Tiffany Devitt, Chief of Government & Consumer Affairs, CannaCraft
Tiffany Devitt is responsible for overseeing CannaCraft's regulatory compliance and government relations. As such, she plays a valuable and vital role in shaping and executing the company's legislative strategies in Sacramento and DC. As a member of the National Cannabis Roundtable Board, she is working collaboratively with industry leaders from across the country to promulgate federal financial services reform and tax equity for the cannabis industry.
Tiffany is a current and founding Board Member of CannaCraft, Kind House, and Emerald Pharms. She was the 2018 recipient of the North Bay Business Journal Women in Business Award. Tiffany received an undergraduate degree from Tufts University and Master’s from Stanford University.
https://www.projectcbd.org/
https://www.cannacraft.com/
https://www.linkedin.com/in/tiffany-devitt/
EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
[00:00:01] You're listening to Thinking Outside the Bud where we speak with entrepreneurs investors thought leaders researchers advocates and policymakers who are finding new and exciting ways for cannabis to positively impact business society and culture. And now, here is your host Business Coach Bruce Eckfeldt.
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[00:01:06] Welcome, everyone. This is thinking outside the bud. I'm pre-sexual. I'm your host. And our guest today is Tiffany Devitt. She is a member of Project CBD, which is a non-profit organization looking collecting data around the use and application of CBD in society and the population. She's also with Ken Recraft. She's chief of government and consumer affairs. We're going to talk to her a little bit about those two roles, how those roles connect her work in the cannabis space, helping pull together information, really understanding how cannabis, particularly CBD, is being used in various populations and how that's affecting compliance and government policy and how she works with organizations and industry to help make sure that we're using cannabis and appropriate, healthy, safe ways for that, highly effective for folks that they can see the benefits of that we could develop and grow this industry. So with that, Tiffanie, welcome to the program.
[00:01:54] Thanks Bruce. Thanks for having me.
[00:01:56] So why don't we start with a little bit about your background, how you got involved in cannabis. The work that you're doing with the various organizations. Tell us a little the story of the background and then we can we've got to get into our questions and topics.
[00:02:07] Sure. So I actually spent most my career in high tech, specifically developing applications for big pharmaceutical companies and insurance companies. So I had been accustomed to working in a highly regulated environment. I've moved over to the cannabis space in about five years ago and in part I was looking for just a change of pace to kind of inspire me.
[00:02:37] Be careful what you ask for. Sure.
[00:02:40] And because the cannabis industry is definitely not boring. And what I found was my inclination is to come at problems with a very kind of data oriented approach. As I said, I'm unaccustomed to working in a highly regulated environment. So given that California was shifting over to the regulated market, it was a good opportunity for me to participate.
[00:03:08] Now, I'm curious, what did you notice? I'm most fascinated by people who are coming from various established, you know, regulated markets, rockets that have been around for a while, have various splish sort of protocols and regulations and highly developed industries going from that into cannabis, which is, I guess one could say, you know, highly regulated.
[00:03:27] Well, that is somewhat questionable. But, you know, at least, you know, wanting to be highly regulated, but not having, you know, this kind of, you know, a long history of development in a mature market. What were some of the immediate things that you noticed? You know, going into this in terms of the differences of these of these bases that you experiences?
[00:03:44] Oh, well, it's been interesting, because 2014 when I came into this industry, California had medical marijuana, but it was wholly unregulated. It was basically what's characterized as a gray market that was emerging from a black market in a itOs at that time was never, ever, ever put anything in writing because it could be used to prosecute you later on. And it was the real Wild West.
[00:04:11] And initially, my participation in that industry was, hey, let's put some systems into play, shall we? And kind of normalize. This is a business. What's happened over the course of that five year period is, of course, California proved recreation or use of cannabis, adult use of cannabis, and it imposed this regulatory framework, said that the cannabis industry in California went from the Wild West, wholly unregulated to the most regulated industry in the country. So making that transition has been fascinating and challenging, I'm sure.
[00:04:49] So tell us, where did you first get involved? I guess what was your first kind of entree into into the cannabis? What groups were you working with and what was your initiative?
