Speaker 1: Hi, I'm Ethan Natalman, and this is Psychoactive, a production
Speaker 1: of My Heart Radio and Protozoa Pictures. Psychoactive is the
Speaker 1: show where we talk about all things drugs. But any
Speaker 1: of view is expressed here do not represent those of
Speaker 1: my Heart Media, Protozoa Pictures, or their executives and employees. Indeed, heed,
Speaker 1: as an inveterate contrarian, I can tell you they may
Speaker 1: not even represent my own And nothing contained in this
Speaker 1: show should be used as medical advice or encouragement to
Speaker 1: use any type of drugs. Hello, Psychoactive listeners. So today
Speaker 1: we're gonna talk about c b D everything you ever
Speaker 1: wanted to know, and maybe we're afraid to ask or
Speaker 1: I'm sure you're getting good answers about now. My guest
Speaker 1: is a real expert on CBD who I have enormous
Speaker 1: respect for. His name's Barton Lee, and I first heard
Speaker 1: about Martin Lee when he wrote a book in the
Speaker 1: mid eighties called Acid Dreams, The Complete Social History of LSD,
Speaker 1: the c I of the Sixties and Beyond, which was
Speaker 1: you know, really became one of the sort of classic
Speaker 1: books in the field. And then about ten years ago
Speaker 1: he did another book, an award winning book called Smoke Signals,
Speaker 1: A Social History of Marijuana, Medical, recreational and scientific um Now,
Speaker 1: Martin in recent years create an organization called Project cb D.
Speaker 1: It's a fantastic website chock full of tons of information.
Speaker 1: He's been my go to person whenever I have questions
Speaker 1: about this. So Martin, thanks so much for joining me
Speaker 1: on Psychoactive. My pleasure. He's I've been looking forward to
Speaker 1: this actually, So could you just explain what is c
Speaker 1: B D well. CBD is short for cannaba dial that's
Speaker 1: the scientific name, and cb D and T and C
Speaker 1: are both components of the cannabis plant, part of a
Speaker 1: group of compounds called abinoids. T, C and CBD are
Speaker 1: the most prominent and well known cannabinoids in the cannabis plant.
Speaker 1: If you look at the molecules, you know, the structure
Speaker 1: side by side, you'd be hard trested to notice the difference.
Speaker 1: It's it's very, very minor. They they have the same
Speaker 1: atoms basically in history, and you look at the original
Speaker 1: strains of cannabis, the so called land race strains. Before
Speaker 1: UH cannabis became popular in the United States in the
Speaker 1: nineteen sixties, it was often the case that a variety
Speaker 1: of cannabis would have relatively equal amounts of th C
Speaker 1: and c b D, and these plants were exquisite in
Speaker 1: terms of the the psychoactive effects they conferred, much loved
Speaker 1: by people today even still if you can get hold
Speaker 1: of them, names like Acapulco Gold come to mind. Uh.
Speaker 1: These are the original land race strains, um. But over time,
Speaker 1: what happened in in the late sixties early seventies when
Speaker 1: people started to I'm amateur corticulture started breeding cannabis strains,
Speaker 1: they made an effort, uh, not consciously to breed the
Speaker 1: cb D out of the strains, but to give a
Speaker 1: kind of accentuated high, the perfect high they were looking for,
Speaker 1: and they kind of inadvertently pushed the cb D into
Speaker 1: kind of a recessive genetic mode. So we ended up
Speaker 1: with a lot of THHC dominant cannabis, which has significant
Speaker 1: medical medical properties. But we kind of lost the access
Speaker 1: to CBD over time, and these the CBD was rediscovered,
Speaker 1: you might say, um in around and then began to
Speaker 1: be reintroduced into the supply. But CBD is not intoxicating,
Speaker 1: unlike t C, which is an intoxicating compound. But I
Speaker 1: think it's misleading and incorrect to describe c b D
Speaker 1: as non psychoactive. That became kind of a marketing slogan.
Speaker 1: I think for the emerging CBD industry they want to
Speaker 1: distinguish it from th HC So the CBD is non psychoactive,
Speaker 1: t C is psychoactive. But actually CBD is shown to
Speaker 1: have anti anxiety properties, antidepressant properties UM and if you
Speaker 1: consume a compound that can change one's mood and make
Speaker 1: one less anxious or less oppressive, it's clearly then having
Speaker 1: a psychoactive impact. It's just not an intoxicating impact. And
Speaker 1: I think that's an important distinction, because there's been an
Speaker 1: effort or emphasis on trying to bifurcate CBD. It's separated
Speaker 1: from T T H c UH, and I think that's misleading.
Speaker 1: I think one of the problems there is that you know,
Speaker 1: initially again that the marketing pitches will CBD it's not psychoactive,
Speaker 1: it will eliminate the high. And originally when we were
Speaker 1: involved at Project CBD and reintroducing CBD into the medical
Speaker 1: cannabis supply in California, the emphasis was not so much
Speaker 1: as that CBD UM didn't get you high. It's that
Speaker 1: CBD helped manage this psychoactivity, uh, that it can lessen
Speaker 1: the psychoactivity um, but not necessarily eliminate all of it,
Speaker 1: and that that was the point. To manage the psychoactivity
Speaker 1: of cannabis, which is really the the first challenge for
Speaker 1: a person using cannabis for therapeutic use um to limit
Speaker 1: the intoxicating effects so it's tolerable. If indeed that's important
Speaker 1: to the person. If one's taken straight c b D,
Speaker 1: is it possible to get high intoxicated in that sense
Speaker 1: like marijuana hire or something resembling that. With just straight
Speaker 1: cb D, even a large amount with no th h D,
Speaker 1: one shouldn't have an intoxicating effect if you take a
Speaker 1: straight CBD or pure cbd um. There's a little caveat
Speaker 1: to that, but maybe we'll get into later in that
Speaker 1: when CBD is extracted from the plant, whether it's hamp
Speaker 1: or cannabis, again, it shouldn't If it's just pure CBD,
Speaker 1: no intoxication. But if it's made synthetically in a lab,
Speaker 1: which I think is the coming wave in the future
Speaker 1: for CBD isolets um. Depending how it's made, it actually
Speaker 1: could have an intoxicating effect. Because not to get too
Speaker 1: far deep into the science right now, you know there's
Speaker 1: a certain um natural form of t C that exists
Speaker 1: in the plant, all same within CBD, N, T A
Speaker 1: C both, but when you create it synthetically, it can
Speaker 1: create versions of c B, d N t h C
Speaker 1: that are non natural versions of the plant. And what
Speaker 1: happens in the lab when you synthesize it, it creates
Speaker 1: what's called a racemic mixture. Um So, just to step
Speaker 1: back for a moment, you know, the CBD and the
Speaker 1: t C molecule have like left handed and right handed versions,
Speaker 1: and in nature it only curs in one way. But
Speaker 1: if you have the non natural version, that can actually
Speaker 1: have a very powerful effect on on the receptors that
Speaker 1: gets you high. Now are those things out on the
Speaker 1: market today? I mean, I thought I was at a
Speaker 1: part of the night and some woman I met with claiming,
Speaker 1: oh I get high c CBD. Was that just kind
Speaker 1: of imagined on her parts of the placebo effect? Or
Speaker 1: was there are there actually things in the market that
Speaker 1: could be doing that Now, I would say it's most
Speaker 1: likely imagined, but it's possible again if it's a synthetically
Speaker 1: created molecule. You have not only actually left handed and
Speaker 1: right handed versions of the molecule which sort of fit
Speaker 1: in differently into the receptor and could do different things.
