Episode Transcript

Trevor:  We're back. I'm Trevor Shewfelt.

Kirk:  Hey, Trevor.

Trevor:  I'm the pharmacist.

Kirk:  How's it going?

Trevor:  I am good. Who are you again?

Kirk:  I'm Kirk Nyquist I'm the registered nurse. And we are Reefer Medness the Podcast.

Trevor: So we've been spending, well more than a couple, but the last couple episodes we've been talking with Jan, a Dutch guy who done cannabis stuff all over Europe, a lot in Switzerland, but ended up, he's still trying to get legal hash out of Morocco into Europe and it's going okay but there's still a few hurdles especially with getting heavy metals out of the hash that meets the European standards. And in the process of all that we did mention a company called Somacan a couple of times. So, tell us a little bit about Somacan and what we're going to be listening to this time round.

Kirk:  This is a car ride that I had with one of the employees of Somacan. This conversation happened, this happened when I was in Morocco. And to put it in order, we spoke to Dr. Rabii. I was Marrakesh, you were in Winnepegosis and he was in Casablanca. And we had a conversation with Dr. Rabii and he kind of explained to us the problems he was having with king Mohammed VI, who declared that he wants Morocco medical cannabis and international legal Moroccan cannabis businesses happening. And he was explaining the difficulties he was having with having cannabis as medicine. And then that conversation happened. We recorded it, put it on the shelf. I continued my trip. I was, in the meantime, still communicating with Jan. And the plan was that I would go to a community on the southern slopes of the Riff Mountains and meet him and his team. So when Michelle and I were in Fez, we got a regional taxi. In Morocco, you have local taxis and regional taxis. The regional taxies are what take you out of a community and into another community. Sort of like for us, you'd be like, I would take a taxi. A regional taxi to get to Winnipeg, opposed to the local taxi that might take me to St. Rose, right?

Trevor: Like back when there were Greyhound busses.

Kirk:  Yeah, but this is a chauffeur-driven taxi that costs a little bit more money, right? So we get one of those, and we go on a highway going north from Fez, and it was interesting because as we got on this highway, we started seeing a lot of construction happening, big construction, and I later learned that there's a big, like a 10-year project for the king. He wants to have a huge highway going into that region. And so we were following the construction and off we went. I think it was about a 45 minute to an hour drive. It seemed longer and we went to a town and I'm not gonna do well with the pronouncing it. We were calling it Taounate, but it's an Arabic name. It's a town that is on a plateau. And Michelle and I went to a small Raid Hotel and we met. The team there, and we were to meet them the next morning. So that day we went for a walk, we went up, we walked, I think we walked a good 200 meters into the air over a period of 1 point, you know, what is it, 1.5 kilometers to meet this fella. And they took us for a drive to Somacan, and... And I got an interview from the gentleman. He's asked to be called anonymous. And that sort of talks a little bit about what's happening in Morocco right now. What we learned from Jan was how they're trying to take an ancient industry. I mean, the Kif cultivar, which they call Beldia, which he talks about in the interview. It's a local cultivar that grows on in the Rif mountains. They figure it's 3,000 years old and in the last thousand years it's become a land race, a hybrid land race that has basically adapted itself to the soils of Morocco and Morocco has very poor soil and Jan talked about that. He talked about some of the the disadvantages of the local varietal, how it sucked up the heavy metals. But it also has low potency and also grows in one long sativa stem with no secondary branches. It's a very unique cultivar. A lot of things in Morocco are unique, such as the argon oil, but I digress. So it's a unique cultivars that grows in a very tough environment. So the farmers have been growing this seed, this cultivar for a thousand years. And as this speaker says to us, they're good at making hash and they're good at make Kef and they called it pollen. And I think he calls it pollen because one of the characteristics of the Kef cultivar is its honey aromas and terpenes. So this interview really brings together the Dr. Rabii interview and the Jan van Weenen's interview and it's ironic because I had it like months ago so it's a good interview.

Trevor: Alright, well let's get into Mr. Anonymous and the car ride and then come back out.

