Organizations

04/24/19 Melanie Dreher

Program
Century of Lies
Date
Guest
Melanie Dreher
Organization
Patients out of Time

This week on Century, an interview with the renowned researcher Melanie Dreher, PhD, RN, FAAN.

Audio file

TRANSCRIPT

CENTURY OF LIES

APRIL 24, 2019

DEAN BECKER: The failure of drug war is glaringly obvious to judges, cops, wardens, prosecutors, and millions more now calling for decriminalization, legalization, the end of prohibition. Let us investigate the Century Of Lies.

DOUG MCVAY: Hello, and welcome to Century of Lies. I'm your host Doug McVay, editor of DrugWarFacts.org.

Well, this week we're going to hear an interview with Melanie Dreher, PhD. She's also a registered nurse and a Fellow of the American Academy of Nursing. It was such an honor to have the chance to sit down with her and to get this interview, and I hope you folks enjoy it. Before any ado can possibly be furthered, let's get to it.

Could you tell me who you are and what you do?

MELANIE DREHER, PHD, RN, FAAN: Melanie Dreher, and I am Dean Emeritus at Rush University, and I'm a cannabis researcher, four decades of cannabis research.

DOUG MCVAY: Doctor Dreher, there is so very much that I could be asking you about, and in so little time. Just, well, what inspired you? This is probably a big question, too, but I'll do it. What inspired you to make cannabis, I mean, I don't know if saying making cannabis your career is the right way to say it. What inspired your interest in this plant?

MELANIE DREHER, PHD, RN, FAAN: Oh, it was purely by accident. I was a graduate student at Columbia University. My professor decided to send me to Jamaica to do an ethnographic study and recruit subjects for a medical study.

And it was 1969. It was when Neal Armstrong first set foot on the moon, and 400,000 of my best friends were in Woodstock, which is where I really wanted to be. And, I ended up on a mountaintop, having no experience with cannabis, never having been to Jamaica, and not knowing how to do ethnography. So I was perfectly qualified for a career as an ethnographer in cannabis research.

And that was the beginning. And, from there, we -- my first study there was really looking at the amotivational syndrome, which was a very popular concept in the early Seventies, suggesting that cannabis use made people lose their interest in productive activities, drop out, drop out of college, not being able to finish simple tasks, et cetera.

And the reason I selected that as my doctoral dissertation was because I had just spent the summer before in Jamaica where men and women were using cannabis to help them work harder.

So, something was going on here, and it warranted a cross-cultural study. So I ended up doing a study of rural farmers, and sugar cane workers, and the nice thing about studying sugar cane workers is that their productivity is measured in the tons that they cut, because that's how they get paid.

And, after a year of -- I'm sorry, yes, actually two years working with cane cutters and measuring their productivity, and getting to know them as people in a certain context, I discovered that actually there was no difference in their productivity. So whether they smoked cannabis or whether they didn't, men were working hard.

But if they believed that cannabis was helping them work harder, that was a good thing.

So, while I was there, I also discovered that women were preparers of cannabis tea and medicines that they would give to their families and children, in many ways, to help the children work harder. They made sure that children had a cannabis tea before they went to school, and especially if they were taking a test, they wanted their children to be able to concentrate. And they did that by preparing them tea.

So I did a tiny study that was then published in an education journal on whether the children who had cannabis tea performed better academically than children who didn't have the tea. And, the result that, and I'm not -- wasn't sure we'd get this result, but in fact, the children who performed better in school were the tea drinkers.

And, I think, one of the good things about doing this ethnographic work is that you come out of the laboratory and study natural behavior in its natural context, and understand why cannabis was working in this instance.

And certainly the mothers and fathers who cared enough to make sure that their children would partake of their, you know, limited, little store of cannabis, were also the mothers and fathers who made sure their children had clean uniforms to wear, and pencils, and notebooks to go to school with, and that they were actually attending school more often.

So it was, cannabis tea was part of a complex of good parenting. Interestingly, we asked the teachers ahead of time which children, they did not know whether the children were getting tea or not. We asked them which children they thought would be getting the tea.

And of course, the teachers were representing middle class, they disapproved of giving cannabis tea to children, and got it completely wrong. The children that they thought were the high performers were indeed the high performers, but they were not the children that they thought were drinking tea.

So, it was an interesting little study that then led on to working with mothers, and a few women had actually begun smoking, which was out of sort of the cultural order of Jamaica.

And at that time, the United States was still reeling from the thalidomide event, and were very interested in the substances, the teratogenic factors of all substances that women were using during pregnancy.

So I was able to get the March of Dimes to fund a small study, looking at the -- at the effects, the neonatal and perinatal effects of cannabis exposure during pregnancy. And we used thirty cannabis using women and thirty non, and they were matched for age and parity, and socioeconomic status.

And that study also engaged the Brazelton Neonatal team from Harvard, and they helped administer that schedule, to look at children's neurological and behavioral -- babies, neonates, neurological and behavioral performance.

And counterintuitively, one day, the children -- babies, in both groups, were non-differentiated. I mean, we didn't -- we could not find anything that would distinguish the exposed babies from the non-exposed babies on the Brazelton Scale.

At one month, the exposed children performed significantly better on every variable of the Brazelton Scale. And we were very surprised. We didn't think we'd ever get anyone to publish it. In fact, Pediatrics did publish it a little bit later, in 1995, and interestingly, we got no pushback at all. I thought there would be letters coming in, how can you say this doesn't make a difference. It was totally silent.

It was not until 20 years later that all of a sudden this became an important study. But in the meantime, pregnant women who use marijuana found this study, and they used this study, and it got, you know, circulated among other pregnant women. So it did have an enormous impact.

Frankly, that little study is probably -- made us rockstars among cannabis users today and advocates of cannabis. It was very well conducted, we worked hard, we got it right.

And once again, by looking at this behavior in context, as opposed to the laboratory, we could see that differences between the two samples that had nothing to do with age or parity or socioeconomic status, but really how they functioned economically, where most of the smoking mothers, or the using mothers, were not in conjugal unions. They were self-supporting.

So they had their own incomes, and they would be the first to say, if I don't have to keep a man, I have a lot more time to give to my baby. And so they were able to create very salubrious environments, neonatal environments -- environments for neonatal development.

And then, we were funded by the federal government, NIH, actually the National Institute on Drug Abuse, to look at these children from two to five, and to see if there was any developmental impact of the prenatal exposure.

Once again, we could not find anything to distinguish -- there were children who did better than other children, but it was not related at all to prenatal exposure. And we were pretty excited about those results, and they generated a lot of other interesting data that allowed us to attribute those differences to other factors in the environment.

But, nonetheless, we decided, let's look at this impact on school age children. So using the same cohort, the only study in history that would have been the same cohort to look at children from five to ten. Went into the feds, and tried to get, you know, an extension, another study funded, and that's when they cut us off and said, you know, these are not the data we expected to get, and we're funded by Congress, and Congress is not going to like these results.

So that was the end of that sequence. But, just because NIH didn't like it did not prevent me from actually doing another study in Jamaica, which was a national survey of drug use.

And that came in the Eighties, late '80s, because for the first time, cocaine had come into Jamaica. And for a while it was just within musicians, and then it leaked into the larger society, for a number of reasons.

I took four students down. We did a national ethnographic study, we were in five communities, the students -- each student had his or her own community. I did sex workers in Kingston who were addicted to crack cocaine.

And one of the things that we -- first of all, we discovered that there was no -- that cannabis was definitely not a gateway drug to crack cocaine or anything else.

The Rastafarian community that we worked with had a kind of socially, and perhaps even physiologically, protective value of using cannabis, and they did not engage in crack cocaine use at all. Maybe one or two might have tried it, but they were disinterested in it, completely.

The other thing that we saw was that my sex workers in Kingston were using -- had never used cannabis before they used crack cocaine, were currently using cannabis to relinquish their crack cocaine habit. And which they did very successfully. So far from being a gateway drug, it was actually an exit drug.

And even though USAID and even the public health, ministry of health in Jamaica was thinking we've got multi-drug users here, we didn't have multi-drug users. We had single-drug users who were using the cheapest, most available product around, cannabis, for self treatment to get off of crack cocaine.

So there you have it, pretty much the history of my work in Jamaica. But, it has provided so many insights, and when I hear about the wonderful physiological research that is going on, and the discovery of the endocannabinoid system, I'm thinking, somehow, through experience, human beings knew this stuff already.

The Jamaicans were doing -- were acting on this, they could tell me way back then that cannabis smoked went directly to the brain, and cannabis consumed in teas and tonics went to the blood, and this is correlating with where CB-1s and CB-2s are now.

Fortunately we have this good research because now it gives us greater application for this amazing plant that has figured significantly not only in humans, but every living vertebrate from the beginning of time. So the fun is just beginning. I'm glad to be part of the early walks in this journey. So, it's been great. A great career.

DOUG MCVAY: We're listening to an interview with Doctor Melanie Dreher. She is Board Chair of the Trinity Health System, Dean Emeritus of the College of Nursing of Rush University and Rush University Medical Center in Chicago. We'll get back to that interview in just a moment.

You're listening to Century of Lies. I'm your host Doug McVay.

On April 8, the UK House of Commons had a discussion about medical cannabis. The UK government is breaking, or maybe just bending, its promise to get medical cannabis to patients that are in need.

And so Members of Parliament have raised the question. We're going to hear now a couple of comments from Members of Parliament. First up, Ronnie Cowan, a member of the Scottish National Party representing Inverclyde.

JOHN BERCOW, MP: Ronnie Cowan.

RONNIE COWAN, MP: Thank you very much, Mister Speaker. There are some warm words circulating here today. My question relates to the point that was just made. We have this problem today, clinical trials will take six months, nine months, a year. What can we reasonably do legally to get certified products that we know will work into the hands of parents today who've got children who desperately need them?

MATT HANCOCK: I entirely understand the honorable Gentleman’s point, and I feel the same way as he does about the urgency of these cases, and the need to get a second opinion now can be actioned immediately, and will be actioned immediately, because the crucial point is that a, we cannot prescribe unlicensed medicines without any clinicians making that prescription.

There are just over 95,000 clinicians on the specialist register. Any of those who have expertise in this area can, if their clinical judgment allows them to, can make these prescriptions. And that can happen right now.

DOUG MCVAY: That was Ronnie Cowan, he's a Scottish National Party Member of Parliament. The UK Parliament discussed medical cannabis on April 8. In particular, there were concerns that the UK government is failing to meet its promise of providing medical cannabis to patients that are in need.

Now, let's hear from another Member of Parliament. Here's Thangam Debbonaire, Labour Party, from Bristol.

JOHN BERCOW, MP: Thangam Debbonaire.

THANGAM DEBBONAIRE, MP: Thank you, Mister Speaker. I -- thank you to internet memes.

I am grateful to the Secretary of State for what he has said so far, but I have spoken with a neurosurgeon in my constituency who says that one of his anxieties is not being able to give good advice to parents whom he suspects may or may not be trying to get access to medical cannabis through not wholly legal routes, because he is unsure what the law is.

I agree with the Secretary of State on the need for clinical evidence, so what more information can he give us on the timescale? When will we see the health education research that he talks about? When will we see this? What will be the timeframe? In the meantime, why can we not use the evidence of clinical trials conducted elsewhere?

MATT HANCOCK: The evidence of clinical trials from elsewhere absolutely can and should be used. All international clinical evidence should be brought to bear on these decisions and has been in the case of CBD. And on the answer to how quickly, as she can probably imagine, the answer is as soon as possible.

DOUG MCVAY: That was Thangam Debbonaire, a Member of Parliament in the UK, asking questions of a government minister regarding the lack of availability of cannabis medicines. Patients were promised in 2018 that the UK government was finally going to allow them to have access to cannabis medicines. That's simply not true.

Now, let's hear Alison Thewliss, Scottish National Party, Member of the UK House of Commons.

JOHN BERCOW, MP: Alison Thewliss.

ALISON THEWLISS, MP: Thank you, Mister Speaker. One of my constituents — one of many who have been in touch with me about this issue — has multiple sclerosis and found previously that cannabis helped his symptoms immensely, but he does not want to break the law and he cannot get a prescription. What would the Secretary of State advise him to do?

MATT HANCOCK: Well if she'll write to me with the case, we'll get a second opinion from a clinician who may be able to make that prescription.

DOUG MCVAY: That was Alison Thewliss, member of the Scottish National Party, she's a Member of the UK Parliament, and she was questioning a government minister about the UK government's failure to get medical cannabis into the hands of patients who are in need.

You're listening to Century of Lies. I'm your host Doug McVay. Now, let's hear some more from my interview with Doctor Melanie Dreher.

Because you have that kind of perspective, I have to ask, the changes now, to then, in not just understanding, but also the policy. What do you think are some of the more positive things that have happened?

MELANIE DREHER, PHD, RN, FAAN: Oh, I think the fact that there are only 16 of 50 states in which cannabis is still illegal is amazing. I mean, given the environment in which I worked in the early days?

I mean, I was arrested and detained at the Miami Airport, I was arrested and jailed twice in Jamaica. I had to get a DEA license in order to do this study and then, you know, send the cannabis to Mississippi. I think the fact that we have -- to be analyzed for THC content.

And, but then to now have a medicine ready plant, the fact that the concentration of THC in our plants is much higher now is a very good thing, because it cuts down on the tars and all those medical problems that result from inhalation, pulmonary affects, so that's a very good thing.

People are still, however, uninformed. They are -- we must do a better job of educating the public, and one of the things that personally has happened to me is that, I always felt safe as a researcher. You know, I'll do the research, you guys take it and do something with it.

Now, hearing the stories of people and the struggles that they have had in their lives for various reasons, has made me an activist, and I welcome any opportunity that I can get in front of an audience and talk about cannabis, and tell them the real truth.

And my -- I usually start out with the statement that I'm not here to get them to use marijuana. I hardly ever use that term, but I'm not here to get you to use marijuana, I'm here to tell you the truth. Whether you use it or not is your decision, but at least know the truth.

And that's been very gratifying to me, now that I'm retired, I have more time to do those kinds of things that help people really understand this extraordinary plant.

DOUG MCVAY: I don't know if you blog or anything, but, what, do you have any books that people might be interested in?

MELANIE DREHER, PHD, RN, FAAN: Well, you know, one of my favorite books is often not cited. There are many, many excellent books on cannabis now, and it drives me crazy when politicians say, well, we need more research. We have tons of research, and research that was conducted under very difficult situations, politically difficult situations.

We have plenty of research. We have some excellent books. But one of the books I like a lot, I'm just blanking at the author's name, he's a very well known author, you might know it. He wrote a little book called The Botany Of Desire.

DOUG MCVAY: Michael Pollan.

MELANIE DREHER, PHD, RN, FAAN: Michael Pollan's book.

DOUG MCVAY: Oh, of course, Michael Pollan's book The Botany Of Desire.

MELANIE DREHER, PHD, RN, FAAN: Yes. And I love that book, because he really described the evolution of the plant in relation to the politics of the people.

And, it's very, very cleverly done, and it's in the context of other important plants in our history as a species. You know, I think it was the apple, and the tulip, and potato, wasn't it? The potato.

DOUG MCVAY: Yes.

MELANIE DREHER, PHD, RN, FAAN: Potato.

DOUG MCVAY: Irish ancestry, you know I'm going to remember that.

MELANIE DREHER, PHD, RN, FAAN: Yes. There you go. And cannabis. It's a small book, a delightful book, and I think gives people a real sense of the importance in terms of human evolution of this amazing plant.

I mean, when you think that the endocannabinoid system really describes how we have evolved, and will continue to evolve, with homeostasis. I mean, this plant makes us eat, sleep, forget, and enjoy sex. These are the four things we need to evolve, continue to evolve as a species.

The significance of it just cannot be underplayed. So it's so important that we acknowledge the brilliance of this plant.

DOUG MCVAY: Doctor Dreher, thank you so much.

MELANIE DREHER, PHD, RN, FAAN: You're welcome.

DOUG MCVAY: Oh my gosh. I am a fan, I have to admit, I am.

That was my interview with Doctor Melanie Dreher.

NGAIO BEALUM: This is why I like weed. It's beneficial. It helps people. You read studies every week how marijuana helps with this s***, marijuana fixes this s***.

They had a study a few months ago, marijuana helps to alleviate the symptoms and the onset of Alzheimer's disease. It's true. It's true. How it works is, you get to used to forgetting s***, you develop a system. Right? So then when the Alzheimer's kicks in, you don't even notice, you just think you're high. Right? As long as you can find your pen, you're good.

This is why I like weed. Marijuana, for me, it's like the umami, you understand, it's the soy sauce. It's the ranch dressing. It's the ketchup of life. Maybe some s*** is cool, you put some weed on it, it's even cooler. Right? Maybe it's not so cool, you dip it in some weed? All right. You hear where I'm coming from?

Things I don't want to do, I don't like to wash dishes, but I don't mind getting high and washing dishes. You understand where I'm coming from? Right? It takes an extra hour, because I have to make a playlist. Right? My washing the dishes playlist is off the hook though, you hear me? It's got different songs depending on how many dishes, what kind of dishes. There's extra spoons there's more SoundGarden.

Right? Spoon me.

DOUG MCVAY: And that's it for this week. I want to thank you for joining us. You have been listening to Century of Lies. We're a production of the Drug Truth Network for the Pacifica Foundation Radio Network, on the web at DrugTruth.net. I’m your host Doug McVay, editor of DrugWarFacts.org.

The executive producer of the Drug Truth Network is Dean Becker. Drug Truth Network programs, including this show, Century of Lies, as well as the flagship show of the Drug Truth Network, Cultural Baggage, and of course our daily 420 Drug War News segments, are all available by podcast. The URLs to subscribe are on the network home page at DrugTruth.net.

The Drug Truth Network has a Facebook page, please give it a like. Drug War Facts is on Facebook too, give its page a like and share it with friends. Remember: Knowledge is power.

You can follow me on Twitter, I'm @DougMcVay and of course also @DrugPolicyFacts.

We'll be back in a week with thirty more minutes of news and information about drug policy reform and the failed war on drugs. For now, for the Drug Truth Network, this is Doug McVay saying so long. So long!

For the Drug Truth Network, this is Doug McVay asking you to examine our policy of drug prohibition: the century of lies. Drug Truth Network programs archived at the James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy.

03/06/19 Mary Lynn Mathre

Program
Century of Lies
Date
Guest
Mary Lynn Mathre
Organization
Patients Out of Time

This week on Century of Lies, medical cannabis in the US and the UK. We talk with the president and co-founder of Patients Out of Time, Mary Lynn Mathre, RN, MSN, CARN, about their national clinical conference coming up April 11-13 in Tampa, Florida; and we hear a UK government minister answering questions in the House of Lords about medicinal cannabis policy.

Audio file

TRANSCRIPT

CENTURY OF LIES

MARCH 6, 2019

DEAN BECKER: The failure of drug war is glaringly obvious to judges, cops, wardens, prosecutors, and millions more now calling for decriminalization, legalization, the end of prohibition. Let us investigate the Century Of Lies.

DOUG MCVAY: Hello, and welcome to Century of Lies. I'm your host Doug McVay, editor of DrugWarFacts.org.

This week, my guest is Mary Lynn Mathre. She’s a Registered Nurse and a Certified Addictions Registered Nurse. She’s also the co-founder and president of Patients Out of Time, which is a 501c3 educational nonprofit that works to educate healthcare professionals, other professionals, patients and the public about medical cannabis.

Full disclosure: I do work part-time for Patients Out of Time, doing website and social media management.

Patients Out of Time conferences, you work along with medical school and professional organizations, and you provide accredited materials. These courses are accredited for continuing education credits, and, I mean, it's -- why is that? Why do you go through the, I know that it's an arduous process getting the accreditation, and getting everything straight, and all the, heck, the paperwork itself. Why do you do that?

MARY LYNN MATHRE, RN, CARN: Yeah, you described it well. It's an arduous process. You know, years back, we actually, my husband and I started out with NORML, the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, I'm sure the listeners know, and you know, clearly, at that point, seeing that it definitely should not be prohibited, that the laws were - the punishment was so much greater than the potential harm of the plant.

As we recognized the health benefits, it just became clear that it's very important healthcare professionals understand the safety and the value of this plant, this medicine. And to do that, we felt we had to have accredited conferences. These are conferences that physicians, nurses, pharmacists, can go and get credits. All practicing clinicians need to continually maintain their license by, you know, showing that they are keeping up to date with new science.

Specifically with cannabis, they really need to understand this. So if we have a conference that accredited, that's basically telling them that this has met the criteria. We are going to be presenting scientific information. We're going to have professionals presenting this information.

So there are many hurdles we have to go through, but, that's it. This isn't a business, it's not a cannabis expo, it's not a business meeting designed for industry people. It's clearly designed primarily for healthcare professionals to really understand the endocannabinoid system, and help them understand the risks and benefits of cannabis, how to use cannabis.

Our attendees -- besides healthcare professionals, we often get patients, because, you know, they look to healthcare professionals to get their information, and sadly, most clinicians, because of the prohibition in the United States, they really don't understand how to use it. Oftentimes, the patients are teaching the clinicians.

But a lot of the patients come to our conference wanting to learn more, and simply to get validation, that they, you know, they really are using a medicine. Patients know how they feel, they can tell if they're feeling better, if the medicine's working or not.

But anyway, yeah, accreditation, for us, is basically saying this is a valid conference. The information you're going to get is valid. And along with that, let me just also introduce the fact that on the Eleventh, Thursday April Eleventh, we'll kick off the conference itself with a pre-conference workshop, and this one is literally really designed for the new clinicians that are considering making recommendations for cannabis, called "Integrating Cannabis Into Medical Practice."

We want to let the healthcare professionals be able to answer questions when patients come in and ask them about their use, and if they -- they can make a better decision about is this -- would cannabis be a good option for this patient, and if so, what would be the best route that they should take? How can I make a recommendation that's meaningful for this patient? How should I chart, or document, my interactions with the patient, what should I be looking for, you know, as they use this medicine?

So, it's, again, the preconference workshop is geared especially for clinicians new to this field. It will give you basic answers, and if we've got two, actually three leading clinicians in this. Doctor Sulak is coming down from Maine, excellent clinician. Deb Malka, Deborah Malka, an MD PhD, she's been taking care of patients for decades as well. And then a local physician, Terel Newton, who's been -- has a background in anesthesiology and treating a lot of patients for pain, pain being probably the most common reason patients seek help with cannabis.

