Elana Goldberg – An Israeli View on the Global Cannabis Market

John Malanca 0:35
John Malanca. Here with the United Patients Group Be Informed. Be Well. Today’s special guests is coming all the way from Israel and Australian in Israel. How are you doing over there at the Elana Goldberg?

Elana Goldberg 0:55
Great, thanks for having me on the show, john.

John Malanca 0:58
Elana is the CEO of the website called the Enigma. She has 15 years of experience in digital publishing and online content spanning journalism, nonprofit as well as the private sector. She excels at building and educating online audiences crafting clear messages and developing industry experts into successful writers, which is there’s a much need for that to the your website, and I’ll let you go and talk about your website. But can nygma Connect is a great website. And I like bringing like minded people on in this industry to share with you, our viewers. But they pride themselves on first they research, which is there’s a lot of information out there. But there’s a lot of misinformation out there. They research it, they write it, and then they edit it. And then the the final touches was doing fact checking which we’ve all heard in the government in our governments and probably on both sides of the pond. Nowadays, fact checking is a big a big keyword. So check out the site, I think you’ll enjoy the way and I’ll have a lot to talk about where to find it and where to get ahold of her to but welcome thanks for thanks for being on.

Unknown Speaker 2:07
Yeah, like I said, Great to be here.

John Malanca 2:09
It could be here. So. So you’re over in Israel, your website is generally global, and you do a lot of global work. But your main audience is over here in the States. Is that is that true?

Unknown Speaker 2:22
Yeah, that’s right. So we launched in October last year. So he’s still pretty new on the scene. But we’re starting to kind of pick up the majority of our audiences from North America with the big chunk being in the United States. We also have a German site and a Portuguese site. So we have about 15% of our audience audience coming from Germany, another 15% from Brazil. And then the rest is kind of scattered around the English and German speaking countries.

John Malanca 2:47
Gotcha. Gotcha. So like, you know, myself printed, I started united patient group, we had a personal story that brought us in into this industry, and you’re a journalist. And so did you research with cannabis coming up in a lot of your story? He said, God, there’s a niche. And I want to, I want to, I want to start this because one, and then when you’re in Israel, because Israel and I share this with everybody in all my shows, Israel is leading the way when it comes to cannabis research. I applaud you on on what you’re doing over there, because I think the United States is 678, the ninth or 10th on that list, which is, which is surprising, you know, and so, so can you share maybe personal personal story how you became the CEO of your company now? Yeah, definitely.

Unknown Speaker 3:35
So I’m infested by I probably can’t take responsibility for all of the cannabis research going on over here, given that it started, you know, about two decades before I was born. But it is a really, it’s a great place to be in the cannabis industry. You know, being right next to some of the premier researchers in the field. I actually, I kind of came into this industry from a whole lot of interests coming together. I had an interest in cannabis in cannabis personally from my teenage years, or my late teen years, I suppose. And I think like a lot of people who use cannabis recreationally, I didn’t really realize at the time the therapeutic use that ad for me in terms of treating anxiety, helping with sleep, things like this. And it was something that was kind of less important to me, as as you know, may later may later 20s and 30s. And as you mentioned, I was I was working in journalism, and kind of kind of segwayed into online, digital content creation, I would say and marketing. And I was approached by this company as it was just kind of bringing together the founding members. And what I was drawn to and what I was all I’m always drawn to and I think what we’re all drawn to is the story and cannabis is just such a good story. And what really struck me at the time I remember speaking in like the second interview or something I had with the founders, I remember someone saying, you know, wow, and this is coming from someone that doesn’t know anything about medical cannabis and I thought I didn’t know any Anything about medical cannabis, because I thought to myself, you know how amazing that there’s this substance that we all have this kind of story that we grew up with. And these memories of high school or college use or you know, whatever it is, if that was part of our narrative thinking, and yet, it’s this thing that’s, that’s so stigmatized, and yet, it has all these therapeutic applications that only just kind of starting to come back into the mainstream. And then I realized that the kind of end of the story is that it’s just the same plan. It’s just a plan. And you know, even though of course, there’s all different types of cannabis, it’s really the same thing. And to me having the opportunity to tell that story. And to kind of speak to that misinformation and misunderstanding, as you mentioned before as well, john, just seemed like such an amazing opportunity. So that was kind of history was a year and a half ago, we were just kind of at the beginning stages of putting the site together. And in the past few months, I ended up actually taking over as the CEO of the company after we made some kind of strategic changes within the company, as a lot of companies have been doing throughout 2020. And yeah, that’s how I ended up here. And and really, I feel so grateful to be able to bring together my passion for educating people have been telling clear stories, together with you know, this important topic of cannabis and specifically medical cannabis.

