Remembering Franco and Discussing Hash

0:00BubblemanOkay, all right, here we go. Hangout is on the air live. We are here with Hash Church episode 120. And no, I didn't wear my bubble bag 120 micron shirt because I figured at least a couple of the panel members would be rocking such a thing. So I am going to quickly head on over and start inviting these people into the room. We've got just, there we go, let me mute that.

0:26BubblemanPerfect. Hope everyone's doing well today on this Sunday morning. Hash Church episode 120. Pretty stoked about this episode, actually. Pretty stoked. You know, we had, we had Martin. Lee, supposed to be coming on today, and I guess he's having some problems with flooding in his neighborhood, so he's not going to be making it today. Unfortunately, we're going to have to reschedule and speak with him another time, but we will have a great conversation.

0:56BubblemanI'm sure CBD will be on the list, and of course, really how I wanted to start Hash Church today was, you know, we lost a major community member here in the last week or so. Thank you so much for joining us.

1:38BubblemanYou know, just, you know, sending positive vibrations to the whole Greenhouse family, to Franco's family, and to all of his friends. It's a pretty huge loss for the community, I'll say that much.

1:56SpeakerYou know, there's a lot of people that are nice to everybody, and then there are people that are genuinely caring to everybody they meet, and Franco was one of those people. I mean, Franco was just amazing.

2:07Etienne FontanHe was in a spirit that I can't even contain to imagine how to describe how Sweet, kind, open. Todd knew him a lot more than I did. I was very fortunate to hang out with him many different times and smoke with him. And he was always smiling, jokester, always had a joint, always like, hey, check this out. He always had the most amazing pot, but he also had the most amazing spirit of communication regarding cannabis.

2:36Etienne FontanHe had a knowledge base in his head because of all the different genetics that he had played with that, I mean, they had won. Every award, basically, for genetics, needless to say. But what Franco and Arian and the Greenhouse crew have been able to put out genetically has really helped many people across the world. And many people don't realize what Franco has or done or created, but hopefully in time, the rest of the world will know the greatness that they have done.

3:06SpeakerWell, he was certainly a friend to everybody he met, you know.

3:10BubblemanYeah. Hey, welcome, Indra. Good morning.

3:15IndraIt's kind of dark here because we have no power.

3:20BubblemanI love that you still made it on, though, you know. We've just, of course, been talking about Franco from the Strain Hunters. And, yeah, I mean, kind of this episode 120 is definitely in honor of Franco. And I knew it wouldn't take long for a 120 micron shirt to show up in the episode, so... Sweet, Etienne. You still traveling, Etienne, or are you back now?

3:40Etienne FontanI'm back home. Yeah, I'll be posting travel pics for a while. But yeah, I got back this week. But of course, the thing that took all the air out of the room was the loss of Franco. It happened while I was there. And fortunately, I reached out to Todd, and he wasn't aware. And we were both overtaken by some major grief, needless to say.

4:02SpeakerNo doubt. And for those asking from what we understand, he got cerebral malaria, which is actually something you get from an insect, a mosquito biting you. He was in the Congo when it happened, and it actually affects the people that get bitten really fast. And he probably thought he had the flu or

4:24Etienne FontanYeah, they said the onset takes 8 to 12 hours, so it would have been quick. I mean, I can only hope that it was as peaceful a passing as possible for Franco, because it's painful to even think of. I mean, I said this to Ty. I could probably wrap my brain around this if it was 1917, but to be 2017 and lose somebody to cerebral malaria like that.

4:47SpeakerWell, there is no, even in this 21st century, there is no real cure for it. And, um, You can get inoculated, but, you know, even that is not guaranteed that if you get the magic insect, you're going to make it. So, you know, everybody be safe. Life is way too short. Franco was only 42 at the time. I thought he was going to live forever. His spirit was so bright.

5:12SpeakerI really don't know. I don't think anything would take him down, to be really honest with you.

5:17BubblemanYeah, it was pretty shocking. A little bit of a robotic sound coming through your mic, Todd. I'm not sure if you'll have to reboot or play with the wire, but a lot of people are talking about it in the chat there. I swear his spirit was with me the other night watching Strain Hunters. I couldn't stop smiling, Monster OG said. It was really, you know, one thing I realized, I mean, obviously I've always known, I've watched Franco movies.

5:42BubblemanA hundred and fifty times step up onto the Cannabis Cup stage and accept awards with Arian, without Arian for the greenhouse.

5:52BubblemanThe guy did a lot. I mean, he really did a lot. And when you see how many people he touched through social media, that really blew me away. My entire Instagram became photos of Franco. My entire Facebook became photos of Franco and really cool stories. And I almost felt like I got to know him a little bit better through some of these stories. You know, unfortunately for me, I was the enemy of Amsterdam when I showed up and I think out of respect, Arian always, for Mila, always maintained a sort of like, I'm not going to go hang out with this guy a bunch and be really close.

6:25BubblemanSo Arian and I never really connected as much as, I mean I hung out at the greenhouse for 15 years. That was the, that was... The coffee shop in Amsterdam that I would hang out with. And still, even after visiting his grows and hanging out with him with Breeders Steve and stuff, I never really broke through to that greenhouse family. So I feel a little bit on the outside.

6:48BubblemanI don't have a ton of selfies with Franco and a ton of amazing stories. But he always said hi to me when he saw me. He always shook my hand. And for that, I'll always remember.

6:59SpeakerYou know, and that's one of the things that really strikes me. I think Greenhouse is one of the tightest families in the cannabis industry. You know, when I first walked into Greenhouse in 1994, you know, Arian was working the door and his wife Brenda was working the bar. And they built that up, you know, from a couple of kids and a coffee shop into a major industry player.

7:19SpeakerAnd what I really always admired about them was, you know, the people that brought on, they brought on for life and they made friends and family and And Olaf, Yo, Franco, Dust, all of them are really great people. And my heart just bleeds for them. You know, I'm lucky that I've been so close for so long with them. And, you know, they've been so supporting in all of my silly ideas and productions and movies and you name it.

7:49SpeakerAnd to lose Franco out of this, it just feels like I lost an arm. And I'm sure it feels like to them that they lost part of their heart.

7:59Etienne FontanI want to send love and appreciation to Franco, Franco's family, and the entire greenhouse crew. Bones up.

8:08BubblemanYeah, we got a whole swack of people rolling joints right now for Franco. They're like, I'm not going to smoke a bong. I'm rolling a joint for Franco right now. So I personally will.

8:18Etienne FontanThat's appropriate. That's very appropriate.

8:22BubblemanWell, I'm going to throw some 120 into my brand new Sapphire Bowl that I will break out in Franklin's honor.

8:33Etienne FontanOh, yeah. This should be good.

8:37BubblemanAh, Cuban in the chat. I sent you a link today, Cuban. It's the 120 episode. I thought we might want to talk a little bit about hash at one point in time today. As it is, you know, some of our biggest episodes here at Hash Church have been the 73 micron episode, the 90 micron episode, and now today here we are at the 120. I didn't really plan a big Hash day today.

9:03BubblemanUnfortunately, Martin Lee from Project CBD is in absolute chaos and flooding in his neighborhood. He's also got Jenny's going, John, but he had to reschedule today. He's not going to be able to make it in today, unfortunately.

9:17SpeakerMartin will be a great guest. He's been up here at the house and hanging out. And I love what they're doing with Project CBD, trying to bring awareness and attention to that other, the other cannabinoid.

9:28Etienne FontanYeah, excited to have him on because he put me in his book on smoke signals. He documented Debbie and the can history a bit from our days of traveling on the road. So I've known Martin for years back when he wrote his mushroom book. And he's been a great source. And I was very happy to see him team up with quite a few others The CBD project, which has done wonders to help people because in 2007 we started testing, we found THC, and then right afterwards we found the second spike, which turned out to be CBD in the labs.

10:01Etienne FontanAnd I really commend him and Fred Gardner and their crew for really Thank you for joining us.

10:29Etienne FontanThey've been out reaching a lot of the straight clientele that won't look at cannabis in any way, shape, or form, but they've also been able to provide data and research to help doctors and physicians with qualified patients to get access to CBD as best as they can, given the most recent ruling, which I was really looking forward to hearing his take on.

10:52SpeakerWell, it wasn't really a not really. I wouldn't say it was a re-ruling. It was really an after... Affirmation. Hey, CBD's always been mixed with THC and cannabis and marijuana, and it's a step of one. I was surprised. But, you know, we're all committing civil disobedience, so everyone listening should continue to commit civil disobedience. Didn't change anything.

11:15BubblemanYeah, absolutely. I agree with that. I'm going to do some civil disobedience right now. Although, is it still civil disobedience when what you're doing is federally legal?

11:26SpeakerAnd we're opposite. We're state legal and federally illegal.

11:30BubblemanRight.

11:30SpeakerDo you have states in Canada? Can Canada legalize in a province and not just federally?

11:36BubblemanNo, but I think what Canada is going to do is they're going to have a federal sort of overview and then they're going to allow each province to create a sort of situation like each province distributes alcohol a little bit differently in Canada depending on the province and how they write up the policy. So I think at least REC cannabis will potentially be like that. Welcome Dr. Scaldone and Dr. Natasha into the room.

12:00DrYes, good morning. Hello everybody.

12:06BubblemanGood morning, good morning, good morning. How was your New Year's and Christmas there, Natasha? I saw you were away in Dauphin.

12:14SpeakerYeah, I was back home in Dauphin, Manitoba for two weeks, and normally I go home every Christmas and every summer, but I hadn't been home in over a year and a half, so a long visit was due, and My husband Dave, his family is also from the same small town so we got to visit not just my family but also the in-laws, do the whole family trip in one big thing and yeah it was very intense but good and I mean intense in a good way like my grandma is 95 now and she has Alzheimer's disease so Getting to visit her again was awesome because she's very present when you're there with her and in the moment, but trying to interact with her over the phone or from a distance is obviously different than just sitting beside her and sharing a moment.

13:09SpeakerFacials and hung out and my parents also built a new house at the lake, which is why I couldn't join you guys. Bad internet connection, but it was very peaceful. We're like right on the water. Also a bit of a shock with the temperature. It was ridiculous. Like I... Seriously, like you walk outside and you're like, if I'm not wearing a parka, I will freeze. Like that's insane.

13:35BubblemanLike minus 30 or...

13:37SpeakerYeah, just like minus 30, probably even more than that with the windshield. Like the first few days, it was comical. Like you'd walk outside and if your face was completely covered and like wearing at least three pairs of pants. I usually need ski pants too. You were just freezing. So it was nice just being in that scene again. But I also really like the friendly Manitoba culture of helping each other out.

14:04BubblemanYeah.

14:04SpeakerAnd also you kind of forget how everybody says hello to everybody where in Vancouver there's a bit more of a bubble where you know you can walk about your day and not really interact with everybody which I also enjoy because you can get Thanks for watching.

14:33SpeakerMake eye contact and make small talk and it's just it's just different so it was adjusting to that lifestyle again but also really lovely because you reconnect with old friends old family and um one of our best friends also had a wedding social on new year's eve so got to go to that

14:52BubblemanSuch a Manitoba thing. Hey, a social. And I know there's a guy that knows all about friendly Manitoba and the friendly Manitobans. Subcool in the house. Welcome, Sub.

15:02SubHey, how you doing, man? Good to see you.

15:05BubblemanYeah, good to see you as well. Happy New Year to everyone that hasn't been on the panel since we've Hit into the new year. We, of course, we, of course, started it off today, Sub, for Franco Strain Hunter, you know, letting everyone know, you know, just a few stories and a little bit of positivity and what a great, amazing guy he was. Of course, he was, he passed away last week or early in 2017, just on the second or the third or something.

15:29SpeakerOn the second. On the second. A little bit of... Good morning, Sub. Cool. Morning. Come on, bro.

15:36BubblemanSo yeah, we've been talking a little bit about that, and yeah, Natasha just came into the room and told us a little bit about her Manitoba vacation. I definitely was... Thinking about you guys over there in that cold, but at the same time, you're very right. Manitoba is an extremely friendly place. You break down on the side of the road and there is literally a car stopped so fast.

15:58BubblemanI think that's possibly because if they don't stop, you'll die by freezing to death in your car, but it's still nice that they do it because I'm telling you, you'd be waiting a long time in some parts of Canada.

16:10Ryan Dank AfIt's like being on a boat. Everybody helps each other when it's that hectic.

16:14BubblemanWelcome, Ryan.

16:15Ryan Dank AfHow are you?

16:16BubblemanI'm doing good, Matt. How about yourself?

16:18Ryan Dank AfNot bad. Good, good. Loading up a memory blast for Franco.

16:24BubblemanYeah, you know, it sure had me going through all my old cannabis cup photos. I have so many pictures of Franco on stage. It's so many, like, from way, way back when he first showed up, he used to wear these really bright, like, blue and yellow kind of motorcycle pants that had different colors on them and stuff. So that was from, like, 99 to, like, 2002. And just kind of neat to see, I mean, those guys had an enormous amount of success, you know.

16:50BubblemanPeople were constantly, you know, of course, anyone who has the most success, people are going to shit on them all over the place, but I always enjoyed the greenhouse environment. I always brought people to the greenhouse. I just felt like in Amsterdam, it was one of the coffee shops, and back as early as 94, 95, 96, that really wanted to do it a little bit differently from the standard coffee shop, which is, you know, Just any old cultivar, grown any old way and sold out the back.

17:19BubblemanThese guys were taking it a little, you know, taking a different perspective on it. So I do appreciate that.

17:25SpeakerThey were the, you know, look, everybody can tell crap, but Arian was one of the first people in the early 90s to actually start buying AK-47 series seats from Simon. And it was one of the more expensive. It was way a step over sunk. And none of the coffee shops wanted to pay for it. They thought that smokers just wanted pot. They didn't care what kind of pot they had and that we were all crazy.

17:46SpeakerAnd Arian helped usher in the long flowering equatorial varieties, the hazes, the Cali mist. He was buying from Neville, buying from Simon. And, you know, he started ushering in some of the best cannabis that Amsterdam saw apart from skunk and took it to a whole new level. The rest of the coffee shops had to copy him because if they didn't, they didn't have the clientele because people would walk a little further for a different variety that they couldn't get there.

18:16BubblemanI'll also say this about them. They really raised the bar at the Cannabis Cup. I mean, if Arian and the Greenhouse were not at the Cannabis Cup in those early years, it just would have been a substantially less experience for those showing up. And what I mean by that is, you know, people that go to the Cannabis Cup, they want to have this friendly vibe. They want to have people engaging with them.

18:37BubblemanAnd Arian would hire buses and he would bring people back and forth from the milk bag to his coffee shops. I think he did it to the one on the Tolstrat and the one on the Damrak. Cool, cool concepts that definitely just raised that bar a little bit. High Times, no offense, I'm not going to start shitting on High Times, but they were doing almost the bare minimum at times, and it was people like Arian and The Greenhouse that really were like, hey, let's, you know, and then Barney came in later, and more people with that mentality of like, okay, I get it, let's raise the bar.

19:07Ryan Dank AfYeah, but it didn't raise the bar in terms of quality, it raised the bar in terms of marketing. Arian's a brilliant marketer, but... You know, I'm not going to, I don't want to turn this off. I don't know. I live there, Ryan.

19:16SpeakerIt raised the bar in quality.

19:19BubblemanWell, it did. I got to say now, I'm not saying that it was the best herb on the planet, like you would only want to smoke it. But if you went to other coffee shops and you were just a dude from California or the West Coast, Vancouver or something, and you eventually found that coffee shop, the quality of the conversation that was going to occur in that building, the people that could walk through the door, I just never saw it in another coffee shop in Amsterdam.

19:41BubblemanAnd I'm just being honest.

19:44SubThat booth they designed with the tile and the table with the lights underneath. It was a surreal experience sitting there smoking hash. As you say, some of the coolest people in the world coming in. I am a serious box snob. I don't like very many other people's weed, but the silver haze I had there was a really good sample. I have to say it really was. I was impressed.

20:07Etienne FontanThey didn't raise the bar. They set the bar, honestly, for a lot of genetics that were out there to really raise the standard of the cannabis that was in their shops. I mean, there's undoubtedly, yes, it would have been completely different without their marketing. Needless to say, there is no doubt that they are genius in marketing, but they also had to have genetics to back it up, which they did.

20:33SpeakerLiving here in Amsterdam the entire time, I think Katsu was actually the first one to mass market haze in the coffee shop. Yeah, Katsu was definitely the go-to, but aside from Katsu, you know, Katsu in 94 was there and they did have it absolutely. I totally agree with you for sure, Sam. But aside from Katsu, it was definitely Tolstrat that started doing it.

20:59Ryan Dank AfAnyway, the point that I was trying to make was not about not getting into the whole greenhouse commercial thing. It was more about Franco as a person. I met him at an Italian Cannabis Cup a bunch of years ago and he and I were both judges along with Franco Castellone from the Strain Hunters India trip. And anyway, I was a foreigner and it was really their home country and they were really very kind and open and Very hospitable and he was just a really good character, you know, and I just wanted to say that about him as a person and kind of just keep it away from the whole business thing because To me, they're totally two separate things.

21:42SpeakerYou know, one of the qualities I loved about Franco the most is it didn't matter if you were poor and practically looking homeless or if you were a prince and looking like a king. Franco treated you exactly the same way with courtesy, respect, kindness, and consideration. He was really the epitome of classy. And when I thought of him, I mean, I think he was the definition of gentleman.

22:04SpeakerHe was always, always kept it classy, always kept it cool.

22:09SubI think one of the nicest comments that I saw, I did a little tribute for him on my show, and one of the weed nerds actually said that Franco introduced him to me and Jill. And that shows how humble he was. I mean, compared to this guy's status, I definitely was no one when I met him. And the fact that he was like, hey, check this American breeder out, you know, to all these guys, it just really struck me as he was down to earth.

22:32SubOne of us is the way I felt about the cat.

22:34BubblemanWell, he definitely deserved people to know who he was because like I said, he definitely took that energy and kind of gave it back. And you know, the only other, it seemed like not the only other because there's this passionate Italian cannabis user and they come from this country that is a little bit anti-cannabis and there's pressures here and there and I've seen them come out. I know that Weed Nerds, Lorenzo is one of them.

22:59BubblemanI know my friend Elemental who passed away Thank you for watching.

23:19Ryan Dank AfThe Italians love artisan. They love artisan works. It doesn't matter if it's music or food or vegetables or cannabis. It really is a super prohibitive country. They've got really strict laws. You can do, for a couple of plants, you can do time. You can do a couple of years. Three years. For these guys to come out of there and have such a strong cannabis culture, which goes back A long way in hemp.

23:49Ryan Dank AfThere's all these Italian hemp varieties too. Some of the finest hemp varieties in the world like Carminiola from Italy.

23:57SpeakerThe other Franco, the older Franco that you met and I were roommates back in the early 90s when he was translating The Emperor Wears No Clothes into Italian and I was helping him do it. We'd sit there and get high.

24:09Ryan Dank AfYeah, he's another super class act, Franco Castellano.

24:12SpeakerMark has a great picture of him in the greenhouse looking up at a plant that's like three times his height.

24:18SubYeah.

24:19Etienne FontanVery nice. Well, on top of that, Franco was a lover of motorcycle and motorcycle racing. It was his side passion. I mean, not only was cannabis, it was he happy to talk about that, but he was always willing to talk about the 750cc, whatever he was into at the time racing, but his passion for racing was right up there with my passion for Saints. I've always appreciated that side passion about him.

24:47Etienne FontanNot only is this his hardcore passion of cannabis, which we could always speak to, his love of cycling was unsurpassed to anyone that I knew around me.

24:57BubblemanVery true. I actually had a good story with him in, I guess it was in Berlin back in... I don't know, 02 or 01 or something. I can't remember the exact year, but we were in the back area and everyone was unloading their vans to the event. And I guess one of the companies, and I wish I remembered who it was, like Casey Brains or something, had this crazy motorcycle, like raced out super moto motorcycle.

25:22BubblemanThank you so much for joining us.

25:42BubblemanThank you for watching.

26:01BubblemanLiterally right beside me, this huge German cop. And at that point, Franco's just kind of like, oh, this should be interesting. And he came over. He's like, starts talking to me in German. I speak to him back in English. He's like, yeah, do you have a license to be riding this thing? And I'm like, well, I have a motorcycle license. Well, do you have one in Germany?

26:22BubblemanWhere's the insurance? This, that, and the other thing. It's like, yeah, I did not get to ride that bike. And I just... Thank you for watching.

26:53SubMark, I'm working on my memoirs. I started about four years ago, then I got busy, then I started back again. And what you said, I can't remember the sequence of events between my prison terms and traveling around the world. I get them confused.

27:07BubblemanWell, and it doesn't help when other people get them confused and remember them differently and post that shit online. Oh, I remember I was using bubble bags back in 1995. I'm like, no, you weren't. Oh, no, I was. Trust me. I'm like, well, I'm pretty sure you weren't.

27:26SubBo, man, I was going to tell a little story real quick. So I don't know your position with Camille Frenchy. You were talking about passionate people. Yeah. I've seen him at the Emerald Cup, man. He was in his element. There was a thousand people wanting him to tell them about his hash and his rubbing technique. He was the busiest booth other than the TGA booth. It was really amazing.

27:49BubblemanHey, I'll tell you how I feel about Frenchie.

27:51SubFrenchie.

27:52BubblemanFrenchie is a fucking hilarious character. I mean... He also has a passion that cannot be denied. Now, do we totally have different concepts? Do we come from totally different places? Absolutely. We believe different things. But to me, that doesn't mean anything. It doesn't take anything away from my respect for his passion for this plant. I think that often people are like, it's almost like a Mila bubble man thing where people are like, oh, what do you think about Frenchie?

28:22BubblemanAnd I'm like, I think he's awesome. I mean, my God, he loves hashish. He makes hashish. He gets hashish out too. Many, many, many people. I think that he's a kindred soul.

28:33SpeakerYeah, he's the shit. He's one of the best hash makers I've ever met on the planet. He's in... His own class with the way he makes hash, it reminds me of everything awesome. When I first went to Amsterdam and I was smoking all this import, the King Hassan, you know, all this great stuff. He has it. The Manali cream, you know, the Nepali hand rub. Frenchie's hash is so amazing.

28:59SpeakerAnd I mean, anybody that gets to smoke it should try to smoke it because it's just great stuff. And I love that he's teaching. He's running around teaching everybody. The way he does it, which is just spreading that.

29:10Etienne FontanYeah, he just published Truth. He's going to be doing one of his hashishin classes in Barcelona for the Spanibus. So if you're going to Spanibus, he just published yesterday that he's going to do that. Unfortunately, I also saw, love you Frenchie, I also saw that Apple Pay has kicked him out. So he was posting today the problems of the realities that we all face, which is... The processing and banking, etc.

29:38Etienne FontanAnd he just lost his account because of Apple Pay. And they can't process anymore. So hope you find something to replace it there, Frenchie.

29:47BubblemanLove you. They just slammed my Blue River accounts the other day. Boom. Gone. I was like, what's going on? I had a bunch of money in there. What happened? They're like, oh, well, we just made a business decision. We don't want to be your bankers anymore. So I was like, over the weekend, I was like, holy smokes. I've never had my banking just closed like that. It was completely shocking.

30:07BubblemanBut it just goes to show that we are still under attack. There are still some people behind the curtain there that are pretty strong. Thank you for joining us.

30:34BubblemanFriendly states and countries.

30:37SubWe're not going to believe this. So I bought a house on five acres of land in the middle of fucking nowhere in California. I mean, it takes me 30 minutes to get to a place to eat or grocery. And last week, they ruled in my county that only ag and industrial are allowed. So my residential property, literally, I can't see a neighbor. It's on the top of a mountain.

