Episode Transcript

Trevor: Kirk, we're back.

Kirk:  Yeah, hey, hello Trevor, I'm Kirk Nyquist, I am still the nurse.

I'm still Trevor Shewfelt, I still the pharmacist and we are still in Spain with Peter Vermeul. You know, we've met him, he's picked you up in the car, he has driven you to the lab. I think that's where you're leading us next.

Kirk:  Yeah, in the last episode, he was dropping us off at the Airb&b. In this episode, where he kind of picked us up, drove us to his house, and we're going into the mountains of Malaga. And from from I think we're facing south. I'm thinking we're faced because we're.

Trevor:  That's really important in a podcast.

Kirk:  It's very important in the podcast, but we're sitting in this house. He lives in the hills. We're looking down. He was commenting on how he's watched the planes land at Malaga Airport. And Peter is a fascinating man and the conversation is pretty much everywhere. And I'm hoping that we can put this into some train of thought. But Peter sent me a couple texts afterwards to clarify some stuff. We went through the last podcast talking about him being Well, there's a quote, there is a quote.

Peter Vermeul:  I'm a criminal, and come on-

Kirk:  So, but, but he also clarified a few things for me, so. This is sort of a quote from Peter he sent to me in LinkedIn. Peter was not cultivating medical cannabis under the Spain laws. He was cultivating hemp. So he moved to Spain around 2015. He wasn't able to get the necessary licenses to grow medicinal cannabis, but he did get instead got starting growing industral hemp for seed and fiber following agricultural regulations that were allowed cultivation without any special permit when using EU certified seeds and keeping the THC levels below 0.2, right? So he's growing hemp.

Trevor:  It's actually under 0.3 is the magic cutoff, but he aims at point under 0.2 just because it made the math easier

Kirk:  Yeah, so he's maintained the proper documentation certifications and in 2016 the Ministry of Agriculture informally advised that inspectors mainly check for THC content and seed certified rather than the hemp type. So as a result, he consistently grows his hemp in Spain using in certified seeds and he focuses on CBDs and CBG strains. And such as charlotte's webs but he ensures that the thc is below the legal limit yeah so that's what he's growing so he's going his cultivars outdoors in Spain

Peter Vermeul:  After 2012, here the crisis was bad. Going back to Holland and I wanted to start there for the CBD strains. I was believing okay CBD is allowed in Holland, we can grow but it was not possible and then I was looking to Switzerland, and it was also not real possible. In one moment, I hear from a friend of me, who was living here close by, Peter, you can grow the CBD strain in Spain now. So I'm coming back to Spain, and I start with, in 2015, to grow here in Spain, completely legal, with authorization of the government. From that moment, I'm growing legal here. Only the problem is that you can grow, but you cannot make an extract in a legal way. Because normally I have to send my flowers outside Spain. And when they make the extract from my flowers in another country, then it is allowed to bring the extract back in Spain. But I'm growing and I make my extraction with everything. Here in Spain, and they know it, but they have never a problem with the police and they check me many, many times. They are more interesting in the THC flowers and that kind of stuff. And I was not growing THC in that kind of way to say, okay, we have no problem with you. But it is also very important, the mayor of the village is maybe have more power than the president of the country, of the king of Spain. When the Mayor say it is not allowed, you can't forget. Okay. But when you say, okay, Peter, there's no problem with no THC.

Kirk:  So he's growing his stuff and we get to his house, we do a little tour of his yard and he's got a wonderful big German shepherd, a lovely dog, and he showed me some of his plants in his garden. He's got tropical fruits growing, he's got his cannabis strains growing, and we go into his lab. There's going to be pictures on the webpage, but Peter takes me into this lab that has three refrigerators against the wall. And he starts talking to me and against another wall he's got all this package CBD. His business is called CBD Spain and again there'll be links on our webpage and he opens up the fridge and inside the fridge are all these one liter jars of nectar, honey, serum, extract. It's just. Jars and jars and jars and jars of hemp products that he explains to me that this is pure essence 100% cannabis extract, nothing added, right? And again, there'll be pictures on the web page. And what I found fascinating is that in these one liter jars, he then packages them in 10 milliliter jars with extra virgin organic olive oil. And he puts one milligram of what's in these jars into this 10 milliliter and sells it for 30, 40, 100 euros depending on the strain. So I'm looking at this bank or fridge is going what? He goes well five million dollars of inventory and but what fascinates me and in the interview you're here he brings out opens a jar puts a stick in it and gives it to and I taste it. And again, like, I mean, when I was visiting Paul Martin in his, in his grow, and he was pressing, pressing cannabis for me and tasted the pepper, the terpenes, it unbelievable. It was just pure hemp, pur hemp.

