The New Yorker Radio Hour - The Green Rush

Episode Date: September 20, 2019

It was just seven years ago that Washington and Colorado became the first states to legalize the recreational use of marijuana. Today the drug is legal in eleven states and counting, with polls showing that sixty per cent of Americans support its legalization. How did that happen so fast? This episode of The New Yorker Radio Hour looks at the end of reefer madness—and the early days of corporate cannabis. Bruce Barcott talks about the politics and the public-health aspects of legalization; Jelani Cobb looks at how legalization tries to undo the decades of harm that marijuana prohibition has done to communities of color; Sue Halpern drives around Vermont, where weed is the new zucchini; and Jia Tolentino shares the joy of watching David Attenborough under the influence.  New Yorker Radio Hour listeners, we want to hear from you.  We have a few questions about the show and how you listen to it. The survey takes about twenty minutes, and your feedback will help us make our podcast better.  Take the survey here.

From One World Trade Center in Manhattan, this is The New Yorker Radio Hour, a co-production of the New Yorker and WNYC Studios. Welcome to The New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick. Look at this little tent. It's like for baby growers. For propagation. For the seedlings. Yeah. And then there's like a lot of paraphernalia. It's a Tuesday morning in the summer in Vermont. And our contributor, Sue Halpern, is checking out supplies at the Garfinals. gardening shop, Green State Gardner.

So show us around. I know there's a lot of fertilizer. I'm looking at something called the Magic Bubble washing machine. It's not really for washing clothing. No. That's how it's marketed. Oh, wow. Okay. What is it for? That is for essentially knocking the tricombs off of the flowers in order to make cash. Okay, I don't even know what any of that means.

Vermont is one of 11 states where it's legal to get high, and 33 states allow medical marijuana. Nationally, 60% of Americans now support legalization, and the pace of change on this issue is incredible. So this week, my colleagues and I want to dig in and understand the ramifications of this sea change in American life. Sue Halpern will show us how Vermont's unique DIY approach to pot works, and I'll talk with Jolani Cobb about how the legalization movement is trying to undue decades of damage that the war on drugs has done to communities of color. To explain how this movement accelerated so quickly, I wanted to start with Bruce Barcott. His book, Weed the People. That's Weed the People.

It's about how the state of Washington and Colorado first legalized recreational use. I think you have to say that 30 years ago, if you had told me that we'd see the day when marijuana was legal, and maybe on the way toward national legalization, I wouldn't have believed it. How did public opinion change so quickly on this? I have to agree with you. 30 years ago, there's no way I would have believed this would change. I think that it changed gradually.

I think, you know, the modern era really began with the AIDS crisis in San Francisco in the 1980s when gay men were suffering from wasting disease, one of the manifestations of AIDS. They couldn't eat. They couldn't keep food down. and cannabis stimulates appetite. You know, you get the munchies

and it quells nausea. So people there started up marijuana buyers clubs and eventually San Francisco passed legalization for medical use. In 96, California passed medical use statewide. And other states followed suit. And then I think, you know what that medical legalization did was kind of enact a kind of pilot project

where different states stuck a total hoe in the water and the walls of civilization didn't crumble. And then that led to the first adult use legalization votes in 2012 in Colorado and Washington. And I too was skeptical about it, but it actually, it worked in my own state and my own community. For the first time in history, cannabis reform is going to be an issue in the 2020 election. Nearly all the Democratic frontrunners support legalization. How did this become such a big deal in the race? And why is it such a big deal? I'm kind of shocked, actually, at how many Democratic candidates have essentially just turned

and embraced legalization. The only person who really has reservations is Joe Biden. Right. And in the previous election, the only person who was for legalization was Bernie Sanders. And essentially, it is in the numbers. You know, every poll that comes out now about adult use legalization hits 65%, 68% support, and it's support that's not red, it's not blue, it's across the board. This is an issue that doesn't divide down party lines, but Democrats see it as a way to essentially embrace younger folks because the breakdown in support is very much generational. The oldest demographic does not like it, is not in favor of it.

The youngest demographic is absolutely in favor of it. Well, Bernie Sanders, though, has young supporters, but he's not a young guy, neither, and Elizabeth Warren isn't either. What does it say about Biden that he's not supporting legalization? The thing about, I mean, Biden was notoriously one of the people who was pushing the crime bill back in the 90s. You know, the other element that's come into play with this is our over-incarceration crisis and our growing national awareness of racial disparities in law enforcement. And really, there is one book that is like the silent spring of this movement and of cannabis legalization. And it's Michelle Alexander's, the new Jim Crow. That really opened up a lot of people's eyes.

