Episode Transcript

Rene:  All right, well, here we are. It's the big 100th episode. I'm Rene. I'm the producer of Reefer Medness - The Podcast. We're finally back in the studio. 

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

Kirk: Kirk Nyquist, Registered Nurse. We're introducing ourselves at the beginning of the show. It's all wrong. 

Trevor: We didn't forget. We didn't forget. 

Rene:  It only took a hundred episodes. But now we're doing it right. 

Kirk: Back in the studio. 

Rene:  Yes. 

Kirk: That's the cool thing. 

Rene:  That is cool. 

Kirk: We're in the studio. 

Rene:  And what's really cool too is and of course, over the last couple of months even, we've been really excited about getting into the 100th episode and we've been talking lots about what do we do with that show in order to make it, make it extra special. And what we thought might be this might be a really great episode to use as an opportunity to introduce people to the Reefer Medness Podcast or Reefer Medness - The Podcast in as far as getting into why does this podcast exist? Why are you guys doing it? And and what's happened over the how many years has been four, five, five, five years? 

Kirk: I think it was. Didn't we start December, September 2017? 

Trevor: Yeah.

Kirk: September is because I think we first walked in here Septemberish 2017, okay. And said, Hey, we have this idea. We I think we asked you, do you know what a podcast is?

Trevor: And you roll your eyes. He said things like, Are you guys serious? 

Kirk: Everyone has a podcast. 

Rene:  There's work there, you know, work to do. But yeah, so I've got a couple of things that I that I thought I would do ask you sequentially to try to get through sort of the story of the podcast. And I guess that would start primarily with how did the project start and what inspired that and what did you plan to achieve when you first set out to do the podcast? 

Trevor: I don't know what achieve, but I'll start with, so cannabis and patients. So the pharmacy I work for used to have five care homes before the government took them away. Not fair at all. And one of the docs had patients, usually you know, kids or grandkids of, you know. Aunt Martha and they figure that Aunt Martha should have cannabis and cannabis was legal medically at that time. So the doc said, you know, can you get cannabis into the care home for Aunt Martha? I said sure, yeah, no problem. Because, you know, as a pharmacy, we deal with everything from, you know, fentanyl for pain to chemotherapy. And sure, you know that no problem at all. And then it turned out a big problem. Couldn't do it. Just looked all over the place and just legally was not something that was legally going to be allowed for a pharmacy to get into a care home. We were not allowed to have cannabis cross the threshold of a pharmacy. And we had to, you know, go through back asswards things like, you know, the niece would order this the cannabis, the cannabis oil from the Licensed Producer, have it sent to the niece's house, and the niece would have to bring it in and sort of give it to the nurses. And the nurses would kind of have to write it in instead of having it put on the official MAR chart, the medication administration record and it was just so back asswards. It was just weird. So that kind of moved me over to talking to Kirk. Someone I've known for a long time who's had both A. Nursing long nursing background and a long interest in cannabis. 

Kirk: Yeah, so it was old school. I remember when we were talking to High on Homegrown, and they asked us to go through this. We did an episode with High on Homegrown, another podcast, and they asked us the story. And essentially what happened is the Trevor is, you know, working through this clinical cannabis issue and. 

Rene:  This is all before legalization. 

Kirk: Recreational.

Rene:  Recreational. 

Kirk: So, I mean, medical cannabis been legal since 2001 2002, right? So so it's medicine out there federally, but not provincially. And so Trevor: walked over to my place, literally walked over and I think you tapped on my dining room window. 

Rene:  Something like that. 

Kirk: Something like that. And you walked in old school as the boys on High on Homegrown said "Old school". And we sat down and we talked about cannabis. I've had I've had an interest in cannabis for a very, very long time and never really found an opportunity in the communities I lived in where I could apply cannabis to clinical practice. I've had friends who have used cannabis medicinally, but again, it was all that, they used it medicinally for themselves but never told the doctors. And this is when cannabis was medicine. So in the early aughts, so I've been around cannabis. I say this often, I've been around cannabis a long time in my youth, but medicinally I saw it happening in 2002 but could never find a niche. Dauphin, I mean, I can remember working as the manager of the hospital, managing, you know, managing programs at the hospital, talking about cannabis and people rolling their eyes, right? So I could never find a niche. So Trevor: walks in and we, I think we part ourselves beer or whiskey or something, and we just started brainstorming and one of us, one of us said, What about a podcast? And it was like, Well, doesn't everyone have a podcast how are we going to be different with a podcast? So that started, yeah, so old school. Trevor: walked over and we talked about it. So then between the two of us started brainstorming what that might look like and come up with names. And we, we came and had a coffee with you here, and between the three of us we came up with Reefer Medness - The Podcast. Yeah. And then we started researching it. And of course this is before recreational legalization, so I had to do due diligence and talk to my college about it. 

Rene:  And I remember that at the beginning it was all about, Can we get in trouble for doing this right? 

Kirk: Yeah, and in hindsight, it's all rather interesting in hindsight to have been worried about it because because at the time cannabis was medicinally legal. So why couldn't a registered nurse, you know, do this? So this is this is what I did. So I approached the college, I approached I approached the Canadians professional society and my insurance body. Spoke to lawyers about it and just did my due diligence. And so I got I got I got an okay from my College that that I could do it as a nurse as long as I keep it, you know, within the lines of not encouraging people to go out there and get high, as long as I'm looking at it as a medicine and as society. So we often talk about this Trevor: and I as a registered nurse, I have such flexibility in my practice. I can talk about the social sciences, I can talk about the science sciences, and I can talk about acute care, community care. I can apply cannabis in so many different environments that as a nurse is hard pressed to say that that's not nursing well defined nursing, right? 

Rene:  So this is all really interesting to people that might not understand what's involved. I mean, it's like, oh, let's do a podcast. Okay, let's talk about weed. And it's not as simple as that because I remember all of that. And Trevor, you too, and just, you know. 

