Episode Transcript

Trevor:  Kirk. We're back. 

Kirk:  We are back. 

Trevor:  So it's a little later. By the time it comes to pass, you know, first thing, David Traylor and I talk a lot about, you know, him going to Germany. By the time this, he's coming back from Germany. The other thing that has sort of happened and way in the past, by the time this drops, I've had my youngest son graduate from high school. 

Kirk:  Yes. Yes. I'm in my garden. In my backyard garden. I hear a whoop whoop and Michelle goes, it's like notifying the start of a parade. Oh, yeah, the grad parade today. So, we open up our garage door and found an entire Shewfelt family in our front yard. Minus one I guess. 

Trevor:  You did. Yeah. So, it was me, my parents, my wife, Doris, her mom, her sister, my niece, Doris, Doris's niece. Yeah. We were all sitting on along your front yard watching the grad parade go by. It was a long day, you know, convocation and then parade and then banquet and then party.  But it was good.

Kirk:  You knew better, you should have knocked on the door. I want to give you some Cossack spirit. 

Trevor:  No. Then I would absolutely have not made it through my entire day. Normally, that would be lovely. But not on that day, in the middle of the afternoon. There is no way I would have made it through the evening. So, yeah, one more kid finished high school. So, that's, that's a something. 

Kirk:  Yeah, that's a milestone. That's a milestone. And, and he bought a motorbike. 

Trevor:  And he bought a motorbike, it's not high up on my list of things that he should have done, but apparently I get less and less say in what he does now. 

Kirk:  Apparently, yeah. 

Trevor:  Yeah. So, back to cannabis stuff. Uh, actually something I wasn't meaning the segue, but works well. David Traylor and I have in common that he has a child graduating from high school or by this point graduated from high school as well. So, this is David Traylor from Golden Eagle Partners. So, they are an investment firm who I, I met David through LinkedIn. I just I've had a while that well still do people I just sort of seem to randomly meet on LinkedIn and ask them things like, Hey, got a good cannabis stories. David's turned into a, you know, we should talk about that and a couple Zoom calls later. I had semi confusedly reluctantly agreed to go to Florida to some conference that turned into CannMed23 and I got to sit on a panel with some super interesting/brilliant cannabis researchers and being in sort of the capital markets part of CannMed23 where we got to talk sort of cannabis business and cannabis business is sort of what David and his company are all about. 

Kirk:  Yeah so this is now the last of your cannabis, CannMed23 stable of stories I guess. 

Trevor:  Yeah. 

Kirk:  Okay so we had, we had the two with, with three or four stories each. 

Trevor:  Yeah. 

Kirk:  And then we had Doctor Russo, which sort of stands kind of independent. And then you brought Big Pharma. Big Pharma. 

Trevor:  We talked to Terry O' Regan from Brain's Bio and you know they're kind of I like to think about sort of that middle ground between research and big industry where, you know, you need to sort of prove that some of these things work in smaller trials possibly before they go off to an actual pharma company. They were there sort of in that bridging area. 

Kirk:  Well, and what I liked about him as I pulled a quote "by modulating the endocannabinoid system can potentially unlock the therapeutic treatment of some of the major diseases humans are facing" essentially a bio spec company that's taking the cannabis plant apart so that it can be more palatable to big pharma. Fascinating story, Trevor. Then you brought in another story not from CannMed but it's it was Ryan. 

Trevor:  Kocot. 

Kirk:  Kocot and he's a compliance lawyer. He's a specialist in cannabis business compliance, and he defines cannabis by the weight of the THC and it can't be any more than 0.3 milligrams and it's hemp. If it's more than that, then it's in his opinion, it's marijuana. So, compliance lawyer, biotech, you've got biotech, big pharma, and now you bring in the investment bankers. This gentleman is the founder of Golden Eagles Partners, a leading boutique investment bank serving North America and international public and private companies, venture firms, family offices, sophisticated investors, and entrepreneurs in the cannabis, marijuana or hemp sector. He essentially underwrites the business plan that the compliance lawyer has got the biotech companies to organize. So, you you've got yourself a trilogy here of business podcasts. 

Trevor:  Yeah, that wasn't really the plan, but it seemed to have worked out well. And like we said off air, you like finding patterns and things and you know, these three in a row really seem to have tickled your pattern recognition part of your brain. So, hopefully the audience likes that this order as well. 

