What We Get Wrong About Cannabis with Yasmin Hurd

Dr. Yasmin Hurd is the Ward-Coleman Chair of Translational Neuroscience and the Director of the Addiction Institute at Mount Sinai.

Dr. Hurd's multidisciplinary research investigates the neurobiology underlying substance use disorders and related psychiatric illnesses.  A translational approach is used to examine molecular and neurochemical events in the human brain and comparable animal models in order to ascertain neurobiological correlates of behavior.  A major focus of the research focuses on opioid abuse and the developmental effects of cannabis. The group also conducts human clinical trials towards developing novel therapies for opioid use disorder. Based on her accomplishments Dr. Hurd was inducted into both the National Academy of Sciences and the National Academy of Medicine.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:00

Welcome to the Thriving with Addiction Podcast, where we explore how recovery is not just about surviving, but about truly living. Each week we'll dive into the science, stories, and strategies that help people and families heal from addiction and build healthier, more resilient lives. I'm your host, Dr. John Avery. Let's get started. Her multidisciplinary research investigates the neurobiology underlying substance use disorders and related psychiatric illnesses. A major focus of the research focuses on opiate abuse and the developmental effects of cannabis, which we'll talk about today. The group also conducts human clinical trials towards developing novel therapies for opiate use disorder.

unknown 0:59

Dr.

SPEAKER_02 0:59

Hurd has been inducted into both the National Academy of Sciences and the National Academy of Medicine. Yes, been welcome.

SPEAKER_00 1:06

Thank you, John, for having me.

SPEAKER_02 1:07

No, of course. It's great to meet you. And you're you're the expert in cannabis, and so we needed you to come on since there seems to be so many different opinions about it these days or from the beginning of time, really. Um how'd you get interested though in the brain and cannabis? What brought you here?

SPEAKER_00 1:24

It's actually a long journey and a strange journey when I think about it. Um I've always been interested in the brain from I was a kid. I always tell people as a weird kid, just, you know, why do people act the way they do? And and I knew it was from the brain. And so I started off being interested in actually neurodegenerative disorders when I was training to be a neuroscientist. And in studying those uh, like for example, Parkinson's disease is a disorder where the dopamine cells are damaged. And dopamine is a transmitter that's not only for, you know, many people think about it for reward, um, but it's about motor function and attention. And we use drugs that target the dopaminergic system in teasing out the neurobiology of Parkinson's related disorders. And I was just fascinated by how these drugs, which turned out were like amphetamine and cocaine, completely changed behavior. Um, and that's when I started looking into drugs, the neuroscience of drugs of abuse. And in studying adults with, you know, substance use disorders, I wanted to know how did they get there? And looking at different risk factors as genetics and early life events. And one of them is early use of cannabis. And so that's how I started down the cannabis path years ago now.

SPEAKER_02 2:54

When I was becoming an addiction psychiatrist, a lot of people encouraged me not to, which is why I decided to become an addiction psychiatrist and study the stigma of addiction. What about on the research side? Were were people encouraging of that transition from sort of the, you know, the bread and butter of the brain Parkinson's to trying to tackle and understand addiction?

SPEAKER_00 3:15

I will tell you that I had previous people early that who I thought were going to be great mentors in my life, who indeed said, do not go into studying addiction. And I didn't understand it, I think, completely in terms of the degree of stigma. But I think that there is actually a greater stigma today, still on the clinical side for you know clinicians like yourself compared to the to the basic science. So the basic science of addiction, uh, people get a lot of high, you know, high impact publications because using off the psychiatric disorders, you can model addiction more in an animal model than you can model, for example, schizophrenia. So you have now a lot of basic science and addiction is very well established, very well respected, but the stigma that comes with clinical substance use disorders, I think is still there, sadly.

SPEAKER_02 4:20

Right. Now that's that's a a good point. Um sometimes you guys have, you guys are saying to us or to patients or to families, this is really uh a brain disorder, and we can really see everything that's going on. And and sometimes we haven't quite communicated that well to people and family who are struggling, but the the evidence is there.

