TSC Talks Guest Tiffany Watkins

TSC Talks guest Tiffany Watkins is a “Cannabis Enthusiast”. She’s been an activist for 20+ years and has done a lot of work to bring awareness to health care and proper distribution of Medical Cannabis as well as paving the way for Recreational Cannabis.

She has marched the Capital (CA), to help bring a voice to those in need of the protection of the Compassionate Care Act. Additionally, she has attended and spoken at City Council meetings and delivered talks as a keynote when invited.

She states, “Cannabis is my passion and I am driven to assist this industry in becoming the standard when it comes to treatment plans, revenue achievement, and sales models.
My intent is to continue helping, building and growing within the Cannabis industry. ”

We discussed her early years getting involved as an activist and what drew her to get involved in the industry; “what drew me in was during that time in the early 90s, we were really coming off the scare of the 80s with HIV and AIDS and there were plenty of my friends whose lives had been touched. They either had a family member or they were personally affected and at that time they were noticing that cannabis was very helpful in easing side effects from some of the very heavy medications that they were on to try to help with the HIV and sometimes full-blown aids. Cannabis helped stave the wasting away. They were using cannabis to increase appetite and lift the mood and just have a better quality of life. They were treated like criminals.”

We go on to discuss the timeline of her life and career, after early activism, exploring other options as there was not an opportunity to build a career in cannabis. Eventually, Tiffany delved into agriculture distribution which “just kind of steamrolled into me making a choice, leaving behind the mainstream and just going head headfirst back into cannabis.”

She talks about her work at Old Pal the home mantra and an ethos of the company is “it’s just weed”. It’s for the people and it’s accessible to everyone. And we spend some time discussing her new business called “Lady Canna”; “when I first developed the concept of Lady Canna, it was geared towards women. It was geared towards the forgotten voices. And as cannabis has really become more mainstream, it is very much so dominated by males….so that’s where it kind of was born. But where it’s ended up is being a platform for education, change of stigma, and overall approach to usage of cannabis”

“I think that that really is where is the fire burning underneath is that I just want everyone to understand we have another choice out there for help for relaxation for all a multitude of things that happen in our lives. We have another thing out there that can help us and we need to listen and stop making a villain out of it.”

Tiffany is full of wisdom, inspiration and demonstrates the kind of longevity and tenacity that will make Lady Canna a success. There’s much more in this episode to educate, inform and empower all who listen. Check out Tiffany’s links:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tiffany-watkins-9910a5176/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ladycanna101
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ladycanna101/
Old Pal: https://oldpal.com/

TSC Talks Guest Dr. Uma Dhanabalan

TSC Talks guest Dr. Uma Dhanabalan is Founder/CEO, Global Health & Hygiene Solutions LLC, Uplifting Health & Wellness, Natick, MA.  She is a highly respected physician trained in Family Medicine, Occupational & Environmental Medicine, specialized in heavy metals, a Fellow of the American Academy of Family Physicians, a Cannabinoid Medicine Specialist and Medical Review Officer.

She completed her Bachelor of Arts degree with high honors from Rutgers University and a Medical degree from the University of Medicine & Dentistry in Newark, New Jersey. She completed a Family Practice Residency at the Medical University of South Carolina, in Charleston, South Carolina and then her Master’s in Public Health and Occupational & Environmental Medicine Residency and Fellowship at the Harvard School of Public Health in Boston Massachusetts. She is also certified by the American Academy of Cannabinoid Medicine and by the Medical Review Officer Certification Council.

She has received awards from the American College of Occupational & Environmental Medicine for her research project: “Occupational & Environmental Exposure to Lead in South India”, from The 7th World Ayurveda Conference & Arogya Expo for her presentation “Cannabis & The Therapeutic Uses” and the Educational Achievement Award presented by Clover Leaf at Cannabis Business Award 2017

She is the Founder/CEO for Global Health & Hygiene Solutions, LLC established in 2006, with a mission to promote wellness and prevent illness. She worked for Kimberly Clark as Regional Medical Director for Asia Pacific She worked for the Hanford Site in Richland, Washington, the largest and most complex cleanup projects in the world, where plutonium was manufactured for the first nuclear bomb detonated in Japan.

