Shocking History & Bright Future of Herbal Medicine w/ Dr. Ben Caplan

Embark on a historical odyssey with me, Shaman Isis, as I converse with Dr. Ben Kaplan, a primary care physician turned cannabis expert. Together, we unravel the intricate tapestry of cannabis's role in medicine and society, examining its ancient roots and the persistent stigma that has shaped its journey. Dr. Kaplan brings a wealth of experience from his transition to a cannabis-focused practice, offering a front-row seat to the plant's therapeutic impact on patients' lives. Our dialogue ventures beyond mere medical discourse, shedding light on the political sway of financial interests and the quest for accessibility in the face of prejudice.

As the winds of change blow, we delve into the implications of cannabis's potential reclassification, a seismic shift that could redefine its place in American healthcare. I share my personal narrative of healing, illustrating the profound influence cannabis can have on individual lives. Dr. Kaplan and I navigate the challenging terrain of stigma, lobbying, and the hope for a more inclusive future, underscored by my own therapeutic journey. This episode is not just about the plant itself, but also about the broader impact of policy and perception on the healing arts.

We conclude our expedition by addressing the hurdles within the cannabis industry and confronting the knowledge gaps that affect everything from healthcare to personal use. The conversation pivots to systemic issues in the prison system and empowerment through education, highlighting the importance of sharing research and experiences. 

Enjoy the podcast teaser from Citizen Journalist 

Chapters

• 1:04 Cannabis in Medicine
• 12:07 Reclassifying Cannabis
• 18:40 The Doctor Approved Cannabis Handbook
• 29:02 Challenges in the Cannabis Industry
• 38:20 Promotion for Book and Subscription

Transcript

Speaker 1: 1:05

Hi and welcome to Citizen Journalist. I'm your host, shaman Isis, and I am super excited about our second episode in our premiere season of Citizen Journalist. And, by the way, before I get started, thank you so much to everyone who has commented and reached out to me and sent me great notes about the show and about the first episode. I truly appreciate it. I am just as excited equally excited about episode two of Citizen Journalist. I have Dr Ben Kaplan here with me today and we're going to be talking about a topic that is really on a lot of people's lips cannabis and the amazing book that Dr Kaplan has written about cannabis. Hi, dr Kaplan, thank you so much for joining us.

Speaker 2: 1:44

Hi, shaman, thanks for having me. I'm really excited to be here.

Speaker 1: 1:46

Yeah, yeah, so we were talking before I started recording the history you know, before we get into the current times right now and what's going on with Bud I would love to hear a little bit about first. Can you just tell me how did you get into, before we get to the history of cannabis? How did you get into this? Can I ask?

Speaker 2: 2:09

Of course, yeah. So I'm a normal primary care doctor. I'm board certified, I'm licensed. You know I didn't grow up in some cannabis farm and kind of raise cannabis flames up for everybody. I went to traditional schools, studied hard, was sort of a nerd at heart, but at one point in my primary practice in the suburbs of Boston, patients were telling me that cannabis was helping them. And I knew nothing about it.

Speaker 2: 2:34

I grew up in the same kind of brainwashed culture that passed on the idea that cannabis was bad for us, that consuming cannabis meant you're soon going to be a drug dealer or you're soon going to be a prostitute or you're certainly going to be some kind of crazy criminal. And I was afraid of it. I didn't know anything about it, but I knew to be afraid of it. So I didn't know anything when I was facing these patients and they were telling me hey, doc, cannabis is helping my headaches or my back pain or my menstrual cramping, or you know what, these menopause symptoms I'm having are really much better when I'm using cannabis. And I was struck across the table from my patients. I knew nothing about it.

Speaker 2: 3:14

So I did the responsible thing. I started learning about it. I developed an expertise and a practice that was built on what patients were teaching me and what the research was telling us we were talking before. We live in these kind of alternative facts world now, where some people say one thing and some people say the opposite thing and kind of all of us are left in this middle ground to try to understand what's real and what's not. So my hope, through this, is to develop a sense of what is actually happening, what's true, what's not true, and I'm trying to bring that to the public. That's kind of what I've become as a doctor.

