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Cartel Cutler, WeedMD - Medical Cannabis
[00:00:02] So my name's Cartel Cutler. I'm the director of medical outreach at WeedMD, been in the industry for five and a half years now. Background is corporate finance. But when I entered the cannabis industry I actually owned operate and founded a group of a half dozen medical cannabis clinics within the Greater Toronto Area cannabis runs in the family. Mom has been a patient under the legal legal medical cannabis program since 2007. Dad and I've been patient since the MMP was initialized in 2014. I definitely believe that there's a place for pharmaceuticals in the industry, in general and in healthcare, but that being said it's not a long term solution more often than not for many particular ailments such as my mom who has chronic long term pain just the contraindications and the ramifications as a result of a long term pharmaceutical use in her case really strong heavily narcotic opiates just motivated me and other family members as well to explore alternative treatments and therapies of which I generally choose plants over pills is what we like to say medical cannabis has been used therapeutically for thousands of years now dates back. Many thousands of years in traditional medicine. So we believe in plants not pills and there's many great medical benefits to using cannabis. Once you receive proper education and you figure out a strange efficacy dosing titration and delivery methods that work for you more often than not it's a combination of those things for different people at different times the day.
[00:01:30][87.2]
[00:01:30] And here atM.D. we're federally licensed producer of cannabis and we encourage people to start low and go slow until they find out they're medically efficacious dose for them and what works for them. Since October 17th 2018, when we federally legalized cannabis in Canada for adult recreational consumption I've actually noticed a higher influx of patients under the medical cannabis program and I think that's largely as a result of the stigmatization that the fact that cannabis has been in the mainstream media so much. There's a lot more discussion going on. It's not to say that it's perfect. It's by no means perfect in terms of how we've rolled out the program but I think that we're working on putting the foundation in place and slowly progressing things along. There needs to be lots more consultation with other groups and communities such as the Indigenous community as well. In terms of how they can get more involved in the cannabis because there's great economic and social opportunities available. I honestly hope that the medical marijuana street medical side of the cannabis industry continues to grow exponentially actually as we get more covered costs and insurers involved definitely on the medical side that's a big concern of ours. Cannabis especially today with a lack of drug identification number unfortunately it's far and few between as far as coverage goes so it's very price prohibitive. A lot of people are very interested in consuming medical cannabis but given that it's medical they're often very sick people. Cannabis is viewed as a final last line treatment as far as the Canadian Medical Association and here in Ontario the College of Physicians in Ontario i goes. So anyone who's a medical cannabis user generally is on some kind of disability whether that's a federal or provincial social assistance program.
[00:03:17][107.3]
[00:03:18] They fixed and limited incomes and budgets. And again it's very price prohibitive. At the end of the day when I look 5 10 years down the road I hope that we could do a lot more research and development, in terms of medical efficacy matching strains to individualised conditions so that we could have health care practitioners can make more informed recommendations to all the patients that they deal with and then also, on the patient side of things as well, I hope that through again research and development and product innovation we see a lot more different options and delivery methods especially nowadays you definitely don't need to smoke it as one would have had to do 50 years ago. You can consume it orally more often than not right now in the legal market. There's oils or tinctures and topical creams but the Federal Government has released proposed legislation for three new derivative categories as well, extracts, topical creams and edibles as well which includes beverages too. So I'm really interested in the new research and innovation that's going to be done on that aspect of things. So for medical patients we're looking at transdermal patches, suppositories,a lot of high CBD products and the fact that the government is reclassified the hemp licenses as well. I think we're gonna see a lot of industrious uses come out of that as well as some high grade CBD products hopefully on the more economical side of things come into the industry. So I think that medical is going to be better than ever over the next five to 10 years and really excited for the growth. [00:03:18][0.0]
[194.6]
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