An Open Conversation on Pain and Sleep with David Bearman, MD

John Malanca 0:00
Welcome back everybody, John Malanca with United Patients Group Be Informed. Be Well. and I’m here with an old friend and old colleague, Dr. David Bearman. Some people say Bearman, but it’s Bearman. He’s an MD out of Santa Barbara. So I love that area down there. That’s where I went to school but still have family down there. And so hopefully, when all those COVID disappears, I’ll be able to come by and knock on the door and say hi again, but me read your bio first off here. Yeah. So Dr. Bearmanis one of the most clinically knowledgeable physicians the United States in the field of medical cannabis. He has over 50 years of experience working in the field of substance abuse treatment as well as prevention. Dr. Bearman was also I say Bearman or Beerman? I said bourbon doesn’t

Unknown Speaker 0:48
make any difference. I

John Malanca 0:49
know but you know how you have. But you know, I’m like if some people say Malanca, and I change it, so now I’m calling you. Yeah,

David Bearman, MD 0:56
I looked at it. It’s funny I did the backstory here is it was sort of my way of striking out and showing my independence. So I transferred medical schools from Wisconsin to Washington, and I started calling myself Bearman when I was in Washington, you know, and, you know, I guess I Bearman was so hey, there’s beer in Wisconsin there bears in Washington. Bearman. And so my children are, they don’t have any confusion there there Bearman. All right. And my daughter is a stand up comedian. She’s got a Master’s in Public Health. She does stand up comedy. And she has her own production company. She produces comedy shows with other comedians. And her company’s called bear cave productions. productions in rare cave productions. And you want to check her out online. You know, she’s actually she’s in a contest in San Diego, a virtual comedian contest. And she made the semi finals. So there are 10 comedians move up to the semifinals. And she’s all excited about that, as well. So

Unknown Speaker 2:15
she must be a great

John Malanca 2:15
storyteller because I know you’re a heck of a storyteller too. And so yes, and Dr. Dr. Bearman, we get into this Ladies and gentlemen, he loves history as well. So maybe we get some history stories out of out of him as well. But let me continue here. You’re a pioneer in the free community clinic movement, which was in Seattle, the San Francisco Bay Area, and as well as Santa Barbara, his career includes public health, administrative medicine, the provision of primary care, pain management, as well as cannabis medicine. You’ve done a lot of your 50 years experience, you did a free clinic and down in Santa Barbara, you’ve been an expert witness, or you still are an expert witness as well as you’re an author, and I have your book here and great books. And so we’ll talk about that as well. And you and I have done docu series together as well as a masterclass on pain and sleep. And maybe we’ll take up we’ll touch up on that pain, pain and sleep. And, and because this is a topic that kind of goes hand in hand, and I still quote you every day. I mean, I have so many patients that call and we talk about, you know, pain, I said, how’s your sleep? You know, I’ve spoken about you on my show with other experts. And I always talk about you and direct him back down to you. But welcome, man, I appreciate you coming on. You know, I’ve done a lot over the years. And every time I call you say when can we do it? So I appreciate that means a lot.

David Bearman, MD 3:46
Well, thank you. It’s my pleasure. And I you know, this is a mutual admiration society. I think that you have all the right motivations and an awful lot of information and an enormous amount of heart. So it’s my pleasure to be with you today, my friend.

John Malanca 4:03
Thank you. Thank you. And yeah, you’re doing well, you and your wife.

David Bearman, MD 4:08
Well, actually, my wife is recovering from stroke like symptoms that were associated with migraine, and she’s making a recovery and she’d be back in the house on Tuesday. But thank you for asking. I know you didn’t expect me to come up with something

John Malanca 4:29
wonderful. And, and I’ve had a lot of friends that have asked about stroke. quote you and I don’t mean to chuckle but I always asked you when it first stroke patient when’s the best time to use cannabis. And when is it

David Bearman, MD 4:44
so the best time to use cannabis is anytime. If you’ve used cannabis before your stroke, you’re going to have less neural damage than if you were cannabis free. But you can also take cannabis immediately after the stroke. And that will decrease the amount of cell loss or loss of function. And Dr. Murray shulam, who you know is, recently they had a conference in Jerusalem, celebrating his 90th birthday. And unfortunately, we couldn’t all gather there. I was at the similar conference in person for his 80th birthday, which of course, was was 10 years ago. And he developed a synthetic cannabinoid called dex abdol, which is useful for was designed to be used for people who had strokes and had traumatic brain injury. And what can ammonoids do is they they have support, basil, dill attention. And what’s happening when you have a stroke is that you’re shutting down the blood supply to the brain. So this is one of the things that it does. But it also does other things besides just the the obvious help that you would get from having veza denotation. And it’s, it’s something that people should be aware of, and it’s something that doctors should be aware of. Irish recently was the panelist with Greg Carter, who’s the president of our organization, the American Academy of cannabinoid medicine, and Mitch Peary’s and Stu, I forget his last name, and it was for the annual conference and physical medicine and rehabilitation. And we had a very, I think, productive panel where we talked about not only, you know, it’s used for stroke, but also, you know, the use for anxiety, depression, anti inflammatory, you know, the whole, the whole ball of wax, and they are hoping to continue they, they’ve made these presentations, at a couple of previous conventions that they’ve had, and they hope to, to keep doing it. And it was, it was a great pleasure to be on with them. Because they were very knowledgeable. Stu is involved is a delegate to the American Medical Association. And you know, it’s important for these doctors in the mainstream, to be aware of all the medical applications of cannabis. So it was fun to be there and exciting to see people that did doctors in that discipline of being interested in this topic.

John Malanca 7:34
Yeah, let’s start and I think the stigmas turned is to starting to drop. And I think patients are starting to ask about it. And I always share about this, it doesn’t matter what state you live in legal or not a country you live in legal or not. It’s not illegal, I guess, in most places to ask the question. And

Unknown Speaker 7:51
I’m glad you mentioned that, because in the State of Hawaii, one of our members called up and said, people are still getting harassed there. And he wants the state legislature to clarify that it’s perfectly legal for doctors to give people advice, you know, the, when you get your MD degree, they don’t say, oh, by the way, you need to check your first amendment rights at the door. No, a patient can ask a doctor whatever they want. No, if the doctor doesn’t know the answer, they’re smart. They say, I don’t know the answer. If you’re real smart, they say, I don’t know the answer, but I’ll find out if when it comes to cannabis. They’re real smart. They say, I don’t know the answer, but called Dr. Berman, you know,

John Malanca 8:41
softball pitch there.

Unknown Speaker 8:44
Well, I you know, I pitched to myself, you know,

John Malanca 8:48
but you know, what you do you just fall in all those categories? I don’t know. I don’t know. I’ll find out. And then thank you for sending patients because because you do know about cannabis. And I didn’t realize that about about about Hawaii. You know, earlier today, I did a podcast with a woman on the East Coast, Claudia Miranda, and she specializes in protecting patients. And patients right as well as Doctor right when it comes to writing prescriptions for opioids. She’s someone who’s a pain patient. And I told her that I was gonna be on with you because we talked about pain, which is your specialty sleep, and how it’s all the how it’s all almost like a domino effect. But hearing about about Hawaii, that’s that’s surprising that

Unknown Speaker 9:35
I was amazed when I found that out. And I will send you a copy of the legislation that he wants the legislature in Hawaii to pass basically telling the federal government but really telling the people of a way that they have every right in the world to talk about whatever the hell they want. And you know, if a patient feels that the advice said a doctor gave them was off the map. They could sue him for malpractice. You know, there are a number of, you know, remedies. But the remedy is not to prohibit people from talking from asking questions. And I think that we’re going to see a dramatic change continued to see dramatic change in the cannabis medicine arena. Kamala Harris has said repeatedly that they Biden, Harris, President, Vice President, a team are going to legalize cannabis. What’s interesting is that this is the change in her position. As a matter of fact, when she ran for attorney general in California, one of the issues she ran against another democrat was a that she wasn’t forcefully enough in favor of removing the legal barriers to cannabis. And now she’s out there saying we’re gonna legalize cannabis. And, you know, we in this country, dodged a bullet. I mean, we we almost missed losing our democracy. And everybody who’s listening to this podcast needs to vote. They need to send money so that the Democratic candidates when ga candidates are normal people, they’re running against two of the richest people in the Senate, people who don’t really connect with the average human being. And I suspect people who have no appreciation for cannabis. Interesting thing about Georgia is, oh, I don’t know, three or four years ago, I was at a conference. You know, I’m on the sewer board. I recommend anybody that’s interested in politics, run for the sewer board. As long as you know, when you push the handle, it goes down the drain. Nobody’s gonna run against you know, and

John Malanca 12:07
you before you go on a quick, please share what your button was in Ireland. So

Unknown Speaker 12:12
when you ran on the SIR boy, oh, well, I had a number of of slogans. So the first time I ran was in 1983. And my button said, vote for Dr. De Biermann, I get your shit together. And people came up to me and said, Dave, Dave, it’s not the 60s or the 70s anymore, you know, well, I won. And my next slogan was, he’s number one. And then number two business, which is a little bit more delicate, you know, and I had a friend of mine, who was an attorney actually was the best marijuana attorney in town, and then he became a deputy district attorney. And he said, You shouldn’t you should use your next time your I should be eliminate waste, which, you know, covers a whole waterfront. So get your shit together. Absolutely.

