Dr. Shade on Thinking Outside The Bud

Christopher W. Shade, PhD, founder and CEO of Quicksilver Scientific, specializes in the biological, environmental, and analytical chemistry of mercury in all its forms and their interactions with sulfur compounds, particularly glutathione and its enzyme system. He has patented analytical systems for mercury speciation (separation of different forms of mercury), founded the only clinical lab in the world offering mercury speciation in human samples, and has designed cutting edge systems of nutraceuticals for detoxification and antioxidant protection, including advanced phospholipid delivery systems for both water- and fat-soluble compounds. Quicksilver Scientific is recognized globally for innovating on behalf of the pharmaceutical and nutraceutical industries. Shade earned his PhD from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and his undergraduate degree in Environmental Chemistry is from Lehigh University. Shade is regularly sought out to speak as an educator on the topics of mercury, environmental toxicities, neuroinflammation, immune dysregulation, and the human detoxification system for practitioners and patients in the United States and internationally.

Aug. 28th, 2020

This is an automated transcript and may contain occasional errors or omissions from the originally recorded conversation. While we review and try to correct any of these issues, we don’t catch them all and we can’t confirm 100% accuracy. Please use the link above to listen to the episode if you have any questions.

[00:00:01] You’re listening to Thinking Outside The Bud, where we speak with entrepreneurs, investors, thought leaders, researchers, advocates and policy makers who are finding new and exciting ways for cannabis to positively impact business, society and culture. And now here is your host, business coach, Bruce Eckfeldt.

[00:00:30] Are you a CEO looking to scale your company faster and easier? Check-Out Thrive Roundtable Thrive combines a moderated peer group mastermind expert, one on one coaching access to proven growth tools and a 24/7 support community created by INC award winning CEO and certified scaling up business coach Bruce Eckfeldt. Thrive will help you grow your business more quickly and with less drama. For details on the program, visit eckfeldt.com/thrive that’s e c k f e l d t.com/thrive.

[00:01:06] Welcome everyone. This is Thinking Outside The Bud, I’m Bruce Eckfeldt. I’m your host and our guest today is Christopher Shade. He is founder and CEO of Quiksilver Scientific. We’re going to talk to him about the work they do, formulating cannabis products, using the products of the cannabis plant, as well as other additives, other things that are out there that enhance everything from neurotransmitter enhancement to other plant based elements that will help really create great products based on what people are looking for, based on the effects that people want.

[ 00:01:38] And there’s a real science behind us and really kind of understanding how these things integrate, interact and bringing together, you know, holistic medicine, integrative medicine to understand how to create products that are really going to meet market needs. And I’m sense of this because I think this is really the next generation of cannabis like we’re getting away from or we’re expanding beyond just the base plant itself to really understanding the components of it and how we can use it in different formulations. So should be a really interesting conversation with that. Christopher, welcome to the program.

[00:02:05] Oh, thank you very much, Bruce. I’m happy to be here. And especially since the whole topic of this is outside the bud and, you know, how do we use the components in the in the cannabis plant with all the components that we use in natural medicine?

[00:02:18] Yeah, exactly. So let’s start with background. How did you get into this space? Is this something that, you know, in kindergarten you knew you were going to be a scientist in the cannabis world? What was the story?

[00:02:28] Yeah, you know, it’s a more classical thing.

[00:02:30] You know, in college, I started growing really good, but indoors. So this is like eighty nine. I started doing indoor hydroponic organic Ebon Flood Systems with Amsterdam seeds. And it’s one thing to be doing that like in California. But this was Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. It was a steel town.

[00:02:51] Not the easiest place to grow.

[00:02:53] No, no. I was very ahead of my time and very in danger.