Trevor:  Well, and I think that's a good spot too. So, cause I had to look it up. So the terpene, the peppery terepene you're tasting is Beta-Caryophyllene

Kirk:  Okay. Thank you for that.

Trevor:  Cause you know, I'm a geek and I had to look that up, but it's also just worth, as we talked about last time, but just worth reiterating, um, like Peter's done, like even talked with, with, you know we'll call him the Godfather of, of cannabinoids, uh, Professor Raphael Mechoulam  when he was alive. And even, uh Professor Mechoulam, you know, the literal discoverer of THC said, you know, that the acids are really important, but they can't be stabilized. This is what Peter has done. These jars, they're stabilized cannabinoid acids. There's other stuff in there, like the terpenes, the Beta-Caryophyllene. It's in there. You know, it's not destroyed. Um, it, he talked briefly about cannflavins. If you remember back to, uh, Episode 121 and 106, we talked to Akeem Gardner, a Canadian guy whose company, Canurta is looking at cannflavens for things like treating Uh, particularly nasty brain tumor called glioblastoma and maybe ALS. So this is, this is why Peter's doing what he's doing is the, the extracts that you were looking at are stable for years. And Peter mentioned this, but just reiterate stable for years, like he, on his LinkedIn page, he has C of A, so certificate of analysis for people who don't speak geek, um, that, you know, seven years later. They they've looked at these extracts and it's still got, you know, 50% CBDA. It's still, you got, over 1% Beta-Caryophyllene and the peppery one years later. So whatever Peter's doing, and you know not surprising. It's not going to tell us the secret sauce.

Kirk:  I kept trying, Trevor. I kept trying.

Trevor:  Seems to be keeping these things stable for years.

Kirk:  Yeah well this is actually how we stumbled into his lab. We go into his house and again we're in Spain so everything's tile right mosaics everywhere. Go into this lab and he goes and reaches in and brings out a 10 mil bottle and puts it up to the light and look and look no sediment and I said okay interesting. He goes yeah and I say well when was that and he goes 2017 and he handed me that jar and I went 2017 and this has been sitting here since then because yeah it's been moving around a little bit but it's 100% stabilized and you're right. He got inspired by Raphael Mechoulam to go on this journey and what's really interesting is that in those one liter jars there's 10 kilograms of biomass And he says, and you'll hear this over and over again, and I've said it over and over again is that he takes the essence of the plant and puts it in a jar. So should we just listen to him? Absolutely. Yeah.

Peter Vermeul:  That is one of the 52 strains are with certification you can grow in Europe. It's only allowed to grow dead strains and it is only with 3-4% of CBD inside. But the final product and also 0.2% with THC, that's maximum. Most of the time the THC is a little bit higher and the final extract from the same plant of course. The amount is not many, for one kilo of flowers I receive maybe a maximum of 4-5% of extract, but that extract is also 40-42-43% of CBDA inside. Mixed up with olive oil, there is 10% of extract inside and the rest is olive oil. Why? Normally the extract is always too high in THC. Even when I make it from the CBG strains, when I make it from the CBG strains even then the THC level is too high. What I do, I mix it up with Olive oil and we dilute the THCs that it is legal. From that moment I can sell it here in Europe, no problem. That is also one of the reasons 10ml is for me also the maximum size for the recreation. Then you have no problems with the governments. Yeah. When I put it in a 100 ml bottle, then they say, ah, but that is not allowed, that is too much THC, milligrams of THC inside. This is always I make a CO from the flower, to find the right flower, then from the extract I make from the flower, then I can make the calculation, then I know exactly how many THC there is inside. All the rest is for me not really important. Only the THC level is important. And then I can mix it up when it is 2% of THC inside. I mix it with 10% or 9% with the olive oil. Then it is 0.2% in the oil and then we have never a problem. This is the distillation. This, I make the extraction. That is not, but that's completely different. When I make this extraction, that is the extraction liquid, when that is ready, then I come to here and I filter it first, and after filtering we distillate it, then we take the extraction out of the product. And even I have tested salts from the to look there is extraction liquid inside And that is almost nothing, nothing. This maximum five ppm or something. That is very, very low. For a lot of products like Pentan and that kind of stuff, you can go to 5,000 ppm. Hexan, that kind stuff is a little bit tricky, of course, I believe 500 ppm, and my products, it is maximum 10%, 10 ppm inside this. But this is the ways of extraction.