John Malanca 13:03
Well, good. Good. The before we go into the political, I want to say one thing, and I and I do hope they look at the cannabis ticket. And it doesn’t surprise me that a politician, Republican or Democrat, whoever does flip flops on that. There’s no, you know that. I mean, Gavin Newsome. We’re here in the San Francisco Bay Area. You know, he has he’s done a lot. His family is here. And but he went on, he got on the ticket with the cannabis team, I guess the group or society and wanted to cannabis vote. I remember Chris and I went to an event that was in San Francisco, and he says, vote for me. I’m gonna you know, I’ll be defending that. Yeah, right. Yeah. There’s a gentleman that I met and interviewed probably back in July and is named Jim Martell. And Jim Bartell is a father and his son here in California, but his son passed a pancreatic cancer as well. And that’s why it’s near and dear to my heart. They’re up in Sacramento and in a hospital and they wouldn’t let in cannabis was not their lifestyle at all. And they just said, let’s try some other things. And so they got Jim tried to get cannabis in the hospital that for his son, they wouldn’t do it. And it took them 13 days to get it and they move hospitals and they found another hospital and his son passed, I want to say four or five days later, but he was awake, and he got to have a relationship, a good relationship with his son and his wife and the friends and they saw the benefits of this. And it was disappointing because Jim just felt that he was robbed the last two weeks of his son’s life and he went and voted. It’s called Ryan’s law. Ryan barthel is his son but Ryan’s law and I interviewed him back in July. If anybody wants to see that, but Jim went to the both the Senate and the House and unanimous on both sides of the aisle, both sides of the aisle California of allowing cannabis use for patients in hospitals and terminal situations.

Unknown Speaker 15:12
Really? That’s, that’s true. Can you send me an email on that? Because I want to send that out to our membership. Okay. Like to be ready for this one.

John Malanca 15:21
It’s gonna blow your bloody you know,

Unknown Speaker 15:23
mind.

John Malanca 15:25
Okay, Gavin Gavin vetoed it.

Unknown Speaker 15:28
No,

John Malanca 15:29
yeah. And I just thought, you know what, that to me, that was that was shit because of a father, you know, me losing my wife to pancreatic cancer and seeing my father do this. But both sides he out and it’s in California. And that was the ticket that he stood on. That was a ticket that he came to the cannabis industry and said, vote for me vote for me. I have your back. I have your back. And so that’s why camela however you want to call her whatever you want to call her, you know, you know, in its hope she does what she says, you know, and

Unknown Speaker 16:06
I’m not big unlikely to

John Malanca 16:07
call it politicians. She still hasn’t stepped down for her position as a senate here in California. Why? I don’t know where we are right now. December 18. You know, so

Unknown Speaker 16:18
she’ll step she’ll step down when she’s vice president. And, you know, the thing is, is that Newsome to my way of thinking has been a Titan of a disappointment. I think he’s in over his head. I think there are other people that would have done a better job. As Governor, I think, what’s his name? Javier bursera. Would have been, you know, I mean, he wasn’t running for governor. But I think that he would have been a much better choice. I think there are a number of other democrats that would make better governors and I I’ve certainly recently been a big fan of Jerry Brown. I mean, when he ran the first time, I thought he was too young. is a year older than me. And I said to myself, well, I don’t know anything I sure as hell couldn’t be governor of California. And I mean, I think that brown he set the bar very high, he has a great balance between fiscal conservatism and social justice. And, and he knows how things work. You know, he doesn’t he doesn’t doesn’t make a lot of false steps because he he anticipates what’s going to happen. And I mean, I, I think Newsome really didn’t fully appreciate how to approach the pandemic. I mean, he can’t criticize him too much, because the last pandemic was in 1918. So you know, that was a while ago. And he has a

John Malanca 18:02
politician, doesn’t matter what side you’re on, if you’re Republican, or Democrat, or neutral, or everyone at the Green Party. I don’t I doesn’t matter what you do. You’re not going to make everyone happy. You know, get everyone happy. If Gavin would have done one thing, Trump would have had done thing with the pandemic, they still would have been wrong. They still you know, so anyway, let’s talk let’s talk cannabis here and put it right back in it.

Unknown Speaker 18:29
I was gonna tell you, but Georgia is that so I met the sewer board the state sorry,

John Malanca 18:33
it was my my fault. I, I took her right adalbert left it alburquerque there. So.

Unknown Speaker 18:39
So I get this call. And I’m wondering, you know, I’m in Palm Springs. And, you know, my mind is 1000 miles away. And it’s a state legislator from Georgia. This was four years ago. Right? And, and parents are bugging him about the use of cannabis for dravet syndrome. And and we had a nice conversation and I saw this guy was quoted recently in regards to the runoff. His last name is peak. He’s no longer in the state legislature, but that I was very favorably or surprised that Georgia did legalize the use of CBD for epilepsy. And I’m sure this guy peak had some some role in that. And it’s interesting to see legislators get educated patients out of time, used to make a special effort to reach out to curious state legislators. And one of the people that went to their conference that was here in Santa Barbara in 2006, was a pharmacist and I think he was on the board of supervisors at that time. He’s now in the California State Senate and his whole attitude towards cannabis. Change, because he understood what was being talked about who was a pharmacist, he understood the chemistry. And I think that that’s the thing that’s really disappointed about disappointing about these politicians who take positions regarding cannabis that that make no sense. I just wrote a a piece based on something I wrote four years ago, basically knocking Jeb Bush and what he had to say about academies, and he was just completely wrong. 100% 180 d 180 degrees out of sync with science. And, you know, Jeb Bush is one of the more reasonable ones in the, in the Republican Party. Now to say something positive about the Republicans. Some of the best supporters for cannabis are conservatives. Now there are very few Republicans who are conservatives, you know, Steve Schmidt just changed from Republican independent to a Democrat, because so many of the republicans are really fascist. But you know, and the real republicans don’t really have a home anymore. But conservative Republicans, many of whom became libertarian, say, like judge gray, understand that we should have the freedom to put what pretty much whatever we want in our bodies, however, we have to take responsibility for that. And as physicians, we need to take responsibility for our advice. But getting back to sort of the original question, that does not mean that if a patient asks you, me, whatever, do you think that cannabis will be useful for treating my pain or for helping me go to sleep? We can answer that question. Yes, I do know, I don’t know anything. No, I don’t. Any one of those three answers is perfectly acceptable. But to say I can’t answer that question. Because I checked my first amendment rights at the door. That’s completely wrong.

John Malanca 22:00
It’s, it’s, it is wrong. And you know, we were fortunate with Chris’s father, which brought us into this industry back in 2010. And we lived in California, because Kemp, the topic of cannabis wouldn’t have come up as an alternative to helping someone who was ill, as well as dying. And so, you know, for those that live in illegal states that contact us every day of help. Where do we go? You brought up Georgia credit, I wrote an article about Georgia, that pretend state and this was probably cringe past three years ago, already, probably six years ago, maybe seven years ago, where they voted. Okay, we’ll let you do it. But you have to, we have these other other pharmaceuticals aren’t working one. Right, you have to get it outside of color of Georgia, but you can’t bring it back in. And so Oh, by you know, it’s that’s why I was saying is pretend state, it’s like saying, Yeah,

you have your here’s your driver’s license, David, but I’m sorry, unfortunately, we don’t have any cars on our islands are allowed to drive, you know, and it’s, you know, so I just think it’s, you know, just, it’s just confusing the patients that are going through this and, and so, I like to see these laws changing. I like this, I’m liking that there’s 35 states, medically available for patients. I think we’re 15 recreationally but the thing that needs to change is the qualifications. I guess qualified symptoms. You know, a lot of a lot of states will say yes, like California we everyone jokes and I joke about it, you can have hiccups and gas and you’ll you can never get a card for a you know,

Unknown Speaker 23:43
well actually it’s useful for creating hiccups and gas.