Anonymous: I'm the quality manager of Somacan, I've been in the industry for over a year now because the industry, what we call legal cannabis in Morocco, it started about three years ago before it was all illegal, so the legislation just knew, but the cannabis itself in Morocco it's something very old. So we had the black market before, that's why the transition is going slower than what we thought in the beginning. But it's still going on. Right now, in 2023, we have started, that was the legalization process, it started just with CBD, with CBD hash. CBD cannabis is just what was allowed by the government and then, last year, 2024, the campaign of 2024 They added the THC but just for one strain. It's the Beldia strain which is the local Moroccan hash. Right now we still have just, for speciese, just the one that has been allowed Plus CBD. For Somacan we do both. We have both production of CBA and for Beldia. Last year we had over 200 tons of Beldia. I'm talking about biomass.

Kirk:  200 pounds of biomass?

Anonymous: 200 tons.

Kirk:  200 tons?

Anonymous: Of biomass. So I have many who have a big factory, you see it later, but a big factory and I have, last year I have... 220 hectares of Beldia, and about the same in CBD. This year, we have more in Beldia. We have over 400 hectares in Beldia.

Kirk:  Maldea?

Anonymous: Beldia. It's the THC strain, the Moroccan strain on our.

Kirk:  Oh, the cultivar?

Anonymous: Yes.

Kirk:  OK.

Anonymous: That's the one that we see mostly here in Morocco. We have other strains but the important one... The one that is predominant here is the local one. ...what they sold on the black market.

Kirk:  So the biomass, is that just flower or does that include leaf and stem?

Anonymous: It includes leaf and stem. And so? After, when we get it from the farmers, we separate the stems from the leaf.

Kirk:  And you are, you talk about the hash. So when you are extracting your CBD, are you extracting it as hash and then extracting the CBD from the hash? 

Anonymous: We extract, first we extract the pollen.

Kirk:  The pollen?

Anonymous: The pollen, we can call it hash when it's pressed. The first form is the pollen, this one that we extracted from the biomass without stems, because we separated the stems before. And then we have an extraction process just for CBD, we want it to be for THC also, it's alright now just for CBD. We can get CBD isolate or CBD distillate at 99% of CBD. We have invested in this project and we still invest in it because, as I said earlier, it's just new. The factory is two and a half years old. The factory itself is less than two years old, but the company is two-and-a-half years old

Kirk:  And is the company mostly local investment or international investment?

Anonymous: Local investment right now.

Kirk:  Okay, and where is the market for your product? Is the market local?

Anonymous: That depends on which products, we have many products in the market, mostly in Europe. For tasting, just get the pollen and the resion of course. We can sell it to pharmaceutical companies in Europe and for CBD we can sell it also in Morocco and we can sell it locally. There are many pharmaceutical companies here in Morocco who use our CBD in order to do cosmetics. And additive for volumetric stuff and we invest also in our own cosmetic. We don't have the cosmetics here but we externalize the cosmetics and the alimentary additives to companies that are working with us, that are creating those markets for us.

Kirk:  Are there resistance in Morocco? Morocco is very big on olives, Morocco is big on Argon oil. Is local market resistant to cannabis or are they excited about cannabis.

Anonymous: The local market, we need to talk about Morocco itself, there's many regions in Morocco. Right now in this region, the Rif region or the region that are near Rif Region, they have the knowledge of the cannabis and they accept it, but outside of those regions It's still some resistance. When you say hash in Casablanca for example, the... The term hash is something that is forbidden.

Kirk:  Sorry, is what?

Anonymous: It's something that's forbidden.

Kirk:  Forbidden?

Anonymous: They think the police will come and they will catch you. Many people, even right now, they don't know that Morocco has invested in legal cannabis or we have the legal process of cannabis. Just the interested people that knows. But talking about the mass, many don't know. Until now, that cannabis is legal.

Kirk:  And cannabis is legal for medicinal, for medical.

Anonymous: For medical.

Kirk:  And how about industrial, like industrial hemp? Is industrial hemp or legal? Is it just medical CBD and medical THC?

Anonymous: Right now just for for medical

Kirk:  In my understanding, that is coming from the king himself. The king wants it to happen. Is that true or is that a right understanding?

