Steve Bate - Founder ComCan Healthcare - The future of Cannabis care

[Music] welcome to this episode of the marketplace for health wealth and freedoms medical cannabis series i'm your host jeff kanter and i'm proud to say that today's guest is steve bate he has a very long and extensive biography he's been doing things both nationally and globally but it's all led to what he's doing right now with com can health care in florida he's going to enlighten us a bit about his background how com can came to be and how this became his destiny so it's going to tell us where things are going into the future and most importantly how you can participate for yourself and also how you can help bring us to the rest of the united states so with that steve welcome thank you very much and i appreciate being here and i feel great to be anywhere to tell you the truth uh about four years ago i was diagnosed with not one but two stage four terminal cancers stage four mantle cell lymphoma stage four non-hodgkin's small cell lymphoma which was in 39 of my bone marrow my spleen was ready to rupture and a friend of mine which was dr davis had set me up with some doctor's appointments immediately if i had waited until the appointments would have come around i wouldn't have made it several more weeks i would not have survived looking back at it so we went in and met with the doctors and uh got an extensive diagnosis to find out that at the time i was quote not treatable and saw a number of doctors they wanted to put me in some experimental therapy the doctor i ended up using uh said that whatever they would have done a lot of things could have happened and if i did survive i may not have wanted to survive it could have been that catastrophic as far as what it would have done to me i went through chemotherapy but before i did i realized both of my brothers had been through chemo both of my parents had perished from cancer so now i'm five out of five in my family diagnosed with cancer i had previously done a bone marrow transplant for my brother at johns hopkins it's been about 10 years now and he passed away about three months later again in hindsight maybe physiologically i gave that cancer back to him i've always eaten healthy and led a fairly healthy lifestyle and when it was time for me to deal with the cancer i was diagnosed with i realized cannabis therapy would do something that made a huge difference and may have made the difference in saving my life and maybe other people's lives and that was typically when you're getting a heavy dose of chemo in my case it was our chop chemo which was a 10 hour infusion or more most people when they started it's almost like metal is dripping off their teeth and then they're nauseous then they have no appetite and from that point on they may never get their appetite back they may never get their taste buds back and a lot of cancer patients i've talked to that's the case in my case when i went in i used an extracts of of medical cannabis known as rick simpson's oil which has been around a while it's kind of a just a phrase that's used or they call it rso what it is is a full spectrum extract of the cannabis and i would take it in a gelatin capsule it was very condensed it's like molasses and i start off with the size of maybe a grain of rice and every four days i would double that but that gave me the ability to literally eat during chemotherapy but not only eating during chemotherapy when i walked into chemotherapy i walked it hello i'm here for chemo and they'd look at me like wow why are you so happy i wasn't happy i was just glad to be alive i mean i realized every day was a budget you know every day was a bucket day and today is a bucket day and every day since it's been a bucket day when i went through the chemo i knew i had to get nutrition and that's what i did i drank two ounces of wheat grass five times the week because my intestines were being eaten out by the chemo the veins of my left arm were gone they couldn't use those anymore it was too late to put a port in because i couldn't heal you know i couldn't go to the dentist because i couldn't i couldn't heal with anything i had to be extremely careful but after the time and going through this when i was done with my chemo the infusionist looked at me and said steve do you realize nobody's ever been diagnosed with the extent of cancer that you've been diagnosed endured what you endured and walked out alive anywhere and that's what they said and i looked at her i said yeah with a smile because every day to me whether it was chemotherapy or whatever i had to endure was a day on earth and i had to address it in the most positive way i could and from that and having gone through that i realized with the prohibition on on cannabis on marijuana we're not finding out what works do we really know what worked for me i don't think it was anecdotal i know what it did for my attitude i know what it did for my taste i know what it did for me being able to get nutrition and to stay alive and with that i felt we need to understand that we need to do case studies and we developed the company com can myself dr mitchell davis albert shulman al was comptroller of nationwide insurance he understands healthcare and here's our company com count and we found that for the purposes of doing true medical cannabis care dr davis founded along with al shulman and myself now we've brought in dr rick way back and both of them have degrees now in medical cannabis we've had thousands of patients we've saved you know over a thousand patients this year we've helped them with their