Mind Pump: Raw Fitness Truth - 935: All About Cannabis with Leafly.com's William Hyde

Episode Date: December 31, 2018

In this episode, Sal, Adam & Justin speak with Will Hyde, Senior Subject Matter Expert and Content Producer for the world's largest cannabis website leafly.com. Who is William Hyde, aka The Avid Dabber? (1:47) How and why cannabis affects people differently? (2:59) Is there any truth to the Indica/Sativa description? (6:30) Are there other cannabinoids that we are seeing interesting things with? (9:12) Are they playing a role in the legalization movement? (11:05) How did he get into this industry? (12:02) The Wild, Wild West of the early dispensaries. The evolution of the space. (15:15) What other things is he starting to see with the breeding of cannabis? (19:35) How cannabis is a tool. The misconceptions of certain strains. (22:20) What does he recommend for the ‘newbie’ cannabis user? (25:39) Do we know yet how CBD modulates its effects? (27:56) What are the differences between the CBD strains? (29:39) Are some forms of cannabis better than others? What antidote has come in from people? (32:41) Has he seen antidote/lab data to why people like strains for certain reasons? (37:35) The Pandora of Marijuana: Curating your experience. (40:50) How the Afghani strands put you to sleep. (43:18) Anecdotal speaking, what strains give you energy? (44:20) What strains get you ‘aroused’? (46:17) What is the difference between heirloom strains? (47:51) Does he agree with moving the industry more to a professional vibe rather than stoner? (51:30) His thoughts on tobacco companies moving into the cannabis space? (54:23) His take on the QUALITY of cannabis, black market and licensing. (56:56) The evolution of ‘dabbing’. (1:00:16) What was his first time overdoing cannabis? (1:07:20) Can the way you grow a particular strain change the effects? (1:10:40) Is growing cannabis a difficult thing to do? (1:11:45) How public perception has changed  cannabis. (1:13:45) How does Leafly monetize? (1:16:45) What companies is he paying attention to currently? (1:17:38) How the cannabis industry is changing the stigma among the public. What “cool” things are in the future? (1:23:33) Featured Guest/People Mentioned William Hyde (@the.avid.dabber)  Instagram Website Podcast Rick Simpson (@Simpson_Rick)  Twitter Products Mentioned: December Promotion: Enroll in ANY MAPS Program and Get 1 Year of Facebook Forum Access for FREE! What Is CBG and What Are the Benefits of This Cannabinoid? What Is CBN and What Are the Benefits of This Cannabinoid? The Emerald Cup Budtending 101: 10 Tips You Should Know - Marijuana Retail Report Cannabis's Entourage Effect: Why Whole Plant Medicine Matters | Leafly RUN FROM THE CURE - The Rick Simpson Story - Full Length DVD HQ Granddaddy Purple Cannabis Strain Information - Leafly Afghani Cannabis Strain Information - Leafly Sour Diesel Cannabis Strain Information - Leafly Green Crack Cannabis Strain Information - Leafly Foria Pleasure Jack Herer Cannabis Strain Information - Leafly The Emperor Wears No Clothes - Book by Jack Herer Potential Big Tobacco Acquisition Causes Cannabis Company's Stock to Soar How to Grow Marijuana Indoors: For Beginners | Leafly 710 LABS Gold Leaf Gardens | Washington | Cannabis Cigars Kiva Confections HifiHops - Lagunitas

If you want to pump your body and expand your mind, there's only one place to go. Mite, op, mite, op with your hosts. Salda Stefano, Adam Schaefer, and Justin Andrews. This is my type of episode right here. If you know what I'm saying, yeah, we got the senior subject matter expert and content producer and host of the leafly podcast what are you smoking so leaflies one of the largest websites online uh... talks about cannabis it's a cannabis website it rates cannabis tells you the effects you know what all about the different types of cannabinoids

uh... and he represents and he came on our show when we talked all about cannabis the science cannabis the history cannabis it was a good talk. He's a dab enthusiast. He likes the dabbing. He does. It's a little strong for me though. It's a little much for me.

Yeah, I like, I'm old school. Yeah, I'm cool with that. Yeah, if you're not in discussion though. It was. If you're not in a marijuana, this is probably not an episode for you, but if you're interested in cannabis, I thought it was a very interesting episode.

Definitely. So again, his name is William Hyde, great guy. You can find them on Instagram at the.avid.dabber. Again, he hosts the podcast on leafly called What Are You Smoking and then leafly is just leafly.com. And before we get into the interview, this is the final day for our promotion, our end of the year promotion. It's the final day to get one year of free access to our private forum for enrolling in any of our maps, fitness programs.

Again, if you enrolling any maps, fitness program, today, when this episode drops, you'll get a free full year of access to our private forum. Just go to mapsfitinistproducts.com, check out all of our programs, find the one that works best for you, and that's it. So here we are talking to William.

William, I want you to just get a lot of audience might not know who you are and what you do. If you wouldn't mind introducing yourself real quick. Yeah, so I am Will Hyde. I go by the avid dabber on Instagram, so some people may know me that way. The avid dabber? The avid dabber?

Oh, interesting. Yep. I am a content producer and subject matter expert for leafly cannabis information resource aimed at really helping consumers find cannabis Whatever that means to them whether it's find information and find ways that they can connect with cannabis or cannabis can connect with them or Literally find cannabis like find a dispensary find the right strain for you find a product that you're looking for. Now, you guys are like the largest website online that does that with cannabis. You guys are the biggest ones, right? Correct.

Are you guys publicly or privately funded? privately funded currently. Okay. And it was like 15 million visits a month or something like that on your website. Yeah, something like that. Wow. It's literally it grows so fast that it's a tough number to keep track of because if I say something, all my analysts are going to tell me,

you know, we broke 16 million last month or whatever. But yeah, you know, around 15 million and climbing every single month. Yeah, so your website, I used, I've used quite a bit because it has, user reviews on there. So they talk about like how strains affect them. Right. It also has my favorite part is the science that you can get in on that website. And then the articles and news that you guys are publishing, which I find very interesting. But I wanted to talk a little bit about cannabis and how it affects people and the different cannabinoids

and why some people react so differently to some strains versus others. If we can kind of break it down, maybe start at the top with cannabinoids. Yeah, definitely. So there's sort of two main components in cannabis that give you the effects as well as the flavor and create essentially the whole cannabis experience.

So one is cannabinoids and the other is terpenes. Cannabinoids are chemical compounds, natural and native to the cannabis plant. They produce them in the tricome, which are the little crystals you see on the buds. And in there, the glands secrete oils, some containing cannabinoids, some containing terpenes. And the cannabinoids are things you might have heard of like THC, CBD, but there's a whole bunch of secondary and tertiary cannabinoids that were really just starting to dive into both their medical benefits, their therapeutic benefits, and of course, their overall effects. But each of those cannabinoids stimulates our endocannabinoid system,

which is a system of receptors in our brain and our body that essentially receives cannabinoids and allows us to digest them and utilize them. Now there's sort of ongoing discussion, debate, and investigation into exactly what the endocannabinoid does as a system within our body. But in my personal experience and the way I like to describe it to people, it's really a balancing mechanism.

And it helps balance out the rest of the systems in your body, which is why it can really, it can do things like stimulate an appetite for chemotherapy patients that don't otherwise have the ability to eat or the hunger to eat when they're on heavy doses of chemotherapy and things like that. Now where terpenes come into play is they actually modulate the effects or they increase our ability to accept the cannabinoids within our receptors. So they're working in tandem in something that a lot of people like to call the entourage effect.

So you can think about it as a few different flavors and a few different effects-based sort of feeling compounds, all working in unison to provide the cannabis experience. Now each strain will express different levels and different concentrations of all of these compounds. That's why effects and flavors and smells of each cannabis strain vary from strain to strain. This is an interesting fact to me that I brought up on the show before.

Scientists didn't even know we had an endocannabinoid system until we were studying the why people get high off of marijuana or cannabis. And then they discovered, oh, we have these receptors that they seem to attach to, and then that led them down the path of the cannabinoids or the endocannabinoids that we produce ourselves. And so now we've learned about them, but it's through the study of cannabis.