Speaker 1: 3:50

Yeah, I love that because that's what makes you such a perfect guest for citizen journalists, because what the show really is about, we just get to the facts so that people can actually be aware of the facts and stay away from the hyperbole and the BS that's being agendized, if you will, by interested parties. So that's fair. I love that you did that because I think a lot of I think the public in general kind of struggles these days with trusting a lot of doctors because they're not willing to challenge themselves in that way, and I think that's brilliant that you cared enough about your patients to actually say you know, there's something. I'm seeing a consistent pattern here. Let me go see what's going on with that. So I'm fascinated by sort of the American history you brought that up and I love that you brought that up because I'm an 80s historian, if you will.

Speaker 1: 4:42

I remember the 80s very well and I remember, you know, sampling cannabis when I was young and not really understanding how it was different than pills which were really becoming a thing. I remember every mother having dexadrin in her kitchen drawer and everyone I knew's mother was taking dexadrin, which I knew to be at the time. Even as a kid, I was like I'm sure that's paid. And then I remember it marijuana being sort of demonized in the 80s just say no, and it really was treated as the same and we can touch on the whole categorization of it and the category it was included in. But I would love it if you could take us back a little bit to kind of like America's history with the Flexner report and sort of how herbal medicine got pushed to the side.

Speaker 2: 5:26

Sure, I mean the history, you know, of cannabis in the human experiment is age old. I mean we have archeological evidence that goes back 12,000 years. Cannabis up until the last 100 years has really been a mainstream part of medicine. Tincture of cannabis has always been part of, you know, the human medicine cabinet as long as we have recorded history In the United States.

Speaker 2: 5:55

We live in this business culture, this capitalist system, where if a company can make profits out of it, if they can block other people from succeeding, they're going to try to do that and it's in their advantage, it's in their interests to push people down and make themselves succeed. Unfortunately, that's the culture we have. As cannabis growing from the earth, this plant doesn't have too many lobbyists. When we look to a government that really runs, because lobbied interests push the government toward their ideas, cannabis gets left behind. And that's really what's happened as the pharmaceutical industry has grown, as the paper industry, believe it or not.

Speaker 2: 6:43

Back in the 30s, william Randolph Hearst owned paper companies that were printed on oak trees and an invention called the Decordicator came about. It looks like one of those old pushed lawnmowers and it could chop up hemp and make paper faster than could be made from his oak trees. So he had a business interest to push down that part of the hemp industry and make his media orientations successful. So that happened, and at the time there were other interests that pushed cannabis aside, namely political agendas, social, racist agendas, unfortunately, and we have now an industry that grew up under prohibition.

Speaker 2: 7:24

Cannabis was pushed aside for all kinds of business, political, social reasons and we as a people, and doctors, as professionals and leaders, lost out. And now we're starting to discover these days that cannabis has a place for helping people with pain. So think about the opiate epidemic. We know that cannabis can help people with viruses. So think about the other pandemic epidemic going on COVID and other viruses, hiv. There's a lot of opportunity where cannabis could have been helpful over the years, but because of the way things are in this country, it's been pushed down.

Speaker 1: 8:04

Well, that's interesting, you know, for our listeners in America in particular, we and you bring up some of the most powerful businessmen, really kind of being able to create this country that they wanted the way they wanted it, and one of the ways in which that was done was by the Flexner Report, which I believe was was financed by Rockefeller. The Flexner Report, which was full of let's just call it fluff, demonizing any means of doing medicine that was not based on what they called, they labeled science and real medicine and they demonized centuries of basically historical proof that there were other ways to do things. And I love it when I hear people call herbal medicine alternative medicine, because I'm like actually the alternative medicines, the pharmaceutical industry. It's kind of backwards, but I get it, because in America, once the Flexner Report came out, all of the medical institutions that supported any kind of herbal medicine which included marijuana, were demonized and shut down, and any institution that supported using pharmaceuticals as the lead which, for the record, made companies that use petroleum based products to support the pharmaceutical industry really rich and that laid the groundwork for Western medicine being built on pharmaceuticals.

