Podcast: Medical Marijuana at William Paterson

Pioneer Times reporter Anthony Cali examines William Paterson University’s newfound relationship with medicinal marijuana.

Anthony Cali: Today we’re going to talk a bit about the history of marijuana in the United States, why we’re so late to the party on its education as far as human evolution goes, and a bit of the legislature that brought it to New Jersey, and a bit about the programs that William Paterson and competing colleges have for the education on marijuana. Now, I’ll start with a walkthrough of Business Insider’s coverage of how we got to where we are with illegal marijuana and legal marijuana. You know a bit about that yourself?

Mitchell Lane: No, actually, can you talk about it?

Anthony Cali: Well, Business Insider says that in the early 1900s, an influx of Mexican immigrants came to the US fleeing political unrest in their home country. So, It’s still happening today. Right. And I feel like this story is going to sound a lot like what they’re doing with coke.

Mitchell Lane: Yeah. It’s not going to be so friendly, though.

Anthony Cali: With them, though,  they brought not just weed because of hemp. They always talk about how we used to have weed for growing hemp and making shirts and making pantyhose. Right. But when Mexican immigrants brought it with them, they were just like, no, they passed the joint.

Mitchell Lane: That was it. Was that really like they were already having fun with it. Wow.

Anthony Cali: They weren’t as business minded as the elite American, I guess. So with them, they brought it and it took off. It was wildly popular. I get it. The Spanish word used to be used more often, too, before all the dirty business. They would use the version with the h marijuana. And that’s not just a silly Spanish pronunciation of marijuana, that’s it h. And once it took off, a lot of crazy headlines about marijuana started to appear. And this is concurrent with how they treated black people with watermelon crop. It was very popular. It was booming business for black farmers. And then they started the propaganda in which they ruined it for them and made it an unpopular crop. Right. Because “how dare?”. Yeah, better than my business. Soon after all this, in 1936, a propaganda film called Reefer Madness was put out. I’ve heard of that. Yeah, it’s a crazy joint. Pun intended. Pun always intended it’s in black and white. But they’ve done some sort of weird early on color affectation to make the smoke of the marijuana, like orange, purple, blue, all these weird colors. And it’s obviously like that’s a great angle to go with because it’s funny to look at. In 1936, they’re running away from trains that were coming towards the screen back then.

Mitchell Lane: Oh, my God. It sounds ironic because that also sounds like something cool you would watch when you’re high. Like always.

Anthony Cali: It’s since become a traditional thing to put on while high. Most streaming services don’t carry it. It’s just like a stinky little film, right? Yeah. So according to the business in the movie, teenagers smoke weed for the first time. And this leads to a series of horrific events involving hallucination, attempted R word, and murder. Much of the media portrayed it as a gateway drug. Now, how do you feel-

Mitchell Lane: I have question, what’s attempted R word.
Anthony Cali: *Holds up the word typed out* For our nonvisual viewers, you didn’t need to see that, right? So we’ve got gateway drug as a topic. Got you. How do you feel about the idea of marijuana being an actual gateway drug? Because I have found it to always be socially happening rather than you smoking the marijuana and loving the high that much.

Mitchell Lane: Yeah, it’s definitely always been social. It’s like yeah, you just get curious about it.

Anthony Cali: I always pictured it as a disobedience gateway. Like you disobey your parents and the police by smoking weed and like then you can continue that disobedience by doing the other things they told you not to do. It’s not about, oh, I love the high, I’m just being a kid. Here’s what I think is also like another little irony about it. We hear about it through the D.A.R.E.  program and stuff like that. And I get like, don’t do drugs or whatever. But you definitely sometimes, in my opinion, in those kind of programs, they talk about these things and then all of a sudden you’re kind of planting the seed in these young kid’s minds that eventually, because their parents say it’s bad and whatnot, there’s going to be some rebellion going on. As far as I subconsciously remember, the Dare program has always been a little bit of a joke because do you remember at the earliest age you remember knowing that marijuana wasn’t actually bad for you? When did you first watch Harold and Kumar?

