Episode Transcript

Reefer MEDness_E179_TedSmithPt1.mp3

Trevor: Kirk, we're back.

Kirk:  Hey Trevor, how's it going?

Trevor: Good. So, I guess we are on the road for this one. Back to visit friend of the show Ted Smith on Vancouver Island. How about you tell us how you got there?

Kirk:  Yeah, this episode sort of will start a series of road trips I took back in April. I left off on April 20th on 420 and headed west and went off to Victoria. And in the next several weeks we're going to have a series of road stories that I picked up as I went. This is kind of out of order because of course we're in Victoria, but this is a timely story. With Ted Smith and the Victoria Cannabis Buyers Club. We've done past stories on these guys Episode Season 3 Episode 4. We started and we met the Buyers Club we went to Episode 86 where we went back and talked about the Cost of Compassion when Ted Ted was raided and what was a 6.6 million dollar fine we get in into the fines in this discussion. We talked to Owen Smith who is also related to the Cannabis Buyers Club. So this is kind of an update for our fans. If you don't know anything about the Victoria's Cannabis Buyers Club, you can go back in our library and check them out. But this is me updating myself with Ted.

Trevor:  All right, let's go check in with Ted.

Kirk:  Well, before we start, let's set the scene. I thought you were going to say something, man. I'm Kirk Nyquist. I'm the registered nurse.

Trevor:  I'm Trevor Shewfelt, I'm the pharmacist.

Kirk:  And we are reframing this to the podcast, thank you for finding us. This interview starts in the Smokers Lounge, I don't even want to call it, it's the Members Lounge. The Buyers Club used to be on Johnson Street, they moved to Quadra Street in Victoria and they've just set up a beautiful venue they have in the back room they have sort of a rumpus room area. Library. Posters on the wall. It's like going into the 70s. Lamps and people gather around and meet and these are this is where the membership meets so Ted and I are in the lounge uh talking uh catching up in the background you're going to hear a dog there's a dog in the room there's squeaky toys lots and lots of noise lots of theater of the mind for people so it's a busy place.

Trevor:  All right, now can we go to Ted?

Kirk:  Now we can go to Ted.

Trevor: Excellent.

Kirk:  Let's go on to Ted. Ted Smith, have you just got raided? Tell me sir, what's going on with the Buyers Club?

Ted Smith:  Okay, well, yeah, I guess the day after 420 on April 21st. Just minutes after opening. We had our fourth raid by the Community Safety Unit. I guess our eighth raid in total. The first one's, first wave was 2002-2003, and this is the fourth since legalization, and in some ways it wasn't entirely a surprise, and that probably should have been a little more diligent with just like a couple of our products that we had too much here in the house. But for the most part, honestly, like they didn't even really try to find everything here. They didn't do a thorough search. What they were looking for is financial information that they can use against us when they fine us and come after our landlord. They didn't t say that explicitly but I'm quite positive that their play is to come after our landlord's here now.

Kirk:  Right, so that goes back to the lawsuit that happened how many years ago, what, 6.6 million total? Like you're 3.3 in the communities is 3.3?

Ted Smith:  Well, they actually dropped my 3.3, so it went down to 3.2, and then with interest it's back up to 3,7 and growing, 10,000 a month.

Kirk:  They're charging you interest on the fine?

Ted Smith:  So, uh, yeah,.

Kirk:  Love that.

Ted Smith:  Right. And so we're still disputing that, but it's been awkward. It's been caught up in administrative appeals. And while we filed a lawsuit and an injunction three years ago after the last raid, that's been kind of sitting on the back shelf pending all these administrative appeals we've been going through. That finally finished in the fall. We filed a judicial review to look at basically the whole shit and kaboodle. And now, especially, we're working hard to expedite that and have that judicial review occur as soon as possible. So collecting some expert witnesses and some affidavits from people, as hard as we can right now for that. But really, for the most part, as long as they were leaving us alone, we weren't really pushing that hard in court either. We filed things, they're proceeding slowly. The province hasn't been pushing for it either, so it didn't seem like they were in a rush to prosecute or certainly not in a rushed to get a legal decision here. So uh, yeah, um.

