Dispense Magazine is a platform designed to enhance the conversation between patients and doctors regarding medical cannabis. We curate thought-provoking, original content from professionals and patients involved in state-sanctioned medical cannabis programs. We also provide a completely free-to-use database of medical professionals, certification clinics, and dispensaries.
Sign up for our newsletter to get articles delivered directly to your email!
Dispense Magazine
https://dispensemagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/Veteran-Profile-Erik-Asher-Mastering-the-Power-of-the-Press-1.jpg
721
1281
Dispense Magazine Podcast
https://dispensemagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/Dispense-Magazine-Logo-1.svg
Dispense Magazine Podcast2019-11-08 11:48:562019-11-08 11:48:56Veteran Profile: Erik Asher, Mastering the Power of the Press
Dispense Magazine
https://dispensemagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/The-History-of-Medical-Cannabis-from-Ancient-Times-to-1937-to-Today-1.jpg
792
1409
Dispense Magazine Podcast
https://dispensemagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/Dispense-Magazine-Logo-1.svg
Dispense Magazine Podcast2019-11-02 18:57:242019-11-02 19:02:31The History of Medical Cannabis from Ancient Times to 1937 to Today: An Interview with Vireo Health's Dr. Paloma Lehfeldt
Dispense Magazine
https://dispensemagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/Keeping-a-Focus-on-Patient-Safety-An-Interview-with-Acreage-Holdings-CMO-Corey-Burchman-MD-2.jpg
792
1406
Dispense Magazine Podcast
https://dispensemagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/Dispense-Magazine-Logo-1.svg
Dispense Magazine Podcast2019-10-30 18:26:462019-10-30 19:25:20Keeping a Focus on Patient Safety: An Interview with Acreage Holdings CMO Dr. Corey Burchman, MD
Dispense Magazine
https://dispensemagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/Dispense-Magazine-Podcast-How-To-Run-A-Patient-Focused-Dispensary.jpg
792
1406
Dispense Magazine Podcast
https://dispensemagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/Dispense-Magazine-Logo-1.svg
Dispense Magazine Podcast2019-10-22 20:26:582019-10-26 09:46:09How To Run A Patient-Focused Dispensary: An Interview with Victor Guadagnino, Jr.
Dispense Magazine
https://dispensemagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/The-State-of-PAs-Medical-Cannabis-Program-An-Interview-With-Lt.-John-Fetterman.jpg
792
1406
Dispense Magazine Podcast
https://dispensemagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/Dispense-Magazine-Logo-1.svg
Dispense Magazine Podcast2019-10-02 12:49:132019-10-02 12:53:12The State of PA's Medical Cannabis Program - An Interview With Lieutenant Governor John Fetterman
Dispense Magazine
https://dispensemagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/Veteran-Profile-Erik-Asher.jpg
720
1280
Dispense Magazine Podcast
https://dispensemagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/Dispense-Magazine-Logo-1.svg
Dispense Magazine Podcast2019-09-19 09:05:542019-09-21 10:38:20Veteran Profile: Erik Asher Erik Asher is a Desert Storm Veteran and a tremendous influencer in the medical marijuana community in and around Pittsburgh. His expertise with a live rosin press has earned him a large following on YouTube. He recently spoke to Dispense for a podcast interview. Asher ran a rocket launcher during the war, got out in […]
DM:
So give us a little about your background. You’re a veteran, correct?
Erik:
Yes I am. I was in Desert Storm, in the army. I was in field artillery. I ran a rocket launcher during the war. I came out of the Army in 1991, got a degree in Business Administration, tried to go the route of the way things should be - you now, get a degree, get in the business world - but see, my PTSD and emotional issues after the war that were undiagnosed and not treated at that time caused me to be unemployable at that time. I just couldn’t keep a job, experienced a lot of depression during the 90s - that was a very bad time for me, as I went from being a soldier and that was sort of a calling for me, and due to no fault of my own and because of the exposure and the damage to my lungs, I was unable to do that anymore.
DM:
What was the exposure? Was it the oil wells?
