Finding hope

THE ULTIMATE MEDICINAL CANNABIS RESOURCE | MAY 2019

Patients are replacing modern pharmaceuticals with an ancient herbal remedy.

MAY 2019

THE ULTIMATE MEDICINAL CANNABIS RESOURCE Extract is circulated at its designated distribution points free of charge to readers for their individual use and by mail to subscribers. The cash value of this copy is $1. Persons taking copies of Extract from its distribution points for any reason other than their or others’ individual use for reading purposes are subject to prosecution.

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EDITORIAL

OPERATIONS

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CONTENTS LEGAL

PATIENT TESTIMONIALS, P. 11

4 legal papers protecting your business

BUSINESS 8

Sean O’Grady’s Ringside Medical

CONSUMERS

11 COVER patient testimonials 14 THC introduction 15 infographic cannabis family tree 17 origins of the word “marijuana”

LIFESTYLE

19 21 recipes Guyutes honey pediatric cannabis

Suzanne Wallace | Photo Alexa Ace

Each month, Extract explores trends in the CBD and medicinal cannabis business, from new treatments and products to emerging companies, but its primary focus is on this new world of medicinal treatment and how it affects readers and consumers.

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3

LEGAL

OPENING DOORS

Know the legal terrain before starting a medical cannabis business.

By J. Blake Johnson As recently as last year, if you were growing or selling pot in Oklahoma, you only had need for one legal service: criminal defense. Today, medical cannabis is a legal, multimillion-dollar industry, and its participants face a wide variety of legal needs.

In many ways, these needs are similar to those encountered in most other industries. Simultaneously navigating the murky intersection of jurisdictional conflicts and rapidly changing regulatory regimes, Oklahoma’s nascent cannabis industry requires legal counsel carefully attentive to singularly industry-specific concerns. Sophisticated businesses now operating in the sunshine, Oklahoma’s “ganjapreneurs” need legal counsel of a decidedly different character.

Are you interested in starting a cannabis business? These are the 10 most immediate legal concerns you will face on your way into the industry.

Business formation Even the simplest matters present choices. How will you organize your business? The limited liability corporation is the most flexible option, but some corporate tax arrangements might be preferable to certain investors. Of course, an LLC can also elect tax treatment as a corporation and might be the simplest option for many startups. Still, this decision should be based on your particular needs, including some investors’ interests in protecting other assets in their portfolios.

Asset protection The process of protecting what you earn — and what you already have — begins at the earliest stage. Usually this involves the formation of a series of business entities that serve as holding companies.

These companies function to separate ownership of valuable assets from the “operating” side of the business, as the latter is exposed to the most liability.

Ideally, if your operating company faces some sort of judgment — whether by a tax authority, law enforcement or other gov4

M AY 2 0 1 9

ernment agency, or in a lawsuit — it will not extend to those assets you maintain in a properly managed and separately maintained holding company.

Asset protection also concerns property you already own. Naturally, you want to avoid the association of any of your pre-existing assets with liabilities generated by your new venture. For example, you might want to transfer any real estate that will be involved in your cannabis business out of portfolios that hold other property. Land and buildings used by your cannabis company face increased liability, and you should endeavor to avoid the attachment of any judgment against those properties to other properties held by the same owner.

Of course, maintaining the distinction between these entities — and avoiding a consequence in which they are all treated as alter egos of one another — is an ongoing process. It involves observing the formalities that attend the governance of each separate business entity and avoiding commingling each entity’s respective funds.

Tax planning Cannabis companies suffer greater tax exposure than virtually any comparable businesses. Section 280E of the U.S. tax code prevents drug traffickers from making the ordinary business deductions allowed to all other taxpayers, even those involved in other federally illegal enterprises. Additionally, Oklahoma law generally prohibits any deductions disallowed by the Internal Revenue Service (IRS).

You must work closely with a qualified tax professional to minimize your exposure. Without proper planning, many naïve business owners will receive tax bills that might bankrupt them, even when they turned minimal profits.

There do exist strategies to minimize your taxes, but they require careful planning and diligent accounting.

Real estate If you have big plans for your company, you probably want to own your real

OR NEW PHOTO

estate. The obvious problem is that because the property you want to collateralize faces enhanced risk — including the risk of federal seizure — no bank is likely to finance your purchase. A well-networked and creative cannabis consultant might be able to connect you with other forms of asset-based lending that could put you in control of your own property and greatly improve the value of your company.

Alternatively, you are going to rent.

An experienced attorney should review your lease agreement since much of the boilerplate common to commercial leases is inappropriate in this industry.

Examples include provisions requiring tenants to obey federal law or permitting the landlord to seize inventory in the event of a default — these tenants will violate federal law and these landlords cannot seize this inventory.

Local authorities Most likely, you have read State Question 788. You might not have read local ordinances that have been passed by the municipality or county in which you intend to locate your business. Some localities have ordinances specific to medical cannabis businesses. Others apply existing zoning ordinances to industry activities.

In any event, you should ensure your property complies with all local regulations before investing significant resources into its improvement.

Before getting started in the medical cannabis industry, it is best to understand all the potential issues. | Photo bigstock.com

Recently, some municipalities have enacted overly restrictive ordinances — or otherwise interpreted reasonable ordinances in overly restrictive manners — in order to discourage or practically prohibit medical cannabis business in their jurisdictions. Some of these local authorities will face lawsuits as a result of their attempts to undermine medical cannabis reform, and they are likely to lose those lawsuits.

Licensing Of course, medical marijuana businesses must be licensed by Oklahoma Medical Marijuana Authority (OMMA) and registered with Oklahoma Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs (OBNDD). Once quite simple, the application process will become increasingly complicated as a result of House Bill 2612 and related regulations. You would be wise to consult an experienced attorney to ensure you are licensed as quickly and painlessly as possible.

Intellectual property Simply put, your brand is your most valuable asset. More directly, if you are not devoting significant attention and energy to developing and protecting your continued on page 7

TO U C H D O W N M AY 2019

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LEGAL CONTINUED FROM PAGE 4

brand, your priorities are misplaced. Developing your brand means developing your intellectual property portfolio.

Your trade name is the most obvious example of intellectual property — it is a trademark. You must be sure to clear your name against other active trademarks to ensure that you own it and avoid expensive allegations of infringement. Once cleared, you should protect your trademark by registering it and enforcing your rights to the exclusion of any competitors trading under a confusingly similar name. Some business owners are reluctant to initiate a dispute by confronting those infringing on their trademarks. You cannot be; if you fail to enforce your trademark rights, you risk losing them.