31:00SubI can't do commercial rec here in California. So I pretty much wasted a mil getting this place. So I think it'll change again because it changes on a weekly basis here. Wow. But it's like you say, you know, we talk about recreational cannabis in California and the cup in L.A. is the first recreational cup. But, you know, I was just told that I can't even grow marijuana outside in my lane.

31:23SpeakerFor recreation. God, I've got to throw this question on. Agricultural is industrial, right? Ag and industrial is the same. All right, so what's up? So you really want to, so you just turn it into the highest hemp farm we've ever seen? You're like, okay, agriculture, I'll show you frigging agricultural, no problem. Here you go, 20 feet high, what do you think?

31:44BubblemanI'm going to be frigging artesian paper. Just at the end, be like, you know, my HPLC must be broken because this seems to be a higher percentage.

31:53SpeakerWell, you can also grow it for fiber. I mean, scones have as high a fiber or even higher than a few of the registered European hemp varieties.

32:04Etienne FontanHey, that's not finola.

32:07SubWell, I'm really lucky in the fact that, well, not lucky, I thought it out, but the seed thing is pretty much, it's like they spend a month talking about cannabis and then they spend 20 minutes talking about seeds in each state. So, it's pretty gray as far as seed distribution in the world, except a few states that have actually addressed it. Oregon, it's garbage, so you can do what you want to with it.

32:29SubRight.

32:31BubblemanWell it'll be interesting to see as I constantly find myself saying what's going to happen in the next couple of years not just in Canada but in America as well because I really feel both of them are these sort of separate edges bookends or whatever that are closing in on each other and maybe maybe maybe when they finally link up and click North America will get some proper

32:54Etienne FontanWell, we're going to see some discussion coming up. Elizabeth Warren out of Massachusetts, because her state went, their route of legalization is launching a discussion in the U.S. Senate to discuss banking because of the realities that she realizes that they have to have banks to process banking. The realities that the consumers want to see. And she may actually be forcing the change because she's a strong committee member.

33:21Etienne FontanI think she's also, she works directly with financial departments. So we could see some relief at least in the coming years, at least a discussion starting people. So once the discussion started, it could take a few years before it actually passes. So don't get too excited.

33:37Ryan Dank AfI don't know, man. We got like two weeks and we'll see how the new world will be down in the States.

33:42SpeakerAnd the truth of it is, where reform is needed the most is places like Saudi Arabia, Singapore, America.

33:54BubblemanThe Philippines.

33:56SpeakerThat's where we need reform the strongest and the fastest.

34:00Ryan Dank AfNo, but you gotta, I think the discussion is true, though. I mean, it is a phenomenon that's happening in North America. And it does have to be brought into the system. You know, it has to, like, in the States, it's... You do it the normal way.

34:13SpeakerFirst, you convert Hollywood. Hollywood converts the world. Yeah. Yeah, but the Americans gotta... We're working on that, but we just want to do banking, man.

34:24BubblemanWell listen, I guarantee you when I just, that metaphor I used of that last layer, that opaque layer that hasn't broken, that's banking. That is absolutely banking because when they hold your banking back, they can put you in this situation where now it's like, It's like you're a victim of money laundering. It's like money laundering. It's cash, right? They just, I like the protection of knowing that the money came from here or from here.

34:49BubblemanI love my banking and being able to do it all like that and show my tax man, who's, our tax man is crazy. He'll put you in jail.

34:56SpeakerWell, it shows that the protection is in keeping this somewhat underground. And it shows that they're really not trying to address it In a way that is going to benefit society, they're trying to address it in a way that benefits the perpetual drug war that they want to sustain. Exactly.

35:13BubblemanAnd holding the banking back is crucial. Probably was one of the first things that got said when they sat down at the round table and said, all right, how are we going to do this?

35:23SpeakerNot only that, but they tax it and don't allow it to be used through banking.

35:29SubYeah. The biggest problem that I saw is what you guys talk about, but the security issue. So we did, well, I don't want to say the number that we did at the Emerald Cup, but every day I left with a hoodie completely stuffed with cash. And I would have much rather used a credit card. So they're forcing this, again, they're forcing us to live like outlaws. And that's what I thought we were getting out of.

35:54BubblemanWell, you know, it's almost like, it's just a... Back in the day when cash was king and credit was a flag, it's kind of flipped. Just the way back in the day you wouldn't go on the internet and call a complete stranger to your house and jump in their car and now that company is worth $60 billion I believe the last evaluation of Uber was. So life changes and it flips.

36:20BubblemanThat one definitely flipped.

36:21SubBubble Man, I want to share this with you. So this came from a good friend now, not Matt with a Z, but Matt with a C, Mr. Rice. So he's my extract maker now. So this is kind of special. Time out.

36:35BubblemanYou have a new extract maker named Matt Rice?

36:39SubYeah, he's trained by Matt Rice. Oh my God, that's too trippy.

36:42BubblemanAll right, I'm on the same page.

36:44SubGo ahead. Different techniques though, okay? Yeah, yeah. So this guy actually takes a live plant, trims it, and snips the little pieces off and fresh freezes it. He doesn't even let it sit in the pans like I used to. So then he makes hash from it doing a double wash, and then they squish it. Low heat, low pressure. This stuff, it looks like drugs for sure, and it sells in the clubs for $280 a gram in America right now.

37:12SubI am stunned. You can smoke a half a gram of it in three hits. It's like smoking, I don't know, it's like smoking what God smokes.

37:22SpeakerDo you think that's a good thing? Do you think that's a good thing for $280 a gram? I think it's a crime.

37:30BubblemanYeah, I just want to hear the last part of the question. What was the last part of the question?

37:35SubWhat do you believe in? A freeze drying seems to be the different technique between the hash makers. Some Don't believe in it. I think this is tastier than extracts not freeze-dried.

37:45BubblemanWell, listen, for sure, to a degree, when you freeze-dry, when you add extreme cold, you're preserving terpene content that will absolutely not be preserved through other processes. But at the same time, that might work out for certain cultivars, whereas other cultivars, I think some of those terpenes, I've had this conversation with Rob Clark, we've been Thank you so much for joining us.

38:38BubblemanAnd I think that that can work out if you hit the right cultivar, like the way Sam had Skunk. It's like, if Sam didn't have Skunk, I doubt that he would have ever... I'm not sure that that... The dry sift would have ever been as nice as it could have been if it wasn't that cultivar that he also bred. I say the same thing for bubble bags.

39:00BubblemanBubble bags never would have been popularized had I not come across the cultivar Rene. Because Rene, you threw it in the bags, it came out blonde or amber on the other side, and it smelled like a pound of weed. It never lost its smell. The water barely had a smell, and it went right through. You know, I've seen, I've heard people freeze drying bud and dry sifting it.

39:23BubblemanI've heard people freeze drying bud and wet washing it. People fresh frozen bud and then freeze dry the hash. Tons of different ways to preserve. There's no denying the colder it is, the more preservation of terpenes will be happening. The only thing to take into mind is are those terpenes that you want to preserve?

39:42SubThat's, that's, it's just, it's a new age. I mean, I, uh, I smoked some of the Cuban growers, uh, 99.9% sift at the cup. Cookies and cream, I believe, but I think he uses your static trick. I just heard about that about three months ago. I didn't see you do it, but your static friction trick with the Keith, I didn't know about that.

40:03BubblemanOh yeah, well that kind of got, you know what, actually D420K's in the house, he was a big part of that, and so was, well, Mesa, because what I really was doing was showing people how to card. I've been talking a little bit about the balloon and some other things over the years, but it was Mesa who actually took the card idea that I learned from the mentors there, that were like, yeah, you can card hash over tight screens and it'll go down.

40:29BubblemanOne way to do it, very slow, but this kid, Mesa, actually figured out wrapping it in parchment, and when he went over it, the parchment, it pushed stuff through, but it also gave him a little lip of heads. D420K was like, I'm going to put it on a DVD with a wider base, and so that started getting larger amounts, and really, between the three of us, that was kind of like how that came to be.

40:53BubblemanAnd I'll say this. Well, yes, absolutely, D, after I say one more thing. Before this technique, nobody was posting fucking like 99.99. There's all sorts of different techniques out now that are secret, but it seemed to be they all coincidentally came out right after D420K started using parchment with his DVD case.

41:14SpeakerWell, you see, the thing that I was using before was those iTunes cards. On one side of the card, I'd attract... Thank you for watching.

41:41SpeakerHe shared this parchment paper tech on the thing and I was watching the video and I was like, fuck, that looks interesting. And before this, I had a box of every type of plastic and fucking carbon and metal and every little thing that I could get from my, you know, rubber chunks and everything that I was wrapping and I wasn't wrapping anything and I was just using it to sift with because of the static tech that I was getting from the iTunes cart.

42:11SpeakerThen when this came out, I used a DVD case, a CD case, and then I've graduated up to a novel, a paperback novel, a Louis L'Amour paperback novel. I wrap it in parchment and then I do it. Now, when you're doing it, if you watch any of my videos, There's, sometimes you're not getting the charge on it. You need a horse hair brush, like a shaving cream brush, a nice thick horse hair one.

42:38SpeakerI charge the screens with that. There's a couple little methods in there that do, Create the static and then, you know, there's the simple thing of taking the one side that you're using, flipping it inside out and putting on the thing and then doing it. It just instantly is charged because of what it's been doing before and just little change ups and stuff like that with it.

43:01SpeakerCheck out some of the videos. I'm going to put a real intricate one out here soon and it'll give you the gist of the whole situation. Nice, dude. Well, welcome. Thank you. Bong rip to every mother lover out there.

43:14BubblemanI'll do that. I got some 120 micron that should probably be going in here right now. It'd be in the 120 episode and all.

43:22SpeakerWell, this here, this little jar, I've been saving up for over two years. And I've put on one single layer of every little fire dry sift batch that I made. So there's two years of dry sift in this here jar that is fucking amazing. So, bong rip. Where did you keep the jar for the last two years? In my fridge. Well, next time stick it in your freezer.

43:53SpeakerIt's even better. Okay, I will.

44:01SubBut man, I want to share something pretty unique that I found out. So you guys know about my lung situation, alpha, blah, blah, blah. So I guess by about the eighth month of last year, I had pretty much quit smoking because, you know, everybody tells me that smoke is bad for lungs, which that's common sense that smoke is bad for lungs. But my condition seemed to be worse.

44:27SubAnd the anxiety caused by the choking feeling from my lung condition was really affecting my life. So I started smoking little tiny hits of high quality ash. And after a couple of weeks, I noticed something pretty interesting. My breathing was not worse. My breathing was better. And I attribute a lot of it to the fact that the cannabis actually calms me down, calms my lungs, calms my brain.

44:53SubSo since the anxiety is not so heightened, My lungs relax and I think I can breathe easier. So I can't do big bong hits. I can't smoke joints. But teeny amounts of pure, pure hash like you guys know how to make two or three hits and I breathe better. And I found that astonishing.

45:11SpeakerYou know, I want to point out something Peter McWilliams wrote and before he died in the 90s. And he was a poet and a best-selling author and wrote a piece, a book about medical cannabis called The Question of Compassion that was never completed but people can find on the internet for free. And he wrote a line that always stuck with me and it was, ease to unravel disease.

45:35SpeakerBecause he was blown away at the psychological side of cannabis and how it was helping him cope with the whole having cancer and having AIDS and his medical condition and the anxiety of it. And he started to get way better. And he felt like exactly what Subcool just said, that when he chilled out and he could heal, he healed. And it was huge. So the psychological part of THC, making us all feel good, is a big part of it making us heal.

46:06SpeakerWell, if we just even look at what happens when you're in a stressful state, your body doesn't work as well. So you can't actually heal. So if you're not feeling calm, It doesn't work properly. Your gut barrier isn't working properly. Even the bacteria that populates you gets disrupted. So being in a stressful psychological state isn't just affecting your thoughts, it's affecting your whole body. So it makes sense that consuming something that can just make you feel calmer is going to have a cascading effect on your whole body.

46:42SpeakerAnd in turn, your body is going to be able to heal itself, right? If you understand that whole process, it makes sense. And I mean, you can go deeper and deeper with that or more bigger so people understand the bigger concepts. And it's not just stress in the psychological sense. It's like oxidative stress, like how antioxidants can prevent that. So there's so many different things you can do.

47:06SpeakerNot just in like some people who are stressed or depressed they think like oh I can just change my state of mind and sometimes you can't because even new theories on what's causing depression and anxiety and stress it's actually linking it back to things like overactive inflammation so if you have I know about this from patients with Crohn's and colitis because when they have inflammation that starts in their gastrointestinal tract it's Thank you for joining us.

48:03SpeakerThey found these access points where immune cells are actually getting into the brain to a higher degree than we used to think. And so now these diseases that were thought to just be related to your psychological state are actually being shown to be linked back to the state of your body. So if you have too much inflammation, like fire going on in your joints, and that can Thank you for joining us today.

48:53SpeakerWhen you're in that fog, like telling someone who's in that fog to go for a run or do some exercise or eat well, you're angry. You're like, are you kidding me? Like that's not going to help me. And it would, but it's too far. So what cannabis can do is be that first point where It can be easy to take in and it has such an immediate effect of calming you down and relaxing you.

49:19SpeakerAll of a sudden these other things of health seem like more accessible. So I can't even remember who it was but it was this speaker at one of the plant spirit medicine conferences I was at at UBC and he was a big spiritual guru kind of guy and he was talking about how when he started smoking cannabis, him and his friends were all of a sudden like, maybe we should do some yoga.

49:40SpeakerAnd so they started doing yoga and they were like, I don't know why we started doing yoga. It was just like, it just felt good to stretch. So we started doing yoga. And then one of us was like, Hey, I'm kind of craving like rice. Like, and then he's like, and all of a sudden I made the best brown rice. So I started making rice and started making vegetables.

49:55SpeakerAnd he's like, and all of a sudden we're eating vegetarian. And he's like, I don't know how we got here, but the cannabis was kind of an access point to making our body feel better, making us more interested in experimenting with fruits and vegetables and other foods that seemed so, like, just palatable before. And it's interesting, because when I went home to Manitoba for the holidays for two weeks, I mean, I'm in a culture of heavy drinking, heavy meat consumption, lots of meat bread, lots of cheese.

50:22SpeakerIt was a lot of fun to eat like that for a little bit, but... My stomach hurt. My thinking was fuzzier. I was having a harder time like Thank you so much for joining us.

51:00SpeakerFeel less stress.

51:01BubblemanNo, I think that was an incredible little blurb you just shouted out there because really, I mean, I saw Todd laughing. I was definitely like, damn, that shit worked the same for me. Started doing yoga. Well, actually, I started eating vegetarian, like first and foremost. And that was cannabis, but also psilocybin mushrooms. Psilocybin mushrooms and my love for animals just made me look at the animals I was eating like, Wow, this is crazy.

51:27BubblemanLike I'm eating all these animals. Like every time I put food in my mouth, it's an animal, like a snack, a breakfast, a lunch, a dinner, animal, animal, animal, animal. And so it just, and it was through smoking cannabis that I kind of was led to a more vegetarian based diet, a more plant based diet.

51:44SpeakerI was tripping and I saw them as earthlings. Like as just like other creatures, like, you know, cause like when you're really high in the, and you're in the woods, sometimes deer come up to you. And you're, you're, I don't know what it is. You're less threatening, I would say, or something. They look at you and they know you're that human as high as fuck. And like, there is no threat here, you know?

52:06SpeakerAnd they just roll up on you and you're like, whoa, dear, you know? And you're like... There's just like, hey human, and I don't know what it is, but I feel like I connected on a level that was just like, I'm alive, I have two eyes, two ears, I got blood pumping through my veins, you know, I'm trying to mate, trying to find a place to live and sleep on a train.

52:26SpeakerWell, that's a lot different. I'm not a lot different. We don't speak the same language, and that might be my bad, but we're not a lot different. Different. And it would be really fucked up if another alien landed on this planet, looked at all of us and went, white meat, or whatever. And you know, Chicken McNuggets, motherfuckers, get in the cage.

52:46BubblemanYeah, no, for real, dude. Very good. For real, dude. And luckily, through that concept of like having that vision of like, I'm not really like, who the fuck am I to just kill all these animals and eat them? I also got the benefit of the health ramifications that occur when you live on a meat-based diet versus when you live on a plant-based diet. So I'm 43 years old.

53:08BubblemanI don't have a lot of like health issues because of like consuming mass quantities of meat for the last 25 years. Whereas when I did, even as a young person in my... Thank you so much for joining us.

53:39SpeakerSure.

53:40BubblemanYeah, but when I was tripping balls on the other planet, the plants weren't bummed out about that, but the animals were bleeding and their souls were crying. So it was just different. It was my own experience. I mean, I'm not saying everyone should do it. I don't promote this to anyone. You can eat whatever the fuck you want. For me, I'm going to do me, and I'm going to feel good about doing that.

53:59BubblemanTechnically, you can't eat other humans. Well, technically, we weren't allowed to grow herb in the 80s, 90s, and most of the 2000s.

54:10SubMy hat's off to you, Mark. I tried being a vegetarian for about two years some time ago, and I literally almost starved to death because, I don't know. I wasn't as good at it as you are.

54:21BubblemanWell, I wasn't good at it at all for many years. Honestly, I'm only good at it because my wife makes these amazing, she makes meals that most of them are even vegan. We're not vegan by any means, and I'll still consume salmon out of the ocean. But yeah, I feel lucky to have a wife who makes good food.

54:41SpeakerIf you eat vegetarian food and you follow simple recipes like diet for a small planet, it gives you complete protein. There's no matter of you starving to death. It's just what do you like the taste of? No, and you know, Subcool, just to throw it out there, the chapter that really sucked me into the whole hemp industry from Jack Harris' book was the one about nutrition because I couldn't believe Thank you for joining us.

55:28SpeakerThank you so much for joining us.

55:54SpeakerAnd Todd, what percentage of your diet daily is hemp seed? Quite a bit now because I have de-hulled hemp seed and we use hemp seed oil. We put it in everything. It's been a huge part of my life for a long time. You know, my trip was they didn't know what the origin of my disease was and it always freaked me out as a little kid. The ethology of my disease was unknown is the way my doctor laid it out.

56:19SpeakerAnd if the adults didn't know, it kind of put it on Thank you so much for joining us.

56:46SpeakerAnd putting poor fuel into your engine, it really fucks it up. He's like, I could go buy you a Ferrari fucking, and you could crash it. I could buy you another one. But this body you're in, this Subcool body you're in, I can't buy you another one. You can have fucking George Harrison money, and you can't fix that shit if you hit a tree. And that's why I'm trying not to hit a tree.

57:09SpeakerI'm filling my body full of what I think I need. When it comes to food, I started looking at it differently. I started looking at it like, what's in you? Just like I feed my plants, and maybe that's part of it, being a grower since I was only like 13 years old, pH was important, quality of nutrients was huge. I'd stand there at the grow store thinking, what can I get that's going to make my plants better?

57:35SpeakerFucking be your plant. Feed yourself. All these growers I meet talking shit about, I got veganics, man. I got vegan plants. And then they posted pictures of fucking ribs and shit. And I'm like, your plants are better off vegan and you're better off ignorant, I guess, is the catch here. Because it just blows my mind. You're the body. You've got to take care of everybody. That's my message.

58:02BubblemanWell, but it's the, it's, we learn differently, you know, like I was a super meat and potatoes guy, Todd. Like I, when I tried to eat vegetarian, it was the hardest thing. And I just, I, I was, wasn't trying to do it for, it was like a feeling I, I just had to do. So I pushed through that early part of not knowing how to like, Thank you for joining us.

58:37SpeakerRight. Going from meat to vegetarian because of, or the types of meat that I'm eating anyways is the steps because I really, really love eating meat. I do love the meat but, you know, I don't do the fast foods anymore. I don't just go to Costco and buy the steaks there even though the steaks at Costco do taste the best that I've found for a while. But what I was finding is eating the meats that From anywhere, like Wendy's Burger or whatever where you got maybe up to 30 animals in one burger.

59:11SpeakerI watched this show called Food Choices and it really opened my eyes up to the animals that are under duress, that are being butchered, that have never had a good day of quality life in its life. It's just been grown up in a pen and fucking just disgusting. So you're taking in these animals' energies and the angst and the adrenalines and everything that they've never not felt every day in their life.

59:41SpeakerSo I'd go through the anxieties and I'd go through, I'd be sitting back wondering, what the fuck am I getting an anxiety attack for, right? I'm not, there's nothing triggered. There's nothing to trigger it or anything like that. But then when I was talking with you, you were telling me about how you'd get these uric acid buildups and shit like that in your knees and your toes.

1:00:05SpeakerAnd I go, in your knees? Well, I never heard of that. And you go, yeah, it's in your knees. And on my one side of my fucking knee, this part was literally asleep for the last year. And if I could kneel on it going across my bed, it was like kneeling on fucking needles. I couldn't do it. It was just like, holy shit. Now that I've been on mostly vegetarian diet and the meats that I've got are, you know, that I've bought, I've bought the chicken and the meats have been free range, organic, you know, the fat on them is nice and yellow, like it's just really different meat and I'm not taking a lot of it in.

1:00:43SpeakerI find a huge difference in just my leg, my knee, I can feel it again, I can kneel on it on the ground. And I feel better. Like I'm not, the anxieties and that sort of stuff just don't pop in all of a sudden and fuck with me in the middle of nowhere. You know, they just, they're very dull. You know what cures anxiety the best? Bacon, lettuce, and tomato.

1:01:13SpeakerI love bacon, lettuce, and tomato too.

1:01:17Etienne FontanTo go also to what Natasha was saying, so stress, of course, is big. And one of the main things I dealt with when I had dealt with the government was to say a lot of stress. So, you know, I'm not a vegetarian, but I practice vegetarianism all the time. You know, I don't eat meat every single meal. But one of the key things besides cannabis was a good night's sleep.

1:01:38Etienne FontanAnd I think if one of the main things I did was constantly maintain a healthy body so I could maintain as best as I could a good night's sleep. And I cannot tell you the importance of the ability through cannabis to get those Good night's sleep to maintain your sanity because I've watched friends of mine, very close friends of mine, lose their minds when they're not able to sleep.

1:02:02Etienne FontanI mean, it's absolutely one of the most horrifying things to watch somebody go through, the inability to sleep, much less to get that healing that they need to get to move forward. I mean, that is absolutely... Thank you so much for joining us.

1:02:42SubI've tried everything on the planet. Doctors have given me stuff which I shouldn't have taken, and I just eat a little peppermint patty every night, just like you guys know, and it puts me in about a seven-hour sleep, and without it, I do not sleep.

1:02:57SpeakerHow many milligrams before you go to sleep do you take?

1:03:00SubThe patty I eat is 500. I eat about half of it. So 250. One of the problems is I don't make my own meds. Can I ask one other question? Yeah. 250 milligrams of activated THC? Yeah, every night.

1:03:21BubblemanThat's hardcore.

1:03:23SubWell, you know, I have really bad anxiety and I just don't sleep well and the dose increase from 100 and I leveled off at 250 and it was great. I ate 1,000 milligrams of burger that time. That was pretty much, I was actually staggering the next day, so I don't suggest that.

1:03:41SpeakerYeah, I ate 450 on a flight to Amsterdam once and I swear I could feel the air move around the fuselage of the plane. I ate everything they put in front of me and I was even comprising like a note to KLM like, thank you so much for the great food. That was really high. A couple thousand milligrams every Queen's Day. And I could walk unless I took, I don't know, more than about three grams of THC, and I would have trouble walking.

1:04:09SpeakerBut up until then, I was okay. Right.

