Episode Transcript

Reefer MEDness_E190_GreenRenaissancePt1.mp3

Trevor:  Kirk, we're back.

Kirk:  Hey Trevor, how's it going?

Trevor: Really good. So, because I tend to forget, I'm going to start right off the top with some really important note-taking stuff for the audience. My name is Trevor Shewfelt. I'm the Pharmacist. who are you?

Kirk:  I am Kirk Nyquist. I'm the registered nurse in Manitoba, Canada. We're Reefer Medness and we're founded at reefermed.ca And you have brought us a human interest story. Actually a book review is what you brought.

Trevor: Yeah, a book review and a really interesting conversation, I think, with J.M. Balbuena. I think I'm getting closer to saying her name right. Listen to how she says it. She is sort of, her book is called Green Renaissance, but she is a bit of a renaissance woman in cannabis. She's been everything from a patient, to a entrepreneur, to now historian an author. Filmmaker, you know, cannabis advocate for changes in legislation, she's got a huge resume of really interesting cannabis stuff. We spend the majority of the time on the book, but so many other things we could have interviewed her on and we'll touch on a few of them.

Kirk:  Yeah, no, I'm on her webpage and she's a filmmaker, an author, everything you said, a Navy veteran. She's an author of three books. Yes, you're right. When I was listening to this, it's like there's so many layers of cannabis. So what I think the listeners are going to hear in the next two episodes is that I think because of cannabis, and you'll learn in this interview how she has come to use cannabis in her own life, she's become a historian, wrote the book. But also, in the book, I find that she's a knowledge sharer. She mentions a few things in her interview with you that I didn't know about in regards to Mexico having their own reefer madness time. She also brings up in the review of the book about how cannabis, and we've known this forever, how cannabis was racialized. Well, I've really focused on the black and the Mexican descendants in America. She brought forward the Hindu population was also, and that, you know, although...

Trevor: I'm glad you brought that up. I had no idea.

Kirk:  Yeah, yeah, and what's interesting is about that, as soon as she said it, it was, of course, of course they would have because of Shiva. I mean shiva dances

Trevor: one of the places the plant started, started being.

Kirk:  Yeah, yeah, so it's a good interview. We could have her online for several more.

Trevor: Yes, but how about we'll let J.M. Introduce yourself and start with her time in the Navy and then we'll come out at the end of part one. Perfect.

J.M. Balbuena: Thank you so much, Trevor. My name is J.M. Balbuena. I am the founder of Synergy Studios. At Synergy Studios, we focused on creating production that is centered on advocacy for cannabis and plant medicine in general. So I am author of the book, Green Renaissance, which is out now in audiobook and E-book. You can check us out at greenrenesance.io. I'm also a filmmaker and entrepreneur in the cannabis space. And you know, I dabble in a few little other things that hopefully we get to cover today. But one of the main ones is I'm the executive director of an organization called Ryan's Law, where we advocate for terminally ill patients to have access to cannabis and hospice care.

Trevor: So many cool things that I know our listeners are going to want to hear about but like for most of our our guests We're going to start way back so silly little sidetrack I I got married on 9-eleven but 9-11 of 99 so for two years my my wife and I had you know a private little giggle about you know we were married on nine one one and then then the whole rest of the world unfortunate to join in. You started in the Navy and you started on an auspicious date too didn't you?

J.M. Balbuena: Yeah, I joined the Navy on 420, 2010. So I've been up to me coming out of the Navy. On 420 as well, so that would predetermine the rest of my career after.

Trevor: No, and that we love little lips like that, but were you at all interested in cannabis, cannabis part of your life before the Navy or was it sort of what happened in the Navy that sort of

J.M. Balbuena: Yeah, so.

Trevor: Pointed you that way.

J.M. Balbuena: You know, I went to college, so in college, you know, most people dabble in different interests. I definitely consumed cannabis when I was in college. Not as like an avid cannabis consumer or anything like that, you know, at parties, in social settings, pretty much how people consume wine every now and then. That, but my involvement, you know, in everything cannabis did stand post military service. Um, and that happened because of the medical need for cannabis. Um, so well, when I was in the Navy, I experienced an accident from that accident, I had a concussion, which, uh, pretty much led me to have sleeping, a sleeping disorder. And so another veteran recommended cannabis. Next thing you know, I'm dabbling, like just going down that rabbit hole of why is there stigma for this when this is helping me. You know, even I felt a little bit of shame at the beginning, like wanting to hide what I was doing. And that was in 2014. And so from there, once I realized how many people had been held before me and the people that were in my same predicament were, you know, didn't associate cannabis with being medicinal or having medicinal properties. Then I kind of dove into that. And to justify my consumption, I tried to educate myself as much as possible, then got into the business. I wrote my first book, which is called The Successful Cannabinor. And that was basically about my first six years in the cannabis space. And next, I'm filming documentaries about the cannabis industry in my city, which is the city of San Diego, wrote my second book, Green Renaissance, from there. So it just...