I want to make sure people also know that on April Twelfth, we will be hosting a benefit dinner at the Florida Aquarium, rooftop on the Florida Aquarium. Really excited about that. It's a chance for those who might not -- who come to the conference, they might want to celebrate that Friday evening with us at the benefit dinner, but it's also open, certainly, to the public, a chance to meet the faculty, a chance to just help Patients Out of Time.

This is a fundraiser for us, so we really -- we depend on donations. As Doug said, we're a 501c3. Folks can find more information at either website: PatientsOutOfTime.org or MedicalCannabis.com. PatientsOutOfTime.org will easily get you all the information about the conference, how to register for it, and I'll hope to see some of you there.

Please encourage your own healthcare professional to attend this conference and learn so that they can take better care of you.

This year, we're changing things up a little bit. We always like to have an evening reception on Thursday evening, which is really a time for the faculty to come, and attendees to come and just interact socially with some of the faculty. And this year we've got Rick Doblin, PhD.

Rick is the founder of MAPS, the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies, and he's going to go back and do a little history of this, you know, what all's happened, how cannabis became illegal in the first place, and where are we today. So we're really thrilled to have him.

Again, we hope folks can come and join us. The reception is going to be at Le Meridien Hotel in Tampa. Again, all that information is on our website.

DOUG MCVAY: That was my interview with Mary Lynn Mathre, RN, CARN. She's the co-founder and president of Patients Out of Time. Their conference April 11, 12, and 13 in Tampa, Florida. The websites are MedicalCannabis.com or PatientsOutOfTime.org. Full disclosure: I do work part-time for Patients Out of Time doing website and social media management.

You're listening to Century of Lies. I’m your host Doug McVay, editor of DrugWarFacts.org.

Here's Valery Shuman. She's Senior Director of the Midwest Harm Reduction Institute at the Heartland Alliance. Audio comes to us courtesy of SAMHSA.

VALERY SHUMAN: So, a lot of the work that I do is in trying to change people's minds about harm reduction, to get them to accept it, to adopt it.

And people have a lot of misconceptions about harm reduction. You know, they feel like it's enabling drug users. They feel like it's giving up on people, right, like setting the bar too low. They feel like if they are sensitive to people's pros of using drugs, right, the reasons that they do it, the things that they get out of it, that that's somehow signing on, or agreeing, that it's okeh to do that.

And so a lot of the work that we do is in trying to understand where people are coming from. I think that's one of the most important things when you're engaging with a community, to try and get them to accept harm reduction, is to understand what their beliefs are, their misconceptions are, why they believe them, what their fears are, because it's often fear-based as well, and to help them understand the ways in which they're already doing it.

That's one of the things that I find, is that people are often practicing harm reduction, but they aren't calling it that. They aren't recognizing it as that, and so we do a lot of discussion around, you know, seat belts. Right? And speed limits, and really pragmatic public health strategies that we all use, that we're all engaged in, that are harm reduction, and around eating, and nutrition, like the dietary choices that we make.

There's a really great book that I often reference called Eat This, Not That. It's like, if you go to a fast food restaurant, this is the healthier choice. Totally a harm reduction strategy.

People who are engaged in primary and tertiary -- primary and secondary prevention strategies around substance use often don't recognize that it's harm reduction as well. They think of harm reduction as only tertiary prevention, right, when people are already sort of on death's door. But all of that is harm reduction. We're all on the same team.

So, trying to help people recognize that we are all on the same team, that they're already engaged in some of these practices, can help them to sign on to some of the more overt practices, as well.

So, another thing that's incredibly important when you're engaging communities around harm reduction is to find what the hook is for that particular community. And it's different in every community.

A good example is if you're speaking to legislators or politicians. They can often leverage information about cost savings to convince people to change the laws, and rules. So for example, there's lots of good evidence of cost saving on syringe exchange programs, reducing the incidence of HIV and hepatitis C, which are incredibly expensive for lifetime prevalence.

Similarly with Housing First, there's great data on how much less expensive it is to house people than to let them remain on the street and use expensive services like emergency rooms, like jails, like prisons, and so to arm people with that information, if that's the hook for them.

But it's different for other people. You know, for some people, it might be their religion or their spirituality, or their morality, that you can tap into, that really speaks to harm reduction.

For other people it's about bodily autonomy, so, trying to figure out what's important to the people, the audience that you're talking to and finding what the hook is for them.

DOUG MCVAY: That was Valery Shuman, Senior Director of the Midwest Harm Reduction Institute at the Heartland Alliance. You’re listening to Century of Lies. I’m your host Doug McVay, editor of DrugWarFacts.org.

On Monday, March 4, in the UK Parliament’s House of Lords, a government minister answered questions about the government’s plans to make medicinal cannabis available on prescription.

The questioning is opened by The Baroness Meacher, Molly Christine Meacher, a Crossbench member of the House of Lords and Co-Chair of the All Party Parliamentary Group for Drug Policy Reform. The Minister responding to questions is The Baroness Blackwood of North Oxford, Nicola Claire Blackwood. Baroness Blackwood is the Parliamentary Under-Secretary for Health and Social Care.

Other Members of the Lords follow with questions. I’ll give you the list at the end.

BARONESS MEACHER: I beg leave to ask the question standing in my name on the order paper.

BARONESS BLACKWOOD: My Lords, government officials have been working with colleagues across healthcare and the wider system to ensure that where appropriate patients can access ?medicinal cannabis.

Clinical guidance has been issued by the Royal College of Physicians, the British Pediatric Neurology Association, and the Association of British Neurologists. Specialist doctors will consider this before prescribing, but we are clear that the decision to prescribe should be one for individual clinicians to make in partnership with patients and their families.

BARONESS MEACHER: I thank the Minister for her reply. The Minister will be aware, of course, that only about four people have received a prescription of medical cannabis since it became legal on the First of November last year.

Doctors have had no training in prescribing cannabis. They need to know the contents, the dosages, the side-effects, and everything else about medical cannabis products. And the pressure on doctors with desperate patients whose standard medications are not working or are causing unacceptable side-effects is intense, and doctors do need government help, urgently.

Will the Minister ensure that the NHS [National Health Service] medical director makes specialist doctors aware of the new guidelines to be launched later this month by the Medical Cannabis Clinicians’ Society, and also to make doctors aware of the twelve module online training course already available from the Academy of Medical Cannabis?

BARONESS BLACKWOOD: Well, I thank the noble Baroness for her question. This is a challenging area, and the evidence base is still developing.

But the Government is working hard to ensure that awareness is increasing. This is why we have asked NICE [National Institute for Clinical Excellence] to develop guidance which will be released later this year. We've asked HEE [Health Education England] to develop a training package to increase knowledge and awareness among health professionals.

And it's also why officials are working closely with suppliers and importers to ensure that when prescriptions are given, they are filled. But we do understand that there is work to do on this and we will continue to work on this issue.

BARONESS MEACHER: My Lords, following the -- following the --

LORD HOWARTH: Will the noble Lady comment on the issues illustrated in the predicament of a person who has been prescribed the cannabinoid Dronabinol, branded as Bedrocan, which is the only medication that has proved effective for her following the failure of 35 different medications previously prescribed to relieve her chronic pain from cervical and lumbar spondylosis?

Given that it was last summer that the Chief Medical Officer stated that there is conclusive evidence that cannabis-based products are effective for certain medical conditions, why is this patient still forced to travel to Holland every three months to obtain the medication which her consultant considers essential for her, and why does confusion still reign over licensing procedures?

Will the noble Lady, the Minister, meet with me and the person I've mentioned to see if she can introduce some more sense into these arrangements?

BARONESS BLACKWOOD: I thank the noble Lord for his question, and I am very sorry to hear about the situation that he raises. I am of course very happy to meet with him. What I would say is that there should be no reason, as I can see, for the situation that he has outlined. It is up to clinicians to prescribe as they see fit under the guidelines which have been put out, and I'm very sorry to hear of the situation that he's raised.

BARONESS WALMSLEY: Lords, when the Chief Medical Officer recommended that cannabis medicines be rescheduled, she produced a report which showed that the most rigorous regulatory authorities in the world -- those in the US, Australia and Ireland, and indeed the World Health Organization -- had strong evidence of the benefits of cannabis-based medicines for people with epilepsy.

In light of that, surely four licences is completely unacceptable. Why are UK patients being deprived of these safe and effective medicines which have actually fewer side-effects than some licensed pharmaceuticals, such as sodium valproate?

BARONESS BLACKWOOD: Well, I don't accept the characterization which the noble Baroness has just given. UK patients are not being denied access to these medications. They are able to access medications via prescription from a doctor who is on the specialist medical register.

And, the Government has acted fast on -- with the review of the best clinical evidence and are going further with a NICE guideline which will come forward, and also with, further, a Health Education England training package to raise even more awareness.

BARONESS THORNTON: What troubles me, my Lords, about the noble Lady's answer, is that -- I've looked on NHS England’s guidance, and it said that medical cannabis can only be provided only where all “other treatment options have been exhausted," and where there is, “published evidence of benefit”.

Well, we've heard lots of evidence of the benefit here, just this afternoon. What, I think, we're right to be worried about is, what is the research that's allowing that to happen? Why is it not happening quickly enough? And I think the thing that underlies this is, can the noble Lady describe what level of opiate addiction and which severe side-effects of other medication can be tolerated before medical cannabis is prescribed?

BARONESS BLACKWOOD: Well, the evidence base for the quality and effectiveness of these products is limited, and it is developing. But this is why the Government has asked the MHRA [Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency] to call for a proposal to enhance our knowledge of these medications.

However, we have not waited to do this. We have introduced a route via the unlicensed medications, which allows for doctors who are on the specialist register to prescribe for patients.

This is the right route because these are the doctors who will understand the conditions which are mostly likely to benefit from prescription, and they are the ones who are able to make a judgment about the safety and efficacy of medicinal cannabis.

And, it is the route which is usually used for unlicensed medications, and is the one which the MHRA has set up already. We want to see more licensed products in this route already, though, so we do also call upon industry to invest in more trials and publish the results and the full underpinning data to build our knowledge in this space so that more patients are able to benefit.

LORD WEST: My Lords, the majority of those guilty of violent terrorist crimes in this country, we have found are heavy users of cannabis. When one looks at violent crime outside of terrorism, again, and I don't know the details of this, but it does seem that very often the people involved are heavy users of cannabis. Skunk, not the ?stuff we're talking about, the liquid stuff.

Could I ask the noble Lady Minister, is the Government actually looking at the relationship between use of these really strong types of cannabis and violent crime, to see if anything should be done about it?

BARONESS BLACKWOOD: Well, the types of medicines that we're speaking about are not skunk. And he is right that all medicines carry risk, but they can also be beneficial.

That is why we have introduced a route to allow medicinal cannabis to be used for those conditions where it will be beneficial. But the change in the law allows strict access by specialist doctors who, in making the decisions to prescribe, can ensure that the benefit outweighs the harm to the patients and that restrictions are line with the advice from the ACMD [Advisory Council on Misuse of Drugs].

Any further concerns around the kinds of drugs which he is talking about are still strictly controlled by the Home Office and policing.

DOUG MCVAY: You just heard The Baroness Blackwood, the UK Government’s Parliamentary Under-Secretary for Health and Social Care, answering questions in the House of Lords on March 4 about the Government's plans for access to medicinal cannabis on prescription.

The other members of the Lords you heard in that segment, in order, were:

The Baroness Meacher, Molly Christine Meacher - Baroness Meacher is Co-Chair of the All Party Parliamentary Group for Drug Policy Reform;
The Right Honorable the Lord Howarth of Newport CBE, Alan Thomas Howarth;
The Baroness Walmsley, Joan Margaret Walmsley - Baroness Walmsley is Co-Deputy Leader of the Liberal Democrat Peers;
The Baroness Thornton, Dorothea Glenys Thornton – Baroness Thornton is Labour Party Shadow Spokesperson for Health;
and the final question was put by what I can only describe as the living caricature of an ill-informed patrician politician, The Right Honorable the Lord West of Spithead GCB DSC, Alan William John West.

You're listening to Century of Lies. I'm your host Doug McVay, editor of DrugWarFacts.org.

Here’s Valery Shuman once again. She’s Senior Director of the Midwest Harm Reduction Institute at the Heartland Alliance. This audio comes to us courtesy of the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration.

VALERY SHUMAN: I think it's really important for people to shift the culture around drug use and drug users in general, really recognize the importance of drug users in taking care of one another, and that they can and they do already, and we can give them some tools, we can use them to help avoid overdoses with others in their community, to educate one another.

So, naloxone is really important, and it's really important to get it into the hands directly of drug users and the people that love them, but there's a lot of other strategies that we can implement as well.

Some of the more interesting and unique things that are coming up right now is DanceSafe and some of the drug users unions have begun experimenting with fentanyl test strips, which were originally made for urinalysis to detect fentanyl in a drug, but they've found that they're actually pretty sensitive if you dilute a little bit of the drug and then dip the test strip in it, and they're detecting fentanyl.

And there's been a small pilot study in Canada, where they've discovered that folks using these, they're actually making different choices with regard to their drug use once they know that fentanyl is present in their drugs.

So that's a really important one.

Other really pragmatic things that people are doing are encouraging people to avoid using alone, you know, to have somebody else there so that they can intervene in the case of an overdose.

To go really slow with their injections, so that they can feel the drug at the beginning, they're not, like, slamming it in really quickly and then they've got all of it in their system, you can't go back.

To avoid mixing with other depressants, because that raises people's incidence of overdose.

Educating people about their overdose risk, things like, if you've had an overdose before, you're more likely to have one again.

People are using social media to share when there's so-called bad batches around, if they know, for example, in Chicago, there was a couple of things on social media about this person, this black Prius, is in this neighborhood handing out drugs and it's, people are overdosing, it's incredibly strong. So using social media.

And then just really importantly encouraging drug users to work with their community and take care of one another, and recognize their ability to do so.

I think that there's a lot of misconceptions about what drug users are capable of. Right? People assume if they're putting this thing in their body they must not care about themselves, they must not care about others. But what you often find when you talk to people about what they're experiences, and what they're already doing, they're already employing a lot of strategies to keep themselves and others safe.

DOUG MCVAY: That was Valery Shuman with the Midwest Harm Reduction Institute. All right, now, let's hear from Dan Bigg, co-founder of the Chicago Recovery Alliance.

DAN BIGG: Well, for the past 27 years, we have operated what we call harm reduction outreach, and that is, we, our philosophy is simply to assist any positive change, as a person defines it for him or herself.

So instead of having chaotic, out of control addiction on the one hand, and abstinence on the other, and saying these are the only two choices, we've said there's a huge productive middle ground, any positive change, and any improvement.

So we try to operationalize any positive change. You would define it for yourself, I would define it for myself, and then we as an organization would provide the most cost-effective and scientifically proven means to accomplish those things. But the choice is yours, both to what and intensity.

So for almost forty years I've been an addictions counselor, and the focus has been on struggling between those two poles, chaotic out of control addiction and abstinence. And the idea was to migrate people who are chaotic and out of control in their drug use to people who are abstinent. That is the traditional model of addiction treatment.

Unfortunately, it's inconsistent with human behavior, human condition. And there's a huge fertile field between the two that would be called improvements. In other words, using in a way that -- separating drinking and driving, for example. Hugely successful public health intervention.

It's not that we stopped drinking. It's not that we stopped driving. It's that we began to develop mechanisms for separating the two. You see them most on New Years, things like this, where, you know, where there's a designated driver, or cabs that are, or CTA, the trains, are offering free rides, and so forth. We realize there's a danger to that, and so we separate the two.

It's not that we're prohibiting one or the other. We could, but we don't, because we know it wouldn't work.

So, and that's basically all harm reduction says, is public health is the most important thing. The health of your children, the health of my children, the health of the community. That has to be first. We have to put in the background moralism, condemnation, one's perception of how one should be.

And so what we're talking about, for the first time, is affirming and even rejoicing in improvement. Not perfection, improvement. And humans are really good at improvement. We are not so good at perfection.

DOUG MCVAY: That was Dan Bigg, co-founder of the Chicago Recovery Alliance. He was speaking on a video recorded by SAMHSA that was released just a few months before Dan sadly passed away.

He was a legend in harm reduction. He was a pioneer in the distribution of naloxone. And he is sorely missed.

And for now, that's it. I want to thank you for joining us. You have been listening to Century of Lies. We're a production of the Drug Truth Network for the Pacifica Foundation Radio Network, on the web at DrugTruth.net. I’m your host Doug McVay, editor of DrugWarFacts.org.

The executive producer of the Drug Truth Network is Dean Becker. Drug Truth Network programs, including this show, Century of Lies, as well as the flagship show of the Drug Truth Network, Cultural Baggage, and of course our daily 420 Drug War News segments, are all available by podcast. The URLs to subscribe are on the network home page at DrugTruth.net.

The Drug Truth Network has a Facebook page, please give it a like. Drug War Facts is on Facebook too, give its page a like and share it with friends. Remember: Knowledge is power.

You can follow me on Twitter, I'm @DougMcVay and of course also @DrugPolicyFacts.

We'll be back in a week with thirty more minutes of news and information about drug policy reform and the failed war on drugs. For now, for the Drug Truth Network, this is Doug McVay saying so long. So long!

For the Drug Truth Network, this is Doug McVay asking you to examine our policy of drug prohibition: the century of lies. Drug Truth Network programs archived at the James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy.

06/07/18 Jodie James

Program
Cultural Baggage Radio Show
Date
Guest
Jodie James
Shaleen Title
Organization
Florida Cannabis Action Network
Patients Out of Time

Jodie James of Florida Cannabis Action Network, Shaleen Title Commissioner on the Massachusetts Cannabis Commission & Matt Elrod re Canada's forthcoming legalization of cannabis + DTN Editorial

Audio file

CULTURAL BAGGAGE

JUNE 7, 2018

TRANSCRIPT

DEAN BECKER: I am Dean Becker, your host. Our goal for this program is to expose the fraud, misdirection, and the liars whose support for drug war empowers our terrorist enemies, enriches barbarous cartels, and gives reason for existence to tens of thousands of violent US gangs who profit by selling contaminated drugs to our children. This is Cultural Baggage.

Hi folks, this is Dean Becker, in studio once again. Thank you for being with us. I have an editorial, Drug Truth Network editorial:

For nearly five hundred years, colonialist powers like England, Spain, and later the United States made it their business to impose their will on lesser countries, to force new religions and morals on all the heathen cultures of this earth.

In the process, they vilified and demonized the use of such drugs as marijuana, coca, and opium, which previously had been a recognized part of many religions, many cultures, for thousands of years.

Today, the United States, through its drug convention treaties, forces its ideas of Judeo-Christianity and all the attendant drug laws and morals on the whole world. US media now ignores the ongoing drug reform in England, France, Spain, Portugal, Canada, and much of the rest of the world.

Research, experience, and common sense have shown these enlightened countries that the medieval drug laws are a -- simply a mechanism that if left unchecked would someday devour the meaning, the very fabric, of liberty.

I ask all government leaders, all citizens, to please develop a rational approach to ending this drug war. Help rid the earth of this monster, spawned from a cesspool of hypocrisy. And now this.

Got some big news to announce. Just today, Senators Elizabeth Warren and Cory Gardner announce the Strengthening the Tenth Amendment Through Entrusting States, or the STATES Act, the Senate's first ever bipartisan bill that would protect states that legalize marijuana. A companion bill in the House of Representatives, cosponsored by David Joyce and Earl Blumenauer, was also announced today.

The bills would protect states that legalize marijuana from federal interference, allowing individuals and business acting in compliance with state marijuana laws to operate without the threat of federal prosecution.

We'll have more on this on next week's show, but for now, this is Senator Elizabeth Warren:

US SENATOR ELIZABETH WARREN: I think it's the attorney general who gave us the impetus to bring our colleagues together. When the attorney general said that he was going to start enforcing federal laws in places like Massachusetts that had just overturned the prohibition on marijuana, it spurred us to more immediate action, and to start to at least try to build the bridge, not between those who don't believe in legalization and those who do believe in legalization, but to say, let's take a practical step right now that we can take that reflects the will of the people of our home states.

And, it's gotten a lot of people engaged in a way that they weren't six months ago. Thanks to the attorney general, more people feel the urgency of the moment in changing federal law on marijuana. Go Jeff Sessions.

DEAN BECKER: You know, news is breaking all around the country, at the federal level, certainly, but on the state level, there are groups and associates, organizations, trying to legalize cannabis in one fashion or another, as they say, recreationally, more certainly for medical purposes.

There's legislators passing bills, there's voter referendums, and there's even judges rulings that are in effect, and here to talk about that from the Florida Cannabis Action Network, we have Ms. Jodi James. Hello, Jodi.

JODI JAMES: Hi, Dean, thanks for having me on your show again today.

DEAN BECKER: Oh, Jodi, it's -- there's just so much happening in regards to cannabis laws, interpretations, and votes, am I right?

JODI JAMES: It is an exciting time to be involved in this.

DEAN BECKER: Now, what's going on in Florida? There's a judge's ruling that's having an impact, right?

JODI JAMES: Well, certainly, it's got everybody at Florida Cannabis Action Network talking. Listeners who have been paying attention to Florida will remember that we passed an initiative two years ago. Now, that initiative gave people the right, if you were a qualified patient, to use cannabis under certain conditions.

One of those conditions is that you could only get cannabis from one of -- a licensed dispenser. Further, you could only get oils. So these were going to be processed products, tinctures, oils, vape cartridges, and obviously the cannabis community that I represent wanted no part of that.

One of our key members and past president, Cathy Jordan, who is a woman who's been living with Lou Gehrig's Disease since 1986, ended up being the lead plaintiff in a challenge to allow patients to use cannabis, the plant, however they needed to.

Still medical marijuana, so you still have to have a doctor that you're consulting with, but this breaks the program and will allow patients like Cathy or any other patient, for that matter, who believes that smoked cannabis, whole plant cannabis, is better for them than something that is processed.

Once this runs its appeals, we should see smoked cannabis in Florida.