Kirk:  Well it's again another dense one. It's a Trevor episode. There's a lot of there's a lot of information being shared. But you know we should get into it and then we'll come out and talk about what we heard from them. 

Trevor:  All right. So, let's listen to David Traylor. Okay. Welcome back, everyone, to Reefer Medness. On the line today. We have David Traylor from Golden Eagle Partners. David, thanks for joining us. 

David Traylor:  Thanks for having me.

Trevor:  So, David and I met for reals in Marco Island, Florida, at CannMed23. He was nice enough to invite me to sit on a panel with some super smart people, and I didn't sound too dumb at the end of that. So, we thought we'd bring him back and pick his brain this time. So, David, let's start with, you know, before cannabis you, we'll say maybe more in the pharma end of things. You were more in like the biotech sphere, right? 

David Traylor:  Yes, I was. And actually, Trevor, you know, it's funny that most people that got into cannabis or have been, got into cannabis like yourself, have more interesting stories than myself. But yeah, I just very lucky to be where we're at Trevor. Essentially, we're an investment banking firm. Golden Eagle Partners is the first investment banking firm to jump into cannabis. We did so in late 2013, so we've been doing it in North America and the U.S. for almost ten years, but also internationally for over seven. Our first Israeli client was in early 2016. But yeah, to my point about just being lucky Trevor. Because this industry, if you really do look at cannabis cannabinoids, plant-based medicines, it's going more towards biotech and science all the time, right? And so to your point, I want to the City of Boulder in the eighties. I have two undergrad degrees in science, biochemistry, and molecular biology, and then got into working in biotech companies. Companies based in Boulder, Colorado, Berlin, Germany, and Silicon Valley. So, I worked for 15 years in operational roles in biotech before I got into investment banking in 2005 and then did biotech deals Trevor, for a few years, about seven or eight years, investment banking moved back to Koran(?) in 2009 to an investment banking leading the life science group of a group called Headwaters. And then, as you know, in late 2012 was when Colorado, Washington really kind of kicked things off, when the voters in both those States allowed adult use cannabis or marijuana or whatever. You know, we can talk about that nomenclature here in a second. So, I was looking at it Trevor, you know, with my biotech background and being in Colorado, you look at it and cannabis was, you know, is a biological supply chain. It's highly regulated, just like biotech. And when you get down to it, it's a it is a drug. I mean, if you really look at, for example, CBD, right? According to the FDA, by Epidiolex, its definition by approving Epidiolex CBD is a drug. So, is a lot of, you know, the molecules within the cannabis plant. So, that's why we jumped into the cannabis. 

Trevor:  Excellent. So. So, you've mentioned a few times. Golden Eagle Partners was an investment banking firm. So, what are you guys looking for? Are you looking for, you know, the next CBD company, the next people who are, you know, growing an interesting plant? What sort of things are you guys are you guys looking for? 

David Traylor:  That's a good question. So, you know, our brand is one of the more well-known brands, I believe, out there. We as we mentioned right before we jumped on, we were going to be in Berlin a week from today for the second time. But the main thing, I think what we've been trying to do Trevor and whether it's involving, you know, CBD or CBG or CBC or, you know, the entire, you know, whole plant extract. With cannabis, we're trying to find, our goal for the last ten years is find really good capital for really good companies. And like, for example, I didn't mention it, but, you know, in late 2014, I joined Surna as chief business officer. Surna was one of our clients. And then they wanted me to join full time. So, I kind of put Golden Eagle Partners on hold and jumped in to start as their chief business officer. And through that experience, you know, Surna was one of the first three public companies in the cannabis sector, Trevor. They made climate control systems for indoor grow ops. 

Trevor:  Okay. 

David Traylor:  And realized through that experience, I worked for about a year at Surna. I realized that it's hard to find really good capital for really good cannabis companies or two really good transactions like M&A or co-development deals or cross licensing deals. And through that experience at Surna, I realized that it's not easy for a number of reasons. We can go on to that during this conversation, but that's mainly Golden Eagle Partners edict. And one thing they mentioned, too, is, you know, as we mentioned, we've been doing international for over seven years. The cool thing Trevor, is that we've recently this year before we were the lead sponsor, Benzinga put together our redesigned website. We realized that we've had cannabis companies with operations on six of the seven continents. So, that's something that really nobody else can come close to. So, we were going around the world finding companies with plant based medicines. We're also doing a, we've been working on psychedelics since 2020, but very carefully focused in on what we want to do in plant based medicines, psychopharmacology and cannabis and cannabinoids, and finding really good capital for companies, really doing smart things with those molecules. 