If we can break it down even just even more for the layman, because I think sometimes when we talk about a subject like this, we're all enthusiasts, I love studying the science of cannabis myself. Sometimes I forget that a lot of people just don't know some of the basics. I totally. It's like sativas and Indikas. Now, they look different, they grow in different temperatures, but historically, or I guess the belief is anecdotally that sativas produce more of this energetic kind of active.

Yeah, high, you know, whereas Indikas are more of this stony body type of high. Is there truth to that? And if so, why, what's going on there? Simply put, no, there isn't truth to that. The reality is that Indica Sativa classifications of cannabis is just sort of an oversimplification that's been used through the illicit market,

the medical market to start to explain some of the ways that cannabis can make you feel. Now, the reality is the only indicator that indica or sativa will actually tell you is the things you've already mentioned. It's the look, the shape, the size, the actual morphology of the plant, and how it's going to look and act when you grow it. So it's still an important piece of data to know, especially if you're growing cannabis.

Sativa's tend to take longer flowering cycle, 10, even 12 or 14 weeks, whereas Indica's are much shorter, sometimes as short as 6, but usually around 8 weeks. And a lot of modern hybrids, which is mostly what you'll see on the market now, are things that have taken from both sides of that and mixed a little of that in a mix, a little of this to create the new modern hybrids. We see like cookies, like skittles, like all of those flavors you might see at the dispensary. Yeah, highly medical strength. Now, what, now, so it's a myth,

it's a myth that the sativas, you know, make you a more energetic and paranoid and the Indica's, give you couch lock, that's just an oversimplification. It's an oversimplification and it's not that, it's not that you can't get those effects from cannabis, but to make the blanket statement to say that all sativas are gonna make you feel this way,

is just not correct. Really what matters is the actual chemical makeup within that individual strain. So we call that the chemotype. There's also the phenotype which describes more of the morphology and the different ways that the genetics will actually express itself.

Interesting, it's fascinating. So the two cannabinoids that people are most familiar with are THC, right? That's the one that gets you high and makes it psychoactive. And CBD now, which is getting all this publicity because it's being studied for its non-psychoactive, but therapeutic effects in particular for something like epilepsy or neurological type disorders.

But there's a whole lot of cannabinoids that are found in the cannabis plant. Are there other cannabinoids that were starting to see some interesting things with? I think there's one called, is it CBC or cannabacromium? I think it showed that it helped promote brain cell, you know, regrowth or growth or whatnot? Am I off base here? No, no, no. There's literally more cannabinoids than I could even list, but so many of them are found in such small concentrations that we're really just starting to dive into exactly what each one can do. But yeah, there's CBG, there's CBN, which is actually what THC converts to over time. So if you've ever had really, really old cannabis that's maybe cured for a really long time or been left out so that it

degraded a little bit, it gets really stony and really sleepy. That's the CBN, that's the effects of CBN. And so I know a few companies specifically are working with CBN as like a sleep remedy for insomnia and some of those things because we have enough anecdotal evidence to say that when THC has converted into CBN, we can attribute those sleepy stony effects to the CBN and it's relatively easy compared to some of the other cannabinoids anyway to convert THC into CBN. It's just time, heat, and sometimes a little bit of light, but as they're extracting it and doing things like that, they have the power to manipulate some of those things. That's really interesting.

What is, are you guys playing a role in the legalization movement, which is exploding now? Are you guys playing any role in that? Of course we are. I think the biggest role that leafly plays specifically is just getting the news out about what ballot measures people can vote on, what politicians support this, how you can get involved and support it yourself. We lift a lot of other great organizations that are doing a lot of great work on the legalization front. And we are really designed to support all types of cannabis businesses, whether you're a lobbying group

that's supporting advocacy or whether you're dispensary who wants to retail cannabis or a grower who wants to grow it or an extractor. Anything you can think of, we're developing tools to help those businesses perform both in the digital space and to actually make their business ongoing and functional. Well, how did you get into this? So I've always been attracted to cannabis.

The first time it was introduced to me, I was never one of those people that was like, oh, what a, you know, I don't know if I should go down that path. It always sparked a curiosity with me. And so, you know, as more of an adolescent, it was obviously just sort of a fun thing that I would do. And I enjoyed more than drinking and some of other activities.

So, you know, I was just always drawn to cannabis. I worked, you know, in the illicit space for quite some time. And then when I moved to Los Angeles for film school, I was basically introduced to medical cannabis. At the time, California was the only state that really had a medical cannabis program. And when I got to film school and started talking to my classmates about how to find cannabis, they're like, oh, you can get a medical card. You can go to a dispensary and I was just sort of blown away at the accessibility of it. Once you did just a little bit of research and found out how you could do it. So from there, I really just wanted to learn more and more about the medical benefits,

but also just the genetic diversity has always been really, really interesting to me. There's very few plants that humans engage with like cannabis and very few that have the genetic diversity that cannabis has and part of that is due to the clandestine nature of the industry itself and a lot of the breeding and information remaining underground for so long But from there, you know my I ended up just spending day after day after day at different dispensaries until one opened up down the block from me and then they couldn't get rid of me. And then eventually they said, hey, we're short staffed.

Can you bud tend for us? And I said, sure. And so me and a few friends ended up bud tending and that spiraled into buying for the dispensary, managing it when the owner went away, really like building the business around sort of the local community we had there in the greater Hollywood area. And then after that, I just, I started helping patients set up medical grows. I started working with other growers cooperatively to grow for other patients. And, you know, so I just sort of was self-taught,

super curious, looked for any way that I could both help lift the plant and lift the people that needed the plant. And then from there, when the recession hit, I decided I needed to go back to school for business, which I did back home in Seattle, went to UW, and then after that, right when I was getting out of business school, was right when Washington was looking to legalize, and I knew that I wanted to get

in the cannabis space in some sense now that it was being legitimized. And from there, I pretty much just fell right into leafly, which was the perfect mix of digital marketing, content creation, video production, and my passion and knowledge behind cannabis. So you were there early, early on. This is when only LA was probably doing LA and maybe Oakland, right? Harbor side was that, were you that far back? Yeah, so when I first started in the dispensary space, this was 2005.

So it's really what I would consider like the wild, wild west where dispensaries were popping up basically every week. Another one was shutting down every other week. So you were kind of like chasing these dots of dispensaries around the map of Los Angeles to find different deals, to find different strains, and to find the community, because the community wasn't going anywhere, even though these dispensaries and the feds were doing their thing.

So you got to share with the audience. I was involved in the beginning of Sounds Day, so I was a part of the first two clubs to ever start here in the Bay Area, and exactly how I describe it is the Wild Wild West. So you got to tell our audience what the evolution has been like for someone like you who's been in as early as you have. Totally.

So, I mean, when I was cruising around, I mean, one thing we did in my early days as a medical patient was you always sought out new patient deals because every dispensary would run a new patient deal, a free gram, a free joint, a free edible $10 off your eighth, whatever it was Just by signing up and getting into their system because that's how they function the bigger their patient bases The more weed they could legally carry the more patients they were legally supplying

So to build up both their inventory and their customer base they'd sign patients on their inventory and their customer base they'd sign patients on, which is what we would do. We would shop around at different dispensaries and capitalize on all those deals. And in those days, you saw literally everything as far as dispensaries. You saw people who were investing and really creating a retail experience, but you also walked into some back alley doors where it was a guy with three jars of weed and a baseball bat. There's literally been the whole gambit of everything as close to black market sales as you could imagine to high-end retail experiences, although those high-end retail experiences haven't really been successful until recently when cannabis has become actually legalized at a state level and people are a little more secure about spending the overhead

needed to really create that experience and to create a safe environment knowing that they're not going to get shut down next week and some of that stuff. So, nowadays you walk in and again, you see a lot of different styles of retail and cannabis but everything from like the Apple store where you're scan and menus on your iPad and you know the geek squads coming up to you with their earpiece and phone and in your order for you to you know people really taking patient care to the next level and providing a consultation. I know some places that literally,

they won't really let you in their system without like a 30 minute consultation with one of their bud tenders or a doctor that they keep on staff. And it's really just to educate the patient or the consumer, but also to understand how they can better serve you. Those are a little more like concierge services, I guess.

