TrueLife - Etienne Fontan - Activist, Cannabis Pioneer, Combat Veteran

Episode Date: October 24, 2023

One on One Video Call W/George https://tidycal.com/georgepmonty/60-minute-meetingSupport the show:https://www.paypal.me/Truelifepodcast?locale.x=en_US🚨🚨Curious about the future of psychedelics? Imagine if Alan Watts started a secret society with Ram Dass and Hunter S. Thompson… now open the door. Use Promocode TRUELIFE for Get 25% off monthly or 30% off the annual plan For the first yearhttps://www.district216.com/Etienne is Vice President and Co-Owner of Berkeley Patients Group (BPG). BPG is the nation's oldest continuously operating medical cannabis dispensary, established in1999. For over two decades, Etienne has helped position BPG as a model medical cannabis dispensary, with a vision to lead the emerging industry as it expands, evolves, and becomes more professional. He has founded medical and recreational cannabis retail, cultivation, and processing facilities in Berkeley, Emeryville, Incline Village, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Reno, Sparks, and West Hollywood.Mr. Fontan has an extensive background as an engaged activist and public speaker seeking to make cannabis legal and safe. Starting in 1993, he was a director of the Cannabis Action Network and traveled through 47 U.S. states speaking at rallies, teach-ins, and rock & roll tours and reaching out to the general public on all cannabis-related issues. Mr. Fontan lobbied local, state, federal, and international governments for cannabis rights. He is an Army combat veteran of Desert Storm and served in the WV Army National Guard. He now lobbies nationally and internationally on veterans' behalf for the use of cannabis and natural medicines.In 2011, Mr. Fontan was invited by top medical cannabis researchers in the Netherlands to undergo training and tour the Medical Cannabis program run by the Dutch Government. While there, Mr. Fontan learned how to perform laboratory tests on medical cannabis and studied the supply logistics of the Dutch regulatory system. Mr. Fontan is a founding board member who served on the National Cannabis Industry Association (NCIA) Board of Directors from 2010 to 2020, including as Board Chair from 2012 to 2013.He is also a founder of the Veterans Action Council and sits on the advisory board for Battle Brothers Foundation.http://www.mybpg.com/http://www.mybpg.com/https://www.veteransactioncouncil.com/ One on One Video call W/George https://tidycal.com/georgepmonty/60-minute-meetingSupport the show:https://www.paypal.me/Truelifepodcast?locale.x=en_USCheck out our YouTube:https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLPzfOaFtA1hF8UhnuvOQnTgKcIYPI9Ni9&si=Jgg9ATGwzhzdmjkg

Darkness struck, a gut-punched theft, Sun ripped away, her health bereft. I roar at the void. This ain't just fate, a cosmic scam I spit my hate. The games rigged tight, shadows deal, blood on their hands, I'll never kneel. Yet in the rage, a crack ignites, occulted sparks cut through the nights. The scars my key, hermetic and stark. To see, to rise, I hunt in the dark, fumbling, fear. Hears through ruins maze, lights my war cry, born from the blaze.

The poem is Angels with Rifles. The track, I Am Sorrow, I Am Lust by Codex Serafini. Check out the entire song at the end of the cast. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to the True Life podcast. I hope everybody's having a beautiful day. Hope your weekend was fantastic. Hope you got to hang out with some people you love. Hope the sun was shining.

The birds are singing. I've got an incredible show for you today. Incredible guests. I'm going to get into it today. The one and only. Ladies and gentlemen, the one and only, let me start it off this way. Ladies and gentlemen, distinguished guests

and fellow enthusiasts of thought-provoking discussions, it is with the great pleasure that I introduce our guest of honor today. ATN Fontan is a remarkable individual whose journey has spanned the realms of activism, public service, and the ever-evolving world of cannabis. He holds the esteemed title of Vice President and co-owner of Berkeley Patients Group BPG, a pioneering institution in the medical cannabis landscape established in 1999. For over two decades,

he has dedicated himself to not only serving the needs of patients, but also paving the way for a responsible, legal, and safe cannabis industry. He has been at the forefront of shaping the industry as it expanded, evolved, and professionalized. His profound impact extends far beyond the walls of dispensaries, reaching into the realms of activism, advocacy, and international engagement. A true luminary in the cannabis movement, his journey has been nothing short of extraordinary. He began as a dedicated activist traveling 47 U.S. states, passionately speaking at rallies, teach-ins, and rock and roll tours. His tireless efforts reach the hearts and minds of people across the nation, driving the

conversation on cannabis rights. Intriguingly, his journey wheezed through the medical cannabis research landscape of the Netherlands, where he was invited by top researchers to explore the Dutch government's medical cannabis program. There he delved into the intricacies of laboratory tests on medical cannabis and the supply logistics of the Dutch regulatory system. His commitment to cannabis extends to veterans as he passionately lobbies for their right to access cannabis and natural medicines. His background as an Army combat veteran of Desert Storm, coupled with his service in the West Virginia Army National Guard, provides a unique perspective on the therapeutic

potential of cannabis for veterans. Moreover, his influence reaches the corridors of policy and industry leadership. He has served on the National Cannabis Industry Association, Board of Directors, and co-founded the Veterans Action Council, leaving an indelible mark on the cannabis movement and its social and economic impact. At the heart of Berkeley patients group's mission is the belief in holistic wellness, community development, and giving back. This is exemplified by their robust corporate giving program, which focuses on empowering, and serving the Bay Area community. Today, we have the privilege of delving into the mind and experiences of a true trailblazer,

an activist, a compassionate advocate for patients, and an inspiring figure in the cannabis industry. Please join me in welcoming him. How are you today, my friend? Hi, I am good, George. It's a beautiful morning here in sunny California. So thank you for the invite. It's wonderful to join you and humbling to be here. Well, thank you very much.

I was reading through the bio and just doing some research on all the things that you've accomplished. And I guess I can just jump into some questions. I think the bio was pretty good. And you're a fascinating individual. And I just kind of want to jump into this right here and ask you throughout your journey. Like you've had a really incredible journey on so many different fronts. Throughout that journey in the cannabis industry and activism, what are some of the most significant insights you've gained regarding the relationship between personal freedom? and the responsible cannabis use?

Early on, often I saw that cannabis crosses every socioeconomic barrier. How many things can do that besides oxygen, food, utility, you know what I'm saying? So it was rather fascinating because I came from it from, I grew up in very rural Louisiana. Anna. So ignorant is a light form of where I grew up in the sense of there was no access to cannabis. There was no discussion of it. I remember when I was young, some neighbors up the street asked me, do I know what pot is? And I was like, yeah, my mom cooks with that stuff. And they kind of laugh. I'm like, no, no, man. Do you know what a joint is? I'm like, yeah, the thing in between my elbow and my arm.

Right. So they immediately realized, get away from this kid. He's a square. So I had no idea, but it later on, I realized it was there. It was around. It's just I didn't have an understanding of it, nor I really have a need for it. I grew up in very much alcohol saturated Louisiana where when I grew up, it was still legal at 18. I was literally the last of the grandfather. 18 year olds to still go in and purchase at 18, go to a bar and drink, et cetera. And I left Louisiana due to their own troubling circumstances and touched base in West Virginia. And that's how I ended up going to the West Virginia National Guard. My father, who was the first blind lawyer in Louisiana, was working for an organization called the Job Accommodation Network in West Virginia at WVU. West Virginia University. And it was basically putting handicapped people prior to the internet in touch with technology, such as you were blind and you needed a braille fax machine. Well, where the hell did you go back then?

It wasn't in your yellow pages. So job accommodation network was a government clearinghouse specifically for that. So people could call no matter what disability you had and you could get in touch with the technology you needed and the access points, etc. So when I got, to, you know, West Virginia University, I couldn't afford to go to school. I was poor. So I joined the West Virginia Army National Guard to get an education and did that, got the GI Bill and one fortuitous day. I think it was October of 89. A very bombastic gentleman by the name of Jack Carrere happened to come to West Virginia University. And he had a little, you know, back then it was more of a combination of pamphlets. That was a book called The Emperor wears no clothes. And I purchased that.

And it blew my mind. I had a girlfriend break up with me in West Virginia because all I would do is go to parties and talk about this marijuana stuff. And I'd just take this book with me and show them logic and information. And I did my English 101 paper on it out of curiosity. And then, of course, I got gig because I can only find two periodicals at the time, high times magazine. and the emperor wears no clothes. And you had to have like five periodicals for, you know, a successful paper. And I challenged the professors like, you go down to the university library and you try to find a book on drugs, much less cannabis. That's actually available to you.

All of them have been chicked out since 1969. So there was nothing there. And so he agreed with me. And over time, I ended up leaving West Virginia because I, Um, went off to Desert Storm. I got activated for that, had to shut down my life, go off to war. And while I was at war, I sustained injuries and was exposed to nuclear biological and chemical weapons. And I found myself, feeling ill. And I started to, when I came back, uh, started to waste away. I had a wasting syndrome that they couldn't figure out what it was. It wasn't AIDS. It wasn't. anything that they could figure out, it just turns out that it was, you know, exposure. And when I would try to go to the VA and talk to them about my, I would use medical cannabis to start to gain an appetite, which it did. It stimulated my appetite. I ate. I got started to get

healthy. And then when I started to talk to the VA about my cannabis use, I was labeled a known drug user. Security was called and I was physically removed from four different VA facilities just for mentioning cannabis. This is 1991, 92, 93. So it was very much pre-21-215 and nobody really understood cannabis. They thought I was just trying to get high and that's all I was doing. But I realized something symbiotic was happening between the plant and I that had was quite significant. And I realized I was frustrated by making criminals out of my friends to get the medicine I needed. It just seemed stupid. And so I realized that, well, I'm my own caretaker and I'm going to have to take that risk.