[00:04:57] Yeah. So I had been working was Project CBD in kind of a supportive role behind the scenes for quite a while. And that was basically Project CBD is run by my husband. So I was helping out as a business person, getting things lined up, et cetera. And as I was doing that, I was becoming increasingly familiar with the science, because what projects CBD does as it relate tracks the international science that pre-clinical studies to.
[00:05:27] Clinical studies around the world and was essentially a conduit for that information, kind of bringing it into the mainstream cannabis community, whether that's patients or consumers or manufacturers or clinicians in helping people really understand what it may be good for and what may be used to best benefit.
[00:05:49] So that was fascinating over the course of that journey. I saw a couple people who are catastrophically ill that are close to me used when all other pharmaceuticals failed and use it to enormous benefit, which was utterly intriguing to me.
[00:06:07] And then up on the sort of my later entry into Cana Craft into the commercial side of the business was very much driven by a desire to have that understanding of the plan and the therapeutics drive policy and drive production.
[00:06:25] And so on the CBD side, I guess there is early takeaways at this point in terms of our areas that the data that that's been collected, the research that's been done is showing kind of application effective, this particular methods or brutalities that are particularly impactful.
[00:06:40] Yes, let's talk about that. So Project CBD, we recently published a survey which one of the larger survey, Stent of CBD and Cannabis Therapeutics. There were thirty five hundred over thirty five hundred responses. And what we were trying to drill down and made, we had the basic questions about who's using it, how often, et cetera. But more interesting was how it was working for different conditions. So there were over 300 questions in that survey and we were really trying to drill down into, OK, if you're using it for pain.
[00:07:15] How effective is it at reducing their frequency, reducing the intensity, reducing the duration? Or if you're using a Perens zeidi. How effective is it it reducing or mitigating the major symptoms of that condition? So whether that nervousness, mood swings, agitation, irritability and what we got a sense of over the course of the study is CBD is remarkably effective, particularly at ameliorating anxiety, pain, sleep problems, which are kind of core quality of life issues. But it's not a panacea. And if you look at the specific like symptoms that are like the markers of different conditions, it's better that treating some than or ameliorating some than others. And that was fascinating to me. And I'll give you one example. So lets people take CBD first, sleep at first sleep. What's relevant is how long did it take you to get to sleep? How many times did you wake up during the night and how we're fresh did you feel in the morning? So when it came to getting to sleep, it was, you know, somewhat helpful. Without it, people said it took them up at an hour to get to sleep with it. They said it took them about 20 minutes to get to sleep. So not perfect, but helpful. But what was far more interesting was, on average, people who take it for sleep said that without it, they wake up about an average 4.3 times a night, which is quite frequently with it. They woke up about 1.4 times a night. And that takes a huge difference. And what we saw is that about three quarters of people reported a dramatic increase in how refreshed they felt in the morning. And that's tied to its ability to help you stay asleep or get back to sleep more quickly in the middle of the night. And that's the sort of nuance that we were hoping to cover with this study.
[00:09:15] Know, this was just people who had just as CBD or CBD, along with t_f_t_ or other, you know, other modes include other parts of the plant.
[00:09:22] Yeah, both. And in fact, I'm glad he asked that question.
[00:09:26] And because one of the things we ask people is, are you using CBD with THC, meaning from cannabis? You're using hemp derived CBD with little to no cannabis.
[00:09:39] And it was about half and half, but about ten to fifteen percent and didn't know exactly it, which was surprising.
[00:09:49] Well I could I could see they. I'd be surprised if they didn't know if they were like taking a 1 to 1 or something. But it's a full spectrum versus broad spectrum. You know, did you have, you know, some minor amount of THC in it? You probably wouldn't feel, but it could have an impact. Yeah. Yeah, interesting. What else? I guess any other key takeaways or learnings or just kind of insights into the process of trying to collect this data or analyse this data that you've been able to develop?
[00:10:13] Yeah. So the one I'll share a little more of the data with you. I have to say, the one disappointment I had was.
[00:10:20] People are shockingly unaware of what dose they're taking when. You know how many milligrams a day? Most people couldn't say, which suggests that there's a need for better labeling and packaging and better education around that. And of course, one of the things that we would love to know is, is there kind of a sweet spot there? Preclinical data suggests that the 20 milligrams is probably a good dose, but that's preclinical data. And we're hoping to get much closer to kind of validating dosing or even ratios.
