 Good evening all, may I invite all Catholics to sign the cells in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, amen. Heavenly Father, we come here before you today, Lord Jesus, to this very important lecture on cannabis very timely indeed. We ask that you anoint each and every one of us in this room. We ask that you also anoint those who are watching us virtually, Lord Jesus joining us virtually. We ask that you continue to anoint the professor so that what he would deliver, Lord Jesus, would be beneficial to us here today and as a country as we try to develop the regulations towards the whole cannabis regime. We ask that you guide the discussions taking place today to help the questions that will be asked today to be directed so that it can lead Lord Jesus to us advancing that whole medical cannabis regime. We ask this from Jesus Christ our Lord, amen. Thank you, DPS. At this point we will have some welcome remarks by Dr. Sharon Belma George. Ms. Dr. Belma George is the Chief Medical Officer of St. Lucia. Thank you very much, Madam Chairperson. Good evening to all. I recognize Honorable Emma Hippolit, the Minister of Commerce, Manufacturing, Business Development, Corporatives and Consumer Affairs. The Deputy Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Commerce, Mrs. Charmaine Justin. Dr. Gerald Thompson, the CEO of the Medicinal Cannabis Authority of St. Vincent. Mr. Dylan Norbert English, the Legal Counsel of the Ministry of Commerce. Our health team, we know that we have quite a few persons here to have the discussion with us and we have over 100 also on Zoom and also on YouTube. Good evening and a warm welcome to you. For us in the Ministry of Health, we have been very pleased to be working along with the Ministry of Commerce on the Medicinal Cannabis Bill. And as you are aware, for us in the Ministry of Health, evidence-based data is extremely important. We look at our local health situation where NCDs continue to be over 82 percent, the cause of death within the country. And our recent step survey, our behavior risk factor survey has highlighted where some of the modifiable risk behaviors are. So of concern to us, alcohol use and abuse has been on the increase, we see it in younger age groups. Tobacco use as well, where we noted over 65 percent of the population from our survey reported smoking daily. Also overweight and obesity, over 65 percent of our population, raised blood pressure and also raised blood glucose. One of the things which we have appreciated quite a bit, especially with Mr. Norbert English, who worked closely with our team, was ensuring that there was open, honest dialogue with the various stakeholders. And today is another example of ensuring that there is stakeholder and discussion as we move forward with the Medicinal Cannabis Bill. What we continue to advocate for at the level of the Ministry of Health is to ensure that we use the data that is available and we ensure that our policies also reflect evidence-based data. Another day is research that shows the medicinal properties of cannabis, in particular Marinole and Canasol, which has been approved by the FDA. After appropriate and effective studies have been effected, we have to ensure that whatever products are used, are used with market authorization to ensure quality and standardization. We also have to ensure that whatever manufacturing of products are done locally, they must have strict standards to ensure quality and also to accurately determine the concentration of drugs that are present. We also want to ensure that whatever mode is used, it ensures standardization as well. Some of the strengths which the Ministry of Health advocates for within the bill is ensuring that whatever is prescribed is from a registered medical practitioner and that whatever is available is through a duly authorized pharmacy. We also appreciate the fact that the Ministry took the time out to review the implementation in similar jurisdictions and documented the lessons learned in the region to ensure that whatever is being proposed in St. Lucia is done as efficient as possible learning from others and other jurisdictions where such legislation was implemented. One of the very important points which at the level of the Ministry of Health, because you would understand, we have a mandate for health and safety of the population. We have a mandate that is very protective given the health burden that we are already managing in country as I indicated the issues of NCDs and the modifiable risk behaviors that we note and we continue to see through our various surveys. We have to ensure that whatever measures we implement, all of the safety nets are also in place to support and ensure whatever we do is done with the best possible outcomes. One of the gaps which we note is the lack of data on current use. On current cannabis use, the last report that I've been able to get my hand on is the OAS CCAD report of 2016 which showed that over 25% of students in the age range, 13 to 17 years used cannabis and this is eight years ago. And St. Lucia was the third highest use within the Caribbean. So this is very outdated. There is need for new data to show the real use. And I think we need to be open and honest when it comes to use. Cannabis, I think way back when it was seen as used by rastafarians or persons on the block, this is not in 2024 in St. Lucia. Every strata of society, every profession is a lot more widely used than is openly admitted. So there is definitely a need for data and whatever we implement must reflect the reality. It must reflect the culture of what's happening in country. We want whatever we do. It must also be realistic. We have to ensure that with the implementation, we have the capacity to monitor, to evaluate and the capacity to regulate. There's also the need for capacity enforcement given our already limitations with our police force. And for us in the Ministry of Health, when it comes to drug use and misuse, we have a more protective layer. It's not our concern to put anybody in prison. We are not about that. For us, somebody who has an addictive issue, our slant is about getting care and bringing them back to the best of health. That is where we are focused on. So if you review the bill, it calls for a lot of processes and procedures from growing to transporting to prescribing. We have to ensure that those measures are adequately put in place to be able to regulate properly what we are about to implement. It's one of the issues I have whenever we speak about cannabis, that comparison with alcohol. Alcohol is not better and I think it's a little hypocritical to say that we have alcohol readily available. It should not be readily available. It should not be readily available to minors. We see the issues. We get it in our health facilities, the end products of alcohol use and abuse, and even in younger age groups. So we know that we've not been able to regulate well alcohol use, even among our very young persons. And also, for example, we've passed the smoke-free space legislation for indoor and outdoor spaces. That's amendment to the Public Health Act in 2019 and the regulation in 2020. And this is one of the areas that we've not been able to enforce with the change made in the regulation. And from a health perspective, we see the outcomes of that. We see it in our ER. We see it at the levels of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease or COPD that we register at the hospitals in our healthcare facilities. So I think it is extremely important as we implement, we ensure all of the various levels are in place to ensure that it is done efficiently. Two other things that I want to also add, we have to ensure with this that we have adequate public and patient education. The data and the research has shown the medicinal values of CBD, but we must not forget that the harmful effects of THC still exist. So it is important that we utilize the beneficial parts of the plant, but also safeguard against the parts that are still harmful. The other aspect which we definitely need to strengthen on is our mental health and social support services, especially in relation to the youth. So we have to ensure that we have adequate information going out to the public, but especially the younger age group. We have to ensure we have the necessary social services in place to ensure we safeguard against them and we protect them at all costs. At this point we are very pleased for the level of consultation and collaboration that we have done with the Ministry of Commerce on Implementation. So we just hope that all of the necessary measures are put in place to ensure that this is done as safely as possible to ensure we get the beneficial aspects that are there. Thank you so much. Thank you Dr. Belma George. At this point we will have the presentation on medicinal cannabis and its applications. This presentation will be done by Dr. Gerald Thompson, and as I indicated earlier, Dr. Thompson is the Chief Executive Officer of the Medicinal Cannabis Authority of St. Vincent and the Grenadines. He is also a specialist in allergy, immunology and infectious disease. Ladies and gentlemen, Dr. Gerald Thompson. Pleasant good evening to everyone, whatever minister, it's a pleasure. And the audience here and all those who are in cyberspace, it's certainly wonderful. I must say I am not new to St. Lucia. As you know I'm a medical doctor. I'm actually a microbiologist by profession and I did internal medicine. I would want to do infectious diseases, the masters in public health in New York, Columbia University. And then I went into private practice. I went into private practice at the core of what was the HIV epidemic. And there I learned a great deal. Now let me say I saw a Vincentian lass and I got a little connected minister and I moved back to St. Vincent and the Grenadines, leaving New York. And I caught a bug, a political bug and went into politics where I became the minister of telecommunications, science, technology and industry. At the time it was setting up ECTEL. I became chairman of ECTEL on a number of occasions and I was president of CTU. And I left politics but became a special advisor to the prime minister dealing with troubleshooting things, the airport. And he asked me to look at cannabis like this and I basically have been there for the last four years dealing with this. And so it's with that particular background that I come to you. Now let me make sure I have all the things right. Let me start off with the subject of pain, pain. Today in this modern era we have a number of things to help relieve pain. But I'm a student of medical anthropology. And when you go back in history you start to understand that throughout the ages people had to use all sorts of different remedies in terms of relieving their pain. We know there were wars and battle people were wounded. A farmer a thousand years ago who fell down and sprained an ankle, what did they do? Did they take aspirin and some ibuprofen? No. Aspirin was only discovered in 1893 just a matter of 120 plus years ago. Ibuprofen, Advil, Motrin all those things we know. 1961 just a matter of 60-something years ago we started to get ibuprofen. And it's been only over the last 15-20 years we started seeing a lot of the other potent medication. But one medication being around for a long time is opium. And this is the whole history of opium and the opium wars in China. It's fascinating. That's not what this topic is going to be about. But let me say the opium poppy, the seeds, if you really extract the stuff from inside the seeds you're going to find three or four important substances, the alkaloids, one of them being morphine and one being caudine. One being morphine and one being caudine from the poppy seeds. And sometime later somebody found out that if you boiled the opium you could create heroin. And we now know of black heroin, gray and white. White heroin was from Asia, the Asian heroin, pure stuff. Black heroin was a crude mix up and so forth. So if you were taking black heroin and so sorry about the racial connotations to it. But if you were taking black heroin and somehow you found a dose, somebody gave you a dose of white heroin. Pure heroin, if you take the same dose of the white heroin you're going to overdose. And we then found a way of making synthetic opioids. And in my last few years working in the United States, I can tell you I wrote a ton of fentanyl. Patients would come in, the drug reps came and said the fentanyl, synthetic opium. Don't worry, we'll fix you up, it's good stuff. And I wrote a ton of it before I left the United States to return to the Caribbean. We need to find five, six years later the fentanyl epidemic and now 106,000 people die of fentanyl overdose every single year in the United States. From synthetic opium. I used to do it as a form of fentanyl called duergesic patches. So take it and give the patient to slap it on. Let's take that off on the market because of the addictive nature of these particular things. And I could go on to other things, Valium, Zanax. In Europe the greatest cause of death, of overdose death is coming from Valium Street, Zanax. And I have some comments on that in terms of how we look at that. For me as an infectious disease specialist in the 90s, in the early 90s, I had a number of HIV patients. I had a lot of them. New York. My area of study was HIV in the elderly. I published a paper of 60 patients of persons over the age of 60 with HIV. The men, business men, white men, would drive down into New York, pick up prostitutes, have sex and then return home. Then we started