Shari Horne: Okay. This is the actual bud, the flower, OG Kush. I’m trying to see what the… It’s 18.4% THC, and this is an eighth.

April Pride: Fun fact, among States where adult use has become legal in recent years, what’s the fastest growing group of cannabis users?

Shari Horne: These are the pipes that I use to ingest the flowers and one is clean, one is dirty, the before and after.

April Pride: I’ll give you a hint. It’s not teenagers.

Shari Horne: Shari Horne, I’m on City Council.

April Pride: Here in Laguna Woods.

Shari Horne: Yes, here in Laguna Woods. I’m 67.

April Pride: 67. Welcome back to How to Do the Pot. I’m April Pride. I do the pot. In 2016 I founded Van der Pop, a cannabis company for and by women. Now with this podcast in my new venture Of Like Minds, we’re looking at how women are using cannabis and who might benefit from this plant.

April Pride: Why does this matter? Consider these stats from the Anxiety and Depression Association of America. Number one, from the time a girl reaches puberty until about the age of 50 she is twice as likely to have an anxiety disorder as a man.

April Pride: Number two, anxiety disorders also occur earlier in women than in men. Number three, women are also more likely to have multiple psychiatric disorders during their lifetime than men. All of these conditions tend to lead in one direction, pills.

April Pride: Number four, women reduce their prescription drug usage by 50% when they introduce cannabis into their regimen.

April Pride: In this episode, that’s exactly what we’re going to look at, pharmaceutical drugs. What they do and how they interact with cannabis. I wanted to know how doctors who do know about cannabis and cannabinoid medicine, how they think about prescribing cannabis alongside pharmaceutical drugs.

Dr. Jessica: I’m Dr. Jessica Knox, I guess more commonly known as Dr. Jessica because I am one of four doctors in my family who are all Dr. Knoxs. So I’m Dr. Jessica or Dr. Jess.

April Pride: If you listened to our episodes on pain and endometriosis, and you should if you have not, you’ve heard from Dr. Jess before.

Dr. Jessica: We take care of patients who simply want to use cannabis or get a cannabis recommendation in Oregon or Washington or California so they can come to us to get the paperwork done for them to be able to access medical cannabis.

Dr. Jessica: But we also take care of people who are trying to manage diseases as complicated as cancer or seizures or neurodegenerative diseases like Parkinson’s or dementia, right, like Alzheimer’s.

April Pride: What are the danger of drug interactions with cannabis?

Dr. Jessica: The primary drug interactions that we are concerned with as it relates to cannabis are due to CBD. CBD along with many, many, many of the pharmaceutical drugs that are out there are metabolized through the cytochrome P450 system in the liver.

Dr. Jessica: What we know that CBD can do is it can sort of bind up that enzyme that is responsible for breaking down other medicines. What that means is if CBD is in the system and blocking up this enzyme, other medicines in the system can start to sort of build up and theoretically, right, depending on the medicine, can cause toxicity because the drug levels are building up and up and up.

Dr. Jessica: Clinically we haven’t seen a lot of this. So right, when we’re taking care of patients in the clinic, we haven’t seen a lot of drug interaction issues. I think the best evidence we’ve seen of this is with certain antiepileptic drugs, so seizure drugs. We’ve seen that seizure drugs can back up.

Dr. Jessica: But what that means is that if you’re use CBD along with your seizure medications, a lot of times we can reduce the dose of the seizure medications. It’s kind of like a pro-con there. It’s just a manner of keeping track of drug levels and managing them.

Dr. Jessica: But the concern is as we see all of these CBD products hitting the market, and you can have CBD in your coffee, and you can add a CBD supplement, you can put CBD in your yogurt. We don’t know what kinds of doses people are going to accumulate over the course of their day-to-day if they’re CBD fanatics.

Dr. Jessica: Nobody is really managing, right, people who can go and buy CBD from their coffee shop or their drug store. Nobody is managing the CBD they’re taking with other drugs they might be taking.

Dr. Jessica: So, we might start to see some more interactions just because people are using CBD in a not informed way.