And, you know, I got ripped off, robbed, you know, all the things that happened when you have to go to the back alleys, the bathrooms to do deals to try to find, you know, cannabis, much less. you know what kind of cannabis it is much less a choice of cannibai right you know so it's usually you what whatever they got you like it you like it you like it it doesn't work for you too fucking bad there's no reason there's no of that so i moved to california to be in a band i was a musician and i was fortunate at w at west virginia there was a lot of talented musicians and a friend of mine had moved out here prior and another friend was like come on let's go we'll form kind of a little super group in California and see where it takes us. That journey fell off real quick because the gentleman who moved out here to California

ended up with a heroin addiction. I came home one day and all my shit was took and except for one lamp and I just picked up a brand new high times. And I sat there in a corner just kind of crying, flipping through these high times, licking my wounds. and I realized that I went to this store and the guy literally just cut it right off the string and handed me the next month's issue, right? And as I was reading this high times, I realized all the dates and the articles were four to six months behind. And I light dawned on my head. Well, wait a second.

If this is all then as now, shit's happening right now that I should find. And fortuitously, the cannabis action now, network, which is a group of activists, Debbie Goldsbury and others who were working with Jack Herrera, had just moved from Kentucky out to California. And they had their first meeting. I was fortuitous to make it there. And when I was there, a gentleman by the name of Dr. Todd McAria, got up and spoke. And if you're unfamiliar with Dr. Todd McAria, he is a genius. Was a genius, wrote the medical marijuana papers, which was a compendium of government research from the 1800s to the 1960s regarding research of cannabis.

And at that meeting, I was like, I need to know you. And he was like, well, I don't have any Desert Storm Veterans. I should know you. And so he became my doctor. And he was the first one to write me a cannabis recommendation. So when I was with the Cannabis Action Network, they brought me on. I was a volunteer. And I went out initially on a 13th.

state tour with LV Muzica. Now, if you don't know who LV Muzica is, LV Muzica is one of a handful of people who sued the federal government and won the right for them to deliver her 300 joints in a tin once a month by the DEA. Right? So traveling around with this woman who was, again, she went blind and her one eye was safe. She had literally 12 operations in one eye.

eye that failed, right? But they saved her one eye and she used cannabis and it reduced the interocular pressure in her eye. It was recommended by the Baskin-Palmer Eye Institute. So these were no small names and these were no small realities that I realized that what I had been feeling and symbiotically and others that stated me that they had feeling there was some real truth to this medical cannabis. It wasn't just as getting high as everybody was suggesting. and we kind of pulled resources and challenges together because if we didn't, again, this is all pre-internet people, we didn't have access to knowledge of these types, much less individuals who had been through such experiences, sued the government for 12 years to win that right.

I couldn't even imagine that, all right? She had been busted as a patient and then realized that, you know what? the community came out and supported her, and she realized how much the support was there for her that she, you know, took it upon herself to sue the government. And the government grows the crappiest weed in Oxford, Mississippi that they still provide to one patient to this day of 300 pre-rolled joints in a 10. I literally have the first 10 from Robert Randall, who was patient zero, that the government issued to him back in October of 1970. So I realized that I was standing on the shoulders of some really incredible giants. I was in the Bay Area. So, of course, I worked with Dennis Perron.

The first rally I did in 93, he was the only activist who would come out and speak at my rally in Berkeley at People's Park. And, you know, he would then go on to write Proposition 215. I was fortunate to actually be in the house in Washington, D.C., when Jack and Dennis were literally arguing over who was going to run their initiative. I had previously run the two initiatives with Jack that had failed. The big problem is that it was a 17 page, no, it was 13 page initiative. And it called for reparations. And it was all kinds of chalk filled full of stuff that no one would green light.

You know what I'm saying? Yeah. So it took literally a handful of his veterans. You have to understand. Jack Carrere was a veteran. Dennis Perron was a veteran in the Air Force and the Ted offense. I was a combat veteran of Desert Storm. So, and another gentleman by the name of Richard Davis was also a veteran.

And we literally sat there and there's a picture of it. I can show you some time. And it's basically me sitting in between Jack and Dennis as they're arguing as we're convincing Jack to hold off on his initiative, which then Dennis would run his medical initiative. That, of course, became Proposition 215. I've inadvertently kind of been a Forrest Gump in this movement because they came in so young and militarily. And a lot of our leaders in the movement were military veterans. So they had a respect for my service and my dedication and what I had proven.

They allowed me not only a seat at the table. They helped nurture me. And it was impossible not to appreciate that. So when I came back to California, 99, after working for a hemp company, DC for three years. I used to import and export hemp from Eastern Europe for Ecolution Hemp Company. So I had a massive knowledge between medical, industrial, and personal use. So when I came back to California in 99, after being in D.C. for three years, a lot of my friends were now running dispensaries or the dispensaries that they had run were shut down. They were the original

seven in California, which was Dennis Perron, Jeff Jones. amongst others that the government forcefully shut them down, saying if you do not close by this particular date, we're going to kick in your doors and everybody's getting arrested. Everybody quietly closed their doors and walked away. Berkeley Patience Group was the first of the second generation. So once they closed down, we opened up. The former accountant and CFO for Oakland Cannabis Buyers Clippers Clippers Clippers,

Club founded Berkeley Patience Group because he saw the need and he was an AIDS patient. So he knew he had a death sentence already. So he already, as far as he was concerned, so he was unafraid and he was very brave and opening Berkeley Patients Group with Debbie Goldsbury and Don Duncan. At that time, I was a grower for Ed Rosenthal because I had come from the Canvas Action network and we had worked with ed and others um they needed people who were reliable and nobody knew who i was when i came back in 99 right i left in 95 so five years is a good enough time for people to forget me and i literally became the behind the scenes grower for jiff jones's

uh medical grow and um ed rosenthal's grow and richard lees grow uh from oxerdam university so i found myself really growing a lot of good quality weed but also doing a lot of the great thing working for Ed Rosenthal was that we had six different bro rooms in one facility and each room was a different experiment so if there was a experiment like he belonged to every um every botanical garden group etc so he got every white paper possible so such as one time we got he got a white paper saying um the Israelis grew hydroponically in socks the vegetables. We're going to grow,

we're going to go get a whole bunch of socks, pH neutralize them, and now we're going to do a drip setup. You know, so that's how it is. And, you know, we did. And so each, you know,

we did things like, you know, two different varietals, but eight different fertilizers to figure out which one grew the best, which one tastes the best, right?

And so doing things like that really helped give me a concentrated knowledge. of cannabis because I was taking it from beginning. I was also a clone producer. So we were pumping out 5,000 clones a week into the Bay Area. Wow. Through the dispensaries. That's what we would deliver to back in 99, 2000. Yeah, absolutely. And so, you know, we deliver a thousand clones to some, you know, Dennis's dispensaries and others, you know, because that's what they needed. So, you know, we just supplied the demand. And by pumping out quality genomes,

You have to understand we got those genetics then back to us in finished flower. We were self-reliant here in California prior to the change of 64 in 2018. Before that, it was reliant on us to have quality genetics from either seas or clones to give out to sell to people so that it would come back because we bought specifically from our patients. And literally, I had the pick of the best, of the best. We turned around 80% of what we saw at BPG because there was just so much good quality. But that journey took me on a kind of a little kink in 2007. I bought a cannabis. I inhaled it and I got an upper respiratory infection.

Okay. That was mind-blowing because I realized that we had a very extensive, what we called organoleptic testing. When in sense, what we looked at, we looked under a microscope, we looked at the size of the trichrome heads, whether they were milky, etc. So we had a real scientific methodology to how we followed to have our high-quality cannabis at Berkeley patients group. But that upper respiratory infection taught me that something slipped through and if it could get

to me, it could kill my cancer patients or AIDS patients. So that's when I started to reach out to places like the University of Mississippi to find out, hey, can we get your testing solutions? We want to actually start testing cannabis, and we don't know how to start. We don't know where the beginning point is. And they ever so politely said, in so many words, those who, if you are visually impaired, I show the middle finger because that was literally the kindest I could put it of how they treated us as well, as they were like, you're a felony central. We can't even talk to you, much less, you know, start exchanging data.

Yeah, fuck off, kids. So I realized that we were going to have to reinvent the wheel. So fortunately, I have friends like Dr. Lester Grinspoon and Ethan Rousseau and others that I was like, okay, I need to find, I need to find somebody who can do this. and I was pointed to a gentleman in the Netherlands by the name of Dr. Arnold Hauskamp and he came to the United States and he actually makes the testing solutions for the Dutch government for the Dutch medical marijuana program. So in 2008 and 2009, it took a while. We brought him to the United States for extended periods to work on this research. The challenge was I cannot take cannabis and put it into a laboratory. If I do so, that's a $10,000 fine per test to the laboratory.

Now, when you realize that gas chromatographs costs $100,000 and UVHPLCs upwards of a half a million dollars apiece, and most of them are all on loans, labs get very nervous when they actually have to deal with illegal substances. So what we were taught through Dr. Hossacomp was to create testing solutions. So we tried different, every type of what we thought was a stripper of the plant. And it turned out 100% alcohol was a trick. It pulls all the cannabinoids out, turpines, diterpenes, tri-terpenes, all that. So we had a method where we would grind it. put it into alcohol, shake it for a certain amount of time, use an alcohol, use a pipette,

pull it out, and then putting it into a vial, extracting it into there, and now it's a legal testing solution that can go into a laboratory. So we pioneered this back in 08 and 09 because the main thing about dispensaries in California is we had to act as non-profits. So we were doing well so I could use the profits and spend a million plus on the research that we were doing, which we worked with a company that was in Berkeley that did overrun testing for Novartis and Bear. We were dealing with real professional laboratory people. I had worked with Steep Hill and others, and unfortunately their standards, they wanted to go proprietary with the standards where we wanted open source when anyone could do it.

That's what everybody in the science community fights for. so that's as a lay scientist. I went to college for printmaking and lithography. So I'm an artist by nature. So I'm a lay scientist, but even I know the basis of science. And fortunately, I had like-minded people and we were able to not only nail THC, we found the secondary spike, which through Muschulam's research, we found was CBD. I think you may have heard of this thing.