[00:10:57] The other thing that was surprising is there's not a clear correlation between the ratio of CBD and THC to the condition and efficacy.
[00:11:08] And it appears that what ratio people use has everything to do with their kind of site sensitivity to THC.
[00:11:18] That said, people with PTSD with cancer and addiction issues were far more likely to report better efficacy with a little bit more THC.
[00:11:30] Yeah, interesting. Talk to us about how you actually collected the data and why. I mean, I guess it could give you a little sense of why this data is hard to get, why it's important, like where are we in terms of actually having good, good data related to the use of CBD and and where we stand from our kind of scientific point of view
[00:11:50] Yes. So the bottom line is, as you know, cannabis and until very recently, CBD included was considered Schedule 1, which means there are enormous limitations on the ability of people to do clinical trials or double blind studies or any of that kind of traditional research. So what our feeling when we started doing these types of surveys back in 2015 was we said, OK, there's preclinical and clinical data from other countries, but there's this large scale experiment, social experiment going on in the US where people are using medical marijuana and cannabis CBD for a variety of conditions in at a minimum, we can at least crowdsource that data and develop a platform for collecting it and sharing that information so that we're getting some baseline information about who's using it, what they're using it for, how it works and how it doesn't work. What are the side effects? Those are the five biggies that we wanted to get there.
[00:12:57] So now that said, we do realize and we do disclose the fact that surveys are not kind of the gold standard for research.
[00:13:07] So we we never want to kind of overstate this in incline. It's definitive medical guidance or something like that. It's not it. It is entirely based on self reports. And because we recruit from Project CBD, which has been tracked, people who are using it and wanting to learn more about it, you're going to have something of a selection by itself. That said, it's still meaningful, useful information and it suggests avenue for research.
[00:13:39] Yeah, definitely. It kind of guide. It creates a little bit of a map of where further research, you know, can and should be done. And, you know, when you move into more formal clinical research methods, it can kind of kind of gives you some questions that probably need to be investigated first.
[00:13:53] And what was the I guess how many how did you actually get people to respond? We were standing around dispensaries and handing out flyers. What was the what was your actual research process?
[00:14:03] So. So our first process was to push out a call for participants through Project CBD, a newsletter or Web site, a project CBD done or we did do some postcards at dispensaries and put that message out through social media.
[00:14:20] I'm always curious about people, how people actually get to the to the research subjects and communicate with them.
[00:14:26] I was frankly surprised that we got so many responses given how many questions there were. And what that said to me is that people really want to share their experience with cannabis, you know, and because they've learned a lot through trial and error, they want to share this learnings with other people.
[00:14:45] Yeah. Yeah, I think it very much as kind of this anecdotal process for I think a lot of folks, I mean, they they kind of talk to friends, talk to family, talk to, you know, other other users and, you know, dispensaries in the bud tenders and things like that, you kind of triangulate a little bit where you're going to try and come up with a strategy for testing.
[00:15:01] Interesting. Let's talk a little bit about Kenneth Craft. How how did that opportunity come up?
[00:15:05] How will I guess. Tell us about that role, what you've been working on there. What is your primary focus?
[00:15:10] Yes. So Kennel Club, just a California based manufacturing and distribution company. My role has been on the kind of policy and compliance side. But as you said, my intent was governmen in consumer affairs, which. What my objective is, is to make sure that the policies and regulations that are in place are aligned with the aligned with the therapeutic potential of the plan. So there's a lot of opportunity here. Cannabis has an incredible safety profile, especially when you compare it to other pharmaceuticals. The question then is how do we make this accessible to people in a way that safe and represents kind of best business practices. So to that and I tend to be playing kind of an industry level role, whether that's being on various association boards. And the objective is to really kind of inform the dialogue within Sacrament know within D.C. and within the public as a whole about cannabis therapeutics and how they should be regulated and overseen.
[00:16:22] Got it. And you mentioned something that we touched on a while ago on the show, but I think it'd be worth getting into again. You mentioned the safety profile. Talk to us about what that means. What is cannabis, the safety profile? How does it compare to other other pharmaceuticals?
