 This is St. Tech, Hawaii. Community matters here. I'm Marcia Joyner and this is Cannabis Chronicles, a 10,000-year odyssey. We are going back thousands of years to learn about this plant that has been with us and all of the things that come from the plant. Hashes, cannabis, hemp, hemp and religion, hemp and food, fiber, fabrics, and cannabis, and dear old Uncle Sam. What would it be if it didn't have Uncle Sam? But today, today, we are not 10,000 years away. We are here and now in Honolulu with my dear, dear friend, who, by the way, started me on this journey. Nice! I'm so glad. Wendy Gibson, who is a cannabis nurse, cannabis educator, among other things. An organizer and everything. I love my job. Yes. Thank you for being here. Thank you for coming to visit with us again. Thank you so much for having me and allowing me to speak about my favorite subject, which is medical cannabis. And, like I said, when we talked, just to let the audience know that when I started this a year ago, I knew absolutely nothing about cannabis. And so the whole idea of the show is to bring the audience along as I learn. So you have been such a great tool in the learning process. I'm so glad. Thank you. Now, we said we were going to talk about the various medical opportunities, educational opportunities. So, just what does that mean? Well, I try to help keep people informed about educational opportunities that are coming up. And there is a gathering of the greatest minds in cannabis that's going to be happening this month. And I get to go and earn some continuing medical education credits for it. And I wanted to let people know about this event. That's where? It's at UCLA in California. Yes. It's sponsored by Medicinal Genomics. And they're billing it as a gathering of the greatest minds in cannabis. That's what it says here. Yes. It's called CANMED 2018. So they're billing it. They're bringing some of the top world's researchers here from Israel, from Spain, as well as some other, not just researchers, but clinicians from the United States. Well, speaking of Israel, in this journey, this 10,000-year odyssey, I discovered that the university in Israel has some of the oldest research of anybody in the world. Dr. Rafael Machulam is credited with the discovery and, well, rediscovery, I guess you should say, of THC, but also the body's THC, which is called anandamide. So your body produces a chemical that's very much like THC. And as it turns out, it's the master controlling system of your body. So he's credited with discovering that. He's not an MD, and I don't even know if he's a PhD, but he is a chemist. Yes. Well, I was just fascinated to find, like I said, in my journey. The Israel was really the top spot. So the top research is coming out of not just Israel and Spain, but UK, and some from Canada. There's some from Italy. There's some really good studies going on. So since we are not at the top, is that because of our arcane rules about? Yes. It is because cannabis was unscientifically and inappropriately placed in the Schedule I drug category by one of our presidents, the illustrious Richard Milhouse Nixon, who did not like hippies or war protesters or blacks. And so he's the president who recorded everything that he said, so we can actually substantiate that this was very racially motivated to place it in the Schedule I drug category to heavily criminalize people who might be using these substances and to lock them up. And so that was the start of our mass incarceration, where they started mass incarcerating 600,000 to 700,000 people a year. Oh. Yeah. Just for cannabis possession alone, nonviolent crime. Yeah. Oh, so there's no room in the jails for people that do real crimes. Yes. All right. Okay. I got that. So tell me more about this conference. Well, this conference. And can anybody go? Anybody can go. I mean, do you have to be active in the industry? No, but it would probably help if you had a basic understanding of how the endocannabinoid system works, of how your own body works, and some idea of how it's being used to treat epilepsy and cancer, because they're going to dive deep into this. They're going to dive very deeply into it. Well, let me just tell you about the people who are coming. I told you about Dr. Raphael Michoulin. Well, not doctor. He's an organic chemist. He's a professor of medicinal chemistry at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He's best known for his work for isolating the structure of Delta 9 THC, which is a non-psychoactive form of it, not the raw, non-psychoactive form. But also, again, of the, well, actually, two endocannabinoids. The one I told you about, which is like THC, called anandamide, but then there's another one called 2-A-G, short for two-arachiodontoglycerol. I can only say that too many times before I poop out. So Dr. Raphael Michoulin is our keynote speaker. And then a doctor, well, he's a PhD, Dr. David Meary, also from Israel. And he's known for his cannabis and cancer research. And then we also have