CULTURAL BAGGAGE

APRIL 17, 2019

TRANSCRIPT

DEAN BECKER: Hi folks, this is Cultural Baggage, I am Dean Becker, the Reverend Most High. We've got several shows lined up from the Thirteenth National Clinical Conference on Cannabis Therapeutics. It was held in Tampa, Florida. We'll be doing a show or three here on Cultural Baggage and a couple more on Century of Lies with Doug McVay. Let's get started.

LAURA LAGANO, MS, RDN, CDN: Laura Lagano, integrative clinical nutritionist and holistic cannabis practitioner. I wrote a book called The CBD Oil Miracle, which is really not just about CBD, but about this ancient plant called cannabis.

What people don't realize is that hemp is cannabis, and marijuana is cannabis. Hemp, according to the US Farm Bill, is less than 0.3 percent THC, and what we're identifying as marijuana is over 0.3 percent THC.

So THC is the cannabinoid, one of the compounds in cannabis, that provides its intoxicating effect. A lot of people refer to CBD as non-psychoactive, and that's not really true, because CBD is psychoactive, that's why it works. That's why it works to quell anxiety, that's why it works for PTSD. That's why it works in depression.

It is one of the compounds in cannabis that really helps to modulate a lot of immune function, a lot of -- it works as an anti-oxidant. But it does work in combination with the other compounds in the plant, what we call the entourage effect.

And, you know, essentially that's also the way other plants work. You know, when we start taking out components in plants, it just doesn't work as well. We see that plants work when you eat a whole plant, and cannabis is really no different.

So in fact, when people are looking for a product, a CBD oil, they typically want to look for something that is full spectrum, meaning it contains the full spectrum of the cannabinoids and often other plant materials, which would include the terpenes. Nobody ever talks about the terpenes.

And just to give people an idea of what is a terpene, take your fingernail, run it over the outside of a citrus fruit, and you'll get that beautiful fragrant smell. That's the terpene, the essential oil, if you will.

And terpenes interact with the cannabinoids in the cannabis plant for different effects. So for example, limonene is a terpene that's often found in the cannabis plant, and limonene is very uplifting. There are some people, however, who cannot tolerate limonene, and you will see typically those people are what I would call, you know, more 'Type A' people.

And it's not necessarily because they're -- why are they a type A person, they typically have some sort of a genetic mutation, it's not necessarily -- it's not a bad thing, it's called a snip, a Single Nucleotide Polymorphism, where limonene really doesn't match with their genetic health. For some people, though, it's wonderful.

Linalool, which is in lavender, also, and can also be in the cannabis plant, works extremely well for people for a more sedating effect. So that's why you'll see often, most people are very aware of lavender as something that's common, and that can really help to modulate mood. So we have strains, which are also called cultivars or chemovars, of cannabis that help to relax.

So in the book, I go over a number, thirty plus, conditions where CBD, whole plant, has been shown to have some sort of effect. Much of this data comes from clinical experience with patients that many practitioners have had.

Some of it does come from studies, so for instance, let's talk about epilepsy. CBD really came on to the consciousness of the US because of the use of CBD with seizures, and of course there is a drug out there now that is available for patients who have two very specific forms of epilepsy.

We also have seen that patients who have other forms of epilepsy and seizures do benefit from CBD, but I would caution against just going out and purchasing CBD if you do have seizures. You must do that with a healthcare professional, and for any disease state that is very serious, whether it's, you know, diabetes, Alzheimer's, MS, you do want to work with a healthcare professional to determine what CBD you might want to purchase.

Because hemp cannabis is what we call a bioremediator, it actually sucks up everything in the soil, so that means that if you have heavy metals or anything in the soil that's deleterious to health, that will end up in your CBD products. You really have to be very careful, and always work with a healthcare professional.

DEAN BECKER: Right, I've heard that it even, that it stores radiation, just, you know, it could help folks over in Chernobyl to remove the radiation from their soil. Well, Laura, let me ask you this, you touched on it, and, as a radio host, and speaker here and there, I get a lot of questions these days about CBD, which brand to buy, what's it good for, et cetera et cetera, and thus far, I say let's let the market figure it out. I don't know. I don't want to steer you wrong. Am I doing the right thing?