finding their wives and them coming down with HIV. I published an ICAC in 1989. I don't want to give you any idea how old I am and so on. But I remember with my patients, one patient came to me. He was a lawyer and he was losing weight. And he said, Doc, do you know, this is 1990, that in New York state they are allowing us to use cannabis in order to smoke, in order to keep our weight up and put us. I'd never heard it out before. I thought he was strict. So I called my lawyer. My lawyer said, yes. He knew about it because he was a lawyer. And of course, I must admit this, the type of insurance he had, you know, it wasn't something that I was going to reject. But he said, I have a couple of friends and he brought a friend the next week for the same thing and they had the same insurance and, you know, I've got to tell you, the reimbursement was good. But I left to go down to the Caribbean. And when I came back, there was a letter on my desk from the federal government saying, I must not prescribe any cannabis. It's illegal, so on, so on, so on. I started looking around to see if cameras were there. How did they know, you know? What it was at the time was that they had just passed the third international treaty convention and they had sent letters out to every physician in the United States. So I received one. It wasn't that they had caught me in any way writing letters. But the fascinating thing was that I saw these patients put back on their weight. I wasn't really writing the letters. They had their own network and they were putting back on their weight. Their appetite was good. I used to give these patients anabolic steroids, something called megas, so that it could stimulate their appetite because we're losing weight. I was part of a group. We went to Kenya. We were trying to use alpha interferon as one of the alternatives to AZT in the treatment of AIDS. And there people were coming in thin like a stick. And in that area they called AIDS Slim's Disease. And again, you know, it was fascinating how for those patients with experience now, the use of cannabis, it stimulated their appetite and they were able to put on weight. Apart from the catechia and so that comes with HIV, there was something that wasn't treating the HIV but overriding the anorexic effect of the HIV. The inflammatory anorexic effect and they started really putting on weight. I wanted to see the experience. So even with that I was not sold on cannabis. I must tell you I got my own little prejudices about cannabis and so forth. But it was only until 1995. I had to attend a CME lecture. And the person who was going to give the lecture was Dr. Raphael Mushalam, the father of cannabis. At the time I hadn't realized the significance but I'm there and I'm there, I'm not there. You know how you attend the lecture, you're supposed to be there, you want to go somewhere else. And this lecture was about he had discovered a new system in our body, the endocannabinoid system. And my mouth just dropped because I couldn't explain what was going on with marijuana and weight gain and so. But here he was presenting something that was going to try to explain that whole process in cannabis. In those days because of the various laws it was impossible to conduct rare research. Double blind studies, scientific studies that you want. You could conduct studies but all the studies were oriented towards proving that cannabis was bad. I did my stint a couple of months at NIH and so forth. Right in there in Maryland there's a center called NIDA. It's the National Center of Drug Abuse here it says. Any cannabis that's cut down in Texas or Maine or anywhere they would ship it off to NIDA, they store it. And anybody who wants to do research has to apply to NIDA to get cannabis from them to do the research. You can't grow your own and do research. You've got to get it from NIDA and you have to sign off that you've got this amount and so forth. But I know some of the stuff has been there for five years, six years and it's all the terpenes and all this kind of stuff has evaporated and so. And whatever studies would be done really had some question. But here was this Dr. Mushalom with a new story. Right, let's see if I get this right. Now we all should know by now I really hate to repeat that internationally there are three drug conventions. Three international, St. Lucia's a signatory, St. Vincent's a signatory, all the countries of the world I believe are signatory, maybe one or two. And the single convention of 1961, convention 1971 on psychotropic drugs and then the 1988 convention on trafficking of narcotic drugs, N means narcotic drugs, N, D and P, psychotropic drugs. There is then a division of schedules. Sometimes the schedule is labeled ABC but this real schedule is a schedule one and cannabis is in schedule one. But guess what, they created an extra schedule, schedule four and they put cannabis inside that too. And schedule four was drugs that had no medical value, no medicinal value whatsoever. You should never use those. But cocaine and opium and all these other things was not in schedule four. Only cannabis and a couple of other things. And it meant that you should really stay, I mean it was not just put in one nail but put in a few nails and so forth to make sure nobody uses this stuff. And so I want to say that in 2020, where we have number four there, cannabis on the World Health Organization recommendation was removed from schedule four. And the World Health Organization acknowledged that cannabis has medicinal value. Now the World Health Organization also suggested that cannabis be moved from schedule one to schedule three. But it was voted down by a very narrow margin at the CND of 26 to 24 votes. In the CND there are 50 something countries there and so forth. Now let me go on. Let me, I could fast-track and this is just an old slide to tell you that in St. Vincent, we legalized in our Medicine Cannabis Industry Act in 2018 and we made amendments to our Drug Prevention and Misuse Act, our Drug Traffic and Offence Act, our Proceeds of Crime Act so that they all in line. It did not allow for recreational use. It allowed medical use but as the single convention say you must create a law first. You can't just say well we're doing it. You have to create a law and act. Passing Parliament, you have to send it to the INCV. Send your act to the INCV and you must set up an authority and you must license the various stakeholders. And this is all laid out in Article 23 of the single convention. It's all laid out and your legal folks who I see there will know all about this and so forth. Now, I'm going to go a little faster. Now, I want to bring up this slide because I was just in Bolivia with Miss Mendesi and Miss Felix. And I was making mention to this when I was out to chair a panel there, to moderate a panel. And I have realized that this important milestone is not well known. In 2016, the UN had a special session on drugs. This was just around the time of the UN Development Goals, the Sustainable Development Goals. And it came up with seven themes. It says we want to continue with our theme of demand reduction, our theme of supply reduction. But we must make medications available to people. You see in Gaza today, people's legs are being cut off without anesthesia. There are lots of places around the world, rural areas. They don't have aspirin, they don't have ibuprofen, they don't have Tylenol, you know. And they've been using all sorts of other medication for years. You understand? No. So in that light green shade there must be availability and access to various forms of treatment, to medication. That's why I'm sure your drug inspector always make sure that the pharmaceutical process is you have drugs and you send it off to the INCB that these are the drugs we bring in. They want to know that you have access. You understand? But they came up also and said there must be human rights. Human rights for patients who may have drug abuse. We must treat them, just like what you said, with human rights. The way we used to talk about the cocaine, Jumbie. Well in Saint Vincent we did. I don't know if that happened here or the crackhead. They were saying we have to destigmatize drug abuse and try and treat these people. Now some people say man we should beat these people with a stick so that they stop taking these drugs. But the UN has been advocating a much more humane, a human rights approach to drug treatment because the inhumane approach has not worked. They've also said that the human rights of small personal possession. Somebody with a small personal possession. There's no need to criminalize them, to treat them in jail, to have in a spliff. You understand? You could handle it in a different way, but decriminalize it, deep penalize it. We've done that in Saint Vincent. We're not putting people in jail because they have a small possession and so forth. You know what I mean? We're not doing that. In Singapore a year and a half ago, someone was found to... They had it on their cell phone. They'd received a message and they'd agreed two pounds of cannabis. They were put to death. They were executed for two pounds of cannabis. And under the UN they've come up with also the concept of Nelson Mandela rules. And one would have to read through the concept of UN gas to get all these concepts. Cut the discrimination, cut the stigmatization, decriminalization, and so forth. Some persons will feel all this is wrong. It's similar like a child. We shouldn't spare a rod with the child. And so therefore we should beat these drug abusers and so forth to get the drug use out of them. And that thinking I'm sure is going to be prevalent in some cultures and some persons. But I want to indicate that UN gas is critical and changed the way in which things. CCAD then adopted, had to adopt UN gas. For us in St. Vincent, see right on the bottom there, they also promoted alternative development. We have a large number of traditional cultivators and so we have had to adopt alternative development. We are distributing a couple of hundred acres of land to farmers and so forth who are traditional cultivators. But we're also going to guide them in getting into some new crops. We're in the process, we buy an attractor, we get in tools, we do all sorts of things and so forth. I say buy an attractor, it's my colleague there, he's the man behind the finances and so forth. I've had to push him but we get in the tractor. So I want to say that nationally conflicts exist. And some conflict exist and this is a very sensitive area that I've observed throughout the Caribbean in terms of the units that deal with anti-drug policy and the units that are now emerging in relation to medicinal cannabis. So the MCAs and the CLAs, there isn't a coming together to really discuss the issues and how the functions of each entity could be carried out. I think there's a little bit of but in there. I know that's not the case in Zilusia, right? Because I've spoken to some of the folks there and I think they're doing a great job. But a question that I'd ask, is there serious conflict? Does cannabis have medicinal benefits? Does it have it? If so, why so many benefits? What is the extent of the benefits? Are they real? What is the evidence? And I think you've asked some of those questions. Is there research which has been done scientifically? Can medicinal cannabis be an alternative to narcotic drugs, to the use of fentanyl, to the use of valium and roofing the stuff that, you know, and how much stigma is involved in your views and perception and belief? These are from fundamental things. And so I'm always, the persons involved in anti-drug and we've come together, you know what I mean? We've been working together and I want to encourage this throughout the Caribbean. I would say that in terms of CCAD, which is the Hemispheric Entity, to some extent by the end of this year, all of the islands from Jamaica to Trinidad would have done some legalization of cannabis, except Dominica. Grenadiers going forward, Zilusia. I hope that, you know, you all go forward. But you know, there may be delays, there may be little speed bumps and so forth that takes place. But the impression I have is that you folks are on your way, you know? And the thing is that I want to bring up an issue, and let me go on there, that I want to say, in Caribbean drug poverty, what is the greatest threat? And the likely development between now and 2030? Or maybe by the end of this year? I threw this slide yesterday and I want to bring this out. In 1961, Harry Anslinger, who was the head of the anti-drug United States, the father of the war drug, said, Mauwana is a addictive drug. He was testifying in Congress. And he said, which produces insanity, criminality, and death? And he said, you smoke a joint and you're likely to kill your brother. Like to kill your brother. And that's the risk of committing homicide. I imagine that sometimes that may occur, but he was framerating away. And in those years, they were primarily addressing people of color. Now, last year, the United States President, Joe Biden, so I think he's doing a good job, you know? He had asked his Health and Human Services Division to do a study. They did a two-year study on cannabis. I have read that study backwards. It's my job. I've got to read it and read it and have been in part of regional discussions and national discussions on it. And it said some important things that we must acknowledge. A, cannabis has a potential for abuse less than drugs or other substances in Schedule 1 and 2. And it should be rescheduled to Schedule 3. That's what they