Erik:
The oil wells, smoke, the Sarin Gas, which is nerve gas, we were inoculated against a lot of things that were used in experimental inoculations. There ? Bromide Tablets that were supposed to protect from nerve agent, but ended up causing neurological problems, like my calves never stop twitching, I have short-term memory problems and these are all side effects of this. These were unapproved so we were basically guinea pigs. So there were a lot of issues coming out of the warren? There hadn’t been any research into ? illness, so the VA kind of turned its back on us for 20 years. I fought for disability from 1992 and didn’t get approved until 2009. In the meantime, I fell into a self-destructive spiral of drug use and depression and it culminated in me being homeless in 1994 for about a year. I tried to take my life at that time and ended up in the VA hospital when it was still operating here in Pittsburgh. They had a program called the Domiciliary? Program for homeless veterans. I went into that program for a year. They offered a lot of coping skills and a lot of ways to work through problems, but what they did was load me up with pharmaceutical medications, you know Prozac, and the side effects alone were so excruciating because they took away the depression but they left you completely numb - you couldn’t feel anything - not good, not bad, and honestly, I would rather cope with the problems that the feelings bring than not have any at all. I didn’t want to feel like a machine. So I started self medicating before it was ever even legal in an attempt to wean myself off of as many of these medications as I could. I was on almost 20 medications at one time. Then I started to realize as I started using cannabis not recreationally, but if I knew I was going into a situation that I knew was going to aggravate my PTSD, I would premedicate prior to going there and I was able to deal with the situation, deal with the people without the side effects that the medicines were causing. Then when medicinal marijuana became legal here, I got my medical marijuana card, and at the time there was only concentrates available. Then, I got my disability, so, I’m on a fixed income. It was literally costing me about a third of my monthly income - about $1,500 just to medicate using concentrates, pens and things like that. I knew there had to be a better way. It just wasn’t sustainable for me. So, I was watching people in these YouTube videos and they were pressing rosin with hair straightening irons and I thought that was kind of a joke so I just kind of laughed it off and I was looking at maybe getting into BHO? But I live in an apartment building so that doesn’t really lend itself to that sort of process.
DM:
What is BHO?
Erik:
BHO is Butane Hash Oil it’s a way of extracting the cannabinoids from the plant material using solvent, butane, propane, alcohol - there are a lot of different solvents that can be used to accomplish this.
DM:
But then you’re left with solvent left in your medicine?
Erik:
Yes, you are left with the solvent that then has to be purged either through vacuum or temperature or both. Even though they are supposed to purge all of it, there’s still a detectable amount of residual solvents in any commercial concentrate that you will buy. With the kind of sensitivity that I have, chemical exposures, and my lungs being as damaged as they are it made it problematic for me to be able to medicate effectively without damaging myself further. I started getting serious about solvent extraction when I started seeing purpose-built equipment, not hair straighteners, but actually presses that were specifically made to maximize your yield and quality. I was sitting around the house one day, and since I don’t work, I just sit in front of the TV melting my brain, and my wife came in and said, look, you need to get out of the house, find some friends and get a purpose in life because I don’t like seeing you like this. Something kinda snapped in my head and a switch went off and I said, you know what, I’m gonna do this. I sold my TV and bought my first Rosin Press. I still haven’t replaced the TV two years later. So. I bought a nug smasher mini, a small two-ton, very portable press, that’s made to press an eighth at a time, which is perfect for someone who is medicating. Through a lot of trial and error and ruining a lot of eighths in the learning process I discovered after a while that I have sort of a talent for this. I got my technique down, I understood that you need to watch what the plant is telling you as you’re extracting. As you’re extracting, the plant indicates when it’s had enough heat and if you pay attention to those things you can make a very high-quality concentrate that has absolutely no residual chemicals at all. Getting your flower from a dispensary, you know exactly what’s in it. We’re just using heat and pressure. You can accomplish with heat and pressure exactly the same thing they do with chemicals. That’s not quite as efficient which is why commercial companies that make concentrates use chemicals because they get all of the materials all at once in one shot and then the plant material is done. When you use the Rosin Press to extract, you get you immediate concentrate, but then the pucks? The byproduct of this process is also medicinally valuable. So, I save up those pucks. They have a residual amount of THC and other cannabinoids in them so when I get enough, I extract them in a batch into coconut oil. Liquid coconut oil is the most available oil and because I press so many different strains. Most edibles that are made by commercial companies usually only use one particular strain, and that’s fine. There’s nothing wrong with that. My edibles come to be an order magnitude more potent because we’re talking 25-30 different strains that comprise the oil that goes into my edibles.
