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This podcast is intended for a mature, teenage age and is provided on an educational and informational basis. Any material presented is for informational purposes only and should not be taken as a substitute for professional
It's over night. Here's a
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medical advice or as an endorsement or medical everything possible rip coat
claim by podcast or dot pro.
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Reveille Addy Ross is good right now fighting it right
Go.
You starved for Ross.
What?
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Bronson goal
Ross Rebliotti has tested positive for passive marijuana.
forced to forfeit his gold medal returns the medal diploma awarded
They put me in jail in Japan.
Get the medal back!
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I just wanted to take the control back again. Let's turn this mess into a success. I'd love if we could be part of normalizing cannabis use and also stand up for the people who use cannabis. It's personal. I'm Ross Rebiliati and this is the podcast.
Welcome to the podcast with Ross Rabliotti, where we explore the world of cannabis through the eyes of one of the world's premier cannabis advocates.
I've been at the forefront of cannabis awareness for over 25 years since that fateful day in Nagano. Join me as we dig deep for gold nuggets hidden in the wide world of weed. It's growers, producers, innovators, and enthusiasts. Don't forget to hit that subscribe button and keep the podcast in your rotation.
Much of the mainstream conversation around cannabis, since it hit retail stores, has centered around one particular psychoactive ingredient, the almighty THC. So much so, that the race to bring products to market containing the highest amount of THC has reached a fever pitch, with some producers caught fudging the numbers. But people in the know argue that this focus on THC is misguided, and the conversation about weeds features and benefits should be much more nuanced.
Thankfully, consumers are starting to see the light as we all continue to learn about this highly complex plant. That's why today's podcast is dedicated to the natural chemical compounds that not only contribute to the flavors and aromas of your favorite cannabis cultivars, but may also contribute to how they make you feel. Things that should factor into your purchasing decisions. We're talking about terpenes.
Speaker 1 (02:40.44)
That's right, Don, and it's one of my favorite topics to geek out on. We'll hear from other self-proclaimed terpene lovers on why these tasty compounds are so interesting. And I'll chat with John Stryker, a professor and researcher from the University of Arizona whose important work is revealing even more reasons why terpenes should be taking the spotlight when we talk about the power of this plant. It turns out they might have the potential to play a surprising role in the fight against the opioid crisis.
Don Schaffer.
And I'm Ross Rebiliade, and this is the podcast.
This episode was inspired by the Black Diamond Stick by Ross's Gold. Infuse your joint or pre-roll with extra THC without a clogging or canoeing like other infused pre-rolls. Just insert the Black Diamond Stick in the middle of your joint or pre-roll, spark it, and you're good to go. Ask your favorite budtender for the Black Diamond Stick by Ross's Gold or visit HerbalDispatch.com. be 19 plus. And now for the pot news.
In January 2025, Innovation Saskatchewan announced its investment in a Saskatchewan Polytotnic Research Project focused on addressing the need for robust cannabis crop breeding programs. The funding supports the Cannabis Plant Quality Improvement, Applied Research and Analytical Lab, led by Blaine Chartrand. It will be used to install growth chambers in the Bioscience Applied Research Center to improve plant quality, as well as support genetics research
Speaker 2 (04:11.8)
and the development of propagation methods for better value-added products in agriculture and life science industries. The funding was matched by the Canada Foundation for Innovation. Inflated THC numbers have long been a concern across the legal cannabis industry, prompting producers, consumers and retailers to call for the government to do more to ensure Canadians are getting accurate information on their cannabis packaging. Health Canada launched a data-gathering program in the summer of 2023
which included sampling and testing of both legal and illegal cannabis products in the market. Health Canada vowed to take appropriate compliance and enforcement actions to mitigate health and safety risks if discrepancies were revealed. In February 2025, Stratcan reported the first results from the program, which tested 50 different legal cannabis samples purchased at five retailers across Canada.
The sample labels listed THC levels up to around 25%, but the testing results revealed nearly half of the samples had actual THC levels under 80 % of their label claim.
Speaker 2 (05:21.14)
As the legal cannabis industry matures, so does our knowledge of this complex plant and its properties. Thanks to our own subjective experience and of course the hard work of folks doing important scientific research. The conversation around cannabis has evolved beyond THC to include CBD and other minor cannabinoids, which we've learned can have different effects that go beyond just quote unquote getting as high.