said. They said cannabis has a currently accepted list of medical use in treatment in the United States. And of course, they went through all the various studies and so forth to compile to be able to make that statement. And in St. Vincent, I do not have the ability to repeat those studies. I can read those studies and maybe even say, that's un-Americans. Would it be the same as Vincentians and so forth? That's a valid point. But I don't have the ability to repeat those studies. That was so-called all the money. I wouldn't have to buy the tractor, you know what I mean? And abuse of cannabis may lead to moderate or low physical dependency or high psychological dependency. Acknowledgement of that. That's real. But it was what was done. And I think, you drew the point. For the first time, the Health and Human Service emphasized the importance of the 2018 Farm Bill in a scope which had legalized CBD. In St. Vincent, we can't stop people sending down CBD creams and so forth in barrels and so forth. The customs itself we give up, you know what I mean? Because it's legal in the United States. But number two, Health and Human Services' decision to focus attention on how the harms associated with cannabis abuse compared to those associated with alcohol. This pointed out it was night and day. Here in the Caribbean, I know for St. Vincent, our Calypsoanians, we celebrate rum. You know what I mean? We sing about rum. You know what I mean? It's a great thing. I see a couple of people looking at me. Don't go there, you know what I mean? But really, alcohol is profound in terms of it. And what we have to talk about is excess alcohol. Even a drink is not a problem. It's the excess alcohol that persons are taking as cause in the cirrhosis, the liver, and all the other issues, the links to cancer, and all those other things. But Health and Human, number three, Health and Human Services emphasized the variability of the cannabis plant as a botanical, right? And in its heterogeneity, and said there's a need for some standards in terms of how it's done. And also in terms of in various states. Do you know, I've been to Michigan, Florida, a number of states to see what the cannabis cultivation is. The map and I, we toured Canada. We toured New York. We met with a lot of people. And you could see each state because of states, right? Some states, they basically produce stuff and all they check for is CBD and THC. Others, they check for bacteria, they check for this, the different standards. But it's number five. That Health and Human Services analysis was the recognition that the relevant data supporting that Marinal and Sandros were in schedule three. Now, I want to say about three draw. Epidialyx is CBD made in the form of a pill. The price for months of Epidialyx is $3,022. In other words, $8,000 EC. The price of Marinal, it was $700. You know, it was that $14,500 EC. Sandros is a little cheaper. It's only $300 US. You understand? But about $8,900 EC dollars a month. Those particular things may be considered as pharmaceutical made. That's why the pharmaceutical industry would like also cannabis to go away so that persons can buy that. Some of the best drugs coming out with diabetes now. The cost of them are so high. The average man here in St. Lucia, that man and woman can't afford those type of medication. You've got to stick with the normal stuff. Let me try and go quickly here. There's some wrong perceptions. CBD is medical and THC is recreational. That's false. THC is a bad cannabinoid. CBD is a good cannabinoid. It's false. CBD is not psychoactive. That's false too. It's not intoxicating, but it's psychoactive. You understand? It certainly has some profound effects on the brain. That's good. Positive. CBD is a good product. It's not an intoxicant. However, from CBD, in the United States, they are extracting THC is called Delta 9 THC. There's a loophole in the farm bill and they're extracting something called Delta 8 THC. It has about the same effect. More toxic, but they're selling that in the United States. Don't expect that to be coming to St. Lucia. They have Delta 10 and a whole set of other things. Unregulated cannabinoid. And then there is what I call CBG. This is a great product. Unlike the others. There's a space there. This is like the mother of cannabinoids. And we would get into a little bit of... I don't know. Okay. Yes. So let's us go through. For those persons who don't already know, there will be three type of strains. We put nose of the sativa, the indica, and ruderalis. Ruderalis is a strain that flowers in a very short space of time. But this is all phasing out now. There are combinations and hybrids and so forth. There have been some good land races. In St. Vincent, we have a land race that comes out of Columbia. We also have the Jamaican land race. There's a special Jamaican land race that's excellent. But over the time, they've changed and they've merged and there's hybrids now. But I want to say that the symbol of cannabis is the leaf. Because in the 70s and 80s, everyone thought that the leaf was the thing that had in the ingredients. But it's the flower bud. But the leaf does have in some ingredients far lower and also the root. In St. Vincent, some of the old ladies would boil the root for their asthma and for their chest stuff and so forth. And they swear by it. But there's still a little bit of stuff in the root that boiling it and heating it. There is release of the active compounds and how it works. Now, if I were to take a close up of a bud, it's kind of hairy on the surface if I look at the microscope. But it's not hairs. It's really something called trichomes. And it's full of oil. They're full of oil. All these trichomes. These trichomes are not ripe yet. It's when it starts to turn a little yellow on the microscope. And we train our farmers to look with a magnifying glass to see exactly where. If you take it too early, it's like a mango. You've got to wait till the mango ripe, you know what I mean? And so in terms of the trichomes, that's the best time to actually harvest. It's all important. You know? I'm losing seconds trying to move this. In St. Vincent, we are into tissue culture. This is where a great plant, we're able to take a slice of it on the sterile conditions. Right? We're able to put it in some special agar and other substances with sugars and so forth and grow it. This is a seed at the bottom growing, the root coming out. But at the top there is tissue culture. And we're able to produce the same characteristic plant. It's not the same as cloning. Cloning is just as good, right? But tissue culture, the quantity, with cloning, you have a mother plant and you have to pick off a certain amount. You can't pick off too much or you'll kill the plant. You know what I mean? You pick off some and then you plant those little branches you've picked off, small branches. But with tissue culture, we take in very small amounts and we can freeze it. We can keep it for 10 years and so forth. And we haven't done it but we're looking at some of our landraces and so forth to make sure we preserve them and so forth, you know, for the future. And things of that nature. Let me just go on. And here I want to get into the medical. When I was telling you about Dr. Mushalom and that 1995 lecture that made my mouth drop, I had gone to medical school, done specialty training and heard about that in our bodies we have 11 systems. I was like, why 11? You know, why 11? And he was telling us there was a 12th system. A 12th system. So you can imagine my shock. I mean, I'm into immunology and he's telling me that all the time I've treated patients and so forth. I didn't know about it and so I regret that during those years I lost patience that if I had the information I might have been able to do something more with them. So do you everybody recognize all those systems? And what the endocannabinoid system entails since 1995, I suppose that's probably why I was doing something. And I want to, this has a pointer, doesn't it? There's a pointer. I'm not sure if it does but the system consists of receptors in our body. The two types of receptors. Some that are in our brain and our nervous system and our spine. And other receptors that are also in the brain but they're also in our skin and in our immune system. They lie on top of some of our white blood cells, our immune cells, the lymphocytes, the macrophages and so forth. And our body produces, what's up in the middle, deep, these ligands called ananomide and 2-AG. CB1, CB2 receptors are made predominantly from omega-3 fatty acid kind of thing. And the ligands, omega-6. So when they interact, they call something. And then to break them down, there's some enzymes that are produced in the liver and all sorts of things. It's a complex thing. But the important thing may use is that inside our body are endocannabinoids. And I don't know how the Lord, how God made it that way. But He produced a plant that had phytocannabinoids that can interact with the same receptors. And so what do these, what does the endocannabin system do? Let me step away here a minute. It's so important to understand. We know the heart controls the pumping of blood around our body. And we know our lungs breathing. But what's the control in our sleep pattern? Our appetite. What controls our mood? Being in a bad mood, in a good mood, and so forth. A rotten mood. What controls some of the new functions? What controls our pain threshold? Sorry about that. Reproductivity and memory. Oh, I see. Sorry about that. The folk talks online. I just want to get a little closer to that just to point it out because I can't point it. And the point is that these are important functions that we have ignored. We have thought, well, they just happen. But there's a system that's delimited. Other systems interact with it, too, and contribute. It's not just the endocannabinoid system, but I want to understand that. And then I'm introducing to a term, CECD. CECD. Sometimes when you would Google it, it would come up very nicely. CECD is clinical endocannabinoid deficiency. We've heard of insulin deficiency. We've heard of all kind of thyroid deficiency. Those endocannabinoids I was telling you about, an anamyte 2AG, there can be some deficiency in them. Whether it's that you haven't been taking enough omega-3 fatty acids or you haven't been taking... It's a complex issue that isn't easily as simple as that. But there is deficiency in your endocannabinoid system, as there could be a deficiency in your thyroid, deficiency in your pancreas and things of that nature. And you can have how cannabis works. There can be deficiency. And we can talk about replacement with natural products, or we can go with some of the good expensive stuff. The marinol and the sand dross. And there's other synthetic illegal stuff called spice and K2 that you don't really want. And you remember Bolivia? You were talking about how spice and K2 is swamping places like Belgium and things like that. But what they've found is that clinical endocannabinoid is directly linked to FIM. FIM, something called FIM. Fibromyalgia is a type of pain. We don't know why we have the pain, you know? But it's kind of a phantom pain. We just got pain. If you ever go to the doctor, the doctor asks you, I don't think you had an injury, no. If somebody hit you, no. I just feel pain. This is fibromyalgia. Inflammatory bowel disorder and migraine. We're linking a lot of migraine headaches to endocannabinoid deficiencies. And I'm going to leave you to follow up on a lot of this stuff. Many of you would have heard predominantly about CBD and THC. The two big ones in white. But I am more interested in a couple of others. I'm interested in CBC and CBG. CBC is the tropical cannabinoid. It found more in tropical cannabis. And CBG is the mother of our cannabis and so forth. And these things in combination, they've been linked. The trials are going on in terms of treatment for cancer and other things like that. We see in some profound things. The studies have not been as extensive as CBD and THC. But we are now seeing the work being done. Especially now, as they've said, cannabis has medical benefits. The door has been opened up. Research has been done. It's no longer illegal to do research. You don't have to jump to hoops to get an application for research approved. And I could just go down. This is a busy slide. These are some of the benefits of some of these things. And it's amazing what's really happening out there in terms of the research. But I want to just want to focus on. We've come up with a mnemonic called AMP minds. AMP, M-I-N-D-S. AMP, and this is a kind of a mnemonic to abbreviate what cannabis can be used for. And it's important. A, appetite. Anorexia, HIV weight loss, catexia, the catexia of cancer. People are wasting away. I'm told I could say this. The CMO of St. Vincent, her father-in-law, was one of our senior politicians. He developed prostate cancer. And he thought he'd beaten it, but it bounced back. And it went all to his spine. And he was in pain. Mr. Mapp and I had just traveled to Canada. And I came back with a couple of vials of the stuff. And the customs did not prohibit me from bringing it in. And then the CMO, when the CMO calls, I says, whatever we do, I heard this CMO. And he was able to receive the medical cannabis and that helped relieve his pain. And he died with dignity. He died not with a grimace on his face. You know what I mean? And I just saw what I'll mention. But I just want to say anorexia. Then M for metabolism. Nausea and vomiting. That's what marinol is used for. Predominantly for