John Malanca 6:19
It’s funny on how many, even today there’s their stigmas. And we’re in California, California, legalized cannabis at the Medical level 1996 we’re 2020 and the stigma still still here. It’s it’s come down a long way. We just had our one of our elections, not only with the presidential election, but cannabis and cannabis legal here in 35. states and I believe recreation, recreation and legal in 15 states. So, you know, the talk is, is here. And yeah, when we started this back in 2011, you know, I don’t say it was embarrassing, but we’d go to medical conferences, pharmacy, pharmacy conferences, not pharmaceutical, but pharmacy conferences, and people would walk by our tradeshow booth like this, I’m not looking, I’m not looking. And then year two, you know, more people of color year three, they’re hanging out with, you know, saying, Oh, hey, we want to learn, you know, and I like that. And a lot of our courses that we would teach were see me in the continuing medical education courses, and we would have scientists that would come over from from Israel. I do a lot with Marilyn Madri over a patient at a time and Pico mowlem came and spoke at her conference, got it. I don’t know how many we I think it was in Florida. Maybe it was where I met met. And I forget her name. Do you work with them? And I know you mentioned it the beginning?

Unknown Speaker 7:43
And no, I didn’t recognize that. I

John Malanca 7:45
got you. I thought so anyway, but but bringing the stigma down, I think it’s really important. And then you talk about it just a plant, you know, it was medically legal here and stop becoming a medicine in 1937. What’s your history in Israel?

Unknown Speaker 8:03
pretty similar. Like most places in the world, you know, the United States did a pretty good job of getting everyone on the bandwagon of prohibition around around the same time. And and now there’s, you know, a growing medical cannabis program here and there’s talk about about a, you know, adult use a recreational program within the next couple of years, you know, similar to a lot of countries around the world.

John Malanca 8:26
With technology nowadays, and journalism, of course, and websites and you know, instant access like this. When my wife Karen was going through her cancer treatment, there was a woman probably about our age with her husband, her husband was going through this and they were from Israel. And they had watched a documentary that I was on, and you know, so they were thinking cannabis for my husband, etc. And she came back I saw at the clinic and she says, Oh my gosh, I grew up in Israel, and there was a man or woman I forget who it was, who was in the Israeli army with her that she saw on this who is now a cannabis expert, and worked on. He worked for tikkun olam but she was just blown away she keeps she couldn’t wait to come back to the to the to the clinic the next day. Like you’re not gonna believe this someone that I grew up with in the Israeli army is now leading the way in cannabis and I just thought wow, you know, again, small world I mean, this is such a small world. the cannabis industry is a small world so so what else are you doing? I mean, you your website has some great stories and you cover a lot of a lot of different stories and you know, it’s nice to see like minded individuals in this industry, putting out some good material and so I applaud you for being such a new organization. Again, you just put you brought your expertise to it and fill the niche just like credit I did. You know, when we started this company, what are you seeing that’s happening not only here in the US or in Israel, and I know you do a lot in Portugal, you said as well as Spain and and those are two kinds trees that are also moving up the ladder in legalization and helping patients. So we get patients all over the world that call HELP. What do we do? And if if cannabis, if we did not live in California, the topic of cannabis would not have come up. And we would never have given that to my father in law. So so it’s tough when you run into families that they say help, you know, and and there really isn’t isn’t much help and I don’t want them to, I don’t inform them to break the law. But you know, if it was to keep my wife alive, you better believe I would I would do that. So what what do you see being on that side of the world?