Mitchell Lane: Like high school. High school.

Anthony Cali: Really? I saw it when it came out when I was a little tiny toddler.

Mitchell Lane: Really?

Anthony Cali: Yeah. That’s why you’re set in my mind early on it’s like, oh, marijuana is not actually going to cause me to die, it causes me to eat cheetos.

Mitchell Lane: No, I’d say like the end of middle school, beginning of high school because I would like catch it on TV.

Anthony Cali: Yeah, I mean, it’s just that conflicting information you got growing up, or like you watch movies and these wholesome funny guys in movies, they’re smoking joints and having a good time. And then you go home and they’re telling you as a child to just avoid it at all costs. It’ll ruin your life. Right. And when you have conflicting information like that, it invalidates the warnings because the kids know. And any other warning you come out with after that, oh, coke’s bad, this bad, this bad. Well, you’ve lost some credibility.

Mitchell Lane: Right.

Anthony Cali: D.A.R.E. program lost a lot of credibility by being so anti-marijuana. So, in 1937, the year after they put out that movie, the Marijuana Tax Act was passed. Cannabis sales were now taxed. And part of the reason for this was passed because of all the fear mongering going on at the time. A huge, instigator, big bad man. He was a king of the Prohibition era, but it ended in 1933. This guy had nothing to do. His name was Harry Anslinger. He hated fun. He hated fun. He turned his focus to marijuana. And in this point in American history, according to Business Insider here, xenophobia and racism really kicked in. So he was able to just point marijuana at Mexican immigrants and compare them to violence inducing gangs and other things, black community as well.

Mitchell Lane: Right. It was a good package of terror to sell the American media in public. By emphasizing the Spanish word marijuana instead of cannabis, he created a strong association between the drug and the newly arrived Mexican immigrants. That association did not last, because never in my life have I thought “weed and Mexicans”, except for the name of it, marijuana. Actually, I only ever heard it used pejoratively. I’ve heard the term “mexiweed” to describe a poor quality bag of weed. That just sounds like racism.

Mitchell Lane: It sounds like racism, but I’ve never even heard that was a thing. Mexiweed. Yeah. Sounds like some weird superhero or some kind of, like, product for it.

Anthony Cali: Sounds like an invasive species of, like, garden herb. Yeah. So he created the narrative about black people on marijuana, hispanic people on marijuana. He pushed that jazz was evil. music created by white people into the influence of marijuana. Right. Mitchell, you are almost like a jazz musician yourself. How do you feel about that? That’s a very loose state that you can make there. But it’s about the notes you don’t play. Yeah, it’s about letting your mind free. I like to play around and improvise, which is fun. And that’s like jazzy. You don’t have to be on drugs. I’ll admit a lot of those guys were smoking weed and they were doing that stuff. But to be honest, all of jazz and everything just comes from the soul and where they’re coming from. Like, deep down, it’s like drugs are no jazz. There’s people out there playing jazz music. They’re not even, like, drinking or anything like that. They’re just kind of like they’re just playing out from what feels good. So that’s what I think. I mean, I’ll admit when I play, sometimes maybe a little bit of weed can  help, it definitely loosens you up. But just so does, like, a little drink. So I guess that’s a little comparative there.

Anthony Cali: Yeah, I feel you. So let’s get into how New Jersey finally decided to let us smoke marijuana. Let’s get into this. Come on. It’s exciting. It is cool. Now, in New Jersey, weed was legal in 2021, January 1. That’s when it started. A fresh new year. New year. High me., Governor Murphy signed the New Jersey Cannabis Regulatory Reinforcement Assistance and Marketplace Modernization Act. Now, I went through the regulatory. I saw the things. A lot of that is just defining terms so people can’t mess with each other in courts, you know what I mean? Like, what is a dispensary? A dispensary is specifically this and this. What is a license? It’s that type of thing. Do you remember the last time we failed to get it passed, it was because we had like, spelling errors and all types of misinfo inside the package.

Mitchell Lane: Are you serious? I never knew that,

Anthony Cali: You didn’t know about that?