John Malanca 23:51
I when I said that, I was like, Oh, well I know he’s gonna say something but but other states or the families that we talk to on a regular basis you know, yes epilepsies my child has it has epilepsy is legal. My other child who has cancer is an illegal patient I just think that’s wrong. You and I’ve talked about that if gray areas in other states had pains legal but cancer is not so your say wink wink you have pain right? Yes, I do. Doc Here you go. Do you know Connecticut I believe just passed this last year put pain as a qualified condition on their on their list and I just and I know that’s your specialty is pain. Let’s go into this in pain and cannabis.

Unknown Speaker 24:36
Absolutely.

John Malanca 24:37
You know and and I want everyone to know, you know, cannabis is not the golden pill. The Golden Ticket doesn’t work for everybody. So this is not to give anybody false hope. It is not to replace a one on one with your medical professional. Dr. Behrman does see patients are you still seeing patients or what’s happening?

Unknown Speaker 24:56
Yeah, I see particularly for cannabis medicine recommendations. Today, my, my bookkeeper left has recorded a voicemail message that said I wasn’t seeing new new patients because she really wanted me to cut back. But I, it’s the people that want a recommendation for medical cannabis. You know, we’ll make an appointment for you, I’ll make a do an evaluation. I think one of the things that patients like about me, I mean, obviously, the ones that don’t come and see me may not like me, but it is that I explain to them why this stuff works. And I work with them in terms of the appropriate dosage, and work with them about how to deal with any side effects that they might have. So I am still seeing patients. And the funny thing is, I don’t, you know, I was supposed to go into sort of semi retirement and I was joking with my office manager yesterday and said, I’m so goddamn busy, I better stop being retired. You know, because there is an awful lot that’s going on in the whole arena of cannabis medicine. I was just speaking with the executive director of our American Academy of cannabinoid medicine organization, and to activists in Brazil, and a lot is happening in Brazil, in terms of the use of cannabis, as medicine. And I think what we need to be careful of here is that we don’t allow the federal government and the large pharmaceutical companies to hijack cannabis as medicine, the federal government in passing the more act in the house, want to slap on a 5% federal tax. So medicine, what what are we doing here? You know, it’s the, the reason that cannabis is scheduled. One is to make it hard to do research. And then of course, everybody agrees there are people who are pro medical cannabis who were anti, we need more research, but you can’t do it. Because it’s schedule one, it just, I tell you, it’s like a prelude to Trump, in terms of having things that are just completely in congruence. You know, we’re going to set up these impossible barriers, these hoops you need to jump through at the DEA and the FDA and the state government. And we’re not going to let you you may be able to do some research on cannabis and animals. But if you’re gonna do research with humans, you can only use THC. Oh, and by the way, it’s the THC that really bothers us. And we made that a schedule three drug or we made cannabis a schedule one drug, absolute insanity, completely illogical. And I hope that we see more education and there is, you know, a willingness to open up on this, although most of that willingness, unfortunately has to do with money. Take a look at Dr. Paul Rand Paul. He owns I don’t know five $6,000 virus a five or 6000 acres of hemp in Kentucky. I believe that Mitch McConnell, our old friend mitch mcconnell is in into the cannabis business in Kentucky. john bainer, the former republican speaker of the house. Yeah, yeah. So I bainer is now the lobbyist for the cannabis industry association. Kind of a funny thing is, you know, the writer, Angela Baca, she used to be editor of cannabis now, for a while she was the executive director of the American Academy of cannabinoid medicine. And she was telling me this past year was a better time flies when you’re having fun. About a year or so ago,

Unknown Speaker 29:10
that she had a meeting in Florida with a fella named Roger stone. But unfortunately, the meeting got canceled because he was indisposed. Her a meeting with him was supposed to be a week or two after he got arrested. And she also said and this is disturbing as well. She’s writing a book on this, that in Ohio and Florida. The Russian oligarchs are heavily into the cannabis industry. So, you know, the world is a strange place and the cannabis arena, while at one time I think it was a refuge from the train, strangeness or at least you could understand or know what that strangeness was. No, it’s just part of this weird weird world that we live in.

John Malanca 30:01
It’s a growing world this cannabis industry I had a gentleman on the show the other day. I think you guys would get along and his name is Michael Patterson and he’s doing a lot overseas and illegal THC grows in Africa South Africa of all places and they are importing to Australia and Germany and that just blew blew me blew my mind and their legal you know the legal stuff so but I was flipping through my aunt sent me these and I the little jokes one liners in it. I’m past what you’re saying. But this is we can certainly slow the aging process down if I had to if I if it had to work its way through Congress talking about Congress. Will Rogers, I’ll send you these my aunt sent me these things here. Bob Hope I don’t feel old. I don’t feel anything until noon, then it’s time for me to take a nap Bob. And anyway, I just I know that’s your your type of sense of humor to exactly. Congress earlier. I’m like, Oh, I gotta go find this thing that that’s what I was looking at two. So on the top list of people coming to cannabis, you always have sleep, anxiety, depression, cancer, those are like the top ones that people come in. And we’ve we’ve done a show on a masterclass on pain and sleep. And you know how they’re tied in with each other. You know, you mentioned that a lot of times when you have lack of sleep, the pain, the body, the depression, the anxiety, but it also has a lot of times the same symptoms with fibromyalgia patients feel of just pain throughout the body. Can you talk about, you know how cannabis works is an analgesic in the body and why it doesn’t work because it didn’t work on current. And that was the one thing that krin would just just like, how is this not working on me, we’ve studied it all the studies show the benefits of cannabis and pain, and where she found pain relief with her pancreatic cancer. For those who are followers who this is my wife was getting in the bathtub or getting in the hot tub and the negative negative buoyancy would take the pressure off her stomach, you know, instant pain relief, and she didn’t want to be on any narcotics and in cannabis, and she was not a cannabis user. But, you know, vaporization and different oils and tinctures she was using just to one attempt to kill this bloody thing called cancer, acute pain relief.

Unknown Speaker 32:40
Let me ask you a question. In regards to dose is what I found is you know, I’ve been doing this for 20 years. So when I first started out, I would sometimes offer people the option of getting a prescription for THC, which of course is legal and has been since 1985. And I’ve, you know, comes in five in 2.55 and 10 milligram dosages. And so I would start people off, you

John Malanca 33:12
know, are you talking marital? Are you talking

Unknown Speaker 33:15
marital marital, at all? level? Yeah. So, because, you know, in early 2000, there were a lot of people that came in who it was hard enough for them to, you know, get together to see a doctor. And then the doctor is going to tell them to go to a dispensary where they’re going to see a 22 year old kid. Tell them smoke this dope, you know, it’d be really good for you. They feel a lot more comfortable in going into a pharmacy seeing a pharmacist who’s wearing a white coat. And what I tell my patients still about Marinol is that it’s more expensive than cannabis doesn’t work as well. It has more side effects, but in many cases it works. Now in terms of pain, nobody, almost nobody got any benefit from 10 milligrams of THC. And when I bumped it up to 15 milligrams of THC. Then people started to get pain relief. Some people started complaining about not liking the euphoria or they even had a touch of dysphoria. dysphoria mean he feel uncomfortably out of touch with reality. And so you know, you throw in an equal amount of CBD one to one. And there you go. So I don’t know what in you know, every everybody’s different. Everybody’s endocannabinoid system is different, the causes of pain are a little bit different. And there’s certainly a hell of a lot of pain with cancer and pancreatic cancer. So the question that I would ask is, did you try a wide variety of of dosages?

