Helping and Healing Veterans with Cannabis

Todd Scattini is a West Point graduate, Global CEO of Harvest 360 LLC, and creator of the Athena Protocol, a strategy to mitigate and treat traumatic brain injury (TBI). Todd conceptualized using cannabis to treat TBI victims after the loss of a fellow Army officer and close friend, who sustained a TBI in combat. CBTS magazine sat down with Todd via Zoom to learn more about the Athena Protocol and the work on behalf of veterans.

How does your past many years of military experience play into your desire to actively promote the use of cannabis?

After serving 27 years in the military, I’m doing this with a great sense of purpose and that is to do what we signed up for in the military—to take care of one another. That was drummed into me when I attended West Point and it became part of my DNA. After I learned about the impact that cannabis was having on veterans in the community, I was able to access it and found great benefits from it.

Where did you begin?

I started to do deeper research into the roots of the prohibition of the plant and came to believe it was very unjust and un-American. The prohibition of the plant was done for reasons that didn’t seem to be indicative of the country that I felt I had signed up to serve at the age of 19. It just struck me as a great injustice. I felt I needed to be involved in what I saw as a paradigm shift in respect to the utilization of the cannabis plant and hemp. The more research I did I found that this plant is a fiber that runs through the entire history of our nation, with all its good and bad sides. We need to own that, given that we have a responsibility as we implement the legalization of this plant to address many of the negative impacts that resulted from cannabis prohibition. What I’ve focused on in my business side and my activist side is to highlight that social justice is changing so that we will no longer be throwing humans in a cage for a plant that has never killed anyone, is incredibly therapeutic—probably the most therapeutic plant that has ever existed—and we now have the opportunity to take advantage of that.

After 80 years of prohibition, we’re finally able to apply the most advanced scientific technology to this plant. And I speak very fluidly about the use of this plant as both a medicine and a recreational product. Every day we focus on how this plant can greatly impact the health and wellness of so many veterans. When I walked out of the Army after 27 years, I walked into a veterans community nationwide where 22 of the kind of people I served with are killing themselves every day.* *The Department of Defense (DoD) and the Veterans Administration (VA) studies in the past few years show that, on average, 22 active and/or non-active military veterans take their own lives each day, roughly one every 65 minutes.

We need to look at that because we will be judged on how well we handled this crisis. Beyond the suicide issue, there are those who die by overdose; 10 veterans per day are reported to have died with a needle in their arm. My goal has always been to have intense research into cannabis as a medicine.

What about the DoD and the VA?

I think the DoD is the ideal organization to do something like this along with the VA, which is the largest healthcare network in the country! It has the biggest patient population in the country [9 million] and along with 150 VA hospitals—which have access to local universities—and 1,200 clinics, all are poised to do this research. We’ve recently recommended to the VA that they utilize the state of Missouri as a research platform for medical cannabis because we have a halfmillion veterans living here and we have a great VA hospital. I believe the military can and should lead the way in this research, much like they have done over the past 100 years with vaccinations, plastic surgery, trauma care, advance amputations--any number of medical advances have been borne out of military necessity.

After some 80 years, the federal government still lists marijuana as a Schedule 1 drug which is defined as a substance that has no currently accepted medical use and a high potential for abuse. It’s lumped in with heroin, LSD, ecstasy and peyote. Yet, there are 36 states that have either approved cannabis for medicinal and/or recreational purposes. How do we square this oddball equation?

There needs to be strong leadership and vision at the federal level and a clear recognition that there is something incredibly impactful with cannabis being used as a medicine across our country and around the world. We have yet to apply American ingenuity and knowhow and academic excellence to recognize that cannabis is medicine and that it can be used in such unique and myriad ways that we would be derelict in our duty as human beings—as anyone who cares about people—to not look at this critically as a real scientific and academic endeavor and apply the funding to this research.

Our lack of willingness to address this issue of moving down the road away from prohibition as well as decriminalizing pot—as some states have already done—amounts to a failure to truly act on something that could be so meaningful to millions or our own citizens because there is no doubt that cannabis can save lives.

In that respect, you’re very focused with your Athena Protocol about using cannabis as a way to actually help prevent Traumatic Brain Injury [TBI], which became part of the lexicon of battle terms over the past 20 years.

