First in this episode of the Ministry of Hemp podcast, Matt starts out talking about CBD scams and false claims to watch out for, based on a recent article by our editor Kit O’Connell.

Today, our host Matt talks with Dr. Matthew Halpert about a new study he coauthored in the scientific journal PAIN. This research looked at whether CBD can help aging dogs with osteoarthritis. One of our Top CBD Brands, Medterra, partnered with the researchers on this study.

Their conversation touches on some new and exciting evidence showing CBD’s ability to reduce inflammation, a new CBD delivery system that could change the way we take CBD, and the weird biological origins of bleach.

This is episode 50 of the Ministry of Hemp podcast! Thank you for listening, and sharing our podcast with your friends.

About Dr. Matthew Halpert

Equipped with a Ph.D. from the University of Alabama-Birmingham, Dr. Halpert is the Director of Research & Development at Medterra. He is currently responsible for all product-related R&D from performing pharmokinetic studies on efficacy to reviewing the latest peer-reviewed publications on CBD. Halpert also holds a faculty position at the Baylor College of Medicine where he studies both the efficacy and immunological processes, homeostatic regulation and cancer immunotherapy.

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Send us your hemp questions and you might hear them answered on one of our Hemp Q&A episodes. Send your written questions to us on Twitter, Facebook, matt@ministryofhemp.com, or call us and leave a message at 402-819-6417. Keep in mind, this phone number is for hemp questions only and any other inquiries for the Ministry of Hemp should be sent to info@ministryofhemp.com

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CBD For Older Dogs: Complete episode transcript

Below you’ll find the complete transcript of episode 50 of the Ministry of Hemp podcast, “CBD for older dogs”:

Matt Baum:
I’m Matt Baum and this is the Ministry of Hemp podcast, brought to you by MinistryofHemp.com, America’s leading advocate for hemp and hemp education.

Matt Baum:
Today on the show, we are going to get into some science. It’s one of my favorite things to talk about because science is how we learn that things work and it looks like there is some real evidence finally coming out to show that CBD actually really does help with inflammation. My conversation on the show is going to be with Dr. Matthew Halpert. He is research faculty in the Department of Pathology and Immunology at Baylor and he just recently worked on a study looking at osteoarthritis in dogs and how CBD can help. But before we get into the science, we should talk a little pseudoscience and some very popular scams that are going on in the CBD world right now.

Beware CBD scams & frauds

Matt Baum:
As I’m sure you know, CBD oil has become an extremely popular fad in the past few years. There’s even consumer reports survey that says 40% of people in their 20s have tried CBD oil and up to 15% of people 65 or older have tried it. I’m sure you’ve talked to or read about people that say it’s helped with their aches or their anxiety, but there’s just as many people out there on the internet right now that’ll tell you it cures everything from cancer to Covid-19 and unfortunately because CBD is currently not regulated by the FDA, legally, they’re getting away with it.

Matt Baum:
Now, normally on this show and on MinistryofHemp.com, we like to highlight people that are creating CBD for the right reasons and doing it the right way. But I wanted to take a moment to highlight some of the people that are doing it the wrong way. The scammers out there that are looking to take advantage of you for money while they can, before the FDA moves in and starts regulating CBD.

Matt Baum:
The first and brightest warning flag you should look for are claims that it cures everything. If you find a product with a laundry list of different ailments saying that CBD cures it, makes it go away, chances are they’re lying. As we’ve said on this show and on our site, and I repeat over and over again, we’ve seen CBD useful in treating inflammation, pain, and anxiety. Now, that is not to say that we won’t learn other uses for CBD later, but for now, that is what we know that it does. Anyone claiming that it cures the common cold, cancer, your skin rash, your dog’s bad attitude … I suppose it could help if your dog has anxiety but it’s not going to make your dog stop biting you. But CBD is not going to cure disease and along those same lines, anyone that is boasting about CBD and immune boosting, is probably selling you snake oil. There is no evidence that CBD is boosting your immune system. That’s not even how your immune system works. And again, it’s a real quick and easy red flag to notice.

Matt Baum:
Another one that absolutely blows my mind, CBD infused products that you can’t take internally. I’m talking about CBD infused bracelets, CBD infused pillows, CBD infused mattresses. That is not how CBD works. If not taken internally, it is not doing you any benefit and I am not going to tell you to eat your pillow to get those benefits. There’s all kinds of great companies that are putting out fantastic CBD gummies, oils, tenures, vapes, all of which, you may notice, are taken internally. Anyone that is trying to sell you an external product that you wear or lay on or think about, chances are, they’re selling garbage and it’s not going to help you. It might be comfortable, but it’s not going to give you any of the benefits that you would get from a quality CBD product that is taken internally. We’ve got a fantastic article right now that has some more scams that are up. You can look over at MinistryofHemp.com and I’ll have a link to it in the show notes. I highly suggest you check it out.

Matt Baum:
I know this stuff sounds like common sense, but unfortunately while this was all unregulated, there are people making wild claims and selling garbage products that can make reputable companies look bad when someone tries some really cheap, Chinese imported CBD they got off Amazon that doesn’t even have any CBD in it. That can make a really bad impression. Go check out this article, educate yourselves and make an educated buying decision before you spend real money on CBD. So you know what it is, you know what’s in that bottle that you’re buying, and you know what it’s supposed to do.

Meet Dr. Matthew Halpert

Matt Baum:
My conversation on the show today is with Dr. Matthew Halpert. He is part of the research faculty in the Department of Pathology and Immunology at Baylor. Now, recently he worked on a study in conjunction with Medterra. Medterra is a CBD company that offers a whole line of different products, including animal products. This study was carried out on dogs to look at how CBD affects the inflammation levels in older dogs suffering from osteoarthritis, which is very prevalent. Here’s my conversation with Dr. Matthew Halpert.

Matt Baum:
Dr. Halpert, welcome to the Ministry of Hemp podcast. It’s nice to have you here.

Matthew Halpert:
Thank you.

Matt Baum:
We’re going to talk about the study that you worked on that came out of Baylor Medical School about animals with osteoarthritis pain. I had to practice that so I didn’t sound stupid when I said it. And how they reacted to CBD. I looked at this study and 99.9% of it was clear over my head. So we’re going to get the dumbed down third grade version, if you will.

Matthew Halpert:
Sure.

Matt Baum:
That’s what I brought you in for, basically.

Matthew Halpert:
Sure. No problem.

Matt Baum:
Before we get started, tell me about you. How does a guy like you, who specializes in immunology end up on a study like this?

Matthew Halpert:
Sure. First things first, let me throw out a bit of a disclaimer. When we get into the part about the dog study, it is important to know that all of the K-9 subjects were seen by highly qualified veterinarians at Sunset Animal Hospital and not at Baylor College of Medicine. We were not in a lab at Baylor experimenting on these animals. These were properly cared for previous patients of veterinarians at Sunset Clinic.

Matt Baum:
That’s good to know because when you start thinking animal lab, you go straight to horror story. Right?

Matthew Halpert:
Yeah. And Baylor doesn’t want to get in trouble. I did not actually touch a dog.

Matt Baum:
Totally get that.

Matthew Halpert:
I’m a PhD, not a vet. So just to be clear on that. I didn’t used to think about being clear on that until I got a little … I have to be very clear on that.

Matt Baum:
A talking to, if you will.

Matthew Halpert:
Yes.

Matt Baum:
I assure you, this is not a [inaudible 00:07:29], I promise you.

Matthew Halpert:
The paper did come out of Baylor and they were like, you need to be clear, we did not experiment on dogs. This was all done underneath the supervision of appropriate veterinarians and regulatory oversight.

Matt Baum:
Makes perfect sense.

Matthew Halpert:
To address your question, by trade I’m an immunologist and as you know, a couple years ago cannabis, cannabinoids, CBD, in particular, all really started surging forward with the passage of the 2018 Farm Bill. When it was de-scheduled and no longer in the same category as heroin or LSD, it became much easier for researchers to obtain it and to research with it. So my focus up to that point, or part of my studies had been in inflammation and the process of inflammation and what goes into that and of course, inflammation is a growing, almost pandemic, at this point. With our Western diet, we’re all sitting right now. The amount of time we sit actually causes inflammation.

Matthew Halpert:
Aging, aging by itself causes inflammation. So we’re just an inflamed people and it’s just getting worse and worse and worse until eventually you end up with some sort of chronic or severe disorder. An example would be osteoarthritis, which affects 35 million Americans a year and as best I can tell right now, one of the main causes is inflammation. Other than that, there’s a lot we don’t know.

Matt Baum:
Fair enough.

Matthew Halpert:
So, obviously it would be beneficial if we could reduce inflammation but you don’t want to go get a shot of steroids every week. That’s a pretty severe path. A lot of people do turn to basically overdosing themselves with NSAIDs like ibuprofen and Tylenol and asprin. The number one cause of liver transplant patient in this country is accidental overdose of acetaminophen-

Matt Baum:
It’s not alcohol.

Matthew Halpert:
Which is Tylenol.

Matt Baum:
It’s Tylenol.

Matthew Halpert:
It’s not. People have no idea how dangerous Tylenol is.

Matt Baum:
That is amazing. I had no clue.

Matthew Halpert:
They think it’s like candy and many people, including myself, have said, Tylenol was basically grandfathered in because it was so old. If it had to go through the FDA rigors of today, it would probably never be approved.

Matt Baum:
Really?

Matthew Halpert:
Yeah, it’s pretty damaging to your organs. For the people who-

Matt Baum:
I’m going to get rid of that then. Let’s get that out of my medicine cabinet.

Matthew Halpert:
Be careful with it. People don’t know but you can overdose yourself with that.

Understanding inflammation and arthritis

Matt Baum:
Real quick, on the subject of inflammation, as I understand it, inflammation is not necessarily arthritis but is a symptom of arthritis and it is the symptom that causes the pain? Is that correct?

Matthew Halpert:
Well, by definition, symptom comes after the cause.

Matt Baum:
Makes sense.

Matthew Halpert:
It’s probably more on the cause side. But it’s throughout. It goes both. Having inflammation does not mean you have arthritis nor does it mean you will get arthritis. It is just associated in people that have arthritis, yes. They definitively have excessive inflammation in their knee or their elbow or wherever the arthritic issue is. So other forms of chronic … a lot of GI disorders, Crohn’s, IBD, those are examples of excessive inflammation in our GI tract. Excessive inflammation in the lungs can lead to asthma or COPD or a number of bronchial issues. So just depends on where the inflammation is. To make it more relatable to the lay person, inflammation is not per se caused by anything external. It’s not caused, a bacteria or virus itself, or whatever you may encounter, does not inflame you. The inflammation is your body’s immune response against that.

Matt Baum:
To something else. Got it.

Matthew Halpert:
There’s a virus, we need to destroy it, inflammation. And in that case, you want that. But for a lot of people, it’s basically an immune response gone rogue and there’s inflammation to your own … Rheumatoid arthritis, you have an immune response against yourself. It’s an autoimmune disorder.

Matt Baum:
Right. Your body starts attacking yourself.

Matthew Halpert:
So you have all this inflammation which can be characterized by a number of things, including the accumulation and activation of different inflammatory cells. Neutrophils is a very popular one. They can rapidly get to, in this case, the synovial joint. Neutrophils actually secrete bleach. That is one of the things they use to kill bacteria. But in this case-

Matt Baum:
Chemical bleach? Strait up bleach? The same stuff you would add to your wash?

Matthew Halpert:
Well, where do you think they discovered the chemical form bleach from?

Matt Baum:
I did not know that.

Matthew Halpert:
Yep.

Matt Baum:
That’s news to me. All right.

Matthew Halpert:
Neutrophils release a lot of toxic agents, commonly referred to as reactive oxygen species, or ROSs. They’re just very toxic and they’re useful in acute situations but obviously damaging if they continue and persist because they will damage your own cartilage and anything else in the area. You also have inflammatory cytokines such as TNF Alpha is a very popular one. These, again, what they tell your body is danger, danger, danger.

Matt Baum:
Attack.

Matthew Halpert:
We need to attack and if you’ve got too much of that, especially at the wrong time, that’s when you say ow, I’m feeling pain. Maybe I should rub something on it or take some Tylenol or etc.

Matt Baum:
So this is where CBD comes in that you were studying.

Matthew Halpert:
Right. So it’s never going to be something I recommend to overdose yourself with NSAIDs. You always run a risk of the benefit not outweighing the damage.

Matt Baum:
And the NSAIDs being painkillers like Tylenol?

Matthew Halpert:
NSAIDs, non-steroidal antiinflammatory. Yes.

Matt Baum:
Non-steroidal antiinflammatory.

Matthew Halpert:
Common ones are acetaminophen or salicylic acid, which is Asprin, ibuprofen which is Advil. I mean, there are others but people just, “Oh, yeah, I’ll just take those.”

Matt Baum:
Well, they’re harmless. Right?

Matthew Halpert:
They’re harmless. Next thing you know you’ve damaged your organs, possibly beyond repair. It has its effects especially if you’re taking … and I fully admit, I used to not know this when I was an athlete back in my younger days, I was definitely overloading on Advil just to get through some pain.

Matt Baum:
Same here. I played hockey and I was a drummer so my hands got inflamed and hurt and I took Tylenol and when that stopped working, a doctor put me on hardcore painkillers, I got addicted to those, it was great. You don’t even know you’re a drug addict. You’re just walking around addicted.

Matthew Halpert:
This is nothing to even discuss about the opioid issue in this country.

The anti-inflammatory properties of CBD

Matt Baum:
And that’s the whole next level I could have gone. I was lucky. And then I found CBD and that’s helped quite a bit with the inflammation in my hands and pain.

Matthew Halpert:
Right. So as we move the needle forward and I’m working in the lab and studying inflammation and ways to potentially reduce it, let’s say safer, more efficiently, more economically, there was the surge in interest in CBD. Anecdotally, I’m sure you’ve read CBD cures everything.

Matt Baum:
Oh, of course.

Matthew Halpert:
Headaches-

Matt Baum:
It’s doing a great job on Covid right now, from what I understand.

Matthew Halpert:
Oh, sure. Cures that. If you end up dying, it’s okay. Take a little CBD. You’ll be fine.

Matt Baum:
You’ll be all right.

Matthew Halpert:
I did not really want to … I do not follow the anecdotal, obviously. I’m a scientist. That means very little to me. It can push us and skew us to what to look at and there happen to be a decent amount out there and some previous research. I’m not the first. There has been other research that shows that, oh, CBD actually does have some really interesting antiinflammatory properties. And initially this was mistakenly assumed that it was only through the endocannabinoid system. The CB1, CB2 receptors which I’m sure you’ve heard of.

Matt Baum:
We talk about them all the time.

Matthew Halpert:
And while there’s no doubt that CBD can interact with those receptors, I would venture to say in all likelihood, that is not even the main receptor CBD interacts with when you take it. It has now been shown to interact with a number of different receptors. Some really interesting. It stimulates through the serotonin receptor, which is your feel good receptor in the brain. That could be very interesting. And not to get too science-y but there has now been identified between six and 10 different inflammation related receptors that CBD actually interacts with.

Matt Baum:
That’s amazing news though. That’s great.

Matthew Halpert:
Mm-hmm (affirmative). Absolutely.

Matt Baum:
We started with CB1 and CB2 and the endocannabinoid system and everybody pushes that and we go, yeah it’s very cool but the news that no, there’s way more benefit to it than that. That’s even better. That’s fantastic news.

Matthew Halpert:
Exactly. CBD, I mentioned before, neutrophils, well CBD can bind directly to neutrophils and reduce their activity. Great. That’s what you want. You want to shut that down. Can it reduce TNF Alpha? Yes. If you go back and look at the paper that you were referring to before that I just published in [inaudible 00:17:25], you can see that.

Matt Baum:
Real quick. TNF Alpha?

Matthew Halpert:
Tumor Necrosis Factor Alpha. It’s a very, very commonly … I mean, you can see commercials, they talk about it in commercials for Humira, for example.

Matt Baum:
Oh, sure.

Matthew Halpert:
TNF Alpha is an inflammatory cytokine elevated in a number of different conditions and it’s sort of become one of the hallmark proxies of, “You may have an inflammatory condition somewhere if we’re identifying increases in that in circulation.”

Matt Baum:
Gotcha. I thought you were saying TN Alfalfa. And I was like, that sounds delicious.

Matthew Halpert:
TNF Alpha. And in fact, in rheumatoid arthritis, which is slightly different, that’s one of the therapies they employ. Is simply blocking that molecule can bring patients a lot of improvement by blocking that. That’s why I mention it, why I looked at it, and why it ended up being in the publication. Not that I’m the first to discover that CBD can reduce that but it’s important to, of course, always verify previous research and then build off it.

Matt Baum:
Right. Obviously.

Matthew Halpert:
So we did that in several different inflammatory models and again, successfully saw, yeah, CBD does in fact do that.

Studying arthritis & CBD in older dogs

Matt Baum:
Let me ask you, you can do this, we’re seeing the science and it’s working, and it’s amazing and we can talk to people and say, “How do you feel?” And you do, “What’s your pain level?” “Well, I was at a seven and now I’m at a four.” That’s an improvement. When you move into a study like this that deals with animals, dogs for example, how does that work? How do you look at a dog in a situation like that and say, “This dog is in pain. We gave it CBD.” You can’t turn to the dog and be like, “What’s your pain level?” And the dog goes, “Ruff. Now I’m at a three. Ruff.” You know? Or something.

Matthew Halpert:
You don’t speak dog?

Matt Baum:
Not real well. My dogs don’t listen to me, I’ll tell you that much. Maybe I’m doing it wrong. I don’t know.

Matthew Halpert:
So, sure. Up to this point, this had been research in the lab in Petri dishes or test tubes, however you want to picture it. And right, this is a situation that plagues science. A lot of stuff can look great in the lab but does it actually hold up in an intact, biological system? We’re not talking about rodents that may all be genetically identical. We’re talking about genetically disperse subject such as humans or dogs in this case, that are also out bred. They’re not all genetically … They’re not clones of each other.

Matt Baum:
Not by any means, yeah.

Matthew Halpert:
No. So this came about largely with a collaboration with Medterra and so this is where they also put some weight and the bottom, basic question was, “all right. CBD reduces inflammation. So what?” I mean, that’s great and all but is it actually going to help people or, “Hey, we have a pet product. Is it helping dogs or not? Are we just following a fad or is there actual science here?” And while there is absolutely impetus to push CBD through the human clinical trial process, and I can drop a teaser that absolutely Medterra is looking into and will do that and that is upcoming.

Matt Baum:
That’s awesome.

Matthew Halpert:
That is a process. You still have to go … It’s not going to happen overnight. We have to integrate with the FDA. We have to integrate with the institution. It takes a bit of work. And it’s a little bit tricky sometimes to go from the lab and mouse work all the way to humans. Because sometimes maybe the FDA feels, “You don’t have a ton of justification here to do this or that.” So sometimes a middle ground is what occurred here with our K-9 friends. Because they are far more representative of a human population than maybe mice or cells in a dish would be.

Matt Baum:
Just because they’re all so different? Is that because different sizes, different-

Matthew Halpert:
I would go, I mean, dogs are easily more evolved, for example, than mice.

Matt Baum:
Oh, okay. Gotcha.

Matthew Halpert:
Their systems are a little more representative of ours. They’re genetically disperse, as we are. They live in the environment. They don’t live in an animal facility or in a cage. They live out and about.

Matt Baum:
They’re exposed to a lot of the same stuff we are. Absolutely.

Matthew Halpert:
And not only that but dogs, more than I would have thought, suffer from osteoarthritis. It is estimated between, and this is going to surprise you, but between 20% and 90% of dogs, depending on breed, will suffer from osteoarthritis at some point in their life.

Matt Baum:
Wow.

Matthew Halpert:
It is very prevalent.

Matt Baum:
I can say, speaking from experience, I had two pugs, both of which had serious arthritis. One is 13 and she has a nerve disorder and she has lost her back legs. But before that nerve went bad, she was in a lot of pain. Turns out it was arthritis.

Matthew Halpert:
Mm-hmm (affirmative). Which often leads to some poor options. There’s actually a need here to maybe have something that could work. Right. So at this point, we’ve got a collaborative effort going between myself at Baylor and the Medterra and their group and their board and then Sunset Animal Hospital who sees tons of arthritic dogs and would love to have something to offer them. And like you said before, you can’t just give one dog some CBD and say, “How do you feel?” That’s not a study. And so in designing the study, what everyone came to a decision on, I’ll say off the bat, there are more invasive and more expensive things that could have been done in this study but in a catch-22, the vets and the regulatory process was not going to approve all of those very invasive or very expensive things until there was a publication that even suggested real justification.

Matt Baum:
Of course. That makes perfect sense. The vet’s like, “Hey, by the way, I’d like to try this experimental thing on your dog. Baylor thinks it might be a good idea.” And they give it to the dog and the dog dies. That’s a really bad look. I get that.

Conducting the ‘Pain’ study of osteoarthritis & CBD in older dogs

Matthew Halpert:
Right. So you got to start baby steps, baby steps. And again, all done between oversight with Medterra and Sunset and so the study that came about was what I would consider an appropriately controlled pilot study. And so I always refer to it as a placebo control double blinded study. What that means is that the double blind means no one in the study knew which group they were in. What they were enrolled. That includes the vet, who did the enrolling, and that includes the enrolling who also did not know which group they were in and obviously if you want to, the dogs also don’t know what they’re taking.

Matt Baum:
The dogs weren’t in on it. They didn’t tell them.

Matthew Halpert:
Kind of triple blind. So no one knows if you’re in the highest dose group or maybe you’re in the placebo group where you’re not actually going to give your dog anything. And so this helps reduce bias. Answer honestly because you’re not really skewed. If you know you’re in the highest group of CBD or something, you may be subconsciously skewed to see benefits where there may not be.

Matt Baum:
I do feel better. And maybe you were just having a good day.

Matthew Halpert:
If you knew you were in the placebo group, you’d go the other way. “I know I’m not getting anything.” So we wanted to keep everyone blinded. And then the collation of it was all done after the fact when the study was done. All right. Let’s see what the data says. And the groups included a placebo group, a low dose of CBD, a higher dose of CBD, and then the low dose of CBD in a, let’s call it a Trojan horse, scientific technology that improves bioavailability.

Matt Baum:
Oh, okay. Gotcha.

Matthew Halpert:
It won’t change the biology but you will absorb it better than if you didn’t.

Matt Baum:
Than if you just gave it to them. Yeah.

Matthew Halpert:
Because CBD, as you may or may not know, no super soluble, not very bioavailable. When you take CBD, you’re probably only actually benefiting from 2% to 20% of it, while the rest of it is either excreted or metabolized by the liver. By putting it in a certain hijack, a certain lipid packaging, that absorption goes much, much higher. Between 10 to 20 fold higher.

Matt Baum:
Wow.

Matthew Halpert:
So you get a lot more benefit.

Matt Baum:
Can I ask what that was? What was the lipid mixture that they used in that?

Matthew Halpert:
I don’t know that I’m allowed to full answer you. That’s somewhat proprietary to Medterra’s efforts.

Matt Baum:
It’s probably not the coconut oil that everybody is using it in.

Matthew Halpert:
No.

Matt Baum:
I didn’t think so.

Matthew Halpert:
No coconut. But I can tell you, it’s something that Medterra is going to be offering post haste. That’s all in production, development right now to be offered because it’s going to be … get your monies worth, right? I mean, take the stuff that your body is going to use.

Matt Baum:
That’s going to change the business. Certainly going to change the business.

Matthew Halpert:
Yep. And so to this story, we had those four groups and the dogs were to consume their product, CBD or placebo or whatever dose orally for 30 days. Just squirt on their food, which again, is not going to be the most, not the ideal situation because I’ve seen dogs eat, it’s a little messy. But 30 days, which is very quick, and I am very up front about having gone on record and telling everyone, for starters I can’t manipulate the data. The data will be the data. You have to be ready for that. It may not work. Second of all, guys, it’s a 30 day study. That’s very quick, clinically speaking, for anything like a chronic condition.

Matt Baum:
You can only look at what happened in those 30 days and look at that data and say, “This is what we have.” We can’t go in saying, “We think it’s going to be this.” Or, “We know it’s this. How do we get there?”

Matthew Halpert:
No.

Matt Baum:
That’s not how it works.

Matthew Halpert:
You get the data and you also have to be careful with extrapolations. “Oh, something is safe for 30 days, it must be safe if you take it every day for two years.” No. That’s not what we studied, so I can’t say that. Here’s what I can say. Within the paper, the characteristics of the dog, we had a really good mix of male and female, we had a really good mix of breed. They all weighed about the same. They were all around give or take 80 pounds. So pretty big dogs. And they were all around, I’d have to check, 10 or 11 years old. This is representative of the population that is dealing with osteoarthritis.

Matt Baum:
That’s when arthritis shows up. Senior dogs.

Matthew Halpert:
Before and after scoring and then two week follow up scoring is how it was done. And the scoring was carried out by the veterinarian who knows how to appropriately analyze dogs for their arthritis and the have a numerical scoring system basically. And they could also do … What was also done was the blood work. Your typically CBC and chemistry to check for, “Are we doing anything to the liver? Are we seeing liver issues? Are we seeing kidney issues? Are we seeing any red flags?” This would all fall under the safety profile of the study. Is this safe? Does it look like it’s being well tolerated?

Matt Baum:
It doesn’t matter if the pain goes down if you have just inflated some other chemical that’s really bad for your kidneys or your liver or something.

Matthew Halpert:
Right. Not worth it if it shuts down your kidneys.

Matt Baum:
Exactly.

Matthew Halpert:
So we had to make sure that was analyzed and then there was before and after and follow up scoring by the owners who filled out what is termed the Helsinki Pain Scale Chronic Pain Index.

Matt Baum:
That’s the one where it’s like, “What is your pain level?” And you’re like, “Nine.” And they’re like, “Oh, you’re hurting.” Right?

Matthew Halpert:
Kind of. It’s a published study that the vets fill this in, it’s actually well accepted in scoring arthritis in dogs and it’s a questionnaire where the owners do score numerically from one to five or one to 10 but they’re different questions. They aren’t just what’s the pain? It’s, how is your dog able to … Is your dog willing to jump up onto something? Is your dog capable-

Matt Baum:
Mobility.

Matthew Halpert:
Mobility.

Matt Baum:
Is your dog shaking. Shaking is a good way to know a dog is in pain. Correct?

Seeing results from CBD and older dogs

Matthew Halpert:
Right. And of course, anyone who is listening can just Google, “Helsinki Pain Scale” and they can see the questions. It’s freely available online but it’s just nothing too invasive, but it’s a way to get some direction. Do the owners of these dogs, do they perceive there to be any benefit after 30 days of CBD use? Does your dog seem to be in less pain? Do they have better mobility? Based on the ways you would score a dog. Again, is where the veterinarians came in and explained all that. And of course, every owner filled out informed concent. This is all by the books and on the up and up and I was surprised to see the difference I saw after 30 days. It was much greater than I would have thought. And so-

Matt Baum:
Really?

Matthew Halpert:
Yes. And so in the placebo group and the low dose group, again, the owners and vet don’t know that those are the group when they’re doing the scoring. They were pretty consistent with each other in their scoring of, “We don’t really see a difference.” And you can see that in the, I think it’s figure six of the paper with the pie charts. But they did not see much difference. So if you just want to boil it down to better, worse, or no change, a bunch of no change. In both groups, in those 10 dogs. And then you’ve got the other two groups where it’s a little bit higher CBD or a better absorbed CBD, almost the exact opposite. 80%, 90% of the dogs in the different categories were definitely showing some level of benefit.

Matt Baum:
Wow.

Matthew Halpert:
And when you dive deeper into some of the scoring, there was an average of, again, I’d have to double check. 40% to 50% improvement in what I would call arthritic symptoms.

Matt Baum:
That’s amazing.

Matthew Halpert:
So these dogs, I agree, I’m quite frankly shocked.

Matt Baum:
That’s a crazy number. Normally if you looked at a study like that and you were like, “Wow. 20% of them did better. That’s a high number.” You know?

Matthew Halpert:
But some of the scores, again, it’s a little bit like golf where a lower score is better and so some of the dogs started at a very high score, I’ll just make up a number, 50. And then after 30 days it was down to 25. Well, that, again-

Matt Baum:
That’s incredible.

Matthew Halpert:
That’s pretty beyond the placebo effect which was very minimal in this study. I mean, it’s not just you scored things a little better. What you’re saying, what they were all basically saying is, “Yes, my dog is doing significantly better in a lot of areas.” And there were a lot of notes, “My dog seems much happier, more playful.” Things that I can’t include in the scientific paper because that’s not objective. I can’t put that in. I was like, “That’s really good to know.” And even arguably more impressive to me was at the 30 day mark, everyone was ordered to stop taking their product and then score again two weeks later. And in the groups that were getting the more efficacious amounts of CBD, they were still showing a statistically significant improvement, even two weeks later.

Matt Baum:
Wow.

Matthew Halpert:
Which means to me, as a scientist, that the CBD was not merely doing what a lot of pain relievers do.

Matt Baum:
Like masking.

Matthew Halpert:
Mask, right. It wasn’t just, “Oh, we masked the pain temporarily.” Because if that’s the case, then once you get rid of that, basically the pain is … the problem is still there. In this case, what it looks like is the CBD was in fact, over 30 days, genuinely reducing the inflammatory components and allowing for what I would call a more genuine foundational improvement. I mean, the pain was less because there was less issue.

Next steps for research into CBD & inflammation

Matt Baum:
There was less inflammation. Yeah. Let me ask the difference, what was the difference between the high dosage CBD and the low dosage with that agent that was helping distribute it?

Matthew Halpert:
Very close. They were not statistically different from each other.

Matt Baum:
Really? So basically whatever this thing Medterra is working on, is going to allow for lower dosages of CBD to be way more effective.

Matthew Halpert:
Correct. It’s going to be much safer to take because it’s not only going to be absorbed better, you’re going to actually avoid first pass metabolism by liver. So because it doesn’t go through the normal oral pathway, I mean, you still take it orally, but it basically sneaks out of the stomach and the intestines into your blood without going through the liver and without being metabolized. And if you’re avoiding the liver, you’re avoiding a lot of potential drug, drug interactions or issues with alcohol or anything else that affects the liver, which is basically everything. So this is going to be a very beneficial, a much safer and more efficacious product. Through a number of different studies, we’ve already shown it’s improved abilities.

Matt Baum:
That’s fantastic news, by the way.

Matthew Halpert:
I think for the CBD industry, we’re excited by that.

Matt Baum:
Yeah. What’s the next step here? Next to we do a two year study with dogs next? Or where do you go from here?

Matthew Halpert:
That’s a good question. We can go a couple of places from here. Obviously with this publication in tow, we absolutely I think have the justification to do a secondary K-9 trial if we want to do some more invasive things. Maybe we do look at the synovial fluid. Maybe we do some imaging. But before I do any of that, what I’ve actually done is I’ve gotten in contact with the FDA, the CBM department of the FDA. A lot of people don’t know but the FDA also regulates the animal space. And so I’ve been talking with them about working together on, how do we get this product … How does Medterra push this product through to be FDA approved in the K-9 space?

Matt Baum:
That’s the next huge thing.

Matthew Halpert:
What do you think we need to see? And they were pretty clear about, “Hold on, there’s a chance you might already have enough. We’re not sure.”

Matt Baum:
Oh, wow.

Matthew Halpert:
“Don’t do anything else until we look at everything you’ve got.” So I’m at a bit of a holding pattern in the K-9 space until the FDA weighs in and tells me either yes, we already have enough to be approved, and then we have a lot more potential of things we can do in studies. We have a much wider berth.

Matt Baum:
That sounds like good news to me though. Really.

Matthew Halpert:
Or they’ll say, there’s not quite enough data yet. It’s very promising. Here’s what we suggest. Here’s how we would recommend moving forward to achieve that. And so that might be a longer study. This is only a one month study. They may say, “We’d like to see this after six months.” And I would say, “Okay, now we know what our next study needs to revolve around. It needs to be a six month study where we determine safety and efficacy.” So I feel confident in saying there will be other K-9 studies but that has not been mapped out yet. And will almost certainly involve FDA input. The other place we go is into the human. So with all of the science that exists now, and now we have a really good in house example of this benefiting an actual arthritic population. I might not have said before but osteoarthritis in dogs is very similar to osteoarthritis in humans.

Matt Baum:
Yeah. You mentioned that.

Matthew Halpert:
They’re very similar conditions. So it’s not even a leap to say, “If this worked here, there is a reasonable shot it’s going to work here.” And I mentioned, it’s 35 million Americans a year are dealing with this.

Matt Baum:
I’m one of them.

Matthew Halpert:
I talked to our Rheumatologist who was like, please do this. There’s basically nothing. Basically these people just take ibuprofen or whatever.

Matt Baum:
You take drugs to mask the pain. That’s it.

Matthew Halpert:
Until eventually we’ve got to do a joint replacement. There’s really no solution. So great, we are in talks with rheumatologists in the Houston Med Center and writing up applications and everything is moving towards, let’s go for it. Let’s see if we see similar or even along the lines, results in humans. And that’s part of the reason I work with Medterra. Is they’ve always been very clear about science first. Forget the anecdotal. Forget the fads. And I’m going to put a little soap box down and say, over the years I’ve had the opportunity to myself analyze many different CBD products, including other attempts at this enhanced absorption vehicle, and I literally can look under the microscope sometimes and see that so and so is just full of it.

Matt Baum:
This is BS.

Matthew Halpert:
That’s not here. Oh, this is contaminated. What is that? Hair? I wouldn’t put that in my body. Because it’s not the most regulated space. Right? There is a fad mentality, a gold rush mentality, and people need to do their due diligence. Not all CBD is as clean as they would maybe expect. If they think that there’s some magical fairy that’s checking on all the companies to make sure they’re actually giving you CBD and not a bunch of other stuff. No they’re not.

Matt Baum:
That’s something we push heavily here at Ministry of Hemp and I’ve felt a lot of pushback from some people and I get it. We’re behind this. This is awesome. And it looks like the sky is the limit but we have to do the science right and we have to make sure the people are getting the right product and what’s actually in that bottle is what they’re saying it is. And it’s so easy to just cheer lead and go, “No, we got it. We did it. It’s curing everything.” It’s not the case and we have to do it the right way. It’s guys like you that I don’t get to talk to very often that are doing the hard science and I appreciate the hell out of it. Speaking as a skeptic myself, it’s so nice to hear, “Hey, here’s a study. We went into it not knowing what was going to happen. It had really good results.” Not showing up to the interview and going, “We all know it’s great. We all know it’s the best. And it’s going to cure everything and here’s how we proved it.” No. Please, don’t do that.

Matthew Halpert:
CBD is not the first fad. There have been fads like this before.

Matt Baum:
It’s not the 50,000th fad. You know?

Matthew Halpert:
And the future of it, I fully believe comes down to how science moves it forward. Either there’s a lot of scientific study, appropriate regulation, and evidence in legitimate clinical trials that people can point to and hang their hat on and it becomes, “Yes, CBD has been studied. It’s a controlled process. A controlled industry.” Or none of that is going to happen, or not enough of that is going to happen. And whatever does happen will be dwarfed by the magnitude of the, “Well, it helped my grandma do this.” Stories that people run with. And after a couple years, people sort of get tired of stuff like that. And they say, “Oh, yeah. I remember. I remember [inaudible 00:41:55] was curing everything. What happened to that? Can you get that at the store?”

Matt Baum:
I remember hydroxychloroquine. Right? Yeah.

Matthew Halpert:
Either there’s science and study or there’s not. But that will determine, if you want to fast forward a couple of years, that will determine how big and strong the CBD industry is. Especially in context of potential future legalization of marijuana as a whole. And so that’s going to be something that people are going to have to grapple with. That CBD and marijuana are not the same thing. And I’m sure you guys are all over that.

Matt Baum:
Oh, we know all about it. Yeah. Spend a lot of time trying to enforce that. Dr. Halpert, I want to thank you very much for coming on the show.

Matthew Halpert:
Thank you for having me.

Matt Baum:
This was fantastic. It was a great talk and you really boiled it down well. I barely had to jump in and be like, “Whoa, what’s that word mean?” And I can’t tell you how much I appreciate that.

Final thoughts from Matt

Matt Baum:
Huge thank for Dr. Halpert for coming on the show and it’s just so refreshing to talk to somebody from obviously such a high level of learning and scientific background that can boil something huge like this down to a level we can all understand and really there’s a lot of information in this interview that’s very exciting about the future and new frontiers for CBD. As always, you’ll be able to find links to Dr. Halpert’s bio, Medterra, and the study we discussed, all in the notes for this episode.

Matt Baum:
That’s about it for this episode. I just want to thank everybody that has been downloading and supporting, especially everybody that has gone to our Patreon page that’s Patreon/MinistryofHemp.com and become a Ministry of Hemp insider. Any amount that you donate not only helps us spread the good word of hemp, but it gets you early access to articles, all kinds of extras like podcast extras and bonus articles and information that you can’t find on the site. Like I said though, more importantly, it really helps us to keep doing what we’re doing and if you want to spread the good word of hemp and hemp education, there’s no better way to do it. Speaking of MinistryofHemp.com, we have a new review up for Winged Relaxation CBD gummies. They’re stress relief gummies but unlike a lot of stress relief CBD products, these won’t make you sleepy. And like I mentioned at the beginning of this show, we’ve got a fantastic article about five scams to watch for in the CBD world. I cannot stress how important it is that you go check that one out.

Matt Baum:
If you need more Ministry of Hemp in your life, you can follow us on all your favorite social media platforms @MinistryofHemp or /MinistryofHemp. We are always posting great stuff. At the Ministry of Hemp, we believe that an accessible world is a better world for everybody so you can find a full written transcript of this episode in the show notes as well. Now, usually I end the show the same way every time but it’s almost time to go back to school and I know a lot of people are being forced to go there. Whether you’re a teacher or a student. So I’m going to add to my usual sign off and I just want to say, be careful, wash your hands, wear a mask, take care of yourself, take care of others, and make good decisions, will you? This is Matt Baum with the Ministry of Hemp podcast, signing off.

The post CBD For Older Dogs: Discussing New ‘Pain’ Study On Dogs & CBD appeared first on Ministry of Hemp.

In episode 61, our podcast host Matt is learning about a new cannabinoid that’s just now hitting the wellness market, Delta 8 THC. Jordan Lams, CEO of Moxie, a cannabis cultivation, and manufacturing company out of Long Beach, CA, is Matt’s guest.

Jordan was our expert for the Ministry of Hemp’s guide to Delta 8 THC, so we were excited to get him on the show. Matt and Jordan discuss everything you need to know about Delta 8 THC: is it legal, how and why are people using it, where does it come from and what impact will it have on the CBD market.

But that’s not all … to close out the podcast, Matt takes a dose of Delta 8 THC too and records his experience.

Here are our guides:

• Delta 8 carts
• Delta 8 gummies

About Moxie and Jordan Lams:

MOXIE is a recognized leader in cannabis with over 90 global industry awards. They cultivate, manufacture and distribute high quality cannabis products in California, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Arizona with more states coming soon. It is their mission to improve the quality of life and well-being by producing the highest quality cannabis products globally.

At age 28, it’s hard not to say that Jordan Lams has moxie. Ten years ago, Lams was skeptical of cannabis but started researching it as a teenager when a friend challenged his negative assumptions. It took him a year and a review of his findings with his family doctor before he changed his mind. Later, his sister’s tragic struggle with leukemia helped solidify his desire to be a part of the cannabis movement.

Subscribe to our show!

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Delta 8 Explained: Complete Episode Transcript

Below you’ll find the complete transcript of episode 61 of the Ministry of Hemp podcast, “Delta 8 THC Exploration Podcast”:

Matt Baum:
I’m Matt Baum. And this is the Ministry of Hemp Podcast brought to you by ministryofhemp.com. America’s leading advocate for hemp and hemp education.

Well, it’s finally happening. I’ve been threatening for a few weeks now, but we’re doing it. It’s the whole show about a new cannabinoid, Delta-8-THC. And not only are we going to talk about it? My conversation today is with Jordan Lams, the CEO of Moxie, cannabis cultivator and manufacturer. Jordan is amazing and has a huge breadth of knowledge. And I was thrilled to find somebody who could actually talk about this because there just isn’t much information on Delta-8-THC, right now anyway.

I know I had a much better understanding of what it is and what it does after I spoke with Jordan, but that’s not where this ends. I have actually just taken some Delta-8-THC. So after the interview, this is where I sit down to do the editing process. So it’ll have some time to kick in and whatnot. I’m going to let you know exactly how my experience was. And if you don’t get an episode this week, then I guess you know what to tell my loved ones happened. So that’s a joke. I’m not scared at all, but we’ll see. And like I said, I’ll tell you all about my experience after my conversation with Jordan Lams.

Is Delta 8 THC legal?