[00:16:36] Why is that important factor when it comes to figuring out how we're going to bring this to the public in a safe, healthy, effective way?
[00:16:44] Yeah. So to answer that question, I need to give you a little science. Sure. Go ahead. If I get too much, I love geeking out. Go for it. Good.
[00:16:54] So that endocannabinoid system, that is a physiological system and all of us have you can think of it as sort of an electrical system. You've got cannabinoid receptors. You've got what are called the endo cannabinoids, which those are agents that work on those receptors. And then you have various transport molecules and metabolizing molecules. And the endocannabinoid system, interestingly enough, is disregulated in almost every disease state.
[00:17:26] So what you see in PTSD and autism and alcoholism, depression, anxiety, all of those, you tend to see lower than normal levels of Ananda Mindin, which is an endocannabinoid compound. Right.
[00:17:42] So the way you can think of cannabinoids as kind of a endocannabinoid system is like an electrical system. Think of that cannabinoids themselves as like a dimmer switch. What they do is they either activate the receptor or tamped down. Now it goes without saying that if you have an electrical system, you never want to turn the lights up so bright that you're blinded and you don't want to have them so dark.
[00:18:10] You can't see what you're doing. You really want to be at that middling range. And so the same is true of the endocannabinoid system. Those receptors, you want them to be active within a middling range.
[00:18:21] So endocannabinoid, meaning the ones that are bodies make are called partial agonist, meaning they only work within that middle name. They will never because of how they're structured, they will never turn that receptor all the way up or all the way down. Cannabinoids are profoundly effective because they very closely mimic that and cannabinoids that our own body produces, meaning they're what's called the weak partial agonist. So they too are incapable of turning that receptor all the way up or all the way down, which is why they have an enormous safety profile. And I'll give you one example. There was a study a while back. Scientists were trying to figure out what level is, how much THC do you have to have before it kills you with an overdose? You said to these monkeys and they fed them the equivalent of three pounds of THC. Yeah, I know. Horrible people. Oh, my God.
[00:19:22] Yeah.
[00:19:23] So as you expect your reaction there, the researchers reported that those monkeys spent like three days sitting at no corner. There are cages rocking back and forth. They were really unhappy, super high little monkey. However, they did not die and they did not have any physiological damage.
[00:19:44] Interesting. Yeah. In in the reason for that, it's because that no matter how much THC you have, it cannot activate that receptor beyond a safe range.
[00:19:55] It's just it's like those guys, it's kind of like God guide rails or guardrails on the receptor. And just no matter how much you put out, it's not going to go berserk.
[00:20:02] Yeah. That said, there are certain synthetic cannabinoids. They do act as a full agonist, meaning it is by synthetic. I mean they act on the cannabinoid receptors. They have different kill structure and they can act as full agonist and they can turn up that receptor all the way up or all the way down with catastrophic effects. And I'll give two examples with that. There was this weight loss. Strug in France and the developer said to themselves, THC causes the munchies. If we block that receptor, it will suppress appetite. That'll be a great weight loss drug test.
[00:20:39] It was a great weight loss drug, but unfortunately it blocked that receptor completely, which means it blocked the Ananta mine that don't connect in and mine, which, by the way, is colloquially known as the happiness molecule. And a lot of people committed suicide and that product was pulled from the market.
[00:20:59] So that's an example of a synthetic that that shut that receptor down. The other end of the spectrum is synthetic cannabinoids found in the illicit market, like K2, like Spice. Interestingly enough, those cannabinoids can cause the kind of catastrophic lung failures that you're seeing, vaping related lung injuries.
[00:21:21] Yeah, I've heard a couple of reports on this that this synthetic cannabis is now looking like a potential culprit for some of those problems. People other than ever.
[00:21:29] Yeah, those synthetics like K2 Spice and there are like six hundred and fifty different other IVs. They can also cause seizures, heart attacks and all manner about stuff.
[00:21:39] So but this is a synthetic being laboratory produced. Any anything that's grown as a planter's pumped from, you know, derived from plant material is going to is going to stay within the safety range.
[00:21:49] Yeah. Said that that that natural plant cannabis has a remarkable safety profile.
