In our continuing educational series on modern cannabis and its many benefits, Wendy Bronfein of Curio Wellness updates Nestor on how the science continues to move forward for gastrointestinal issues, sleep aids, pain management and overall mental and physical health all derived from the plant.
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
Duran Duran, Chief Brand Officer, medical cannabis, adult use, sleep aids, mental health, pre rolls, cannabis science, Crohn’s trial, GI product, holiday stress, mental health, cannabis research, Maryland crab cake tour, Baltimore positive
SPEAKERS
Wendy Bronfein, Nestor Aparicio
Nestor Aparicio 00:01
Foreign. Welcome home. We are W, N, S, T, am 1570 Towson, Baltimore and Baltimore. Positive. No World Series here, but we got football games coming up this week. We also have football tickets. Marilyn lottery gives me the Raven scratch offs giveaway the Maryland crab cake tours back out on the road. We were at mamas on the half shell last week at Owings Mills. We’re going to all of the usual suspects, all of our sponsors, all of our friends through the holidays. I set all these up. Cocos on the fourth of December. We’re going to be Gertrude on the fifth, with Dan rodrickson at the PMA, also with fates on the 12th and Costas on the 19th. And I have a whole litany of November dates in new places. All of it brought to you by our friends at Jiffy Lube, multi care as well. Our oyster tour is out on the road. Our 26th anniversary is underway. Our friends a curio wellness, and far and daughter have been a part of that, and as part of our 25th anniversary, and are usually a part of good times and fun things like maritime magic last month, and sometimes I see him down at CFG back arena. Wendy brown fine joins us now. She is our chief cannabis officer. She’s the Chief Brand Officer, curio wellness, and he hadn’t heard us before. We’re gonna have some fun in this one, because I’m gonna sort of like, go sort of top to bottom on this because we haven’t been together for a little while. First things first. How was Duran? Duran, I was too old. It was too cold. And there was a baseball and a football game that I was very involved in falling asleep on Monday night.
Wendy Bronfein 01:20
It was great. It was really good. I well, I didn’t go until, probably, to the to the two old part. I went at like, 830 ish. I got there like, just after they started, because I knew that there was, like a DJ before. And I was like, I don’t need to hang out. So got there for the good stuff. No, it was really he. So it’s like, one of those weird moments that I kind of am faced with age, because he shared, Simon shared that His birthday was the day before, and he turned 66 and, like, I never really thought about how old he was, it would make sense. But I’m like, oh my god, 66 and then, you know, there were so all you could just tell from the fans, particularly the women, you know, they’re an all male band, and they’re like, you know, just like, I
Nestor Aparicio 02:07
was gonna go down there to be a part of all of that, and every friend I know was there. So like, I woke up at six in the morning, and everybody had video stuff. And I’m like, they were really good. I saw the merry weather a couple years ago, and I was, I’m not anti Simon Labonte. I mean, I like, I’ve seen Duran. Duran every decade since the 80s. I’ve seen them. I’ve seen them at Pier six. I love the band, and tickets were inexpensive at the the moment where you’d want to buy and say, Do I want to go or not? My wife is out of town, and I’m like, you know, the Steelers are on. The World Series is on. I’m just gonna, like, I mean, I’m talking seven o’clock, I was shaved up and, like, thinking about going, and I just, I got old. I just got old, and ain’t no more pep in my step. And I guess this is where, maybe where you come in, Chief Brand Officer of of curio wellness, I have a whole list of questions you and I get together all the time, and I haven’t asked you any of this sort of top to bottom stuff about your business and how things have changed with don’t use and how, you know, I’m in your store every couple of weeks buying something or another, and I just see this wide multitude of people and wide multitude of products. And I don’t know that people, in general, if they see the logo or see you out. Think flower, or are they more thinking true medicinal qualities, and more than that, things like the bombs and the sleep aids and the things that I talk about, what’s popular at curio these days? Wendy,
Wendy Bronfein 03:36
well, I would say, and so well, we were medical, right? We had, like 100 at its height, we had about 160 some 1000 people who were patients. Then we became a medical and adult use program last July. We I think that the whether the people are medical or adult use, the core reasons for use have remained the same. So it’s sleep, pain and something in the mental health space, whether it’s like social anxieties, general anxieties, depression, mood issues. So like the reasons when people come to us and ask for a solution of sorts, it really is the a lot of the same. You know, where the medicinal can differ is there can be extremes of any of those versions, or in the worst case, like, you know, a life threatening or debilitating disease that they’ve been diagnosed with. But on the adult use front, I think you see a lot of the same, like life improving reasons that people come flower is always the most known category, because it’s people. How people know cannabis. So I think even now, a year plus into it, you still see people who are surprised to learn, oh, like, I don’t have to smoke this flower because something hurts. I could rub this cream on my body, or I could do it in a chew, or. Gummy form I could swallow a tablet. All of those things, I think, remain a little bit unexpected for people, but that’s an exciting moment for us, because there are so many other forms and discrete forms that you can use it and we and we really see probably most people still continue to live in the space of a flower and choose an adult use 10 milligrams at the top potency that that product can be. So that’s a very prolific area, and we see a lot of movement of pre rolls, because they’re just so convenient, right? So you could buy flour as an eighth or a larger package, but you would need to decide how you want to smoke it, in a bowl, in a bong. You want to roll your own joints, whatever it is, or you can just buy that joint already made, which is called a pre roll. And because they come in multi packages, like you can get up to, you know, seven or so in a pack, people tend to gravitate towards the pre roll a lot in the adult use. I
