Beyond THC: Why Terpenes Are the Real 'Steering Wheel'

[00:00:00]Welcome back to Senior Savvy Cannabis.

[00:00:02]I'm Katherine Goldberg. Today we're joined by Evan Pilot who might love terpenes as much as I do, if not more.

[00:00:10]Evan, thank you so much for joining us on the podcast to talk about one of the coolest things about cannabis.

[00:00:18]>> Thank you, Katherine. Really appreciate it.

[00:00:21]>> So, let me ask you, we're going to talk about the efficacy of terpenes. We're going to talk about what terpenes actually do. We're going to dissect the gross science from peer-reviewed journals that I know you have combed through extensively.

[00:00:37]But, let me ask you, what were you doing in the cannabis industry that made you so cognizant of terpenes and that led you to You have an invention that we're going to talk about, a product. But, what What were you doing where you you thought that terpenes were more important than we give them credit for?

[00:00:56]>> Yeah. Um so, I have been in the cannabis industry for about a decade. And I've learned a lot about the plant from how it grows to how you process it and the efficacy in the end. And the one thing that continued to come up again and again is, you know, strain diversity. Some strains work for some people. Other strains are not as effective. And when you take THC aside, there's really two main differentiating factors.

[00:01:32]There's the ancillary cannabinoids, so your other minor cannabinoids, which would be like your THCV, your CBG, your CBN. And then, there's the terpene component. And those are comprised of hundreds of different uh components in very small ratios. So, like the main ones you hear about are maybe myrcene, pinene, limonene, but in one strain, there may be 100 or 150 different components in varying ratios. And that, in its truest sense, is what I believe gives that that strain its uniqueness.

[00:02:17]Now, I worked with some outdoor growers, and I saw this essentially just getting burned up.

[00:02:25]This This was like the most unique part, the reason why they grew strain diversity, but they didn't have time at the end of the harvest to preserve the terpenes, and they just were turning it into distillate. So, distillate to go into gummies, carts, whatever concentrate, but the terpenes, through that distillation pro- process, ended up getting burned up. So, they were left with this pure THC, but none of the character that actually made that strain itself. And I saw that there was a real opportunity to bring this to light, and to preserve really what makes a strain unique, and to put it in a form factor that people could enjoy with or without THC.

[00:03:14]>> Brilliant. Brilliant. So, I want to tell the audience what it is, and then I'm going to ask you some more questions. But imagine Airheads had made decided to make weed-flavored Airheads, but not just weed-flavored, but the best weed-flavored Airheads you had ever had in your life. So, is that is that a fair comparison?

[00:03:40]>> I I think it's it's very fair. I mean, we went through I want I I think maybe 50 different recipes to get the correct consistency, the chewability, the flavor ratios, the mix between the flavor and the terpenes, all of it.

[00:03:55]>> So, the reason we're having this conversation, just FYI, because I don't a lot of people reach out with their products and inventions, and most of them are bad.

[00:04:05]But, this was this was interesting enough that I wanted to at least begin a conversation with Evan and see what it was all about. So, first of all, the taste it's delicious.

[00:04:16]And it's not like a little bit delicious. It's like I was walking around all day, and my breath was like pineappley. Like, it was the pineapple express one that I had, and I was like, oh, like it just tastes good. So, I think the obvious question that people would ask is that so you you invented a taffy that is very terpene rich that tastes exactly like how weed smells in the best possible sense, and there's no THC and no CBD in it. And I imagine a lot of people say like, I don't get it.

[00:04:49]>> Right.

[00:04:50]>> So, how what do you say to them?

[00:04:53]>> Yeah, so absolutely. So, um terpenes in in so, in the cannabis plant, um the THC, if if the cannabis plant was like a car, the THC is essentially your gas pedal. It's the psychoactive component, it gets you from zero to 100.

[00:05:11]And a lot of these strains nowadays, um are 25, 30% THC, and they kind of get you there really quickly.

[00:05:21]Uh the terpenes, however, are more like the steering wheel. They shape your experience. So, um the best way that I could describe this is um in one of these chews, there's roughly the same amount of terpenes as there is in one 1-g joint. So, we do not skimp on the terpenes. Um and what it's meant to do is this is not like an edible. You are not going to have this and just go on a psychoactive trip, get locked in your couch. But the most noticeable noticeable effect that I feel is, you know, if I've had two, three cups of coffee or some yerba mate or if I've you know, just there's a lot piling up on me.

[00:06:04]I take one or two of the raspberry relief or I have something that has a you know, a more of a sedative effect.