Kirk:  I make the assumption, knowing you and knowing your history, that if you were to lose the Provincial, it's going to appeal court, you're taking it all away.

Ted Smith:  Yeah, we've got at least one round of appeal afterwards.

Kirk:  And then you can take it to the Supreme Court if they choose to read it.

Ted Smith:  Getting to the Supreme Court, yeah, isn't always easy. You know, we got really lucky with Owen's trial that we had a dissenting judge at the Court of Appeal.

Kirk:  Yeah.

Ted Smith:  Because if you go to a Court of appeal and get all three judges on your side, it's really hard to get all the way to the supreme court. Right. That being said, if we win at the court of appeal with all three judge, that should be enough anyway. But, yeah certainly, we'll be exhausting every avenue. If we do lose at the next level of court though, that'll be a significant blow and the government might not wait to proceed on further actions. They're also right now proceeding to take my girlfriend's home away. She was on the board of directors at the earlier raids.

Kirk:  Right.

Ted Smith:  So that's the notice we got a month ago that should have tipped me off that they were doing more, but we were hopeful that that was just kind of procedural stuff that was just following through on fines that had already been issued. But now, when we look at the combination of this recent raid and that proceeding, it does seem like they're moving ahead to shut their club down in any way possible.

Kirk:  They took $100,000 worth of product?

Ted Smith:  Well, we don't know until they come back. That was what I estimated, and I assumed that they would have looked and taken more than they did. Yeah, so there was probably a hundred thousand dollars with a product in the store when they raided, but they didn't get it all.

Kirk:  Okay.

Ted Smith:  Those were the, that was my estimate when we were still in the midst of the rate. So, you know, luckily it was less than that. But still, it's tens of thousands of dollars of medicine that they got.

Kirk:  That's a lot of pot.

Ted Smith:  It was actually some of the concentrates that I had more of.

That would be expensive. Okay.

Yeah. Because I'd sort of bought more than I realized and then I saw I stopped purchasing more. Okay. And they caught us before I sold it all off. And I should've just put it some other site. But... It had been three years since the last raid and for the most part we were pretty diligent about things but there's that one loss where there is you know probably 10 or 20 grand worth of stuff that shouldn't have even been in here.

Kirk:  That's way too... And now you've got a sign on the door saying that... What's that about?

Ted Smith:  Well, after they do their investigations, they hope that it stays up for 30 days.

Kirk:  And that's to warn people off?

Ted Smith:  I guess typically it gets taken down. It's to notify the public. I guess, typically, people that are caught in these kinds of raids are trying to hide what they're doing, so they think this is a way of exposing them.

Kirk: Okay.

Ted Smith:  And ironically, when he gave it to us, he's like, well, I'm not gonna put this up because I assume you'll take it down right away anyway.

Kirk:   No way.

Ted Smith:  And we're like, no, we have nothing to be ashamed of. You should be ashamed to what we're doing, but we want everyone to know that you've robbed us and that this has happened here. So we'll probably keep that up for longer than the 30 days we're required to, just because we want, we're not embarrassed. We're enraged at what's happening. We're gonna call our government to task for it,.

Kirk:  as you should.

Ted Smith:  But we're gonna pretend it didn't happen.

Kirk:  Well, it's funny, I come to Victoria once every two, three years it seems, but I was asking some friends last night about the Buyers Club and they said, so tell me, do you guys hear anything about the Buyers Club? And they both sat and thought about it and said, the Buyer's Club, you know, the only time we really hear about the buy Buyer Club is when Ted makes something and Ted wants to say something. But otherwise, no, the Buyer's Club is pretty quiet, unassuming, no one really thinks about it or cares about it. So Is that a west coast mentality? Is that because you've been here forever, you're part of the fabric? I mean you've told me before that City Council doesn't bother you, City Council likes you, you got you got all the permits.