SPEAKER_00 4:41

Absolutely. The evidence is there. The the problem still is that many people think of substance use disorders as disorders of, you know, of lack of morals, lack of will, lack of that. And I don't think that they understand the nature of substance use disorders. Yes, you cannot develop a substance use disorder if you never consume the substance. So it's unlike, you know, Huntington's disease. If you have the the risk, if you for Huntington's the genetic risk, you will develop Huntington's. But if you never take an opioid, you will never develop an opioid use disorder, even if you have a genetic risk. So I think, you know, that is one of the reasons why I think our society, you know, look at people's substance use discord that they brought it on themselves. But many people go through the same thing of experimenting, especially during adolescence, with substances and other things. But a small handful get stuck in this and for no fault of their own, while others go on to lead, you know, very productive lives. And I think that that's you know the issue of substance use disorders and psychiatric disorders in general.

SPEAKER_02 5:56

And then among um substances that one study as a neuroscientist, I think sometimes the opiates and the cocaines and amphetamines, they're sort of more accepted almost than cannabis, right? I I think you talked early on that in some of your early work, people argued against cannabis being accepted or understanding that's addictive and acts on the same reward pathways in the brain.

SPEAKER_00 6:19

Yes. I remembered when we started our first studies with cannabis, and in our animal models, we studied THC, you know, the main psychoactive cannabinoid. And um and getting the first paper even published because reviewers will come back like, why are you studying this? My grants, uh, cannabis is not addictive. And these are themselves neuroscientists, other, you know, investigators. But they were like, you should just be focusing on cocaine and heroin. Those are the problems. And I was also looking at cannabis from a developmental lens, from a developmental perspective, because for me it was, you know, is this really leading to risk for later challenges in life? And again, people were like, you should be studying if you're gonna study, study it in the adult brain. Why are you looking at it, you know, in during development? And this whole issue of cannabis is so benign that it can have an elastic impact on the brain. And of course, many, as I said earlier, many people will experiment, you know, in college, people experiment with cannabis and alcohol and cigars. And so they think, oh, it's fine. I went on to become a neuroscientist, or I went on to become a lawyer and so on. So, you know, it's not a problem. And we now know that's not the case.

SPEAKER_02 7:41

That's right. So let's jump into why that's not the case. Let's jump into cannabis. First, first, definitionally, cannabis, marijuana, weed, THC, CBD. Can you sort of unpack a little bit what we're talking about today?

SPEAKER_00 7:56

You know, I mean, marijuana is a term definitely more colloquial used on the streets. You know, I call it cannabis because for me, how our society has changed it from being a quote unquote recreational drug to voting for it to be medicine. And if that's the case, it's not marijuana that's medicine, quote unquote. It's cannabis. But even that, I think many people don't understand that cannabis is a complex plant with, you know, over 140 cannabinoids and hundreds of other chemicals that we still have very little knowledge about. And yes, we know a lot about THC, and we know we're now learning more about the other, the second highest cannabinoid in the plant before cannabidial CBD. But cannabis is complex. And even if it's been around like many things for thousands of years, many people think that we know a lot, but we really don't. And we really don't because even one of the things that we started earlier to talk about, many people weren't studying cannabis because they thought it was not a problem. They never thought it really had any lasting impact on the brain. So why study it? And that's and and that's the issue. But I do want us to talk about cannabis, and I want us to be specific and teach the public about cannabinoids because it is THC that is the issue that we see for really psychiatric and challenges and the growing psychiatric challenges with these high THC potency products that have been made as compared to CBD. So people put CBD in the context of of being cannabis. And for example, a lot of the the the voting to legalize cannabis was really a vote to legalize CBD, because when they saw that CBD was beneficial to treat, for example, these rare childhood forms of epilepsy, who wouldn't want to help the kids? And so a lot of the lobbyists used CBD, Charlotte Swab, as a way to say cannabis is completely, you know, fine. Look at this, it helps these kids with epilepsy. But people weren't voting for CBD. The laws went voting for cannabis as quote-unquote medicine. And so it's really important that people understand the difference between CBD, a cannabinoid, and cannabis, the complex plant.