[00:21:56] There are a lot of different reasons. Why. Why? That's known to be the case. And what's exciting about the safety of that is it means that the opportunity for people to explore the therapeutic benefits kind of at their own pace and their own time is remarkably safe in a way that most most pharmaceuticals, it would not be safe.
[00:22:20] Well, compared to something like Tylenol or something like that. I mean, give us a sense of how the safety profile of title comparison, something like cannabis, a planter of cannabis.
[00:22:29] I don't know the exact number exactly, but there are quite a few Tylenol overdoses every year. And I'd have to look that up on the CDC poison control website that Tylenol. Over time, it causes liver damage. It causes kidney damage and you can overdose on it.
[00:22:49] And it certainly compared to things, you know, these opioids that we're having so much problems with, I mean, that, you know, it seems like such a different set of parameters we're working with in terms of what we need to worry about. And, you know, guidelines, we need to put on things, you know, safety and controls. I guess we need to regulate cannabis, use it. You know, it doesn't even regulate it. But kind of the potential risks and the sort of window that we're talking about is so different than some of these other drugs.
[00:23:13] Yeah. You know, it's interesting, a brought up opiates because one of our earlier studies was on on comparing cannabis and opiate use specifically and the treatment of age related pain and what consistently and I think there are about 41 different studies out here on using CBD in conjunction with opiates.
[00:23:35] And what's consistently found is that CBD interacts with the opiates in such a way that it mitigates that opiates addictive potential and it mitigates the titration they typically see with opiates by titration.
[00:23:51] I mean increasing your dose over time to get the same effect. So this most recent study found that we did is we asked people explicitly who are using CBD to for alcoholism or for addiction.
[00:24:07] And what we found was that CBD in particular was extremely helpful for getting and staying off opiates, which, as I said, is consistent with a number of other studies that show patients voluntarily decrease or go up opiates when they use it with cannabis. It was less effective at alcohol abstinence, though it was helpful at reducing the amount of alcohol consumption. And it was even less helpful, though, someone helpful as a smoking cessation aid. So in terms of efficacy, most helpful at the opiate addiction, somewhat helpful at alcohol, moderately modestly helpful with nicotine said.
[00:24:50] It's so much of this is, you know, we are where we are as a society and the use of a lot of these, you know, these different medications, these different chemicals and how cannabis is going to play play a role in that as it becomes more widespread and, you know, more adopted. Has a big, big problem, you know, in terms of adoption. I think we're facing is the whole stigma around cannabis and kind of re-education that is going on for society.
[00:25:11] But interesting that is exactly right now in terms of the work you do with kind of craft. Now, what's kind of what's on your plate? What are the big initiatives you have going on? What what is the work that you're kind of focused on and the policies and things that you're you're hoping to affect?
[00:25:25] Yeah, so so three. Is one, it is. I work with National Cannabis Roundtable and we are working on federal legislation.
[00:25:35] First, getting banking services for the industry and second, federal legalization. So those are the two big federal priority said rationalising and tax structure locally in California. We have two major issues that have to be dealt with. One, by way of background, in California today, three quarters of local jurisdictions banned cannabis, retail and 80 percent of sales are still happening in the illicit so-called black market. That's a big problem and is a consumer health and safety problem. And it is a industry wide problem. So are two issues. There are addressing promulgating tax reform so that the cost of cannabis is not twice as much two to three times more in a licensed dispensary as it is on the black market. And secondly, opening this state up so that we genuinely have people have access to well-tested, well-regulated cannabis.
[00:26:36] Got it. I'm curious here. There's various legislation and its status right now in terms of the legalization of cannabis. I mean, how do you think that's actually in play? Because I've heard various theories of having it rescheduled, due, scheduled, and each of those presents kind of different problems or challenges. And then the whole who is going to actually regulate it and under what capacity? I know that CBT was kind of a question that was going to be the USDA or the FDA gets treated as a drug or as a supplement. And I guess, how do you see that most likely playing out? Do you have any opinions on how it should be done? You know, given given what we need as a society to make sure that it's used properly and effectively in health and safety?
