Episode Transcript

Rene: It's Reefer Madness, the podcast. I'm Rene back here in the studio. Welcome to episode 179, and it's part two of an interview, more of a conversation, that Kirk had as he traveled west on another road trip and visited Ted Smith at the Victoria Cannabis Buyers Club. And why don't we just get right into it.

The Voice: And it's Reefer Madness, the podcast with Trevor and Kirk.

Kirk:  Let's move on to medical cannabis then, Health Canada. And in the last eight years we've had legalization and my observation is that they're ignoring the medical cannabis portfolio. They're just ignoring. Like now doctors are able to say when a patient comes into the room, I'm interested in cannabis, oh, just go to your rec shop. And that's happening.

Ted Smith: Well the numbers are declining. In a way that works in our favor.

Kirk:  Sure it does.

Ted Smith: Because we can say that there's millions of Canadians using medical marijuana that have no access to a medical professional to discuss it with. They're just going into recreational stores, playing roulette with their health, you know, with kids that don't know anything to really give them proper advice. And so in a way the worse this goes with Health Canada, the better it's going to look for us when we go to court. Is our main argument. Is that their definition of medical marijuana is wrong, because according to them, it's only medical if a doctor approves it.

Kirk:  Correct, Yeah. Right.

Ted Smith: Right? And then they'll have statistics that come out about, well, this many millions of Canadians are using medical marijuana. Yeah. But, you know, we've got like, what, 40,000 in the program. Yeah, right. So you have 40,00 here. I think in that felt fed, no, in the federal health program, I think it's around 40, 000 now and declining. And it's really catered to, to wealthy homeowners. Yeah right. It's about people getting licenses to possess the only two categories of people that have licenses. Are homeowners growing their own, and veterans that are getting it paid for through their insurance coverage. Nobody else has any incentive to sign up to the program at all. I'd be surprised if more than 2% in the program are outside of those two categories.

Kirk:  Yeah, very true. And what I've noticed, my observation, is the industry is basically covering the gaps. Now we've got certified cannabis coaches and we've interviewed them and they're an unregulated health professional.

Ted Smith: Yeah, but they're only helping like the smallest number of people.

Kirk:  People, yeah. But the industry is saying we need coaches, we need people, so they're building. And have you heard of EduCanNation? EduCanNation, yeah yeah. They're a group out of Ontario that's trying to come up with consistent training of cannabis coaches. So if you're going to be a cannabis coach, so the industry... Teresa is one of them. Yeah, I believe so. Yeah Teresa is a cannabis coach. She's in Nelson. Okay. Yeah she has...

Ted Smith: Yeah, I'm trying to think of the names that I've been following some of this. Yeah, yeah.

Kirk:  Yeah, so we've done the interview and the way I'm, like I'm just, I'm pissed off at the nursing profession because we're giving away our competencies to other people. But the industry is recognizing there's a gap, so the industry's is fixing the gap, right? And it's the medical cannabis industry.

Ted Smith: And I don't mean to discredit the efforts, because they're wonderful. You see the industry, I don't see the industries supporting this. I don see any of the companies pitching in money to do this. I see individuals like yourself that know this is medicine, that refuse to give up. The industries turn their back on medical. They're not investing in it, they're not doing research in it. They're doing conferences on it. It's over. Right? They've moved on. Um, and so I appreciate you saying the industry's trying.

Kirk:  I mean, I guess I'm using the word industry and I should have used the word community.

Ted Smith: Yeah, yeah right.

Kirk:  That's better word. It's a better word, but it's just what I'm saying is the medical cannabis patients Are creating an industry of medical cannabis professionals and they're unregulated and again, you know Like I discovered athletic therapists a couple summers ago I was working for the Manitoba Summer Games as a nurse right and volunteering my time But I was working with athletic therapists, and they're unregulated. And I'm going, what the hell is an athletic therapist? And I learned they're a very competent group of people that keep athletes working, right? They're not regulated, meaning they don't have a regulation, government ignores them. Fantastic! So, in my brain, I have just said we're creating cannabis coaches which are becoming unregulated health professionals. So in five years, if EduCanNation gets their wish and creates a recognized competency. We'll have people to walk in here, have a certificate as a cannabis coach, can I come in here? And it's like, there's your athletic therapist, right? You don't need the nurse now, right. You've got someone that's been trained. I mean, like yourself, you're a cannabis coach, right, I mean in a sense.