Speaker 1: And in fact, one of the metabolites, it's been shown
Speaker 1: in a laboratory of these alternative versions of CBD, non
Speaker 1: natural versions, has a more powerful effect than thh C
Speaker 1: on the receptor. So it's conceivable that, uh, that that
Speaker 1: will make you feel high. And I've heard from people
Speaker 1: that they purchase a CBD product. It's advertised as being
Speaker 1: on a whole plant spectrum, meaning other components of the
Speaker 1: kind of canvas plant, and they're not just the CBD.
Speaker 1: Yet when we tested some of these, they only had
Speaker 1: CBD in them um and the person claimed that they
Speaker 1: got high from it and made them uncomfortable. That this
Speaker 1: is a person that was and particularly fond of th HC.
Speaker 1: Not everybody is, So I don't know. I think this
Speaker 1: is something that has to be looked at very carefully
Speaker 1: and regulated very carefully because it could be dangerous. So
Speaker 1: just going back to the the innovation that was happening,
Speaker 1: you know among horticultural is trying to get stronger marijuana.
Speaker 1: Back in the seventies, eighties when they were trying to
Speaker 1: kick up the th HC, did that sort of inevitably
Speaker 1: lower Remember hearing this, I don't know as a rumor
Speaker 1: or not, that when you try to kick up the
Speaker 1: TC and the plant, it's going to be knocking down
Speaker 1: the cbd um And was that originally true and no
Speaker 1: longer true or is that sort of an edible part
Speaker 1: of that process of trying to increase th HC potency.
Speaker 1: It's kind of an either or thing. I mean, genetically,
Speaker 1: when when the plant is developing, you know, there's only
Speaker 1: a certain amount of cannabinoids that can be in the plant.
Speaker 1: Generally we think of it as maybe you can push
Speaker 1: it up to thirty, but you can't have both. So
Speaker 1: you have certain strains that are kind of half and
Speaker 1: half to fly equal amounts of CBD and t C.
Speaker 1: But I remember hearing at some point years ago that
Speaker 1: there were more and more of the very high th
Speaker 1: HC plants and that was knocking down the cb D.
Speaker 1: If it was an either or factor that was resulting
Speaker 1: in people becoming more anxious and things like that when
Speaker 1: they smoked marijuana, that sort that was that was that?
Speaker 1: Was there some truth to that? Yeah, I think that's
Speaker 1: essentially correct with what happened, And it wasn't that it
Speaker 1: was the people were intending to knock out the CBD.
Speaker 1: Um It's more, you know, the the breeding in those
Speaker 1: days before we had access to analytical labs that can
Speaker 1: tell us actually what's in the plant was a lot
Speaker 1: of it was this as much art, if not more so,
Speaker 1: than science, you know, and people were creating different versions
Speaker 1: of the plant and testing it and see what they like.
Speaker 1: They they picked and choose, and they sort of inadvertently
Speaker 1: bred the cb D into very low amounts Genetically. You
Speaker 1: could think of it this way, if if the th
Speaker 1: C dominant plants or the brown eyes and the CBD
Speaker 1: plants the blue eyes, they kind of bread the blue
Speaker 1: eyes out of it, except those genes were recessive. So
Speaker 1: when you have all this kind of crazy intermixing of
Speaker 1: so many different strains of being bred, inevitably a few
Speaker 1: blue eye plants would pop up. And that's what happened
Speaker 1: in two thousand nine two ten when we identified a
Speaker 1: few plants that had a significant amount of CBD in them.
Speaker 1: And these were plants that were generally what we call
Speaker 1: the type two's of the plants that had roughly equal
Speaker 1: amounts of CB D N t C. Type ones I
Speaker 1: t C low CBD. Type two is mix of each
Speaker 1: type three's high CBD low t C. When once once
Speaker 1: the hemp entered the picture, uh, in some ways there
Speaker 1: was less focus on marijuana plants quote unquote with significant
Speaker 1: amounts of CBD that kind of fell off the radar
Speaker 1: and got short shrifted a bit, although I think that
Speaker 1: will come back in the future. I think because I mean,
Speaker 1: you know, al and hemp. I always thought, you know,
Speaker 1: hemp was basically to my mind, it was low you know,
Speaker 1: low th HC marijuana growing wild all over the place
Speaker 1: and being cultivated in many parts of the world, but
Speaker 1: banned in the US until you know, I guess with
Speaker 1: the farm bill um and often it's being used for
Speaker 1: industrial and agricultural purposes. But it wasn't the industrial hemp.
Speaker 1: Was it that was being associated with CBD or was
Speaker 1: it originally or was it incorrectly associated with that? What's
Speaker 1: the story about that hemp plant and CBD relationship when
Speaker 1: you think about it before, when I'm referring to as
Speaker 1: the rediscovery of CBD, industrial hemp around the world, wasn't
Speaker 1: grown for cannabinoid content. It was grown for fiber, for
Speaker 1: the best heard and also in some cases for the
Speaker 1: seed oil. But this was not uh, this isn't really
Speaker 1: little to do with CBD or t a C. This
Speaker 1: was not the focus of of industrial hemp. But what
Speaker 1: happened is when you consider the different categories of him
Speaker 1: they were basically two the hemp grown for fiber and
Speaker 1: hemp grown for seed oil. Hemp grown for fiber is
Speaker 1: really useless in terms of extracting for CBD or th
Speaker 1: HC or any cannabinoid. These are plants that sort of
Speaker 1: look like bamboo almost shoots with with just a little
Speaker 1: bit of foliage. Um. Then you also have the seed
Speaker 1: oil plants. They're a little bit different. They're a little
Speaker 1: bit bushier. And if you actually analyze the content if
Speaker 1: the cannabinoids and the seed oil plants, the plants that's
Speaker 1: grown for extracting oil used for soap or paint or
Speaker 1: also nutritional purposes, they have a little more CBD than
Speaker 1: the fiber plants, maybe three three and a half percent
Speaker 1: if you measured it in an analytical lab. But there's
Speaker 1: always a few outlayers uh that would would pop up
Speaker 1: a little bit higher with the cb D maybe up
Speaker 1: to six or seven percent that kind of a little
Speaker 1: bit wild in the field, and that's what became the
Speaker 1: cb D from hamp uh those type of plants kind
Speaker 1: of the offshoots of enola or seed other seed oil
Speaker 1: varietals um and that's what became UM Charlotte's web initially
Speaker 1: and some of the more well known that was the
Speaker 1: most well known strain of of hemp early on, you know,
Speaker 1: you know, when it first burst into national consciousness in
Speaker 1: and those same plants had th C in them as well,
Speaker 1: added comparable amounts or what not much. You know, in
Speaker 1: hemp in general, there's not much resin in there compared
Speaker 1: to a marijuana plant, and that's where the cb D,
Speaker 1: n t C lives in the plant. In the resin
Speaker 1: hemp is low resin cannabis. Marijuana quote unquote is high
Speaker 1: resin cannabis. That's how I distinguished them. Resin is in
Speaker 1: the flower tops of cannabis. You know, that's where the
Speaker 1: magic is. That's where the cannabinoids are um. If you're
Speaker 1: getting cb D or thh C from cannabis, it's coming
Speaker 1: from the resin in the plant. When you go back
Speaker 1: and look get the actual definition of marijuana within age
Speaker 1: from the Marijuana Tacks Act of seven and the exact
Speaker 1: two sentenced definition was poured it over to the Control
Speaker 1: Substance Act in nineteen seventy. It mentions resin three times
Speaker 1: in the definition of marijuana. And it's very clear that
Speaker 1: anything to do with the resin was considered illegal. That
Speaker 1: was prohibited if there was part of the cannabis plant
Speaker 1: um it was just the stalk and no resin. And
Speaker 1: if it came from a plant that that was low
Speaker 1: resin plant, that anything in the plant that had nothing
Speaker 1: to do with the resin that was considered legal according
Speaker 1: to the Marijuanattacks Act. Essentially, it means that CBD was
Speaker 1: made illegal in nineteen thirty seven according to the Marijuana
Speaker 1: Tacks Act, but it's peculiar because CBD actually hadn't been
Speaker 1: discovered yet. It was only discovered in nineteen forty by
Speaker 1: Roger Adams, the chemist at University of Illinois. So CBD
Speaker 1: was made illegal before it was discovered, simply because of
Speaker 1: the banning of resident. That Marijuana Tax Act banned anything
Speaker 1: to do with the resin of the plant, any derivative
Speaker 1: from the resident and the resident itself. But the resident
Speaker 1: is where ccbd lives in the plant, in residents where
Speaker 1: th C is in the plant. So anything to do
Speaker 1: with the resin was considered illegal. Um. And the way
Speaker 1: that the distinction between hemp and marijuana plays out legally
Speaker 1: now you have an artificial wine drawn across the plant,
Speaker 1: so that any plant was zero point three t C
Speaker 1: or less is considered hemp, where if it has more
Speaker 1: than that amount of t C, it's considered marijuana. But Mark,
Speaker 1: I thought the entire hemp plant was actually banned for
Speaker 1: many decades. Welln't because it produced resin, even if it
Speaker 1: was a tiny amount. I se. So nobody had figured
Speaker 1: out how to produce hemp plants and hemp stocks or
Speaker 1: industrial purposes that would consistently be below point three percent.