You should also protect your trade secrets. Many of the things that make your business different — those things you believe give you the edge — constitute trade secrets that should be protected like the recipes for Dr Pepper or Coca-Cola. You should take precautions to protect these secrets and avoid their dissemination.

Copyright law is also of interest to you to the extent that you are hiring third parties to produce works of “authorship.” This includes any contracts you might have for logos or marketing materials, murals or other art, websites and the like. It is tempting to assume that you own these things when you pay someone else to produce them.

Typically, you do not. Accordingly, you should execute appropriate agreements to clarify the ownership of these works.

unfamiliar with their obligations under state and federal law. While Oklahoma law is fairly friendly to employers, it is nonetheless crucial that anyone paying for labor consult a qualified attorney to assess their obligations and reduce their liabilities. Employment litigation is expensive and best avoided through responsible policies, procedures and training. Do not assume that because you call those who work for you “independent contractors,” you therefore owe no further obligation. You might be exposing yourself to significant liability.

Contracting The most effective way to avoid litigation — which, again, is expensive — is to draft careful contracts. Amazingly, so much business is done in the cannabis industry by handshake. These unrecorded agreements will eventually result in costly disputes and ruin relationships.

Do yourself and those with whom you conduct business a favor: Record your agreement.

Actively negotiate contracts that accurately reflect the parties’ agreement and anticipate the potential problems that might emerge in the relevant transaction. As with so much legal infrastructure, any money you spend on developing these written agreements in advance will be saved later if you avoid even one unnecessary dispute.

The process of protecting what you earn — and what you already have — begins at the earliest stage.

Regulatory compliance The laws and rules that govern this industry at the federal, state and local levels are changing rapidly, and sometimes it is difficult to predict what reform might come next. You need someone on your team who is devoted to remaining constantly familiar with these regulations and developing new and innovative strategies to deal with them.

Employment matters Many medical cannabis employers are

J. BLAKE JOHNSON

E X T R AC T L E G A L A N A LY S T

J. Blake Johnson is the founder of Climb Collective and a partner in Overman Legal Group, representing some of the biggest cannabis brands in Oklahoma.

The preceding is intended to be generally informative but should not be interpreted as specific legal advice. If you are involved in the cannabis industry and have legal questions, you should seek legal counsel from an attorney with whom you have an attorney-client relationship and who is familiar with your particular legal needs. | Photo Alexa Ace

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7

BUSINESS

GREEN MACHINE

Retired boxer Sean O’Grady opened his dispensary, Ringside Medical, on Feb. 9.

By Matt Dinger Sean O’Grady hung up his boxing gloves 35 years ago but has lived with the pain of his glory days for decades.

The former lightweight champion of the world began his professional fighting career when he was 15 years old. He ended it nine years later with 86 wins, 70 of them by knockout.

“There are 14 bones in a hand, and I feel like I feel every one of them,” Sean O’Grady said.

The O’Grady family earned its bread with boxing, and Sean O’Grady was fighting every few weeks to keep his family fed.

The injuries came early. First, he broke the little finger on his left hand. He shied away from using that fist, turning his striking hand to avoid another direct impact, but broke his left thumb. Then he broke his right hand.

“We were so poor, we couldn’t go to the doctor to ascertain that it was actually a break. But actually, I broke a bone. But I went [to bed] every night with that broken hand, and I’d cry myself to sleep,” Sean O’Grady said. “That was our life and our family. We needed to have a stream of income, so that’s just what it was.”

Over the years, he tried steroids, opiates and a myriad of home remedies, but it wasn’t until his mid 50s that he first tried cannabis at his son’s insistence.

“When I was a boxer, my hands hurt all the time. Well, they still hurt today. They never stopped hurting. And in this agonizing complaint from me time after time, day after day, Chase started really pounding on me about the efficacy of CBD,” Sean O’Grady said. “I

Sean O’Grady experimented with medical cannabis for boxing injuries and used his knowledge to open Ringside Medical. | Photo Alexa Ace

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M AY 2 0 1 9

used the CBD stuff, and it was pretty good.

It would last me a couple of days, and you know, it made the pain go away. I could run a little bit, not like I used to, but in my walks, I could run a maybe a mile of the walk and it lasted about a day and a half and then it went away. Well, then I tried the THC medicine. That stuff lasted me a week, maybe 10 days,” he said. “I’ve got it on my hands right now. I use it on my feet.”

Sean O’Grady flirted with cannabis in his youth at parties and concerts, but it never stuck.

“It wasn’t appealing to me,” he said.

“First of all, I don’t smoke. I don’t like the taste. Smoking gets my throat all choked up and congested. Smoking is really not my thing, but most recently, my son has gotten me into some tinctures and some edibles that are quite nice and some pills. ... The best thing though is the rubs. The rub I put on my feet this morning, and I’ve constantly been rubbing my hands with this THC stuff all day today. So it just helps so much in alleviating the pain of my feet and the pain of my hands.”

New challenge

Family business

A day shy of his 60th birthday, Sean O’Grady opened Ringside Medical, 14201 N. May Ave., Suite 205.

“With this new business that is available here in Oklahoma, it just meant so many different opportunities for people to learn about cannabis and the benefits of cannabis,” Sean O’Grady said.

“Whenever I talk to somebody about this subject, I always make sure to tell them, ‘Look, just do your best to try to understand more about the cannabis. We’ve all been brainwashed that it’s not good for you.’ I’ve found it is very good. It’s great for you.”

The storefront will include all manner of cannabis and hemp products, and Sean O’Grady said he has tried most of them except for the flower.

Besides acetaminophen in the morning and at night, cannabis products are the only ones he uses for the pain these days. He quit taking opiates for pain in his 30s.

“I would take them during the prescription time, then I wouldn’t continue after that, but I can see where people become addicted,” he said.

He thinks cannabis would revolutionize the lives of war veterans and their families. It might have changed the course of his own family.

“My father, Pat, was a veteran of World War II,” Sean O’Grady said. “He saw some of the fiercest battles of World War II.” Pat O’Grady — who went on to become a legendary boxing trainer — fought at Guadalcanal, Iwo Jima, Peleliu and Okinawa.

