Cannabis Clones, CBD Conversion, and Industry Trends

0:01SpeakerHello, hello, hello. Welcome.

0:09SpeakerI'm freshly back from Jamaica, no longer in Kingston, but I am back in British Columbia. So give me a few minutes. I'm going to go through and invite everyone in and, of course, turn off.

0:29SpeakerIt does. It's about a 15 to 20 second delay and then it goes.

0:39SpeakerI'm just having some good conversations a little bit about the history of bubble bags.

0:49SpeakerAction. So that version. Try to have the most accurate version of what went down.

0:59SpeakerThis, and I can send out these invitations. I know if I send out the invitation, my voice will start up and start interrupting, so.

1:19SpeakerThis can go for, what do I know? I'm baked. All right, I'm going to send out the links.

1:28SpeakerI do that, of course, it starts right up. Boom, muted. We'll send that one out. We'll send the emails to the... ...idea. Let me grab my headphones here soon because I don't want to be the guy that... Good morning. Good morning. What's up, John? Good morning, Mark. Hi, guys. Good morning, ATN. What legal weed?

2:03Etienne FontanRumor has it it's legal in California.

2:05SpeakerDon't tell everybody. Get mad.

2:17Etienne FontanWell, we actually have Twitler in charge now.

2:22SpeakerHey, who's got the... Let me guess, it's the guy that's not sitting in his chair. Maybe. I think it's good. I'm going to go with that guy.

2:33Etienne FontanWell, then, due to echo, I suggest that we all burn smoke toward the Vatican and toward Mr. Bubble Man. I agree. There he is. Headphone guy. I know him. That was that guy who was in Jamaica last week, right? Headphone guy. Mark will forever be known as Headphone Guy.

2:51BubblemanPlease talk while I'm not talking. I'd really appreciate it.

2:57SpeakerWhat did he say? I'll fix this. I'll fix this. I heard that. Well, good morning, everybody out there. It seems that we're having technical difficulties.

3:10SpeakerYeah. Well, we do have the Twiddler in chief now. We will see what happens.

3:17Etienne FontanYeah, and congratulations to all the women around the world yesterday who showed up with the largest protest in U.S. history. And I saw pictures from around the world in Paris and Germany and so much respect to all the women and the protesters because no one was arrested from what I read.

3:46SpeakerWelcome back, guys. I haven't done that yet. Good morning. Good morning. Hello. We're having some loop problems today. Hello. But I think Martin's working on it. Everybody's smiling. That's a great thing. Good morning, everybody. Yes, good morning, everybody. Yes, that was a great March yesterday, and I just wish that kind of thing made a big difference, you know.

4:16Etienne FontanI agree. I hope it spurs some interest or some change. But I mean, the reality is, is that, you know, that we have to go back to being active every single day again, get involved in local politics because it all starts locally and it spreads nationally. So get involved, get active. And thank you again, women, for getting that all together and showing the world that you were a power to be reckoned with and need to be reckoned with.

4:41Etienne FontanNow we need to do something with that power. But I don't know anything that you would have would actually affect that egomaniac in the White House right now. So good luck.

4:53SpeakerNumbers. I mean, you know, I mean, well, yeah, I think the motivation here, the good part about this is that it is going to most likely remove a lot of the apathy from people that were Thank you for watching.

5:31Etienne FontanNo, no, no, go ahead. I was about to say Canada also had large show, large turnouts all across the country.

5:41BubblemanYeah, I just had, I saw that there was a big one in March.

5:49BubblemanShe was on TV discussing how she was inspired to do it. It was pretty cool. Another little connection to Canada.

6:01Etienne FontanWelcome, everybody. Hi, Bubble Man. You still seem to be having some vocal lag.

6:09BubblemanOh, I'll turn off my camera and my mic and kind of hang out in the back.

6:18Etienne FontanWell, I guess somebody better pick up the talking in the meantime. So, yeah, a lot of things happening around the world. We still don't know what's happening with this administration, which way the wind is blowing. Sessions has given some kind of vanilla response, and we still don't know which way the wind is blowing, although one of the first acts Twitler did was remove the ONDCP website from the whitehouse.gov.

6:45Etienne FontanWhatever that means, we don't know. It's an interesting sign, nevertheless.

6:52SpeakerYou know, dare I say it out loud, but, you know, he is the exact type of person that could stand up and say the drug war was stupid, and you could see it end. I mean, you know, I'm not saying that I think that's going to happen, but it's, you know, that type of a flippant personality could get up there and go, you know, drug war was bad, you know, really could happen.

7:17Etienne FontanYeah, we're in a very interesting wait and see mode.

7:19SpeakerWell, the best thing I take a look at, I'll be talking with the business partners down in the U.S. They're talking about how Trump's going to bring back the U.S. to the people. And cannabis being such a mainstream, such a money-making industry, I can't see him trying to discard it or even taking a better look at it because of legalization, what's happening. I mean, cannabis is the next gold to this earth.

7:44SpeakerI mean, it We can grow it from the earth. We don't have to mine it from the earth. It's a fuel. It's a food. It's a fiber. It's my medicine. He knows that. He knows the money it can make and the companies that are flourishing in the United States around cannabis. I think he's only going to start endorsing them and hopefully seeing a bigger industry for the United States around cannabis.

8:06SpeakerI really pray to see that. I agree 100%. I think that it's only going to grow. They can't afford to shut it down. Too many very wealthy people are starting to make a lot of money off of it. So you believe Trump is based with common sense and truth? No, but thanks for ringing in with the sublimely ridiculous. He is about money, though, and cannabis makes a lot of money on the illegal market.

8:36SpeakerSo for him to put it into a legal market where it's going to benefit his people, I really truly see him working towards it bettering the United States and America and the world. I hope to see that, really truly do. I mean, crossing my fingers, but... I think this guy's got a little bit more sense into him when it comes to making money. Don't forget we're turning into a reality TV show now and everything they say is just to make the hamster spin the wheels because, I mean, this is all rhetoric at the highest level of rhetoric.

9:08SpeakerNothing matters. Everything they say is just hyperbole. I mean, realiztically, we are in a TV show now. I'm combing my hair forward and dyeing my skin orange. I'm going to blend in with them.

9:23Etienne FontanSo the interesting thing that did happen, and I agree that nationally it's interesting, however, internationally is going to put pressure because we saw this week Germany passed medical marijuana, and I just got the latest IACM news, and it says cannabis flowers will be available on prescription for medical purposes from March 2017 on, according to the law passed in Germany. So that's quite a significant change there in Europe in quite a large country to actually... Yeah, that's good.

9:50SpeakerThat's very good. Fantastic.

9:53Etienne FontanWhat do you think about that, Sam?

9:55SpeakerWhen will Hitler be making it okay here? I've already been working on a variety which I call Blitzkrieg.

10:07SpeakerI like that. Let me guess, it's the bomb. What about the vodka varieties be coming out of Russia? I mean, you know, Germany never did really get a leg up on Russia. Yeah, all our Mercedes come from last time I checked, right? Or BMW. When was the last time you were in India, Todd? Because I can tell you right now, the Indians ran Mercedes out and they make them now and they call them Tatas.

10:38SpeakerTata Motors is huge, man. Tata Motors is doing really well. Way bigger than Mercedes, but they started by copying Mercedes.

10:48BubblemanTime out, time out. Way bigger than Mercedes. Isn't like Volkswagen, Audi, Mercedes, Chrysler, Dahmer, Benz, Bugatti, Veyron all owned by the same company?

10:58SpeakerVolkswagen is the world's largest. Yeah, they're the fucking monsters. Mark's totally right because they just got hit with that VW fine and it didn't even look like it would bother their Bugatti division.

11:09BubblemanSeriously.

11:10SpeakerYou better take a look. Tata Motors is selling nearly all the cars in Asia, Mark. And they're starting to import here. And they're importing up there, believe it or not, the Beaver model. And they're growing worldwide. I mean, they're a huge company. They actually own stakes in a lot of those companies that you just mentioned. Yeah.

11:33Etienne FontanSo they're going to get cheaper?

11:37SpeakerHard to say. I mean, if you go to... We're just hoping. We're hoping for cheaper prices, you know, and that's what we're always looking for. Cheaper cannabis prices. Mark's talking about that in chat and about prices of pounds and hopefully with the new systems changing, let's start seeing cannabis more active, accessible through pricing because, I mean, I'm buying my meds right now because I didn't grow after my surgery for a year and wow, isn't it pricey?

12:03SpeakerI smoke a lot.

12:04Etienne FontanWhat are the prices going on average?

12:07SpeakerI like full melt dry sift and really to buy that by the gram, you can't find it. If you do, they're charging $150. I mean, and if you guys are going to drop, John, don't you think? I mean, as more and more people start growing, it's inevitable because of supply and demand. There's been a limited supply with a high demand. Soon there's going to be a supply that equals the demand.

12:27SpeakerWell, even like with me working at a hydroponic store, we've seen such a rise in 315 watt bulbs being sold at the hydroponic stores. People are starting to see the difference with power, with everything, and more and more people are growing. I mean, less wattage. Less heat, less problems, and we're getting, we get a lot of guys coming by three or four 350 watt bulbs, and these guys are beginner growers, and I love seeing that more and more these days.

12:51SpeakerWe're getting more and more. And you're just coming into the store and say, I don't want to pay for it anymore. I'm going to put in a couple of bulbs and grow a couple plants. So, I mean, I'm definitely seeing that more and more in the coming year for 2017. But you can't. I went to work yesterday and I couldn't believe the amount of people that are coming in to buy grow bulbs to start cloning and stuff like that.

13:10SpeakerThe way to really save is to put in some little tiny sunshines in your grow room. Yeah. In other words, sunshine is free.

13:20Etienne FontanWhere do people get their genetics? Do they just have to find them or the federal government isn't selling them yet, right?

13:27SpeakerNo, the federal government will not sell them, but licensed producers will be allowed to start selling clones and seeds. We've seen some really crazy prices, like $150 a clone. We do have like the Vancouver Seed Bank or BC Bud Depots and then of course there's DNA. People ship all over the world, so seeds are readily and easily actionable. Anywhere if you just got to purchase them. And here in BC where I live, there's cloning houses and you can buy clones pretty much anywhere.

13:54SpeakerIt's pretty easy. I mean, me, myself, I keep my own moms as always and I've had them for years, but I mean, when it comes to growing, a lot of the clubs in Vancouver even sell clones in March and April for the outdoor crops. So you start seeing them come in. The British Climate Compassion Club Society used to start selling clones in March so people can get them going for the outdoors for the summer.

14:14SpeakerSo we used to see that. Hopefully we see that again this year.

14:16BubblemanThe only thing I would worry about in the selling of clones in BC that I've seen is it's the most amazing way to distribute mold and funguses and bugs and it's like if there's a price for a clone that's like $150 but you can continue to get it and it's always there for you and it doesn't have against all these things.

14:42SpeakerYeah, I totally agree because, I mean, that's the problem with a lot of these people. When you get clones, you get it with bugs. You get it with mold. You get it sprayed with Nova or some kind of harsh chemical that's a stomach in the plant so it doesn't continue. Like, yeah, Mark's 100% right. So, I mean, that's why I continue to only produce and grow my own moms because I know exactly where my medicine's coming from, from myself.

15:08SpeakerSo, I mean, it's hard for people out there and I will totally agree with that. I mean... But I mean, maybe in the future, we'll start seeing cloning houses where you can actually go into like a gardening center. Instead of buying plants, flowers, you can buy different strains. Well, you want to know something, though? 25 years ago, that was Positronics back in Amsterdam. You walked in, we had a whole chalkboard with all the strains, and you'd pick up whatever you wanted.

15:31SpeakerWe had show and grows, all the babies out. And we did really well. We were an organic shop, but we were very diligent to not... To not have bugs, we would quarantine plants, you know, so it was a different trip. But it worked. We were doing it. Mark remembers it.

15:49BubblemanI'll tell you, I do remember Posse. I'll tell you, the person who sold the most clones, he was selling close to 30,000 cuts a day when he was in Bellinzona.

16:06SpeakerI mean, just think of the mother house you have for that. That's just like... It was a field. That would make sense. I'm just going to go outside to my 15 hectares and get you some corn to be back in an hour.

16:20BubblemanMy goodness, absolutely.

16:21SpeakerHey, cheers. Smoke a joint for Franco, everybody. Please. I miss him.

16:30SpeakerI was just talking with someone with Franco and I got him at all the events and This is 2010 and just always talking to him about the plants and even going to my Instagram and him liking the old world pack. It's a couple of my pictures and that's what we used to always talk about was those land-raised genetics and of course, Hindi Kush is the Kush you love at the Kush and that was one of my biggest things.

16:51SpeakerSo yeah, bomb rip to Franco. You know what? A true cannabis warrior, educator and really did a lot for everybody in the community. Cheers, buddy.

17:01BubblemanYeah, one of my last pictures that I put up on Instagram.

17:09BubblemanIt's the last person.

17:09SpeakerCan anybody else hear you?

17:12BubblemanI can hear someone.

17:16Etienne FontanBubble Man, your vocal is breaking up about 10 seconds into you speaking. Each time you go into a long speak, you kind of freeze up.

17:25SpeakerYeah, and then you take a toke. Plug my mic in. Huh, I wonder what's up. That's weird because he's home too, so go figure. We might have to go over there and check that out, maybe. No, definitely. I am puffing on. Somebody just asked. I am puffing on a Jack Frost, actually, I want to say. Yeah, All-Star Jack Frost. Mm-hmm. 24.1% THC eggs. Wow. I found this beautiful little jar of just dry sift, and it's fully melty, and I...

18:00SpeakerThank you for watching.

18:22SpeakerHey, what's everybody in the chat room smoking today? I wonder how many people in the chat room are smoking right now. Yeah, ho are really smoking. Let's all do a bong rip at the same time.

18:31Etienne FontanAll do a bong rip, yeah. What is that flower, Indra? That's a nice looking flower there.

18:37SpeakerThat was the Emerald Cup first place winner, Scarlet Fire.

18:45Etienne FontanI read an article this week about how some of the winners failed in pesticides. Is that true, Todd?

18:51SpeakerYeah, it is. I sent an invitation to link out to Tim to see if Tim Blake could join us and maybe talk about things. But yeah, they disqualified quite a few entries from what I saw, you know, almost a quarter of them, I think. Which really weirds me out because you've got to realize these people are not showing up expecting to fail. They're showing up with their best shit, expecting to win or hoping to win.

19:14SpeakerSo these people are not getting there with swag. This is not, you know, looking at the outside, looking in, people would think, what the hell kind of stuff is that? It's surprising because when you look at the samples, they're all incredible.

19:27Etienne FontanBut I want to know what the actual chemical people are still using, you know.

19:33SpeakerArathrum.

19:38SpeakerI don't think that's what's showing up, technically. I don't think it's pyrethium. I don't at all. I would think the derivative of pyrethium, and it's a petroleum-based insecticide that's not going to cycle out of the plant if you use it too close to harvest time. Well, we were just talking about this on CNC News Live on Friday, and we have licensed producers, some of the bigger ones here in Canada, using some pretty nasty chemicals, and they're being tested positive and recalls through some pretty big of these companies.