April Pride: Dr. Jess hasn’t been too worried by negative interactions between cannabis and pharmaceutical drugs. But she does see them as two very different approaches to medicine.

Dr. Jessica: Pharmaceutical drugs are so complicated for me. I have a complicated feeling about them. Pharmaceutical drugs are largely single isolate compounds, right, where a lot of them actually are derived from nature.

Dr. Jessica: That’s why if we go to nature, a lot of the plants are medicinal, and that’s why pharma has sort of isolated certain compounds that they’ve found to be medicinal and turned them into pharmaceuticals that are patentable so that they can sell them for more money.

Dr. Jessica: But because these compounds have been isolated from their natural source they’re often toxic, frankly.

For instance, if we talk about cannabis, one of the things that are so beautiful about cannabis is that as a full spectrum medication, it is very safe and very effective.

When I say full spectrum, that means it’s the natural plant. It’s the whole plant with all of its constituents as they were created in nature.

Dr. Jessica: An analogy might be, you know, eating an orange versus taking a vitamin C supplement, right? You’re going to get vitamin C from the orange, but you’re also going to get some other terpenes and flavanoids and fiber and all of these great things and that vitamin C. But if you have just a vitamin C supplement, you’re only getting vitamin C and you’re taking away all the benefits of all those other constituents.

Dr. Jessica: If we back that back to cannabis, cannabis as a full spectrum whole plant medicine, it has all of these different constituents in it that work together to, one, have better effects than if you were to take any of these constituents alone. That’s what we call the entourage effect.

Dr. Jessica: But also, two, it makes it safer because while these components are working together to create more effect, they’re also working together to sort of counter balance one another and take away some of the negative effect.

April Pride: In short, part of why cannabis can be so effective is that we’re more likely to get the full range of the plant’s benefits especially in using tinctures or smoking it, the full orange, if you will.

Dr. Jessica: So then if we take that back to pharmaceuticals where our big pharma has isolated compounds out of natural plants, we’re left with these isolate molecules that might be effective in doing what they’re supposed to get done, but they’re also really toxic and have laundry lists of side effects because they don’t have the fellow constituents from their natural source balancing them out.

Dr. Jessica: Another thing about cannabis that’s really neat is that it’s sort of gentler and it sort of it tries to mimic our own endocannabinoid system that works really quickly.

Dr. Jessica: Our own endocannabinoid system, the endocannabinoids will sort of go and do what they need to do on the receptors and then they leave. They don’t hang around. They don’t just linger. They’re very specific and quick acting.

Dr. Jessica: Pharmaceuticals, they get in there, they hang out forever, they’re very general. They’re not targeting anything for the most part. So they’re just creating havoc until our system works them out.

April Pride: You heard Dr. Jess mention the endocannabinoid system or the ECS. It was discovered in the 1990s. Everyone knows that I’m blown away by this fact because it’s been in the human body since there were humans. It’s the body’s way of rebalancing from stress and other harsh inputs.

April Pride: We talk about it more in our first episode on pain. Cannabis mimics the body’s natural neurotransmitters. It’s one of the reasons it can function as a medicine.

April Pride: Okay. With that refresher in mind, let’s listen to what Dr. Jess just said one more time.

Dr. Jessica: Another thing about cannabis that’s really neat is that it’s sort of gentler and it sort of it tries to mimic our own endocannabinoid system that works really quickly. So our own endocannabinoid system, the endocannabinoids will sort of go and do what they need to do on the receptors and then they leave. They don’t hang around. They don’t just linger. They’re very specific and quick acting.

Dr. Jessica: Pharmaceuticals, they get in there, they hang out forever. They’re very general. They’re not targeting anything for the most part. So they’re just creating havoc until our system works them out.

April Pride: Isolated compounds and pharmaceutical drugs, Dr. Jess is saying, may cause more side effects because of how they work and how long they stay in the body. While cannabis and the system that it works with in the body, the ECS, flushes itself out more quickly.

April Pride: I was thinking about Dr. Jess’s analogy about eating a whole orange versus a vitamin C supplement. As more and more people are learning about cannabis, we’re all focusing on more specific molecules within the plant like THC and CBD, which is great by the way, of course.