Ted Smith: I just don't have the certification

Kirk:  You've got the years of knowledge man.. It's like when I went to the academics and I got my master's without an undergrad, I had 10 years of industry experience and the university says, you don't need an undergrad come on here and get it done. So now you don't need it, but there you are. I keep interrupting you. Is there anything I didn't like?

Ted Smith: No, it's been an enjoyable conversation, you're not interrupting me, we're talking.

Kirk:  How does someone, how does someone become a member of the Buyers Club? How does anyone walk in and become a member.

Ted Smith: We require a proof of a diagnosis of a serious medical problem. It doesn't have to say anything about cannabis, just confirmation that a medical professional, that one that has prescribing authorities. So we take nurse practitioners, naturopaths, chiropractors I think now even. And so psychiatrists as well, right? So we've gradually opened that up somewhat.

Kirk:  I'm watching over the medical candidate's certificate.

Ted Smith: Oh, they're in, they are more legal than we are, but I'm more talking about people that have workers' compensation files, disability forms that confirm that they've got different medical problems.

Kirk:  So I'm a first-time guy,.

Ted Smith: I'll log in. I'll even take a, if someone comes in with a membership to Canadian National Institute for the Blind, or the MS Society, you come in with an appointment card for the cancer clinic. They don't give those out because you're curious, so we don't have the bar set that high, but we need some evidence that it's more than you just saying that you have this problem.

Kirk:  I'm not coming for cheap, I'm coming for the cheap pot. So I walk in the door, I say I'm interested, this is curious, I've been told about you guys, I have cancer, how do you engage someone as a new member?

Ted Smith: Well, there's a first a little form that they fill out, you know, just some simple things that they agree to and but and then we Give them a verbal introduction to our club. We've got a lot of options to smoking cannabis. Six kinds of suppositories. All these things. So we typically take patients through everything we got in the toolbox here, whether we think they're going to use it today or not. And then once we've done that, if they want some extra time trying to figure out where to start, typically for most patients coming in here it's an experiment. Partly because we have so many options, right? You know, like we have three different topicals with essential oils in them, and some people swear that one of them is better than the others, right, that kind of thing. So we'll usually start with a guess as to what they want, although sometimes people come in and they know exactly what they wanted, and that's fine too, but we'll have cancer patients come in with no experience at all, that we walk them through as gently as possible. We do almost the same thing online as well, in terms of taking the time to verbally discuss how the club operates, what we have to offer.

Kirk:  And there's obviously Canada's coaching as well, right? Helping them with those things and like, how to doze or is it? 

Ted Smith: Oh yeah, oh, that's what our staff does, right? Like, yeah, we're basically pharmacists here, so when we have someone new come in, it takes a while before they're comfortable saying much, but there's always others around that can have that discussion with the patients as they come in. But most of the people that we hire are patients themselves that have experience with the plant. It takes them a while to learn all the tools in our toolbox, but Yeah, you know that a good portion of our day is having that discussion with the patients.

Kirk:  Five years. What do you hope for the cannabis community? What's five years from now?

Ted Smith: Five years from now, I hope I'm working on the next phase of our clubs, which isn't just to have these, you know, across Canada, but we want to have integrated palliative care facilities. We're working with First Nations and we have grow ops on site with, you beds basically for palliative care where we're growing and making medicines that are specifically focused on fighting certain types of cancers and then we have a restaurant on the site where the public can come and eat food and that way the patients get like really top high quality food and then we would have other medical services on site from you know possibly massage therapy to a dentist and things so that the patients would have care readily available and then the public could use it as sort of a little medical facility. And even have like live-in facilities and a little hotel there for people that are coming to visit and stuff like that with their families. So that's something that I have a lot of friends and people that want to work with me on. And as soon as this club gets some legal footing, we'll be launching that separate project as well, which is really important to me.

