Danny Jones Podcast - #10 - The Business Protecting Marijuana Cashflow | Mike Hengstebeck

Episode Date: March 14, 2019

Mike Hengstebeck is an American Veteran who works in the cannabis distribution & transportation business. Hard Car armored vehicles protect & transport millions of dollars for marijuana dispensaries. ...Mike also has extensive knowledge in the science of treating PTSD with CBD. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript
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Starting point is 00:00:03 Cool. So today on the podcast, we have Mike Hanksdebeck. You have an extensive knowledge and experience in firearms, military, and most recently the cannabis business. So how did you get started in all this? It's been really an interesting journey with this whole thing. It initially started with a friend of mine who was a special operations out of McDill Air Force Base. Suffering from PTSD. And he'd 24 years of honorable service to the country. and ended up having some problems.
Starting point is 00:00:36 Got physical with his wife one night, was arrested for domestic violence. We tried to get a grip as to what was going on. Again, this guy's special operations guys, they don't touch their wives. They're not abusive individuals. Right. And so we started to figure out that he was on 14 different type
Starting point is 00:00:51 of psychotropic drugs that the VA was given him. What is psychotropic drugs? These are drugs that actually helped them with, deal with PTSD with regards to actually altering their moods. Okay. So the biggest problem is obviously sleep with a lot of these guys. You're just not getting good sleep. Right.
Starting point is 00:01:07 If you're a special operations guy, you're used to being the guy that goes and helps everybody. You're not used to asking for help. Right. A lot of these guys just don't go down that road. And after this became a parent that was something wrong, I said, Alan, what is going on? He said, listen, I mean, the last, the last medicines at the VA sent me, you know what it said? It said, may create anal leakage. Anal leakage.
Starting point is 00:01:30 Anal leakage. I'm 44 years old, and I've got to shit my pay. because, so it became a real issue. So we started to look at what was really going on with him. And at the same time, I saw a program on TV called Vicerland. Yeah, yeah. And it was dealing with a security group in the cannabis business out in Denver, Colorado. And these were all combat vets.
Starting point is 00:01:50 So our combat vets are suffering from PTSD in the worst way. We're losing 22, 22 guys a day, 22 honorably charged, discharged, well-meaning human beings. They're coming out into the world and committing suicide after they come out of the military. day. Every day. So when you start to look at these numbers that is not acceptable, we decided that we were going to send Alan out to Denver, Colorado to actually meet with. I actually called the CEO of the company up and spoke to him on the phone.
Starting point is 00:02:15 Kind of told him what our dilemma was. The answer wasn't to go out and medicate or to start smoking cannabis. The message was to get out here and talk to other brothers who have been in combat, who understand what you're going through and can identify what's happening. So after about four or five days of trying to convince him to go out, he decided to go out. We put him on a plane, flew him out there. And he was out there for about two weeks. And again, all the individuals they hire out there are combat vets.
Starting point is 00:02:40 So he had decided, after about a two-week period, that he was going to try to medicate. This is an individual who'd been on five different operations looking for Osama bin Laden in the Middle East and was very full of bravado the nights that he would go on these operations saying, hey, tonight's night, we're going to kill this guy. Right. The night that he was getting ready to medicate the first time, he was absolutely terrified. and I had to remind him that, listen, marijuana never killed anybody. Nobody overdoses on marijuana.
Starting point is 00:03:07 You can. It's impossible. I said, we didn't send you out there to, this is not about trying cannabis or marijuana. This is about going out there and kind of find a center spot that you're in a better place. So after about 45 minutes of talking, he decided that he was going to medicate that night. They were all, they were camping outdoors. And he called me at 8 o'clock the next morning and with the realization that was the first time in six years that he had slept through the night. Wow. So we started to identify problems.
Starting point is 00:03:33 Really with sleeping, I mean, listen, when you catch prisoners of war, the first thing you want to do is deprive them of sleep. Three days of no sleep will kill you. Right. So you can imagine if you're not sleeping well through the night having these challenges of these problems. So we kind of begin to identify what was going on with Alan. Now he remarried his wife.
Starting point is 00:03:50 He's living out there. Again, he's fully functional. I'm a full-blown advocate now for cannabis and the whole vet side of it. Right. Understand that these guys are, like I say, we're losing 22 a day, unacceptable. It's changed his life around completely.
Starting point is 00:04:04 It's impossible to overdose on cannabis. You can't do it. There's been no lung infections, cancers. I've spoke to medical professionals now here in the state of Florida for the last five years as we look at the legalization of cannabis here in Florida. Right. Obviously, because it's still federally illegal as a scheduled one drug, the VA is very, very slow to react to this whole process.
Starting point is 00:04:27 So, again, the whole hard car, background, the understanding of what we're trying to do is trying to bring us to the forefront. We hire nothing but combat vets. We're a world-class asset protection and transportation group. We drive up-armored vehicles. They're very discreet. We look for combat vets because obviously this is the kind of experiences they were having overseas.
Starting point is 00:04:50 So we have a purpose. We have a function. There is somewhat of danger involved with regards to what we actually do, but it's scheduled. So by bringing other vets into the picture, These guys now have, there's camaraderie, and there's the bravado, and all the things they were missing in the service. So what has been, what has been like the latest research or where is this country at in regards to treating PTSD? Like what has been, like, what's the most recent science on it or studies on it? I think, listen, when we start looking really at what's going on with PTSD and you start looking at combat vets, especially, the challenges are this.
Starting point is 00:05:25 You're overseas, you're in an environment where you're getting mortared every day or shut. shot at what with the possibilities. You've got vehicle-borne IEDs that are going off. Every day is a day that's full of adventure. And when you live at such a high plateau where you're literally, you know, listen, you hear a boom go off in the background and your adrenaline starts to run. You know instantly that something's going on somewhere in town. So this goes on every single day. So if you do this for about 12-month period, what happens is you become used to kind of living at that higher level. So when you come home, give you an example, I think we can talk about this, One of the guys we have is a former scout sniper.
Starting point is 00:06:01 Great guy. To look at the guy, you'd never realize that this guy suffers from PTSD in such a bad way. Scout sniper. What do you mean by that? He's actually a sniper in the Marine Corps. Okay. Been in for eight years. I saw five combat tours.
Starting point is 00:06:15 I'm not going to get into the number of individual kills these guys have. Now, let me just say this too for the record. We vet every vet that comes to work with it. We vet them out. We make sure they're exactly who they say they are. We look at their DD-214s. We're verifying who these guys are. and you must be a combat vet if you want to work for hard car.
Starting point is 00:06:32 So as we start looking at these individuals and start peeling back the layers, I saw he was a scout sniper, I knew he had deployed to Iraq, didn't realize how many times he'd actually deployed to Iraq. And then we started talking about the number of kills that he had actually accomplished while he was there, which was extraordinary. And I'm thinking to myself, what do you do with a guy like this when he comes back? What do you do with the Navy SEAL who's got five or six tours under his belt? He's been trained.
