Episode Transcript

Trevor: Kirk we're back.

Kirk: Episode six.

Trevor: You've been waiting all day haven't you?

Kirk: I have been, because we launched Episode Five today and now we are recording episode six, Man, this is like fast paced industry.

Trevor: It's great. We got a couple of really interesting guests.

Shecann.

Kirk: Shecann.

Trevor: Is a Facebook group,.

Kirk: Community.

Trevor: Community. Thank you, they're close community, but they'll, you know, let people in if basically if they're serious and willing to be respectful of the community rules and they've got lots of interesting and good information on their site and a really supportive group of mostly women who just, you know, they've used medical cannabis and want to support each other and their choices.

Kirk: I like we just finished the interview and where it's hot off the topic. But what I found interesting about, they are an advocacy group and she talks about she's talked about being a data nerd, which gets to the to a segue to our next guest. But she also talks about how, as a group, they're educating their members to educate their family doctors. On the use of cannabis.

Trevor: And this is going to be an ongoing thing because I literally had a patient last week and this morning who, you know, they had no problem going to their family doctor, getting a prescription, getting their cannabis oil from a licensed producer. But then as big questions now what now?  And you know, and that's a great question of now what? Because there is, you know, unlike a diabetes pill, we don't have clinical practice guidelines on exactly now what.

Kirk: Now What.  And what and what's happening in this industry from our from our learning that, you know, this podcast has offered us this learning, is that the clients, the patients are learning now what.  I mean, when I was down in Arizona and episodes to come, I had a chance to interview a naturopathic doctor in Arizona. And she does the same thing. She provides a script for people to buy cannabis from a licensed producer, but she doesn't necessarily give them the prescription. It's up to them to decide how it works for them. What makes Episode Six of Reefer Medness - The Podcast is that we are talking to two agencies, one an advocacy group, and one is an app.

Trevor: A technology company.

Kirk: A technology company that is helping patients govern their use of cannabis.

Trevor: Yeah, no, it's fascinating. I love technology. And, you know, everybody out there has a Fitbit and a diet tracker and a and that tracks their asleep. So, you know, it's one of these after you heard about go, of course, there should be an app for people to track the medicinal cannabis they're using in. And there is.

Kirk: And there and there is. And what's what makes Episode Six so special and why I'm sitting here with this grin from ear to ear. Is it these two agencies called us.

Trevor: Yeah. Apparently, there are listeners out there.

Kirk: There are people listening to us Trevor. But they called us after, I think the first or second episode. And it's like, oh my God, we got all these episodes in the can. We don't even have time to produce these episodes and you're calling us. So three, four months down the road, we finally called them.

Trevor: Yeah. And they're great. They're fascinating. You'll you're going to love what's coming up.

Kirk: So welcome to Episode Six of.

Trevor: Reefer Medness - The Podcast.

Kirk: The Podcast.

Trevor: I'm Trevor, the Pharmacist.

Kirk: And I'm a nurse. Hey, you know what, Trevor, we also have a new sponsor. What's this sound?

Trevor: I don't know. I'd love to say beer, but I don't think it is.

Kirk: It's not beer. It's a specialty can of ginger beer. Oh, I like ginger beer. And I have found myself a stash of ginger beer and Dauphin. That's also an Internet based company. So we're going to talk about our new sponsor as well.

Trevor: Looking forward to it. And you'll share some of that ginger beer. Right?

Kirk: Yeah, right away here. Pass the glass. That's the glass.

Trevor:  You are a problem.

Trevor: Today on the line we have a very special guest from SheCann we've got Ashley Brown. Hi, Ashley. Could you tell the people a little bit about yourself?

Ashley: Hi, Trevor. Yes, absolutely. I can.  My name is Ashley Brown, as you've already mentioned, and I am a lifelong Winnipegger. I have two children and three stepchildren, and I also suffered from a seizure disorder.

Trevor: So I think that leads into the next thing of tell us a little bit about SheCann and how that got started.

Ashley: So I think the best way to talk about SheCann is to just give you a little bit of background on my illness and the two kind of dovetail really nicely and I believe that with an absence of evidence in the medical cannabis world, our stories are usually the most powerful thing we have. So. About nine years ago, when my youngest daughter was three months old, I suffered a massive seizure just out of the blue and they still really don't understand what happened. It may have been hormonal. It may have been a structural abnormality in my brain, but my life really changed overnight. So I started to have about one hundred and fifty to one hundred and eighty seizures a month. And at my worst point, I had the neurocognitive functioning of a 70-year-old with senile dementia.

Trevor: So you're having like multiple seizures a day.

Ashley: Multiple seizures a day. And I, you know, add the caveat that they weren't all tonic-clonic like you see in the movies in the way that we frame seizures. So it took a little bit of time to understand what was happening even for myself, and to be able to articulate that a lot of what was happening was very much like when your computer freezes, you shut down and have to reboot. If you have to do that 15 or 20 times a day, it's exhausting and you're always kind of in recovery mode. So that made being a mom and being a partner and being an employee a really difficult thing. And most of those roles dissolved. I lost my house and my job and in a lot of things along the way. So it was really.

Trevor: You're the definition of really screwing up someone's quality of life.

Ashley: Yes. Yes. My quality of life was not what it what it should have been at twenty-seven, that's for sure. But I had great doctors like they really did do everything they could. And at a point we, we just got to a place in 2016 where my specialists reached kind of a dead end. They had done everything they could. The surgery became too risky. They found some evidence of brain damage, but it was just a very dicey thing to do. And they just said, we can't guarantee you quality of life. We don't want to risk anything being damaged further. So, at that point, I kind of fell into a bit of a deep depression. It was about managing the other things in my life, my migraines, my, you know, now clinical depression. And, you know, I think we, as is the family, my partner, my children, we needed time to kind of collect ourselves around that. And luckily, I have great support. So, the way that I segued into medical cannabis was really through the help and support of other people. I had a very good friend who had Lyme disease and one day when she was well enough and so was I, we got together for dinner and she tossed me a syringe of cannabis derived CBD oil.

Trevor: And what did you think when your friend was handing you, you know, pot, medical pot. But my friends handing me to say.

Ashley: Well, that's just it. I mean, I had used recreational marijuana and it really had never done anything. So, I kind of looked at her and said, yeah, this is why it didn't help my seizures. I'm not really interested. And she just said, forget everything you think you know about marijuana. This is medical cannabis. So that was kind of a moment of I took a leap of faith with her because I, I trusted her and I was willing to suspend my disbelief. So we were actually going to the cottage for the first time with my daughters. And those things are really hard for me. Heat is it is still somewhat of a trigger. And I often couldn't be outside with my children. So I decided to try the CBD oil and I took it every day for three days when we were there. And it was the first time I had gone for 24 hours without having a seizure.

Trevor: Well, that's amazing. That's a huge change.

Ashley: It was it was really surreal. And I was able to be at the beach because I wasn't constantly rebooting from a seizure. And my partner and I cried because it just seemed like something that was really the impossible had become possible. There was at least hope there.