And I wish, frankly, Joe Biden would read it. Now, what about the Republicans? John Boehner, the former speaker, John Boehner is on the board of one of the country's largest cannabis corporations. Why is this stop being an issue for the Republicans? It's the weirdest thing. I mean, Jeff Sessions was sort of the last, the last of the great drug warriors. And even, even members of his party sort of were baffled by why he rode that hobby horse of marijuana prohibition so hard. It was like an obsession with him. You know, and his, his successor really doesn't, doesn't give a darn about, about cannabis. So, yeah, I don't know. It's, it, we've seen this with a number of politicians where once they're out of office, all of a sudden they're running to join the new legal cannabis industry.

John Boehner is sort of the leader in that sense. But I think you'll see a lot more of those folks coming into this industry because it is booming. Now, you were living in Seattle when the state of Washington voted to legalize marijuana, but you originally weren't in support of it. What ended up changing your mind on this? I was, you know, it was back in November 2012, and it was a dinner with friends. we were all discussing who we were going to vote for it. And we were going down the ballot and marijuana legalization was on our ballot in Washington State. And I said, look, you know, I'm really kind of

on the fence leaning no on this. I don't like pot. It's not my thing. I worry about my kids. And a good friend of mine actually was a lawyer at the time for the ACLU. And the ACLU was behind the effort in Washington State. She said, she turned out me and she practically poked me in the She said, she says, you know what? Nobody gives a shit about whether you like or don't like pot. This is not about you. This is about, you know, hundreds of thousands of people, mostly people of color, being thrown into jail for something that's really less harmful than alcohol. You saw Washington legalized marijuana and 11 states have now done the same. They've joined Washington. Which states have done this really well and have any states done it poorly? Yeah, I think that Washington and Colorado did it well under the circumstances. They were first. They were the pioneers. And so their laws were not perfect. I think the better laws that are coming on now, there's a lot of eyes on Illinois.

The law in Illinois is like 615 pages long. It's insane. But there are a lot of provisions written into that law that weren't in other states that people are very, hopeful about it. It deals with things like expungement of past convictions for marijuana. I think it addresses, or at least touches on things like workplace discrimination and parental rights so that, you know, child protective services isn't going to come take your kids away if you're using cannabis legally. There are a lot of little micro issues that have emerged since the big issue of simple legalization has come out in 2012. What about the business aspect is? California had stars in size, and they had huge problems, as it turned out, with their rollout. The officials there predicted a billion dollars in tax revenue and they ended up with less than half of that.

What happened? Yeah, part of that is the fact that California's illegal industry is so entrenched and so enormous, and it gets by not just with feeding its own state. I mean, it produces seven times as much cannabis as California residents consume. So it's going into the rest of the country. And then the regulations in California were pretty tough. And so it made it pretty difficult and very expensive for folks to move from the illegal space into a legal space to get their licenses and get security. And it took a lot of money and investment to do that. And so they've been having a harder time moving people from the illegal market into the legal market. Who's going to make a lot of money off of marijuana?

Last year, I think the marijuana industry was valued at around $10 billion. And the projections are to go much, much, much higher than that in the future. Who are the big players in the industry who's making a fortune? Fewer people are making fortunes than you might think, actually, at this point. I think that as we go along, what we're seeing right now, is the larger players coming in. Our investors are coming in. Large investors are coming in quietly.

Beer companies are coming in quietly as well. Which ones? Constellation Brands, which is the distributor for Corona beer, they have a significant investment in canopy growth, which is the largest Canadian cannabis company. Are we going to see multinational marijuana conglomerates? Oh, yeah. Yeah, it's, you know, we're seeing, obviously, Canada has full federal legalization at this point.

Germany has full legal medical marijuana. Mexico is coming online soon. The Mexican Supreme Court has declared that the country's prohibition on cannabis cannot stand. And so they're working on establishing a legal system right now. We should see it in the next year or two. So ultimately, this will be a global industry. It's just right now we're still in the phase where in the United States, it is very much a state-by-state industry. Those walls are very high, but those walls will come down.

Now, part of what impressed me so much about your book is that it's very shrewd and fair-minded. You're covering this as a journalist, and you're looking at data, you're talking to both sides. It's clear that you come out on the side of legalization, but what's the most convincing argument that you found against? for legalization? I don't, I don't have one. I mean, honestly, it's, it's, the, I think the, the, the, initially, the biggest arguments against it was that it would unleash a flood of real public health issues. That was the main concern. And if that happened, I think we would have seen states drawback. I think we would have seen other states not adopt legal policies. And we really We haven't seen, there's been no state that's gone back and said, you know, we did this, we tried it, and we don't like it, we're going to withdraw.