medical care and we've also been chosen as that at this point in time the first medical cannabis healthcare company that can do basically personalized cannabinoid therapy where we identify what the issue is and look at the solutions using the different cannabinoids that may or may not include thc it would include the terpenes or the cannabinoids that have been affected in different types of diagnoses and the different diagnosis would really determine how you're going to treat each individual which is very different than just getting cannabis and using it what type of cannabinoids do you use and in looking at the the true medical capabilities of what endocannabinoids can do we're just now scratching the surface so what we've been able to do is help thousands of people we want to work with other doctors and with the patients to educate at this point in time i feel the most important thing we can do is education we're working with legislators in florida and nationally to change legislation that can make a difference as far as medical cannabis care the way it's looked at the stigma of medical marijuana or medical cannabis and also looking at treating other things such as opioid addiction currently the way opioid addiction has been treated is with methadone or suboxone or gabapentin what the research shows is it hasn't been very successful maybe a 92 percent recidivism and there's a lot of overdoses both people have been brought back with narcan or overdoses that are death i know where we're at in delray there were over 600 overdoses last year how many resulted in death a lot of them especially during coven where they couldn't be administered narcan or people wouldn't touch others to to help them in a situation like that knowing that that works as it does in canada which is now legalized cannabis they did a program with a thousand opioid dependents where they were able to reduce 97 of their opioid usage and over 50 percent got off of opioids and stayed on for over six months and without withdrawals or without the typical withdrawals that that they say and that's something that we've looked at as far as treatment unfortunately billions of dollars are spent on opioid treatment we're the only country in the world that has the crisis with opioids that we've had and cannabinoids can be very powerful in helping them the cannabinoids can overpower the opioids in helping treat people whether it's people that were on it because of using it for a drug for a you know an addictive drug or people that did it because of of their treatment in an accident or in pain care either way cannabis can do a lot more and it's not toxic it's not lethal nobody's ever died from an overdose of cannabis but we still have the stigma we've had the prohibition and first of all we want to change the stigma but most importantly we want to address professional medical care to treat patients like myself i did it on my own by educating myself best i could i don't know what worked in that and i don't know that anybody knows what worked in the concoction that i took but we need to define that dr davis one of my two partners spent over 20 years in doing case history with hepatitis c so he understands applying case history to individuals to help develop a drug a drug was developed by gilead that nearly cures hepatitis c but we like to approach our medical cannabis in a way that is done as case studies done in a way that true medical health care addresses the issues you look at the veterans 22 of them are committing suicide a day most of those are on opioids and antidepressants the statistics show that about 93 of those have asked for medical cannabis they're not able to get it through the va they're not able to get it as a veteran or an active duty person in the armed forces but they'll give them plenty of opioids i've had veterans that have come and said steve can you talk to the veterans administration about giving me cannabis i get all the free opioids i want i don't want them right the disabled veteran they're paying for everything the house the utilities is is told you know everything but they will not give medical cannabis or even cbd's for that matter and the problem is a lot of them are scared that they'll lose their benefits because of medical cannabis and a lot of relying on the on the black market and they don't know what they're getting and that's a whole other issue so you look at true health care you trust you look at logic you look at common sense that's what it really needs to come down to this is the only issue that i look at that's a true bipartisan issue this isn't a republican or democrat issue well it's indicative of the way you came to it's a dick of the way you came to it because you didn't come you weren't like looking to have a dog in the race or anything you had a problem and you wanted to solve it and you came up with a solution so you came in the most unbiased way to this epiphany which is important to demonstrate and i look at this as an altruistic reason to get involved my first job is working in congress i'd like to go back to congress and sit down and say democrats republicans come together let's do what's right let's take care of the veterans let's take care of the people that have opioid dependencies and let's take care of people that could really use medical cannabis the way it's meant to be used let's understand that and let's save money let's do proactive medical health care as opposed to crisis management i had to do crisis management and i may be one of one that was diagnosed with what i was diagnosed that's alive so i'm here to let