[00:06:12]And it's not that I'm like oh my gosh, I'm you know, stoned but it definitely takes the edge off. It it helps to relieve some of the anxiety and I think like some of the people who this has helped the most are you know, people who have let's say perhaps PTSD and they're trying to seek a natural alternative or you know, with the raspberry relief especially like people who have arthritis pain. It doesn't cure things but what it can do is help take that edge off and if it's not strong enough, then you can have some with some a THC product, a gummy, flower or whatever but the whole concept is it's taffy. It's meant to stay in your mouth for a while because you best absorb the most amount of terpenes sublingually.

[00:07:04]>> So that's let's let me ask you something about that. So I found my I was chewing this for like >> Yeah.

[00:07:12]>> between 45 and 60 seconds. It was in my mouth for a while and I know that one of kind of like the myths that still exist in the cannabis space is that is that cannabinoids can be absorbed sublingually and the fact of the matter is they're quite large and no matter how much you keep it in your mouth you're going to get the effects once you swallow it but terpenes are much smaller. So >> Yeah.

[00:07:42]>> is that is that why you chose like because ta Taffy I don't want to use childish because childish is not the right word, but it's candy.

[00:07:53]>> Mhm.

[00:07:54]>> So, how do how do you like to think about like you're talking about like a wellness like a wellness product like a product that improves could potentially improve I you know what the thing is the way I've been thinking about this all week is that cannabis is part of a wellness toolkit, a comprehensive wellness toolkit. And that could include THC, it could include CBD, it could include terpenes, and it includes nutrition and exercise and meditation and positive self-talk and everything else that we have available to us. So, even though the effect might not be as profound as taking a toke of a Durban Poison, >> Mhm.

[00:08:38]>> there's still something to these chews.

[00:08:41]>> Yeah, um so there's a lot of science behind and you know I can share some of this with you, but um so the terpenes like you said are small. Um so they for the widest spectrum of terpenes, so not just the small monoterpenes, but the sesquiterpenes and some of the other more fragile components, they flash off.

[00:09:07]Think of rubbing alcohol if you leave it on the counter, um it's going to evaporate.

[00:09:13]Uh but um these terpenes when exposed to uh heat, let's say in a combustion like smoking or toking, um a lot of them never make it uh into your lungs, they never make it to you.

[00:09:32]Um so the absorption rate is dramatically lower. Um I would say you know, for most terpenes, if you're if you're actually combusting them, you're somewhere around 4 to 6% is what you actually get in. If you >> Out of the 100%?

[00:09:48]>> Out of the 100%. A bio-bioavailability is what you end up getting.

[00:09:54]Now, for low temperature vaporizing, you get substantially more. For the monoterpenes, you can get 40 50%.

[00:10:06]But for the sesquiterpenes and some of the more fragile ones, you're again dropping way way way down into the single digits, maybe 4 5%.

[00:10:16]But with sublingual, so having it in your mouth, you can get really a little bit less than cold low temp vaporizing. With the monoterpenes, you're probably somewhere around 40 to 30 to 40%. But what you do get is you get a larger spectrum of them. So you end up preserving the sesquiterpenes and some of the other ones that are more fragile that ordinarily would have burned up throughout the combustion process. And it's just because these things need low temperatures. They have to stay at low temperatures or they will boil off and they will just become part of the air.

[00:10:56]>> So let me ask you something without giving away any like trade secrets or intellectual property.

[00:11:02]And also I know nothing about making taffy and yours is really good. But how do you make a product and I imagine you can't use that much heat to like there you have to be like there has to be a balancing act where you're making this product but you're not destroying the main ingredients.

[00:11:19]>> Yeah, let's just say that one it needs to be hot. This this is not we do it when the taffy is cold so that way we preserve everything and we are able to preserve it. We do full testing, not only before, but also after to make sure that those terpenes were preserved, and that nothing really boiled off.

[00:11:41]You're always going to lose some to the air, but um for the vast majority of it, um you're getting about 20 mg of terpenes in that final taffy.

[00:11:52]>> That's a That's a lot. And let's just assume for to be conservative about this, that may maybe half are destroyed by digestion.

[00:12:04]May maybe. That's a It's a big That's a big number, but let's just say, you're still left with a significant amount.