One of the things that pushed me into the area of saying, yes, this is the right thing to do, was that ultimately the data and the science, I felt were on the side of legalization, that the folks who were scrambling to stop this movement were picking data, picking studies, that were deficient or weren't telling the whole story, and I ultimately did not trust their data. I didn't trust their science. I didn't trust their narrative. And that includes the data on the correlation between marijuana usage and schizophrenia. And I hasten to say it's not a causation, a correlation. Yeah, that's one of those issues where, as an editor and a science writer,

I love that issue because it is so unsettled. I took a plunge into it and spent a whole chapter in my book. looking at it. And what I came away with looking at what little science, what little research does exist, is that if you have a family history of schizophrenia, if you have a family history of mental illness, you should know that and do not touch cannabis until you're well into your 20s if you want to. And then the scientists don't think that cannabis causes schizophrenia. The most they can say is that it could hasten the onset. In other words, if you're 18 and you're susceptible to schizophrenia, if you start going in and smoking pot every day, that could hasten the emergence of schizophrenia.

And what we do know about schizophrenia is the longer it can be delayed, the later that emergence comes, the more likely a person is able to manage it and deal with it. I mean, some sort of connection between schizophrenia and cannabis or the cannabinoid system does exist. But to say there's some sort of tide of psychosis rising, it's just, it's preposterous. It's just not there. It's, nobody can point to it. So we're in this netherland of 11 states having legalized marijuana, but it's still, according to the federal government, illegal. And that's kind of confusing, not just for me, but for a lot of people in the industry. How can this be legal and illegal at the same time in economic terms? Law is confusing.

Look, there is the law, and then there is its enforcement. And those are two very different things. You know, federal leaders like the Attorney General and U.S. attorneys set priorities about what laws they'll focus on and enforce. And back in 2012, the Obama administration essentially saw the vote in Colorado and Washington, and they said, okay, look, we're going to let you proceed. we're going to watch you very carefully, and we're going to let you proceed, see what happens. Keep it tight. We don't want to see any leakage.

We don't want to see marijuana going, flowing out of these states to other states. We don't want to see kids getting into it. We're going to watch and see. We're going to keep our hands off, and we're going to focus on higher priorities. And that has essentially been the daint that we have been working with ever since. It's okay.

The problem really comes with, what minor aspects that aren't so minor, like banking. Right. The big banks have been pretty reluctant to touch cannabis since it's not legal to the federal government. And that means those companies can't open checking accounts. More importantly, they can't get bank loans. There are no lines of credit. So to get in this business and stay in this business and grow, you've got to be independently wealthy,

or you've got to have a rich uncle, or you've got to take on investors. That's the only way to grow. Bruce, thank you so much. Hey, thanks. Anytime. It's been a pleasure. Bruce Barkott is the author of Weed the People, and he's senior editor for the cannabis website called Leafly. This is the New Yorker Radio Hour, and we're talking today about the impact of marijuana legalization. And we'll be back in a moment. This is the New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick.

Most states that have legalized marijuana have decided to regulate it like we do alcohol. You go to a state license store, you buy the product, and then you pay the state government some taxes on it. Vermont has taken its own approach, and it's a unique one. In that state, it's legal to grow your own, but it's illegal to buy or sell it, so that makes for a pretty unusual economy. The New Yorker's Sue Halperin, who lives in Middlebury, showed us how it all works. After legalization, I noticed that almost everybody I know who had a garden of some sort was trying their hand at growing marijuana. I have a friend who was drying it in his sauna.

I have a friend who was growing it among his tomato plants. And everyone seemed to have this surplus. I mean, you had to beat people away if we wanted to just show up at your house and give it to you. It's just like, I mean, it was crazy. I decided that I wanted to find out how this was. was playing out in the state. What road is this?

Heinz Road, which is a dirt road, which is now we're really in Vermont. We're going to go talk to David Zuckerman, who is a very interesting fellow because he is our lieutenant governor. He is also a farmer. Zuckerman's farm, a full-mone farm, is in Heinzburg, Vermont,

and it's one of the most productive farms in Vermont. So this is part of. This is about a half an acre of parsnips for winter storage. And actually, you just got a whiff because we're walking towards the cannabis. You can see the canvas. Right now, the way the law reads, any Vermonter, who's over 21, can grow two mature plants and four immature plants for their personal use. Zuckerman isn't doing that.

Instead, he has a license, a commercial license, to grow hemp. But the thing I learned, and it just kind of surprised me was that, Hemp and marijuana are actually the same plant. They're both cannabis. And the only distinction is that hemp has very low levels of THC, which is the compound that gets you high. So it's classified differently under federal law, which is why instead of having six cannabis plants,

David Zuckerman has 500. Pretty far away from it. It's huge. I mean, it looks like a forest. Some of them are as much as maybe eight, even nine feet tall. some of those spikes up over there. And literally two weeks ago was almost two feet shorter.