[00:02:56] I mean, those are the Reagan Bush times of just say no and and serious prohibition. And that actually doing that led me into this fascination with growing plants and especially organic growth. And then I took this detour into being an organic farmer. I was organic, biodynamic farmer, you know, vegetable guy up in the Northeast. And I spent a couple of years doing that. And then that sort of window closed. And I ended up going back to grad school and started looking at environmental science and environmental toxicology. I got a Ph.D. around. Mercury is a toxin in the environment and in people that did some testing for that and then started a company doing testing of toxins in people. And then that led me to developing systems for detoxifying people and that led me to advance delivery systems for getting different what are called nutraceuticals into the body in this could be compounds in biochemical compounds from the body. It could be amino acids, could be vitamins, it could be botanical extracts, it could be purifications of botanical extracts. And how do you get those in? And right about then as I got good with my delivery systems, advanced bioavailability, that’s one CBD popped up on the radar and that’s when legalization of THC started. So I started applying that technology to CBD and then THC and then got so good at the delivery systems that we started expanding out. And then came this idea of how you start putting together your cannabinoids with your other compounds that you’re using in what’s called functional medicine, an integrative medicine. Those are just sort of the evolutions of naturopathy in natural medicine.

[00:04:52] Interesting. And we talk about delivery system. What do we like? What is this about for those folks that are listening here that that haven’t been exposed to kind of all the complications that would just give us a breakdown of like why this is important and what happens when you go from kind of a plant product to actually getting into the year, getting into your system and having efficacy.

[00:05:11] Right. So a delivery system is any way to get compounds from outside of your body, inside your body. So in cannabinoids, the original delivery system was smoking them, you know, rolling a joint and smoking it that evolved. Those inhalation deliveries then evolved. Into getting oils out and, well, first vaporizing the bud, then vaporizing, you know, butane oils and vaporizing distillates and that line and then edibles evolve from the browny and the and the butter into starting to take compounds out of the plant and mix them into, say, oils or grinding up the plant and putting into capsules. So A is the delivery method, the oil like taking Mukti oil and having your purified CBD or THC in that was sort of the next generation. And then you get into the kind of things that we do. And these are nanotechnology’s for delivery of basically emulsions. So on a simple level, like when you make a salad dressing, you’ve got oil and water blended together and you might put some egg or mustard in there to help those keep from coming apart. But there’s still big droplets, oil. Now, what we do is we make those oil droplets down on a nanoscale so nanometres a millionth of a millimetre.

[00:06:39] So these are super, super small droplets. You know, what we do is in the 20 to 40 nanometer range and they’re so small that when you put them in the oral cavity, they start diffusing right through the oral cavity into the capillaries, right under the skin. And then what you swallow absorbs in the stomach and upper GI. And what that gives you is something that’s missing in consumption, the cannabinoids. It gives you immediacy, like we can measure this in the blood. Two minutes. Yeah. And it gives you high bioavailability. So you’ll get anywhere from six to ten fold more absorption of CBD and you’ll get it really fast. So this won’t be going on. You know, you won’t be absorbing over three hours in and several hours out, which is more of a big deal with THC. It’s just the endlessness of it. And so you get those relief effects right away. And in the medicinal side, that’s relief from some sort of inflammatory problem or pain problem and all the recreational side, it’s having kinetics like onset and offset that are more similar to alcohol or, you know, not quite as fast as smoking or vaporizing, but pretty quick.

[00:07:53] Yeah, because in smoking, we’re going directly from the basically the lung to the brain almost instantaneously. But if we’re ingesting we’ve got to travel the entire GeoEye and get absorbed and go through there and all these things.

[00:08:08] So so these end up becoming quite different kind of modes of consumption, modes of effectiveness because of how does the skin work. So you mentioned the sort of oral tissues and stuff that it absorb right in the mouth, or are these bones and stuff that, you know, people are or putting onto the market? I mean, I’m assuming the absorption through the skin has some kind of challenges. You know, how does it compare and contrast? Yeah, sort of the different modes.

[00:08:35] You know, we have this broken down. It’s like if there’s a hole or a surface, I’ll figure out how to get cannabis and what are the basic ways, you know, when you look at all the different ways you can consume Canada’s, break it down for us and how those how they’re different.

[00:08:47] Well, you know, if we want to do them. All right. So so then your topical.

