There are a lot of cannabis-related phenomena that, up until recently, were things people just talked about behind closed doors. But with cannabis legalization spreading across the country, some of these phenomena are starting to come out of the closet. One such phenomenon is known as the “cannabis shakes.”
Anecdotal evidence suggests that the cannabis shakes are legit; people really do experience them from time to time. Perhaps you have. At any rate, the cannabis shakes are not dangerous. Yes, they can be uncomfortable and a little disconcerting, but shaking after consuming cannabis is not likely to harm you.
We know from the testimonies of Medical Cannabis users that the shakes are legit. Unfortunately, we don’t know what causes them. There hasn’t been a whole lot of scientific research into this particular phenomenon. That is going to change at some point but until then, we can only offer some educated guesses as to why some cannabis users experience the shakes.
The Cannigma website recently published a great post talking about the cannabis shakes. They offered a number of possible causes:
Animal studies have demonstrated that THC can cause a drop in body temperature. The same thing has been observed in human beings as well. So if that’s the case, even a slight drop in body temperature would make a person feel cold. That could be enough to induce shaking.
As a cannabis user, you might be so preoccupied with the shakes that you don’t realize you feel cold. Figuring it out would prompt you to grab a blanket or throw on a jacket. As you warmed up, the shakes would go away.
Some people experience mild anxiety when using cannabis. For others, the anxiety could be significant enough to cause shaking. It is really not all that different from being so angry that you’re shaking, or even being so scared by something that you get the shakes. It’s just your emotions getting the better of you.
It is possible that some people get the cannabis shakes because they combine their Medical Cannabis with other stimulants. For example, have you ever heard people say they avoid coffee because it makes them jittery? The caffeine in coffee is a stimulant. If you were to experience the shakes first thing in the morning, after drinking a cup of coffee and then using Medical Cannabis, chances are that you’re experiencing the result of combining multiple stimulants.
Using too much cannabis in too short a time can result in a phenomenon known as “greening out.” We recently published another post discussing this phenomenon, if you’re interested. That said, one of the symptoms of greening out is feeling anxious or uneasy. Combine those feelings with another symptom, increased heart rate, and you could experience the shakes.
Experiencing the shakes can be a bit unpleasant. Is there anything you can do about it? Yes, but only after you figure out the exact trigger. If you are shaking because you are cold, put on some warmer clothing. If the shakes are a result of greening out, slow down. Do not use so much cannabis in so short a time.
As a Medical Cannabis patient, don’t be alarmed if you experience the shakes from time to time. The shakes are a normal reaction to the drug that some patients experience. It is not a dangerous condition, and it generally goes away on its own. If you persistently experience the shakes, talk with your QMP or PMP about using CBD instead.
Episode 91 of Utah in the Weeds features Collin Mekan, a beloved patient experience agent at Utah Therapeutic Health Center. Collin’s friendly demeanor, great sense of humor, and knowledge of Medical Cannabis have made him an invaluable team member at UTTHC.
We started this episode with a brief overview of Collin’s work experience within the cannabis industry. Before joining UTTHC, Collin worked in cannabis cultivation. [03:25]
Collin’s knowledge of cannabis and the human body’s endocannabinoid system help UTTHC’s patients feel comfortable with cannabis medicine. [06:23]
Collin spends some of his free time playing music. He said he owns several guitars and he likes to “folk out” now and then. He and Tim shared some of their memories about learning to play instruments as students. [11:57]
Next, they talked about cannabis and other plant-based medicines. Tim and Collin agree that Utah’s Medical Cannabis patients should have the legal right to grow their own medicine. [15:56]
Collin and Tim touched on the spiritual aspects of cannabis use – a topic that doesn’t often get discussed in a medical setting. Then they talked about some of the legal pitfalls Utah’s Medical Cannabis users could face. [20:04]
Collin told us about his experience turning 40, and Tim also shared a few insights about being in his early 40s. [23:29]
Next, they talked about the therapeutic potential of some of the lesser-known cannabinoids, like CBG and CBN. Both hope to see more non-psychoactive products available to Utah’s Medical Cannabis patients. [24:41]
Collin told us about his own use of Medical Cannabis, including the use of cannabis to deal with social anxieties. One benefit of Medical Cannabis is “layering,” or using multiple delivery methods to achieve the desired effect. [31:15]
Tim and Collin discussed the stigma and stereotypes surrounding cannabis, and how Utah is already ahead on that front. [36:18]
Tim mentioned the Discover Marijuana YouTube channel’s series of giveaways in March. This led to a discussion about Tim and Collin’s favorite dry herb vaporizers. [38:41]
Collin talked about visiting Scotland for his 4o birthday and some of his other travels with his wife. [41:30]
Next, they discussed the supportive atmosphere at Utah Therapeutic Health Center, which echoes the familial quality of Utah’s Medical Cannabis community. [42:32]
When asked about his favorite cannabis strain, Collin said it’s more important to focus on the cannabinoid, terpene, and flavonoid content of the product. [45:46]
We wrapped up the episode with a discussion about cannabis cultivation, and the opportunities Utah has yet to explore. [47:55]
Tim Pickett:
Welcome everyone out to episode 91 of Utah In The Weeds. My name is Tim Pickett and I’m the host, here with you and Colin Mekan, a friend of mine, and I think the only person in Utah who has both experienced growing and worked in the patient side of the medical cannabis program. Very excited to share this with you because his perspective and his experience is unique.
Tim Pickett:
For those of you who want to get into this industry, listen to Colin’s experience when he talks about how far he drove and the sacrifices that he made and was willing to make in order to get into the industry, the cannabis space. Which is very heartening.
Tim Pickett:
Then his experience with the patients and how that experience helped him grow into, well, really one of our best experienced agents. And somebody who really cares about people and cares about that education and their health, helping them all along the way, transition from prescription medications to natural therapy and plant therapy with the cannabis plant.
Tim Pickett:
I Also want to mention that right now we have started the March giveaway series. We’ve partnered with DaVinci Vaporizers for March for our Discover Marijuana YouTube channel. You can go to Discover Marijuana on YouTube, subscribe, and then comment on this week’s Discover Marijuana video on our YouTube channel. You must be a United States resident aged 21 or older, or a Utah medical cannabis cardholder, to win. There are, of course, a few people under 21 that are medical cannabis cardholders here in Utah and they would be eligible as well.
Tim Pickett:
But we’ll announce the prizes during the videos launched on Wednesdays. Okay? That is the rule. Basically subscribe to Discover Marijuana on YouTube, comment on this week’s Discover Marijuana video on that YouTube channel, and you’ll be entered to win. Every week of March those prizes are going to increase and everybody who’s entered will continue to be part of that drawing and part of that.
Tim Pickett:
It’s really a cool program, we’re really excited to give back to the community here with some swag and some DaVinci products. They’re a really good medical vaporizer product for dry flower, if you want to use flower in Utah this is a non-flame state and will continue to be a non-flame state for the foreseeable future. There was no discussion in the legislation this year about adding flames, whatsoever. Anticipate that’s going to continue for years to come.
Tim Pickett:
Here’s this interview with Colin. Just a great guy. A lot of talk about the endocannabinoid system. I hope you enjoy this episode. Subscribe on any podcast player that you have access to, Utah In The Weeds. I’m Tim Pickett, thanks for listening.
Tim Pickett:
Yeah, okay. Tell everybody your full name and what you do.
Collin Mekan:
My name is Collin Michael freaking Mekan and I am a patient experience agent here at UTTHC, working for UtahMarijuana.org.
Tim Pickett:
What did you do before this?
Collin Mekan:
Oh, at one point I was working for True North in cultivation, moved on-
Tim Pickett:
Our friend Brandon.
Collin Mekan:
My friend Brandon Alonzo, big shout-out to him, taught me everything that he knew. I was in charge of the mothers and their clones at one point, which I really enjoyed.
Tim Pickett:
Did you get to be involved in that, when they were in their new facility?
Collin Mekan:
I did. I was a big part of that move. I was working with them in Plymouth, along with indoor and outdoor Riley, who are now with Standard [crosstalk 00:04:13].
Tim Pickett:
Yeah, for those of you who don’t know Riley Meyer, you should listen to whatever episode that is, it’s probably in the 60s, 70s.
Collin Mekan:
It’s a good one, absolutely.
Tim Pickett:
It was a good one. Yeah, go back and listen to that.
Collin Mekan:
Yes. Riley’s incredibly knowledgeable. We would drive three hours a day back and forth, going to Plymouth in commitment to that job. But at one point we were just in a little warehouse out in the middle of nowhere and it was a lot of fun to help make that expansion.
Tim Pickett:
Was that the first thing you did in cannabis?
Collin Mekan:
It is. I really have to make a shout-out as well to my friend Andrea Silva and Matt [Chiota 00:04:49] Vagabond, just for getting me into the industry once Proposition 2 passed. It was a great experience.
Tim Pickett:
Okay. Talk about that. You drove three hours?
Collin Mekan:
I did.
Tim Pickett:
Who in their right mind, for a job?
Collin Mekan:
Passionate people, Tim.
Tim Pickett:
Right.
Collin Mekan:
Very passionate, committed people.
Tim Pickett:
Okay. It’s like I set you up for that question.
Collin Mekan:
Yes, thank you very much, Tim. We were very passionate. We all felt the same, that the universe was taking us in a direction and we were just going with the current of it and all meeting each other while were doing. And really inspiring each other and piquing each other’s interest and learning from that.
Tim Pickett:
Do you feel like… What made you switch from cultivation then to the patient side of things? [crosstalk 00:05:32].
Collin Mekan:
I was relieved from duty at one point. I was working for Harvest as one of their managers and they made a switch. I found my position dissolved. Then I found myself without a job for a little while. I just twirled my mustache and thought-
Tim Pickett:
It’s pretty nice.
Collin Mekan:
Thank you. Unemployment and cat oil, ear wax, and human saliva, just twirling away. But eventually I kept educating myself through your videos, Tim, and it was very Utah specific. One day I noticed at the bottom of the website it said careers. I just pressed that button there and here I am.
Collin Mekan:
I like to say this, I feel like I’m on a different side of cultivation now where I feel I get to see this community grow. Cultivating a community instead.
Tim Pickett:
Yeah. Nice. That’s a really good way to look at it. I haven’t met anybody, except you, who’s been on both sides of this. Right?
Collin Mekan:
I love it.
Tim Pickett:
From the cultivation and the growing side and the patient care side. You have an experience and a perspective that nobody else, you’re the only one, literally [crosstalk 00:06:42]. Yeah, you really are the only one.
Tim Pickett:
Here, one of the reasons why I wanted to get you on this podcast was that perspective. Because you see patients and something, I don’t know what it is, some of it is the passion for cannabis as medicine, some of it is your knowledge it seems like. But there is something different about the way you talk to people than the way, really, everybody else.
Tim Pickett:
I love everybody who’s here, don’t me wrong about that, but there is something a little different about it.
Collin Mekan:
I can honestly say that stemmed from one of our original meetings that you were a part of, where you mentioned treat these people like they’re your family. Treat them like they’re your grandmother and that you have a great connection with these people.
Collin Mekan:
I really took that to heart, Tim, and I try to use it every day. I feel real passionate for these people and I’m excited for them on this journey. There’s still a huge stigma to it and I Feel like we’re breaking that every day.
Collin Mekan:
I also feel like one day we’re going to look back and feel like we were part of a movement rather than individuals getting their medical cannabis card. Because what better place to do this than here? It’s really working.
Tim Pickett:
Yeah. Walk us through what you do here. How do you talk to patients? When we worked in Bountiful, I’d do the visit, we’d talk through all of their medical history and the evaluation process and give them basically the key to the door. Then they come to you. What are you excited about telling people when you talk to them?
Collin Mekan:
I think that that’s my job. I try to get them excited about it. Recently I had somebody approach me outside of work and tell me that I got her her first card. I was very proud of that, and still I was able to give her some pointers and some tricks to saving some money.
Collin Mekan:
I just like to keep people pretty excited about their endocannabinoid receptor system. It’s pretty fascinating that we even have it, to be honest with you.
Collin Mekan:
But if I can get people excited about that and let them know what their options are, then we can really make the program succeed.
Tim Pickett:
For me with cannabis, it started out a lot about the plant and about the endocannabinoid system and choosing to use the right strains or the right products. There’s a lot to that now and we give a lot of education about that.
Tim Pickett:
But there’s also something that seems to be underlying and cannabis is really just the tool that we use. Because when you talk to patients, you’re not getting them excited, it seems like, about their endocannabinoid system almost as much as you’re getting them excited about learning something new. Right? And taking control a little bit.
Collin Mekan:
Absolutely. They’re 100% in charge of this whole situation. I love to inform them of that because I find that incredibly empowering and kind of beautiful at the same time. Some of our patients, that’s quite a relief for them. You see that every day.
Tim Pickett:
Yeah. I think that’s one of the most powerful things that we do. I mean it’s like Lance Armstrong wrote the book It’s Not About The Bike. I feel like that in some ways here, that it’s-
Collin Mekan:
That it’s not about the [bowl 00:10:00]?
Tim Pickett:
It’s not about the bowl. I mean it kind of is, but that’s just the key and the tool that we use to get people to wake up.
Collin Mekan:
Also I like to point out to people these new devices. A nice vaporizer really allows you to give new life and respect to your marijuana. Saves those terpene profiles, they’re known as precision vaporizers. Then you can stretch out your product by saving your AVB and really doing whatever you want with it.
Collin Mekan:
Once I realized that, I started eating my AVB, putting it on my ice cream at night. But I sleep the whole night through and that’s a miracle for me sometimes, totally uninterrupted.
Tim Pickett:
How much have you learned here versus what you were exposed to when you were growing or in cultivation?
Collin Mekan:
I’ve learned quite a bit here, because my focus was able to shift a little bit. When I was working in cultivation I was very plant oriented. When I was working with clones, I had a dream I was growing roots out of the back of my neck and that was very unnerving.
Collin Mekan:
But now that I’m working with patients, that’s very rewarding. I feel like I’m very connected to this community, where before working with the plants was amazing but my face was in a plant every day. Here I get to actually communicate and see how this is helping people. It feels like quite the blessing.
Tim Pickett:
Have you… You’ve used a bunch of different ways now, that you weren’t using before even?
Collin Mekan:
Yes. Well, for one I think putting-
Tim Pickett:
Consumed, I guess. What’s the term? Use, consume, whatever.
Collin Mekan:
My dosing method.
Tim Pickett:
Dosing method, right.
Collin Mekan:
I do a little bit of everything, in reality. But now putting fire to my flower seems kind of comical. I couldn’t even do it. One, I know that I’m wasting so much of my product, which costs me money. But then I’m also missing out on medicine which helps me sleep at night. Again, that’s a game changer for me.
Tim Pickett:
What do you do for furn?
Collin Mekan:
I like to entertain my wife actually. I love to make her smile and laugh and I love to cook for her. But I play guitar as well and I like to write a lot of music.
Tim Pickett:
Oh really?
Collin Mekan:
Yes. I’m very good.
Tim Pickett:
Electric?
Collin Mekan:
No, I play acoustic. I had to pin it down to acoustic folk Americana I suppose. I like to folk out every now and then.
Tim Pickett:
Nice. How many years have you been playing?
Collin Mekan:
I’ve been playing since I was 12. I went through that phase when you’re 12, people think you’re a phenom, adults see you sing and play guitar and you’re like wow, he’s going to go places.
Collin Mekan:
I did not. I did graduate from an arts academy. I went to Interlochen, which was one of the number one arts academies in the country at the time. Since there I find myself doing a lot of karaoke, which I find is a great form of expressionism and maybe therapy even. I guess those would be my pastimes.
Tim Pickett:
How many? Do you have one guitar?
Collin Mekan:
I have about five guitars right now. Lately I’ve been playing my acoustic bass quite a bit. Not one that I picked up very often for a while, so been picking it up, slapping it around, seeing what other gifts I have available to me I suppose.
Tim Pickett:
Did you play in a band?
Collin Mekan:
No. I do play with a friend of mine every now and then. But it’s mainly just for fun, a way to express ourselves I suppose.
Tim Pickett:
I mean now we’re going to need to hear it. I mean are you willing to bring it to the Christmas party?
Collin Mekan:
I would 100% bring it to the Christmas party, Tim. I even wrote a jingle for you. I don’t know if I’m going to be sharing today, because there are a lot of swear words in it, Tim. And it’s 15 minutes long.
Tim Pickett:
Oh, sweet.
Collin Mekan:
I do look forward to sharing it with you one day.
Tim Pickett:
I really have always loved music. I grew up singing mostly, played a little piano, played a little guitar. Everybody who sings and grows up playing the piano might play the guitar. Right? I can play three or four songs. I have one, I have a guitar.
Collin Mekan:
You don’t see pianos in many households anymore. You see universal, that universal instrument. Go over to a friend’s house, sit at the piano, play a few songs. Now it’s the acoustic guitar. You can go over to almost anyone’s house, see that acoustic guitar. I never see an oboe or a reed instrument.
Tim Pickett:
No. I played the clarinet.
Collin Mekan:
Like hey man, do you mind if I play that clarinet of yours over there?
Tim Pickett:
I played the clarinet in junior high, moved to the saxophone, played the baritone sax in junior high. Then I had an alto sax. That’s just an instrument that was very popular when I was in junior high, that age group. Kenny G.
Collin Mekan:
Oh really?
Tim Pickett:
Do you remember Kenny G?
Collin Mekan:
Oh my goodness, do I ever.
Tim Pickett:
Right? He played the soprano. [crosstalk 00:14:49] for those of you who are too young to know.
Collin Mekan:
Excuse me.
Tim Pickett:
Know Kenny G, I went to a concert, a Kenny G concert. That is a crazy [crosstalk 00:15:00] long, permed hair too. Right? That brings back some memories.
Tim Pickett:
I did not use cannabis at that time. I was way too young and yeah, that’s [crosstalk 00:15:13].
Collin Mekan:
Can we pop on some Kenny G now? Is that [crosstalk 00:15:16]?
Tim Pickett:
I’ll have Nate put the Kenny G, play it over the-
Collin Mekan:
Really set the mood.
Tim Pickett:
Yes.
Collin Mekan:
Oh man, that’s ridiculous. You know, actually when I was working with clones I started doing a lot of research on what they heard. Because I knew that they sensed vibrations, they’re hearing something as well was the idea.
Collin Mekan:
I started doing research on what instruments mimicked nature and it came down to string instruments. I started playing a lot stringed music for my plants and they were responding really well to it. I was thinking of thunder, [inaudible 00:15:51] thunder, how they respond to that. It seemed to work quite well for a while.
Tim Pickett:
Is growing at home something that is important to you, to try to work for?
Collin Mekan:
Absolutely. I mean just the idea of growing in general, I like to promote growth all around me, within myself and the people that I care about and run into every day. But I love my little herb garden. I’ve really came to respect the herbs over the years.
Collin Mekan:
That was one of the things that brought me into it actually. You’ve mentioned this a few times on your podcast or different videos, but that idea of aspirin being derived from the bark of the willow tree. I had a willow tree outside of my apartment at this point. I never made my own aspirin, but I remember making that connection and how close medicine actually was to us and all around us and that really piqued my interest.
Tim Pickett:
For example, van Gogh’s Starry Night painting, the theory goes that he saw it that way because of his heart failure and he was on dandelion root for a diuretic. They used to use, well I mean they still do, dandelion [crosstalk 00:17:02]. If you drink a lot of dandelion tea-
Collin Mekan:
I love my dandelion root.
Tim Pickett:
Yeah. Okay. If you’re ever in a weight loss competition [crosstalk 00:17:15] here you go.
Collin Mekan:
I don’t know if that is going to be happening for me, Tim.
Tim Pickett:
If you’re ever in a weight loss competition, the last couple of days you got to get some dandelion root at the GNC and you got to overload on the dandelion root and you’ll pee out three or four pounds.
Collin Mekan:
That’s gross, Tim.
Tim Pickett:
But it’s plant based medicine.
Collin Mekan:
All right then. I’m going to trust you and get some of that dandelion root tea. I actually love my home apothecary. I go to some of the local apothecaries around town and they’re amazing.
Collin Mekan:
One of them, you walk into it’s like a classroom in Hogwarts. Just full of all these mason jars, every herb and spice you can possibly think of, fungis, and this and that.
Tim Pickett:
This is something we don’t talk a lot about in Western. Western medicine is so allopathic. You have a symptom, oh yeah, we created a pill or a drug or something for that. Plant based medicine just not at all. Right?
Tim Pickett:
It’s one of the problems we have with cannabis, I think, is the doctors, the providers, they have a hard time using a drug that is so broad.
Collin Mekan:
Yeah. Figuring out how to actually dose with it.
Tim Pickett:
You’re trying to create a solution to one symptom, but you’re using something that affects multiple systems.
Collin Mekan:
Oh, it’s phenomenal.
Tim Pickett:
Yeah. Which is [crosstalk 00:18:35] for us, for you and I, this is why wouldn’t you?
Collin Mekan:
Why wouldn’t I.
Tim Pickett:
Why wouldn’t you do this? It’s not only going to help you with your pain, but your headaches and your attitude, your anxiety.
Collin Mekan:
I see our endocannabinoid receptor system, I know the way that it works with me when I use marijuana. But to see it affect the elderly, I feel almost like our CB system was designed for them.
Collin Mekan:
As you get older, I mean it’s hard to go through life without one of these qualifying conditions. To even have our endocannabinoid receptor system in the first place blows my mind. People say it looks like we’ve evolved side by side with this plant to actually have that system.
Collin Mekan:
But more likely than not we’ve just been eating the animals that will ingest it, I suppose. But the fact that it’s there for us to tap into as a processing unit, I find that fascinating. The fact that we can manipulate it with layering, I find once you start layering and manipulating your CB system, you really take control of it and it helps you process all types of things you don’t even realize.
Collin Mekan:
I mean I think of the analogy of walking to your car and then dropping your coffee just as you open the door and ruining your day and you’re crying. Or else dropping your coffee and laughing it off and saying typical. You know? How do you process your stress throughout a day? How do you process trauma without even noticing it? It’s so subtle, it’s quite beautiful.
Tim Pickett:
I like your attitude about the plant.
Collin Mekan:
There’s spiritualism to it, in a way.
Tim Pickett:
That’s something we don’t even hear. We don’t almost have time, it seems like, to talk about the spiritual side of cannabis.
Collin Mekan:
No.
Tim Pickett:
But these psychoactive medications and the plants that are so psychoactive, peyote and ayahuasca and these other-
Collin Mekan:
Shifts your perspective a little bit.
Tim Pickett:
Yeah. When you talk about evolving next to the plant and the shaman or the medicine person in the tribe would help people use things like this, it wasn’t just about medicine. It really was about that spiritual experience.
Collin Mekan:
Connecting you to the earth, set in the setting almost. Setting intentions.
Tim Pickett:
It’s a whole ‘nother realm of cannabis as a medicine that we talk about quite a bit, I guess. It’s one of the reasons why I think people have a hard time getting away from, like rolling a joint. Right? Because it’s not just the joint, smoking the joint, that was [crosstalk 00:21:18].
Collin Mekan:
It’s the ritual.
Tim Pickett:
It’s the rolling, yeah.
Collin Mekan:
How tight it is.