Dr. Cristina Sanchez from Spain. And she's known for her research on gliomas, which are brain cancers and also breast cancers, and showing how you can use less chemotherapy, if, well, on mice. And I believe there's only one human study that they've done. But it did show some decent results and very encouraging news. We also have Dr. Jeffrey Hergenrathor. And he is an MD, yes. He's one of my favorite people. He's the founding member and the current president of Society of Cannabis Clinicians. And this is the oldest organization of physicians who specialize in cannabis medicines. I believe California, yes. But the Society of Cannabis Clinicians, they're a nonprofit and they're dedicated to not just quality patient care but education. And so Dr. Hergenrathor is an adjunct professor at Sonoma State University. And he's teaching a biology course in the medicinal use of cannabis. So while it's really not being taught largely at nursing schools or in medical schools, Dr. Hergenrathor and the Society of Cannabis Clinicians, they do offer CMEs, I believe, for physicians. And then we have Dr. Bonnie Goldstein. And she's another one of my favorites. She wrote this book, which is one of my favorites, it's called Cannabis Revealed. I have this. Do you? Yes. And it really lays out. So can we get close? Sure. Let me get my clip off of there for you. Can we get up close? Yeah. Yeah. So Dr. Christina, I'm sorry, Bonnie Goldstein. Goldstein, yes. She's a medical director of cannabis centers. And that's a California-based medical practice. And it's devoted to educating patients about the use of cannabis for serious and chronic medical conditions. Her specialty is pediatric emergency medicine. But she has a special interest in treating children with intractable epilepsy and autism and advanced cancers. And I've heard sort of through the grapevine from people who have worked with her about some amazing stories of putting a three-year-old's leukemia into remission using cannabis oils. And she also treats adult patients for chronic pain, autoimmune illnesses, and other endocannabinoid deficiencies. She says here, did you know you have a widespread receptor system that interacts with the compounds in cannabis? You do. Because your body creates these endocannabinoids, which are similar to what are in the plant, your body has receptors for them. These act as neurotransmitters. You have more receptors, endocannabinoid receptors, than any other receptor type in your body. So that it's a natural, unlike man-made medicines, it's a natural interaction. Yes. It's addressing a natural system that... Since cannabis is natural, it grows in nature. Yes. So... Well, the chemicals are similar to the ones that your body produces. And we believe that in a lot of these illnesses, especially with inflammatory conditions, that your body has a shortage of these chemicals. And the receptors actually come out looking for them. So in different diseases, such as cancer, we see what's called an upregulation of these receptors. You can kind of think of it like a satellite dish sitting on the cell surface. And they're pretty comfortable as long as you have adequate levels of these chemicals in your body. But when you have a shortage of them, these receptors come out like satellite dishes looking for those chemicals. So in many conditions, we're seeing an upregulation and these receptors looking for the chemicals. Wonderful. Wow. Gee, it's exciting. It is really exciting about where this is all going. The chemistry is fascinating. It's just I learn something new every day. And there are so much research. There's over 28,000 studies that have been done. And yeah, so I'm excited just because one of the things I'm trying to teach about mostly right now is how cannabis can be used to replace at least some of the opioids and other drugs that people are dying from overdosing on. And I think we actually have a pretty good chance of doing that. Well, we need to take a break. Okay. And when we come back, let's talk about the opioids because that's the headline everywhere. So let's talk about what we can do right here in Honolulu. Great. Okay. I'm all for it. Okay. We'll be right back. This is Think Tech Hawaii, raising public awareness. When I was growing up, I was among the one in six American kids who struggled with hunger and hungry mornings make tired days. Grumpy days. Kind of days. But with the power of breakfast, the kids in your neighborhood can think big and be more. We're not hungry for breakfast. We're hungry for more. More ideas. More dreams. More fun. When kids aren't hungry for breakfast, they can be hungry for more. Go to hungarees.org and lend your time or your voice to make breakfast happen for kids in your neighborhood. We're looking at, is trying to reduce the amount of opioids that are being used in pain management and also people who have substance use disorders, opiates specifically. And we are finding that there's emerging evidence for both of those. And if anybody's interested in knowing