definitely the most common. Linalool is very much like lavender. That’s the smell that we have. And caryophyllene, beta-caryophyllene is a common anti-inflammatory terpene. It’s very common in strains that tend to help with chronic pain, but these three are my favorite terpenes when it comes to PTSD symptoms. If you have the ability to look for terpene, product with these terpenes, either added or these terpenes are dominant in the flower, then these would be pretty good.
Tim Pickett:
The cannabinoids, there’s about 120 cannabinoids we know of. THC is a cannabinoid, CBG, CBC, CBD, and CBN. CBN is known for its relaxing properties. It’s known to be very calming. It is very good for sleep and calming anxiety during the day.
Tim Pickett:
So if you’re looking for products with cannabinoids or terpenes that may help a PTSD type of condition, these would be where I would start. And you can find this particular graphic on utahmarijuana.org. And you can find information on terpenes. It’s readily available online. Terpenes are essential oils, right, which a really common thing in Utah to treat things.
Tim Pickett:
One warning about terpenes, you do not want to inhale terpenes on their own, right? You’re not vaping terpenes. Don’t vape your essential oils. That is very, very dangerous. It’s not recommended. You’ll notice in these products, there’s very small percentage of terpenes added because they can be very strong in low doses.
Tim Pickett:
And then product recommendations, for me, I’m going to tend to recommend indica or hybrid type products. A couple of things in Utah that are fairly common and easy to find are ice cream cake and Dosie Dough. Dosie Dough is a vape cart and a flower. There’s a bunch of different companies that make these products with the Dosie Dough kind of breakdown.
Tim Pickett:
The only edible that I could find with a breakdown of what’s actually in it was a Zion Medicinal, the Plush Wild Cherry gummies. The reason why I like this one is because of the ratio. I think you want that ratio of THC to CBD, which brings me really to my favorite products for PTSD and for new patients, which are tinctures. I recommend ratios of one to four, up to one to 10 THC to CBD.
Tim Pickett:
If you go back in our slides, you’ll find that that CBD research is really good and CBD tends to smooth out the rough edges of the THC effect. So patients who use them together tend to have better sessions when they’re in that one to four ratio or at least one to one ratios. Cliff, do you have any favorite products?
Clifton Uckerman:
Yeah, I think anything that is higher CBD, lower THC. For me and my patients, the one to one sometimes can be a little too much. The one to four, what do they got, one to 10, one to 30. And then some people really do like flower and there are flower products out there that are mostly, if not all CBD with a little bit of THC, which can be really helpful. But they’ve got vapes and tinctures and edibles. But I think for me and my patients, the tinctures are great, but edibles tend to kind of be what I hear a lot of my patients using a lot more is the edible.
Tim Pickett:
This is good slide for reference for dosing. Just like Cliff was saying, the one to 10 THC to CBD, that seems to be a really good sweet spot for people who are new to cannabis, to people who want to decrease anxiety, help their sleep, decrease their dreams. That 2.5 to 12.5 milligrams per dose also seems to be, when you look at the evidence, we tend to come to this 7.5 to 12.5 has the sweet spot for THC dosing.
Tim Pickett:
A lot of that is around, if you get too much THC, the brain starts to spin and you’re watching the waterfall. You’re behind the waterfall and this is just going and going and going. And that can ruin your sleep.
Clifton Uckerman:
Especially the sativa. I you already come with a lot of anxiety and anxiety is a big part of PTSD, but if you already have a lot of anxiety and then you’re using really high dosages of THC and sativa chances are, you’re probably going to get a little bit more paranoid. Anxiety can turn into paranoia if your brain is overactivated.
Tim Pickett:
The last thing I’ll say before we get to questions is if you are concerned about the high start with CBD one milligram per kilograms, take your body weighting pounds, divide it by 2.2, that’s your kilograms. One milligram per kilogram per day. Start with that, right? So I’m 170 pounds. That’s 80, 75 kilos. So I’m going to take 75 milligrams of CBD every single day divided. So I take a slug, I call it. Just take a good slug in the morning, good slug in the middle of the day. And that will help on its own without any psycho activity, and can be used during the day, because it’s not psychoactive and you don’t get that high feeling.
Tim Pickett:
So let’s go to some questions. We’ve got a question about a teenage child who’s been diagnosed with PTSD at a loss for how to handle the compassionate service board. Yes. I have some comments about that, if I have any advice. She has a diagnosis from her therapist who’s an LCSW. Her therapist is supportive, but not a QMP. So this is a great question and there’s a couple of things about this. Cliff is an LCSW, right?
