Welcome everybody. Thank you so much for joining us for this last session. My name is Melanie I'm a
part of Sudax planning team and I am here and it really excited to have Patrick Rippberger from Meso
Solutions as our presenter today with the high the rise of high-potency THC products Just the
last housekeeping item. This will be the last time you hear it from me but if you are here for CEUs,
please make sure that you sign in and out on the attendance sheet that's on your
on your table, make sure that you're here at the end to scan the CEU or the QR code to get your CEUs.
And then before you leave today, if you could make sure to fill out your program evaluation and leave
it on the table that you came in at. And with that, I'll take it away. Patrick. All right.
All right. Thank you all for being here today on day two of your summit. I'm excited to talk with you
all today about marijuana. We've been seeing marijuana right our entire lives, but things have changed
and I'm happy to be here to talk with you about that. Like Melanie said, my name is Patrick Rippberger.
I am a practicing epidemiologist and master community health educator. I've done a lot of work at the
intersection of mental health, but also substance misuse.
And through my work with the CDC and drug-free communities, we found a lot of need for information about
what THC products look like today. Pot is very different from when we all grew up. It's very different
from when our parents grew up. So we'll be talking about some different trends, how things have evolved.
And actually, you get to take a tour through my pot shop pretty soon. So I'll get to go on a little
field trip with you all through my virtual pot shop.
And again, thank you all for being here today. Mezzo Solutions is an organization that we put together
about six years ago to help serve helping professionals through education, but also mental health support.
So this is my piece in the public health world for this project. So about this training, we're looking
a little bit at product potency, but also access. And we're trying to figure out a way to replace the
stigma of substance misuse, of marijuana use,
with some more clarity for the work that we all are engaging in. We're gonna talk about also some Indiana
data. We'll look at some legal clarity about what's actually happening with the realm of marijuana throughout
the community. And I see now Melanie's passing out some of my snacks for you all, so feel free to take a snack.
We'll also get to watch a video here in just a minute, so a little movie snack for you. At the end,
I'm going to go over some practical action steps for what you can do with your organizations in your
community to help promote the reduction of substance misuse.
some lessons that we've learned along the way. Some of these slides are adapted from Sue Thaw, who is
one of the only preventionist lobbyists we have here in the United States. So we've adapted and updated
some of her information through an organization called CADCA. We've been presenting this information
to organizations at summits and conferences across Indiana for about two years now, first starting with
the Indiana Rural Health Association to what it is today. So we will take a look
also at what this is and what this isn't. So this isn't about legalization, okay? Legalization of marijuana
looks at decriminalization, which is something that I'm totally for, right? I think that we shouldn't
be putting people in jail for long years because of substance use crime. What we're looking at today
though is the commercialization of cannabis, the commercialization of marijuana. And this also makes
me think too about the idea of marijuana becoming a celebrated drug,
not just a drug that you have at parties, but the kind of drug that you find in your convenience store,
the kind of drug you find at your gas station, the kind of drug that you would find at your grocery
store. These are things typically that we think of, like alcohol and tobacco. Some institutes would
also say caffeine, but people get kind of angry when I say, hey, caffeine's a drug. But it is. I still
use that for sure. But celebrated drugs are normalized. And if we don't look at them honestly and sincerely,
We have to be honest with it. I myself, I'm in long-term sustained recovery, and one of my substances
of choice was alcohol. From alcohol, I got rid of my alcohol issue by using cannabis, which became problem
use. So I'll be talking about what that looks like too as we go along. So again, this isn't
about legalization. This is about branding. This is about commercialization and what happens when we
either regulate or under-regulate a market and see where we are today.
So on the screen, I want everyone to look at what we usually picture when we think of marijuana, right?
There's this plant. It's this green thing that comes from the earth. We smoke it. It makes us feel kind
of funny, kind of good. At the top, there is this flower or this bud. This is typically what we think
of when we think of marijuana. It's dried. It's put into products. Maybe it's put into an edible or
you smoke it.
But there's other pieces of this plant, too, that are cultivated to make different types of products.
This image itself is actually taken from a cultivation website that teaches people how to cultivate
marijuana. And this shows the different names of things, the things that can be turned into oils. We
turn into concentrates. So when we start this presentation, this is usually what we picture. This is
the marijuana we think of. It's a plant from the ground. But by the end of our today's session, we're
actually going to see what it looks like today.
what it looks like in our stores, in our communities, throughout our neighborhoods. Because it doesn't
look like this anymore. It looks like something completely different. So to start with, I have a video
that we're going to play real quick with my help from the tech department over here. We're going to
play this quick video. Feel free to have some snacks. I put some snacks on your table. Go ahead and
grab some gummies and enjoy yourself. This is going to talk about how THC impacts our brain.
how it impacts our bodies, what we know and what we don't know about it, because there's still some
mysteries, because there's been a lapse in research that we're also talking about. So I'll pause now
and play the video. And we'll get some sound in a minute. Yeah, there's supposed to be some sound.
research on the drug's mechanisms and effects. Today, marijuana's therapeutic benefits are
widely acknowledged, and some nations have legalized medical use, or are moving in that direction. But
a growing recognition for marijuana's medical value doesn't answer the question, is recreational marijuana
use bad for your brain? Marijuana acts on the body's cannabinoid system,
which has receptors all over the brain and body. Molecules native to the body, called endocannabinoids,
also act on these receptors. We don't totally understand the cannabinoid system, but it has one feature
that provides a big clue to its function. Most neurotransmitters travel from one neuron to the next
through a synapse to propagate a message. But endocannabinoids travel in the opposite direction,
When a message passes from the one neuron to the next, the receiving neuron releases endocannabinoids.
Those endocannabinoids travel backward to influence the sending neuron, essentially giving it feedback
from the receiving neuron. This leads scientists to believe that the endocannabinoid system serves primarily
to modulate other kinds of signals, amplifying some and diminishing others.
Feedback from endocannabinoids slows down rates of neural signaling. That doesn't necessarily mean it
slows down behavior or perception, though. For example, slowing down a signal that inhibits smell could
actually make smells more intense. Marijuana contains two main active compounds, tetrahydrocannabinol,
or THC, and cannabidiol, or CBD.
THC is thought to be primarily responsible for marijuana's psychoactive effects on behavior, cognition,
and perception, while CBD is responsible for the non-psychoactive effects. Like endocannabinoids, THC
slows down signaling by binding to cannabinoid receptors. But it binds to receptors all over this sprawling,
diffused system at once,
whereas endocannabinoids are released in a specific place in response to a specific stimulus. This widespread
activity, coupled with the fact that the cannabinoid system indirectly affects many other systems, means
that each person's particular brain chemistry, genetics, and previous life experience largely determine
how they experience the drug. That's true much more so with marijuana than with other drugs,
that produce their effects through one or a few specific pathways. So the harmful effects, if any, vary
considerably from person to person. And while we don't know exactly how marijuana produces specific
harmful effects, there are clear risk factors that can increase people's likelihood of experiencing
them. The clearest risk factor is age. In people younger than 25, cannabinoid receptors are more concentrated
in the white matter
than in people over 25. The white matter is involved in communication, learning, memory, and emotions.
Frequent marijuana use can disrupt the development of white matter tracts and also affect the brain's
ability to grow new connections. This may damage long-term learning ability and problem solving.
For now, it's unclear how severe this damage can be or whether it's reversible. And even among young people,
The risk is higher the younger someone is— much higher for a 15-year-old than a 22-year-old, for instance.
