Episode Transcript

Trevor: Kirk we're back.

Kirk:  In the studio.

Kirk:  In the studio yeah how's it going.

Trevor:  I'm good we we're trying to get up at Rene hours we're here early in the morning

Kirk:  Yes, yes, my dog didn't even get up to be fed, it was early.

Trevor:  No, my dog wanted to know why I wasn't playing ball with her more, but you know, that's, that's just what she does. And she's also annoyed. I didn't want to play a ball with here at 4:30 this morning. So no, she's up for ball at any time. Um, we are back in Spain on this one. Um, so I'm going to talk, even though I wasn't in Spain, I'm gonna step all over your trip and talk a little bit about who you're there to meet, because sort of as a podcast, we met some of the players ahead of time so a little while ago we talked to Bob Hill, "On the Electric High" and he was kind of the first one who introduced us to mitochondria doing interesting things with cannabis. And the longer we talked to Bob Hill and people from his company, we found that where they were getting their stuff from was this guy, Peter Vermuel. But we talked people like Dr. Abraham Benavides who's a medical doctor, who talked about how full spectrum cannabis was doing wonderful things for his patients and, uh, Daniel Gana, a microbiologist. Again, talked about how cannabis or cannabinoid acids were the best thing ever. A someone who's been in school too long, Brent Ristow, he's a lawyer slash PhD biochemist. You know, I never want to leave school kind of guy. Again, talking about how the tests they were doing on, and the C of As on the stuff for BioSource Botanicals was, you know, off the charts but again it kept coming back to this this guy this this Dutch guy Peter Vermeul who was somewhere in Europe doing some something that was getting sort of the source material to BioSource uh pharmaceuticals or BioSource Botanicals sorry the pharmacist has to sleep sleep in there once in a while so that's back in episode 140 and 141 Um, so that's kind of the backstory. So how, how about you jump off from there, Kirk? You know, we've, we keep hearing about this mythical Peter Vermuel and then, then what?

Kirk:  We heard him briefly in one of the episodes we did with marijuana in Spain when I visited the social clubs in Spain. We heard very briefly in that episode. Yeah, Peter's interesting. He is He's a fascinating dude, and I kept track of him through WhatsApp. And as Michelle and I were getting ready to pack and go, I threw off a bunch of emails to connections I had in Europe, and Peter got back to me. And he also linked us with another gentleman we're going to meet in the Morocco stories when we when we get those produced. And so I just text back and forth as I'm visiting Spain. I'm texting with Peter back and fourth. I go to Morocco, texting back and for Peter, keeping track of him. We get back to Spain and he says, yeah, come visit. So... We visited and Michelle and I spent a day with him and his partner, his wife, at his home. We went into his personal lab where he does some of his smaller work. I walked around his garden. He has a dog that chases rocks, a big German shepherd, you know, and you pull up to this house and you're thinking, oh, I'm going to a cannabis guy in Spain. There's this great big German shepherd behind a gated community. I'm like, oh my God, what am I getting myself into? And it was a wonderful dog. Chases rocks, likes his scratches. Peter's wife was wonderful, treated us well. We had a cup of tea, we sat and we spent hours. Hours, literally hours with this couple. And learned about his process and you know it goes back to the when I met when I met Ivan in Spain and about how cannabis brings people together.

Ivan: We were like in the same kind of line or vibe and I believe weed kind of bring people together that is in the kind of synchronicity and it's not about luck, it's about like being in the right place and the right people around you, like stuff begins to happen, you know?

Kirk:  And yeah, so I kept track to Peter and our podcast that we're producing here, I think we're going to get, we're going to possibly get two episodes out of this, maybe three, uh, that by no means is this in any sort of order because the day just happened and I had the recorder out and we had one conversation here, one conversation here, and, and I'm going to try to line them up in these episodes. So we're gonna meet him as he's driving us back to our Airbnb. So he introduces himself and I said, tell me your history, man. And he gives me his history as we're driving back. So it's a little bit of out of sorts that this part of the episode starts at the end.

Trevor:  And I just want to throw in because it was mentioned several times by the BioSource Botanical people and Peter does get into it but you know his backstory is interesting but the thing that one of the reasons we were so interested in Peter is the BioSource Botanical guys and gals were talking about how Peter grows uh marijuana hemp cannabis that's really high in CBD and CBDA. And, but his extraction was the, seems to be the magic. So Peter will, we'll get into that. But what he grows is impressive, but how he extracts it's even more impressive.