Starting point is 00:06:56 He's that millions of dollars instilled upon him or her. her to be the special operations person. Why not bring them back here and give them a chance to use all that knowledge base they've learned? There's millions and millions of dollars that they pulled up on. So for us, it's been a big push in that whole direction to make sure we're getting these guys kind of back, again, to a, listen, it's not real dangerous, but obviously there's dangers involved. There's robberies and theft that are going all the time in California. So we're constantly training. We're constantly bringing the guys up to speed.
Starting point is 00:07:24 We also want guys that are used to handling weapons. I don't think I've talked to anybody who doesn't want to do this job. The problem is finding the right combination of guys that we want. Again, listen, we're talking about the cannabis business. Most people are friendly and nice. They don't want to be met with a knuckle-drager who's got a gun slung around his neck and talking about, hey, the next time we see this guy, we're going to kill him. They don't want to hear that.
Starting point is 00:07:51 So you need that kind of that in-between where the guy's happy and go lucky, but understands, say, if things go left. Not just pissed off about everything, right? Absolutely. And if things go left, we're not looking for a gunfight. Right. We'd like to be able to de-escalate, and then we run into you. If I can get in the car and drive away, again, all of our vehicles are up-armored.
Starting point is 00:08:08 We have that ability to drive away from a situation, providing that everybody's in the truck, and we can just pull away. So we look at de-escalation is a big part of what we do across the board as well. Wow. So it's been an ongoing procedure here in Florida because the laws have been slow to change. Now they just finally, the legislation just, past where we can now have up to two ounces of cannabis in your possession and actually be able to smoke the flour now, which for patients is going to be huge in the state of Florida.
Starting point is 00:08:36 And where is this? This is here in the state of Florida. That's just for patience, though, right? Correct. It's just for, just for patients right now. Right. We're probably looking at the recreational aspect of it coming up soon. A couple different things are going to happen.
Starting point is 00:08:48 The president could go ahead and wave his magic wand for reelection purposes and go ahead and legalize it. Nationwide? Nationwide. Right. That would help him get elected again. Absolutely. Well, we have four.
Starting point is 00:09:00 It's ridiculous. We have 14 states right now that have it legalized in some way recreational or medical. Right. When you look at some of the dynamics and you start doing the math, I initially getting into this wanted a bigger, bigger picture of the economics that are involved. So I go to one of the first areas that ever started being sold recreationally, which was Denver, Colorado. Right. And it was amazing. when you look at this Denver, small city, kind of a microcosm of 5 million people,
Starting point is 00:09:30 their tourism was around 27,000 people a year, on average. After Canterps became legal, that went to 77,000. To date, now I went out there and I spoke to Chief Brown with Aurora Police Department. The Aurora Police Department is the largest police department in Denver. So I went there and actually spoke to him and asked him about, is there anything positive that's coming out of this? and he refused to really wave the flag on the positive side. He said, listen, the people here have voted on this.
Starting point is 00:09:59 I'm here to support what the people wanted, but I will tell you this. We have 28 new cars, patrol cars, that we didn't have before. We have three new high schools that are going up now. The teachers have gotten the pay they deserve. The economy, just in this one microcosm, from 2014 to current, is about $1.5 billion, just to that area alone.
Starting point is 00:10:20 So when you start to look at the infrastructure and what's really taking place, it's a dynamic. It's a change in entrepreneurship. It's a change in the way we look at certain ways to relax and enjoy ourselves. When I looked at the bigger picture, they had, obviously, it was 420 was coming up. And the chief said, well, if you're staying here for 420, I suggest you go out. He put me out with one of his sergeants, and I met him the next day. This is in Denver?
Starting point is 00:10:45 This is in Denver. Okay. And the funny part was that when I got there to help him kind of unload, he said, hey, do me a favor. Grab that big box of Doritos right there. And I just kind of laughed. I said, you're kidding. right. He's like, no, dude, really, who doesn't want to smoke a joint, eat a bag of Doritos?
Starting point is 00:10:58 True. And I said, Sarge, we need to have a talk. I really need to understand where you're coming from. He said, this has really been good for the economy here, man. He goes, what you're going to see this afternoon is, they'll have a big smoke out here. And he goes, if you look around, there's probably about almost 100 new restaurants that have popped up in the area now that we're not here anymore. So what do those restaurants mean to the city? It's more tax income for us. It's more revenue. We generate it more. Listen, he said, well-fed people are happy people. And I said, now let me ask you with this event going on out here today, what is the arrest record?
Starting point is 00:11:28 I mean, he goes, listen, typically if this was a political event, he said we'd have 5,000 people out here, it'd be crazy. I'd have to have all my officers out here. People getting violent, right? Yeah, absolutely. Everybody wants to everybody has a stand. Right. And so he said, I'd have to have the sheriff's department out here.
Starting point is 00:11:42 We'd have to have a paddy wagon set up. I've got to make sure there's room at the jail. So I said, so you're probably talking, you know, 100 plus officers, deputies. He said, oh, absolutely. So look at all the overtime that's in. heard. Look at all the time, the space that's taken up in jail. All of these different things are defined by what we do. And I said, so let me ask you this. With this taking place today, how many arrests will you go on? He goes, listen, other than the drunks, there'll be no arrest today.
Starting point is 00:12:07 Wow. So again, these were all eye-opening experiences from me looking at the bigger picture, not really ever thinking it from a medical perspective, but truly seeing now the benefits, talking to law enforcement, who have a much, greater detail of understanding the THC. And when I talk to these law enforcement officers across the board, the funny part is they always start out by saying, hey, look, no one smokes a joint and attacks my deputies or attacks an officer or beats his wife up.
Starting point is 00:12:35 So from an educational perspective, it's been really, really interesting, to say the least. Why do you think Florida is so far behind? I mean, I mean, how many states? There's seven states, is that right now that are illegal? For recreational? Correct. So why, I mean, when do you think this will happen with Florida?
Starting point is 00:12:50 Why is Florida so far behind? Florida has listened. Florida really has had a couple of different challenges. The first challenge being the governor, Governor Rick Scott, the initial understanding that there's another gentleman named Mel Simpler. Mel Simpler's a billionaire. He lives right here in Pinellas County. Really? He is actually the one that supported Rick for both his first run as governor and the second run. Okay, yeah, I know who he is. Not real estate guy. Bingo. Yeah. He's also a big Narcam guy. He used to own and have a business back in the 80s called Straight was a drug intervention. program. He has now
Starting point is 00:13:23 another one I can't. I don't want to promote his website, but it's a, it's a drug free America.com. So he's really against it? So he's big time against it. And he was a big supporter of Rick Scott. Absolutely. And also a big, big supporter of Narcam and some of the other drugs that are for. Marcam is obviously,
Starting point is 00:13:42 you guys know that if you take an overdose of heroin. Right, they shoot you with it, bring you back to life. Bring your back to life. Right. So obviously it behooves him to have cannabis not legal so that people will continue this madness with the fentanyl and all the other drugs out here that are killing people left and right. It got so ridiculous. Jesus Christ. That's ridiculous, man. If you look at Manatee County here in Florida last year, I think it is, and maybe off on my year, but they were
Starting point is 00:14:05 typically having about one to four overdoses a month. It went to one to four overdoses a day, and they had to open up a second morgue. Where is this? This is in Manatee County, just south of where we're located at here. And what was the overdoses? Were they overdosing on? Most of it was fentanyl. Okay. The heroin would be so pure. They would actually do it with their kids in the back, in the gas station,
Starting point is 00:14:28 and then somebody would take a picture of them all passed out in the truck hanging out all over the place. So it behooved him, and when I say him, Mel Simbler, did not have cannabis legal in the state of Florida. So what happened then, I'm sure this is the business deal between those guys kind of went like, hey, if you do this for me,
Starting point is 00:14:45 I'll do this for you and make sure you have all the money you need to get voted in to be the next senator. And so that, he put a, a gentleman in place by the name of Christian Bach, who ran the Department of Health, the Department of Health, which is kind of odd, are the group that actually handled the cannabis
Starting point is 00:14:59 here in Florida, when it should be the Department of Agriculture. But he did that again to set it up purposely so that they would run interference on the legalization of it, so that what they did was they put different processes in place to slow it down. In other words, you couldn't smoke flour.
