 This is Stink Tech, Hawaii. Community matters here. I'm Marcia Joyner, and we are on a 10,000-year odyssey. So tell me, Muse, a vet plant of many resources which wander far and far wide. The ancient plant of food, fuel, and fiber cultivated from millennia. As we venture through the past 10,000 years, we will explore and discover the plant which cannabis derives. The many uses of the plant, hemp, cannabis, ashes, cannabis and religion, cannabis and medicine, cannabis and Uncle Sam, and so our odyssey begins. Today our odyssey is not long ago and far away. It is current and in progress. It is Paul Clink. He is the founder, patient advocate, chaplain, medical assistant, how about all that. And he just wondered off being with the people of Houston, that horrible, horrible storm. So he brings all of that compassion to those people so far in need. Paul is the founder of Honolulu Wellness Center, cannabis, and he was patient as well as an advocate. So he understands and feels what the patients need and want. And above all, he's learned to listen to be with the patient. So there we are. So welcome, welcome, welcome Paul. I am so glad that you're back all in one piece. And so before we talk about cannabis or anything else, tell me about, because we did talk to you on the phone from Houston. So tell me, I mean, that's just beyond my imagination what being in Houston was like. I've been a volunteer for the American Red Cross here in Hawaii since 2012. And I've been blessed to have been deployed to a few different natural disasters to help our fellow Americans in California during the Orville Dam evacuation. They evacuated 200,000 people. And there was quite a bit of flooding, even though the dam didn't break. We came up with a concept, or Red Cross came up with a concept of a mega-shelter. So instead of, say, having 1,000 shelters with 100 people, have one shelter with 100,000 people or something like that. So being able to centralize all the care in one spot. I'm trained as a disaster action team member, so I go to a lot of house fires here on Oahu. But I'm also trained as a shelter manager. So they deploy me to different parts. I also manage a shelter in Pahoa during Hurricane Izzale as it hit the big island. Nothing prepared me for what would happen in Houston. I had never been in a situation where I could really have more empathy than sympathy. I could totally see myself in these people's situations. Many people were in areas that were not under evacuation, that were not thinking they would ever be affected by the storm. But due to levee and damming and things like that, their homes were flooded at middle of the night. Where water would flow in their bedrooms after smashing in their bedroom windows. They'd have to gather their family wearing what they were wearing at 90 degrees in the middle of the night, swim out of their own home, and try to get to a rooftop and wait evacuation by helicopter. Having only what level of any clothes they had on their back, and then end up in a shelter. So just listening to them. I was night shelter manager, so I do that and I also help take care of the facilities. And just listening, being a place for them to cry, put their head on your shoulder. And even though I did go through a lot with Hurricane Iniki, I can listen better. A lot of people misunderstand and think they need to compete with the client. And tell them what they went through that they understood it. I think the client's just sense that you've been through it when they see you listening that intently. And giving them the nods at the right time. And truly interactive listening. And so doing that and playing a lot of Hawaiian music. That helps. Handing out some live-aloha stickers and cards and just being there for them. And letting them get it off their chest and get them into a process I like calling the new normal. Because their old normal is never going to be around again. It's gone forever. Their house is maybe miles downstream from where they left side. So they lost all their material, worldly goods. But they realized then, they got themselves, they had their health, they had their family. And they have thousands of Red Cross volunteers who are giving up their time, their vacation time expenses. Whatever it takes to help their fellow man with love with people we've never met and didn't know who they were. Without anything spun to it at all other than humanity. So Red Cross volunteers really are a beautiful example of humanitarianism in fellow Americans. I do deploy other places in the world under other organizations. And nowhere do you see people coming together like the United States. Nowhere. In Texas we have people from all over the United States. And tons of people up from Mexico. All selflessly helping for free. I am just, well I was impressed period with that whole process. And we just talked on the phone to someone in Charleston. And no one talks about those islands. But he did say that unlike the cities where those islands, the water comes in and in goes out. There's nothing that, no walls, no buildings that stop. Right. So they do get hit, but then it recedes. Right. But that's different. Those are different. Yeah, in Houston it's all the cement and it doesn't absorb any moisture or water. So and the bayou system is really interesting. The flooding continued on for days and days and days. Because the way the water comes through the bayou is slower than a straight stream or