people know my first occupation out of college was working as a legislative aide in congress and i was able to accomplish a number of things i was one of the founders and designers of the us holocaust memorial museum in washington and i think we've ins you know we brought some insight to people on how anybody could condemn anybody for that matter other humans and in a way people have been condemned for cannabis over since 1934 you know this prohibition that's gone on has condemned a lot of people people their madness the reefer madness was done almost in a racial slur to i you know to identify those that were using cannabis at the time but it was really identifying individual groups that they could target in in a manner that in hindsight was not right we look at the holocaust it was not right how can we condemn others when we need to be logical we need to to use common sense and none of this was common sense the common sense now is to evaluate what works when eli lilly had drugs in 1890 they were working on on cannabis medication they thought the plant had a lot of efficacy as far as extractions for medical care we're still not there we still not have we have not defined what the extractions in cannabinoids can do best for different individuals with different needs as you've demonstrated and has made the point which has become very obvious is that education research are critical to be able to move this thing out of the closet but at this point for those who may not be in the know what's the one obstacle that's preventing any and all of that from occurring is it not that schedule one federal federal schedule one that says that cannabis marijuana has no medical effect effectiveness whatsoever and therefore is a dangerous drug scheduled the same as lsd and heroin we know that myself i know that it's not even an addictive drug it's not a physically addictive drug alcohol is much more dangerous nicotine is much more dangerous but managing the different cannabinoids when we talk about thc thc isn't always what is effective in a lot of cases understanding that you don't have to get high to have medical cannabis care as a matter of fact that has nothing to do with medical cannabis care not at all with treatment and the efficacy of what works for different diagnoses with the with your ability to do that now is it's still some level of experimentation because there's not a good solid research you just try to try different combos and see what kind of works or do you have a more of a science of it now no you still have to understand the individual and there hasn't been enough as far as studies there hasn't been truly identifying what works as as it should in isolating that and as far as patients the biggest thing we have to do is educating patients you know that this is not something dangerous that you can get off your your percocet and use some of this and the percocet was dangerous this isn't dangerous but you really need to understand what they're taking and monitor it just like someone that's going to take insulin what they start off with may not be what they're using a year later or six months later or even six weeks later so it's really understanding and managing what works best and you know we always say you know slow and low you know start slow and use a low dose to find out what's going to work the last thing you want to do with the patient is for them to go you know get a medical marijuana medical cannabis card and go to a dispensary and get something that's the wrong mixture and we don't know that until it's too late and they have a bad reaction that's not good and in order to really manage that properly you have to have an interactive relationship with your physician to know that what you're taking is dealing with your medical ailment and managing that there really hasn't been managed care in medical cannabis care for that matter it's very blanket and and that's really kind of where the newest reality of medical care is going is the idea of completely individualized healthcare and this definitely lends itself to that with with what you're doing are you growing mostly by word of mouth or is that kind of how people are finding out about you there's two ways we're growing by referrals from patients that have been incredibly happy we have hundreds we have well over a hundred ratings every single rating that we have is five star we've had nothing but five ratings phenomenal in every case and we've had you know this year we had over a thousand patients [Music] and yes it's individualized it's different for each individual what one person is going to have in the reaction they have to those cannabinoids is going to be different to every individual so it re like any type of medicine what one person takes is not going to work for everyone and everybody has a different physiological makeup and that's where you identify it and you know we grow we change as we age and you know that's another thing in understanding the different regimen that you're going to have as far as what you're using unfortunately it's not accepted because of the schedule one the doctors that recommend have a conflict of interest if you're not just doing medical cannabis care which we are our physicians are focused 100 percent after medical cannabis care they are both nationally recognized physicians but they're focused 100 percent on medical cannabis care and i feel like we're not only the best at what we're doing we're the only ones that are really doing what we're doing and addressing it the manner that we are i'm just going to ask you are you the only operation