Unknown Speaker 10:39
Yeah, it’s really interesting. I, it’s funny, when people ask me about what’s going on in Israel, and what’s going on in Australia, I end up having to say, I actually know a lot more about what’s going on in the United States, because that is, you know, the focus. You know, basically, as I mentioned before, we want to educate patients, potential patients, and anyone who’s interested in finding out, you know, what science has to say about cannabis. And basically, what we’re looking to do is translate the body of evidence, which is not anywhere near as big as it should be. But you know, we there is a lot that we do know about cannabis, even if it’s just preclinical evidence, for example. And our role is to, to translate that to whoever needs it. Now, the primary audience, of course, is consumers. But we also educate healthcare providers, we put out information sheets for doctors there, you know, as you said, there, there are patients that come and they know nothing about cannabis, and they’re, you know, at a last resort, they, they, they want to try something. The same is true for healthcare providers, there are plenty of health care providers, who do someone you know, a patient comes to them and says, you know, we want to try this, this is the last better. And as you mentioned to me, I think before we started recording, actually, that the doctor just said to you, we didn’t know anything about this. So we kind of looked at to bridge that gap and and look at, okay, if I’ve got five minutes of someone’s time, what’s the most important thing things for them to understand about cannabis. So number one is cannabis is not one thing, this is super important for people to understand, because I think so many people have this stigma, probably from you know, high school, and they smoked one joint and they had a bad experience. And then they decided, Cannabis, you know, makes me trip out, and I’m never going to touch it again, which is, you know, fine. But it could be that in 30 years time, they might actually need it or have someone that needed. And they’ve got this stigma because they believe I tried cannabis, it did one thing and so therefore, you know, I’m not going to try it again, or it’s not worth that sort of suffering. So the first thing is, there’s all different types of cannabis, then starting to educate again, consumers, healthcare providers, bud tenders alike, the dosage is super important. And the delivery methods are super important. So even if I feel like again, if I only have five minutes, I’m probably not going to explain to them what the different delivery methods are, or what sort of dosing regimen they should start off. But simply drawing attention to these elements, the fact that, okay, there’s different types of cannabis. Okay, I need to play around with dosage. And I could look at different ways I don’t have to smoke a bar, for example, that could be like the association that people have in their mind. So we would kind of do that across the board. And of course, the way I deliver that information to a physician is going to be very different to the way I deliver that information to, you know, a patient or a caregiver that’s coming to the site. And so again, this this speaks to education in general and storytelling, and I suppose good writing in general is that people digest information in different ways. So some people are going to do better with a video some people are going to do better with an article I you know, I’m a reader, I would always prefer to read the written version, but I know there’s plenty of people who like give me a podcast or give me a video or they need to see a graphic representation like they need to see an infographic. So so we kind of like spread these topics out over all of the different formats, and for all of the different audiences. So a lot of what we’re doing is we’re like okay, we got everything we know about dosage. Let’s workout let’s check that we’ve got the infographic let’s you know, bring in the expert like we just interviewed Dr. Dawson, select Home Show, you know, on our podcast, the cannabis Enigma recently to kind of break down his clinical practice. We’re putting a video together whatever we kind of like feeling the puzzle that way. And so that’s you know, how we’re trying to help solve our pot of you know, the cannabis Enigma which is of course where we made the name that can make math from

John Malanca 14:21
perfect and Dustin’s a dear friend, he sits on our advisory board as well as numerous conferences as well. So you you’ve picked so he knows about dosing because like you said, a lot of doctors over here don’t know unfortunately don’t know the medical benefits and they just think the only way to do it is smoking. And then it’s not a one size fits all and I share that with all the time it’s not a one size fits all. Age, weight, current health condition, any any medications, you may be on sensitivity stage availment stage of disease.

Unknown Speaker 14:53
Yeah.

John Malanca 14:55
You spoke about smoking. You know, we speak at a lot of retirement community I do now. And and that’s the one question I always ask, you know how many people think the only way to consume it because they’re thinking back to their high school days or before? You know how many people that think the only way you can consume this is via smoking, and we used to have 80 90% of the room that would raise Yeah. And then you educate them they go. So I look at education. And what you do as a journalist as well, is like throwing a pebble in the pond and the ripple effects, and someone read your article and goes, gosh, did you did you read this article from England, you know, in the end, it passes on and on and on. And that’s for our listeners and for you. Because I’m all the above, I like to listen, I like to read and I like to watch it, we will have a transcript. For our viewers, which we do, we have the podcast for listeners, and we have the video that will go out. So we’re cafe 123 punch for all the people so they can get get to know what’s going on there, too. So back to the retirement communities in the nursing homes, and you have five minutes to meet with a doctor and say, here are the benefits. And I always share everybody’s not the golden pill, the golden ticket. Yeah, what worked, works for my father, but it didn’t work for my wife, you know, pancreatic cancer and the different stage. And so people always asked me, How do you continue on with this, you know, if it didn’t work, you know, to me, and I’ve shared this on on my show as well and others, to me, saving a life because that’s how I came into this. Right off the bat. It was the blind leading the blind, trial and error, we had no air and it was my father in law. We saved a life and