John Malanca 34:52
You know, it’s a great question when you said dosage right before you started your your your talk there. You know We did try a bunch. And at the same time, it’s hard when she and I, our relationship was just on every level we were we were connected. and communicating talking was something that was that was big. And it’s tough because I’ve talked to many patients with ex spouses saying, Oh, it’s just so hard to see my loved one just just sleeping and drugged out if you want to say, because they’re, they’re so high, which a lot of patients go through and probably need to battle and that was a tough thing. And she and I talked about it, she didn’t want to be out cold. She did not she didn’t want to avoid the conversation that we were so used to having. And, you know, I don’t know if I would change anything of what we did except give her my pancreas give her my liver and I even volunteer that man, and

Unknown Speaker 35:59
you know, hey, look, you know, we all would like doctors and researchers to be geniuses and they have all the answers right now today. Yeah. And, you know, cannabis is an anti cancer drug. I have a good friend of mine, who called me up who has pancreatic cancer. And, and I’ve talked to a couple of people. Well, you know, Liz Rogan has worked with cancer patients, someone with pancreatic cancer. Stacy Szymanski, has worked with people with pancreatic cancer and had worked with some doctors at Cedars Sinai, which I’m impressed that doctors would, you know, lower themselves to work with the layperson, I say that is sarcastically if facetiously as possible. When you take a look at the use of cannabis for cancer, you need to use very, very high doses. And a person is going to be a lot of it. Now, in many cases, not every case, but in many cases, they develop tolerance to the high, they may take 10 days, it may take two weeks, it may never happen. Now, the way in which you deal with that, or ways to deal with that. One way is to use depositories. And the apparently that’s more common in Europe and using cannabis for cancer. Now I’ve heard two explanations for why you don’t get as high when he uses depository. One is that the floor of the pelvis is served by three different veins, only one of which goes directly to the liver, where it would be metabolized into 11 hydroxy THC, which is more of a euphoria into nine, then delta nine THC. And the other two would distribute this more into the other bodily fluids in traditional interstitial fluid. So it’s going to take longer, and you’re not going to have that that peak, either of THC or hydroxy, 11 hydroxy THC. Other people have said that the mucosal membrane, whether it’s rectally, kozol membrane, or under the tongue that there isn’t as much absorption. And I think we have to be very careful of a lot of misinformation or a lot of misreading of the information, because you hear a lot of reports of the benefits of sublingual application or even vaginal application or rectal application. So I think we need to be careful about some of the stuff that’s out there because there are some well meaning people who still let their cultural bias get in the way.

John Malanca 39:04
I’m going to stop you on that one because somebody asked me before I go here, do you think suppositories work for cancer patients?

Unknown Speaker 39:12
Yes. Okay.

John Malanca 39:14
So Chris and I, and I don’t care if someone says eat this pen 10 of these pens it will help. And when you’re going through cancer, you better believe someone’s to say, hey, it worked on I’m going to try it myself. So Chris and I did an article because we work a lot of patients that have had success had success with with depositories. And we wrote an article that said is the posterior superior and it was about cannabis suppositories. And your two good friends publicly blasted. Me and my company and my and my wife, Hagen rather than hurt your two good friends rather than Fred Garner. And,

Unknown Speaker 39:54
well, we’ll talk about when we’re off to light here.

John Malanca 40:00
Yeah, it really didn’t mean, cuz I know you’ve done a lot with them. But I just said how you know what

Unknown Speaker 40:06
I mean, they,

John Malanca 40:08
it was disappointing that they said that because

Unknown Speaker 40:10
very disappointing.

John Malanca 40:12
We had it, we had this whole thing of doctors arguing on our site, other oil makers arguing on our site. And some people we don’t even talk to anymore because of that article. So it’s, it’s good to hear, you know, I don’t want to ever give anybody false hope. But when you see patients that are, you know, just we’ve talked about the placebo, they have placebo out there, this is a, you know, double blind placebo cases, even with placebo that sometimes a placebo works in and taking that hope away, we talked about how you and I before. So anyway, I mean, to say you’re saying, Oh,

Unknown Speaker 40:47
that’s okay. I and I’m glad you named who it was. And we can talk about that, because I don’t really want to talk about them. I want to talk about what they said. And the fact of the matter is, is that number one, there’s more than enough anecdotal reports to justify say that suppositories work. My guess is, is that they may be looking at been looking at the mucosal absorption, and jumped to that conclusion. And this kind of goes back to what I was saying before, but we really need to look at research with a jaundiced eye, because you have people that will just grab on to something recently, I got online, and I won’t go into the backstory, I was looking for non mbalula embolic non hemorrhagic reasons for a person having symptoms like a stroke. And so I I saw that the Cleveland Clinic said that there were certain drugs that might do that. And then they said cannabis, and they had a case, or what was the case? What was the evidence, their evidence was this was a 60 year old, African American who had diabetes and hyperlipidemia. And they found a nine carboxy THC in his urine. That That does not mean that that’s what caused this man’s stroke like symptoms. Furthermore, cannabis is a vezo dilator, not a vasoconstrictor. And in this particular instance, the actual cause was not cannabis, it was migraines, and migraines are something that are cause vasoconstriction and are known to result in symptoms that can mimic a stroke, because same thing, a decrease in blood supply to a critical part of the of the brain. And I I’ve kind of reminded of one of the most outrageous pieces of junk science related to cannabis, the guy who, in the 70s, he one of the zealots, you know, and he had a preconceived notion of how he wanted his research turned out. So he exposed monkeys to cannabis smoke, and then, and then sacrifice them and he couldn’t find any damage. So he figured out, they’re not getting enough. So he fitted them with gas masks, and then pumped in all kinds of marijuana smokes. And sure enough, when he sacrificed them, he proved, if you deprive monkeys of oxygen, you will get brain damage. You know, he didn’t prove anything about cannabis, you know, it’s just, you have to read the damn research, you know, and you have to look at it with a critical eye. And if you have something that somehow doesn’t fit with what you know, to be true, then you need to find some other explanation for you know, what the outcome of that particular study was, why it doesn’t fit with, you know, 100 other studies that say exactly the opposite. And it’s so it’s really, it’s really critical to know not jump to conclusions. And it sounds to me like, they’re, they may have jumped to a particular conclusion, by the way, in going on to something that is also controversial, but it’s not going to cause the the altered state of consciousness. And that’s juicy. And I want to give a shout out to Dr. Bill Courtney, who’s in Dominica now. And Dr. Corner

John Malanca 44:41
told me he’s running he’s he’s a he’s this mythical. You know. I’d be like Rick Simpson, you know, always on Thursday now, you know?

Unknown Speaker 44:53
Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, he said Dominica, which is an island in the Caribbean. And but every two or three years, his house gets flattened by a hurricane. But anyway, he called me up a couple of months ago and said he was going to go talk to the Minister of Health in Dominica, and encourage them to because they had a lot have a lot of farms that aren’t operating because of COVID. And, and they’ve been really hammered because they’re a tourist destination. And he’s trying to convince the Minister of Health that they should make Dominica, a site for where people can come for cannabis treatment. You know, they’re a small island, they’re gonna have a hard time competing with Brazil and Australia and New Zealand. But nevertheless, I think it’s great, you know, and he’s so he’s a big proponent of juicing. And of course, we know that the raw plant, all of the cannabinoids are in the acid form. And if THC is in the acid form THC a and as a carboxyl group, it’s going to affect the way it fits into the CB one receptor, and you’re not going to get high. However, if you take the juiced whole plant, it does have anti cancer affects. So I mean, when when you have these objections, you have these questions that come up, it doesn’t mean that we should get into these silly arguments of what what it is or what it isn’t. It’s that we should do further research. I remember, I was kind of at the last minute, asked to be on the Ricki Lake show and they had a nine year old girl that had been treated for cancer for leukemia. It looks a little bit fuzzy, the backstory because the parents were kind of using her to raise money and all that stuff. I found that out later. But so what’s your name? former editor of Cush magazine, name escapes me right now. But so they they wanted to have a debate between two doctors about whether giving cannabis to a nine year old was a good idea. And the person who was on the other side was Dave Smith. I just got a Christmas card from Dave he sends me a Christmas card. Every year Dave Smith started the Haight Ashbury clinic, and Dave Smith, I was getting hassled by some people over at the Haight Ashbury drug treatment program. And so he installed me as co director of that. So I mean, I know Dave pretty well. And so jack, Ricki Lake was very, very upset because Dave and I are friends. And we were able to disagree without being disagreeable. So we got very little airtime. Most of our conversation ended up on the cutting room floor, the only thing that we really agreed on was that more research was needed. And of course, that got cut off, cut out of both of our comments. Oh, wow. So we do need more research. And these questions are important. And rather than, you know, point fingers at each other, let’s point fingers at the researchers and at the barriers to research. And let’s say let’s take a really close look at some of these questions which still need to be answered or questions that have been answered, but are ambiguous enough that some people have been fooled. But

John Malanca 48:23
you know, and that happens quite a bit. And I’ve learned a lot from you over the years. And you know, yes, more Reacher research needs to be done. I’ve even shared with a lot of that we have a lot of people that call us that don’t live in legal states and they’re going through pain or sleep issues, I keep on going back that but cancer and stuff like that and I say you know what you can do as Dr. Berman’s has publicly spoken about is get your doctor write a prescription for Marinol. And then you can get your CBD in and kind of you know no one synthetic and once is in most cases whole plant is preferable but sometimes she has to you know MacGyver some things make some things work. You know or become a part time cannabis refugee go for a little little little break and go see if human cannabis does work for you before you uproot your life and your family and your doctors and your community. You know, and so, are you still do you still feel that way?

