(lively uptempo music) - Oh hey, it's the season two premiere of "Inspire."

To kick off our new season of shows, we start with the first episode of a three-part mini-series, "Cannabis in Kansas."

Coming up, we dive into the history, the stigma, of cannabis.

Stay with us.

(light electronic music) - [Announcer] "Inspire" is sponsored by Kansas Furniture Mart, using furniture to inspire conversation, and by the Blanche Bryden Foundation.

(upbeat inspirational music) - Hello, and welcome to our season two premiere of "Inspire."

It's great to be back with my gorgeous co-hosts.

We have Danielle Norwood and Leslie Fleuranges, and you, thank you for being back.

We're excited, we're gonna be discussing a lot of all-new topics, but one that we visited before.

- Betty Lou, it's great to be back, and what a great way to kick off a season premiere, with a three-part "Inspire" mini-series covering one of my favorite topics, cannabis in Kansas.

- For the next three shows, we will cover major topics of cannabis legislation, right here in Kansas.

This week, the history of cannabis is our topic for discussion, and here with us to cover the history and stigmas of cannabis are Kelly Rippel, co-founder of Kansans for Hemp, and joining us via Zoom are Amy Reid, president of Kansas Cannabis Coalition, and Dr. Currie Myers, retired Sheriff for Johnson County and consultant.

Kelly, Amy and Dr. Myers, thank you so much for joining us on "Inspire" today.

Talk to us about the stigma around cannabis, and Kelly, since you're here, Merry Christmas.

I'm gonna start with you (laughs).

- Okay, all right.

Well, the stigma that we now know from cannabis really originated from some anti-immigration sentiment, that was taking place in the United States around the 1920s, early 1900s.

We had immigration from other countries such as Mexico, and with those immigrants, they were working in the farm fields and they got the social stigma tied to them that they smoked this herb.

The fear was that they were smoking and dealing marijuana, and causing havoc.

And I will say that specifically in Kansas, with the temperance movement and alcohol prohibition, there was kind of a void left open, and that anti-immigration sentiment and very racist ideology latched on to that sentiment of demonizing people who use substances, specifically cannabis in this case.

- Okay, Amy, I'm gonna let you answer.

What's your thoughts on this?

- Well, Kelly's exactly right.

And the interesting fact is that, all the way back to the 1850s, cannabis was on the pharmacopeia, and doctors prescribed it for over 100 different illnesses and ailments.

And they fought hard when marijuana prohibition began, in the 1930s, 1920s, 1930s, and they ended up arresting over 3,000 physicians for prescribing cannabis back then.

So, politically centered, it was very focused on, "These people are bringing things into our country that aren't good," and less focused on the true medical benefits of the product.

That was intensified when Nixon took office as the president, and he signed the Controlled Substance Act in 1970.

I'm in my 50s, and when we grew up, we took classes at school about "Just say no to drugs," you know, Nancy Reagan and her whole Just Say No initiative.

So I think we were all conditioned to believe that it was just this awful thing, between the media and the press and school.

And sadly, no universities were teaching the endocannabinoid system, and the benefits of the plant.

And I'm a registered nurse.

I was not taught in nursing school about medical cannabis.

Neither were the doctors.

So when somebody would go to a doctor and ask, we don't know anything about it.

So we're like, "Oh no, it's bad."

We learned on the radio, on TV, that it's bad.

So it was just a horrible situation all around.

- And Dr. Myers, I want to bring you into the conversation.

What are your thoughts?

- Well, it's been an effective marketing campaign all these years.

I agree with Amy, we've lost focus on the medical side.

It became kind of the evil drug.

It became a Schedule I drug, which, you know, cocaine and methamphetamine and heroin, and some of these others aren't even Schedule I drugs.

So I just think that stigma came with it.

And then once it became a Schedule I drug, which means it really doesn't have any benefit at all, it's very difficult to get your status back once it's been demonized to that level.

But I think the table's turning.

We're seeing close to 70% of the public that is supportive of medical cannabis now.

In Missouri, they passed Amendment 2 with over 65% of the public supporting it.

So I actually think that the tide's turning and we are seeing more information and more data, and there's certainly much more medical information that's coming to light now about the positive use of medical cannabis.

- So let me roll us back just a little bit.

Couple of questions on the difference between what I'm seeing in stores around Topeka.

There are some CBD places where you can buy CBD, and then there's the THC, right?

So what is the difference between that, and the medical marijuana as an example?

I'm totally confused.

- No, that's a great question because there is a lack of education in general, with everyone that hasn't studied the plant.

And the cannabis plant has multiple, over 100 different cannabinoids within it.

And one of those is CBD.

