As you may or may not have heard, the 2021 Utah General Legislative Session was held this spring. Many amendments passed in multiple areas of the law in Utah, so rather than going blue in the face listing them all for you, let’s get to the good stuff: amendments to the Utah Medical Cannabis Act. What do patients need to know? What do providers need to know? Join me, if you will, and we’ll dive into some of the most significant changes made to Utah cannabis law and how they affect patients. (Check out this related episode of Utah in the Weeds with Rich Oborn, Director of the UDOH Center for Medical Cannabis.)
When the Utah Medical Cannabis Act was written, it was stated that only fourteen Medical Cannabis pharmacy operating licenses would be awarded. All fourteen of those licenses were snatched up very quickly, but the rollout has been a slow burn. We still haven’t seen some of these pharmacies emerge over one year later. But, lucky for us — especially those of us in Southern Utah — every holder of one of the fourteen Medical Cannabis pharmacy licenses in the state will need to open by June 1, 2021. Our access to Medical Cannabis will almost double by summer!
But let’s get back to the session. First off, a bill passed through legislature that grants Utah one additional pharmacy license to issue, bringing the grand total to fifteen in the state. This pharmacy will be located in the rural area of either Daggett, Duchesne, Uintah, Sevier, Grand, San Juan, Emery, or Carbon County. UDOH doesn’t have a deadline yet to award this license, but keep an eye out for it sometime in 2021. We suspect to see this license awarded to one of the existing players in the Utah Medical Cannabis space.
When 2020 came to a close, it left many of our Utah Medical Cannabis patients to the south and other rural areas up a creek without a paddle, so to speak. They were no longer legally allowed to possess cannabis purchased out-of-state, and the closest Utah Medical Cannabis pharmacy was miles away. Under previous law, out-of-state Medical Cannabis was deemed legal possession by active Medical Cannabis cardholders through December 31, 2020. A possession bill passed extends that deadline to June 30, 2021. This gives patients legal access to their medicine while the remaining Utah Medical Cannabis pharmacies get up and running.
In addition to this deadline extension for out-of-state purchases, a bill passed prohibiting patients to remove or alter the labels on their Medical Cannabis purchases. At utahmarijuana.org affiliated clinics, we have always suggested this to our patients as an extra precaution, but now it’s mandatory. Just think of the countless stories out there of legal Utah patients being pulled over with Utah Medical Cannabis in their cars being cited with possession. So, the more proof you have of legal possession, the better, right? You can’t always count on other people to know the laws. Many people in Utah still don’t know Medical Cannabis is even an option to them. This one just makes sense: keep your labels, folks.
Already rolling out in some of the pharmacies, more in-depth verification is coming for us in Utah. Every single Medical Cannabis transaction must now be reviewed by a Pharmacy Medical Provider before it’s
dispensed. This could mean longer wait times and delayed pick-up or delivery orders while your friendly neighborhood pharmacist takes a peek at your dosage recommendations. There’s no doubt in my mind that this process rollout will be rocky at first, but think of it this way: you go to your local CVS or Wal-Mart with a prescription for 800mg Ibuprofen but ask for Percoset. If your pharmacist didn’t verify your actual prescription, you’d walk out with a controlled substance without a second look. That’s basically the thought process behind this law. It is a medical program, after all. We’ve got to treat this like medicine.
A bill also passed this session stating that by Fall 2021, each Utah Medical Cannabis cardholder and their purchase history will be incorporated into Utah’s Controlled Substance Database. Likely the most highly debated amendment to the Utah Medical Cannabis Act, the pros and cons are clear. For example, many patients worry about discrimination or denial of treatment from medical providers who do not agree with cannabis use. With this new visibility, patients don’t get to choose who they share this information with as they do now. (Utahmarijuana.org pro-tip: it’s always best to be completely transparent with everyone on your healthcare team!)
That being said, there are some upsides to this inclusion in the CSD. This will allow for more access to research on Medical Cannabis use and treatment, which will only further the program not only here, but in other states as well. It’ll also promote honesty and provide a more effective and comprehensive patient-provider relationship. When it comes down to it, cannabis is an intoxicating substance at moderate-to-high doses and should be treated with caution by patients and providers.
Buckle up for new EVS and card rules! I’m happy to announce that soon, our favorite necessary evil will get just a bit clearer. A bill passed to extend the timeframe of the first-issued Utah Medical Cannabis Card from ninety days to six months. That’ll save patients (and providers) the headache of navigating the EVS application again so soon. Keep in mind that at Utah Therapeutic Health Center, we love to hear from our patients. Don’t be a stranger! If you need something in your first six months — application help, directions, program clarifications, anything! — please reach out to us. Our Patient Experience team is always happy to help or put you in touch with your QMP. You’re not alone in this.
Next up. If you became a Utah Medical Cannabis patient in 2021, you’ve experienced the strange interim period of being able to use Medical Cannabis legally, but not being able to purchase it yet as you wait for your card to be sent to you. No longer! UDOH will soon roll out a Conditional Card available immediately to approved patients 21 years of age or older. For simplicity’s sake, think of Conditional Cards as fancy state-issued recommendation letters. Remember those? Providers can revoke this card at any time, and this will give patients access to the pharmacies while they wait for their Medical Card from the state. Look for Conditional Cards in the near future after necessary software modifications. We expect Conditional Cards to make an appearance on the scene in late 2021.
This session also introduced the LMP, or Limited Medical Provider. A Limited Medical Provider is defined as any MD, DO, podiatrist, APRN, or PA with a controlled substance license. (Oh yeah — a bill passed to add podiatrists to the list of approved providers that can be a QMP, too!) Contrary to a Qualified Medical Provider, an LMP doesn’t need to register with the Utah Department of Health. In fact, they won’t use EVS at all.
However, they’re only authorized to recommend Medical Cannabis to fifteen patients. So, technically speaking, if your provider is willing, you could be one of the lucky fifteen they keep in-house. LMPs will roll out later in the year after necessary software modifications.
Supportive of this amendment, Medical Cannabis education will appear in existing continuing education programs for providers with a controlled substance license. These providers already attend required courses every two years and these courses will soon include cannabis information. This will help support patients who choose to stay with their existing providers — cannabis experience or not — to receive well-rounded, comprehensive care.
In addition, physician assistant QMPs no longer require a supervising physician QMP (MD, DO, or podiatrist). Great news for PAs! Now you all can take a page from the Tim Pickett playbook with even more freedom and control over your practice. Score!
Finally, an EVS change. A bill passed giving QMPs the option to submit treatment and medication history about a patient to support their decision to restrict certain delivery methods or provide specific dosing guidelines into a patient record. This will be viewable by the PMP during the purchase verification process to ensure all recommendation guidelines have been met.
Phew! *wipes sweat from brow* Are you still with me? That was a lot to take in, wasn’t it? If we’ve learned anything about the Utah Medical Cannabis Program, it’s that nothing is set in stone. Things will change, then change again, then change back, and we’re all along for the ride. We here at utahmarijuana.org are here to keep you informed, safe, and legal. Keep an eye on our blog and FAQ page for the latest updates. For more about the program and these most recent updates, check out our founder’s podcast, Utah in the Weeds, where we interview Katie Barber, Medical Cannabis Program Specialist with UDOH, the man himself: Rich Oborn, Director of the UDOH Center for Medical Cannabis, and so many more. Comment below with your thoughts on these recent legislative changes — we’d love to hear what you think.
The law in Utah is very clear about how Medical Cannabis can be used. The state allows for multiple delivery methods, including tablets, capsules, and concentrated oils. Even vaping is allowed. Smoking is not. If you tend to prefer smoking, we invite you to try vaping instead.
We get that no delivery method is perfect for everyone. We also realize that a lot of patients like to vary delivery methods depending on how they feel on any given day. We think vaping should be an option on most patients’ lists. Not only does vaping offer several benefits over other delivery methods, but it really is a fantastic way to experience Medical Cannabis.
One of the most talked-about benefits of vaping is that it delivers near-instantaneous results. Inhaling the vapor directly into the lungs immediately introduces the beneficial components of the product to the bloodstream. If you have used Medical Cannabis in tablet or capsule form, you know it can take quite a bit longer to start feeling the effects.
This is not to say that vaping is always the best way to go. It might not be. But at those times when you and your pharmacist agree you need near instant results, vaping is your best option.
Getting back to the law for a minute, the state has very clearly stated that Medical Cannabis is not to be introduced to flame in any way. That rules out smoking. So how does vaping work? While a vape pen has several parts that work together, there are two methods for vaporizing cannabis products. One utilizes unprocessed flower while the other relies on concentrated oils.
If you were to choose flower, you would use a vaping device that heats the flower to a temperature just high enough to release the chemicals you need – but without actually burning the marijuana. E-cigarette makers can do much the same thing with tobacco.
If you were to choose concentrated oils, you would use something like a vape pen to deliver your medication. The vape pen has an internal atomizer that heats the oil until it turns into a vapor. It is a lot like how a kettle turns water into steam on your stovetop. You inhale the vapor just as you would smoke.
From a strictly technical standpoint, the concentrated oils method of vaping has been around longer than the dry heating method. You might find oil vape pens more reliable and convenient. But of course, that’s up to you and your pharmacist.
In closing, we want to address the safety question. We have heard so many claims over the years about how vaping is no safer than smoking. Most of the claims revolve around a substance known as vitamin E acetate, a substance that has been linked to popcorn lung. Understand that reputable manufacturers no longer use vitamin E acetate in their liquids, so that issue has been resolved.
We also want you to know that vaping is safer than smoking in the sense that your lungs are not being exposed to the thousands of toxic chemicals produced by combustion. When you smoke marijuana, you are inhaling many of the same chemicals tobacco smokers inhale. When you vape, it is a different story. Where there is no combustion there is also no exposure to its byproducts.
Vaping is a terrific way to deliver the medical benefits of cannabis. As a patient, we recommend you consider vaping as one of your delivery options. Talk it over with your cannabis pharmacist on your next visit to the dispensary. You just might find that vaping does more good than any other delivery method you’ve tried.
We are quite enthusiastic about the progress Utah has made in delivering Medical Marijuana to patients in need. There is still much to do. There’s also a lot more to learn. As a potential patient yourself, we want you to have as much information as you can. To that end, this post will discuss the basics of Utah’s Compassionate Use Board (CUB).
You might not realize it, but our Medical Cannabis laws are not as draconian as they might seem. Our state legislators have worked awfully hard to accommodate the needs of patients while addressing concerns posed by the medical community. They are still working to improve things. In fact, new legislation now being considered might make it easier to obtain Medical Marijuana without going through the CUB.
At any rate, the CUB exists to help minors and those whose medical conditions are not on the list of qualified conditions gain access to Medical Cannabis when appropriate. The Board could end up being your best friend should you need to call on them at any point in the future.
The first thing to know about the Compassionate Use Board is likely the most important. The Board is not made up of bureaucrats and politicians. Instead, it’s “seven qualified medical providers who have been appointed by the executive director of the Utah Department of Health,” according to the state’s Medical Cannabis website.
This is good news. Board members are all medical professionals. They are the ones we should be asking to make decisions about compassionate use. We hope that all current and future Board members have been educated about cannabis and the human cannabinoid system, the same way QMPs and cannabis pharmacists have been.
Next up, the CUB’s responsibilities are narrow and well-defined. Their main function is to review petitions for compassionate Medical Marijuana use. The petitions come from:
The CUB can approve petitions based on two circumstances:
It’s our understanding that the CUB has rejected very few of the petitions they have reviewed so far. Most get approved. When rejections do occur, it is mainly because of a lack of information from the applicant.
One of the more attractive aspects of petitioning the Board is that you do not have to meet with them in person. In fact, neither you nor your QMP have any direct contact with Board members. Rather, you submit your petition along with a QMP Recommendation Letter for the board to review at its next meeting. The letter should include all of the information your doctor deems relevant.
Board meetings are private meetings, meaning no one other than Board members are allowed to be present. All petition information is kept strictly confidential. After reviewing your information among themselves, the Board makes a determination of approval. That’s about it.
Utah’s Compassionate Use Board exists to help people obtain Medical Cannabis under unusual circumstances. We recommend you first try to get a Medical Marijuana Card through your QMP and have them help you decide if Board assistance is needed.
It’s always interesting when Chris and Tim have an opportunity to sit down with someone heavily involved with the policy side of Medical Cannabis in Utah. That’s just what happened in episode 41 of Utah in the Weeds. Our hosts had a fascinating conversation with the Utah Department of Health’s (UDOH) Katie Barber. Barber’s official title is Health Program Specialist. Her job involves everything from maintaining EVS software to sitting in on Compassionate Use Board meetings. Tim & Chris discuss all of this with her and more.
In this episode, there is quite a bit of discussion about the transition from letters to Medical Cannabis cards.[09:12] As of January 1, letters are no longer acceptable in Utah. Medical Marijuana users must have state-issued cards. Barber discussed why the transition was made. [10:11] She explained that Medical Cannabis cards just make it easier for the UDOH to track what’s going on for regulatory purposes.
Tim and Chris also discussed the Compassionate Use Board in-depth with Katie. [17:34] She explained that the Board rarely denies applicants. When they do, it is typically for lack of information or concerns over continuity of care. Barber said that the Board tweaks its policies with every meeting, in hopes of improving them.[18:17]
In the later part of the discussion, Katie talks about how UDOH seeks to educate both patients and doctors. [31:48] They want patients to understand how easy it is to get a Medical Marijuana Card. They want providers to know how they can go about becoming QMPs. It was a fantastic dialogue answering some of the most frequently asked questions Tim and Chris receive.
This episode is for anyone who wants to know what they are thinking over at the UDOH. You won’t want to miss it.
Chris Holifield: This is episode 41, of Utah in the Weeds. And my name is Chris Holifield …
Tim Pickett: And I’m Tim Pickett. I mean, I kind of wanted to just jump in because I’m so excited about our guest today. This is the podcast for cannabis culture in Utah, really. And cannabis culture is a medical … It’s really a medical culture because of the Utah Medical Cannabis Program. And today we have really, who I consider the workhorse of the whole program, Katie Barber. She works for the Department of Health, and what’s your official title, Katie?
Katie Barber: My official title is Health Program Specialist.
Tim Pickett: But I run the whole program.
Katie Barber: But I do a lot of things at the program, yeah.
Tim Pickett: Right, right.
Katie Barber: Team effort.
Tim Pickett: Okay. Yeah, I’m excited about this, Chris.
Chris Holifield: Where do you want to start with her? Because I mean, I was looking here over everything she’s got going on there. I mean, there is so much that we could talk about.
Tim Pickett: I’m interested in maybe finding out how you came to be with the Department of Health in the program.
Katie Barber: Yeah, that is a great question. I joined the program in October of 2019, and I joined them after spending three years in retail pharmacy, and additionally working in harm reduction. So, this type of alternative treatment, helping Utah’s public in a non-traditional way sort of, was really of interest to me. My other background, my educational background, is health policy and communication, and health and science communication. So, this job was perfect. The program was just starting out, it was in a field that I wanted to be in, especially in a beginning field in Utah, like it is. And it was an opportunity not to just interface with Utah’s public, but to help Utah’s public in this new way. So, that’s how long I’ve been there, that’s why I got involved, and it’s been a wild ride.
Chris Holifield: Now, are you a Medical Cannabis user yourself? Or what’s your relationship with cannabis?
Katie Barber: I am not a patient. But I have family members who have benefited from it. So, and-
Chris Holifield: Very cool.
Katie Barber: … every day I hear amazing stories from our patients. So, it’s not out-of-the-realm possibility for me, that’s for sure.
Chris Holifield: So, you are open to it.
Katie Barber: Oh yeah, absolutely. And even though there’s a lot of research that needs to be done on it, just the anecdotal evidence to me is really compelling for something as simple as a backache, to debilitating arthritis. My family members have benefited from it because they have arthritis, so it’s … I watch people flourish before my eyes just as part of being in this program, and then from hearing how it benefits people. So, it’s hard to deny that there’s something to it, even though it’s not FDA regulated. It’s hard to deny that there’s not something to this.
Tim Pickett: Yeah, for sure. I mean, did you have a pretty good knowledge of cannabis before you started with the Department of Health?
Katie Barber: No, I really didn’t have any knowledge of cannabis. That really all started when I joined in 2019, learning about it. And it’s been really fascinating. I’ve approached it more from a policy perspective, I’ve been fortunate enough to be part of our compassionate use board, and help out with our cannabinoid product board. So, I get to learn the research that’s going on around the country, and around the world. So, yeah. I didn’t know anything about it until I joined, really.
Tim Pickett: Did you grow up here, in Utah?
Katie Barber: Yeah. I’m born and raised in Utah. Went to the U, and stayed here.
Tim Pickett: That’s pretty cool. I mean, I am too, and we’re … I think this perspective of it’s those rich, and so many people that are involved in the program are really just homegrown. So, there are people in Utah who are open-minded, apparently, who were born here and raised here.
Katie Barber: Yeah. Our projections were much lower by the end of the year than we hit, so we far exceeded expectations for patient … For cardholders. And the interest has been way higher than we anticipated, even for providers. Just people who want to find out more, maybe they want to seek treatment for their family member, they’re looking into how much research is out there, what the Department of Health can provide, which is a lot. We have a lot of resources. And I think it’s caught on, especially because there was this initial interest. More and more people are talking about how it’s benefiting them, so we kind of just see this domino effect. I think the people who hear, “Hey, this worked for me, might work for you.” And it’s surprising, because we are such a … Utah has certain cultural factors that prevent us from thinking about something that’s not regulated, typically. We are much more of a by-the-books type of people, I’d say.
Katie Barber: So, it has been awesome to see the growth, and see people benefit from it.
Tim Pickett: In your communications, you’re always been pretty positive about the fact that the program is doing better, or growing bigger than you anticipated. So, what was the original projection? Something like 16,000 in the beginning?
Katie Barber: I don’t even think it was that much. I think it was closer towards 10,000, 8,000 cards by the end of the year. It wasn’t that many.
Chris Holifield: I thought I heard even 6,000.
Katie Barber: Yeah, I think we’ve almost about doubled that growth over our projections.
Tim Pickett: Yeah, you’re at over 30,000 legal users now?
Katie Barber: I can give you the updated number. We are between 18,000 and 18,500.
Tim Pickett: Of legal card holding … Okay. So, this is good news, because there isn’t anybody in the state who probably knows this number better than you.
Katie Barber: Oh yeah. Oh, yes. So, we’ve got a small team. So, actually one of our teammates is pretty much approving all of these. It’s a small team, so she is the one that really has seen all of these cards come through her desk. I help patients along the way, and … But she really has been pushing through on these approvals, and we had such a wave leading up to the end of the year because of the law change. And so, we saw about 2,000 more just between November and December kick up.
Tim Pickett: Wow. Okay, so just so everybody knows, I’m going to back up and I’m going to basically reintroduce you. You are part of a small team at the Utah Department of Health, who specializes in cannabis. And really the policy surrounding how to get a card, what the process is like through that EVS system, the electronic verification system. And you’re really an expert in that system.
Katie Barber: Right, yeah. And just to add to that, we facilitate the law, so we can suggest things about policy. And of course, we have the Utah Department of Health rule, but we are facilitating what the statute tells us to. So, yes, that includes an electronic system that was mandated by the legislature, everything had to be electronic for people to get cards. And that’s what we do, day in, day out. That’s what our help desk is for, is helping people get their cards. And occasionally telling people how the law works. People ask questions about that, too.
Tim Pickett: Flash back to March 1st, 2020, the day it all opened. We had card number one, right on the podcast, David Sutherland. He’s a friend of ours, and what was that like when this all opened up for you and your team?
Katie Barber: It’s crazy. We’ve grown since then so our team was even smaller at that time. But to watch everything, it really did come together on March 1st and March 2nd, when the first pharmacy opened. And it’s the culmination of everything, because there had been so much work done to create the software, make sure we were adhering to the statute. You trying to anticipate things that will make it easy for patients to get cards, and then next thing you know you’re in there on a Saturday at the Department of Health, playing help desk for all of these patients that want their cards on day one. But that’s great. I mean, you couldn’t ask for a better situation where you have people that genuinely are seeking alternative treatment, and you’re there to help them. There’s no better feeling than that. So, it was wild, and it continues to be wild. But it’s amazing.
Chris Holifield: And then COVID happened on top of it, so I’m sure that didn’t really help.
Katie Barber: Right. That’s been challenging for everybody, especially the Department of Health. And it is strange, I get the most … Interaction I get now is with patients, and then also happening to talk to people like Tim, or one of the pharmacists at the pharmacies and they tell me these situations where patients are benefiting from it. After you’re doing so much every single day to just see people’s name on paper, or help write rule, or whatever you’re doing for the day, and you don’t really get to see that connection then where somebody got help. But those are the moments where you really do remember oh, this has an impact. They’re not just numbers, they are patients and they’re being benefited by this.
Tim Pickett: So Katie, talk to us about some of the changes that are occurring in the program starting January 1st, 2021. Because I think our listeners are really interested in that. Not everybody knows. I mean, there’s a lot of patients on my list that were seen a long time ago who never got their card at all, and still they have this letter. What’s-
Katie Barber: Right. So …
Tim Pickett: What are the changes?
Katie Barber: Yeah. It’s that letter. So, previously patients were able to purchase at the pharmacies using a letter. Part of the intent of the legislature, I think, was to allow people who had been possessing product out of state, and might not have been able to get it in-state, due to lack of availability, they wrote into the law that these people could purchase with a letter at these pharmacies. That would be their proof of being able to possess in Utah. So, that went away on December 31st. So, if you had a letter you need a card now. If you had product from somewhere not in Utah, you’re illegally possessing. So, that’s the major change there.
Chris Holifield: Why couldn’t you just keep the letter program going if it was working? Why not just let people keep using letters?
Katie Barber: One big reason I would imagine is that this helps us track better. So, whenever you have a system that’s not … Is manual, it’s just going to have more flaws. And that’s actually part of the Controlled Substances Act, that it’s up until January 1st of 2021 that somebody can possess something with just a letter, or proof of their provider being able to prescribe it. They would be able to possess a letter … I need to actually think of what the law says. They would be able to possess Medical Cannabis as long as their provider could attest that the provider wanted them to be using it. So, that took the form of a letter, that got turned into letters, and then people were able to purchase. And it just becomes a lot easier to track, to manage, to … In my opinion, it’s better for care over time if you got a system where the provider can see what the patient is getting. That’s not something that happens now with the letter process.
Katie Barber: So, I think it’s a combination of the legislature wants this to be regulated, we want to be able to track it, we still want people to have access to it. That was the way of making people have access to it, letting people have access to it for as long as possible. And giving them time to convert to a card.
Chris Holifield: When this first launched, I think it was going to be cards from the very beginning. Letters weren’t going to work the entire year, but then there were problems with the EVS if I’m not mistaken? Is that kind of why that changed? Or what was the reason for that change?
Katie Barber: It’s possible that patient advocacy groups really pushed for an easier way for patients to access Medical Cannabis.
Tim Pickett: Plus… I love talking to you because you’re like, “We have no position. We have no-
Chris Holifield: Okay, okay. I get it, I get it.
Tim Pickett: … position.”
Chris Holifield: Yeah, I gotcha.
Katie Barber: We didn’t write the law. I know a lot of people think we do, but we didn’t. So, obviously we want patients to be able to access cards as easily as possible. When you have a new program, it had a way higher …
Chris Holifield: Interest.
