CANNABIS AND SOCIAL MEDIA WITH TIFFANY WATKINS

Christina: Hello everyone and welcome to another episode of I am Christina DiArcangelo. And with me should be a familiar face and voice, Tiffany Watkins. Hi Tiff, thank you for joining us today.

Tiffany: Hey. Hello. I am so happy to be back here. I always love my time.

Christina: And we always have so much. We just released the mental health awareness podcast that we shot together last month for this month. We have a couple more days left here in Mental Health Awareness Month. And today we're not going to talk about Mental Health Awareness Month although it does cause some anxiety for someof us, which aligns well with the month. But we're going to talk about what is happening still in the cannabinoid space as it relates to professionals that are working into the space and what happens to them in social media because we still have a problem. Do you want to start off Tiff?

Tiffany: Yeah. This is something that I know I not only battle in my own dealings, workings, business and career, but I also coach people on this and teach about this the terms and conditions of Google and social media, meaning Meta, even Twitter, LinkedIn and some others, we get a really hard time. Those of us who work in the cannabis space, whether it's plant touching, whether it's research, education, the algorithms all read us as the same. So, we are forced to have to try to look for platforms that are friendly to us. Right now, I think LinkedIn is probably the one that's the friendliest. Twitter is close in second as they've opened up. But the big battle is your Meta group is the Facebook and Instagram. That's a huge battle for getting our word out, even being able to advertise our services that are non-plant touching. So, this is a pretty big subject for many businesses and even people who are ancillary.So, this is a really big subject. 

Christina: Yeah. So, I'm just going to bring up some of the things that recently happened to us at APA, which for our viewers and listeners, I think by now you probably know what that acronym means. It’s Affinity Patient Advocacy. And you all know that we always say the acronyms because it's such a long name of a company, it's easier just to say APA or ABP for Affinity Bio Partners. So, what really put us in a spiral just recently this week was that we had released a press release out there. So, it went out to EIN. That's who we use for our press for all of the companies. We had developed a press release that talks about our women executive board. This is the first time in the history of Affinity Patient Advocacy that we have a woman led executive board. So, we created this nice littlegraphic showing who we were.

APA the title of the press release, which is a woman executive Board for Affinity Patient, all women. That's all it said.Nothing about cannabis. And then we talked about why we did what we did. We had quotes in there from Tiffany, Melissa Frain, who is our secretary, obviously CD over here. And when I tried to boost the post, because we'retrying to create an awareness about APA and how we really are a heart cantered organization, we lead by examplewith having an executive woman only board. That's all this press release was about. And I got banned from trying to boost this post. Then I said, okay, Tiffany, I got on.

We were talking with Melissa about some other APA business, and we decided that I would then try to boost the mental health podcast that we shot, which I mentioned in the beginning of this podcast. So, we shared that one, which, again, we boosted. And we talked about, if you haven't already watched it or listened to it, we talked about mental health, we talked about nutraceuticals, we talked about APA. We did not talk about anything illegal, if youwill, and we did not talk about cannabinoids. And just to remind everybody, CBD is legal in the United States, which is where we are. And the space that we play in is the hemp space. So, 0.03% falling under the federal bill, which means we're legal. So, help me understand, and help us understand how we keep getting blocked out from these types of ads that we're placing because we advocate for cannabis patients. That's it. 

Tiffany: It's unfortunate, but like I said, even those of us who don't touch plants, we fall victim to the algorithm. They dig into the accounts, the accounts, their associations, tagging, hash tagging, all those things, and then it makes a decision and then spits out a result. And I've always wagered that there should be a better process to approving and denying what gets to go out on social media. I understand. I think the age gap or age gate for Facebook and Instagram is what, 13 years old and up. Obviously, they have to protect the youth that are coming on to enjoy their platforms, right? So, in cannabis, we have to make a concerted effort to understand the audience. We have to work within that regular guideline of perception. We perceive the audience to be of age for given product, whatever. And so, in that, I understand, no, you don't postpictures of flower, THC products, edibles consumption, things like that. But there are so many people that do, and that aids in the algorithm, kind of making a blanket decision and ruling yes or no in aggregate based on a few factors that pop up in the mathematics, right? I say this everywhere, be careful of your content, especially when you're in the cannabis space, because think of it in a whole approach. Think of the people who are doing the research for medicines. Think of the people who have products that are right now protected by the Federal Farm Bill. Think about that when you're posting, because one of us affects all of us in this space. And shadow banning, which if you don't know what a shadow ban is, that is when you don't appear in searches, your content isn't at the top of the list. Your hashtags are dead, so you can be hashtag Tiffany and you'll never see Tiffany. Those types of things are just a precursor to losing your entire account. And if you don't know what that looks like, that's going in, logging into your account and finding nothing. No followers, no content. And you know that you have been completely banned. You'll even receive an email oftentimes to the email associated with your account telling you you violated terms and conditions and you are now banned. And it's a fight to have to get back your you can use your network to get back your account, but it's a lot to go through when you're just trying to spread the message of awareness and education and things like that. So, we have to really take that holistic approach and go, okay, if it's one of us, it's all of us here in the cannabis space, because that's how we're viewed.

