Episode 98 - New Year, New Thought: Cannabis As A Gateway Drug to Health

For years cannabis was slammed as a "gateway" to harder drugs. Dr. Dave Gordon begs to differ. After 20 years of treating people with medical cannabis he tells us how it can be used as a gateway to better health and habits. 

In the prohibitionist rhetoric of yore, cannabis was maligned as a “gateway drug,” meaning that it led users down the path to stronger and more “dangerous drugs,” cocaine or heroin or god forbid, psychedelics. As with much prohibitionist bunk there was never any evidence to this contention, but that never stopped our friends in law enforcement or politics from rehashing it for the next four decades. It hasn’t stopped them yet, even with reams of evidence showing exactly the opposite.

The truth, of course, lies elsewhere: millions of people know that cannabis can be a gateway to improved health and wellness. It can help slow down our speeding world and enable people to change consciousness with far fewer deleterious effects than our legally sanctioned inebriant, alcohol. It can help us pay attention to the subtler things in life and in our own bodies. And it can certainly help us contend with the stress of everyday life. 

But cannabis can also be a gateway to other healthful benefits. “Knowing the history of cannabis prohibition can be a gateway to educating people about the long, terrible history of systemic racism in our country, and its profound impact on social inequality. Understanding the endocannabinoid system can be a gateway toward viewing disease in a wholistic systems approach, rather than the siloed model we’re taught where each disease is a problem with a single “system.” Once people slow down and really check in with themselves and their bodies, they might be able to do that with other things -- what they eat, how much they’ve slept, the amount of time they spend on their screens...It can be a gateway to better habits without cannabis.”

The last paragraph is from a conversation I had with this week’s guest, Dr. Dave Gordon, a functional medicine physician in Denver, Colorado and a passionate advocate and educator whose 20 years of medical practice has brought him to the radical idea that “cannabis is a gateway substance in the truly modern sense.”

I highly suggest you listen as we say good riddance to 2020 and welcome this new year that brings with it new and much needed hope. 

Footnote: Dr. Dave serves on the advisory board of Leaf 411, the fantastic free nursing hotline that educates and supports the general public about the safe use of cannabis. Click the link to learn more about this great, big hearted, service.

This episode of Brave New Weed podcast is made possible with the support of Bar Capital. Bar Capital is a different class of investment firm. Their purpose is to help cannabis become as common and culturally accepted as aspirin or alcohol.

Bar Cap invests in, advises, and helps raise capital for companies and fund managers operating in the cannabis space. They back entities that are innovative, audacious, and have great leadership. Bar Cap believes now is the time for Ultra High Net Worth Individuals, Family Offices, and Institutions to consider cannabis as an essential piece of an alternative investment portfolio.

If you are looking to raise funding or are an accredited investor that would like to learn more about investing in the cannabis space, please visit www.barcapital.com and connect. You’ll also find the full regulatory disclosures and risk disclaimers on their website. Each member of Bar Capital is a Registered Representative and offers securities through Stonehaven, LLC a Member of FINRA/SIPC.

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.