Mother's Day and Medical Marijuana Research

0:02BubblemanHey everybody, welcome to Hash Church episode 85. I am your host, Bubble Man, and I'm about to send out the links for another episode of Hash Church. We will start with Chimera, and then we will send out to everyone else on the Facebook links, and I think that will organize it.

0:34BubblemanOkay. Awesome. All right. Welcome, ATN. How are you doing this morning, my friend?

0:38Etienne FontanGood morning, sir. I am doing well. And a happy Mother's Day to your wonderful wife and to all the other wonderful mothers out there.

0:46BubblemanI was going to say the exact same thing, a big celebratory Mother's Day today and obviously happy Mother's Day to my mother, Paulette Richardson, and happy Mother's Day to my beautiful wife who is Mother Supreme and taking care of the kids and doing everything. And happy Mother's Day to all of the mothers out there. And most importantly as well, the mother plants. Happy Mother's Day to all of you mother plants out there.

1:13BubblemanIf you have a mother plant and you may not have that cultivar saved anywhere else, I implore you today on Mother's Day to take some cuts off your mother and share that mother. Give that mother out. Pass it on to people. Don't try to decide whether or not you Thank you, John.

1:59BubblemanMuch appreciated, brother.

2:01Etienne FontanAnd one more mother to thank, mothership.

2:04BubblemanYes, the mothership. Let us thank the ship of mother, because, hey, why not?

2:13Etienne FontanShall we start off with blowing some smoke to all the mothers, Vatican's?

2:17BubblemanI like the idea. I like the idea. I will do that, and we will all do that. Let's get a little turp dip in the house here. To all you moms, much love. To all the moms.

2:29Etienne FontanAnd my mom, Gretchen, much love. And my sisters who are all mothers, congratulations and great job.

2:35BubblemanYes, I should give my sister a shout out as well. She is a mother as well. It's hard to remember all the mothers. They really do, they make it all possible. They birth all of us. And without the moms, who's to say?

2:51Etienne FontanWhat do you do for Mrs. Bubble Woman on Mother's Day?

2:56BubblemanWe are going to a beautiful brunch. The brunch is ridiculous. It's super, super, super epic. I'll have to take pictures and post it in the Hash Church group because I can't even describe how over the top this brunch is. It is absolutely ridiculous. They've got a guy in the middle with the grand piano, and then surrounding him are about four or five buffet-style tables that are absolute five-star tables.

3:22BubblemanYou know, the highest quality food that you could absolutely imagine. Really amazing desserts and treats. And I just, I absolutely can't wait to go. It's going to be good.

3:33SpeakerWelcome back, Sam guy.

3:35BubblemanYep, I made it. Good. Welcome back, Sam I am.

3:43Etienne FontanSo, Bubble Man, you know that video of that soft squash squish you in the other week?

3:50SpeakerWhat about it?

3:51Etienne FontanThat was my friend's, my friend Kevin, it was his herb that was being squished, and so I ended up getting some of that from my friend Ital Extracts, Kevin.

4:01BubblemanThe one that was like flowing down like crazy? That couldn't have been herb, dude.

4:05Etienne FontanYeah, no, no, he made it from hash, but it was, this is it, it's fucking amazing.

4:10BubblemanBecause what I thought was, and someone mentioned it, was those guys, what they do sometimes is they clean their rosin, That has got herb particles in it. So they'll put like 10, 15 grams of rosin into a screen and then press it and it flows out like crazy. I haven't tried it yet myself because I just use screen bags to clean all of my, I usually use it initially when I do my squish.

4:37BubblemanBut I know Soil Grown does not use any screen at all when he squishes bud, just hash, but What a beautiful squish that is regardless, ATN. That's awesome that you're puffing on that.

4:48Etienne FontanIt's tasty. What are you puffing on today?

4:51BubblemanI'm puffing on a little West Coast concentrate here. It's, you know, very clear. You can almost not see it. Fucking beautiful, beautiful, beautiful rosin. And I've turp dipped it into cheese bomb this morning. Now, I almost went and hit my bowl, but look at my element under my sapphire.

5:14Bubbleman1100 degrees.

5:17Etienne FontanThat's under the cherry moon. Yeah, exactly.

5:20SpeakerYou know how often I hit my nail at 1100 degrees? Like, I always fuck that up, and it hits hard, guys.

5:27BubblemanIs it as often as you forget to mute your mic? Well, that too.

5:35BubblemanI'm not surprised that Johnny's hitting his nail at 1100 degrees.

5:41BubblemanOh my goodness. I almost wore that shirt today, John. We would have been twins. I had it in my hand. I was like...

5:47SpeakerI'm like, I feel 73 today after the March yesterday was so awesome. The Global Marijuana March was epic.

5:53BubblemanDude, why did the March look like eight people were there?

5:56SpeakerWell, there was probably a couple hundred. That's it. It was a good march. We marched over Cammy Street Bridge.

6:04BubblemanI saw the pictures. I just couldn't believe it. Toronto had a big one. I just thought, I guess in Vancouver, the people will really come out to sell weed, but to march for weed, not so much. 200 people versus, what was it, 20,000, 50,000, 100,000 that came out to the other event?

6:21SpeakerThat's amazing. I don't think Vancouver got the publicity it should have.

6:26BubblemanI think if the Marijuana March started selling herb... Thank you for watching.

6:47SpeakerOtherwise than that, you know what, it was a good march. It felt good to march over that bridge and walk up the street and stand up for a plant.

6:54BubblemanI wasn't there, but from the perspective of watching and looking, it looked not so good. It was awesome. Whereas the other event, that was a proud moment for Vancouver when those photos went out and it was like, man, listen to this, like, Thank you so much for joining us.

7:36BubblemanWe won our Supreme Court. We won the right to grow cannabis. We won the right to have cannabis on a federal level. We have our Compassion Club still fighting to exist, but it's like a lot of what we were fighting for and marching for over the last 20 years, we have won, and we have actually acquired.

7:55SpeakerThat was the end of the march.

7:59SpeakerYeah. Yeah, there was definitely probably, I don't know, I'm bad at crowds, so. As you can see, we blocked off about...

8:07BubblemanIt looks like a little bit less than the other event.

8:13SpeakerYeah, definitely it was, but you know what, overall, I mean, it was a good moment, and it was a beautiful day, and we stood what we believed in, and we marched from City Hall to, I mean, from the Vancouver Art Gallery, down Granville Street, then up Canby Street Bridge, right across to the City Hall, and you know what, it was, just felt good, it felt good to march for what we believed in, and everybody was there, it was a proud, great moment, the vibe was awesome, and it was just, overall, it was a great event, I was really happy to be a part of it.

8:43BubblemanHey, welcome, Todd, and welcome, Rick, Richard, that just came in.

8:49ToddYeah, Rick. Oh, Rick, you made it on. Sorry. I turned from Rick on the phone and started rolling my morning spliffs. Everybody, I'm really happy to have Rick on. For those of you who don't know, Rick Doblin founded the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies. Amazing. He's got to be the happiest person in the drug law reform movement.

9:12Etienne FontanI love you, Rick.

9:15ToddAnd Rick Doblin has been pursuing some of the more serious medical marijuana research in the community for a long time. Some of the earliest smoking comparing to vaporizing studies Rick did with California Normal back in 95, I think it was. And it was forever ago. And Rick has been struggling to get approval for... I'll let Rick say it, but various medical marijuana research programs that NIDA has been very resistant to give him cannabis about, if I'm correct.

9:46ToddSo Rick, if you could tell us a little bit about MAPS and what you've been up to, we'd all love to hear.

9:51SpeakerYeah, terrific, Todd. Thank you for inviting me. And I'll start out by saying that in 1992, there was a meeting that the FDA had An advisory committee meeting and special meetings to decide whether to open the door to psychedelic and medical marijuana research after it having been shut down for several decades other than the state studies with marijuana for nausea control for cancer chemotherapy that took place in the 70s and early 80s and resulted in the approval by FDA of Marinol, which was designed to try to block the plant from ever becoming a medicine.

10:35SpeakerSo we made a lot of progress with psychedelic research with the FDA because we could have our own independent sources of supply of psychedelics. But then NIDA had the monopoly on the supply of federally legal marijuana. And that has been since 1968. And the only people that have ever tried to challenge the NIDA monopoly have been us, Professor Lyle Craker at UMass Amherst. Starting in 1990, I started trying to think about how do we open the door to marijuana research as well.

11:17SpeakerAnd one of the things that really did it was the arrest of Brownie Mary. I'd been looking for people to do marijuana research for about a year, but nobody was willing to try to do it. And I called around all different people, and they said, there's no point in it, and it won't give us the marijuana, you know, why bother? And once the newspaper talked about Brownie Mary getting arrested, it was in the New York Times, it was all over, I called San Francisco General, and I talked to a bunch of the people there, and it turned out Donald Abrams was the only one that was willing to respond, and Donald said, yes.

12:00SpeakerI'll try to work with you on trying to get permission for a study for marijuana for AIDS wasting people. And we got approval from the FDA. We got approval from the IRB. And we even were able to try to negotiate with NIDA to get the marijuana. But in the end, NIDA refused to provide the marijuana. And it was just incredibly frustrating. It was a very good protocol.

12:28SpeakerThen what happened, thanking you people in California and Arizona in 1996, you know, the Prop 215 passed, and we had medical marijuana. And NIDA realized that one of the reasons that the marijuana passed was because people knew that the FDA system was blocked. There was no other way to make marijuana into a medicine because NIDA was having this chokehold on the marijuana for drug development studies. So they contacted Donald and said, if you can change your protocol from one looking at the benefits of marijuana to looking at the risks of marijuana, and you could look at people with AIDS, with HIV, but they can't be age-wasting.

13:09SpeakerThey can only be AIDS, and you have to look at the protease inhibitors, which looks great, those buds. So the protease inhibitors had just come out. So it was a study looking at whether marijuana negatively influenced the So we decided that we wanted to do a study on the body's absorption of the protease inhibitors. But at the same time, they said that they would also fund the study.

13:33SpeakerSo we decided it's not exactly what we wanted to do, but at least we could gather information on appetite, on caloric intake, on weight gain. And so we did get some sort of secondary information that was helpful. Then I started working with Ethan Russo on a marijuana migraine study. And that was similarly approved by the FDA, approved by institutional review boards, and NIDA, once again, in the late 1990s, refused to provide marijuana for the study.

14:04SpeakerSo, out of that frustration, I realized we have to break the NIDA monopoly. And starting in 2000, I spent looking... Hey, Rick, can I ask a question? Can I ask a question? Sure. How did this refusal come? So you were already enrolled in a study, this was a study that was There was grants submitted. There was internal review boards or institutional review boards that reviewed this thing.

14:27SpeakerSo this was already approved. How did the refusal, how did you realize, so you already had people enrolled in the study? No, that was the difference. No. So we didn't actually have anybody enrolled because in order to do research, even if the FDA says yes or the IRB says yes, NIDA is the only supply of marijuana. So they refused to provide the marijuana. Did you see how I mean?

14:53SpeakerYeah, so we were never able actually to enroll anybody, and we were never able actually to start the study. So that was incredible. How were you notified of this refusal? Was this a phone call or an email? No, we submitted the protocol to NIDA, and then they just said we don't like it. And we had letters from Alan Leshner, who was the head of NIDA, And because of this frustration, you know, basically, in 1999, HHS created a new policy.

15:31SpeakerAnd they said, okay, we will provide marijuana to privately funded studies. Before that, they had only provided marijuana to government-funded research, almost entirely looking at the risks of marijuana. So this policy in 1999 created a public health service review, another review program. So you needed FDA approval, IRB approval, you needed this public health service approval, and then if you could manage to get that, then you'd need the DEA approval, and then you could buy the marijuana from NIDA.

16:06SpeakerBut this public health service approval was a rigged game because basically what we're trying to do is develop the plant into an FDA approved prescription medicine. And what the Public Health Service review, it's basic scientists. And they're trying to understand how things work and what are the mechanisms of action in the body. From the FDA point of view, when you do drug development research, you don't need to know how the drug works.

16:35SpeakerWe don't know how a lot of the drugs work already that we have approved by the FDA. You just have to prove safety and efficacy. The public health service reviewers were like, well, we're curious about this, we're curious about that. We don't like this, we don't like that. We're like, well, the FDA, who is really the people we need to deal with, said yes. And how is it that you're saying no?

16:59SpeakerYou can't tell us you want to learn all sorts of stuff without giving us the money to do it. You're making us spend money, private money, on inquiries that the FDA doesn't require, that no other pharmaceutical company ever has to deal with that. So the public health service review itself was a rigged game. And so in 2001, with Professor Kraker, Lyle Kraker from UMass Amherst, we submitted an application to the DEA to grow marijuana and break the night of monopoly.

17:31SpeakerAnd the DEA's main strategy is delay. They don't care if their arguments are right. They don't care If they'll be overturned in the appeals courts, none of that matters to them, really. Their lawyers know they have bogus arguments. Their strategy is just how do we delay for as long as possible. And look at this. I mean, it's 2016. They've delayed since the early 1970s when Lester Grinspoon first started talking about marijuana for nausea control for cancer chemotherapy.

18:05SpeakerAnd then the later research in the 70s and early 80s showed that the plant worked better than In a lot of patients. You know, can I ask a question?

18:14ToddYou know, that really does bring up, I've always felt that status quo was the point of the drug war. The people that are making money off it want to continue to make money off it. And when you say that their obstruction is really the whole point of their game, I feel that that is almost, it almost proves what they're doing is just trying to bide time because it's really the status quo that's making so much money.

18:36ToddThis whole drug war has turned into such a big business. Now you have bureaucracies basically absconding and not wanting to face the truth of science because it conflicts with their current activities. Do you feel like that's what you're running into?

18:52SpeakerExactly. Yeah. Yeah, that's exactly what we're running into. But I would say the good news there is that the different agencies are narrowing. So right now, NIDA is saying that they want to end the NIDA monopoly. In fact, NIDA has told us to talk about it as the DEA-mandated NIDA monopoly. And Norval Oka, the head of NIDA, spoke in Congress about a month and a half ago and said the NIDA monopoly should end.

19:21SpeakerSo we now have DEA as the final holdout, and I don't know if any of you saw the State Department comment that came out last week in conversations with Senator Gillibrand. We're working with her office to try to end the night of monopoly, and they've been pressuring various other federal agencies. And so what DEA's, DEA has two main, I should say DEA's main claim right now about why they can't give the monopoly, Why they can't end the monopoly is that U.S. international treaty obligations under the single convention require the DEA to license only one facility, and it has to be under the control of the government.

20:07SpeakerAnd what the State Department said is that that is not the single convention. It does not say that. So now we have the State Department criticizing the DEA, and the State Department is the agency that works on our international treaties. So when the State Department says that the DEA interpretation of the Single Convention is wrong, that's really powerful. And so we've got, the DEA is the last holdout now against making marijuana into a medicine through the FDA.

20:40SpeakerNIDA marijuana can only be used in research. It cannot be used as a prescription medicine. And none of the marijuana that's grown in California or grown anywhere else All of this is grown under DEA license, so none of the state marijuana, which is better than the federal marijuana, none of it can be used in FDA-approved research beyond, yeah, Global World Forum. Yes, we're making a lot of, okay, so what's happening now is, well, let me just go back.

21:12SpeakerSo in 2001, we submitted an application to DEA to grow marijuana. They did nothing for three and a half years. We sued them in the appeals court under the Administrative Procedures Act. And the court astonishingly said that three and a half years is not necessarily too long of a delay, but that at least the DEA had to answer why it was taking so long. So when they answered, they said, all right, we're rejecting the application.

21:37SpeakerThen we could sue them on the reasons they rejected. And we were able to get a DEA hearing in an administrative law judge in 2005. And

21:47SpeakerWe won in 2007, but then the head of the DEA rejected the recommendation. Then we lost in 2013 in the appeals court. Now we're working with one of the leading law firms in Washington, D.C., called Covington & Burling. Attorney General Holder, who was in charge of the DEA, I mean the attorney DEA works under the Department of Justice, Attorney General Holder worked for Covington & Burling before he went to become attorney general.

