TrueLife - Whistleblowers in the Kingdom of Lies

Episode Date: September 12, 2025

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/Jamie Morey & Graham MooreIn the cracked sidewalks of Massachusetts politics, where ballot dreams go to die under the boot of backroom deals, two strange and stubborn prophets refused to swallow the corporate acid trip being peddled as “reform.” Jamie Morey and Graham Moore didn’t come dressed as lobbyists or polished policy wonks; they came like guerrilla gardeners ripping weeds out of a poisoned soil, with the audacity to name the rot for what it was: dark money masquerading as medicine, nonprofits laundering hope through the spin cycle of campaign finance law.Picture it: Boston Commons at midnight, the ghosts of Sam Adams and Timothy Leary shoulder-to-shoulder, puffing resinous smoke, muttering that the revolution never ended, it just got lost in the spreadsheets. Morey and Moore stand in that lineage, part whistleblower, part psychonaut, part PhD-level forensic accountants of corruption’s underworld. They are the inconvenient voice at the bus stop, the ones muttering gospel while the crowd pretends not to listen, only to realize later that every word was true.They are here to remind us that psychedelic healing without transparency is just another hustle; that cannabis liberation without integrity is a rerun of the same old prohibition playbook; that democracy is not a brand to be bought by the ounce, but a fragile organism needing light, honesty, and a few beautiful maniacs sharpening their bones into spears to hurl at the machine.So listen closely, because when Morey and Moore speak, it isn’t just about a failed campaign. It’s about whether the psychedelic renaissance will become another Wall Street pyramid scheme in tie-dye, or whether the movement can still remember the sacred chaos it was born from.https://www.masshealing.org/ 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, furious 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. Let me start it off this way. In the crack sidewalks of Massachusetts politics, where ballot dreams go to die. under the boot of backroom deals. Two strange and stubborn profits refused to swallow the corporate acid trip being peddled as reform.

Jamie Morrie and Graham Moore didn't come dressed as lobbyist or polished policy wonks. They came like guerrilla gardeners ripping weeds out of a poison soil, with the audacity to name the rot for what it was, dark money masquerading as medicine. Nonprofits laundering hope through the spin cycle of campaign finance law. It's in Boston Commons at midnight. The ghosts of Sam Adams and Timothy Leary, shoulder to shoulder, puffing resinous smoke, muttering that the revolution never ended. It just got lost in the spreadsheets.

Mori and Moore stand in that lineage. Part whistleblower, part psychonaut, part PhD-level forensic accountants of corruption's underworld. They are the inconvenient voice at the bus stop, the ones muttering gospel while the crowd pretends not to listen, only to realize later that every word was true. Jamie and Graham, thank you for being here today. How are you? We're okay. Thank you so much, George, for having us.

That was an amazing introduction. Yeah, you guys are awesome. I'm super stoked to finally get to talk to you, and I'm grateful for all the work you guys have been doing over there. And thanks for being here. Thanks for having us. Yeah. Nice.

Well, I put out some stuff to my audience and the Discord, and I'm excited to get moving here. So let me just, I just want to, maybe we should flesh it out a little bit. Can you guys, Jamie, can you give me a little bit of background on, on what you guys have been doing with Yes On Four and kind of like where people are at? So my audience may know exactly what you guys been working on. So together, Graham and I worked on the Yes On Four campaign. We actually were connected previously through grassroots psychedelic org. But we worked together on the campaign, worked very hard to get that passed. We saw a lot along the way that was problematic.

And after the really disappointing failure of the ballot question started digging in, you know, asking ourselves what went wrong. You know, there were things that we had seen at the time that were problematic, but, you know, Graham, especially Graham, spent a lot of his time digging through old emails, old campaign emails to try to, you know, put together a picture of what really happened, in addition to what we knew had happened, came up with some, I'll let him speak to the details, but came up with some, you know, problematic information. And we just felt like we needed to

to get it out there and have the truth about what happened in Massachusetts that caused this ballot question to fail to be known to, you know, the people of Massachusetts and the psychedelic community at large because it's, it is really important. And this failure, um, heard a lot of people and was, um, you know, we think avoidable. So I'll let Graham add his piece. Um, I'll just briefly say for the audience who maybe doesn't have much familiarity. So question four was a ballot measure last year that would have very expansively decriminalized personal use of plant-based psychedelics, so including magic mushrooms, you know, containing psilocybin. It would have allowed people to grow, possess, share, and use these substances in their homes

with practically no restrictions, which depending on who you are, that was either really great, or not so great and scary. And in addition to that, in sort of a somewhat contradiction in a way, it would have created a very highly regulated commercial industry of psychedelic therapy centers where you'd have to come in and be monitored by regulated professionals in order to access it sort of in the above ground. So that was what happened. And the other thing I wanted to make sure to emphasize is that,

we're not just asserting that this failure hurt people. After the thing failed, we received outreach from people who were looking to still use psychedelics to help themselves. And of course, now that continued to be illegal with all the various issues there. And in addition to that, Jamie and I and some others helped this veteran in Massachusetts who was charged for possession of psilocybin that he was using to treat his diagnosis. PTSD. And that that had just derailed his life, this, this charge. And we are very grateful to everyone involved after our advocacy. They let him go with a continuance, without a finding, I think, which basically means he has like a six-month, very, very easy probation. And then if he doesn't get any trouble, it'll just be dropped like he was never charged. But it was very stressful for him

