Welcome to the Cannaba Verum podcast, the cannabis truth podcast. I speak the language of cannabis freely and uncensored, while educating my audience on the safe use of this live Plant Therapy. You should know what’s in your cannabis, what’s good and what’s not. It does not come with an FDA stamp of approval yet, using cannabis mindfully, as medication is a different concept in the healthcare philosophy of the past 100 years. There’s a lot to learn and consider cannabis is not dangerous, but it is not harmless, either. This is honey Smith walls, a 21st century cannabis shaman here to explain the language of cannabis in historical, political, and scientific terms, so you can make educated decisions about the medicine you ingest.
Hello my friends,
I have some trepidation over the stuff we’re able to buy now in cannabis products. Even if it’s from a licensed facility and comes with a 3rd party lab test for contamination… edibles work differently than what you might expect after some experience ingesting it as a tincture or smoking or vaping or even using a patch on your skin. When you have an edible, it feels like it’s going into the marrow of your bones. I’ve never experienced anything like it from any other medication. Not from “twilight” for a colonoscopy or shot up by the dentist in numbing my gums, or even serious pain meds after a shoulder surgery… this is different. And I’m just telling you how it affected ME!
Plenty of other people will try to relate that weird feeling but it’s somewhat illusive in nature and extremely hard to articulate. If you set 10 people in a room who just ate a 10mg edible, they’d give you a bunch of different adjectives and you’d still be confused. Until you tried it. Then all this makes sense.
It gives me a bit of anxiety just to think about the attitudes of so many people eating cannabis. You see how much there is to learn and yet, I feel like they’re cramming it down our throats before we really have a chance to understand what the effects are and how to properly use them.
But then, I’m not a big advocate of Adult-Use cannabis. I think everybody is a patient and if you feel like you want whatever effects this plant will give you, then use it wisely and to your advantage. Don’t just treat it like a piece of candy. Learn about it and use it properly with knowledge about the 400+ compounds in it. There is one compound in aspirin. And aspirin can ruin your liver and kill you if you take too much. Never a death in the history of the planet by cannabis. So I just wanna slow down a bit and take a deep breath before acting like a teenager with no funeral in sight.
That whole adult use philosophy is really more like a scene out of the head of a teenager where the land of the oblivious have no idea what they’re doing or how that product could be affecting them… especially if they’re already immune compromised. And most Americans are already immune compromised by the time they’re teens. Obesity in America would make it very difficult to find enough able bodied people eligible for the draft if we needed one immediately. And along with obesity come the side issues like diabetes and arthritis and sleep apnea just to name a few. What I’m saying is that we’ve lead an unhealthy life for the last hundred years of fast foods and overnight drug sensations. Cannabis is a live plant with over 400 compounds that have not even all been named yet! But we have the ability to stamp a molecule so our technology is up to the task of figuring it out. It’s our attitudes that need an adjustment. I’d like to see Adult-Use proponents take some cannabis courses and THEN tell me they’re not a patient! If they really knew anything about it at all, other than the stupid names given to the products, they might stand to benefit much more from the product. It pays to be mindful about cannabis. With all those different compounds, there’s going to be some chemovars that affect you more potently or adversely or whatever that you want to use over and over again. If you’re just purchasing product to get high and relax, you’ll be less likely to pay attention to the chemical makeup of that purchase than when you realize it stopped the pain from your IBS and allowed you to sleep all night without your gut spasming… now what was that variety again? Or maybe you wanted some pot to stop thinking about the nasty day at the office with that loudmouth jackass you work for. We call that PTSD and cannabis with a little THC and CBD in it is perfect for that. Maybe you’ve got a tumor that a certain blend of cannabis will alleviate. The point is, even if you don’t consider yourself a patient, the gold standard of athlete’s with perfect bodies use cannabis all the time to reduce inflammation and repair stress damage. You think our Olympic athlete’s who eat a perfect diet all their lives and are so focused on their project they’d never do anything to jeopardize it… would use something they weren’t sure would work? Talk to the guys in the NFL and NBA. They’ll tell you how well it works.
But if you’re using cannabis aimlessly, then you’re not using it correctly. I’m not against anybody using cannabis for whatever reason they see fit. But using it without knowledge is just plain stupid.