Kirk:  Right, right.

Peter Vermeul:  And distillation, of course. When I make the final distillation, then it's turning for a minimum one hour and a half by 300 millibar. Okay. It's this very low, and then everything is reeling out. Yeah. And small batch is not 10 kilo every time, maximum 1.5 kilo or something. This strain from 2017, I tested many, many, many times. And the last time was four months ago or something. Even all the acids are almost there from the beginning. And only the way of testing is now more sensitive. They can test for way more of cannabinoids, way more of terpenes, and less testing on the... When it was tested in 2015, you can test only on eight or nine terpenes and I want 50 but in this one was 26 terpenes.

Kirk:  Terpenes. So now that is that is a solid product, right? That is like tar. That's like tar so that's that has real tar but that does that does not have olive oil in it or is that? Pure pure resin, rosin What would you call it rosin resin

Peter Vermeul:  No, no, no. The pure extract.

Kirk:  Extract, it's just pure extract.

Peter Vermeul:  The whole print extract. 

Kirk:  Wow. Wow. So those are all, how many plants would be in one jar? Like how many plant would be one jar.

Peter Vermeul:  It's around 10 kilos.

Kirk:  10 kilos of plant, flower, leaf, the angel leaf.

Peter Vermeul:  Because you have 10 kilos of flower, with most plants.

Kirk:  10 kilos! Wow. So it's almost like a honey.

Instead of five degrees

Kirk:  Yeah. Can you come in closer, Michelle? So it is almost like honey. Wow. Not even, it's even more solidified than honey.

Peter Vermeul:  Your finger. It is CBD Ferimon, it is a very rare one. Want to try?

Kirk:  Its got that pepper!

Peter Vermeul:  Yeah, that's the terpenes man.

Kirk:  That's the Terpenes so that peppery

Peter Vermeul:  Yeah, what?

Kirk:  So that so that peppery that's terpene

Peter Vermeul:  Yeah that are the terpenes. Black pepper for example is also for cancer and that is also exactly the same. Of only there are way more of terpene in this product and there are more than 500 other compounds.

Kirk:  And that's not, that's, see the last time I tried this, like the peppery, wow, my eyes are watering. I had a fella squeeze it, he put it through a press and it came out rosin and I tasted that and it was the same thing, but this is so much more pepper, this is, wow.

Peter Vermeul:  When you press it, you save also a lot of terpenes, but not all the terpene. And now I save all the assets for them, the CBDA, the THCA, name it. All the terpene, little sort of flavonoids and all that. And a lot more products.

Kirk:  Whatever we don't even know.

Peter Vermeul:  When I test my products at a 60-65% maximum and what is the other 35%? Yeah. No chlorophyll. It's pure, pure, purer.

Kirk:  Crazy.