SPEAKER_02 10:31

Right. And we'll talk mainly about THC today, but maybe talk a little bit just about CBD. I know you've done some research on it. I mean, as much as THC is everywhere, CBD is sort of everywhere. You're people are rubbing it all over their body and putting it in everything they drink, and you can go broke on CBD products. But but it might have some benefit. Tell me what what we understand about it.

SPEAKER_00 10:53

I have to say I am extremely shocked with how CBD became this huge market. And I would have been a multimillionaire, actually billionaire, if people had believed me and I patented, uh allowed to patent CBD, because in studying THC in our animal models, where we would see that adolescents, for example, rats that we gave THC to and study them in adulthood, they would self-administer more heroin. So we knew that THC was changing our endogenous opioid system, making them more sensitive to opioids. But I wanted to, you know, was it really THC? Because in our human studies, we studied cannabis and in our animal models, we were studying THC. And so I wanted to look at another cannabinoid. And I said, let's look at CBD. And then no one knew what CBD was. It was actually very difficult to even get it ligand for our human studies. And we saw something different. We saw that CBD actually reduced heroin seeking in our animal models, and then we moved it over to human clinical trials. So cannabinoids do differ. CBD is not cannabis, CBD is not THC. And I think that that, again, like I said, is very important. Now, people, you know, CBD now is in your coffee, your water, everywhere. I don't like that's shocking because we still don't know that much about CBD, even though I think that clearly it does not induce the psychiatric, you know, uh problems that we see with THC. But there's still a lot that we don't know. And to the point that you're setting it's very expensive, you know. Um a lot of these um boutique shops that had originally popped up at CBD with these creams and everything, you pay a lot for that CBD. But the the one issue on the negative side for CBD for me was that we did not realize that the cannabis industry would grow so fast and then use CBD to convert it to an intoxicating THC product. Because CBD is not intoxicating. We see that it reduces anxiety, but reducing anxiety does not, is not an intoxication. And that to me has been really um disturbing because we took a non-intoxicating product and made it intoxicating.

SPEAKER_02 13:18

By adding the THC. And then to clarify on the CBD, while it may help some things, it's not totally clear. It's it's helping for all the reasons people are marketing it, especially at the doses they're marking it and the ways people are using it, correct?

SPEAKER_00 13:30

Correct. I mean, I will be honest, in our clinical studies, we use doses of like 400, 800 milligrams of CBD. In the boutique shops, what they're buying, it's like 10 milligrams C BD.

SPEAKER_01 13:41

Right.

SPEAKER_00 13:42

So, you know, I when it so people should also know that um in the US, obviously cannabis is still illegal federally, even if it's you know, um been voted to be legal in in most states in the US. But there was an exclusion, hemp-derived products. So hemp has uh the plant has less than 0.3% THC. So they said, okay, for those states, especially that were used to making tobacco, now they could, like, you know, still the agriculture, the farm bill allowed them to make hemp and hemp-derived products, and hemp is CBD, basically, these CBD-rich cannabis plants. But they used chemistry to convert CBD to THC. And that is the problem. Um, and also it's not just that they made THC from CBD, but the chemistry that's used, also, there are toxins in there, those chemicals. And that's one of the things also that's a problem, that when you're using and buying these product C BD products, you don't know what's in them.

SPEAKER_02 14:47

That's a great point. There could be other stuff. There could be THC, even though they say there's there's not THC. And and so let's and so let's jump into THC. Tell me tell me about, and that's sort of what we the psychoactive component that we've associated with cannabis, with marijuana for a long time. Tell us about that and and tell us how the concentrations and potency of it have changed over time.