Nestor Aparicio 05:57
find the stigma part, you know, years into this and discussing it. No one had any problem with an Advil or a pill form, not even knowing what the hell’s in a buffering like literally or or any of that, or rubbing my dad would rub, I always say absorption junior or Ben gay, not really knowing that they feel the tingle, or you feel that thing about it, talking about topicals and different things like that. And smells, you know, it smells medicinal. Cough syrup tasted. Turned out it was a raspberry thing. I never really understood what they were trying to do. It was awful. Maalox. You know, we think that chalky, all of these awful ways to take these things, and I think there’s a stigma on flour and would you would say pre roll, smoking ball, all of these words that would be associated with the chi, chi Chung movie back in the day. But the the part where you’ve taken this plant and the science and brought it back down to something like that, I think everybody could understand in any drugstore, going back to reeds, when the dime stores in Woolworth we were kids, is a pill form that that synapse of legality and illegality for years and the tittering about maybe a gummy being something that would be not medicinal, but something fun. I remember flinch notes, chewables as a kid, we’re always trying to make medicine or vitamins or anything if you’re going to ingest it, at least not be that awful experience that I talk about. But I think people didn’t realize when medical was a tittering thing to say, all right, mental health, I think 10 years ago, we didn’t talk about mental health comfortably in this country much at all, and you just used it as a tool for what you would do in a way that I don’t know people would have thought of flour that way in the 1970s right? But I think that it’s come a long way with not just adult usually, but but these kinds of conversations to say, no, no, no, you don’t have to smoke it. And it’s it’s better than some of the over the counter things, or certainly prescription opioids and different things, things that that are really not great for you. And I think you’re always trying to say, this can be a tool for you to not only get you where you are, but but also to keep you alive.
Wendy Bronfein 08:20
Yeah? Well, I think that you see it, you see it kind of on both sides, like in the most truest of a recreational sense, like there’s nothing you’re trying to quote, solve for. You’re just using it for your own enjoyment. That you know, there’s a lot of people who start migrating to it a little bit more than and weaning off how much alcohol they have, right? Because you don’t have a lot of the same. You’re not going to be hungover. It’s kind of, in some ways, a healthier way to to get to that effect, if you will, in terms would be my
Nestor Aparicio 08:55
if I were to stand and really pimp for you and for what you do, I’ve passed liquor stores forever. I’ve sold beer here sponsorships. There was never any purpose there. It wasn’t and for most people, didn’t help their mental health certainly didn’t for my parents, who were both alcoholics, right? So you know, when I think about it in that term, as far as 35 years of being on the radio and talking about it, that’s what I do love about this, because the mental health part, and my family member, mine has Parkinson’s right now and is using your plan in a way to not have to use a cane for balance. Now I don’t there were, there were no science. There was no science about this in the 70s or 80s or last century to support any of this, but this is where what you’re doing and what’s being done across the country, in the science part of it that it’s helping patients in ways. I always come back to Sanjay Gupta on CNN 15 years ago and talking about children and epilepsy and different things that the plant could do. Two that if you just explored it from a scientific standpoint, you could really help people like my mother in law’s husband with his Parkinson’s. Yeah,
Wendy Bronfein 10:08
we have so we are actually just starting our first IRB approved blind PLACEBO trial of a GI product, so specifically for Crohn’s patients, and we’ve partnered with a local gastroenter gastroenterology practice that has offices around the region, and though the patients who come into it will be able to you to be part of this trial of this product where we’re using cannabinoids to deal with the Crohn’s issue, the inflammation in the bowel, and mitigate those symptoms, and ideally, kind of put your your situation into a remission for yourself. We have someone with Crohn’s who has been using this for years now, since we had began working on it and found relief. But it’s important to us to sort of validate it, because your point when you made the comment about the aspirin before, right? The reason that is is because there’s an ability to traditionally research it. It’s presented to the medical professionals. They validate it and accept it and thus promote it to patients. That’s where we lack because we’re hindered on our ability to do research in a traditional way because of schedule one in Maryland’s law for moving into adult use, there were elements put into place that now allow us not only to expand what we can do in research, but we can partner with larger institutions, and we can move into a placebo based study, which really gives a lot more credibility to the data, because some people have the medicine, some people don’t. We are separated from it in terms of, it’s all randomized and blind, and so we sort of start the process, and when it all finishes, we get the data and we see how it is, and then we can publish our findings, but you can’t. This is all very, very controlled and very hard to pull off in some ways, because we are schedule one, and it really relies on the state space program to be open and willing to support this kind of research.
Nestor Aparicio 12:18
You operate here. You also operate in in Missouri, correct, Mississippi or Missouri?