Speaker 1: The law didn't say anything to do. It didn't have
Speaker 1: anything to do with Europe with that only comes later
Speaker 1: with the farm bill. Um. You know, the law was
Speaker 1: all about resident Anything to do with residon is illegal
Speaker 1: now because the way things played out politically with the
Speaker 1: Federal Bureau of Narcotics and then in its successors, they
Speaker 1: went whole log and they basically banned hemp even though
Speaker 1: parts of hemp had no residented UM and which is
Speaker 1: also why people could you know, import hemp products which
Speaker 1: were totally sort of you know, cleansed of any th
Speaker 1: C that was legal, right, Yes, and then when, of course,
Speaker 1: I guess that was a little historical period during World
Speaker 1: War Two when he was government encouraged farmers to briefly
Speaker 1: grow hemp because it was part of the war effort,
Speaker 1: but then rebanded thereafter, and I guess it essentially stayed
Speaker 1: on banned until just a few years ago, except for
Speaker 1: maybe some state authorized research programs that age. With that
Speaker 1: farm Farm Bill from that year, it became legal to
Speaker 1: grow hemp um, particularly for CBD H extraction, and that's
Speaker 1: really what motivated the interest in the CBD that that's
Speaker 1: what led to the Farm Bill, that the explosion of
Speaker 1: popular interest in the CBD. But but the Farm Bill
Speaker 1: is inherently flawed really because I compare it to like
Speaker 1: a software patch that's created two improve or or remedy
Speaker 1: defective software. In this case, that the fact of software
Speaker 1: is the Control Substances Act, except you can't really fix it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you can't really fix that with a software patch because
Speaker 1: it leads to other problems and then you have to
Speaker 1: have another patch that fixed the software patch and add infinitum.
Speaker 1: What it's done is create a situation where people who
Speaker 1: wanted to grow hemp to extract cannabinoids, in particularly CBD UM,
Speaker 1: they have a lot of problems they had to face.
Speaker 1: I mean, if you have a robust plant, a cannabis plant,
Speaker 1: they don't like. It doesn't really conform very easily to
Speaker 1: this politically correct zero point three limit. You know that
Speaker 1: it is an artificial limit. You know, in in European
Speaker 1: Union it's zero point two c only that's allowed. In
Speaker 1: Switzerland they allowed one percent. It's it's it's an arbitrary
Speaker 1: number that doesn't have a scientific basis. UM. That's really
Speaker 1: imposed in US law, I think to keep quote unquote
Speaker 1: marijuana illegal, to distinguish hemp from marijuana that way, when
Speaker 1: originally it was about resent content, not about th C content. UM.
Speaker 1: And this has caused a lot of problems in terms
Speaker 1: of UM, the industry getting off the ground, UM and
Speaker 1: just how it's really how we relate to it legally.
Speaker 1: We'll be talking more after we hear this. You say,
Speaker 1: there were two farm bills one and one, but you
Speaker 1: have this explosion right of hemp production happening. I think
Speaker 1: all sorts of people trying to get into it for
Speaker 1: industrial purposes, but also I guess CBD purposes. And then
Speaker 1: a few years ago you have this explosion of CBD.
Speaker 1: So are they linked Because most of the CBD then
Speaker 1: or even now was coming from hemp plants or what
Speaker 1: plans that were still that were legal under federal law
Speaker 1: or not. I think that the the the momentum, the
Speaker 1: popular momentum for CBD had been building for some time.
Speaker 1: It really ever since the CNN broadcasts that showed children
Speaker 1: with severe epilepsy or helped by CBD, almost in a
Speaker 1: miraculous way, and every since that time the CBD pierced
Speaker 1: national and international consciousness. Prior to then, very few people
Speaker 1: have heard about CBD at all. So um, it had
Speaker 1: been building and and and it's really what led to
Speaker 1: the passage of the Farm Bills, in which is quite
Speaker 1: limited what you could do with growing hemp at that point,
Speaker 1: and then which legalized the growing of hemp both for
Speaker 1: cannabinoid content and the classic industrial purposes. The problem is
Speaker 1: uh that the kind of hemp that they were allowed
Speaker 1: people to grow was not the optimal source for extracting CBD.
Speaker 1: You know it again, when you look back to those
Speaker 1: original noteworthy strains like Charlotte's Webb, you're talking six seven
Speaker 1: cb D content by Dryway at most. When you compare
Speaker 1: that to a marijuana quote unquote plant with the high
Speaker 1: cb D content um you were talking about, and CBD
Speaker 1: by Drywaight with about one and one at one t C,
Speaker 1: which is over the limits for hemp, but still it's
Speaker 1: it's still very low to h C and it's the
Speaker 1: best source of CBD. So what you had was people
Speaker 1: growing hemp um but not optimal to extract, so they
Speaker 1: always were trying to push the plant for higher cb
Speaker 1: D content, and eventually what what happened is that they
Speaker 1: took these um high CBD marijuana strains um and try
Speaker 1: to breed them in such a way as to draw
Speaker 1: down the THHC levels, and it's very difficult to do that.
Speaker 1: So farmers were growing these plants and they had to
Speaker 1: play cat and mouse with the authorities because the plants
Speaker 1: tended to go hot. You know, hemp plants like that.