And try not to touch the flowers directly too much. You can touch the leaves. And when will the hemp come do? Well, I'm learning. My understanding is sort of you can harvest it whenever you want. The risk of going too late, you have more risks of molds and diseases.

And if you go too long, you also have a risk of growing hot product on the THC side. What Zuckerman means is that the bigger his hemp plants get, the more THC they have in them. The more THC they have in them, the more they resemble marijuana plants rather than hemp plants. And if they go over a certain level, then they are marijuana plants. And David Zuckerman suddenly is looking at a large fine and possibly jail time, which is really not a very good look for the lieutenant governor.

So tell me about cannabis reform. You said that you've been doing this for a very long time. Why aren't we getting the tax revenue that we could get if we had dispensaries? Well, that's a great question for other people. I have advocated for a well-regulated dispensary system that would promote small-scale agricultural production with a craft product, much like we have in our beer side of things, that would draw tourists who would then stay at our bed and breakfasts,

hike in our mountains, all the other great things that people do in Vermont, and really expand our economy not only just from a tax revenue on cannabis perspective, but boost our tourism revenue, which is really one of the backbones of Vermont's economy. Bye. Route 7. Okay. So just go that direction and eventually you're going to hit one of them. Okay, great.

Thank you. Thanks. See you. Bye. So we're on our way to Procter, Vermont, and I'm supposed to talk to a guy I found on the internet named Jeff Bugay. I was at Ace Hardware, and I came out, and somebody was reading it. my sign on my car and was like, ah, you're the weed guy, huh?

I was like, yeah, cannabis. I do hemp also. And he was like, I live right around the corner. Can you stop and look at my plants? And I was like, absolutely. Jeff runs a company called Homegrown Vermont Professionals. And he drives around the state making house calls for people who want to grow their own marijuana. He's kind of like the weed doctor. What do you do for someone? They call you up and they say, hey, Jeff, I want to grow. but I don't know anything about it.

What do you do for that person? Okay. Well, what I will tell you is literature and what supplies to get if you're serious and we would schedule a consultation. And I would come to your house and I'll evaluate where you want to set it up.

Where is the best place in your house? If you only have one spot, then we'll work with that. So you can't sell anything that is actually plant material. So where do people Where is people supposed to get the seeds or the plants if they can't buy them? I offer two free plants with a home consultation. One hour consultation, you get two free potted plants to get going.

So you don't need to buy seed because you're giving someone a plant? I'm giving them free plants or free seeds or free cuttings. The loophole that they left in the law was it's okay to gift. And for me, it's ridiculous to think that, You can possess it, you can use it, you can carry it, you can grow it, but you can't buy it or sell it in any way, shape, or form. And that's where I come in with the free gifts. There is a gifting loophole in the law, and people have taken a lot of advantage of it. Not long after it became legal, the Vermont Attorney General, T.J. Johnovan, said he would consider any gift of marijuana that had a financial aspect to it to be illegal.

But Jeff says that's not really stopping anybody. There's a place around here I saw on Facebook. Actually, there was two or three that I saw. You buy a wooden rose and you get a bag of weed free. You know, you buy a 12 pack of cookies and you get a bag of weed free. You know, so there's a lot of people doing it and very blatantly doing it. I mean, running ads on Facebook. So, and that's not my game.

That's not my bag, if you will. Thanks a lot. You're welcome. Our last stop of the day is to visit my old friend and neighbor Sherry Brown, who I met probably a dozen years ago when our daughters went to school together. I'm going to see you. Are you stoned? I just had to ask.

Okay, no. Can we have some of these? Yeah, are you hungry? Sherry is the innkeeper at Blueberry Hill, which is maybe the most iconic in Vermont. She's also a master gardener. we're looking at Sherry's Garden which has one two three four five where's the six oh it's over there I can't see it two of them are called wedding cake one is called blue cheese the three little plants that we had last year produced quite a bit so that's I mean everybody I knew who was growing had so much and they were just like

Take some, have some. It was just like zucchini. I know. I love that. I can see it just landing on my front doorstep, couldn't you? Sherry is also a master baker, and before I left, she offered me some blueberry weed muffins. We'll see. I have these muffins here.

I don't really know if it's how effective it'll be, but you can have some and try them. I can't eat wheat. Since I can't eat wheat, I couldn't eat the muffins, so I passed them on to my producer, Riann't Corby, who agreed with very little persuading to be my proxy. And you're not driving anywhere after I drop you off. It's true. And you can try it, and you can report back. Okay, we'll do it.