vomiting. You pay 700 EC dollars for a mod supply. Or you could use cannabis and so forth at a much cheaper rate. But pain, cancer pain. I mean talk about cancer that has spread to the bone. Or chronic pain or migraine and arthritis. Sickle cell disease. I used to have patients with sickle cell disease. We got to give them all sorts of opioid medication. They're addicted to the opioids. They could be replaced with cannabis instead. Just not to be smoking. It could be what I have there on display. Oil droppers, oils and so forth. And then mood. Do you realize the accurate figure is 4.5% of the global population suffers from depression. And for anxiety it's 5.5%. I'm talking about half a billion people. And here what they say. It's predominantly women who suffer more from anxiety disorders. The studies have shown that I don't believe it. I've become saying that to be diplomatic. But the point I'm making there is that mood disorders is really profound. And then inflammation, inflammatory disorders. Especially inflammatory bowel disorders I told you about just now with FIM. Arthritis, inflammatory autoimmune disease. Hepatitis. And then nerve damage. Epilepsy. Everyone saw Sanjay Gupta and Charlotte's Web. Sanjay Gupta wasn't joking. The young lady benefited. And today people are benefiting from epilepsy and so forth. Seizures, Parkinson's disease. Now some of these, the benefits are less than you would have for pain. And then sleep insomnia. Sleep disorders affect, I have 30% they affect 20%. I've said this. That means that some six, seven persons here suffer from sleep disorders. I don't know who all suffer from sleep disorders and so forth. But the point is that cannabis. Now the funny thing is that THC is best for sleep disorders. And best for anorexia, nausea. But CBD is best for degenerative diseases, CNS. Nerve damage. And a combination of CBD and THC may be good for immune reaction. Mood disorders is best to go with CBD. And pain, you need sometimes a combination. And what persons can tolerate. You could on the CBD and it isn't working because it really needs a bit of THC combined with it. And this is a very important chart to show that overlap. And so with dosing, you could have THC only. You could have CBD only or you could have equal amount. But we also have intermediate with a little bit more THC or small amount of THC and so forth in those doses. This is our lab, our state of the art lab in St. Vincent. We constructed, the minister you would have seen it and visited and so forth. And we're particularly proud of it and so. Because we realize that in order to be a player, for the Caribbean to be a player, we had to show we could produce quality product and test it. We can't guess, we can't look at it and say, this looks like good stuff, you know what I mean? And this is, you know, this is the same sort of stuff there. So I do want to just touch on this a little bit. CB1 receptors in the nervous system. It's at the end of the nervous system. And when you look at CB2 receptors on the white blood cell, on the macrophage, on the immune system. Just to give you an idea of the impact. Why are they there? Are they just there just because for so? What's the reason? There's some important functional reasons for it. They're not there for no reason. Do we know everything about it? No. You understand? We know enough, but we don't know everything about it. And this was in terms of the function, in terms of stopping inflammation. The whole thing, CB2 receptors and so on, so engage in these things and a lot of information. I want to touch on this, the brain. And I know there are other persons in the room. There's, this part of the brain, do you see a jagged circle called, this is called the medulla oblongata. This is a part of the brain stem. So vital, all parts of the brain is vital. Are you getting it? And it controls your heart rate. It controls your respiratory rate. And it controls your ability to swallow, vomit and so forth. If you become unconscious, the risk of aspirating your stomach content and it going down into your lungs, it's an important cause of death. Whether after surgery or so. But overdoses, when somebody takes an overdose of fentanyl, oxycodone, percocet, all these valium, cocaine, it will knock them out because it's affecting these parts of the brain. But it also suppresses, because they're receptors for these opioids in the brain stem. So your respiratory rate starts to drop. Normally your respiratory rate is 16 plus, it starts to drop. Your respiratory starts to drop to two. You breathe in two beats a minute. Or your heart rate starts to fall, very, very low. Even stop because of the drugs. You die from the overdose. Cannabis, give you euphoria, will probably put you to sleep. You don't know in terms of how the Lord made things that way. There are hardly any receptors for cannabis in the brain stem. So the person who takes an overdose, which they're going to be, but their heart does not stop. Their respiratory rate does not drop to the degree that they don't breathe. And that is why in the literature they've not found overdose death as a result of cannabis. Now certainly if somebody takes cannabis and they're high and they drive and they crash in two, three, four vehicles and kill themselves and other people, then that's wrong too. But I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about the individual who takes an overdose. This is often disputed, but it's now really remarkably repeated. You don't see it. In the Caricum report, they had a chart showing deaths reported from cannabis, whereas death reported from other drugs. And throughout the world, the 106,000 people who die of fentanyl from overdose is because of this side of the equation. You know what I'm saying? Now, let me, cannabis use disorder. I think we have to respect it. There are a number of very important parameters. If a young person starts using cannabis very early, talking about before the age of 18, I'm talking about the age of 13, 14, and using it consistently. And they have a family history, you know, of a psychiatric disorder, schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and the type of THC that they're taking, the type of cannabis taken is a high dose of THC, and we've been seeing a gradual increase in the potency of THC in cannabis. You know, a number of years ago it used to be 10, 12, 14. Now we're seeing it, 18, 20. I could tell you the truth. In St. Vincent, one of our companies developed a cannabis that was 31% THC, right? We sat down with them and said, we don't think this is right. The company we are linking with in Switzerland has said they don't want anything over 25%. They don't want anything below 20, but they don't want anything over 25%. And they were able to reformulate and we had to check on them and we tested 24.5% consistently. Interesting. But even that is too high. You know what I mean? CBD, remarkably CBD is being used in the treatment of alcohol use disorders. The number of persons who are taking CBD to get them off of their alcoholism and alcohol use disorder, opioid use disorder, cocaine use disorder, CBD is considered to be neuroprotective. I think I have a slide here. But you know, this is a chart that talks about our pleasure centers. I know the doctor whose psychology would be, you know, these areas, I don't want to get into detail. They are MIGDALA, Nucleus Cumans and so forth. These things are so important. It explains to us why people become addictive to chocolate, to sex, to alcohol, to gambling, to all sorts of things. It's the same sort of reason behind it in addition to drugs. And, you know, it has to do a lot with dopamine and all these sorts of things and so on. It doesn't allow me to go into the detail today. And the brain, the neurotransmitters, I tell you the amount of stuff that's there, busy, busy slide. But just to tell you how complex this stuff is. I, of course, want to end, for instance, I'll be going along, sorry, that today it doesn't allow me to talk extensively about things. I haven't gone into a lot of detail about side effects. I should tell you we should not drive using, it should not be taken during pregnancy, you know. And all these things will come out in their own due course. And the slides I've taken out, you know, to limit the presentation in a particular way. But I have to put this one in. In November, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, we are going to be holding a medicinal cannabis festival. It's called Cannabis SVG. The name is not that important, you know. November 1st to 3rd. But the whole thing is that we are going to be bringing people from the Caribbean and around the world to talk more intensively about a lot of the things I'm talking about. Cultivation and manufacture. How is it really done? How do you achieve the best standards? How does the Caribbean become a player? Right? And we'll be having farm tours. We're going to see some of how some people are doing it. How they've set up already. And then we'll be talking about the legal justice and regulatory reforms, you know. What's happening? Should you, shouldn't you? What to do here and there? What's worked? What hasn't worked from a regulatory point of view? Has decriminalization worked? Has deep penalization? All these sort of things and so. And then the medical benefits. So, you know, I'm hoping that a lot of people will be coming to me. There'll be me, but we're having some big names come in to talk a little bit more about some of the more finer details in relation to smoking and cancer. Smoking cannabis. I want to say a lot of some literature has come out that shows that not that smoking is safe, but it is, there were some articles put out talking about cannabis just the same as cigarettes or tobacco. And these articles have debunked that thinking to a great degree. But we are also going to be talking about the broader medicinal industry, you know, about other plants that have medicinal value, philocybin, all these sort of things and so forth. And we are looking to have a traditional cultivator's village with an expo. I must admit, I think the prime minister in our law has the ability to declare that, you know, there were certain things could take place, but we will have a consumption launch. And that it should be good. But the point of it is the educational aspect and the toes. And if anybody wants to slip down to back way or climb, I love to climb last with Fray Volk. You know why? Because I could see the pitons. I could see St. Lucia, you know. And so let me say with that, I think there may be a couple, but I'll stop there and I hope there might be a couple of questions and so on. There are some areas I haven't gone into in great detail, but I thought that in terms of limiting the leds. I don't want to talk all night, you know. Thank you very much. Thank you, Dr. Thompson. I'm sure for many of you here, the information presented was insightful, educational. So we're ready for persons. If anybody has any questions, you raise your hand and we will have the mic. Taken across to you. Questions? Thank you very much. I brought these along. This is a vape pen and this is a dropper bottle. And I was hoping to also have brought in some capsules with oils and so forth. When somebody takes a capsule, it is swallowed, it goes into the stomach, it goes through the intestine and then it's absorbed and goes through the liver. Really, the liver makes changes to it, actually making it a little bit more potent and then it enters into the bloodstream and then goes through the brain to have the effect. That takes one hour to take place. And so taking tablets or taking things orally is a slow process. However, it lasts a long time. And people have to know this because somebody could take a tablet, especially this happens when taking brownies and so forth. And be careful with that. If you take a brownie and you're waiting for effect and no effect, you take another brownie, no effect, you take another brownie, you've taken three doses and then an hour later the person is dancing on the table, you know? With a dropper, we recommend the person takes this and puts the dropper and put two drops under their tongue. These things are usually flavored with pineapple or mango or so so that they taste actually good. But not taste so that you would drink it, you know what I mean? But that it's palatable. And that it takes close to about 5 to 15 minutes for it to be absorbed. One of the most intensive blood complexes underneath your tongue. And so it absorbs that and takes it around but it doesn't go through your liver, it goes straight to your brain, so 10 to 15 minutes. However, smoking is able to give you the impact within a matter of one minute to two minutes because it's absorbed through the lungs, through the pulmonary artery and goes to your brain. So you see virtually almost like an immediate, it's not immediate, but you see the effect within a matter of one minute to minute. Similarly, vaping would give you the same type of thing. So it comes down to a process. It comes down to a process, sorry, whereby to use this device, it is discreet. Somebody could take it and put it in his pocket. I didn't tell you that the smell from cannabis doesn't come from THC or CBD. It comes from the terpenes that are in it. There's these other compounds called the terpenes and I didn't want to go into detail with that. And you have pineene, you have all sorts of different eons that smell in a particular way. You see them in lime, has limelene, right? And some cannabis products have it. I must tell you, in St. Vincent, some of the lab people have come up