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Plant Medicine

Plant Medicine

Plant Medicine Coalition Application
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About the Plant Medicine Coalition

The Plant Medicine Coalition is comprised of local growers/farmers, entrepreneurs, professionals and advocates dedicated to building a just, sustainable, locally-based and prosperous plant medicine industry in Pennsylvania. Our purpose is to build local, self-reliant communities that have the capacity to grow and produce their own medicine and the knowledge of how to effectively use it.  We develop and strengthen local supply chains that offer safe, healthy, accessible, and affordable plant medicine as an alternative path to achieving greater wellness.

In addition to traditional herbal medicines, a special focus is given to cannabis as an emerging industry, supporting local ownership and supply chains for hemp CBD products and medical marijuana. The Coalition advocates for adult use cannabis legislation that will create a locally-based and equitable cannabis industry in our state. We seek to connect with prospective entrepreneurs from communities harmed by the war on drugs and help them catalyze new businesses.

CURRENT CAMPAIGN

Pot Profits for Pennsylvanians (P3)

The legalization and regulation of Adult Use Cannabis (AUC) in Pennsylvania affords a unique opportunity to lift up Pennsylvania’s rural and urban communities through local ownership of this new industry.

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Background

There are as many plant medicine traditions as there are cultures, and at the core of these approaches is the wisdom to observe the natural world, recognize patterns of harmony and disharmony, and restore balance. When practiced skillfully, plant medicine is not a retreat into the past or opposed to Western medicine. Rather it is a powerful set of tools that can be integrated with the best parts of modern medicine. Western medicine specializes in understanding disease, and provides immensely valuable emergency medicine, whereas traditional medicine understands health and wellness, and holds crucial keys to help us rebuild our broken healthcare system.

The U.S. has the most expensive and least effective healthcare system in the industrialized world. Iatrogenic deaths (caused by hospitals and medicine) are the third leading cause of death. Within our generation 1-in-2 people will be diagnosed with cancer. Autism rates have increased from 1-in-5,000 in 1975 to 1-in-36 today. Chronic and auto-immune diseases are rampant. Opiate abuse is a national epidemic. Bacteria are becoming increasingly immune to our antibiotics. Beneath all these trends, Western medicine often takes a reductionist approach that falsely separates physical, mental, and social health.

Plant medicine offers a powerful complement and alternative by addressing whole systems instead of isolated symptoms and emphasizing the role of prevention and nutrition. For hundreds of thousands of years there was not even a separation between food and “medicine”. The human and plant species co-evolved as parts of a highly interdependent ecosystem. Our epigenetic needs were embedded within our food and the knowledge of health and healing was passed down through the generations, often maternally. Even the word “prescription” comes from the French word for recipe, and the Rx symbol has the same root in Latin.

Today we are still very much using plants as medicine. The majority of pharmaceuticals are extracted or derived from plants. We self-medicate with coffee, alcohol, nicotine, and sugar. A new wave of medical research is validating the therapeutic value of psychotropic plants. The political landscape is shifting and medical marijuana was legalized in PA in 2016, the 2018 Farm Bill deregulated hemp production, and recently bills have been introduced in PA to legalize adult recreational use of marijuana.

Plant medicine are largely unregulated by the FDA, so it’s especially important to work with local growers and practitioners who are trusted for integrity, quality, and clinical success. As cannabis becomes increasingly legalized and normalized we have a responsibility to understand how to use it — and all plants — responsibly and safely. Plant medicine traditions can provide us invaluable wisdom and guidance here. Approaches such as Ayurveda, Western Herbalism, and Chinese Medicine are tested through thousands of years of rigorous empirical observation and clinical application.

These traditions provide not only a safe and powerful approach to plant medicine, but also a pathway to see clearly what is broken in the world — in individuals, families, communities, and nations — and empower us to start healing ourselves.                                                                                                            - Benjamin Bruckman

What We Do

Support Local Supply Chains

Connect consumers to environmentally sustainable, socially responsible, locally owned businesses, including farmers/growers, processors, manufactures, wholesalers, and retailers in order to build viable local supply chains. 

Identify challenges confronted by businesses in the local plant medicine industry, and design projects to help overcome them, with special focus on businesses owned by entrepreneurs of color and women, as well as small farms. 

 

Advocate

Advocate policies, cooperative ownership models, and collaborative business practices that offer ownership opportunities in the emerging marijuana industry to economically marginalized populations, such as small farmers, entrepreneurs of color, women, veterans and returning citizens, and provide meaningful living wage jobs in both rural and urban communities.

Through P3, we advocate for policies that specifically benefit communities harmed by the war on drugs, including helping those convicted of marijuana offenses.

Educate

Educate the public, political candidates, state and municipal legislators, investors, farmers, entrepreneurs, and local businesses about the opportunity to support and grow a just, sustainable and locally based plant medicine industry in Pennsylvania, and dispel fear and negative stereotypes associated with marijuana use. With partners, organize educational seminars, workshops, speaking engagements and public events.

Model Business Values

Model cooperation among members of the Plant Medicine Coalition,  as well as with other All Together Now coalitions, to support each other, build trust and share information about connections to resources and markets, new plant medicine products, opportunities for collaboration, sustainable business practices, and models from other states. Demonstrate business relationships based on partnership, generosity, fairness, integrity, compassion, and respect for all people, nature, and other species.

Move Money

Move money to investment in local plant medicine businesses and the emerging cannabis industry in order to build community wealth in our towns and cities, and in particular to help communities who have been harmed by the war on drugs.

Plant Medicine Advisors

Traditional herbal medicine advisor:

Linda Shanahan, owner, Barefoot Botanicals

THC advisor: Cherron Perry-Thomas, Co-founder, Diasporic Alliance for Cannabis Opportunities (DACO), CEO of Green Dandelion.

CBD advisor: Ben Davies, co-owner Wild Fox Provisions

Cherron is also ATN's Plant Medicine Coalition Leader.

 

Where to find locally produced plant medicines

Barefoot Botanicals, Doylestown, PA

Cultural Oasis, Pittsburgh, PA

DitchWeed Craft Hemp, Susquhanna, PA

Farmacy Partners, York, PA

Lancaster Farmacy, Lancaster, PA

Moka Hemp, Burlington, PA

Natural Hope Herbals, Millersburg, PA

Pocono Organics, Blakeslee, PA

Susquehanna Hemp Co, Muncy, PA

Tooth of the Lion, Orwigsburg, PA,

Wild Fox Provisions, Berks County, PA

 

Locally owned medical marijuana dispensaries :

There are no longer ANY locally owned marijuana dispensaries in Pennsylvania. All are now owned by large multi-state corporations.

Let's not let that happen again with the upcoming legislation to legalize Adult Use Cannabis. These licenses must prioritize local ownership.

Join the P3 coalition to support legislation to legalize Adult Use Cannabis In Pennsylvania that prioritizes  local ownership and provides opportunities for entrepreneurs from communities harmed by the war on drugs, and our local family farmers, rather than benefiting out-of-state corporations.
Cherron Perry Thomas, Plant Medicine Coalition Leader
Cherron@AllTogetherNowPA.org

Cherron Perry Thomas

Plant Medicine Coalition Leader

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