Matt Baum:
Perfect. And where are you talking to me from right now?

Jordan Lams:
I am talking to you from Long Beach, California.

Matt Baum:
All right. Bet the weather’s a little nicer there. So, I’m in Omaha, Nebraska.

Jordan Lams:
It is hot today.

Matt Baum:
Oh, really? Well then I don’t want to hear-

Jordan Lams:
It’s like 90.

Matt Baum:
… no complaints out of you, sir.

Jordan Lams:
None.

Matt Baum:
So Jordan, I brought you on the show because we are now seeing Delta-8-THC sort of hitting a similar market to the CBD, CBN, CBG wellness market. And quite honestly, it’s so new that I really don’t know anything about it. And a lot of people have been asking questions, and I was actually really hesitant to even talk about it on the show because I didn’t even know if it was legal. So why don’t we just start… Before we even get into what it is, is Delta-8-THC legal?

Jordan Lams:
I think that probably depends on who you ask.

Matt Baum:
Okay.

Jordan Lams:
It’s definitely coming up as an item for debate at the moment. The argument amongst some law firms is that because it’s being, in this context that we’re talking about now, derived as a by-product of a process from CBD oil, that it’s not derived from cannabis, quote-unquote, and therefore it is legal. Chemically speaking, it’s still THC. It’s just not Delta-9-THC, which is the most prevalent psychoactive compound that is derived from the consumption of cannabis after you heat it up. So, yeah, I think it’s still up in the air.

Matt Baum:
So as far as I understand it, and again, I’m not a lawyer, but I live in Nebraska, which has some pretty strict cannabis laws, as you can imagine. And I’m pretty sure the law doesn’t say, “Well, Delta-9-THC, that’s the problem. That’s what’s illegal. And if you’re caught with Delta-9-THC, you’re going to jail, buddy.”, or whatever. I mean, marijuana has been basically decriminalized in Nebraska for the most part, but I don’t necessarily think the differences between a Delta-8 and a Delta-9… Is that where the nebulous thing comes in right now?

Jordan Lams:
That’s I think the… That and the fact that it’s a derivative of CBD in this context is… the wedge with which some attorneys are trying to force their argument through. And that differentiation between Delta-9 versus Delta-8 in some jurisdictions, it is delineated very specifically-

Matt Baum:
Really?

Jordan Lams:
… as still being considered THC. Yeah. So it varies market to market.

Matt Baum:
Okay.

Jordan Lams:
Particularly in more regulated markets where you actually have licensed businesses that do cultivate and extract. They’re more likely to specify, but in places where decriminalization those are usually kind of broad stroke legislations. And so you don’t always have that level of specificity.

The chemistry behind Delta 8 THC

Matt Baum:
Now, again, I’m not asking you to play a cop or a lawyer. These are strictly opinions here that we’re talking about but in other cases… And I’ve spoken to not too long ago, actually, I spoke to a guy that works in a lab in Oregon, and they do a lot of testing to make sure that what is actually in the bottle of CBD is in the bottle of CBD. And he was telling me one of the things that he’s noticed with Delta-8-THC, because they are taking the CBD and affecting it chemically and changing it into a different chemical that in and of itself could be illegal as well, based on laws that were made to stop people from say, buying cough medicine and turning it into meth or something. Is there any worry [crosstalk 00:05:04] about that?

Jordan Lams:
Definitely, what it reminds me of is the early days of the California medical market, before we had regulation. It was very specific in the state statute, as well as at the federal level that manufacturing of cannabis products using solvents was illegal. And so there was a contingent of attorneys, again, that took the position that CO2 because it’s not alcohol or a solvent by the maybe the more traditional sense that it didn’t qualify for that. And that was a bit of a, well maybe more than a bit of a loophole that they were trying to-

Matt Baum:
Yeah.

Jordan Lams:
… exploit-

Matt Baum:
I was going to say.

Jordan Lams:
… but they got a lot of buy-in across the industry in that thinking because it was fairly dominant law firms, at least in the space at the time that were suggesting this. And so it actually led to the proliferation of CO2 extraction throughout the industry. That coupled with the scientific community really does use super-critical and sub-critical CO2 extraction in a lot of different laboratory applications-

Matt Baum:
Okay, real quick. I don’t mean to interrupt you-

Jordan Lams:
… it didn’t stop people from getting prosecuted.

Matt Baum:
I don’t mean to interrupt you that’s seriously-

Jordan Lams:
No problem.

Matt Baum:
… the reason why CO2 extraction took off the way it did?

Jordan Lams:
It’s definitely one of the big contributing factors, yeah.

Matt Baum:
No kidding.

Jordan Lams:
The flip to that, though, is that if you talk to any analytical chemist or real… organic chemist that’s got a lot of lab experience, supercritical and sub-critical CO2 is usually the go-to methodology. That being said, if you’re a real, real consumer of cannabis products, unless you’re using very hard to find subcritical CO2 extractions, you’re likely to have a version of a product that is vastly inferior, subjectively of course, to what a hydrocarbon extraction or even a solventless extraction or water extraction is what they call solvent less would produce. And even then, on the objective side CO2, you’re forcing a physical reaction that’s just ripping everything off the plant. Whereas hydrocarbon, it’s like nature’s lock and key. Cannabinoids, terpenes, those are hydrocarbons. So that’s a perfect chemical reaction where you’re only getting what you want, and you’re post-processing is far less. Whereas with CO2, you get everything and the kitchen sink-

Matt Baum:
Gotcha.

Jordan Lams:
… depending on the parameters of the extraction.

What is Delta 8, anyway?

Matt Baum:
Okay. So let’s get into it. Delta-8-THC, give me a broad spectrum, [inaudible 00:00:00] doubt view. What is it?

Jordan Lams:
So there’s… It’s just another cannabinoid. It is a tetrahydrocannabinol. So it’s a THC molecule, but Delta-8 is just a different isomer of THC. And oftentimes it’s found not necessarily as a degrative product of a Delta-9-THC, but oftentimes in certain processes where there’s a lot of heat and pressure used to do distillation or various types of… I guess, processing you end up potentially oftentimes by accident converting some of that Delta-9 into Delta-8. And then there was, over the last couple of years, a trend where it was being done intentionally. Now, not intentionally because people wanted the Delta-8 outcome, but in the process that you use to really, really tighten the fraction as it’s called in chemistry, the fraction of the chemicals that you’re trying to remove. As you tighten that down and make it more pure, you’re putting it under really extreme conditions. And what people were shooting for has been come to known as water clear. So it’s a cannabis oil that literally in a jar looks almost as clear as water, even the way it refracts light.
There’s no weird effect to the way that you see through the product. And that being said, in doing that process a lot of times, not always, but a lot of times, you end up causing that conversion from Delta-9 to Delta-8. And then from there, I think that’s what spurred the, “Oh, oh. Hey, isomerization is really a thing that we can do with these cannabinoids. What if you can take CBD, which is abundant and cheap, and turn it into something of higher value.”.

Matt Baum:
So this is a byproduct. It’s not something that occurs naturally? It’s actually a byproduct?

Jordan Lams:
It can occur naturally. So here’s the thing about even Delta-9. Delta-9 is an activated version of the acidic form of THC. So if you were to take a raw cannabis flower that’s loaded up with THC. It’s not usually much Delta-9. It’s not usually activated. It’s in its acidic form. And when you heat that flower up, either in a joint or in the oven, making an edible or in a bowl, when the flame hits it, you’re doing what’s called decarboxylating the THC. Taking that acidic carboxyl chain and removing it, turning it into the active ingredient-

Matt Baum:
That’s my favorite thing to do with it.

Jordan Lams:
… psychoactive. Exactly. And it’s not dissimilar here. That being said, it could occur naturally. It’s just very rare. So similarly to… For decades, nobody did anything with cannabis except for it to get max THC.

Matt Baum:
Sure.

Jordan Lams:
So even for a while, CBD strains were not very available. And it took several years of the CBD industry growing into its own for that to become a readily available genome where it occurs in high concentrations. And similarly, now you see people moving into areas of CBG, CBV, THCV, trying to get those expressions of minor cannabinoids and turn them into majors. But Delta-8 is not one that has been bred for that. So there’s not a lot of, maybe even any to my firsthand knowledge, occurrences of it naturally into the available spectrum of strains that exist.

Matt Baum:
Got you. So when you take regular THC cannabis, and you smoke it, you are sort of doing the same process that you would undergo in the lab to create Delta-8 from Delta-9. Okay, I think I said Delta-8 the first time. When you take THC cannabis and smoke it to get high, you’re effectively doing the same type of process that would take place in a lab where they convert Delta-9 into Delta-8 for other reasons.

Jordan Lams:
Yeah, well, again, it’s a combination of certain things, of heat and pressure. Really that’s the easiest way to simplify it. Think different ratios of heat and pressure, different amounts, and different timelines, and what they call residency times, which are the exposure to those conditions, can impact the way that a molecule will change.

Matt Baum:
Got you.

Jordan Lams:
Now what they’re doing with CBD to Delta-8 is not dissimilar from a high-level perspective, but it is a lot more involved. You’re not going to be able to… Where you could take Delta-9 and turn it into Delta-8 for THCA and turn it into Delta-9 at home in a very, very basic setup. To really get pure CBD into very pure slice of Delta-8 is a little bit more involved. It’s a little bit more expertise-driven-

Matt Baum:
Of course.

Jordan Lams:
… There’s a little bit of an art to it, honestly. It is chemistry, but there… We learned anything from Breaking Bad, right? The last 0.3%, it’s where all the magic is.

Does Delta 8 THC Make You High?

Matt Baum:
Right. Right. So the idea here is to basically take plants that would normally create high levels of CBD because they’re cheaper than plants that would create high levels of THC and create a different THC. Is the experience different? Does it get you high?

Jordan Lams:
It definitely gets you high.

Matt Baum:
Okay.

Jordan Lams:
I have some firsthand experience using Delta-8, and I got to say it was very pleasant. I was actually asked by a producer of CBD who’s making it into Delta-8… Is interested in us manufacturing products and firsthand says, “Well, let me look into the legality here because this is an interesting one.”. But we played around with the material and made some ingestible products with it. We made some gummies, actually. We do a lot of gummy production using regular Delta-9. And I got to say the experience was really pleasant. Maybe a little bit tempered of a potency, even at the same dosage rate. It didn’t seem and granted, it’s a limited experience, so it’s by no means a clinical trial here-

Matt Baum:
Sure, sure. We’re… Neither of us are… We’re playing scientists on the internet. We’re not actual scientists.

Jordan Lams:
Exactly. Play one on TV. Yeah, but for me, it was really, it was maybe a little bit more mellow, a little bit… less imposing upon my general sense of being. And very relaxing… Myself and my partner use gummies every night for sleep. And when we have the dosage dialed in really, really love it. Sometimes, you do a little too much, and you’re a little groggy the next day or not enough, and then you don’t really get the impact. This one was a shot in the dark of dosage. And the effect was really, really nice. And my partner’s not a heavy user. And her experience was really, really great. It wasn’t an overwhelming thing, and that was, I think, a 10-milligram dose that we each tried.

Matt Baum:
Okay, but very similar to what you would get from 10 milligrams of, say, a gummy of THC. But maybe… Is it a head and body high feeling? You said it’s tempered a little bit. Can you go into that?

Jordan Lams:
Yeah, I can. And I want to caveat it with that, one of my biggest soapboxes that I stand on is that cannabis, CBD, hemp, THC, whatever it is, it’s so personalized-

Matt Baum:
Yes.

Jordan Lams:
… so the way it is-

Matt Baum:
Without a doubt.

Jordan Lams:
… for me may be-

Matt Baum:
Without a doubt.

Jordan Lams:
… completely different for those out there listening. And, to me, that process of discovering for yourself is as important as that end result because it’s changing that paradigm of figuring out your being, your health, your body, and the way it reacts to these-

Matt Baum:
Sure.

Jordan Lams:
… different inputs.

Matt Baum:
I mean, even with [crosstalk 00:14:51] CBD, we say, “Start low and go slow.”. And that’s… We repeat that all the time. So this would be the same, of course, the same theory here, start low, go slow, see how it makes you feel.

Jordan Lams:
Yeah. And remember, it’s still THC. So don’t think just because it’s coming from CBD that it’s so vastly different, but I wouldn’t describe it as a head effect for me. It was more… I would say more general relaxation. Like sometimes, when you take a really great full-spectrum CBD product, you can actually observe a… shift in your perception and all of that.

Matt Baum:
Definitely.

Jordan Lams:
It’s still not, it’s not quite high-

Matt Baum:
Right, [crosstalk 00:15:32] it feels more body-driven almost-

Jordan Lams:
Yeah, and more like-

Matt Baum:
… as opposed to head-driven-

Jordan Lams:
… holistic-

Matt Baum:
Yeah.

Jordan Lams:
This is more similar to that, but still with definitely a psychoactive element to it like, “Oh yeah, I’m feeling an intoxicant here to some level.”-

Matt Baum:
Sure.

Jordan Lams:
… but not as… sometimes as overt as Delta-9THC can be if that’s a good way to put it.

Matt Baum:
Okay. Yeah.

Jordan Lams:
Sometimes THC just comes to me like, “Oh, and now I’m high.”.

Matt Baum:
Right.

Jordan Lams:
And this was more like, “Oh yeah, I’m high.” but not too high and very relaxed and just a great sense of well-being, I would say.

Matt Baum:
Do you know, I mean, speaking on a chemical level, does it affect the body the same way that THC would?

Jordan Lams:
In most ways, the way that it binds with the different CB1 receptors, I would say… That I would speculate that it is very similar. That being said, there’s not a lot of data out there. There’s not a lot on cannabis in general, but Delta-8 specifically, there hasn’t been access to any volume of it to even observe anecdotally what it’s doing to people up until really recently. So it’s a little bit of uncharted territories, but if we know anything about the broad spectrum of cannabinoids that do exist, is they all slot into their own unique place depending on you as a person-

Matt Baum:
Sure, sure.

Jordan Lams:
… individually. But, they all have their role, and we’re slowly but surely discovering more and more what part each of them has to play.

Potential legal issues around Delta 8

Matt Baum:
So Moxie, are you guys… You’re in the Delta-8-THC game.

Jordan Lams:
We’re not in the Delta-8 world. We’ve been exploring it with a couple people. I think we always air on a pretty extreme conservative side of legal interpretation.

Matt Baum:
I think you have to. Right? I mean, that’s just safe.

Jordan Lams:
Yeah, well, and we’re a licensed THC manufacturer and cultivator in a number of different states. So sometimes, even in California, for instance, as a THC operator, ironically, we’re not allowed to process hemp. Now it seems pretty silly, but that’s just the way, and it is silly, but that’s the way that the regulations were drafted-

Matt Baum:
Yeah [crosstalk 00:17:31] Well, it’s completely different [crosstalk 00:17:31] though. What are you talking about? It’s completely different.

Jordan Lams:
It doesn’t even look at all the same.

Matt Baum:
No. Or smell the same either. So-

Jordan Lams:
No, I always try to bring it back for people that are really trying to understand. There’s not really a difference in the plant here. There’s different versions of it that grow different ways and have different chemical expressions of their contents, but it’s all the same cannabis plant. And it really just is incredible. The broad appeal and application that it has. And there’s still so much left to discover.

Matt Baum:
Oh, of course. Absolutely. I mean, that’s what the show is all about. One thing I want to ask, do you foresee any trouble? It seems like one of the main things that the CBD and the hemp market has tried to push forward is, “We are not marijuana. We don’t get you high. That’s not what we do. And that is why you don’t have to worry about it. This is a treatment for anxiety. This is a treatment for sleep disorders. This is… Or just whole body wellness or whatever, but it’s not marijuana. It’s not marijuana. It’s not marijuana. Oh, by the way, now we can get you high.”.
Do you see any problem there? It makes me really nervous, honestly. And again-

Jordan Lams:
Yeah, I can.

Matt Baum:
… we’re very green-friendly on the show, and I’m very green friendly. So all of it, but at the same time, while we’re trying to… convince the FDA, while we’re trying to convince states like South Dakota and Nebraska who are super hardcore about this stuff, do you foresee any trouble here?

Jordan Lams:
I can’t imagine there won’t be at least some.

Matt Baum:
Right?

Jordan Lams:
I mean, it’s a pretty harsh reversal. Particularly when you think about, say, Kentucky, right? That’s Mitch McConnell’s back yard, and he’s been a big proponent of hemp but a staunch opponent of cannabis.

Matt Baum:
Right.

Jordan Lams:
And to think that where he advocated for his community to have a new driver of economics and even some level of health benefit, that all of a sudden now that’s going to backdoor into the intoxicant world. I can’t imagine that that’s going to be something that really excites him or others like him.

Matt Baum:
I think this is worrisome, quite honestly. And maybe I’m just being a pessimist, but I’m afraid it could set back… Some other CBD purveyors and CBG purveyors and people that are pushing to get that more mainstream and come into food and beverage and other things. I’m afraid that something like this could scare the FDA and have them back off and say, “All right before we legalize-” I mean, it’s legal, of course, but, “Before we say, here’s your regulations and here’s how we want it done. We need to make sure this never happens. This doesn’t happen. So we’re scrapping everything and starting over.”. Does that scare you?

Jordan Lams:
Yeah. A little bit. And it opens the can of worms of like, “Well, what else can they make from this?”.

Matt Baum:
Right [crosstalk 00:20:17] exactly. Next thing you know, they’re going to be making PCP out of it and feeding it to Antifa or whatever, right?

Jordan Lams:
And too, it’s… it’s interesting because at the end of the day… they’re trying so hard to control something that… is really vastly uncontrollable.

Matt Baum:
Yeah.

Jordan Lams:
And up until this point, I think the hemp industry did a pretty good job of drawing a very clear box around it, of what it was and what it wasn’t. And this is a really harsh 180.

Matt Baum:
That’s what it seems like [crosstalk 00:20:55].

Jordan Lams:
Yeah, I can’t imagine it’s not going to come with some trials and tribulations. And moreover, I think the consumers are confused. I think people are looking at it like, “Oh, it’s a derivative CBD, and it’s legal, so it’s not going to get me high in the same way.”, and then you have people that dose too much, and it can, it can scare them off altogether, which is one of the biggest challenges with THC is when people dose too much and then they never want to go back to it.

Matt Baum:
Yeah, yeah.

Jordan Lams:
But the reality is they could get a lot of good from it if they just find that balance-

Matt Baum:
Right. Learn how to use it. I will say, as someone who is very aware of the laws and knows a lot about this from just doing this show, when I opened a box of Delta-8-THC that was sent to me, I didn’t know what I was getting, but they said, “We’re going to send you a bunch of CBD stuff that we have.”, and that was one of them. And I took it out, and I said out loud, “Is it legal to send this through the mail?”. I didn’t know. And I’m still not real sure. And I guess we’re just going to have to wait and see where this goes. Speaking from your company’s standpoint, at what point would a company like Moxy feel safe and feel cool going into this? What are you looking for to happen first?

Jordan Lams:
I think, for us to be able to receive Delta-8 in from a hemp producer, we’d need, at the very least, a strong level legal opinion. But some clarity from the federal government on how the farm bill applies to this would be helpful because there’s the whole… That’s just the first part, getting it in. Then secondarily, we would need clearance from our state or local regulators to be able to process it. Because, as I mentioned, even with hemp, technically in California, you can’t process it. In Nevada, however, we can. You just have to have a separate hemp handler’s certificate. So-

Matt Baum:
Good lord.

Jordan Lams:
… it’s a little… It would be a mixed bag, a little different all over, depending on what operation of ours we were talking about. But clarity in any regard would be helpful. I think.

Matt Baum:
Yeah, just a little bit. I mean, even if it’s someone getting arrested, so we go, “Oh, okay. There it’s… Okay. So now we have to be careful. Got it.”.

New cannabinoids and the war on drugs

Jordan Lams:
And where they need the most guidance is at the law enforcement level, because I mean, imagine the poor, beat cop that has no idea of the difference in the visual-

Matt Baum:
Absolutely.

Jordan Lams:
… it’s oil. It looks just like the CBD, looks just like the THC.

Matt Baum:
Right, I [crosstalk 00:23:07] mean, right now [crosstalk 00:23:09] if you’re like, “Oh look, no, these joints that I have on me, these are CBD joints. That’s all they are. They’re for my back pain or whatever. And they’re completely legal.”. It’s hard enough for a cop to look at that and go, “Okay, I’m going to take your word for it.”. Now, when you pull out a package that says THC on it and go, “No, no, no. This is cool. It’s not that THC.”. Just… It’s-

Jordan Lams:
Where it gets interesting too is, and I’m not sure how it works, but the field tests that they have, which are notorious for false positives for one, but also will this trigger a regular THC field test? And does that mean that you’ll have someone that might have issues of driving under the influence charges based on the way that one of these tests pops up?

Matt Baum:
Absolutely.

Jordan Lams:
And so-

Matt Baum:
Or if your drug tested at work.

Jordan Lams:
… it’s got to get addressed quickly.

Matt Baum:
If you’re drug tested at work? Is this going to come up as THC on your drug test? Is it going to come up as-

Jordan Lams:
I’ve heard that it doesn’t.

Matt Baum:
Really?

Jordan Lams:
I can’t validate that, but that’s what I’ve been told is that, in fact, it does not trigger in a regular drug test, through urine analysis, but-

Matt Baum:
Interesting.

Jordan Lams:
… I’m not sure. It’s early days.

Matt Baum:
Yeah. We’ll have to look into it. I just feel like we’ve got a real sticky wicket here with this one. And I don’t mean to sound prude, and I don’t mean to sound pessimistic, but it just seems like we really, and when I say we, I mean, the larger cannabis space really needs to be careful. Just with the amount of work that they have done saying, “We’re hemp, we’re not marijuana, we’re hemp, we’re not marijuana.” And now, “Oh, yeah. But we can also do something kind of like marijuana.” So, keep-

Jordan Lams:
Yeah, no [crosstalk 00:24:40] I agree. And I don’t want to make the caution of the unclear deter people from even pushing the issue on an advocacy side, because where things get really interesting as we do evolve our understanding of the cannabinoids that exist at large is that various ratios of them together, that affect the entourage affect in different-

Matt Baum:
Oh, absolutely.

Jordan Lams:
… capacities. It’s still such a huge amount of discovery that we have left to do. And getting access to large amounts of pure molecules like this is critical in that development and understanding of how things work and then ultimately in the formulation of combinatorial treatments. So, on one hand, we need to figure out what it is and how we’re going to deal with it now from a legal and marketing, and other perspectives. But on the flip, now we’ve got access to something that we didn’t before at scale and inexpensively, and that-

Matt Baum:
Yeah.

Jordan Lams:
… opens up a whole slew of opportunity.

Matt Baum:
Yeah. I mean, it’s definitely cool, and we’ll see where it goes. And I think you… It sounds like you guys are being very level-headed about this, and you’re playing it safe for now because you have to. So, we want to advocate, and we want to push, but at the same time, we got to play this stupid governmental game, unfortunately. And even that will be better for everybody.

Jordan Lams:
Yeah. And it’s a process, right? I think our industry because we come from being the misfits by nature, those willing to stand up in the face of adversity for what’s right. Or what we believe is okay for ourselves as individuals and our capacity as adults. But I got to say too, having… I’m 31. I’ve been in the business for about 13 years, which is a lifetime in this industry, and going into it; I was probably the pessimistic young adult that didn’t really believe in the system and fighting the good fight. And 13 years later, I can say I’ve been able to affect some real change by just getting out there and having conversations like this with the stakeholders who have pen to paper.

Matt Baum:
Absolutely.

Jordan Lams:
And just don’t be jaded at the end of the day. If there’s something there and it can be done safely, you just have to stick to your guns. You have to stand up in the face of adversity and advocate for what’s right. And these natural therapies that are safe, despite even some level of intoxication, when using a small subset of them can have absolutely life-changing impacts for people. So we’ve got a little bit of a road ahead to deal with this one specifically because I think it came fairly unexpectedly.

Matt Baum:
Yeah. It seems like this [crosstalk 00:27:11] year.

Jordan Lams:
But I’m so-

Matt Baum:
It just popped up.

Jordan Lams:
… optimistic.

Matt Baum:
Right. Last… I feel like this just popped up [crosstalk 00:27:14] in the last six months.

Jordan Lams:
Nothing forces ingenuity like necessity. Right?

Matt Baum:
I suppose.

Jordan Lams:
And I think with COVID and the crazy turbulence that our industry and the world has gone through this year, it’s caused some very unique thinking to surface. And this is one of those really intriguing new opportunities.

Matt tries Delta 8 THC on the podcast

Matt Baum:
Yeah… I want to send a huge thanks to Jordan for coming on and doing such a wonderful job explaining all about what is Delta-8-THC. We’ll have links to Moxie in the show notes. If you want to check that out and more information about Jordan too. But now, let’s get into it…

It’s been a little while since I’ve taken the Delta-8-THC, and I’m still here. I have to say; I don’t feel impaired. I have some experience. I mean, with marijuana, I’m not going to lie. This is a green friendly household I live in… And this is a different kind of high. I definitely feel high. It’s there, but it is more of a body high kind of what Jordan explained. I feel very relaxed, very at ease, not so much clouded in my head. I might not take something like this and drive just to be safe, but I also don’t feel drunk or lightheaded or dizzy. Any of the things that someone who doesn’t experiment with THC very often can have happen when they try an edible, for example. The Delta-8-THC that I took was a tincture. I’m not going to name the company, but it was a flavored tincture. And you take it much like you would take CBD.

I put it under my tongue for about a minute. Let it sit. The suggested dosage on the bottle was one milliliter, which, according to the label, is 11 milligrams of nano Delta-8-THC. And it also has three milligrams of nano Delta-9-THC, both of which we spoke about in our conversation.
Now, maybe when I go back, and I listen to this, I’m going to think, “Oh, wow. I sounded really funny.”, but I feel like I’m talking, okay. I feel like I’m still parsing out this information as best as I normally do. I’m not going to say I’m an excellent podcaster, but I do the job.

Now normally, whenever you’re trying new products, we always say to start low and go slow. Which, of course, I did not because I wanted to get a real feel for what happens when you take the suggested dose of… And I got to say; this isn’t bad at all.

I feel very relaxed. I have these sort of waves that are running through my body of relaxation that sort of start, what feels like just below my neck maybe. And they carry down through your chest and through your hands. And it’s really just nice and a chill way to end the day, I guess.

It seems like this hit a little slower than THC, that you would smoke or vape. And it really gently just sort of rolls into it. Whereas sometimes if you’re smoking or vaping, boom, you’re just high. The same thing can happen with an edible that you take for the first time. You feel fine. You feel fine. You feel fine. Wham, you’re way too high.

That doesn’t seem to be the case here. Now, again, I’m an experienced THC user. So that’s why I went ahead with the one-milliliter dose. But if you’re going to try this, I would definitely start maybe at half a dose just to see how you react to it. My first experience reactions here, I got to say this isn’t bad at all. And I kind of enjoy it.

So far, I’m giving my first experience with Delta-8-THC a thumbs up. Is it good for the market? Is it going to give CBD a bad name? Well, that all remains to be seen, I guess.

Final thoughts from Matt And Does He Recommends Delta 8?

Matt Baum:
That brings us to the end of this episode of Matt Does New Drugs On The Internet. I hope you enjoyed it. And if my parents are listening, I’m not going to apologize. You know who I am.
Next week on the show, we are going to be talking about pharmaceutical CBD, but specifically a co-crystal that has been used to make CBD more bioavailable, meaning easier for your body to absorb. We’ll tell you all about it next week. And if it is what the people that I talk to says it is, then this co-crystal could blow the whole CBD market wide open.

If you need more Ministry Of Hemp news in your life before that, head over to our site ministryofhemp.com, where we’ve got a fantastic article, all about CBN. It’s another new cannabinoid, that’s very hot. That is being marketed as helping people sleep.

We’ve got a whole article called CBN. What is cannabinol, and why is it getting so much attention? And you should also check out a show that I did a couple episodes ago with Ethan Carr, from Slumber CBN, all about how it can help you sleep. Really cool stuff. And again, those will both be in the show notes. Speaking of show notes here at the Ministry of Hemp, we believe that an accessible world is better for everyone. So we have a full written transcript of this show in the notes as well.

Be sure to follow us on Twitter and Facebook and check out our Instagram because we’ve got another giveaway coming up real soon here. And I think they’re going to let me announce the winner on the show, which is cool, makes me feel special, right? And if you really want to help us out, please rate this show wherever you’re getting your podcasts from, give us a star or even a little written review, because it helps move us up in the search algorithm and get this show in front of people that are looking for hemp news and information about things like CBD, CBN, and Delta-8-THC, even.

But if you really want to make a difference, head over to Patreon/ministryofhemp and become a Ministry of Hemp insider. It gets you access to podcast extras, to early news articles, to articles and information that we don’t even put on the site. But most importantly, it makes you a hemp crusader helping us to spread the good word of hemp and how it can change the world.

All right, that’s it. For now, remember to take care of yourself, take care of others, and make good decisions, will you? This is a slightly stoned Matt Baum with the Ministry of Hemp signing off.

The post We Explore Delta 8 THC: Weed’s Little Brother, Does It Get You High? [Podcast] appeared first on Ministry of Hemp.

Our host Matt talked with Nick Warrender, the CEO of Lifted Made,  a subsidiary of publicly traded Acquired Sales Corp. Lifted Made creates “Urb” brand CBD flower pre-rolls. Smoking CBD is rapidly gaining in popularity. Nick tells us how he changed his business model to accommodate the simplest and oldest way to take CBD: inhaling it.

But before we talk about smoking CBD flower, we need to address some very sad news that left our whole industry grieving last week. Of course, we mean the tragic loss of CBD lobbyist and force-of-nature Charlotte Figi. Dr. Sanjay Gupta, who knew Charlotte, memorialized her beautifully on the air, leaving even the host in tears.

Charlotte Figi, who was born with a rare form of epilepsy, helped inspire the CBD movement. She died on Tuesday. In a tribute, @drsanjaygupta says she changed his outlook on medical marijuana. https://t.co/YjEgMjHDUA pic.twitter.com/2rsg6NMeS3

— CNN Newsroom (@CNNnewsroom) April 9, 2020

For more, check out our memorial tribute to Charlotte Figi.

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Smoking CBD: Complete episode transcript

Matt Baum:
I’m Matt Baum, and this is the Ministry of Hemp Podcast, brought to you by ministryofhemp.com, America’s leading advocate for hemp and hemp education. Welcome back to the Mystery of Hemp Podcast. My name is Matt Baum and I am your host. I hope your quarantine is going well. I know mine has been really good. My wife and I have been trying to keep our spirits up. I’ve been cooking. She’s been working on her cocktailing, and she’s getting really good, by the way.

Matt Baum:
If you want to see what we’ve been eating and drinking, you can follow me on Instagram @-Y-O-B-O-F-O-F-A-S. That’s yobofofas. It’s a silly name that I use because it’s never taken. Today on the show, we are going to talk about the simplest and oldest way to take CBD, and that’s actually smoking it. Now, just a word of caution here. Smoking is bad for you, period. It doesn’t matter what you’re smoking, you shouldn’t have smoke in your lungs.

Matt Baum:
With that said, we’re not talking about cigarettes here. We’re talking about hemp, not marijuana, mind you, but hemp. Yes. Like I said, it’s still not great for you, but if you’re looking for a very quick way to get the benefits of CBD, got to say, it works very well. Before we get into that though, there’s some pretty sad news in the hemp world this week.

Remembering Charlotte Figi

Matt Baum:
On April 7th, Charlotte Figi, a 13-year-old girl who became the face of CBD, and cannabis, and the benefits it can bring to people with serious illness passed away. According to a Facebook post by the family, Figi died of respiratory failure, and cardiac arrest after an extremely severe seizure that was likely brought on by what they think is COVID-19. Figi suffered from Dravet syndrome, which is a very rare and severe form of epilepsy.

Matt Baum:
It begins in the very first year of a child’s life. Dravet syndrome causes frequent, intense, and prolonged seizures. And the condition resists conventional forms of epilepsy treatment. Figi’s family had tried all manner of different medications and remarkably, it was CBD that brought relief from the hours-long seizures that she often suffered reducing their length and frequency.

Matt Baum:
In 2014, the International Business Times called Charlotte Figi, “The girl who was changing medical marijuana laws across America.” It was through the lobbying efforts of her family that Charlotte became the figurehead of the movement. And soon, lawmakers were changing cannabis laws allowing thousands of children, and others with severe untreatable epilepsy to access CBD. Charlotte led the way to a nationwide legalization of hemp in 2018.

Matt Baum:
There is even a low THC, very high CBD strain of hemp called Charlotte’s Web, and it was one of the first strains bred for this purpose named after Charlotte Figi. And today, the largest CBD supplement brand in the industry also bears her name. They call themselves Charlotte’s Web. This is a terrible loss, and it really drives home the seriousness of the Coronavirus pandemic, and how deadly it can be for those out there with existing medical conditions.

Matt Baum:
Charlotte was amazing, and she was the Greta Thunberg of the CBD movement, and this really is a massive loss. I will have a link to a CNN report that Dr. Sanjay Gupta did, where he interviewed Charlotte, and I’m going to warn you, it is a tearjerker. We’ve also got a great piece on ministryofhemp.com about Charlotte.

Matt Baum:
I encourage you to take a little time and give it a read. It’s awful to hear about things like this, and I know there’s a lot of bad news out there. But remember, there are things that you can do to prevent further stories like this. Stay inside, wash your hands, avoid groups of people, do the right thing and stay quarantined for now.

Matt Baum:
We, the Ministry of Hemp just want to thank Charlotte and her family for everything they have done, not only for CBD and hemp in this country, but for people that are suffering, who now have an option of a treatment that could help make their life a little better. Thank you for everything, Charlotte, and I’m glad you’re not suffering anymore.

Meet Nick Warrender

Matt Baum:
My conversation today is with Nick Warrender. He is the CEO of Lifted Liquids, and the COO, and vice chairman of Acquired Sales Corp. I spoke to him from his warehouse in Zion, Illinois, so you might hear a little noise in the background. He was still working. Nick has got a pretty interesting origin story, and I’ll let him tell that to you.

Matt Baum:
But he also has a product called Urb, which are essentially pre-rolled hemp joints that are making a lot of users rethink the way they get their CBD, and try it in a very basic, and probably the first way humans ever learned to experience the benefits of CBD. This is my conversation with Nick Warrender.

Matt Baum:
Welcome to the ministry of hemp. Nice to have you aboard. Before we really get into anything here, you’ve got a hell of a backstory about how you came in to hemp, and I would love to hear this because I set it up a little bit in the intro, but I said no spoilers. I want to hear it directly from him. So, tell us about this.

Nick Warrender:
Yeah. Cool, man. I mean, I guess one question is how far back do you want to go, if there’s anything in particular? It’s been such a crazy journey personally, and in the business where that-

Matt Baum:
Let’s start with basketball, let’s start there. You were playing basketball.

Nick Warrender:
Yeah. Yeah. I played basketball at a young age, at a really high competitive level, man, had the honor to travel around, and play AAU, and go to a lot of different schools, and meet a lot of different people, and basketball was like my life. I absolutely loved it, adored it, and long story short, through a family vacation, we went on this cruise and unfortunately, I ended up getting abducted in Belize, a third-world country, and-

Matt Baum:
I don’t mean to laugh, but that is crazy.

Nick Warrender:
Yeah. It was wild, man, and it changed my life forever. No doubt.

Matt Baum:
What happened? What was the story there?

Nick Warrender:
Yeah. So, I was with my brother, and my best friend, and you come into these ports, and we had gotten some weed from pretty much all of these ports, just to be honest. There was a scenario where police, and drug dealers, and all of these people in some of these third-world countries, they work together, and they [inaudible 00:07:18] tourists. So, we got kidnapped, we got snatched up, we ended up in the back of some truck with rice bags over our heads, the whole nine yards.

Matt Baum:
Oh my God.

Nick Warrender:
It was crazy ever happened to me. And we ended up getting sold to the police, and the police brought us in, and they really wanted to make a lesson out of us. So, we ended up in third-world prison, right? And my dad leaves my mom on this cruise ship, and for all she knows, her whole family disappeared, and there’s no cellphone reception on these things. There’s no way of communicating, just a total mess.

Nick Warrender:
And so, we found a way in this prison, and my dad had met this lady, God bless her, that knew the magistrates, and knew what was going on down there, and literally lived in like a mud hut. But really was well-connected down there, and she helped get us out. She helped get us properly stamped in because we were illegally now entered into the country-

Matt Baum:
Oh my God.

Nick Warrender:
… after the cruise ship had left, and it was really crazy, man. When we got back in the States, I ended up getting sick, picked up some virus. Unfortunate to talk about in these days, but I was in and out of the hospital for many years after that, and couldn’t play sports anymore, and came across entrepreneurship, and this other way to be impactful, still be competitive, but be able to impact people’s lives in an even better way.

Nick Warrender:
And we came across nicotine products at that point, and vape. The vape industry had just started, and a lot of the products were getting imported from China, and there was a lot of ingredients that were maybe questionable that were being used. And there’s only a couple companies here in the States that started making vape liquid. So, we wanted to help people get away from cigarettes.

Nick Warrender:
We found that a lot of research and studies that were being done, vape had a lot of potential in helping people curb smoking cigarettes, and was also proven in a lot of different ways to be much safer alternative. So, we did, we started in that realm, and I got introduced to cannabinoids in 2016 beyond THC with CBD, and CBG, and some of these other things. And it just really felt fit right into our mission, which was, how can we help people that really need it the most? I had a really good friend of mine that had OD’d on heroin and-

Matt Baum:
Oh, that’s terrible.

Nick Warrender:
… that’s struck for me. And finding out that people that were dealing with opioid addiction, and wanted to come off of it, there was a lot of potential benefits with cannabinoids. So again, following in the mission of just how can we make a positive impact, and not only in our own homes, and communities, but beyond there has just been our main focus.

Nick Warrender:
And entrepreneurship and basketball were real similar, building up a team, and communicating, strategy, and find alliances, and having good coaching, and all these other things, man. It opened up a new life for me. So, I’m thankful for these industries. I’m super thankful for the impact that we’re able to have. And we hear about it every day with good testimonials, and just how these products are changing people’s lives for the better, and what it’s doing for them.

Matt Baum:
I’m thankful you got out of a forceful confinement in a third-world country, and found your way home to do this.

Nick Warrender:
Yeah. That really-

Witnessing the benefits of CBD

Matt Baum:
Can I ask? You said you found your way to cannabinoids that were not THC back in 2016, how did that happen? What was your introduction to hemp and CBD? Because obviously, it made an impact. You started a company dealing in CBD, so how did that happen?

Nick Warrender:
Yeah. So, I had a few people that were using it, and at that time, it was extremely expensive, and it was federally illegal. But some of the States were allowing it, right? So, I’m the type of person where if I want to try to take something, I typically like to try to make it myself first, right?

Nick Warrender:
This is again, before all these farms are producing, and kilos isolate are 25 grand, and I found a supplier. I think I picked up 50 grams of isolate, and we brought some in-house, and found how difficult it was to break this stuff down with a lot of the things that you would need for vaping products, right?

Matt Baum:
This was like you were de-engineering a crashed UFO basically, like you found the wreckage and you’re like, “How do we make this technology?” And you just tried to de-engineer it from there?

Nick Warrender:
So, we got some isolate in, and we’re working with polypropylene, vegetable glycerin, and propylene glycol, and then some of these other things. And it was just like, “Okay, well, this isn’t really working.” Vape product aren’t going to work for CBD. So, we started moving into polysorbates, and at that time, nobody even really knew what MCT oil was, right? There wasn’t tinctures yet. There wasn’t all of… the CBD industry just didn’t even exist yet.

Nick Warrender:
So, we had finally come up with a solution that worked as like a vape additive. You could add it to your tank. It was all food grades, and you could use it as a tincture. And we started with two milliliter, 10 milligram, tiny little bottle that was like $4.99. So, people could try CBD without having to spend 100 bucks, just try it.

Nick Warrender:
And we were at this little festival, we roll these things out, we had people coming up, they had put it in their beers. Well, two or three hours later, these people are coming back and they’re like, “Man, I haven’t been able to open my hand all the way for 10 years.

Matt Baum:
That’s cool.

Nick Warrender:
I’ve got to work worst on arthritis.” And there’s some immediate effects, and I know there’s people that it could take 30 days, and some people that it really doesn’t even help at all because they had no cannabinoid system. But it’s just seemed like for the majority of the people we had come across, it was helping with all sorts of different things, and the miracle cure all that that became CBD. We were just finding that depending on what your deficiency is, this thing could help you with all sorts of different things.

Matt Baum:
You handed it out, and people were trying it like in their beers, and whatnot, and coming back to you and saying, “Hey, suddenly it don’t hurt. What did you give me?”