more, they can email me and I can send them a me and I can send them a list of research articles that they can look at. Well, you know, we talked about this last year and before the legislature, and I kept thinking early in this journey that we should look at that to help people come down from addictions. And then I was told by a well-renowned doctor locally, oh no, we already have methadone. And then I had, I talked to a man who was taking methadone and he said it was worse, worse, the coming down on that was worse than the drug. And so I, you know, of course, am not the expert, but having read so much and it made sense to me that this would assist in coming down off of that horrible addiction. So how do we move from, from me thinking this is a good idea to how do you talk to the legislature? Because that is... Well, the legislators did help us pass Senate Bill 2407, which would add to Hawaii's list of qualifying conditions for patients in our medical cannabis program. It would add to that list of qualifying conditions patients who are having trouble with opiate use disorders or other substance use disorders. And no, we don't have a huge body of evidence and we don't have a lot of guidelines for the practitioners to use, but we've got, I believe, enough evidence that it's safe and possibly effective that we shouldn't be running scared of it, that we should at least try it. Because what I believe has been found in terms of the effectiveness of any rehab is not that abstinence only is not the most effective way to go, that the medication-assisted therapies, like you mentioned, like with methadone or suboxone, those are the ones that they're seeing greater successes with. And so there are rehab centers that are experimenting with using cannabis to replace some of the opioids and benzodiazepines and other deadly drugs and seeing good results. And I hear it all the time from patients that they were able to cut back on their opioid and other drug use by at least 50%. Well, what my issue is, not mine, but the minute you mentioned this, so many of those drug rehab places get federal grants and with the federal grant means that they can't use this. That's true. So we need to get it out of a schedule one category to move forward on so many levels in medicine. Not just research, but patients are largely not allowed to use it if they are in the hospital or even in the clinic. Or if a patient comes over from another island to get treatment here on Oahu, they can't bring their medicine with them because of schedule one drug classification. You're entering into... Can't fly. Can't fly or bring it on a boat. So I do want to try to raise awareness though about this and I think that because Governor Ege vetoed our bill after we got it passed through both the House and the Senate, Senate Bill 2407 actually made national news because both Tulsi Gabbard and Colleen Hanabusa, our reps, saw that this was happening and they posted on, I believe it was Colleen Hanabusa's congressional website, a plea to Governor Ege to please reconsider this, that this could help a lot of people. And we all already know that military vets have twice as high of a rate of overdosing on opioids than any other population and we have such a huge population over here. You know, we just figured this would be a good thing for Hawaii and but the governor felt otherwise and whoever else was protesting this. It was a vet that told me on this show about the methadone. I think he said it was methadone. Anyway, he said it was far worse than... Yeah, sometimes, yeah, the side effects from the... He said the side effects were just awful. Yeah. And so why do we go... What do we have to do to go back to... Do we have to redo the bill all over again? What is... That's a good question. I don't know how to pass a bill, again, that has been vetoed. I don't know that that's possible. But I think we can help raise awareness and that's what I want to try to do. And Dr. Dustin Sulak also has been trying to do that. He's a physician, he's an osteopath from Maine and also one of my favorite clinicians and another one. He practices integrative medicine, so not just cannabis alone but with an emphasis on osteopathy or osteopath work. I'm not sure how you say that. Energy medicine, mind, body medicine and medical cannabis and he helps set the standard of care for the use of medical cannabis in a wide variety of conditions including pain, spasticity and seizure disorders and PTSD. And I brought along a guidebook that he created. This is the guidebook. Yes, so this is for... Can we get up close? Can we... Or do I need to do this camera? This is for clinicians who would like to try to use cannabis to replace some of the opioids or all of them. All of them, yes. Well, if people email me I can send it, we'll leave to that also. But he outlines it very clearly in dosing regimens for patients who are cannabis naive versus those who have already tried and found it to be successful and and helps them to build up their tolerances