Rene:  Yeah, my Kirk is much more diligent than me. I went with the ask for forgiveness rather than the permission route with my College. The College said, you know, do not ask as pharmacists do not have anything to do with cannabis. And I rationalize in my mind and hopefully the college eventually agrees that it would not be, it would be considered normal if a patient came into the pharmacy and said, Hey, Trevor, I want to talk to you. We go into the private counseling room and told me about their cocaine habit. I am, you know, I know about cocaine. Cocaine is a you know, actually you used to instill once in a while is use in actual, quote unquote legitimate medicine. 

Kirk: Nosebleeds.

Trevor: Believe it or not, nosebleeds and nosebleeds. And in dental surgery, because it was a it's a local anesthetic and stops bleeding. So. 

Kirk: Constricts the blood vessels. 

Trevor: Exactly. So if someone had told me about their cocaine problem, I feel comfortable talking to them about, you know, okay, well, you also have a high blood pressure issue and you've got this and, you know, you know, yes, that deviated septum in your nose might make things worse or might get worse. Like, I feel as long as I have done the research or say, you know, here's your five questions, I can answer three of them. I'll do some research and get back to you on these other two, that that feels very normal. Something a pharmacist would do. But with cannabis, which at that point, like Kirk: said, was legal medicinally, if you had a prescription from the doc, but not recreationally that why couldn't I? Because people were already starting to have questions because people's you know, grandsons were out. You know, I deal with an older population. People's grandsons were already saying, Hey, grandma, why don't you try this? Hey, grandma, why I've got this joint here. Why don't you smoke it with me? And they come in the next day. You know, my arthritis felt better. Was that a good idea? So it seemed as long as I was sort of, you know, reading as much as I could. You know, I was not encouraging anybody to go out and smoke pot. Again now it's legal. I'm still not encouraging. But, you know, if they want to go ahead. But as long as I was being accurate, saying what I knew, when I knew something or what I didn't, it seemed reasonable to me. But no, I didn't go ask my college. And hopefully that doesn't end up putting it in the pot where it's. 

Rene:  One of the premises of the podcast right from the start was to see what happens after legalization. I think that was why the podcast started a few years before and then recreational got legalized. And then the idea was to now monitor how, how the the cannabis landscape changed. And so just as you were just talking then you were giving advice based on the research that was available to you. Is there now more research available for you to draw from? And and are you allowed to speak about this more knowledgeably now with patients? 

Trevor: There is more research, but one of the things that Kirk: and I always talked about and I will throw it in now, the sky did not fall. The day after legalization. The sky didn't fall. We didn't have 100,000 car crashes a day. So people did not, every everyone and the dog to not show up high for work. You know, it was, you know, what was October 2018? Yeah, October 2018. Recreational legalization was such a complete nonevent. Yeah. 

Kirk: What is it? I saw a quote, you know, reefer madness and it was Canada legalizes "Reefer Mildness." You know, And it was like it's like what happened? Nothing happened. I mean, and I think we predicted that in the shows before legalization. We published I think our first show went up in January 2018. So we had we had ten months of programing before recreational legalization. 

Rene:  Right. 

Kirk: And it's interesting, you you talk about perceptions and stuff. And when we first started this, I was I was really nervous because, I mean, I was like episode zero. We finally pulled it down, but I shared a lot about my youth in the early episodes. To the point that I remember coming in say, No, you got to edit that part. You got to edit that part out because I'm sounding like a cannabis enthusiast before its recreationally legal. So as a nurse, I could get in trouble. Now in five years, I think I've calmed down a little bit because I'm more comfortable at the microphone. But also the premise of cannabis, it's reefer mildness. No one, no one's excited about cannabis, right? It's it's it's available. There's and now the big issue is there's too many cannabis stores. So now we're losing cannabis stores.  

Rene:  And so even as you say that so monitoring what happened in the last five years but let's say post legalization. Couple of things that I've heard lots of is people watching the prices. Is it now? First of all, the greater benefit as as I understand it, is you now know what you're buying and you know what's in it. When I was buying, when I was young, bought from a guy, got stoned. Yeah. No idea at all about what I was smoking or what was in it. And now at least you can, you can choose what it is you want and so on. On top of that, I think what's come out of it, certainly for me, after all the weed that I smoked when I was young, I had no idea what I was smoking. I was strictly smoking weed to get stoned. And and it's a relaxing thing and it was a lifestyle and all that. And no idea about CBD at all. I had no idea about Terpenes and the effect of those. And now you go into a store and everything is categorized by those very things that I had no idea about. 

Trevor: Yeah, and further on that, because we've had this come up with several guests. So here's some of the good things Canada did. You know, it's all laid out. What's in there? You know what you get outside the bottles, what's inside of the bottle. As a pharmacist, I really like that. And then just the whole list of tests they have to do from, you know, does it have mold in it? You know, does it have this toxin and does it like that? The Health Canada, I think, has done a good job, we'll call it on quality control in general.  I think that's been really, really good. But you were mentioning pricing. One of the things that's, you know, do we have enough bang for our buck? All the different levels of government, though, are taking their taxation cut of the price of weed. So, you know, the grower, the LP, the store, they are getting not very much bang for their buck. You know, they're not getting a lot. Compared to the amount that the consumer pays, like a whole bunch more of the price of the pot you buy at the legal store goes to the various levels of government than it does for cigarettes and alcohol, which is, I'm assuming, going to be more future episodes. But that's, maybe they went too far. Like one of our early episodes, we talked to an economist and he even threw out there that, you know, he said, yes, I know, politically untenable, but that's one of the stated goals of the Cannabis Act was try to get the the illegal, the illicit market gone. He said, well, you could you could never reverse tax, you know, you could actually give the Licensed Producers money and then then they'll be cheaper and they'll drive the black market out, which makes perfect sense to an economist. But, but and. 

Rene:  Realistically. 

Kirk: Season Two Episode Three Dr. Jason Child that that was a really cool episode. Him talking about taxes and the Pigmelin tax. 