Unknown Speaker 16:37
I thought,

John Malanca 16:38
Ah, you know, our journey is to get out there and save as many lives as we can one with information and education, but also direction, bridging that gap, as you’re talking about. We help people avoid the tangled web in this industry. If they have two weeks, like we did, we were able to say here, we’re going to help you here the questions asked here are the things to stay away from and avoid. And so they go, Ah, you’ve allowed us to you help. And so with that. Success for others is different from me. success with others, you allowed my husband to get out of the hospital, you allowed my daughter to stop with her seizures, you allowed my me to get off, you know, being having anxiety or sleep or, or you know, whatever. And so that so success with this plant. And when I speak and I my listeners are probably we heard the story, john. But I’ll always put up a roll of duct tape on my presentation of a slide behind me people look at me like, hey, that’s the wrong slide, man. And I’m like, actually duck, I don’t want to say cannabis is like duct tape with a million in one uses. But when you really get down to it and the science behind it, you know, it really has a lot. And so leading into what Israel is doing and leading the way with nursing homes. Can you talk about that? Because a lot of talk about the ripple effect of coming from Israel to here. A lot of seniors that I that I speak with on a regular basis, say I read or watched or I saw are or listen to what’s happening in Israel of the benefits of vaporization. In the nursing home. Do you think that will ever happen over here in the States? And I hopefully it will. But can you talk about that? I mean, it’s right there in your back back backyard and you being a journalist and you you might throw some tips tips on it as to what’s happening over there.

Unknown Speaker 18:29
Yeah, look, I really hope it will, you know, to question whether the United States It seems that now is the time for cannabis in the US, you know, whether it’s whether it’s this coming year in the next couple of years. I don’t think we can stop this kind of snowball. It’s getting bigger and bigger. That’s my take. I hope I’m right. You know, I think when it comes to the the nursing homes here in Israel and in various countries around the world, it really connects to what you mentioned before about the kind of de stigmatization, and I think something that’s happened here is that the first level of kind of acceptance I think about the plan is is is like, okay, you don’t first of all know it’s evil, we definitely shouldn’t touch it. And then you’ve got the next level, which is like, well, maybe there’s some people that it could help in some situations, and then you’ve got you know, once someone can accept that, then they might say, Oh, yeah, it’s totally fine for medical purposes. It’s a plan. It’s got all different uses. That’s great. And I think from there, it’s like just a hop, skip and a jump to two people having full acceptance of the various different uses of the plant, medical and recreational life. And the reason I mentioned this is that I think society in general has a different take on the elderly using cannabis and terminal patients. using cannabis. It’s this idea of like, well, if there’s no other options, and if it’s gonna bring them comfort, then then we’re okay with that. But it’s like, you know, if you want to if you want to get a little bit high at the end there, okay, fine. were okay with that. And I think just the same as, as cannabis being used initially for HIV AIDS patients and patients, and then the various different indications or the conditions that cannabis can be used for, expanded in, in, I suppose, the public’s general acceptance, I would say, I think, you know, General easing of the ailments that elderly patients suffer from is under fitted into that category. And I think that’s what’s behind it. And it makes sense. I think it’s a good gateway, I suppose. into more mainstream medical uses of cannabis,

John Malanca 20:40
it’s starting to happen with our mainstream conventional hospitals that are dealing with cancer. And we have a lot of doctors that will call us up and they said, you know, for the institution that we work for, we really can’t recommend or promote cannabis. But I made a promise to my patient, and the family that I do some research and I bought those doctors that do that, because a lot of a lot of the hospitals over here get federal funding. And they don’t want to jeopardize, of course, the grants that are coming in because of the scheduling here. You mentioned, conditions. You know, in our over here in the United States, each state has different conditions. So California, you can have hiccups. Here’s your cannabis recommendation guard, where other states it’s pain, or cancer or epilepsy. And some states will have epilepsy legal but pain, pain and cancer not. And so do you run into that over in Israel, too? And are you seeing that and other other countries that you’re working with right now?