with some unique combinations of terpenes that I haven't seen before in other places. But what I'm saying is that by vaping, you eliminate some of the smells and yours. So I could come here and go into the corner and vape and nobody here would know that I have used it. Whereas if I went there and smoked, somebody, more stupid people, I'm sure everybody would say, oh, I could smell cannabis coming from somewhere, you know what I mean? But the price is obviously going to be different. And just like I mentioned Marinal and I mentioned Epidiolex, nobody wants to pay. In St. Vincent, they started off with these things at about $100. And they've now dropped the price at about $50 and so forth. And they have refilled cartridge and so forth. But for someone else, they may want to use a small spliff in the quiet of their home, the privacy of their home and there will be no problem. In my view, there's no problem for that. So I've given you a long answer. The advantage of smoking is the immediate effect. So people with pain, they may take a capsule, they know they have long-term effect. But as they're out and about, the pain starts to come on. And if they try to take another tablet, how long will it take for the effect to see? What they could do is they could smoke or vape to get almost immediate effect in terms of reducing the pain. Smoking and vaping will only last for a short period of time. The most it will last for about an hour, hour and a half or so. But at least you then be able to go back to some of the other methods and so forth. So it's a combination, same like insulin, you know, the amount of insulin you take and when and all this sort of thing and so forth. Can I ask something again? Haven't been very active as an advocate and people have seen me. Total strangers have come up to me and said, I had asthma when I was a young teenager and I smoked ganja and the asthma went away. And a good few people have told me that. Obviously there are people who said that they use the tea or the leaves and the root. But obviously this is anecdotal and what do you think these people, how did the smoke affect their asthma? Or are they just tripping and they just imagine that? Quickly, there's three things I got to say about that. If cannabis is not grown properly, there can be a fungus called aspergillus that can develop on the fungus or on the cannabis. So in the lab we test for aspergillus. Aspergillus, if you inhale it or you try to sell it, it can trigger. Asthma. In terms of one of the cannabinoids called CBN is excellent as a treatment, an alternative treatment for asthma. Now I didn't put that as one of the benefits. I didn't put glaucoma, I didn't put a number of other things that people recognize. But in certain cultures and so forth, cannabis is used positive. However, you are going to find some persons because of their hydration and so forth. I've seen where persons are using other type of filters and things like that. In order to reduce the amount of dust particles and so that may well help. But an individual who has asthma, if they're not using cannabis for asthma, they use something else. They may well go to another method of using cannabis if they need it for some other purpose. Paying this, that and the other. And I know your question you may be getting at is if smoking cannabis will trigger asthma. I'm saying that the circumstances it will trigger asthma, as if there's aspergillus in it. And the smoking in itself should not induce asthma in somebody who doesn't have asthma. Somebody who has asthma has to be particularly careful and may choose to use some other method accordingly to that. But a lot of persons who will not have not really known that smoking cannabis will just induce asthma just if there's no underlying history of asthma. Can I add to something to respond to this question? So one of the things that also that we need to look at is the effect of cannabis on your stress response system. So asthma itself is known to be, in a lot of persons, a response to chronic stress basically. And the effect of cannabis on the stress response system is that it kind of dulls it a bit. Yes. And that's one of the coming effects we see in a lot of persons. Yes. So then a lot of persons will find that using cannabis or smoking cannabis will result in a reduction in the asthma symptoms. Because of that effect the cortisol in the body reduces, the anti-inflammatory effect reduces. And those points will then respond, report that the asthma goes up. I put up a slide there focusing on the anti-inflammatory response and so forth. Absolutely right. And so each individual may be slightly different. But one of the important things is that on use we have a policy of saying start low, go slow. Start low, go slow. And if anybody has anything then you could switch to some other methodology and so forth. But I agree with exactly what you said there. And I wanted to add to what Dr. Gillier just said that the chronic stress response is actually underlies or underpins a lot of the NCDs as well. And that's why you see some of the studies that point out that appropriate use of cannabis can actually help with some of those NCDs as well. You know diabetes, hypertension, even cancers from the point of view of them being the stress response, long-term chronic stress response reaction. And the other place where certain experience with cannabis oil, not high THC but low THC cannabis oil with agitated dementia in older people in particular, it's amazing. That has been an amazing response to that. Just a few drops. Yes. I can tell you my father in 2017 passed away from dementia. We had not passed the act yet. And again, I mean I think people are going to get the impression that I'm an illegal hound. But he took some products. And I found that but it's all anecdotal in that particular sense, you know, and I saw some improvement. But in the area of, what we've been finding in the elderly, in St. Vincent, the elderly, in their little groups and so church groups and so forth, they have been finding cannabis. In our data assessment, 50% of the persons who are getting prescription are female. And this has gone against the grain where you expect an 18-year-old, a 9-year, 20-year-old coming because they want to get high. And the age group is running, the highest age group is running 25 to 40 years old with a high proportion to older. Now, as I said, this is where the difficulty is. The older folks are saying, well, we're hearing on Facebook and so forth that cannabis is safe. We're hearing America and Canada, our friends in Canada and so forth are doing this and that and the other. And so it should be safe. And this is where the challenge comes to the anti-drug unit because the young people are hearing that too. And they're thinking that it is safer. And the studies are showing that young persons are thinking that there's increased safety originally. Now, the truth is, it's safer than what they had heard before. Does it make you kill your brother? Does it make you do all the... No, it doesn't do those things. But the education has to be there in relation to the young folks. Because in the same way we've been telling them, don't have sex, you know, or don't drink rum. Does it surprise you as mother-in-law you find out that your 14-year-old is drinking alcohol? Does it surprise you? Or... I shouldn't say any other thing about that. But the point is that it's happening and they are astute. The students in college, they're getting stuff online the same way. The trend that Jamaica has legalized, this is Antigua, this is... So what impression is that? So there needs to be some countermeasures. But I think that you have to expect some increase in the use among young persons. But education has to still be in place. And don't be alarmed by the increase because it is what is going to take place. You're telling the 60-year-old, the 70-year-old, it's okay, it's fine. They've been hearing over the years that it's going to give you brain death and all this other stuff. And they're now believing that that's not the case. So we have one question that's coming from a participant online. So Lilian is asking if cannabis can be taken together with maintenance medication. Yes, but you see here what? This is where CMO, the doctors, need to be treated. I haven't put up any slides on various things. CBD is metabolized through the liver through what's called a cytocrine 450 system. If I start talking about it, everybody is shut down. It's a mechanism, doctors I'm sure would know what I'm talking about. And this happens with many medications that it slows down the metabolism of those medications so that those medications stay around for a little longer in your blood. They don't get expelled from the body as quickly. So by taking CBD that doesn't happen with THC. And that's why in the early days they used to use high doses, big doses of CBD. Now everything is microdosing. But the point I'm making too, and I didn't put up the slide, is this concept of the entourage effect. The entourage effect whereby if you have THC and you have a little bit of CBD, the CBD with the THC is neuroprotective. You understand? And if you have CBD, you should have some THC with it because it has an enhanced effect. So where they have isolated CBD, and it's an isolated, pure CBD on its own, it does not have the same effect as if it was the natural form or what we call broad spectrum form or thing like that. Now that's going to be difficult because our tendency, and I went through this, is to have the pure stuff, the marinal and the sand dust, which the big drug companies have isolated and put together and are selling for 700. But I'm not sure, I could never buy that, you know what I mean? And so the average person to have access, I think, and we've found, and Dr. Emmanuel has presented a number of papers to show that the cannabis in its natural form, all the flavonoids and other ingredients, I haven't started talking about stuff that's inside the cannabis yet, good stuff, the flavonoids, they are present and they would have a much more positive effect. So I just want to just mention that. Yeah, just to add to what you're saying there, that entourage effect that you speak of may be one of the effects that a lot of persons get from smoking the cannabis. Yes. And that's why a lot of persons may be reporting the effects of smoking marijuana as almost similar to the medicinal cannabis that's being promoted now. Yeah. And I think that's why a lot of the board is that we're hearing. What is a smoking in our jurisdiction? Yeah. Smoking of cannabis is allowed and is part of the medicinal. So we're not making a distinction between smoking of cannabis and this stuff. Yeah, because that's what he asked you. So it's a matter of just choice. It's a matter of choice. And I didn't go into it. A new person, somebody who's a novice, naive to cannabis, you start low, go slow. But somebody like yourself, if you were to ever go on this. We could go straight for the jugular. Yes. Yeah, that's the point. Yes. Thank you very much for the presentation. You've practically answered the question because you talked about the various isolates that have been researched over the last 20 years or so. CBD, CBN, and the other CBG, I think research was a giant of them all. And now my question was going to be, do you see that as the sort of modality going forward that is going to be isolates? Or because in my mind, it should just be the natural bud that is available that should be used with all the complex compounds that are there and available that fit with the cannabinoid or endocannabinoid system that we have. And I just wondered what your take was on that. Yes. Yes. You know, I, that's a very interesting question. And I want to say it's going to be a combination of both. And the reason why I'm saying that is I put up a chart and really skipped over it. I had a very busy chart with CBD, CBN, and so forth. The work is being done in relation to the combination of certain cannabinoids for breast cancer to prevent relapse of breast cancer or in relation to certain other type of condition. The information is not all in preliminary information, but the way we study things is that you could do, you go study, then you got to do double blind control study. You know what I'm saying? And in the past, you couldn't do those studies. It was illegal to do those studies. So you're now finding there's a catching up and some of these studies will take five, 10 years. But in relation to much of the conditions that I have said, the average condition, the arthritis pain, the migraines and so forth, all these other things. You can use the natural product in those settings. When it comes to the future, we're also going to see the terpenes being used because they have medical value too, to a smaller degree. And the combination of terpenes. And so to some extent, there's natural products and there's product that we do have to research and engineer. We don't want to over engineer it, but we do want to see in terms of what it could do to certain disease that may not be on my list. So the answer is yes and no. Natural stuff is good for what I've mentioned to you. And from an age point of view, you will find that somebody who is taking it who's 80-something years old or that may not necessarily want to smoke. I can't accept that. They may want to take it in a different form. Whereas somebody who's 40-something, in the privacy of their home, should not be denied that fundamental human right as was expressed in UN gas. And from November 2020, they said cannabis is no longer in schedule four. It is okay to use