Anonymous: That's the project is something that the king himself has instructed and he's developing and that's for development of this region position region for the Rif,  the Rif they were the one the hash for many many centuries They were doing hash, but right now it's becoming legal. They all have the knowledge, when we talk about the farmers, they have the knowledge of cannabis and now we are adding this knowledge to the scientific knowledge that we we can get from outside

Kirk:  So the local farmers know how to grow cannabis

Anonymous: They know how to grow cannabis. They know to get good hash. Many investment in cannabis and they are helping us because right now we're the facility we have in build here we have 22 cooperatives that's for for us to get cannabis from.

Kirk:  22 growers farmers.

Anonymous: not farmers cooperatives the farmers are groups and are grouping in cooperatives.

Kirk:  Okay.

Anonymous: And every cooperative some have content 50 people.

Kirk:  and these would be farmers that used to be hash farmers. They used to make hash. Did they did they form the corporations, the cooperatives did they form it after legalization?

Anonymous: That's right. Before they were growing hash, I'm talking about the black market, but after that they were doing hash when legalization started. They are doing hash on the legal way. They group themselves in cooperatives and then they sign the contract with our company. In order to get the hash directly from them. As I said earlier, the first year, we're just doing CBD, so we have to provide the seeds because CBD seeds are not local to Morocco. So we had to import the cannabis, the seeds. But after that... After that, we did get the authorization last year from Beldia, so we used a Moroccan Strain

Kirk:  So these were the seeds you brought.

Anonymous: I'm going to show you everything and...

Kirk:  Thank you. Thank you for that.

Trevor: So Kirk, yeah, Mr. Anonymous had lots of interesting things to say. He talked about the local varietal or local cultivar quite a bit and how right now it sounds like the local farmers and local co-ops are kind of struggling a little bit with this whole legal, non-legal thing. You know, they've been, like you said, growing cannabis forever. But you know it hasn't been legal so it's all kind of under the table but then the King said it's legal so they formed local co-ops so groups of farmers together to sort of grow stuff in the legal but it yeah sort of meshing in with what Jan was saying it growing pain. So you know you know went back when everything was illegal you could as Jan mentioned you know you could charge whatever you want now if everybody gets their own cut like the. Co-ops well, then the price of the end product is way higher than what you could buy other types of hash for in Europe and Yeah, it was it was interesting and that my sort of takeaway was, lots of stigma and lots of sort of black market gray market. What's legal? What's not? You know, can we talk but and right back to the fact he didn't want to be identified Talks to the facts. It's not quite not seen as quite kosher. I think that was kind of my takeaway.

Kirk:  Yeah, there's a whole bunch of things here I need to sort of remind people of. I'm not sure if I explained this before, but we drove to this town, met the team, they drove us towards the factory. We got to Somacan and we walked in and we were placed in the boardroom. And we're in the boardroom, Michelle and I were in the boardroom for a good 10, 15 minutes, it seemed odd. But they came back and said, we can't go any further because you didn't get the proper authority to come into the factory. And actually, because we were at the factory, everyone started getting nervous because we shouldn't have been there in the first place because we didn't the authority. Hence one of the reasons why this became anonymous. The individual wants to be anonymous because there was some question about our authority to be there. But as everyone sort of calmed down, we talked a lot about culture there and they were explaining to me the farmers a little bit deeper stuff and showed me some of their products. Somacan will have a link on our web page so you'll see the cosmetic apartments and they brought chunks of hash and they were blonde hash and as we were talking they were using the word kef, kef kef and I thought they were talking about kef you know the kef is the stuff that you shake out of your you know you you grind your your your weed and you get kef on the bottom of the grinder and that's how they make hash is it's through the static method. Jan was using that terminology, the static hash and that sifting it. And they were showing me blonde hash and they were showing me dark black hash. And Jan was talking about how they was doing CBD cultures and they're also doing some of the local kef, which would've been the local cannabis, I talked about it before we did the interview at the start of this podcast. One thing that I've learned since, and I've been doing some reading about Morocco and this particular cultivar, And was the fact that they're really worried about this land race, losing this landrace. And one of the reasons is because of all the hemp they're bringing in, because medicinal cannabis is now legal, CBD is now illegal in Morocco. These hemp plants are flowering and sending pollen out and pollinating the kef plants. So there is a threat. Morocco might lose their ancient landrace because of the King's pressure. So there's a lot of stuff happening. I guess, you know, in these three stories, specifically about, four stories, specifically about Morocco, is that what we kind of uncovered is that there's threat to the Moroccan way of life when it comes to the Rif region of Morocco, in the sense that the hash, you now, the most important imported illegal hash in the world comes from Morocco. There's a threat to that because of this happening. So there's a lot of dynamics. I'm so pleased we got these stories. And I think there's so much more that we missed just by not understanding what we know now. Does that make sense? Like coming this far, what we now, boy, if I'd known what that, when I got there, there'd be a whole different.