Unknown Speaker 21:42
absolutely everywhere is completely different. I mean, I don’t think anywhere is as extreme as the United States, but it’s on really like such a state by state basis. But really, every country is different. It’s something that, you know, I’ve noticed as we attend medical cannabis conferences around the world when going to conferences was still a thing, I hope it will be again at some point in the future. And and we’ve often kind of lamented, you know, why can’t we just learn from each other? Like, have you all look at, I don’t know, the Canadian system decide that after a certain amount of years, they’ve gotten to a decent place, and we can kind of mimic this system. And, and instead, I guess what happens is that different systems open as a result of kind of local circumstances. Like, for example, it’s often parents that are pushing for treatment for their children, often with, you know, rare and severe epilepsy. And so they’ll start off with that indication being approved with, with epilepsy or seizure treatments being approved, and then it’ll kind of roll from there. This is happening all over the place, and I hope down the line, we’ll be able to kind of centralize these recommendations and like the list of approved conditions, as you mentioned, and I think the countries that give it over to the discretion of the doctor are heading in the right direction. Because you know, when it comes down to it, cannabis isn’t really treating conditions, it’s treating symptoms. And you mentioned this before, they are often with cancer patients, what cannabis is particularly useful for is malnutrition is wasting syndrome. And and obviously, with epilepsy, it’s not epilepsy that cannabis is treating, it’s the seizures. And for people dealing with chronic pain, it can be helpful for pain, but actually, it’s far more helpful for sleep and for inflammation, inflammation, and then that has such a positive flow on effects on quality of life. That, that the patient is then able to get better, to be able to become more healthier. It’s not actually curing the disease or treating the disease. It’s treating the symptoms. So I think if doctors are able to prescribe in order to treat symptoms rather than particular conditions, that’s a step in the right

John Malanca 23:50
direction as well. Hopefully, it’s getting there. Because Yeah, skills still up in the air. And there’s so much information out there. You know, you mentioned Dustin, Dustin, I always share with Dustin it’s funny. I’ll tell you how I how I met Dustin not to take anything away from you. But when we Chris and I started this, you know, there was the blind leading the blind, and we just literally gave my father in law. My new when I say my news, a lot of people say take a gram a day we’re taking, you know, 20 milligrams, and people and he was getting better and better and better. And people were without us. And we were at a conference up in Oregon, north of us here. And we were at, we had our exhibition booth and we went down just to take a break off our feet, have a cup of water just sit down and there is a speaker that was playing into the, I guess the luncheon area. And everybody was up in the conference room and we hear this voice and it was Dustin speaking about the benefits of micro dosing, why less is more and we look each in decision. What we’ve done, and everyone doubted us, your guys are lying. You’re not telling the truth. Like, why would we make up a story? We don’t sell a product. Why would you make up a story? So we ran up there and luck looked into it. We saw this. Man, you know, Dustin speaking reason I’ll be darned. It’s everyone, of course, bombarding him afterwards, they will. We’ll meet up with him later. Anyway, we did a zoom call with him a couple of days later and shared our story of Yes, because this one isn’t so you know, so it was great. Seeing that someone else saw the benefits of microdosing. More is not always better. One. It will save you money. I mean, why not try something at 1020 milligrams works. You know, you don’t need to do the 100 milligrams. So but Dustin is one of the few in this industry that really know about dosing, a lot of doctors still unfortunately, in the 35 states that are illegal here. We’ll just say, okay, Ilana, Kamini are coming in a year if you want to renew on your card. Yeah. And that’s the guidance. And so it’s frustrating because a lot of the patients who come to us say, What do I do now, my doctor said, I said, it’s, it’s frustrating that you don’t think it’s great that a doctor will write your recommendation, but he’s not he or she’s not going to write your recommendation for a pharmaceutical and say, go on your way. He, this is what the side effects are this way. And then you have pharmacists to show our pharmacists. And because pharmacists are starting to get involved here in the States, what’s the procedure that’s happening over there? For a patient? As I mentioned, when we were off camera, I have a lot of people from Israel that constantly constantly call us to say, help, I’m over here, I watch, you know, your podcast or the show. Can you direct me and so I’m going to direct them to you to do that we but what is the process of a patient that, unfortunately diagnosed with cancer to get to the level of meaning of medical professional and in cannabis over there?

Unknown Speaker 27:00
Yeah, it’s pretty similar to what you are explaining. Obviously, there are exceptions. There are doctors that specialize in cannabis treatment. And they obviously really know what they’re talking about. If someone’s lucky enough, to be able to find a doctor like that and to get their prescription from a doctor like that, then then they might end up with kind of ongoing guidance, setting up their treatment regimen, for the most part. So I’m going to get a prescription you go 30 grams a month, go to the pharmacist pick it up. That’s it, you can pick into Casa Teva, which as we know meant absolutely nothing.