Katie Barber: Yeah. There was way more interest at the very beginning, and I think a lot of patients reported back to these advocacy groups, or maybe it was to their senators and legislative representatives, that they weren’t able to access. We have never been able to confirm that there was some sort of delay on our end, but then you also had issues at the very outset, which is general product availability. So, that could’ve been another reason that the second bill was passed, to allow patients to purchase with a letter. But it didn’t have anything to do with a … It wasn’t a software related issue.
Chris Holifield: I got you.
Katie Barber: The software that we use now is the software that we used then.
Tim Pickett: And it’s pretty close to the same process to register, but there … I remember in the beginning, I mean, we were able to access the EVS system all the way through … I’ll be honest, I was kind of one of the people that was not very pro-expanding this letter program. I thought the EVS system seems to work. It was only taking about a day, or in some cases less than that to get somebody through. But there was certainly was a lot of … No, there was a lot of talk around the EVS system is totally broken, and bogus, and that sort of thing. Do you feel like now that you have no letters, are you seeing this week, I guess would be your only … The only timeframe. Are you getting a lot more calls from people and providers, having to now learn this new system?
Katie Barber: Well, one of the great things is that part of the law that was passed required that certain people that had a role in patients accessing Medical Cannabis educated the patients about getting a card. So, personally I think we saw more interest before the end of the year, because more patients actually knew that they did need … That there was an expiration date to their letters. So, I think we’re kind of over that hump, actually, for … Just personally. That’s what I think for how many people are kind of mass emailing, calling, because we did have … We were backlogged. And we kind of still continue to be backlogged with requests of people just wanting to know how to get a card. We’ll often get language to our email, or over the phone about I need to convert to a card from my letter. And it’s just kind of interesting, because the letter process, again, was born out of just something that turned into it’s standard. That was never the law.
Katie Barber: And it became law. So, I hope that answers your question.
Tim Pickett: Yeah, totally. So, how long right now are you out? Because the law says that we can wait up to 15 days, but I’ve never seen anybody wait 15 days. How long does it take once the approval … Once the QMP approves that in the system, how long is the state usually out?
Katie Barber: It’ll be less than 15 days. That’s the law, that’s going to be the max amount of time somebody has to wait. And our turnaround time is usually much faster. I would say within three days people have their cards. That’s a long time compared to our typical turnaround.
Tim Pickett: How many cards are you issuing … Are you approving about a week now?
Katie Barber: Let’s see, I’d say an average, a good average for the month is 2,000. So, that would help break it down by week there. It varies.
Tim Pickett: How does it vary? It’s always fascinating to me that it varies so much.
Chris Holifield: That what varies?
Tim Pickett: Does it vary with COVID? The appointments.
Chris Holifield: Oh, I gotcha.
Tim Pickett: For cards. That it varies. Healthcare doesn’t really vary. Chronic pain doesn’t really vary. But for some reason there’s 600 this week, and only 200 next week.
Katie Barber: Right, yeah.
Tim Pickett: Does COVID affect the … Your workload?
Katie Barber: I think when the lockdown first started, it especially did. We had people that were kind of in limbo with treatment just in general for their conditions. And we had a lot of interest, and we still continue to get interest from providers especially, who would like the opportunity to consult patients, either at home or … Not at home. They want to consult patients with telehealth, or telemedicine, and they’re not able to because the law just says they have to meet in person. So, I do think that that did have an impact, because that meant the offices, like yours Tim, they were just reorganizing to accommodate these people. And we have to factor in social distancing, and knowing who’s in and out of your door it becomes a lot harder to treat people, whether it’s any appointment, any regular appointment for your treatment. It just turns into something different.
Tim Pickett: Do you know the percentage, or the numbers of people who get denied?
Katie Barber: So, really the only population of patients that would get denied are those that are in the Compassionate Use Board group. If we don’t have enough information about a patient’s certification for Medical Cannabis use in the EVS, they will be marked incomplete. If we don’t get that information, it simply expires after 30 days with no change. And most people get something changed within 30 days. So, we don’t have a lot of actual denials at all. Even in the Compassionate Use Board, we don’t.
Tim Pickett: How many people have gone through the Compassionate Use Board?
Katie Barber: So, we’ve had 118 approved through the Compassionate Use Board. And I would say only a few more would have been denied. So, that gives you an idea of how many people have actually come through the queue.
Chris Holifield: And aren’t you a part of the Compassionate Use Board?
Katie Barber: Yes, yeah. I do everything with the Compassionate Use Board. So, I organize the meetings, I take the minutes, I do the audio, I help providers navigating-
Chris Holifield: I was wondering-
Katie Barber: … medical records.
Chris Holifield: For our listeners, let’s say they’re interested in approaching the Compassionate Use Board, do you have any suggestions, or tips? Or words of advice that might help their situation?
Katie Barber: Absolutely. So, our most successful petitioners will have submitted as much information as they can about their diagnosis from their provider. You could write letters too, about why you believe that you should be using Medical Cannabis, you can include research about your diagnosis that we can refer to. But the strongest petitions have the most information about the patient, and what their diagnosis is. So, whether that’s x-rays, or consults over time, documentation from multiple providers might be needed. That’s one thing that really does help patients. If we know, for example, that your primary care physician is endorsing your Medical Cannabis treatment, or at least has been consulted about your Medical Cannabis treatment, that helps. If the specialist that you go to knows that you want to seek Medical Cannabis treatment, and you make that known to the board through your petition, that will help.
Tim Pickett: Interesting. Okay, so I have a little bit more specific question, and I’ll be careful here. If a patient is denied on the Compassionate Use Board, is it typically … There’s only been a few denials. A couple of them have come from our group. And I think that it’s because for some reason people refer patients that are underage to me, specifically. If you listen to Representative Ward’s so-called pot clinics, will refer their Compassionate Use Board cases to me personally because they know that I know about the Compassionate Use Board. And we have helped a few patients navigate that process. In the denial, there’s only been a couple of them, but is it usually something like … That continuity of care between providers seems to have come up more recently, as kind of an issue that the Compassionate Use Board is considering.
Katie Barber: You’re dead on. Yeah. So, I have multiple things to say to this. But the first is it’s a process that’s in its growth phase. I’ve been with it since the beginning, and we’ve had actually a nurse transition out, and a nurse transition in that supports the board. We are still in the process of developing the policies for this board, even what are our bylaws? What are we going to look for? Are we going to have some sort of expedited way for getting these done if we’ve seen this type of case before? But you bring up a really good point about continuity of care. So, like I mentioned, I probably should’ve mentioned more in-depth, I say primary care physician, or somebody like a specialist that’s treating you, what you’ll have, yes, are these patients that haven’t had the conversation with their primary care physician yet about Medical Cannabis, or with their specialist. Somebody who’s treating them for their condition about for Medical Cannabis, because they assume that they’re not going to endorse treatment with Medical Cannabis, so they do seek a different provider that has more experience with the Compassionate Use Board petition process.
Katie Barber: So, if communication happens between everybody, whether that’s with a clinic like yours, or it’s a different situation with a different clinic, that’s going to help. We do like to see, on the board, continuity of care. That will help your petition, just because communication is key in treating you and your health, and maintaining your health. So, that’s why it’s going to help to communicate between providers. For sure.
Tim Pickett: This is good to know too, that the … It sounds like the Compassionate Use Board in the beginning kind of had this idea, and that idea is evolving. Because, for example, in Florida if you have a non-approved condition, there is essentially a form that you just fill out and send to the board, and they approve it, just because it’s so common. And they have established kind of this workflow. Do you see that ever happening with the Compassionate Use Board? Or do you think that’ll take maybe years to develop?
Katie Barber: Oh, I definitely think that could happen. We’re setting precedents every time we hold meetings, so I could totally see that happening in the future where it’s more of an automatic petition. You barely even have to do anything to petition. And by barely, I mean as long as you have the documentation. If we’ve seen the same type of case, we are going to be more likely to push that case through, without as much of a … As much scrutiny, I would say. But the patient does have to do a little bit of work to get to that point. And it will be left up to the board, if that’s what they decide. One of the other things is as we grow, we’re going to simply have more petitions. Are we going to be able to take more time to review a case? Will time factor into it? What are we going to do to accommodate more cases? Does it mean more meetings? We’re still literally answering those questions.
Katie Barber: So, I do see that being a possibility down the line, but also a factor of what if the legislature has question? Then what if they make a law? That means they’re going to enforce more time in a process, or require more information in the process. It’s just a weird balancing act that, of course the department and the board can inform, but ultimately we don’t have final say over. So, I do see that being a possibility, though.
Tim Pickett: Yeah, the Compassionate Use Board is kind of this … It’s this hidden thing, I think, amongst patients and people even in the industry. Even though I think that if we ask somebody like you, there doesn’t seem to be a lot of transparency into the Compassionate Use Board yet. So, hopefully that will change as time goes on, and we’ll get more transparency into the system. Do you feel like the Compassionate Use Board … I know we’re talking a lot about this, but do you feel like that board is becoming more friendly to cannabis? Or they’re pretty set in their opinions?
Katie Barber: So, all of these board members had to have been … They had to affirm that they would be willing to treat their own patients with Medical Cannabis, or at least they were open to the idea of using Medical Cannabis or else they wouldn’t be on this board. That’s just a requirement of being on the board. So, over time to see how they work out, sometimes board members want to see that. They want to see progress over time. In an environment where we don’t have a double blind study to refer to, this is our closest thing to that, really. These are patients we can even track over time. So, they really do prioritize patient safety, considering what the outcomes will be, and weighting benefit and risk. They’re most concerned with that. So, I mean, I don’t think it’s a question of being friendly to cannabis, it’s how can they best be part of a process that has integrity to maintain patient safety, and at the beginning of a process like that we’re just going to want to take more time to consider what the effects will be.
Tim Pickett: Speaking of data, you guys did a survey of a bunch of Utah patients, yeah?
Katie Barber: Yeah, we did. We did our first patient survey. Yeah, so that was sent to 4,000 patients in our system. Just randomized patients.
Chris Holifield: What was the survey?
Katie Barber: So, the survey had questions about their treatment. So, some were open-ended questions, like how do you feel this benefited you? Some of them were on a scale of this to this, have you seen a progression in your condition? Will you seek continued care in the Utah market? How do you think the prices are? What do you think about how prices are? What do you think might happen as a result of Medical Cannabis prices in Utah? They had the option to let us know where they thought they would go after being in the program once. Or we were just questioning them on their use before, what they anticipate for the future, questions like that to help us gauge how patients are responding to the program. And then also to the treatment.
Chris Holifield: Do you guys have anything to do with the pricing? You were mentioning the survey asked questions about pricing, and that’s kind of a thing people are talking a lot about, the higher prices here in Utah. I was curious now how much you guys control that.
Katie Barber: Zero.
Chris Holifield: Okay.
Katie Barber: There is no control over the prices whatsoever. And that was a decision from the legislature. That could change, too. We don’t know.
Chris Holifield: You guys just get that three bucks that they take at the pharmacies, I guess. Right?
Katie Barber: Yeah, there’s a $3 transaction fee on top of every purchase.
Chris Holifield: Yeah.
Katie Barber: You could buy $400 worth of product and you’d still only pay $3 to the Department of Health. And then our card prices are pretty low in comparison to other states, too.
Chris Holifield: Oh, absolutely. Yeah, absolutely.
Tim Pickett: Yeah. Just a couple of things that we get questions about all the time. Does the EVS system automatically set my expiration date?
Katie Barber: Yeah. So, the EVS system automatically gives initial patients a 90-day expiration date. Patients who renew after that will get a six-months-out expiration date. I try to tell patients, “That’s your default setting.” So, a patient that looks closely at the law will notice that the providers actually have the ability to change that date if they want to. The law gives them the ability to limit the participation in the program if they choose, just kind of like writing a prescription for a 90-day supply versus a 30-day supply. Or seeing how the patient reacts to it, and then prescribing more. Kind of like that. Obviously these are not prescriptions, but I think that was kind of the intent. So, those are the default settings for card validity.
Tim Pickett: Are a lot of providers adjusting those dates?
Katie Barber: Not a lot. I think the more providers we have, the more we’re going to see that happen, though. Some providers like to have more control over patient treatment, so they want to see their patient in again. Like some other prescriptions, some other very controlled prescriptions, to see how they’re reacting to it. So, not a lot of them are doing that, but I just … Some patients have issues with it, so I’d like to remind them that that’s changeable.
Tim Pickett: Right. It is. And I mean, we’ve used it a couple of times in cases where really I need to see this person back in three months because this is very serious situation, and we want to make sure that we keep up on the patient care. Opioids, for example, that’s an every month visit for people. And so, I like to remind people that we’re definitely not to that point. But the EVS system, it does the 90-day, and then six months, it does another six months, then it … Does it default to the annual?
Katie Barber: Yeah. The provider will actually be able to indicate that that person should have a card for a year after they’ve gone through those two renewal periods. And once they’ve had their card for a year. So, that’s what you’re describing Tim, is having your card for a year is a requirement of the law, and then after that time the provider can indicate that they can renew for a full year.
Tim Pickett: But the default is still going to be six months.
Katie Barber: No, it will be a year.
Tim Pickett: Okay.
Katie Barber: After that. They just have to have had their card for a year, and the system is smart enough to know when that happens.
Tim Pickett: Got it. The little technicalities of a program like this are … They’re a burden to the patient in some ways, they’re just kind of made up, it feels like, in other ways. Kind of a balancing act, it feels like. Do you feel like the Utah system is a pretty good balance of safety and access?
Katie Barber: I think it is. I personally think it is. I mean, this is not really a situation that has a precedent, where you are taking a law, you’re bringing it into a sphere where people can utilize it in a way that is not endorsed by the federal government. You want to also educate the patient as well as you can while enforcing the law. Okay, so a patient acknowledges that they’ve read the law, they’ve acknowledged that they’ve read the law, how do they know what the law says about their renewal? Or whether or not their provider can change the renewal? I think there are ways in which our system could be improved, and I will say our system can be improved, and we are making changes, and that will be just a thing that happens forever and ever. But there are probably ways our system can be improved to kind of better balance that education versus enforcement, or …
Katie Barber: Yeah. Education versus enforcement for patients so that they know what they’re complying with when they submit information, and also why they’re complying with it, because I think that tediousness that you feel is a result of just not knowing that these are requirements of the law. Or it could just mean that we need to spend more time educating patients just in the real world, actual communication efforts, and getting out there and getting in front of the public. And of course, for such a small team it’s hard to do that at this moment, which is why an opportunity like this talking to you is amazing, because this is one of the few communication channels we have an opportunity to be in front of is people’s ears. So, yeah. That tediousness is probably just … It will be a balance act forever, because it’s requirements of the law.
Chris Holifield: You were mentioning you don’t have opportunities to get in people’s ears. I mean, is there anything that you would like to say, that you want to make sure we talk about?
Katie Barber: Man. There’s so many things that we’d like to tell the public about how easy it is to get a card. So, it’s a simple process, it really is. I would say one of the biggest hangups that patients have is that they’ll go start the process, and go about a third of the way in, and assume they’re done. So, one giant thing I would recommend for everybody to do is just to read the instructions about getting your card before you even start the process. Before you even find a provider, just read the instructions, and because a lot of people get that third of the way in, think they’re done, when they actually need to talk to their provider, or find a provider. And they could’ve already done that.
Katie Barber: So, that’s one of the things that I think patients can benefit from knowing. The other thing, the other big thing, is that a lot of patients don’t have a provider. So, we get questions all the time about what a patient should do if they don’t know where to even start to find a provider that can provide care for them, or even approach their current provider about having a conversation about Medical Cannabis, or they don’t know whether their current provider will … Or if they’re part of the program, or if they will become a part of the program. So, I always tell patients have that dialog with your provider, see if they’re going to be willing to enroll in the program. We always offer the opportunity to speak to your providers if you need that. Our nurse is happy to talk to anybody, anybody on our team is happy to talk to one of your providers and just inform them about the process because it really is an easy process. And that’s what we’re emphasizing, is it’s not that difficult.
Katie Barber: Providers have to go through four hours of CE, so if there’s any providers out there listening it’s four hours of CE, and then a fee to the Department of Health, and then you’re registered. And that means you can care for up to 275 patients, that means you could care for just one patient. But if you’re interested in seeking just an alternative way of treating your patients, it’s a possibility to consider for you. If any patients reach out asking about assistance finding low-cost healthcare, we have resources for them, too. So, if fees are too high for certain patients, they can come to us and we can give them some resources about applying for a card in a way that’s not going to take too much out of their pockets. I also like to remind patients that when they have conversations with their primary care physicians, those primary care physicians have the ability to bill their insurance for treatment.
Katie Barber: So, if your physician, or specialist is open to it, just bill your insurance and then you don’t have to pay an out-of-pocket fee to providers if you’re not able to pay for that. So, those are a couple things we tell patients where they get stuck, or they don’t know what the next step is dialogue, ask us questions, read our instructions, it’s an easy process. Communicate with your providers, and if they have any issues they can reach out to our help desk. We’re available by email or by phone, and we have also a really quick turnaround time there, too. So, anybody needs help we’re happy to do it. And if any of your providers need help, happy to do it. That’s what I do most of my time is helping providers through our software, and going to clinics and helping them out with the software. So, yeah. I know it’s difficult, and the system is improving, but we’re there to help so let us help you.
Tim Pickett: So, you actually will go out? Or somebody will call and say, “Hey, I’m a provider. I need some help with the system,” and you’ll walk them through the whole process, learning how to certify a patient, learning what that looks like, what renewal statuses are, things like that?
Katie Barber: Yeah. That’s what I spend the most of my time doing right now, so even before COVID we were out doing presentations, educating the public and the providers about what the program means, what it’s going to mean to be in it, how you become part of the program. And now that we have people that are in it, it’s … Yeah, troubleshooting for providers, teaching providers how to use the system, answering provider questions about the law, what do we require as department of health as part of recommendations, things like that. Yes, we do troubleshooting for the providers and teaching them how to use the system.
Tim Pickett: And there are over 400, or 500 providers in enrolled?
Katie Barber: Yeah. We’ve got 560 as of last month.
Tim Pickett: And the goal as like 100 in the first year?
Katie Barber: You know what? I’m actually not sure what the goal for providers was. It was low. It was low compared to what it is now, that’s for sure.
Tim Pickett: Okay, so I got two things I’m thinking about here. If you spend all of your time right now helping providers navigate the system, what if they allowed everybody to do this just for one or two, or 15 people? That seems like a lot of work.
Katie Barber: Yeah, that could be a lot of work. You might be right about that. It could be a lot of work. So, what might be the alternative, maybe … I don’t know. Who knows what could be the alternative to helping people through it one-by-one. I don’t know. If there is any sort of possible legislation in the future that could address that, I would hope that legislation and legislatures listen to how much of an impact that would be if we did have to help every single person through the software. Yeah.
Tim Pickett: That would be a big deal. I know the Department of Health, so I mean, I won’t even really ask you the question of where … What does the Department of Health, or what do you think about this proposed legislation to allow any provider to recommend cannabis for 15 people? Because I don’t think you can take a position on that, can you?
Katie Barber: I can not, as an employee of the Department of Health, but personally, just from my own background, my first goal would be obviously to give patients access to the treatment that they need. I would hope, just as a voter myself, as a private citizen, that the legislature would recognize that that’s what we’re going for here. So, how would they envision that the Department of Health could best enforce a policy that gives a lot of people access while making it easy? I mean, nobody wants something hard, and that’s not some sort of opinion from a professional. That’s just we don’t want things to be hard, they shouldn’t have to be this hard.
Chris Holifield: So, what’s coming in store for 2021? Anything you want to talk about coming in store for there? Anything that you know or want to share with listeners that way?
Katie Barber: Yeah, absolutely. So, there are exciting things on the horizon for 2021. We’ve got seven new pharmacies that plan to open by the end of March, and on our website we have an update email list. So, you can sign up for that, you’ll be the first to know when those are open. You’ll also be the first to know when our home delivery begins. And that is really a big step for our program, because that means that people that are in areas that might not be able to access Medical Cannabis are going to be more likely to be able to access Medical Cannabis. So again, sign up on our website if you want to know about that.
Chris Holifield: Any idea when home delivery might start?
Katie Barber: I know that we are finishing up some of the very last outstanding software bugs that have to take place and get fixed before we launch that. But it will be soon.
Chris Holifield: Very cool.
Tim Pickett: It’s going to be pretty cool for home delivery. That’s just going to blow the program up.
Katie Barber: Yeah. Well, one of the things that-
Tim Pickett: In rural areas, especially.
Katie Barber: Oh yeah, absolutely. I think one of the things that’s most unique about our program is the pharmacy aspect. I am biased, but I love that we have pharmacists, actual pharmacists, involved in this process. And I do think that we stand out among other states because of things like that, and home delivery. And there’s actually, in my opinion, there’s not a lot of regulation about home delivery. I mean, obviously there is, but it could be so much more tightly controlled than it is. And there’s not a ton of hoops to jump through really, for patients to get product. They just use the address on their file, and that’s where it gets delivered, and it’s really not going to be as kind of crazy as you might think it would be in Utah, to launch something like Medical Cannabis traveling down the road. It’s not actually going to be that big of a deal.
Katie Barber: Of course, it’s regulated but the access is actually going to be pretty easy, so I’m really thrilled personally, that that access is going to be there, and it’s going to come with professionalism. I think that’s key. If you want to build a program with integrity, in my opinion that’s key.
Chris Holifield: I can’t wait.
Tim Pickett: Very cool.
Chris Holifield: It’s going to be awesome. A lot of people are eager for that home delivery, but … Anything else? Anything else coming up? I kind of interrupted you there with the home delivery. Anything else you want to talk about for 2021 that people might need to be aware of?
Katie Barber: Well, those are the two big things-
Chris Holifield: Okay.
Katie Barber: … that I can think of. I always like to remind patients, and anybody who wants to be involved with this program, whether you’re a provider, a neighbor of a patient, a mother of a patient, you have a voice and it can be heard in the legislature. Just this is me saying it personally, but this is how you influence Medical Cannabis law, and if you want to be an active voice in this process you have to at least say something. It’s easy to get discouraged when you think your voice might not be being heard. I think a lot of people turn to an entity like the Department of Health to say, “You should change this.” But it’s actually your senator, and your representative who you’ll want to reach out to. And the legislative session begins this month. Really soon. So, get involved, watch the news, see what’s going on there, maybe reach out to lobbyist groups, or your senator representative and see how the law’s working for you, and what you think might need to be changed to make it better, even.
Katie Barber: So, that’s another thing I would say that’s on the horizon is the [unintelligible.] And that session starts on the 19th, so it’s coming up.
Tim Pickett: Well, this has been great. I am so grateful for you, Katie. You have done more work, frankly, for our patients … I mean, you’re integral in the care of Utah cannabis patients, so thank you very much.
Katie Barber: Happy to do it. And it’s providers like you and your clinic that work so hard to keep our program afloat. And you are also an expert in our system, so you have to give yourself more credit too, about how you know how to use our software, because it is hard to use. And we hear all the time about your patients, so we know that a lot of people are getting help through you guys.
Tim Pickett: Thank you. Well, is there anything else Chris, you want to bring up with Katie?
Chris Holifield: I don’t think so. I mean, we got a lot of the big things covered. I mean, I think you said the important thing is to go sign up on your email so people can find out when these new pharmacies are opening up? Because that’s one of the biggest things I hear too is that people don’t know when they’re opening up. So, it’s like hey, you find out how you can hear right there.
Tim Pickett: Right, where the addresses are, when they’re opening up, there’s so much talk about St. George, and where is it? And when’s it opening? And nobody down there knows. We need to sign up on the Department of Health … What’s the website address?