22:15SpeakerAnd now that he's left being the Attorney General, he works for that law firm again. And one of the senior partners on that law firm was on my dissertation committee at the Kennedy School. So they're taking the, it is all political, totally. So they're taking the case pro bono, and we're about to refile Professor Craker's application in a couple weeks, maybe two to four weeks. With a legal analysis on why we would win in court if we have to sue the DEA.

22:46SpeakerAnd we're hoping that the current climate has changed so much that the DEA would be willing to grant the license. But if not, we're prepared to sue them yet again. So that's the key issue is we need our own independent source of supply to use in phase three research that can be also sold as prescription medicine. Now the good news is that Tilray, which is a Canadian producer owned by Privateer, they're starting to negotiate with FDA about opening up a drug master file for their marijuana.

23:19SpeakerSo it could be imported into the U.S. for clinical research, not for patients, but for clinical research. I mean not for patients state legal. So Tilray is, oh yeah, okay, yes, Tilray is trying to do that. And so the monopoly is ending, and we're just giving away the business to people in other countries. So I think that the fact that the monopoly will end, Bedrocan is, at least so far, not from the Netherlands, has not opened up a drug master file.

23:50SpeakerThere's nobody that we can import marijuana into the U.S. from, not even Tilray. They haven't completed their discussions yet. So we have to stick with NIDA marijuana. So then about six and a half years ago, While we're still trying to break this monopoly, and after I'd worked with Donald Abrams and Ethan Russo, and both of those projects were blocked by NIDA, Steve Fox, when he was working for MPP, contacted me.

24:17SpeakerThis is a little bit about six and a half years ago, and he said that there was a woman that he was working with, a psychiatrist, that she was interested in trying to do marijuana research. And I thought, all right, let's try again. And that was Sue Sisley, and she wanted to do a study with marijuana for PTSD. So I thought, all right, we're doing MDMA for PTSD.

24:38SpeakerIt'll help us learn about PTSD. You know, marijuana helps a lot of people for PTSD. Yeah, I can't read. It's too small. So we ended up deciding that we would work on a protocol. It's been a long saga. We got FDA approval. One more time, FDA is the courageous federal agency. But then... We got IRB. Then NIDA refused to provide the marijuana yet again. So that led to a long process.

25:09SpeakerThe Public Health Service rejected the recommendation, rejected the protocol. Then we got University of Arizona IRB approval. Then we resubmitted the protocol to Public Health Service. And the University of Arizona IRB saw what the Public Health Service had said, So we were able to get the public health service finally to turn around and then that meant that NIDA was going to give us the marijuana. So last year we were able to succeed in getting the health and human services to eliminate the public health service review because it was completely redundant and used to block research.

25:52SpeakerSo now the last big obstacle Thank you for joining us.

26:26SpeakerTo educate young people on how bad marijuana is. And so a bunch of the veterans started protesting and trying to get a recall election against this Republican woman who was in charge of the committee that refused to even consider this bill to let some of this money be used for research. And so this Republican woman then contacted the Board of Regents and the Board of Regents contacted the University of Arizona Again, it's state money that goes to the Board of Regents for the state universities.

26:56SpeakerAnd they told them, fire Sue Sisley. So then Sue got fired for completely political reasons. And the university said, oh, no, we're not really against the research. We're just, you know, her contract expired, and we've got somebody else that we would like to be the principal investigator. If you work with us, with this new principal investigator, then You know, we'll go forward with the study. Well, this new principal investigator a couple weeks before that had been in email discussion with Sue and said that he was too busy to do the study, didn't really want to do it.

27:31SpeakerSo he got pressure to change his mind, and so I told the University of Arizona, just forget it. You know, I've been working for Sue with years. We are not going to ditch Sue and go to somebody that you control who doesn't really want to do this. So we left The University. And then I got a call from a fellow named Marcel Von Miller, who's at the Palo Alto VA.

27:55SpeakerHe's the head of the, he's the main person for the VA that studies the use of marijuana by vets with PTSD. And he said, well, now that you've lost University of Arizona, you know, do you want to work with some traditional people? And I said, well, let's see if we can do that. And so we started, um, Working with Marcel, and also he was connected with Ryan Vandry at Johns Hopkins, who is the head researcher for NIDA, looking at people who use marijuana for PTSD.

28:29SpeakerSo we negotiated the agreements, we decided to work together, and then we were able to get a $2.1 million grant from the state of Colorado for the study, which was great, because I'd been talking with Rob Campia and Heath Nadelman and others, and they're worried. What if, you know, Now you need millions of dollars for this study. What about people who want to donate? We want them to donate to legalize marijuana.

28:57SpeakerAnd we want them to donate for medical marijuana states. And I said, yeah, that totally makes sense for me. And so we were able to get money from the state of Colorado that would only be for medical marijuana research. They never would have paid for marijuana legalization or medical marijuana initiatives. So we got a new source of funding from And then we had to go through all this long process then to get the DEA approvals.

29:24SpeakerAnd finally the DEA approvals came together a couple weeks ago. So now after six and a half years of trying, and basically the way I started by talking to you about the work with Donald Abrams starting in 91 and 92, is that really it's been 24 years that we've been trying to do what's called a drug development study. The studies that were done by CMCR, the California Center for Medicinal Cannabis Research, those were really good studies, but those were academic research studies, and in order to get that bill passed for $9 million for medical marijuana research, State Senator John Vasconcellos had to agree that they would only be doing academic research, that it wasn't to develop the purpose of those studies We're not to develop the marijuana plant into a prescription medicine.

30:17SpeakerSo if you go to the CMCR website and look at the studies that they've done, they've got a lot of good results for MS, for nausea control, for cancer chemotherapy, for pain. And they've done the water pipe vaporizer study showing the difference between subjective effects and what's in the water pipe and vaporizer. They've done great work. Yeah, Todd? No, it's just that the story seems to always lead back to obstruction.

30:49SpeakerBut yes, and the last and final obstruction is the DEA blocking and preserving the Night of Monopoly. So the clinical research, it's like change on the federal level. It happens at the last. So the state medical marijuana initiatives, The state legalization efforts, all of those have put pressure on the DEA and on members of Congress. But yeah, the fear is that the science and the research will educate people properly about what the real risks of marijuana are and what the real benefits are, and then people will know and will challenge the propaganda that they've heard since 1937.

31:30SpeakerThe American public has been drastically misled about the risks. And what we see, and this is what I use, I don't have a chart I can show, but let me just say, you probably all have seen this chart. It was the Gallup poll, and it was about American attitudes towards the legalization of marijuana going back over the last 45 years, starting in around 1970. And so what they've shown is in 1970, it was normally about 12% of the American public was in favor of legalizing marijuana.

32:02SpeakerAnd that grew to about 18-20% through the 70s. And that's where, you know, normal was started. People were like, oh yeah, marijuana's going to be legal right around the corner. And then Carter was elected in 76, and he was saying, yeah, let's decriminalize marijuana. But then in the 80s, there was a massive back, late 70s was starting the backlash, the parents groups. And then we see a flat We've had a flattening of support for marijuana legalization, somewhere like 20% or so, for almost two decades.

32:35SpeakerStarting in 96, 97, 98 is when the attitude started changing. And then by 2012 was the first point where it crossed 50% of American voters saying yes to marijuana legalization. But what happened during this flat period, from like late 78 to around 98, really, Not much happened. But what happened starting in 96 and it took a while to take effect was medical marijuana in certain states. That started changing people's attitudes.

33:07SpeakerSo medicalization leads to legalization. And we know that and the DEA knows that. And so that's fundamentally why the DEA has been obstructing this research and why NIDA has been obstructing this research up until just a few years ago. So I think we are Starting to really overcome this idea of federal obstruction of research. But with psychedelics, we're at this stage of completing an international series of what's called phase two pilot studies.

33:39SpeakerLooking at MDMA for PTSD in a bunch of different conditions. The group Hefter Research has been working with psilocybin for end of life. So we're at this transition from phase two to phase three. Phase three are the key studies. That make the, help you make a drug, you have to prove safety and efficacy to make it into a medicine. But with marijuana, we're just starting, CMCR has done phase two studies, but nothing was ever followed up.

34:05SpeakerWe're trying to do a phase study with marijuana for PTSD. And so the key difference is that we have our own supplies of MDMA, psilocybin, Hefter has their own supplies of psilocybin. We've even, Amanda Fielding from Beckley Foundation even imported LSD into the U.S., For research. So it's really now limited to the DEA obstruction of medical marijuana production in the United States. And then the last thing I'll say, and then we can talk more, is the marijuana PTSD study that we're doing, because we're doing non-profit drug development, we put the protocol up on the web.

34:43SpeakerAnd Tilray contacted me, Philippe Lucas from Tilray, and he said, we'd like to do some research too. And you've done all this work for all these years on this protocol. Could we use your protocol and do research with our marijuana? And we said, sure, that would be great. So the studies are going to be taking place at Johns Hopkins and in Phoenix, Arizona. So we're only able to work with vets in those places.

35:14SpeakerOr in Victoria, actually. So Tilray is going to replicate the study. And then about a month and a half ago, there was an event at the National Institutes of Health. It was called Marijuana and Cannabinoids at Neuroscience Summit. And that was the head of NIH, the head of NIMH, National Institute of Mental Health, head of NIDA, other groups. And they were endorsing medical marijuana research into isolated cannabinoids.

35:44SpeakerAnd one of the people that was there was a fellow from University of Sydney. And I'm not sure if you know, but the University of Sydney received an incredible grant. There was a grandfather whose grandchild had pediatric epilepsy, and nothing else helped. Then they tried CBD, and it worked. This guy was so grateful, he gave $34 million to the University of Sydney for cannabinoid research. That was the largest grant in the history of the University of Sydney everywhere.

36:19SpeakerSo now they decided that they want to do the same study using our protocol, and what they're going to do, it's a fantastic situation. So we're in the U.S. at Sioux City site in Phoenix and at Johns Hopkins are using marijuana from NIDA smoked. One is a 12% THC with no CBD. The other is 12% CBD with no THC. The other is 8% THC and 8% CBD.

36:48SpeakerAnd then the other is placebo. So Tilray is going to use the same, but they're plants that come the closest to it, and they're going to use vaporized. The Storzenbickel, who made the volcano, is donating vaporizers to them. And then in Australia, they're going to be using Tilray marijuana put into capsules, and it's going to be edible. Oral administration. So we're going to be gathering enormous amounts of data MAPS, because we're doing it again non-profit and give away the protocol and all that work, it's phenomenal.

37:22SpeakerSo we're going to have data from three separate sites, three different routes of administration, and then it's going to be a three-year study. So what we're hoping is that in three years we can break the NIDA monopoly, start our own production facility, and get this phase two data and then move to phase three, and then hopefully in maybe six or seven years from now, Have FDA-approved marijuana.

37:48SpeakerAnd we're trying the hardest thing, which is to try to get them to approve it as a smoked drug. So I see several of you smoking. The important point there is that marijuana does not hurt your lungs. It doesn't cause lung cancer. Sometimes people have more incidents of colds or infections or things like that, but it doesn't cause lung cancer, doesn't cause chronic obstructive pulmonary disorder. And the stronger the marijuana that you use, the less you need to smoke.

38:16SpeakerSo for experienced smokers using high-potency marijuana, I believe that a rational risk-benefit analysis would result in marijuana becoming approved as smoked medicine. However, we know there's still politics, and so maybe it will be only approved as vaporized. But our goal is to get a low-cost plant approved as a medicine. So in Israel, one of the producers there better is able to grow high-potency trim buds for 50 cents a gram, $14 an ounce.

38:50SpeakerThat's their cost of production. Let's say they sell it at twice that, $30 an ounce. Let's say you add taxes, and now it's all of a sudden $100 an ounce. It's going to be cheap. And if you look at what Marinol costs, you look at what GW Pharmaceuticals is charging for... Epidiolex or Sativex, it's thousands of dollars a month sometimes. So what we're suggesting is we need a low cost generic bud approved as a medicine where insurance companies will pay for it.

39:26SpeakerAnd that's the other big thing is that marijuana approved by states is fantastic and loads of patients are getting it. And they're getting better quality than they get from NIDA. But people have to buy it themselves. And that's not the way medicine should operate in the United States. Medicines should be covered by the insurance companies. But the only way to make that happen, yeah, or grow your own.

39:49SpeakerGood point. But marijuana should be available as an FDA-approved medicine that your insurance companies will cover. And they're probably going to cover Epidiolex or GW because they're going to get them approved by the FDA.

40:08Etienne FontanRick, I have a question. This is ATN from the patients group. Much love.

40:11SpeakerGreat to see you here. Yeah.

40:14Etienne FontanNow, I'm a veteran with PTSD. Now, I'm not in the areas where you're going, but can people move to those areas where the research is going to take place, or does it have to be already accessed VA patients currently in those VA facilities as of now?

40:36SpeakerLet's see. I don't hear, can you hear me now? Yes, can hear you no problem. Oh great, okay. So people can move there if you wanted to. And at this point the VA is not formally referring patients to us. These are people that are coming to us from outside the VA. VA is not ready yet to formally send us patients. We are going to be reaching out to the Phoenix VA, which has been one of the most scandalous of all the VAs, and then also to the Baltimore and Washington, D.C. VAs and Walter Reed.

41:15SpeakerWe're going to try to let people know there, but people have to come to us from finding out on their own. The same is true with our MDMA studies. We're doing MDMA studies for PTSD with VA-trained therapists. But the patients, the vets are coming to us from outside the VA. Now, Marcel Von Miller, who's at the Palo Alto VA, he's the coordinating PI of the sites at Johns Hopkins and at Phoenix, but he's doing it through his University of Pennsylvania affiliation, not even through his VA affiliation.

41:49SpeakerSo that's, but we have some support at the VA. You know, again, they're highly political as well. So what we're What we're hoping will happen is that we'll get some referrals from the local VAs. I don't know, and basically the study is this, is that we're trying to appeal to people that have either used marijuana before, are currently using marijuana, or have never used marijuana. If people are currently using marijuana, they have to stop.

42:18SpeakerFor about four weeks. And that's so that their symptoms come back. In a sense, that's going to be really hard because we're asking people to take something that's helpful for them and stop using it because then we need to show that when they do start using it again, what happens? So it's going to be a challenge for people, but once they have stopped, then we have two Thank you so much for joining us.

43:14SpeakerSo we have two four hours where they try it under supervision. We teach them what to do if they have a panic reaction, if they can deep breathe, relaxation techniques. Then they get 1.8 grams per day for three weeks. And they can smoke it any time of the day that they want. They can use a vaporizer. We're going to give them a pipe. They can use it however they want.

43:36SpeakerThey just have to keep track of it. And this is the first study with marijuana since 1968 when Andy Weil started where people are actually getting the marijuana to take home. All the other marijuana studies in CMCR were all done in a lab. So this is, and we said we can't have people sit in a hospital lab for two months. You know, we need to do it at home.

44:02SpeakerSo the DEA, we've got this situation where we're giving people a little bit of a safe and a video camera, like from a phone. And people have to videotape every day when they take the marijuana out of this little safe, when they use it, and they put it back, whatever they don't use. So we give them a package, 1.8 grams per day. Whatever they don't use, they give it back to us, and they only get a week's supply.

44:25SpeakerAnd then at the end of the experiment, we prolong it. We give them back what they gave us. Not the exact same, but the same amounts. So then they smoke for three weeks. However much they want, whatever time of day, and they track all of their PTSD symptoms. Then we stop the experiment, and there's a two-week, what's called a washout. So it's really the experiment is continuing, but they don't get any marijuana.

44:51SpeakerAnd then their symptoms presumably will come back again, and then they get another variety. They don't know which one it is. We don't know what it will be, but we've set it up so that if people had the high THC, They're either going to get the high CBD or the THC CBD combination. And for the second three weeks, we eliminate the placebo condition because we know that if you're smoking placebo marijuana in one day, you're going to tell.