Trevor:  Yeah. So, let's go down that rabbit hole just a little bit because the psychedelics now and depending on where you are, especially US. What the best way to call it. Might be sort of borderline legal. You know, you have the problem south of the border that, you know, federally THC or the majority of the cannabis plant is as. It's a prohibited drug. So, it must be hard to, I can see why if I was a company that wants to do research on TBG, why, you know, investors might want to steer away from that because it's, it's a gray area the right word? Like it's not, kind of legal, not quite legal, in between. A little bit of a little bit of more ambiguity than probably most investors are comfortable with. 

David Traylor:  Yes. Well, I mean, the one thing this industry is so crazy, as you know Trevor. Is, you know, I think for an example to start off with one thing we always like to talk about. I mean, it's such a weird, unique industry. The nomenclature is screwy, frankly. 

Trevor:  Yeah. 

David Traylor:  I mean, if you look at it. So, we're so I meant, you know, with my biochemistry background, we look at cannabis as a genus, right? Cannabis is the genus of the plant. So, to us, cannabis means not marijuana. Cannabis doesn't mean THC. And that's the thing. People both here and in Canada and abroad, they refer to marijuana as cannabis. And it's not from our perspective, we're trying to actually reshape that. And if you look, if people want to look on the Global Investor Forum, which is happening June 27th. We put together the nine panels with the help of Alex Rogers, who is the main driver on ICBC. That's you don't know Alex. You ought to know Alex because he's a unique individual. He's doing some great stuff for cannabis globally. But if you really do look at the program. We're trying to write to define nomenclature of being essentially THC plus and THC minus. 

Trevor:  Okay. 

David Traylor:  And by looking at it that way, we think it really simplifies things. Because for example, you have Delta8 THC. Now Delta9. Delta ten. And those are different things unto themselves. And then you certainly have like industrial hemp, which we consider to be THC minus. But, you know, there's a whole avenue, an opportunity both here and abroad. But getting back to your original question, yeah, here in the U.S. it's not easy because people are mainly looking at the THC plus side. And right now, the THC plus side is, you know, whether you want to call it marijuana or cannabis however you do it. But if it has involved THC Delta nine THC. It's pretty tough, right? And we've seen that actually, Trevor, in the fact that a lot of our competition in the last 6 to 9 months, whether it's Roth Capital or Cantor Fitzgerald or Callan or are out of, what they consider to be cannabis because it's just, it's nationally it's illegal here still. And I think they're frankly looking at the wrong way. But yeah, I don't know if that really answers your question or not. 

Trevor:  No, no, that's good. I guess. What will it loosely call that your competitive advantage that you, we are we are very cannabis positive here on this podcast. But it's nice to see somebody with the financial background looking at it in a in a positive light instead of just, you know, "it's THC, I don't want to touch it" and honestly, I think it's going to be I'm hoping again, a little biased. We're kind of hoping that's going to, you know, frankly, make the world a better place because there's lots of good medicine to come out of the cannabis plant. 

David Traylor:  Yeah, well, that's one thing I think Trevor, to your point, and I think you and I saw this at CannMed, which was another great experience, is the fact that these groups and a lot of these people are looking at it in the wrong frame of reference. Right. I mean, if you really do look at this, a lot of these different molecules, etcetera, they're amazing molecules. And I think one thing why you and I went to CannMed is, I think one of the things that needs to be done is people need to do the real science to all these different, I mean that's my main goal I think to throw this out here and I think help frame this discussion. Our whole idea and I think you would agree to from your background Trevor, is that the main goal here in the next 5 to 10 years is the fact you have all these different cannabinoids on one side and then you have all these different indications. 

Trevor:  Yeah. 

David Traylor:  Insomnia and anxiety and you name it. And to figure out which of these molecules, whether by themselves or in combination with each other and be successful to treat a lot of these indications that are intractable. 

Trevor:  And that's that's frankly what we're all hoping for now. But I don't think we can go on that rabbit hole forever. Let's switch gears a little bit. So, you've been watching the cannabis industry for a while. And something I kept hearing over and over again in Florida was, you know, while A, it was just nice for people to know where Canada was, often where we travel, Canada, where Canada who. But no, at a cannabis conference everyone knew where Canada was. So, that's excellent. But it was yeah, it was so great because you would legalize federally. It was fantastic. And then money poured into Canada and then you guys just kind of blew it there. You know, a whole lot of nothing happened after recreational legalization. So, from someone sort of watching the cannabis industry from outside of Canada, what where did we blew it? Blew it because, yes, a bunch of money did come into Canada. But I will be the first to admit that a lot seemed to have happened after it all poured in. 