But you see everything now. I mean, I was at the Emerald Cup this weekend, where farmers and dispensaries and brands were selling cannabis right on site and there was you know vending machines there was you know iPad programs and pick up and Different ways that people were were you know using sort of omnichannel retail to To close the deal or to secure the transaction between

Dispensary and consumer. Wow. That's wild. Now you host the podcast also? Yeah, I host a podcast called What Are You Smoking? It's a strains and products focus podcast where we bring on guests, but we discuss basically all the new genetics that are exciting or that we've come across as well as the products and brands that we really love or that we've been engaging with

or that have just, you know, we've seen help someone or really anything. Yeah, let's go into that for a little bit. I know when it was all black market, the main things that growers would try to breed for was just maximum THC. Like, that was the most, which strain could get you the highest because people buying on the black market weren't buying it for really for medicinal purposes. It was just I want to get stoned and now that it's been legalized It seems like you're first all you have you have CBD strains now, which you couldn't find before

What are what are the things are you starting to see now with the with the breeding? Yeah, breeding is is really interesting. I mean one the biggest thing people have been breeding for recently is terpenes. You know, the smell in a room of cannabis has always been important when you're purchasing or when you're selecting between different strains. But because everything was kept underground, having really loud and odiferous cannabis was actually sort of bad in a lot of senses

because that was an easy way and the number one way for authorities to know that you have cannabis as if it was really loud. So people would, whether they knew it or not, were sort of selectively breeding out some of those skunkier, more pungent cannabis strains. So recently, in the past five, 10 years, we've seen a resurgence because you don't have to think, we don't have to keep things so sort of under lock and key. We can be a little bit more out about our cannabis use and the fact that it is in our pocket, that it is in the trunk of our car, wherever it may be.

And so, different terpenes, we still predominantly see that most cannabis on dispensary shelves are high THC, THC dominant strains, and they are mircing dominant, which is basically the most prevalent terpene in cannabis. What kind of smell is that? Is that piney? No, so mircing is actually also found in mango. It doesn't really have a mango smell per se, but it does.

A lot of people attribute it to some of the more sedating, relaxing, calming effects of cannabis. Okay. So, are they doing that on purpose because of the effects or because of the smell because people just like the smell? I think it's both. And that's like, like, give me a strain that had that's high in mercy and because I almost any strain, I believe blue dream, one of the most popular strains out there when Adam's favorites is THC dominant, mere seen dominant. And so, but, but like I said, I mean,

we haven't crunched all the numbers, but just getting a few snapshots, I would say, you know, easily over 60% of the market is high THC merecine dominant. Now speaking of blue dream, and I find this interesting, because you're bringing it. Yeah, you made a comment that I always assume

that the reason why I liked blue dream so much was I really enjoyed the Split of about 60% Sativa 40% Indica, but you kind of shit on that a little bit ago That that probably has less to do with it. What would you probably is or what would you say is the reason why I like that feeling that it gives me if it's not that I thought maybe it was this nice balance of it it wasn't too heavy, it didn't make me too psychoactive or paranoid, but it also wasn't so what I would refer to as endicadomina that would make me feel tired and sleepy. Right, and it is, it is those things.

But it's not because of its endicacetiva classification. Right, right. Which is what I thought, That's what I mean. Right, and so I mean, part of it is that cannabis is a tool and cannabis can be basically anything to any one. And the more preconceived notion you put on a cannabis experience, the more likely it is you are to have that experience. If you say, oh, every time I smoke I'm paranoid.

If you smoke, especially high THC strains, you're probably going to get paranoid. That's just the brain is a powerful, powerful tool. And we have the ability to manipulate our experiences with what we put in our brain, whether it's substance or thought. So I think... So the paranoia, you think, is a lot to do with just high THC? High THC is known to create anxiety, which is a symptom or a part of paranoia. And so, really what I believe the sort of paranoia angle of cannabis comes from is consuming

high doses of THC in an illicit market where you're constantly looking over your shoulder and have been for 10 years. And so the higher you get, the more anxious you get, knowing that you're doing something that might be breaking the law or pushing the limits, you're naturally a little more paranoid. Yeah, I found for me that the ideal amount, if I'm gonna have a high THC strain,

it's going to be no more than like 14, 15% THC, which is actually kind of getting hard to find nowadays. They're all in the 20s now, which is way too strong for me personally. So I agree with the whole THC, you know, what you're saying about THC. And I think you were asking about what people are breeding for.

I think we are starting to see a resurgence of strains that are in sort of that 15 to 20% sweet spot that just have really compelling and high terpened content because that creates the flavor, it modulates the effects, it provides an element of aroma therapy. So, you know, some of the terpenes like linoleul which is the principal terpene we find in lavender are create very calming experiences.

So there's no one easy answer when it comes to cannabis or finding the right cannabinoid or terpene, because our bodies all engage with it individually and differently. So it's the same reason why an edible might hit you much different than it hits me. It's because I might not have had a as big a breakfast as you or I might, you know, be more hydrated than you or I might have a higher tolerance to THC and some of those things. Is there? So with the recent legalization, I know that there's probably a lot of newbies out there.

Yeah. And so is there sort of like a strain or recommendations you put out there for somebody who's never even tried it before? Yeah, definitely. I think the best place for people to start is with a balanced strain. And when I say balanced, I'm talking about the THC to CBD ratio in that strain.

So THC and CBD have a really, really unique compelling relationship. They work better together because, like I was saying earlier, terpenes and cannabinoids work together to modulate the way our receptors receive them. So, while you can get what's considered like isolated CBD from things like hemp and stuff, I don't always recommend that for its medical benefits because you're not getting the full spectrum. It needs just a little bit of THC

to really kick things in gear to engage your cannabinoids or your endocannabinoid system and get it flowing through your receptors and through your bloodstream. So it's good to get that full spectrum. But with a beginner who's unsure where to start, I like to tell them start with a 1-1 because CBD also balances some of the anxiety that you get from high doses of THC. So a 1-1 should give you just enough THC

so you can start to understand what that feeling is, but should also curb enough of the anxious and maybe some of the downsides of too much THC so that you can sort of find some comfort and some sweet spot and and if you try a 1-1 and ask your bud tender if all this isn't you know making sense to you or whatever bud tenders will know what you mean when you're looking for a 1-1 ratio or a 2-1 or a 20-1, any of that stuff. But if you enjoyed sort of the psychoactive, the recreational aspects of cannabis, then know that you can crank up the THC level a little bit and back off the CBD level a little bit if you like. Or if you say, you know, that was maybe a little

bit too much, but I still am looking for some of the benefits of cannabis, then ramp up the CBD and minimize the TH. Now, you mentioned the entourage effect, which is just for the listeners, this is, I don't know who coined the term entourage effect, but it basically refers to how when cannabinoids work well, burger. Yeah, that's right. When cannabinoids are present all together, their effects are, they multiply rather than add up. So studies will show that just taking THC,

isn't as effective as taking THC with a bunch of other cannabinoids. Right. Same thing with CBD, you get that entourage effect. But I do have a question about CBD in particular, because from what I've read, it doesn't attach to either of the two receptors that we're familiar with, the CB1 or CB2 receptor.

Do we know yet how CBD modulates its effects? So I am not, I'll be the first to say, I'm not the best person to answer that. The way I actually understood that CBD did engage with our CB2 receptors, which are the ones in our bodies, not in the mind, which is why it's really good for things like pain and inflammation, and some of those things without engaging the CB1 receptors

in your brain, which is where a lot more of the psychoactivity and the feeling of high and euphoria and bliss and all of that come from. But I do know that there is more to learn about CBD and the way that our body interacts with it because it seems like a very, very useful tool with a lot of uses for a lot of different people with different ailments. But we're really just starting to understand exactly what happens to our body and how our body metabolizes it

and sort of what the result of all that is. Do you see benefits in people using, rather than a CBD oil, because let's say somebody doesn't wanna get the psychoactive effect, because there are people that genuinely don't want to feel altered. Definitely, and I should clarify, we at Leifley like to use the worm word non-intoxicating, and that's because psychoactive means producing activity in your brain, and the reality is that

CBD will produce activity in your brain. It's just not mind altering or perception altering. in your brain, it's just not mind altering or perception altering. So it is psychoactive just to be clear, but it's effects are non-intoxicated. It doesn't get you high. Exactly. So do you think that there'd be benefit them from someone having a full spectrum of hemp oil,

which hemp is normally very low in T.H.C. or at least it has to be, could you see benefits from the entourage effect from that, because it's all cannabinoids. Are there the same cannabinoids? In other words, is CBD from hemp, the same is CBD from cannabis? Yes, it's just so molecularly

they're the exact same compound. Okay. The difference and the dichotomy between hemp and cannabis is really only there because the government says it's there. They're both the cannabis plant. The government defines hemp as anything less than like 0.3 or 0.03% THC. So it's the closest thing to zero as possible. Basically hemp is just cannabis without