45:23SpeakerBut if you have to smoke it every day for three weeks, you know there's no point in having a placebo condition in the second three weeks. That crossover is mainly for us to understand What people's preferences are between THC and CBD. And then we're going to study that for three weeks. Then there's another two-week cessation period. And then we gather all sorts of information about statistics. And then the study is over.

45:50SpeakerSo it's going to be really good information. The one major limitation, and I'd be curious to talk to you that have more direct experience, is that we are giving people only one One variety for three weeks. And I've come to understand that people tend to use a different kind of marijuana during the day than they use often at night. Might be a more THC, sativa-like activating marijuana during the day, but then people at night want to use a CBD or a Indica, something like that.

46:22SpeakerSo we're limited in our first study. We're just going to try to see what one strain does, and that's the only strain people have available. So I am curious. How do you all see this idea? Do people really, for PTSD, and vets, do they really use different strains in the course of a day, or how does that work? Rick, I am a vet, and I have what I consider pretty severe PTSD.

46:47SpeakerAnd for the last two years, I've used cannabis to treat all my symptoms. And for me, personally, I need something that's uplifting first thing in the morning, but then I also need something that's a concentrate that's vaporizable During the day that's more THC and more sedating because when the anxiety starts kicking up I get these physical reactions in my shoulders and in my neck and with having something that's high THC I can feel that tension go away immediately.

47:22SpeakerWow, that's great. And then at night do you use something different or? Yes, I don't have access to it, but if I had something that was as close to pure CBN as possible, it puts me to sleep. You can't even fight it. I use Reclaim right now because it's what I have access to, and I can do a dab of that, and within half an hour, I'm asleep.

47:46SpeakerAnd I wake up in the morning at 6 when the sun comes up, fully rested like I was 12 again. So it definitely works. I would suggest getting to people who have never used cannabis at all for your study because anybody like me who's figured out a regimen that works, they're not going to function very well during the study if they have severe...

48:13ToddWell, you know, I'd like to bring up something, Rick, that started becoming kind of obvious when you started asking that because now on the panel we talk about terpene modulation. We feel that it's not just about cannabinoids because now that we've gotten, you know, these shatters and butters and we've been able to analyze them and we've been able to see that they're just cannabinoids and, you know, in the processing of it we've lost a lot of the more delicate elements like the terpenes.

48:37ToddThen we were starting to feel like, well, well, maybe the cannabinoids are triggered by the terpenes and the way that the terpenes are. And when you're talking about this, it almost feels like, you know, due to bureaucratic red tape that we're almost in the 90s studying cannabinoids and not really actually able to take in the full body of what this is. Because when you're asking, you know, I just switched buds in the course of conversation and...

49:03ToddIt was because I just didn't like the vibe I was getting from this joint. And it was funny. And then you start talking about people switching at night. And I think we've all been doing that because for some reason, it rejuvenates the feeling of the medicine, if you will. So if you smoke the same stuff constantly, it might not help me with my neck pain. But if I change up, it helps me.

49:26ToddIt has a different effect. And this is what I was going to ask you. Is terpenes something that MAPS is going to start going down the road of? And do you see a way of incorporating this kind of new way of looking at it, this new tech? Well, when I say that, the way we're looking at it now, which is at the higher notes, the delicacies of the terpenes, and now working this into your studies.

49:50SpeakerWell, The limitation is that we get the marijuana from NIDA. And NIDA only analyzes their marijuana for THC and CBD. They don't have any information about terpenes. They don't have any information about CBN. None of that. And they also mix different strains together to get a batch that's consistent. So, it's not even clear.

50:13ToddI would like to point something out too, and I can send you a photo to verify this, but I was with LV Musica one day, and the manufacture date was like 2009, and the ship tour date was like, you know, 2014, and, you know, the stuff was like six years old, and then ironically it has an expired buy date of 12 months after she received it. So they sent her herb that's like six years old, and then they say it's only got like 12 more months.

50:42ToddGood luck with that. Yeah, no, it's hilarious. This is something that's going to happen to you too, though, with your study. Are you going to get the same six-year-old bud? And they're going to say, okay, now show us its effectivity.

50:53SpeakerWell, we're not. So first off, let me say that we're going to get the marijuana that we get from NIDA independently analyzed. So we're going to try to understand what are the other cannabinoids, what are the terpenes in it. But we're stuck getting it from them. And because the stuff that Elvie got, so when we had the Craker case, NIDA was really proud and they tried to say, oh, we've got this sophisticated inventory control system called FIFO.

51:22SpeakerAnd we're like, well, what's FIFO? FIFO means first in, first out. Which is completely inappropriate for medicine because that means you're always sending the oldest stuff. But that's what they're doing.

51:37ToddI've got to ask this, though, and I felt like as soon as I held the can, I felt like they're just trying to prove it doesn't work using LV as an example. This woman we're speaking of, for those of you listening, has glaucoma. She was the first woman to legally receive medical cannabis from the Mississippi Project Compassionate Investigational New Drug Program. LV Musica, if you type her name in, E-L-V-Y-M-U-S-I-K-K-A Musica.

52:01ToddHas been a proponent of our freedom for as long as I've known her. I've known her 22 years. She used to go out on the stages and give the best speeches and she's awesome. And it just troubles me that they're using her as an example of, you know, bad herb. And can you actually, knowing this, and I can send you a photo of the can with verification of the time dates I'm saying, can you demand what we use, which is somewhat fresh herb?

52:30SpeakerYes, so here's the thing is that the marijuana that they have supplied to LV, you're totally right. They've used it. They send low-quality marijuana, so people have to smoke more to get it. It's like been in the area of 2% to 4% THC that they send out to her. It's terrible, and that's why a lot of the medical marijuana patients who get from the compassionate use smoke 6, 8, 10 joints a day because there's virtually nothing in it.

52:57SpeakerHas been clear though is that NIDA in the past has had very low quality marijuana. So when we said we want 12%, we want... It's only a few years ago that NIDA even looked at CBD. So 1998 is when GW Pharmaceuticals started, and their first product was Sativex, 50% THC, 50% CBD. Since 1998, it was clear that CBD did things, but NIDA didn't have any marijuana with CBD in it.

53:25SpeakerSo what happened a couple years ago, which is, you may know this, it's pretty outrageous, NIDA, you know, A couple years ago, we're still trying to block everything. They gave a $65 million contract five years to El Soli to grow marijuana. $65 million contract over five years. And 13.2, something like that, over $13 million a year. For a bunch of shreds.

53:54ToddYeah, that'd be some great herb if it was put in the hands of anyone.

53:58SpeakerI know. What's the street value of that? Oh, my God. Well, what they do is they also test marijuana samples that police send them to aid in people getting prosecuted for marijuana. They do other stuff with that money. It was like Prairie Planet Systems in Canada. But because they had only grown pretty poor stuff, in order to supply our study, in order to try to say that we don't need to end the night of monopoly, they have grown More plants recently in the last few years than they've grown before.

54:29SpeakerSo the marijuana that we're going to get has been grown just last year. So we are going to get, you don't want to get these contracts. That would be a huge improvement.

54:38ToddOnly a year old would be a lot better than six. Yeah.

54:42Etienne FontanIt's not optimal, but still it's, I have a question.

54:47SpeakerYeah, the Sanjay Gupta documentary definitely helped, yeah.

54:50BubblemanAre they giving you cannabis that is ground up into powder, stems and all, like the stuff that shows up in those tins, or do you get actual buds?

55:00SpeakerWe're going to get the ground up stuff. Okay. Yeah, and one of the things that they've said is that they use traditional cigarette rolling machines. And what they've said is that the higher potency is sticky and it clogs up their rolling machines. So they charge, it's like if you want to get a single roll joint now, It's like $10. I don't remember the exact price, but it's around $10 a joint.

55:30SpeakerIt's really expensive. This is not kidding. This is through NIDA.

55:34ToddNIDA is going to charge you $10 per shitty joint. And they give 10 of these a day to LV.

55:41Etienne FontanAnd not only that, they're using an old Paul Mall machine. They had a high-time red old thing on it back in the 70s or early 80s showing the actual machine. So they're going to charge you $10 a joint.

55:53SpeakerNo, no, they're not. So what they're doing is they're sending it to us in bulk. We couldn't afford to pay their prices per joint. It was ridiculous. So we're buying it in bulk, and then we have to pay people to take a bunch of it. The whole study is going to use about 14 pounds of marijuana. And we have to have people to put it into 1.8 gram packages.

56:17SpeakerAll of it. So we're going to have people working for days and days and days and days to process this night of marijuana and stick it into these 1.8 gram packages, Ziploc packages, and then label it and everything so people know what day it is, what You know, so we can have numbers so we can track what actually it is in it. But working with NIDA marijuana, it's so inadequate.

56:42SpeakerAnd so now that the State Department has come out and said that NIDA's arguments about the international treaties are wrong, the only argument the DEA has left is that they claim NIDA marijuana is adequate. But now that we've started this study and we can talk about Phase III, Well, the NIDA stuff, they do provide the placebo, but the rest of the stuff has to be active, and we can only use marijuana from NIDA.

57:14SpeakerSo we're stuck using their marijuana, but what we've got is an argument that NIDA marijuana is inadequate. We wanted to do the study with 12% THC variety, a 12% CBD, and then a combination 12%, 12%.

57:32SpeakerYou could, people have that fairly close to that, but neither the best they could do was eight and eight. But we know you can't compare medical state marijuana in a study. The other part of it is that the institutional review boards that have to look at the safety of the marijuana for human, any study, they look, the institutional review boards look for safety for human subjects. They're also federally regulated.

58:01SpeakerSo we've talked to several IRBs who refuse to look at studies with state marijuana. And more importantly, the FDA will not accept data from drugs that are not federally legal because the FDA is a federal agency. So what we need to do is work with federally legal marijuana. So we could get better, more appropriate marijuana from different states, which has a profile where we understand all the cannabinoids, we understand the terpenes, but none of that is federally legal.

58:33SpeakerSo that's why we've been stuck focused on the NIDA monopoly and trying to get their marijuana and trying to end the NIDA monopoly. I think, Todd, you and several people have said, really, it's political, and it's because they're scared of the research. They know that it will work, and they don't want science saying that. So a few years, about 10 years ago, this was after, yeah, more like 12 years ago, NIDA was upset because MAPS was saying, look, we have FDA and IRB approval for Donald Abrams' study, for Ethan Russo's study, and they won't give us the marijuana.

59:11SpeakerSo NIDA didn't like the bad PR. So they went to FDA and they said, we want you to stop reviewing studies until we review it first. And if we agree to give the marijuana, then you can review the studies. But we don't want people saying, FDA said yes and we're blocking it. So I filed a formal appeal with the ombudsman and it went up to the top levels of the FDA and the FDA rejected NIDA's request.

59:37SpeakerSo the FDA is really a hero here.

59:40ToddI have like a zillion questions, but my first question, first thing I'd like to say is, Rick, you know, I've known you 22 years and I've known all the stuff you've been up to, but thank you for coming on Ash Church and encapsulating a couple decades worth of work in an hour. We all appreciate it. And also thank you for so diligently staying on this and putting it in the face of these highbrow bureaucrats.

1:00:02ToddI applaud and appreciate everything you're doing. How do you feel like, remember Dr. Micaria, he used to talk about grandfathering it in, and it always struck me as odd that alcohol and tobacco are not at all scheduled in any of the CSA. Now, with the talk of this de-scheduling, because it's the only thing you can do from the worst place, Which is go down. They did de-schedule.

1:00:27ToddFor those of you listening, Marinol was a Schedule II drug which required triplicate prescriptions. When I was getting Marinol back in the 90s at the cost of $1,200 for 110 milligram pills,

1:00:41ToddI was actually having to go through a lot of red tape. My doctor had to keep a copy of the prescription, the pharmacy did, the DEA got one. And then, it was July of 1999, right before the 4th of July, ironically, they buried a story on a Friday that for the first time in CSA history, they de-scheduled a drug from Schedule 2 to Schedule 3 because it had no intrinsic street value and no potential for abuse.

1:01:09ToddAnd that drug was Marinol THC. And I was blown away because I had just fought a battle with Muhammad Asoli over THC-D in my system. He was using it as a marker to say that I smoked organic cannabis. My question to you is now where do you see this de-scheduling happening and could they take it completely out of the Controlled Substances Act?

1:01:35SpeakerWell, Congress could take it out of the Controlled Substances Act. DEA cannot do that. DEA can reschedule, but they cannot deschedule because they didn't schedule in the first place. That was Congress. But a lot of people are sort of, I think, deluding themselves that DEA has said that the first half of the year they're going to rule on this petition. And some people think actually they're going to downschedule marijuana.

1:02:02SpeakerI don't think so. You know, the research, yeah, Marinol. I'd be curious, just by the way, how much Marinol costs?

1:02:10ToddI got a question. Marinol cost me at the time about $1,200. I used to shop around different pharmacies. It cost me between $1,200 and $1,400 for 110 milligram THC pills. So it was pretty expensive, and I had to pay for it myself because I didn't have insurance at the time. I was fighting the federal government.

1:02:29Etienne FontanIt's still around there. It's actually up about $1,500. I had a prescription a couple years ago, and it's around $1,500 a bottle, and you only get $60.

1:02:38ToddSo it hasn't diminished in cost at all in light of it being brought from a 2 to a 3. So it hasn't increased its access. In some ways it's now as prohibited as a Tylenol 3, a T3, right, but it's still super expensive. My thought is, though, is this. Is there any merit to the fact that cannabis should be grandfathered in? I mean, I remember reading that it was tentatively placed into the CSA pending the Schaefer Report, and then it was shelved, and that it was never revisited, and that potentially its placement in Schedule I is illegal.

1:03:16SpeakerOkay. Let's now talk about that. That's a really good question. And here's where I said before about marijuana medicalization leading to legalization. Sheldon Adelson, you know, the right-wing mega-billionaire from the gambling industry, he's put, Rob Campion told me that he's pledged $10 million to block medical marijuana in Florida. $10 million from Sheldon Adelson, which will probably make it so that they get less than 60% of the vote.

1:03:51SpeakerNatural health products are... Our law of Congress has passed so that they're outside of the DEA. They can be sold, but you can't make health claims about it. So I think what we've got, though, is that the route to legalization, it looks pretty good. Thank you guys in California and Sean Parker and others who are putting money, but Rob Campion has been having trouble raising money for Massachusetts legalization.

1:04:17SpeakerI mean, Vermont legislature just shut it down. So I don't know. You know, how long it's really going to take to get federal legalization going.

1:04:26ToddBut it might not be just right on the corner. I got a serious question that bothers me, and you know, maybe it bothers me in this way. Why is it the responsibility of private citizens to change the laws that are enacted wrongly by our elected officials when these fuckers are obviously corporate puppets that are in there bidding against us and our better interests? I'm sorry if that's not really a question, but it just annoys me to no end.

1:04:54ToddAnd is there no way now that we're all walking around with smartphones that we can't bring these politicians to task? Because when I met you and we would have to hang out at Kinko's to, you know, remember we were excited when PDFs hit the scene? PDFs, we're going to just be able to send you documents. Yeah, well... These jerks in office can get all this information in the palm of their hand, and shouldn't they be held accountable to the reality of things instead of letting them slide on this I don't know baloney?

1:05:23SpeakerWell, we should try to hold them accountable, but that's what the initiative in California and Massachusetts is going to be, and Nevada, we've got a political system that we have to work through, and It's not going to be as easy as people think. I worry. So what that means is that if we do the research through the FDA, that's going to attract an enormous amount of media.

1:05:50SpeakerPeople will be changing their minds once they say, oh yeah, look at these veterans. Marijuana helps them with their PTSD or other studies are being done with pediatric epilepsy or MS or pain. I mean, we've got to be looking at people on opiates for pain and combining marijuana with, yeah, with Sativex. Yeah, how much does Sativex cost?