Trevor: So I assume that, you know, things are still going relatively well with you.

Ashley: Yeah, they are. So I once I kind of started to learn the ropes of medical cannabis, and that's obviously where SheCann come in. My seizures decreased and so did my anticonvulsant medications. So instead of having one hundred and fifty, two hundred and eighty seizures a month, I averaged about 12 to 15. And, you know, that's not perfect. It's not a cure. But it has been a massive, massive increase in my quality of life and has really given me an opportunity to help others now, too. So, the biggest thing, of course, and I know that you and Kirk have addressed this, is that there really isn't a lot of information about what to do once you get a prescription. So, having obtained one, I kind of was at a loss as to what do I take, when do I take it? Where do I get? And it all seems really bewildering, so I turn to the place that we all go when we have a question, which is the Internet's for better or worse in some. I found a lot of great resources in other patients, but it was also kind of negative and toxic and hard to sort out what was legal and what wasn't, to be honest.

Trevor: So, I've got two things. And actually, that's going to lead really well into, frankly, a gentleman I was talking to this morning. But if you don't mind sharing now, this is private health information. So you don't have to do mind telling us what other meds you're on for your seizures now that are sort of going with or without the cannabis like that are working well, we think with the cannabis you're taking.

Ashley: So, I don't mind speaking to that at all because they think it's a really important question that comes up a lot, especially as we see more people transitioning to medical cannabis. Currently, I'm still two seizure meds, that's Clobazam and also Lamotrigine. So my doses half of the Clobazam and a third to a quarter on the Lamotrigine.

Trevor: So, yeah, those are those are, like you said, standard seizure medications that I see in the pharmacy every day.

Ashley: And there's a lot of discussion about Clobazam, especially in and actually some of the interaction. So, you know, we're excited as a patient community to have more, you know, involvement in talking about what those things look like and how they can be responsibly managed.

Trevor: So, and I think that's a lead well into my next question. But just so happens, I had a gentleman last week and then happens to be there again this morning, who is, we'll call it, experimenting with, uh, medicinal cannabis. He's a he's a cancer patient. And he didn't have trouble getting his doctor to write the prescription and then get, uh, an oil in his hands. His big concern was, um. Now what? Because his doctor didn't have a clue on the dosing. He just doesn't know where to turn for. How should I use this? What types I use? Like all he had so many questions. I thought, oh, you know, I bet somewhere like SheCann might be a place, you know, because like everybody else, he's going to go do some research on the Internet. What would SheCann, if you had a patient like that sort of joined, SheCann what would where would they get pointed? What would happen with them in the community?

Ashley: So that is pretty much the reason we exist. I think we're sitting at almost sixteen hundred and fifty members. SheCann was started by myself and a handful of other women just over a year ago. And that is the most common question is people say, OK, yes, I've gotten to this point where my doctors prescribed. Now what? And it always comes back down to it sharing the experiences that people are having. So there isn't a lot of anecdotal evidence. You can't say take two mils, you know, each 2 milliliters of oil at 10 a.m. and then six to eight hours later take another 2. Everybody's going to be unique. The plant itself is so complex it becomes more about understanding what other people have tried and what has worked and hasn't worked and where to start. So we're still in a place where there's a lot of trial and error. But if someone is coming to us, you know, especially someone who is a cancer patient, we're going to do our best to make sure that their questions get answered. And there are no stupid questions and SheCann. That's the most important part. A lot of people haven't used medical cannabis or even cannabis at all. So these products, you know, they can get some, you know, recommendations from their licensed producer, but they're licensed producers are pretty sanctioned by Health Canada and they can't make a lot of medical claims about what medical cannabis can and cannot do for people. So that's where a group like SheCann. We can speak freely because we're patients first. And I think a lot of times the first thing we do is ask people what they're taking or what they're treating and then go from there in kind of collaborating and being very vocal and engaged as a group. The biggest thing is that the process can be discouraging if things don't work right away. And that's where we want to maintain that confidence that they can connect with us, you know, again and again and really check in through that process in, you know, maybe try something different or tried at a different time of day. Or maybe it's a matter of trying it on an empty stomach or with the small snack or, you know, micro-dosing. Those are all options that, you know, when you're starting out, you don't have any tools. Other patients sharing their experiences of trying those things can really empower you to feel like you can have some success with medical cannabis.

Trevor: Oh, that's great. And one of the things I really liked when I was flipping through the forum.  There seems to be a lot of stress, and I think it might have even been the terms and conditions that, we don't, we want to, you know, there's not a huge amount of science on how cannabis should be used at all, but you guys seem to be leaning towards let's have a look at what science there is and try to keep the wild claims to a minimum.

Ashley: Yes. We have kind of two premises that we always operate from and #1 with the team that that leads the group on a day to day basis, especially, you know, my lead administrator, Jamie, they really look at it as cannabis is not a magic bullet and it's not a panacea. So we don't want anyone to feel badly should they not find massive success in a cure from cannabis. And we also don't want to shame anybody for using pharmaceutical drugs. So that's always kind of the first piece. And the second piece is, as you said, it's all about education. There isn't a lot of firm science, but there are some studies emerging and there is science around the plant itself. So what we found, and it's really amazing to watch, is people who didn't even know what CBD stood for, you know, coming around and learning about elements of the plant, like terpene and dosing and milligrams and, you know, all sorts of other cannabinoids and profiles beyond just Indica and sativa or THC and CBD percentages. So the more information we can kind of give that is scientific and then the more emerging research we can encourage. You know, I think that that causes people to really feel like they have some say in the way they're using this medication. So, we're very big on education first and also on safe and legal access, because that's a really confusing thing. And it's very hard, you know, to help yourself if you don't know what it is you're taking. Right. Like, Oh, I got some good stuff. It really helps with my pain. OK, well, what about it was good. How can we replicate that? So sticking to the system we have, although it's not a perfect system, you know, we look to collaborate and work with government and the industry to make those things better based on their personal experience and the education that's emerging.

Trevor: Now, those are great points. And as a pharmacist and we you know, we're used to having things in the pharmacy that have been Health Canada approved and tested. So, yeah, I love that you guys promote the licensed producers. I know. Not that I know there, we will call it the more libertarian cannabis users out there who would just as soon not go through a licensed producer. But I think you at least get some, some amount of reassurance that there's been some testing done. And what's on the outside of the label is really what's inside the product. So, yeah, no, I completely agree. Um, sort of going back to my patient and I'm sure this comes up over and over again when someone, you know, is just starting out and has picked a strain and picked an amount. Uh, what sort of, what sort of guidance does the, uh, does the community give towards them? You know, how do I tell if this is working?  Like, some people, I assume would be straightforward. You know, in your case, I have less seizures. But, you know, the guy I was talking to this morning, he's nauseous and a lot of pain. So what sort of, how do we tell if the cannabis, if he's got the right amount and it's doing the right thing for him? What sort of guidance do you guys do on that?