Katie Barber: The exact website address is medicalcannabis.utah.gov. And the email signup is on every single page on our website, but if you go to the resources page and click on news, you’ll get there fastest.
Tim Pickett: Okay, cool.
Chris Holifield: Very cool. And how can listeners reach out to you if they wanted to connect with you? Like an email address? Or anything? Is that something-
Katie Barber: Yep, that’ll be email.
Chris Holifield: … you can give away?
Katie Barber: Well, I’ll give you our help desk.
Chris Holifield: Okay, that works, too.
Katie Barber: It’s medicalcannabis@utah.gov. If you do want to talk to me, ask for Katie. And I will respond to you. Yeah, and that’s goes if you’re a provider, if you have any questions about pharmacies, if you’re not able to find it just shoot us an email. Any questions about the law, if we’re able to answer we will answer.
Chris Holifield: Anything else you want to add? Or how can listeners get ahold of you, Tim, if they’re interested to find out more about Medical Cannabis, or what you’re up to?
Tim Pickett: Well, utahmarijuana.org is our website, and we have a lot of the same, frankly, information that Katie talks about on the government … The Department of Health. We want to be a one-stop shop as well, for people and patients to get all of this info about the EVS system, and that sort of thing, too. But if you want to become a patient or you have questions, you can reach out to us, at utahmarijuana.org. And you can find out more about the podcast, all of our podcasts are going to be at utahmarijuana.org/podcast, which is kind of an exciting development for our community here in Utah, the podcast community.
Chris Holifield: Yeah, and we wanted to create more of a little home for you. And speaking of that, call our voicemail line, it would be really cool if you call and left a message. Nobody will ever pick up the voicemail number, but if you have any questions for Tim or myself, or about the podcast, or about cannabis in Utah, or if you’re interested in coming on the show, whatever. That number’s 385-215-9557, and like I said, nobody will ever pick that up so call that number and leave a voicemail. And we might even play it on the show. You can listen to my other podcast, I am Salt Lake Podcast, iamsaltlake.com. I do that podcast with my wife, Krissie. We have a lot of fun getting to know people in Salt Lake City. We just had a really fun episode with a gentleman who goes by the name of Bad Brad Wheeler. I don’t know if either of you guys are familiar with Brad, but he’s a great guy. He’s got a great story, and he’s got a lot of energy to him.
Chris Holifield: So, go listen to-
Tim Pickett: Yeah. And I love that podcast. Check it out.
Chris Holifield: Anything else you want to add, Katie? Any sign-off you want to give for the listeners? Any fancy sign-off?
Katie Barber: A fancy sign-off. Man, just check out our resources. We spent a lot of time on our website, so check out our website. We have the answers there, we have fact sheets, we have facts, we have a locate-your-provider page, and when in doubt send us an email.
Chris Holifield: Awesome. We got to get you back on the podcast, Katie. You are awesome. You are-
Tim Pickett: Yeah. Thanks for coming on.
Chris Holifield: Yeah, thank you so much.
Katie Barber: Thanks for having me.
Tim Pickett: All right, everybody. Stay safe out there.
In the final episode of the 2020 calendar year, Chris and Tim kick back and review the year. They talk about the highs and lows of their first year as hosts of Utah in the Weeds.
What they most appreciate about the podcast is its conversational nature. [01:57] Tim and Chris get to bring on guests from throughout the Medical Cannabis industry and just talk shop. Utah in the Weeds’ conversational tone makes it easily relatable to listeners yet still very informative.
Tim mentioned how doing the podcast has really benefited him personally. [02:56] He’s learned a lot by talking to cannabis movers and shakers. He has also been able to humanize those people rather than just thinking of them as political figures. Tim has even been able to use the newly acquired knowledge to help other QMPs.
Early on, Chris and Tim hosted the very first person to legally purchase Medical Marijuana in Utah. [05:57] They also had the first card-carrying patient on their show. Utah in the Weeds has truly been at the forefront of getting information out to patients and providers alike.
Throughout the podcast, Tim and Chris reminisce about the many patients they’ve talked to. Most are regular men and women you would meet on the street. A lot of them are LDS, which is important in the sense that the Church has come out in favor of Medical Cannabis when used appropriately and according to the law. [07:37]
Tim and Chris rounded out the podcast talking about various products, how these are prescribed, and everything from available stock to pricing. [16:08] They generally agreed that the number of card-carrying patients will eclipse 100,000 in 2021.
The podcast concluded with a brief discussion on utahmarijuana.org. [32:26] They have already opened a couple of pharmacies and are working on more. Chris provided a podcast phone number that patients can call with specific questions to be answered in upcoming podcasts.
Chris: So this is 39.
Tim: Welcome to episode 39. 38B.
Chris: Yeah, we’re going to do a proper introduction here. We’re going to welcome everybody out today to episode 39 of Utah in the Weeds. This is the final episode of 2020, Tim.
Tim: Yeah, I’m excited about that. We need to wrap this year up.
Chris: You’re excited that 2020’s over, it’s the last episode? What are you excited about?
Tim: Yes. All of the above. I mean, I’m excited about talking to you and really kind of going through a little bit of 2020, recap a few of our favorite episodes, talk about what’s happened in the cannabis space in Utah 2020, preview maybe a little bit of what’s going to happen in 2021, but this has been an epic year, essentially for everybody, right?
Chris: Well, especially trying to keep a podcast together when you and I didn’t even really know each other that well when this whole thing started.
Tim: No, we didn’t know each other hardly at all.
Chris: So to try to keep it together, it’s been… the feedback from the community, from listeners, from your patients, from the patients that we’ve had on here has been ridiculously awesome.
Tim: I think we’ve done pretty good. Like you said, we didn’t know each other at all a year ago. We have our first episode in February. I was talking to somebody today about our first episode. I did not go back and listen to our first episode.
Chris: We should go back and listen.
Tim: I’m hopeful we’ve gotten a little bit better.
Chris: Yeah. People have pointed that out actually.
Tim: Yeah.
Chris: Actually I think it was Josh last week on episode 38 when we talked to him down at Deseret Wellness. He was saying, you and I, we’ve come together, we’ve figured out kind of how this goes. You and I are figuring out a rhythm, how to talk.
Tim: Mm-hmm (affirmative). And I think that the quality of the discussions is really good. What I like about this podcast for me now is this is like conversational cannabis, right?
Chris: Yeah.
Tim: Because in clinic with patients, there’s a certain feel to the conversation, this patient-provider relationship. An education video that I do, there’s a different relationship, and there’s this… not saying it’s a fake persona, but it’s not as conversational as this, you and I talking together, talking to people, just kind of shooting the shit, figuring out what’s going on in the cannabis space. So that’s what I’ve really enjoyed about this podcast, and it was really important to me to keep it going despite the COVID.
Chris: What was some of the things… I mean, I guess you kind of just said some of the benefits of doing this over this last year of 2020 for you, but by doing this, what has been some rewards, or unexpected rewards even?
Tim: Definitely, and we talked about this last time down in Provo, after we had finished recording, the fact that we kind of get access to these people in the know, that we were able to have a conversation back early in the cannabis legalization in Utah with Rich Oborn, and we were able to have a conversation with Desiree Hennessy from Utah Patients. That type of access has been… well, I mean, there’s countless… thinking about all these people we’ve talked to, and getting to meet them and learn about their perspective on what’s going on in the cannabis space, that’s been the biggest reward.
Chris: Humanizing them a little bit too has been nice too really, because I think a lot of times we just look at them as these political figures, up on Capitol Hill.
Tim: Up on The Hill and working for the state, or there are pharmacists behind the scenes in this scary cannabis space, right?
Chris: Yeah.
Tim: So do you feel like you’ve gotten… as a provider with utahmarijuana.org, I’ve really benefited from that knowledge, and it’s translated into me being able to help different QMPs or patients or different people. As somebody who doesn’t… your full-time gig isn’t in the cannabis space.
Chris: I wish, right?
Tim: Right? I mean, it’s kind of becoming that way.
Chris: Yeah, yeah, with this podcast maybe someday.
Tim: What’s been the benefit for you?
Chris: Well, honestly, a lot of similar things, like you mentioned, I mean, it’s just been nice going into Beehive Farmacy, and that we chatted with Bijan from the pharmacy there, and now I can say, “Hey, what’s up, man?” He knows who I am. I’m not just some person lost in the sea of crowd of everybody else, all 33,000 cannabis users or cardholders in the state of Utah. So that’s been nice. I mean, just really getting to be a little more involved in the industry, getting to see some of these grow operations that I’ve seen, that I would have never had an opportunity to see if I was just not doing the podcast. So that’s been worth it right there for me.
Tim: Yeah, that’s cool. I think that getting that insight from your perspective for listeners, hopefully has been really helpful. That’s why I think we make a pretty good team on the podcast.
Chris: Absolutely.
Tim: You get these two different perspectives.
Chris: You’re the QMP and I’m just the patient.
Tim: Just the QMP. You’re the important piece of the puzzle. 33,000-
Chris: Is that how many there are now?
Tim: Yeah, there are more than that I think, legal cannabis users in Utah, and I’ve kind of lost track over the past couple of months because the number’s gotten so big. But literally there were no cannabis patients in Utah last year. No cannabis cardholders last year. There were a few letter holders, but all of those people are cardholders now. The Department of Health has done a lot of work this year.
Chris: And then, remember David Sutherland who we had on episode two, wasn’t he-
Tim: Oh, yeah.
Chris: Was he the first cardholder?
Tim: Yeah, he’s card number one.
Chris: Card number one. But then we had Mario, he was the first customer or something like that, right?
Tim: Yes, the first person to purchase legal cannabis in Utah was Mario. And that was a fun interview too. And I’ve talked to him quite a few more times because he was working up at the True North pharmacy, Modern Earth.
Chris: It’s kind of been fun to see these people that we connect with online or through the podcast, seeing them out to these local pharmacies.
Tim: Yes. I saw the guy we interviewed at Wholesome-
Chris: Phil?
Tim: And I see Mindy Madeo–
Chris: Yeah, Mindy, yeah.
Tim: I see her once in a while up there in Bountiful, and we’ve associated with these people definitely more than once. There’s a small community of people that are now… we communicate more and bounce ideas off of each other. We talk about the new legislation that’s coming out. But we’ve had a lot of really good interviews. The patient interviews we’ve had, other than David, were excellent too.
Chris: Which one off the top of your head, did any of them stick out?
Tim: The guy with the voices.
Chris: The voices?
Tim: Remember that guy? Long-haired, LDS guy. He’s a plumber.
Chris: Oh, yes.
Tim: I cannot think of his name.
Chris: Zac. Was it Zac?
Tim: Yes.
Chris: Great guy. I love listening to how he was mixing up all the different hemp strains. Is that what you call them, hemp strains I guess?
Tim: Yeah. And then the colitis, Ryan Thomas.
Chris: Yeah.
Tim: Another great interview. Just such good perspectives on the Mormon community and cannabis, and how there are pockets of openness, I guess.
Chris: So we’re a Utah podcast. We’ve had some Mormons on the podcast. They say they’re strict Mormons. I mean, the Mormon church is pretty cool with that right?
Tim: I suspect we’ve had a lot of Mormons on the podcast.
Chris: Well, yeah.
Tim: But we didn’t ask.
Chris: Well, true, true. They’re okay with it, right, as long as it’s used medicinally?
Tim: Yeah. The church officially came out and is in support of medical cannabis, is not in support of inhaled medical cannabis. There are something differing opinions about medical cannabis in the church population.
Chris: Okay.
Tim: The church is officially for medical cannabis when used appropriately and not raw cannabis flower inhaled. I think there are some patients who are LDS who use flower and who are okay with that, and they’ve made their own choices. But there’s always that with any, I think, organized religion, there’s always the word from the church and the rule, and then there’s always a little bit of fringe.
Chris: I don’t think it should be any different though than getting any other prescription. I can go down to CVS and get a prescription. It shouldn’t be any different with the Mormon church, right?
Tim: No.
Chris: If I got an Adderall prescription or any pain pills or anything.
Tim: Right, that should be okay.
Chris: It’s the same thing really.
Tim: And we’ve had the discussion with a lot of LDS patients frankly about that, and about how their family is really supportive. Come to find out, they were scared to talk to people, and then well, wait, Aunt Mabel, she’s doing it too. What other interviews really stood out to you over this year?
Chris: I’m pulling them up here actually. You know, honestly, my favorite ones were going out and visiting Shawn at both grow locations. The one he was at in Murray, the first one in Murray, and then when we got to go out to Payson. Heck of a drive down there, but I think those ones really stuck out for me because that was kind of always what I loved about podcasting. One of the ideas when I first even got into this whole thing was I want to go see them in their domain.
Tim: Yeah, in the element.
Chris: In their element.
Tim: Well, Mike Rodriguez, the same thing, when we went to this different experience, but really fun to go there, tour his place, and yeah, those were really fun podcasts.
Chris: You talk about payment, right, where, “Oh, is it worth doing the podcast?” Experiencing that is worth it, man. I would have never got to see Mike’s hemp farm probably.
Tim: Yeah, that’s true.
Chris: I probably would have never connected with, maybe through Instagram.
Tim: Right, but you wouldn’t have even known where it was.
Chris: Exactly.
Tim: Right?
Chris: So those are probably some of my favorite ones. I’m looking through here. 38 episodes. We had Jack, he was a 19-year-old. That was a fun one too.
Tim: Oh, yeah, that made me a little nervous.
Chris: Yeah.
Tim: If anybody goes back and listens to that, you’ll hear in my voice a little nervousness because I was concerned that Jack was illegal, and I went right from the recording to Rich Oborn, and I cornered Rich and talked to him and said, “Hey, we need…” In fact, I had talked to an attorney on the way to Rich’s house, should we release the episode or not, and come to find out, Jack’s a legal cannabis user under 21, but again, good opportunity to learn a thing or two, even for me who a lot of people consider the expert in the industry, and I should know all the rules. But that episode was fun. Yeah, looking back, that’s crazy.
Chris: You know what I think the craziest thing to me about this whole year, 2020, though is how cannabis marijuana has been frowned upon forever, really. All the 1900s pretty much, right? All of a sudden in 2020, it was considered an essential business.
Tim: Yeah.
Chris: I mean, really in all states.
Tim: That’s right. You’ve had dispensaries and pharmacies open in every state. Yeah, they consider it totally against the law 20 years ago, wouldn’t have even have crossed anybody’s mind.
Chris: I mean, you got a little nug in your pocket, you’d probably be thrown in jail.
Tim: Yeah, thrown in jail. And now, 2020, global pandemic, let’s keep the pharmacies and dispensaries open. We’re going to need those.
Chris: What do you think of that?
Tim: I mean, I guess it just makes sense to me now. I feel like this brings up another whole kind of topic. I feel like I am neck deep in cannabis all the time. My entire life right now is marijuana, cannabis, talking about it, podcasting about it, videoing about it, teaching people about it, learning about it. I live in this world that is just all cannabis all the time. I’m constantly having to remind myself that the rest of the world is not quite where I’m at. It’s not quite as normal for everybody else to just be walking down the street with flower and vaporizers and all of this going on in your mind and stuff.
Tim: I guess back to your question or point about what do we think about cannabis, and where we’re at now in this essential business, these dispensaries being essential businesses. To me, that’s just, “Of course they are.”
Chris: Sure.
Tim: Because that’s just the paradigm I live in. You kind of have both sides. You have the I am Salt Lake side, which really got into the local economy and the local business, you saw that more than I did.
Chris: Saw the local business…
Tim: Yeah, the local restaurants hurting.
Chris: Oh, sure. Yeah, with COVID?
Tim: Yeah.
Chris: Yeah, because of everything shutting down, yeah.
Tim: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Chris: The local pharmacies, they’re doing all right though because people have got to stay medicated. Is that kind of what you’re talking about?
Tim: Yeah, I’m talking about it’s a dichotomy. It’s really almost polar opposites.
Chris: Sure.
Tim: You’ve had this cannabis industry in Utah that has thrived all year.
Chris: Oh, sure, sure, sure. They’re hyping it up. They’re talking about it. They’re saying, “This is us.” And then when I’m interviewing for people in the local small businesses, like this last week we had the Cluck Truck food truck, local food truck, and they’re just talking about, “Hey, there’s not as many events going on. We can’t get out there,” and so they’re struggling, so you almost get depressed after talking with some of those.
Tim: Yeah, but you talk to Narith, when you talk to Bijan…
Chris: Yeah, I’m excited about that, man. I’m just like, “Yeah.”
Tim: And these guys are like, “We can’t grow enough flower. We can’t stock the flower. We can’t stock the products. It’s just going off the shelves.” It’s so crazy to be in both worlds this year.
Chris: I also think Salt-Baked City, we need to make sure that everybody takes advantage of that resource because…
Tim: Yeah, Cole does a really good job.
Chris: I was stoked on talking with him on the podcast too to find out a little bit about that, because I’d really been enjoying his site with… I mean, he was breaking down terpenes and he was breaking down…
Tim: Yes, there’s a couple of us… I feel like you and I with the podcast, me with utahmarijuana.org, and Cole with Salt-Baked City, we’re trying to take information and disseminate information about the cannabis, like what’s going on in Utah for everyone in a pretty legitimate way. I think he does it in a really legitimate way too. It’s not over-the-top bong rips and…
Chris: I was going to mention, so he did an article here, $14 million is what Utah from March until the end of April, so almost the entire year there, because obviously there’s some months we lost… so $14 million in sales. I don’t know if you’ve heard these numbers at all.
Tim: No, I haven’t.
Chris: I wanted to see if there was a graph on here. There was a graph I saw online showing the amount of each cultivator group, so Dragonfly, how much… They grew the most obviously in 2020. A lot of these other pharmacies that have grow… what’s the correct term that you’ve used if you have a grow license, just a grow license.
Tim: Yeah, a grow license. I mean, there are eight grow licenses in the state of Utah, and I know of four that grow… five. I believe Wholesome is starting to grow now. Zion, of course, we’ve purchased flower from Zion. They have products. Tryke, they were big. They’ve produced a lot of flower.
Chris: I think they were one of the next biggest ones that grew.
Tim: Right. And Dragonfly. Then there’s Harvest. Is Harvest… and then there’s these small brands like Sugar House Selects, which is really part of Zion. And Harvest, which I think is part of another grow license type. That’s when it starts getting a little fuzzy. 2021, Chris, we need to have more growers and processors on the podcast, and break that part down.
Chris: You know what we should make here is put a map up, even at one of your offices, it could be fun to show the main growers, like Tryke for example, and then who they grow for, or like how Zion grows for Sugar House.
Tim: Right.
Chris: And kind of break it down and show little graph or something, kind of just show who everybody’s coming out of. What were some of your favorite strains this year? You guys sample a few, I’m sure. Or not sample, I mean…
Tim: Definitely, I think Fatso’s just the favorite, you know?
Chris: Yeah.
Tim: It’s so strong, and really, really good for pain, but also, man, a dose of insight. If you’re ever looking for a dose of insight, Fatso is a reasonable strain just because it’s so strong on the head change. And then I talk to patients all the time. I mean, I know Sundae Driver’s just been a nice, even-keel strain.
Chris: It’s not a bad one.
Tim: Not a bad one. Maxine, another one that was very good for what I needed. And Pink Starburst Petrol-
Chris: I haven’t had a chance to try that one out yet.
Tim: Yeah, they had just a small run of it. So those are it. How about you?
Chris: Well, I was going to mention the Fatso. I was only able to pick up like an eighth one time at Beehive, so hopefully I’ll be able to get in on some of that the next time that they do that. But the Garanimals, I don’t know if you’ve tried that one.
Tim: No.
Chris: That one’s been nice. That one’s really nice. I’m more of an Indica person, so anything with a higher Indica. My mind is blank on that. I should have had this more prepared. There was a Zkittlez one. I don’t know how to pronounce… that I tried one time. I tried ample times. That’s been really nice. I mean, there’s a lot, but I would have to say Fatso and the Garanimals probably were the top for me.
Tim: It’ll be nice when you have a little more consistency and you can say, “Well, my go-to is this.”
Chris: Yeah.
Tim: Right, “My go-to is this strain,” and it’s always available at the pharmacy. It’s always available. That’s been a problem all year.
Chris: Well, because you never get the same thing, right?
Tim: Yeah.
Chris: Like you can never get the same stuff, the same… Night Terror was another good one that I really enjoyed by Tryke. The Night Terror by Tryke, get a good night’s sleep on that one.
Tim: Yeah, and wouldn’t it be nice to have that in the jar all the time and not have to worry about… and I think that that’s… hopefully in 2021, it might take another year though after that before there’s enough consistency in the market, because remember in the very beginning, there was no flower, for like a month. Dragonfly had a little bit and they sold out first day, and then they didn’t have any for a while. And now, it seems like you can always find some type of flower.
Chris: Yes and no. This actually just happened yesterday. Let me give you a little story here. I was searching for some Indica. I noticed that Wholesome got some Indica in. I went in there, found out they sold out in two hours.
Tim: Oh, wow.
Chris: You know what I mean? Because that was the only Indica. Everything else has been Sativa or hybrid through Utah, right?
Tim: Yup.
Chris: So it’s kind of like whoever is releasing Indica right now is just going to cash in probably because it doesn’t even matter who’s putting it out there if it’s Indica. So they sold out in two hours. So you got to keep an eye on their website. You got to keep an eye and put it on hold.
Tim: You know the other thing we learned, and Blake Smith brought this to my attention last week. That was that they told the growers there was going to be about 6,000 patients the first year in 2020. It’s my understanding now that the Department of Agriculture, another good episode we should look for with the Department of Agriculture, but they told the growers, “Hey, build up to… build for 6,000 patients, or at the most, 16,000 patients.”
Chris: Which I think they’re growing for, and that’s about all they can supply.
Tim: Right, and that’s about whether they can supply right now. So are they ahead of where they were supposed to be or behind? Of course they’re behind for what’s reality. Are they ahead for COVID? I don’t know. Maybe they grew more than they pushed and pushed, but regardless, just interesting that 2020 brought such a huge demand in product, very low supply and sporadic supply. And then there’s all these other normal factors that were into play too, how many patients were supposed to be, and how many patients ended up being legal. I think the program has been hugely successful.
Chris: By the end of 2021, I predict over 100,000 patients.
Tim: That’s more than 3% of the Utah population.
Chris: You were mentioning that, yeah. I mean, if we’re almost to 40 right now.
Tim: Yeah, you figure in Oklahoma they had 70,000 the first year. I guess we might be on track for that type of momentum. It’d be interested to see what 2021 brings. There’s that new legislation that they’re trying to pass, and we’ve talked about that a little bit, the expansion of potentially allowing non-QMP medical providers the ability to write for up to 15 providers. Some pretty good push back. There was a new idea floated today about having all medical providers in Utah do education about cannabis. I would support that. Basically make us all do some type of cannabis education.
Chris: I love it.
Tim: We didn’t get any in school. Wouldn’t you approve of that? You’re a primary care provider. It would be nice if they were mandated.
Chris: How would you require that though?
Tim: So we all have to renew our license every year, and we all have to renew our controlled substance education, so Utah requires me-
Chris: So all doctors.
Tim: All doctors, PAs, nurse practitioners, everybody who prescribes controlled substances in Utah, you have to do a controlled substance education. It’s basically a way for us to learn to not prescribe narcotics.
Chris: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Tim: That’s the whole point.
Chris: So they could even just throw on, “Hey, watch this four-hour video on cannabis.”
Tim: Yup. Boom, an extra two hours.
Chris: Two hours, whatever.