Wendy Bronfein 12:26
Missouri, we have grow and process in Mississippi. We have a dispensary franchisee.
Nestor Aparicio 12:32
So a lot of folks don’t know that, and you know, they’ve seen names that may have come from the west coast to our state and branding and different things celebrity branding that we’ve talked about that goes beyond happy Eddie, who’s local versus, you know, Snoop or a whisk, anybody that would be doing things on a national basis, a Belushi, different people like that. The science part of this for and you’re in the GI space, and I’ve talked to your father about this. We did a show with Gina shock last year just talking about and look, I to say miracle drug. It’s election week. We don’t need any rhetoric this week, right, like but there are parts of it that are unexplored. Have always been unexplored, and I think just the surface of this over the last decade of where it’s gone to say, from sativa to hybrid to indica, for what people would understand about it, cannabinoids and terpene profiles, and the science part of it, the GI thing is your lane. What else is going on in the science? And is there? Is it collaborative? Is it or is it proprietary? That’s competitive, that somebody else says, no, no, no, cannabis isn’t an idea. Isn’t an idea, it’s a the next thing, mental health, or the places that I hear mushrooms, and I don’t know a whole lot about that area, but just what the plant could do above and beyond just gi
Wendy Bronfein 13:58
Well, I think to the greater extent there’s, it’s sort of unknown how far I can go, because of the restrictions on your ability to research it in a traditional way. But I think anecdotally, from years of having medical programs across the country, we do know conditions and disease states that seem to respond. Well, you mentioned Parkinson’s. We see Ms, obviously things that relate to people who are dealing with cancer treatment, whether it’s managing nausea or pain or loss of appetite. And I think that the you know, and then a lot of people generally speak to their own mental health experience. I mean, I can tell you, talk
Nestor Aparicio 14:41
uplifted last week, right? I said uplifted, happy, energetic. These are, you know, quieting the mind. Yeah, these are focus. These are easy to find things in your chest that we used to go 30 years ago. And. To look to much more damaging sort of drugs and and I’m guilty, I’ve taken those things that aren’t good for my kidneys, for my pain, including alcohol, which, you know, certainly isn’t good for anyone’s liver. So I think about all of those kinds of drugs or heightened experiences that I wanted, at a ball game, at a concert. We’ve all had beer. We’ve all had a drink. We all know that taking the edge off, or whatever that would be, that’s a recreational it was thought to be recreational. I think maybe it’s beyond that when once we start talking mental health and making people happier, if, I guess, for lack of a better expression, but it does change your your mind in some way. It does. It can. It can alter your day in a really positive way, yeah,
Wendy Bronfein 15:52
well, I would tell you, for the last seven years, whether we were medical only or adult use was present, we’re approaching the time of year that becomes extremely busy. And it’s not necessarily because you’re thinking, Oh, I got holiday parties and New Year’s Eve and all this stuff. It’s actually all the mental stress. It’s families coming into town. I gotta go to my in laws, like doing this thing, like all of that social anxiety and stress that comes over people at the holidays. Like for seven years, we have heard people come in at this time of year, and like the shopping increases to manage all of that mental load.
Nestor Aparicio 16:28
Well, Wendy brown fine is here our friends at curio wellness. I love these chats far and daughter is our local dispensary. It’s a great, great place to stop by see things. They have all sorts of things in the wellness space. It’s, it’s right, just south of Timonium road on York Road. You can always visit foreign daughter, as well as curio wellness. Wendy’s always out on the front of Baltimore positive. We’re always here at W, N, S, T, trying to educate folks and not just go through Duran Duran concerts and usher concerts and have some fun then at the CFG Bank Arena, and also talk about living classrooms. And I, you know, I know we’ve had a lot of different conversations about different spaces, but, um, you know, I think the number one thing is just people changing how they may view it to see how it could be helpful. And I think at the end of the day, that’s what our chats have always been about here. Absolutely. Thank
Wendy Bronfein 17:15
you. All right, I
Nestor Aparicio 17:17
know your time is short. Today. She’s busy on the go. She’s Chief Brand Officer for all things curio wellness and foreign daughter. You can find her out at the front of Baltimore positive and all of our chats as we get the Maryland crab cake tour back out, and we’re on day nine of our oyster tour. We had a lot of fun with our oysters. Our friends at Liberty, pure solutions, one 800 clean water came together with our friends at Curia wellness to partner on our 26th anniversary and our oyster tour, keeping the bay clean and keeping education alive. We had some great oysters at it, at mama’s on the half shell out knowing smells last week. Finn McCusker was here. Howard chair was here. We’ve had some great political conversations this week as well. In regard to the election, we’re please vote. Please get out and vote. I had Pam wood on. I had Josh Kurtz off from Maryland. Matters this week talking some some politics. I haven’t had as many politicians on in this cycle, but I’ve had a lot of conversation about it. And obviously it’s a big week here in America. Make sure you’re doing your part and getting out and vote. I’m Nestor. We are wnst. Am 1570 Towson, Baltimore, back to crab cakes and football and the Ravens woes and trading deadlines. Right after this. We’re Baltimore positive. You.