and his family. And again, he was one of the lucky ones. So, you know, this criminalization is a big problem. And now we're in this tough position since this failed politically. Nice. So let me ask you guys this. Looking back on yes on four, what do you believe was the fatal flaw? Not policy, but strategy or ethics that toppled an otherwise promising campaign. I mean, I was waiting for Jamie jump in, But I think the fundamental failure was not taking seriously their responsibility inherent in moving this movement forward and this access forward. Because if you understand that lives are on the line and you really seriously understand that and feel that, then you're going to work backwards from that to do things a very different way. You know, you're going to say, okay, you know, we don't want to fail. We also want to get people affordable access.

And then you're going to craft a policy based on, you know, what's the most viable thing that helps the people in the most need, does the least damage, etc. And I just think everything about this points to the people who they purported it to be for, veterans, mentally ill people, cancer patients. They were like the lowest priority in a lot of ways. Yeah. What are your thoughts on that, Jimmy? Yeah, I agree. I paused because there were so many. Yeah. There's so many different factors and so many different pieces to this story.

I think the policy itself, as it was written, you know, was problematic. And, you know, we can dig into that a little bit later. But, yeah, I just think, like Graham alluded to, a big part of the problem was the people working on this campaign, besides Graham and I, didn't necessarily have the emotional personal connection and just see the desperate need for this. Graham and I both have really personal stories of why this medicine, you know, has changed our lives and why we we want it to be available, you know, for loved ones. And it just seems like that same passion was, you know, was lacking. in the campaign strategically.

I think there was just a lot of errors made. We don't think. Sorry, there's a lot. Yeah, I was like trying to figure out how deep to go. Well, I was just going to say it's not really just our opinion. Like, I think that's something that we're trying to increasingly communicate. So one of the big light bulb moments for me

was listening after the fact, because like Jamie, I was just hustling so hard during. campaign season, so I didn't even bother to listen to this. But after Election Day, I discovered this podcast that had been recorded by one of the campaign's chief strategists, you know, with two of the consultants from the campaign on it. And in that podcast, this consultant laid out like what you need to do to have a successful campaign. And then I was cross-checking that with what the consultant's own campaign had done. It didn't line up. So these two people who worked on our campaign said that to have a viable yesterday,

campaign, you want to measure polling at least in the high 60s. And I was like, well, wait a second, the internal polling never even came close to that, you know. And then they also talked about how important it was to have messengers who are credible. And I knew that our polling pointed to that being, and they did too, you know, veterans and medical providers and law enforcement. But they'd done virtually no legwork in that department for the vast majority of the campaign, far as me and Jamie are aware, you know, the opposition came out the gate with the Massachusetts Psychiatric Association coming out against this, but we didn't get a Veterans org that wasn't Heroic Arts, you know, that wasn't a psychedelic org endorsing until, I think it was October, Jamie,

right? So if we got that endorsement in October, you'd think that these very, very highly paid consultants and team could have gotten that endorsement the previous year. And then right out the gate, we would have had the Veterans Org, you know, supporting us. But everything was up to the last minute. We got a big doctor's endorsement like the week before the election. That was me. You know, I had this not very bright idea to get a, to have a sign on letter for medical professionals. And I say not very bright because it's so fucking obvious. Like, why didn't we do that starting the year before? Why was this an idea that Graham political novice was like, like, maybe we should do this in like September, you know, like a month before the election.

And, and, you know, part of me, and then I listened to this podcast and I realized this, this campaign was being run by people who like, you know, actually are kind of smart, you know. I don't know why they haven't been running the campaign the way that apparently they know campaigns should be run. And so when we say that there were big strategic mistakes, it's like you can take their own words and play it back. and be like, okay, so you guys didn't do the things you're supposed to do to win a campaign in your own words. And you're the ones who run campaigns for, you know, decades or whatever. So I don't know what you want to tell us. You know, like, you know, it makes me wonder, is it apathy or ignorance? And on some level, that doesn't really matter because it happened.

But like, is it, is it just that the is it because was there a monetary factor? And like, we don't really care. We just want to funnel some money over this nonprofit. Or is it like, we never thought about that, even though we're brilliant campaign strategists. Like, what do you attribute it to? Jamie, I want to let you talk, but I can talk. Go ahead. The answer is we're still trying to figure it out.

I think there was some apathy. I think there might have been some conflict of interest involved. It's just hard to, it's just hard to all parse out. And also, one of the issues with the campaign is it was so kind of disorganized and had these different groups. there was the consulting company involved Dewey Square group and kind of their sphere. And then there was the new approach, Super PAC, 501C4, you know, out-of-state psychedelic lobbyist crew. And they were different. And behind the scenes, they were sniping at each other until shortly after Election Day. And this was another thing that made me and Jamie suspicious

and also upset was, you know, both sides were sniping at each other all election, kind of blaming each other for different issues. But then as soon as it actually failed and it was after the fact, very quickly they closed ranks. And all of a sudden, we were the problem. There had basic, you know, we were told there really was no issue. Everything was really done well. Go away now.