Speaker 1 (05:48.81)
Over the years, I've learned that the effect a particular strain has on me is due to much more than its THC and even its cannabinoid content, and that terpenes and something called the entourage effect play a bigger role than some folks might think. But what is a terpene exactly? Luckily, we found someone who can school us on the topic.
I'm Cora, I'm the Pure Sun Farms Commercial Specialist for Vancouver Island, and I'm definitely a huge terpene nerd. I'm a big fan of the club Terps Not Terfs, if you haven't checked it out, I have to plug it. We love Terps Not Terfs, but let's talk about terpenes. As a rep for an LP, one of my favorite things to do is to bring in terpenes whenever I do a pop-up and just show them to the staff.
as well as the consumers because it really introduces people into this wide world of aromatics within cannabis.
She's serious, folks. Cora travels around Vancouver Island with a trunk full of terpene vials, ready to take people on an oil factory journey. And it's a fascinating journey, to be sure.
Turpenes are unsaturated hydrocarbons that are used as building blocks, primarily in plants. They seem to be mediators that help facilitate different action potentials, which are happening in the plant all of the time. Some can be used as defense mechanisms. Some are used for aromas. And some are even used in carnivorous plants to form the sticky substance that we call mucilage, which often will include tannins and alkaloids as well.
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There's over 30,000 compounds that we can call terpenes with one of the most recently discovered ones being called hashinine, which we know is a result of mercy and degrading over time. And it seems to indicate some truth behind things like hash hitting heavier than we might expect. Cannabis produces at least 150 different terpenes. And we can compare that to anything within the order that
cannabis belongs to.
So we know different cannabis plants have different combinations of these terpenes and when taken together with the plant's psychoactive ingredients like THC we get what's known as the entourage effect or the theory that the combined effects of cannabis compounds are greater than the effects of the compounds on their own. Cora has a pretty great analogy for it.
Yeah, I've heard a few people say this kind of analogy, and I'm a big proponent of this analogy, is THC is kind of your gas pedal, but terpenes are your steering wheel. They're really what's going to guide your experience. Sativa, indica, we're all aware that all of these plants are hybridized to some extent. And really,
even with different terpenes and an indica, you can kind of modify that indica high that you're gonna experience. I know that's something that has a good amount of limonene and it can still be an indica, even though we might indicate in aromatherapy, that might be more of a sativaline.
Speaker 2 (08:57.422)
Researchers are finding the entourage effect can produce potential benefits like chronic pain relief and can even help reduce unwanted side effects of cannabinoids taken on their own. Later in this episode, we'll chat with one researcher who's exploring that connection. But for now, let's look at how this might affect your typical cannabis consumer.
Take a look at the last package of flour you bought. In addition to the total THC, CBD and other cannabinoids, some cannabis brands have started to print the terpene content on the package. They usually include the top three terpenes present in the strain and their percentages. If you know your stuff, this info can give you an idea of how the weed's going to taste and how it might make you feel.
Incidentally, Ross's Gold happens to be one of those brands.
Our last round of organic mango gold tested with a total turp count of over 6%. And the most amazing part of it is that the most rare terpene in the realm of terpenes is terpenilene. And to get over 2 % terpenilene in our organic mango gold is unheard of. The euphoric effect of the terpenilene after you finish smoking it, you just feel great. I can say for myself personally, it's like an antidepressant.
in a major way. Like I just feel great after it. I want to hang out with the kids. I want to go for a bike ride. I want to go to the gym. want to do it. It's a very big motivator.
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Of course, we have to add the disclaimer that cannabis affects everyone differently. And this is Ross's personal experience with turpinoline. But as you become more experienced, you may realize that certain terpenes have a certain effect on you. And then you can go to a store with that information, chat with a knowledgeable budtender and have a better chance of finding a cannabis product with the terpene content you're going to enjoy.
Personal favorites for me, awesomene, granule, neroladol, granule, and farnezine. Farnezine for me especially has been one that I facilitate as much as I can. If I see something with farnezine, I'm a shark. I'm gonna go and I'm gonna eat it. I love it. One of my favorite reasons why is because it's actually, it can kind of combat your munchie effect from cannabis. You can smoke it and not munch out too much. And as people who smoke a lot of weed,
That's kind of important.