DEAN BECKER: Well, you know, I'm proud to say that I've interviewed Ms. Cathy Jordan over the years, that I've had the opportunity to meet with her and her husband Bob, and to witness, truly, the astounding benefit that this has for Cathy Jordan, and I think the judges have recognized this. Anyone who has investigated her situation at all recognizes that fact immediately. Correct?

JODI JAMES: Absolutely. And, you know, one of the things that the state was arguing is that it is just too dangerous to use as a smoked product. And one of the things that they were arguing was that it wasn't necessary. And, as compelling as Cathy's testimony was, there was a woman by the name of Ms. Dobson, who had been part of a pain study, and she talked about being burned with a hot iron, and then using cannabis as part of a trial to find out if cannabis was effective for pain.

You know, when you start looking at what people have gone through over the years, to study this, to bring out the benefits of it, to overcome the rhetoric, I just think it's a great time. We win, we win, we win.

Bob Jordan sent me a text message when the judge's ruling came down. Bob and Cathy and I have been working together for more than 22 years, and the message was: we won, we won, we expletive won.

I told Bobby my problem with winning is that it means that we're still fighting, and I'm so sad that we still have battle after battle after battle. But at least I'm glad to be winning.

DEAN BECKER: Right, and you know, you've probably heard my thought over the years, incrementalism is a killer, and it certainly is, but it beats the hell out of nothing happening. And, I guess we should be happy in that regard.

And I look at it this way, Jodi, that the example that Cathy and Bob have set, with - through their courage, their commitment, their willingness to delve deep and get to the truth, is what will win it for all of us across this country, is being willing to admit that we use cannabis, that it benefits us, and that we're unafraid to speak about that benefit. I think that's where total success lies. Your thought there, Jodi James.

JODI JAMES: Absolutely. But you know what incrementalism has brought us, and you and I are on the same page with this, Dean, I just can't stand being an incrementalist and suddenly I find myself one. But, every step we take, there are more people who understand the beautiful value of this plant.

And they start becoming incrementalists, and suddenly you have the patient who had never tried cannabis six months ago, and now they're a firm believer and they're like, everybody should be using this.

DEAN BECKER: Yeah. I was going to ask, the details on -- you mentioned that prior to this judge's ruling, that oils were the preferred method of the legislature. You know, I don't know the details, but I know that much of the black market cannabis oils is made incorrectly, is made with ingredients, is made with the possibility of further damaging the health of those making use of it. Your thought there, please.

JODI JAMES: You are so right, Dean, I'm always concerned about extracts. Certainly there are healthy ways to create extracts, and these concentrates are necessary to treat certain disorders, but we don't know about pesticides.

Florida Cannabis Action Network had our regular team meeting today, and one of the things that we're moving forward with in Florida is studies with the Department of Agriculture, whose job it is to approve pesticides, and the Florida Department of Agriculture understands that a pesticide that might be okeh processed in the liver, when you eat it on lettuce, is certainly not the same as concentrating it, putting it in a pen, and then vaporizing it through your lungs.

So, I'm very concerned about that, but you know, anybody who lives in a legal market should be concerned about pesticides in their medicine.

DEAN BECKER: Well, what you brought forward there is certainly overlooked, that you take a fairly huge amount of cannabis and you run it through the process to extract the oil, and take it down to grams, take ounces, turn it into grams, it's multiplied thirty, fifty, maybe a hundred times, the effect of that pesticide.

JODI JAMES: Correct.

DEAN BECKER: Well, --

JODI JAMES: Then again, you know, what a compromised immune system can handle compared to what my immune system, in a perfect world, can handle is very different.

I understand the attraction of the oils, the idea that you can get a measured dose, the idea that you can get a consistent dose, but you know magic is science that we don't understand, and there's an awful lot of magic to cannabis.

DEAN BECKER: Yes there is, for so many different maladies, everything from constipation to headaches and beyond, it's quite, quite a medicine.

Well, I'll tell you what folks, we've been speaking with Ms. Jodi James with the Cannabis Action Network, based in Florida, and Jodi, closing thoughts, your website?

JODI JAMES: Well, thank you Dean. Certainly, our website is www.FLCAN.org. You can find a place real easy to sign up so that you can get our regular alerts. We have been blessed, but you know, it's a persistent force, and it's that persistent force that has just worn things down.

One of our senators said to us, I don't know, ten or twelve years ago, you want to legalize drugs? Keep showing up. And so that's what we've done. We just keep showing up, and we have found where cannabis and drug policy in general are relevant to other issues that are important to lawmakers, and as a result we have made cannabis more important every year.

And now we're seeing things like rights restoration and mandatory minimums, and, you know, I think that when you start by having a force like ours, Cannabis Action Network, in there, talking about the harms associated with prohibition policy, it opens the door for more people to have conversations, and as a result we are just really seeing a real uprising of people here in Florida who want to talk about justice.

DEAN BECKER: Last month, Drug Truth Network reporter Doug McVay was up in New Jersey attending the Patients Out of Time conference. While there, he captured a speech given by Shaleen Title. She's a Commissioner on the Massachusetts Cannabis Commission, an attorney and long time drug policy reformer. Shaleen Title.

SHALEEN TITLE: First I just want to say how much I appreciate the invitation to speak here, and how much respect I have for Patients Out of Time. I really love talking to the organizations that have been doing this from the beginning, since before there was an industry, and the organizations that are in this really for the right reasons, so, appreciate the opportunity.

So, I was asked to speak about fairness and cannabis business licensing, and I really appreciate that, because I'm usually asked to speak about our equity program in Massachusetts, and my specific focus, which has been on racial justice, and that gets a lot of attention, but there's no point in having an equity program if you're licensing scheme isn't fair to begin with.

If you were to have some of these barriers to entry, like $500,000 capital requirements, or a tiny number of licenses, and then make an equity program, that's akin to like a big company making a diversity plan that doesn't actually do anything.

So, if you're in a state, you're trying to be fair, you're trying to address social justice and the harms of the war on drugs, the first thing you have to start with is fairness.

So, first to just orient my perspective, so, I've been an activist in this area for about 15 years, and was particularly inspired by people like Deb Small and Michelle Alexander. When we started talking about business licenses and there was a movement in Massachusetts that, basically, legalization was not going to happen unless we did it in a way that was fair and equitable.

So, long story short, to their credit, Massachusetts legislators really took that to heart, and so they created a brand new cannabis commission, to be the regulating agency. There are five people on it, and each of them has a different area of expertise. There's public safety, public health, business, government regulation, and then the last seat is for someone with social justice experience.

And to my great surprise, because I -- normally activist millennials don't get appointed to high level government office. I got put in that seat. So they were basically like, if you care this much about racial justice, like, here's the keys and do it.

So, I've been doing that for eight to nine months now, and so we spent the first two, three months really looking in detail at other licensing schemes, what other states were doing with their medical programs, to try to make them fair and more diverse, and localities in California, like Oakland, to begin with, but also LA, Sacramento, several other cities that have been leading the way in equity.

So I would like to share a few lessons with you that I think are the most important, as we've had this focus. And let me say first, also, that I am in no way doing a victory lap here, because Massachusetts has yet to issue its first license. Under state law, we can't do that until June First, so we're very much in the beginning, so I'm sharing with you as a team effort where we're at, but, you know, if you would invite me back next year I'm sure I'll have plenty to say about the lessons learned as well.

So first, the most important thing, in my view, is, there should be no caps on the number of state licenses. And we learned this the hard way in Massachusetts. When our medical program passed in 2012, the idea was, let's start out slow and make this palatable, so we're going to start with 35 licenses, and people were referring to them as "golden tickets." Just like, red flag number one. This is not how you want to start out.

And, you know, and I've been a marijuana business lawyer, like, there's nothing wrong with people acting in their rational self interest, but when you set up a scheme like that, you are making incentives for people to do the sketchiest things they could possibly do to get one of these 35 licenses.

So, there are no caps at the state level in Massachusetts. The number of licenses that will be issued are the number of applicants that come to us that meet the suitability requirements.

Some people have asked, well, what do you do about preventing diversion? We don't want stores on every single street corner. So we have a limit that no person or business can own or control more than three licenses. There's also a hundred thousand square foot cap per licensee.

So there's other ways that you can, if you want to, you know, keep it small to begin with, it doesn't have to be by a small number of huge licenses.

The second part of that is, local approval, and bear with me because this is going to sound a little bit insider baseball-y, but to me, it's been the biggest challenge in Massachusetts, and if I had a time machine and I could go back and address it, this is the thing I would address.

So, I really want to impart this knowledge unto people. So in Massachusetts, at the state level, there are no caps. There's an equity program. However, in order to get a business license, you have to get local approval, at the city or town level. So, under state law, there was an effort to try to make this fair, so that you couldn't just go into a city or town and kind of like offer to give the most money back to that city or town, and then get their approval.

So, some cities and towns in Massachusetts have been wonderful, they've approached us about how to do their own equity program. Some have had very robust application processes. Others have had a lot of public scrutiny placed on them because they're trying to, it looks like, go outside of the limits in the law.

So here's the main limit in the law, when it comes to local approval. When a city or town decides that they can only have a certain number in their locality, let's say, four. The business and the community have to put together an agreement of how they will work together, and submit that to the state. So once the state sees that, okeh, you're good, you can go to the next step.

So in that agreement, you can put in how much money that community is going to give to the city or town to make up for the costs that are coming to the city or town. And they have to be the number, and the costs have to be reasonably related and documented. And there's a limit in Massachusetts of three percent of revenue.

So the city or town would get three percent of revenue of the business, and a three percent tax. Now, what we've seen in some of these agreements is a limit of three percent, but also a donation to the city or town of tens of thousands of dollars.

And right now in Massachusetts, there is no clear way to enforce what seems to a lot of people, what looks like to be going outside of the law. So, my suggestion to anyone who is worried about fairness in their state, in a cannabis licensing scheme, is to ensure that there is some sort of mechanism to enforce that, because it sounds like a small detail, it's not something you necessarily think of in the beginning, but that is what is happening in Massachusetts.

Second item is access to small businesses throughout every part of the regulatory process. And this is something I'm really proud of. All five of the people on the commission have been supportive of making sure that we're thinking about small businesses in every decision.

So for example, fees are waived for equity applicants, the application fees. The fees for seed to sale software are waived for equity applicants, microbusinesses, and co-ops. We set an environmental standard of the efficiency of the lights that you use, and the wattage rate was a bit -- a bit greater to allow for more flexibility for the smaller businesses.

So these types of decisions, they really add up to make it possible for small businesses to be able to be part of the industry, and to make it more fair. So no caps, access to small businesses, and then the third item I would mention is priority. I think it's been a trend that, when a medical program moves to an adult use program in a state, that those medical facilities often get priority, because they're already in the business of producing and selling marijuana to be the first to open in the adult use as well.

DEAN BECKER: It's time to play Name That Drug By Its Side Effects!

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It may create the illusion that you are tougher, smarter, faster, and better looking than most people, and it may lead you to think people are laughing with you. May cause pregnancy, and it also may be a major factor in getting your ass kicked. So what are you waiting for? Stop hiding, and start living, with tequila.

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DEAN BECKER: Well, we heard how things are panning out, slowly, down there in Florida, but today we're also going to go up to British Columbia, Canada, going to see what's going on up there. I keep seeing news articles that the senators are fine tuning the new law that's due to go into effect in the next couple of weeks, I suppose, and here to talk about it is my good friend from up that way, in British Columbia, Mister Matt Elrod. How are you doing, Matt?

MATT ELROD: I'm good, Dean, thanks.

DEAN BECKER: You know, I see it as a long unfolding of this new marijuana law up there, and it is still being fine tuned by the senators, it will -- by your parliament, or your house, I guess it is, and it's also going to be fine tuned by the provinces and the cities as well, as it unfolds. Is that right?

MATT ELROD: Yeah, it's -- some would argue that it's been hasty in fact, critics of the legalization have criticized the government for being hasty, but you're right, it's been a long time coming.

And you're also right that when the federal government relinquishes criminal control over all these aspects of cannabis, it will be relegated to the provinces to do the on the ground regulation.

DEAN BECKER: Well, and we have the big folks, Tweed and a couple of other major corporations, that have massive warehouses already growing cannabis, and probably going to take major control of the industry. Would you agree?

MATT ELROD: Yeah, they got a head start in that Canada legalized cannabis for medicinal purposes in 2001, and shortly thereafter started allowing so-called licensed producers to set up shop to meet that demand, and they have long anticipated that we might legalize for broader purposes, and so they have a first starter advantage, for sure.

The legislation does allow for various grades, or sizes, or licensed producers, from what they call micro to a sort of medium sized player to the large players, but, yes, we can anticipate consolidation and the big fish eating the little fish, I think. Expect, you know, I've heard in Oregon the wholesale price has dropped through the floor, and I would expect the same thing to happen here.

So, yeah, I'm leery of investing in the industry, for that reason, because, you know, one of the provisions of the Canadian bill C-45 is to allow for personal cultivation. Now one of the last minute senate amendments was that they were going to grant the provinces the authority to prohibit personal cultivation individually. Now, so far, two provinces, I think Manitoba and Quebec, have opted to do that, to prohibit personal cultivation.

But, everywhere else, consumers will be able to grow up to four plants. I don't know how many will do that, but that's also likely to depress the street value of cannabis, and so, yeah, the profits that big companies are anticipating may not be so big. You know, it's a mixed bag, and as you often say, we don't know what's in that bag.

They say it's going to be a process, not an event, and I expect some of the provisions will be challenged in court. You know, our medical marijuana laws were challenged numerous times, and struck down as unconstitutional different provisions of them, so you're quite right. It will be fine tuned over a long period of time, I'm sure.

DEAN BECKER: And, Matt, a website you might want to share?

MATT ELROD: Oh, well, your listeners might want to check out drugsense.org, which is sort of my primary website, and links to the Media Awareness Project, which has news clippings from all around the English world, including Canada.

DEAN BECKER: Again, I want to thank Matt Elrod and the other good folks. You know, the senators who are putting forward that bill to basically legalize marijuana at the federal level, I urge you to contact your representatives, you can get some good links at MPP.org, Marijuana Policy Project, and at NORML, NORML.org.

Until we end this war on drugs, we'll be forever subject to an increasing escalation of the violence, disease, corruption, death, and destruction that comes not from drugs but from drug prohibition. I consider all drug laws to be racist, bigoted, and a violation of our civil rights, and as always, I remind you, because of prohibition, you don't know what's in that bag, and I urge you to please, be careful.

To the Drug Truth Network listeners around the world, this is Dean Becker for Cultural Baggage and the unvarnished truth. Cultural Baggage is a production of the Pacifica Radio Network. Archives are permanently stored at the James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy. And we are all still tap dancing on the edge of an abyss.

06/03/18 Paul Stanford

Program
Century of Lies
Date
Guest
Paul Stanford
Deborah Small
Organization
Patients Out Of Time

This week we hear from Paul Stanford and Teressa Raiford at the Global Marijuana March in Portland, Oregon, and from Deborah Small at the Patients Out of Time conference in Jersey City.

Audio file

TRANSCRIPT

CENTURY OF LIES

JUNE 3, 2018

DEAN BECKER: The failure of drug war is glaringly obvious to judges, cops, wardens, prosecutors, and millions more now calling for decriminalization, legalization, the end of prohibition. Let us investigate the Century Of Lies.

DOUG MCVAY: Welcome to Century Of Lies. I'm your host Doug McVay, editor of DrugWarFacts.org.

A lot of stuff this week, so let's get to it. First the Global Marijuana March was May Fifth. Got some good audio from that, and we're going to hear some of that now.

I'm speaking with my good friend Paul Stanford. He is the founder and director of the Campaign for the Restoration and Regulation of Hemp. He has been an activist for peace and social justice and marijuana reform for as long or longer than me and that's honestly saying quite a lot. Paul, how the heck are you doing, man?

PAUL STANFORD: I'm doing really well, you know, I remember back in 1984 when we both came here to Oregon, with Jack Herer, and to follow John Sajo, to work on the second marijuana petition in the history of the United States. And we've been at it ever since. I'm doing well. thank you.

DOUG MCVAY: I'm glad, I tell you, we've made a lot of progress.

PAUL STANFORD: That's true. That's true. There's more to be made, we're not there a hundred percent yet. There's a lot of places you can be thrown in jail, and there are people in prison here in the United States for life without the possibility of parole, some being executed, so, there's farther to go.

DOUG MCVAY: We're here at the Global Marijuana March, some may ask, as they do every year, when it's Hempstalk, or whether it's Hempfest, or any of the other reasons, they always ask, well, you've got partial legalization, you've got, you know, medical for people who can afford their own homes or who have a caregiver. So why are you still out here? Why are we still out here, Paul?

PAUL STANFORD: Because we need to educate people that hemp should be used for fuel, should be used for fiber, should be used instead of alcohol in most cases, in our opinion. So -- and to educate people about, you know, the oldest and most productive crop. Hemp's been cultivated over 25,000 years.

We could replace almost all petroleum and almost all plastic with hemp derived seed oil. Protein, fiber, and until we can make those ecological changes, the, you know, hemp is good medicine for people, but it's also medicine for the earth. And so, we have to educate people about that. We're not there yet.

DOUG MCVAY: Now, behind me, behind us on the stage right now is our good friend Elvy Musikka, talking about legalization, reform, and all the good work she's doing. She and I were guests on your local show here. You do a show here in Portland. How long have you been doing that?

PAUL STANFORD: Twenty-two years. We started in 1996. I was on other people's shows in the late '80s and early '90s here in Portland, and somebody asked me, a guy named Lanny Swerdlow, who's very active in California still today, he lived here in Portland and did the first 120 shows, and that was back in 1996, so we've done almost a thousand shows over twenty-two years.

DOUG MCVAY: And it's Cannabis Common Sense, right? Now, it's -- I used to have cable when I was, you know, living up here in southeast Portland, and I'd see your show on quite a lot, actually. I don't have cable anymore, but, I can still catch it online, right? It streams, Cannabis Common Sense streams. All right, where do you find it?

PAUL STANFORD: It streams live on our Facebook page, at facebook.com/restorehemp, and it's also on Youtube. It doesn't stream live on Youtube, but it is posted generally within 24 or 48 hours, and just look up Cannabis Common Sense and you can see hundreds of them. Literally, we have an archive with 800 hours or more of video.

DOUG MCVAY: You had me, you had Elvy, obviously you have some great guests. Who are some of the other folks we'll end up finding?

PAUL STANFORD: You know, Jack Herer was on many times, Keith Stroup, the founder of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws. Lots of different people. Lawrence Cherniak back in the day, for those old enough to know who that guy is. The list goes on and on. Anthony Taylor, Anthony Johnson, Sarah Duff. Like I said, I could just keep naming people.

DOUG MCVAY: And you're naming people in the crowd, too, as I think about it, it's like, these are good.

So, I missed your -- didn't get a chance to tape you when you were speaking. What were you talking about, what do you hope the takeaways are that people get from what you had to say?

PAUL STANFORD: That hemp and cannabis still need further reform, further deregulation, and that it's the oldest and most productive crop, you know, it's been cultivated at least 25,000 years, maybe twice that, you know.

So, agriculture, civilization itself, sprang from hemp and cannabis, and we need to return to using hemp and cannabis for fuel, for plastics, biodegradable plastics, nontoxic alternatives.

DOUG MCVAY: So, any closing thoughts for the listeners, and, oh heavens, let's see, let's get the -- let me get your website here, too.

PAUL STANFORD: It's CRRH.org, that's CRRH.org, or you can go to facebook.com/restorehemp.

TERESSA RAIFORD: I'm Teressa Raiford, and I'm a candidate for mayor for 2020, and I'm also the founder of a social justice organization called Don't Shoot Portland, which seeks police accountability and community engagement.

DOUG MCVAY: Teressa, this is of course the Global Marijuana March. You were just up there speaking a moment ago. Lord knows whether my recording came off, so could you tell folks the gist of what you're trying -- what you hope people take away?

TERESSA RAIFORD: Well, one of the biggest things is the health access for people that are living in marginalized communities to marijuana, not only medical marijuana, but also recreational use, and not only just the marijuana form but also access to RSO oils and having access to them through our health departments and our programming that is supposed to help us legitimize the health resources that are found in the plants.

We all know the science behind it, but we haven't found any legislators or any political leaders in regards to building that health infrastructure and outreach and accessibility, and so that's something that I'm very serious about, because in the time that we were pushing for the legalization, in the forefront of my mind was the medical access and how we would integrate that into society.

Another thing that I'm standing here and I was speaking about from that platform was public consumption, public use and consumption, which goes again hand in hand with the medical necessity and also the recreational use of it.

We already know that a lot of times that police are saying that weed is a gateway drug, and they tend to criminalize certain communities for access and use of it, and so to take away that criminalization and the violence of being humiliated and prosecuted through our courts for something that we all know is legal, we've all spent our time and energy fighting for the legalization.

We need to start a social justice framework for use, and I think partnering with organizations like mine and activists that have been fighting for accessibility and the decriminalization of our bodies, that that makes sense. I said some things like we don't need people doing it for us, we need people to do it with us, and I also gave a call to action for the industry to use their funding to create the infrastructure and the outreach that needs to be done.

We used to have to depend on elected officials, we used to have to depend on people that had influence and access to power, but now we have growers, now we have budtenders, now we have people that are in the industry in several different capacities that actually have the financial power that it takes to build campaigns and build movements that are necessary and make change.

And I'm just hoping that that's something that happens. We need to build our own political leaders, and we need to start depending on what we know, and what we trust, because we've been right. We've been making it, but we don't have to move that slow as we have been.

DOUG MCVAY: Teressa, you -- you're a candidate here in Portland, you're -- the organization you work with, Don't Shoot PDX, is doing tremendous work. Drug policy reform movement, I know this is rooted in social justice, but a lot of people have come into it because they've heard of marijuana, the marijuana business. But, once they start doing it, I think they understand, this is about social justice.

What can people in drug policy reform, people like me, be doing to be better allies and to help support the work you're doing with Don't Shoot PDX, and some of the other work that you're doing generally?

TERESSA RAIFORD: Being a better ally 101 is hiring people from those marginalized communities to be a part of the outreach and the research that's going on, in order to develop systems that are not system of oppression and are not centered in white supremacy, you have to bring people that have been effected by those issues.