it in those particular types of settings. Now that hasn't filtered through yet. That hasn't filtered through yet. But it will do, you know what I mean? And you know in that Bolivian Comfort in the past declaration that you heard about UN gas, UN gas, UN gas all the time. And I mentioned it when I went up on stage. So I want to say in the future, we are going to see the use of some engineered products. Not necessarily Marinal and Sandros, but you're going to see isolates coming together, you know. And it's happening in the Caribbean. I don't want to let out what's happening in the cities and so forth. Thank you very much for that. Appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you. This will be our last question. I just wondered if the medicinal cannabis industry in the region would evolve to the point where let's say I go to a doctor and he prescribes a cannabis product, let's say, take 500 milligrams three times a day for seven days. And then I go to a pharmacy, have that prescription filled out. Then the insurance then reimburses me for the cost of the actual cannabis product. Yes. In Germany, the medical insurance system does that. Unfortunately, nowhere else in the world has adopted that. And to an extent, it's largely because the money that's collected has to be banked. And the pharmacies and dispensaries and other things like that, the federal restriction, like if you operate with your credit card and all that stuff, you may be prohibited from paying with your credit card. You know what I mean? Because those are fees of MasterCard that federally operated. So I don't think it may necessarily happen. Although I'm expecting this year, the United States to reschedule cannabis from schedule one to schedule three. In 2020, it was voted down. But the United States finds a way that when no one else can do it, they can. You understand? They will do it. And I've seen the people how they plan to do it, but they're going to do it. And I mean, I like to think I'm a Democrat. So Joe Biden's going to also do it because it'll be a plus for the elections. But I think that what we should expect is the job of law enforcement and the job of the drug prevention unit. Your job. You can have a tough job. Because stuff is going to be coming down in barrels from the United States. Because right now, things can't go on a plane. Things can't come on a boat. Can't be shipped out. Can't go from New Jersey to New York. You can't come across the George Washington Bridge with cannabis. You can't go from one state to the other. And then when they do that for schedule three, schedule one drugs is different from schedule three drugs. Yes, Sam? I could take my valium and I could go from New Jersey to... I don't have to declare it at the border of New Jersey. I got valium. Can I take it across to New Jersey or New York? You know what I mean? But when they reschedule, that's going to happen. And you're going to see people shipping it down in barrels. You see people coming to cruise ship. You see people... That's why it's important to establish a regime now that you have good product here. You could get it here and so forth, you know what I mean? And just expect that. But I also feel I'm hoping that at some stage if you have a card or anything like that and you come to St. Vincent that your card is also going to be honored. And you can get your product for your migraines or for your arthritis and so in St. Vincent without having to pay any sort of additional amounts and so forth. I think we did that, you know, in terms of OECS. I mean an OECS product could come in St. Lucia and you get a car. You could bring it over to St. Vincent. It should be the same thing, you know what I mean? So an visitor or so, but I have the same thing. So I'm looking forward to this. But I'm saying from my journey, it's been a little long. I regret that in the 90s that I was so short-sighted. I wrote those guys a letter. Okay, go and get that, you know what I mean? You can get your card. It wasn't a prescription. I had no objection to it. But maybe I saw a lot of patients who wasted away, right? And I may not have promoted the card. But it's only after I found out there was an endocannabinoid. And you know cats, dogs, all of them, they have endocannabinoid systems too, you know? So the pet industry, the pets should not get THC. They can get CBD. But there's a whole big, a horse. All of that kind of thing. I'm telling you it's a big industry, you know? And you know, I've been thinking about, I wonder if I should get back into practice, you know what I mean? I have a radio program every Wednesday night in St. Vincent. But you know what, maybe not, maybe not. Maybe I'm just a little too aged to do that. But I think I regret not having pushed it a lot more. Yes, bless and love. Give thanks. Bless that evening. Honorable minister. Honorable Dr. Thompson. Give thanks for that love representation. CMO, bless it. So what you're saying basically is that the Rastafari was right. The Rastafari. I've said this, my fact. In Bolivia, I said the Rastafari was right. Remember, I said this? The Rastafari. The Rastafari was damn right. They put it like that. Alright, so basically it took us about, let's say, to be discreet. At least a 70 years to catch up. With the vision of what the Rastafari was propagating from 70 years ago. And I wonder how did you all know that? What kind of scientific studies did you all do? Was it just experience and so forth? Or foresight or blessings or what? The endocannabinoid system. So basically what I'm saying is that there are many other... Since it is that the foresight of the Rastafari community has been proven to have some great scientific validity. There are plenty of aspects or the ways that the herb is being utilized by the Rastafari community that they have not even thought of to dive into with profound scientific analysis. Because so it provides us if an opportunity to say, well, if what they were saying 70 years ago was right. So what happens when the smoke goes through the water and comes out? Was the difference between that aspect and probably a whole plant extract now that they call it, how do they call it? Do what effect? The entourage effect. That's a beautiful name. But we used to call it synergy or INI, oneness. So there is also a strong spiritual component which is critical in what we call even in integrative healthcare now. Whereby a doctor is urged to recognize the religious lenience of the client, the specific culture. And even as you pointed out the utilization of herbal medicines or other medicines, so if the Rastafari have been used in it for that spiritual aspect of it, it also provides us an opportunity for a lot of research and development. And it is something that I'm just to point out something with what Brother Pancho was saying, if the smoking, even the original Rastafari principle don't promote the smoking of cannabis through a paper. The original principle is that the smoke has to go through water to get cooled off and cleaned off. And when you look at the science, they call it the chalice. And then they call it the bong. So I think that there is lots of hope that as brothers and sisters we could still collaborate and look to see how we could create a good system that even the Rastafari would also have the right to prescribe, not just the pharmacist. That's interesting. Yes, interesting stuff. We face the same thing in St. Vincent, in terms of the naturopaths and the herbalists. They're not on the list of things. That's why we're looking to include them. But I think some of these things will take some time. During the pandemic, we all learned about turmeric and ginger. And turmeric has in this curcumin and so forth in it. That's really excellent. Can it cure COVID-19? No. But in terms of it was able to help significantly. And after the pandemic, now we forget about all that, there are these benefits because your CMO has told you that throughout the Caribbean, the study in the 2007 Heads of Government report, it said that five islands in the Caribbean had the highest levels of NCDs and so forth in the whole of Latin America and the Caribbean. You understand? We, in our step study in so for 2015, we haven't been able to repeat us. The money involved, I'm really happy to see you being able to repeat yours the other day. Data's important but the money, it's like doing a census and you know how much money we spent on a census. It's tough. But the information that comes out is remarkable. But what it's showing is that diabetes, hypertension, it's also showing that mental illness, drug abuse is a form of NCD. You understand? You know what I mean? It should be looked at in that but it would be classified as that. But I believe that our diets have so changed. Our diets have been so westernized and the stuff we eat in that to some extent we do have to start to embrace the concepts of the turmeric and gingers and the other things that will go. We now know fiber, soluble fiber. I was going to proper slide. 70% of your immune system lies inside your gut. 70% along something called prized patches because the gut is the gateway for germs to enter into your body. And when you don't eat the right types of fiber, the bacteria in your gut, do you know what they feed on? They feed on fiber. And when you don't feed them, they start to eat away at your mucus membrane. They start to release certain toxins that get into your blood, go to your brain and that's one of the whole concepts of Alzheimer's and dementia. You've been hearing on show reading about the microbiome and all these other things. I'm putting it to you that the Caribbean and I know that the CMOs and so forth have been really looking at this on top of that but we have to... I know the food tastes good. I know the food tastes good, we're over time but I am hoping that we can have a major shift in attitude, not just to cannabis but also to food and NCDs and St. Lucia remains... I mean the guys I don't know about you but the ladies here in St. Lucia always look it good, you know? Thank you very much ladies and gentlemen. Good night. Thank you Dr. Thompson and thank you participants for your questions. Our final presentation will be on the cannabis regime and where we now and this will be done by Mr. Dylan Norbert Inglis. Mr. Inglis is the senior legal officer within the Ministry of Commerce, Manufacturing and Business Development. Cooperatives and Consumer Affairs. He was the chairperson of the Cannabis Bill Staring Committee and he is currently a member of the Board for the Regulated Substance Authority. Ladies and gentlemen, Mr. Dylan Norbert Inglis. Good evening everyone. We were scheduled to have ended at 9 p.m. this evening. Being St. Lucia we like to be hospitable so I've extended quite a bit of hospitality to my dear friend from St. Vincent. I think what he was discussing was quite valuable so we allowed him some latitude. Nevertheless it's now quarter past nine so I'm going to have to accelerate my presentation some more to get you on as a fair hour. So there are a few points that I think are really integral to this discussion. More so leaning at the medicinal industry and how it's going to play out within St. Lucia. So the background to the cannabis industry is one that we know so we will appreciate that the Drug Prevention and Misuse Act is a piece of legislation on our books and even the nomenclature of that Drug Prevention and Misuse Act was one that we have to look at in a certain context. But going beyond that 2014 there was a Karikom report that spoke to the legalisation of cannabis in the islands in the Caribbean. That report actually spoke to the legalisation of recreational cannabis and that report was the basis of the legalisation throughout many of the islands in the region. In 2019 the government caused a commission on cannabis to look into legalisation here and that was the start of our journey in legalisation. So first steps in 2021 we knew that there was the changing of the Drug Prevention and Misuse Act by way of amendment and that amendment allowed for a simple possession what we refer to as possession simplicity of 30 grams of cannabis. There was also a statutory instrument and I'm going a little quickly because I understand the time constraints. So there was a statutory instrument which allowed for cultivation of four plants and there was also an amendment to the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act that allowed for the expunging of records for persons who had less than 30 grams for nonviolent cannabis offences. Last year we had the enactment of the Regulated Substances Act and that created the Regulated Substance Authority or the RSA so the RSA is the entity which will be responsible for the cannabis regime in St. Lucia and it's referred to as the Regulated Substance Authority because unlike the other jurisdictions it will not be dealing with cannabis. There's an intention for not just an intention but within the legislation it speaks to the authority having the ability to look into a number of substances as it stands now we already have started looking into radioactive sources as another substance that the authority will be responsible for based on an international obligation. So I've already spoken about what some of the other regulated substances are there is also an intention and interest in looking at some other substances as alcohol may be one of the substances that may fall under the RSA. Toxic chemicals and pesticides is being examined as a possible area for the RSA to have responsibility. We also have a few others that the Board of the RSA will be considering