I want you to remember that using cannabis edibles is very very very different than using cannabis any other way.
That being said… you can control it. But you must learn how and use it properly to find out what your perfect dose is for that particular edible and variety of cannabis in it.
My old lady girlfriend went up to Michigan to see friends and her grandson offered her a pot brownie. She trusted him so thought, “why not?”. I got a very panicked phone call explaining what happened and asking me if she was gonna die! Should she call an ambulance? Why couldn’t she feel her legs? Why couldn’t she get up out of the chair? How long was this gonna last? Was it supposed to make her nauseated? She was extremely fearful and anxious. I was so sorry for her.
The first thing she did was ingest something she had no idea about. And she’s in her 70’s. But she trusted her friends and grandson. Yet they’d never seen anybody overdose on pot brownies and didn’t know what to do for her. None of them were having an experience like that… why was it only her?
So many questions asked after the fact… not before. Nobody expected that terrible effect from too much THC in the pot brownies for HER!
You see, everybody has a different tolerance for cannabis. And she had no idea what hers was. So she just ate something that someone told her would be a great ride but they had no idea what meds she was on or how that pot brownie might contraindicate with other compounds. They didn’t consider that she might not do well…. that it would make her feel terrible and afraid and make her cry. Hopefully they learned their lesson. And her too. Because it’s easy to follow suit when everyone is having a good time. But there are over 400 compounds in cannabis and she had no idea what to expect.
What they should’ve done was dose the brownie to know how much each portion had. Then one tiny bit could be ingested. And then wait for an effect to present within 30 minutes to an hour.
Now that’s key. Because who do you know can sit there with a delectable brownie after one tiny taste and not eat another bite for so long??? Yet, because it’s so good and because she didn’t feel anything at first, she kept eating. See the problem? Soon she began feeling the effects but by then it was too late. She already over-consumed and was well on her way to a bad experience.
Remember, no deaths in the history of the planet from cannabis. So they put her to bed and let her “sleep it off”… but vertigo set in and she was just miserable for hours and hours. And that’s because an edible filters through your liver which takes longer for one to feel the effect, It also chucks about 60% of the product out the rear as well. So that makes edibles the most expensive product on the market.
The effects take longer to feel and last longer than any other delivery method.
And one last thing before I read Mr. Smith’s point… Not only could my friend have titrated that brownie to keep from overusing, she also could have used CBD with it to tame the effects of the THC.
They could have fed her something with lemon or black pepper in it to quell the effects of THC. Both those products have Beta-caryophillene in them which subdues the effects of THC. And drinking water and being mindful that she was really OK, just experiencing a rather large overuse of THC for her system. It didn’t have to be that way… but because she didn’t know any better, poor thing had a terrible time of it.
Break
Now let me tell you about an article I read
this morning from Jeff Smith at MJBizDaily.com . And btw, I trust this news source about cannabis. I listen to their podcasts, have a Patreon membership with them, and get extra news letters. For those of you unfamiliar with Patreon, its a way of supporting a business that doesn’t load your inbox with junk and helps them sustain their business. I may do the same some day and create a Patreon membership for my audience to show their support.
So Mr. Smith wrote this great article which you should totally go visit for the rest of the story and much much more. Right after this… He says:
“Edibles are hitting the medical cannabis dispensary shelves in Florida, launching a new market segment that could generate up to $250 million in sales in the first full year.
Tallahassee-based Trulieve, the state’s dominant medical cannabis operator, was first out of the gate, selling edibles in its hometown dispensary on Sept. 2.
The first sale came about a week after the state health department issued long-awaited edible production rules.
“The industry has been waiting for this for several years,” said Jeffrey Sharkey, president of the Medical Marijuana Business Association of Florida.
“It’s a huge deal for a variety of reasons,” Sharkey said, listing several factors:
- Edibles sales come at a time the Florida MMJ market continues to grow at a rapid pace, with the number of qualified patients recently exceeding 400,000, up 25% since the beginning of the year, when the patience count was 299,000.
- “In talking to several licensees, they believe edible sales will be in the 20% range” of the total market.
- The profit margins of the products are “pretty robust.”
If edibles wind up accounting for 20% of the total medical marijuana market in Florida, that could place edibles sales at roughly $250 million in 2021, the first full year of sales.