Trevor: Pigovian.

Kirk: Pigovian

Trevor: Pigovian

Dr. Jason Child Yah. Once we've eliminated the the way of avoiding the tax, then you have more power to engage in that sort of price manipulation through taxation and Pigovian taxes. That's absolutely correct. Until the illicit market is eliminated and we can be relatively confident, it's not going to crop up again. We can engage in that kind of pricing policy if we're serious about the policy objectives that were stated in, you know, the legalization Act. 

Kirk: But but, you know, we're talking about how cannabis is changed. The government. What I've learned in the last five years of doing this podcast and talking to the guests and the kind people that have that have talked to us about cannabis, is that is that the government didn't necessarily meet their goal of eliminating the black market. And there's lots of reasons for that. And we discussed a little bit of that in Episode 78 Buyer Beware Buyer Bewildered. That's when we were in Calgary talking to all the craft growers. And when I was learning, learning about how cannabis has commercial cannabis, legal cannabis, how it travels, you know, back and forth. 

Trevor: Across the entire country. 

Kirk: Right. So you're losing some of those Terpenes that you're talking about. You're losing some of those fine Kief and hash like particles that are on. Yeah. So so people are still growing in some provinces, not Manitoba. Some people are growing their own pot because they because homegrown pot doesn't travel. So I think in the sense the government the government missed the boat with blowing up the black market because in B.C., I think most people still get their cannabis in the black market. Yeah. You know. Yeah. So. 

Rene:  So that leads to another thing that that has over the 100 episodes, probably most of them at some point mentioned this about cannabis and that's the stigma. I remember like early on it was especially right after legalization, everyone was talking about how long is it going to take to get past the stigma of smoking weed or cannabis being a drug and a gateway drug and like all the all the stigmas around it. Do you guys feel that there's been any headway made in changing the perception of cannabis and how it fits into a lifestyle? 

Trevor: Yes or no. So here so one of the just, you know, its fun having a podcast. I play rec hockey, fat old man hockey, if you prefer. And people now relatively often come up to me in the hockey dressing room where everyone else can hear and talk about, you know, the cannabis they smoke or the gummies they've had or the, you know, I'm trying to cut down on my drinking and, you know, use cannabis more like it's just kind of a normal topic of conversation now, which it just absolutely wasn't. Yes, of course, You know, we're always make fun of, you know, the one guy on the team who is the obvious stoner. But, you know, the rest of the guys, you know, ad nauseam about the beer and rum they drink. Yeah. And, you know, or the brand of cigarettes they smoke, but nobody talked about their cannabis use. So. So that's good. But still. Even I was talking to a bunch of medical students, family medicine residents about cannabis the couple of months ago, and they had lots of questions, which was good. But they still don't. They still don't teach the endocannabinoid system in medical school. Like, it's still sort of a, it's a sideline. It's not it's not mainstream, at least in the medical community. And it's still not reached for not even just first is still not seems to be in the top ten of of things that maybe they should be reached for earlier. What do you think about stigma? 

Kirk: Stigma? Well, I have a wonderful opportunity. I get to write about it in our blog, on our web page, Reefermed.ca. There's a blog page. And I I've been spilling my guts on that on my opinion. I find it interesting. I've always been a flower guy. I've been a flower guy forever. I like I like my pipe. I like to roll it. I've tried vaporizers, I've tried eating it. I just like flowers. So when I go to outdoor concert in Dauphin or New Year's celebration, where there's people I always have, I always have flower with me and and yes, COVID times. But I'm an old guy. Sometimes I still pass my pipe. Right. But it's funny when I when I'm there, No no man, I'm on gummies. So it's like it's like people are on the main street. People are consuming cannabis. Like it's a beer. Like it's coffee. Yeah. I think the stigma of cannabis for the population is it's very few people still talk about the Cheech and Chong Stoner right. They're out there. Where the stigma is with the health professions right and I write about this in the blog and my theory is, is that, you know, cannabis was medicine federally for 17 years, 18 years before it became provincially recreational. Yeah. So the colleges.  College of Pharmacists of Manitoba. Stigma. They're not allowed to have cannabis in a pharmacy. Yeah. What the hell. I mean, it's got LD50 of zero. Yeah. And it's considered monstrous right. I had a similar experience. There's a local college here, LPN students, licensed practical nursing students their second year, and I was invited to speak to them about my northern nursing experiences. Well, I'll be damned if I didn't do that over Zoom last year in their first year. So I show up in the classroom and I've done this presentation to the second year. I've done it when they're in first year. So I said, Well, I can talk about cannabis. And they said, What? And and according to the instructor who I've known for 20 years, we used to we used to be managers at the hospital together. She's now teaching. She said her students haven't been that engaged ever in her and because I fired up reefermed.ca our web page. Yeah I showed them how to search through our web page and we started talking about the endocannabinoid system. We started talking about cannabis as medicine. They're nursing students and their curriculum still doesn't have it. So the stigma of cannabis is with the health professions. 

Rene:  Interesting. 

Kirk: The provincial health. Now we should get do we want to get into the Cannabis Act review and what you know, what the perception happening there and the stigma of the federal government. 

Trevor: I'm going to go with. That's interesting to us. But you know, things things like driving and stuff are probably more interesting to the audience. 

Kirk: But but stigma is a big thing. And unfortunately, I think the stigma to end the conversation about stigma is and I read about this, I think governments got to stop believing their own propaganda. Okay? Right. So and but I think population bases us guys sitting around here. Stigma of cannabis it not there. 