Tim Pickett:
Yeah. And that experience of grinding. I think we get that with the vaporizer.
Collin Mekan:
I find that we can. I mean it’s really hard for me to go back to that experience. I mean I feel like I’m wasting so much of it, and I also don’t want to get arrested, Tim.
Tim Pickett:
Yeah. The law [crosstalk 00:21:39] we have had, in fact, I had a patient, I think it was a couple of weeks ago, who got a ticket for having papers in their trunk.
Collin Mekan:
Oh no.
Tim Pickett:
Yeah.
Collin Mekan:
No tobacco to go with those papers?
Tim Pickett:
Yeah, no tobacco to go with the papers and there you go. They got a ticket for paraphernalia.
Collin Mekan:
That’s quite unfortunate to hear those stories.
Tim Pickett:
Even though they had a card.
Collin Mekan:
But I mean we still have to be careful. It’s still a fledgling industry and people are still learning the laws. As we go, even some of our law enforcement, I suppose.
Tim Pickett:
Sure. Have you ever run into law enforcement with cannabis?
Collin Mekan:
No, I am lucky. I have always abided by the laws, Timothy Pickett. But I have been quite lucky. As I got older, I honestly had this… I was tapping into some of my privilege that I didn’t even recognize was there.
Collin Mekan:
Just by the look of me. I like to look fairly respectful to my peers and people that I meet, a way to honor them I suppose. But also I wasn’t somebody that you would really pin as…
Tim Pickett:
Pin as a lawbreaking-
Collin Mekan:
As an outlaw, [crosstalk 00:22:48] Tim. As an outlaw.
Tim Pickett:
As somebody who had two pounds of weed.
Collin Mekan:
Which I never did.
Tim Pickett:
[crosstalk 00:22:53] no, I mean well, I didn’t either. I totally agree with that privileged idea too.
Collin Mekan:
Oh, it’s embarrassing to look back on to now.
Tim Pickett:
Yeah. So we didn’t get in trouble, which was good. Thank God we didn’t get in trouble. Right?
Collin Mekan:
Ironically too, I have a face that police officers do not seem to enjoy very much as I was growing up. All of a sudden they got a lot younger than me, that was a strange shift as well. When that cop walks up to your window and-
Tim Pickett:
And they’re younger than you?
Collin Mekan:
They’re like 20 years younger than me.
Tim Pickett:
How old are you?
Collin Mekan:
I’m 40 years old now. I’m a man. I’m a man now, Tim. I made it.
Tim Pickett:
You survived.
Collin Mekan:
Yeah, I was in Scotland for my 40th birthday, it was quite the experience.
Tim Pickett:
Congratulations on being 40. 40 was fun.
Collin Mekan:
It feels good, it feels good.
Tim Pickett:
40 was a fun year. It is a novel year, right?
Collin Mekan:
You’ve told me it gets worse after this. You say, “Wait until you’re 43.”
Tim Pickett:
[crosstalk 00:23:53]. Yes. For those of you out there, for those of you whoa re 39, 40’s great. It’s really there’s a novelty to it.
Collin Mekan:
You’re bringing me down, man.
Tim Pickett:
Yes. And 41 is even not so much worse than 40.
Collin Mekan:
Oh great.
Tim Pickett:
42, you start to think shit, I’m kind of knee deep in this.
Collin Mekan:
There is no birthday after this.
Tim Pickett:
Yeah. And 43 and you realize what everybody says it’s true, Colin. As you get older, it is harder to recover.
Collin Mekan:
Oh, 100%. I keep convincing myself that the weather’s going to be changing any day now because I can feel it in my knees and my shoulders. They’re tight like rubber bands, Tim, it’s terrible. I need to stay medicated.
Tim Pickett:
I noticed when I hurt my back it took a lot more cannabis and THC than I thought it would to really dig in to severe pain.
Collin Mekan:
[inaudible 00:24:57] CBG, CBD, CBN, and CBC. A little bit of THC is great but they really work best in combination with each other. But those other cannabinoids, I mean that’s where the real miracles are happening.
Collin Mekan:
They’re all antiinflammatory, almost all of them help you fight against pain and process that. It’s pretty amazing. I wonder what the rest of the cannabinoids are going to end up doing in the end. I wonder if we’re going to cure brain disease. I don’t think we’re that far away from it, in all honesty.
Tim Pickett:
We might not be [crosstalk 00:25:26]. For those of you who don’t think there is enough evidence for cannabinoid medicine, I think you’d be… I just don’t think… Well, I don’t agree with you.
Tim Pickett:
This is definitely a plant that’s been studied more than probably any other plant that’s ever grown.
Collin Mekan:
It’s one of our oldest medicinal plants, yeah.
Tim Pickett:
Right. And used probably as much or more than any other plant has been used as medicine, ever to grow. That’s a pretty big statement, I guess. I guess I don’t know that for sure.
Collin Mekan:
But, Tim, I am apt to believe you. I feel like I trust the things you say. I’m going to go with that.
Collin Mekan:
With the way that we can dose now too, it amazes me. As I started to educate myself, I like to tell people I found that this is truly the ideal way to be dosing when it comes to flower. I mean still, I mean rolling the joint, passing it around with your buddy, honestly there’s nothing more communal than that. It’s such a unique, personal experience.
Collin Mekan:
But there’s nothing [crosstalk 00:26:28] the peace pipe. You create a circle, you pass it around. I think it’s very communal. Something that [crosstalk 00:26:36].
Tim Pickett:
COVID has ended that too.
Collin Mekan:
Sure.
Tim Pickett:
Not only the flame laws here in Utah, but I mean-
Collin Mekan:
Yeah. People are less apt to pass on a-
Tim Pickett:
Lick each other’s lips, pass it around the circle.
Collin Mekan:
Oh, that’s what I miss before those COVID days, is licking each other lips around the circle. I don’t remember that very well, but I mean if that’s your pre-COVID. I do not judge, Tim. That’s one of the great things about our community.
Tim Pickett:
I love layering and we talk a lot about this with our patients. The oral, using an oral method first and then layering on top of that. I found especially with my back that, to your point about cannabinoids, CBC, CBD, CBG, you don’t get a lot of those with the oral stuff. Where you get a little more of the entourage effect with the flower.
Tim Pickett:
Which really seems to make layering more efficacious, is the word I would use. More useful from a medical standpoint. I hear you talking about that to patients all the time.
Collin Mekan:
Oh, I think it’s really key, is trying to find ways to fill up those receptor sites so you have that entourage effect with full spectrum of all those minor and major cannabinoids that are available to us. It’s really hard to do that because I mean usually your flower’s going to have some THC, maybe some CBD. Same goes with cartridges, can be THC with maybe one or another minor cannabinoid.
Collin Mekan:
If you can find a good non-psychotropic cartridge, I think that’s amazing for layering. I’d love to find some really nice non-psychotropic full spectrum tinctures that we could offer as well.
Tim Pickett:
Yeah [crosstalk 00:28:33]. When you talk about non-psychotropic, we have one, it’s made by Clean Leaf, Kyle Egbert. And Logan. Great guy.
Collin Mekan:
Absolutely. Great job as well.
Tim Pickett:
He does.
Collin Mekan:
In it for the right reasons too, which is something that’s really inspiring in this community. I don’t know if a lot of people know this, but there’s a huge amount of people in this industry that didn’t get into it because of them. They got into it because of a family member or something along those lines, that inspired them to do so.
Collin Mekan:
It’s just really inspiring to see people want to do it because it’s medicine and it’s helping people and that’s their true motivation behind it.
Tim Pickett:
Yeah. You describe these non-psychotropics and I think they’re really undervalued.
Collin Mekan:
Absolutely.
Tim Pickett:
In the medical marijuana market itself, because I mean you come here, you come to our clinic for an evaluation for a card to use THC. A lot of our patients undervalue the other minor cannabinoids when they come here.
Collin Mekan:
That’s why it’s our job to bring it to their attention, Tim. If they didn’t know about these things, we can’t send them on their path correctly. I feel like it’s almost our obligation to bring these things to their attention, let them know what their options are really. That keeps them excited in the program, I believe.
Tim Pickett:
Over and over people who’ve used cannabis for three, four, five, six months will come back and then realize oh wait, there’s more to it. Right? Phase one seems to be learning how to associate when you get high and what’s that like and dealing with delta nine and that.
Collin Mekan:
Right. It seems so far away to me, I have to remember that it affects people this way.
Tim Pickett:
Yeah. Then seems like phase two, or phase three is-
Collin Mekan:
Dialing in your dosing.
Tim Pickett:
Yep. And figuring out that there’s, wow, there’s more to the plant than just the psychotropic effects.
Collin Mekan:
So much more to it. I mean I think that the THC gets you into it originally, if you’re younger. But man, [crosstalk 00:30:40].
Tim Pickett:
It’s the rest of the plant that really has probably more, well, certainly more of the actual healing benefits come from the other cannabinoids and things inside the plant, than THC.
Collin Mekan:
100%. I mean THC is lovely as well. I think of it as a vehicular molecule, in combination with all of them together it helps it travel up the central nervous system. Really, they do work best in combination.
Collin Mekan:
A low amount of THC, in all honesty, goes a long way when it comes to the healing properties of this medicine.
Tim Pickett:
You were saying, I caught there, that you don’t get high a lot.
Collin Mekan:
Oh, I haven’t gotten high in years, Tim. But I do stay fairly medicated throughout a day. Excuse me. I was just… I would say my tolerance is fairly high. My wife recently called me a pothead and I was… I won’t lie, that hurt. That cut deep.
Tim Pickett:
Cut deep.
Collin Mekan:
But I could probably utilize a tolerance break, but then I wouldn’t be able to move throughout the day as seamlessly as I do.
Tim Pickett:
What’s a tolerance break look like for you?
Collin Mekan:
Oh man. Sadness. I don’t know. For me it is very habitual, but also I’m very familiar with my body and how I try to fill up my receptor system. It wouldn’t be the same without THC.
Collin Mekan:
I also have crippling social anxieties, which I’m able to mask with this. It’s something that I overcome and I get to decide not to be socially awkward. I face it and just own the awkwardness of the moment. I live in an awkward world too.
Tim Pickett:
We all live in an awkward world.
Collin Mekan:
Thank you. Thank you, Tim.
Tim Pickett:
I’m surprised that you feel like you have this anxiety.
Collin Mekan:
That’s because my tolerance level, Tim. See? That’s manipulating my endocannabinoid receptor system right there.
Tim Pickett:
Yeah. If you are listening to this, Collin is a perfect example of what you can do with a cannabis blend.
Collin Mekan:
However, I did start younger than I feel like I should have. I probably started smoking around the ag of 16 and my brain hadn’t fully developed. And look at me now, Tim. Look what it did to me.
Tim Pickett:
When was the first? Take us all the way back to the first time you were exposed to cannabis.
Collin Mekan:
I was breaking into the artistic world in high school, trying to develop my bravery I suppose. I was learning that I can sing, I was feeling pretty artistic. While building my confidence, I had my art friends, I suppose, and I tried it on seven different occasions.
Collin Mekan:
I thought I was immune to marijuana. Then we were on our way to see The Big Lebowski and I remember driving downtown Kalamazoo, Michigan and all of a sudden there’s a joint in front of my face and I took two hits. I remember the spatial, what you call, all of a sudden my seatbelt grew in size immensely and I did not know what was happening.
Collin Mekan:
But it turned out I was just falling towards the seatbelt. In my vision, it was growing as I was getting closer to it. After that I remember thinking it was like walking through a crowd of people at the movie, like I was in a dream and moving so fluidly.
Collin Mekan:
Afterwards I heard that it was because I was walking around, moving my arms like I was underwater. Back then the THC had a really strong effect on me. It was like I was in a dream and I was pretty hilarious I suppose. I made a fool of myself quite a bit.
Collin Mekan:
But I am so far away from that I forget that it has that effect on people. That’s, I believe, part of the stigma about marijuana too. People believe that the effect that it has on them is the same effect that it’s going to have on everybody. So if it made them a fool, they think that there are a lot of stoners out there walking around in a daze.
Collin Mekan:
I found the other side of that. I forget that it has such a strong effect on people because I know the effect that it has on me. That’s knowing your body, I suppose, and really exploring your different methods.
Collin Mekan:
Oh, come back to this. You had mentioned earlier how I dose. I like to utilize everything with layering. I love having a tincture, I really like those non-psychotropic items. I think this is one of the only medicines that layering is actually an option.
Tim Pickett:
It is one of the only. I mean there’s certainly no other medication that I’ve prescribed that you think about. You know what [crosstalk 00:35:29] you should do, is you should take half a milligram of this and then you should-
Collin Mekan:
Drop some under your tongue and see what that does.
Tim Pickett:
Yeah. And then inhale it. Well, I mean take an inhaled method like albuterol. You’re not going to layer albuterol in a pill form and then an inhaled form. No. Your heart rate, for one, would just go through the roof.
Collin Mekan:
[crosstalk 00:35:50] it made me feel weird.
Tim Pickett:
Yeah. Or your blood thinner, your blood pressure medication, your insulin. I guess we do layer diabetes medication. We take metformin and then some people take insulin on top of that, if their diabetes is bad enough. But that’s just not a great example, compared to cannabis.
Collin Mekan:
There’s not a lot of things to compare.
Tim Pickett:
There’s just not a lot of, yeah. When you’re talking about how you felt when you first used or you first felt the effects of THC when you have that joint in high school, and I feel the same, that same stigma. Not only for people who use it themselves but for also people who’ve seen one other person high or one other movie with a high person, with that stereotypical on the couch. Pineapple Express comes to mind.
Collin Mekan:
It can happen, though.
Tim Pickett:
[crosstalk 00:36:51] yeah, those definitely can happen. But that’s not the baseline. There are 45,000 Utah patients. You think all of them are-
Collin Mekan:
Intelligent professionals, caring, empathetic people.
Tim Pickett:
[crosstalk 00:37:05] who really want to feel better.
Collin Mekan:
The Uplift program has been such a success. I find that very inspiring, to see that this community, I mean if not generous, we want to share this experience.
Tim Pickett:
We had a patient [crosstalk 00:37:16] today give $104.20.
Collin Mekan:
104.20, yes.
Tim Pickett:
104.20.
Collin Mekan:
Gentleman right after her gave 50, so it’s-
Tim Pickett:
Very committed community.
Collin Mekan:
Absolutely.
Tim Pickett:
Not only of people here who work here and work in the industry, like you and hopefully people say that about me and the providers that we have. But all of the staff here seems like they’re not only just employees but they’re really activists. We have [crosstalk 00:37:45] talked about this.
Collin Mekan:
Well, this is your team, Tim. We’re all into this because we’re real passionate. At least I know I, for one, am definitely into this because I felt the universe bring me here and I feel incredibly passionate about that. I want to share that with other people.
Collin Mekan:
It gets me so excited just even talking about it. I love it. I feel like we’re really going somewhere with this. You’re quite an inspiration to a lot of people, seeing how you’re doing this correctly.
Collin Mekan:
I think you’re setting a template for other states that haven’t been able to do this quite yet. The success that we’ve seen in Utah has been phenomenal, it’s been crazy. I mean they expected 10,000 cardholders. What, we’re at over 40?
Tim Pickett:
Yeah, 4, 45 plus thousand and rising. Yep.
Collin Mekan:
Then your podcast. I mean your YouTube, Discover Marijuana. I know that’s over 2,000 listeners at this point.
Tim Pickett:
Yeah, over 2,000 subscribers [crosstalk 00:38:38] I think. As of right now when we’re recording this. In fact-
Collin Mekan:
Well, hopefully we can bring that up.
Tim Pickett:
For those of you who are listening to this and on the release of this podcast episode, if you’re not subscribed to the Discover Marijuana channel, we are doing a giveaway in March.
Tim Pickett:
This week I think it’s a micro, DaVinci micro. It’s a glass stash jar, medicine jar. It’s a t-shirt I think. I don’t know, what the heck are the rules? I don’t know. Somebody knows the rules. If you go to Discover Marijuana on YouTube or you follow us on Instagram. Go to our website.
Collin Mekan:
Tim, do you not [crosstalk 00:39:20]?
Tim Pickett:
There are rules to win. Okay? There are rules. I can’t do this all by myself anymore.
Collin Mekan:
Put me in the running. I could definitely use one of those DaVinci micros.
Tim Pickett:
Micros, it is so small. But I use the IQ2.
Collin Mekan:
Yeah, me too.
Tim Pickett:
It’s really become my favorite vaporizer.
Collin Mekan:
Absolutely.
Tim Pickett:
The taste is good. The taste is as good as the Firefly but that seems like for some reason the pull is better.
Collin Mekan:
I will miss the Firefly, Tim.
Tim Pickett:
I do love the Firefly [crosstalk 00:39:52].
Collin Mekan:
But the DaVincis are lovely, the 10 year warranty is amazing.
Tim Pickett:
Have you used the phone app?
Collin Mekan:
No, I don’t have enough space on my phone.
Tim Pickett:
You have to download… Okay, it’s a little bit clunky because you can’t download the DaVinci app in the App Store, from an Apple phone. So you got to download this browser.
Tim Pickett:
I downloaded the browser and then you can connect it to your IQ2 and then you put in how much THC percentage your flower is, if it’s a new loaded bowl in the DaVinci, and it will tell you how many milligrams of THC. I mean it estimates it based on how much you pull on the thing.
Tim Pickett:
But surprising how… And it doesn’t even need to be accurate to the milligram to give you a sense of how much you’re getting, because let’s say you inhale up to where it says 30 milligrams. Well then, all you got to do next time is inhale till it says 30 milligrams again.
Collin Mekan:
Wow. That’s what makes it the precision vaporizer that it is. It dials in the temperature but also you can really see how you’re dosing. It’s pretty amazing.
Collin Mekan:
For somebody like me, I wouldn’t really utilize that very often. I don’t want to say technology is intimidating to me, Tim, but I’ve worked in cultivation for a while and I’ve always leaned away from technology. Up until now I suppose.
Tim Pickett:
It’s you’re more of the dirt grubber type?
Collin Mekan:
Oh absolutely. The friendly fungus in there, helps fight depression and keeps you happy.
Tim Pickett:
When you… What’s your favorite place to go? You went to Scotland for your 40th birthday?
Collin Mekan:
I did. My wife and I travel fairly often. I wouldn’t be able to do this at all without her in my life. But our family lives in Scotland, so we got to go over there and see them.
Collin Mekan:
It was beautiful, it was amazing. But we were also locked down. My birthday is the day before New Year’s, it’s December 30th. We wen there for Hogmanay and we’re not able to really experience Hogmanay. But I do have some heritage there, I got to follow that ancestry line and it was fascinating. It was a beautiful experience.
Tim Pickett:
Where’s the next trip?
Collin Mekan:
We are going to Costa Rica. Yeah, it’s my wife, the amazing saleswoman that she is, she got top sales and won us a trip to Costa Rica. Last time she won us a trip to the Bahamas. So I need to request a little time off, Tim.
Tim Pickett:
Well, if it’s to Costa Rica, there you go. It’s fine. Take all the time you need.
Collin Mekan:
What a guy.
Tim Pickett:
You know? Health and happiness in the team has got to be… We are literally in that business. If you don’t live it on the employee side and on the team side, I think that would be pretty hypocritical.
Collin Mekan:
This is a pretty amazing job, Tim, because of those reasons. It’s a job where you really feel as an employee that you matter. You can give you some direction and helps motivate you. At least me I know. But I really appreciate [crosstalk 00:43:05].
Tim Pickett:
Thank you, Collin. I think that you get a lot of that from everybody else on the team too. I think we-
Collin Mekan:
Oh, we uplift each other. Right?
Tim Pickett:
Yeah. We do. I’ve never worked at a place like this. When I worked in surgery, people were always pissed off at us for all the pain and suffering we caused. We did solve a lot of problems for people, surgically.
Tim Pickett:
But here it seems like everybody’s happy when they leave. Not only the team is happy but the patients are all happy. Before COVID hit, I mean I would get a hug from two out of three patients.
Collin Mekan:
I’ve gotten a handful of hugs. I used to gauge my success of the day on how many hugs people would try to give me.
Tim Pickett:
Yeah. Go into another area of medicine and that’s just not the case. For most people who are here, they’ve never worked in any other part of medicine. They came into this because of the cannabis draw.
Collin Mekan:
Sure. Something about it’s appealing. I don’t know what it is. It’s specialized, I mean [crosstalk 00:44:07].
Tim Pickett:
We get to bridge both worlds. You get to bridge something that you love already, that you’re into already, you want to share with everybody else, the cannabis part. You get to work in medicine where you’re part of something that’s an industry that’s really been run by the pharmaceutical companies for so long. It’s like a movement against… It’s like the anti-medicine.
Collin Mekan:
Yeah. What do you call it? An exit drug.
Tim Pickett:
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I think we’re doing a pretty good job in Utah. And thanks to this program, thanks to what we do, I think that’s the case.
Collin Mekan:
I’ve been reading up a lot on this, Tim. We are the people that keep ourselves educated. I know that California got the ball rolling but the way that Utah’s doing it, ironically, I mean what better place to do it for one. I mean reeducate, remedicate, and destigmatize.
Collin Mekan:
I mean the success rate of this is pretty amazing here in Utah. I give it up to our community. We’re destigmatizing it every day, just by sitting in front of each other and educating ourselves.
Tim Pickett:
Talking about it out loud.
Collin Mekan:
Out loud.
Tim Pickett:
As if it’s not illegal.
Collin Mekan:
The fact that it’s so patient oriented too, that we’re excited for these people. It’s not just about pushing the medical card. It’s about assisting them and giving them the tools to succeed and want to continue with the program. That’s why the program is working in Utah, I believe, is we’re doing it right somehow.
Tim Pickett:
It seems like there’s a lot of good things happening. What’s your favorite strain?
Collin Mekan:
Ooh, I love this question because I’ve really come to realize it doesn’t really come down to favorite strain for me. They’re all hybridized as it is. It’s all about terpenoids, flavonoids, and cannabinoids, Tim.
Collin Mekan:
Once people start paying attention to that, they can believe that they love Bubba Kush and Bubba Kush has never done them wrong. But in reality they probably loved one of those harvests, because every harvest and every batch is different from the next.
Collin Mekan:
Unless you’re paying attention to that one did you right, let’s see what the THC level was, let’s see what the terpenes involved were, once you can dial into that I think then that’s what people are really into, I believe.
Tim Pickett:
Do you think that having the consistent flower choice is important for patients? Or do you think patients should be using multiple strains and that’s just an evolution? There’s some people in some camps who are like I want the same strain every time, that’s what I need and want. And then there’s this reality that a mother won’t last forever, a cannabis mother plant won’t last forever.
Tim Pickett:
So that is just not [crosstalk 00:47:08] a realistic expectation. When you talk about every harvest being a little bit different too.
Collin Mekan:
Also your CB system’s always changing. Every day you wake up it’s a little different than it was before. I really think it is great. Keep a journal, we bring this up quite a bit. Keep a journal of what’s working for you and go back to it.
Collin Mekan:
But as your tolerance builds and you can utilize [inaudible 00:47:35] a little bit more, it’s always changing. It’s as unique as we are and just as we’re changing everyday so is our endocannabinoid receptor system. I just love saying it, it’s a beautiful beautiful thing.
Tim Pickett:
It is. It’s funny to hear you say it too.
