Facing the Fire: John Vought's Crusade for CBD in First Responder Care

Jerry Dean Lund: 0:15

All right, welcome to Enduring the Badge Podcast. My very special guest today is John Vote. How are you doing, john, great man? Thank you for having me on. Yeah, I'm super excited to talk about this topic. That's pretty new to the first responder world. We're going to talk about John's company. I'll let John explain who he is and what company he represents. Go ahead, john.

Jon Vought: 0:40

Yeah, I have 14 years on the job in South Florida. I'm a firefighter paramedic. I currently hold the rank of captain and I, in my time on the department, just went through a lot of issues with this foot surgery. I had and had some sleep issues and I started the company Rescue One CBD. We make CBD that is safe for the job by taking the THC down to 0.000% in the main ingredient. That is CBD. I'm sorry, 0.000% THC. So THC causes failed drug tests and so we mitigate that by removing that down to 0.000%. And we've been in business for three years. We've had thousands of firefighters use our products with zero failed drug tests, so we're really proud of that.

Jerry Dean Lund: 1:31

Yeah, that's awesome. I mean, so now we can get right into this, because, like, how do you get the THC out of the CBD?

Jon Vought: 1:41

Yeah, and it's kind of like a word salad, you know like the THC, and CBD so all of the. That's the tricky part and really what it comes down to is lab work, laboratory work. Hemp naturally has THC in it. That's where we make CBD from. We don't make it from marijuana, we make it from hemp, and the reason is is because CBD is more prevalent in hemp, so it's more cost effective to farm and harvest hemp flower, since you're starting off with like a good amount of CBD in it already and then, once we get there, we have to extract all the CBD out and we also have to make sure that we remove the THC from it after we extract the CBD. So basically, what we're doing is we're testing it throughout the manufacturing process while we're doing the THC remediation stuff. We have to test it during manufacturing, we have to test it once it's done and then, once we bottle it, I have to make sure that my fireman math didn't screw up everything, that I got the right amount in the bottle and also that we have that true 0.000% THC mark and we take a lab test from a third party. So they're unaffiliated. They are a DEA certified lab. They're regulated by the federal government. They report these numbers and then we take a QR code attached to that lab test, throw it on the bottle so that you can scan it and see. So all three lab tests that we do have to match up, they all have to show that 0.000 number and then we actually send it at home drug test with every order so that people can see for themselves, because we want them to feel that extra layer of confidence. I don't want you to take my word for it. I don't want you to take anybody's word. I don't want you to buy gas station CBD. And you're like yeah, the guy at the shell said that this stuff is going to pass the drug test. So that's the goal of the company is to just provide the best quality while being extremely transparent about how we do it and letting everyone see the process as much as possible. The laboratory side of it, like how we actually do it is like a whole hazmat course. They use machines called high pressure or high performance, either one HPLC, high performance, liquid chromatography, and you can extract compounds at a molecular level through that. So we turn CBD, we take hemp flour and we take it all the way down to turning it into a powder. The CBD molecule is when you isolate it it's like a little crystalline and we get it 99.75% just CBD and just looks like sugar.

Jerry Dean Lund: 4:34

It's pretty cool looking actually. Yeah, I didn't know that. Actually that would turn into a cranial Like yeah. I only see it right and just in the where you know, in a product or in the liquid.

Jon Vought: 4:49

Yeah, well, you know, and if you really wanted to get into it you could. There's so many forms you can turn it into. If you extract it straight from the flour it's like a syrup and you know it's called crude and it looks like crude oil and you can refine it a little bit. It's like untaste, like you can't even taste it. It has chlorophyll in it. It's got all the fats and waxes. They refine at one point after that and it turns into a distillate. So it distills down into. They get rid of all the chlorophyll and some of the fats and waxes and then it's more palatable and a lot of people just take that right there and put it in like products. That's called full spectrum CBD. It's got a lot of THC in it. Okay, but not enough to make you feel high, but enough to make you feel a drug test. We take it, pass a distillate and go down to isolate. So we isolate just CBD. We take all of the other stuff out and we take the CBD molecule and isolate it down and make that the main ingredient of the product.

Jerry Dean Lund: 5:49

Yeah, that's awesome and that's kind of fascinating to me and hopefully it's fascinating to listen to get that extra education about what they're taking and why you work so hard to get the THC out. So going back to like, yeah, you don't want to take just anybody's word for it or buy it just at any place, because you could definitely run the risk of having THC in it?

Jon Vought: 6:14

Yeah, 100%. And if you Google it, you'll see a bunch of horror stories from around the country not necessarily firefighters, but truck drivers and the like, people buying CBD products thinking they were going to be fine and they ended up failing a drug test.

Jerry Dean Lund: 6:29

Yeah, which is life altering when it comes to that state. So you had an injury, I guess. Is that what you got you into the CBD? Like looking into that?