Marijuana can also cause hallucinations or paranoid delusions. Known as marijuana-induced psychosis,
these symptoms usually subside when a person stops using marijuana. But in rare cases, psychosis doesn't
subside, instead unmasking a persistent psychotic disorder. A family history of psychotic disorders
like schizophrenia, is the clearest though not the only risk factor for this effect. Marijuana-induced
psychosis is also more common among young adults, though it's worth noting that psychotic disorders
usually surface in this age range anyway. What's unclear in these cases is whether the psychotic disorder
would have appeared without marijuana use. Whether marijuana use triggers it early is a catalyst for
a tipping point that wouldn't have been crossed otherwise.
or whether the reaction to marijuana is merely an indication of an underlying disorder. In all likelihood,
marijuana's role varies from person to person. At any age, as with many other drugs, the brain and body
become less sensitive to marijuana after repeated uses, meaning it takes more to achieve the same effects.
Fortunately, unlike many other drugs, there's no risk of fatal overdose from marijuana.
And even heavy use doesn't lead to debilitating or life-threatening withdrawal symptoms if use stops.
There are more subtle forms of marijuana withdrawal, though, including sleep disturbances, irritability,
and depressed mood, which pass within a few weeks of stopping use. So, is marijuana bad for your brain?
It depends who you are. But while some risk factors are easy to identify, others aren't well understood.
which means there's still some possibility of experiencing negative effects, even if you don't have
any of the known risk factors. Okay, I like showing that video because everyone has access to it. It's
on YouTube. If you have clients who have questions about marijuana, if you have staff that have questions
about marijuana, it gives a nice snapshot to look at what we know so far with the research we have.
But there are a lot of questions that are unanswered and some ambiguity about this video, and I want
to talk about that now. Before I start, though, I want to ask, how is cannabis or THC products showing
up in your community? And you can just shout this out. Where are you seeing THC? If you're seeing these
products, where are you seeing it at? The gas station, okay?
What was that? Liquor stores? The smoke shop or the vape shops. Yeah. Do any of you, I mean, we live
pretty close now to Illinois, right? Illinois has some legal dispensaries. So you might see billboards,
you might see packaging around town. You might get advertisements. You might get mailers even advertising
to come over to Illinois. So cannabis is showing up in a lot of different ways in our community.
And there's a weird market too from this Delta 8 piece that you might have seen, which we'll also talk
about here today, about why is there marijuana in our gas station in Indiana if it is illegal? And we'll
answer that question here today. But we need to start with, okay, start by looking at where is marijuana
legal? What's the legality of it right now in the United States? Where can you actually get it from
state to state?
And you'll see here on this map, Indiana is still in the red, but we're surrounded by a lot of states
that allow recreational or medical marijuana use. Illinois is medical, but also recreational. Michigan
is medical and recreational. Ohio is medical recreational, and Kentucky is medical, with a push to have
recreational marijuana available. How close is the nearest dispensary to us right now? Does anyone know?
You're not exposing yourself either, I'm just... Maybe less than an hour, right? Maybe over in Illinois,
less than an hour, somewhere around there. In my community, I live over in Richmond, Indiana, which
is kind of west of Dayton, Ohio. Our dispensaries used to be about 45 minutes or an hour away, but we
actually have a new one that popped up in a town on the border, so it's actually about 10 minutes away.
So we can just go right across the border, get some weed, come back over. It is illegal, but it's very
accessible for our community. It's becoming more and more accessible. And you can go to Illinois from
Indiana and buy marijuana. I've done it. I know that anyone can do it. You just got to have an ID. You
got to be old enough to do it. Same for Michigan and Ohio. They're totally fine selling it to people
from the Hoosier state.
It's not that hard to obtain it as long as you have an ID and you're of age to be there. There has been
some talk in Indiana, right, about legalization, about recreational and medical, but there's been a
lot of stop in the government to make sure this isn't happening. We'll see if it ever happens. We're
still kind of unsure about when or if it'll happen on a state level in Indiana.
I like to keep this slide in here because originally we started having this talk with youth coalitions
in Indiana about how marijuana has changed. And the truth is this marijuana we have today is not your
grandma's marijuana. This is not the weed that we had maybe at Woodstock or before. This is a more high
potency THC that can impact us in ways that we don't really fully understand yet because the research
hasn't caught up to where we are with these potency levels.
So I'm about to show you the story of THC levels here in the United States. And these are taken from
illicit marijuana samples that are confiscated by law enforcement and measured over the years. And we're
gonna see how this THC from illicit marijuana has increased over the past few decades. So in 1970s,
we had THC in a marijuana joint that was equaling about one to 2% THC.
very low level marijuana, some like grass weed they would call it, that woodstock weed. And as we see
the years go on and on, potency kind of stayed about around that. We started getting higher into 5%,
6%, into 10% THC in 2010. In 2015, 2020, we were peaking at about 15 to 16% THC in illicit marijuana
that was confiscated by law enforcement.
But around this time, too, we started seeing the recreational and the medical use start to catch on
to figure out how can we actually increase potency. Now, I like to stop it here to show the 15 to 16
percent THC in illicit marijuana because studies have shown that anything over 15 percent THC is considered
high potency. The medical use of THC products begins to diminish after 15 percent THC.
The psychoactive effects can actually inhibit helping, healing, and supportive in that medical department.
But we see time and time again that THC is way beyond this 15%. But research has shown again that there's
not a lot of medical support after a 15% THC, but it has become a standard. I'll go back real quick.
One of the places that has had legal marijuana for a long time is Amsterdam.
Amsterdam, when I was a kid, we always joked about we're going to go to Amsterdam because they have
weed and we're going to smoke weed in Amsterdam. But the fact is Amsterdam did this experiment and they
found out that when they legalized marijuana, it became commercialized. When it became commercialized,
the industry started making higher and higher potencies of the marijuana to where it was exceeding 15%
THC 85% of the time. 85% of their products were high potency THC.
And when they tried to create legislation and make rules about reeling this back to figure out how can
we create low-potency THC in our community, they couldn't do it. The industry became too strong. They
couldn't get this passed through their government. So even Amsterdam, with this experiment back in the
day, is still suffering from the consequences of an unregulated market of potency. And a lot of states
that we have here in America today
don't have potency caps in a way that is effective for this product that we have. So there has been
a lot of research looking at what is the average THC potency in dispensaries around the United States.
And we can see here that everywhere from Maine to Vermont to California, the majority of marijuana sold
in their dispensaries are high-potency THC. It's really hard to find low-potency THC
If you want to find low-potency THC, it's almost a specialty thing now, because there's so much high-potency
THC, it's flooded the market. Because in the commercialization of this, people want a higher potency.
They want to sell the best product. They want to get better and better. High-potency THC is the standard,
but the research for that hasn't caught up yet. Even over in Michigan, we see that the standard flower
of cannabis is 18% to 23% THC.
We see concentrates hitting at 82% THC, which is a whole other world that we'll talk about as we go
along. THC, and if anybody wants these slides afterwards, I'm happy to email them to you and share.
If you need to talk with your organization or your community, I'm happy to share these slides. We do
have the references at the bottom of all these slides for your use as well. So even in Michigan, the
standard is above
the high-potency threshold. Another way to look at this is that one joint today could be as strong as
17.5 joints during the 1970s, that woodstock weed. And this can cause a lot of issues for people, especially
if you are maybe a returning user from back in the day. Maybe you experimented with pot when you were
a kid and you tried some of the new stuff. It's way stronger. It's really, really strong.
And I have an example of that for sure. The first time that I tried marijuana as an adult had been about
15 years since I tried it as a kid. And I was at a concert in Detroit, right? So Michigan, they had
legal marijuana. I got some from the guy I was getting the Airbnb from. I tried this marijuana and I
got so freaked out, I about called the cops on myself.
because I just, I couldn't handle it. I was like, this is not the weed of my childhood. Of the 2010s,
you know, it was that like 10%, 11%. This was like 30% THC and I thought my face was like gonna melt
off. Terrifying stuff, right? And we hear this story time and time again of people who maybe are given
these products because it's told by their loved ones or someone that cares about them that it'll help
them. Maybe even their doctor has prescribed it. But these high potency THCs are a different level.