Speaker 1: They don't want to stay at the point three percent
Speaker 1: t C. They want to go up to that one
Speaker 1: percent tight C level um. That's the natural form of
Speaker 1: cannabis for these types of varietals, and um, it really
Speaker 1: made it difficult for growers. Uh. They would grow plants
Speaker 1: they go that would go beyond the th h C
Speaker 1: limit and they'd have to destroy them, and you know,
Speaker 1: it became kind of a mess. And so so they
Speaker 1: would actually try to cheat the regulators to to keep
Speaker 1: them in the ground, um, just as long as they
Speaker 1: could to maximize the cb D content. But then it
Speaker 1: pushed the THHC too high and uh, and they would
Speaker 1: try to evade the Agriculture department representatives that would test
Speaker 1: the the plants, and it became very very difficult. Is
Speaker 1: it's still going on now, yes, so to uh, yes
Speaker 1: it is going on. There was a study published by
Speaker 1: the University of Minnesota scientists working there that concluded that
Speaker 1: the genetics of the so called high CBD hem plants
Speaker 1: were actually marijuana genetics. UM. And when you're when you're
Speaker 1: playing with these type of plants, you you can't grow
Speaker 1: them to full turn. Otherwise again, you you exceed the
Speaker 1: the th AC limits. The longer the plants staying ground,
Speaker 1: the more cannabinoids that are in their more cbdn let's
Speaker 1: take a break on this, but let's go to the evidence,
Speaker 1: because my understanding is that the only f d A
Speaker 1: approved CBD product, right is the thing that GW pharmaceutical
Speaker 1: started working on twenty five years ago. Right, it's the statotacts,
Speaker 1: I guess and and epidolens um, which is found you know,
Speaker 1: helpful in terms of dealing with children's epileptic conditions. Is
Speaker 1: that right? Is that still the basically the only one
Speaker 1: that's approved. Correct. That is a pharmaceutical version of CBD
Speaker 1: that's approved by the f d A specifically to treat
Speaker 1: children with three types of severe forms of epilepsy, and
Speaker 1: it can only be used for that purpose. Um. And
Speaker 1: I think that's a positive development to the extent that
Speaker 1: this can really help children with these terrible diseases. It's
Speaker 1: proven to that they went through all the rigorous tests
Speaker 1: that you have to to be proved by the FDA
Speaker 1: as a as a pharmaceutical. I don't think that the
Speaker 1: g W Pharmaceuticals, which was formed in the late nineties
Speaker 1: and nineties, was focusing initially on this kind of CBD isolate,
Speaker 1: which is what epidialects of the pharmaceutical you just mentioned,
Speaker 1: That's what it is. Initially they were focused on a
Speaker 1: tincture that had roughly equal amounts of cb D and
Speaker 1: t C. It's called sat Effects, and it is approved
Speaker 1: as a pharmaceutical in over a couple of dozen countries,
Speaker 1: but not in the United States. It's proved for use
Speaker 1: in neuropathic pain, in um, multiple sclerosis, cancer, and other
Speaker 1: conditions like that, but it's not available for use in
Speaker 1: the United States. And it's not your CBD. Sata x
Speaker 1: is mainly cb D n t C with with a
Speaker 1: smidgeon of everything else. And you know, frankly, I don't
Speaker 1: think epidialects is a particularly good medicine in terms of
Speaker 1: its cannabinot content. It's basically just pure CBD, but also
Speaker 1: has supralose in it, which is an artificial sweetener which
Speaker 1: disrupts the microbiome, you know, has adverse health effects. So
Speaker 1: when they're giving this to children, um, whatever it's doing
Speaker 1: for the epilepsy, it's also doing other things that aren't
Speaker 1: so great. And there was a very interesting study UM
Speaker 1: done out of Brazil. Scientists in Brazil did a meta analysis,
Speaker 1: which is considered a very you know, kind of a
Speaker 1: gold standard scientific type of study, and they compare it
Speaker 1: epidialects its effectiveness to full spectrum c B D rich
Speaker 1: oil meaning hemp oil that was hemp derived oil presumably
Speaker 1: from hemp UH that was mainly CBD, very little th C,
Speaker 1: but a little bit of everything else that's in the plant.
Speaker 1: And they found that when they compared the full spectrum
Speaker 1: CBD oil to the isolate, that both were effective in
Speaker 1: dealing with these catastrophic epileptic conditions remarkably so. And you
Speaker 1: were talking about children from nothing else helped um, but
Speaker 1: these isolate required five times the amount of CBD compared
Speaker 1: to what was in the full spectrum products UH to
Speaker 1: be effective. So when you talk about CBD as an isolate,
Speaker 1: which is what epidialec says, it might pass muster easily
Speaker 1: with regulate laters. It might be something that the f
Speaker 1: d A is won't frown upon that's coming from a
Speaker 1: cannabis plant or a hemp plant. But it's not necessarily
Speaker 1: the most effective or the best means of using CBD,
Speaker 1: even for epilepsy. And I think it's important to to
Speaker 1: highlight because the CBD industry itself in some ways is
Speaker 1: lobbying for these isolates, particularly in Europe, which is an unfortunate,
Speaker 1: but it's a game that's played and that's still being
Speaker 1: played whenever you're dealing with cannabinoids. Well, it's I guess
Speaker 1: that's part of the regulatory challenge, right, because if there's
Speaker 1: reason to believe that it's the entourage effect of the
Speaker 1: multiple of TCCBD and their elements in the cannabis plant
Speaker 1: is probably something that FDA and other regulatory agencies just
Speaker 1: aren't they good at figuring out how to you know, regulate,
Speaker 1: how to evaluate. I mean, let's face that the FDA
Speaker 1: was not established to regulate plant medicine. It was that's
Speaker 1: not what it's about, UM And interestingly, I don't think
Speaker 1: it should be in the business of regulating plant medicines.
Speaker 1: Probably need another kind of agency or something UM. But yes,
Speaker 1: the problem with the FDA now and CBD is that
Speaker 1: the f d A privileges the isolate over these more
Speaker 1: complex or what they call the the full spectrum or
Speaker 1: the raw plant that has a lot of different components
Speaker 1: in it. This presents problems, you know, for people working
Speaker 1: in pharmaceutical drug development. They don't generally like carnabinoids. They're
Speaker 1: messy cannabinoids, and particularly CBD does so many different things
Speaker 1: in the body that you know, and and pharmaceutical development
Speaker 1: likes to take one compound and harness it to have
Speaker 1: one particular effect. With CBD, you're having dozens and dozens
Speaker 1: of effects within the body, you know, even pure CBD.
Speaker 1: So it just it's it's messier, it's more problematic from
Speaker 1: the pharmaceutical point of view. I personally am not against
Speaker 1: pharmaceutical versions of cannabinoids. What I find troubling is how
Speaker 1: they are privileged by the regulatory apparatus to the detriment
Speaker 1: of natural forms of the city. Well, by both the
Speaker 1: regulatory apparatus and by the fact that it's easier for
Speaker 1: researchers to focus on individual elements as opposed to looking
Speaker 1: at entourage as the combinations. Right, It's it's on both sides,
Speaker 1: so you know, I mean the earlier today, Martin, I
Speaker 1: was kind of as I'm looking through your website and
Speaker 1: I looked at clinical Trials dot gov online, which lists
Speaker 1: studies underway or studies completed. I just popped in CBD
Speaker 1: and it's at nine. When these six studies around the world,
Speaker 1: I mean US, Europe, but also Israel, China, a whole
Speaker 1: range of places going on. So there's obviously a huge
Speaker 1: amount of research going. But meanwhile, I guess there are
Speaker 1: no there are a number of other controlled double blind
Speaker 1: studies and human beings which have shown interesting results. There's
Speaker 1: a bigger number of studies with animals, other animals, UM,
Speaker 1: that have shown promising results. And then a whole bunch
Speaker 1: of stuff that's in vitro right, a test tube stuff
Speaker 1: which is you know, looking promising, but where it's a
Speaker 1: long ways to go before we have the kind of
Speaker 1: controlled double blind studies that we get approved by the
Speaker 1: f d A. So when we look at the various conditions,
Speaker 1: right that are out there, the childhood epileptic conditions are
Speaker 1: the ones that we know about and they have gotten
Speaker 1: most of the attention, UM. But when we look at
Speaker 1: the other areas where CBD has proven most or CBD
Speaker 1: CBD in combo, what THHC has proven most promising, UM,
Speaker 1: And where the human you know, control double blind studies, UM,
Speaker 1: you know have produced positive results. What's stands out right now?