Nick Warrender:
Pretty much, and I’m not high, and I’m not anxious, and some all the other things, right?

Matt Baum:
Right.

Nick Warrender:
So, we started doing some research on even THC, like why is there a big percentage of people that don’t like THC? Why is there a lot of people that get anxious from THC? And it’s like, well, you start thinking about it the way that we cultivate THC, isn’t the natural cannabis product.

Matt Baum:
Not at all. Yeah.

Nick Warrender:
We are stressing these plants out, and it’s just bagging to reproduce, and that’s going to affect the chemistry of it.

Matt Baum:
Sure. It’s like giant genetically modified chickens where they have huge breasts and gigantic thighs and that-

Nick Warrender:
It’s not the same.

Matt Baum:
Not quite the same thing.

Standing out in the crowded CBD industry

Nick Warrender:
Right. So, it was like, you my dad, or older people from the ’70s are like, “I used to have to smoke an ounce to get high.” Because it wasn’t that high in THC. So, I found hemp is I don’t want to say more natural in the sense, but as we still are isolating it from the male plant, and all these other things. But the way that the cannabinoid profile, it seemed to be a little more… it was more broad. You walk into a cannabis dispensary and you might find minor-minor CBG, minor-minor CBD.

Nick Warrender:
Most of it is just pure THC, where we’re able to get these really vast profiles with all of these cannabinoids. And it just seemed like it had a better effect for the majority of people. And a lot of the people that didn’t like THC or actually hated cannabis we’re actually turning a corner. So, I was like, “This is awesome.” This is where cannabis can actually go mainstream even beyond what THC, in my opinion, could ever do.

Matt Baum:
Does Illinois allow growing right now? Where were you guys getting your hemp from? Was it coming from Illinois?

Nick Warrender:
No. So, at this point, everything was coming from Colorado, mostly Colorado, and then Oregon started opening up. But yeah, there was really no processing that was being done out this way at that point. And CBD Isolate was actually hard to get your hands on. It really wasn’t that long ago.

Matt Baum:
Yeah. This isn’t like the last two or three years, we’re talking.

Nick Warrender:
Yeah. This is within a couple of years. So, now, CBD is extremely cheap and everybody’s got it. But there’s all these other cannabinoids, and you see all these industries, CBD is becoming an ingredient. Big industries are moving in, and they’re utilizing it in health, in food, in beverage, cosmetics.

Matt Baum:
Yeah. It’s just a matter of time for Gatorade and Coca-Cola have a CBD drink here, so.

Nick Warrender:
Right. So, you had this CBD industry that formed, and then you have all these huge industries that are coming in, and utilizing it as an ingredient, and it’s making it really hard to just be a CBD company.

Matt Baum:
Right.

Nick Warrender:
Right? It’s really hard to differentiate yourself, and there’s all this new technology, and nanotechnology, and now, all these other minor cannabinoids that are being used. And it can be extremely noisy.

Matt Baum:
Yeah, absolutely.

‘Coming back’ to smoking CBD

Nick Warrender:
You’re just like, “What do we do?” So, we’ve always tried to be on the cutting edge with… we’ve had nanotechnology for over a year. We’ve been doing all sorts of formulations. Well, now, what we’re finding is people are coming back to flower. Just like what happened in the THC industry.

Matt Baum:
It’s getting very popular.

Nick Warrender:
Dads came out of cartridges, and disposables, and crumble, and live resin, and butter, and-

Matt Baum:
I got to say that’s one of the things that turned me off initially. When I started learning about CBD, was everything was it tincture, or vape liquid. I mean, it’s cool to look at that, and talk to people, and go, “Oh yeah, this is how we make it, and this where it comes from.” But if you just walk up and look at it, well, what the hell is that? Where did it come from?

Nick Warrender:
Right, exactly.

Matt Baum:
I know what the flower looks like, and you sent me some pre-rolled joints. We should mention Urb is your company. U-R-B.

Nick Warrender:
Yeah, Urb.

Matt Baum:
You sent me some pre-rolled joints, and I open it up, and I looked at it, and I was like, “I know exactly what this is.” And I felt good about it.

Nick Warrender:
Yeah. So, it was just funny because where we’re at today is the most simplest form. And as with all the noise, and all of these industries, and all of these massive companies moving into CBD, and cannabinoids, and all of these things, it’s like this breath of fresh air where you’re just like, “Let’s go back to the simplest form, which is arguably the most effective.” Inhalation is an immediate-

Matt Baum:
Without a doubt.

Nick Warrender:
… absorption rate, high bioavailability. You’re getting a true full spectrum product with all the natural terpenes based on that strain, and all of these other things. Because I mean, even if you go and you grab a cartridge off the shelves, most of the time, it’s just that’s the same distillate, and it’s just a different botanical terpene. So, you’re just not getting that variety of what all can come through the strains. So, we’re still doing a lot of new technology products, and we’re looking at all these other industries.

Nick Warrender:
But a big focus of what we’re doing right now is just flower, man. And it’s bringing people back to its natural form, how nature intended it to be, and how we can find something that’s going to really work for people, and they find a good strain for themselves. And it’s incredible, man, people that never smoked, people that were totally against cannabis, these people are sparking up pre-rolled joints right now because it’s really helping them. So, not to go off on it-

Matt Baum:
I have to say, my neighbor looked like I was insane.

Nick Warrender:
It’s just really, it’s been interesting as a small business with not having a ton of funds behind us, not having a huge staff, coming into this thing on the pioneer side, watching it explode, and then what’s happening today, which is volatile, it can be really nasty. And it’s like, “How do we get back to the simplest form, and stick to our mission, and just keep the blinders on? And regardless of what’s going on with all of this, we’ve been in this industry from day one.

Nick Warrender:
So, now, we just get back to our roots. We find good people that are for the right reason, but you stay aware of the dangers, you stay aware of the nasty people and the nasty companies. And you just keep your network right, keep it honest, keep the moral, and do it for the right reasons. So, that’s then this journey over the last few years, and what brought us to today with this Urb brand. It’s pretty funny to just see, come back to the simplest form, man, and probably help the most people with it.

Smoking hemp after the vape crisis

Matt Baum:
Can I ask you, what was the thought process when you started to move away from, I mean, distillate, and from tinctures, and liquids, and go back to a pre-rolled flower joint? And for those of you who don’t know what we’re talking about, we are literally talking about rolling hemp the same way that you would roll a marijuana joint, and smoking it for the CBD benefits, not the THC benefits.

Matt Baum:
And I will say, you sent me a few, and I was in my backyard grilling out, and my neighbor looked at me like I was insane because I was just smoking a joint, and told him it’s not what it is at all. And it did hit instantly. I got to say almost instantly. And I haven’t come across that in a lot of other CBD delivery systems. What was the thought process? Was it to get just something that was more pure, something that was easier, and faster? I know you guys have isolated a lot of CBG and a lot of CBN as well. Is it better delivered in a smokable process like this?

Nick Warrender:
So, inhalation is unfortunately, one of the most bastardized ways of taking these products. One, because there’s a connotation with THC like you witnessed with your neighbor. But also, you look at what happened with the cartridge market, right? And with people dying with the Vitamin E Acetate, and that really turned people away from the vaping products, right? Disposables.

Nick Warrender:
I mean, that whole part of the industry, I know everybody felt that. I don’t care who you were. And it still hasn’t bounced back. So, coming from the vape space, and understanding how inhalation as a method works beyond just people looking at it as smoking is, you take a gummy. Well, that has to go through your digestive tract. A lot of it is not going to get absorbed into your system.

Nick Warrender:
And it’s going to take a while for you to feel any effects, if you do feel some anything at all. Inhalation, it just bypasses all of that. It goes right into your lungs, right in your bloodstream, and you’re breaking that blood-brain barrier rapidly. So, the other part was how are we… we’re going through all of this processing to get it to its purest form, and to get it to a honey oil distillate, and then we’re going to reintroduce the terpenes, and all these things.

Nick Warrender:
And it’s like, “Well, we can just bypass all of that if we can get quality strains, if we can get everything intact.” Look, people have gone back to flower as one of the highest selling products in the THC industry. Even as a consumer myself, it’s like, there’s always something different with flower.

Matt Baum:
Right. Without a doubt.

Nick Warrender:
It’s edible, it’s as great as the concentrates are, there’s just something about the flower. So, another thing that we had seen was in the industry, pretty much all of the same strains were present as an offering. There was five strains that every company that was selling flower had. And a lot of the packaging wasn’t very transparent, and you didn’t really know what the breakdown was.

Nick Warrender:
So, one, we wanted to come up with… find new genetics that weren’t just present in the industry, and give people a new offering. With that, we wanted to be able to let people know how this breakdown was so that if it works well for them, they can look for other strains with a similar profile.

Matt Baum:
Right. I should say each one, I’ve got a container right here, and each container, like this one was called Jupiter. There’s another one called Stormy Daniels, and I want to know where the names came from as well. We’ll talk about that in a minute. But right on it, it’s a CBG 0.69%, CBD 9.38%, THC, a 9.13% that which, so you know exactly what is in this?

Nick Warrender:
Right. And that just wasn’t really present in anything that we could find in the industry.

Matt Baum:
Definitely, definitely.

Nick Warrender:
Especially, at the time. And then, there’s the jars, and a lot of people are using glass, and it’s breaking, and it wasn’t keeping it… it was just, look, everybody seemed to be doing the same thing when it came to packaging. And we love taking packaging as a challenge, and an art. So, it was like, how do we come up with something that’s different?

Nick Warrender:
How did we come up with something that’s going to stand out? How do we get new genetics, and new strains? And the other thing that we liked about flower was it was entry-level price point. So, people can try something like this, and not break the bank. If you want to go into a CBG or a CBN tincture, well, it’s going to be at least a $50 product-

Matt Baum:
Yeah. Entry level, 50 to 70 bucks easy.

Nick Warrender:
It’s still going to be really low, and in concentration to try to hit that price point, and it was just like, how are we going to be able to get this out to a lot of people, and give people the ability to try it? And then from an efficacy standpoint, we tested it. So, smoking flower had the fastest and the most effect out of any product that we had tested.

Matt Baum:
I completely agree.

Nick Warrender:
And this is internally, so it’s not like we didn’t hire out a huge case study to be done, but look, if out of 20 people, 90% of them are seeing the best effect from flower. For me, that means something. So, it’s just interesting to see that this most simple approach can potentially be the most effective. And now, we’re starting to roll out moon rocks, which have the flower dipped in distillate and then rolled in Kief, and then we’re also reintroducing other terpenes to that.

Matt Baum:
Oh wow.

Nick Warrender:
But again, it’s going back to just smoking, and the inhalation side is just something that I think is, I don’t want to say game changer because it’s been around forever, but there’s something about lighting it on fire. I’m a huge advocate of vaping as well because it is a safer way. You don’t have the combustion, but it’s tough because you typically need to create a formula for that. And there’s nothing wrong with that, but taking the flower lighting it on fire, that’s about as natural-

Matt Baum:
It sounds like we’ve just been-

Nick Warrender:
… keeping it as natural and as simple as you can.

The business side of smokable hemp

Matt Baum:
Yeah. We’ve just been overthinking it basically. And doing it all these different scientific ways, when this is the old school way to do it, and it works just fine. Can I ask from a business point of view or perspective, I guess, which is more expensive, cooking it down and turning it into a distillate, or setting up a system to just pre-roll flower? I mean, is it cheaper on the business side too, or is it still pretty much the same?

Nick Warrender:
Well, you would think that it’s cheaper. The machinery is not much, much cheaper. One thing, and then there’s variables. So, we have high quality control, everything gets looked through multiple times, and there are some ways. If there’s mold, that’s an issue. So, even though these are third-party tested, and there’s no microbials, you still have to go through, and make sure that there’s not one nug that got moldy from the inside out because it was too close to a different nug.

Nick Warrender:
There’s a lot of quality control, and there’s a lot more waste than I think most people would think. But another thing was we watched the market crashed with isolate, right?

Matt Baum:
Big time.

Nick Warrender:
We watched isolate go from at 1.6 $7,000 to under $1,000 in a matter of six months. That’s a whole off crash. And what that did is it hurt a lot of these farmers. So, farms got to a point where if they’re sitting on biomass, not to go off on a tangent, and I will answer your question.

Matt Baum:
No, please.

Nick Warrender:
If they’re sitting on biomass and there’s a processor that’s like, “Yeah, we’ll do a split toll process for you. You have to pay this amount and then we take 50%, and you keep 50%.” It got to the point where that farmer could go and buy the distillate for cheaper than he would be able to go and toll process his own biomass.

Matt Baum:
Ridiculous.

Nick Warrender:
So, now, this farmer that’s being absolutely just beaten up by massive labs to the point where they’re able to make the product that he’s growing, they’re cheaper than he would be able to himself. So, it was unsustainable business model, right?

Matt Baum:
You’re right back to soybeans and corn at that level.

Nick Warrender:
Right. So, with flower, we can pay a higher rate for it than you can for biomass, a substantial rate, 10x, right? So, look, I would rather pay a fair value to a farmer for flower, and help support him, and ensuring that he’s going to grow next year so I have a true organic farm of generational farmers that can produce our crop. I’m not a farmer. I’m a marketing guy, and a brand development guy.

Matt Baum:
Fair enough.

Nick Warrender:
And we set up systems of manufacturing, and that stuff, but-

Matt Baum:
The farming is hard work, man. It sucks. I mean, I wouldn’t want to be a farmer either.

Nick Warrender:
Yeah. That’s a very tough job. So, in our marketing material, we touched on this is a big part of our mission again is to support these American farmers. Because these are usually the first guys that get pinched. So, do we pay a little more than we should? I said then we can, yeah. I mean there’s always a better deal out there, and there’s always somebody that maybe, this was their only thing, and they’re just trying to get out.

Nick Warrender:
And you see that a lot. You see a lot of people coming into this industry, and going right back out. So, we want to build a relationship with farmers. We want them to not have to deal with a lot of these brokers that take advantage of these situations, or these toll processing labs that sign these people up for something that they have no idea what the outcome is really going to be until they… and now all of a sudden, they’ve lost their whole crop, or they’ve lost their whole investment, or they’re sitting on a product that they can’t sell.

Nick Warrender:
They don’t have distribution channels, they don’t have manufacturing, and brand development teams, and all this stuff, and they can’t go sell it under market value. So, it’s really put them in tough position. So, just as important as it is to us for us to help the people that we make products to. We want to be valuable on the backend with farmers, and with other vendors, and support these other businesses because it really does take all of us to make these great products.

Matt Baum:
That’s awesome.

Nick Warrender:
It’s the different process. I wouldn’t say it’s cheaper. It’s very expensive to deal with isolated cannabinoids, and formulations, and dialing in formulations, and making sure that your numbers are right, and they test out correctly, and it’s consistent throughout big batches. There’re quality control measures that go into that no doubt, but people that think you’re just throwing these things into a pre-roll, and throwing them-

Matt Baum:
Right. There’s a bunch of dudes just sitting around like, “That’s a good looking one bro, next.”

Nick Warrender:
… and making sure… right. Yeah.

Matt Baum:
It’s not exactly how it works.

Nick Warrender:
Yeah.

The future of smoking hemp

Matt Baum:
So, what is the future of Urb? Where do you go from here? Are you guys going to be looking into like more of the pre-rolled different strains, stuff like that? Where do you go from here?

Nick Warrender:
Yeah. So, with Urb, we rolled out a CBG strain, and our goal with CBG is to get it to a better consumer price point. We want people to be able to try CBG. We’re really excited about these trains that are rich in CBG. I think that that’s going to be a cannabinoid that you hear a lot about this year.

Matt Baum:
Definitely.

Nick Warrender:
Hopefully, when people get back out there. So, we’re excited to roll that out. We’re rolling out the moon rocks. So, we’re doing a strain specific moon rock for CBD, as well as CBG. So, we’re doing a CBG moon rock. We do believe that that’s the first to market, but maybe somebody else has done it. But we’re excited to do CBG moon rock that’s entail CBG distillates. Also going to have CBG Kief.

Nick Warrender:
So, we’re rolling those out. Again, very transparent on the packaging so people can see the strain of distillate, the strain of Kief that’s used, and the strain on the flour that’s used. And we’re repairing those two skews also with the caviar cones, which will be the pre-rolled joint dipped in distillate, and then rolled it on the Kief too.

Matt Baum:
That’s crazy, yeah. I want to try that. That sounds really cool.

Nick Warrender:
Go to the next. Definitely get you some to try out. Those are the next skews. Everything is in. So, those should go into production, and we should be looking at a week or two launch on those. We’ll definitely launch them digitally, and get them online.

Matt Baum:
Very cool.

Nick Warrender:
But we’ll get some samples out to you over there.

Matt Baum:
Awesome.

Nick Warrender:
You can try them-

Matt Baum:
I appreciate that.

Nick Warrender:
… in your grill out, and your neighbor can ask you-

Matt Baum:
Yeah, man. Hey, thanks for coming on. This has been really good, and it sounds like you guys, I love the packaging. You guys are doing a hell of a job. And I really like the idea that it’s just simple, and it’s the old way to do it. And if the old way isn’t broken, we don’t need to fix it. And when you do it responsibly, and you take care of the farmers, and you know what you’ve got, you have a great product.

Nick Warrender:
That’s it. Yeah. Keep it simple, stupid. Someone once told me.

Matt Baum:
Exactly. Thanks so much for coming on the show, man. I really appreciate it.

Nick Warrender:
Yeah. It’s my pleasure, man. Again, I appreciate-

Matt Baum:
Thanks again to Nick for joining me on the show. He’s a busy guy with a lot of cool stuff coming, and you’ll hear more about it right here on ministryofhemp.com. If you want to find more information about Lifted Liquids, and everything they have going on including Urb, and they’re pre-rolled hemp joints. I will have links to all things Lifted Liquids in the show notes for this episode over at ministryofhemp.com.

Final thoughts from Matt

Matt Baum:
That brings us to the end of another episode of the Ministry of Hemp Podcast. My name is Matt Baum. I have been your host, and I cannot thank you enough for downloading, for listening, and for interacting with us on this show. We love to hear from you. You can email me directly at matt@ministryofhemp.com with any questions or comments about the show.

Matt Baum:
You can call us at 402-819-6417, and leave a message with your hemp-related questions, myself and ministryofhealth.com. Editor in Chief Kit O’Connell like to collect a bunch of them, and then answer them on the show, and I think we’re going to have another Q&A show coming up real quick here. Huge thanks goes out to everyone that has jumped on our ministry of hemp patron.

Matt Baum:
You can find that at patreon.com/ministryofhemp. Any donation will make you a Ministry of Hemp insider, and it really does help us to get this message out there. If you believe in what you hear on this show, and what you read on our site, please help us out, and help us spread that message even louder and further by becoming a Ministry of Hemp patron.

Matt Baum:
This week, the Podcast Extra is going to be with Nick, and we are talking about where they got the names for their pre-rolled joints, and it’s a pretty fun little story so I hope you dig it. Be sure to head over to ministryofhemp.com, and read that story that I mentioned about Charlotte. I’ll have a link to that in the show notes. There’s also an excellent article about how to start a white label CBD business.

Matt Baum:
Very cool stuff for anyone looking to get into the hemp or CBD business. Be sure to check us out, and follow us at ministry of hemp or backslash ministry of hemp on all of our social media platforms. And I know I said it earlier, but right now, it’s very important. Remember, we’ve got to buckle down. We’ve got to wash our hands.

Matt Baum:
We’ve got to stay away from large groups of people, and we’ve got to beat this Coronavirus crap together. So, when I say this, I really mean it, okay? Remember to take care of yourself, take care of others, and make good decisions, will you? This is Matt Baum and the Ministry of Hemp signing off.

The post Smoking CBD: Matt Smokes Hemp Flower With Nick Warrender Of Lifted Made appeared first on Ministry of Hemp.

In episode 67 of the Ministry of Hemp podcast, our host Matt talks with Tomas Skrinskas, Founder and CEO of Ascension Sciences. As a CEO of a Canadian company that works with pharmaceutical companies in developing CBD based medicine, Tomas has a different perspective on the hemp market and how the Canadian government legislates hemp.

Tomas is also an expert on nanomedicines, so Matt and Tomas get into the topic of bioavailability. Ascension Sciences works to make CBD-based medicine more effective through nano-encapsulation, and he explains future of nano-encapsulation of CBD in drinks.

Matt also mentions our recent guide to CBD and CBN products that help you sleep.

About Tomas Skrinskas & Ascension Sciences

For over 15 years, Tomas Skrinskas has been at the leading edge of transformative health care technologies including computer assisted surgery, surgical robotics and genetic nanomedicines. His career began with research and engineering which provided a strong foundation for the business development and operations roles that followed. Tomas founded Ascension Sciences (Twitter: @AscensionSci), a R&D laboratory focused on nanoparticle development for cannabinoid products and therapeutics, in January 2019.

You’ve got hemp questions? We’ve got hemp answers!

Send us your hemp questions and you might hear them answered on one of our Hemp Q&A episodes. Send your written questions to us on Twitter, Facebook, matt@ministryofhemp.com, or call us and leave a message at 402-819-6417. Keep in mind, this phone number is for hemp questions only and any other inquiries for the Ministry of Hemp should be sent to info@ministryofhemp.com

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Canadian perspective on hemp & CBD: Complete episode transcript

Below you’ll find the complete transcript of episode 67 of the Ministry of Hemp podcast, “Canadian hemp and CBD”:

Ep 67 Transcript:

Matt Baum:
I’m Matt Baum. And this is the Ministry of Hemp podcast, brought to you by ministryofhemp.com, America’s leading advocate for hemp and hemp education.

Matt Baum:
Welcome back to the Ministry of Hemp podcast. And if you’re new here, welcome aboard. Nice to have you. Today on the show, we are going to talk about another way pharmaceutical companies are making CBD more readily available to your body after you ingest it, or even rub it on your skin.

Matt Baum:
I’ve spoken about bioavailability on this show before, Episode 62, specifically. In that episode, I spoke with Dr. Andrew Yates and Professor Saoirse [O’Sullivan 00:00:00:43], who developed a cocrystal that will improve the bioavailability of CBD. In a nutshell, your body doesn’t want to absorb this molecule very well. So we have to come up with creative ways, to get it to absorb into your system. Now, another way of doing this is nanotechnology, specifically nanoencapsulation.

Matt Baum:
Today on the show, my conversation is with Dr. Tomas Skrinskas, founder and CEO of Ascension Sciences. And what they do, is work with nanoencapsulation. Basically, taking these molecules and putting them in a really, really tiny container that helps your body absorb it. This is a Canadian company, so we were also able to talk about what it’s like to develop hemp-based medicine in Canada, as opposed to the US. And Tomas had some really interesting points that I hadn’t thought of. Here’s my conversation with Tomas Skrinskas, CEO of Ascension Sciences.

Getting to know Canadian hemp and CBD

Matt Baum:
Tomas, welcome to the Ministry of Hemp.

Tomas Skrinskas:
Yeah. Thanks.

Matt Baum:
Glad to have you.

Tomas Skrinskas:
Yeah, this is… I’m stoked. This is great.

Matt Baum:
I think you’re our first Canadian guest.

Tomas Skrinskas:
Outstanding.

Matt Baum:
Yeah. So we can put a pin in the Ministry of Hemp map now, which is cool.

Tomas Skrinskas:
Yeah. That’s somewhat surprising, but no. Happy to speak for all of Canada, and to thank you. No, we’re happy to be here.

Matt Baum:
Perfect. So let’s talk about hemp in Canada, real quick. Hemp in Canada, and cannabis in Canada, period. Very different from hemp and marijuana, in the United States. You guys have quite the head start on us. Can you give us a quick little historical background of where you’re at, compared to where we are?

Tomas Skrinskas:
Yeah, I can. My entry into the industry, the space, is actually really only been in the last two years. So, a deep history buff, I am not. But what I’ve learned, in my short time is, I think there’s advantages and disadvantages to what we’re doing. So, one example is the CBD, an explosion of CBD, from hemp in the US, it’s actually a little more flexible or a little easier to work with those materials-

Matt Baum:
Really?

Tomas Skrinskas:
… or to develop products. Because it’s in the Farm Bill, and it’s all above board, and it’s easy-peasy. On the Canadian side, we have that CBD aspect that’s from hemp, but there’s just a lot more red flags and red tape and attention drawn, to make sure where it’s coming from and what it’s used for. So for us for example, we just assume and we treat our CBD, like it’s THC. We have to report and track and-

Matt Baum:
Oh, wow.

Tomas Skrinskas:
We can’t lose a drop of it. And then, that’s just to be certain that we’re doing everything right, because regulations are changing so fast. So all that to say, I missed the whole history part of your question, I just avoided it.

Matt Baum:
No, no, this is perfect.

Tomas Skrinskas:
But the difference-

Matt Baum:
This is perfect.

Tomas Skrinskas:
But the differences are there, that it’s sometimes easier, sometimes harder, but yeah. It’s, different.

Canadian hemp is nationally regulated

Matt Baum:
As I understand it, it’s one set of rules for the whole country, though. Basically it’s not province by province, if you will. Whereas, here in the States, we have different states with completely different cannabis laws. Some you can’t even drive cannabis through, let alone… Or even hemp, it’s nuts. So Canada is nationwide, though.

Tomas Skrinskas:
Correct. Yeah. There are some age differences, just like alcohol consumption is different in Quebec, and the Prairies and NBC, it changes by one year as you move around, and that goes for cannabis as well.

Matt Baum:
Sure.

Tomas Skrinskas:
But yeah, across the country, we ship samples and all the rest like, bank. No problem. And all that is easy-peasy.

Matt Baum:
See, that’s a huge step up from us, right now. So, we’re having a lot of trouble. It’s about smaller companies, as well. When you turn and say, “Well, I can’t accept credit cards, because we can’t figure out if anything is insured,” and credit card companies don’t want to get in on that yet. It’s very difficult. And I think we look to Canada… You said, there’s a lot of red tape. We’re not, we’d kill for that red tape. At least there’s red tape. And we know we have to cut it, and get through it. We don’t even know, right now. Like, “Please give us some red tape, please.”

Tomas Skrinskas:
Yeah. For product development and the research that we want to do, we want it, we’re completely above board and all the rest, but we do compete with people who just neglect the legacy market. It’s called the legacy market-

Matt Baum:
Right.

Tomas Skrinskas:
Just neglects it, and keeps going. And they’ll become legal, and the government helps them become legal, so that’s the part that kind of pisses me off. Like, I’m doing it right. And some people are going to be doing it right, eventually, but they have this little advantage. They’re just kind of chugging along.

Matt Baum:
You say there’s a legacy market. Is that almost, when the laws were passed, or people that were already doing it this way? And Canada is nice enough to be like, “Well, you guys catch up when you can.” Is that, seriously, what’s going on?

Tomas Skrinskas:
That’s exactly what’s going on. And then there’s big consultancies and people helping them go from the gray market to the legal market. It’s the reality. Yeah. They can’t just shutter, or burn the crops or all the rest. There’s systems in place to help them become legal. And, I think that’s good.

Matt Baum:
Sure.

Tomas Skrinskas:
It’s, fine.

Matt Baum:
But I assume there’s a lot of people that are dragging their feet, because this costs money.

Tomas Skrinskas:
Exactly. Yeah. The licensing process, you have to spend money to out… Security, and record-keeping, and all that-

Matt Baum:
Of course.

Tomas Skrinskas:
Quality, and all that, absolutely costs money. And it’s going to, some people won’t be able to make it, and maybe they’ll take that risk. And, some people won’t. Time will tell, time will tell.

Introducing Ascension Sciences

Matt Baum:
Right. Let’s talk about your background, for a minute. You said you got into this about two years ago. Tell me about Ascension Sciences.

Tomas Skrinskas:
Yes. So, I had always been in the medical field. I did a master’s in biomedical engineering, and it wasn’t in particles and drug developments, so to speak. But all that to say, healthcare and hospitals and wellness, has always been part of my upbringing and then education, and career choices. And that brought me to a company called Precision NanoSystems where I came by nanotechnology, and nanoparticles. Meanwhile, they were doing, or they are doing, genetic medicine. But I saw the opportunity to mash that up with cannabinoids, which are essentially insoluble compounds, insoluble drugs, as we see them-

Matt Baum:
Right.

Tomas Skrinskas:
… [crosstalk 00:08:23] therapeutic. So they require these types of delivery systems and cocrystals. I listened to your absolutely handy podcast on bioavailability and cocrystals.

Matt Baum:
That was awesome, right? Those guys were so cool.

Tomas Skrinskas:
Yeah, no, they’re legit. No, Artelo is doing real stuff. That’s the echelon, or that’s where we’re placing ourselves, we’re in health to therapeutic development. And so, all that to say is, this health technology background, mashed it up and then saw an opportunity. And that’s when Ascension Sciences started.

Matt Baum:
Why cannabis though? What drew you to that? It seems like there’s a lot… I don’t know if it’s safer, in Canada. I know Europe, and it sounds like Canada, definitely have better rules in place for people to develop these types of drugs. Where in the States, pharmaceuticals are still, they’re definitely planning. Don’t get me wrong. They’ve got these patents, and they’re ready as soon as they feel like it’s safe.

Tomas Skrinskas:
Yes.

Matt Baum:
But, what drew you to cannabis?

Tomas Skrinskas:
Somewhat opportunistic. The market, and legalization, it just lowered the barrier for the research to be done. If your angle or your, if you’re prodding for my epiphany around the plant, and things of that nature, I think it’s a tool kit in any health and wellness situation. You don’t take your Tylenol to hurt your toe, without realizing that it’s your small shoes, that’s hurting your toe-

Matt Baum:
Right, exactly.

Tomas Skrinskas:
… take your shoes off. So in mental health and inflammation, and anxiety, it’s a tool. And I recognize that, it’s certainly been part of some situations for me. But, I’m opportunistic, as well. [crosstalk 00:10:16] there’s-

Matt Baum:
There’s nothing wrong with that. That’s a real answer, and I appreciate that. [inaudible 00:10:20].

Tomas Skrinskas:
Thank you. Yeah.

Matt Baum:
It’s nice to say, “I had a magic moment, and the sun hit me just right. And I looked at the [crosstalk 00:10:26] –

Tomas Skrinskas:
Yeah.

Matt Baum:
… [crosstalk 00:10:27] and it spoke.” And you’re like, “That’s great,” and all.

Tomas Skrinskas:
This is, it’s a little more calculated. It’s a little more calculated, than that. But…

Nanoparticle research and bioavailability

Matt Baum:
There’s nothing wrong with that, at all. So, what kind of stuff are you guys working on? You were talking about nanotechnology and nanoparticle development. Those are words that are thrown around a lot, and they’re not always thrown around by people that seem to know what it means. I’m not putting you on the spot. You seem to know exactly where you’re coming from on this, but I’ve definitely interviewed people where I’ve said, “Okay, well, tell me about this nanoencapsulation in your body balm,” or whatever. And they’re like, “Oh, it makes it really small, so it just slips right through.” I’m like, “Well, what does that mean? What are we talking about, here?”

Tomas Skrinskas:
Yeah. I kind of have the verbatim definition of nanotechnology. It’s just manipulating materials, molecules, at a very small scale for some advantage or purpose. So, in drug development, a lot of drugs require nanoparticles to be delivered, around the body. The best analogy is, like a delivery truck. The nanoparticle is the truck. Your drug is inside the truck. And the truck is driving around, getting to the right place at the right time, in the right concentration. And you can design this truck, this nanoparticle, to do those things.

Tomas Skrinskas:
And that’s where things get interesting. You’re replacing parts. You’re making big trucks, small trucks-

Matt Baum:
Sure, sure.

Tomas Skrinskas:
… all for various benefits, in your administration. Is it in your… Are you swallowing it? Is it under your tongue? Is it on your skin? You can design these to aid, or to tune release, depending on what you want and how you want it done.

Matt Baum:
So speaking to that, you, we mentioned cocrystals, and whatnot. I learned recently in that podcast, that your body naturally does not want to absorb these cannabinoids, because of the nature of the molecule itself. Can you shrink something down small enough, so that it is absorbed better? Or do you always need a cocrystal, carrier type thing?

Tomas Skrinskas:
Yeah, that’s a good question, or a good point to clarify. So, we’re not shrinking CBD. We’re-

Matt Baum:
Shrinking is the wrong word. Yeah. Anyone who says they are, is lying, basically.

Tomas Skrinskas:
Yeah. Correct, but we’re packaging it, and we’re protecting it with other lipids or, things that, a shell around it. And we make it more stable, things of that nature. And cocrystals are, I would say, a competing technology to nanoparticles. When it comes to bioavailability. So you can, the fancy term is functionalize, the CBD. Where you attach something to it, and it becomes more soluble, more bioavailable. Our approach is to package all of the CBD into this matzo ball, and the matzo ball itself, is the soluble component.

Matt Baum:
I’m Jewish, so now you’re just making me hungry. Thanks.

Tomas Skrinskas:
Okay, sorry. I can, I [crosstalk 00:14:02] on that. That’s-

Matt Baum:
No, that’s perfect.

Tomas Skrinskas:
Yeah. And then, there’s pros and cons, from IP to manufacturing costs, to actual reasons to do one or the other. For example, in nanoparticles, we like to draw attention to tuned release. So, long lasting or fast acting? So for pain, we can have a particle that releases it slowly, whereas a cocrystal, it might absorb it immediately, have the effect now for-

Matt Baum:
Sure.

Tomas Skrinskas:
… acute pain. So there’s all manner of reasons to do one or the other.

Fine tuning how fast CBD works

Matt Baum:
So in nanoparticle technology, we’ll call it, you can actually tune it to release fast or slow? Or is it a type of thing where, like a cocrystal is always going to be a fast release, and you have more control when it comes down to nanoparticles?

Tomas Skrinskas:
Yeah. This is a slippery slope. Where-

Matt Baum:
Or does it just not work like that? I have no idea. [crosstalk 00:15:18].

Tomas Skrinskas:
So, your tablet, your gel cap, has all sorts of other components in it. So the gel cap can dissolve slowly, so that’ll impart slow release-

Matt Baum:
Okay, sure. Sure.

Tomas Skrinskas:
… [crosstalk 00:15:33] so you could put cocrystals in your slow release cap, or your slow release tablet. So you can attain different features from both sides, but combining the two as well. There’s no reason that we couldn’t put cocrystal CBD into a nanoparticle, and just to have it be that much more bioavailable, that much more controlled and tuned release. And that’s where you start to look at the indication.

Tomas Skrinskas:
So again, Artelo is getting a lot of press here, for their PTSD applications and mental health situations. You can start to target the brain or wherever you want these things to collect, preferentially, in your body. That’s another reason nanoparticles become interesting.

Matt Baum:
So theoretically, you could say, “Okay, I want to make a capsule that is good for pain,” and that’s going to go through the whole body. As opposed to a capsule that’s good for anxiety, which might target part of the brain, instead.

Tomas Skrinskas:
Correct. Yeah.

Matt Baum:
That’s very cool.

Tomas Skrinskas:
Where, yeah.

Matt Baum:
So what kind of cannabinoid products are you guys working on, right now? What kind of therapeutics? Are you looking at guiding things directly towards like, “I want to treat PTSD,” or. “I want to treat seizure disorders.”

Tomas Skrinskas:
Yeah. Very good question. So, the short answer is, we do contract research. So we actually look for companies to bring their delivery problem, their therapeutic problem, to us. And we have kind of a toolkit of nanoparticles, and we can guide them, direct them, to some of our toolkit. And say, “This particle, it sounds like it will work. Let’s work together, and develop it further.” And that’s our preclinical development business model, at this stage of the company. That’s just somewhat of the reality of it being a six person, R & D licensed outfit. But we want to work with people like Artelo, and work with people like Cardiol and InMed, and GW Pharma. And, help them get their therapeutics to be more efficient, and help that many more people, by being better drugs.

Matt Baum:
So I own Company X, and theoretically, we’re working on a drug for Crohn’s disease. Very painful, and CBD or cannabinoids, have been shown to help a lot. I can come to your company and say, “How do we build this? What’s the best way to build it? What’s the best way to deliver it, and to target Crohn’s disease?” And that is what you work on.

Tomas Skrinskas:
Correct. Yep. So it-

Matt Baum:
That’s [crosstalk 00:18:39].

Tomas Skrinskas:
And then, Crohn’s is a good example, too. Because it has to get through the stomach, has to get through that environment. We want it to get as deep into the gut, into the large intestine, and there’s these like multi matrix systems that coat your gut lining. And so it’s, that’s a very interesting application. Or, you’re going the suppository route, so there’s… That’s all well, and good.

Matt Baum:
It’s a quick way to get there, I suppose, yeah.

Tomas Skrinskas:
Yeah, cut the corners. And, but nano, in those applications, is absolutely relevant.

Researching bioavailability and CBD treatments

Matt Baum:
So give me just, a rough idea. Let’s stick with Crohn’s disease, and we want to develop a pill. How does this start? You have to decide, like you said, it’s got to go through the mouth. It’s got to go through the stomach, and you want it to end in the large intestine, before it releases any of these particles. Are you designing every part of this drug, with that in mind? Like, “We’re going to need this thick of a capsule. We’re going to need this type of nanoencapsulation,” and whatnot?

Tomas Skrinskas:
Yeah. It’s a big undertaking. Yeah. This isn’t something that we even have all the expertise under one roof, that’s why we’re very much preclinical. And you could take our formulation, and put it on cells. You could put it into a small animal model, and that’s where we would start to step up and scope the project appropriately.

Matt Baum:
Sure.

Tomas Skrinskas:
But yeah, you’re not wrong where, we can guide you on a capsule technology, but what’s going in the capsule is our stuff.

Matt Baum:
Right.

Tomas Skrinskas:
Or if it’s in a dry tablet form, the excipient systems like the other components of the tablet. We’ll give you a short list, but ours is the active ingredient. And then, start to develop it further. But you certainly have to start with the active, and how it’s packaged. But it’s, developing a drug and dosage form, is many small steps. So we’re part of that value chain, if you will.

Matt Baum:
Let’s talk about your active ingredient. You said, “Our stuff is in it.” This is not the same hemp that you go to the CBD place. And they know the farmer, “And it was harvested down the street and we de cord it, and it’s beautiful,” and whatever. “And then we put it, and drip it under here, and it’s great.”

Tomas Skrinskas:
Yeah.

Matt Baum:
This is not the same stuff. What are you guys dealing with? Where does your CBD come from?

Tomas Skrinskas:
It’s isolate, or synthesized, CBD. And we’re trying to assess the differences, they have different, even those two broad categories have different implications on the particles. And then it also comes down to what segments you’re servicing. And like, health product or drug development? And do people care about naturally sourced? Or, the synthesized version is chemically equivalent, but the jury is still out on exactly what’s happening there.

Tomas Skrinskas:
And, yeah. The short answer is, we’re at that studying phase of all that. And then, we’ll happily characterize any nanoparticles from it with any source of active.

Matt Baum:
Just whatever works best, for whatever’s needed, more or less.

Tomas Skrinskas:
Correct. Yeah. All our R & D right now is with isolate, but that’s kind of almost [crosstalk 00:22:34]-

Matt Baum:
Why isolate? Can I ask? Does isolate, is it because it’s easier to point it, like a bullet, towards the target that you want?

Tomas Skrinskas:
Well, no, actually. It’s more stable in, a little bit will last longer in our fridge, just for practical reasons.

Matt Baum:
Fair enough.

Tomas Skrinskas:
Yeah. Because it’s the kind of purist, or I guess rawest form of CBD, we can add things. It’s always easier to add things. So, it’s not in a carrier oil, so we can choose the carrier oil. If we want it to be refined or added with terpenes, to kind of bring it back to a distillate or a full spectrum format, for research purposes.

Matt Baum:
Right.

Tomas Skrinskas:
That, we can do. So it allows us flexibility, and again, that’s somewhat of the shorter answer there.

Matt Baum:
So isolate, because it’s just, it’s easier to control. You know exactly what is there. And you can always add-

Tomas Skrinskas:
Correct.

Matt Baum:
… but you can’t… Like when you’re cooking. You can always put salt in, but it’s very hard to take it out. Basically.

Tomas Skrinskas:
Yep.

Matt Baum:
Makes perfect sense.

Tomas Skrinskas:
Yeah.

Matt Baum:
And you guys work with both the health and the pharmaceutical industry?

Tomas Skrinskas:
Yeah. That’s where we see it. We entertain calls for beverages or… We don’t make chocolate bars and gummy formulations. Dosages continue to be an issue.

Matt Baum:
Yeah.

Tomas Skrinskas:
And the application still exists, but yeah, it’s Startup 101, is just focus. Find something you’re good at. So, I even find those two segments, like health and wellness, and then pharma, still leaves us a little open to being too broad. But the technology is a little more relevant. Concentrations are higher, it’s not just five or 10 milligrams. So, when you get to higher concentrations, nano becomes even more important.