1:06:14ToddI'm not...

1:06:15SpeakerI have a question if I could interject for a second. So, thank you again. Everything that you've contributed today is wonderful, wonderful input. Schedule 1 listing is just inconsistent with the fact that the government Thank you for joining us today.

1:06:56SpeakerTo Canada Life in Doylestown, Pennsylvania. So now the US government is drawing a licensing revenue From the cannabis patent that the Department of Health and Human Services holds. So how could they be drawing a licensing revenue on a patent that by definition has to be useful? You can't patent something that's not useful. You can only patent things that are useful. So when something is patented that says that it's useful, how can that be consistent with Schedule 1?

1:07:31SpeakerThe way in which it's consistent because you can have a patent on an idea, but you haven't proved it yet. So the way in which we have to be proving marijuana has a medicine is through these large scale phase three studies. So even if we do a study with the marijuana for PTSD in veterans and we get good results, that doesn't mean that we've proved it because that's just a phase two pilot study.

1:07:59SpeakerWe have to go Bigger to phase three, definitive studies, negotiating ahead of time with FDA about the design, and then only with phase three research can you say it's proven, and then if the FDA agrees, then DEA must reschedule. What schedule they put it into is up to them, but they must do it. So I think we've got a situation where because of the NIDA monopoly, Nobody has been... We're estimating right now that it will cost somewhere in the neighborhood of $15 million worth of research to make marijuana into a medicine for PTSD.

1:08:39SpeakerNow, that's over five years or so. You know, we got the... You know, $2.1 million we got the state of Colorado to pay. Maybe if we get good results, Colorado will pay for a Phase III study. We're not sure. But you need to do...

1:08:55SpeakerPhase 3 studies. Yeah, and if marijuana is rescheduled to Schedule 2, what does that really do? Pretty much nothing because the penalties for non-medical use are the same for a drug in Schedule 1 and Schedule 2. Cocaine is in Schedule 2. Methamphetamine is in Schedule 2. Will and does it give anybody the right to market it? No. Which is why it needs to be descheduled. It's a plant.

1:09:21SpeakerIt's not a drug. A drug is made by a drug company based on an active ingredient that's been tested in FDA approved trials like you say. Cannabis is not a drug. It's a plant. It's an herbal plant and should be regulated as such. Well, that's true.

1:09:40ToddThat goes after that. Do we have any grounds to fight for cannabis to be grandfathered in as a natural and not as exactly what Mark just said?

1:09:50SpeakerWell, okay, there's two things, Todd. One is, is there a logical reason? And then, is it politically possible? So, logically, marijuana is less dangerous than alcohol and tobacco. It should be completely legal. So, this is not the realm of logic, right? This is not the realm of science, really. This is the realm of politics. And we can use science to influence the politics, but in the end, it's a political decision.

1:10:16ToddCan we exchange the words politics for sorcery?

1:10:22SpeakerI would feel better about it, because it would make more sense in this right now. Well, yeah, because you could say that sorcery, starting with Harry Anslinger, telling fables... Thank you so much for joining us today.

1:11:00SpeakerAnd it was from 1957 to 1964. And they would give, they were trying to destroy people's personalities and take them back before they learned language and then rebuild them up. And they would give them electroshock, sometimes hundreds of those times, along with LSD daily for months at a time. It was an enormous scandal. And so they've invited me there last Friday, actually, not this Friday, Friday before that, So we're trying to do Montreal as one of the sites for MDMA PTSD research, but it's political.

1:11:38SpeakerIt's not about the science. They're doing work at McGill, by the way, for PTSD. They're using a drug called propranolol. Propranolol is a beta blocker that calms your nerves so that when people use it for giving public talks or musicians use it when they're scared. So your heartbeat doesn't go as fast, your temperature doesn't rise. And they try to make people feel calm, and then they expose them to their trauma.

1:12:02SpeakerAnd then the feeling is that if they're peaceful when they think about the trauma, that will help them the next time they recall it. And we're trying to say, you should test MDMA versus propranolol. MDMA is going to work a lot better. So we're not sure what's going to happen in Montreal, but we are going to keep trying. And some steps were opened. Yeah, the after party was fantastic, but it's political.

1:12:26SpeakerSo is there a logical reason for marijuana to be criminalized? No, it's all political, and how do we undo it?

1:12:33ToddAnd I got a question, and it's this. In light of all the research and all the fighting to do research you've done, You know, when I was sitting in prison, I was really shocked to come out and see that during while I was in prison, on October 7, 2003, the United States patent was issued to the United States of America, represented by the Department of Health and Human Services, for cannabinoids to be used as antioxidants and other associated things.

1:12:59ToddHow did this happen? How did that happen? The United States government is patenting the medical applications of cannabinoids while blocking legitimate researchers like yourself and others from being able to study it and put it into public domain.

1:13:16SpeakerOkay, so let me just compare the United States government to a human being. So we have different parts of our body. We can have our liver having cancer or cirrhosis of the liver, but the rest of our body is working fine. When we think about ourselves, we're a collection of parts. And when we talk about the U.S. government, it's not a unified thing. It's a collection of parts, and different parts have different missions.

1:13:44SpeakerSo that's why the State Department just came out and said the DEA is wrong about their interpretation of the international treaties. So some parts of the U.S. government, there are a lot of good people in the U.S. government. There's a lot of good people in NIDA. There's even some good but misguided people in DEA. And so they are trying in some ways to do what they think is best, and some of them are like, hey, we hate this drug war, and I want to look at the medical uses of Cannabis.

1:14:13SpeakerAnd so they managed to do this patent and they knew that one day you would be holding up this patent and saying how hypocritical is this. So that's what we're trying to do is we're trying to piece apart which parts of the government are sympathetic, which parts of the government are oppositional, and then how do we build up those ones that are sympathetic to have more courage.

1:14:37SpeakerAnd that's the balance that we're now trying to raise. And I believe that before Obama leaves office, there's a very good chance that we will end the night of Monopoly and that marijuana research will move forward. I've got just like 10 more minutes. Okay, yeah, 10 more minutes and then I have to go. I'm here in Chicago with my mom and dad for Mother's Day. I can keep talking just for a few more minutes, but I just wanted to let you know I have to go soon.

1:15:08SpeakerBut I really think that the federal government, you have to recognize that the FDA is our ally. The FDA is our ally against DEA and NIDA. And so that's how this patent happened. There are some good people. They get something through, and then we have to use it to help us.

1:15:26ToddWell then, you know, Rick, I want to say thank you for joining us today, too. And everybody, you can find MAPS, work it on the simple website. It's MAPS, M-A-P-S dot O-R-G. Right, Rick?

1:15:37SpeakerYeah.

1:15:38ToddYeah, that's it. Yeah, and the Multidisciplinary Association has been around since, when did you start that, Rick?

1:15:44SpeakerWell, 1986, so we just had our 30th anniversary. Amazing. Yeah, it took us, I was the only employee for the first seven years, and then we started growing as the FDA started opening up the door to research. Now we've got 20 full-time people It's astonishing. We've got studies all over the world, and we're starting this marijuana PTSD study, and we're negotiating with FDA about moving to Phase 3 for MDMA for PTSD.

1:16:18SpeakerWe're working with VA researchers. Yeah, I felt like, for me, the persistence was that when I was 18 years old, this is what I decided I wanted to work on. It was for political reasons. So it was 1972, and Nixon was like, Leary's the most dangerous man in America. And I was like, well, why does Nixon feel so threatened? It's because people who tended to do psychedelics at the time tended to get involved in the anti-war, anti-Vietnam War movement.

1:16:47SpeakerThey tended to get involved in civil rights and other things. And you probably have all seen the Ehrlichman quote that's recently been made more public about how he talked about how Nixon didn't really like the civil rights people and he didn't like the hippies and You can't criminalize ideas, but you can criminalize drugs that those groups tend to use more than others. So they criminalized opiates and they criminalized marijuana and psychedelics, and they were able to use that to put leaders of these movements and people in jail and go after them.

1:17:16SpeakerSo the drug war from the very beginning has been political. So when I started recognizing that and started, and the fundamental thing for me is that We are, I mean, look at what we're doing right now. We're having this discussion on the internet. It's phenomenal that we can actually do this and see each other and talk. So our minds, our technology has exceeded our humanity. Einstein said that.

1:17:40SpeakerOur technology has exceeded our humanity. So we have incredible technology, but emotionally and spiritually we're underdeveloped. And for me, psychedelics and marijuana help bring people into balance. So that's where I said, okay, I'm probably going to go to jail for being a draft resistor to Vietnam. Luckily, I didn't have to. They didn't even notice me, because I was one of 60,000 people that never even registered in the first place.

1:18:06SpeakerAnd we all thought we were going to get arrested, but they didn't have computers back then, and somehow they didn't even notice. So nothing ever happened, but I was like, okay, politically, this is what I'm going to do, and so... That's where I'm still doing it now, and I've never had a better idea.

1:18:23Etienne FontanHey, Rob, the first event I did with you was the 50th anniversary of LSD in 1983. Were you the only MAPS employee at that time, or did you hire after that point?

1:18:35SpeakerI hired right after that point. Yeah, and actually, you know, Todd, you talked about Kinko's. So what happened was that I went into Kinko's in Charlotte, North Carolina, where I was living, and there was this woman that worked there, and I went there at like one in the morning and stuff, and she had a little bit of time, and she said, I apologize, but I read your stuff, and I want to volunteer.

1:18:58SpeakerAnd I'm like, well, why do you want to volunteer? And she said, well, my boyfriend is in jail for selling LSD. And my first reaction was, you must be very proud of him. And she was confused. And I said, it's because the only people that go to jail are the ones that don't cooperate with the police to turn other people in. And he obviously refused to do that and he's in jail.

1:19:22SpeakerThis was Sylvia Tyson. And so she started crying. And then she started volunteering. And then I started using so much of her time, I felt like I needed to pay her. So that's how the first employee began. The midnight Kinko's run.

1:19:36ToddWow, and she was great. I remember her really well. I used to communicate with her a lot because I started getting in trouble quite a bit and I started leaving her after. Yeah, yeah.

1:19:45SpeakerShe's fantastic. She works for Arrowhead now.

1:19:49ToddYeah, wow.

1:19:51SpeakerPutting out information. Yeah, we were the fiscal sponsor of Arrowhead to get them started.

1:19:56ToddThat's incredible. Wow. Well, cognitive liberty is a terrible thing to waste. Yeah.

1:20:01SpeakerWe were also the fiscal sponsor for Richard Boyer's Center for Cognitive Liberty.

1:20:07ToddThose were great. Those journals were great. That's exactly what I was thinking of. Right, right. Yeah, yeah.

1:20:12SpeakerWe were their initial fiscal sponsor, too.

1:20:15ToddThat is awesome. Are those journals available on maps at all?

1:20:18SpeakerThey're not on our website, but I think they're available on the Internet.

1:20:22ToddThat is cool. Center for Cognitive Liberty and Ethics is what he called it. Yes. The Center of Cognitive Liberty and Ethics. Yes. Wow. Someone sent those to me while I was in prison, the little black books. Everyone listening, I would check it out. It's really brilliant. We do have a freedom to think and we should think.

1:20:42BubblemanAbsolutely. And I'll tell you, MAPS, well, between Terrence McKenna and his talks at the SLM Institute and the information at MAPS and that was available on Eroid, I mean, it opened up my psychedelic third eye 100%. Great. So give thanks for that, Rick. And thanks for coming on the show. Really much appreciate it. Chad always brings incredible guests, but you have been absolutely incredible to show us this unique perspective of And to do the work that you're doing, it doesn't sound like it's easy and it doesn't sound like it's always fun, but we really appreciate you and definitely let the audience know how they can get behind and support Any of these projects that you guys are doing.

1:21:26SpeakerYeah, Rick, how can people help out? How can people offer their volunteers support in what you're doing? Yeah, that's great. So there's several different ways. One of them is to educate yourself and speak out. I mean, look at gay rights and gay marriage. What really made that work is people coming out. So what people could do right now is that we're trying to model, for our 30th anniversary, we started thinking what we wanted to do.

1:21:50SpeakerAnd so we're asking people to have psychedelic dinners. We call them global psychedelic dinners at which people invite their friends and others. And then part of the evening is people telling stories to each other about what psychedelics have meant to them or what they hope for psychedelic research. We're having them in over about 15 countries are having these dinners. And there's so far about 90 of these dinners that are happening.

1:22:15SpeakerAnd right now, we've talked about trying to break the monopoly

1:22:23SpeakerWe're actually able to have produced our own medical grade MDMA and we're actually getting a kilogram of the world's purest MDMA manufactured in England and it's $400,000. So we're asking at the global dinners for people to contribute towards a legal drug deal to help us buy legal MDMA for research and if each dinner just raises $500 or $1,000 we'll We've already raised about $137,000 out of the $400,000 that we need.

1:22:55SpeakerSo the first part is people can sign up for our email newsletter, which is free. Just go to the MAPS website and sign up for that. It's only just a few a month of emails. Then there's instructions there under participate if you want to host a psychedelic dinner. And that would then be Money, if you want to raise any money, then it's for helping us buy the MDMA.

1:23:23SpeakerOne day, hopefully, we'll have the dinners to help us raise money to supply, to buy marijuana, to grow marijuana. But we're not quite there yet. Sorry, go ahead, Sam. Who owns MDMA? Okay, so MDMA was invented, nobody owns it. It was invented in 1912 by Merck. And it was patented by them in 1914. And they ended up, so it's in the public domain. And then, I don't know how many of you know about Ibogaine for the treatment of opiate addiction.

1:23:55SpeakerBut what happened in the 80s, so I started MAPS in 86 as non-profit, trying to raise money through donations. So any money that people donate at these dinners or wherever is fully tax deductible. But Howard Lotsoff and others decided, hey, that's going to be really hard. We're going to patent Ibogaine for Opiate addiction, nobody had known that it was helpful for that, and they tried for profit.

1:24:18SpeakerBut once that started happening, people started suing each other. It was just like turned into this really frustrating situation. So I contacted their patent lawyer who worked on Ibogaine, and I said, I want you to devise an anti-patent strategy so that nobody can ever patent MDMA for any particular use. So you can patent the composition of matter, but you can also get use patents. You can also get production patents.

1:24:44SpeakerSo for a while there was a patent on how the production of Marinol took place, on the synthesis of THC. So we have asked everybody who MDMA has helped for anything. One person said, hey, it helped me get over my rheumatoid arthritis. So then they tell us a story, we put it up on the website, and now that's in the public domain. So we've successfully done this anti-patent strategy so nobody can patent MDMA for anything, and the composition of matter patents has long since expired.

1:25:15SpeakerBut the other part, just to say, is that pharmaceutical companies don't understand Science, and don't understand, I mean they understand science, they don't understand psychotherapy really. And psychedelics are a combination of pharmacotherapy, the psychedelic assisted psychotherapy. So for MDMA, for Ibogaine, where these drugs are not the cure in and of themselves, these drugs enhance psychotherapy. Pharmaceutical companies don't even know psychotherapy. So it's off patent, there's no use patents, and they don't understand the methods.

1:25:47SpeakerSo therefore there's been no

1:25:52SpeakerWe've not yet been able to get government grants. In 30 years, our first government grant was the $2.1 million from the state of Colorado for the marijuana PTSD study. Maybe one day, culture will change enough, we'll be able to get a government grant, but that hasn't happened yet for psychedelic research.

1:26:09BubblemanWell, I love the idea of the psychedelic dinner parties. And more so, I love that you were able to come on Hash Church and ask our audience to help you buy a kilo of pure MDMA. That is amazing.

1:26:21SpeakerThank you for that. Yeah. Yeah. And I should say that we're predicting MDMA will be a medicine in 2021. And the other thing I'll say is that we have MDMA to give away. But only to DEA licensed researchers. We have 960 grams of MDMA available. It was made by Dave Nichols in 1985. It's the same MDMA we're using today in our U.S. studies, 31 years later, but it's not GMP, good manufacturing practices, so we can't use it in Phase 3.