It turned into a bastard stepchild that has run amok that every charlatan and snake oil salesmen to very good operators are having to navigate right now because, yeah, that Pandora box got opened and, oh, boy, it ran so fast and so far. And, you know, Project CBD and others, I credit for, you know, the research and the finding and putting that information out. So when we now had testing in California, we started coming out with that in 2009 in 2010, it had a significant shift. It showed us also how ignorant we were because now people were thinking and equating because there was no real education, unfortunately. And another dispensary ran with the testing before we figured out the ethics. okay well what do I mean by the ethics of the new testing of cannabis well the numbers of THC became kind of the arbitrary number now a high THC number became something that people desired

I think due to the causality of alcohol prohibition and thinking oh the more bang from my buck the higher the proof the more fucked up I am going to get etc etc and And what we saw was a great shakeout in California cannabis because what was great cannabis because of all the other effects were now kicked out by other dispensers because now you had to meet this threshold. If you didn't meet this 20 something percent or minimum 30 percent THC limit, then buy. You know, we don't want you. Go away.

So which was fortuitous for me because all that great cannabis of all those other. instances, the turpenes, di-turpines, and all the chemovars that we would now come to understand over time and with further testing, we realized that there was, well, I knew early on, because I had actually tried marinal back, you know, through the VA, et cetera. Now, not through the VA, I was trading cannabis to a Vietnam veteran who was getting marinal, and I had tried marinal, okay, the tens, the oranges, okay? And what I found is that THC wasn't, the thing. It wasn't working for me just as THC. We realized that there is a whole symbiotic relationship that was happening between the turpines and the ignition and the

THCA turning to THC. And why is that matter? Well, THCA, now my hand is the electron. There's an electron in THDA, CBDA that's constantly active, okay? And that's why your body can't necessarily uptake it or absorb it. And all it needs is a carbon to to just needs a carbon and then it'll stop and then it turns from THCA to THC and now your body can uptake it and now your body can have it and not only that it can be uptaken and you know five different organs seven different areas of the brain what science would teach us but it would take again more science and other states coming it becoming legal other states making testing mandatory. Now we've got states making terpen profiles mandatory. It was just in Pennsylvania

not too long ago and they actually list all their turpines, you know, whereas in California, they're voluntarily doing that nowadays. I'm also a judge for the Emerald Cup, one of the more prestigious competitions. And I judge the CO, the cartridge competition. So I have for the last seven years or almost eight years been doing that and they actually, their competition now, that tests. And if it fails, you can't be in the competition. So it shows how we have fostered through the decade plus. It's been 15 years since testing in the United States people. That's how recent this is. It was a handful of us that started. And fortunately, when we did, we also got the city of Berkeley to pass a law that the other dispensaries had to test their cannabis too.

Because what we're finding is when people would fail, they would just take the cannabis off and sell it to somebody else and then other people would get the unfortunate bad cannabis. They wouldn't know about it because there were unscrupulous people who would just looking for the cannabis to sell it was rejected by Berkeley patient's group. This shit looks great to me. I'll take it and sell it. Well, I don't understand the standards and the ethics that we had behind the standards because people's lives were at stake. I was a patient. I had, you know, and I'm forever a patient.

So my understanding of what works for me and what works for you is completely different, but I do know that science can help us understand what works for you and what works for me. And so we're understanding that now through the chem of our process, right? Not only there's, it's no longer this Indica Sativa understanding. Rob Clark and others helped us understand that that same genetic, because they literally gene map these plants, found that same genetic that was growing in the higher mountains as a quote unquote indica, was the same plant growing very loose and long in equatorial regions as a setiva.

And what we came to realize is that hemp is setiva. Well, we wear the sativas. We were smoking all different chemivar indicas from different regions, broadleaf or narrow leaf varietals. That is still being, science is still figuring out how to label cannabis because this whole indica setiva hybrid thing has been missed. Myth and myth information specifically that has no basis in science. Science has corrected it.

Unfortunately, the lie has put on its pants and is halfway wrong before the truth is put on its shoes. So that's the reality that we've struggled with since 2008-09 is, unfortunately, this Pandora escaped us. So we couldn't set the ethical standards or help the average patient or, or person understand that higher THC level doesn't necessarily matter. It's a symbiotic relationship of those 500 other chemicals in that plant in your ingestion process and whichever modality you choose because if you smoke it, onset, nine seconds. You eat it, it turns to a lexiahydroxymetabolite in your liver, which is more psychedelic.

So people don't even understand that concept or why that, happens or what happens during that change. I have because I've been a nerd. I've also watched people go from zero to uncomfortable really quick. We've also at Berkeley patients have had to have contraindications forms so that when people have negative experiences with cannabis, we could document them. We had doctors like Dr. Todd McGrhea early on, rest in peace, and then Dr. Amanda Reimann come through Berkeley patients group and use our medical place as a resource. for access and not only that to understand the access. Why are people using this? Okay. I noticed something in 2018 when legalization happened, so we were no longer seeing just one individual or their caregiver.

We were now seeing groups of people coming in because they all wanted to gawk and look at the products that they had been hearing about for 18 years, but could now experience. So we were having mothers and fathers and son and daughters bringing their parents and grandparents in. And it turns into a whole show and tell because people want to see and know what's happening. So it took a lot of education and time for people to come around to also see what products were available because prior to Prop 64, all the products were made by patients for patients. dietary restrictions be damned, etc. People created them because it didn't exist for them.

So they were the mom and pop who created it and then we bought it and we sold it. Unfortunately, when legalization or commercialization or overtaxation and overregulation happen, not really legalization, we saw quality drop. We saw 80% of the medical providers could not make that leap, either financially or getting things together. It just couldn't happen. And it's been a journey watching things start, you know, from the kind of the Wild West,

which really worked for California, to where they rained it in and changed cannabis to a point where it's overtax, overregulated. And the quality of cannabis isn't what it used to be because the people in charge don't understand what quality cannabis is. They didn't grow it. They didn't use it. They don't use it except maybe by an occasional pre-roll joint,

which is usually not that great a quality to begin with. And that works for them. Whereas quality cannabis people, such as here in California, they grew up on quality cannabis before you and I were born, right? So they know good quality cannabis. The big problem is that we have here in California is we're taking cannabis, growing it, overcommercialized, harmoniously, you know, cutting it, processing. And what's happening is oxygen, light, and heat are happening along the way. Big problem is you've got a package, you know, with cannabis in it, right?

Right. A little bud goes in it. The problem is the rest of that is oxygen. okay well what happens well oxygen eats crystals right what happens if you take a quarter pound of cannabis or cannabis and you throw it in a closet and you come back a month or two later and no longer smells as sexy or it's something happened to it it changed color well it's anaerobic decomposition if you look under crystals they've turned red because they've oxidized because oxygen's eating it okay so we've got oxygen eating the cannabis in this jar and this jar can sit around a distributor for

three, six, nine months to 12 months. Okay. And what's happening is every three months, if you tested it, that cannabis has changed. And the quality has gotten less. And it is no longer the chemical snapshot of when it was cut off the vine. It's almost a different product. So California is not refrigerating it, keeping it like an herb, right? Keeping it stable in a nice, humid environment.

they could go to something like what in other states are doing, such as using nitrogen and argon, 80% nitrogen, 20% argon in a container, neutralizes all the oxygen so there is no further degradation, okay? That's huge. That's why those, if you've ever seen those tuna cans of cannabis, they have NO2 in them, and that's why the cannabis is still solid quality, whereas compared to in a jar, that oxygen that's trapped is, literally eating that cannabis to death.

And what's happening is you're getting people who expect that fresh cannabis off the vine are getting stale product consistently here in California. And that's a problem because their expectation has caused them to stare and the overtaxation has called them to go back to their local dealer because they're getting what they expect in a fresh representation. So here in California, the, the, the Department of Cannabis Control can't even understand that. Okay, I do as a provider because all of our concentrates are kept in refrigerators, right?

So that, you know, including myself, I literally have a refrigerator here in my room where I keep my concentrations and flowers all the time because I don't want them to degrade. That's why, you know, I keep same with my seeds. I keep them in a cool, dark, dry area because you want to hide it from oxygen, you want to hide it from the light. and you want to hide it from heat. Okay, so those are all the things that will degrade the cannabis and leave you with barely a stem, no longer the, you know, frat that you want to see at the top of, you know,

the cannabis plant. So for me, it's been a journey of a gentleman who used to believe that I was burning brain cells when I was smoking cannabis, which of course was lies and misinformation spread in our smoking circles, to understanding the real soul. science and working with the top scientific minds. I've been on a YouTube channel called Hashchurch for seven or plus years with a bubble man who does the bubble bags. And we speak with the top experts in the world. We have Sam the skunk man who created skunk, A's and other

genetics. So I know these people. I visit them when I go to their countries. And look at their genetics and understand what these genetics do for me and my patients and our customer base. And so unfortunately, there's a real disconnect between the state's understanding of what cannabis should be and those cannabis connoisseurs who have dealt with cannabis and understand cannabis. And until that disassociation is corrected, we're still going to say, see many states, they'll do well, but they won't rain everybody in because the quality of

cannabis isn't to the expectation to the consumer. And until that is there, you know, you're going to see states like California continue to languish due to the overtaxation because they don't have to pay the taxes from their local dealer on top of that. And when you're talking 20 to 30 percent, you know, taxation on a product, that's a whole other level, you know. So for me, I've had to immerse myself in a whole other level of cannabis, not just being the individual dealer that I was or that we were. It became a responsibility that we understood that there is a medical need, there is a medical necessity. And going forward,

there needs to always be access and access points for high quality, fresh, very terpen-rich cannabis, because that is something that very many people respond to. Not everybody can handle cannabis. Some people are allergic to it. You've got people who it makes them nauseous. This is just the hypermeasis syndrome, which is new. We're seeing a large lot of population use cannabis.

On top of that, we're seeing also an unprecedented, you know, illegal. cannabis and the use of pesticides and herbicides is still rare. Fortunately, here in California, we test for all that. So when I, when I purchased from my dispensary, I know I'm getting clean cannabis. And unfortunately, people are still getting sick and dying because they're spiking that stuff with fentanyl nowadays. And that is, you know, terrifying in the aspect of just as a, you know, any type of casual drug user, a friend of mine's friend. and went to a party and these kids lost their parents because they decided at a party just to do each a line of Coke and didn't realize it was spiked with fentanyl.