Collin Mekan:
I’ve really figured it out. I say it trippingly off the tongue.
Tim Pickett:
What about if you could grow any strain? Would you be able to pick one or would you just grow a bunch? Would you grow some 73 dayers, some 62 dayers?
Collin Mekan:
If I could, I would grow the longer.
Tim Pickett:
Why the longer [crosstalk 00:48:12] ones?
Collin Mekan:
I think that with these shorter cycles, unfortunately there are some strains that we’re never going to be seeing in Utah because of that. Unless there’s some cultivation companies that take it upon themselves to do these longer strains.
Tim Pickett:
[crosstalk 00:48:26] I know I hate to bring this up, but there’s some production. There’s a lot of just straight up production happening in Utah. They’re limiting their strains to not even [crosstalk 00:48:39] yeah, not allowing the full maturity. Right? They’re not letting clear, they’re to getting clear on the trichomes.
Collin Mekan:
Sure. Well, they go from clear, they get a little milky. It’s a beautiful thing. But also I understand why they’re doing that right now. As the community grows every day, these companies are still trying to expand and keep up with this growing community.
Collin Mekan:
Right now there’s not… I mean they’re doing the best they can. I got to give a shout out to all those cultivation companies, because I’ve worked for two of them and I can honestly say they are amazing. Buy locally.
Collin Mekan:
I think of it like local honey curing your allergies for the season. The closer to your backyard the better. I think the same thing about these plants. They’re breathing our air and drinking our water and they’re in the same environment that we are in. I think they help out quite a bit.
Tim Pickett:
I think the intention actually does make a difference in the medicine. That’s one of the reasons why I think homegrown would add that different level of care. I think if you are growing your own medicine in your own backyard, I think that would change your experience a little.
Collin Mekan:
You say production-wise too, I can say I know that these cultivationists, they put their heart and their soul into it. And they love these plants. I would go in and greet my mothers every morning, say good morning, ladies, how is everyone today. How was your evening? I’d tell them my dreams and ask if they had any nightmares from the night before.
Collin Mekan:
I loved these plants, though. When they’re tending to them, they take great great care of them. They truly do.
Tim Pickett:
They do. Well, just like everything else in this industry, you don’t get into… You get into it because you want to get into it. Right? I don’t feel like there’s very, if any, people I’ve met in growing, production, that literally just got in it because they were-
Collin Mekan:
Look at me now, Mom.
Tim Pickett:
Yeah.
Collin Mekan:
Shout out to my mom, by the way. I love you, Mom. And look at me now.
Tim Pickett:
Yeah. I mean we want to be a part of this movement.
Collin Mekan:
Absolutely. I feel really passionate about that and excited to see where this is going to take us. I don’t know. I feel good about it. Like something’s telling me stick with it, you’re making a difference. I get to see that in these patients almost daily and it’s really inspiring. Makes me feel like I am doing something right and that I truly am part of something that’s bigger than me.
Collin Mekan:
I feel like I’m part of this community and helping it grow all the time.
Tim Pickett:
You certainly are, Collin.
Collin Mekan:
Cultivating the community.
Tim Pickett:
This has been really fun. It’s fun to chat with somebody face to face. I don’t do the podcast face to face very often.
Collin Mekan:
It’s always a pleasure to chat with you, Tim.
Tim Pickett:
It’s really fun. Is there anything else that you think we missed, you wanted to talk about that we didn’t?
Collin Mekan:
I’m probably going to listen to this later and I’ll be in the shower putting in my conditioner in my hair and thinking why the hell did I say that. You know? Shame, right?
Tim Pickett:
Too late, buddy. Too late.
Collin Mekan:
Let’s discuss shame in the cannabinoid.
Tim Pickett:
It’s totally fine. Just switch over to CBN or use some other cannabinoids. Reduce that anxiety and-
Collin Mekan:
Layer.
Tim Pickett:
Layer.
Collin Mekan:
There it is. Stay safe out there, Utah.
Tim Pickett:
I’m going to let you… Okay. There you go. For the sign out today, before we sign out or we sign off, Utah In The Weeds podcast, if you’re not subscribed and any podcast player that you have access to, please subscribe. Go to Discover Marijuana on YouTube, subscribe there. You can listen to the podcast there, that’s a great place.
Tim Pickett:
That’s actually a better place, in my opinion, because one, I can see it. But two, if you have questions you can comment and we answer all of the comments.
Collin Mekan:
Please comment.
Tim Pickett:
Yeah. Please comment, because your questions are questions that somebody else has and we can answer them and we don’t have to keep it a secret just between you and I, Collin.
Collin Mekan:
Isn’t that a way to get in the running too?
Tim Pickett:
It is. I think commenting on the videos plus being a subscriber. Again, there’s rules to giveaway and I don’t know all the rules. But I promise in the intro I will give you all the rules.
Tim Pickett:
Utah In The Weeds, thank you for being here Collin.
Collin Mekan:
Tim, it has been a true pleasure. Thank you for having me, absolutely.
Tim Pickett:
Everybody-
Collin Mekan:
Play the Kenny G. Oh, yes. Stay safe out there, Utah. Did I say that right? Is that… Thank you, everybody.
Tim Pickett:
You just… Perfect job, Collin.
Collin Mekan:
Appreciate it.
Episode 90 of Utah in the Weeds is for anyone interested in using cannabis for pain management. Listen to a presentation on this topic from Tim Pickett and his Discover Marijuana co-host, Blake Smith.
Tim Pickett:
Welcome, everyone, out to Utah in the Weeds. My name is Tim Pickett, and this is episode 90, episode 90. This episode is the episode before my two-year anniversary, and you know what? We go along so fast and we’re doing these episodes. Chris Holifield reached out to me and mentioned, “Hey, you know what came up in my Facebook feed? The fact that this is the two-year anniversary of Utah in the Weeds this month.” I wasn’t even thinking about it.
Tim Pickett:
Next week, we’re going to do something special and give away something for the two-year anniversary of Utah in the Weeds, so stay tuned. Subscribe at any podcast player that you have access to. Subscribe to Utah in the Weeds. Tell your friends we’re going to give away something, something cool. Definitely a sweatshirt, definitely a Utah in the Weeds sweatshirt is coming at you, probably a t-shirt, as well, and then something else that’s a surprise, so there’s the hook.
Tim Pickett:
Today’s episode is with Blake Smith. We did a webinar. We’re going to rebroadcast that because we talk a lot about pain, and we talk about cannabis for pain, so a little more educational, maybe, this podcast. I love to rerelease these webinars because they’re kind of a different style, a little more educational format. You can always catch that webinar on Discover Marijuana on YouTube, just about to hit 2000 subscribers.
Tim Pickett:
If you’re not subscribed to Discover Marijuana, you’re going to want to be subscribed because March is a massive month for giveaways. We’re going to be giving something away every single week on Discover Marijuana on YouTube. If you know what we gave away last time, we gave away a PAX 3 complete kit. We gave away some, I think, PAX 2. We gave away a bunch of clothes and swag. We’re going to blow the doors off this time. Excited to keep these episodes coming at you. Again, subscribe. This is Blake Smith and Tim talking about pain and the Utah cannabis program and how it might help you. Enjoy.
Tim Pickett:
Welcome, everybody, out to our webinar, Discover Marijuana webinar series. I’m Tim Pickett.
Blake Smith:
I’m Blake Smith.
Tim Pickett:
Blake is the chief science … You’ve got so many titles. I can’t even keep them all straight. CEO of Zion Medicinal, chief science officer.
Blake Smith:
Yup.
Tim Pickett:
Zion Medicinal.
Blake Smith:
I’m also-
Tim Pickett:
I … Go ahead.
Blake Smith:
I’m also the chief science officer and CEO of Intrepid Biosciences and the chief technical officer for [inaudible 00:03:08] and probably the chief science officer for the Henderson Group.
Tim Pickett:
I think you may need to start saying no to some things.
Blake Smith:
That’s absolutely right. That’s absolutely right, but they’re all doing good things. They’re trying to make life better for people, and they want to do it doing cannabis science and nanotechnologies and so how can I say no?
Tim Pickett:
I know. That’s what’s so hard. Tonight, and for those of you who don’t know me, I’m a medical cannabis provider. I specialize in taking care of people who need to use medical cannabis for their medical condition. I teach people how to use cannabis. I educate them on all of the things surrounding cannabis. I love it. It’s so rewarding and so fun to watch people feel better with something natural instead of something and reduce the use of pharmaceuticals.
Tim Pickett:
Tonight, we’re going to be talking about pain specifically, kind of all about pain, chronic pain, acute pain, cannabis use for pain and so well titled here, The Hurt Blocker. Yeah, again, we’ll talk about acute and chronic pain. We’ll get into a little bit of the mechanism of action of cannabis and cannabinoids, what we know and maybe what we don’t know. We’ll talk a little bit about cannabinoids and terpenes that may be good for pain, deep dive into THC, and, of course, our favorites, some suggestions at the end.
Tim Pickett:
Let’s talk about acute pain first. What is acute pain? We’re talking sharp pain, sudden pain. Ten days ago, my psoas spasmed up, and I was completely incapacitated. That’s acute pain, couldn’t walk from the bedroom to the kitchen. Acute pain disappears as injury heals. That’s the key with acute pain. It happens now, but it’s going to go away. We have a good process in the body for acute pain, broken bones, surgery, of course, labor and childbirth. God bless them, dental and orthodontic work and everything, bump your hand.
Tim Pickett:
Chronic pain is a little different. In Utah, for the cannabis program in Utah, chronic pain is two weeks or more of pain that is not well controlled with a typical treatment or medication or therapy. Typically, chronic in medicine is something that is longer than three months, tends to be kind of that threshold of chronic when we talk to patients and something lasts a little bit longer than three months.
Tim Pickett:
The issue with chronic pain is sometimes the … With acute pain, you get a broken bone. You have pain. You have healing. You have no more pain. What if your bone healed, but you still had pain? That’s kind of one of the keys with chronic pain. It’s a disassociation with what’s happening physically, and it becomes this longterm thing almost regardless of whether or not you have some type of physical or mechanical dysfunction or problem in the body, but you just have this pain response. [crosstalk 00:07:02]. Go ahead.
Blake Smith:
One other thing that often causes this is when you think about injury, so you break a bone, for example. You have nerve bundles. You have nerve fibers. You have certain areas in the body that are hard for your body to get all of the repair mechanisms into those spaces. Your bone may heal within eight weeks completely, but the nerve fibers themselves may not heal in that same amount of time and so longer. What will often happen with chronic pain is your acute pain masks something that’s going to last much longer and so as the acute pain starts to go away from the broken bone or the burn, you’ll discover that you had other injuries that you were unaware of that is going to take a lot more time to get fixed.
Tim Pickett:
Yes. Nerves are notoriously hard to heal, if they ever heal, a lot of times. I think in school, we were taught that nerves can grow about a centimeter a year, so sometimes, you get some nerves back. Arthritis here, I want to highlight arthritis because arthritis is it’s the number one cause of chronic pain, I think, nationwide. It has to do with the aging population, frankly. Everybody’s going to get arthritis, eventually some type of arthritis from overuse. We just, we’re not built to live forever.
Blake Smith:
Well, and arthritis particularly occurs where you have joints and you’re not using bone or muscle or tendon. It’s, literally, like the material in your nose, the material in your ears, but in your joints, typically, because the way this typically works is you have all these self-recognition proteins that tell you in the case of Tim, “Hey, I’m Tim. I’m a Tim cell.” Then an immune system cell will go by and communicate and say, “I’m also a Tim cell. Everything’s cool.” Those transmembrane-bound, self-recognition proteins inside your body identifies things that are foreign invaders and so it mounts an immune response when it says, “Hi, I’m Tim.” And the other one says, “Well, I’m not,” or, “I’m Bob,” or whatever it is.
Blake Smith:
What ends up happening there is when you look at your joints with collagen and things like that, you break off through multiple use those was transmembrane-bound proteins and so all of a sudden, your immune system doesn’t recognize your own joint cells as being self cells. One of the first immune responses you have is to attack it with chemicals, histamines, [isophils 00:09:50], neutrophils and all of these other things. That is where you get this red inflammation and the locking of the joints and pain with arthritis. The problem is you can repair those proteins for most cells. You cannot repair them for your joints, for cells that are, basically, fixed, that don’t have an ability to multiply and then replenish themselves. Sorry, I went on a diatribe, but [crosstalk 00:10:21].
Tim Pickett:
No, you didn’t. No, you absolutely didn’t. Now let’s switch over to the mechanism of action, what we know about … Well, we were really talking about kind of the mechanism of pain, right? We’re talking about when we talk about the mechanism of action, explain a little bit more about the mechanism of action. It’s hard to describe the mechanism of action of the endocannabinoid system as a whole, right, other than to say from my side, when I talk to patients, I talk about the fact that cannabinoids are going to stimulate healing when it needs to be, when something needs to be healed. Cannabinoids are going to inhibit things when they need to be inhibited. I use broad terms when I talk to patients because the endocannabinoid system is a system that strives for homeostasis. It strives for balance, right?
Blake Smith:
Yup.
Tim Pickett:
And cannabis tends to, I feel like it tends to try to balance things.
Blake Smith:
So a body enters into homeostasis because, ultimately, it’s thermodynamically more favorable for a body to do that. The whole purpose of organic life is to fight entropy. I’m getting kind of really big here, but when we think about it, we’re thinking about it like there’s a finite amount of usable energy in the universe. When we say usable energy, we’re talking about energy that can do other things, convert and so forth. Heat energy doesn’t convert back to, say, kinetic energy or heat energy doesn’t convert back to usable other forms of energy.
Blake Smith:
Your body uses energy to stay organized. We’re now talking about the second law of thermodynamics, all ordered things start to move to an unordered state and the only way to maintain that order is to use energy to do so. What ends up happening is your body has been designed, and whether you believe in God or evolution or whatever it is, your body has been honed in based on these laws of thermodynamics to specifically be in its most energetically favorable state.
Blake Smith:
When we talk about homeostasis, what we’re talking about is expending the least amount of energy to do all the functions that your body has to do. Endocannabinoids, or your endocannabinoid receptor system, is a helper to your normal central nervous system at maintaining homeostasis. Think about it like if you have a bag of M&M’s and all those M&M’s are neurotransmitters. If you have more brown ones, your body’s natural inclination is to get more brown ones into equal piles onto both sides. What ends up happening is if you have imbalance, cannabinoids can help reestablish balance in places where you’re either having deficit or too much. Anyway, sorry.
Tim Pickett:
No. I think what’s important there is we understand the broad piece of the endocannabinoid system, right? We understand broadly what it does and we’re trying to figure out all of the little details. There are certainly too many details that we don’t know, but we know it finds balance. Chronic pain, when you’re talking about pain, it’s essentially trying to figure out the system and try to balance it back out.
Tim Pickett:
There’s a theory. It’s a growing theory that because humans evolved next to the cannabis plant, that cannabinoid deficiency actually almost can be a cause of these chronic problems.
Blake Smith:
Yeah.
Tim Pickett:
Let’s go to we’re talking about cannabinoids for pain relief, terpenes for pain relief. I feel like my favorite terpene for pain relief is beta-caryophyllene. It’s a good antiinflammatory, tends to be strong in strains that are good for pain relief, Kushes and Hazes, but talk [inaudible 00:14:51] information about cannabinoids for pain.
Blake Smith:
Yeah. Again, most cannabinoids are mimicking a natural neurotransmitter that’s already being produced. Now, we don’t know all of them, but we know some of them. When we look at CBC, CBC is typically an anticonvulsant, and it is most effective for things like Parkinson’s and seizure-type conditions that are energetic seizures, not necessarily freezing-type seizures, where all of a sudden you lock. Instead, this is one where you’re having misfires of energy, energetic signals. CBC can help with pain, specifically, because if you’re having nerve misfiring, CBC can help regulate that.
Blake Smith:
When we look at CBD, CBD is mimicking normal GABA pathways. Now, one of the things that’s cool about CBD is it doesn’t inhabit all the normal receptor sites that GABA does, but it inhabits some of them. This is why when people talk about CBD, well, it’s great for pain. It’s great for inflammation. It’s great for stress. It’s great. If you want to know all the things that CBD potentially can affect, start looking at all the different receptor sites and uses that your body has for GABA. That’s why that one becomes so effective in terms of pain relief.
Blake Smith:
When we think about CBG, CBG is absolutely, and you’re going to get to this in your slides, basically CNS pain that comes from the brain down versus pain from an acute place moving back up to the brain. CBG is extremely effective at blocking signaling coming from an acute source to the brain that basically says we don’t have to enact the sympathetic nervous system to start having a histamine reaction, epinephrine, cortisol, and all these other things associated with a pain response, which are almost always associated with fight or flight, right? CBG is effective in that particular space.
Blake Smith:
CBN downregulates, when you’re awake, serotonin pathways. It downregulates also, when you’re going to sleep, the melatonin pathway. If you’re having overall stress or anxiety or sleep issues and that’s causing longterm pain, CBN is effective. Especially if you think about your body does almost all of its repair while you’re sleeping, so if your pain is keeping you awake and you’re not getting good sleep, you’re not fixing the thing, your body’s not fixing those areas of pain, so CBN can be extremely effective there.
Blake Smith:
Delta-8 has a very high absorption cellular rate and so when we look, especially, at organ pain, stuff that’s in the trunk of the body, Delta-8 is extremely effective at lowering inflammation or, at least, the pain response associated with that. Whereas Delta-9 is a more CNS response where your body then responds and stimulates the dopamine pathway, ultimately, and so you mask pain using Delta-9.
Blake Smith:
The terpenes are particularly interesting. You brought up beta-caryophyllene. Beta-caryophyllene and your other caryophyllenes in general are all derived from pepper plants and so at some point, humans were growing weed with pepper plants. Most likely, what we’ve seen genetically is that mostly came from the Middle East. Plants have a unique thing where they will often share genetic and chemicals back and forth with each other. Terpenes are one of the things that plants will freely share back and forth over periods of time in generations and so it’s likely that most forms of weed that are high in caryophyllene were originally derived from the Middle East, but that’s neither here nor there. The point is we know pepper plants are often used for acute pain and relief of those type of things in several ways or forms and that’s the reason why.
Blake Smith:
Here’s the biggest problem with terpenes in general is I believe very, very much that they’re effective. The mechanism of action of terpenes is almost impossible to determine. It’s just like lavender and some of these other things. I don’t think they don’t work. I mean, there’s plenty of studies that show that enough people are affected in a positive way by taking certain types of oils and natural products that it’s effective. When we try to break it down how it actually is a dose response, 10 milligrams of lavender oil equates to this lowering of stress, it’s really hard to do. On the terpene profile, I believe in it, but I don’t know how it’s doing what it’s doing per se.
Tim Pickett:
That’s where you come into more than these cannabinoids, as well, right?
Blake Smith:
Yeah.
Tim Pickett:
We’re describing these, the mechanism of action a little bit, or the function of these cannabinoids in the body, but there are 120 cannabinoids, so most, the vast majority we still don’t know much about.
Blake Smith:
Yeah. Really, most of these start with the precursor molecules. GABA is a precursor molecule. In the case of Delta-9 and Delta-8, it’s anandamide that are initially starting that process for the production of dopamine and so forth. We can look at those precursors, but they’re pretty tightly linked with an ultimate outcome of a final chemical. The terpenes are like, the precursor molecules with terpenes are, like, there’s 30 or 50 of them or even more, so it’s like, well, where does humulene go in and actually cause an effect? I don’t know. We have a grab bag of all kinds of places it could go and all kinds of things it can do. That’s why when you find a really cool combination of cannabinoids with terpenes, high five. Stick with it because there’s something synergistic going on with that combination that is providing the relief that you need.
Tim Pickett:
That particular point right there is good enough to be repeated. When you find a strain or a product and a combination of cannabinoids and terpenes that work for you, you’ve got to write that down. Write the strain down. Write the product down because it’s no kidding that one strain is going to work for somebody and it might not work for somebody else. I think there are probably countless examples of this. One I know of in Israel, a seizure patient who is using a cannabis product, a natural cannabis product, seizures are almost completely gone. Change the formulation, seizures come back. They had to do a lot of research to figure out the breakdown of what they grew.
Blake Smith:
Tim, so you’re very smart, too, and really, really good job on this one because that bears repeating, too. This is the biggest challenge in the marijuana industry as a whole, both on the medical side, as well as the adult use side, getting the same product every single time, produced in the same way, with the same outcomes, is really not many people are doing that or doing that well. That’s one of the things that makes this really important as we do this because we have to treat this like medicine and so that somebody who’s relying on this for relief gets the same thing every time they take it.
Tim Pickett:
Yup. Okay. Let’s dive into Delta-9. Really, in my opinion, Delta-9 is one of the biggest factors for pain relief. It’s because of the disassociation. You’re, essentially, putting your pain over there on the couch. That’s what Delta-9 does, from a practical standpoint. It disassociates the brain and the thought process from that pain and that symptom. People will have headaches or toothaches, and it’s almost like I am my headache or I am my toothache. THC takes the toothache, puts it over there. It doesn’t necessarily take away the pain. It takes away the perception of the pain so that a person can move on and do what they want to do during the day.
Tim Pickett:
I think it’s important to talk about that because we talk about a lot of cannabis users just want to get high. Then we talk about chronic pain and people just want to get high. Well, the truth is people being high, for some patients, is part of the process.
Blake Smith:
Yeah. Look, especially if you’ve been self-medicating for a really long period of time, if you’re self-medicating, how do you know that your self-medication is doing what you need it to do? Well, a head change is a really clear indicator that you know the medicine is doing what it’s supposed to do. We’ve talked about this before. It’s a challenge because you have this legacy group that uses, that that’s the indicator they use, but as we’ve talked about before, it would be really odd if you take a Tums and you got high from that to let you know your Tums is working or your aspirin or something. Most medicine is not designed to have you feel a particular way as an indicator that it’s doing what its job is.
Blake Smith:
This is one of the reasons why a lot of people who are high in THC think that CBD is not very effective because they’re expecting to feel this grandiose change. What I would say is from my case, I have bum shoulders from being too rowdy in my younger days. Without CBD or a lot of NSAIDs, I can’t raise my arm above my head. I just did it right now, but I can tell you it’s because my inflammation is so much lower. It’s not like I take CBD and I’m like, oh, I could do cartwheels now. I don’t feel like a billion bucks. The difference is when I’m sitting here talking with you, I can raise my arms, whereas if I’m not taking it, oh boy, that would probably cause me pain for about two to three days.
Tim Pickett:
It is going to be different for chronic pain. It’s going to be different for acute pain. One thing that I really noticed recently with my, frankly, with my back injury, is you have … Let’s talk about chronic pain for a minute and then acute pain. With chronic pain, I like to have people learn how to low dose or microdose more consistently and then use inhaled methods on top of their low dose because it gives you a more therapeutic, kind of tends to give you more therapeutic effect. The microdose may be at the head change level or below and so just enough maybe disassociation that you know it’s there or, like Blake said, maybe you can raise your shoulder. You don’t feel high, and there is THC on board. It’s disassociating you from your pain, but you don’t know. It’s not enough. It’s enough to reduce your symptoms, but it’s not enough to get you high. That’s ideal.
Blake Smith:
Yeah.
