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This month’s Healer webinar explored how recent cannabis policies impact patients, parents, and more.

The Science of Policies: Healer Webinar Explores Effects of Cannabis Laws

Industry feedback is being considered in developing pathways to make CBD accessible – and safe – to treat minor health conditions without a prescription.

Health Canada Considers Possibilities for Non-Prescription CBD Products for Humans and Animals

Here, we bring you our top four recent news articles covering research for cannabis and ALS and autism, updates from the NCIA, and testing license applications in Alabama.

Best of the Week: February 21– February 27, 2025

This webinar covered how cannabis for this neurodegenerative disease could provide better symptom relief and improve quality of life better than conventional treatments.

ALS and the Potential of Cannabis-Based Therapies: Insights from Dr. Ethan Russo

The Alabama Medical Cannabis Commission made the announcement in its most recent meeting, intending to advance the state medical cannabis program.

Application Period Open for Alabama Testing Laboratory Licenses

 is a cannabis education platform offering a variety science-based courses online. As the company continues to grow, plans for the future involve exploring new areas such as animal health, culinary, and psychedelics. In the first part of this two-part interview, 

 Editor, Madeline Colli, sits down with DeVol for more insights.

Be sure to check out the second part of this interview in 

The Future of Cannabis Education with MM411: Trends, Innovations, and the Passion Fueling It

Watch the video clip and read a partial transcription below!

MM411’s president and co-founder, Chris DeVol, discusses the evolution of the company, their most popular cannabis education courses, and their partnership with Cannabis Science and Technology. 

MM411's Journey: From Grassroots Beginnings to Global Cannabis Education Leader

What are the most popular courses offered by MM411?

 Certainly the courses that are required, it's our bread and butter. It's the one that they have to take. We’re also approved by the American Medical Association for Category 1 physician training, for doctors, nurses, psychologists, dentists, social workers, and pharmacists. So we've got the majority of the categories. Those for sure are very popular courses. The flaws with the Category 1 CEs is that because of the Schedule I – which, by definition, with cannabis, says that there's no medicinal value and it's highly addictive – we can't talk about dosing and how to medicate in those courses. So it by definition, they're kind of flawed, but certainly they are popular and they're well received with the research that's in them.

I would also put our Mastery of Medical Cannabis at the top of the list. It's probably one of the most robust courses that's available anywhere in the world, even the more than expensive university programs. It's one of the things that we're using as the core course with our partnership with 

. And the reviews on that course are just incredible.

We also just formed a partnership with CReDO Science, with Dr. Ethan Russo, he's legendary, and now we’re helping to make sure his legacy is heard. It’s through video and then we take the research and make sure there's what we call a SCORM file of the exact presentation that allows you to just click on an end note and open up all the cited research. The Foundations of Cannabis Therapeutics by Dr. Ethan Russo has also proven to be very, very popular, and we've got now some smaller courses that are coming online. The 

 [cannabigerol] and his study of it reducing anxiety, stress, and improving mood, which I have personally experienced in my own patient journey with cannabinoid medication.

We also are looking, with the Triumph acquisition, what health and wellness courses do we want? We've got a Hemp Seed Nutrition course and Hemp Sustainability Foundational course that I think will be very popular. It's launched in Japan first, and it's been proven to be extremely successful in that market. Other pieces of where I want to go would be the animal health/veterinary side of things. Food, certainly, we've got to look at culinary, being part of a worldwide, established for hundreds of years, culinary brand. We want to bring that aspect in, and obviously psychedelics in some of the new, emerging healthcare opportunities for us within our own framework.

I would say that the Mastery of Medical Cannabis, though, if anyone wants to start, that's the course to start with.

Videos

MM411’s president and co-founder, Chris DeVol, discusses the evolution of the company, their most popular cannabis education courses, and their partnership with Cannabis Science and Technology.