THC. Now it's the less cool plant. Right. Yeah. yeah. It's the dead flanders of wheat. It's weed light. Yeah, there you go. But the reality is that hemp hasn't been bred for anything more than its fiber for its biomass. That's how. Right. And so, while it can produce compelling terpenes and other cannabinoids, it hasn't been selectively

bred for those things. So we're just now starting to see hemp strains, meaning high CBD, CBD dominant strains with less than the government barrier for THC, and we're starting to see breeders emphasize the terpine content and develop them specifically for flavors so things like hemp derived CBD can be more of a full spectrum and provide a greater experience because the, you know, if you've ever smoked a hemp flower or even some of the very early high CBD, the Charlotte's webs and some of the strains that first gained notoriety for their high CBD content, they just, they weren't compelling cannabis strains other than their medicinal benefits because

they didn't look very good, they didn't have the best flavor, they were sort of grassy and hay and what most people who consume cannabis regularly try to avoid. So we're just now starting to see more and more genetic variety of these high CBD and CBD dominant strains. Now years ago, the reason why I ever got an interest in cannabis is I had a very close family member who got stricken with cancer. And it was a very bad form of cancer. There were no conventional treatments that would have helped her.

And so I went on a research spree to try and figure out what are the alternative methods we could use that could help either ameliorate some of the negative side effects or symptoms of cancer or maybe even help potentially cure cancer. And I'm very careful with my wording there. Yeah, definitely. Because you go online and you look up natural cancer treatments, and there's like a million and one different things that pop up and everything from apricot seeds to sunlight

to weird shit that's supposed to help you. So the limit test that I use was study. Studies, like, studies. Like what studies are showing with non-traditional cancer treatments, and I found animal studies, and find human studies, but I found animal studies that were really compelling with cannabinoids and how they were affecting, in some of the studies,

were showing curing cancer, and animals, or at least it kills cancer cells. And then I did further research and I discovered Rick Simpson, who had this documentary on it, and then I started reading all these anecdotes. And the way people were using it for cancer was this very, very thick,

they would take like a pound of cannabis, and they would distill it down to this very thick, tary substance. I was extremely powerful and potent, and you were supposed to take it and up your dose because the studies show that the more you took, the more of an effect it had on cancer. And so I learned that for cancer patients,

if that's what they want to do, this was the way that they used it. Are you guys, in terms of how people use cannabis, are some forms better for some things than other? For example, pain, would people be better off with it? Being edible, are you finding, because you guys have so many people that write into you, and unfortunately there's not a lot of science yet

on the best ways to use it. What are the anecdotes coming in like? How are people using them to treat different things? Yeah, so I mean, there's a lot of factors that come into play with how your consumption method will affect the experience or target specific symptoms. It really is case by case. Obviously, if you have things like COPD or anything,

you're not going to want to smoke. And so the first thing is, we get more often than not, is like, I see the benefit of cannabis. I don't wanna smoke, maybe I'm an ex-smoker, maybe I've got lung cancer, who knows? But I don't wanna smoke, how can I still benefit from this? So naturally, if you don't wanna smoke, you can vaporize, which again, isn't the greatest choice if you have respiratory ailments because inhaling anything into a

weak system is not good for it. But you can also eat it. It's also topically available. So really, it sort of depends. I mean, with things like pain, like you mentioned, pain can mean something totally different to anyone you ask. Pain thresholds are different, whether it's acute pain or surface level pain or a bruise or all these different potentials for pain. But with localized pain,

you see a lot of people who really benefit from topical application, sorenies, soar backs. They're typically people who are looking, maybe they're a construction worker who just, they stay active, they're on their feet, they use their body in their day to day, and so they need that quality of life that will allow them to perform their work, but also won't inhibit them from thinking on their feet, dealing with safety protocols, all those things that

come along with people's day to day lives. So is the most popular way still smoking though? Yeah, definitely. I would say smoking cannabis is still the most popular with vaporization gaining rapidly. And then I think for the newer consumer, edibles seem like a really, really easy entry point because everybody eats. We all enjoy nice treats or a good meal. And so infusing them or being able to, you know, for example, if you had an epileptic child

and you were trying to give them the benefits of cannabis and they're a finicky eater because a lot of children are, then maybe you can find some food that they like and infuse it or add cannabis oil to it or whatever you need to do so that it makes sense to sort of integrate with whatever your lifestyle maybe. Let's talk about strains for a little bit. I know there's an individual variance

and I know, so in other words, some strains can affect some people differently. And others, but you guys are such a big site. You're amassing a massive amount of people's anecdotes. Yeah. What are their strains that are starting to stand out in terms of their effects? Like generally speaking, people like this particular strain for creativity or for sex or for food or for sleep,

are you starting to see that? We are starting to see that and we've seen those patterns for a while now. I would say what's honestly more compelling, although we want to be the hub for those conversations and for that anecdotal evidence is we're actually really starting to dive into what lab data can tell us about strains and knowing what people are saying anecdotally and aligning those anecdotes with lab data to start connecting more of the dots to know that, well, people are liking this strain for this reason. And if you look, there's maybe a tertiary cannabinoid or a tertiary turpine that's less prevalent

in the cannabis landscape that's more prevalent here. And maybe that's a connection that we should explore to start understanding some of those minor cannabinoids and terpenes a lot more. We do, you know, as a bud tender, we used to make those anecdotal recommendations a lot for things like sleep, I always tell people to start with GDP. GDP is just a good sort of classic.

What is that stand for? Granddaddy Purple. Oh, okay. It's a strain developed by Ken Estes in the Bay Area. He was a cancer patient, I believe, himself with his own terminal illness, and he needed something that would both stimulate his appetite and that he could replace his pain medications with.

And so it's, you know, it is what I would classify as that more deeply relaxing sort of sedative, stony vibe of cannabis. And it also definitely gives me the munchies, although most cannabis does. And so like when my mom who suffers from insomnia was like, okay, I'm ready. I want to try a vape cartridge.

What should I try? She asked a bud tender and she got a bad recommendation and I said, mom, what are you doing? Why didn't you just ask me? And she said, well, they didn't have the one you talked about before and I said, go here, ask them for GDP. She found it, it worked. And I mean, that's not to say that it will work

for everyone, but that's sort of the types of recommendations that we've been able to make historically. Now with the integration of lab data, now that all cannabis on the legal market has to be lab tested, we're able to collect more and more of that data to start grouping these strains by both their chemotype and the resulting anecdotal evidence we have behind each one so that we can start bucketing these strains a little bit better. Oh, so you guys are going to be like the Pandora of marijuana, so if I like this, you may like this, this, and this also. Are you guys, are you just heading that way or what?

Because that's pretty cool. Yeah, I mean, I think that's ultimately what, what happens when you purchase cannabis, right? You either come because you want to feel a certain way, because you want a certain flavor, because you want a certain experience, because it's what you had last time and you enjoyed it. So the more we can answer those questions and get better at answering them

and have data that verifies what we're saying, rather than just, oh yeah, a bunch of other people said they like this for sleep or a bunch of other people said, this helps them with their migraine headaches or whatever. Then it becomes a legitimate idea that people like doctors can start to grasp, that medical studies can start to grasp and dive into deeper and then obviously develop maybe some real legitimate medicines for people to take. I personally view cannabis as a supplement.

You know, a lot of people view it as an intoxicant, like alcohol or tobacco or something, but it's almost like a daily supplement that you take. It balances your system. It's something I greatly enjoy and I consume it recreationally, a fair amount. But at the same time, I'm getting all those therapeutic benefits. And I think that's a really interesting point that I like to drive home about sort of the difference between recreational cannabis and medical cannabis. And that is that there is no difference. If you're consuming it medicinally, you're getting the recreational benefit of

a better quality of life, some giggles, a good time with friends, all of those things. And if you're consuming it recreationally, you're also getting some of the medicinal and therapeutic benefits of balancing your endocannabinoid system, stimulating your appetite, anything, stress relief, pain management, anything that cannabis is known to help for. I think there's definitely a sweet spot though. I know for myself. Yeah, definitely. Yeah, I know for myself, if I have it daily, I don't like the way I'll feel.