They died. So this is why testing is so important and understanding what's in your cannabis is so important. And as we start understanding and getting into more chem of our types, one of the original things I understood when we were doing all of our original testing is a lot of our cannabis chemically looks the same. The THC numbers are just about the same. The difference is in the expressions through the Turpin, Turpene profiles. That in combinations with the THCs and the other CBGs, et cetera, that are present have an effect. And of course, since then, we've, during this entire parallel time, in the 90s, they discovered the endoc cannabinoid system that every mammal has, which means that we can, there's a reason we uptake cannabis. And there's a reason there's

no LD 50 for cannabis and why it won't kill us, right? Because there's no bindings along the spinal cord. Okay. So for that, that is huge why people can, you know, smoke cannabis and just get tired and go to sleep, get uncomfortable, however the situation is. You know, as the terminology, you know, cause your 1,500 pounds in 15 minutes to die from cannabis. And most likely you couldn't inhale that. You would have to fall on you, right? This is a joke that you used to tell people. But that's what they, these statistics would be around 1,500 pounds to inhale that in 15

minutes, which is illogical. And you would die from literally oxygen deprivation, right? This is, we also saw researchers from the other side start to come over to our sides, such as Tashkin when he was doing all the research on lungs and the government wanted everything negative on cannabis and he could come up with anything. He came to our side because he's like, it's cleaning up the lungs. Echo user, it's better for you. It's actually sometimes better than non-smokers. So that type of scientific understanding and seeing why and how they were hidden

and why their research was buried. And by being around these researchers and these other experts, I've come to these understandings and realizations. And now due to the public understanding now, because there's more, you now have colleges, you're teaching cannabis. You're now getting accreditation for doctors and nurses. I used to teach at Oakstown University acquisitions,

how to actually bring your cannabis to my dispensary, right? you know, check your turn signals, you know, make it in the trunk, you know, your, your lights are all working, you know, simple things, but, you know, make all the difference in the world, you know, it's, you know, so it's a journey for every patient. And if you haven't grown, you wouldn't have an expectation of what you should be getting. And that's why one of the great things that we teach We work with patients as growing is such growth therapy and growing cannabis while you're going through an illness or something traumatic is very helpful because of the therapy of taking something sustaining its life and bringing it to the expectation of what you're hoping for. Hopefully, right? Farming is not easy, right?

There's no songs about farming, right? There's only laments. So, you know, our whole society has gotten away from its agrarian, you know, realities. Because, I mean, 70 years ago, we used to grow 10% of what we use in a day's time, right? Now we're pretty much just extensively, you know, consumers. And so we are understanding to what the product expectation is, right? So if we don't know that, you know, what a fresh tomato is or tastes like, then that, you know, that canned tin tasting tomato is just fine for us, right? But if we have tasted a raw tomato that you've grown off the vine, right, the flavor, everything about it, just, ah, and how you grow it.

If you're growing it in regenerative, healthy soil, you know, it's a totally different experience. It's the same with cannabis, you know, commercially grown cannabis can be grown very well. I've done it, but there is nothing compared to outdoor sungrown, well-tilled, healthy soil. They've shown through testing that there are showing turpines and terpenes profiles they thought were extinct or don't exist through outdoor cannabis because of the expressions, you know, right? That ball a million miles away, right? You know, for some reason, can keep the nodal structure very tight on a plant outdoors. You grow indoors and you stretch that light too long. Next thing you know, you've got a foot, you know, nodal structure between your buds.

So, you know, there's mysteries to growing and growing in greenhouse and that still have application to this day and also show us what. the proper expressions of what cannabis can and can be. So, you know, if you have the availability, you get hold of genetics, grow them. One of the main things we're working on as we're working on these laws as they change is making sure people have access to home grow, right? Because the same way, you know, once you've grown cannabis, you have an expectation of what you want as opposed to what you will accept. and people are either going to become that can of Coca-Cola or they're going to create their own colas, right? Which, you know, growing outdoors and doing it

is very possible and doable depending on where you are in the United States. Some have narrower windows to grow in if you're in the more northern regions. However, you can still do it by, you know, vegging it inside and then taking it outside, you know, and then having, you know, nature do its thing. So cannabis is one of the most fascinating plants. It's the most research plan in the world.

However, we don't have a lot of research here in the United States. And the thing that I'm working on with the veterans is specifically around that is to really take cannabis in a direction so that we can have access at the VA level. Because the VA, of course, is more than happy to give us all the pills. I mean, right. you should see the amount of pills my brothers and sisters get. It's astronomical. And the majority of these have never been tested together. They have contraindications that they now have to take another pill for because of that one,

because it causes, you know, lockup. So now they need a stool softener. You know, it's the, the insanity of the pill treadmill that they put us on in the VA is terrifying because all, you know, For PTSD, they offer us two medications. Both those medications have suicidal ideation, you know. Cannabis, not so much. So, you know, this is why, you know, I formed the organization Veterans Action Council as a kind of a buddy check as we check in during COVID because we didn't want more of the veteran suicide situation to happen, right?

Because you've heard the term about 22 veterans a day commit suicide. It's a fluctuating number. It can be significantly higher or around there, you know, in any particular day. And the data and how that data is gathered is a whole other ethical discussion because they don't count certain autopsies. They don't count, you know, yeah, there's a lot of misinformation in the data points around, you know, the deaths, especially due to pharmaceuticals. So we want to provide alternatives. and we want to have access in a way that our friends in Canada do. They have a veterans access to cannabis program.

Have you heard of it? It's going to kind of blow your mind. It used to be I'm 100% disabled veteran now. Okay, it took me 32 years to get here. I literally got it last month. Wow. But as 100% disabled veteran in Canada, you had access to 10 grand.

a day. Now it's three grams a day. But you can now order it on your phone, right? And you can order it. The National Pharmacy has an app. So you can actually order on the app. And then not only that, you can pick your modality, such as I want a sucker, then I want a patch, and then I want a joint. As long as it adds up to three grams that day, they'll package it up, send it to you by the Canadian Postal Mail within 48 hours. Wow. Right. Yeah. And that is something that we're looking at here in the United States. Like, wow, that would be nice to have because the problem that we have with, you know, disabled veterans, you're a fixed income. You only get a certain amount of disability payment. And the cost of cannabis is too high. Always has been.

So that's one reason why we have charitable giving. We give away free cannabis to approximately 250 patients each week. and have since, you know, the inception of Berkeley patients group because the cost of cannabis is too high. You know, even at the access and access points that we have, we have created, you know, SB 34 here in California, which is a charitable giving and something we're trying to instill in other states where companies and distributors and manufacturers can donate cannabis to veterans organizations or organizations like myself. to donate to veterans that they then distribute free to each other. Okay. And that helps greatly supplement, you know, their access to cannabis because they get free cannabis. I mean, you go to some places, they're walking out with a grocery bag full of products

that are free that have been donated. And so we want to see other states do the same. You know, I do travel to Hawaii and I'm very fortunate in, you know, in Hawaii that they have reciprocation. So I can literally send a copy of my medical card in my, my ID, and for $40, I get a three-month recommendation in Hawaii so I can go to the dispensaries there when I go and I can get my cannabis. So I don't have to travel with my cannabis or deal with the stress of traveling with my

cannabis, but not every state does that, right? So these are also areas as we're seeing the change happen. we're realizing the depths of the levels that we have to look at to constantly take care of those that are being left behind, right? That those patients that can't afford high. I just found out I have staged for, you know, cancer just this week. What do I do? That happens all the time to us and has for the past, you know, 24 years. We turned 24 this month.

Okay. Congratulations. So, thank you. And that has shown us the constant need to always have compassion because we never know if today is somebody's first day or if it's their last day. And I always find out if it was their last day from unfortunately a relative. You know, that comes and says thanks. We appreciate what you did and what you do, you know. And those are the, yeah, that touches your soul.

and that keeps us driving forward to do and be the ethical integrity standards in the industry because unfortunately there's a lot of bad actors. But fortunately, due to the laws, the laws can make good actors via solid laws. And by having proper testing and proper distribution and access points, you know, it can be very successful depending on, you know, state, region, et cetera. So there's successes as well as there's failures, you know, and we teach people to look at California as an example. There's successes here, but look to our failures, you know, look to Washington's state

that had its failures in the sense of it dismantled its medical program, that inside us in California to really solidify medical cannabis in other states to do so as well. So we have to also continue to be good stewards in anticipation as the changes continue to happen. We need to still be there and be the critics to help people understand why things are working and what isn't working and why. Because no system is perfect yet. Right. I know that was your first question. That was beautiful, man.

There was so much there. It's beautiful. And that's why I wanted to have you want. I think you're a wealth of knowledge and you've seen it. And you've seen the maturation of not only the growing process, but the way in which we look at the medicine. Like it's fascinating to see it grow up. You know, when I was a young kid, everything was by name.

Oh, we're getting white widow, man. We're getting some Maui, wowie. And that's how you knew it. Like it doesn't really say anything about it. And then as you grow older, you start to have a more mature relationship. And you can see the TIRP profile and stuff like that. And maybe if we can see that, past relevant behavior is the best predictor of future behavior.

What do you see on the horizon as far as some of the challenges and maybe some of the good things that could be coming up? I see it just like any other, you know, vice. You know, I grew up again in a very rural area, and we could go to the local 7-Eleven or a little general and pick up a pint, a shot, you know, a little glass, a pint, or a fifth of any liquor, including Everclear. 190 proof right behind the counter anytime you can buy your cigarettes there same thing well eventually

you're going to have your cannabis there as well right the bodegas in new york are already fighting for it you know eventually you're going to get your Costco ounces right you're going to have your Costco lows mids and highs or eventually it's going to get there it's going to be a while don't get me wrong but eventually yeah i mean uh the majority of people are there's a shift that happens. People are shifting away from alcohol in some results and finding, you know, cannabis works for them. Better so because, again, you don't get the hangovers, you know, the health issues and, yeah, aging issues. You know, I look at people who are my age, who I went to school with who graduated in 87. And I mean, they look sometimes 10 years older than me because of

the alcohol and cigarettes and the other vices that are available that I don't imbibe in. I've seen, you know, I'm 54, not bad for 504. Looking great, my friend. You know, so, you know, credit cannabis and, you know, having a good life and a good wife and all that. So, you know, it's also a constant looking at and analyzing, staying on top of things, you know, joining things like the international science. of cannabinoid medicines and various education access points so that you understand where the

horizon is and what's coming over the horizon. Eventually, there will be no dispensaries. There's a time and a place for us, and we're dinosaurs. Here shortly, we're just going to be just another commodity sold elsewhere, right? You saw it just in a certain state. They're selling it now in pharmacies, right? So normalization is going to happen. We're going to see most likely schedule three coming down the pike in the next three to six months,

which is going to open up banking, which is going to see a significant change across the board and cannabis outright. We're seeing a nano-emotions. So you can actually buy drinks now where there's no longer, you know, know, the oil settles up at the top, right? It is now, you know, I'm selling Papsed seltzers in my dispensary. So they've figured out, they've got their scientists playing with this stuff now, that they can now make it so that it is now no longer saturated up here. It is now throughout the entire drink. And that takes science. Those are things we couldn't do because back then we were only doing butter, right, to extract or, or, um, or coconut oil, right? We had no idea of, you know, butane or CO2 extraction.