Jamila Owens-Todd is a Naturopathic Doctor, Formulations Consultant and Director of Clinical Education, and an Adjunct Professor of Cannabis Pharmacology at 

St. Louis University’s Cannabis Science and Operations Course

. In her keynote presentation at the upcoming Cannabis Science Conference, Jamila will present, “The Evolution of Cannabis As Medicine - Keys to Cannabis Manufacturing,” and discuss future of cannabis manufacturing and how it can adhere to the integrity of healing, especially when encountering pharmaceutical product manufacturing. Jamila also holds a chemistry degree and has experience cannabis extraction and product formulation, plus clinical work and research.

Check out the video, read a partial transcript below, and 

register here for Cannabis Science Conference Spring 2024

! See you in Kansas City, Missouri May 7–9, 2024!

Keynote speaker Jamila Owens-Todd shares her perspectives on cannabis from medical and science viewpoints.

Cannabis Science Conference Spring 2024: Interview with Jamila Owens-Todd

Read more about Jamila Owens-Todd’s perspectives and upcoming presentation:

How have you seen cannabis science, education, and healing overlap throughout your career?

: I feel like I've had to be intentional in it overlapping. But to be fair, my many careers make it overlap. You cannot enter a room, a cannabis space, a dispensary with a cultivator or manufacturer or a testing lab without education. Education is at the core of everything in this industry because we still to this day have novices, we have stigma, and we have people at very high levels in government who just don't understand what this is. So education is so much at the core that it has to be a part of the conversation of cannabis. Now the education is based off of the science—you cannot separate the two. What am I educating? I'm not typically educating on consumption, but even consumption is science; it's pharmacology and pharmacognosy. It's how medicine interacts with the body, how the body eliminates this medicine. So it's science no matter what.

Healing is my life, it is my life's work. And what I mean by that is, I feel that I've committed myself to doing the work of helping people find the path to their healing. And that can be with substances, or it can be with lifestyle, it can be with food choices, it can be relationship choices. Whatever it is that institutes healing into your life, I want to support that. And I want to be someone that can make that a reality for you. But healing is science. So we're talking about breathing—taking a deep breath, that's a healing that can occur in the state of stress or inducing calm, where there's a huge component of taking deep breaths that engages the vagus nerve, and you get into the nervous system interaction and engagement. And that's science. So to me, we cannot have one without the other. You cannot have cannabis education without science. You cannot have cannabis science without healing.

What will you be covering in your presentation, "The Evolution of Cannabis As Medicine – Keys to Cannabis Manufacturing"?

: I give a little bit of the history. Most of us are familiar with the early medicines of cannabis and how they presented in early society. And not much has changed. That good old hashish ball is right now showing up as rosin. So I want to talk about those connections between what has happened and what is happening. And some key notes to being in the manufacturing space. I have been fortunate to be in a few different cannabis manufacturers and making products that I feel are good and quality and are safe for human consumption. Well, those practices, we can get really evolved. And we can get into some very high, “sciency” practices, nano technology and emulsions, which are cool, but it's still based off of a rudimentary science. And not to mention those same practices can actually be done just with bare hands and simple machinery. The question is, what is the end result? So the talk is to highlight how we haven't really gone too far from the original. But the point in that is to say, “Are we still adhering to the true principles of healing, natural medicine, science, at its core, when it's time to apply these things to products?” And so that really is the goal of this conversation, is to potentially present new pathways of production, but also the integrity of the products that we're making. Sometimes integrity is just based off of understanding the science, the education, healing practices. Are we implementing those today? And if not, how do we make it more applicable?

In Part VII, Jeremy Robbins and David Benedicktus, co-founders of 

 (CPPNW), share which current challenges cannabis patients and consumers face that they hope to see change in the next five years and why being in a cannabis business is a labor of love.

Catch up on past interviews or watch the whole series!