20:09SpeakerSo, I mean, everybody's trying to get around how to fight bugs and combat it. Well, I think it comes down to what I'm seeing, even with myself. You've got to clean your room every time you take something down. It's not like it's... It's a hard thing. I just transplanted new soils the other day, and I just talked about this. I have soils that are trucked across provinces on trailers, stored outside.

20:34SpeakerThey're soaking wet bales. They come to the hydro store. Then I bring them into my garden. I crack them open and wonder where I get fungus gnats or something like that or thrips or what's these soils that's where they're stored and where they come in. And it's really even the licensed producers, they get the same problem. They buy the soils too, and they come with bugs. And we don't know where they're coming.

20:54SpeakerThat's just my opinion. John, you know the thing is, what I've noticed over all the years that I've been at this is if your soil is alive, and I truly mean alive and doing well, your plant will do well. And if your soil is full of chemicals and crap, you're going to get crap results out of your plants. The plants are sensitive to you giving them living soil, and their way of thanking you is by producing the medicine that you want.

21:22SpeakerAnd it's simple. If you give them crap, they're going to give you crap back.

21:31SpeakerIf you have a perfect environment for pests, you very likely will have pests, even if your plants are grown in perfect soil.

21:42BubblemanWell, I think that... Am I echoing if you guys...

21:55Etienne FontanYes, you are, Marcus. I don't have you echoing as much as you're freezing up.

22:00BubblemanLike still freezing up.

22:04Etienne FontanYes.

22:08Etienne FontanYou're frozen up right now. It's about two seconds into five seconds into your speaking. We hear what you start off with, and then when you go into your second or third sentence, it freezes. I'm sorry.

22:19SpeakerI'm going to grab my laptop and drive to your house, and you can use it off of mine.

22:25Etienne FontanOkay, minor technical difficulties. Seems like Tony has popped in. We're trying to get Martin with a visual. Martin, can you hear us?

22:33MartinI can hear you.

22:34SpeakerWelcome to Ash Church, Martin. How are you doing today? Welcome, Martin.

22:38MartinAll right.

22:40Etienne FontanGo ahead, ATN, give them an introduction. Yeah, I was going to say a minor introduction here. This is Martin Lee, who is one of the foremost CBD experts who works directly with Project CBD. He has a history that comes to us from Psychedelic Mushrooms and a great book regarding that. And in the last five to ten years, he's been working directly with Project CBD. So we're very excited to have Martin here.

23:06Etienne FontanHi, Martin. Hi, Martin. Great to have you here.

23:09SpeakerHey, Martin, could you give us a little update on what's going on with Project CBD and what you've been working on since?

23:16MartinWell, we just launched our Spanish language site a few days ago, so the entire website is in Spanish. The website's doubled in traffic in the last year. We've got a lot of stuff going on we're going to be pushing out this year, particularly around the website and different kind of information we offer, particularly emphasizing other herbs and holistic healing modalities that complement cannabis therapeutics and explaining how these other healing modalities are mediated by the endocannabinoid system.

23:46MartinYou know, we're overwhelmed with so much stuff.

23:49SpeakerIt's an embarrassment of riches in terms of the kind of... Yeah, content that's out there right now coming out. Can you give us a little overview of how you feel about the DEA's latest assertment of, you know, don't forget, cannabinoids are cannabinoids. Could you please give us your take on that and the way Project CBD is viewing this administrative backlash, so to speak?

24:14MartinWell, you know, the point was, I think the phrase that you made, don't forget, is the key one. Because they didn't really do much that was new. They just reaffirmed, excuse me, what their policy is and has been, even if it's out of touch with reality. It's still, that's the official policy of the DEA. This seemed to catch a lot of people by surprise because I guess they're taken in by the Thank you.

24:39MartinThank you. Thank you. Thank you.

25:09MartinI think it's very important to support it. The problem is the CBD space as it comes from industrial hemp is just cluttered with a lot of bullshit. There's some good stuff out there too. But unfortunately, there's a lot of hype that doesn't connect with reality. And it's driven by business interests more than concern for people. And the, and the challenge.

25:31SpeakerYeah. You know, it's interesting.

25:34MartinI just want to do emphasize that there's good products that can be made from industrial hemp. It's just that the whole, the whole discussion is muddled because of prohibition and the fact that cannabis is illegal still on a federal level. And that, So you're going through all these contortions if you're dealing with industrial hemp to try to claim that it's legal to extract CBD from industrial hemp and sell it anywhere you want.

25:58MartinAnd that's just not the case yet. We hope that would be the case today.

26:03SpeakerWell, you know, one of the things I wanted to mention as you said that was that I was glad that the FDA did test some of these companies because the biggest concern I have is people getting their hands on authentic CBD. Thank you for joining us.

26:42SpeakerHonest companies, and I think that it shows that people need to try to source their CBD locally or at least know that where they're getting it is reputable, tests it, and that they're actually getting a product with CBD in it. You know, how is CBD, how did Project CBD view that when we saw the litany of tests come out of the FDA and, you know, a lot of them didn't even have CBD or any cannabinoids for that matter in the product?

27:10MartinWell, I think it's important that there be testing. It's an entirely unregulated industry, really. But I don't like the downside of what the FDA did is that it misleads people into thinking that somehow the FDA ought to be the arbiter ultimately about this. And I don't think that's the case. We're talking about an herbal medicine, concentrates derived from an herb, whole plant, urban medicine. That's just not an area that the FDA It's all about privileging single molecule pharmaceutical approaches to healing, which has its place.

27:48MartinThe problem is it's inherently arrogant, it seems, and it wants to claim that's the only way of doing medicine, and that's not the case. Cannabis therapeutics is a profound refutation of that orientation, I should say. So, you know, the problem is again muddled definitions here. We think that the best source of cannabinoids is from resin rich plants, whatever the cannabinoid therapy might be, whether it's THC rich, CBD rich, some combination thereof.

28:18MartinThe best place to get a drug from is from a drug-rich plant, and that's a high-resin cannabis plant. Hemp is a low-resin plant, and it's not a great source of cannabinoids. We know that. It's a great source for many, many other things, and it's a great plant. But I think the issue really that's shaping up is not so much a matter of... Marijuana versus industrial hemp, what's the best source of CBD?

28:46MartinIt's really high resin plants, whether they're above 0.3% THC or not, and sooner or later, there already are now emerging resin-rich strains, high resin strains that are below 3% THC, so it can make the legal industrial hemp cut. And if they're not here now, they will be soon. The point I think in the future is single molecule versus whole plant. That's where we're heading and that's what we have to look at and that's where the FDA really comes down on the wrong side of things even though they were right to test these products.

29:21SpeakerYou know what, but dare I say, you know, as a patient of the last 30 years of cannabis, single molecule is where we came from because that was the argument Thank you for joining us.

29:51MartinI would agree with that. Just one caveat. I do think single molecules can have their place. I think for some people, very, very small number of people, Marinol could be an effective medicine, even though generally a whole plant would be even more effective if they had the opportunity to access it. The same thing with single molecule CBD. It will be approved soon in the United States as a pharmaceutical.

30:16MartinNor the fact that in some rare cases, given the panoply of diseases that cannabis can address, In some very narrow segment of cases, a CBD single molecule could be an effective remedy. But generally speaking, a whole plant CBD-rich remedy is going to be more effective, certainly for growth.

30:37SpeakerCBD in the body when administered is not a single molecule at all. It's degraded and it's a reactive molecule that in the stomach does all kinds of chemistry. Thank you for joining us.

31:11SpeakerMark, hasn't it been shown that CBD can actually, in the gut, change to THC?

31:18MartinYes, absolutely. That's absolutely false.

31:21SpeakerThat's absolutely false. Under acidic conditions, CBD cyclizes to THC. That's what the experimental data suggests. You have to show us data to say that it can do otherwise. You can't stop thermodynamics. No, it's in theory only. Oh, absolutely, yeah, yeah. And again, the theory is guided by thermodynamics. Let me finish, please. Thermodynamics happens in your stomachs. 700 milligrams given daily for six weeks. They could not find any THC in the blood syrup.

31:54SpeakerZero. That's what Martin is talking about. Yeah, I think THC is further degraded, so I mean, you can't, you have to look at... I actually, I don't agree with that either. Under acidic conditions, you have to answer the question, why wouldn't it cyclize? So what's the reason why it doesn't cyclize when experimental evidence shows that it does? Well, how about when they look for it in blood serum, they can't find it?

32:22SpeakerRight. And that's experimental evidence from a company from Japan. You have to keep that in mind. That's from a study in Japan.

32:35SpeakerSo the question is, why doesn't it cyclize when it gets treated with acid? So what keeps it from cyclizing? Well, if that was the case, you could do that synthetically. So why don't you take CBD molecules and magically make it into THC and a Petri? It's not magic, Tony. It's science. No, no, it's not magic. Yeah, it's been shown by Michelle and co-workers that you can take acid.

32:59SpeakerThe reason nobody does that is because it's cheaper to buy THC on the open market than it is to convert CBD to THC. It's like getting gold from seawater. You can do it, but nobody does. So somebody has taken pure CBD and converted that to THC with THC. Yes, that can be done. Tony, we've taken CBD from hemp and we did an extraction that was with Roji Concentrates and it came back 11% THC and that was from hemp and that was direct from CBD and he's done that with some way in his process but three times in a row.

33:42SpeakerWhen we've taken hemp and he's done his extraction, we've came back with some type of TCN 7%, 11%, and it was a 14.2% without the Willis test. And that was test done through MDM labs on Vancouver Island. Yeah, what's the chemical breakdown? Not from that Japanese experimental study in your gut with the acid, but what are they actually doing to the CBD to transfer it? Well, I'm not sure what the Japanese one you're talking about is.

34:10SpeakerI'm talking about... That's the one Mark's talking about. I'm talking about... Well, there's two other studies now. Don't need to back that up. There is. Study by Zernuba Pharmaceuticals in Pennsylvania. The reference by Ethan Russo in his recent... Right. Yeah. And this is well established. There's scientific literature that shows, especially in the liver, that CBD is oxidized by P450 to give a myriad of hydroxylated products. So again, when CBD goes into the body, it gets converted to a number of different things.

34:44SpeakerNo, that's true, Mark, but nobody has ever found any P450. From this conversion. Zero. Can I, can I, can I, all this great science for a second? How about the metabolites? Did they find any of the THC metabolites? Yeah, exactly. Well, all this great science, what I want to say is I think that Martin is correct in that as we learn to understand these cannabinoids and the role they have in our bodies better, as we learn to understand the endocannabinoid system, single molecules will be effective for treating things that are treatable with CBD once we better understand how it's working.

35:22SpeakerBecause right now we are still Quite a bit in the dark with our science. Martin, can I ask you a question? Martin, you said earlier that the meanings of some of the words were muddled. And what I'm concerned with, or what's going on right now, is instead of muddled, I think there are actually people in the administration that are mincing words. And that's the problem. People in the FDA and the drug agencies are mincing the meanings of these words.

35:51SpeakerAnd testing the veracity of all of us to listen to that kind of crap and still go along with it. Well, I have a question for you, Mark. So when you say experimental, they did PKs, bioavailabilities, they've taken it through phase one or two clinicals, they've done it besides, they've done it past the petri, they've done it in rodents, they've done it in humans.

36:12MartinYeah, so... What are you referring to? I don't know.

36:15SpeakerI'm referring to taking CBD and showing that it converts into THC in the body, in the liver, besides experimental on paper.

36:24MartinIt doesn't. They've never shown it.

36:27SpeakerI agree with you, Martin.

36:27MartinIt's simulated against your conditions, but it's not a human being, and it doesn't correspond to what actually happens in the body. Right. It's never been... Ethan Russo just came out with a reputation of this. Project CBD does something on this as well. It's just a bit of... It's just nonsense, and it deflects attention from their issue at hand and figure out how to use this stuff for best therapeutic benefit.

36:49SpeakerSo I actually agree with you, Martin, but I'd like to hear what Mark is saying, that it's proven. When you say proven, when you say proven, how far has it been proven? Okay, so let me just give you sort of like the chemistry background. So chemistry background is that you can convert... CBD to THC under acidic conditions. Now when you do this conversion, what you're doing is you're essentially protonating the exocyclic double bond, which then cyclizes to give a more thermodynamically stable structure.

37:20SpeakerTHC is more thermodynamically stable because it has less rotational degrees of freedom, which exist in the CBD structure, okay? And so this has been shown by Mishulam and coworkers as being two ways of making THC. So I think if you treat it with protic acid, it primarily also isomerizes the Delta-9 to give Delta-8. So I think you can get pretty much a quantitative yield by taking A strong protic acid and treating CBD with a strong protic acid.

37:56SpeakerAnd this is published literature. I'm just telling you what's out there. I've seen those papers for years and years and years. But the question is, has anybody ever found THC in the blood of a human being that only took CBD? I told you that I was just giving you the chemistry background, right? But can I just lay this out? It's not practical. THC is abundantly available at very low prices, and it's going to cost money, labor, time, and equipment to turn less useful chemicals, cannabinoids, into THC.

38:30SpeakerIt may work in a hypothesis in a Japanese, but who gives a shit in real life? We've got fields of CBD, fields of THC. We're legal in all these states. We're going to have tons of these cannabinoids coming down. That's really... It's an important question because there's a lot of patients that can't test positive for THC, and many patients take... But the body has its own THC, anandamide 2-EG, so it's binding in some way or another, right?

38:57SpeakerSo in the neurological land, I'm not a neuroscientist or anything, but how I've learned neuroscience, there's some kind of binding, right? That's not THC. That's anandamide. They're two different critters. I know they're two different critters, but you know what I'm trying to say. Even if they cause the same effect, they're not the same compound. It's that simple. Yeah. So from a chemistry perspective, you have to ask yourself, why does this not happen in the gut?

39:25SpeakerAnd again, I guess until there's conclusive data to show that it does. But let me go back to the other question I think that was addressed, which is the oxidation. This is well established in peer-reviewed scientific literature that P450, which is a oxidizing enzyme in our liver, I'm just telling you that this data exists. Again, as a chemist, Tony, I just ask myself, gee, if I can do this under acidic conditions,

40:13SpeakerWhy doesn't it happen in the gut? That's the question to ask, not does it happen in the gut. We know why it does because it's thermodynamics. The question is, well, if they're not observing a change in some kind of metabolite profile due to this, why? Is it buffered in some way? That's one way to look at it, Mark. The other way to look at it is if you can't find it, it ain't there.

40:41SpeakerWhat about if nobody's really been looking for it under those circumstances? No, but it was. You don't buy things you're not looking for. Did you read the recent paper by Ethan Russo where he talked about several studies doing this exact thing, looking for THC conversion? And they couldn't find any, zero, even after six weeks and 700 milligrams a day per subject. But maybe it's being metabolized further to one of the THC metabolites.

41:10SpeakerSo by looking for THC.