Unknown Speaker 49:30
I do is better frankly.

John Malanca 49:32
Chuck, you’re chuckling so I don’t know exactly. Yesterday

Unknown Speaker 49:34
I was talking to one of my in laws. I will mention who it was who asked me about a topical, you know, what, which one I prefer. And so for that I said, Well, you know, all topicals have they they can’t have more than three tenths of a percent of THC and your CBD is going to be very good for anti inflammatory but it’s not going to do A lot just as an analgesic as a plain as it may decrease your pain because the inflammation is contributing.

John Malanca 50:07
You think it may increase your pain?

Unknown Speaker 50:09
No decrease that. I’m sorry. Thank you. Thank you. I’m talking so damn fast here. So yeah, it can’t the CBD may decrease your pain by decreasing your inflammation but the THC is a direct analgesic. In fact, I have my father’s 1927 remingtons textbook of pharmacies and pharmacists. And it tells you on page 999, to 1000, how to make tincture cannabis, and that it was useful in treating pain and anxiety. And and so I told him exactly what you just said to your audience here is go and get the the topical nail that’s going to have CBD and make sure it has a wide spectrum of terpenes myrcene is a good one to find in there. And I said have your doctor or you know I can write you a prescription for dronabinol and you know just take a pinhole a pin and stick it into the capsule and squeeze that THC into your in your topical product. You know if let’s say you get 510 milligram capsules, 50 milligrams of THC. And you know that’s that’s a pretty good amount to slather all over your your skin or to mix it into, you know, a one ounce container of a topical, that’s a whole spectrum CBD. And that’s going to give you more relief than just the the whole spectrum CBD with the with the terpenes. And then again, the other thing I said is, look, there’s a there’s a laundry list of maybe five or six different terpenes that are useful in treating pain, another five or six that are useful in treating inflammation, you can get any of them without a prescription. So I mean, all of that is is very important. And I think I think very useful to know, you know, the barrier. The problem with plant based medicine is that plants refuse to be simple. I mean, it’s not like a pharmaceutical company that says, let’s see if we can figure out the one main contributor to this plant’s therapeutic effect. Well, there may be one main contributor. But in the case of cannabis, there are 500 molecules over 140 of which are cannabinoids over 200, which are terpenes. And many of the cannabinoids and many of the terpenes have therapeutic values. So this is why, you know, I tell my patients that the plant is better than the THC and I was at nym

John Malanca 52:53
You mean that plant is better than in when you say THC? You still talking methanol?

Unknown Speaker 52:57
Yeah, yeah. Okay. And and so I I’m reminded of I was in I’ve been a nimbin a couple of times, I was a speaker there. And I read that people are women are lovely. They have the second longest drug policy protest to fill in the world after hemp Fest in Seattle. And I think it’s been going for 30 years in nimet. nimbin is a town of about 800 people. And during their protest, Ebola has about 2000 people. And so they have prayed on the first day and prayed on the last day. It’s a three day long festival. And one of the signs that they have to carry in the parade says the plant the whole plant and nothing but the plant. And I really I really liked that sentiment, you know, but you know, any port or storm, you know, if you if you live in a state Look who’s making these laws, guys who I’m gonna say this tongue in cheek guys who weren’t smart enough to get into medical school and therefore became lawyers are the ones that are that are making these laws.

John Malanca 54:04
Yeah, and it’s funny you say that because I would always say, I think before these lawmakers make these laws they should do on cannabis should take a course about medical cannabis before they make these laws to really understand what’s going on and what they’re what they’re doing, how they’re helping or hurting patients. And sometimes, as you and I both know, ailment, cancer, pain, sleep issues, doesn’t discriminate, doesn’t discriminate. And and maybe it will, I should say maybe it will affect someone in their life in some way in their circle. And so again, before they make these laws, they should do some research. They should take a course on cannabis. You know, I think all of our all of our politicians should before they just start saying Oh, yeah, you know, right, the right you know, put the signature in the bottom of the on the dotted line too. So, so what else you’ve been doing, I mean, I know You You, you know, you’re a witness.

Unknown Speaker 55:05
Tell me tell me about the cases I’m working on now.

John Malanca 55:09
Those are always interesting.

Unknown Speaker 55:11
So there was a case and

John Malanca 55:15
I brought that up because that was a another softball pitch after your your lawyer comment.

Unknown Speaker 55:23
So

Unknown Speaker 55:25
one group of bureaucrats 10 annoying me. Probably more than any

Unknown Speaker 55:31
one Come on only

Unknown Speaker 55:34
are the people in Child Protective Services, who seemed to not have the time to save children who are being tortured? Yeah, whose relatives are repeatedly complaining to them about what’s happening to the child, and the child dies, but they do have the time to take children away from parents whose children say have autism. Yeah, that are receiving cannabis. So this case, they really picked on the wrong people because these people had money and they could hire an attorney. So they took they had the parents had a nine year old who they got a recommendation from a doctor for the use of cannabis. Hmm. What is prop 215? Say? doctors can make recommendations for the use of cannabis. For what? While we were talking before about the the list, the constrict restrictive list? Yeah, they’re no restrictive list in California because of the late Dr. Todd McCurry Dr. Rick Korea was a great old friend of mine. I knew him since the 60s, we were both volunteering at the Haight Ashbury clinic and one of the lines in prop 215, that was there only because with Dr. Mercurio was that doctors could recommend it for, you know, migraines and nausea, or any other medical condition for which the physician believes it’s useful. So this doctor had every right in the world to recommend it. And parents, of course, had every right in the world to ask him for it. And the child became a little bit drowsy. This child had been doing all kinds of self injurious behavior. And she stopped doing it or markedly decreased it. And the self injurious behavior would have been worse in and a side effects. So where they have these people now have a really good attorney, and I’m working on that. And

Unknown Speaker 57:42
the case going on now.

Unknown Speaker 57:43
It’s going on right now. Yeah. Then there’s another case in Michigan, of a guy who was actually a grower who they were fixing the road, and he made a left turn, and the science had no left turn and everybody that lived in that neighborhood or did that you know, so I guess he was unaware that the sidewalk was closed, there were a couple of kids walking in the sidewalk. And he didn’t expect him to be there. And one of them got hit and died. And the guy had used cannabis, you know, 1012 hours previously, had elevated THC is driving as it was described, you know, in the police report, and it wasn’t described, as we’ve seen, it wasn’t described as slower and more carefully. He passed the field sobriety test, they took him to the hospital, there were no neurological problems. And the DA wants to make a political point. And so he’s charging the guy, he has a previous DUI, so he has the ability to charge him with second degree murder. And an L when they found a toxicologist who just came in and tortured. The research said things that were not consistent with the research. And and this was the expert that the you know, that the state chose to use this. We’re just at the deposition stage. So I mean, the trial has been put off and put off and put off because of COVID. But it’s I I have had a number of driving under the influence second degree murder cases. None of them have ended up in a conviction for second degree murder, not that they didn’t do something wrong, not that they didn’t commit some crime. But driving under the influence of cannabis was not one of the crimes that they committed. And it’s really upsetting to see the criminal justice system abused in the smashing. I mean, it did to charge somebody in it. it underscores what you said that these folks don’t understand the science. They don’t understand the endocannabinoid system. And it’s there’s so many things out there that need to be addressed. That to see us wasting our resources on things that aren’t crimes itself should be considered a crime. It’s, you know, it’s a waste of taxpayer money and a waste of bureaucratic time. Anyway, though, that that’s one of the things that I’m working on. Another thing that I’m working on, is I got a couple of publishers in Brazil that want to translate my book into Portuguese. And I’ve done some presentations for audiences in Brazil, one of which had Portuguese subtitles. Put on that. We’ve got a recent call from a doctor who moved to Thailand about three years ago, and apparently, Thailand has figured out how to stand up to the pharmaceutical companies, and they have their own

John Malanca 1:01:11
Cut, cut your hands out, because I know, they’re pretty strict on their laws over there.