And it's something that we have to be honest about. Because the THC today is not the THC that we think
about. It's not the marijuana that we picture in our minds, that plant. So now I'm about to take you
guys on a little virtual field trip to Pat's Pot Shop. So this is my pot shop. And we'll be taking a
tour of what you will find in a dispensary if you walk into a dispensary here today.
Pat's Pot Shop is for public health purposes only, so I hope that everyone here is 21 years or older.
before we go in. A funny side note is I had a t-shirt made because I would give this talk a few times
and I was wearing my t-shirt for Pat's Pot Shop to a Costco in Ohio over the weekend. And people were
stopping me asking, where's Pat's Pot Shop? I want to go to it. And I was like, all right, well, this
is a good time to have a conversation with you about what this is. But people thought it was real. So
maybe there's a market in the future. But for today's purposes, we'll be looking at the public health
impacts of these THC places.
So when you first think about THC and marijuana, we think of these products, the flower, the things
that came from that plant that I first showed you, the top of the plant, the pieces of the plant. You
can buy this as a bud.
You can buy this as a pre-roll depending on the state you're in. Some states have made it so you can't
get pre-rolls because it's a harm reduction technique to reduce the time it takes for you to buy to
use the product. Ohio had that ban for about two years, but that was lifted last November. And you can
also buy ground cannabis flower if you don't want to grind it at home. So these are the flower products
that you can purchase at a cannabis dispensary.
And this is the type of label that you will see on a cannabis product. Now this has a lot of information
on it, a lot of information about the lab it was tested from, where it was grown, the THC content. We
have the total THC in this garlic breath, which is a pretty popular brand for this state, is 29.5% THC,
which is double what we would consider high potency. So this flower is
double the high potency, and it lists the different types of THC you'll find in it, from Delta-9, which
is the standard THC, to THCA, which is a THC that you can actually extract from hemp flower and hemp
products. THCA is just like THC-9 or Delta-9, except THCA has no psychoactive effects until it's lit
on fire or heated up
or exposed to some type of heat. So THCA is converted to THC9 or delta 9 with heat. So it's showing
that you add all these things up and you have 29.5% THC in this type of product. Now what do you use
to smoke these products, right? So at the shop you could buy this type of paraphernalia or do this paraphernalia.
You have bongs, pipes, one-hitters. The dry herb vape is sometimes interesting to people because you
can actually vape a dry herb. You can vape a marijuana flower. Some people say it's healthier or it
makes their lungs feel less clogged up, but that is something that you can do. So that's what a standard
dry herb vape will look like. And then you have the papers and the pre-rules. So these are the tools
that trade when it comes to the flower. So that's what those look like.
But we also have vapes, right? Vapes are very common. We see these a lot today in gas stations. People
vape nicotine and different things. And these vape shops sell the types of vapes that you would have
in your gas station. They have the disposable vapes. They have the vapes that you'd put onto a battery.
You can see here, too, that the one for Michigan is 100% clean, 100% tested, 100% Michigan, promoting
that this is a Michigan brand.
And that's by design, but also because of the law. So there is a law in place that says that marijuana
is federally illegal, which means that you can't transport Michigan weed to Ohio for sale, just like
you can't take Illinois weed to Kentucky for sale. It has to be grown in the state and sold in the state.
You can't pass borders. It's state by state right now when it comes to that legalization. So they also
try to make it regionally attractive to people, saying that this is Michigan's brand,
You should be in Michigan smoking this brand. So a lot of times you'll see like in Ohio, they have like
the Buckeye brands. I don't know what's big in Illinois, but probably like, I don't know, Chicago weed
or I don't know, something like that, right? That's the only thing I can think of with Illinois. I apologize
if you're from Illinois. So they really try to make it regional because of that federal law. You can't
move it from state to state. So they're trying to really work on that.
You have the disposable vapes. We even have our friends Cheech and Chong getting on the board here,
right? So we have Cheech and Chong vapes, which you can buy online, have it shipped to your house. Cheech
and Chong primarily works in legal delta from the 2018 farm bill, which we'll also talk about here today.
But these are things that you can buy online, have shipped to your house, completely anonymous. You
don't even usually need to give an ID to get these types of products.
And then you also have the cannabis cartridge right there that you put onto a battery. And typically
the concentration of this is 40 to 90% THC, right? So high-potency THC is 15%, but the vape is 40 to
90% THC. And the THC that you can consume during a session of vaping is a lot more than you can from
smoking a blunt or smoking a bong, because you can just keep doing it, keep going and keep going.
So that's a look at the vape cartridges. I want to also talk about concentrates, which help build up
the vape industry. This right here is THC disatel oil, and this looks a lot like a syringe. Sometimes
people think, like, do people inject this? But no, this is not something you inject into your veins.
This is a concentrate that you actually use to smoke
You use it to actually put into maybe edibles. But it comes in this type of syringe because it's a very
sticky substance, a very sticky substance that you would use in this process. When we think
about concentrates, we also know that some can be up to 99. We're even seeing some at 100% THC now.
The entire thing is just full of THC. You can pack a heck of a punch. So this THC-dissipate oil can
be used to smoke or you can put it into some type of ingestible.
Some other smokable ones that we've seen are THC Wax. This one here is kind of a Skittles brand, so
it has a bit of a Skittles taste to it. We have THC Shatter, which is also smoked. We have THC Batter,
which again is also smoked. We have THC Crumble, which is smoked with a dab pen, or it could actually
be mixed into some type of flour if you're able to heat that to a high enough capacity. We also have
THC Sauce,
You don't put this on your food, you actually smoke this too. And these are all byproducts of the marijuana
processing process. All those parts I showed you on that plant earlier are used in this in order to
make it. Sometimes it's through pressing oils out, other times it's through caustic chemical compounds
using propane and like a laboratory in order to extract these THC's from the plant to make
these concentrates. And then we have THC sand.
THC sand can be smoked in a dab kit or it could be put into a marijuana joint sprinkled in to make that
THC flower even more high potency. THC sand, it looks like sand, right? It's like this very like fine,
fine powder, fine substance.
These are the tools that trade for that too. In order to smoke these products, we have nectar collectors,
we have wax vapes, which heat up just like a traditional vape, but heat up to the temperature to burn
the oil. And then we have a dab rig, which is kind of like the bong version for a dab. And this is a
slide too that helps me reflect on the reason why I started to question, is marijuana still marijuana?
Is it still the plant that we think of? Is it still this green plant from the earth that we contribute
to like the 1970s and maybe like hippie culture and spirituality? Is it this natural compound or is
it turning into something different? And it was this product that I first started to really think, it's
different. There's something happening here.
When I walked into my friend's house, he was my friend, but I sometimes bought pot off of him. And I
went to his pot room. It's true, right? I went to his pot room, right? And he has this room set up where
he had all his pot, his scales and whatnot. And after he weighed out some leaves and stuff for me, he
put out a dab kit. And he was like, do you want to take a dab? And I was like, what are you doing? What is this?
And he takes this dab rig and he takes a hit and he starts hacking a lung up like he just like inhaled
from like an exhaust on a car. And I kind of freaked me out, right? It kind of really did freak me out.
It made me question, you know, what is this drug now? This was just like a fun thing, a recreational
practice. Maybe it helped with some medication that I needed. But this level of marijuana made me really
question what's going on in the industry today.
I've seen the same thing. There was, is anybody from the Muncie area or visit Muncie sometimes? There
is a pot shop in Muncie that
had Afro Man come to it once. That was his claim for fame, is they had Afro Man come in. They sold legal
marijuana. It was like a meet and greet. And I was in town for a conference, and I was like, I'm going
to go check out this pot shop. I go in, and the worker is hitting a dab kit behind the counter, and
then just starts hacking up a lung. And he's like, I'll be with you in a minute. And I was like, I don't
know if you'll be with anyone in a minute. How can you function with this level of THC? It's just bonkers,
right? It's just bonkers.