Rene:  Yeah. Okay. Interesting. You just mentioned the website a whole bunch of times. So why don't we move into that? Obviously you've got a podcast, so you have to promote it somehow and yet and you have to give people digital access to the information or to the podcast. So you created a website, as everyone should. A lot of people that listen to the to the program probably aren't aware of the amount of work that, especially you, Kirk, have have put into this website. This is anyone I've shown it to is just blown away at how thoroughly you have taken all of the information that that was gleaned out of these 100 episodes and have categorized them and made them so sortable by Topic matter, by Guest, by Theme. You've got transcripts of of every single program. You've got all the supportive material, scientific documents and and all the stuff that gets referred to. It's it's absolutely insane how thorough this website is. And so reefermed.ca. Everyone if you've even if this is the first time you've you've heard the podcast go to reefermed.ca. Find out what you're interested in by category and start exploring these podcasts and read along because you can. It's absolutely amazing. And so, yeah, so, so what was it that compelled you to put that much effort into the website when you already have podcasts with all that information on it? 

Trevor: Cause he's a nut bar and glutton for punishment like really when he first Kirk: first said, Yeah, I want to do some work on the website. Oh fine. Go do some work on the website. Yeah. You know, I think I want to make it more searchable. Yeah, fine. Put like a Google button on there. Sure. But no, he just went completely above and beyond. And, you know. Well, we should be able to search this by Guest. Okay. And by Topic. Okay. And where all the transcript, like he put just hours and hours and hours of work into it which I'm eternally grateful because it was up to me would not look like this. 

Kirk: But we have different skill sets. That's what's interesting about this podcast. But for me, it goes back to one of our first conversations we had when we were working like episode ten or 11 or something like that. And we're, you know, we're two little eager guys or guys where you're going, Hey, this project and we want to do this, this and this, this. And you said to us, Rene basically that we have to get a volume up first. We have to get a lot. And I think you use the term library. I don't know who used it, but the term library came up. And so as a registered nurse, I remember walking away from here, I may I may have had an influence of the flower. I don't know. But I remember walking home from from here, thinking about it, thinking, well, I'm a registered nurse. What would I want to have? Right? And who are we? I mean, we're just we're just two guys in the center of the continent who decided to talk about cannabis. Yeah, right. But I am. I kind of said to myself, well, if I if I think about 100 episodes into the future, what do I want the Web page look like? I want it to be a library. So if it if we start now, what's important about a library? How do you search back in the day, the card catalogs. How do you use where you would search for author, you would search for topic to search for key terms. So I figured, well, let's have that in the Web page. So my goal was because because we're not researchers. Right. Right now, currently, neither of us are practicing with cannabis in our practice, but here we are in the center of the continent talking about it. So what makes us special, I think I think this has been me going back to school and therefore what I wanted to do to prove to my College of nurses, how am I applying cannabis to nursing, right. The web page. So the web page to me was a way of demonstrating as a nurse, how can I get information about cannabis out there to people that want to learn about cannabis? Yeah, so that's why the web page came that way. Beautiful and is growing. It's still growing. 

Rene:  So let's have a look at that library right now. I was going to ask you as well. I'll ask you now. You guys are very familiar with 100 episodes. Do could I ask each of you to mention five of your favorite episodes and why so? And just briefly and then we'll play a clip of from the episode. Trevor, if you got a favorite. 

Trevor: Well, that's hard, you know, like favorite children. And the answer is my dog. So but as as a pharmacist, I'm going to mash two of them together because we had two really good but really different guests about drug interactions. On E80 Dr. Lindsay Anderson. Now she is a bench researcher, and so she was literally in a lab and she had, I think it was 12 different cannabinoids and a bunch of different we call them CYPS or enzymes that break down drugs in the body. And she was seeing which cannabinoid affected what. And then we had Dr. Cody Petersen, who's a pharmacist, a clinical pharmacist, who was looking at it more from a clinical point of view. And between the two of them, if you know, and this is still ongoing, you know, how do do medications you take interact with the cannabis you might be taking between the two of them, between Dr. Anderson in E80. and Cody Peterson E94, I think you get a pretty good overview of drugs interacting with Cannabis. 

Dr. Lindsay Anderson: The major finding was that the majority of the cannabinoids inhibited CYP2C9 and then as well as CYP2C19, but less potently. And so the kind of the important thing about that is that together CYP2C9 and 2C19 they're responsible for the metabolism of about 25% of prescription drugs on the market. 

Dr. Cody Peterson: Alcohol and THC and cannabinoids in general do interact. Alcohol has this ability to disrupt this very important barrier in our bodies called the blood brain barrier. Turns out we all evolved to protect our brains from any of the stuff in the world. So you got this extra tight seal around our our spinal cavity and and our brain. Now that barrier gets disrupted when we start consuming even just one drink and it starts to get a little loosey goosey. And what we see is that one drink combined with one marijuana cigarette. That's what they studied, what they called it when they studied it, right? And they found nearly double the brain concentrations of THC in the rodents that they that they they went and did this. 

Rene:  Kirk, have you got an episode or a quote from an episode? That really stood out for you. 

Kirk: You know, it's funny, a couple months ago, I went and developed these ten quotes that I have. And I don't know, is that you're right. What's your favorite episode? Each episode we've done has grown my knowledge. I've had fun ones, Like I got to play fanboy with David Crosby, right? I mean, I got to play fanboy and I listen to it now and it's like, Oh God, how embarrassing. But he was he was very gracious. And from what I understand, he really enjoyed he really enjoyed talking to us. I noticed he didn't promote us, but but he apparently he was standing outside the doctor's office while his wife Jan, was inside and he was talking to us. So that was a fun one. 

David Crosby: And I prefer to just smoke the flowers that we raised. I like it better that way. I've vaped the flowers that we raise. I like it better. 

Kirk: Nice. Nice. And do you guys bake with it as well? Do you make edibles? 

David Crosby: Yeah, we do. Yeah. My wife has come up with a ginger snap. That is the superior ginger snap of my life. I've never tasted a better one anywhere, ever. 

Kirk: Isn't that cool? 

David Crosby: And you can't taste the pot, but it definitely works. 

Kirk: Isn't that cool? 

David Crosby: My son makes brownies. My wife makes ginger snaps. 