Kirk:  That's wonderful. Thanks Ted, I know you're busy guy., yeah. Thank you, man.

Trevor:  Kirk, so just a quick Definition because not everyone has heard these letters RSO, what is it? You guys talked about it a fair bit

Kirk:  RSO is Rick Simpson's Oil. Rick Simpson Oil is a deep concentrate of cannabis rosin, cannabis essence, that has been put into medicine. It's not really something people use recreationally.

Trevor:  Okay, and because it reminded me, same but different back in E-116, Dr. Joe Goldstrich. He never calls it RSO, but what he was talking about was maybe RSO maybe not, but a very similar idea. So if people want to go back and listen to that one, okay. And now I'm going to be you and I'm gonna do the whole let's play devil's advocate. So I'm not looking for hate mail from you or the listeners. Kirk, why do you think we, you know, we have legalized weed now, rec legal, medical legal, the Cannabis Buyers Club, no, Ted, don't get mad at me either. Why do we still need this place that is constantly getting in trouble with the law? Why can't they just go legal? Why do you need such a place?

Kirk:  That is a really good question and Ted and I kind of touch on that at the end about how they have remodeled, reframed themselves from a medical cannabis club to a harm reduction club. And I think Ted describes it very interesting in the sense of how doctors, he's all for doctors, right? But doctors were thrown into the medical cannabis field by Health Canada without having the background or the knowledge about plant medicine and cannabis plant medicine cannabis and we've heard this over and over and over again all throughout this this experience this passion project of ours how cannabis people were called to it. The whole cannabis medicine thing you know back in prohibition back in ambition with 2018. People were using cannabis as medicine for a millennium and then in Prohibition came people had to do it in the back yards under closed areas. So it became a grassroots thing where people helped each other to use cannabis as a medicine. And I think why we still need compassion clubs is that by going to legalization, the legal market, the medical field has sort of been allowed to push it aside because now cannabis is seen by the federal government not necessarily as a medicine anymore but a substance of misuse. A substance that has to be controlled and if you want to use medicinal cannabis then it can only be medicinal cannabis if a doctor prescribes it or gives you recommendations to use it. But since cannabis doesn't have a DIN number and doctors aren't familiar with it, cannabis is just left out and doctors are saying just go get your pot from the rec store. So doctors, the medical field have no obligation to to get into it because now there's direct does that make sense like at one point Health Canada said okay it's medicine, doctors have to prescribe it. So doctors were forced into the game they didn't know enough. The grassroots came up the compassion club started 1996, I believe, 30 years, and because they were the experts. The Victoria Buyers Club is the last one. They're the last standing compassion club in Canada because of legalization. I don't... did I answer your question?

Trevor:  So I think you're saying that... Why this semi-legal, semi-illegal entity, and no disrespect meant, Ted, is needed now is almost something we touch on all the time is even though medical cannabis is legal, it's not really getting used the way it could or should be, and they're facilitating that.

Kirk:  Very much so. There are very, very few medical practitioners in Canada that prescribe cannabis. Now, you and I, it seems like a lot because we're in the game, but like when you compare it to, you know, allopathic medicine going to your doctor's clinic, very fewer of those doctors are practicing cannabinoid science. These guys, the Buyers Club, the Compassion Club, They're the ones who taught. The first doctors who got in prescribing about cannabis. So, you know, many medical users simply buy their cannabis from rec shops now because it's so open. And I believe that that's one of the things that Health Canada wanted to happen. You know, let's just get people to get their pot from a legal store. But these legal stores don't have anybody there. They can talk about your drug interactions. To talk about how high doses of cannabinoid science can have a difference, like the Rick Simpson's Oil, for example, or cannabis extract, whatever you refer to it as. These are high concentrated cannabinoid medicines that few doctors know how to use and compassion clubs have the expertise to do it. Tet Smith being one of them.