Empowerment Through Education, Part I: An Introduction to the Founders of Cannabis Patients Pacific Northwest

Empowerment through Education, Part II: 'It's a Big World of Cannabis Out There'

Empowerment through Education, Part III: ‘It’s Not Food Science, It’s Cannabis Science'

Empowerment through Education, Part IV: Medical Cannabis Grow Laws and Cultivation

Empowerment through Education, Part V: Navigating Medical Cannabis Regulations

Empowerment through Education, Part VI: Cannabis Courses and Outreach

The co-founders of Cannabis Patients Pacific Northwest share how they envision the future of cannabis regulations and policy

Empowerment through Education, Part VII: Rescheduling, Banking, and Beyond

: So my next question was what would you guys like to see change in the next five years in the cannabis industry?



: Rescheduling from Schedule One—that would that would be the next five years right, we're talking about that? Rescheduling, allowing the banking industry to take over, growers and dispensaries to have access to the banking industry, and federal legalization. The big thing for me is the federal legalization because of the social justice side of things. Some opportunistic law enforcement agencies are using this as an opportunity to do civil forfeiture possession of cars that are driving from Oregon or Washington through Idaho for example, which is a completely illegal state, and they just target you because you're coming from a different state. And then when they get out there, they create a reason to get the dog out and then they cause them to point at the car and then they take whatever money you've got and the car and seize it and sell it and they make you get a lawyer to say that there wasn't anything in there and in the end, and you have to go through the process of talking about how canines can be triggered to point at something, that they weren't reacting to anything that was in the car. Unscrupulous, corrupt, this has been documented in Politico, it’s been Mother Jones, all these articles on this and they’re letting that happen throughout the United States. That's why I don't drive through the South or into Idaho. Jeremy, go ahead.



: You know, federal legalization would be great. I don't think that that's going to happen. Before that, though, if they could somehow or another figure out the banking, that would be huge. We are an ancillary—we touch cannabis, but we don't sell cannabis. And we definitely don't collect taxes on it. We still have a very challenging time with banking. We've been rejected by several banks—

: Our nonprofit, yeah. That word “cannabis” banks don't like. The patchwork of laws so you know, that people can get Delta-8 all over the place instead of you know, here and there. There are still places where cannabis is illegal, and people are still going to jail for it. And that's got to change. It is a plan. So those are those are my hopes over the next five years.



: And I would add to that, that all health care curriculum includes cannabis.



: Jeremy and I just recently attended an online two-day symposium by Stockton University. There were presentations on medical cannabis, on legal cannabis, all done in community education or university settings, classes. So there's movement in that. A lot of them on the East Coast: Cornell, Stockton in New Jersey, Robert Mejia, I think his name is. So we're gonna get involved with that and be part of that. Doing a talk maybe in the next quarter when they have it. But it was wonderful to see all the people talking and all these educators talking about what's happening their area, how they can grow hemp, and what the community's response to it is, the college or university response, and how law schools are teaching about medical cannabis, cannabis law.

: Now, my last question for you guys before I take up any more of your time, is, if you have anything else you want to add that I didn't ask.



: Well, so I would say the “green rush” is over, you know, getting into cannabis to make a bunch of money is probably not the best thing for anybody to do at this point. You know, the price per gram of cannabis is cheapest here on the West Coast. And that's not talking bulk prices, so it's really difficult for a lot of companies to succeed right now and what we're seeing is a lot of consolidation. What that pretty much means is that large companies are buying up all of the small farms and what we know from just regular old agriculture is that having a few producers of products, if something goes wrong during that chain, yeah, it can have really disastrous effects.

The last thing that I'll add is cannabis really is a labor of love. It's an awful lot of work, you know, to produce a product. And so, at this point in the game, if you don't have a passion or a love, for what you do and for the people who you're doing it for, clearly you're in the wrong business. It's there's no money left in it. that was the intent for a lot of people I know at the beginning. It's something that, you know, I am in it for the long game. I don't know why they just can't put a permanent stamp on my medical card, but they like that $100 I give them every year, so here we go. But yeah, so thank you. I really have felt like this was an excellent interview. It's been really fulfilling to be able to tell our stories. We hope that you have been able to learn a little bit of something too.