river. So days were normally we would be receding waters, lowering flooding. It was still going up. And it remained dangerous in ways no one imagined. Alligators came into areas they never were before. These islands of billions of these red biting ants, fire ants, would be floating around. You could see them. It's a wonder of nature. But if you got near them, you got anywhere you had exposed skin, you were in trouble. Snakes, venomous snakes, they had never been in those areas. They were all being displaced by the flooding. And the live wires, you'd be walking in the waters and feel a vibration. You know there's an electrical wire nearby. You had to get out right away. It's deadly. So having risks and situations that we're not really familiar with. Just trying to get to the people and get them out of harm's way and get them some clothing, food and shelter. And getting them on their path to recovery so that they understand there's a system. There's people who've been through this before and it's going to be okay. It's just going to be a new normal. Yeah, new normal. That's a new phrase. That's what I call it. That's really what it is. They're going to learn how to survive and they're going to have a great story later and inspire a lot of people. And we end up making a lot of future volunteers for Red Cross. They see the value of what we do and see the gratification we get just by listening, just by helping, just by being there. And we end up recruiting a lot of future volunteers from people we service. And you bring that same empathy to your wellness cannabis clinic. Exactly. How long have you been doing cannabis clinic? How long? It's interesting. I actually, the grandfather of the cannabis movement in Hawai'i, Quincedonia, I just saw, got fostered and we stand on his shoulders and shoulders of his associates who were working back in the 70s and 80s and 90s so that in 2000 we got that law passed so we could use it medically and legally here in Hawai'i. I became a patient right away because of my cardiological and pulmonary, many physical issues I've had. And I don't like using synthetic, narcotic drugs if at all possible. And I found that all natural cannabis is a much better alternative. And then I opened my company last year in 2016 because my normal doctor was on vacation and my card expired. And it always seemed like people were doing it on the dial and they're like, oh, I got medical marijuana card. It's completely legal. It can be completely transparent and completely appropriate. So I associate with doctors that are qualifying patients. And I take care of all the front end. I find the clients, the patients. I educate the patients with the information I've been taught through schooling. I get them prepared. Then they meet with the doctor to verify and set up a face-to-face ongoing doctor-patient relationship with our medical cannabis doctors. We work out of the Infinity Life Center over at Restaurant Row. We're in the building 470. We just moved in. Dr. Michael Pasquale is our certifying doctor. And he really cares as well. We're there to listen and help. So let's talk about the plant itself. Yes. See, I'm a newbie. So that's why we're on this odyssey. So my understanding is that we've had this hemp since God created the planet. Or the divine, whatever you want to call it. So tell us about the plant itself. The plant itself is fascinating. And first of all, people think weed is a weed. It just grows like a weed. But to make it into medicine, there's a process. It's not that easy. It's just some seeds in the ground. You pick it and smoke it. First of all, we never recommend our patients smoke it for ourselves. We choose not to do that. I work with doctors who don't prescribe narcotics. So they're very much into natural solutions. And again, they're DOs. Both doctors I work with right now are DOs, which MDs to me are more about dealing with symptoms and DOs are more about dealing with solutions in my experience. And the underlying there is that medical schools are financed by the pharmaceutical companies. Yeah, so they're discouraged from that. So they're not going to know anything about it. Well, the pharmaceutical companies are learning about cannabis quickly. Oh, they have some patents. They have some patents and they have business models that are accommodating to the advent of it. We being re-legalized. The important thing to me is I'm moving forward. Because looking back on it, it's shameful what's happened. It's really a crime against humanity the way the cannabis a non-synthetic solution for so many ailments. I always start public speaking about cannabis with the same quote. I always start off like this. It's not as good as the proponents want you to believe it is. It's not as bad as the detractors want you to believe it is. But what it's good for, it's really good for. So we have a plant. This plant here. And it is a hemp plant. And on that plant, out of that plant, you get hemp. You get cannabis. You get hashes. That's why I say it's a divine gift. Because you can build a house with it. You can have medicine. You can have fabrics. You can have a non-tree paper. You've got all of these wonderful things out of this one plant. And we've had it for 10,000 years or more or more. So how did we get from medical, because ancient Chinese used it as medicine. And ancient Indians, Ayurvedic medicines. All of these medicines come before they became pharmaceuticals. How did we get