Tim: Everybody is required. Here’s the Utah law, here’s some basics about the pros and cons of cannabis, two hours. Everybody’s required to do it. I think that is the beginning. That could be the beginning of the normalization in medicine.
Chris: Well, yeah, absolutely. And especially once they start doing testing and once they can start doing that, and then open it up to insurance companies.
Tim: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Chris: It’s going to happen. 2021, we have a lot of stuff, both in Utah and in the United States, a lot of stuff’s going to happen.
Tim: Yeah, the MORE Act passed this year.
Chris: Well, in the House. Then there was another one I haven’t fully researched.
Tim: Yeah, I was just reading a little bit about it, that the Senate has passed a research bill that will allow some research to be done on cannabinoids. That needs to happen too, because the research, although there’s plenty, we’ve talked a lot about this on the podcast. There’s not good research on medical dosing for cannabis. A lot of the research that’s been done is on guys who smoke five joints a day, and that’s just not the average patient.
Chris: What do you think the average person smokes, uses, vapes? What do you think an average patient goes through?
Tim: Are we talking about… I think there’s two types of patients. There’s a million types of patients. Don’t take offense to this anybody, but I think if you were to broadly categorize, you have patients that are really just using it medicinally. Then you have patients that are using it medicinally and what you would call adult use as well. I think there’s a pretty big difference in use in those two populations, because a patient is probably not going to require more than 50 milligrams per day of THC.
Chris: You think so?
Tim: Yeah, I think it’s strong.
Chris: 50 milligrams?
Tim: Yeah. I don’t think people need… I think most of the time 10 to 20 milligrams dose two or three times a day is probably a pretty good dose for most people.
Chris: Now are these AIDS patients, cancer patients, or are these just people with a little bit of pain in the…
Tim: I’m just talking about the big percentage of patients.
Chris: Sure, sure.
Tim: This is definitely not everybody.
Chris: Yeah.
Tim: Maybe it would just be the pain patients, and it would just be the people who just use it medically. The Sutherlands of the world. He’s a five milligram in the morning. Sorry if I’m really repeating his podcast, but he’s a five milligram in the morning. Okay, so let’s take a generic patient.
Chris: Okay.
Tim: Five milligrams in the morning, five, 10 milligrams in the afternoon, 10, 20 milligrams at night. People can stay on that type of dosing for a long time. But then you have this other really broad category of people who use it medicinally and a little bit recreationally, and I think the average is probably half an ounce a month.
Chris: You think in just a month, a half an ounce in a month? I’m just curious. The point I’m trying to get at here is I feel bad for some of these patients that need to go through a lot because of these prices in Utah, but what’s interesting is I actually just read an article… Pennsylvania’s even higher than Utah.
Tim: Oh, as far as cost.
Chris: As far as cost. They’re the most expensive, I guess, right now.
Tim: Like $80 an eighth?
Chris: About that, yeah.
Tim: Well, and then we talked to Jeremy from Deseret Wellness who talked about… well, if you took an… or Bijan said the same thing, “If you took an ounce of flower now or if you took an eighth here, $60, with a $3 transaction charge, and you added 21% sales tax on it,” which if it was recreational, Utah state would charge sales tax, “then all of a sudden, now you’re $70, 80 an eighth.”
Chris: Hm.
Tim: And so the prices get worse if it goes recreational. They don’t get better. That’s the argument.
Chris: Well, and I think everybody compares everything to Colorado, and Colorado’s been around since 2014 they went recreational, so yeah, you can get an ounce for under 200 bucks there, right?
Tim: Yeah, and if you want to really to Oregon, you can get an ounce, same ounce for 180.
Chris: But yeah, it is what it is, I guess… how do you even answer that? I think if I was a patient that I was going through that much, I would probably live in a state… I can’t afford to live in Utah.
Tim: We have this conversation in clinic once in a while. A patient comes in and they require three ounces of flower a month. Well, how do they afford that?
Chris: Well, that’s what I’m wondering.
Tim: And so you don’t want them to divert the product and be buying it for their friends, but at the same time, can they really afford that amount?
Chris: Tell me, is anybody really buying that much flower?
Tim: I don’t know. That’s a good question for the pharmacies.
Chris: I know we can’t get too deep into that because of HIPAA, but I’d be curious what some of the…
Tim: Well, I know patients are running up against the state max. I guarantee it.
Chris: What’s the state max here?
Tim: Four ounces of flower-
Chris: A month.
Tim: And 20 grams of THC concentrate. That’s 20 1-gram cartridges a month.
Chris: You think people are going up against that?
Tim: No, I guarantee they’re going up against it, because we have patients who use the state max every month. Every month. Not in concentrates.
Chris: How are they paying for it? That’s what I want to know.
Tim: I don’t know. I don’t ask because if they need it, they need it.
Chris: How do you afford this?
Tim: If they’re selling it to their brother, then that’s against a lot of laws.
Chris: Well, let’s hope people aren’t doing that.
Tim: Yeah. I mean, we can’t spend too much time on that, but…
Chris: Okay, here’s a question: do doctors sit around and think about that, like, “Oh, if I prescribe this guy this Adderall, is he going to be selling it to his buddies?”
Tim: Oh, that for sure.
Chris: Do they really think that?
Tim: Yes.
Chris: Okay, because I was wondering, I was trying to compare it, you know?
Tim: Yes. Controlled substance database. This is another issue. So if you need Adderall and I’m going to prescribe Adderall, then I’ll look you up in the controlled substance database, make sure 1) you’re not getting Adderall from somebody else before I prescribe it to you, and then, yeah, you want to be sure that the dosing is accurate and you don’t want to overdose. You want to be very careful with that. So cannabis is different because people choose their own dose.
Tim: So with Adderall, it’s 10 milligrams twice a day or 10 milligrams once a day. You get 30 pills every month and that’s all you get. Then you can’t sell them because if you need them, you’re going to need all 30.
Chris: And you don’t go back to the doctor and ask for more.
Tim: That’s right, because you’re in the controlled substance database, and that makes sure that you don’t get them from multiple people.
Chris: Yeah.
Tim: Now cannabis, different. You get to choose how much you take. We just get to set the parameters.
Chris: So why does this set the parameter they do? Is that just to kind of discourage people from selling it?
Tim: Yeah.
Chris: Where do they come up with those numbers?
Tim: They come up with the numbers from other states.
Chris: Okay.
Tim: Other states of set these boundaries. In Florida, we talked to Melanie Bone. Remember that interview, and she was talking about in Florida they have a seven month renewal period. They can only use flower if they’ve tried and failed something else. They have less concentrates they can buy than here. Just a different program, different hodge podge of what those doctors and scientists and legislators.
Chris: It’s interesting, I mean, Utah’s not the only state that came up with some goofy laws. I was listening on this same podcast, this Pro Pot, I think is the name of the podcast, they were talking about in Virginia, I guess, just opened up dispensaries. Sounds very similar to Utah. They don’t even have flower yet, I guess, either, but they have the gelatinous cubes and they have the cards and smoking’s not allowed and all that. So it’s interesting to see it’s not just Utah that are coming out with these medical programs that are kind of a little different than we’ve seen in California and Oregon and stuff.
Tim: Yeah, and we had this year… I mean, weed was on the ballot like crazy. Multiple states went recreational or adult use. Multiple more states went with medical programs. And so, yeah, like you said, it’s coming. It does seem like it’s accelerating.
Chris: Well, and with the new presidency, he’s already said he wants to decriminalize cannabis, so let’s see where he can take things. I don’t know, we’ll see.
Tim: We’ll see.
Chris: Yeah. But it’s going to be interesting, 2021. I’m excited. I’m excited for the podcast. I want to start doing some live recordings, some more video recordings. I know we’ve talked about that on the last episode with Josh.
Tim: Yeah, doing some live, and you showed me your Mevo.
Chris: Yeah, the Mevo. I want to do some Mevo recording.
Tim: So when we’re in our office and we can live stream them on… We’ll just put it up on utahmarijuana.org. So 2021, we’re going to live stream some episodes. We’re going to give it a shot. It does appear based on the fact that we made this work even during a global pandemic, Chris, that we’re going to make it through 2021, right?
Chris: Oh, yeah.
Tim: So, another 38, 40… hopefully maybe 50 episodes.
Chris: I want to shoot for 50, because we have 52 weeks, so maybe miss two weeks in there. But let’s shoot for at least 50 episodes.
Tim: So shoot for 50 episodes.
Chris: … in 2021.
Tim: Yeah, we need to do some live streaming.
Chris: Do some live… you know what would be really fun would be to do some live recordings, like I’ve done even at I am Salt Lake. With I am Salt Lake we did them at some of the local bars.
Tim: Okay, for sure.
Chris: Maybe once towards the end of the year, once things start to open up because they’re predicting… I know the vaccines coming to Utah, they say in July. Anyway, we don’t need to get into all that. But I think things are going to start turning around hopefully the end of the year, maybe we can get out… How fun would that be? Do a live recording at a local pharmacy/dispensary, right?
Tim: Oh, yeah.
Chris: That could be really fun.
Tim: That would be really fun.
Chris: Set up the mics right there in the lobby or something. People can watch us chat with one of their pharmacists or some…
Tim: Well, we have a lot of things coming up because in February is our one-year anniversary for the podcast. We obviously have 4/20, which is going to be big. And this year, hopefully even better because hopefully they’re starting to open up a little bit by then. Summer we’ll have some events, some live recording events. This has been really fun because I’m not super excited about 2021.
Chris: And we have a voicemail now. I know I mentioned that on the last episode towards the end of it, but really, call this number in. It’s 385-215-9557. Nobody will ever pick this up. It’s a Google voice number I set up just for this podcast. Nobody will ever pick it up, so call it up, leave a message on there. If you have a question for Tim or myself, if you have a question about getting your card, if you want to get some feedback on an episode, call up that number. You can even text it if you don’t want to have your voice heard or anything, you can just send a text to that number too. And maybe we’ll play it on the show, right? We’ll read the text or…
Tim: Yeah, if you have a message, we can read it, we can play it.
Chris: … play it. I was hoping we’d have some tonight, but nobody’s called in yet. You know, if you have any shout outs you want to make to a local dispensary or a local pharmacist that treated you well, say, “Yo, thanks for taking care of me.” We do have an iTunes review though. I want to read that really quick right now if that’s okay, Tim.
Tim: Yeah, absolutely.
Chris: Which, please go and leave some iTunes reviews. We’ve got a handful of them. It looks like everybody’s really stoked on the podcast. 21. We have 21 five-star ratings right now on iTunes, but the most recent one was just left here the beginning of December by Bluntness in Utah, so that’s fitting: bluntness in Utah.
Tim: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Chris: It just says, “Podcasts are on point. Thank you for touching on so many unspoken and gray areas of legalization in Utah.” So straight and to the point. I don’t know about you, Tim, I like to hear what these people have to say about the podcast.
Tim: Yeah, feedback is everything.
Chris: But I think I’ve read all these other ones that were left on here. There’s like four other ones that we’ve gotten.
Tim: That’s pretty cool. I’m glad that people are listening. They’re getting some benefit, learning a thing or two, and you know, just some more understanding about who’s out here in this culture in Utah.
Chris: Let’s talk about utahmarijuana.org though. Or Utah Therapeutic, Utah marijuana clinics, because you have four now, right? You have Ogden now?
Tim: Yes, we have Ogden, West Valley, which is really just West Salt Lake. It’s right across from the Beehive Farmacy there.
Chris: Great location by the way.
Tim: That’s a cool location, yeah. And then Millcreek. 3900 South 7th East. And we’re looking at going to Logan. We should have an announcement about that in the next couple of weeks, at least on a periodic basis in Logan. And we want to expand because there’s patients everywhere, but primarily, we’re trying to take care of the patients that we have now. There’s some laws changing over the next couple of weeks at the first of the year.
Tim: I didn’t want to talk about this too much today because we want to have Katie from the Department of Health on, and I hope to get her on next week. She can really explain the changes in the law and what people can expect. So really stay tuned to the next episode, the next couple of episodes because we’re just going to have the Department of Health come and tell you what you need to know about 2021. So get really prepared for that. And we’ll have more on our Instagram Utah in the Weeds, and utahmarijuana.org Instagram. Of course that’s always the best place to find us.
Chris: Yeah, Instagram I think is probably the best one right now.
Tim: Yeah.
Chris: Because I know that’s going to hopefully get a little more active on Instagram.
Tim: Yeah, we’ll start getting a little more active there. And then, I’ve just been really happy with the response from… you know, the interest in utahmarijuana.org and Discover Marijuana on YouTube, it seems like people are really interested in this, it’s not just us, Chris.
Chris: Oh, yay. Can we talk about the hoodies? Let’s talk about the hoodies. So these Utah in the Weeds hoodies, okay so-
Tim: 2020, we even got hoodies done.
Chris: Okay, so you surprised me with these hoodies, Tim. I didn’t even know you were doing it, which is great by the way. Honestly, fantastic. Then you surprised me with some hoodies, like was it last week or the week before?
Tim: Yeah, last week.
Chris: And I posted a picture online, right?
Tim: Yeah.
Chris: Obviously I posted it. I was so excited. Nobody was at home. I was hoping Krissie could take a picture. I did it in the mirror, so it’s backward, but whatever. People were like, “I want one.” “Where do I get them?”
Tim: Oh, yeah, okay. So you can buy…
Chris: People are just going to love them.
Tim: Yes. You can buy a Utah in the Weeds hoodie at any of my clinics, the Utah Therapeutic Health Center clinics. So go to utahmarijuana.org, look up one of our clinics. Obviously Millcreek is centrally located 3900 South 740 East. You can go in there during business hours. I think they’re 39 bucks, so we tried to keep the cost down. For a hoodie, they’re a nice hoodie. Utah in the Weeds. Yeah, I was wearing mine earlier.
Chris: Oh, they’re great. They’re so soft and ridiculous. I love them and I’m just like, “Oh, my gosh, I got to get so many people…”
Tim: I know. They’re so fun. We have a pretty limited supply. We did a limited run for Christmas. We gave them to all our QMPs.
Chris: Yeah.
Tim: And watch for them around at the dispensaries. And if you work at a dispensary or a pharmacy and you want one, you can wear it outside of work.
Chris: Isn’t that ridiculous that I can’t go to Wholesome or Beehive and buy a hat or a tee-shirt?
Tim: Or a mug.
Chris: Because I’m stoked on them.
Tim: Yeah.
Chris: And I’m like, “I want to advertise for you guys.” Nope, can’t do it.
Tim: Nope.
Chris: So ridiculous.
Tim: That’s why we needed some hoodies, Chris.
Chris: Yeah. We should giveaways or something.
Tim: Yeah, totally.
Chris: People that come in to get their cards at utahmarijuana.org, if they come and get a card, they can get a hoodie.
Tim: Yeah, get a hoodie, get a buy-one-get-one hoodie.
Chris: Yeah.
Tim: I don’t know, we’ll do something.
Chris: Mention you listened to this, you know?
Tim: I’ll tell you right now, if you mention that you heard about that hoodie on the podcast, I don’t know, Chris, maybe we’ll give 15 bucks off. We’ll give a coupon.
Chris: There you go.
Tim: First 10 people who come in say, “Hey, I heard about this on the podcast,” yes, $25 hoodie.
Chris: Yeah.
Tim: That’s a deal.
Chris: Okay, so they can stop by any of the locations, go to utahmarijuana.org to probably get the addresses of the locations so we don’t have to rattle them all. Text us. Get a hoodie. We’ve still got cold days ahead of us. We’ll make some tee-shirts once spring rolls around probably.
Tim: We’ll get Krissie on the design. And kudos for the design.
Chris: Yeah.
Tim: Krissie, if you’re listening, way to go.
Chris: Yeah, she did it. My wife did the logo for Utah in the Weeds. She just kind of threw it together, man. I’ve always been a fan of ’70s, so it kind of has a ’70s lettering.
Tim: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Yeah, it’s way cool.
Chris: I’m trying to think if there’s anything else that we need to discuss. Did we talk about these transdermal patches? I know that Deseret Wellness…
Tim: Yeah, Deseret Wellness got transdermals.
Chris: And I know you and I, kind of off air, but I figured to let listeners know, they got those down there. I would imagine the other dispensaries will get them.
Tim: Yeah, they’ll come to other dispensaries. Good way for long-acting, consistent dosing throughout the day transdermal.
Chris: What kind of people would you recommend that for?
Tim: I’m going to recommend them to people who are chronically on opioids and they just need something really, really long-acting so they can put the transdermal patch on and get a nice, consistent dose all day long. So I’m going to put them on the chronic pain type situation where you need that long dosing. And you can do inhale for breakthrough still if you need that much. You need to be careful with transdermal because you can get a little over the top.
Chris: I was just going to say it would be nice for people, like say even the businessman that can’t be puffing on his vape all the time at meetings or anything, but he needs to kind of…
Tim: Yup, and you don’t have to bite off half the gelatinous cube, you know?
Chris: Yeah.
Tim: And so again, that consistent dosing, that’s the next phase of medical cannabis in my opinion. Bijan talked a little bit about this, like metered-dose inhalers where you get an exact amount, you know how many milligrams you’re getting. That’s where it becomes much more like medicine, and I think providers will like that better when they can say, “Okay, yeah, take this. It’s one inhalation. It’s five milligrams.”
Chris: Because it’s hard right now, because even edibles, you’re not even guaranteed that so much of that cannabis or THC made it into that…
Tim: No, that one gelatinous cube.
Chris: … gelatinous cube, really.
Tim: Yeah, you might have 70% in that one, and 120% in the next one, and you’ve always got be a little careful.
Chris: It’s just the way it works out, man.
Tim: Yup.
Chris: So you think they’ll be able to get that and hone that down, huh?
Tim: Yeah.
Chris: You think they’ll be able to hone it down, so you know you’re getting 20 milligrams in that.
Tim: Exactly 20 milligrams. In fact, I suspect that within the next three to five years, you’re going to know… maybe even less time, you’re going to know I want 20 milligrams, 10 milligrams of THS, 10 milligrams of CBD, 10 milligrams of CBG, and that’s what I’m going to get. And I’m going to have that in a transdermal patch and boom.
Chris: You go to the pharmacy, you pick it up.
Tim: And it’s the exact same every time, every dose is going to be very, very consistent.
Chris: Hm.
Tim: It opens up the marketplace even more for a lot of people who don’t like the smell, don’t like the inconsistencies of the strains.
Chris: Yeah.
Tim: We love the inconsistencies of the strains.
Chris: Sometimes. Sometimes it gets old though, but the inconsistency is fun just because it opens up new possibilities and new discoveries, and you’re like, “Okay, I want to try this one out.”
Tim: Right, but Grandma does not like inconsistency.
Chris: True.
Tim: She gets dizzy when she gets a sativa, she gets a headache or she gets paranoid. No inconsistency for her. And that’s a huge market for drugs and medicine. Anyway, we could go on and on.
Chris: No, you’re great, you’re great. I predict a lot of good things in 2021.
Tim: Yeah, it’s going to be a good year.
Chris: Anything else you want to talk about? I don’t know, should we wrap this up maybe?
Tim: I think we should.
Chris: Should we wrap up this episode?
Tim: Let’s wrap up episode 39.
Chris: You and I went back and forth a few times. No, it’s episode 38. No, it’s episode 39. But we figured it out.
Tim: 38B.
Chris: So yeah, the last episode of 2020. It’s been fun doing this. Merry Christmas, everybody. Happy New Year.
Tim: Yup, Merry Christmas, everybody.
Chris: Be safe.
Tim: Please be safe out there.
Chris: Don’t do stupid stuff. We want you to stick around.
Tim: If you need anything, just give us a holler.
Chris: Reach out. And if you want to come on the podcast, reach out to Tim or myself, or should they reach out to Utah Marijuana?
Tim: Honestly, utahmarijuana.org, if you chat with us online or call, that’s a great… any way you can contact us is probably fine at this point.
Chris: And then somebody would answer the phone there, email, and then they would get it to the right person I guess.
Tim: That’s right.
Chris: Awesome, Tim, awesome. Well, I’ve had a blast doing the show with you, man. I’m so grateful I reached out to you to say, “Hey, let’s do this podcast together.”
Tim: Yes, thank you, thank you.
Chris: How can people get a hold of you? You know the drill.
Tim: It’s the same old drill, utahmarijuana.org. Don’t even need to give a phone number anymore, because that’s I think easier than anything.
Chris: The website, yeah.
Tim: The website. Yeah, with chat, and the phone number’s listed there.
Chris: I was going to say the phone number’s right up in the, I think, right-hand corner.
Tim: Top right corner.
Chris: Yeah.
Tim: And we’re really excited for 2021, and keep this momentum up.
Chris: What about those YouTube videos? You want to… are they on the website too?
Tim: Yup. Discover Marijuana is the YouTube channel. Anything we livestream of the podcast will go there on its on feed.
Chris: Okay.
Tim: But Discover Marijuana, you can get to that from utahmarijuana.org, and that has really education videos, like right now we’re posting educational videos, short clips just with marijuana for beginners.
Chris: I love them. I love them. They’re well done.
Tim: I think they’re helping people. I hope they are. How about you, Chris?
Chris: Iamsaltlake.com. I’ve talked about it a couple times in this conversation. Yeah, go check it out. It’s my other podcast I do. I do that with my wife. The last episode was with the Cluck Truck food truck. The next episode you would think I know what it is. I know I have it all recorded. My mind is blank right now, so I’m not going to even say it, but we’re talking to business owners and artist/musicians, and we’ve got a fun year planned out.
Tim: Yeah, so toward that podcast, because there are a lot of… I’ve been really enjoying the local food trucks and the local restaurants, and then we can go out and support them, and they really need our help.
Chris: Well, and we give ideas on how to support them too. Especially with Christmas, one thing to keep in mind, gift cards, gift certificates go a long way, because you can give a gift… Well, this will be up after Christmas, or Christmas day I think this is going out.
Tim: This is the perfect time to go up for the sales, after-Christmas gift cards.
Chris: Get the sales, because with any place, they need that cash right now, and you might not even use it until summer, but if you like an eating establishment here in Utah, and you want it to stick around, go support it because I’ve been reading about New York City and just some of these cities, they’re just… some of these eateries are just shutting down, man.
Tim: Yeah, that’s too bad.
Chris: It’s a bummer. Anyway, we don’t need to be down and out here. We need to keep it up and up on positivity on this podcast. But utahmarijuana.org. Go listen to the podcast there. Go check out the transcripts, and as Tim says…
Tim: Stay safe out there.
In this podcast, Tim and Chris speak with Josh Fitzgerald, head cannabis pharmacist at Deseret Wellness in Provo. This particular episode was actually recorded at Deseret Wellness. As one of the first dispensaries to open in Utah, Deseret Wellness has already made a name for itself.
The podcast opens with a brief explanation of how Fitzgerald got started as a cannabis pharmacist. [01:56] He began his career working as a department store pharmacy tech before getting his degree from Midwestern University. He returned to that pharmacy after graduation in 2001, becoming the staff pharmacist.
Josh explains how he was really turned off by the opioid crisis of the early 2000s. [04:05] He wished there were some other way to alleviate pain without pushing pills. But what finally made him decide to investigate Medical Cannabis was his interactions with a young epilepsy patient. Fitzgerald realized he might be able to reduce her seizures with Medical Cannabis.
To make a long story short, he became a cannabis pharmacist and applied for the position at Deseret Wellness. Now he is excited to tell people all about Medical Marijuana, state-issued cards, dispensaries, and so forth.