Speaker 1: 9:30

And I think that's led to look, I'm not going to completely demonize pharmaceuticals because they have their place. I think a lot of them don't just personally, but it did lead to a lot of issues in America that we've actually carried on to abroad, including serious addiction issues, and I don't really see the same addiction problems from people I've known that smoked for years. Anyway, for our listeners, I just wanted to give them a little bit of that background. And so when did that ship start turning?

Speaker 2: 10:06

I think it has always been floating and even these days, as listeners think about their perceptions of cannabis, ideas like oh, there's not enough research come to mind. We've all been fed these ideas and doctors especially will tell you well, it's not randomized controlled trials, there's not enough data that supports those. There's an interesting divide in the medical community, which is doctors and healthcare providers of all shapes and sizes feel like we stand on solid ground with certain types of evidence, and those certain types of evidence minimize the ingredients so that you get a very microscopic picture about what happens with a medicine and with an individual. And the field of medicine and pharma extrapolates. They take mathematical, statistical extrapolation from one study or group of studies to determine what happens to individuals at a grand scale. But the problem with that formula is the stuff which you extrapolate from those individual studies never applies to one person in front of you.

Speaker 2: 11:09

That we average these studies because we're trying to say that a medicine is safe or that the medicine is defective for doing a certain task, but it doesn't apply to the individual in front of you. The individual in front of you might have diabetes, they might be great exercisers or terrible exercisers and those things impact how medicine works for that individual. So when you turn to plant medicine, plant medicine is like exercise or like nutrition or like sleep. We're all a little bit different. Those things apply to each of us differently and those have a big impact in how your life goes, how your health and wellness is. So it's not just what does one medicine do for everybody, it's how is this sort of system of operating working for one individual who's unique?

Speaker 1: 12:01

It's definitely a diverse tool that can be utilized for so many different things, at least from what I've seen. So the history is interesting. I do know that recently, I think the FDA Biden had asked for the FDA to look into the categorization of marijuana as a class drug. That was the same as which is called C and H, because I don't want to get spanked too badly by certain outlets and the FDA came back just in December, january of 2024, I think it was January of 2024, for those of you who are listening to this in 2027, and said that marijuana was not, as far as they could see, it should have never been classified the way that it was classified, but basically saying it should have never been demonized and put into a class that scared. I know my generation was absolutely terrified of it because we were told just say no, it's demonic. And so do you have any thoughts on that shift?

Speaker 2: 13:00

I mean, that is the political discussion of the day we're talking about, and it's the Health and Human Services. Health and Human Services Department has recommended to the DEA that cannabis be rescheduled from schedule one, which means it has zero medical applications, no medical value, only potential risk to schedule three, which has some medical value. And the HHS has said and publicized just this week their documentation showing that there is medical value. The truth is just like the history discussion. The scheduling system is not scientific, it's a political system and the existing structure is a little bit silly. The idea right now, the current law, is that cannabis is worse than fentanyl, which is schedule two, or cocaine, which is schedule two, and the idea that cannabis could be on par with ketamine or steroids still seems a little bit harsh.

Speaker 2: 14:03

So there's players on both sides of this discussion that say, oh, cannabis should be totally free, it should be free for all. There are other people that say, well, it should be regulated in some degrees. We don't want our children consuming this stuff. So the discussion is very much live. I think it's not just what the people want. The US government has treaties with other countries that bind what we can do with certain medicines, certain drugs, and cannabis has been treated as a drug. So our hands are not totally free in terms of our government, but there's no question that the American people have spoken, that over 90% of people want cannabis to be accessible to anybody who wants it for medicinal reasons. Most people out there I think the numbers are 60 to 70% of people want it to be available for a free adult. If they want to make a decision, they should be able to do what they want with their body.

