Dispense MagazineThe rapid growth of the cannabis industry in America today is causing concerns about the impact on our economy, our health, and our wallet. So who is out there working to keep the medical cannabis industry a healthy one?
Soulful Cannabis is a Philadelphia based organization working to keep all aspects of the industry focused on the right things. They call themselves a collective to make a good industry better. Using thought-provoking events and other third-party tools, they monitor the Social Equity of cannabis, which is a big picture view of the community impact, opportunity, diversity, patient advocacy, and social justice issues.
In this episode, we’ll talk to the founding team of Soulful Cannabis. Skip Shuda, Jason Mitchell and Julia Kline discuss a wide range of topics, from industry practices to holistic medicine, social justice and some key ways to help end the stigma.
To connect with Soulful Cannabis, sign up for their newsletter at SoulfulCannabis.com, or subscribe to their YouTube channel.
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Transcription
DM:
Skip, from an executive perspective, what are the needs of the industry that inspired you to form this organization?
Skip:
I come from the technology world where I was an internet entrepreneur in the 90s. Five years ago I founded Green Rush Advisors to get into the education and advocacy space. I put together some courses for people who wanted to get into the space as career seekers or as business owners. Through those efforts I became connected with a group that ended up applying with and helped spin up, the first couple of dispensaries in Southeastern PA. I was the chief executive officer for about a year there. Jason was also a part of our team there as a general manager. He really helped us get up and running.
The really interesting thing was the contrast between cannabis and what I saw in the internet industry as that was getting started. You had a lot of people with professional backgrounds—consulting, analytics, software developers—but in the cannabis world, I see much more of the wild west—people with a wide range of disciplines. Some from illicit markets, some from completely different and unrelated industries. And everyone is moving really fast, just like the internet space. But in moving fast, I want to make sure we’re not missing opportunities to really do this right. We have a lot of practices in other industries—big tobacco, big alcohol, big pharma—and some of the practices are not things we want to emulate or copy in the cannabis industry. This is an opportunity to really be a healing industry, and I think our business practices as we roll out this industry should reflect that. That was my motivation for starting Soulful Cannabis and I knew I had like minded partners with Julia and Jason.
DM:
Jason, what is your view from a dispensary manager’s perspective?
Jason:
First, there’s so few of us! I’ve only been doing this legally now for about ten years. The bulk of my experience was in the Colorado market. Skip and I met when he started the Green Rush course. I wanted to help him with some content, which was applicable to the space, not just in theory. The majority of this is all brand new space. Other older industries have these grooves already set as to what their models will be and how they’re going to function. We have this great opportunity in this industry to lay new grooves. It’s a tremendously exciting time. Like Skip said, with so many people coming from so many different backgrounds, I believe there is an inherent need to blaze a high standard and path. As a minority in this industry, I was certainly a voice that needed to be heard. As a patient advocate, I always like to remember that this is healthcare. We are bringing this through as a patient’s benefit. We talk about the startup of an industry, but the reality is this is a plant for the people and for the patient. We are here to serve people on a high level.
DM:
Julia, what kind of needs do you see as a nurse and patient advocate?
Julia:
What I saw and I still see every single day is a patient need for education. They don’t even know how to take the first step to become a patient. I’m always guiding, directing and advising. Some people are scared. We’re just here to help and to guide and to maintain ethics and standards.
DM:
Are there things you can tell patients that dissipate the fear and help them understand how safe it works?
Julia:
There are several key things. One of them is how CBD is not only in the cannabis plant but is also found in basil. It’s a naturally occurring thing that our bodies are just made for. There are receptors on our spinal cord for it. It’s like a lock and key. Another is that no deaths have ever been recorded from it. You can’t die—it’s a safe option. Especially when you look at the alternatives.
DM:
It seems crazy that people will be OK with taking an opioid, which kills tens of thousands of Americans every year, but hesitate over a plant that has never killed anyone.
Jason:
That’s where we get into that conversation of education and information. There’s been such a good job of misinformation for the last couple of generations. It takes so much dissemination of positive information to start to break down that trained response.
DM:
One of the key things you do is events. Tell us about one of your recent events.
Skip:
We had an event in late February in Media, PA with about 130 people. We had several sponsors including leading grower/processors and dispensaries in the area. CannaCare Docs was there and registered over 40 patients. We had some great medical speakers and panelists along with caregivers and parents, who had some very powerful stories. We wrapped the day with an industry roundtable, which we saw as a springboard to starting these conversations around accountability by the businesses in the space. We also started signing people up for special interest groups. Julia is actually going to be hosting a caregiver's circle. We also have people interested in hemp and the spirit and energy of the cannabis plant. We are letting these circles form based on the interests of the people who come to us.
DM:
Jason, what are some of the other tools you are using to educate people?