Unknown Speaker 1:01:17
Yeah. But they are okay. with cannabis. As long as the government controls it, wow. I mean, it’s this guy is talking to the Minister of Health. You know, he’s got all kinds of, you know, modern technological bells and whistles, I don’t know who’s funding him. But it sounds to me from what he’s told me that he’s got people standing in line to fund him because of what he what he’s going to accomplish. But the, the government of Thailand does not want this screwed up by for profit pharmaceutical companies. And what this fella is wants to do is he wants to do what you suggested to educate the policymakers, as well as educate the doctors in Thailand. So it, you know, when you’re in the cannabis space, people come up with all kinds of fantastic ideas. This is a fantastic idea that the more I hear about it, the more it’s grounded in reality, and the more it’s something that has a real possibility of existing, and that is sort of getting the government of Thailand in the medical cannabis business.

John Malanca 1:02:40
You know, just like, you know, you you’ve, you’ve been to New Zealand kurenai spoken to New Zealand, you know, the drug parliament. And before COVID, you know, they had come to us saying, Hey, would you come over and, and do some education because they’re at the same thing. They’re looking to us, meaning the United States of the leader and sometimes I had I had a couple people on recently on my show, one was from Israel. skosh, I’m blank, Atlanta Goldberg, do you know her?

Unknown Speaker 1:03:17
What’s her name again?

Unknown Speaker 1:03:18
Nina Goldberg?

Unknown Speaker 1:03:19
No, I don’t I but I know about four or five of the people in mushrooms. Lab but I, I don’t know everybody.

John Malanca 1:03:29
She’s there and then speak with Mary Biles over in the UK who’s written a book as well. Where was I going through this? David? I don’t know where I was going with this. But education I know doing things over with with New Zealand. Oh, I know. people turn to us, meaning us the United States is a leader of of education in cannabis. And it’s funny. I think a lot of the Americans look at Israel is blowing doors on us on research and Asia is Canada, north of us, South America. And it just seems like we’re in the stagnant thing slowly getting I mean, we should. You’re also talking about that.

Unknown Speaker 1:04:09
Exactly. It and I think that it is a demonstration of the power of the pharmaceutical companies. But it’s also a demonstration of the power of races. As you know, my first book drugs are not the drugs. Drugs are not the devil’s tools. How greed and discrimination lead to a dysfunctional drug policy and how to fix it. Fingers that that drug policy has been used to marginalize discriminated against groups for centuries. Right now, African Americans and Hispanics are in the box. But you go back say to prohibition, and it was the Irish that were in the box or you take a look at the Harrison narcotic Tax Act. And it was the Chinese that were in the box. And there’s been an enormous amount of irrational policy related to the use of substances, particularly substances that are psychoactive. Now, the reason that the kind of original stigma was placed on cannabis had nothing to do with the psychoactive effect it had to do with its therapeutic effect. And who wasn’t stigmatizing this. It was the Pope, of course, Pope Innocent the sixth in the end of the 15th century at the beginning of the witch hunts, came out said that cannabis was a tool of the devil, because it relieves pain, specifically the pain of childbirth. And of course, so we all know that the pain of childbirth is Eve’s punishment for eating from the tree of knowledge. And, and we have these kinds of lingering absurdities that stick around for centuries and centuries, which were supposed to be beyond the superstition stage space, and we’re supposed to be in the place where we’re taking a look at science. And as we’ve seen with global warming, you have people who just refuse refuse to look at reality in a you know, it’s the snow is fucking melting, you know, the icebergs are going away. Is this coming about as a result of warming? You know, and is this something we should do something about? Anyway, I, I go on, if you’re asking wonderful questions.

John Malanca 1:06:37
I share with the audience that you’re that you’re historian, and you have a lot of knowledge in a lot of things. And I like that, because I’m like that as well. I have I, I know a little about a lot that how it goes a little about a lot and

Unknown Speaker 1:06:53
right, that’s I’m a general practitioner, which means I know a little bit about an awful lot.

Unknown Speaker 1:06:57
There you go.

Unknown Speaker 1:06:58
But I’m a specialist on cannabis. And so I know a lot more about that. I don’t know nearly as much as I’d like to know. But I do know an awful lot about cannabis. And, and I want to know a lot more.

John Malanca 1:07:13
Yeah. And I learn everyday as well. Let me let me rewind since you bought you knowing a lot about cannabis. You’d be an expert witness. You’ve you’ve been an expert witness in over 500 cases since the 70s.

Unknown Speaker 1:07:25
You wrecked

John Malanca 1:07:26
then you mentioned the gentleman that in Michigan that took that left turn and the outcome was he hit hit a child and the child passed

Unknown Speaker 1:07:36
a teenager actually, but

John Malanca 1:07:38
but still Yeah.

Unknown Speaker 1:07:39
Yeah.

John Malanca 1:07:40
Have that. I can’t imagine, you know, that happening when you go to the for the parent side,

Unknown Speaker 1:07:47
but also for

Unknown Speaker 1:07:48
Oh, yeah, it’s nobody wins. nobody wins.

John Malanca 1:07:52
No one wins. And normally, you know, but you talk about it. You know, if you and I smoked a joint two nights ago, um, it would still it would still be in our blood today. Two days later. Yeah. And and so a lot and in fact, is it nanograms that the right measurement anagrams, right.

Unknown Speaker 1:08:17
And so

John Malanca 1:08:18
it was still shopping lead today, two days later, 48 hours later, that on a David who smoked a joint two days ago, in a system and something God forbid, something happened to us while we were driving, it would show up in our system saying, Oh, you guys are intoxicated. That’s it. That’s a that’s a tough one. And it depends on say, if you and I smoke 10 joints a day compared to one joint, it shows how much energy in your system two days later and and that’s the measurement. How How do you? I mean, you must get those as an expert witness

Unknown Speaker 1:08:51
all the time. And so

John Malanca 1:08:54
how do you explain that? Because it’s really, you know, you know, I don’t believe cannabis two days later has any I mean, you and I go have a normal conversation here. You can drive you can get caught you do run your business run your practice.

Unknown Speaker 1:09:10
Well, you know, it happens. It happens that I do know an awful lot about this little bit. And I’ve taught a number of courses and so this is a short course for the jury on the endocannabinoid system, and the effect of cannabis. And in fact, the matter is, is that if you are a regular consumer of cannabis, that you will be able to detect THC in the blood for up to a week after last use. And you’ll be able to identify the metabolite nine carboxy THC in the urine for three to six weeks. Whatever point out to the jury is that this toxicology screen proves that you use cannabis. That’s not the issue. The issue is were they impaired? No, I am helped by the Department of Transportation, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and the Food and Drug Administration, who all have no problem with the use of cannabis, so long as it doesn’t interfere with your driving is what the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration says there’s no increased risk of automobile accident as a result of driving a cannabis use. And they say this, because of all the research that’s been done. They also say there’s no relationship between the THC level in your blood and impairment. And that if you are impaired, you drive slower and more carefully, as I tell the the jury this ad, I mean, my job is to educate my job is to be a presenter of the facts. The jury then takes this and decides what are what is not applicable in this particular case. And each case, you know, has its own nuances is a little bit different than the other. And so the you have to rely on the jury being educated. And, you know, depends on the attorney, we had a great case in place called Florence, Arizona, the main business in Florence, Arizona, is putting people in jail.

John Malanca 1:11:49
I was gonna say bonds.

Unknown Speaker 1:11:51
Yeah. So they I mean, they have a state prison there, they have their local jail. I don’t know if they have a federal prison. They have lots of prisons there. Okay. And it’s just a little town, you mean five or 6000 people have at most. So I, you know, I was told that and, you know, I thought well is your is like to be a little bit pro law enforcement. And I mean, the these cases, when they get won or lost, it’s the attorney that wins or loses them. It’s not their expert witness, but the way they use the expert witness and this guy, I mean, he was so innocent, it was unbelievable. And they wanted to just not tell the truth. I mean, he, he had been seen 10 minutes before he was arrested by two cops, who told him to get out of there, his he was threatened by another guy, I won’t go into the specific details I’ve ever heard may have already said too much. But anyway, he’s he they said we got out of here. He has been threatened. And he has kids in the car, and the kids were acting up. And one of them, you know, they stop and one of them jumps out of the car and the cops come 10 minutes later, different cops. And they say, well, this guy’s and they test him and all that sort of stuff. And they say, Well, he’s under the influence. So it’s child endangerment, blah, blah. He was acquitted. He was acquitted. And what I like is, is that the attorney was very relaxed, you know, and, you know, I think in order to sort of remove any stigma that I might have coming from Southern California, said, so Doc, tell me about this. I mean, he referred to me as Doc, and I thought that perfect, perfect, you know, and the jury understood, and the jury paid attention. The question was whether was he in paradise? And the answer was no. And the jury got it. And it just, you know, an interesting thing here here is that the federal government knows that the field sobriety test is inaccurate. And it’s, it’s only 25% more accurate than chance for alcohol, which is what the field sobriety test was developed to test. And it’s, as the chief of police of Ohio, California said in a panel that we were on when I pointed out the problems of the field sobriety test is he said, Well, no, it’s only supposed to be used, you know, in the field in order to see whether there’s it’s possible that the person Yeah. And, you know, so that I thought that was interesting, you know that it’s not proof it’s it’s, uh, raises your level of suspicion and maybe it’s proof enough to arrest the guy not necessarily proof enough to convict a guy those are two different levels of proof that you that you need and and you know, it’s it’s nice to be able to be in a situation You look at the evidence and you say, this doesn’t hold water. I mean, I don’t have to prove, or the attorney has to prove that they were