Jon Vought: 6:41

Yeah, it wasn't an injury. I was born. My foot was actually really, really crooked and it got worse over time to the point where, you know, it was basically extremely flat-footed but also walking on the instep of my foot. It became really painful and in my 20s, my back and my hip and my knee started getting very serious pain, to the point where it was hard to stay on my feet while running calls and after like five or six runs I was already like needing to sit down and stuff. And I was like 26 years old, you know. So what the hell is going on? Fast forward, a few years later. That's how long I waited to get the surgery. You know I got that done and I had to take opiates for a while and I'm sure a lot of our listeners have had to go through this. but getting on opiates is rough. The addictive side of it is very real, obviously, but you know how it affects your sleep is what really lingered with me even after I stopped. I had withdrawals, but I didn't have them to the point where it was addictive Like I was. It was debilitating me. What really ruined my I guess circadian rhythm and everything else after was the opiates that affected my sleep, and so for weeks and months after, my sleep cycles were absolutely ruined, for it seemed like way too long. I figured I was like I've already gone through all the withdrawal phase, a lot of my sleep still so bad. Well, I had to do a lot of research. You know, if you're, if you're on the fire department or first responder, you can have a prescription for any sleep medication or even Xanax for sleep, and it's very accepted and even encouraged. You know if you have sleep issues, but you can't have a prescription for THC in most places. You can't fail a drug test from marijuana. You can fail a drug test for benzodiazepines if you're taking Xanax for sleep. You know, which blew my mind, because when I asked the city doctor I was like, hey, so if I take Xanax for sleep on a Wednesday and I work on a Thursday. He's like that's fine, but it's going to be in my system. I'm going to fail a drug test. How do you know I'm not intoxicated at work? It's still in my urine. You know what I mean? Right, it's weird that they use that argument for marijuana. They're like we can't tell if you're intoxicated. You can't tell Xanax either, but you're okay with me taking that, you know, because I have a script. So I just went down this rabbit hole and I started researching what other alternatives there are. I didn't necessarily I'm not a very I'm not, I wasn't a proponent of THC. I didn't really see anything wrong with it, I just didn't want to use it. And I started looking at sleep stuff and I found CBD. I was like I can't take this because I'm going to fail a drug test. So, you know, it ended up being something that I was very interested in and did a lot of research. I actually worked for another CBD company for a short amount of time online and then I started my own and but it wasn't for firefighters. I was selling full spectrum and I got to know the industry really well and then, talking to a lot of scientists and lab techs that were very, very intelligent, you know, talking about that crystalline form and what you could do to bring it down to those safe levels, I was like man, we could make this for firefighters. And then I launched Rescue on CBD in 2020. So it took a lot of like prodding and a lot of my own hesitation from it from within the industry itself, Like I was in the industry and I couldn't even. I was like I don't even know if we can do this. You know, you take a firefighter who's got no background in business and no background in labs, lab or chemistry or anything like that, and just asking people questions and learning, and that's how we ended up here.

Jerry Dean Lund: 10:32

Yeah. Yeah, I've taken CBD products off and on and had some good results of CBD products, but, like obviously we're talking about, not all of them are created the same, so why? Why is CBD so effective for ones, I guess? Do you want to start?