1:26:53SpeakerIt just doesn't have all the documents. So we have 960 grams of MDMA that we're offering to just give away to researchers who want to study anything about MDMA at all. And then we're having to buy this kilogram. When I bought the kilogram from Dave in 1985, it was $4,000. Now it's $400,000 for a kilogram. But it has a pedigree with it, and we need roughly half of it for our MDMA research for But the other half is for our other studies.

1:27:24SpeakerWe've got MDMA for autistic adults with social anxiety, MDMA for people that are anxious about dying with life-threatening illness. But we have MDMA to supply researchers all over the world. Okay, I do have to go. My parents are telling me now we've got to go.

1:27:37BubblemanWell, thanks for coming in.

1:27:40SpeakerThank you, Todd, for inviting me. It's great. It's our friendship all over the decades. And thank you, all of you, for being so active with marijuana. Awesome, Rick. Thanks a lot. Thank you, Rick. Okay. Yeah, it's been a pleasure. Peace, Rick.

1:27:53BubblemanGreat guest, Todd. Very cool to have Rick Doblin come on and lay down that knowledge. And you know, it was such unique knowledge. That's the kind of knowledge that you won't really hear from your average sort of cannabis activist that's out on the streets fighting things at a grassroots level. This is like, The next level of like doing all these things that a lot of us, you know, we're sitting here saying, why do we have to do this?

1:28:16BubblemanIt's like broccoli. It's benign. We should be allowed to use this plant in reality. The real problem is, is that this system is not based on logic. And Rick could not have answered that in any more accurate way. I was really impressed with the way he shared everything. So transparently, you could just see that he was sharing everything exactly the way it happened. And it surprised me.

1:28:38BubblemanPeople were like, wow, this guy's really sharing a lot of crazy information, telling about how certain groups are trying to block this and naming out billionaires. I just thought that was great, Todd. That was the kind of guest we want on Hash Church. Hammered it out.

1:28:53ToddYou know, Rick, it's interesting you say that, though, about grassroots and Rick, because Rick has done a great job of actually being a grassroots activist in the sense of very, and so much in the community that I met him when I was just a young kid and, you know, when we were doing kinkos and all the stuff with medical cannabis and he was reaching out and talking to me about cannabis My medical experience, because he saw valid points being made by people like me, like kids.

1:29:22ToddI felt like a kid not being heard, but Rick not only heard me, he understood where I was coming from and he was explaining to me how he was adapting it and trying to teach people like Us and Sylvia Thyssen, the woman he mentioned meeting in Kinko's, she became a very dynamic, not just a worker for maps, but you couldn't be a worker for maps and not be like an activist because you were fighting for the understanding and the education of something that you knew people misunderstood and really didn't comprehend.

1:29:53ToddSo this... He really brought us together in a way, and he's now doing these dinners and such. It is very grassroots in a sense to get the community to organize and not just be sitting at Harvard dictating protocols of stuff, but getting into the community and causing the community to mobilize. He's been one of my favorite activists, honestly, that I've met in the past 20 years of being politically active.

1:30:19Etienne FontanOne of the few doctors who actually put his money where his mouth is and actually showed other doctors and researchers that you don't have to be scared to be a researcher in this world where a lot of people were afraid because, as we know, Thank you for watching.

1:30:50Etienne Fontanethical and efficacy standpoint from the get-go he wasn't trying to profiteer from it as much as with maps and which is why we did that 50th anniversary of LSD and things like that when he was still so fledgling is because his idea and vision was so pure and idealistic that I couldn't believe there were one a doctor doing it and two why aren't there more and I knew this guy was going to be an influence on other doctors and researchers which he has been over the decades and

1:31:20BubblemanSo I guess I should take this moment to welcome Chimera and Tony and Adam Greenblatt to the room. Tony and Chimera have been with us before. Did Adam just split? He did just split, just as I was welcoming him to the room. Maybe he'll come back. Welcome Tony, welcome Chimera. How are you guys doing today?

1:31:40SpeakerGood, really enjoying that guest. He was pretty incredible. You know, they've created this whole web of things that you can't do, and it's nice to see someone actually taking the time to go through and try to unravel it and figure out how you can do these things. You know, it's like you figured out when you were part of the hemp consortium that was trying to get hemp growing in Canada.

1:32:01SpeakerIt seemed like a big impossible wall to people at one point in time, but somebody climbs it and picks the right path and shows everybody else how it's done. A lot of incredible things can come from that.

1:32:13BubblemanWell, it's not even the people that are against you who are telling you that make the impossible wall. Often it's like your supporters. You know, when we tried to get hemp, like literally the people closest to us were like, When hell freezes over, when pigs fly, you're never going to get that done. It's never going to happen. I will be dead long before. And it was just kind of like, damn, dude, like, all right.

1:32:40SpeakerEven the system, though, at the same time, you know, the system is set up to not allow this type of thing. It's been designed with layers and layers of don't do this, but there's always a way to do things. Not only did they not allow FDA weed from Mississippi University, but they refused to allow, the DEA did, to import cannabis from the Netherlands that was legally grown and licensed.

1:33:10SpeakerThey just said that we weren't a UN approved production facility, and they just made up bullshit. Yeah. Well, the American government's been really difficult with this kind of things, but other countries have been a little more, you know, loosey-goosey with it. Even, you know, before cannabis was grown in Canada, they were growing opium poppy at the University of Calgary. So there is mechanisms for all this stuff to happen.

1:33:34SpeakerIt just takes someone to figure it out, how to do it, and cross all the T's and dot all the I's.

1:33:39BubblemanWell, peel back those layers of the onion, and it's like, it's not fun work, it can be difficult. You can see how what Rick was telling the story about that one woman getting fired through this political means, and how he was able to see how the guy who was now in charge didn't actually want to be a part of it because he had sent an email saying, Weeks earlier saying he had no time to do that.

1:33:59BubblemanSo when you can uncover the pressure and the manipulation and then, you know, show it to people, that's pretty powerful stuff.

1:34:09ToddWell, you know, he also, I always wondered why that woman got fired because there was like a social action that happened around her removal because it felt like it was political and I expressed kind of like, you know, like excitement but it was because I finally understood what had happened. Because I hadn't had it broken down on a linear way for me like that. Rick just explained 20 years of struggle to get through the multi-bureaucratic hurdles that have been placed in front of us when we try to do it the right way.

1:34:44ToddYep.

1:34:44Etienne FontanDoing it the right way for 20 plus years, that's the most important thing. So, I mean, he is led by a pure example, and that integrity is nothing but respect.

1:34:57BubblemanYou gotta love it when a guy can go out to Chicago to visit his folks on Mother's Day and before going to brunch, spend an hour with the Hash Church crew. That is legit. That is grassroots right there.

1:35:09Etienne FontanHey, I also gotta send out a big shout out. A major thing happened this week. Harborside's forfeiture case was dismissed by the federal government.

1:35:19SpeakerYeah, that's incredible.

1:35:20Etienne FontanAnd that is really huge because I am in a similar case. In fact, I'm the last case now in the federal government's grip currently. So hopefully in the future we'll get some positivity from it. But until then, I just want to give a shout out to Steve and those guys. And we'll definitely smoke a bowl on their behalf because That's a huge piece of reality right there that is going to affect change because it just shows that the government is still fighting the fight, but at the same time it shows that the change is happening where the Rohrabacher Amendment has made it so that the federal government can't spend money fighting us anymore.

1:36:04Etienne FontanAnd the ripples are being fought and are being seen. And Harborside is fortunately the latest benefactor of it. Before that it was Shambhala. Out of San Francisco, which was another dispensary that the government tried to do that to. And again, we're last, but we're continuing the fight and we're going to stand our ground and we look forward to our victory. And I look forward to the day when this bong that I'm about to do is for fucking me.

1:36:30SpeakerUnfortunately, the feds raided three dispensaries in Michigan.

1:36:36BubblemanYep, I saw that as well.

1:36:38Etienne FontanYeah, good news in one place is bad news in another, unfortunately, until the fight is won in all 50 states.

1:36:48SpeakerI understand Harborside was granted a license also for a cultivation facility down in Monterey County, I think in the Salinas Valley, which is a pretty incredible place to grow cannabis. Double win. If that's true, wow, they're going to have, it's a pretty big greenhouse, actually. Thank you for joining us.

1:37:37SpeakerBig week for Harborside and the Archie group, so congratulations to them. That ruling on the feds, I mean, the feds dropping that case is major, major. I don't think that can be underestimated, you know, understated how big that is. I hope, AJ, you have something similar coming your way down the pipe.

1:37:59BubblemanAbsolutely. Just seeing Steve do the press conference at the podium on the steps with all the people, I was like, damn, this is serious. Getting your case dropped by the federal government is pretty sweet when your job is selling cannabis and extracts to people in California.

1:38:18SpeakerIt was to show how far we've changed and how far we've come in four years. Even four years ago that wasn't a palatable case. Oakland, when they pushed back against the feds, but for the feds to just abandon that and

1:38:32Etienne FontanYeah, but this was over a decade in the making because back in the day, this all started, believe it or not, it has a foundation in Ed Rosenthal getting busted. And when Ed Rosenthal got busted, a group of us started this organization called Americans for Safe Access. And Americans for Safe Access went to D.C. and started lobbying and getting that Rohrabacher Amendment. So how's this for over a decade's worth of work that I started with A group of activists changed the law that in the end will affect my dismissal by the federal government.

1:39:12Etienne FontanTalk about humbling.

1:39:15BubblemanHey Adam, are you there now? Your camera's not working, but I see you're trying to introduce Adam, a new guest. He's been having some technical difficulties. He's the executive director at Santé Cannabis in Montréal. So we'll see if he ends up making it on at one point. Tell us what's going on over on the East Coast. Oh, he's gone. That means he's coming back. Maybe we'll pop a bong rip in the meantime.

1:39:39BubblemanWhat are you saying, Wood Thrush?

1:39:48BubblemanHe's like, I'm trying to find my mute button. That's what I'm saying.

1:39:52SpeakerYes, things are going well. Have a space, setting up a greenhouse. We're going to have a potluck and get together on Memorial Day. And hopefully some vets will come out and help us build a greenhouse and have some good food. And get a psychedelic dinner, why not?

1:40:19SpeakerI'm not sure if I can do that with Grow for Vets being a sponsor, but... Definitely going to try to put one of those together privately.

1:40:31BubblemanThere you go. Yeah, I could see that being a potential issue. You would want to make sure that the psychedelics taken were very like, maybe like the MDMA. Maybe that seems to be one that they're using with PTSD. Have you ever tried MDMA for your PTSD, Wood Thrush?

1:40:46SpeakerI have not, MDMA is one of those things I would have to get it from a very, very trusted source. Like the amount they're going to buy legally, I would be willing to be part of a study for that, but buying it off the street, it could have anything in it. I mean, I'm sorry, but I'm not putting methamphetamines in my body if I don't have to.

1:41:08BubblemanYeah, I hear you loud and clear on that one.

1:41:12SpeakerI'll stick with cannabis and cannabis products for now, but one day maybe in a clinical trial I might be willing to partake.

1:41:22ToddThat is a fantastically responsible answer and I really like it. I think that's really cool. One of the things that appealed about Rick Tooney was he had a very open mind and psychedelics. A lot of people don't realize this, but Dr. Lester Grinspoon, after writing Marijuana Reconsidered, wrote a second book that didn't become known quite as well. It was called Psychedelics Reconsidered. And there is a crossover in the sense where in Europe we used to call cannabis an atheogen, where it kind of helps you find your own inner God or whatever.

1:42:00ToddFor those of us, I always speak for myself, that veered away from our childhood religions, cannabis found a way for us to get a spiritual balance. And when I started studying martial arts, it was all about mind, body, and spirit balance. And cannabis really helped achieve that. And I kind of got where they were coming from in Europe when they described it. And I think now we're seeing more of that here.

1:42:26ToddAnd I think psychedelics play a big role in that.

1:42:29Etienne FontanFor me, it wasn't the DMA as much as it was LSD. LSD was a huge factor in my healing and confronting a lot of issues for me for my PTSD after the war, without a doubt.

1:42:42SpeakerThat definitely... I definitely want to have that experience, but I have to have a shaman or somebody very experienced to lead me through that because... Yeah, you need a guide.

1:42:54Etienne FontanYou want a guide, without a doubt.

1:42:56SpeakerI've tried LSD a couple times, and yeah, the first experience wasn't good, so I definitely need to have a good atmosphere when I try it again, so...

1:43:10BubblemanI have had amazing experiences with psychedelics. I used to grow my own mushrooms. And like I said, the inspiration of the Terrence McKenna lectures in the early 90s when I was just coming out of being a teenager was definitely pretty sweet. Getting to listen to all these amazing lectures and think about psychedelics in a very, very different light. Thank you so much for joining us today.

1:44:00BubblemanSometimes I actually have a true guide when taking something like ayahuasca, which definitely is something that, you know, not only just having a guide but even following a particular diet for about five to six days prior to taking it because there are certain things that it doesn't react well with in the body. And if you have certain things in your system, you can get crazy cramps, you can get, you know, insane vomiting, which you can take these substances without having to purge if you understand The proper diet that you should be eating before you actually take the substances.

1:44:33BubblemanBecause people are like, yeah, you've got to vomit when you take this. It's like, yeah, if you're super fucking self-toxic, you do. But I'll tell you, it's a much more enjoyable trip when you're not.

1:44:44SpeakerI just had a buddy of mine that went down and did the ayahuasca with the shamans in the rainforest. Nice. The guy, farmer, that I took the picture with, Face Swap, that I posted on Instagram. Yeah, yeah. It's going for round two, but he told me in detail his experience, and they used what made him throw up, and I know that you would absolutely not be able to do this, nor would I.

1:45:11SpeakerThe tobacco? Yeah, the shaman's blood tobacco in your feet over and over and over in like a black teepee while you're tripping out on this like route, and like you don't see things around you except little clips. And they're blowing tons of tobacco in your face. Over and over. And you're just like... And apparently the tobacco has a spirit, though.

1:45:42BubblemanIt's definitely a very sacred plant that they would never consider taking the trip without. Because it's like how they get back. It's like the breadcrumbs that can bring your consciousness back. So I understand that, but I couldn't do that. You're right. Having that type of tobacco blown in your face in a teepee is like, I am definitely out.

1:46:03SpeakerWell, and he told me that he's got a very, I guess you'd say, large tolerance for psychedelics, because when he went there, they gave him the shot, and he was in his spot, and he saw people fishing out on the floor, all kinds of weird stuff going on, but he didn't feel anything. Thank you so much for joining us.

1:46:48SpeakerHis story and his experience of what he was explaining was insane.

1:46:53BubblemanHe's like that guy, the shaman was like that guy that you ask for a dab after you just had a dab, and he's like, oh, you want another dab? Yeah, exactly. Let me get one for you.

1:47:04SpeakerThat's where ninja dabs were born, right there.

1:47:08BubblemanThat is the ninja dab, right there. It's true. So this guy got ninja ayahuasca'd.

1:47:16Etienne FontanYeah, he did. That's pretty amazing. Yeah.

1:47:21BubblemanYou're puffing on. What am I puffing on? Yeah, I thought you were spinning something there.

1:47:26SpeakerOh, yeah, I've got, this is some of the stuff that I was telling you about. The slurry. The solventless slurry.

1:47:35Etienne FontanHey, Tony, right when you stepped away, we were congratulating you guys over at Harborside on the win this week. What's the action around the office? Everybody must be pretty stoked.

1:47:45SpeakerYeah, everybody's pretty stoked, you know. Even I'm pretty stoked. Anytime you win anything against the federal government, there's like a 70% boost of morale, I think, among people. So it's kind of like everyone's pretty happy doing their thing, but it's a different type of connection. You know, it's just sometimes for me it's a little... It's a little mind-blowing that we can make these steps in history, and I thank you and everyone that set forth before to make it even possible for everyone in the industry.