Let's check in every 15 minutes. So would you recommend one muffin to start with? I would recommend for taking two muffins. Sue Helpern, reporting from her home state of Vermont, and the muffins I heard were fabulous. Did you see all the blueberries? No, I want to look at the blueberries. If I'm going to be addicted to some substance, it's going to be blueberries.

Yeah, I'm pretty addicted to blueberries. Now, outside of the blueberry-rich state of Vermont, marijuana is a multi-billion dollar industry, and that's just the legal side. In states that haven't legalized, the drug trade goes on as it always has. Here in New York, a legalization bill failed recently, but people are still expecting the change

to come sooner or later. And so entrepreneurs are racing to get a foothold in the market before legalization. Jelani Cobb, who's a staff writer at the New Yorker, has been looking into this nascent cannabis economy

who's benefiting and who's not. Recently, I went to visit a man I'm going to call L. He lives in Brooklyn, and he sells some pretty high-end items. This is spreadable chocolate, so it's like a chocolate version of Nutella,

a vegan also. These are our skin creams. One is T.HC. One is CBD. These are TACC brownies, lollipops. So this one here is a vegan soursop sorbet. It has 165 milligrams of CBD. Elle makes his own cannabis products, puttering around his kitchen and whipping up these concoctions.

He has them on like a display case, right when you walk in the door. This year is CBD isolate, so pure CBD in its purest form. He's showing me a jar of what looks like white powder. When that, when I get those, I get them delivered because I'm scared to walk around with a white powder. Giuliani, who are his customers? He told me it's a bit of everybody. The neighborhood is racially diverse, and like much of Brooklyn, it's changed a bit over the years. I feel like when the white presence came into the neighborhood that it made it more acceptable

because they're way braver actually smoking outside than any of us would have been. in the past, so it kind of normalized it overall, you know? Really? Yeah. Tell me more about that. Well, I started noticing it in the city. Like, I'd be walking through the city. Like, I worked at a hospital for about 20 years here in the city,

and I would be walking to and from work. And, you know, getting off the train, I would just smell it in the air everywhere. And then it became such, like, a normal thing. And then it became to where it's just everywhere you go and now you smell it everywhere. Like, all over New York. It's amazing. Have you ever gotten in trouble for selling pot? I was pulled over about a year ago.

The cop said that I had a broken windshield and my taillight was out. So I guess they saw the front and the back of my car at the same time. But they pulled me over. The guy gets out the car. He's walking out to my car and he's going just like this. He's like waving his, fanning his hand in front of his face. He's like, what are you smoking in there? I'm like, I'm not smoking anything in here.

He's like, I smell it. You're smoking. I said, sir, I haven't smoked since 12 o'clock this afternoon. mind you, it's like 1 o'clock in the morning. I'm just getting out of work at the bar. Right? So he's like, you're smoking in here. I'm going to find it, right? Get out of the car, go stand in the back.

So there was three offices in the car, three undercover officers. The other two stood there with me while he went through my car. He found a few bags of weed behind my seat. I had some cartridges, some oils in it, and they locked me up for that. The officer's arrested Elle, and he faced up to nine years in prison. Nine years? That's a lot of time. Yeah, Elle got lucky. He found some good lawyers and pleaded the charges down to a violation. But the police still confiscated all the cash he had on them at the time, which was about $1,500. And here's a fact about New York. 20 years ago, black people were about five times more likely to be arrested for marijuana than white people. They're now eight times more likely. Even though they use it basically the same rates.

Exactly. I always used to say, right, that if you go to like a small suburban town and a white teenager is found smoking weed, they'll be brought home to their parents, dropped off, I caught him smoking weed, I'll have the talk with him, and that will be that. You catch a 13, 14 year old out here smoking weed, right? Their life can change. If weed is legalized in New York State, what would you? you like to see in that legislation? First thing I would like to see is that the people, the nonviolent people who are in jail because of it get released. That would be number one.

Before we move forward, we have to get those people out of there. Like, get them back to their families, get them back into society to try to get a good footing in life to be able to maybe be a part of this change, you know? And those people, I cry for them, man. Like, I sit back and I think of just how many people have done so. many years. So why risk selling now? Why not just wait until it's legal?

While we're waiting, huge corporations are getting their stuff in order, putting all their eggs in the basket, you know, working on their packaging, how they're going to come to the market. If we don't have that same freedom, how is it fair? So Elle would likely go to prison if he's caught selling his cannabis chocolate in sorbet. But on the other hand, he wants to build his business to give himself. a chance against big weed once marijuana is legalized in New York. Shalani, how did you start exploring this?