Tim Pickett:
That would be ideal.
Blake Smith:
Yeah. One of the coolest things about THC Delta-9 as a pain reliever, especially for acute use, is like you get a root canal, for example, and they traditionally would give you codeine or whatever it is. What really just needs to happen is basically, you’ve just had your jaw punched a bazillion times. You just need to heal. That’s all that really needs to happen there. You don’t. And so you need some time-
Tim Pickett:
You need time. You need time to heal.
Blake Smith:
That’s right. You just need to heal. Okay. Rather than being loopy with your codeine or something like that, we’ll just go ahead and disassociate using some THC, which is not as much as you have to take on the codeine side. It doesn’t have the negative effects, and it can get you over that acute pain pretty quickly. It’s really a kind of a cool way to think about it.
Tim Pickett:
This is exactly what happened to me with my back 10 days ago. I mean, you lock it up and there’s healing that needs to take place. There’s anti-inflammation that needs to take place. In my case, there was prednisone involved to try to really lower that inflammation and get that going. There was a significant amount of and there was a lot of discussion with a couple of other providers about this, but there was a lot of THC use because really, what I needed was time. I needed muscle relaxation and I needed time. Me personally, I tend to be a person who’s very, very motivated to get a lot done, so it is extremely hard for me to lay in a bed all day long for two or three days. It really takes some disassociation in order to do that for me to kind of keep me down.
Blake Smith:
Yeah, and it’s more effective to use an indica-like strain so that you want to sink into your couch versus wanting to go do pushups. Right?
Tim Pickett:
Yes.
Blake Smith:
Sometimes, you’re going to want to disassociate, but still have to get up and run around and do stuff, and so that’s one type of sativa-like strain you would want. Then there’s other times you literally just need to be in bed and sleep it off, so let’s get you sinking into your couch. That’s why there’s two ways to kind of think about using the different types of sativa versus indica.
Tim Pickett:
And that comes to, really, product selection. There’s going to be products that are going to be better for chronic issues, some better for acute issues. Obviously, pain can be mechanical, can be in the gut. There’s all kinds of places it can be. That’s where we try to, we, as providers, and Blake, as a producer, he’s trying to design products that are specific for specific conditions or specific types of pain. I’m trying to figure out with the patient, listen to the patient. What type of pain is it? Where is it? What do we know about the cannabinoids? What do we know about Delta-9, Delta-8? How can we build a product or how can we choose a natural flower that is going to help, help you get through, help you get more time, do more things, if that’s what, where you’re at in the pain cycle.
Tim Pickett:
I found that there was a couple of strains from local growers that I used a lot of that did not work near as well as when I switched to a Fatso or a Mad Max. It was really night and day, so in the physical therapy situation, it was very, very strain specific. If you’re using one strain, it’s not as helpful. If you’re using another strain, it is. Every strain is different for people. Temperatures seem to be a little bit deal, too. Not a part of this webinar, but …
Blake Smith:
Well, one of the things, if I can address, is I think this is super interesting, by the way, because if you go and look at the genetic profile of most flower that’s in the universe, the THC is always going to be somewhere within a couple percentage points one way or another. Really, the only difference is a couple percentage points on the terpene profiles, so what makes one more therapeutic than another?
Blake Smith:
Really, it has to do with those profiles and how you’re metabolizing those profiles. The reason why Mad Max, and I’m going to throw down with Mad Max because I like it so much. The reason why I like Mad Max so much is because it’s high enough in CBG that even if it’s not your normal strain that would help, like if you’re used to Dutch Treat, for example, or you’re into-
Tim Pickett:
[crosstalk 00:31:50]
Blake Smith:
… Golden Spike or something [inaudible 00:31:55] progeny, so-
Tim Pickett:
Did you see that?
Blake Smith:
I saw that.
Tim Pickett:
That’s Mac.
Blake Smith:
If you’re using those and those are usually helpful for you, they don’t typically have much difference in the profile. Mad Max, specifically, always has somewhere between 6% and 8% CBG, so I know it’s going to lower inflammation. Now, it may not be enough to fix you, but I know you’re at least going to get an anti-inflammatory effect from it. That’s why I like that strain so much. The Fatso is really high in caryophyllene, which makes sense of why that one is usually quite therapeutic. Anyway, that’s kind of the thing. It becomes hard to find your right thing, but there are some ways to sort of tip it in your favor, right?
Tim Pickett:
Yeah.
Blake Smith:
Get out your [crosstalk 00:32:45]-
Tim Pickett:
When you’re going to the pharmacy, you’re trying to choose. Sometimes, it’s choosing an eighth of two different things and then going home and trying them both. Sometimes, it’s mixing them and that can be a thing. For when it comes to flower, it’s a journal. It’s a journal issue. It’s what did I take? How do I feel two hours later? What did I take? How did I feel two hours later? Then you can go back and you can look at the profiles a little bit more and you can make a little bit better … You can tip the scales even more in your favor when you choose new strains because there will always be … I’m talking to Brandon at Two North and there will always be strains that come and then eventually, the mothers, the genetics will change. The mother will change maybe. I don’t know. The genetics are going to change just a little bit through time, I feel like, with flower. Would you agree with that, Blake?
Blake Smith:
Yeah, absolutely. That’s one of the main reasons why almost every flower that’s out there is a hybrid now There’s very few true sativa or true indicas. You’re getting an indica or a sativa experience based on the terpene profile, but yeah, true, unique by themselves strains sort of don’t even exist anymore.
Tim Pickett:
They don’t, and they just don’t last forever.
Blake Smith:
That’s right.
Tim Pickett:
I mean, the plant eventually won’t … The mother eventually will be discarded.
Blake Smith:
Yeah, that’s right. That’s exactly right. And if you’re treating your weed like the soup of the day, people are just cycling as many combinations as they can cycle as quickly as they can cycle it, just like I want to try Kitchen Sink. Next week, I want Donuts. The week after that, I want Cherry AK. The week after that, I want Fatso. That’s also a challenge because a lot of growers are cycling their flower so quickly because just trying to appeal to a taste or a sensation, like getting a new candy or a soda, which is awesome, in some ways, but it’s also like, well, if you found the right flower for helping a particular illness, you can’t find that flower anymore, it’s a problem.
Tim Pickett:
Right. Oral, I’ve chosen a couple of my favorites here. The Plush gummies I like because they’re a mix Delta-8, Delta-9 and so they tend to be a little less psychoactive, a little better in the GI system from a absorption standpoint. I don’t have experience with the fuel cubes, but have had a lot of people have good results with that.
Blake Smith:
I hear a lot of people like them. I hear a lot of good things about the fuel cubes. I think they’re probably a pretty cool product out there. I haven’t had any myself yet, but there’s time.
Tim Pickett:
There’s a lot of products.
Blake Smith:
There’s a lot of products.
Tim Pickett:
There’s a lot of products out there.
Blake Smith:
Yeah. It’s hard to get through them all.
Tim Pickett:
Then topical, I always go to the Sage balm, but I go to the Sage balm because it’s an ointment and ointments tend to stay on the skin longer, absorb longer. To me, it’s just a practical thing from a medical, from what we learned in dermatology, a cream or a lotion. It’s nice and it feels nice and it’s not greasy, but an ointment, eh, stays on longer. It’s going to absorb a little bit better and so it’s going to work a little better.
Blake Smith:
Yeah. Really, we have found now we have a lot of patients that use the Cypress Sage for foot pain because what you do is you slather it on your feet because your feet have a lot of callouses and so forth, so you’re having to get through a lot more skin in the feet, so a lot of topicals don’t really hit it the way that it needs to. Standard Wellness produces a pretty cool patch that works for certain things. The patch doesn’t work great on feet because it can’t get through. In the old days, we used to throw things like DMSO in with it, which makes you can bypass your skin and get right into the bloodstream using DMSO. DMSO is not healthy for you. It has some implications for your liver and some other things and so you don’t really want to do that. You get a thicker balm. You literally put it on your feet, put a sock over it, whew. You’re golden. It’s going to absorb. It’s going to make your feet feel better. We have a whole bunch of people that even have avoided bone spur surgery as a result of using the Cypress Sage balm.
Tim Pickett:
I’m so surprised.
Blake Smith:
Sorry. This is not designed to be a plug for my stuff [crosstalk 00:37:22].
Tim Pickett:
No, but topicals in general are surprisingly effective in ways that you don’t really think that they will be, like with back pain. Again, coming back to that, you think well, the muscle, the muscle belly is too big. It’s too deep. The psoas is too deep. It just works. Some things just work. Topicals just kind of, they just tend to work.
Blake Smith:
We have found also with menstrual cramping and so forth that a nice balm, especially with little CBN, is really effective at relieving pain there. I [crosstalk 00:38:01]-
Tim Pickett:
Whether it’s distracting or it’s working down into the tissues doesn’t really matter because it’s safe and it works. Some things just work.
Blake Smith:
That’s right.
Tim Pickett:
Okay. Let’s get to some questions. We have-
Blake Smith:
Four so far.
Tim Pickett:
I’d like to … Okay. Let’s look. Let’s look. We’ve had a little bit of chat discussion. I’m familiar with a little bit of the chat discussion. Let’s go with, okay. Terry. How long would it take for the cell to heal? I’m going to say different different times. Depends on the cell.
Blake Smith:
Totally depends on the cell. Typically, cells have different life spans. Blood replenishes within about 24 hours and so forth. Muscle cells repair pretty quickly because they have a lot of access to ATP and energy, plus, they have high oxygen rate. Typically, when you think about healing for cells, you’re looking at oxygenation is a huge part. Oxygen is a huge part of that whole process. That’s because of the CREB cycle and the citric acid cycle. Essentially, it’s the conversion into energy that’s important for healing mechanisms.
Blake Smith:
Protein is also important, areas that have higher amount of protein, so you have little, tiny machines, essentially. I mean, they’re little organs, but your endoplasmic reticulum basically chart out and make proteins and so you use amino acids to, basically, allow your endoplasmic reticulum to make proteins. Those proteins are essential.
Blake Smith:
When you have muscle, muscle has tons of endoplasmic reticulum. It has tons of mitochondria for producing energy. Muscle will heal quick. Nerve cells already are firing electricity back and forth. You don’t move a lot of excess energy into nerve cells. You don’t oxygenate nerve cells the same way as quickly, so nerve cells take a lot longer. Some cells heal really fast and some don’t heal almost. It takes really long periods of time.
Tim Pickett:
[crosstalk 00:40:07].
Blake Smith:
That probably was an unsatisfactory answer, but it depends on the type of cell.
Tim Pickett:
Okay. What if the pain is all over the body? To me, this is kind of the same question is how do you figure out what will work? I know they seem unrelated, but to me and the patient discussion, they’re related. You start from scratch. You learn how … Here’s what I would say. You need to know your lowest effective dose for a head change. That’s a dose that you absolutely need to know. You need to know kind of how many milligrams THC you can take orally and get a head change. That’s the threshold dose. That’s kind of the baseline. You want to stay with that. That’s a dose you can take very consistently and be very productive, not have a lot of psychoactivity, be very functional. Then you need to know your maximum dose, the dose at which you are-
Blake Smith:
Paranoid.
Tim Pickett:
If you take anymore, you’re going to get paranoid, right, the maximum dose of THC that you can have. While not everybody needs to know that dose, it is helpful when you’re trying to create a therapy for somebody with pain all over the body or trying to figure out what will work. You need to know that. Then for me, it’s going through what Blake said earlier, which is try to tip the scales. Use the pharmacist. Use the Q and P, the provider, to try to choose products that maybe in that window, and then you’re keeping a journal.
Blake Smith:
Yeah.
Tim Pickett:
That really is kind of a practical answer. It’s not really cannabinoid or a terpene answer. It’s just practical.
Blake Smith:
One of the reasons I like doing this with you, Tim, is because your answer was spot on and really practical. I tend to go off into these weird tangents, which I’m about to do.
Tim Pickett:
Lay it on us.
Blake Smith:
When you think about whole body pain, you need to actually affect the central nervous system. It’s different from putting a balm on because a balm is acute. It’s going to fix your joints in the area. It’s going to fix your lower back for arthritis. It’s going to fix things locally. You need to affect endocannabinoid receptor system, one, and you need a full across the blood-brain barrier to affect the entire system for whole body pain. That’s the only effective way to start thinking about this because you need to actually start shifting the way the body is thinking and dealing with the pain structurally across the entire organism versus just something that you’re fixing in an area.
Blake Smith:
I also like layering. You talk a lot about this, Tim, and I agree with you on this one a hundred percent, layering your products. I take a tincture before bed. I wake up the next day. I take my gummy or rub, vice versa, whatever it is. Then all of a sudden, I’m at work and I feel like I’m going to die. This is now an inhalation method or this is now I’m going to dose again. It’s that’s to get immediate relief, but I’m keeping the normal under control through my daily ritual of taking something. That’s my response.
Tim Pickett:
We’re going to get to more questions. We kind of answered this question earlier. Can topicals help with deep tissue pain, and for some reason, for some reason they do. Blake can’t tell me the mechanism because you can’t get it deep enough. You cannot get the THC deep enough in the tissue, but it works.
Blake Smith:
So I don’t fully know the mechanism, but I do know this. There’s cellular to cellular communication and if one cell is in pain and the cell right next to it has been relieved, the one that’s relieved says, “I’ve been relieved. I don’t have a stress response anymore.” That tends to calm down the cells that are next to it, as well. For treating, I only have to get to a nerve cell to start treating it with cannabinoids and nerves are about an eighth of a millimeter in, so I’m not going to, to your point, Tim, and I agree with you. If I’m trying to hit my glute or something, I’m not going to get deep enough. I don’t really need to get all the way to where my muscle is hurting on my quadriceps. I only have to get to the nerves around the quadriceps to start downregulating the pain response. That seems to be one-
Tim Pickett:
I’m learning something right now. This is interesting, and it makes a lot of sense.
Blake Smith:
Yeah.
Tim Pickett:
This is besides the mechanical help that you’re getting really from the massage of rubbing in the topical, too. Touch is a very powerful healing tool, as well, and so if you can combine the cellular communication things with the natural product and you don’t have to get high, why not?
Blake Smith:
Yeah. I like topicals a lot, and plus, they last a long time, so you’ll go and you’ll buy one. They’re a little bit pricey, but they should last you 3/4 of a month or a month and so you’re not buying them. Most of the people I know who are buying flower are buying flower every week, sometimes multiple times. I don’t have to do that with tinctures and balms. Typically, those will last me a month.
Tim Pickett:
Next question is, let’s see, we’ll go to-
Blake Smith:
Can you get a card for migraines as in the slide? Can you do-
Tim Pickett:
As in the slide?
Blake Smith:
Yeah. You’re the guy on that one. You know better than I do.
Tim Pickett:
Okay. In Utah, qualifying under the pain qualification, I wrote an article about this in 2020, in the very, very beginning when we were starting out, so pain lasting longer than two weeks that is not well controlled with a typical medication. Every provider is going to have a little different approach for this and with migraines, if you have migraines and you’ve been diagnosed with them and tried some medications for them and they’re not working and you want to try cannabis, then we look at well, do you qualify under the pain? Are you missing work for a migraine? Do these migraines bother you over and over and over in a pattern?
Tim Pickett:
Then most providers, myself included, I would say, “Look, yeah, that’s a chronic pain issue.” It’s pain. It lasts longer than two weeks, and it is not well controlled. We are, with migraine patients, we’re trying to use indica and hybrid medications, trying to stay away from sativas. Inhalation methods tend to work. A lot of CBD sometimes helps, but technically, migraine is not a qualifying condition in Utah, but pain is a qualifying condition.
Tim Pickett:
Let’s see. What would you suggest for a very busy, active person who has been diagnosed with chronic back pain, with the only solution being pain management for during the working day? Easy at night.
Blake Smith:
Can I make one quick comment about migraines?
Tim Pickett:
Yeah.
Blake Smith:
We have found it’s pretty effective, actually, to take like the Cypress Sage balm or an equivalent topical. You put it right at the base of the skull right here, rubbing on when because most people can feel them coming on. You start getting your tunnel vision and you can feel it happening, so you put the topical right there. You also put a little bit right across your forehead. Go into a dark room. Sit and close your eyes for about 15 minutes. We’ve had a lot of success on people arresting or stopping their migraine from starting because what ends up happening a lot with migraines is you get tons of vasoconstriction. You get optical restriction around the optic nerve and so getting stimulation for all your senses down won’t cause as much energy influx in the head, so you’re going to want to take all of that down. Then the balm, the topicals in those areas will help relax blood flow and everything within those areas and so it’s an effective way to think about migraines.
Tim Pickett:
Great recommendation, Blake. Okay. Excuse me.
Blake Smith:
Very active person.
Tim Pickett:
Active chronic pain person. It feels like I’m talking to myself.
Blake Smith:
Teresa is running around everywhere. Can’t stop.
Tim Pickett:
Running everywhere.
Blake Smith:
Just going crazy.
Tim Pickett:
Got running shoes on all the time, all the time. Yeah, what are you going to do? So this is where I layer. This is where layering comes in big time because you want, first of all, I feel like you want CBD at a milligram per kilogram. Take the pounds you weigh. Divide it by 2.2. You need that much CBD every day. That’s where I would start. Then I would layer a oral cannabis method with THC or Delta-8, Delta-9, whatever works better for you. I would put that at the threshold of psychoactivity or just barely below because on a scale of one to 10, 10 being maximum dose, three being where that head change is, I want you at a three or a two, 2.7, but I want you to take regular doses morning, noon, night. I want to make sure that those doses are pretty consistent. Then when it’s bad, then I can use an inhaled method on top of that and go up to seven or five or six.
Tim Pickett:
The three, this does a lot of things. The layering does a lot of really cool things. It keeps you at that level so that you’re using inhaled. You’re going up to the seven, but you’re only coming back down to the level three when that wears off, which it will do earlier than the oral. It keeps your inhaled methods down over your lifetime, so you’re inhaling 10, 20, 30% less over your lifetime. Your lungs will thank you. You won’t get COPD and chronic bronchitis from. Not that you will, if you’re not using a lot, but the inflammation in your lungs will be less.
Tim Pickett:
That low threshold tends to be something that patients get used to. They don’t have the psychoactivity, but they keep the therapy. A lot of patients can continue to use the same dose for two to five years. I have a patient that has been using the same dose for five years for his chronic pain, same dose.
Blake Smith:
Tim Pearl asked earlier, too, was asking about well, does your tolerance always go up? It doesn’t have to. It’s only when you keep stimulating and taking more that all of a sudden, you’ll start noticing tolerance changes. If you find an effective dose, that will stay effective as long as all things being equal don’t change. Right?
Tim Pickett:
Mm-hmm (affirmative). Yup.
Blake Smith:
The other thing I would just … Tim, you’re so smart at all of this stuff. I mean, you are exactly right. I will say this. I have lower back pain. I have arthritis in my lower back. After sleeping in the same position for multiple hours and I need a good sleep and so I will often take CBN or something and knock myself out. Then I wake rested, but my back is so stiff, it’s hard for me to move out of bed. I have a topical by the bed. I put it on a little bit in the morning and within 30 seconds to a minute, I can move out of bed and I can move for the day. Then I layer on top of that.
Tim Pickett:
Hmm. That’s a great idea. Let’s see. We’ve got a stage four metastatic pancreatic cancer. What can I use for abdominal pain? I don’t know about you Blake, but this is one of these specific conditions where you go no holds barred.
Blake Smith:
Yup. I agree.
Tim Pickett:
You go all the way. We’re going to jack up the CBD dose, if we can tolerate that. We’re going to do oral methods consistently through the day. We’re going to learn what’s good in the daytime, what’s good in the bad, what’s good when I have a really bad day, what’s not. Then I’m going to layer on not only flower, potentially, but I’m going to layer on even concentrates.
Tim Pickett:
Here’s where, before we get too far into the discussion, because I know you want to add to this, here’s where tolerance to me, it becomes a little different discussion. I want to build up tolerance here because I’m not so concerned about using more and more and more because we have metastatic pancreatic cancer. The reality is there, right? What we want to do is we want to have a high enough tolerance that we can use a lot of cannabinoids because I now think I need to load this person up with cannabinoids. I need to be getting a lot of milligrams of cannabinoids in this person to help.
Blake Smith:
Yeah. Tim, I am a hundred percent in agreement with that because most people who have pancreatic cancer, it’s not whether or not you had a good day or a bad day. I either had a bad day or I had a worse day and so really, it’s no, I agree with you. There’s no holds barred. You want to build up a tolerance to multiple cannabinoids and you want to hit it with everything. Unlike certain types of cancer, we have not seen cannabis directly solve that as a cancer issue. There are some implications that cannabis can help with certain types of cancer. Pancreatic cancer has … I’ve heard of people being healed, but there’s not a lot of data to support that. There’s pretty good data to suggest that CBG helps with glioblastoma in the brain. Pancreatic cancer, you need relief to enjoy your life, what life you have left, and so you do what you got to do. Your doctor should [crosstalk 00:54:57].
Tim Pickett:
Yeah, and this is where journaling is important because if one strain is not working, you need to discard it and move to another strain. If one product isn’t working, you need to either increase the dose. This is where you’re really trying to get religious about it. Get technical about it, I think, too, because some things, there’s going to be some strains that help with appetite more than others and finding those might be helpful during the day. Then at night, other products. I also put a plug in for RSO here, true RSO, because I think for some reason, there’s something to the whole blend up the whole cannabis plant kind of mentality.
Blake Smith:
Yeah. I agree with that, too. Really, Delta-8 may be helpful taking the edge off, too. If we’re talking about specific products, Delta-8 may help taking the edge off. It won’t be sufficient for all your pain, but at least it will start that process because Delta-8 will just give you more of a body high than a head change. In the trunk, you have a high absorption rate of cannabinoids and so I like Delta-8 in those circumstances.
Tim Pickett:
But excellent question. Okay. We’re available for this type of discussion outside of the webinar series. Okay. Colin asks non-psychotropic cannabinoid cartridges. Yes or no? No question a CBD, a heavy dose of CBD vape cart helps immensely. It’s like topicals to me. I’m just surprised at how effective they are when you use a straight CBD product or a CBD-CBN-CBG. There’s more and more of these good products on the market. I’d say yes.
Blake Smith:
Yeah, so yes, definitely. Be careful where you get it.
Tim Pickett:
There’s a bill on the hill. We don’t want to go down this rabbit hole, but you’ve got to-
Blake Smith:
You’ve got to be-
Tim Pickett:
I can give you two products I carry. I know where it’s made, the cartridge in Logan. I know where your tincture is made and grown. Just limit yourself to good, reputable products, adequate testing.
Blake Smith:
You have to.
Tim Pickett:
Yes, especially with inhaled and especially with cartridges.
Blake Smith:
Especially with cartridges. Trust who you have making them.
Tim Pickett:
Yes. Yes. Okay. What if you can’t get the same product? Yup.
Blake Smith:
Okay. Here, I can answer this from a Zion perspective. If it’s a Zion product and you can’t seem to find that same Zion product, literally just email the company. If it’s a product that we have that worked for you, but for some reason we discontinued, I will make it just specifically for you. Tell me what pharmacy you go to and I will ensure that they always have that product for you, always. I can’t offer that for everybody else. I can offer that for Zion products because we typically don’t phase out a lot of our products very often and so because when you make a medicine, people become reliant on that medicine, so you always have to have it available.