She created the TotalHealthCareTHC model where she “Educates Embraces Empowers” patients and promotes cannabis as a treatment option at Uplifting Health and Wellness, in Natick, Massachusetts. She is an advocate, activist, and educator and speaks globally about cannabis as a plant medicine. Her mission is to change the Stigma regarding Cannabis and for the world to know about the Endocannabinoid system through education” https://necann.com/news/speaker/dr-uma-dhanabalan/

Dr. Dhanabalan states: “Cannabis is not for everyone, yet it should be a first-line option not the last resort,” and “Cannabis is not an entrance drug, it is an exit drug from pharmaceuticals narcotics and alcohol.”

Meeting and talking to Dr. Uma was a transformational experience for me. She logically explains the evolution of her understanding of cannabinoid medicine, starting from an early age. Born in India, moving to the US from India at age 8 with her father, a chemical engineer and her mother, a mathematician and working in computer software, she was raised with a strong interest in science as well as a passion for understanding preventative health.

“I’m a family doctor, went to South Carolina (and) finished my practice residency, then I decided to do my second life which brought me back to Massachusetts to Harvard. Where I did my masters in public health because that’s where I really realized I had to go back to that calling of preventative medicine.”

She goes on to say, ” That was something that has been rooted in me, that’s never really encouraged in most doctors’ lives. You know, it’s always -make a diagnosis- what’s the treatment plan? What’s the ICD code that you have to bill with, and how many people?… La la la la la. That’s the world of healthcare. Ultimately, what people have to live with today. I was very fortunate also, not only did I have all of that as a background, I had a culture. My parents kept up with my language. I spoke five different languages when I came to this country.”

Dr. Uma discusses various experiences she had leading up to her “AHA” moment when she was with her mother who was dying of lung cancer for unbeknownst reasons, “she had seen a TV program and I could still hear her saying using ganja and I damn well knew what that word was. I beelined it and I heard her said they’re using it for COPD, asthma, lung cancer, PTSD, and I still remember that” From there Dr. Uma has gone on to become one of only 50 physicians certified to practice cannabinoid medicine in the United States. She was one of High Times’ top 50 females in Cannabis in 2019. I’ll share one more quote to wrap up this intro, with the 3 key facts she shares when doing public speaking, and often she is told by doctors that they just didn’t know this;

“number one, nobody, and I use the word nobody because there are no deaths ever in the world from this medicine. You cannot die from it. You may feel like you’re dying, you ain’t gonna die from it. Fact number two, the government has a patent number 66 35 07, issued on October 7, 2003, and it’s owned by the government. And it clearly states cannabinoids, not just one, cannabinoids, as an antioxidant. And guess what? A neuroprotectant. There’s nothing here about the developing brain. There’s nothing here about neurotoxicity. It says neuroprotectant, and they have known about it for Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, dementia, strokes, protection of the heart. They have known about it. Fact number three, doctors had the liberty to write prescriptions because it was allowed. And it was in the United States pharmacopeia from 1852 to 1942.” Wow. Check out her website to learn more: http://totalhealthcarethc.com/

Dr. Uma’s Links:
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100008556311630
Twitter: https://twitter.com/drumasays
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dr.uma_thc/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dr-uma-dhanabalan-md-mph-faafp-mro-cms-02843040/
Other links:
https://necann.com/news/speaker/dr-uma-dhanabalan/
https://hightimes.com/news/honorees-high-times-female-50/
https://www.cancerschmancer.org/summit/
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/cannabinoid-medicine-rebirth-nature-dr-uma-dr-david-bearman/

TSC Talks Guest Keith Stroup

TSC Talks guest Keith Stroup, Founder of NORML, may be a down-home country boy, from Southern Illinois, but he sure did make it in the big city (from Box #10 w/Jim Croce). Keith takes me on a walk, through the annals of his legendary history as a founding father of the marijuana legislation movement in the US. From his early years growing up in Southern Illinois, to Georgetown Law School where he became politically radicalized by the Vietnam anti-war movement, and he started using cannabis.
After getting his law degree and working with Ralph Nader, he was inspired to start a consumer group for cannabis users and using his legal skills to try and impact public policy rather than simply “to assist your individual clients get richer, stay out of trouble or whatever.”