41:13Etienne FontanLet's stop this guessing game. Okay, let's get back to real science. We don't know yet, Dr. Skeldown. Yeah, I know. That's reality. So let's get research out. Let's go back to what we do know with actual science. We consider and hypothesize for hours and hours. Thank you for joining us today.

41:47Etienne FontanThank you so much for joining us.

42:04SpeakerIs CBD converted to THC in the gut? In test tube experiments, yes, that seems to be the case, but in clinical trials, that doesn't seem to be the case, at least now. And yes, this is an important question because People, exactly, I can't remember who said it, but people who have to do blood tests for THC and are taking CBD, they want to know those questions. People who are concerned about psychoactivity, they want to know the answers to those questions.

42:33SpeakerSo, this is an important thing that still needs to be discussed, but we don't know the answers right now. And it seems like in human trials, anyway, this isn't happening. And, I don't know, Ethan mentioned in his paper And I'm in like in the testing experiments, they're showing that this can happen, but the enzyme might not actually exist or the acidic environments needed to do this conversion might not actually exist in humans.

43:01SpeakerSo maybe it's not happening, but whatever. Let's move along to some other CBD misconceptions. So let's talk about CBD being sedating. That's a common misconception. So Martin, do you have anything to say about that?

43:15MartinYeah, it is a misconception. Part of it has to do with biphasic effect that a very, very high dose could have the opposite effect of what a lower dose would be. A lower dose tends to be alerting. I think it has something to do with CBD being a reuptake inhibitor of adenosine, which would have an alerting effect, you would assume.

43:40MartinYou know, it's an example of one of the, I mean, CBD does, as a single molecule, does so many, many things that the reuptake inhibition aspect of endogenous compounds is very, very interesting. And I think that the non-sedating, the alerting effect of CBD may be in part attributable to that, that reuptake inhibition of adenosine.

44:08SpeakerYeah, and Ethan, well, Ethan also mentioned, I'm just going back to, again, his nice little kind of review about CBD claims and misconceptions. This was a paper that was hard to access because it was behind a paywall, so I know a lot of people didn't get a chance to read it. But even what he was saying, going back to CBD being sedating, it might not be the CBD, it could be other terpenes such as myrcene, which is known to cause the couch lock phenomenon or whatever.

44:37MartinAnd to your point, ACDC, which is very popular in the sense of widely grown CBD-rich strain, low THC, CBD-dominant strain, doesn't make the industrial hemp cut, could have upwards to 1% THC in it, 20% CBD by dry weight, does have myrcene as its First terpene, it's high as terpene, and that would have a sedating effect, and that is confusing to people, because if they use that strain, they could feel tired in a couple of hours, or a little more tired than usual.

45:13SpeakerAnd it's also the personal biochemistry that we have. I mean, an aspirin may cure a headache for one person and not cure a headache for another person, so a lot of it has to do with the person who's using it and how it affects them. No? You know, when I was at the Cup, I had a funny experience. I was smoking a lot of 20 to 1 CBD for about three or four hours because my back hurt and I was pretty uncomfortable.

45:39SpeakerAnd then when I actually sat down and had, after many hours of dabbing CBD only, I was I had a dab of THC, and I had to hold on to the bench I was sitting at because it came on so hard. It reminded me of the first time I ever smoked pot. The whole world seemed to rotate and turn and rush.

46:03SpeakerCould be the lack of oxygen, too. I've had that before. I did that a lot when I was younger. I have a question for you, Martin. When was the first time you heard about CBD and became interested in it? What year was that? Where was it? Who turned you on to that information?

46:25MartinIs that addressed to me?

46:27SpeakerYeah, that's addressed to you, Martin. It's Sam, your buddy in Amsterdam.

46:32MartinHi, Sam.

46:34SpeakerWhen would it be? It would be hard to put a specific date.

46:37MartinIt was definitely before 2006.

46:41MartinIt would have been in the context of attending or covering as a journalist some of these science conferences, the International Cannabinoid Research Association or society conferences and those kinds of conferences. I would have heard about CBD earlier, but that's where I would have... Thank you for joining us.

47:22MartinThank you for joining us.

47:42SpeakerWas Fred part of the reason you got interested? Because he was interested in THC, I mean, excuse me, CBD, even earlier than that. We had talked about it many times at the ICRS meetings.

47:55MartinYeah, Fred's, O'Shaughnessy's was really key in opening the door, I think, for me and for many other people, that publication to, it was really the only source that you can get information about the new science that was discussed in a way that was accessible to non-scientists. O'Shaughnessy's is a tremendously valuable source of information that way. And it probably, I think I read references to CBD in other books before I got a hold of an O'Shaughnessy's, but for me certainly O'Shaughnessy's was huge and I was able to help for it in subsequent years with the publication.

48:34SpeakerI think CBD must have some effect because I remember in the early years getting weed that was hemp related and CBD heavy and they called it headache weed. So there was some effect. That's not an effect. That's a detrimental trait.

48:55SpeakerFamily or otherwise?

48:57MartinI think we had some CBD in the hash that used to come around in the late 1960s, early 70s. Almost. I'm sure that was CBD-rich.

49:06SpeakerAlmost all imported hashish had CBD content, or dry-sipped.

49:12MartinBut of course that got you very high because it was also THC-rich.

49:16Etienne FontanDo you know what percentage was CBD, just out of curiosity?

49:20SpeakerNo, we analyzed a whole bunch of plants grown, and what we found out was that about 25% of the plants from Afghanistan, seeds imported from Afghanistan, were high in THC, 25% were high in CBD, and 50% of them were sort of equally had both of them. So, yeah, but I guarantee you, Afghan hash absolutely does get you high, even if it has equal amounts of CBD to THC, because you're smoking them both at the same time.

49:53SpeakerIf you smoke a half a gram of CBD first, and then try to get high on THC afterwards, good luck.

50:05SpeakerIt was in 2% when Mishulam did the isolation from the Lebanese hash that he fractionated to make THC. Had less than 2%, I think it was about 1.6% CBD. What percent THC? Oh, it had a very large percentage of THC. I don't recall off the top of my head, Sam, but when he first did the isolation, But he did remark that, again, it was very, very small amount of CBD.

50:33SpeakerI think it was less than 2%. I want to say about 1.6. Yeah. Well, if you grow dry sift plants, plants used for dry sift populations from Afghanistan, Pakistan, Kashmir, or those areas up there, then you find more CBD because Out in the field, they don't smoke individual plants. They only smoke a field of resin at a time. So they save the plants that have the most resin, regardless if it's THC or CBD.

51:05SpeakerSo there's no way to get rid of it the way there is with ganja growers that keep the seeds of the plants they smoke that they like the best of.

51:15Etienne FontanBut they weren't really aware that CBD was in those plants as well as you do. That was just through their own natural selection or cross-pollination, correct?

51:23SpeakerWho are you talking about? Which group?

51:26Etienne FontanEither or any.

51:28SpeakerWell, the ganja growers knew that certain plants they liked better, so they kept those.

51:35Etienne FontanSo it's just on effect?

51:37SpeakerYes, and the ones I kept had little to no CBD. It was mostly THC. Whereas hashish production, I mean, you can find plants that the majority of them is CBD, like I just explained. So, yeah, it often had up to 50% CBD in the Middle East. Maybe in Lebanon and Morocco it was a bit different because those are much more sativa plants. Thank you for joining us.

52:29SpeakerSo it was marijuana grown seeded, and then they would manicure it and get the seeds out, chop it up with black tobacco and call it key.

52:40SpeakerWell, and back to what Natasha said, I do think, at least from my experience, this last lemon remedy was a three to one with myrcene being the fourth on the list, limonene was number one, and beta-carophyllene and pinene were above that. We were kind of discussing that. Thank you so much for joining us.

53:24SpeakerVarieties paired like the lemon remedy that didn't make me tired, didn't make me sedative, didn't have those effects at all. That's probably because they were low in myrcene.

53:37SpeakerAlmost no myrcene. That's what I'm saying. No myrcene. Yep, that makes sense. So now, can I ask you another question? Sure. I just wanted to know like from your experience and everything you've read about CBD and I know we're focusing a lot on CBD and you guys do a lot more than that but just even where the research is going with CBD and what you think like we all know CBD for epilepsy like what do you think are going to be the emerging kind of conditions that CBD is going to help that Maybe the preliminary science is starting to show some interesting things, but the general public maybe wouldn't have heard about it yet.

54:21SpeakerDo you have anything to say about that?

54:23MartinCertainly metabolic conditions, what's called metabolic syndrome, diabetes, and obesity, and this will be an area I think that CBD-rich therapeutics could really make a very, very valuable contribution. Other neurological diseases, not just epilepsy. It's as broad, of course, as the endocannabinoid system is in terms of its potential for Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

55:24MartinYou know, affecting various different ion channels and so forth. And so you're just opening up a whole world of fascinating science, for sure, to look into, but which likely have very profound therapeutic implications. So that's really exciting. The whole notion of what the endocannabinoid system is is really being stretched to the limits. I think you'll also...

55:52SpeakerI was going to just add to that. I think CBD, you're going to find that, at least with a lot of the patient data that I'm seeing, you might find more of a role in when patients are coming off, say, Xanax. There's different, what Martin was saying, with different receptors and actually repairing certain types of receptors in the body we haven't really discovered yet. And in psychosis and different types of mental illness where THC might not The very first use that we came up with back in maybe 1990 when we were first doing CBD research and we developed the world's first CBD variety was we were supplying the Brazilians who were doing some research as an antipsychotic agent.

56:45SpeakerAnd it was very effective. And I wouldn't be surprised at all if there might be some application of either it or closely related analogs or other compounds that can help people reduce psychosis.

57:03MartinThere have been the studies with single molecule CBD in Germany, which showed a lot of potential in that area. I know there's studies ongoing now at Yale University looking at single molecule CBD for psychosis. And I think these are actual clinical studies. So yes, definitely, that's an area. There are many areas that CBD-rich cannabis products could play a significant role.

57:28SpeakerLet's go back to what you were saying about metabolic diseases and like type 2 diabetes and obesity and how CBD and cannabis could potentially play a role in these conditions. And this is pretty interesting, an interesting area. I'm writing a piece right now that should be out in March about how Thank you for joining us.

58:04SpeakerWe know that in people who are sick and have things like wasting diseases and HIV, AIDS, or even late stage cancer, they can use cannabis to improve their appetite, but it doesn't always necessarily increase body weight, and that's a bit of a misconception because People think like cannabis always makes you gain weight and it can help you gain a healthy weight in some instances but for the clinical trials with things like single compound dronabinol and other things like single compound THC as dronabinol, The clinical trials with that on looking at weight gain or helping with body weight in these late stage illnesses have been a bit disappointing.

58:51SpeakerAnd I think, I hope they don't give up on these areas though because things like, it's called cacaxia, it's late stage cancer and diseases where your body literally starts like Thank you for joining us.

59:29SpeakerWhat's interesting is these diseases are more complicated than that and it's also about targeting the inflammatory process and if they can get this inflammation under control then a lot of these patients can actually start gaining body weight. And so I think a lot of these studies with cannabis for appetite and body weight increases have been a little limiting and that they should also be looking at how cannabis could potentially target inflammation and I think that's a big area that CBD Thank you for joining us.

1:00:12SpeakerMore, like with more compounds, and not just the cannabinoids, also with the terpenes, because as we were talking about before, something like mercine might make you more tired, but there's also some animal studies showing that something like mercine can actually stimulate appetite, and things like linalool and lavender might stimulate appetite. So if we can put all these compounds together and create something that's targeting appetite, body weight, and inflammation, and of course other things, perhaps we can help these patients.

1:00:40SpeakerAnd then we can look at the other end of how cannabinoids not only can increase body weight and appetite, but can also suppress appetite and body weight. And again with CBD, there's an animal study showing it suppresses feed intake anyway. But in general, I think CBD has a pretty neutral effect on appetite. What do you guys think? Dr. Natasha, two things. One, I watched my dad put 50 pounds on when I started feeding him pot brownies in the hospital.

1:01:10SpeakerHe was 126 and he went to 160 before he died. And so I know it had some kind of effect. He wouldn't eat. And when I started giving him the pot brownies, he started getting me to go to... So he ate well towards the end. And I contribute that towards the fact that he ate a pot brownie every single day. Yeah, and he's eating something that has the whole plant, right?

1:01:41SpeakerIt's not just a single compound, so he's getting a bunch of different things. And that's even a lot of the clinical trials with HIV patients, they find that when they're smoking cannabis and the whole plant cannabis, they're finding better effects or even higher dose. Like a lot of the clinical trials just aren't using high enough doses of THC because then there's unwanted side effects. So there's an issue of trying to get the dosing right also.

1:02:04SpeakerWell, we haven't. We have an organic answer to that question about that. It's called a joint. You know, and that's worked for years and years and years. People smoke a joint, get the munchies, bang. It's anecdotal evidence to be sure, but it's potent anecdotal evidence, isn't it?

1:02:24Etienne FontanMartin, can I ask you a question? Sure. What is, what's on... What's on tap for Project CBD in 2017 and into the future? Where do you see interaction?

1:02:41MartinI've got, like I said, embarrassment of riches in terms of opportunities. We're just limited by resources and just the number of people we have working with us. But I think I would... I would like our information offerings to evolve in a direction that's more encompassing of other herbs and other holistic therapies with the grounding and information of how it relates to cannabis therapeutics. I think that that would be a A good approach for many different reasons, because I think it's most helpful for people potentially, but also I think there's some political strategy behind that, and I think we could be in for a very rough period in the future, particularly on the medical side, because while REC is, I'm not getting a free pass, but it's moving forward in several states, the question is what is going to happen with regulation of The medical experience with respect to cannabis.

1:03:41MartinAnd there you have a distinct possibility of federal policy, at least in the United States, coming down strongly through the FDA in terms of a single pharmaceutical approach to the exclusion of others. And that's very worrisome to me. So I think whatever we're going to be focusing on, we'll be doing it with that in mind, that we want to I think that plays into what you were talking about before, Natasha, where

1:04:27SpeakerAnd we had this conversation about CBD compound likes, like CBD compounds that are found in different plant species that exist. And that's also undiscovered. I mean, we talked about this with, you know, just as topicals and how different types of essential oils with CBD can create different responses, as we were talking about when I saw you in person. But I think you'll find also... One last thing on that was about muscle recovery and different things that maybe aren't quite related to, say, patients, but just overall wellness as we venture into that next chapter that Martin's talking about, just general wellness.

1:05:16SpeakerAnd it doesn't have to be at a pharmaceutical level, but it can be at a daily thing, you know?

1:05:26MartinI don't think it's even more. I don't think that the choice is between daily or pharmaceutical. I think there might be a lot more possibilities in terms of how one layers CBD, I should say cannabis therapeutics, not just simply CBD-rich therapeutics because cannabis therapeutics is broader than that, but how one layers it into one's life. It's a relationship we have with the plant. Relationships evolve as one's Thank you so much for joining us.

