Debra Borchardt
- Debra Borchardt:
- We last spoke a year ago when New Jersey had put forth their bill on adding mentral cramps as an approved condition for medical marijuana. Now it looks like New York is trying to do the same thing.
- Whoopi Goldberg:
- Yes, which would be wonderful because as you know, most people don’t think of menstrual cramps as real pain. We saw that with the governor of New Jersey in his response to our initial request, but I know that there are thousands upon thousands of women out there who have really severe pain and really severe cramps. We know that marijuana works very, very well for it. I think we’ve gone on to prove that it does give relief to women with our products.
- You don’t have to smoke our products. You could rub our products. Whoopi & Maya’s not trying get you high, but we do know that marijuana is a really good pain relief medicine. So, hopefully we can convince lots of people who know nothing about menstrual cramps or menstrual cycles to take a listen to folks that actually do, maybe even some women who’ve actually had them, to say, “Hey, yeah, you want to include this and get out of this thought process that woman are just trying to find a way to get high with marijuana.” They don’t need the doctor to prescribe it for them in order to do that.
- Borchardt:
- Your product really does fit with the rules and regulationss for New York because we know that Governor Cuomo was really set against smoking. He really was not comfortable with that at all and pushed hard for them to keep that out.
- Goldberg:
- Yes. But again, trying to get people to pay attention to just the menstrual cycle conversation and it just freaks everyone out. So, we’re just hoping that they will be freaked out enough to say, “Yes, whatever you want. Just put it on.”
- Borchardt:
- “Just quit talking about it. Do something.
- Goldberg:
- Just put it in there. The other striking thing is that in this world that we live in, I think Midol was created in 1911. Maybe Pamprin is the other thing. So, those are the two things that people can take for their menstrual pain.
- Borchardt:
- Or medicate with alcohol, which really isn’t going to do anyone any good.
- Goldberg:
- Yes, or try to take some of these other way too strong drugs that you don’t need to be taking. So, that should tell people that there is a need. Women have a need to find a way to up their ..productivity.
- If you’re a cramps sufferer, you’re missing at least two days a month of work. Oftentimes, women will just power through. But there are those days when you just can’t. So, if they will help us, say to women, “Here’s something, here’s an alternative that will allow you to continue at work, you can do everything you need to do and nothing is getting you high or altering your state,” this might be helpful.
- But I think that when you talk about pain, and I don’t know if you’d call monthly pain, I guess that’s chronic. But when you talk about chronic pain, this should be one of the things that people talk about and they haven’t. It seems so odd to me. But then I look at the folks oftentimes who have created a lot of the bills and they’re not people who might be dealing with period pain.
- Borchardt:
- How is your product doing in California?
- Goldberg:
- It’s doing very well. We seem to be in many, many dispensaries now and we are planning to go into Colorado and have a lot of nice expansion plans. The bottom line is women all over the country are screaming at us going, “Please, please, please, please.” When you read our website, we just put up what people say about the product. We haven’t gotten a lot of negative return on it and people, they’re not fooling around with this because people are so desperate for it.
- It’s the word of mouth. It spread all over the world and it’s kind of crazy to see someone from Venezuela saying, “Are we ever going to have access to this?” We can only go place by place because that’s the law. We can’t mail it to you. So, it’s a little bit slow going in. We’re not a sexy product. We don’t have internet gazillionaires saying, “Here, take this million dollars or $5 million and do what you need to do.” We’re not getting that from folks. So, we’re just doing the best we can and we’re doing all right.
- Borchardt:
- But to your point that you are targeting this specific ailment and there are not that many products that are targeting this specific ailment.
- Goldberg:
- I hope it works for as many people who try it. Now, it may not work for everybody. But it’s a least a start. That’s how I’m looking at it. So, I’m hoping that we can make the New York legislature understand why this is important because we do meet all of those criteria. But I also hope that at some point, they recognize that not everybody can ingest cannibis the same way. Some people do need to smoke it. Some people do need to ingest it in, not pill form, what is it called, the capsule form.
- Borchardt:
- I appreciate you taking the time to talk to me.
- Goldberg:
- Thank you for talking to me again. I do appreciate all that y’all have done. I just want to say thank you for that because once I think people started to realize that this was really legitimate and it wasn’t some sort of weird, roundabout way of getting people stoned, and part of that is because of the articles that you write and the people we talk to. So, I just want to say thank you for all your help.