When we are consuming up to 99 to 100% THC in a smoking session, it can hit us really quick. And I want
to talk about those delivery systems as well. When we smoke marijuana, when we consume it in this capacity,
it can affect us within minutes. We have anywhere from seconds to a few minutes for that really to hit
with a 30 minute peak on how that marijuana actually impacts us.
We also know that it can last for up to six hours with everything, those effects kind of going away
within 24 hours, depending on your tolerance and depending on how much you consume. But when we look
at ingesting marijuana, edibles, consumables, it can take a while. It can take sometimes 30 minutes
to two hours for the effect to actually start feeling with a peak sometimes at about four hours.
which can result in over ingesting marijuana and edible. Maybe you've heard of that before, right? Like,
and I know I've definitely been there. I love I get to tell these stories too. So I used to work under
a federal grant and there's some things that were like, you can't say that. And now I'm like, I can
say whatever. So there was a time that I was in Michigan and I took way too many edibles and I didn't
know what it would do to me. Cause I was just a returning user from my youth. I ended up being stuck
at a Burger King parking lot for four hours.
because I couldn't leave, because I was way too intoxicated. This can sneak up on you, right? Doses
are really important. Dosing, when it comes to edibles too, usually start at 2.5 to five milligrams
per dose, and I'll show you in a second how that can be problematic. So some common things that you'll
find in the pot shop, in Pat's Pot Shop, are Rice Krispie treats, right? The things that we think of,
like a little treat you can have, a Rice Krispie treat,
They have these other things called cones, which is like a little cone that's filled with chocolate
that's infused with THC. We also have breakfast bars, like a Lucky Charms bar. We also have nerds. We
have nerds ropes, nerd bites. We have stony patch kids. And I'm going to pause right here and ask. About
30 minutes ago, 20, 30 minutes ago, we started passing out some gummies that anybody take any.
You took some gummies? Are you feeling okay? They're not dosed, okay, but look at the package, right?
So that's also something they wouldn't let me say during the grant. But look at the package, right?
The packages look very similar to these products. I promise I didn't dose anybody here because that's
illegal and I'm not breaking any laws today.
So the packaging looks very similar to these candies that we ate as kids, that our kids eat. It looks
very similar. Stony Patch Kids, Nerds Ropes. We have candy bars, candy bars infused. And you can see
here, I hope you guys can see it, the percentages, right? So a package of gummy of Stony Patch Kids
has 350 milligrams of THC. The recommended medical dose starts at 2.5 to 5 milligrams.
I don't know anyone who just takes one Sour Patch kid and calls it a day. That's hard to do. This next
one's even a little scarier, and I really want to find an example of this in the wild, but Doritos.
This looks like real Doritos, but once you start paying attention to the package, you'll see there's
like a triangle in the corner. There's some information about dosing. These brands have been sued time
and time again by regulating bodies saying, hey, those are copyright infringements. You can't sell these,
but they keep coming back. A new one will start. They open up a new company to make it happen. This
is straight from online. You can buy a box of these online, have it shipped to your house.
These look just like Doritos. When you dive into the serving size, can you guys guess how much a serving
size is for a dose of Doritos? It's one or two chips. I've never opened a bag of Doritos and had one
or two chips. Never once. The risk of overdosing yourself with these products is very easy.
We also have mints. So mints usually come, each mint is about 2.5 milligrams of THC to 5 milligrams
of THC, and they're odorless, they're easy to use, and these are available at your standard smoke shop.
This could be a dispensary across state lines, this could be your gas station, it could be your vape
shop that's selling these products. Any questions about these before we
take some more examples. Have you guys seen products like this before? Some people, it might be kind
of shocking to others to be like, wow, that looks just like something in my kid's lunch box, which we
will talk about as we go on. Here's some more examples of the Doritos. You can see that this one's a
little more telling because there's some pot of leaves on it. But the Flaming Hot Cheetos, again, you
can see that little California label in the corner.
But other than that, this looks like a bag of Cheetos. This one just came up recently. Pop tarts. Right?
Pot tarts. These look just like a box of pop tarts. If this is at your home, in your kitchen, you know,
a kid or unsuspecting person can definitely get a hold of this not knowing what they're eating. And
this can be pretty harmful. This can be harmful for someone if they don't know what they're using.
And even if they know what they're using, this type of dosage can be very detrimental. Some more of
the stony patch kids, also looking at the labels on the back and just how familiar these look like to
the candies that we have in our lives today. As we go on with consumables, we're starting to see a bigger
market for drinks.
drinks that are infused with THC or different THC compounds. This one's called Keef. It has 10 milligrams
of THC per can. We also have Flower Aid, which is just like Power Aid, but you kind of have a scoop
and you can make your own dose about how much THC that you want. I don't know if this will actually
help you with sports though. It might actually change your dynamics in that. This one too, Keeva, cannabis
infused gravy.
Okay, so we'll have some more information about this as we go on, but the kind of gravy you would take
to like a family get-together. We have Delta 9 syrup. So this syrup you would add to like a big gulp
or like a drink at your house. This contains a thousand milligrams of THC, but there is no measuring
spoon with it. There's no way for you to actually measure what you're putting in it unless you bring
your own tools to that.
And then we have tinctures, which can be used under your tongue or with other types of consumables that
you might be making. Some more on the drinks. We have high dose lemonade that has 100 milligrams of
Delta 9 infused in it. So that's kind of like your standard lunch box serving of lemonade.
And then we have Willie Nelson getting in on it too. So Willie Nelson's been having some commercials
come out about his drink, right, talking about how there's sobriety from alcohol, but using THC will
help you, you know, reduce some stress. So Willie's drink here has 17 servings. It has 170 milligrams
of THC per bottle. So Willie Nelson is getting on this too. Each serving is about 10 milligrams of THC.
Now the gravy. Okay, this one's interesting, but I also want to talk about how they're marketing this
as well, because we're seeing ads for this gravy come up on social media in different places. So Kiva's
Cannabis Infused Gravy, they're looking at normalizing the market to help people think that, you know,
this is a celebrated drug, this is something that we can bring around the family. Kiva Foods has dedicated
to crafting different types of cannabis edibles that are focused on this type of product.
So Kiva's marketing for Thanksgiving gravy, these are some one-liners they have on some of their social
media ads. Kiva's cannabis gravy ensures a stoned family dinner. Need to tamper down some of those family
disagreements, just give grandma a little spoonful. And again, dosing somebody without them knowing,
that's illegal, right?
Also, Kiva Foods' cannabis infused gravy has 10 milligrams of THC in a package, enough to get you or
your loved ones a little loose for that conversation about what you're doing with your life. So this
is just looking at some of the marketing that they're normalizing the use of cannabis products throughout
the country. Now, we have to talk about the 2018 Farm Bill.
because there was already some discussion about we're seeing marijuana in our gas stations and our vape
shops here in Indiana. And I want to talk about why you're seeing that. In 2018, Congress accidentally
legalized weed. They didn't mean to, right? They did not mean to. They were trying to support farmers
who wanted to grow hemp. And their idea was that we can unregulate some of the hemp production with
different regulations around that. And they said that if you can make a product that is
0.03% THC by that item, it's legal, right? They thought this is like a low dose of THC. We don't got
to worry about it. Because of that, hemp production really went up. They started producing more and
more hemp. They made so much hemp, nobody wanted it. Nobody wanted to make bags or clothes or textiles
or paper, but there was a plethora of hemp.
It took scientists about three months after that hemp created a surplus to figure out how they can actually
convert hemp and the THC inside hemp into psychoactive material that we have in these products in our
gas stations. So by law, these are legal products because by volume it contains 0.03% THC.
That's how this loophole has opened, and that's why these legal THC products have been put into our
communities. The Delta-8s, the Delta-10s, the THC-A, THC-V, THC-10, the THC-Acetate, THC-P, all of these
derivatives pulled from hemp plants through usually acoustic means, right? This is scientists using
things like propane and different chemicals to extract
this THC from these legal plants, and then putting it on our shelves. And this is what we're finding.