April Pride: It gives new users, those who are green, more control over what kind of effect they may be looking for. But still it reminded me of what Dr. Jess was saying about focusing on isolating down to chemical structures. I asked her about whether she was worried that cannabis medicine was becoming more like a prescription drug. Often say, will the plant be Frankensteined. The short answer, yeah.

Dr. Jessica: My biggest fear, you can probably guess, is big pharma coming in and taking over cannabis. I obviously believe in cannabis and I think it should be legal for everybody to use in an informed and responsible way with appropriate regulations.

Dr. Jessica: But I also know that once cannabis is federally legal, that opens up the field for big pharma to come in and do what it usually does, right? Big pharma is already working on this, right? Where they’re looking at how can we isolate the cannabinoids, right? Because we know THC and CBD are really powerful medicinally and a lot of the other phytocannabinoids are as well.

Dr. Jessica: But they’re not thinking about how do we create botanical synergy with our medicines? They’re thinking about how do we isolate these, how can we patent them? How can we make money off of the derivatives of this plant. Because that’s what they do. That’s just their business model for for better or for worse.

Dr. Jessica: The concern is if they do that, we’ll lose access to the whole plant in a legal way. Insurance might cover pharmaceutical derived cannabis, but not whole spectrum cannabis, which it’s like okay great. Patients might have access to cannabinoids because insurance is covering it, but they’re getting an inferior medicine. So how do we feel about that?

Dr. Jessica: Also, there’s a giant industry of folks who’ve been working on cannabis as medicine for decades and they’ve created, a lot of them have created businesses that serve their community and serve their fellow man for good.

Dr. Jessica: It’s like if big industry comes in to take over cannabis, what happens to all those folks who’ve been working on this as a project of passion and love and community for so long. So I think there are lots of different reasons why I’m concerned about the sort of big pharma threat to cannabis.

April Pride: When I launched into cannabis about four years ago, I designed products to store, smoke and share cannabis. I used to joke, but then it really became not a joke, that all of these large bags and storage containers would be replaced by pill cases. That the plant would be replaced by pills.

April Pride: But the more I learned and the more I talked to people who knew a lot more about this than I did, I realized how important it was for people, humans to be consuming whole plant medicine, full spectrum plant medicine rather than isolating cannabinoids and dialing in your dosage that way.

April Pride: That’s really the threat that we’re faced with. That we will no longer have access to the plant and at the same form as pharmaceutical companies become more interested in the power that cannabis can have.

April Pride: To really understand how cannabis and big pharma can coexist, we need to look to seniors, those in the US who are 65 and older. In the United States, people who are 65 and over account for 36% of the country’s total healthcare spending, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation.

April Pride: Seniors are experiencing pain and disease seeking treatment and sometimes confront new risks. One risk, opioids. The grandparent generation is increasingly suffering from opioid use disorder. For years, cannabis supporters have petitioned medical experts to study the relationship between cannabis use and issues that are so common for seniors.

April Pride: Recently, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, NASEM, issued a report that said there is conclusive or substantial evidence that cannabis or cannabinoids are effective to treat chronic pain in seniors.

April Pride: So why does this matter to you if you’re not yet 65 or older? A couple of reasons. One, in 10 years, 50% of the US population will be 65 and older.

April Pride: The second reason in 15 years, 65% of the US population will be 65 and older. How old will your parents or your grandparents be in 10 years or 15 years? I’ll give you a second. Do the math.

April Pride: Number three, today, 15% of the US population is 65 plus. Going back to number one and number two, there’s going to be a huge jump in the amount of people in that age demographic over the next decade. Currently, this demographic is prescribed more than a third of all prescription drugs in America. The drugs are often used to treat pain. Today we meet a senior, an activist who is spreading the word about cannabis to a generation that could see serious benefits.

April Pride: To really get into that retirement sensibility at the time when it’s perfect to do the pot, I visited a place where seniors are thriving. A small city in Orange County, California called Laguna Woods where I met Shari Horne, the former mayor of Laguna Woods, and a long time cannabis advocate. Can you start by stating your name?