[00:08:51] Ok, so so what we are talking about before in edibles and smoke bubbles and then the Nanos, those are to get systemic absorption. Now, we’re not really looking to stop pain in your teeth. We’re looking to get it into the blood and have that systemic effect. Now, when you go to a topical, you’re going much more strongly into a localized effect. So I just I’ve got inflammation in my elbow or I just hit my elbow or I was playing sports and it hurts. I’m going to rub some balm on there. And most of that is going to be a localized effect. It’s going to bleed its way into the skin, into the areas around there and deal with some of the inflammatory pain there. But some will go systemic as well. In fact, we’re working on a couple of different topical, some for more cosmetic applications, some to sort of get in and circulate more. And so there is that possibility, especially if you’re rubbing it over an area where there’s a lot of vascular supply, there’s a lot of blood vessels, then you’re going to get a little bit more systemic delivery. But, yeah, like you said, you know, they tried to get it everywhere, you know, for you is a good example. What are the different places you can put this stuff into?

[00:10:03] Yeah, but I mean, in the end, they all have these challenges. I’ve I’ve got to figure out how to I’ve got to somehow get into the body right there. I have to go through the skin. I’ve got to go to the guy. I’ve got to go to the lungs and and a how long does that process take? So you’re mentioning kind of the kinetics of it, you know, with the onset time and B, what is the actual absorption? So I’m assuming, you know, depending on these modes, you actually have a loss or you only have a certain percentage of of the chemical of the molecule actually making it to the.

[00:10:30] Cbd, you know, it’s somewhere six to 10 percent of the CBD gets absorbed in the guy and it’s taking forever to get in, there is a little higher. You know, maybe it’s like more like 15 percent. So it’s a little bit better. But the whole kinetics of onset and offset, like, you got to get it in and then you’ve got to get it out. And, you know, if we injected it all into you, put it all in at once, it would still take a couple of hours to get it out. Now, switch to an edible and you’re eating this thing and you’re absorbing it over maybe six hours.

[00:11:02] Yeah. And then from the last moment of absorption, you still got another three, four hours to get out. And I saw one data set where people took this really big brownie and it took eight hours to get the peak dosage and twenty four hours to clear out. So you’re really signing up for such commitments? This is a commitment. It is a commitment that when Molson Coors came to us, they wanted something that was more like alcohol. So to be more like alcohol, we had to get it all in pretty quickly and then let it go off on its own time course. And we ended up successful with that by making these natural motions that they could put into the beverages. And they were just that rapid at absorbing once they got to the stomach.

[00:11:45] Yeah. And I know there’s something I mean, I can’t remember the exact science, but ingesting it’s a different chemical pathway to actually effect versus smoking in that I know that an edible is ends up being much stronger, has a lot more productive.

[00:11:58] Yeah.

[00:11:58] So give us some insights. The other part of it is that depending on how you’re taking it, how it ends up affecting you can be quite different.

[00:12:06] Yeah, so that is so there’s Delta nine THC and that’s your that’s what everybody talks about. But when that goes through the liver, it turns into eleven hydroxy THC, 11 hydroxy THC takes a lot longer to clear and is a much sort of weird or trippier sleepier high end. But people do this at different rates. Some convert a lot to 11 and hydroxy, some convert less according to their genetics. But then for anyone at whatever their level is, much more that is going to turn into Golovin hydroxy when you eat it because of something called first pass metabolism. When you absorb things through the GI tract, there’s an assumption in your architecture as a human that there’s going to be a lot of toxins in there. So everything goes across the GI tract into the blood and then goes right to the liver and things are filtered out that are bad or converted as they go through the liver. And so when all the THC goes through the stomach, it all goes to the liver before it goes anywhere else. And that’s where this conversion do 11 hydroxy takes place. Whereas if you inhale, you go from the lungs to the blood and then that just circulates freely and slowly. You have this conversion as that blood circulates through the liver. Now, with the intra oral these sort of sublingual deliveries that we make and even when the Nano delivery’s in the GI, it bypasses the liver to a great extent. So you have less of this formation of this heavier, trippier stuff. And the high is more like smoking and less like your traditional edible.

[00:13:49] Interesting. So you actually kind of dial in the experience based on sort of the technology that using for for delivering this.

[00:13:55] Yeah, yeah. You know, and again, we kind of thread the needle between that like hyper immediacy of smoking where the blood levels are going to peak in five to 10 minutes after the inhalation and that ultra long commitment of eating.