SPEAKER_00 15:08

Yeah, you know, uh, again, I think for me, and I think for a lot of people, I don't think anyone expected the explosion of these cannabis products in the manner in which they have grown. So, for example, you know, the plant, when people think about cannabis and like, you know, the hippie generation and woodstock and so on, the TFC concentrations were like 2%. They kind of rose in a little later in the 80s, 1980s to like 4%. And they've continued to escalate so that today you have cannabis, and you have THC products that have, um in a flower at least, like 24% THC. That was not the original plant at all. But what's worse is that they have created strains of cannabis strains that's even has 60% THC. And now they have products that are the concentrates, you know, the dabs and so on, but and they're vaped that can give 90% TFC. Think about it. The original plant and what you know a lot of um previous generations consumed when they experimented with cannabis was like a 4%, 2% THC um product. And they would smoke, and a lot of these kids in college and high school that would giggle and share one joint. But now they're consuming by themselves vape products. Vaping is also another thing, the the way, the means by which cannabis can get into your body, that they're putting THC in these huge hits, in these concentrates of 90% TFC. That is not the same drug. And I think that's another thing I wish our you know the public and and politicians and policymakers would probably start calling it a different name. It is not the same cannabis, it is not the same drug, and so it's like think about, you know, when cocaine itself was very addictive, and then came crack cocaine, they changed how you know uh how cocaine was consumed, and uh that even increased the addiction more. We know that as the concentration of any addictive substance increases, so does the addiction. And that's what's happened with cannabis. The THC, as they increase THC levels purposefully, because they wanted to get more people addicted, we've actually this had more people addicted and more psychiatric and health issues out of it. So the purposeful creation of a product that's 90% THC that has nothing to do with the original plant, I really do think we should be calling them a different name so people know what they're actually consuming.

SPEAKER_02 17:59

Right. It's sort of marijuana on drugs, basically. It's it's a whole new thing.

SPEAKER_00 18:04

Exactly. It is the turbo marijuana, turbo marijuana.

SPEAKER_02 18:09

All right, we'll figure out the name by the end of this podcast.

SPEAKER_00 18:12

I hope so. Yes, please, John.

SPEAKER_02 18:14

But whatever we call it, it's it's dangerous. And and so what you're seeing because of the availability, the access, the ease to use, you can use it in a stealth way with the vapes and the edibles, is that we're seeing well, what are we seeing? What's what's the evidence show in terms of who's getting addicted and and the mental health and other consequences of it?

SPEAKER_00 18:32

For me, one of the the worst things that a society could do is to not uh raise healthy children because they're the next generation and they reflect what's happening in our society. And today we see that these high THC products, more so than ever, have increased psychosis in young people. Um, I think a new study even came out from Canada, and Canada, I think, is important because they have a national healthcare system and they legalize cannabis before the US. And I think people don't realize it takes time to collect data to see what are the impacts of anything in our society, any change. And the Canadian data showed now clearly that the more recent earth cohorts they show um an earlier onset of first episode psychosis and greater number of first episode psychosis than previous generations. That cannot happen because of genetics. It cannot happen, you know, and it they real and it was related to cannabis use. And so for me, it's I don't think that people realized that cannabis is this drug that they thought, oh, you know, you giggled and that, you know, you may eat, you know, order pizza in the night or something, that that was would become this drug where we see a very close um association with psychosis and schizophrenia, especially the younger someone starts using cannabis, um, in in terms of teenager and the frequency. And now we have kids that they call it wake and bake. They wake up, the first thing that they have to do is to consume cannabis. That is not moral. And we see now also even more of uh in the emergency departments, more young people coming in with cannabis hypermesis syndrome, meaning, you know, this chronic vomiting and nausea. That never happened before with cannabis use. It really was like aspirus um case that could occur. You see now data showing greater even cardiac issues in young people with associated with cannabis use that again never occurred. And even children obviously showing up in terms of the toxicity to emergency departments because they'll eat a gummy that their parent made up out, left out. You never had those things before. It's a different drug that's associated with more health impact. And another thing that Canada, again, like I said, when you have a national healthcare and a national uh system that tracks a lot of things than we do in the US, they even see that young people are using the healthcare system because of cannabis more. So cannabis use is has a much greater economic impact on the healthcare system than ever before. Those things are actual numbers. They're not well somebody making up, oh, that cannabis is so bad. This is not the same drug. And so we're seeing much greater health impact across all spectrum in the healthcare system, not only in psychiatry, but in our colleagues in terms. Of cardiology, we see it absolutely obviously in emergency department. And not just Canada, I should say that also the number of epidemiological studies in the US also replicate that there's an increase in psychosis and other mental and health issues with teens and young adults using cannabis.