Trevor:  No, that's good and now I'm going to accuse you of burying the lead. So obviously the title of this should be Victoria Cannabis Buyers Club uses pharmacists now.

Kirk:  I was wondering if you could pick up on that when we were talking about how they brought pharmacists in. I just wanted this, you know, I kept interrupting them and as Ted said, we were just talking and there was noise all over the place. So it's funny to hear yourself talk to somebody and how often you step on them, but it happens I think in common conversations all the time. But yeah, what did you think about that, that they brought in that model?

Trevor:  No it was fantastic. Obviously I love that and unrelated to the podcast or because of the podcast I've actually had a couple non-podcast conversations with Ted over the last since we talked to him last. You and I were both on a separate podcast separately and mine happened to be an episode where Ted, me and another person who were all interviewed together so that was cool and then I had another sort of off-the-record conversation with whole pharmacist in in the in the buyer's club and at that point it hadn't happened yet and uh i said oh when it does happen you know uh can I interview your pharmacist he said well no. So okay well no you don't understand because we are we are not a legal entity we he doesn't want to get the pharmacist in trouble being associated with a place that keeps getting raided. Oh well that that actually makes a lot of sense so I'm really glad this is this is an up and running thing and Ted obviously thinks it's helping the the Buyers Club members i'm assuming the pharmacist who i still even if we can do some sort of anonymous interview I'd still really like to talk to her him about what what's this like and how it's going. But yeah, no, that's I'm very excited that we can talk about this as a thing that the Buyers Club is actually doing now.

Kirk:  Yeah, you know, and we haven't even touched on the fact that they were raided, right? Yeah, I'm, I think it was April 21st, I am traveling across Canada in Van Houtte and I get a message from one of our cannabis colleagues in Dauphin here. He said, hey, did you see the buyer's club got rated? And they got rated again. And we talked about it in the interview. So I don't want to go over that. But it's just this compassion club is just being bothered. You know, at the very end of the conversation I asked Ted about his vision, right, five-year vision tends to be a thing my generation do. What are you going to do in five years from now? And his whole concept about having that cannabis clinic, you know, my brain just sort of went to AI, you had the palette of coroner over there, you have the restaurant over there. You have this acreage of land and there's cannabis growing and everyone's happy and it's sort of like one of I don't know, I just, I envision what Peter Vermeul is doing, what he wants to do in Suramin, because I think when you go back to that episode, he was talking to me about he's going to Suramin in South America to set up a similar thing. A cannabis clinic where he can provide cannabis medicine. I think that's a utopian thought that the cannabis culture has, is that why can't just go someplace where we can have a wellness model and cannabis can cure all. I think that's a really I think it's a really utopian thought and I kind of share it with them knowing that gee whiz, in the last 30 years, all these guys do is get hit on by government and bothered by government, and legalization of cannabis actually put more restrictions on cannabis than we had before legalization.

Trevor:  Well Ted made, in that, he made a really interesting comment, I don't know if it'll come to pass, but I just hadn't thought about it this way. When he's saying sort of this Health Canada push, intentional or unintentional, who knows, a basic pushing everybody to rec, getting out of medical, push them all to rec actually makes more of a case for something like the Buyers Club than before because like you said, he said, if medical professionals aren't ready to talk to people about cannabis and people want to use cannabis, people with medical conditions and on medications and all that, you know, not, you know your average 22 year old who wants to go to a, you know, a rec store and get the stuff that's going to make the most high on the weekend, but someone who has 18 different conditions and wants to treat some of them with cannabis. If we're sort of getting rid of the medical system without an alternative that makes a stronger case for having things like buyer's clubs, compassion clubs.