That’s based on the recent Marijuana Business Factbook projection that Florida MMJ revenues will total $950 million to $1.2 billion in 2021. Those projections didn’t take into account edibles sales.
MMJ sales in Florida this year are expected to reach $775 million-$950 million, up from an estimated $475 million-$575 million in 2019.
Sharkey said edibles could cut into some other THC-infused product sales, but the overall revenues should be quite a bit higher.
He doesn’t expect edibles to affect smokable flower sales, which account for roughly 50% of Florida’s MMJ market.
Licensing deals
Florida’s medical marijuana operators have been preparing for edibles for quite some time, Sharkey said, in part by developing licensing partnerships with out-of-state edibles companies.
For example, Sarasota-based AltMed Florida, which now has 25 dispensaries across the state operating under the MüV brand, announced this week an exclusive licensing agreement to produce and distribute Colorado-based Wana Brands’ edibles, pending state approvals.
Trulieve, meanwhile, has built out a 10,000-square-foot commercial-grade kitchen and is making a branded product line of gummies and chocolates.
In addition, Trulieve has licensing partnerships with Bhang in Miami as well as Denver-based edibles companies Binske, District Edibles and Love’s Oven to produce cookies, brownies and other edibles, pending state health department approvals.
“There has been strong demand for medication in this format for over three years now,” Trulieve CEO Kim Rivers said in a news release.
She noted that the customers’ average age is in the early 50s.
“Many of these patients have requested edibles as they have less stigma associated with them, are often easier to ingest, and is a medication option that tastes good too.”
According to Florida regulations, edibles:
- Must not resemble commercially available candy.
- Must be in geometric shapes (not animal shapes).
- Can include baked goods, chocolate, drink powders, lozenges and gelatins.
Brady Cobb, CEO of Fort Lauderdale-based Bluma Wellness, which operates dispensaries under the One Plant Florida brand, said it will launch edibles later in the year, with a focus on gummies, cookies and pretzels.
The company is planning to sell its own branded products as well as edibles obtained through a licensing partnership with California-based Venice Cookie Co.
‘Will be a great category’
“I think edibles will be a great category in Florida and will offer additional growth potential,” Cobb wrote in an email to Marijuana Business Daily.
He noted that, even in more mature markets such as Colorado and California, edibles account for 10%-15% of sales, “and I think you will see something similar here in Florida.”
Cobb and Sharkey both noted that the Florida MMJ market continues to grow at a brisk pace.
In addition to patient growth, the number of dispensaries has increased 28% from 213 at the first of the year to 273 as of Sept. 3, according to the state health department’s weekly updates.
Trulieve continues to defy expert predictions by maintaining a nearly 50% market share.
Part of the success is reflected by Trulieve’s execution.
Trulieve was the first Florida company to sell medical cannabis four years ago. It was the first to sell smokable flower 18 months ago. And now it is the first to sell edibles.
Jeff Smith can be reached at jeffs@mjbizdaily.com”
So Wow! Turns out we’re pretty lucky in Florida to have a market that’s flourishing, gaining more and more respect from the state legislators who devised the safety regulations for the market. Mind you, there’s a lot of work to be done in organizing this machine. But make no mistake, it’s comin in like a freight train. Buckle up.
Host: Honey 26:57
You’ve been listening to another Cannaba Verum podcast with 21st century cannabis shaman Honey Smith Walls, about the importance of using safe hemp and marijuana products. Unless otherwise proven by a reputable third party lab test, please be advised that all street weed is contaminated. It may do grave harm to a patient with a delicate immune system. I challenge you to check the veracity of my statements in each episode by checking the medical citations posted on my blog at Cannaba Verum.com.
That’s C A N N A B A V E R U M.com
- plant specifically grows, the acid form, the THCa – https://academic.oup.com/pcp/article/46/9/1578/1812749
- all street weed is contaminated: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5022003/
- Handbook of Cannabis for Clinicians, Practices and Principles by Dr. Dustin Sulak – https://www.amazon.com/Handbook-Cannabis-Clinicians-Principles-Practice/dp/0393714187 and healer.com
- Certificate of Analysis (COA) https://www.pharmtech.com/view/certificates-analysis-don-t-trust-verify