One of those is THC, which the THC is the one that produces the psychoactive effects.

And you can purchase in Kansas now, CBD, that's legal up to the federal limit of .3% THC.

The problem you run into is, different ailments require different strains, and those different strains can be, for example, a two-to-one ratio, CBD to THC, or a one-to-one ratio.

It varies, CBD has some very intense anti-inflammatory effects, but the THC portion of it can help tremendously in controlling pain and nausea.

And when you combine them together, it allows for the therapeutic effects.

But when you're treating so many different diseases and ailments, one size does not fit all.

So some are better with high CBD, very, very low THC, and others, for example, terminal hospice patients with chronic intense pain, need the exact opposite.

- Okay, so is there, we want to ask, is there a one place that you can go to get some education and descriptions and so forth?

If you can hang on to that for just a minute and think about it, because we need to take a short break, but we will be right back with our guests to learn about that, and just so many things that we're all confused about.

So we're guessing that you might be confused as well.

Do stay with us.

(light upbeat music) (light contemporary music) - Hi, I'm Janice Watkins, CEO of Topeka Habitat for Humanity.

Drywall repair is more than just something that is for aesthetic purposes.

It's important to have a proper sealant, to allow protection from smoke and fire combustion.

Drywall errors can happen with just a, moving something about and dinging the drywall, or it can (hammer bangs) really take place.

So we have a hole in our drywall that obviously needs repairs for multiple reasons.

The first thing we want to do is to kind of clean up that hole, so that it's gonna be easier to repair.

We can do this by taking a utility knife, (knife scrapes) and kind of cleaning up around the edges to make that smoother.

To allow a smooth application of a drywall patch, there are multiple ways to go about that, but the quickest and easiest way to repair drywall is through a self-adhesive patch.

You can obtain this from any hardware store, for just a couple of dollars.

They come in multiple sizes.

In this instance, we've made sure we have plenty of room to patch our hole.

We're just going to peel off the backing, and place it as such around the hole, so that we can begin the process of reapplying and fixing our drywall.

(light contemporary music) (drywall knife scrapes) Once we have all of our joint compound or mud applied and our patch covered, we're going to take a larger drywall knife, and we're going to feather the ends, so that we have less work to do on the completion stage, and have a nice smooth finish around our patch.

(drywall knife scrapes) Now, as you can see, we can see some of our patch.

So this is an important first step.

This is not a quick process.

We're going to let this be nice and smooth and then dry, and then likely have to add a second coating of mud or compound, so that we can have a nice clean patch to our drywall repair.

Now that we have applied our first coat of compound or mud, we can go back through, and we can start the smoothing process.

As you can see, our patch is not quite dry.

The area is gray, and not all of the way white or translucent.

So we're going to use this existing patch.

You're going to start with some sandpaper.

(sandpaper scratches) Lightly go over the edges to make them nice and smooth.

With drywall, this really is for the aesthetic purposes of applying paint towards the end, so that we can have a nice, smooth surface.

On flat walls and non-texturized drywall, this is going to be extraordinarily important, as we're going to see every cosmetic issue when we apply paint.

You can also use a wet sponge to aid in this process, which will just kind of smooth it down, and we're gonna feather the edges, till it's nice and smooth.

We're going to continue repeating that process until our edges are nice and smooth, and we're able to see zero imperfections, and apply our coat of paint.

Thank you for joining us.

And we hope you get inspired to address your own home maintenance.

(lively uptempo music) - All right, so we're back, and so here's my question.

I want to follow up on my wonderful co-host's question of, where can people go?

Is there a one-stop shop where people can go, and learn more about medical cannabis, so that we reduce the confusion behind that product?

Dr. Myers?

- Well, locally, the Kansas Cannabis Coalition is a great resource for information that people can visit and learn more.

The National Institute of Health, the government's has quite a few studies out, showing the efficacy of medical marijuana, and there's more information being researched almost daily, just because we've had enough states now that have passed medical marijuana, where we're seeing more and more data that's associated with the benefits of medical cannabis.

So I think we'll continue to see more research and more data that comes out.

I do believe it's gonna be, there's potentially legislation federally about decriminalization of cannabis, or at least removing it and no longer making it a Schedule I.

That's gonna be very, very important, in order to not have conflict between the federal government and the states.

So that's another positive indicator that we're actually seeing both sides of the aisle supportive of these measures in Congress.

So we may very well see something in the next legislative session.

And of course in Kansas, they'll be considering medical marijuana in the next session.

And there's really some great benefits for medical consumption.

Especially, one of the reasons that I've been supportive of this, is you see so many people in the military and veterans come back, and they're suffering from PTSD, and they've had war injuries.