But once or twice a week seems to work. Now that being said, in the past, when I've had certain, would seem to be like autoimmune type symptoms, then I would use it on a nightly basis. And it did benefit me. I think that's different from person to person. I think like anything. I mean, people abuse cheeseburgers. I think you go too far with anything,

but it depends on the individual, and why you're using it. I want to ask you about the Afghani strains, because for any time I've used an Afghani strain, I sleep like a rock. Is that something you hear about those strains? Is that what they're known for? Yeah, I mean, and that's where a lot of the Indica's

make you sleepy come from, is that Indica, the short stout, fat, dark green plants are from the Hindu Kush region, originally, near Pakistan, Afghanistan, India, that region of the world. And they traditionally have had more of the sort of sedating, calming, relaxing effects of cannabis. And so all indica's sort of got bucketed into that. But a lot of the heavy sort of traditional indica effects and those deeper calmer aspects of cannabis

are like, I would attribute mostly to the influence of Afghani or similar genetics. Oh, interesting. Now, what about energetic strains? Anectotally speaking, what are some of the strains that you keep hearing from people that seem to give them more energy and creativity? Yeah, I mean, there's a bunch,

honestly, things like super lemon haze, sour diesel. Sour diesel is really, that was a common one. Right, yeah, and honestly, I personally, until we have more data to substantiate it, I like to tell people that I think a lot of those uplifting and invigorating effects come from the turpene content and things like limonene, which is a prevalent cannabis turpene, but also one we see all over the place.

It's citrus. It's uplifting. It's bright. It's eye opening sort of. It's invigorating in a sense. And as far as like aromatherapy goes and stuff, you see citrus use as like a mood enhancer, as an upliftor. And so when you see cannabis strains

that are high in this terpen, it's not unusual to think that, hey, maybe this is influencing the experience, giving me a little bit of lift with my THC, which is known to be euphoric and blissful. And if there's, you know, very, very minute amount of CBN, then you're getting less and less of that sort of sleepy aspect of cannabis.

And so you're lifted up. I've never paid attention to the smells in the sense of how the smells may affect me when I use I've never paid attention to the smells and the sense of how the smells may affect me when I use, I'll pay attention to the smells because oh, it smells good, it makes it more palatable, if you will. But I've never paid attention. And I'm gonna start doing that

because sour diesel, you mentioned sour diesel. For sure, if I was gonna use a strain, that was gonna maybe make me feel more creative or up, lifted, it would be sour dieselsze, it was one of them. Another one's green crack. Yep, definitely. Green crack will do that. Although green crack is a huge libido booster for me.

Are there any strings that you're finding people like, oh, this is the one you need to, if you wanna have some good sex with your girl or whatever. You know, that's one of the more common things we find people searching for cannabis. One of the filters on leafly is aroused. Actually, we've been trying to determine more and more whether people mean like sexually aroused

or just sort of excited aroused. I think they mean sexually. They mean sexually. Yeah. And I'd say for everyone, it's a little different. But, you know, green crack is a great example because it's not one where you're gonna get lethargic. You know, you are gonna be uplifted and invigorated.

You're gonna have that happy mood. You're gonna have, you know, generally positive effects unless you're, unless you're maybe getting in your head a little bit. But so yeah, things sort of that are known as those like traditional sativa uplifting effects are generally what people want for a rousal. I personally haven't found one specific strain

that I would recommend for that, but people are definitely searching for strains that do that, and there's even companies like, I'm gonna butcher the saying of their name, but it's Fioria, I believe, or Foria. And they're essentially just an infused lubricant that's designed at increasing sexual pleasure and, you know, topically, as opposed to consuming it via smoke.

Yeah, it's weird whenever you apply a lubed yourself, you get a roused. Yeah. Yeah, it's weird. What are you doing in the corner over there, Adam? It's working. That's funny. What about the heirloom strains that I hear so much about?

You know, I've told the story on the show many times, but a particular strain was, there was one particular strain I used when I created the first fitness program that we started selling, and it was Jack Herrera. So I have this very interesting relationship with that strain, but it does seem to be a creative strain. Don't have it very often, because I usually don't,

I don't typically use cannabis to be for recreational purposes usually. But Jack Herrera is one that if I do, I will. And I've heard it being referenced to as an heirloom strain. Yeah, so there's a couple things to unpack there. One is the difference between maybe an heirloom strain. Yeah, so there's a couple things to unpack there. One is the difference between maybe an heirloom and a land race. So a land race is something that most of the heirloom strains were bred from. And there then the native population of cannabis that native civilizations cultivated or kept around them

for whatever reason. So the things like Afghani, things like Mexican land races, stuff that is sort of native to those parts of the world that then cannabis breeders have collected from around the globe and mixed and matched and created things like the heirloom strains of Jack Herreraer, AK47, some of the older, old-school sort of classic cannabis strains as I like to describe

them. Most of them were developed by Dutch seed banks because that was really the only place that could do breeding projects like that. But Jack Herreraer is a great heirloom strain. It's named after the author of The Emperor Where There's No Clothes, which is a book all about the history of hemp and cannabis that I believe was written in the 70s by Jack Herrera. And he's just been a lifelong cannabis advocate who lost his own fight, but I even saw this weekend that his family and his son is carrying on his name. They've got their own brand and they're really continuing the conversation that Jack started. So it's cool to see the heirloom legacy still being perpetuated throughout the industry. Now the heirloom strains and Jack is actually one that really gained notoriety from people

who really suffered from medical ailments, who wanted to consume cannabis, but didn't want the sedating elements of cannabis. So people who just wanted a better quality of life still wanted to go on about their normal day, some of those things really, really latched on to Jack or Air. And so that's what's elevated. And I know actually a fair amount of people like it for it's sort of a rousing effects even.

So the other heirloom strains, I mean, there's things like skunk one, which is a heavy indica. Things that have come from skunk one are like cheese, even green crack is a descendant of skunk one. I believe it's just a specific phenotype that is sort of unique in that Skunk 1 is traditionally, you know, basically as pure of an Indika as you could get, and yet Green Crack, which is a descendant, is almost thought of completely as a pure Sativa. So that in and of itself sort of explains the conundrum between the Indika Sativa dichotomy.

Now, you've been in this for so long, so you've seen some of the evolution, and I've argued this on the show that a couple of things in my opinion, maybe you disagree or agree with me, need to change about the industry before it gets adopted nationwide. And one of them is the naming of the strains,

like green crack or a laskin thunder fuck or whatever, that's an actual name of a... It's a great strain. Which is great. It's fantastic strain. But that's a great strain I ever grew. Is it really my favorite strain? That's literally the name of a strain.

And then also the products, like you're gonna have fruity pebbles cereal with THC in it and candy and lollipops and stuff like that. And I'm like, look, if they want to go national with this, they're going to have to make it more, I guess, move away from the kind of stoner vibe and move it more towards this professional type of thing. Do you agree or disagree?

Do you think that's, or is that an element of it that'll never change? I mean, I don't agree or disagree with it. I think, you know, if you're a cannabis company aimed at a medical consumer, then yeah, you need to clean some of that stuff up. If you're a cannabis company aimed at having fun and being playful, then some of those things work just fine. I mean, we see craft beer with all sorts of absurd names, dog piss and moustrool and all sorts of stuff.

It's not to say that it needs to go away completely, but we do need to abolish things like trademark infringement and some of those things that have run rampant in the cannabis industry for so long. And that's just a legitimizing factor. If we want to be thought of as legitimate businesses and operating legitimately, then we can't be stealing other people's ideas and brands. And that's just common sense.

I think that's sort of the growing pains and some of the maturity issues that the industry has been faced with and is continuing to evolve out of. Now I sort of, the part I struggle with when it comes to like the candies and the gummies and there's sort of all this backlash over like, oh, that's for children or whatever. I'm a 34 year old adult. I love bright colors and gummy candy. That doesn't make me a bad person and I should be able to find an infused gummy if I want. I think the, there's vitamin C gummy bears.