Jon Vought: 10:56

we can start with sleep, yeah, Sleep is the biggest one that I see our customers wanting it for, and you know there's a few things to bring up. One CBD is never going to be a panacea. It can't work for everyone because it's so complex why people are having sleep issues. You know if you Google sleep and any supplement you can think of sleep and magnesium, sleep and olive oil. You know you're going to have like good and bad stuff that comes up with it as a result of that Google search. So you know there's so much that comes into sleep and so that's one. It can't be a panacea just because of you know what is causing your circadian rhythm upset in the first place. But two dosing has to be on point. There's a lot of studies and Dr Matt Walker, who I was reference, is like one of the senior, foremost experts on sleep. He wrote a book called why we Sleep. Every first responder should read it. It's really impressive. It's actually kind of depressing, though if you're a first responder, you're just telling me I'm going to be unhealthy for the rest of my life. I've read two pages about how I can't fix this. How often healthy I am. No it is good. It is good read, but he had mentioned a lot about CDs, pretty educated on it, and one of the things he noticed was that if you take less than 25 milligrams it actually is terrible for your sleep. It has a wake promoting effect, which is fascinating to me, but over 25 milligrams it will induce REM sleep a little bit deeper for a few reasons that he's assuming and it's one is it drops your body temperature slightly and it quiets down a portion in your brain, the amygdala, that deals with fear and stress and things like that. And it has this effect on serotonin that it increases the levels of serotonin naturally in your body. Serotonin is like the feel good hormone. So the combination of these things at night before you go to bed with that feeling of relaxation and maybe I don't know if you have, I'm sure most of us have, you definitely have is laying in bed and like the thoughts start reeling up. I got, I got $2 in your barking and background. You know your brain starts spinning up and you can't stop it. So it's assumed that the mitigation of those things are what help fall asleep. The decrease in temperature slightly is what helps you stay asleep, and then there's other mechanisms that they just don't know about yet, but you know there's. There's studies in humans and animals where they both had improved REM and non-REM times and woke up feeling more rested and actually were able to fall asleep quicker. So that's kind of like the short story of it. The other things that it's really beneficial is inflammation and mood the mood thing we kind of talked about. Where has an effect on serotonin, which is wild, because there is just reference after reference after reference and CBD is cited in hundreds of these other studies about how it affects the serotonin receptor. And this is like what anti-anxiety and anti-depression medications work on. They work on your serotonin receptors, you know. So it's really fascinating that they have this, this effect, and that also that it's been reproduced for decades I mean you're talking 20, 30 years now, just over and over again where in human and animal models that CBD has this prominent effect on that 5-HT serotonin receptor. So pretty cool. But same thing, it's dose dependent. You can't take anything less than 33 milligrams. It really doesn't do anything. And then the last one is inflammation. A lot of people think CBD is like a analgesic and it's not. It has nothing to do with pain. You know THC is the one that actually stops your perception of pain, your perception of pain. But CBD just reduces inflammation and a lot of people get pain relief when they reduce inflammation, like specifically arthritis, but doesn't necessarily go after the way your brain perceives pain, like the way your nerve endings are ascending pain. It stops chronic inflammation, which is also known as oxidative stress. So it almost like oxidation and anti-oxidation, like oxidants and antioxidants. It goes in and tries to balance that out. So over time it reduces that chronic stress. And for me that's the huge one for first responders. Longevity, because if you run calls after midnight you're in a state of inflammation, you know. If you are physically stressed out, you know like you know working when you're supposed to be sleeping, that's also inflammatory. And poor diet, which a lot of us eat after midnight and do a lot of stuff, and when we come home we just like gorge our faces and fall asleep. It's very cyclical. These sleep things cause inflammation and inflammation causes bad sleep. So I see that as being a big benefit to first responders as well as trying to affect that inflammation cycle, and so CBD could come in and be a really powerful tool for us if we can attack those things at the end of the earlier in our career that we started, you know, hopefully the longer we can reap those benefits. Like I would like to see the you know the average age of retired firefighters and first responders kind of go up a little bit.

Jerry Dean Lund: 16:23

Yeah, yeah, that would be awesome. You have some really good points on a backup on some of them, because I want to go a little bit deeper. So I have a habit of just wrapping fog.

Jon Vought: 16:33

I'll just start firing up Runaway train, so stop me whenever.

Jerry Dean Lund: 16:37

No, it's totally good, totally good. So I'd taken. This is could be why I didn't have the reaction to a CBD that I wanted to, so I took the CBD was combined with melatonin at that point that I was taking and it was in a in a gummy and so it was has a weird effect on me where I would actually like you were talking about I'd wired, get there. I got, yeah, I would take it. Like. So I took like that at night. I was still wired and I'm like, okay, then I take the regular CBD just like in the dropper and just take that up and under my tongue. So I'm like, oh man, I have energy there too, and like this is for sleep, this is like a no go for me.

Jon Vought: 17:21

Yeah, totally true, you know. The other thing too is like a lot of it is just experimental, where CBD and melatonin are totally safe to take together. From everything I've read, by the way, melatonin I think is really important for people who, especially like first responders who have been deficient in sleep for a long time. They're probably pretty deficient in melatonin. Like it's not a bad thing to take it, you know, if you're I'm not a doctor, just like the disclaimer, like I'm not medical advice. But you know just from a comp if I'm speaking from a common sense point of view. You know if you're deficient in anything and it's critical to your normal body processes, it would make sense to take it. But so if you're deficient in melatonin from your shitty sleep at work, you know it makes sense to do that. But you know there also is, like these, negative effects that a lot of other people would contest with melatonin. So that I don't know as much about. I do know that. So I'm sure everybody's heard like the stereotypical names of strains for CBD, for marijuana, where they have, like you know, og, hindu Kush and pineapple express and like all these, whatever there's. It's funny that there's also a reason for that they have it's like horses, you know that race where they take like the first name from someone you know, when they take, like you know, couch, or like a sofa's majesty or something like that, you know they take like these two weird names and they put them together. It's because they had two different strains. You know the last name of the previous strain and the first name of the new one and a lot of them are. That's one reason sometimes they just do really have funny names. But the some of these strains you know they have wake promoting effects because they're a sativa blend. Sativa is hemp, that's what you make CBD from, and so the less THC and the more CBD is in it. You know some people were taking like small doses of CBD and they're feeling energized when they would smoke certain strains of marijuana. So they would like you would go in, you know, to your. This is like the like the stereotypical scene from half baked, where these like smoke this one, you know you're going to have like energy, and if you smoke this one, you're going to be locked on the couch. You know, there is, there is we're learning. Now. There is actually some truth to that. I should say there's a lot of truth to that. So what you were describing is basically a, you know, like an and a wake promoting feeling from taking smaller doses of CBD, which I do during the day, like I'll take a small amount during the day, just to you know, have that instead of taking, like my 66 milligram at night. You know.