1:48:26SpeakerIt's a step for everybody, you know? And I hope to see the pattern continue until they fucking get on board with the rest of the world.

1:48:39BubblemanIndeed. Did you make it back in, Adam? Is your shit working now? I tried to welcome you, but you, like, dropped out as I welcomed you. I kind of gave you a little introduction, and then you were like, I was like, oh, is he gone?

1:48:52Etienne FontanCan you guys hear me?

1:48:54BubblemanI can hear you now that you unmuted your mic, absolutely. So how are things going on the east coast of Canada? We're closer to the east coast than I am.

1:49:06SpeakerYeah. It's not the same scene as in Toronto and Vancouver, that's for sure. No dispensaries in Montreal, or a few? No. There's only a couple dispensaries in Montreal. I used to run one of them, but we, with the MMPR coming in, we actually turned our dispensary into a clinic with physicians working in it. So, yeah, things have evolved a little bit differently out here. Historically, dispensaries have had a tougher time in Montreal.

1:49:35SpeakerWe have a couple of regressions. So, yeah, yeah. That's what's going on in the hospital. We see a lot of dispensaries opening in Halifax, but Quebec is a void.

1:49:53BubblemanRight. It's a void indeed. Well, it's good that you guys are doing what you're doing out there. Someone's got to be pushing it forward. How did changing things into a clinic work out for you?

1:50:05SpeakerIt's been really challenging going from the dispensary side of things to running a medical clinic. And, uh, I've been working with an actual financial regulator, right, so our doctorate license is in Quebec College of Physicians.

1:50:26BubblemanI'm having a hard time hearing you. Is anyone else having a hard time hearing Adam? It sounds like his mic is a little, like... Yeah, I'm getting an echo.

1:50:33Etienne FontanYeah, it's somebody else's mic.

1:50:35SpeakerMaybe if I just turn up my volume.

1:50:40BubblemanIs it working now? I think so. Let's see. Try talking again.

1:50:47SpeakerYeah. Testing one, two, three. Better.

1:50:51BubblemanYeah, a little bit better. Yeah, so I met one of the doctors that works with your clinic at the Rethink Breast Cancer panel. I believe her name was Marcia?

1:51:05SpeakerI do have headphones on. Give me one second. It was Marcia.

1:51:08BubblemanYeah, yeah, yeah. Try putting on your headphones. That's always good. We might all have to eventually move to headphones here because... Mute YouTube. It's the new YouTube.

1:51:20SpeakerNo, he needs to mute. YouTube.

1:51:22ToddOh yeah, well. It's a combination of them guys. As long as the microphone can pick up the sound, there's going to be a sound. That's why in every single podcast you see people wearing headphones and there being a separate mic and it avoids this loop that we have. And just, you know, these conversations for a lot of people, they're spending time and listening to them. And I get a lot of emails about the sound quality of this and people would like to hear us.

1:51:44ToddAnd I think it would prove us way better if we all did it. You heard the difference. I just switched away from them because I was going to shut up and listen, but it really does make a difference. Do you guys hear me better now?

1:51:57BubblemanYeah, we can hear you better now.

1:52:00SpeakerOkay, sweet. The feedback loop should be gone. I'm on the headphones.

1:52:04BubblemanI didn't even get a feedback loop for you at all, to be honest. I just found like your mic was more muted and it was kind of almost turning off and turning on much the way Tony's was right before... Like you were maybe too far away, but the headphones are much better, absolutely.

1:52:19SpeakerCool. So yeah, you did meet Dr. Gilman at the Rethink Breast Cancer. I actually caught a bit of the panel when it was live streaming. It was pretty interesting.

1:52:29BubblemanYeah, it was definitely something different that I'd never really been involved in. It was nice to be up there with a patient, of course, and nice to have a couple of doctors up there as well giving their perspective. It was kind of a unique panel in a sense.

1:52:43SpeakerYeah, I actually tuned in right as you were saying you were making a point about the importance of having physicians teach each other about cannabis and how that's like really one of the best ways to spread that knowledge among the medical community and that's exactly what Dr. Gilman does a lot of actually. She does a lot of continuing medical education events and she's really on the speaking tour sort of like re-educating physicians about cannabis and cannabinoids.

1:53:13SpeakerBecause a lot of them still harbor a lot of misperceptions and bias and so forth.

1:53:19BubblemanAbsolutely. And when patients try to explain that to their doctors, there are experiences where you really get through and you educate your doctor, but there's more than not where the doctor's just like, listen, I went to school for a long time and there's no way you're going to have learned something on Google that I don't already know.

1:53:38SpeakerYeah, exactly. So when they hear from their doctors, it goes a long way, and that's really the thinking behind Sante Cannabis, was like we saw an opportunity with the MNPR to really do some important work on the medical community side of things in Quebec. Quebec's always been one of the most... Reluctant and far behind provinces when it comes to medical cannabis. You see like the explosion in BC and Ontario, even among physicians who support the use of cannabis, but we never really had that in Quebec.

1:54:13SpeakerEven under MMAR we had the lowest number of participating physicians and some of the lowest like patient numbers in the MMAR and it continues under MMPR as well. And why do you think that is? Because we've had, in Quebec, we've had really, we have a particularly conservative medical regulator, so the College of Physicians here is far more conservative than other colleges across Canada. And the, sort of the professional code and the ethical code that physicians follow in Quebec is actually written into provincial law.

1:54:50SpeakerSo it's not like an internal regulation. Thank you for watching.

1:55:19SpeakerSay in Ontario, right, and I'm not talking dispensaries, I'm talking about like the telemedicine aggregators, the on-site cannabis clinics with physicians, like you don't, you haven't, we've really pioneered that in Quebec and so far there haven't really been any businesses to do that in Quebec because, and it's mostly because in Quebec we're obligated to prescribe cannabis only in the context of research. So every single patient that we see either becomes a case study or goes into a provincial registry that's run by McGill University and Dr. Mark Ware, who I'm sure many of you guys are familiar with.

1:56:03SpeakerSo we participate in the Quebec Cannabis Registry, which is a massive pharmacovigilance research project. It's kind of a post-market surveillance. If you're familiar with clinical trials and that kind of world, we're basically participating in a post-market surveillance study that traces outcomes and adverse events relating to the use of medical cannabis. And we're forced to do so by the College of Physicians here because The College of Physicians here doesn't recognize cannabis as a medical treatment.

1:56:40SpeakerIt's considered an unapproved treatment, and there are special parameters that physicians need to follow when they're working with unapproved treatments, and the research caveat is one of them. So it's an administrative burden for us, but at the same time, we're also participating in very groundbreaking, historic work Thank you so much for joining us.

1:57:30BubblemanYou took on the obstacles and now you're doing all these studies that just you mentioned now will end up being like super valuable in the end. The thing that they force you to do, you'll be stoked that you did because it'll be a potential game changer for knowledge and education learned.

1:57:47SpeakerTotally. You know, Rick's a big inspiration of mine as a drug policy activist because like so much of his work has been done within the system. And as an activist myself, like I faced... I still get all kinds of shit because we, you know, moved into the MMPR space and closed our dispensary and kind of like moved away from that civil disobedient end of things. But it's really, we've accomplished more working within the system in those last two years than I'd ever really accomplished as a dispensary.

1:58:21SpeakerActually, when the Physicians College in Quebec passed its guidelines on April 1st when the MMPR were implemented, Dr. Gilman, who you were on the panel with, actually wrote an open letter expressing her sort of disdain with With the guidelines as they've been passed, because one of the things that the college tried to do here was restrict the prescription of cannabis to just that old category one from MMAR.

1:58:52SpeakerThey wanted to scrap anyone that fell into the B2 category. So, you know, Crohn's, PTSD, anxiety, depression, you know, everything but the category one, right? You look in the Health Canada manual and you've got 40 potential indications or so. So one of the things that her open letter to the college actually did was open it up to all of those diagnoses again. Because had Dr. Gilman not written that letter in such a public way, we really kind of cornered the college on that.

1:59:27SpeakerAnd one month after implementing this policy, they amended it to include all of those other diagnoses. That's great. We also had some really cool... One of the coolest things we did also was intervene in the Smith case. So we were one of the only, I think we were the only cannabis-related clinic or business to successfully submit an intervener application. So we were able to submit three affidavits that kind of added another dimension to what Owen Smith and Kirk were arguing in the Smith case around access to edibles.

2:00:06SpeakerRight.

2:00:06BubblemanAnd for those of you that don't know, watching the Owen Smith case was a very big case here in British Columbia and across the board, even though Phelan hadn't made his judgment in Supreme yet, that MMAR be revamped and that it was indeed a breach of the Charter of Rights. But the Owen Smith case allowed for us here in BC for at least a year, maybe more, to To be able to, under the MMAR program, which is our federal program to be able to possess and grow cannabis, that we would now be able to process the cannabis.

2:00:41BubblemanSo it was a big case for extracts.

2:00:45SpeakerYeah. And similarly, one of the results of that was now for patients who are authorized under the MMPR, They're now legally allowed to alter the physical and chemical properties of the marijuana that they obtained from the licensed producers. And prior to that, they weren't allowed to do that. So you could legally buy your bud from whatever LP you're with, but as soon as you made a coconut oil, as soon as you made a rosin, as soon as you made anything else but the dried flower, You were basically committing a criminal offense under the CDSA.

2:01:21SpeakerAnd so the response to Smith was to grant this exemption to everyone authorized under MMPR to basically make whatever they want out of their weed, save for BHO, because there is a specific prohibition on the use of butane and pressurized hydrocarbon solvents. In Canada, for those of you that don't know, we have a separate crime for cannabis residents in the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act. So the way our medical marijuana law was written, it was about dried flowers, like Adam is saying.

2:01:58SpeakerAnd anything that was, you know, dried flowers were allowed by people that were in the medical marijuana program, but anything else wasn't allowed. Yep.

2:02:10BubblemanAnd more importantly, that those things that weren't allowed held mandatory minimums of two years in prison.

2:02:17SpeakerWell, they did after Harper got in, yeah. Yeah, making BHOs, it's like the equivalent to running a meth lab.

2:02:24BubblemanBut it wasn't just making BHO, because Kirk made the argument that here's this woman who has an MMR license, she's like an elderly woman, she gets her cannabis, she grows it, whatever, she goes to put it in her hot water to make tea, and She's now made an extract and she's now in breach of this law that holds this mandatory minimum sentence.

2:02:47SpeakerYeah, she wasn't in breach of the law until she removed the leaves out of the water. Right. Exactly. Or you strained the last little piece of leaf out of the butter. As long as there was still a little bit of leaf in there, it was legal.

2:03:01BubblemanIt was a very powerful metaphor or story that he used to show how ridiculous the law was nonetheless.

2:03:09SpeakerSo we added, we had Mandy McKnight, who is the mother of Leah McKnight, who is now the poster child for the use of CBD and Dravet Syndrome in Canada. We had her submit an affidavit as part of our intervener application. You know, explaining the fact that as soon as she lifts the, you know, runs the herb and oil through a cheesecloth, that she's like violated the CDSA and that like it's an untenable position for her as a mother and a caregiver.

2:03:40SpeakerAnd similarly, the other affidavits that we submitted came from our medical director and myself basically saying that in our position running a cannabis clinic providing patient care as we do, we're in like an ethical position Particularly for Dr. Dworkin, who's our medical director, he's put in an ethical sort of quagmire where he's forced to basically explain to patients how to break the law if he's recommending like an edible product or an oil, right?

2:04:09SpeakerAnd how that was completely untenable from our situation. And so there's now also an exemption for healthcare practitioners as a result of the Smith case where healthcare practitioners like doctors and nurses and pharmacists are now actually exempt from the CDSA as it relates to administering medical cannabis or cannabis oil to authorized patients. So, yeah. Another thing I thought of that's going on out east is Particularly in Quebec, and you don't hear about it much in the rest of Canada because Quebec's kind of a news vacuum to English Canada, but we have some of the best hospital vaping policies.

2:04:56SpeakerSo there's a lot of controversy going on in Ontario and other places where hospitals and long-term care facilities are banning the use of vaporizers inside of their establishments. But the government of Quebec just recently amended the anti-tobacco law to allow hospitals and long-term care facilities to designate rooms where authorized patients can vaporize medical cannabis. So right now we're working with the Jewish General Hospital to implement their vaporization policy.

2:05:30SpeakerIt looks like they're going to be allowing patients to vaporize in private rooms, and they're also kind of like redesigning the regulations around what to do for a patient who smokes their marijuana, like what's the procedure to, you know, what's the procedure when a patient needs to leave their bed and go outside to smoke a medical joint, right? So it's really cool to be at the center of that kind of policy development, and it wouldn't have been possible for us to do that Had we continued as a gray market dispensary?

2:06:03SpeakerNo. I was working in the States for a while, and now in the States they have these, all the markets have these vaporization pens, which I'm sure you've seen some of the panel using. But those are bad for Canada, but they would really seem to be like an excellent adjunct for hospital therapy. Oh, they'd be sweet. I mean, right now we give people like a Pax and a Smoke Buddy for when they're in hospital.

2:06:27SpeakerWhen I was in the hospital I had my vaporizer tent with me the whole time and I was puffing and I was on the spine unit and I mean I wasn't blatantly with it but the nurses saw it sitting there and they took my natural supplements away from me but they left that behind and that's my, they knew what I was about so. Yeah, it's kind of hard to come in.

2:06:47SpeakerYou see people in that much pain, what do you say, really? I mean, you're going to make them go outside and smoke a joint? Why don't we just allow them to have these extracts under the MMPR? They can be made safely and certified clean and known terpene and cannabinoid contents. Yeah.

2:07:04BubblemanAnd probably also when you mention the pens, it would be probably a good idea to not have probably 99% of the pens that are on the market right now because I think a lot of them are just inexpensively rebranded, low integrity buyers, you know, buying these pens from China and just putting a name on them. John took his apart when Samurai came on and talked about that Omicron.

2:07:29BubblemanIt just seems like you would really want to design the most Thank you so much for joining us.

2:08:01SpeakerCut the resin with glycerin mixes. We need to learn a lot more about that stuff because it seems there are still hazards to that. I think that's really not okay to be doing that myself. The glycerin, when it breaks down, it can break down into all these other certain things. You're not supposed to be putting that kind of plant lipid in your lung as a vapor. I don't think it's a long-term good way to go.

2:08:25SpeakerYou know, the cannabinoids are one thing because they're the active medical compounds, but you don't have to adulterate with all these other things. Yeah, I think it's funny how a lot of these, like, to see the evolution of the marketing, right? I'm always, every time I see like a pen with CO2 oil in it, and they're saying, oh, it's like solvent-free, this is a solvent-free extract. It's like most CO2 extracts are washed in ethanol afterwards.

2:08:51SpeakerI've tasted it in juju joints and other similar style pens, like a very clear sort of ethanol taste to it, and I find it funny that they're marketed as solvent-free. Well, that's bad production.

2:09:05ToddThat's just to confuse people, right?

2:09:08SpeakerYeah.

2:09:09ToddWhen they say solvent-free, they just mean that we vacuum purged it of any of the solvents we used, and now it's solvent-free. That's literally... And descriptive as a selling point, and people should be aware of that.

2:09:22SpeakerYeah. There should be no solvents left in your products. I mean, that can all be tested in the lab and, you know, regulated. I don't know. I just think it's really interesting the way that it's playing out up here. I mean, I assume that in Canada they're going to try and regulate extracts out of even the recreational legalization. And, you know, whereas in the States they step back and they just let the free market Figure all these things out and then they regulate the safety and the production.

2:09:50SpeakerThey're actually trying to regulate what you can and can't have. One of the major problems of that in cannabis is in the void of any regulation, this whole culture has developed with tinctures and extracts and this way of doing things and this way of people consuming cannabis and extracts that they're used to. Now, are you going to try and take that all the way? It's just not possible.