Kirk: That's very cool. We did the same thing. Michelle and I sat down. We were doing some cooking, and we're, you know, tasting the batter and stuff. And, you know, it's got that earthy taste. That can be a little cinnamon and see how that balances it out. Cinnamon double choc double chocolate cookies, man. Unbelievable. 

David Crosby: I bet they're great. Absolutely great. We do both. 

Kirk: Yeah. Fantastic. In the sense of favorites. I enjoyed the first five because the first five, we were sweating so much. Okay, what do we play first? What do we play first? And my response is why worry? Let's play the first one. First of all, addictions. Why worry about it? And Dr. Fandry coming in and basically telling us what to worry about. And at the end of it, we realize there's really nothing to worry about. 

Trevor: Not a lot to worry about. 

Kirk: Cannabis has its harms. But really in social network of misuse substances, cannabis isn't, you know, it's not a big one. 

Trevor: Mildness. It's Reefer mild again. 

Kirk: So I'm saying which one's my favorite. I really I really like the medicinal ones we've done where, you know, we talked, we talked about lowering costs and quality of life with the TOPS study. I don't know if you I wasn't listening to you.

Trevor: I try to make different quotes than you. 

Kirk: Yeah. Okay. So I mean, so, you know, from from episode is I mean E69 I mean when he talks about cannabis decreasing the cost of narcotic costs like, like cannabis I, I wrote my last blog about this. Right? The cannabis can decrease the cost of somebody's pharmacy. 

Dr. Philippe Lucas: You've got a group of patients who are largely affected by by chronic pain and mental health conditions. You introduce medical cannabis in their course of care and then you get an associated reductions in use of prescription drugs, including prescription opioids and statistically significant improvements in quality of life. 

Kirk: So there's so many episodes. So I guess I guess top five? I'm going to say let's group the first five together because that was just pure fun. 

Rene:  Okay. Yeah. 

Kirk: David Crosby was just a hoot to talk to. Yeah. So that's my two I guess. You tried to squeeze two together, I squeezed five together. 

Rene:  Trevor, give me one more. 

Trevor: Sure. So I'm going to do the other squeeze them together. Cannabis 2.0. So we've alluded to this. This is and I thought Brant Guppy from E82 said it well so. 

Dr. Brent Guppy: So for us Cannabis 2.0 means anything that's not smokable flower. Cannabis 1.0 is smokable flower. So you know your loose buds, your milled flower, your pre-rolls, things like that. Anything smokable. For us Cannabis 2.0 is anything that's not smokable so concentrates vapes, topicals, nonoemulsified powders, beverage mixes and all of the kind of different flavor formats of cannabis that aren't necessarily smokable, let's say. And that's really where my kind of skill sets came in coming from the drug research and development world. I was able to apply some of the, let's say, pharmaceutical strategies that are employed in mainstream pharmaceuticals to cannabis. 

Trevor: And then we get, you know, that gets us all the way to E84 with Sara Roberts. Now she her company Assuage does lots of different things. But, you know, because I'm a pharmacist, I got to talk to somebody about cannabis suppositories and, you know. 

Rene:  And you love suppositories. 

Trevor: Yeah. Any chance I can get I talk suppositories. And she was very gracious and very knowledgeable and, you know, trained as a pharmacist. So, you know, we had, and the other melds well into another thing that I just never thought about when it came to cannabis because it's come up a couple of times. Endometriosis. So this is a condition that's not well treated. Apparently the pain can be worse than childbirth and we just don't have a lot of good treatments. A lot of people suffer from it and cannabis suppositories may be a potential treatment for it. So, you know, Cannabis 2.0 with, you know, we have Brant Guppy from E92 and Sarah Roberts from E84. Things just never occurred to me at the beginning of the project. 

Sara Roberts: So most of the patients that we've seen that have been knocking on our door trying to get a hold of these products, you know, you're looking at things like endometriosis, ovarian cysts, or because I said before the kind of the sexual dysfunction. So there's, you know, there's obviously a need there. There's kind of a historical usage and now that we're bringing this into a legal product. It allows us to get that data out in a safe way where we know that the products are not contaminated. You know, we know that they're being overseen by a physician and a pharmacist, and they can start to kind of come into that more medical light where we can start treating it like another natural health product. 

Kirk: I'm completely off script, but I'm thinking. Kieley Smiley, Smiley, Kieley. And she made you blush when she actually made you blush. And I could see the blush over the radio when she was talking about female health and cannabis. I forget which episode that was. She was. 

Trevor: She was talking about sex stuff and sex and suppositories and Yeah,. 

Kirk: Could feel this this old guy here just blushing. It was hilarious. I don't think I don't think I was in on that conversation, but it was just. 

Rene:  I remember that. 

Kirk: For me, it's been the people. You know, this podcast is has offered me an opportunity to and I've done more this than Trevor: has. Walking down the streets of Victoria and just walking into an office and saying, Hi, I'm Kirk: Nyquis I have a, I have a podcast. Can I talk to Ted Smith? Right. And can I talk to you and talk to Owen Smith? Can I talk to these people? And they let me in. 

Well, and actually those are always fun. And that leads to the My Cannabis Stories. Yeah, we've got so many great little segments through the My Cannabis Stories and some of the actual shows and interviews of you just walking in and talking to people and and even when you guys have been to

Trevor: Saskatoon.

Rene: Conferences and you guys actually hosted one. 

Trevor: Hempfest Hempfest. HempFest in Saskatoon a few years ago and yeah, we, we did a couple podcast episodes from the stage and they were people that had basically been previous My Cannabis Stories and turned into entire episodes. 

Kirk: Now become, you know, distant friends. 

Trevor: Friends of the show. 

Kirk: Friends of the show. 

Rene:  It's another interesting thing that happened, and for me as a producer, this was always fun is to for you guys to have interviewed some celebrities. Bif Naked was one that stands out because she's actually from Dauphin and she spent lots of years here

Trevor: We are claiming her. 

Rene:  And yeah, we claim her. 

Kirk: Thank you so much. I can't tell you how much. 