Blake Smith:
That’s actually a good indicator about companies in general. I don’t just mean Utah. I just mean in general in the universe. If somebody is changing their product so often that you can never find the same product repeatedly over and over and over again, they’re not doing it from a perspective of trying to make a medicine for somebody to have for the rest of their lives and so make it.
Tim Pickett:
He [crosstalk 00:58:57].
Blake Smith:
Send an email that is strongly worded email that says, “Hey, I use this for medicine. Keep making it.”
Tim Pickett:
Yeah. Okay. Last question, and a difficult one. This is a patient. I know specifically the patient. If the Delta-8 is causing vertigo and headaches, this is a patient with a lot of chronic pain, lot of chronic abdominal pain, flares. It comes and goes, but it’s hospitalizations, that type of thing, so if I change to a different, but the Delta-8, so we talked about Delta-8, recommended it. For some reason, causing vertigo and headaches.
Tim Pickett:
Here’s my question. I don’t think we’re going to get to a great answer on this tonight, but I guess I could generalize it for the rest of the audience here a little bit, too, is when you have a chronic pain issue and the products that you’re trying to take are causing a side effect that you don’t love, that is, it’s causing a problem and you can’t get through the side effect to get the relief, what do we do? I think that really is more of the question here, like we have this problem. We think we’re leaning, we’re again, tipping the scales to products that we want, we think are going to help based on what we know, but we’re getting a side effect that we can’t get through. So what do we do?
Blake Smith:
Yeah. My initial gut, man, I would love to know what the product is and the administration route is the first two things I think of because a lot of times, I’ve heard this specifically around vape carts, around Delta-8. Sometimes, I’ve heard people getting vertigo from an inhaled method of Delta-8, but they don’t seem to have the same problems with like a gummy with Delta-8, so I’d want to know the route of administration. Also, the product in particular, because it could be the terpene combination or if somebody’s using botanical terpenes, not … By the way, I’m not against botanical terpenes per se, but it may not be the right thing. Also, if you don’t know where they’re being made, so it looks like try gummies, tincture, and capsule. Do we have Delta-8 capsules in Utah?
Tim Pickett:
Mm-mm (negative). I don’t think so.
Blake Smith:
Because if all-
Tim Pickett:
Oh, this is … I-
Blake Smith:
Oh, you’re in Colorado. Okay. I’m going to even take a couple steps back. This is the whole debate around Delta-8. Delta-8 is a cannabinoid that is an analog to Delta-9. It’s typically made the way most people make it is they take sulfuric acid or hydrochloric acid and they dump it into either CBD or Delta-9 and they start to force the bond to shift thermodynamically under heat. The acid serves a catalytic bridge to move that bond over, and then they either take the acid back out. They neutralize it. They should be washing it. There’s a whole bunch of stuff to do to clean that Delta-8 up. If they don’t clean it up, you can notice a lot of health implications around that. You can get vertigo. I mean, I have heard headaches. I’ve heard all kinds of things associated with that, so knowing your source and how they make it becomes really important.
Blake Smith:
Now, you don’t have to make Delta-8 that way, by the way. I’ll just speak for my own company. We use energetic oxygen, heat, and UV light, and you can still get the bond to move without having to use harsh acids to do that. I would try one from Zion or somebody else that’s local, where you know where it’s being made. I would try that first to see if it helps. If it does help and you don’t have the exact same experience, it tells you that your Delta-8 you were using before is adulterated. If you do use it and you get the same effect, what that tells me is we need to think about different forms or higher levels of Delta-9 with lower levels of Delta-8 so that you’re getting a masking of that.
Blake Smith:
I would continue to use Delta-8 if you need … If it’s giving pain relief and you find unadulterated and it works, that’s the right way to do it. If you can’t find unadulterated Delta-8, I would switch strains because if you don’t know how it’s being made and somebody’s in their garage with radiator hoses dumping hydrochloric acid in something, that’s sketchy. You need to be careful of that. That’s not the right way to think about it.
Tim Pickett:
And let me bring this back to medicine with the medicine that I was practicing before, which is to prescribe a pill. If you come in with a problem and I make a prescription, usually, we are taught that you should try three different medications, basically at least three, if the first one didn’t work, so we’re going to give one a trial. Then we might give a different one a trial, and we might give a third one a trial. In many cases, in some conditions, we’re trying up to five medications before we’re giving up on that even almost class of medication.
Tim Pickett:
This isn’t to say this is common. I’m not trying to dilute the issue, but this is it’s unfortunately kind of where we’re at is sometimes, these things take a while to figure out and again, why keeping a journal is probably a good idea. Trying multiple products is a good idea, but like Blake said, when anything you know about with Delta-8 is just such a controversial topic that you want to know. You want to know where you’re getting your products.
Blake Smith:
Yeah. I-
Tim Pickett:
And to Terry’s point, comment there, getting help for chronic pain is hard because providers are we’re busy. We’re impatient. You come in. We write your prescription. You’re out the door. Thank you for your copay. That’s just, we don’t like that. It’s the reason why Blake and I or part of the reason why Blake and I are in this.
Blake Smith:
Well, and this one, in particular, hits a home with me a lot because when we had the stuff going on with my daughter and thinking about what the implications of that are, when I went and got product from everywhere, I was getting inconsistent results, metals, pesticides, horrible chromophore showing up, all kinds of things everywhere, which is why I got into this in the first place because I decided I had to go just do this on my own.
Blake Smith:
I’ve been trained as a bioanalytical chemist. My background is bioanalytical chemistry and so I’ve been used to making medicine the way Tim is used to it in the pharmaceutical company. I’m like why can’t cannabis be the same way because that’s the thing that helps my daughter. I’m moving away from all this craziness. There are more producers of cannabis products in the US than most other businesses at this point, but you can’t trust 80% of them.
Blake Smith:
I do like medical markets a lot because medical markets typically are more tested and more rigorous than often adult use markets. That doesn’t mean there’s not good products there. It just means that typically in Utah, I’ve been audited. My company’s been audited by the state every week for the last, like, month and a half. Maybe it’s because they’re just really trying to find something wrong. The point is every single thing I make is tested. The state is in my business all the time and so you can trust it.
Tim Pickett:
Well, Blake, this has been a good discussion.
Blake Smith:
It is.
Tim Pickett:
I like this one. I think we’ve done a good job. Let’s see. How do we know-
Blake Smith:
There’s so many smart people who have been on tonight and so many people who are just so great. Thank you everybody for attending. I hope it was useful. If you have more specific questions, you can always come to Tim and if he needs [crosstalk 01:08:18]-
Tim Pickett:
Well, yes. One of the best ways to do this, too, is to go to Utah, is to go to the YouTube channel. In fact, we’re answering questions all the time. If you go to the YouTube channel on Discover Marijuana where this would be posted and you make a comment on one of those videos, you ask a question on one of those videos, we’ll try to answer it. That way, we can answer it for everybody and we don’t have to just keep the answer to ourselves and keep it secret just between us. I think that is probably the best way to get ahold of us. Subscribe to that YouTube channel. We really appreciate feedback that we’ve gotten tonight and Teresa, to your question, yes, all the pharmacies are selling mostly the same products. There’s a little bit of variation, but most are selling a lot of similar products from the same companies, all tested. Anyway, take care, everybody.
Blake Smith:
Thanks everybody.
Utah in the Weeds host Tim Pickett is heavily involved in the 2022 Utah legislative session. In this 89th episode, Tim gives us an update on recent cannabis-related discussions on Utah’s Capitol Hill.
First, Tim talked about Utah Therapeutic Health Center’s new educational partnership with Gray Matters. Gray Matters is dedicated to educating the public about the risks of adolescent cannabis use. [00:58]
Next, Tim gave an update on UT THC’s Uplift program, which subsidizes Medical Cannabis evaluations for terminally-ill and low-income patients. [05:32]
Then, Tim talked about the Discover Marijuana YouTube channel’s recent activity. The channel has a new series of videos to help viewers get to know Tim and his co-host, Blake Smith. [05:52]
To start the discussion about Utah’s 2022 legislative session, Tim talked about Senate Bill 190, a Medical Cannabis bill sponsored by Sen. Evan Vickers. SB 190 would add restrictions to cannabis advertising and labeling, and ban synthetic THC analogs like Delta-8, among other changes. [08:15]
Next, Tim talked about SB 195, sponsored by Sen. Luz Escamilla. The bill would add further restrictions on advertising for Medical Cannabis businesses, and add “acute pain” as a qualifying condition, among other changes. [27:11]
Tim talked at length about both bills, and their potential impacts on patients and healthcare providers.
Podcast summary coming soon.
Podcast transcript coming soon.
If you haven’t heard yet, a new rule regarding renewal of the Utah Medical Cannabis Card went quietly into effect earlier this year. The new card renewal rules eliminate the ninety-day term of a new patient’s initial card and replace it with a six-month term. Suffice it to say that this is good news. But what does it mean for you?
Before we get into that, it is important to note that the new rule does not affect current Medical Cannabis Card holders. It doesn’t change the ninety-day renewal requirement for anyone whose initial card expires prior to April. With that said, let us get into a more detailed explanation.
Utah law dictates that Medical Cannabis Cards are not open-ended. You cannot get a card that allows you to use Medical Cannabis for the rest of your life without seeing your Qualified Medical Provider (QMP) for periodic renewal. And for the record, that’s the way it should be. Medicine should always be administered under the supervision of a medical provider.
Prior to the new rule’s establishment, a patient’s first card was only good for ninety days. It had to be renewed by completing an online form and visiting a second time with a QMP. Fortunately, the renewal term itself was six months.
Under the new rule, a ninety-day renewal has been eliminated. All new patients obtaining their Medical Cannabis Cards for the first time will be issued cards that are good for six months. Prior to expiration, they will still need to visit with their QMPs in order to obtain another six-month card.
Understand that the new card renewal rules only affect a patient’s initial Medical Cannabis Card. All the other rules remain intact. That includes the rule governing one-year renewals. They are still possible, but three conditions must apply and be verified by a QMP:
A QMP must certify all three on the renewal application in order to recommend a one-year renewal. Then, as always, it is up to the state to decide whether to renew the patient’s card.
Everything else about the state’s Medical Cannabis Card program remains the same. To apply for your initial card, you have to use the Electronic Verification System (EVS) accessed by way of the state’s Medical Cannabis website. You cannot apply for a card with paper documents. You cannot visit a state office and apply in person.
Next, you cannot obtain a legal card without first visiting with a QMP. The state is currently developing a program to allow medical professionals to recommend Medical Cannabis for up to fifteen patients without becoming QMPs, but that program is not yet in place. So for now, the QMP requirement remains hard and fast.
You will also need to visit with a QMP to have your card renewed. It may not be necessary for an in-person visit; online visits are appropriate in some cases. Either way, your QMP will have to recommend renewal after evaluating your current health.
In terms of extending initial cards from ninety days to six months, regulators have done the right thing. The change represents a good move that will streamline the system, increase efficiency, and allow interested QMPs to take on more patients. It also eliminates some of the unnecessary administrative work created by the old ninety-day term. Well done, Utah regulators.
Things in the Medical Cannabis space continue to change at a rapid clip. Thanks to increasing cannabis demand around the world, a lot of the changes we are seeing are directly related to cannabis cultivars and non-plant products derived from THC and CBD. Of particular concern right now are PGR cannabis products.
‘PGR’ is an acronym for ‘plant growth regulators’. These are essentially synthetic hormones applied to cannabis plants in order to modify growth and development. They can be used to maximize production. They can also be used to enhance some characteristics while stifling others.
Here are four things you should know about them as a Medical Cannabis user:
Competition within the cannabis space – both medical and recreational – has a lot of entrepreneurs and corporate entities wanting their piece of the pie. These days, it is all about maximizing production. The best way to do so from the grower’s perspective is to grow more plants more quickly. Adding PGRs is one way to do that.
The result is that PGR use is becoming more frequent. From small farms to corporate growing operations, businesses see PGRs as the ticket to higher profits by way of more plants. As PGR use gradually takes over the industry, it is probably going to be harder to find non-PGR products.
Left to its own devices, a cannabis plant will grow in a certain way. It will exhibit a specific chemical structure when tested in a lab. But throw in a foreign substance, like a PGR for example, and you end up changing a plant’s chemical structure.
Studies have shown that PGRs can change the chemical structure of cannabis plants. To what degree those changes occur is still up in the air. But one definitive change is that trace elements of PGRs can remain in plant material after harvest. And if this is the case, consuming PGR cannabis also means consuming PGRs themselves.
Above and beyond chemical changes, PGRs can also change the flavor and texture of a given plan. The problem is that the synthetic hormones interfere with a plant’s natural hormones. This can affect everything from trichome counts to a plant’s cannabinoid and terpene profile.
Differences in flavor and texture can be anything from subtle to drastic. There is no way for growers to be sure without actually adding PGRs and then seeing what comes out the other end. As for consumers, it is not unusual for them to observe drastic differences between similar products based on whether PGRs were introduced to the growing process.
Finally, utilizing PGRs to increase cannabis production is still a relatively new practice. As a result, their effects are not yet widely known. We know that PGRs affect plant growth to some degree. We do not yet know just how significant those effects are.
We also don’t know how PGRs affect human health. Future studies could prove them to be entirely harmless. On the other hand, we may someday learn that Medical Cannabis patients haven’t been enjoying the full effects of their medicines because PGRs inhibit how THC and CBD interact with the endocannabinoid system. The fact is that we just do not know right now.
The best advice we can offer is to avoid PGR products if you are at all concerned about the potential for side effects. In the meantime, we need more scientific study into how the synthetic hormones affect everything from plant structure to medical efficacy.
Episode 88 of Utah in the Weeds features Daniel Jones, a war veteran who uses Medical Cannabis for PTSD. Jones says cannabis has helped him retake control of his life.
We started this episode with a discussion of Jones’ decision to join the armed forces at age 18. He says he didn’t see a future in his home town of Rock Springs, Wyoming, so he decided to join up. [02:06]
Jones says he spent about 4.5 years in the service, and he went on tours in Kosovo and Iraq. Jones shared a few memories of his time in the service, including a close call with a land mine. [05:55]
Like many people, Jones’ first experiences with cannabis happened when he was a teenager. He says he didn’t use much cannabis then, but an experience with the VA made him want to revisit cannabis. Cannabis has helped Jones retake control of his life by helping with his anxiety, panic attacks, and other PTSD symptoms. [12:07]
Jones and our host, Tim Pickett, agree that some cannabis strains can worsen symptoms like anxiety. Jone says the cannabis strain “Blue Dream” made his anxiety worse, but “Blue Cheese” gives him the mellow, calm feeling he’s after. [15:25]
The conversation then shifted to Utah’s Medical Cannabis program and Proposition 2, the 2018 ballot initiative for Medical Cannabis. Jones, like many others, is disappointed that the state didn’t pass the proposition as it was originally written. [18:45]
Jones says he wanted to join Utah’s Medical Cannabis program as soon as he could. He says he contacted a company called Truu Med to get his card. Jones says the company misled him, and he ended up paying them thousands of dollars for unnecessary monthly appointments. [20:00]
Jones buys his Medical Cannabis products at Deseret Wellness in Provo. He uses some of the cannabis flower sold there, and he also finds their gelatinous cubes useful for sleep. [30:51]
We wrapped up this episode with a few more of Jones’ insights about the VA, the US Military, and his use of cannabis to replace alcohol and other drugs. [35:32]
Tim Pickett:
Welcome everybody out to Utah In The Weeds. This is episode 88 and I am your host, Tim Pickett. Today’s episode is a discussion with Daniel Mark Jones, a veteran. This is a heavy conversation in two regards. One, his tours… I’ll let you just listen to it. Kosovo and Iraq. This is serious trauma that these… They’re we don’t give enough credit to those in our country, I think, who are willing to do this, right? Willing to go out and serve in this way. Just always very strong and powerful to hear these stories.
Tim Pickett:
But the second piece of his story with his experience getting a medical cannabis card here in Utah and what happened to him, and how he was basically fleeced for thousands of dollars. And just the opportunity that people take, I guess, to take advantage of other people, especially veterans, come on.
Tim Pickett:
Anyway, great conversation. Very, very genuine guy. From a housekeeping perspective, I’m excited release this episode. We’ve got our own [Colin McCann 00:01:26] next week and going to record with him soon. Looking very forward to that.
Tim Pickett:
I’ve also got a product review that I’ve been doing on my own. Sprained my back over the past week and have been just debilitated and unable to walk, really. So been doing some research on my own with what’s working best, trying to just recover a little bit. So stay tuned for that. Utah In The Weeds, download and subscribe on any podcast player that you have access to. I’m Tim Pickett, again, enjoy this conversation with Daniel Mark Jones.
Tim Pickett:
First off so we can get your name right, would you mind saying your full name so we get the pronunciation, right? And tell me a little bit about you.
Daniel Jones:
My name’s Daniel Mark Jones. I was born in Salt Lake City, grew up in Wyoming for 20 years in a small miners town of Upper Reliance. That’s about three miles from Rock Springs, Wyoming. That’s where I joined the 1041st Engineers. I joined them November 13th, 1999. It was living under a bridge, it was a negative 50 and I just couldn’t do it. So I went and joined the service. I walked in the cold up towards the mountains, right over the college, right down to where the mall is and then I joined them. So I was able to join the 1041st, so it was pretty cool.
Tim Pickett:
So what was that like? How old were you at the time?
Daniel Jones:
I was 18. I was 18 working on my GED. Most of my life I was homeschooled. Mom was falling behind on her bills, everyone else was able to go to public school, and I was stuck getting my college… Up at the college to get my GED.
Tim Pickett:
Yeah. What was the service like?
Daniel Jones:
The service, it was different. But for me it was a life changer. I was able to get out and away from people that were going to bring me down. It got me away from the drug scene. It got me away from the basically just destroying my life. It was an opportunity for me to leave Rock Springs, Wyoming, and that was the chance I took.
Daniel Jones:
One of the reasons for that is Rock Springs is called rock bottom. You’re going to be stuck at the bottom of nowhere and you’re going to be stuck on either drugs or end up locked up, and that’s something I didn’t want to be. I wanted something better for my life.
Tim Pickett:
Yeah. Did you ask your parents before you joined up?
Daniel Jones:
I didn’t tell anybody I joined.
Tim Pickett:
What’d they say?
Daniel Jones:
Basically when they found out is when I was in Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri training. They had us all coloring our parents to invite them to graduation. Everyone in my family thought I was dead, even my friends. They couldn’t find me, I just disappeared. When they found out I was in Fort Leonard Wood, my adopted dad, he was stoked.
Tim Pickett:
Was he?
Daniel Jones:
He was.
Tim Pickett:
Because, one, you were alive.
Daniel Jones:
Yes.
Tim Pickett:
Right? And they didn’t know where you were. How long had you been gone before you contacted them?
Daniel Jones:
It was about probably seven weeks.
Tim Pickett:
Holy cow. As an 18 year old, you’re living under the bridge. You joined the service. You’re gone for six, seven weeks. Yeah, I’ll bet they were pretty excited to hear from you.
Daniel Jones:
Yeah, he was pretty stoked. He drove three days to come to my graduation ceremony.
Tim Pickett:
That is awesome. So what was the rest of that like? Did you do tours? How long were you involved?
Daniel Jones:
I did. I did about four and a half years in that gate. That pretty much put me in two different war zones. My first tour was in Kosovo in 2002. I went with 54th Engineers Company, Bravo Company, out of Bamberg, Germany. They were short staffed on the soldiers and they were looking for volunteers and I was the first to volunteer out of my unit out of Hanau Germany. That was an interesting experience there.
Tim Pickett:
Yeah. Talk about that. So it’s interesting, I’ve been to Kosovo, I’ve seen the statue of Bill Clinton in the square. I don’t think it was there when you were there, but talk about that a little bit and what you saw.
Daniel Jones:
We were stationed in Klokot. It’s about probably 12 miles from Camp Magrath, and then about probably four or five minute drive from Camp Bondsteel. We were in charge of checkpoint 417, and that’s the longest checkpoint. You just look down the road for miles one way and one way or the other, it was all flat. It was a church in the middle. We did a lot of our searches right there, vehicle searches. Lot of our main focus was there.
Tim Pickett:
What other war zone did you go to?
Daniel Jones:
Everything around us was a war zone.
Tim Pickett:
Was it?
Daniel Jones:
Most of the people that were living in homes were destroyed by bombs. We were even protecting cemeteries. The Serbs, they would come dig up to Albanians graves and scatter their bones everywhere. They were pretty much ruthless. One race thinks they’re better than the other and needs to annihilate the other race. One of the things that we found there was a couple more massive graves where they lined them up and shoot them, and then just dumped the bodies in one big hole.
Tim Pickett:
Wow.
Daniel Jones:
Kosovo also is a minefield. About 90% of the mine fields that have been planted were never recorded. So wherever you drive, you had to be careful. My unit, we were out doing our regular drive arounds, we ended up on a back road and we ended up in the middle of a minefield. If I didn’t [inaudible 00:08:57] to ask the Sergeant and ask him what was sticking up out of the ground out there and stop the vehicle, we were probably about 10 feet from hitting that mine.
Tim Pickett:
Wow. Is this something that you still deal with? It sounds like you have some pretty vivid memories of this still.
Daniel Jones:
I do, I do. I still remember that was pretty hectic driving in a minefield. I was at the church guard guarding, and that’s when the seven bombs went off. It just constantly went off one right after the other. Sergeant Bergess, Sergeant Mcdevitt, they were injured. They were literally putting bombs on people’s homes and just blowing them up.
Tim Pickett:
So what other war zone did you go to other than in Kosovo in 2002?
Daniel Jones:
After Kosovo in 2002, three months later, my regular unit, the 54 Second Engineers, we end up going to Iraq just three months after I got back from Kosovo.
Tim Pickett:
Oh, wow.
Daniel Jones:
My unit was a combat unit, a multi unit bridge unit. We were the river wraps. We put the biggest world float bridge ever built in a war history, a 98×2 float bridge across the Tigris River there. Which is really funny because the river, it’s not a very big river. It’s like a creek. You can even probably just run across it and jump across. But Saddam’s idea was if he blew the dam that was like 30 miles up the river, his idea was to try to take out the dam. It didn’t work that way. So we ended up putting the float bridge across. From my memories from that, that was pretty hectic. One of our sergeants in the boats, the boat went under and it dragged the sergeant down. He didn’t pop up until 150 feet from the bridge.
Tim Pickett:
Wow.
Daniel Jones:
We’re facing white waters. The river itself had blood disease in it. If you go further up the river from the little town, the Tigris, you could actually see the sewer dumping into it. People fishing, people washing their clothes in this river, just five feet from where the sewage is dumping into it. You sit there and wonder, it’s like, “Wow, can’t you just dump that sewage somewhere else?” But they don’t have what we have, the cleaning facility for it.
Tim Pickett:
Wow. So when did you get out?
Daniel Jones:
I got out November 3rd, 2004.
Tim Pickett:
Let’s switch gears a little bit. When did you first get introduced to cannabis?
Daniel Jones:
Oh, probably about 17, 17 and a half. But I wasn’t a really big user of it. It’s not until about seven years ago from today is when I got really into it. One of the reasons I got into it is the VA likes to give a lot of pills out.