Speaker 2: 14:52

Most people don't want the government regulating their choices, but it's still up in the air. It's a very hot topic these days.

Speaker 1: 15:00

Well, I think that goes back to what you were talking about with lobbying. When you really start to go down the rabbit holes of how, particularly in America, how our world works and you understand how much of this is about money and it's about who's controlling our politicians it's just my personal opinion. When you look at how many of our politicians are financed by Big Pharma, you understand why there's been such a fight for such a long time to reclassify it and allow people to utilize it as a shaman. I really believe in plant medicine, holistic medicine, and it's insane to me that we're still having. I remember and I talk about this in my book in the 80s, thinking to myself well, I don't know any kids who get beaten by a stoned parent, but I know plenty that get beaten by a drunk one. And I remember thinking to myself and I used to tell people I was like well, no, by 2000, we'll be done being led around by the nose. I mean, I kept saying that you thought the same thing too.

Speaker 2: 15:56

Right, right, right, yeah. No, it's silly.

Speaker 1: 15:58

Yeah, I thought by 2000,. I was like, oh God, by 2000,. We won't be that dated. And there we were. Even 10 years ago I was like I can't even believe that we're still. But that's the financial interest.

Speaker 2: 16:23

Right and, on the other hand, if we think about, we are still talking about cannabis and it's been illegal since the 70s and despite every law against it, despite the cultural stigma saying this is evil, we're still fighting a good fight and the reason that is the reason it is on the discussion table is because people who have consumed cannabis and found relief and found benefit have fought tooth and nail for it. It's not because of the doctors they're largely out of the loop. It's not because of the researchers, because they're a little bit powerless. As much as they're trying to push out evidence that shows cannabis is helpful, they're being pushed into the bottom drawer. This is certainly not about the politicians moving the needle because they've been stuck on their thumbs for a while. This is really about the people lobbying their government, writing notes calling, making it clear that they want this to be accessible.

Speaker 1: 17:16

Yeah, they really do. Before you and I started filming, I shared my personal story and I'm very open Not one, but two books sharing my personal journey into consciousness and and I thought I would share that with the audience that you could comment on kind of the challenges around that and the beauty of that situation. So I grew up quite dramatically in an orphanage and on the run from human traffickers and I kept that very quiet for a really long time. I even used aliases for years and then eventually I was hiding from my own secrets because I didn't know how to even begin to speak about the things that I had experienced and hadn't told anyone. And when I finally realized that I was never going to heal if I allowed my secrets to keep me sick, I made a decision to finally speak and I want to say I've never told anybody almost anything. I really hadn't.

Speaker 1: 18:08

So it was very trauma inducing for me to speak about these things and I went and got my medical marijuana card and I remember the conversation because he asked me you know what were my needs?

Speaker 1: 18:18

And I had. I've had multiple. I've like 10 car accidents, several motorcycle accidents, like I had more than enough like physical reasons. But I was like, well, you know, and I kind of said it to him and I remember him looking at me and said we can't put that one down. And I was like, okay, so basically we're going to stick with one of the many I already on my list that I already have as my valid reasons for having a card. And in that experience with with bud, we whatever you want to call it was instrumental in helping me through the, particularly the first six months of speaking for the first time about the experiences that I had and finally getting all of that toxic, you know, shame out of myself and out there, and so I think it's an incredibly powerful tool that can help a lot of people. What, what are your thoughts on that experience?

Speaker 2: 19:12

Yeah, I mean it's. I'm so glad that you're you're you're confident and able to share that with the world, because I think so many other people are in similar predicaments. They're dealing with, you know, maybe not trauma, but maybe terrible stress, or maybe difficult sleeping or terrible pain, and they don't know what to do. There they're approaching their clinicians, their healthcare providers, and they're not interested in the same pills over and over. The system that's that's supposed to help them is failing them.