Clifton Uckerman:
Yes.
Tim Pickett:
So Cliff cannot be a QMP under state law because he doesn’t have a controlled substance license or a license to prescribe controlled substances in Utah. That requires somebody like me, a PA with a controlled substance license. So in this case, no matter what, if the patient is diagnosed with PTSD from a LCSW and you then go to see a QMP, you can take that diagnosis and that letter of treatment, and you can then get a recommendation from the QMP for medical cannabis.
Tim Pickett:
So these two things go together, right? You’re going to get the cannabis recommendation from the QMP. You’re going to get the help and the therapy from the clinical social worker. And I hope that makes sense. That’s just in general, the process. Then you add on to that the Compassionate Use Board for somebody under 21.
Tim Pickett:
So that application has to be done through the QMP with help from the social worker. So there’s an entire application process that has to be done. They have to take that application to the Compassionate Use Board, which is seven physicians in Utah. And that board will make a recommendation for medical cannabis and allow them access.
Tim Pickett:
Then you, as the parent have to have a guardian card or a caregiver card to help them access that medication, if they’re under 18. The process takes one to two months. And really if the patient is between… If they’re 16 and over, you can go to utahmarijuana.org, and you can see us. We will help. The Compassionate Use Board has been a little hesitant to use specialist providers as QMPs. It’s a tricky scenario, but we can help guide you through it.
Tim Pickett:
So give us a call. We have somebody who’s actually an expert on the Compassionate Use Board and, and does all of that for us. So hopefully that helps, and we can get you more resources as well.
Tim Pickett:
Okay, perfect. I’m going to answer that one. There we go. And then we had a nice comment. Very thankful to us for… We’re exploring the cannabis family. Yeah. Thank you. I don’t know if it’s Jeanie or Jean, but thanks for those kind words.
Tim Pickett:
Yes. Cliff and I actually really like this stuff. I don’t know if you noticed, but we’re all jazzed up about this, about this topic, right? I’m fascinated with the idea that you can manipulate the mind and you can change like you can change behavior and you can change your perception of your own life and your experience. I think that’s so important and I think that’s missing with modern medicine. I just feel like a lot of the times we just prescribe, and prescribe, and prescribe and dull everything.
Clifton Uckerman:
Yeah. Yes.
Tim Pickett:
And cannabis is like a turning point. It’s not about the cannabis. The cannabis is just unlocking something that is allowing us to take a step forward in our life and in our growth.
Clifton Uckerman:
And there also may be some healing properties too. I mean, I think for me, I grew up as a delinquent youth. So I was in the system a lot. As a way to prevent youth from getting into trouble, they made us feel like all drugs and alcohol were bad and to never use it. Well, when my brother had diabetes and it went blind because of glaucoma, he started using cannabis and brought his vision back. And with all the people that I’ve worked with, especially when I worked in the jail and I ran a program there, we could not talk about it, yet most of the people in there were in there because of drug charges and a lot of it marijuana and were also using cannabis when they were in jail. Sometimes they would use it in jail too.
Tim Pickett:
Oh my gosh.
Clifton Uckerman:
But we couldn’t talk about it. So in the last couple years, as I’ve been working more with patients with trauma and seeing how much this can help and have healing properties, I think it’s something that I want to be a part of and be involved in the conversation about, for sure.
Tim Pickett:
Okay. We have a last question and it is perfectly timed, so thank you Nathan for asking it, and that is this, “Any recommendations to find a therapist willing to work with a cannabis patient like him?” Well, yes, there you go. Call Cliff. And you can get a hold of Cliff by reaching out to us because that’s not part of this presentation as far as our… And I think probably just an oversight on my part, frankly, Cliff, so sorry. So go to utahmarijuana.org, reach out to us, mention the webinar. We will set you up, right?
Tim Pickett:
We’ll give you all the information you need and you can just call our office. We have locations and Cliff is going to be involved with us clinically in our locations, specifically in Bountiful, if that’s somewhere that you want to go. To be honest, I want to do it because I’m just interested in utilizing cannabis like going to the next level and getting really serious about my mental health and use some cannabis.
Tim Pickett:
You can also follow us on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram. We’re on all the things. And at the end of this, hopefully if you’ve signed up for this, then there’ll be a feedback poll. So we really appreciate the feedback. One way to get ahold of me or Cliff is when this is posted on YouTube. If you make a comment on any of the videos that I have, we answer all those questions. It’s better than email because when we answer the question, we get to answer it for everybody and not just keep it a secret for only you.