Jason:
The next phase is not only facilitating a platform for education and information to flow in all directions between government, the industry, and patients but to also give the industry third-party tools to go out and do things like plug into your community in a social outreach model. Or hold job fairs in disheveled neighborhoods or areas heavily impacted by the war on drugs or by over policing. As this industry ushers in the billion dollar age, what are we doing to ensure that everybody gets to share in that expansion?
DM:
It’s heartening to see the way cannabis and holistic therapies are working hand and glove now. Julia, can you speak about the results you’ve seen in people who’ve embraced these kinds of therapies and philosophies?
Julia:
Absolutely. The things I’ve seen just over the last year have been amazing. I’ve always been a holistic nurse—just wanting to help and heal. From a personal standpoint, I have seen my father, and Jason’s mother as well, just embrace the whole plant extract and start changing their lives. My father was dependent on benzos to sleep and alcohol to function during the day. He made a decision and chose the plant and has been off both since. Jason’s mother has cut her insulin intake in half. There are just these unknown benefits that are happening as we speak. Even more personal, I had broken my back three years ago and was sent home with a large tub of opioids. Well, I knew too much, I saw too many overdoses of young people, old people, people of every color—it doesn’t matter, it affects everybody. So yeah, cannabis is medicine that is changing lives.
Skip:
Julia and I had the opportunity to participate in a kundalini yoga and gong therapy event, which had a cannabis component as well. It was very interesting to integrate that into the whole meditative experience. It was really powerful.
DM:
So you medicated, then did kundalini yoga, which is pretty vigorous, then meditated while gongs are being played?
Skip:
This was an event put on by friends of ours over at Village Wellness in Berwin. They wanted to do it right so I checked with the patient advocate at the Department of Health, and she said: “This is the kind of event we’d like to see more of.” So it was only open to people with patient cards. They said ‘bring your vaporizer’—no smoking and no edibles. We medicated, then the manager Lance led us through the kundalini experience. After that, we medicated again, and then we went into the gong therapy. During the kundalini experience, you really open up all these channels in your body. For me, the effect was much more profound. It was through the whole body, really feeling it all through my body in a wonderful way. It was very relaxing. Then we laid down for the gong therapy. A lot of us actually reported the sensations of an out of body experience. Lance told us that cannabis is associated with the liver in Chinese medicine, and the liver is also associated with out of body experiences. Many people self-reported this uplifting experience through this meditation. It was very cool.
Jason:
We toss around these words like ‘holistic’ and ‘vibration’ and ‘energy’. We know that’s the connection between us and the planet. Whether that’s a gong or hitting that right mental vibration state in breathing practices, I think we’re finding these tools, like the cannabis plant, that helps us elevate our own natural state rather than this ideology of toxicity that, in this society, we certainly like to indulge in. Whether its food, alcohol, tobacco, whatever it is. Just being able to balance some of that out with a more holistic approach vibrates with people.
We get excited when we hear the State say this is exactly what they’re looking for. This is exactly what we’re trying to promote—that opening of people’s inner self, that third eye, reaching that next vibration of enlightenment.
DM:
Skip, from an executive perspective, what are the needs of the industry that inspired you to form this organization?
Skip:
I come from the technology world where I was an internet entrepreneur in the 90s. Five years ago I founded Green Rush Advisors to get into the education and advocacy space. I put together some courses for people who wanted to get into the space as career seekers or as business owners. Through those efforts I became connected with a group that ended up applying with and helped spin up, the first couple of dispensaries in Southeastern PA. I was the chief executive officer for about a year there. Jason was also a part of our team there as a general manager. He really helped us get up and running. The really interesting thing was the contrast between cannabis and what I saw in the internet industry as that was getting started. You had a lot of people with professional backgrounds—consulting, analytics, software developers—but in the cannabis world, I see much more of the wild west—people with a wide range of disciplines. Some from illicit markets, some from completely different and unrelated industries. And everyone is moving really fast, just like the internet space. But in moving fast, I want to make sure we’re not missing opportunities to really do this right. We have a lot of practices in other industries—big tobacco, big alcohol, big pharma—and some of the practices are not things we want to emulate or copy in the cannabis industry. This is an opportunity to really be a healing industry, and I think our business practices as we roll out this industry should reflect that. That was my motivation for starting Soulful Cannabis and I knew I had like minded partners with Julia and Jason.
DM:
Jason, what is your view from a dispensary manager’s perspective?
Jason:
First, there’s so few of us! I’ve only been doing this legally now for about ten years. The bulk of my experience was in the Colorado market. Skip and I met when he started the Green Rush course. I wanted to help him with some content, which was applicable to the space, not just in theory. The majority of this is all brand new space. Other older industries have these grooves already set as to what their models will be and how they’re going to function. We have this great opportunity in this industry to lay new grooves. It’s a tremendously exciting time. Like Skip said, with so many people coming from so many different backgrounds, I believe there is an inherent need to blaze a high standard and path. As a minority in this industry, I was certainly a voice that needed to be heard. As a patient advocate, I always like to remember that this is healthcare. We are bringing this through as a patient’s benefit. We talk about the startup of an industry, but the reality is this is a plant for the people and for the patient. We are here to serve people on a high level.