1:04:13BubblemanWell, I gave Breeders Steve about maybe a little over a gram of bubble hash on the plane once. It was a KLM flight to Amsterdam as well from Vancouver.

1:04:22SpeakerSo that's not even THC. That's THC-A.

1:04:26BubblemanYeah, he ate it with some, I don't know, he ate it with like a yogurt or something, and it was like, I'm telling you, in like less than an hour, his face was melted right off of his head. I've never seen him look like that, literally his face.

1:04:39SpeakerNah, his face is melted all the time, Marcus.

1:04:42BubblemanNo, I'm telling you, this was, he was right next to me. He couldn't talk for like seven hours. At one point, he was going, water. His lips were like super dry. I fell asleep and forgot about him, and he was just like...

1:04:56BubblemanWhite, dried out lips, still champion though, got off the plane nine hours later or whatever, walking and stuff. I'm not into eating that much where you lose hours or something.

1:05:09SpeakerSomebody can knock you for a freaking loop.

1:05:13Etienne FontanThe hardest loop I ever had, actually, Sam, was your hash. When I had initially met you with old Ed and Todd, I was able to have some of your hash, and when I got to the airport, there was just less than a half a gram, and I put it into balls in my hand, and I just ate that on the, you know, and I swear by the time I touched down and San Francisco.

1:05:41Etienne FontanIt was very hard to maintain proper equilibrium. Fortunately, when I got there, the guys just waved us through because my wife was rushing through at the time and just kind of waved us through. But man, I tell you, I was definitely high on that flight.

1:05:55SpeakerThat is the reason that I made really strong hash was to make sure that people had a good time filing it.

1:06:04Etienne FontanThank you, thank you, thank you, and thank you.

1:06:08BubblemanI just ate a nice little 100-milligram granola bar on my flight from Toronto back to Vancouver, and it was just lovely, just nice, nice vibes. A little bit intense for maybe five minutes, but nothing overly uncomfortable. Got to like edibles.

1:06:23SubMy ride to the strong edibles definitely came from the fact that I gave up bong hits. I miss bong hits really bad. Sometimes I dream of doing a giant bong hit and exhaling and it's so real that I wake up pissed off. That's amazing, dude.

1:06:38SpeakerIf you smoke a vaporizer, doesn't that solve most of the problems associated with the question?

1:06:44SubThe problem with Alpha-1 is I have not an ability to take very long intakes. Like with a vaporizer or a little teeny bong, you have to inhale for 20, 25, 30 seconds to actually You know, get a vaporizer to work. You got to take even longer. So I use a little teeny pipe. I put a little teeny hash in there and I ignite it. So my intake time is maybe eight seconds.

1:07:10SubAnd then I exhale immediately. If I don't do that and I start coughing, I can run into a bit of a problem.

1:07:17SpeakerYeah, well, what you could try is a volcano with the little, they have these stainless steel woven pads on them, and you can put dabs on it, and they, those, and it'd probably be pretty easy for you. I guarantee you can take a bigger hit than you can hit. Yeah, coming to the old school volcano, that's probably really smart for you.

1:07:44SubYeah, like I said, I just started smoking hash again about three weeks ago, and I didn't even mess with any of the stuff that's going around nowadays, the different vape tools. The industry has just exploded. I cannot believe how much paraphernalia is available to smoke cannabis now.

1:08:02BubblemanOh, hey, John, that's me that keeps muting your mic. Sorry about that, dude. It's just when you're not talking, it's creating a reverberation. So if you wanted to talk now, go ahead.

1:08:14IndraHey, Subcool.

1:08:15SubHi, Andrew.

1:08:16IndraYou need to put a little more effort into getting in touch with me.

1:08:21SubI know. I was waiting for you to give me a little bit of a push because of that. I've just been going through a little bit of shit, but it's getting better now, so we will get in touch, I promise.

1:08:33BubblemanDude, he told me the other day that I'm like, he's like, your breath is great, you got great breath, and if I saw you, I could improve it by 100%.

1:08:40SubI don't want to go see so bad, like I say, it's been a weird transition here the last couple of months, but everything is back on target now, so I want to ride up there and see you guys. I got some other friends I want to see up in that area too.

1:08:54IndraNice. So you need lung work or you need a foot in the behind?

1:08:59SubYeah, a little bit of both, my friend.

1:09:04BubblemanIt's because they won't give us banking. We're forced to be outlaws. The next thing you know, it's like we need a foot in the behind to get anything done. It's all their fault.

1:09:11IndraAnd my phone up and working because the generator decided to stop working for some reason. So I managed to find my way through on the phone.

1:09:28BubblemanJust mentioning the 11-hydroxymetabolite that THC changes when it metabolizes in your liver. Someone's mentioning that in the chat room there. I got to mute your mic there, Andrew. That's a crazy sound in the headphones.

1:09:44SubCan anybody in the chat room tell me a little bit more about isolates? I had the chance to smoke some, Pure THCA at the Emerald Cup. On a side note, because I put pictures of it on my Instagram account and everyone kept calling it meth and crack, that killed my 91,000K Instagram account. No, no, they shut you down? Yeah, it wasn't the picture, it was the comments.

1:10:12SubThey got over 300 comments because it was, you know, it was very, people were like, wow, man, what is that? And then the kids are like, whoa, it's meth, I'd smoke it. And I went to the user's page that made it and every one of his posts says no sales, no drag references as per Instagram's terms of user agreement or whatever the hell. But my question is how do they make this stuff?

1:10:34SubWhat's in it? The CBD... The stuff is clear. It looks like glass.

1:10:38BubblemanHow do they make it look? I know the CBD one. There are particular compounds, terpenes if you will, that you can get these out of the oil. You can get them to crystallize. Indra's had them crystallizing right inside his extraction chambers.

1:10:57SpeakerThere's ways... We have Brad on, you know, because my friend owns Guild Extracts. You know, I spent actually Christmas on his dad's wonderful yacht in San Francisco Harbor with Frenchie Cannoli and Tom Alexander of Sensimilia Tips. Okay, yeah, and I've also... This is my Christmas party. And they make this stuff, the CBD isolate. This is really great stuff. This whole little kid I...

1:11:26SubThat is the company that I got it from, Todd.

1:11:28SpeakerYeah, they're great. Brad and his dad. So it's called Guild Extracts. We can have them on, actually. They've been kind of on before. Their product is amazing. And they are some of the people that hold on patent processes and are... They're really doing well from what I understand. Yeah, they're in the chat room right now. They're over 300 California dispensaries, and they're really putting out a quality product.

1:11:55SpeakerI got a lot of love for these people, actually. They've been in the chat room. How do you make crystal?

1:12:00BubblemanI'm just going to type what I'm going to say. You guys keep talking. I just wanted to know how you make crystal. In the chat.

1:12:07DrBy purifying. The compounds are crystalline. And the more pure it is, the more highly likely it's going to be crystalline, right? So THCA is a crystalline solid. CBDA is a crystalline solid, but CBD is also crystalline. THC is not, right? That's why THC is a clear viscous oil.

1:12:32DrBut if it's crystalline, yeah, you could just purify it, and that's how you make it, by recrystallization and purification.

1:12:40SubI was impressed with it. We actually got some terpenes as well, you know, while we were there, and it was just fun. You know, I hadn't been in that scene for a long time, so it was, I think we got some lemon terpenes, and we got some grape terpenes, and we just came home and had a good old time. Oh, by the way, I was going to tell you, the Emerald Cup was so busy, we came home the first night and packed seeds all night because we We misguessed how many we would need.

1:13:03SubIt was unbelievable. I wish you guys could have been there.

1:13:14Etienne FontanLull of the conversation, take one, bong hit.

1:13:17BubblemanYeah, I noticed when I mute my mic and actually just type what I want to say, I definitely noticed we can get those lulls in the conversation.

1:13:27SpeakerLook, I was trying to get Brad to...

1:13:33SpeakerThe Camel Cup was awesome, and it's my favorite event in the entire world, and I can't wait until the entire world is doing what Tim and crew is doing at Sonoma County Fairgrounds. It is heaven.

1:13:44BubblemanI think they have some announcements.

1:13:49SpeakerA warmer climate would be nice, and doing it twice a year would be nice. Being able to walk around in that place at night in the warmth would be like, it would be a whole other experience that I would cherish as much as I cherish today.

1:14:01Etienne FontanFor some reason, the weather was perfect right up until just about that weekend. Any other weekend before would have been pretty perfect.

1:14:10SpeakerCan I just throw this out there? A cold night in Northern California in December. I'm really surprised, right? Me? I'm not surprised.

1:14:20Ryan Dank AfThere's a reason it's out there at that time of year. I mean, that's why that event is so special is that all the growers can go. Right. It's harvest time. You know, everybody's done at that point in time.

1:14:28SpeakerYeah, but now we lighted up up there so we could do it again in spring and have just as good a weed. So why don't we start? My suggestion is two a year because it's that cool. It is that cool.

1:14:39SubAnd I got a shout out from my friends, Mendo Dope, for taking third place. I don't know if you guys know these kids. They are. They sing about our culture. They don't diss women. They don't think about violence. And they took third place, man. I'm so excited for them.

1:14:53BubblemanYeah, they were really excited. I remember they had a little drama earlier because they wanted to play at the Cup, and they weren't somehow able to play and represent the community that they lived in. I just, I also love those guys. I think that they're good guys. I love the grows that they do and the way they cover the grows that they do and the singing and cutting their CD in the grow.

1:15:15BubblemanThat's, that's all just cool. That's cool shit, right?

1:15:19SubI hopefully got them a gig in the LA Cannabis Cup. I hooked them up with Matt Stang. So he texted them right back. I said, look, I said, these guys are huge in the culture. They represent us. And if you guys don't have them on stage, you're kind of missing out. So hopefully they will connect and maybe get a little gig in that three-day event down in LA in April.

1:15:38BubblemanThat's awesome. It will be well deserved for sure. I enjoy them. I have a video up right now with one of their songs, In My Zone. One of the new songs from the new albums. Absolutely a great track. And I just, I woke up one morning and there was snow everywhere, all off my deck and around the forest and the mountains surrounding. And so I just got the drone out, filmed some epic footage, slapped that Mendo Dope song in the background.

1:16:04BubblemanAnd you can check it out on the channel there, In My Zone. Because I'm in my zone.

1:16:10SpeakerUnfortunately, the guy that makes that stuff, that guild, that owns guild is sick today. Oh, shit. But he's feeling down. But he said come on next week.

1:16:22BubblemanWell, you know what? Maybe Martin Lee will come on next week. Maybe we'll get the Center Tech guys on next week, and maybe we'll just have a mad CBD isolate conversation again.

1:16:31SpeakerWe'll see how it goes. He also does the THCA, too. Perfect.

1:16:35SubI have hours of that, too.

1:16:37BubblemanIsolator.

1:16:39SubThe Mendo Boys have a DVD coming out, I guess it's soon. It's called How to Grow Mendo Dope. And they basically film the process of that huge 70-pound garden from start to finish, the caging, just all the methods that they were able to yield those huge numbers in. And they're very excited about it. And so when they came down last time, they have a special pink cut of one of my stains.

1:17:04SubSo we're going to whip it up in something and We're going to make a strain called Mendo Dope for the boys. Nice. We're very excited.

1:17:11BubblemanThat's very cool, man. Right on. I bet you they're doing backflips over that one. The Mendo Dope Cultivar. You know you've made it when you've got, I remember when they came out with the Jack Carrere, I can't remember what year it was, like 97 or something, or maybe later.

1:17:26Speaker94. I was standing next to Jack when Ben christened it Jack Carrere at the Cannabis Castle. Wow. Yeah, I was there. It was the first trip that they opened up through the Cannabis Castle, and Jack was invited, and I was with Jack, so I was standing literally next to Jack in front of Alan Dronkers. That's how I met Alan. Nice. Yes.

1:17:45BubblemanAnd then Alan ended up living there for years later, didn't he? Oh, Alan lived there on and off for years.

1:17:50SpeakerYeah. Yeah, they renovated the place. The place is amazing now. And me and Alan, last time we were together there, we drove up to the gate. He didn't even have the gate code anymore. He's like, I can't get in. But we just looked at it through the gate. Took some pictures. But that was the first time, Jack Carrey. It was really epic. They all dressed up in costume and opened the whole house up.

1:18:13SpeakerEverything was hemp. All the drapes were hemp. The furniture was hemp. The rugs were hemp. It was absolutely incredible. And they debuted this super mixture of an equatorial sativa that they dubbed Jack Carrey because of the important clothes. It's a good one. Yeah, Jack joked that he got stopped at customs and the customs guys in France thought that he was the grower, that he grouped the pot Jack Herrer.

1:18:40SpeakerAnd he was like, no, I'm an author. This is my book. He better read my book. It's not about the pot. It's about the book. It was really great. That is awesome. Yeah. But now he's more famous for the pot ironically than the book. So go figure. Irony of life. True, true.

1:19:00Etienne FontanYeah, that has really turned out to be quite an irony in the end, you know, because it was Jack who got all of us together. All of us are here because of Jack.

1:19:08SpeakerKids, if you're smoking Jack hair today, please Google the name. Read that there's no clothes. Get educated. Please, please, please. Absolutely.

1:19:20BubblemanWe're definitely...

1:19:23BubblemanDid wonders for us. I definitely, that book was a huge part of our self-education.

1:19:31Etienne FontanIt was the guidebook for all of us. I mean, it showed us that there were other opportunities and that it was more than just about smoking dope. You know, it was showing us, like I said, the first time I saw Jack with Debbie back in 89 when they came through West Virginia University, And he was up there yelling and holding his book. But it wasn't until I actually touched that hemp in Debbie's hand that this epiphany light went off in my head.

1:19:57Etienne FontanAnd I went over and I got Jack's book. And then I did a college research paper on it and became the most annoying guy at parties because all I would do is talk about, do you realize what we're being...

1:20:09SpeakerThis hemp and this marijuana, and let's tie it together.

1:20:12Etienne FontanAnd yeah, I had a girlfriend leave me because all I did was talk about it at parties. She's like, I'm tired of you talking about that fucking dope shit. Fine, bye, goodbye.

1:20:21BubblemanThat's hilarious, dude. I saw a friend post the other day that he was like finished with his girlfriend because she was making him choose over ganja. And he was just like, I'm finally done with it. I'm choosing this plant. It's my passion. It's going to be my life. I love this girl, but this is what I'm choosing. I was like, damn, this is... There's some commitment right there.

1:20:41Etienne FontanYou know what it is? Every place that sells Jack Herrera's strain should sell the book, and the book should come with it.

1:20:50BubblemanYeah, that's true.

1:20:52SpeakerStarting with Berkeley Patients Group. There you go. Good call on that one, bro. Dabs calls for a bomb rip.

1:21:03BubblemanHey, what's up, Dabs? Dabs, little Dabs is just little. I just had a bong rip, but I guess I could have another.

1:21:13SpeakerWell, she called it, so. She called it.

1:21:20BubblemanYou're just respecting Dabs' wishes. Yep. Hey, did you guys want to travel through a universe with me real quick? It's the Gateson universe. Okay, let's go.

1:21:38BubblemanJust a fatty marble. Had it on my desk, figured I'd share. It was Gateson. It's crazy how come the bigger, how come the deeper in you go. Like look at how far that planet is.

1:21:55BubblemanDamn. I am impressed, Gateson. You have impressed me. What do we all have these freaking things sitting on our desk? Is that what's going on?

1:22:04SpeakerWhat's that? It's really trippy. We actually have marbles sitting on our desk. We're all freaking big kids.

1:22:10BubblemanYeah, dude. I got this one at the Degenerate Art Show in 2004 at the Melting Point Gallery in Vancouver.

1:22:18SpeakerI got this one given to me by my friend Russ Kress from the Galaxy Gallery in 1997. This is the pipe it came with by the same blower. Wow, that's cool. I didn't get no damn pipe.

1:22:32BubblemanYeah, did you see the Tuca that I posted on Bubble Man's World, the Scott Deppie and Gateson Tuca? Because that's who did this, is Gateson. Universe Marbles, yeah. Well, of course we have big marbles on our desks. Come on.

1:22:49SubThis is a Bob Snodgrass.

1:22:51BubblemanOh, yeah, representing with some snotty. Eugene Action. That's awesome that we just have these sitting on our desks. But do you have a large glass hair straightener?

1:23:09BubblemanYou rock. Man, people are funny. Why am I in here twice? That's weird. You're the boss. I'm the boss, right? I don't feel like the boss of much these days, but...

1:23:26SpeakerLooks like ATN's moving again.

1:23:28BubblemanOh yeah, ATN, what happened there?

1:23:31Etienne FontanMy computer froze up, thought it was a little surge or something due to all this electricity issues due to the storm we have in Northern California currently that Indra's dealing with and others as well.

1:23:44BubblemanYeah, it's pretty brutal, isn't it?

1:23:46SubYeah, it's just a lot of rain. Yeah, we've got 50 mile an hour winds right now right outside. 50 mile an hour winds and 4 or 5 inches of rain and And maybe an hour out of San Francisco. Okay.

1:23:58IndraThey're calling for 12 inches of rain. So you ain't seen nothing yet, basically.

1:24:06Etienne FontanWell, we need the rain. I mean, we've been dealing with a drought. So, I mean, it sucks that it drops in large, you know, spots like this, but it's, you know, one of the main things, things, wells need to replenish and all the water needs to come back. So it's very helpful.

1:24:21SubWell, you know, that goes to something that happened here last year. Our wells went down to basically mud and we had, we struggled in our grow room with our water quality, uh, We're up at a place where it's hard to get water delivered and we basically live off a well and it was pumping out water that looked like Yahoo. So I spent about $2,500 on a water system because the quality.

1:24:44SubSo this water is going to fill it up and the water quality will go up and the quality of my garden will go back up. So I'm happy about it.

1:24:51BubblemanAnd would you also put in like cisterns to capture some of that rainwater aside from just your well if you're draining it by the end of the summer? Is it good to have some extra cisterns so you don't have to deliver water?

1:25:03SubYeah, we don't. I have some fancy system, but we buy big 55-gallon containers and put one on each of our gutters. So we have six gutters, so it's 300 gallons of water. Yep.

1:25:15BubblemanYeah, that's a good idea. I know in Jamaica they just have them all over like huge, like 1,500 gallon ones and bigger ones that are just on properties just open. That's, you know, because the way it rains, you know, you get 12 inches of rain and you have a couple of those things. It's like, man, you will capture a lot of water.

1:25:34SubYeah, you know, up on the big island up top, they don't have water. So they have catchments pretty much how they live up there.

1:25:41Etienne FontanWow. Crazy. Yeah, I was seeing that in Maui. One of the things that, yeah, they have all along Haleakala and stuff like that, different catchments.

1:25:49IndraHmm. Is it? One from, from, uh, Ryan from Morocco. They had swimming pool catchments.

1:25:58BubblemanYeah. They know what they're doing. Those were impressive.

1:26:05SubNow I got, this is not funny, but so Jill is in Oregon with her girl. We got a facility there and it's un, Unusually cold and snowy there. I think they've got like 12 inches and they don't get that in that part of Oregon. And so all the hose bibs are froze. All the water lines are froze. All the hoses are froze. Her water situation right now is critical because it's like 12 degrees with 15 inches of snow.

1:26:32SubSo always a challenge to grow indoors in the middle of the winter.

1:26:36BubblemanYeah, we're in the same boat right now. We have a mad amount of snow. I can just give you the old out the window action. My whole deck is just full of snow right now. It doesn't really show on the camera, but we have snow as well. It won't go away. It's been here. It's snowed the last five weekends in a row.

1:26:57SpeakerYesterday morning, I woke up here in Amsterdam, and there was a very light brush of snow, maybe an inch deep or so, across the entire landscape.

1:27:07BubblemanI know, it made me smile, dude, because your wife took a picture of your feet next to the bicycle, and I was just like, I'm going through my Facebook, and there's like 5,000 people on there, and I see your feet go by in your sandals. I'm like, right on.

1:27:24SpeakerShe also labeled me as her crazy husband.

1:27:28BubblemanYeah, I saw that as well. But that's, you know, fairly accurate.

1:27:33IndraThey're calling 20 feet of snow in the Sierras.

1:27:38Etienne FontanHow much? 20 feet?

1:27:41IndraThat's what they say.

1:27:44BubblemanWell, Whistler did 10 feet from November 23rd to November 30th. 10 feet of snow fell on Whistler Mountain.

1:27:55Etienne FontanYeah, I keep my eye up there because I have, you know, dispensary in Incline Village there on the Nevada side, and they're getting inundated with quite a few feet right now.

1:28:08BubblemanWell, I guess, you know, it's hard to say. I don't pretend to try and know what the world climate is or what it was, you know, 500,000 years ago or what weird cycle we're in now. People always try to, you know, think that they know what's going on.

1:28:24SubIt does seem pissed off though, it really does.

1:28:26BubblemanWe're definitely in a weird cycle in the least.

1:28:32BubblemanBut yeah, how are you doing today, Mark Scaldone? You've been very quiet. Are you just like melted from fish?

1:28:39DrNo, no, I'm just listening to everybody. It's just a great episode to listen.

1:28:43BubblemanNice.

1:28:45DrNo, yeah, I definitely melted from fish, but I think I'm back on earth.

1:28:49BubblemanGood, good. It's nice to be back on Earth. I heard an interview on the Sirius FM the other day, and it was one of the horn players that was on the stage just talking about his perspective.

1:29:01DrYeah, what did he have to say?

1:29:03BubblemanOh, you know, he had been there like, I think he had been there like a month prior playing Madison Square Garden, but with some like pop band. And so he said it was very different. Like the two experiences were like night and day. But yeah, he said it was insane. It was fucking raining cats and dogs.

1:29:21SpeakerDr. Mark, I have a question for you. Do you think the new DEA interpretation of the regulations saying that anything extracted from cannabis plants is in fact schedule one illegal, is that going to prohibit interstate transport of CBD and international transport of CBD to America?

1:29:46DrWell, I think a lot of that has to do with, you know, who would be the enforcing body to basically come down on somebody. So, I guess, yeah, I mean, if the regulation is that anything derived from the cannabis plant, terpenes, cannabinoids, any molecules or any derivative or any salt or anything that it's made into...

1:30:10SpeakerIn the wording, they even said, even if it's 100% pure CBD...

1:30:16DrRight. And I think this is, you know, like collusion to basically put it into schedule two with the FDA. Because I don't know, I mean, again, who's going to enforce this? How are they going to come down on it? It doesn't, the Rohrabacher amendment to the appropriations bill basically gut all of the spending that's in place to enforce anything that's appropriating.

1:30:48SpeakerYeah, and the scary part is it can be removed. It was a rider. It can be reversed.

1:30:53Etienne FontanIt was a rider. It can pass the bill without it, and then we don't have it. But it has been continued until April. At this time, it has continued until April.

1:31:04DrRight, so after April, there would be funds in place for a government division to basically sit down on that and enforce that, I guess?

1:31:12SpeakerYou are correct, right? What it did is it prohibited from spending the money in the states that was legal to enforce the laws that were otherwise legal in the state. And after April, if they don't renew it, guess what? But it didn't cover interstate or international shipments, did it? No, no, no. It's all about what's happening in states where it's legal. And that's it. And I agree with you on that interpretation.

1:31:37SpeakerYeah, yeah. No, interstate commerce or intercountry commerce is not at all something that is legal. At all at this time. So the CBD manufacturers that are shipping it all around the world and shipping it state to state are absolutely in a situation where they're under way different scrutiny than the people that are just like if Subcool went industrial up top the mountain and grew CBD this year and sold it only in California, you'd be totally within the rights of the state of the law to do that.