John Malanca 27:33
pharmacy so they can go in there and get their pharmaceutical medication, and cannabis in the same pharmacy.

Unknown Speaker 27:40
Yeah, assuming stocks as often supply issues here. So there’s often people to go from pharmacy to pharmacy to try and find that that’s the system at this point. I want to speak to something that you mentioned before and and it reminded me of something that Dustin said on the podcast with us a couple of weeks ago, that whilst it’s really helpful to have a physician or any health care provider, really it could be a pharmacist, as you mentioned, could be a nurse to kind of guide them through the process. And there was something that was selected in the interview that really stood out to me that, you know, this is what I do. This is how I help my patients through but really patients don’t need someone with my level of expertise. He said, this is something that with the right education, you can walk yourself through, if you educate yourself properly, if you understand the kind of these concepts we’re talking about, like start low, go slow. And as he pointed out, the next line is actually and don’t be afraid to go all the way I really like that. But if you understand that if you understand that there are different types of cannabis, and there are different delivery methods, you can kind of play around. And I think like, know what you said before that you without knowing it, you will micro dosing, I think it kind of makes sense intuitively, like a child, if they’re trying something new is not going to, I don’t know, scale, the whole bottle of suit, they’re going to taste a little bit first, they’re going to check does this feel right for my body. And I think, you know, when we’re when we give all of the autonomy over to the healthcare provider, it means we don’t have the ability to kind of just check in with our own bodies and see what’s working. And I think that with the right level of education, I’m not saying we should like you know, take healthcare providers out of the loop, of course, but I mean, the amount of pressure that it puts on the system that a doctor has to, you know, suggest one particular product, you go out and try the product, it doesn’t work, you’re gonna go try something else, if we can just educate people enough that they can embark on this journey themselves. I think it can work you know, better for the patient and also better for doctors who are ultimately you know, trying to fit in as many patients help as many people as they can, often in very short periods of time.

John Malanca 29:41
But you are right, because that’s what Krishna looked at it just common sense. It’s like okay, he’s wasting syndrome. Why should we go have a run a marathon right now when he hasn’t even been able to run a five k? Let’s get the body and it was working and same thing. And I like Dustin. His mindset too is what he has is patience is taken. Buddy check, taking big breath, let it out and see where your pain levels is it a two? Or is it a 10? And then take one puff or whatever form of cannabis you’re taking. And then take that same big breath, close your eyes, let it out and see how your body feels? Is the pain level now lower, stay the same higher and go from there. You know? And I do think that and I do I do. I had I recently had him on the show, and he shared that that one landing go all the way. You know, and I agree with that on a lot of patience. But when you have a lot of cannabis naive patients, you know, like us back in 2011, my father in law that was really wasting and I’ve and I’ve spoken to other other family members, not our family members, but patients where their loved one is in a coma from not eating, and they take too much cannabis. And they sleep and they don’t eat. And then that’s when the wasting say just comes in. Well, yeah, I would cancer and AIDS patients. So But yeah, I you know, it’s it’s fun when I had the stories of patients, and even my friends moms and dads that call me my friends will call me and say because you My mom is taking cannabis with me because of me. Well, she trust you. And I said, Did she trust you? You guys is like no, you made it. Sometimes it takes an outsider to share a story to break that ice that Break, break that wall down and just say, hey, it helps helps out. But so what else are you doing over there? You know, I mean, you’re doing

Unknown Speaker 31:40
this takes up most of our time. You know, from a kind of content creation perspective, one of the things I love about this work is that I really don’t think we’re ever going to run out of topics. You know, we have like, endless lists of what to cover. And sometimes we realize we actually want to go back. And you know, it’s only been a year and a half. But I find like we’re so much smarter now than we were a year and a half ago, both in terms of you know, our development as a team, and as a company and also the state of the research. So a lot of what we’re doing is kind of maintaining existing content that we have on the site, existing educational material, and then obviously creating new content. We work with, as you mentioned, you know, a bunch of like minded organizations, we’ve teamed up with Acer on our, on our podcast, we now co produced that podcast, which is fantastic. We work with all sorts of different companies across the cannabis space to get their brands in front of, you know, cannabis friendly audiences. It’s very difficult to advertise in the online space when it comes to cannabis because of all of the restrictions on the major advertising platform. So we help different brands kind of get their stories in front of our readers who are obviously interested. We, as I mentioned, we have the podcast, we produce articles, videos, it’s kind of like this is what we do.