Speaker 1: What stands out in general is we're at this precipice,
Speaker 1: as you mentioned, is over nine hundred clinical trials now
Speaker 1: in effect with CBD. Most of those trials involved just
Speaker 1: CBD isolates. There's a massive amount of preclinical data, both
Speaker 1: in vitro and vitro and in live animals and just
Speaker 1: test tubes UM and that's very very compelling data that
Speaker 1: just begs for clinical trials. So we're finally seeing that
Speaker 1: starting to take place. In terms of results from clinical experiments.
Speaker 1: The verdict is out, but I expect that it's quite
Speaker 1: likely given what we're hearing anecdotally from people who are
Speaker 1: using CBD products, whether isolates or full spectrum or broad
Speaker 1: spectrum as it's called, there's enough anecdotal data that's quite
Speaker 1: compelling and shouldn't be ignored UM that suggests that cb
Speaker 1: D shows utility and effectiveness and significant benefits in a
Speaker 1: number of areas for neurological diseases, most definitely UM for
Speaker 1: certain mood disorders like anxiety I mentioned, also depression for pain.
Speaker 1: Also it's it's clear that those are the big three pain, anxiety,
Speaker 1: and depression. So Marty, you mentioned in neurological diseases, but
Speaker 1: that means like Alzheimer's, dementia, Parkinson's MS, all of those
Speaker 1: things that's showing some promise in either in vivo or
Speaker 1: in vitro, and either you know, uh, you know, lab
Speaker 1: tests or an animal So far, you know, all in
Speaker 1: terms of pre clinical work, we all have shown very
Speaker 1: very interesting possibilities. And again when you match that with
Speaker 1: anecdotal reports from people who are actually using CBD in
Speaker 1: one form or another, now it's compelling. But we've been
Speaker 1: largely missing the clinical trials that would prove one way
Speaker 1: or another if the anecdotal accounts are in fact correct.
Speaker 1: But we're on the precipice where we're going to get
Speaker 1: more information and that's exciting. But again, most of these
Speaker 1: studies are with isolates c the islets, which generally are
Speaker 1: not as effective when you're talking about a full spectrum
Speaker 1: CBD product and the people playing around with dose, I
Speaker 1: mean it often helps. It may just be there finding
Speaker 1: no result if they're just using levels that are too
Speaker 1: low on CBD. Yes, that's true. Uh, CBD is shown
Speaker 1: to it's a pretty broad range in terms of dosage.
Speaker 1: Sometimes very low doses do seem to be effective, not always.
Speaker 1: Sometimes higher, much higher dosis are required. And the things
Speaker 1: like disorders of the stomach of the gut I mean,
Speaker 1: collitis or Crohn's disease. That's once again it's it's essentially
Speaker 1: anecdotal evidence with a little bit of labor animal stuff,
Speaker 1: with a lot of lab animal stuff actually, and a
Speaker 1: lot of anecdotal evidence again, but that the missing piece
Speaker 1: is the clinical side, so that that's uh, and obviously
Speaker 1: it's a very very important piece, but without it doesn't
Speaker 1: mean we should ignore the anecdotal accounts, which are voluminous
Speaker 1: and impressive, right right. Diabetes and obesity the same. That's
Speaker 1: a very very interesting area because you know, when you
Speaker 1: talk about medical metabolic disorders like diabetes and obesity, you're
Speaker 1: talking about a condition that that the World Health Organization
Speaker 1: has identified as basically almost of a huge crisis, of
Speaker 1: global crisis. And uh, diabetes, I mean, I think actually
Speaker 1: a lot years of life lost, maybe greater now involving
Speaker 1: diabetes and obesity than even from smoking cigarettes, or at
Speaker 1: least it's neck and neck. I'm not surprised to hear that. Again,
Speaker 1: it's the same situation anecdotally, what we hear from people
Speaker 1: using CBD relatively small arounds forty to sixty milligrams a day.
Speaker 1: When they compare the blood sugar levels before and after
Speaker 1: a four weeks of using CBD, um it improves the
Speaker 1: readings afterwards. So I think that's going to be an
Speaker 1: area in the future that could be a major use
Speaker 1: for CBD rich products. I also saw on your website
Speaker 1: to mention of skin diseases like acne, dermatitis, and psoriasis. Yes, yeah,
Speaker 1: again pre clinical that that's what we're seeing also for
Speaker 1: some skin diseases UM in Italy. I believe there's CBD
Speaker 1: rich creams that are available UM that are part of
Speaker 1: a you know, within a frame of pharmaceutical framework. But
Speaker 1: one of the thing I just need to fla understand.
Speaker 1: So we talk about the benefits of CBD. We also
Speaker 1: time time talked about the benefits of merril water at
Speaker 1: large with all its constituent elements. We talk about the
Speaker 1: benefits of th HC, But when we're talking about CBD,
Speaker 1: how much of this medical stuff is about CBD entirely
Speaker 1: isolated from th h D and other elements. How much
Speaker 1: of it is about the combination of the two. If
Speaker 1: we were to ask you which is more medically beneficial,
Speaker 1: could you say, well, one is more than the other,
Speaker 1: or that in fact was most beneficial most of the
Speaker 1: time is the combo of the two. I would think
Speaker 1: the latter is correct. It's the combination of CBD and
Speaker 1: t it C that it will have most therapeutic benefits.
Speaker 1: And the more th HC one can include in that product, um,
Speaker 1: the more helpful it will be in the CBD rich product.
Speaker 1: The problem being that the th HC is going to
Speaker 1: be getting you high untless you develop a substantial tolerance
Speaker 1: to the intoxicating effective t well. This is when it
Speaker 1: comes down to again managing the psychoactivity of th HC.
Speaker 1: A cb D can be very or the psychoactivity of cannabis.
Speaker 1: That's where CBD comes in and can be very very helpful.
Speaker 1: And you can get versions of cannabis now that are
Speaker 1: not intoxicating, but that's not the point of CBD. The
Speaker 1: point is not to ablate or eliminates uh the intoxicating effects.
Speaker 1: It's to manage it because those of the intox because
Speaker 1: th HC is has very powerful therapeutic attributes, and you
Speaker 1: want as much as of th HC as possible and
Speaker 1: your and your product if you're going to use it
Speaker 1: medicinally issues that some people don't tolerate TC very well,
Speaker 1: so they have now options. How does this relate to
Speaker 1: what's going on with with with psychedellings, right, I mean,
Speaker 1: I think where was I reading that? Is that the
Speaker 1: CBD binds to the same serotonin receptor the five H
Speaker 1: T two A is LSD, mescalin and uh soloson without
Speaker 1: triggering a psychedelic trip. And you now have in the
Speaker 1: psychedelic research field, you know, all sorts of for profit
Speaker 1: enterprises and maybe some not for profit ones as well,
Speaker 1: that are trying to figure out how to take the trip,
Speaker 1: how to take the high out of the psychedelic and
Speaker 1: isolate out, you know, the elements that can be therapeutic
Speaker 1: without people going through the big you know, you know,
Speaker 1: large dose psychedelic trip. Now is there something analogous without
Speaker 1: respect to t HC going on. It's almost to repeat.