1:32:09SpeakerBut if you started shipping it to Nevada or Oregon, then Yeah, so it's how you look at it, unfortunately.

1:32:17SubAnd we have the same problem.

1:32:20SpeakerIt's all about the wording.

1:32:22SubWe have to produce seeds in Oregon and Oregon, seeds in California and California, seeds in Colorado and Colorado. There's no other business model in the world that works like this.

1:32:33SpeakerThat's for sure. Welcome, Tony. Jack Daniels has only been made in one place. Every bottle you've ever seen anywhere in the world you were had one source of origin, and we don't have that in cannabis yet at all.

1:32:46TonyWell, and you also have to look at the wording of that skunk man. They defined marijuana, and they defined CBD in pure form in compounds like CBD derived in its pure form, and they were describing marijuana. They were also describing They didn't, they were very cute and very, they did not describe, derive from hemp. And then there's a farm bill. So to answer your question, on a local level, on a local level, like in Colorado, if you're, you know, we're producing hemp on large, large volume.

1:33:20TonyBut internationally, I do think it's a, It's definitely a little, hey, I just want to remind you, this is a controlled substance and pure CBD, you know, is a controlled substance. And I think what it is doing is putting a little bit of a kibosh on international import. And export. So.

1:33:41SpeakerMaybe interstate too because that's controlled by the federal government, not the local state.

1:33:48BubblemanYeah. Same as the outside border, the international border.

1:33:52TonyBut like Mark said, who's enforcing that? And right now they're not enforcing that on at least hemp farmers. With agricultural licenses.

1:34:01SubThe other thing we talk about a little bit, and this is outside what we're talking about, is just simply enforcement. I mean, in California, if you smash into someone and almost kill them, the police just vaguely watch you change information. There's no form of oversight in that. So I can't imagine how they think they're going to go out and police the entire state of California when, I mean, we've been growing cannabis for, What, 14, 15 years under 2015?

1:34:29SubI'm probably wrong on that.

1:34:30SpeakerWell, can I bring up something quick? You know, it was watching in the states where cannabis is legalized and the amount of money that they receive from the federal government to go around and eradicate. And Colorado went down to zero. In Washington, they're still busting people. And the article was about how they're still spending a million dollars a year to eradicate marijuana in Washington. But they're dealing with national parks and places like that where, you know, they're not privately owned.

1:34:54SpeakerYada, yada. But the amount of money that's been spent, they have little charges, significantly lower in the years that followed legalization. And the oppression you've been dealing with as a Northern California girl for your whole life is going to start decreasing because if the state doesn't do it and the state doesn't comply and the state's looking at you, hey, this guy's going to make us money now.

1:35:16SpeakerYou know, they're going to make so much more of taxing and regulating us than they ever did stealing our shit and locking us up. And that's the bottom line when it comes to the taxes and state means. They just want revenue. And we're going to blow away wine, blow away everything else they got, and they're going to love us. And it's a weird transition we're going to go through, but we are in the process of going through it.

1:35:37SpeakerLook at the ML Cup. That's my example of they're going to love us.

1:35:42SubYeah, and I'm real lucky. Well, lucky, whatever. I have my banking situation figured out, and I mean, the government loves us. I'm pretty sure I always have the theory that the government knows who I am and exactly what I'm doing, but I pay an enormous amount of tax every month, and I think they're probably happy about that. Maybe I'm wrong.

1:36:03BubblemanYeah, well, right up until the banks are the weird one. As long as you get your banking sorted, you're good to go. The minute you have problems there, which people in the cannabis industry constantly have problems with. I've been kicked out of 35 banks.

1:36:21BubblemanYeah, that's ridiculous.

1:36:21DrWell, and they need to exclude cannabis from the 280E provision in the IRS tax code because right now that really cripples new businesses because they can't write off any business expense.

1:36:34Etienne FontanIt cripples old businesses as well. They have to pay 100% tax on everything they've sold. It's crazy.

1:36:40TonyYou can't even write off the money you borrow, the interest that you pay on the money that you borrow. You know that? Oh, yeah.

1:36:48DrThey need to eliminate all of that.

1:36:51Etienne FontanWell, again, we were talking about it earlier. Elizabeth Warren is actually working on some of that because of what's happening in her home state. So, fortunately, she is on one of the actual financial committees, and so her voice is exponential.

1:37:05DrYeah, she's gotten a ranking member of the Senate Banking Committee, and she's definitely a... A voice of consumer protection.

1:37:12Etienne FontanWell, and she's made this her point in the last couple of days is specifying cannabis because of what's happening in her state. So this could have a rippling effect. But as I was stating earlier, this is going to take some time. The discussion is just being breached. It took us eight years of failure of the Rohrabacher Amendment before it was actually passed, people. I mean, that's the reality of that little fine line that we're dealing with.

1:37:35Etienne Fontan8 years of failure before it got passed, so don't get too excited about this initially. However, this is a great time to reach out and this is where each one of your voices represents 100 or 1,000 people because if you called in to your representatives and into your house of representative members, You would affect a great change, but because we don't, we sit on our ass and pretend like we can't make a phone call, which we do every single day.

1:38:00Etienne FontanIt would make a great deal of difference because, as I stated, every voice that calls represents a certain amount of constituency out there. And enough people in their areas called, you can really affect change. I've seen it happen.

1:38:14SpeakerDon't you think that if the majority of cannabis businesses that have problems with dealing with cash and banking were to use Bitcoin, the government would immediately freak out and allow you to use banking?

1:38:30Etienne FontanWell, that would be great if every consumer was using Bitcoin. However, that's the problem is that everybody has cash or credit cards and the majority of people have credit cards. What we used to always, you know, you never went anywhere without cash. Now you don't go anywhere without a credit card. So as Bo Man stated earlier, the dynamics have completely, the paradigm have completely shifted to where, you know, you have to have, and now try running a business, you know, then without credit card companies or without banking.

1:38:58Etienne FontanAnd then have like 85 employees. It's a challenge.

1:39:02IndraSo he who invents a machine that's similar to an ATM that you can feed dollars into and get Bitcoins back out.

1:39:10SpeakerThey already have them.

1:39:12IndraWell, I mean, look, he needs one in his dispensary. They need to proliferate them, it sounds like to me.

1:39:20DrHow about Marcel's coin? How would Bitcoin, right? There you go. Have it spit out Marcel's coin.

1:39:30BubblemanI actually sent him a link today.

1:39:32Etienne FontanOh, hey, let's send congratulations out to Marcel and the baby. I saw they named it Phoenix, I thought. Yes. Beautiful, healthy baby, healthy mama. Much love to the family of Marcel Brown and the whole 33 Project.

1:39:49BubblemanYes, total shout out to Jessica Boggs for birthing a beautiful little baby girl. And yeah, Phoenix Rose.

1:39:57IndraSo that would be, since she's named Phoenix, that would be rising from the glasses?

1:40:02BubblemanRising from the glasses. I think that's, yeah, for sure. They're both glassblowers.

1:40:10DrComplete, transparent, monetary system.

1:40:15DrYeah.

1:40:17BubblemanYeah. You know, like a scientific application to the monetary system. It's all data. Glass money, baby.

1:40:32SubYou mentioned the Emerald Cup a while ago. If the Emerald Cup... If they just accepted all of the sales at Emerald Cup were done through legal bank transactions and all of it recorded, think of how much revenue the government would make because all of it out there was BOE volunteer. So if you weren't necessarily a scrupulous businessman, you did not have to do it all by the book.

1:40:59SubAnd that's because we can't use credit cards or some type of banking system We're just using cash, and most of the cash at the animal cup smell like bud, so it was very fitting, but I couldn't help but notice How much revenue was being missing unrecorded? And I'm not trying to be an asshole, but...

1:41:17SpeakerBut you know, though, Subcool, this is what got High Times kicked out of Richmond years ago, you know, and it was unregulated sales. And this is what, you know, was the air of the city attorney's office when I was trying to rent the L.A. Coliseum, was how are you going to regulate all that commerce? And, you know, this is their issue, and it's... I get it, but, you know, we're up against a situation where it's not like we're throwing a beer for us and you're, you know, Budweiser and that's Miller and there's Coors and blah, blah, blah, and they all come in and they legitimately conduct themselves and we all party.

1:41:50SpeakerYou know, unfortunately, these poor people are moonshiner A, moonshiner B, moonshiner C, And, you know, they all show up with it in the back of their truck and, you know, it's really questionable. But we've forced into that situation. But you people, like you, who are starting to put stuff in packaging, brand new stuff and step out of the closet and say, I grew this and, you know what, I'm going to take responsibility for this.

1:42:13SpeakerYou're like your own little Jack Daniels. And, you know, it's people like you that are going to define the difference of normalization of the business. And as they normalize and go, you know what? I met him. He's pretty cool. I don't got a problem with the guy. Let him do business in the bank. And then, bam, the next thing you know, the bankers are on your side saying that we want that money.

1:42:32SpeakerBecause if all those transactions are going to be taking place, it would be safer if it was in our banks and we were making interest off it.

1:42:39Etienne FontanMRSA, which is the medical regulation, already has incorporated that. They're going to allow for one-day permits in non-dispensary locations. That's one of the things that the state has passed. So they're already looking toward where these one-day festivals, they're acknowledging them. And so what they're going to do is they're going to send out an SBOE representative like they do to regular normal events. When I used to work at Jacob Javits Center, when I used to do the hemp shows, they local tax from New York.

1:43:09Etienne FontanWhen I was in New York, New York State tax came out and they all gave us all a form and filled it out beforehand. So any sales that transacted. Thank you for joining us today.

1:43:38Etienne FontanAnd show that you're in a legal business with your legal sales. It's not coming this year, but it's coming soon. This is what we're all, this is the realities and the growing pains, Subcool and us, that we're all here. As we deal with this growing industry, we're in this change. And so we can do less like Tony. And all of a sudden it's just strap in and do the best you can.

1:43:58Etienne FontanStay above board. Keep your nose clean and do the best you can.

1:44:03SubThe Emerald Cup was the first event that the BOE came up to us. With one of their state computers, and they asked us about our business, what we did, how much revenue we would do, and that is the first time in maybe some 40 events that I've done throughout the United States that that has taken place. And I took it as progress.

1:44:24TonyThat's a really weird conversation to have in an event.

1:44:27SubLike, it blew my mind when he called me by my name.

1:44:30TonyNever heard that in my life. But yeah, in Denver, I mean, In Colorado, you see what the trend's going to be. There's just going to be permit events. So like every event, when you go get your booth, you'll have to get a permit. And then in that permit, you'll have to verify your business license, good standing, any required insurances for the event, all that stuff. And it'll be a fee.

1:44:51TonyAnd each one of those booths ends up paying a local fee. And that way, when they give you a permit to go out there, they've checked your businesses before you go out there. So the fact that like, It's kind of funny like the event's going on and the guy's coming out with his clipboard asking Subcool. So I see that you have a business here and it's like attic and that's crazy.

1:45:13SubIt's like how much money are you going to make? That's crazy. Well listen.

1:45:17SpeakerWell you know when I produced the TV Expo, all these businesses were responsible for their own licenses even if they came from out of country or out of state to do business in Los Angeles for the time. Thank you so much for joining us.

1:45:55SpeakerThank you for joining us today.

1:46:10SpeakerLegal. And, you know, we're making this transition now. We, like people like you, have to really vocalize to the BOE and others that you're normal businesses and that this is what's going on. You're seed merchants. Really, you're some of the oldest type businesses in the world when all you're peddling is a f***ing plant.

1:46:29SubIt's been a crazy journey. I mean, the laws keep changing on us. And sometimes as hard as I try to be legal, I'm operating in an area that I don't know if I'm making the right decisions. I have, just like many of you, I have three lawyers and then a business consultant in California that's helping guiding me through the, whether it be a, there's seven different permits proposed, I think, in California, maybe more, but I would operate right now under the 105,000 square foot medical, but no one really knows because if you go to the website, that's what it says, that they don't really know right now in their own words.

1:47:10SpeakerAnd Subcool, what year did you first have marijuana seeds for sale?

1:47:17SubThe Cow Palace, it was seven years ago. The other seed vendors were there, Cali Connection, DNA, Not a lot of the European vendors and the reason we started selling seeds live is because the booth we bought was $12,000 and they were kind of, the people standing around the event were talking to officials and they couldn't decide what to do about seeds because they had only addressed cannabis itself.

1:47:48SubSo I turned to my team and I said, you know, we really need to recoup $12,000 here so start selling seeds and then The very next event we saw Cali Connection selling seeds and then the next event we saw DNA selling seeds. But it's just been the last three years that we were able to pay taxes.

1:48:06SpeakerI understand. The reason I'm asking is because I started in 1976 and it was exactly the same as marijuana.

1:48:19SubYeah, I know you blazed the trails for us and let me say thank you very much because you certainly made it easier for the For the more modern seed companies.

1:48:27SpeakerWell, the main thing was that then you could really only sell via friend of a friend of a friend. You couldn't advertise.

1:48:38SubI understand. It's a strange business to be in, and to me, from the angle of an owner of a seed company, I'm When I started, there was the European people, there was people like you, Sam, that blazed the trails, but here in the States, there was maybe five or six companies, and oh my God, there must be 4,000 seed companies now. There's journals, and every single page is a seed company.

1:49:06SubIt is the biggest market that I've ever seen in my life.

1:49:10SpeakerThe last span of biz that Marcus and I went to last year, I collected 67 different seed catalogs that had booths at the span of this. 67 different ones.

1:49:27BubblemanUnbelievable. That was pretty wild. He had them all out on the floor in the Airbnb that we rented. Do you remember that, Tony? Oh, yeah. Absolutely. Oh yeah, that's what I'm talking about.

1:49:41TonyHey, quick question for you. Did you guys talk about Franco?

1:49:47BubblemanYeah, absolutely. If you want to say something about Franco by all means.

1:49:51TonyI would love to say something about him. It happened suddenly into 2017 and I just, you know, I thought he was one of the unique and most special guys In the industry and on the planet, and it seemed like no matter where you and I went on adventures, we always ran into Franco. I mean, in like the most remote places, most crazy times, two, three in the morning.

1:50:20TonyI remember we were in the middle of Jamaica somewhere, and it was like late, late night. We're driving around. It was just you and I. And you're like, oh, look at this. There's a guy over here.

1:50:33BubblemanMy veggie soup, my veggie stew guy.

1:50:35TonyDid you tell this story? No. No, I did not tell this story. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So we're driving. You're like, oh, look. Check this guy out. He's the veggie stew guy. He's on the side of the road. This guy, like, didn't he, like, cater your wedding or what?

1:50:48BubblemanNo, he was the,

1:50:52BubblemanHe took the photos at my wedding like 22 years prior. Okay.

1:50:57TonySo this is how small and connected the world is. So we're in the middle of nowhere. You see us in the middle of the rain on the side of the road. You're like, oh man, there's my veggie stew guy because you were hungry. You like manifested this guy because you were trying to get some food. I was like one or two in the morning and you pull over.

1:51:16TonyYou're telling me the story and all of a sudden I look to my right and from across the woods, In the middle of the rain, Franco comes running over. I'm like, what? I was like, dude, you're here? And he was like, oh, yeah, man, yeah. We're just in the woods and this and that. I'm like, Jesus, bro, you are hardcore. Yeah, it was with Arian. Yeah, yeah, they were, it's just, we just, it was just, and I ran into him in Canada, I ran into him in Jamaica, I ran into him in Spain.

1:51:43BubblemanThat might have been the last time I seen him. I might have seen him in Canada.

1:51:46TonyNo, Canada.

1:51:47BubblemanYeah, Canada, right, okay.

1:51:48TonyHe came to Canada for Lyft. Yeah, that's true. Saw him in Toronto. Yeah, man, I just, I just want to, I'm going to take a rip for him. I'll take a rip for that. Yeah, we will. Nice to see you. Very, very special guy. He came to our greenhouses in, uh, In Denver too, and just saw his heart and his eyes light up anytime he saw a plant.

1:52:15TonySomebody's growing a plant. He was just so passionate about the plant. You just see his entire soul light up. I mean, it was part of him as the plant was, you know.

1:52:29BubblemanWell, we will certainly take another puff for Franco.

1:52:34IndraBoom.

1:52:53BubblemanThat was a good one. Jack Frost terpenes are just so ridiculous.

1:53:03SubThere we go. Go ahead.

1:53:11BubblemanWhoever was going to talk. Let's see what the chat room is saying right now. The sound of precision. Franco.

1:53:25BubblemanAh, yes, Hedy Martin, that's right. Greenhouse was in the booth directly in front of the Medtainer booth. Johnny B, of course, is in Mexico right now. He's going to be driving on down to Tulum in the next couple of days with his little lady, and they're having a nice five, six-day vacation down there. So, hope you're having a great time, Johnny B. We miss you here in Hash Church, but you deserve a vacation, bro.

1:53:49SubYou know, something, just some whatever, pot culture trivia. I saw Bobby Black at the Emerald Cup, and he's not with High Times anymore. So I was surprised to find that out, but I was curious if it was because High Times got rid of the, what is it, the High Times girl, I don't know what it's called, but the The model girl thing, I think Bobby was doing that.

1:54:15SubNo, no, no.

1:54:15SpeakerBobby was doing a lot more than that. Bobby's been with the magazine since I want to say 95. I remember when they hired him on. He'd been at that. He was part of the institution.

1:54:26SubWas he a partial? I thought he was maybe one of the partial owners or something.

1:54:31SpeakerNo, Bobby's not. No, no, no. Very few people own it. Stang. Yeah, very few people own it. Michael Kennedy used to run it. And it changed hands, you know, so many times they wanted to take it into a different direction. If you remember 2003, 2004, they tried to bring in Richard Stratton and Norris Kidd, Buffalo Mailer to reorganize the magazine. And it went really bad. It was after Hager, the guy that basically invented the cannabis cup on his Thanksgiving vacation into Amsterdam, retired.

1:55:04SpeakerThank you for watching.

1:55:21SpeakerThere's been a huge reorganization in it, you know, with now Nico Escondido and Matt Stagg and Malcolm McKinnon as Dan's guy running the magazine. And, you know, Bobby and his wife April were both at every fucking event I ever went to for High Times. They were really the anchors and they were just great, brilliant, bright faces. They were always so cool. I still love them. And now they're living in California.

1:55:45SpeakerAnd Bobby's doing his own thing. I think we're going to see him doing podcasts and stuff. And he's a really great guy. I mean, everybody can just look him up, Bobby Black. I'm sure they'll find him on Facebook. And, you know, he's definitely just reinventing himself after like, honestly, over 20 years at high times. I think he did two decades in the magazine, you know.

1:56:05SubSuper professional working with him. I've worked with him about 15 years and just always very professional.

1:56:10SpeakerYeah, really sweet guy. Him and his wife April are really, really cool people.

1:56:14BubblemanThey're doing a tour company, I believe, for cannabis events.

1:56:19Etienne FontanYeah, we ran into him at Chalice, and yeah, he told us that he had left High Times, so I knew that as far back as, yeah, the summer.

1:56:29TonyWell, and you got to remember, when they did the High Times, Miss High Times, whatever, that's just like one personality, like Dan's the voice, that's just this kind of a, Front personality, but there's other roles that they all have.

1:56:44SpeakerAll that happened, Tony, they put a porn star on the cover with some pot, and they got incredible sales. And at the time, it was a point where they were trying to reinvent themselves, and they were looking for something that would catch the audience's eye. Was that Misty? No, Misty, no, no. No, it was, she's a famous porn star. I can't think of who it is. I think she's Asian looking.

1:57:07SpeakerI think, like, she was holding buds and wearing gold. I remember the cover, like... Did you have a Kobe tie? It's old. I honestly...

1:57:16BubblemanThe only reason I mention that is because the one time... I mean, maybe there was even a couple of times in the end, but the first time I ever went up on stage and got a cannabis cup... I entered one of Marcel Braun's pieces that I had with me. It was a really crazy, beautiful fish and all this stuff. So he won, I don't know what it was, like second or something.

1:57:37BubblemanAnd when I went up on stage, she was the one who was giving the medal away. I can't remember the year. 99, 2000 maybe?

1:57:49BubblemanOh, did I do that accidentally?

1:57:52SpeakerYou're muted, Todd. Oh, my bad. I'm sorry. I probably muted myself. And actually, I looked it up, and it was when Bobby Black interviewed Tara Patrick, and they caught mad sales for it, and then they tried to kind of push this, like, okay, we're going to do girls, you know, like they were scrambling, in my opinion, and they scrambled in that direction. I don't think it was the best direction, but that's the direction they scrambled in.

1:58:15BubblemanSo it sounds like potentially within the next hour we'll get Tim Blake. He's just driving down to an area where the internet will work and he's going to be with Alec from SC Labs. So hopefully we'll see those guys in the next hour to have a little conversation. And yes, give thanks, Tony, for the New Year's gift.

1:58:35Etienne FontanYeah, everybody, there's a major storm in Northern California, so a lot of people are having issues. Andrew, of course, has lost his electricity due to it, and I've had some searches here myself. Fortunately, I still have electricity, so that's why we're having some issues, and that's also why we were hoping to have Martin on today, but unfortunately, he is having weather issues as well, Lee, so that's why he's not on today as well.

1:59:04IndraI'm on UPS backup at this point in time. If UPS goes down, I'll be stuck in a tiny hole in the woods.

1:59:16SubIf I disappear, it's because my power goes out and my router dies. It's really bad. It's like 50 miles an hour right now. I'm looking. All my chairs on my deck are on one side of my deck now.

1:59:28Etienne FontanYeah, the trees out front are on their side. Yeah, the wind's heavy here too.

1:59:33SpeakerIt's great. I can't see past my deck. It's just cloud.

1:59:38BubblemanIt's kind of crazy when you live in a forest with giant trees because I remember a couple years ago going away in November when we usually get our windstorms. Coming back after the Cannabis Cup and having three, like, maybe one foot away from my house, like a full, like, 300-foot tree, like, fall right off the mountain and then be, like, really close to my house. And it's hard to move a tree like that from coming down the mountain, the way you buck it up and everything.

2:00:07BubblemanIt's a pain in the butt for sure. It's scary to put a house in that situation. Definitely hemlock trees, those things snap. It's good to get the tree guy in before those windstorms when you live in a forest. It's good to know what trees you live around. Most people can't identify half the trees on their property.

2:00:33SpeakerYeah, I have oak trees and now there's these little fucking anemones popping up and my dogs are eating them. That's caps. No, they're not good. They're killing pets all over the place. Come on. So people should learn what kind of trees they have in their backyard because their pets' lives depend on it. Not to be Debbie Downer, but my dogs came home and held a high and I wasn't sure what the fuck happened and they were okay.

2:00:55SpeakerThey lived through it, but scared the shit out of me.

2:00:59BubblemanOkay, you know what? It's, listen, they have a few, okay, the toxics, ibotenic acid and muscimol are not lethal to humans, but in rare instances can cause death in dogs.

2:01:10SpeakerDeath caps?

2:01:12BubblemanAmanita muscarias, I guess.

2:01:14SpeakerOh no, they're another branch of the enemy, just type in death cap, they started putting muscarias up all around the bay.

2:01:20BubblemanI guess those gallerinas?

2:01:21SpeakerUnder oak trees.

2:01:23BubblemanOh no, Amanita phalloids.

2:01:26SpeakerYeah, fucking hell. They supposedly smell like fish, so they smell good, taste good, and our dogs eat them. So if you're walking your dogs and you're in Northern California and you have dogs, please look for mushrooms and don't let your dogs eat them.

2:01:40BubblemanYou know, before the death cap, I was always afraid of the gallerina, which was the deadly gallerinas. Oh, welcome back, Natasha. Because they could just kill your liver. Like, they go through you and just destroy you. You're done.