And unfortunately they get prescribed opioids, and other drugs that are highly addictive, where medical cannabis could be a viable resource for them.

So there's more and more information coming out every day that shows the positive benefits of medical cannabis.

- So when it comes to medical cannabis, are we smoking that, or are we also ingesting that as a pill?

What's the manifestation of this, that people could be taking?

Because there's a stigma, right?

I mean, if people are smoking weed, people think, "Oh, there's a druggie over there."

- It's a great question, first of all.

And second of all, it's funny how everybody perceives that when you say marijuana, everybody just assumes it's smoking or inhalation.

And the beauty about this product is that it doesn't have to be inhaled.

It doesn't have to be smoked.

There's so many different ways, and sometimes better ways, to administer the product, based on the patient's disease process.

For example, arthritic hands.

My mother has terrible arthritic hands, and there's a topical lotion that has CBD with a very small amount of THC in it, that provides her tremendous relief.

You could do more than one route of administration as well.

So you can do a topical that penetrates the top two layers of skin, but doesn't go too much deeper than that, but then also do maybe a sublingual.

There's tinctures or oils that you can use, where you put a few drops under your tongue, versus smoking it.

And the onset is a little longer.

We prefer inhalation on a lot of patients, strictly because it's like an emergency drug.

You know, you get stung by a bee and you're allergic, you inject yourself with a pen right away, because that's the quickest route of administration.

For people that are having, say, an anxiety attack or PTSD, full-blown onset where they need something immediately, like an emergency drug, the quickest way to get it through your blood system is through an inhalation.

- Right, well, you know, just coming off, several people might be watching who, the only thing they ever really knew about marijuana was that country singer Willie Nelson was always getting in trouble for, you know, (Danielle laughs) and had marijuana on his bus and that's kind of all you heard, but in our previous episode, we had the lady on who was talking about being a concierge.

And you definitely wouldn't want to just go in somewhere, and not know what you're asking for.

That's why I was asking about a one-stop place just to get some information, Kelly?

- You're absolutely right, and there is some interesting documentation that came out of Canada that shows patients who have a registered medical card, for cannabis access, they have seen an increase of utilization with their medical provider.

So it can be stated that people who have access to medical cannabis do tend to get their guidance from their medical professional about that, and how it affects their conditions.

- What if your medical professional is not a fan of hemp?

What do you do then?

Do you change doctors?

I mean, how do you handle that?

- Trying to have that discussion with your medical provider, and have them look at some of the data that's out there.

Because like Dr. Myers said, in 2021 alone, there were over 4,000 studies published about cannabis, or that had the term marijuana in them.

So that doesn't even account for the other studies that are about cannabinoids and all of these other constituents.

So there is that opportunity that patients have with their medical provider to introduce some information to them, if they're not aware of it.

They can also talk with a different medical provider, and maybe have them collaborate with that medical provider that does have an awareness or maybe an acceptance of it.

- Okay, Amy, did you want to add something to that?

- No, I do think that's a big risk when rolling out a brand new program is, you want, with Kansas Cannabis Coalition, we're all about patient access.

We want our patients to have access to medicine, and it is concerning that a lot of our existing medical professionals are not experienced.

Now, when the bill language is written, there will be requirements for doctors who are writing recommendations.

We call them recommendations, not prescriptions, but whoever's writing those has to go through some training themselves, and has to become educated.

There's also other resources within organizations.

For example, I'm a registered nurse and I'm part of two national cannabis nurses' organizations, that provide us with a plethora of patient education that we can use out in the field.

I think the scariest part of where Kansas is now, and we're in the process of writing what we hope to be the perfect bill, the scariest part is that we erroneously leave certain patient populations out.

And that's what our focus is.

We want the small businesses.

We want the patients.

We want Kansas farmers.

We want people far, far out in Western Kansas to have access.

And if we don't have any medical providers out there who are willing to write recommendations, that's gonna be a problem.

- Dr. Myers, when you were in law enforcement, you were a sheriff over in Overland Park and Johnson County.

What was your experience when people are going over because they have illnesses, they're sick and they need to go and get this medical marijuana.

And they're going across over to Missouri and then coming back to Kansas, and getting caught, getting pulled over.

- Yeah, the first thing is I don't recommend doing that because it's a violation of Kansas law and you're gonna get arrested.

So we have to understand that we do, each state has different laws, and different applications of those laws.

This is why it's important to have the federal government come in and kinda eliminate the chaos by passing their national legislation as soon as they can.

DEA and other federal organizations have taken a hands-off approach to the medical cannabis side, if a state passes it.

But the law enforcement authorities are still gonna go after black market, which we want them to do.