Bioavailability in CBD drinks

Matt Baum:
Right. Absolutely. So let me ask you, you said, you entertain the idea of beverages. Have you guys worked with any beverage companies? Are you working with any? And you don’t have to name anybody. Obviously, it’s proprietary stuff, but.

Tomas Skrinskas:
Short answer is, we have. But, it’s somewhat opportunistic.

Matt Baum:
Right.

Tomas Skrinskas:
But it, again, they haven’t been big products.

Speaker 3:
Da-da.

Matt Baum:
It’s okay. This is edited. Don’t worry about it. I’m going to edit this. So, don’t sweat it.

Tomas Skrinskas:
Okay. Hey [Lawrence 00:00:25:20], go away.

Matt Baum:
I love you, go away.

Tomas Skrinskas:
Yeah, I know.

Speaker 3:
[crosstalk 00:25:26].

Matt Baum:
Do you see a future? As soon as, in the States anyway, as soon as this bears out and the Food and Drug Administration says, “Here’s how we want it done in food. And here’s how we want it done in medicine.” There’s going to be a massive market, huge. And you know that Coke, Pepsi, these major companies, are just sitting on this and waiting. But, from my understanding, it’s actually very difficult to, maybe not infused CBD into a drink, but infuse it well. And make it, so that it works.

Matt Baum:
There was this fad of CBD water going around for a while. It was like, “Yeah, CBD infused water.” And if you speak to anybody who works in this industry, or does any testing, they will tell you, “Well, if it’s clear, there’s nothing in there.”

Tomas Skrinskas:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Matt Baum:
Do you see this as, is it going to be a bigger challenge to do in the beverage market than it would be in a pill, for example?

Tomas Skrinskas:
Well, it’ll absolutely be a challenge, going… When you’re talking about Coke and Pepsi and these types of companies, where budget is not, R & D budget and product development budget, is not a problem. And they have teams, buildings full of scientists.

Matt Baum:
Right.

Tomas Skrinskas:
It’s not going to be a problem.

Matt Baum:
Fair enough.

Tomas Skrinskas:
So, yeah. I think, like you say, what they are waiting for is just a bit of a more open environment, so they can flip the switch. Then it’ll be game on. And some are doing it either through subsidiaries, or partnerships, so it doesn’t say Coke on the front of the building.

Matt Baum:
Of course, of course.

Tomas Skrinskas:
But, they’re developing. And, these emulsifying technologies, which is the predominant one for, the predominant nano approach for beverages, it exists. It has existed, for a while. In food and beverage science, culinary science, cannabis did not invent culinary science.

Matt Baum:
No. No. [Manny’s 00:27:49] invented culinary science, I think. Right?

Tomas Skrinskas:
Yeah.

Matt Baum:
[inaudible 00:27:53]. So, you said you worked on a beverage. Is it just emulsifying CBD, into the beverage? Is that basically it? Because it can’t be the same as putting it in a tincture, or in a pill, where you can surround it with some type of fat. Or a cocrystal, or something. They’re not going to put cocrystals in your Gatorade. That’s ridiculous. Is it just a matter of emulsifying it, so it’s small enough that it’s in there?

Tomas Skrinskas:
The emulsifying stabilizes it, so it just prevents all the little oil droplets from coming together, and being one big oil droplet, so that you see an oil droplet in it. Like your-

Matt Baum:
That’s like a bow [crosstalk 00:28:31]-

Tomas Skrinskas:
… salad dressing.

Matt Baum:
… type thing, where you’re like, “Ugh. There’s this weird CBD fish egg, that I just drank.”

Tomas Skrinskas:
But, Gatorade’s a good example. Gatorade is an emulsion, itself, even though it’s clear and orange, or whatever color it is. If it does sit on the shelf for months, you’ll see powder and stuff settle out of it. So, even that’s not a perfect emulsion. It’s out there, doing good things. So, the CBD part isn’t, into beverages, is challenging. I don’t want to disregard all the good science that people are doing to solve it, because there’s still unknowns. But we’re not talking like, Nobel Prize of Chemistry.

Matt Baum:
Right.

Tomas Skrinskas:
[crosstalk 00:29:23] a problem, here.

Matt Baum:
“You did it, you whipped CBD into whipped cream.”

Tomas Skrinskas:
Yeah.

Matt Baum:
“Congratulations.”

Tomas Skrinskas:
Yeah. Congratulations.

Matt Baum:
“You’re a household name.” Yeah. What kind of-

Tomas Skrinskas:
Sorry, COVID vaccine, you… Step aside.

Matt Baum:
“Yeah, that was last year. This year, we’re all feeling mellow.”

Tomas Skrinskas:
Exactly.

The future of Ascension Sciences & Canadian hemp research

Matt Baum:
So Tomas, what’s next for Ascension Sciences? Where do you go from here?

Tomas Skrinskas:
I think what we’re trying to do, is really demonstrate just how versatile some of these drugs and nanoparticle combinations are. So that’s where we have our toolkit and, we didn’t touch on liposomes. We didn’t touch on polymer nanoparticles, solid lipid nanoparticles. They all have different features and functions, and each one can have a deep dive, and those are the types of groups we like to work with, and that are health and R & D focused. And want to take their therapeutics to the next level. But yeah, it’s exciting times for little companies in Canada, and I think it’s doing it right. And no, but I think you’ve, even… Not, you’re not a lay person, lay-lay person. I think you talk to enough people, and you touch on-

Matt Baum:
I’m a lay person, trust me.

Tomas Skrinskas:
But if it’s resonated with you, I feel our message is hitting the right chords. So, as long as that message is received, we love to hear from people and what problems they might have, so that we can help them solve them with our expertise and our abilities. That’s what we’re here to do. That’s the kind of the note I would end on.

Matt Baum:
I just, one final thing. I want to-

Tomas Skrinskas:
Oh, yeah.

Matt Baum:
I want to let people know that, I get very excited when I speak to doctors and scientists, that are willing to talk about this. Because, there is a future here, there is a there, there. It is a thing. It’s coming. It works. There are tests that show this. And there’s so many people that want to write off CBD as a fad. Stuff that, “It’s a bunch of people feeding you olive oil telling you that you feel good,” but this is real. This is really happening.

Tomas Skrinskas:
Yeah.

Matt Baum:
Real pharmaceutical companies and doctors and researchers, and R & D people like yourself, are doing this for a reason. Tell me it’s because it’s real, and this is the future. Because it makes me feel better.

Tomas Skrinskas:
Yeah, no. It’s absolutely real, though, what gives me confidence or what I come back to is that, I don’t think this is a blockbuster drug, but it has the ability in a very, very safe way, to help so many different conditions.

Matt Baum:
Yeah.

Tomas Skrinskas:
And, I don’t want to put the business spin on it, but at an over-the-counter price. And it can replace so many, not so nice drugs, as well. That’s the exciting part as well. The pain medication, the opioids, the antianxiety stuff that people get hooked on. This has real applications, in a safe way. You can’t overdose, those types of things.

Tomas Skrinskas:
It still needs to be studied. And, you want to be sure you’re doing it for the right reasons. And I guess, what I mentioned, initially. It’s not a magic thing, you need to, if you’re taking something to help make you feel better, you need to also address the problem, the source.

Matt Baum:
Right.

Tomas Skrinskas:
The… Make sure you’re also eating properly and getting outside, for your mental health, on CBD.

Matt Baum:
Yeah, you can’t just be like, “I’m fat. And I feel horrible. I want to take a pill and just feel better.”

Tomas Skrinskas:
Yeah, yeah.

Matt Baum:
That Snot how it works, unfortunately.

Tomas Skrinskas:
So, it’s part of a system, and I think it actually is a critical part. So, don’t forget the system, though.

Matt Baum:
Yeah. So, where do we keep up with you? How do we keep up with the Ascension Sciences, and see what’s coming and what you’re working on?

Tomas Skrinskas:
One of the things I wanted to direct people to is, our social media channels. Our LinkedIn-

Matt Baum:
Definitely.

Tomas Skrinskas:
… our @AscensionSci. Correct, Melody? As long as I got that right. @AscensionSci. And we’re quite active on LinkedIn, we’re posting other people’s research, as well as our own. So it’s a place to just keep in tune.

Matt Baum:
Yeah. You’re, is it, a six person team? Is that right?

Tomas Skrinskas:
Depending on what day you ask me, but, yeah. Yep, it’s some key advisors, some hardworking folks that have put the time in from internships, and kind of stayed on with us. And some postdocs.

Matt Baum:
It’s so cool. And I don’t think there is another, and maybe I’m wrong, but I don’t think there is another drug frontier out there where you have very small groups, like punk rock groups of R & D people that are like, “Yeah, we can work… You know how to do that? Good. I know how to do this. Let’s team up. We’ll work on it.” You, “I know a guy that can do this, and we’ll contact,” it’s just like back in the day, where my dumb band was putting out seven inches. And we had a friend that printed T-shirts, and we had another friend that had a van. So we made him the bass player, so he could drive. And stuff like that, so.

Tomas Skrinskas:
That’s the way it is.

Matt Baum:
I think it’s awesome. Thanks so much for your time. I’m going to let you guys get out of here, because it’s getting late.

Tomas Skrinskas:
No, cheers.

Final thoughts from Matt

Matt Baum:
As always, you’ll be able to find all the links that Tomas mentioned in the show notes, along with some other cool notes. And here at the Ministry of Hemp, we believe that a more accessible world is better for everyone, so you can also find a full written transcript there, as well.

Matt Baum:
Thank you for joining me for another episode. And if you’re digging these episodes, and you like the information here, it really does help if you give us a thumbs up or even a short written review, wherever you download your podcasts. It just lifts us in the search algorithms, and helps other people find this info. And speaking of this info, you can find more hemp education info over at ministryofhemp.com.

Matt Baum:
The holidays can be a stressful time of year, especially this year, where COVID has made them very different. And a major part of managing your anxiety is getting your sleep. We just happen to have a best CBD for sleep article up at ministryofhemp.com, right now. It’s all about CBD and CBN products that will help you get to sleep and stay asleep, without feeling hung over in the morning. Very cool stuff.

Matt Baum:
You can also follow us on all our social media. We are @MinistryofHemp or \MinistryofHemp, and we’re always kicking out great information on all things hemp. And if you want to help us continue to get that information out, head over to patreon.com/ministryofhemp and become a Ministry of Hemp insider. Any amount you give makes you an insider, and gets you early access to articles, podcast extras, and all kinds of other stuff. Not to mention the fact, it helps us so much. And a huge thanks goes out to everyone that already has signed up for our Patreon.

Matt Baum:
This is probably going to be the last episode for the year. And I want to thank everybody that stayed with me this year, or came on and found us this year. We don’t have a show without you guys. And your input has been fantastic, just on my guide, learning about this amazing plant and what it can do for the world. Thank you, so much.

Matt Baum:
2020 was not the best of years, I totally agree. But we stuck with it. We did it. We maintained, we took care of ourselves, and 2021 is already looking brighter for everyone. And I’ll be right here, with the rest of the Ministry of Hemp gang, to keep bringing you this news in the new year. So, thank you. And I hope you plan to stick around for more.

Matt Baum:
I like to end the show the same way every time. And this is the last time I’ll be doing it in 2020, but remember to take care of yourself, remember to take care of others and make good decisions, will you? Have a safe and happy holiday, and of course, a happy new year. I’ll see you in 2021. This is Matt Baum, with the Ministry of Hemp, signing off.

The post Canadian Hemp & Cutting Edge CBD Research, With Ascension Sciences appeared first on Ministry of Hemp.

In episode 66 of the Ministry of Hemp Podcast, our host Matt has a conversation with Ron Vasak-Smith, CEO, and James Eichner, Co-Founder and CSO, of Sana Packaging.

Ron and James met in grad school where they worked on a project together that would turn into a career running a hemp packaging company. The two cofounded Sana Packaging. Today, they work with more than 300 vendors using both hemp plastic and reclaimed ocean plastic as packaging for cannabis and hemp brands.

We’ve visited with Sana Packaging before, including a discussion about sustainable hemp plastic and paper packaging at NoCo Hemp Expo in 2018.

Matt also mentions our 2020 CBD and Hemp Gift Guide and our Populum CBD honey review.

You’ve got hemp questions? We’ve got hemp answers!

Send us your hemp questions and you might hear them answered on one of our Hemp Q&A episodes. Send your written questions to us on Twitter, Facebook, matt@ministryofhemp.com, or call us and leave a message at 402-819-6417. Keep in mind, this phone number is for hemp questions only and any other inquiries for the Ministry of Hemp should be sent to info@ministryofhemp.com

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Hemp Plastic Packaging, With Sana Packaging: Complete episode transcript

Below you’ll find the complete transcript of episode 66 of the Ministry of Hemp podcast, “Hemp Plastic Packaging”:

Matt Baum:
I’m Matt Baum, and this is the Ministry of Hemp Podcast, brought to you by ministryofhemp.com, America’s leading advocate for hemp and hemp education.

Matt Baum:
I never went to grad school. I had a lot of friends that did though, and it was a nightmare. It was super difficult, and they were literally living on a shoestring budget while working as hard as they possibly could to hopefully increase their chances of getting a job afterwards. Now imagine that you finished grad school and you had a project you believed in so much that you said, “The easy thing to do would be to go and find a job, but instead we should make a job.” And that is exactly what my guests, Ron Vasak-Smith and James Eichner did. Ron is the CEO and James is the CSO of Sana Packaging. Sana Packaging is an up-and-coming hemp plastic packaging company. They had an idea in grad school and it was centered around cannabis packaging, and the question, why is it all in single-use plastic?

Matt Baum:
There’s plenty of industries out there that are trying to be more environmentally friendly, but it seems like the cannabis industry is intensely aware of their impact on the environment and what they can do to lessen that impact. When these two grad students started approaching smoke shops in their area saying, “Hey, instead of putting everything in plastic, what if we put it in hemp plastic? Or what if we put it in reclaimed plastic?” And they built a customer base, and now they’ve got a successful business. I had a fantastic conversation with these guys that I think you’re really going to enjoy. I know we’ve talked a lot about hemp plastic on the show recently, but this was a chance to talk to two people about how they got a business like this off the ground, and they were completely open and honest and a lot of fun to talk to. This is my conversation with Ron Vasak-Smith and James Eichner of Sana Packaging.

The college origins of Sana Packaging

Matt Baum:
Let’s start at the beginning. You guys met in college.

James Eichner:
At grad school.

Matt Baum:
Grad school. Okay. You met in grad school. And what were you both going to grad school for at the time?

James Eichner:
We were pursuing our MBAs at CU Boulder.

Matt Baum:
Okay.

James Eichner:
And we were both taking a lot of classes together.

Matt Baum:
And at some point you’re like, “You know what? There’s too much single-use plastic in this world.” How does this come up? How does this even start? It’s the kind of thing where… you both look like ski bums to me, no offense, but I know one of you happen to have been skiing today. How do you get in the idea that not only do I want to work on a project where maybe we incorporate hemp into plastic, but we should start a company too. How does this happen?

Ron Vasak-Smith:
Yeah. I mean, honestly I think James and I both say it comes from being disgruntled consumers, right? We are both in Colorado since legalization happened and consuming cannabis and just personal guilt, honestly. If this is something that I’m going to be consuming, and it’s just another area of waste that I think James and I are… We’re both really fortunate to be in the time at school, when we were just able to have the space to start a business, right. And coming out of grad school, it’s either go find a job or start a job. One of the other.

Matt Baum:
Sure.

Ron Vasak-Smith:
Starting something sounded a little more intriguing, I guess.

Matt Baum:
But this started as like a college project. Is that right, James?

James Eichner:
Yeah. We were in a sustainable venturing class together and we’d taken a bite. We were both focusing our studies on primarily sustainability and entrepreneurship. So we basically ended up in all the same classes together. And this was the first semester of our last year. And Ron approached me and asked if I wanted to work on this project with him. And Ron hit the nail on the head by saying at the time, it was like, “Hey, I know you’re disgruntled about cannabis packaging as well. Do you think this sounds like a fun idea for a class project?” And at the time it was really just an exploration to see what might be out there material-wise, business model-wise, neither of us had a background in packaging or anything like that. It really was, I don’t know, happenstance.

Matt Baum:
That’s my next question. Neither of you have a background in packaging, did either of you have a background in cannabis other than recreational cannabis or?

James Eichner:
Not beyond the level of small-time college slanging eighths for some extra pocket change-

Matt Baum:
Fair enough, fair enough.

James Eichner:
Really beyond that, no experience in the cannabis industry. Formerly, I came from the social and environmental justice sectors before grad school. Ron came from the liquor industry. I think we’re both… They like to say that there’s a few types of MBA students. There’s people who are there to enhance their careers. There’s people who are there to change their careers. And then there’s folks like Ron and I who just really needed some direction. And we both really love being students. And I think we didn’t know each other beforehand, but I think we were just in similar positions of it’s our mid-twenties, we’ve had a few years after college having fun and now we really need to find some meaningful direction. And I think that’s what, ultimately both drew us back to school.

Matt Baum:
What year was this when this project started? Because now from what I’ve heard and what I’ve seen and talked to other people, even in the last five years, there’s been a lot more of the hemp that you would need to make industrial packaging or even rope or cloth and stuff like that. But literally only in the last five years before that it was a complete desert from what I understand. And even now it’s still not real easy. What did it look like when you started and what year was that?

Ron Vasak-Smith:
Yes, we got started in 2016.

Matt Baum:
Okay.

Creating more sustainable packaging for hemp and cannabis

Ron Vasak-Smith:
I remember I went for grad school. Our class advisor was like, “Hey, you need to go to get more involved in something that you’re interested in.” And there was a hemp conference-

Matt Baum:
Like, “What you doing with your life kid, come on.”

Ron Vasak-Smith:
There was a hemp conference up in Loveland and I was like, “Ah, I like hemp that sounds interesting enough to me.”

Matt Baum:
Was that NOCO in Loveland?

Ron Vasak-Smith:
It wasn’t NOCO, it was like a round table and then it was just probably 50 to 70 people, just Governor Polis was there just gives 2016… The hemp stuff was just getting off the ground.

Matt Baum:
Great.

Ron Vasak-Smith:
And I was there and I was looking around and I was just like, “Seems like, I’m in the right place, right time to do something with this stuff it’s happening. Why not be an on the ground level. And it just coincides, it is really useful for a lot of things. And so why not try to make some packaging out of it.”

Matt Baum:
At that time CBD was booming and really starting to take off. Why didn’t you guys try and jump in on that? I’m not trying to dissuade you anyway. I’m just curious and thinking process, because I’ve interviewed so many people that were like, “I was growing hemp. I started making CBD doing the CBD to…. ” Not as many people have decided to go the industrial route. And I’m just curious, why not go into CBD?

Ron Vasak-Smith:
I think for us, it was honestly like if you’re going to start a business, start a business that’s a problem, right?

Matt Baum:
Yeah.

Ron Vasak-Smith:
And not saying that CBD isn’t fixing problems, it is, but for us, this was a problem that we were passionate about. Let the passion drive the ship I think for us in that one, and there’s definitely been times where it’s like, “Oh, CBD seems to be an easier path to profitability than what we have going on.” But the same time I think James probably feels the same way, but we were stoked on what we’re doing.

James Eichner:
Yeah. And I think starting with the initial problem that we set out to explore was why is cannabis packaging and by extension hemp and CBD product packaging, why is it the way it is? Why are people using the materials that they’re using?

Matt Baum:
Yeah. It’s stupid right?

James Eichner:
What’s affecting that. And so we started from the packaging side of things and then got into the hemp side in terms of learning about it as a potential material for packaging, as opposed to coming to the hemp plant and then trying to figure out, okay, well, what do we do with it? We already had that intended use in mind. And luckily it worked out.

Matt Baum:
And James, it didn’t hurt that you came from an environmental law background as well I’m sure.

James Eichner:
No, no, no. Nonprofit. Environmental nonprofit, yeah.

Matt Baum:
So you were making the big bucks in the environmental?

James Eichner:
Yeah. I was really rolling [crosstalk 00:09:46].

Matt Baum:
There you go. All right. It’s all coming together now.

James Eichner:
Still really rolling now.

Sana Packaging’s first hemp plastic packaging prototypes

Matt Baum:
Oh, I can tell. Just by the way, you should see where these guys live. It’s palatial. It’s an audio podcast, so they can’t see it. You do the project, you find out this can work. We can actually make this happen. What happens next? Then you’re just like, screw it, let’s start a company?

James Eichner:
Ron, did we have a 3D printed prototype by the end of that semester, by the class projector?

Ron Vasak-Smith:
Yeah. We were doing the New Venture Challenge along with it, right?

James Eichner:
Yeah.

Ron Vasak-Smith:
Because there’s some cash prize involved in that. And I think-

James Eichner:
We didn’t wait in back.

Matt Baum:
Fair enough.

Ron Vasak-Smith:
… coinciding with the one class and we had another class project and we were doing in that venture challenge. Just, I mean, like when you’re in school, right? There’s the most resources around you you’re going to have, right?

Matt Baum:
Yeah.

Ron Vasak-Smith:
We were able to rely on people much smarter than us, and had skillsets in areas that we didn’t to help us along. We had a prototype made basically for the class project. Fortunately, a company was making 3D printable hemp plastics.

Matt Baum:
Yeah.

Ron Vasak-Smith:
To make a hemp prototype packaging product wasn’t too far of a stretch. And I had an idea of what design would have some sort of locking mechanism in it and stuff. And we tried out some stuff. And so at the end of the class we did have a prototype.

Matt Baum:
Tell me about the prototype. What was it?

Ron Vasak-Smith:
It was our first, basically a pretty similar to what our first product is, honestly. I don’t have any right here to show you, but it’s our box that you see on our website basically. And we sat down with a engineering student who knew CAD/CAM and was able to sketch something out that the next step-

Matt Baum:
Right, the math.

Ron Vasak-Smith:
The math [crosstalk 00:11:43].

James Eichner:
Yeah. Shout out to a Swapneil Kumar for being our first product designer.

Matt Baum:
That’s awesome. You said you used a 3D printer, so you’re using these are the ones that use the hemp plastic that also has regular plastic in it as well, right?

Ron Vasak-Smith:
Yes. And it’s actually a really similar formulation to what we’re using currently because PLA, which is the plant-based polymer typically comes from corn or sugarcane feed stock.

Matt Baum:
Right.

Ron Vasak-Smith:
Has a lower melting temperature than a traditional petroleum-based plastic. And so with that lower melting temp, it’s a hemp and corn-based composite basically.

Matt Baum:
Okay.

Ron Vasak-Smith:
So it really similar to what we use now. And that was the, “Hey, this is a step in that direction. Our products we want to make them a hundred percent plant-based.” And so this was a pathway towards that.

Matt Baum:
That’s one of the things I’ve talked to some people about hemp plastics about. The PLAs especially while they do break down better, they can leave microplastics and stuff like that. You’ve moved now to a full plant-based, is that correct?

Ron Vasak-Smith:
Yeah. It’s a biocomposite 30% hemp, 30% PLA. Still dealing with that issue with any polymer is going to leave behind microplastics. It just matters what happens to it, how they’re digested, where they’re digested. And we as a company coming a long way from four years ago, James and I have learned so much about the actual systems within the waste space. And so what actually happens to a product afterwards is the stuff that we would like to see more focus on.

Matt Baum:
Right. It compostable what you’re dealing with?

Ron Vasak-Smith:
Not certified compostable, we use compostable inputs, but due to the wall thickness of our product, we don’t actually meet the breakdown timeframe-

Matt Baum:
Fair enough.

Ron Vasak-Smith:
… which is 90 days for that. And so this is basically our first product to market and we know that there’s so much more that we can do moving forward. And so that’s just what we’re currently working on that [inaudible 00:13:59].

Getting started in hemp plastic packaging

Matt Baum:
Let’s talk about your current product. James, tell me about what you guys have going on right now?

James Eichner:
We went to CanopyBoulder, an accelerator in Boulder.

Matt Baum:
Okay.

James Eichner:
And that’s how we got our first bit of funding. And Ron put in some of his personal money as well. And that’s what got us off to the races. And we Sana Packaging became a full-time endeavor for us. Really the second we finished school and the accelerator in the span of the same week, I think. And had a little bit of money in the bank for the company. And just like how the class project went well, so we decided to apply to an accelerator.

Matt Baum:
Yeah.

James Eichner:
Accelerator went well, so we decided to continue with the project after the accelerator and things kept slowly falling into place, but it took us about a full year after we finished the accelerator to get our first real working prototypes, not just done, but child-resistant certified and then building out a production scale mold. And then we launched a pilot program in the summer of 2018 with around 20 pilot customers and went through a six months learning period with them because beyond just making a product, a big part of packaging is the customer service that you’re providing to folks.

Matt Baum:
Oh yeah.

James Eichner:
Learning the ins and outs of how to communicate with our manufacturing partners, our supplier partners, how to communicate with our customers, how to make sure that things show up on time. All that behind the scenes operational stuff was hammered out in this six month customer-learning period, along with just ramping up our production and making sure that we can truly start mass producing something made out of a hemp biocomposite. And that was in 2019, beginning of 2019 that we really opened our doors up for sales. And now we’re up to… Started 2019 with two products and 20 customers now coming to the end of 2020, we’re up to seven products. One which we just launched earlier this week, soon to be eight, we’re going to launch our eighth product just before the end of the year. And we’re up to a little over 370 customers now and so it’s-

Matt Baum:
That’s awesome. That’s awesome.

James Eichner:
… crazy how far we’ve come.

Matt Baum:
You guys, rather than the other posh mucks that had to get out of grad school and go find work, you’re like, “Let’s just make a job. We’ll make our damn own job.” Which is harder, sure. But you did it. Tell me about your first customers. I’m sorry. Tell me your first customers, like the people when you came out, like those first 20 people, what did you guys do? Did you just like show up places and be like, “See this box, this box is made of hemp, it’s not cardboard, it’s not plastic.” What was that like? Who were they?

James Eichner:
It was a lot of door-to-door.

Matt Baum:
Really? Literally like, “Hello, my name is Ron and I’m James. And we’re here to talk to you about Sana Packaging.”

Ron Vasak-Smith:
When we look back on it now it is like, no. I would say it’d be very difficult to do what we did in any other industry, right? Like the cannabis industry just getting going. And you could just walk into a dispensary and be like, “Hey, hemp. We’re making hemp packaging.” Right?

Matt Baum:
Yeah.

Ron Vasak-Smith:
And then the people were like, it would get like an eye raise and maybe interest in it. We didn’t have the product to sell at the time. It was very much like when you’re going through the startup phase, you’re fundraising, you’re trying to basically convince customers, but then you’re trying to convince investors and such that someone’s going to actually buy this product, right?

Matt Baum:
Right. But you’re not just convincing them that like, “Hey, you should buy this product.” You’re also having to convince them, like, “You should spend a little more money on your packaging for a more responsible product.” Right?

Ron Vasak-Smith:
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that’s the tough thing, right to go into a business and tell them, “Hey, you need to spend more money on product that… ” It’s a tough conversation. And I think that was for us at the beginning, we really had to have that passion. Just button up the shirt and go and knock on as many doors as possible and be like, “Hey, is this interesting to you? Would you buy this?”

Matt Baum:
And again it probably wouldn’t work in any other industry. It’s not like you can walk into Ford and be like, “Hey, instead of using all that plastic in your car… ” For the cannabis industry, I can see them being like, “Wait a minute. Why are we putting this stuff in plastic or cardboard or a garbage.” When you’re supposed to be a little more ecologically friendly. I would guess in that industry.

James Eichner:
We really owe so much to those early pilot customers. Because when we first approached all of them, it was similar. We were approaching investors, we were approaching potential customers. And with everyone, it was selling them on a hope and a dream. With investors it was, if you give us money, we will make this and we’re confident that we’ll be able to sell it for this amount. And it will be a good use of your money to invest at us, who by the way have never done anything.

Matt Baum:
Two grad students with a dream.

James Eichner:
And then with these potential customers, it was approaching folks and saying, “Here’s a prototype. If we’re able to mass produce this four to six months from now, will you commit to being a pilot customer with us?” And again, selling someone on a hope and a dream and something that doesn’t physically exist yet. And as you’re trying to connect to the dots of getting money in, investors want to see that you have potential customers lined up, potential customers want to see that you actually have a product to sell. And so you’re trying to line up all of these things. And I’m trying to think of who some of those early customers are. I know there’s-

Ron Vasak-Smith:
Shout out to Smokey’s 420 in Fort Collins. They were our first, first customer.

Matt Baum:
Nice.

James Eichner:
Yeah.

Ron Vasak-Smith:
So they’ll still have that first check.

Investing in hemp plastic packaging

Matt Baum:
It’s one thing to walk into Smokey’s in Fort Collins and be like, “Hey bros, we should all be nicer to the earth, right.” And they’re like, “Yeah, bro.” And you’re like, “Well, check this out.” What were the investors like? That’s got to be a whole different shebang there. I mean, when you start talking to money guys, what were they like? Who were your first investors? I mean, I know Ron, you had to throw some of your money in there. I hope you got it back. It seems like you probably did it by this point.

Ron Vasak-Smith:
We’re working on that.

James Eichner:
We’re working on it.

Matt Baum:
What was it like approaching investors with this idea?

Ron Vasak-Smith:
I think first being able to go… James and I as being two guys leaving grad school who hadn’t done this before, being able to go into business accelerator like CanopyBoulder was focused in the cannabis industry and had the framework set up for us as far as this is how you will approach, this is how you could approach these people. And so I think that was super useful for us. But I mean, I think James and I would just… It’s one of those things you got to learn on the fly, right?

Matt Baum:
Sure, sure.

Ron Vasak-Smith:
You just put yourself out there, right? You don’t know how you’re going to be received by these people. There’s a lot of perceived, critiquing going on around your business model, how you’re presenting it. Early on a lot of unsolicited advice that you just got to-

Matt Baum:
I’m sure.

Ron Vasak-Smith:
… take it in and be-

Matt Baum:
You can’t wear that. You’re going to wear some money dress like that.

James Eichner:
Ron’s name was actually changed from Ronnie to Ron by potential investors.

Matt Baum:
Oh, I totally believe it.

James Eichner:
When I met Ron, he went by Ronnie. And he’s gone by Ronnie, his whole life, so a friend calls him Ronnie, his friends call him Ronnie. And we just started interacting with these potential investors. And they skew male.

Matt Baum:
No.

James Eichner:
They skew a little older.

Matt Baum:
No. You’re kidding me. Let me guess a little white too, I would guess.

James Eichner:
Yeah. Pretty pasty like what you’ve just seen here.

Matt Baum:
Okay. I think I know what you’re talking about now.

James Eichner:
Yeah. And literally overnight, Ronnie became Ron because he just introduced himself, “Hi, my name’s Ronnie.” And they’d be like, “Nice to meet you, Ron.”

Matt Baum:
Yeah. That’s a kid’s name. I’m not going to call you that. All right. Anyway, where were we?

Ron Vasak-Smith:
Yeah, exactly what I heard that’s a child’s name, so you get that enough times you’re like, “Oh, we’re trying to make good money here.”

Matt Baum:
Right.

Ron Vasak-Smith:
Changed the name to see if that works too.

James Eichner:
Just about investors again, real quick though, it’s similar to those early customers where you get really lucky and you find these handful of people that believe in what you’re doing. Like Smokey’s 420 in Fort Collins or Bailey and Murphy in Oregon, they were another early one. We had a few early investors as well. I don’t want to name names, but there’s one individual who he’s placed capital with us a few times in a few different seed rounds that we’ve done. And not huge sums but he’s been the first money in on each of those rounds and-

Matt Baum:
That counts [inaudible 00:23:53].

James Eichner:
… if you’ve ever fund raised before that first money in is the hardest, because no one wants to be the first.

Matt Baum:
Everybody is waiting to see if someone is going to throw money [crosstalk 00:24:02].

James Eichner:
Everyone’s looking for people around them to be like, “Hey, this is a good idea. We’re all doing this.”

Matt Baum:
Right.

James Eichner:
That first person’s really taken a big leap and this person did that for us twice. And it’s not the most money we’ve ever gotten, but it’s some of the most important money we’ve ever gotten.

Matt Baum:
Yeah, I would argue it counts way more. Just because someone else sees, “Oh, I’m not the only idiot that’s going to throw money at this. Someone else did it for us. So. Okay.”

Ron Vasak-Smith:
And even more than that, like the confidence boost that it gives you.

Matt Baum:
Totally.

Ron Vasak-Smith:
From a fundraising standpoint, right?

Matt Baum:
Totally.

Ron Vasak-Smith:
It’s like when you go fishing, right? You might not know there’s any fish in there, so you’re just like, “Let the second get a bite.” You’re like, “All right, first this is worthwhile, right? We got a chance here.”

Matt Baum:
Back to where we were saying about going in and talking to these investors, you guys had never done it before, so you don’t know the wrong way to do it, let alone the right way. Let’s just do it, right?

James Eichner:
Yeah.

Growing Sana Packaging

Matt Baum:
That’s great. You go from 20 customers to 300 customers, you said you just unveiled a new product last week. What was that?

James Eichner:
That was a V2 or I don’t know if V2 is the right word, but it’s a second iteration of our reclaimed ocean plastic pre-roll tube. The first iteration that we did was in the same production scale mold as our hemp biocomposite pre-roll tube. We knew when we launched the… Because using the same mold for both products was an easy way to have a new product, use a new material, get something else to market. But we knew from the get-go that down the road, we would be able to lighten the amount of material used just because the wall thicknesses are a little thicker than necessary for the reclaimed ocean plastic material, because they were designed to run this biocomposite.

Matt Baum:
Sure.

James Eichner:
This has been a long time coming for us and we’re really excited about this product. It’s our first pop-top design. Our previous products had… They were two piece molds, meaning that the lid of the pre-roll tube is a whole separate piece.

Matt Baum:
[crosstalk 00:26:24].

James Eichner:
And again that original design was made to work with the hemp biocomposite. Now we’ve moved over to a pop-top for the reclaimed ocean plastic. We’re able to reduce our material use by 25% while also increasing the length of the pre-roll tube from 110 millimeters to 116 millimeters. And also moving into a larger production scale mold. All of that combined also allowed us to drop our price by 30% compared to our previous reclaimed ocean plastic pre-roll tube. It’s a huge step forward for us. And we hope it’ll be a real game changer just because it’s a really common form factor. And because it’s that much more price competitive, we really hope that it’s a no-brainer for folks that perhaps earlier were a little scared off by the inevitable price premium that comes with sustainability.

Matt Baum:
Potentially stupid question, where does one go to pick up ocean-reclaimed plastic? I mean, coming from Nebraska, I would know where to start, but are you hooked up with a group that is literally pulling plastic out of the ocean? Or are there suppliers? I have no clue how this works.

Ron Vasak-Smith:
We’re working with a network called Oceanworks and they basically have network of processor, cleaners, and sorters that they work with to go out and certify this material. Ocean plastic, like any other products, recycled product, there’s the varying levels and degrees of the quality, types and all of that.

Matt Baum:
Of course.

Ron Vasak-Smith:
Beyond just saying, it’s ocean plastic there’s certain grades of material that we need, certain type of material. We have some needs around cleanliness, so FDA approved material.

Matt Baum:
Sure.

Ron Vasak-Smith:
And so making sure that that is all up to snuff and basically that our manufacturers are getting what we say it is, and the customer is getting what we say it is. And just a way that we can ensure the quality of the product.

Matt Baum:
And I assume it’s just very similar to recycling plastic more or less. You’re melting it down, you’re pouring it into your mold and it cools and I mean, is it more or less work than just bringing in new plastic?

Ron Vasak-Smith:
Yeah. I think not necessarily more or less work, from a theoretic level you’re correct, right? Materials being extruded into a mold.

Matt Baum:
Right.

Ron Vasak-Smith:
But the biggest problem is the quality of the material, right?

Matt Baum:
Yeah.

Ron Vasak-Smith:
If with virgin material designed to perform a very specific way, if the recycled content or reclaim content has any variability in it, that variability might show up in the part.

Matt Baum:
Sure.

Ron Vasak-Smith:
This is one of the big reasons why you don’t see a lot of recycled and reclaimed material used amongst major consumer products because in the traditional world where price is everything, if you’re going to get let’s just say two out of every 1000 units have a blemish or something, right?

Matt Baum:
Right.

Ron Vasak-Smith:
That might be enough to tip the scale, to say, “Let’s work with virgin material that oftentimes it’s going to be less expensive.”

Matt Baum:
Yeah. That’s the nightmare of recycling, right? Because my wife and I recycle, my neighbors all recycle, and we’re sending all this plastic to be recycled and you don’t have major plastic corporations using recycled plastics for just that reason.

Ron Vasak-Smith:
I mean, this is the big thing with it, right? If we’re going to recycle, we have to close that loop the best we can. The backend of that is that companies are going to be working with this material. They’re going to pay more for it. They’re going to deal with the inconsistencies that could show up. But that’s what we’re doing as a company, right? Like this idea of producer responsibility versus consumer responsibility, right?

Matt Baum:
Yeah.

Ron Vasak-Smith:
Both of those have to work together. The consumer has to recycle the producer has to work with the material that has been recycled.

Matt Baum:
Well, and let’s be real. I’m not going to go to the grocery store to pick up my detergent or something and be like, “Oh, well that, bottle’s not as orange as I remember. I think I’ll buy the competition.” No, and nobody cares. It’s preposterous. But we got off subject a little bit there. I think it’s amazing what you’re doing. Don’t get me wrong, but what is next for Sana Packaging? Where do we go from here? I mean, you don’t have to divulge secrets or anything, but-

Ron Vasak-Smith:
The big trade secrets [crosstalk 00:31:04].

Matt Baum:
… if you want to break some news.

James Eichner:
I’d say we’ve always been mission driven, but when we started the company, we were very focused on trying to tap into innovative material types and more sustainable material types. But the big thing that we’ve learned over the last, what is it? Four years, three or four years, is that materials and material innovation are really just one piece of the puzzle.

Matt Baum:
Yeah.

James Eichner:
In terms of where Sana Packaging is going, we ultimately view ourselves as material agnostic, meaning we always want to be able to tap into what we believe to be the most sustainable and best material available for the use cases that we’re trying to use it for. And the other big piece of the puzzle is our waste management infrastructure and not just waste management infrastructure, but all the other infrastructure around packaging and in our case specifically cannabis packaging. When we think of what’s next for us, it’s how do we affect that larger systemic change that needs to happen within the cannabis industry and the waste management infrastructure that aids the cannabis industry. And how do we change? How do we shift cannabis packaging from a linear economic model where it goes, take, make, dispose to a circular economic model where at the end of a product’s useful life, you’re recovering it as much as possible, reusing materials as much as possible, regenerating natural systems.

Matt Baum:
Right.

James Eichner:
And that’s what’s next is how to figure out how to make truly circular cannabis packaging. Because every step of the way we’re making incremental change towards it and moving toward circularity. But the big question is how are we going to make that ultimate leap and put those pieces into place and leverage our position in the industry to try and make that happen.

Matt Baum:
And once you build that model, I mean, it’s easy people here will what are they doing in cannabis industry, whatever. But once you build that model and show, you can do it in this industry. There is no reason why you can’t apply that across the board to any industry. There’s no reason why once you get a model like that working, we can’t go into Walmart and buy groceries in a bag made of hemp plastic, or something, or reclaimed plastic, or get your food from McDonald’s in a responsible package. I mean, that’s ultimately where this goes. I’m not saying go shop at Walmart, go shop at McDonald’s, but it’s models like these when you can scale up and change the frigging world. And I think it’s amazing what you guys are doing. Not bad for a couple of stoner bombs from college that came up with a project. Nicely done for a couple of grad students.

Final thoughts from Matt

Matt Baum:
I will have links to Sana Packaging and more about Ron and James in the notes for this episode. Speaking of which here at the Ministry of Hemp, we believe that a more accessible world is a better world for all. So you will find a full written transcript for this episode in the show notes as well.

Matt Baum:
Thanks again for hanging out with me for another episode, I hope you learned something and you might have questions about what you heard or you might have questions about something you heard on another episode, or maybe you just have questions. Call me, let’s talk about it. 402 819-6417 is the number to call and you can leave your message. And we will answer your questions right here on the show. We do Q&A shows where I bring in other people that worked for ministryofhemp.com, my buddy Kit, he’s the editor in chief, Desiree, our videographer, and sometimes Drew our brand manager all show up. It’s a great time. And we love to answer your questions.

Matt Baum:
You can also shoot me an email with an MP3 or just written question to matt@ministryofhemp.com. Speaking of ministryofhemp.com, head over there and check out our review of a CBD honey put out by one of our favorite brands, Populum they were delicious CBD raw honey. We’ve also got your CBD gift guide for Christmas. It’s coming down to the wire. If you’re going shopping, you’re going to want to get it done now. Check out our CBD gift guide. And we have a great guest post about wholesale hemp flour, and about getting into the CBD business, if you’re interested in that.