Christina: Yep, and I just want to bring up a point about research, right? Because obviously that's one of our main components of what we do with these companies. And you know that the listeners and viewers know that APA helps patients get in clinical trials. If they so desire to be in a clinical study, they can come to us. Now, it does not always mean it's a cannabis study. It could be a traditional pharma study. It depends on how they come to us and what they want. And that's how we service our patients in the CRO world with Affinity Bio Partners when we were trying to recruit diabetic neuropathy study. And yes, it was a cannabinoid-based therapy that we were researching. And this is all out there, so this is public. I'm not saying anything confidential. I had a heck of a time. And Tiff will tell you, because she sits on the board for APA and works alongside all these other companies. When I was trying to recruit subjects, my ads wouldn't always be placed where they should have been placed, which doesn't make a lot of sense because let’s just think about what we're doing. We’re running a clinical study, right?  Yes, it's with cannabinoids. Yes, we're following the regulatory requirements that we have to to do clinical research, because guess who's behind it? I've been doing this for how many years. I follow the rules and the laws. Right? So why is it okay for big pharma to advertise their advertisements about their drug that they're studying, whatever it would be, schizophrenia or otherwise. How come they can gladly put these things on Meta? I know, I see them all the time about especially PTSD. see PTSD all the time. Okay. How come I can click on their ad and see all these things about their enrolment and whatever else they're doing, right? They're following the rules as it relates to clinical research. So, I'm not knocking them, let me be clear. But here I'm doing the same thing with cannabinoids and I'm having a problem and it's a pharma company behind me that's hired us, right to do this work that is in the space legit doing clinical research, which is what the supposed other people that oppose us say. There's not enough research, we need more research while we are trying to do research. And again, you're talking on both sides of your freaking mouth. I can't even publicize the fact that I'm trying to recruit my subjects. 

Tiffany: Right. No, it's absolutely insane. And I liked how you say they're talking out of both sides of their mouths and effectively they are. Here we are, we have the hemp, CBD, we have the Delta-8, we have these things that are allowable under the Federal Farm Bill, but on the opposite side from the same plant, we have the federal government saying for the schedule of drugs, this is a schedule one drug. And so effectively it is out of both sides of the mouth because and for the listeners, I don't know if you are savvier to cannabis or not, really cannabis is just one plant. Hemp, THC, CBD, CBN, all of the different constituents of cannabis, all the cannabinoids, this really exists in one plant. And so effectively we're constantly splitting hairs, so to speak. And it is very confusing and it does trickle down to our usage of media platforms such as social media and or Google for your websites, your SEO and these types of things. And we do need to find a way to challenge this. I won't call it a battle because I think it's just really a form of understanding. We need to come to an agreement. Why can a pharmaceutical company advertise what they are doing, what they are using to cure or want to see if they can cure patients, but a cannabinoid research firm cannot, even though they're using something that is allowable by federal government only and reaching the same patients? But we can't say this out loud, so to speak, because we don't get the same platform. And so, I think that we all need to really come together and try to figure out what looks best and what works best. And then that's just me. I'm the ever-living activist. I think we need to come together and start writingand start presenting and start lobbying for change and difference because here in the United States, we need more research, we need it from every angle and we need that understanding and we need to be able to include thepeople, but they don't get to see us.

Christina: I mean, I was even talking about this with Dan Safara last week. I got invited onto his podcast Clinical Trials Guru and I love talking to Dan because Dan reached out to me back in 2016 when I first got into the research space in cannabinoids. And that was pretty brave of him because he's a traditional guy, right? But he was in Southern California, where when you're in California, your lifestyle is so different compared to some of the other states, right? So, he was more accepting to Cannabinoids than, say, another traditional person. Pardon me, but last week I was on his show, and he wanted me to give an update on what we're doing and all this great stuff that we've been working on. And he asked me point blank in that podcast shoot, what's going on with research? Why isn't there more research, Christina? Why aren't people doing more research? And then, of course, he talked to me about CVS fiasco of them pulling the plug on their clinical research. Obviously not Cannabinoid based, but we'rejust talking about research in general. And the reason why I'm bringing that point up is it costs a lot of money to do clinical research. And it's not because we're taking all of your money as a CRO or Affinity Patient Advocacy, as your recruitment arm to help you find your subjects, or SA, Spectral Analytics Precision telemonitoring your EDC or ePRO platform. We're reasonable providers. We cost far, far less than what some of our other competitor’s cost.We're not eating up your money. It's all the other things that are involved with having insurance, patent protection, all the things that you have to pay for that cost a lot of money. And keep in mind, folks, we have to follow what the regulators tell us to do when we're doing drug development. So, if you're working in the United States and the FDAsays they want a certain thing; we have to do that. That costs money. It can't be done for free. No one does anything for free unless you're a non-profit like us. We work for free. So, research costs money. So, these people want to say they want research, right? Everybody wants research, but nobody gets behind it from a financial standpoint, you have to go out and try and find your own funding. And we just talked about how hard it is to work in Cannabinoids to begin with as a professional. Imagine trying to raise the money for it, and we have the employee, like what's happening right now with the cannabis space in general, with all the grower processors and triple stacks and all these licensing’s and things that are happening all over. We already have that problem, and everybody'sworried about the financial forecast there, and I can't even get money for research. I said from the beginning, if they would have gotten into research, these triple stacks in the beginning, we would be further along. Instead, they decided to make the guap and just put it in their pocket. So now here we are, and we're still talking research.