Now, CO2 extraction now gives you a flavorless. You no longer have the taste of, you know, that cannabis taste when, you know, I can't stand it, you know, that's all gone. So science and technology is going to take it further. And, you know, you're going to have, you know, specific Turpene profile edibles and drinks that aren't available now that in time, as more of these companies and these 3Ms are working with cannabis are going to find new ingestion methods that are better and easier, you know.

People like drinks. That's an easy access point for them. It's normal for them. Why? Alcohol. They're used to just drinking something and having a drink, cause them to have a euphoric experience. So you're seeing that currently being a large factor.

But I think you'll see transdermal patches. You'll see other modalities. You'll see cannabis with the effect without the high. You know, I see that for sure because people like, that's why they like CBD. They get the calmness and the effect, but without the high, the uncomfortable high. They're not used to the high. You're going to see more type three cannabises, right? Now, for those who don't know, type 1, cannabis is the high THC.

Type 2 is more of the hemp varietals, you know, the cross between the two. And the third is going to be the, you know, low THC, higher CBD. So you're going to see that because people realize these terpenes and turpene profiles, help you relax, help you chill. And they don't have the toxicity on your liver that alcohol does. And I think you're going to see a huge shift there in the sense of easier understanding because as we know, we grew up with smoking being normal, as in tobacco smoking, right? My parents smoked, your parents smoked.

We rode in cars, everybody smoked. We even grew up sneaking cigarettes and stuff like that. Well, there's been a whole shift in the mentality where tobacco is no longer as acceptable as it used to be. and cannabis is going to help kind of do that for alcohol in its sense is, you know, the access of these easier access points for people, such as, you know, when I wanted to get my mom to try cannabis, a cannabis tea, which was a 20% CBD to 1 THC was such an easy access point because it was tea. It was something she could. It was just hot water, brown liquid. Oh, that was easy for her to understand. was, oh, the epiphany came on. Oh, it wasn't me sitting around at 70 years old smoking a joint,

right? Because a lot of the older patients don't want to smoke. What we found is vaporization. We found onset. What I found in 2018, we would have lines around my, literally around the block. So I would literally take off my work badge and I would go to the back of the line and just kind of hang out and literally use a timer to see how long it took me to get to the frontal line again, right? But I would find myself engaging in talking with patients. And I find myself talking to a lot of older women who were post-retirement, having trouble sleeping, and they were looking for CBD-THC blends, usually in a vapor pen, etc. I started asking them, why are you trying this now?

Well, I'm having difficulty sleeping. I'm no longer being pissed at this as I, I no longer have a job, so I don't have to worry about that anymore. So I hear this works for people, so I want to try it and see if it works for me. And so what we have seen is we've seen an actual demographic shift. Our individuals went from around 35 to 40 to around 55 because older patients no longer had the fear, being of losing a job or their income, right? They have the time.

They have time. They've got poodles of time. And so they're trying cannabis and finding that it works for them as opposed to what they had become reliant on with alcohol, tobacco, or other vices, et cetera. So we're seeing demographic shifts, you know, from the younger generation that they're always fearful of is that they're actually more educated on cannabis and aren't necessarily as interested in cannabis as they used to be. or, you know, they find they're having medical issues or anxiety issues and they've heard about this cannabis thing and have tried it and they're now finding that it works for them. And now you've got anything from, you know, drinks to edibles to topicals to, you know, different modalities and different ingestion methodologies so that it more fits in with their

lifestyles, right? It's easier for them to take a, you know, a cannabis pen with them that is easy to fit in the pocket that they can hit because it's not a joint because if you smoke a joint you literally can smell like a joint that's your day when i was a kid in louisiana the cops would pull us over and when we would get pulled over they would ask to smell our fingers i didn't i have a clue why but now i do because kids were smoking roaches and they would smell the cannabis on their hands and so that's kids used to go off into the the sugar cane fields where i grew up in louisiana in rural Louisiana there in St. Mary Parish.

And that's, you know, what they would do. Because once the sugar cane, it's like, you know, going out into a cornfield. It's so high people can't see you. When you're in there, people would take their dates and all kinds of stuff. But, yeah, people would go out and get high because it was safe. They wouldn't get caught because, you know, you get caught in Louisiana. That's real time, real jail time, you know. I mean, prison time, not your kind little slap on the wrist go about your fucking day

with a ticket kind of shit. So, you know, growing up with that type of prohibition, fear, misinformation, and fear-mongering, you're going to, you've seen shifts. You've seen shifts in police departments. You've seen dogs retired. Dogs are no longer even being trained at the federal level on cannabis. They're trained for bombs and other drugs, you know, except that, you know, they do it at the post office and others. Don't get me wrong. But for the most part, most police dogs in least, legal states, they had to retire cannabis sent to dogs because they're moot. You know, I've had, I've had people tell me that when they're pulled over here in California, state troopers, sheriffs, et cetera, say, I'd be surprised if you didn't have cannabis in your car

here in California now. So what used to be their main entry point to harass arrest is gone. And so they have to rely on, you know, real, you know, real things as opposed to you know, the low hanging fruit cannabis people used to be. They're now held to a higher standard and also know the higher standards and are aware of cannabis and are very helpful regarding it. I was fortunate to open up a series of dispensaries in Nevada. And Inclined Village, Nevada is a very exclusive, very hoity-to-to-dy area.

And literally had two organizations created and formed. against us coming in and doing our dispensary. So we created an Operation Charm and Disarm, where we basically hosted people, hosted haters, had them come in. We had numerous show and tells where we basically had people come in and, you know, here, take a look at the dispensary. It's not some scary basement. We're bringing you in to sling drugs, you know.

And so the first meeting, we actually had. the sheriff for the county. Okay. Now, you know how empowering that is as a cannabis dealer to have your local sheriff show up and say to a room full of people. Hi, your state passed this law. These people won the lottery for your area. So you can hate it all you want, but you already approved this. These are the good actors.

I'm here to tell you, these are the good actors. So, you know, trust me, you know how bizarre that was for me to say that's crazy. Experience after cops sipping my finger as a kid. Now I've got literally the head, the lead sheriff up here selling, this is your pot dealer. Deal with them, okay? You're going to like him and you're going to deal with it. And, you know, it turns out both organizations disintegrated and one of the heads of those organizations was the first person to purchase at our dispensary. So by engaging your community, by challenging yourself to educate them, you can change them.

Because all it is is fear. They're afraid. They don't understand. And if you can bring them in and show them, this is what this is. This is what this looks like. And they see a very well-lit, you know, copper patinas and very professional-looking areas, very wonderful local wood and all this stuff. So it changes their mind. They realize, oh, wow, this isn't some crazy drug deal or something that happened to me back in the day, which, you know, everybody has their perceptions, fears.

Most of that has been projected on television, right? So, you know, the fearmongery has been there since we were knee high to a grasshopper. So we're also seeing education on television. We're seeing television shows about medical cannabis. We saw some, you know, decade ago, you know, where they were, you know, the main character gets something and has to get cannabis to somebody because they're ill. And it's, you saw a shift in the dynamics and the fear mongering, which was now the main vessel, we're now showing compassion and helping people understand the compassion that we were dealing with, right?

We were risking our freedoms back in the day, you know. We used to originally go through for the first decade. We had raid drills every day in anticipation that we were going to get our doors kicked in and, you know, handcuffed and, you know, etc. So we had signs. We had signs stashed. We had phone circles so that everybody could call. And if anything happened, literally hundreds of people in signs would show up within moments, which, you know, completely disarmed the police. You know, they didn't like these types of negative response.

Why are you talking about it's negatively in the media? You know, oh, because you're assholes, you know, and this is why. And, you know, they came to realize, oh, shit, we are being assholes. I mean, we're enforcing the laws, but, you know, we're being assholes about it, you know. So we saw shifts in, you know, my police can talk to me. I can talk to my police. And not only that in Berkeley, we found out after the fact that the police chief changed and made a whole series of cannabis. rulings because his mother had died of cancer and she had used cannabis and he saw the respect that needed to walk along with it.

So he put out those directives to his police department. You know, Jeff Jones early on with the Oakland Cannabis Buyers Club would go down to the Oakland Police Academy with his lawyer and a mature plant and a little plant in boxes. and then literally go in front and educate the police there at the academy. If you walk into somebody's house and you see this, this, and this, and you see this note on the wall, you walk away because that is a legal medical cannabis. This is what it should look like and the note should look like this. And over time, guess what? Cops would go in, find cannabis, find all the right things.

They'd find the notes on the wall and the plants and how they should look and they would walk away, you know. a gentleman told me he's like yeah they came and busted my girlfriend for prostitution at my house and left all my plants whereas in the past he would have actually been arrested with the plants and she would have gone off for a

prostitution and he would have been arrested for the cannabis but again because of the shift and us actively engaging the police right going into their you know police academy with literally plants to educate them so that you know over time

over the years, those hateful cops around cannabis were now soft, educated, now engaging the patient to ask the patient, okay, are you a patient? Okay, it says you're a patient here. Okay, all right. I'm not trying to stress you out. I understand your situation. We're here to deal with this other situation, right? So what became the low-hanging fruit now became a shift in dynamics by our active participation.

So eternal vigilance is the price of liberty, right? So just because the law has changed doesn't mean you like how the law has changed. California changed in 2018 but didn't allow for charitable giving. So we had to find places to buy for stuff for a penny or buy the cannabis to continue to give to our people until we passed SB 34 here in California. Right. And then we had that charitable giving. Well, that sunsets next year. Okay, so what we're now, we're organizing currently in California so that we can make SB 34 permanent.