Peter Vermeul:  When you have chlorophylls inside, when you have a bottle, you put them on the shelf for a few months and when you turn them, you can see the chlorophyll on the bottom. It's not bad, but they make the taste more bitter and another problem is when and you want to use a medicinal the first drop and the last drop are in my way exactly the same. When the first drop is completely different than the last one. And complete, complete, even the last test you can find on LinkedIn was from the Compolti, I don't know how strain it was, but even the microbiologic was completely clean. No fungus, nothing. This is the plant. What is in the plant, I can take out the plant and put it in the jar. Okay. All right. And I never mix it up with other stuff or whatever. It's just only what I sometimes do and that is special with the CBG strains. The CBG is a little bit difficult to extract. And I found out when I mixed the plants together, the CBD strain and the CBG strain in the amount of 50-50. And then I start with my extraction, then it's real perfect. Then I have the both, for example, a THC extract, with high THCA, THC, high CBGA, and CBG. Most of the time also a part of CBD inside, and that's the perfect mix for a lot of problems. And I do it also with CBD and THC with CBD strains, CBD with CBD strains. Oh you can put it on your skin, that is no problem, but every strain, real every strain is completely different than the other. Right. Even either plant is complete, another composition. Right. And that's the reason I work with the mother plants. I make always mine extract from the same genetic. And then when you have 10 people with Parkinson's, for example, when I start with the Carlotta, that's most of the time the strain I use for that. This is the Charlotte web strain. Yes. Then I give 10 people the product, and eight people in 20 minutes maximum, you can see, ah, they relaxed and they say, okay. Then when they give and other two are not react on that then they take another strain and then I give and then it is working also or not then I take another strain or another strain or an other strain okay and also a very nice story from one guy Mitchell, you have Tourette's syndrome. Very heavy, like... I sent him complete in the beginning, now eight years ago, a bottle of the Felina. That is a strain of Ferimon. Okay. Just another strain. Okay. It was the Felina strain. I sent them the bottle and in 50 minutes he was complete free of everything. After three months, we had our first bottle, complete legal, the Mixta, and the name Mixta is... 25% of Felina, 25% Compoti, 25% of a, so four different strains. I sent the bottle and it was complete, complete, not working anymore. After three weeks we tried a lot of other things. A whole bottle, a half bottle, an oil in a day, nothing was working. After three week I sent him a bottle I can from the Felina. After his drops, 50 minutes later, free. When I. Take the CofA, testing results, are almost similar. The THC levels are exactly the same, the CBD levels are the same. Most of the terpenes are a little bit exactly. But one strain is completely working like hell. Boom, boom, it is over and all the rest is not working. And he uses the strain now for eight years and he is completely free of everything. Only when he stopped to take his drops. 12 hours later, he is again. And when I sent him another strain, another oil, it's not working. Only the Felina. It luckily I have three kilo of Felina from 2017. This is very old stuff. But even with this Felina, perfect for the guy. That is so incredible, the stability is amazing, it's like sugar, it is for your whole life. I have a patient now in Poland under suspicion from a real doctor and when that child was four months old he had an infection and from that moment, the baby had a kind of also epileptic seizure, but I was expecting that it was on a little child, but the child is now a big man, 54 years old, and he's laying all the time in bed, and when he had a seizure, he is even in coma for a half day or whatever. They start with two drops in the morning and two drops at the evening, and 12 days no seizure, and after 12 days he had the seizure. And the seizure was so mild that he was completely not in coma. He asked directly on water, and even he is coming out his bed of maybe a few drops. And then you want the real full spectrum, but even the Stanley Brothers cannot make the real Full Spectrum extract from the strain. Yeah, yeah. It's all decarboxylated. 80% of the real power is in the air.

Kirk:  Are they making, the Stanley Brothers, are they not making it as Rick Simpson's oil? Is that not how they're doing it? Or are they doing it...

Peter Vermeul:  With Rick Simpson it's also with heat, and then you destroy your product, even when you dry your weed too hot or whatever, then you also destroy your products. When you destroy everything that you destroy in your flowers, you cannot repeat it or make it, you can not take it from your flower anymore. When it's gone, it's all gone. And a lot of terpenes are very, very sensitive. Hey, by 40 degrees they are gone. And when you make an extraction, then you put iso... Iso-alcohol. Isoalcohol inside. And you want to remove it. They drop water inside that you boil it till almost 100 degrees for a long time. All your acids, all your terpenes, no cannflavin is all gone. Okay. It is good for, it is way better than the isolate and the distillate. And for skin cancer is perfect, but it can be better, way better.

Kirk:  Well, I mean, you're talking about magic here, right? 

Peter Vermeul:  It is magic. In America, they don't call me the wizard. But this is also a very interesting machine. When you make this machine, you can mix water with olive oil in 30 seconds. And that is like milk, it's white. In the beginning I had also, all the time, with heat and a stirring magnet for mixing. And I do now everything with that machine for 10 years. That is so amazing. I put the olive oil, my extract together, and in the machine for five minutes, and it is mixed like crazy. And it is very fine. This is when you take the products, even CBD and everything is inside, this directly in the stream. This is the most simple aperture. This is not high tech. And even with my extraction way, I use the socket installation. But I changed the installation a little bit and the way of extraction and the time of extraction. But it is now in the patent office and when it is free, then you can start all over the world with the production of that. So you have the real full spectrum extracts, the pharmaceutical, people want to steal it. That's the reason. My extraction way is now in Patent. They're going to, I say, in another organization and we're making kind of, I'd say, that other people can use your products and they have to pay a little bit fee but that is only for small product.