“My father suffered from PTSD. Me and my two sisters had to deal with that growing up here in Oklahoma City. ...

They diagnosed it as shell shock, and they prescribed him barbiturates — Tuinals and Seconals — as many as he wants, as often as he wants. Well, he finally succumbed to the Tuinals when he died at 60 years old,” Sean O’Grady said. “My father, the only way he got relief from his anxiety and his PTSD was from barbiturates. And I really wish he were on something other than that. My father would have been so much better off. He’d still be alive. It was always his conjecture that it should not be illegal and it would help a lot of people.

Whenever my father said that, my first thoughts were, ‘Dad, it would help you.’”

Ringside will be offering veteran discounts, but the percentage has not yet been decided.

“I have a special place in my heart for anybody who served this country,” Sean O’Grady said.

His son Chase helps run the family business, a 3,000 square-foot storefront that boasts a 110-inch television screen that plays both boxing and cannabis content.

A 30-minute documentary about Sean O’Grady’s life is also in the works.

“Sean was very pro-advocacy for cannabis and the medical uses for it, so I think we just kind of fell right into it and realized that this is a path that we should try to take,” Chase O’Grady said.

“And then we knew that we wanted to focus more on the athletic and more of the kind of muscle recovery, muscle relief avenue. CBD was very active here in Oklahoma. And he kind of took my suggestion actually pretty open-heartedly because he used a lot of natural remedies when he was boxing, tinctures and topicals that his family made in order to help him to do some pain relief, so it was a very easy adaption for him.

“He knew that going along with THC would help. And he visited a few states that it was rec-approved and went and tried it there and realized that it was really helping him, and he would go on a whole trip and just rub that topical on one time, and it lasted the whole trip.”

Even though his father doesn’t smoke cannabis, Chase O’Grady hopes to develop a strain in his father’s honor. His father’s fighting moniker was The Green Machine.

“There’s a strain that’s called Blue Machine,” Chase O’Grady said. “I would love to cross it with Green Crack. So I think that’s something that I would really like to rally around and get behind. Coming up with a strain that’s an Oklahoma-based strain, I think, could be very positive for the state.”

Before he was The Green Machine, he was also known as The Bubblegum Bomber because he would walk into the ring chewing bubble gum to give a carefree appearance and also calm him down before a fight, so Chase O’Grady said they are exploring a cannabis-infused gum with the same name.

Even three and a half decades after his fighting career, Sean O’Grady still has quite a reputation and cult following in Oklahoma City.

“All the vendors have all been used by us, and we feel confident about bringing them into the store, and there’s no vendors we’re using that have not been lab-tested,” Chase O’Grady said. “We love that people have that amount of confidence in him, in his judgment. We will do everything on our side to meet that.”

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1p

CONSUMERS

PARADIGM SHIFT Cannabis is replacing medications for a variety of ailments and illnesses.

By Matt Dinger

Medical cannabis has been available to way, and the best way I can explain it to patients for just over six months in anyone that doesn’t have any kind of neuromuscular issue is you feel like Oklahoma, and though the data is still far from comprehensive, anecdotal evidence you’re clenching all the time. So start of its effectiveness is coming in droves. with your hand; you clench your fists.

Extract spoke with two women who My go-to position, like right now, I’m have used the plant to wean themselves off looking at my hand, it is a clenched fist powerful prescription pharma— my thumb is in between my ceuticals. fingers. But it mainly One of them is a affects my hand that 29-year-old attorway but affects my ney. Though she entire left side. It’s feels telling her weakening of muscles, it’s story is importshaking, it’s ant, professional concerns kind of tremorprompted her to like symptoms. ask not to be It’s like terrible identified or phofluidity of Jo motion, and it’s tographed for this story. She shall henceconstant tension. I’ve forth be referred to as “Jo.” had that since I was 10, Jo has had lifelong ailments, and I’m 29 now and I’m really both physical and mental, and began treatfeeling the effects. … It doesn’t hurt, but ing them with cannabis last fall. if you imagine that stress on your body “I knew that I had anxiety and de… it’s a lot of wear and tear on your body. pression, but law school was where I first That is the very un-nuanced version of it because a lot of people experience in was diagnosed and really kind of my first introduction to it. … My mental health very different ways. It’s such a weird is kind of what sparked, ’All right; I need illness to have, and it’s hard to find doctors that even know what it is or this, but I also have a crazy physical illness,’” Jo said. “I’ve always been active; know how to treat it, know where to I always played sports, grew up playing even begin with it.”

When she was 10, Jo started taking softball, golf and basketball. And when I was 10, I’m right handed, and I noticed muscle relaxers for a number of years that my left side was weaker, and I asked to treat her dystonia but curbed them in my parents about it. … Long story short, her adolescence. we discovered that I had a stroke, actu“I stopped taking medicine for it. I ally. I didn’t know. They think it must just dealt with it. I taught myself to type. have happened when I was asleep. But I I played golf, basketball and softball — super-active kid, all while dealing with was 10 years old, went to a lot of specialthis physical disability. When I was in ists and I was diagnosed with dystonia.

There are a ton of different versions of high school, my shoulders started it. It’s all weird. There are no cures. The hurting me, and so I started going to see way that it affects me, specifically, I had a traveling movement disorder neurola stroke in the right side of my brain ... ogist because I didn’t have any available but essentially what it does is overworks to me in Oklahoma,” she said. “I get my left side, specifically overworks my Botox shots in my hand. It’s one of the left hand, but it overworks my entire weird ways that Botox is used; it deadens left side, so when I’m tired, my mouth the nerve and just relaxes the hand a will pull to the left a little bit. The left little bit. Well, the flip side of that is it side of my body just doesn’t fit the right also weakens the hand or weakens

The first day it was available, I believe in October, I started using it for medical purposes.

Suzanne Wallace left her career in law enforcement to become a budtender. | Photo Alexa Ace

muscles it’s injected into, and so I was really good in high school at golf, and I couldn’t hold on to the club because it weakened me too much. … I now get Botox shots in my hand, my neck, my shoulder, my forearm, my chin. I get about probably 10 Botox shots every three months. I tell people I probably have like a 50- or 60-year-old’s body, and I’m 29. Maybe even something more achy than that. It’s just constant pressure, constant pain.”

Jo said she only started considering using cannabis to treat her ailments in her 20s.