Ashley: So, I get really excited talking about this part because it's kind of twofold. And I'm I'll just admit that I'm a pretty big data nerd. So, you may have noticed that there is a lot of charts and polls within the group, because I find that when we have numbers, it really helps people to get a benchmark for how things are working. So, some of what we'll do is poll the group and then we'll be able to kind of refer back and and we try to manage expectations. I mean, people have their own, you know, barometer of how well something is working. And if we can kind of encourage them to be self-monitoring, that's even more helpful, because then they can kind of stack their own experience up against, you know, a poll that says that most people find CBD, for instance, works really well for inflammation but doesn't always handle acute pain. So it's kind of a combination of data and your personal experience. But the second part that I get really excited talking about is actually something it was created by a friend of mine and somebody I met through this medical cannabis journey who is also a patient herself, and that's an app called Strainprint. So we have a lot of patients who use Strainprint. It's a medical cannabis journal that allows you to track your use in all the Licensed Producers strains and user strains are available in there so you can download it for free and then you just enter your session. So you start using it and you pick, you know, your method of ingestion. So let's say a vaporizer, I took three puffs of this strain X, I was feeling nausea at a nine out of 10 and then 20 minutes later or at a set increment of time later, it'll prompt you to say how you're feeling now. So it'll allow you to rate again on that scale of one to 10. And you'll be able to kind of follow that, because sometimes we want to believe things are really working and sometimes they're not working as well as we thought they were. But in that moment, if we're able to be objective, you know, we see a pattern emerge with that data. So that's been a really huge tool for so many of our members because it's also accountability in terms of what you're using. There were strains I thought were working really well and looking at them, you know, being able to export that data and even share it with my doctor. I can see that there were better options for me or maybe I needed less or more or more frequently or less frequently. So it's been really powerful. And we're able to kind of compare notes within the group with that information as well. So it dovetails really nicely.

Trevor: Oh, that's really great. We're just giggling over here because we like the idea of Strainprint so much there on our interview list. So, yeah, we think that, uh, well, it just goes you know, everybody likes having from, you know, their Fitbit to, you know, the calorie counter on their phone. So, it frankly is one of those, of course there should be an app to, you know, log what's going on with their medical cannabis use. And there's Strainprint was. So, we think that's a fantastic idea.

Ashley: Well, I'm very glad that you're having them on. And I will say full disclosure, that I liked them so much that I actually now took a position with them to be their community manager and patient liaison because they're allowing me to wear my SheCann hat at the same time and still keep that patient focused. So that's a very recent development and it's actually the first time I've been able to be employed in a decade. So it's kind of been a win-win-win for me as a patient and, you know, as an advocate and obviously something that I'm really excited about. So, yes, it was it was something that I cared very much about and has allowed me to continue doing a lot of the advocacy and working with SheCann as well.

Trevor: Well, congratulations. So just because we could go on and on about all the cool things that I've seen on SheCann. But just to just some of the interesting things I've seen, everything from discussions on edibles to a chart of the different licensed producers to, you know, what strain does the group like for motivation, to terpenes to growing your own, to psoriasis.  And those are just kind of a few of the things I saw in there. Just so the listeners have an idea about, you know, the wide range of topics, could you give me, I don't know, the top three or four that have peaked your interest lately that have come up?

Ashley: Well, it's interesting that you bring this up now because there's one that's very timely and relevant that comes to mind. We do a very engaged group. So, you know, we will 28 thousand reactions on social media in a month, which is an extreme amount of activity. So that generates a lot of great conversation and it really empowers people because they just have that volume of information. But one of the things that came up over the weekend, and it is a massive issue for patients, is accessibility and affordability. And what we are finding is that we had members that I've known and I've been following their journey personally for months and months, and they've had great success with medical cannabis, but now they actually can't afford to purchase their medication. So the cost of the medication not being covered by insurance and some people don't know is already actually taxed. It's the only medication that is taxed in this country with GST and PST and will be taxed with an excise tax should the proposed changes go through. It is already not affordable for most people. And so that has been a topic of discussion lately because we do have some advocates who will be speaking in Ottawa to the Finance Committee, and we wanted to be able to give them some more information. And it looks like, based on the early results of this poll this morning, that our members are really happy to engage in, that about 95 percent of our members are either under dosing or going without their medical cannabis completely, despite the fact that it works for them. So that is first of all, it's heartbreaking. As much as I knew that affordability was an issue, knowing that so many of these women and men are going without their medication because of something like cost, and they're often turning to pharmaceutical medications, including opioids. Because those at least recovered, and that's really, it's a really significant issue and it extends beyond the education into advocacy and just human rights, so.

Trevor: Absolutely. And the other thing that, you know, it's come up again and again is if one of the points of legalization was to put a dent in the gray and black market of cannabis, you know, affordability and how it's taxed is, you know, a huge policy issue.

Ashley: Yes. Yes. It's a very it's a very big issue. And, you know, I work with Canadians for Fair Access to Medical Marijuana or CFAMM a lot on these types of things because it's a natural progression that we have a voice. And that's why I think that SheCann communities so powerful because it can feel bewildering and very upsetting to be in these positions. So we do talk a lot about advocacy. I would say the biggest things that people have questions about, they're not comfortable talking to their doctors often. So, we often educate before they have a prescription. They're not sure. They don't understand cannabis. They have a stigma. We often look at having access for these patients if they're not sure about their own doctor prescribing, helping them connect with a reputable clinic. And, you know, we have clinics we work with nationally. And, you know, we're just a patient driven organization. So we're always looking for allies and whether that be licensed producers, whether that be clinics, whether that be pharmacists or medical professionals, we want to give people the best opportunity to discuss cannabis without the stigma and have them, you know, make the best decision for themselves.

Trevor: Well, like I said, we could go on for hours, but I think wrapping up on stigma's is a good a place as any.  Ashley, thank you very much for your time. Honestly, I think we'll we'll probably touch base with you for down the road because this has been fascinating and I'm sure we could do five or six episodes just on SheCann. But that was great. Thank you. I've learned a lot.

Ashley: Well, thank you very much, Trevor. And please feel free to reach out anytime you have any questions or comments. And I'm always happy to have an open dialog. And I appreciate so much that, you know, both of you as part of the medical profession are really looking to understand this and address it in so many different angles. So please keep up the good work. We as patients really appreciate it.

Trevor: So that was Ashley Brown of SheCann. That was a fantastic interview, one of my favorite so far, Kirk, we got more coming up next, though.

Kirk: We're moving on the Strainprint. They are Canadian owned business that's only about three or four years old. And they are growing and growing and growing and they are developing tools for us as clinicians. So let's talk let's talk this very enthusiastic.

Trevor: So let's go to Strainprint 

Stephanie: Hello.

Kirk: Hello there. It's Kirk here.

Stephanie: Hi There.

Kirk: Hi thank you very much for coming to Reefer Medness. Please introduce yourself.

Stephanie: Hi. OK, well my name's Stephanie Karasick and I am the chief creative officer of Strainprint Technologies.