Tiffany: Yes.

Christina: Basically, Tiff and I wanted to come on here and talk about what's been happening in the space and have you understand that this is happening and there's conflicting messaging that's going out there because there's press that says, oh, we let you advertise, don't worry. We let you advertise on Google, we let you advertise on Amazon, we let you advertise on Beta. But in fact, it's not true. We're here to tell you it's not true. We're just regular professionals working in this space. You'll never see us smoking or doing anything. That's propaganda, so to speak.It's all educational, face things that we put up that's relative to cannabis.

Tiffany: Right.

Christina: And we're still having a problem

Tiffany: and we're still having that problem. So I think that when I think of a call to

action, because as your listeners probably know, that's where I live, we got to have the action behind all this. The call to action is really examine what you're posting on social media. Let's help each other out altogether by makingsure that our posts do go by the guidelines and that we are talking about. If you're plant touching, don't link your profiles to your menus, link it to you about, talk about your team, don't advertise your sales, don't do things like put cannabis usage on your social media. Help other folks out who are trying to get information out there by us all just easing back and allowing the algorithms to see us in a different way. I know it's not the most popular opinion and Iunderstand it, it's not very exciting, but it is necessary. These are very necessary steps for cannabis as a whole in this country. There's a lot of ups and downs, there's a lot of regulatory systems, poor taxation, all sorts of things. We could talk an hour and a half about that. But what we really need is a fighting chance. And that is only something that we can give to ourselves. And so, it's going to take us all.

Christina: And I think the other call to action, too, is for the dispensary partners that are out there that I'm sure are viewing us and listening to us, watching Tiff alluded to that initially when she was talking about growing and such.I'm coming from this research side now, trying to hit you there because guess what? When we are running studies, it would be great if the local dispensaries around that clinical trial site would at least just take our flyer and put it up in the dispensary. Because at the end of the day, they are there because they're supposed to be helping patients and they believe in cannabinoid plant medicine, right? That's why they exist. Well, if that is the case, then help usout because we help you out by doing what we do every day, advocating for patients, having an electronic system that's validated that's QA'd that fires queries and all kinds of things to make sure we're doing everything we're supposed to be doing. And lastly, advocating for the patients to educate them based on the fallacies that they haveout there, that they are reading all over the place, that's just simply not true. Help us out. If we're going to do this, we've got to do it together to Tiff's point.

Tiffany: 100%.

Christina: We have to come together. We have to stop segregating each other. I know when I first came into the space in the research side of things, I scared people. People were like, oh my god, this lady, she's worked on FDA stuff. She's going to be in us constantly saying, don't do this. It wasn't because I was trying to be the don't sir. It was because I was trying to make sure that when we kept going down this pathway, which we're still on, that we are doing everything by the book so that we can go back to the FDA and say, hi, FDA. Hi, guys. Guess what? We just worked on this thing and it worked. And let's talk about it. And let's talk about the platform and the way that we could go ahead to say, for example, help pain patients without having to give them Oxy or Gaba or Lyrica or any of the other things that are out there. Prednisone. There's all kinds of things people are taking. Let's look at alternatives.That's all we're asking for. Give us a chance.

Tiffany: 100%. That's it. So, call out to all my dispensary partnerships and network. And if you can work with us, if you can spread the word for us, you guys know where I am You can always find me on LinkedIn. Just look for the mohawk. Yeah, seriously, we'd love to hear from you.

Christina: For real, seriously. I mean, we're working on a big educational event that we're going to be having in Miami. I'm just going to tip it off right now because TIFF and I are here together. And as you guys know, or ladies, gals, everyone, whatever you call yourself, I don't mean to be unpolitic ally correct when I say guys. It's just I'm from Philly. We say guys, and we're going to be doing our Miami event, and it's going to be a cannabis educational event.And APA is the company that's putting that out with all of our other companies that will be supporting all the teams will be coming down to Miami. And our ask is again that we have the right partners in play, from sponsorship to attendance, et cetera. Help us get the word out so that we aren't going to have to keep having these podcasts to explain these things that are happening, because the viewers have no idea why we're upset. They don't know. 

Tiffany: That's true.

Christina: Well, thank you so much, Tiff, for coming on. I love your pearls of knowledge, and you don't even have pearls on today, bling bling. But thank you so much for taking time out of your very busy schedule to meet with me to talk about this very important topic because we've been talking about this forever, and it just kind of came to the head when we were just trying to do little things with APA. And we said we've had enough.

Tiffany: I'm absolutely happy to be here. Absolutely.

Christina: Okay. Well, with that, as we always say, remember, we are the same. I am Christina Di Arcangelo. Thank you for joining us today.