Kirk:  Completely, agree. That was, again, in the discussion, I agree, that's a good way to pick up on it. And it goes back to the Cannabis Act, how the Cannabis Act has really restricted cannabis. So it's affected the medical side greatly. And what people have to realize and remember is that it was medical cannabis advocates that got this going in the first place, right? With the Supreme Court rulings about people, you know, could choose their own medicine. And that's when Health Canada pushed it upon the doc saying, okay, we're going to create a medical cannabis program and you have to have a doctor's prescription or a doctor recommendation. And the doctors, well, we don't care. So then they, you, know, people were using it and the compassion clubs formed because people need to get information. And then we get legalization of cannabis. So now cannabis is everywhere. But we forgot the whole medical side, and this is what we've talked about over and over and again in this podcast, how legal pot is not medical pot. And that's not necessarily that the plant has changed. What has changed is the understanding, because medical cannabis goes beyond the 10 milligrams. Medical cannabis goes into high doses of cannabinoids that rec people just don't need. You know, it's like, you don't need to drink.

Trevor:  Or what? It's a different idea. You know, what I need or want to treat my ulcerative colitis, you know, like a suppository, is definitely not what I want to do before going to a concert. They're, you know... They're different uses.

Kirk:  You're not buying you're not buying a suppository at a rec shop.

Trevor:  No.

Kirk:  Not that I know of I don't know any rec shops selling suppositories I mean I I just I just cruised across Canada in April came back with with a whole bunch of stories that we're gonna share soon and suppository I mean they've got inhalers now that look like look like what are they aerosol.

Trevor:  naso ex things for your nose and.

Kirk:  Well, no, puffers like asthma puffers, like a Ventolin puffer. They now have puffers with cannabinoids in them at rec stores. And I'm thinking, why would you use one of those in a rec? So obviously rec stores are providing cannabinoids in a medical dispensary way.

Trevor:  A metered dose.

Kirk:  A meter dose, but not by any means some of the calculations you need. I mean, some of those suppositories that Ted's making on are much higher than 10 milligrams, right? So the Cannabis Act has limited the ability for the grassroots compassion clubs to provide medicine. Hence, and again, we get into this again over and over again, it's so many it's so interesting how so many of the issues circulate back to what we've done in the past with, you know, the creation of cannabis coaches and EduCanNation working on, you know, the, the guidelines of what cannabis coaches need. And you and I are sitting here as a pharmacist, a nurse going, we've got the competencies already defined in, in, in our, in our colleges, and we're ignoring it. So, you know, the industry, I use the word industry, and I got, I got schooled on that.

Trevor:  Ted didn't like that.

Kirk:  No, he didn't like it at all. No, and I wish he had a video because he was getting more uncomfortable with me using the word industry. And I was trying to figure in my head going, what am I? Oh, community, right? So yeah, he doesn't like that. But yet you and I are working in the industry and trying to get the cannabis industry to realize that we're forgetting the medical people, right. And there we have one of the last standing Cannabis Club in Canada. Being raided of their product, their medicine and now with another fear of being evicted and going back to my letter on reefermed.ca The blog I sent an open letter I put it on LinkedIn I think I put it in Meta and basically supporting the Cannabis Club in the sense that in past conversations, Ted has a really good relationship with the municipal government. And the feds, I mean, he's won all the court cases with the fed, like the fed's are leaving him alone. It's the province. And the irony is that the safety group is like, what are they, there's a name for it. 

Trevor:  Yeah, it wasn't the cops it was the community safety council or something. I don't have that quite right.

Kirk:  Yeah, it's in my letter, I don't have it in front of me, but it's the safety council coming and saying, you're being unsafe. And the irony is that they're trying to keep things safe. I mean, they're in an area of Quadra, very near the city police, the new building at city police. The area, there's lots of houselessness in the area. So Ted's providing a service to people. That need this medicine and use this medicine appropriately in a safe place. And they're being sanctioned for being unsafe and the irony is rich in stigma, essentially right.