Shari Horne: Shari Horne. I’m on City Council.

April Pride: Here in Laguna Woods.

Shari Horne: Yes, here in Laguna Woods. I’m also a senior assembly woman with the California Senior Legislature.

April Pride: Laguna Woods is a senior living city. Everyone who lives there is 55 and over. That’s because most of the city’s land is one big senior community called Laguna Woods Village. Think rolling hills, high rise towers and golf carts. We’d all be lucky to call this home in retirement.

Speaker 4: Perfect.

Speaker 5: Aloha. Welcome to Laguna Woods. Where are you headed today?

April Pride: Shari Horne’s house.

Speaker 5: I know them, yes. Do you have the address?

April Pride: We do, but I think it’s in my bag hidden in the back.

Speaker 5: Okay. Well I happen to know it so I’ll let you go ahead and see Shari, and they’re real nice people and you have a great day.

April Pride: Thank you. You too.

Speaker 5: Bye-bye.

April Pride: In addition to the nice guards and a nice swimming pool, there are also lots of nice seniors here using cannabis.

Shari Horne: We were the first city to permit cannabis in the city, but none of the landlords would rent to a dispensary. We did have a collective here in Laguna Woods Village. So a lot of people use that and that was wonderful.

April Pride: Can you give us a little history on Laguna Woods?

Shari Horne: Laguna Woods is now 20 years old, and Laguna Woods is all seniors. Even outside of Laguna Woods Village, there’s four other housing areas, but they’re also for seniors. So the whole city is 55 or over. And that’s why we have all the multimodal trails so people and seniors can get to where they want to go even when they’ve given up their car.

Shari Horne: We have a lot of programs and a lot of the officials on the state and county level come here when they want their proposals taken up and supported and to seek support, they come here to Laguna Woods.

April Pride: I asked Shari to tell me when she started doing the pot.

Shari Horne: Gosh. I was a week away from my sweet 16 birthday, was the first time that I tried it. I smoked it a lot when I, not a lot but …

April Pride: Yeah.

Shari Horne: … Continuously through the years when I was younger and grew up with it. Then I moved away from it, but I’ve always liked it.

April Pride: You hear this all the time, the stuff that we have access to today is so much stronger than it used to be. Do you have any insight into that?

Shari Horne: What I think is really important is that now we test it so we’re sure that there’s no pesticide. I mean we were smoking malathion years ago because people just didn’t think about putting pesticides on what people ingested because they said well people aren’t supposed to ingest it so therefore we can poison them without any regard.

Shari Horne: That’s changed a lot and you can feel better about what you are using. But yeah I guess it is a little stronger. Although looking back since that was all we had, a little ounce of Acapulco gold was pretty good. You can’t usually get it anymore. But I guess I do like the sativa better than the indica because I like the creative and the giggly stuff.

April Pride: So when you started smoking a week before your 16th birthday, were you of average age? Were there other people in your grade, in your age group that were doing this? Were you younger?

Shari Horne: I guess we were all about the same age. I didn’t do it in a group because it was always a secret. It wasn’t something that everyone talked about a lot. So, the first time I tried it I was just with a small group of people.

Shari Horne: But after a while everyone would just pass joints around. When you went to a concert there was a lot. I guess everyone was smoking back then and that was the ’60s.

April Pride: As a child of the ’60s, Shari smoked and she probably called it grass for fun. As she grew older and began representing a senior community as mayor, she became interested in its medical properties, particularly for older people who are prescribed many prescription drugs.

April Pride: The issue took on a sudden urgency for Shari when her mother was diagnosed with cancer. Her mom might have opted for assisted suicide, but California had not yet passed its death with dignity law. For Shari It was hard to watch her mom suffer.

Shari Horne: My parents had lived here before me and my mother got lung cancer. She would never try cannabis because it was illegal on the federal level and at the time it was still illegal on the state level.

April Pride: What year is this?

Shari Horne: This is 2005. Though she ended up starving herself to death here because we didn’t have the death with dignity and she was afraid to try the cannabis and she wanted to … she didn’t like the morphine and just wanted to end it. She’d had a very healthy, wonderful life and she didn’t want to draw it out.