1:06:24MartinWe have a California production operation that was hit very hard last June with a rain that has since bounced back and stronger than ever. But we're concerned that that could happen at any time again. And I hear different things with my ear to the ground. I don't think there's anything that the federal government can do ultimately to roll back this whole phenomenon. It's way too strong, but they can certainly make life miserable for certain people and for certain organizations, and that's a big concern.

1:06:54SpeakerI think within the state of California, as long as you're not trying to import or export out of the state of California, Right now, they will ignore CBD activities. It's just when you try to do interstate and international. Aren't I correct?

1:07:14MartinI don't know what they will or won't do. They can do whatever they want. They've got the guns. And they can make any excuse for attacking a medical operation, saying, oh, it's not really medical. We got word that it's whatever. It's something else. But the fact of the matter is we've legalized it for recreational use and adult use in California. How this is going to be implemented, It remains to be seen.

1:07:37MartinYou know, it's on the one hand very exciting and very daunting and in some ways very difficult and challenging for people. And it's big changes afoot in the whole space. Big, big, big change.

1:07:48SpeakerAnd people are working with CBD like your good organization. But also, remember, we're just scratching the surface. Next will come up CBG. CBC, THCB, and some propyl homologs of some of the other ones also. So we still have a long way to go. Well, you know, that brings me to the question I wanted to ask Martin, which was, you know, as you interview people, do you see a lot of people starting to use the available cannabinoids, CBD and others as preventive medicine of people that are trying to, you know, stay healthy?

1:08:34MartinI could say I use CBD-rich cannabis that way, but also I want to strongly say that I'm very partial to THC-rich cannabis as well. And so, I don't know. People have to figure out how to use it and layer it into their life. People are different. And if you're not dealing with an acute illness, then, okay, what are you using herbs and medicine for? You have to figure that out.

1:09:00MartinI'm not saying that's not a good thing. I think it's really... Thank you so much for joining us.

1:09:14MartinThank you so much for joining us today.

1:09:41MartinThe great doctors in this area are really the exception and not the rule. And the great doctors are dealing with catastrophic cases, generally speaking.

1:09:51SpeakerCan I ask you a fun question? And speaking of going into our golden years, one of my favorite publications of yours is your book, Acid Dreams. And a lot of us on the panel agree. Love the work of Albert Hoffman. And I was just wondering when you first tuned into that. I first heard of you when you were putting your book together about cannabis personally, but that other book, Acid Dreams, I've just loved.

1:10:20SpeakerAnd I was just wondering when it came out, what inspired you, and if I could, what impact socially do you think that his work had LSD on society in the past 30, 40, 50 years?

1:10:33MartinAcid Dreams came out in 1986. Glad you asked. It's an oldie but goldie for sure. It's never gone out of print and recently now is an audio book and a very well done audio book, unlike Smoke Signals, the audio book I wasn't too happy with. But my interest in both LSD and cannabis goes back to my early teenage years. Thank you for joining us.

1:11:16MartinJust on an intellectual level, very, very challenging and interesting, both cannabis and LSD, the things it poses on a physical, a philosophical level individually, in terms of social realities, whatever. For me, it was very interesting. I was interested in these as both subjects, not just to experience, but to be thinking about. And, all right, so...

1:11:42MartinWhen did I start working on Acid Dreams? 1977. I had a chance when I was living in Washington, D.C. to review some CIA documents that were being declassified that were discussing the CIA's experimentation with LSD, and that was quite eye-opening. I came across, I think, in my first session when I would go down to the CIA's reading room in Virginia and look at this material that was being released.

1:12:07MartinI came across a document that indicated that the CIA, it was minutes of a meeting from 1953 in which these high-level CIA people were discussing the availability of 10 kilograms, they said, of LPRLSD from Sandoz. And they were considering this as a potential threat to national security. And they decided they would buy this supply. And 10 milligrams is enough for hundreds of thousands of doses. And to be a little bit confessional, the first type of LSD I ever took was actually Sandoz.

1:12:43MartinIt was from a friend whose uncle was a doctor, a psychiatrist. He had some left over. From the time, we have to remember, in the early 60s, LSD was legal, at least accessible for a psychiatrist to use as an experimental medicine, and where you say it has positive effects. But then everything, you know, the shit hit the fan real bad. Everything fell apart, and by the late 60s, 1967, it was banned in the United States.

1:13:10MartinWell, this was after that period. There was some left over. So we knew exactly how many milligrams we were taking. And I just wondered, well, you know, it was just one of these light bulb moments reading this document saying, my God, that was the type of LSD I took. I wonder if I took the CIA's LSD, which turned out to be not the case. They got the decimal point wrong.

1:13:33MartinIt was not 10 kilos available. It was 10 grams. And You know, so typically with the CIA, you know, they sort of bundle the information. But nonetheless, it set in motion just the whole question of what, in terms of what you just asked, you know, what was the social impact of LSD? Would the CIA or some kind of control freaks, social control freaks, see this as something advantageous to be out among the masses?

1:14:02MartinWhen it weakened people's interest in political engagement, social, you know, these kind of questions of which I didn't have a prejudicial point of view, you might say. It just posed, and they were intriguing and kind of drew me into this whole process of researching what the government was doing with LSD secretly. Now that brought into a much more interesting story of just what was happening in the culture and then how these two things were interrelated.

1:14:31SpeakerWell, I want to thank you for writing it. I really like the book. And when I was, you know, a teenager in the 80s, everything was lumped into one pile. You know, cannabis was illegal, hash was illegal, LSD, mushrooms, mescaline, DMT, I could go on, was all illegal. And, um... And so it didn't matter. It was if you're going to do one, you could do all of them.

1:14:50SpeakerSo LSD ended up playing a really pivotal role in my development and my kind of coming to terms with going through childhood cancer and kind of coming out of it and looking forward to a future that was uncertain and reading books like yours. It helped me understand the choices I made tripping when I was younger and I appreciated it.

1:15:13Etienne FontanMartin, I have a question. What inspired you to do the book? I mean, it's one thing to be exposed to LSD and be exposed to the culture. It's another to actually sit down and put pen to paper.

1:15:26MartinWell, you know, interesting subject. I mean, I started working on it. It was 1977. That's 10 years after the so-called Summer of Love. It just posed a myriad of very interesting social questions, not just the

1:15:42MartinThe interesting intellectual issues it poses when one takes it about, you know, existence and temporality and so forth and so on. Just these fundamental philosophical type of questions, at least that for me is what it amplified, the significance of those questions and drew me into it. I don't know, it's all about, I was involved as a writer already and that was, what better subject to write about?

1:16:07MartinIt was so interesting in so many ways and so is cannabis for that. It intersects in so many different levels with areas of interest.

1:16:15Etienne FontanBut it's one thing to write something. It's another thing to get it published. So how did you go about finding interested publishers? I mean, in those days were the dark ages of the drug culture.

1:16:26MartinWell, Acid Dreams was published by Grove Press, and Grove Press had that reputation of being, well, at one point it was somewhat of an avant-garde publisher. It published the beats and a lot of edgy material, and I think that was part of that tradition. The editors there were very receptive to that as a subject, and they saw it as something that maybe could sell, quote-unquote, and actually Acid Dreams has done well in that way.

1:16:53MartinIt's never been out of print.

1:16:54SpeakerMartin, did... Back then, did you believe in turn on, tune in, and drop out?

1:17:05MartinI was never a follower of the great leader. Not that Leary was seriously presenting himself that way, but I took it as one among many cues.

1:17:19SpeakerI would have turned on, tuned in, and took over.

1:17:25MartinYeah, I was not a dropout person. I turned on TuneIn and be engaged maybe in whatever you're doing, whether it's an artistic expression or political engagement or whatever. To me, I don't think LSD has some intrinsic direction telling you not to be engaged. I think that the dropout part is a... In one sense, you might say a reasonable response to an unreasonable situation, but that's not the only response to social injustice.

1:17:53MartinTo drop out and create a better society is one way to go, but not the only way. So I don't know, but I would never follow up.

1:18:02SpeakerKnowing Larry and meeting him multiple times and being able to smoke with him and such, I think it was dropping out of the norms of society, you know, coming from the perspective that he was, you know, Harvard professor, you know, in the suit and the tie and oh so proper. And, you know, really kind of dropping that hole. That's what it takes to be a correct person mentality and finding your own place.

1:18:26SpeakerI think the dropout part, but I love, of course, and I've pursued the, you know, turn on, tune in, take over, but, you know, dropping out of that part of society, I think was an important element for our whole generation or a whole generation of people starting to think outside the box. I think what he was talking about when he said dropout was drop out of the conditioning.

1:18:53MartinAlso, you had on the political side, people like Herbert Marcuse talking about the great refusal in the 1960s. And you can say that's a dropout too, you know, and that the tune in, turn out, drop out is part of that great refusal. So I see them all as a part of a spectrum that should be affirmed.

1:19:15SpeakerWell, it's a fantastic book and I thank you for writing it. Just wanted to bring it up because it was just one of those books that once I read it, always stuck with me and I really enjoyed it. So, thank you.

1:19:27Etienne FontanWell, you also jumped from the LSD, then you went into psychedelic mushrooms, correct, Martin?

1:19:32MartinNo, I didn't write about them in terms of the book. I wrote about them a little bit in Acid Dreams. I'm obviously interested in them and have experimented myself, although it's not something I'm actively engaged with these days. But what did I do next? I went into FAIR, Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting. I was one of the co-founders of that. It was the same year that Acid Dreams was published in 1986 that we launched FAIR in New York.

1:19:56MartinAnd then FAIR is still going on, FAIR.org, a good organization. It was focused on media criticism, including on how the news media was covering the drug war. And the drug war was a huge issue in the 1980s when Reagan was president. But we addressed wide range of issues. And the third book, Beast Reawakens, is about neofascism. That's relevant today, unfortunately, with, I could just add another chapter to that book in terms of the current administration.

1:20:26MartinAnd then cannabis, smoke signals. I don't know if I'm going to write another big book. The whole publishing world has changed so dramatically. I realized after Smoke Signals was published and they, you know, an ebook is now a standard part of your publishing contract with mainstream publishers. I didn't think much about it at the time when I signed the contract, but now I realize I'm an indentured servant to Simon Schuster and I can never get that book back in my life because they can always, Publish it as an e-book.

1:20:55MartinThey don't have to do anything else. So authors can't get their books back anymore if there's an e-book.

1:21:01SpeakerAnd I think that that's a bit disturbing. If you want to keep up with times, the next book you write, instead of printing up a book, just tweet it every day for a year.

1:21:13MartinI haven't gotten, I've limited myself to, I'm a non-Tweeter, I have to admit. I think Sarah does that for Project CPD.

1:21:21SpeakerYou know, with that said, in your experience in the literary world, do you have any, a lot of people in the cannabis industry are writing books, and do you have any advice? Should they all just, as my first publisher, Peter McWilliams, was famous for saying, he self-published out of self-defense. And do you see that as the solution for people that are trying to put their own books out into the literary world?

1:21:47SpeakerWhat's your advice?

1:21:47MartinYeah, it's really good that we have that option. I mean, now with the internet and the whole digital reality, it's much easier to get an audience in a way, but it's much more difficult to earn money as a professional writer. So, you know, once again, it's a balance. I don't know. There's been two really excellent books come out recently within the last year that was essentially self-published, Chronic Relief by Nisha Whiteley, and very recently Dr. Bonnie Goldstein's book, Cannabis Reveal.

1:22:18MartinBoth of them are excellent, and so it really underscores that you don't need to go one of the big five publishers to have a positive experience publishing a book. In fact, you can really get caught in a A whole undertow of problems when you're dealing with corporate publishers, big corporate publishers.

1:22:39SpeakerWell, I have your audio book.

1:22:45SpeakerDo you read the audio book on Acid Dreams, by the way?

1:22:49MartinNo, somebody else read it. I think you did a great job. With the smoke signals, I was less than pleased with the audio book, but so it goes.

1:23:01SpeakerYeah, the Acid Dreams audiobook's a great one. I put it under my pillow when I go to sleep.

1:23:06MartinOh, that's sleep teaching. Dangerous.

1:23:11SpeakerWell, I learned years ago that... You only really listen to your own voice as like it within your head. So if you want to program yourself at night to do something different, you've got to use your own voice. Subliminal tapes never worked because it might be somebody on the subliminal tape whose voice irritates the living shit out of you. And so then you don't really learn anything from it and maybe even have a psychotic reaction.

1:23:36SpeakerBut if you record that stuff in your own voice and play it back, you're very likely to listen to yourself.

1:23:43MartinInteresting.

1:23:49BubblemanI wonder if my mic is still broken. Oh, really? Cricket mic. Wow, I feel pretty happy. I've been listening to the conversation and enjoying it, for sure. But at the same time, I just felt like, I wonder if my mic is working now.

1:24:07SpeakerIt's a lot better than last week. Last week, I hate to say that church was piss poor, but it was pretty darn close. Yeah, it was awesome. Marcus, we got some heat from the congregation, too. I bet. Yeah, the folks were a little upset. I'd like to ask Martin something, if I could, while there's lull in the conversation. Could I? Sure. Hi, Martin. I'm Mark Sheldon. I'm a chemist, and sometimes I'm, I guess, a victim of my own chemical knowledge, so sorry about the previous discussion.

1:24:43SpeakerYou've got to realize we're on the same team. I'm always one of those people who sometimes, you know, will... Thank you so much for joining us.

1:25:07SpeakerThank you so much for joining us.

1:25:24SpeakerYou know, CBD is a resource and all, so it's a particular kind of phenol, and it's a fat-soluble one, which is really key. So it's bioavailable, and any kind of phenol is going to be a radical scavenger, so it's going to help maintain the quenching of free radical species that can cause all kinds of mutations. So in terms of health maintenance, yeah, I can understand why that can almost be viewed...

1:25:51SpeakerThank you for joining us.

1:26:06SpeakerPerhaps there was some evolutionary pressure that made the plant evolve the different synthases. What's your thought? I mean, there's a completely different molecule in CBD in that you have a resorcinol versus the benzopyran. Their UV properties are different. There's all kinds of things that you could speculate on why the plant would evolve this bifurcated biochemical pathway to produce these molecules that we have. Oh, so love and enjoy.

1:26:38SpeakerI don't know about chemically, but evolutionary, I've read several papers which lead credence to the belief that THC came from CBD. In other words, CBD was the first synthase, and THC came maybe as a mutation or whatever from that. Right, so what could have been that evolutionary pressure? I really don't know. And whatever happened before the last ice age is probably lost. You know, that's gone. So we have to really look since the last ice age, really when man started doing with agriculture and stuff.

1:27:24SpeakerBut I don't really know except for that in nature, CBD is just as common as THC. But... There's no grouping between, say, equatorial and non-equatorial varieties, Sam? There's no clustering on where those varieties were found if original land races were discovered? The trouble is that I'm not sure people can find any cannabis land races that are untouched by the hand of man. They've all been selected by man for some purpose.

1:28:07SpeakerMaybe they exist, but I haven't found them yet. And I've looked everywhere and collected seeds every place, looking for what I felt was truly wild. I found some that I thought were pretty close to wild, 9,000 feet up in the Kashmir Mountains. They were 800 seeds to one gram. Whereas the ones that are bred for seed size by man in China, I've had them 12 to 1 gram.