Tim Pickett:
I’ve heard that. I have heard that rumor.
Daniel Jones:
Oh, there’s an escalator. If you ask my old lady here where we first hooked up, she found one of my Tupperware was full of pills. They keep sending me more and more and more. There’s pills I never asked for too that they’re sending me.
Daniel Jones:
When someone with PTSD has a flashback or has a hard time trying to get under control, a pill can only work for so long. It takes 45 minutes to an hour. If you do one hit of cannabis, you’re having faster reaction of calming the person down. That’s one of the things I started using the cannabis for was to help get me back in control of my life.
Tim Pickett:
What was happening in your life that you needed to get control of?
Daniel Jones:
Panic attacks. My anxiety was taken off. I was starting to actually see shadow figures walking across my living room. I always, even to this day, I still feel like I’m being watched. I feel like I hear people walking outside around the house. There’s times where I don’t feel safe in my own home, and with the cannabis, it kind of restores my sanity back knowing nothing’s really there.
Tim Pickett:
Yeah. When you started getting into it, you’re just getting it off the black market, yeah?
Daniel Jones:
Yes, I was.
Tim Pickett:
So did you really have a choice of what you were using? Or it was kind of like, “Hey, I got this indica, I got this sativa.” Or, “Hey, I just got a bag.”
Daniel Jones:
It wasn’t really much of a choice. It was just I got a bag. You’re paying like $50 for a gram.
Tim Pickett:
Really?
Daniel Jones:
For 3.5, you get like $50, $60. But you’re still paying pretty high.
Tim Pickett:
Yeah. Did you run into flower cannabis that ended up making things worse sometimes, or was it always helpful? I guess I ask that question because now you have a little bit of choice in the process here, right? You can choose what strain you buy, who grew it. When you’re buying it off the black market, you don’t really know what you’re getting. I don’t know. I know sometimes strains like a real sativa might make people more anxious. Did you ever run into that?
Daniel Jones:
Yes. I ran into where the certain strains, I would say blue dreams, it left me with high anxiety. It got to the point where even my chest, it felt like my heart was trying to pound out on my chest. Compared to where I did something like blue cheese, which blue cheese has a different effect on me. It has more of a mellow and calmness. That’s something I’m more looking into is something to help with the calmness because I feel I have a battle going inside my own head and in my own heart. I feel like I’m always at war or being in a tug of war.
Tim Pickett:
Yeah, makes sense. What do you do for work?
Daniel Jones:
I work for Love’s Truck Stop. I am a maintenance man. I fix the pumps. I will get down in there, change hoses out, pump handles, diesels, DEF handles. The pumps go down, I go reset the pumps. I make sure the store runs. I’m basically the backbone of the store, keeping it flown.
Daniel Jones:
People have a hard time with running their cards or they can’t get their cards run, I go out and help them. If the elderly need help and they can’t go in the store, they’ll pay me. Then I’ll go in, pay it, come back with their change and their receipt and hand it to them. We show our courtesy to our customers because that’s who we need to keep going because they keep this country going. The truckers, they keep the fuel going. Our job is to make sure everyone’s taken care of and helped.
Tim Pickett:
It’s really interesting to hear your story about joining the service and being 18. You were 17 and you didn’t get caught up in drugs. You left that scene, which ended up being a good choice, but at the same time it caused you a lot of trauma. But staying would’ve caused you a lot of different trauma probably.
Daniel Jones:
It would’ve prolonged it.
Tim Pickett:
Yeah.
Daniel Jones:
That’s what I felt like. Going through two different war zones and seeing a lot of the dead laying around, it’s unnatural. For me, it’s unnatural to take another man’s life. The reason I say that is because when you take somebody’s life, you’re trying to be God or something. It’s not really our choice to take another life unless it’s to really defend your family or your country. But what Saddam did to his own people, it was wrong and he needed to go.
Tim Pickett:
Yeah. So fast forward to the program here. You’re living in Utah, 2018, we legalized medical cannabis here. What are you thinking at the time?
Daniel Jones:
I was excited. I was stoked. But I wasn’t happy with how they changed the people’s vote on the original prop two. That kind of really made me mad because then that’s taking the people both rights away and then dictating another person’s right into putting in what they wanted to believe. I think prop two was destroyed when the LDS church got involved. It’s just wrong. If somebody votes on something and that’s what we voted on, then that’s what it needs to be, not changed.
Daniel Jones:
I was really disappointed on that, but I was still stoked they still passed through the laws. Something when Truu Med came out, I jumped on it.
Tim Pickett:
Yep, yep. And that’s one of the big reasons why we wanted to talk is because this whole experience with Truu Med. Yeah, let’s talk about that. What the hell happened?
Daniel Jones:
So when Truu Med came out, they were about 90th south and I would say 13th and 14th, a hundred west or somewhere like that. That’s where they first started out, somewhere up in there. They were charging a heavy penny. So me living all the way up here, gas was expensive. You’re looking at almost $3.80, $3.75. It took almost $120 just to fill the whole tank up in the truck. The old lady, she has brain damage, so I worked on her too at the same time.
Daniel Jones:
So first appointment, I took about $800. $400 for me, $400 for her to get it going. I seen their doctor and all that. I was excited, I was stoked. I signed a letter from a medical provider. Turns out this medical provider is no longer with them. He pretty much lasted about four months and he quit on them. So they called, whenever they would call me about three weeks to a month and I’d come down and paid them another $300, $400.
Tim Pickett:
This is how many weeks after?
Daniel Jones:
About six weeks. Not six weeks.
Tim Pickett:
Six months.
Daniel Jones:
No, it wasn’t even six months. They were having us come down every month.
Tim Pickett:
And paying them again? What date is this? What’s the timeframe of this happening?
Daniel Jones:
Beginning on October 20, 2019.
Tim Pickett:
Okay. So for context, I’m going to mention what I’m doing at that point. I’m starting to look into becoming a Q&P, I’m starting to think about how I’m going to set up a business, how I’m going to start seeing people, thinking about insurance. I’m kind of looking into this because 2020, we’re going to have a pharmacy open. So Truu Med is ahead of the game so to speak, right? They’re one of the first people out there. The only other person at the time that I know was writing letters was Corey Anden in Ogden. But Truu Med was out there. So you’re going down there every month, you’re having to pay… So what total amount did you end up paying them?
Daniel Jones:
I paid about $6000. $6000 came out of my pocket. Even you got to put the gas in there too, and it gets expensive.
Tim Pickett:
Because where are you driving from?
Daniel Jones:
Salina. It’s about a two hour and a 20 minute drive to Salt Lake City.
Tim Pickett:
There’s no information anywhere else, so there’s no way really for you to get information that tells you, “Hey, this isn’t right. This is something you need to be concerned about,” because there’s no state website up really. There’s no other cannabis clinics, doctors aren’t doing this. Is that right? Am I getting that right? You’re really only getting information from them. And they’re telling you, “Hey, we need you to come back. We need you to renew your letter.”
Daniel Jones:
Yes.
Tim Pickett:
Holy shit.
Daniel Jones:
There’s times where me and the old lady showed up, me and Casey, we did show up a couple times where there was no doctors and they still took the money. He gave us back $40 for gas to get back home. That was about it.
Tim Pickett:
Who was this? Was this the guy who ended up in jail?
Daniel Jones:
It was Troy Martinez. I tried calling them last week and the week before. The number on the website doesn’t work.
Tim Pickett:
Yeah, I think the guy Ramone, he got arrested for kidnapping a woman and beating her.
Daniel Jones:
I didn’t know that. No.
Tim Pickett:
Yeah, so interestingly enough, there was a news article that… And I think this is all allegedly, I guess I should say. This is an opinion of us, right? Utah In The Weeds is a podcast, we’re talking about things that we… We’re trying to get the facts of course, but we’re just people talking. But yeah, Ramone allegedly kidnapped a woman, carved numbered in her hand and has been arrested because, yeah, it was a crazy, crazy story. But he’s the owner, or was the owner of Truu Med, one of the owners of Truu Med. There was a lot about Truu Med came out just in the past few weeks about this, essentially, predatory behavior.
Tim Pickett:
I heard about this as somebody who does medical cannabis and who has been pretty open and honest about what the fees are, what the costs are, what you get for your money, how long you get a card. That just seems reasonable, right? I don’t see how you could charge somebody and take $6000 from them and have you drive and the letters. I can see how, I guess, you would do that, but it is just crazy to me that this happened. You’re not the only person that I’ve heard something like this from. This is certainly the most money I’ve heard of. How has that affected you financially?
Daniel Jones:
I took a major hit. I’m struggling right now. That’s money I could have saved and used because right now I’m at home and I’m stuck with COVID. I’ve been with this disease for about eight days now and it’s really taken an effect on me. I wish they have done something right, something different, because I could have put this money to something, a better use.
Tim Pickett:
Right.
Daniel Jones:
For this problem now, I’m facing criminal charges.
Tim Pickett:
Okay, talk about that. What’s that?
Daniel Jones:
I got hit with two ounces because they didn’t tell me how much I could have. I didn’t get like how I got with UTTHC, I think it is. They gave me information about what I can carry, what I can have or how much I have on my possession. Well, with Truu Med, I never got anything like that.
Daniel Jones:
So when I got pulled over about 30, 40 minutes from home, I showed the cops these signed letters I got from Truu Med. They just looked at me and then they went and talked with each other. The other came back and says, “We never seen anything like this before.” I said, “What?” They said, “These signed letters from Truu Med.” I said, “This is what they sent me and said I would be safe and I would be good.” Pretty much the cop just pretty much looked at me and said, “Well, I’m thinking you pretty much got scammed out of it.”
Tim Pickett:
Wow. And then they still charged you.
Daniel Jones:
Yep. It’s my first offense with it. I don’t know what else I can do with it but talk to the judge and let them know what’s going on.
Tim Pickett:
Yeah.
Daniel Jones:
I got a court date. My first court hearing on it is on February 9th in Nephi, Utah.
Tim Pickett:
Wow. Well, we will all be in support. You got a community now, and hopefully if you need something, this gets cleared up because it sounds to me like you’re the reason, you’re literally one of the reasons why this program exists. So it seems tragic that somebody like yourself can be taken advantage of in such a horrible way financially. And then on top of that, get charged for possession in a state where you have legal product. And two ounces is under the legal limit of what you can possess. You can legally possess up to four ounces of flower and plenty of concentrates. So hopefully this works out in your favor.
Daniel Jones:
I did get my card, my cannabis card.
Tim Pickett:
Yeah, good.
Daniel Jones:
What I was really impressed with HTT was that they stayed there, made me stayed there until I got everything done and make sure it was done correctly. And that’s something that Truu Med never did. They got me all email set up with EBS and all that. So when I’m looking on the EBS, there’s no doctors that I actually met with in Truu Med. There’s not a record on it. When I looked up the BBB reports, there’s someone filed a complaint on Truu Med and that turned out to be a big mess. From what I read is that has never been resolved.
Tim Pickett:
Yeah. I don’t know that it ever will be, but I guess here’s hoping. But I don’t know whether or not we want them seeing patients anymore at all. At this point I think there’s been multiple red flags kind of come up in my opinion on that whole organization.
Daniel Jones:
I think the course really need to do a thorough investigation of these people because a lot of people, I feel like they’re taking advantage of people who really need the cannabis. There’s a lot of people who can’t afford a lot of this money. And whatever they come up with, they’re taking advantage of them and robbing them. They need to be put a stop to it.
Tim Pickett:
Yeah. Couldn’t agree more. So question on your use too, now that you have Utah product, what’s your favorite pharmacy?
Daniel Jones:
The one I’ve been going to so far is the one in Provo.
Tim Pickett:
Deseret Wellness, Josh Fitzgerald is the pharmacist down there. I like that place. Nice, easy access off the freeway, pretty cool people.
Daniel Jones:
And they were very, very helpful and they took care of us, took care of me and the old lady. It’s the best place to go.
Tim Pickett:
Cool. I’m glad they got a good recommendation from you. You’re buying mostly flower there?
Daniel Jones:
I bought the flowers, but I’m also buying the edibles for sleep.
Tim Pickett:
Yeah.
Daniel Jones:
I have sleep apnea. I got a sleep problem.
Tim Pickett:
Nice thing about cannabis is it doesn’t make you breathe worse like opioids. I think it’s safer than Ambien, too. And the gummies last all night, right? You got a favorite?
Daniel Jones:
Oh, I got a favorite. This one I bought, it’s called Calm, True North Organics.
Tim Pickett:
Yep.
Daniel Jones:
It is one of my favorites because if I need to, I could take half of it and I sleep like a baby. I don’t wake up during the night.
Tim Pickett:
Yep. And with somebody like yourself, the nice thing about edibles is they suppress dreams too. They not only make you sleep a little better, but they suppress a little dreams so you actually sleep better, especially if you suffer from PTSD or nightmares, and with sleep apnea. Do you wear a mask?
Daniel Jones:
Yes, I do.
Tim Pickett:
Yeah, so you need to shut it down at night.
Daniel Jones:
There’s times that mask gets on my way and then I feel like I got a chemical mask on. It drives me nuts.
Tim Pickett:
Yeah. I could see how that’d be hard.
Daniel Jones:
Yeah, it is.
Tim Pickett:
So what’s your favorite strain to use in… We’ll call it vaporize, right? Smoke or vaporize. You’ve got a favorite strain of flower?
Daniel Jones:
My favorite strain is probably more of sleeper. I pretty much like something that’s going to calm me and relax me down more. I already feel like I got enough hyperactive during the day, so at night when I’m wide awake and sitting there laying, I feel like I’m hyperactive because my ears are listening to everything. They hear every little creeks in the boards all the way down to hearing something walking on the gravel around the house. So it makes me get up and want to go out and look, feeling like I’m back on guard duty doing my fire watch.
Daniel Jones:
But at the same time, it’s also taking care of the pain and the joints. It’s taking care of the pain in my back. It’s been a miracle helper ever since.
Tim Pickett:
That’s cool.
Daniel Jones:
Like I said, it’s a lot better than taking the pills.
Tim Pickett:
Yeah. It sounds like you’re able to control it better, right? You’re choosing. You’re in the driver’s seat.
Daniel Jones:
Yes.
Tim Pickett:
Where before it didn’t sound like you felt like you were driving.
Daniel Jones:
But it kind of sucks because with the VA, half the VA’s for it, the other half of the VA’s against it. They’re still split on that decision. So you sit and wonder. It’s like half the doctors say, “If it’s working for you, then continue using it.” The other half says, “Well, you’re a bad person for taking it.” I’ve run into doctors like that.
Tim Pickett:
What do you say to them?
Daniel Jones:
I say, “Well, at least I’m not getting hooked on something. At least cannabis you can quit and not affect you in any form like an opiate does, or like an Ambien.” I was on Ambien for a while. Ambien hit people differently. You could take it the night before, wake up in the morning fine. Two hours later down the road, you could be sleep driving from your Ambien from the night before and not realize it.
Daniel Jones:
One of the things I think they don’t like people on cannabis is because they are losing their money in their pharmacies.
Tim Pickett:
Yeah, I hate to say it. I guess it could be. I hope that’s not true, but it certainly could be true.
Daniel Jones:
The VA has an escalator going straight to the pharmacy and home.
Tim Pickett:
Do they?
Daniel Jones:
Yeah. There’s times where I sat waiting for two hours just to pick up my medication because the pharmacy’s filled with vets waiting for their medications.
Tim Pickett:
Wow. Do a lot of vets who smoke weed?
Daniel Jones:
I know probably like 10 of them.
Tim Pickett:
Do you find that your family and friends are pretty supportive of your cannabis consumption? What’s going on with you?
Daniel Jones:
Yes. They prefer me doing the cannabis. One of the reasons for that is I’m not on opiates and I’m not a raging alcoholic. Because if you actually look at the statistics, a lot of vets are alcoholics. They drink and drink and drink. When you’re in the service, what did we do? We drink and party, drink and party.
Tim Pickett:
Yeah. And the only options are not marijuana, not cannabis, so you got alcohol.
Daniel Jones:
Yep. And they’re big supplier of alcohol, the military is.
Tim Pickett:
Are they?
Daniel Jones:
Oh, yeah. When I was in Germany, in Hanau, Germany, my wall locker, I had like six, seven cases of beer, four bottles of Jack Daniels. It was always stocked in there. We’d drink every single day, every night. One of the things I’m happy is I don’t drink.
Tim Pickett:
Congratulations.
Daniel Jones:
The cannabis helps out with that.
Tim Pickett:
Is there something else that you want to talk about, you want to bring up, you want to make sure everybody hears?
Daniel Jones:
Yeah, I just want everybody to know is that they need to stay away from Truu Med. Those who’ve gone through Truu Med and been screwed over by Truu Med, they need to come forward and put a stop to it. We do better as a group than one single person trying to take them on. If everybody who’s had a problem with them, if everybody came together as a team, we can do something about it.
Tim Pickett:
Well, absolutely.
Daniel Jones:
That’s what I really need to let people know.
Tim Pickett:
Well, if you’re listening to this podcast on Utah In The Weeds and you you want to make a comment or you want to share an experience about Truu Med or another clinic that took advantage of you in the system in Utah, let’s do this. Let’s go to YouTube, our YouTube channel. It’s called Discover Marijuana. This podcast is posted on that YouTube channel. Make a comment there on this episode and we’ll start a little group of people there. If there’s people who have stories, make a comment. Again, Discover Marijuana. This podcast with Daniel Jones. Daniel Mark Jones, this has been a great… I am glad to get to know you, man.
Daniel Jones:
Same here, Tim. It’s really good to be seeing you, to meet you this time.
Tim Pickett:
Yeah. If we can do anything for you and help you in any way, you reach out to us. Shout out to Deseret Wellness who’s helping you get your medicine. I love those guys down there. Stop in next door. We’ve got an office right there and we’ll hook you up a sweatshirt, Utah In The Weeds sweatshirt, next time you’re up there in Provo.
Daniel Jones:
Sweet.
Tim Pickett:
All right, everybody. Exciting times in Utah as the legislation gets kind of underway, and appreciate you listening. This has been great. Stay safe out there.
Episode 87 of Utah in the Weeds features Blake Smith, Chief Science Officer at Zion Medicinal. Blake frequently collaborates with us in educating the public about Medical Cannabis, and we were happy to invite him back for another episode of Utah in the Weeds.
Tim and Blake reminisced about the last couple of years working in Utah’s ever-changing cannabis industry. [02:17]
Blake talked about Zion Medicinal’s growth over the last two years and some of the products they’re producing now. [05:22]
They talked about the customizability of a Medical Cannabis treatment plan. Patients can experiment with different ratios of THC, CBD, CBG, and other cannabinoids to tailor their treatment. [11:30 ]
Blake responded to recent research about cannabinoids and COVID-19. He says the research isn’t quite as exciting as sounds, and he explains why. [13:44]
Tim noted reproducibility has been a challenge in the cannabis research field, and for science as a whole. Blake explained some of the challenges in conducting pharmaceutical research. [16:12]
Both Tim and Blake appreciate the enthusiasm with which Utah’s Medical Cannabis patients have provided feedback about their treatment. [21:32]
Next, they talked about the current state of Utah’s Medical Cannabis program and the changes they’d like to see. [25:12]
Blake talked about entering the retail space in Cedar City and his philosophy of making a wide variety of products available. [33:14]
He also spoke about the plans for Bloom Medicinals to begin a delivery service. [39:16]
Blake is also involved in cannabis-related projects in other states and even in other countries. One project involves producing hemp-based products for pets. Blake says cannabis products for pets should be made with the same high-quality materials used in making products for humans. [40:54]
The pair reflected on the quality of Utah’s cannabis products before shifting to a discussion about Medical Cannabis legislation. [44:13]
Blake talked about Delta-8 THC and another lesser-known synthetic cannabinoid called HPP. [45:27]
Blake says it’s “silly” to define hemp according to a low THC percentage. A hemp producer, he says, could still legally make a product with several milligrams of THC. The key to making that type of product legal is basing it around a dense food product. [50:06]
Tim and Blake then discussed potential legislation regarding cannabis, and the continuing need for quality assurance in cannabis products. [51:07]
We wrapped with a quick discussion of a new video series to help Discover Marijuana viewers get to know Tim and Blake. [57:18]
Tim Pickett:
Hey, everybody. Welcome to Utah in the Weeds. I’m your host, Tim Pickett. And I’m excited for this episode, an interview with Blake Smith, the chief science officer, as you were, for Zion Medicinal, and just a good friend of mine and somebody that I’ve wanted to bring back on the podcast for quite some time. We talk a lot about a lot of things in this episode. So, I’ll let you listen to it all. Again, Blake Smith, he knows pharmacokinetics, he’s very, very interested in minor cannabinoids and how those interact in the body, and just making good medicine. So, some housekeeping; also, we just wrapped up the month of January, and again, raised over $6,000 for the Uplift subsidy program for medical cannabis patients here in Utah. We’ve added two more partners that will be starting to contribute in February. So, if you have not donated, we are going to match your donation. I believe it’s eight times now; eight times those donations to Uplift at utahmarijuana.org/uplift.
Tim Pickett:
Stay tuned, we have upcoming episodes with Daniel Mark Jones, a veteran of basically, two wars, was in Kosovo, was in Iraq. And you’ve got to hear his story about how he was basically fleeced for $6,000 in Utah, trying to get medical cannabis access. You’ve got to listen to that story. That’ll be coming up in a future episode. We’ve also got [inaudible 00:01:44] from the department of health coming up, and we just have a line of guests now, as we dive into the winter and the spring. Subscribe to Utah in the Weeds on any podcast player that you have access to, stay up to date with the conversation on YouTube. Discover Marijuana is the channel. Leave a comment there, and we answer all of those comments. We want to engage with you. So, I’m excited to have you with us, and enjoy this episode with Blake Smith. Cool. Well, Blake Smith.
Blake Smith:
That’s me. The one and only.
Tim Pickett:
Do you remember, the only real-time we’ve had you on the podcast was in the very beginning, right? So, you haven’t been on the-
Blake Smith:
Yeah.
Tim Pickett:
This is going to be like episode… We’re high 80s now.
Blake Smith:
Holy crap. Awesome.
Tim Pickett:
…Episodes, right? And maybe a few more people are listening to the podcast than were when we had you on before. I remember sitting in the room when we were recording. We were in our Mill Creek office, we had like these cheap Amazon desks, and we were talking, and man, things were so different. We’re talking episode one, two, or three. We’re talking-
Blake Smith:
Yeah, I think that was episode three or four. Yeah.
Tim Pickett:
Yeah. So, since then, holy cow.
Blake Smith:
The world is very-
Tim Pickett:
Are you tired?
Blake Smith:
Yeah, I’m exhausted.
Tim Pickett:
Because just remembering a couple of years ago, it just makes me tired.
Blake Smith:
This industry, more than anywhere I’ve ever worked, is accelerated. A year in this industry is like five in any others. And so, anyone who’s in here too long will age and age significantly.
Tim Pickett:
Yeah. I mean, I guess they talk about how being president of the United States is just really, really stressful and it ages people. Of course, Biden’s into his administration, what? A year. But he already looks a lot older. I feel bad for the guy in some ways, but in the cannabis space, yeah, it’s like that; it’s just a rocket ship.