Starting point is 00:15:15 It had to be into an oil type, like a vaping pen of some sort. Right. They made sure that there was no edibles. You had to process it. You had to do what's called vertical integration. You had to do everything right there at the grow. From grow it to process it, you had to provide your own security, your own transportation.
Starting point is 00:15:34 And at the end of the day, these nurseries that were selected were selected because of their ability to produce a quality plant, not to do security work, not to do processing. So this slowed everything down because now the nursery's got to learn how to process. They have to understand transportation. They need to understand there's an experience. expense involved with that. So as the kind of the program went along, it just kind of got slower and slower because guys didn't know how to process. Now they've got to do that. Now, with Governor DeSantis in place, who understands the will of the people here in Florida, again, let's not forget, 72% of the people here in Florida voted for medical cannabis,
Starting point is 00:16:13 that the will of the people was to be able to smoke flour. So they'll now be able to have up to two ounces of cannabis in their possession. This is still have to be finalized and through the Senate. But they'll be able to have two ounces of cannabis in their possession. And listen, don't travel with it in your car. Let's not smoke it in the car.
Starting point is 00:16:34 You will get caught. And it's a bad day. Right now, law enforcement's kind of taken a different look at this. Again, we have to understand this is about generating revenue. The sheriff's departments are a business. They have to be rum like a business.
Starting point is 00:16:48 Right. The majority of law enforcement officials from the chiefs to the actual sheriff's I've spoken to, all believe that it should be recreational available. The problem is that it generates money for them. The way it was put to me was that, hey, my most marijuana smokers are easy targets. I get reimbursed from the federal government for everybody I arrest. So really what you're asking me to do is give up part of my budget, which have, oh, by the way, here in Florida, taken a beating since 2008.
Starting point is 00:17:17 So now you're just asking me to give up more of that money. It's not, listen, it's a victimless crime. You know, people don't smoke pot and attack my deputies. You can talk to our narcotics guys. I'll talk to all the guys across the board. They all realize where we're going with this. And what should happen? I tell you, if you put somebody in prison who has smoked cannabis,
Starting point is 00:17:34 they don't come out a better person at the end of the day. And most of these people are, listen, if you got caught smoking a joint down at the beach, and what people don't realize right now is because if you do this the right way, first of all, you should be smoking to the beach, you won't have any problems then. But if you are, and a law enforcement officer walks up on you, do not stick that joint in your mouth.
Starting point is 00:17:52 Don't flick the joint into the water, because now you've just committed a felony where before he's probably just going to write you a ticket, but if you caught destroying evidence, now you're going to go to jail. Really? Yeah, so it takes on a whole new life. So there has to be some smarts used.
Starting point is 00:18:05 I would definitely encourage you. Listen, don't smoke at the beach. Don't smoke in your car. Do it in a private place. Be responsible. Yeah. But understand that even today, if they see you vaping in your car
Starting point is 00:18:15 and they decide to pull you over, everything better match. You better have an MMTC card. You better be buying from one of the local, you know, dispensaries here in the state of Florida. And the cartridges better all line up. Or if they don't, they're going to take that product from you. They're going to test it. If it tests positive for THC, they rescue for a felony right on the spot.
Starting point is 00:18:36 Really? So again, be smart about what you're doing. Think about how you're ingesting your cannabis. Stay home. Do it the right way. If they see you on the road, it's going to create a problem. I think it's like alcohol. We don't want to be drinking and driving.
Starting point is 00:18:48 You shouldn't be smoking and driving. You shouldn't be smoking and shooting your gun. Right. Speaking of that, what is there a law saying that you can't get a medical marijuana card if you also have a concealed carry permit? Basically, I tell you what you got right now in the state of Florida. And actually, it's a federal requirement. There's a form that you fill out.
Starting point is 00:19:04 It's called a 4473. As soon as you buy a firearm, you fill it out. One of the questions on that form is, do you currently use marijuana? If you check yes to that question, they cannot sell you the gun. Really? Again, it's a federal law. It's still a scheduled one drug. And until they change that, that law is not going to change a whole lot.
Starting point is 00:19:24 Now, with that said, Nikki Fried, here's the new Agriculture Commissioner for the state of Florida, has and is going to allow in the state of Florida for you to carry your CCW, carry a concealed permit, and have an MMTC card, which means you're going to obviously be armed. Right. So this will, I'm sure there'll be some pushback. It's like everything else. It's just like, listen, you're not, well, you're not supposed to be drinking and shooting your gun.
Starting point is 00:19:49 Although I can go on YouTube, but I can say it. Alcohol's going to encourage you to use your gun. Weed is not. Bingo. Different forms. And that's so true. Because listen, it's going to make you de-escalate a whole lot more than alcohol. Exactly.
Starting point is 00:20:01 Escalate. So looking at the process, looking at what's in place, she's going to push this now. We're working with her. We agree with this process. We think that if you carry a gun, hey, listen, even if you're a law enforcement official, and I know that this does not sit well with a lot of these guys, but again, they have a suicide problem or challenge that is developed within the industry itself. We just had a deputy who committed suicide in Pasco here with her service revolver.
Starting point is 00:20:29 Her husband was a deputy, and she shot and killed herself. And listen, under any circumstances, that's not acceptable. Why would a young, she only been a deputy for five years, had a great-looking family. I don't know the deputy personally, but I don't know the deputy personally, but I don't know. I knew the stresses that they go through on an everyday basis. And when I talked to them about cannabis, most of them have such a hardcore line on that with regards to being able to ingest cannabis,
Starting point is 00:20:57 that they're like, no, no, no, no, we're not going to do that. So my next question is to them, so suicide's okay as an alternative? Right. So how do we curb that, again, through education, making people understand. If you go to California right now, it's funny because it is legal there.