in this dedication that focus or others starting to mimic what you're doing no i think there's a number of physicians out there that are truly knowledgeable and truly understand but as far as trying to create a compound specific to each individual we're really the first ones doing that right now awesome that we know of i i know in israel they've been doing it you know dr raphael machula who isolated the cannabinoids in the first place has come up with a lot of response to how we address medical cannabis one of the statements he said is if there's a 10 variant in medical cannabis based on the compound or the plant or or you know what you're taking it's very difficult to manage care when you have a 10 over a 10 variant right when we look at the plant itself you know one part of the plant may be different than another part of the plant but when you're doing the extractions and you're dialing down the different cannabinoids then you know you're in a specific realm as far as what that extraction is the milliliters of that extraction or the different compounds that are in it which is very different need you know as far as the needs for individuals sure with what you're doing and you're mentioning israel there are any other areas around the world that are kind of into this zone or you know you're still that much out front of everyone else well i think there are a lot of people's all people all over the world looking at this obviously in canada and many other countries they're looking at jamaica was looking at they finally you know legalized jamaica they have a cannabis licensing agency unfortunately the people that have been involved in america because it's federally illegal they couldn't go to jamaica because they wouldn't pass interpol as far as legal they broke a federal law in america even if it's legal by the state and when you look at for instance looking at the veterans we were going to talk about well they can get what they want in their state what if they travel i'm from indiana there's still no medical cannabis in indiana you can still be imprisoned for a year so let's say a veteran goes there and they have an extract that might be a felony there because it's an extract the laws are different in every state and we don't sit still i mean you know unfortunately for covid we stayed at home and we didn't travel but you know this is a very active country it's a very active world and to be able to travel with your medicine is fairly important right if you can't take your insulin with you and you're a diabetic you may die right and and i've had childhood diabetics that have said to me steve i'm in a place where i'm not allowed to have cannabis but it's saving my life because after dinner they'll take a little bit of cannabis that reduces their blood sugars enough and they may have a pump where they didn't get another shot of insulin so they have to pay for the insulin but they're also breaking the law they're like steve i'm saving my life and i'm a criminal right that scares me and it hurts me that you can be a corporate executive you could be anybody but yet if you're using cannabis you could you're a criminal in a lot of places right no punishable by prison over the years that have been imprisoned sure for a small amount of cannabis well that and and even worse like you described with all the people that died for one reason or another because we've ignored the common sense of what this is showing itself to be and somehow is married to this position so in terms of that moving are we having some progress there as far as getting that off schedule one to open this up a little better well i think the people in congress are looking at it i think everybody wants to take credit for it at some point but at this point it really needs to be a collective group democrats republicans coming together it may be the best thing for the country we're doing something that that is bringing everybody together the majority of america want medical cannabis i think the the percentage of people that accept it is over 85 at this point and at all age levels too the average age of most of our patients is nearly 70 years old when you exclude the autistic children epileptic children now in the case of anybody under 18 to do any type of cannabis therapy they need two doctors to evaluate but we've had autistic children that would come in and be beating themselves up sticking their head in the couch you know making all types of noises and coming back a month or so later walking in you wouldn't recognize them hello dr davis how are you doing today wow unbelievable and we've worked with the autistic society i had a radio show called kind of his conversations uh for a while and we had a lot of different people on uh had someone that talked about their child who was an epileptic who was on prescription drugs and they would still have seizures on their prescription drugs every month or so they'd still have seizures they said they've been on medical cannabis haven't had a seizure in two and a half years amazing amazing so here's a very important part of the questioning you know for the people that are listening that think well you know if i need this i can kind of reach out obviously to you guys or get some direction but for those that don't think they need it themselves maybe not yet or they do know others in their family what can they do to get involved to help move this legislatively or locally or communally what can an average person do to help further the cause it all comes down to us congress the states have done a lot the people in the states have done a lot