Jerry Dean Lund: 21:37

So do you like with your products then? Do you have like one, do you give people the dosing they should take for different things, or do you have like different? Like this one's promote sleep, this one's promotes energy both type of yeah, we try to like.

Jon Vought: 21:54

So when you get a box, you get the product. You get some instructions, you get a drug test, you get instructions for the drug test. The instructions will tell you about dosing, about increasing dosing, and then we also have a sleep formula. And the sleep formula is double the dose of our normal formula because a lot of people, you know 25 milligrams is the minimum right, so people would take 33. But everybody's a little bit different and especially if you've been taking it for a long time, you can develop a little bit of a tolerance. It's not huge, but I found that a lot of people that were taking it for sleep are going through this bottle in like 15 days. You know it's 60 bucks for a bottle on a subscription and so my team it's only three of us, but we're like talking about it, like what if we double the dose on this? What is the absolute least amount that we could charge people to get double the dose? So we try to cut the cost of this thing Because I didn't want people paying doubles, like I don't want to have to pay $120 a month to get good sleep I mean don't get me wrong Like it was working, sure you know? Because in my worst state of sleep depression, sleep deprivation, of somebody asked me like would you pay 120 bucks to get good sleep around that? I'd pay like a million dollars to get good sleep. But from a realistic point of view I'm like we're firemen, we're not like loaded here, we're not rich, so what is the least amount? So we double the dose and we only increase to buy 10 bucks. So that's a 2000 milligram bottle or 66 milligrams per serving, and we put a bunch of sleep terpenes in it. And just to talk about that for a second. But terpenes are chemical compounds in a plant that give it its smell. The evolutionary purpose is they're supposed to attract other pollinators. So these smells attract, like bees and bluebirds or wherever, and they'll come by and they'll land on it and they'll go to other plants and pollinate. But they also happen to have these effects and one of them, my favorite one, is called Mercing and it's a sedative. It makes you feel lethargic and kind of tired. So we call it our formula for sleep is called out of service. So it's really not made for shift or, you know, like when you have stuff to do. It's made at night and we put a bunch of Mercing and a bunch of other terpenes in there so that when you they're naturally from the cannabis plant. Except we didn't get them from the cannabis plant, we extracted them from like mangoes and hops and stuff. It's really cool and so, yeah, it is. They exist in a lot of other fruits and flowers, so we got them out of there and we put them in with CBD and at night when you take it it makes you feel tired and then the CBD itself helps you sleep better. So those two things make our sleep formula. But yeah, in general we have instructions also with it where we talk about dosing and I'm very clear like, hey, do not take anything less than a full dropper if you're trying to take it for sleep. Anything else, have at it, you know but little both.

Jerry Dean Lund: 24:54

Yeah, I mean that makes sense. I mean I think your approach to selling the product is great, like, I think it's just, instead of just selling it like oh, here's the bottle and read the little tiny writing on the side of it and have at it. But you know, having some like all the things you put in your kit, basically when they send it to like makes you have a little more confidence, right, that this is potentially could work for me, because someone's actually helping me with the dosing of it instead of just on the screwing around, you know, with it.

Jon Vought: 25:31

Yeah, Well, it's because when I started, I literally just sent a bottle and some bubble wrap and then somebody was like how much do I take? I'm like the writings on the side of the bottle.

Jerry Dean Lund: 25:41

And.

Jon Vought: 25:41

I'm like wait, that's not very helpful. So I put instructions in there. And then some people would keep asking me like how do I know I'm going to pass a drug test? I'm like you will, I promise I test myself once a week. And I'm like oh, where'd you get those? And my buddy came the idea. My buddy, joe, was like you should put one of these drug tests in every order. I'm like that is a fantastic idea. So I buy like thousands of them and I throw them in there. And then people were taking these drug tests and they're like dude, I failed this drug test. I think what? Send me a picture. And it's very clearly a pass. I'm like no, two lines, is it? It's not. It's not like you're pregnant. Like two lines it means you're pregnant, you know. I'm like one line is a fail, two lines is a pass. And I would man, I, jerry, I would have a freaking heart attack every time somebody would text me like I failed this drug test. And I'm like oh no, what happened? Like how could this happen? And I look at it and I'm like that's a pass. And I'm like you know what? I'm going to put instructions in here. So it kind of like again. Firefighter who's got no background in this is learning by crashing his head into the wall and figuring out as he goes. That's why that stuff's in there.

Jerry Dean Lund: 26:51

I mean that's. I think that's awesome. So let's see, we're talking. We talked about sleep and then okay, so inflammation right, inflammation, we know causes a ton of disease. Right, it's a base at most. So many diseases I can't even tell you. So how does CBD work on on the inflammation side of things?

Jon Vought: 27:15

it has a property that it reduces oxidative stress and the, the, the, the pathway, or what they call the mechanism of action, is so complicated like I had to write it down and when I, if I would read it, it would just be a bunch of gibberish. You know, but it basically inhibits, not inhibits, it reduces Oxidation in the body, very similar, like I said, to oxidants and antioxidants. Stopping chronic, stopping chronic stress is reducing what's called Oxidative stress, and oxidative stress is your body oxidizing. You know a lot of cells that that end up turning into what they call free radicals. So free radicals, you know they, they are bouncing around and they crash into stuff. Sometimes DNA and Antioxidants will grab free radicals and stop them from from bouncing all over the place. So CBD does have a little bit of an antioxidant effect as well. So it helps with that. But it's mild. The real, the real power behind its anti-inflammatory stuff is reducing oxidative stress. And you know, to be clear, like inflammation is necessary, we need inflammation. That's the body, that's the immune system's response to things like injury and pain and stuff. But inflammation that stays out of balance and stays high for longer than it's supposed to is called chronic inflammation, not acute inflammation. And chronic inflammation is basically, you know, running your body on red line constantly, you know, and it's like kind of, can you red line your car every once in a while, like if you're trying to get in the fast lane or trying to go around somebody, sure, but if you just laid on the gas the entire time, something's gonna, you're gonna blow out an O-ring. You know what I mean. Like, right, it's, it's not good to to have your body in that state. So the problem is, as first responders, we have no natural mechanism for taking ourselves out of that High chronic inflammation state other than diet, exercise helps a little bit and sleep, but, like Dr Matt Walker would say, every hour I want to say every hour, yes, every hour of sleep deprivation that you're in. It takes eight days of sleep to correct normal sleep. Yeah, show me the person in this country that has that schedule. I would love to meet them. Um, so it's, it's really abnormal what we do to ourselves and we signed up for it and it's like it's a noble to noble cause and we know what it was. But now we have this thing that can maybe help with that a little bit and try to return some of those states properly and naturally without Any side effects. It's pretty awesome.

Jerry Dean Lund: 30:06

Yeah, I mean, if you're listening to this, I know we're getting into some of the science of it that I want people to understand, like to be educated about this, educated about something that they could potentially take that would help them. So my next question is mood. Like we're talking in the mood, we're talking the serotonin, like let's just talk about that, just a little bit.

Jon Vought: 30:27

Yeah, I mean the. The key takeaway that people should understand is that Same thing with sleep mood is tricky and if there is, if there is any kind of imbalance of serotonin, this this is absolutely a help. A lot of people that feel feelings of anxiety or depression have an issue with their serotonin. So this is kind of a way of helping that serotonin imbalance. There are some people that take it and it does nothing for their anxiety. You know, this is one that's probably the least known out of the three. There's a lot of information, information about how inflammation is affected. There's a lot of information about how sleep is affected. There's very little on anxiety. What we do know is that it affects serotonin receptors. So I wish I could give you a ton of information on that, but really it's just take more than 30 milligrams and so it's slightly more than sleep. Take more than 30 milligrams and there's there's a no set time that you have to take it to try to to, you know, mac, optimize that performance. So, like you know, sleep taking an hour before bed, but, yeah, anxiety can take it during the day, no problem.

Jerry Dean Lund: 31:39

Yeah, I think some of the things like. So. One of the studies I was looking at was that psych psychiatric like to diagnose somebody and medicate somebody with Sleep issues. 80% of the time they cannot do that Because they the right sleep masks so many different things. Without good sleep You're like you may get misdiagnosed or maybe like, oh, here, we're gonna give you a pill for this To to help you with your sleep or to help you with your depression, your anxiety and stuff like that. But like sleep is just is this so huge, so important? Right, it's just like it masks so many different things. I think one thing right when I think as first responders, we know that if we don't get the right amount of sleep or whatever, that we Can feel kind of anxious, you know, about things, and probably a lot of us don't really want to look at ourselves and feel that right and maybe do the In-depth work of like why, why do I feel this way? Well, because you haven't slept, yeah, or haven't had good sleep right for a really long time.

Jon Vought: 32:47

Yeah, there were two things that I that really Set in my brain forever when I heard them about our ability to do damage to ourselves asleep. One your the part of your brain I believe it's also your mingala Changes when you get into sleep deprivation for too long and it it alters in such a way that you're basically permanently more aggressive, you're permanently more angry, you're permanently more sad or depressed. Then it can revert back, but the structure of it like if you took a CT scan before and after you would see that the structure of it actually changed just from the first time you got to sleep. It changed just from lack of sleep. That's how horrible it is on your mood. But the other one that really stuck with me was doctor Walker talks about Psych, psychological issues, mental health issues, depression, anxiety, schizophrenia. He said that there is not one single Mental health issue in the DSM. I that sleep is not a direct link. So nobody that is diagnosed out of the DSM has good sleep. Not one person is a. It's like a requirement basically. And it's so crazy to think about what this thing does, this whole sleep cycle thing does, to your brain and it's that important.

Jerry Dean Lund: 34:15

Yeah. So I mean. So you look at a first responder like wow, they're not sleeping very well, they're not eating very well, their mood's not very well. And then you're like why are they acting the way they're acting? And then let alone the calls that we respond to, and we're like why are people acting this way? And it's like, okay, you know when's the last time he slept in? Eight, you know. And it's such an incredible role. I think that we we maybe dismissed right, because the culture of in first responders like, oh well, I'll sleep when I'm dead. Yeah, well, by the way, that's probably gonna come a lot faster if you're not sleeping. Yeah, and just think about how every aspect of your life is being affected by the lack of sleep.

Jon Vought: 35:06

Yeah, and you know, like that whole mentality towards it, I can appreciate, you know, in some way.

Jerry Dean Lund: 35:13

You know, I don't know.

Jon Vought: 35:15

Like I want somebody who's gonna tough it out. One of my pet peeves is, people complain after midnight like God, I'm so tired, I'm like shut up man, everybody's tired.

Jerry Dean Lund: 35:24

Don't say it now. We're all thinking it. It's like oh, I'm hungry, like don't say that God.

Jon Vought: 35:30

So, yes, I really appreciate the grit. I want people who are going to have that ability to tough it out, and I'm not trying to say you know, we need it easier, we don't. This job is going to beat you up. There is nothing that I can do to stop that. We can't help what happens when the tones drop, like that's literally what we signed up for. It is the job and you should all want it. What I'm saying is we could absolutely have a chance to fight back now, you know, without having to like do a cocktail of prescription medication. And I'm not allowed to say that CBD is a replacement for any of those things and it's not. But what if, just hypothetically, you could reduce some of that stuff? Could we maybe take less? Could we maybe take none of it? I don't know. I've seen amazing things come across our reviews, our comment sections, our direct messages. Customers have called us just to tell us the results. You know, and it's not just rescue one CBD. There are a lot of really good CBD companies out there, you know, and I'm sure people all over the country that are taking it with you know THC in it are getting great results too. We're just trying to do it for us, because nobody's really looking out for us. You know, nobody as a publicly traded CBD company is taking the time to make this entirely different production process just for first responders. It's expensive and it takes a lot of time, you know. So they're like we wouldn't do this unless you know it only made sense for our. That was the only thing we're doing. So that's kind of why we're doing it, why nobody else has done it yet, you know, on a big scale.

Jerry Dean Lund: 37:14

Yeah, and then I was just thinking about with all your packaging and everything like that, and people are still, you know, skeptical about it. But you know you have a story that talks to your company's integrity and you're probably your own personal honor about when you had a batch that was contaminated.

Jon Vought: 37:34

Yeah, I did and it sucked. But you know, wouldn't you be skeptical too? Like you know, I was skeptical, I hope people are. You know. I hope that you're taking this job so seriously that you know you're not screwing around with that stuff. I get it. I don't expect people to listen to me, talk one time and go. That's it. I'm buying it, you know. You know you do your research and talk to your doctor if you take prescription medication. A lot of doctors are pretty educated on CBD. There's a lot of published research. But also just feeling comfortable with what it is you're taking it for and with our batch that had THC in it, that was a horrible time. We I was going up to FDIC and we had sold out just before I went on the trip. I have to bring like a thousand units up there, and so I had a batch that was getting created and the ingredient came back with 0.02% I think it was 0.02% THC in it and I, man, like I, got the email with the lab test and opened up the PDF and started reading it and I saw the lab test showed THC in it. While I was setting up my booth at FDIC you know I had brought all the product with me. I was just waiting on the lab test to come back and I'd never had a bad batch come back before, but it was still sold out on the website. I was refusing. I always refused to sell it until the lab test comes back. You know what I mean. It's kind of put in cart before the horse and honestly I can't sell it if nobody has a lab test to look at, because they would ask me where's the lab test for it? Like it's not done yet, but I'm taking this. So obviously I waited and yeah, it came back when I was up there and I had boxes and boxes of product that I'd shipped up there, lugged through the freaking airport, like done this whole thing and it sucked. I had to just leave it in the hotel and I came up to the booth empty handed which is nothing there and you know people would come up and ask me and I'm like no, we had the product contaminate with THC. Yeah, put a thing on Instagram. I sent it on an email because we had, you know, we had a lot of people. We had a lot of people on Backwater and I had to tell them like sorry, the product that you bought ended up having THC in it and I didn't ship it out to you. So it's like me, my sister and one of the guys I work with and my fiance that run the company and I just kind of got everybody together and I'm like it was a good run. You know like we did it, you know, as long as we could, because I figured everyone was like cancel my order and I'm never buying this again and I'm going to tell everybody that this stuff is not safe. But I was very transparent with what we did and had the process well documented about, like how we were fixing the issue. And my process actually proved to work. You know, I guarantee a 0.000% THC in every single bottle. That's the guarantee of the company and it'll never ship. Because we tested three times with that process. We caught it at the very beginning. We caught it at the first test, not even the last test. So like there was the other two, I just canceled. I was like I don't need to do those other two. So we had, we did, we did retest it just in case that like instrument was contaminated with THC. So we had another sample retested in. That lab also was like hey, no, it's done, so it's trash, you know. But with all that, you know, we had those back orders get filled. And then I took everybody's email at FDIC and I said if you know, if you guys still want this, when it comes back, it's going to take me six weeks to make another batch and to test it, you know. And then once it's done, I'll send you an email. And we had a tidal wave of orders the first day. I sent that email out and said like, hey, it's back If you want to buy it. Here's like a discount for just waiting so long. Thank you guys, and free shipping and whatever else. And it was like it was just like a flood of orders came in and it felt so good Because I was like people understand that I'm not here to make a buck, I'm here to. I'm on a mission. I absolutely am, and you know, I hope that comes across with what we're trying to do. You know increasing firefighter longevity. You know on it off the job, but it was a. It was an extremely stressful time Like that will in my life. That will be one of the most stressful times of my life, for sure.