Speaker 2: 19:38

Cannabis has been miraculous for a lot of the patients I've seen. You know, I've had the privilege of overseeing hundreds of thousands of people as a leader in my industry, but personally I've seen, you know, almost 20,000 people with a journey similar to yours, where they didn't know anything about cannabis. They gave it a try and through guidance, through someone learning about them individually and helping guide them with specific products, and through failures not everybody gets it right. You know, just like anything, we have to learn what works and what doesn't on any given day, and through that guidance I've seen results that are just astounding. You know people who never imagined they would, you know, have a gummy or pick up a joint or something. Those people they report their lives being totally changed. And you know, here I am like this crazy doctor working on the outside of normal medicine and I'm hearing these transformative experiences. How do I scream that information? How do I get that out to the mountain tops? I see, you know, one person at a time and I can help one person, you know, kind of change their life.

Speaker 2: 20:43

But that's where my book came from. I wanted to have this open to people so they could read it, so they could check my information. You know, look at the facts that I'm learning from and hear the stories that I'm hearing from my patients. That was the whole story of my book. You know, I'm seeing an industry grow up and make a lot of mistakes. You know there's plenty of nutty actors out there who are just trying to make money. There are other actors who are really trying to succeed and help people and I'm starting to get a sense of who's who and I want to share that information. That's really what the Doctor of Proof Cannabis Handbook is about. Half of my book is about the individual stories and the individual illnesses. So there's a sleep section, a headache section, a mental health, etc. But half of the book is also how does this stuff fit in traditional medicine. How do I know what a dose is or what I'm going to need, or how do I change that if it's not working out?

Speaker 2: 21:39

The sort of how to you know? You can probably tell us. Oh, your experience getting a medical card is often very plastic. You know you're dealing with a commercial system right.

Speaker 1: 21:53

There was no like should you get some therapy? That was not part of the conversation.

Speaker 2: 21:59

Right. No, that's, and that's what I saw kind of early on, that the doctors that I was supervising kind of, were checked out Like they'd either burned out of their old career or they didn't know very much. They weren't challenging themselves to learn more and learn from patients. So I'm trying to create a different model where this is treated as a regular specialty, that this is a very powerful actor in people's lives and how do we help people understand how it's good for them individually? And that takes work. It takes, you know, real clinical practice.

Speaker 1: 22:27

It really does. I was fortunate that I was very like self-aware for somebody who was very closed up, but it really I really do give it a lot of credit that in the people who stepped in when I finally started to like go. I need help, I need support. I don't know how to deal with the situation. I had some incredible people come into my life and genuinely help me move through everything and help me blossom and move up the consciousness scale. But I do believe that it was that card and that ability to go to the store and test things out and find what worked for me, and in my case it was.

Speaker 1: 23:04

I don't know if it's because I'm autistic, but I'm the opposite. I have the opposite effect. So what puts people to sleep? It makes me the other way around. So it took me a little bit to play that. But you know, not only did I lose 80 pounds, I'm healthier now than I've been in the probably 25 years Even when I was like a little tiny thing. I wasn't healthy because I wasn't loving, I wasn't coming from a place of self-love and really focused on my own renaissance, and I changed my entire diet and I really feel like that was a very big part of that because it helped, you know, it kept me calmer and you know it's just a really wonderful experience. And so, and just as somebody who was living in Florida at the time, I watched and met so many people who dealt with chronic pain, who dealt with just a laundry list of great stories I have of these people that I watched transform over time as I would run into them again. They became like kids again. It was incredible to see Right.

Speaker 2: 24:03

No, I mean, what you described, I think, is the perfect formula for people, and that's number one vulnerability. You know understanding that there's a need that you could meet that you're. You know something's got to move. The second is motivation. You sought help, you sought someone to get you to that next stage. And the third is knowledge. You know where can you find the knowledge to get better, and I'm trying to meet people on those three motivators. You know you're a success story, I think, because you took the initiative and you had the wherewithal to understand what you needed and the motivation to do it. And you know. You clearly now are a fountain of knowledge spilling over, so much that you're sharing it with other people, which is really remarkable.