And we will. I mean, we're going to lobby that when it's going to happen. So, but this is what we do, right? We are active participants, such as the Veterans Action Council and Berkeley Patients Group. We've been very active in changing laws and changing history. Give you a quick, well, it's not so quick. Yeah, please. Berkeley Patients Group wanted our business permit, right, that goes in the wall, right? Originally, when we went in California and Berkeley, we could only get a miscellaneous use sellers permit, right?

And they're like, well, you have to tell us what your miscellaneous use is. We're selling cannabis. Miscellaneous enough for us. And so they gave us our initial permit, right? Well, in 2002, 2003, we wanted an actual cannabis permit. The city made us jump through hoops. And every time we jump through hoops, they wouldn't do it. So at the advice of one of our lawyers, James Anthony, Hawaiian, native Hawaiian.

Nice. And he basically said, let's do an initiative. And we did an initiative. We got the initiative on the ballot. Back then it was Measure R. Okay. Measure R was back in 2004. It lost by less than 1% of the vote.

So if it's less than 1% of the vote, you can pay for a recount. We paid three dispensaries in Berkeley, all paid for the recount. It was $30,000 that we had to come up within the next day, which we all fit in equally and made it happen. This was back in the whole hanging Chad's thing. So literally we're going through the city was like, oh, this is a Berkeley student, so they're transient, throws it out. It turned into just a big brouhaha. But at the crux of the thing was we wanted to look inside the Die Bold voting machines. And Die Bold and Alameda said, imagine that.

I know, right? You can look inside the machine those were downloaded into. You have no right to look inside those machines. Well, we were called by some lawyers out of Florida who said, hey, we're election lawyers. You have the perfect storm. Can we take your case and run with it? Lawyers, pro bono, taking case. Tadda! Go for it. Well, it took four years and at the end of it, I kid you not, the state of California, I mean, pardon me, Alameda County, nor Diebold could come up with the 420 voting

machines. They disappeared. DiBole wouldn't say if they came and got them. Alameda wouldn't say if they sent them. They wouldn't say anything. So the judge said, well, since y'all ain't telling me shit, these guys win. Their stuff goes back on the ballot. And the next election, which was, this was now 2000. This is early 2008. So now it goes on to the ballot. And so in 2008, it went on to the ballot. and we won by 64% of the vote. And that's how we ended up getting our freaking business permit. It took us five years and, you know, a federal court case, and we won that. And then a couple of years later, the federal government came to us and tried to forcefully

evict us from our location, of which they did. We closed down, moved right next door, stayed open as a delivery service, found a new location within six months. and in December of 2012, after closing in May, the location, we reopened in a new location that was, we were originally gone after by the federal government for being within a thousand feet of a school. It turns out that if you walked it, it was well over a thousand feet and it was a private French school. But if you do it as the crow flies, property line, property line, oh, it was 984 feet. Well, the French school is like, we don't care. these guys have had we have had no issues regardless the federal government got us to shut down on may

and then December we acted then as a delivery service so we stayed continuously operating then in December of that year we reopened in our new location and then six months later the federal government came after us to forcefully evict us saying we were within a thousand feet of a daycare center And so we took them to court because the laws do not say daycare centers or preschool. It says K through 12, right? So lawyers and everybody said, kid, you're going to lose. You should just throw in the towel. We're like, fuck you, no way.

So, well, inadvertently, my friend, going back in history again here, because this is all going to have a tie in together. Our friend at Rosethal got busted in 2002. and when he was busted, he was sentenced to a year in jail. He ended up having a second case of which I was one of the recalcitrant seven. I was the first to refuse to testify in federal court so that he would not cop a federal charge. Okay. So Ed Rosenthal's case was one here in California that showed that the government could no longer get a conviction, right, in California.

But inadvertently, while going in the elevator up to go see our friend, Ed Rosenthal, our friends decided that we need to start an organization by patients for patients. And that's when we started an organization called the Americans for Safe Access. You may have heard of it. And we wanted a cannabis-specific patient organization. And out of that, they created a law called, well, back to that. was the Roerbacker amendment, right? It failed eight different times. But what the Roerbacker FAR now the Blumenauer FAR amendment basically stated that the federal government could not spend

taxpayers money going into states where there's legal medical cannabis and prosecute people. Well, that finally passed, right? And inadvertently, by the time my case came around and in 20, You know, they started in 2012 and 2016. Well, it actually started in 2011. But in 2016, the government finally threw in the towel because the now FAR amendment, you know, the Blumenauer FAR amendment basically stated they could not send lawyers into prosecuting. So the government had to throw in the towel. And they basically, they offered us limited immunity. and we slid it back over the table and said,

we're going to take full immunity. And they gave me full immunity. And on our birthday, October 31st in 2016, I held up while wearing my Scooby-Doo outfit by full immunity and the dropping of the case by the federal government. So inadvertently, by decades plus earlier, planting the tree of American for Safe Access, years later, the shade of that tree would protect me.

Right? Yeah. Yeah. Beyond humbling on so many levels, right? So it shows you to, you know, if you do the right things, they can sometimes turn out the right way. And all my lawyers told me we would lose the case. And we ended up winning because of that.

And yeah, trust me, mind blown. And that was lots of lawyers, lots of money. and fortunately the government allowed us to stay open. Otherwise, you know, we would have lost the ability to pay our lawyers to do so. So we've been at the forefront. So when the law changed for the Diebold situation for our business permit, we inadvertently won the right for every American to look inside every voting machine forever. That's our employees, Mike Goodbar and Donald Colbert, rest in peace,

were the plaintiffs who won that case for you and every American. So you have the right to look inside every voting machine just because a couple of fucking pot dealers just won their goddamn business permit legally. How you like them apples? I love them. They sound like green apples to me. Oh, it's tasty.

It's a tastiest fruit you'll ever bite into, my friend. There's nothing like victory at the federal level because you've now set precedents for other Americans forever. when we beat them at this case, guess what? They're not going into these other states and doing the same thing. They can't prosecute people. So we've become, by being steadfast and being the pioneers, yeah, you take a lot of spears and arrows in you, don't get me wrong,

but you eventually are called pioneers. We were called crazy back then. Right. But now 24 years down the line, you know, that's why not only, was I part of the NCAA, I was one of the founders of the National Cannabis Industries Association as well, because we saw the need for banking as well as the need for getting rid of 280E, which will also be dying when the rescheduling happens because currently we are the biggest low-hanging fruit for the federal government. They make nearly $5 billion a year off of 280E.

5B. That's with a B people, billion. Okay. So, I mean, myself, I've been hit for, you know, multiple million dollars, which I'm still in the settlement phase of currently, you know. Not only that, my company did the, there was a rebate that was allowed, right, that it gave you a credit. It was a emergency retention credit by the federal government that if you have certain amount of employees that give you this tax break, right well i did that i filed that and the irs stole it right from under us did not send it to us because oh you owe us that money so we're just going to take that so they literally took our emergency retention credits that we should have gotten for keeping my business open during covid they literally

stole that as part of the tax payment already so that happened to me you know just a couple months ago. So the unfortunately, the indignities are going to continue. I am caught in the last swing of the dragon's tail while it dies. And, you know, I'm in the offer and compromise and settlement phase

right now and hopefully they'll accept my offer and because 280 is about to die. They know that. I know that. The writing is on the wall because once it's out of Schedule 1, it's no longer on our dispensary's head. And

unfortunately it's a very huge sort of Damocles up there that is all over every dispensary and almost every dispensary you know has to do and deal with their taxes around the 280E and so quick lesson for those who don't know what 280 is it was a tax basically it's a tax of 70 plus percent that the government instills on Schedule 1 drug dealers etc it happened in the 80s a drug dealer wrote off his cocaine empire by his airplane, his, you know, pilots, flight time, all that stuff, right? Pissed off some senator and they created this 280E tax thing. And unfortunately, they have used this against every dispensary to taxes over 70%. And it goes back years, right? They hit me back in 2016, 2017, a couple years ago. Well, they found 2016. They found something that led to 2017.

So they decided to gouse me for 2017 too. So I'm not the only dispensary. Almost everyone has gone through it. And it's part of being a leader in this. You get it all. And of course, it just inadvertently, I got hit with 280E one year and one day after beating the federal government. You know what I'm saying? So, you know, they have ways of making you suffer when you tread upon them after they've tried to successfully heal you out.

and they realize that your cockroach that won't die, then they try to throw every raid and poison at you. And unfortunately, for them, it's not working. We're still here. We're going to continue to do what we do because we're by-patients, four patients. So we have a lot of patience. Well played.

It's fascinating. I love the fighting spirit, you know, and I think that on some level, it's something that was in, ingrained in so many of us when we were young. Like you stand up for what's right. And if it's not, you fight for it. You know, because it's the right thing to do.

Right. My mom actually was my example. My brother was born without eyeballs. Very blind. Blind and autistic. And the state of Louisiana was supposed to pay for travel from the child's house to the state school, which is in Baton Rouge. Well, that was a three and a half hour drive each way for us.

where we lived in rural Louisiana. You have to go through all these small 10 mile per hour towns across bayous because we live south of Baton Rouge. So it's all bridges and stuff all the way until Baton Rouge. So in 1978, my mom decided to sue the state of Louisiana. You also started an organization called the American Council for Blind Parents. There was no organization for, hi, you just had a child that was born blind. You know, there was no clearinghouse of information.

There was no one to call, like it, lump it. That's how it was. So she started this organization, and it quickly grew within 40 countries in every state within a year, right? Because blindness, unfortunately, is everywhere. And we got invited to the two different blind conventions. There's a Republican and a Democrat. So there's a American Council for the Blind and the other one, Democrat Council for the Blind. or something like that.

So, you know, there were multiple factions. So we found ourselves going to, you know, conventions every year, multiple ones. Because blindness is so inherent. My mom's organization was really getting things going. But people were also fascinated by the case that she had against the state of Louisiana because the state of Louisiana was basically refusing to fund it at the budget level. So it was never funded. And so we received death threats, all kinds of nasty phone calls that I would pick up and traumatize me at a very early age, you know, of people saying, you know, insert how they're going to kill my mother and my brother and for, you know, going against the state.