Kirk: Cool. And you did this, what, two, three years ago? You came up with an idea for a Strainprint.

Stephanie: Yeah, well, actually, I'll go back a little further. About four years ago when I was in my early forties, I'm forty six now.

Kirk: You gave that away real quick.

Stephanie: I know it was I was seeing a psychiatrist at the time. I still see her actually. And she had diagnosed with PTSD, which I never really considered something that I might have had. I struggled with anxiety, depression for years, most of my life actually. And I was sort of unsure about how to treat some of the things I was dealing with, it was getting challenging. So she said to me, you know what I read some good stuff about soldiers using cannabis for PTSD, would you know, would that be something you would consider? And I actually was a little taken aback that a doctor would potentially recommend something I knew very little about. I tried it in my 20s recreationally. I hated smoking, so it never stuck. I liked I liked how I felt, but I didn't like the coughing and the stinkiness and all that. So I just never just never stuck. So when she sort of mentioned it, I was like, well, I don't I don't know. And I don't want to, do I have to smoke it? She's like, no, you can do something called vaping. And I'm like, what? Like, that is how naive I was I knew nothing. So anyway, fast forward a couple of weeks and I said, sure, I'll give it a try. She gave me a referral to see a doctor, Dr. Daniel Schecter actually.  I was one of the first patients I think of when he opened up his cannabinoid medical clinic back in August of 2014. And that time in Canada, they had just, I think, established the ACMPR. It was it was the MMPR and then it went to the ACMPR. He gave you a medical recommendation for I think it was a gram a day. And I looked and I said, perfect. Now what do I do? Which strains do I buy? And he said, well, I can't really tell you that you're going to have to trial and error. And I found that to be a little bit surprising, again, I was really looking for more guidance, hoping for more guidance, but, you know, he told me the best he could and I then was set off on a journey of discovery. And what I did was I bought a few strains from whatever I can't remember which were the first LP I tried. It might have been Tilray and Tweed, I think. And I bought a bunch of different strains he'd recommended, I try some CBD strains and I learned two things really quickly. I learned that A. Cannabis actually could work for me incredibly well, and B. Not all strains worked well for me. So I really had to take notes about it because I didn't want to make the same mistakes. And if I took too much of one, I felt like not like lethargic or not great. In another one I would take and just feel a little bit racy. But then others I would be like, no, this is perfect. And suddenly I could like a whole world opened up in front of me. So it really changed my life once I started to use it.  Am I going on too much here.

Kirk: This is wonderful because my research this morning and in the last couple of months since I've discovered your app was that was it you started journaling?

Stephanie: Yeah. So that's exactly what I think. So I all I could do really to not make the same mistakes and to also learn from past success was to write down what my experiences were. So, every time I inhaled cannabis, every single time, like I seem like a crazy person for saying this, but whatever it was, I had a different vapor like one or two different vaporizers. And I take three puffs at 5:18 p.m., you know, at 190 degrees, like I was really technical about it. And then I would, I would say within ten minutes felt calm and whatever, whatever. And so, I started to have my own little shorthand and after about six months of doing this, I went back to the doctor and I showed him, you know, what was it was a you know, what do you call it when you go back to your check in?

Kirk: The Follow Up.

Stephanie: The Follow up exactly, sorry I lost the word and showed him the journal and he said this is fantastic. This is this is this is beyond the scope of what I would expect from a patient. But that said, he was like, keep going because...

Kirk: Its working for ya.

[00:32:42] It's working and it sort of made me think I said to him, like, don't all your patients do that? And he goes, Well, no, mostly don't. You know, it's not really something you can force people to do. But I thought if there was like an app that could just because I wear a Fitbit every day. I know. Do you have a Fitbit?

Kirk: I did. I had one for a while. Yes.

Stephanie: So you know what's it about right. So I'm a kind of person who I like well, I hate exercising, but if I get this thing and it tells me that I need to walk more, then I might listen. So the same line of thinking led me to kind of go along the line of maybe there's something to help people to learn how to medicate better to follow their progress.

Kirk: So let's jump a couple of years. So you develop this app, you get you get these business acquaintances who are high fluting techie guys who are working with.

Stephanie: So yeah, luckily, I had a husband who was in software so he could help me sort of get some developers to help make the project, you know, from an idea into an actual thing. And then we got another business guy who happens to be a data architect of sorts. And he's like sort of like the wizard behind everything, Dave Berg and Andrew, who is like he put us all together. He's an old friend of mine from about twelve years ago. And we just started to realize, like together we could really build this thing and make it happen and help people use cannabis better. That's all we wanted to do.

Kirk: And you know, what I find so interesting about your business is now, Trevor and I've been doing this since October religiously. Last summer. Last summer, we were talking about how we could get into the cannabis industry and what can we do. And it seems exciting, but yet our professions prevented us. So we started doing some research and came up actually with no one seems to be doing a podcast that has health professionals.

Stephanie: That's awesome.

Kirk: Yeah, but you know, what was really interesting as we did this sort of like yourself is like, well, this is out there. It's we were the first country in the world to legalize medicinal cannabis. But yet the family physicians seem to be not for it. There seem to be a lot of roadblocks and barriers. And  what we've discovered, and your business is an example of this, this has been patient driven.

Stephanie: Exactly.

Kirk: The whole the whole industry of medicinal cannabis has been patient driven. So this this technology, this app that you've developed is now patient driven. And let's talk about the app. Tell me, how does this app work now?

Stephanie: So, yeah, so in a nutshell, like you said, it's patients. OK, so again, you're new to cannabis. You don't know much about it. That seems to be a large chunk of people who are using the app. You know, people like your mom, like, you know, just trying oils for the first time and whatever you want to know, you know, a little bit more. Certainly, if you're replacing traditional meds, you want to have more of feeling like this is medicine. So we're going to treat it like medicine. So first thing you do is you download the app from the App Store or Google Play. It's free, doesn't cost the patients a dime. Second thing is you're going to fill out just a very, very simple sign-up profile thing where it's going to ask you it. It's just it's very easy to do. It's a simple setup wizard. So take you through it. It's going to ask you which conditions you suffer, which symptoms you are looking to use cannabis to treat, because we're not treating the conditions. We're helping to treat the symptoms. And then once you're done that it asks you which strains you may already currently have, because most people do have like a recommendation or one or two products that they start with. We also have an Explorer Section that people can go on and look up if they are not sure where to start. That can help sort of form opinions. This is just based on, you know, amount of users and usage. So, again, it's just a crowdsourced information to find top trending strains for certain symptoms. OK, so you get the app, download it. Now you're on. You have you also get something called Strainpoints, which we developed. It’s a loyalty program because we figure, you know, why not incentivize people. It's not an easy thing to actually take the time to be mindful about medicating. So let's be rewarded for it. Why not. So we going to get some bonus points for that, which I can tell you about later, and then you're good to go and you're ready to track a session. What that means is just after you've medicated, whether you've inhaled it, ingest it... Whatever you do, you just you tap there's a giant button in the middle of the app when it was designed to be very user friendly and very simple. So I don't know if you see the interface, but it's like.

