Debunking 10 Crazy Cannabis Myths with Chris Fontes

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Marge (00:00:42) - Today. Friends, we are busting cannabis myths. We have deeply held beliefs around cannabis, but are they true? Does the science back up those claims? Find out with me which myths are true and which ones are not. With special guest and cannabis expert, Chris Fontes, welcome to Bite Me, the show about edibles where I help you take control of your high life. I'm your host and certified JE Marge, and I love helping cooks make safe and effective edibles at home. I'm so glad you're here, and thank you for joining me today. Joining today. Welcome back friends. Thank you for joining me today. I'm really excited about this episode because the guest that I have with me today knows his shit. So if you're joining me for the first time, I hope you enjoy this episode. And if you're a longtime listener, welcome back. Thanks once again for joining me. And I think you're gonna learn something in this episode as well, no matter what your level of cannabis knowledge is, because I certainly did, and I'm really excited to introduce to you Chris Fontes, the founder and CEO of High Spirits Beverages. He's a dynamic individual with a rich history of innovation and leadership in the cannabis industry and beyond the perfect guest to help bust some of those cannabis myths that we all carry. So without further ado, please enjoy this fascinating conversation with Chris as we bust some cannabis myths.

Marge (00:02:10) - All right, everyone. Today I am joined by Chris and he's gonna be busting some cannabis myths for us. Some of these commonly held beliefs that I think it's time they just need to die, I think. Anyway, but before we get started, Chris, could you take a minute and just introduce us? Introduce yourself to the listeners of Bite Me?

Chris (00:02:31) - Absolutely. And thanks for having me on the show. I'm excited to be here. Thank you. Uh, my name is Chris. I'm the founder and CEO of High Spirits Beverages, as well as Troja Mars Cannabis. Uh, we were the first company to use Delta nine from hemp in an intentional way to create products and market those products as D nine products. And, uh, the brand Trojan Horse was the initial brand to do that, and it's evolved into a beverage brand called High Spirits, which is currently exploding. Uh, for those of you that aren't familiar with THC Beverages, you should get familiar. It's a fantastic, uh, option for consumption. And, uh, on top of that, I'm involved in multiple trade associations. I'm the, uh, co-chair of policy at Cannabis Beverage, uh, association, hemp Beverage Alliance, national Industrial Hemp Council. And I'm also on the, uh, board of directors for Colorado Hemp Association.

Marge (00:03:15) - So, you know, with thing or two about cannabis, it sounds like. I know, I know

Chris (00:03:18) - A couple things. Yeah. Yeah,

Marge (00:03:19) - , and I'm glad you mentioned the beverages too, because I've been talking about those for a while on my show. I just feel like, oh, great. They're an often overlooked way to consume cannabis in the edible space, and they're definitely growing in popularity. I love them. And in the states, you also have a lot more options than we have here in Canada, which is lucky for you, .

Chris (00:03:38) - Yeah, absolutely. Yeah.

Marge (00:03:39) - And again, once before we get into it, once again, would you be willing to talk a little bit about your own cannabis journey?

Chris (00:03:46) - Yeah, certainly. Uh, so I started using cannabis initially when I was about 14, uh, which is too young, but also not incredibly uncommon, especially in the days when it wasn't legal in anywhere, you know, anywhere. Um, and, uh, I was sort of peer pressured into it, like I think a lot of, you know, young, uh, freshmen in high school probably were, and I enjoyed it, but it didn't click for me probably for about another year. Um, I had another opportunity to try when I was closer to 15, maybe 14 and a half. And, uh, that time it stuck and I was like, oh, yeah, this is a thing I'm doing now. Um, so naturally, like you do when you're a consumer, uh, in the nineties in Southern California where there's more options to to good bud than most other places in the country, you consume a lot and you start, we'll say, participating in the legacy market.

Chris (00:04:38) - Uh, and I did that up until I was 21. Uh, when I was 21. I had my firstborn son and, uh, remember folks, this hasn't always been legal. Uh, and I didn't want to lose my kid over something silly like, like cannabis, which cannabis isn't silly, but it's, you know, my kid's more important . So, uh, I, I quit consumption altogether. Uh, and I, and I stayed cannabis free. It wasn't in my life early, in a tangible way, uh, for about 15, maybe 16 years. And in this time I had, um, developed all kinds of other health issues and health concerns and things like that. And one of those was insomnia. I was taking Ambien every night just to sleep, uh, for, for about a decade. Um, and, and it wasn't always, uh, Ambien, it was other medications as well, just to try to knock me out.

Chris (00:05:28) - And at some point, you know, I was, I was buying things off Amazon randomly at like 2:00 AM that I don't remember buying and just doing weird stuff. And I'm like, how long before I decide to go for a drive on Abient or something really dangerous? So I said, there's gotta be another option. And I ended up, uh, traveling to Vegas and bought some chocolates while I was out there and was reacquainted with my passion for cannabis and then said, yep, this is what I'm doing. Instead, I'm, I'm getting off the Ambien and all the other, I've all was on a lot of painkillers for my back and stuff like that. Kind of ditched all that in, in favor of cannabis. And around this time as well, probably about a year after I started re consuming, uh, I was a software engineer at the time and I had an opportunity to build some software for a new company. And lo and behold, through the process of of evolution, I ended up being the founder and CEO of that company, uh, and launched that and that was hemp exchange. Uh, so that, that dove me into the hemp side of the space, uh, really early on in 2018 and, uh, been evolving with the industry ever since.

Marge (00:06:33) - That's amazing. That's quite the story. And it does remind me a little bit of my own, 'cause I started, I think the first time I tried cannabis. I was about 14 as well, and my friend and I snuck out of my house to smoke a joint. I did not get high to this day. I mean, it could have been oregano that we bought. I have no idea. Right. But where I was in the early nineties, uh, all you could get really at the time was hash. So once I tried that, then, you know, I, that's what I was into. And there was really good hash going around at the time. And then I had my first daughter at the age of 20, and my relationship with cannabis has ebbed and flowed over the years because I quit after getting pregnant. Of course. Yeah. And, uh, yeah, here I am today.