DM:
So, you’re really maximizing the entourage effect?
Erik:
Not only that, but I’m also getting every last bit of medicinal value from that plant and because the bi-products are also medicinally valuable, I’m stretching every dollar, which is the reason I got into this.
DM:
So you’re main purpose, especially to help veterans with, is that this costs less to consume medical cannabis this way, correct?
Erik:
It’s really simple. I can only speak for myself, everybody is different, you’re mileage may vary, but for me, if I go to the dispensary and I get an eighth of flower, and I take it home and I use it in the way that they designed it to be used, which is dry vaping only - you cannot smoke it. That amount would medicate me effectively for about a half a day. If I take that same eighth and put it through my press, I’ll get somewhere close to a gram of concentrate from that. That amount of concentrate will medicate me for three solid days.
DM:
So, you’re tripling the potency, and you still have the pucks.
Erik:
Exactly. Then I have pucks for later and I can make the edibles and they are incredibly potent. Also, all of the equipment that I use to extract and to vape this product is cleaned 190 proof Everclear instead of using isopropyl alcohol, which is what most people use. The Everclear is food grade so it makes an instant tincture that is medicinally available. Here’s the best part: If I get it to the point of saturation where I’ve got enough material to the point where it won’t hold any more, I can take that tincture, put it into a slow cooker, boil the alcohol off and I’ve got Rick Simpson oil. Because of the 25 or 30 different strains that comprise it make it an order of magnitude more potent than anything a dispensary can offer. So I’m able to get, at every level, a great medicinal value from one purchase.
DM:
So, in all of this, we should emphasize that it’s perfectly legal here in PA, stinking up the front entrance of this place with all of your medicine you brought in, and you’re actually pressing here at the expo.
Erik:
I am. I am pressing not just dispensary flower, I’m also pressing CBD flower, making rosin? From that that actually can be vaped right here on the spot because there is no THC it’s legally purchased anywhere. I didn’t know that CBD could produce a good rosin because I had no experience with it.
DM:
The CBD flower is not really readily available at a lot of places.
Erik:
It’s starting to become so in a lot of vape shops, and you’ll start seeing more CBD flower. There are more companies coming out with it and now that hemp is a commercial product, you’re gonna see a lot more of it. The nice thing is, if you like doing concentrates, you can take the CBD flower, use the same exact process I do for medicating you can make yourself a vapable concentrate that is actually very tasty if you’ve got good material to start with. That’s the thing about the press. The reason it’s dangerous to use anything other than dispensary flower is because if the flower that you have may have been grown improperly or someone used chemicals or pesticides on it, when you concentrate that by pressing it you are concentrating all of those toxins, and for me, that is absolutely unacceptable.
DM:
And there’s the fact that hemp and cannabis are both used to extract heavy metals out of the soil through mediated soil. I guess they used them around Chernobyl, that is even worse. Putting heavy metals into your system would be a disaster.
Erik:
Unless you know who grew your flower and you know what nutrients they used and they don’t use pesticides, until that day comes, I’m gonna stick with dispensary flower because I know exactly what’s in it - and it’s a one stage process from flower to concentrate, not adding anything, not taking anything away, and you’re keeping the full plant profile. Every terpene remains intact if you do it properly. Now, you could overpress, you could overtemperature your press and you could burn all your terpenes off and what you end up with will get you high, but all the medicinal value has been ruined. So again, it’s a learning process. Anybody can make rosin - you can take a hair straightening iron and a piece of parchment paper, and you can make it, but if you want to get really good quality medicine, it takes paying very close attention to the process - the color, the amount of activity that goes on as it’s extracting are all indicators that you need to pay attention to and then when you pull at the optimal time, you end up with a concentrate that is far superior, in my opinion, to any concentrate that any dispensary sells.