[00:14:09] So our peak in the blood is between 15 and 30 minutes and the peak experience is more like 40 to 60 minutes. And the delay there is crossing the blood brain barrier. And all of the you know, a lot of the experiences of the high are are things that aren’t totally related to to the peak blood level. It’s you know, that’s not exactly when the peak HIAS. And these are things that we’re just starting to understand about how we modified neurotransmission when the cannabinoids get into our brain.

[00:14:45] Yeah. So let’s talk about some of the other things that you can. Words in terms of other effects are things that are, you know, will help the process you’re trying to enable or, you know, add to the process in different ways. I mean, give us a sense of the things you’ve looked at and the effects that you’re looking to create.

[00:15:00] Yeah. So the overarching thing is, you know, people talk about the entourage effect, you know, the some of the brains of the cannabinoids, you know, greater the sum of its parts. And and that’s totally true. And the thing is, why stop at one plant for your entourage effect? You know what? If you took your whole garden of stuff and started blending it together, you got a lot of other things that can help. Just like a terpene one. Terpene will be sleepier. One, terpene will be more enlivening all these other. And first, I want to say just this little history lesson of how we make natural medicines now, you know, go back to the 70s and yeah, there was a couple of vitamins out there and the rest of it was just like whole plants, like chop this shit up and make a T out of it and you’re going to get some of these compounds out and you’re going to have some effects. And then as we moved into the 80s, 90s, 2000s, we started isolating things like curcumin from turmeric, like resveratrol, from grape extracts and taking these. Yeah. And taking these purified compounds and, you know, and see what they do and how powerful they are alone. And then there’ll be some blending back of broader whole plant extracts for all of this sort of ontology things that they do.

[00:16:17] So cannabinoids have gone through this, too. It was, you know, grow your plant, chop it up. You know, the most advanced thing that you do is soak it in some butter and extract out the TNC. But most you’re using the whole plant now. You know, we’re taking a big ethanol extract and then we’re distilling it. We’re getting individual cannabinoids. So those are at the point of which we’ve gotten to with with all of this functional medicine. So now we’re going to start blending all this from the different worlds together. So what we’ve done in in Quicksilver Scientific CBD Synergy’s line, like when we want to sleep formula will now we’re not using THC, but we’re licensing some of this out. But we’ll use a full spectrum CBD so it’ll have a little bit of THC. Then we’ll add in the hormone melatonin. The sleep hormone will add the serotonin precursor five HTP, and then we’ll add a neurotransmitter called GABA, which is a calming neurotransmitter. And then some whole plant extracts. We use Skullcap, Passionflower and Camomile, and there we have a really good entourage. Plus we have a terpene blend. You know, when you do these purifications of the cannabinoids, you lose all your terpene.

[00:17:35] So then you usually end up taking food grade turbines and making a blend, putting those back together. And that’s what we do. We have an 11 terpene, roughly 11 terpene blend the different formulas. We modify them a little bit like this, more little lull in the stress and sleep formula. And the general ones have a little bit more limonene because it’s more energizing than we did, one just for stress. And we have less of a focus on sleepy things and more of a focus on anxiolytic. We have a pain formula, CBD Synergy’s pain, and that combines full spectrum CBD with curcumin boswells and a big dose of the terpene beta carry offline. So you can see this bigger palette that we’re drawing from in making this. And then with some of our THC partners like Trus Beverage Company, the joint venture between Hexa cannabis and Molson causing in Canada, they’re making RTED beverages, a beverage additives using some of the different herbals and terpene blends that we have. But then they’re using CBD, THC ratios and then Wannna in Colorado here are making integral fast acting tinctures. And their first range is just simple terpene plans and simple cannabinoid ratios. But the second generation will incorporate all of these different aspects of the broader palette from natural medicine.

[00:19:03] Yeah, we actually had Nancie on the program just a little while ago. So it’s interesting. It’s interesting kind of seeing how the brands are kind of now kind of becoming more sophisticated, I guess, more targeted around really what kind of for me is interesting from a product strategy point of view, because they’re really dialing. And what do customers want? Like what is the end effect that is desirable in our different market segments? And how do we craft formulations and products, you know, not only in terms of the the underlying, you know, molecules, but the form factors and delivery mechanisms and things like that. It’s become really much more sophisticated.