LAURA LAGANO, MS, RDN, CDN: You are. I think right now, I don't even know how many products are on the market. It is really excessive, because everybody's trying to jump in on the green rush, and get their product on the market, and of course, like any advertising and marketing, every person out there has the best product.

This is truly caveat emptor, buyer beware. You need to talk to a healthcare professional to find out what products are the best products to use, and not only for your condition, because we don't match the product to the condition. We match the product to the person.

Cannabis, whether it's with or without THC, if it's, you know, CBD oil, if you're, you know, you're going to a dispensary to buy a product, it is matched to the person. This is personalized, lifestyle medicine. You always want to match it to the person.

And, I mean, this is what I do in my own private practice as a clinical -- as an integrative clinical nutritionist, I am matching the food plan, the lifestyle, whether I'm recommending CBD, whether I'm referring people to get a medical marijuana recommendation, it's always to the person.

Because I could have two people with the exact same clinical presentation, but they respond differently. They respond differently to food.

DEAN BECKER: We have this situation where cops are looking for ways to determine who's high out on the roads, looking for a means to determine that inebriation, if you will, whether it be, you know, from blood or breath or however else they might want to do it, and I guess my point I'm getting at is, for some folks, a mild dose of THC is more than they need to be out driving, and for others, an enormous dose is not going to incapacitate them or keep them from driving.

And I guess what I'm saying is, it's per person, as you were kind of indicating earlier, they're, the effects are different, person to person, from use of cannabis.

LAURA LAGANO, MS, RDN, CDN: Absolutely. Everybody has a different response.

So, I'm going to tell a funny story. When I was in college, I was going out on, we used to take the train out to the beach with my college roommate. And, she's Irish by heritage, and I'm Italian, and we would meet, I was working in a test kitchen at that time for a magazine, and we would meet at the test kitchen I worked in, and we would make some beverages before we left, which were made -- which was alcohol with grapefruit juice.

And we would consume the exact same amount, and we're about the exact same size. When we got to our destination, my girlfriend, Kathleen, would be totally fine, and my name is Laura Maria, I would be completely on the floor.

Now, why is that? Well, later on, fast forward, here's the funny thing. That is because I have a genetic predisposition, a SNP, a Single Nucleotide Polymorphism, where grapefruit juice, a compound in grapefruit juice, actually potentiates the action of alcohol, where I don't actually detoxify it through what's called the cytochrome P450 system, basically making alcohol much more potent for me.

So there you go. So we had the same thing happening with THC. So, we know that there are genetic SNPs that are specific to people within different systems of the body, particularly in that cytochrome P450 system, where people are not detoxifying the THC as quickly.

Some people are detoxifying it more quickly than others. So, that's the same -- it's the exact same thing.

And the other thing I want to mention, which you're pointing out, is the euphoria. And I did a talk on this several years ago, where I say, well, what is euphoria? What is high?

If you have people using THC, many of them are microdosing, which is of course as a healthcare professional, which I prefer, because the microdosing is really what enables people to satisfy their endocannabinoid system, and be their best self.

So if you're going from being tightly wound, and stressed out, to your mood being regulated, is that really high?

DEAN BECKER: Some profound words. Laura, I know you're going to be speaking here in just a little bit here at the Patients Out of Time conference. Your book, the title, maybe where folks could learn more about it?

LAURA LAGANO, MS, RDN, CDN: Sure. So, you can go to my website, LauraLagano.com, where you could purchase the book. You could also purchase it from McMillan, who is my publisher. You can also go to my site HolisticCanna.com, where I actually have an online cannabis education program about integrating cannabis with holistic modalities, like nutrition, aromatherapy, yoga, meditation, breathwork, acupuncture.

It is for healthcare professionals to learn more about cannabis. I do have smaller programming for patients, if they're interested, and you could always email me at Laura@LauraLagano.com.

You know, I'm really -- I'm an educator. I'm a clinician, so I really want to get the word out there and really, really stamp out cannaphobia.