Kirk: I've downloaded it and I actually have played with it. And I had an opportunity to go to Colorado and in a legal environment, actually test it out. And it's a fascinating app. I have lots of questions on the on the nursing side of it. And I'm sure my Trevor, as a pharmacist, we both thought it was marvelous because it's almost like

Stephanie: Want to say I do want to say one thing.  My father was a pharmacist for fifty years, so I grew up in a drugstore literally behind the counter wearing a white lab coat, helping him count pills. And for me, I have immense respect for obviously pharmacy for dosing. And how we learn from, pharmacists are the gatekeepers, right? Like they're supposed to be all knowing, you know, they're the ones that tell you, oh, my God, you're taking this. I mean, now we have computers to help circumvent some errors. But I've seen, you know, my dad catch some crazy stuff in the day, you know, interactions with other med stuff like that, so for me, as a pharmacist daughter, this we have to treat cannabis in the same way. I feel that it's that's what has been lacking to this point, is that people don't view cannabis in the same way that they do, just in general, whatever a pill that they're taking, certainly not an opiate, opioid or anything like that. So, you know, just to get thing... So you track a session that right after you medicated and what it's done is it's set up in a way in a typical sort of a medical pain scale. So it's going to ask you, what symptom are you treating. I'm going to say whatever headache. How bad is your headache?  On a scale of one to ten? Most people can answer that question. If it's a ten, you're pretty much dying,  You know, most people can evaluate, oh, I can give this one to seven. OK, give it a seven. What are you consuming? And you can you just fill in. I'm taking, I'm vaping Blue Dream or whatever it is and I had five puffs of it. OK, put it away. And now the app is set to notify you based on the method of ingestion. So if you're inhaling it, you're going to get a notification of 20 minutes. And if you're, if you're swallowing it, you're going to get notification in an hour. So based on when the when you're when the cannabis starts to metabolize in your body and it's going to then ask you after 20 minutes, how bad is your headache now. Now you're catching someone in real time as they're experiencing the hopeful benefits of this medicine. ah, its not a seven anymore, right? No, actually, no. I can really say right now it's a three not in a month from now when I go to my doctor and he says, how did it help for your headaches? Yeah, it helps, you know, to be able to see I was a seven and I went to a three and also we asked for a mode of ratings. Does it make you feel tired, does it makes you happy, does it make you feel creative, focus, whatever? We have a whole list of them you pick and done. That's all we're doing. So over time, as you track these sessions, your personal snapshot, your profile starts to fill in and it starts to, you know, give percentages for how much efficacy you got with this versus this versus this. So, you know, you can sort of see how it lays out. The more information you put in, the more you get out of it.

Kirk: It's more it's a more comprehensive diabetic log in a sense. When you look at a diabetic tracking how they use insulin, how they eat and how they track, their food, their exercise and the medicine you've done.

Ashley: It would be along those lines.

Kirk: Yeah, you've done that. And I've played with this and I've gone deep into it. And I've noticed and this is something new that I've picked up in the last couple days here as I was just on the couch playing with your app, that I can actually modify this to my own needs. I met a friend of mine who has an autoimmune disorder, and he and I discovered that he is a card-carrying cannabis, a medicinal cannabis user. I didn't know that. And we just got into a conversation, you know, of course, sharing what the podcast. And I and I said to him, did you know about Strainprint? He said, no idea. So I brought it up on my phone. I showed him it and we went looking for autoimmune. And there it is. And you can basically program this app to meet your needs.

Stephanie: We have over we have over 350 conditions and symptoms listed. By the way, if something's missing, we have a great support team here so that people can email and say, oh, you know, how so-and-so is such and such and all listed and it will be up within hours.

Kirk: So from a patient care perspective, an advocate of medicinal cannabis in the more I learn about cannabis and if you listen to Episode Five, I declared I made a declaration that I believe that all people that use cannabis recreationally, non-recreationally, medicinal, however you call it, I believe the self-medicating and.

Stephanie: Hundred percent, I believe that.

Kirk: I believe that non-medicine users, recreational users, and what I liked about your app is that you do have a recreational option.

Stephanie: Yeah. And permit me to just say this about that because I didn't even know this when we when we added that option and we added that because we had users write in to say, you know what, sometimes they just out with friends on a Saturday night and I just want to use it recreationally. Can I track those sessions to my course? OK, let's give you that option. But what's interesting is that we're finding that some users who have been chronic users of cannabis for years, 20 plus years, they've never been accountable. So there's a lot of people that smoke a lot of weed. They're realizing if I have something, a tool that I can like, like Weight Watchers, where you start tracking how much you're eating. Yeah. And you start tracking. Oh, how much weed am I consuming in a day or whatever, a week or whatever. Suddenly we can suddenly we can, we can start, you know, looking at reducing that amount.

Kirk: Yeah, I have I have a friend of mine who I've known since the 60s, so I'm outing myself.  We've been dear friends for a long time and he's been self medicating, we've actually had these conversations, so I'm not going to out him by his name. But but, you know, I'm talking about him. We've talked about this and he's developed a dependency and a psychological disorder to cannabis like he is one of the nine percent.

Stephanie: And that will happen; that’s reality.

Kirk: He is getting therapy for it now. And I said, you know, you know nothing in harm reduction says you have to stop smoking cannabis. What harm reduction would suggest you do is you start tracking and being more cognitive of what you smoke and how you smoking it and why you're smoking it. And you should check out this new app.

Stephanie: OK, well, that's why we printed up words that say mindfully medicated. We want to be able to give people want them to say, you know what? I'm treating this as if I'm taking medicine because I am self-medicating. So, again, let's be accountable to something, someone something. See how much you're actually consuming. You can reduce. I've had people say they've reduced, so they've gone down from like maybe, I don't know, four or five grams a day, which is, you know, a lot to me. And they've gone down to maybe half of that. And that's amazing.

Kirk: Well, I've noticed, you have allowed you allowed twelve doses a day, right?

Stephanie: We do. But that's not that's not entirely true.

Kirk: Well, you, track 12.

Stephanie: You can track as much as you need to track, but we give points for up to twelve because people we don't want them to game the system to think that, you know, they can just track and log up all these points. And then because then it's the data that we want. Right. And by the way, all the data is anonymized. So you're not attached. We don't know who you are. The data is there. It's put into a giant pool of information that then gets sorted and filtered through our other software, which is Strain Analytics. 

Kirk: Yeah. And I was going I was going to ask you that when you log in, I can't remember. I think I provided my age, my sex and I think I've provided an email. I don't think you actually asked for my name.

Stephanie: So your age. So here's where we would get your name if you redeem for loyalty items. So we give away hundreds and hundreds of vapes and grinders and shirts and hats. And I thought it was just here. I'm in the office. A big shipment of new bamboo trays came in. For anyone that knows the app, that's something that's been a staple for a while. And we once you're ready to redeem for an item, you just put in your name and your address. So we do not tag to your data. So we don't know what you do, just know that you redeem for that item. So, yeah. So privacy, something we take very seriously.

