While traveling the Saskatchewan highways, Kirk sees a sign in the ditch directing him to a unique recreational cannabis shop. He takes a hard left to visit a First Nations Reserve looking for a simple short Road Story. Instead, he finds Montana, a caring individual who manages his reserve's recreational cannabis store with a harm reductionists approach.  This simple short Road Story became an entire episode.  Listen to how one individual can help a community with cannabis.

Kirk brings Trevor another batch of Summer Road Stories. Kirk spent time traveling through Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba learning from Bud Tenders. We hear how CBG, the Cannabinoid of the summer, is “a bubble bath for the brain”. Kirk and guests discuss the strategies Bud Tenders use to help people buy their medical cannabis. While sitting in one small town, a long boarder stopped to talk about the cool van Kirk is travelling in and leaves a cannabis story behind that teases the Manitoba Government. Summers are short in Canada but the stories about cannabis are never ending. Tune in to this episode for some grass roots My Cannabis Stories from Prairie people

It is safe to say, Mr. Clayton Moore is a growing concern within the hemp industry of Southwestern United States.  As an undergraduate within the Texas A&M Agricultural Soil and Crop Science Department, he has his fingers, hands, and mind buried deeply in growing a better understanding of hemp and cannabis.  He is: a leader within a student lead initiative called CHIL, an advocate for decriminalization of cannabis convictions, the lead researcher within the university Hemp Conversion Program, plus he writes for the local industry focused newspaper.  He is a busy young fellow following the passions of generations within his family of agronomists.  The future of Hemp is in good hands with this student of hemp. 

We first met Spencer Payson in Episode 75 - Road Stories. When he opened a new store in our hometown of Dauphin Manitoba, Kirk went to say hello. Talking to an owner of a Recreation Cannabis store provides practical insights to how society is changing it perception on cannabis. Sitting in the staff room of his new store, Spencer shares personal and professional stories about his cannabis experiences. We also learn how he trains his staff to assist those customers looking to buy their medical cannabis from his recreational store.

David Traylor has 2 undergrad degrees in Bio-Chemistry and Molecular Biology. He is a former pro lacrosse player. He got involved in BioTech in the 1990's and dealt with the difficulties of getting molecules like erythropoietin to market at scale. From there he got into investment banking. Obviously, with that background, the next step is to do cannabis deals on 6 of the 7 continents! Golden Eagle Partners was the first investment banking firm to jump into cannabis, which they did in 2013. In addition to doing international cannabis deals, David's experience has led him to be involved with financial and cannabis related conferences around the world. In fact, David is the reason our co-host Trevor was at CannMed 23 in Florida. Listen as Trevor and David discuss: What is THC+ and THC-? Where is the cannabis industry going in the next three years? Did Canada blow it on the business side of cannabis when all that money poured in post national legalization in 2018? Why is it so hard to scale a biological product like cannabinoids? David wraps up with talking about the importance of humility when dealing with cannabis. Whether that is dealing with patients, growing the plant or navigating the cannabis business world, we think a reminder to be humble is a wonderful mantra!

Ryan Kocot was the in-house legal counsel and director of compliance for a multinational cannabis company. He now has his own practice in California, Massachusetts and New York. He helps operators scale into multiple States, do joint ventures, trademark, and other intellectual property license agreements.  Listen as Trevor and Ryan discuss the weird and counter-intuitive land of multi-states operations, trade marks when cannabis products aren't federally legal, and how Trevor's pipe dream of being a cannabis gummy mogul is way more complicated than he thought.

Terry O'Regan has spent his career in the pharmaceutical industry. He has worked for several Big Pharma companies including ones that have developed important treatments for neurological diseases like Multiple Sclerosis. Terry had heard there was a class of therapeutics for neurological conditions that pharmaceutical companies weren't working on, cannabinoids. Terry kept hearing from neurologists that cannabinoids held great promise for neurological conditions. Enter Brains Bioceutical. Brains is involved in trials around the world looking at phytochemicals including cannabinoids. Trevor and Terry discuss how cannabis medicine is moving into the pharmaceutical space and how all our "Brains" could be better with the right cannabinoids. Come have a listen.