Marge (00:07:15) - But it sounds like you have tons of experience with cannabis and the fact that you were able to overcome, you know, the usage of ambient and other addictive painkillers with cannabis is quite remarkable. And I love hearing those types of stories because it just shows you can manage those aspects of your life with something a lot less harmful than a pharmaceutical. And there's always a place for pharmaceuticals. I, I totally see that. But if you can, if make something like cannabis work for you, then why not try it out because it's so much better for you?

Chris (00:07:48) - Absolutely. I, I'm a big general believer in, uh, in eastern and western medicine sort of coming together. It's, it's what's actually effective and what actually works. Right? Right. And western medicine is beneficial for a lot of very unique things. Uh, if I get strep throat, I want an antibiotic, like, hands down. Exactly. Uh, but that doesn't mean that every drug that's produced under this framework is necessarily good for you. And I think it's, you know, American consumers, uh, really, uh, consumers nationally or, uh, worldwide need to kind of understand a little bit better about what they're putting in their body and what it does. And I think that we've all been sort of trained to just sort of follow the guidelines of what we're taught is good for you. And I think we're realizing now that, I won't say that there's intentional misleading there, though. There is. Um, but, but more or less people have just gotten lazy, right? Right. People don't read their nutrition labels. They don't think about what they're cooking, what they're making, what they're ingesting. They just assume if it's on the shelf, it's safe.

Marge (00:08:44) - Right. And yeah, sometimes it's easy to overlook the list of side effects with those pills and potions that you're getting from your doctor. So, yeah. And the side effects, as we know from cannabis are, well, there is no list of side effects. They're pretty minimal. So . Yeah. Yeah. Um, yeah. So why don't we get into busting some of these cannabis myths, because let's, I think that's a, a good place to start. Now, of course, a lot of these have to do with edibles because that's what I'm passionate about, but, and that's what the listeners of the show are pass passionate about as well. So the first thing I wanted to me to ask about, and because I used to see that I used to work in a dispensary, and I saw this all the time, edibles that were labeled sativa or indica. Can you talk about that? Because consumers would often come in and ask, oh, I'm looking for the sativa edibles 'cause they keep me up, or the, the indica edibles will help me sleep.

Chris (00:09:34) - Yeah, placebo is a hell of a thing, isn't it? Right,

Marge (00:09:37) - . Um,

Chris (00:09:38) - So this, this requires a little bit of, of backstory knowledge before I can really get into the myth here. So this concept of, of, uh, of, uh, sativa or an indica or some sort of hybrid, the concept itself is fairly faulty. And, you know, botanists and scientists in the cannabis space now, uh, they've reclassified, uh, the different species and subspecies of cannabis and, and the different, uh, groupings and those terms aren't really accurate, and it turns out they never really work. Now, that said, uh, those terms survived decades and decades and decades of bro science. And I think we'll find, I'll use the term bro science a lot in this, uh, podcast, probably because in absence of the ability to do proper scientific studies, uh, thanks to, uh, being a controlled substance planetarily, um, it was left to the underground legacy market to figure out, uh, the science and frankly, really not qualified to be scientists.

Chris (00:10:38) - They're growers, they're businessmen, entrepreneurs, businesswomen. They're not scientists. And so a lot of the things they came out with are, or stuck onto or taught, weren't really accurate. And this is one of those things where your dealer would tell you, or even your grower would tell you, this is sativa, this is an indica, et cetera. But those classifications don't really hold true, uh, scientifically speaking. So how does this impact the consumer? Well, the consumer has heard the story and it's continually perpetuated to this day through marketing efforts from different, uh, cannabis companies. That sativa, uh, makes you tired, or sorry, uh, energetic and upbeat and ready to go. And indica makes you tired. People say indica means inda couch, right? And that's also not true. Um, we thought it was because of the particular cannabinoid, terpene and flavonoid profiles of short bushy plants, which we would call an indica, typically because they shared those genes all had some similar genetics, uh, based on where they were, how they grew, et cetera.

Chris (00:11:37) - And sativa, long and lengthy thin leafs, uh, lots of space and more climates kind of developed a similar cannabinoid profile to each other and similar terpene profiles to some extent. And, uh, had those, uh, kind of uplifting effects. So there was some correlation early on to these designations. However, there was no causation and there still is no causation. Um, so to that end, these terms are kind of irrelevant. However, since they're so prominent amongst the market, cannabis companies are using it as a marketing tool to try to help the consumer understand what they may feel if they take this product. And the way they do this is quite literally someone will smoke a joint of a new batch and they'll say, well, that put me in the couch, put it down as a indica. Oh man, that made me py, put it down as a sativa.

Chris (00:12:22) - And that's it. That's how they determine the classification of the product. Now, there's a couple problems with this. One placebo's a hell of a thing, right? If if you think it's going to create a certain sort of impact to you, it probably will. Um, and on top of that, cannabis in general, uh, the cannabinoids really sort of act as an ex expon of your current mood. If you take an edible and no one tells you if it's sativa or indica, and you are, it's like 11 o'clock and you're all pumped for a hike, and you take an edible and go for a hike, you're gonna say, man, that was definitely a sativa that had me pumped. I could give you that same edible at 11:00 PM when you're already a little tired and it's gonna knock you out. And you're gonna be like, man, that indica put me in my bed last night.

Chris (00:13:02) - I was totally zonked. And it could be the exact same product, and you would probably not realize that. So this is common across all cannabis consumption, but edibles, particularly with the point of the show, which I'm building up to, is extremely interesting because what steers the effects of a, of a cannabis experience is a combination of your primary cannabinoids, your minor cannabinoids, your terpenes, which are a primary driver, and other things that we're learning. Now, there's certain esters and, and volatiles, uh, in cannabis that we think now are having some impact on that. Uh, additionally, well, when you make an edible, almost always you're using distillate. And when you make distillate, the terpenes get burned off in the process. And in fact, a lot of the miners do too these days. So you end up with a primarily THC only edible, which has no steering effects.