Starting point is 00:21:15 So even when I'm standing there, with a group of people and one of the guys pulls a joint out, let's say at a convention, I immediately kind of stoop my shoulders down like, hey, hey, hey, you know, and I have to catch myself because we're so trained to do it this way. For the longest time out in California, we hard car got into this originally through a former police officer who saw a need. The challenges are, obviously, this is a cash-based business. So what happens is when I drop off cannabis, we're picking up cash. Okay.
Starting point is 00:21:46 So this is the company Hard Car that you're involved with right now. Correct. How did you get involved with these guys? How did you start working for these guys?
Starting point is 00:21:53 Initially, I had wanted to get into the industry, obviously from an advocacy standpoint because of the military guys, two of my buddies, and really didn't know how to get into it. But after seeing, as we talked about a little bit earlier with Vicerland,
Starting point is 00:22:06 and there were security teams that were doing this, kind of to look at that model and see if it was something we could do here in Florida. Right. So the challenge is that everybody wants to,
Starting point is 00:22:14 wants to do this. The reality of it is that not everybody can do this. If we now vet all of our guys, so as you come in, we do federal background checks on everybody, I've had from pedophiles to guys who told me they were Navy SEALs and obviously both ends of those, that spectrum is not acceptable, especially if you're the pedophile and you're not the Navy SEAL, that's a problem. So my challenges were finding guys that were who they said they were, who had a great temperament to bring them into this kind of cool and an emerging industry.
Starting point is 00:22:47 Okay. So we, so Hard Car's main objective is transporting cash, correct? Or is it also transporting marijuana? It's actually doing both. Okay. Our vehicles are up armored. The new ones we now have actually have AC units in the back.
Starting point is 00:23:03 What does that mean up armored? Up armored is basically a bullet resistant. Okay. So the front cab is the windows are completely resilient to any, kind of gunfire that they would try to use on the vehicle at all. Wow. So that's really to kind of keep the guys safe. Again, that's our primary objective here at the end of the day.
Starting point is 00:23:20 Right. And again, they're discreet. So if you looked at them, it looks like a sprinter van. You would not have any clue that that's what it is. We run with the windows are slightly tinted. All of our operations are typically done behind the building. So we try to stay out of the way of the general public. Most of the guys are tacked out.
Starting point is 00:23:36 They carry rifles and handguns, which always kind of looks weird in front of a dispensary. Oh, that's why teams there. we dress a little bit different. We try to act a little different. We're not real aggressive. We do pre-trips to make sure that if we're coming up on a new place, where they're located at, what's the crime rate in that area? What are the possibilities of somebody trying to come up in jack us in the middle of either a cash offload or a cannabis offload? So it's the reoccurring process of staying alert and staying on your game. So who are the clients of Hardcar? Right now out in California,
Starting point is 00:24:12 There's about 6,500 licenses that are out there, and each of the dispensaries becomes a customer to hard car. So we do a couple of different things differently than just a security group. So individual marijuana dispensaries? Correct. Contract hard car. Correct. Okay. And we would, again, transport their cash, their product.
Starting point is 00:24:29 We can do the new, right now, new push in California is for a product called Flash Frozen. It's cannabis that is loaded into a trailer. It's literally cryo-freeze down to 20, low. And what happens is they take this then and bring it to a large press. We actually put it in our back of our trucks. The trucks have the ability to are refrigerated. So it's hold the temperature at about 19 degrees. So we transport this as an example. We did 2,200 pounds, brought it to a facility. They put it under a press and they squeeze it. The unusual thing about this is the plant doesn't realize that it's dead. Unlike other programs where you are, and I know this is not going to make some of the
Starting point is 00:25:09 other guys happy, but as far as the way that you process it, if you process it with CO2, if you process it with ethanol, if you process with some sort of nitrogen gas, there seems to be a residual taste that's left over. Yeah. And so some people tell me that, listen, I don't like it because of that reason. With the flash frozen,
Starting point is 00:25:30 you're literally just squeezing the sap right out of the plant. So you're dealing with a pure process, which is completely different than anything else that you're going to experience. And I think that's truly going to be the future of it. It's a cleaner burn. You're not using butane from a lighter. You don't have to worry about paper if that's the way you ingest your cannabis.
Starting point is 00:25:53 It actually comes in an oil. There's no, there's no smell. It's very discreet. Do you vape it? It's actually a vape. Okay. It's actually a vape. The problem is that it's very expensive to set this process in place.
Starting point is 00:26:04 Obviously cryofreezing and getting it down to... Right. It's not cheap. Yeah, 40 below is... But listen, you're getting a top quality product. at the end of the day. So when you start looking at this, and these are the groups
Starting point is 00:26:16 that we try to align ourselves with, Flokana is a distribution model in California right now. They're probably, they're like the Amazon right now. They come up with a... Of weed. Who is this again?
Starting point is 00:26:25 It's called Flocauna. Flocana. It's a lowcona out of Northern California. Great group, distribution-based. And what we do is we leverage our transportation against distribution. So if you say, hey, Mike,
Starting point is 00:26:37 we want you to transfer our cash for us and our cannabis for us, we're like, great, we'll do that for you at no charge if you guys let us handle your distribution. So we're a different security group. That's really where we make... So now we're going to save you money on the processing cash where hard car security is the first group in the country
Starting point is 00:26:56 to actually make a deposit into the Federal Reserve. And we continue to do that today. Really? So, yeah. And again, when you think about it, it's federal illegal, how do these guys do that? Well, there's a process to get that money in. Obviously, we drive up armored vehicles
Starting point is 00:27:08 that are certified up armored vehicles, gives us the ability to, first of all, transport cash anywhere we have a license to do this. So just in case anybody's out there who makes their ears pop up when I say this, but we can transport cash anywhere in the state or anywhere in the country. Right. Cannabis, unlike cannabis that is federal guidelines, you cannot break state lines with cannabis. So there's a whole other side to the federal thing with regards to,
Starting point is 00:27:33 hey, this is what we're going to do. We're going to transport cannabis. I'm like, if you transport cannabis and you're breaking state lines, it's only a matter of time before you get caught. So you guys just do like a long road trip and you'll hit multiple dispensaries when you're when you're dealing with cash? It depends. We have set minimums on cash that we would pick up from your dispensary. If you're not doing a million plus when we stop in because that's what we're there to pick up,
Starting point is 00:27:53 we're probably not going to be doing business with you yet. Okay. So we're looking at that threshold. So when we go to a particular location. So you guys have to pick up a minimum of a million dollars to be able to make it worth your while? Correct. Okay. Correct.
Starting point is 00:28:06 And to make it every worthwhile for everybody. Right. Obviously the more, the less time. You know, what creates crime is opportunity. So the less times we touch this and carry the larger amounts, the less time we have to worry about somebody coming more aware of what our movements are. Right. So as we, you know, if we're picking up big cash, we send a chase vehicle out as well.
Starting point is 00:28:23 Okay. Those guys are armed. They're behind the vehicle. Typically in a suburban type. And it's going to be noticeable to some extent. And we want that. We know people to realize that, listen, if you're going to try to get foolish here that You're going to get fucked up.