Join us for the final installment of this multipart interview series as the co-founders of Cannabis Patients Pacific Northwest share how they envision the future of cannabis regulations.

 (CPPNW) Jeremy Robbins and David Benedicktus, share details about their college cannabis courses, the outreach groups they support with their education, and a few stories of how patients over the years have benefitted from their knowledge. 

Cannabis Patients Pacific Northwest co-founders describe the topics covered in their cannabis education, both inside and outside the classroom.

: Could you tell us a little bit more about the courses that you were offering at the Clark College Science of Medical Cannabis?



: At Clark College? Yeah. The design was to fit into the Lifelong Learning programming. And they really like classes that were five weeks long, two hours each time. They used the model that I developed in the Aging of the Brain series in how to talk to your physicians so they'll listen and how to appeal insurance claims and stuff like that. I would present the issues and then have people come in from the community. So we would talk about the history of cannabis—normalized it—we would talk about the human history of cannabis, how it was used in burial procedures, how it was, surprise, surprise, one of the anointing oils of the disciples and things like that, and how in 350 BCE people were buried with cannabis underneath their heads as part of this ritual process. And we have been experimenting with for years and how, depending on the environment it’s growing in, different terpenes are produced from it. Here is a little class on plant biology. What do terpenes do? Well, they attract insects and repel insects, right? That's what the plant is doing. But human being said, “Oh, look, the animals are eating this and they're not dying, so maybe I'll give it a try.” And then liked it and they carried it with them wherever they went, right from Delta Valley, from Asia, all the way into Europe, and the Vikings used it for rope and also the seeds were for long distance travel on ships. The seeds were a great source for antioxidants. So they just munched on those. And then the hemp-growing in the United States, how it was part of the Pharmacopoeia up until the 1920s. And so people were just saying, “look, that makes sense. Yeah. It's part of our herbal plant-based medicine.” And then we talk about the how it became illegal, the marijuana tax, and Harry Anslinger who included marijuana like heroin. And of course then it became racial. Cannabis that was being prescribed by your pharmacist and elixirs and smoking and whatever was different than the cannabis that the Mexicans were bringing over across the border, and the jazz musicians used it and it was “corrupting white women” and I mean, there was posters everywhere. I mean, it was totally so flagrantly racist, that propaganda, and then the drug wars came in. And even though the Shafer Commission—in the class we cover Nixon and the Shafer Commission. This conservative governor, Schafer, that Nixon hired came back and said, “there was no public policy reason to do this.” But Nixon wanted to a law-and-order kind of issue and so he demonized cannabis, along with LSD, and the hippies and the Blacks who were using it, I mean, it's right there. So we show that in the class just get that out of the way.

Now let's go to the science. And then we've talked about the science and what's a registered controlled trial, a clinical trial, what is a human trial and stuff like that. And list all the cannabis products that have been tested for in those different categories. What Dedi Mieri is doing in Israel, what we're doing United States, and Sue Sisley and the PTSD studies. Then we go into the body systems, and I would switch over to my holistic, prevention-wellness hat and we go through neurological diseases, GI problems, seizures, autism, childhood autism, all those categories. And we would tell the class, “you can email us privately any concerns that you have for your own personal thing and we can talk about in class, but I'll send the literature on that.” So it was really a personalized approach. And even the 10-hour class wasn't enough for people to get enough of that.

But it was wonderful to bring in dispensary owners, growers, producers, and have them talk about it and show pictures of how it's grown and what they do. And talk about pesticides versus organic processes. And then connect people up to resources in the community, following, as I said, a cadre of people together to go out to dispensary visits. We did one grow operation. We actually went into a grow operation and showed from clones all the way at the beginning, all the way to the end to the drying and into making RSOs and stuff like that. So we'd love to get back to doing all of that if people ever get comfortable with being around each other post-COVID. But that's the model that we're using in the classes. The other thing about this is, again, going back to low-income and disabled people and access, the state of Washington prior to the pandemic was subsidizing low-income people to take classes at community college. They would actually pay the tuition once a quarter. And a lot of our disabled people in Clark County were using that scholarship to come in to the cannabis class. And that went away in 2021, in 2020. So people weren’t signing up for the class. We did an online zoom class, but the state funding went away for that. I mean it wasn't much, like they had their own cost savings and stuff. So we're trying to figure out some kind of online approach that we can use to get some maybe some funding from other sources.