John Malanca 32:59
Is your husband involved.

Unknown Speaker 33:01
He’s not he hears about it a lot, but he’s testing me.

John Malanca 33:05
I didn’t know if he was part of your team. So he hears all the kick the canister. What about your your, your your your family over in Australia, they’re with you in the in Israel.

Unknown Speaker 33:15
They’re in Australia. Yeah. Sally’s New Year and my, my family’s ever in Australia.

John Malanca 33:24
No, it was funny. When I when Chris and I started this, I’m thinking, Oh my gosh, how do I tell my mom my dad had passed a year prior? And I’m thinking oh my gosh, how do I tell my like, you know, and when I shared it with her she was you know, I think that monkey came off my back like, oh, stressing out for nothing. And so, you know, we grew up with the stealing out of the closet coming out of closet. I mean, we grew up with that statement. A lot of people are like that as well. It’s so yeah. Is that did you run into that with it with any of your family members or you being

Unknown Speaker 33:54
my family’s? Pretty cool. I think that’d be happy to hear me calling them cool.

John Malanca 33:59
Have a very cool family too. Yeah,

Unknown Speaker 34:03
look, I think also, you know, this was only 10 this was only in the past two years. I think. I think that a lot of change from from 2011 until 2018 the world kind of a different place when it comes to cannabis and public opinion is really been shifting, so it’s probably a little easier for me than for you.

John Malanca 34:18
You know, we’ve done a lot of current I would do a lot of conferences and we used to have a lot of when we did them I haven’t done that one since criminals passed. But we would have a lot of Australian nurses that would come over and we even spoke we were Skyped into speak with no it’s not Australia but the New Zealand parliament, talking about the benefits the benefits of this and help you know and trying to break the ice of what’s going on and bring bring that stigma down and it can be beneficial for you know, our citizens is what they’re looking for as well too. So well great. Any Any closing words? I really appreciate you coming on. I know it’s around nine o’clock your time and you Some kiddos downstairs are probably still up getting ready.

Unknown Speaker 35:02
I really hope they’re asleep already by now, by the time I get this. Yeah, really great to chat with you, john, anyone who’s interested in seeing what we’ve been talking about here should go over and check out connect my.com You can also check out our podcasts that we produce with Acer, like I mentioned the cannabis enigma. And if you want to talk to me, you can find me on LinkedIn. Or you can you know, shoot us an email via the site and that’ll find its way to me via my team.

John Malanca 35:28
Definitely and and I will put all your links up up on the on the podcast information and so yeah, please take a look at look at a lot of site. I Ilana Ilana, I know we both doing Yeah, but check, take a look at some great articles, you do a great job. And before before we get off, what are some of the other things that you used to write on before you wrote on cannabis?

Unknown Speaker 35:52
So I mean, I’ve been writing since I don’t know, I started writing, I have these boxes of journals, which is very embarrassing. But you know, I always write, I started off working in hard news, I went for the Jerusalem Post for a number of years, I ran the website there. And then I kind of switched over from you can imagine covering the news in the Middle East is generally, you know, pretty serious stuff. And I guess we could show Brian and basically the opposite of the bad news that I was covering is all good news. Kind of environmental news, personal development, cultural societal, so that was really fun. I did that for a number of years. And then I think maybe I mentioned this to you before we started recording, I don’t remember but I worked in in kind of digital marketing as well as I really got to understand the the online space for for the last couple years before I ended up at Kenny but so kind of really across the blood there from kind of hard journalism to the nonprofit space and everything in between.

John Malanca 36:54
Isn’t it funny it’s life journey when it comes to work, you know, you get everything and you merge it into what we’re doing and make us a better a better person and I’m glad you and your family are safe and I appreciate your evening. Just spend it with me this evening and wishing you and your family a Happy Hanukkah coming up one but also Yeah,

Unknown Speaker 37:14
it’s true.

John Malanca 37:15
Safe and we’ll see you soon but I appreciate your time.

Unknown Speaker 37:19
Same to john thanks for inviting me

John Malanca 37:21
on I go work with Enigma Enigma excuse me Enigma and ration their to and everybody John Malanca united patients group being formed in be well and thanks for being with us. Bye bye. Nice.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai