Jude Thilman
Integrating Cannabis into Mainstream Medicine
by Jude Thilman & Joyce Perlman | photos by Joyce Perlman
Jude Thilman, a medicinal cannabis educator with over 20 years of experience in the cannabis industry and co-founder of Dragonfly Wellness Center, is nothing if not practical. She ardently believes in health care as a human right and sees a return to traditional, herbal medicine as heralding the death knell for a “pharmaceutical-dominant” approach to treating “dis-ease.” At the same time, she recognizes that, “Western medicine, or allopathy, is not going away tomorrow.” One focus of her cannabis educational work is to build bridges between allopathic medical practitioners and traditional healers who utilize cannabis in their practices.
Jude herself is a cannabis patient and a former coastal cultivator. Before joining the Mendocino cannabis community, she spent two decades working for social justice causes globally, including publishing stories about the anti-war and civil rights movements while in high school, for which she was forbidden to write for the school newspaper. Later she worked in South Africa on Nelson Mandela’s presidential campaign, provided support for women activists running a domestic violence hotline in Budapest, and served as the Director of the Marin County Human Rights Coalition Against Hate Violence, in addition to many other projects.
Jude became involved in the cannabis community after moving to the Mendocino Coast in 2003. She was dismayed that, while there was a large amount of global research on healing properties of cannabis, in the U.S. there was very little information available to the public about its medicinal value. This, in spite of the fact that there are written records on the healing properties of cannabis for over 5,000 years. This “missing story” is changing, though, as modern science is increasingly recognizing cannabis as an herb and not a drug. The National Institutes of Health identifies over 540 chemical compounds in the cannabis plant. These compounds come together to provide many healing benefits on a root level. Jude reflects, “If medical practitioners are willing to partner with traditional herbalists and healers, it would be a significant step forward. Couldn’t today’s healing practices include elements of both? For example, osteopathic doctors and chiropractors are clearly not very interested in using pharmaceutical drugs, and they have been accepted into Western practice.” Jude isn’t the first to think this way, and she won’t be the last. Herbalists are already taking huge steps to integrate cannabis into their herbal healing practices.
Jude Thilman, a medicinal cannabis educator with over 20 years of experience in the cannabis industry and co-founder of Dragonfly Wellness Center, is nothing if not practical. She ardently believes in health care as a human right and sees a return to traditional, herbal medicine as heralding the death knell for a “pharmaceutical-dominant” approach to treating “dis-ease.” At the same time, she recognizes that, “Western medicine, or allopathy, is not going away tomorrow.” One focus of her cannabis educational work is to build bridges between allopathic medical practitioners and traditional healers who utilize cannabis in their practices.
Jude herself is a cannabis patient and a former coastal cultivator. Before joining the Mendocino cannabis community, she spent two decades working for social justice causes globally, including publishing stories about the anti-war and civil rights movements while in high school, for which she was forbidden to write for the school newspaper. Later she worked in South Africa on Nelson Mandela’s presidential campaign, provided support for women activists running a domestic violence hotline in Budapest, and served as the Director of the Marin County Human Rights Coalition Against Hate Violence, in addition to many other projects.
Jude became involved in the cannabis community after moving to the Mendocino Coast in 2003. She was dismayed that, while there was a large amount of global research on healing properties of cannabis, in the U.S. there was very little information available to the public about its medicinal value. This, in spite of the fact that there are written records on the healing properties of cannabis for over 5,000 years. This “missing story” is changing, though, as modern science is increasingly recognizing cannabis as an herb and not a drug. The National Institutes of Health identifies over 540 chemical compounds in the cannabis plant. These compounds come together to provide many healing benefits on a root level. Jude reflects, “If medical practitioners are willing to partner with traditional herbalists and healers, it would be a significant step forward. Couldn’t today’s healing practices include elements of both? For example, osteopathic doctors and chiropractors are clearly not very interested in using pharmaceutical drugs, and they have been accepted into Western practice.” Jude isn’t the first to think this way, and she won’t be the last. Herbalists are already taking huge steps to integrate cannabis into their herbal healing practices.
Mendocino County is home to many traditional healers who have integrated cannabis into their practice. Wendy Read and Annie Waters are just two of the many herbalists who include cannabis in their healing work. Also, decades-old small, craft cannabis farmers, such as Emerald Spirit Botanicals (winner of the Emerald Cup Regenerative Farm Award), are among those cannabis farmers dedicated to making medicine with cannabis.
Dragonfly Wellness Center is unique in its emphasis on caring for people’s medical needs through the informed, science-based choice of cannabis medicinal products, such as tinctures. Dragonfly itself was inspired by a group of women dedicated to holistic, natural healing in all its forms and modalities. That first group included practitioners of massage, Bowen (a type of touch therapy), cranial-sacral therapists, yoga, and meditation.
From the start, Jude decided against a typical “pot shop,” which usually emphasizes high THC smokables. Instead, Dragonfly sought to be a community resource for people seeking pure and potent cannabis medicines combined with other traditional healing medicines and modalities. Dragonfly believes that, like all healing herbs, cannabis use must be true to the meaning of “holistic.” It must be part of a comprehensive approach that includes nutrition, exercise, movement, music, meditation, spirituality, and all treatments that consider the body as a whole, not a collection of segmented parts.
Dragonfly opened its doors in 2011. As it evolved, Jude developed its educational and patient advisory missions—work she continues to this day. She wants Dragonfly to be a resource for people seeking the education and information they would need to understand how cannabis heals and how best to choose and use their cannabis medicine. While there are few adverse effects from herbal medicine, it is up to the patient to find what works best for them. Jude upholds the #1 rule of herbal medicine—that we are individual metabolisms, not cookie cutters of each other, so patients must find out what ratios of phytocannabinoids and what dosing are best for their individual bodies and needs.