Exactly. When you're talking about medical supplements, the gummy is actually the, or dietary supplements, the gummy is actually the fastest growing category because old people can chew them, young people can chew them, and they're easy and enjoyable other than, you know than popping a pill or having a bad tasting supplement. And so why can't we, as the cannabis industry, utilize some of those same tactics to make our products consumable? Okay, now speaking on as far as the business end of it, I know that Marborough has just invested quite a

bit of money coming in. It's like, it's forced something billion dollars coming into the industry. 2.4 Canadian, I believe. Right. So, talk to me about your thoughts in terms of like big, huge tobacco companies now getting their hands in it. I mean, it's not surprising. We've heard rumors of it since long before I was even born that Marble already had Marble

greens already to pull the trigger the second it was legal. The reality is that money is being poured into cannabis, especially Canadian cannabis because they've been the first G7 nation to really embrace it on a nationwide level. And if one, if the states doesn't act soon, then Canada's going to be the epicenter. And we're going to miss out on a lot of that economic opportunity. And two, I mean, I think investment in cannabis is a good thing. I would caution consumers to just do some research, figure out where your cannabis is coming

from, who's growing it, who's funding it, and you'll start to see some patterns and just like all industry and anything that capitalism can touch. There's a right way to do things and a wrong way to do things. I don't think investment in cannabis is inherently bad, but I think I would encourage people to support the pioneers of this industry who have risked a lot of time, a lot of money, and their own freedoms to showcase what this plant can do for people. And there's a lot of them, in fact, almost all of them, if they're not already locked up, active in this space, and you are able to support them, and you

are able to find mom and pops, or, you know, victims of the drug war who are now being propped up by cannabis, and we should be supporting them. The irony of it is, too, that the more we, when we legalize, if we regulate it too much, we're just going to maintain a really strong black market. You know like you go to like in New York I think it's in New York they have a huge cigarette black market because they've taxed and regulated the shit at a cigarette so much that people are selling them on the black market so the irony of it is you know legalizing it isn't necessarily the answer has to be legalized with like appropriate regulation not make making so insane that people will just buy it on the black market anyway because it's

going to cost you a million dollars. That's an interesting direction to take this conversation. I'm curious to hear your opinion. You know, I noticed that being somebody who was in the clubs, grown, still have a lot of relationships with both club owners and growers. There still seems to be a pretty strong black market. And kind of what I see now and what I was seeing when I was leaving the space was the clubs were in the price wars of being able to provide an eighth of weed for the cheapest price

they possibly can. And then there was still this market for like really high and high and like connoisseur type weed. And so I feel like, I mean, and I still don't get all of my cannabis from a, from a dispensary. In fact, if I can get to one of my good friends that are growers that grow really top notch product that I know how they're growing it to, I prefer that. And sometimes I feel like the quality of the cannabis clubs even some of these really big nice cannabis clubs Isn't always the triple a stuff. Do you feel the same way too or am I totally off here? Yeah, I mean, I think I don't I don't disagree with you at all

I think part of it comes from the conundrum of licensing more especially in California where we're you know really a year into it at this point and hardly any of the industry has been granted their license. So the market has completely shrunk. So all those operators that are busy trying to get their businesses back off the ground because they've had to go through this big, regulatory shift, you know, are either looking at other means to survive,

whether that's illicit markets or other business opportunities or just ways to scrape by until they can get licensing from the government. So I think some of that will go away as more and more of these businesses get licensed. But also, I think states need to encourage home grow. I know that's prevalent here in California, and I would encourage anyone who lives in a state that allows you to grow your own cannabis to do it, whether you do it on a larger scale or perpetually, like that's up to you, but do it one time.

Figure out what it takes, and you'll learn so much about the plant. It'll teach you way more than you could ever teach it. And you know, the black market is not going to go away completely. There's always going to be people who sort of like the criminal element and like operating in that space. But I think for the 99.9% of us that just love cannabis and want to be able to do what we want to do, we will find ways, whether it's by getting licensed or collaborating with licensed grows to make that happen. I also think that gifting cannabis as a personal grower is the same as someone sharing a beer

that they brewed at home. It's probably got a little bit more craft in it. It's maybe a little bit of a more amateur approach to it or a bootstrapped approach to it, but that adds some character and some nuance to it that you might not get from commercial scale grows or breweries or whatever else you want to look at. Right. Let's talk a little bit about dabbing and the evolution of that.

Yeah, I'm sure. I know we were some of the first ones to do this in the early 2000 back then. It was ear wax and honeycomb and evolved a shatter. And now I have some of my really close friends that are producing clear, share with the audience that has no fucking idea what I'm talking about right now, what that's been in it,

because I'm assuming you're a dapper based on your Instagram name. Yeah, that's my bread and butter. I love hash and concentrates, but specifically solvently hash is the go-to and what I would consider the upper echelon of cannabis, the world is just as diverse as growing it as as operating in this space no matter what you're doing. So we could probably do a whole nother show on cannabis extraction alone, but basically, you know, the idea behind extraction and there's a number of different methods to do it is to remove the plant

material and separate the essential oils that contain the cannabinoids and terpenes. And this really started with like bubble hash, right? Well, this was probably the first original form of that, correct? Well, going back even further, I mean, you know, charas and Moroccan dry sieve hash and some of those things, those cultures figured out cannabis extraction long before we were growing cannabis for the flower. But yeah, I mean, modern cannabis extracts definitely are sort of the evolution from bubble hash, which just takes cold ice water and agitates the plant so that the tricomes become brittle, separate from the plant, and then you see them through a number of different micron screens, refining further and further until you're left with just the prime tricone heads.

And then moving from there, what are they doing to make these, like you were saying, clear and... Yeah, so to take it a step further, when you start, so bubble hash and solventless hash specifically is a very hands-on process. It's very much a craft, but if you're looking at larger scale production, you're looking at things like using chemical solvents, like butane and propane, and some of those solvents, as well as things like CO2 to extract that oil and then you essentially cook off the residual solvent so that all that remains is that beautiful hash oil that you you were after. So again there's a number of different techniques and methods you can accomplish that by but really what it takes is is a

big chamber that you would fill with your plant matter containing all the cannabinoids and terpenes that you're trying to extract. And you blast them in a closed loop system through with high-powered CO2 or high-pressure butane and propane mixes. And that resulting raw extract basically captures the full spectrum of the plant. And from there, you can do some post-processing, things like distillation,

a number of different ways people distill it, but short path tends to be the most popular and without getting too technical, but basically what you're doing is distilling off or vaporizing at different temperature ranges, different compounds, knowing that they have different boiling points, we can boil them off separately and encapsulate them and encapsulate them and then remove any things like solvents and stuff that remain so that we're left with just those isolated cannabinoids, which is why you see things like liquid distillents and stuff that remain, so that we're left with just those isolated cannabinoids,

which is why you see things like liquid distillate at like 99% TH. I was gonna say, it's like super strong. That would be the clear. Yeah, so like hitting one dab is like the equivalent of how many hits off of a joint, for example. It's a lot stronger, right? Right, it's more potent.

It's definitely more potent. I mean, the sticky point is you can take a big dab, right? Right, it's more potent. It's definitely more potent. I mean, the sticky point is you can take a big dab, you can take a small dab. There's nothing that says you have to get a certain amount of homie from a, from a dab. Now, just to put it in perspective, I would say most concentrates fall between 65 and 85% THC. If that's what they're going for, you see the same thing with things like CBD and stuff,

although oftentimes much lower just because they're concentrated in lower quantities, but you know, so if you think about a small dab being about the same as maybe like smoking an entire joint to yourself and that joint, if you roll a big, nice, Graham joint, is about 20%, 25% THC. So with a gram, you're looking at, you know, 250 milligrams of THC. And if you're taking a dab, which, let's say, is probably less than a tenth of a gram and is, you know, 65% THC. You're getting down there at about the same conversion. Now, it obviously hits you different because in a dab, you're... It's right away, you're like... It's flash vaporization, so you're getting it almost instantaneously and you're getting

what, what essentially you would get in that whole joint like that. And so not for the beginner or the for not for the person with low tolerance. You know, I I would argue that too. I think there's a I think there's a misconception that that dabs are inherently a means of like over consumption. One of my favorite things to do is give people their first dab and that's because I want it to be an enjoyable experience. A lot of people, when they give people their first dab, they sort of want it to be like a right of passage

and put them through the ringer. And like that might work in a fraternity or something, but like if you're really trying to get someone to understand and enjoy cannabis and cannabis concentrates, like you want to create an enjoyable experience that they can repeat and enjoy time and time again. So while I would caution someone with lower tolerance or a beginner, I would say you can still safely and effectively dab. It's just about finding the right product, the right dose, and really the right temperature. Because if you dab at a low enough temperature, you're effectively vaporizing it at basically

the minimum boiling point so that things like harshness or some of the anxieties that come with that much THC hitting you that fast are actually sort of leveled off a little. Did you bring your rig with you? I have my puff go peak in the car if you want me to. Oh, shit, we might have to make you out of it. We might have to make these guys dab. I don't want to get the one-wap. Remember the one-wap?