DM:
Julia, what kind of needs do you see as a nurse and patient advocate?
Julia:
What I saw and I still see every single day is a patient need for education. They don’t even know how to take the first step to become a patient. I’m always guiding, directing and advising. Some people are scared. We’re just here to help and to guide and to maintain ethics and standards.
DM:
Are there things you can tell patients that dissipate the fear and help them understand how safe it works?
Julia:
There are several key things. One of them is how CBD is not only in the cannabis plant but is also found in basil. It’s a naturally occurring thing that our bodies are just made for. There are receptors on our spinal cord for it. It’s like a lock and key. Another is that no deaths have ever been recorded from it. You can’t die—it’s a safe option. Especially when you look at the alternatives.
DM:
It seems crazy that people will be OK with taking an opioid, which kills tens of thousands of Americans every year, but hesitate over a plant that has never killed anyone.
Jason:
That’s where we get into that conversation of education and information. There’s been such a good job of misinformation for the last couple of generations. It takes so much dissemination of positive information to start to break down that trained response.
DM:
One of the key things you do is events. Tell us about one of your recent events.
Skip:
We had an event in late February in Media, PA with about 130 people. We had several sponsors including leading grower/processors and dispensaries in the area. CannaCare Docs was there and registered over 40 patients. We had some great medical speakers and panelists along with caregivers and parents, who had some very powerful stories. We wrapped the day with an industry roundtable, which we saw as a springboard to starting these conversations around accountability by the businesses in the space. We also started signing people up for special interest groups. Julia is actually going to be hosting a caregiver's circle. We also have people interested in hemp and the spirit and energy of the cannabis plant. We are letting these circles form based on the interests of the people who come to us.
DM:
Jason, what are some of the other tools you are using to educate people?
Jason:
The next phase is not only facilitating a platform for education and information to flow in all directions between government, the industry, and patients but to also give the industry third-party tools to go out and do things like plug into your community in a social outreach model. Or hold job fairs in disheveled neighborhoods or areas heavily impacted by the war on drugs or by over policing. As this industry ushers in the billion dollar age, what are we doing to ensure that everybody gets to share in that expansion?
DM:
It’s heartening to see the way cannabis and holistic therapies are working hand and glove now. Julia, can you speak about the results you’ve seen in people who’ve embraced these kinds of therapies and philosophies?
Julia:
Absolutely. The things I’ve seen just over the last year have been amazing. I’ve always been a holistic nurse—just wanting to help and heal. From a personal standpoint, I have seen my father, and Jason’s mother as well, just embrace the whole plant extract and start changing their lives. My father was dependent on benzos to sleep and alcohol to function during the day. He made a decision and chose the plant and has been off both since. Jason’s mother has cut her insulin intake in half. There are just these unknown benefits that are happening as we speak. Even more personal, I had broken my back three years ago and was sent home with a large tub of opioids. Well, I knew too much, I saw too many overdoses of young people, old people, people of every color—it doesn’t matter, it affects everybody. So yeah, cannabis is medicine that is changing lives.
Skip:
Julia and I had the opportunity to participate in a kundalini yoga and gong therapy event, which had a cannabis component as well. It was very interesting to integrate that into the whole meditative experience. It was really powerful.
DM:
So you medicated, then did kundalini yoga, which is pretty vigorous, then meditated while gongs are being played?
Skip:
This was an event put on by friends of ours over at Village Wellness in Berwin. They wanted to do it right so I checked with the patient advocate at the Department of Health, and she said: “This is the kind of event we’d like to see more of.” So it was only open to people with patient cards. They said ‘bring your vaporizer’—no smoking and no edibles. We medicated, then the manager Lance led us through the kundalini experience. After that, we medicated again, and then we went into the gong therapy. During the kundalini experience, you really open up all these channels in your body. For me, the effect was much more profound. It was through the whole body, really feeling it all through my body in a wonderful way. It was very relaxing. Then we laid down for the gong therapy. A lot of us actually reported the sensations of an out of body experience. Lance told us that cannabis is associated with the liver in Chinese medicine, and the liver is also associated with out of body experiences. Many people self-reported this uplifting experience through this meditation. It was very cool.
Jason:
We toss around these words like ‘holistic’ and ‘vibration’ and ‘energy’. We know that’s the connection between us and the planet. Whether that’s a gong or hitting that right mental vibration state in breathing practices, I think we’re finding these tools, like the cannabis plant, that helps us elevate our own natural state rather than this ideology of toxicity that, in this society, we certainly like to indulge in. Whether its food, alcohol, tobacco, whatever it is. Just being able to balance some of that out with a more holistic approach vibrates with people. We get excited when we hear the State say this is exactly what they’re looking for. This is exactly what we’re trying to promote—that opening of people’s inner self, that third eye, reaching that next vibration of enlightenment.
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