Jerry Dean Lund: 42:08

Yeah, I mean for listeners who don't know, fdic is like the largest convention right Of it's right, the International like convention of firefighters in the world, in the world, in in in Indianapolis, right, and it's just massive and a booth is not cheap and it's just like it is a massive process. So I feel your pain there. I'm like, oh my gosh, to get a booth is incredibly expensive, to pull all of it off and then to get there and be like, yeah, I don't have anything, I would just be, yeah, just wrecked, yeah, especially because I thought it was the end.

Jon Vought: 42:54

But yeah, it was one of those moments where, looking back and I'm like man, I was so glad I went through that and also, just it changed entirely how we create the product as a process and it made it so that I will always appreciate what I had to go through to make it through that mentally and just to say I'm not just going to throw in the towel this and even though this is a huge headache, we'll get better. And because, ultimately, the customer suffered because they were delayed and getting what helps them sleep and helps reduce their inflammation, I felt horrible, man. I was getting emails like I can't sleep. Please hurry this shit up. What do I have to do? I don't want to start taking my medication again. It was like I was like, oh man, I felt so bad. I felt really responsible, but then I had to remind myself look, man, people are able to do this because of this brand. So it's a blessing and a curse, but that's why I won't stop, because I do believe in it very much, in that we are trying to help people.

Jerry Dean Lund: 44:11

Yeah, what was the rest of your team like when you were like, oh man, this is happening, what do we do? Were you like what did they follow you?

Jon Vought: 44:23

Did they like, oh dude, I think we should stop or like no, they were like. What do you think we should do? Dumb shit, like there's only one option burn it. You know like it's gone.

Jerry Dean Lund: 44:33

What I mean for us, like how do we move forward from here though?

Jon Vought: 44:36

Yeah, yeah yeah, absolutely, oh no we had no idea. But yeah, I did have that moment where I was like I have no idea what to do and my fiance Megan was like what do you mean? We've already made this decision a hundred times over, like over the last two years that we've been doing this, because this was last year Not, I'm sorry, yeah, it was last year. Yep, it was 2020, fdic 2022. Yeah, and she's like what are you talking about? You've preached about this all the time. You got a contaminated batch, you trash it. So just there's the playbook man. Go for it. I'm like, yeah, leave it to her. She's always there to like really kind of even me out and like make big decisions really seem kind of minor and like easy going. She's awesome about that. And it centered me a little bit where I was like you know what there is? Yeah, I mean, after that, you kind of like I guess this could be said about a lot of things in life where I think we draw the anxiety because we don't have control, we don't know the path and even if the path is really really hard, if we at least know the direction we're supposed to take, or at least the next steps in that, we take confidence in that, because we're at least like, yeah, it's pain, but I know what I'm supposed to do. You know what I mean. So it's much simpler and because it's simpler, I think it becomes less scary. You know where I'm just like I talking to the customer. I'm just saying, you know and I hate using the word customer because they're my brother and sister firefighters you know what I?

Jerry Dean Lund: 46:11

mean.

Jon Vought: 46:12

I'm only selling to these people. It's not like you know. I'm sure there are other like family, friends and stuff. They're like, oh, I heard your product's good, but for the most part it's my people, you know, and you know, talking to them. I'm just, you know, this is the path, like there is no other choice. I'm just going with this and this is the right thing to do. So. At that point it got easy.

Jerry Dean Lund: 46:34

Is there? Are there departments that out there that have policies or people can?