Blake Smith:
That’s right. Well, because every day is different. Every day, something is happening. I mean, just yesterday, we were up at Capitol Hill, and then the week before that, there’s people who were interested in doing different things with their licenses. And the day before that, the state comes by. And then the day before that, there’s an announcement in Mississippi, and then the next day… It’s just nonstop all the time.
Tim Pickett:
Yeah. It’s nonstop. It is an industry… I feel like the medical programs, it’s still really… For any other industry, this would be in its infancy. So, we’re two years into the program. And when we were talking to you before, we were barely getting tinctures out, lemon dream, your vape cart lemon dream. Wasn’t that the first vape cart you made?
Blake Smith:
Yep. It was the first vape cart we made.
Tim Pickett:
And one of the first-
Blake Smith:
It may have been the first vape carts created in the state.
Tim Pickett:
In the State of Utah.
Blake Smith:
That’s right.
Tim Pickett:
And there was hardly any flower at the time.
Blake Smith:
Almost nothing.
Tim Pickett:
And now there’s quite a bit of flower in the state. So, take me from before, take me from Zion Medicinal, when we talked two years ago, to today. Give me just an overview of some of the stuff that’s changed.
Blake Smith:
Oh, wow. Well, all eight licenses are growing now. And so, there was about a year period where several licenses were not activated, and we started off with zero patients. So, when the program first started, they say, “Okay, everything starts March 1st, and we want products available, and then we’re going to be getting our first patients, and we’re going to be doing this.” Boy, that’s a real hard way to start planning how much you’re going to grow, how much product to make.
Tim Pickett:
Right. This is back when we were thinking, “Oh, there’s going to be 6,000, maybe 10,000 patients the first year. How much operation do you need? How many plants do we grow? Can we afford it? Because we’re maybe not going to get our investment back for a long, long time.”
Blake Smith:
Yeah. I’m mean these are the issues. So, a lot of people, also even if they got their grow going… And you remember, we started off in our own warehouse. We had grow tents and stuff [crosstalk 00:06:48].
Tim Pickett:
Oh yeah. I recorded with Sean in, now what is your processing facility, and there were like three grow tents back there.
Blake Smith:
That’s right. And it’s because we had no idea, plus, creating a clean grow space in a warehouse was challenging. I mean our isopropyl costs alone were outrageous. I mean, it’s just one of those crazy things. And now, I’ll speak to Zion, we have two grows going. One, we’ve maximized our license. We produce a lot of biomass, we produce massive amounts of products and distillate. We have all kinds of different products out there. And we continue the science, figuring out mechanism of action of specific cannabinoids, and tried to create specific medicines for specific conditions. But now, we have a lot more cannabinoids to actually do that with. There’s like the 1:1:10 tincture for pain. We’re right in the middle of the 1:1 tincture with CBN.
Tim Pickett:
Tell me, what’s the 1:1:1 for pain?
Blake Smith:
It’s a 1:1:10, and it’s one part THC, one part CBG, 10 part CBD. And then we’re about to do one for sleep, which is a 1:1:10, but instead of CBG, it’s CBN. And we’re also looking at doing some vape carts that are going to be some mixes like a 1:1:1, something along those lines [inaudible 00:08:16].
Tim Pickett:
Yeah. Because there’s no vape carts in the Utah market with other cannabinoids that I know of.
Blake Smith:
Their White Widow had CBG.
Tim Pickett:
In a vape cart.
Blake Smith:
In a vape cart. There’s a couple. What I would say is it’s been lacking a little bit. And part of that’s because if you don’t get your ratios right, the other cannabinoids, other than THC, will crystallize in the cart, so you got to get it just right with the right amount of terpenes, with just the right amount of agents in order to get it to keep from crystallizing. So, that’s just science. We can figure all that out.
Tim Pickett:
Yeah. So now, would you say you have an abundance supply of biomass and flower for what Zion needs to do?
Blake Smith:
Yeah. I mean, I have enough flower and biomass to produce pretty much anything anybody wants. I mean, we’ve started now producing concentrates, [crosstalk 00:09:18].
Tim Pickett:
Which takes a lot of biomass.
Blake Smith:
Which requires a lot of biomass and it requires a lot of good flower, quite frankly. And so, good flower was always at such a high demand. There was not excess flower to put into the market in this other products. So, you talk about raws and carts and things like that. There’s just not enough material to make that worthwhile, considering that flower will all sell. We’re getting to a point now in the industry where there’s enough flower to start seeing some other products come out, and that’s cool. That’s a cool place to be.
Tim Pickett:
Yeah. Have you landed on things that you really like over the past couple of years; the products that you feel like are kind of your favorites so far from Zion? What are those?
Blake Smith:
Yeah. I think, a little bold on this one, I think Zion makes a lot of cool products, but I think the tincture market is probably our strongest. And the reason I say that is because we specifically put a lot of different types of cannabinoids and very specific formulations for very specific conditions. We make a really nice delta-9 cart. The delta-9 cart is designed to really help you get the head change and mask pain. We make some cool delta-8 carts which are good as antiemetics. They’re really nice in terms of helping with nausea and things like that, nice flavor profiles, and they’re all cannabis-derived. But our tinctures, without trying to sound too bold, we’ve seen miracles with some of these. We’ve seen people stop having seizures, we’ve seen people who cannot sleep, all of a sudden, their back pain goes away. And so, I mean, we produce some cool flower too. Our Mad Max flower is one of my absolute favorites. It’s always a high percent THC, but also a high percent CBG. So, people are happy to make their own and splits with it.
Tim Pickett:
Yeah, the Mad Max, it is a favorite strain and just because it’s kind of different. As you get into this and you learn a little bit about it, start keeping a journal as a patient, and you start to experience these different cultivars, different strains, different products, you start to think or you start to realize what the difference is. I know CBG, I’ve seen it marketed as a bubble bath for the brain, and it is kind of that way. It’s like a little different… The head change is a little different. And so, for patients who are experimenting with THC and CBG, and THC and CBD ratios, I’ve had people come back to me and tell me, “When I needed the chill, then I really just go to the THC, CBD, but when I don’t need that, there’s just something different about the CBG.” So, from a medical standpoint, it’s as if we’re manipulating our own drugs for our own effects, and it’s working. It seems like it’s working for people.
Blake Smith:
Yeah. I mean, the thing is we’ve learned enough at this point, that we can draw some actual dose effects, like we know about, for the typical person, how much THC will affect… a masking element for pain and create a head change. We know about how much delta-8 is required. We know about how much CBD is necessary to cut into if you’re overly high, but also how much CBD is necessary for helping with pain management. We know enough about CBG, how many mgs of CBG are required to do things. But now we’re also in the fun world of like, “Okay, well now, let’s start mixing more of these together.” And then you get these entourage effects where you get heightened effect from any of the individual cannabinoids, by putting them in certain ratios. And that’s this whole other world that’s kind of awesome, where individual patients get to figure out what their right dose is that’s working for them in this mixture of cannabinoids.
Tim Pickett:
Yeah. I wonder what, once you get through the CBN, the CBG… Oh, okay, totally going to change this topic here. What about CBGA and CBDA. This is your COVID study article? What about those?
Blake Smith:
Yeah. Well, I mean, somebody may try to come and hang me after I say this. They’re not as exciting as I think people want them to be. Here’s the thing. In vitro, you’re putting in a Petri dish, you can get the same effect out of coffee, actually, with tannic acid. It inhibits proliferation of viral load. That’s not to say the CBDA and CBGA don’t have a physiological effect, but how are you going to get your CBGA? How are you going to it in? Are you going to smoke it? Well, guess what, the second you light it on fire, you decarboxylated it.
Tim Pickett:
You’ve decarboxylated it.
Blake Smith:
That’s no longer CBGA. So, what are you going to do? You can do a crude. Well, crude oil has other health implications. I don’t know that you want to be delving into armfuls of crude. So, that may not be the right answer either. And we also know that with the acidic forms, you’re not going to get into CB1 receptors. You potentially will get into CB2 receptors. Cellular uptake for the as acidic form seems to be a thing. We don’t have tons of data on it yet, but there could be medicinal value with both of those. Could you get a protective index from them? How about this? Maybe.
Tim Pickett:
I’m glad we’re bringing this up.
Blake Smith:
[crosstalk 00:15:23]. We don’t have CBGA and a nebulizer, so it’s not going [crosstalk 00:15:27] viruses.
Tim Pickett:
Right. And you don’t have… Okay, so what about this other issue with the reproducibility problem that we have with this data? So, there was this study, the CBGA, CBDA study, there was another study that was done, retroactively looking at CBD patients, seizure patients, and looking at their incidents of COVID, and saying that, potentially, CBD had this protective effect. Some confounding factors, certainly, one being that maybe people with seizures were not in the public and getting exposed to COVID as much as the general population, but that all being aside, it also seems like, in general, in science… And I want to hear your opinion about this. We have kind of this reproducibility problem. We have these studies, and then we’re having a very hard time reproducing the results of a lot of science. Not just in cannabis medicine, but even outside of that. What do you think about that?
Blake Smith:
So, I’m not going to speak directly about cannabis for one second. I’m going to just talk about science and science process in general. So, I got a bunch of degrees. I started going and working for a contract research organization, and my first boss I had there said, “Hey, you got hired in this contract research organization because of your background and your degrees. However, we’re going to now teach you real science.” And I was like, “What? What does that even mean? Man, I studied my butt off, I passed my test, I’m a scientist.” And they, very politely, were just like, “Well, there’s a difference between getting N of 20 people and getting 10,000 people, and reproducing it with 10,000 people.” In fact, there’s difference between that, and then six months after all your tests are done, randomly picking a thousand of those 10,000 samples, pulling them back out of the freezer, running the same method, and being within 2% of your original value.”
Blake Smith:
That’s hardcore science. I mean, that’s reproducible science, where we know that aspirin has a dose-effect because we now have so much data and have done this so many times that we know what aspirin does. Now, we have that much data around THC. We know about how much THC it takes for a head change. How many science experiments do we have with THC in two different hundred types of cancer? And how many variables? So, this part of the whole science and medicine stuff is still nascent, it’s still new, we’re all of this stuff. Could THC, CBD, CBG help with COVID? Maybe. Scientifically, can we prove that yet? Do we have an end of 10,000 that show that? No, we’re not-
Tim Pickett:
And not only do we have an N of 10,000, but we can we take another N of 10,000? And when you say N, that means just the number of people treated.
Blake Smith:
The number-
Tim Pickett:
Right. Number needed to treat, but then can you then take another 10,000 people that kind of match those first 10,000 and do this again, and then do it again? Then you get into this issue where… And again, another kind of rabbit hole, but you look at SSRIs for example, and there’s so many studies, and some of them didn’t get published because the results didn’t match what the drug companies needed. So, you end up somewhat biasing the publishing of some studies over the… It’s not that you’re withholding data in those cases. You’re just not promoting some of these things. How does that fit in with cannabis? I don’t feel like we have enough of those studies with cannabis to even make that argument.
Blake Smith:
It’s an interesting point though. And I think it’s actually probably very relevant to what we’re talking about, because, in the cases where you have some drug companies that aren’t releasing all studies to the public, what I would say is this, it’s not that those studies don’t ever get released, because what does happen is those studies do get released to their peers, other companies, FDA, and so that’s where you start getting your contraindications. I mean, you, as a doctor, know what the side effects of most of these drugs are, not because the drug company initially came out and said, “Hey, we saw this in a study, but it’s like, upon full scientific review, we know this is a contraindication of this particular SSRI or whatever it’s.”
Blake Smith:
And so, that scientific process is the part that needs to continue to play in cannabis. Because what I hear a lot in the industry is this sort of war against synthetics versus non-synthetics, or this war of whole plant medicine versus non-whole plant medicine. And I don’t think we need to war at all. What I think we need to do is have qualified individuals talk about the data, and then we need to peer-review all of our data, and then come up with conclusions that we either can agree or we don’t agree on, and that’s okay. Scientist don’t always agree, but one thing we will agree on is, this data is here and this is what the data itself sets. So, that’s kind of my feeling; I just feel like we’re so new in how we even think about the science on all this. It’s really hard to get real hard conclusions. Having said that, we’re getting there. We’re getting a very good understanding of CBGA and all those [inaudible 00:21:29].
Tim Pickett:
Yeah. Or we’re certainly better of. Well, and we have 40,000, here in Utah, we’ve got 40,000-plus patients that are using cannabis in various forms and types and delivery methods and products, and they’re responding to questionnaires that we’re giving them. And what’s nice about the cannabis population, the cannabis consumers, is they seem interested in providing this feedback. Like, “I want to prove to you what’s happening. I want to legitimize what I’m doing as a patient.” There’s a lot of that in cannabis.
Blake Smith:
Cannabis is awesome because it involves the enthusiast around the medicine they’re taking. I don’t usually see somebody who’s like, “Man, I can’t wait to go home and take my Warfarin,” but somebody who’s like, “Look, I can’t sleep because of my pain, and this flower or this product, I sleep with this. My life is better and I want you to have a better life too. Let me tell you about it.”
Tim Pickett:
I haven’t heard one human being, in my lifetime, say to another, “Hey man, I couldn’t sleep. You know what you need to do, you to get on Ambien.” Like, “Oh, I just started Ambien last week, and it is so awesome. I sleep so good, and I’m now…” That never happens. I hide the fact… Most people would be hiding the fact that they take this, but cannabis is the opposite. “Sally, you know what, I have been using these Gummies that my sister brought back from wherever, and now I got my card and I’m using the tincture and it has changed my life.”
Blake Smith:
Yeah. That’s right.
Tim Pickett:
That’s what’s happening.
Blake Smith:
And part of that is the stigma. There’s a stigma around it, so people are trying to break the stigma, but I think you can also run into the other problem too where people can be so over-enthusiastic that it comes off as being hyper drug culture. And here’s the thing; personally, I don’t really care about any of that, but somebody might be like, “Oh man, how much Mescaline do you take? Do you follow the White Rabbit? And that’s going to be the best high you’ve ever had. Let alone, don’t worry about the cardiac palpitation, don’t worry about the [inaudible 00:23:57], don’t worry about… But if you’re trying to get lit, man, it’s the only way to fly, whatever.” So, I think there’s this balance that you got to play out. “I use this medicinally or I use this for this purpose.”
Blake Smith:
And look, here’s my experience. And please correct me if I’m wrong. And viewers or listeners out there, please correct me on this. But even most recreational or adult use is still usually centered around treatment of some kind. I very rarely have somebody who’s just like, “Man, I just light up all the time because I like to just be lit all the time.” I mean, there are people that do that, but almost everyone I know who even use it as an adult-use product, they’re like, “Man, I just sleep better. I feel better. I have this pain, I’m just off. I’m not in my right place, and this helps center me or whatever it is.” And so, they’re taking it medicinally even if they’re not identifying it with a card saying, “This is my condition. This is why I’m doing it.” And that’s why medical programs become [inaudible 00:25:02] because you can bring them in and say, “Yes, what you’re complaining or what you’re sensing is a real thing. Now come onto the white market and let’s do this in a way that makes sense for everybody.”
Tim Pickett:
Is the program in Utah getting better, getting worse, staying the same? What do you think?
Blake Smith:
That’s a great question. Despite what I think detractors will say, Utah is a pretty good program. That doesn’t mean it’s all right, but overall, I mean, we are allowed a lot more concentration forms and different things than many states have allowed on the medicinal side. We have a lot more producers producing lots of different types of products, so even the number of products is pretty wide in terms of what we can do. I mean, we haven’t got there yet for everything we need, obviously, but we’re moving in that direction. Legislatively, our legislature’s been pretty open to changing things that needed to be changed. And that’s been really, even in this session that’s going on right now. We’re looking at changing a couple of things to make the industry better. Do I think we’re there?
Tim Pickett:
What types of things…
Blake Smith:
No, but we’re getting there. I think we’re continually trying to improve.
Tim Pickett:
What types of things is Zion interested in changing or is the “Industry in Utah,” trying to change?
Blake Smith:
The biggest thing, I think, everybody in industry can agree on, no matter… Because there are different companies that have different philosophies about how we think about medicine, and that’s okay, there’s nothing wrong with that. But I think universally, the industry can all agree that we need more patients. Patient counts have got to go up because that helps fuel innovation, it helps fuel business, it helps fuel getting rid of the stigma. I mean, there’s so many advantageous… And so many people who still just need help who are still on their opioids, or still on their Ambien, or still taking all these other drugs, that could be helped by cannabis, and so we need to increase patient counts. So, I think that’s a universal thing we all agree on. I think the other thing we would agree on as an industry is we need to get the right amount of licenses with real data. Because if you go back originally and you look at eight grows, 14 pharmacies, and now there’s a 15th pharmacy, I mean all these numbers are sort of arbitrary.
Tim Pickett:
Sort of arbitrary. They’re like literally arbitrary. Somebody could say they’re correcting me and they have data around how many pharmacies there could have been, that… bullshit. It’s just arbitrary. [crosstalk 00:27:53].
Blake Smith:
Tim. I like you because you’re bold. I was trying to give a little bit more of the benefit of the doubt, but [crosstalk 00:27:57].
Tim Pickett:
I know, but like it’s… [crosstalk 00:28:00].
Blake Smith:
You’re right. The numbers were arbitrary. Now, does that mean the numbers are necessarily wrong? Well, how do you know right or wrong without the data. So, the whole point would be, I think the industry would all be okay with getting data around it and saying, “Look, how much do we really need?” I mean, because right now, even if you look at the amount of flower, there’s now enough flower for the most part. Almost every pharmacy has flower in stock. Does it always the best flower? No, I think we still have strides to make there. And we need to lower prices. Prices need to come down, but generally speaking, we’ve made huge advancements.
Blake Smith:
Over half companies still aren’t utilizing their full license either. So, if everybody has flower in all their pharmacies and so forth, and we can start lowering prices, maybe we don’t need more grows. But the only way to do that is to start doing a real assessment. And then I would say the same thing on the pharmacy side. How many people are not being served because they can’t get access to it? And so, we need to have data had to suggest how many pharmacies we should have. I think the industry is okay with those ideas, but we should make all decisions based on data.
Tim Pickett:
Yeah. And at least I can see, I think, Ray Ward is trying to do maybe an appropriation for some industry questionnaires, asking the QMPs and the patients, how the program is going, what’s happening, what’s good, what’s bad? I can support that from my side, from the medical provider side, that we need practical data, on my side, on how the program is being used. On my side, it’s more of a question of who’s providing the recommendations? Who does the legislature want to be providing the recommendations, versus who is actually making those recommendations and helping the program grow?
Blake Smith:
Yeah, that’s right. And we’re still lacking in education too. I mean, one of the biggest challenges, I think, with the government, in general, is that they stepped into this without actually knowing how the cannabis industry actually works. And then not only that, but then there’s always this standoffish like, “Well, of course, industry is going to suggest things because they’re so self-motivated that the industry can’t be trusted.” Well, the industry’s the only one who has all the knowledge that’s necessary for everybody to know everything, so it’s a very weird stance to say, “I’ll be ignorant and make rules based on my ignorance, but I can’t trust industry who does know the answer to this because they’re only going to do it in their own interest.” I mean-
Tim Pickett:
You’re exactly in the same spot that I am too. Nobody trusts me as a QMP that that owns a cannabis specialty clinic, because, “Oh, you have all of your interests. Utah Therapeutic, their interests are in seeing more patients and doing more evaluations.” But on the other hand, just like you, but yet, I’m the one seeing all the patients and doing all the evaluations.
Blake Smith:
Right. I’m the guy who’s making medicine, so like-
Tim Pickett:
Right. You’re like, “You’re the guy who’s making medicine, so you’ve got to listen to what people are buying, what people are using, how people are responding, what’s the accessibility.”
Blake Smith:
And this is the science of what we do know.
Tim Pickett:
Yeah. This is just practical. It’s that practical knowledge that’s hard. And it is hard for a state… Ironically, you have a state that’s very libertarian and right-sided on the political spectrum, and yet, they have got their clauses deep in regulation on this side. So, it’s a very interesting place to be. I’m glad you feel that same way. And it’s…
Blake Smith:
Tim, I always laugh. I laugh about this a lot because I have been told to my face that, “Well, we wouldn’t want to trust data coming out of a cannabis company because it’s going to be self-serving in terms of doing the research.” I worked in pharma for a good portion of my career. Every study we did, we paid for, and it was promoting our material we were making from pharma. The difference was it was okay because it was being peer-reviewed, it was going through this regulatory process. And so, why is cannabis any different? Zion, I think I have done clinical studies, I know how to do this, but if Curaleaf gets a study done and they open up the data and everybody can review it and scientists all can weigh in, that’s good for everybody. It doesn’t really matter that it was Curaleaf or Zion or whoever, it doesn’t really matter. Good data is good data, and that will win out at the end of the day.
Tim Pickett:
How do you… Switching gears a little bit on Zion’s portion, so you applied for the 15th license, Dragonfly ended up with the award. Sounds like they’re going to put a pharmacy in price. You fought hard, Zion fought hard, I know.
Blake Smith:
Yeah.
Tim Pickett:
You and I talked for that license, but you have a retail establishment. How did that play out? Talk to us a little bit about that because not a lot of people understand or even know.
Blake Smith:
Yeah. And that’s been… I mean, that was pretty intentional on our end. I mean, there has been differences of opinion in the industry about different companies and different things. I mean, I’ve heard people say, “Well, Zion, those are those lab guys, and they’re full of chemists and scientists, and they’re doing weird stuff.” And so, people are entitled to the way they think about it. I would like to think that we make good medicine and we follow good scientific practices as a result of that.
Blake Smith:
But what ends up happening is, because of these differences of opinions and different things, that we had an opportunity to acquire the business, which included the license for pharmacy 127, which is the one that’s in Cedar City, and that became important. I mean, it’s important for us for a lot of reasons, but we need to be able to give all different patients, access to all kinds of different medicine. But we also wanted to make sure that we didn’t want people to not want to get us products because it was going to be a Zion affiliate in some way, shape, or form. Because if you go to Cedar City, what you’ll notice is that pretty much every company is represented there. Every company.
Tim Pickett:
Yeah. You buy products down there from everybody. We have a clinic in that same building, and it’s one of the things that our staff… And when I ask my staff about loyalty programs and which pharmacies they like to shop at, which pharmacies they like to get their medicine at, always, the availability of all the products at Bloom at the Cedar city location, is one of the things that comes up. Always stopping by that pharmacy on the way to St. George, that’s what I’m hearing people are starting to do, because, the variety’s good, the prices are as good as you can get around in the state. And that variety isn’t the case in all of the pharmacies.
Blake Smith:
That’s correct. Yeah. So, to that point, Tim, I mean, we purposely have lowered prices on all products a little bit. I mean, I would like to do more, but at the moment, it is what it is, but I think we’re one of the cheapest pharmacies in the state for the daily price. I mean, there are pharmacies that run some specials, that do a little bit better than that, but on average, the daily price is cheapest, and that’s very intentional on our side. And the other thing is we want to carry everything. Because here’s the thing. And again, I’m going to be bold, Tim. You know I like to get bold.
Tim Pickett:
Yes.