Kirk:  So those jars, those jars is pure full spectrum 10 kilos of cannabis plant and then what's in here is that with olive oil to make that.

Peter Vermeul:  Yeah and this bottle is normally one gram of extract for 10 mil and one gram is not one mil.

Kirk:  No it's weight by weight.

Peter Vermeul:  This is by weight and one gram is 1.2 mil wow more than five million daollars right  and the benefit is you need only a very small amount of product

Kirk:  Well, this is what I'm remarking, 10 kilos of product in one jar, and you only need one gram of it to create medicine out of it.

Peter Vermeul:  Or even less, for one gram, I can normally, and depends on the illness, it's good for five weeks.

Kirk:  But you're gonna take. You're going to take that jar, take one gram, mix it with how much olive oil.

Peter Vermeul:  One gram in a bottle of 10 ml, and then I fill it up to 10.5 ml inside the bottle.

Trevor:  A lot of what Peter's saying actually made me think of a previous episode, E117, with Richard's Spatola and solventless extraction. You know, Richard went into great detail about, you know, alcohol or even CO2, basically any solvent in there he felt was, there was always a little bit left, you couldn't rid of all the solvent at the end so you know. He went to great pains to just extract stuff with pressure and heat pressure and heat. That's a, that's how I get it out. And you know, I can get out, you know just this cannabinoid for this pressure and heat and just that. Um, again, we don't, we didn't know all of Richard's extraction techniques and we don't know all of Peter's, you know, we, but they, they seem to in a way be cut from the same cloth and that they they're not big on the solvents. They want to sort of avoid any extra stuff being left over and, uh, Peter spends a little bit of time talking about making Rick Simpson oil and some of the other extracts of Charlotte's Web haven't been as good as his because they were using too much heat.

Kirk:  Yeah, and again this is all spec, not speculation this is sort of a vague understanding. It's my understanding that Charlotte's web, the extract that was used for medicine, that the extractions are done through heat. So there's been some carboxylation of the of the cannabinoids. Peter's method is that there's no deep carboxylation. When he takes the essence of the plants, he's taking all the acid form out. And his Charlotte Webb, he calls it Carlota.

Trevor:  Right. It's in Spanish.

Kirk:  It's Spanish, and he says that. And he actually showed me the papers. Like I was asking him, like there's a language barrier. Peter speaks very good English, but some of his terminology from my brain I had to ask specific questions about and he explains, he finally gets out some paper for me and it's all in Spanish but I can sort of make out that this is patent pending and we were there, we were there in Um late September and he showed me a letter dated September 24th. So he just got it that his process is ready. He's now ready to take it to the world and really go out there because his process is patented. He can't patent the medicine but he can patent the process that got the plant into the jar and that's what he's done. And so my understanding what makes his product unique from the Stanley Brothers product is that his product's not decarboxylated.

Trevor:  Yeah, Andy, he's mentioned a few times, I didn't know, but I guess it makes sense that so the heat will decarboxylate cannabinoids, and if you want to keep the acid then that gets rid of it, but also a lot of the terpenes are very, in pharmacy world we call them heat labile, destroyed by heat, like he's saying, 40 degrees C, which is just a really hot summer day, can make some of the Terpenes go away, so... Again, Peter says his process doesn't go that doesn't get that hot. So it saves all the terpenes as well.

Kirk:  Well, but he also like he's he's quite excited when he talks about his process, but he also he also is able to take, like I said, biomass. So he takes the flowers. He takes the angel leaves. And he also takes some of the bigger fan leaves and puts the entire biomass because he's extracting cannabinoids from from the fan leaves. He's actually drawing cannabinoids out of tropical plants in Suriname. We're going to talk about this in a couple of seconds. But he's he's doing some business in South America and he has found cannabinoids in other plants.

Trevor:  Is not a big surprise that has come up sort of all along. I didn't know this particular plant had them, but you know, other, other people on other interviews have, you know said things like, you know, there's probably some funguses that have some cannabinoids. There's probably, you know, they're, they are more widely available in nature than maybe we thought.

Kirk:  Yeah, no. Well, and every every mammal has cannabinoid receptors. So this this this plant has been affecting Gaia, Mother Earth, for a long time. You know, so I'm in the lab with Peter and one of the first things he does is hands me hands me three jars of of his medicine. CBD Spain. Again, there'll be pictures on the web page. And I start asking about dosing, you know, like, how do you dose this stuff?  And what do you think his answer was?