Speaker 1: You know, CBD was hyped as you get the medical
Speaker 1: benefits of cannabis without the high. Now you have so
Speaker 1: called versions of psychedelic compounds that are being created um
Speaker 1: that confer benefits without the trip. So it's a very
Speaker 1: similar type of approach UM with CBD. It's even more
Speaker 1: interesting because CBD it binds too many different type of receptors.
Speaker 1: Not it doesn't just interact with cannabinoid receptors, and it
Speaker 1: does so actually in a different way that th H
Speaker 1: C does UM. Cbd actually has a very powerful affinity
Speaker 1: for various serotonin receptors, including the serotonin to A receptor,
Speaker 1: which is the so called psychedelic receptor. It's the receptor
Speaker 1: when LSD binds to it, or mescaline or metabolites of psilocybin,
Speaker 1: it produces the trip, a full blown trip if you
Speaker 1: have it and you know enough enough of quantity that
Speaker 1: you're consuming UM and and CBD binds that same receptor
Speaker 1: as the psychedelic receptor as l s D binds two.
Speaker 1: And the question is with why doesn't CBD cause a
Speaker 1: trip UM. It's its a whole interesting area again to that,
Speaker 1: there's actually a study out of China of crystallography study
Speaker 1: within the last year where UM scientists from the Chinese
Speaker 1: Academy of Science were playing around with different psychedelic compounds
Speaker 1: to create versions of them that don't confer the trip,
Speaker 1: and they created a crystallized version of this five H
Speaker 1: two t A the serotonin to a receptor, and they
Speaker 1: found that it was actually two points, two binding points
Speaker 1: where UH a compound combined with that receptor, and depending
Speaker 1: which point is being affected, UH, it might induce a
Speaker 1: full bone trip, or it might not. But whatever happens
Speaker 1: when you bind to a serotonin receptor, what whatever point
Speaker 1: of that receptor you're bind to, it does induce um
Speaker 1: neuroplasticity and neurogenesis, which CBD does. CBD is a psychoplastogen,
Speaker 1: but not a hallucinogen. And that's just the type of
Speaker 1: compound that the scientists are now who are working in
Speaker 1: the so called psychedelic field, are trying to create. They're
Speaker 1: trying to create so called psychedelic compounds um without the trip.
Speaker 1: I call those pseudodelic compounds. That's a phrase that David Luke,
Speaker 1: a professor in the UK and the University of Credit,
Speaker 1: he had that phrase to describe that class of compounds
Speaker 1: that are being developed by scientists from a psychedelic scaffold,
Speaker 1: but without the hallucinogenic properties. Let's take a break here
Speaker 1: and go to an ad. Let's go to the question
Speaker 1: that is really my starting point, and I would imagine
Speaker 1: as a starting point for most of our listeners. So
Speaker 1: all this hype with the with the topicals and the
Speaker 1: lozenges and this and that, and it seems that when
Speaker 1: you look, I don't see any controlled double blind studies
Speaker 1: or anything like that. I have no idea how much
Speaker 1: is placebo on on this sort of thing. And I
Speaker 1: also assumed that most of the folks manufacturing this stuff
Speaker 1: don't really have an interest in having these control studies
Speaker 1: and double blind studies happening because they're making money off
Speaker 1: of the hype. And if they control double blind studies
Speaker 1: turn out to be, you know, show just nothing better
Speaker 1: than placebo. You know, there's stuff can go down the drain.
Speaker 1: What is the story with that stuff? What do you know?
Speaker 1: What can you tell us? You know, I think we
Speaker 1: should take seriously reports from that are anecdotal in nature. Yes,
Speaker 1: I do think there is a lot of placebo effect
Speaker 1: going on here. People. If you spend money on a product,
Speaker 1: you want to believe it's gonna work. The things did
Speaker 1: get kind of crazy with CBD when there was this
Speaker 1: huge explosion finally in twenty eighteen UM where it seemed
Speaker 1: to become almost intergalactic. CBD became one of the most
Speaker 1: popular health supplements on the planet all of a sudden,
Speaker 1: you know, really just exploded. Where you did find CBD
Speaker 1: in practically everything. We had a piece we rank we
Speaker 1: call it on the Project CBD website called the CBD
Speaker 1: Silly Season. Well, you're just ridiculous. Obviously, it was just
Speaker 1: used for marketing purposes. If you're putting it in in
Speaker 1: vodka or in clothing, you know, claiming it's going to
Speaker 1: somehow be absorbed with this skin. Uh. And there's a
Speaker 1: you know a lot of situations where it's just didn't
Speaker 1: seem any apparent reason to include CBD. One example is coffee. Um.
Speaker 1: You know, caffeine and CBD have opposite effects in terms
Speaker 1: of what they do in the body, and it doesn't
Speaker 1: really make sense to put them together, really. Uh. Caffeine
Speaker 1: works by blocking a dnascine receptor. A CBD indirectly triggers
Speaker 1: the dentasceine receptor dnasceine involved in sleep regulation and so forth.
Speaker 1: So if you block it, you get more you feel stimulated,
Speaker 1: you feel more energy. That's how coffee works. Well. CBD
Speaker 1: is what you'd call it an end a dentiscene reuptake inhibitor.
Speaker 1: It delays the breakdown of the DNA scene in the body,
Speaker 1: so there's more of it to bind to their dnascine
Speaker 1: receptors a way that's activating it. But but again, caffeine
Speaker 1: blocks it, So why would you put CBD together with
Speaker 1: caffeine coffee? It doesn't make any sense. Are there any
Speaker 1: studies at all looking at topical application to deal with
Speaker 1: everything from muscle ache to arthritis too, other types of
Speaker 1: you know, problems. There are studies, again pre clinical mainly
Speaker 1: maybe some now are in process clinical, very interesting research
Speaker 1: out of hungry UH CBD for acne, which again showed
Speaker 1: a great deal of promise. But um, you know, herbal
Speaker 1: use of topical remedies UH has been, you know, something
Speaker 1: that people have been doing for for centuries and typically
Speaker 1: what you see in the products today where CBD is
Speaker 1: part of it a topical application, there are many other
Speaker 1: herbs in there that combine, so it's hard to know
Speaker 1: really what's working and what's not. Is it's the CBD
Speaker 1: or is it the other herbs. One thing we do
Speaker 1: know in this regard is that CBD is absorbed easily,
Speaker 1: more easily transdermally than t C. There's been studies, again
Speaker 1: pre clinical studies that indicate that it's about ten times
Speaker 1: easier to absorb CBD through the skin than compared to
Speaker 1: t C. So it would make sense in terms of
Speaker 1: cannabinoids in a topical that CBD would be a good candidate,
Speaker 1: and there are cannabinoid receptors in this skin which CBD
Speaker 1: doesn't bind too directly, but it does increase the amounts
Speaker 1: of endogenous cannabinoids in the skin, which again could have
Speaker 1: a therapeutic effect. The scientific basis for understanding how it
Speaker 1: could work is there. The pre clinical evidence is there,
Speaker 1: but anecdotal evidence is there. But again we're waiting for
Speaker 1: the clinical studies. And in terms of taking it orally
Speaker 1: where you're having it, you know, just going through your stomach.
Speaker 1: I think even even as CBD infused chocolate bars. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: by all means. You know, it's shown that with CBD,
Speaker 1: with other cannabinoids there are more effective if taken in
Speaker 1: an edible form of taken orally, if they're combined with
Speaker 1: some kind of a healthy fat like a coconut choice
Speaker 1: or something like that, there's more CBD that's absorbed that way.
