TRANSCRIPT

Eddie: Hey everybody, it's Eddie with a Mindful Emergence where on this channel we focus on education and support for those of you wanting to use cannabis in the best safest way and we particularly focus on seniors. So here's a question for you. Have you ever been in a situation where you're going to go for a hike, you're doing an outdoor concert, maybe you're going to go play a round of golf, and you'd say, "You know, I'd like to take a little medicine with me and maybe just be able to have little bumps here and there and just enhance the experience," but you haven't quite gotten the thing that you want? Well, that's why I've got Michael Baron Boy with me today from WeeJets. And we already did a video where we talked about this amazing Maze X Pipe, but now he's going to talk about a one-hitter. So, Michael, thank you for joining me. Why don't you introduce yourself? Tell our listeners a little bit about you.

Michael: Thank you for having me back. It's great. I think we're going to have an amazing program today. And after the last video that we had about the pipe, you have no idea how many emails we received with questions, and most importantly, when people got that pipe, we received numerous emails thanking us from the bottom of their heart. I think money is one side, and put it aside, but the feedback from people and seeing how helpful the tips and the products that we design are is just amazing.

My background is in biomedical mechanical engineering. My main company that I started in the middle to late 90s, we design and develop medical devices. I have over 100 patents in medical life-saving technologies. You can look it up on Google and search me under Michael Baron Boy. I've done a lot of work in cardiovascular devices, pulmonary devices for COPD (chronic obstructive pulmonary disease), for asthma, spine reconstructive surgical equipment, cancer ablation systems, you name it. My group designs medical devices for big corporations like Boston Scientific, Johnson & Johnson, Smith & Nephew, and the list goes on and on and on. So my whole career, as I mentioned before, I've spent in helping people live better. The appreciation from that is just tremendous, and I continue to enjoy it. I've started a few companies, one of them went public. So I'm really truly at a point in my life where everything that I do is designed to help people, and it gives me all that energy back.

Last time we talked about weed pipes, and I've seen some comments where people talk about dry vaporization, vape pens, and things like that. We obviously understand that, and there are millions of people who still smoke pipes, and this is the segment of people we're trying to help. We're not trying to create a debate about what's better and what's worse. Everybody picks for themselves, but with people who even use dry vaporizers, we all know that they don't deliver as much and as fast for medical purposes. That's why I think it's important to understand we are helping people who use those particular devices to use them safer and to enjoy them a lot better.

Today's topic is one-hitters, because what I've done is I look at every segment of the market and I say, "We can do it better. We can do it better for people." To be honest with you, I started smoking late in life. I was almost 30 years old when I started smoking cannabis, and my first tool that I used, that my friends convinced me to try, were one-hitters. One-hitters were my favorite tools, and the reason is simple: it's convenience. Whenever you go out, you can grab a small pack of something. In my hand, this is what I have: it's a dugout. I think I've used this one since 25 years ago. It's a very convenient tool, but with that came all the problems.

When people are viewing this, they will agree that it creates a very hot smoke. You constantly have to reload them. You always have to use that tool to clean them after each heat because it collects resin. The pathway in the pipe—and this is a brand new one—the airway is very small. So the resiny flower creates a blockage, and every time you use a tool, you get your hands dirty. You always lose this tool. You wear amazing clothes, you put it inside your pocket, and all of a sudden your pocket is ruined—it's resiny. The dugouts themselves lose flower because it's loose flower in there, and they smell. They smell. There's no protection. But they're convenient—that's why we love them. Every time you go fishing, you go hiking, you go to your friend's house, you don't want to take a pipe with you. You just take a simple tool.

Eddie: You don't want to be the guy on the golf course and somebody looks at you and goes, "Are you... do you have weed on you? Did you bring a bunch of..."

Michael: Yeah, exactly. It's trying to be discreet, you know? But the most unpleasant thing that I've experienced is because some of the pipes are that short. You can see how short they are. Basically, when you're burning flower here at about 1,400 to 1,500 degrees Fahrenheit, this is one inch and it goes right into your air pathways. It goes right into your lungs. Guess what? It's about the same temperature that you're getting. That's why people cough. That's why people get ash going into their mouth. That's why people have unburned particles—we call them Scooby snacks, right? So instead of focusing on pleasure, you're always thinking, "Is this little hot cherry going to fly and burn the back of my throat?"

So all of those things before we start developing products... And again, I'm not here to sell any products. I'm here to share the design thought and invite everybody to participate and understand the design intent for every little feature that we do, in particular for one-hitters. It took me a year and a half to design a simple tool, but I think it addressed so many problems.