A short intro for the eminent Dr. Ethan Russo is challenging. Ethan Russo is a neurologist who explored the Amazon rain forest in the 90's to explore medicinal plants with aboriginal tribes. He returned to the USA and became interested in medicinal cannabis. He quickly became an expert in the field, and worked as a consultant for GW Pharmaceuticals. Later, as a Senior Medical Advisor for GW, he was involved with the development of Sativex and Epidiolex. Dr. Russo founded CReDO Science, creating innovative products and services related to cannabis and the endocannabinoid system. Trevor and Dr. Russo discuss Cannabinoid Hyperemesis Syndrome (CHS). It is a relatively rare, but very unpleasant condition that causes some heavy users of cannabis to be very nauseous and vomit a lot. Dr. Russo and collaborators have developed a genetic test that may be able to predict who will get CHS and thus who might want to avoid THC containing cannabis altogether.  Then Trevor and Dr. Russo discuss THCV. Come hear about all the potential indications for this lesser known cannabinoid. Make sure you listen to the very, very end of this episode for a hidden my cannabis story.

We've got another amazing group of attendees from CannMed 23!

One evening they said dinner was on Lanai Beach. In Manitoba, if you are at a conference and someone says dinner is on Lanai Beach, then Lanai Beach is the name of a room. But in Florida, they actually meant dinner was on a beach. That sounds like a lovely idea, unless it is over 30 C and there is no shade. Thankfully, I brought a ball cap for my bald head and I met Dr. Joe Thompson also looking for some shade beside a pole. Dr. Thompson trained as a pediatrician, but now is the President & CEO of the Arkansas Center for Health Improvement. They have a program where they are going to analyze the data of people who got medical cannabis in Arkansas and see what happened to Health Outcomes. You want to hear about how that study will be done.

Dr. Leah Johnson Pharm D is a pharmacist and we met her in the Poster Hallway. Her Poster was about palliative care patients in California. Her group believes that if patients have access to cannabinoid medicine during palliative care, that will promote a better quality of life for the patients. Dr. Leah helps patients with their cannabis therapy and is a Cannabis Speaker and Educator across the US. She is on the Executive of the Pharmacist Cannabis Coalition of California (PCCC).

I met Akeem during the opening reception of CannMed 23. I didn't know anyone at the conference yet, so thankfully, he came up to me, read my name tag and introduced himself. Soon we discovered we were both from Canada, and we laughed over the fact the sliders were taken away too quickly. He told me he was nervous about a main stage talk he was giving. Now I understand why. He was giving a very technical, science heavy talk to a room full of cannabis doctors and researchers. But he killed it during his talk. He even handled challenges from the audience. I got to collect some audio from Akeem right after his talk. He’s from Mississauga. He’s a huge basketball fan. He has a nephew who Uncle Akeem really wants to become the next Lebron James. But for our story, Akeem is a Canadian lawyer turned hemp farmer turned CEO of the BioTech company Canurta Inc. His talk was about cannaflavins and their potential to treat glioblastoma, a common and aggressive form of brain cancer.

Bruce Mackler was involved with Prairie Plant Systems in Flin Flon when all “legal” Canadian Government Cannabis was grown in a mine in 2000. That became Cannimed in Saskatoon. And that got bought out by Aurora. Former lawyer that fought cases against the FDA. Former immunologist. His company, Ethicann, is developing a sublingual tablet for Multiple Sclerosis as a competitor to Stativex.

Ahmed Labied – Morocco - At the opening reception of CannMed 23, there were all these people with green t-shirts that said Morocco. Trevor introduced himself and was told he had to talk to Ahmed Labied. Ahmed explained that in August 2023 there should be the first legal crop of cannabis coming off the field in Morocco and that they’re organizing a cannabis conference in Morocco in November 2023.

Texas A&M - Everything is bigger in Texas. These tall gentlemen from Texas A&M are all about hemp. Russell Jessup is an Associate Professor Texas A&M. Clayton Moore is a Student Researcher at Texas A&M in AgriLife Soil & Crop Sciences. David Baltensperger is a Professor and the Head of Soil & Crop Sciences at Texas A&M. Listen to hear what Texas A&M has been doing with hemp.

Cathie Hiegel - Hear Cathie’s winding road from cytotechnologist to writing the textbook, “A Microscopic View of Medicinal Cannabis”. It really is a very well referenced, easy to read text on Cannabis.

Markus Roggen - Our Germany, American, Canadian chemist. Markus runs Delic labs at UBC in Vancouver, BC. Although it really has nothing to do with the high-powered chemistry his company does every day, Markus is a little obsessed with cannabis names. He found that every year when he gets new students, he has to re-explain cannabis nomenclature. He wondered if he could develop a new classification system for cannabis. Long time cannabis aficionados may hate this, but the rest of us might really like it.