Education is key to Dragonfly’s identity. Jude regularly teaches a free class at Dragonfly called “Cannabis is Medicine: Changing the Narrative.” She studies the science of cannabis medicine, largely drawing from the formative groundwork of the Society of Cannabis Clinicians. This group of professionals from the pharmaceutical industry, allopathic medicine, and traditional healing has produced studies and reports based on lab research, clinical testing, and communications with international colleagues. This last is especially important, as research around cannabis as a healing herb was conducted around the world in countries that did not have a “War on Drugs” that included cannabis.
Thankfully, as more states legalize cannabis, research within the U.S. is growing. Jude has attended cannabis conferences and interviewed leaders in the medicinal cannabis sector of the industry. She featured these interviews in her program, “Cannabis News and Views,” produced by Mendocino TV and broadcast biweekly via the internet in 2022. She also secured funding to take her educational presentations on the road throughout the state, presenting at events such as the Emerald Cup and Cannabis Farmers’ Markets, the 2017 Dandelion Medicine Conference, patient support groups (Cancer, Parkinson’s, vets dealing with PTSD, seniors, and others), hospital community education programs, Chambers of Commerce, civic and professional groups, and everywhere people were open to the changing narrative about cannabis. Over the last ten years, a growing segment of the population has been seeking scientific information about how cannabis heals. Education is the key, and the Mendocino community is finally seeing years of prohibition-defined misinformation slowly dissolve into irrelevance.
Many cannabis farmers incorporate principles of herbal medicine in their growing methods. Unfortunately, state and county regulations after legalization have not been friendly to the medicinal cannabis movement. Small, craft farmers in the Emerald Triangle have been forced to spend all their resources paying exorbitant license and permit fees and taxes, struggling to meet state and county regulations for participation in the commercial cannabis marketplace. And true to a profit-driven system, the commercial cannabis industry prioritizes adult recreational use, which is unfortunately defined by high THC content—not sun-grown, organic, sustainably produced flower, with the requisite combination of chemical compounds needed for healing. It is only through the efforts of groups like Origins Council, which consists of seven county trade associations, that a strong voice exists in Sacramento advocating for small, craft cannabis operators best suited to produce cannabis medicines.
The immediate issues that rural cannabis growers faced in this legalization process, especially in the early years, included helicopter raids, busts by a county prosecutor running his own “pay-to-play” scheme, license fees and taxes well above those commonly charged in any other industry, profiteering by banks and insurance companies, and regulations so burdensome that adherence would bankrupt most small farmers. This has been, and continues to be, a deck that is utterly and completely stacked against them. Small cannabis farmers have had to spend all their time trying to stay alive in this new, “bigger is better” marketplace.
But there was a bright side to these difficult times, as longtime cultivator Nikki Lastreto of Swami Selects noted back in 2017:
Cannabis is what has actually brought together our community in a way that was not possible before. … there is a lot of open space in this county and it can take up to four hours to drive from one end to the other. Hence, it has always been difficult to meet our neighbors, as our ranches are often miles apart. It took the common cause of cannabis to bring us together into an active community. The gift of the many friends I have made through this process is priceless.
Times have changed since Dragonfly opened in 2011. Located in close proximity to the Mendocino Coast Botanical Gardens, Dragonfly hosts ever-growing numbers of cannatourists. The well trained staff offers product guidance, education, and concern for everyone who comes to visit. They are not called “budtenders” but rather “staff counselors,” symbolizing an important difference in what Dragonfly offers to the community. In response to their disillusionment with other dispensaries, customers Anna and Lee Gardner sent the shop a letter of thanks for its “fantastic selection of products,” “excellent prices,” and “location that is easily accessible.” The letter also shared their gratitude: “Thank you for the peace of mind you give us. … We are so grateful for the simplicity, comfort, and ease you have brought to this experience.”
Every day, more and more people are turning to cannabis as medicine. They are disillusioned with the pharmaceutical model: the high cost, the adverse effects, and the ineffectiveness of many “medicines” that do no more than treat symptoms. But the cannabis industry itself is shackled by a lack of scientific information. It continues to operate from its 40-year-old incomplete narrative that, at worst, touts the mystical magic of cannabis as the end-all solution to world problems—solving everything from war and global warming to economic inequality. At its best, the cannabis community knows that cannabis can be both a “recreational” inspiration and a healing herb. But it is threatened by an economic system that will degrade and denigrate the broader value of cannabis in the world.
The next chapter on the fate of the best cannabis in the world, from Mendocino and surrounding producer counties, is yet to be written. Hope, prayers, and this precious community are tasked with keeping cannabis—as it is meant to be alive.
Dragonfly Wellness Center
17975 N Hwy 1, Fort Bragg
(707) 962-0890 | dragonflywellness.org
Open daily 9am - 9pm
Dragonfly photo by Bojh Parker. All other photos by Joyce Perlman.
Jude Thilman is an entrepreneur and medicinal cannabis educator, bringing over 20 years' experience in the cannabis industry. She is ready to retire from Dragonfly and is looking for buyers that share the vision and values of the Mendocino cannabis community. If you are interested, contact Themos Pentakalos—themos@drivemeta.com, (858) 361-6364, www.drivemeta.com.
Joyce Perlman is a photographer living in Mendocino. In 2022 her photographs of Jude were selected as one of the chapters for the One in Six project, which examines how 25% of the workforce will be 55 or older by 2030 (1in6by2030.com/stories/a-journey-of-activism). See more of Joyce's work at jperlmanphotography.com.
