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Plant Medicine

Plant Medicine

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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 field, 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.

Plant Medicine Coalition Application

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 P.A. Bill S.B. 350 has recently been introduced to legalize adult recreational use of marijuana. Plant medicine are largely unregulated by the FDA, so it’s especially important to work with local, trusted 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

Build Local Supply Chains

Connect environmentally sustainable, socially responsible, locally owned businesses, including farmers/growers, processors, manufactures, wholesalers, retailers, distributors/delivery, service providers and ancillary businesses into viable local supply chains that bring locally grown plant medicine products to market. 

Identify gaps in local supply chains and catalyze social enterprises to fill those gaps, with a focus on providing economic opportunity to marginalized rural and urban communities.

Build partnerships and a trusting community among the business owners and farmers, in order to cooperate with each other and share information about connections to resources and markets, new hemp products, opportunities for collaboration, sustainable business practices, and models from other states.

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.

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

We endorse SB 350 Adult Recreational Cannabis Use.  For more information, click here.

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 businesses and farms in plant medicine 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 Coalition Steering Committee

Steering Committee Chair:
Cherron Perry-Thomas, Co-founder, Diasporic Alliance for Cannabis Opportunities (DACO), and CEO of Green Dandelion, cherron@alltogethernowpa.org

Traditional Medicine Advisor:
Linda Shanahan, owner, Barefoot Botanicals

Benjamin Bruckman, ben@alltogethernowPA.org

Steering Committee Members:

  • Shawn Wilson, CEO, Veterans In the Hood/Suite 4102, Philadelphia
  • Val Chavenson, Cannabis activist/consultant
  • Skip Shuda, Founder, Soulful Cannabis, non-profit cannabis education & consulting
  • Judy Wicks, Founder,
    All Together Now, JudyWicks.com

What citizens can do to support locally produced plant medicines

Buy local plant medicine

Barefoot Botanicals, Doylestown, PA

Cultural Oasis, Pittsburgh, PA

Farmacy Partners, York, PA

Lancaster Farmacy, Lancaster, PA

Natural Hope Herbals, Millersburg, PA

Susquehanna Hemp Co, Muncy, PA

Tooth of the Lion, Orwigsburg, PA,

Wild Fox Provisions, Berks County, PA

 

Buy from locally owned medical marijuana dispensaries (not outside corporations):

TerraVida Holistic Centers, Abington, Malvern and Sellersville, PA.  A woman-owned, locally owned dispensary

Keystone Shops South Philly, King of Prussia, and Devon.  Locally owned dispensary.

These are the only locally owned dispensaries in PA that we are aware of. The others are controlled by outside corporations.  Help support local ownership.

Support legislation to legalize recreational marijuana
  • Senate Bill 350
    Educate yourself on SB 350 by reading about it here.

Want to get involved in the Plant Medicine Coalition?

All Together Now PA - Cherron Perry-Thomas

Cherron Perry-Thomas

Coalition Coordinator

Contact Me

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