 Hi, welcome to Seymour's World. I'm Seymour Kazimerski on Think Tech Hawaii. We are here today to present a very, very interesting and very valuable show for people here in Hawaii as well as the rest of the world. We're going to be talking about medical marijuana. Before we do, I just want to say thank you to all the hundreds of people who have given me comments on the last show, which was the show I did with Jay Fidel called Here's to You, Seymour. I am fine. I want you all to know that my cancer is in check right now and I'm feeling great. And a matter of fact, our guest, who I'm going to introduce in a moment, is one of my tennis partners and paddle tennis partners. And we are going to be talking about something very close to my heart because I'm going to be going on a trial with cannabis for my cancer in the next few weeks. I'm going to see how it can do for me. So without further ado, because we have so much to talk about, I want to introduce Brian Goldstein. Brian, welcome to Seymour's World. Good morning. It's great to be here. I know, and you've been on here before, right? You were with me, I think two or three years ago when we did a show and you've been on with Jay before. And now your role as CEO of Minoa Botanicals, one of the licensees here in Hawaii. And I can tell all of you that Brian is one of the hardest workers I have ever, ever met. And when he decides to do something, he does it to the nth degree. He puts in 150% of his time and effort. And I'm very proud to have helped him a little bit in getting Minoa Botanicals started. So Brian, it's been a road for you, a difficult road, a hard road. But there's only three people on Oahu that have licenses and you are one of them. So first I want to say congratulations. Thanks Seymour. It's been a really interesting journey. I've been working on this full time for over two years now. And it's a real fortunate opportunity to be in the position to help bring this, I think, really valuable medicine to the qualified patients of Hawaii. You know, when we talk about that, Brian, we say it's medicine, we really have to get over the idea that marijuana is just the high. We have to understand that it truly is a medical breakthrough. It's been used for a long, long time, many, many years. I spent two weeks in Israel, as you know, doing some research on medical marijuana. And when I was there, I was shocked at how many ailments medical marijuana is assisting. Can you tell us a little bit more about that? Yeah, well, the history of cannabis goes back about 3,000 years. I mean, human beings and cannabis have been interacting for a very long time. And there's documentary evidence to show that in Egypt, in China, and in Europe, and in America, that cannabis has been used as medicine for hundreds and thousands of years. It's really only in the last 80 years, due to politics and racism that marijuana has been made illegal by state, local, and federal governments. But we're really, in the last, I think, 10 to 15 years, we're seeing a lot of progress in recognizing and acknowledging the medicinal benefits of cannabis. There is, unfortunately, because of the limits on research, and your other guest today is really going to be able to talk to that, because the limitations on federal research, because cannabis is a schedule one controlled substance, there really isn't a lot of data other than anecdotes. And some clinical research trials that have been done showing the efficacy of cannabis in a variety of conditions. The most important, some of the most well documented is for helping in pain. And so there's really a lot of conditions for a lot of people that cannabis can help. In particular, we're seeing an opioid crisis in this country. And one of the interesting sort of factoids that a lot of people aren't aware of is in the states where cannabis, medical marijuana is legal, they're seeing significant drops of prescriptions of opioids. And here in Hawaii, Brian, it's a necessity because we've got a crisis here in Hawaii. And we have probably one of the worst percentages of opioid use here in Hawaii. We've got a high amount of young people on opioids. And when I did my research in Israel, I found breast cancer, I found sleep disorders, I found pain management, I found so many different ways that cannabis is being used medically. And I think it's important for people to know why Minoa Botanicals is such a leader in this. We have a guest here today, which is your medical director, Dr. Susan Sisley. And Susan, we're going to get on with you very shortly. But I want you to talk about Minoa Botanicals and why you are such a real proponent of using medical cannabis. Well, when I started this journey of building the company and the team, I really set out and tried to understand what the medical and therapeutic benefits of cannabis were. And we built, in doing that, we built a team of professionals, of scientists, of researchers, of physicians, and farmers. Because in this case, we're actually farming a medicine, which is really a little unusual. And