Kirk: And I and I've read I've read all your privacy, you meet all the Canadian. Now you're a Canadian company, right. You're Canadian owned.

Stephanie: And we're in Toronto.

Kirk: Yeah. And you have your Canadian owned. Canadian shares. So you guys are you guys quick statistics. You gained three dollars million raised on Series A's private placement.

Stephanie: U.S. Funds yup.

Kirk:  U.S. funds. So you have U.S. customers. So you do. So you obviously, I guess clients, they are not customers.

Stephanie: Sorry it's confusing. We have patients that  are using the app in the States and in Canada. And then as far as like customers, because what we do is we sell the anonymized data in a subscription form.

Kirk: Right.  I want to get to. Let's stay with the app for a moment. You've got you've got tens of thousands of users. Yeah. You've got a half million medical records in there. You've got seven million data points and you're increasing 25 percent information a month.

Stephanie: Isn't that crazy? It's like it's actually mind-blowing.

Kirk: You're the Facebook of cannabis users.

Stephanie: Well, I mean, well..

Kirk: In a sense, you gather together all that information.

Stephanie: Here's the thing. And this is I mean, you just said earlier, you know, you talk to a friend and have you heard of this app? No, I haven't heard. I want everyone to know of this app using cannabis. If they're you know, I'm not talking about the occasional recreational user, but it is something that you're incorporating into your life. One hundred percent I want you to use this app. I want you to know about it, because not only are you going to learn more about what works best for you, but you are going to literally we are part of a generation now that is able to inform treatment guidelines for generations to come. Like you can be part of this this what we call it, the largest observational real time study on cannabis use.

Kirk: And that's exactly my notes. My notes say that real time use, how is it different than leafly, for example, leafly.

Stephanie: Leafly is a great app as well.  If people can go in and they can write reviews based on their experiences with particular strains, I believe I haven't actually done it on Leafly. I know that they have. It's also crowdsourced reviews. It's not exactly what we do because... There's no app for Leafly to be able to track your sessions or anything like that, but they again, they provide very useful information for people that really don't have another place to go. There's just not, there's nowhere to go if you're if you're somebody who's curious or you're thinking about it or you want to talk to your doctor about this, you're feeling a little bit shy or anxious. I mean, these are all things that we're told. Right. And we've I personally experienced those things, too. So we want to have people have a place to go. And in fact, I want to also say that we are weeks away from launching a Beta of our. Well, it's going to be pretty exciting, but it's going to be something of something of a community that we all have a place for people to just come and learn and, you know, metaphorically have a nice warm cup of tea and, you know, and talk among people who are in the same position.

Kirk: Steph, I have so many questions for you.

Stephanie: We will need to take into another podcast.

Kirk: I think so. But here's a couple real quick about the app here. Just how do you validate the data? I mean, when you look at the data, the data is coming in, there's some flaws.

Stephanie: That's great question. We put a lot of thinking into that, obviously, because we need to make sure. So there's two things. One is, our strains are all ACMPR validated strains, which means that you can go online, you can get the lab reports for many of the LPs, provide that with that are transparent, some are less. But we are working hard to get make sure that all the information on the strains that are in our database is up to date and it has full cannabinoid terpene profiles. So that's the first thing. So you know that when you're tracking against, you know, Pink Kush from Tilray, that we know which batch it is and we know what's in it, that's really important. Second thing is we do have algorithms in place to detect rogue users. So if you're if you're tracking, like, the same numbers, the same strains or the same results, or we have a whole bunch of algorithms in place to make sure we can clean up.

Kirk: For example, like some of myself playing on the couch, I put myself through a token use. You say, OK, I'm going to play with this. And so you'll pick up that whoever from this email address.

Stephanie: The system may pick it up. If there's something that looks weird about it or off about it, it could get flagged. I can't say for sure in that one case because don't forget, we have millions and millions of points of data.

Kirk: Seven million.

Stephanie: Yeah, I know. It's insane. It's a very valid question. We want to make sure listen, we had just about a month ago, we had our first medical journal published. From the University of Washington that this is really important stuff. So if the medical community can look at our data and say, yes, nothing's perfect, of course, it's not a clinical setting. However, it's something and it's something that if we're crowdsourcing this information so we know if thousands of people are having the same type of results, we can look at that and we can say there's something to it.

Kirk: Right. And that leads us right to the next the next business. I guess you guys, you have a Strainprint the app. But then now all that data you have Strainprint analytics. 

Stephanie: So we needed to put it somewhere, right. The data was starting to fill up and then we've been working on concurrently as the data has been pouring in this dashboard system to filter and sort this data. And what we've got now is a very, very slick and interesting and amazing piece of software that you can like. You can spend hours on it.  Sometimes I do like at nighttime and like I can watch Netflix or I can just play with the data.

Kirk: Look at my numbers. So you have the producer edition and the clinical edition. So, yeah. So the clinician is that for the clinicians, for the family doc.

Stephanie: Yeah. So for clinics if they want to be able to have the doctors, first of all the clinic edition, the clinics can have the software sort of part of the medical records. Right. So we can, it can be all talking to each other. So that's good. But also for like if a patient comes in with a certain, you know, MS or whatever and there is a 40 something year old woman that can go online and or on to our, you know, onto our app and then start seeing, like areas that, oh, well, it looks like you should be maybe an oil like this, like a one to one would be a good starting place or whatever. We can see what's working really well.

Kirk: So as a nurse, If I happen to have this my clinic as a nurse, I get a 40-year-old MS patient coming in. I can go to the data and say, let's see what other people within your demographic are using as a strain and terpenes and.

Stephanie: And even geography by the way. So, you know, if you're living so if you like, it's interesting. Like we can see the differences between what's happening in Manitoba, Alberta or B.C. versus Ontario, look, it's very interesting, the patterns and who's using what, so, yeah, we can slice it, you can slice and dice it however you want. Essentially the same data. It's just presented in a different way.

Kirk: It's a very interesting way. And in the way of, you know, when we're researching cannabis in the industry and how patient driven technologies are basically driving this industry, but it's also driving the care of patients. And it's you know, we just talked to and I guess we learned yesterday that there's a merger, not a merger, but there's a link between you and SheCann.

Stephanie: And we get very excited about that merger whatsoever.

Kirk: But no, no, I mean, just you've hired somebody and we just interviewed Ashley.

Stephanie: Ashley Brown. My goodness. do I love that woman. She's amazing

Kirk: We interviewed her yesterday and she's actually going to be part of this podcast episode, and we didn't know this. Right. So that's but there's another example of advocacy and so I don't know if I want to ask you a political question. How are you working with the family physician's group? You know, the Association of Family Physicians, the College of Families, Physicians, their position statement is that they're not recommending that family physicians prescribe cannabis.