SPEAKER_02 22:20

And are these harms, which I think even include lesser things like worsening of depression and anxiety and sleep disturbance and certainly the risk of addiction and functional impairment, are these harms seen even with occasional use? Is occasional use of this sort of turbo marijuana, I mean, it's obviously different than the occasional use back in the day, but does that even come with risks? Or what should we tell parents and kids as they try to navigate this?

SPEAKER_00 22:45

I mean, the data shows that obviously the more frequent you use these high um potency products, the greater the risk. But there are individuals, still there are risk um in terms of even the infrequent use, and it's again because of the high potency of the THC. So, you know, a teen in a party, there somebody gives them uh this, you know, 90% THC, they've ended up in the in the hospital, even though they're not frequent users of cannabis. The question that we have, and then you, you know, you've raised in the sense of a lot of teens today, especially even adults, in terms of such an highly anxious world, teens are suffering from a lot of, you know, social media, this, the that. Their world is very stressful. And many of them, um, like adults say they use cannabis to alleviate their anxiety. But all the data shows that it exacerbates and worsens it to a point where they end up in the hospital. They need medical treatment for their anxiety. And yes, it's a it's a it's it's a it's a perplexing thing for people who say, oh, you know, our endogenous cannabinoid system is indeed important for regulating our stress response. It does. Our endogenous cannabinoid system is like a break on our stress response. But with chronic cannabis use, it takes away that break. So now it becomes it's like a uh a fast car on the highway. It just becomes it's an excessive anxiety that they they feel. And then they're like, oh, I need more cannabis, but they don't realize that the more cannabis they use, it's this ugly cycle. It just exacerbates the anxiety and the other mental health uh challenges. And and that's the thing, is you know, with mental health issues, people can't step back and see that. And that's the problem.

SPEAKER_02 24:50

Right. It's it's both hijacked the reward pathway, but then this withdrawal state that you enter really propels you forward because it's it's just so unpleasant. And and maybe speak to that a little more. What is it doing under the brain for your for your research and what you know?