Ted Smith:  Well, we're not quite there yet. We're working through a rezoning, but you know, case in point, when we had our rezoning hearing, because we had to have a neighborhood public hearing for that, the neighborhood is pretty much indifferent. We have supporters, right, like patients that need our medicine, obviously, but we're a public nuisance in any way, shape, or form.

Kirk:  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Ted Smith:  We do our very best not to be that, to not be in anyone's face here, but still present.

Kirk:  Sure.

Ted Smith:  Right? So in a way, what your friends described is exactly the.

Kirk:  what you want.

Ted Smith:  role that we want, that people know we're here. If you need help, there we are, but we're not aggressively pushing our services. A lot of people don't even know we are here in town until we get raided. Right. It's like, what? What are they doing? Right? Like...

Kirk:  So remind me, what is your services? How has this organization grown or shrunk or changed in the last two, three years?

Ted Smith:  How have we changed? Well, we've been adding some more really amazing RSO products for cancer patients. Last year, we were even able to start giving discounts to some of the RSO products to the cancer patients, like fairly good discounts as well, which I'm really proud of.

Kirk:  So when you say discount, measure it from what, what's the measuring stick when you say a discount compared to the commercial shops?

Ted Smith:  Everything that we sell is pretty much cheaper than what you can buy in the legal recreational stores.

Kirk:  That was what I was thinking.

Ted Smith:  Except actually like a lot of the cannabis in the legal system has caught up with us. The prices and the quality have been improving in the illegal system. So you know you can buy fairly comparable herb. It might not be as fresh or locally grown but you know certainly um, that's not what we pride ourselves on here anyways.

Kirk:  Okay.

Ted Smith:  It's the alternatives, right? The suppositories, the capsules, the creams and stuff like that. Now I don't know what all the prices are in the legal system. Okay. Um, but that's a whole other thing. Um, But I do know that we sell jars of RSO, they're an ounce, um, for $200, um to most of our patients.

Kirk:  Okay.

Ted Smith:  Um, now $200 is like what? $6 a gram. That's typically what people pay for bud, let alone for concentration.

Kirk:  So therefore that's a good deal.

Ted Smith:  So that's good deal, our cancer patients get it for a hundred dollars. So, you know, that's, that is a significant discount, you know, even here, let along compared to the legal market, where, you know, products that have 10 milligrams can often cost $10.

Kirk:  Yeah. OK.

Ted Smith:  And so that's a thousand milligrams for a hundred only.

Kirk:  Can you even get RSO in the commercial market?

Ted Smith:  Yeah, but small amounts and like they are selling larger volumes now.

Kirk:  oh are they, but there still can't be more than 10 milligrams, can it?

Ted Smith:  Per dose, so now they're selling like bottles of stuff.

Kirk:  Okay.

Ted Smith:  Bigger things. Honestly, I haven't even looked fully into what is available, but there is RSOs and those types of products, but the thing is, is the general public's not looking for that. The general public wants shatter, they want diamonds. If anybody's into the concentrates, RSO is this black tar gooey shit that nobody wants to use. They don't smear it on their rolling papers anymore. So like we've got some old members that are still stuck in that and they'll still smoke their RSO. But typically the RSO is eaten by cancer patients, people in significant pain, dealing with trying to get off opioids, that sort of thing, right? So the market's not catering to that. They're not even trying.

Kirk:  I cut you off when you were telling me about how the club has changed or what's new with the club.

Ted Smith:  You know, for me, that's been one of our biggest and best changes, is improving our product line. The other part that's changed is we're trying to now come out with 4 to 1 ratio, 4 THC to 1 CBD. Okay. Because, have you heard about the impact on the liver and drug interactions yet?

Kirk:  CBD, yeah.

Ted Smith:  So you know the four to one ratio seems to be the sweet spot for fighting cancers and stuff. So trying to come out with our RSO products first but you know more of that and uh yeah I'm really uh you know that so you're just constantly improving our product line to me is the most one of the most important things that we do here.