[00:19:37] Oh, yeah. I mean, when it just sort of opened up here in Colorado, I remember I was like, hey, look at these great nanomoles. And they act, you know, right away on you. And everybody’s like, just give me the but I’m just so frickin happy that I can buy legal weed and, you know, just getting people over having legal weed took this many years and now thinking, oh, there is a lot we can do with this. And I don’t have to look like a freakin, you know, college kid sneaking out back with a joint. I could just open this bottle and put a couple drops in and and sail away.

[00:20:09] Yeah. So, I mean, the combinatorial complexity here seems overwhelming.

[00:20:15] I mean, how do you go from kind of all these different kind of options and combinations or permutations of things down to, OK, look, this is the effect I want. So, I mean, I imagine some kind of mad scientist laboratory. Where is it going? We’re going to take, you know, to our. To those in three parts of that, and then you try and see what happens. I mean, what what does this process look like in terms of putting together these products and come up with these formulations?

[00:20:36] Well, you know, it’s two parts, mad scientist laboratory and, you know, one part sophisticated science thing, you know, or maybe it’s the other way around. But, you know, here, like because we’re a medical group originally, we’re not a cannabis group. And so in my bullpen here and we saw the doctors. So I have a number of I’ve got a naturopath over a Chinese medicine guy. And my cell phone staff is all clinical outreach. And we have a lot of herbology background and we have a lot of background in all of the different compounds from functional medicine. This is what we do. And so when we talk with Nancy and and Mike Hennesy, AWANA. Well, well, all right. What do you want? You want it up. You want it down. You want to sideways. Where are we trying to get people to? And then we know what from our palate we can use, you know, what color is it going to work on this? And then we take that into R&D. We know about the chemicals, you know, and which ones are going to work together generally. And then we got to get our paws on it and start doing the blends and see, well, how much of this can I get in before destabilises it? Because remember, we got to make these perfect little nanospheres and they got to pack all these chemicals in there. So the chemicals got to get along and they got to play well with the particle. And so then we see what’s going to work, what’s not going to work. And then we tried different ratios and and we come down through the funnel to a working product.

[00:22:02] Yeah, well, it is a trick because it’s I imagine that there’s a certain amount of, you know, beforehand or you have a pretty good idea of beforehand of how thing what the effect is going to be with certain combinations. But then there’s a certain amount of we got to try to put it in the process and actually measure.

[00:22:16] How do you measure the results? I mean, you do you get volunteers to come in and like you put them into a room and, you know, measure the effects and have them fill out surveys. I mean, what’s the process look like?

[00:22:26] Yeah, I mean, it’s a whole mixture of different things. I mean, my R&D staff are very Colorado. Just let me say that they are no strangers to cannabinoids over there and nor am I. And so we start trying it and then we have all this sophisticated blood measurement equipment for and that’s one of the differentiators, is we can just go into our lab, we can measure what your blood levels of different cannabinoids are, you know, and that’s really hard to do. And we can measure all the other compounds and we can make sure that they’re going at the same rates and then actually will bring in a cohort of people and have them try it and give us subjective experiences. And we did this with Molson cause, you know, how are you feeling? Happy, sad otherwise. And because, you know, there’s so much individuation on the effects.

[00:23:12] So we start amongst the tribe here. We get some data, then we bring in more of the public. We have other people go out and try it. And so we got a nice consensus that we’re hitting the right buttons.

[00:23:24] Yeah. So you’re masters of formulation, working with these brands, working with these companies to help them come up with products. Where do you see kind of the trends going in terms of the types of products, types of applications? I mean, what’s been kind of trending over the last year or two? And where do you think kind of future types of product? Where do you anticipate. Yeah, you kind of developing more products in in terms of general consumer.

[00:23:47] Yeah. So faster acting was a huge thing. Finally, people are like, OK, we’re done with all this smoky stuff and we want these things that go in through the mouth, but we don’t want to take so far take so long. So it’s like, thank God, like I’ve been waiting for this time and you don’t want to even have a fast acting gummies.