And yeah. And what we also found is that all the parents and relatives of the schools of the deaf and the blind who happened to be right next to each other were quite strong and built a coalition. And over time, we won the case. My mom's case won. And by the time I was a junior in high school, she started this when I was in grade school, the bus came to the end of the cul-de-sac that we lived on out in Sugar King. country and every kid who is deaf or blind now had access. So my mom was my example that you have to fight for what you need, right? She could not deal with three and a half hours. You have to understand school for the deaf and school for the blind is during the week. So on a Friday, you go pick up your

kid for the weekend. So on a Friday, you have to drive three and a half hours up and three and a half hours back. Sunday, you got to drive him back to school to be in his dorm. So that's three and a hour's up, three and a half hours back. That's 14 hours of your weekend. Gone, right? That's just transporting child to and from. So early memories of me doing my homework in the car, getting to, you know, Lafayette and then going to Mr. Gaddy's pizza and then, you know, falling asleep on the way home, you know, that was normal childhood for me, right? Whereas as now it's no longer a thought for many people because my mom made the sacrifice, took it on the chin, did what was right for the greater good.

And yeah, it was a slog through the swamp, but she won. So it taught me that, you know, you have to fight for what you want and what you believe for. even if you think it should be right and everybody else should be right, it doesn't mean it's going to happen. And so that example was, you know, further instilled in me in the military where they taught me how to fight, but they never taught me how to stop fighting, right? So it became very instilled early to fight for what was right.

And then I found my category, which was cannabis, and I fought with it for every inch of my freedom. and have won my existence out of it. So, you know, determination, sticking to your beliefs, even when everyone doubts you, is sometimes the price you have to make to be here. That's, man, that's one of the most inspirational quotes I've heard. Thank you for that.

I wish more people. And you know what? I think when people do it, like hearing your story today and hearing other people's story, have fought and stood against the odds and become a better person, not only for themselves, but for so many people behind them. That's the pebble in the pond and it radiates outwards. And more people can then hear that story and hold that story close to their heart and become

part of the story in a way. It's contagious, I think. Oh, changing history is quite addictive. Once you've done it, you enjoy doing it. And that's why we lobby. One of the things VAC is doing is we're not only lobbying at the federal level for access. we're currently working at the United Nations. We're working on adult legal access by 2029,

so people will stop being executed for cannabis. Multiple people were executed in Singapore this year and didn't even touch the fucking plant. So I've been under the mentorship of Michael Crowitz, who has been at the UN since 97, when he told Jack Carrera and Dennis, I'm off to find out what we can do for the movement. And he is an Air Force veteran

and one of our people in the Veterans Action Council, and he has guided us and educated us as we work for the past three years at the UN. So we do side events because we have people like, if you've ever heard of a gentleman by the name of Kevin Sabat, he is a massive prohibitionist, and he started off originally as a speechwriter for Obama. And then he basically got into the Office of National Drug Control Policy, and has been a boil on the pus of an ass ever since,

and has continued to reshape and reshift his focus, literally stealing DPA material in shifting it just slightly for his own, literally same font, same pictures, everything. And the problem is, is that this gentleman is being heard basically solo at the UN level. And countries like China, Indonesia, Pakistan, Singapore, who want to continue to execute people, China, etc., all are using his talking points. So we're having side offense, which are educational events at the UN in between sessions, where we're actually educating them on the positives of cannabis. We're working with a coalition of countries from Spain, France, South Africa, Germany, among others. to flip this law because Michael and others, they were successful in getting medical cannabis taken out of the most dangerous drug category in December of 2020, which is why you're seeing so many other countries now have medical cannabis because it's legal around the world.

We are currently challenging via a FOIA request, the U.S. Attorney General's office, because they have actually rescheduling. And actually they reschedule all the time because there's a line in the treaty. Each year in the CND, the Narcotics and Drugs Congress that meets in Vienna in March, which will be there again this year. They basically put out a list of drugs that are banned each year, okay, that are considered Schedule 4, which is our schedule 4, which is our schedule. Schedule 1. And so each year, they're made a different schedule. And so the Attorney General then, at his own discretion via this treaty, then changes. Okay. So this year, there are about five meth analogs and one synthetic THC that was made illegal at the international level. Well, all the U.S. attorney general goes is just goes and puts put them in their perspective scheduling number.

So currently, your attorney general, Merrick Garland, can literally change scheduling of cannabis right now and has actually been requested. And so we're trying to find out what happened to our four-year request as well as we have another four-year request with Representative Nancy Mace for all the VHA data regarding cannabis since 2010. Michael Crowitz and other veteran leaders got the VA at the bottom of their forms that say if you discuss medical cannabis with your physician, there's a checkbox. Well, we asked for that data. And we just got back after a year and a half, just last week, we got back the government saying, we don't have any data. We don't have any of that.

So right now, we're about to spearhead a new head up their ass campaign. We're going to really use Representative Mace and other experts to now petition and ask what has happened to this data. Why do we have it? Why did we ask for this data? Because we started, as VA people, we started to see data coming out about cannabis. And we're like, well, there must be data points somewhere. Okay. We'll give us the data points.

We've got no data. Well, how do you have data points coming out, but no data? stay tuned people this one's going to be fun as well as in hopefully in 2029 we'll make it legal worldwide and you know check back with me uh well check back in april and i'll let you know it can let you know what happened um on the ground there because we'll be there in vienna for the week of the cndi specifically uh the dates haven't been released yet um we'll probably get those dates in December when we meet with the Justice Department and others, when they'll kind of give us what they're going to be speaking out and toward. So yeah, we as activists and as veterans

are meeting as dignitaries and as outside observers at the UN and are meeting with countries and educating them because we're past here in the United States. Now we want to affect change worldwide. And if we can stop people being executed for cannabis worldwide, I can feel a lot better about myself. And my other activist friends do so too, because it is heinous to think that for what I do and have done daily for years and the hundreds of thousands of tons of cannabis

that I have sold over the decades would have gotten me executed decades ago. And I don't want people to ever have to continue to deal with that, which unfortunately people still are. And next year, it's going to still have. And the next year after that, it's going to still happen. And hopefully the year after that, it's going to stop. So we're going to work on that.

So, yeah, it's not easy. But, you know, we're driven as activists. You know, I was given five years to live back in 1991 because of the wasting syndrome. They didn't know I had. They just didn't see me living. And so ever since then, every day is kind of gravy, right? Once you survive, battle, every day is gravy. And you, you, nothing that teaches you peace quite like war.

And nothing spurs change like being part of change. So get off your asses, participate, find local organizations or something that you believe in, and do something to help someone, you know. As the Dalai Lama said, live your life right early so that later you can enjoy it a second time. 24 years ago, they were calling us crazy. You're going to get arrested. Lawyers said, don't document anything, all that other stuff that we ignored them and said,

no, we're going to show people that we're doing it the right way and that we were trying to do it the right way, that we're not trying to smuggle money, that we're doing everything above board. And look, what can happen. Change can happen. It started off when I got into this. There were no legal states. there was no medical states, and now there's 40 plus medical states and 20 plus recreational states.

So it went from, it's never going to happen in your lifetime kid, is what they told me in 1992, 93, to when's it coming to my state? When's it going to be federally legal? And now when is it going to be internationally legal? Well, stay tuned, hopefully by 2029, if not by 2034, because it's in every five-year kind of process at the UN level. There's a 2024 is what we're going to be reading. They're going to giving us the updates on the net last five years. And we're going to be presenting to them in March of this year, our next five-year plan where it is actually going to be legal in the end. and the WHO sees it and the other organizations understand it.

And we just have to walk the walk and be the good stewards. And next thing you know, there'll be other places in the world for you to go and access your cannabis. Hopefully. Yeah. You know, it brings to the question. I talk to a lot of people in the world of psychedelics, especially psilocybin. And it seems that cannabis has sort of paved the way for psilocybin in a lot of the states that are now finding ways to use it for PTSD. And I'm just wondering with all your background, what are your thoughts on some of the parallels between the two industries?

And are they going to face the same challenges? Or are they different animals? Or what do you think? Medical is always going to be its own animal because there always needs to, there is an expectation of a medical product or program that has to be of a higher ethical standard. End of story. It has to be pure. It has to be tested. It has to be what it is.

can't not be what it isn't, right? So those are crucial pieces of the puzzle that have to always be in place. Also, the availability for people to use it in hospitals, availability for people to, in the future, to have nursing homes where you can have holistic places for you to pass by being able to use psychedelics as well as, you know, cannabis as well. You know, we've found in the veteran community that cannabis is quite the palliative. Superb as a palliative. Okay. However, if we want to get to the deeper parts of our healing, psychedelics are key to it.

Okay. And we, I have self-found that out. I've done more than a hundred acid trips myself and well as I enjoy psychedelic mushrooms every six months to help stay away the chronic depression that comes with the various realities of living in this existence, not to mention the added traumas that I have had an experience from, you know, pre-war to during war to being in the drug war. I've taken more hits in the drug war and been in more federal cases in the drug war than ever so, you know, prior. So those are all stresses and stressors that fortunately cannabis has helped and assisted me in, you know,

lowering my blood pressure, keeping me more than anything able to sleep, right? You know, that is one of the most important things. I watched a friend of mine go through a federal case and he wasn't allowed cannabis and he couldn't sleep. And the lack of sleep literally drove him insane, you know. And the main thing that I had during my federal cases is I had access to good cannabis and I kept a consistent regime. So I go to sleep at a certain time and I wake up.

at a certain time and do the things that I need to do. And by keeping those and having solid sleep beyond the most important thing. And cannabis and others help and assist that. I have severe sleep at me. So I have to sleep with a machine to assist me breathe at night. Okay. To release the stress on my heart that the, you know, the 40 episodes I would have an hour, you know, would affect. So real science and real medicine have their place in our everyday lives.

There are needs for medications. However, oh, hello, who are you? That's my cat chairman meow. Oh, chairman. Yeah, well, hello chairman. And as he jumps to the chair. Yeah, right. So, you know, cannabis, you know, recreationally, I think for people, there will always be a place for. And I think that, as Dennis Peron said, all cannabis use is medicinal because as people find, oh, the stresses of reality and they're using it to relax, well, that's medical. You know, that is really, you know, it goes past the psychological there, which is also very helpful on top of that. because that's what I found is what cannabis helped me deal with the stress. Much as it didn't allow my mind to keep recirculating on.