Throughout the podcast, the guys talk about a range of things. They spent quite a bit of time talking about pricing and supply [14:52], with the general consensus being that both will level out in the near future. As more dispensaries open and growers reach capacity, stock should be more consistent. Prices should stabilize as well.
The guys also talked about how cannabis pharmacists do more than just dispense cannabis. [34:46] They work with patients to help them get the most out of their prescriptions. Fitzgerald mentioned that anyone with a Medical Cannabis Card can stop by Deseret Wellness to get advice, answers to their questions, and cannabis products. Orders can be placed on their website, too.
Chris: Well let’s get going here, Tim. I mean, we sound great, the microphones are hot, we’re ready to go. We’re live at Deseret Wellness in Provo, Utah. This is our second time recording here-
Tim: Yeah, that’s right. Utah in the Weeds, episode 38?
Chris: 38, Utahmarijuana.org is where you can go get all the transcripts, you can listen to the podcast right there.
Tim: Yes and we are going to start doing a full transcript of the podcast, which I think will be… I mean, it’ll be a little different, but you’ll be able to find them there and I think you’ll be able to find them there within about three or four days of when they release.
Chris: Okay.
Tim: Oh iTunes, which is kind of cool. If you want to read the podcast for some reason, you don’t want weed in your ear or on the speaker.
Chris: There you go, Utahmarijuana.org. And we are here today with Josh Fitzgerald, he is the head pharmacist here at Deseret Wellness. How long have you been at Deseret Wellness?
Josh: Since we opened up, I came on with them mid July before we opened up.
Tim: And when did you open, again?
Josh: What was it? Hard to think back.
Tim: But it was in August-
Josh: August 31st, last day of August.
Tim: And it was kind of a crazy day, I remember the stories.
Josh: Yeah. Have you guys heard the stories about how we opened? The Friday before we opened, the state changes all our EVS protocols and we’re scrambling, I got an email from the state and like, “Oh this is the new change.” And this is Friday night and I’m like, “Oh my gosh.”
Tim: We got some phone calls because we got a lot of patients who wanted to come down, wanted to be a part of the opening. The way I heard it was they were enforcing rules that already had existed but were not necessarily being followed to the letter and implemented perfectly around town. But that’s awesome, pharmacist in charge is your actual-
Josh: That’s my title, yeah.
Chris: Were you a pharmacist at a regular pharmacy before you came here?
Josh: Yeah, So, a little bit of my background, I started working in a pharmacy in ’96, fresh off an LDS mission, and my best friend’s older brother was in pharmacy school at the time and he’s like, “You need to do this, man, it’s cool.” So I’m like, “Okay, whatever.” So I went down to the Target in Fort Union, Cottonwood Heights now, and they just barely opened up, like a few weeks, and I walk in there and I said, “Hey, you guys looking for a pharmacy technician?” And the manager was like, “Sure.” And so they hired me right on the spot and I started working like two days later.
I worked with Target from ’96 to ’98, I was with them as a technician, went to pharmacy school and stayed on with them while I was in pharmacy school down in Phoenix. Graduated in 2001 from Midwestern, came right back to that same Target in 2001 and was staff pharmacist.
Tim: Oh, wow. As a pharmacist.
Josh: Yeah, they wanted me back there quickly so I was like, “Sure, I’ll go back.” The manager just left then and so there was some shuffling with the management there. So I started there as a pharmacist and then, what was it, 2005… I lived in South Jordan, Riverton, South Jordan area, and the Target out there in the district opened up in 2005, well late 2005, it opened 2006, but as soon as that happened I jumped on it, I was like, “Hey, I want to be a part of that.” So I was there from 2006 to this last July.
Chris: And so now you’re dealing with cannabis, I mean here you’re at a regular pharmacy dealing with regular pain pills and then you’re coming here dealing with a little more natural… I mean, was that a hard shift for you?
Josh: Oh definitely, honestly it was a huge learning curve because, one, I’m not a card holder, just to put that out there for everybody, don’t use the stuff.
Chris: Have you ever used cannabis?
Josh: No, never.
Chris: This is… I mean, we got to get into that.
Josh: Yeah, we’ll get into that. Yeah. I always bring this up because it’s fun to talk about, I’m not a user, I shouldn’t say user, a partaker of it, a patient.
Chris: I say the same thing.
Tim: You know what though, there is no wrong way to talk about it. In my mind. Weed, marijuana, cannabis, you call it whatever you want here. Call use, smoke, vape, consume, it doesn’t-
Chris: A lot of it is just lingo that we use.
Josh: Here in a medical setting we kind of keep it a little bit more on the professional side-
Chris: You have to, yes.
Josh: But in your podcast, yeah.
Tim: Okay, but you went through the whole opioid epidemic in the late ’90s through the early 2000s.
Josh: 2000s, yep. And that’s-
Tim: Like, you were in the heart of it.
Josh: I hated it, I hated every minute of it, yeah. To see these pill mills popping up in downtown Salt Lake and out in West Jordan. We’d see the patients come in and we’d see the doctors that came writing the same thing over and over again. I hated it and there was nothing I could do about it. I mean, it was a legit prescription, but it’s coming from a pill mill. And luckily over the years, there’s been some changes to that kind of stuff and there’s been some law changes that have been implemented to curb some of that stuff. It still exists though, unfortunately. And I hated being a part of it, that was part of the decision that made me want to leave that industry and come over there.
Tim: So what made you want to even investigate cannabis, marijuana, though? You know what I mean? What made you even be open to this?
Josh: Working at the Target that I was at for so many years, there was a family that has a home in Grand Junction and they have a daughter that’s had epilepsy her entire life and they got this summer home down there, and they would go down there and they started using some CBC and THC combinations to help with the epilepsy. And it got me thinking a lot over the years, I would see them take this drive down there multiple times a month, and to see the change in this little kid that was having seizures multiple times a day, knocking it down to maybe a few a week, that got me thinking about what this industry entails and how we’ve kind of lost it.
After that it’s kind of just me researching it and when I saw the position open up here at Deseret Wellness I was like, “Should I apply? I’m interested, but should I apply?” And leaving that industry that I’d been in for, gosh almost 25 years, it was really hard. But the more I looked into it and the more I saw how they do things here at Deseret Wellness, I was really opened to the idea. but to see… And that little girl that I dealt with before, she wasn’t the only one, there were other people too. And I saw people get into that downward spiral of addiction, I’ve had family members that have been in that spiral and to not have this option that they could have turned to was really kind of a motivating thought for me to make this change.
Tim: Yeah. That’s the gap between knowledge and not knowledge is that light bulb moment where you realize, “Wait, I don’t know a lot about this.”
Josh: Yeah.
Tim: Right?
Josh: But you have to explore it.
Tim: But you see something-
Chris: Are you still in touch with that family?
Josh: Not as much as I was, I haven’t seen them since I left, really.
Tim: So now that you’re here, did you look at other pharmacies to work for when you were looking into this or just this one?
Josh: Just this one in the beginning because that was all that was opening up at the time, I had feelers out to see what was going on, at that point it was just Dragonfly so there was other people. And Wholesome was kind of in the beginning and Mindy had already been established as a pharmacist up there so that wasn’t a possibility for me. But, yeah, I looked around a little bit.
Tim: You say it like it’s just normal. Like Dragonfly and then Mindy up at Wholesome.
Josh: Oh yeah.
Tim: I mean, this is really a small community-
Josh: It is a tight group of people, it is.
Tim: There’s only how many pharmacies open now, I think there’s six or seven.
Josh: I think there’s seven, yeah.
Tim: Of the 14 that will open-
Josh: Hopefully open, yeah.
Tim: And really, everybody… Do the pharmacists essentially all know each other?
Josh: We do, we have a little group, the Utah… I forget the exact name of it, but we’re an association of cannabis pharmacists. We talk monthly, usually, and go over things and voice our opinion when we need to voice it to the state as a group. Yeah, we’re very tight knit in a lot of ways, we don’t talk all the time but if I have a problem I’m going to reach out to Kevin up at Dragonfly and see what’s going on there. When Brian was over at Curaleaf I could reach out to him too. So, yeah, we know each other. It’s fun.
Chris: Do you live in this area?
Josh: No, I live in Riverton, so I commute down here every day.
Chris: Because I was just wondering how it was down here in Provo, like if you lived here and then your neighbors found out you were dealing with cannabis, I was just curious what it’s like.
Josh: It’s interesting. When I got this job, in the beginning, I didn’t come out and say I got this new job, that I’m working in the cannabis industry because I didn’t really know how to take it in the beginning. But now I’m totally open about it and love to talk about it. But it’s interesting to see the people come out of the woodwork that you didn’t know that were maybe using it or going to Colorado or Nevada to get it, they’ll be — “Hey, Josh, I’ve been getting it from Colorado for the last five years.”
Tim: Right like, “I need to come see you down here.”
Josh: Yeah, so that opens up some doors and I can talk to them about it. Like I told you, I’m LDS, I’m kind of like the token LDS guy around here, and I see a lot of LDS patients in here, it isn’t a stigma as much as we think it is in a lot of ways, in this culture and community. It’s cool to see people come out and say, “Hey, yeah, I use this stuff and it’s helped me.”
Tim: Do you see a lot of patients here that are from this area? Or do you see a lot of patients that are traveling because they don’t want to come to their local cannabis pharmacy?
Josh: No, people pretty much go where the closest pharmacy is, it’s a location based thing. But we have people come from, since we’re the furthest one south, we have people come from Saint George, we have people come from the Blanding area, we have people come from Moab-
Chris: No kidding.
Josh: You know, we’re straight out of the mouth of the canyon here, out of Spanish Fork Canyon, so we get a lot of the Southern Utah people. But to say, like the majority of our patients are based here in Provo and Orem and Spanish Fork.
Chris: Speaking of that actually, I have a question on that topic, since you have people driving here so far. It’s been a while since I’ve been to your website but do you guys keep it up to date pretty much? With your product.
Josh: Oh, yeah. I’m glad you asked that because we just changed to an online format that gives a little bit more of our menu options and you can actually make online orders now. That’s been huge over the last week, it’s pretty new to us.
Chris: And you do the curbside pickup, I saw out there. You take the Hypur app here yet?
Josh: We do, yep, Hypur and everything, yeah.
Chris: Okay.
Tim: Are people using cash primarily or are they switching over to Hypur?
Josh: We would like them to switch over to Hypur but it’s primarily cash and I think it’s going to be that way for a little while.
Tim: Is it because people are still afraid of the system knowing that they’re-
Chris: Being tracked.
Josh: Yeah, people talk about that, being tracked, all the time.
Tim: People do not want to be tracked with cannabis.
Josh: Yeah. I try to alleviate those concerns, you know, Hypur doesn’t really you in any way. Yes, you’re a user on that platform but…
Chris: You’re being tracked in EVS, every purchase you make right there.
Josh: That’s what I was going to say, yeah. And to kind of go back to what we were talking… Off the podcast with the whole controlled substance database, you guys talked about last week-
Tim: Well, with Desiree.
Josh: With Desiree, yeah.
Tim: And they put it in this little article I read on the news and they kind of hid it at the bottom of the article, right? Like, “Oh, by the way, we’re going to put you all on another state run database.”
Josh: Yeah. There’s good and bad to the controlled substance database but everybody is being tracked, so if anybody has any concerns, you are being tracked, but it’s in a good way. The state’s here to help us out.
Chris: Our phones in our pockets are tracking you.
Tim: The phone knows more about you than you do.
Josh: Yeah, exactly.
Chris: So, are you thinking about ever using cannabis? Have you ever thought about it? Like, even the lotion or anything?
Josh: So, I went to my primary care physician because I like to run a lot and I’ve had some issues with my heel over the last couple months and I made an appointment with him and I’m like, “Hey, I want to maybe try cannabis.” I said, “This is my new job.” And we’ve known each other for years now, and he was hesitant about giving me that letter so…
Tim: Is he a QMP?
Josh: No, he’s not, so he was going to give me a letter and I was going to try and go to a QMP. But yeah, I definitely want to at least try some of the stuff, I don’t have a true qualifying condition in the extent of other people do. But yeah, I have chronic pain in my heel, which I think is a qualifying condition, right?
Chris: I was going to say, isn’t pain a qualifying condition?
Tim: As somebody who can tell you that it is a qualifying condition, yes that’s a qualifying condition.
Josh: Yeah. So, I’m-
Tim: Especially for topicals-
Josh: That’s what I really wanted to get, I want to try some edibles and I want to try some topical to help with this pain that I can sleep at night. Hopefully, I can get an appointment with somebody here in a little bit. I want to give it a try, for sure.
Tim: It’s interesting, do you feel like you’ve come to that because you’re involved in it? I mean, when we were all in school they said, “Don’t hang out with those kids because the more you hang out with those kids the more likely you are to get into trouble and use…”
Chris: And look what happened, you started hanging out with them.
Tim: So is this the truth or is this just the knowledge?
Josh: It’s the knowledge, it’s the truth in the sense that it is the knowledge, yes. I’ll tell you this story real quick, I’ve got a good friend that, she’s dealing with a lot of shoulder pain right now, she found out she had a herniated disk in her neck that was causing the shoulder pain. And she came in here because she didn’t want to take opioids, and she wouldn’t have come in here unless she would have known that I was here. So in the sense that the association with me and her gave her that entry to get in here. Same goes with my situation, the knowledge that I have is that entry to get into here and pursue this kind of thought and treatment method.
Tim: So this is exactly the point that I think needs to be made, is that it’s not the association with the wrong crowd.
Josh: No.
Tim: But it is the association with the cannabis crowd.
Josh: Yep.
Tim: It’s the association with the correct cannabis crowd that makes the difference.
Josh: Yep. And it’s just the sharing of knowledge and sharing of experiences too, with it, and being comfortable with it. There’s definitely the stigma that’s out there and we have to change that as a community and it takes us talking about it and takes us sharing it and yes, it’s association but it’s a good association, like you said.
Chris: Speaking of the stigma, have you noticed since March, the first pharmacy opened up in Salt Lake, Dragonfly, to now, have you seen a little bit of that stigma kind of disappear a little bit?
Josh: For sure, yeah.
Chris: Over the last year even, here in Utah.
Josh: Oh, yeah. You know, the more people see it the more people are comfortable with it and the more we can explain to them that it’s a safe, effective method of treatment, it’s going to keep growing. And we can see that in the card numbers that are coming through, I mean, we started off what… What was it back in August when we opened? There was maybe like, 10 000, 19 000? I don’t remember, what’s it up to now?
Tim: It’s well over 20 000 legal users now, and I think the card numbers-
Josh: The card numbers are in the 30 000, there was one yesterday that was in the 32 000, so.
Tim: Yeah. So there are so many legal cannabis users. Remember when we get to 100 000, that’s three percent of the state’s population, adult population.
Josh: I can’t wait.
Chris: Is that kind of when…
Josh: We’re gonna start voting for legal then, right?
Tim: Yeah, that’s what the lobbyists and that’s what the industry looks at, they look at that three percent number. It’s kind of the magic number before you start to transition to that other discussion.
Josh: Yeah.
Tim: Have you seen people… This is a good question for Josh, because on my end, I’m not for adult use yet. But have you seen patients who have had some negative effect?
Josh: Negative effect, no, there’s really no negative effect that I’ve seen so far. It doesn’t work for some people, I can say that, and some people are discouraged when that happens but it’s not a negative effect. The majority of our patients see a positive effect from it, they see a benefit from it.
Tim: So not a lot of negative effects?
Josh: No.
Tim: That’s good.
Chris: Except draining your bank account, right.
Josh: Exactly, yeah.
Tim: Right, especially in prices here. So, talk a little bit about prices, is there anything on the horizon that will bring prices down?
Josh: Competition, the more pharmacies we can get open, I think the more competition we’re going to have. And then the more growers we can get producing quality product and more of it, well it’s going to drive the demand for it… Well, the supply will go up and that way we can have that… I don’t know, it’ll even the market out, is what I want to say.
Chris: But if there’s only 14 pharmacies then how can you really have competition?
Tim: Right. There was somebody who, the other day, told me they drove through a city in Colorado, 120 pharmacies-
Chris: The green mile, man, in Colorado. 22 dispensaries in a mile-
Josh: At some point, the state’s going to have to evaluate the amount of pharmacies we have and I think that’s going to be the deciding factor on what’s going to level the market out.
Chris: Have we ever talked about why they only allowed 14 pharmacies in Utah? Do we know why?
Tim: Originally it was the central fill, remember we were-
Chris: Well I remember that.
Tim: You were going to go to the central fill and then-
Chris: And that was the blister packs.
Tim: That was going to be the blister packs and then the central fill pharmacy would distribute it out to the health departments and then they would distribute it out to the patients. But there was some problem with the health department employees doing something federally illegal, dispersing a federally illegal product and not forcing them. So, again, compromised with a small number of retail pharmacies.
Chris: I’m just wondering where they got 14 and not 20.
Josh: I’ve never heard that.
Tim: Deseret Wellness has a pharmacy in Park City that going to open, when do you think that pharmacy will open?
Josh: We’re shooting for early February, late January, sometime in that timeframe.
Tim: Early February, late January, and is home delivery going to be a part of the Deseret Wellness
Josh: It’s going to be our core, I think, up in Park City for sure. Just the way that the demographic is up there with the seasonal people there too, I think it’s going to be very core to how we dispense up there. Down here in Provo we’re working on getting that done, as soon as we get the state authorization we’re ready to go with home delivery here and hopefully that comes sooner than later because we’ve got a lot of patients that struggle to get here. That’s why we have the curbside for the moment and we’ll keep doing that, but curbside has helped out a lot of people that have a hard time getting into the building. So those types of one-off delivery methods or one-off purchasing methods are key to this industry, I think.
Chris: Do you have a drive-through here?
Josh: We don’t, no. We’re not set up for that. I’d love to have one but no.
Chris: Yeah, I was going to say, I didn’t think I saw one.
Tim: No, but there’s how many curbside spots out front?
Josh: There’s three, we started with one and just this last week we had to add a third and we’re probably going to have to add a fourth here pretty soon.
Tim: Oh really? That’s cool though.
Josh: It’s really nice, yeah.
Tim: So talk to us about flower too, because you’re the guy who knows how much flower is in this location, and it still comes up as an issue, I just talked to a patient this morning who was like, “Oh, there’s no indica here, where can I find some indica?”
Josh: Yep, all we’ve got right now is Sundae Driver, yeah. Flower is tough here in Utah, we’re having shortages and a lot of it is held up with the state and the second round of processing that just went through. A lot of it is just our growers growing quality flower that they can put on the market too. So there’s some things that could change and be a little bit better here in the state, for sure, to get us to that point.
Tim: If you could pick a couple of those things which would it be? Because I hear you say a couple of things, one, there’s not enough growers that are producing an adequate amount of flower. Is there’s only three? There’s Tryke, Zion and there was Dragonfly.
Josh: Wholesome’s got some going on now. I know that Beehive’s affiliated with some growers too. So yeah, there’s flower out there and I’ve talked to some of the people and you can grow flower and that’s great. If it’s not quality flower then it just gets shipped to processing for edibles and other things. So we need to have quality flower that’s grown that’s quality to smoke and to use as medicine. If it’s not that then it’s not worth bringing to market and I think that’s where some of it’s getting lost right now, yes there’s flower being grown but a lot of it’s just getting pushed to processing.
Chris: Even a lot of the stuff that you can vape is kind of garbage, though, that’s coming out of the State of Utah. I’m actually surprised that it’s coming out.
Josh: Yeah, talking to a lot of our patients, there’s some things that could change.
Chris: I mean, I don’t want to sit and talk bad, I just want to see change. I want to see us get better quality because we deserve it.
Josh: And you know, talking to Jeremy, our market president here, he’s got a good relationship with Tryke and with Zion, pretty much everybody here in Utah. And they’re making strives to get to that point, they want to produce as much as they can, they want to produce quality product and they’re getting to that point. We’ll be there soon, I would imagine by mid next year we’ll have plenty of flower to go around.
Chris: I have a question on that, popped in my head here and you might not be the person to ask, we should have asked Shawn this when we were recording with him. But are they limited to how much they can grow in a space or can they grow as much as they was as long as they have a license.
Tim: No, they can grow as much as they want in the space but they’re limited to how many square feet they can grow in.
Josh: And to that point, Zion opened up a ton of extra grow space. Elk Ridge over here, just south of us, and they’ve got a grow going up in northern Utah too. They’re making those strides to get to that point so we’re grateful that they’re investing, that’s a lot of money that these growers are investing into our market.
Tim: Yeah, it’s a big investment. And the greenhouses, just additionally to this point, is you want to grow cannabis quickly then you need an existing greenhouse to take over. So you got to take over somebody’s poinsettia operation and they’ve got to know that they’re going to get paid and they’ve got to make some modifications for security because you can’t just grow a bunch of weed in the middle of Ogden and expect it not to get stolen. I mean, even the hemp gets stolen, we talked to Mike Rodriguez.
Josh: I’ve heard some stories about some of this other Utah stuff that’s happened on there. They’re making progress, like I said before, mid next year I think we’re going to see a levelization of the flower market and start to see some normalization of what we can have in stock and making sure we have the same things in stock.
That’s what we’re kind of worried about here and what we try to strive for is having the same things in stock every month. So when someone can come in and they’ve been using Gorilla Glue from Tryke and it’s working well for them, heck they come in the next month and we don’t have it for them and I feel horrible. They want this medicine and in a traditional marketplace, a traditional pharmacy, that’s unheard of. So to me, that hurts me as a pharmacist, it just makes me feel horrible. These people want this medicine, I can’t give them their Khalifa Kush vape cart that they’ve been using for the last month because we’re out of it.
Tryke’s trying as hard they can to get it to market, we’ll have some soon but, you know, it’s such a young market here in Utah that we can’t expect too much of what they’re doing at the same time, so we got to have some patience on our end too.
Chris: Since this will be going up Friday, can you give any tips on when any stuff’s coming in? Or is that not something you’re allowed to talk about?
Josh: I’m not allowed to talk about it, but I will say this, keep an eye on our website.
Chris: Okay.
Tim: And you keep that well up to date.
Josh: Any pharmacy here in Utah, look at their website before you come in. That way you’re not going to be surprised when you get here. Everybody keeps their websites completely up to date and that’s just the best way to get the information before you come.
Tim: You mentioned Gorilla Glue and these names, as a pharmacist do you feel like these are more fun names for drugs?
Josh: I tell this story all the time, as a pharmacist, one of our first days here, I’m selling a cart to this little old lady that she’s been vaping for a few years from Colorado and I’m selling her PPD, and she’s like, “PPD, I’ve never heard of PPD.” I’m like, “Oh yeah, yeah.” I didn’t want to continue with it any further and she kept bugging me, “Well, what is PPD?” And I’m like, “Okay, it’s Purple Panty Dropper.” And like everybody in the pharmacy just busts up laughing. Yes, the names are pretty funny and crazy, yes we could probably do better at naming them, especially in the medicinal market I think it’s a little bit weird. We’ve had conversations with different pharmacists and it’s just the market.
Tim: It’s where the market came from, I guess.
Josh: Exactly, yeah. Since the marijuana tax act of 1937, we lost that ability to have cannabis, marijuana in our culture and luckily we had these hippies in California that were growing it for us and keeping it alive. If we didn’t have them we wouldn’t have what we have today and unfortunately, they named it, not unfortunately, I shouldn’t say that, but to some extent they named it some crazy things and that was just because of their culture and we have to accept that that was part of the culture. Can we change the culture today? I think so, I think we can make it a little bit more medicinally friendly.