Speaker 1: 24:44

Yeah, it's been great. Writing about it has been really cathartic. Your book is called the Doctor's Approved Handbook, the doctor approved cannabis handbook.

Speaker 2: 24:57

It has a long subtitle too, which is reverse disease, treat pain and enhance your wellness with medical marijuana and CBD. The long title is really just to capture a lot of eyes for people that are looking up different parts of this because, as you alluded to eloquently before, cannabis has a lot of different names. People don't understand all the nuances of it, and that's the point of this book is to bring all of those different kinds of people together with one voice and help them understand how this stuff is, how it works, where it is in our culture, how it fits into their lives. I'm trying to bring it all home.

Speaker 2: 25:36

The book is written for everybody to read, not just fancy language, not just doctors. Everything is simplified. There are charts and diagrams. It's not meant to be necessarily red cover to cover. It's snackable. So someone who wants to read about boiling points and how they can start heating up cannabis and avoid the toxins of smoking can do that easily. For someone else who's interested in edibles and they don't want to consume a lot maybe they don't want to be high ever how do you do that? So that takes knowing the industry. It takes knowing the products. It takes the ability to help guide someone with step A to step B, and that's what this book is all about.

Speaker 1: 26:15

I love that. I think that's incredible. It's so nice to see I'm in New York now. It's very open in New York. It's wonderful to see that we've evolved to a place. I don't think the political systems and the lobbyists can hold it back at this point. It's moving forward. Where do you see it Before I keep going? Where can people get your book?

Speaker 2: 26:41

So it's no, no, thank you. It's everywhere books are sold. So Amazon, of course, number one on most people's list. Ben Bella Books is the publisher. Penguin Random House is the distributor, so this is going on bookstore shelves across North America. If people want to reach me directly, my website, kaplan Cannabis so C-A-P-L-A-N, cannabis-c-a-n-n-a-b-i-s dot com when in doubt my name, benjamin Kaplan dot com Any of these places will have the book. The book doesn't have diagrams and pictures, so that website I quoted, kaplancannabiscom, actually is full of free pictures and free education about the book and from topics within the book, so that's a really handy resource for everybody who's wanting to learn more but doesn't want to pay for a book.

Speaker 1: 27:30

Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's awesome. Where do you see things like in this sort of the short term future and then the long term future? I'm curious.

Speaker 2: 27:40

No, that's a great question. I think I've witnessed the industry shift by leaps and bounds in the last 10 years. 10 years ago, nobody would talk about it openly. Oh, you're interested in cannabis? Who would do something like that? We were all kind of stigmatized. I watched that change where I was hearing from doctors, instead of saying no, no, no, don't do that, they were saying look, I don't know, maybe ask someone else or maybe do a Google search. And that's shifted, even in the last three years, to doctors reaching out to me and patients are getting a first referral here.

Speaker 2: 28:12

I have patients who have, believe it or not, breathing troubles and how do they find cannabis helpful? Side note, they don't smoke. There are plenty of ways to consume cannabis that are not smoking. Other specialists are reaching out. I have an orthopedic surgeon who always refers patients to me because their patients are getting better with cannabis. They can avoid opiates, they can avoid long term medicines, they have more choices in cannabis that are empowering. We live in a culture now where you get to be the boss of your own body. It's not just about which doctor you saw and hopefully you get the right prescription or the right situation. You get to decide what works better for you and I think we all want that.

Speaker 1: 28:50

Yeah, yeah we do Sort of a signature of citizen journalists, is to kind of highlight the biggest challenge with the solution. What do you see as the biggest challenge currently in the industry and the solution or the way forward with that?

Speaker 2: 29:10

Yeah, I think the biggest problem is knowledge. There's a huge knowledge gap for the healthcare community, for the medical insurance community, for the individuals out there. People hear good stories. They know that, oh, a friend of mine got some good result out of cannabis and someone else I know is taking CBD and that's working for them. Oh, and I heard Sally's dog is taking CBD and I think that's working for them. But they don't know which website they bought that from or which products are going to work or which products are going to make me high.