Matt Baum:
And if you like the content on this show and the stuff that we put up on our site, the best way you can help us is to head to patreon/ministryofhemp and become a Ministry of Hemp Insider. Any amount you give, makes you an insider, gets you access to podcast extras, to early articles and all kinds of extra stuff that we put up on our site and on our show, but more important than that, it helps us to bring hemp education to people that want to hear it and needs to hear it. We’re trying to change the world here folks. We need your help, go to patreon/ministryofhemp become a Ministry of Hemp Insider. That about does it for me, and I like to get out of here the same way every week, by saying, remember to take care of yourself, take care of others and make good decisions will you? This is Matt Baum with the Ministry of Hemp Podcast signing off.

The post Hemp Plastic Packaging: The Promise Of Hemp Plastic With Sana Packaging appeared first on Ministry of Hemp.

In Episode 65 of the Ministry of Hemp Podcast our host Matt sits down with Shreyans Kokra the CEO of CanvaLoop, an Indian based hemp fiber company, to discuss their new ‘SLOW’ brand hemp jeans Kickstarter. CanvaLoop is using a proprietary process to make high-quality hemp jeans with the same feel as cotton-based denim. Unlike regular jeans, Slow Jeans are made from carbon negative Himalayan hemp harvested by locals.

Himalayan hemp is a cannabis plant growing in the wild, in the majestic and pristine Himalayan ranges of India and Nepal. It has been growing with ‘zero’ human input for over 5000 years — that means it needs no water (except natural rainfall), fertilizers or insecticides. The seeds are also not sowed by man but by nature itself — twice every year. It takes only 90 days to grow and also replenishes the soil it grows in.

In addition, hemp fabric itself offers a number of benefits over cotton fabrics in terms of sustainability, durability, natural antibacterial properties and more. India is quickly distinguishing itself as a leading creator of hemp textiles.

About Shreyans Kokra and CanvaLoop

In 2016, Shreyans Kokra (Founder and CEO of CanvaLoop), set out on a journey to make a truly sustainable fashion material that has all the performance features that a modern human wants. This quest led him to Himalayan Hemp and the current Slow hemp jeans Kickstarter campaign. If funded, SLOW hemp jeans will be available in three classic colors: Black, Indigo and Sky in various fits.

CanvaLoop is an alternative fibers and material science company. They make textile fibers from agri-waste or plants like hemp and banana. Their fibers are eco-friendly, ethically produced and functionally superior. Their mission is to mainstream sustainability by creating alternative fibers.

You’ve got hemp questions? We’ve got hemp answers!

Send us your hemp questions and you might hear them answered on one of our Hemp Q&A episodes. Send your written questions to us on Twitter, Facebook, matt@ministryofhemp.com, or call us and leave a message at 402-819-6417. Keep in mind, this phone number is for hemp questions only and any other inquiries for the Ministry of Hemp should be sent to info@ministryofhemp.com

Subscribe to our show!

Be sure to subscribe to the Ministry of Hemp podcast on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Podbay, Stitcher, Pocketcasts, Google Play or your favorite podcast app. If you like what your hear leave us a review or star rating. It’s a quick and easy way to help get this show to others looking for Hemp information and please, share this episode on your own social media!

Become a Ministry of Hemp Insider and help spread the good word!

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You’ll be the first to hear about everything going on with our special newsletter plus exclusive Patron content including blogs, podcast extras, and more. Visit the Ministry of Hemp on Patreon and become an Insider now!

Sustainable ‘Slow’ hemp jeans, with CanvaLoop: Complete episode transcript

Below you’ll find the complete transcript of episode 65 of the Ministry of Hemp podcast, “Sustainable ‘Slow’ Hemp Jeans”:

Matt Baum:
I’m Matt Baum, and this is the Ministry of Hemp podcast, brought to you by ministryofhemp.com, America’s leading advocate for hemp and hemp education.

Matt Baum:
Welcome back to another episode of the Ministry of Hemp podcast. My name’s Matt, I’m your host. I have talked to a lot of people on this show and learned a ton about hemp, but I don’t think I’ve ever spoken with anyone from India. I almost lined up an interview with some people that were running an Indian hemp conference a while ago, but it fell through due to time constraints. This week, I’m changing that. I have a conversation for you to hear with Shreyans Kokra. He’s the CEO of Canvaloop. Canvaloop is working on bringing hemp jeans to the public. They look just like regular jeans, they feel just like regular jeans, but they are much more ecologically friendly, not in just the way that they’re made, but also when you wash them, and you’re not going to believe where they’re getting the hemp.

Matt Baum:
The Canvaloop process is one of the most carbon negative processes. Not carbon neutral, but carbon negative, and you’ll hear why, that I have ever heard of. It’s incredible what they are doing, and they have a Kickstarter that’s running right now to get their jeans to the public. There’ll be a link for that in the show notes, and I hope you’re going to go and back it, after you hear my conversation with Shreyans Kokra of Canvaloop.

Harvesting wild Himalayan hemp

Shreyans Kokra:
Hi, I am here today primarily because we launched an awesome Kickstarter campaign, called Slow by Canvaloop, which is jeans made out of wild-growing cannabis in the Himalayas.

Matt Baum:
So let’s start there. We noticed you because of the Kickstarter. At Ministry of Hemp, we’re always looking for cool stuff like this. Where are you guys centered out of?

Shreyans Kokra:
Yeah. So we are based out of India.

Matt Baum:
Okay.

Shreyans Kokra:
Currently I’m in Surat, Gujarat, which is the Westernmost part of the country.

Matt Baum:
Okay. You are using Himalayan hemp to spin it into a cotton and then make denim jeans, basically. So tell me about Himalayan hemp, because I watched the video and it blew my mind. Tell me a little bit about Himalayan hemp first.

Shreyans Kokra:
Basically, it’s the wild cannabis that grows throughout the mountainous regions of the Himalayas, so when you probably reach there, all the lower and the middle part of Himalayan are full of the wild cannabis that grows there and it is brought up the own lip line in which you have very good quality flood, which is generally used by people as marijuana and also a very, very good quality fiber. So, that is what we found. And it has no known genetics. It grows absolutely in the wild with zero human interference. It just grows when we harvest in three months after you go to the same place, it’s dead at the same height, yielding the same quality of materials. So it’s like nature’s biggest gift to the planet. Every 90 days, you have some amazing things growing and you can just go and collect it.

Matt Baum:
This is not farmed. This is truly wild. Himalayan hemp, like pine nuts. Basically, you don’t grow them on a farm. You just go get it.

Shreyans Kokra:
Yes, exactly.

Matt Baum:
Does this land belong to anyone? Or are you allowed to just go take it?

Shreyans Kokra:
So we need permissions from the forest officials…

Matt Baum:
Right.

Shreyans Kokra:
To go and collect it. But since hemp again is such a renewable resource. Within 90 days it grows back to it’s same height and the same….

Matt Baum:
Right.

Shreyans Kokra:
So that forest officials have also started to allow it in the past two, three years, we follow a lot of guidelines. With regards to how much can we harvest? How do we harvest? Especially keeping like the areas has zero infrastructure. And it’s by design that the infrastructure is kept to a minimum because we want nature to survive as it is.

Matt Baum:
Sure.

Shreyans Kokra:
So we take a lot of precautions while exercising the extraction, the harvesting, and we follow a lot of guidelines as well. So yes.

Matt Baum:
So it’s carbon zero, like carbon negative essentially because you’re not farming anything. You guys are literally going and picking a weed.

Shreyans Kokra:
Yes, exactly.

Matt Baum:
That’s just amazing. Tell me about that though. You said it, there’s not a lot of infrastructure. So how do you get there? Are you like rolling in, on a dirt road, basically into just a forest?

Shreyans Kokra:
So let’s imagine that there are small villages all across the mountain region. And villages are like 10, 15, 20 houses.

Matt Baum:
Right.

Shreyans Kokra:
And so the villagers initially used to only collect the seeds. And sell them in the cities for making a small amount of living. So we basically taught them that fiber is something which is also a very, very useful part of the plant.

Matt Baum:
Definitely.

Shreyans Kokra:
Right. And there are ways to harvest and extract the fiber. So we have trained them with the help of some NGOs on the ground. And literally from each village, you get like a hundred kilo or 200 kgs of fiber. And a track goes down, keeps on collecting it from the villages. Some of it comes on a donkey bags. Some of it comes by…

Matt Baum:
This is so bad. [crosstalk 00:05:53] I don’t mean to like… [crosstalk 00:05:59] I don’t mean to like be so mind blown by it. But there just isn’t anything like this in the United States where we’ve been sweet enough to work with local people and not exploit them and not coming in clear cut, therefore for us to hear that you’re going into these smaller areas and working with the people that live there and giving them income as well. I mean, you’re paying them to go out and gather this, right?

Shreyans Kokra:
Yeah. So we actually get a lot of support from the ground because this prevents migration of people from the villages to the cities, which is a big problem in the villages, because there is actually no infrastructure. There are no industries. Then there are no employment opportunities, but this gives them a way to get employed throughout the year without leaving their birthplace place. So this is something that they’re getting a lot of ground support on.

Matt Baum:
And they’re the experts too. They know exactly where it is. They know exactly where to go get it, let them do the work with their expertise.

Shreyans Kokra:
Exactly, exactly.

Creating hemp jeans with CanvaLoop

Matt Baum:
It’s amazing. So you show up, you pick up the hemp from there, you drive it back into town. Tell me about the process now from turning hemp fiber, I’ve always known that hemp fiber can be made into fabric obviously, but jeans, that seems like pretty next level. Can you take me through sort of a broad scope of the process of what happens?

Shreyans Kokra:
Yeah. So basically the parent company Canvaloop, we have a proprietary technique, it’s patent pending by which we convert any sort of a hemp fiber for a plant, a stock part of the plant to a garden light fiber. While retaining the properties of hemp. So the hemp fiber is some amazing deal. Like it being anti UV naturally, anti-microbial all of these properties by [inaudible 00:07:53] we make sure that the amazing properties of hemp stay and hemp gets converted to a very soft fiber. And this is what we have been doing for the past couple of years. But then we thought that there is a gap, we must do something that the consumer actually sees and wants. We understand that a lot of people want to wear hemp clothing, but it’s not available. So that’s why we worked for it, on it for a couple of years, since 2019, we have been working on this project.

Shreyans Kokra:
And so we have kept a lot of thought on sustainability in hemp, throughout the jeans making process. So the way we convert the stock into fiber, again, 100% green be used compressed natural gas instead of coal, which is generally used in the fashion industry for heating [inaudible 00:08:47]. So all the little things that couldn’t be taken care of. Again, right. We have used natural Indigo dyes. So dyes actually gotten from the Indigo flat. So that’s why jeans are called in the indigo. Because jeans technically used to have natural Indigo dyes in the past two, three decades that we are seeing all artificial dyes, which…

Matt Baum:
yeah.

Shreyans Kokra:
Look up river systems and everything. So throughout the process of making the jeans, we have kept sustainability in hemp at the core. So from making the fiber to the thread and then making the final denim, we have kept sustainability in hemp. And yes, it’s a beautiful piece of denim. We have tried to make it as soft as possible. And a lot of tests have been done. We have washed it off 500 times. It stays as it is because of the great durability properties of hemp.

Matt Baum:
So it’s not going to fade like my other jeans and whatnot?

Shreyans Kokra:
It is not because it uses natural Indigo dyes. And then hemp. Hemp is the strongest natural fiber. So we, as an industry have to use hemp’s properties to make products that reflect its true nature.

Matt Baum:
Right. It’s not a matter of turning hemp into something else it’s using hemp to get a final product that you want with the benefits of the hemp fiber itself more…

Shreyans Kokra:
Yes. Exactly. Yes.

The benefits of fabric made from hemp fiber

Matt Baum:
So tell me about that. Let’s talk about the fiber for a second. Because I watched the video and the jeans look amazing, looking at them. I can’t tell any difference. Visually. You said hemp is a very strong fiber and it’s hard to work with and you have a proprietary process to turn it into something that looked like cotton, but it’s not cotton. It’s still hemp.

Shreyans Kokra:
Yes.

Matt Baum:
So how does it perform differently when you make it into a denim than say, I am wearing a pair of jeans right now, a pair of raw denim jeans that I paid 75 bucks for, which is a steal for raw denim. That’s pretty cheap. And guess what? A year and a half later, I’ll be real honest with you, there’s a split in the crotch. You can’t see it. Cause I’m at home by myself. So it’s fine right now. But these are $75 raw denim jeans that are supposed to be tougher than normal denim. And they were also made, like you said, there, they were made more responsibly, whatnot. They’re garbage. So explain it like these hemp jeans. How does it stack up to something like raw denim and what are the differences, I guess, similarities and differences I suppose.

Shreyans Kokra:
So similarity, we have worked a lot to not change the feel of the denim. Because we have been wearing denims for so long and they suddenly may give you a very different feeling denim, you will not want to wear it.

Matt Baum:
They will say these aren’t jeans.

Shreyans Kokra:
Yeah. These aren’t jeans today. So we have consciously tried to make the feel of the jeans right how it’s worn as similar to cotton like your normal jeans as possible, like a premium from jeans as possible. The major differences that lie are on the way you can bear the jeans. So jeans are technically made to be worn for longer periods of time without being washed. But the problem with modern jeans nowadays is with a lot of say things coming up in the past few years, you cannot wear them multiple times.

Shreyans Kokra:
They start smelling or they’re sweaty, they’re sticky all of those problems. So, because hemp has a very… Sorry for being a little technically, but yeah, as a very porous, but again, say cross-section, it’s very breathable. So you’ll sweat significantly less. And also it’s naturally anti-microbial. So since there is no bacterial activity, the jeans not get smelly. So again, probably wear them for longer periods of time without actually washing them.

Matt Baum:
So these are jeans that I can wear during the summer is what you’re saying.

Shreyans Kokra:
Yes. Summer as well as winter again, because it’s porous, they’ll keep you warmer in the winters and cooler in the summers. So again, these are all amazing properties of hemp that we’re just trying to reflect on the product rate. Hemp is what takes the credit over here. So that is how it’s different. Because of the amazingness of the plant, the variability of the jeans is amazingly better than what you can expect from a normal cotton.

Matt Baum:
So more durable, it’s more porous, so it’s breathable. So it’s, cooler in the summer, warmer in the winter, which is good for guys like me. Cause I’ve chicken legs. And I don’t like wearing shorts. I want to wear jeans all summer. And also it’s UV resistant you said.

Shreyans Kokra:
Yes.

Matt Baum:
That’s a natural Part of the hemp fiber is UV resistant.

Shreyans Kokra:
Yes.

Matt Baum:
Wow. So it’s not going to fade.

Shreyans Kokra:
Yeah, it’s not going to fade. So it is eventually going to fade like probably after 10 or 15 years, but not when you’re going to wear it for sure.

Matt Baum:
So what about construction? As far as, as sewing it, is it harder to work with than working with denim?

Shreyans Kokra:
It is definitely harder to work with. Especially when we get to the machines, because most of the modern machines are either made for synthetic fibers or cotton. So it’s significantly harder to work with and there are specialized skills required. So not your everyday jeans maker can make a hemp jeans. So, and hemp jeans, there are some jeans on the market which have like a certain percentage of hemp in the denim.

Matt Baum:
Yeah.

Shreyans Kokra:
But they are not hemp rate. By hemp rate I mean like at least 50% of the fabric should be hemp.

Matt Baum:
Right.

Shreyans Kokra:
Then [inaudible 00:14:49] something made out of hemp. So it’s significantly difficult, but we are getting there. So either could be believe that within a few years within say the next decade hemp is going to be a norm of the fashion industry.

Matt Baum:
Absolutely.

Shreyans Kokra:
So everything will revolve around hemp. It’ll go, it’ll be the next big material. So yes, we are trying to make it happen.

Matt Baum:
So did you guys have to make new machines to work with this because they’re not out there right now. Right? I mean sewing machines and whatnot, and the looms that bring this hemp fabric that you can’t just run this through a normal loom and make the same type of cotton. Can you?

Shreyans Kokra:
So again, the fiber that we make, since we’ve [inaudible 00:15:37] so like cotton. It runs on the regular loom with special assistance. So with some modifications and some special assistance, that’s not your everyday person can done it, but someone who’s trained to run something like this, then definitely run it on the regular machine. So that is the basic. But for us that we are trying to solve to make the adoption of hemp as easy as possible for mainstream fashioning vans as well. Every one on the planet should start using hemp.

The sustainable benefits of hemp jeans

Matt Baum:
I totally agree. That’s why I host this podcast. Now you have a proprietary process that breaks it down into that fabric, more, not the fabric, but the thread, the fiber, if you will, at that point, you’re saying once it’s there, you could ship it into any place that deals with fiber and they can work with it pretty much the same way.

Shreyans Kokra:
Yes, exactly.

Matt Baum:
That’s incredible. One of the other things I saw, it takes 7,600 liters of consumed water to make regular denim jeans. And that’s for Americans, that’s over 2000 gallons of water. And 1900 pieces of micro plastics are released into the oceans with every wash. Why are micro plastics coming out of my jeans? I had no idea.

Shreyans Kokra:
So, so a lot of jeans nowadays have a certain percentage of polyester or say like in a [crosstalk 00:17:11].

Matt Baum:
To make it stretchier and more comfortable and…

Shreyans Kokra:
Yeah stretchier and a lot of jeans that you see on the market claim to be more durable. Actually use polyester, which every time you wash like a piece as each piece of this cloth, it releases micro plastics in the water.

Matt Baum:
That makes sense.

Shreyans Kokra:
So, and a lot of again, jeans are nowadays branding themselves as made out of plastic bottles, recycled plastic bottles. But that’s again, not so good for the environment. Because on one hand, you’re recycling the plastic bottle but again from the fabric that is made mainly you’re releasing micro plastics in the world. So it’s like dying by one goal. You’re dying by a… [crosstalk 00:00:17:59]

Matt Baum:
Yeah. It’s death by a plastic bottle or death by a million pieces of tiny micro plastic.

Shreyans Kokra:
Yes.

Matt Baum:
So tell me about the water consumption. How does that work? Like slow jeans, obviously, according to what I’m reading here use quite a bit less water. How does that work out?

Shreyans Kokra:
So again, it’s so hemp, as I said, requires no sort of artificial water irrigation to grow. It grows on the lane rainfall that happens or from the ground water.

Matt Baum:
Because again this is not farmed. You’re just going and picking this…

Shreyans Kokra:
Yes. Exactly. And the cotton that is used to make denims, it requires a tremendous amount of water to grow. So one kg of cotton requires approximately 10,000 liters of water.

Matt Baum:
Jesus.

Shreyans Kokra:
And that’s literally just two pieces of jeans. So, and again, throughout the processing, the dying process of the jeans and all of those processes also, there’s a lot of water required and we have, we allow, so we make denims in mills that use completely recycled water. So they recycle their own water. They do not take any new water.

Matt Baum:
So it’s like gray water system.

Shreyans Kokra:
Yes, yes. Right. And again, the plant did not require any water to grow. So throughout the whole value chain, we are saving tremendous amount of water.

Matt Baum:
That’s incredible.

Shreyans Kokra:
Yeah. So that is what we wanted to emphasize in the campaign as well, because a lot of people are not aware about the water footprint of that clothing.

Matt Baum:
Right. So let’s talk about…

Shreyans Kokra:
It may be. So by the way, yes.

SLOW hemp jeans on Kickstarter

Matt Baum:
Let’s talk about the campaign for a second. Tell me about the Kickstarter, what you guys have going on. I’ll have a link to the Kickstarter, of course, in the show notes. So people can go throw many of this because we all need to be wearing hemp jeans. And by the way, these are not like boxy farmer looking jeans. These are sexy. These are really good. Do you come from some type of fashion background or anything? We’ll talk about you in a minute I guess. Let’s talk about this, the Kickstarter first. Then I want to talk about you where you came from and how you got this idea. Because I think it’s amazing. So tell me about the Kickstarter.

Shreyans Kokra:
So we presenting slow jeans. These are jeans completely made out of the vial growing Himalayan hemp, and it’s processed in the most sustainable manner possible. And the final output, the jeans better than the normal jeans that we wear, cotton jeans. It’s available in trees, timeless colors like sky, which is like a light blue color, Indigo, which is like a dark blue color and the classic black….

Matt Baum:
Right Very classic American denim jean [inaudible 00:20:52].

Shreyans Kokra:
And all the fits. Right? So if you want a regular fit or a slim fit or a skinny fit. So most of it’s a perception that hemp is a loose that grandpa kind of a thing… [crosstalk 00:21:06]

Matt Baum:
See the hippie and the pajamas with like the poncho on, like I’m wearing clothes bro!

Shreyans Kokra:
So this is like your regular, this is jeans that you can wear to the biggest party in town and people will ask this jeans, what is this jeans? So all the fits, all the colors are there. And I just want to say it out loud that there are two things with it. First it’s made of the wild Himalayan hemp and second it’s insanely comfortable.

Matt Baum:
Yeah.

Shreyans Kokra:
So this is what we have emphasized on. We did not want to give a product that did not feel good. Not just want to sell hemp because of just it being hemp. We wanted to make a very good usable piece of product. And once you have it, you’ll see the difference for sure.

Matt Baum:
Yeah. It’s definitely jeans, I think are an intensely American institution where everybody wears jeans. It’s just something that like for, I mean, Cowboys wore jeans back in the days, its crazy jeans are something that we go to work in jeans, jeans are something that I mow the lawn in, jeans are something I can take a nap in. So if these are going to be hemp jeans, I’ve got to be jeans. They’ve got to be comfortable. They’ve got to look right. They’ve got to feel right. It’s not like you’re just showing up with hemp pants. So tell me about you. How did you get into this? What is your background?

Shreyans Kokra:
So I’m personally trained in finance. So, but I have a family history in textiles and fashion. So my family has been in the fashion textile industries for 40 years and I wanted to get away from it all. And that’s why I came to the US with a finance background. But then again, I got in touch with hemp and just realized it’s awesome potential. And the actual problem that the textile industry had, I was always aware of that. Right. But I did not really have a solution in mind, but when I got in touch with hemp then its awesome benefits. We were damn sure that this is something that needs to be presented to the normal public. And…

Matt Baum:
Absolutely.

Shreyans Kokra:
Yes. The four years back, we started on from scratch, literally from scratch, working with the plant. And how do we convert it into the best possible fabric for the people?

Matt Baum:
What was it that brought you to hemp? Did you discover it?

Shreyans Kokra:
So when I came to the US a couple of people mentioned it to me. And I’m a very inclusive, curious, kind of a person. So I just go out into it, started reading about it. And interestingly, I was doing a master’s in entrepreneurship.

Matt Baum:
Okay.

Shreyans Kokra:
And we had to pitch an idea to work on throughout the year during the course. So this was my master hemp was by all about the masters.

From US college entrepreneur to Himalayan hemp

Matt Baum:
You’re the second person I’ve talked to that did this as their master. They’re like, I was in grad school and I came up with this crazy hemp idea. And they were like, write the paper about it? And now it’s my job.

Shreyans Kokra:
So we started, so during the college itself, you are a group of people. We started a company there in Boston itself. Over the time we did not work out. It was still hemp. We stuck on it. We pivoted a lot of time. And then we finally had this breakthrough with the technology. And today here we are with the jeans.

Matt Baum:
Well, just the kind of thing where you were in the States and you got interested in hemp and decided, okay, my family is from a fiber background. Was there this moment where you just went, Oh my God, there are hundreds of thousands of acres of this stuff back in the Himalayas. I got to go home and use this. Was it just something like that?

Shreyans Kokra:
Yeah, I think, I think you pictured it perfectly. This is exactly what happened. So…

Matt Baum:
I mean that’s [crosstalk 00:25:26] that’s incredible.

Shreyans Kokra:
[inaudible 00:25:25] The United States, a lot of incidentally [inaudible 00:25:34] 16, when I was in the States, the whole movement to legalize hemp and the separation of hemp from Atlanta was going on. Especially in the Boston area. So that movement actually was like a kickstart that we got. And coupled with my textile background back home. Right. Because we also need some sort of an expertise in the product. This is what I also firmly believe, like build the traditional sort of industries get into hemp. It’s not going to go very, very mainstream. So like [inaudible 00:26:11] starts making, say probably some sort of edited drinks with hemp. [crosstalk 00:00:26:16] yeah. So I think they did really good times ahead. So

Matt Baum:
So you, you came to the States and you got your finance degree, and then you were like, Oh, Oh crap. I’ve got to go home. That’s where the action is. You come home with this idea and you come to your family and like, hear me out, hemp jeans, who’s on board? Were they like, yeah. Let’s Absolutely. Let’s pull the trigger over there, like, son, you’re insane. What happened to you in America? How do you pitch an idea like that? Because I’m guessing you’re, and I don’t know, but I’m guessing your family’s textile business was not going out into the woods and finding plants to make clothes out of, how do you pitch that to mom and dad? And were they just on board?

Shreyans Kokra:
So my dad was on board right away, he is like very open. Yeah. So he’s very open. He’s like this, these are your years to experiment in life. And so you can go ahead, you are not making a fool of yourself, then go ahead, try as many things as you want.

Matt Baum:
That’s awesome.

Shreyans Kokra:
But again, since in India we have sort of an extended family system. And there were a lot of people who are not very keen on letting this happen, because there are a lot of regulatory issues in India. And also in the States it’s everywhere…

Matt Baum:
Sure, sure.

Shreyans Kokra:
Just cannot deny it. It’s significantly harder for a person to do business in the hemp industry as compared to any other. So we have under layer of licenses when we import and we export, then we do autumn normal, dry transaction. So people are not very keen. But since I had to go ahead with my dad, we just winged it and…

Matt Baum:
You just got to keep fighting. Right?

Shreyans Kokra:
Yes.

The challenges of working with hemp

Matt Baum:
Sooner or later they’re going to stop telling you. No, because they’re sick of you. This guy won’t shut up. Just tell him. Yes. All right. So what is the government like with hemp in India? Is it… Like you’re in the States, we’re still trying to figure it out. Like, which is ridiculous because our neighbors in Canada have been doing it since the 90s. Europe is way ahead of us. China has been doing this since they figured out they could make fabric out of it. What’s it like in India is a government, a little more green friendly or is it similar to the state?

Shreyans Kokra:
So it’s, it’s changing, the current is like, no one wants to get into this crop. So it’s so controversial, no elected government is like let me take this ahead. So it’s just stuck in us or double limbo, but there are smaller States which are now acting up and legalizing it. Because one interesting thing with India and hemp is it grows in the wild part in the country. So it’s not something that people haven’t seen. It’s just that it was not commercialized. People have seen in spite of the culture. So the ground level acceptance is there, but from a regulatory standpoint, it’s changing slowly. But we are hopeful especially with the United nations, the announcement coming last week with regards to cannabis and we tend to follow the US in order…

Matt Baum:
It does. It sounds very similar to the really stupid stuff we are dealing with hemp here in this country. I’m sorry. It’s like that there. I’m sorry. You guys are following us. It’s embarrassing. We’re bad at this.

Shreyans Kokra:
And even like the States that have made it legal, there’s a lot of issues because we have just copied the guidelines from the European union. Without actually making the guidelines as part of the country. So there are a lot of issues that are there a lot of things in the gray area, but we’re very hopeful that in a couple of years, all of this will work.

Matt Baum:
It sounds like they’re starting to see the benefits. And especially when you have someone like you was who is like, look, I’m not just grabbing this stuff and immediately exporting it to China or immediately exporting it to South America. We are keeping it here. We are using the local population and helping them make money and putting the product together right here and then exporting it. That’s…

Shreyans Kokra:
Exactly.

Matt Baum:
very important. Very much. I mean, India, we have definitely for years and years, not just India, but India, Bangladesh, a lot of these smaller Vietnam, even we say, Hey, make our gap jeans, Hey, make our old Navy jeans do it any cheap, crappy way you can think of and then ship it over here. It’s nice to hear that someone is doing it the right way. I’m sorry that you’re fighting to do it. I wish this could just boom, explode. But this is an amazing story. And I think it’s awesome. And I hope anybody who’s listening to this goes and backs the Kickstarter. I want a pair of these jeans, so damn bad. I just want to walk around and be like, I’m wearing hemp jeans and they look awesome.

Shreyans Kokra:
Amazing, amazing. Thank you. We, as a hemp and the cannabis community, we keep talking about how great the plant is, but there’s a lot less action happening. Even if within the community, they start using things made out of hemp. Well, actually everything in the house that we are living in and in the office space that we are occupying. A lot of things can be made out of hemp and they can be better than the current things that we’re using. So we, as a community, if we start using hemp products in general, the industry and the community will become stronger. And I think the way forward for the industry is to start supporting each other first and then looking outside…

Matt Baum:
Definitely.

Shreyans Kokra:
For more approval.

Matt Baum:
Because we can’t just continue to just cheerly do each other. That’s not going to change anything. We’ve got to keep screaming to everybody else. Hey, we can make wood out of this. Hey, we can make jeans out of this hey. We can make plastic out of this. And Oh, by the way, you have an endo cannabinoid system in your brain that wants this as well. I mean, it’s very important. Thank you so much for your time and thank you for what you’re doing. I truly think this is just incredible. And I hope this explodes. I hope you’re so famous, it’s stupid. And sometime next year, they’re going to be like, Oh, you got to hear when he was on that ministry of hemp podcast before anybody knew him.

Shreyans Kokra:
I definitely hope this happens, thank you so much.

Matt Baum:
Thanks to Shreyans for talking with me. It was going on midnight, his time when we had this conversation. So thank you for staying up late to talk to a lazy American that didn’t realize what time It was there. And also the links to the canvaloop Kickstarter are going to be in the show notes, please go check it out, watch the video. I think we’ll have it in the post for the podcast as well, but it’s truly incredible what they are doing. And he’s right. Hemp is one of the fibers of the future and it’s just a matter of time. And it’s really cool. Does he early pioneers? And when I say early pioneers, that’s ridiculous. Because we’ve been making hemp clothes for thousands of years, but it’s coming back in a big way and it’s really cool what they’re doing. So we owe it to support people like Shreyans in Canvaloop. Speaking of the show notes here at the ministry of hemp, we believe that a more accessible world is better for everyone. So you can find a complete written transcript of this show in the notes as well.

Final thoughts from Matt

Matt Baum:
Thanks again for spending some time with me today and learning about hemp and thanks to everybody that supports this podcast, by going to patron backslash ministry of hemp and becoming a ministry of hemp insider, it is an amazing way to keep this information coming and here, podcast extras to get a look at early posts before they go up on the site and all kinds of other extra stuff we’ve got T-shirts, we’ve got stickers, all kinds of cool stuff. It really does help. And you know what else helps leave me a review for this show, wherever you listen to podcasts, whether it’s a star rating or even a written review, it helps so much to bump us up in search algorithm. So other people can find show. Speaking of the show, next week, I will be talking to two of the gentlemen that started Santa packaging. They are one of the largest hemp plastic packaging companies in the United States.

Matt Baum:
And it was an awesome conversation. So be sure to tune in for that, if you need more ministry of hemp in your life until then head over to ministryofhemp.com, we have got our holiday gift guide. The holidays are coming and you have people that would love all kinds of hemp presents to check out our holiday gift guide. And if you didn’t hear it last week, check out our round table discussion that we posted on the show here, where I spoke with drew and kit and Deseret, the whole ministry of hemp gang. And we talked about hemp and cannabis on the ballot in the 2020 election. It was a great conversation and I hope you had a chance to check it out. You can also follow us on all our social media at backslash ministry of hemp at ministry of hemp or all over the place.

Matt Baum:
And we’re always kicking out great hemp education links. And maybe you have questions about this episode or CBD or anything hemp related. You can call us (402) 819-6417 and leave your message with your question. We will play it on a future show. We do these Q&A shows where myself and other people from ministry of hemp answer your questions. It’s a ton of fun. And I would love to hear from you. You can also email me matt@ministryofhemp.com with your question or shoot me an MP3 to that email too. Regardless we want to hear from you. It’s your show. Let’s hear your questions. I got to get out of here. And I like to do it the same way every week by saying, remember to take care of yourself, take care of others and make good decisions. Will you, this is Matt Baum with the ministry of hemp signing off.

The post Hemp Jeans From Wild Himalayan Hemp, With Shreyans Kokra of CanvaLoop appeared first on Ministry of Hemp.

In episode 64 of the Ministry of Hemp podcast, our host Matt is joined by the whole Ministry of Hemp crew: Editor in Chief Kit O’Connell, Brand Manager Drew De Los Santos, and Videographer Desiree Kane to discuss cannabis on the election 2020 ballot. While the American public may be split on somethings, cannabis legislation is not one of them.

For more on the subject, Kit’s article on hemp after election 2020, too.

You’ve got hemp questions? We’ve got hemp answers!

Send us your hemp questions and you might hear them answered on one of our Hemp Q&A episodes. Send your written questions to us on Twitter, Facebook, matt@ministryofhemp.com, or call us and leave a message at 402-819-6417. Keep in mind, this phone number is for hemp questions only and any other inquiries for the Ministry of Hemp should be sent to info@ministryofhemp.com

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Cannabis legalization & hemp after the election: Complete episode transcript

Below you’ll find the complete transcript of episode 64 of the Ministry of Hemp podcast, “Cannabis legalization & hemp after election 2020”:

Matt Baum:
I’m Matt Baum and this is the Ministry of Hemp podcast brought to you by ministryofhemp.com America’s leading advocate for hemp and Hemp education.

Matt Baum:
Hope everybody had a good Thanksgiving holiday and I know ours was a little strange in the Baum house because of COVID and whatnot. We didn’t really get to hang out with the family, but we still made the best of it and it went really well, but it felt like a nice relaxing end to a pretty stressful month and the main stress of this month yes, definitely COVID but there was also an election. So today we’re going to talk about the election, but don’t worry. We’re not going to get into the Trump stuff and Biden stuff. Not at all. Today, we are going to talk about cannabis on the ballot.

Matt Baum:
I wanted to give everybody a few weeks to just decompress after how gnarly the whole election process really was before we can talk about this kind of stuff, but it seemed like a really good time to get together with the other Ministry of Hemp guys and just talk through what went down as far as cannabis measures that were on ballots all over the United States. So here is our little Ministry of Hemp round table discussion about cannabis and the 2020 election.

Meet the Ministry of Hemp team

Matt Baum:
I am joined here today by the entire Ministry of Hemp crew, which is awesome because we’ve never done this. We’ve had Drew, Kit and I have done some shows, we’ve had Drew in some shows, but Desiree is here too. Desiree, why don’t we start with you say hi to the kids and tell them what you do for Ministry of Hemp.

Desiree Kane:
My name is Desiree Kane. I’m a Miwok two-spirit that recently moved to the Pacific Northwest in occupied Salish territory. What I deal with Ministry of Hemp is right now, I’m doing the holiday guide with Drew and Kit, where I get to take beautiful pictures of a whole bunch of products that you can come to Ministry of Hemp and see Kit’s input and review and learn some things about CBD comes in so many different forms and you can expect to see my pictures in there. Sometimes I also do educational videos. So you’ll see me making spritzers and also perhaps explaining to you what is CBG or what is CBN.

Matt Baum:
You have the glamorous job. We’re all here rolling around in the muck and editing and you’re making spritzers and making videos.

Desiree Kane:
It’s not awful.

Matt Baum:
Fair enough. That was the most punk rock intro we’re going to hear tonight by the way and I really liked it. Drew introduce yourself again. We know you but you know, just for the kids who are the new listeners.

Drew De Los Santos:
Yeah. My name is Drew and I am the brand manager at Ministry of Hemp, just making sure everything’s flowing and that we keep working with great brands

Matt Baum:
And then kit our editor in chief say, hi.

Kit O’Connell:
Hi everybody this is Kit O’Connell great to be here again.

Matt Baum:
Do you know kit? He’s been with me on a bunch of our Q and A shows. We’re not doing a Q and A show today, but what we are going to do, I don’t know if you pay attention to the news or not. It was a little election recently and it got some coverage and people freaked out about stuff and I know my heart almost stopped a few times and if it wasn’t for CBD, I probably wouldn’t still be here. But luckily I have lots of samples and they got me through that week. We just wanted to let it re-decompress a little bit, maybe except what happened with the election and then we can move forward from there. But we’re not here to talk about that.

Matt Baum:
We’re here to talk about marijuana and Hemp in the 2020 election. Because while we can say that it looks like America is very split. If you look at the election results and how many votes went to Republicans and many went to Democrats. One thing they don’t seem to be split on at all is marijuana and Hemp, which is kind of shocking. It was on a ton of ballots all over the United States and it won pretty big not just that but psychedelics as well in the form of mushrooms seem to win really huge Desiree you just moved to Portland. Tell us what went down in Oregon, which blew my mind by the way.

Cannabis & other drug laws change after election

Desiree Kane:
So Oregon, basically it is now legal or will be by 2023 to have therapeutically administered psilocybin therapy, which psilocybin is also known as magic mushrooms. They also decriminalized low levels of all drugs.

Matt Baum:
So what does that mean? Exactly? Because there are some pundits that freaked out, of course, and they’re like, Oh great, now kids can walk around with heroin. Like what does that exactly mean small amounts of drugs? Or is there a number on anything or-

Desiree Kane:
That’s something that I would have to look into it following that vote. I do know that basically they’re going to approach it as a public health thing and if you have certain types of controlled substances, you’ll be into a therapy program instead of sentenced to the prison industrial complex which creates a whole other set issues that are problematic.

Matt Baum:
It’s also very similar to a lot of programs that are going on in Europe right now, where rather than demonizing addiction, you work with addicts and [crosstalk 00:06:07].

Desiree Kane:
It’s the same thing Portugal has done.

Matt Baum:
Yeah, and it’s super successful and it scares a lot of people here in the United States, but guess what? It works folks, and it’s here because you have voted for it. So what else did we have on the ballot? Anybody let’s try in, let’s talk about this.

Kit O’Connell:
Well, I want it to jump off of what Desiree with the same, because what’s just happened in Oregon. You know we don’t know what’s going to happen at the federal level. Obviously a lot is still to be seen about what’s going to come. But if you look at the platform for president elect Biden, his platform that he ran under actually was quite progressive on the war on drugs and one of the things that he talks about in there is encouraging the people be diverted away from the prisons for possession. So we could see that there actually has been some Republican support for reducing the war on drugs too.

Kit O’Connell:
So they’re seeing as something that has some bipartisan support and there’s even one of the things that we’re seeing that’s interesting is that there’s this growing bipartisan support from the people of the United States, across the political board for cannabis legalization, a majority of people, it’s almost 70%. I think in one of the studies I saw across the political spectrum now support cannabis legalization and that’s really extraordinary. So that includes Democrats, Republicans, young people, old people, people from all backgrounds, races, if you lump them all together and take an average, the vast majority of people support this idea.

Matt Baum:
So real quick, just to spell it out, marijuana specifically cannabis was made legal for medicinal reasons in Mississippi and South Dakota. These are two distinctly red States like South Dakota has legalized medical marijuana and they have a governor that didn’t want people driving Hemp through the state. So the people have definitely spoken there pretty shocking and then voters legalize the possession of marijuana by adults in Arizona, Montana, New Jersey and South Dakota. So they got medical marijuana and recreational marijuana in South Dakota, which I thought for a long time, I’ve been saying for a long time, Nebraska will be the very, very last state to legalize marijuana and it will be after Puerto Rico is a state. So watch for that and now South Dakota has just proved me, right? Because South Dakota they’re very hostile to this stuff, but the voter [crosstalk 00:08:42]-

Kit O’Connell:
Montana?

Matt Baum:
-Yeah, I mean it blows my… Actually Montana we’ll see, from what I understand, that’s going to be on the ballot there soon too. So we’ll see. It’s the people that are coming out and voting for this. We listened to what a lot of officials say and look at laws. They’re trying to put on things to hold cannabis back, hold Hemp back. But then whenever it goes to the ballot, guess what? It gets voted in. The only reason it wasn’t on the ballot in Nebraska it’s because our governor said, there’s a problem with the paperwork. Try again next time and then ran around in circles so they couldn’t catch him because we were basically saying, what is the problem with the paperwork? Tell us they wouldn’t answer until it was too late and so it didn’t make the ballot and just like you said, kit, when polled in Nebraska, 74%, 74% of the population said, yeah I’m fine with it. It does not bother me at all.

Election 2020 shows cannabis popular in ‘red’ states too

Desiree Kane:
There also not a governor that can avoid in States like the Dakotas or any of the bread basket States, the big agriculture industry that comes with it. So the farmer, I think we can expect the farmers to be a little more mobilized around it and that’s why you have governor Noem in North Dakota, doesn’t want it driven through or whatever. But there are Hemp farmers who are being locked out of a crop and at the end of the day, that’s the constituency base that rules those States, right? So in the best interest of the farmers is to get on board and that will inevitably shift the politics of the governorship.