Stephanie: Yeah, listen, I mean, I. I think I think people, patients are going to start advocating for themselves and they're going to they're going to find a way to get it, because ultimately, you know, there's a lot of antiquated thinking that's going on there.

Kirk:  I'm not putting you on the spot, but I think you're I think you're app is a result of that, a client, an educated client can walk into a doctor's office, say, you know what, here's some data for you. Here's how it's working for me. You can I can you add it to my care?

Stephanie: Yes. 100 percent right. Like, we want to be able to have more and more studies come out with the data to be able to help validate this for a lot of physicians who are doubtful or sometimes it just takes you know, this doctor may not do it, but I'm going to go to see a different doctor that that that is open to it. Like, sometimes you just if you're going to have, like, an older doctor that's pretty set in his or her way, then you move on if need be. If cannabis is something you're determined to try, then patients will find a way to do it. And that's becoming more and more important as we you know, as I as I'm watching this unfold, is just patient advocacy is really the future of, you know, like we are gone are the days where, you know, you walk into the doctor, you take to two of these in the morning and two of these at night. And I'll see you in a month. I mean, now people are pretty savvy to other options, what with the Internet and everything. Like, you know, it's a bit of a different time now. So we have to realize that and it's nothing about the recommendations from the colleges, but we have to be more open minded if it's working for hundreds of millions of patients, whatever, you know, and then obviously, why shut down the access to that. That seems very, very old school thinking and is not going to going to live that much longer, in my opinion. I think this is all going to go away, you know, over the coming years, the next few years.

Stephanie: So how do you think how do you think legalization of cannabis, no medicinal use is going to affect your business?

Stephanie: I, I really don't know. I mean, we've been pretty kind of nimble throughout and we're sort of we're sort of watching on the sidelines just like everybody else. The good thing is that hopefully it will help. I hate using the word, but it's the only word I can use, the stigma. I think it'll become more normalized. So I think, like, you know, just like there's liquor stores or whatever. Yeah, there's cannabis stores. OK, so people will start seeing as part of their regular life, which is, I think, useful. It's not something you got to go into like the back alley to like buy drugs from the dealer. So I think that will help. I think that that also and this is the part that concerns me a little bit, is that there are a lot of opportunities for people to misuse it because nobody knows really about it. We're just learning, you know. So that's why I feel that now more than ever, we need to keep this groundswell going. We need to get tons and tons and tons more, you know, exposure and users on the system learning about it. And then we can spit out the information back to the public, back to the media, back to the doctors, whoever it takes to start realizing that, hey, shit like people are using this. Yeah. And guess what? They're getting off of opiates. They're not using other medications. Like we got to watch. We got to listen.

Kirk: We in episode three, we interviewed a lawyer and his vision, you know, the whole craft beer industry is a craft budtender industry. When I had the opportunity to go to Colorado and walk into a dispensary and see, you know, the medicinal side and the recreational side, it was like walking into a craft brewing or a scotch whiskey tasting where you can tell,.

Stephanie: Did you go into those dispensaries in Denver?

Kirk: No, I went to Fort Collins and went to Organic alternatives. A nice little place, local business, local grow-opp, local, everything's local. These guys treated me really well. I sat middle of this old tobacconist’s place, you know, wood everywhere, glass in this mayhem watching every like I'm 21 years old to I swear one lady was in her 80s, people coming in with military fatigues, people like all walks of life, walking in, talking to the budtender, you know, picking their high. And I was thinking about your app at the time because I downloaded and brought it with me. I was thinking, boy, you know, you could almost be like a beer tasting app. You know, you could, you know, almost go on recreational side. OK, I've got the Terpenes you can actually follow and dial in your high is, as I call it.

Stephanie: You see how it can go in so many... it's pretty, we actually have a lot of things that we're going to be adding to it in the coming months as well to further enhance the experience and to make it even more accurate, like things like adding a menstrual calendar for women so that we can see the cycle.  There obviously must be correlations between the hormones in women. OK, let's track that. Let's learn things like weather. I mean, you know, people that suffer from migraines. How is that affecting how the efficacy of the cannabis? So there's so many areas that we can dial in.

Kirk: You have a really exciting business, like when I was reading through your business and, you know, you just raised 3 million bucks I noticed that you're looking at one of the interviews I was reading. You're looking to use that money to hire, hire and look at, you know, expanding into Australia, looking at expanding into other countries.

Stephanie: Yeah, I mean, the money is is exactly that's. Yeah, it's so it's so that we can hire great people and I cannot underscore that word enough.

Kirk: Well, I noticed there's no pharmacists or nurses on your staff,.

Stephanie: So we'll take this off line.

Kirk: You can look us up on LinkedIn. We're more than just groovy voices.

Stephanie: Oh, that's awesome. I love it. I love it. You're hired. Yeah. Yeah, I we don't. We have actually three amazing medical advisors, four amazing medical advisors. We just announced three new ones, so we were just so thrilled just to bring it back full circle. Doctor Schecter recently accepted a position as one of our medical advisors, which I couldn't be happier about, quite frankly, as well as Dr Carolyn McCallum, who's a very respected physician and a pharmacist as well, I will add from out in BC and Dr D. Elterman as well. So there's there we got some very big brains on this.

Kirk: Yeah, that's great.

Stephanie: And those people are there to guide and advise us on all things medical. I think Dr. Schecter is going to be off to Australia next week, so he will share his learnings with us, right?  Again, you know, it's about hiring and getting the right people. The good people. My goodness, there's so many good people that just, you know, need to need a chance, you know, and just moving forward, who knows what the future holds. We're just trying our best right now to provide. We're learning we're trying to share the learning as much as we can. And hopefully this conversation will seem very, you know, silly actually in a decade from now.

Kirk: It's our ignorance. You know, there's a friend of mine use to tell me ignorance is curable stupid's forever. And I think, you know, I think people misunderstand the word ignorance. Ignorance means that you don't understand something. It means you're teachable. You can learn about it.

Stephanie: And we've been cannabis ignorant for. Yes, pretty much eighty years or however long prohibition has been for.

Kirk: When I look when I look at your app, you focused we really focused on cannabis, which is fantastic. But one of the things we've discovered in our research is that people that have discovered cannabis start getting off some of their other meds like they might be. Yeah, they are. So I'm wondering, are you looking at that? Are you looking at.

Stephanie: Yes, the answer is yes, we do. We have something that we're working on right now to try and guide and track for opiates as well, because typically opiates, that type of medication that's become an epidemic. I don't know if you watch the CNN documentary recently that I think it's called Weed 4. Yeah. If you haven't seen it.

Kirk: All the research, I mean, there's so much medical research out there.

Stephanie: This is this is really a problem, the opioids are causing more deaths I believe in the United States than car accidents, breast cancer and guns, which is mind blowing. Right. So, OK, so we do. We do. We're working on some ways to be able to work to work that into the app. But also we're going to be working on some studies specifically with doctors who are going to be following patients and doing, you know, the best way we could do studies and in clinical trials for cannabis. Of course, as you must know, this is, you know, millions of dollars and years in the making. And we're trying to do. Time is running out, you know, we're trying to figure shit out and people are dying. And let's see if we can help those people not die.