Starting point is 00:28:35 Things are going to go left. Yeah. We don't do the traditional, you know, fat over. overweight security guy who is not really taking this as a way of life. The guys that we employ, this is a way of life for them. This is a, they're gun guys to begin with. They live a certain lifestyle. They're typically in great physical condition.
Starting point is 00:28:55 They care about what they look like. These are the guys that we're interested in. Everybody can shoot a gun. How well can you shoot a gun? How well, you know, do you take care of yourself? When you look smart and you look like you're somebody to be dealt with, that sends a message also that, again, keeps the bad guys away from. Right. Wow. Have you guys ever ran into anything sketchy? Any problems or anything?
Starting point is 00:29:17 Absolutely. Absolutely. Well, listen, one of the few things that obviously many people don't do is when you pull up on a particular location and you just take a few minutes to look around. Yeah. And we've had guys who've actually videotaping us. We have had actually individuals within the dispensary that we were picking up stuff from videotaping us. and when I was like, hello, what are you doing? And he was like, oh, dude, I'm going to put this on Instagram. I'm like, oh, my ass, you're going to put this on Instagram. So now we have to implement some new policies and procedures with some of the dispensaries, making them understand, listen, we're not trying to be a hard ass here, but we don't want people to understand what our movements are,
Starting point is 00:29:55 what our vehicles look like, and, you know, what are we transporting today? Obviously, if we drop off three or 400 pounds of cannabis up to 2,200 pounds, if you do the math at $2,000 a pound, it adds up pretty quick. Yeah. be in the situation of carrying $30 million to a particular location where now you have to count that money. We process it. We actually bag it up for the Federal Reserve. I think it's too, it's amazing when you see how many counterfeit bills are out there. So we have to now, these units automatically pull those counterfeit bills out. And then we have to go back to the end user
Starting point is 00:30:28 and the customer and say, hey, listen, it was $300 in bad bills that were here. And by the way, you don't get those back. Let's go right back to the Secret Service. So it's crazy when you really think of that in the bigger picture, but you think about how much money you're carrying. Yeah. And where could you possibly get $3 million and one hit off of a truck on the road today, you know, especially when you look at the Brinks trucks, the Dunbar trucks. Yeah. And so again, we're looking to do that long haul.
Starting point is 00:30:53 The state of Florida has determined now there's two types of transportation. You've got local delivery. And then what they actually call the heavy haul, which just is the same way that it sounds. It's a heavy transport for processing purposes. again, 1,000 pounds, whatever that particular number would be. So what is that process like to actually deposit all this cash into the Federal Reserve? So you leave the dispensary with a few millions of dollars worth of cash? Correct.
Starting point is 00:31:18 Because these dispensaries can only deal with cash. Correct. Where do you physically have to go to, or what do you have to actually do to deposit this cash? We actually have a place where we bring the money. It's actually processed. It's actually in a hardened facility. And, of course, by the time when they're counting this money, we have guys situated outside around the facility,
Starting point is 00:31:37 again, making sure nothing's going to go left. And they start the process of counting. We have actually the cash. You've seen the big federal cash counters that, you know, that's what we use to count the money. Okay. Obviously, if you're counting three or four million dollars, it takes you several hours to get that done.
Starting point is 00:31:51 Then we have to bind that money up, process it into a plastic bag, see-through bag that has tamper-resistant. So if you open it, it tells you through the tamper-resistant tabs on the side, hey, this has been opened up. And then once it's all packaged up and stacked up real nice and neat,
Starting point is 00:32:05 you make an appointment. We have to be invited by the Federal Reserve to actually deposit this money there. So once they do a background, and it has to be fully armored up truck, we have a scheduled appointment, and from our scheduled appointment, we make the run.
Starting point is 00:32:19 Now, of course, the first time we did this, we pulled up outside the facility, at $3 million, we were kind of looking at each other. I was one of the other guys who was a retired cop, and we were kind of looking at each other, and I thought, what's going on, man? He's like, well, I just want to feel
Starting point is 00:32:32 with these last few minutes of freedom feels like, I'm not sure what's going to happen when we go to the Federal Reserve. Really? So, yeah, we didn't know if they could confiscate the truck through forfeiture. They could arrest us. They could take all the money. There's several different things that could happen and transpire at this particular time. Wow.
Starting point is 00:32:48 But it was uneventful. We pulled in. They came out, grabbed the cash, counted it up. We were there for about 15 minutes and then back on the road. Wow. So it turns into a better situation now because obviously we're so used to doing this. We have the process down. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:33:04 We have two facilities here in the state of Florida, two federal reserves here in Florida. We have one in Jacksonville and one in Miami. Okay. And we are in process now of a few licensing that we're getting now. And probably in the next five months we'll actually be transporting here in Florida. Really? So it could be sooner. Could be sooner.
Starting point is 00:33:19 But right now five months for sure. And how long do you think it'll be until marijuana actually becomes recreational in Florida? I think that by 2020, it'll be voted in. There's a law firm in Tampa right now, Michael Minority, Minority Law. he is a huge advocate. He's been working with the state of Florida for the signatures for this. I actually went over with him one day, and we counted out, I think, 100,000 signatures.
Starting point is 00:33:45 We go through, you have to divide him up and look at the actual signatures before you can actually submit him to the state. And so that's 2020. Okay. I think, though, now, DeSantis has said, Governor DeSantis has said he's not a big recreational guy. That's the new governor in Florida. That's the new governor in Florida.
Starting point is 00:34:01 He's been super, super, super, super receptive getting this thing rolling. They've got now, they've finally hired the new director of cannabis here for the state of Florida. Her name is Holly Bell. She came, moved here from Kentucky. She's working with Nikki Freed,
Starting point is 00:34:16 who's the new Agriculture Commissioner. They are working together to bring legalization here to Florida. So they're pushing hard on that side. I think when you, at the end of the day, when you really look at the tax benefits that are coming into the state, the fact that, This crime rate will also go down, which is a huge benefit.
Starting point is 00:34:37 Yeah. When you look at what's going to happen just on the side of bringing in new tourism, I mean, you figure if we're doing, Florida's bringing in right now about 100 million tourists a year, that would probably go to 130, 140. Yeah. Real easy. And, I mean, so the economy would just boom for that side of it. I think that from our side of it, from the hard car side of it, which is nice,
Starting point is 00:35:01 we can put vets to work, especially combat vets to come back to work. Our business model looks great. And we continue to make that push to bring these guys in and girls. We actually looked at some females as well to bring them on. We've got great skill sets. And to better help educate everybody with regards to what's going on with cannabis here in the state of Florida. Yeah, there's also those big lawyers out in Orlando, the Morgans. Are they, they're pretty big advocates of.
Starting point is 00:35:28 Well, let me tell you, they're huge. it's actually quite interesting. As we got farther involved in this, we've actually had some guys reach out to his former politicians, the former Speaker of the House, John Mills, Jeff Kamcott, the former lieutenant governor, obviously John Morgan, looking at what I met with Mr. Morgan,
Starting point is 00:35:48 figuring out why he was in this industry was kind of interesting. I said, so, do you have a dog in this fight? Right. And Mr. Morgan actually has a brother who was paralyzed. and I want to say 30 years ago and realized that the meds they were giving him were not really working the way they had hoped they would and he realized that moment that cannabis,
Starting point is 00:36:10 this is his brother, realized that cannabis seemed to be the best medication that he could get from a pain reliever perspective. A lot of the medications he was taking were interfering with his appetite. Well, obviously we know cannabis is going to give you that appetite. So it improved just a quality of life just from that aspect of it.