Matt Baum:
Oh definitely, and if you look at that list of States, almost all of them barring New Jersey really are well in Arizona maybe are agricultural States. So this States know where their bread is buttered. Nebraska is one where we have gently said, well we want to look into what it’s like growing Hemp and they’ve been very wishy-washy about it because the farmers want it. But like you said, you have governors who have to run on their constituency and they are terrified that their constituency will look at them and say, “Oh you’re a hippie and you like smoking weed now, got it.” We’re going to vote for this crazy person. That’s going to tell us it’s a sin or whatever. So-

Desiree Kane:
The supreme court recently resolved that issue where the electoral college didn’t have to vote the will of their constituency base. So moving forward, your vote is going to matter in a way that it hasn’t been before really and so it will become increasingly important to vote when you have these opportunities, because it can change American politics if we wanted to, we just have to actually organize around that.

Matt Baum:
Definitely. I also think it’s hilarious that a lot of these States you have very hard line, not just anti-cannabis, but just anti-drugs all across the board. Candidates who now have to look at the people that voted for this and go, “Oh, okay well, I guess that changes things a little bit and maybe I have to loosen up on some ideas of my own.” So-

Drew De Los Santos:
I mean, I think it’s like, it’s become undeniable of the various benefits of legalizing cannabis and legalizing Hemp and making sure that they get those regulations out quickly I think because in Texas, like right when all of the other States legalized cannabis and marijuana, one of the state senators, or state representatives in San Antonio, he put down a bill to legalize it here in Texas stating that, because of Corona virus, there’s a $4.6 billion budget hole that we’re going to have to deal with next year and the years to come. So it’s like, here’s an easy solution that doesn’t involve raising people’s taxes, you know add another revenue stream and it’s like, there’s only so many times that you can ignore that before it’s just like glaringly obvious.

Matt Baum:
It’s funny because we voted for gambling here, but we couldn’t vote for cannabis and I know don’t get me wrong, cannabis has ruined far more lives than gambling has in this country. We all know that to be true. So it’s absolutely ridiculous.

Drew De Los Santos:
Speaking of the records, one thing that was cool that happened in Arizona was as soon as it was voted in one of the district attorney in Arizona’s largest County started dropping the charges for people like immediately. So they immediately started dropping marijuana charges for folks there, [crosstalk 00:13:27]. which I thought was great.

Matt Baum:
That’s even more important. Definitely like, that’s the even larger side of this is when you start legalizing it for adult usage, you have to look at all these ridiculous cases and overcrowded prisons and overcrowded courtrooms and just get rid of this garbage, get rid of it. So we can focus on real issues, real crime, real problems, not the guy that had an ounce in his pocket when he got pulled over for doing five miles over the speed limit or something. So I’m really interested to see where that goes.

Kit O’Connell:
It has to be said too, they’ve done studies now consistently that showing that there’s a racial disparity when it comes to arrests around drugs and one of the problems that we’re seeing is that that racial disparity does not disappear even under most forms of legalization, “legalization.”

Kit O’Connell:
There’s always still ways that you can break the law in a legal state. You could sell weed without a permit or you can have too much of it or all kinds of things can happen and they’re showing that it’s still a disparity that black people and people of color are arrested more even though when they do studies in drug use, it’s the same that white people and people of color use drugs at the same where even white people use them more depending on the drug. So we need to make sure that we’re expunging cases and we’re making sure that there’s an accessible and like a level playing field under whatever we call legalization.

Matt Baum:
Definitely. So what happened in Texas? Tell me Texas people, Drew and Kit are both Texans. What happened? I thought this was supposed to be on the bill. I thought it was supposed to pass. I thought you guys were going to flip blue. You both promised me it was going to happen.

Kit O’Connell:
[inaudible 00:15:15] We always say that We’re going to flip blue.

Drew De Los Santos:
Maybe if it had been on the ballot, we would know but I think it always gets caught up like marijuana legalization bills always get caught up like in the Senate committees or they never leave the committees and I think our governor hasn’t been very willing to sign it, even if it does go through, but maybe Kit you can speak more to that.

Kit O’Connell:
Well, that’s one of the things that we’re seeing is it, we talked about how the people tend to support legalization, but the politicians don’t always. That’s definitely the case here in Texas and Hemp it’s very distinct on the whole. They’ve passed a very pretty broad, you know they nationally legalized Hemp in 2018, but here in Texas, the policy is pretty broad. They did try to ban smoke able Hemp, but even that got overturned by our court and least temporarily people can smoke hemp here again. Yeah so the populace wants it, the politicians are resistant, but Hemp is supported. It’s interesting that we talk about this a lot. There are two forms of the same plant they’re growing in very different ways, but they are at the base the same plant and it’s weird that politicians have accepted that it’s safe. As long as it doesn’t have THC in it. It’s, it’s very arbitrary amount of THC 0.03% is extremely low, so low that it’s even hard for people who are just making CBD products sometimes to keep it below that throughout the entire process.

Cannabis after election 2020

Kit O’Connell:
So we’ve created this arbitrary distinction, and now we’re talking about how we’re going to enforce it, or at least the politicians really want to enforce it. I hope to see that that is breaking slowly there’s talk that we may see a congressional vote on some form of marijuana legalization in 2021. I don’t know if we’ll see enough to get it through both parts of Congress, but we probably will see a vote on it. Biden does seem like he supports medical marijuana and he supports the States, making their decisions on recreational. That’s based on his platform. Obviously you’ve seen presidents change once they actually get into office, but based on his platform, he wants to see less jail time for people for possession in general, he wants to see a medical marijuana nationally passed and he wants the States to make up their mind recreationally. That’s a pretty good if we could get there, that’s pretty good.

Matt Baum:
I mean, we’re almost there 36 States. We have 36 States that have either enacted or voted to enact medical marijuana and then we have 15 States where adult usage is totally fine. So we’re way past halfway there. I can’t do that math but that seems like it’s close to 50, you know?

Kit O’Connell:
We’re even at the point where… One of the things I thought was interesting that started recently was there was some proposal. I saw this in Hemp Industry Daily. So I’ll give them a shout out, that we’re starting to see so many States legalize that theoretically those States could start working together and sort of forming blocks. Like right now we have the Oregon cannabis industry and the Washington cannabis industry and each state is in a silo. But there’s enough neighboring States that have all legalized. They could start actually working together and your dispensary in Portland could be selling the best stuff from Washington state. I’m sure there’s pros and cons of that

Matt Baum:
You got a conference just like college football. [crosstalk 00:18:53] You’ve got conferences, all of a sudden.

Kit O’Connell:
I think there’s a lot of interesting potential. The more that’s starts happening, the less it starts to live viable for the country to keep it illegal at all.

Why cannabis matters to hemp

Matt Baum:
Now I know people that listen to the show and I’ve had a couple of comments come at me whenever I do a podcast where we start talking about marijuana or THC related stuff and they say, I thought this supposed to be a Hemp show. Why are we talking about marijuana? So why are we all sitting here talking about marijuana when we are the Ministry of Hemp? Why is that?

Drew De Los Santos:
Well, I think that Hemp has helped to show an economic opportunity for the plant and it’s just like, there’s so much business that’s it just comes along with opportunity for people and not controlling a plant. Like these things are connected, not controlling business, not controlling what individuals do, when it doesn’t harm anybody else and it hasn’t been proven to harm anybody. Then the other thing about it is that it’s related because people still get arrested for Hemp. Like you were mentioning people can’t drive through South Dakota and people get arrested here in Texas for Hemp, even though it’s legal. So if marijuana was legal, that problem would go away and it would be time that wasn’t wasted money that wasn’t wasted going through this arbitrary legal process.

Matt Baum:
I just totally tricked Drew into saying exactly what I wanted to hear. That was perfect.

Drew De Los Santos:
Hey, that’s my opinion.

Matt Baum:
No, but I don’t disagree at all. I think we’re at a point now in the United States, where as bizarre as this sounds, I would argue that marijuana is probably less regulated, not regulated, but is probably easier to gain legally and work with legally than Hemp is in a lot of States. And that is preposterously stupid. Just inane. If we’re afraid of THC fine, let’s be afraid of THC, but the United States has shown we’re not. We’re not scared of it. When you put on the ballot, we’re going to vote for it. So it’s time to stop pretending like one, there is some issue with 0.03 THC in Hemp that makes it perfectly safe and okay, we can raise that number. We could raise it to 10% and you still wouldn’t even be coming anywhere near the good stuff, if you will. You know what I mean?

Matt Baum:
And it’s so limited right now. I just did a wonderful interview with a woman. That’s going to… I don’t know if it’s going to be next week or the week after that was talking about Hemp plastic and one of the reasons that’s holding things back like Hemp fibers and Hemp plastics is because big business doesn’t know what to do yet. They’re looking at marijuana being legalized and going, well their safe money there and we know we can do that. We can take credit card payments for it now in a lot of States where this has been approved and whatnot. Banking is becoming easier for marijuana than Hemp and that is ridiculous. That makes no sense to me. Does anyone have any thoughts on why we’re still having to talk about this at this point 36 States voted for medical marijuana, 15 it’s totally legal, but Hemp is still having trouble and it was legalized by the farm bill. Why are we still talking about this?

Kit O’Connell:
One problem is just like, we don’t want to get into the details on this show, but there has to so much just like divisiveness and politics, even though sometimes there’s been bills proposed to fix some of the issues with Hemp that’s left behind in the Hemp industry. There just hasn’t been the time or the energy or they’re being distracted by other things. It’s hard to get it on the agenda. Hard to get a lot of things on the agenda and Hemp is included in that list right now unfortunately.

Kit O’Connell:
Even though some people do want to fix it, even Mitch McConnell has shown that he has said he wants to fix some of the holes that were left behind by the 2018 farm bill legalization of Hemp, but it was just too much [inaudible 00:23:00] and there’s too much going on as we all very well know to let that in [inaudible 00:23:05] I think one problem too is just this like we do have this patchwork of laws. They still don’t have a FDA regulation. We still don’t have a USDA regulations that everybody can agree on and all of that’s holding the industry back too, and it’s even still this sort of like some States do it this way. Some States do it that way and I’m sure, you know the banking industry wants to come in and do a one way across the country and that’s still not possible for Hemp.

Matt Baum:
Yeah. Banking and insurance, both especially crop insurance. That’s one of the things with a lot of the farmers that I’ve talked to. Crop insurance is such a nightmare because it’s different from state to state to state. Now that is true also with corn and soybeans, but corn and soybeans are not limited other way in other States are [fightyard 00:23:53] traded as commodities and Hemp is not. So it’s little things like that. It’s easy for us to say “we did it, we voted, we won, we’re legalizing marijuana and we’re fighting for Hemp.” But that fight is not over. It’s nowhere near over and we need to keep telling the people in power.

Matt Baum:
We want this and we don’t just want this because one, we want to get high. That’s it man. Or we’re hippies and we like wearing Hemp clothes. No, we want it because it’s important for our farmers. It’s important for business revenues. Like Drew said, it is important to free up frivolous lawsuits and get people out of prison that should not be there and it’s important for our own wellbeing. There’s so many pluses to this and we can’t stop fighting yet. I think that’s the most important thing to remember. Let’s not just say, “we did it, we got rid of Trump, all our problems are gone. All of them.” No, they’re not.

The history & future of cannabis in the U.S.

Desiree Kane:
Well, I think that there’s honestly a debt to be paid on a national level when it comes to cannabis. Because look at the history, cannabis was first called Indian Hemp and it came illegal when there were floods of Mexican, quote unquote Mexican immigrants like migrating in. So it’s part of a vast criminalization mechanism that is built into the system. So when you ask and I liked Drew’s answer about why it’s important with marijuana, with THC, with Hemp, with all of these things, there’s so much that has gone into why that plant is illegal and it is very racially motivated against black and Brown people. So we have to actively combat that as we as a nation are going through this moment of racial equity. Some moments are happening and that the fight around cannabis is a frontline in that way.

Matt Baum:
One of the really cool things that I’ve seen in Nebraska, just like every other state, we have definitely jerked our native American people around and now they’ve said, “well, we’re going to start growing marijuana and Hemp because it’s our land and you guys don’t want to patrol it, you don’t want to take care of it, you say it’s not part of the United States, so there you go.” And they are, and they’re doing a fantastic job and our governor hates it, and I love that he hates it. You jerks are the reason that they are living where they’re living. Okay. So now we can’t get mad and decide, wait a minute. We don’t like what you’re doing on the land that we said as yours. That isn’t really good for farming other stuff, but that which we’ll do very well there, by the way, and make you a ton of money. Now we’re upset.

Desiree Kane:
I really like what NuWu is doing in Las Vegas. It’s where I grew up. Oh my goodness. It’s beautiful to see native people with economic empowerment that is fueled by a plant that is within the natural order.

Matt Baum:
Right. Not fueled by casinos, which is just-

Desiree Kane:
[inaudible 00:27:24] Around casinos and all of that. But with cannabis, you know it’s another way that you can treat many things. As we know, there are multiple benefits for consuming cannabis of all varieties.

Matt Baum:
Absolutely.

Kit O’Connell:
Desiree can you introduce what NuWu is real quick? There’s a lot of people listening. Won’t know what that is.

Desiree Kane:
Yeah. NuWu I call it the pot grocery store, but it’s a beautiful marijuana dispensary in Las Vegas that is run by the Paiute people native to Las Vegas, who, you know Las Vegas is built upon their ancestral bones. Every time you go swimming there, guess who’s underneath your pool.

Matt Baum:
Yeah. But we like to say, “nah, it’s just a desert. They came out to this desert in the middle of nowhere and we built a strip and now it’s beautiful and gorgeous and there’s famous people in restaurant.” And like, yeah there was something there before you jackasses and it wasn’t just sand. So-

Desiree Kane:
Oh, there’s also like a beautiful Springs there that that tribe has really fought to preserve also.

Matt Baum:
This is awesome and this has been a great discussion and I think again, we go into speaking about marijuana THC, because it is the same plant at the end of the day. It’s the same plant and any legislation that is good for marijuana is even better for Hemp because it erodes that case. That’s out there and saying, “well, we don’t know and it might be a little scary and maybe we shouldn’t feed it to animals and if kids eat the seeds, what’ll happen.” Like it’s time to settle down. It’s time to listen to the American public that has voted and said, we want this and we’re going to see more and more States fall and it is going to be legal. I think it is a foregone conclusion and it wouldn’t surprise me in the next two years. We don’t even have to talk about this garbage anymore and we can laugh about it. Remember that? That was ridiculous. That’s where I hope we end up guys. Thank you so much. Thank you for joining me. This was fantastic.

Drew De Los Santos:
Thanks Matt. I was just going to say one thing real quick, is that another reason it’s important is because if it’s one that we all Agree on, like we should hold on to one good thing that people from all walks of life can agree on. We need that right now.

Matt Baum:
Right. Because it seems like there’s not a lot ofs we do agree this country at the moment. So.

Kit O’Connell:
I think in our ideal world, what would I see for the future? You know we are still going to have distinct industries. It’s not like Hemp is going to disappear if we legalize marijuana, because they are so different. I hope we will invest more in fiber Hemp and in all the ways we can use Hemp, if we get rid of all these like you said, just all these distinctions, if we’re allowed to explore the whole plant, but I think it’ll be better for everybody.

Matt Baum:
Most definitely because we’re not going to, in a position where it’s like, okay, so marijuana is legalized. Let’s make cattle feed out of it. No, that is where Hemp will come in. You know, that that fibers woods, plastics, cardboard’s, that is where Hemp is going to come in and it’s going to come in huge and there’s just no way to stop it. It’s just a matter of catching up, education, that’s what we’re here for help you guys and we just have to keep screaming in our leaders and letting them know we want it fights not over. That’s a most important thing to remember big wins in this election, but the fight is not over.

Kit O’Connell:
I agree completely.

Final thoughts from Matt

Matt Baum:
I hope you dug this little break from our usual format, and I hope it was informative too and I hope you understand that. Yes, just because things have changed and we will have a new White House and a lot of people have new governors and senators and congressmen. We’ve still got to stay on them. We’ve still got to let them know we want cannabis legislation in this country, because it is better for everyone from the buyer to the farmer to keep fighting the good fight out there guys and don’t forget, we hear the Ministry of Hemp think that an accessible world is a better world for everyone. So you can find a complete written transcription of this episode in the show notes for this post at MinistryofHemp.com

Matt Baum:
That brings us to the end of this episode, but maybe you have some questions about legislation in your state or who you need to talk to, to help fight the good fight, or maybe you just have some Hemp questions. That’s totally cool and we would love to hear from you. You can call us at (402) 819-6417 and leave your Hemp question on our hotline. We, perhaps this panel we had today, we’ll answer it right here on one of our Q and A shows, or you can also send an MP3 question to me, Matt@MinistryofHemp.com just make sure that your message is in MP3 form so we can play it on the show and be sure to leave your name too so we know who we’re addressing and if you want to read more about this subject, head over to MinistryofHemp.com we have a fantastic story.

Matt Baum:
Hemp after election 2020 legalizing cannabis will make Hemp thrive. It’s one of our featured stories right now, and it really drills down into a lot of these subjects, really informative stuff. If you enjoy informative stuff like that, follow us on all our social medias @ministryofhemp/ministryofhemp and if you want to support us and help us get more of this information out there and push more Hemp education, head to patrion.com/ministryofhemp and you can become a Ministry of Hemp insider. We’ll have a link right in the show notes for this episode, you can click on and when you do it, any amount that you donate to help us out, first of all, I can’t stress how much it helps, but any amount you donate makes you an insider. It gets you access to early stories to podcast extras and all kinds of other cool stuff we’re doing.

Matt Baum:
But first and foremost, it helps us so much. Also, if you dig what you hear, do me a favor rate this podcast, give us a star or even a short written review, because it’s seriously, it helps so much to push us up in search algorithms to get this show in front of people that are looking for more information on Hemp. All right, I can go on about this all day long but I got stuff I got to do. So I’m going to get out of here and I like to sign off the same way every time by saying, remember to take care of yourself, take care of others and make good decisions. Will you, this is Matt Baum with the Ministry of Hemp signing off.

The post Cannabis Legalization & Hemp After The Election (Ministry of Hemp Podcast) appeared first on Ministry of Hemp.

In episode 63 of the Ministry of Hemp podcast, our host Matt Baum talks about biodegradable hemp plastic with Carolyn Virostek, a distributor for Exhemplarylife.com.

Carolyn talks about the benefits of biodegradable hemp plastic vs other plastics. Some plastics that creators claim are more environmentally friendly actually break down into microplastics. The conversation covers single-use plastics like the hemp straws and how hemp and other plants like flax can be used for much more than making smoothies. Matt also mentions this Stanford University report on plastic straws at the beginning of the episode.

About Exhemplary Life

Exhemplary Life was created out of a desire to advocate for hemp and products made from this indigenous plant. The hemp flowers, seeds, and stalks can make many products such as clothing, shoes, accessories made with Hemp fibers for more natural and eco-friendly products. The oils of the plant can be used for food and extracts as a huge health benefit of our bodies Endocannabinoid System.

Part of the advocacy is in educating people about the needs and health benefits of hemp products as well as its eco-friendly sustainability. While educating people about the benefits of hemp people would ask us where they could get quality hemp products. Their plan is to provide more products made from hemp as the industry develops new items. Since the U.S. has finally made hemp legal to grow and cultivate we will see more and more hemp goods being made available. At first, they’ve focused on providing high-quality clothing, salves, lotions, extracts, oils and foods with more products added over time.

You’ve got hemp questions? We’ve got hemp answers!

Send us your hemp questions and you might hear them answered on one of our Hemp Q&A episodes. Send your written questions to us on Twitter, Facebook, matt@ministryofhemp.com, or call us and leave a message at 402-819-6417. Keep in mind, this phone number is for hemp questions only and any other inquiries for the Ministry of Hemp should be sent to info@ministryofhemp.com

Subscribe to our show!

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Become a Ministry of Hemp Insider and help spread the good word!

If you believe hemp can change the world then help us spread the word! Become a Ministry of Hemp Insider when you donate any amount on our Patreon page!

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Hemp Straws And The Sustainability Of Hemp: Complete episode transcript

Below you’ll find the complete transcript of episode 63 of the Ministry of Hemp podcast, “Hemp Straws And The Sustainability Of Hemp”:

Matt Baum:
I’m Matt Baum, and this is the Ministry of Hemp podcast, brought to you by ministryofhemp.com, America’s leading advocate for hemp and hemp education. Welcome back to the Ministry of Hemp podcast. And I know we’ve been talking about hemp plastic a lot on the show, but there’s been a lot coming out about hemp plastic, and bio-plastics, that’s really exciting, today on the show we’re going to talk about some new completely biodegradable hemp plastics that are out there that hopefully are going to take the place of a lot of single use plastics on the market right now. But before we get to that, let’s talk about straws for a second.

Matt Baum:
Did you know that almost 500 million straws are used a day in the United States, and of those 500 million I’m going to say close to a 100% only get used once and then thrown away. Now this plastic finds its way into the ocean, into our landfills all over the place. And it’s not good for you. It’s not good for animals. It’s not good for the planet. It’s not good for anyone.

Matt Baum:
And while 500 million straws can sound like a crazy, huge number. And it is, that makes up for less than 1% of plastic pollution, which is sheer insanity. This information is coming from an article from stanford.edu, and I’ll have a link to it in the show notes, but it blows my mind. Now the good news is, there are States like Washington that have banned plastic straws. McDonald’s is moving away from plastic straws, Starbucks also did the same thing this year, and look, I don’t think paper straws are the answer either because they’re awful.

Matt Baum:
They just melt, and cutting down trees to make paper straws is not an answer. Now, there are people out there making a completely biodegradable hemp plastic. And today we start off talking about straws. My conversation today is with, Carolyn Virostek. She’s the distributor for exhemplarylife.com, who deals in all cool hemp products, including hemp straws.

Matt Baum:
And we just happen to give some away on our Instagram and at the end of the show, stay tuned because I get to reveal the winners on the end of the show. Super fun. Right? And I’m going to have a coupon code for you guys for 25% off your purchase at exhemplarylife.com. So, stay tuned for the end of the show for all of that, but first here’s my conversation with Carolyn about hemp plastic, hemp straws, and how we can make a more responsible and biodegradable plant-based plastic.

Hemp straws and the problem of plastic pollution

Matt Baum:
Carolyn, before we get into it, we’re going to talk about, I don’t even know what to call it quite honestly. You sent me these straws, and I looked at them and I said, “These look like plastic. They feel like plastic, when I drink out of them it feels like plastic in my mouth, but it’s not plastic. What am I holding here? What did I drink through the other day?”

Carolyn Virostek:
They absolutely do look like plastic. They feel like it, they don’t hold up as long as plastic, which is what the purpose of them is, because we don’t want them to last a 100-1000 years, our environment and our animals don’t need that. They are hemp-based product made out of hemp biomass. And then, we have two other products that we don’t actually divulge it’s proprietary, but none of it is PLA, which is something that a lot of plastics end up using if they’re trying to be compostable or biodegradable.

Carolyn Virostek:
Especially in the hemp industry, or really in a lot of the plastic industry where they’re trying to come up with alternative to fossil fuel plastics. They will use PLAs, sometimes a PHA, but the PLAs are the biggest ones, which, I don’t want to sound like I’m negative against PLAs, they’re great because they are a plant base, but they still have their issues with how they break down, how they need to be composted and broken down in the right environment.

Matt Baum:
Sure. So, real quick, can I ask you, what is a PLA? I have no idea, or a PLH? No clue.

Carolyn Virostek:
It’s an organic based polylactic acid, that is used as a binder within plastics as we call them. And plastic really is a term really basically, of anything that has the malleability that we can use in different products where it’s going to hold up under different circumstances. We have hard plastic, soft plastic, et cetera, but PLA is going to be an organic compound that is used as a binding agent.

Matt Baum:
Same with PLH?

Carolyn Virostek:
Right. A lot of times it’s made out of corn starch, sugar cane, and now they’re even starting to make it out of other products too, even coconut shells. So PLAs can be made from many different products.

Matt Baum:
But in these PLA products, they still have plastic in them. They’re still petroleum-based plastics that these are incorporated into?

Carolyn Virostek:
No. That’s the difference, PLAs won’t have the petroleum base. It is an advantage to use the PLAs, because we’re not using the petroleum-base, because that’s a completely different animal. And that’s what we’re trying to get away from, because petroleum-based takes so much more energy to produce, actually just to extract from the earth, to refine it and then produce it.

Carolyn Virostek:
That in itself is toxic to the environment as well as the actual product. And then what do you do with that product when you’re done with it? After drinking that water bottle that you just had for maybe an hour, what are you going to do with it? And what’s going to happen to it? Or you throw it in the garbage and it’s there for 1000 years.

Matt Baum:
Right. Aliens, discover it after human society has been wiped from the earth and go, “Well, I wonder what they did with this trash.”

Carolyn Virostek:
Right. Why did they make these? What’s this purposed for? It really does make you think about, “Well, do we really need all these plastics all the time? And how long is it going to be in our environment?” And we’re finding that it’s not good, that we are finding huge portions of it on islands where humans have not even inhabited, but here these plastics are washing up on shores.

Matt Baum:
Yeah. And like rafts of plastic that gather in the middle of the ocean and stuff, it’s insane, it’s absolutely insane.

Carolyn Virostek:
It is. And we just keep making more and more plastic, because the oil industry puts a lot of money into it and they want to keep it going.

Matt Baum:
It’s cheap too. So why not?

Carolyn Virostek:
It’s very cheap according to them. Now that brings into another conversation I have, we can say, “Yeah, it’s cheap, plastics are cheap.” And that’s the comparison between our straws, is that, our straws are more expensive than plastic. And that’s one of the issues that people have with it. And my comment as well, “You can either pay for it now, or you can pay for it later.”

Carolyn Virostek:
Because when you use plastics that are oil-based, first of all, you do pay for it. In that you’re extracting a finite material from the earth. We can’t make more of that. Whereas hemp, we can grow it every couple of months, every few months we’ve got a whole new crop.

Matt Baum:
Exactly.

Carolyn Virostek:
And it also is great for the environment. We’re not causing more toxicity by growing hemp, whereas oil, how it’s even processed and refined that takes toxicity, puts toxic waste into the environment. So right then and there, we do want to look at the cost to the environment, just in bringing it to the market. And then when we have a product just like in plastics, in our bottles or our hemp straws, one, we find it out in the rivers or out in the creeks or wherever we are.

Matt Baum:
Or in the bellies of dead animals even.

Carolyn Virostek:
Exactly, in the ocean, and then we’re losing animals because they’re eating it. It goes back to where we find the material, we have to go and get it. You’ve got to bring it in from the trash that it is, the pollution that it is. Then we have to find a way to process it. Process it into a new material to make something new.

Carolyn Virostek:
If we do that, a lot of times, many countries still burn all their plastics. So we’re increasing the toxic waste into the environment by burning it. But for them, it’s a lot easier to be able to just burn it than to actually process it into something new.

Matt Baum:
It’s cheap, right?

Carolyn Virostek:
That’s what they say, it’s cheap.

Matt Baum:
You can put those blinders on and just say, “Well, yeah, but it’s less expensive, and it does the job. And I don’t have to think about it when it gets thrown away.” But that’s not the case. Just like you said, we are pulling oil out of the earth. We are then doing something toxic to the environment to create this plastic straw that you use one time, you literally use one time and then you throw it away. And then the earth pays for it for 1000 damn years.

The problem with PLAs

Matt Baum:
We know we’re trying to get away from that, and PLH is a step better, but it’s not as good as what’s being used in these hemp straws. Now, what is the difference? You said PLH, doesn’t quite break down the same basically. It’s less durable, or it’s more durable, before we get into what’s in the hemp straws, What is the problem with PLAs?

Carolyn Virostek:
The problem with that is, and even some chemists are still debating on what it is, as far as, are PLAs biodegradable, or are they just degradable?

Matt Baum:
So we don’t even know?

Carolyn:
There’s debate, you can get one scientist. “Well, no, it’s absolutely biodegradable.” And another one will go, “It breaks down, but it’s not really biodegradable.” If we even look at that, if I can just come up with a biodegradable versus compostable, that’s the other thing, if something is deemed certified compostable, it’s also biodegradable, but something that’s biodegradable is not compostable.

Matt Baum:
Yes. Not all things that are biodegradable are compostable, but all things that are compostable are biodegradable?

Carolyn Virostek:
Right. And with the PLAs, they do debate on that. And we can say it does degrade, but it just takes longer. So PLAs can biodegrade in, as I’ve seen it as short as four years, but the average is about 80 years. So again, it will break down and it doesn’t have the toxic residue that an oil-based plastic will, if it were to break down, but it still has a cost to the environment, because these PLAs as a plastic, quote-unquote, “Break down into smaller finer materials, which then become microplastics.”

Carolyn Virostek:
And those microplastics are what we’re finding in the billions in the oceans and our creeks, and even in the glaciers, and even at the top of the mountains where it’s actually raining and snowing down in those particles, they’re such fine particles. We do find plastic bottles, plastic bags, in the stomachs of the sea life.

Carolyn Virostek:
But we’re also finding these microplastics in the smaller forms. They can’t eat a big bottle, but they’re still eating these microplastics thinking that they’re food, and they’re either dying from it or they’re carrying it on to us. So even our urine, they’re finding huge amounts of microplastics in our system.

Matt Baum:
So does it break down? Yes. But it breaks down just into really small plastic. It doesn’t break down into something that is combustible even, or compostable. It’s just really, really little pieces. And that’s not an answer either. We don’t want that.

Carolyn Virostek:
Right. With compostable, something that’s compostable, that’s going to break down and may compost. Then we can use that, that’s something usable, but when it just breaks down into microplastics, into smaller parts of it, it’s not usable and it’s not ideal.

Matt Baum:
And still dangerous.

Carolyn Virostek:
It’s still dangerous. I don’t want to make it out to be this horrible thing, because it’s a lot better than using the fossil fuels, but we still have to move a little further along to make it the right product.

Hemp straws & how they’re made

Matt Baum:
So tell me about the hemp straws then. What are these made of, and how does something that feels so completely plastic, both in your mouth and in your hand and does the job, how is it completely compostable?

Carolyn Virostek:
Well, the biggest thing is the plant, hemp. You and I both are advocates of the hemp plant.

Matt Baum:
Absolutely, it’s why we are here.

Carolyn Virostek:
Because, it can do so much for us. How many plants do we know that you could use the seeds, the fiber and the pulp, and make so many products? One of the big taglines is that, hemp can make 25,000 products. Well, that’s actually a disservice. I think it can make a lot more than 25,000 products.

Matt Baum:
Oh yeah. Totally agree.

Carolyn Virostek:
Hemp is a cellulose based product as a plant, it has cellulose just like sugar, just like the sugar cane would, even has cellulose. These are products that are used in quote-unquote “Plastics to make material.” Because, cellulose is the binding agent. It helps to support that. And as you look at hemp, the stalks and the biomass, it’s very fibrous, it’s much more fibers than wood, and that’s what gives us its strength too.

Carolyn Virostek:
If we can make hemp into say, a fine powder, and compress it under heat with some other elements that are plant-based too, is what we use. Those can actually form a very strong material in a very simple way. It can be complicated, but then it can also be very simplified. You can watch YouTube videos, where people make this in their kitchen, where they take cornstarch and water, heat it up and they make a little plastic out of it. So, hemp that’s what we’re doing also, is we’re taking hemp and making it very fine powder, like a starch and adding other materials to help bind it. And then it gets heated up and formed into straws.

Matt Baum:
So, it literally melts basically, and the cellulose works with the other binders and holds it together. And at that point you can form it just like plastic? You put it around a dowel and it becomes a straw?

Carolyn Virostek:
Exactly. Exactly. They do make them into little pellets, just like they do with the plastic, so that they can put it into the extruder machines, so they don’t have to adapt the machines for the product, but the product gets adapted for the machines. With that, then the pellets are made very small, just so they can be added to the machine. And then they get melted within that process, going through the extruder and that’s what helps to make them, now there are many products that can be made out of it too. And that’s in the futures bags, cups, you name it.

Matt Baum:
Sure. Sure. Now let me ask you, is clear a problem. Because I’ve heard in hemp plastics clear is very difficult, because of the nature of the plant green and brown, super easy?

Carolyn Virostek:
Exactly, super easy.

Matt Baum:
But clear seems to be a problem still?

Carolyn Virostek:
Yeah. Yeah. You can’t really do a clear straw, but you can do an opaque straw or we do add colors and the colors that we add are standard colors that we are able to use in the industry that are, I’m not gonna say completely plant-based natural, but they are more natural. They are able to use them to color it into any color that you need. But people do like the natural color as a hemp straw though.

Matt Baum:
Yeah. It makes sense that it’s green. It comes from hemp. I like it. It differentiates it, if nothing else. Let me ask, I take my hemp straw, I drink my drink, I throw my hemp straw away or I compost it. I actually have a compost pile in my backyard. Take it out, throw in the compost pile. How long before it’s gone?

Carolyn Virostek:
Well, it depends on your compost really, because anytime you… I would love to say that every single one’s going to compost in a certain time, but it’s going to be different. In fact, industrial composting is going to be the fastest and the best because they’re going to control the oxygen in there. They’re going to control the heat and even the microbes and all the little critters that are going to go in there and eat it up to make it into compost. How that’s going to be in your compost, is going to vary. How’s it going to change from day to day, let alone month to month, with all the different seasons.

Matt Baum:
Sure. So, let’s say industrial compost, a best case scenario?

Carolyn Virostek:
We’ve seen them biodegrade completely in 120 days.

Matt Baum:
That’s amazing. That’s like paper.

Carolyn Virostek:
Yeah. When we look at the compost, there’s really nothing that’s in there. There’s no residue. That’s the other great thing, is that a lot of times you will find some residue from that because of some of the materials that they use gunks up the systems, and facilities that are compostable facilities are very picky about what they allow in, because it will mess up their whole system.

Carolyn Virostek:
And so, you have to be certified through the BPI world compostable and biodegradable. They will give you certifications on your product, which we do have. In fact, here in Pittsburgh, we have a company that does do the compost, and they actually go around to the restaurants and bring in all their compostable material, and they found our straws and they contacted us because they said, “Are you guys really compostable? Can you share that with me?” And I said, “Yes, it is.” And gave him the information.

Carolyn Virostek:
Because he said, “Otherwise we have to pull it out.” Because it’ll just gunk up the system. I said, “No, you really will not have an issue with it.” And that’s something that you can’t say about every product that is a PLA, and even PLAs if you send them in the landfill, people think, “Oh, we’re in the landfill, if it’s biodegradable it will breakdown.” Actually it won’t, because landfills seal them up and you have no oxygen, without oxygen it’s not going to break down, and it can actually create more methane gas. It’s same as a plastic, if it’s trying to break down in that environment, because it’s not the appropriate environment.

Matt Baum:
So, I say it’s like for a month and we say no more food garbage, your food garbage goes over here. And we’ll compost that because it’s so much methane builds up when you seal it and put it away in an airtight coffin. You’ve basically created a bomb, a methane bomb at that point. Is this different than other hemp plastics? Because, I’ve spoken to some people recently on the show and brought up that like, “Oh yeah, I just did an interview with some people about hemp plastic and stuff.”

Is hemp plastic really sustainable?

Matt Baum:
And a couple of them are like, “Oh, hemp plastic? Huh. You know about that?” And I was like, “Well, I don’t follow. What do you mean?” And they’re like, “It’s a lot of hemp filler, and it’s still a lot of plastic.” Is this different than that? Have you encountered that elsewhere? And are they lying to me? Because, I’ve bought some hemp plastic products and felt really good. Like, “It’s made of hemp plastic.” Does that mean that there are different levels of this, and you’ve got to watch out for it basically?

Carolyn Virostek:
Yeah. If you look at say the 3d printers, which is a lot of hemp plastic, which again, I think it’s great that they’re using hemp and they’re wanting to make things compostable and biodegradable. But a lot of them are going to be with a PLA or PHA, which is another one too, which is actually really good. I think it would be better if we did start using PHAs more than the PLAs, but they’re still not using that.

Carolyn Virostek:
But a lot of the 3d plastic filament, I’ve not been able to find one that does not have PLAs in there. Now, they do have different components even, or I should say substance, or where it might be 25% hemp, 40%, 60%. There’s very few companies that do anything to 90, to a 100%. Now there is a company that is in France and even in Canada, where they have really a much higher percentage of hemp in their plastic.

Carolyn Virostek:
Again, we use that term. But in their filaments, they do have a much better process that they’re using and they’re trying to break into the industry and they’re doing well with it, but there’s still very few companies that are doing that.

Matt Baum:
What can you look for? I’m just curious. Is there a question that you can ask? Is there something you can look for, when you see someone that is working with hemp plastic or some way? What do I ask them to make sure… I understand it’s good that they’re using any hemp as a filler, because less plastic better, but if it’s just a filler and there’s still plastic in it, or there’s these PLAs in it and whatnot, what is the question we should be asking to make sure that we’re getting responsibly made hemp plastic, that’s going to break down and it is compostable? Is it just as simple as saying, “Hey, is this compostable?”

Carolyn Virostek:
That’s one of the questions, yeah. “Is it compostable?” And how long does it take? And also, is it a PLA? If it’s a PLA, then we know that it’s going to break down into microplastics and it’s going to take longer for it to break down, and it’s not going to be compostable it’s biodegradable, but not compostable.

Matt Baum:
And they’re going to know, if I say the word, “Hey are their PLAs in this?” They’re going to go, “Oh, this guy knows what he’s talking about.”

Carolyn Virostek:
Well, they’re going to say, “Yeah, there are PLAs, but it’s compostable.” And that’s okay. Yeah, it is. I would much rather have a 25% hemp than a no hemp, and 25% with PLA than an oil based fossil fuel that they’re using.

Matt Baum:
Definitely.

Carolyn Virostek:
That would be one thing, “Are you using any fossil fuels?” Because some will still even use PLA with some fossil fuels to bind it up, to make a little bit stronger, but then we changed the compostable ability as well as the bio-degradability.

Matt Baum:
That’s exactly the subject that was brought up with the person I was speaking with, who I’m not going to name because they asked me not to, because they’re like, “I don’t want to mess up anyone else’s good thing.” And he’s like, “But a lot of these people that are working in hemp plastic now are literally just incorporating it into old fashion oil-based plastics and using it as a filler.” Which again, better but not the answer, not what we want.

Matt Baum:
The idea is to move to something closer to these hemp straws that like you said, “Reduce in to powder, you’re adding some…” And I’m not sure, I’m not even me to look for the scientific terms, what you add to make a bind, but you heat it up and boom, we have plastic. What is the future of this? Where does this go? Is this something that you… The straws I think are so important, because if you look at single waste plastic, that is the biggest form of plastic waste out there.

The future of hemp straws

Matt Baum:
It’s not children’s toys, or even industrial plastics, it’s single use plastic. So, obviously like you said, these are a little more expensive, but the idea behind it, is it’s more responsible. Are people responding to that? Are people excited about this? Are people willing to spend a little more? And do you think this is something that is going to catch on and start to get major plastic producers to pay attention?

Carolyn Virostek:
Absolutely. There’s an excitement about it, because of the property of hemp, as well as not having the PLAs. And it is more expensive. So it is something that we have to try to get them to understand, that you either pay for it now or pay for it later. You can either pay for the straws as a cheap component and then pay for it later in the processing of having to get it off the beaches and out of the waters, et cetera, or you pay a little bit more now and then that worry is less.

Carolyn Virostek:
We still have to be responsible in how we dispose them and how we compost them. But it’s something that, if it does end up in the ocean or in the waters, it’s going to break down and we don’t have to be so concerned about the toxic residue that it might leave behind.

Matt Baum:
Yeah. It’s perfect.

Carolyn Virostek:
It’s very exciting. We have a lot of people excited about it. I will say the environment right now with the pandemic, everything’s shut down. It’s cooled things off, but what it has done also is made people more excited about realizing we need to do something now, this is not something that we need to put off for five years or try to work it into the budget because again, we either pay for them now, or we pay for that cost later. And I think right now people are really excited about having something that they know is going to break down and is not going to linger in our environment for years and years.

Matt Baum:
Correct me if I’m wrong, but sounds it like, I would guess anyway, that the price is only high because there aren’t a lot of people making this stuff yet. And as more people get into the business of making hemp plastic, that price is going to come down. Is it just a matter of producers? Because it seems like every aspect of the hemp business at present, and not just at present, but in the last we’ll say four years, their biggest issue has been finding producers to do the work.

Matt Baum:
Basically, we’ve got farmers, that’ll grow it and that’s great. But what happens next? Whether it’s going to a place that’s going to extract CBD, or take out the fiber or grind the seeds, is this just another case of, “We just need more people doing this?”