Tim Pickett:
I think that’s the best way to get the information out is just go to YouTube, comment away and we’ll get it. Anything else that we missed, Cliff?
Clifton Uckerman:
Nope. I think that was great. I appreciate it. It sounds like everybody had a good time. The one thing I wanted to mention is if you can’t journal, some people have a hard time writing and tracking stuff, come to therapy. Let me be your journal. I’ll keep a documented record of it. Every time you come in, we’ll measure it every time. We’ll send it to Tim and we’ll all work together to make something work for you in the best kind of way.
Tim Pickett:
That is a great idea. All right. Thanks, everybody. Stay safe out there, will you?
Clifton Uckerman:
See you later.
Nearly every plant species in the world has its landrace varieties. Many animal species do as well. If you are guessing that cannabis has its own landrace strains, you’re right on the ball. Unfortunately, such strains are rare. They are exceedingly difficult to find these days, which is why they are so expensive.
The landrace principal is based on the concept of adaptation. No matter where you go in the world, local flora and fauna adapt to the natural environment. It is why you find different varieties of pine trees in upstate New York as opposed to central Florida. Cannabis is no exception to the adaptation rule. Different strains have grown in different parts of the world for millennia.
What you will find with landrace varieties is that they possess unique environmental properties. We cannot speak specifically to cannabis because true landrace strains are so hard to find. But a good comparison would be coffee. Here are some common types of coffee with properties specific to the regions in which they are grown:
This post is not about coffee, so we will leave the examples here. The point is that coffee takes on unique characteristics based on where it is produced. The same holds true for landrace cannabis. The big difference between the two is availability. Landrace coffees are widely available; landrace cannabis strains are not.
So why are landrace strains so difficult to find? According to The Cannigma, the main culprit is hybridization. Back in the 1960s and 70s, cannabis was a lot more local than it is today. Somewhere during that time, growers began searching for new and exciting strains they could bring back to the U.S. to crossbreed. They went far and wide looking for strains that offered exactly the right mixture of cannabinoids and terpenes.
Years of crossbreeding taught them how to produce plants with the most desirable properties. They learned how to increase THC levels and manipulate growth cycles. They learned how to create more robust plants capable of surviving harsh weather conditions.
Because hybridization now dominates cannabis production around the world, it is getting harder and harder to find genuine landrace strains unless you are willing to go out and hunt the wilderness. Most of what is produced today is the result of hybridization and cloning.
Older cannabis users may long for the ‘good old days’ before hybridization, but the truth is that hybridization is not necessarily a bad thing. Over the years we have learned a lot about cannabinoids and terpenes. We are just beginning to understand how isolating and combining specific cannabinoids with select terpenes can lead to better medicines.
Even now, skilled processors here in Utah are investigating hybridization techniques that could lead to better products. Imagine a day when medical cannabis products are as specific as other prescription drugs. That day is coming, thanks to research and hybridization.
Meanwhile, consider yourself lucky if you ever manage to find a landrace strain. Such strains are hard to come by. They are as unique as the environments in which they are grown, just like landrace varieties of any other plant or animal species.
CBD oils, vapes, and other products can be legally bought and sold without any special license or permit. In Utah, the same cannot be said about Medical Cannabis. If you don’t think this matters, think again. The results of a research study published in early 2021 suggests that CBD can reduce the effects of a THC high. That puts a whole new spin on the differences between the two cannabinoids.
Cannabis products are generally divided into two categories under Utah law. CBD products contain less than 0.3% THC by volume. Medical Cannabis products contain more than 0.3%. Both types of products are derived from cannabis plants. Just the fact that we think of them separately tells us everything we need to know about how policymakers view CBD and THC.
Perhaps that’s why so little work has been done on combining the two cannabinoids for medical purposes. But now that scientific research demonstrates that CBD affects THC uptake, there may be room to develop an entirely new line of medicines for Medical Cannabis users.
The study in question was published in September 2021 in the Journal of Clinical Psychopharmacology. Conducted by Spanish researchers, the study looked at combining CBD with THC and measuring its impact on the human brain. Researchers discovered something phenomenal: combining THC and CBD at a 2-to-1 ratio led to a less intoxicating THC high.
The thing about CBD is that it is psychoactive in the sense that it can affect mental and emotional responses. We tend to consider it non-psychoactive because it does not have an intoxicating effect. But psychoactivity is psychoactivity, whether it happens to be intoxicating or not.
A patient might take CBD because it helps relieve anxiety. It might help another user who struggles with mood swings. Either way, people use CBD because it helps them feel better. If we can combine it with THC to make a better medicine, why not do so? Why continue to keep them separate?