“Even in college and law school, I didn’t use it at all,” Jo said. “And so since as soon as I could get my license, I applied and I’m one of the few that my general practitioner was like, ‘Absolutely; you need this.’ And once I got it, and it was available, I finally was able to start figuring out what was right for me, what helped me the most. So I’m fairly new on my journey using pot, using cannabis. I know people had a lot of practice compared to me.”

Jo acquired her card last summer and waited patiently for the day THC became legal.

“The first day it was available, I believe in October, I started using it for

medical purposes,” she said.

She started with edibles.

“I was fully aware of the unpredictability of it, so I started off and the edibles available were pretty limited initially, and so I started off with edibles and I needed some guidance with flower and I got a vape pen. So I use flower, edibles and I vape oil now, but when I first started, it was like a brownie and I got flower, and I’d smoke it out of a pipe, but it took me a little while to get the hang of that,” she said. “Time of day is mainly my issue. What am I using it for? What am I going to go do? ... For pain relief, edibles are my best bet. I know that, and I knew that from the beginning. They tend to be the biggest bang for my buck, at least in my experience. I use different kinds at different times, knowing how interactive I have to be with people, so mostly it’s based on less symptoms, more ‘What kind of social interactions am I going to be doing today? What kind of work do I need to get done today?’ Because I know what works best for my symptoms. Time of day mostly dominates it.”

Since beginning cannabis treatment, she has been able to get off most of her other medications. continued on page 12 M AY 2 0 1 9

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CONSUMERS

CONTINUED FROM PAGE 11

“Since October, when it first actually became available, I think I’ve taken my muscle relaxer twice,” she said. “I am also prescribed beta blockers for my anxiety as needed, and I think I’ve taken those twice as well since October, and I have not bought ibuprofen since the summertime.

We have Bayer. I’ve taken Bayer maybe twice since October. I was definitely taking ibuprofen or Bayer every day, and I was pretty much using my muscle relaxer every day as prescribed by a doctor. I needed it. This has replaced a lot of things for me.”

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Suzanne Wallace also has both physical and mental issues that she has to contend with daily and has replaced her other medications with cannabis.

But that was not where her familiarity with the plant began. The daughter of a Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) agent, she was also an Oklahoma County juvenile bureau probation officer. It was not until she left that profession that she began experimenting with Suzanne cannabis though.

“When I was 10, I injured my knee skiing. And I’ve had problems ever since. I think seven surgeries on the books on my right knee.

They started me on opiates when I was 16. And from 16 to 26, I was on, daily, like 80 to 100 milligrams of opiates,” Wallace said. “It got to the point where I was in so much pain that I would have to use crutches or a cane to go to work.

I couldn’t go into the field at work because I wasn’t safe with my physical health, and I actually finally had a knee replacement at 26. And after that knee replacement, I said, ‘OK, I don’t want to ever take another opiate again.’ And around that same time when I got my knee replaced, I was the victim of a sexual assault and I developed PTSD as well. So about the last six months to a year, I was on that amount of opiates plus six benzodiazepine doses a day. So I was not functioning. I wasn’t able to get out of bed. I mean, at 25 years old, it just felt like my life was over because I couldn’t do anything with the pills. It was actually the PTSD that got me to try

cannabis. [A friend] saw me just struggling really, really hard one day and finally said, ‘Just please take this joint and try it and see if that helps.’ And I have not gone a day since without cannabis, I don’t think.

“I was a criminal. Absolutely illegally healed. I was on opiates for 10 years, and it was doctor-prescribed. I never went out and bought them off the street or anything, but 10 years is a long time.

Within two weeks, I was completely off of opiates with cannabis. Didn’t need rehab. Nothing. The first week, I still had the opiate withdrawal. I was sick. I went through that. But cannabis really helped with those symptoms, too. But after that, it was enough. I still had to take the benzos. It took actually having access to medical-grade cannabis and my research on the terpenes and all the properties that go into it.

“I was diagnosed with PTSD off the charts. … After four months of access to legal medical cannabis and being able to tailor what I was buying to what I needed, I no longer measure for PTSD. It takes 33 points to be diagnosed. My scale was at six at the beginning of March, and it’s Wallace been at like 50 to 70. I do believe it healed the neural pathways in my brain.”

She got her medical cannabis card in October, before dispensaries were open for business, and using her master’s degree in forensic pathology, Wallace is helping other patients with her knowledge and experience.

“I didn’t feel like there was enough mental health representation in the industry,” Wallace said. “There are a lot of people that have a lot of medical knowledge. I mean, I’ve even heard of people that went from being paramedics and things to going into the cannabis industry. But I don’t hear much about therapists or psychologists or anything like that. And that’s physical pain. I’ve lived with both physical and mental, and one is not more important than the other.

And I really think that mental health is represented enough in the cannabis industry at this time, but we are still new.

And I would like to see more people with backgrounds in mental health get into the field to help the patients.”

Now Wallace has left her law enforce-

I didn’t feel like there was enough mental health representation in the industry.

MEDICAL CONDITIONS ment career behind to work in the industry.

“I’m a dispensary agent. So that’s a fancy word for budtender that we like to use. … I’m really good at research with my academic background,” she said. “And so for me, my day-to-day consists of a lot of reading and researching looking up symptoms, looking up diseases and then going to what limited research that we have on cannabis. That’s one thing; I can’t wait for it to be federally declassified so that we can study it. We’ve got a lot of good research coming out of Israel, some starting to come out of Canada. So really, a lot of my day is spent on research, and what’s not I spent with patients, talking to them about what’s going on and trying to help them find the best product to meet their needs.”

She is good at recommending products as well, as she uses every form of cannabis product on the market.

“I have found that for me, topical oils and edibles work best for my arthritic and chronic pain, like with my knee, but smoking works best for my anxiety,” Wallace said. “I really believe that, honestly, that we’re supposed to have THC in our systems. We wouldn’t have evolved an endocannabinoid system if it weren’t supposed to be used.”

Medical application of cannabis is still emerging science, but doctors are discovering that the medicine is effective in treating a growing number of diseases and conditions. This is a partial list of conditions for which medical cannabis can be effective.