Carolyn Virostek:
Yeah. And knowing how to do it. Absolutely, because even though we are farming a lot more hemp than we were even a year ago. And a lot of companies say we’ve got so much biomass that we don’t even have the buyers for it. What it is, is that they actually don’t have the equipment or the know-how, to process it the way that they want it to, and that machinery is millions and millions of dollars.

Carolyn Virostek:
They’re bringing it out, but we’re in the growing pains, of learning how to use this product and how to use it in the best way that we can environmentally and being able to process it without any waste too. Because, we really can’t use the entire plant. We just need to know how and have the proper equipment. So, we’re in a big learning curve right now, growing pains with that.

Matt Baum:
How far off do you think we are? And just call your shot. No, one’s going to hold you to this. No, one’s going to look at the podcast in five years and be like, “Nice call.” But how far off do you think we are before, I go to Starbucks and I get a hemp straw?

Carolyn Virostek:
I’m hoping a year to two years.

Matt Baum:
Wow. Really?

Carolyn Virostek:
Yeah. That’s absolutely my hope.

Matt Baum:
That’s awesome.

Carolyn Virostek:
I will say that we had really big clients on the list, until the pandemic shut everything down. Really big companies similar to Starbucks. So it’s on the cusp there. People are wanting and ready. It’s just now we’ve we need the economy to just support it too.

Matt Baum:
So we’ve got the machines, we know how to do it. We’ve got people growing it, now it’s just a matter of showing people. Not only is this the responsible thing to do, it’s the right thing to do. And it’s a cost-effective thing to do, if we put a little know-how into it and that’s basically it, that’s our biggest issue. Just getting them to try it more or less.

Growing hemp for sustainability

Carolyn Virostek:
Yeah. Yeah. And then it will come down to a point where we do need more farmers for that biomass, because one farm is not going to be able to supply the biomass for Starbucks.

Matt Baum:
Absolutely.

Carolyn Virostek:
That’s our hope, is that we have so much demand for it that we need more farmers to be able to supply that biomass.

Matt Baum:
It also seems like there’s a lot of farmers that went into this, with the CBD gold rush idea where like, “I’m going to grow hemp and sell to CBD weirdos, and they’re going to turn it into all kinds of fake drugs for hippies and I’m going to make money.” And then they went, “Oh, that market’s not quite there.”

Matt Baum:
And in the meantime, the fiber farmers weren’t as plentiful. Because again, it seems like they’re won as many, I want to say, industrial companies that were working in hemp fiber, is that part of the issue too? Just convincing people that like, “Hey, it’s not all CBD. We can grow this for fiber and seed as well?”

Carolyn Virostek:
It’s that as well as the machinery. In order to break the hemp down into the product that you need it for, whether it’s for clothing or for, quote-unquote “plastics.” It’s having the correct machinery to break it down. And that I think is what has slowed a lot of companies down into processing it. The hemp is the passion of mine. I really do think that we should be using it more. I feel I know maybe a half a percent of what we could know about the plant, but I think we’re still learning.

Matt Baum:
That’s the most exciting part though, right?

Carolyn Virostek:
Exactly.

Matt Baum:
It’s like, how many other plants out there that farmers in the United States, in Iowa, in Nebraska, in Kentucky, in Colorado are growing right now where we’re like, “Oh my God, there’s so much more we could do with this.” What can we learn about this? It’s like, if we found out, like, “Look at that corn, we can build skyscrapers out of it.” Who knew?

Carolyn Virostek:
Who knew we could refill a car out of the corn oil?

Matt Baum:
Right. It’s crazy.

Carolyn:
We can do it, but are we doing it? That’s the same thing with hemp. We can make all these products. Why aren’t we?

Matt Baum:
Exactly.

Carolyn Virostek:
One, it is the infrastructure is not there. Also, we still have regulations that limit what can be done, in some States they’re not allowed to use the biomass or the fibers or anything for animal bedding, even just simple as that, or animal feed.

Matt Baum:
Let alone animal feed. They won’t even let them lay around in it for a fair. Like, is the cow going to get stoned? Come on, it’s ridiculous.

Carolyn Virostek:
Those things just make you question like, “Really, why aren’t we using it more?” Just like flax, that’s a plant too that can be used, and my great, great grandfather brought it over from Ireland in the 1850s to Canada. And I didn’t realize this until a few years ago when I started looking at the hemp and then I realized that he actually wrote a book in Canada about flax and the importance of flax for the fiber, for clothing, for so many different things, for food. He had a big part in bringing flax over to North America, but we’re still not using flax even to the point where we could be. Hemp is the same thing.

Matt Baum:
We put it in smoothies, and that’s about it, because it helps in digestion. Right? You can do so much more with it. It’s crazy.

Carolyn Virostek:
With hemp, even making clothing and building materials, if you’ve seen hemp wood, there’s a company, Hemp Wood.

Matt Baum:
I just interviewed them. I just interviewed them on the show. They were fantastic.

Carolyn Virostek:
I love their wood. With Hempcrete, what I think we should be doing is, especially in California, Colorado, Oregon, with all these forest fires, we need to rebuild with hemp, because if you can put a blow torch on hempcrete, why aren’t we building-

Matt Baum:
Same with hemp wood. Hemp wood barely burns, it’s crazy.

Carolyn Virostek:
And they’re antibacterial, antimicrobial. Why aren’t we using this down in South when they’ve got all these floods and hurricanes, because if it gets wet, all you got to do is bring in a dehumidifier and let it dry out.

Matt Baum:
Right. And you are good to go.

Carolyn Virostek:
Whereas now you got to tear down the whole structure because it turns to mold and mildew within three days.

Matt Baum:
Oh, but there’s a whole cottage industry for that too. So they might not be happy about losing their jobs.

Carolyn Virostek:
Exactly. And that’s why the fossil fuel industry pays $125 million a year to lobby, to keep their oils in the plastic industry. It’s just the same thing with everything else. I think we’re going to be moving towards that more and more, building materials, clothing, containers, furniture, I really hope that we can.

Matt Baum:
It’s unavoidable, because oil is going to get more and more expensive and more and more bizarre. And the ways we have to find it, we’re filtering it out of sand and stuff now, it’s going to get more and more expensive, and hemp like you said, they can grow it in a month.

Carolyn Virostek:
Right. And it doesn’t have toxic byproducts. If you fracking all that toxic byproducts that comes from the waters and it contaminates that, where is how it actually can heal the land. And creates more carbon dioxide for us. And it really can help in healing the planet. So yeah. Why aren’t we using more of it? And it’s all political, but we’re getting there.

Matt Baum:
Of course. It’s going to happen. I feel good about it. You feel good about it, we feel good about it. Right?

Carolyn Virostek:
Well, the other thing is that if you look at Europe, they’re way ahead of the game, they’ve been making clothes for decades. Now, they’re even making their cars out of hemp, the internal components, the dashboards and things are made out of hemp because it’s stronger, it’s lighter weight. So it makes the gas mileage even better.

Matt Baum:
Yeah. I interviewed a company that works with Maserati, Mercedes. It’s not like they’re making junk here. They’re making hemp plastic for very expensive high-end cars. And I asked him, “Why don’t we do this in the US?” And he goes, “Well, we don’t really want to mess with all your BS right now, as soon as you guys figure it out, we’ll be there.”

Carolyn Virostek:
Yeah. It’s got to make you question. Why is it that Europe is already making them, but we don’t have the American car manufacturer?

Matt Baum:
It’s shamefully stupid, is what it is.

Carolyn Virostek:
We also know that cars don’t have to rely on fossil fuels. Right? We can be using corn oil, hemp oil to run our cars.

Matt Baum:
Or electricity.

Carolyn Virostek:
Right. They want to tax people if they use solar energy. And it’s government regulations that are backed by these big corporations that are feeling threatened. And that’s why we lost cannabis to begin with in the 1930s, was because of political and corporate concern about getting into their space. And we’re just dealing with that in 2020.

Matt Baum:
That’s why they’re hesitating to bring it back too. I don’t want to take up any more of your time. This has been fantastic. Thank you. Thank you so much. And thank you for the straws. They’re great.

Carolyn Virostek:
Oh, you’re welcome. Thank you, Matt. I really appreciate you having me on, and making me feel at ease.

Matt Baum:
Totally. I took a box of the straws up to my local coffee shop and I was like, “Check it out. These are hemp straws.” And they were like, “Oh my God, these are amazing.” It’s like super or liberal, where you go to see dudes having Marxist conversations and stuff in Omaha, in our little blue pocket of Nebraska here in Omaha, but they loved them. So I’ll put them in touch. I’ll definitely put them in touch so they can order some.

Carolyn Virostek:
Great. Thank you, Matt. I appreciate it.

Hemp straws contest winners & Exhemplary Life coupon

Matt Baum:
Carolyn was wonderful to talk to, and she’s the type of person that is very passionate about hemp. And I love speaking to people like that. Funny story, when she initially started and I told her I wasn’t going to mention this on the show, but I thought it was funny enough that you guys should know.

Matt Baum:
When we first started talking, she was really worried that we may not be able to use the interview, because she doesn’t normally talk about this stuff. And she’s not from a science background, but as you can see, she is very well-versed in hemp plastics and bio-plastics, and it was so nice to talk to her. Thank you so much for coming on the show, Carolyn, I will have links to exhemplarylife.com in the show notes. And, like I promised you, if you use the coupon code 25 off that’s 25OFF, you will get 25% off your first purchase at exhemplarylife.com. That’s 25OFF, 25 off use that code.

Matt Baum:
Let them know that you heard about their site here on the Ministry of Hemp podcast and let them know that you appreciate what they are doing on their site. And as always, because we believe that the world is a better place for all when it’s more accessible, we have a full written transcript of this show in the show notes as well.

Matt Baum:
And now it’s contest time as promised. I get to announce the three winners of our exemplary life and Ministry of Hemp, Instagram giveaway, congratulations to @ritualsofthekitchen, @xtra_salt_xtra_lime, and @Kateanne27. You are all big winners of hemp straws and Ministry of Hemp stickers. So go tell every money you win big, when you listen to the Ministry of Hemp podcast. Oh, follow us on Instagram too, more about that in just a moment.

Final thoughts from Matt

Matt Baum:
And that brings us to the end of another exciting episode of the Ministry of Hemp podcast. If you dig what we do here on this show, and you think that hemp can change the world, the best way you can support us is to go to Patreon.com/ministryofhemp and become a Ministry of Hemp insider. It is an awesome way to help us spread the word. And you could access to podcast extras, early articles, all kinds of other stuff, not to mention you can feel better knowing you’re helping us spread the good word of hemp education.

Matt Baum:
And if you need more hemp education in your life, get over to ministryofhemp.com. Check out all our awesome articles there. Follow us on Instagram, on Twitter, on Facebook, we are either at Ministry of Hemp or /Ministry of Hemp, maybe you got hemp questions. Maybe you’ve got some subjects you’d like to hear me talk about on the show.

Matt Baum:
Call me, leave me a message. And tell me about it. 402-819-6417. Leave me a message on our Ministry of Hemp voice line. And I might answer your question on the show with little help and Drew and Kate and maybe even Deseret who you’re going to hear from soon. She’s great. She’s our videographer. We love her. Again, that number is 402-819-6417. Call us, ask your questions and you might hear us answer them right here on the show.

Matt Baum:
Now, I hope you all have a safe and happy Thanksgiving. Remember to wash your hands. I hope you’re not traveling. And if you are out there and be extra careful, please wear a mask the time for me to get out of here. And I like to sign off the same way every time by saying, “Remember to take care of yourself, remember to take care of others and make good decisions, will you?” This is Matt Baum with the Ministry of Hemp.
Signing off.

The post Hemp Straws And The Sustainability Of Hemp With Exhemplary Life appeared first on Ministry of Hemp.

Welcome to episode 62 of the Ministry of Hemp Podcast. In this episode, Matt talks Dr. Andrew Yates, scientific consultant, and Professor Saorise Sullivan, scientific advisor and consultant. They developed a “cocrystal” that will improve the bio-availability of CBD. The two authored a paper about the cocrystal that is being used in the treatment of PTSD in clinical trials in Europe. The conversation touches on how CBD has trouble being absorbed in the human body, why the cocrystal they developed works, and how it could change the way we take CBD.

Matt also mentions his discussion with Dr. Matthew Halpert about a CBD study on aging dogs with arthritis, which used a similar bioavailability booster.

About Saoirse Elizabeth O’Sullivan and Andrew Yates

Professor Saoirse Elizabeth O’Sullivan (@ScienceSaoirse) received her doctorate from Trinity College Dublin in 2001 and moved to the University of Nottingham in 2002 as a Research fellow where she began researching cannabinoid pharmacology through basic and clinical research.  She was made Lecturer in 2007, Associate Professor in 2011 and Full Professor in 2019.  She has over 40 peer-reviewed articles and 3 books chapters on the topic of cannabinoid pharmacology.  In 2016, she was named the International Cannabinoid Research Society Young Investigator of the Year. In 2017, Saoirse set up an independent consulting company called CanPharmaConsulting Ltd, and through this, acts as scientific advisor to companies like Artelo Biosciences, CBDScience Group, Therapix Biosciences and Dragonfly Biosciences.

Dr. Andy Yates has more than 20 years’ experience in the pharmaceutical industry including 10 years as an executive at AstraZeneca. Andy Yates is a UK registered pharmacist who received his PhD in cannabinoid medicinal chemistry from the University of Nottingham. Recently he has acted as an independent consultant and scientific advisor for the Biotech, Life-Sciences, Wellbeing and not-for-profit sectors; predominantly within the expanding cannabinoid field. Andy holds an academic position at the University of Keele.

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CBD cocrystals: Complete episode transcript

Below you’ll find the complete transcript of episode 62 of the Ministry of Hemp podcast, “A ‘Cocrystal’ Could Change The Way We Take CBD”:

Ep 62 Transcript:

Matt Baum:
I’m Matt Baum. And this is The Ministry of Hemp Podcast brought to you by ministryofhemp.com, America’s leading advocate for hemp and hemp education. Welcome to episode 62 in Ministry of Hemp Podcast and in the little over a year that I’ve been doing this show, I’ve learned a lot about you guys, the listeners. Not just from talking to you when you call our phone line at (402) 819-6417, which you can call, leave a message with your questions at any time. We love to answer your questions on the show.
I’ve also learned a lot about you guys from the comments that are left on the podcast posts on our website, ministryofhemp.com. Based on your calls and your comments, it seems like there are a lot of you that are interested in wellness and then there are others of you that are interested in medicine, medicine as in, I have a condition, will this help. And wellness being, hey, I know I feel better when I do this after I work out or this helps me sleep, neither of which are bad, but on the medicine side, things can get really scary for some people when we start talking about pharmaceuticals and pharmaceutical companies.

I’m not going to get into the debate of whether or not they are giant evil corporations controlled by lizard people who want to drug us through the gills so we can’t pay attention to what’s going on anymore, although 2020 did kind of feel like that. But I will say there is something to be said for the rigorous amount of testing and study that goes into producing a drug for human consumption.

Today on the show, I’m going to talk to two scientists. They’re both out of England and they’re both scientific advisors for a company called Artelo. They recently wrote a paper about increasing the bioavailability of CBD. Now we know that there is evidence that CBD has certain effects on the human body and the brain, it helps with anxiety. It can help with pain and inflammation, but one of the major problems with CBD is it’s very hard for your body to process it, to actually pull it in and take it out of whatever it’s in and introduce it into your bloodstream, where it needs to get.

And that’s why a lot of different companies infuse it into tinctures and oils and pills and whatnot. Well, what they are working on is called a cocrystal, which is fairly popular in pharmaceutical, from what I understand from our conversation. But this cocrystal basically bonds with the CBD molecule and makes it far more bioavailable than it’s ever been before. This was an amazing conversation. And you’re going to hear in the very beginning, I had no idea what I was talking about going into it. I was trying to sound smart and they very quickly correct me. And then we have a really good conversation.

Now we’re not going to get into crazy heavy science here, I promise, but what they are talking about could really change this business and just blow it wide open. Today on the show, I’m speaking with professor Saoirse Elizabeth O’Sullivan and Dr. Andy Yates. Like I said, the two work together with Artelo to create something really incredible. And the more incredible part is it’s not far off, it could be coming soon. Here’s my conversation with professor Saoirse Elizabeth O’Sullivan and Dr. Andrew Yates.

What is a CBD cocrystal?

So we are going to talk about a drug that you guys are developing, and it’s one of the first patents and correct me if I’m wrong here, but from what I understand, it’s one of the first pharmaceutical patents that has been issued using CBD or hemp.

Saoirse Elizabeth O’Sullivan:
So I wouldn’t say that it’s necessarily the first patent because other people have patents. For example, GW pharmaceuticals have patents on their version of CBD that they use in epilepsy. It’s just probably the first composition of musher patent, is that right Andy? In terms of a new molecular structure or a new way of presenting CBD in this cocrystal format. So it’s not a use patent, it’s a composition of musher patent. There’s probably other kind of structural variants on CBD where people have kind of played around with the molecular structure and there’ll be patterns on those also. But in terms of kind of pure CBD, this would be a first.

Matt Baum:
Okay. So let’s talk about that for a second. We’re talking about the molecular structure and you guys have come up with a new, you use the word crystalline structure basically.

Saoirse Elizabeth O’Sullivan:
Yes.

Matt Baum:
So what is the structure that we start with when we’re looking at, and tell me if I’m using the words right, a CBD molecule.

Saoirse Elizabeth O’Sullivan:
Molecule. Yes. No, that’s right. So [inaudible 00:05:12] how it’s built out of its different elements is the molecular structure. And so CBD is CBD when you put together those elements in the right order, in the right orientation, you come up with the molecule that is CBD.

Matt Baum:
Okay. And you guys have affected it in a way that you can make it more potent, more useful.

Saoirse Elizabeth O’Sullivan:
And so what Artelo have done is they’ve formed a cocrystal. So this is where you take a molecule of CBD and you bring it together with another compound, which in our case is a molecule that’s used in Chinese medicine. So they’ve brought them together in what’s called a cocrystal. And so that changes the physical properties of the molecule because CBD has some physical properties that don’t make it very easily usable as a medicine. So we need to try and improve its solubility and its absorption.
And one way that pharmaceutical companies go by fast is to make something as a cocrystal and attach it onto something else. And that can change the physical properties of this molecule that you’re interested in, in order to make it more druggable and easier to give to person and basically better and more consistent exposure to that drug within the patient.

Matt Baum:
So the idea that we have [crosstalk 00:06:35]. Go ahead, I’m sorry.

Andy Yates:
I was going to say if I may come in. We’ve taken everything that we love, if you wish, about CBD, [inaudible 00:06:41] exactly the same, but taken away some of the bits that we don’t love about CBD, which is its crystallinity, its melting point, potential stability and it’s bioavailability and we’ve added something else into it as an integral part of the crystal structure. And we hope that that will improve the way that we can use CBD as a medicine.

Matt Baum:
So basically the CBD molecule is kind of a jerk, and we know it does good stuff, but this jerk doesn’t want to play with your system very well.

Saoirse Elizabeth O’Sullivan:
Exactly.

Matt Baum:
And you have created something, a friend that is saying, “Hey, take it easy jerk. Let’s get along.”

Saoirse Elizabeth O’Sullivan:
And they’re holding to this hand as they work through the body.

Matt Baum:
Yeah. Settle CBD down, walks him into the body and says, all right, see, you feel better now, right? And he goes, okay. I was nervous, it was nothing, my bad.

Andy Yates:
That’s a great analogy. Very well characterized.

Saoirse Elizabeth O’Sullivan:
Yeah. That’s pretty much it.

Traditional Chinese Medicine, TMP and the CBD cocrystal

Matt Baum:
I’m for hire if you need a PR department. So just let me know. I’m really good at boiling this stuff down if nothing else. I’ll be truly, honestly, I tried to prepare for this and I went back through like all my college chemistry [inaudible 00:07:47], oh God, it’s gone, it’s just gone. And I’m like, I’m going to sound like the biggest steady hits. So thank you for bearing with me on this one.

So the cocrystal you’ve created, you said it’s from Chinese medicine. Now I am a skeptic by nature, and so when I hear a term like Chinese medicine, my first knee-jerk reaction is, oh boy, that sounds a little out there and whatnot. But-

Saoirse Elizabeth O’Sullivan:
And it’s funny because that’s the reaction some people have about cannabis-based medicine.

Matt Baum:
I did when I got into this.

Saoirse Elizabeth O’Sullivan:
And the molecule that we’ve used in the cocrystal is something where we know the molecule really well. It’s something that’s really widely used in Chinese medicine and has kind of widespread clinical use, lots of clinical trials, it’s the particular active ingredient of this plant. It’s very similar story to CBD and the cannabis plant as this molecule, which is called Tetramethylpiperidine or TMP.

Matt Baum:
We’ll go with TMP for the rest of the interview.

Saoirse Elizabeth O’Sullivan:
Yeah. It’s very analogist between the plants and the active molecules.

Matt Baum:
Okay. So it’s part of Chinese medicine in the sense that it’s part of several plants, I guess, that are used in Chinese medicine. So it happens to be there.

Saoirse Elizabeth O’Sullivan:
Yeah.

Matt Baum:
And I guess my question was, what worried me was like you said, there’s been lots of clinical studies that show that this works as a binder. What other kinds of stuff does this TMP molecule bind to? What else does it help with?

Saoirse Elizabeth O’Sullivan:
Sorry, it’s not that it is used in Chinese medicine as a binder, it’s used as itself, as the molecule, as a drug in Chinese medicine.

Matt Baum:
I guess it happens to be there.

Saoirse Elizabeth O’Sullivan:
Yeah. And to be honest, that’s not why it was chosen. There was a chemistry screening process where lots of different potential co-formers were assessed because not all, you have the analogy of the two guys walking through the body hand in hand, not all molecules want to be friends. And there was only a few of them in the chemistry screening that was done. There was only a few that actually wanted to hold hands with CBD.
And it just happened that TMP was one of them. The fact that TMP has its own clinical profile is wonderful. And in best case scenario might add some advantage onto the artillery CBD cocrystal, but actually that’s not why it’s there. It’s there really just to be holding the hand of the CBD. And if it adds to CBD then wonderful, but it was kind of happenstance that it was one of the ones that came along that did want to hold hands with CBD.

Matt Baum:
Andy, you were going to say.

Andy Yates:
And also of interest to your listeners, not only does it have a usage in traditional Chinese medicine, but it also has a use in food flavoring.

Matt Baum:
Oh good.

Andy Yates:
So it’s bringing a coffee mocha vibe to CBD. The tones of a TMP are used often in coffee and mocha flavored free products.

Matt Baum:
Really?

Andy Yates:
Yeah.

Matt Baum:
So when you go get like a McFlurry or something, which is, we all agree is not coffee, but has the vaguest hint of coffee flavor, there could be TMP involved.

Saoirse Elizabeth O’Sullivan:
There could be TMP in there. Yeah.

Andy Yates:
It could indeed.

Using CBD to treat PTSD

Matt Baum:
Interesting. So this drug that Artelo is developing is going to be tested for PTSD and-

Saoirse Elizabeth O’Sullivan:
Yeah. It’s a variety of different areas that Artelo are interested in, but PTSD is definitely one of the, probably the first areas of interest. There’s other conditions in which CBD is useful, like inflammatory bowel disease and stroke. And so they’re also kind of on the horizon, but PTSD is probably the first indication that Artelo would try and pursue through clinical research.

Matt Baum:
Okay. So why PTSD? How did we happen upon that? Is it because of the anti-anxiety factors of CBD? And I guess my next question is, is it worth going after CBD to treat this, so much so that you created a cocrystal to help the body accept it better, whereas there are already other treatments for PTSD that are out there? Is this one, do you believe from what you’ve seen in your research, do you believe this is worth it and will be a better treatment?

Saoirse Elizabeth O’Sullivan:
So both of those things are true. So it’s because CBD is very good at reducing anxiety and there’s quite a good evidence-based from scientific and clinical literature to show that. And there’s an awful lot of research going on in this area. So we are not the only people who think that CBD is a good [inaudible 00:12:37] agent.
There’s lots of research going on there, but in order to develop a licensed medicine, we need something that is going to be really good. Good bioavailability, getting good absorption, good stability, all the things you want from a good drug and have patentability, because if you’re going to develop a medicine it’s quite a costly process.

Matt Baum:
Of course.

Saoirse Elizabeth O’Sullivan:
So we need a good CBD, a reliable CBD that we can give in specific doses and that we can prove in an area which is probably considered to be an area of unmet need. So there are medications available for PTSD, but they’re not without their side effects and some of them can have limited efficacy. So I think that people who work in this area would say, there’s definitely a need for a new medicine in PTSD and CBD is really emerging as something that is of interest in lots of different anxiety disorders, it’s not just PTSD but-

Matt Baum:
Yeah. Absolutely.

Saoirse Elizabeth O’Sullivan:
… things like central anxiety disorder, generalized anxiety disorder, social phobia, there’s lots of research going on that points to controlled, randomized controlled data the points to CBD being effective in these areas.

Improving CBD bioavailability with a cocrystal

Andy Yates:
And two additional adds to that, one of the other big parts of PTSD is ability to sleep. And CBD well is unknown aid to sleeping and we think that would obviously help the syndrome itself. And the other aspect is that if you are not going down that route of, as you said, coupling it with a friend to help into the body, the other way of doing it, as I’m sure you’ve seen from shops that sell CBD is to dissolve it in oil.

Matt Baum:
This is my next question. I’m glad you’re going there.

Andy Yates:
You have to hold it under your tongue. And I think what we’ve done with this sort of friendly crystal is that you could start to think about form relate in this now in a capsule or a pill, which I think most people would agree is a much more convenient way to take CBD for the majority of the people. I’m not saying that’s for everyone or the companies like GW have been developing medicines for children, so they’re quite happy to put CBD in an oil or an alcoholic based solution.
So we’ve really got an advantage there with our cocrystal, when it comes to thinking that we’ve designed or we’ve pre-programmed into the solid form, some good characteristics that will make it easily or more easily atunable to a tablet form.

Matt Baum:
So Andrew, let me ask you based on what you were saying, bioavailability, I’m glad you went there because that was my exact next question. This cocrystal is designed to help the body accept CBD better. If I’m not using that, if I just say, have a tincture, a high quality CBD tincture like you said, and I’m putting it under my tongue, what would you say is the amount of CBD that I’m going to, just percentage wise, rough percentage wise versus what I would get from CBD with this cocrystal.

Andy Yates:
I would love to be able to give you a flavor of that. We’re actually doing that work right now to understand it. And I think it would be disingenuous of me to say where those levels could be.

Matt Baum:
You scientists.

Saoirse Elizabeth O’Sullivan:
We can say in general that the fact that, and if you’re using a sublingual oil, just of any type of CBD, we’re not talking about our CBD, but probably the bioavailability is maybe 20% to 25% under the tongue, whereas if you’re just taking a cocktail or a tablet orally, it’s probably less than 10%. So just in general terms [crosstalk 00:16:30]

Matt Baum:
I was holding my bottle like, how much am I getting when I pour this in my eyeballs.

Andy Yates:
I’m sorry. I thought you were asking what the difference would be between our cocrystal and what you can get.

Matt Baum:
No. I guess just more broadly. It seems like there’s a lot of research going into this that we have found, like you said, CBD does not want to be absorbed by our body very well. So we put it in carrier liquids, we put it in powder forms. We nano encapsulated stuff.

Saoirse Elizabeth O’Sullivan:
We inhale it.

Matt Baum:
We inhale it. Yeah.

Saoirse Elizabeth O’Sullivan:
That’s what we’ve always done because actually inhalation is still the best methods, delivery methods in terms of getting as much of the drug into your system as possible. It may not stay around for very long, but there’s a reason why people have always inhaled.

Matt Baum:
Sure.

Saoirse Elizabeth O’Sullivan:
But people like to take drugs orally, people like to take tablets, as Andrew said. And if we know that with the tablet only 10% of that drug is going to get into the system, then clearly what pharmaceutical companies want to do is make a tablet that has better bioavailability because that drug is being wasted. 90% of that drug is being excreted. So it’s not good, it’s not good for the economy, it’s not good for the environment.

Matt Baum:
Yes, it’s not good for anybody.

Saoirse Elizabeth O’Sullivan:
It’s not good for the patients.

Andy Yates:
And it’s also around the variability as well. We know as Saoirse said that taking a tablet when you’ve got an empty many will be different for your bioavailability for when you take a tablet and you’ve eaten a meal, typically if the meal is fatty.

Matt Baum:
Of course.

Andy Yates:
These things can really affect. If one day it’s a 10% bioavailability and the next it’s a 25% bioavailability, you can expect that you’re going to get lower and higher efficacy and safety side effects.

Matt Baum:
Sure.

Andy Yates:
So if we can bring a crystal to the market, which does things just more reproducibly, both within the same patient and between patients so that every person in the clinical trial, every person using the drug, you take the pill, you get 20%, that’s a much better place than where we are now, where it’s a bit of a sort of coin toss of whether you’re going to get a low or a high dose today.

Matt Baum:
Right. So just the fact that you can establish what we all got X, that’s a starting point that we have not had-

Andy Yates:
Absolutely.

Will cocrystals change the CBD market?

Matt Baum:
… up to this point yet, because of all the different ways that it’s being taken, the different ways it’s being delivered, to the different potencies and whatnot. Now this sure sounds like when this research comes out and it’s accepted, it sure sounds like it’s kind of going to blow the entire CBD market up pretty badly, in the sense that a lot of people that are making claims, which is good. I think it’s a good thing, but a lot of people that are making claims like this is the best way to do it, or we have the highest quality or all of a sudden the bioavailability is going to come into play. And now that you can prove, well, this cocrystal increases bioavailability, this is kind of where everybody has to go next, right?

Andy Yates:
So I think for me, it’s yeah, it is. I think you’ve hit the nail on the head. If this delivers everything we think it can deliver, promise what you think it can promise, then it is a game changer for CBD in many respects, because suddenly it’s the go-to form. And we’re talking here whether it’s be the wellbeing market, the one that we, over-the-counter, but particularly in the pharmaceutical field, it’s the go-to form that you would be putting your money, your energy into so that the patients are getting that reliable, consistent dosing and stay higher dosing.
For the pharmaceutical industry, as one of the connotation. And sometimes profits and intellectual property is a bit of a dirty word. But in order for any pharmaceutical company to spend the tens/hundreds of millions of dollars to turn a drug into a PTSD therapy or a PTSD therapy or another therapy area, it has to know that it’s able to recover and make some money for it’s shareholders who put their money in at risk.

Matt Baum:
Of course.

Andy Yates:
And what we found so far, and if you look at a company like GW, is that it stayed away from areas which it doesn’t have this, what they call orphan drug protection behind it. So all of these conditions that their trial in, their drug in tends to be in small groups of patients that they wouldn’t normally have a therapy designed for them, but people like the FDA and the European equivalents give us special dispensation for people who develop medicines in orphan drugs. And one of them is they call it data exclusivity. So if you spend money, develop a drug in an orphan indication, you get rewarded by the regulators with a longer period of time before people can start piggybacking on your data.

Matt Baum:
That’s amazing.

Andy Yates:
That’s great.

Matt Baum:
So if you do that here, you just get fired and then you get made fun of in the news. And maybe you get shot. I don’t know, it’s America. So things are crazy right now.

Andy Yates:
That’s right. It’s really great. But what it does do is it limits where people will spend their money developing CBD right now.

Matt Baum:
Sure.

Andy Yates:
And I think with a cocrystal, you take the handcuffs off and you allow people like Artelo, or it may be others that want to come in and work with Artelo and borrow or pay us to borrow our technology. Suddenly you can start developing in diseases that aren’t orphan drug and know that your investment is protected through the patent that you brought up right at the very beginning of the show.

Matt Baum:
Right. It’s kind of an early game, but it’s a game you have to play if you’re going to bring this to market. And if this will do what you think it’s going to do… It’s pretty amazing because like you said, there can’t be a whole lot of money in PTSD treatment. It’s not like something we see TV commercials. Do you have PTSD? Maybe you can talk to your doctor about [Narco flex 00:22:39] or whatever. So I think the fact that you, it makes me feel a little better that you guys are developing a drug for something like PTSD to show that it works there. And then from there it opens up.

The immense potential of CBD drugs

Saoirse Elizabeth O’Sullivan:
And then you go on. Yeah. As Andy is saying, the beauty here is with that IP behind you, you have the potential to go into much bigger patient populations. But ultimately this is going to be good to patients because Epidiolex is only available for these very rare forms of epilepsy, but every kid with epilepsy wants it, but that’s not what it has it’s license for, because they’ve down that route, whereas if we can produce something which is going to hit a much bigger patient population, then that’s obviously going to be really good.
And yeah, you start with PTSD, but then you might go into generalized anxiety, then you might go into other mental health conditions or a sleep, if you get a good signal with sleep, you might go into insomnia. You’ve just got to start somewhere and somewhere where you’ve got good hope that it’s going to be successful as well.
And actually PTSD is on the rise. And especially in the post COVID era, there’s going to be an awful lot more PTSD. And that’s something that we are quite mindful of. There’s going to be an awful lot of people who suffer with mental health conditions because of the pandemic and the impact that it’s had on them socially and financially. It’s huge. And the estimates of the rates of PTSD are that they’re going to really significantly increase. And especially in frontline workers, people who’ve been exposed to the disease.

Matt Baum:
Most definitely.

Saoirse Elizabeth O’Sullivan:
So we can see that in the short term, this is going to be a really important [Marcus 00:24:19] to be proving the cocrystal in.

Matt Baum:
So let’s talk about sleep for a second, because you brought that up earlier about how it’s excellent in treating PTSD or any trauma, sleep is definitely one of the biggest issues. Now, this molecule, pardon me, this molecule that you have created, this cocrystal, binds really well as CBD. We’re seeing a lot of companies in the industry saying that CBN, a different cannabinoid, is very useful in sleep. Will this cocrystal behave the same with something like CBN, or is that a whole different jerk of a molecule that needs an entirely different buddy or something?

Saoirse Elizabeth O’Sullivan:
The CBN is a completely different molecule. And actually it’s funny because it often has a reputation for being sleep enhancing, but it actually doesn’t have as much evidence as CBD does for sleep disorders.

Matt Baum:
Really?

Saoirse Elizabeth O’Sullivan:
No, CBD definitely has far better evidence. There’s very little clinical use of CBN, if any that I can think of, I can’t think of any clinical trial.

Matt Baum:
Yeah. It’s very new. And the same with CBG, is another one.

Saoirse Elizabeth O’Sullivan:
With CBN, yes. So this is definitely an anecdote rather than something which has an evidence base. Whereas at least with CBD, we do have an evidence-based. There is randomized control data either where sleep has been looked at as the primary endpoint. So specifically in people who have sleep disorders, but more often what you see in a clinical trial is that the CBD is being used for something else but sleep is coming back consistently as being one of the other symptoms that’s positively affected by CBD. So it’s one of the secondary findings of a trial.
So we have quite a lot of information with CBD in areas like autism, Parkinson’s, Crohn’s disease, or there’s types of conditions where people are reporting that they’re sleeping better when they’re taking CBD. And actually being sleepy is also one of the side effects of CBD. So we have that as a signal as well. So I think CBN has the rep, but probably CBD has a better evidence base.

Matt Baum:
Got you. So it’s one of those things where, and I realized I may be asking you out of your field here because you’ve been focusing on one thing, but it does seem like the claims are being made again. And with a health claim like sleep, it’s not like you’re saying, hey you blind guy, you’ll be able to see again. That would be a health claim that can’t make, but something like sleep, I take a CBD with CBN in it to help with sleep. And chances are, from what it sounds like you’re saying, it’s the CBD that’s putting me to bed.

Saoirse Elizabeth O’Sullivan:
Until somebody does the trial and convinces me otherwise, all I can go on is the data that I have seen and I haven’t seen data with CBN. So it might be excellent, but nobody has tested it yet. So yeah, it could be that people find us goods, there could be anecdotes of it. And that’s a great place to start if you want to design a study, but we just don’t have that kind of empirical evidence [crosstalk 00:27:32] about CBN.

Matt Baum:
Sure.

Saoirse Elizabeth O’Sullivan:
And it may be that the combination is excellent. If you were designing something which was purely a sleep aid, then maybe a combination of CBN and CBD is and great.

Matt Baum:
But we got to do the work first.

Saoirse Elizabeth O’Sullivan:
Yeah. We’re just not at that level of kind of granularity, I think in cannabis-based medicines of knowing exactly which combinations of compounds to put together. But the probability is that CBN is probably just like CBD in that in most of these compounds from the plant are very fussy lipophilic. And so they all have these problems that they’re not very well absorbed. So it may be that CBN needs a friend as well.

Matt Baum:
Just a different friend. We’ll find out.

Saoirse Elizabeth O’Sullivan:
Yeah. Who knows what the friend will be.

The future of cocrystals and CBD

Matt Baum:
How far away are we? So I assume if you’re talking to a podcast or in Omaha, Nebraska, right now, you guys feel pretty positive that this is coming through and it’s going to happen. How far out are we from this cocrystal exploding onto the scene?

Saoirse Elizabeth O’Sullivan:
Andy you’re better at these, understanding the length of pipelines.

Andy Yates:
I think in something like PTSD, which has already got a good evidence-base in it, which is one of the reasons we chose to develop in that area. We’re looking roughly at being able to generate clinical data. So the sort of data where Saoirse said before, where we have compelling evidence that our cocrystal does something in PTSD.
I would say looking at sort of a two to three year time horizon for where we are now, before you’d be seeing that data come out. Beyond that, to get something which would be available to go to your doctor, your physician for, you’re probably looking at another two to three years on top of that. That’s the realistic sort of timeframe that you’re looking out for a true drug developer to do this,
That being said, Artelo bio-sciences aren’t exploring this, but potentially people might want to come and talk to us about using this cocrystal in the wellbeing market. And if that’s the case, then obviously without putting claims behind it, but potentially having knowledge that this is better absorbed or more consistently absorbed by the body. This could be available on the shelves within a year if it wanted to be used in that sort of way.

Matt Baum:
So I’m not asking you to bust any deals here, but have you been approached by anyone? Because I guess I was of the mindset that, and I don’t know how this works, but I was of the mindset that once you to go down this pharmaceutical path, we do not sway from it, we’re not allowed to. I thought maybe there was a direct line. I didn’t know that you could be approached by a private company and say, we want that.

Andy Yates:
Yeah. Exactly. We’ve been approached by a lot of companies to talk about our portfolio because it’s sort of out there in the sense of all of our compounds target the endo cannabinoid system, that’s a sort of fairly hot topic and very relevant topic. So we speak to a lot of people all the time about our innovations. Obviously I couldn’t say if we’re speaking about this specifically with any partner, but what I think is of interest is that particularly in Europe. And the US has some interesting views and rules on this, but in Europe it’s clear that you could develop this in a wellbeing product and you could develop it as a pharmaceutical.
You may not wish to do that for commercial reasons, but there’s nothing stopping you from the laws and the regulations from doing that. And I don’t see why you couldn’t do that in the US particularly because it’s not approved as a medical product. And as so she said at the beginning, you have to see this molecule with its friend, the way that it’s cocrystallized, right. It’s a sort of unique sort of chemical entity. It’s got unique composition of matter. So until it is a medicine, if you wish, the analogy is it’s not a medicine, it can be put into some products to… So watch this space.

Saoirse Elizabeth O’Sullivan:
It just like kind of straight CBD is available over the counter or through Epidiolex. So it already exists in these geo world worlds.

Matt Baum:
So it’s not a matter of they could put it in a purple pill and give it a crazy name and patent it and now no one can use that crystal but of them. This is the kind of thing where yes, it could be very available and very soon.

Andy Yates:
Yeah, absolutely. It could be. If somebody wants to come and speak to us about using this in a wellbeing product, does it say that’s not Artelo’s remit. But if people want, because the thing is, with some drugs, as you probably know, they can be developed in different therapy areas and obviously we would hope to do that with the cocrystal. But sometimes it’s probably not commonly known for necessarily listeners of the show, but the pharmaceutical companies can sometimes do these types of deals. And it sort of sells the rights for the drug, the Parkinson’s disease to company A, and it sells the drugs for the treatment of pain conditions to company B. It’s called split in indications, but we’re not invoking to do that, but potentially you could see something where somebody wants to have this as a wellness product. And Artelo don’t wish to develop in that space. So yeah.

Matt Baum:
Let me ask you, are other people working on this too, because not too long ago, I spoke to a vet that was out of, I think it was Murray state, I can’t remember, left me now. But they were working on a study with aging dogs and arthritis and how CBD affected the inflammation and whatnot in the dogs. And one of the things he mentioned was, I can’t say he used the word crystal, but an element that they were working with that was increasing the bioavailability majorly. And he said, I can’t say the name, I can’t talk about it, it’s very exciting and it’s coming in. It’s huge. Was it you guys? Is it you?