DEAN BECKER: It's time to play Name That Drug By Its Side Effects! Severe depression, cancer of the breast, stroke, dementia, blood clots in the lung, prolonged bleeding, high blood pressure, heart attacks, and congestive heart failure. Time's up! The answer: Primpro, a combination hormone replacement, approved by the FDA.

Okeh, folks, I'm in Tampa, Florida, I'm attending the Thirteenth National Clinical Conference on Cannabis Therapeutics, and first thing this morning I run into one of my old friends, a strong ally of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, a man who's been at this for decades, Mister Dale Gieringer. How are you doing, Dale?

DALE GIERINGER: Good to be here.

DEAN BECKER: Yeah. Dale, California has really run the gamut. They've legalized now. What's it like out there?

DALE GIERINGER: Oh, the regulatory system they set up under legalization is a real disaster. They're overregulating to the hilt, everything's too expensive, two thirds of the products you can't get anymore because they haven't figured out how to produce them and pass their absurdly rigorous testing requirements.

And really it's sort of a SNAFU at the moment, I think everybody would agree, but it will get better as time goes on. But they really did go too far in their regulations in California. So, you know, I thought it was best, the situation in California was best, in 2017, which was the first year that adult use was legal, but the dispensaries were operating under the old medical system, and they didn't have these new regulations in place.

But it's feeling -- it costs you a couple million dollars to go into business these days, and that's just not the same game that all those old backyard growers were playing all these years, so there's an enormous adjustment that's going on out in the market.

And a lot of small people and, you know, medical co-ops, veterans co-ops, and things like that are not strictly within the law anymore, and they're nervous about what happens next. So, that's one issue that we're trying to straighten out.

DEAN BECKER: Now, a couple of weeks back I talked to Ed Forchion, the New Jersey Weedman, I'm sure you've heard of him, and he was talking about New Jersey's going to legalize, they didn't, but he was going to then protest --

DALE GIERINGER: Never count on the politicians to legalize for you.

DEAN BECKER: No. No, but, he was going to protest in front of the state house, going to smoke joints, try to sell some pot. But he's not going to be able to do that now, but, it comes back around to the thought that these politicians, really, it's like, I don't know, trying to solve a puzzle with a couple of pieces missing, they don't quite know how to frame this up, whether it's New Jersey or California.

And to me, what's, I don't know, nauseating, perhaps, what Canada has done is given the rights to grow and sell to all these former cops and prosecutors and others, and --

DALE GIERINGER: -- now have so much money that they're investing in the US, and, we had to a clause, our initiative, actually, the Prop 64, one of the legalization initiatives did have a clause in it forbidding out of state investment, which is a very hard thing to police anyhow, but, that got written out of the -- a subsequent draft and amendments were passed after the initiative passed, through the legislature, passed amendments by the governor that eliminated that on the grounds that it was probably unconstitutional to forbid, to limit investment to people from one particular state.

And so we've got Canadians all over the place.

DEAN BECKER: Well, then, that's my understanding, that, well, I'm not going to say any names, I have friends at a couple of those organizations. But, they have the money, they were able to offer their stock up for sale first, and get that bank roll, and go to work on Big Marijuana.

DALE GIERINGER: Yeah.

DEAN BECKER: Well, Dale, what brings you to this Thirteenth National Conference, here?

DALE GIERINGER: Well, I'm just trying to keep in contact with the medical marijuana movement. I mean, this is, I'm very closely attached to this movement because I was there at the beginning. I worked with Dennis Peron on San Francisco's medical marijuana initiative in 1991 [Proposition P], which was like the first successful marijuana initiative, pretty much anywhere, ever.

And, which just, you know, snowballed from there, from 1991 it took us five years to get it legal in California with Prop 215, and I'm just amazed at how far things have progressed since then.

On the local level, I mean, so many states now have medical marijuana laws. What, 32 foreign countries, I believe, now recognize medical marijuana? Looks like the UN maybe about to do it. The only thing is federal law hasn't changed a whit, it's just incredible.