Speaker 1: Oh so that's better than vaping it, for example, you know,
Speaker 1: vaping it. You know, each of these administration routes that
Speaker 1: have their own benefits, our own you know, their own
Speaker 1: pluses and minuses. You might say, you know, vaping very
Speaker 1: quick the effect and you don't have smokes and that's
Speaker 1: an advantage as well. UM, but I caution people it's
Speaker 1: in terms of using vape products CBD v products. Uh.
Speaker 1: I would caution people to steer clear of anybody regulating
Speaker 1: them at this point and not and it's unregulated. And
Speaker 1: there's a lot of crap in these products. That's what's
Speaker 1: found because there's always a carrier age. It's some kind
Speaker 1: of oil or something in there that CBD, which is
Speaker 1: generally in Iceland, that's put it added on a dollop
Speaker 1: of CBD to some kind of carrier agent. Um. It's
Speaker 1: pretty funky what can be in these products. So so
Speaker 1: someone let me ask you this, you know. So the
Speaker 1: one product that I've been you know, consuming for years,
Speaker 1: and our listener should know, I don't get paid anything
Speaker 1: for saying this. I've been used this product for a
Speaker 1: million years is the Kiva chocolate bars that come out
Speaker 1: of the Bay Area in California. I think they've got
Speaker 1: this great chocolate. They have a reliable effect. I like
Speaker 1: the way they do it. I actually went over and
Speaker 1: visited the factory and at the owners some years ago. Um.
Speaker 1: But sometimes I'll use a bar that's th HC and sometimes, Um,
Speaker 1: it's split, you know, fifty fift THHC and cb D.
Speaker 1: I don't know that I'm noticing that much difference. I mean,
Speaker 1: should the difference be fairly perceptible to me? Or is
Speaker 1: it only gonna be perceptible to some people? You know,
Speaker 1: when you have a roughly equal amounts of CBD and
Speaker 1: th HC, assuming that it's a sufficient quantity, it will
Speaker 1: be intoxicating. It's not just well though they're definitely equal,
Speaker 1: I mean they seem to me roughly equally intoxicating. That's
Speaker 1: what I'm wondering, because when you combine the two, right,
Speaker 1: the CBD is supposed to lessen the high a little
Speaker 1: bit in addition to lessening any potential anxiety or inflammation.
Speaker 1: That's my understanding, right, but I haven't noticed a big
Speaker 1: just overall difference in terms of the high the feeling. Um,
Speaker 1: is it this I'm not paying it close enough attention
Speaker 1: or it's a good question. Might have something to do
Speaker 1: with how the product made, And I agree, I think
Speaker 1: Kiva products are very good. Uh. I found that when
Speaker 1: I smoke a CBD rich variety of cannabis that is
Speaker 1: roughly equal amounts of CBD and t it c It
Speaker 1: does feel like that that the ceiling of the high
Speaker 1: is lowered a bit, and you don't get that kind
Speaker 1: of antsy feeling you sometimes get from very high high
Speaker 1: th C of cannabis um As for edibles, you know,
Speaker 1: we don't know what's going on here. If they just
Speaker 1: simply added at cbd isolate to the chocolate, that's probably
Speaker 1: what they did. Okay, and listen, there's another isolate kiva.
Speaker 1: I think had another candy, but there's another drug that
Speaker 1: has cb N in it. What's the CBN thing about?
Speaker 1: Is that like in third place after th HC and
Speaker 1: cbd is being a prominent and promising substance. Um Is
Speaker 1: it the one that people use for sleep or other things?
Speaker 1: This is an example of a kind of folklore in
Speaker 1: the cannabis world where cbd N has which is stands
Speaker 1: for cannabinol. It's really a breakdown product of t c UH.
Speaker 1: You know, when the cannabis is old in your closet
Speaker 1: or something that's exposed to light, um it breaks down
Speaker 1: into CBN UM and which to me is an indication
Speaker 1: of it's sort of an old product not as good really.
Speaker 1: CBN has been associated with treatments for sleep. But I
Speaker 1: think there's really no scientific basis for this at all, really,
Speaker 1: and it's it's so I think it's a marketing ploy
Speaker 1: because the folklore has it the oh CBN good for sleep,
Speaker 1: even though there's no science showing this. UM it's become
Speaker 1: a thing in the cannabis world, so a lot of
Speaker 1: products you know, have this in it. And I think
Speaker 1: it's basically just I don't think it has any There
Speaker 1: shouldn't be any risk, and there's just a kind of
Speaker 1: a bit of a scam or nothing. But it's not
Speaker 1: gonna hurt yet. I don't think it would hurt. No,
Speaker 1: it may, you know, a very very mild version of
Speaker 1: thh C. You can think of it that way, but
Speaker 1: in terms of getting to sleep, I don't. I don't
Speaker 1: think it has really help. And what's the whole thing
Speaker 1: about cb D and pets, Well, there's a whole area
Speaker 1: are about certain veterinarians they are looking into using cannabis
Speaker 1: as part of a veterinarian therapy. UM are very very
Speaker 1: excited about CBD. UH. Th HC is a little bit
Speaker 1: more problematic for dogs, for example, they react very strongly
Speaker 1: to th HC. So the the emphasis on you know,
Speaker 1: not getting your animal intoxicated. Um. So there's a natural
Speaker 1: leaning towards CBD, and I think it's the promising area
Speaker 1: for veterinary science, veterinary medicine. Now, Mart going back to
Speaker 1: the industry here, so I see that on your web
Speaker 1: Frie example, you don't promote any brand, but you have sponsors, right,
Speaker 1: and you have I think one or two dozen companies.
Speaker 1: Now do you vet these companies before they can become
Speaker 1: a sponsor? I mean to make sure that they are
Speaker 1: really doing the whole plant thing that they're you know,
Speaker 1: I mean that basically their products are safe and good.
Speaker 1: How do you handle that stuff? You know, it's tricky. Yes,
Speaker 1: we do vet them, and we look for certain things,
Speaker 1: um about the product themselves. Uh. Some of it just
Speaker 1: makes sense. You know if if the products that include
Speaker 1: a lot of sugar, corn syrup, artificial sweeteners, then we
Speaker 1: steer clear of those brands. Um. If the brands are
Speaker 1: interested in other forms of therapy with functional mushrooms or
Speaker 1: things like that, it tends to indicate a brought a
Speaker 1: perspective about healing that would be complementary for for what
Speaker 1: we're looking for in terms of of a CBD brand. Uh.