So, I mean, that's the reason we have regulations.

That's the reason we have compliance.

That's the reason we have quality control and standards, just like we don't have, you know, we don't want to see black market use of other pharmaceutical drugs that are out there, because you don't know what the quality control is in the standards.

But to your point, you know, Kansas is pretty much surrounded now by states that do have cannabis approved for usage.

And you could have someone who is a Colorado resident, that's driving through the state of Kansas, and has a legal reason and permission from Colorado to use the cannabis that they've been prescribed.

And they could be driving down the road and be stopped, and that cannabis could be seized and they could be arrested in the state of Kansas right now for having those drugs on them.

So that's the conflict, and that's the chaos that occurs when we don't have sensible national strategy and legislation.

I do think Kansas is taking positive steps forward.

There is a significant interest in my opinion, by many legislators right now that they want to, that they're okay with medical cannabis.

The last data I saw that was close to 70% of the Kansas population are supportive of medical cannabis in Kansas.

So, you know, until the federal legislation can either decriminalize it or move it from a Schedule I to a Schedule II or III, we're gonna see more and more states go ahead and take on the specific legislation.

To me, I think it's important to have compliance and standards in place, because we are talking about medical cannabis, and we're talking about prescriptions.

And I think you mentioned earlier, you're concerned with quality control as a patient.

And I think everybody would be concerned with quality controls and standards as a patient.

And we want to ensure that those things are done with good legislation.

- Right, Kelly, I noticed you were nodding throughout that.

Would you please add to that?

- I agree with everything that has been said by Dr. Myers, and it's really unfortunate that we have exported not only revenue to other surrounding states as Dr. Myers mentioned, but we've also moved people.

Families have moved across the border so that their child who has epilepsy can obtain cannabis preparations, and it is happening more and more.

And I don't think that that will stop or slow down until Kansas has a medical cannabis program in place.

- Well, and one of the concerns that we addressed with Leigh Zarda, who's going to be on, Lee Zarda Carr, who's one of our, I call her a concierge, as it is.

- Concierge, yes, yes, yes.

- Is that there are a number of people whose lives could have been changed by having cannabis as part of their treatment, and people who could have died, because they didn't receive cannabis here in Kansas.

So I want to talk about, we're one of 13 states, according to some data, that have not legalized medical marijuana.

Where are we on that particular trend?

And you said in one data supply that you have that we're one of three.

So tell us, is it one of three, one of 13?

And how can we try to get this as part of the conversation to actually get it legalized?

- The data that I understand is from 2019, and I do believe it said that we are one of 13 states.

And Amy, correct me if I'm wrong about this, but there are some states that have passed medical programs since then, but they haven't been enacted yet or fully implemented.

So that number is still kind of shifty or gray, I guess.

But yes, there are some maps out there, from peer-reviewed publications, that show Kansas is one of three.

Idaho, Nebraska and Kansas are the last three states to have full, zero, prohibition, you know, zero tolerance on the cannabis plant as a whole.

But there is conflicting information out there.

- Okay, so what do we need to do to move the needle?

I know that there is a lot of questions, I'm sure, from our audience that want to know more about this, but obviously there are more benefits, as we're gonna find out in future shows, than there are things that are going to be problems with this.

What do we do to, A, educate more people?

And what do we do in terms of legislation?

What's the next pieces that need to happen?

- So I think there was some really strong strides made in 2021.

There was a larger economic picture that legislators started to understand about what this is going to mean for the economic development of the state, bringing well-paying jobs to rural and frontier counties, for example.

But really getting that information to the lawmakers has been the key, having them understand the aspects of how this is going to impact our society, based on evidence from other states.

And so, we've heard a lot of arguments in the past about the sky's gonna fall, and we're gonna have all these fatalities and you know, but the data overall is showing that those red flags maybe were a little unwarranted.

And so we really have to really tease in to the data, and find out what is accurate and how we can, well, in order to better understand what we can expect in Kansas.

- That's all the time we have for today.

We look forward to continuing our conversation on cannabis in Kansas with our next episode, where we're gonna dive into the medicinal side of cannabis.

- Don't forget, you can watch and share this show and all other episodes of "Inspire" at watch.ktwu.org, and if you are so inspired to learn more about our guests and find out what's coming up on future shows, be sure to visit our website at www.ktwu.org/inspire.

- Inspiring women, inspiring you, and inspiring knowledge on the history of cannabis, right here on KTWU.

We thank you for watching.

(light upbeat music) - [Announcer] "Inspire" is sponsored by Kansas Furniture Mart, using furniture to inspire conversation, and by the Blanche Bryden Foundation.