Shari Horne: So I became an advocate and I wanted our city hall, I used to advocate at our city hall, to have them legalize cannabis and eventually they did. When I was mayor in 2017 there’s a mayor’s meet in Orange County every three months to talk about things that the County has to talk to them about directly.

Shari Horne: We were very high on the morbidity level for overdoses, intentional or not, with alcohol and opioids. Two years ago was when I was mayor and cannabis was helping a lot of people.

Shari Horne: By then it had been legalized in the state. People were experimenting with the tinctures and the topicals, and they were getting a lot of help. So I became much more of an advocate, much more out there to talk about my own experiences with it so that people wouldn’t be afraid to try it because there was very much the attitude that just unsavory people and those people used cannabis and I really had to change that.

Shari Horne: Something that had always been a big secret for me, I brought out and started talking about.

April Pride: What are the negative stereotypes around cannabis that are preventing seniors from adopting it? You mentioned it was only something that those people chose. What does that those people look like?

Shari Horne: The old reefer madness. Maniacally playing the piano at a thousand miles an hour. The old Cheech & Chong movies, and that’s what we have to overcome.

April Pride: It’s a lifestyle that they don’t connect with.

Shari Horne: Right, right.

April Pride: Right.

Shari Horne: Again, that was a very unfortunate stereotype that was developed years ago that are preventing people from getting help now.

April Pride: Right. You said you had to become vocal about consuming cannabis, which is something you had done your entire life since you were just before 16. When you did come out, what did you face? Was that uncomfortable for you?

Shari Horne: The first time I came out, yes, it was very uncomfortable because we were growing in the gardens here, the community gardens and in the board room they wanted to get cannabis out of the gardens. So I went there to advocate to keep it in the gardens and I had just had my foot surgery at the time.

Shari Horne: One was going on and on about these unsavory kind of people that it’s drawing to the community and there’s going to be thefts. I got up out of my wheelchair and I was well respected in the community by that time and I said, “I use cannabis. So I’m one of those unsavory people that you’re talking about.”

Shari Horne: That director had been friends with me for a long time. That was the first time. There was a hush in the board room. But since then, I come out and say it over and over and over. It’s strange, the things that you may hide and are secret and that you wouldn’t want anybody to know for fear that they’ll never talk to you again if they know the real you, once you come out and you say what your secret is with the confirmation and the advocacy about why it’s good and why you think that people could benefit from it, people take a whole nother look and it became … Now it’s one of my strengths.

Shari Horne: It’s one of the things I talk about all the time. I’m much more confident in myself and confident in what I’m saying. I get benefit from cannabis. I think you could get benefit from cannabis. Just try it, just try it.

Shari Horne: That has gone a long way. Now I’m very proud to say it and I, yes, there’s always snickers that people are always talking about that you want to get high or you want to smoke pot or this is just about this or just about that. That’s okay. They can snicker. If I can help one person, if I can get one person off their opioids and onto something better and help people, that’s worth it to me.

April Pride: Worth it because older Americans who we might assume have the most stigma around cannabis use also stand to benefit the most. When you’re encouraging someone to just try cannabis, is there an example of a person that took you up on that and with great benefit?

Shari Horne: There is. I don’t know how she would feel about me using her name.

April Pride: That’s fine, yeah.

Shari Horne: But she had terrible pain in her tooth and there was nothing that would touch that pain and she didn’t know what to do. I got her to come on the bus to the dispensary to talk to the pharmacist. She got the tincture and a couple of other things, gummy bears with CBD and THC. It took it away immediately. Immediately.

Shari Horne: I was thrilled. I was just thrilled. She plays bridge and goes to the pool. So she’s been talking to people too and she was someone that had never tried it, had never smoked, didn’t grow up in the ’60s with it and she was a little reluctant to try, but she was in a lot of pain. She tried it and it was just that one time. She doesn’t have to continue using it. When she gets that pain, she uses it and it goes away.

April Pride: It’s situational. Right.

Shari Horne: She’s like, “It’s a miracle.”