David Traylor:  Yeah, that's a good question, Trevor. Actually, I don't think Canada blew it, actually. I mean, it's, you know, it is you know, this is a tough industry. And, you know, one of the things that came out of Florida, I'm sure you remember, is the fact that, you know, there's still quite a stigma involving this plant and these molecules that we need to get over the hump. But you know, I think Canada it's doing better than the U.S. is. But I think one thing that you know and I still think this remains true. There's three main points that I brought up. So, we actually as we mentioned, we'd been international, right? So we jumped in, got a deal done with a hemp company in late 2019 and said, okay, well, for your international let's go to Davos to the World Economic Forum. So, back in 2020, January 2020, right before the pandemic shut things down, we traveled to Davos and we were the sponsor of two events in Davos. We're the only group to sponsor both events. And we got up at the conclave and talked about three things that, you know, are you know, we believe that we learned being in North America and we thought they could be applicable to Europe. You know, one is the fact that these, most geographies, when they open up in cannabis, take a little longer to open up than people expect. Number two point was that it's a biological supply chain, and biological supply chains are inherently unstable. And by that, this comes from my experience working with recombinant hemoglobin back in the early nineties that when you scale as biological supply chain, they're inherently unstable, which means they tend to break when you scale them up. And that's definitely something that we can talk about here in a second that definitely the Canadians screwed up and then the well and also the U.S. 

Trevor:  No, no, no, no. It's a fair point. Fair point. 

David Traylor:  And then the other one is the fact that, you know, there's have been very little of first mover advantage history in the U.S. Like, for example, Surna was probably the biggest name brand, Dixie Elixir. and Surna were probably the biggest brands back in 2014, 2015 in cannabis. And that's the thing. Probably most people on this listening to this don't even remember those names. And then as you know, let's get back to then Canopy Growth, right? That had a bunch of money put into them by Constellation Brands. And let's get back to yeah, kind of how it was blown. But it was not just in Canada, right? There's a lot of these groups is these companies that assume that growing weed is easy. Now growing weed is easy. Growing really good weed is hard, right? 

Trevor:  Right. 

David Traylor:  So I think that was one of the main things that we learned is the fact that these guys went from, you know, 40,000 square feet of grow to 400,000. They scale up very quickly. So, it gets back to my scale up point. And they, those things broke. Right. And the other problem is that and we also mentioned this in February 2020 at an event called CannaVest that we were actually publishing Bloomberg about. And the fact and I think you'll agree with this too Trevor. The problem with the industry, whether it was in Canada, in the U.S., North America or other parts too, is the fact there is too much arrogance and too little humility. And it's funny, I've been saying this for now, what, three years? And the reason why I continue to say it is because it's right. Right. And there's still people out there that are arrogant and think it's easy and or how about all these people that come in from outside of cannabis thinking, oh, well, you guys are idiots. You kind of blown it. You know, I'm smarter than everybody else. And they come in and you know what? They don't last very long either, because it's a hard industry. Right. 

Trevor:  No, I think those are fair. Yes. All of our Canadian listeners remember when, you know, suddenly entire towns were taken over by green houses and, you know, this was going to be the biggest thing ever. And a lot of those greenhouses a couple of years later are no longer growing cannabis in them, you know. But hopefully that will be a positive spin. Hopefully, like you said, the people who are growing good weed are continuing on and you know the that but it'll mature they'll mature into something that that actually helps people out.

David Traylor:  Well one thing is too that Trevor so I'm in Colorado right. Colorado was one of the first states we did. We were the first state. 

Trevor:  You guys. You guys won. Yeah. You were the first mover. 