Right now, the implications of combining CBD with THC are still being understood. Still, think about what the results of the Spanish study might mean for medical users. Combining CBD and THC could give a Medical Cannabis patient the best of both worlds. It could mean the benefits of THC without a seriously intoxicating high.
This has pretty serious implications for people who need to medicate around the clock – even at times when being high is not acceptable. We can imagine the day when a CBD-THC combination makes it possible for Medical Cannabis patients to hold jobs they currently cannot hold.
Then there are those patients who need THC but just do not want to experience the high. If CBD can minimize the intoxicating effects without seriously reducing the therapeutic benefits of Medical Cannabis, such patients would be in a much better place.
One thing we definitely know is that there is still a lot to learn about cannabinoids and how they affect human biology. Here at Utah Marijuana, we are just happy to see that serious research is finally getting underway. Trying to understand how CBD influences THC uptake is just the tip of the iceberg.
If you are a Medical Cannabis patient in Utah, keep an eye open and an ear to the ground. We will be seeing more research as the months and years go on. Undoubtedly, a lot of that research is going to mean good things for Medical Cannabis here in Utah and around the world. That is definitely a good thing.
Chances are you have heard your fellow Medical Cannabis users talk about cannabis strains. Perhaps you’ve also heard about varieties and cultivars. So what’s the difference? Actually, there is none. All the terms are used to describe the same thing. Unfortunately, none of them are technically correct.
All the aforementioned terms are used to categorize different types of cannabis products. What we normally call strains or varieties are actually chemovars – or chemical varieties, if you prefer. They are known by their cannabinoid and terpene profiles.
All the science aside, we talk about different strains and varieties because we do not know any other words to use. That’s okay. Just know that the name of a given strain does not necessarily tell you anything about its makeup. It doesn’t really tell you about cannabinoid and terpene profiles.
It may seem important to study the many strains, varieties, and cultivars everyone talks about. But ask yourself this question: what is in a name? We are guessing you have one or two favorites in terms of your medicines. But what do the names of those medicines tell you? Not much.
Maybe you are a big fan of Blue Dream Vape or Wautomelon. Maybe Purple Urkle is your thing. Regardless, all those names are chosen for marketing purposes. That’s fine. You get to know the names of your preferred products and you stick with them. But what if you want to try something new?
The key is getting to know the cannabinoid and terpene profiles of the products you are currently using. You can then use that information to research new products.
Some people have tried to explain the differences in varieties as being similar to differences in wines. In the wine-making world, you have three main categories: white, red, and champagne. Knowing that you prefer red wine doesn’t do much for you in terms of the many varieties in that category.
You might like sweet red wine while your spouse prefers a nice cabernet sauvignon. Both types of red wine taste drastically different because they have different chemical makeups. It is the same thing with Medical Cannabis strains. Each product makeup means different results for patients.
The wine comparison breaks down due to the fact that there are very strict standards for classifying wines. Those standards have been in place for hundreds of years. No such standards exist in the cannabis arena. Until they do, a lot of what goes into finding the right medicine is a matter of trial and error.
The best advice we can offer for making sense of the many strains and varieties is to work closely with your Pharmacy Medical Provider (PMP) at your cannabis pharmacy. It is your PMP’s job to be familiar with the many different cannabinoid and terpene profiles in the products on pharmacy shelves. Do not be afraid to tap into their expertise.
Your PMP can help you figure out which products are best for your condition. You can contribute by tracking how often you use your medicines, the effects that you experience, and any other relevant information your PMP asks for. Together, you can come up with a solid therapeutic plan to ensure that you feel better.
One final thought is this: do not stress over having to choose between so many strains, varieties, and cultivars. All those different names you find on Medical Cannabis shelves are really just for marketing. Once you and your PMP figure out which cannabinoids and terpenes work best, finding the right medicines will be a lot easier.
Have you heard of a runner’s high? It’s probably safe to say that every one of us has either experienced one firsthand or skeptically rolled our eyes at someone who has. Apparently, after you run enough, you reach a point of euphoria where running becomes awesome and fun. I’ve never gotten there myself, but, boy, do I have some serious FOMO about it. Rather than literally chasing that high that may never come, I opt to get high and then run.
Chances are by this point, I’ve already lost some of you. Frankly, there was a point in my life when I’d never considered using cannabis before exercise. What a waste of a good thing, I’d say! And while it might not be for everybody, there are a few of us out there who have tried to exercise while medicated and found that it helped. Does it really, though? There are some experts who have gathered information about the subject (though it’s important to note that no official scientific studies have been run to test the effects of cannabis on exercise). If you’ve ever been curious about mixing the two, here are a few tips contrived of a healthy mix of my own personal experience and anecdotal evidence from said experts.