A lot of people that are well meaning, and now are seeing their whiteness and are seeing how the constructs have created the oppression of others, they still haven't seen fit the opportunity to put other people in a position to dismantle those systems.

And I think the only way to remove a noose from your neck is not to count on the same system that helped apply it, but to give power to those people that had it, and see what you can do to strengthen that up.

We have to do that. It takes courage and integrity, but like I said, right now, there's an overwhelming support system in place for this industry, and that gives you an opportunity to be more courageous than what legislative action would usually give us access to.

Legislators tell us it takes five years to get a bill passed, and that once that bill is passed that they'll have the funding to do the research to apply what needs to be applied in order to create structural change. We're already a part of the change, we're already in the structures, and now we have our own funding, so now we need to use that to mandate our own financing, build the leadership models that need to be done, and then duplicate them in different parts of the country.

DOUG MCVAY: Any closing thoughts for my listeners, and where can people find out more about the work that you do? Like, your website and also your twitter.

TERESSA RAIFORD: Awesome. My twitter is @Teressa_Raiford, and my website for my campaign is Teressa for Mayor PDX, teressaraifordformayor.com, you could google, and you can go there and you can donate, you can volunteer, you can see our events.

These events are all on there. I'll be at the capitol in August, making sure that I back that up, all the stuff that we've been talking about. And also for Don't Shoot PDX, we do a lot of social justice work, education, and community outreach, and you can find more information about our work on dontshootpdx.org.

DOUG MCVAY: Teressa Raiford, thank you so much for all you do. Thank you.

TERESSA RAIFORD: Thank you.

DOUG MCVAY: Those are interviews with Paul Stanford and also Teressa Raiford.

And for me, this, this is our May Day. This is our day to reach out in solidarity with others and say, we are your neighbors, we're your friends, we're your family members. We smoke weed. We like weed. We think that pot should be legal.

And we ask you people to join with us in calling for that. It's not so we can have a party. I could have a party anytime. If it weren't for legalization and drug policy reform work, I'd have a lot more time for partying. All right? I'm doing this because it's important, because it's about freedom, because it's about justice, and it's because it's what's right.

Social justice is where it's at. There's a thing called harm reduction, where you try to reduce the harms that people do to themselves, and you manage the risks that people expose themselves to.

Drinking, drinking alcohol, maybe just one drink an hour so that your body metabolizes. That's called harm reduction. Not taking a shot of whiskey to wash down your opiates, that's harm reduction, because you could kill yourself doing that. Smoking marijuana to relieve your minor pains rather than taking an opioid, that's harm reduction. Okeh?

Simple concept. When we give out clean syringes to people who insist on injecting drugs, people who inject drugs are people too, they're our friends, they're our family members, they're our sisters and our brothers, they're our parents. They're our spouses. They're our partners. They're our friends. They're people. So we can either leave them to get sick and to die, or we can do something about it. Right?

Now, Portland, there are handful of people who've been working for a little while, and it's getting a little bigger, trying to put something together called a supervised injection facility. I know, a little off topic, this is a weed thing, but you know, we got here because of drug policy reform, and we got here, because people were willing to break the law to do what they think is right.

Now, we have a syringe exchange that's run by the county in this area, Multnomah County, a wonderful thing, but we need more because of the overdose crisis and because really resources are just being outstripped. So a lot of folks are working to get this area to consider a supervised consumption facility, a safe consumption space. A safe injection facility.

The city of New York is running close. King County Seattle is trying. They're trying to get this done in San Francisco, they hope to have it in fact by sometime this summer, down in San Francisco. Portland, it's our turn. We've been a leader in all this stuff. We've been a leader in marijuana legalization and medical marijuana, and in harm reduction, for a very long time.

It's because people like you come out to events like this and let elected leaders and officials and just these -- I'll be nice -- people in places like Studio On The Square, we let them know that we really are serious. That we want this stuff to change and we're not going to go away until it's happened. And frankly, we're still going to be here because it's still not going to be perfect, and there's still a lot of work to be done.

Sure we have medical, but god help you if you live in an apartment or federally subsidized housing. Sure, we have legalization, of course, do be careful if you try and consume out here, because it's illegal to consume in public, and there are very likely people who would have you arrested. And so, you know -- we ready? --

RAFAEL MARTINEZ, JR.: Whenever you're ready.

DOUG MCVAY: Okeh. I'm going to get through and wrap this up in a second. So here's the thing. Marijuana legalization is a great thing. Drug decriminalization is absolutely vital. Harm reduction is important.

All this stuff is why I do what I do. Again, my name is Doug McVay, DrugWarFacts.org, you can find a lot more information on all this stuff I've been talking about. I want to thank you all for being here. You are beautiful! Happy May Day!

Yes, that was me, I also spoke at the Global Marijuana March. I do go out in public every once in a while. That audio comes to us courtesy of Russ Belville, a journalist, radio talk host, host of The Marijuana Agenda, and of course from 420Radio.org. My good friend, Russ, I do thank him very much for that audio. You can also catch the video on Facebook, if you want to check it out.

You're listening to Century of Lies. We're a production of the Drug Truth Network for the Pacifica Foundation Radio Network, on the web at DrugTruth.net. I'm your host Doug McVay, editor of DrugWarFacts.org.

Now, the Patients Out of Time conference did take place a week or so after that. One of the smartest people I've ever met, one of the best advocates I've ever met, Deborah Small, was one of the speakers. Let's hear from Deb.

DEBORAH SMALL: There are three main points that I want to leave you with in the conversation around children and families. The first has to do with this assertion I want to make, that I believe is true, that a marijuana arrest is more harmful to any person, particularly a young person, than the use of marijuana.

I want to just say that again: that when you're talking about harms, that the harm of an arrest for marijuana possession is more long lasting, to almost any individual, regardless of their age but particularly for a young person, than the use of marijuana. I don't know too many people who have engaged in violent or negative behavior under the influence of marijuana, but I know a lot of that has happened inside of our jails and prisons.

And in many ways, an arrest for marijuana acts as a form of "Head Start" to prison, and the thing I want to say around that, which I really think is important because when we were doing this work in New York, people would constantly say to us, but most of the people who are arrested for possession, they don't end up in prison. So it's really not that bad. They might get arrested, you know, they might spend a night in jail, but most of them are not going to prison so like what's the harm?

And I said to them, how would you feel about having to be strip searched, fingerprinted, have your personal information entered into a criminal justice database, because that's what happens for every person who's arrested, regardless of whether or not they end up going to jail or in prison. So I think it's important, when we talk about harms related to marijuana, that we actually distinguish between the issues related to mass incarceration and mass criminalization.

We have a conversation in the country right now that acknowledges that mass incarceration is a major problem and a waste of resources, but we don't have that same conversation around criminalization, which is why you get so little pushback to the idea of having drug tests as a requirement for all kinds of things, not just for public benefits, but in many school districts, young people have to be willing to submit to drug tests as a condition for being able to participate in school based activities, in athletic activities and extracurricular activities.

They have to prove that they're drug free. I wish they had the same rules for sugar, but, that's another conversation.

The second point I wanted to make is that there is a distinction between using drugs and having drugs use you. And for this I want to like draw on my experience as a parent. I raised my son in New York City, and because he knew me, he knew a lot of people who use drugs. Mostly marijuana, but not exclusively.

And so, he didn't grow up in a household that had a zero tolerance policy around drugs, or even a belief that drugs were bad. At the same token, as a parent, I didn't want my son using marijuana at 13 and 14. So I had a conversation with him around drugs, very similar to the conversation I had with him about sex, and the conversation was that both of those things were healthy, but, how good they would or would not be for you depended on who you were and how old you were when you initiated those activities.

So I didn't want him to think that sex was a bad thing. I'm like, sex is a great thing, but it will be better for you if you wait until you're old enough to be able to use it responsibly, than if you start having sex at 11, 12, 13, even though your hormones might be telling you to. I'm like delay.

That was the same conversation I had with him about drugs. People use drugs because they're good, because they make them feel good. I think we have this crazy conversation that somehow if you make kids believe that drugs are horrible things, that they won't use them, but that's not true. That's not why anybody ever used them. And personally I've always thought of addiction as being a good relationship gone bad.

So in the same way that I wanted my son to have healthy love relationships, I wanted him to have healthy relationships with drugs. So we discussed all the different drugs that were out there, and the ways in which people use them, and don't use them, and one of the things I did with him is I would walk around the neighborhood with him, and I would point out people, and I'm like, this is a person whose drugs are using them. They're not using the drugs, the drugs are using them.

I really want you to get the distinction. Now, on the other hand, you know, he had friends, I had friends, that were responsible, working adults who also used drugs responsibly. I'm like, this is the difference between using a drug and having the drug use you. The older you are when you initiate use, the more likely it is that you'll be able to use the drug as opposed to having it use you, because your brain will be developed enough for you to be able to figure out what moderation looks like for you.

Now, many of my son's friends had an issue with the fact that I engaged in drug education that way, and that I allowed my son to smoke in our home. My feeling was that as a harm reductionist, I much preferred to have him use marijuana in our house, where I could observe him and his friends, than have him out on the street, and be potentially subject to arrest, that I could make sure that he wasn't using marijuana and alcohol, and other drugs, and that he knew that -- and that I knew and he knew that the source of his marijuana was a place that wasn't going to taint it with things like PCP and other drugs.

I mean, I believe it's important to provide young people with the tools that they need to be able to engage in their lives as safely as possible. All parents want to shield their children from all harm, but unless we're going to wrap them up in a bubble and carry them around, we're not going to be able to do that.

So for me, I think it's really important to interact with young people in an age-appropriate way, and to give them the kinds of tools that will enable them to negotiate all the different experiences that they'll have in their lives as productively and safely as possible.

And then the third point that I wanted to make is that a pregnant woman is a person, not a baby delivery vehicle. And I know it should go without saying, but it seems like in this country we -- women lose their personhoods when they become pregnant, because the whole conversation becomes about what kind of vessel is she for the health of her baby?

Her own health becomes almost secondary, and all the other things that factor into her being healthy are considered unimportant except for her own individual behavior. And so, in that -- and it doesn't matter what kind of drug we're talking about. I mean, it's really interesting to me. People who have reasonable attitudes about alcohol become unreasonable when they're talking about women, and pregnancy.

Now, I'm not standing here as a person who's advocating for people to use drugs, alcohol and other substances, while pregnant, but what I am advocating for is for us to treat pregnant women as the full human beings that they are, and to support them into being healthy and happy, and not just focus on the life that they're bringing into being.

And the example that I want to give to illustrate this point is this, and if I seem a little angry in the moment, it's because I am around this particular issue, in that, in the work that I've been doing with National Advocates for Pregnant Women, I have seen pregnant and parenting women be literally verbally assaulted by judges in court for the fact that they maybe took a drink, or that they tested positive for marijuana, like that was ipso facto proof that they were not worthy mothers, that they couldn't be good mothers, because they had this drug in their body.

And for some of those women, they were threatened with loss of custody, some were threatened with being locked up, based on these drug tests. In many parts of the country, unfortunately, in rural areas where doctors and other people know a lot about people's health backgrounds, they literally wait for these women to show up in the hospital so that they can lock them up and take their children away, on the basis of their drug use, totally separate from whether or not there's actual proof of harm.

You know, back in the '80s, we had this whole hysteria around crack babies. People still talk about that like it's a thing. But there's no such thing as a crack baby, and there's no such thing as an addicted baby. We're hearing that now, inside the whole opiate crisis, where there's newspaper articles about how are we going to save these addicted babies?

Addiction is a set of behaviors that babies are not capable of expressing. A baby can be drug dependent, or chemically exposed, but what they cannot be is addicted. So when you call a baby addicted, what you're really saying is that that child has a bad mother, that the mother is addicted, and that somehow she infected her baby with her addiction.

And again, that's simply not true. So I raise this to say that we really need to think differently about it, and that example for me that made it so clear, like how hypocritical we are about this, is what happened in Flint, Michigan, where you had women who were forced to drink lead polluted water. There is no question about the harms associated with lead poisoning, to children, to adults, to people. It's been scientifically proven for over a hundred years, the kind of damage that is done to the physical body and to the physical brain as a result of lead poisoning.

The quote unquote "harms" of drug use have yet to be specifically proven, particularly with respect to marijuana. And yet, we will lock a woman up who fails a drug test, but we take no action against the water polluters who've made that woman ingest lead, which is going to hurt both her and her baby. Tell me who from Michigan has been held accountable for all the children that were poisoned? From drinking lead polluted water for over a year.

There were women who were in jails and treatment programs in Flint, Michigan, who had no choice and no option to get bottled water, who were pregnant, and who then had to live with the guilt of having a child that they knew was going to be impaired because of that poisoning, but there is no legal accountability for that. And no one has called the people who poisoned the water criminals.

So, I ask you again: like, what's the real crime? And what's, where is the punishment?

DOUG MCVAY: That was Deborah Small, speaking at the Patients Out of Time conference in Jersey City, New Jersey. That conference took place May 10 through 12. Again, full disclosure, I do work with Patients Out of Time doing website and social media.

And well, that's it for this week. I want to thank you for joining us. You have been listening to Century of Lies. We're a production of the Drug Truth Network for the Pacifica Foundation Radio Network, on the web at DrugTruth.net. I’m your host Doug McVay, editor of DrugWarFacts.org.

The executive producer of the Drug Truth Network is Dean Becker. Drug Truth Network programs are available via podcast, the URLs to subscribe are on the network home page at DrugTruth.net.

The Drug Truth Network is on Facebook, please give its page a like. Drug War Facts is on Facebook too, give its page a like and share it with friends. Remember: Knowledge is power. Follow me on Twitter, I'm @DougMcVay and of course also @DrugPolicyFacts.

We'll be back next week with thirty more minutes of news and information about drug policy reform and the drug war. For now, for the Drug Truth Network, this is Doug McVay saying so long. So long!

DOUG MCVAY: For the Drug Truth Network, this is Doug McVay asking you to examine our policy of drug prohibition: the century of lies. Drug Truth Network programs archived at the James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy.

05/27/18 Mary Lynn Mathre

Program
Century of Lies
Date
Guest
Mary Lynn Mathre
Brandon Wyatt
Organization
Patients Out Of Time

This week, we hear from Mary Lynn Mathre and Brandon Wyatt about veterans' issues and medical cannabis, plus more from my interview with Steve Bloom, editor-in-chief of Freedom Leaf Magazine.

Audio file

CENTURY OF LIES

MAY 27, 2018

TRANSCRIPT

DEAN BECKER: The failure of drug war is glaringly obvious to judges, cops, wardens, prosecutors, and millions more now calling for decriminalization, legalization, the end of prohibition. Let us investigate the Century Of Lies.

DOUG MCVAY: Hello, and welcome to Century Of Lies. I'm your host Doug McVay.

The Patients Out of Time Twelfth National Clinical Conference on Cannabis Therapeutics was held in mid-May in Jersey City. The first day of that conference was devoted to public policy. One of the panels that I found most interesting involved veterans' issues. We're going to hear from part of that panel. In the interest of full disclosure, I do need to mention that I do website and social media work for Patients Out of Time.

We're about to hear Mary Lynn Mathre, the co-founder and president of Patients Out of Time, who's a military veteran, along with Brandon Wyatt, an attorney and medical cannabis advocate in Washington, DC, who is also a military veteran.

MARY LYNN MATHRE: -- well, it clearly elapsed. I mean, well, and that's the problem, the veterans were not appreciated for what they came back from. When you think of post-traumatic stress, and I'm kind of answering it, but I go about it in a different way, but when we think of post traumatic stress, it can happen to anyone. I think we all know that, whether you think of rape, a hurricane, a tornado, life's loss, et cetera.

But if you can picture a combat veteran, who, as you saw in the clip earlier, has nightmares of their buddies being blown up, of knowing that they just killed someone, of being wounded themselves. But then, the next day, you go do it again. The next day you go do it again. It -- it shatters whatever happens to you. So they're really screwed up with that.

They come back, and a lot just got kicked out of the service because of post traumatic stress symptoms. They were literally kicked out for -- dishonorable discharges. Sometimes it was just smoking pot, and yeah, so going back then, in that era, that was the Just Say No, you know, the war on drugs and all that, and they started the urine testing. They start that with veterans, just, years earlier, decades earlier, they started the LSD on veterans, experimenting with that, what it did.

Well, drug testing started on veteran -- on active duty, I should say, on active duty military.

BRANDON WYATT: So, let's -- let's drill another key point. One of the key points it that veterans a shared, similar experience, but we also had a shared similar law and regulation, which governed the country, that, when we left and went home, everybody in their fifty states abided by, but together, when we were a unit, was one law, UCMJ [Uniform Code of Military Justice], which allowed to be their experimental code for a lot of policies that related to drug use, not only in testing, to see if you were using it, but testing to see if it worked.

So, that's where the key to listening to Mary Lynn from the nurse's side, and the balance from the lawyer's side, kind of comes in, because now you're talking about jurisdiction, who had jurisdiction and control of what the veterans did, and then what happened in the federal government as a result of the testing in the military, and then how can we use that leverage to break open the entire country for cannabis laws. It would be fun when we get there, but, go ahead, Mary Lynn, I'm sorry.

MARY LYNN MATHRE: But -- yeah, no, point well taken. And so we get to, as I was saying, with the stigma, so the Vietnam vet is really suffering, they're finding cannabis is helpful, but they will -- they're going to be very quiet about it, because they've already been, the stigma is very bad on them just for being a Vietnam vet.

So we fast forward to today, and certainly, Brandon, you can talk more about the veterans of today. There still are some vets who are unaware of the use of cannabis for post traumatic stress symptoms, because they go to the usual healthcare system in the VA -- yeah, and, so people can understand the VA system, when a veteran comes back, as veterans, we can go to the VA to get our healthcare. It's a federal facility, the physicians are under federal law.

And so, that basically means, as Brandon said, from state to state, these laws are happening with cannabis, but the vets are stuck under federal law. Now, what did happen, in 2010, Robert Petzel, the director of the VA at the time, made a decision, a directive, and he put the directive out, saying that if you are a veteran and you live in a state with a medical cannabis law, then -- and you go outside of the VA system and you get permission from a civilian doctor to use cannabis, then the VA should recognize that.

Well, in one sense, hallelujah, but a couple of things. Now, the vet has to go pay for their medical care, which they're not supposed to have to, they've got to go pay for that medical visit, they've got to go pay for their medicine now, which should not happen.

But two, what happens when you're, like my husband, in the state of Virginia, which won't allow that, or, CBD only, now, but, so it's -- these are the issues which I think lawyers get into a lot. And, what happens when they get sick and they're on their medicine, and it's okeh under the VA, but if they have to go into a VA hospital, now it's not okeh.

BRANDON WYATT: Well, let's go from it -- from a different way. So, in the sense of, generationally, as I've studied, and been able to be lectured and learned from Vietnam era veterans down, what we're able to see is a shift in government resources and funding based on their perception of if you were quote unquote from a good war era or a good soldier duty time. Okeh?

So you go through the whole war we've gone through, Grenada, we've gone through the first gulf war, and we develop a cadre of individuals who have disabilities. And I'll say that directly, and I'm from Fort Bragg, so I've worked in Washington, DC, great, but I grew up in Fayetteville, North Carolina, Fort Bragg, North Carolina, so I grew up around the young men and women that I'm speaking about, so I know them very, very well, they were my friends' parents, and my older neighbors.

So, in that regard, another issue that happened is, when they come back, they don't necessarily have a trust for the VA, from what Mary Lynn spoke about, they don't necessarily have a trust for the system, because prior to -- I guess you would say really when you get to the GI Bill, working very well at the end of the '80s, you had a pull back from using the VA systems because veterans would have their benefits, if they were not already reduced, reduced further if they were convicted or had any testing for drug crimes, if anything effected their benefits that way, especially in regards to cannabis.

For some of the other, harder drugs, maybe say heroin or things like that, I try not to scale them, but they are in scale harder drugs, they would not have the same kind of effect, but for cannabis, however, it seemed to be a big trigger.

So as we got down to my generation, I'm a second Iraq war veteran, I went over in 2003, which is crazy, to be thinking about it. So a recent sample of my peers, about 600 of them from Iraq and Afghanistan, found that fourteen percent of them had post traumatic stress disorder, 39 percent reported severe alcohol abuse, three percent reported drug abuse, in addition, axis one and axis two depression was identified as a major barrier to housing and employment.

And so, with these kind of figures, you're -- well, maybe you will ask, you'll say, well, who caused the injury. We're not pointing the blame, and in fact we're at duty to serve our country, but why should veterans that have fought for one country be treated differently from state to state?

Why would you -- why would you not understand that the symptoms and conditions that triggered this matter should not be handled differently. Now, in studying it, what we've outlined, as Mary Lynn has traveled across the country, and has taught me, is every state has a different flow, and the way their policy considerations affect individuals.

A quick case I'm going to touch on, not a veteran, but in New Jersey, is Barrett versus Robert Half. Robert Half is like a staffing placement company, especially for lawyers, so it's pretty interesting. So, Barrett versus Robert Half, and it's a case about the violation of New Jersey law against discrimination. You had an individual who was required to take mandatory drug testing, but he previously was a medical user of cannabis. He was terminated from his employment.

So, when you go into a situation similar with veterans, they are required to go to the VA to get healthcare, but when they go and they're drug tested, even randomly, we have a good friend Michael Krawitz, even randomly, that then affects their treatment profile. And then it affected the benefits received each month.

And then, if -- depending on if you were in certain states, and good folks in here like Doctor Burnett can let you know, that if you sign up for a card as a veteran or recipient of federal benefits, they may exempt you now as a holder of the card from owning a weapon, they may exempt you from receiving benefits, they may exempt you from receiving actual opioid medication that you may need in addition to cannabis, or other antibiotics, because of the feared impact.

And that kind of relates back to what you said, in 1985, Mary Lynn, is they're doing all this without any research.

MARY LYNN MATHRE: Yeah. It -- yeah, it's scary. And when you talk about that, I -- that's probably the biggest thing, hitting on weapons now. We have, as most people know, there is no treatment for post traumatic stress.

There's two antidepressants that are approved for the depression with post traumatic stress, but you've got, vets or anyone with post-traumatic stress, we don't like to say disorder, post traumatic stress symptoms being, obviously, nightmares or insomnia, not being able to sleep at all, depression, huge anxiety, when I say anger we probably -- it slips into rage really quickly. Very often they've been wounded so there's pain as well.