Saoirse Elizabeth O’Sullivan:
Well, Andy and I can both comment on this is that it’s widely known that CBD isn’t great by itself. And so lots of people are looking at ways to improve bioavailability. They tend to use different strategies. So there’s multiple strategies in the pharmaceutical world of how you can make a drug better. And so most companies so far have focused on things like using different types of solubilizers or maybe making emulsions or non-emulsions and that those were using… So solubility enhances is probably more common. And so through that way, can they improve the bioavailability of CBD?
And so there are some, there’s not an awful lot of data out there. A lot of people have kind of claimed that their CBD has enhanced bioavailability. There are some that have shown that, have demonstrated this through proper kind of pharmacokinetic profiles. So there are people out there who have developed ways of improving the bioavailability of CBD. But just not through the cocrystal strategy. Andy and I also recently wrote a paper called, Towards Better Delivery of CBD.

Matt Baum:
Cool.

Saoirse Elizabeth O’Sullivan:
You could point people to that because it’s a really good summary of everything that people are doing in the pharmaceutical world, not just Artelo but other companies as well. And so we basically summarize the strategies of lots of different companies who are trying to make CBD better. And so it would be a really good thing to link to [crosstalk 00:35:14]

Matt Baum:
Yeah. Please shoot me that link. That sounds awesome. That sounds totally awesome.

Saoirse Elizabeth O’Sullivan:
Obviously we did that on Artelo time. So there is a, not a conflict of interest because we did it in a very independent way of just looking at what was out there. But our summary is that we think that the cocrystal, because this is a really, this is a typical strategy of pharmaceutical companies to do the cocrystals. And so we think it is applying that kind of pharmaceutical knowledge that Artelo have onto a common problem in drugs. Cannabis isn’t unique or cannabinoids aren’t unique in having physical issues. And so there are lots of different ways that people can approach this. And I think Artelo have done a very smart job of making CBD better.

Matt Baum:
This really sounds like it’s going to change everything. Not to mention the fact that once we can get something like a cocrystal that like you said, can prove that it’s delivering X, a value of some kind. I think that’ll go a long way with the American FDA setting up rules as well, because we can establish something and say, all right, this is exactly what it’s putting in your body. And right now, maybe you’re drinking olive oil. You know what I mean?

Saoirse Elizabeth O’Sullivan:
We actually did a study last year, and then I work for another organization in the UK called The Center for Medicinal Cannabis. And we actually took 30 over-the-counter, CBD products and we did find that one of them with a fairly hefty price tag was just olive oil, there were no cannabinoids in there.
So there was a lot of issues in the over-the-counter CBD markets. And Andy’s working really hard in the UK trying to solve those issues and have some regulation in the industry. Even when you have a good product, the best that it can be is still probably not as good as a consumer would want from a product. And the basis, something we didn’t really mention is that in a lot of the medicinal uses of CBD, you do need quite a lot of the molecule within your body for it to have the pharmacological effects that you need. And for that kind of dosing, it’s very difficult to achieve that with sublingual oils.

Matt Baum:
Oh yeah, definitely.

Saoirse Elizabeth O’Sullivan:
It’s very difficult to get hundreds of milligrams of cannabidiol into your body using an oil. It just doesn’t. It’s not a very effective way of drug delivery. It doesn’t taste good, you’re never quite sure exactly how much, you’re guessing because you’re using a dropper trying to figure it out by yourself. Tablets are consistent, you know if you take a paracetamol it’s 500 milligrams of paracetamol to go with. Wherever you go, that’s how it comes.
We need to get to a very pharmaceutical way of delivering basic cannabinoids. If we want them to really be the best that they can be, we’ve got to have that approach to them. And tinctures and oils and foods for me are not necessarily the best way of if you want it for medicinal reasons. Now I’m not talking about what are the reasons you might be taking them. But if you were trying to cure an ailment, you need to know what dose you’re getting.

Matt Baum:
Sure. If you’re targeting an anxiety, for example, then we need to target the anxiety and we need to make sure everything we are shooting at it is getting to the anxiety.

Saoirse Elizabeth O’Sullivan:
Yes. And that’s why you need a product that you can have reliability and consistency and have good stability and absorption, and all the other things that over-the-counter medications should have.

Matt Baum:
Right. And you can write that right on the side of the bottle and say, this is exactly what it does and we know that. That’s important. I think you guys are doing the work of the CBD angels right now honestly, thank you.

Final thoughts from Matt

I want to thank Dr. Andy and Professor Saoirse so much for coming on this show, putting up with my uninformed BS and gently correcting me. And to also just for boiling a very heady, intense pharmacological discussion into something that we can all understand. And I cannot stress how important what they’re working on is. If this cocrystal can do what they say it can do, it literally changes everything. We’re talking about better dosages, real dosages, putting less CVD into your dose, which brings the price of CBD down.

I will have links to the paper they wrote in the show notes and I will also have a link to the episode I mentioned where I interviewed Dr. Matthew Halbert about aging dogs and arthritis, and how CBD is helping them.
Speaking of show notes here at the Ministry of Hemp, we believe that a more accessible world is a better world for everyone. So you can find a complete written transcript for this show in those show notes that I was just talking about.

That is about it for this episode. Thank you again for listening, for downloading, for interacting. And if you have questions about what you heard, I’m going to repeat myself, but call us at (402) 819-6417 and leave your hemp and CBD related questions. Now, those are questions about how it works, not telling me that you want to buy some, because people do that a lot. And that’s great. And we’ve got all kinds of trusted brands that you can find right here on ministryofhemp.com. Speaking of ministryofhemp.com, get over there and check out our new review of the level two. It’s an infusion machine that allows you to make things like infused hemp butter and oil, which is fun. We also have just in time for the holidays, our best 11 CBD skincare and hemp beauty products to help you create a hempy skincare routine.

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Also, it gets you access to all kinds of early articles and podcast extras. Like this week, I am talking with Dr. Andy about his side gig working with the UK health system to make sure that CBD and other wellness companies are held to a very high standard when it comes to what is actually in the bottle. I’m sure could use someone like that here in the United States.

Luckily, you got us to help you with that. Like I mentioned, we have a trusted brand section at ministryofhemp.com and we have our own seal which says, we researched it, we checked out the lab testing and we know these people are for real. Next time on the show, we’re going to talk about hemp straws and a company that is making them the right way and why hemp plastic might not be as cool as we think it is. And guess what? I’m guilty of that, but hey, I’m here to learn and I’m glad that you guys are here to learn with me.

Now it’s starting to get cold outside and COVID numbers are starting to spike again, so please take care of yourselves out there, wash your hands, wear a mask. If you’re feeling anxious, up your CVD dosage a little bit. I know I have, and it’s really helped. Don’t forget to take care of yourself, take care of others and make good decisions, will you? This is Matt Baum with the Ministry of Hemp signing off.

The post A ‘Cocrystal’ Could Change The Way We Take CBD appeared first on Ministry of Hemp.

Our host Matt talked with Connor Skelly, head of marketing for the Brightfield Group which specializes in cannabis marketing. They talk about the cannabis year in review, how COVID-19 devastated the market but also made it stronger, trends in new cannabinoids, and how both successful and budding young companies are weathering the storm.

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Cannabis Marketing And The Future Of CBD: Complete episode transcript

Below you’ll find the complete transcript of episode 61 of the Ministry of Hemp podcast, “Cannabis marketing and the future of CBD”:

Matt Baum:
I’m Matt Baum, and this is The Ministry of Hemp Podcast, brought to you buy ministryofhemp.com, America’s leading advocate for hemp and hemp education.

Matt Baum:
Welcome back to The Ministry of Hemp Podcast. This is Tuesday. It’s Election Day. And as I sit here recording this, I have no idea what is happening with the election yet. And I’m not going to lie, I’m a little nervous, I voted by mail. I didn’t see a whole lot of people in line today, so I think a lot of people in Nebraska also did. But, I am a little anxious. And I’m taking my CBD today to help me stay calm, collected, and head in the game. I hope you guys all had a chance to vote, I hope you’re not as anxious as I am, but if you are, it just so happens that CBD is great for Election Day anxiety, as well as a lot of other types of anxiety.

Matt Baum:
But we’re not here to talk about that. Today we are going to talk about CBD, but we’re going to talk about the marketplace as a whole. Today I’m talking with Connor Skelly.

Cannabis marketing expert Connor Skelly

Connor Skelly:
My name is Connor Skelly, and I’m the marketing director at Brightfield Group.

Matt Baum:
The Brightfield Group is a marketing group that supports the most comprehensive data in CBD and cannabis out there today. They’ve been tracking this market pretty much since its birth. Which, as you’ll here, has been pretty exciting for a guy like Connor. Now there’s still a lot to learn, but just like any other product, CBD, cannabis, is sold to people. And you got to market to people. It’s a very cool conversation about the state of the cannabis market today, dealing with COVID, the election and whatnot, and what it’s going to be like next year. Here’s my conversation with Connor Skelly of the Brightfield Group. We opened with some discussion of 2020, the cannabis market year in review.

Connor Skelly:
Zooming out, over the course of this year, this very long year-

Matt Baum:
Yeah, it has felt pretty long, hasn’t it?

Connor Skelly:
It’s been a pretty long year. It’s the same amount of days as last year, but it still seems a lot longer.

Matt Baum:
I don’t know if that’s true, to be quite honest. So, at this point.

CBD marketing during a pandemic

Connor Skelly:
So what has happened to a lot of these CBD brands is, they’ve had to significantly adjust their marketing strategy, and their digital strategy, and how they go to market. When COVID hit, across most of the United States in March, these brands who were predominantly in brick and mortar saw significant declines in sales.

Matt Baum:
Yeah, just like everybody, right?

Connor Skelly:
Yeah. So not just with them, but everywhere. And even online first CBD brands, they saw a hit too, as consumers and people across the country were evaluating their budgets, many people were getting laid off, it was just a tough economic time for, really every sector. And the ones who were able to adapt very quickly were those online first brands, the ones who had strong D2C model in place already, the ones who have already been setting up strong marketing channels online, where everyone was just online even more.

Connor Skelly:
And so over the course of the past six, eight, seemingly 100 months, a lot of these company’s brands who may have had strong distribution networks able to get into brick and mortar very quickly, they are now adapting, strengthening their D2C models, trying to play catch up on their digital marketing strategies.

Matt Baum:
So you’ve been working with a lot of these brands I’m guessing.

Connor Skelly:
Yeah.

Matt Baum:
You work in strategic data and insights. I’m looking at your website right now. It’s a good looking site by the way.

Connor Skelly:
Thank you.

Matt Baum:
That’s coming from a guy that helped people with broken websites, so.

Connor Skelly:
I appreciate that.

Matt Baum:
What is the strategy when something like COVID hits? Because you would think, a lot of people would think, well, you said brick and mortar stores have had trouble, but online brands, I mean, what’s the problem there? They should be fine, right? I mean, they’re online. And CBD’s the hottest thing in the world. Is it still as hot as it was? Is it just COVID that is pushing this stuff back right now? Or are there other things that are causing issues as well?

Connor Skelly:
So one of the larger things in the CBD industry was price compression. So in Q1 a lot of… With the steep decline of hemp going down, it’s going down and down more and more, CBD brands wanted to be able to reach more consumers by doing 30, 40% price cuts across their entire portfolio.

Connor Skelly:
And so seeing that in Q1, a lot of people not… No one knew that COVID was coming, they saw significant revenue declines, even though a lot of that sales volume still remained relatively strong going into Q2. So back in July we reforecasted our US CBD market sizes. And that was one of the biggest contributors to it, was that, even though sales volume was still going strong, the CBD brands were adjusting their pricing strategies, and their pricing models, and it just brought everything down.

Matt Baum:
Right. Which, good for the consumer, but scary for the actual brand, right?

Connor Skelly:
Absolutely. Yeah. It makes revenue forecasting significantly harder to do. And it just makes it much harder. That situation in Q2 was… It just made it significantly harder to predict for the future. Even some of the top brands who were performing really well last year and early this year, they’re in a tough spot.

CBD and dropping prices

Matt Baum:
Do you think that this is something, like the price that we’ve seen, the declines, because I have seen that through a lot of brands, have drastically been cutting prices, do you think that’s something that stays when things start to rebound? Is this going to become the new normal? Because it does seem like, to me, just dealing with a lot of people that have questions about CBD, and CBD brands and whatnot, it seems like the biggest entryway blockage is price. And as price comes down that seems to get more people buying, and checking it out, and it helps more people. Do you think prices stay down after this? Is this a new normal?

Connor Skelly:
Yeah. Yeah. Prices should roughly stay the same, if not go lower on some of those products that are more easily available to produce like capsules, for example. And there have been a lot of brands doing big awareness grabs. From a marketing standpoint, being able to do these large awareness grabs, just to get consumers in the top of your funnel, giving away free product for 30 days, or whatever it is, for a 30 day supply. And just a way to get those people in on a relatively low cost has been really popular.

Matt Baum:
Definitely. I’m sure.

Connor Skelly:
And what we’re seeing in our data is, consumers are… They’ve cared about price for a long time, right? Price and education have been some of the top things. And what they look for in brands is trustworthiness and high quality products. And that is now quickly becoming table stakes. And so if that’s the standard for a CBD brand, how else can you further differentiate yourself. And so that’s where we’ve seen a lot of these online first brands over the last few months really try to differentiate themselves through their marketing.

Matt Baum:
Sure. So who comes to you? Who do you work with? What kind of brands are you working with? Big huge brands? Little brands? All kinds of brands? Who is coming and looking for this?

Connor Skelly:
All kinds. Yeah, all kinds. And we work with many of the top CBD brands in the space. The top cannabis brands as well, the ones with CBD products. And we’re hearing it from all angles. The top brands, our experience and challenges, surely prior to COVID we were tracking 3,500, roughly, CBD brands.

Matt Baum:
Wow.

Connor Skelly:
In the US alone.

Matt Baum:
Wow.

The future of the CBD industry

Connor Skelly:
So that is… I mean, any industry like that is due for a shakeout, right?

Matt Baum:
Of course, of course.

Connor Skelly:
You can’t have a healthy industry with that kind of saturation. So it was due for a lot of these small brands to kind of leave. And COVID accelerated that significantly. And so the smaller brands who were able to stick around were the ones that were often online first, the ones that were brand first, the ones that were customer first, consumer-centric, they were thinking like a real company. Where at the end of 2019, or even just at first when the Farm Bill got passed in 2018, you just had a lot of bad actors in the space that were just trying to sell this product.

Matt Baum:
Yeah, definitely.

Connor Skelly:
And a lot of times it was just olive oil. So now that we’re past the curve of disillusionment, we’re kind of passing sort of this massive-

Matt Baum:
Would you say that bubble has burst? Would you say that? I mean, just like any other marketing, it gets huge, it bubbles up, everybody wants a part of it, we’re all going to get into it, there’s bad actors, there’s good people, and then bang. It pops. And you do shed a lot of those bad actors because they go, “Well, what’s the point right now?” You also shed, unfortunately, some really cool people who just couldn’t survive. But ultimately, it does seem like it’s better for the business, right, in the end?

Connor Skelly:
Ultimately, yes, right? Ultimately, overall for the industry, it does strengthen it. And this was going to happen anyways, and COVID just accelerated it. Where, another possible consolidation point, or another sort of come to Jesus moment for the CBD industry will be when the FDA provides more guidance on specifically in decibels. Because then that will shake up the space a lot more, and they have since accelerated their guidance a bit, which is promising-

Matt Baum:
Definitely.

Connor Skelly:
… especially for a lot of these large CBG companies that are holding out to make a stronger decision. But once those companies come in, they’re going to be looking at brand acquisitions, they’re going to be looking at doing their own product innovation, and to your question around what else is happened this year, innovation did not slow down. Companies are launching new products, they never stopped doing that.

Matt Baum:
It does seem like that.

Connor Skelly:
Adding in minor cannabinoids in their products, trying to find new ways to position, thinking much more strategically about how they can get in front of different types of consumers for different need states. That really, that didn’t slow down at all as a result of COVID. So-

Current trends in CBD and cannabis

Matt Baum:
So what’s hot right now? Like you said, there’s all kinds of new innovation. They’ve been forced to innovate, basically, because there’s so many other companies. What’s hot right now? What’s the new hot cannabinoid if you will?

Connor Skelly:
CBN is kind of the biggest one. With all these cannabinoids, the jury’s still out on how conclusive the science is around all of it. And these CBD brands, they’ve been very careful about making health claims, and that’s kind of the biggest number one thing that you shouldn’t do. [crosstalk 00:11:31], and-

Matt Baum:
Right. The good ones have been very careful about it. There’s plenty of bad ones that have not been very careful about it though.

Connor Skelly:
Right, right. And with CBN it’s being positioned for sleep more and more. It does have properties that allege to help with insomnia, and overall sleep issues. So various brands have been launching products with CBD and CBN, with CBD, CBN, and melatonin, to further use those kind of functional ingredients, to not only help position our product when people have that need state of, I need to improve my sleep. And then they go out and find that product. Melatonin can help with that.

Connor Skelly:
But now we’re seeing more of products with just CBN and CBD. And so they’re taking out that functional ingredient from it, and now just sort of strengthening the positioning of CBN as a potential sleep aid.

Matt Baum:
Yeah. I’d seen a lot of those. I’ve actually talked to a few companies that are really pushing CBN. And I got to tell you, I really like it, personally. I’ve found a couple that work really well, and I’ve found a couple that didn’t do anything. So, I mean, you got to look around.

Connor Skelly:
Yeah, that’s how it goes, right? And kind of getting at that point around trial, right? Trying out different products, brick and mortar is fantastic for that. And that’s where a lot of these innovations have capped launching. And I expect that a lot of those innovations will ramp up faster as brick and mortar opens back up again.

Matt Baum:
Definitely. Definitely.

Connor Skelly:
Because it’s a great avenue to do trial packs for customers just to grab a quick thing that may be on sale for them to try out. And we’re starting to see that more in the earliest channels that we saw that in during COVID was convenience and the C stores and gas stations. Those [crosstalk 00:13:23]-

Meet the Brightfield Group

Matt Baum:
Before we go a lot further with this, tell me a little bit about you guys, about what you do with the Brightfield Group. Where are you located? How do you find clients? Do they come to you? What do you guys do exactly?

Connor Skelly:
So we are a market research firm. And consumer insights firm. And what we do is, the core value of our business is our ability to implement a multi-source methodology to get as much information around emerging markets as possible. And so with CBD and cannabis, we have been able to leverage multiple sources. So on the research side, doing the desk research, doing the modeling out for market forecasts, and talking with… Doing various in-depth interviews with retailers, and brands, and manufacturers, and everyone across the supply chain, as well as a partnership network with various brands so we can understand sales a lot more.

Connor Skelly:
And then on the tech side, being able to do digital menu audits across retail, social listening, our consumer survey is integrated with social media so we can better tie usage, and attitudes, and psychographics, and product usage, to actual social media behavior. So taking all of these inputs and using a research team and a team of subject experts to look at this, and being able to provide the most robust view of the industry possible.

Matt Baum:
So why strictly cannabis? I mean, you guys are obviously marketing nerds, I can tell by the way you’re talking.

Connor Skelly:
I can’t help it, I can’t help it.

Matt Baum:
No, yeah.

Connor Skelly:
Well, this approach to research works really, really well in emerging markets when you just don’t have the data elsewhere.

Matt Baum:
That’s exactly what I thought you were going to say. This is pretty much a baby market. I mean, we now have about, what? Five, eight good years of marketing research on this basically?

Connor Skelly:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Matt Baum:
Does that-

Connor Skelly:
Yeah, I mean-

Matt Baum:
Is that more difficult? Or is that easier to deal with?

Connor Skelly:
Wait, what do you mean?

Matt Baum:
The fact that it’s so young. Is it easier because you can see it and track it from its birth? Or is it more difficult because you’re not looking at something like, I don’t know, pork belly futures or something, that have been around since before the Dust Bowl.

Connor Skelly:
It’s a bit of both, right? It’s extremely difficult because you don’t have the traditional data that you would to track, say, general beverage companies, or beverage industries, right? You don’t have the Nielsen data, or the Mintel, or the SPINS data that has been tracking this stuff in store for years, and then after a few years they’ll put into their consumer surveys, and then you finally start to get more consumer data about that. The time hasn’t happened for us to get that.

Connor Skelly:
So our approach to it is, collecting as much data from as many sources as possible, and creating a larger picture that way. And for markets like CBD and cannabis, that really is the main way that you can do it, because you’re going to miss out, point of sale for CBD, for example, a lot of it happens online. And so you have a huge data gap there. A lot of it happens in independent pharmacies. And so a lot of them don’t have the point of sale infrastructure.

Matt Baum:
Yeah. A lot of them are dealing in cash, because they don’t even have credit card usage that they can work with right now, so.

Connor Skelly:
Right, exactly. So that’s our approach to tracking these markets. And consistently, we were the company that had originally predicted the CBD boom in 2019. And well before the Farm Bill was passed. And it was all under the hypothesis that the Walgreens and the CVSs of the world, they’re going to see the opportunity and they’re going to want to get in on it. And we did see that. FDA, COVID, those are our big blockers to it. But the way that we approach this stuff, it’s worked really well.

What’s next for the CBD industry?

Matt Baum:
So let’s take, best case scenario. COVID gets cleaned up, FDA goes, “All right. We figured our crap out. Here’s how it works.” And they spell out the rules. What is the next big thing for CBD, for cannabinoids?

Connor Skelly:
Well, this has been going on for a couple years, maybe even more than that, it’s such a large industry. But looking at… Well first, I’ll look at CBD and where it’s being used as, and being positioned as just an ingredient that can fit into all types of different categories.

Matt Baum:
Right. Food, drink, capsules, tincture, whatever.

Connor Skelly:
Yeah. And that’s happened, right? These CBD brands, they’ve done a very good job of creating robust product portfolios around CBD. As the category expands, it will be… And more of these larger players get into the space, ingredients companies, CBG companies, it will continue to be used as an ingredient to focus on wellness positioning, which is a big topic, right? Wellness is a huge category. Something like four trillion dollars is the global wellness market, or something ridiculous.

Matt Baum:
And it can mean like anything almost, it seems like.

Connor Skelly:
Right. Even from spas to my FitBit to CBD, right? And so where I see this going is, these companies will begin to use CBD more and more in a wellness positioning, and really targeting those need states of consumers under, for many companies, where it makes sense for their brand, under a wellness umbrella. And there’s a lot that you can do with that, right? There is a lot of these brands moving more and more into the wellness space because there’s only really so high you can go for a growth potential in CBD.

Matt Baum:
Unless you want to end up like Kratom, in ever gas station, or something.

Connor Skelly:
And there’s always companies like that, right? There’s always companies that they stay in their lane, they know what they’re doing, and they do it really well. And there’s nothing wrong with that. And there’s a lot of companies out there that want to continue to grow.

Matt Baum:
So you think the growth though is moving into more of a wellness lifestyle type situation as opposed to just a tincture that you take to help you sleep, or a tincture that you help to take with anxiety. This becomes more lifestyle related.

Connor Skelly:
Yeah. Companies will start to… And not just CBD brands, right? Other companies that want to enter the space, they will begin to look at, what are those other tangential products, lifestyles, services, things like that, that fit into an overall CBD consumer.

Matt Baum:
So what are you looking at? What kind of things do you think? What recovery drinks and protein stuff like that?

Connor Skelly:
Yeah, I mean, those are happening now. For sure. Back to the point around innovation, there’s been a ton of beauty products. Beauty and skincare has exploded this year. And-

Matt Baum:
Which seems odd, because no one can go out. We can’t do anything. Why do we need to be so beautiful.

Connor Skelly:
Self care. It’s self care man.

Matt Baum:
I stopped cutting my hair even, I was like, “Ah, screw it.”

Connor Skelly:
Yeah. So, we’ve seen the beverage space has been really big again, the growth of it is kind of artificially constrained by the FDA guidance right now. But all these different kinds of positionings focus towards recovery, focus towards energy, all these kind of aspirational need states that consumers have. CBD brands and other companies are getting better and better at starting with those need states and then figuring out, well what products… How do my existing products meet those needs? And if they don’t, where this will be going in the next year, or two, three years.

Connor Skelly:
They’ll say, “Well what other products can I create?” Maybe, what other brands can I partner with to create that experience for our customer?

Matt Baum:
That seems… And I don’t know, I don’t work in market research, but I do feel like I’ve seen a lot of these companies that are marketing to athletes, or to weekend warriors, and that seems to be where a lot of this is going. Gym culture, and health culture like that, where yeah, it’s just part of the deal. You drink your special drink and you get your CBD, and it helps you with your muscles and whatnot. Is that the way to go? Or is that going to get played out really quick here to?

Connor Skelly:
Not every brand’s going to do it. There’s going to be a lot of brands that, they perform really well in pharmacy, right?

Matt Baum:
When you say in pharmacy-

Connor Skelly:
They have a medical positioning for their brand. What’s that?

Matt Baum:
When you say they perform really well in pharmacy, how do you mean? Full on in a pharmacy like Walgreens type setting?

Connor Skelly:
Yeah, your Walgreens. They may have, whether it’s their entire product portfolio, or the company has created a separate brand geared towards a pharmaceutical audience. There’re many companies that are moving in that kind of direction, where they find that they could be channel driven, and then so they’ll create a brand, position their products differently around that specific channel, and the consumer behavior on that channel.

Matt Baum:
Fair enough.

Connor Skelly:
So that’s just one example. There will be a lot of brands that will continue to move more into this wellness, or active, or these other kinds of positionings. It will just kind of depend on how they want to grow as a company and where those overlaps are with their current consumers and their prospective consumers.

Cannabis & hemp marketing during a pandemic

Matt Baum:
Okay. So let’s play, I’m a CBD brand. And I come to you. It’s been a rough year. Ugh, COVID. It’s killing me. What is the worst mistake that I made this year? What is the worst possible thing that you’ve seen brands doing, in your opinion? I want to go the opposite side of the spectrum, as opposed to, here’s what you should be doing. What’s the worst trend you’ve seen them do?

Connor Skelly:
Ignoring digital.

Matt Baum:
Really? All together ignoring? Just saying, “Nah, all we are is a brick and mortar?” That seems insane.

Connor Skelly:
Yeah like-

Matt Baum:
I can’t believe anyone’s doing that.

Connor Skelly:
And this doesn’t just apply to CBD, this applies to companies in general. There have been a lot of companies spending more money on social media and social listening tools. There are companies that are spending more on market research and things like that, because that’s what you do when market’s down. Is, you need data to back it up. The people that aren’t able to quickly meet their customers to where they are are in a lot of trouble.

Matt Baum:
Yeah. Okay. So, and they come to you. I’m struggling doing that. I’m having so much trouble. What do I do? What do you say to these clients that come in and they’re like, “I’m just screwed. I don’t know. I’m screwed.”

Connor Skelly:
Well, you use our data, you listen to us. No, no. So, CBD brand, for example, comes to us and say, “We’re steadily losing sales. We don’t have a problem getting people to come to our site, but they don’t convert.” Or things like that. Then, we could help them understand who their core consumers currently are and everything about them. From how they’re using those products, to basic things, demographics, usage, attitudes, all that.

Connor Skelly:
But then also, help them understand, well how are they talking about this stuff on social? What’s the context in which they talk about these things on social? What are the different points in their journey that you can continue to educate them? Because that’s very important, consumer education. What’s the right way to educate them for your brand and the brand direction that you want to go?

Matt Baum:
There you go, yeah.

Connor Skelly:
And-

Matt Baum:
Because there’s things you can tell them, but there’s also a right way to tell them these things, and a wrong way as well too, so.

Connor Skelly:
Right. And especially early on, it’s just kind of this buckshot thing where it’s like, “Well we’re just going to put this out and kind of see, and put it out in a bunch of different places and kind of see what happens.”

Matt Baum:
Right. We’ll tweet about it, we’ll talk about it on Instagram, whatever. But God, there’s so many. Like you said, there was 3,500 that you were tracking. And they’re all doing that. It just seems like, at first, we talked a lot about extraction. And then we talked a lot about the carrier, what kind of oil are they using? Or what kind of pill is it? Or whatever. And then we talked about specific things. Well this product will help you sleep. Or this product… CBG is a new one that we’re learning about.

Matt Baum:
Is it that differentiation where everyone’s going to… You spoke earlier, saying CBN seems to be popping up. Is CBG doing something similar? Is that coming up? And do you think-

Connor Skelly:
Yeah, it definitely is. I think C-

Matt Baum:
Do you think that differentiation is because of where we’re at?

Connor Skelly:
What’s that?

Matt Baum:
That differentiation, is this also just because where we’re at? Everyone is trying to survive right now and carve a niche?

Connor Skelly:
Yeah, I mean I would say, especially with CBG, where the positioning on it isn’t 100% defined. And-

Matt Baum:
Right. That seems like a really tough one right now. Because-

Connor Skelly:
It does-

Matt Baum:
We know it’s a thing. We just don’t necessarily know what that thing totally does.

Connor Skelly:
Right. And that goes with all of them, right? But to me, the positioning on CBG has always kind of been more wellness. Which, to the right consumer, there is nothing wrong with that. If you’re able to position your product of, this has enhanced wellness features or properties, that’ll be music to their ears, and those products will perform well with those consumers.

Connor Skelly:
So I think that’s kind of one of the areas where the industry is advancing right now, and how, they may have a tough time, or they may not need to position their products any differently than they do now. But if they want to be more innovative and have their positioning of those products, a lot of them are using cannabinoids to do so, especially as the cost of hemp decreases. I’m assuming, and I’m guessing, that over the next year or two years it’s going to become a very complex brand and consumer targeting space. Yeah.

Matt Baum:
Right, as you start to drill down into this and decide… And again, not making health claims, but CBG helps with X, or it’s really good for Y type of person, you’re going to start to get into more very much directed marketing to that. Whether they’re athletes, or they’re senior citizens, or they’re kids with anxiety, or something. What do you think, next year, what do you see as… And again, we’re forecasting here, no one’s saying go bet on what he says folks, you heard it here. There’s your hot tip. But what do you see trending up next year?

The FDA and CBD as a big business

Connor Skelly:
Well, with FDA guidance likely getting figured out by middle of next year, that’s going to open the floodgates.

Matt Baum:
Food and beverage you think more than anything? Or do you think it’s going to maintain a larger business in the tinctures and pills and whatnot? Because I would think, you’ve got companies, there’s no way Coca-Cola isn’t just waiting for some FDA so they can go, “Boom, we put it in Gatorade, we put it in Diet Coke, we put it in this.” I mean, I would guess that market is, I mean, just massive, absolutely massive.

Connor Skelly:
Yeah, I think, take that new product from Pepsi, Driftwell, right?

Matt Baum:
Oh, I don’t even know what that is.

Connor Skelly:
I don’t know if you saw that.

Matt Baum:
No.

Connor Skelly:
It’s a sparkling beverage that has calming properties in it. There’s no CBD in it.

Matt Baum:
Oh.

Connor Skelly:
There’s no CBD, there’s no hemp in that product. But that’s definitely where I see these companies going.

Matt Baum:
Do you see that-

Connor Skelly:
I think they’re going to use their existing… their brand prowess, their distribution prowess, they’re going to use all of this to really target after those need states of consumers. And they’re going to do it significantly better than a lot of these CBD brands have. Now, a lot of those top CBD brands, they have done extremely well on it. And some of them, they may be looking to be acquisition targets, they may want to still compete against all those big CBG companies, and they very well could. It will be a very brand-centric space.

Matt Baum:
So do you think, you said next year sometime when FDA… I mean, phew, fingers crossed, the FDA figures this out and gives us rules for this.

Connor Skelly:
Fingers crossed next year it happens.

Matt Baum:
Yeah, no doubt. I’ll believe it’s there when we get their friend, okay? But as soon as these FDA rules come in and you start to see major players come in, is it going to turn into what we see with microbrews getting famous and then getting purchased by Coors, and all of a sudden it’s like, yeah, they still maintain this type of beer or whatever, but it’s not really them anymore? Is that what’s next for these companies? Blow up, get acquired, make your money, start a new company?

Matt Baum:
That seems to be what happened in brewing in the United States as beer got more and more popular, and microbrews got more and more popular. The idea was, go get bought. That seems like the next frontier, to me, for a lot of these CBD, CBG, CBN companies. Get acquired, so now you’re still your company, but it’s your company CBD in Gatorade, for example, or something.

Connor Skelly:
Mm-hmm (affirmative). I think there’s definitely a lot of brands that, they want to be acquisition targets. There’s a lot of those founders, they’ve put in a lot of the work for all these years and they saw the space moving this direction. And they want to get acquired by Pepsi, right? There’s nothing wrong with that. And they should absolutely make sure that they have a strong brand and a strong connection with their consumers, so then it’s an easy sell to them.

Connor Skelly:
I think there’s also a lot of these top brands, aren’t going to want to give up their seat, right? They have very established relationships with consumers, like I said earlier, trustworthy, high quality products are some of the top brand descriptors that we get from consumers. And a lot of those top brands, they rank highly for those descriptors. And so when you bring in another brand, say like a Coca-Cola or a Pepsi that have strong brand affinities across a wide range of consumers, the jury’s kind of still out on, are they going to be trustworthy on a CBD side?

Matt Baum:
Yeah. The exact opposite, it could turn a lot of people off that are into this sort of wellness ideal, and they look at major companies like Procter & Gamble getting involved, that’s scary, I’m out. I’m not touching… Boulevard got bought by Coors for example, Boulevard Brewery-

Connor Skelly:
Or-

Matt Baum:
… and a lot of people said, “I’ll drink something else, thanks.”

Connor Skelly:
On that kind of same token, it could just strengthen the relationship that those consumers have with their existing CBD brands. So, over the past few months we were starting to see brand loyalty grow a bit more, brand preference grow a little bit more across different attributes and descriptors, and there’s a good amount of evidence to show that CBD consumers, they may want to stick with their current brands, even if a larger company enters the space.

Matt Baum:
Sure. It does seem like we’re in a space right now with CBD where, again, we don’t have a lot of government oversight. And so it can be hard to find good quality CBD. And when you do, yeah, people go, “That’s the one. I don’t want any other one, I want that one. I’m sticking with it.” And that can also be good and bad, in the sense that it’s like, a company goes out of business, well what do they do? Maybe they go, well screw it, I’m going to try something else then. Because I can only trust those one guys.

The shakeout in the CBD iindustry

Matt Baum:
Is there a danger there of, when this starts to get regulated… I mean, I want regulation. We need regulation. If nothing else, so we can see these people are doing it right, these people are doing it wrong. Do you see any sort of day of reckoning coming, if you will, like an armageddon almost that is going to shake out a lot of these companies? And the strong are going to survive and the others will just go into the next Wild West whatever?

Connor Skelly:
I think a lot of that has already happened.

Matt Baum:
Really?

Connor Skelly:
Especially with last year and COVID accelerating a lot of the big shakeout. A lot of that has already happened. And I think the top players will continue to strengthen, even though there’s… Across different channels, like independent pharmacies are online, are still highly competitive. The entire industry is highly competitive. But there are certain channels where top 10 brands could look very different-

Matt Baum:
Yeah definitely.

Connor Skelly:
… in a year from now. So no, I don’t think there will be this kind of reckoning in that sense. But when these CBG companies… What these brands should be doing now is, using this time before FDA guidance wisely. That’s been a big talking point to CBD brands that we have had-

Matt Baum:
Get ready for it.

Connor Skelly:
… for the past year. Is like, use this time to your advantage. Continue to build up a strong brand, continue to develop… set the foundation for long term relationships with your customers, listen to them, meet them where they are, and you’ll be well set up to effectively compete, or be ready for an acquisition target.

Matt Baum:
So, still a good time to get in the business. It’s not as scary as we all thought. Because I honestly, I didn’t think you were going to come in and be like, “Oh, doom and gloom. Oh, good lord.” Right? But it’s scary and a little more complex right now. But would you say, still a pretty good time to get in the business if you’re going to do it right?

Connor Skelly:
I think so, yeah. I mean, we’re seeing a lot of bounce back from Q2, and I definitely want to acknowledge the hardship and a lot of the challenges that all brands, and especially the brick and mortar ones have faced over the last year. We absolutely have to. You can’t negate that.

Matt Baum:
No, no, of course not.

Connor Skelly:
But as we’re progressing, and through 2020 and into next year, economies are opening back up, and we’re seeing, in Q2, we saw a steep decline in new users entering the category.

Matt Baum:
Definitely, yeah.

Connor Skelly:
Compared to last year.

Matt Baum:
I’m sure.

Connor Skelly:
And we’re starting to see that number come back up. And those that are heavy users have been steadily decreasing since last year.

Matt Baum:
Really?

Connor Skelly:
Or, sorry, steadily increasing since last year. And so-

Matt Baum:
Okay. Okay, because I was going to say, this year has been so awful that I’ve needed by CBD more than ever.

Connor Skelly:
Yeah. And we started asking questions related to COVID to our cannabis and CBD respondents, end of Q1, and the most recent data that we got showed that 75% agreed that this helped them through the pandemic.

Matt Baum:
Definitely.

Connor Skelly:
And so that usage continues. New users are coming back in. And close to 50% of respondents are saying that they’re starting to purchase their CBD in store again.

Matt Baum:
That’s great.

Connor Skelly:
Yeah. And so-

Matt Baum:
That’s really great.

Connor Skelly:
… what’s also interesting is, yes, they’re starting to purchase in store again. But we saw, it was something like, roughly 20, 22% I think, in Q1, purchased online. It more than doubled to Q2.

Matt Baum:
I would guess.

Connor Skelly:
Of people purchasing online. And that’s continued to stay strong. So that’s going to continue to be a strong channel for brands.

Matt Baum:
Awesome. This has been fantastic, and it’s not something I really get to talk about. Usually we’re talking about processes, or we’re talking about quality, or we’re talking about this cool cloth that could replace cotton someday, who knows? And it’s really interesting to talk about this from a market perspective. Because I mean, you wouldn’t think about it so much because it is CBD, and it seems like this separate thing, and it’s still new and ever. But, you have to market it just like anything else. And you’re selling it to people. And people are going through a tough time right now, and that means it’s going to be a tough financial time for all kinds of markets and whatnot.

Final thoughts from Matt

Matt Baum:
Huge thanks to Connor for coming on the show and giving me a chance to have a conversation that I haven’t really had. It’s amazing that marketing firms really are paying attention to this market, because it is huge. And while it has been struggling, it was really nice to here somebody like Connor, who is deeply entrenched in this, with such a positive outlook for what comes next. And for companies that are doing it well. And, not to mention the fact that he seems to think the FDA is going to figure it out sometime next year, which would be good news for everyone involved.

Matt Baum:
Well, that about brings us to the end of another episode of The Ministry of Hemp Podcast. I’ll have links to the Brightfield group in the show notes. And speaking of show notes, we here at the Ministry of Hemp believe that an accessible world is a better world for everybody. So, you will find a full written transcript of this show in the notes as well. Next week, I promise, we’re going to get to that show about Delta-8-THC, I finally have locked down an expert. And I’m super excited to talk to them. Not just that, I am going to take Delta-8-THC and let you know about my experience right here on the show.

Matt Baum:
If you’re looking for more hemp news and information right now, head over the ministryofhemp.com where we have a Delta-8 fact sheet you can check out to prepare for the episode I keep telling you is coming. Sorry about that. And, we have a brand new Ministry of Hemp verified seal that we are giving to cool brands that we’ve reviewed, and researched, and talked about. So, if you see that seal, the Ministry of Hemp verified seal, it’s green, it’s really cool, you got to check it out, you know we’ve done the hard work for you. And, this is a brand that you can trust. We wanted to do something to help you, the consumer make good choices with your money while we’re waiting for FDA regulation. It’s a cool stamp, and I even suggested we make t-shirts of it. So let me know what you think.

Matt Baum:
If you want to help support hemp education and spreading the word of hemp education, head over to patreon/ministryofhemp and become a Ministry of Hemp insider. It gets you access to all kinds of cool stuff, like this weeks podcast extra, where I am talking to Connor about how a marketing guy ends up working in cannabis. It’s a fun little conversation. And, you get so many other things too, like early access to articles, and extras that we don’t even put on the site. Not to mention the fact, in doing so you are directly helping us spread the word, keep the site alive, and keep this show going. Please head over to patreon/ministryofhemp and become an insider today.

Matt Baum:
Well that about does it for me. I’m about to go huddle in front of the television all night and hope for good news in the election results. We’ll see. Either way, we’ll be back here next week, and we’ll deal with it, one way or another, I promise. You’re not alone. And the good news is, there’s things like CBD to help you with your anxiety if you need it. For now, remember to take care of yourself, take care of others. I hope you voted, because it’s your patriotic duty to do so, and I hope you made a good decision. This is Matt Baum in the Ministry of Hemp, signing off. (silence).

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