Well, there's an interesting background in that I am in that probably minority demographic of people my age who have no experience with marijuana whatsoever. Not one time. Not once. It was just a matter of not inhaling or? Not even getting into the room to inhale. Fair enough. But I heard about this issue from my friend Mary Pryor.

Mary has Crohn's disease, and she uses cannabis medicinally. And she moved to L.A. to get better access to it and developed friendships with some other black women who were also interested in cannabis. And right away, she noticed something. We already saw that there was a huge gap of black and brown access in L.A. specifically, that we experienced. So even when I would go to dispensaries, I would be like, okay, there's no black black. attenders here, and I'm in Englewood. That's interesting. Mary started going to cannabis events trying to learn more about the business. So we would be maybe, we would be three out of seven black people at a festival of hundreds, and it was all like white people. We were sitting at this

table looking at the room like, wow, they really don't want us in here. So the big issue that Mary is raising here is that people of color suffered from the criminalization of marijuana for all these years, but now under legalization or potential legalization, the people who will benefit will be white, where that's the fear. Right. I mean, millions and millions of people who've gotten arrested for using this drug, mostly people of color. And that's why there's a lot of conversation as legalization bills are being passed about

social equity. Can you define social equity in this context? Well, it can mean a lot of things. It can mean releasing people who have low-level drug convictions from prison and in a lot cases these bills actually wipe those charges off their records altogether. It can mean using tax revenue to rejuvenate communities that were hit by the war on drugs. And then there's this interesting program in Oakland, which was started in 2016. It's called the Equity Program. One of the beneficiaries of that was a man by the name of Tucky Blunt. Everybody I knew growing up

pretty much went to jail. You know what I mean? For different, you know, different drug crimes, but most, in most cases, it was weed. for a lot of time. I know people did federal time for growing cannabis. So all over Oakland, it was pretty rampant, people going to jail for cannabis. Tucky grew up in Oakland, and in 2004, he was arrested for $80 worth of marijuana in his pocket. He spent a little time in jail and moved on. 2017, I received a phone call from a good friend of mine named Michael Marshall,

who was the voice of the song, I Got Five on it. He called me and simply said, hey, find out you ever caught a case in Oakland for weed? And I'm like, yeah, why? What happened is that Oakland's equity bill said that half of all cannabis business permits had to go to people like him who were personally affected by the war on drugs. And he explained to me about the program and some people he knew that were looking for an Oakland resident to help them apply for the business license.

And I was like, all right, cool. Let me, let me, you know, go talk to him, see what they want for me. and kind of like the rest is history, like literally. So what happened next? Mind you, I thought about this in November of 17. We had to turn our application in December of 17. And then we won the lottery January of 18. So this happened like super duper fast.

And it was a lottery. You had to pick a bingo ball, throw it in a chamber. They rolled a ball, the chamber around. And if they didn't pick your ball, the last four balls won a dispensary. And that's how we won. And tell me what you did with that license. All right. So Blunson Moore is the first brick and mortar cannabis store, recreational and medicinal,

ever owned and operated by a person formerly incarcerated for cannabis. It's in Oakland, California, directly across the street from the Alameda Oakland Coliseum. I'm from Oakland, born and raised. And for me to be able to sell cannabis legally. in the city I grew up in and went to jail for selling illegally. It's just a ride of passage that I didn't even know was coming. And it's represented all through Blunts and More. Our staff, just our lobby area, it just shows that we are black and cannabis,

and, you know, we rep it real well. So this is a guy who, in the end, made good. Yeah, but he's the only one. Oakland's program was designed to give black and other people of color residents a stake in the market. and that's turned out to be much easier said than done. So what are the obstacles that you and other equity applicants face? Honestly and truthfully, I believe it's from lack of funding and lack of education in the sense of, we should have got the license and had education right away because that's how quick the vultures was waiting on us.

Then you run into funding issues because there was no money available at the time for the applicants. You just have the license. So now you got to go find somewhere to rent. And then you also run into real estate, people gouging normal real estate for commercial space is maybe 75 cent to a dollar in California. But most people, when they find out you're doing cannabis or anything related to cannabis, they're asking for upwards of $4 to $6 a square foot. And you have to pay all of this rent, get all your stuff, all of your staff,

all of your equipment before you can even get your license. So you're paying all this. where you're getting this money from if you're poor. Did anyone ever try to buy your license from you? Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. I got offered the most offer. The highest offer I got was about $3 million.

And it was from one of the guys who ended up getting somebody else to sell to him, which is okay. You have the right to do that, you know what I mean? But what did you get out of it? You know what I mean? I'm hearing that one of them may have been offered $100,000 and $10 million in future stock options. That's ridiculous. That's ridiculous. That's not going to change your kids' life.