Chris (00:13:55) - It's not going to make you excited, or it's not going to make you tired, or it's not gonna make you focused. Uh, they just, they just don't do that. Um, you can have minor cannabinoids introduced, uh, like let's say THCV for example, or CVN for example, and then you could sort of steer, but that's not really sativa or indica either. It's just a different cannabinoid having a different effect on your body. And so there really is no such thing as sativa, hybrid or indico when it comes to edibles, especially, uh, because the steering effects don't exist. Now, you could have like a live resin edible, uh, which would probably still retain a good amount of terpenes, but even if they're there, when you ingest it into your stomach, the terpenes get filtered out by your liver. So even if they exist in the edible, they're not making it to your bloodstream. There's a couple heavy ones that might make a little bit of it, like mercene, for example. But a good portion of them, the, the whole majority of them will not even get to your bloodstream. So even if it's in the edible, it doesn't make a huge difference at the end of the day for the experience.

Marge (00:14:54) - So basically what you're saying then is most of the edibles that you're gonna find in dispensaries that are labeled sativa or indica, it's a total misnomer. And I saw that all the time too, but it's kind of frustrating 'cause I guess manufacturers and LPs and and people involved in the industry know that consumers understand cannabis in that binary of sativa and and indica. And does that mean they're just not taking the time to sort of educate consumers?

Chris (00:15:22) - Yeah, and I can kind of explain why, uh, as a brand owner, there's this, there's this term out there when you're in consumer packaged goods, that the market's always right, even if they're not right, they're gonna put their dollars where their dollars want to go, whether they believe the truth or understand the truth or not. And you can try to educate 'em. But something that's really intrinsic with bro science is it's deeply ingrained why? Because the culture has baked these bro science concepts into it. And so it's like sort of a core, uh, uh, piece of that religion, if you will, of cannabis consumption. And so it's sort of, uh, like a golden calf. It's not supposed to be messed with. And people are really entrenched on it, and they think it's true because their buddy that grew for 30 years and, you know, the green triangle in California told 'em, and they know everything there is to know.

Chris (00:16:10) - And it's just really hard to reeducate consumers. So what happens is you spend all this money towards reeducation, and then the consumers just buy a different product 'cause it doesn't say sativa or indica on it, and then you go outta business. And so it's sort of this, this problem where the education needs to be there, but it's sort of a catch 22. And it, you can't get the education out if you don't have the dollars to do it. And you don't have the dollars to do it unless you market a product that the consumer buys. But this long entrenched incorrect data is, is moving buying habits. So I, I used to, when I first got in space, I was kind of frustrated at companies that did this. Uh, but now I understand having several years in the space that even if they don't want to do it, it's really tricky to navigate your way out of it and still run a successful business,

Marge (00:16:54) - Right? So it's sort of a problem that perpetuates itself almost because like you said, you could, you could educate a consumer, but then at the end of the day, they're like, well, I just want, I just want that sativa edible because that's what I believe is best for me. Or the, the person that you talked about coming in and, uh, having a buddy that grew for 30 years and I want the highest THC stuff you got in the store. Like, I saw that kind of thing all the time. And it didn't matter what you said to them because they would think you were the idiot . Yeah, of course, of course. The way around. And so that, that's a pretty great explanation as to why companies sort of keep moving in that direction. So I'm really glad you brought that up because it does help people understand why this is the way it is. And I guess it's just one of those things that's gonna take probably a long time to rectify. Yeah. But that's why we have to do things like this, have conversations like this.

Chris (00:17:41) - Absolutely. And podcasts like yours are so important for the consumer because it's really the only way they're getting this education.

Marge (00:17:47) - Right? Right. Now you already touched on terpenes, so I hope we can dig into that a little bit because you mentioned that there's this, this idea that most edibles have zero terpenes. And you kind of touched on that and said some do have some terpenes, but by the time we digest it, they're, they're not gonna really, they're not gonna pass their digestive system. So let's talk about that for a minute.

Chris (00:18:09) - Yeah. So, you know, we've, we've been thinking with some scientific research to back this up, although we're still learning. So this is, there's room for, uh, some alteration of what we know now. But what we suspect now is terpenes do a good portion of the steering, right? THC would maybe be the throttle in your, in your vehicle and terpenes of the steering wheel, uh, to some extent. Now it's way more complicated than that. Um, but, but loosely for this point of this conversation, take that into consideration. So those terpenes are semi volatile, right? Which means it doesn't take much heat for them to turn into a gas and disappear. And when you're extracting and distilling product, the, the, the reason you're distilling your e extract from cannabis is because usually it's extracted with ethanol in, in any mass produced. So this is the same with like vanilla extract and a lot of other herbal extracts.

Chris (00:18:58) - Ethanol's a very common, in fact, if you think about what a tincture is, tincture is traditionally alcohol that is extracted some sort of herb. Uh, so in cannabis we use ethanol, uh, you know, food grade ethanol. And, but we don't want that in the end product, right? You don't wanna be selling gummies with, with ethanol in it. So you have to get rid of the ethanol. And the way you do that is just like a whiskey still. You're, you're distilling it or like you would distill water so you get it up to a certain temperature. So the ethanol burns off. Well, in that process, it's taking other things with it that have a similar, uh, point at which the temperature converts to solid into a gas. Um, and so you lose some of those miners, you lose all, almost all the terpenes, if not all the terpenes and distillate, uh, and flavonoids a lot of the, you know, those, those volatiles especially like the ERs and and things of that nature, they're all gone.