You know, there was a time and place when cannabis was prescribed as part of the medical community’s playbook up until 1937. There are books written by West Pointers in the 1800s about the absolute necessity of bringing cannabis on your mission to treat pain! It was preferred over the use of opium as a pain killer because it was not an addictive drug.

The federal government actually holds a patent [No. 6630507] on a certain type of cannabinoid oil that is being tested to help reduce the effect of such brain injuries. Explain.

It was during my research that I learned about this patent on the use of a cannabinoid that can serve as a neuroprotectant and an anti-inflammatory to mitigate and treat TBI. That’s when we decided to move forward with the concept of the Athena Protocol with which we are publicly promoting to fully open research into this oil in tandem with the VA.

What’s the protocol for that?

The protocol is essentially four phases: Applying the neuro-protectant and anti-inflammatory properties of the cannabinoid to help prevent or reduce the effects of a TBI by having the military personnel use it prior to going on a mission, right along with all their other preparation. Besides prepping on the outside, we need to prep the inside of the body as well with non-impairing cannabinoids so that soldiers are prepared for potential TBI, or a concussion, in order to lower the rate of severe injury. This cannabinoid would actually enter the brain to put a fine protective layer between the brain and the skull, helping to reduce the “rattle around” effect. It can also be used during a mission as an anti-inflammatory to personnel who have been injured. A third element would be its use when someone is hospitalized for TBI—and especially when they’re being monitored for intra-cranial pressure—so we don’t have to drill holes in their heads to relieve the swelling, which has become a standard TBI treatment. The fourth phase is the rehabilitative part of their recovery, to be able to include a full spectrum of cannabis, not just as an anti-inflammatory and pain remediator, but in tandem with physical therapy and talk therapy sessions. This could be very revolutionary. I’m urging the VA to take a leadership position on this as an opportunity to increase the survivability of soldiers in combat, to ensure the ability of veterans to thrive after their service and to recognize this plant as a medicine and to realize that this is the moment, right now, to address this issue as being of a true societal nature.

How do those who may have never served in the military react to your idea of the Athena Protocol?

Many say they are aware of TBI and are glad that someone is addressing these issues, especially when they relate a story about a friend or family member who served. I tell them that they are serving by their support of the cannabis industry and by supporting the use of cannabis by veterans, especially when it comes to reducing the reliance on opioids for chronic pain or treatment of PTSD.

They also recognize that advances in military medicine benefit the general public, because everyone gets old and everyone hurts at some point. There is an opioid crisis that still has this country in its grip and that worsened by 20 percent since the start of the COVID pandemic. This is another area in which we will be judged on how we handled this crisis. I think we’re on the right side of history.

We are doing something meaningful and impactful that is raising the veteran’s voice, which I firmly believe will break the back of cannabis prohibition and can lead the way to a new future of medicine that is safer and more effective and that shatters the paradigm of what we’ve shackled ourselves to in this day of modern medicine.

In that regard, will the Congress, the FDA, the DEA, the DoD and the VA and other agencies around the country ever see the light on this issue and progressively push for cannabis to be removed as a Schedule 1 drug as well as decriminalize its possession and use, as several states have already done?

There are two things that must happen. That’s leadership and courage to be shown by the [Biden] administration along with all of us wrapping our heads around this plant and looking at it in the framework of a major societal issue with health and wellness being the key factor.

I ask for leadership and vision from the DoD to stand up in their inter-agency meetings and look to the FDA and the DEA and ask, “Why are we not shining American research on this plant that just saved my kid’s life or allowed my brother to come off opioids or my sister to deal with her PTSD or anxiety?” We have to recognize that there’s a new frontier ahead of us.

Look, three-quarters of the U.S. is currently providing legal, adult access to cannabis! Our only limit is our imagination, because we’re not limited by the science, nor the agriculture. The only limitation we face is by ignoring this plant as a real opportunity.

Interviewer Peter Bie is a U.S. Army veteran, having served from 1967-1970, with two tours in Vietnam, the first as a military journalist and the second as a helicopter door gunner. He spent nearly 45 years in radio and television, much of it as a field reporter, journalist and news director. Peter is currently the president of the Santa Barbara Chapter (218) of the Vietnam Veterans of America and resides in Carpinteria, California with his wife, Melinda.