Alzheimer’s disease Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis/Lou Gehrig’s disease Anorexia Arthritis Autism spectrum disorders Cachexia (wasting syndrome) Cancer Cerebral palsy Chronic/severe pain Crohn’s disease CRPS (Complex Regional Pain Syndrome Type II) Cystic fibrosis Decompensated cirrhosis Dravet syndrome Dystonia Epidermolysis bullosa Epilepsy Fibromyalgia

Glaucoma Hepatitis C HIV/AIDS Hydrocephalus Hydromyelia Inflammatory bowel disease Irreversible spinal cord injury Interstitial cystitis Lennox-Gestaut syndrome Lupus Migraines Mitochondrial disease Muscular dystrophy Multiple sclerosis Myasthenia gravis Myoclonus Nail-patella syndrome Nausea Neurofibromatosis Obstructive sleep apnea

Osteogenesis Imperfecta Parkinson’s disease Persistent muscle spasms Post-concussion syndrome Psoriasis and Psoriatic arthritis Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) Reflex sympathetic dystrophy Residual limb pain Rheumatoid arthritis Sickle cell disease Sjogren’s syndrome Spasticity Spinocerebellar ataxia Syringomyelia Tarlov cysts Tourette’s syndrome Ulcerative colitis

APRIL 2019

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CONSUMERS

WHAT IS THC? Tetrahydrocannabinol recently became legal to use medically in Oklahoma, but what exactly is it?

By Matt Patterson

Tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC, is the principal psychoactive medicinal compound found in cannabis. It is consumed primarily through smoking, vaporization or oral consumption. | Photo bistock.com

For decades, Americans have been bombarded with negative messaging on the evils of using cannabis and getting high.

The federal government made cannabis radioactive in 1970 with the Controlled Substances Act that put it alongside heroin and LSD on a list of Schedule I drugs, a culmination of a long-term public policy effort to make people scared of pot.

But gradually, things changed. Even as Nancy Reagan implored everyone to “just say no,” movies like Fast Times at Ridgemont High and Caddyshack made pot funny in our popular culture.

In the political realm, Bill Clinton admitted to using pot during his college days, even if he didn’t fully own it. Barack Obama did just that in his 2008 run for president, adding that that inhaling was the point of the whole exercise.

Today, reality has caught up with Jeff Spicoli and the rest of the guys in the minibus. Never before has cannabis been more acceptable. Ten states and Washington, D.C., have legalized it for recreational use since 2012, and 33 states have some form of access.

According to a 2017 Marist Poll, 52 percent of those surveyed said they had used marijuana in their lifetime. A further 44 percent said they were currently using it.

But while public opinion on pot has shifted dramatically, what hasn’t changed is the process in the brain that 14

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gets users where they want to be. THC, otherwise known as tetrahydrocannabinol, is the culprit.

Stephen Goldman is the laboratory director at PhytaTech, a Colorado firm that tests THC and CBD products for potency and purity, among other things. He said THC is one of more than 100 cannabinoids found in cannabis plants.

“THC is special,” Goldman said. “When it’s absorbed into the blood, it’s very hydrophobic. That means it doesn’t like the water phase; it likes the oil phase, and because of that, it can pass your blood-brain barrier into your brain and bind with Jacob CB1 receptors. That’s what starts the cascading effect that gets people high.”

It is the moment when your brain surrenders to mild euphoria often accompanied by a feeling of extreme relaxation or weightlessness, a period when your mind drifts away from the jerk at the office to, “Hey, let’s go get tacos and binge-watch Breaking Bad for six hours,” and nothing seems even remotely wrong about it.

THC is psychoactive, meaning it affects the brain by altering its function

and the user’s perception.

The chemistry goes deeper. Delta 9-THC and its cousin Delta 8 are the only compounds in cannabis plants that produce the psychoactive effect.

“Those are different isomers of the same molecule,” Goldman said.

The different isomers matter to the user only because each might have a different effect.

“What’s important is each isomer has a different structure, so because its structure is different, it bonds with the CB1 receptor differently,” Goldman said.

“The stronger it binds, the stronger the psychoactive effect.”

THCA otherwise known as tetrahydrocannabinolic acid is another cannabinoid that has become the subject of research. It is found in the raw form of a cannabis plant and might be used for treating nausea and other ailments like arthritis.

“THCA is the acidic form of THC,” Goldman said. “If nature plants a cannabis plant, any plant will make the acidic form. They’re not psychoactive in that state. If you smoked the flower, it wouldn’t get you high.”

Medical cannabis The full power of THC is often what patients who visit Dr. Jacob Moore at Bloom Healthcare in Oklahoma City are seeking. They come for help managing a variety of ailments.

“I’d say it’s a tie between various types of pain and anxiety disorders and musculoskeletal and joint pain,” Moore said.

“I’ve also seen several people with autoimmune disorders like lupus.”

And some patients simply want to know how modern THC products are going to make them feel.

“That does come up,” Moore said. “I tell them Moore usually people feel relaxed, that they might feel a little bit tired but not to the point where they’re passed out. And that it can come with increased appetite. And it can also have a calming effect if someone has a lot of anxiety, like sitting in a hot tub, taking a break from it all.”

Those questions are especially pervasive among new users.

“For those that do have questions, they often want to know about the different types of products available now

They often want to know about the different types of products available now versus how it was a few decades ago.

versus how it was a few decades ago,” Moore said.

Dosage is another question. Smoking or vaping provides the user an almost instant high. With their slow burn through the digestive system, many find edibles a little trickier. There’s a fine line between feeling good and a full-blown freak-out. You will not die, but feeling so stoned you become uncomfortable isn’t a lot of fun.

“What I tell everyone is to start low and work their way from there because you can always take more to help, but if you go too far, you can end up with some bad side effects,” Moore said.

Those can include paranoia, rapid heartbeat and fatigue.

“You don’t want to be to the point where you’ve used so much you’re not functional,” Moore said.

A lot of those same questions are asked by customers at any of Oklahoma’s medical dispensaries. Keith Wiley owns Native Brothers, a medical dispensary in Oklahoma City selling cannabis flower, edibles and vape cartridges. He said a good dispensary welcomes questions from customers.

“That’s our job,” he said. “We have a lot of people who come in and tell us it’s their first time and they have back problems. We try to stay informed on what different strains might help with their problem. We do our best to help them with any questions they might have.”

Wiley said a visit to a dispensary is not unlike another experience most users are familiar with.

“If you go to a pharmacy, you’re probably going to have some questions, especially if it’s a new medication,” he said.

“It’s no different at a dispensary. If you want to know how much THC is in a product, we can tell you. If you want to know how much to start off with, we can help you with that. It’s about making the experience the best it can be. We try not to make it overwhelming.”