SPEAKER_00 25:04

You know, the research shows that you know, chronic cannabis use or high high potency products does even change the structure of your brain cells, the structure that stays with when we studied the adolescent exposure and look in adulthood. So it's not a make-believe thing. It changes the structure of your cells. It also changes the re how quickly your stress system reacts in a negative way. So all these stress-related um your your stress hormones, the genes that regulate a lot of the stress response, they are very high, especially when exposed to high potency THC products. And yes, you know, withdrawal for cannabis, as you know, is actually one of the worst of many of the substance use disorders. You know, the depression, the sleep, sleep is a huge aspect of many mental health disorders. I should many disorders, and I think that that's one of the things as well. That you know, the withdrawal from cannabis impacts sleep tremendously. So again, many people think that cannabis is benign, but nothing is benign if it causes such huge impact on brain cells, on other cells in the body as well, but on the behavior and the long-term effects that we see. And from a research perspective, you know, my question was what maintains this? Why is it there? And we could see that these epigenetic changes and epigenetics, as you know, you know, we inherit the DNA sequence from our parents to, you know, what to determine, you know, everything in our in our bodies and and brain. But the environment can put tags on those DNA so that genes that should be turned off are now turned on and vice versa. And we see that developmental exposure to to THC changes the epigenetic platform or the signature in our brain. And that signature, interestingly, looks like what we see in aspects of schizophrenia when we look in the brains of people who were diagnosed with schizophrenia, and it changes those epigenetic changes linked to how the cells communicate at the synapse. So these are things that are not um, you know, fiction, these are actual scientific facts. High potency THC impacts the brain, it impacts fundamental biological processes, that does have a long arc. Does it mean that you can't go back to normal? No. The one thing that I will say that when we saw that these changes were mediated by these epigenetic mechanisms, I actually was very hopeful. Because unlike genetics, you can't change your the the things you inherit, but epigenetic mechanisms are reversible. And so that to me gives hope. And that's why the earlier someone stops using cannabis, make it try to make it through that really tough withdrawal period, there is hope. And, you know, obviously on a research level, we're trying to see how we can target these epigenetic mechanisms. We can target them in an animal model and reverse the the you know bad behavioral outcomes of developmental cannabis use, but trying to find ways that we can do that in humans in a healthy way.

SPEAKER_02 28:58

Right. And what about the person that says, all right, Dr. Heard, Dr. Avery, I get it. Kids shouldn't use weed, their brain's developing, it is all these changes. But as an adult, I hear all the worry about alcohol and weeds everywhere these days. Isn't it safer if I just smoke a little bit of weed instead of drinking? I mean, holiday parties this year in New York, I heard there were so many that actually were serving not no alcohol or less alcohol, but they were serving marijuana products to adults.

SPEAKER_01 29:24

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 29:24

Um, and there's just sort of this perceived safety more, maybe even on the adult side. What would you say for the adult casual or interested user too?

SPEAKER_00 29:33

Yeah, I mean, the adolescent brain, absolutely, and young adult brain are much more vulnerable to cannabis than the fully mature brain. Every data shows that, really. However, even adults, because of this high potency THC products, are having mental health issues. Then so I don't want to make people to think it's only the teens and only young adults, the mature brain as well. And alcohol is one of the worst drugs, you know, substances, I should say, in our society, it creates a lot of health issues. I think everyone has to think about what they're consuming and putting in their bodies. Um if you are at a party, often many people at a party are not drinking grain alcohol. You know, many people are the same thing with cannabis. What kind of cannabis product are you putting in your your your body as an adult? You should do the same thing in looking at these products. What is the concentration of THC? To me, it's knowledge. People have to understand that our society has become guinea pigs for these companies that create these high THC products. We are their guinea pigs. We have not done that with you know nicotine, the tobacco, they never made the nicotine higher. Yes, Joule made these, you know, fruit products which got genes and so into it. But that's what the the cannabis industry has done. They have increased the TFC concentrations that even at the adult range is also vulnerable. So, you know, alcohol or cannabis, for me, it's like it's I always say, is it, you know, do you want to jump off the fifth floor or do you want to jump off the third floor? You know, it's you know, nothing is say without harm, but we do know that the THC products today are not the same. They are manufactured to create addiction, not because otherwise there was no reason for them to change the amount of THC. And not only do they increase addiction risk, they also have increased the risk for other mental health illnesses and other physical illnesses. And yes, I'm sure perhaps the the industry that was not their thought, but that is what has happened.

unknown 32:10

Right.

SPEAKER_02 32:10

But it's encouraging if someone's listening to this and and trying to stop that. A lot of the brain changes seem potentially reversible, at least the epigenetic ones. And then what do we know about treatment? If someone's in trouble, what what are some of the options available to get to the other side of it?

SPEAKER_00 32:26

Um, today there are no pharmacological treatments as yet. There are a lot of you know studies in the in the pipeline for trying to develop new treatments for substance for cannabis use disorder, but there are a lot of behavioral treatments that are out there. For me, there are more and more uh clinicians that recognize um cannabis use disorder, motivational behavioral therapy. There are a lot of behavioral therapists that who can help. So there is hope. And those behavioral therapies have worked. It's just to stick it out, especially during the withdrawal period that I know a lot of people feel that they can't make it through, but you you can. You absolutely can.