The same kind of Delta-8 cartridges that we might see. Its counterpart is Delta-9 in the dispensary.
We have the concentrates. We have the diamonds, which again, you would smoke with a dab rig. We have
the exhale wellness blunts that you can smoke. And we have the flour.
Now it's important to understand that even the flower here is a problem because the flower itself, hemp
flower, is not psychoactive. You can smoke hemp and nothing happens. You might feel a little relaxed.
You might get some of the CBD benefits from it for pain, for different muscle supports.
What they do with the flour though is they make the concentrate or that oil and spray it back onto the
flour to make it have that psychoactive effects. So even if you have this legal farm bill weed, it's
still doused and concentrates to make it psychoactive because by itself it's not.
Hemp is not psychoactive by itself, but when they improve the psychoactivity with the concentrates,
that's what we're seeing. And then you see these types of gummies too, right? The Delta-8s and Delta-10s.
But what you'll notice is that a Delta-8 product, like a gummy or consumable, is usually a little bit
bigger than what you would find in a dispensary. It's a little bit bigger because it's working that
definition of 0.03% by volume.
It's working that legal loophole. So the gummies are a little bit bigger, but they still have
that psychoactive effect that could impact your ability to drive a car, to make certain decisions. So
this is why we have this legal weed through Indiana. This is what it might look like on your shelves at your
gas station, these colorful packages showing these types of designs, selling this THC. I've seen a lot
more of like the Delta 8 neon signs and windows at vape shops when I go buy those. This is something
that you can buy online and have it shipped to your house without any ID, without any really requirements,
just pay them with a credit card and they'll send it to you. Some states are cracking down on this interstate
travel of these types of drugs, but it still is popping up.
This one's over in Indianapolis. We were talking at an addictions conference, and this store was about
five minutes from that room. They had an actual physical location where they could actually sell this
product to the public, but it's also online, so you can have this ordered and shipped to you. So Delta-8
and the derivatives from hemp because of the farm bill are currently still legal, but that is on the
verge of changing.
When there was some independent studies also looking at are these products actually accurate when it
comes to their consistency or their potency, they found that some of them didn't actually have the right
potency listed because no one's regulating the potency of these products. They're not regulated at this
point and no one's watching those laboratories as well. So even if you're buying it from a vape store,
you're not always necessarily sure what's actually in it and you're really taking that company's word
for granted for what is on their label.
So what about the regulation? So Indiana has noticed that there is a lot of problem with this farm-built
weed throughout the state, and they've done some work on trying to regulate that and change it. But
also this industry that has popped up has gained a lot of momentum because there's a lot of money behind
it. A lot of money is being made, billions of dollars because of this loophole. And as we all know,
right, money can actually make things happen with our regulations.
So, Indiana state bills have been put up, they've been paused, they've been thought about, they've been
reworded, and recently they've actually kind of paused and said, okay, we're not going to pursue banning
this because there is some federal legislation in the work that says that this loophole will be closed.
In 2025, they looked at closing the loophole to reduce the amount of THC that could be in these products
and actually try to wind back these rules, which would actually impact over 95% of the products on the
shelf today, and essentially eliminate this industry as we know it. First, it was supposed to be banned
in November. That's been pushed to December 11th of this year, and we'll see if that
keeps rolling backwards as they pause to figure out how they can regulate it instead of ban it, because
there are some components of people who say there are some harm reduction supports for this legal farm
bill weed. This changes it to a 0.4 milligram per container and not just per item, which actually just
eliminates a lot of these products. But we are seeing a lot more move towards beverages that
include THC. So I theorize that we'll see a lot more beverages even if these edibles and things start
to go away. So December 11th is supposed to be the day that these are off the shelf across the country,
but we will kind of stand to see if that's actually going to happen. We also need to talk about rescheduling
because that's usually a hot topic.
In 2025, there was an executive order to expect to expedite medical marijuana and CBD research and looking
at moving marijuana from a schedule one to a schedule three. And there's still some things in the works
for that. We see that the schedule three is kind of a partial at this point, looking at FDA approved
a state licensed medical marijuana to move to schedule 11.
schedule 11, schedule three. But it's important to understand too, this is not legalization of marijuana.
This is not saying that adult use or recreational use is legal. This is opening up the field for research on
marijuana, where it is today, this high potency. For years now, we've been researching some really bad
weed. Not bad as in like, oh, it's bad, but like just really low potency government supplied weed. You'd
have to talk to the government to get weed to research it, and their weed was not as good as the weed
on the streets. And it was hard to actually understand what this THC was doing to people and how it
impacted them.
So this rescheduling will actually open up the doors for us to actually look at what is high-potency
THC doing to people and how can we make sure that we are honest in our discussions about it. And it's
important to understand too that when you're talking to medical providers, when you're talking to individuals
about THC, a lot of the research we have today about the benefits of marijuana is about low-potency
THC, the kind of THC that you can't find hardly at dispensaries or
in stores. So the research that we hear from our physicians is always cited from research that was on
low-potency THC. Now, hopefully, this will make it so that we can catch up, that we can start looking
at the more high-potency. But again, we are waiting to see. This is an anecdote, too, to just solidify
that marijuana is still illegal and it affects a lot of industries. We talk about marijuana a lot with our
at our company, around the state, and we sell a lot of workshops about marijuana. And because of that,
my credit card company that we contract with caught on and contacted me and said, hey, it looks like
you're in the marijuana industry. We can't support your business anymore. And they wanted to cancel
my credit card contract. So I'm still trying to figure out if they're going to actually cancel my credit
card connection with the company because there is such legalities around cannabis.
You can't do anything with high potency cannabis when it goes beyond the farm bill and the litigation.
So even my credit card company has dinged me for talking about high potency THC because they thought
maybe I was dealing it in some aspect. So THC is still illegal in that federal level. The rescheduling
does not change that.
So I want to talk about some statistics too as we go along. So we have slides here, and again, I'm happy
to make these available to anybody who would like to utilize them. But this one talks about potency
and risk at first dependent symptom. Teens who are first exposed to lower potency cannabis were at a
1.88 times more likely to develop the first cannabis use symptom
cannabis use disorder symptom within a year. And we'll talk about what that cannabis use disorder looks
like in a few more slides. But teens who had a first exposure to high potency cannabis were nearly five
times more likely to develop that symptom within the first year. So the higher potency, the more likely
there was that someone might develop problem use when it came to youth use.
We're also seeing that 72% of adolescents who use cannabis have used a concentrated product. So these
concentration products are becoming very popular with youth. Maybe you've heard of youth using THC vape
pens. I know in my community we've had a lot of reports of teens going into the ER after using a vape
pen because they didn't really know what it was and they didn't know what was happening to them and
it kind of really scared them.
Adolescents who use concentrates show higher rates of broader substance use problems than those who
use flour only. Looking even at that idea of poly use when we look at substance use and these concentrates.
Non-vaped adolescent cannabis use is declining while the vape is actually increasing. And frequent adolescent
vaping six or more times a month is increasing across nearly every demographic group.
we're seeing more and more of these concentrates being used within youth. One question that comes up
sometimes in our presentations is about fentanyl-laced weed. Some states have heard of this, some communities
are concerned about it, and there's a lot of information from the DEA and some other state agencies
regarding this, so we like to kind of show this slide that talks a little bit about
the myths and reality of fentanyl-laced weed, even the chemistry behind it, and how fentanyl can be
exposed to a person. And there's no evidence of widespread contamination so far in reports, but there's
been some news articles, some spurred by some false positive tests in the field that were reported,
and that's how those conversations have started, because we know that anything fentanyl is scary.
Right? But this also is a conjunction to this too about how youth can be exposed to fentanyl. And there's
a lot of talk about the idea of, you know, counterfeit pills. There's a lot of campaigns even about
the one pill. It just takes one pill to be exposed to things in this counterfeit market. Especially
if you're purchasing these types of substances on social media or the internet or through non-organized groups.
