When I offered a high-cbd cannabis medicine making class

Even after studying herbal medicine, many people I know feel like working with cannabis is too complicated, so they just avoid it altogether.

I hate to say it but corporate producers (the kind that would patent the plant if they could) want to keep us afraid of making our own medicine.

In the last post we reviewed some of the barriers that prevent most herbalists I know from making their own high-CBD cannabis products;

1. Knowing how (feeling intimidated)
2. Lack of connections with growers
3. Anxiety about prohibition (or just jumping through hoops)

If this describes you, my mission is to help you overcome these barriers.

My mission has been to get this plant medicine in the hands of the people who know many plants, the herbalists.

The adventure has been long and winding, taking me down unexpected paths I could’ve never seen until I arrived at their trailheads.

One path led to teaching all over the country, another to my online classes and the next big adventure will be the release of my book in March of 2020.

The latest adventure has been the growing of 150 high-CBD cannabis plants. Along the way I’ve met incredibly generous folks who embody the abundant paradigm we are struggling to venture into.

Abundance and generosity have been my trail markers along the way helping me to find our tribe. Is this person willing to share? Knowledge? Lessons learned? Resources such as seeds or clones?

One of the many wounds cannabis is here to heal is our relationship with generosity and greed.

Very few plants we’ve encountered have the charge and stigma cannabis carries with her. We are slowly coming out of an 80 year prohibition, leaving incarceration, lost livelihood, and untold suffering. All this because of a healing plant.

Here is the current status of things:

• Although the legality of the plant is changing, “hemp”, which is cannabis with a THC content of less than 0.3%, is legal federally.
• Hemp is not legal at the state level in all 50 states. Idaho, South Dakota, and Nebraska still have a prohibition on “hemp”
• Cannabis with higher than 0.3% is still not legal federally, and states have different levels of legality affecting who can access and how the medicine is sold.

Even with the legal hemp across the states, big banking has its own form of regulation/prohibition. Anyone wanting to educate or sell legal hemp is shut down by online payment processors such as paypal, stripe and square.

Of course if you are a BIG business selling CBD products, you aren’t policed the same way as the little guy.

A friend and colleague had their entire online teaching platform shut down for months when she advertised a class I was teaching for her on the endocannabinoid system and cannabis. It is for this reason you will not see any mention of “the plant” for courses I offer on my website.

Although hemp flowers are legal, the FDA says you cannot make or sell any products a person would take internally. As of this writing high CBD cannabis/hemp extracts do not fall under the dietary supplements but under the drug category. Yes, everyone and their brother are selling it, everywhere including your local quick mart, but technically it is illegal.

Why all this information? Because you have the right to know what’s really true so you can make informed decisions. Because you have the right to make your own medicine.

Mass produced CBD: Problems and Solutions

Unlike at home or small scale medicine making, the industrial process is all about efficiency and compromise. This has consequences on potency, quality, effects, health benefits… but corporations use slick branding to cover it up and paint a pretty picture.

Here’s what you won’t get from reading the labels on CBD products:

1. The process of extracting constituents from cannabis are not difficult.
2. It is your birthright to make medicine and care for yourself and your family.
3. We have the opportunity to change the lives of the farmers as well.
4. You can make your own high-CBD cannabis medicine

The process of extracting constituents from cannabis are not difficult.

If you’ve been making tinctures or infused oils, you know how to do it already. There’s one additional step, which is heating the flowers to “activate” the acid forms, which has the fancy name of decarboxylation.

If you know how to spread flowers on a cookie sheet, regulate the temperature of your oven to 250 degrees fahrenheit, and remove after one hour, you can do this fancy extra step. No phD required.

It is your birthright to make medicine and care for yourself and your family.

There’s a lot of hype out there about different processes for extraction, sometimes with misleading intentions. It has been and will continue to be my mission to help folks tease out the relevant information, to learn the questions to ask so you can get a good quality medicine. All the while understanding the process so you can make informed decisions when you spend your hard earned money.

We have the opportunity to change the lives of the farmers as well.

Historically the people tending the plants, doing the back breaking work, sweating it out in the field, worrying about the weather and working long hard days, are the people who make the least in the present time capitalist top down model. They are paid pennies per hour while each subsequent part of the “supply chain” makes exponentially more money so that by the time the medicine arrives to you, you’re paying $75-100/ounce on something the farmer was paid 1-2 dollars for.

I’m not making these numbers up. These are real numbers.

So how do we change this? You know the answers, we’ve started to do this with our food with CSA’s (Community Supported Agriculture), and we can do this with medicine too.

Here’s a few other ideas:

• Buy local, from the farmer and pay them a fair price for their flowers.
• Buy local, from the farmer who makes medicine from their flowers.
• Buy local, from a medicine maker and pay them a fair price for their medicine, so they can pay the farmer a fair price. Ask them if they are paying a fair price for the flowers they use.

You can make your own high-CBD cannabis medicine

I make medicine, I know how much flowers cost in blood, sweat and tears to grow on a small scale like I’ve chosen to pursue, and on a large industrial agricultural farm. There’s a difference in paying people to hand harvest and process the flowers and utilizing machinery to cut down and chop up the flowers. All of it comes at an expense, in human energy, fossil fuels, time, and quality of the plant material at the end.

So with the mindset of “everyone eats” I’m offering what I’m calling “the package”. Our chance to change the current top down model.

We’ve spent 550 people hours just in the harvesting, drying, curing and processing of the flowers from our land. We’ve harvested more than we will need for our own needs, and so would like to send off “the girls” to folks like you, the people of my email list (and only my email list).

Click here to read more and enroll in the Medicine Making Course

What’s Included in Medicine Making With “The Plant”

• Online video course: instant access once you purchase the package and access forever! Four plus hours of the medicine making class filmed live. The video class will include all the information for you to make your own medicine.
  • The Endocannabinoid system; what it is, why we have it and what a healthy system does for us.
  • Cannabis the plant; brief summary of how she grows, the parts used, constituents, will CBD get me high?
  • Medicine making: decarboxylation, tinctures, infused oils.
  • Why make one particular preparation over another
  • Current status of legal issues
  • Conditions a beginner could use high cbd cannabis preparations with
  • Considerations and contraindications

See the full curriculum, and sample lesson over at Heartstone Online

I made this course for people like you who will bring these medicine making traditions into the future, keeping the whole-person, whole-plant approach alive and well.

Okay, whew! Thanks for reading.
Tammi