Bif Naked: You're most welcome. Thank you for including me. I really appreciate and I'm sure that you guys will will get lots of different guests. I'm sure. I mean, you guys are great. You're great, you're articulate, you're funny, you're generous, and the questions you ask are really, really great. They're personable. And there's smart. 

Kirk: This the smiles in this room right now are adding to the city of sunshine. So it's. We're very happy. 

Thanks, guys. 

Rene:  Yeah, Ethan's Zohn. 

Kirk: Survivor.

Rene:  That was a cool one. 

Ethan Zohn: You get a million bucks when you win Survivor. So I use that money and met up with some of my soccer buddies and we created this organization called Grassroots Soccer. Well, growing up as a competitive athlete, I was never really into cannabis smoking cannabis recreationally. Obviously it was around me at school. I did try and second semester of my senior year of college just to say that I did something crazy in college, but as an athlete, I just never really got into it. And then once my playing career was over and cancer came around, I was plagued by just all the side effects that happens when you go through cancer. And I was popping a lot of synthetics every night. It would be Zofran for nausea, Ativan for anxiety, Percocet for pain, Zoloft for mood, you know, Ambien for sleep. And then I'd hop up in the morning and I'd have to pop an Adderall just to get enough energy to go to the doctors. And it just was a cycle that I wasn't comfortable with. And so I started looking into alternative therapies and ways to mitigate the side effects of cancer treatments. And I knew of cannabis, read about it, friends used it all the time. And so I got into it. 

Rene:  So, yeah. And so again, as we're going over 100 episodes, one thing that I can say about the variety in the episodes is you've explored between the two of you because you each have individual interests and expertise, everything from nursing and pharmacy to actual history with, with you, you know, growing up around cannabis and or marijuana. When did we start saying cannabis anyway? Wasn't it marijuana? 

Trevor: It was. So it kind of got legalized so the more respectable cannabis. 

Rene:  Okay. But what was interesting for me is how much variety of topic there was surrounding what I would just refer to as weed. And it's so much more complicated. There's so much that can be learned about it, whether it's learning about the science of it or the application of it or the well, as you guys have been exploring the legalization and its consequences or its effect on society. I've learned so much more. Like I said, I would buy weed, I smoke, I get stoned. Yeah. Now I think about weed so much differently. And it's not even weed anymore. Now it's the extracts and the CBD and the THC and the terpines and the functionality of it and the usefulness of it. And, and I learned all that through the podcast. 

Trevor: Yeah. And like you said, sort of some left field things and I'm using that pun intentionally. Cannabis and athletics. You know, E76 we talked to Dr. Mark Ware about elite athletes because this was around the time where Sha'carri Richardson, a U.S. sprinter, basically gold medal favorite, basically wasn't allowed to go to the Olympics because she tested positive for weed. And which is really weird when you think about it, because it's really hard to say that weed is a performance enhancing substance. 

Rene:  Right. 

Trevor: You know, and we talked about that a fair bit with with Dr. Ware and you know. It's really interesting and went into lots of things that I'd never thought of where you know. Well but in the Paralympics you know it might be really important for somebody is for someone's medical treatment and you know but they the Paralympians are sort of under the same umbrella of WADA, the World Anti-Doping Agency. So can they not use their weed to treat their, you know, spasticity from their spinal injury? And, you know, is it really performance enhancing or is it in this weird other category of promoting a healthy lifestyle? That's part of the Olympic ideal. And I was just lots and lots and lots of stuff about, you know, what I think about cannabis and the Olympics. I just still think of Ross Rebagliaty, you know, won the gold medal, the gold wave and went back. But, you know, and that was a bit of a ha ha ha when I was growing up. But, you know, it's of course, so much more complicated than that. And that was just really cool to have a really knowledgeable person sort of walk that little, little story through with us. 

Kirk: Exactly. That leads to another thing I wanted to ask. Kirk: I will ask you. What was the biggest surprise realization that you've discovered through the hundred interviews that that you've been a part of? 

Kirk: Good question. It sort of goes back to your question you just posed about when it's become cannabis and not marijuana. It's when I realized that pretty much everyone that consumes cannabis is using it medicinally. 

Rene:  Yeah, I see that. 

Kirk: And I mean that in a sense that to answer your question about cannabis, the reason I use the term cannabis is because as a nurse, I want to use the most professional term. Cannabis covers everything. It covers sativa, indica, hybrids, it covers marijuana, it covers hemp. So cannabis is the umbrella term. And then as you get deeper into the conversations, then you can use marijuana to discuss, you know, the psychotropic components of cannabis. But as a nurse, I use cannabis so that I'm talking about it as it's, it's, it's as medicine, right? So my. I started, I started this podcast project thinking I knew about cannabis because I had opinions, right? I consumed cannabis for the 30 years I have. I know stuff, but when it started looking at the structure of the chemical formulas of cannabis, when I started talking to people that actually study this and they're giving us new research, I mean, one of the early questions when we walked in this morning was about the research of cannabis. Is there more research now in the last five years? Yes or no? Yeah, but but but what's happening in the government? When the government legalized recreational cannabis, they put a lot of money out there for people to research recreational cannabis. So what's happened is that the medical side of cannabis isn't being as studied. They can't get the funding because everyone wants to talk about the misuse of cannabis. And prepare for the misuse. We're still in that stigma right from that from the academia government side. Yeah. So so what's my revelation? My revelation is that cannabis isn't what I thought it was. And having said that, it true that this is going to sound idiotic, but it can it can save and help health care. We're in the middle of a crisis with health care right now. Every time we turn on the radio, there's a crisis. These 100 episodes? There are so many examples in this podcast, on our web page that will tell you how cannabis can help. Cannabis can make healthier homes. Right. Cannabis can take pain away better than Gabapentin. Cannabis can decrease the cost of pharmaceutical costs to an aging population. Cannabis can help nurses in long term care to focus on their patients and not doling out meds. So to answer several questions, I, I think our web page has research that you're asking about, and I think my opinion has changed because of that research. 