Kirk:  I just interviewed Dr. Neary in Regina. He is a PhD pharmacist researching concussions and using CBD isolate as a preventative medicine for concussions, and he's funded by the NFL.

Ted Smith:  Cool.

Kirk:  And he's giving people mega, mega, you're talking about big athletes, like six foot four, 200 pound, big guys. He's given a massive dose of CBD and I asked him about the liver enzymes and he says that they do the liver enzyme every so often but there's been no change that he's noticed with these massive doses.

Ted Smith:  Yeah, but they're probably not taking blood thinners or anti-seizure drugs and stuff.

Kirk:  Correct.

Ted Smith:  Those are the ones you've got to worry about because then those drugs will build up in your system.

Kirk:  Okay.

Ted Smith:  But if they're not taking other drugs, there's nothing to worry.

Kirk:  Okay.

Ted Smith:  No, it's just the drug interactions with anything that grapefruit will interact with.

Kirk:  Right.

Ted Smith:  You know, grapefruit. Well, it is funny because grapefruit doesn't make the other drugs act differently. It just makes them last longer.

Kirk:  Yeah,.

Ted Smith:  That's what CBD does.

Kirk:  Okay.

Ted Smith:  And along those lines, when we were investigating into that, one of the other and even the most significant change I should have started with was last summer, we really changed almost our mandate, our function, in that we've now hired a pharmacists and added a new component to our sign up procedure in that our local pharmacist here now vets every new member.

Kirk:  wonderful.

Ted Smith:  And looks up their profile to see what other drugs they're being prescribed to see if there's any potential drug interactions. And so, once we do the initial intake, he looks up the information, we get a new page for every new patient on the risk assessment, and if it's a high risk at all, we contact them and have a phone call, or he will contact them immediately, we haven't had a case of that yet. But it's it's really wonderful to both have reassurance that I've got a medical professional looking into potential drug interactions because we have so many elderly patients coming in here that are taking you know all sorts of other medications and things and you know they're often looking for CBD in particular which ironically is more or sort of you know tricky than THC in this aspect so Yeah, so it's wonderful to have that back up, but it's also really important for us to have third-party professional medical oversight of the gatekeeper role. So we're taking the gate keeper role from the doctor. We're changing this from a medical club to a harm reduction club. So instead of arguing it's medical, because we don't have DIN numbers for nothing, we're arguing that it's just a safer alternative than the other drugs that these patients may be using.

Kirk:  It's a good argument.

Ted Smith:  So, it takes the emphasis away from doctors who don't know this plant medicine. They don't how to prescribe it. They don't it's drug interactions. They dont know it's long term effects. They don't want to. It's a plant medicine, it's out of their realm. So it doesn't need to be shoved down their throat as Health Canada's done for decades now. We think that pharmacists are much more appropriate and safe in that role, but it's limited. Their role here is drug interaction. We're the specialists in cannabis. So we talk about what creams to use, what capsules to try, what combinations. So the pharmacist isn't trying to, again, speak to a drug that really they're not an expert in. They're an expert in all the other drugs and potential interactions. So I think that this model actually is one thing that can really fit and iIf we do survive this phase and start to help other non-profits across Canada grow, it will be in partnership with pharmacist.

Kirk:  And that's what we're discovering too, that lots of pharmacists are actually putting their shingle up in rec stores and saying if you have any questions about medical cannabis.

Ted Smith:  I hear this.

Kirk:  And whether it's on our podcast. We've had two episodes on just this, right, and I think it's marvelous. Last time I talked to you we talked about getting you a nurse or getting a doctor involved with the community, has that happened at all. No nurses have stepped forward?

Ted Smith:  I haven't had any luck in that. I haven't put in a lot of extra effort since we've moved here really my staffing levels have been quite low. Some days like today I have one person here with me, I'm making all the capsules, I am rolling all the joints, I'm answering the phones. It's hard to get past that to do the advocacy and so there's a bunch of areas like that that I just haven't had.