Chris: But you need to remember your roots and I think that’s the problem is too many people in the industry now are trying to forget it. Trying to make it too glamour… You know, “Oh let’s make it look all fancy.” While there’s still people in prison for paving the way at this.
Josh: We owe them a debt of gratitude for sure, we wouldn’t have what we have now if it weren’t for them. The growers that were coming out of California and the Pacific North West and Florida and even South America. We have these plants, we have these hybrids that they cultivated for us for years and we should be grateful for them, yes. But I-
Chris: I know what you mean.
Josh: Yeah, and that’s going to be a back and forth for years.
Tim: Those are the people that are taking themselves so seriously, you know, “You got to rename everything and you got to…” Yes, could we do a little bit better and does the little old lady probably prefer a name that’s not Purple Panty Dropper? Maybe, but maybe she doesn’t take herself serious enough-
Josh: She’s probably telling all of her friends, “Hey guys…” At the same time, like I said before, she laughed and it was a fun time in the pharmacy. So there’s two sides to it, for sure.
Chris: Should we hit up some of these questions? Because there’s quite a few on this paper here, Tim.
Tim: I know, there is, we got a few that we asked already about, the Park City, you know.
Josh: We’re so excited about Park City, it’s going to be so neat to have that up there.
Chris: The next question on here, these were questions submitted by customers or patients here.
Josh: From Instagram, yeah.
Chris: From Instagram that — follow Deseret Wellness on Instagram because it’s great to be connected. I think that’s a good way too to find out about product.
Josh: Yeah, and if there’s any announcement that we want to make to our public we send out an email but we also put it on Instagram, that’s like our go-to-
Tim: It’s the only way they’ve allowed you to, not promote, but just to communicate to the public.
Josh: Yep, and we take full advantage of it.
Tim: Yeah, I think so far everybody does.
Josh: Yeah.
Tim: So people come in here and ask… Number two, Chris.
Chris: Number two is, why do other dispensaries get products before Deseret Wellness? An example: the Mother Liquor rosin. That’s a good question.
Josh: Yeah, it is a great question. We’re not integrated with any grower or any producer so we stand along as Deseret Wellness. There’s other pharmacies out there that have a grow division and they’re affiliated with a specific grower, and us being not that way, we lose out on something like Mother Liquor because it’s going to wherever. Wholesome, who’s getting it? I can’t remember.
Chris: Actually I think Dragonfly has some now too.
Josh: Is Dragonfly?
Tim: Yeah, but they’re vertically integrated, they have a grow, they have… And that’s what you’re talking about, right? If I have a grow I’m going to put my rosin that I made in my pharmacy.
Josh: Why would any smart business person give it to somebody else if they can sell it themselves in their pharmacy?
Tim: So an advantage to them to do that, but a disadvantage too.
Josh: Disadvantage in the sense that we can’t get it, but that also, we’re not beholden to any specific product.
Tim: This is the disadvantage to them and the advantage to you, because you get to choose the best product.
Josh: Yeah. We can choose what we have and we get to choose, like you said, the best products we have. We can cultivate specific relationships with a lot of our growers and making sure that we can secure other things a lot easier than some of the other vertically integrated pharmacies. It gives us a lot of freedom here at Deseret Wellness, we don’t answer to any grow side, so we sell what we think is quality, and what we have here at Deseret Wellness we think is quality. So we’re going to have the products in stock that we know are going to help people, the medicine that we feel is the best medicine for our patients here at Deseret Wellness.
Tim: As a pharmacist, do you think that’s an important distinction between you and the other pharmacists? Not that I’m asking you to talk negative about other pharmacists in the industry, but do you think that those vertically integrated businesses, the Wholesomes, the Dragonflys, do you think they’re going to have to fight against the corporation trying to push their own product?
Josh: I would say yes, they’re going to have to… They own that product, so they’ve got to sell it, right? So yeah, they’re going to sell it and hopefully make the most money they can out of it because we need to succeed as an industry that way. But at the same time, even in last week’s podcast, you guys talked about having the pharmacy affiliated with a grower, it sometimes pushes patients to a specific product. That pharmacy may feel that they need to push that product to their patient, and not to say that it’s a bad product and the product will help that patient. But here at Deseret Wellness, I think we have the opportunity to have variety of products in stock that people can choose from and specifically pick the product that we think is best for them, and that gives us a lot of freedom, like I said before, and a lot of benefit for our patients here.
Tim: I’m so glad that you said that all.
Josh: Yeah.
Chris: Do you want to ask number three here, Tim?
Tim: Yeah, I do. Does Deseret Wellness have their own cultivation or plans to do so? So, you’ve talked a little bit about that you don’t have your own cultivation but is there any plans to develop that?
Josh: There’s no plans but who’s to say, maybe later on if the market shifts that way, we’re open to it. We’re not going to shut down something that might benefit but it’s not on the table right now for sure. Definitely not, yeah.
Chris: Shoot, I’m even open to that…
Tim: I mean, I think that the more we’re involved in this, Chris, the more you and I have talked about off the mic, we’re learning so much about cannabis and about growing and about all this stuff, it would be so fun to put a couple of plants in your backyard, in the greenhouse in the backyard.
Chris: One day, one day.
Josh: Maybe one day we’ll get there, yeah.
Chris: It’s fun to talk to people in California that just kind of have some growing in their garden.
Josh: We have a lot of patients that have moved here from California and they talk about the old days when they were living there and they could have a few plants just to hang out in their backyard.
Chris: Could you imagine that?
Josh: There’s a guy that was in here last week and he was saying that he’s been growing the same plant here in Utah in his basement and he’s been growing it for seven years. He’s an oil worker and he left to go out of state to work on it, left it to his brother and his brother killed it. And he said the stalk was like four inches in diameter, it was an old, old plant.
Tim: An old mother.
Josh: Yeah, and it died, he was pretty sad and I was pretty sad for him.
Chris: Yeah. Wow. The next question on here is, if or when you guys are doing delivery, and I know you’ve talked about delivery a little bit-
Josh: Yeah, as soon as the state can authorize that and get it ready to go, we’re going to jump right on it.
Chris: And kind of an estimate, or a goal? Are we looking at a month or six months? Or you have no idea?
Josh: You know, we’re hoping sometime early next year, is what I’ll say. Yeah, early next year.
Chris: Let’s see here, I’m just going to keep going with these, Tim. He’s changing out the video there, we’re doing some video so we’ll see if we can do anything with this video, so pay attention to when we announce that, listeners.
Will the flower supply become more consistent? It seems like flower goes so quickly at all pharmacies. And when will more products be available? I know we kind of talked about that.
Josh: We talked about that, yeah. I think mid next year the market’s hopefully going to level out. I don’t have a lot of specifics and knowledge on that but talking to people in the industry, we’re hoping so.
Chris: It’s kind of a given, if you watch a lot of industries that open, it takes a little second to iron the kinks out.
Josh: Yeah.
Chris: I know I’ve said this on other podcasts, people got to remember there’s been a lot of wild stuff going on this year on top of rolling this out, so that’s kind of held things back too.
Josh: It’s been a crazy year-
Chris: If this year was as normal as every other year we probably could be way ahead.
Josh: Exactly.
Tim: Would you have had Park City open, do you think, in a normal year?
Josh: Yeah, we would hope we would have had it open by now, for sure.
Tim: I think you would have opened here in Provo earlier too, right? A few months earlier.
Josh: Yeah, probably about a month earlier if we could have. But yeah, COVID held us back on the build out, quite a bit. COVID held us back on hiring people and getting things up and running. So, we had some issues but we were able to overcome it in the end.
Chris: That’s what I think we all need to pay attention to, it’s like, “Hey, at least we have them.” It might not be perfect but we could not have anything.
Tim: I mean, there might not be the products you want but it’s already leaps and bounds better than it was in March and April and May. The availability of product is by far better now.
Josh: Much, much better, yeah.
Tim: And there’s a lot of product in the pipeline. We were just in Payson and, let me tell you, there’s a lot of product down there.
Josh: Where were you guys at?
Tim: We went to the Zion grow. We want to go out and see the Tryke facility too because we want to see, because the listeners, they want to know. What you can’t see, you don’t believe nowadays.
Josh: Exactly, yeah. It is coming. I tell this to people all the time, we’re kind of in the wild wild west of medical marijuana here in Utah and everything’s changed so fast and so quickly and we just need to be a little bit patient with it. We’re only into it six, seven months, really. We’ve developed a whole market in this amount of time, this is insane, this is great. Two years from now I think we’re going to be in a lot better spots.
Chris: Exactly.
Josh: Patience is key right now.
Tim: Okay, this last question is-
Chris: It’s a good one.
Tim: It is a good one, and one we’ve never asked anybody before.
Chris: I don’t think so.
Tim: Okay. Josh, is there a way to set up so my spouse could pick up my order? I’m wondering if there are many options for people who have a hard time traveling or can’t drive themselves?
Josh: Yes, there is an option. You can become a caregiver with the state, so if a patient is unable to come to a pharmacy, whether that’s because of age or any type of physical ailment that they can’t get here, you can have a family member or close friend get a caregiver card with the state that’s attached to your card that says that that person can pick up for you and purchase for you. That is key to a lot of people here and we’ve been trying to talk with people about that. There’s definitely that option for people to go get that.
Tim: How hard is it to get a caregiver card?
Josh: It’s a little bit tricky. That person has to be authorized, there’s a fee involved with it that’s like $75.
Tim: Yeah, it’s a background check.
Josh: Yeah.
Tim: It’s really associated with the background check with the state.
Josh: That’s where it’s going to? Yeah. We’ve had a handful of people here at Deseret Wellness that have become caregivers and it’s helped out their patient tremendously, so we’re excited. And we’ll help people with that process and answer questions if they have any questions for it.
Tim: And essentially you just need to justify, it sounds to me like what your saying is you just need to really justify that you need the caregiver.
Josh: Yep.
Tim: And you can do that by age, so anybody under 21, they’re going to need, or at least under 18, has to have a caregiver card. And then anybody in a facility, anybody who’s living in an assisted living facility could qualify for a card.
Josh: Hospice qualifies. Any type of physical disability.
Tim: If you can’t drive, right? Then get a caregiver who can come get your product.
Josh: To that same point, we’ll have delivery options available next year that we can deliver to your house if you’re not able to make it in.
Chris: I was going to say, that’s probably the best option too right there, the easiest once delivery starts getting… I mean the curbside too, they wouldn’t have to get out of the car, if somebody could drive them here, at least.
Josh: A lot of our cancer patients that have a hard time getting to the store, they’ll have someone drive them here, we go out there and help them at curbside and get their order taken care of. So, yeah, options for them.
Tim: Can you do a consultation curbside? I’m sure you’ve done it.
Josh: We haven’t done a technical one but we do offer a telehealth here, so we always have that available to people that can’t make it in. If you want somebody to come into your consult with you, say you’re just not feeling comfortable going in by yourself, we make those changes. We usually bring them into this room that we’re in here today and kind of have a group consult, with the whole family sometimes, it’s pretty cool. But yeah, we make accommodations for anybody that can’t do it the traditional way.
Chris: It kind of becomes a family situation because if there’s one person in the home using cannabis, kind of everybody is part of that, really.
Tim: Yeah, they’re going to know about it.
Josh: It really is.
Chris: Whether it’s smell, or something, you know.
Tim: Yeah and the buy-in on the cultural side, especially growing up here LDS, this religious community, you need to know, you know, what’s grandma doing that smells a little funny.
Chris: Yep.
Josh: So many of our patients come from people that’s using cannabis in the home and they’ve got a family member, like a mother or grandmother, somebody else that’s dealing with an issue that cannabis can help with. That’s what we love, that people are out there sharing this idea and this treatment method with other people. And yeah, come on in, we’ll take care of you, we’ll get it taken care of for you and have that consult here as a family. It’s really cool, like I said, to have a bunch of people in here.
Tim: It’s been cool to talk to you about that, it’s a good perspective.
Chris: Dude, you’ve given us so much new information even, different angles compared to some of the people that we’ve talked to. Any other questions? I don’t know. I’m trying to think of any other… Any other things that you want to discuss while the mics are hot? I’m trying to think just so we don’t… Cards need to be wrapped up by the end of the year.
Josh: Yeah, that’s one thing that we need to really point out.
Chris: I know we say that on every episode, but it’s important.
Tim: Yeah, we are two weeks away from your letter not being valid.
Josh: And we’ve got what, about 12 000 letters out there that the state’s estimating, last I heard.
Tim: Yeah, that’s what the state is estimating and we know that-
Josh: There’s got to be more, yeah.
Tim: And it’s still, literally two weeks away, people. This is-
Josh: We’ve been hounding people, every time they come in with a letter we’re like, “Please go get your card, please help us… Help you get that card.”
Chris: What are you hearing why people aren’t? What’s the biggest holdup?
Josh: Money, usually, they don’t want to pay the $15.
Chris: Okay, so it’s $15, really is all it is.
Tim: Well, and it’s a lot of these letters still are not associated with QMPs.
Josh: Yep, and that’s probably the second biggest holdup. Some of them too are just elderly people that don’t have that internet competency to go through with that whole EVS process, which is complicated.
Chris: Oh it’s hard.
Tim: Yes it is.
Josh: For us it’s totally fine, I can go in and do it, you can go in and do it but-
Chris: I’ve stumbled around on that thing.
Josh: But you put somebody in front of a computer that’s 65 year old and-
Tim: We were supposed to have it, in the original bill it was supposed to be done in the doctor’s office at the time you got your card, it was part of the statute. They took it out because it was too cumbersome and they might have, should have left it in because it is hard and we’ve gone back to that.
Josh: A lot of the QMPs are doing it still, the good ones are doing it there. All the QMPs that we see that are doing it, their patients are having a much better experience. So if the QMPs are hearing me right now, please help your patients get that because that’s the first step, pretty much, is right at that first visit and you need it taken care of. I’m scared the new year is going to roll around and we’re going to have all these people that can’t come in here and get what they’ve been taking and using and benefiting from for the last six months. I don’t want that to happen to anybody and I’m afraid it’s going to happen to a lot of people, unfortunately.
Tim: Well, we’ll be ready.
Josh: Yep, we’re here.
Chris: Actually, while we have you on the podcast, let’s promote Deseret Wellness a little bit over the holidays. Are you guys going to be open the day after Christmas? The day before Christmas? New Years? What’s the plans there?
Josh: The only hour changes we’re having right now is Christmas Eve we’re going to be closing at 5 o’clock. After that, Monday through Saturday, 7-11, normal hours.
Chris: So day after Christmas is normal, which I believe is Friday, the day after Christmas-
Tim: You’re open til how late?
Josh: On Christmas Eve?
Tim: No, normal hours.
Josh: Seven.
Tim: Normal hours is 7 PM. 11 AM to 7 PM, six days a week.
Josh: Six days a week, yep.
Tim: Got it.
Josh: We’re closed on Sundays down here.
Chris: Okay.
Tim: Cool, I mean, it’s appropriate, you can’t be open down here on Sundays, I think there must be some rule-
Chris: No, Beehive I know is Sunday, I think Wholesome’s Sunday, I know Dragonfly’s not Sunday.
Tim: Yeah, I think Beehive and Wholesome. But this is a great… I like coming down here, I don’t really mind the drive.
Chris: No, it’s not a bad drive, especially if you guys have the product I could see a lot of people from Salt Lake coming down here for-
Josh: Oh, yeah. People will go where the flower is right now so if you’ve got flower you’ll get people from anywhere in the state, really.
Chris: What’s Deseret Wellness on all the social medias? Instagram, Facebook, are you on Twitter, do you know? I mean Twitter’s kind of one of those…
Josh: I haven’t seen a Twitter account. But yeah, Deseret Wellness or Deseret-Wellness, we’ve taken most of those handles.
Tim: Well it was great talking to you, Josh.
Chris: Yeah, it was great-
Josh: Thanks for coming down here, guys. We appreciate this, it’s nice to have some good conversations around medical cannabis in Utah and exploring some different ideas, I think it’s great. Thanks for coming down.
Tim: Well you can get ahold of me at Utahmarijuana.org, you can see our… A couple of billboards up now.
Chris: Are they all over now?
Tim: They’re kind of all over now, which is exciting.
Chris: Are they all mostly in Salt Lake, though?
Tim: Yep, they are mostly in Salt Lake., we’ve got a couple in Ogden. But Utahmarijuana.org is a good place and we’ve written a couple of blog articles about the letter situation and what’s going to change come January first. Decent place, I think, to get information. And our podcasts are all up there with summaries and they’ll be transcribed, we’re catching up on those.
Josh: So people can to you if they want to even get their letter-
Tim: Yeah, we have an entire program, so if you go to Utahmarijuana.org and you chat with us online or you call us, no matter who your QMP is, we will help you navigate the system and there’s no cost associated with that.
Chris: Just the $15 though, for the-
Tim: Just the $15 for the state. We’ll reach out to your QMP and if they’re not planning on becoming a QMP… Or we’ll reach out to the person who wrote your letter, I should say, if they’re not planning on becoming a QMP-
Chris: It was at that moment that I looked down, I noticed that the recorder was off, the SD card was full. But I also knew that the recording was almost over so I didn’t want to bag the rest of the conversation. I just told Tim, I said, “Hey, I’ll just close this out at home, I’ll say a few words. I’ll close out the podcast.”
So anyway, here I am, thank you so much for listening to that episode with Josh and Deseret Wellness, such a good pharmacy here in Provo. Go check them out if you’re in the area, say hello and tell them that Utah in the Weeds sent you. We also set up a voicemail number that you can call in if you have any questions for Tim or myself, if you have any feedback you want to give, or if you want to be a guest on the podcast. Give us a call 385-215-9557, nobody will ever pick that up for you, it goes right to voicemail, say a few words, we might play it on a future episode of the podcast, we would love to hear from you.
You can listen to my other podcast at IamSaltLake.com, I am Salt Lake podcast, I do that with my wife, Krissie. Go check it out, we’ve got a brand new episode every week. We’re talking to business owners, artists, musicians, tattoo artists, everybody here in Salt Lake City. IamSaltLake.com, go check that out, and Utahmarijuana.org, go check that out. Make sure you get your card by January first, there, because those letters aren’t any good after the end of the year.
Anyway, that’s all we have to say, make sure you subscribe in iTunes or wherever you’re listening to this podcast and we’ll catch you next week on the next episode of Utah in the Weeds.
In this week’s podcast, Tim and Chris speak with Utah Patients Coalition executive director Desiree Hennessy about a number of important topics relating to Utah’s Medical Cannabis law. This highly informative podcast brings viewers up to date on four specific areas.
Desiree explains [5:28] proposed legislation that would allow qualified medical providers (QMPs), like doctors and PAs, to work more closely with pharmacists to prescribe Medical Cannabis. The proposal should make things easier for patients and QMPs. For example, it allows doctors to write letters of recommendation that are then forwarded to pharmacists. It would be up to the pharmacists to write prescriptions, determine dosage, and enter patient information into the EVS.
The proposed legislation is partially motivated by the fact that there are some 800 qualified medical professionals that have already successfully completed the Medical Cannabis course. But only a small number of them are actually helping patients get cannabis cards – or even talking prescriptions with them. Passing the bill addresses some of the QMP’s reservations about getting involved.
The other two topics discussed in the podcast are the government’s controlled substance database (CSD) [31:57] and additional legislation that, if passed, would add to the list of conditions that can be legally treated with Medical Cannabis in Utah.
Desiree and Tim speak of their concerns that the CSD could be used to discriminate against patients with Medical Cannabis Cards. For example, ER doctors may be afraid to prescribe painkillers to patients the CSD says are already using cannabis. Discrimination may not be a problem now, but it could be later.
Ms. Hennessy is a repeat guest on the podcast. Whenever she appears, she brings with her a ton of helpful information that proves beneficial to both providers and users alike. This week’s podcast is no exception.
Chris: Episode 37 of Utah in the Weeds. Tim, how you doing, buddy?
Tim: I’m doing great. I’m glad to be here. We’re glad to have our first return guest. No, I’m sorry, it’s our second return guest.
Chris: Oh, that’s right.
Tim: Just as important. Desiree Hennessy with Utah Patients Coalition.
Chris: Yeah, she was originally on episode six. Episode six of the podcast, if you want to go back and listen to that one too.
Tim: We’re glad to have you. We’re still doing virtual. Here we are in the beginning of COVID winter, and we’re still doing virtual podcasts.
Desiree: Eventually they’ll just start dating life like that. COVID winter number one. First COVID winter.
Tim: I go back, and I talk about the day the world ended. I still remember the weekend my calendar fell apart and everything was erased.
Desiree: Right.
Tim: Now we just push on.
Desiree: Right.
Chris: Where should we start with this, Tim?
Tim: Yeah, I mean I kind of want to jump back in with the Utah Patients Coalition. And when we met with Desiree before, we talked a lot about the history of the bill, the Medical Cannabis bill. What had been proposed, how all of that worked out, the compromise. I remember talking a lot about that, right?
Desiree: Yep.
Tim: And the reason why we asked you to come on again was, we have a new proposal that potentially could expand or not, the cannabis program. There’s some privacy things we can talk about too, but tell us a little bit about where the cannabis program is at, from your perspective, I guess? Let’s just start there.
Desiree: So where we’re at right now, we still have all of the pharmacies open. We still don’t have all of the cultivation, the grows open. We have product on the shelf. We have patients purchasing. We have still a wide range of conditions that are getting utilized. We have a compassionate use board for the patients that are falling outside of that, and they’re reporting back a 90% approval rating for patients that come through. We have issues with product shortages, which isn’t strange from a new program. We have issues with not a lot of different product options. We have a lot of problems with patients still trying to find a QMP or a physician that will get them on the state program.
Desiree: We have good and bad, but the thing that makes me not complain, is I always am seeing progress. So far, I haven’t hated anything too much quite yet.
Tim: That’s good. Now when we talked before, we were in hopes of 100, 150 QMPs. I remember talking to Rich Oborn about this as well. Do you know the current number of QMPs?
Desiree: I should have looked before I got on. No, but it’s above 600 now, right?
Tim: Yeah, I mean, it’s certainly above 500. I don’t know either.
Desiree: Yeah, I think we’ve reached 600. I want to say we were hoping to be around 800 by now, because we were seeing a steady increase all the time. I remember thinking, “Let’s hope for 800 by Christmas,” and I want to say that we’re there or really close.
Tim: That’s good compared to what was originally hoped for on the one hand, right? That we have providers willing to get into the system on the one hand. I know we’re going to get into talking about the potential issues with access, but I think that was a pretty good milestone.
Desiree: It’s very encouraging, to say the least. Now we’ve just got to get all the patients to the doctors.
Tim: Okay, so let’s back up a little bit. Talk about how many there are. Over 20 thousand legal cannabis users in Utah. Is that about around a round number?
Desiree: And again, it’s going up all the time pretty steady. But yeah, just about 20 thousand. The problems that we’re seeing though, is a lot of the QMPs, some are still not recommending, they just wanted to take the course. And some are not accepting new patients. There’s different reasons. Some were just doing a handful of patients. There’s a lot of different reasons why they’ve taken the QMP course, but then those physicians aren’t necessarily… like you know, Tim, they’re not necessarily the ones that are carrying the bulk of the patients that need cards. They’re seeing their few, and then we still have the specialist doctors that are recommending just for Medical Cannabis that seem to be still very needed, right? That’s where we are. That’s actually what kind of birthed this plan that we have come up with this year for this session if you want to talk about that. If not, we can keep asking questions.
Tim: No, everybody is very interested in this.
Chris: Yeah, please share.