Note: I’m a Medical Cannabis patient, not a doctor or a scientist. The following should not be considered medical advice of any kind.
It’s important to understand your personal relationship with cannabis before attempting vigorous physical activity.* You’re not going to want to get your Medical Cannabis Card, get blitzed, and head to the gym. Patients of UTTHC are educated on the importance of finding your just-right dose and given a tailor-made treatment plan to follow to help them find optimal relief at the lowest possible dose (known as microdosing). You can download our Find Your Just-Right Dose guide and many other helpful Medical Cannabis guides here.
Once you’re comfortable with your body’s reaction to canna-treatment, take a moment to be mindful of how you feel. If you feel a little couchlocked, maybe take a bit less than your just-right dose prior to your workout. Remember, we’re going for medicated here, not stoned.
It’s no secret that Medical Cannabis can help treat chronic pain. The concept here is the same: when you’re exercising with cannabis in your system, your body can tolerate aches and pains much better. You may be able to run that extra mile, lunge a little deeper, or knock out a few more squats — and who knows? That extra boost could be just what you’ve needed all this time to see those gains you’ve been working so hard for. Check out this episode of Utah in the Weeds where we interview local athlete, Toby Larson, about how cannabis before exercise has helped him lose near 50 pounds.
Sometimes, a good workout is all about the experience you create for yourself. A good playlist and a little energy can carry us through most workouts, but when you need that extra oomph, cannabis can get you there. Microdosing before repetitive or tedious gym sessions — like weightlifting, running on the treadmill, or yoga — can get you in the zone faster and help you to stay focused on your form.
After a heavy workout (or a string of them), when your joints ache and your muscles feel like they’re on fire, you’re not going to want to throw on your gym shorts and head out to hit it hard again. Cannabinoids like CBD, THC, CBG, etc. can help to decrease that inflammation so your muscles can recover. Then you can get back to it sooner, ultimately helping you to build more muscle and get stronger.
Shout out to cannabidiol. Better known as CBD — the infamous ultra-therapeutic, non-psychoactive compound in the cannabis plant. CBD can help to treat many things, but we’ve gotta give it up for its anti-inflammatory and analgesic properties. These two properties in particular make CBD a gift when it comes to recovery. And while Medical Cannabis is legal in Utah, it’s not as quite easily accessible as CBD is. Not to mention the fact that not all of us can just go off and use cannabis. Maybe you’re regularly drug-tested or don’t like feeling “high”. I’m here to tell you that CBD oil will get the job done and you’ll likely notice a positive difference.
That being said, medicating with whole plant (THC and other cannabinoids included) is far more likely to provide more well-rounded relief, as many cannabinoids play off of one another in your endocannabinoid system. For example, while you’ll get one anti-inflammatory effect from CBD, you’ll get a totally different one from THC or CBG. Not to mention the effect you’ll feel when they all work together (called the Entourage Effect). There are roughly 100 other cannabinoids in the cannabis plant. You never know which might be your saving grace until you try. It’s worth a shot, no?
This goes without saying. I mean, obviously, right? But for those of us who don’t like exercising and have a hard time staying active because of it, microdosing a little cannabis beforehand could spice it up for you. (This same advice goes for other mundane tasks, like laundry and shoveling snow.)
So, if like so many of us, your 2022 resolution is to exercise more, be healthier, or feel better, I implore you to see what cannabis can do for you. You could go from couch potato to gym rat and flex on all of your loved ones by this time next year. If you still need your Medical Card in Utah, reserve an appointment in any of UTTHC’s six clinics across the state. What are you waiting for? Make 2022 the year you put your health first.
Now, considering the above — and because it’s fresh on everyone’s minds after the Sha’Carri Richardson scandal last July — do you think cannabis could be a performance-enhancing drug? And if so, should it be put in the same category as steroids for Olympic athletes? Here’s what our founder, Tim Pickett, had to say on the matter on KSL NewsRadio. What do you think? Comment below — we’d love to hear your thoughts!
Warning: If you suffer from heart disease of any kind, proceed with caution. Cannabis use can decrease blood pressure, making the heart beat faster. This could be cause for concern for those with heart issues, especially when physically active. Talk to your doctor before mixing cannabis and exercise.
* Some physical activities may not be well-suited for cannabis use. Use your best judgment.