but it really comes down to a national effort as i said you can't move from state to state the laws are all different we need a standard and we need insurance we need affordable cannabis care i look at our patients and they're fairly wealthy you know the people that that need cannabis a lot of them can't afford it that's right and there's no avenue right now for them to get it right i was very fortunate that i educated myself i saw what my family had gone through what my brothers had gone through and i realized it's nutrition but if you have no taste buds and everything tastes like metal and you're depressed and you can't get out of bed you're not going to get much nutrition no are there any like nash organizations to participate in or do i just lobby my local legislators american society of cannabis medicine is one that's that's a group that is great to join but the american council for cannabis medicine which i'm now the ambassador for for the state of florida has been working nationally to first of all educate people to work with legislation to change schedule one to work with insurers to work with medical providers you look at you go to universities you go to medical schools they don't teach the doctors about cannabis no they do not know there's no education as a matter of fact in one of the medical schools when they got to pharmacology it listed cannabis it said a federally illegal drug that's all it said but it broke down you know all you know percocets volumes you know everything else and there's components within cannabinoids cbn for instance several drops of ca cbn may be equal to the the value that you took well diem could be toxic right and based on on some of the studies that worked better same thing with cbgs they're saying now thcv which is legal which does not create a psychoactive or effect to make you high working for parkinson's and believe it or not it's working for diet the last thing people think of with medical cannabis is that you're going to be able to use it for diet usually use it to enhance your appetite is working for diet so as we learn more and a lot of it's isolated studies because you can't do a case study you're not going to be able to do a study with the ama someone that's doing regular medical care that's doing this on the side but they're taking insurance for that visit how can they take insurance and say recommend quote a federally illegal drug right it's a conflict of interest totally how can you do medical care and talk about it with your physician so getting back to our referrals our referrals are coming from assisting patients and doctors we have over 70 doctors now that are referring patients to us and as i said we're getting nothing but five-star ratings and when people come in and say my god i haven't golfed i haven't danced for three or four years i'm doing both and their quality of life is so much better they're getting sleep that's a whole nother issue the extracts that con that are best for sleep you know what's the luxury of the largest everybody that you're able to help i mean it becomes pretty much a list of everybody from every age bracket every socioeconomic background it doesn't really matter everybody that's got something going on is going to find some way within this world to be helped well it's truly proactive the medicine we typically do is crisis management like a lot of things right and you look at never made good decisions in a crisis well it's interesting you look at what's happening with coven and you look at some of the cbds reducing inflammation well there's an inhaler i think that they've put in ventilators that have reduced some of the covet cells and brought people back i think you know there's a study in canada when covid came out that some of the cbds will reduce inflammation in the esophagus and in the lungs uh to help with people that have contracted covet it's just interesting to see where what we're going to discover when they allow this stuff to move forward it's going to be really very exciting i mean you're mentioned a lot already but it's literally just scratching the surface on what's going to be found out you know what's exciting about today is is demonstrating what you're bringing forward and also to indicate to all the outsiders it's time to get off the fence you need to help participate because one day you may need this and somebody in your family property already is benefiting some you may not even be aware of so on that note steve i want to tell you this has been a fantastic interview and i'm so glad you spent some time with us today well i really appreciate it jeff and one other thing you mentioned is when you said people may not know they're doing it people don't tell people they're using cannabis i know they did they did a study and asked people that were advocates people that were advocates if they told their doctors that they had used cannabis less than 50 percent told their doctors and those were people who were advocates right medical cannabis or cannabis per se and that's even scarier where you can't even admit that it's working or that you're utilizing it no it goes to that health medication or whatever you know totally goes that stigma and that fear that you described which would all dissipate if we could take that thing out of the shadows so definitely again thanks so much for today jeff you're very welcome and and i'd love to make myself available i can't wait to walk up to congress and you know figuratively grab the members of congress by their lapels and say listen folks this needs to happen it needs to happen now [Music] you