that's one of the reasons why I called the company Minoa Botanicals. Because really cannabis is a whole plant botanical. And so our goal is to bring a really high quality pharmaceutical grade medicine to the qualified patients of Hawaiian to conduct research. And helping, and some of the goals of that research will be to develop specific strains that have therapeutic benefits for particular disorders. We're starting to see research on that, like that in Israel, as an example, in other locations around the world. But what is, I think, the most fun part for me is the opportunity to work with incredibly talented people like Dr. Cisley. Without further ado, let's introduce Dr. Cisley. She's been associated with you. How long? Well, I met Sue. I guess it's about a year, year and a half ago in the pre-licensed period, as I was sort of doing research on the industry. And it took us, we spent several months getting to know each other and sort of seeing if we could work together. And I love her. She's an amazing, amazingly talented researcher, compassionate physician, and really well-informed expert. In fact, I never know when I call or text Sue where she is going to be in the world. As an example, she's at a conference in Washington D.C. Now she's a sought after speaker globally in the area of cannabis research. And I'm just super pleased to have her part of the Minoa team. That's wonderful. Sue, may I call you Sue instead of Dr. Cisley? Please, Sue. It's much better. Welcome to See More's World. It's a pleasure to see you. At least we can see a little bit of you. We can't see you directly. And you are in Washington. And I understand there's a bunch of bills in Congress that are being considered right now. Yes. And some of them will help loosen the restrictions on cannabis research. So that's why I'm out here trying to provide guidance. And we have firsthand experience now with the barriers to research that the government has erected over so many decades. And so we can testify firsthand about how difficult these barriers are to overcome and how they prevent scientists from entering the field. And one of the things that Brian just mentioned about that we are missing right now what we call strain science, which is what strains are best for what illness is. And that was part of why I was so pleased to team up with Brian, because I see that he's very committed to that science. And that's the science that is directly relevant to the day-to-day lives of his patients. His patients have specific questions about how does cannabis work for my illness? And those are the things that the government has impeded this work for so long. But now Brian has a golden opportunity to start, you know, as he begins to, you know, cultivate this medicine. He can collect the feedback from these patients. He can collect clinical experiences about how patients are responding to various strains of cannabis and begin to look at trends of what strains seem to be best for, you know, chemotherapy-induced nausea, what strains seem to be best for intractable neuropathic pain. And we can begin to not just collect the data, but publish it. And that's what I see that, you know, Brian's always been very serious about that. A lot of teams claim that they're going to do that and never follow through. But I know that he's determined to really make that happen. And it's going to take us a long time. It's not something that happens in a moment. You know, but I expect within the first couple of years we'll already have a substantial amount of data that we can begin to publish and put into the public domain. I admire you, Sue, because you're speaking directly to a topic that's very close to my heart. I have cancer and it's a CLL, leukemia lymphoma type cancer. And I'm on a certain trial drug now, but I was just in touch with somebody in Israel, a doctor in Israel, who is preparing a cannabis treatment for me. And I have a lot of faith in it because when I went to Israel, as I mentioned before, I found that they are very, very profoundly interested in direct connections between certain strains of cannabis to certain strains of illnesses. And it has really started to work. Let me ask you something, Sue. As medical director for Minoa Botanicals, I find Minoa Botanicals of all of the licensees here in Hawaii very, very focused on the medical use. How can you do that here in Hawaii? Can you actually grow certain cannabis products, or maybe, Brian, you should answer that, that are directly related to Alzheimer's or to certain types of diseases? Well, we're going to cultivate, we're going to bring, when we open our store, we expect we'll have probably about a dozen or so strains available, and we're going to be rotating those strains through our dispensary. And one of the goals is to collect data from our patients for their specific conditions and to understand which strains are benefiting them. And as that data is collected, we're going to be able to target our cultivation strategy to target those strains. So one of the ways that we do that is we