: I think that was also an idea behind the creation of the nonprofit is that we can offer courses at a reduced or no fee. Whereas if we are offering them through the community college there always has to be an associated fee.

: The prices kept going up from $89 was the first price for five weeks/10 hours, then it went up to $95 and $99, now it’s $115. And people who are on a limited income, fixed income, like a senior, can’t afford that. So that's again the benefit of the nonprofit and we can have classes online and people can just call us up specifically for guidance. We don't offer prescriptions, but we give people information they can discuss with their physician, especially cancer patients.

The hospice programs in southwest Washington won't allow cannabis in their hospice. I was giving a friend of mine, who was in hospice, and myself and family members were bringing in cannabis products, but the nurses got a hold of them and gave them back to us and wouldn’t let him use it.



: A lot of roadblocks, but you guys are doing great work.



: Yeah, it's good. We have the passion for it. And it's wonderful to have the feedback form people on how valuable that is. Especially for veterans and seniors that are on all these different medications that they can reduce, especially pain medication profiles.



: My next question is if you guys do any outreach to support groups.



: Yes, yeah, we do. So of course I've got a bunch of spinal cord injury and the related. So here in Washington, there's something called the Here and Now Project. There's the Oregon Spinal Cord Injury Connection. Those are both in person and online. I presented “Cannabis and Spinal Cord Injury” for both of those groups. This last year was for the Here and Now Project and the year before it was for the Oregon spinal cord injury group. I'm involved with the Paralyzed Veterans of America, I'm a lifelong member of that. And we do, you know, support and talks. Some Autism Spectrum [ASD] groups. I do some consulting and a lot of conversation around ASD and what products work for those.

And then the CBD stores around town, we have quite a few brick and mortar shops. American Shaman was one of them. And we like to go in and educate folks about CBD specifically and with the legalization of the Farm Bill it really helped bolster our program. But you know, it's just cannabis. It just is not psychoactive, but it does a lot of cool stuff. Veterinarians and pet stores, I happen to know a couple of vets that are associated with Oregon Oregon State University, and so we've done some CBD-type talks with them. And then David has a host of other groups that he deals with will tell you about.



: Patients come who are in support groups. And the first one that asked us to come in was a Parkinson's support group and we've done four of those. As I mentioned, it was kind of surreal going into medical center that I had come to the ER for, or my children had been treated there. And I actually went to that same hospital when I had my knee replacement. The Parkinson’s support group met regularly at Legacy Health, and we had about 30 people in the room and talked about CBD and THC and Parkinson's, and the titration schedule for beginning of Parkinson's versus late stage, and the tremors, and the locked-in syndrome. And it was really interesting to discover that people were using a lot of products, but they wanted more information about when Parkinson progressed. Because it doesn't heal the Parkinson's syndrome, but it reduces the symptoms and increases the quality of life for people. People were talking about how they would vape a little bit for before bed, it would help them with the tremors and things like that. And then of course the folks that had the really freezing, locked-in tremor combination that the RSO products were really helpful for and just within minutes stop the tremors. They can talk, they can hold a cup, they can walk without a cane, things like that. So all of that wonderful improvement in lifestyle and accessibility and being able to normalize your life is quite profound.