We also have some information here which is just repeated from the video talking about how cannabis
impacts the developing brain. We have frequent adolescent use is linked to changes in brain regions
governing things like attention and memory, decision making and even motivation. It's dangerous to use
cannabis when our brains are developing.
If you're going to use cannabis, wait until 25 or 26, right? That's kind of an idea to think about it
because our brains are still kind of forming. They're still kind of mushy in there. Attention and memory
deficits have been detected even after a month of abstinence of substance use when it comes to cannabis.
And there's even associated IQ decline that can impact individuals up to eight points when it comes
to adolescent cannabis use.
Studies have time and time again found links between suicidality trends among young adults who use cannabis.
This has even been found true when adjusting for things like depression and even cannabis use disorder.
This one is a newer diagnosis that
has hit the market. And we've had some people we've worked with through our organization that
have experienced this, the cannabinoid hypermemesis syndrome, which is repeated severe nausea and vomiting
in a chronic way from frequent cannabis use, but it's linked a lot to high potency use. So it's almost
like uncontrollable vomiting after long exposure to chronic high potency THC use.
This was sometimes not even caught when people went into the ER to figure out what's going on because
they didn't want to admit that they were using cannabis products because there's still stigma or legalities
behind that. And that's not a good thing because one of the best ways to treat this is to stop using
cannabis. But if that's not actually communicated to them, it can keep it going because they think I'm
nauseous. Maybe I should use some more cannabis, which can prolong the symptoms.
Another interesting anecdote here is that again, a definite treatment is cessation of cannabis, but
also using capsaicin cream and hot water to offer relief on the abdomen or stomach, which is just an
interesting anecdote there. The American Heart Association talks about the risk of cannabis use and
heart issues.
We have cannabis uses linked to an increased risk of heart attack and heart failure in observational
studies. We see that TXC triggers the nervous system, which activates increased heart rate, blood pressure,
and oxygen demand. So it even impacts our heart, right? We could even kind of go on a limb here and
say, too, that sometimes when you're using cannabis, you might not be making the healthiest food choices
sometimes, which could
increase our risk of maybe heart problems. We also have data from the emergency department, right? I
talked about how kids might be going to the emergency department more and more because of intoxication,
but it's happening to adults too. We see that cannabis-related ED visits is up nationally across the board.
Cannabis was the second most common substance in drug-related ED visits followed by alcohol and just
ahead of opiates. And age is the strongest risk marker with 18 to 25 being the highest followed by 26
to 44. We also see that 43% of cannabis-related ED visits involved at least one additional substance
or that polysubstance, most commonly alcohol.
So people are using these drugs in conjunction, and there are some notable racial disparities here.
The rate of black individuals was significantly higher than the white individuals. When we look at the
youth data, we also see that ED visits among people under 25 over the study period is at over half a
million, and over 90% of these visits were people aged 15 to 24.
CDC discussions have tied the rising use visits to this high-potency THC use. So they're more commonly
using high THC products, which is resulting in adverse effects. And sometimes that involves seeking
support from the emergency department. When we talked about ingesting, when I joked about dosing you
all, which if that scared anybody, I apologize. I really do. We see that this happens more and more.
We see this is more and more happening. Children under the age of six accidentally consume edibles containing
marijuana has jumped over a thousand percent between 2017 and 2021. Over half of these reports involve
toddlers between the age of two and three, because these look just like candies or foods we find around
the house. And 91% of those cases occurred in their own home. Maybe a family member is using these substances
or leaving them out. They're not locking them up.
Nearly one-fourth of the children wound up hospitalized because of these incidences and eight percent
admitted to critical care with depressed breathing or even coma. We've talked with home visiting agencies
before where they said that they've heard of families in the past who might have accidentally left out
these types of products. Their kids might have got a hold of them and they were too afraid to go seek
medical help and they wanted the kid just to sleep it off.
on the couch. There's some danger there, right? There's definitely some danger there because there is
stigma and there's fear. If you go to the hospital and you admit that your child has taken some drugs
that you either inadvertently or on purpose provided to them, there could be some legal consequences.
So there is risk in this. There is definitely risk. We've talked to schools that say they've heard of
parents using these substances to calm their kids down.
to help them go to sleep. There are some high potency pieces in this market that can help you sleep.
They're marketed to help you sleep. And some people are using it thinking it's a natural alternative.
But I hope maybe the vision that you're starting to see is some of this isn't just completely all natural.
This is kind of just like a big laboratory experiment that we're seeing when it comes to these high
potency products.
Marijuana and impaired driving. It's the number two drug detected in impaired drivers. Driving under
the influence of marijuana is associated with 110% increase in fatal crashes. We've also got research
showing that four times as many high school students reported driving after marijuana compared to alcohol.
Same for college students. Four times as many college men report driving after marijuana compared to alcohol.
Now what that statistics tells us is that there is a lack of, what's the word I'm looking for, perception
of harm. Individuals are believing that using marijuana isn't as harmful as alcohol when it gets coming
to getting behind the wheel. So they think that it's not that bad. They're more likely to use marijuana
and get into a car than they are to drink alcohol and get into a car.
We've done a lot of work on the public health side and through our community saying, like, don't drink
and drive. But we need to start talking about don't smoke and drive. I myself, I have friends and sometimes
even colleagues who say, like, they're a better driver when they smoke. I kind of find that hard to
believe. It takes attention. If you don't know the right dose, it could really mess you up. If it's
something new, you don't know what you're handling. So we need to start talking about don't smoke and
drive or don't dose and drive.
because this is dangerous, but we don't really believe that. And I would assume that we don't believe
that smoking and driving isn't that dangerous because we have this perception of it's just this natural
herb from the earth. It just helps me feel good. We're still picturing that woodstock weed. We're not
picturing this new high-potency product.
Looking at the psychosis risk too, which the video talked about a bit, people who use high-potency cannabis
are three times as likely to experience their first episode of psychosis. Daily users of high-potency
cannabis are five times as likely.
This is not saying that if you use cannabis that you're going to go into psychosis, but it does say
that the research tells us that it increases your risk of your first episode of psychosis. Higher potency
is also associated with greater risk of cannabis use disorder and that severe dependence. Now this is
a new street term that's coming out. Some of you may have heard of it, maybe you haven't, but greening
out is considered an overdose
I'm going to use that kind of like in quotations, like an overdose on marijuana. Now marijuana has never
killed anybody from an overdose, but greening out is consuming too much THC in one setting that can
impact your body. And here's what it looks like. It happens when someone consumes too much THC, flour,
edibles, or concentrates. The symptoms include nausea, dizziness, vomiting, rapid heart rate, paranoia,
panic, loss of coordination.
It's most common for new users, for returning users, youth, and those with pre-existing anxiety. So
if you guys remember my story from Detroit, that was greening out in that instance. I consumed too much
THC for what my tolerance was, and there were adverse effects of what happened. So what do you do if
you happen to be around someone or if you yourself
Maybe accidentally greens out. You gotta stay calm. You gotta rest. You gotta hydrate. Maybe practice
some deep breathing. Avoid adding more cannabis to calm yourself down. That's not gonna help, all right?
The idea is to help kind of get it out of your system. Do not add alcohol to it. Some people say, how
do you reduce greening out? They say, take a shot. Don't do that. That's not gonna help, okay? You need
some water, some time, maybe some soft music.
and also seek medical help if it is severe. The risks here though that if you are experiencing a green
out is accidents due to impairment. Imagine if you lose all sense of coordination and you're walking
down a flight of steps. Or if you're driving a car. Or if you're walking on the sidewalk by traffic.
There's mental health risks and it's a higher risk for youth with a developing brain. Now the message
here that I really want to share is that greening out
is not fatal, but it doesn't make it safe. There are some risks that can occur if you overconsume THC,
and these risks can be harmful to you and people around you.
So some common health effects that we see a lot when it comes to what we have so far in THC research.
Mental health daily or near daily use of cannabis can contribute to dependence and mental health problems.