We are all familiar with this, right? So I'm going to put it aside. The first thing that I wanted to say is it's attractive. This is the way you carry the one-hitter. It comes in its own EVA case that drastically reduces the smell. I can't smell one-hitters when they're in this case. So this is a very convenient carrying case with the WeeJets logo on it. When I open it up, I have a silicone case that also protects the smell. The way we wanted to design the tools is that they're convenient for people, but at the same time, they provide all the benefits that your hands stay clean. This is the first one-hitter that does not require you to touch flower from the point of loading to the point of when you start cleaning it. This is completely hands-free, as I call it. You're obviously taking the pipe, but you will see I will never touch flower with my hands.

This is a very small case. You can see that if we compare it to a lighter, this is about the same height as a Bic lighter. It's very small, and you can see the profile. It's very small, but when we open the top cover, this is where we see the pipe. It's about 3 inches in length, just like a cigarette. It comes with removable pods. In this particular case, I have a ceramic pod, but we also have metal pods. Some people prefer metal, some people prefer ceramic. There are pros and cons for everything.

The way this one-hitter works is you preload all your flower. Instead of taking loose flower, you preload all your flower into these pods and take it with you. We have another cover. You can see there are four additional pods, so five pods altogether. I thought, "Well, maybe when we go out, I don't want to touch flower. I don't want to reload. I don't want to look for the cleaning tool. I don't want to experience this nastiness from one-hitters."

With this pipe, you can remove the mouth tip and use it with our charcoal filters, the CarbonX charcoal filters. I think you guys are familiar with this, right? So we put a charcoal filter inside and close the mouth tip. Now we are also protected with charcoal filtration, which not only filters, but also lowers the smoke temperature as well.

The way you load these pipes is also very convenient. You basically just take your grinder with medium-ground flower, and instead of taking your hands and putting it inside your pods, you basically put it inside and rotate it three or four times. You can see that I just loaded one pod.

Eddie: And just to jump in, you're doing this before you leave the house.

Michael: You're doing it before you leave the house. You prepare yourself. Instead of taking loose flower, I take one pod, I load it with flower without touching my hands. You can see I can put it right into the case and grab the next one. I repeat the process. I take the empty one, I rotate it, and now I've collected enough flower. Again, I put it back. I do this to all five pods.

Now when I grab one pod—and I will do the same with this one, I just load it up—now I have five pods loaded. Let's say I'm not going to repeat it for the other ones. I close this cover, it's smell-proof and smell-reducing, and I put my pipe inside the case. I close it, and this is all I have. Each pod can carry about 0.15 to 0.2 grams of flower, so altogether with five, you can carry up to 1 gram of flower in this. We actually have additional cases that people buy—we call them Go Cases—where you can put five additional pods and take it with you, so now you have 10.

Now this is where the magic starts. When you smoke this pipe... and maybe I can smoke it a little bit, it's a cannabis show, right? Why not?

Eddie: Got to admit, I took a few puffs before the show. Why not?

Michael: And you can see I took a very slow, very short puff. You can see how much smoke I had in my 60-year-old lungs, and I had zero cough. This is what the filter inside the tip and the slow pulling help with.

People are always asking me, "Why do you think slow pulling is better than a quick hit? Because I've been smoking for 50 years and I don't want to change. I love it the way I smoke." You can continue, but what happens with a slow pull? When we pull very slow, the temperature of the smoke when it burns in a pod is much lower. Imagine when you have a fire and it's burning, but when you put more oxygen to it, what happens? It starts burning at a much hotter temperature and it ignites again. The same thing in metallurgy: if you want to have a higher temperature, you put a lot more airflow.

People don't realize it, and this is a good tip. We actually got a lot of emails from people asking us about and thanking us for this tip, because now when they smoke, they simply sip. You don't need to take a big rip; you just need a slow, short pull. I'm not holding it inside my lungs because this is important: as we mentioned before, THC absorbs almost instantaneously. So there is no reason for you to hold it. You're not going to get any higher—you're going to get maybe a little bit higher because you're depriving yourself of oxygen, and that's what happens. But THC is absorbed instantly, so when you inhale, exhale immediately.

Eddie: So there's a little bit of relearning for some of us if we're willing. If we've been hitting bongs, taking those huge rips, getting that big red-hot cherry, holding it in... it's a different way of approaching it with the same or even better results.

Michael: Exactly. Exactly. And that's our point. WeeJets is not about developing products and just reselling them. We develop products that help people from a scientific perspective: lower the temperature, filter the smoke. But we are also an educational company. We try to help people who are willing to listen, and later on they thank us for this, because there are so many things we can learn in this world.