DM:
Well this is a great service you are doing, especially for veterans on a fixed income, but really, anybody on a fixed income.
Erik:
I’m here to educate.
DM:
You’re here to educate. You’ve got a YouTube Channel.
Erik:
I do, I’m also on Instagram, Facebook, and I keep a database of all my dispensary flower presses, they;re all eights, there all pressed at the same temperature, 200 degrees and I buy from all different grower/processors and dispensaries too. I mostly go to Maitri, but I do visit the others when they have flowers I’m particularly interested in. A database goes up for every press I do and there’s a link on my Facebook that will shoot you right to that page and you can see exactly what I’m getting in real-time and that way, you as a patient know that if you’re going to try pressing some rosin, you now know which flower is going to give you the results you’re looking for. Of course, everyone has their favorite strain, and even if you get a strain that isn’t a good producer, you’ll still get high-quality medication out of it, you just won’t get the yield you get off some of the others.
DM:
You’ve discovered a trick that is really valuable or people who might be complaining that the flower we get here in Pennsylvania may be a little bit dry sometimes. You’ve got a trick to rehydrate them.
Erik:
Haha, that may have been the biggest understatement I’ve ever heard. When you’re pressing in a rosin press, the optimal moisture content of the flower has to be between 60 and 70 percent. Generally speaking, when you get it from the dispensary, it’s probably down to around 20 percent, maybe down into the teens. But, most people take the Vita Packs, which are an industry known product that’s not really a rehydration solution. Here’s the problem - the chemical they use in those packs to keep the moisture content steady tends to degrade the terpenes, it absorbs them as part of the process of stabilizing the moisture content. Now, I didn’t discover this, it was given to me by a friend of mine who is a chiropractor who’s also a medical patient. He said, “Look, take fresh spinach leaf, put it in the container with the flower, and it will be ready to press within 4 to 6 hours.” I was really dubious about that. I’ve been using the Vita Packs and they work for me but they are very slow. Between the time I buy that flower and the time I can actually press it if I’m using the Vita Paks takes 4 to 6 days, and for somebody like me, it’s hard to sit on your medicine that long to make it usable. When he told me about spinach leaf, I told him to go ahead and bring some over some time and show me. So, he comes over one day and he has an eighth of Alera flower. He said to go ahead and feel it and when I did it was moist and sticky and smelled perfect - it was ready to press and gave us an amazing yield when I put it through the press so I have become a believer.
DM:
Spinach, it’s not just for Popeye anymore.
Erik:
Exactly. It releases its moisture in a controlled but quick manner. When he brought that home from the dispensary it weighed 3.3 grams, so it was underweight because it was so dry. After we hydrated it for four hours it read at 4.2 grams. It sucked up that moisture like a sponge. I can tell anybody that has an inclination or notion of pressing rosin with dispensary flower and you need to rehydrate it and if you need it done quickly, definitely use spinach. It works. Spinach is very neutral. It doesn’t impart any kind of flavor, it doesn’t affect the terpenes and all and it just works really quick.
DM:
So, there you have it kids, eat your spinach and if you don’t eat it, put it in your pot container. Erik, it’s been great having you, we appreciate all the work you’ve been doing for the veterans and for anybody on a fixed income. It’s a great resource.
Erik:
I love educating,de-stigmatizing this plant, that’s what I’m here for.
The first Green Goods branded retail location opened yesterday in Scranton, offering customers cannabis products from Vireo and other state-licensed manufacturers. The Company plans to open a second Green Goods location in Bethlehem, and the third location in Stroudsburg, pending regulatory approval. According to a press release, Vireo Health intends on launching all-new dispensaries and […]
On April 17, 2016, Pennsylvania became the 24th state to legalize Cannabis as a medical treatment when Governor Wolf signed the “Medical Marijuana Act.” While the Act has addressed many concerns on the medical administration of the drug, those utilizing this treatment must understand that Pennsylvania still classifies Cannabis a Schedule I Controlled Substance. This […]
Dispense Magazine
Dispense Magazine
Dispense Magazine
Dispense Magazine
Dispense Magazine
Dispense Magazine
Dispense Magazine
Dispense Magazine
Dispense Magazine