[00:24:06] And so the fast acting is a definite thing that’ll be here to stay. And so we’re right at the forefront of that. But then people are like, all right, now I want to turn my high or turn the effect. And, you know, the first generation of that is just, you know, simple ratios of cannabinoids and some terpene. And now as we get into using the different compounds like, you know, say, I want you to have a more uplifting you know, I can put vitamin B 12 is very uplifting, B vitamin. And I could put some neurotransmitters that are more stimulating neurotransmitters and maybe some guarana, some caffeine like thing in there to get you up and going. And then, you know, conversely to bring you down, I’d mentioned before, there’s different herbal compounds that are very sedating, like skullcap and passionflower and the and the different neurotransmitters. And so really, you know, we’ve already started doing that. But bringing that into the THC world, you get a much more powerful action when THC is a driver there. You know, for a little bit, I was starting to think I don’t think that it’s terpene modulating tax high. I almost like to look at it like THC as a driver of the potential energies of the turbines. And it’s an interesting way to flip it over on its head. Yeah, so and developing all that out is that’s going to.

[00:25:29] Lash out over the over the next couple of years, and you mentioned earlier that some of this ends up being about your genetics and stuff.

[00:25:36] I mean, do you envision that at some point, you know, I could get online, enter, enter my genetics, enter the outcome I want and it would do a custom formulation is like Bruce’s personal gummy formulation that would, you know, kind of take in all those years. My desired outcome, my particular the way I process some of these right chemicals. Is that in the future?

[00:25:56] Yeah, yeah. I mean, that’s definitely the dream of the genomics coming together with individualized medicine. There’s definitely I know some people who are now they have what are called snips. That’s your genetics. That’s like little variations in your gene for cannabinoid receptors versus my gene for Cavitt receptor. So maybe you barely have any and I have a ton. So just a little bit of cannabinoid, just freaking rocks my world. And so they’re just in the infancy of getting to know those genetic variations. But that’ll happen. They’ll look at the variations in the toxin processing or, you know, the the metabolites of it. And yeah, I mean, it very well could be. Yeah. Here’s what you want for your cannabinoids and here’s the other things. You should blend with it to get the best effect.

[00:26:42] Yeah, it does seem like that as we really kind of dial this stuff in, like the genetics side ends up becoming the biggest factor just because, you know, depending on your receptors, you know how you metabolize things, it ends up that’s going to be the big determiner at some point. I can’t really dial these things in anymore because that is that’s such a variation in the population.

[00:27:00] And we’re going to have to learn how to up regulate and down regulate cannabinoid receptor. What’s the right word here? It’s like it’s getting the wrong word here, but it’s like your manifestation. So how many cannabinoid receptors do you express at any one time? Because what I’ve seen is these serious, heavy, heavy users, especially ones, have been dabblers or taken just really high dose stuff. What you do is down regulate your expression of those cannabinoid receptors so you actually have less of them. So we already have this genetic up or down level like you expressed more than you do naturally. That’s at steady state. But then it’s called epigenetics is what your exposures are doing to you. And I’ve had a lot of people just say, man, I don’t know what to do so I can get high without so many freaking grams of of, you know, Dabb. So that’s something that that we got to figure out a little bit, too. Yeah.

[00:27:57] And that’s what makes this so interesting. It’s I mean, that’s, you know, part of it’s sort of product design, part of its medicine, part of its science. You know, it’s it’s so multifaceted.

[00:28:07] And we’re I mean, in terms of the, you know, adult use recreational versus medical side of this, like how do you see this playing out? Because you I mean, you mentioned you came originally from kind of the medical side of things. Yeah.

[00:28:17] Is this really now focused on kind of the adult user? How do you see the medical application of cannabis kind of fitting in to the formulations and the work that you’re doing?

[00:28:27] Oh, it’s absolutely both. You look at like, you know, a pain or inflammation really formula that’s that’s a medical thing. And, you know, people will get into more for neurological issues and that’ll develop out more. And so with the beginning, I thought it was more I think I’ve started back and forth. At first I was like, yeah, here, I’ll just make this sublingual so you can get high without smoking. Then I’m like, now I’m going to make all these medical things and blend in all these medical compounds and get really nice results. And then I’m like, back to like, oh, now I’m making drinks, I’m making drinks with the same office on set. And all also is alcohol. So now on the recreational side.