Also, with dementia support groups, I have a personal connection there. My mother-in-law had to move out of her—after her husband passed away, she'd been living by herself, she had to move into assisted living, and then she gradually got dementia and progressed, so that they were having to give her very heavy duty psychiatric medications to manage her anxiety, which she didn't like, didn't respond well to. So I went to her gerontologist, had an hour and a half meeting with her, and talked about CBD and some of the literature on that. Just CBD, not the THC because I figured that in the assisted living that the THC wouldn't fly but maybe just CBD would. And she wrote a prescription for it. I went over to my CBD store, purchased a couple of bottles, took it over the assisted living and they said, “no we can't have that here.” Because even though they do eyedrops and vitamins and everything else that the physician orders, they wouldn't do the CBD even though I had the physician order because the federal guidelines—they were afraid that Medicare would come after them. Which they don’t, by the way, Medicare says, “we're not interested in doing that at all, coming after people, go ahead and use it,” but assisted livings don't want to pull it so I had to go over there four times a week and dose her in the morning and I did that for six months, four times a week—fortunately she lived close by. And it really, really, really helped, but then we finally had her move into—when she got worse—we had to move in to her house for the last six months. And then working with the physician I said, “we don't want to use the Risperdal, the anti-psychotic and the really heavy drugs, that just puts her out completely. What about adding the THC, CBD combination?” So we were able to use that for months until the very end. So dementia support groups, a lot of interest in that, especially for the agitation. People with mild cognitive impairment, understanding the low-dose CBD and THC is neuro protective and can even reverse cognitive impairment.

Hospice, cancer work, the veterans group—so I just put out a mailing to 15 assisted livings here in Clark County now that we're out of the shadow of the pandemic. We have for veterans’ organizations and I joined the local American Legion so they can get to know me and I can start talking about this stuff and turn them on to the “Unprescribed” documentary.

So 55 and older communities, people are still moving around, they're playing tennis, they’ve got a golf course right to the middle of their community and stuff. And they want to be active stay active and stuff and stay home. So, there's a movement called Villages throughout the nation that is helping people stay in their houses by getting volunteers in the houses rather than having them have to go. So they created a nonprofit called Villages and that helps people, and you buy in for a membership—it’s pretty low cost—and then organizes a volunteer network to take you to appointments or to have people come to your home, take a light bulb or whatever. And doing presentations for those folks too. The senior market, people are very interested and are willing to try it, especially those folks who remember the 60s and say, “Well, maybe I'll give it another shot.” So there's a lot of receptivity there in the support group communities, patient support groups.



: Do you have any anecdotes you'd like to share that normally don't have the opportunity to?



: Well, I just did the one about my mother in law. The other is just that when we were doing the support groups in the CBD store in their lobby on Wednesday evenings, we’d have people come up and just tell us amazing stories. Like, fibromyalgia is such a horrible syndrome, it has all these different symptoms and huge pain syndrome for people that they can't get control over and they’re often on opiate medications. It’s kind of tricky, so if they're taking an opioid then they have to be drug tested to make sure they're not taking cannabis or something like that. Which is really tricky for us. So they’d stop taking opiates and take cannabis and take the other medications for other the other syndromes that are part of the fibromyalgia. So those are a couple of couple stories that I have.

Join us for Part VI of this multipart interview series as the co-founders of Cannabis Patients Pacific Northwest describe the topics covered in their cannabis education, both inside and outside the classroom.

Empowerment through Education, Part VI: Cannabis Courses and Outreach 

In Part V, Jeremy Robbins and David Benedicktus, co-founders of 

 (CPPNW), explain how physician perspective, the current scheduling of cannabis, and the differing state laws surrounding medical cannabis create challenges for accessing cannabis education and medicine.

Co-founders of Cannabis Patients Pacific Northwest share their experiences navigating state and federal regulations around medical cannabis.

: As a patient, what do you think are some of the biggest challenges facing healthcare professionals that believe in cannabis as a medicine, aside from the financial aspect?



: So as a patient, for me, it's challenging to get healthcare professionals to believe cannabis is a medicine right? Especially ones that are pretty steeped in the allopathic.

And then once I get them to believe that, I think they are limited in just the choices that they can make around it. Generally, though, I think that you know, pharma companies feel threatened by the legality of cannabis. I mean, we see this in Arizona, where, you know, big companies have given a lot of money to anti cannabis campaigns. And, yeah, it's not a system that is really open to a lot of alternative ideas. I think also the fact that I'm physically disabled, and you can see my disability works to my advantage. I think it's a lot more challenging for people that maybe have conditions that still have a legitimate legitimacy of needing cannabis, but it's just not as easy to tell.