Trevor: No, and I thought, now you're talking about CBD versus THC, I wasn't sure when you were in the car if you and Mr. Anonymous were having a language barrier when you're trying to talk about hemp versus marijuana, CBD versus the THC. Looking back now, I don't know that we're having a language barrier so much as, like you said, there is sort of a push. And looking back, uh... Understandably so for CBD products because at the moment that sort of medicinal and CBD goes together. So yeah um it's it is interesting and just so but back to the landrace uh the varietal, other than that sort what Moroccan hash has come from from the past how many ever thousand years is there and it's you know tall and skinny you mentioned that. Is there anything special about the hash? I'm just, as someone who I'm not sure I've ever seen it or smelled it or whatever, does it smell different? Does it have a different high? Like what's the purported magic with this?

Kirk:  Yes, yes, actually there is. Like I said, I've been doing some research and I do remember as a kid, Moroccan hash was huge. And I think in one of the Spain stories, I talk about one of The Compassion Clubs, one of cannabis clubs had Moroccan Hash. Moroccan Hash, what I know about Moroccan Hashing, and again, I was in Morocco, I never had an opportunity to consume any cash, it just never happened. Quite frankly, it probably shouldn't have happened anyways because it's illegal. But Moroccan hash is, it's a blonde hash. It is known to be very mellow. It's not a high THC, again, considering the cultivar. But actually, where Moroccan has came from, my understanding is it started in the 60s when Westerners traveled to Morocco because Morocco grew good pot. Now. This is in the 60s. So they used to get, and I think David Crosby talked about getting Moroccan hash up from Morocco that he fed the Beatles.

David Crosby: When we became friends, they were very interested in the Byrds when we went over there the first time. They were very kind to us. They came and saw our shows. They took us to their houses. They drove us home from gigs. They hung out with us, and it was a very good relationship. And I had much better weed than anybody in England. A friend of mine had just come back from Africa to London and had African weed that was just stunningly good and they had never had it and they were still at the stage where you take some hash and break it up And put it on some tobacco, you know. Which is really a terrible way to get high and I had actual weed that would really do what it's actually supposed to it. That was a total thrill for him

Kirk:  So they were getting, I guess they were our Mexico, Europe's Mexico, I mean we were getting our cannabis in the 60s and 70s, it was from Mexico or Columbia, so it was coming from the hemispheres, so from that hemisphere Morocco was getting. So I'm hypothesizing here and putting together what I believe happened. The hippies started flocking down, the westerners in the early 70s and taught them to make hash through sifting. What they started doing was concentrating the high, because of course it's an extract of cannabis in the sense of getting the concentration. And they discovered that it's a fast-acting, quick-onset feeling and dissipates quickly. So, and it's very tasty. And I was saying to you before that it has a honey-like quality to it. So it's is a very tasty hash. Quick-onsets. And passes quickly. So that's a unique hash. And you can compare it against Afghani hash and other hashes have different things. So that my understanding about the hash. And yeah, that it, you know, that's it at risk.

Trevor: Oh, that is fascinating. Jump in with anything else but just let's see if we can't put see if we can put some kind of bow on your whole yours and Michelle's whole whole Road Stories so.

Kirk:  Road story.