1:28:41SpeakerSo that gives you an idea of the difference. The hand of man really made it big, whereas not having the hand of man, it being a truly wild plant, the seeds are really, really, really tiny. And also the yield of cannabinoids is also tiny, and it's not geared towards THC at all.

1:29:08Etienne FontanUtterly fascinating. Bong rip. I can get behind that. It's good to hear you, Bubble Man.

1:29:24BubblemanIt's good to be heard.

1:29:26Etienne FontanSpeaking of, how was your trip to Jamaica? Can you tell us more? Because we didn't really get to hear much.

1:29:32BubblemanJamaica was amazing. It was a very good trip. We moved things forward for our company. We got to see, I guess, The growth that's happening from the start of this project from four years ago to where we lay today, mostly like all the other companies, still waiting final permits, but working projects in with University of West Indies and the Rastafarian Council. We finally got our rosin press in Jamaica, so we have a Sasquatch rosin press there and lots of bubble bags and washing machines.

1:30:10BubblemanYou know, we've had the terpenes produced already, so it's... There's a lot more to tell than I am telling, but I think it's important to just do the work first before, you know, letting it out of the bag, so to speak. So definitely watch for more exciting things coming out of Jamaica. And we're not the only company there. Of course, there's other people doing interesting things there as well.

1:30:33BubblemanSo I think in the next couple of years, it's going to get very interesting.

1:30:39SpeakerWe did explore, we did do a path through all of our genetics though. There were some different genetics there that was very interesting to see under the Jamaican sun. Things that I've seen indoor and things that I've seen in greenhouses in different states as well. And now to see it in Jamaica was quite interesting. And to see how they had to cultivate, you know, 3,000 feet on the side of a mountain with their own water.

1:31:07SpeakerI mean, people don't understand Like what the rosters and like what they go through just to water their plants or, you know, get shit done over there. Yep.

1:31:19BubblemanI guess I've got a little bit of that footage. I could show a little bit of that drone footage from the... It's not as smooth as a drone footage might be normally, and that's because I couldn't figure out how to turn off my obstacle sensors, and the posts are very close, but we'll give you a little shot here of the...

1:31:45SpeakerThis is like a greenhouse.

1:31:46BubblemanOoh, look at that shot.

1:31:48SpeakerI was going to say, this is a greenhouse that was sexed from seed. So they were all seed, then sex, then transplanted, and then these are kind of basically like your mothers that will end up flowering out.

1:32:01BubblemanYeah, I'm trying to fly between the posts.

1:32:04SpeakerSo funny.

1:32:07SpeakerThis is... This, watching you, watching this, first of all, I'd never seen a drone in action and I ended up buying a Mavic Pro just because, just because of the sheer, I mean I was into radio controlled cars and planes and obviously film and cameras, but the control that like these drones have, and this doesn't really do it justice at all over the internet. It's fluid flybys that, like if you were in the film industry and, you know, 20 years ago, like shots that he got, you know, two miles in the air over Jamaica coming down on acreages of farms was out of control, really.

1:32:51SpeakerI mean, it was something I'd never seen before. So, technology wins on this one.

1:32:59BubblemanFor me, it was so good to see how...

1:33:07BubblemanIt's in Jamaica, which are two and three feet tall, but there were a few that were in the four and five foot tall.

1:33:17BubblemanReally nicely there. But did you want to name some of the strains?

1:33:23SpeakerYeah, you were kind of coming in a little choppy. I think you were talking about the health of it and some things that were, yeah, some things that were different there, you're seeing like they're planted right in the ground, but what that is, that's dug out. And then there's emulsion, like fish emulsion. And then there's this like reddish clay that's very, very airy that they have there, a lot of it.

1:33:46SpeakerAnd so they do this emulsion with clay, but like a dry clay. And then you can see the lines were dropped with the feeders. So there's Jack Frost is in there, Lemon Pie, a... A Harlequin.

1:34:07SpeakerThere was a Star Killer. El Jefe. El Jefe. What else was in there?

1:34:19SpeakerThere was a few more in there. Couldn't remember all of them. But the Jacks looked really healthy. I expect them to be really good. And that Lemon Pie Bubba Kush. Look really good. We'll see how the Harlequin does. And those are all, also if you're looking at that, those are all, those have like little lights up there, so they're not just thrown in, you know. They were kept.

1:34:50SpeakerOh, there you go.

1:34:57SpeakerEvery day, was it every week the guy has to go and get fresh spring water brought up? 2,500 gallons or something like that?

1:35:07BubblemanYeah. Yeah.

1:35:16SpeakerSo there's a rumor on the island that the, I guess their like, form of their DA or whatever, they had bought like two or three drones and nobody had actually seen any drones flying around. So there was this kind of like, joke going around that like basically, Bubble Man was posting up and probably scared the shit out of like, I don't know, a few hundred farmers by flying this thing all over the place.

1:35:42SpeakerWe were talking about it. We were talking with Iggy and I was like, well, your competition's done. And he goes, what do you mean? I was like, Bubble Man over there, he posted up within five minutes, just flew a drone all over Jamaica. So everyone around your mountain just scattered.

1:36:00BubblemanThat's hilarious.

1:36:02SpeakerWell, What you can do, Marcus, is to paint yours bright orange and tell everybody, when you see the orange one, don't worry, it's just me.

1:36:23SpeakerInternational space there.

1:36:28BubblemanYeah, some fun footage. I'll tell you, we traveled two and a half,

1:36:37BubblemanIn 10 minutes. I was like, what? Yeah, we're leaving in 10 minutes.

1:36:45Etienne FontanBad news, Bubble Man. Your issue is creeped back.

1:36:50SpeakerYeah. Only when you're trying to speak, though.

1:37:00SpeakerWell, you know, we do it for the love. Obviously, you can tell it's not a very expensive production, you know, so. Well, like Sam always says, it's time for a hostile takeover. Wait, we were supposed to keep that under our belts. Don't let Marcus know we're going to take over. Well, he's helpless now. He can't do anything about it. Maybe you're right.

1:37:32SpeakerYou think we've been hacked by the Russians or something?

1:37:38SpeakerWhoa, that could be real. They're after house church. They're after house church. Let me check WikiLeaks. All we all have to do is comb our hair forward and put orangish makeup on and we'll just blend right in with them all.

1:37:55Etienne FontanBigly, bigly, bigly, bigly, bigly.

1:37:59SpeakerYeah, but where do we get our big red baseball cap that says, Make America Stoned Again? Or is that what they said? We should Make America Hash Again is what we ought to do.

1:38:12MartinSomeone gave me a cap the other day saying, Make America Green Again.

1:38:16SpeakerThat's pretty good. Yeah, we haven't talked much about that one, but... This will be an interesting next four years if he makes it four years. I want to be the first one to predict. You just don't know what could happen. Might leave a winner, might leave broke. I want to be the first one to predict that he will let down all the workers of America that elected this guy and will not be reelected in four years.

1:38:51SpeakerLet's face it. How has Trump made a magic turnaround and became in favor of the workers? This is a guy who's cheated everybody good around him for years. Well, he even admitted it on the campaign. He said Clinton was saying something about About all your buildings are made of Chinese steel and this and that. And he says, well, there's no rules or any laws preventing me from doing it.

1:39:15SpeakerAnd those got to be fixed. So it was kind of like he said, yeah, I've been taking advantage of the loophole. So I know how to work them and how to fix them. I predict. I predict he will be impeached within two years. Probably. And then Pence will turn out to be a hundred times worse than anybody imagined that he could be. He's a Christian. He's right wing.

1:39:37SpeakerAnd if he gets his chance, he'll hammer down everything in a hot second. And I think Trump stands a great chance of getting impeached. They've been talking impeachment since before he got nominated.

1:39:49Etienne FontanWell, they also came out with five different agencies have been investigating his friends ever since the spring of last year. And as we know, those investigations take about about a year or so. So depending on what they found, which means something in the next six months is going to definitely pop up. But I have a feeling the Republicans are only propping him up as long as they can get Use him to what their advantage is and once that's done then they're going to release the hounds on him and he will be persona non grata and run out of Washington.

1:40:23SpeakerWell and it's sad because we have to vote for him so that basically we got to vote for him to just say hey if you're in any way shape or form hands off you know states rights on cannabis you got to kind of vote for him and root for him because Pence is He's, you know, he does not favor it at all. And with Sessions there, now it's kind of like we got to, you know, hope for the best here because if Pence takes it... Let's be honest, even if he does that, if Trump does allow cannabis to flourish better, he's only throwing crumbs to appease the peasants.

1:41:01SpeakerYeah, it's true. That's true, but you know, the word is that Sessions is a team player, and if Trump tells him to lay off, that that's what he'll do, he'll lay off. And I mean, as much as everybody's afraid of his stance and the way he talks about things, his reputation is a team player.

1:41:25Etienne FontanWell, we also saw a re-ignition this week of... Thank you for joining us.

1:42:00Etienne FontanDismissed, but it was just reinvigorated by a federal judge this past week and given the current situation of instability and unknowing where we're going, it's one we're keeping our eye on.

1:42:14SpeakerThat doesn't mean that the Supreme Court is going to listen to it. The Supreme Court turned it away the last time and didn't listen to it then. And if you read the briefs that they've presented around it now, you see there's not really much change in the argument than before. And they're just hoping that people new in the administration will see the same old shit as, oh, new and invigorating information when it really isn't.

1:42:45SpeakerWell, I can hope he gets impeached. I can always hope for the best because you know what? We had eight years of Obama and he didn't stand up and say, as a scholar, I can tell you hemp has a great history and marijuana prohibition is wrong and we're going to change that immediately. He didn't. He kept locking people up. And he pardoned more people than the last 20 freaking presidents in history.

1:43:10SpeakerBut he also continued the bad policy of locking us up in the hundreds of thousands and dragging us through the court system. For the last eight years, he was the freaking president. And, you know, I have never liked Trump because he's a fucking loudmouth trust fund baby. But that aside, it's going to take somebody to step up and go, this is stupid. And we have to end marijuana prohibition.

1:43:36SpeakerWe have to look at this rationally. We have to look at it from the perspective of how much money is being transferred illegally. When it could all be done through banks, it could all be done without costing the criminal justices. It could change significantly.

1:43:52Etienne FontanHow does one rationalize with somebody who won't even admit to the reality of photos and the actual Department of the Interior stating how many people were at his election? You had his own... Oh no, dude, your butt ass crazy. I'm not saying you rationalize with anybody. He chastised the actual media and then came out today and said that, oh, he was using alternative facts.

1:44:17SpeakerBut he lives in an alternative world, Christ's sake. So this is the reason I've never liked him. Not from the fact, he's just a pompous ass. I've never liked pompous, rich assholes who got daddy's money from New York. It's never been my kind of calling card. His hair is orange for a reason. He's a clown. No. Hair, orange, clown, orange hair, clown, orange hair, clown. If you need to go to the toilet on your jet, we're probably not going to be friends, you know.

1:44:44SpeakerI just see a greater need in the world. So not my kind of friend. But that aside, cannabis prohibition has been ultimately stupid. And if he did legalize weed or whatever, I would almost like him, forgive him for his gold-plated shitters. But... You know, go figure, you know, it's what it is. But, you know, I say it's like, really, it's like watching a race or a game or something that, this is kind of really weird right now.

1:45:13SpeakerAnd America has turned into a reality show. And I think the rest of the world has popcorn in their lap and they're just watching, laughing really hard at us. Todd, the thing we can count on, Todd, is, Trump is the kind of guy who won't be taking the same tack towards it that everybody else has, worrying about school children and so forth and so on. He's going to be looking at it with a businessman's eye.

1:45:40SpeakerThat's the way he looks at everything. And there's no reason to believe that he's going to look at this any differently. Sorry, I just got a visual of Trump feeding school children alligators. Well, it depends. Is it profitable? It's good for the alligators. It's an attraction at one of his hotels. Oh, jokes aside. But, yeah, it's going to take somebody to go in and say this has been stupid policy.

1:46:07SpeakerAnd realiztically now, I hope that this mobilizes the left and the people that have been fighting for not just marijuana legalization, but a whole host of very important issues to really organize and step up. And, you know, we need... We need kind of cohesive cohesion. We need to kind of come together. And you can't run the government like a business, you know. It has got business aspects, but you can't just run it like a business.

1:46:33SpeakerYeah, he's the first guy who's come along who's willing to sit down with a pen in hand and change the law. He's that kind of guy. We've had a different businessman. There was Hoover and different presidents before that tried to take the business hand at it. And there's empathy for people. And that's something he's going to have to learn because he doesn't have it and he wasn't born with it.

1:47:00SpeakerAnd it's very apparent. And that's going to cause a lot of problems if he tries to run everything like a business without any empathy for people. In the 1960s. The empathy part comes in by not stopping the cannabis businesses. There's a lot of people that are depending on it for a living. And I think he will look at that and not reach out with a little pea brain like Sessions and hammer the whole thing.

1:47:30SpeakerYou know, I think Trump will think about all the people that are making a living off of it right now.

1:47:38BubblemanWell, as much as I...

1:47:46BubblemanCertainly not why I invite you here each Sunday to... You're frozen. Oh, I'm frozen.

1:47:57SpeakerI tried.

1:47:58BubblemanI tried.

1:47:59SpeakerNo, I think we think you said politics bad, right? In two words, politics bad. Tongue well hashed. Okay. Well, it affects your hash, not in Canada, but it definitely affects your hash in the United States, so we had to cover a little bit of it. Well, and don't you think it affects the high too? Don't you think the fucked up laws? I mean, everyone always talks about, ooh, smoking weed makes you paranoid.

1:48:23SpeakerYou know what makes you paranoid is the fucking laws. If we could freely smoke weed, no one would be paranoid, right? There's no paranoia. That's bullshit. And I'd like to say, for the love of science, this has been a political issue from the drop. You know, we... We've been in an uphill political battle to get these rights and the freedoms to even talk about this, you know, like we're talking about it now without fear of, you know, raids the next day and repercussions tomorrow.

1:48:50SpeakerSo we've had a long battle and it's not over. And this is the reason we all talk about it because every single person on this panel has had cannabis affect their life positively. And a lot of everybody watching this thing right now, same thing. So we all get it. We just, we really do have to try to motivate our neighbors who don't get it as much as we do, or we are always going to be oppressed.

1:49:15SpeakerYeah, I had, uh, I had an interesting experience coming back into the country, um, Randomized, I guess, but just to get a perspective from another entity or agency, but they will randomly take you out of line and then make you wait in a line for an hour and then take you to a desk and then check you in and take you to another desk and check you in for another hour and then they Google you for Probably another 30 minutes or so.

1:49:49SpeakerI'd say they spent a good hour while you're sitting there, probably Googling you and trying to find out who you are. And as you know, lying to a federal agent will get you imprisoned and or fined. If you ever have to speak to a federal agent, just keep in mind that there is no lying. Don't try to lie. Because they hate you lying. There's a Fifth Amendment, my friend.