So, the VA medicates them. They give them an antidepressant for their depression, they give them an anti-anxiety medication for their anxiety, they give them an opioid for their pain, they give them a sleep medicine, they give them whatever else they need. You cannot take those medications and not have serious consequences.

Every antidepressant drug that's out there has a black box warning on the label that says, if you open the package insert, that says may cause suicidal or homicidal ideation.

BRANDON WYATT: Wait, that happened to me. Wait. But I had, I was in law school. Wait, I almost killed myself.

MARY LYNN MATHRE: Yeah.

BRANDON WYATT: They gave me all this cocktail of stuff, and I asked the math question, Mary Lynn --

MARY LYNN MATHRE: And Brandon could have a weapon.

BRANDON WYATT: If every -- I asked a question, and you remember, I asked it almost the first time we met, and it almost put you in tears. If they gave me five pills that all had a five to ten percent occurrence of suicidal thoughts or ideations, I had to take five, don't I have like 60, 65 percent chance then of wanting to kill myself?

MARY LYNN MATHRE: Well, it's not all of them that have that chance, but when you mix them all? And again, our healthcare professionals, we've all learned that we need random controlled trials. Double-blind, placebo controlled studies, that's when a drug gets FDA approved.

We have never had any -- any of those studies on poly-pharmacy, on when you mix five drugs. So you've got -- that's never happened, and we know from veterans saying I felt like I was going insane. Maybe they did feel homicidal. And when you bring up weapons, they could have their weapons, and frankly, a veterans -- in my mind, anyway, just being around them, is much safer with weapons because they know how to use them, they know what they can do. They're -- they know what to do.

But, now they get cannabis --

BRANDON WYATT: Let's clarify --

MARY LYNN MATHRE: -- but now they get cannabis --

BRANDON WYATT: -- if they didn't have an ID card, if they did not register for an ID card, they can have weapons, but if they did, you can't. So, let's just clarify.

MARY LYNN MATHRE: No, that's what I'm saying. But, if you're a cannabis patient, yeah. So if you're a cannabis patient, you cannot have a weapon. So, now the veteran gets off the medications that make them homicidal or suicidal, to go to a medication that helps them feel normal again, and we'll learn at the last session a little bit about why that happens, but, helps them normalize their system, feeling better, and they have to give up their weapon.

And, again, that's a security issue to the vet. They're not going to -- generally, a healthy vet is not going to be crazy out there with it. In fact, I want to -- here's a really sad story. Before our conference in 2012, six months before it, in Tucson, Arizona, there was an incident. It was a veteran, an Iraqi veteran. Hispanic. He's back home. DEA's going to do a drug bust. Somebody said that he's using cannabis, whatever.

So they did one of those pre-dawn drills. Well, veterans, the other thing about post traumatic stress is you're hypervigilant. He heard something. He know something was going on. He thought he was being burglarized, going to be burglarized. He put his wife and son in the bathroom. He was ready with his weapon, whoever was going to come and rob him. There's not a knock knock, can we see you, we've got a search warrant. There was a bust in that door, and sixty bullets later, what did we find?

Nobody could go in for a while, and I was thinking, oh, what are they going to do, plant drugs on him or something? But, those sixty bullets, I don't think all of them hit him [sic: police fired 71 rounds in this incident, and Jose Guerena was hit 22 times], but of course he was killed.

He still had the safety on his weapon. You know, when you think about it, vets are trained to kill. I mean, it's a sad story, but that's -- their warriors, they're trained to kill. Police are trained to serve and protect. And so we've got our police service now coming in, unannounced, to a veteran's home, guns blazing, without knowing what they're shooting at, and a dead vet.

And --

BRANDON WYATT: Well, let's talk a little bit about how that, how these kind of stories, you may way, well, why would Mary Lynn tell us such a sad story, why does this matter? Because it happens in every state. It happens in every jurisdiction. It happened to my brothers in arms, it happens to my big brothers like Al, his brothers in arms, it happens in every state, so it's a cross-cleaving tie, it makes everything come together.

Now, when we look at equity laws, when you say, what do you mean, equity? Things that provide remediation. That's a big portion of the population that everyone should pay special attention to, because we taught ourselves as veterans, no matter if you're black, white, yadda yadda, we're all green, blue, some weird color that matches our uniform, at the same time. We're not girls or guys, we're soldiers or airmen or navalmen [sic: sailors], okeh?

And so, that gives us an ability to work together. We're a political bloc. Now, there's laws and different tools that veterans can open the door for, that relate to disability rights, relate to the rights of individuals to have public housing, rights of individuals to have reduced medication costs. One of the big reasons that you want to point out your veterans in that is because the laws that are shaped that way are favorable to politicians.

Call your politicians, talk with your politicians, make sure that they establish equity laws and programs that assist veterans, because by allowing us to open the door, you allow the door to be opened to help all disabled individuals have reductions on benefit rights, if it's, hey, the cannabis cost is too high, great, that's something that will be annexed.

When you look at countries like Canada, how they treat their veterans and what not, they all get a certain little stipend each month, I think it's around $175, for medication, not too much, but enough to keep the industry alive and going.

So we can start making a bridge between different laws, especially as it relates to interstate laws, by focusing on helping veterans. Why? Because we didn't fight for one state, we fought for all fifty states. So when we're down in DC, where I live, we can talk in the same language. All right?

So that's a big thing for New Jersey to bring forward, I'm proud of you guys. You guys passed an opioid disorder, I hate to say disorder, but opioid addiction disorder, about a month ago, for your bill. That's huge. One of the big things about veterans and opioids is, it was one of the highlights that they noticed because the VA spent so much money on the pills, and immediately there was a study done by individuals, like Doctor Sisley and her friends, that showed there was a correlation between suicides and the rate -- the amount of money spent on opioid medication for veterans.

So that's why many states started paying attention. So Mary Lynn, I want to let you close out a little bit, we talked about equity laws, but one of the big things we also talked about, or should have talked about, is to make sure we looked at the post-service to prison pipeline, like, but we didn't get there, but, anything you want to close out with today?

MARY LYNN MATHRE: Well, cripe, just even thinking, prison, that pipeline, uff-dah. I -- in closing, I think the big thing here is, veterans kind of epitomize, in many ways, the United States. What are they doing? They're defending the Constitution first. They're defending freedom in America. So to come back, as a veteran, and want to grow a plant? And be thrown in jail, to be kicked out of the service dishonorably, to lose your family because you can't take the medicine.

We have families break up because, if it's a male in the service, he needs that to keep his sanity, to be a good parent. The mother, the wife is sitting there going, but if anybody knows this, they will take my children away, our children away. It breaks up families all the time.

So, I guess that's it, with the veterans. It's just -- it's the epitome of what is wrong with this country. They go and risk their lives for, you know, for all of us, to come back and not be able to use a plant. Uff-dah.

BRANDON WYATT: And if you use the plant, different benefits and things are taken away, so, it's really great talking with you all. It's often hard to get veterans up on a panel to speak, so it's an honor to be educate a little bit with you all today. Please take the time to speak with veterans in your life. They're great advocates, and they often will provide you with some information that will help you tremendously in your push for cannabis rights and legislation.

If you have an issue talking with a senator or a councilman, take your local veteran in there with you. They're going to open that door, all right? Thank you all.

MARY LYNN MATHRE: Thank you.

DOUG MCVAY: That was Brandon Wyatt, an attorney and advocate in Washington, DC, an Mary Lynn Mathre, co-founder and president of Patients Out of Time. Both of them are veterans, and they appeared on a panel at the Patients Out of Time Twelfth National Clinical Conference on Cannabis Therapeutics, speaking about veterans' issues and medical cannabis.

You're listening to Century of Lies. We're a production of the Drug Truth Network for the Pacifica Foundation Radio Network, on the web at DrugTruth.net. I'm your host Doug McVay, editor of DrugWarFacts.org.

I ended up spending a few extra days on the east coast this year because of a travel snafu. I know, poor me, stuck in New York City. But, I had a good time, got together with some friends. One of those friends, Steve Bloom, and I took a food pilgrimage through the lower east side to one of my favorite spots ever, Yonah Schimmel's Knish Bakery.

After all that, we went back and sat and had a long interview. I'm bringing you portions of that interview through the next couple of weeks. We heard a little bit last week, about Steve and I and the Cannabis Action Network and Hemp Tour and those glory days back in the '80s. Now, let's hear about some of the work that Steve is doing currently.

Wow. Let's start with -- let's start with some of the fun stuff that you're doing now. Well, we just finished this great walk through New York, and it's -- it was like a blast from thirty years ago, walking into some of these places, and just the smells and the sounds, and going to Nine Bleecker Street, to the old YIPPIE! headquarters, and it's just been madness. It's just been madness.

It's been -- how did you get here, Steve?

STEVE BLOOM: Okeh, where?

DOUG MCVAY: Oh, well, to this -- to the exalted position that we find you in now, as publisher, editor, no, not publisher, you're the editor of -- yeah, let's talk, let's do the current, so that we -- so that people, I mean, people already know who you are but that's okeh, we'll, just in case they don't.

And, Freedom Leaf Magazine is -- full disclosure, I occasionally write for Freedom Leaf Magazine -- is a terrific publication that's one of the top in the marijuana media industry, field, as far as I'm concerned. I did mention I write for them, right? Yes.

So, how did that start? You're the, you were -- you are the first news editor? Then --

STEVE BLOOM: Well, I'm the editor in chief.

DOUG MCVAY: Editor in chief, sorry.

STEVE BLOOM: I started in the third issue. The first two issues came out the end of 2013, and Chris Goldstein, who's affiliated with NORML, Philly NORML, and does his own thing, works for Philly.com. He had gotten involved with Freedom Leaf, and he had contacted me about this new publication that he was working on, and asked me to write for it.

So, for the first two issues, I wrote articles. And in the second issue, when the second issue came out, it looked a little sloppy to me, and I got in touch with Chris and I gave him, like, a critique, you know, I sent him a note with, like, you should do this and that.

And he got back to me and he said, well, you know, maybe you should do it. You know, and I said, Chris, I don't want your job, that's not what I'm saying here, I'm just trying to give you a little advice on how to improve the magazine. He says, well, maybe you'd better do it.

DOUG MCVAY: It was less a, you think you're so smart you try it, it was more like, you know, you're so smart.

STEVE BLOOM: You know, I think Chris knew it really wasn't his thing to be the head of a magazine. He's a good reporter, and he's super knowledgeable about so many things, but it wasn't necessarily, you know, where he needed to be, and he needed a little help, and instead of, you know, me coming and coaching him, you know, he kind of felt like maybe better I just take it over.

So, I did leapfrog over Chris and became the editor in chief, and Chris stayed on as senior editor, and we worked together, you know, very closely for the next couple of years. So that's how I got involved.

Freedom Leaf is a cool little publication that deals with marijuana policy, politics, some science, some business, some culture, you know, we have our hand in whatever is happening, but the main focus is the policy changes in the US. Every issue we zero in on the latest and now it's Massachusetts going legal in July, and a lot of movement here in the New York area.

We've been following obviously very closely developments in California, Nevada, the new states, the old states, you know, that are even getting older by three, four, five years, Colorado, Washington, Oregon, your home state. So keeping an eye on what's going on domestically and internationally. Canada, we just did a report on that, looking around to cover world issues.

We have a new issue coming out with a lot of Mexico coverage. So there's just so much out there, you know, you just have to carve your own space, and I guess we have. You know, just sort of by the unique vision that I suppose I have, because I don't get too much direction, I have a lot of freedom to more or less do what I want, so it's my pallet every month to put together, you know, curate, you know, a new issue from start to finish, and we have, you know, people who write regularly, and we let NORML, and SSDP, and NCIA, and WomenGrow, and a few other organizations have their voice, and they write regular columns.

And then the rest of the magazine is, you know, whatever is in the news, you know, and just get good people to write about it. You know, that's the key, and then I'm also editing the website, FreedomLeaf.com, which you write for, and that's a little more up to date newsy. The magazine's a little more broader in terms of the overall focus of being feature-y. So, we try to make a distinction between the blog format that we feature online versus the print format of a magazine, which is a little bit of a different style of writing and look.

I had been an editor at High Times for many years, I got away from print publication, and it's fun to get back into it, because my heart is always in print. That's where I got my start, when I was younger, in high school and college. But I love the web, you know. When I left High Times, I started CelebStoner. I learned a lot early on. I know how to do basic coding, probably a lot of people don't even know how to do that, of course I learned a few years ago, when you had to know a few things, like today I had to fix a story, it needed some coding, and thank goodness I knew, you know, I remembered the basics. But still, basics help.

And -- and I started, you know, before I even really knew what a blog was, in 2006, and kind of had some training wheels to learn how to blog, and learn how to post articles, and put photos together up onto, you know, a website, and you know, learn the real basics of that, and that's evolved into CelebStoner. So I kind of wear two hats, I'm the editor in chief of Freedom Leaf, I'm the publisher of CelebStoner.

DOUG MCVAY: Well, the -- I love the idea that you have the activist kind of orientation, the sort of, I mean, the back page of your, of the issue I was just looking at is the events calendar. There's a big ad from SSDP, there's a big ad for Patients Out of Time. Anyway, the -- and I love that. I love that. It's a, I think it's -- especially because you're covering the politics, it's, I mean, the business is part of it, so you talk about some of those as well, but you still cover the social justice side and the politics side. I just, I think that's brilliant.

STEVE BLOOM: It's a must. That's my background, that's my interest, but we also want to cover the business too, because there's a whole new world out there, and it would be foolish to ignore it. So just like, you know, you have that big article in the new issue, you know, an interview with BioTrack THC's CEO Patrick Vo, you know, this is a world that, you know, people have to deal with now. You know, seed to sale tracking and all that is kind of technical, but important.

And so, you know, if we can break it down a little bit in the magazine too, in addition to talking about policy, why not? You know, there should be a little bit for everybody. We're not snubbing anybody and saying, oh, we don't want to cover business or we're not into the green rush, or we'll just, you know, pick our spots, and be very careful about what we cover.

DOUG MCVAY: I think it's -- you mentioned the international stuff. One of the things we were talking about earliier, of course, this newest edition has Vicente Fox, your interview with him. And there's a conference that you're going to be going down to down there as well, cannamex. So let's talk about Mexico for a minute.

STEVE BLOOM: Well, it's CannaMexico, the event which Vicente Fox's organization, Centro Fox, is putting on. It's north of Mexico City in Guanajuato, near the León area. It's an international summit, and it will be new to me, because I haven't been to Mexico for any event, I haven't been to Mexico in quite a few years, and certainly not for a cannabis event.

You know, Mexico's getting in a little late, but, last year they passed a medical marijuana law, it's very limited, only allows for CBD, and it allows for US companies to possibly import to Mexico, and so the door's open a little bit there, for business.

Fox, who I interviewed, would like to see a business begin in Mexico. There really isn't any type of, you know, legal marijuana industry to speak of, and Mexico's still wracked with, you know, tremendous violence, you know, that's due to, you know, the illegal drugs in many ways, and the cartels, who do that business, and, you know, cause a lot of mayhem and violence in the country.

He, you know, clearly sees the solution to curbing the violence is ending prohibition. He believes that marijuana should be legal as well as all other drugs, sort of the Portugal approach, or he mentions Portugal and Holland in his conversation, that that's where he wants things to be.

So, he has a big plan, at 75, to try and, you know, steer Mexico finally in the right direction, try to end the violence, and get Mexico in the middle of the industry that's evolving here in the US, and that this should be a place for Mexico, too.

DOUG MCVAY: That was part of an interview with Steve Bloom. He is the publisher of CelebStoner.com and editor in chief at Freedom Leaf Magazine. Again, full disclosure, I write for both of those. And that's it for this week. We'll have more from that interview with Steve Bloom, and more from the Patients Out of Time conference, in the next couple of weeks. For now, that's it.

Thank you for joining us. You have been listening to Century of Lies. We're a production of the Drug Truth Network for the Pacifica Foundation Radio Network, on the web at DrugTruth.net. I’m your host Doug McVay, editor of DrugWarFacts.org.

The executive producer of the Drug Truth Network is Dean Becker. Drug Truth Network programs are available via podcast, the URLs to subscribe are on the network home page at DrugTruth.net.

The Drug Truth Network is on Facebook, please give its page a like. Drug War Facts is on Facebook too, give its page a like and share it with friends. Remember: Knowledge is power. Follow me on Twitter, I'm @DougMcVay and of course also @DrugPolicyFacts.

We'll be back next week with thirty more minutes of news and information about drug policy reform and the drug war. For now, for the Drug Truth Network, this is Doug McVay saying so long. So long!

DOUG MCVAY: For the Drug Truth Network, this is Doug McVay asking you to examine our policy of drug prohibition: the century of lies. Drug Truth Network programs archived at the James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy.

05/24/18 Mason Tvert

Program
Cultural Baggage Radio Show
Date
Guest
Mason Tvert
Matt Elrod
Organization
Marijuana Policy Project
Patients Out of Time

Mason Tvert goes back to work for Marijuana Policy Project, Matt Elrod Canadian drug reformer, Dr. Melanie Dreher re long term use of cannabis

Audio file

CULTURAL BAGGAGE

MAY 24, 2018

TRANSCRIPT

DEAN BECKER: I am Dean Becker, your host. Our goal for this program is to expose the fraud, misdirection, and the liars whose support for drug war empowers our terrorist enemies, enriches barbarous cartels, and gives reason for existence to tens of thousands of violent US gangs who profit by selling contaminated drugs to our children. This is Cultural Baggage.

Hi folks, I am the Reverend Dean Becker. Thank you for being with us on this edition of Cultural Baggage. Today we've got three great interviews, from around the US and up into Canada, talking about this stupid drug war. Let's just get started, what do you say?

It seems like just yesterday I met this young fellow. I think I was in Seattle, maybe it was San Francisco, but we were near some boats and I was talking to this young fellow about marijuana laws, about the drug war in general, and damn if he didn't just take off like a rocket, joined forces with some other drug reformers, and helped to swing the cat so to speak in Colorado, and move things around the US.

He's with us right now, I want to welcome, now with the Marijuana Policy Project, Mister Mason Tvert. Hey, Mason, how you doing?

MASON TVERT: I'm great, Dean, thanks for having me.

DEAN BECKER: Well, it does seem like just yesterday that you got your foot in the water and, hell, you really got things moving there in Colorado. First off, just tell us how are things in Colorado. Is it full of people ODing on weed, what's going on up there?

MASON TVERT: Things are quite lovely. It's, you know, really just business as usual for the state, and adults are simply able to purchase cannabis legally, like they are able to purchase alcohol. It's really not much different for the typical person.

Of course it's created tens of thousands of jobs, so it's certainly changed the lives of a lot of people in that way, and it's generating, you know, hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue that's been benefiting state programs at our schools and providing other services that were needed, and, you know, it's really, you know, marijuana was here already, it's not as if it was, you know, dropped into the state the day it became legal. So not much is different, with the exception that it's now a legal, regulated product.

DEAN BECKER: Now, you know, I mentioned early on there that you were involved with many different organizations, heck, you even co-wrote a book, what was it? Marijuana Is Safer, So Why Are We Driving People To Drink? Was that the right title.

MASON TVERT: Correct. Yep.

DEAN BECKER: And that, it kind of generated a wave, a recognition, that the old, you know, the lies, the propaganda, the reefer madness, is losing its luster, very few politicians are leaning in that direction these days. Right?

MASON TVERT: Absolutely. I think that the more people hear about cannabis, the more they learn about it, the more that they see and hear, you know, other people that they know and respect supporting an end to prohibition, the more likely they are to support an end to marijuana prohibition.

You know, a lot of people only heard negative things about marijuana for most of their lives, and it was really just a matter of exposing them to the debate, and letting them hear the other side, letting them see the facts, and once that became pervasive enough, we now have just seen support for prohibition crumble, and there's a desire for a more sensible approach.

DEAN BECKER: Well, even at the federal level, McConnell, Boehner, some of these die-hard, well, no longer die-hard prohibitionists are coming forward and changing the equation as well. Right?

MASON TVERT: Yeah, you know, it's really becoming an industry, much like other industries, and people are going to be seeing these opportunities. This is perhaps the fastest growing industry in the country, the legal marijuana industry, and there are people in, you know, looking into it, and examining the opportunities, and recognizing that there are big opportunities, and that it would be foolish to not get involved out of fear of marijuana in general, and a prohibitionist mindset.

It's, you know, being looked at like any other business opportunity, with potential risks and potential benefits. And it's not surprising that we're seeing former elected officials deciding to get involved in this, as well as current elected officials recognizing that there's really nothing to fear politically if they get supportive.

DEAN BECKER: I think it's actually a vote getter, if they just want to dig down to the bottom of it.

MASON TVERT: Yeah, potentially, I would say that it probably depends on, you know, what office they're running for, where, and, you know, the general makeup of the race, but, it's certainly not something that seems to be hurting anyone politically. It also certainly does seem to have benefits for a whole lot of candidates.

I mean, it's moving toward the point, we're not there yet, but moving toward the point, like, with alcohol. I mean, could you imagine being supportive of a candidate who said they thought alcohol should be illegal, or even a candidate who said they'd never drank alcohol before, or thought it was bad to drink alcohol. I mean, that would be very difficult for a lot of voters to relate to, and, you know, we're going to sooner or later see that type of situation with cannabis as well.

DEAN BECKER: Well, and you know, at the state level, we have a lot of voter referendums, people trying, some states have two or more, as I understand it, we have a situation where many of the state politicians are trying to circumvent or pre-empt these referendums, try to legalize it where the, in a fashion that suits the legislature better than it does the citizenry.

It's a real bundle of energy insofar as people trying to change the marijuana laws at this point, right?

MASON TVERT: Absolutely. I mean, you know, we've always seen lawmakers with a lot of disdain for the ballot initiative process. They don't like the idea of not having that control. But unfortunately, a lot of lawmakers have not been proactive on this issue, so it has resulted in citizens taking it up and moving it forward through ballot measures.

And, you know, if it -- it's great that that's forcing a lot of lawmakers to take it more seriously and consider passing these types of measures, and if they pass measures that are, you know, poorly written or way too restrictive, then they can expect to see efforts to change those laws, through ballot initiatives, and it's really a, quite frankly, I think a great aspect of the, you know, the democratic process in this country, at least in those states that have a ballot initiative process.