Kirk:  That's where he is today. What we're going to learn about is who was he in the late 70s and 80s.

Peter Vermuel: Okay, I am Peter Vermeul, I'm 66 almost, I was a gardener from a young guy. And more than 40 years ago, I met a guy who was growing cannabis and he was for me a drug dealer. It was in the Netherlands events, yeah. And after a few months, I started to grow with the cannabis flower. It was special in that time. It was nice to grow, nobody knows it. It was not real dangerous. With dangerous I mean nobody knows exactly what cannabis was. You can walk with the plants on the street and that kind of things. The final product was a lot of money. It was very nice to grow your own plants and to sell it a little bit. And it was more for your pocket. I was a grower for flowers. And that was my daily job. Another grower was normally a flower grower. He was also growing cannabis. And in that time I started also with the cannabis. And I did it for many many years, and I can make money with it, and nice holidays

Kirk:  You were one of the biggest growers in the Netherlands?

Peter Vermuel: Not the biggest, but well the most famous I believe.

Kirk:  Okay?

Peter Vermuel: Yeah yeah all black market yeah okay but i grow even in that time complete biologic and that make the product the taste is way better than all the chemical growing weed and they sprayed a lot of pesticides the special products for making the flowers bigger and harder and that kind of things only to make more money.

Kirk:  Yeah, so that's interesting. Can you imagine? Here he is, you know, he's on the continent growing his flowers and sending them to Britain and he becomes one of the most famous growers in Europe and selling flowers to Britain making double the money.

Trevor:  Yeah. Famous or infamous, you know, worth mentioning again, at this point it's completely black market. Everything he's doing is not legal. But yeah, he is, he is famous or infamous for his cannabis and, and Britain is a great place to sell it.

Kirk:  And his quality. I mean, he talks about he's always done organics. He's always grown in soil. And he started getting into breeding and everything he did was quality stuff. Unlike some of the stuff that was being, I guess, sold in those days.

Trevor:  Yeah. Um, so he's talking about another group. Um. No, again, we have no way of verifying any of this, but the, the point, and honestly with the slight language barriers, it got a little confusing for me. But my understanding is he's talked about another who was taking the stuff out of fluorescent lights, like all the phosphorus and stuff in there, sprinkling that on the cannabis to increase the weight because cannabis is sold by weight. So the heavier cannabis, the more money you're going to make. Whatever there was coming out of these fluorescent light tubes. You don't really want to be inhaling any of that. So, you know, again, this is Peter's story. So we'll just take him at his word. But some of his competition might not have been, you know, quite as, uh, concerned about the quality of the stuff they were, they were sending.

Kirk:  Yeah. And I mean, in the seventies, when I was a young, young person consuming cannabis, there was this, there was undercurrent of understanding that, that stuff that, I mean our stuff was coming off of Mexico, right? When I was kid, I grew up in the west coast of, west coast of British Columbia in Victoria. And our, our marijuana in those days was coming off Mexico in square blocks off the boats. I mean there's all sorts of stories of guys throwing bundles off a boat and another boat going and picking it But there's all sorts of rumors that some of the weed that was coming up was sprinkled with angel dust and sprinkled with stuff. Well I mean Peter and I were talking the whole day we just talked and sometimes I had to record around sometimes I didn't but he would just drop nuggets and like he said a nugget of gypsies sprinkling their their cannabis that they grew with a little extra dust of something that gave weight. But he became known as growing quality stuff

Trevor:  And, but here I'll just put a plug for it, the current Canadian system, there is a good reason to have regulated cannabis because you hopefully should avoid most of the sprinkling stuff from a fluorescent tube on what you buy at a store.

Kirk:  Well, what a wonderful opportunity to to mention our PSA is on our Blog page.

Trevor:  Sure.

Kirk:  And there are benefits to buying legal weed.

Trevor:  Absolutely.

Kirk:  Not only are you encouraging the economy, but you're also ensuring that you're getting quality stuff.

Trevor:  Absolutely.

Kirk:  So yeah, Peter, so Peter started growing. What three or four hundred plants at a time and he was doing it every 50 days because he got into growing clones. So this is back in the early 80s so he was doing clones, soil, and starting to breed his own his own cannabis breed

Peter Vermuel: 300 plants here. Okay. And then you can harvest every 3-4 times in a year, but at the end of the day I was complete in line with everything, with the right strain, with right everything. Every 50 days my harvest was ready. Always clones.