Tim: This new plan, right? Anything that will change or promote the plan, or talk about the plan. Everybody’s talking about this bill.
Desiree: So depending on who you talk to and depending on the moment, these changes are either referred to as huge or small. Right? It’s either a huge change, and at the same time it’s not that big of a change. It was something that I came up with when we were calling QMPs who had written letters but not cards… weren’t putting patients on the card system. Or just calling them to see if they had any questions. Just trying to get a feel for this QMPs or possible QMPs, and if we were going to get this program up off the ground.
Desiree: Knowing that, the climate for raising patient caps is not there at the legislative level. I could cry, scream, beg, whatever, and it’s not going to happen. Really, there’s only a couple doctors or QMPs that have reached that cap. So I don’t really even have a big reason to ask. It’s not like they’re overburdened and they need them raised, except for in a couple situations. So in talking with doctors I found, like I said, there was a couple reasons. You know, either they were afraid that it would risk their license. They had a policy against it from their own work. They didn’t understand, so they just didn’t feel comfortable. They’re like, “Maybe I took my QMP. Maybe I have patients that want to use it, but I just don’t feel comfortable.” Actually interesting enough, a lot of those physicians… and Tim, I know you got some of these as well, where you would have a doctor or a primary care physician from some place like Intermountain Hospital write a diagnosis letter and send it to a QMP.
Desiree: Say, “Hey, I have this patient. I think that they could be using this medication, but I don’t want to do it. Will you?” And it was on letterhead from another doctor’s office, and so that was what kind of started birthing this idea for me. What I’d proposed isn’t what’s shaken out, so I’ll tell you a little bit about what I proposed and then the changes made there. Is the proposal was is that we would allow a patient to get a diagnosis letter from their primary care physician or whoever they were seeing for that condition. They would take the letter to the pharmacist, or it could be faxed over and then verified. Then the pharmacist, who there’s no doubt the pharmacists in Utah have become specialists in Medical Cannabis. They know the products that are out there. They know what conditions they’re working for, and they understand routes and dosing. A lot of medical providers are asking the pharmacist to already handle the dosing and handle the route.
Desiree: That’s something that we already gave them the power to do. There was no change there. We were just saying, “And while you’re doing that, will you put them on the EVS?” That removes the liability that some doctors were feeling about losing their license. They were like, “If I start putting patients on the card system, I’m going to lose my license.” Even though that’s not true, it was a big concern. Also if they had a policy about it saying that they couldn’t recommend, they can diagnose. There’s nothing saying that they couldn’t diagnose a patient and pass that on to a cannabis medical pharmacist, right? So we thought that kind of soled those. In turn, the pharmacies loved this idea, because it gave them better communication with the doctors. Better communication with the patients, and they were willing to manage the EVS.
Desiree: Another thing is that a lot of medical providers had just said that they felt like managing the EVS system was almost a full time job. That in order to be proficient the it, you need to be doing it every day. If they were going to do that, then they needed to hire somebody just for the EVS, and they weren’t interested. So we did have QMPs that got their QMP, then decided not to just because of the EVS. Well the pharmacists aren’t going to have that problem. This is their job, they’re there. Part of the law that we did not like in the beginning required the pharmacist to be there from lights on to lights off. We fought that tooth and nail, didn’t get anywhere. In the end, I’m not mad, because now we have these specialists that are there and can now enter in what’s called a collaborative practice agreement with the medical professional. Get the patient on the EVS. Get them the right dose. Report back to the medical professional or QMP. I mean, sorry, PCP, or whatever we’re going to call them there. It could be an APRN or a PA or whatever.
Desiree: Then any time that this primary care physician says, “No, like I don’t want this patient on here anymore.” They just take them off and then report back that they did. They have that as well. Any renewals like that will just be handled like, “Hey, do you want to renew this patient?” The doctor says yes. The pharmacist does the renewal. If the doctor wants to see the patient at six months, or at three months or whatever, they just report to the pharmacist. “Hey, before you renew this, I would like to see my patient.” They can handle that with the patient, but then they can also leave a note for the pharmacist that says, “Don’t renew this. They haven’t come in.” Right? There’s a ton of communication that can happen there.
Desiree: When I proposed this to the legislative body, or the people working on this law specifically, the interest was definitely there. The concerns were that they felt like if a doctor or a medical professional was going to do this, they felt like they enter in these kind of agreements all the time. If they were going to do it more than say, 15 times, then they wanted them to get their QMP license at that point. Just so they said, at that point they’ve showed that there’s enough interest that we at least want them to take the class. But even if they take the class now, I believe we’re still going to allow them to pass the book and have the pharmacist get the patient on the EVS.
Desiree: If it’s an EVS issue, if it’s just a time issue, if it’s just keeping up on it or understanding it… Let’s let doctors be doctors. Let’s let them diagnose. Let’s let the pharmacists handle the rest of that stuff. That’s what it’s looking like right now. I don’t personally love the 15 cap, take a class. I hope we don’t see doctors drop off after the 15. But at least it gives us time to see if this is going to work, and again, it’s a compromise. Whenever you’re entering into big changes like this, you’re never going to get anything you want. I feel like at least in this case, I got 70-80%, right? This will be a good first step.
Desiree: Another thing is that I know that if this works really well this year, then it’s a great opportunity to go back and revisit this next year. They seem way more open to raising this number than just patient caps. Because it does keep patients with the original provider, then it leaves these specialist doctors for the patients that their doctor’s unmovable. Right? A lot of patients that absolutely could not find a doctor, the QMPs that are writing letters or getting them on the card system, are reaching the ends of their caps. Then those patients are kind of going to be left in the dark. We would like to leave those specialist doctors for these, especially like veterans, stuff like that. That’s their only option, so not flooding that market with patients that have the possibility of staying with their regular doctor.
Tim: Are doctors then, do you feel like or the legislature feel like, they’re taking the liability away? Because it seems to me, if I write letter, or if I make a recommendation for cannabis, that that is my medical decision. I still have to be the one making the decision. That decision still falls on the medical provider to make that recommendation. That to me doesn’t seem to solve the liability issue. I still feel like I need approval from my employer to do that. I still need medical malpractice to do that. How is that being handled?
Desiree: The truth is if there’s a malpractice suit or something like that, that’s still going to come back. A lot of the doctors just don’t feel comfortable. Or they feel like if they deal with the medical, if they’re recommending… because remember, the big concern was that if they cross that line and they start talking about dosing and routes, then they have entered into almost like a prescription. So we have doctors that are concerned to kind of cross that line. This just is another step removed, of them not having to feel like they’ve crossed that line into something federally illegal. When we vetted doctors, they liked the idea. But you’re right, if somebody wants to sue… like if you write a letter for me, and I fall in the –
Tim: Right. Yeah, I mean the fact is, I’m the one making the recommendation.
Desiree: Right.
Tim: I think if you did it one or two times… and I discuss this with Ray Ward as well. If you’re doing it one or two times, or three or four times, and you don’t carry malpractice for cannabis, then maybe you feel kind of comfortable with that. Whereas if you do it 275 times, you want to potentially get a malpractice policy that covers cannabis. I worked for Steward Medical Group for six years, and they forbid all of us from writing any recommendations. That’s not going to change. They’re not going to add to their… this bill would not help them. Even if you remove them to the pharmacists, I’m sure their employer… because they would have to write it in the chart, right? You would have to say, “Well, this patient comes in for chronic pain. I am going to allow my MA to tell the pharmacist that it’s okay.” I think that that won’t work, but I’m sure there’s a few pharmacists… When I talked to Dr. Ward, Ray Ward, about this, he said a very similar thing as you’re saying.
Tim: The introduction of cannabis into a practice is what the goal is, and this feels like it is a legislation that is trying to introduce cannabis into practices that wouldn’t normally have cannabis as an option. Try and stick your toe in the water.
Desiree: Dangle the carrot.
Tim: So to speak, right? A patient comes in, says, “Hey, doc. I really want to try cannabis.” You’re like, “I don’t really want to, but okay, I’ll write you this letter.” Patient comes back, says, “Hey, I had a great experience. This is really working. The pharmacists helped me get some products, and it’s working.” Then the provider says, “I’ll try that again.” Tries it three or four times, and then decides, “Okay, I want to get involved. I think I should take this a little more seriously.” Is that kind of how you see this working for providers?
Desiree: I think that’s the hope. Also, because they have a pharmacist that they can talk with. They have somebody that’s handling the dose. They’re handling the things that the primary care physician maybe doesn’t understand right in the beginning. 15 times with 15 different patient, we’re hoping that it kind of dips their toe in the water, right? They feel like they’ve done it, they’ve seen it work well. Maybe out of those 15 patients, we can assume that the least 10, it worked well, and they decided to continue use. That medical provider hopefully would then feel like they had enough experience to do it themselves, or like to take the QMP course and try.
Desiree: But we’re not removing the safety net of the pharmacist. The pharmacist is still there as a collaborative partner at that time.
Tim: Is there some safeguards to the pharmacist being involved? The pharmacist is employed by the drug manufacturer. This has always been a very big concern of mine, that you have in no other industry… except we did know that in the opioid industry, when people were involved in the manufacturing and sale of opioids-
Desiree: Right.
Tim: They tended to give people bad advice. And we ended up with a big controversy, and one of our state senators was involved in that controversy.
Desiree: Right.
Tim: We still have pharmacists now that are employed by the manufacturer of the drug they sell. Is it concerning to you, or should it be concerning to patients that we have this unique, I would say, relationship?
Desiree: If cannabis was more of a risky product, then I would say yes. If there was more risk for addiction, if there was more risk for overdose. But right now what we’re dealing with, we’re most of the time not dealing with patients that are new, and they’re trying this out for the first time. So we’re sticking them in a predatory market, where people are just trying to get them as much drugs as possible. We are just trying to stop as many patients as we can from being illegal and using the black market or going out of state. In the name of just trying to keep them safe. If you’ve been using cannabis for a year and a half, and now your letter expires, and it’s been working for you… I can’t think of very many patients that are just going to say, “All right, fine. I’m going back to opiates.”
Desiree: So this is just the avenue that we could come up with, and I do see the similarities in all of those. Like I said, if it was a riskier product, then yeah, there would be a problem. And if in the next couple years, we see that this isn’t working, this is always something that we can change. We can change it in a year from now if we want. We could have a special session and say this didn’t work out. But right now, for the sake of keeping… because the number is coming down, but in the beginning, we had potentially 10 thousand patient that had a letter, that were not going to get a card. We needed to get them on the EVS somehow, because not believing any of them, or at least believing that a majority of them were now just going to become illegal users. This was an avenue that we came up with.
Desiree: Like I said, there’s always room for change, and that has been talked about. We all know that that is how a big portion of this opiate epidemic started is when you’re picking your own funding. That can lead to a lot of problems. We’re hoping that this market doesn’t end up like that, because it’s not as addictive, and these patients are truly just looking for medical help.
Tim: Right. I believe you, and I want to ask that question, because I do have this issue with the pharmacists selling whatever vape card’s on sale. I think that the other thing that I worry about is in the cannabis space, we talk about how cannabis is so safe, it’s so safe. We also created, when we were talking about the QMP program, we use the opposite argument. Cannabis is so dangerous that we need a four hour course, and we need to have these people registered. It’s still federally illegal. It’s still a schedule one. I think we use a double standard. I do too. I catch myself using a double standard too. What I want is more patient caps. I totally see, I’m at my limit and four or five of my providers are at their limit.
Tim: The problem with what I have, is I have 15 providers. I don’t need 15.
Desiree: Right.
Tim: I could use five experts and not 15 people who aren’t as good. I think that’s a bigger problem for patients than having somebody who doesn’t know anything about cannabis write a letter. Do I mind that program? I don’t know. I guess we’ll yet to see on my side, how many patients get it. The one thing that I do think about this bill that I like is for a small percentage of patients who can not afford a specialty consultation… who can go to their primary care provider. Who can convince that person to bill the insurance on the visit for however you want to justify that. There are going to be some patients who really need the help and who can access cannabis in that way.
Tim: I think on that side, I’m a supporter. Do I like the whole thing? So far, I don’t know, Desiree.
Desiree: Right. And we have talked about still creating… we talked about it again yesterday. Creating cannabis specialists, so pockets of doctors that had taken the QMP course, maybe a little bit more education, and they didn’t have a cap. That’s not off the table. That’s something that we talk about all the time. A couple of the lobbyists and I talked about it yesterday. There’s still a lot of interest there. It’s just getting the details nailed out, or hammered out, and that we can get the legislative body on board. That’s where we’re at with that. Because the one thing that they really want is if the doctors are doing that, these specialist doctors, they want them to take insurance. They want it to be the cost of a co-pay. So if we can get there, I think we can make specialists happen.
Desiree: I think that you’re right. If I could send patients to a specialist that was doing what the pharmacist is doing, where they’re reporting back to the original doctors and saying, “This is what I put them on, and I understand the other meds and everything. But it was only costing them $35.” Yeah, that would be amazing, but we haven’t been able to get a consensus on that language. It doesn’t mean that we’re not trying. We tried really hard last year, and more pushback from the UMA this year. But it’s not off the table for this year at all.
Tim: Two questions with that is, what’s the UMA say about this bill?
Desiree: They are the ones that took it from just letting their… if you didn’t have your QMP, then you could just write the letters and send it to the pharmacist. They’re the ones that really advocated to take it down to 15.
Tim: The other question that I get a lot is why don’t you take insurance? I called Aetna and Medicare, and I asked, “Can I put this evaluation under the insurance?” Their response to me was, “Absolutely no. The claim will be denied, and you potentially could get kicked off our panel.” Have you thought about going to the insurance companies and forcing them to accept these visits and cover these visits?
Desiree: I talked with some earlier this year. I actually tried to get them to come and meet with some of the QMPs, but then Coronavirus happened, and we could no longer have meetings. The idea there was they’re not interested, but we have even the doctors of the Department of Health are doing this. They just say, “I saw a patient for pain. I saw a patient for PTSD. I recommended treatment,” and they are convinced… even Dr. Mark Babitz, who works at the Department of Health. When he writes a recommendation, he just charges copay, and he just says, “I saw the patient for pain. I saw the patient for PTSD, whatever.” He says, “I don’t report to the insurance companies when I recommend or prescribe all medications, so I don’t feel like I have to do it here.”
Desiree: The doctors that feel comfortable doing that are, and the ones that are worried… I mean I had a doctor that was doing it for months and then was like, “I feel like I just am wading into dangerous waters here,” and so he stopped then started not taking insurance. So I get it, but we did reach out to insurance companies, and they’re hesitant, for sure. They were interested to hear that some doctors were doing it, and I didn’t tell them who obviously. They do see the loophole.
Tim: This is just such a touchy subject. I mean I could dig into this all day, because there’s so many nuances, and there’s nuances that benefit one argument one way and another argument another. What do you think about all this, Chris?
Chris: Hard to keep up on all of it, really. Like you said, I was following what you were saying earlier, and I can’t agree more. It seems like you want to get more of an expert to stay as kind of the main expert when it comes to recommending cannabis, instead of just bringing all these new people on. That part just doesn’t make sense to me.
Tim: Yeah, I think so. Talking to patients, it’s one thing to have… in the beginning of the program, when we were seeing patients in March and in April, we were only getting about one in 10, maybe one in seven that had never experienced or never tried cannabis before. For a primary care provider to recommend that patient Medical Cannabis and have the pharmacist take over, most of the patients, I think that would be fine. Sorry, I guess that was a little bit unclear. But now we are seeing at least one in five of the patients that we see have no experience in cannabis at all. The average age has increased as well. Our average age female patient, for example, is 45 years old. It wasn’t that way earlier in the system.
Tim: I worry, because I want those patients to get a lot of hand holding through the process. I think cannabis is a little different than… like in med school, we learn about all of these drugs. But then a point was made to me. New drugs come on the market all the time, and we don’t get education on those new drugs. We just start writing them, and then we just kind of see how it goes. They’re deemed safe by the FDA or by whoever, and a drug rep comes in and gives us a little bit of education. Then we start to write those recommendations. This bill treats cannabis like that, right? You learn a little bit about it, you write the recommendation, and then you kind of learn as you go.
Tim: Cannabis, I don’t see it like that. You know, I see it as it’s very experiential. I like the specialist idea, but again, there are literally only a handful of specialists in the state legislating around those 10, 20, 50 QMPs. That’s not reasonable either.
Desiree: And I’m not trying to skirt around the specialist issue here. In fact, what I look at, is I guess I’m just looking at the patient and the specialist of the patient. The patient specialist is the doctor that they’ve had since birth, or the doctor that they’ve been seeing for this condition. I’m trying to keep the patient with that specialist. Instead of trying to have another doctor acknowledge all of this other stuff that they’ve gone through, and all of these other conversations and add cannabis over here. Let’s just take the bulk of the patient information with the specialist for that patient and add cannabis over here. And add a collaborative practice agreement with somebody who understands cannabis. Marry those two, and I feel like that’s where the patients are going to get the best care.
Desiree: I love cannabis specialists for other reasons, but majority of the time, I just feel like… I have a son with extreme special needs. If I had to leave his specialists to go find a cannabis specialist, I don’t know if I would do it. I don’t have to go to a new doctor every time they change his heart meds, so I would just feel more comfortable keeping him with the doctors that have truly watched him die and saved him, and done it all, right? For me, I’m trying to preserve this specialist that belongs to each patient more than a specialist that belongs to a drug.
Tim: Yeah, I like the way that you’re putting that. I like that idea. What I hear you saying is that there’s got to be more acceptance of cannabis as a medication in the healthcare community, and there needs to be more education frankly, from the specialists to those other medical providers. So that we can all become better at cannabis.
Chris: Better at cannabis. That’s something I can get behind.
Desiree: Right, can that be our new logo?
Tim: Yeah, better at cannabis. We are better at cannabis.
Desiree: Better at cannabis.
Tim: Talk to us a little bit, Desiree, about the controlled substance database and this other government list they’re threatening to put us on.
Desiree: I’m not going to talk too much on it, because I don’t like it, and I’ve been arguing it. I still don’t like it. I also don’t know that there’s anything that I can do to stop it. But what I am being allowed, and what everybody is working towards, is making sure that there are protections that don’t just… Like now I’m on a list that says I’m breaking federal law. Who would like to look at it? To be clear, you would have to have a warrant to see this list. We have looked to see if anybody has been targeted in other states on a CSD list. Those haven’t happened. I lost a lot of ground when it just hasn’t happened. I can’t say this is dangerous for patients if it’s never been dangerous for patients.
Desiree: Connor Boyack with Libertas and I are hashing out some details. I’m going to do a little bit more research to make sure that we cover the bases for patients. If we can’t get them to not be on this list, my next priority is just making sure that I offer every protection possible. The reason why they want them on is because they truly are, and for our benefit… maybe not with the CSD, but for our benefit in the long run, they want this treated like medication. If it’s going to be a federally scheduled medication, they want it on the controlled substance database. I can see that, and I think the more we can line up with regular medications, the better we are in the long run. I just don’t like this controlled substance database, because it is still federally illegal. If it wasn’t, we wouldn’t be as nervous, right?
Desiree: Connor and I are going to talk about this. We’re going to make sure that patients are protected. Brad Daw even is still involved in these discussions a little bit. He really wanted this CSD patient added to that, but he still also agrees that, let’s make sure that there’s protections. As soon as we’ve got consensus and I can talk explicitly about the protections that we’ve added, then we’ll do that. Right now, for the record, I don’t love it, I don’t want it, but I don’t think we’re-
Tim: I’ll tell you, I would say a couple of things about the CSD. One, if the federal government classifies this as a scheduled medication and reschedules it as a controlled substance then put it on the controlled substance database, they may reschedule it into a lower schedule. Then you don’t have to go on the controlled substance database. I have seen the controlled substance database used to discriminate care amongst patients, and I have talked to emergency room physicians who have told me point blank, “Patient comes in, I’m going to look them up. If they look shady at all, I’m going to look them up on the controlled substance database. If they have a weed card, I’m not giving them any narcotics.” They’re going to treat the patient differently in the emergency department. They’re going to discriminate care. That doesn’t get written down. That doesn’t get charted. That, I think, will be a tragedy for patients beyond the privacy issues. I fear for the patients in that regard, and I hope they decide not to list this on the controlled substance database.
Tim: I certainly have other concerns about the bill in general, but I would think that would be something… I would hope there would be a lot of people who support the bill, but the CSD, then we don’t support it.
Desiree: I love that with ER doctors though. I have not talked to them. My husband is a fireman. I’m going to talk to him about that too, and see if we can reach out to that demographic of care providers. I already knew that there was a hurdle with pain patients. I’ve had many of them tell me… and these are the ones that rely on a cannabis specialist, right? “If my pain doctor finds out that I am using cannabis, even PRN, then I will lose all my other opiates.” They have felt like they’ve reached this balance, where they are using this amount of Gabapentin and this amount of cannabis, and they finally have pain relief.
Desiree: They are terrified. Their care will stop on the day that they’re added to the database. I don’t have numbers to prove that it’s going to be catastrophic, and I won’t have those until after it happens. Like I said, I can throw a fit. I can say I don’t like it. I can yell it from the rooftops. But right now, until I have damage caused by this, I can’t find a way to stop it. But I if can reach out to ER doctors and I can reach out to paramedics or something that says, “Yeah, we’re going to be checking that, and yeah, we do discriminate.” If I could get them to testify, even that that is a possibility, I think maybe that gives us enough reason to say, “Can we just wait?”
Desiree: Even if it gets rescheduled federally, I don’t know if that will be enough to stop discrimination. If they ever are on the CSD, or if it gets rescheduled… if they don’t have to go on the CSD, then it stops that. If they ever have to be on there, then I think we will always have discrimination there. Still a lot of pain doctors, crazy enough, that do not believe that you can take both.
Tim: I know. I talked to one in the summer. Yeah. I get the referrals from the doc, or the patient comes in and then I call the pain specialist. I say, “Hey, they don’t want to get kicked off the pain contract.” They’re like, “Oh, yeah. They’re going to get kicked off.”
Desiree: Yeah. And then they’re-
Tim: And they can’t. That’s not fair.
Desiree: They’re taking away their… yeah. It’s a mess.
Tim: Man, I have really dominated the questions today, Chris. But this is-
Chris: No. No, no, no. It’s fine. I’ve learned a lot just sitting here listening. I mean, there’s so much to learn and so many ways to get active.
Desiree: Tim, this is your arena, right?
Chris: I just kind of want to absorb it all, you know?
Tim: Right. I mean, you’re right in my wheelhouse now. Now we’re getting to the point where I can see the things that potentially could use a change. Of course, I always have my opinion. Everybody has their own opinion and their own paradigm from which they see things. And I can really appreciate, although I think… You know, we’ve had a good discussion today about things that I don’t agree with. But I agree with some of the things that you’re talking about and some of the things that are needed with the program. It’s nice to know that in America, we can still have a useful dialogue and learn a thing or two from each other.
Desiree: Right.
Tim: We’ve proven it again, Chris.
Chris: Is that possible?
Tim: With cannabis, anything is possible.
Desiree: Right.
Chris: We’ve proven it again. We’re the myth busters. So what else? Is there any other bills that we need to talk about? Anything else that we need to talk about with changes?
Desiree: I think we need to remember that there’s a lot going on with hemp right now. I don’t have the details of that, but just know that no consensus has been found with those. So just know that those are being worked on, and… there’s something flashing. The hemp issues are being worked on, and the sponsor is not… they don’t want to put anybody out of business. They, I don’t think understood the ramifications of what the draft was. But also remember a draft is only just a draft. That is the time when it’s like, “Hey guys, this is what I’m thinking. Let me know what you’re thinking.” That’s the call to become involved.