DEAN BECKER: You know, it was just over a year ago, my city of Houston came up with a, what they call the Misdemeanor Marijuana Diversion Program, that under four ounces of weed would not result in an arrest or jailing, none of that, they'll just write you a ticket, and whenever possible at the local level I think a lot of local officials, district attorneys, and in the case of New York City, the mayor, are trying to change the perspective, trying to change the number of arrests, trying to do away with much of that reefer madness. Your thought there too, please.

MASON TVERT: Yeah, I think that we are reaching a point where, you know, they can't ignore this anymore, I mean, the number of arrests taking place in a city like New York, the extreme disproportionate impact on communities of color, it's just not something that people are ignoring, the media's not ignoring, and as a result elected officials can't ignore it, and they're having to at least do something about it, and measures like the one in Houston are certainly a great step, and will make people realize that you don't have to arrest and, you know, seriously punish every single individual who gets caught with a small amount of marijuana.

But, there's obviously still room for improvement. We shouldn't see any punishment associated with simple possession of marijuana, this is at least a big step toward recognizing that.

DEAN BECKER: All right, friends, once again we've been speaking with Mister Mason Tvert, now aligned with the Marijuana Policy Project. Mason, what am I leaving out, what would you like to share with the listeners?

MASON TVERT: Well, I think there's, you know, a lot of progress has been made, but there's still a lot of work to be done, and, you know, even in states, whether it's like Colorado or California or Washington, where marijuana's now legal for adults, there's still efforts to paint these systems as being horrific and causing so many problems, when they are not in fact problematic.

We need to make sure that the facts are getting out there. And then of course there's a lot of places where we still need to see changes made, and it's going to be an ongoing battle that's not really going to end at any point. It's going to be, just like with alcohol, constant discussions and debates and fights over certain policy issues to make these laws reflect the facts, and make them more sensible.

DEAN BECKER: All right. Once again, that was Mister Mason Tvert, Marijuana Policy Project, their website, MPP.org.

We're going to shift countries right now. We're going to go north, going to Canada, up in BC, going to talk to my computer guru and to a long time friend, associate, fellow drug reformer, for well over a decade now, and my friend, Mister Matt Elrod. Hey, Matt, how you doing?

MATT ELROD: I'm good, Dean.

DEAN BECKER: Thank you for being with us. You know, Matt, it seems the dam is cracking, you know, there's certainly fissures showing up here and there in the US, we just heard some great thoughts coming out of the UK, and Canada's fixing to legalize this summer, I guess, is the word, cannabis, and there's a reexamination of the whole of the drug war up there as well. Am I right?

MATT ELROD: Absolutely. Yeah, as you mentioned, Canada's got a legalization bill going through the Senate right now, and a companion bill to strengthen drugged driving laws, to allay fears about carnage on our highways when we legalize cannabis.

And, you're right, right on the weight -- on the heels of that, there's a lot of talk in Canada about at least decriminalizing all illicit drugs, in light of the opiate overdose crisis we're facing. And, you know, the voices for -- calling for that are growing louder, the opposition parties in Canada, or at least two of them, have been calling for that. So, it's hopeful.

DEAN BECKER: You know, all the hoopla and the reefer madness that still lingers somehow, that gives the cops and the prosecutors this idea that they -- they really need to crack down on cannabis drivers, when, I think the truth be told there haven't -- hasn't been that many cannabis caused wrecks in the first place, it's just this inherent built-in fear of what might happen. Am I right?

MATT ELROD: Yes, and you know, fear stems from ignorance, and that's what we're facing, is just a lot of ignorance about cannabis. And there's also some deliberate misleading going on from groups like Smart Approaches to Marijuana. Three of the senators who are currently studying our legalization bill made a trip last month, I believe it was, down to Washington to meet with Jeff Sessions, and with Smart Approaches to Marijuana, to get some tips on how to fight legalization.

And they came back with a stack of SAM reports, I guess you could call them reports, SAM propaganda, that makes the case, or attempts to make the case, that cannabis related accidents have doubled in Washington state and Colorado. Now you and I know that what has really gone up is the number of fatally injured motorists who are testing positive, whether or not that caused their accident, whether or not they were impaired when they had the accident, and this is largely due to testing going up, by drivers who are tested more frequently now.

I think where before, if a fatally injured driver tested positive for alcohol, they wouldn't bother doing the cannabis test, because they had their culprit, whereas now they do. So for all those reasons, you know, what we're seeing is an increase in the number of reported so-called cannabis related fatalities.

And this is being deliberately twisted and used to mislead some of the fearful and the ignorant.

DEAN BECKER: That's the hell of it, isn't, leading the fearful and the ignorant, that's been the, I don't know, the cause, and the solution to all of life's problems. Drugs, I guess.

MATT ELROD: You know, it's sometimes difficult to tell who's delusional and who's dishonest.

DEAN BECKER: Right.

MATT ELROD: And for that reason, I try to give such people the benefit of the doubt and think, okeh, this person's just uninformed, but at root I know that there are people like, you know, Kevin Sabet and others who deliberately mislead the public, who know better.

DEAN BECKER: Right.

MATT ELROD: And, and I think some of our senators fall into both camps. Some of them are sincerely ignorant, and understandably fearful, while others are ideologically opposed to the legalization, sometimes for partisan reasons, they just don't want Trudeau to succeed in this endeavor.

And -- or, or maybe they're fighting a culture war, maybe a pothead stole their girlfriend in high school, you know, which is often the case.

DEAN BECKER: Well, and I, of late, I've really come to the conclusion that it's alcohol versus marijuana, and other drugs, but, about a hundred years ago, the alcoholics lost their moral standing, if you will, here in the US, when we had that first prohibition, but then they kind of gained back and meantime they had passed the Harrison Narcotics law [sic: Act], and other anti-drug laws, and it just seems the alcoholics have the upper hand and they're just not going to let go. Your response to that, Matt.

MATT ELROD: Yeah, it's a tough one. I mean, the records show, so, historical record shows that Anslinger et al. wrapped the war on drugs with the end of alcohol prohibition, they had all these drug agents, you know, that they had to keep busy, and, you know, there are a lot of vested interests in drug prohibition, so it's clear that there was a transfer there.

It's also clear that there's the racial element to the roots of drug prohibition in both our countries. And, I think some of that still remains. Certainly, systemically we see that's the way the law is enforced. So ....

DEAN BECKER: Well, here's hoping that you guys get it straightened out, and that the cops and the prosecutors don't take over the whole industry and they let some good folks like Marc and Jodie Emery get involved, after all the hard work they've done. But, the good news is that the Drug Truth Network has a new website design, new ease. Tell folks what's going on with our site, please.

MATT ELROD: Yeah, we've finally gotten you upgraded to a newer version of the content management system running at DrugTruth.net, and this version is much more mobile-friendly. That's, I think, the biggest plus at all, because we were certainly starting to lose people who've become accustomed to surfing on their phones and their personal devices.

So, that's good. While we were at it we decluttered it a bit, I think, made it a little easier to surf around and find what you're looking for. We've added the ability for you to attach images to individual programs, which I think will be helpful for your listeners, to see who they're hearing. And, I particularly like -- you've always had this functionality, but the ability to search the entire website by guest or organization.

In particular because I'm a vain man, and I can see that, with just a couple clicks, all the interviews you've done with me. So similarly, you know, any guest you've had, or any organization they to, NORML, what have you, can link to directly the programs that they've been featured in.

DEAN BECKER: Well, this is all good news, and, you know, and the heck of it is, dear listeners, I worked towards this, Matt has worked towards this, is to educate and to embolden you to do your part to end this stupid god damned drug war.

MATT ELROD: Amen.

DEAN BECKER: Amen.

BILL MAHER: We have this fantasy that our interests and the interests of the super rich are the same, like somehow the rich will eventually get so full that they'll explode. And the candy will rain down on the rest of us. Like there's some kind of pinata of benevolence.

But here's the thing about a pinata. It doesn't open on its own. You have to beat it with a stick.

DEAN BECKER: It's time to play Name That Drug By Its Side Effects! Euphoria, drowsiness, nausea, confusion, constipation, sedation, unconsciousness, coma, tolerance, addiction, respiratory arrest, and death. Time's up! This drug, 80 times stronger than morphine and heroin, is available via schedule two prescription: Fentanyl. For major pain.

All right, as promised last week, we have some more interviews and speeches coming out of the Patients Out of Time conference, which happened just a week and a half ago up there in New Jersey. This is all thanks to Doug McVay, who produces our other half hour program, Century of Lies. But, well, let's just get to it.

MELANIE DREHER, PHD, RN, FAAN: This is really my personal odyssey, from being a scientist to being an activist.

DEAN BECKER: This is Doctor Melanie Dreher.

MELANIE DREHER, PHD, RN, FAAN: And, I think that it's something that many scientists go through, so let me just share with you some of this. Nineteen Sixty-Nine, the summer that Neil Armstrong set foot on the moon, and 400,000 of my very best friends were at Woodstock, New York, I was on a mountain top in Jamaica, in a journey of discovery.

I was sent there by my major professor at Columbia University to find out about cannabis. Now, I have to tell you, at that point I had never smoked anything, not even a cigarette. I had never done field work before, although I was a graduate student in anthropology, and I knew nothing about Jamaica. So, I was obviously exquisitely qualified to undertake that study.

And, I was at that time, I was helping my professor, who had just been funded to do a study of the chronic use of marijuana. At that time, all the research had been focused on what happens to you when you smoke, the acute effects of smoking, and no one had really looked at, well, what happens to people after they smoke for years, on a daily or weekly basis.

So that was my job, was to just find out about cannabis use in Jamaica. He had done his field work there, and he knew that it was used. So, I, on that mountain top in that small community, I discovered, and it was the summer of discovery, that cannabis was not only a substance that was smoked and used recreationally, but it had religious connotations among the Rastafarians, in fact it was their sacrament, is their sacrament.

And then of course this rich medicinal use. And that time, and still, herbal medicine is an important part of the Jamaica folks pharmacopoeia, but, as they showed me this bush and that bush, and another leaf, and a tree, they would say, but ganja, which is the Indian word, marijuana, ganja, that is the king of it.

And -- meaning that it was a substance that had so many uses, and could be used in so many ways. Topically, as an edible, cooked in soup, smoked.

And so, I went back with my little report for the summer, and then the next year I went to recruit the sample of men who were going to be in a study of chronic use, the impact of chronic use, a medical anthropological study, and at that point, I very much realized, and this has stayed with me the rest of the time, that -- the rest of my career -- that in fact cannabis really depends, as our -- previous speakers have said, on set and setting.

It's really important to understand the context before you can interpret the results of your research. So, we found, for example, that all of our cannabis users, compared to our non-users, were significantly psych -- on every psychological test, better adjusted.

And, but then when we looked at, when I shared my experience with recruiting, it was very easy to recruit cannabis users. I could hardly find any non-users. So you know that the people who were not using it are already a little weird. You know, there's something different about them, they're not part of normal male social life, so there we go.

And, so, again, it was not -- all we could say with that study is that probably cannabis doesn't do any harm. Then, I went back, and studied the amotivational syndrome. We all know what that was, but in Jamaica, men were using cannabis to work harder. And it was actually distributed to cane workers, who, as a little coffee break to get, sit down, have a smoke, get up and cut more cane, load more cane, sugar cane.

And while I was there I also of course started working with women, and when I first went, very few women smoked. They drank the tea and men were the smokers, men claimed that women didn't have the brains to smoke, so, they had to stay away from those psychoactive properties, but, women were preparing teas, and poultices, and infusions, other infusions, for their children, to keep them smarter, and healthier.

And, really? You're making marijuana tea for your children, three times a day? Yes, miss, it really helps them in school. Well, let's see, so I got funded to do a little study of children, and, comparing the children who drank tea on a regular basis and other children who didn't drink tea. And again, we found out, tea drinkers did significantly better in their studies than the children who didn't drink tea.

But, it had to be put in the context of parents who were willing to share their precious store of cannabis with their children were also the mothers and fathers who made sure their children had pencils and paper and clean uniforms, and went to school on a regular basis.

But it was associated with good parenting, and not bad parenting. And while I was looking at children, I was looking more at women and women who were smoking during pregnancy, and at that time, the United States was still reeling with the thalidomide crisis of the 1960s, very interested in the teratogenic effects of cannabis. And, I though, okeh, this is the time to do a study of the impact of marijuana during pregnancy.

And we tested these neonates, we used standard measures, we had thirty exposed neonates and thirty non-exposed neonates, and once again, the results were counter-intuitive, and our exposed neonates did significantly better on every dimension of the Brazelton neonatal scale than the non-exposed infants. So, here we were, and this became one of my first challenges about the social and political realities of cannabis use. It was very hard to get that study published.

We did get it published in Pediatrics, finally, but it brought to fore the editorial bias that exists in most journals, and has actually been cited, a wonderful article in Lancet in 1989 actually evaluated various studies on not just cannabis, but other drug studies, studies of substances as well, and found that the more positive your findings are, in other words, that actually negative, that cannabis does not have cocaine does not have a bad effect or as serious effect as we thought it would have, the less likely you are to get published.

And, that editorial bias has continued to exist, in my own profession, which is nursing, as well as anthropology.

DEAN BECKER: To dream the American dream,
To lie still and hope
With both of your eyes closed.
To ignore
The nightmare that surrounds you
Just to try, try to reach
The American dream

All right, I apologize, that was me singing, but it's designed to get your attention, to think about this American dream, this dream of an eternal war on drugs, where the number of deaths increases every day, the number of diseases, where the amount of violence, where the expenditure of trillions of dollars just continues and continues on.

Kind of recapping the show, our new web page, designed by Matt Elrod, is up and ready, that's at DrugTruth.net. It's phone friendly, as I understand it we already have an increased number of listenership. You know, share it with your friends, your family, your relatives, and again, I remind you, because of prohibition, you don't know what's in that bag, and I urge you to please, be careful.

Drug Truth Network transcripts are stored at the James A. Baker III Institute, more than seven thousand radio programs are at DrugTruth.net, and we are all still tap dancing on the edge of an abyss.

05/17/18 Deborah Small

Program
Cultural Baggage Radio Show
Date
Guest
Deborah Small
Paul Armentano
Organization
Patients Out Of Time

Deborah Peterson Small speaks at Patients Out of Time Conf, Paul Armentano of NORML re drug war hypocrisy and lies, Jasmine Budnella of Vocal NY, Melissa Moore of Drug Policy Alliance in NY

Audio file

CULTURAL BAGGAGE

MAY 17, 2018

TRANSCRIPT

DEAN BECKER: I am the Reverend Dean Becker, keeper of the moral high ground in the drug war, for the world, and this is Cultural Baggage.

All right, shortened up the intro so I've got more time to talk to you folks. We've got a lot to report. Our Drug Truth Network website is up and running, very telephone friendly. Please give a look, give a listen, we're going to have pictures, I'm going to start a blog, starting this next week. It is going to be MoralHighGround.world. It's time, it is frickin' time.

My friend Doug McVay was up in New Jersey at the Patients Out of Time conference, got a lot of good stuff for all of us, and let's just give a listen.

DOUG MCVAY: Thanks, Dean.

Hello folks. I’m Doug McVay, editor of DrugWarFacts.org and host of Century of Lies, the sister program to Cultural Baggage on the Drug Truth Network.

Recently I had the pleasure of attending the Patients Out of Time Twelfth National Clinical Conference on Cannabis Therapeutics in Jersey City, New Jersey. Full disclosure, I also have the honor of working with Patients Out of Time doing website maintenance and social media management.

At this year’s conference, the first day was devoted to a policy seminar titled Medical Cannabis in the States of Confusion. We had a lot of great speakers. One of my favorites was Deborah Peterson Small. Deb Small is a great friend of the program and a friend of mine. She’s an attorney, drug policy reformer, and social justice activist who is one of the smartest people I have ever met, an incredibly sharp mind, and she's an exceptionally good speaker.

She gave a few presentations at #Patients2018. One in particular that I think listeners will enjoy was at the end of that day. The title of that panel was Where Are We Going: Federal Descheduling and Reclaiming Medicine. Here’s Deb Small:

DEBORAH PETERSON SMALL: There's a difference between ending cannabis prohibition and achieving racial and economic justice. And even the way that we do it may not achieve racial and economic justice.

I'm a California cannabis consumer who feels screwed by Prop 64, which I worked to help get passed. All right? Seriously. And it hurts me. I worked for six years on the campaign to change the crack cocaine sentencing laws, because of the impact that it was having on black communities, but the whole idea behind changing that was that that was supposed to be the first step towards getting rid of mandatory minimums.

Well, we spent almost a decade getting the ratio changed from a hundred to one to eighteen to one. Still f******, but a victory. But do you think anybody is now really talking about getting rid of mandatory minimums? It's like, oh, that fight is over. You don't -- I mean, it's still alive, but the level of energy and everything is gone, and I have this, well, we can talk about that over dinner.

But, I can tell you in terms of funding, and where the resources are going, it is not focused on changing federal law around mandatory minimums. In fact, legislative reform, for me, it looks like we go through phases. When I first started this work, everyone was focused on reentry. How do we support people coming back home. Then, it was voter disenfranchisement, around 2000, and all the foundations got behind that.

Now, they're all around, oh, how can we influence prosecutors, and that's like the newest thing. But the bottom line is that poor people remain poor. The system finds other ways to over-police them, and use that as a way to keep them out. And this is the thing about, you know, we have this conversation about expungement and all of that, as if those laws are legitimate.

But the thing that I learned, from working in law firms, many of our clients who had been guilty of and convicted of white collar crimes, was that they got to come back and become traders again. They got to come back and make back all that money. The thing -- and those crimes that they committed caused a thousand times more damage to society than any of the drug crimes that we're talking about here today.

So, I really -- I want people to, like, look at this stuff proportionately. And when they hear people like me, and I come across sounding like an angry black woman, it's because I am angry. I'm angry because I've watched now four generations of my family be affected by the drug war. People that I've lost to addiction, to homicide, to homelessness, to mental illness, over b*******.

Because there's nothing inherent about these products that require the level of damage that we as a society seem to be willing to allow to be inflicted on people. And I'm tired of these incrementalist conversations that say that I should be happy that we're going to treat marijuana like medicine, which just means that the government has more ability to control my life, because anything that we medicalize in a system that is not committed to health becomes another tool for control.

Now, I am an advocate for health, but I'm very clear that in this particular system that we're in, this is not a system that cares about people's health. And it uses the health system as a way to control people.

And so we have to think about all of those things as we do our advocacy. Personally, I am a proud socialist. My ultimate fight is to bring down pernicious capitalism, because I believe that that is the ultimate ill, that all of the other things that we have to deal with stem from is the pursuit of profit over people.

And yet that's not a conversation that we have, and it worries me that even in the area of reform, of these horrible laws, what's motivating people to change the is the pursuit of profit, the ability to get more tax money, the ability to get more revenue. What that sounds to me is like the constant succubus, just sucking more and more resources, more and more stuff from people, that only benefits a few people.

So I hope that we can have a conversation about building collective power. How do we build collective power. Instead of having marijuana businesses, let's have marijuana collectives. Let's think about microfinancing. Let's look at the rest of the world for ways to improve economic equity. Not rely on the old models that we've had before, the ones that have not served us, and I'll just end with this last thing, which is not about drugs, but it is in a way.

Which is that, in the twenty-first century, we need to let go of our conversation about the middle class. There's only two classes of people in the world right now. There's the class of people who work for money, and the class of people whose money works for them. The majority of us belong to the class of people who work for money. If you work for money in our particular system, it doesn't matter whether you're getting paid $25,000 or $250,000, when your source of income goes, you're screwed.

If you have enough money that your money works for you, like the Trumps, and all the people who are in this administration, everything that we do is designed for you to keep that money, for it to grow, and for you to pass it on to your kids. We are creating a permanent aristocracy, a permanent plutocracy, inside of this frame that we're in, because we are not challenging economic distribution.

So please, as we go forward in our advocacy around this, let's have it come from a place that's increasing economic democracy, because ultimately you're not going to be able to preserve political democracy if you don't expand economic democracy. Thank you.

DEAN BECKER: All right, folks, that was Deborah Small, speaking at the Patients Out of Time conference up there in New Jersey. Thanks to Doug McVay we're going to have several programs, Cultural Baggage and Century of Lies will be featuring segments from that conference. We were the only outlet there allowing to use that stuff.

Again, go to DrugTruth.net, check it out, we've got a brand new site, we're still working on it. Going to do a big announcement next week, but it's in trial phase, it's working, as I said, we're going to have pictures from the conference, other additions, and it's really telephone friendly. I urge you to please, check it out.

Today, we're going to be speaking with the deputy director of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, Mister Paul Armentano. And Paul, I want to preface our discussion with this thought.

A few weeks back, I somewhat tongue in cheek and somewhat seriously declared myself to be administrator of the moral high ground in the drug war, because over the years, hell, over the decades, the top dogs, the administrators of the DEA, the ONDCP, the attorney general, governors, prosecutors, all kinds of folks, stepped forward as if they were knowing, as if they were fully informed, and declared this eternal madness to be necessary.

One such instance occurred lately, where you heard that the head of the ONDCP was talking out of another orifice, so to speak, and you had an opinion in The Hill. Tell us about that piece, would you please, sir?

PAUL ARMENTANO: Sure. Well, to clarify the issue we're talking about the acting director of the United States Drug Enforcement Administration, Robert Patterson. And last week, he was asked to testify before members of Congress, and during his Congressional testimony, he was asked a number of times about marijuana and marijuana policy.

Specifically at one point he was asked whether the agency held an opinion with regard to whether the expanded medicalization of marijuana was playing either a positive or a negative role in American use and abuse of opioids.

To which Mister Patterson responded that he believed the passage and enactment of medical marijuana laws is exacerbating the use of opioids and is exacerbating the opioid crisis.

Now, that's a very unique opinion and position, because it runs contrary to virtually all of the available peer reviewed data on the subject, which in fact shows just the opposite, that legal marijuana access is directly associated with reductions in opioid use, abuse, hospitalizations, and mortality.