Trevor: So you so we sort of started in Spain and you were checking out compassion clubs and other stuff added to CBD like these THC and then alphabet. T HC O and D and added on which seemed to be sort of lab modified cannabinoids to make your CBD flower get you high. And then from there we went, like you said, to Morocco, talked to Dr. Rabii who's smart guy involved in the medical end and seems to be one of the King's sort of lead emissaries for trying to get Moroccan medicinal marijuana, medicinal cannabis, medicinal hash used and exported and from there to sort of Jan and I guess a Moroccan foreigner but you know someone who really appreciates what's going on in Morocco seeing what he can do to get Moroccan hash to Europe and then probably the rest of the world. I know I skipped a lot of spots, but what else do you sort of highlights do you you want to remind people out from your Odyssey?

Kirk:  In the six weeks that I was away and sort of searching for cannabis stories, what I learned is that, first of all, through the first episode and the compassion clubs, I'm calling compassion clubs. The cannabis clubs of Spain, is that the cannabis culture is worldwide. You know, it's like people that like cannabis throughout the world have the same thing. I mean, one of the fellas in... Barcelona talked about how cannabis brings people together that are like people. The young lady in Madrid, that cannabis brings her in and allows her to get in touch with herself. The young ladies from Italy that lives in Barcelona who uses it medicinally. There's a real common thread in cannabis in Spain, in Canada, in America, the different stories we've got. The other thing I thought about the whole cannabis, the whole, the whole way industry finds a way to make money. Okay, so hemp's legal, marijuana's not. So let's get hemp and let's just throw a whole bunch of stuff on hemp so that we can call it hemp and you can get high. That's just industry making money. That's ingenuity of the human person to say, okay, let's work around the law. And that's what's happening in the States right now with some of their hemp products as being manipulated into these new manufactured, and they're manufactured, they're still cannabis products, but they've been adjunct, they've worked on,.

Trevor: Tweaked.

Kirk:  Yeah, the whole Morocco story, that just sort of fell in my lap. Like I said, I never went there with any idea what I was doing. I knew I was in the Rif Mountains. I could see cannabis growing around me. I was with a group of friends that were not cannabis centric, so to honor them, I did not go out exploring cannabis when I was in the north section of the Rif Mountains, but I did have contacts. So once we parted ways, I made my contacts, and we learned a lot about Moroccan cannabis. And it sort of stems from your visit to CannMed several years ago when we got the, you know, they had their first conference. So. I really enjoyed it. I want to thank everybody that was involved and helped us and trusted me with this story. This last one was the most sensitive. The individual that I was with treated Michelle and I really well and he's a very kind man and it's a shame that I'm using his name as anonymous. I mean, I could always get a hold of him and maybe down the road in another episode, I'll identify him. But he was a very nice guy. And he had another sidekick with him, who also a young man, but he also treated us well. So it was a good visit. Trevor and I'm glad I got the opportunity to do it. And I hope to be back on the road and get more road stories.

Trevor: And we hope so too and we're really hoping that if you've looked that you've learned a little bit about Spain, Morocco, Peter Vermeul, extracting cannabis all

Kirk:  Yeah, Peter forgot all about Peter. Peter was what a fine, what a wonderful guy.

Trevor: We're hoping you enjoyed all these Kirk and Michelle on the Road episodes as much as we did and Yeah, hope you'll come back for more Kirk on the road and possibly stuff in Dauphin But yeah, we've really enjoyed this trip through Europe and North Africa and we hope you guys have too

Kirk:  So what do we have? We've got 2, 4, 6, 8 episodes. Wow.

Trevor: They are all good ones and this has been another good one. I'm Trevor Shewfelt. I am the pharmacist.

Kirk:  I'm still Kirk, I'm the registered nurse. We're Reefer Medness, The Podcast. There's pictures of my trip to the south slopes of the Rif. There's a few pictures there and our web page is truly a resource.

Trevor: Reefermed.ca.

Kirk:  I've made some changes to it.

Trevor: Reefered.ca, go there.

Kirk:  Go there, and I've some recent changes to again and I'm playing with it and added research to it, so yeah. Go over, look, it's a dynamic little page and we like people to hit it. Oh, by the way, give us five stars, man.

Trevor: Absolutely. On any of your podcast apps, we're usually @reefermed We're @Reefermedness. We're @ReeferMedness and most of them they're socials. Find us, like us, give us five stars. We like making these. Give us a reason to keep doing it.

Kirk:  Yeah. Exactly.

Trevor: Alright, man.