have a variety of strains that have different levels of CBDs or cannabinoids and the relationship to THC. So we're going to have high CBD strains, we'll have low THC strains. And because we're on an island in the middle of the Pacific and nothing can get shipped in or out of here due to the federal restrictions, we have to grow everything, manufacture everything, and sell everything. So it's really a fairly complex operation and a pretty expensive operation to stand up. In most locations on the mainland, these would be three separate companies, a grower, manufacturer, and a dispensary. And what we're doing is we're standing up all three operations simultaneously in parallel and trying to do it quickly so that we can get this medicine to the qualified patients of Hawaii who have been waiting a really long time. What is the status right now, Brian? Where are we as to when you're going to be able to open? Minora received a notice to proceed from the Department of Health to begin cultivation of cannabis in early February. We constructed a nursery to start those initial growth operations and it's going very, very well. We are very close to completing construction of our main production facility. And if things go reasonably well, and most importantly if we can get some testing labs certified in the next couple of months, then we should be ready to open our dispensary in the fall later this year. Wonderful. Well, that's going to be very good news to a lot of patients that I have been speaking to and people are calling me all the time and saying, when are you opening? When are you opening? And I keep saying, well, I don't know. So you feel that the fall will probably be around that period of time. Yeah. I mean, I know you've been delayed several times because of the state issues and lab issues. Yeah, one of the key challenges that we face is that there are no certified labs to test our medicine. And the Hawaii statute requires that any products that we sell in our dispensary have to be lab tested, which is very important for us and for our patients. And there are currently no labs and we don't have visibility on when one or more labs will receive their certification from the Department of Health. Well, let's take a short break. And then we're going to continue with Dr. Sue Sisley in Washington and with you and discuss more about the medical side of marijuana, because I'm very interested in where you are going in the future. Today, we have obviously certain strains, but I'd like to know what's happening in the future. This is Seymour Kazimurski on Seymour's World. We'll be back in a minute with Brian Goldstein and Dr. Sue Sisley. Thank you. Aloha, this is your host Beatrice Contelmo. Come and join us every Friday at four o'clock on Perspectives of Global Justice. Hello, I'm Dean Nelson, host of Planet of the Courageous. From a Tibetan point of view, we chose to be on this planet because we enrolled in a sort of graduate school for courage. Just that we may have chosen this adventure is a leap of logic. The question is, how do we spend and make sense of this precious human life? We are, as a species, extraordinarily successful, dominating the planet and now with planetary size problems that our existence itself has created. It takes courage to face not only the uncertainty of life, but also the challenge of sustaining this gift of life for future generations. Join us every Monday at three p.m. on Think Tech Hawaii. Aloha. Hi, welcome back to Seymour's World on Think Tech Hawaii. Our topic today is Medical Marijuana, especially here for Hawaii with Minoa Botanicals. My guests are Brian Goldstein, who is CEO of Minoa Botanicals and we have Dr. Sue Sistli talking to us from Washington DC, who is the medical director for Minoa Botanicals. Sue, I want to get into what's happening with research. I see many, many papers. As a matter of fact, Dr. Philip Kim, who's a friend of mine, just sent you a paper. I don't know whether you got to read it or not, which is pain management. His work in pain management is astounding. I was amazing at how many patients he treats with cannabis for pain management. Sue, can you talk to that for us, please? What's happening? Yeah, well, we were really lucky. In January of this year, the National Academy of Sciences released what I consider a really groundbreaking report called the Health Effects of Cannabis and the Current State of Evidence for Cannabis Research. The report stated that there is conclusive evidence that marijuana can be used as a medicine, and that's really the first time we've ever seen a federal agency come out with such a definitive statement. Basically, the report found that they didn't find clinical evidence for all conditions that cannabis treatment is often associated with, but it recognized its immense efficacy for treating many different medical conditions such as what you just mentioned, the chronic pain in adults that also found substantial data to support cannabis for chemotherapy-induced nausea and vomiting, and also showed very strong