DEAN BECKER: That's for sure. Now, one last thing I wanted to point out to the folks listening, that next year, I think it is, is the NORML, National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, is going to celebrate fifty years, and I overheard you in the car saying, hopefully that, perhaps that could be the last year it's necessary.

DALE GIERINGER: Yes, I would hope so. Actually, I think maybe 2021 or 2022 we'll finally get the meaningful change in federal law that we're looking for. That's my guess. I'm not one of these guys who back in the Seventies was saying, hey, it's going to be legal any day now. I never saw that, but I would say now, within the next five years, I feel comfortable about that.

I mean, actually, there's probably a majority sentiment in the House and in the White House to do it today, except nobody's going to agree on anything in Washington under the current circumstances. I didn't mention the Senate, which I think is probably still a problem, yes.

DEAN BECKER: All right. Well, real good. Once again, I've been speaking with Dale Gieringer. If you want to learn more from NORML, go to NORML.org.

WILLIAM SIMPSON: Hi, my name's William Simpson, I'm from Ontario, Canada, I've been in the cannabis industry for twenty-one years as an approved cultivar, and a processor to make multiple products to provide patients the relief they deserve, can afford, and trust.

DEAN BECKER: You know, the heck of it is that Canada legalized, but like California, like many of the other states, legalized has different interpretations and from my perspective none of them are quite yet legal. Your response there.

WILLIAM SIMPSON: Well, in Canada, I think you're partly right with what you just said. What they legalized is what's known as recreational cannabis in California, Colorado, Oregon, and every state.

In Canada, there -- our Canadian government took the position sixteen -- nineteen years ago to legalize medical cannabis, and there is a definite difference between medical cannabis and recreational cannabis.

DEAN BECKER: All right, yeah, and again I say there's different parameters, barriers, interpretations, rules, regulations ....

WILLIAM SIMPSON: Well, so, to explain to a German company that was interested in coming to North America to the cannabis industry, I explained to them, in the recreational industry it will cost them about three million dollars because they have one test, that's tested for pesticides, heavy metals, THC percentage level, and CBD level.

Yet, there are many -- Doctor Mechoulam has proven there's a hundred and fifty cannabinoids which provide medical relief, so this has become a very in the trenches area in the United States of America, because, if it's classified as recreational, then there is no medical value, and you will not have to deschedule it out of schedule one.

Right now, it's stuck in schedule one because the federal powers continue to deny the medical qualities that cannabis provides, yet internationally around the world medical cannabis has been recognized for thousands of years by doctors.

DEAN BECKER: No, so true, by the witch doctor back when, even, right? I mean, what the heck. No, the truth of it is, we look at the, some of the rules and situations that are developing around the US, one in particular revolves around hemp. Hemp is gaining traction, hemp is being recognized more and more as a legitimate medicine and or supplement, I guess, it depends on how you look at it.

And then we have other situations, like state of Florida, for instance, where they don't want to allow a THC limit higher than 10 percent, as if that barrier would somehow limit damage, or misery.

WILLIAM SIMPSON: That is being provided to them by the pharmacopiea [sic: pharmaceutical] companies, because if you go above a certain percentage, but you're -- when they link that -- Florida made that ten percent rule, they took specifically into consideration smoking. And if you have an edible product, so, our doctors, and around the world, and our nurses, teach eat it, don't heat it.

Because if you smoke it or vape it or in your processes of making a product you heat it, or, which is known as decarboxylation, you are going to have psychoactive compounds. You take the THC-A from an acidic form into a delta-nine THC.

When you take it into delta-nine THC, that's when it creates psychoactive effects, and that is what everybody's worried about. So they don't do that, with regards to teaching people the proper way. Heat it, don't eat it, that gentleman right there that just walked by is one of the premier doctors, Doctor Dustin Sulak, and he is a cannabis study and research person, and he'll tell you, heat it -- eat it, don't heat it.

So we believe that by traveling around the world, when we made cannabis illegal in the United States of America in 1936 [sic: 1937], in order for people to recognize that they got their money's worth when they were buying their cannabis, they were taught to smoke it, because as soon as you heat it, you get a psychoactive effect, and when you get a psychoactive effect, you immediately feel like you've got your money's worth.