Eddie: And you've got videos. I've never seen a company providing products similar to what you're talking about where you have as many instructional videos and as much content. So once you get the product, you can watch in detail how to use all of these.

Michael: Exactly. We have written instructions. We have video instructions on every listing page telling exactly how to do it. We even have a dedicated page that collects all our video user guides on our website. People go and watch it, and then they still ask questions. But what's interesting is that we are also the only company offering face-to-face meetings when people still don't get it and they have some issues or trouble. We have product educators and people who are willing to help people and do FaceTime calls or Zoom calls, and that's how we retain customers. We are here to help people—this is priority number one.

So when I smoke this, what do I usually do after? When I give it to my next friend or when I smoke, I have to clean it, right? I have to reload it. I have to open up my loose flower, reload it, and try to smoke again while collecting all this resin. In this particular case, you can see we have no cleaning tools because we don't want you to clean it on the go. You simply take the used pod that I've smoked—maybe I can have three, four, or five more hits from that, but let's say I smoked it—and I put it back into the case. This is my used one, and I have a new one.

The filter that's here is going to last you up to five pods if you smoke it correctly. It depends on how resiny the flower is, but sometimes it lasts four, sometimes three if it's too resiny. But I usually use it up to five pods. I pull slow, I enjoy it all the way, and when I smoke this one and I use it, I put it back in. I unscrew it.

With regular one-hitters, I would have to find a resiny tool, try to clean it, then try to find a space to put that resiny tool—maybe in the pipe itself, maybe in a dugout. It falls out in my pocket, and again, it's a mess. With this, you smoke it, you put it back in, and you grab the next one. When you get home, you clean them all at once.

Cleaning is a breeze, because again, once you have all of those dirty pods when you come home, what do people do for de-ashing? People ask us, "Why don't you have a cleaning tool?" The reason why we don't have a cleaning tool with this is because we don't want you to clean it and store this resiny tool somewhere. What we offer for de-ashing and cleaning is taking a simple paper clip. It's the most convenient way to clean it, and then you can throw it away. It's biodegradable. Or you can take—by the way, this is a new tool we're working on for people to carry toothpicks—so you can also use a toothpick.

Eddie: Yeah, that's what I use.

Michael: And this is a fraction of a cent, and you can throw it away after cleaning five pods or your pipe.

Eddie: So, I got a quick question. Sorry to interrupt you. What I've been doing is I clean it out, and sometimes I'll take a little Q-tip to make sure it's a little more thorough. Then, with the stainless steel or the ceramic—in my case, the ceramics are in this container here—I soak them in some isopropyl alcohol and then rinse them really thoroughly. Is that a good way to do it?

Michael: Yeah, it's the best way. Ceramic cleans very well, just like glass. If you put them in a Ziploc bag, put a little bit of isopropyl alcohol, shake it up a little bit, leave it for maybe an hour, and then you can just come in and clean the rest with dish soap under running water. Sometimes I use Q-tips, sometimes paper towels.

If we're smoking, this is a process where we've got to enjoy everything. We've got to enjoy the smoking, but we've also got to enjoy the cleaning. Otherwise, if you think that this is a chore, you're not going to enjoy it. I really enjoy cleaning. I really enjoy preparing when I go out, and this is my favorite tool nowadays.

We actually have a strap here, and it's very easy to clean this pipe. Every little piece, every little thing is designed not to break, but to pull apart. So you can clean it all together, or you can put it back simply by just snapping it together. I did it for the top cover, and I'm doing this for the lower cover. Here we go.

This is a small tool that allows you to do everything. Actually, it has two extra slots for additional charcoal filters. If you go fishing, or if you're going to use 10 pods or 15 pods, you don't have to carry charcoal filters in your pocket—you can carry them right in the case.

When I close it, I take my EVA case, I put it back in, I close it, and I have an amazing case that looks great that you can take in your suitcase, you can take fishing, or you can take on any on-the-go activity. So it's very convenient.

This design, this approach to one-hitters is not evolutionary—this is a revolution. We have a hard time keeping it on the shelf because people really appreciate the value of what this product does. It's your safety. There's nothing more important than your own safety and your own health. It's convenience, it looks good, and it's also discreet.

Eddie: It's also discreet, exactly. Because you can't smell it when it's in the case, and it's this tiny little thing that's not going to be obvious if you're out and about.

Michael: And if you smoke this correctly, the smoke smoothness and how your air pathways feel in your lungs is just completely different. It's so smooth, it's better than vapes. People write to us that they still cough from vapes, but if they smoke this correctly, there is no coughing.

Well, obviously everybody has different lungs, but at the same time, remember to sip it instead of taking a big rip, because you're already lowering the temperature in the bowl, and as it passes through, it also cleans through the filtration and removes a lot of heat.