THC can be overwhelming on its own.

And today’s cannabis is stronger than ever.

Those who have not used it in a while or maybe have not used it in one of the forms offered today should be taking baby steps, at least at first.

“It’s a totally different ball game,” Goldman said. “In the 1980s, the average concentration of THC in marijuana plants was about 8 percent. Today, there are strains above 30 percent. There are products that exist that can be on the low end of the concentration, and for most people, that’s the place to start.”

CANNABIS FAMILY TREE Cannabaceae is a family of flowering plants that includes about 170 species in 11 genera, including hops, hackberries and cannabis. The cannabis genus includes three species: Cannabis sativa, Cannabis indica and Cannabis ruderalis.

All three species contain more than 100

cannabinoids, including tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) and cannabidiol (CBD).

Cannabis sativa plants are tall and loosely branched, whereas Cannabis indica plants are shorter, conical and have thick, dense branches. Cannabis ruderalis is the runt, rarely growing over 2 feet tall with

thin stems and little branching. Ruderalis has low THC concentrations but larger amounts of CBD and, while mostly excluded in modern Western cannabis cultivation, has been used for centuries in Russian folk medicine. Hybrids are cross-species of indicas and sativas.

While the psychoactive effects do not cleanly cleave, the highs of indica plants are generally more relaxing, while a sativa high tends to be more energetic.

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CONSUMERS DEMONIZING WEED The temperance movement and newspapers helped spread misinformation about cannabis and its users over the last two centuries.

By Chad Crow In 1753, Swedish botanist Carolus Linnaeus formally codified Cannabis sativa, a useful plant cultivated for thousands of years.

Although it was known and used throughout the tropics where it flourished, cannabis was largely introduced to the western world by the 18th-century British Empire, where it enjoyed a long tenure as a practical plant useful for making hemp rope and weaving durable fabric and as a base ingredient for all types of medical research. Unfortunately, by the turn of the 20th century, the dialogue surrounding cannabis began to shift from the plant’s beneficial properties toward an emphasis on its perceived negative psychoactive properties.

In Marihuana, the Forbidden Medicine, Lester Grinspoon and James B. Bakalar explore the question of how cannabis came to be discounted by the medical community, concluding “the The 1936 film Marihuana was part of the intense propaganda campaign against cannabis use and production. | Photo Out Here Visuals / provided

medical use of cannabis was already in decline by 1890. The potency of cannabis preparations was too variable, and individual response to orally ingested cannabis seemed erratic and unpredictable.” In addition to this inability to homogenize the dosage effects of cannabis, research of the plant was hobbled by two other factors: the invention of the hypodermic syringe in the 1850s, allowing water-soluble opiates to be injected for rapid pain relief, and the development of more chemically stable synthetic drugs like aspirin, chloral hydrate and barbiturates.

Ironically, widespread abuse of opiates and alcohol led to the acceleration of the temperance movement in the late19th century and helped birth the demonization of cannabis, with the plant getting caught up in the feverish fervor of late-19th century yellow journalism.

One example is the inflammatory language used to describe this “new” drug in a piece originally published by the Springfield, Massachusetts newspaper The Republican on Dec. 29, 1897: “Southern Arizona and Mexico produce a weed called mariguana (sic), which, mixed with tobacco and smoked, produces a more powerful effect than opium or any other smokable thing. Under its influence even the sedate Mexican becomes noisy as a cowboy and has to be lassoed and put in the calaboose to cool off.”

This rhetoric wasn’t limited to the North American hemisphere. It resonated across the pond with Britain’s Temperance League pressing Parliament to expand restrictions on alcohol and opium abuse at home. The fearmongering ex-

panded to India with vicious rumors claiming that the smoking of the hemp plant led many to a cannabis-induced psychosis.

In proper British fashion, The Indian Hemp Drugs Commission was formed in 1893, with the declared purpose (as described in The Science of Marijuana), to “inquire into the cultivation of the hemp plant in Bengal, the preparation of drugs from it, the trade in these drugs, the effect of their consumption upon the social and moral condition of the people, and the desirability of prohibiting the growth of the plant and the sale of ganja and allied drugs.”

Two years and six volumes later, this exhaustive study concluded that people were definitely not going insane from consuming cannabis. Quite the opposite. In fact, the commission’s authors concluded cannabis was “harmless in moderation, and perhaps in some cases beneficial: that the abuse of it is not so harmful as the abuse of alcohol.”

Despite the findings of this largely forgotten study, as Mexican-American immigrants introduced the casual smoking of cannabis to the southwestern states of America in the last part of the 20th century, newspapers successfully managed to shift the discussion away from the actual plant cannabis and toward its more criminally exotic slang term, marihuana. As a side note, this was common spelling until the Nixon Administration standardized “marijuana.”

“Marihuana is a weed used by people of the lower class and sometimes by soldiers, but those who make larger use of it are prisoners,” wrote the Tucson Citizen in a widely republished 1905 op-ed. “The dry leaves of marihuana, alone or mixed with tobacco, make the smoker wilder than a wild beast. It is said that immediately after the first three or four drafts of smoke … they see everything moving and finally they lose control of their mental faculties.”

This sort of irresponsible journalism not only played to the ever-present nativist fears, but also led to the outright 1915 ban of “marihuana” in the Texas cities of El Paso and Dallas, followed closely by the state of

Utah. In pieces like 1922’s The One Wicked Drug the Lawmakers Forgot, newspapers like Philadelphia Inquirer served to inform the public about the “Insidious Mexican Hasheesh (sic) Which Wrecks the Lives of Its Victims Even More Quickly Than Cocaine, Heroin or Opium.”

Articles like this planted the seeds of misinformation, helping weaponize the term “marihuana” and leading to the creation of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics in 1930. After 1933’s repeal on alcohol prohibition, bureau chief and tireless prohibitionist Harry Anslinger set his sights on cannabis, finally succeeding with the passage of the Marihuana Tax Act of 1937.

A l th o u g h Anslinger and the press succeeded in demonizing cannabis, there were some who understood the stakes at play. Consider this incredible transcript unearthed by High Times of a May 4, 1937 hearing before the House of Representatives Ways and Means Committee, where American Medical Association legislative counsel Dr. William C. Woodward made this statement: “There is nothing in the medicinal use of Cannabis that has any relation to Cannabis addiction. I use the word ‘Cannabis’ in preference to the word ‘marihuana,’ because cannabis is the correct term for describing the plant and its products. The term ‘marihuana’ is a mongrel word that crept into this country over the Mexican border and has no general meaning, except as it relates to the use of Cannabis preparations for smoking. … In other words, marihuana is not the correct term.”