Trevor:  It depends.

Kirk:  It depends on the patient, right? And this is what's so what is so confounding about cannabis medicine is that it's independent to the person taking it. So. I said to him, okay, you're giving me now, this is at a point now I do use cannabis for pain management. I'm learning to use it. I'm not using as recreationally as I used to. And I have I mean, I tore some ligaments in my shoulders a few years ago and I'm suffering the consequences now. And I said, so what do I do with this CBD Spain you give me said, well, you can rub it on your shoulders, you can take it under your tongue, you figure it out, right? And this is what he's doing now with clients. And Michelle and I did just that. We've been traveling, we've been on the road probably by this time, four and a half weeks, five weeks. I've had no cannabinoid products because we've left Spain, gone into Morocco. I was three, four weeks without any cannabis. I wasn't taking any acetaminophen, so I was living with some aches and pains, right? And so I take the jar and we get back to our Airb&b and Michelle puts some on her thumb because she's got a little arthritis on her thumb and I put a little bit on my shoulder and we go to bed, we wake up in the morning, we start our day and we're And I'm going, hey, how's your thumb? And he goes. Haven't thought about it." I said, no way. He goes, no, I haven't, haven't though about it. And like, I, and she goes, how's your shoulder? And I said I haven's thought about it. And it's like, okay, what's working? Is it working? Is it worked? Or is it not working? But so we used, we used his product for the rest of the time we were in Spain. One gram, and that's gonna last for how long?

Peter Vermeul:  Yeah, I know but the questions they ask me all the time where it is good for yeah, and I say I cannot give you an answer. What if you can better ask me? For what kind of illness it is not working. You have to listen to your body, but maybe better to put a few drops And on your skin you can put directly on the only it is and then high concentration so I normally with our Cream there's only 7.2 CBD and CBDA inside, in the cream. We cut the whole plant, we hang it up, drying for two weeks or something. And when it is dry, we strip the whole plants. Even the big leaves? Yeah, but the big leaves are most of the time, in the time of drying, you lost your big leaves. So when it's dry, everything that is on the plant, hanging, we stripe it, we grind it, and then we make extract from that. And we grind it? Yeah. And then we make an extraction. So easy. So what you can do, the best medicine, even better than my medicine, is to eat fresh bud.

Kirk:  say that again.

Peter Vermeul:  The fresh flower,.

Kirk:  The flower, and the bud in the ya.

Peter Vermeul:  You cut it, put it in your smoothie and eat it or drink it or whatever. That is the best medicine. And even the leaves and also the sprouts of the seeds.

Kirk:  Yes. Yeah.

Peter Vermeul:  There's no cannabinoids inside.

Kirk:  Right.

Peter Vermeul:  Cannflavin also inside the flower in the sprouts and that is very of course the amount is very very low but when you make the sprouts and you freeze dry it for example you put it on your salads or whatever you can put it in the store or no problem but also when you have the fresh flower the whole plant, you can make a machine that you When it's real fresh, with all the sap from the leaves, from the juice, you have to juice the whole plant and put it in ice cubes and you freeze and take every day one or two ice cubes.

Kirk:  The raw plant.

Peter Vermeul:  That's the best medicine.

Kirk:  And just the flower and the small leaves around the flower.

Peter Vermeul: Everything . Even the big leaves. No problem. This is of course it is not complete my product but yeah and in my way it is only I extract real everything in once.  And then I filter my extract, when it is ready, then I filter my extract with the liquid, the extraction liquid with everything. We filter first by minus 27 degrees. And after that, I put it in the distillation. And I take all the extraction liquid out. And then it's ready. And even here in Spain, it is completely not allowed to make an extract. Even the medical companies that can grow medicinal weed are not allowed make an extraction from them. And when they are allowed, it's not allowed to sell it in Spain. It's always out of Spain. Also the medicinal cannabis is only for out of Spain. It is allowed, but when I make it in Holland or another country and then I bring it to Spain, no problem. But here in Spain you can't make it, but even in Holland it is not allowed.

Kirk:  Can you buy this in Spain? online?

Peter Vermeul:  Yeah, online. But also in Holland, we have a big distribution channel in Holland. All the time, for 10 years, I had one employee. But now, going to Suriname, I stopped growing. I have no employee anymore.