Before you munchy surfers run out to find that one, we've got another fascinating terpene fact for you. Terpenes are found in many other plants and products that touch our lives on a daily basis. Limonene, for example, is found in citrus fruits. When it appears in cannabis, you may notice a citrusy aroma or flavor. Have you ever perked up after smelling something citrusy? Maybe you opened your eyes a little more after lathering up with your orange scented body wash in your morning shower.
You have terpenes to thank for that, and the terpenes in cannabis plants are no different. The main difference is that terpenes derived from botanical sources other than cannabis are referred to as botanical terpenes. Botanical terpenes are often added to cannabis products like vapes to enhance their flavor, a practice that not every purist agrees with.
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You know, I've gotten a lot of challenges myself as a rep. We label botanical terpene infused distillate as sativa and indica all over this industry. And a lot of people will push back, especially on Vancouver Island. It's such a knowledgeable place. And my challenge back to them is always, well, you understand aromatherapy, right? Like citronella will make you brighter and happier. And there's psychology effects too. I remember in
I believe it's Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell. talks about how introducing citrus aromas before deals are made makes people more fair and more willing to kind of acquiesce and compromise. And so we know that these things affect our entire bodies. Turpenes are building blocks of not just plants. Turpenes can be found in the mucous membranes of snails.
They can be found in the secretions of beetles when they're having sex. It's a fascinating world, right?
As consumers learn more about this fascinating world thanks to passionate folks like Cora, perhaps we'll see them making more informed buying decisions, like what budtender Matt Webb is at Mood Cannabis Company in Nanaimo.
I had a conversation with one of my coworkers at the store the other day about Trypinoleum and just like how much he loves
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it. I wonder if they've heard of my organic mango gold.
Ironically, the guy I'm talking about, that's literally his favorite product in the store. We push that stuff so hard because it's so good. The newest one was somewhere between five point something and six point something.
I didn't pay him to say that, I swear.
We often have conversations with customers about terpenes and I don't really hear many asks. Well, I do hear people asking for maximum THC, but when people are talking about quality now, they're not talking about that. They're talking about lineage and terpenes. I had one person come in and ask specifically for pining. I've had someone come in and ask specifically for limining. I can think of a number of times where people have come in and shopped by terpene and they don't care about anything else.
which I had never encountered previously. There haven't been that many cases where people are coming in and asking for turps by name. There is much more of a thing where they'll come in and ask for like the highest turps or like what's the best. Like I want something that's top shelf, high turps, high THC. But before you weren't hearing the high turps, it was just the high THC. I'm really lucky as a budtender, I work somewhere where the people who walk in to the store on a daily basis are almost as interested and nerdy as we are.
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Exactly how nerdy is Matt about terpenes. Something tells me I'm gonna regret asking.
I am here today to talk about a terpene I can't pronounce because it has three different numbers in it. But it's selena-4,7 in brackets 11-D. We're just going to call it selena because I'm not going to continue saying that. The thing that I found interesting about this terpene is I think the first time I encountered it was back when a bazam strain dropped and it was noted because
I'm sorry, what was that? So-
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Thank goodness.
Speaker 4 (15:26.36)
They had never seen it and it was really, really rare. And it was to the point where it was like a selling feature of this strain. They were like, check it out. It's got this turp. Nothing has this turp. And I just remember that sticky in my head. And also cause the numbers, was like, what? A few years later though, I started noticing it come up in turp totals and I started coming up in higher and higher and higher percentages. And I was really confused cause
To the best of my knowledge, it was supposed to be super rare. And so I actually started researching it and fell down a bit of a rabbit hole on, I believe it's Phytochemia or one of the, it's a testing laboratory's website. They have a whole article about how when they began testing cannabis, they would have terpenes that would show up that they didn't know how to identify because they just didn't correlate with any of the known terpenes. Over time, with more and more cannabis results coming in,
They then realized that cannabis was one of the only plants, if not the only plant, that actually produces this terpene in relatively large amount. So that's why it had never been identified before, because unless they were using cannabis as the biomass to extract these terpenes from, it just wouldn't exist in any sort of recognizable concentration. You know, as time goes on, and we learn more and more about terpenes, and especially about cannabis-derived terpenes.