Trevor: It kept going.

J.M. Balbuena: Yeah, it was a snowball effect.

Trevor: No, and like so many other people we talked to, you know, sort of a personal need slash use led into more education and kept going from there. And like I said, there's so many things you've done that have been interesting, but let's start with Green Renaissance. My co-author Kirk is gonna be very jealous we're talking about this with you instead of him because he loves cannabis history. He loves, loves, love it. He loves links of it. He had... A friend slash author had linked it to usage in the Bible. He loves how some paper billionaires, he thinks got rid of cannabis because hemp might do more than pulp and paper. Kirk loves this stuff.

J.M. Balbuena: He will definitely have a blast reading this book or listening to it is also available on audiobook. And we, I go over everything that you mentioned. I also was super interested in all of that and did major research. I did research for five years focusing on, you know, trying to find sources that were reliable because there's a lot of anecdotal or like a lot of opinion-based information. But if I was able to dive into newspapers from the 1800s in Mexico where I found out that they had their own version of reefer madness before the U.S. had it. Theirs was in the 1800's where newspapers were literally talking about crazy enragement of people consuming cannabis going crazy and having the power of eight people and taking out, you know, cops, just one person taking out five cops. Like it re crazy. And I'm like, what weed was that? I've never seen anybody on cannabis become that. You know, there's people that become paranoid and become, you now, perhaps uh, anxious or something like that. That's like the, the most I've ever seen. And, and those people are running away from others, not necessarily charging at, especially like police officers or something like that, so, um, it was really interesting to like read and then try to like associate, if you really think about it, cannabis from back then, the THC levels are said to be below like 5%. And now that we have things in the range between 15 and 30 something, and that is not causing people to go crazy and charge at five people at a time. So it's very interesting. I was able to find about this one guy who was called El Rey de los Grifos in Mexico. So he was the first person documented in the West. Or in the Americas that was selling cannabis by the droves, and he was arrested, and then he advocated for himself pretty much. There's a speech documented that says that he said, hey, why are you doing this? This plant helps people. A lot of people use it for medicine. I'm just providing, I'm supplying it. So I found that and included it in the book. So. Your guy would be really, really impressed, or at least he would enjoy reading the book because there's a lot of historical context.

Trevor: No, and that's fantastic, that's the stuff we want to hear, but for people, I'm sure we've got listeners out there who are surprised that cannabis goes back beyond the 1960s, sorry, but here's where you can educate them. So you've been talking about like the 1800s in Mexico, which honestly, I didn't know there was a big thing there, but you go back even farther, right? Like how far back were you looking at cannabis use in your book?

J.M. Balbuena: So the earliest documented is like 4000 BC. So in China where they were using it as one of their main crops. And so in the hemp, the form, so they had the plant, they used the seeds for consumption of like food consumption and then they use the fibers to create fabrics and papers and things of that nature. So the whole plan has been used for centuries. And so with the book, what I'm trying to cover is how do we get here? It goes from when it started, it was just a plant, which is still the same plant today. But people's agenda, it took a turn when it started being racialized, it started being criminalized. Big industries, which is another chapter in the book, where I go over who benefits from prohibition. You have big alcohol, big pharma, and those big industries that would be affected financially. Right now in the United States, it's being documented that college students are turning to cannabis more than they are alcohol. That is where most people start consuming. So if they start their consumption of, let's say, a cannabis drink, which the worst effect that can have might be that they go to sleep early or get hungry and eat more pizza, more than one slice of pizza or something like that, or eat a bunch of snacks. That versus ending up in a trash can throwing up. I'm pretty sure people are starting to see that who wants that for themselves.