2:01:52SubThat's what those do. My lab last year was those stupid newts. Did you know a newt is like the only thing more toxic than a newt is a puffer fish, I think? And my silly lab picked one up and was chewing on it, and he was messed up for about 10 days.

2:02:10SpeakerI just wanted to say something. I heard you guys, I was listening, and you were talking about skullcap poisonings. Well, I saw something interesting the other day. So Sarah Russo, Ethan Russo's daughter, she just wrote a really nice piece for Project CBD about milk thistle and its active ingredient, silymarin. I'm not sure how exactly to say it, silymarin, but silymarin. Anyway, this compound is very protective for liver health.

2:02:35SpeakerAnd I saw someone comment on her piece that filamarin is actually an antidote for death cap. And it's actually the only known antidote. And she was like, oh, I was going to include it in the piece, but it got cut by my editor. So you may want to look into that more. And if it works for humans, I'm assuming it would work for pets. So that might be something to just have on hand.

2:02:56SpeakerYou can buy the supplements. And it's a super safe supplement. Thank you so much for joining us today.

2:03:29SpeakerYou can use cannabis for weight loss and appetite control because most people know of cannabis as like increasing appetite and they think that that's the only thing that it does. But certain types of cannabis and certain forms of cannabis can also suppress your appetite and such as THCV. So that's one of the compounds that's actually being researched by GW Pharmaceuticals as an appetite suppressant. And you guys may know of Ramonaban, so that was the drug a bunch of, was being developed clinically to inhibit the CB1 receptor and- That killed people?

2:04:02SpeakerExactly, exactly. It was horrible because what the thing with these drugs that they're developing They inhibit, they fully inhibit the CB1 receptor, which can have damaging repercussions like affecting your mental health. What's cool about these plant compounds is, the natural compounds, is they're just partially inhibitors. So they can inhibit them, but they don't completely inhibit them. So they don't have those unfortunate side effects of making you more at risk to commit suicide, which is why they had to pull the drug Ramoniband and other drugs from the market.

2:04:35SpeakerYeah, it's pretty crazy. But going back to the milk thistle and the silymarin, so it is one of these natural plant compounds not in cannabis that can also partially inhibit the CB1 receptor and it increases the CB2 receptor and it's super protective for liver health. So anyone with like concerns about liver damage should be taking milk thistle.

2:04:59TonyI've been using that for… A topical like facial scrub, an enzyme.

2:05:07SpeakerAnd what's, how, yeah, how is it, I've heard about it's really good for topical, especially for dermatitis or inflammation. It can really be calming. It's really strong antioxidant. So yeah, how, what's, what's the form? How are you liking it?

2:05:20TonyI'm just, I mean, I put it on my face every day now and work it in with one of those UV brushes.

2:05:27SpeakerWhat's the UV brush?

2:05:29TonyThey sell those little... Thank you so much for joining us.

2:05:48TonyI try out products first.

2:05:50SpeakerWell, give me your address. I'll send you some of my stuff to incorporate into your routine.

2:05:56TonyI wasn't even thinking of milk. It's so funny because yesterday I had to look up if mushrooms were poisonous to my dog because she was asking for a treat. I looked in the fridge and I usually have a carrot or I have something else. No, I can't give you an apple. I can't give you a grape. And she was like, oh, I want something. And I was like, well, I got these little mushrooms that are chopped up.

2:06:17TonyAnd I threw like a mushroom on the floor, just like a little tiny one. And she started eating it. And I'm like, huh. I said, that could possibly cause problems. I was like, because that's like a sponge, you know. And I was like, so a spore. And so I look up online, and it says that... That, you know, you shouldn't feed your dog mushrooms. It's on the top 10.

2:06:37TonyAvocados on that list, like you were saying, and chocolate obviously was on the list. And I was talking to someone about using baking soda because my dog got into chocolates and edibles and ate like 600 milligrams one time. And so... Not baking soda, hydrogen peroxide. And so that's another natural thing to do. I know it sounds weird, but if you spoon feed your dog hydrogen peroxide, a very good grade of it, like two spoonfuls, it will actually cause everything to regurgitate.

2:07:12TonyIt foams up and the dog will regurgitate that edible. If you know that they've eaten a chocolate mushroom, type of thing or they've eaten a chocolate edible that you feel could be fatal. That's a trick that I had to do with Ola before because she absolutely loves cannabis edibles and she loves chocolate.

2:07:34SpeakerYeah, and dogs have an endocannabinoid system just like us, so they respond to cannabis just like us, and people have to be careful because dogs have a different response than humans, so yes, it can be an effective medicine for them, but they can also have issues and can be a problem, so you want to be careful.

2:07:53IndraYeah, she's... Dr. Natasha, I noticed that milk thistle was listed as the antidote for marijuana.

2:08:02SpeakerWell, that would make sense if it's inhibiting the CB1 receptor. Maybe it would be like if you had too much THC, which is overstimulating the CB1 receptor, maybe that would be reducing it. I mean, I don't know very much of it in that way, but it makes sense because that's also kind of like THCV, just in terms of appetite and body weight. It's being seen as an antidote to, or like it does the opposite as THC in that THC increases these things where THCV would suppress these things.

2:08:35SubCan you talk about THC and its reaction to the CB2 receptor when it applies to the immune system?

2:08:44SpeakerSure, I know, like I know more just about how it affects the CB2 receptor, or sorry, what did you just say? She said THC affecting the CB2 receptor?

2:08:54SubTHCV affecting the CB2 receptor, stimulating the autoimmune system.

2:09:00SpeakerYeah, so, yeah, it's supposed to stimulate the CB2 receptor and suppress the opposite. So, the CB2 receptor is found on immune cells. And so, I mean, this is complicated. It depends what tissue we're talking about, what cell we're talking about, what immune, like... Thank you for joining us.

2:09:45SpeakerIt's still mostly just shown in animal studies and test tube experiments, so sometimes it's hard to translate that.

2:09:52TonyMaybe for our audience, just quickly give a generalization of THC, what it does on CB1 and what it does on CB2 and CBD and what it does and vice versa, just so everyone has a general map in their head.

2:10:05SpeakerOkay, so it does a lot of different things, but in general, the CB2 receptor Thank you for joining us.

2:10:39SpeakerYeah, so THC can stimulate both the CB1 and the CB2 receptor. It's mostly going through the CB1 receptor. But again, this is like... I hesitate to break it down just to these basic things because it's like a net doing so many different things. And the areas that I'm more worried about are like the TRPV1 receptors and how it's affecting like heat sensing and peristalsis.

2:11:06TonyLet's bring it back to reality then. Milk thistle, if I take it after I smoked a joint, what happens?

2:11:13SpeakerI have no idea, but... Theoretically, it may help with clear-headedness. That's kind of what it seems like it should do.

2:11:23TonySo that's what John's saying, and that's why I'm working with Milk Whistle.

2:11:27SpeakerOkay, so tell me about it. I can tell you the theories, but I don't have the experience working with it.

2:11:32TonyYeah, so think about it that way. If you were looking for something to reverse the effects, if you were too high or you wanted to push a certain effect of, say, THC partially through or in a way, you can start pairing THC. Pairing things with other plants that also inhibit on or off those receptors, you know?

2:12:02IndraIf you take milk thistle, Tony, after smoking, it'll bring you down faster than the IRS letter.

2:12:11TonyAnd so think about how that would pair if you were trying to boost CBD or push THC a different way with it, you know?

2:12:19SpeakerAnd so what doses are you talking about here?

2:12:22TonyI can't discuss that.

2:12:24SpeakerThat's fair. But I mean more like if you were taking it as an antidote versus like a daily... I was just kidding.

2:12:32TonyI don't even know doses yet. I don't ever do... I don't really... When I'm like making something or working with something, yeah, I work with a certain amount. But I usually work in a much stronger amount so that I can make sure I feel it. You know, like something might be a thousand milligram topical for a while. You know what I mean? Until I like... Until I keep scaling back until I find the right...

2:12:53TonyDosing, but for myself, I usually do things with a lot more.

2:13:00SubThey were appalled earlier that I was taking high doses for 500,000. Well, they were giving me a little bit of grief.

2:13:08TonyThat you're taking 4,000?

2:13:10SubNo, I take between 250 and 1,000 on average. I've settled at 250.

2:13:17TonyWhat, milligrams a day?

2:13:18SubYeah, milligrams a night. I take it about 10 o'clock and I take it for three.

2:13:27SubNothing on the planet works like it for me.

2:13:32SpeakerTony, when you make your blends to inhibit the CB1 receptor, did you know that there's also compounds in carrots that can do that?

2:13:44TonyYeah.

2:13:48TonyWell, you know why I started getting into that was because when you start realizing how terpenes kind of from just cannabis play a significant role in how it, I guess, would be a catalyst for these things, for these compounds. And so it only makes sense that you start to think about how other fruits and vegetables and roots I'm fascinated with it. I wish I studied it more and I wish I had a degree in it.

2:14:23TonyAnd I wish I had time to go back to school. But when I find people like yourself that's into it, that's into science and also natural products and then trying to pair these cannabis properties with other natural plants, these synergistic effects that probably have been around for thousands of years, but of the last hundred years since it's repressed, it's We're rediscovering it in new ways, you know, and I think it's a very interesting path.

2:14:48TonyAnd I think on a homeopathic level, there's a whole industry that is going to explode in the next five years, you know, as you start seeing more and more of this.

2:14:58SpeakerWell and it's interesting like for instance last night my husband Dave had really bad severe pain due to his arthritis in his shoulders and he was finding like I had made him a cannabis infusion also with frankincense and myrrh it was really nice but we used it and he was just not really getting a lot of relief from it and then once I added Thank you for joining us today.

2:15:47SpeakerThank you for joining us.

2:15:58SpeakerAs anyone who's made anything with peppermint knows, you can put too much peppermint where it actually becomes uncomfortable and it feels too cold. So you can only use a little bit amount of that. So to make that work better, I'll add other things like the eucalyptus and the lavender. And again, those things, they have other benefits. Like the lavender is helping with anxiety. It's helping calm you down.

2:16:18SpeakerSo it's getting you to the... You know, when you're feeling all clenched up because you're in pain, when you're breathing in these compounds, you start being able to relax a little bit more so your medicine works better. Another thing that we've recently started using is diffusers. So we've got a nice little water diffuser. I think we're going to upgrade to the little electronic one because If you have the electronic one, you can use heavier blends like vetiver and these patchouli, heavier essential oils.

2:16:44SpeakerBut the one we have right now with the steam distillation, we've been putting this sweet orange, bergamot, and grapefruit blend And it is wonderful. You just have it kind of burning and you get, or it's not burning, it's steaming, and you get little whiffs of it and it's just, it's delightful. Like, really, you smell it and I found it even like, it was almost like eating a piece of chocolate.

2:17:06SpeakerLike, it felt, every time I get a whiff of it, like, I get just like a little, hmm, that's nice, and just, I don't know. So having that burning in your house, it not only makes you feel good, it's also helping with, um, Thank you for joining us today.

2:17:41SpeakerThank you so much for joining us.

2:18:11SpeakerSeven pounds of onions, which I would recommend putting them in the fridge first before you do this. Like seriously, everyone in the house was like painful crying. It was so intense. But cooking that, it cleared the whole air out and then it turned into this really delicious, you know, soupy, beef brothy aroma. Which also has a lot of benefits to eat because onions are really rich in beneficial fibers that encourage the growth of good bacteria.

2:18:36SpeakerSo you're not only killing the air of bad bacteria, you're also populating your gut with good bacteria by eating onions. And an interesting point, we had a baby in the room, like a six-month, or sorry, a six-week-old baby Dachshund, and the baby was not susceptible to the onion terpenes. So, didn't cry. Anybody know anything about that? Babies not being receptive to volatile compounds in the air? Because I was surprised.

2:19:03SpeakerWell, we should ask Marcel.

2:19:06BubblemanWe just came into the room and congratulations, dude. You guys just had a baby. Dude, are you muted? Yeah, I can't hear you. You're muted.

2:19:15SpeakerWe sure did. We're so happy.

2:19:17BubblemanDude, congratulations. We shouted you out, both you and Jessica and Baby Phoenix earlier, but it's nice to see you and it's kind of coincidental that you come in as Natasha was talking about babies.

2:19:29SpeakerNice. What was the question about babies? Something about VOCs?

2:19:36SpeakerWe were making French onion soup and there was a lot of onion volatiles in the air and I said we were all reacting very strongly as you do when you cut onions like really red crying but the baby the six week old wasn't affecting wasn't phased out so I thought I was wondering if maybe babies don't aren't don't have the receptors yet to respond to that. May have had a plug nose.

2:19:59SpeakerNo, she wasn't sick. Sorry, someone's commenting. She wasn't sick, or it's a boy, baby Dachshund. He was fine, and he was working fine, but for some reason, the onion turps were unfazed. Are you sure it's the turps that make you cry? I thought it was hydrochloric gas or something that would expose to water.

2:20:22DrThiols, thiols, allyl thiol. So am I right? Sulfur-containing compounds. They aren't terpenes. Yes, you're right.

2:20:30SpeakerYeah, you're right. So I'm smelling them and feeling them getting both of the exposures. So maybe the baby was smelling them but not. What are they? The thiols that's making me cry?

2:20:39DrThiols, yes. Thiols.

2:20:42SpeakerThe baby wasn't affected by the thiols. I can't confirm if the baby could smell the terps. So my bad.

2:20:50BubblemanWell, tell us about your little baby, Marcel.

2:20:53SpeakerOh, she's wonderful. She's just, I mean, perfect in every way. Beautiful. Oh, look, here she comes.

2:21:04BubblemanOh, hey, congratulations. Thank you. Oh, my goodness.

2:21:09Etienne FontanCongratulations. Oh, look at the little.

2:21:13BubblemanLook how advanced she is. She's like a couple days old. She's like, I'm on Hash Church already. I've been on the panel. I come on every Sunday or whatever.

2:21:22SpeakerVery sweet. First unplugged.

2:21:39BubblemanThat's very sweet. Very happy for you guys when I saw that. I was like, wow, that's wonderful. It's such a, it's just such a wild time, that whole pregnancy experience and birth, and it's just so, it's just so life and death. You know, you're just on this cusp, this edge, and it's just very nerve-wracking. I mean, I can't imagine being a mom, but from the father's perspective, oh, we just want you to be safe.

2:22:06BubblemanIt's a helplessness feeling sometimes, being there and helping with birth, but yeah, you're just there to back up your lady, to help her get the job done, and it looks like you guys did a great job. Oh, yeah.

2:22:17DrWell, that's when you reaffirm to yourself that the pregnant woman is the most powerful being on the planet.

2:22:24BubblemanYeah, or just the woman in general with the ability to become pregnant.

2:22:29TonyYou could tell those two guys speaking are happily married with children. Their wives have them in line. Yes, we are well-loved. You're on your way, Marcel.

2:22:42SpeakerHappy wife.

2:22:43BubblemanAnd how is your daughter loving her new sister?

2:22:47SpeakerOh, she's just been awesome.

2:22:49BubblemanYeah.

2:22:50SpeakerShe's already one of the most helpful 12-year-olds I know, but she's taken it up a notch, too.

2:22:55BubblemanI bet she has. She's just probably instantly like, whoa, unconditional love to the max.

2:23:01SpeakerOh, yeah. Both of them were there right during the labor.

2:23:04BubblemanOh, great.

2:23:06SpeakerAshton was holding my vomit cup because I was vomiting with all the contractions.

2:23:12BubblemanOh, no. The beauty of birth.

2:23:18SpeakerThis 12-year-old was like, tuck your chin in.

2:23:22BubblemanOh my gosh, that's awesome. What a journey. I mean, my word for it has always been psychedelic.

2:23:33BubblemanIt's just so psychedelic. Like the highest I've ever been on psychedelics is very similar to watching your children be born. It's like, whoa, this is a place I have not spent a ton of time. This is new. Man, I'll tell you. Well, very, very nice. You know, it's good to, uh, We started out Hash Church, of course, mourning the loss of our friend Franco from the Strain Hunters in Amsterdam.

2:24:06BubblemanHe's worked with Arian and the Greenhouse family for, you know, since 1999, I believe. And he passed away in the Congo. He got malaria, so it's been a big hit to the cannabis community. So that's kind of how we started Hash Church, and we've been, you know, remembering him and positive stories. But it's very nice to have you guys come in with a new life in the same episode.

2:24:31BubblemanSo very cool, guys. Love it. Subcool, welcome back, buddy.

2:24:42BubblemanDid you change your clothes or something, Sub? Oh, I don't think he can hear me. He looks like he's got different stuff on.

2:24:49SpeakerYeah, guys, so we just finished up this one. This is my newest coin.

2:25:01BubblemanOh, nice. How the hell?

2:25:06SpeakerMake this the best day ever. This is one of the largest specimens. They're going to be the, I had a kind of a wide varying size, so here's another one of the same. Yeah.

2:25:20BubblemanYou know what, Marcel, this might be a good place to tell you about an idea that I've had that I definitely see your coins and your project fitting into. I've been talking about bringing back the Melting Point Gallery to Vancouver. Okay. But on a completely different level. Of course. Like raise the bar times 10, I would suspect.

2:25:42SpeakerWasn't that the function of the, it was, that's what you did the first time, so.

2:25:47BubblemanYeah, yeah, exactly. For the first time, it was a huge, huge pop, but this one's going to be like another unique. I just sent a text out to Slinger the other day and was like, listen, kind of throwing this idea around glass, high-end glass gallery in Vancouver, being one component of it, obviously. I mean, I would love to have myself a really nice vape lounge and restaurant area that is attuned to the...

2:26:11BubblemanYou know, just a nice place like the melting point was for people to come and be and get educated. And so there's this whole vision, I won't go into the whole part of it, but definitely the gallery part. I could see you being a huge part of it, man, and definitely throwing a special Project 33 event and definitely being a part of taking the coins and using the coins and just...

2:26:36BubblemanYeah, I wanted to tell you that.

2:26:40SpeakerYou just have to let me know how to support it, what's going to be the best for you, and maybe we can do a special coin to help with your initial publicity when you're putting the word out.

2:26:54BubblemanYeah, dude, absolutely. Something cool like that, for sure. It's going to be fun. It's been a while since I've had a project like this. Like that, like the melting point really immersed me for three years. Like Sling and I were immersed in that shit for three years. Right?

2:27:11SpeakerYeah, it was... It's time for you guys to team up again and do some...

2:27:16BubblemanYeah, well, I definitely know having Slinger be out in Philly and know that whole crew so well, like I could definitely picture throwing like a Philly show where it's just like, let's get all these artists out. I love the idea of raising the quality of the gallery. I want to see properly, you know, Thank you so much for joining us.

2:27:55BubblemanLike it's, I love the idea of being able to purchase it in a natural, like this is a business environment. Come sit down and we're going to talk about this. You're safe. You're not going to get robbed. You're not going to, because that's another thing that I definitely worry about. The more I see, because I go to some of these places and I see all these kids with Pelican cases and sometimes out east in Toronto, I've seen, 20, 30, 40 of them in the same place.

2:28:19BubblemanAnd some of them have stories of like, you know, that kid's known to have a big glass collection, like better keep your Instagram. So it's just the privacy and the sort of like art, that level of collecting art at that level where you want to be able to just protect certain aspects of it, not really have it all be put on blast, you know, because it's your own private business.

2:28:44SpeakerYeah, I mean, it just depends on what your goal of collecting is. I mean, a lot of these kids that are collecting the way that we're seeing right now, they're actually adding value to the piece by doing it on Instagram and creating this, like, desirability based around their Instagram and the energy that they put into the piece.

2:29:04Etienne FontanWell, it's also creating a provenance as well for supporting the art as well as the history of the art. So it's been represented, which in the past has been a problem with art, you know, keeping proper documentation through history. And so this is just a way.

2:29:20SpeakerYeah, absolutely. Yeah, no, I think that's a great thing because a lot of these kids that are a great link to add up pieces on Instagram and stuff, they would do better.

2:29:35SpeakerBy, you know, doing some more of this like mainstream type of marketing or participating like buying from a venue like you're talking about, Mark.

2:29:44BubblemanWell, a place you can go and really see beautiful glass and when the times come to go and do your business, you can actually go into a private room and, you know, either do it through banking or do it through cash or however you want to go about doing it. But just make it a little bit more private in that regards.

2:29:59SpeakerYeah.

2:30:00BubblemanSo that's just one real simple aspect. What I really want to do is just be more involved in glass again. It's like a full circle. And it's so strange that I have like a two-and-a-half-year-old again. So now it's like my child now is the same age as, you know, Tosh or Trinity were back then. It's kind of wild.

2:30:21SpeakerRight? Yeah, I got the same thing that was going on myself.

2:30:25BubblemanFull circles. The reason I keep muting your mic, John, is because it's clicking and people in the chat are asking me, oh, can you mute John's mic, Indra? So that's why I keep muting your mic. But if you have something to say, I definitely won't re-mute it because I don't want to be doing that to you.

2:30:46Etienne FontanAll right, who did we lose? Subcool is having a hard time. Oh, yeah, the storm's got him.

2:30:50BubblemanThat's kind of wild that there's this insane storm going on right now in California and hope everyone's doing well and safe there.

2:30:58SpeakerAnd I had an adventure based on the weather this morning. So I went outside and I actually have been going on Instagram live and doing some monologuing up there. So I got up and I was walking out and I was showing, I got an excavator in my yard right now because we're replacing a septic tank or doing a repair. And so there's a big pit open in the yard.

2:31:23SpeakerSo I walked over there, just kind of, the only reason I was was to talk crap on IG. And I looked down in the pit and one of my chickens is just like huddled in a foot of water, just down in the hole, like just looking all kinds of unhappy. And so like while I was on Instagram I like got the whole ladder and went down into the bottom of this hole and I had to change my boots and I don't have rubber boots so I was just like in these old work boots that were once waterproof but they're not and I'm down in a foot of water and I finally catch this chicken and it's flapping around and he Breaks my glasses, which break down and they're not broken, broken, but the right earpiece fell off into the water.

2:32:12SpeakerAnd so now I'm down my super awesome glasses and I got this fapping chicken in my hands.

2:32:18BubblemanThat room, Sean's 420 was like, ask Marcel about the chicken.

2:32:25BubblemanThat's the trippiness of social media right there. Because he said that and I was like, okay, I'll just see if Marcel brings up the chicken and then maybe towards the end I'll mention it. But you brought it up, dude.

2:32:38SpeakerIt was a whole adventure. So I'm like got this squawking cock, breaks my glasses, climb back out. And then so I'm like trying to figure out how to get my glasses. And the water was really clear. So it's basically like, oh, let's go to the shop and we'll smoke weed until the water clears up. And then, you know, that's the perfect kind of foil for the monologue.

2:32:59SpeakerAnd we've got this mission. It was a great, it was a great, great morning this morning. And then I ended up going back out there after the water had cleared, spotting them from the top and getting it. Nice.

2:33:11BubblemanVery good. Well, that chicken probably was up last night watching like Food Choices on Netflix. He was like, this is what they do to chickens? I ended up going back out there. Hey, how's it going, Alec?

2:33:24SpeakerWhat up? Well, that chicken probably was up last night watching like Food Choices.

2:33:30BubblemanShut down the YouTube aspect or mute the YouTube and then we won't have that reverberation. That's Alec from SC Labs in the house.

2:33:42BubblemanAnd we do welcome you. You've got your mic muted, but if you've managed to mute the YouTube video, you won't get that same reverberation when you unmute.

2:33:53SpeakerThere we go. There we go. What's up, guys? Hey, everyone.