Desiree: I always tell people, it’s really notes on a napkin. Take it for what it is. I think that we’re going to see big changes in what they proposed to do with hemp. We’ve been trying to stick a little bit closer to what is federally going on in other states, what the federal government has proposed and what’s happening in other states. That’s going to be discussed. I won’t be as involved in that. Mostly I’m just helping make sure that it’s happening, and then I’ll go back to dealing with a couple other things that we’ve got going on with patients. I did do some law enforcement education this last month. It was really good. We were going to do in person meetings, but then it was right when the governor said, “Let’s shut down again,” right before Thanksgiving.
Desiree: So we canceled all the in person meetings and did some Zoom meetings with, even sergeants, supervisors, on down to just beat cops that were watching on their phones in their cars. They had excellent questions, and the feel of all of the meetings were that they were really just wanting to do this right. Department of Health did it with me, they actually invited me. They did a presentation about what was legal, because we were finding that so many times, when I have a run-in with a patient, the police officer truly didn’t understand the law. So they wrote a ticket, funny enough, the code is usually like 58-37, whatever, which is the exact code that says you’re legal, but they just didn’t understand. So they thought, “Well, I’ll give the ticket, and then it will be worked out in court.” Then the court was turning around and saying, “Well, the cop wouldn’t have written the ticket if this wasn’t illegal, so we’re going to prosecute.” It’s been a mess.
Desiree: Having these education classes has been amazing, because they truly needed the education. But since that day… then we made a handout that we gave to them for them to give to all of their officers. It doesn’t tell them how to handle a traffic stop or an encounter with a Medical Cannabis patient, but it gives them the law. Like, this means this… and I can send it over to you. We’re actually creating one, a patient toolbox letter as well, just for patients to carry.
Tim: Oh.
Desiree: It’s almost done. It’s basically done, we just need to make sure that lawyers look over it and it’s good. The patients can carry this as well and say, “Okay, but look up these law codes really quick.” We not only say look them up. We cite them. So it’s boring, because it’s just, this is the problem, this is the law code. You say that I can’t have it out of a blister pack, here it is, you know? You say I can’t have raw flower? Yes, I can. So because I have a Medical Cannabis Card, you can’t charge me with paraphernalia because I have a vape pen. Which they’re like, “Well, we’re not going to give you possession, but we can still give you paraphernalia,” has happened a couple times. We have those written out.
Desiree: We gave one to the law enforcement officers. I’m hopeful, and I’m crossing my fingers here… but since we did that, I have not had any cannabis patients come to me saying that they were targeted by law enforcement even though they were legal. That’s been the longest span since this plan started, that I haven’t had patients come to me. I’m hopeful that we actually did see some change there. That the trickle down and the education got passed around. They really were trying to understand. Some of them had said they had a traffic stop, and they were unable to get on their… I forget the name of it. It’s a weird name. But they have a system, where they can look and check if you have anything, a controlled substance, I believe, and cannabis. We put it on the same one. They could just look. It doesn’t say anything else except, “Desiree Hennessy, yes or no.” It’s like, “Desiree Hennessy. Does she have a Medical Cannabis Card? Yes.” No other information.
Desiree: Some officers were simply just, “I can’t get on that. When I’ve tried, I haven’t been able to, so I gave a ticket.” So the Department of Health was able to talk them through that and help get them in touch with people that would help them be able to access that and understand it. Hopefully that made some big changes, and we’ll quit seeing patients targeted.
Tim: Yeah, that’s important.
Chris: What was it yesterday, you were talking about some PTSD qualification on a video I was watching on Facebook?
Desiree: Yeah, so the product review board meets every month. They are led by our friend, Perry Fine. They meet, and they discuss products. They recently started discussing conditions that we’ve approved. The product review board, their job is not to take conditions or add conditions. That was done by the legislature. But they do make recommendations, and it’s up to the state to follow them or not. They have taken a couple of different conditions. One was MS a couple months ago. They were like, “That has little to no value. Medical Cannabis, we feel like has little to no value.” Then they vote on it. Well yesterday in the morning, what they did was, there was some confusion and a lot of concern, that they had voted that with Medical Cannabis, they felt like it had no value, zero value with PTSD.
Desiree: They voted as a board that that is their position now. Which is unnerving if you’re a PTSD patient. That does not mean that they have the power to take it off the list, but they will mention that as a recommendation to the state of Utah. I do not see them taking it off the conditions list this year. It is something that we all need to be aware of, and especially me, and doctors that have put patients on for PTSD. We need to be ready to push back if that arises. Like I said, we have no reason that they’re going to make any movement on that this year. I do believe it’s the first condition that they’ve said they’ve found had zero value, with Medical Cannabis had zero value with PTSD. I don’t think any of the other ones that they voted on had zero benefit.
Desiree: Now they’re just looking at studies from outside of Utah. They’re not looking at patients. They’re not talking to them. They’re just looking at studies. That’s what they voted on.
Tim: Gosh.
Desiree: I hate it.
Tim: That’s so frustrating. The MS one is frustrating as well.
Desiree: It hurts my heart.
Tim: I mean, I can hear my MS patients telling me, “If I don’t have cannabis in the morning, the middle of the day…” they’re low dose people. “I can tell when I adjust my dose, and I feel better, and I can do more.” All these things. The PTSD. There’s not going to be good studies. These are psychological illnesses that take people discussing this with people who use the product. I have some data. I have anecdotal data that I could share with the board, you know? Self-reported data.
Desiree: Right. And that’s what I told them. I said, “You know, it’s kind of sad…” when I was talking to the Department of Health. I said, “It’s sad, because maybe you don’t have good data from other states or out of country.” Although I’ve seen some, but the product review board is so very critical. But I said, “The funny thing with PTSD is I don’t get a call from the patient themselves saying, ‘Oh my gosh, that was wonderful. That helps me so much.’ I get a call from the spouse, and they say, ‘Wow, I’ve got my husband back… or my wife is finally happy again.'” And it’s hard, because I’ve heard those testimonials. The thought that somebody easily just looked through a book and said, “We see no value.” It hurts after months of getting to know these patients, loving them, and seeing their progress. Seeing them be suicidal and then not.
Desiree: It’s hard to hear. It definitely is just hard to hear. Now one thing that we need to remember is that the product review board is probably our next biggest hurdle to stop us from adding any conditions to the conditions list that we have. Although they don’t get to add them or take them off themselves, the legislative body is relying heavily on them to do the research on what conditions we can add. That’s why everybody hates the compromise, but we have to remember… we fought tooth and nail to get anything on paper. Everything we have had on paper has not been taken away. Once the compromise happened, they have not backtracked at all. We knew it was still gonna be hard to expand it, especially the conditions list. We’ve tried every year. But like it or hate it, the compromise is that safety net that has stopped them from taking anything else.
Desiree: If we had passed Prop 2, which again, I will say it til I’m blue in the face, we never never thought that we would keep Prop 2. From the day we started writing it. Did we want to? Yes. Did we think that they were going to let us keep it? No, we live in Utah. But we knew that after we walked out with the compromise, not loving all of it, but realizing that they wouldn’t take any of that away. They haven’t. Adding is hard, but the product review board is probably our biggest obstacle in adding new cases. I personally would like to see sleep disturbances added. I felt like we had some interest in adding some anxiety and depression, but then at the end, it was decided that maybe we’d let the product review board decide if they recommend it.
Tim: You’re going to have a tough time with anxiety with the product review board. Tough, tough time.
Desiree: Well, because they do believe that anxiety, bipolar… they still believe that mental issues can have a potential of making it worse. Almost like a 50/50 chance. Like, it could make it worse. It could make it better. They don’t want to put patients at risk, but my thought is, are there other medications you’re trying not putting the patient at risk for other things? I mean, my husband’s a fireman, and he’ll tell anybody, “I’ve never been on a suicide patient that wasn’t on an anti depressant.” He’s like, whatever reason that is, it’s either not working, or whatever else. He said, “It’s not stopping all of them, so why not allow them to try something else before they take an exit?”
Tim: Yeah. Well, Desiree, this has been great. I’m always excited to talk to you, because I believe that you have the patient’s interest in mind. You definitely want what’s best for the patients, and you go for it. So bravo. I think you do good work when it comes to that, and I appreciate you being willing to come on and talk about the process. And be honest about the process, about how it’s going, and what you think the pros and cons are of what’s being proposed. So Utah Patient’s Coalition, I think it’s a good-
Chris: Yeah, thank you.
Tim: It’s a good place for Utahans to know they’re getting good support.
Desiree: Thank you, thank you. We have a Facebook page, which is probably the best way, especially if they’re watching this. Utah Patients on Facebook. We have Twitter. We have Instagram, that I don’t use a lot, but I have somebody that’s just offered to do media. So hopefully you’ll see stuff there. I just can’t do Twitter. I’m too old. We also have a website, so UtahPatients.org. If you get on our website, you can go up to a tab like compassionate use board. Say you have a good or bad experience, you can leave a review. That just helps us know when we talk to them, what concerns to bring up or stuff like that. It’s a little interactive there, so…
Chris: Anything else that you guys want to talk about before we wrap this episode up or anything?
Tim: I don’t think so.
Chris: Okay, we’ll go over more things in future episodes, Tim. To let listeners know as the end of the year kind of wraps up with getting cards and what not.
Tim: Yeah.
Chris: How can people get ahold of you, Tim? What’s the best way for that, if they want to get their card or anything?
Tim: Best way is utahmarijuana.org. We’ve got educational video series that we have that have been posted there. We always host the podcast there and do a transcription or a summary of those, if you want to look through and you want to pick up on the cannabis culture in Utah. Kind of learn about all the history and the stakeholders. We have a lot of people on here now, Chris. So utahmarijuana.org is a great place to go. How about you?
Chris: Very cool. You can listen to my other podcast, IAmSaltLake.com. I got a really fun episode actually coming out this weekend, so a couple days after this episode releases on all the dog friendly places in Salt Lake City that you can go to. If you’re a cannabis patient, and you have a dog, you might want to check that episode out.
Tim: That’ll be a great Sunday morning.
Chris: Yeah, otherwise, just reach out to Tim or myself, if you want to come on the show and leave us a review or reach out and say hello. Yeah, we’ll wrap this episode up then, you guys. Thanks for coming on, Desiree.
Desiree: Thank you, guys.
Tim: Thanks, Desiree. Stay safe out there, everyone.
Loni and Paul from Buddy Jane join us from Southern California on this episode of the podcast to talk about their brand new social media app for cannabis users.
Loni and Paul join the podcast from Southern California, where recreational cannabis use is legal in some counties, to tell us all about their brand new social media app for cannabis users, BuddyJane.com.
It’s a social app that was developed by a couple of ‘grown stoners’ who looked at the landscape of tech and cannabis and saw there was nothing that allowed like-minded people to interact. So BuddyJane can be described as “an IG that got pregnant by Weedmaps and had a party with a bunch of people!”
When people access the app, they are asked if they are 21 (or 18 with a Medical Cannabis Card), but the app is for everybody, not just Medical Cannabis patients. It is global and already has users in Europe, the UK, Australia, Asia, and South America.
They’re starting to see a global connection of the cannabis community. This is particularly relevant since Facebook and IG flag and delete cannabis content, and delete/kick users off the sites— as they did to comedy duo Cheech & Chong. This censorship in mainstream social media was one of the reasons they started BuddyJane – to give the cannabis community a voice that won’t get muted.
Tim confirms that this constitutes a significant difficulty in running a cannabis-related business, or allowing business owners to educate or promote using the words cannabis or marijuana. This pertains across the board, on Instagram, Facebook, Google, YouTube, and Twitter.
The app is monitored to a degree, though they do want to represent the counterculture that cannabis represents. They’re not allowing any pornography, overtly sexual content or any illegal activity on the app.
Their users have to operate with verified business accounts before they are allowed any sort of sales activity. They want to create a safe environment and support the people that put in all the work, money, time and energy that it takes to run a legit cannabis business.
They’re a small startup, though it’s grown a lot faster than anticipated. They have a couple thousand users already and have begun to build a community. Some people who have joined Buddy Jane have become brand ambassadors and are helping them monitor the community (a way to self-police the app). They have already needed to turn away users trying to sell cocaine and guns.
The cannabis community has many patients who use cannabis for medical reasons; and it has a culture of enlightened business with an honest and positive vibe that they want to protect and foster. To keep it that way, they will kick off any ‘cockroaches’ that threaten the ethos.
Every decision that has been made on this app has been a decision by Paul and Loni. They have a team that does the technical support and coding, but every click, every module, every wireframe, every piece of the app requires their direction and approval.
Before Buddy Jane, Paul and Loni had been in the software world working on complex projects. Having worked successfully on projects before, they started looking at the cannabis landscape and detected a void (and opportunity), leading them to jump in and start development of their app.
The core of Buddy Jane is a social media connection piece, so users will find it similar to other social platforms. Loni and Paul wanted to create an all-in-one spot for all things cannabis.
The main goal is to make a single social space to connect all things cannabis. They’ve also just come out with Bud Cast, where you can live stream cannabis-related events, podcasts, and more.
Their future roadmap is pretty aggressive, and they’re currently negotiating a deal with a crypto currency company to establish reward points that users can use for discounts at participating dispensaries. In essence, they’re creating a self-sustaining ecosystem within the cannabis community that will benefit the community as a whole.
They’re looking at creating a filter for those who would prefer to use the app anonymously. People are not required to reveal their identity, and the app is not selling any CBD, THC, or flower products, making it safe to use for all.
Buddy Jane is essentially just a social media advertising app that people can access for free. Users of the app have freedom to be themselves, contact like-minded people and have access to an abundance of information.
There is no problem with trolls, or people being judged. The online shop mentioned will just be for small, ancillary products (a bit like Craigslist) with no plant-based products being sold. This aspect is still under development.
Loni has a background in design and 3D animation. Their app has changed greatly over the year-and-a-half of its development. However, one of the biggest surprises for him was how the community immediately embraced Buddy Jane.
They developed the app with a political aim— they want the community to be aware of some of the less-than-admirable motives that lie behind the move towards legalizing cannabis (namely money and greed). The cannabis community needs to pay close attention to the laws that are being passed. Their leaders must be given a platform to be heard so that they can fight for real change and have a voice to change perceptions, ideally leading to changes in law.
That’s been one of the biggest surprises for them— how this political motivation behind the app has been so fully embraced. This creates a powerful platform to democratize the cannabis movement. Hopefully Buddy Jane will contribute to meaningful change by uniting the cannabis community in large numbers to make their collective voice heard, despite media restrictions.
They have an active social media presence on Instagram and Twitter. They also have some partnerships in place that will allow for larger user numbers once they officially launch (e.g. with Cheech Marin and his brand Cheech’s Private Stash that will help them in their rollout). They will also feature Cheech’s animated series exclusively on Buddy Jane.
There’s also the cryptocurrency component and strategic partnerships in place for launch. Many people who’ve joined Buddy Jane are now also promoting the app by tagging friends on IG and other platforms.
They believe Buddy Jane will release on Android early in 2021, with an established community to help it succeed.
They are projecting between a quarter million to half million in the first year, of people downloading the app. Because it’s a global app, they’re starting to see users already picking up in Europe.
The app could also be a great conduit for information about new dispensaries opening, or simply for getting in contact with like-minded people. They believe the usership of the app will just grow organically, with the enormous commercial potential of the app appealing to the canna-business community.
No, first of all, the app doesn’t keep any personal information. Texts and chat messages are all encrypted at transit and encrypted at rest, so the privacy of users is secure. People also aren’t required to share any personal information or their location.
They do want people to use common sense and are not encouraging any illegal activity, so they’re not anticipating the Feds would have any reason to mess with app users. Buddy Jane is not a tool for illegal activity.
Loni and Paul are ploughing money back into the app for further development. They are self-funded so far, though they’ve had venture firms given a closer look lately. They are not opposed to funding at a later stage, but want to retain creative control, allowing them to take a cue from the community in terms of app direction in the future.
They want everybody to ‘hop on’ and join their cannabis community. There’s an overview and a brochure for businesses that list their services. They want to bring the education, science, and business communities into one place. The app is emphatically not simply for recreational use. There are mothers on there who use CBD for their child and professionals who use it in their daily lives for medicinal purposes.
Utah is a Medical Cannabis state with just over 20,000 legal medical users. The culture in Utah is that people are looking for others who also use cannabis, and are seeking education, which is severely lacking on social media. Tim’s Medical Cannabis patients are continually looking for more science from legitimate sources.
Connect with Loni and Paul on BuddyJane.com or follow Buddy Jane on Instagram and Twitter.
Tim is at UtahMarijuana.org if people need help getting their medical cannabis cards.
Chris is at the IAmSaltLake.com podcast.
Kenyon Snow, a cannabis patient of Tim’s, shares his struggle with severe ulcerative colitis, and how he benefited from Medical Marijuana while traditional drugs were not effective.
Kenyon was diagnosed with severe ulcerative colitis in 2014. He was put on immunosuppressants, like Humira, and was okay for a couple of years. However, in 2016, he had a bad flare-up on his wedding day. He was put on steroids to control it. After returning from his honeymoon, he had another colonoscopy before being put on Remicade, another strong immunosuppressant.
In February of 2017, another colonoscopy and biopsy were done, returning a precancerous result. This led to Kenyon’s colon being removed in March 2017. In July of 2017, his rectum was also removed. He then had an ileostomy, requiring him to wear a bag from the small intestine. His stoma is not on his right side, as is usual, because when he had a revision done in 2018 which caused him to develop necrotizing fasciitis, a flesh-eating bacteria. Two weeks after that surgery, they went in to cut away a large part of his abdomen and move his stoma to the left side of his body.
This year he had a hernia, right next to his stoma. It looked to have become strangulated, so Kenyon was put on Oxycodone for a month (which he hates and describes as a nightmare). However, because of Kenyon’s past history, along with COVID hitting, they decided to hold off on additional surgery until absolutely necessary.
There are different levels of ulcerative colitis. The steroid prescribed is usually Prednisone, 60mg a day, which has unfortunate side-effects like water-retention. People can also have bad psychoactive responses to these steroids. Kenyon confirms that he nearly broke up with his wife, his then fiancée, because the Prednisone gave him bad paranoia.
Humira is also used often, which is a drug you inject weekly. You have to keep it refrigerated and it’s very expensive, along with being painful to inject. Remicade, which must be specially approved, is a once-a-month IV infusion that patients must undergo.
The more serious surgery that Kenyon had is called a total abdominal colectomy and proctectomy. Any further surgery would have been problematic, as they would have been dealing with a so-called ‘hostile abdomen’ (ie. enormous amounts of scar tissue).
Kenyon’s brother-in-law in Arizona, where Medical Cannabis was already legal, got diagnosed with ulcerative colitis and also had to have his colon removed. He found that cannabis was very effective for pain relief. On a visit to Arizona in March, just as everything was shutting down for COVID, Kenyon decided to try it as well. He got a vape pen, and for the first time since his diagnosis in 2014, was pain-free without opioids.
It was the first time he had ever used cannabis, and his wife was initially apprehensive about its usage. At the time, Tim was one of the only QMPs in Utah. Kenyon accessed Tim’s website from Arizona and set up an appointment.
Tim was just setting up his office, and with the COVID restrictions patients were being assisted carside. Most of the consultation would be done by phone, followed by payment being taken by credit card, in-person, by those wearing masks and gloves. People needed that face-to-face contact. Tim remembers clearly that Kenyon had no previous experience with cannabis at the time.
He first started using vape cartridges but now prefers flower, as he finds it most effective and the easiest way to gauge appropriate doses. He also can’t help but remember when people died of ‘popcorn lung’ as a result of counterfeit vape cartridges. He buys his flower from the pharmacies and only uses vape cartridges when flower is not readily available.
Once Zion Pharmaceuticals started releasing products, Kenyon started purchasing from them. He mostly uses a vaporizer and considers Zion the best flower he’s tried (particularly their Pink Starburst Petrol strain, which has a wonderful aroma).
Kenyon admits that talking to his wife about his medical cannabis usage wasn’t easy, as cannabis (even now) is still somewhat of a taboo subject. It was a difficult subject to raise, particularly because they both belong to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. She had the misconception, as many do, that the church was completely against cannabis use. Kenyon showed her in church doctrine where they’ve come out and said that as long as you have a Medical Card, there’s no problem with it. At this point she became more comfortable with the idea.
That’s when Kenyon started his Instagram account to try and educate people who had similar health issues that they could benefit from cannabis. He is trying to show them that it is a safe alternative to traditional medical drugs, especially when it comes to pain relief. Apart from a single daily antidepressant, Kenyon is now off of other strong traditional medications that he had been prescribed for years.
For the most part, close friends and family who knew his medical history and what he had been through, were understanding of his usage— particularly given that Kenyon had been so addicted to opioid painkillers that he was considering checking himself into rehab. Tim points out that opioids cause a lot of problems with constipation because they slow down the bowel function ‘to a crawl’ and can cause people to lose their appetite.
At work some people are still ambiguous about Kenyon’s Medical Cannabis use, and wonder if Medical Cannabis users are always ‘legit’. He thinks the biggest thing is to get rid of that stigma that is still attached to cannabis use so that people will just accept it as normal.
Obviously, inhaling takes effect a lot more quickly than ingesting, but then ingesting lasts a lot longer, so his use depends on what he needs. He’s got flower, vape cartridges, gummies, and tinctures. When he’s in a lot of pain, especially at nighttime, then he’ll take a gummy because he knows it’ll last all day and he’ll wake up feeling good.
Yes, he does so because every now and then to help with the nausea caused by his GI tract being messed up. He just got a new vape cartridge from Deseret Wellness (who recently opened in Provo) called Maui Wowie, made by Dragonfly. Hee highly recommends this cartridge for relieving nausea and leaving your mind clear.
Kenyon says that he started with low doses because he wanted to make sure that his body could tolerate it, and needed to determine how different dosages would affect him. His usage then increased from there. However, he now only uses medical cannabis when needed, which is a few times a week.
Whenever Kenyon tells people that he has a Medical Card for cannabis, one of the first questions they usually ask is, “what about recreational use”? Kenyon doesn’t see an issue with people who use cannabis recreationally. He thinks of it along the same lines as alcohol. When used responsibly, there is no harm, especially in Utah, where there is a narrow window of qualifying conditions (with some, like sleep disorders and irritable bowel syndrome, being removed from the list of qualifying conditions).
Tim points out that he understands no conditions will be added to this qualifying list in the immediate future. He believes it would take a big groundswell of public opinion to get any movement on that front.
He didn’t try anything that was “pharmaceutical” grade. He had tried some CBD oil just for trying to help with pain and sleep, but he didn’t notice a huge difference. It was also so expensive that it wasn’t really worth it. It was just better to stay on the sleeping medication he was on at the time.
Now that he has his Medical Card however, he’s able to buy CBD flower at the pharmacy. This CBD actually works really well for him. He likes to vaporize one part CBD to one part THC, and finds that effective for pain and anxiety without it affecting his clarity of mind.
His mom was apprehensive at first, having grown up in an era that viewed marijuana in a very negative light. Kenyon sent her articles that convinced her of Medical Cannabis’ legitimacy. But overall, his family has been super supportive – particularly having seen the huge change it’s made to his well-being. He can now fully participate in family events and enjoy life again.
Get in touch with Kenyon on his Instagram, @beehive.cannabis.culture
Tim is at UtahMarijuana.org if people need help getting their medical cannabis cards.
Chris is at the IAmSaltLake.com podcast.
