In week 10 we sat with Tom Brown, co-founder of Honahlee who is an advocate for cannabis as natural aid for people’s health and fitness.

Tom is a cannabis enthusiast and a digital marketer. Tom loves to trawl through cannabis research, documenting cannabis truths and myths.

Tom started consuming cannabis at an early age for recreational purposes. However, he quickly realised that people were using cannabis as natural aid, including health, wellness and medicine.

In 2012, a back problem from years of sport started to rear its head. Where once cannabis was simply smoking a joint for fun, it became a tool for relaxation, pain management and mental health for the couple. Tom’s wife, Cara has Fibromyalgia. Tom introduced Cara to medicinal CBD which ended up being a life-changing medication for her. Tom stopped smoking cannabis and began using oil and edibles to manage his back pain. He has reduced alcohol intake in favour of cannabis which has had a significant impact on his health and fitness. Findings from previous research demonstrate that many patients with treatment-resistant neuropathic pain have found CBD to be a useful treatment. It was shown to improve their overall pain levels and sleep quality.

All of these experiences led Tom to form Honahlee in 2019 with his business partner. Honahlee was founded with a vision to create a world where everyone accepts cannabis as natural aid for health and wellbeing. Honahlee has helped thousands of Australians learn about and access cannabis medicine.

Key Points

1:48 – While growing up in New York, Tom Brown started using cannabis as a recreational drug during his teenage. After moving to Australia, he conducted a survey and realized that individuals lacked even the basic knowledge of cannabis. While utilizing his experience in the domain of digital marketing, he created Honahlee in 2019 with the sole purpose of educating Australian citizens and enhancing their health experience.

8:44 – Tom praised the presence of good educational content on Netflix regarding cannabis usage in US and insisted that the same needs to be replicated in Australia.

10:18 – While answering a question, he praised the role of local cannabis industry experts and talked about the need of a campaign to change drug driving laws. He informed the audience that while Most of the content on website revolves around the frequently asked questions, the main queries revolved around driving laws, access and clinics.

14:30 – Tom spoke in detail about the differences between medical cannabis market in US and Australia. He believed that the poor patient care was imminent in Australia where a card was thrust in a patient’s hands without adequate guidance.

16:17 – Tom spelled out the other end of spectrum with limited access and discouraging attitude of doctors. He asserted that once prescribed, the doctors needed to guide the patients properly.

19:16 – Tom agreed that US does not have same level of scrutiny as that of Australia. He believed that instead of focusing on cannabinoids and terpenes, the industry should be focused solely on CBD and THC alone. He threw light on extremely challenging and weird approach in Australia as compared to overseas.

21:37 – Tom spoke about the villainization of cannabis in Australia and clarified that the diverse nature of cannabis usage is the missing link. He illustrated that since everyone from doctors to nurses to ex-professional athletes are using it, therefore, this stigma needed to end. He also explained that Honahlee was a platform for educating the conscious cannabis consumer.

26:53 – Tom demonstrated viewing positive trend in the legalized recreational usage so as to ease out the access issues along with the problematic driving laws.

32:25 – Tom strongly believed that it was still a long way to go in the legal domain. He gave the example of Tasmania where people could drive after consuming cannabis legally.

34:24 – While giving a time frame for legal usage, Tom hoped that it would be legalized by February 2025.

36:16 – Tom agreed that CBD would be legalized first and that ACT will be the first state to actually legalize the recreational side.

40:01 – Tom spelled out that through intricate data analysis, the reservations of people regarding possible public health decay with the legalization of CBD could be answered quite conveniently.

Honahlee: https://honahlee.com.au/