David Traylor:  Yeah. In January 2014. And so we sat down last week with an adviser to our firm, Ron Kammerzell. Ron Kammerzell was really the leader of MED. He was head of enforcement for the Department of Revenue, which the MED, Marijuana Enforcement Division in Colorado reports into. And, you know, we haven't done things ideally, you know, they did a pub-kill-bill. They didn't allow public companies early on. And that's one thing that really actually if you look at most of the big, really successful companies in the U.S. or the MSO are in Illinois or other states, they're not in Colorado. Right. So, Colorado really kind of screwed that up. And then Ron was saying last week that one of the things we need to start looking at here in the U.S. is kind of relinquishing some of this overregulation. I mean, for example, you know, one of the problems here in the U.S. is the illicit market. So, that's a problem that we the U.S. has really screwed up as we continue to overtax a lot of this. You know, you have 280E you're dealing with. And it's hard to compete with the illicit market when you have so much overregulation, so much taxation and etc.. It makes it hard to compete. So, yeah, the U.S. is certainly not without its warts to. 

Trevor:  No, fair enough. And don't talk to a Canadian about overregulation, over-taxation, that is our bread and butter. We do that. We do that way too. Okay, so we're getting a little short on time. So, before I. I have you on here to pick your brain a little bit. So, good on you, you know, your future looking five years down the road. Glass you know, you've got but you've just you're now back from Germany. You collected so much new info there. So, where is the cannabis industry going? Are we going towards, we'll call it the pharma route. Where we're picking out one cannabinoid, matching it to one indication. Do you think there is still a place for whole plant medicine. Where if you've got your crystal ball on, where do you think we're going in the next five years now? 

David Traylor:  Well, you know, for one, we actually just we're doing a prep call for this event last week in Berlin. And one of the participants said, where we go in five years? And I was like, you know, let's just talk about three. 

Trevor:  Like I, I can live with three. 

David Traylor:  Three is hard enough. So, five? There's no way. And the other thing we've always said Trevor, is that there's no crystal ball in cannabis, at least from our, our saying Trevor is the most predictable thing about cannabis is its unpredictability. 

Trevor:  Fair Enough. 

David Traylor:  But I mean, a couple of things that are interesting though, and that's, I think one thing that's pretty exciting about what we're doing. Like, for example, you know, there's the person that's coming to Europe from one of the main investment banks that you've heard of before, and he said that he's going to Europe to see what's going on. To us, which is kind of funny because, again, you know, as we mentioned, we've had clients in six of the seven continents we've been doing going over Europe for a number of years. Yeah, a couple things that I think are interesting. You know, for example, we published an article, if you guys want to look it up in the Global Cannabis Times, I think it was late last year on the five some of the five countries to watch. 

Trevor:  We will definitely look at that. 

David Traylor:  That's the cool thing that we are doing, Trevor, is, you know, you talk to, you know, see these investment banks. And the reason why they're all getting out of cannabis is because they're looking at it in the wrong perspective. They're all looking at North America. They're beholden to North American deals, and there's no deals getting done here. So, of course, they're going to get out of because they're not making any money. But yeah, we're seeing some interesting things, like, for example, Weed Care. The Weed Care program in Switzerland. Everybody's saying how Germany is the leader and frankly speaking, right now, I don't think Germany is the leader. I mean, Germany had a declaration come out to they kind of this last year. They've kind of changed their direction. You know, they want to do some social clubs and they're allowing, you know, home growing, but they're taking more of an incremental step, which is fine. I mean, that's kind of getting to your point. It's maybe more incremental is better than what some of the things we've seen in both Canada and the U.S. But in Switzerland, they're rolling it out in different cities. Basel, I believe, was the first one. Zurich now. Lausanne and the Weed Care program is in Switzerland is adult use. It's very limited number of patients and they're essentially going to study the effect on these limited patients in each city over the next two, two and a half years. And it's adult use marijuana. The cool thing is that it's under the FOPH, I believe, as the Federal Office of Public Health in Switzerland, but also the U.N., which as you guys know, if people are listening and they're aware of what's going on internationally, one of the big issues that the U.N. Single Convention of 1961 and the fact that you're not supposed to be able to import or export narcotics across borders. Right. And so that's been one of the big in Europe. You don't have 280E.  In Europe, you do have the issue with the Single Convention of 61. But the cool thing about the Weed Care program is the U.N. Narcotics Board is a part of that program, or certainly I think they gave it kind of their seal of approval. So, I think that's going to be interesting. Malaysia, that's crazy. Malaysia, it looks like they're legalizing it. If anybody knows the history of Malaysia, they had, I think in 19, early 1950s after colonial rule, they essentially had a zero tolerance policy on narcotics. Right. So, if you are an Australian traveling to Malaysia, which unfortunately happened every now and then back in the eighties, you were busted with any kind of drug, you're essentially, it was capital punishment, right? There's a number of the Australians, right? So, Malaysia used to have capital punishment for any zero tolerance policy, and it turns out now it looks like they're going to legalize. Czechia or Czech Republic. They will look like they're on the forefront. You have Germany. And so the next you know, I think the one thing I will say is, you know, North America had a better watch it because, you know, we may not be the leading, you know, U.S. or Canada or both might not be the leading market for cannabis in the next couple of years because it might end up falling into Switzerland and Europe or some other country. 