We're starting to learn a bit more about what those dark terrapins might be because they're cannabis specific. And I just think that's super, super interesting. And it's one of those things that isn't something we expected to learn about after legalization. Like, I don't think people were like, and we will also learn more about, you know, flavoring compounds because we'll have access to new ones. So I think that's just kind of a cool side effect of increased
research and increased access to cannabis for research.
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It sounds like there's still much we don't know about the vast universe of cannabis terpenes, which is why the work our next guest is doing is so critical to our overall understanding of this still somewhat mysterious plant.
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Earlier in this episode, we touched on something called the Entourage Effect, or the theory that the combined effects of cannabis compounds are greater than the effects of the compounds on their own. You may have heard this theory, or even experienced it for yourself, but until now, there hasn't been a lot of research to back it up.
I had a really fascinating chat with one researcher whose work is demonstrating that the entourage effect might be even more powerful than we thought. It might even change people's lives.
My name is John Strecker. I'm a professor at the University of Arizona. And what I really am interested in is pain, especially chronic pain and different ways to treat it more effectively than a lot of the limited options that we have available now. And that is what drew me to terpenes and cannabinoids. So when I started my independent research career, I was mostly focused on opioids. So these are very effective at relieving pain, but also have a lot of really negative side effects, especially the addiction, driving the overdose crisis, very dangerous.
So at the time, my then graduate student, Justin Levine, who has a PhD in his own right, is doing his own research career, had come across this idea of terpenes and the entourage effect in cannabis and had kind of done some of his own independent reading and came to me and said, hey, John, I think this is really interesting. I think we ought to take a look at this. And so we took it into the lab, ran some experiments, and it actually had a marvelous effect. It had a big impact on the behavior of the animals that we were using.
And so that immediately said that we probably have something interesting here. And that first paper was published in 2021. We had kind of started in 2019, 2020. And since then, we've put a lot more effort into figuring out what are these terpenes? What are they doing? What are their mechanisms? Are they effective for chronic pain? And the answer is yes. So they're pretty great drug. And unlike opioids, not habit-forming, not lethal, that's true of cannabis and cannabinoids too. It's not really a dangerous drug in the same way that OxyContin is.
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And so I think there's a lot of promise here for the future. We're really excited about it.
So just a question on that part of it, as far as non-lethal, know, cannabis and terpenes are a natural substance as opposed to a manufactured substance, a lot of opioids are. Are you looking into the potential of creating terpenes in a lab or just deriving them from the cannabis plant itself?
Like once you have the chemical structure at the end, the actual terping chemical structure, doesn't really matter where it came from. That's the same chemical structure that the plant makes, right? So in that sense, even if I make it in my lab, it's still a natural product because it's the exact same chemical that the plants have. But I do want to caution you just a little bit. There are a lot of great natural products and I'm studying them.
I think they're great, so there's no argument there. But it's not quite so simple as to say something that's synthetic is bad and that something as natural as good. So if you were to make foxglove tea and take a big swig of it, we would not be having this conversation in an hour. You would be dead. And for that matter, morphine is completely natural. So that came from the poppy plant. Now we've made derivatives like fentanyl, which are synthetic, but many of them are completely natural. And so there are natural substances that are good, natural substances that are bad.
but we definitely like exploring them because one of the advantages of a natural substance, unlike something that I have to go and invent in the lab, the natural substance is the product of usually millions or even billions of years of evolution to interact with these particular protein systems in our body. And so that gives them an advantage so that we know when we go looking, we're more likely to find something versus having to like build it and test it from scratch if we're going to make a completely synthetic drug.
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So use what's there to get the research started. Take the natural compounds that you find in cannabis and isolate them, see which ones are working, and then you can go from there into the lab and recreate them at scale.
Exactly. And I don't want to pretend like I discovered terpenes or cannabis, right? So people have been using this stuff for thousands of years. A lot of great people on their own as well as scientists have studied this, but we're, I hope, making a small contribution to their mechanisms and how they might be used.
I know you're using mice in some of these experiments and there is a reference to a tail flick. Can you tell me what that is? Yeah.