When the DEA's administrator was pressed on this issue, when he was asked to provide evidence in support of the agency's opinion, he acknowledged to Congress that he was aware of no scientific evidence supporting the DEA's position. He further argued that he was aware of no scientific evidence that conflicted with the notion that medicalization is actually mitigating the opioid abuse crisis.

So, here we have an instance where the acting director of the primary federal agency that addresses drugs and drug policy admits that he holds an opinion, that he represents an opinion of the agency, but acknowledged that he has no scientific evidence in support of that opinion, and in fact acknowledged that the evidence that is contrary to that opinion, the agency itself has no interest in even assessing that evidence.

And it really strikes to the heart of this drug policy issue, that we have an agency that is largely ideological, that is guiding drug policy, and my suggestion for members of Congress and others, we're moving forward, to simply pay no further deference to this agency, because they admit that they don't know what they're talking about.

DEAN BECKER: So true, and again, I think there's a parallel across the state, representatives and others, who, you know, if you're told in kindergarten that if you kiss a girl you're going to get cooties, well, you might never get laid, and I kind of draw a comparison there to this belief system that they learned in their youth or that was stamped in their brain, in their heart, when they were younger, and they refuse to even inquire or investigate the possibility that they were wrong? Correct?

PAUL ARMENTANO: Well, indeed, in fact at one point the DEA was asked specifically had the agency ever assessed the relationship between medical marijuana laws and opioid use. And Mister Patterson admitted that they had not. So again, it's not so much that the DEA holds a flat earth position, a position that runs contrary to the available science, but the DEA further admits that they have no interest in learning the truth on this issue. That is what he said under oath.

DEAN BECKER: That's just scary as hell, to be honest with you, because over the years they've gotten well over a hundred billion dollars, and if I dare say, the respect of police chiefs and prosecutors and lawmakers around the country, to believe what they believe, right?

PAUL ARMENTANO: They're lazy. They're so used to not getting pressed or prompted, to have to substantiate their positions, that when they are prompted in a situation like this, they have nothing to bring to the table. You know? I mean, they're just -- it's a lazy institution, that feels they don't even need to be prepared, because anything they say is going to be rubberstamped anyway.

The DEA is an artifact of a bygone era. They're the flat earthers in drug policy. And the fact is, in 2018, pundits, lawmakers, members of Congress, their staff, they need to view the DEA in this light. This is not an organization that has any credibility on drug policy, so it is not an organization that should be guiding drug policy in America in 2018.

They are out of step with both public opinion and also with scientific opinion, and the rapidly changing cultural status of marijuana in America.

DEAN BECKER: Well, some profound words from our good friend at the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, their deputy director, Mister Paul Armentano. Their website: NORML.org.

It's time to play Name That Drug By Its Side Effects! Headache, fatigue, nausea, dizziness, irregular pulse, skin discoloration, weakness, amnesia, agitation, loose stools, coughing, taste perversion, tremors, arrhythmia, cardiac failure, and death. Time's up! The answer, from Pfizer Laboratories: Caduet, for high blood pressure and high cholesterol.

All right, folks, thank you for being with us on this edition of Cultural Baggage. I am the Reverend Dean Becker, the owner of the moral high ground for the world and, you know, I think more and more folks are going to understand this to be true, and get behind this effort.

We've got some reports coming to you out of New York City.

JASMINE BUDNELLA: My name's Jasmine Budnella, drug policy coordinator at VOCAL New York.

DEAN BECKER: Now, there's been some shake-up, if you will, going on in New York, a recognition of the racial disparity in regards to the marijuana arrests, and an endorsement by your mayor, De Blasio, in support of safer consumption spaces, places where folks can inject drugs safely. Tell me about that support, that endorsement from the mayor, first off. It's in recognition of the work of VOCAL New York, Drug Policy, and many other good folks, right?

JASMINE BUDNELLA: Yeah, absolutely. So, we had quite a long fight with Mayor De Blasio on releasing a feasibility study that was commissioned in 2016, a hundred thousand dollars from city council commissioned this study to study the feasibility of supervised injecting facilities in New York City.

We had heard from the mayor in February that he would be releasing the study soon, and we launched a full-on campaign to get that study released as we're dying, in 2016 we lost 13 -- over thirteen hundred people to overdose. In 2018, or 2017, sorry, we lost over fourteen hundred people to overdose.

So, during this fight to get the study released, we were able to move the mayor into supporting this lifesaving intervention. And so now he's come out in support of them, but, in one of the stipulations to get this off the ground in New York City, is to have state approval. So, two weeks ago, city hall sends a letter to the governor's office, to Commissioner Zucker of the Health Department, to approve these sites.

We still have yet to hear anything of the approval, so now, now that the mayor's in support of lifesaving interventions, which is very critical right now, especially as we're losing so many people, we have changed our strategy now to really push the governor to stand with us and stand with the city of New York as well as the mayor of Ithaca, and other mayors across the country.

DEAN BECKER: This is wonderful news, Jasmine, and I, you know, San Francisco, Seattle, even my city of Houston, there are rumblings and mumblings about the need for these safe injection facilities, and we're going to need people at every level, mayors, governors, district attorneys, and other folks to get on board to make this happen, are we not?

JASMINE BUDNELLA: Yeah, absolutely. This is a group effort, right, the opiate crisis is impacting all communities right now, and it's very important that we all stand up to recognize that we have a strategy, one of many strategies, to save people's lives. These sites have been around for over thirty years, are well researched, are all over the world, and it's time that all of us as a community stand up to say we can't lose another person.

DEAN BECKER: Well, this is good news, certainly, and I understand there was a protest today as well, or a rally, to hope to convince Governor Cuomo?

JASMINE BUDNELLA: Yeah, absolutely. So, on May Second, we had a -- we performed civil disobedience in front of city hall, to really show the mayor we were -- we're very serious about saving lives, and the very next day, it was, his announcement, so as a community, we did really great. We had eleven people get arrested, as well as a councilmember with us.

And today, as we're shifting over to telling Governor Cuomo we need you to stand with us, we went to his office in New York City and held a rally with community members, from Drug Policy Alliance, Housing Works, Harm Reduction Coalition, and our community members, who are directly impacted by these issues, to raise our voices and say that we're not backing down until we -- we're able to prevent overdoses and keep people alive.

DEAN BECKER: All right. Again, we've been speaking with Jasmine Budnella of VOCAL-New York. Is there any closing thoughts, a website you might want to recommend?

JASMINE BUDNELLA: Just sending love and hugs to everybody as we continue this fight to save people's lives.

DEAN BECKER: Opening up a can of worms, and going fishing for truth, this is the Drug Truth Network. DrugTruth.net

MELISSA MOORE: I'm Melissa Moore, I'm the New York State Deputy Director for the Drug Policy Alliance, and the Drug Policy Alliance is a national organization working to end the harms of the war on drugs and drug use. So, we're working for evidence based solutions, and to end the damage caused by prohibition across the country.

DEAN BECKER: I'm aware that people are beginning to hold politicians' feet to the fire. For too long, many of them have stood and pronounced the need for this drug war as if it was god's will, but many of them have never delved into the facts, have never actually realized that they are off base, they're off track, and they're causing harm through their endorsement of these policies or their failure to recognize the failure of the policy. Am I right?

MELISSA MOORE: You know, the fact is that we've seen growing momentum across the country, from people saying that we're not going to accept the war on drugs anymore, that we know that prohibition has not been effective at reducing use or keeping people in communities safe, whatsoever, and that amid, in particular amid the overdose crisis right now, we need innovative solutions.

And we need to shift from the criminalization approach that completely hasn't worked and has brought so much damage onto communities, to a public health framework, and that's where solutions where safer consumption spaces, making sure that people have access to harm reduction programs that can provide syringe exchanges and naloxone to reverse overdoses and things like that make a lot of sense.

And then also legalizing marijuana and taxing and regulating it, so that we're no longer prohibiting the substance.

DEAN BECKER: Well, in your fair city of New York, you know, they've been saying they're cutting back on the number of marijuana arrests, that they're, you know, they have a gentler, kinder situation, but, for blacks and Latinos that has not been true. Am I right?

MELISSA MOORE: Exactly. What we know is that, although there has been somewhat of a drop in overall marijuana arrests in the last couple of years, that the racial disparities across the board remain exactly as they've been for the last thirty years. We know that 86 percent on average of the people arrested in New York City every single year for low level marijuana possession, which I should note was decriminalized in 1977, the vast majority of those people being arrested are black and Latino New Yorkers, even though we know that people use marijuana at roughly the same rate across racial and ethnic groups.

So this comes down to targeted policing, hypercriminalization of certain communities, and it's time for that to stop.

DEAN BECKER: Well, you had a great piece in the New York Daily News, you and Chris Alexander, title was Legalize And Tax Marijuana To Truly End The Disproportionate Arrests Of Blacks And Latino New Yorkers. And, you know, your fair city leads the nation for city arrests. My state of Texas leads the nation for state arrests of marijuana users, and it's way out of wack. It is focused on black and Latinos just way too often. Correct?

MELISSA MOORE: Right. We know that this is something that's systematically a problem across the country. Even in states that have legalized marijuana, enforcement still ends up being harshest on communities of color, so we know that just legalizing the plant doesn't necessarily legalize people who are often subject to hyper-policing, and extensive targeting, even though they've done nothing to deserve that whatsoever.

But nonetheless, we know that legalizing marijuana and ending prohibition does remove a significant tool that law enforcement can use as a justification for interactions with community members. So, it doesn't change the entire parameters that we're operating with within this country, but it does provide some significant ways forward for people to not be criminalized.

DEAN BECKER: Through your efforts and the efforts of Drug Policy Alliance and many others, the mayor, De Blasio, has now refocused and promised to change the situation, has he not?

MELISSA MOORE: He has, and this is due to many years of pressure from Drug Policy Alliance and our partners. Years and years of research, just last summer we published a report with the Marijuana Arrest Research Project that showed once again the extreme racial disparities in New York City, and Mayor De Blasio tried to refute it. He tried to debunk it, questioned our character, questioned the data, which had come from the state's own office of criminal justice services.

And now he's changed his story, when it's absolutely undeniable what the situation is in New York, and it's clear that he needs to take action or he'll be -- he'll suffer for it. We know that marijuana legalization is actually more popular than most politicians are at this point. So people are seeing that there's a need for a shift in this conversation.

DEAN BECKER: Well, Melissa, is there something I'm leaving out, something you think needs to be brought into this story, into this interview?

MELISSA MOORE: I think actually one of the most significant developments yesterday was the Manhattan DA, Cy Vance, and Brooklyn District Attorney Eric Gonzalez, announcing that they were no longer going to prosecute low-level marijuana possession charges in their offices anymore. That, those two offices alone, two of the DAs out of the five boroughs of New York City, those offices account for about ten thousand arrests and potential prosecutions for low-level marijuana possession every single year.

So, those offices and the bold leadership of those district attorneys, saying in the interest of justice, we're no longer going to prosecute these cases, it's clear that these arrests are being carried out in a racially biased manner, no more will we participate in that, was huge, and we -- we're certainly hopeful that other district attorneys across the state of New York and in other parts of the country will follow that lead as well. It's definitely time to take action, and we don't have to wait for legalization in order for district attorneys and other people in positions of power within different agencies to take similar steps.

DEAN BECKER: You know, it's a sign that people are recognizing, I don't have a better word, the stupidity of this drug war that has never worked in any fashion.

All right, that was Melissa Moore, DrugPolicy.org, and she's absolutely right, yesterday's New York Times had a big story about this in the paper. Folks, it's time for you to get on board, it's time for you to help end this madness, and again, I remind you, because of prohibition, you don't know what's in that bag, and I urge you to please, be careful.

Drug Truth Network transcripts are stored at the James A. Baker III Institute, more than seven thousand radio programs are at DrugTruth.net, and we are all still tap dancing on the edge of an abyss.

03/16/18 Ethan Russo

Program
Cultural Baggage Radio Show
Date
Guest
Ethan Russo
Organization
Patients out of Time

Maricela Orozco from Caravan for Peace, interpretation by Daniel Joloy , Ellecer Carlos, of the Philippine Alliance of Human Rights Advocates, Dr. Ethan Russo re Patients Out Of Time & Bob Wenzel of Target Liberty

Audio file

CULTURAL BAGGAGE

MARCH 16, 2018

TRANSCRIPT

DEAN BECKER: Hi folks, this is Dean Becker, and I thank you for joining us on this edition of Cultural Baggage. I'm headed to Europe to gather some important interviews, getting some help this week on preparing the show.

This week, we're going to hear from the UN Commission on Narcotic Drugs, who just completed its sixty-first annual meeting. This information was gathered by Mister Doug McVay of DrugWarFacts.org and our other program, Century of Lies. And we also want to thank the DrugReporter and the Rights Reporter Foundation for their help in this effort.

Our first segment comes from the CND side event. It features Maricela Orozco out of Mexico, Familiares en B??squeda Mar?¡a Herrera, from the Caravan for Peace, Life, and Justice, which I traveled seven thousand miles with. English language interpretation is provided by Daniel Joloy, senior policy analyst at Amnesty International.

MARICELA OROZCO [interpretation by DANIEL JOLOY]: Good morning. My name is Maricela Orozco. I come from Mexico. I am here today because, unfortunately, my kid, Gerson, of 19 years old, was kidnapped a little bit more than three years ago, and that same day, my son, Alan, who was an architecture student, and my son in law, Miguel, were also killed when they were looking for Gerson.

My son, Gerson, was disappeared in the context of the violence and impunity that the war on drugs has brought to Mexico. This war has consisted in the militarization of public security, resulting in the increase of violence and human rights violations that has reached a number of more than 30,000 people disappeared since 2006.

In the case of the disappearance of Gerson, and the killing of Alan and Miguel, are involved state and non-state actors. Even the secretary of defense has participated in covering up for the evidence of this tragic case, and judges have currently also covering for organized crime.

Because of this, I began my struggle to try to find my son. While looking for Gerson, I met other families, and I -- we gathered together to found an organization, Families in the Search Mar?¡a Herrera, a network of other family collectives, of people looking for their disappeared, across all the country, called the Network of National Groups.

That's how I became, from searching only for my son, to look for many other people disappeared in Mexico. This is how I became a woman human rights defender.

From these two organizations, I have joined actions to look for the disappeared alive, and also in mass graves. I also participated in the process to draft the general law against disappearances, which was recently approved in Congress, and we also resisted a recent law on interior security, a law that was sadly approved just a few months ago. I have also joined active efforts to demand a stop of this war against drugs.

Besides the damages that this war against drugs has signified to thousands of families that, as my family, have lost their loved ones, or are searching for their loved ones, defending human rights in this context, it's very, very dangerous.

In our work, for searching for the disappeared, many friends have been killed, like Miriam Elizabeth Rodr?¡guez Mart?¡nez, who was looking for her daughter, Karen Alejandra, and was killed in May of last year at her house, or our friend Jos?® Jes??s Jim?®nez Gaona, who was looking for his daughter Jenny Isabel, and was killed in June 2016.

The search for our loved ones make us be uncomfortable, both for criminal actors, but also for the state, because evidence their omissions and their collusion with organized crime. By organizing ourselves and taking on all the other cases, as if they are our own cases, our vulnerability increases.

On the other hand, in Mexico, it's almost zero that reparation of damages or effective remedies for victims of human rights violations and human rights defenders.

I am part of the mechanism of protection for human rights defenders and journalists that has evaluated my risk as extraordinary. The mechanism has granted me some protection measures, such as a panic alert, installation of strong doors and windows, a GPS sensor, and lights across my house. However, the risk situation me and my family are facing is very, very high, and that's why the attorney general's office has been forced to intervene as well, and to give me some police to protect me and my family, because the measures proposed by the mechanism are insufficient.

The panic alert is a privatized measure that, when you activate it, it puts you in touch with a private corporation. Besides, it is inefficient, because it doesn't have the capacity to react adequately and before an emergency, and frequently the button doesn't work.

In emergency cases, the police would only send some people to police around your house, but they wouldn't be able to protect you when they are trying to kill you or to attack you directly.

In addition, being able to be considered by the mechanism is very complex, and you necessarily need the follow-up of a civil society organization that is specialized in dealing with the mechanism, just in order for the authorities to take your case into consideration, and be kept within the mechanism, and to have -- to demand constantly that the specific measures granted are evaluated and changed according to the necessities.

The mechanism will always be insufficient, while the cases of human rights defenders attacked are increasing. The mechanism does not implement measures to prevent these attacks, nor comprehensive measures to reduce the rates of impunity for these attacks. Without this, the cycle of attacks and threats against human rights defenders and journalists will definitely continue.

The cycle of impunity and corruption that fuels the war against drugs has not allowed us to find for our disappeared, and increases the risks for those of us who defend human rights. This is why it is urgent to meet the strategy and drug control policies in Mexico towards one that guarantees the full protection of human rights.

Thank you very much, and I just want to share that this last December, we found the body of our son who was kidnapped for more than three years.

DEAN BECKER: I thought it important to let our Spanish speaking friends hear the truth here on the mothership of the Drug Truth Network. Next up, we hear from Carlos Ellecer
He's spokesman for the ÔÇ£In Defence of Human Rights and Dignity MovementÔÇØ in the Philippines.

ELLECER CARLOS: Thank you so much, Daniel. Warm greetings of human rights solidarity to all. I would like to take this opportunity to thank Amnesty International and the International Drug Policy Consortium for organizing this important event that further enables us to bring out the truth on what is happening in the Philippines.

I am with the Philippine Alliance of Human Rights Advocates, and PAHRA is the lead convenor of the In Defense of Human Rights and Dignity Movement, the one that first responded to the mass killings when they started, even before President Duterte took office in June 2016, and we're now engaged in our second international solidarity information tour.

We went all around the world last year for five months, simply because we could not see working accountability mechanisms in the Philippines and our judicial system being already under the control of this violent president, and, yeah. Essentially, we're also extending the Philippine human rights movement which was once strong outside the Philippines because of the impending dictatorship in our country.

Most of you are all aware of the drug war in the Philippines operating outside the rule of law, which has made human life very cheap, the worst human rights crisis since the time of Marcos, one that is dehumanizing us all.

As we reported constantly at the UN and the US Congress, President Rodrigo Duterte established a permission structure for mass murder, and redefined the rules, and institutionalized the rules of an institutionalized impunity in the Philippines.

He has popularized the idea that the crisis there can be solved by exterminating addicts and criminals. Conditioned our police to be quick on the trigger and routinely circumvent due process, and have a general contempt for the rule of law by promising them protection from litigation, imposing on them forced quotas, forced results, offering bounties to even ordinary citizens, and putting up a reward system.

Hitler-style, he effectively dehumanized and defined drug dependence and drug peddlers as the -- THE -- inconvenient sector worthy of elimination. Through sustained incitement to hate and violence, he has done so.

This kill society's undesired, or de facto social cleansing policy, has led to the deaths of at least 12,000, conservatively speaking, of the most neglected, beaten down, and impoverished sections of Philippine society, including children.

What civil society has offered are three basic things. One, this includes academic institutions, international experts, and of course human rights groups, is to end that clamp down, prohibitionist, and hardline approach, which never worked elsewhere, and apply compassionate, evidence-based human rights and public health centered approach to resolving the drug issue.

Of course, radical reforms in our inoperable criminal justice system so that justice can flow there. And mostly, it's an investment in a life of dignity for all, address the root cause. In the Philippines, there is a huge market of beaten down, impoverished individuals, predisposed to become exploited into a life of crime and drugs, and we would like essential services and opportunities to be democratized so that everyone can have a chance to get out of poverty, explaining to this administration the direct relationship between the decrease of crime and drug dependency with the rise of the standard of living.

Instead of consulting and listening to us, Duterte demonized us, human rights defenders, and conditioned the public to detest us. He has publicly distorted and sown misperceptions about human rights values, ideals, and principles. He has presented human rights groups as coddlers of criminals and obstructionists of justice and obstacles to development, and promoted -- sorry about that -- the narrative that the world will never be safe for us as long as these human rights groups are here to side with criminals, addicts, and so forth.

The state enforced distortion of the truth and hate for human rights and human rights defenders has eroded public belief in human rights, and secured some level of public acceptance should the killings spill over to our sector. He has publicly threatened to kill us on several occasions, ordered the police to shoot us if we obstruct justice, and harvest us together with addicts, using the word "harvest".

Duterte's message is clear. All he has to do is give the orders, and we will all be killed. This situation has drastically constricted space for human rights discourse and the defense of human rights in the Philippines. Yeah, so, there's no affirmative action being undertaken to resolve the killings both by the police and two-thirds of the killings of death squads.

The design of the drug war is -- is really confining the violence and mass killings to the most impoverished urban poor communities. The lowest rungs of the drug trade, really. And the impact of the drug war is several fold. This endangers everyone. Anyone can now be accused of being an addict, or a drug pusher, in the Philippines, without having the opportunity to go to court and defend him or her self.

That general contempt for the rule of law is leading to the breakdown of our democratic institutions. It threatens to transfigure the mindsets of our entire policing establishment, transforming even the most law abiding and decent police officer into butchers.

Now we're threatened also to throw away all the human rights education work that the commission on human rights and human rights organizations have been doing, and of course the civic behavior in the Philippines, the normalization of the killings, is worsening our collective sociopathy.

Duterte, after several extensions, has finally ruled the drug war -- that the drug war will continue until 2022. And, yeah, now is -- the problem is that the dormant death squad network has been unleashed into an entire epidemic.

So what is important now is exposing his true intentions. He has no intentions whatsoever to resolve the drug issue. The Philippines' war on drugs is really nothing more than a sham war, used as a populist tool to sow a culture of fear and silence, and to advance an authoritarian agenda.

It's clear to us all that this is just part of a much bigger picture. For us, it's about the falling apart of democracy, and a retrogression into dictatorship, and the disintegration of Philippine society.

The situation today is the closest we have been to an authoritarian government in thirty years, and he's been rolling back the gains of human rights and democracy, and civil and political rights have been systematically eroded.

He has co-opted two other branches of government, and we have evaluated that his current priorities, his two political projects, charter change and federalism, is merely a realignment of the elite, and intends to dissolve nationalist, economic, and human rights provisions in our constitution and do away with the democratic safeguards and checks and balances, on terms extension and also the judicial and congressional review of martial law declaration, and intends to abolish constitutional commissions such as the commission on human rights.