from there to it being illegal, it being trashed. All of these things that had happened, scared people to death about it. How did we get there? I try not to be too much of a conspiracy theorist. I'm really good with reality and truth. And the reality and truth of this is it's all financial. I mean, from day one, if you look at whenever there was a detractor to cannabis, you could trace it back to an investment or situation where they're benefiting financially by pushing cannabis down. Whether it was the opiate industry, whether it was the funding of the concept of MDs to begin with in the first colleges and the existing colleges, and the funding by pharmaceutical companies, the money that surrounds the FDA and what needs to go through or not and who needs to be paid or not and what needs to be done or not is a quote-unquote drug FDA certified. A lot's been done against humanity in the name of profit here. And rather than going back and pointing out who did what, for me it's much more useful to move forward and say, okay, we're getting it legalized in parts of the United States. Well, to me the United States is a democracy. So 50% or more would win and we had more than 50% of the states that allow cannabis consumption for medicine. Do I think it should be loosey-goosey recreationally available? Absolutely not. Especially when today's strains and trade, today's concentrates are so powerful if it could just be handled similar to alcohol as far as legal use is concerned or a medicine which to me with rules and such and competing with opiates is not going to be easy, it's much more effective to be handled like alcohol, I think. Let's take a break and come back and we'll talk about that very thing, the problems and the uses and whatever. We'll be right back. This is Think Tech Hawaii, raising public awareness. I just walked by and I said, what's happening guys? They told me they were making music. Ted Rawson here folks, you're a host on Where the Drone Leads our weekly show at noon on Thursdays here on Think Deck. We talk about drones, anything to do about drones, drones, remotely piloted aircraft, unmanned aircraft, whatever you want to call them, emerging into Hawaii's economy, educational framework and our public life. We talk about things associated with the use, the misuse, technology, engineering, legislation with local experts as well as people from across the country. Please join us noon on Thursdays and catch the latest on what's taking place in the world of drones that might affect you. So we're back. And we are here with my new best friend, Dr. Paul Clink, who is, well, his resume is that long and that would take up the rest of the program so we'll deal with that later with you. And we are talking about this subject of cannabis. Yes, medical cannabis. I don't want to talk about all those other things except that we do need to talk about the fact that alcohol, which kills you, is legal. Tobacco smoking is legal. That will ruin your lungs. Yet here we have a natural product that's been with us for thousands of years. Even the Bible talks about Jesus anointing with the oil. That is not legal in parts of the United States. I guess I know when Uncle Sam decides, just like they did at one point with alcohol, which didn't work then, just doesn't work now, the fact that they criminalized it with, what is this a number one? Schedule one, same as heroin. It's scheduled in such a way that it has, to be on that schedule, it has to have no medical value, which is ludicrous. The federal government has patents for medical value cannabis. Real quick, I'm a doctor of divinity. I'm the company's chaplain and I'm also a certified life coach, so I work a lot with the patients about their use of the cannabis and some of the anxieties they have because it has been demonized over the years. Trying to show them that it is now legal to use in Hawaii where they're qualifying ailments. We just make sure they actually have one of the qualifying ailments. And the list is always growing. We're just in a meeting this morning to add lupus and general anxiety disorder. Well, there's a general anxiety with that PTSD? PTSD may be as part of a general anxiety disorder diagnosis, but that would have to be diagnosed by a psychiatrist and documentation would be brought to us so we can give them the card similar to, I mean, the PTSD is a standing diagnosis now. So if someone comes in with a diagnosis for that, we were able to add that on to the state of Hawaii's list with a couple other diagnoses. It's always growing. I'm looking to get autism on there. It's an amazing medication for autism. But I'm there to listen to the patient and to make sure they're well-educated. We give workshops once every two or three months about how to grow it, how to cook with it, how to use it other ways than smoking it. It's never been known to cause cancer. In the history of recorded medical journaling, it's never, ever had someone overdose on marijuana. And there's a technical, biological reason for that in the way the brain handles the THC that's activated. There's a lot of medicines in cannabis. There's, say, 116 to 132 specific quantifiable medicines or terpenes in the endocannabinoid profiles of the cannabis plant. And there's different varieties. So someone who maybe had a bad experience with one kind, when I speak to them about different varieties, there's tens of thousands of varieties. And each one's been documented very well