Chris (00:19:47) - And so it's, it really boils down to you're, you're really getting your primary cannabinoids into an oil and that's about it. And that's typically what we make edibles out, uh, from because it's the most cost effective, uh, way to do that. Now you could do a live resin or like a bubble hash or a rosin or something else to maintain some of those terpenes to put into edibles. But again, if you're trying to run a business, you're paying a lot of extra money for an oil that has some compounds in it that ultimately aren't gonna make any difference and the end user's experience. And so it's typically not done. Now that said, we actually do sell live resin edibles, and we do so not so much for the terpenes, but for the other miners and the acidic version, right? With that heat during distillation, CBDA converts to C-B-D-T-H-C-A converts to delta nine.

Chris (00:20:36) - So you have these, uh, these acidic, uh, carboxyl groups that are attached to the molecules that come off when heat is applied. And so distillates all, we'll say con not converted in the way that like delta eight is a conversion, but it's, it's through heat, it's losing its carboxyl groups. So you're getting that version of the product, um, which means you don't get any of the, the potential benefits of having those acidic, uh, compounds in your product. So we make a live resin gummy intentionally to maintain some of those acidic, uh, carboxyl groups in the product. 'cause it gives you a more holistic, uh, cannabinoid profile from the plant. And it's overall a better experience. Uh, but I, I don't believe the terpenes are doing anything for our consumers with our libris edibles.

Marge (00:21:18) - Right? So if you want those terpenes, you should be combusting or vaporizing versus ingesting. Yes. How would that differ for someone who's making their edibles at home and they've done their D carb and they infuse it into a fat, then they make a, a pop brownie?

Chris (00:21:33) - Yeah, great question. So I haven't actually seen any testing to qualify what I'm about to say, but I suspect a lot of those terpenes are gonna be lost in that, in that process as well. I think de carbing is probably gonna lose a good portion of the terpenes. Um, I mean a good test would be to, uh, decarb your flour and then smoke it and see if it feels different than, uh, you know, before you, before you did that. Um, I guess actually it should be the same. Well, I don't know. You've really posed a good question here that I don't think I have a solid answer for. I would suspect though that the terpenes are lost during it, at minimum the cooking process.

Marge (00:22:07) - Right? I tend to feel the same way. Yeah. I've had a few chefs tell me the same thing because the decarb process and then again you're cooking them temps in your to make your fat and then of course you're also baking it or cooking it into something as well. Yep. So there, I think there are methods to sort of preserve those per or terpenes when you're cooking at home, but then you lose out on the potency. So there's always a trade off in a lot of those scenarios. So it doesn't really matter which way you go, you're not really consuming edibles for the terpene profile. You gotta save that for your other methods of consumption.

Chris (00:22:41) - That's right.

Marge (00:22:42) - Yeah. Now, CBD, does it cancel out THC? No, that was one of the myths that I've seen.

Chris (00:22:51) - Yeah. So when we first launched our company, um, the product that we launched with to sort of kick off the hemp derive D nine space in the USA, uh, was a 10 to one ratio. Actually our first one was a 15 to one ratio product. So 15 part CBD to one part THC, which means you means you had 10 milligrams THC to 150 milligrams of CBD. And we really hit a wall that we didn't expect we were gonna hit when we first launched with people going without much CBD, you'll never feel it. You could take a thousand milligrams, you'd never feel the THC, that's just ludicrous. Um, this is not true at all. Now, it's true that CBD does have an effect with THC and it does mellow some of the sharper edges of the symptoms you would experience, uh, while being in impaired by or having a psychoactivity, uh, from Delta nine CHC.

Chris (00:23:41) - And so there's a benefit there and it does change the effects a little bit or modulates them more accurately. Uh, but it doesn't negate. And that's the big difference. And so for people that are high tolerance consumers, uh, that high frequency, high tolerance consumers, they push back on CBD because they're trying to get that sharpness back that they've lost because they consume too much. And essentially when you consume too much all of your receptors downregulate, which means they start minimizing the amount of, uh, receptor sites you have because it's like, whoa, we're getting too much of this. We're gonna slow down and, and turn a bunch of these receptor sites off so we can't get that much anymore 'cause we're getting inundated, which makes it harder to experience the the effects you're after. And so they want that sharpness because that's what they're trying to get the reality. If you start your, if you start your journey with a good amount of CBD in your product and you don't over consume, you're less likely to downregulate in that way. And you're more likely to be able to experience what you're trying to achieve every time instead of getting to a point where now you eat an edible just to feel kind of normal, but you never really get high anymore. Mm-Hmm, . Um, so I'm not sure if that answers the original question at this point. 'cause I kind of rabbit trail a little bit.

Marge (00:24:53) - I think. No, it does because you're basically suggesting that CBD doesn't cancel out the THC and if you consume an edible that has 15 times the THC, but that THC is at a thousand milligrams, uh, and depending on your tolerance level, you're still gonna get really, really high

Chris (00:25:09) - . Oh yeah, yeah, absolutely.

Marge (00:25:12) - It's not gonna cancel that. Which leads me to my next question, which is a lot of the times you hear that if you get too high, you can take CBD to sort of bring you back down. Can you talk about that? Because I have heard many times that that's actually a myth as well.

Chris (00:25:27) - So it's, it's a myth that it'll bring you down, but what CBD does is it helps modulate the experience. And specifically with a Delta nine high, what it does is it calms down the paranoia, right? Uh, it calms down your tachycardia or your racing heart. It calms down sort of that, um, we'll say impending doom where you want to just kind of crawl up into a corner and you're afraid you're stuck like that for the rest of your life and you think you might be dying. It calms down the negative side effects, but it doesn't make you less high. It just makes the bad part of being too high not as bad. So it's more tolerable. You can, you can write it out easier, right? Uh, but there are some problems with this still, right? If you eat an edible of CBD, it's gonna be an hour and a half before it kicks in.