to the THC, to levels that are effective. And generally what we have found as far as dosing in cannabis is that there's a general rule of start low and go slow. So start with the lowest possible dose you can and work your way up very slowly to a dose that works for you and then possibly stay at that dose for quite some time. I've talked to patients who have gotten up to not high levels of both CBD and THC and have been able to stay on those low doses for many years. Well, so I'm certain the way that the VA and all of Uncle Sam's facilities for their veterans, they write prescriptions for opioids like you would not believe. They just... They don't have a lot of choices. Yeah, but and they are creating these for people come in they say they have whatever they got from Uncle Sam. They wouldn't have gotten this if they weren't in the military. Then they have to pay the copay and now they're making them drug addicts. It's... There are a lot of catch-22s and convoluted pretzel logic in the whole cannabis laws, all of them. However, the American Legion has come out in strong support of removing cannabis from the Schedule 1 drug category and allowing veterans access to the medicines. And some of the athletic organizations nationwide worldwide have said the CBD... Well, I know you know this but I'll remind you that the United States government has a patent on CBD as a neuroprotective agent and antioxidant. They have a patent on cannabis period in 1949 and said that it cured all of these. I mean if you read the patent it says and they own the patent. But this patent in particular showing that it has neuroprotective qualities. The NFL is hugely interested in this because of all the concussive injuries because what this patent says is that CBD can be used to protect the brain from damage from ischemic injuries. So a cutting off of the blood supply in stroke that kind of thing. But it can also be used in the treatment of... This is United States patent treatment of not a Schedule 1 drug but treatment of Alzheimer's Parkinson's and HIV dementias. So yeah, there's... I thought the NFL was going to be conducting some research up in Washington on head injuries but I'm not sure that that ever happened. Well they're doing something. Are they? They're doing some kind of research. I don't know all the details but I know they are. They change the rules of the game. This year the whole game is different about where you can hit somebody and how you can hit them and all of that. I'm no expert. So we won't pretend. But as learning opportunities. So the UCLA conference and then if you go to the drug policy forum of Hawaii's website you can see the medical cannabis laws. Yes. We've created a guidebook for physicians, caregivers and patients so they can stay within the confines of Hawaii's laws. And we keep changing the laws so there's lots of updates but they're all good ones. And also I'll be speaking at the next cannabis expo which is in January in Maui in Lahaina. Great. Yeah. So I'm looking forward to that. Now you have a retreat. A retreat? No. A home that you're building. Oh well I'm creating a cannabis education center where people can come and look at books or studies or videos and I'm going to be creating a series of videos for people to watch also remotely. Where is this? Well it's in my home so it's not going to be like an open library. Yeah it'll be like I'll be the librarian by appointment or something like that. Yeah I want to share my educational materials as best as I can. And so you will is this free? Is it open to the public? Yeah I've never wanted to charge for my educational program. I've been able to educate about 250 health care professionals in Hawaii so far and probably an equal number of people who will sit still for an hour and a half. Well I did. I'll teach anybody a little. I did. I went to one if you wanted. I don't know that I said still but I did. Well I've clipped it down to a 30-minute PowerPoint but really if you want to learn everything that I think is important it takes about an hour and then a half an hour for questions and answers so yeah but I don't charge for it. I might start charging for the videos because it's going to be expensive for me. I'm funding all of this myself. Oh wow. Yeah. Very good and then you're not going to how do you get that money back? I'm not focused on money I really just want this information to be out there and I'm not offering CEUs or CMEs okay which is what people pay for. Oh okay. And there are some good online courses if you choose to take them American Cannabis Nurses Association Society of Cannabis Clinicians. It's if people want to email me at info at mchhi.org so that's the medical cannabis coalition of Hawaii.org so info at I'll send them a list of resources that I use. For example if you want to know more about CBD I suggest go read up on it at Project CBD's website. Okay. Yeah. Well Wendy it's always a pleasure to be with you and we will talk to you soon. Thank you so much and we'll see you next time.