Kirk:  Okay,.

Peter Vermuel: Always. Otherwise it is not possible. I know a lot of the plants. And one moment a family of me had problems with cancer and from that moment I was more looking for how to make medicine from the flowers and that was 20 years ago or something. And bit by bit I learned more and more about the flowers. And I grew so with the CBD strains, I started with the Charlotte Web strain.

Kirk:  You started the Charlotte's Web.

Peter Vermuel: Yes, yeah.

Kirk:  Before the Stanley Brothers?

Peter Vermuel: No, no, no. Almost in the same period. Okay. And in that time I was also growing with the commercial weed for smoking and everything.

Kirk:  Right, okay.

Peter Vermuel: And I put always 20-25 plants also in a quarter of the growing part. For growing my CBD strains for epileptic people and that kind of stuff. And then we start to make my oil and everything. I'm growing with 8 model plants. Just a few CBD strains, 4 or 5 CBD strains, 3 CBG strains. And I have 1 THC strain. Now I start to grow with my CBDV strains. 

Kirk:  Okay and these are your, these are your breeds. These are your cultivars that you've created.

Peter Vermuel: Yes, only the Charlette's web. I was the first I buy the seeds from the seeds I make my own cross breedings. That is the way. It's almost 20 years ago now I start to make my first extractions. I start also with alcohol and that kind of extractions.

Kirk:  Okay.

Peter Vermuel: In one moment, I had a very good connection with a laboratory in Holland and the guy was also a genius. He was a complete crazy about it. He said, Peter you have to try this, that kind of product for making your extraction better. He sent me a few samples and after that I started to make an extraction with that product from that moment. I make only extraction with that product, and that is part of my extraction method.

Trevor:  So we've mentioned this on previous podcasts and so have other guests, but let's, but it's, I, there's still a lot of confusion out there. What an acid form of a cannabinoid is. So let's just, we'll do the quick science break. So everyone's heard of THC when you smoke, smoke a joint. It's the THC that makes you feel high, but that's not what was in the plant or not very much of it. Anyway, what was the plant was something called THCA or the acid form of THC and it's the same with the rest of the cannabinol. CBDA, THCVA, CBGA, those are what's mostly in the plant. There is some small amount of non-acid forms in the plan, but it's mostly the acid forms. And then when you heat it, say by cooking with it or smoking it, that's what decarboxylates it and turns it into the non-acid form. And Peter and others, including the guys from BioSource Botanicals are big proponents of the acid form of the cannabinoids being, having a lot of medicinal properties, medicinal power, they, Peter likes to say, and true or not, the other, the point that everybody agrees on is it's hard to stabilize these, the acid form after you've taken out of the plant, like it, it seems to want to quote unquote, degrade into the non-acid form. It's once a tea car box laid on its own with time and heat and UV light and, and, and, and, and we, we, you know, we've even interviewed people in the past that, you know they literally invented a chemical process to stabilize the acid form. So, and Peter will get more into it along the way, but listen for the fact that Peter is getting a lot of acid form out of his plants, but then also keeping it stable.

Kirk:  Yeah. And what I get a kick out of here, here's a guy, here is a guy that's growing cannabis in the black market of Europe, selling his plants through a middleman to Britain. So people in Britain are probably consuming his stuff in the 80s. And there is a crisis in his family and he talks about this and that's when he starts understanding medicinal strengths of cannabis through the cannabinoids and he starts breeding his own strains of cannabis. And there's a point here where you may hear me and he started talking about Charlotte's Web.

Trevor:  Yes. Right. Which is a famous strain. And as you mentioned, it's coming up purportedly developed by the Stanley Brothers.

Kirk:  Yeah and this was a whole point of

Trevor:  sorry, Charlotte's web, lots of CBD, which was, which was novel at the time.

Kirk:  And what was her name? Charlotte, Charlotte tweaks. (figi)

Trevor:  I don't remember Charlotte's name, but Charlotte was a real,.

Kirk:  Real girl,.

Trevor:  Real girl who had real seizures. And this was developed by the Stanley brothers for her.

Kirk:  Well, as they were doing their research in Europe, Peter is growing his own Charlotte Web and bringing his own plants. And he tells me that essentially he has eight mother plants and from those eight mother plans he has his CBD strains, he has a CBG strains and CBG is considered the mother of all cannabinoids. All cannabinoids start as CBG and we've heard we've talked about CBG in our podcast before as the bubble wrap for your brain.