Starting point is 00:36:24 And I believe that Mr. Morgan saw that, Listen, if my brother goes to prison or jail, he's not coming out a better guy. So this gave him a reason to get involved, and he would actually like to see his daughter be the queen of pot over there in Orlando. The queen of pot. The queen of pot. That's a nice ring to it. Listen, like I say, it's been an interesting journey to see the politicians get involved,
Starting point is 00:36:47 to hear the reason why. It's the same story over and over again, even with speaking to Mr. Mills, that he had a friend of his just here recently committed suicide. He believed that if he had been able to medicate with cannabis, that that would have happened. Was that guy a combat vet as well? Absolutely. Was that in Vietnam?
Starting point is 00:37:07 I mean, we just lost a colonel over here at the VA in St. Petersburg about a month and a half ago where he actually blew his brains out in the parking lot, sitting on his awards after 34 amazing years. Damn. And, yeah, how does that happen? How does a full bird colonel that has, you know, this great background, all these accommodations awards, beautiful wife, you finally retire to settle in
Starting point is 00:37:30 to really enjoy the last part of your life. Blow your brains out. So those are the things that we continue to push against. I've actually found a group here locally, the OptiCorps group, which basically are taking special operations guys and putting them back to work. So this is the kind of guys
Starting point is 00:37:46 we're going to go back through and look to bring these guys into the fold. And obviously from a training perspective, we have all regular training and, again, carry firearms. We carry ARs. We have to be certified with those in the state to carry those, especially in an armored vehicle as well.
Starting point is 00:38:01 Right. So. Wow. And you knew that really famous sniper Chris Kyle, right? We actually do a thing down here in Florida every year called sniper craft. Snipercraft is put on through a company called SartT Supply, and we would bring in about 80 snipers from around the area. Some would come in from out of the state, but most of them were here locally. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:38:21 And we always bring in a guest speaker. Chris Kyle at the time. happened to be one of our guest speakers that had come in to talk. He was still active. He was in active military. He was still... He was still on the teams. Right. And came to our... We wanted to have some photos with him, take some photo chance. He was like, hey, guys, I'm still active. We can't do that right now. Oh, really? So, yeah, so he was real, real. Super great guy. Yeah. We work with another group called Black Dagger out of Socom, Black Dagger Military Hunt Club.
Starting point is 00:38:49 And Chris would come out, and basically what this is, this is taking combat vets, or vets, period. who have some sort of catastrophic injury and bringing them out to either hunt or to shoot guns. We've got a former Green Beret. Romi, he's all over LinkedIn. He had gotten shot through the neck in Iraq. And the guys that when he got shot, they didn't realize he'd been shot through the neck, yank them back inside the vehicle. Well, it paralyzed him from the neck down.
Starting point is 00:39:18 Now, this guy, as a Green Beret, did more than most of us by 5 a.m. in the morning every day. We're just getting up and starting our day, and some of us were waiting until 8 o'clock to start it. But he decided that he was going to be a green beret for his whole life, married a beautiful woman. After he became paralyzed, obviously depression set in. He's in a full wheelchair that he moves with his head, with his neck and his mouth. And he decided he wanted to come out one day and come out with us out to the range. And we had a guy that was out there the same day who was kind of in the same situation who had a wheelchair that he could actually mount a rifle on and shoot from by blowing into a straw. Whoa.
Starting point is 00:39:54 And so we looked at getting this for Romi and bringing this on board. So now he's shooting again. We're shooting a tenorite, which is an explosive that blows up when you shoot it. So we'll have those out to 15, 100 yards. He's actually shooting them again. Wow. So just like a green beret should be. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:40:08 And so we work this other side of it through Socom and the guys over there out of McDill. Dave Winters puts this event on. It's a great event. Working with also Gold Star parents, parents who have lost children. I shouldn't call them children. They've lost adult children or their kids in combat. And then they come over to McDill. We either bring them out shooting.
Starting point is 00:40:30 Each of the parent wears a picture of their son or their daughter on their shirt. And we just make sure we ask about them as we go throughout the day with them. Right. Wow. That's amazing. So, yeah. It's so far when the journey has been fantastic. And I've also read about MDMA being a big, you know, an effective treatment.
Starting point is 00:40:52 for PTSD. It's funny to say that. They just now, there's actually two drugs that just came out. One of the, I think if you ever heard it called on the streets
Starting point is 00:41:01 was called Special K. Special K, I've heard of it, yeah. And they're actually allowing now people who are depressed through a nose spray to be able to use this stuff, which is kind of interesting. But on the other side of the coin
Starting point is 00:41:12 with the MDMA, now MDMA is now being used by the VA for combat vets who are suffering big time with PTSD. Legally, really? Legally. Now, it's still probably in experimental stages right now.
Starting point is 00:41:22 Um, obviously MDMA, uh, has the ability to go up and, and squeeze all the, uh, endorphins out of your pituitary gland. Not a pituitary gland. Out of your, um, I forgot the gland now. But what it does is it and it basically gives you all your happiness right now. Right. Yeah. And so they, so they start to look at this bigger picture with these guys who are suffering from PTSD. And kind of looked at that as an alternative to possibly, listen, if you're not going to commit suicide at the end of the day, that's all I care about.
Starting point is 00:41:49 Right. Yeah. Um, I'd like, I don't know enough about MDMA to say, hey, it's, it's non-addictive or, you know, what the benefits are. Obviously, as a party drug, some of the ill effects, you know, guys talk about, well, after I did it, and it take me two or three days to feel happy again, I guess, to that happy gland gets filled back up again with all the right stuff. Serotonin.
Starting point is 00:42:07 The serotonin. So, you know, again, if you look at that bigger picture, I haven't heard a whole lot more about that. I continue to push here at the VA with cannabis because, again, no one commit suicide on that. You can't eat too much of it or drink too much of it and have those problems. That's amazing, man. Does it affect their benefits if they're using cannabis for the vets and so? Actually, right now, yes.
Starting point is 00:42:29 And the challenge is this, because federally, it is illegal, and the VA is run by the feds. Right. It makes it so that the individuals who need it most don't have access to it. Now, with that said, they've actually passed some laws to some of the other states that allow that for the VA to be more involved with it. And I think what they're doing is, as an example, I have a doctor over here at the VA now that I have spoken to. We talked about this. She agreed to work on,
Starting point is 00:42:59 and they may be doing this with other vets, and I'm just not aware of it, but this one individual, but he had to be willing to give up cigarettes and had to be willing to stop drinking completely. She wanted to monitor what happened if he just went to a cannabis-type regiment. And so he's been doing this now for about 120 days,
Starting point is 00:43:15 and he's actually, of course, the positive side is he's actually giving up cigarettes, which is interesting enough. through this whole process. But the doctor now, she's looking at this in a whole new way because she said what she sees happening, it's not like it's a typical pothead.