Have you had any bad experiences? I mean, of course. Yeah, I think as... What was your first? Tell us about your first time just fucking doing too much. I mean, my first time overconsuming cannabis was, I think, probably like a lot of people's, and that was my first edible experience. And that's really because your body metabolizes cannabis differently when you eat it. It converts it to a different form of taxi, right? Yeah, yeah. It does. It converts it to a different enzyme within your stomach. Also,

your digestive tract is just a much longer process than your endocannabinoid system. So, you know, the same way that when you go to the hospital and they give you an injection, it gets right to your bloodstream. Whereas if you take a pill, it takes some time to get it dispersed throughout your body. So for, oh man, it must have been my 20th, 19th birthday maybe. My best friend's older brother, who was always like the cannabis guru, you know, the typical like older brother who showed you how to make your first guy. That's a huge exposure. Yeah, exactly. So he knew it was my birthday,

so he was like, happy birthday. Here's two pot brownies for you. And of course, I'm like, sweet. I love weed. I smoke weed all day, every day. Let's enjoy these. And my buddy's like, it's your birthday. Like, you're gonna eat weed.

I'll just drive you around from, you know, birthday party to birthday party or whatever. And so I end up you know, typical Edibles Horror Story. I ate half of it, got impatient, said this isn't working, so I ate the other half. And by the time I finished the other half, the first half was hitting me, and I was already starting to lose it. I don't... I remember having a really good time. I remember being just sort of so lethargic that like, if you've ever had surgery and come out of anesthesia, The few hours after anesthesia, we're like, your mind is awake, but your body isn't quite there yet. That was the Edibles experience my first time.

And I just remember catching glimpses of myself, you know, in the rear view mirror of the car, and just being like, how'd we get back in the car? Oh, now I'm with new people. Oh, now we're eating dinner, I guess. And, you know, so it's sort of the strobe like effect throughout. It really didn't. Mostly because I was in a good setting with good people and I enjoyed cannabis already. So it wasn't anything I hadn't necessarily experienced to some degree, but it was definitely the type

of experience where you woke up the next day going, oh my god, what happened? It's one of those things that the first time I had an, I did too much. I didn't do any for like years afterwards. Is it frightened? That's pretty common. Yeah, it's one of the worst things to, in my opinion, to overdose on. It's really not though. It's really not. Yeah, it's really not. I mean, in terms of dainty. It's probably the best thing over here. It really is, right? It's just the mental aspect of it. That's the part.

Yeah, that makes you think that way. You think you're gonna do that. Overdose on alcohol, you can die. Yeah, right. Pretty hard to die on cannabis, you know, to take too much. So, you know, earlier we were talking about the different effects of cannabis based on the chemical constituents.

Can the way you grow a particular strain then change its effects? In other words, can one type of jack-harrere affect me one way and then I do it again and it affects me totally different because it was grown differently? Yeah, totally. And I mean, it's just you're a product of your environment, right?

So like if you split two twins up at birth and they were raised in totally different environments, well, they'd have a lot of the same traits, same mannerisms and stuff, like they'd inherently have some differences too. So, you know, the amount of care, the amount of sunlight, the amount of nutrients and water and, you know, humidity levels, there's so many variables

that can affect how the cannabis plant ends up. And so, with good stable genetics, those differences should be smaller and less distinguishable, but there's a lot of genetic variability in cannabis. How hard is it to grow at them? Because you were talking early about promoting home grows, but then when people talk about growing it, they're like, oh you got to get lights you got to do this you got to do that You got to make sure you have the right chemical of this vitamin this nutrient and I'm like it's a plant that grows

Naturally shouldn't you be able to plant I mean especially in California am I wrong? Is it is it super hard to grow or is it just that growers? Spend so much time on it because of perfecting it just like if you were to go to a commercial Tomato grow whatever versus the average person where you could just put it in a pot and grow it. Yeah, I mean, it's called weed for a reason. It's not hard to grow cannabis. It takes a lot of passion and a lot of time

and energy to grow good cannabis. Okay. So, yeah, I think it's more like the ladder of what you were explaining. And that is that people just cannabis growers inherently care and the nuance matters to them. And the subtle differences matter and the subtle results matter. And so they care about the every little thing that they're feeding to it and the way they're nurturing these plants. So it takes what I would say is not so much that it's like hard or difficult. You can make it as technical or as easy as you sort of want.

It's as easy as putting a seed in some dirt and giving it the right amount of water and sun. You know, that will grow cannabis, but to grow really truly exceptional turpine rich or to breed things for exceptional traits or qualities or rare cannabinoids, things of that nature, like that really takes attention to detail, passion and experience more than anything. Well, you drew the, you know, you compared it to the tomato plant, which is a perfect one to compare to,

since the macro profile is almost identical to that, and if you were to just take a tomato plant and water it every once in a while versus measuring its nutrient level and taking really good care of it, I mean, you're gonna get this beautiful tomato that tastes amazing and is great or it's gonna taste okay, right? Yeah, they're just squeezing out more out of the plant.

In regards to the public perception, that has changed a lot hasn't it? Because you've been doing this for a little while now. Yep. I'm sure before you reviewed like, oh, you know, Stone or whatever, now is the perception totally changed? Or is it dependent where you're at?

Like if you're in California, it's all good. Yeah, I think it depends where you're at. You know, on the West Coast and where I'm from in Seattle and definitely in California, I think in a lot of ways we've had cannabis publicly available and safely available to us for some time now, whether it was medical or recreational, and I sometimes get caught up in my bubble of like,

oh, wait, there's still people going to jail for this other places. And so it's good to have reminders and to be cognizant of that in a lot of ways this, as much as I believe it should be a right, it's very much a privilege at this point. And so the perceptions are definitely changing. I can't have a family meal or holiday without inevitably the conversation turning towards cannabis.

It's, you know, partly it's a hot button topic politically. It's got such big economic and industrial impact that you're seeing sort of the collision of all sorts of things like technology and everything colliding into this space all at once. So there's a lot of opportunity and optimism and excitement around the plant and the things we can do with it and the fact that we're just now starting to be able to really study it and understand it.

So perceptions are changing. I think there's still a lot of stigma to break down. People still have lazy, stoner stereotypes in their head, whether it's when you're applying for a job or the fact that employers will still, you know, drug test you for cannabis and states with legal cannabis seems kind of counterintuitive, especially for some of the jobs you might be applying for. Oh, I think it's so hypocritical. If you were to meet new people and they say,

what do you do for living? Oh, I have the vineyard. Oh, that's a wow, that's amazing. Great job. You know, I grow cannabis, you know, and you get totally different impression. Or, you know, so, but so I think the stigma definitely needs to change.

I think it's changing, but it's taking a little bit. It is, and honestly, I think the biggest thing that will change it is more and more because I don't know about you guys, but I know a lot of people who consume cannabis and they come from all walks of life. There is no box that you could put a cannabis consumer in because there's so many ways to consume it, reasons to consume it, you know, different strains to be attracted to and touch points for cannabis in sort of any lifestyle. So like it just is going to take more lawyers and cops and judges and people, politicians,

you know, people to come out and just say, yeah, I consume cannabis, I do it responsibly. It's not a bad thing. How does leafly monetize right now? What is their main source of monetization? Digital advertising. Okay, interesting. You guys have an app? We have a mobile app available on Android and the app store and everything. It's the first place I'll go to review a string. If I get a new string and I want to see what people say about it and what the effects that are being reported,

you guys are killing it. The best site that I've seen so. Awesome. Thank you. Yeah. And if you want to find a new strain, you can filter by effects, by flavors, by some of those things, and try something new. And some of those features and capabilities were working to make bigger and better for both consumers and business to make the shopping experience really what it can be and what it should be, at least in the digital space, while giving businesses tools to be more effective and reach their consumers. Any companies that you like right now or that you're paying attention to, that you think are doing really cool stuff in the space, or even edible, or vaporizers, or companies

that you think are doing things the right way. Yeah, definitely. So I will say I'm not as familiar with the California market just because I don't spend as much time here and there's been a lot of movement, so I don't exactly know everyone who's fully licensed at this point and stuff, but I will say I just came from the Emerald Cup and there was a number of brands they're doing really cool things.