Jon Vought: 46:39

take CBD. There are some, but I think a lot of them are really confusing, because a lot of them will say things like you can't take cannabinoids. And then they'll say, okay, what drug, what cannabinoids do we test for? And they go THC, we don't test for CBD. I'm like right, but that's weed. I'm like no, it's not, it's temp. And then there's like this confusion oh shit, you're right, I'll get back to you, you know. And then it's like you know what it comes down to man. So there are, there are all ranges where there's very few departments that say you cannot take CBD and they, they call that, they call out CBD directly. Most will have like this weird gray area. Some of them actually allow you to do CBD or marijuana all the way around, right, and then it's not even a problem. But a lot of times they'll they'll be confused about what terms mean what. So they'll say you can't use cannabis products. Well, in the state of Florida, cannabis and hemp are two different plants by definition. It's you know the there was a Senate bill 1020 that says hemp or marijuana is exclusively. You know, under the term cannabis, cannabis is exclusively to mean marijuana. Hemp is no longer considered cannabis. It's totally different. So it was very clear. And then, so you know, like departments around me said you can't use cannabis products. I'm like, okay, but that means I can, you know? And then like, no, you can't do that. So it becomes this weird middle ground policies Tricky. My sister, kim, who works with us, she is a policy guru and she actually went to college for political science and she loves policy writing and examining policy, I know as well. I'm like Kim, you are going to be the policy expert for the brand. And she's like are you serious? That's so great. I'm like, I'm really thrilled for you. You know, because I know what is, I would do that and it's just, you know, it's like paperwork stuff, but she really gets into it. So we've helped. We've helped lots of departments, big departments, you know. Unions from big departments like DC Albuquerque, you know, come up with language. Some of them, some of them, have implemented it. Most of them haven't. You know, they've just gone to their attorneys and just said like, hey, this is what other departments have used. Because we kind of just like cup in paste and say, look, look, we look what works, and kind of help them with their language, because Kim's not a lawyer and she can't get legal advice. But we can say like, check out what other people have done, you guys might want to tweak some of this stuff and we can help you. So she's helped write policy even to the south of me in Broward County. You know she's helped them and it's pretty cool, but a lot of it is just, it's this weird stigma, you know, where they'll associate hemp with weed and they just kind of don't deal with it. You know.

Jerry Dean Lund: 49:38

Yeah, that's, I think, very challenging for you and your business to like overcome such a massive like stigma and but let's be honest a lack of education right.

Jon Vought: 49:50

Exactly it is. I don't blame them, you know, like that's how we grew up. I was born in 88. I was in the Dairiers, you know, and like I don't think that there's a way to kind of undo that very quickly, but I hope that people would understand with hearing me or doing their own research and understanding that this is not intoxicating. You can make it safe for the job. And even THC. I'm a proponent of THC. I think that it has its place, you know, and I think it can. It has its dangers too, just like anything. But I don't think it's any more dangerous than prescription medication and I don't think it's anywhere near as bad for you as alcohol. And you know I like to drink. I have a drink every once in a while. I like whiskey, but I'm not like I'm not a big time drinker. I think it's horrible for your health, but every once in a while, you know, I have one. But you know, if people were using THC just to feel high, is that as bad as alcohol? I'd say no, just you know, anecdotally. But then there's the other side, where there's also medicinal benefit, with pain and anxiety and a lot of people that have a lot of other medical ailments that THC is prescribed for and I don't think that you know it should be shied away from. But that's my little THC thing where, like a lot of people think I don't want anything to do with marijuana. It's not true. I just firefighters want to take CBD and want to take it safely, and that's what I'm here for.

Jerry Dean Lund: 51:22

Yeah, John, what other? Do you just have the one product or do you have other products?

Jon Vought: 51:28

We have. So we have the original flavor or the unflavored, which is a thousand milligram for like the daytime, and it comes in original or I'm sorry, unflavored lemon or mint. And then we have the nighttime formula. The terpenes themselves give it a flavor. It's kind of smells like lavender but it tastes like fruit loops. It's weird, but that's not artificial. That is all extracted from plants mercy and limonene, or from like lemons and hops and mangoes and stuff like that. It's pretty wild. And then we have a topical. The topical roll on is just a. It comes in a roller ball and you can apply it locally for topical pain relief to leg joints and soft tissue injuries and things like that.

Jerry Dean Lund: 52:15

Very good, John. Where can people find you and learn more about your products?

Jon Vought: 52:21

This is our quickest response because there's always two people at least two people monitoring at home time and it's a rescue underscore, the number one underscore, CBD. So rescue one CBD. And then you can email myself or Kim if you had any questions on any of the stuff we asked.  I am at www.rescue1cbd.com. It's the number one and I love talking about this stuff. So if I sparked any interest in something that people maybe wanted me to double click on or send them some research or anything, but on Instagram, we also put out a lot of info too, so people can get to kind of their head wrapped around some of the concepts you talked about. But I love talking about it, so reach out anytime.

Jerry Dean Lund: 53:09

Yeah, and then what's your website? Rescue one.

Jon Vought: 53:13

Yeah, Rescue 1 CBD. Again it's the number one. Or you can just Google Rescue 1 CBD, it'll pop up Awesome.

Jerry Dean Lund: 53:22

John, thank you so much for being on. Thank you for explaining all the different processes and the products from your CBD company. Appreciate that.

Jon Vought: 53:32

Of course, jerry. Thank you for having me. It was awesome. Yeah, appreciate it, me too.