Yeah, so the whole idea behind all of this in general, just taking a little small step back, is pain. So how do know that someone or something is in pain? So if it's a person, most people, you ask them. you would rate your scale on one to ten. You probably all had this experience going into the emergency room or seeing a doctor. Not so easy to ask young children, infants, people with certain cognitive difficulties, or animals. We can't ask them. And so we have all these experimental methods to try to get at what they're experiencing.
And so the tail flick is a simple method of measuring a pain response. And it's very similar to a hand on a hot stove. like you accidentally turn the hot water handle on on your sink and you shove your hand in the water. you jerk it right back out again. That's exactly what a tail flick is. We use hot water, not like boiling water, just like 52 degrees Celsius water. We have it in this little tank. You dip the masses tail in. Usually they'll flick it out in two or three seconds. Like, that's hot. I don't like that. They're going to flick it out.
Speaker 3 (22:41.644)
You give an opioid or cannabinoid or another pain relieving drug, they'll leave it in longer. And so it's a very simple assay just with a stopwatch and some warm water to figure out what the mouse is experiencing in terms of pain. And the interesting thing about the terpenes is that when we give them in this tail flick model, they're not that effective. They're okay, but they become really effective when we do chronic pain models. And this is the pain people care about, right? Like no one's taking cannabis because they want to be able to play with a hot stove all day long.
they're taking cannabis because they've got fibromyalgia or they've got post-surgical pain or they've got migraines, whatever you got, right? And so that's the pain that we really want to treat. And the great news is that terpenes, the ones that we've tested anyway, are way more effective in that kind of pain than they are in sort of the simple acute pain, tail flick kind of pain.
So the more the pain lasts, the more effective the terpenes are.
Perhaps to say that the more the pain is pathological. Gotcha. Like the more that there's something wrong with your body like inflammation or nerve damage.
more chronic it is. I was checking it out and you did focus on a particular grouping of terpenes. Maybe you can elaborate on that.
Speaker 3 (23:51.054)
So we got geraniol, beta-caroalfalene, alkyl, alpha-humalene, beta-pinene. So those are the ones that we analyze. And so when Justin first came to me with this idea, I want to study terpenes, I want to look at this, we had to sort of figure out the right approach, right? Because there's a lot of ways that you can study terpenes. One would be to say use a cannabis extract that's got THC, that's got CBD, that's got other minor cannabinoids that has some amount of a mixture of different terpenes in them. Because cannabis is particularly rich in terpenes compared to most plants, like different kinds.
Or you could do a terpene heavy extract where people will do these extracts. We've worked with these before from the plant, but it's mostly terpene, not any THC, not any CBD, but it's got like a mix of terpenes. Or you can do what we did and use one single isolated purified terpene. And the reason that we chose to do that was so that we could say with the greatest confidence that this is what this drug is doing. Like we inject it, we figure out how it's working, it relieves pain. It's because of that particular terpene. Whereas if you inject a mixture,
Okay, maybe you see this great effect, but then you're like, okay, where did that come from? Then you got to like delve in, it becomes complicated. So we wanted to start at the simplest level possible and then build to that complexity. And then why those particular five? So again, Justin was hitting up the literature, was studying this, was interested in it. And he picked five that had at least moderate to high levels in most cannabis strains. That's another crazy thing about cannabis, by the way, you analyze different cultivars for their levels of terpenes, can vary wildly.
And a lot of ones I've seen they're nursing heavy than others I've seen the nursing is really low and like, you know, alignment will be high. So it varies a lot. And so he found some that were at least in most of the reports were at medium to high levels in cannabis and had some indication from the scientific literature that these could be effective in relieving pain, even if they didn't know a lot, that there was some reason to think that these might be useful. And then from that beginning, we ran those five and then we got this effects. We're like, okay, now we've got something. And then we've sort of been focusing on those five ever since.
Interesting. Yeah, because there are so many different terpenes that are present in cannabis and different cultivars. That's super interesting. I was wondering like why you chose those few, but that makes sense. They're the most commonly found terpenes.
Speaker 3 (25:57.826)
And some of what we're finding, by the way, is that these are not all the same. so chemically, if you look at them, their chemical structure is fairly similar to each other, not identical, but fairly similar. And they're simple. They're small, simple molecules. And so that has led some to think, well, these are all basically just doing the same thing. But that's really not true. At least what we're finding. We're finding that, at least among the five we've studied, they have unique effects from each other. So they're not all the same, which we wouldn't have found out if we just kind of studied them all in some big mix.