[00:29:09] So I got a foot in both camps and and I believe in both camps. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:29:14] And they certainly they inform each other like one side on the medical side, you know, you can take that over to the recreational side and vice versa.

[00:29:21] So absolutely. I mean, it’s, you know, necessity is the mother of invention. I got to do this. It’s forces me to break the barriers of thought I had before, shows me new stuff. And I’m like, oh, wait, let me cycle that back over there and solve this other problem I had on the other side. And so I just look forward to it. Just continuing to evolve.

[00:29:40] Yeah. And anything about, you know, we’re still dealing with those kind of federal regulation issue and, you know, people have talked about if and when we’re going to get things scheduled. But is there anything in terms of the regulatory side that you see that would be really helpful?

[00:29:54] You know, are things if I gave you a magic wand and you could change anything about how this world works right now that you think would be really positive for the cannabis industry?

[00:30:01] Well, these regulatory bodies have to get more rapid about approving things. They have to get more pragmatic or not even improving things, but giving guidance. And they have to have a lot more understanding. They are underpowered in their scientific and medical understanding and overpowered and their bureaucracy. Now, I will cite to the greatest offender in the universe, and I know it’s the universe because nowhere. The universe, could anyone be as bad as Health Canada, Health Canada is just a permanent blockade to development and sales, they have crippled that industry up there. You know, the collaboration’s we have or have tried to do up there with all of the different big LPs up there have gotten. Yeah, I’ve just been so many of them have just been derailed by Health Canada for just the dumbest nonsensical stuff that is just strictly bureaucratic. And ethanol is one of the biggest problems in this world, in my world, where we’re trying to develop these advanced Aurel delivers because we end up using ethanol to dissolve different things to to help preserve things. It ends up being a huge thing. And what they did is they lumped in ethanol with residual solvents like isopropyl and butane. I mean, basically ethanol and butane are the same to them. And so they’re looking at them as as residual solvents from an extraction. When I got this totally pure extract and I added the ethanol is an exception in my process. And so even here in Colorado, where they’re a little bit faster, the Med has had a hard time just wrapping their heads around the use of ethanol as an incipient, which has been going on in natural medicine and tinkering for, you know, for hundreds of years.

[00:31:49] Yeah, yeah. So it’s is one of the both challenging, but also, you know, it makes the industry just interesting when you have all these funny regulations and, you know, state by state issues and stuff.

[00:31:58] Yeah. And, you know, really they’re trying to do their best and state by state, they’re not doing a horrible job as bureaucracy goes. But Health Canada, with the amount of resources they have and how incredibly anti business they’ve been, they get the worst in the universe award.

[00:32:18] Interesting. Christopher, there’s been a pleasure. If people want to find out more about you, about the work that you do about Quiksilver, what’s the best way to get that information?

[00:32:25] Yeah, Quicksilverscientific.com. You can come and look there. We also have a YouTube channel where there’s a lot of videos of me teaching on these different subjects. Sign up for our newsletter, get an account, you’ll hear all the new news. But you can look at our all of our different CBD products there. There’ll be little product videos where I talk about the different blends and and why we do them. And so that’s the place to find us. Awesome.

[00:32:49] I’ll make sure that the links are in the show notes so people can click on that. Thank you so much for taking some time today. Great conversation. Great insights. I think it’s really helpful for everyone listening that you’re in the cannabis space. I think there’s some really good learning. So I appreciate you taking the time with us. Thanks so much, Bruce.

[00:33:04] You’ve been listening to Thinking Outside The Bud with business coach Bruce Eckfeldt to find a full list of podcast episodes, download the tools and worksheets and access other great content, visit the website at thinkingoutsidethebud.com. And don’t forget to sign up for the free newsletter at thinkingoutsidethebud.com/newsletter.

Join Dr. Shade's Community

Join our community and be the first to know about Dr. Shade’s articles, podcasts and events.