Your kids' kids' life. If you want to be signed off, you should get a good amount of money. You know what I mean? In my opinion, upwards of at least 10 to 15 million minimum. But everybody doesn't think like me. Wow. So a few million dollars did not seem to impress them all that much. These dispensary permits are worth a hell of a lot of money.

Yeah. Managed correctly, these could be really big business. So, Jelani, you've reported on the issue. you're talking to people about the problems. What do you want to see happen? How do we legalize marijuana fairly taking into account the damage that's been done all these many years in the war on drugs? Well, it's complicated. What seems clear is that the remedies need to be as extensive as the problem itself.

It's not enough to decriminalize or even legalize cannabis if you don't also void convictions and expunge records. But beyond that, it seems that even granting licenses to people of color who are affected by the war on drugs will ultimately be more symbolic than effective unless it's also paired with concrete steps and resources to actually get those businesses off the ground. So it's not inconceivable that these cities would also provide seed money, you know, no terrible pun intended. Beyond that, it seems that revenue from the taxes on this product in particular could be directed into other remedial efforts. And, you know, the dispensaries are just one small part in a much bigger production chain. And the people who have talked to who think about this a lot are really very invested in seeing people of color have positions in equity throughout the entire system. So there are growers, there are marketers, and they want to be in on every level of it. And while there's a lot to be done, it does seem that you can see maybe that there are some steps being taken in the right direction.

Jelani Cobb, thank you. Thank you. Staff writer Jolani Cobb, and you can read everything he's written for us at New Yorker.com. Among the Democratic presidential candidates, Corey Booker, has been probably the most assertive about legalizing marijuana. saying we should use that tax revenue to benefit communities that have been harmed by the drug war. I'll talk with Cory Booker about that issue and many others on the New Yorker Radio Hour next week. This week, we're talking about the legalization of marijuana. And I'll be back in a moment with the New Yorker's Geotolentino.

Stick around. Welcome back. I'm David Remnick, and this is the New Yorker Radio Hour. We've been talking a lot about the big issues around marijuana legalization, and the politics, the economic policy, the public health aspect, a whole lot of serious talk about something that was supposed to be in the first place a good time. So I asked Gia Tolentino to stop by my office for a chat. Gia is a staff writer at The New Yorker. She's got a new book out called Trick Mirror, which is a big bestseller.

And Gia is without doubt one of the more outspoken people I know about her habits. So Gia, I want to know, and the people absolutely want to know, what's your favorite thing to do or watch or listen to when you're high? I don't know how you feel. Like, I am not, despite being a sort of career stoner, I don't really like all of the traditional sort of stoner movies. Like I never got into like Fast Times or Ridgemont High. And Big Lobowski, they seem kind of cheesy.

Because the thing about weed is it's not cool, you know, so to make a big deal out of it. Wait, wait, when you say it's not cool, meaning as opposed to some other intoxicant or drug or whatever? Well, it's kind of cheesy. Like, there was something about movies. about all these sort of deadbeat men who had like their sort of cultural identity was ice smoke weed and there was something about that that I never really vibed with when broad city first came on

it was the first time that women were at the center of a stoner thing and I appreciate the way that women get high or the stereotypical way women get high more than the stereotypical way that men get high which is like big lobowski you know what's the female part of it's like aviolventa this super energetic let's go for a walk let's go for an adventure Let's get into some trouble. Let's be outside in the world and have fun and mostly be normal. So it's not eat an entire pizza then collapse. Yeah, it's not this sort of like I'm going to wear my drug rug and, you know, like sit in the house and talk about weed.

You know, in my experience, like what I like to do when I get high is go do stuff. Right. There's this really funny episode of Broad City where the two girls, Abby and Alana, they decide to grow up. And for Abby, this means finally buying weed instead of sponging off of her friends. And for Alana, it means doing her taxes herself instead of calling her dad or whatever to get her dad to help her. We got the W-2s and the W-9s, but where do we get three through eight? Dude, I don't know. You get the things you get, you sign them, and you send them back.

She doesn't know, and she is mean. I'm sorry that I snap. I'm in a bad mood. I'm having a really hard time finding weed, okay? It's like, yeah, you got to grow up, got to, Get a weed guy. You got to do your taxes. You got to go about your day and have a little fun. Adulting. Yeah. I hate that word. But yes. There it is.

It's more fun to sit down and clean your house and listen to a whole record. You're a little stoned and you listen to the music a little more. Now, I gather that you're in the number two position that David Attenborough documentaries. You got a favorite? Yes. So Blue Planet 2. Very good. Like a friend was telling me about this and he was like, Gia, you got to get high and watch this episode of Blue Planet 2, where there are some. saltwater lakes at the bottom of the ocean.

