Enter the CBD Dragon

Photography by Madison Fender

For many, the magic of CBD is a mystery. Kevin Menard is working to solve it.

A licensed sports medicine acupuncturist and traditional Chinese medicine practitioner, Menard has been on a near-decade long journey of systemic CBD exploration specializing in one central healing mission — the careful, methodical blending of western physical medicine and diagnostics with traditional Chinese herbs to return balance to the body.

And thanks to his just-turned-two, brick-and-mortar healing hub, Dragon Hemp Apothecary on Main Street in Sag Harbor, he’s not only gotten the hang of how CBD works, he’s making it an easy-to-access, product-based lifestyle movement to hopefully heal what ails.

The Mighty 40 Percent

Initially launched in 2021, with a physical space open since 2022, Dragon Hemp has offered a line of wellness products containing CBD-hemp and medicinal herb-based formulas that are used topically or ingested orally, and sold in the form of a gummy, tincture, balm or, most recently, body care products.

Often overshadowed by tetrahydrocannabinol — commonly referred to as THC, the dominant active compound found within the Cannabis sativa plant, which can have psychoactive effects — CBD (short for cannabidiol) accounts for about 40% of the plant’s active ingredients. While some argue that THC is leisurely therapeutic (wink-wink, nudge-nudge), it may in fact be within CBD where the actual, long-term healing power for common, chronic ailments like inflammation and anxiety lies.

“CBD initially popped onto my radar around 2017, 2018. My dog had aggressive lung cancer at four years old out of the blue,” he says. “I thought he had Lyme.”

Menard brought his pup to his local veterinarian and an X-ray showed that his lungs were riddled with the tumors of late-stage cancer. “People around me said to try to CBD to ease the pain. His condition was too far advanced, and we lost him, but it’s the experience that introduced me to CBD.”

Still, he found the burgeoning research behind it fascinating and impressive. “People were taking CBD for everything, and I wanted to figure out why.”

Inflamed with Information

Menard started his Sag Harbor-based clinic in sports medicine acupuncture in 2012, opening on Division Street shortly after earning his master’s at TriState College of Acupuncture in Manhattan. He became an expert in Chinese medical acupuncture, the more modern method of trigger point acupuncture (aka “dry needling”) as well as Japanese meridian therapy, which focuses on gentle needling techniques and restoring balance in qi, or energy, while promoting proper blood flow throughout the body. To that, he added a dash of advanced intramuscular needling techniques, based on the western medical model.

“I trained with a lot of really great martial artists, so I used a lot of topicals based on martial arts trauma formulas,” he notes. “I ended up using those on my patients.”

Armed with a holistic approach, he quickly became well versed with the specific and, more often than not, chronic conditions found throughout his roster of East End patients who were experiencing pain, sleep deprivation, anxiety and, especially, inflammation.

“I was trying a CBD product, I think it was called New Leaf, and I was like, ‘I don’t feel anything,’ and it wasn’t cheap so I kind of just put it away,” he recalls. Over the next year though, he decided to give this a second look. “Everyone on my radar was talking about CBD, and I started thinking maybe I wasn’t taking enough, maybe I wasn’t using it right, maybe the product wasn’t right.” He took a deep dive in, experimenting with different tinctures and capsules on a consistent basis, ultimately noticing it was lowering inflammation in his body.

“I was constantly dealing with inflammation in treatments of patients as I was used to [inflammation] existing in tissue, whether it was in the form of arthritis, swollen joints, people feeling bloated, whatever, but through research, what I found fascinating was that your central nervous system could be inflamed as well.” Here, he also made the link between symptoms of anxiety, insomnia and gastro-intestinal disfunction, among others. And a light bulb went on.

An Experimenting Expert

According to the National Institutes of Health, there are over 11,000 herb plants that have been recorded in various traditional Chinese medicine related pharmacopeia, with around 700 species commonly used.

Menard began to gain a deeper understanding of the science behind how CBD works in the body. Armed with this knowledge, he quickly realized that by blending certain Chinese herbs with the hemp extract, he could counter the uncomfortable and downright painful outcomes for different conditions. “My intuition was that it would be more effective, and no one else was really doing it.”