Mitchell Lane: No, I didn’t.

Anthony Cali: It was kind of embarrassing, but we finally pushed it through for legalizing and regulating cannabis use and possession for adults 21 years and older and decriminalizing marijuana and hashish possession, now 21 years older. It’s like, oh, yeah, we matched the liquor age, but when is it really true? You know, because we used to be told all sorts of lies growing up. I was told cigarettes would keep me short and I was told marijuana would potentially stunt my growth. This is like a mental thing, neither of which are probably true at all.

Mitchell Lane: I think it’s like any kind of substances. If you start drinking or smoking at an early age, I think there could be some kind of stunting. But then again, I mean, I don’t know. I’m no doctor. I’m a loosely termed jazz musician, but I don’t know. I think if it’s way too young, it makes sense to make sure kids under the age don’t do it because that’s like a huge developmental age. Maybe like-

Anthony Cali: What was the youngest age you smoked?

Mitchell Lane: Me? Yeah. I think I was like a freshman in high school. I was 14. So yeah, around there for me too. Right? I don’t know. I could say I have my own personal habit problems, so I think it probably didn’t help that I started that early. It’s different for everyone.

Anthony Cali: Yeah, I guess it’s like food’s going to have obese people, weeds going to have people who can’t leave the house because they’re playing a game.

Mitchell Lane: I don’t know. I think it’s any kind of substances. We knew kids who were drinking in high school and stuff like that stuff will definitely- like it’ll affect your brain development because what, now we’re going to be 26. You’re 25. Our brains are fully developed at this point.

Anthony Cali: I feel like anything that alters your sense of perception mentally is just going to like if you use like, if you use it nonstop yeah. How you perceive the world is going to change. It’s going to change you. Yeah. You know what I mean?

Mitchell Lane: Yeah, that makes sense.

Anthony Cali: But it just goes as far as history.man, that guy Harry Anslinger, he really burned the weed Library of Alexandria on this one.

Mitchell Lane: Did he?

Anthony Cali: We could have known so much more at this point. And now we’re just starting to pop up these special programs. Let’s get into the programs because this is pretty cool stuff that we have going and it’s only getting better. They find out who and what, who wants to get into it, who wants to learn. At William Paterson, we have a Medical Cannabis certificate and an advanced certificate. Now, according to their website, this self paced program provides core information on cannabis and patient care and pharmacy. It is comprised of six evidence based modules that provide the necessary knowledge and skills required to respond to inquiries by clients, patients, and other health care providers on cannabis legal status usage, proper assessment, monitoring, and care plan development. A lot of big words to just throw around what is an ambiguous education system going on here? I think what is really in it, the evidence based modules. You can tell it’s not person to person, so there’s no professor you’re teaching yourself with the modules. In the advanced certificate is a self paced program on cannabis and patient care and pharmacy. You’re expected to know everything from the lower certificate. According to this, you got to know all about it. You expect to know just all about marijuana. The basics, I guess. It says specifically the main components of cannabis plant, the major difference between cannabis constituents, the evidence about the endocannabinoid system, cannabinoid, pharmacokinetics, pharmacodynamics, safety, side effects, precautions, constraints,, and drug to drug interactions. So, it sounds like a lot like EM/t work a little bit. I mean, it’s like all this is all very meticulous drug to drug interactions. We’re not hoping for that. You think you’re talking about like, oh, what’s it like if he does coke and weed at the same time? No, just don’t even bother talking about it. If he ends up doing that, then don’t show up to class the next day. So these modules explore the interrelationship between cannabinoids and opioids.

Mitchell Lane: It seems like there’s a lot of scientific level stuff going on here.

Anthony Cali: I hate scientific level education unless it’s for science.

Mitchell Lane: This sounds really interesting though. Honestly, if this was a class when I was going to school, I may have been a little more interested because I got involved with like-

Anthony Cali: well, high school, they’re never getting a marijuana class.