In case you’re still unconvinced, here’s something else to consider. In February of this year, Bob Sechler reported in Austin American-Statesman that Irving, Texas, Rep. Terry Meza introduced House Bill 1196 to effectively replace the phonetic “marihuana” references with the proper term, cannabis, in all official usage across the state of Texas.

Considering that Texas doesn’t even have medical access on the horizon, perhaps we should take a page from its book?

Widespread abuse of opiates and alcohol led to the acceleration of the temperance movement in the late 19th century and helped birth the demonization of cannabis.

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LIFESTYLE PEDIATRIC CANNABIS A local teenager found relief from seizures through THC, but only after a long legal process.

By Nikita Lewchuk Tammy Searcy is a medical cannabis advocate and mother of five. Her daughter, Brianna, has a severe form of epilepsy that causes her to have frequent seizures. The Searcy family has visited a number of doctors throughout Brianna’s life to try to mitigate the effects of her condition, though often with limited success. She is on 10 different pharmaceuticals, all of which are narcotic.

“I’m sitting here going, ‘Wait a minute. We’re on all these meds and we’re still having seizures. What’s the point?’ And at this point, it could be deadly,” Searcy said.

Brianna’s seizures started when she was 28 months old. Throughout the next 14 years, Searcy heard a variety of responses from doctors.

“I was told by a doctor all I could do was pray because she probably didn’t have long to live and they didn’t know what else to do,” she said.

One course of treatment that has worked Tammy for Brianna is medical cannabis.

“I thought, ‘Maybe, just maybe. … And I won’t do anything illegal so [we’ve] got to change the law,’” Searcy said.

Searcy first heard about the effectiveness of medical cannabis from a YouTube video showing a child being administered CBD to the bottom of the foot. The seizures stopped in less than a minute.

After 14 years of uncertainty, medical cannabis provided some hope to the Searcy family. Eager to see the full effects of medical cannabis for her daughter, Searcy has been on the frontlines of the fight to legalize medicinal cannabis in Oklahoma.

“I was fully involved,” she said. “I

spent 16 hours a day, seven days a week petitioning and being at the Capitol. My other kids were standing on the street corners as well, just trying to put my daughter out there.”

Searcy was able to bring attention to her daughter’s situation and raise awareness for how medical cannabis can be used to treat a variety of conditions.

She also caught the attention of Oklahoma Department of Human Services, which argued her activism was detrimental to her children.

Government reprisal DHS took all five of Searcy’s children into custody for a year on the grounds that posting a video of her daughter having a seizure at the state Capitol was irresponsible. They were taken from her Dec. 11, 2017.

“It was all over my activism. …

They told me in the very beginning that if I would just shut my mouth about Searcy [State Question] 788 and admit I was wrong, they would give them back,” Searcy said.

After hiring a lawyer and having the case heard in front of a new judge, she eventually won custody of her children and got them back exactly a year later in December 2018.

“Right after we got the new judge, everything changed. … Now I’m looking at a federal lawsuit for civil rights violations,” she said.

After a discussion with Brianna’s neurologist, Searcy began working toward getting her daughter a medical cannabis card.

“When we started with CBD alone without THC, the change was huge,”

Within 24 hours, she was out of the wheelchair, and within 48 hours, she was riding a horse and saying words again.

Tammy Searcy became a medical cannabis advocate after cannabis made a significant impact on her daughter Brianna’s seizures. | Photo Alexa Ace

Searcy said. “Within 24 hours, she was out of the wheelchair, and within 48 hours, she was riding a horse and saying words again.”

Brianna has been on “whole-plant” medical cannabis for two weeks, and in that time, she has seen continuous improvement.

“Others that have been around her … they can’t believe the difference,” she said. “They’ve said it’s miraculous. It’s like a whole different child.”

Finding hope Searcy’s experience with Green Hope Wellness Clinic in Moore has been positive and welcoming.

“I told her we were going to be getting [it], but we didn’t have her card yet,” Searcy said. “All my money has gone to the lawyer that helped me get my kids back.”

Renee Harper, owner of Green Hope Wellness Clinic in Moore, was able to help Brianna get her card. To get a medical cannabis license, an adult must first have a recommendation from a doctor. For minors, two doctors must sign off on the recommendation.

Harper started Green Hope Wellness in Moore with the aim of giving Oklahoma residents access to medical cannabis. The clinic offers a variety of services. The doctors on staff are qualified to issue medical cannabis recommendations, and several educational resources for patients and family members are also available.

“We just started our pediatric program not too long ago. … Some of the doctors are still leery of doing the first [signature], but after they see some of the children we’re seeing and how bad they need cannabis … they kind of just

warm up and say, ‘Hey, I’ll do one,’” Harper said.

Her goal in starting the clinic was to get patients — both adults and children — off more intense prescription drugs. “[We see] kids with ADHD running around here on Ritalin, and then they’re giving them adult blood pressure medicine to counteract the effects of that,” Harper said. “It’s just awful. …. I encourage everyone, whether they’re pediatric or adults or whatever, to start there anyway just because CBD for some … it will help, and then others will need the THC.” Harper was able to get Brianna her recommendation in a matter of days, much to the relief of her mother.

“Now that we’re treating with wholeplant marijuana, we’re walking in heels … and not falling all over the place,” Searcy said.

In addition to allowing Brianna greater mobility, her treatment with medical cannabis also decreased the frequency and severity of her seizures.

“The following day, the school would not let us administer at school,” she said.

“She did not get the noon dose, and she had a seizure at 12:30. Other than that, she had no seizures at all that next day.”

After passage of SQ788 and being able to medicate her daughter with both CBD and THC, Searcy is relieved and optimistic. Though the fight to keep her daughter safe and healthy is far from over, for the moment, it appears as though her battle for medicinal cannabis has been a success.

“It’s hard to believe that we’re here,” Searcy said. “To think that we’re here now, this many years later … it’s pretty awesome.”

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LIFESTYLE

Making the infused honey

GREENER GREENS

Guyutes chef Matt Pryor and owner Jarrod Friedel use cannabis-infused honey to make salad dressing.