Blake Smith:
I think I produce some of the best products there are. I believe that. I come from a background of making medicine, and I think I’m really good at this. And some of my products, I think are better than others. I think we produce the best tinctures. I just think that that is the case, but having said that, that doesn’t mean there’s not room for other tinctures in the market. And in fact, I would make the argument that says, everybody should be able to make the things that they think and hold value. So, for example, if somebody thinks that it’s better to have whole plant medicine, where they don’t pull out certain terpenes that have sulfurs, and they think that’s valuable, that should be available to patients.
Blake Smith:
Patients and providers should be able to start talking about what types of medicines are going to be the best fit for that individual. And even though I think I make great medicine, there are plenty of other processors and people who make good medicines as well, that may be a better fit for an individual. And as a result of that, it’s our philosophy at our pharmacy, at Cedar City; we try to carry everything. I mean, we don’t always have everything, but we try to carry everything because we want patients to have the biggest selection they can possibly get.
Tim Pickett:
Well, you don’t go to Walgreens and expect that, “Oh, they don’t carry that brand of my thyroid medicine.” Like, “Oh, can’t get that one because I don’t order that.” That’s not the case. We write prescriptions, expecting that no matter where you go in the pharmacy world, you can get what I write for.
Blake Smith:
That’s right.
Tim Pickett:
Now, that’s not happening… It’s not the same in cannabis, but what you’re talking about is essentially that same thing. You should have… If what you need is this flower that is grown at a processor in Garland, then we’re going to need to carry that stuff because you’re not driving to Garland or Brigham City to go get it’s.
Blake Smith:
That’s right.
Tim Pickett:
You’re in Cedar City or Southern Utah.
Blake Smith:
I think almost every company now is producing gummies of some type, gelatinous cubes of some type. You should have the ability to choose. I mean, “Am I going to get the Kroger’s brand of aspirin? Am I going to get the Walmart version? Am I going to get the one from Bear?” Look, there’s a price point differential for all of them, and that’s okay. Give the patient the ability to make that choice, and that’s valuable. So, that’s how we think about it.
Tim Pickett:
Do you guys plan on doing delivery out of Cedar City?
Blake Smith:
We do. One of the things that’s becoming important to us is trying to figure out if there’s a way we can do broader delivery out of multiple locations. Since we have a pharmacy, we can do delivery anyway, but the way the rule is currently written is, I would need to have a delivery vehicle leave from Murray to go down to Cedar City, then Cedar City, potentially coming back to Salt Lake to do a delivery, and it could be the same medicine. That’s a little odd. And so, legislatively, we would love to be able to say, “Look, as long as you have a pharmacy and a pharmacist who is actually reviewing every single thing going out, then it should be able to come from any of the locations that have the right licensure.”
Tim Pickett:
Yeah, it seems silly that you would have to-
Blake Smith:
And that’s a difference for most of the industry, by the way. That’s something that Zion cares about, but I don’t know that everybody in the industry would care about that, but that’s something we care about.
Tim Pickett:
Sure. What… I lost my train of thought there.
Blake Smith:
That’s because it was so groundbreaking. Just playing.
Tim Pickett:
What other projects do you have going on? What other projects does Blake… You’re involved in… I mean, I’m sure you’re involved in other states and their scientific process, working on bills, to pass bills.
Blake Smith:
Yep.
Tim Pickett:
What else are you involved in right now, what other projects?
Blake Smith:
We have some projects that we’re working on in multiple states, all cannabis-related. We have some ventures that are actually outside the United States, in Europe and New Zealand, and some other places, that are actually more on the hemp side. We have a whole hemp side of our business. I’ve started developing specialty in cannabinoid science for animals, specifically mammals. And so, we’re doing a lot of work and we’re doing some clinical studies with another company. And I can mention them, I’m sure. [inaudible 00:41:39] pharmaceuticals. They’re producing animal cannabinoid therapies. And so, I’m their chief technical officer as well. And we have a study at University of Sydney and a study going on at UPenn, measuring arthritis and elbow joints for dogs. And CBG and CBD are far superior than the gold standard.
Blake Smith:
And that’s awesome. That means not only is your life better through cannabis and cannabinoid, but we’re going to start making pets lives better through cannabinoids. And one of the biggest failings in the industry right now, on that side of things, is people think, that’s for an animal, we should be using substandard materials. We treat them just like we treat everything else. We use medical-grade everything because like in the case of my dog, that is for my daughter and so forth, I’m not giving it subpar material. I want it to have the best.
Tim Pickett:
No, and this is billions of dollars. The pet industry’s billions of dollars a year. I mean, people are willing to spend the money on the right product and get good products for their pets. Why would you do… I don’t know, it does seem odd that you would use low-grade products for pets, but I guess-
Blake Smith:
Because it’s cheap.
Tim Pickett:
It’s because it’s just cheap.
Blake Smith:
If we’re going to be honest, it’s the same thing with anything. Why are some products better than others? Well, can we make it cheaper? I mean, if you think about medicine even, like the different brands of medicine for aspirin, what is the real difference? If they’re both 25 milligrams of acetylsalicylic acid, then they’re both 25 milligrams, well, what’s the difference? Well, what are they using as the filler for that pill? And so, your fillers, all of those different types of things, have different cost value. And so, the biggest issue, I think, in all of cannabis, whether it’s hemp or medical or even adult-use, is who’s out there trying to make hay while the sun is shining and they don’t care about the product, they’re just trying to move it as quickly as they can and as much as can, and consumers buy it, versus who’s trying to make something that’s going to have a lasting effect and be a quality product?
Tim Pickett:
Well, I think in the medical market here, we’ve done a pretty good job. I don’t see any real bad actors making, for lack of a better term, really just shitty products in Utah. I don’t see that either.
Blake Smith:
Look, I think Utah is a great place with great producers. I don’t have any complaints, but I can tell you this, having done business now, looking at things outside of our state, not all places are created the same, not all bills and legislation are created the same, and not all processors are created the same, especially, as you start to follow cannabis around the country and what the black market’s doing and different things, some people still are using dirt floor radiator hoses, and hexing to do a bunch of business. And that, I don’t know, seems a little sketchy to me.
Tim Pickett:
What on the hemp side is changing in the legislature now? I know they’ve combined the Utah Department of Agriculture with… They’ve made their own department up there for the hemp and the medical cannabis that’s going to be combined, I guess, at the department.
Blake Smith:
In legislation, we’ll see if it happens.
Tim Pickett:
Okay. What about what other hemp things that are happening? Do you know?
Blake Smith:
The biggest thing is getting like delta-8 and other THC analogs out of the general public and moving them into the medical industry.
Tim Pickett:
Do you think that’ll happen?
Blake Smith:
Yeah, I do.
Tim Pickett:
It seems like there’s a pretty good appetite in the system and in the legislature for that.
Blake Smith:
Yeah. I think so. I mean-
Tim Pickett:
To remove delta-8 from the over-the-counter products.
Blake Smith:
And what I would say is delta-8 is only one part of that. I mean, if you look at delta-8, the rules around delta-8 is it has to be significantly pure to be in the medical market; 95%-plus. So, the response to delta-8 now being eliminated out of general circulation, is people are moving to HPP, which is basically another THC analog. And, oh my gosh, if you were sketched out by delta-8, you should be really nervous by that, because, the way that you make it is you end up usually combining sulfuric acid, hydrochloric acid, an acetic acid because you actually have to donate carbons. We’re no longer moving a single covalent bond. We’re literally changing the molecule, adding things, taking stuff away, and manipulating the molecule. And what does it do? It gets you high, but I haven’t seen any that’s really pure. So, it has just-
Tim Pickett:
I’ve seen some of this on the market. I’ve literally been given a vape cart of this because it’s the new thing. It’s the new thing. You should-
Blake Smith:
And it’s sketchy. I’m going to be honest, it’s sketchy because I have not been given any material or created any material that I can throw on the mass spec and show that it is extremely pure. I haven’t seen any yet. I mean, there’s some stuff that’s not bad, but people were complaining about delta-8, that like, “Well, what’s the other 5%. If it’s 95% pure, what’s the other 5%.” AJ, HPP, I haven’t seen anything that’s better than about 82%, ever.
Tim Pickett:
I mean, how do we adjust for this? Is the black market and the hemp side just going to always be one step ahead, are we always going to be chasing?
Blake Smith:
[crosstalk 00:48:01]. Yeah. I mean, the legislators could fix this real quick. “Okay, any analog of THC is now going to be regulated.” Done. It’s over. Because this is just another analog of THC. And so, if you do something like that, then it falls into the same category as spice and some of these other things. And so, let’s not do that. Let’s not go down this rabbit hole. I mean, there’s ways for us to cap CBD molecules. And what I mean cap, I mean literally binding the ends of these molecules so that it will sit in your stomach long enough, so that it’s subjected to warmth and acid. We can get it to convert in your liver to 11alpha-hydroxy. And so, we can get you high on CBD.
Tim Pickett:
Which will get you high.
Blake Smith:
We can figure that out. I mean, in fact, we know how to do that. Let’s not play that game. That’s a silly game to play. We’ll just keep doing this over and over again until somebody at the legislative level says, “Look, if we’re going to regulate THC, then we should regulate.” And even if this were to become adult-use market, even if that happened, I would still want to regulate these rogue analogs because they’re not shown to have be safe. Typically, if Joe’s growing it in his backyard or in his basement or in his bathtub, and the local-
Tim Pickett:
And then converting it in the garage.
Blake Smith:
Yeah. But even if the neighbors just goes and buys weed from Joe, it’s probably pretty safe. Joe’s probably not spraying it with arsenic, he’s probably not getting lead or cadmium in there, and he is probably not dousing it in hydrochloric acid. Okay. Joe’s brother, who’s out on the farm, who ends up having massive amounts of hexane hydrochloric acid, who just starts taking all their hemp and dumping it in there, and then is like, “We got some of it out. Let’s go ahead and make a bunch of vape carts,” that’s sketchy, that’s weird. We shouldn’t allow that in the system even if you are a pro adult use. It’s just the way that you think about processing things.
Tim Pickett:
Yeah. It’s just not safe. What about also, the… I’ve made a gummy that is 0.3%, but I’ve made it so big that it’s got eight milligrams of delta-9 in it. Is there a legislation to fix that?
Blake Smith:
So, here’s the trick. Here’s how to beat the federal government. Everybody, are you ready? What you do is go buy some Kashi, which is sticks and stones and berries cereal. And that’s going to add density. Just pour that into your party gummy, and you can get about 20 mgs of THC in there, and by weight, it’s still going to be below 0.3%. So, you could eat that whole party pack and get 20 mgs of THC and be legal. Look, the whole thing that’s craziness too; to define things by percentage is a real silly way to think about this. Just because, from a weight density perspective, look, I could just add denser and denser materials to my gummy, so I can up or increase the amount of THC that’s in there.
Tim Pickett:
And is that part of the bill… If we limit analogs of THC, are we going to limit total milligrams of delta-9? [crosstalk 00:51:19].
Blake Smith:
I don’t believe [crosstalk 00:51:21] now.
Tim Pickett:
You don’t think so.
Blake Smith:
I don’t think it’s in there. I mean, I haven’t seen the draft yet.
Tim Pickett:
I haven’t seen the language either on any hemp side or medical side.
Blake Smith:
I would love if it was in there. Because here’s the other thing-
Tim Pickett:
I just don’t want people… Look, the reason why you come see a medical provider is so that I can help you just adjust the dosage, plus I can make sure the pregnant woman, breastfeeding woman, and the kid who’s under 21, doesn’t get access unless they absolutely need it through the Compassionate Use Board. There’s a system of access for these folks. I get that. That was what we designed. We’re going around it. We’re actually making the medical market kind of look foolish.
Blake Smith:
Yeah. Well, and the other thing I would say is, I’m pretty pro-free market when we think about things like this. If somebody creates something innovative and so forth, then they should be able to have a right to sell it. But I don’t think this qualifies as innovative. This is not like… If somebody went in their backyard and threw in a bunch of seeds and you did this hyper mix of boswellic acid and all these type of things, you don’t know anything about it. And it’s like snake oil in some way, shape, or form, but it happens to be a high-demand snake oil. And so, you’ll sell it, but there’s no guarantees about anything about it. Could it kill your liver? Could your kidney suffer failure? Maybe. Does the person making it even know that? No.
Tim Pickett:
Nope. Nor do they really care.
Blake Smith:
Nor do they probably even care.
Tim Pickett:
And they know that it’s only going to last so long. And we’re going to get a ton of comments on this, the people that disagree with me on this. And I get your point, I get people’s point that we should have access, but if you want that, then create an adult-use program and get it done legislatively so that it’s legal, and that’s the right way to do this. You don’t-
Blake Smith:
Even if it’s an adult-use program, Tim, it’s still going be sold at a dispensary.
Tim Pickett:
Yes. It’s still regulated.
Blake Smith:
And still [inaudible 00:53:32] rules.
Tim Pickett:
Rules and processing and testing. That’s what we want. We need safety.
Blake Smith:
That’s the point. If Joe’s making cereal… Sorry, if there’s somebody listening that’s named Joe. I keep using Joe. We’ll call him Bob.
Tim Pickett:
It’ll be fine.
Blake Smith:
If Bob is making cereal in his kitchen or in his bathtub, and he says, “Look, it’s just like Marshmallow Mateys,” I’m not sure that I want to eat Bob’s Marshmallow Mateys out of his bathtub. I don’t think that’s the right way to think about cereal. And so, because, at least the general meals has rules, and GMP is good manufacturing practices. There’s rules around how to do it. And so, I just think it’s the same case for all of these things. I don’t trust somebody just dissolving some willow bark and making aspirin on their own. I think that’s a weird thing to do.
Tim Pickett:
No, but alternatively… Okay, this brings up a good point. And about home-grow and flower, and what you said before about Joe growing a plant and then providing it to his neighbor, that’s probably reasonably safe.
Blake Smith:
Sure. Yes.
Tim Pickett:
So, Joe grows his vegetables, takes them to the farmer’s market, sells them, reasonably safe. Joe starts manipulating and doing gene modification on things, and now processing in the garage, that’s where this breaks down. So, there’s a very big distinction for me on flower and safety, of flower and potentially home-grow and that type of stuff, versus processing THC, which we need regulation.
Blake Smith:
And I’ll take it further. Do I have a problem with Mary taking willow bark, making her own aspirin, and then Mary taking the aspirin? No.
Tim Pickett:
Yes.
Blake Smith:
That’s fine. Look, that’s your deal, you get to decide what to do with you and your individual family. Do I think you should start making that in pill form and giving it to the kids on the street, or selling it to all your neighbors? Nope. I’m out. That’s where we have a problem. And so, it’s the same thing. Look, if you want to make your own HPP in your garage and take it just yourself, well look, man, go do your thing.
Tim Pickett:
Yeah. I guess that’s something because you should-
Blake Smith:
But you put it in a kiosk in the mall, and you’re telling me to trust you that it’s all safe and done the certain way, yeah, man, I want to see the certificate of analysis. And it needs to actually come from an accredited lab, and it needs to have a full profile, and I want to see the mass spec. That’s the point. Where it’s individuals doing their own thing, I don’t know that I care that much about it. I think people should do whatever they need to do for them. But the second you try to commercialize that and you don’t have a safety profile, you don’t have GMP, you don’t have any of those things, I’m out. I can’t support it.
Tim Pickett:
So, back to… You and I can go down the rabbit hole a little bit.
Blake Smith:
Okay. I’m in.
Tim Pickett:
No, we just did.
Blake Smith:
Oh yeah. I get that a lot. I’m like a wind-up toy. You just wind me up and let me off.
Tim Pickett:
Yeah. I love it. Okay, so we’ve got Bloom… Well, Cedar City, which is retail, we’ve got bills at the legislature that are happening. We haven’t read the language yet. We’ve got hemp stuff. We’ve got multi-state projects going. I mean, when do you… Oh, and I should mention this. For those of you who listen to the end here, congratulations, because, you’re going to get a preview. Blake and I, we just spent the last week videoing ourselves. Okay. That was a little awkward for me. Was that a little awkward for you?
Blake Smith:
It was sort of terrible in some ways. I know I talk a lot, but I don’t necessarily actually like the sound of my voice that much, and I certainly don’t like talking about myself.
Tim Pickett:
In a way that they were trying to really get us to talk about ourselves, because, you and I kind of try to thread this needle between all of these different things; our kids, our involvement in the program, the fact that we deal with cannabis for a living, our own use. All of that sort of stuff is just a little awkward.
Blake Smith:
Well, one part was pretty upsetting, actually. I mean, so the question got asked to me, how do I balance my work life?
Tim Pickett:
Yeah, me too.
Blake Smith:
I don’t.
Tim Pickett:
I know. They were like, “Well, but you make it to all the soccer games and all the dance concerts and all of that sort of…” And I’m like, “Well, yeah, I do that, but it sure doesn’t feel balanced. It feels like I work all the time. I love it.” What do you think?
Blake Smith:
Yeah, I like my job. I wouldn’t spend so much time doing this if I didn’t think it had value.
Tim Pickett:
Sure.
Blake Smith:
And so, I have this weird dichotomy that I hold my family… My family’s like my number one thing, and then work is also important to me because I feel like I’m doing good things. I’m doing good things for lots of different people. Okay, so now I have two competing things. And so I try to do both, but what that does also mean is I don’t take good care of myself very well. There’s all these other things that happen as a result. And the thing that was hard during the interview, was like it was kind of a little bit of a slap to my own face. Like, “Oh, I don’t do a good job at balancing everything in my life. I don’t do a good job of taking care of myself.” And I don’t talk about that very often because I try not to think about myself or talk about myself very much. And so, saying it out loud was like, “Oh my gosh, wow, do I need to reassess how I think about things?”
Tim Pickett:
Right. And what I’m prioritizing for me. And I’m very, very excited and terrified at the same time. For listeners, Ramble Content does a lot of our video production. And great guys. Dave Trevino, friend of mine, and very, very talented organization. We’ll be putting these videos together on our YouTube channel, Discover Marijuana. If you’re not subscribed to that channel, you should just go there right now. YouTube, Discover Marijuana, hit subscribe right now, because, in the next few weeks, you’re going to see these videos of Blake Smith, close-up look at Blake, close-up look at Tim Pickett too.
Blake Smith:
You got to find out, I guess, what makes me tick, I guess.
Tim Pickett:
I’m interested to see how they put it together. I think that they’ll certainly do a better job than you and I would’ve. And I think what’s good about having other people involved, is they see what’s happening for the industry, they see what’s happen for you and I, and I’ll bet they put together something that’s true in a way that you and I wouldn’t have seen.
Blake Smith:
Oh, I guarantee that. Yeah. That’s absolutely. And you and I, when we sit and talk, we tend to be able to… We enjoy each other’s company and we can talk about anything for a long period of time. Having somebody else come in and view this objectively… I don’t know that you and I are always fully objective about the way we do that.
Tim Pickett:
No, certainly not.
Blake Smith:
Having somebody else do that for us, I think is valuable.
Tim Pickett:
Yeah. Well, I’m looking forward to those and I’m looking forward to the new content on season four, frankly. Well, I think there’s going to be a lot of… We had a meeting about that today. There’s going to be a lot of really amazing content coming out, and a redo of some of the stuff that we’ve already done on that channel, that’s just, let’s just step it up a notch. We know more, we can do better, so let’s do better.
Blake Smith:
Yeah, absolutely. Do better.
Tim Pickett:
Just do better.
Blake Smith:
Better.
Tim Pickett:
Just do better, work more. One year, my motto was, go to bed later, wake up earlier, show no mercy.
Blake Smith:
And how did that work?
Tim Pickett:
It was awesome. This year, it is, let’s do that again. And it has a thumbs up with it too. Let’s do that again.
Blake Smith:
Do it again.
Tim Pickett:
Let’s do it again.
Blake Smith:
I don’t have anything, quib or anything, saying that’s awesome like that.
Tim Pickett:
You can use mine; “Let’s do that again.”
Blake Smith:
Okay. Let’s do it again. Hey, let’s do this again.
Tim Pickett:
Let’s do this again, Blake. Okay. Well, there you go. Okay, well, I guess that’s it. Anything else you want to talk about?
Blake Smith:
No, you’re awesome. Look, it’s really fun to be in this industry. It’s really fun to see patients get benefited from this, and it’s really fun to be able to be part of making history in some way, shape, or form. I mean Utah, cannabis, medicine, treating people, it’s wild. This is all wild.
Tim Pickett:
It’s really wild. All right, everybody. Stay tuned, thanks for listening to Utah in the Weeds. If you’re not subscribed to Utah in the Weeds, please subscribe on any podcast player that you have access to. This has been a great conversation, Blake, and I look forward to talking to you again. Stay safe out there.
Blake Smith:
You too. Thanks, buddy. Bye.
Combining multiple mind-altering drugs is something our culture generally treats with caution. Such is the case with the practice known as crossfading. The practice is one of combining cannabis and alcohol in order to maximize the effects of both drugs. Though it can be dangerous, crossfading is also a common party practice. How much do you know about it?
It might seem like crossfading is not an issue in Utah given that our cannabis landscape is medical-only in nature. But using Medical Cannabis does not prevent one from also using alcohol. Medical users can still participate in crossfading in the privacy of their own homes. The question is whether they should.
A 2018 survey among young people showed a general familiarity with crossfading. According to the study data, 87% of the nine hundred survey participants had at least heard of the practice. Approximately 43% described it as combining alcohol and cannabis while 25% said that a person is not crossfading unless they have consumed enough of the two drugs to be both drunk and stoned.
In terms of who actually participates in crossfading, research data suggests that just over 60% of users had experienced it at least once. Just 13% viewed it as a positive experience. Some 59% reported a negative experience. Finally, 45% of the respondents reported believing that crossfading was moderately risky; just over 33% said it was very risky.
The data shows that alcohol and cannabis users are aware of crossfading as a practice. It also shows that the practice is common, though not desirable in the end. We advise being extremely cautious with it. Even though you may use Medical Cannabis to alleviate the symptoms of your qualifying condition, combining it with alcohol could create problems you are not interested in dealing with.
Both alcohol and cannabis can affect cognition and coordination. They can alter your emotional state. The two drugs can lead to fatigue, slow reaction times, etc. Using either drug makes driving a dangerous proposition. Unfortunately, crossfading amplifies the effects of both drugs. When a person crossfades, they feel the effects of both drugs more intensely than they would have by using one of them alone.
Crossfading can also create side effects above and beyond amplifying what is normally experienced with alcohol or cannabis. For example, it can create a profound sense of confusion. It can also lead to nausea and vomiting, serious sedation, and a prolonged high that could ultimately prove very uncomfortable.
Though rare, the most serious cases of crossfading can result in passing out, blackouts, dehydration, and dangerous slip and fall accidents. Patients have been hospitalized with serious injuries associated with crossfading.
As a Medical Cannabis patient, you use cannabis to help alleviate your symptoms. We think that this is a good thing. We hope you will continue to do so by consulting with your QMP and PMP. As for crossfading, we don’t think the practice is worth the risk involved.
Though there are no guarantees you would have a bad experience with crossfading, the possibility exists. To be quite honest, crossfading could also negatively influence the therapeutic benefits of using Medical Cannabis. Finally, why take the chance of making your qualifying condition worse?
Continue using Medical Cannabis as directed by your PMP. Should you choose to use alcohol as well, do not mix the two. Your PMP or QMP should be able to help you figure out how to use both without crossfading. That’s the best way to go.