And so as an example, can talk more about this later, beta-karyophylline, we found, has this unique benefit in potentially blocking opioid reward, like opioid addiction potential. Whereas limonene, in our hands at least, really didn't relieve pain. But, mersene and geraniol and beta-karyophylline and linalool and so on did, really effectively. And then linalool seems to be more sedative in our hands. So there are these differences between them.
Right. So you can custom craft an entourage of turpins depending on what the patient's needs are.
Yeah, exactly. And then we're working with different companies to figure out the best way to do that, right? So I'm working with a company on like a vape approach where they make like a 10 % terpene vape. And of course you can mix and match. You can make that whatever you want. As a vape style, I'm working with a different company on a oral formulation of terpenes. You can use much more terpene that's more orally tolerable than if you inhale it. So a lot of different ways to explore this too, ways of getting it to people in a way that's gonna help them the most.
That's pretty incredible stuff. know, terpenes have been kind of in the background until very recently in, you know, it's all about the THC content and how high you're going to get. But in the last couple of years, terpenes have been the focus of the industry and of the users of cannabis, whether it's recreational or for a multitude of medical conditions.
Speaker 3 (27:46.414)
Yeah, absolutely. Well, the medical is the clearest, right? So that's where I can give you the clearest answer. So we're looking at chronic pain. As I mentioned, that's not all. So there's other potential for, you know, anxiety, inflammation, maybe depre... I don't want to go too far over my skis, but maybe even sort of the antidepressive effect, depending on what you read. And again, if this is an effective pain medication or effective whatever medication that is not addictive and is not really something you can overdose on, that's great. So I guess if we can establish that
Different terpenes have a different effect as you were just saying, Ross, for terpenelene. That kind of gives you what you want. You can dial in. There are sort of cannabis sommeliers, I understand already, who will sort of like help you pick out the one that works best for you. It's still not clear to me at least that those effects are from the terpenes, but you know, once we can figure that out and get the real knowledge in there to add to the knowledge that you already have, that would sort of help someone get the experience that they want.
The common belief in general is the entourage effect and how all of these things work together. Rather than isolating one in particular, do the terps that you use, that you've looked into, are they being used just isolated on their own or are you creating an entourage or a full spectrum application?
Yeah, so we're building up to that. So as I mentioned, we start with the isolates and then we move up. So we've done a lot of isolate work now showing that they're beneficial, which is great. And then now we're starting to do some combinations. So in our 2021 paper, we combined the terpene with the cannabinoid, synthetic cannabinoid, I should mention, not THC, and found that it enhanced the pain relief in this particular pain model, this tail flick model that you mentioned, Ross. And so that's good, but we're not even limiting it to cannabinoids. So in our...
more recent 2024 paper on chronic pain, we combine the terpene with the opioid. And we found that when you did a low dose of both, right, so a low dose of terpene, low dose of opioid on their own produce a low amount of pain relief, put those together, now your pain relief is higher without increasing the negative side effects that you don't want, And specifically beta-cariofalene, as I mentioned before, we've found that it blocks opioid reward. So that could...
Speaker 3 (29:50.604)
leave you with sort of this perfect combination therapy where you could take beta-cariophylline specifically with an opioid and make the pain relief better but blunt or block potentially the addictive potential. So that would be one great approach. And then we've also done some blend work. So looking at these different extracts and blends and trying to say what are the differences between ones that are say heavy on mercine versus heavy on limonene. The answer that we're still trying to get that paper published but the answer is mercine is better at least for pain relief and then build up from there and not just cannabinoids and cannabis.
to get that addictive nature of the opioids more controllable, I think, then we have something very interesting there. Because as we all know, the crisis in North America and around the world of opioid addiction is really taking its toll. Absolutely. This is pretty amazing stuff.
And that's not necessarily something that you would take if you're already addicted and you need treatment. That would be something you would take with an opioid at the beginning to prevent you from getting addicted in the first place. Like that would be the general idea. And so we've done some limited experiments with blends because that's how most people are being exposed to terpenes, right? They're not taking an isolate usually, although those are now are available from companies like LabFX. And so most people are taking them as blends. So I want to understand how they interact with each other and how these blends are acting.