Speaker 2: 29:39

And many people, hey, I don't want to be high or I don't want to test positive on a drug test. What do I do with all this stuff? There's a lot of questions out there and those are the questions I'm trying to help people with. That's what my clinical practice is for, that's what this book is for. I work with another company called EO Care that's guiding people and businesses with how to deal with this, like I'm trying to put myself out there in a way that's educating.

Speaker 2: 30:04

So I think knowledge is the biggest resource gap and I think in the long term that's always going to be a struggle. You know, we all hear, oh, there's not enough research and I actually I think, in the one hand that's not true, that there's plenty of research out there, just doctors aren't reading it and they're not sharing it, but B there's never going to be enough research, because science is about learning and we always question what we know. We challenge existing status quo and the norms and our understanding. We're trying to grow as a culture and, ironically, cannabis, as we were talking about before, is the oldest medicine. But I think it's also going to be a part of the future. You know, we're watching around us. Psychedelics come up and people know about ketamine and they're hearing about LSD and MDMA and all of these things, I think, are going to be part of the future medicine.

Speaker 1: 30:51

Yeah, no, absolutely. It's wonderful to see the world open up. As somebody who I talk about addiction. I definitely had struggles with that throughout my life. It's something that runs in my family and I think that a lot of that has to do with. I think our prisons are honestly filled with people who have unhealed trauma. I don't think they're filled with necessarily bad, evil people. I think they're people who were traumatized, did whatever you know, and I think it's also filled with people who got caught in a system that demonized a plant over things like alcohol and prescription medications, and it's just interesting to see us finally get to that place where we're healing from that, we're learning and we're seeing it as something that's going to be a part of the medical world in the future. I mean, it's already become such a huge part of it. But I love the work that you're doing. I think it's so important. Education is such a big deal, and not only are you educating other doctors and the public, but the industry itself. Yeah, trying to, that's incredible.

Speaker 2: 32:00

I mean, you know you're right, I think the system has been pretty messed up. You know, we have right now prison systems, that bias, who they take on as prisoners based on the shade of their skin, and it's crazy. And I think we have this baggage from our past as a culture that we need to learn from. We need to change and, like anything, it has to come from the people. So people have to stand up and sort of vote with their feet, learn more, express to their doctors that they do want their doctors to know about what they find helpful, and most people these days are finding cannabis helpful. They prefer it to pharmaceutical medicines.

Speaker 2: 32:41

Believe it or not, if cannabis were a medicine, it would be the number two medicine on earth behind Humira. It is a massive part of the human experience. It's different for everybody, but it is no less fundamental to what it means to be a human in this culture, in this society, that people want their cannabis. They want it to be available. Some people want to do it for fun, because they makes them feel good in a stressful world. Some people do it because, you know, they have trauma or they have pain and they want to have a better choice for that. Everybody's a little bit different, but we all have to come together to change the system. That's just old and needs revamping.

Speaker 1: 33:18

I love that, you know, I think, one of the gifts of the closures, which didn't feel like a gift when it was first going on.

Speaker 1: 33:27

But I think we always have to look at what happens in our lives as an opportunity to grow, and I've watched this.

Speaker 1: 33:34

I felt it.

Speaker 1: 33:34

In the collective consciousness, the number of people on the planet that are willing to have the hard conversations, to have the honest conversations and to have their voice be heard has increased exponentially, and that really is the beginning of the seismic change that we're going to see, and we need it because it's AI and I talk about this a lot.

Speaker 1: 33:52

It probably sounds crazy to some people who aren't that familiar with AI, but, as AI is really entering our world, we need as many people as possible who are willing to have the hard conversations and to address issues, because it can be a very transformative future for us, where people can have the medicine that they need without being guilt, tripped or, you know, mistreated, and that they can heal from whatever. Whatever that is, and that we can implement what is going to be one of the most. It's a new industrial revolution. I think everybody knows that, and we can have enough people who are unconscious, as I'm willing to push the conversation that needs to take place, instead of allowing the big corporations and politicians to make decisions for us that oftentimes turn around and burn us.