Chris (00:26:12) - Well, by that time, some of your THC is probably starting to mellow out po potentially depending on when you took it and when you got too high. Uh, and so it's hard to tell, is it the CBD that's making me feel better or is it just time? Right? If I've just been high long enough and it's starting to wear off a little bit. Uh, but I do believe that if you can get it into your system fast enough, it will start to have those mitigating effects against the negative side effects and therefore you will feel better even though it's not bringing you down per se.

Marge (00:26:40) - So it, like you said, it'll make being too high, a little more tolerable so you can get through it without having to call 9 1 1 essentially, which is always a good thing. . Yeah.

Chris (00:26:49) - Right. Yeah. And you know, I don't fault anyone when they feel like they need to call 9 1 1. Like if you feel like you need to call nine one one, call nine one one. But the reality is, if it's because you're high, they don't do anything for you. Right? They'll bring you some water and they'll check your blood pressure and they'll be like, yep. Turns out you're high. Just hang out in this hospital bed and a thousand dollars later you'll go home. 'cause suddenly you'll be sober and be like, why am I here?

Marge (00:27:12) - Right? Yeah. Now, as far as CBD goes though, to bring down your high, I mean there, are there some people that, that might not work for just because of their unique biology?

Chris (00:27:22) - Oh, I think so. Uh, I think something that's a, a big misnomer is that THC always makes people feel X this terpene always makes people feel y it's so variable. Um, and here's a great example. We're talking about those high tolerance, high frequency consumers, and they're wanting to chase that sharpness. And a lot of them feel like the CB ddus it out for 'em. Mm-Hmm. . I also know people that are high tolerance, high frequency users that when they introduce CBD with their THC, they get too high, they get obliterated and they're like, I can't do that anymore. Right? In fact, when we started making our edibles, we were, uh, a friend of mine from high school actually had started his own cannabis, uh, gummy company. And I said, Hey man, are you willing to take a shot and make these edibles for the first time in history that are like this?

Chris (00:28:06) - And he said, yeah, let's do it. Well, they're a small batch company and the pots that they make there, they make a special type of gummy that's very particular, you have to mess with it a lot during the process. It's not a set it and forget it process. And because of that, they use an open pot when they're boiling their gummy material. And as you can imagine, when you pour distillate into a hot, open pot, some of it evaporates into the air and you inhale it and just like you're doing dabs all day. So him and his entire team were basically used to ripping dabs most of the day while doing their job because that's how they had to function. And this was early enough that respirators weren't being used. And some common sense PPE wasn't being used. So all him and his entire team were massively tolerant. They were, they were inhaling distillate all day long for the last several years. We brought him our distillate that was 15 part C, BD to one part THC and had 'em cook it. And he said, everyone got so high that they had to shut down the office

Marge (00:29:02) - and

Chris (00:29:02) - Everyone had to just go home for the day and call Ubers to get home because they were too high to drive. Wow. He said, from now on we have to do your stuff after hours when everyone else goes home because everyone in the building gets too high. And that's wild. So, right. So some people the CBD will, uh, make their experience not as sharp and for other people it's gonna intensify it and all that to say, yeah, people react to these compounds differently. And while you could safely say like 80% of people will probably fall in this range of effects, there's always that 10% on either side that's gonna go wildly extreme the other direction.

Marge (00:29:35) - Right. So if you're using it to, as a method to bring yourself down, you've gotten too high. At least know how it affects you before you do that. Yeah.

Chris (00:29:42) - Because otherwise

Marge (00:29:43) - It'll make things worse. Yeah. And you don't want that. Now as far as edibles go, edibles the same as inhaling cannabis. Let's talk about that myth for a minute.

Chris (00:29:52) - Ah, no, they are completely different. In fact, uh, so again, the plant really makes, uh, the, the two primary cannabinoids we'll talk about is THCA and CBDA. When you're buying your flower from your dispensary or from your plug or outta your home grow, uh, you pull your flower out of, it's gonna be predominantly THCA and or CBDA. This is the acidic form that again, if you were to consume straight THCA, it has no effects 'cause it doesn't bind to your receptors in that manner. So what happens is when you spark that joint and that flame hits the flower and it turns into smoke, that combustion converts the THCA to delta nine THC, and it creates CBDA into CBD. Well, you inhale that it goes into your lungs through a perfusion in your lungs or gas exchange, just like with oxygen, it gets right into your blood immediately.

Chris (00:30:43) - So in your blood there is delta nine and that is the compound that is binding to your receptors. Now, when you consume via in edible, we already talked about how the decarb ation process doesn't happen with your lighter. Like it doesn't a joint, it happens when it's being distilled typically, and then it's cooked. Even if you're making edibles at home, it's cooked. That's, it's going to be decarb. You're going to be eating delta nine. However, your liver does not put delta nine in your bloodstream. You have an enzyme in your liver that actually processes this cannabis oil. And in that processing delta nine converts to 11 hydroxy delta nine THC. So what happens is 11 hydroxy is the compound that gets into your bloodstream, not delta nine by itself. So it really is an actual different compound and people can have wildly different experiences. My wife for example, she can hit the vape cart, she can hit live resin high THCA vape cart 5, 6, 7 times and feel pretty good.

Chris (00:31:40) - Two milligrams of ingestibles is her limit before she starts having panic attacks. And Right. She's tried to increase that and she can't. And for whatever her reason, her body's super sensitive to 11 hydroxy delta nine HC. There's a caveat here that I want to add because it's really interesting. This is true for all edibles and all inhalable except for beverage. Beverage is an, is an exam, uh, an exclusion from this rule. And the reason is in order to get the oil to homogenize into a water base, you have to emulsify it. And in this process of emulsification to get your liquid suspension with the THC into the water, you don't want all the T HC sitting on the bottom and you drink the first half and feel nothing and then all of a sudden you get it all on the bottom. Right. And especially thinking a big barrel when you're making thousands of cans of something every can needs to be the same exact milligrams.