in short order. So the status of the RSA so having passed the legislation in November the cabinet of ministers has now appointed a Board of Directors and just two days ago we were visiting of the members of that Board so we expect the first meeting of that Board to take place within the coming weeks and they will at that point in time be able to give by way of resolution motion and initiate the matters surrounding the RSA. What we really need to understand here this evening what does a regulated cannabis industry and solution look like? So the industry and the development commercial trading use of cannabis and cannabis products for medicinal, industrial and scientific research purposes only. The regime will require licenses for cultivation, transportation, wholesale distribution, manufacturing, dispensing exportation, importation research and testing on cannabis and cannabis products being used for practitioner prescribed medicinal class 2 and self prescribed therapeutic class 1 and I'll touch on that a little bit later as well as industrial and scientific research. Dr. Thompson spoke earlier about our requirements based on our international obligations to ensure that every stage of the process is licensed. So we have that requirement and we're going to make sure that our legislation speaks to the requirement for a license for every stage of the commercial process. So as I said earlier the RSA will be responsible for the regime and then being responsible for the regime it will be responsible for issuing all of these licenses. So let's go back one slide. Cultivators will have the opportunity to cultivate under an approved license cannabis for industrial or medicinal purposes and we'll touch on the difference in industrial and medicinal cannabis shortly unless otherwise permitted all cannabis cultivated shall be sold to a central entity. Now this is something that is specific to St. Lucia when we looked at the other jurisdictions and what they had done for the industry that they had we felt that there was a need for a bespoke approach in St. Lucia. So the central trading entity or the CTE as it's referred to is something akin to your banana growers association of yesterday. It seeks to ensure that the players in the industry will be guaranteed a place within it. So if you have companies that come in from overseas who want to get into cultivation that's fine. If they want to get into cultivation they will be compelled essentially to sell to the CTE unless they have a fully vertically integrated model. So that is the hope and intention of incorporating the CTE in the process in our jurisdiction. So medicinal versus industrial in St. Lucia if the cannabis is being consumed by a human being it's medicinal cannabis. So regardless of how it is being consumed if a human being is going to consume it it's going to be medicinal. If it is not going to be consumed by a human being it can be considered industrial. Class one versus class two. So class one medicinal cannabis as I alluded to earlier will be available without a prescription from a class one dispensary. Class two medicinal cannabis will require prescription from a duly certified medical practitioner and I'll touch on that in a second and will only be available at a class two dispensary which must be a licensed pharmacy. The minister of health on the advice of the medicinal cannabis advisory board which is created within the act shall determine what product shall be class one and class two based on the THC within the product or other cannabinoids. The central trading entity which I spoke to earlier will be allowed to serve as the conduit between the two and they will be responsible for serve as a mechanism for encouraging manufacturers to obtain products from a traditional cultivator and they will also be responsible for monitoring quality. So the burning question, pun intended how do you determine or what is what class one is this is what class two is we cannot say at this point there is within the legislation the advisory council that advisory council is going to comprise a number of experts from the medical field and otherwise who will guide the minister of health as to what should be the delineating factor between class one and class two. And because it is in the regulations or by way of statutory instrument it can be changed and amended accordingly so it does not require the act of parliament for an amendment. If it is that the advisory council says that we think it should be this amount of THC within a THC product which is the CBN product which has this amount of CBN in a finished product and we are looking at finished products then they would recommend to the minister who then can issue a statutory instrument indicating that all products with less than this amount of THC will be a class one product and obviously if it is a class one product then it can be sold in a class one dispensary if it is above that threshold then it must be sold in a class two dispensary which will require a prescription from a doctor that a class two dispensary which I said earlier must be a pharmacy right so we spoke earlier on the distinguishing factor points worth stressing individual possession of more than 30 grams of cannabis will not be permitted without an authorization so on the status quo you are allowed to have 30 grams of cannabis that is to remain the case with the new piece of legislation however you will not be permitted to have 30 grams on your person possession of class two medicinal cannabis without a prescription or without authorization will not be permitted so again if you have class one cannabis that is fine if you have class two cannabis you should have only obtained access to class two cannabis by way of a prescription so if you don't have a prescription that would not be authorized and that would not be permitted cultivation of more than four plants in a household will not be permitted without a license for cultivation and smoking or other consumption of cannabis products in a public place will not be permitted the sale of cannabis to minors will not be permitted now on this point it is of note a doctor can prescribe cannabis to any person it is a medicine so unlike some of the jurisdictions where we understand that there is a restriction on cannabis use of 18 our regime does not recognize that restriction for class two cannabis if it is that the doctor is of the view with their medical training that a child of three years of age requires a product that has cannabis they can prescribe that cannabis product to somewhat of any age if it is that is a class one cannabis product where the individual does not require going to a doctor that person can access class one cannabis only they are over the age of 21 if they are under the age of 21 they can still access class one cannabis but they will require a prescription for it so another burning question what of the rastafarian community so under the legislation the rastafarian community they have been given certain carve outs and certain caveats within the legislation if it is that they wish to cultivate there is a special license in the regime that is referred to as a traditional cultivators license that license is supposed to only be given to individuals who are traditional cultivators the a religious organization and we didn't specify a rastafarian organization but a religious organization can apply for a traditional cultivators license and we treated as an individual we would have been part and parcel of the industry prior to the legalized regime and with regard to the traditional cultivators the persons and religious organizations who apply for these licenses will be issued them under less costly and less onerous parameters so we are trying to engender a culture where the companies who want to get involved in cannabis the licensing regime for them may be more costly than the regime for your traditional cultivators so that you are encouraging them as processors to engage the traditional cultivators in the processing in the cultivation rather and purchase the cannabis for their processing so what of the current crop because we are all aware that Sinuja has quite a bit of crop and amnesty is being provided within the bill and it provides for a process for the application the approval of it and certain immunities and rights for the persons pursuant to that amnesty so with the bill as it is currently drafted somebody can apply for that amnesty it will go to a board the board can approve that amnesty and that amnesty is in place there are certain requirements of you to submit some of your product for it can be tested to ensure that you meet certain parameters that you do not grow fresh crop but the crop that you have will not be cut down if it meets the certain criteria it can be funneled into the legitimate system through that amnesty how much longer do we have to wait and I looked at minister and I asked that question again the legislation has undergone an iterative process which has allowed for refining and improvement of the concepts and processes in the bill expert consultants have been engaged to develop regulations to support the bill these regulations have been received and the review is ongoing it is expected that the draft will be ready for public comment in the coming weeks and even the regulations that we received after reviewing them we realised that quite a bit of the information in these regulations had to be incorporated in the bill itself because the drafting unit felt that some of the suggestions in the regulations went to the core of the actual bill so they are now being incorporated and that is why we have not been able to release the bill as yet we had intended to do so about a week ago so these are some of the regulations that have been developed so limits and residues of contaminants the public and religious consumption medicinal cultivation medicinal manufacturing transportation, import and export central training regulations packaging and labelling the medicinal authorisation and just a point of medicinal authorisation within this regime all medical doctors as it stands now need to issue a prescription for cannabis there will be a requirement for these medical doctors to receive some certification we are still in discussions with the Board of the RSA and with the individuals in the Ministry of Health as to what that qualification will look like but we want to ensure that anybody who is going to be prescribing cannabis knows full well what it is that they are doing and we accept and I think all of us have accepted that very little medical training given in the current tutelage of persons in medicine so we want to ensure that anybody who is going to get involved in prescribing cannabis would have gone through some course some formal training and been certified to allow for them to prescribe so there are regulations which speak to that there is the access and use regulations class one and class two dispensaries we discuss the fact that there are two different dispensaries the research regulations advertising and marketing testing and laboratories so what now I tried to have this wrapped up within 15 minutes and I am just 2 minutes over we look out for the bill and the regulations which we hope to release within the coming weeks the public engagement which we hope will be fruitful and will be as well attended as this one is this evening please review digest question critique welcome it all any suggestions that you make will be taken into account whether or not you see it forming part of the legislation trust me when I say we go through a painstaking process of considering every single recommendation and suggestion no matter how outlandish it may seem and finally if you would like to receive a copy of the bill if you have any questions concerns comments queries we have an email address we have put up here you can send an email to us here when the bill is ready for dissemination we will send it to anybody who has requested one by way of email or any questions that you have we will review we will ensure that at our board meetings that due regard is given to all the comments and concerns by the populace if there is nothing further with which I may be of assistance at the 2 minutes past the hour I had suggested I would have been I will take now a few questions there should be a mic to the back okay good evening I know you went through really quickly so maybe I missed what I am about to ask by any clarification I heard a lot about laboratory testing I know there is quality assurance you also spoke about the amnesty about testing the crop what is in place with this regime as it relates to testing is it just that maybe private companies who have licenses for testing or has the government something that the government is putting in place or the authority for testing quality assurance determining soil type zoning where you know just general guidance as it relates to testing of the cannabis product we referred earlier to the regulations and we have specific regulations for testing so in these regulations which we hope to release soon it speaks to what are the requirements for a laboratory that is going to be testing cannabis the licensing for that lab and a lot of the other parameters so as soon as you release that you should be in a better position okay so if we are ready to go on live we are ready to this is happening and there is no company with a private lab what is in place are we not going to test will we have to source an outside lab will we be using a lab on island what is going to happen well we have already had discussions with some of the