On founding NORML: “First off, I enjoyed smoking it but I also had become part obviously, of the underground culture of millions of smokers around this country, and began to be aware of the hundreds of thousands of people who were being arrested and having their lives destroyed because of a senseless policy. So I got some friends together a couple of colleagues of mine at the time and we found it normal as marijuana smokers lobby. ”

From here Keith goes on to outline his work with NORML over the years along with key moments in the history of marijuana legislation, starting with the foundational motivation of avoiding being drafted, “but for that Vietnam War and that experience of having lived through that terrifying experience and thinking you’re going to be drafted and sent to war, I don’t think I ever would have had the interest to start NORML, but because of that, it that I jumped into it with both feet. I think I was a bit naive at the time. I remember someone asked me how long I thought it was going to take. And I said I thought it would take at least 10 years. Well, that was in 1970. So it’s taken us a little longer than that, where I think we’re in our 45th year at NORML, but it is now finally happening”

Keith discusses the shift in public opinion under the influence of more conservative leaders; “Well, we underestimated the possibility of the public mood shifting. And as of the late 70s, early 80s, you had Ronald Reagan and Nancy Reagan. (The) “Just say no” movement, the parents movement, there was a period there where we began as a country to evaluate drug proposals on whether they were good for children. Well, no one is suggesting that children should be using marijuana or alcohol or any other drugs. But nonetheless, that was started the test and as a result, after we got the 11th state to decriminalized in 1978, we didn’t win another statewide victory for 18 years”

Bringing us to the current day, Keith discusses the latest legislation approved by the house judiciary committee, ” And one of the reasons that the bill at the House Judiciary Committee approved just yesterday, right is so important is because it’s called the MORE act. And among the things that would do the most important is it wouldn’t just lower marijuana to a lower schedule under the Controlled Substances Act, it would, in fact, remove it altogether from the Controlled Substances Act. ”

Keith has been a trailblazer in pushing forward on marijuana legislation nationwide and encourages anyone interested in understanding more about their state laws to visit the website https://norml.org/ and click on their state to read all the applicable state and federal legislation.

There’s a lot more here, check out Keith’s links and thank you, Keith, for your groundbreaking work to reform marijuana legislation over the last 50 years!

NORML: https://norml.org/. https://norml.org/about/item/r-keith-stroup-jd
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/keith-stroup-68997b6/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/keith.stroup
Twitter: https://twitter.com/keithstroup
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/keithstroup/
Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keith_Stroup
Recent articles:
https://www.arlingtonmagazine.com/life-after-50with-cannabis/3/
https://www.cannabisindustrylawyer.com/keith-stroup-norml/
https://www.playboy.com/read/weed-warriors

TSC Talks Guest Marissa Fratoni

TSC Talks guest Marissa Fratoni, Holistic RN – Cannabis Therapeutics – Maternal Health – Writer – Public Speaker, is a wealth of information and insight on cannabinoid therapeutics holistic medicine and integrative health. I met Marissa through Jessie Gill, Marijuana Mommy, when discussing our medical cannabis project, wondering if she knew of any local to MA cannabis nurses so I was thrilled when she agreed to have a chat.

We started off talking about how she went from traditional nursing in a very demanding operating room at a local hospital to becoming a visiting nurse, then “on a whim” taking a job in a local dispensary, she says,

“Working in the dispensary just completely opened, changed my entire perception of the plant. I was in interacting with people who were very chronically ill and seeing miraculous changes in their overall quality of life with the use of cannabis. And these are things as a visiting nurse, I didn’t see you know, my patients were always you know, very a lot of them were very compliant with their pharmaceutical regimens and whatever their doctors were telling them, but they weren’t healing and what I saw in the dispensary was cannabis patients consistently coming in and saying, this is helping me it’s improved my entire life. It’s changed my life. I mean, those are things that I’m was not hearing as a visiting nurse”

She ended up engaging with a lot of people looking for support and she started to offer consultations to women; mainly weight loss, wellness consultations in the realm of motherhood. But then, she started working at the dispensary and had patients who found her that way too when her name was coming up as a cannabis nurse.

“It was a game-changer for them, you know they were looking for people who could help them build a bridge between what they weren’t receiving in the medical community and what they were getting in the medical cannabis community. For a lot of patients, they’re stuck navigating all of this on their own. And that’s essentially where cannabis nurses come in”

We also discuss her role interacting with the traditional medical community, she states, “my goal as a nurse is to not to get them to just completely transfer off of medications. I think there’s a lot of poor information out there and a lot of people think that it’s either-or, and it shouldn’t be. There’s a lot of great things available through modern medicine. There’s also a lot of great things available through holistic and integrative medicine and practices. And I think my goal as a holistic nurse is to help to again, bridge that gap.”