Chris (00:32:28) - And to do that, you need really good suspension or homogenization through, through everything. Um, so in this process, the particles of THC, which are really resonance, really sticky and bind together in these big clumps, they get broken apart and then encapsulated into something that will stick to the water. Well, because those molecules are so much smaller, they're, they typically come in nanoparticle size, which is sub 100 nanometers. They're small enough to skip phase one metabolization. So what that means is to get it into water, you need to essentially make the molecule small enough that it no longer gets metabolized through the liver and therefore you get an ingested delta nine that stays delta nine and hits your blood like delta nine.

Marge (00:33:12) - That's very interesting because my next question was talking about drinks are more like an inhalation high. So is that sort of the idea then?

Chris (00:33:20) - That's exactly correct. Right. Because you're getting that delta nine through ingestion, but it's going right to your bloodstream instead of being converted, it's going to feel much more like an inhalation high. And again, my wife being an example of someone that has extreme reactions to 11 hydroxy delta nine CHC, she can drink beverages and have a great time. Right. Her tolerance is a little higher. Uh, she can do about five milligrams in beverages. Yeah.

Marge (00:33:44) - I was just gonna ask if she can drink a little bit more than the two, because two milligrams is in the world of edibles, like extremely low. Although I've met people who have one milligram tolerances as well. But then again with edibles, I've met people who could consume 600 and still operate Mm-Hmm. , I don't understand.

Chris (00:34:02) - Yeah. I think, I think there's more people out there that have that incredibly low tolerance than we realize. And I think we didn't realize it before because who is making one milligram edibles in 1998? Right? Yeah. Nobody, nobody, you didn't, you didn't know how many milligrams was in it and the only way you had any idea was you ate one and said it feels strong, it feels weak. Right? But the people doing this are high tolerance, high frequency consumers, and they're giving it to their high tolerance, high frequency friends. And someone's like, I want to try and you give 'em a quarter of a cookie and they have a horrible experience. Well was it two milligrams or was it 30 milligrams? Nobody really knows. And so those low tolerance consumers, I think in the past they had said, I wanna try that they have a horrible experience 'cause it's way too much for them. They're like, I'm never doing it again. But now that we're quantifying the milligrams in products, we have an opportunity to allow people with a really low tolerance to eat low pro uh, low milligram products. And so they can still have that good experience without getting burned the first time they try it.

Marge (00:34:58) - Right? Yeah, that's very true. And thank goodness for the legal market because of that. Because even now, like if somebody gives me gifts, me an edible and they haven't tested it in any way and they have no idea what the potency is, I won't eat it. Yeah. Because I kind of know the range where I'm at. But if it's a homemade edible and they're like, well, I don't know, I thought it was strong, then I'm basically eating that edible on a hope and a prayer . Yeah. Uh, or out, well, because it could be a hundred milligrams, it could be five and you know, one end of that spectrum, I won't feel anything in the other end of the spectrum. I'm having that panic attack. So yeah. You know, it's, it's pretty risky. But when you have legal market edibles, a lot of the times I'll direct people that if they have access to it that way first, so they can start at that one milligram edible Yeah.

Marge (00:35:45) - And work their way up. And then when they have some confidence, if they're making their own at home, then they have at least a benchmark of what their tolerance is and how to sort of figure out how to make edibles in that range. Yeah. And then they can also gift them to other people and be like, you know, I've calculated this to be about this much. Yep. And when you gift them and you can give somebody that idea, it's so much safer than just being like, here, try it out and let me know what you think. And then yeah, chaos is serious. Exactly. Yeah. Now as far as, um, we'll switch gears a little bit here. There's the myth that hemp is the male plant and marijuana is the female plant.

Chris (00:36:23) - Yeah. This is just a boldface lie. I'm not really sure where this, uh, originally came from. Um, but I think there's, there's general confusion around the terms cannabis, hemp and marijuana, especially in the US where we have a very robust hemp program that is making products that are virtually the same, if not exactly the same as the marijuana program. So the, the terminology here is really muddied for most of the consumers. Uh, and back in the day, again, going to that bro science, uh, this is what was taught for some reason. And I don't know if, if math, I, I doubt like real growers believed this per se, uh, but I think consumers holistically did. And the reality is it couldn't be further from the truth. Um, hemp is a made up term. It is in the US it is a legal term. Uh, previously to it being a legal term in western civilizations, before we called it marijuana, it was often referred to as hemp.

Chris (00:37:19) - Why? Because for thousands and thousands, if not millions of years, we've been using the hemp varietals, uh, as a species to make rope twine, textiles, uh, all sorts of things. In fact, it's really interesting in, in, uh, during World War II in the us uh, while cannabis was already completely illegal and you couldn't grow it, we realized that we were running short of hemp supplies and we couldn't get imports because we're in the middle of a war. So, uh, the US actually said, Hey temporarily, not only is this not illegal, but we're gonna pay you if you grow hemp. And they had this whole, um, he hemp for victory, uh, reel that they would play at movie theaters to encourage farmers to jump in and start growing hemp again. Uh, but hemp is cannabis. Marijuana is cannabis. It's all cannabis. And just like canines, there's a wide variety of we'll say phenotypes and genotypes within that species.

Chris (00:38:16) - So, uh, when you think of retaining some cannabinoids out of your plant, those are typically going to be the shorter bushier fat plants with the big fat colas of buds on them that are technically a flower. And we're gonna either smoke those or extract those to get the can. We're maximizing cannabinoids, right? That's a type one chemo type of cannabis high THC, little to no, CBD type two is a balance of THC to C, B, D type three is high C, b, d, low THC. And those are all those bushier Christmas tree looking plants. But then you have type four chemo types, type four chemo types are predominantly grown for either fiber or grain. And they look drastically different. They don't look like, uh, Christmas trees, they almost look more like bamboo. You go right up next to each other, they get 14 feet tall.