[00:12:10]>> Yeah. Yeah, it's It is a significant amount, and um you know, we're we're constantly trying to tweak it. Again, kind of going back to your taffy um situation, we needed to create something that was appealing to the broadest audience. And that way, we could begin to expose them to a new form uh of uh a cannabis product. You know, everybody's used to an edible in a gummy form. I couldn't have a gummy. I had to have something that could appeal to a wide variety of people, and that wouldn't be conflated or confused with a uh an edible. So, then the next step was kind of okay, how do I make it appealing so that way when someone puts it in their mouth, their mouth, it's just not full explosion of cannabis. So, pairing everything together, making it taste great, this is all the first step of it.

[00:13:02]>> It is like a full explosion of what makes cannabis amazing.

[00:13:08]Mhm. It's It's incredible.

[00:13:10]Um so, we know that there are a lot of therapeutic properties of different terpenes.

[00:13:17]I like the terpenes that give me energy, fabulous. There's one specifically, beta-caryophyllene, that it has been shown over and over and over to help reduce pain.

[00:13:30]Some people are not willing to use THC or even CBD to address their pain.

[00:13:37]Do you think this is like Could this be like the bridge that that group of people that are like curious, but that don't want to commit to something psychoactive could start with?

[00:13:48]>> Yes. Um so interestingly enough um that is a sesquiterpene. And so that's one of these little bit larger um terpenes. And that one survives at a rate of 5% for combustion and 5 4% uh in vaporizing. versus uh sublingually uh the bioavailabilities about 15%. So you're getting about three times as much by >> By a chance.

[00:14:20]>> absorbing it sublingually. Yes.

[00:14:22]>> Wow.

[00:14:22]>> than um and this is like something that we see time and time and time again is the you know, the there's people who, you know, smell it and they they they see this flower and they think that they're going to be getting all of that, but in reality, you know, sometimes the process of using uh breaks apart and destroys some of these components.

[00:14:46]>> Absolutely. Um I think everyone who delights in cannabis should try your taffy. They're called Mondays because unlike the Sunday scaries, this is the we can approach life Mondays. Is that the philosophy?

[00:15:03]>> Yeah, yeah. Like every I you know, I wanted to make uh Mondays enjoyable again. I wanted everybody to look forward to Mondays again. And there's too many people who have anxiety on Sunday and I just wanted to take those Sunday scaries away. So um you know, that that was the whole goal of it and to expose people to this beautiful part of the plant that often is overlooked.

[00:15:26]>> Yeah, we have been talking about the how horrendous ultra-processed cannabis is and how adulterated distillate is.

[00:15:36]And not only it's bad enough, period, and then they try to add in these fake botanical terpenes to recreate like our favorite strains and it's there's something wrong about it.

[00:15:51]So, I appreciate that your terpenes are from hemp-derived plants and you I mean, you nailed the flavor.

[00:16:01]So, what we're going to do on the Senior Savvy blog, I'm going to when I post this conversation on the blog, if you guys want to try any of um Evan's taffy, you can leave a comment and tell me which one and why. We'll all break down maybe the most popular ones by which main terpene they have in case someone's like, "Ooh, I want it for pain relief or I want it for relaxing or I want it for energy." And then um we can see because I I appreciate the novelty of the product, but I I don't think it's like a novelty product, if that makes sense.

[00:16:39]>> Yeah. Yeah, I and you know, that was another thing kind of having a conversation with you that um really spurred us. Um so, we're in the works on getting something that would be no sugar um and it would be a um a tincture. So, incorporating this into a sublingual tincture that is very easy. Um we're we're perfecting kind of the the taste, but it would be very easy to take, you know, just 1 ml at a time and that way people could have the effect of it if they don't want to have sugar, if they don't want to have taffy, um and just give them another alternative to get that full effect of terpenes.

[00:17:20]>> Do you think the, um, the downside of that would be that it's not in their mouth for the 45 seconds it takes to chew?

[00:17:28]>> Um, it there is a potential downside there. I would say that more of the downside would be the fact that, um, it's go it's more potent. So, there's not as much kind of, uh, you know, these are the flavors, aromas smells of the cannabis plant. So, it's kind of a very strong experience, but, um, we're working on ways to kind of blend it to be a nice palatable one, also. But, yes, you definitely want to try and keep it in your mouth for as long as you can. And, um, the longer you keep it in there, the more effect you'll be able to receive from it.

[00:18:07]>> One question. You don't have to answer this if you don't want to. You guys have two separate product lines. One are the terpenes from hemp flower, and then you have botanical terpenes.

[00:18:19]Today we've only talked about the hemp derived terpenes because I don't like botanical terpenes even for other reasons.

[00:18:25]>> Sure.

[00:18:26]>> Sure. Why do you have both?

[00:18:27]Is it because there there's not enough hemp?