Starting point is 00:43:32 And I'm like, well, so what do you mean? She goes, you know, everybody thinks about smoking weed and laying on the couch all day long and be a lazy ass. Yeah. Yeah, I get that. Playing video games. And listen, does that exist?
Starting point is 00:43:41 Sure, we all know that exists. I mean, I know guys who don't smoke weed and do that. Exactly. Little alone if you smoke weed and do that. Right. So, but there's such a very good. number of guys. I recently had a, I can say, a former police officer come up to me.
Starting point is 00:43:56 And he is now medicating with cannabis. Now he's retired. One of the interesting things that he said to me, and I think it's been about 90 days now that he's actually been experimenting with it, was that he has the ability to kind of contemplate where he is in his life right now. And he said, I realized that I was an asshole. And I kind of chuckled. I said, well, I've known you for 10 years.
Starting point is 00:44:14 I've known you. I've known you. He goes, no idea, but I'm that way to my family, too. when I realized that I'm not spending the kind of quality time with my kids I should be spending. He goes, why would cannabis make me think that way? I said, listen, as long as you're having great thoughts, I'm not sure why that happens to keep having them.
Starting point is 00:44:29 Keep having them. He needs to spend time with more with his kids to begin with. And so this gave him a whole new conduit. His wife is still in law enforcement, so there's kind of been some pushback there. But he has been on nine different pain meds over the last 14 years. And so he said his big issue was
Starting point is 00:44:45 he would have these swings of, depression, depending on what meds he was taken. And he said, I recognize the depression as a chemical response to the meds I was taken. So I never, he goes, no, I'd never, like, oh, I'm going to commit suicide today. But he said, I would, I'd be depressed. I'd be like, oh, this sucks. I hate, you know, I mean, I hate my life right now. I hate everything about it.
Starting point is 00:45:02 But I understand why I feel this way. Yeah. So he goes, that's why I never really killed myself. He said, until I started doing cannabis, I've walked away from all those other pills. Because he doesn't take anything else. Zippo. Just, just cannabis. That's awesome.
Starting point is 00:45:17 So it's, well, it's amazing, man, when you start looking at it, when I had initially gone to True Leave, which is a dispensary here in the state of Florida, when I had gone over to Tampa to listen to one of their classes for guys who were suffering from PTSD or from traumatic brain injury. And I got over there and they brought everybody out. I initially asked the question, hey, can you overdose on cannabis? And of course, everybody in the room kind of broke out laughing.
Starting point is 00:45:42 Listen, I don't know for sure. I mean, I need to know. And the doctor was there and said, it's impossible. for you to overdose on cannabis. And I said, why is that? And she said, listen, most of the chemicals in our body that are pain relieving are kept in the brainstem. She goes, so we take that chemical that's in there
Starting point is 00:46:01 and we copy it and we make it synthetically. And we can introduce it to your body. The problem is that if you get too much of it, the same thing as your brainstem done, which is regulates your breathing or your heart or the way your nerves function. So by overdosing on that, you can cut those functions off. They didn't find out until 1998 that our bodies actually have an endocannabinoid system in there.
Starting point is 00:46:24 And there's some doctors now that are looking at it from a perspective of, hey, these endocannabinoid systems actually play a role in cancer. And we believe that when you're endocannabinoid deficient, that cancer has a much greater process of showing up. So I started to understand. I said, so tell me more about this endocannabinoid system in our bodies and what it does. And she said, basically, as you ingest cannabis, and she said, we'd like them not for you to smoke it
Starting point is 00:46:48 because obviously it's still a carcinogen, but by ingesting it has her true benefit to the body by releasing these endocannabinoids and keeping your body really at a higher rate of the ability not to get cancer or to have some of these terminal diseases. So she said there's still, because it's been federally illegal, we haven't been able to really to study it. We recognize that within the traumatic brain injury,
Starting point is 00:47:10 and when you look at football players and or the guys I were sitting with who had been blown up, as a matter of fact, the scow sniper, I told you that was with us, has had two different episodes where he was actually blown up. He was wearing a helmet cam for one of them and was suffering from it. So when I asked the doctor, I said, listen, I need to know more about how the hell does cannabis work on somebody who has traumatic brain injury? And I said, to keep it simple because I'm not that guy.
Starting point is 00:47:34 So she said, hey, listen, it's like this. She goes, the nerves long. It has these things called axioms at the end. And as you have these impacts with the brain, these axioms get closer. If the axioms touch, it kills that part of the brain. For some reason, she said when people smoke cannabis, it makes that nerve longer. So those axioms kind of move away from each other.
Starting point is 00:47:58 And so that's exactly what I said. I was like, really? So the next thing I had with me that day... Science, man. Oh, it's amazing. Well, and listen, I had another one with me where it was a gentleman who was suffering from Parkinson's disease. He was in Kentucky.
Starting point is 00:48:12 This was not cannabis. related, it was hemp related and CBD. And CBD, true CBD hemp oil only has 0.003 THHC. So it's not like there's anything in there that's going to create a euphoric feeling. This poor guy was suffering from Parkinson's disease so bad that he couldn't get his coffee in his mouth. He was shaking so hard as he came up to his mouth. So she brought in some of this oil that was in kind of like a syringe and squeezed it into his mouth. And within four minutes, he stopped shaking.
Starting point is 00:48:42 And I was like, That's crazy. I was like, come on. I mean, is this real? So I'm telling the doctor, do you think that's real? I mean, how could the medical profession not know this? This poor guy is shaken 24 hours, seven days a week for the rest of his life when you can give him that,
Starting point is 00:48:57 which contains no THC. And he stops within four minutes of shaking. And she started laughing. She said, listen, let's call the doctor. I know this doctor that's in this video. Let's call her. And he said, before I tell you this, before we call them, as a doctor, if I love, to you intentionally, I run the risk of losing my license.
Starting point is 00:49:16 She goes, I can tell you right now that this doctor doesn't want to lose her license. So I know there's no deception going on here, but let's find out what's really going on. So she called her up and, you know, we broke into a 10-minute dissertation about what we were looking at. She said, listen, at the end of the day, I said to her, how do you know this guy just doesn't have his own agenda? And this is his way of tricking the system so that, oh, we've got to have this, you know, legal. And she said, listen, it's, I agree with what you're saying. and I didn't have something actually hooked up to him that would say, hey, you know, this is what his heart rate's doing. This is what his senses are going on.