2:33:56BubblemanDoing well, man, doing well. Marcel was just telling a hilarious chicken story and how it assaulted him and broke his glasses off of his face.

2:34:03SpeakerYeah, Marcel, are you in California? Eugene, Oregon. In Oregon, there we go. Yeah, the storm is pretty crazy right now. Yeah, it's, I mean, you know, we missed quite a bit of it. They said it was going to be the strongest injury, but it's the same thing. Thank you for watching.

2:34:36BubblemanThere we go. That was the one to mute. Excellent. Well, welcome, man. Yeah, we've just been having a pretty chill Sunday afternoon. We had Martin Lee was supposed to come in and talk a little bit about Project CBD and some of what he's up to.

2:34:49SpeakerSuch a wealth of knowledge.

2:34:52BubblemanYeah, yeah, absolutely. So he's going to reschedule for sure. So we're not losing him by any means. And thank you to Natasha who set that up. She's really going out of her way and helping find new panelists to come share their stories and their knowledge here on Hash Church. So we always appreciate some new people coming in and sharing like we appreciate you coming in today to share, man.

2:35:15BubblemanWhat's going on? And welcome back, Primera.

2:35:19SpeakerOh, there we go. What's up, Ryan?

2:35:22SpeakerExcuse me.

2:35:32Etienne FontanWe can do it. Low on the conversation. Take two. Another bong hit.

2:35:36BubblemanI was talking. My mic was muted. I was telling everyone to mute their mic when they weren't talking, but my mic was muted. Welcome back, Todd.

2:35:44Ryan Dank AfBong rake penalty still.

2:35:47SpeakerThat's hilarious.

2:35:48Ryan Dank AfSo, Alec, what's new with the cup results this year?

2:35:51SpeakerWhat's up? What's up? Things were really interesting. So we just, you know, Emerald Cup was mid-December. You know, you came down for that. It was awesome. You know, 13th and 14th of December. And then kind of at the end of the month, we just finished working with Hitman Glass Production. They did a Happy Place Fest that happened just over New Year's. And yeah, it's been very, very insightful to say the least, you know, kind of, you know, on the analytics standpoint of testing.

2:36:21SpeakerYou know, and, you know, working with both Emeril Cup and kind of the Hitman crew. And, you know, the biggest revelations kind of are around just, you know, the whole pesticide reality, you know, and the conversation of cannabis. And, you know, we kind of have SC Labs, kind of about three months ago, we implemented kind of a new testing methodology for testing for pesticides. And it's two new triple quadrupole mass spectrometers that basically brought us down to single digit part per billion detection levels for all the analytes.

2:36:56SpeakerWe've been looking for all these very common pesticides and fungicides and plant growth regulators. And, and yeah, so, so, so it's, it's kind of, and we're quantifying now, you know, the, the exact presence. And so, so now that we're quantifying kind of, it's, it's really, you know, enlightening to see how common, you know, a lot of, you know, the big cartridges and stuff kind of have, you know, 15, 20 times the EPA allowed limit of like Eagle 20 in their extract that's in their vape cartridge, you know.

2:37:25SpeakerYeah, I was going to ask Alex, ATN, good to have you on the panel.

2:37:30Etienne FontanWhat's the number one thing you found for failure as a commonality between those two contests? Was there anything specific?

2:37:40SpeakerPeriod.

2:37:41Etienne FontanPeriod.

2:37:42SpeakerYeah, it's like, you know, I think the biggest revelation we've been having is how, you know, in the extraction process, the more high-tech the extraction process, you know, if it's in some type of closed-loop apparatus, if it's in some type of distillation, instrumentation, you know, I don't think people are cleaning out the machines, fully sterilizing out the equipment in between running different farms they're subcontracting with. And I think as a result, subsequently, you know, people are just kind of spreading pesticides in the extractor process to all kinds of people's material, organic material, everything.

2:38:17SpeakerAnd so, you know, just like cannabinoids, you know, you're seeing, you know, if you're concentrating cannabis, you're concentrating pesticides. And so the further you're concentrating distilling, you're also further distilling and concentrating pesticides. So a lot of these very common things that we see like Eagle 20 and fluoramide, Amidocloprid, Forbid, Paclobutazole, you know, these like, yeah, we just see in such high, like, you know, staggering kind of levels kind of across kind of your extracts that are of the high, you know, of these types of processes, you know, and so cartridges, cartridges are basically what we're seeing are kind of the dirtiest category.

2:38:53Etienne FontanAnd that's because a lot of people are taking product and material that they couldn't sell and then are blasting it or putting it through mechanizations that will extract it. And so, of course, all those negatives that they tried to make their flowers better along the way would extract along with it. It's surprising, though, to hear that it's still that prevalent.

2:39:13SpeakerWell, no, it's gnarly, actually, you know, and to see... You know, because there's been, you know, just like, you know, I find it kind of, you know, the misconception within the community, you know, kind of, I feel like it's kind of almost on the same level as it was at Shatter. Like, if you recall, you know, for this long period of time before testing and residual solvent testing kind of became prevalent, you know, there was this long misconception that, you know, Shatters are cleaner, you know, overall than kind of something with texture or kind of like butter or crumble or different, you know, agitated type, you know, extracts that are, Thank you for watching.

2:40:02SpeakerAnd yeah, as opposed to kind of, you know, agitated kind of samples of butters and stuff, which we're going to have usually below detection limits. You know, but there was this long running misconception or, you know, for such a long period of time until kind of like this, you know, mass body of data came out to show otherwise. And I think right now we're going through the same thing with pesticides and distillation because, you know, there's been this running kind of, you know, kind of internet, Blog is your kind of inspired kind of belief, I think, that when you distill cannabis, you're cleaning up any shit.

2:40:37SpeakerBut I mean, I think that's right to an extent, right? Because you're obviously distilling out any undesirables or darker attributes or any remaining residual solvents that might be there, but it's not that way with pesticides. And I think that's, you have so many people in the extract community that are focusing on getting You know, below detection limits or zero PPM for their butane levels, but they've never even done a pesticide test in their life to even understand if their system is contaminated because most people's systems, you know, are contaminated, you know.

2:41:10SpeakerRight.

2:41:10BubblemanAnd so this is, Mark, or I'm sure Kymaric or yourself, Alex, could mention this, but this is due to the molecular weight of these pesticides and of cannabinoids, correct?

2:41:25SpeakerI personally can't speak on, you know, I know with distillation heat, certain things might separate off, you know, kind of.

2:41:33DrWell, they might decompose. I mean, that's a lot of these things will thermally decompose before they would distill. Spinosins, those really large macrolide compounds. Thank you for joining us.

2:41:58DrThank you for joining us.

2:42:18DrThank you for joining us.

2:42:38DrJust running that cell or a lot of... But like short path molecular distillation separates things out based on their molecular... Yeah, but Mark, you want to get any contaminant out before you put any kind of thermal history on the cannabis resin itself.

2:42:54BubblemanTotally understand that. No, I get that. I was told by the people at VTA who have these short path molecular distillation units that they said that the problem with using material that has had pesticides sprayed on it, because they're saying all the things they could get out, but they said the pesticides, they have a hard time getting out, and they can't get out because...

2:43:16DrThe range of the molecular weights of these pesticides are so similar to that of cannabinoids, but you're saying that's a complete fallacy, so I'm just trying to figure out, Dr. What I'm saying is that molecular weight does correlate to a material's boiling point, but I think the point is that you're talking about trace amounts of material that are in there, and when they get heated up, they don't Thank you for joining us.

2:44:03DrThank you so much for joining us.

2:44:29DrYour distillation pot without purifying it to make sure that it's pesticide and contaminant free until you start heating it up and reducing it and distilling at that point. I think you're just trying to take all measures. Buying markets, if you're buying that VTA instrument, man, I don't want to put anything into that distillation unit that's got any kind of pesticide contamination whatsoever. I'm going to get it out before I put it in there.

2:44:59BubblemanYeah, no, I was kind of bummed out about it because I thought the unit was really cool in the sense like, wow, you can clean out all the mistakes people might have made with their oil or even their... Not so much the pesticides, bummer.

2:45:11SpeakerWell, no, that's what's crazy. I mean, you know, with certain processes, you know, certain types of, you know, column chromatography or what have you, there might be possibilities of being able to separate pesticides, but I don't think, I mean, anybody's conceptualized being, you know...

2:45:25DrI'm just recommending like if you're doing an ethanol extraction, just for example, and you have an ethanol solution, pass that through a pad of silica gel, do chromatography to hang up any polar crap that shouldn't be going Before you get down into your rotavap and spin that down to feed the distillation unit. So the point is that, yeah, you can do chromatography on like a bulk scale, almost in a filtration kind of way where, you know, like Indra talked about passing his butane through a column of molecular sieves or activated charcoal.

2:46:08DrActivated charcoal will also bind up a lot of that shit. I mean, that's the kind of stuff that's in water purification systems that you can buy commercially that's actually built to remove trace pesticides. So when you take those cartridges apart, you just find out it's basically a baffled filter of activated charcoal. And so, yeah, a bed of activated charcoal would probably do the same thing. But I would prefer silica gel myself because silica gel is very polar.

2:46:36DrAnd a lot of those insecticides, especially the fungicides, the azoles, azole group themselves are pretty polar. And they'll get hung up on silica gel where everything else from the plant will just blow right through. So you just put a thin pad of silica gel over the top of your bupner funnel when you're doing your filtration. And that should take care of any residual pesticides. But I'll say this, Alex.

2:47:01SpeakerI've never seen anybody on that level of process, though, and have success doing it.

2:47:05Ryan Dank AfYeah, well, the thing is, the assumption is all it's clean. This is the way to get rid of them. Until you start testing it and actually running the numbers, you don't really know what you're looking at. Right, right. But I'll say this.

2:47:17DrWhen you start looking at the part per billion level of anything, you're going to find part per billion Viagra. You'll find part per billion every medicine that's in the shelf. And so the question is, it's a noble thing to think that, hey, the goal is zero. We want zero. Even if you have… Thank you for joining us.

2:47:56DrI think I mentioned it once before on church where we had a sample that was contaminated by a non-agricultural fungicide but one that's used just for veterinary products for the control of yeast infections. That's obviously someone in the grow who had a dog or whatever and they applied it to their dog and then mistakenly just contaminated a sample. Alex was talking about that on the panel, right?

2:48:23SpeakerYeah, no, exactly. So, I mean, that's one of the most kind of like, I think, horrifying kind of things that we've stumbled upon because as we just kind of, you know, started being able to pick up all these specific compounds that we're looking for in single digit part per billion amounts, you know, we stumbled upon this pretty gnarly, you know, acronym called UREC, UREC, you know, and this acronym is used in the National Organic Program to describe drift and carryover and Thank you so much for joining us.

2:49:22SpeakerYou know, it's like, I mean, water in high ag areas can have, you know, detectable trace levels of these things. And so, you know, for what it's worth, yeah, like when we first came online with this pesticide test, you know, and we're seeing everything in single digit part for billions, We kind of started essentially roasting people that were paying for our testing to kind of identify issues.

2:49:48SpeakerAnd all of a sudden, it was in these cases where people weren't even using it.

2:49:54SpeakerYou know, I mean, whenever you really come, you know, and, you know, upon multiple repreps, it's still there in these certain small digit PPM, PBB levels. And so it's like, well, what is the, what is, where is the point at which you report, you know, because, and I think that's something that's really important that, you know, we as a community and the lab community kind of get together and like work, you know, in this next year to kind of push the state on, because you don't, you know, I mean, No crop has ever been so regulated like cannabis is about to be on pesticides.

2:50:23SpeakerAnd since everything in California and so many areas is so bombed with so many of these systemic, you know, bare chemicals, you know, it might be really hard. I mean, we see a ton of herb grown with zeros across the board. You know, and it's, and it's obviously that, you know, everything's not contaminated, but the thing is, is at what point do we report? And so what we kind of did, we took the, you know, basically, I mean, it's not, it's not necessarily, you know, the answer, but, but, you know, over this next year, you know, to, to just, you know, because from a lab, if somebody fails a pesticide test, that's as good as, you know, if somebody has a detection in their pesticide test, that's as good as a failure, you know, and, and it's, it's not going to be, Thank you for joining us today.

2:51:34DrSo do you make a fresh sample all together?

2:51:36SpeakerI mean, not for, I don't, I think anytime there's a pest, we, you know, we run positive, we run blanks before and after every sample, you know, to kind of measure potential drift or carry over from the lines, you know, and we have internal standards in our run as far, you know, I mean, you know, The catcher's step is, you know, anytime there's a reprep, it's a whole separate reprep, not just from...

2:52:00DrRight, a whole separate reprep. But so the point is, when you do multiple measurements, it's on the same sample. So if there was, if that sample was adventitiously contaminated, you would see that systematically in each of the... So retesting it, you're going to, of course, see the same... You might see a different level of contaminant, but the point is that if there was adventitious contamination that was completely unintentional of that sample, that sample isn't re-prepped through the catcher's method.

2:52:35DrThe customer would have to actually resubmit another sample and run it again.

2:52:40SpeakerRight, right. You know, unless there's any like remaining sample kind of, you know, that hadn't been prepped yet for pests or for like, you know, whatever other assay that we might be able to reuse as a reprep unless, you know, I mean, otherwise, yeah, we'd have to get another sample from somebody. But yeah, I mean, you know, I can't, you know, I mean, I'm not a chemist myself.

2:53:01SpeakerYou know, I'm one of the co-founders of the lab and I've kind of come from the cannabis background.

2:53:05DrWell, you're having a conversation with one, so it's okay.

2:53:08SpeakerSounds pretty good.

2:53:12DrYeah, you're doing really good. Thank you, thank you.

2:53:15SpeakerBut yeah, no, I mean, and I would love to have my partner Josh or our Chief Science Officer Travis on, who's our analytical chemist behind the development of our pesticide test, but yeah.

2:53:25DrJosh has been on before, right, Marcus? I think Josh has been on. Yeah, he's welcome to come back again.

2:53:32SpeakerNice. But, you know, but I mean, overall, you know, it was really interesting. On the recap tip, you know, like, you know, I was, you know, for my own kind of, you know, inner purpose of kind of just, you know, trying to see where things are and, you know, you know, kind of how consistent, you know, our new pesticide testing program is, you know, we, you know, the, the, the happy fest, happy place fest that Hitman put on over New Year's was a much smaller data set, you know, from the Emerald Cup, you know, which is over 1200 entries.

2:54:02SpeakerUm, you know, and, and so, so, you know, all the kind of positive detections for pesticides on the flowers, concentrates, uh, you know, uh, cartridges, you know, like nine out of 11, nine out of 10 cartridges all have detectable pesticides, you know, sum up to like 65 PPB or sorry, 65 PPM. Um, um, you know, on, on multiple of the pesticides, but, but yeah, basically, um, all the, all the repreps on the kind of concentrates and the flowers that had any positive detections all kind of came back the same.

2:54:28SpeakerYou know, amounts essentially same ratios of the different detected analytes.

2:54:34DrAnd what are you seeing at that level? That's, that's extremely high, right?

2:54:38SpeakerOh, gosh. No, no. Well, I mean, I mean, EPA, well, cause so, so this, this whole thing I was talking about like URIC, Thank you so much for joining us.

2:55:13SpeakerSo it's like 50 part per billion would be like essentially I think the URIC level, you know? And so, so yeah, so, so essentially, you know, I mean, We're only reporting if it's at like about 100 part per billion or higher, you know, for these certain pesticides, you know, to not like arbitrarily roast people that just have detectable residual levels that might be considered uric. But when it comes down to, you know, kind of anything above that, you know, we're seeing, yeah, like, you know, there's so many samples that have, yeah, like, You know, 63 PPM.

2:55:49SpeakerSo that's like, instead of 5% the allowed limit, that's like 12, 15%, you know, the max allowed limit, you know, of that pesticide on a, you know, regulated crop, you know, cannabis isn't one. So it's like, It's just so, it's just amazing to see the range, you know, I think of, you know, because now when we're seeing, you know, if somebody has pesticides on their flowers, you know, it's like when you see per million amounts on a flower, it's like, wow, you sprayed that pretty late, didn't you?

2:56:17SpeakerYou know, like, you know, you treated your plant, I mean. And so it's interesting because it's like all of a sudden bringing out this whole other level of I think consciousness and awareness and then the ethics of once you know. Because for so long people have not known and it's like this very out of sight, out of mind thing.

2:56:36Ryan Dank AfYeah, well, people have been predatory about it, right? Oh, very much. They've been taking advantage on the fact that they're calling it organic and they're spraying it with Myclo or whatever. 100%. It's not everybody that does that in the industry, but there always are going to be bad actors looking for money. So at what point in time does it become regulated in California where when you test, you have to notify some third party regulatory board?

2:57:01Ryan Dank AfLike right now, I guess you're just only going back to the customer, right?

2:57:05SpeakerYeah, I mean, right now it's, you know, it's, you know, we, I mean, we give deep respect and credit, you know, to anybody that's, you know, done like testing with us to this point, you know, in any capacity because, you know, it's in a purely voluntary market, you know, and so, So, you know, for the first couple of years, it was really like, you know, people testing for cannabinoids because that was a marketable tool, you know, and, you know, if somebody ever, you know, by happenstance in a pesticide test, you know, even if that pesticide test failed, you know, I mean, or I mean, if it passed, it was cool, but most people didn't know or realize or really give a shit.

2:57:39SpeakerBut if it failed, then, you know, there's no way they could even market it. And so, You know, there's no incentive to kind of do these different quality assurance tests. And so most of the big people in, you know, the entire state have, you know, haven't like really taken on kind of full kind of different implementation of quality assurance or, you know, trying to identify and work out what vulnerabilities they have in their, you know, business line, you know, their product line, you know, that are kind of, you know, that could potentially get them caught up in a product recall or something.

2:58:06SpeakerBut, but, but basically we have this next year, you know, come the beginning of January, 2018, you know, that, that, Thank you for joining us.

2:58:33SpeakerThank you so much for joining us today.

2:59:02Ryan Dank AfVirtually integrated, right? But if you're not virtually integrated, how do you How do you ensure that you're, you know, quality control throughout the process when you're dealing with other distributors?

2:59:13DrWell, I think you put material that is questionable in quarantine until it passed some residual test, and the residual test should be somewhat similar to the actual manufacturing process that you're going to run.

2:59:27Ryan Dank AfBut even that, I mean, so what's a lot size? What do you do? Do you test every five pounds, every four pounds, every one pound? You know, like, where do you draw the line?

2:59:38IndraBy getting the properly with the right equipment in the first place, just in defense of our system, by the way, Mark, each of the systems at the bottom of it before anything exits the chamber goes through six inches of activated charcoal and six inches of molecular sieves of various angstrom measurements and our extracts have been considered in the industry in the essential oil industry the cleanest ever seen anywhere by anybody and we just followed that formula of putting at least six inches of each of those in the bottom i don't think anybody else in the industry does that and i can understand why because chambers are designed so poorly Thank you for watching.

3:00:58DrAnd also the issue of, like, once you run contaminated material through there, now your molecular sieves and your charcoal is contaminated.

3:01:07IndraWell, we take that out and toss it away. Right. The molecular sieves go in the oven, and some of the activated charcoal can even go back in the oven and be recycled. And I don't think once you recycle them in the oven at 500 degrees that there's going to be any accidental... Carry over from one time to the next.

3:01:29SpeakerI really don't want to encourage growers to use pesticides because they know they can clean it up afterwards. That's bogus.

3:01:42IndraNo, that's not the point. The point is, if the extractions are done properly, you get a much more accurate picture of what's going on with the growers. Having those Molecular seeds in the activated charcoal is not BS. In fact, it's a way of ensuring a level of purity that's ongoing and repeatable.

3:02:10SpeakerAnd on that point, too, because I think this brings up a couple of really major points, I think, for any kind of business that's doing extract that's going to make it in the future. They're going to have... We have to have really high-level good manufacturing practices, best practices, standard operating procedures, and how they clean their machines out in between running farm material, and or have these post-sterilizing steps that could potentially remove pesticides.

3:02:40SpeakerI haven't heard, not necessarily, we haven't tested a ton of pesticides Thank you for joining us today.

3:03:10SpeakerYou know, big ups on, you know, where you guys are at with that because that's definitely pretty progressive technology that I haven't heard most people on. But I think, you know, so many people just aren't cleaning their instruments. You know, it's like, I mean, people are running production, you know, because they're not forced to be on this very, like, batched kind of, you know, accountability measure scale kind of thing, you know, kind of a, Thank you so much for joining us.

3:04:02SpeakerIf you turn that into 20 pounds of extract that now can't pass the pesticide test and gets that person caught up in a product recall, you're going to get sued. That's exactly what's going to happen. And so, you know, I think it's, it's a, it's, you know, it's a really fascinating kind of a dichotomy that we're, you know, kind of, you're just this transition state, you know?

3:04:21DrYeah. So maybe the way that that transaction occurs is that the vendor of that hundred pounds of material that wants to sell it to a processor basically provides that material in quarantine and then That material then is sampled to determine whether or not it's going to have any residual pesticide content is the ultimate determination on whether or not that material gets sold and processed. If it comes back contaminated, then it should basically be turned back around at that point.

3:04:56IndraA big problem is these guys extract, they don't recover properly. And they have these trays and they pull them out in the room. And I've seen pictures of them on YouTube where they've got eight or nine people in a row stirring these trays up of oil that's still loaded with butane. And they tell me that this one is OG Kush and this one's that and this one's the other.

3:05:18IndraTalk about cross-contamination. I mean, this is the most blatant form. There's no SOP. Oh, yeah. Beginning till the end. They don't recover it. So it's properly recovered. They take it out with plenty of butane in it. It's dangerous.

3:05:40SpeakerBut just because it's made of butane doesn't mean it's dangerous. And there's a way to kind of post process it and, you know, in the back oven process.

3:05:50TonyWhat he's saying, Alec, is if you properly... Use the BHO extractor the right way with what his method is. You'll get all the butane out of it before not having a 5% or 10% little left in the bottom. There's no purging.

3:06:05BubblemanHe's been doing it well over 20 years, and he only just learned what a vac oven was, and he thought, wow, a whole business sprouted up about doing this the wrong way. The wrong way.

3:06:19IndraYeah, we have, we've had a system for 10 years that is a commercial system operating overseas and here in the States and elsewhere. And we've never heard of a vacuum oven, even though we've been passing NMR tests for 12 years. He's got full recovery. Wow, that's crazy. Yeah. In the first place, and the product comes out of the bottom chamber ready to consume, bottle, burn, rub on, stick in, encapsulate.

3:06:51IndraWow. Game recognized game. Bathe in, you know.

3:06:55TonyBut not everybody, but not everybody's there. So like the real, the point comes back to the soil. And when somebody asked me this, something that I adapted, and it's what Mark just said, it's like somebody says, okay, I have, I have five pounds of Harlequin or I have 10 pounds of ACDC. Okay, great. They're in, you know, two-pound bags whenever you put it into a vault, you put it into quarantine, you send it out for tests, and you say, all right, I want to see potency, I want to see pesticides, I want to see what's in the flower.

3:07:27TonyIf it passes, boom, you get paid. If it doesn't pass, it gets returned. And so it has to start with the flower. Because, you know, at least when you're making medicine, it's like, you know, you don't, it's like what Skunk Man's saying, you don't want to give people One inch of the opportunity to think that, oh, well, I could just use whatever I want and it's going to be fine.

3:07:51TonyBecause then you have to think about the biggest points. Yeah. And then you got to think about the chemicals itself that are just sitting around your little trichome heads, those precious little heads that we're all like, you know, keeping to us like Lord of the Rings, my precious. Okay. So it's that kind of like passion for us. So these little resin heads that we're trying to keep, As fresh and clean as possible along the way.