Kirk:  He also gave me a bottle of, I think it was Carlotta, for our friend of the show, Dr. Anderson. Now, for those people that are on LinkedIn, Dr. Andersen's been having some difficulties with Tilray and getting Charlotte's Web in Canada. There's some politics happening, and Peter was aware of this because he was he was, he was seeing her talk about this on LinkedIn. He's really big on LinkedIn, so if those people on LinkedIn look up Peter, it's fascinating guy. All of his certifications are on there and so he gives me a bottle and they're in our conversation and I've asked Rene to exit most of this out of the discussion because I'm quite concerned. How is this Canadian going to bring cannabis across the borders because you're not allowed to travel with cannabis across borders, right?

Trevor:  Yes, PSA, don't cross international borders with cannabis. We'll just full stop, you know. Whatever Kirk is about to say next, it's fine and it worked, but you know, don't go from Canada to the U.S. With cannabis, don't come from the U S to Canada, don't from Canada, to Europe, don't across international borders with cannabis full stop.

Kirk:  Yeah, I, um, I um... I did this trip, like I think I mentioned before, that when we were tripping younger, we were Tripping with Maps. And now in 2025, we're Tripping With Apps, right? So I downloaded ArriveCan, which is the app for doing your paperwork to arrive back into Canada, right. And anybody that's traveling internationally, the hosts give you a piece of paper and you fill out, I'm not bringing in $10,000. I have not been on a farm. Yes, I have I have $200 worth of merchandise, and this is your claim, right? Well, I downloaded the app It's called ArriveCan and I and Michelle and I were thinking what are we gonna do with this cannabis because the guy's given us several hundred dollars worth of cannabis products. That is medicine, right and I get on ArriveCan and I'm filling out the form and I am ticking off the boxes, no we don't have $10,000, yes we've been traveling six weeks and we have $300 worth of stuff and it goes, are you traveling with cannabis? I looked at Michelle and said, it's asking me if I'm traveling with Cannabis. She goes, what are you going to say? Yes! So I travel yes. And and we traveled with carry-on and these bottles that he gave me with 10 mil bottles and we you know we we got on the international flight we we got on Barcelona went through security nobody questioned anything you know the toothpaste was right the little vials of cannabinoids were right we get into Calgary airport and we were late and we have an hour connection to get from Calgary to Winnipeg we have an hours connection. And so we breeze through with the other 400 people on the plane. And we go to one of these little kiosks and has anything changed? No, it spits out a like a supermarket receipt. And we'd go up to the guy. And you know, the guy in front of us is talking to the young girl, oh, you have too much, you've too much product, you have to go claim that you have, to go outside security, you to go and pay your extra duties and then come back through security. Michelle and I pull up and he looks at her and goes, okay, you got cannabis with you. And I'm about to explain, well, no, it's acid form, it's cannabinoids, it is Peter, it medicine. And Michelle is like, Michelle's tired, I'm tired. And I just got, I am just ready to have this debate, right?

Trevor:  I can picture it. Yeah.

Kirk:  Oh, yeah. And I'm eager, right? And the guy goes, are you using it for pain? I didn't hear that. I didn't hear that, I was about, Michelle gives me one of those wifely elbows to the, you know, to the chest. Kirk, are using it to pain? Of course I'm using it. And so I'm looking at my wife going, of course I'm using it for pain. And I'm about to explain to the custom offers officer about this product, how amazing it is. He goes, he goes to me, I'm supposed to send you to those guys so that they could look at the product, but I see that you're plane is almost, you got to get going. So just keep going.

Trevor:  I'm honestly surprised you didn't just go argue with the other guys just for the sake of being Kirk, but I'm glad that Michelle elbowed you in the rib.

Kirk:  Well, I was going to get the tape recorder out and I had a whole episode about crossing borders. But yeah, no, I, again, I don't recommend it, but you guys, I followed the law. I claimed I was traveling with cannabis. It was on the form. The guy stopped me. I declared the cannabis and I kept going and I, and I was legitimately using it for pain. It was not, it was not an intoxicating cannabis that I was traveling with. But I got a hold of, I guess this is where I can talk about, I got a hold Dr. Anderson through LinkedIn and said, Hey, I met Peter, he gave me a gift for you. And by the way, it's all legal. I claimed it. And she goes, you what? This is on LinkedIn. You, you, what? I said, yeah, I, I've got it through NavCan. It's, it, it all claims. She goes, that's amazing. And I sent it to her. She sent me her address. I sent her the bottle. She got it. And I don't know where we're at now, but I know her and Peter are talking.