efficacy for cannabis for multiple sclerosis and the spasticity, you know, the kind of musculoskeletal neurologic problems associated with MS. So I think this report is really a vindication for all of the patients and health providers and researchers who've long understood the benefits of medical cannabis and who've dared to speak publicly about that, but have been at odds with our own government who continues to insist that cannabis has no medical benefit, continues to, you know, to lump it into Schedule 1 with all these much more toxic drugs. So we finally have a thorough review of the scientific evidence from a respected federal agency that concludes that there are serious medical benefits to cannabis that really should boost the case for federal reform. That's what I'm hoping that out of this report, and that's what I've been doing here in Washington, D.C., is taking that 400-page report and distributing it to all of these members who continue to hold very antiquated notions about cannabis to try to show them, look, your own federal government is now endorsing cannabis as a medicine. And I think this report really underlines how out of touch the DEA and other, you know, opponents of cannabis are when they continue to claim cannabis has no medical benefit. Let me ask you, Sue, what is your 12-month forecast? Where do you see us going when it comes to the federal government? Do you see the federal government actually changing their ways? Are they going to start looking at it? Is it going to take two years? What's your forecast? Well, now being out here and dealing with these, you know, electeds one-on-one has been pretty discouraging. I have to say that I'm worried that we're up against a brick wall here. And hopefully, they at least won't roll back what the existing structure, if they would at least, you know, the good news is with the conservatives empowered, they all at least claim that they respect the 10th Amendment and that they will take a hands-off approach to medical programs and respect states' rights. So I'm hoping that they will abide by that, but it's still really unclear. As long as we have an attorney general, Jeff Sessions, who is kind of making these sort of wishy-washy statements about respecting states' rights, I continue to worry. And that's why it's so important that we have a presence here in D.C. and don't let these guys off the hook. You know, we need to keep their feet to the fire and help them see that there is real science to support this, that this isn't pseudo science. These are controlled trials published in peer-reviewed medical journals. This is serious data. And the fact that we now have 28, actually soon to be 29 states, I don't know if you saw them, West Virginia is about ready to sign a medical cannabis law. So, you know, in another month, we'll have 29 U.S. states that have approved medical marijuana, another 16 states that have CBD-only laws. You know, last summer the DEA announced it would not reschedule cannabis, but this NAS report had made it very clear that the barriers to doing meaningful research on this plant are really impossible to overcome. It's amazing that we have the studies that we actually, you know, that have been published, even in the midst of all the efforts of the government to systematically impede this work, and yet we still have an immense amount of scientific data to support its medical use. You're absolutely correct. Brian Minoa Botanicals here in Hawaii is obviously a leader in getting ready to get started, right? And the products that you have, the medical cannabis products that you are going to be selling, those will be already authorized. Those will be products that can go to those patients directly. Right. So, Minoa, as well as any of the other licensees, we have to be in compliance with state law. There's a group of products that we're going to be able to sell, including flour and oils and tinctures, lotions, ointments, topicals, no edibles, no soft drinks, no brownies, no gummies, but regardless, it's still contrary to federal law. But here in the state, we're going to be able to get the benefit of all of that research that Sue is talking about. Yeah. I mean, part of the challenge is that some of the research, well, it depends on what the research is on, whether it's on whole plant smoked cannabis like Dr. Cicely's study. Dr. Cicely's doing a groundbreaking study on whole plant smoked cannabis for the treatment of PTSD in veterans, which is very unusual because most other studies are on specific extracts, or they might pull out a specific molecular cannabinoid. Here in Hawaii, because we're in the middle of the Pacific and we're surrounded by federal air and federal waters, we have a lot of limitations. And so, we have partnered with the Hawaii Agriculture Research Center, which is a 130-plus-year-old organization that does agricultural breeding and research. We have a half dozen PhDs at Hawaii Agriculture Research Center that are available to us to conduct breeding research. So, as we start to see data come in from