3:08:15TonyDon't touch it. Don't rub it. Don't spray it. Don't get anything on it. Like, we're trying to do everything possible to keep them perfect, you know? And that way, when you make your medicine or you make your extract, it's a true representation of genetics and the medicinal purpose or adult use or however you want to look at it, wellness purpose of the plant. It's its true profile.

3:08:37TonySo it starts with the farmer. And when people like... Get test results and people that we stick to. You look at the farmers and you look at who you're working with and you've got to be selective of that. And when there's a good one, And they never test for pesticides. And they tell you to your face, oh, I don't use pesticides. And you have test results countless times that they don't use pesticides.

3:09:03TonyChances are they're not using pesticides. And those are good. And you have to reward those farmers. And that's, I think, the hard thing when you're looking at competition, when you're looking at going through like test results, then judging results, and you have to make decisions. And ultimately, at the end of the day, You know, if you're failing for pesticides, You've got to rethink your whole entire strategy.

3:09:32TonyAnd to answer Carmara's question, how do you monitor it? Colorado has a system, but I have my own. You've got to think logically. If you're getting an indoor crop and somebody says, I have 40 plants and 1,000 square feet, and it's all the same strain, right? Okay. Probably need to test habitability. If there's 40 plants and there's 80 pounds in there, and it's all one room and you know it's indoor, you could probably test two spots in those batches, two or three spots, and find out if there's any kind of pesticides.

3:10:11TonyIf somebody has outdoor and you know the plants are 10-pound plants, Then what you do is you test it. If you're buying 100-pound quantities, you have to test in, okay, is this an outdoor? And you size it up. And if it's an outdoor and these guys are growing 10-pound plants, you know out of 100 pounds, you should probably test two or three spots. It's just relative to the type of the grow.

3:10:36TonyAnd being super selective. And I think when you're making extracts to be consumed as in vapor, like we're smoking them the way we smoke them constantly, that's extremely important to not have any contaminants in your product.

3:10:51SpeakerYep. No, and, you know, I think that's a really good point because, you know, I mean, it's one thing to kind of, I mean, I don't think that we can condone, you know, kind of pesticide use as far as kind of, you know, You know, any of these EPA-regulated pesticides, until there's further information known about which ones are analogous and combustible or kind of analogous to tobacco, even though that's probably not a good comparison.

3:11:16SpeakerBut, you know, it all comes from the farm, you know, and everybody's downstream from a farm. I mean, you know, I think, I mean, if you're left without having any clean sources of trim once regulation hits, you're dried out and you can't produce anything, you know. And, you know, You know, I mean, to create, to have a relationship with a farm as an extract manufacturer, like, you know, you have to have very deep kind of, you have to hold them to as deep scrutiny as they're going to hold you to in the regulated market, you know, because...

3:11:49SpeakerYeah, I'm sorry, I'm missing my point, but my point was just kind of on like, you know, with distillation, like, you know, it's great that there's a step that if there is bulk dirty extract, it can get distilled and purified to such high level and quality and concentration, and it can still have amazing stuff done with it, or it can be infused into products and just, you know, diluted across, you know, all these different products that are going to be sold individually.

3:12:14SpeakerBut when, yeah, when you're smoking it or vaping it or kind of going to, If you're going to pay, you know, and vote with your dollar or vote with your bowl to support kind of, you know, kind of, you know, the highest quality kind of consumer, kind of sewer extract that's on the market, you know, I mean, I think, you know, I think if you're not, if you're not, if you're failing for pesticides, it's like, you're going to be kind of done like soon, you know, because this has to start with the producers.

3:12:41SpeakerThis has to start in the garden. And, you know, aside from what we can clean up, the reality is we shouldn't have to clean it up. And we have to learn how to adapt to a cleaner, you know, overall production process, because if we don't, our competition will, and you will be out of business. So anyone who doesn't think that way is just Neanderthal. And people deserve a clean product.

3:13:04SpeakerYou know, that's the bottom line. Nobody would want to buy edibles without a little sub note with a list of the pesticides that are also contained therein. So this has to start with the farmer.

3:13:15BubblemanWell, the last time I checked, I don't know a single extract artist that's like, like I'm making water hash and I'm like, you know what I find? I find if instead of water when I spray the hash through the screen at the end just to clean it up a bit, I'm using Eagle 20. The way it works is so efficient. Like, they're spraying that on the fucking plants.

3:13:34BubblemanNo extract person is using pesticides to extract the plant. It's unheard of.

3:13:41Ryan Dank AfSo I posted this link up from the Cannabis Safety Institute. It was a report that was written by people including Maugly Holmes from Philo's and John McPartland from Cannabis Pests and Diseases and We've written a bunch of articles, but they recommend five grams per pound be tested for microbials in their report. That's their recommendation.

3:14:06SpeakerThat seems kind of a lot, you know.

3:14:10Ryan Dank AfI'm just saying that that's what's been drawn as one of the limits. So it's like between that and three spots.

3:14:16DrThat's for microbial testing though, right?

3:14:19TonyYeah, and that's an intentional rule to hold our industry down. I mean...

3:14:23SpeakerSo, I mean, Oregon... You guys know about- $100,000 a month in testing for one- Yeah, no, that's an undue burden on the industry, and that would be good for labs, but it would fuck labs. I think Oregon right now is such a good pilot to see what's happening, because they implemented this really restrictive pesticide testing, which arguably is the leading pesticide regulation in the nation. There was very few labs that were certified to be, I mean, because Oregon, for what it's worth, I mean, they did it right.

3:14:55SpeakerThe attentions do it right. You know, because if you're going to have You know, really strict requirements on producers and manufacturers and processors. You have to have equally strict requirements on laboratories, you know, holding labs and any tests they offer to the public to both have full ISO accreditation, but also to show proficiency testing, you know, kind of through further like ORLAP, which is Organ Laboratory Assessment Program.

3:15:21SpeakerUm, or yeah, and something like Oregon Environmental Laboratory Assessment Program. And so, so basically, yeah, you'd have to have full ISO 17-025 accreditation on each assay that you offer to the public. But then you have to show further proficiency testing through ORLAP, um, to do the testing and to get accredited by ORLAP to do the testing. And so what happened is, you know, there's, you know, a handful of labs that got through and there's such a huge amount of bulk product building up that's like unable to be tested.

3:15:47SpeakerAnd we're laying off workers. I mean, it's, it's turned into this whole ordeal where Oregon's actually backtracking and reversing slightly on their pesticide regulation, you know, and in an interesting way, like, you know, I can't speak like fully, fully to it. You know, Josh was on conversation with the, You know, kind of one of the head people from Orlaf just this past week, kind of about the dilemma that they're facing.

3:16:12SpeakerBut I mean, regardless, when it comes down to it, there's going to be some type of process, you know, whether it's, you know, every batch is held up till it's pesticide tested and whatever the batch may be designated, whether it's, you know, 10 pounds or, you know, kind of a certain size of a, you know, of a grow, you know, but Whether it turns out to be like that where there's going to be this huge bottleneck in testing unless, you know, I mean, because, you know.

3:16:38Ryan Dank AfYou couldn't do live resin, right? Like how would you do live resin?

3:16:42SpeakerWell, I mean, it's this whole, yeah, it's just the whole thing. I mean, it's, you know, testing can't become such an overburden on the industry that it kind of, you know, kind of hinders innovation or hinders kind of people's ability to do business. And so, you know, what you're saying right now in Oregon is so many ways.

3:16:56TonyI think that they don't, they also haven't looked at it like, You know, if you have a, if look at, look at somebody as a, as a clean facility and producing good herb and pass every time. So that's why I use the standard of what I said. But let's say we got a test result that spike in pesticides or microbial. Oh, that's weird. Now that, now that's secondary phase, you would move into a heavier regulated pesticide.

3:17:22TonyImplement for that particular facility. Okay, everything was clean. We were testing, you know, three tests out of your 40, 80 pounds in this thousand square foot. Something went off. We need to, now we're going to test every 10 pounds or every five pounds. And that's how you can penalize a company, but also put them into a probation stage, kind of saying, hey, look, you're under the microscope.

3:17:45TonyYou've got to do some remediation. And then you can, at that point, get some consulting if you don't know what to do. And you might have to change your grows, but it gives the industry a chance to like, that's like what I see as like, you know, it needs to get to that point in it, you know?

3:18:01SpeakerWell, you know, and that's one smart thing Oregon did too, is they made it that if you can pass, I'm pretty sure it's with pesticides, if you can pass like a year or two years worth of pesticide testing, then you're actually exempt kind of from doing that testing, you know, which is an interesting thing because, you know, it's like, Sometimes people slip up one grow and kind of, you know, might be, you know.

3:18:24TonyYeah, I don't think it should be like that, but I think the idea is there, you know.

3:18:29SpeakerYeah, but, you know, anyway, like Oregon, you know, due to, you know, the burden that, you know, testing has become, you know, on, you know, especially around pesticide testing with the three, four, five week turnaround times. I mean, it's like, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's unfortunately creating a lot of kind of, uh, Backlash, you know, and so I think Oregon's, you know, from what I heard, they were considering kind of shifting it to, you know, kind of a, you are a company, you do all the testing that you need to do, because if you don't do it, there's going to be testing that's done like, you know, spot testing throughout like secret shopping type testing throughout the end products market at the dispensary.

3:19:07SpeakerAnd if anything fails, you know, the Oregon Health Authority like seizes all that batch, all your crop, you know, and kind of it's destroyed. And so I think they, you know, there's this possibility that the pesticide testing program or the QA testing program might evolve into a way that is or that is similar in some other industries where all the onus is on you to be a good business and a good practitioner.

3:19:30SpeakerThank you so much for joining us today.

3:19:51SpeakerI don't know, it's an interesting ongoing topic that California's got a year to figure out.

3:19:57TonyWell, and the other part to that is the handling. So the farmer's stage one, right? So let's say the farmer does their job, no pesticides, and now the person that's doing the extracts doesn't clean their tools, doesn't use UV chambers for their tools, doesn't use gloves, and all of a sudden they contaminate the resin, right? Okay, so now the handler and the processor also has to be held to that same exact standard as the farmer, you know, and that's what consumers should expect in a regulated market, you know, is getting all of that together and you can see it slowly coming together in California and these I mean, honestly, it's amazing to see just over the last two years

3:21:12SpeakerBetween the Emerald Cup and, you know, kind of the Hitman kind of productions like Chalice and then this new one, you know, I mean, it's these kind of public facing events that are, you know, kind of celebrating the winner of the best quality product, you know, the cups. And it's only since like really the Emerald Cup like two years ago that, you know, they took the initiative to do full like kind of micro testing.

3:21:36SpeakerAnd then, you know, the second year was micro testing and pesticide testing. This year we did micro testing, pesticide testing, you know, But we were able to kind of convince them to not necessarily use micro levels as just a straight blanket pass fail criteria on crude flour. You know, like they did last year, they kind of held the same standard as Berkeley, which is like 100,000 CFU for yeast and mold and aerobic bacteria, which is a pretty strict kind of Thank you so much for joining us.

3:22:23Etienne FontanThe lack of knowledge, and so they're trying to apply other knowledge standards where there has been no real set of standards for this type of efficacy for this type of ingested plant that can be ingested in so many different ways.

3:22:37SpeakerBut, you know, when you consider, just on that point, you know, when you consider, like, you know, I'm drinking some, I was just gifted this big brick of this, like, five-year-old aged fermented pu-erh, you know, and pu-erh tea has a You know, is a fermented kind of, you know, I mean, all herbal products kind of have huge levels of microbes on them. Like, and most kind of micro, most kind of herbal products or supplements that come to the United States that we are exposed to or purchase kind of typically have, you know, some level of acknowledged or acceptable levels of microbes, you know.

3:23:08SpeakerAnd what's really trippy just on the micro topic, you know, because we've been in a lot of conversation trying to push this issue with Roy Upton, who's the Executive Director of the American Herbal Pharmacopeia. And essentially, you know, all the states kind of that just they basically, you know, whether it's Colorado, Washington, Nevada, the city of Berkeley, they pretty much copy and pasted this like chart out of the HP monograph for these like recommended levels for microbes for You know, these different, you know, for yeast and mold, aerobic bacteria, coliforms, pseudomonas, salmonella, and E. coli.

3:23:44SpeakerBut what's super frustrating to this dude, Roy Upton, is the fact that, you know, if you had read above and below, well, if you read the title or the top of the chart, for one, it was only meant to be used for oral and consumed products, not for crude, herbal, botanical extracts, etc., And so then, so they just took this chart, put it in place as the ceiling pass fail criteria to disqualify somebody from being able to sell their product, which was a fail.

3:24:12SpeakerAnd so even from Roy up in his mouth, You know, it's like if you read above and below that chart, you know, it specifically details in the HP monograph on cannabis that, you know, these micro levels are not meant to be used as pass fail criteria, but more as indicator microbes of quality, of process, of environment, you know, of shelf life. You know, and it's only the pathogens, if anything, that are most concerning.

3:24:39SpeakerYou know, when it really comes down to it, anybody that's, you know, ultra-immunocompromised, they should be making choices more on sterility than they should, you know, kind of, you know, what have you. But is your average, you know, healthy, you know, kind of consumer of cannabis, you know, in any way going to be harmed by, you know, over 100,000 CFUs of yeast and mold or aerobic bacteria, which arguably could be probiotic?

3:25:03SpeakerThank you for joining us.

3:25:26SpeakerTo supersede the way they're using it and to like hopefully, you know, if they're going to make micro levels be pass fail on herbal products, if anything, they should raise those levels, you know, much higher for things that don't matter like yeast and mold, aerobic bacteria. But then, you know, it's pretty cut and dry though for pesticides, you know, because when you see an unregulated product environment through some of these cups, you know, You know, people entering the cup with a cartridge that has like 50, 60 ppm, you know, that's like 60,000 ppb of like 20.

3:26:00Ryan Dank AfWhat's the fail rate this year for concentrates or flowers?

3:26:04SpeakerAt the Emerald Cup, it looks like overall flowers, you know, kind of was kind of around the same as last year, which is actually really interesting and encouraging because like when Tim did testing last year, Um, you know, that, and he, he ended up, uh, kind of through the website build, they put everybody fully on blast, you know, that, that had a fail, whether it was for micro or pesticides.

3:26:28SpeakerAnd so I think a lot less people entered that, you know, might have treated their plants. Um, but, but there was about a 5% overall detection rate for pesticides on flowers. Um, on concentrates, there was, um, I want to say it was, it was about, it was 25% overall detection rate across the concentrate categories. Within the, Cartridge category though, there was basically like 34 of 38 that were disqualified.

3:26:54SpeakerIt was for either having detected pesticides or for being a distillate because they didn't kind of allow distillates in the cup this year. You know, just because like, you know, Tim's concerns with kind of, you know, a lot of dirty stuff being cleaned up through distillation, not having any ability to, you know, I mean, you could kind of, yeah, whatever. That's another topic. But, but yeah, so, but there was like, that was essentially like a 65% disqualification rate, you know, kind of most, most of the things were pesticides.

3:27:24SpeakerA lot of the distillates didn't have pesticides, but, but, Then in the Hitman Glass Happy Place Fest that just happened, yeah, it was like 9 out of 10, 9 out of 11 cartridges detected, 12 out of 25 concentrates had detected pesticides, and it was like 4 out of 19 flowers.

3:27:49SpeakerBut it's a trip because, you know, and what Hitman did and, you know, kind of Doug and, you know, the team from Happy Place, they kind of made the executive decision to kind of, you know, not necessarily put people fully on blast and publish their COAs with how much PPMs they had of what, but basically put out a list of You know, these are all the kind of companies that, you know, were disqualified for either having pesticides, residual solvent levels above limits or, or, you know, too high micro levels because they used, you know, kind of micro levels, you know, strict.

3:28:23Etienne FontanSo why didn't they put them on blast? I mean, shouldn't we be putting people like this on blast?

3:28:27SpeakerWell, that's what's such a trip. They ended up like, they put them on blast, they put a list of the names and then basically, uh,

3:28:34Ryan Dank AfYeah, I mean, it's had a really interesting effect, though, because... Yeah, but, like, I mean, what little respect they have for their own brand. Why wouldn't you take it and have it tested yourself? Well, what's... You know what I mean? Like, if I was entering something like that, like a concentrate or whatever, I'd want to have it tested before it even went out the door to make sure that it wasn't, you know, it wasn't contaminated.

3:28:56Etienne FontanRight, to make sure I'm not embarrassing myself.

3:28:57Ryan Dank AfYeah, like, how are you going to kill your brand?

3:29:00Etienne FontanI mean, that doesn't make any sense at all. Why set yourself up for failure?

3:29:04Ryan Dank AfYeah. I mean, there's always, like you said, there's always room for contamination unless you're completely vertically integrated, right? When you have somebody else do some other stage of the process or of the growing, you can't be sure.

3:29:18IndraThe biggest failing of humanity is fooling yourself into believing what you've done is okay without a rigid, standard operating procedure. People do it all the time. That's how it comes. So many people entered the cup and got disqualified because they're fooling themselves all along about what they're doing. There's no real good practices in good practices.

3:29:46Etienne FontanScience has caught up, so the reality check is, I mean, who are they really fooling? No, they're not fooling themselves.

3:29:53SpeakerThey know the chemicals they're using. It's just that a lot of people are trying to go bigger. The price is dropping. They're instituting new technologies to them when it comes to light depth. And it's, look, you know, it's different moving plants. When you're growing outside, the sun does a lot of the work for you. But when you take that stuff inside and you take away the UV and suddenly you've got molds and issues that you didn't have to deal with outside, suddenly you're scrambling to relearn something you've been doing for potentially decades and it fucks them up.

3:30:23SpeakerAnd they're trying to adapt basically whatever they can because it's not cheap to put up greenhouses. It's not cheap to rewire shit and buy a bunch of equipment. And they're going to lose their shit if they don't figure out something to do with it. And that's what happens. And it sucks. But there's no fooling themselves. These people are trying to get away with covering up Thank you for watching.

3:30:56SpeakerAnd they're all saying, I mean, when we're talking about Northern California, it's prone to these problems just because of its geographical location and setbacks that they have in such a moist, cool, wet, quickly changing climate.

3:31:10TonyOh, we talked about that in... We had dinner the other night where everyone's like running out to grow cannabis all across the country. And ultimately, there's different cultivars that do well in different types of light cycles and different types of elevations. But in Florida, yeah, it's a great place to grow To grow oranges, but it's also flat. It's right by the water. So, you know, cannabis likes to be about 500 feet to 1500 feet, a little higher than that, especially when you're dealing with like PM issues and things like that.

3:31:49TonySo I think the challenges of growers when they pop up in different locations, they get these different kinds of diseases that come in like powdery mildew and they don't know how to deal with it. And it's a stomach problem and they start spraying and trying to like, Thanks for joining us. We'll be right back.

3:32:36TonyYou can't, somebody says, hey, I grow cannabis in Oakland. You're like, I don't know.

3:32:42Etienne FontanYeah, you don't know until you see it. And then when you see it, you're like, okay, can I see the specs?

3:32:47TonyWell, and like I have my window open, you know, and I like, you know, I have like blinds open and I'm like, oh, I wonder what this black stuff's from. I had this conversation the other day. Because now I lived in the bay for like a year and I'm like, oh, what's all this black stuff? And they're like, oh, yeah, that's like the nuclear by waste that comes off the ships from the Japanese ships or whatever that's coming through the bay.

3:33:06TonyI'm like, what are you talking about? And they're like, yeah, the black suck. It's like this like thing that goes into the air. I mean, that's everywhere in the bay. You know, I'm cleaning it up all the time. Volcanic ash? You tell me. You tell me what that is.

3:33:26SpeakerWell, you know, it's a trip. Because before we opened up SC Laboratories, I worked in the hydroponic industry for about four years. And I was kind of managing a couple of hydro stores, working with, you know, in Santa Cruz and, you know, kind of dealing every day, interacting, helping people with their IPM stuff. And it's amazing because, you know, I mean, even the most well-intentioned people that, you know, are doing things to a level of organic, You know, when faced with potential catastrophic realities of crop loss from, you know, pest, you know, pest kind of infestation or pathology infestation, kind of it puts people to an interesting, you know, kind of a moral compass question and people before, you know, up to this point, you know, and I think so much of it's unknowing, you know, and not necessarily malicious, but, you know, If somebody came in and they're like in week three of flower and, and, you know, they would come in like, Oh my God, I'm freaking out.

3:34:22SpeakerYou know, powdery mildew is like popping up everywhere, you know? And, and, and speaking to your point, Tony, it's like, yeah, inexperienced farming, you know, it's farmers, but it's like, you know, people have figured it out, you know, over time. But, but so many people, I mean, it's like, yeah, it's like they would not, they would have like a, You know, 50 pint dehumidifier doing their 20 light room, you know, having like humidity spikes throughout the like night cycle of the plant, you know, around 80%.

3:34:47SpeakerSo powdery mildew is always going to be an issue, you know, and so, so then, you know, they're kind of covering up this eyesore, you know, that dispensaries don't want to buy because they see it, even though it's pretty much benign and non-pathogenic, you know, and, and, you know, and, and they would deny it because people would see it. So instead, you know, people would, Hide this eyesore that's pretty benign and they would spray a toxic poison on it and week three or four or five a flower, you know, and making that kind of conscious choice.

3:35:20SpeakerBut it's because you can't see it. And then, you know, up to the point where you couldn't quantify it, you know, it was just this kind of a, well, you know, I didn't realize, you know, how much it was actually there kind of thing. You know, everybody always has the half-life thing. Everybody's always like, oh yeah, you know, it's like Eagle 20 breaks down like 30, 60 days, you know, whatever.

3:35:39SpeakerBut then it's like indoor versus outdoor. Was it grown with the UV spectrum that's gonna break down the pesticides or not? Because if it's grown indoor without UV spectrum, pretty much, Thank you for joining us.

3:36:18SpeakerI'm sorry.

3:36:19Ryan Dank AfGo ahead. In Canada too, they're finding stuff that's not even meant to be sprayed on food crops. It's only for ornamental plants, you know?

3:36:30SpeakerYeah, the PGR conversation?

3:36:32Ryan Dank AfNo. We're talking like Dodomorph.

3:36:37SpeakerWhat's it called? Dodomorph?

3:36:40Ryan Dank AfDodomorph? It's some kind of, it's a pesticide. It's something they use for Thank you for Pete for Powder Melody. Oh, wow. Yeah, but it's definitely not approved for, it's for ornamentals. It's not for food crops.

3:36:56SpeakerWell, and because that's, and that's, and that's the thing. It's like the, you know, I think it's, I think it's important to test for all the pesticides, you know, to make sure that they're not there. But the answer isn't to find pesticides that aren't being tested for that you can use that are systemic and questionably like harmful to the end person. The point is to like, You know, integrate that deep, you know, methodical approach towards like prevention, you know, and, and oil and bio fungicides and insecticides, but that's like farming, you know?

3:37:33SpeakerAnd so, you know, I think, I really think that, I think that the small, medium scale farmers that have been doing this for so long that, you know, know this plant and organically dedicated this plant, I think are going to do really well also. Hey, did you want to go ahead and say something, Indra?

3:38:18IndraNo, I was just saying that the business of the pesticide use is yet another symptom of not really giving the plants the right soil and the right nutrition and all the things they need to grow in. Environment, yeah, exactly. If the plants are healthy and the soil is really healthy, the bugs don't bother it, the powdery mildew doesn't show up, People are trying to force feed it with chemicals and other nonsense like that rather than organic.