April Pride: The miracle is born in part from a new way of doing things. Old thinking won’t solve the modern condition. When we reprogram our beliefs about pills, that they’re the most effective way to deliver medicine, we open ourselves up to new treatments and relief that really can feel miraculous.

April Pride: Which is why activists like Shari Horne have been fighting to give seniors more and better options. Shari Horne is really a born politician. She’s giving us that California picture postcard view of what aging can mean when you’re California sober.

Shari Horne: This is a heaven for seniors to age in.

April Pride: Did you start the Cannabis Club, if that’s what it’s called?

Shari Horne: Yeah. No, it is called the Cannabis Club, but it was going on much earlier than I got started. But I became a member and I was a big supporter of it. But it was a constant, huge group of people. I mean we would get 200, 300 people to every meeting, every monthly meeting.

Shari Horne: It changed a lot as people learned about it. Then they went and either tried it and got some of their own or whatever else it was and more people would come and were always interested. So, it wasn’t the kind of club that you had to stay in and come to every meeting.

Shari Horne: They would come and they would learn what they wanted to learn and get the information and everyone shared all their tips, because it was always very much, and it still is, you don’t know your own personal dose. When you start taking a tincture, how do you know how many drops to take? Some people need micro doses and so they only take a drop. So you had to start low and slow with one drop for a week and then raise it to two or three until it took away your pain.

Shari Horne: So people would talk about it. Everyone that had that condition would talk about it. So, there was a great support group. A lot of those … We even had a facilitators group so that if somebody was trying it for the first time and they were scared, a group of us would go over there and be there with them not getting high or using any of our own medicine, but just being there with them so that if they started to feel cold, that’s a natural thing.

Shari Horne: Sometimes your capillaries can strict and you might feel cold. You might feel dizzy. It might lower your blood pressure. All those things might happen and you’d like to be there to tell people that’s normal. Just sit down or relax or go ahead and eat something if you want, you know, whatever it is. So I thought that was a wonderful thing to do.

April Pride: The Cannabis Club is unfortunately no longer active at Laguna Woods Village. But Shari and others still spread the word to their fellow residents about how cannabis helps with their ailments. So who better to guide us through today’s high five, our tips for how to do the pot today.

April Pride: Five reasons seniors are using cannabis. Number one, joint pain, no pun intended, especially in the joints of hands and knees.

Shari Horne: Arthritis is a big one that people use it for, especially the topical ointments. Bursitis, they use a lot of the tinctures for that because it does make me less in pain. The bursitis doesn’t hurt as much. My joints don’t hurt as much.

April Pride: Number two, relaxation.

Shari Horne: The doctor used to tell my 93 year old father to have a drink at night to relax, that it’s good for you. I like cannabis better because there’s no calories in it.

April Pride: Right.

Shari Horne: And the alcohol was bad for your livers whereas the cannabis isn’t.

April Pride: Number three sciatica and it’s not just seniors who suffer from this.

Shari Horne: Sciatica is another one that it really helps. Back surgery when your vertebra … I mean there’s intractable pain that people have had for years and they get help and there’s nothing better than seeing that smile.

April Pride: Number four, topicals for pain relief.

Shari Horne: What really makes the difference in people’s minds here is their friends and neighbors that have tried it and found relief. When you can put a cream on and it helps right away, take that pain away, that is big. That is big here and it works right away with topical pain with tendinitis.

Shari Horne: My husband had tendinitis on his foot and nothing else would work and you put it on there, it is just amazing. Just amazing. It just wipes that pain right away. I’ve had surgery on both my feet and I have plates and pins and screws in there and I put a little bit of that cream on there and it takes away any pain.

April Pride: Do you find that that’s the product that people start with, a topical?

Shari Horne: Basically yeah.

April Pride: Number five, once seniors get comfortable with topicals, typically they’ll move on to a sublingual tincture. Today, we’re going to talk about one of my favorite lines, Rosebud CBD. Notice that I said Rosebud CBD. This is a hemp derived CBD.

April Pride: If you need to know little bit of background of what we’re talking about, you should check out our first episode on CBD and pain, which explains a little bit more the difference between CBD derived from the cannabis plant and the hemp plant.