Trevor: No, absolutely. So the I'm going to call it racism versus big, big industry. Was that so you we we touched on a little bit what was going on in Mexico in the 1850s ish, the early 1900s. And cannabis was sort of kind of used in the US had been used there forever, probably. If you talk about some of the Aboriginal communities, but call it mainstream community it was it was moving around a little bit in the early 1900s do you think that is that sort of in your book when you talk about racism slash big business sort of got involved or did jump in earlier than that

J.M. Balbuena: So in the early 1900s in the US, the consumption there, for the most part, as far as like consuming recreationally, because for medicinal purposes, it was everywhere. The US had it for medicinal purposes. Mexico and the rest of the Americas and Europe and Asia and Africa, they all have it in pharmacopeia. For centuries. Now, as far as when it was racialized, it was the recreational use, the adult use, that mostly at that point, because of the war, the civil war in Mexico, a lot of people turned to cannabis. Obviously, you know the feeling that you get, you feel okay when you're consuming and even the term marijuana came from Maria and Juan, which was the terms that they were using, and then combined Marijuana, and that's where it came from. So what they utilized was that they coined that term Marijuana and then used it to scare the average Joe in America. Saying Marijuana is making people crazy, it's making women desire other men and things like that. The whole narrative with Reefer Madness. And it was racialized again, because of the consumption for recreational purposes at that point became, you know, the Mexicans, the Hindus, and then the blacks.

Trevor: okay, just because I'm not sure I've heard on that part before, Hindus, Hindus in America and cannabis that was that was a thing that.

J.M. Balbuena: That was the thing.

Trevor: That was a thing

J.M. Balbuena: That is documented as well. Those were the three races that were profiled when it came to cannabis consumption. Between the early 1900s through the 1940s, specifically. Those were three races.

Trevor: I'm learning something all the time. So we'll we'll jump ahead a little bit because this was sort of how your book is broken up so 19 what sort of change in the 1960?

J.M. Balbuena: So there, that is when the wars were happening and the cannabis culture, as far as like people wanting freedom and people wanting to stop criminalization and things like that. And then the civil rights movements in the United States, that was taking place. And so all of that came together and cannabis was a common threat of all of it. And so from there, you know, there was the boom of the drug wars, which would come then in the 1970s and had again a specific target, which kind of went back -- pretty much we took steps back to going back to the early 1900s. Uh, targeting people, people that specifically people that were known to consume that and not necessarily, uh, deal it, not necessarily like sell it and, but it's, it was the consumer because even, uh in the two thousands, if you move forward, the, all the races consume the same cannabis, the same amount, um, no race consumes more or less than the other. Everybody consumes at the same rate. But the targeting and even the sentencing, it's harsher on people

Trevor: Dramatically different if you're racialized.

J.M. Balbuena: dramatically, 100%...

Trevor: And I'm sure that that's not a surprise to anyone, but did you dig up any, I don't know, stats or stories or anything to sort of illustrate how much worse it was to be a part of racialized community caught with marijuana that if you were a white guy like me in college in the 60s and 70s?

J.M. Balbuena: So as far as the numbers, I don't recall off the top of my head, but it was definitely there. That's where the, I want to call it the crack epidemic, for instance, in the United States, where people doing crack, which is just another version or a cheaper, more dangerous version of cocaine, people that were doing crack and people that were doing cocaine had a 10x. Um, rate of incarceration, uh, than the, you know, the people that were caught with crack, then the people who were caught with cocaine. And so that ended up being changed, um, because they are classified in the same, uh context as far as the schedule goes. And so, but the sentencing, you know, The people that we're doing the cocaine, because it's a little bit pricier, tended to be people with money and in America, people of the white race. And so it was later on, like in the early 2000s where that actually was changed and they try to go back and change the law, but they used a loophole where they didn't pardon anybody. So it didn't even matter at that point. But that's in a section of the book as well.

Trevor: Kirk um you mentioned off the top but just I had no idea that Mexico in the 1800s had its own refer madness but it sounds so familiar you know well you know if these people are on the the devil's weed you know they are going to have the strength of eight men and take on five cops at once and it's just it sort of underlines how crazy the early 1900s in the US was and it off to a similar degree. About talking about the Mexicans, you know, are going to smoke the reefer and then take on the cops. Well, but the Mexicans were here about this a hundred years earlier, like it really kind of blew my mind a little bit.

Kirk:  Yeah, I actually spent time with her book and and read through it and I like it I like the way she's formatted the book. She introduces herself right up front. She goes into a deep dive and prehistoric perspective as you mentioned to her. That's where my head was at the global uprooting. She's got heroes and villains where she outlaws and actually names individuals who were responsible for reefer madness. So it's a book for historians, but it's also, she also goes into a contemporary look, you know, how the culture is not for sale. She goes into what the new normal is. And of course, because she is a advocate of cannabis, she goes into what she's calling the Green Renaissance and it awaits. And I think that's sort of I think to give it away, I think she wants to perpetuate cannabis as medicine. And, you know, and... And sees it in the future, you know? Does that make sense?

Trevor: No it does and you know what I think that makes a really nice segue because she sort of calls the last 30 years we'll call it from the 1990s on the green renaissance so how about we'll wrap up part one here and we'll come back and listen to more about from JM and then we'll have a longer discussion at the end of part two