Unknown Speaker 1:15:10
not

Unknown Speaker 1:15:12
under the influence of cannabis, or that did not use it, they have to raise reasonable doubt as to whether or not they’re driving was impaired. And I look for that in the toxicology results. And I look for that in the description of the stop by the officer. And I look for that on the results of the field sobriety test. So the field sobriety test is inaccurate enough that the federal government has given a grant to a guy named Michael Milburn, who’s a professor at the University of Massachusetts for a device that he calls the druid advice, which stands for driving under the influence of drugs. And it is something that can scientifically tell if you’re impaired. Now, it doesn’t tell you what you’re impaired from. But it gives you some objective numbers, some objective results, as opposed to standing on one foot. Now I got another case where this guy

John Malanca 1:16:19
for our audience we’re not we’re not a proponent of

Unknown Speaker 1:16:24
smoking

John Malanca 1:16:26
a joint and driving it you

Unknown Speaker 1:16:28
know, here’s here’s the thing with that, is that here’s what the Food and Drug Administration says, okay, we don’t have to give advice The federal government has good advice out there. And their advice on Marinol, which is right THC, it has the

Unknown Speaker 1:16:45
the

Unknown Speaker 1:16:47
the euphoric effect. And it’s as the standard psychoactive drug warning that the food, food and drug administration puts on all psychoactive drugs, whether they’re opiates or benzodiazepine, or stimulants, what have you the warning says warning, do not drive, operate heavy equipment, or engage in dangerous activity until you determine whether or not this interferes with those activities. And that’s the advice I give my patients. And then I suggest to them that you need to be careful, you need to be extra careful. Because even if it doesn’t interfere with your driving and you’re using it regularly, they test your blood, they may charge you. So I mean, it’s one of the things that physicians need to take care to do is to give people adequate information. Now there was another case that I was in. This was very unique in that in almost every case that I testify about having to do with driving under the influence of cannabis. The question is, were they really under the influence of cannabis, in this case was not like that. This case, the person was under the influence of cannabis and had a terrible outcome. So this was an Asian American whose mother disapproved reviewsee cannabis, so use it for anxiety. She goes and gets a Skype recommendation, and the doctor tells her to take indika now you know, as well as I do, that the terms ativa and indika had historical meaning and have no meaning now. And this is not just my opinion, this is the conclusion that was reached by Dr. Ethan Russo, who I consider to be the most knowledgeable clinician in the United States on cannabis. And also by john McPartland. I think McPartland is a scientist, although he may be a do. He definitely knows this stuff. And they have like, I

John Malanca 1:18:58
get people that email me all the time. John Malanca, john McPartland at the time and I say, I appreciate i’m not i’m not him and not him. But yeah, he’s

Unknown Speaker 1:19:08
very knowledgeable guy. So I mean, what they said is you need to take a look at the cultivars type one, type two and type three. And so that that’s relevant in this case, because, you know, indika indicates the cannabis that came to us from India Sportiva is much more closely akin to what we call hemp. hemp and cannabis are what Linnaeus called cannabis. You know, there is a distinction without a difference. They’re the same plant. So in because the one that will get you high density was the one they want and we’ve kind of most people have it backwards. And so this doctor says, Get yourself a sativa So she goes to a dispensary gets us to tiva. And lucky for her it wasn’t a sativa That is to say it was high in CBD and low and THC, which is just what she needed. Right. So because her mother disapproved, she was still living at home. She would stop at a parking lot on the way home and take a couple of hits of cannabis go on away so that the dispensary gets closed because they don’t have they turns out they didn’t have a license. So she goes to a licensed dispensary goes in and says I want to IndyCar and the bud tender who California don’t have to have any training and he didn’t ask her what it was for radios. And because they’re over there. So she goes and picks out something that has 25% THC and less than 1% CBD. You know, has been using this stuff for a year from this other dispensary. That was the other way around high CBD low THC. She stops in the parking lot park where he home takes two or three hits. No, think about this. If you have a gram of cannabis, which is about what the government sends out to the people on the independent new drug program, so and it’s 25% THC. That means there’s 250 milligrams of THC in this joint and one gram of a marijuana cigarette, and you take three hits off of it, you now have consumed 25 milligrams of THC. I don’t know about you, but to me, that’s a pretty pretty healthy dose. You know, it’s certainly more than I would recommend that a person start with, yeah, she goes down the road. She has a panic attack, she crosses the median, she hits a car head on. The passengers kill the drivers maimed for life. So they wanted to charge her they charged her with second degree murder because she had a previous DUI. And the issue there would be if she purchased the cannabis with the intent of getting high. And she didn’t know. Fortunately, the attorney was able to convince one juror that she wasn’t guilty of second degree murder. So they found her guilty of other things. But they hung up on the second degree murder and apparently the DA felt that they might have the same outcome again, so he didn’t recharger with that. And I think she wasn’t able to make bail. She’d been in jail for four years. I Oh, wow. I think she was she was released with credit for time served. The sad thing of course, is that the person who was killed is still dead. The person who

Unknown Speaker 1:22:57
is main and still named. And I point my finger at the state of California for not requiring bud tenders bud tenders to be trained and for not requiring dispensaries to be pharmacies. I am opposed to dispensaries. I’m a poet. I’m in favor of pharmacies that only carry cannabis or other natural products if that’s what they want to do. And remember, you know, my father was a pharmacist. He had an assignment in 1928 at the University of Minnesota School of Pharmacy to make tincture cannabis. And according to the literature, American physicians wrote 3 million prescriptions a year in the 1920s that contained cannabis and there were more than 25 over the counter preparations that you could get in just about any drugstore in the United States that contained cannabis. And the AMA was very supportive of the use of cannabis for medicine in 1937. They testified against the marijuana Tax Act of 1942, the longtime editor of the Journal of the American Medical Association, Dr. Morris Fishbein recommended cannabis for migraine headaches. And that echoed the words of Sir William Osler, who was considered the founder of modern medicine and wrote was thought to be the first textbook of Internal Medicine in 1892. So I mean you you have a lot of unfortunate things that happened because DuPont wanted to make money they are the ones that are responsible for the marijuana Tax Act. While Hearst and anslinger had a little input it was not they’re doing they get credit for something that was really DuPont doing

John Malanca 1:24:46
point a finger DuPont good point the finger at DuPont.