There's another very interesting thing you can do, because every product in our system is designed to be compatible with other products as well. We have people who have COPD and emphysema, and you understand that for them to inhale smoke is 100 times more difficult than for regular people, right? So what they do is they can apply an additional filter to this by taking our filter tip from the Maze X Pipe (or we sell them separately). Because they smoke it at home, they put it on top of the one-hitter and they put a second filtration on. I'm not saying this is for everyone, but this is definitely helping people who are taking their medicine for the fastest onset, not through dry vaporization, but through igniting and burning the material, and they already have two filters. We have people who showed us they have a whole chain of these filter tips—it's insane! People are creative, so we learn from people as well, and this is an amazing interaction.

By the way, those filters don't filter THC. The way these filters are designed, they're quite different from everybody else's charcoal filters. These are not typical charcoal pieces from bamboo or coconut, because when you ship them and use them, shaking them produces a little bit of dust as little particles break inside. If you get this filter, I invite you to open one up to see: there are compressed spherical minerals, organic minerals with high porosity. What happens is when the smoke goes through, the sticky particles fill those pores, and at the end of the day, the spheres swell. They produce no dust, and that's why when people try to use other filters, they ask, "How come your filters are the best?" It's a different technology.

Eddie: I'm laughing because I'm thinking this is what you get when a biomechanical engineer decides...

Michael: Well, I'm a little bit geeky, you know? I like to tell people amazing things that are simple and land on the surface. But because I deal with this every day with the development of medical devices, for us, a device doesn't start with wanting to change the way it looks, but with problems with existing devices: what can we do to improve? That's exactly the same approach.

By the way, there's another advantage of this tool. I know some people smoke before bed and keep their pipe next to them on a nightstand. This is the way I keep it when I want to make a last puff before I go to sleep: I put it on the table right in front of me like this, and it sits like this. So this is also a stand. All those little features are beneficial for people.

The price of this is higher than regular one-hitters, but the value is there. The value is tremendous. It takes us a lot of time to engineer products and to create IP, but that's what we do. We try to help people, and I think people appreciate it.

Eddie: And by the way, is this all stainless steel, or is it another metal?

Michael: No, this is brass with chrome coating on the outside. It's a very thick brass. That's another thing I wanted to mention: there's a misconception that people cannot smoke from metal pipes. By the way, we're burning the flower inside the ceramic tip or stainless steel. Surgical stainless steel is the best because it produces no elements that can escape and evaporate, but brass is also a good tool. Remember, the brass here is not seeing hot temperatures as we're not burning it inside—it's just passing through filtration. It's a really good material, and it looks amazing. It's a chrome pipe and it looks sophisticated. But the value is what you should look for when buying your next tool: look for the value, what it does for you, and how it protects you. In essence, that's our goal, and we're happy that we can help people.

Eddie: Well, seniors... and you're on the cusp of 60, you told me. Did you have your birthday yet?

Michael: My birthday is coming in November—I'm going to be 60. I still want to smoke as long as I can. But what I've noticed when I started smoking with filtration and using our tools is that I no longer have phlegm in my throat, because that accumulates from all that resin and tar depositing on your throat. Within three or four weeks of smoking through our devices, we get emails from people saying their lungs feel a little bit lighter too, because you will see on this charcoal filter how much tar and resin it collects—it becomes dirty and black. We got so many messages saying, "Oh my god, I literally can see what I'm not getting inside my lungs."

Eddie: Yeah. This is amazing, and this is what's the most important thing. To the fact that you're about to turn 60 this fall, I turned 78 a couple of days ago. We've got to take care of our health.

Michael: Well, that's why I'm making smart decisions about how I use this plant.

Eddie: Absolutely. Absolutely true. There are better ways, there are more enjoyable ways. I want to treat this as a session of enjoyment rather than just to get high. That's why sometimes when I'm smoking this one-hitter with the ceramic tip, I simply just slightly pull. I can see a little fire inside here, and I'm just enjoying it. This is an enjoyment. This is not just for us to get medicated—this is a process to enjoy. I think that's what we're trying to do as well: provide value for safety and for your health, but also to enhance your enjoyment.

Michael: Succeeded.

Eddie: And of course, some folks are using it for sleep, for inflammation, for pain management. I used to deal with neuropathy—I would get woken up in the middle of the night in my left foot with this burning sensation. That was prior to becoming a regular cannabis user. Neuropathy is a thing of the past now. I want to be careful: I'm not telling folks out there medical advice, I'm sharing my own personal experience. This plant has so many benefits, but we need to be smart about how we use it.