Speaker 2: 34:33

Yeah with with respect to AI and where the rubber meets the road. You know the current AI large language models take information that they gather from all over the world and they're not really looking at whether it's good information or not good information. It's all information. I have helped build my own large language model which is taking good cannabis research, clinical experience that I'm filtering and serving and bringing that to bear for patients. You know, one of the things that I've done on my career is build the world's largest library of cannabis publications.

Speaker 1: 35:08

Oh, that's incredible.

Speaker 2: 35:10

I put it online for free in a huge Google Drive. But who's reading? Who's reading scientific journals? Very few people, and most people don't understand it. So I created a large language model, a big librarian that lets people ask a chat bot how is this cannabis right for me or what, what would work for me in cannabis? And the chat bot will look at the library, understand the literature and then translated an answer in plain English. The idea there is, the information they're getting is not, you know, some hic in a mountaintop writing on his computer, or not someone who hates cannabis because something bad happened to them once. This is randomized, controlled trial data. This is good data. This is clinical information, all abstracted to answer someone's real question.

Speaker 1: 35:54

That's incredible. I love how this whole interview ended in some surprise thing about you that I did not know. I think that's amazing. I talk a lot about AI, do sometimes workshops to help people really understand what, how it can be an incredible tool, and it's amazing to me that you've already of course, your head is a you wrote a book, an incredible book on on a handbook on on cannabis, so why would it surprise me that you've already got a large language models in AI on on it? I think that's amazing, and I just know someone's going to see this and now be in contact with you to see if they can tap into that resource.

Speaker 2: 36:28

Yeah, for anybody out there who's interested in connecting, I'm all over social media. At Twitter, I'm at Dr Kaplan. That's D R C A P L E N. On Instagram, I'm at Dr Benjamin Kaplan. So D R Benjamin Kaplan. If you forget all that, benjamin Kaplancom is the fastest way to get me. That's Benjamin and C A P L E N. I'm thrilled to meet anybody who has questions or wants to share their story. I'm happy to help you individually. It's not hard to reach me. Reach out.

Speaker 1: 36:58

Oh, I love that. Thank you so much, dr Kaplan, for coming on and sharing your incredible knowledge and your book. Again, benjamin Kaplan, you guyscom. That's really the main resource, but he's Dr Kaplan's and all the major social media platforms and I think he's going to be continue to blaze a trail right through this important issue. Thank you so much for joining us for episode two of Citizen Journalist, where we talked about the past, present and future of cannabis in the holistic and medicinal sense and its sort of future, particularly here in America.

Speaker 1: 37:34

I hope you guys enjoyed that. If you are, let me grab my book before I forget. Oh, where is my book? There's a question that's me making a lot of noise. If you haven't already heard about my book, Memory Mansion, you guys go check it out. Of course it's going to blur.

Speaker 1: 37:52

Memory Mansion comes out officially February 3 of 2024, but it's available worldwide. It shares my crazy journey from Tennessee Orphanage on the run from human traffickers, falling into being a fashion pioneer and eventually learning to heal all of my trauma and love myself. So if that sounds interesting to you, it is the self love memoir that reads like a thriller and it's available everywhere. So go check it out and of course, it's going to keep blur in the cover. For those of you who are listening, you have to go check my book out, because the cover of my book is actually the coolest part. I think it speaks to the moment in which I opened Memory Mansion and finally began to speak my truth. Everyone should be shameless because our secrets keep us sick. So if that sounds good to you, go check it out online. It's available everywhere and you can certainly learn more about my work at shamaniciscom.

Speaker 1: 38:43

You guys have an amazing day. Thanks again for watching Citizen Journalists, and if you're not already subscribed, what are you thinking? I mean, this is where the truth lies and the future gets spoken about in beautiful ways. So be sure and subscribe. Okay. Thanks, you guys, and have a good one Bye.