for the specific uses and side effects they may have, dry eyes, dry mouth, how to mitigate those. Other alternatives than cannabis. There's crotom, there's other acratom, there's other herbs that are non-synthetic that can help with pain, anxiety, stress. Because the top three reasons people really use cannabis for, they'll come in for the reasons that are on the list and they will qualify if they do with objective medical information. It's really stress, anxiety, and insomnia. No matter what anybody says, that's generally the reason people use it. And it works really, really well for that. And Hawaii may be the first state in the United States to add anxiety to our list. We've been a pioneer since day one. I would think so. Simply because when we look at, well, since Vietnam War, PTSD is big. Yeah. I mean, they've never had a definition for it before, but now they do. Now they do. And the stories we hear from our patients, we don't solicit our patients. They come in with a diagnosis from their doctor where they're to validate that, which is a quick conversation and have an ongoing relationship. When it comes into our clinic, our initial price, which is one of the lowest in Hawaii, includes two additional appointments during the year. It's not a wham-bam, here's your signature, go away. You're now our cannabis patient. We're here to educate you, keep you up to date with the laws, make sure you're compliant with all the laws yourself and how you're handling your medicine, other alternatives they may need or want, as well as educating them that we're there for them to hear their situation and help them. Well, you said, now, that you don't necessarily smoke. I think smoking marijuana, putting ash and heat in your lungs just doesn't make a lot of sense. Using vaporizing pens or vaporizing systems, which are pre-combustion, makes a cooler inhalation. If you want to inhale it, and if it's made from VG or vegetable glycerin or certain elements, your lungs will digest it, like it won't cause any future problems with your lungs, generally speaking, but I also recommend tinctures, which are made with just... Tincture, is it? It's under the tongue. It could be a sublingual tincture or something, you add the food. I highly recommend cooking with it. I mean, you can put a certain amount in some butter, make it with the butter, because the heat, the carboxylation, the heating of the cannabis activates the psychotropic or the part that gives you the quote-unquote high, but in most cases, to get the medicinal value, your endocannabinary system needs the THC delta to open your endocannabinary system to get the other medicines. You've heard about CBD oils and all these other things. Okay, what's the difference in the CBD oil and the cannabis oil? Okay. What's... Usually, the CBD is legal in all 50 states. That's a great area, still, but I would say that the CBD is something that's separating out the THC or the psychoactive part of the plant. I think to be legally CBD has got to be .003, a very small amount of THC, because it's hard to get all of it out. But in my experience, you need some THC to actually activate your system to accept a lot of the CBD's values that a lot of our patients are looking for, but CBD by itself has been shown very clinically in certain conditions where qualifying ailments to be useful. When someone says hemp oil or cannabis oil, as you called it, that usually refers to full plant or full spectrum. So that will include the THC delta, THCA. I mean, there's, I would say, over 100 of these acronyms and medicines in the plant, which, and again, I'm always traveling to education. I'm always trying to learn. A lot of the best education about cannabis is coming out of Israel, the Netherlands. It's not out of the United States, but yet because it's lost. I did, someone did send me a file from the university in Israel. They've got thousands of years of documentation. That's peer-reviewed. Yes. Very effective. Incredible. Now, also, a person showed me, because, you know, I'm talking about this hemp cream. Yeah. As long as it has a solvent. It's DMSO. Because it's wonderful for tattoos. He says that it protects the skin, helps to heal. Helps heal. It helps with the pain. And whatnot with a tattoo. I've never had a tattoo. People with atopical issues with cannabis has a lot of anesthetic and it has a lot of value. And I always recommend people, instead of talking to someone, go and research incredible sources. A lot of which are out of Israel, coincidentally. Yes. The important thing is if you're going to use a salve or a lotion, if it doesn't have a solvent in it, a DMSO, kind of like the old horse medicine, they give it to them. It goes through their skin. Transdermal. It's not going to get into your system, so to speak. So a lot of the salves that we make or how patients make, and I've made for myself in the past, we'll use DMSO. We'll get them down to Earth or any health food store. I use 70, 30. 