Unknown Speaker 1:24:51
I always point the finger at DuPont and I I normally you know characterize it as circumstantial evidence and I think gave a presentation at a satellite conference we had up in Portland before the patients on a time conference. And I can’t remember this fellow from Baltimore, whose name I should remember who knows a lot of stuff, said, Well, do you have any hard evidence of that? And I thought, Oh shit. No, I don’t. And I usually say, you know, it’s circumstantial. And here’s the circumstantial and we don’t have the smoking gun. Okay. So the circumstantial evidence is this person in 1916, George lichten, invented a decor to cater for harvesting cannabis, which not only harvested the hemp, but also preparing it for industrial use. So it cut the labor costs in half and made it competitive with a wood pulp for making newspapers which is one of the reasons why. You know, Hearst got his Fanny in a button. And he was able to stop the not not, scripts Howard chain from switching from wood pulp based newsprint to hemp based the newsprint and he had been in correspondence not only wish lichten but also with Timken of the Timken roller berry company who thought that this would be better for the environment to make newsprint out of a annual replenishable plant rather than rather than the trees that, you know gonna take 20 years to return. And so he his patent, he dies in 1924 schlechten. And so his patent runs out in 1933 and other inventors, you know, look at the patent and improve on it and so this is going to make him even more available. And why is DuPont concerned about hemp? Okay, so they have heard the core of the hemp is cellulose. Oh, who cares? DuPont cares, because dynamite depends on cellulose and they made dynamite their munitions manufacturer, right. They also make cellophane which is synthetic made out of cellulose. They also make nylon, which is a synthetic made out of cellulose. They also have the North American rights for rayon, cellulose. Furthermore, they makes sulfites that are used for making paper out of both wood pulp and hemp but you need four times as much of the sulfites to make paper out of wood pulp as you do out of him. And lastly, and most importantly, we go to Henry Ford, that old radical Henry Ford, who always felt that cars would run on ethanol most likely hit ethanol. So if they had done that, we would be crabbing about big ag No, not big oil. And we probably wouldn’t have the problems we have in the Middle East. So Ford came up with is, for lack of a better description. They hadn’t mobile in the late 30s. It was a vehicle that the skin was in acrylic in bed with him. The upholstery was made out of hemp. The stuffing in the upholstery was made out of hemp, and it ran on hemp ethanol. Well, why would do DuPont care about that? Well, they made separate Cacharel ethyl LED and additive for gasoline. And even more importantly, they were the largest shareholder in Ford’s competitor General Motors. And I urge your audience to you know, go look up on images and Google and put forward and hand mobiel and you will see Henry Ford a picture of him with a sledgehammer whacking the fender of this car. And the sledgehammer just bounces off. The car had a nice, a nice acrylic skin with hemp in it, and it ran on hemp ethanol. And that is why we had the marijuana Tax Act because well, hers may have had the political clout. anslinger certainly didn’t. anslinger was just trying to preserve his job. He was the first director of the Bureau of Narcotics and dangerous drugs, and he had had the responsibility for alcohol a and now that was going to go away. And he really wasn’t going to have a large bureaucracy with cocaine or opiates.

Unknown Speaker 1:29:37
And he had been said that these attacks on cannabis were foolish, before he became director of the Bureau of Narcotics, dangerous drugs and he sort of changed his tone because he saw a good opportunity to become a bigger bureaucrat, and then he also was a racist, as well. So we throw that in there. Yeah, throw that in there. I mean, he said cannabis was used by African Americans Mexican, Puerto Rican,

John Malanca 1:30:11
green. I we did a we did a, here’s that hemp plastic car was 10 times more debt resistant than steel. And there he is with a sledgehammer. You know if you can see it, and we made this united patient group tile. Gosh, I don’t know how long do I did this? 2012. Maybe I made this tile. But But yeah, it there’s that picture. That’s that famous picture there. So

Unknown Speaker 1:30:37
yeah, this is one of the things. By the way. I’m assuming this is a fundraising thing. You tell me how much it is. And I’ll contribute some money to get that because I’d love to have that title. If you still have it.

John Malanca 1:30:47
That’s mine. I’ll send it I’ll send it over to you. I’ll send

Unknown Speaker 1:30:50
it over. So the one of the things that DuPont was concerned about, was that you could make plastics out of cellulose. You could make plastics out of hemp. And they were hampered by the fact that everybody, everybody, the majority of people in the US in the 30s knew what hemp was. They knew what cannabis was. But people really were not aware of what marijuana was that it was exactly the same thing. When the AMA testified against the marijuana Tax Act, their guy who testified to Dr. William C. Woodward doctor, an attorney, former commissioner of health of Washington, DC in Boston, Massachusetts, past president of the American Public Health Association, referred to the word marijuana as a mongrel word. And he said that the AMA didn’t know almost didn’t know they were talking about cannabis. Because that’s not what this is called. It’s called cannabis. And should be called cannabis today, by the way, hey, I think we’re a little bit past wrap up time. And I appreciate you letting me just off forever it is her

John Malanca 1:32:06
audience. David and I have done these podcast live Q and A’s in the past, and we I think our longest one was two hours and 20 minutes. So this and I and I knew and I knew we were gonna go long on this here too. But I always love having you on. I appreciate everything you do. So here’s a recent book, and I have my signed copy. But it’s cannabis medicine, the guide to the practice of cannabinoid medicine, Dr. David Berman, and I don’t know, Maria petit navo pectinata. She down there Santa

Unknown Speaker 1:32:41
is. She’s a pretty remarkable woman. She’s on the faculty of the Seattle University School of Nursing, which is a Catholic University. I kind of like that. And she was at the conference in Baltimore where I delivered a talk and I had a booth and came up and talked to me and her involvement has been very important because I tend to be a little bit sloppy, I have too much going on and stuff and she is insisted that you know this be properly footnote and stuff. Now, you’re having the first edition and anybody wants it. They can just contact me via my email, David Behrman. That’s b e, ar ma n, at Cox dotnet. And ask about it. And or you can go to Amazon cept I get to keep more of the money if you come to me. But good go to Amazon

John Malanca 1:33:37
contact you and that’s in that’s coxhoe x

Unknown Speaker 1:33:41
dotnet.

Unknown Speaker 1:33:42
Yep. And we’re working on a later volume. So but right now, we still have plenty of these. And that later volume is in the process of being laid out. It has almost the same stuff in it. And the book is I think I mentioned earlier on the verge of being translated into Portuguese, which I’m pretty excited about. Thank you so much for mentioning the book. I appreciate that.

Unknown Speaker 1:34:06
Always. Always. I

John Malanca 1:34:07
love supporting, supporting you as well. And then you also have a membership drive for our physicians out there listening out there. Can you talk about that? And I’ll put

Unknown Speaker 1:34:16
so in in the night in about 2005 or 2006. There were a number of us who were regular participants on the medicine panel at the symposium at ham Fest in Seattle. And we were disturbed by all of the media attention that this doctor in Venice was getting who had a gal in bikini out in front of his place, saying cannabis recommendation is 3995. A few other things I want to mention but we said look, this is undermining the credibility of the medical utility of this plant. What can we do to marginalize this guy you know without giving the Medical Board a club to beat us up with and we said why don’t we create a organization that certifies those doctors that are practicing good quality medicine. So our goal of the American Academy of cannabinoid medicine is to get the medical schools to teach about the endocannabinoid system. In 2014, only 13% of medical schools did. It’s a little bit larger now. And also we wanted to see cannabis as a subspecialty. And we accept into our membership. Anybody can become a certified cannabinoid medicine specialist who has the ability to recommend medical cannabis, MDS deos, nurse practitioners, physician’s assistants, natural paths, it’s different in different states

John Malanca 1:35:50
that are doctors or naturopath and they cannot name until they can recommend I.

Unknown Speaker 1:35:56
But that’s because you’re in California. If you were okay. Yes, I know I’m in California, but I’m not a natural.

John Malanca 1:36:07
Yeah.

Unknown Speaker 1:36:08
So in Washington, natural paths can wear Maria’s out of Yeah. So I mean, here in California, that means that doctors have more political clout than natural paths. That’s why natural pass can’t do it has nothing to do with their training, which is actually probably much more appropriate than MDS. So the but we also will accept laboratories, businesses. Look as the late Jeff Unruh who was a political kingmaker here in California and speaker of the assembly for a long time. used to say about money said money is the mother’s milk of politics, or money is a mother’s milk of nonprofit organizations. And so we would and also if you don’t have to be a physician, you can be a nurse. You can just be somebody who wants to support cannabis. We have information on our website, which I think is a ACM info.org. We’ve we’ve been refurbishing our website. I think we’ve got all the bugs out of it. We’re putting more bells and whistles on it each day. If you have any trouble getting on that website, contact me at David Berman. Yeah, David Berman Cox dotnet. You can go to my website if you want. David Berman md.com. I’m sorry.

John Malanca 1:37:41
Give me the links that are have Rianna put it Rihanna.

Unknown Speaker 1:37:45
Yeah, that’s the name of my art.

John Malanca 1:37:47
She’s wonderful. So Rihanna runs Dr. Berman’s office, and she’s fantastic. So if you ever call in, you may get her but she’s wonderful. And I thank you for everything that you do my friend and wishing your wife speedy recovery. First off, but give her a big, big hug from us. And I thank you for being on.

Unknown Speaker 1:38:08
Thanks very much. Thanks for inviting me and good luck to you and your organization, you do fantastic things. And I look forward to the opportunity to get together with you face to face in the not too distant future.

John Malanca 1:38:22
We’ve had some good times together. So we’ll we’ll do it again. And but I’ll get your information up with Dr. Berman’s book as well as his organization. And thanks again. Doc, John Malanca united patients group being formed to be well we’ll see you soon. Bye.