Rene:  Cool. So Trevor, biggest surprise realization. 

Trevor: I'm going to go a little into the other field. Cannabis people have the best stories, but you know, the My Cannabis Story, Kirk teases me and he's right. I'm usually much more interested in the science end of stuff. But every time you talk to a cannabis person like somebody, they're really interesting and they really have great stories. Like we had one with Tara Baptiste. He's almost made it to the NFL guy. 

Kirk: Did he not play a couple games?

Trevor: At the camp. Okay. I mean, as far as the camp, but, you know, still an amazing athlete who didn't quite make it in. And now but he always smoked cannabis all the way through. And, you know, he wasn't sure whether the cannabis was helping or hurting his athletic career. But now that he wasn't having an athletic career, he thought he'd go learn more about it and he was just a clip machine. So, you know, my favorite could be the tagline for our show "It's okay to be medicated while you're getting educated" and then, you know, he talked about, you know, he just got cut from this team, wasn't sure where he's going. So I said, Oh, so did you have a now what moment? He said, Well, I didn't just have a now what moment I had a what now moment. Because on top of all that then he had testicular cancer and then he had to deal with that. And then after failing to deal with that, then he said, you know, I think I've been through all of this and all I really knows I'm still smoking. Maybe I should learn more about that. Like they're just they're amazing people that the cannabis community, I love hearing their stories. 

Rene:  Well, and as you say that like any of your guests, because I mean, the theme is cannabis. Any of the guests in these 100 episodes have some sort of an interest and a passion for something cannabis related. What am I trying to say here? 

Kirk: Cannabis culture? 

Rene:  Well, cultures, yes, there's a whole culture there, but it involves scientists and researchers and users and sick people and health professionals like yourselves that see application here. And then there's there's like frustrations and there's legal processes and there like, it's there's so much going on that revolves around cannabis and going through the library here. I think you guys over the last hundred episodes have covered so much, which will lead me to my next thing. Where do you see the podcast going now after the first hundred episodes? Are there have has the goal changed with the podcast or what's the evolution of it to this point? 

Trevor: Well, that's simple, Rene. We come, we supplant Joe Rogan and make millions of dollars and go retire to a tropical island. 

Rene:  Excellent. 

Trevor: Or. 

Kirk: Yeah, or we continue funding this passion project. oh, God, I don't know how to I don't know the answer the way we're going in the future, I think like we've got three we've had three episodes in the bag right now that are some of the most interesting episodes we've done.  You know, episode 101 and episode 102 are going to be more interesting than episode... You know, like it just keeps getting better and better.  When I whenever I pick a story, I go back to our three pillars, Reefer Madness. Does does this story register on the stigma scale? Reefer, reefer, mellow? Is this a cannabis culture stoner kind of story or reefer medicine? Is this is this a scientific application to you know, so I've always because I've brought story ideas and it's sort of like, wow, that doesn't fit to three pillars. It doesn't work. Yeah. So, so we've pulled them. I mean, I think we still have stuff on, on the shelf that we have pulled down from different meetings and stuff. 

Trevor: And people we should follow up with. And it's a little addictive. And the good news, Kirk: was saying earlier, the research, you know, part of me says, yeah, there's been a whole lot less funding for research. But on the other hand, you know, I go to a semi monthly sort of update, sort of a continued medical education thing put on by one of the cannabis companies. And everybody they talk to is a researcher who who's done something like with there's one that I still want to chase down she's looking into cannabis and bone health like osteoporosis. Again, something I would have never thought of. So there's so many stories to chase down. So I'm just hoping we get to keep chasing down stories and people people keep listening to them and and keep giving us the really cool My Cannabis Stories along the way. 

Rene:  Well, for my end of things, I'm very thankful to you guys for involving me in the project. This has been I mean, obviously as a producer and as a creative guy, I really enjoy being a part of a project like this. But more importantly, I've learned so much about stuff that I had no idea about. And like I said, there's a whole world of cannabis related experience out there, and I'm so impressed with the two of you and your dedication to the project and to how thoroughly you investigate and research and prepare for all of the interviews that you do. And and for for someone listening to this right now, what you don't know is that after the interviews and especially through COVID, it got weird because we we weren't recording in the studio. So there was technology that needed to be adapted to and schedules and and all that. But what happens is I get back here to the studio. Trevor is, is so organized in the way he gets the audio to me and Kirk and Trevor work together constantly and I and I would say almost daily on exploring ideas and bouncing ideas off each other and, and then getting that that audio to me. And then I get to play here in the studio and construct a program that I think is going well. The goal is to make it sound technically is as good as it possibly can, but also so that it makes sense because in the process of the interviews that Trevor and Kirk do, the topic sometimes wanders. And so there. 

Kirk: Down some rabbit holes. 

Rene:  So and so there's post-production in there. But, but I just love it. And again, thank you guys for involving me in this project. It's, it is such a treat to work with people that that care about this and aren't just going through the motions and going okay we banged off another interview here, do something with it. 

Trevor: And we want to thank you, Rene. We we talked about you being our secret source, you know, otherwise it would be, you know, to two guys making interviewing people and trying to jam audio together and sounding like two guys trying to jam audio together. So. So, no, you you make a sound. You make a sound good, like we know what the hell we're doing. 

Kirk: In the post-production as you as you throw this episode together and then pitch it over and I say, okay, here's here's the final project, Listen to it. I listen to and of course I'm listening to us and I'm learning to be a better interviewer by listening to myself. But I always look forward to the cut out at the end. 

Rene:  Yes. Okay. So that's the other thing. 

I always I always look forward to what is going to be the Easter Egg? 

Trevor: What dumb thing did I say that Rene pulled out. 

Rene:  There are a couple of cool things for for people that might not know. A couple of cool things that happen every episode. And I just get a kick out of it because it's just funny to me. But, but a couple of regular things. So for the longest time and more often than not, either Kirk or Trevor will say, Well, that was another good one. 