: Yeah, I can agree because I think I mean, this isn’t just cannabis related, but when you have a handicap sticker or whatever, if you don't see physically see it, you're walking fine or whatever, people think that you don’t have an issue.



: Yeah, it's a spectrum, you know, and there are a lot of challenges and in figuring out how to accommodate everybody.



: Now, David from your retired nurse perspective, I guess same question. If you have any feedback on this.



: Well, from interacting with other medical professionals, the Schedule 1 status of cannabis is a big barrier. I’ll just read you Schedule 1, just to see how insane it is in terms of all that we know the face of what Sanja Gupta says. ‘Schedule 1 drugs, substances, or chemicals with no current accepted medical use and a high potential for abuse. Some examples are heroin, LSD, marijuana, ecstasy, MDMA, methaqualone, and peyote.’ So that Scheduled 1 is preventing it from being researched, preventing access, and that also prevents people from getting training. And they're waiting for the cue right? The cues from policymakers in government that this is okay to do education on.

I interviewed for the podcast I had during the pandemic when I was sitting at home trying to figure out ways to interact. I interviewed a woman with a PhD who created and is revamping the chemical dependency program at Clark College. This is a two-year degree chemical dependency—science based and stuff like that—and she's bringing in trauma-informed care and treating these AA-degree people understanding the underlying causes for addictions. Cannabis isn’t part of that, as a harm reduction. She has the title of harm reduction, but cannabis can't be included in that because of the federal guidelines. So that needs to be integrated fully into all bachelor’s degrees, master's degrees, doctoral program, nursing school, physician’s school, naturopathic medicine school. And we're ready to teach—call us up. And we know people who have the degrees, PhDs and pharmacy, that can do that too, like Victoria Star and our friend here, Michael Graff, who now works—after his pharmacy closed—at Greenhead Cannabis. He went to work for the VA working on prescriptions for mental health drugs and for all drugs in the VA system here in Clark County, but he can’t talk about cannabis. And he ran a dispensary and he did it because he wanted to give back to the community. I mean that that's crazy to me. It's just nuts.

So it’s primarily education and understanding that it is plant-based medicine that’s been a legitimate part of our pharmacopoeia since the early 1300s and in the United States in the early 1700s. One of the things that people really enjoy in the class is to talk about the history of cannabis in the United States and how you had to grow hemp in the colonies because it was used for rope and people were using the seeds to make meal and stuff like that. And they didn't know about the anti-inflammatory properties of it, but it was also anti-inflammatory. I had Victoria Star, the pharmacist that took the class through University of Maryland, say, “now think about that. If hemp was being mass produced the United States, they were feeding the leftovers to animals. And so our animal stock had a high level of cannabinoids in their system that we were eating and that might be very protective.” So we need to start educating big time about that, just like I would say that we're doing slowly with the trauma-informed practice that is now expected to be part of every curriculum, right? Anybody that's in child-serving or family-serving agencies needs that background as part of their education. And holistic approaches to health care, including plant-based products that have less risk profiles need to be included in that. And done by people who have had the research at their fingertips. That's one of the things that's delightful again, shout out to Cannabis Science Conference for bringing all those researchers together it changed my life seeing Ethan Rosseau and Jeanie Meyer up there talking about it, you know, it’s just wonderful.



: Yeah, one thing I think for one of the biggest challenges was what you're saying with Schedule 1, because it's such a big thing—because of the scheduling the insurances won't get involved. Banking, there's no banking for cannabis companies, which also harming industry because without having financial access, you know, they might not be able to produce as much or pay their bills. You know, I mean, and then that affects patients too. It all trickles down.