3:38:53IndraAnd the plants are just exhibiting a symptom of, I can't really stand that. And so that's what's going on with all that. And that's where the pesticides are coming from. Everybody's trying to take shortcuts. It's like I say about the recovery, the people that do the recovery and the people that do the extractions in the first place.

3:39:16SpeakerDon't pay attention to the things that they need to get done in order to be doing that all the time.

3:39:24IndraIf you're switching from one oil to the next, you need to run a complete cleaning cycle. And I mean complete. And what we always do is we cycle the molecular seeds and start over with fresh ones and assign the cost of that to that extraction. It just has to be done if you want to continue to do this kind of work and show up with as clean as possible.

3:39:51IndraBut when people ask me about it, if I've got pesticides or something, can you clean that up? My comment is always shit in, shit out.

3:40:00Speaker100%.

3:40:02BubblemanAnd no thanks, I don't want your shit in my machine.

3:40:05SpeakerAnd you can't polish a turd. Well, there's some people who... People have been selling polished turds for $100 a gram, though, for a long time.

3:40:15Etienne FontanI know. That's why we started testing.

3:40:17IndraThere's people who will tell you you can pick up a turd from the clean end.

3:40:22Ryan Dank AfNo, you have to tell them. You have to tell them that, yes, we can clean it up. You have to leave the industry.

3:40:29IndraYeah. Well, if you're in the business of cleaning it up, that's one thing. But, you know, most of these people are just in the business of extracting because... That's how they make their money. They make their money off the BHO thing and make their living.

3:40:47SpeakerIt's been like drug money too, like $18,000 a pound type money for a long time, you know?

3:40:55Etienne FontanWell, and people have been able to hide behind these false realities for a time, but what's going to be a huge reality check for them is as soon as the state of California implements their new distribution system, you're no longer dealing with dispensaries. You're dealing directly with the state and the distribution center for the state, which means the state's going to blackball you. You're going to blackmail yourself by dealing with this state because if you don't think they're not going to be sweet and friendly to you, you're kidding yourself.

3:41:27Etienne FontanThey're not going to be.

3:41:28BubblemanNo, it's the same here in Canada. Like I see people all the time going, oh, the Health Canada is protecting the LPs. It's like Health Canada hates the LPs. I don't see great, great relationships there. I think if Health Canada had their way, there would be no LPs and there would be no MMAR and there would be no cannabis period in Canada. But for some reason, this country works like if enough people are like, fuck that, we're not going to, that's not how it's supposed to be.

3:41:56BubblemanIt just gets changed. It's super trippy. I couldn't believe it when it happened with hemp. I couldn't believe it when it slowly started happening with medical. And I really kind of almost couldn't believe it when that task force came out recently. It was just like, yeah, anyone over 18 can puff and yeah, we can have four plants. And I know those aren't ideal numbers by any means, but I was surprised they were acknowledging it and releasing that information.

3:42:21BubblemanSo...

3:42:21Etienne FontanWell, the dialogue's shifted. They realize that they have to acknowledge us. Y'all have forced the issue so much up there in Canada that they have no choice but to deal with you. We don't even have federal acknowledgement yet.

3:42:34BubblemanWell, you guys have so many people. You have so many people. Like, man, do you guys ever have to get a large group of people behind you to push things forward when you have like 300 and some odd million people?

3:42:45Etienne FontanOh, look, it took us six years after we failed with 19 to get to 64.

3:42:53Etienne FontanSo yes, it does take a lot because of so many people, but fortunately, you know, you're also leading the way in the discussion because these politicians are also seeing what Canada is doing and there's no way they aren't listening.

3:43:06SpeakerRight. There's ripples. Dare I say California continued to fail because it took a Facebook billionaire to come along to legalize weed. Right. And we all didn't like how we did it, but we're glad it's done. But where is the community where post-19 that was going to come do it right? Where did they go? Yeah, that's the kind of unfortunate, Gore Vidal called us the United States of Amnesia.

3:43:35Etienne FontanOh, we failed. I mean, we failed to organize. We failed to come together cohesively. We failed to raise the money. We had divisionary politics play even in our own world so that you had four or five different competing initiatives and even one initiative refused to release their information because they were fearful that the other initiatives were going to steal their information. That's a type of bullshit that we were dealing with and so it took, unfortunately, a Facebook billionaire to come in I mean, I think that's,

3:44:26SpeakerIt's like, it is really about just, you know, the fact that it passed, it's done, that's amazing. Now it's the stakeholder groups to like rally and lobby or don't, you know, because it's on us now to, you know, shape it up in a way where it's most ideal for the industry or we could forget about it, you know, be apathetic and then, you know, kind of let it be as it is, you know.

3:44:47SpeakerYou know, implementation is the most important aspect of the initiative process. And 20 years later after Prop 215, you know, we're still getting our asses handed to us. So I'm really glad that we have this tool in our toolbox to try to work from because we're not done for a long time. And, you know, Subcool was sitting here earlier saying he can't even do what he wants to do on property.

3:45:12SpeakerHe grew and he has no neighbors for miles. So, I mean, we're all dealing with this repression in some different way, and, you know, we all gotta fight towards it. It's not over for a long time, people. I mean, I don't want to sound like, you know, Debbie Downer, but... It's, it's a long battle ahead of us. And there's a lot of special interest groups that are going to stop us along the way.

3:45:34SpeakerDon't think for a minute that the banks are not being lobbied by every alcohol, pharmaceutical, tobacco company that isn't digging on this. Profits. Yeah, for sure. But you know, be that all as it may. I mean, you know, also if you look at just like the kind of craft brew explosion and how, you know, every city's got so many little, I mean, I, I feel like, I feel like, The people that are in the positions to get the licenses and whatever they're trying to do that have been doing this all their life are going to be their own biggest failure or success.

3:46:04SpeakerBecause it's like you competing with yourself. That's really the thing. The crap beer explosion happened 60 years after alcohol was re-legalized. So I don't want to wait that long for us to have a craft cannabis explosion. Well, no, but, but I mean, I just mean right, right now you, I mean, it's like anybody that's creating a product that's in the top one to 5% of quality in the market, whether it's flower extract or whatever, it's like, as long as you're able to grow and scale on a way that's not, you know, kind of, Issue, you know, having kind of conflicting issues with the integrity of how you're growing the plant and you're able to produce clean product.

3:46:43SpeakerI mean, if you look at Colorado right now, the price of trim is kind of around five to eight hundred bucks a pound. You know, it's like I mean, you know, everybody is downstream from a farm. And so I think the value of quality, clean, consistent material, you know, for the people that are trying to get licensed or I mean, or just like kind of contract kind of batches so that they can do whatever they're trying to do in their business.

3:47:06SpeakerI think it's going to hold value, you know, for a long time. I mean, you know, maybe at some point the cost of production, all these things are going to get crazy low. But it's like as long as the leading brands that are doing it now and the leading farms are doing it now are able to get ahead over the next couple few years, you know, and just able to be consistent with that clean quality consistency.

3:47:27SpeakerYou know, I think they'll, you know, I think anybody will be rewarded, you know, from that, you know, it's the people that, again, I think are, you know, I mean, there was a lot of people that rushed to Colorado, you know, big money, invested crazy money into, you know, super huge million dollar facilities, you know, and grew mediocre weed that can't pass the pesticide test, you know, that contributed to the fact that Colorado's trim price is at where it's at now, you know.

3:47:51BubblemanMediocre weed. That just like hurt my soul a little bit when you said that, mediocre weed.

3:47:56SpeakerNo, I'm not, and I'm not all Colorado. I've seen some of the dangest herbs I've ever seen.

3:48:00BubblemanNo, and not even Colorado, just the term mediocre weed made my soul cringe a little bit.

3:48:06TonyYeah, that was a little first world. People should not have to settle for mediocre weed anymore.

3:48:12SpeakerNo, but if it wasn't for organizations, you know, in a sense like the Emerald Cup bringing attention to this, it really would be hard to catch it because this has been going on around us for a long time and we just... It's invisible to most people that use cannabis because we don't have built-in GCMS machines in our brain. 100%. And people see something tested for THC so they think it's tested clean and passed the lab test for pesticides or what have you and most things aren't.

3:48:39Etienne FontanThat's the biggest fallacy that we see as well. They have to pass also the others and people just come in with just a THC and think they're coming through the door with that and that's not the reality that they're going to face now or in the future once the state starts actually, you know, regulating things and actually giving you the pass and fail.

3:48:59SpeakerRight, and yeah, exactly, and I think that's one of the most important aspects of like, you know, seeing the, you know, the ripple effect and how the, you know, the Emerald Cup kind of You know, people put on blast and then, you know, kind of these other groups put on blast, you know, kind of.

3:49:13Etienne FontanBut it educates, the consumer is educated now to people like you that they know there are labs out there like SC that are going to test and that will hold companies to standards because they know that now the science is more sound than it was. You know, that's a key thing also is actually having science to back that up. I mean, one thing to say here is saying conjecture is another thing.

3:49:35Etienne FontanHere's my calibrated UVH PLC machine and here's the actual run. Consistency and repeatability. You know, 100%.

3:49:41SpeakerAnd, you know, but the fact that these events are kind of, you know, through kind of the testing, helping to expose these things to some of the biggest brands in the state that otherwise have no idea. It's pretty, like, remarkable, you know. So, I mean, yeah, that's why I can't, like, you know, it's amazing because we're seeing these, like, shifts, you know, in awareness, you know, kind of around, you know, these things that, yeah, we have one year to get ready for.

3:50:03SpeakerYou know, and so, so, so you have the biggest ups to kind of, you know, the events that are doing it, you know, cause it's not hard. It's, it's hard to put people on blast like that, you know?

3:50:11Ryan Dank AfWell, the testing's informing the market. It's just feedback loop. That's what the lab should be is a feedback mechanism, right?

3:50:18IndraPlus the people in the field, like the rest of us, like myself, I have on my medic alert bracelet now, uh, the warning for physicians in case I'm found laying somewhere, no mediocre weed. And, I think that kind of thing will go a long way towards improving the quality of weed that's available medically.

3:50:46Etienne FontanAnd it also gets the consumer to demand that it's tested. And now that they know that they don't start getting THC tested, that there are microbial and pesticides and are, you know, testing as well. Not everybody offers it, but in the future, again, within the next year or potentially the state may, you know, slow down its regulation process, you know, because of realizing how daunting it is.

3:51:09Etienne FontanRegardless, that time is going to come.

3:51:12SpeakerI just want to give a shout out for Mediocre Weed. I mean, the first week I ever spent in my life was average mediocre Mexican. And it got me to where I am today. Give me a break. Biggest ups to mediocre weed for sure.

3:51:28BubblemanI love your perspective.

3:51:30SpeakerI did not mean to be pejorative. I'm sorry with that statement.

3:51:32BubblemanNo, you never have to be sorry because no matter what you say, Sam can always find this really, what's one of the things I really appreciate about him because he's right, you know, and I'm not going to lie that I was crushed when you said mediocre weed. It made me sad, but then his perspective, it was like, oh yeah, that chocolate tie in grade eight.

3:51:52Etienne FontanOh, that Coca-Cola pressed black seeded stuff we used to get back in West Virginia, you know? Yeah, totally. You're right. Absolutely. Much respect, Sam. You're right. We all started off on crappy. Well, at least I did. I can only speak for myself. I started on crappy.

3:52:08SpeakerI mean, I was lucky. Within a year, I smoked red Lebanese, so... But I lived in Hollywood in 65, so it was easy to get those kinds of things there.

3:52:22Etienne FontanDid the red Lebanese, is that what turned you on and made you go, oh shit, this is it?

3:52:26SpeakerWell, the other pot, to be honest, the first time I ever smoked a joint, I smoked three joints in a row without taking a breath of air in between. That's so skunk man, Sam, for those of you. I got high. I felt like I was floating in a color cartoon.

3:52:50BubblemanOh, man. Just excessive, hey? That's awesome.

3:52:54Etienne FontanZero to going there.

3:52:56BubblemanTwo speeds, go and stop.

3:53:00Etienne FontanYeah, but most people don't go, you know, foot to the floor, you know. The first four times I smoked, I didn't even get high because it was grabby week.

3:53:08BubblemanBecause most people have multiple speeds, not just go.

3:53:14SpeakerI just wanted to make sure I got the effect, and I did. An hour later, I was sitting at the International House of Pancakes, I had ordered three different complete pancake dinners.

3:53:29SpeakerAnd you probably chowed them down because... Time out. I at least tried to chow them down.

3:53:36BubblemanDid you say three orders of pancakes?

3:53:40SpeakerThree different dinners. Complete dinners, yeah. Wow. One for every joint. Whatever. Yeah. I was totally out. And I was putting, you know, blueberry syrup, maple syrup, and, you know, what can I say? Butter. It was the invention of the Monte Cristo. And then you had a sugar rush to take you all the way home. Absolutely. Yeah. And I realized that, you know, cannabis was for me. I really didn't like alcohol.

3:54:16SpeakerAwesome. You know, and that kind of brings me to like this kind of interesting philosophical point, you know, like if you're familiar with like Michael Pollan's work from Botany of Desire. Oh yeah, Botany of Desire. Yeah, you know, in it, you know, he talks about the whole idea of like co-evolution and who's really in the driver's seat, you know, like how, you know, there's been, how much effect has, You know, alcohol and this intoxicant had on creating industry and creating consciousness or regression of consciousness, you know, and then you kind of see cannabis and its purpose here and how much it sparks each one of us to kind of become it's like fucking, you know, it almost possesses us to become it's like messenger, you know, and like its biggest fans.

3:54:59BubblemanIt's definitely a major companion plant, to say the least.

3:55:03SpeakerAmong others, for sure. And I feel like it's also the gateway to the others and it's also through the end of the prohibition of it going to help to end the prohibition to the others also.

3:55:14BubblemanIt really, the rabbit hole goes in so deep that you almost could start sounding like a crazy person if you go in deep enough because when you read Jack's book and you learn about this whole like Well, wait a minute, like, what do you mean they just made it illegal and it was all based on racism and what, what, what? There was companies and they were creating synthetic fibers and like, it's just such an insane story.

3:55:36BubblemanAnd with pharmaceutical being so many of the pharmaceutical drugs or cannabinoid mimickers, it's just, the rabbit hole goes in deep when this finally breaks and all of this comes pouring through, it will be an incredible time to have been I just pray that I'm alive to witness it.

3:55:57SpeakerYeah, big time.

3:55:59IndraWell, you know, in the Bible it talks about the mana machine, about how this food was distributed like that in the very beginning times and people were allowed to eat it. And I was thinking about that and I'm pretty sure that was a manawana machine. Manawana. Yeah, because the seeds are, you know, All of these things that they talk about in the Bible and so forth are what's left of a description that these ancient peoples could decide to make of this thing.

3:56:40IndraAll the translations that have occurred have obfuscated the true meaning of these things. And so that's why Sam and myself think of these What I call truthisms that instead of mana, it was a marijuana machine.

3:56:59SpeakerWell, yeah. And, you know, I think, you know, psychoactive plants have for sure been like the root of so much of the oral history and storytelling that, you know, we've tried to make sense of this world with for millennia. Yeah. Absolutely.

3:57:15BubblemanShit. Rocking out three solid hours of hash church there. That was pretty damn good.

3:57:20Etienne FontanThat's four.

3:57:22BubblemanOh, did we do four already?

3:57:24SpeakerDamn, that's really good. 58 minutes is pretty close to a full hour.

3:57:31Bubbleman58 minutes is pretty close to a full hour. You heard it here. First, we've got all sorts of facts here on Hatch Church.

3:57:41SpeakerYou never know what's going to happen. To be technically correct, three hours and 58 minutes is almost the same as four hours.

3:57:52Etienne FontanThat's like doubling a 120. It's a 240.

3:57:55BubblemanIt's a 240. I like that.

3:57:57SpeakerI like that. Well, I think saying love to Franco once again is always appropriate. 100%. Yeah. RIP.

3:58:07BubblemanAnd, you know, of course, you can't mention Franco without feeling for his family and his, you know, Ari and like, oh, man, those guys have been very, very close for the last 20 plus years.

3:58:20Etienne FontanTo the entire greenhouse family.

3:58:21BubblemanYeah, the entire greenhouse family.

3:58:23Etienne FontanAgreed. Boom. All right.

3:58:27BubblemanPuff a little, I guess I got some Congolese dry sift here and that's the sort of closest thing that I could come up with to a super silver haze or one of those, you know, Aryan hazes.

3:58:41SpeakerWhat's up? Is it mediocre?

3:58:43BubblemanThis is not mediocre. This is exceptional.

3:58:46SpeakerExemplary.

3:58:46BubblemanExemplary, exceptional, wonderful, a wonderful. We're going to hit it on a fairly clean sapphire and yes.

3:58:57TonyHere we go. What are you talking on, Tony? I am smoking some of this Wi-Fi flower rosin.

3:59:22Etienne FontanWhat is Wi-Fi? What do you know?

3:59:25Ryan Dank AfThe OG cross is white fire OG.

3:59:28Etienne FontanRight. Say that again. You kind of broke up a little bit.

3:59:33Ryan Dank AfIt's the white cross with an OG, I think, with the fire OG.

3:59:37Etienne FontanWhat was the dominant?

3:59:39Ryan Dank AfIt's got the OG nose, but it's pretty frosty.

3:59:43TonyYeah, it's like a floral OG. I left you a little sample, actually. I don't know if it'll ever make it to you, but...

3:59:51SpeakerThere's certain Wi-Fi phenos test and upward to high 28s, 30s, total cannabinoids. How is it as a producer?

4:00:04TonyOh, I don't know, but these are small, dense, super frosty little OG buds that are very floral, and it makes this wonderful... This was pressed ultra low on the new Sasquatch...

4:00:19Etienne FontanWhat temp was that extracted?

4:00:20TonyActually, this was on the old one.

4:00:22BubblemanThat definitely looks like some of the Wi-Fi that I got to press as well, Tony. I got a photo of it here up on the screen. I'll share it with you. It looked the similar color. There we go. Let's get this out of the way and share that picture. Is it kind of showing up or is it showing up with your hand in it too? I don't want my entire screen.

4:00:50BubblemanSometimes it's difficult.

4:00:51TonyI did see that. It's a very florally kind of OG. It's got real nice OG, but it's not like a minty, not like a lemony, not in that kind of a sense, not like a fruity, but kind of a very nice light and a little florally to the OG.

4:01:16SpeakerI want to say it's typically limonene dominant. I have a question for you, Eric. What variety of herbal cannabis had the highest terpene content? What was the terpene content? Alex? I think, I mean, From what we've seen, kind of, you know, flowers typically when grown perfectly and cured, dried, you know, post-harvest cured, you know, blah, blah, perfectly, you know, kind of three and a half to four plus percent-ish.

4:01:50SpeakerYou know, we, there was, you know, there was this one strain actually that we recently, you know, have tested quite a bit of. That's, it's called Grease Monkey. And it's a strain, I think that's like a self, like Gorilla Glue kind of phenol, but it's not really super Gorilla Glue like, but it's a really high resin producing plant. And, you know, we've seen it testing in the high 20s, you know, cannabinoids.

4:02:20SpeakerAnd then, you know, we've seen it kind of consistently around like four, four-ish and a half percent for flower, you know, through kind of consistent retests, because that's like above like the threshold for like flowers to trigger like a reprep. You know, typically like for, for hashes, you know, kind of, you know, there'll be anywhere from like three to, you know, kind of, you know, seven, you know, and then like, you know, kind of some of the more kind of preserved resin kind of like fresh extracted, you know, anywhere from like seven to like 12, you know, some of the runnier kind of stuff, holy water that we've seen kind of, you know, you know, 18 to 20% turpentine.

4:03:01SpeakerBut yeah, that was a bit more than your question. Right. No, what I was really curious about was flowers. Because we never found much more than about, you know, four or five was unusual. Yeah, exactly. And, but I've heard rumors of double that. So I was just curious what you guys have found. That's crazy. Well, you know, and, you know, I think, you know, one of the big issues is kind of a, You know, you know, lab inconsistency, you know, even, even labs kind of.

4:03:35SpeakerHow do you guys test for terpenes? Do you do with the GCFID or? GC headspace, GC head with headspace analysis, headspace autosampling. For terpenes, we do GCFID. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. That's what we used and we got very reproducible results. What are you doing the headspace for? Alan? I'm sorry? What are you using the headspace for? For residual solvents.

4:04:03Ryan Dank AfOh, residual solvents, right.

4:04:04SpeakerYeah, residual solvents with Headspace, sorry. And then, yeah, GCFID for terpenes. I apologize. Yeah, exactly. No, that's what I absolutely agree is the best until somebody shows me something better. Nice. Awesome. And, and yeah, and so and so, you know, kind of, you know, we've seen kind of even in some of the regulated markets, that's why we, you know, tend to kind of think, you know, Oregon is on point with it, because they're holding equally strict regulations on labs to be qualified and be able to be proficient doing, you know, these different tests that are going to be offered to be consistent.

4:04:36SpeakerYou know, and so, you know, because in Washington, there's a bunch of labs that are operating in the regulated marketplace, but, you know, they're publishing like, yeah, 40% cannabinoid results and, you know, for flowers. And then, you know, and kind of, yeah, like, you know, high, mid, high, you know, 10, single digit to 10 kind of percents for flowers or for terpenes.

4:05:02TonyVery cool.

4:05:05BubblemanWell, I don't know, guys. I think four hours is a pretty solid hash church, as solid as I can imagine one being. It was great having you on, Alec. You definitely picked up the conversation. Thank you. Go ahead.

4:05:19Ryan Dank AfJust saying thanks for coming, Alec. Oh, yeah, yeah, exactly. Always nice to have you, bro.

4:05:25SpeakerNo, it's awesome, man. Really appreciate all you guys, man. You guys are legends. And, yeah, it's an honor to be on and really appreciate the conversation, the dialogue, and Hope to be on, you know, any time you're to have me.

4:05:36BubblemanAbsolutely. Well, we'd love to have you and Josh on and, you know, anytime you could come on and show us anything of any sort from the lab, we would only appreciate it.

4:05:45SpeakerCool. Awesome. Thank you. And then maybe next week, if possible, I can hopefully help get Tim dialed up with you. Anytime. To be on for the Emerald Cup.

4:05:54BubblemanAbsolutely. We'd love to have Tim on and give us any new updates that he's got going on or what's going to be happening in the next year.

4:06:01SpeakerI look forward to the point where when you're testing for fungicides and insecticides and pesticides, you can hardly find them because people know you're going to be testing for them. Thank you for being like a keeper at the gate, man, because if it wasn't for companies like you, we wouldn't even be seeing this shit.

4:06:22Etienne FontanThank you. That means a lot. Mad respect because the science is taking all of us forward hand in hand. Bullshit never could stand it. True science has led us to where we are and will continue to lead us forward. So thank you for being a leader in that. Thank you very much. That's awesome.

4:06:40DrAnd Alec, you can go ahead and tell people you're a chemist. If they give me any shit, just hit me up.

4:06:48IndraNo, no, please keep it truthful, keep it truthful. It was nice to meet you. Epic. Right on. Thank you. Likewise.

4:06:55BubblemanWell, thank everyone for coming out. You know, Indra and Skunk Man Sam, Todd McCormick, Mark Scaldone, Etienne Fontaine, Chimera, and Tony Verzura. We had D420K in for a little while, and Dr. Natasha Rice was... And the new baby.

4:07:11Etienne FontanWe had some unfortunate deaths due to Franco, but we also had some beautiful life.

4:07:15BubblemanAbsolutely. And we'll finish it off with a huge congratulations to Marcel and Jessica at Little Baby Phoenix. We're stoked that you're here. So thanks everyone for watching Hash Church episode 120 Micron. Just like Etienne's shirt says. See you next week, guys. Peace out, everybody.