our patients, we're going to be able to use that data with the expertise of Dr. Cicely and some of our other physicians, as well as the breeding capabilities of the network of agricultural experts that we brought to bear to hopefully bring some Hawaii specific genetics into the world of medical marijuana. What about physicians, Brian? Yeah. So, one of the challenges is that we don't have a lot of physicians in Hawaii that are certifying patients. And one of our key challenges and goals is to educate physicians as well as registered nurses in addition to potential patients on the medical and therapeutic benefits of cannabis so that when patients go to their doctors and ask, and this is happening a lot, when they ask about medical marijuana, that the physician or registered nurse is informed and can provide accurate and valuable information. So, right now, doctors and PAs, physicians, assistants and nurses, can prescribe? In Hawaii, it's one of the few states that allows APRNs to certify patients. So, any physician or medical professional that has the ability to, a DEA license to write prescriptions, can certify patients for medical marijuana. Unfortunately, none of the large hospitals allow their physicians who are employees to certify while they're employed. So, it's really independent physicians and nurses that are really leading the charge here and are in the vanguard of providing these certification services. So, a patient goes to a physician and the physician is able to write a prescription? No, it's not a prescription. So, you cannot prescribe marijuana or cannabis. So, what they do is they certify that the patient has a qualifying condition such as chronic pain or um, wasting syndrome or cancer or AIDS, PTSD. And once they are certified as having a qualifying condition, then they can get a medical marijuana card from the Department of Health. It's actually a very easy process. It took me about 10 days to get my medical marijuana card. So, you go to your physician first. You have a condition that the physician can say you are okay to get a card and then you go to the Department of Health. It's not a prescription. It's all online. But you must go to your physician first. A physician. It doesn't need to be the physician that you normally go to because frequently the people that your regular primary care physician will may not be willing to certify you. They may not be in the position to. It may not be somebody. So, for example, they work for Straub or Capulani or Hawaii Pacific Health. They cannot. They cannot. So, there are clinics. Is there a list? We have a list of certifying physicians. Where do they go? Just send an email to info at manoabatanicles.com and we will respond with a list of physicians and clinics that will make an appointment, see a patient, and if they have a qualifying condition, we'll certify you. Wonderful. Well, I have to say, Sue and Brian, this has been, it's not enough time because I really want to discuss more about the medical side. And you guys are in such a forefront, especially manoabatanicles and Sue, you as well, you guys are really the most fervent people that I have seen who want to get this thing off the ground. And I know, Brian, you're anxious to get it into the patient's hands because it is a medicine. And for those of you in our audience, I can just say that for me as an individual, I've done so much research on it in Israel and I get research that I see. And we just have to get the doctors to understand that this is something that is a medicine. It is not simply a high. I was shocked and amazed when I saw Jeff Sessions, who Sue Cisley talked about and said, do we need more marijuana at the drug store? I mean, that's a ridiculous statement that he put out. And I just feel that we have to treat it seriously. Here in Hawaii, we are one of the most progressive states. And I think because we've had medical marijuana laws on the books for how many years, Brian? 17 years. 17 years we've had it on the books and nowhere for people to buy it. Manoa Botanicals will be out there open hopefully this fall. Yep, later this year. And hopefully we'll be able to help patients find a way to help cure or to help ease some of the pain that they have. So thank you, Brian, and thank you, Sue and Washington. I feel this is one of the most important topics we have because if we can help people in any way shape or form, that's what Seymour's world is all about. So thank you for appearing on our show. It's a pleasure. Thanks for having us. It's our pleasure. Thanks, Seymour. Thank you, Sue. And to all of you, I will be back in two weeks with a new commentary, as well as a show that I think you will be very, very interested in. Again, all of your comments, all of your emails, texts and phone calls, as long as you love the show, send them to me. Otherwise, don't send them at all. Aloha from Hawaii. Be well, everybody. See you in two weeks from Seymour's world on Think Tech Hawaii. We're done. Thank you. All right, Sue, thank you. Great, yeah. Sue, thank you very much.