DEAN BECKER: I think that's very true. I find myself, I'm, I was a lifelong tobacco smoker, damn those Marlboros is all I can tell you, I quit ten years ago, but the COPD is chomping on my ass, it's making it very difficult to smoke cannabis these days, and I do find great relief, or, you know, through eating edibles, because, you know, damn the hour it takes to take effect, but it certainly does its job once it's in effect.

WILLIAM SIMPSON: You're absolutely correct, sir, so what our patients are being taught, to work with our nurses and doctors, because only the patient knows the sweet spot for the patient.

So what the doctors and nurses will say is, take one hit off the vape, wait five minutes, take another hit, when you get that immediate relief that you need to get past that threshold pain, then you're okeh, take your cannabis pill in a raw form, where you're just taking crushed cannabis in a capsule, eating it in raw form so it's not been activated, and that will provide the relief over a long period.

So when we did our research in the laboratories, smoking or vaping gives an immediate kick, right off the hop, but then it comes down within an hour, and it rock bottoms. So if you take the pill, and then you take your vape, you get your immediate relief, as that curve comes down on the backside, the pill is starting to work its way through your digestive system and its bringing you to an upward, so you're -- you, on that downward curve, we don't recommend smoking either.

We all understand that smoking was something we were taught, that was probably the worst thing, nicotine is the most addictive drug known to man. Yet that was the first one legalized [sic], so how can we trust them when they tell us that cannabis should be illegal and doesn't provide medical qualities?

We can't trust the people that say these things.

DEAN BECKER: No, some sound advice there from William Simpson, he's president of CanaCrafted. He's up there in, see if I can pronounce, is Waubaushene?

WILLIAM SIMPSON: Waubaushene, Ontario, Canada.

DEAN BECKER: All right. Thank you, sir.

WILLIAM SIMPSON: And we are also, just to mention, my friend, we are also been [sic] consulting for many of the California LPs, because I wrote the protocols. My last name is Simpson, as he just said. My family owned, built, Simpson Race Products, the largest safety equipment manufacturer in North America.

We all watch racing and see that red Simpson name on the helmets. That's our family. So we learned from the very beginning to quality assure our product, because people's lives depended on it, and now in the cannabis industry, we use that same quality assurance because our patients' lives depend on it. It's very, very similar.

DEAN BECKER: You can learn more about the work he does out there on the web at CanaCrafted.ca.

All right, to close things out, we've got the following segment that was recorded at the Texas House of Representatives. It features my good friend, fellow LEAP member, Judge John Delaney.

JOHN DELANEY: What brought me here today, is multiple things. One of them is a 38 year old stepson. I've raised four children, a doctor, a lawyer, a teacher, and a homeless drug addict.

And sometimes he lives in the woods, sometimes he lives on the streets, sometimes he lives on somebody's couch. Periodically he comes to stay at our house. He has a mental health problem that is untreatable by any drug that that we've been able to find for him, but he gets enormous relief from marijuana.

And he can function almost as a normal person. Sadly, along the way, the criminal justice system has taken away his driver's license for six months, and then his driver's license for ten years.

So, it's a terrible, compounded thing, partly his fault, partly an accident of nature, but the state of Texas is complicit in his misery and our misery because it makes it -- makes it a crime, were he fail to get the relief that helps him.

Now, I have to make this observation, that sitting back, listening to these people with their very compelling stories, I can see the expressions on your faces, you're very moved.

So, I have to wonder, if you had been on the jury panel for one of the 375 cases I've empaneled a jury, would you be able to tell the judge and the prosecutor that if you were a jury on a case to try any of these people for possession of marijuana, would you be able to vote guilty? I bet you'd stand in front of that judge and say, I'm sorry, I just don't think I could.

Well, if that's true, if my instinct is true, that begs the question: why do we have this outrageous law in the first place?

DEAN BECKER: I want to thank Judge John Delaney for having the courage to speak so boldly, so truthfully, so publicly, and that is what it's going to take from all of us to end the madness of drug war, and again, I remind you, because of prohibition you don't know what's in that bag. Please be careful.