I love as far as extracts go because that's sort of my bread and butter. I love 7, 10 labs. They do solventless extraction, but they also do solvent-based live resins and stuff like that. Their saying is, I believe, OGs grow better OG and that's just really, they're saying they've been in this game for a long time They know what to look for. They have a keen eye for using the right genetics So if you like extracts definitely check out 710 labs. I believe they're also available in Colorado

Which is where the business started before California legalized um And what else I mean There's um And what else? I mean, there's, you know, back home, I'm a big, big fan of Goldleaf Gardens. They grow in living soil indoors, which is basically they're beyond organic. They're not able to use the organic term

because that term is actually owned by the federal government. So you can't market your cannabis as organic. Really? That's interesting. Not currently because it has to be approved. I did not know that. Yeah.

It has to be approved by the government. It has to be approved by the federal government. That is a term that they... Wow. Now, I know a lot of people do do that. So that's a little loophole there. So the government can come in and... Yeah. they can.

And, you know, it's, I know one reason I love gold leaf so much is because they practice this beyond organic method of growing cannabis, which is rare in and of itself, but the fact that they do it indoors is even that much more rare, because a lot of people doing regenerative farming are doing it outdoors. But they're working with the Washington State Department of Agriculture to get organic certification at a state level because the state is on board. The state wants these things. It's just again the balance between state government and federal government. It'll be interesting to see which brands go national once it becomes, it's gonna become legalized nationally.

Kiva is a good, as a brand based out of California. And I, from day one, they're just so uniform, so clean looking, they look like they're already a, a national. Yeah, they've been well established. I know they were really active in the medical market. They've spent time really really on their product development, on their branding, on really creating a foundation

so that they can do things like taking a brand national, which a lot of brands, not that they're bad, but they might be a little short-sighted. They're maybe bootstrapped or they're just too focused on, you know, they're maybe thinking a little too small. I mean, we need the people who want to think small as well, but if you're doing things like taking a brand national, you need some of those more foundation. In my opinion, this way, I would predict that happening is if it does go national, first

off the big players and come in and they're going to buy out the really good state brands. That's what I think. So I think like Kiva, they have the process, they got the brand, they have the recognition, then you'd have like Nabisco or someone come in and buy them and put it out. That's just my personal opinion. Because once it goes national, you're competing with those monsters.

Just like Marble, like good luck trying to grow weed and unless you're kind of a craft brand, I mean, to compete with someone like Marble on the national stage for Nabisco. It's a great brand, I mean, to compete with someone like Marble on the national stage for Nebraska, what a great brand to do that you said. Yeah, I said you pulled that out off the cuff there, but that's not a bad one, right? Absolutely.

I mean, you know? You used Oreos, right? Yeah, it makes perfect sense. That sounds delicious. That's these big brands would do that. So like I said, I think Marble's already, they already grow plants. They've got all the processing.

Yeah, Marble invested in Canadian cannabis. I believe Corona, or whoever owns Corona invested in Canadian cannabis brands as well. He and Heiser Bush. Yeah, and there's this one brand of cannabis. It looks like it's beer, but it's not. And it's just a cannabis drink. And it was, remember the brand I showed you guys? It was like that Mexican beer brand, but now it's anyway. Logonitas? Yeah, there you go. Yeah, yeah.

Logonitas has their turp tonic or whatever they're calling it. They're already in it? Yeah, they're in it. Well, one thing, Logonitas actually has a sort of longstanding history with cannabis. They're from Northern California. They're very much sort of ingrained in that culture and the counter culture and the community there. And so their story, they've put out things like hemp ails and stuff previously, I'm pretty sure, but they partnered with Absolute Extracts, which is a California extract brand. And they did a

partnership. And I believe what they did before things went recreational as they actually created things went recreational as they actually created cannabis vape cartridges, hop vape cartridges, that they extracted hop oil and mixed it with the cannabinoid distillate that we were talking about and gave you sort of beer-flavored extract. And then in reverse of that once it went legal and what you guys were talking about is they're essentially they're infused non-bear because it's non-alcoholic. It's almost like a tonic that's infused. It's like a...

It tastes like, it tastes like that aftertaste of beer, but it's not alcohol. Yeah, it's like a lacroy, but for hops that's infused. It's like the essence of hops with sparkling water or whatever, however they brew it to make it. Another thing that I'm seeing that the cannabis market's

doing that I think is brilliant is because of the regulations on packaging where they have to have these kind of like childproof type packages, you know, I bought, it was a Lagoonitas, it came in a can like a soda, but it had this like little top on it that, obviously a kid wouldn't be able to open, but it was reusable. And I'm seeing more and more packaging come out

because of the regulation, I think it's ingenious. I think that's smart, because you gotta get around that stigma before you go national. Yeah, and I mean, the packaging conversation, I think the safety element is definitely important, but at the same time, the cannabis industry is getting somewhat of a bad rap for the amount of waste that they're creating, because of that. Plastic waste, but it's a necessary evil, and it's not something that most of these

cannabis companies want. They don't want to over package their product, but they have to, to meet regulation. They have to use, you know, certain thickness of plastic wrapping for the candy wrappers that's like three or four times as thick as what your normal candy would be wrapped in. And while I understand, like, the safety mechanism about making it harder for someone with, you know, little hands to open or whatever, at the same time, what's that doing to our environment? And like the cannabis community in general tends to be stewards for the planet and for the environment, not all of them, but most of them will tell you that they want to support

doing things sustainably in the right way. And some of the regulation or over regulation is sort of creating some new stigma around cannabis. And meanwhile, I have I have suit if at home and blister packs that kids can pop open and crush and it's way more dangerous, you know, saying. So anything cool in the market of cannabis that you're seeing right now, that's kind of emerging. Like anything to look out for. I mean, the biggest sort of hype recently is diamonds and sauce and that's in the extract world. That's basically isolated THCA or pure THC

with its native terpenes. And so to simplify it a bit, it's essentially that raw extract I was describing earlier. And then they post process to allow it to separate. And when THC separates from the terpenes, it crystallizes almost like you would see rock candy. So some of this stuff's retelling it like 100 grams. Oh, yeah, more than that, even depending on how they've done it

and the processes and the strains they're using and all of that. And it's really like, it's a unique and inventive and very like visually stunning way to present cannabis and pure THC because it really does. It looks like quartz or diamonds, you know? It's very, very cool. But part of me says, you know, it's the same thing.

You could take that raw extract. It's actually, it's still the same. It's no better and it's actually more work to produce. It's more work to produce. It's visually appealing. It's visually appealing. There's nothing wrong with it by any stretch, but if you just want flavor and effect, you almost already have that from the raw extract.

I predicted it would come and go, Tabadilla. It's just like we've had a lot of those different things like that that are cool. They look cool or taste cool and it's like it's just a little ridiculous to... Yeah, I mean, I don't know that it'll come and go. I think the market likes novelty. So I think there'll always be a place for products like that.

I do think that the hype will die down a little bit and the price points might come down a little bit and people might, but I also think that's the innovation right now and that's what people are excited about and extraction in general is where a lot of the advances and understanding of isolated cannabinoids and stuff are coming from. So it's all very exciting and I think that's why it's the hype is because people are like, whoa, look at this thing we just learned how to do. Now when they learn how to do something new, that'll be the... Well, thanks for coming on, man.

Yeah, thank you guys for having me. Absolutely, where you based that, by the way? I'm based out of Seattle. Okay, good deal. So if you ever come down, come back on the show. I definitely will. So we'll come back. Absolutely.

Come by, definitely. All right, thanks, Will. Yeah, thank you guys come down, come back on the show. We go up there too. So we'll come back. Absolutely. Come by, definitely. All right, thanks Will. Yeah, thank you guys. Thank you for listening to Mind Pump. If your goal is to build and shape your body, dramatically improve your health and energy, and maximize your overall performance, check out our discounted RGB Superbumble

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