Trevor:  That sounds like something you're gonna follow up on for maybe a story.

Kirk:  It will be an episode eventually, certainly, and I think Dr. Anderson knows that, but right now we just got a story that I have traveled borders with cannabis.

Trevor:  You did. And again, last PSA, don't cross international borders with cannabis. It's just I'm glad it worked out well for Kirk. It might it might not work out as well for one of our listeners. 

Kirk:  It's on the Canadian app, Trevor. I followed the Canadian rules.

Trevor:  You didn't do anything wrong. We're just, you know, just PSA, don't cross international borders with cannabis. It's much safer.

Kirk:  Well, I would also say, fill out your forms accurately.

Trevor:  Yes, don't lie, fill the forms accurately. That's all good advice, but if you just don't cross international borders with cannabis, that's safe.

Kirk:  So I guess you know I guess we can wrap this up. Peter is on his way to Suriname.

Peter Vermeul:  The next step is indeed South America, we're going to Suriname. Why? In Europe, I'm busy now for 10 years, I ask many governments. I try all the time to start with a full spectrum extract. It's not important that it is medicinal, but also as a food supplement. And food supplement is also very healthy. I can work perfect with it, but it is not allowed. And that's the reason I'm going now to South America and in South America, in Suriname. We have all the license to grow, to extract, to make a clinic. We work with doctors, with hospitals, with pharmaceutical people.

Kirk:  Fantastic.

Peter Vermeul:  And that is for me the dream. Treat people with the real full-spectrum extract and that is so powerful, that is the goal. Not only that, I can start there, I have all the corporations, we can start in a clinic with doctors, we treat people, with cancer, whatever, people from America can come to us, from India they come to us, come to the hospital, the cannabis hospital, for two weeks, three weeks, four weeks. That is more people with big money, but then with the extra money we can make, we want to give also the local people the treatments from the flowers. And they cannot pay the product. For example, in Suriname, an employee, they earned 350 euros or something. And my bottle, my most expensive bottle is all  120 euro for 10 ml. They said it's not possible for that cash. But then we make a little bit more money with people. They have millions. That's OK. Then you can buy it for almost nothing.

Kirk:  You subsidize it. All right. Thank you.

Peter Vermeul:  I am sixty-six. I have no children. What do I have to do with a lot of money? I was growing an illegal grower for 40 years or something.

Kirk:  So in these four episodes that we've done about Spain, one thing we've, one thing that we definitely know about Spain is that the laws of cannabis in Spain are nuanced.

Trevor:  And they seem a little ambiguous, at least to us.

Kirk:  Yes, and there's Peter trying to do business. And so he has decided that he can't do his business the way he wants to do his business in Spain. And he's gone. He's going to Suriname. He could be there right now. I believe he's there right now. And is reclaiming forests. And what he's doing is.

Trevor:  How about just a quick geography lesson. Kirk, where is Suriname?

Peter Vermeul:  It's on just south of Brazil on the east coast of South America. Okay. And I hope, I hope to someday get there because I'm excited for him. He's taking his clones, he's taking mother plants, he's taken his entire operation, moving it there and he's going to and he says this, he is going to work with some physicians down there and open up a clinic and he is gonna provide cannabis medicine down there, and grow his clones and like he'll take his mother plant and grow a field of outdoor clones of his breeds and make a ton of money that he has no idea what he's gonna do. Well, he does know what he is going to do with it. He says this. He's going to make a ton of money that he's going put back and give to people. Back to people because what does he need lots of $5 million for, right? So yeah, he's going to go start a business down there and do cannabis and I hope someday to get down there and help him out.

Trevor:  Oh, that sounds fantastic.

Kirk:  So this ends our stories of Spain. Thank you so much for going on this holiday with Michelle and I. I'm Kirk Nyquist, I'm the registered nurse.

Trevor:  I'm Trevor Shewfelt, I'm the pharmacist. Yeah, thanks for taking us along to Spain and thank you for letting us spend some time with Peter. He is a fascinating dude.

Kirk:  Yeah, he truly is a fascinating dude. Take care, Peter. I hope we've done you justice in this episode.