It can impair driving. There can be respiratory issues because there's still toxins if you are inhaling.
And also pregnancy. Substance use
Substancing using cannabis while pregnant can transfer from the mother to the child and affect the baby.
Not using cannabis of pregnant or breastfeeding is the safest option. We've worked with organizations
that have said that their participants doctors told them to use cannabis if they're experiencing morning
sickness. Maybe some of you have heard that yourself. But the thing is, I don't know if that physician
actually knows what that client knows about cannabis.
Is it a low potency cannabis they're using or is it something off the shelf? If it's off the shelf,
it's more likely to be a high potency product. What can that do to a developing child? If you're
breastfeeding, it's just like if you're drinking. So if you do use cannabis while you're pregnant and
breastfeeding, you should pump and dump that because it can create a concentrate in your breast milk.
Passing high potency concentrated breast milk to your developing child, I mean,
they'll probably sleep, right? Like sleep really well, but who knows what's happening to their developing
brain or their body? I try not to be too funny about it, but seriously, right? It could be
pretty detrimental. So health effects, short term, we have altered senses, altered sense of time, changes
in mood, impaired body movement, difficulty thinking or problem solving, impaired memory, hallucinations
are taken in high doses,
delusions when taken in high doses, and even psychosis, risk of regular use in high-potency marijuana.
Now, long-term effects, which we still are studying and the research needs to be updated on because
we only know about low-potency marijuana at this point, is impaired thinking and memory and learning
functions, disruption in brain connectivity, heavy teenage use is linked to an eight-point IQ drop,
Cannabis use can lead to substance use disorders and problems with child development during and after
pregnancy. Now, cannabis use disorder is in the DSM-5TR, so this is an actual diagnosis that we can
look at when we look at different symptoms. You have to have at least two of the following symptoms
in a sustained criteria within 12 months on the screen. This includes continuing the use of cannabis
despite physical or psychological problems,
using cannabis despite social or relationship problems, craving cannabis, difficulty controlling or
cutting down cannabis, giving up or reducing other activities in favor of cannabis, spending a lot of
time on cannabis, taking cannabis in high risk situations, such as driving a car, right? And I like
to pause on that one because I'm going to talk about
my pot dealer again, the one who used the concentrates that got me thinking about this is different.
He told me that he would take a gummy before he left his office because he would start feeling it by
the time he got home. And he wanted to feel it when he got home because he was dealing with some stuff
at home. He didn't really want to be completely present. He was using it as a medication to help him
calm down. That's a high risk situation.
He's taking a gummy before he gets into a car and hopefully the traffic's good enough so that by the
time he gets home, he's not like stuck in traffic or veering off towards someone or something else.
So high risk situations, we can find ourselves falling into that. Maybe you were using cannabis while
your kid was at school and you thought that it would wear off by the time you had to pick him up. But
maybe the clock is ticking and maybe you took too many edibles and now you have to get in the car to
go to the pickup lane. That's a high risk situation.
We have taken cannabis, more cannabis than what was intended. We have tolerance to cannabis, withdrawal
from discontinuing, and then problems at work or school or home as a result of cannabis. And this can
be measured depending on how many symptoms you have from mild, moderate to severe. So cannabis use in the USA.
Here's some statistics. We have 52.5 million people use cannabis in 2021. 30% of 12th graders report
using cannabis in the past year. Three in one people who use cannabis may actually have a cannabis use
disorder. And people who begin using cannabis before age 18 are four to seven times more likely to develop
problem use as an adult, which
could also lean to why a lot of the marketing we see is trying to capture kids when they're younger,
because you capture them when they're younger, they continue to use as an adult, and you could have
some lifelong profit from that. Now, we used to have this great group, the epidemiological
group here in Indiana that did some studies. The last one came out in 2023 that showed us who uses the
most cannabis here in Indiana. We found ages 18 and 25% in this survey, 22.5% of them reported past
month use of cannabis. And then ages 26 plus came in under that, and then ages 12 to 7 came in under
that. So these are the age ranges of the majority of cannabis users in Indiana.
And when we look at the surveys from the Indiana Use Survey or INYS, we see some trajectories here from
2009 to 2024 about cannabis use in our schools, right? So if you're not familiar with INYS, it's given
at schools to help us measure perception of harm, even use, different risk factors throughout schools.
And we see that the majority of
Grades where people are using cannabis are 12th grade. That's the common thing we see for a long time
is that 12th grade is the most common use for cannabis. We do see that it's starting to kind of go down
though, which is a good thing, but we are seeing a reduction in cannabis use with youth across the board.
It's a slight downgrade, but still there's some good work happening.
We also want to point out the fact that on social media, adolescents who are 5 to 19 who followed a
cannabis business on social media platforms are five times higher to have past year use. So if you guys
have kids, maybe check out who they're following on social media, right? This helps kind of reduce the
stigma of cannabis and promote it. So that's something to think about.
Those who thought they'd likely own or wear cannabis brand and merchandise had nearly eight times greater
odds of past year use. So if you're wearing it, you're promoting it, that's also a sign. We also look
at the review of cannabis businesses on social media. And some states had rules about how they advertise
cannabis. Should they have warning signs and labels on it? And some regulated yes.
But not all these companies are actually following it. We got to think of like the tobacco and alcohol
industries and how they advertise. A lot of these companies are not putting the required warning label
on their ads, which are on social media, on these platforms that the kids are seeing.
We also need to take a look back at history. At the beginning of this talk, I talked about celebrated
drugs, the things like alcohol and tobacco. And these industries are catching on to the fact that marijuana
is becoming more popular. It's more popular than alcohol now when it comes across the board in the country.
And they are using what they learned in their marketing strategies to promote marijuana. We heard back
in the day with tobacco, its natural product, it came from the ground.
The plant I showed you at the beginning was a product that came from the ground, but that's not what
marijuana looks like now today. There was medicinal uses. They said that there was health benefits of
smoking, including supporting asthma, head colds, and even diseases of the throat, right? They told
us that smoking was good for us. They said that the doctors support it. Doctors use it so it must be
okay, and no one has ever died of a tobacco overdose, right? These are claims that we heard from the
tobacco industry as it was growing.
And there's been a commercialization of marijuana which has created a profit-driven business. I don't
know anyone who likes being marketed to. No one likes being marketed to. The ads are annoying. We don't
like being told what to do or being convinced to do something. But these guys are professionals at it.
They've been doing it for years. When any drug is commercialized or legalized, the marketplace is able
to innovate and create new, potentially more addictive and high-potency products.
And this is the story of how the makers of Marlboro have caught on to the fact that marijuana is getting
popular. We need to play this game as well. They've invested heavily in companies, heavily in lobbying.
They've even founded a coalition for cannabis policy to try to find ways to increase access to cannabis
across the country to help their margins. The alcohol industry is doing the same.
81% of marijuana consumers believe that marijuana is safer than alcohol, and the alcohol companies know
this. Alcohol companies have created marijuana beverages, such as this Keefe brand that again has 10
milligrams per can. We have the makers of Corona and Modelo agree to take a large stake in a Canadian
marijuana grower where they can get around some more legalities of that, and they want to take a leading
position in the cannabis beverage industry.
Now the role of the helpers, what can we do when we're looking at cannabis legislation, rules around
marijuana in our communities?
If we ever get to a point in Indiana where we say we're going to have legalization of recreational or
medical, these are some things to really take into consideration. Everything from private possession,
private possession amounts to sales derivatives, to rules around self-cultivation, restriction on businesses
that are selling and producing cannabis, sometimes even distance ordinances about signage that you have
about advertising marijuana.
We also have limits of retail sales. If you go over to a legal state, you might know that you can't
buy a certain amount of marijuana or over a certain amount because there are regulations about what
you can buy per day. And those are some harm reduction tactics. We also have the idea of the buffer
zones between retailers. There's not too many, like a strip mall of pot shops, but they're spaced out
a bit too. So there are some environmental things we can do.