Michael: Exactly. Exactly. Look, I have two kids: one is 30, one is 26. To remind people, that's the reason why I started this company. I mostly swim in the medical device field—that's my area of expertise. But when my kids started smoking early in life, I started looking for ways to help them. Instead of prohibition, which we all know doesn't work, I just said, "Well, why don't I design something that's going to make it safer for them?"

To my surprise, I thought that maybe they would not listen, but once they started using it... my son, up to this day at 26, says, "I can't use it without these devices, because you can feel the difference." You can immediately measure how much coughing goes away—a drastic reduction of coughing. We don't say that we eliminate coughing, because people use different techniques, but regardless of coughing, you will see the filtration and the resin and tar that we stop. You're just getting a little bit more pure smoke and more enjoyment out of it.

Eddie: How long ago did you start the company?

Michael: We started playing with this probably in 2018. We created these filter tips that fit on any of your joints or on existing pipes as well. You can see that I took a regular one-hitter, I added this device, and now it's filtered as well. We also have a lot of devices like this: this is the same filter tip, only bigger. So whatever tool you have, you can go on our website and select the right size for this filter tip, whether you have a pipe or a vaporizer, to reduce the heat additionally and filter more tar.

You can take your existing pipe... I have this particular pipe. You can put this medical-grade silicone adapter on it. By the way, we use only medical-grade silicone—this is one grade higher than the food-grade silicone we use to cook. So when people ask, "Is it safe?", well, you're cooking in your kitchen with food-grade silicone trays. This is medical-grade, one grade higher. You put a charcoal filter inside, and actually you have a screen there as well that's going to catch the Scooby snacks, and you simply sip. You will never burn yourself with this pipe. Now that we have this, I think we're going to start selling kits at a lower price point as well for glass bowls with filter adapters already in place.

Eddie: All right. Well, I think it's great. I was surprised when you sent me this and I saw this little thing. I opened it up, and then I went to the website and looked, and I went, "This is amazing." You just load it, put it in, get another one, and then... I mean, you've got 10 of these. You could go backpacking for a weekend and you're all set.

Michael: Yeah, we have people who buy these little round pods—buy 5 or 10—because they can prepack them at home, and your whole experience is going to be clean on the go. You will not spend time cleaning your pipes or cleaning one-hitters. It's just very convenient.

Eddie: Yeah. Okay. Well, Michael, I appreciate you going through and explaining the science behind this, the logic behind this, how it works, and going through in detail the design and why. Anything else you want to say before we bring this to a close?

Michael: I'm grateful for all the opportunities. As I said before, I came to this country as a political immigrant from the former Soviet Union in the 80s with $100 in my pocket. This country gave me so much, I love it so much, and I'm trying to give it back to people—all the opportunities that I would not have had otherwise. That's why I don't understand people who complain. This is the best country in the world, and in order to understand it, you need to experience something else.

To all the amazing people... I'm obviously an American for a long time now, and I'm grateful for that. I had this opportunity in my life, and I'm grateful for this country allowing me to come here legally and go through all this process through additional education and work. I worked for $6.50 an hour for the first year with a master's degree in mechanical engineering.

Eddie: How was your English when you got here?

Michael: Well, I could ask for a pack of cigarettes probably at the gas station, but that's about it. I actually had a minor in English from Moscow University, but when you come to a different world and a different country, you don't know how you sound. So you have to go through this cultural shock and barrier, but I picked it up pretty fast. What's amazing is that once I started working three weeks after we came, there was not a single day that I was laid off or fired—I worked every single day. Nowadays, the older I become, instead of thinking that I'll be retiring, I actually work Saturdays and Sundays, and I enjoy it, because this becomes an enjoyment now: helping people, and seeing in medical devices when people are alive because of what you've done with your groups to help people. This is just an amazing journey for me.

Eddie: Well, thank you again for joining me. If any of you watching this are interested, there is a link and a discount available to you so you can order and save money. If you decide to make comments on this channel, whether you buy or not, I will do my best to respond. Michael has come in and answered questions—there have been questions that I don't know the answer to, and he's been kind enough to come on and follow it and answer questions. I know this company offers a lot of support. If you make a purchase and you have questions down the road or run into problems, you're not going to be left stranded.

So if you like the video, give us a thumbs up. If you have not subscribed to this channel, come on, guys, what are you waiting for? We have so much good content coming out talking to people like Michael, introducing ways to use this medicine in the best way. That's why I'm here—to do this. It's my passion as well as yours, Michael, to support people in the best way using this cannabis.

So thank you, and thank you for watching.

Michael: Thank you, Eddie.

Eddie: And folks, we'll see you in the next video.