SPEAKER_02 33:13

Right. I think there's good psychological treatments, there's 12-step treatments. Unfortunately, no medications quite yet, like we have for alcohol and nicotine and opiates, but hopefully with time, some some pharmacological sport. And sometimes it's just treating the underlying psychiatric conditions that have developed or or contributed as well, I imagine.

SPEAKER_00 33:31

Exactly. Exactly. Coming back to anxiety, there are treatments that are well um known for many years that, you know, psychiatrists can prescribe for you if you have and if the underlying issue is anxiety, the same thing for depression. There are, you know, we have pregnant women taking cannabis to to, you know, treat their nausea and even their anxiety is also during pregnancy. There are medications that have been well studied for the impact on their fetal and their children outcome that show that they're safe. There are many safe medications that already exist. So kind of think about what your underlying reason was to even start, and even what might have developed you due to the cannabis use, but there are medications out there that are well known to alleviate those symptoms.

SPEAKER_02 34:26

Right. And I guess the other thing we have to think about in terms of changing all these behaviors is how do we address this at a societal level? How we talk about marijuana and media and culture and the regulations. We need you basically talking to everyone all all the time. Uh, but what would you recommend in in those spheres?

SPEAKER_00 34:45

You know, sadly the force that left the barn with these high potency products. The question is, how do we as a society um bring back safety? We wear seatbells, there are laws about seatbells. Why are there not laws about the types of products that we now know cause harm? I understand we will, you know, we're never going to make cannabis illegal, but make safe products that are well studied, that they must fit a certain level, that everybody can just make these high potency THC products that we know cause harm. Those are the things that policymakers and the public need to understand and demand of their politicians. The same thing. Um, there's now, you know, bills on um the capital being discussed about closing the hemp um loopholes where people made, where industry made these intoxicating Delta 8, 9 TFC products, delta 8 that's a time TFC products from CBD. We can close those loopholes. But as a society, they for the first time in our history, they were our public was asked to vote that cannabis or anything was medicine. Before, we used to have to go through FDA products, every pathway to say this is medicine. Cannabis is not medicine, it has medicinal properties for some conditions, like and then you know, certain products, like obviously epidiolites for epilepsy, but it's specific for those. And that's the thing that we need more research. So to me, the public, we should be pushing our policymakers and politicians to create and demand some industry safer products. Our society and our kids and everything that deserve that.

SPEAKER_02 36:37

You sort of alluded it to it, and I don't think it's talked about too much, but there's sort of like a big marijuana lobby, and and like there is big tobacco, and I don't think that's quite been named as regularly as sort of the big tobacco.

SPEAKER_00 36:49

They're the same.

SPEAKER_02 36:50

And they're the same. Exactly.

SPEAKER_00 36:51

They are the same. And this is the issue. It's about um money over lives. And especially for cannabis, it's not that you know, people always say, oh, but cannabis is not like opioids that, you know, overdose that, you know, I can overdose this. But you're getting lifelong mental health outcomes from cannabis. And that to me is equally killing off, quote unquote, a large part of our society. That too is wrong.

SPEAKER_02 37:22

Well, yes, I really appreciate you taking the time to share all this with us today and uh keep doing the good work, helping us understand cannabis and all these different topics in addiction.

SPEAKER_00 37:32

Thanks, John, for having me.

SPEAKER_02 37:33

Thanks. Thanks for listening to the Thriving with Addiction Podcast. If you found today's episode helpful, please follow and subscribe wherever you listen to your podcast and share it with someone who might benefit. You can also connect with me on Instagram, LinkedIn, and YouTube, or visit thrivingwithaddiction.com to learn more. Stay tuned for next week's episode, and remember, thriving is hot.