By Matt Dinger and Jacob Threadgill Spring has sprung, and the warmer temperatures pair nicely with cool greens.

This season, that salad can be extra relaxing with the right dressing.

Extract teamed up with the chefs at Guyutes, 730 NW 23rd St., to offer some infused dishes off the beaten path.

Guyutes owner Jarrod Friedel and chef Matt Pryor have created medical cannabis-infused recipes absent of the cannabis aftertaste. This month, they’ve prepared a salad dressing with infused honey.

First, the honey has to be infused, which is a longer process than most THC extractions or infusions.

But before that, the cannabis has to be decarbed. Decarboxylation is the process by which heat separates the THC from the plant matter and readies it for absorption by the liver.

Friedel recommends breaking up the medical cannabis — about 10 grams will be needed to make infused honey — either by hand or with a grinder. He cautions not to grind the flower into a fine powder. Put the

Salad dressing with infused honey 3 tablespoons of fresh lemon juice 2 teaspoons finely grated lemon zest 2 tablespoons honey 1 teaspoon chopped thyme 2 tablespoons Dijon mustard 1 pinch of kosher salt and freshly ground pepper 1/2 cup extra-virgin olive oil

Combine all ingredients except the olive oil in a mixing bowl and whisk thoroughly. While whisking, slowly add the oil. Whisk until fully emulsified. mixed greens strawberries baby radishes goat cheese chopped bacon fried wonton strips

Drizzle lightly over the salad to coat and toss.

cannabis on top of parchment paper on a baking sheet and preheat the oven to 220 degrees Fahrenheit. If the oven rises above 300 degrees Fahrenheit, it will burn the flower and rob it of its medicinal effects.

Once the cannabis is decarbed, fill a Crock-Pot halfway with water and set it on low. Place the cannabis in a cheesecloth and tie it with string. Drop the bundle into a Mason jar, pour a cup and a half of honey inside and put the lid on it. Drop the jar in the Crock-Pot. Make sure the jar is submerged past the level of the honey, but the water doesn’t cover the entire jar.

Every two hours, remove the jar from the water and open the lid to release pressure and submerge the jar again.

Repeat four times, or up to eight hours.

Two four-hour sessions can achieve the same results. Allow the jar to cool before removing the cheesecloth bundle.

“Slow-cookers would also work for people that had actual slow-cookers with timers. They can do a set time for the cooking process,” Pryor said. “So by itself, it’s super, super-duper strong, so that’s why we’re going to go ahead and make it into a salad dressing. You can control your temperature a little bit more so the actual strain came out stronger into the honey than it did any other process.”

For this honey, Friedel used Zsweet Inzanity from Nice Tree, his grow. This particularly strain tested at just over 24 percent THC.

Infused honey allows home cooks to control how much medicine they apply to the salad. | Photo Alexa Ace

To make the dressing, combine lemon juice, lemon zest, honey, mustard, thyme, salt and pepper in a large mixing bowl. While whisking, slowly add the olive oil until emulsified.

“We’ll use probably half a cup; half a cup or more. It all depends on your intensity of the flavor that you want and the intensity of the marijuana that you want,” Pryor said.

Spread the dressing lightly over mixed greens and toss by hand.

“It’s just going to be roughly one and a half spoonfuls. Nothing huge,” Pryor said. “You just want a nice coat. That’s why, even with the amount of THC in there, it’s still not going to be heavy on you. You’re not wanting to drown it.”

Top the salad with strawberries, goat cheese, chopped bacon and fried wonton strips. Pryor recommends also using baby radishes instead of larger ones.

“They’re not as peppery, not as hot. … You’re just using the crunch factor.

They’re tasty that way,” he said.

This recipe makes about six servings.

Additional honey can be used to make more dressing or flavored teas or be stored in a cool, dry place for later use.

Review A refreshing salad hits the spot, especially when the weather gets warmer. The combination of strawberries and radishes provides crispness and sweetness that is well balanced with the addition of salty goat cheese and bacon crumbles. It is becoming a trend with the recipes provided

by Friedel and Pryor, but there is no marijuana aftertaste. After combining all of the ingredients in the vinaigrette, it was balanced between the sweetness and the acidity of the lemon. The fried wontons

The Guyutes salad tops mixed greens with strawberries, goat cheese, chopped bacon and fried wonton strips along with its infused honey dressing. | Photo Alexa Ace

1. Fill a Crock-Pot half full of water, set the temperature to low.

2. Place 10 grams of decarbed marijuana inside a small cheesecloth and tie it up like a sachet with butcher string.

3. Place the sachet inside a Mason jar and pour 1 ½ cups of honey into the jar.

4. Place a lid on the jar, set it inside the Crock-Pot and add more water if necessary to submerge the honey but not the jar completely.

5. Place a lid on the Crock-Pot and set a timer for two hours. Every two hours, carefully remove the jar from the water and remove the lid to release pressure.

6. Replace the lid and return the jar to the water. After eight hours, the honey is infused. This can be done in two four-hour sessions if you do not have eight hours of time.

7. Allow the honey to cool before removing the sachet. Scrape the sides of the sachet and discard or steep in some hot tea for a real fun time.

8. Store the honey in a cool, dark place.

This recipe used Zsweet Inzanity, 24.02 percent THC 10 g x 1000 = 10,000 24.02 percent x 10,000 = 2402 1 cup = 16 tablespoons 24 tablespoons/2402 = 100.08 100.08 mg THC per tablespoon

are a nice replacement for the traditional crouton crunch. The fun thing about this recipe is that you can use many citrus variants if you’d like to try something other than lemon. Pryor said he wanted to use citron but wasn’t able to find any before our test. He also said yuzu would work very well, and those ingredients will likely become more readily available as spring turns to summer.

The salad dressing allows the user to control how much medicine is applied to the dish. There is no guessing game like there is with a baked good that uses infused butter or oil. Since a tablespoon of dressing has 100 milligrams of THC, I used the dressing lightly on the salad, drizzling a few teaspoons. I got a slight body high about 40 minutes after ingestion that lasted about four hours and helped put me to bed around 11:30 p.m. I recommend making sure the vinaigrette is good and emulsified because the infused honey is much heavier than the other ingredients, so it would be easy for it to sink to the bottom and make for an inconsistent dosage. —Jacob Threadgill

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