Trevor: Its another Good One. 

Rene:  And then we had I throw sound effect in of a beer can opening up. Yeah, yeah. And I don't know I just think that's funny. The other thing that happens is and I love the consistency of this. At the end of every episode we play a song and it's I enjoy that because initially it was we play music from local artists because we're producing in Dauphin and all that. 

Kirk: It's was a 100 mile diet one time. 

Rene:  Yes. Okay. And but that's evolved into allowing the guest to pick the song and it's always interesting what they choose. And then so so we play the songs. We have a cool variety of music to sort of wrap up the the episode. But then at the very end we've got a bit of dead air and then there's the Easter egg and and that is usually some sort of an outtake or something and well, I'll play a couple of those right now. 

Kirk: And so Trevor, you discovered that any time that you smoked pot before legalization. 

Trevor: I was already drunk. 

Kirk: You're already Drunk. So last night was the first time you ever got high just on cannabis? 

Trevor: Yeah, yeah, yeah. We sat on your front step, and then I walked home with my wife afterwards. It was nice. Some boaty Mcboatface from our local store. High CBD. So I wasn't real stoned, but I felt good. 

Kirk: But you also had two meatballs, ice cream and a cookie. 

Trevor: I did. So maybe I was a well-balanced stoned. 

Kirk: Do you have any new growths any where on your body? 

Trevor: No, no, no, no. horn out the forehead. 

Kirk: So you survived. You got home okay? 

Trevor: I got home okay. Yeah. Thanks for asking. 

Kirk: see ya, we'll edit that one I guess. 

Trevor: I was good during the interview. I was very professional. I had a little bit of trouble during our during our intro, sorry Kieley. I have I have trouble keeping the straight face talking about sex. All right. It's a good one. you should come back. 

Rene:  Okay? Kylie Boudreau or Beaudry

Trevor:  Oh, crap Beaudry

Rene:  Thought so. 

Kirk: ah right, do it again. I'm talking to David Crosby. David Crosby talking to me, man. Challenge me.  I want to be challenged by the health profession. I want my college to challenge me on what we're doing and saying about cannabis because I have come to appreciate and I'm now I mean, now I've got a six pack on this fully loaded thing saying challenge me on what we know. 

Rene:  Okay, So make sure to listen to the end of every episode so that you don't miss the hilarity that ends every episode. Couple of other things to visit before we wrap up here. One of the things that happens when you create a podcast is it costs money. And and we've had some some really nice relationships with some some clients, especially early on. There is a lot of support for that for the program and I guess it just hasn't been pursued well enough. But tell us about the importance of relationships. 

Kirk: Well, when we started the podcast again, the first five, I was very involved with the Watson Art Centre at the time and I love live music and for me, like cannabis and music go together and we even did an episode, you know, In the Key of Weed with John Enerson. 

Trevor: Enerson . 

Rene:  Einarson. 

Kirk: Einarson

Trevor: Sorry John 

Kirk: Again, but again, you know, so music's been important. So it was, I think when we first started we were, you know, I was thinking, okay, well I'll do a little segment then we do music and we do segments and I think the first couple are like that, and it just didn't work with the production. So the first five gave us opportunities to sort of figure out what the post-production would sound like. And now we have one song at the end and it was a 100 mile diet. It was, you know, picking music because we I think we got all the way up to 50, maybe even 45, 50.  It's all local music. So then it spread out. Relationships are important because one thing about what I've learned about the cannabis culture, the community out there is they're all very kind people, right? So on our web page, without singling anybody out, go to our Web page and the relationship we've had companies and individuals that have supported us along the way. And thank you very much for doing so. I guess we should really say Strainprint was the biggest. Yes, they was a big hit. They gave us a very nice little stipend at the very beginning of the podcast. Got us rolling. Oh, I made. 

Trevor: Make a rolling joke. you really realy want to

Kirk: Maybe it was more like addicted, because they got us into this passion project. Now we can't get out of it right now we're hooked on our own podcast. So we're looking for we're looking for someone else to pay for our addiction. But so yeah, they helped us. And, and there is a culture and even even Dauphin embraces us a little bit. Now we're kind of known well Trevor plays hockey, I just wander the streets now as I'm retired as an aimless wonderer. But people know us as the cannabis guys talk about cannabis and it's kind of cool. And yeah, I just like the community. 

Rene:  I'll tell you another thing that was impressive was from the musical community, the theme by Desiree. 

Kirk: and Marc Clement 

Rene:  Marc doing all the little bridges for us. And yeah, it's and I have to say CKDM for you know, supporting the production of of the podcast. And it's very cool when you listen to the podcast, I always think, well, I always smile and realize this is very cool, that this podcast with this whatever professional or whatever is being produced in Dauphin. 

Kirk: The center of the continent. 

Rene:  It could be anywhere and it's being heard throughout the world. Yes, but we're producing it here in Dauphin and, and using local talent. Yeah. Like literally all the way through, right from the from the theme to the to the. 

Kirk: Soul Back Jack.  Desiree Dorian right. When I asked her permission she's a strong acquaintance. I cannot say Desiree and I are great friends. We're strong acquaintances. But I asked her if we could use her Soul Back Jack. And she said, Yeah, go for it. And I think it was like a year and a half or so I saw our Countryfest and she came up and said, That's right, you guys are using my Soul Back Jack, for your podcast. Yeah. I said, Have you heard the interview? No, I guess I should start listening. Yeah, but you're right, it has been a community thing. People, people have come out and helped us with this. 

Rene:  Yeah, very cool. Okay, so this is the hundredth episode. Anything that you guys want to say to wrap this up with. 

Trevor: We want to see everyone back for number 200 coming up faster than you think. 

Rene:  That's true. These last five years just flew by. 

Kirk: No kidding. Yeah, no kidding. Yeah. 

Rene:  Okay. Thanks, guys. Here's to… Cheers. To another hundred. 

Trevor: Another hundred?