Mitchell Lane No, that’s not what I’m saying. That’s what I’m saying is like, oh, I did like my own self research, right? But like, if I knew about this kind of stuff in college or something like that, that would have been like a cool elective or something like that to check out. Like, hey, I can learn about this stuff that for a while now I’ve been ingesting and not really understanding the real scientific factors to all this because it all is. I know a guy who is working on dispensary and the hiring process and everything. He had to understand and learn about the different scientific factors that go into marijuana. So it kind of leads people to know more.

Anthony Cali” Yeah, it sounds like the process for these kind of things has become really uptight since legalization and I hope it becomes less uptight. I don’t think you should need half a degree to sell me a joint.

Mitchell Lane: Yeah, I mean, who knows? Only time will tell. So basically from this, you can hope to be a doctor that prescribes marijuana, and you can also get a physician as a store pharmacist at a dispensary. Apparently, dispensaries are legally required to have a store pharmacist on hand at all times. I don’t know which I guess is helpful.

Anthony Cali: Yeah. Just to understand it,

Mitchell Lane: They say the purpose of this course is to educate physician pharmacists and certified registered nurse practitioners or physician assistants seeking to register in New Jersey. Yeah, that seems like a pretty good program. So let’s compare it to some other schools and what they’re doing. First one I looked at was Stockton’s program in- nearby. Right. How is the cannabis studies minor different from the cannabis studies certificate? Since they have both, they have a certificate, and they also have their own minor.

Anthony Cali: Oh, that’s cool. Stockton Cannabis Studies minor courses are credit bearing. So these courses have credits. Wow. You are graduating by learning about weed. Wow. See, that’s where I hope for William Paterson to get to at some point, because I agree with the assessment that they made in the regulatory that Phil Murphy signed. It’s just I think education for this is really important.
Mitchell Lane:  and just deeper understanding.
Anthony Cali: The classes are self paced, of course, though. Meaning you don’t have a teacher, you don’t have a professor. I’m sure there are at least one professor out of college anywhere that says, I want to be “Professor Weed.”

Anthony Cali:I got you. Maybe one day.

Mitchell Lane: So another school I wanted to talk about was the University of Vermont, because they’re actually the first medical school in the nation to offer a professional certificate in the nation. This is another noncredit program, but it’s unique because they were the first to do it from an angle. So their seven week online professional certificate is designed for physicians, dispensary personnel, nurse practitioners, pharmacists, the usual. They have a Department of pharmacology that offers this program, but as far as it goes, they’re offering no credit still. And this seems to be based more on actually starting your own business than it is compared to the other Stockton and William Paterson’s. It looks like cannabis history and business law and policy is being brought up, which has not been brought up in the previous ones. So that’s a little bit about their curriculum towards marijuana. It’s different and it’s unique for a school to do it. They concentrate on evidence based scientific approaches to understanding the therapeutic uses of cannabis for the future of medicine. That’s pretty cool. Yeah. A director of the Medical Cannabis Center for Research and Education at the School of the Cannabis Pharmacology Course at the University of Vermont Medical School. Do you know what that means?

Mitchell Lane: No, what does that mean? That’s Dr. Weed.

Anthony Cali: That’s Dr. Weed. We found her. Wow.

Mitchell Lane: Oh, her. That was a twist. I didn’t expect that. All right. Ignorant of me.

Anthony Cali: And that about wraps up our coverage on where you can hear about medical programs that will help you learn more about marijuana near you. New Jersey? Vermont. Pennsylvania. It’s being happening. It’s going on, and it looks like it’s going to grow. You don’t think we’ll get credit courses?

Mitchell Lane: I don’t know. I hope you do. I hope you get credit courses. It’s well off. It’s got a lot of new information. These are new times to be learning new things, so why not? It’s like, oh, why can’t I just learn about marijuana online? Well, the point of school is that they kind of compartmentalize and organize the important information for you, and they teach it to you in a learnable way.

Anthony Cali: Yeah. And it lowers some of the risks that some people may have learning about marijuana on their own. Yeah, and incorrectly. All right, that about wraps it up. Queuing the jazz music, and let’s wrap it up for the week.