It allowed me to get into other things and to breathe into life. And fortunately, I have lots of hobbies and things. So I would embrace those and do things that I love to do. You know, growing cannabis and growing cannabis two and four medical patients was, again, a higher purpose. And so what we have found for us in our group and our PTSD, our post-traumatic stress is helping others selflessly, inadvertently helps ourselves and relieves our PTSD because now we have a purpose, right? Because part of PTSD is we feel lost. We feel without purpose. But by working with others and actively working for change together, because our Veterans Action Council, we're all volunteers, we're all equal.

There is no, there's no pay, there's no dues. We didn't want money and we didn't want hierarchy. We wanted to be equals. And we found that worked very well for us because as a buddy check, we realized that we had very strong rolodexes. So we started working together. And next thing you know, in the past year, we've lobbied Capitol Hill twice, you know, working past the research area.

We were working, asking for a voucher system here in America so that we could subsidize our cannabis access, right? We also want access to our Second Amendment rights because, you know, not only are we veterans, we are probably some of the most well-trained know-how to respectfully handle weapons better than everyone, you know, needless to say, I've handled everything from, you know, squirt gun all the way to heavy artillery, you know, it gives you a healthy respect along the way of, you know, arms and what those are. But, you know, as a cannabis patient, currently I can't own a weapon, you know. And so currently we have two cases that are before the Supreme Court that within the

six months could open it up finally because there was a previous Supreme Court ruling where they stated that just because you do something illegal, it should not take away your rights, right? Such as, you know, using cannabis should not be a usurper of your Second Amendment rights. So hopefully between those two cases, we're going to see some real change come down the pipe, you know, even for, you know, that access. So as we see and as we get more of these politicians to grab and take these discussions forward, we're also bubbling up and looking at the next round of change we want to see, right? We would love to see the VA growing medical cannabis at VA facilities using veterans to grow it as part of an actual grow as well as a growth therapy program right we would love to see

the vfWs and american legions be converted into cannabis use centers because currently you can go to all these and buy all the alcohol you want and you know what none of us want that we want to take our dab rigs in there and dab you know or smoke a joint and talk to our brothers and sisters we're now seeing certain ones start to do that in California and New York in other places. And not only that, we want to turn them into educational centers. So when you get out of the military, hi, here's your six clones. We're going to teach you how to grow, you know, along the lines of a group back in Amsterdam, positronics.

It was a group because, again, canvas is tolerated, not legal in Amsterdam. So you belong to this private club and you would get this key. and the key opens it up to a warehouse where you would come in and immediately there's an entirely tiled room for you to cut, manage your clones with racks and everything else. To your left is a mother room for you to actually cut your clones from, right? And then there was also a collective area for hash making. So if you used these sieves, the house got a 10% cut. There were microscopes on hand. There was education as well as they sold seeds, clones.

They had organic restaurant on hand. Not only that, they made their own ballasts and lights because it was too expensive to import them into Amsterdam. So they would do all this. They mix their own living, mixed soil that they would then bag because people had to be very discreet in the Netherlands, right? They have to grow in these very private small areas. There's no large-scale grows like we see here in the States and Britain, etc. So the ingenuity of people behind the scenes have helped us understand the potentials, right? We would love to see, you know, a veteran coming from trauma and from war and then take them into growth therapy and have them grow something and bring it to life.

And if they're like this cannabis and then they're using it and now they've found a purpose to take something from, you're no longer killing, you're now bringing it back to life and keeping it and sustaining it. It does more for the up here and for the soul and the spirit than people realize. And we want our brothers and sisters in arms to experience this potentially. So these are things we'd love to see over the horizon as opposed to these alcohol veteran dark centers, turning into these very bright and lightning grow share experiences where people can have and enjoy and not have to worry about drunk driving home, which they expect out of every VFW in American Legion currently. Because I can go into any American Legion or VFW,

and that Coke machine, that is not Coke, that is not Pepsi, that is not 7 up in those things. There's all beers, right? So that's the reality that, you know, I grew up with and seeing and knowing in my rural VFWs because we would clean them out, and then the kid would put in a dollar and hit that Pepsi. and oh, out comes a Miller.

Oh. Oh. Right? So the normalization of cannabis will hopefully be the same normalization that alcohol has been over time. And it will be as the normalization and decriminalization and finally legalization at the federal level opens it up for interstate commerce and larger brands than you realize, right? You ask what was coming up? There you go. I love it, man.

In some ways, I think it speaks to the idea of like a product, like alcohol is a product of decay. Like you take grapes and you decay and then you drink them. And in some ways, I can't help get past a philosophical idea. If you consume a product of decay in some levels, you're bringing that into your body. But if you're produced, if you're running on a product that is growth and new growth, in some ways, you're providing a lifestyle like that. If I look at psilocybin, like I see these products. Yeah.

And your body is symbiotically in harmony with it, right? Yeah. I never felt that with alcohol the way that I feel with cannabis. It feels natural in my body, whereas alcohol does not, you know. So that's also the endocannabinoid speaking up for us in saying, yes, not only does this work for me, I'm going to put you in homeostasis. Homeostasis, that's what we want to be. When your CB1 receptors and CB2 receptors are properly stimulated,

holy shit, you're there, right? So if you realize that less than 1% of the population has a proper saturation of their endocannabinoid system, and at that you're in homeostasis and in health, how unhealthy is our society as a whole? And just imagine if there was homeostasis via this in our society, how the health care industry would be significantly different. The pharmaceutical industry would be completely different. There would be a completely different shift because people would have harmony and wouldn't be sick and wouldn't be debilitated and homebound at areas where they didn't need to be, you know, because of, you know, alcohol turns to sugar, diabetes.

Oh shit. Yeah. You know, which is a huge problem. I learned a lot about that because I went to a lot of convention for the blind, and I watched people go from their diabetes and go completely blind. I had a woman I used to have a crush on as a kid that she used to could see me. And by the end, she could no longer. And how heartbreaking it was for me.

And it was, I cannot even imagine how absolutely devastatingly heartbreaking it was for her. And so this was brought on by. bad diet by lack of access to good healthy food, right? And good healthy uptake, which we need farming. We need farmers. We need agrarian living and people communally working in areas and doing away with their front green grass lawns and actually putting and erecting up actual gardens. And let's go back to exchanging fruits and vegetables with each other and exchanging our cannabis

and our mushrooms and our other. psychedelics, you know, our toads, here's my toads, you know, you know, you need better harmony. We do. When you look at it from that angle, you know, there's a quote that says something along the lines of in a society that's sick, the person running away is the only one that's healthy. And when you look at the people that are fighting, it seems like they are the people that have a healthy constitution. Like, this is all wrong. We've got to fight this. But if you're, if you're full of fear, if you're full of disdise, if you're full of disdise,

ease, of course you're not going to be able to fight the good fight. You're not going to have the resource. You're not going to have the energy. You're not going to have the fortitude. You're going to be consumed by fear. And so I just want to say thanks again, man. I really appreciate the road that you've traveled. But more than that, I appreciate you coming out and explaining to people about the pathway that's there for them to follow and that it's not an easy fight, but it's a worthwhile fight. And there's meaning in there. Not only for you, but the people around you. And that's how you build a better society. Through community, right?

Yes. That's why we charitally donate locally and give locally because giving nationally doesn't do shit for us locally, you know, but by supporting the local organization that is providing food or we provide one that's the Berkeley Free Health Clinic. They're out there providing health care to the underserved dental checks, giving them, you know, shots and the things that, you know, people are too afraid to go or can't afford to do, you know. these are worthy people of your donations. These are worthy areas. And when you find that you contribute in your community, your community responds. You know, we had security walking around earlier on, our dispensary in San Pablo Avenue was world-renowned for prostitution.

And our security literally cleaned up our neighborhood to where when the news would come around and try to do hit pieces on us, they would tell the local news to fuck off and go away. These people are cleaning up our neighborhoods. just want to take a dirty fucking cheap shot. Fuck off. You know what I'm saying? But that's where community matters by going to your local neighborhood meetings and finding out,

oh, people have problems with, you know, dog feces everywhere. Well, then you sponsor and you put up the, you know, the paper, I mean, the plastic bags and the bins for people to put that stuff in. And the next thing you know, by actively listening to your community and donating and contributing to it, now they've moved on to

something else that can make better for their community. And not only that, they see you as a direct contributor to the betterment of their community. And what more could you better ask for than your neighbors waving at you and saying hello and thanking you? I mean, it's priceless and something I hope you can all experience because it's an awesome fucking feeling. Well, this podcast has been an awesome feeling. I really appreciate it.

Before I let you go, though, where can people find you? What do you have coming up and what are you excited about? Let's see. I can be found. I am on most socials under ATN420. The letter is ATN420. So I'm on, you know, threads, Facebook, you know, all that. I can be reached at ATN420 at gmail.com.

I'm usually found at Veterans Action Council and, you know, veteransaction Council. com. We do discussions roundtable. So currently I'm excited for what's coming up in March. We've actually submitted stuff for discussions with the Justice Department for their understanding of what they're going to be their talking points, as I said, stated in March so we can understand and craft ours around it and our message that isn't theirs. They have their agenda. We have ours. We want to be respectful by knowing the rules before we break them, right? So, you know, that's just how it's going to be.

You know, very excited for interstate commerce that's coming down the pike, which, you know, I also am very excited for the rescheduling that's going to happen. I wish it were descheduled altogether. But I have to also remind people we didn't lose all our rights at once. We're not going to gain them all back at once. So it's going to be incremental and then change is. painful and slow. So contribute, get active. Find a local organization within your state that is doing something and contribute, get active, get involved, and you'll end up with a self-satisfaction

that I don't think people won't, you know, appreciate, especially your soul. That's so well said. So beautiful. Hang on briefly afterwards. I'm going to talk to you briefly, but to all our friends that hung out with us today, thank you so much for being here. Go down to the show notes, check out the links, and get active, participate. become a better person. The fight starts with you and you can do it. So that's all we got. Ladies and gentlemen, Aloha.