Trevor:  I think that's I think that's a wonderful place to wrap up. So, I'll end with what I usually end with. Did I miss anything? You know, we've been a little all over the place, but is there anything you wish I'd asked or I think that listeners really, really should know about? We'll say, in general, capital markets in cannabis. 

David Traylor:  Oh, I. You know. Yeah, well, Trevor, we did miss a lot of stuff, but that's cannabis, right? 

Trevor:  Yep. 

David Traylor:  You can never cover everything and cover all the points. But, you know, again, I think that's one thing that's made U.S. successful. And, and the fact that, you know, a high degree of humility, that, you know, we've been around the block and we've been doing this for a while, but that doesn't mean we're the smartest guys in the room. And, you know, it's just it's a hard industry and you just some degree of humility and keep your expectations real. I think that's the best way to solve it. But yeah, if anybody wants to reach out to what Matt Daugherty and myself do at Golden Eagle Partners, we're on the Web, on the Web, and certainly on LinkedIn. We're very active on LinkedIn and love to connect with anybody that's looking to be successful in this industry because it takes a village. 

Trevor:  Thank you very much for your time David, and have a good time in Germany. 

David Traylor:  Thanks, Trevor appreciate it. 

Trevor:  So, Kirk, we have a guy who, like I said by this point, is back from Germany. I'm sure did some other stuff there too. But I liked how he said that he was basically trying to recreate the capital markets part of CannMed in Germany. But, you know, with, you know, European companies and seeing how they're tackling sort of the European markets, European regulation. And yeah, I really liked how it was done in Florida because they were they were panels. They you know, you had sort of a few sort of canned questions at the beginning to get the conversation going. But then after that, it was it really was thrown out to the audience and see what questions they had and sort of had the discussion go from there. And so I thought that was a great way for start learning what was going on. And I hope it was equally enlightening over in Germany. 

Kirk:  Yeah. Pretty impressive portfolio. I went on his web page and he has relationships. He has a relationship page similar to reefermed.ca. We have a relationship page as well. But his relationship page is quite international. And I noticed that he does have relationships in Vancouver and Toronto. That's so he does touch in Canada. You know, we talk about how different industries define cannabis. How does the investment banker define cannabis? 

Trevor:  See if I get this. THC plus and THC minus. I was going to say that I like the nomenclature. You know, back when we were talking with Marcus Rogan and you know, him renaming cannabis, this was another, it's another nomenclature that, you know, really kind of makes you think about a little bit differently, right? 

Kirk:  Oh, man, no. These have been fun stories you brought from CannMed. To touch on something a little on a personal note, he talks about Malaysia becoming legal, right? Well, I was in, Michelle and I traveled Malaysia in 1985. We came up from Singapore, took train to Kuala Lumpur. Then we hitchhiked from Kuala Lumpur into Thailand. 1985 man. Different time, different space. I think Corey Hart had a number one hit, and so did Michael Jackson. And We Are The World was all over the place because I remember hearing it on the plane. I digress. Coming into Kuala Lumpur on the train, the prison walls. Right. And we're talking prison like it's right near the center of the city. You go by it on the train. Of course, we were traveling by, you know, by our backpacks and going into the hostels. Everybody, Australians, lots of Aussies, lots Aussies in Malaysia and Thailand and Indonesia. Like friends of friends that have gone through that prison because cannabis in drugs was bad. They would have they would have graffiti sanctioned government graffiti on the walls of the prison of Hangman saying, Drugs, you die, you know. So, it was it was drugs. You did you like going up to Bangkok, Bangkok and going into Thailand? Cannabis could be bought anywhere you want. So, people that were traveling north to south, they would have to literally empty out their packs because, of course, they're carrying they're carrying in Thailand, not that suppose to, but when you got into Malaysia, there was no carrying man. There was no drugs anywhere because you did not want to go behind those cement, those cement walls. So, my ears perked up when he when he was telling me that story about Malaysia becoming sanctioned. 