We discuss the CBD craze, her concerns with product safety and labeling, emphasizing that every company that has a quality CBD product on the market will be backed up by functional lab testing, where they’re able to tell you the cannabinoid profile and if it’s tested positive or negative for any contaminants. If it’s tested positive experiment, it shouldn’t be on the shelf but they should be able to tell you what is in that product within that bottle.”

Marissa also has some experience working with patients in recovery using cannabis as a “harm reduction” tool and has some really relevant insights on working with those struggling with heroin addiction and how cannabis can be a useful but cautions that medical supervision and support are needed when detoxing, etc.

It was a pleasure to pick Marissa’s brain on her broad offerings and wide array of lived experiences she’s developed into a fabulous platform. Check out her links and thanks for listening!

Links:
Website: https://holisticnursemama.blog/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/marissa.fratoni
Instagram: @holisticnursemama
Twitter: @Marissa_Fratoni
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/marissa-fratoni-94b62429/
Central MA Yoga: https://centralmassyoga.com/marissa-fratoni/
Medium: https://medium.com/@marissafratoni
https://cannamommy.org/about

TSC Talks Guests Joyce Gerber and Amie Searles of The Canna Mom Show

https://tsctalks.com/podcast/

 

TSC Talks guests Joyce Gerber & Amie Searles are The Canna Moms who started the local-to-MA podcast called The Canna Mom Show!  Referred to as The Click and Clack of Cannabis, while also aspiring to be the Terry Gross of Cannabis Talk, these ladies were awesome. Funny, smart and actually visionaries who want to get the word out that Canna Moms are not lazy, good for nothing slackers who are a burden to society but exactly the opposite! Inspirational visionaries out to change the world, one canna story at a time!

We talk initially about cannabis and parenting and our observations that cannabis has helped us all, in many instances be better parents, or at least more able to engage in the now and connect with our offspring. Making the connection with the TSC community, I will share personally that using cannabis helped me greatly slow down the frequent crises long enough to observe my son’s TSC/TAND behaviors, my own role in perpetuating patterns, and start to break the cycle. One small example of how the potential of cannabis as medicine can positively impact the entire family.

Their pitch is as follows: ‘Are you interested in hearing inspiring cannabis stories told by real cannabis moms? This is the show for you! Former family law attorney and mother of two, Joyce Gerber, and her canna-sister, Amie Searles, a 420 Realtor, talk with women from coast to coast who are leaders in the revolution of cannabis and caregiving and crushing the cannabis stigma, one canna story at a time.”

While an overall lighthearted conversation, we dipped down into the weeds a bit to get some of the deeper motivations for their willingness to step away from more traditional careers and launch a podcast. Not just any podcast, but one on cannabis. Joyce discusses some life challenges with juggling career and parenthood and coming back to a career in her 50s and how that pushed her to try something different. Amie relates how her own experience being diagnosed with breast cancer and using cannabis as part of her treatment regimen gave her the impetus to speak out about her positive experiences instead of holding on to the many years of shame, guilt and confusion so many from our generation felt and continue to feel for using something that can actually contribute to improved mental and physical health.

“But the truth is everybody has a cannabis story. You know, even myself, I’m very active in my temple and in our synagogue, I’m having a doctor come in, and we’re going to do a talk on cannabis, Friday night, pre-service. You know, these are older women a little older than me. And we are the fastest growing population of users”

We discuss the local cannabis industry in MA, challenges with legislation in cities such as Cambridge, MA, some of the fun events these ladies have attended to engage with the local community and promote their work, such as a Cannabis Wedding Expo.  Also discussed are the CBD market, CBD safety and Cannabis interactions with medications, the over-medicating of America with pharmaceuticals, and much more. This one will make you laugh, cry, giggle, inspire you & broaden your vision in regards to the potential of cannabis as medicine, as a recreational substance, and more. Also, how podcasters as communicators speaking out about this sometimes controversial subject matter have the power to truly affect change, at a local and national level. Go Canna Moms!

Links:
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thecannamomshow
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thecannamomshow/
Stitcher: https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/the-canna-mom-show
Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-canna-mom-show-with-joyce-and-amie/id1485037386
Tune In: https://tunein.com/podcasts/Health–Wellness-Podcasts/The-Canna-Mom-Show-p1245811/
LinkedIn, Joyce: https://www.linkedin.com/in/joyce-gerber/
LinkedIn, Amie: https://www.linkedin.com/in/amie-searles-79329373/
YouTube Promotion: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TSeN5j1pWlo

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