1:50:15SpeakerYou just tell them I'm not going to incriminate myself or say anything that might incriminate myself without my knowledge even of doing that. And you just don't say anything. You don't tell the cops anything ever, period. Well, I see that you said and done that when you're at the customs border trying to get back into your country. They can't stop you if you're in America. You have to talk about two different things, you know.

1:50:39SpeakerOne is when raided, yes, please keep your mouth shut, ask for a lawyer, and, you know, be really polite so you don't get your ass kicked. But when entering into the country, what Tony is saying is don't try bluffing these motherfuckers because they'll call you shit, put you in a secondary, and rip you a new one. Yeah, and the two people before me obviously tried to throw some bluff because it was an older lady who got the gloves in a special room and this other guy got arrested by humongous dudes.

1:51:08SpeakerThey had like some regular guys that were working the computers and then whatever happened with him. Whatever he said, they brought in two guys that were like, made me feel like I was five foot one. So I'm six five, so they must have been eight footers. I don't know, they were huge. I'm like 260, they were like 350, seven foot, you know, just monsters. And they just, they were taking people away.

1:51:35SpeakerSo I could imagine that like on the surface when you Google me, And you say, oh, okay, this guy works for a cannabis company. United Cannabis is coming from Jamaica. This seems like, you know, a big, big, big fish here. But after I saw the old lady go down, then I saw the guy before me go down, then it was my turn to go up there. And he says, well, you know, I wanted to find out who you were and what you were doing in Jamaica.

1:52:06SpeakerSo I said, well, let me start by giving you my business card. And what my position was and what company I worked for. And I was straight with them. Exactly what we did. But they knew all kinds of stuff. And they tried to trip you up. And I volunteered. I said, you can go through all my stuff, my watches, bag, whatever you want to go through. I got nothing to hide.

1:52:32SpeakerThey have Instagram at the airport. They can type into Google and figure out what you're doing and see things and Yeah, no. And now that cannabis is okay to talk about, it's better just to be straight up. Well, I can tell you from their position, I had showed them the brochures, and I was basically pitching Prana while they were going through my luggage. And so they were like, so you're able to get like the raw form of it.

1:53:01SpeakerAnd I said, yeah, you know, there's THCA, there's elements that are medicinal without also getting you high. Most of the program is all raw form. And they liked that. And then you could tell like the recreational thing. They asked me like several times if I was in the recreational market or if I sold recreational or anything recreational kept trying to trip me up. And I was like, no, I don't touch manufacturer or distribute and certainly all just medical.

1:53:26SpeakerAnd they're like, okay, okay, that's good. And I was like, is that kind of like the, The feel, if you will, among, you know, where the agency is and stuff. And to be honest, and that was where I got a surprising response. And he said, you know, we see good things with medical cannabis, and they specifically talked about epilepsy, autism, cancer, HIV, you know, pain related things as a natural Alternative, they seem to be pretty supportive, like the ideology behind medical cannabis, whole plant medical, not like a CBD thing or anything like that, just that there was evidence out there and every one of them always brings up Gupta.

1:54:12SpeakerYou know what I mean? They're just like, well, you know, they see in their mind there seems to be good among what they see in moms, parents, their siblings, their friends, people with, you know, conditions like that. So there's a positive support. But the recreational in their minds was not a positive thing. More of an experimental fuck the cats out of the bag thing.

1:54:37Etienne FontanIt shows a great dynamic change though, at least what we've affected them exponentially to where it seems Gupta was quite a wave across the mainstream.

1:54:50SpeakerYes, that's what I'm going to say is positive. Our mission wasn't based on that. They saw some documents in my possession that was more into research and development, which they liked too. So they were... They're, I would say the mentality in the last eight years, maybe Obama didn't do exactly what we wanted, but in the last eight years, in one shape or form or another, there seems to be a better consensus about medical cannabis helping people and there is good there and I think that this This next wave is going to support medical.

1:55:28SpeakerI'm not sure what we'll see on recreational. Like you said, that new case is up. And it's not the new case. It's just they're coming at it as a RICO Act. So they're coming at the appeal differently than the first time with the other states. The states are trying to claim RICO. And there are some things that could go either way. That's a toss-up one. That could go either way.

1:55:56SpeakerJust kind of depending on where they're going to go with it. But I do also happen to think that it's too big. And once a state regulates the way Colorado did, I would find it hard to believe it would reverse. Well, you got to remember too, Tony, the feds do not have the manpower to do this. They could go after the biggest players or they can encourage the state locals to do their bidding for them, but they don't have the manpower, the feds.

1:56:30SpeakerYou know, though, they almost can't convince the locals to do their bidding for them to the degree that they used to because now they don't have matching budgets. They don't have supports of city councils. They have city councils looking for revenue and looking for ways to tax the industry. They're not looking to impede it. They're looking to, if anything, expand banking regulations and open it up because everybody, you know, including cities and states, you know, they're strapped for cash.

1:56:56SpeakerThis is expensive to police and it's not making the money and I'm sure even the most conservative politicians are drooling over the numbers coming out of even the small states like Washington which only has 5 million people living in it but is already clocked in a billion dollars in cannabis sales legit. Yeah, and Colorado is the same way. When I was in that market, the way they set it up with the cameras, I mean, You're talking like cameras everywhere in these facilities.

1:57:24SpeakerSo there's monitoring that goes on from their agency. So their first couple years they had lots of inspectors and, you know, they had to police it hard. But once you get everyone licensed, once you get everybody online, once you get the mitts going and all the tracking systems going and everything accounted to a gram, you know, You have the privilege to do that for a living and you pay a lot of money to get licensed and get all of that stuff situated and so when they're clocking in in Colorado like 180 million in a month, there's tax money that goes to those police officers and those agencies.

1:57:58SpeakerSo now what happens is the federal budget is zero, the state budget is in the tens of millions towards them policing and supporting the cannabis industry there. Technically they're paid to do their job and protect the plants at this point and to protect those businesses. Now if those businesses ship out of state, go off the grid, do something wrong, it'll be hammer time for sure. You know, it's interesting because one of the reasons I was in support of 64 passing is because in California, I read that between 02 and 12, the California Eradication Task Force had eradicated or seized $181 million in property from people.

1:58:41SpeakerAnd there have been books written that forfeiture laws were motivating law enforcement to perpetuate the war on drugs because it created revenue for them. And there's a lot of factual data to back that up. But when you look at what they're expecting revenue to be in a single year, you're looking at a billion dollars a year in California with its population base. What they stole from us in 10 years, they would recoup in less than a quarter with taxing us and allowing us to exist.

1:59:13Etienne FontanI saw that in Berkeley when we started paying our tax money and we saw the police actually when they were selling budget cuts all around the state they started to have new vehicles and it's very interesting when you start to financially have an impact on your community that positively impacts those around you that you used to consider your enemy and now drive by you and wave at you and buy and stop and shake your hand because You're giving them an economic basis where they never had before and opportunities to exceed where they're actually hiring more cops as opposed to laying them off.

1:59:49Etienne FontanAnd they understand the economics of it. So not only has the medical side proven itself out through efficacy as well as through testing and the new re-emergence of CBD, et cetera, the financial aspect Thank you for watching.

2:00:23SpeakerThe new activism, I didn't mean to cut you off, Tony, is people like you that are trying to get the politicians and get the people that are, you know, to see you as legitimate business opportunities that they could support and, you know, the society and community around them would gain benefit from. And that's kind of what we need. People that show up with a business card and a smile and say, listen, you know, not trying to rob you or kidnap your kids.

2:00:46SpeakerYou know, this is something that could help you and help the community. And I think when they start looking at us in this beneficial way as doctors and specialists and scientists and such, they're going to look at the community a lot differently. The cannabis community is what I'm saying. Well, they give you that. They put you through a lot of scrutiny to get to that point. Like I said, you've got to get...

2:01:09SpeakerYou've got to prove yourself. It's something that's earned.

2:01:17SpeakerAs much as they're your friend, when you're above board, don't get too relaxed because the second you're not, they'll hammer you. I can't emphasize that enough. People risk everything and pay a tremendous amount of taxes, and when somebody avoids that, I don't really, you know, I don't really have any sympathy. You know, it's like once you're on the grid and everybody's on the grid and you cheat the grid, you know, consequences for it.

2:01:47SpeakerAnd I think that part right there is what will keep federal intervention off. It's if those locals and those local agencies do have a budget like you said now and they are getting paid and their job now is to protect those that do business correctly and protect those plants and those patients and then those that are not, you know, they're going to seek into that now. They're going to have a budget to investigate on that.

2:02:11SpeakerThey're like, okay, well, local task force has been watching you for six months. What are you doing, buddy? You know? And so inherently we're actually fueling their local budgets in a different way with a different mentality.

2:02:26MartinI'm going to add something here if I could. I've seen in California, Northern California, definitely a shift within the last several months. I think that state officials are really strongly behind the, they want to be behind the marijuana industry in California. Certainly in terms of After the raid against Care by Design and the Canicraft Group, local politicians in Santa Rosa came out very strongly behind the industry and behind that group in particular, and so did officials in Sacramento.

2:02:58MartinAnd it was right around the time of the Emerald Cup last month, there was an interview with the attorney, the incoming attorney general in California, who basically said that they were not looking for a fight with the federal government. But if around marijuana industry, but if the federal government wants to pick a fight, they're going to be dealing with the seventh largest economy in the world. And they've made it very clear that they want to see this industry succeed on their terms, obviously in a regulated, taxable way.

2:03:29MartinSo things are really shifting in that regard. But if I can shift also and pose a question related The acid versions of the cannabinoids. Some folks on the panel here might have an answer. Why is it, if as is the case, THCA is not psychoactive like THC, doesn't bind to the CB1 receptor, if the acid versions of these compounds are not psychoactive, why when you eat a lump of hash, you get totally blitzed out like you're on an acid trip?

2:04:02MartinIf those compounds inherently or not cycle. Someone give a good explanation for that for me.

2:04:08SpeakerI think it's a combination of the terpenes and some of the THC is in THC form. It's not all in THCA. For example, they may have used heat when they pressed it and various other compounds. My question then is, is 11-hydroxy metabolite is obviously the one-pass effect that THC goes through when it hits our liver, and I'm just wondering, basically, does that still happen if it's THCA?

2:04:44SpeakerHow much of THCA is converted into 11-hydroxy? Muhammad Asali estimated it was three to five times more psychoactive in our bloodstream than THC. Yes, but it doesn't happen with THCA. THCA, for the record, does not convert into 11-hydroxy metabolite? Not to any appreciable rate, no. Yes, it does. Can I ask this next question then? Is it going on that?

2:05:11MartinIs that the way you understand it too, Martin? Yeah, I agree with what you said. It makes sense about what you said about terpenes and probably with just the preparation of making the hash, rubbing it in your hands or whatever, just naturally in the plant, that there'll be some conversion from THC A to THC.

2:05:29SpeakerYeah, so there's two things about psychoactivity, right? So you have to first get what's across the blood-brain barrier. And I think it's pretty well established that THC gets across the blood-brain barrier A whole lot more readily than THCA. So there's that. Then there's binding to the receptor. And I know that the binding hasn't actually been measured for THCA. And I was looking for that article. And I'll see if I can't post that later on the Hash Church website.

2:05:59SpeakerBut I think that one of the things that you have to consider with any of these is that Again, these things are reactive, somewhat reactive molecules in that they have functional groups that can undergo bioconjugation, that can under actually go, I think what's happening with the terpenes effect here that you're seeing, and we've talked about this on Hash Church before, What we're seeing is that terpenes increase the fluidity through any biological membrane because it basically opens up the lipid bilayer to basically accommodate a lot more molecules just being transferred in and out of cells.

2:06:35SpeakerWhat that does globally, it depends on the administration, depends on the rate and everything, but it is going to peripherally affect that tissue in which the cannabinoids are being absorbed into. To distinguish this from, hold on a second, Sam. So distinguish this from like taking like a dab where you're getting a huge dose of decarboxylated THC Thank you for joining us.

2:07:22SpeakerSo that's why we feel high when we take a dab as opposed to the longer onset of activity that it might take if you're doing like an oral tincture of activated THC. But I totally hear what you're saying, Martin. I would think that also in the body, correct me if I'm wrong, There could be non-thermal ways of decarboxylating the THC acids. So I know that yeast and other sort of biochemical roots could actually be implicated to actually decarboxylate THCA or the cannabinoid acids to make the decarboxylated versions.

2:08:07SpeakerIt would be interesting to do blood plasma levels and see exactly what is going on. Thank you. Yeah. Yeah, I think so. Again, I could post some results. There are some results that were done with blood plasma work. I think it was done over in the UK. It was published maybe about five or six years ago. And I could, again, post those links onto the Facebook for Ashwin.

2:08:31SpeakerI'm pretty sure that I remember Roger Pertree telling me that THCA does not really bind to the CB1 receptor. Like THC does. Yeah, I'll pull up that data right now, Sam. Hold on, give me just a second. I'll tell you in a second.

2:08:55SpeakerCarry on, folks. But I do agree. I've eaten both resin and cannabis flowers, and I did get stoned. But they were rich in terpenes and also they, maybe your stomach can decarboxylate a tiny bit of it enough to give you an effect because oral cannabis is more effective than smoked. I agree. It works for me too, Sam. 100%. I can eat, when I came, when I was in the hospital, I started eating cannabis right when I came out.

2:09:34SpeakerI couldn't do anything else. I couldn't smoke it, so I was eating raw cannabis. And it helped me 100%. It has to have a pathway towards some decarboxylation because the plant... You're eating your stomach, so something's going on there, right? Well, the plant uses THC as a bird repellent, and so the birds only get stoned if they eat something and it's able to be deep-carbed in their systems or there's enough THC there in the first place to keep them away from eating the seeds until the plant material rots away from the seeds.

2:10:08SpeakerSo I think that there definitely must be a pathway for I don't know the birds that you know, John, but the birds that I know, all of them, they like THC and they go looking for it and they eat up all the damn plants and all the seeds just because the THC is there. They want it. Well, in the wild, that's not the case. In the wild, when birds would...

2:10:35SpeakerI agree with you. I'm just joking. Yeah, you know, unfortunately I lived in Kansas for a while and in Kansas you can drive 60 miles an hour for an hour past fields of marijuana or hemp that's been grown there since World War II.

2:10:57SpeakerMost notably, they make a lot of seeds, a lot of 30, 40 foot tall plants loaded with seeds. And I don't see the birds, or I didn't see the birds investigating them until the seeds hit the ground or the plants hit the ground. That was the first time I saw the birds looking at the seeds there. And anecdotal evidence, though it may have been, there was a lot of it.

2:11:18SpeakerSame thing when I was in Rishikesh, when I was in Rishikesh in that area for a number of years, and you could drive for hours and hours and hours on the road, Sam, I'm sure you know that as well, by marijuana plants on both sides of the road, obfuscating your view from almost anything else.

2:11:40SpeakerYeah, no, I can't say that I've seen, I've seen birds a couple times eating seeds from my plants in my greenhouse. They came in through the open windows and they were stealing. And I just chased them off. But I haven't seen it be, but I've, Red hemp literature where they said in certain areas you could not grow because there was a particular type of bird that really, really favored hemp seeds.

2:12:10SpeakerIt would just ruin seed fields. Very colorful little birds, I think, right? And they wear sometimes dreadlocks along with the feathers. No, but it's Jamaican brethren. Right. Just pulling strings.

2:12:34SpeakerI'm just interested in the fact that cannabis, you know, I don't think that the cavemen who discovered it were rolling up or twisting up doobers. I think they discovered it probably by eating the seeds and then noticing the psychoactive effect. You know, I've maintained for years that mana wasn't just mana, it was manawana. And I think mankind survived on that early because it's been looked into recently and it looks like, on the books anyway, marijuana is the most nutritious vegetable on earth.

2:13:11SpeakerI consume it every day. I take CBD caps. I smoke it. I put it in my smoothies. It's a plant that saved my life. And I'm not, no, guys, I have to take off for the day. Thank you. Just love listening to you guys and have a fantastic day. Peace, everybody. Bye, Johnny.

2:13:30MartinI also have to take off, but I also appreciate being on here. It's fun to be part of this conversation. So I'm going to join you again in subsequent weekends.

2:13:41SpeakerThank you for coming on, Martin. I've been a fan of your work for a long time. Martin, I can't thank you enough.

2:13:46MartinMy image was visible because I'm looking at me.

2:13:51Etienne FontanWell, we look forward to having you back in the future, and please feel free to come back. We appreciate your knowledge and your broad base of experience. It's greatly appreciated.

2:14:02SpeakerAnd what you have to try and do, Martin, is move on, move on. CBC, CBG, THCB.

2:14:09MartinCome on, move on. It's got to be available or else we're just moving on in our heads rather than interacting with people. But yeah, we'd love to see more of those options actually available on the ground. I know eventually, but we want it now. You take care.

2:14:26SpeakerNice to meet you, Martin. Thanks, Martin. Bye.

2:14:36SpeakerThank you. So I found that data. Do we want to look at the data?

2:14:41Etienne FontanBong Rip. Well, thank you again, Martin. That was needless to say. Martin Lee is his name. He is definitely an asset to our community. It's definitely great to have him on. So thank you very much, Dr. Rice, for making that happen and making it come to fruition.

2:15:02SpeakerSo he's gone. We can talk about him now.

2:15:07SpeakerYeah, I thought his mama dressed him funny.

2:15:11Etienne FontanHe just had this blank stare the entire time.

2:15:20SpeakerShame on me. All right, Cricket. So do we want to talk about that data? Yeah, I was just looking at it. Go for it. See what you got. Explain what you got there. Okay, so it looks like the KI for CB1 for... THCA, it's got a pretty large range here. I mean, if you look at the range, it's quite large, but somewhere in the nanomolar regime, let's just say nanomolar, and you can see THC is about 8.5.

2:15:55SpeakerI should share my screen here. Hold on a second. Let me share this. Let me see if I can share this. Marked by a factor of 10, 100, 1,000. Yeah, exactly. Okay, hold on a second. Let me... Let me see if I can share my screen and show you. Okay, so can you guys see it? Maybe not. No, we see you. Okay, hold on a second. Let's try this again.

2:16:26SpeakerActually, I just see the reflection in your glasses of the screen. All right, fuck it. Well, I can't share my screen. Yes, you can. Yes, you can. You just go to the far left, and right under the blue one is a green thing that says screen share. Yeah, well, why isn't it working for me? When I go to screen share, the only thing I get up there is... Do you have a secondary... Oh, here we go.

2:16:48SpeakerApplication with that. Never mind. Okay. All right. How about now? Can you see this? Bingo. Okay. Oh, there it is. Yeah, bingo. I see it. Synthetic. So there is some synthetic in here, but we've got, Yeah, there's some synthetic, but this is just a table, again, that's copied from the literature. So basically what you're looking at here is the smaller the number here, the more potent it is for different receptors.

2:17:15SpeakerAnd it says specificity here between, Thank you for joining us.

2:17:35SpeakerYou know, current discussion, this isn't the data that I was referring to. Data I was referring to was from another article, but point is, is that these were all measured, again, as biologically available. So when they say biologically available, it's going to be activated THC. So you're talking about THC and CBD that's been essentially decarboxylated. And what you see is, again, just what Martin had said, which is cannabidiol having no affinity for Thank you for joining us.

2:18:22SpeakerThat are probably made by mostly fluorescence spectroscopy techniques because you're basically measuring how certain radio labels are basically counted and taken up by in this particular test. There could also be very different tests run in different Thank you so much for joining us today.

2:19:09SpeakerAnd so basically this is just an admission that the pharmaceutical company paid attention to the discovery of the endocannabinoid system because right away they started developing synthetics. And these are the synthetics that you find on, you know, the various things like spice and whatnot, some of which have an incredible affinity for the receptor. So if you look at like, The WIN compound, it's basically more potent for CB2 by an order of magnitude.

2:19:49SpeakerAgain, don't pay so much attention to the range here, but just look at sort of the lower number here, just sort of guide you on how potent these are for the receptor. So some of these numbers, again, are very, very small because that, again, describes their binding affinity and activation of the receptor. This tells you whether or not it's agonizing the receptor, which turns the receptor on similar to the way Thank you so much for joining us.

2:20:42SpeakerPotent binders to the receptor. I mean, something that binds on a nanomolar level is still pretty binding pretty potently. Now, again, the range of these has to do with exactly how it's measured and by what assay. And I don't know if anyone else wants to comment on it. But the only other thing that I found with the acids, I don't know if you guys find this too as well, This is just mostly an individual bioassay.

2:21:16SpeakerI noticed that the immediate onset you get when you dab is just not there when you smoke a refined concentrate. It's just not there. So if you were smoking something like the clear or a vape pen, something where you know that it's been distilled and it's been deactivated, there's definitely no We're going back and forth here on the K values to CB1 range 23 on THCA.

2:22:05SpeakerAnd then we have THC. Sorry, it's real hard to see on my end. You were making these little comments out here because it looked like you had some data on the difference between THCA and THC as it's absorbed, or at least connects with those.

2:22:23SpeakerI'm sorry. I was on mute there for a second. Here, let me post that. So that's this paper right here, Tony.

2:22:36SpeakerI just put it in the chat. Okay.

2:22:42SpeakerSo again, I'm not familiar with this full paper. I'd want to read the full paper before, you know, commenting and understanding exactly how they're measured. This is in 2014, October 12. Interesting.

2:23:07SpeakerYeah, I still don't know that this is, again, the answering the question on bioavailability and psychoactivity and whether or not it's just merely the difference in receptor binding affinity, which is manifesting in the way you feel different from doing one or the other. The phytocannabinoid did not affect the number of dopamine.

2:23:51SpeakerWell, if you smoke THC-A, what gets delivered to the blood and brain is THC. That's correct. If you eat THC or THC-A, what gets delivered is 11-hydroxy. If it's oral, you're taking it oral, so you're comparing apples and oranges. Yeah, but eating it, you mean like consuming it into your GI tract. It's different than say like taking like a sublingual drop where it gets absorbed into the circulatory system in advance to going through the digestive system.

2:24:28SpeakerYou're right, a sublingual like GW does or a suppository like O'Soleil's patent. Yeah, no, that's more like smoking it. Right. And I would assume like if you administered it in like a nasal spray, just because you're getting it into the oral mucosa where it's going to absorb into the bloodstream in the neighborhood of your brain, you're going to feel psychological activity that way, right? I wouldn't be surprised, but I don't know anybody who's done it.

2:25:00SpeakerAnd also, don't we have to really get to a point of standardization and or consistency in terpene and cannabinoid levels before we can really make generalizations about how they're affecting us because there's so much variance. Thank you so much for joining us.

2:25:47SpeakerYou know, we're not going to know until we know based on something that's consistent or maybe I'm wrong. Well, there's ways to do that. If you're talking about the active version of THC, you can do plant-derived like our P1s plant-derived and then we extract terpenes from specific cultivars so you could pair and overlay those terpene profiles consistently when you're doing huge batches. But yeah, you have to standardize the cultivation.

2:26:15SpeakerUm, standardize the genetic production. So if you're, you know, if you could go from tissue culture on a large scale or at least preserve that in tissue culture and then, and then clone out from there. Um, but yeah, you have to standardize everything. Um, it's not easy and no one's ever standardized it from, uh, from a pharmaceutical level. If you're trying to get a pharmaceutical approval on a natural product that's naturally derived, it's a very difficult.

2:26:42SpeakerWhat about corn? I don't eat corn or look at corn or touch corn or corn products anymore. But a lot of people do and you get food and you get also alcohol and a lot of... And beef. Beef wouldn't exist without corn. That's grass-fed beef. Yeah, you're right, you're right. There's grass-fed beef.

2:27:08Etienne FontanThere's also Skittles-fed beef, too, that came out this week.

2:27:13SpeakerI'm glad you mentioned that, because that Skittles-fed beef is probably pretty damn sweet.

2:27:18Etienne FontanYeah, it's full of corn syrup, pretty much, so yeah, it is corn per se, but they're feeding, yeah, apparently a truck of Skittles turned over that was on its way to a farm, and yeah, they've been feeding cows that came out this week, Skittles, by the tonnage.

2:27:33SpeakerWell, I got a ham that was from the pigs over by where it's up here in Northern California. There's several people who feed their pigs exclusively on leftover marijuana stuff. And I got a ham from the guy. And I got to tell you, I did not get high off of it, but it was head and shoulders above other hams I have eaten in the past.

2:28:01SpeakerI think it's because that pig was happy. I didn't know that it was going to end up. It was fat and happy. It was fat and happy. So there you go. I was living high off the hog.

2:28:15SpeakerYes. In a transparent economy. Yeah. Transparent monetary system. I'll get it right next time. Okay. Those guys that are making those little glass coins would be offended if you...

2:28:37SpeakerAnyway, Dr. Natasha, I really want to get this seed thing open up to you because I think what you're doing... Really clocks in with seed extraction. Because I think seeds are magical. Besides providing the oil, the other protein isolates that are within all seeds, we haven't really looked at in the world like we should. There's a lot there that the world's missing out on, and there's a tremendous food source that's bypassing us.

2:29:11SpeakerMarijuana seeds are in the forefront because they produce such a beautiful isolate. I don't think Lisa would have done that. Well, and that's what I was saying when we were talking about CBD before. You got to look at the plant itself like hemp, you know, and then if you've got hemp holes, people use all kinds of hemp proteins, hemp isolates, you know, but when you start incorporating like pure CBD at least, and when I was saying in a, I guess you would call it a daily layering as Martin was saying, but if you're, if you look at how CBD in its pure molecule can help Thank you for joining us.

2:30:04SpeakerAnd it not being a drug, you know, so there's a whole bunch of undiscovered stuff that's out there and you're definitely going down the right path. Just like when we're talking about milk thistle and different things, you know. Yeah, I was looking milk thistle up in the herbal directory and it seems that it's listed as the antidote for THC. Is that right? You might know. Yes. What are you going to cure?

2:30:36SpeakerWhat they're meaning by that is THC can stimulate the CB1 receptor, whereas silymarin can inhibit it. So that's kind of what they're saying by it's an anecdote. It's not really. I don't know. It can inhibit potentially some things, THC effects of it, but I think that's more what they mean by that. It acts differently on the CB1 receptor compared to THC. Does anyone else have a comment on that?

2:31:08SpeakerCould be a competitive inhibitor for the receptor? I saw it in one of those teas they advertise that if you drink this, you'll pass a urine test.

2:31:20SpeakerYeah, I don't think that's true. I don't see how that could be true. Did you see the report that came out? It looks like the 19th was reported on National Pain Report about a new pathway for cannabinoid receptors repealed and in effect of it being analgesic. Which one now, Todd? I just posted it in our chat. You can see it. It's a national pain report did it.

2:31:48SpeakerAnd it's actually pretty interesting. The study was published by the Journal of Neuroscience. And, you know, it just, again, they're finding another path of how cannabis works or cannabinoids work to relieve pain. I mean, my first five vertebrates are fused and I've grown up with constant chronic pain and cannabis has always quelled it. So I've always been kind of tuned into reading about stuff like this. And I just find it interesting, you know, all that really they're coming to the conclusion is they're figuring out more neural pathways that the cannabinoids are basically working to do the things we would like them to do.

2:32:27SpeakerWell, the pharmaceutical industry wants to make pills that cure you but don't make you feel better. And they're ignoring the fact that cannabis, when you use it and you're feeling bad, makes you feel pleasure. And when you're feeling pleasure or you're in a euphoric state, it's much tougher to feel bad. Thank you for watching.

2:33:10SpeakerFun is not allowed. You should not mix feeling good with feeling bad. And they don't get it that feeling good helps eliminate the bad feelings. I think a lot of people, especially in your various religious backgrounds, think that self-flagellation is a good thing and feeling good is a bad thing.

2:33:37SpeakerYeah, I agree with you. Joy has definitely been oppressed by religious, you know, guilt has been part of the Roman Catholic religious experience since I grew up and part of why I rejected it and moved on. And, you know, feeling good was a great way to get over feeling bad. And I thought that when cannabis helped me psychologically feel better about the fact that I was, you know, fucking going through chemotherapy and dealing with cancer, It gave me a better perspective on it and it way helped with my healing.

2:34:09SpeakerYou know, that psychological lifting it did to my spirits helped me in so many ways. You think you still might have recovered from the cancer without that, just from the chemotherapy and the drugs that they gave you? It's hard to say, you know, I met a doctor when I was in one of the prison hospitals. He did his pre-med on histiocytosis and he wanted to talk to me because his one comment was, I've never met any adults that were children of your disease.

2:34:34SpeakerAnd he was really nice. But, you know, it's weird to say, I mean, I had it so many times, John. I had it 10 times, you know, in so many various parts of my body. I was just really lucky to get through it. And, you know, so I don't know what would have happened. I'm just really grateful that my mom picked up that magazine, Vector Housekeeping, and read about marijuana and decided to give me a joint and had an open-minded pediatrician.

2:35:06SpeakerI fell fortunately within some good people and I'm still alive today and I give thanks. I think that your statement that the doctor never met an adult Thank you so much for joining us.

2:35:34SpeakerWell, massive role. I think Western medicine played a critical part in this. You know, I have a spinal fusion and, you know, I've got physical things that they fixed. But, you know, cannabis did so much for me. It's what motivated me to become an activist. It's what motivated my whole life, you know, really to try to get other people tuned in to what it was helping me.

2:35:57SpeakerI mean, I became addicted to this information when I was fucking really young. I mean, I So 12, 13 years old, I was growing. I mean, this was my passion from a very young age because of how it helped me. It helped me in a way that was profound. And I mean, it not only made me stop puking, it made me feel better. It made me eat.

2:36:19SpeakerIt helped me sleep. It brought my life together. And I don't mean that in a light way. It really brought my life together. It gave me balance. This is the path of two activists. They always come from suppression and barely surviving an experience. They're trying to open it up to everybody so that everybody can understand where it came from. And the reason that you survived all that was because you are bringing this message all the time.

2:36:46SpeakerI've been listening to you on Hatch Church for a long time and you ring that bell very consistently. So I'm convinced for one You feel that the fact that we did survive is intimately connected with cannabis, not able to be divided off from it. And that's, you use that as a strength that you bring to your activism. Yeah. It, you know, it, I didn't realize it was, I didn't discover my activism until I just, I met Jack Herrer and he, Basically walked me through the back door of you know the whole cannabis movement and let me see what it was like from his perspective and he mentored me and put me on stage and you know really encouraged me to speak up because he felt people would empathize with the fact that i was a little kid who could articulate why it helped me and you know as an adult it you know cannabis medicalization was the first step in compassion And striking a string of empathy in people so that they would stop and listen to us and not just pass us off as they did with normal, unfortunately speaking about recreational use and civil liberties use for a couple decades.

2:38:06SpeakerWhen people really started looking at medical cannabis, it was hard for them to deny somebody the empathy that they would want to show their own child. You know, who wants to see their kids suffer? You see it coming across some politicians now who've been forced into that corner of needing to use it for their own children. So they're finally coming around and saying, hey, this law needs to be changed.

2:38:31SpeakerMy own kid was treated with it. Now it's doing fine. And unfortunately, it's taking that. I mean... Somehow the powers of the cosmos are reaching out and smiting these kids from these politicians so that they will turn around and take a new look. Well, it sounds like a weird thing and I don't want to sound like a jerk to say it, but you know, when I read in the early 90s that they were predicting cancer rates would be one out of two people by 2000, I actually thought to myself, good.

2:39:04SpeakerEverybody's going to either have cancer or know somebody that's had cancer, and their heart will have to open up to the good that cannabis can do for people. And I don't mean that, but when you see all the harm happening, it takes something to really motivate people or to be that catalyst for them to understand. And nothing makes you understand more than someone you love suffering and this little benign flower being the bridge that helps make them feel better.

2:39:33SpeakerWe know the Chinese have a saying, they say that you can't learn wisdom without an enemy.

2:39:42SpeakerThat's deep. Enemy, though, in this case is ignorance. And we have to always remember that because when people truly get it, they get it and they can never go back. Our politicians, our doctors, our lawyers, our friends, our neighbors are all reachable if we can find out what would cause them to understand where we're coming from and we build from there. Well, compassion is definitely the key.

2:40:05SpeakerYou're right on, Mark, with that. There's no other way to some of them, to their hearts. You have to remember, a lot of the politicians are sociopaths and people who are otherwise what would be called control freaks.

2:40:21Etienne FontanOr egomaniacs.

2:40:22SpeakerOr egomaniacs and control freaks mixed. So, you know, getting through to them... It's going to be a matter of shaming them publicly into Thank you so much for joining us today.

2:41:04Etienne FontanThank you for joining us.

2:41:21Etienne FontanThank you for joining us.

2:41:42Etienne FontanOver time, you know, we made the change and also showed up and did the volunteering and do all those things that are not fun to do. However, it means a lot to that politician if you're trying to sway their thoughts and where they're actually going to spend their money or how they're going to vote. So it really takes an intimacy of you getting involved. And if every single one who's sitting here watching here right now got involved and taught their friends how to get involved, And showed them how to go and talk to their constituency and went down to their city council meetings and attended them.

2:42:17Etienne FontanYou would see a great change across the board if you actually attended and pay attention to what's actually going on around you currently. And you can affect the change in the future. We knew that when we started in the early thousands that we would have a very limited impact. We've got to show up and...

2:42:50SpeakerYou got to show up at the city council with several thousand people every fucking time they meet and stand around, standing room only, and then they get it that the community is involved and wants something. And that's what you've got to drum up. I mean, right now, America is disconnected from the people who control and run things. And the only way we can reconnect is by constantly reminding them that, by the way, decisions that you make need to And you saw yesterday that women are woke around the world, and now they're active.

2:43:43Etienne FontanAnd I hope that they will get active and continue to be active and will teach more of us men how to be active and get involved to realize that, you know, even though we may not be affected by their laws that are being affected on their bodies, but it affects them and therefore it affects us. So we have to listen actively and assist as well.

2:44:04SpeakerWell, women know how to do it. You know, I saw the police report on Yahoo. Not one arrest was made. And women could go out and do that kind of a demonstration without an arrest. That would have been a bunch of knuckleheads out there. There would have been plenty of arrests. But women went out and did it the right way. And believe you me, they got the attention of everybody.

2:44:28SpeakerYou know, there were so many that were there and they were all in the same heartbeat and all on the same page. It was powerful. Trump said it was fake news. Yeah, well, those pictures, we saw the pictures. Can I say this about fake news, though? Hasn't marijuana been the number one victim of fake fucking news for the last century from all of these clowns? And it's hard to take a lot of what they say seriously, any of them, even the most reputable, because they've been lying about a fucking flower for as long as I've been alive.

2:45:03SpeakerWell, dude, the people who are doing all the lying were the people who were printing newspapers who had something to gain by telling us a load of bullshit in the beginning about it. Well, they all had something to gain, John. They all made money pushing them pharmaceutical companies and taking big money and fucking promoting the drug war and that. All that fucking payola money was real dollars.

2:45:26SpeakerSad but true. It's the good old boy complex that runs strong in this country in the DNA and in the blood. You know, in the 1990s, I got to go on tour with some activists, and Jello Biafra was one of the activists. And the way he spoke when he went on stage was with the Newsweek magazine. And his point was, as he flipped through pages and he explained who the authors were and who they worked for and what their histories were and what their perspective was and why they were writing this biased, opinionated report.

2:45:58SpeakerIt was really deep. And he had us sitting on stage with our mouths wide open and Jello just shredded us because it was so true. And until you learn how to read who your sources are and what their motivation is for telling you what they're telling you, you're getting biased opinion the whole fucking way through. And I left that night, the first night I really listened to him speak, just never looking at anything the same, a news week ever again.

2:46:28SpeakerDude, I remember when I first came to understand the meaning of special interest groups in politics. It didn't really come through to me when I was a lot younger. And then when I first got on to what special interest groups did and what they were, I suddenly realized, wow, these are people who are through one means or another are trying to subvert politics. And, well, you could...

2:46:57SpeakerMaybe subvert is a harsh term, but nonetheless, in the end, the results that they're looking for will be the same as if it was subverting it. And there's so much word mincing going on in the field of politics that you can never be sure what the hell they're talking about when they're saying this should be this way or I'm voting for that. You know, that's why we need to show up en masse.

2:47:24SpeakerI would love to see 20,000 people a day show up at Congress to fill the halls of Congress to intimidate the fucking congressmen who are there. And that they're being watched in every move they make in every vote and in city halls and, you know, all across the country. We need to get re-involved with the country. We're not running it. There's a bunch of yokels who are running things that don't care and make decisions anonymously and autonomously as if none of us even mattered.

2:47:55SpeakerIt's just going on constantly in this country. We need to get a hold of it again. So go down to your local government. Every evening when they're having meetings and make a spectacle.

2:48:12Etienne FontanOr become part of the spectacle.

2:48:14SpeakerAnd tell them that Indra sent you. Yeah. Look, if you've ever been to any of those meetings, it's a spectacle anyway. No, it's true. What John's saying is right. You've got to become part of the system if you're going to change the system. And we have to actually step up and, you know, Not get stoned on the way there and make sure we present ourselves well and give a good point.

2:48:34SpeakerI mean, it's really fucked up to think that it's all up to us, but it really, really is. And I'm sorry to disappoint the whole world by saying that, but it's not going to get better unless you get up and make it better. And that's just... Well, all these people should have turned out on election day to vote, you know?

2:48:49Etienne FontanAnd if all these people would have voted, I don't know if we'd be able to... Well, if the DNC hadn't have stole the election from Bernie to be able to be there in the first place, then we wouldn't even have this discussion.

2:49:00SpeakerThey did not vote. Three million more people voted for that crazy lady than voted for the crazy guy that we got as president. So what the fuck did democracy have to do with this conversation? If we would have been doing the popular vote right now, Bernie would be president right now. We wouldn't even be talking about all this shit because he would have taken the popular vote.

2:49:24SpeakerBut somehow, we've all handed our power over to a few hundred people who might or might not vote this way or that way. What a load of shit, the Electoral College. I know when they came up with it in the first place, it was based on the fact that there was a lot more people in New York than there was in Wyoming. No, it was the same pile of shit.

2:49:45SpeakerThey wanted a small group of people that can control the reality for the large group of people, and they wanted that to not come up. But it's come up in recent years because the large group of people have said one thing, and the small group of people goes, sorry, we're counting the populations differently, so fuck what you said, we're going to do something different. And this is where the issue's coming up.

2:50:07SpeakerSo the electoral college might get blown out of the water soon because if we're a true democracy, it doesn't fit. Look, we have this thing called the internet and we can all decide everything all the time very simply. But instead, these people called politicians want us all to hand over our power to them and then they make these autonomous decisions that don't fit in with what the rest of us want and are looking for and dreaming of.

2:50:35SpeakerAnd so why do we keep putting up with it, you know? Everybody go down there and get involved and show up. I mean, look, take some time out every evening and go down to the town hall of the city hall meeting or if you're in Washington, D.C., walk into Congress and stand around and let them know that they're being watched because right now they... Secrets are killing us and they try to do everything in secret.

2:51:01SpeakerGOP just recently decided that nobody could film or make any videos or pipe any live stuff out of Congress so that people could listen to what those fools are talking about. C-SPAN just went under. Just kidding. Oh well. The government sucks. We all hate it. That's why we're potheads. We're all like, fuck it.

2:51:25Etienne FontanBut also realize, people, that most of your city council meetings are done by 9, 10 p.m. at night. So it's not like it's something that you have to show up at 2 a.m. It's something you show up at the 6 to 7 o'clock hour and you just attend. That's the reality.

2:51:38SpeakerI mean, there's politicians in D.C. Well, the politicians in D.C. You can call your senator or congressman at any hour of the day and you'll be put on some.

2:51:46Etienne FontanYes, you can call them, but you won't meet with them except at 9 to 5 Monday through Friday, if at best. However, your local politicians are always accessible, as well as your local representative should access their office. So you can always call their office, and nine times out of ten, they'll be there or be there shortly. So that's how we're able to keep in touch with Barbara Lee.

2:52:06Etienne FontanThere's my local representative who has been very helpful all throughout the years. So familiarize yourself who that person is and get to know them and go show up and be active.

2:52:17SpeakerThat's why I have email addresses and some of them actually have Facebook pages. Thank you for watching.

2:52:48SpeakerYou know, one of those two stimuli goes to work on them. So you got to go down there and show up. You know, phoning them is great, but you got to get in their face. And that's just the way it is. They understand that. They don't get anything else.

2:53:10Etienne FontanHey, Darren. D420. I saw you appear.

2:53:19SpeakerYeah, he's doing a bong hit. Bong rip, motherfuckers, I think is what he says.

2:53:24Etienne FontanMother lovers.

2:53:26SpeakerOh, sorry. That'll probably get beeped, yeah.

2:53:32Etienne FontanDifferent between fucker and lover, I have to say.

2:53:36SpeakerI spelled it F-U-K, so.

2:53:42SpeakerNot the same spelling. It's hard to hear my pronunciation, but it's definitely there.

2:53:55SpeakerHave we lost Bubble Man?

2:53:58BubblemanYeah. No, I'm here. Okay. You're there.

2:54:00SpeakerOkay.

2:54:03MartinEvery time I talk, I... Hey, Mark.

2:54:07SpeakerNo, Mark. Yeah, Mark. Look, I've been watching on... YouTube. And there's some terminology that comes up that I wish you would just clear up for once and for all that people are misusing. One of the terms that people are talking about all the time is nucleation. They say that when they're stirring the extract afterwards, it causes, when the bubbles are coming out, that's a result of nucleation.

2:54:44SpeakerCould you please chime in on that? Yeah, no, that has nothing to do with nucleation. The bubbles are just basically the gas evaporating out of the hash. Nucleation has to deal with the crystallization process and basically creating the initial lattice structure that begins essentially a self-repeating pattern of crystallization. So nucleation actually has to do with... And energy, it's a surface energy related phenomena in chemistry or in physics actually.

2:55:15SpeakerSo like you could enhance nucleation by scratching the bottom of your vessel. And by scratching the bottom of the vessel, you create a imperfection in the glass, can create a template to create crystallization to happen. That would be a point of nucleation. So all you fools out there who've been saying when you start up, nucleation happens, you can now stop. Because Mark just made it absolutely 100% clear and ended all those arguments about nucleation.

2:55:50SpeakerSo I don't want to see that anymore from any of you fools over there who've been using it. No, wait a minute. Wait a minute. You're not calling your fellow brethren fools, are you? I thought you were a saintly guy from India. No, I'm not calling them. I'm not calling all of them fools. Just the ones who've been saying nucleation. Besides that, you know, like you, you're always asking questions about the Buddhist.

2:56:22SpeakerI mean, you have to look at the world from a practical point of view, and that's what the Buddhists do. And, you know, sometimes you have to seek practical solves for what you might view as a mystical situation.

2:56:43SpeakerBong rip! And Indra told you so.

2:56:53SpeakerMan, oh man, this Resin Ranch stuff is something else. I got, I had some buds from the guys at Resin Ranch too. And holy mackerel, they're so dense. I got one bud out and my son, I said, hey, roll me up a joint out of this bud because usually I would hand him a bud and I get back one or maybe two joints. He handed me back six joints from this bud.

2:57:18SpeakerAnd I said, gee whiz. And he said, I got one too. He said it was really dense. That's the one that won first place at the thing. And then they disqualified him for some reason or another. But, you know, they arbitrarily changed the amounts of pesticides that they allowed this year. And what I heard from a bunch of the people who did enter, and you're right, Mark, no one entered to lose.

2:57:45SpeakerBut they complained that there wasn't enough time between the end of harvest and curing and the time they had to enter the material in for the contest for them to get it analyzed themselves. And traditionally in the past, the cup had analyzed it for them. And so I think that's partially what accounted for a lot of them being kicked off this time because the pesticide level wasn't something that they were expecting to deal with.

2:58:13SpeakerAny pesticides is too much. Well, I agree. But you know what? A little bit of the pesticide they're talking about in my body, which is full of Agent Orange, not even a problem. My Agent Orange just hosed it down and got rid of it. Not a problem. That's probably not a problem to plant growers unless you're peeing on their plants, dude. Yeah.

2:58:43Etienne FontanOkay, it seems that we are at just about the 12 o'clock hour, and Bubble Man is going to wrap this up here, so I just wanted to give everybody a chance to say their goodbyes.

2:58:55SpeakerGoodbye, everybody. Invigorating talk today. Thanks, guys. Have a nice day, everybody. Peace.

2:59:03BubblemanPeace out, everybody. See you next time.

2:59:07SpeakerPeace out, Marcus.