Trevor:  Okay and my last and this is going to sound nitpicky pharmacist thing but I think I'm going to segue into one of your future conversations. So nitpick pharmacist, you were talking about liver damage like high liver enzymes like you had talked about with Dr. Neary who's going to be coming up in an episode or two. Stay tuned for that one really good concussions, NFL, money, Saskatchewan. Whatever you like about any of those come back for that one. But what Neary was measuring with liver enzymes as sort of levels of liver damage and what Ted was talking about was the cytochrome p450 and other sort of liver enzymes that break down drugs. So if you take CBD especially. You can affect how your other prescription medications might be metabolized and that sort of led into the pharmacists at the cannabis club but I was just flipping back we have talked about liver enzymes a few times and especially back in E80 which was a little while ago Dr Lindsay Anderson when she was in Australia that was literally well she does other things too but she had spent a long time on a paper looking at various cannabinoids and various P450 enzymes and how they're interacting. So if you want a deep dive in that, Dr. Lindsay Anderson, E80.

Kirk:  Yeah, you also reminded me of grapefruit. It's been a long time since I thought of grapefruits. and how it affects.

Trevor:  Yeah, Ted and that's just one of my notes. I'm always amazed every time I listen to Ted. You know, if you've never heard Ted before, he speaks kind of slowly. I wonder if this guy knows anything. And then he just blows me away every time with just his breadth of knowledge on everything, including that is an explanation I give every day at the pharmacy about how grapefruit can affect your medications. Ted just nailed that because you know just off the top Ted knows about grapefruits affecting cyclone P450 because he's Ted.

Kirk:  Yeah, well he's got a lot of rich knowledge and that's the thing, right? We talked about it. Cannabis coaching, he's been doing it for 30 years and now the culture is catching up because nurses, doctors, pharmacists around Canada are ignoring this. So the cannabis culture are catching up and saying, okay, we need people to understand this stuff. There's Ted who's just you know he's written books I mean we've got books and and stuff from Ted and I've read him that yeah he's a good guest and I and I love the fact that he's actually listened to some of our episodes because he knew some of the guests like he talked about some of The Cannabis Coach so yeah this one's for Ted and and um Again, we'll keep following his story and people out there that are advocates, you know, send a letter to the Victoria Town Council. Go back to our blog page at reefermed.ca the blog and you can see how I wrote an open letter saying come on, you give these guys a break and get the province, get the safety team off this group of harm reductionists. The irony is just so rich and throughout this passion project, what are we doing We've been doing this now, what, eight years? So many times we just stumble into stigma and the irony of it, right? I mean, we're going to protect people from cannabis and then you start getting into it. How? What's the fear? I met a vet last night, sat down. You're saying about a bunch of concerts I went to, well, sat down at Obsolete last night. Across from me from people from Winnipeg. She's a veterinarian. And we got into the conversation about cannabis and she said, well what's the problem? Exactly. What's the problem? Anyways, that's for the last episode. Any other questions? Thank you for pulling some of that stuff out.

Trevor:  No, no, no. I enjoy everything with Ted, and as usual, this was a good one. Yeah, no unless you've got other things. I think we covered everything on my list, and we better not make this one last forever. But again, I'm Trevor Shewfelt. I'm the pharmacist.

Kirk:  I'm Kirk Nyquist the Registered Nurse at Reefer Medness, the podcast and yeah, go to our webpage, all the stuff's out there, all of the links are there. I've been spending the morning looking at Buyers Club links and I think Ted, you've got a couple of webpages out there that are out of date but we'll put all the links up in our webpage and I tell people, you know, we're on Spotify, we are on iTunes, We're on all most of if not all of the podcast platforms But if you are new to our podcast, go to the web page and by going to the webpage you'll see how we categorize our stories and you'll be able to find the story you want to listen to. And then once you get hooked, then just stream us on Spotify and listen to every week, Tuesdays, every Tuesday.

Trevor:  We do our best, yes. Okay, that was another good one.

The Voice: And we'll talk to everybody later.

Kirk:  Yeah, cheers mate.