After attending countless hemp summits across New York State where he was able to consult with acupuncturists doing CBD testing, as well as doctors and scientists from all around the world who were using it as a substitute for opioids to reduce pain. The more he learned, the more he understood the potential of CBD hemp in both health and business.

“I was meeting all different types of people [who] were talking about using hemp for all sorts of things, from constructions to making batteries,” he says. “It was incredible, the excitement around it.”

This was all happening during the same time that then-Governor Andrew Cuomo started advocating for New York to be the poster child for CBD hemp, pushing for best quality, best practices and best processing.

“The Food and Drug Administration hadn’t ruled on it yet and the West Coast was way ahead of us,” Menard says. “It really drove me to find hemp partners to develop these formulas.”

The ability to create a quality CBD-hemp product that’s successfully blended with Chinese herbs is a little tricky. First and foremost, says Menard, they have to be effective and second, they have to taste good.

“When you cook down Chinese herbs, they’re nasty,” he says. “They’re super effective, but you have to take them every day for a long period of time to see results. It’s really tough to get them down. It takes discipline.”

Mernard’s initial products launched in 2021 and originally used hemp from New York-based Hudson Hemp, while working with a California-based company to develop his capsules for pain, energy and enhanced athletic performance. “The process was very crude at first. Then COVID hit and I was determined to bring the brand to a new level that was happening in the world of CBD.”

Apothecary for Athletes

Presently, his main manufacturing partners are in North Carolina and Colorado, where organic hemp is cultivated on small-scale farms. The products have evolved into full spectrum CBD, meaning the product uses all of the phytochemicals found in Cannabis sativa, which include essential oils, terpenes, other cannabinoids, the cannabidiol itself and THC (although the amount of THC will usually be under 0.3 %, as guided by law). This results in better quality and even more effective tinctures, balms and gummies. 

With Dragon Hemp firmly rooted in the community as an educational and experiential space — offering comprehensive, in-person consultations at the apothecary — products are prescribed to people based on three metrics: aches and pains, overall wellbeing, and rest and restoration — Menard is able to promote health and wellness along with modern cannabinoid therapy. 

His past efforts include holding a teen clinic for Sag Harbor middle and high school students, offering free acupuncture treatments to youth affected by the opioid crisis plaguing the East End at the time. Most recently, he’s been getting back to his athletic roots, providing Dragon Hemp as a sponsor for Event Power triathlon races across Long Island for the 2024 season, most recently the Beacon of Hope 5K in Montauk and the Mighty North Fork Race in Southold.

Menard and his team of five, which include a licensed nutritionist as well as acupuncturists, and a former holistic health spa employee, are also hosting pop-up apothecaries at upcoming races, too.

Since the beginning of June, two triathletes, father and daughter duo Mike and Alyssa Bahel, of East Hampton and Sag Harbor, respectively, are on a Dragon Hemp-prescribed regiment that includes energy capsules, cooling and heating balms and recovery tinctures for after working out. “I’ve been really loving the recovery tincture,” says Alyssa. “I’ll take that right after a long bike ride or a heavy workout and I don’t feel sore at all. It’s incredible.”

For her father, Mike, it’s the increase in energy plus the improved sleep he’s experienced. “We live in a world [with] a lot of pharmaceuticals, and I think it’s important to think about alternatives,” he says. “I’m old school and I think gummies and all that stuff couldn’t be medicinal, but I’m learning they can.”

As far as looking to the future, Menard says he would love to turn to locally growing his own hemp. This would allow Dragon Hemp to produce, process and manufacture all the products. However, he stresses that’s a notion that’s way down the line.

“First and foremost, Dragon Hemp is educational and secondly, it’s consultative. We’re not getting people high here, we’re not a dispensary. We really want to improve people’s lives,” he says. “That’s why I created this line, so people can continue enjoying their lives without pain. We want them to feel safe and we want them to feel heard.”