: Well, all the banking stuff and then the interstate transport. So we can't share between states information and cultivars in the states that are just ramping up—they can't get good quality products for their for their patients. And in the states that do medical usually have pretty low-quality products or not a diverse range of routes of administration available and at a high cost. So that gets me up on my soapbox for sure, Schedule 1, especially when you look at the risk profile of addiction compared to the other drugs that they mentioned there and the risk profile of the antidepressants that are being prescribed. It's unconscionable.



: Yeah, and one issue too, is the regulation too, because I've interviewed people in the past and they might find a product that works for them in another state, but they can't get in their own state and they obviously can't bring it back. And then when they're traveling it's really hard to treat what they need cannabis for.



: Interesting story, a personal story. I had to go, sadly, to Hawaii in September for my younger brother's funeral. And I was thinking, “okay, I'm in Washington, I got a medical card. Can I take cannabis in Hawaii? Well yes, I can.” All I have to do is produce my Washington medical card. But then it says, on the Hawaiian site, but remember, you have to get it through TSA—you’re flying on a federally regulated airline who may not like you carrying it with you. And then for the small price of only $49 for the week that I’m there I can apply for a cannabis card in Hawaii.

: I can transfer my Washington registered medical card. I can then print off—it's good for 60 days, though I’m only going to be there for a week—but I can go to any dispensary there and get the cannabis. But I have to pay $49 to buy their card. Again, just crazymaking.



: Well, you bring up a great point. And it also goes back to patient access. And so Delta-8 is a great product. We had a lot of success with getting patients, especially new patients, novel patients, using Delta-8 with great success. It doesn't cause the anxiety that the Delta-9 does. But guess what? In Washington State, any cannabis product is under the regulation of the Liquor and Cannabis Board, the LCB, and the LCB said that they don't want the dispensary selling Delta-8 products, so they had to get rid of all of the D-8. Granted, you can still go online and you can buy this stuff and have it shipped to you. Not only did they get it out of the dispensaries but then it was also being sold at gas stations and novelty shops and things like that. And there might be some questions around the expertise that a gas station attendant has in selling somebody a Delta-8 product, I get that. But the dispensaries themselves? Yeah, I don't know. And then the fact that you know, you can go to another state and purchase those products. Florida, for instance, you can still go and get Delta-8 at the gas station. I was going to talk about this a little bit more in the five year future of the cannabis industry. But yeah, the patchwork system of laws, it needs to change. They need to get better testing. They need to figure out when they're making things like Delta-8 or THCO or whatever it is, how to do that cleanly, how to get all of the bad stuff out there. They can do it. It's science. It's not rocket science, it's cannabis science. Trust me, they can do it. So yeah, it's really interesting that these products that work for people, for patients, that depending on the regulations around them, they may or may not end up continuing to be legal.



: I didn't realize that you can get it at your local gas station.



: That was one of the concerns they have. So yeah, so as Jeremy said, the gas station attendant might not the best resource for education, so have it at a dispensary, but they didn't want to fool with that. And they didn't want to create the regulatory mechanisms and review the efficacy and any contaminations and stuff like that of Delta-8 products. And as Jeremy said, it was a great alternative for folks that were looking for something with less anxiety, better nausea control, and then the Delta-9 and CBD combinations. So yeah, those are those are the barriers, the struggles, the challenges for patients.

Join us for Part V of this multipart interview series as the co-founders of Cannabis Patients Pacific Northwest share their experiences navigating state and federal regulations around medical cannabis.

 co-founders Jeremy Robbins and David Benedicktus provide insights into the medical cannabis laws, taxes, and other obstacles patients in the Pacific Northwest must navigate to access their medication, plus the challenges and rewards of methods of at-home cultivation.

In this interview, Jeremy Robbins and David Benedicktus explain the medical cannabis laws and cultivation practices patients in the Pacific Northwest navigate.

Empowerment through Education Part IV: Medical Cannabis Grow Laws and Cultivation

Join us for Part IV of this multipart interview series where we dive into the complexities of state cannabis grow laws with the non-profit, Cannabis Patients Pacific Northwest.

Medical Cannabis

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