And I was like, what? You know, like my whole brain was just like, you know. Cutthroat eels, scavengers, come to the shores of the Bryan Lake in search of something edible. And the fact that there are pools of saltwater at the bottom of the saltwater ocean that really... Bleu your mind. Really blew my mind. Spending too long in it can send an eel into toxic shock. But the real thing that blew my mind was.

There's a part of that episode where they have a fish. I think what's it called, what's it called the bobblehead fish? Sorry. I wrote it down. Bubble. I just forgot it. This is the downside. I basically have you at the New Yorker for another few years.

And then the brain is just really leaking out the ears. She was fantastic. You would remember her. Okay. It's called the Merleye fish. A fish with a transparent head filled with jelly. so that you can look up through its skull. Wow.

So this is the equivalent of a Grateful Dead movie. Yeah, I mean, let's go see the Grateful Dead. So do you work, do you ever write high? Sometimes. And is that, what's the result? It's totally, yeah. It's good. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I work exactly the same when I'm high as when I, I would never report high, but I do often. So good to know. Actually, that Weinstein piece that I wrote, the one that went really big, like right after the Weinstein case, I wrote that while I was stone because I was so stressed out that I couldn't get calm. I couldn't, like I was so upset personally. And it calmed me down the way half a glass of wine would. And then I just sat down and was able to write this very emotionally direct thing. And it helped.

Like it, it, yeah, sometimes also if I get a note back that's like, can you make this a little funnier? Add the funny. Yeah. Now, look, I think you are many fans. even already know that you're an extremely disciplined writer and reader. And yet you allow yourself to talk publicly about drug use and smoking weed. I feel a little guilty about that, though, you know? Why your mom get upset? No, because I'm conscious of the fact that I, you know, I've been able to smoke weed kind of with enthusiasm in public because I'm this very kind of benign-looking

young woman, you know, like nobody is going to, I have pretty much lived knowing that no one's going to arrest me for walking on the street smelling a little bit like weed if I'm tucking a joint in my pocket. And that, I feel a lot of guilt about that, but I also... Do you have any hesitation about legalization at all? Do you have any, or any hesitation about read whatsoever? Yeah, for sure. I mean, I do think that it is possible to have a, you know, I happen to not have a physically addictive tendencies in my constitution, which is really lucky. I, but I do think that actually where we're at, I mean, you see it with all those people that are getting sick from vaping. It's this transition period, like weed, if it was fully regulated, it's, you know, such.

an enormous tax base, and it's also the gray market where there are so many stores in California that are selling legal weed that actually are unlicensed, that's where it gets dangerous. I think that if we fully transition to a legal system, it'll be a lot better than what happens now. And what about music? Well, music is the best thing. I went to the vampire weekend show at MSG on Friday. Lots of, you know, lots of high bro. hugging each other. It was really lovely. But I was thinking about when that Tame Impala album, Currants, came out in 2015, and I saw them a couple of times at festivals, you know, the classic, like, it's sunset,

everyone's high, everyone's having a really good time. And there was this part halfway through, let it happen, and where it just, the song just starts vamping, and it sort of sticks. And I remember listening to it and just, like, you know, the sky's pink, and like, all of my friends were around me and we're all super stone. And it just felt like everything had frozen. Like we were just in this really, really, really good loop for, you know, forever. And I think that's the feeling that being high and listening to a really good song can give you. Like you, it makes so much space within the song and you can hear the math of it. And it's just,

yeah, it's, it felt good. Hearing the math of it is a great phrase. Yeah, you know what I mean? You know what I do. and it's that, yeah. I do know what you mean. Yeah. Let's leave it at that, shall we? Yeah. Gia, thanks for coming by. Thank you.

The New Yorker's Gia Tolentino on Broad City, David Attenborough's Blue Planet 2, and the band Tame Impala. Her new book is called Trick Mirror. I'm David Remnick, and that's it for today. I hope you enjoyed the show, and I hope you'll join us next week for my conversation with Senator Cory Booker.

See you then. The New Yorker Radio Hour is a co-exam. production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker. Our theme music was composed and performed by Merrill Garbus of Tuneiards, with additional music by Alexis Quadrado. This episode was produced by Alex Barrett, Emily Boutin, Avey Curio, Riannon Corby, Jill Duboff, Karen Frillman, Kalalia, David Krasnow, Caroline Lester, Louis Mitchell, and Stephen Valentino,

with help from Mung Faye Chen and Emily Mann. The New Yorker Radio Hour is supported in part by the Sharina Endowment Fund.