2:10:11SpeakerI don't know, I don't think it's likely that they will legislate all of those products away with recreational. I think we have a really powerful activist movement in Canada, and I think that we have a good chance to, I mean, what we're looking at, I don't know if you guys are all familiar with what CAMH, which is the Center for Addictions and Mental Health, has proposed for cannabis legalization.

2:10:37SpeakerIn Canada, but like, that's kind of the model that I think we're headed towards, and some important tweaks to that policy could be made to include those products. The concerning aspects are like really high age limits, like 25 caps on THC percentages and so forth. Those are things that I'd be concerned about, but I think there's like very strong arguments that could be made to Avoid those kind of restrictions.

2:11:07SpeakerYeah, if they were consulting, you know, the Canadian public, which they so far are not doing. Yeah. So I don't know. I don't have a lot of faith in the liberal-based legalization based on just their behavior so far. I don't think they're being inclusive. I think it's really ignorant and ridiculous not to consume the people that are, you know, not to consult the people that are consuming the drug.

2:11:32SpeakerYeah. And, you know, and talk about, again, this is all basic harm reduction stuff. And so, you know, we're no, in that sense, we're no farther ahead than we were 20 years ago when Malmo got arrested, right? Right. Right. So... We need to... Although I see Kirk saying that, you know, if a similar charter challenge was launched today that he thinks that there would be a better outcome, considering all of the legal history we have with MMR and MMPR, because before with Clay and LaMama Levine, that was really like before there was a lot of that MMR litigation that led to like everything we see now, right?

2:12:10SpeakerIt was before Barron, it was before Lucas and even... I think it was, I think Clay and Malmo Levine was before Parker too, I'm not sure. But he says, he speculates now that like if that same case were to go through that you could legalize on charter grounds, you know, that that case might win. Yeah, well it might come to that, you know, it might come to that.

2:12:34SpeakerYou know, every step of the way, any games that have ever happened in Canada have been the result of a lawsuit. And I think that recreational legalization that we're putting in is going to be no different. They'll put in some stupid legalization and people will get arrested and charged and they'll go to court and it'll be a whole different context for interpreting this law. Right. In America, I think they've really just stepped back.

2:13:02SpeakerWhen I was living in Colorado, I know a guy that got called. The cops got called over 100 plants. The sheriff showed up, literally got back in his car and just drove away. So it's like they're not going to enforce the laws that are on the books because it's too much, it costs them too much and they don't make any money from it. Right, but the corollary to that is that it just makes for even more unequal enforcement.

2:13:27SpeakerSo it makes the enforcement that does happen even worse and even more unjustifiable.

2:13:36ToddRight, draconian. You know, I'm so glad you said that because decrim, people argue about it here in California that we're better off with decriminalization than we are with legalization and it's horrible because it makes for very selective enforcement and it makes for a very awkward position whereas, you know, this mouse is legal. The person making this mouse, holding this mouse is legal. The people that are making the mouse are They're not illegal for making it.

2:14:00ToddAnd under decrim, everyone that grew every joint that fell into the hands of every legal person would be a criminal. And that's fucked up. I used to say that when I spoke. How many people here have smoked a joint and the whole place would light up with hands? And then say, okay, great. Do y'all think you should have went to jail for that little... Smoke in a joint and they put their hands back down.

2:14:21ToddNo. Do you think the person that sold it to you should go to jail? Is that a crime? Right. You know? Should that person go to jail for selling you something that you shouldn't go to jail for using? And people would start to see the hypocrisy pretty quick. And under decriminalization, it puts the producers of something that's otherwise legal into criminals. And that, to me, is so fucked up.

2:14:43ToddAnd it puts the end user in an unsafe place because there is no regulation between them and the product.

2:14:49SpeakerAnd that dealer stigma is some of the most persistent even among consumers, right? You'll still talk to your everyday pot smoker and whatever, and they'll still think poorly of the person who sold them the pot, right? That drug dealer is the bad person is so pervasive in culture that it's why we have so much problems in the discourse. I talk to people all the time who are like, oh, well...

2:15:18SpeakerIt's okay, we can just write tickets for it, but it'll still be illegal to sell it. And they see that as somehow a logical end point, that criminalizing the dealer is totally justifiable, even if we're like, you know, it drives me insane.

2:15:34ToddWell, we have to argue for equal rights in a way because the producer of Jack Daniels is just as legal as the person picking up the shot glass. And that type of equality is what Canada's industry really needs if there's going to be safety between the distillery, so to speak, and the shot glass.

2:15:50SpeakerYeah. Right now the decriminalization argument in Canada has evolved in quite an interesting way because... Trudeau, our Prime Minister, is now really like brainlessly regurgitating activist talking points on decriminalization. Even though the context has totally changed because we have a promise of full legalization. It's not like the decriminalization proposition in Canada now is not like decriminalization as an end point. It's like stop fucking arresting people in the meantime while you get your shit together on legalization and work to pass this law.

2:16:32SpeakerThis legalization law. And now that's what we're running up against in Canada. The Trudeau government has outright refused to decriminalize cannabis. In the meantime, people are still getting arrested, even though it will be legal in some way in the next two years, two or three years.

2:16:51ToddI can't help but bring this up, Adam, what you're saying. You know, I feel like what happened, what's happening here is really there's a conversation that's more about cannabis profits than cannabis prisoners. And I feel like, and maybe as someone who's gone to jail and stuff, the struggle is real. Like them arresting us is no joke, you know, and that realiztically this is what we have to keep as our, you know, the details will fall as they may.

2:17:19ToddBut as soon as we go to the spot of stop arresting us and let's deal with the people in jails and prisons, Thank you for joining us.

2:17:50SpeakerSo where do you see it going in Quebec, Adam? Where do you see medical marijuana going? Where do you see recreational marijuana going? It's anybody's guess right now. Our provincial government is not as proactive as, say, the BC government or the Ontario government. You know, we haven't had any kind of concrete pronunciations on liquor models or pharmacy models. Around, you know, I mean, the pharmacy distribution debate is interesting because what people don't realize is that the CPHA, the Canadian Pharmacists Association, is the one calling for pharmacies to sell cannabis.

2:18:29SpeakerBut the CPHA is not a regulatory body for pharmacy. They're a trade association. So the regulatory bodies for pharmacy in Canada still generally oppose the dispensing of cannabis for all the same reasons that The medical, all the medical regulators do. No evidence, no double blinds, blah, blah, blah. So, and I've talked to the order of pharmacy in Quebec, and they really don't want anything to do with it.

2:18:58SpeakerSo, it's... There's a... And then for the liquor store model for recreational, that's possible. I could see the Quebec government moving towards or like sort of getting their toes wet with sort of regulating marijuana through the liquor board. But I think those talks are just starting to happen, so nothing is really set in stone right now for Quebec. And as far as... That's a nightmare. I think them going through alcohol is going to be ridiculous.

2:19:34SpeakerIt's totally different warehousing. It's different distribution. You have expiry dates on products. I think putting it in liquor distribution is a nightmare. The quality of the herb is just not doable. That has yet to be seen, I think. It's... It definitely seems like the path of least resistance for provincial governments and I think that's why it's appealing to them. The product spoilage though, right? Who ends up on the hook for all that spoiled product?

2:20:08SpeakerYeah, I don't know. The logistics of it would have to be reimagined I think for cannabis.

2:20:14BubblemanI just can't imagine putting cannabis with alcohol.

2:20:19SpeakerLike, just side by side just seems like... Well, the assumption is that the alcohol people do a good job of keeping out of the hands of children, and therefore they should be able to do the same with cannabis, right? I'm just torn about that. Always the case, though, right? I think... Is there anybody on from Washington State who can speak from experience? Again, this is where... The cannabis board is now made up of a bunch of rejects that used to regulate liquor in the state.

2:20:49SpeakerAnd I think they actually were such a bunch of rejects that it was privatized and it was taken over by a private group. And so these losers were all without a job and they're like, okay, well, they can't regulate alcohol properly. Let's let them regulate cannabis. Right. Well, we have a bit of a different system in Canada where all that stuff is... Regulation and distribution of alcohol is done through the provinces, which is like the state, and it's not privatized, and they essentially license who can and can't, you know, distribute.

2:21:21SpeakerSo I think that that's the assumption base there, that they'll, you know, we trust them to keep the hard liquor out of the kids' hands so that they'll also should be able to do a good job with weed. Yeah, well, one case... My concern also with, sorry, with the liquor model is that we start from square one again. Like in Canada, the LCBOs in Ontario, man, like you didn't see like these display shelves of the whiskeys and the beers and the alcohols.

2:21:47SpeakerIt was like you go in and it was like... You fill out a card with the stuff you want and you put it through a bank teller and they're like, oh, come around here and get your alcohol. It's taken years just to have the level of commercialization and sort of like branding in alcohol, which is already very present in cannabis, which I wouldn't want to see lost with cannabis.

2:22:09SpeakerThat's one of my big fears with putting it in liquor stores. But I'm torn about this notion of like having cannabis and alcohol together. Side by side, because I get the harm reduction argument, but on the flip side, like in BC, for example, the government employees union is suggesting cannabis-only stores that are regulated by the liquor board. So it's not necessarily like a liquor shop with weed in it.

2:22:40SpeakerIt's like a cannabis store regulated by the liquor board. I think that's not a bad model, really. And I think it also, like, it also... Would cater to like the sort of craft cannabis industry that's already very well established in BC. Vineyards are allowed to sell wine off their property. They can have a wine shop with a vineyard license. So there's no reason that you couldn't have the same for cannabis.

2:23:08SpeakerWell, I was hanging with Matt the Great Gardener on the island just last weekend. And, you know, you see all the signs for the wineries. And I was like, one day, man, there will be signs saying like, you know, weedery. The government pays for those signs for the wineries as part of tourism. If you build a winery, you call the government up and they'll come and put out a sign on the highway for you.

2:23:32SpeakerIt'll be interesting one day when they're paying for these signs.

2:23:36ToddYou know, guys, I was driving through Berkeley, and now there's this campaign about, like, New Leaf California or something, the California, the cannabis, the natural way, and it's really odd to stop at an intersection, look up, and see a full-size whole board dedicated towards just cannabis flowers. It's like, it's just a little culture thing. I actually drove by, like, not even sure what the fuck they were selling, to be honest with you.

2:24:03ToddIt's like, pot, yeah, it's great. I just couldn't believe it. So like four of them in one night.

2:24:11BubblemanThat's what's up right there. The world is changing. Be the change you want to be in the world. Exactly.

2:24:18SpeakerYeah, well the change hasn't happened yet too, so I think it's really important that everybody keeps voicing, you know, and talking about what the best solution is for our problems because, you know, The way that they're looking at it, they're looking at things like policing and criminal penalties for cultivation over a licensed amount and all that kind of stuff. It's the people that are going to shape these things if you make yourself heard.

2:24:42SpeakerIt's not just ready the time to kick back and relax now that we have total legalization, whatever that even means. We don't even know what that means.

2:24:51BubblemanIt's a different focus of energy, though. It's definitely like, you know, You know, getting that change from within the system is definitely pretty much more effective than trying to change it outside of the system because we tried that and that was like prison and jail and getting arrested and, you know, A lot of people call out people that choose to take the, you know, choose to use those mediums that are available to them to get something done, whether it's a pharmaceutical model for getting cannabis, you know, what Rick was talking about.

2:25:26BubblemanAnd people were like, why is he saying marijuana so much? And I'm like, because he's dealing with governments and he's dealing with like different groups within government that are, That are mainstream, super mainstream, that don't believe that this is, that don't have logic when it comes to cannabis and cannabis medicine. So that's a whole different way of coming out about acquiring your, you know, executing your plan.

2:25:53BubblemanThat to me would be incredibly difficult. I have always found myself to be able to work much easier outside of the box. But for those of you that choose to work inside the box, I do applaud you because it's important work as well.

2:26:07SpeakerFrankly, it's a lot harder. I worked in dispensaries for six or seven years before I opened the clinic, or we opened the clinic, and it's scary when you're actually regulated by a body, like a regulatory body that has a lot of teeth. You know, when we ran the dispensary, our biggest concern was a police raid, right? Which, you know, takes several months of investigation. Are they actually going to go through with it?

2:26:36SpeakerYou get criminal charges. You've got this, you know, you've got the hero status in the court of public opinion. You're going to launch a constitutional challenge, all that kind of stuff. But, you know, running a cannabis clinic? We're actually more vulnerable than we were as a dispensary. The College of Physicians has more power than the police. They can walk in any time they want, no warrant, no due process, and just like, we're auditing you.

2:27:05SpeakerLet's shut everything down, pause everything.

2:27:10SpeakerUnlike the police, where it takes a while, they've got to get a warrant, there's due process, there's a trial. You don't actually have that with medical regulators, so And, you know, it's just interacting. We interact a lot more directly with the healthcare system, and now we're just even more intimately aware of how fucked up and broken it is, working from within it. You've chosen a really tough market to be in, too, with Quebec the way it is.

2:27:40SpeakerYou know, I don't know if it's partly because there's a huge Roman Catholic population, or at least it's really heavily influenced the heritage of Quebec. But, you know, also France is quite anti-cannabis too. And it seems to be that these wine producing countries and their legacies and their colonies are often quite anti-cannabis. Yeah. I don't know if that translates to Quebec. We have a very... Well, it's definitely more restricted in, say, British Columbia or Ontario, right?

2:28:12SpeakerLike, they've managed to keep a clamp down on it in ways that they haven't done in other parts of the country. Oh, yeah. I always thought that that was a constitutional argument for a Quebec citizen, is that you're not... The way that these laws that are supposed to be equal to all Canadians across the country, they're not enforced equally. Well, the reality is that the restrictions that the Quebec College puts on the prescribing of cannabis are of questionable constitutional validity.

2:28:39SpeakerAnd I think they know that. Originally, before our college implemented these guidelines where they mandate research and all this other stuff, their original intention was to prohibit the prescribing of cannabis entirely. And they obtained two legal opinions, not just one, they went to two judges. And they were like, hey, can we just ban the prescription of medical marijuana? Because that would be a lot easier for us.

2:29:03SpeakerAnd both judges were like, no fucking way. Everybody in Quebec really needs to thank Dr. Mark Ware for his work in establishing that database that you were talking about to monitor adverse events and outcomes. Because like you said, without that, they wouldn't have been allowed to have medical documents that allowed cannabis use in Quebec. Yeah, yeah. Mark Ware. Yeah, Mark Ware, he's the man out here. Yeah, he really is.

2:29:33SpeakerHe's like a, you know, he's, I kind of compare him to like the Canadian Ethan Russo. He's just, he's such a powerhouse, you know, he's such a powerhouse. But our clinic right now is about a third of that registry because like it's still, it's still very challenging. There's not a lot of funding for that research. It's, it's very difficult. It's, you know, it's this much paperwork for a, I can't see my camera, but you know, it's like a stack of paperwork just to consent to participate in the registry.

2:30:03SpeakerSo, you know, we get consent fatigue with patients at the clinic who already have to sign a bunch of disclaimers just to be seen by our physicians, let alone participate in the registry and the research that we're mandated to do. And they're not compensated for it. It's the only research that I'm aware of where the physician collaborators and the patient participants are not compensated in any way for their participation.

2:30:34SpeakerSo it's a very, very tough sell. Please come participate in this research where you have to buy the medicine. It doesn't really happen in other studies that way. Yeah, it's really incredible patchwork the way it is right now. It's amazing.

2:30:55BubblemanPeel back the layers.

2:30:56SpeakerWell, it sounds like you're doing some great stuff in Montreal, Adam. Keep it up. I love your tweets. It's nice having you as a voice in the discussion in Canada. It's also like...

2:31:14SpeakerIt's the only way...

2:31:18SpeakerDid I just break up there? Can you guys hear me again?

2:31:22BubblemanYep.