He also has well-financed propaganda machinery that is effective in shaping public opinion, social conditioning, and re-echoing his anti-human rights and kill rhetoric. And of course online bullying and spreading culture of intolerance to criticism and dissent.

He has made full use of bureaucratic and political apparatuses to carry out political persecution and silence dissent and criticism, and attack through judicial harassment and misogynistic public comments, those who represent our institutions providing checks and balances, yeah, and his political critics, our vice president, Senator DeLima, the supreme court chief now facing removal, and of course our ombudsperson's chief.

He's been whitewashing the Marcos years and painting the Marcos years as the golden years. He has institutionalized vigilantism and forced organizing by forming pseudo-mass movements. These are extremist nationalist groups exploiting a distorted sense of patriotism. This has constricted space for public action for us, because these government funded public actions, rallies really, Hitler-style, they organize in the very same spaces that we do.

Yes, okeh. Yes. So it -- the challenge for us is enormous and unprecedented in the Philippines for human rights defenders, while being threatened as next targets, we must persevere to fight apathy, help Philippine society reestablish the respect for right to life, and reclaim our collective humanity.

And, yeah, basically, the difference between now and the Marcos dictatorship is, during the Marcos dictatorship, the public was sympathetic with the human rights cause, but now, a huge section of the Philippine public detests us. Duterte's still able to operate on top of a strong support base, and, yeah, we lack physical and security plans amongst human rights organizations, while government is actually upgrading its surveillance capacity and infrastructure.

And we're -- a lot of us are under the watch and persons of interest list of the Philippine National Police and the armed forces of the Philippines. So, the total crackdown of political activists started actually, and the rights of killings of activists and the human rights defenders already, and this includes the murder of eight indigenous environmental rights defenders on December Three last year.

So our work now is how to expose the duplicity of Duterte, claims to be anti-poor but really has no social agenda that will uplift the lives of the poor, whose economic policies will only deepen inequality.

So, yeah, that basically, our role is now to make sure that our fellow Filipinos will not behave like the good Germans of the Nazi era, and of course, accountability and how to protect, provide sanctuaries for the courageous families of victims of extrajudicial killings. So, yes. Thank you very much.

DEAN BECKER: Again, I want to thank Doug McVay, DrugReporter and the Rights Reporter Foundation. Thank you.

It's time to play Name That Drug By Its Side Effects! Rash, hives, difficulty breathing, tightness in the chest, yellow eyes, swelling of the tongue, hoarseness, dark urine, fainting, fever, irregular heartbeat, mental or mood changes, seizure, and death. Time's up! The answer, from the UCB Group: Xyzal, for asthma.

Last week we had the privilege of speaking with the director of Patients Out of Time, Nurse Mary Lynn Mathre, about the forthcoming conference May 10 through 12 up there in Jersey City, New Jersey, and one of the featured speakers of this conference is joining us now to talk about what's happened, what's, I don't know, the regression and the progress over the past year, and I want to welcome Doctor Ethan Russo. Hello, Doctor Russo.

ETHAN RUSSO, MD: Hello, thanks for having me.

DEAN BECKER: Well, yes, sir. You know, progress, regression, it seems the science is moving forward but the propaganda and the hysteria is still trying to drag us backwards. Would you agree with that?

ETHAN RUSSO, MD: Well, I'm afraid I have to agree, yeah. I mean, it's one of these situations that we clearly see progress, but it's occurring extra-USA, I'm afraid, and although science marches on, we have a situation where it's still extremely difficult to do meaningful scientific, clinical research on cannabis in this country.

DEAN BECKER: Right. And they keep saying we need more studies before we can do progress, but the same people saying that are helping to delay that progress, in my opinion. Would you agree there?

ETHAN RUSSO, MD: I, again, you're correct about that. There is an overwhelming body of evidence behind the clinical efficacy and safety of cannabis for a variety of illnesses. Figure this much: we have a situation where a cannabis based medicine is approved for treatment of spasticity in MS in 29 countries, but it doesn't include the US.

And we also have a situation in which a cannabidiol based cannabis extract is about to be FDA approved, but that has not led to progress on other fronts, in terms of availability or of acceptance of cannabis as a bona fide medicine.

DEAN BECKER: Now, it's my layman's understanding that there was either late last year or this year an approval of a synthetic marijuana, you know, pharmaceutically made and so forth. Is this a new development, or am I off base there?

ETHAN RUSSO, MD: Well, let's look at this historically. Way back in 1985, the Food and Drug Administration in the USA approved synthetic THC, Marinol, for treatment of nausea associated with chemotherapy. One of the ideas behind that was, well, now we've used this and people won't need to use cannabis. But that obviously didn't happen.

What they didn't understand was that THC by itself is nothing like herbal cannabis, with its full range of other ingredients that contribute to both the therapeutic benefits of the medicine as well as reducing side effects associated with THC.

So the synthetic THC has never been a popular medicine, hasn't been much used clinically, but we have millions of people around the world using cannabis, in contrast, and anyone who has tried both will tell you that they're not at all the same.

It still is the case that many companies are interested in trying to make their own synthetic molecules that might mimic some of the things that cannabis does, but I have to say that the chances that they're going to be better in any material way is extremely slim.

We have the added benefit of thousands of years of experience with herbal cannabis, and we know exactly what to expect with it. This is not to say that people cannot take too much, or get into trouble with it, but with judicious approaches to dosing, it is a very safe medicine.

DEAN BECKER: Doctor Russo, I was talking about, you know, progress and regress and in the state of Texas, we had a situation just earlier this month where a couple had a daughter who was approaching 18 years of age, and they were re-defining her guardianship, and the judge determined that the parents, who had been giving her doses of cannabis medicine, were the best guardians for that youngster becoming an adult, and I guess what I'm saying is, even in Texas, the truth of this matter kind of sneaks into the courtroom, sneaks into the legislative offices.

The truth of this matter is known, but not recognized. I think I'm saying that right. Your response there, Doctor Russo.

ETHAN RUSSO, MD: Yeah, I agree, it's unfortunate that this is one of those issues in which real progress doesn't seem to occur until a politician has retired, and then says, well, you know, actually cannabis probably is a good idea.

Or, the other situation, this is also unfortunate, is that people don't change their minds until they're touched by it directly. That they get cancer, and get cannabis to help them through it, or a family member has it, or another dread disease that's aided by cannabis, and then they see the light. It's really unfortunate that this kind of direct slap in the face, if you will, is necessary for people to realize the utility of this drug.

DEAN BECKER: Well, you know, my city of Houston, we have a new sheriff, police chief, district attorney, they've all come on my show, and talked about, they have friends, associates, family, they know people who benefit, and they have eased up. They have a new Misdemeanor Marijuana Diversion Program here, where nobody gets arrested for under four ounces. And I guess what I'm saying is, politicians and law enforcement, in many locales, are doing what they can, despite the law.

ETHAN RUSSO, MD: Yeah, that's true. But we've got a situation, we've had a huge step backwards on the federal level.

DEAN BECKER: Oh yeah.

ETHAN RUSSO, MD: Just due to old attitudes that really are based on ideology rather than science, medicine, or anything else. To me, this is a medical issue between patient and doctor, and when people try to inject moralism into it, it really is not going to work for other people.

Moralistic attitudes that are fine for oneself, to set a person's own standards, but by imposing that on others, particularly when it comes to medications that patients may need, that approach just doesn't work.

DEAN BECKER: No. Well, friends, once again, we've been speaking with Doctor Ethan Russo. He's going to be one of the featured speakers at the Patients Out of Time conference. Please go to that website, PatientsOutOfTime.org, and sign up for their conference on May 10 through 12. You'll get the best science information from around the country, heck, from around the world.

And I don't know how else to say this. This is one of the conferences I go to each year that just fortifies me with information that helps to negate, to knock down, the hysteria, the propaganda, of those like our attorney general Jeff Sessions, who, he seems like he grew up with Harry J. Anslinger. Your thought there, Doctor Russo.

ETHAN RUSSO, MD: Well, I can't deny it. I hope eventually that people will see the light on this. Certainly, for everyone in this country to have the availability of cannabis as medicine's going to require a change in federal law, but certainly that could happen in the future. I keep waiting, each day I get a little grayer, a few less hair follicles on top, but still hopeful that this can change in this country.

DEAN BECKER: Well, I'm with you, sir. I look forward to us meeting again, having a more indepth discussion there at this conference. And again, folks, Patients Out Of Time. It is the most prestigious marijuana conference you can go to, and I highly recommend it. It's going to be May 10 through 12, and you'll get a chance to meet Doctor Ethan Russo.

So, after all that good common sense, it's time for some government bullshift.

VOICEOVER ANNOUNCER: Marijuana use during adolescence can lead to serious long term cognitive impairment, and an increased risk of severe psychiatric disorders, according to new research from the lab of Doctor Asaf Keller at the University of Maryland School of Medicine.

ASAF KELLER, PHD: Children who start around pre-adolescence, thirteen to fifteen years of age, tend to develop very serious deficits, and these include a very high incidence of neuropsychiatric disorders like schizophrenia and attention deficit disorders as well as longterm and permanent reductions in intelligence as measured by IQ tests.

VOICEOVER ANNOUNCER: In this study, researcher Sylvie Raver measured the brain activity of mice after exposure to low levels of marijuana during adolescence. Cortical oscillations measured in adulthood reveal the impact on the adolescent brain.

ASAF KELLER, PHD: It is very worrisome, and it seems to be very specific to that age, because when we repeated that experiment in older animals, that were beyond their period of adolescence, these animals had no permanent deficits.

DEAN BECKER: Okeh, to close out this edition of Cultural Baggage:

If you will, please, introduce yourself, tell us about the work you do.

BOB WENZEL: Okeh, hi, Dean, my name is Robert Wenzel, I'm publisher of EconomicPolicyJournal.com, and also Target Liberty, and what I do is I write about the economy at the Economic Policy Journal, and at Target Liberty I cover topics that are a little bit more broad with regard to what's going on in the country as far as government operations, and developments in the libertarian movement.

So, that's the best way to find out what I'm doing, and I've got some other books out, things like that, but if you go to EconomicPolicyJournal.com or TargetLiberty.com, you will be able to find what I'm doing from there.

DEAN BECKER: Well, Robert, I was, you know, on the internet, somebody posted a link to one of your stories from last year, it was titled up, The Insane Take By Attorney General Jeff Sessions On Recreational Drug Sales. And, you know, I'm a former cop, I'm a speaker with a group called Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, now Law Enforcement Action Partnership. I like the old term better.

But, this coincides directly with my feelings, that we couldn't do this any worse if we tried. Your thought there, please.

ROBERT WENZEL: Yeah, Dean, basically what's going on is you've got a situation where the attorney general said that there's something naturally inherently violent about drug sales. And that's really not true. You could make coffee a violent business if you made it illegal, and if you made the penalties for selling coffee extreme enough.

In such a case, a coffee dealer would be willing to shoot and kill people if he thought it would protect him from going to jail, or if he would want to expand his territory, what happens is you tend to get more violent people in that industry.

But if there were no regulations against, you know, if we're talking coffee or drug use, you could walk into any drug store and buy them, and a grandmother would sell them. So, you basically have a situation where the problem is not that there's something inherently dangerous or evil about drug sales in the sense that people are always shooting each other when it's -- when a drug sale is involved, it's the law which makes this illegal. And we see this perfectly when we look at what happened with prohibition.

We had Al Capone and everybody else selling alcohol illegally. There were a lot of murders and shootouts and all that sort of thing. As soon as prohibition was eliminated, and sales of alcohol were allowed in the open, you basically had a situation where those murders and the violence disappeared.

So Sessions is completely inaccurate when he says there's something inherently dangerous about selling drugs. That's not the case. That kind of violence occurs only because of the legal structure and the prohibition on drug sales.

DEAN BECKER: You know, Robert, I pretty much weekly preach the thought that if these drugs were made by Merck or Pfizer, sold at a reasonable price in the drug stores to adults, that we would have basically zero overdose deaths, except for those too unintelligent to realize what they were up to, and that it is, if you want to call it violence or the deaths from drugs, are basically, again, because of this prohibition.

Because with Prince, with Tom Petty, with, what did they say, 60,000 people last year died from overdose, and most of them didn't know what they were taking, often taking pills they thought were legitimate that were counterfeit, and just never knowing quite what they were injecting or, you know, ingesting, I guess I should say.

ROBERT WENZEL: Yeah, Dean, you know, you're absolutely right there. I mean, that's a very, very good point. What happens is, when you have a free and open market, you know, people know where they can go to count on for quality drugs and buying what they want. You know, if you go to a CVS, a Walgreens, Rite-Aid, any of these stores, you're going to pick the Bayer aspirin off the shelf, and you know exactly what you're getting.

And in Bayer aspirin, CVS would get in a lot of trouble if they sort of labeled something else Bayer aspirin that was killing people. The same thing with any other, any other type drugs that are now prohibited. If you could pick them off the shelf, the violence would disappear, you'd have grandmothers behind the cashier station selling them to you, and the people buying them would be knowing exactly what kind of quality they're getting.

All prohibition does is eliminate that freedom and the lack of violence, it's a very, very dangerous business, because these guys, who are risking their lives to be dealers now, know that if they're caught, they're facing very serious time in jail.

So, what happens is that you sort of draw the people that are most violent into the business, who aren't afraid to, you know, plug somebody if they're going to squeal on them or whatever, and then consequently these guys are also the type that will try and expand their territory, so, that -- violently expand their territory.

But all that would end, we saw it in prohibition, and every other product out there that's on a free market on a shelf, you have no problem with.

DEAN BECKER: Well, and one other true complication is the fact that were these drugs made, like I said, by Merck, Pfizer, sold at the drug store, the price would be so low, they wouldn't have to go out and break into houses or knock people in the head or shoplift or all of these other things to afford their drugs. They would be one percent the cost that they are today, roughly.

I did a study last week of dentists, right here in the United States, currently are buying cocaine at $30 an ounce, and, you know, compared to the price in the black market, and the contaminants in the black market, it's a hell of a better deal. Your thought there please, Robert.

ROBERT WENZEL: Yeah, Dean, Dean, again you're absolutely correct. See, when the market is, again, free and open, you've got major, major competition, and the people that are offering these services don't have to be afraid about going to jail, so consequently there isn't that risk premium involved.

Someone that's going to be selling a drug, where they face significant jail time, is going to be -- want to be compensated a lot of money for selling that. And that doesn't happen in CVS, that doesn't happen in Rite-Aid, because that -- the risk of getting arrested for selling something in a Rite-Aid or a CVS is zero. I mean, it's not going to happen. So people are much more willing to work for a lower wage.

But the guy who's going out on the street in a dangerous business because of the regulation, and has to know that he could be arrested at any time, and serve a long prison sentence, he's going to be wanting to be compensated an awful lot for that, so the price goes very, very up. You're eliminating the low cost providers by this, and consequently increasing the crime in the country because these people want to get these drugs, and they'll steal anything they have to to get them, which would not be the case if the drugs were allowed to operate on the free market.

DEAN BECKER: You know, another complication that used, that's turned on its head to justify more drug war, is, you know, the, we're empowering terrorists, we're enriching these barbarous cartels, Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, and we give reason for these violent gangs to be out there prowling our neighborhoods selling these contaminated drugs to our kids.

And that, all of that, the horror, the fear, is used to justify more drug war, when in truth, it just makes it worse. Your thought there, Robert.

ROBERT WENZEL: Yeah, Dean, you're absolutely right. And you know, you've got two things going on. First of all, the drug business will attract the most violent people, but it also creates violent people, because you have young kids, whether they're gang members or wherever they're coming from, they basically see the guys that have the money in the inner city are the guys that are selling the drugs.

And then they see these guys have to be violent, and so it encourages them to be violent. It's a very, very dangerous thing, that, when you sort of press on a bunch of people and violently, which is really what the police do when they bust these guys, you can get the blowback, which you're getting, you know, people who do not want to deal with the police and risk getting arrested move away from that, and the only ones that stick around are the really tough guys that are very, very violent, and it teaches that to the young kids who want to make money in those areas, that they have to be tough and violent, and it's just terrible.

DEAN BECKER: Now, just a few days ago, our resident, Trump, gave a speech, and talked about deadly drug dealers, that you can shoot somebody with a gun and you might go to prison for life, might get executed, but these drug dealers, he says, kill two thousand, three thousand, five thousand people with their contaminated drugs and get away with it and he thinks that's wrong. He thinks we should follow China and the Philippines and Singapore and start executing drug dealers here in the US. Your response there, Robert.

ROBERT WENZEL: Yeah, again, you know, you're basically you're getting a situation where that's a very naive way of looking at the situation. You're basically threatening to kill people because they're trying to provide a service where there's a black market and it's difficult to provide that good, and instead of understanding that the way to solve the problem is to remove the prohibition on it, you're going to press these guys, the dealers, even more, which is only going to a, jack up the price, and make them even more violent.

If they know they're going down for a life sentence, I mean, these guys are violent enough now. They're going -- you're going to start having real drug wars where they'll be shooting police because they have nothing to lose. I mean, it doesn't -- it doesn't take into consideration all the consequences of an act.

Yeah, you could -- you can sort of have this dream utopia world where, okeh, I'm going to kill all the drug dealers and then there won't be any more drugs, and the world will be wonderful, but that's not the way the world works. As long as there's demand, there's going to be people that are willing to take the risk to supply the demand. These are not the sort of closed cultures where, in Singapore and China, it would be extremely difficult to do that in the United States, and all it does is, it would create more violence in the drug world.

DEAN BECKER: Exactly right, Robert. Once again, we're speaking with Robert Wenzel, he's an author, an activist, an intelligent human being, who has examined this drug war in great depth. Robert, I want to continue on that thought for a minute, that, you know, were these drugs made by trained chemists, and were not so deadly, the pronouncements of Trump and Jeff Sessions and all of the other prohibitionists would be just in an echo chamber.

ROBERT WENZEL: Yeah, Dean, I mean, what's really going in is, you're absolutely right. All the arguments they're making, they don't realize the arguments they're making are there because of the prohibition. The quality of the drugs would be much more consistent, you wouldn't have these dangers of people mixing, I mean, you know, people are desperate, in this underworld market where nobody really knows who anybody is and they buy stuff like, as you've pointed out, from people they don't really know, and it can be bad stuff.

And it's very, very risky. And that would change completely if it was legalized. You know, no one's dying from a beer overdose or a vodka overdose or any of that [sic: not true. According to the CDC, thousands of people in the US die every year from alcohol overdose, and alcohol-in-combination with other drugs is a contributing factor to thousands more deaths annually].

And, none of those products are mixed with poor quality ingredients, and that's because the free market sort of has a consumer protection part to it, where people know where they're going to buy things, they know what brands they're buying, and they know that the brands will be consistent.

And when you have that black market, where you have to worry about the government cracking down on these dealers, which again brings out all the violent guys and crazy, you don't know what you're buying, and no one's out there with a brand, it's very, very dangerous to sort of have a brand and say yes, this is me, come to my corner, because that's the first guy that's going to get arrested, if he's there all the time and people know he's consistently there.

I mean, people will try to do that, but it's -- it's much more complex to do that versus being able to walk into a package store and pick up some alcohol.

DEAN BECKER: No, and --

ROBERT WENZEL: Where they're -- go ahead.

DEAN BECKER: I just wanted to throw this in. You said folks wouldn't be dying from beer and alcohol. That's a pretty good rarity. It does happen, especially with vodka or something like that, that people can kill themselves, and I would imagine in a true regulated environment, we would have those few who would die from these drugs, take too much.

ROBERT WENZEL: Right.

DEAN BECKER: And especially if they combine these drugs with alcohol, because that's where most of these overdoses are happening to this day, is through the combination of alcohol and, you know, the downer drugs, heroin, barbiturates, and so forth. And, we need to educate better, we need to truly pull the lid off of this and examine the whole innards of intake of substances, because Americans are ignorant. I mean, I've got to admit that we don't quite have a grasp on, especially combination of alcohol and heroin. Your thought there, please.

ROBERT WENZEL: Yeah, there's no question, but you know there's another point I want to bring up here, and that's -- you know, we're dealing with a drug enforcement industrial complex.

DEAN BECKER: Oh yeah.

ROBERT WENZEL: That's a huge, the DEA is a huge multibillion dollar agency that is out there that's supposedly, you know, fighting drugs, but really what's going on is their survival is based on the drug industry really continuing, because then all these guys would have to find new jobs and everything else.

And so, then there's the question of, you know, why are you taking my tax dollars and spending it on this kind of stuff, which makes the entire drug situation worse? And at the same time, you know, somebody wants to take drugs, let them take drugs. Why are you taking my money to try and stop this? And then you're living off this, and creating a career for yourself, on something that I don't care about. I mean, it's, from that perspective, it's a terrible thing.

DEAN BECKER: It's a great waste of resources, manpower, and focus. It really is.

ROBERT WENZEL: Right.

DEAN BECKER: Well, I tell you what friends, once again, Robert, pronounce your last name for me so I get it right this time.

ROBERT WENZEL: Sure, it's Wenzel. You've got it correct. And if people want to find out more about the things I write, they can go to EconomicPolicyJournal.com, or TargetLiberty.com, and I write and post there seven days a week, so there's always something new coming up.

DEAN BECKER: Well, once again, I want to thank you for your writing, for, I don't know, I mean, sometimes I get pretty lonely, I realize people are moving more and more towards the stance I have taken, that you have taken, but, again, the ignorance of America, to just believe that the DEA has their -- has good intentions, that this whole drug war is worthwhile, and that we should continue funding terrorists, cartels, and gangs, forever. It just blows my mind that this is so, this potential is so invisible to so many people. Your thought, Robert.

ROBERT WENZEL: Yes. Yeah, there's no question, there's two people who really want this drug war to continue: the DEA, and the gangs. The DEA, because it provides them with long term careers, and the gang members who know they would be out of business in a minute if the drugs were legalized and you could open up stores and provide it at a much lower price, with better quality and much more safety. So it's very, very bad. And Sessions and Trump do not see that.

DEAN BECKER: I ask you to please visit our website, DrugTruth.net, and remember, because of prohibition, you don't know what's in that bag. Please be careful. And pay no mind to this gentleman who's going to close out our show.

donald trump: If we catch a drug dealer, death penalty. That's all.