As I mentioned, we did do like a two-mercine heavy versus a limonene heavy blend and the mercine was more effective in the pain relief. And so that kind of knowledge will help us figure out, build towards the entourage really, right? Figuring out how these are interacting with each other and interacting with THC and CBD. So people say entourage, you immediately think of cannabis, but technically it can be anything, right? Especially any natural product things. you could, I mean, there's terpenes in all kinds of plants. You could have entourage effects in all kinds of plants that we haven't even known about or studied.
And then not even just THC and CBD, right? So there's other stuff in cannabis. And so we can be looking at the minor cannabinoids. So we had a paper on like THCV and CBDA and Delta 8, THC, CBN, CBG. Like, so some of these ones are definitely different. They're not all like THC. A lot of them are very different and understanding how they interact with each other and so on. So there's a lot of work to be done out there.
Speaker 1 (31:58.072)
There is so much research to do. There has been so many years where we weren't able to do that research. And now we're finally getting to the point where we can effectively study the nature of these compounds and find out where we're going. You're one of the few scientists in the world. I know there's been some leading papers out of countries like Israel and so forth. Yeah. We need to know more about how these cannabinoids and how these terpenes work and how they work together and how we can create a safer world.
Absolutely.
Speaker 1 (32:28.212)
and a more effective product.
Absolutely. So do you mind if I give a little soapbox talk on that for a quick? Jesus said Ross is absolutely true and completely fits with my view on things the importance of research and I think honestly most people probably feel the same right medical research is important helps us figure out a better way for You know helps people live better lives helps them treat their children all the rest of that But I know you guys are in Canada, but at least in the United States We're under a sustained attack right now for the ability to do science at all
Second please what?
Speaker 3 (32:58.642)
And so, you know, the new presidential administration has made attacking science one of their priorities, trying ways to block our funding. I was supposed to be on a review panel to decide which grants were going to be the future in pain research and which one should get funded, the research that go forward. That was canceled less than 24 hours along with dozens of other study sections. are what these are called study sections were canceled before that was able to happen. If this continues, we won't have it. It will end.
And so I just encourage all of your listeners, even the ones that maybe live in Canada, you don't think it can make a difference, make your voice heard, stand up for it because what happens in the United States is going to have impacts everywhere in terms of our scientific enterprise. We're all colleagues. I work with colleagues from Canada. I have a great colleague, Dr. LaPrairie from the University of Saskatchewan that we're working on this project with terpenes, right? So it's important we all work together, make your voices heard, help us push back.
and defend our ability to do exactly the kind of research Ross that you just said that we need, which I fully agree with.
100%. And if that ever comes down to it, you got a place here in British Columbia, you could bring your research and continue if need be.
I have to take you up on that. We'll see.
Speaker 1 (34:07.63)
Yeah, 100%. Well, I'm not joking.
Thank you, Dr. John Stryker, for the work you do and for enlightening us on the fascinating and potentially life-changing qualities of cannabis terpenes and the entourage effect. And thanks to our other guests, Cora Barber and Matt Webb, for bravely confessing their terpene obsessions and sharing some fun facts with us.
Speaker 2 (34:33.538)
This episode was inspired by the Black Diamond Stick by Ross's Gold. The easy way to infuse your joint or pre-roll with extra THC. Ask your favorite bud tender for it or visit HerbalDispatch.com. Must be 19 plus.
Join us for our next episode of the podcast, where we'll be focusing on the expansive world of cannabis concentrates. From the ancient art of hash to the buzzy liquid diamonds trend, we'll be dabbling in it all. Subscribe to the podcast so you don't miss out. The Podcast with Ross Rebliotti is an Everything Podcasts production. The opinions expressed in this podcast are not necessarily the views of the podcast team or our partners. This show is intended for a 19 plus audience.
Thanks to our host Ross Rebliotti, our showrunner and writer Jessica Grechik, and our sound engineer is John Massacar. I'm Don Schafer, thanks for listening to the podcast. Another Everything Podcasts production. Visit everythingpodcasts.com, a division of Patterson Media. Subscribe wherever you get your podcast.
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