70% DMSO, 30% aloe vera, because it can be harsh on your skin. And then I use that and then add the texture to that. And then it makes the tincture, it's a transport of the tincture to get into, you get the topical value you spoke of with the tattoo, but also goes systemic. Once it goes through the skin, then you get the benefits inside your entire system. It seems to me that these high-end tattoo products, and they're not cheap. That's something that they would... Oh, I'm sure. Well, the CBD oil for now, but as soon as it becomes recreational or available, they would be able to use it in other ways, as long as some patients over 21 years old. No, I'm saying that they're giving these tattoos. It seems to me that that would be part of the process. Yeah, it would be a natural. Absolutely. It would... But for older people, and older people, we just got real tight arthritis and other forms of arthritis that cause pains out into the list. And I've had enough broken bones. Well, I can tell you, if you put the CBD oil by itself, ideally full spectrum, it really works. I mean, you can do this where normally you really wouldn't be able to do that. Wow. And it really, for seniors especially, cannabis is just a silver bullet for a lot of ailments that just humans have as a condition of being human as you get older. Well, now... Clarity too, because now we're recommending it for dementia, Alzheimer's. A lot of these psychotropic values go in to help patients in other areas as well. So that it would clear up the fog of whatever's getting in the way. Yes, there's a whole set of cannabis that are specifically built. They call them the college exam cannabis set. The reason why a lot of college students, they're called focused strains. So these strains really help you focus mentally. They increase your math scores. The Netherlands has done studies on that. It increases IQ scores. A lot of it, I think, is relaxing you. Allow yourself to think more clearly and less distracted. Well, what about for Alzheimer's and dementia where you... To pull up whatever's the most... Recollection. I can tell you that I had a severe stroke in September 2015. The only two medications I used regarding the stroke was mother's milk from my much better half because she had frozen a bunch for our daughter and someone who said that just think human mother's milk creates a body, a baby from birth to two years old perfectly creates brains and cannabis. And I'm talking to you right now and using my right hand and my right leg that weren't working. To me, it was a severe stroke. It was a thalamidic stroke. It's a lot of asphagia, which means I wasn't recalling words. I wasn't able to speak without stuttering. It was very upsetting. And I did some research and found out the strains that would help with that, which were high CBD, low THC, similar to the lotions people would get for tennis elbow or tennis arm, and some other varieties that were known to be good for a clarity of mind and thought. And somehow my neural network got me to the point where I'm talking to you today, which is emotional to me because I couldn't talk after my stroke very well. And I had canes and it was horrible. Yeah. Stroke is pretty bad. Yeah. So there is a part of the body and I don't know what it is that accepts this. Your endocannabinolid system. So you have this every human. Every human. System. Every human. So it welcomes naturally. Naturally. It's a natural process for you. And so they work together to fix whatever's wrong. Well, it's what it's good for. Yeah, definitely. For glaucoma, it releases the pressure in the back of the eye. For cancer, of course, the precipitous symptoms from your chemotherapy, it really helps with nausea, any kind of nausea, but definitely with chemotherapy derived nausea. Cachexia, wasting syndrome, you can't eat or what you can't eat won't be digested well. And nutrition won't come in. Cannabis is world famous for those symptoms. And they're finding very clear objective peer-reviewed results in regards to cannabis and cancer. From my experience, it makes your body a very unfriendly place for cancer. And I've seen some miracles, but I'm waiting for peer-reviewed results to come out to share them. I read a piece just a week or two ago about a study and diabetes. Oh, yeah. So I have a friend, we've been family for 40 years. Everybody in that family has diabetes. So one of them who has been on recreational cannabis, for as long as I've known them, he out of the whole family is the only one that has handled the diabetes well. He functions well. He doesn't have dialysis. He doesn't have this. And I've watched that family deteriorate with this. And it never occurred to me until I read the study. And I thought, ah, that's why he has survived. Yeah. Absolutely. And it's a medicine that really works for what it works for. And we're finding diabetes is one of those things that cannabis can be very, very useful. And it's helping people survive. I've seen with my own eyes the healing effects of an autistic child calling his dad, dad, at 23 years old for the first time. I've seen people put self on the bottom of their feet with severe diabetic neuropathy and be able to walk again. I've seen people with diabetes that have been able to reverse some of the actions. I'm leery to get specific because until we have peer-reviewed studies, the powers that we aren't going to feel the truth of it all yet. But it's clear to people anecdotally, obviously. Well, there's so much because we have 10,000 years to catch up with. So you will come back? I'd be honored to help you anytime, Marcia. Thank you for you. My pleasure. This is a great start on our 10,000-year journey. And so, again, thank you so much. Thanks for inviting me. I'm honored. And thank you for volunteering to go to Houston. I love being one of the volunteers. It's selfish. We get to see some miracles and it's beautiful. Under the circumstances. Aloha. Thank you.