Speaker 1: If the CBD brands involved with some of these new
Speaker 1: fangled Delta ten and Delta eight and these uh kind
Speaker 1: of th C knockoffs, we steer clear of them because
Speaker 1: these products are not regulated, and again, the the way
Speaker 1: they're made, it really raises the likelihood that there's going
Speaker 1: to be contaminants in these products. Um, if there are
Speaker 1: helps CBD brand at selling vape products, that's a bit
Speaker 1: of a red flag for us as well. Vape products
Speaker 1: and CBD rich vape products sold in cannabis dispensaries. We're
Speaker 1: okay with that because again, they go through a testing
Speaker 1: regiment that the hand products don't go through. And generally speaking,
Speaker 1: I mean when I talk to people who say, you know,
Speaker 1: I mean marijuana problem with it makes me paranoid. It
Speaker 1: makes me anxious. I sometimes find myself saying, well, why
Speaker 1: don't you try doing something with a high CBD low
Speaker 1: th HC content In addition to changing the set and
Speaker 1: setting and paying attention to that may be the most
Speaker 1: important variable I'm in doing with people you're comfortable with
Speaker 1: and you know, and all this sort of thing. But
Speaker 1: I mean, does that make sense that people have had
Speaker 1: negative reactions in the past that maybe switching that ratio
Speaker 1: might be the thing that enables them to learn how
Speaker 1: to enjoy marijuana. Yeah, exactly. Um, that's that's the whole
Speaker 1: point of different ratios of CBD and th HC. If
Speaker 1: you have a lot of CBD and very little th HC,
Speaker 1: it shouldn't be intoxicating. You know, studies have shown there's
Speaker 1: a genetic basis for how people tolerate t C. There
Speaker 1: is certain people who just cannot tolerate t C. We
Speaker 1: can be talking about six ft five in sky who's
Speaker 1: two fifty pounds, who will wilt. You don't have to
Speaker 1: even near t C. You know. Uh, it doesn't have
Speaker 1: to do with body type or anything like that. But genetically,
Speaker 1: about twenty of Caucasians have what's called a polymorphism, or
Speaker 1: you can call it a mutation, but it's a little
Speaker 1: bit too strong a word, where the enzymes, the proteins
Speaker 1: that would normally metabolize THHC and break it down. Um,
Speaker 1: they're different in those people. So it results in his
Speaker 1: ability to break down the thh C in a quote
Speaker 1: unquote normal way, and for such a person, they'll have
Speaker 1: bad experiences on th HC. So Martin just go back
Speaker 1: and we're gonna wrap this up shortly. UM. So the
Speaker 1: f d A put out something, I mean, I think
Speaker 1: they're being asked to regulate cb D. I think there's
Speaker 1: many people in city who would like it to be
Speaker 1: regul related. I think consumers would like to have greater
Speaker 1: assurance out there. But the f d A, I think,
Speaker 1: to the extent it stepped into it, has said some
Speaker 1: pretty negative things. And we talked before about how they're
Speaker 1: not really cut out to be evaluating, you know, things
Speaker 1: that involve an entourage effect that were's evaluating plans. But
Speaker 1: what is going on with this f d A now
Speaker 1: and what do we expect to see happening with them
Speaker 1: in coming years? These a VCBD. Well, FDA is the
Speaker 1: foot dragging administration really, and they're dragging their feet on
Speaker 1: this issue. You know, it goes back to the Dietary
Speaker 1: Supplement Health and that that Act that specifically that there
Speaker 1: is a provision called the exclusionary Provision which states that
Speaker 1: if a compound is approved as a pharmaceutical, it can't
Speaker 1: be included in in dietary supplements. Well, that's really the
Speaker 1: hold up with the FDA because they're sticking to that rule.
Speaker 1: UM as a way of saying, well, we don't move
Speaker 1: on this because because of the exclusionary principle. And and
Speaker 1: I think that there's a counter push coming that even
Speaker 1: within Congress, even coming from the Red state senators and
Speaker 1: representatives who represents states that are hemp growing states, that
Speaker 1: they want to see the FDA move past this. And
Speaker 1: I think, you know, the CBD has scrambled the prohibitionist
Speaker 1: narrative in a lot of different ways, and it's sort
Speaker 1: of it's forcing this f D a I think, to
Speaker 1: you know, to change the way it approaches this issue.
Speaker 1: In this particular instance, there's just too much popular pressure
Speaker 1: on this. There's just too much of a need um
Speaker 1: to have a seriously regulated market here for CBD rather
Speaker 1: than the wild West that we're seeing with him CBD.
Speaker 1: And I would like to see the standards raised so
Speaker 1: that the way that the cannabis industry, of the legal
Speaker 1: cannabis industry is regulating um its products, including CBD rich products,
Speaker 1: that everything else rise to that level of safety, which
Speaker 1: that would be I think a positive development, But I
Speaker 1: think I'm not sure if that's what the CBD industry
Speaker 1: wants to hear. And do you think that as we
Speaker 1: move towards synthetics, Will they become better at doing not
Speaker 1: just the cb D and TC, but all the other
Speaker 1: minor elements of the cannabis plant. Will that will they'll
Speaker 1: be producing synthetically sort of synthetic entourage drugs from the front.
Speaker 1: I mean, there's getting the entourage effects through synthetics. I
Speaker 1: don't know about entourage through synthetics, and I don't think
Speaker 1: you can really create recreate a real entourage effect or
Speaker 1: a full entourage effect just by you know, adding a
Speaker 1: bunch of putting a bunch of synthetics together. But I
Speaker 1: think the potential positive side of this move towards synthetics
Speaker 1: is that minor cannabinoids with with great therapeutic potential which
Speaker 1: would not be possible to to access from the plant
Speaker 1: itself in any significant quantity um, could be made in
Speaker 1: efficient quantities to do clinical trials with understanding that that's
Speaker 1: that's the pharmaceutical approach, a reductive approach, that's focusing on
Speaker 1: single molecules. I'm not against single molecules. When I'm against
Speaker 1: is privileging pharmaceutical signal molecules over a full plant. And
Speaker 1: then uh, you know, which is what you're saying, will
Speaker 1: inevitably happen as we move to synthetics. Um. Yes, but
Speaker 1: it's a matter of you know, we have to stand
Speaker 1: up for artisanal, full spectrum cannabis products. That's it should
Speaker 1: be part of the mix. It's just that the regulatory
Speaker 1: apparatus doesn't favor that type of thing. And that's the problem.
Speaker 1: It's not the intrinsically um single molecule pharmaceuticals are quote
Speaker 1: unquote bad um. They can actually work and help people.
Speaker 1: Epidialects works well. So it sounds like though, as mariana
Speaker 1: is increasingly legalized, though, it's really going to ease the
Speaker 1: way for the therapeutic values of CBD. And since you're
Speaker 1: basically saying that anytime you're taking CBD, you're better off
Speaker 1: take in it where it's got some sidly small amount
Speaker 1: of th HC or even other um elements of the
Speaker 1: cannabis plant in it, I mean that's going to be
Speaker 1: all for the good in terms of making CBD as
Speaker 1: useful as it can be UM for people living here
Speaker 1: or wherever. That's what we would hope. Okay, Well, listen, Martin,
Speaker 1: thank you very much for sharing your insights and wisdom
Speaker 1: about CBD with me. And my Psychoactive audience. Thank you.
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Speaker 1: eight three three seven seven nine sixty that's eight three
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Speaker 1: at protozoa dot com or find me on Twitter at
Speaker 1: Ethan Natalman. You can also find contact information in our
Speaker 1: show notes. Psychoactive is a production of I Heart Radio
Speaker 1: and Protozoa Pictures. It's hosted by me Ethan Nadelman. It's
Speaker 1: produced by Noham Osband and Josh Stain. The executive producers
Speaker 1: are Dylan Golden, Ari Handel, Elizabeth Geesus and Darren Aronovsky
Speaker 1: from Protozoa Pictures, Alex Williams and Matt Frederick from My
Speaker 1: Heart Radio and me Ethan Nadelman. Our music is by
Speaker 1: Ari Blucien and a special thanks to ab Ario s
Speaker 1: f Bianca Grimshaw and Robert Deep. Next week's episode will
Speaker 1: be all about I Began I'll be talking with Hattie Wells,
Speaker 1: one of the leading experts in the uses of this
Speaker 1: remarkable psychedelic substance. The piece that I think might make
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Speaker 1: you'll be lying down on a bed for at least
Speaker 1: sort of sixteen eighteen hours without moving, and you can't move,
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