Starting point is 00:49:47 She goes, but I have a nine-year-old girl. And when I give her this stuff, it does the same thing to her. And I can assure you the nine-year-old girl doesn't have an agenda. So again, so these benefits of cannabis or, again, in this case, it's hemp, are unbelievable. And I think that when you start looking across the board as to what it could do to help, again, to the, vet's, I'm all for it. That's my continued push in this whole,
Starting point is 00:50:15 this whole process. Yeah, and that's another huge thing is young kids with cancer, you know, being a treatment for that. Bingo, just legalized here in Florida also. You can now,
Starting point is 00:50:25 if your child is suffering from one of those diseases, you can actually legally, now, again, it'll probably be at the end of this month when it's actually goes through the Senate and becomes law. But you'll actually be able to do that now in Florida, where parents before who lived in other states
Starting point is 00:50:37 would have to move from that state to Colorado. Let's say to be able to treat their child. Right. So all of a sudden you figure out these kids are gone from like having 15 or 20 seizures a week to like one a month. How can you, again, how can you not address that and say, you know, our laws have been unjust. I get why they brought them into play, but they've been unjust. And now it's time to change that.
Starting point is 00:51:01 I wonder what's going to happen in like the next 10 years, maybe five years to the like the big pharma. You know what I mean? like all the companies manufacturing, all those, all those opioids and the fentanyls and all those types of businesses, like you said, the guy we were talking about before who's, you know, very Mel Simbler, yep. Right. Yeah. Well, I mean, what's going to happen to that industry?
Starting point is 00:51:21 Do you think marijuana is going to take it down and it's going to have a big, put a big dent in it, obviously? Well, I think here's what's going to happen. And it's already kind of happening. Alphrea, who is Marlboro cigarettes out of Canada, are now trying to get into the cannabis business. Right. I saw that. So I'm like, go fucking tell the story about your Marlboro man who died of cancer. Right.
Starting point is 00:51:44 Fucking cigarettes because the cigarettes have 700 different chemicals in them. If they're going to change the dynamics, you know, one of the process that we have with cannabis today, which is really interesting, was that it's not the same plan it was 40 years ago. Yeah. So you can't get, I saw this an officer, and any guys are listening out there with referred to the law enforcement side of it. Too much THC is a bad thing because it makes you feel paranoid. So you... THC makes you feel paranoid. THC, too much THC and cannabis
Starting point is 00:52:11 will make you paranoid. Okay. So what I see is, oh, everybody's worried about this T.C. And we're going to breed these things to be like, oh, more TC. That's not the idea. Because who wants to sit around and think,
Starting point is 00:52:21 oh, God, am I getting busted here in a second? Oh, shit. Somebody looking at me? Oh, man. So you're not going to... When I see officers talk about, oh, it's just me, they're growing in this grow house over here
Starting point is 00:52:31 and it's 40 times stronger. That's a false statement. They put this again in the wrong light. That's not how this works. When you start looking at, when I talk to some of the geneticists, understanding, I mean, I'm thinking like,
Starting point is 00:52:43 these guys are working under a magnifying glass and they're, you know, pulling out the chromosomes and the seed and they're genetically putting them together. One of the fact is, when I ask the guys, how do you do that, man? He goes, here's what we do.
Starting point is 00:52:53 He goes, I take 100 seeds. I plan them. Out of the 100 plants, one of them's different. I want to understand why that one's different. What are the characteristics? So I pull that plan in and start looking at what goes on, and all of a sudden I find out that it has,
Starting point is 00:53:06 a different color or a different CBD or it's maybe there's a little stronger. You know, we want to use this for a different process. So because that's how we do this. There's no gene splicing. It's not genetically done. Obviously, if you grow it indoors, you get four great grows a year. It's the perfect weather every day. You can control bugs.
Starting point is 00:53:27 You can control, but it's not full spectrum. The plants that grow outside are full spectrum sun. So you're getting every bit of that. full radiation of the sun every single day. So there's people that will say, oh, well, that's because it's grown indoors, it's not quite as good as the outdoor stuff. And what do you define as good,
Starting point is 00:53:46 meaning, is good mean higher THC? Not necessarily higher THC, greater looking plant, maybe a bigger plant, yields more product. Some of the funny attributes about cannabis as it gets stale,
Starting point is 00:54:00 and cannabis does get stale, it gets very, very high in CBD. Yeah. As it gets higher in CBD and it gets more stale, it makes you, want to go to sleep. Okay.
Starting point is 00:54:08 So there's different ways you can bring this to the market with regards and how you want to show the cannabis itself. It's all pretty much the same. You've got setiva and you've got indigo. Yeah. People talk about hybrids or what they're doing. I'm not really sure in the bigger picture how that all works, but when you kind of look at it, it all looks the same.
Starting point is 00:54:24 The way they trim the buds up is pretty much the same. The way they process it is pretty much the chain. Everybody tries to come up with a different branding perspective. As an example, one of the guys that we work with one of the vets groups, wanted to private label some cannabis. And so we were looking at trying to figure out a great name for this. And so as we're sitting around kind of brainstorming, hey, what would be a good name for this? One of the guys came back in and said, hey, I just got to walk on my dog.
Starting point is 00:54:52 And it took me from the time I left the house to walk the dog, I smoked one joint. So we came up with dog walkers. Nice. And so all of a sudden, dude, now it's a veteran-owned process. We call them dog walkers. They come in a little, you know, a little case. Oh, the little tin with the little joints in it? Bingo.
Starting point is 00:55:09 You saw them. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Those things are awesome. And they're called dog walkers. I love those things. And what a simple name. And it has taken off like you can't believe.
Starting point is 00:55:17 And it's a, it's a, you know, standard sativa. Sativa's kind of up. Yeah. You want to be on the high side of it. The indigo kind of helps you go to sleep at night. And so I see that when these guys participate and they take the sativa, obviously, they're much more happier, much more content. Right.
Starting point is 00:55:34 Helps me focus. It's funny when you talk to different people about different ways that it affects them, it's amazing across the board. Obviously for the vet's side of it, most of these guys do it to treat themselves at night before they go to sleep. But I always hear about the great sleep that they get. So I always encourage them, get the indica. Keep getting the indica, you know, go that route.
Starting point is 00:55:52 Right, yeah. So when it works out nice. That's amazing. Cool. Is there any other big points that we should hit that we haven't hit yet? I think, first of all, we just need to make sure that everybody's aware that if you haven't filled out your sheets to bring it into the state
Starting point is 00:56:05 to make it legalized recreationally. Go to True Leave, go to Satera, go to Cureleaf. Go to the actual dispensaries. They have the forms there, fill them out. Get them turned in. If we just sit back and wait for this to happen, it's not.
Starting point is 00:56:18 So we all need to be proactive on that side of the coin. Understand that from a hard car perspective, we're now going to be here in the state. We transport. We do this through variances that we've actually worked in place through the statute here in the state of Florida.
Starting point is 00:56:34 So if anybody is looking for transportation on cash, looking for transportation on cannabis, there is a way to do that legally here in the state of Florida, which we're one of the first groups to actually do the variants here in the state. So I actually have that in my possession. So if anybody out there listening wants to have some services, we can talk. How can they contact Hardcar? You can reach me off of our website, which is Hardcar, all one word.com,
Starting point is 00:56:57 or you can reach me at Mike at Hardcarsecurity.com. Perfect. Either work. It works out great. That's awesome, man. Thank you so much for your knowledge and your time. It's been a great podcast. I learned a lot.

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