Chris (00:39:05) - They don't extend sideways very much. Um, most of flowering is the very, very top instead of all up and down, uh, the stock. And we use those for different things. Hemp seed for, for feed and for human consumption for food. It's really good in omega threes and proteins. It's actually, hemp is kind of a wonder food actually. Um, and we use 'em for fiber. We use 'em for animal bedding, we use it for bioplastics. We can do lots with those varietals or those, uh, chemo types of, of plant or or or subspecies of, of cannabis. However, again, hemp is just a made up word to try to define bat stuff. Right. And in the US we've muddied it 'cause we've made an arbitrary distinction that hemp is below 0.3%. THC, it's an arbitrary number and it has nothing to do with the science of the plant.

Chris (00:39:50) - It's just a legal term. Marijuana has been considered the drug type, what you get cannabinoids from. But again, it's muddy because in the US we're not growing a ton for fiber and textiles, we're growing for cannabinoids. So the whole thing is a giant misnomer. And I'll also share that when you're getting flowers out of your plant, that is a female plant. Right. Period. So it doesn't matter if it's hemp or it's marijuana or even if it's a type four fiber, if there's flowers on top, uh, that is a female plant because the, the flower is the female reproductive organ that's out there to try to catch the pollen from the male plants.

Marge (00:40:28) - Right. So hemp derived anything is still from a female plant. Yeah. It's just the morphology of the plant is distinctly different because it's being grown more for the seed or the fiber or that kind of thing.

Chris (00:40:40) - Well, uh, here in the states anyway, when we use hemp derived products, the plants look indistinguishable from a marijuana plant. Okay. It looks, smells, it's identical. It's that it's that short stocky Christmas tree with the big fat buds. 'cause that's where you get the most of the cannabinoids from. Now that doesn't mean that you can't get cannabinoids from those other other varietals, but no one in the states right now in a big way that I'm aware of is growing large grain or fiber crops and then trying to pull cannabinoids out of them. Uh, because you can grow these stockier plants with way more cannabinoids. Now that's a, we could talk about a percentage of yield by acre for different chemo types. It's a different topic, but, uh, hemp here in the US anyway looks exactly like marijuana in the US You can't tell the difference.

Marge (00:41:24) - Right. That's very interesting. And it is, it is so muddied. 'cause I see even in Canada, people would come into the dispensary. Sadly, a lot of them were older folk who had seen something on the, the internet and they're like, I want more of this. And they'd show me a little bottle and it would be a little bottle of like hemp oil Yeah. That you could buy at the grocery store and take, you know, sprinkle on your salad or whatever. But they had paid obscene amounts of money for it. Right. Which was like, obviously some mar company was out there marketing to these people and they thought that it was the same thing, but sadly it wasn't. So I'm glad we talked about that. Now can we talk about the term marijuana itself being a racist term?

Chris (00:42:04) - Yeah. So this has also been academically proven to be false. Now that doesn't mean that it wasn't used in in racist tonalities, especially in the US during, uh, or the original prohibition. Um, Henry Ann Slinger, uh, which really pushed, uh, the anti-marijuana rhetoric in the States. Uh, first, uh, before Nixon did by several decades. Uh, he was heavily racist. And he said some really horrible things that I don't even generally like repeating. Um, but you can Google 'em and find them. And they're quite shocking. I mean things like, they're just absolutely absurd to say in, in, you know, as a human. Um, and because of that, because of the, the racist tendencies of an slinger and those policies, and then further by the racist tendencies of like the Nixon administration, when the Controlled substance act came out, there's this concept that marijuana is an inherently racist term.

Chris (00:42:53) - And the reality is it's not. Uh, racists used the accurate term at the time for the plant to talk about the plant and, and stigmatize it and make it bad. Uh, but the term itself was not created by these people. Uh, it was inherited by these people because that's what it was being referred to at by the, the consumers of the product generally. Uh, so it's not inherently racist. In fact, if you go back and the Tricom Institute has a wonderful blog post about this. And one of the members there, uh, is extremely intelligent and does a lot of deep diving research. And he was able to go back and put together this whole story from a bunch of different researchers. And there's other professors at universities that have done this. And he pulled reports from them that show that marijuana is actually a very positive term.

Chris (00:43:40) - And when Spanish settlers landed in Latin America and they instilled Catholicism as through force amongst these people, uh, they did not like cannabis use. And they basically banned it from the indigenous folks in Latin America. And the Latin Americans as part of their religious ceremonies were using cannabis and they didn't want to stop using it. So they figured out they had to hide it and they had to kind of sort of do it underground, which feels very, uh, like we haven't progressed very far since the Spanish invaded Latin America apparently. Um, but so they came up with this term, uh, you know, marijuana, which sounded like Mary kind of sounded Catholic so they could talk about it with each other and it wouldn't really raise a red flag immediately with their overlords, if you will. And they could do it in private. And it was almost a term of rebellion.

Chris (00:44:29) - Like marijuana was almost a rebellious flag. Like a don't tread on me. We're gonna keep using this whether you like it or not, and we're gonna do it under your nose and you're not gonna know about it. And I think that we should reclaim that term as that anti prohibition, anti-government overreach, anti telling us what to do. 'cause that's how it started. And this concept that if you use it, you're a racist blows me away. And it's unfortunate 'cause it's extremely prevalent. I think it's gonna take, I don't know if we can reverse reverse course now. It's so prevalent amongst the hive mind. Uh, but I'm hoping we can, 'cause really it's a great term and it has a lot of historical value. I mean it was in the, the Pharmacopia in Mexico, you know, decades and or not centuries ago, uh, like a century ago.

Chris (00:45:13) - And it's really unfortunate that we've decided it's racist and now no one can use it. Now I still use it regularly. Uh, and the way I use these terms is interesting. So especially in the US 'cause of our policies here in our laws, if I'm talking about the plant, the product, what it does to you or any general terms about it, I just say cannabis 'cause that's what it's, when I'm talking about the legal framework in which your business or product operates in, that's where these terms are required because they're actually legal definitions in our country. So marijuana is a legal term and hemp is a legal term. And so when people have often said in our country, well there's cannabis and hemp. Nope. Both are cannabis. There's marijuana in hemp. Both are legal terms, all are cannabis. And so I continue to use it, but I use it sparingly and only when I'm talking about the legal framework that it re resides in.