April Pride: This is derived from the hemp plant, which means Rosebud can ship anywhere in the US. Tinctures Are sort of like Fisher-Price.

April Pride: My first experience with cannabis, I love it. They’re so easy. You just put the liquid from the vial under your tongue, hold it there for 30 to 60 seconds. Yes, it does smell or taste a little bit planty because the ingredients that Rosebud uses are so pure, right? It’s the plant and it’s organic.

April Pride: MCT oil, which is coconut oil, hold it for 30 to 60 seconds and allow it to be absorbed by the cells and your mouth versus swallowing it, which will delay the onset. You can expect to feel something probably within 15 minutes. Some people say 30 minutes, but it’s not intoxicating so you won’t … When I say you feel something, you may just experience, it’s almost like it’s a sense of wellbeing and relaxation, not just from your mind’s perspective, but your body seems to just be more chill as well.

April Pride: If you leave it on your vanity and someone walks in, there’s no way they’re going to really be able to tell a difference between your Rosebud CBD tincture and your fancy department store cosmetics.

April Pride: The other great thing about keeping a tincture on hand, we have a weed hack as part of this high five. Keeping CBD around is great if you happen to consume too much THC. CBD cuts through the THC, minimizes your high and allows you to maintain control once again. I just keep CBD on hand because you know it doesn’t always hit you the same.

April Pride: Every good hostess has a little CBD on hand for this reason and thanks to Rosebud for offering 20% off when you enter the promo code, do the pot, D-O-T-H-E-P-O-T on their website, Rosebud cbd.com.

April Pride: If you have questions or weed hacks of your own and live in a legal state, please join our Facebook group. We’re taking these questions and this content online and off air. You can find it on Facebook under How to Do the Pot.

April Pride: Along those lines, we need your help. We are looking for listeners who have used cannabis to treat issues related to sleep or to treat their migraines. We have an upcoming episode and would love to hear your stories. Please send us a voice memo to hi H-I at dothepot.com and you could be featured on a future episode. We can also keep it anonymous.

April Pride: If we know that 50% of women who consume cannabis reduce or cease taking their pharmaceuticals altogether, then what we are trying to accomplish with this episode, one of the things we’re trying to accomplish, is to make sure that medical experts, that doctors, nurse practitioners, registered nurses understand how cannabis interacts with other drugs.

April Pride: Or if someone’s condition is the right type of condition to substitute cannabis for a pharmaceutical. Frankly a lot of medical experts, let’s just say most of them, have no idea how cannabis works with the body, much less your current pharmaceuticals. We would like to see more research around this.

April Pride: Of course the other reason is we have an aging population that is going to outnumber the rest of us in no time at all, and they are popping pills for pain because that’s what their doctors know to prescribe them.

April Pride: It should come as no surprise that during a five year period, 2010 to 2015, non opioid related inpatient hospitalizations for US seniors decreased by 17%. Yet at the same time opioid related inpatient hospitalizations for seniors increased by 34%. They’re not going to the hospital as much, wait unless they’ve been prescribed opioids. 20% of all seniors are being prescribed at least one opioid.

April Pride: So what’s the one solution that all clinicians can agree on? Reducing the dosage of opioid medication. Cannabis has been shown to reduce the dosage of opioids by up to 50%. Again, we want medical practitioners to better understand how cannabis can work to compliment or supplement pharmaceutical pain medication.

April Pride: The impact is just so dramatic for seniors. The people who might have been the most skeptical parents and grandparents are showing the rest of us the scale of impact cannabis can have. Once you have your grandmother saying yes to cannabis, it’s just a matter of time before the rest of the family is wondering how can this plant help me.

April Pride: Thanks everyone for listening today. If you liked this episode, please share it with someone and please rate and review us on Apple podcasts, it helps more people find the show. You can find more info and past episodes at dothepot.com.

April Pride: Thanks to my co founder, Ellen Scanlon, Allie Mussolini, our marketing manager, producer, Gina Delvac, and the team at Western Sound, including Steven Hoffman, Ben Adair, and Hayley Fox. I’m April Pride and we’ll be back soon with more of How to Do the Pot.