Kirk: Well, and that's and that's the thing. This is a good way to. This is a good way to end the conversation. We all agree we need more study, but we can't delay, Cannabis is as someone said, the horses have left the barn right.

Stephanie:  They sure have they're running right now ramped, running in the field wild and we need to sort of like we need to say, hey, come this way. This is the right way. This is the good way, the other way is not so good.

Kirk: Let's study it and let's go this way and let's get some of the barriers and let's learn as we go. No, I'm an advocate of medicinal cannabis. I've seen it work. I've seen I've seen the perils of people that have abused cannabis, but I've also seen it work. So I'm all over this.

Stephanie: And nothing makes me happier, by the way. Nothing makes me happier than when I get an email, a personal email from somebody who's used the app that has suffered for years, that has tried everything, and they stumble upon cannabis. However, they stumble upon it and they stumble upon the app however they did. And they suddenly have their lives dramatically improved to the point where they're like, you know, playing with their kids again and they're smiling. And, oh, my God, I could just I could just cry. And I do I get I do get to read. And that's the best part of my job. But when I get to read those success stories.

Kirk: Yeah, I'm loving your enthusiasm. We we're hoping.

Stephanie: It has to, listen this is a seven day. I say eighteen hours a day, seven days a week job.

Kirk: But you sound like you really enjoy it and it's that's and that's a blessing.

Ashley: You're right. It is. Thank you. Thank you for taking all this time to speak actually. Really.

Kirk: Well, I'm just loving this because we've given our producer the job of making the last two interviews into an hour show and I think you've just challenged him.

Stephanie: Right. You know what? It might have to be a two-part series.

Kirk: So you know what? That that's not that that's not a bad idea. We're changing as we go. Thank you very much. Because you guys approached us and this is this has been a fabulous discussion. And I wish you all the luck and we will touch base with you again. And I am going to follow your app and see the changes.

Stephanie: I would love to send you some stuff. Take it easy. Have a great day. Bye bye.

Kirk:  So what do you think of that interview Strainprint?

Trevor: The Strainprint was fantastic. Steph from Strainprint is you can't get someone more enthusiastic, but they do and frankly doing some fascinating stuff.

Kirk: As a pharmacist, what do you think about that.

Trevor: That's what we want. We want data. You know, we want to be able to say, you know, if like you said, if you're a forty-six-year-old MS patient, you know, what have other forty-six-year-old MS patients from the Dauphin area used and she's collecting the data to find out.

Kirk: I never got into I never got a chance to really discuss some of the some of the issues with the data because there are statisticians will tell you there are flaws. I mean, this isn't the, double blind placebo-controlled trial. But the part I was amazed with is how closely they're working with a licensed producer, that it's not just what Trevor thinks is Purple Kush, it's, you know, what Purple Kush is coming from Aurora and you know, the breakdown of the cannabinoids and terpene. So, you know, it's not you know, there's all the data could always be better. But it's not just out there in left field.

Kirk: It's organize, organize data. And, you know, and people are recognizing I did read the study and that that was the study. How does marijuana strains and dosing affect depression and anxiety is a new study that looks for answers. And that was in Forbes magazine and it's Washington State University. So their academics have picked up on this app. 

Trevor: Yeah, no. And that's what you're saying. You know, it is getting published and they're collecting literally millions of data points. So I'm hoping to see lots of studies in the future. And like you said, maybe this could lead to, you know, what you and I are used to dealing with, which are clinical practice guidelines. You've got patient X who's got condition Y. What might work for them.

Kirk: But we also want to remember the art of medicine, too,.

Trevor: If we don't, we will we won't forget the art. But I love the data. The data is great.

Kirk: The science verses the art. so let's talk a little bit about a local sponsor. We did the pop fizz here.

Trevor: Pass the Pop.

Kirk: Pass the pop.

Trevor: Sorry, Pass the Pop.

Kirk: I was walking, walking to work today to the studio and I got some notes from the fellow.  Currently he has three hundred types of beverages growing to twelve hundred by the end of the spring. This is a this is a gourmet pop shop.

Trevor: It is. But now not that we should downplay the gourmet because we like that part, but I've got to throw in a plug for my son Eric Pass the Pop is easily his favorite store in the in town because.

Kirk: Ice cream, corn dogs.

Trevor: And all these candies that for me anyway, I hadn't seen since I was like 12. So the fact my 12 year old is loving some of the things that I hadn't seen was 12. It was it was fantastic.

Kirk: Retro Candy. They've got a wide variety of ginger beer. Now, I'm not a pop advocate, but I do like my ginger beer.

Trevor: Ginger beer. Excellent.

Kirk: And I like tonic water in my gin.

Trevor: I don't like tonic water. And I don't love gin, but yeah, but my wife likes both.

Kirk: Pass the pop can be found on Facebook.com/passthepop. They are at @Passthepop204 on Twitter. They also have an Internet business.  They are Prairie Mountain Specialties and they can be found. There are 20 retailers that are in the network. So you can order online through Facebook and you can order online through www.pmspecialties.ca.  So thank you very much. They are the sponsor of this episode. (PLEASE NOTE: the "pass the pop" links are dormant at the time our new webpage was launched)

Trevor: Pass the Pop.

Kirk: Pass the pop. Now we're going to lead into Melissa Stefaniw. I have a copy of an unpublished CD that even the artist is asking me about.

Trevor: She doesn't even know she has it.

Kirk: she doesn't even know she has it. It got past me from a dear friend of hers, who passed it to me. And Melissa called me and said, Kirk, I need a copy of my CD, please. She's given all of all her CD away. Now, what happened is I went for a ride and I was listening to the music and the song that I picked for to end this episode with is called Gentleman's Disgrace. Melissa was telling me that she won in Alberta Foundation for the Arts. She won a fifteen thousand dollar award.

Trevor: Congratulations.

Kirk: Melissa Stefaniw is known in the community as an artist. She's played on the stage many times and those in Dauphin know her and love her. And please stick around this is six minutes and the song builds and it builds and builds. Don't just stop. Listen to the end.

Trevor: I think we just finished off Episode six,.

Kirk: Episode six Reefer Medness - The Podcast.

Trevor: Make sure you come back and look for us on those social media sites on.

Kirk: What is it, Facebook, the Facebook,.

Trevor: The Twitter,.

Kirk: The Twitter there.

Trevor: The the Instagram,.

Kirk: The Instagram. we sound like a bunch of hicks. We are really hicks

Trevor: maybe a little hickist. I think we're @reefermedness on all of those. And then what's our website?

Kirk: Our website. People need to go to our website. Our website is informative. Our website is educational. Don't just go there to look at our pretty faces masked by microphone Reefermed.ca

Trevor: Reefermed.ca. Go there. Learn along with us. Until next time.