Marge (00:46:04) - That's fascinating. I did not know that I've been, I've been one of those people that have been, you know, moving towards the use of cannabis in instead of marijuana. But what I'll do is also try and track down that article you mentioned from the Tricom Institute because I think that's really interesting. And you know, the evolution of language is always, it's always fascinating, especially when you talk about like, you know, people trying to hide their youth but make it sound sort of Catholic uhhuh. That's uh, that's pretty interesting stuff. Yeah. Um, also the myth holding in smoke longer increases the high.

Chris (00:46:37) - Yeah. That's also also false. Um, in fact they have done some studies on this and if you want to increase your high, the suggestion now is to breathe it into your lungs, but stop short. So you still have lung capacity and then take a deep breath in of just fresh air. 'cause what that's doing is you're getting the smoke in the lungs and then when you're breathing in fresh air, it's sort of forcing all of that smoke and those compounds, uh, through your, uh, through your lung system. Whereas if you just hold it, think about it. If imagine blowing smoke into a balloon and just holding it there not much is being forced against the walls of the balloon. The majority of it is sitting in the inside of the balloon just sort of swirling around doing its own thing, not touching anything. Right. When you're holding it, that's all you're doing. You've got two balloons called lungs that are just holding smoke and not doing much. But if you get enough smoke in where there's enough to coat the lining of your lungs, if you will, and then you take a deep breath right afterward, it's already been pushed into your lungs and what's done is done. So holding it doesn't help anymore. So take some inhalation, remove the joint, take a big deep breath, and then blow out immediately and you're gonna maximize your cannabinoid uh, intake through that method versus holding your smoke.

Marge (00:47:48) - And would that apply if you're using like a vaporizer as well?

Chris (00:47:51) - Absolutely. Yeah. This is general chemistry or, or physiology concepts or probably more physics concepts. I'm not really a scientist a physics concepts that apply here and not really unique to the inha inhalant.

Marge (00:48:03) - That's pretty interesting then. So that's like a little hack. If you wanna sort of maximize the use of your cannabis when you're smoking or vaporizing and you actually wanna get that little extra high then Yeah.

Chris (00:48:13) - And, and this stuff is expensive, right? If, if you could get there with two hits of giant rips and holding it or one hit that's a quarter of the size that you inhale quickly and you get to the same spot, you just four x your supply.

Marge (00:48:25) - Right, right. And which everybody's interested in because of this economy right now. So Yeah, exactly. Make it last. Yeah. That's great. Yeah. Now the last question I have for you today is cannabis stays in your system for 30 days. This true or not?

Chris (00:48:40) - It's complex. It can be true. Okay. Um, the general rule of thumb is cannabis stays in your system for about 30 days. However, there's a lot of variables and uniqueness to you as a person that could drastically change this one. How often and how much do you consume? You? It's, you could consume every day, but you could consume such a small amount that you don't have enough metabolites for the drug test to pick up the positive. Um, because at the end of the day, we're not pulling out your blood. Generally speaking, for most of these tests, they're mostly urine tests. There are blood tests, those do exist, but generally speaking, they're pulling it out of your urine and just like testing anything, there's a limit of detection. How low or how sensitive is our equipment to pick up? How many parts per million of this compound?

Chris (00:49:25) - Well, you could have some present, but it's so low that it's not enough to trigger a dirty on a drug test. Conversely, you could be such a high tolerance consumer and smoke so much that you could be paying dirty for 90 days afterward, easily 90 a comp A complication here is that, um, that the cannabinoids reside and are stored in your fat cells. So another thing that's complicated is if you start dropping a bunch of weight and you haven't consumed in a while, you might actually start peeing metabolites again. Um, so it's complex. Generally speaking, I say it's about 30 days for most people, but again, that's most people, not all people. And if your job depends on it, uh, I would, I would do some significant testing on your own to know how long it stays in your system based on your tolerance, your frequency, and your body chemistry. And so you know what you're dealing with if you need to be clean for some reason.

Marge (00:50:18) - And would this apply also to edibles if you're an edibles consumer primarily?

Chris (00:50:23) - Absolutely.

Marge (00:50:23) - It's all the same. Yep. Okay. All right. Well, that answers that. And that's a, that's really good to know if you're unfortunate enough to be somebody who has to deal with some kind of drug testing for employment purposes or whatever the case might be. But yeah, the more, you know, knowledge is power, as we like to say, so

Chris (00:50:38) - Absolutely. And I would never encourage anyone to perform any sort of fraud or anything, but I will say that synthetic p for, uh, whatever other reason you may have is easily available. And, uh, you can order it online and it's, it works every time.

Marge (00:50:50) - Right? Yeah. Now, I just wanna say thank you, Chris, for joining us today and answering these questions, because a lot of these, I'm sure there's people listening who are like, gonna be like, you know what, this is going to make my life better and knowing these, these things. So I appreciate it.

Chris (00:51:05) - Of course, I'm happy to be here. Thanks for, uh, giving me a chance to speak with you and your audience.

Marge (00:51:10) - Well, friends, I thoroughly enjoyed that conversation with Chris. But after hearing this episode, are there any cannabis myths that you've now changed your mind on, if any? Let me know what you think. You can always hit me up by email the podcast hotline, DM me on Instagram, and let me know what you think. You can also share this episode with someone, and it helps to share the education and also share the show at the same time. You can always say it to date with the news events, questions for guests with the newsletter, and it helps keep these episodes timeless. And of course, you know, it's not a myth. The products and services on the Marge recommends page that helps support the show. And of course, consider joining the Bite Me Cannabis Club, where we can talk about busting myths over there. More in depth if you wish. I'm your host, Marge, and until next time, my friends stay high.