[00:27:13] Well, yeah. So there are a couple different questions here in terms of scheduling. It needs to be D schedule, not rescheduled event schedule to. That's going to cause an ungodly amount of operational challenges and will effectively mean that we have the same access issues today or even worse access issues than we have today. So it needs to be a D scheduled first and foremost in terms of how it is regulated one. There are two different pathways you can go and whether you take path or take part B depends on really whether you can see this as a therapeutic agent or a recreational agent, meaning is it the equivalent of the Valerian or St John's Wort or vitamin D by it in your grocery store?
[00:28:05] Or is it the equivalent of the six pack of beer? It's the equivalent of if it's a recreational product, then the requirements regulatory requirement should certainly be no more onerous than they are with alcohol, for example. And if it's considered sort of a supplement type of product, then requirements and regulations, it should fall under the same thing that the Achenese show you buy falls under. Sure. So and the reason why I say that is I think it's important that we regulate cannabis within existing frameworks and not treat it like it's some rogue agent that's particularly dangerous and therefore warrants particularly unique oversight. Now, that said, from a food and safety standpoint, the federal regulation of supplements could stand to be improved. Right. And I'm not kind of pretend that's perfect. My my point is simply that cannabis is safer than most things. And therefore, there shouldn't be some special structure or nor should there be a syntax associated with it.
[00:29:21] Yeah. Yeah, that's true. Anything else that you see, you know, for people that are in this space that are either thinking about getting into the cannabis business or in the industry or in the industry, things that you would suggest they put on their kind of strategic roadmap in terms of changes that they need to consider, you know, shifts in the market dynamics that are going to kind of play out in the coming months and years. Just as someone who's highly involved in the industry has had a kind of finger on the pulse of things. What else is what else is on there on your.
[00:29:48] So what's going to be interesting is federal legalization, because that will change everything in the manner by which that happens will change everything.
[00:29:58] So, for example, what the ironically, the two candidates that are the least supportive of cannabis legalization are bitin and Bloomberg and Biden is like apparently still back in the 1970s, madness and things sense a gateway drug, even though the National Institute of Health says that it is not.
[00:30:26] The CDC says that it is not a gateway drug and there is a preponderance of evidence that suggests it's actually an exiled drug. So if you have like a Biden presidency, we'll probably stumble along in the same way we're stumbling along today. There is, however, progressive legislation moving forward in the House that House Judiciary Committee just moved forward. The more bill, which has some strong social equity, social justice components, that's going to die by the time it gets to the Senate.
[00:30:58] But it's important because what you see is we're moving at next horribly in that direction. Now, my personal theory and I can be totally wrong, I'm speculating loosely is that Trump will will legalize D schedule by executive order leading up to the 2020 election.
[00:31:20] So it would be a good way if he's running against someone like Biden, it would be a good way to pander to millennial voters.
[00:31:27] But you know, who knows? I frankly think Bernie Sanders has a fantastic program laid out for legalization.
[00:31:35] Interesting. After checking in on that a little bit more. Yes. So fascinating how the politics end up shaping the industry and then how, you know, what actually gets done in politics end up being impacted by so many other things other than what's best for what's best for people.
[00:31:50] This is been a pleasure. People want to find out more about you, about Kenneth Kraft, about Project CBD. What's the best place to get that information?
[00:31:58] Yeah. So Project CBD just visit Project CBD, dot org.
[00:32:03] And tons of information there on various conditions and the science and whatnot. How to use it. If you're a beginner like can a craft website is can a craft dot com. And of course it can be found on LinkedIn.
[00:32:17] Some will make sure that the links are in the show notes. People can click through and get that information. Thank you so much for taking some time.
[00:32:23] This was a great sort of deep dive into the research into really what's happening in terms of, you know, understanding how these things are benefiting people and they kind of parameters in the use and also what needs to get done and hopefully what will help kind of shape this industry to to be a positive for for everyone involved.
[00:32:43] It's really been a pleasure.
[00:32:44] Thank you, Bruce. And hopefully next time we chat, we'll be chatting about legalization. Exactly.
[00:32:50] Exactly. So thanks. All right. Thank you.
[00:33:54] You've been listening to Thinking Outside the Bud with Business Coach Bruce Eckfeldt to find a full list of podcast episodes. Download the tools and worksheets and access other great content. Visit the Web site at thinkingoutsidethebud.com. And don't forget to sign up for the free newsletter at thinkingoutsidethebud.com/newsletter.