Another thing that helpers can do in their communities is looking at something called SBIRT. Some of
you may be familiar with it in your communities, but it is a brief standardized question to identify
risk level before problems can be obvious of different substance uses. And this is actually a training
that you can have brought to you through Prevention Insights, which is from IU School of Public Health.
They also have some free modules on their website that you can complete to learn more about SBIRT and
if that would be a good thing for maybe your community or for your coalition to support. We also have
the personal screening or the free survey, the CUDITR, the Cannabis Use Disorder Identification Test
Revised, which is eight questions to look kind of
internally to see maybe are you experiencing some symptoms of cannabis use disorder. Some red flags
in the population for the people maybe you're working with or people around you. If there's impaired
control, maybe repeated or unsuccessful attempts to cut down or stop.
leaning towards the idea of dependence, using larger amounts for longer than intended, a great deal
of time spent obtaining, using, or maybe even recovering from use, and also persistent craving of use
of cannabis.
We have, over here on social and occupational functioning, maybe declining performance at work or school,
or even in our caregiving responsibilities. We have withdrawing from activities, hobbies, and friendships
that we used to find really important or that mattered to us. Continued use despite causing friction
in relationships. And even for the youth side, if you work with youth, change the peer group. A new
secrecy about time and even whereabouts.
For risky use, we have use in physically hazardous situations, again, driving, operating machinery,
caregiving while impaired, continued use despite a physical or psychological problem, or even worsening
of that problem, and then on the other side, needing more to get the same effect, so again, having that
tolerance issue, and then some behavioral things too, irritability.
anxiety or sleep disruption in days when you're not using in those in-between gaps. Also, we have on
the GI system, again, we're thinking about that hypermimesis, reoccurring or unexplained GI symptoms.
Some caregiver action steps. It might not be believable to some of you, but our kids really care what
we think. They care what our perception is on things. They care about our approval even.
So making sure that we're talking with our kids about the use of substances, talking about honestly
about marijuana, what it is today, and the risks of it is really important. Having those open communications,
setting boundaries, offering education, maybe even having like some meetings or some conversations with
the people you serve about cannabis use. Maybe offering not just a leaflet, but just a discussion about
like weed is different now. Weed is definitely different now.
Some community campaigns you might be interested in. We have the JustSayNo.org, which is also part of
the Johnny's ambassador program that has some social media graphics that you can share with your organization
or your newsletter even. This one is 50 Woodstock joints equals one marijuana dab.
That's a big comparison. We also have Talk They Hear You. Talk They Hear You is a campaign through SAMHSA.
Anybody can get a license for it with your organization to provide PSAs to those that you serve.
Social media, you can put it on billboards. This one here, we were working with a drug-free coalition
and we had some locals put together some photos of us to help
spread the message of Talk They Hear You. And Talk They Hear You is great because it's not just a campaign
or a picture, but it's also a companion app and a website resource that teaches caregivers how to talk
with kids about substances, how to have that conversation, because it can be hard to start that talk.
But there is step-by-step guidance through Talk They Hear You in that domain.
There's also National Drug and Alcohol Facts Week, which connects communities and those that you're
serving to the National Institutes of Health so that they can learn about substances from scientists
that are studying it. It's a cool thing. We usually bring it into classrooms in my community to have
them talk. It's a virtual talk, of course, about what they're seeing and the truths about it.
There's also Red Ribbon Week, where individuals can bring that to their communities, and also National
Prevention Week that some of you may have been a part of. Now, again, on Talk They Hear You, there's
creative ways that you can bring this conversation to your community. One thing that we did was that
we had a movie night, where we actually took over the local movie theater, and we did a free screening
of Inside Out. I didn't know you could do that, but you could actually buy the rights for it for a night,
get the theater rented out. And we had people come in. And before we played the movie, we actually had
the PSA run. We had videos run. We had a talk about Talk They Hear You. And it opened up these community
members' ideas about substance use and how to talk about it with their kids. And it was really great,
because after this gathering, we actually had parents contact us and say, hey, we had the conversation.
And we wouldn't have. We wouldn't have had it if we didn't have this opportunity.
Our kids may be getting substance use education in the school, but it's not always coming home with
them. We might not always talk about it. So having these conversations with parents in the community
can be very impactful. And sometimes putting on a free movie night is one of the best ways to do that.
Some evidence-based programs that you can use in your community or your organizations to support the
people you serve. Things like life skills training, strengthening families, guiding good choices. Some
of these might be familiar to you, they might be new. Too good for drugs, also too good for violence
as a companion to this. We have Project Alert and we see a lot of
you know, like Boys and Girls Clubs and Girls Inc. and those types of organizations utilizing these
programs. But also for adults, don't worry, you're not left out, right? We have this thing called Prime
for Life. Prime for Life is drug education for adults that can be implemented over either a few days
or even a few weeks where you can learn about everything from, you know, alcohol use to marijuana use.
It is a pretty great program. It's pretty, not too expensive to get trained in too.
So what can you do as an individual? Get involved. I always tell people to get involved with their local
coordinating council. The majority of communities in Indiana have a local coordinating council. They're
the ones that might give out drug-free grants to your community or have a monthly meeting for you to
join to learn about substance use initiatives and trends. Stay informed. Stay updated. This presentation changes
probably week to week. I think in my hotel room before I came here, I added like two more slides because
new things are always coming out. We have to stay informed because the market is changing and share
what you've learned today. Talk with someone about how this is not your grandma's marijuana anymore.
This is something completely different. These high potency products are not what we know of in our youth,
not what our parents knew about is something completely different.
Another thing to think about before we close today is that if we're thinking that these new high-potency
THC products are just like the products of the past, of just like the flower, that's like comparing
a glass of alcohol to a bottle of Everclear. The potencies are very different. These are very different
items. And I really hope that maybe you're thinking about marijuana a different way now, because we
can't just think that marijuana is marijuana. We have to know more about it. What's the potency of that
marijuana?
How many milligrams are in it? What's the percentage? We can't think of it as just this green stuff
anymore because it's been cultivated in the way where it's not quite that. Now, I also want to close
with, if you're concerned about your own use after hearing some of these things, I welcome you to maybe
explore that some more.
Cannabis use is something that is very normalized. It's becoming celebrated. But if you are sitting
here today thinking like, wow, maybe my use is becoming kind of problematic for my health and well-being,
it's something to really reflect on. Cannabis use disorder is a diagnosis. It's not a moral failing.
It's something that can happen to any of us. So here's some information on this screen about, you know,
SAMHSA getting connected to help.
findtreatment.gov, and if your organization offers an EAP program, that's something you could also lean
on to talk with them about some issues. So this is recognized and it is treatable. My last ask for you,
okay, I do like getting drugs from people. It's one of my favorite things. So if you are connected to
a law enforcement agency,
that is willing to provide some empty packaging for these talks that we continue to do in the future.
I'm always looking for examples of products you're finding in your communities. I do ask that the police
give me a letter that says that they gave it to me. Just in case I get pulled over, people aren't thinking,
like, why does this guy have all these empty packages with a tie-dye shirt in his car? Like, what's going on?
We have collected some from our local police department. They actually gave me the wrong stuff one time.
And I was like, this is psychedelics. And they're like, oh, sorry. But we're looking for packaging,
because we want to have some hands-on materials to show people. So if you're connected to law enforcement,
who would be willing to share some packaging that they can part with? I'm happy to accept it. And that
takes us to our last two minutes. So I wanted to show the CEU slide up here, if anybody would like to
scan for CEUs.
And I'll also pause for any questions. Well, thank you all for your attention. I know it's been, you're
on day two of the summit, it's about to end. So thank you all too for your work and how you're working
to support your communities of reducing substance use. I know it can be,
Some heavy works. I hope that you all get to take care of yourselves and don't have to rush back to
work after this. I hope you can maybe take some time off, maybe go for a walk. It's a little hot though,
but thank you all for your time.