Trevor:  Bubble bath.

Kirk:  Bubble bath your brain and so this is so this man is now and again this happens about I think the 90s or I'm not quite sure the time when he starts looking at cannabis differently and starts looking a cannabis as medicine and starts breeding his own strains so that he can help family and then gets into the businesses he's into now. Peters Medicine

Peter Vermuel: That is the real medicinal power from the whole plant. And of course for smoking you need to decarboxylate your product. If you want to smoke recreational then you have to decarboxylate your product otherwise you become not stoned. Even the product, the final THC product I make. And I heat it up a little bit more for a longer period. The THCA is also decarboxylate for 40-50 percent and when you make a joint of that product they become Stoned-like. Even the most heavy smokers and they pass my place and they start to smoke what I smoke, the pure paste, they are completely crazy after that. They cannot handle it. OK. And it is not a THC level. Most of the time, you become stoned not from the THC level, but from the terpenes.

Kirk:  OK.

Peter Vermuel: And you have a lot of terpenes inside your product. And also a little bit, it depends which kind. It makes you stoned like a canary. Other nice thing is the extract I make from don't matter which plant. It is stable for 10 years or whatever, I don't know exactly. My oldest extract is from 2016 until now, it's almost 9 years old and it is completely exactly the same from the beginning. When I retested it in the time, it is always the same. The best, the best, uh... The medicine is the fresh plant on the field, only the amounts you need to take maybe 300 gram a day from fresh flours to make the same amount of product than in my bottle. For example, 700 gram of extract is minimum 10 kilo of flowers.

Kirk:  But when did you figure out that the raw form, the acid form, was the real medicine?

Peter Vermuel: From Raphael Mechoulam for example, he told me Peter, the acid form, that is important, that is the way, only we cannot stabilize it. And that was for me, to try to make an extract exactly what the plant makes. I want to keep it complete and safe. That the whole extract, at least the whole product in the flower is exactly as in the the flower as in a bottle. For me, from the beginning, it was clear it was no problem for me. But after four or five years, I discovered it was not for everybody the same. I was the only one who discovered the way to keep it completely intact. Most of the time, with all the companies, they make from the CBDA and the THCA in the flower and they bring it in the bottle. Then the THCA is gone, it has become THC, the CBDA is gone to CBD. The terpenes are not there. And later also, I discover also the flavonoids. And the flavonoids are special, they can't cannflavin. It's in the leaves, not in the flower. And the extraction way I have discovered, you can extract also the leaves. When they make an extraction from the leaves, even the chlorophyll is still in the leaves. But I can take the sterols, the flavonoids, the cannflavin for example, out of the leaves and that is the missing link, my opinion for making the extraction, including the acids, make it ten times better than all the other distillates or exhalates or even the full spectrum or RSO extracts.

Kirk:  Well, you were showing us pictures of those beautiful flower buds that were empty. Right, you're showing those pictures. So that's part of your extraction is that you were taking the essence, the cannabinoids, the flavonoid, the terpenes out of that flower, leaving the flower whole.

Peter Vermuel: Yup, and it looks beautiful,.

Kirk:  But there's nothing in it.

Peter Vermuel: And there is complete nothing inside, and that is the part of the trick. And it is a very, very long process. It is not in eight hours or whatever.

Kirk:  No, no, okay. So, no I,

Peter Vermuel: And everybody, when you make money, time is money.

Kirk:  Yeah, yeah.

Peter Vermuel: Even on this moment, when you want to buy extracts here in Europe, you pay maybe 250-300 euro for one kilo. Pure extract. Kind of full spectrum distillate. Everybody say it is full spectrum. It is bullshit. But even on this moments, I start with 10.000 euro per kilo. And when you have buyers... And they tell my price, they say you are crazy, I say yeah, I'm crazy, but you have to buy or you can go to another shop and you can buy crap, and that is more expensive than my stuff. When you mix it up, the final product is similar in price than all the crap that they sell.

Kirk:  Okay, so yeah, I think this is a good place to stop. We've met, we've met Peter. He's driving us back to the Airbnb. We had a wonderful day. I'd like to take the next part of this conversation into his lab.

Trevor:  Sounds good. So let's remind everybody. Who are you?

Oh, I'm Kirk Nyquist. I'm the registered nurse.

I'm Trevor Shewfelt. I am the pharmacist. This has been a good intro to Peter. I hope everybody is excited as I am to hear more about what's going on in the lab.

Kirk:  In the lab.