2:31:23SpeakerOh, sweet. And yep. I was going to say, I mean, a lot of the discussion today, we've been talking about stuff like that. Yeah, I could go on forever. A lot of the stuff has been wrong. Here's some information here that we did in Vancouver. This is a preventive harm from a psychoactive substance. Some of the stuff that happened here back in 2006, 2007, and 2008, And if you can get your hands on this, it's got a lot of information on the regular markets of setting up clubs here in Vancouver and all the stuff we've been talking about today.

2:31:53SpeakerIt's options for cannabis and stuff like that. I don't know if you guys can see this or not, but there's a lot of really good information. And this is the book that I actually have, so if you want to look it up and take a good look at some of the systems that's in this, because a lot of stuff we're talking about is in there. And also...

2:32:16SpeakerI have the other book here, and this is beyond global. This is for the NGO Committee on Narcotic Drugs and Psychoactive Substance, and a lot of the stuff that Rick was talking about at the beginning is really good framework in this book. I've highlighted this because I did this all in the past and stuff like that, but everything we're talking about, this is all stuff they talked about back between 2005 and 2008, so stuff we're seeing in these books today, I mean seeing in these books now is what we're seeing today, so Definitely try and look this stuff up.

2:32:47SpeakerI tried posting it but it looked like it was hacked. But Tony, if anybody wants any of this, I'll photocopy it and send it out to you. But some really good information in here. Just wanted to put that in there and let you guys know because I wanted to say something about that. You should digitize it and upload it to Hatch Church Group. Okay, that's what I'll do then.

2:33:09SpeakerThen everybody wouldn't have to get mail. Yeah, no, that's a good idea. I was just trying to figure out a way, but it's a really good information game that we're talking about today, and it's all stuff. You just scan it.

2:33:18BubblemanScan it.

2:33:22BubblemanI think that's the easiest way to digitize, wouldn't you say there, Chimera?

2:33:26SpeakerYeah, well, I'm not a digitization expert, but yeah, scanning always works, or take a photo, or whatever you do. There you go, there you go. They'll put it right up to a PDF all in one document, so. More options.

2:33:37Etienne FontanYou mean that crazy PDF talk that Rick Doblin was talking about earlier?

2:33:41ToddThat guy. Yeah, that was a big deal, PDFs, man. I didn't have to spend all night in Kinkos. That was huge, man.

2:33:52BubblemanOh, yeah, well, feel for us in Canada. We never had Kinkos.

2:33:56ToddDo you know what's a funny Amsterdam fact? The first 24-hour, like, business from America that opened up was Kinkos. They claimed they were, like, a service in this business. It was kind of crazy.

2:34:10SpeakerKinkos in Vancouver?

2:34:12ToddYeah.

2:34:14BubblemanI'm talking about like 20 years ago.

2:34:16ToddOh, yeah. Yeah, it was, man. Kinko's opened up in Amsterdam like a winter of 96. Hey, that's... Oh, I went there one year ago. I met you there in November of 95.

2:34:30BubblemanYeah, that makes sense. I met a lot of great people at that first Cannabis Cup. It was quite small. It was still at the PAX Party House and just not... It wasn't flailing. It was still... I think growing.

2:34:46ToddThat was a better year because we had practice in 94 and 95. It felt a lot smoother. And Positronics and other places around it accommodated the guests that showed up. And 95 was even more fun in my opinion.

2:35:02SpeakerSo I got some extract questions for the extract experts on the panel. And a bunch of old stuff made into extracts.

2:35:15SpeakerAnd there's this whole thing on the color and the market and color value and all that kind of stuff. So does anybody want to talk about that or light is dark less value or light is more value?

2:35:28Etienne FontanI found it to be more hearsay and conjecture because I've had some amazing stuff that's in the darker color. I've had amazing stuff that's in the lighter color. It runs the whole spectrum. All these have been tested and all these have passed and each one has very similar Profiles per se, but it's become this sort of a, in my, what I have seen, if it's got to be as clear as possible, et cetera, et cetera, or it's no good sort of connotation has been brought forth by the general public.

2:36:02Etienne FontanBut I still, you know, I rely on science. So for me, I have laboratories tested and tell me one way or the other. Yes, I would prefer it all looks sexy and clear, but that's not necessarily the reality of what we see or what tests through. I've had failures on stuff that's absolutely clear to absolutely dark, and I've had success with dark as well as light, so it all depends on the product in the end.

2:36:28BubblemanI think there's no doubt in the hype of The people always love lighter colored, golden, you know, almost see-through, like people just love that shit. People that are connoisseurs like ATN and others have a deeper knowledge and rely on science and more than just a color, but there's definitely a hype and Here in Canada, dispensaries will pay more for lighter colored stuff. I would put almost a guarantee on that.

2:36:57ToddOne of our former guests, Frenchy Cannoli, just did a thing on oxidization. And he was arguing that in traditional housemaking, it was part of the processing. You know, and I would love to, you know, because of, and Tony, you'd be good to speak on this, because there is a change of chemicals. You won't have CBN present if you don't let it go through this natural decomposition. You know, so oxidization, he said, brings a nuance to it that you don't get if you just go fresh.

2:37:26ToddLike a sleepy buzz to me.

2:37:28BubblemanYeah, so. I'm just joking.

2:37:31SpeakerI would say that for the market, like most people out there, will gravitate towards white or lighter or cleaner. But, you know, I produce stuff like in the, I have a certain, we have a certain process and it really comes down to the age of the resin. And if the resin is early and fresh and clear heads, And you process it with the exact same process, you'll end up with that clear, that beaming white product.

2:38:00SpeakerIf you take heads that are 70% amber or have a little yellow when you look at them, and they've gone past cloudy and they're clear, and you extract those heads, you're going to get a more mature type of resin head. If you wait until Those heads are, you know, very old or aged. Then again, you'll get a darker one. So it really depends. I think what it really comes down to is, you know, indoor fresh frozen or greenhouse fresh frozen versus cured cannabis aged resin heads.

2:38:40SpeakerWhen you extract them in the exact same process, one's going to be white, one's going to be tanned. And you could have THCA, at least on my side with solventless, you could have THCA and it looks darker or what people would think is oxidized. And it could test, you know, 70% THCA and 1% THC. So it really comes down to the resin head and the education of the consumer that's out there.

2:39:07SpeakerAnd then what Etienne said, the most important part, test it. That'll tell you everything. You know, and if you have... You know, two or three lab options, test them with two or three places and see like, and compare them and see what, see where, see if you get something that's at least close. I know we all talk about testing and, you know, that kind of stuff, but, you know, when it comes down to, when it comes down to BHO or hydrocarbons, like Etienne said, I mean, you could see something that looked like water and you could test, Completely off the chart, not, you know, they've used some kind of washes or acids or some other shit, acetone or something in their process that has stripped out the color, but it doesn't necessarily deliver the medicine.

2:39:54SpeakerAnd that's always a concern and a thing that I deal with with the capsules too, trying to clean out chlorophyll or trying to make something clear or at least have clarity and people like You know, really gravitate towards a more clear, almost like watercolor. But, you know, in the capsule form, it's like you could, I could create that, but it might not have any cannabinoids in it.

2:40:21SpeakerYou know, like cannabinoids are going to have some color. So, I had this conversation with the Healing Harvest crews, like people and growers up there, you know, all their hash is sun-grown, all their hash is going to be, all their hash is going to be What we normally expect to see, like in a tin or a brown hash, nothing wrong with it, but they said the same thing.

2:40:44SpeakerThey have a hard time selling it if it's not, you know, white, beaming white. You know, like, I have a jar over here that I posted that was beaming white. It was stable. It was nice. I intentionally left it out and let it grease up. I like my shit very greasy. I like it to be, like, as...

2:41:06SpeakerAs a greasy like full milk. You know, and Frenchie loves to age his stuff. So there's that whole thing. You know, it's like wine. It's like, oh, this has been aged out. And that has totally different flavors and responses. And there's nothing to say like if that hash has been aged, there's something wrong with it. I prefer even aged rosin or aged anything. I mean, there's all aspects of it.

2:41:33SpeakerYou know, it's a But to answer your question, consumers gravitate towards shit like that. They like clear. They're like, if you could make a rosin like clear shatter, they'd freak out. You know, they'd want it. Yeah, it's weird. I mean, it's like I wonder if we're getting into that thing like we did with the bimbo. We called bimbo bud in British Columbia.

2:41:53BubblemanYeah.

2:41:54SpeakerYou know, it all looked really good. It's lime green and frosty, but it was junk. It's train specific, isn't it?

2:42:06SpeakerLike here's like, you'd freak out on this. This has got, this actually has, this is solventless oil. There's actually something there. Yeah. It looks, that looks like a live resin, isn't it? No, no live resin. It's, it's what the, the Terp Disslet thing I've been working on with Bubble Man. It's like, we're trying to create a, like a new, a new solventless oil. And this one, This one's a sour cleaner and you see that kind of like amber color.

2:42:36SpeakerYeah. You know, I can't, this is like, this is what, this is what the hash looks like when it's greased. When it's white heads, now it's just greased. Yeah, this all came from frost seeded crops, so it was, it was really just trying to recover whatever cannabinoids were there and there's a bunch of it, but it's, It's all lost its monoterps, I can tell just from the taste of it.

2:43:03SpeakerIt's lost all the monoterps. But it's been sitting for a couple of years. And there's still lots of cannabinoids in there. Just how to clean them up is the next step, right? Yeah, it's true. I have noticed something that's interesting. You know, since we were using terpenes to, like the ACDC crystal that we made was an accident. It was something that we had some oil, we had ACDC terps in it, And it was in the sun and then it started evaporating and creating these little tiny hair crystals.

2:43:36SpeakerAnd from there it just like, ooh, created like a crystallization. And it only worked with, for that particular terpene. I tried it on some other things and it just didn't do the same thing. But I started to, you know, you guys were talking about using like AHO and jars to create 99% THC crystals. So we used that same concept using terpenes from the same strain. And so ACDC was something we had a lot of with Goldrop when we started doing that.

2:44:07SpeakerThen I started thinking about that on a patch rosin or a flower rosin process to use them to evaporate them out. And I'm already starting. You can see this one. This is from strawberry banana glue flower rosin. Right? You see those two little layers? Yeah, what are the two phases? What are the two phases? Is it just Chemabs and Terps? Yeah, and so... They're separating out because the solvent's not holding it in solution.

2:44:36SpeakerYes, yeah, so this one is a... This orange, creamsicle, terpenes with strawberry, banana, goo, flower rosin. Now, flower rosin, and this is not a knock on flower rosin at all, this is just something I've noticed is, you know, you're pressing it out straight from the plant and you've got other things involved in the... This is the same process that another type of process that's very similar, but this is made from never touched.

2:45:04SpeakerThis is washed, never sieved, freeze dried, and then pressed, and then used in kind of a different process that allows it to kind of bind together. It's super fluid. There's like zero contamination left in it compared to The flower rosin, every time I take flower rosin and do it, it's okay. It gets a little murkier, so I decided to start playing around with this crystallization process in the sun, and it's already happening.

2:45:37SpeakerSo, you know, it'll be an interesting process. This one, this one is just clear. I mean, I've been trying to make, you can kind of see how clear it is. You know? Yeah. But yeah, it's just like, I agree with you, you know, It's just kind of like if it's earlier resin and it's got lots of terpenes in it, it's going to be clear. It's going to be on that white spectrum.

2:46:06SpeakerBut when I actually want to, you know, I feel like I get a better response from mature heads. But it's a different type of experience and a different type of response in my mind, you know. I like somewhere in between. I don't like it's like super clear and I don't like it, but something like this, I'm okay with. Like this is a nice, it looks a little darker on the screen, but this is more in the, this looks more like a hand style.

2:46:37SpeakerHow much percent turf is in that? Oh, there's probably, I think that ratio is like 10 drops to a half a gram. So it's a lot. So it's a lot.

2:46:52Etienne FontanSo why do you guys think then that the clear issue has become so pervasive in the undercurrent? I mean, because none of this is really in the overcurrent of society. So, I mean, this has been really kind of an underground situation from the wax situation coming on board into, you know, these different types of clear concentrates coming on board in the last five to six years, etc.

2:47:17Etienne FontanWhy do you think the consumer has gone that direction? Or it has become the pervasive theology.

2:47:27SpeakerSorry, go ahead. It's all Instagram. It's ruined everything. You mean clear concentrates in terms of distilled THC, or do you mean clear in terms of color? Clear. He's talking. We're just talking color. Okay. So to a chemist like myself, Clear means pure, means purity. And usually dark, typically dark is meaning that there's been some oxidative degradation that's happened. Because if the medicine is clear on the plant, theoretically if it's extracted and if it's extracted right, it should be clear extracted off the plant.

2:48:11SpeakerSo it shouldn't change its color just because you're extracting it. But you got to remember, again, that with color, a little bit of compound can go a long way. So a lot of oxidative degradation is really only happening to a very minor fraction of the extract itself to make it turn somewhat dark. So you can have really high pure extract that's Almost, you know, analytically pure THCA crystalline solid, but it's still like a brown, you know, slightly off amber color solid, but it's still crystalline solid and it shatters.

2:48:51SpeakerSo when you're talking, and when Tony's showing those crystals, I mean, he said THC, but I'm sure he knows that that's THCA. THCA is the crystalline compound that you're seeing. THC is, again, not a crystalline compound at all, so... This is always the thing that people are showing like these things with those dragon balls. These are the guys up at Extractive, Tony. Ryan Wright shows his two dragon balls, which are these two big flasks, round bottom flasks, but I guess it appears as though he's actually holding purified THC and everyone knows that you can't hold purified THC, it would Be a mess.

2:49:37SpeakerThese are glass balls or just magic orbs that just fill themselves with activated THC somehow. But to go back to color for a second, I've also seen this trend, and I think we discussed this on church, about PHOs and PHOs compared to BHOs on the same flower, which really have a lot more brighter orange sort of essence to it, orange color to it. Some even, you know, or brighter yellow where the BHO tends to be a slightly different color.

2:50:10SpeakerAlso, depending on the process you're running, I mean, certain hash makers tell you that they can tell the extractor, they can tell the process just by the color of the hash itself. So one hash maker might have a different color hash for a particular strain that Someone else, you know, can recognize as, oh yeah, that's someone's OG Kush because it's just, that's the color that his hash is.

2:50:36SpeakerBut yeah, color is a great indicator of purity. Color is a great indicator also of, you know, like when you're decomposing stuff, we were sort of having this as a sidebar chat with Thrush here, which was that people who are looking for CBN CBN is, yeah, the oxidative degradation product of THC, and those do tend to be showing up in the darker oils and the darker concentrates.

2:51:07SpeakerSo it could just be a color of oxidative degradation.

2:51:10BubblemanI think it's going to be a conversation that we continue next week. I have a few things I want to say before I close out the episode. But I had invited, or I guess a friend of mine got in touch with me through Facebook and said, Chris from The Clear said, Wanted to come and talk and enter the dialogue. And so he was supposed to be here today, which is unfortunate that he wasn't able to be.

2:51:33BubblemanBut we will have him next week, hopefully. And we'll be able to continue this conversation at 9 a.m. next Sunday. And in the meantime, I wanted to say a few words before we finish off this particular Mother's Day episode of Hash Church. Call your moms. If you haven't already, go see your mom. Send her some flowers. Take her to brunch. I'm doing all of those things.

2:51:54SpeakerMy mom just called.

2:51:55BubblemanNice, excellent. Well, it's good to stay in touch with moms, but what I wanted to give a shout out to was all of the people that have been affected by the fires in Fort McMurray, Alberta. That's an entire town that got wiped out by fire, like every one of the houses got burned out. It looks like a nuclear war had landed there. People were by the thousand escaping this area.

2:52:21BubblemanThank you for watching.

2:52:44BubblemanI just wanted to give that shout out to all of those people who are suffering from that, and it's nice to see everyone sort of binding together and helping people out, not with an agenda of profit, but just an agenda of help. Nothing feels better than that. So thank you all, everyone that came out for Hash Church today. Much love, and we will talk again soon. It's Mother's Day.

2:53:08BubblemanI'm off to brunch. Peace out.