powers that be with regard to our testing regime so that there is excess capacity at certain labs in the region so we are looking at what the situation will be at the time that we roll out and we would make use of the different options that are available may I just suggest that we do have a lab that we probably can use our agriculture lab we know that there are some issues with the use of some of these labs so depending on the jurisdiction that you intend to export to if you want to export some of these jurisdictions require that you have a cannabis specific lab so we can have some testing done here but if you want to satisfy whichever jurisdiction you are going to be sending to there may be a requirement for a cannabis specific lab I noticed you all have that in Saint Vincent right in the specific lab any other questions the ministers you showed class 1 and class 2 and you indicated something about if you have a class 1 you should be 21 and above so how we will have our own people monitoring this but how do we differentiate what is required to differentiate between a class 1 and a class 2 in terms of access to it for example somebody is walking around somebody age 18 as what in the end would be a class 1 the process of identifying that class 1 so within the legislation and the regulations there are specific requirements for packaging so we had packaging and label regulations so the packaging would be able to easily identify a class 1 which is a class 2 product so class 1 products are always finished products there is no breaking bulk for class 1 products when it comes to a dispensary it must be a finished product similar to this this would be something akin to a class 1 product a class 2 product is being dispensed at a pharmacy it can't be but in most cases it wouldn't be a finished product very often the pharmacy would have to do what is called breaking bulk so if you have lots of pills and a person is prescribed 10 pills you are actually breaking bulk to give them 10 pills so in that case the pharmacy is going to be responsible for them to properly identify that product and be easily identified so that's why in our regulations as they are currently drafted the responsibility for how you identify a product falls on different persons so in the case of the class 1 product the packaging and labeling responsibilities fall on the producer whoever is manufacturing when it comes to the class 2 product it would fall on the pharmacy I just want to ask one question very frequent use of cannabis raises the risk of strokes and heart attacks for what is the response that is a very recent study from American Heart Association the study shows that increased use of cannabis raises the risk of heart attacks and stroke just want the answer from the doctor ok a couple of months ago I had seen that particular article a couple of months ago I had seen that particular article in a similar way there have been articles suggesting that there has been or is likely to be an increase incident of cancer I am celebrating my 40th year as a physician and remarkably the question was asked I haven't seen a big surge in persons in arrest of far-right faith coming down with cancer I don't know if the epidemiologists have noticed any particular thing like that we are often talking about a medical regime and an illegal regime I have no doubt in my mind that currently there are persons who use cannabis illegally I want to also warn you in Bolivia we had lectures we had a lecture from the drugs are in Belgium and Belgium is experiencing a massive surge in crack cocaine and we are seeing increases in the Caribbean I am saying this because sometimes the cannabis is a vehicle is adulterated and in terms of what else persons are putting in it I want to make an appeal and we are doing this if this is a sacred herb we have to do everything we can to make sure it is not adulterated there is no doubt that with cocaine and so forth there has been an incident I have gotten an impression that in terms of that particular study there has been no differentiation as regards what exactly might have been in the product yes I am saying and that the decoration has come under some review and sometimes scrutiny as regards whether that is the case but we could well check and see here if in the Caribbean I don't think we really notice that in the Caribbean there has been an increased incidence of heart attack directly due as a result of cannabis or an increase in stroke what we are seeing is an increase in stroke and heart attacks coming from diabetes, hypertension, stress and all those other factors that we have to deal with but I think in that particular area there was a lot of questions as regards the makeup of the cannabis itself exactly the marijuana what exactly is it what might have had in it because in some other places they are adulterating it with this, with that, the other and all sorts of things and I want to I think we got to launch a crusade that if cannabis is something sacred to the Caribbean we got to keep it that way and it shouldn't be adulterated in any way that would get your CMO very unhappy I'm sure you know Dylan so under the new regime 30 grams is still decriminalised so somebody that is not class 1 not class 2, 30 grams of of cannabis is decriminalised that will remain what about substances like hashish what will happen the current parameters speak to cannabis and cannabis products so within the definition for cannabis it speaks to any product that would have included cannabis as a cannabis product similar to other products that you would have had any other matter it would have been that matter so it's a similar treatment so the hashish would have been treated like a cannabis product yes good night you mentioned breaking bulk in that regard you meant that in a pharmacy the raw cannabis product may be bulk and the pharmacist breaks it down based on the request from the patient but typically what it's done is that the products are packaging smart amongst our experience so there isn't any tampering any adjustment to the cannabis by the pharmacist and that may be the case here as well but you do not know for a fact what will be prescribed and how it will be prescribed typically it's packaged like in 3 grams smart amongst but even that we can't say so even if how it is packaged is the prerogative of the processor how it is prescribed is the prerogative of the doctor so if the doctor says that I want to give you 1 gram as opposed to 3 when all of the processors are put in 3 then the processors now have to change to put it in 1 so you have to import some products that may not be on your market initially so we have to acknowledge the fact that if we start our regime tomorrow though we have a plethora of cannabis products on Ireland, we're well away they may not necessarily have been tested and been scrutinized to a level where they can be sold as pharmaceutical products we may have to in the initial stages even with the grimace I'm going to get from certain sectors we may have to import some of our products that's the reality if it is that we are importing some of the the products that we can see on the table here today if these products come in and this may have 30 capsules in it and a medical doctor says I want to prescribe 10 capsules for you to use over the next 3 days the breaking bulk so understanding that it may only be the 30 and luckily for the pharmacist there's no need for us to break bulk and I can just sell you the entire thing but if the doctor says 10 our legislation allowed for the pharmacist to do that because you can't take that power away from the pharmacist I was just giving you our experience so we're hoping that there's no need for it and the pharmacist will have the easy job of just giving finished product but if it is and we recognize that that's a possibility we did not want the situation of our legislation didn't speak to it and the pharmacist is now saying what do I do because the prescription says and I only have them like I'm not supposed to so we said if that's in fact the case you still need to dilute it in this way my second point is the issue of someone under 18 being prescribed cannabis I know you mentioned it but does your love provide for a caregiver because in the prescription a caregiver must be the person who really is responsible for the prescriptions and so forth it does provide a caregiver and does your love provide for that caregiver to have a medicinal cannabis card yes so we do have caregivers in our regime but a caregiver would have been responsible for the administration because you would not obviously trust the child of three and four to administer the product to themselves but the prescription will still be coming from the medical practitioner they will say that the child must take X, Y and Z and they will give that prescription to the caregiver get the card as a caregiver and I believe in our legislation unless it is your child you as a caregiver you can have no more than three or four persons that you are responsible for if it is in fact your child then you can be responsible for all of your children I just wanted to note that so that it's important that you make that point in your presentation too as you present that under 18 is being prescribed cannabis under the supervision of a caregiver that's very important thank you for that we will take one last question yes just a question I notice a lot of control in your legislation and what I note as well is that we are dealing with a new generation of people who have a totally different mindset to us and who do not like to be controlled so my question is not if but when those that new generation begins to fight back against that control how do we adjust our regulations and our need for control to accommodate our youth you see I think the issue that we face is one where we are operating in a space that we have been in the beautiful thing about life is as you evolve things change the only thing that is constant is change I have had the benefit of being in the Canadian system for some time and I have had the opportunity to see how things were when they first legalized five years ago incidentally it's five years since they legalized where you went into a dispensary and you went for weed and where you go to a dispensary now in Toronto and you walk in and you're looking for and that shows a very quick shift from I want weed to what effect are you looking for I'd like to sleep or you need CBN then that's the kind of conversation that's now taking place within five years so they no longer looking for cannabis they're looking for CBN T8C one to one that's the kind of conversations these people are having they're walking and saying what's CBJ because the packaging and the labeling now specifies CBJ this is CBN this is CBD this is and they're now entire pamphlets when you walk in on T8CA on T8CV but it has opened the minds of these persons the hope is that the young persons who are not yet initiated in cannabis will grow up in a time and space where cannabis is different to the cannabis that we know of so I'm hoping that the person who's 3, 4 and 5 who when they get to an age of consuming cannabis is not thinking like the person who was forced to smoke it behind the school when they were younger and I will not happen overnight and we will have as I joke with my mother quite often we will have the feeling like we're cutting our hair with graters for some time that will happen but with time you will have a generation that will come to appreciate that okay I would like a certain effect on me and this is a drug that I can take in this way to cause that effect not that I want weed so we're trying to move away from that to a respect and reverence for this product and that will happen with a regime that has to be flexible and not over-regulate and has to also take into consideration that all of your regulations may not be able to be met in the beginning but you need to have standards as you can ask persons to aim for so within the legislation they're also there's authority for the RSA to allow for somebody not to meet all of the regulations for the first five years so the RSA can say if you have a cultivation license you are required to have cameras fencing, this, that we understand that's quite onerous but the RSA has the ability to say we will grant you a license to cultivate we know you won't have cameras and fencing within the first year we can waive your camera requirement for one year we can waive it for up to five and beyond five years the minister can give you a national two years to meet those standards because we understand that you want to have persons want to be part of the industry and not immediately believe that you're cutting them off or removing them from having any access to it thank you I'm sure it has been a long night for some of us here at this point we would like to thank our presenters Dr. Sharon Belma George the chief medical officer Dr. Gerald Thompson the CEO of the medicinal cannabis authority in St. Vincent and the Grenadines and Mr. Dylan Norbert English the senior legal officer from the ministry of commerce, manufacturing, business development, cooperatives and consumer affairs we would like to thank all participants here and those who are participating online via the zoom platform the ministry of commerce would also like to thank the ministry of health for its support as well as the various interest groups and other stakeholders as we look forward to a mutually beneficial working relationship and as we work together to advance the medicinal cannabis in St. Lucia I thank you and good night