Kirk:  Because there's nurses, I'm on my way to Alberta. I'm going to meet up with a nurse in Edmonton. She's Holistic Nursing. She's now a cannabis nurse, clinical cannabis nurse. She's not a prescriber, but she's a clinical cannabis. So they're out there. They're out. And of course, they build insurance companies for the services as nursing care. So they are out there, and I mean, I've said to you, if I lived in Victoria, I'd be here.

Ted Smith:  No doubt.

Kirk:  I would be your nurse because I find this fascinating. In my world, I don't have any call for clinical nursing cannabis in small town Manitoba. So still the stigma is still very much alive. What else? What haven't I asked you that we should update on? What's going on? Yourself, you're well? You're good?

Ted Smith:  I'm doing well, thank you.

Kirk:  You carry a lot on your shoulders. This is your gig, right? You're the captain of this ship. And the navigator and also obviously the nurse.

Ted Smith:  Um, and uh, dishwasher.

Kirk:  and dish washer ya, ya.

Ted Smith:  And I feel very blessed to have been given such a strong body and soul to take this on.

Kirk:  Yeah, thirty years right?

Ted Smith:  We just had our 30-year anniversary in January, had a fantastic party to celebrate it.

Kirk:  Once again, I wish I was here there. Yeah, here's another question for you. You know what? I should ask this question I'm gonna I'm going to and I may I might parse this off of the conversation 420, right? Yeah, I'm I was in Moose Jaw for 420. I made it to Moose Jaws. I went to there. Do we need 420 anymore? Is 420 important or what's happened to 420?

Ted Smith:  Well, in a way it's been sad what's happened to 420 because the legal industry seems to find no purpose in celebrating our culture. And so I think what's happen to 420 is that, you know, I was at a conference in Vancouver a couple of weeks ago, I came up with this great analogy where cannabis culture didn't get uprooted here, we got cloned. And so the mother plant, the original culture, was left behind and our government here took a little slice of it and we've had to grow new roots and a completely new environment. It's like being taken from outdoors and cloned and moved indoors into an industrial setting.

Kirk:  Okay,.

Ted Smith:  And and and in that process the the old roots of 420 have been you know taken away. It wasn't made legal because of its cultural significance. It was made illegal because the government wanted to take us away from us, essentially, right? And so, you know, there are some signs of 420s coming back. They had a pretty big one in Vancouver, I understand, this year. The biggest they've had since legalization.

Kirk:  OK, that's good.

Ted Smith:  And, you, know, actually ours this year wasn't so bad either. And you know it's it's changed you know the the urge to protest isn't there like it once was obviously here you know we still have some things that we feel we need to protest and getting raided the day after just you know you can't get me made that home, brought that home

Kirk:  Kind of convenient eh, Well, at least they allowed you to celebrate 420, you know, because they could have raided you.

Ted Smith:  they could have came that day which would have been very frustrating and sad in all sorts of ways. 

Kirk:  Maybe that was, maybe that was kind of him, I don't know.

Ted Smith:  (deep sigh)...

Kirk:  I don't know.

Ted Smith:  And so, you know, but you know in a way obviously 420 has some strength because they waited until after that because they know that it would have just brought out more people to protest and given me more power if they'd have done it beforehand.

Kirk:  That is true too, as you would have brought 420 here.

Ted Smith:  No, no, if we had had 420 at the ledge on a nice day after we'd been raided like the week before, like we would have had thousands of people there in support, right? As opposed to a couple dozen people there.

Kirk:  But if they had raided on 420, you would have had to have come back.

Ted Smith:  Yeah, oh, it would have ruined the day.

Kirk:  Yeah, yeah.

Ted Smith:  But no, I'm thinking more about if they'd have raided.

Kirk:  the power of it.

Ted Smith:  It beforehand, it would've just brought attention to us. And if they would have raided us on 420 too, the whole world would have heard of that one, because that's just too much of a coincidence.