[00:18:30]>> Uh, there is So, sometimes, uh, hemp is hard to get a hold of, especially, um, with one real main harvest season per year for outdoor. Um, you're harvesting once a year. So, you got to get all your your terpenes for the whole year. And the second thing is is that most of the time botanical terpenes are done wrong.

[00:18:51]Um, they don't taste at all like the flower.

[00:18:54]They don't smell at all like the flower.

[00:18:56]They don't even resemble the flower.

[00:18:59]Um, so, with our botanicals, what we did is we sequenced the whole strain. We figured out all those components. We remixed them together. And, uh, one little known fact that, uh, you should know is that some of these quote unquote botanicals are actually synthetically derived. So, you can derive terpenes from um components and create them. But, there's a way to tell if they were artificially created or naturally created. And um that goes into left-handed versus right-handed molecules. But, basically >> Wow.

[00:19:33]>> we do tests to make sure that, you know, the molecules are all the same direction to make sure that they are botanically derived because in synthetic processes, you're left with a 50/50 ratio of synthetic uh right-handed and left-handed. With nature, they only make right-handed or left-handed. Um and so, when we blend them all together, we we make sure that the chirality, it's called chirality, um is from nature. And then, we mix them back into the correct ratio. So, the botanicals are genuinely as good as flower. They smell as good. They are of the highest quality and not the typical botanical you would see in a cartridge.

[00:20:20]>> I appreciate that. Um and also, I saw some like secret behind-the-scenes footage that we're not going to share with you guys of what goes into this. You know, they list the three terpenes at the dispensary that and we're like, "Okay, the this trio we can we can guess what direction it's how it's going to make us feel."

[00:20:39]This list was like four pages long.

[00:20:42]There are hundreds. I mean, you said that that was the first thing you said. But, there are literally hundreds of terpenes that make up the complexity of good flower and reducing them to the top three it is is just doing we're just missing so much.

[00:21:03]>> Yeah. Yeah, and and that's what we saw, you know, I would say that maybe in the in the United States there is five or 10 laboratories with the sophisticated the level of sophisticated equipment needed to be able to identify to this level and most of which are not accessible to the normal person.

[00:21:28]Um they're at university laboratories.

[00:21:30]So we couldn't even, you know, use them for the most part. There is one that we used that um they go full down. They do multiple tests and they make sure that the test results are not only correct, but are repeated three times to make sure that we have an average of, you know, all three tests to make sure there wasn't any layer separation or anything like that. So we get a genuine sequence of the terpenes that were actually found within those flower profiles.

[00:22:01]>> What?

[00:22:02]One question to end on because you're so cool.

[00:22:06]Do you have a favorite terpene?

[00:22:09]>> Oh, um you know, it's less of if I have a favorite terpene. I mean, um there's some great strains out there. Like I think Green Crack is an amazing strain.

[00:22:21]Um Jack Herer >> Oh my god, we like the same weed.

[00:22:24]>> I Yeah, like um I think that there's uh some amazing strains out there.

[00:22:31]Um I have been um just really interested in not only just the one terpene, but how the terpene mixes make me feel or make, you know, others feel. So I would say like if I had to choose like my go-to, um I would choose one of those or I would choose like a, you know, a raspberry relief. Like if I go on a run, I don't know what it is, but terpenes they help I the next day with inflammation. I don't know what it is.

[00:23:02]It might just be me.

[00:23:03]>> Wow.

[00:23:04]>> But, um you know, it it genuinely There's a lot of research to support their anti- uh inflammatory properties out there. And I think, you know, more people need to dive into this and less into THC. Because these These are the things that help shape the experience.

[00:23:22]They Their effects may be subtle, but they're important.

[00:23:25]>> Brilliant. I'm with you. Um I hope this is the first of many conversations. And I love what you're doing. And I'm so thankful that you were willing to share it with us, Evan.

[00:23:35]>> Thank you so much. I really appreciate you having me on here and just being able to talk with your audience.

[00:23:41]>> Let's keep it going.

[00:23:43]>> Absolutely.

[00:23:45]>> Bye.

[00:23:46]>> Bye.

[00:23:47]>> Okay, thank you. That was so good.

[00:23:49]Okay, was that good for you? Were you happy?

[00:23:51]>> Yeah. Yeah, I'm happy with it. Um I think that Yeah, I'm excited to just expose people to this concept, this novel concept of of terpenes because the most often question I get is like, "So, is it an edible?" And it's not, you know? There's that educational hurdle hurdle. But, I feel that you've done so much education over the course of all of your videos that um it's just so exciting to see somebody who genuinely not cares.