Trevor:  Well, and just to go back to David, some of the nice things I thought I've mentioned this before, but it's worth mentioning in the capital market section, I really found that was the dichotomy between sort of when I was at the medical talks, you know, everybody there was very whole plant whole. You got to use the whole plant to get anything good. Medicinal in capital markets, they want to pull it apart because that's how pharma works. You know, we take out A drug from this plant and we aim it at A indication. And that's just the easiest way to get something approved. So, you know, the either brilliant let's make money or sacrilegious, "oh my God what are you doing to the plant?" The example I had was, you know, one guy, he was a very I forget his name, but one of the speakers and he was very pro cannabis. He himself had a sort of come to Jesus moment with cannabis. You know, he didn't really have any thoughts one way or the other, but he suddenly as a as an a finance guy, got a seizure disorder and nothing was treating and couldn't figure it. And long and short of it, he found cannabis. Cannabis fixed his seizure disorder and is now a full fledged medicinal cannabis is the thing guy, but he's also finance guy, he said. But I don't think I can basically I don't think I can make any money off the whole plant. He said, You know what I could make money off of If you took out CBN, one of the cannabinoids that might be related to sleep, and you put it in Colgate toothpaste and you call it sleepy time toothpaste.  I would make billions on that, billions, you know, which, you know, to the green culture, the whole plant people is just the most sacrilegious thing on the planet. You know, taking out this one thing and putting in toothpaste that might make people possibly sleep a little better. But it was just I really saw that dichotomy in the in the capital markets section. But David and some of the other we'll call them business people, see, you know, a third way is not impossible. You know that, you know, maybe we can do some whole plant stuff. Maybe we will have to do some extraction stuff, Maybe we'll have to do a little bit of both. But, you know, because we talk about stigma a lot, I like that. He also talks about stigma and got to be a little bit humble. You know, anyone can grow weed. It's not that easy to grow good weed. Anyone can extract something from the plant, but, you know, not that easy to extract it properly. You know, a little a little bit of humility goes a long way. And I thought that was that was a good thing for a finance guy to have come to grips with. 

Kirk:  So find a big pharmaceutical guy that's following good, good manufacturing practices and extracting the resins from a plant, turning it into a medicine that attacks one specific symptom of a disease and give it to big pharma to market. It's it's it's it's how we develop Western medicine. Right. So, that's how it gets out there. 

Trevor:  And I'm going to segue to you because I know you just read it and I can still quote it. In one of the articles that David referenced, he talked about his five sort of predictions. I know you read through that. What were his sort of five cannabis predictions? 

Kirk:  Yeah, five of them. Well, the first one to survive in 2023 will be a strong predictor of the future successes in North America and internationally. So, businesses that get through 2023 probably have some legs. The stigma harming cannabis will continue to fall away. Well, I think that's a no brainer. It's happening. I mean, it's happening in Kuala Lumpur, of all places, and it's okay. And science will play a growing role. We just learned that with all the biotech companies coming into play, export isn't as easy as it sounds. The compliance lawyer talked a lot about that. Ryan.

Trevor:  Yeah, like even state to state in the U.S. and definitely getting stuff Canada, to the US. U.S. to Canada, not an easy thing. 

Kirk:  David Crosby talked about it, trying to get himself marketed as Mighty Croz brand. It was very difficult. Conflict over IP is set to explode. So, basically I guess that's when you start getting into the market in the stock eh. 

Trevor:  Well and what Ryan Kocot was talking about, you know your brand, you know, you got a state level trademark. But you know, at the moment in the U.S. There is no national trademark because it's not legal nationally. And you know what happens when, you know, we have brand X in Massachusetts and the same brand name in Colorado and suddenly it goes legal nationally. Well, who has the trademark you know, IP like that will be? Well, we you know, the lawyers will make a lot of money off of that. 

Kirk:  These were good. These were three very good episodes. The last three, you know. 

Trevor:  I think they worked out well. But I we should probably do the intro that we always now do is an outro. So, I'm Trevor Shewfelt am the Pharmacist. 

Kirk:  I'm Kirk Nyquist, I'm the Registered Nurse and we are Reefer Medness the podcast we found at ReeferMed.ca. We have a very interactive web page. Give U.S. a rating on that podcast platform you listen to. Tell a friend Reefer Medness The Podcast.