And, you know, that conflicted with what they've been telling us all year. So it seemed like maybe the different group. including us, like the grassroots folks, kind of had different interests. Maybe the donors had different interests. Like it just the whole thing seemed just very disorganized. And Jamie spoke to a few donors after the fact who were not happy and seemed to be kept out of the loop. So again, I think there were maybe some donors who were more plugged in, some who weren't.

So I think there was just a mismatch of different motivations. But one notable conflict of interest was that the head of the PR, strategy of the campaign was lobbying this Department of the Massachusetts government on behalf of a health information tech company. And simultaneously, in this department of the Massachusetts government on the commission, like evaluating information technology, was a Compass Pathways board member. So Compass Pathways for people who don't know is a company advancing a psilocybin as a pharmaceutical drug. So they stand to lose considerable money if psilocybin becomes cheaply and widely available. And the other thing that this company that our PR person was lobbying on behalf of this tech

company worth way more than the ballot question. You know, they're not publicly traded, I don't think, but we're talking huge government contracts to manage mental health systems, you know, probably worth at least tens of millions of dollars, if not, if not considerably more. So, you know, the 10 million, 8 million budget of the campaign is peanuts compared to Compass Pathways valued at over 300 million, this non-psychedelic mental health information technology company seeking government contracts worth tens of millions at least, but probably above 100 million. So I'm not saying that intentionally, right, like the thing was thrown, but, you know, there was this incentive, this conflict of interest where this person was trying to get presumably

some kind of contract or some kind of thing from this entity where a person on the board, an influential person on the board, would not, you know, had a financial interest in this campaign not going well, or at the very least, sort of the language not emphasizing that psilocybin is safe and can be widely available. Because that was a big problem me and Jamie had, is that even though the language that they, the experts put on there, was like, the most extreme decriminalization you could possibly imagine, they didn't want to talk about it. And they were always emphasizing how scary these things were kind of, you know, and that's why we need all this regulation around the care. But as a result, they were kind of running their own opposition

because their messaging kept emphasizing how these things are really, really intense and really risky, but they were trying to sell something that the implicit premise was they're not that dangerous and that's why you can grow, you know, an infinite amount in your house and give it away to anybody you want. Yeah. So, you know, that that was a problem. The public education piece was really lacking. And we were told to avoid certain topics. We were told, you know, explicitly to pivot away from home cultivation, which was a problematic piece of this legislation from the start that needed a lot of education. We were told for a long time to pivot away from Decrim, which doesn't make any sense, as Graham explained, because it was such a big piece of this bill.

We were told not to talk about Ibegain. You know, there was just a list of things that people wanted to talk about microdosing. We were told to pivot away from microdosing, which is what so many people had questions about. So there was just a lot of stuff like that that didn't make sense and not doing a really robust public education campaign around this, I think was a huge problem. We were told that you don't really start pushing on the education piece, you know, until after, in advertising, until after Labor Day, which makes no sense with early voting starting in October. Well, also, I want to go back to like their own words. And we're in the process of making this all public, but there was an interview.

Again, the public interview by one of the heads of the campaign, I think October or November. And he alludes to the internal polling, showing how unpopular the home growing was. But his quote is, he doesn't tell us, he doesn't make the polling numbers public. But he says, you know, it's clear from the polling that, you know, home cultivation is something that's really important for us to educate people about. So he says that, you know, months before the campaign decides, let's not educated about it at all, you know, because it's so unpopular. We just want people to not think it's there and to not really think about it too much. And so, you know, he might have changed his mind. Everybody gets the right to change their minds, but this is their own words and their actions not aligning with their own words.

And so just for your viewers to know, like the internal polling, home cultivation allowing people to grow psychedelic plants. in Massachusetts was polling at, I think, 38 or 36% support, even before they wrote the policy. So full disclosure, me and Jamie like people being able to grow these things at home. So we're not against it on the merits. But the truth is, they knew that at baseline, that idea was fairly unpopular in Massachusetts. And, you know, maybe some kind of home cultivation. still could have flown, maybe something just for medical patients or maybe just a small amount. But they knew home cultivation was polling at 38%. And then the policy they wrote said, okay,

let's, this is very unpopular. Let's put the most of this we possibly can in this ballot measure. And to me, that doesn't make sense. Man, none of it makes sense to me. None of it. There was a lot of stuff with the money that didn't make sense either. Imagine that. So just, you know, we were constantly told that there wasn't enough money. You know, there wasn't enough money for this or that. There wasn't enough money to get our ads up until I think the second week of October

when early voting in Massachusetts starts the second week of October. Our ads were up late. There was no, that was an accepted fact on the campaign and they blamed, you know, not enough money. But my question is, how do you spend so much money on these supergeniuses supposedly? And they only raised something like $40,000 in the first nine months of 2024 for the official records. It's something like that, it's under 100K. And come on, are you really trying if you raise less than 100 grand, you know, from January to September? in an election year for something like this, especially when you know the polling so so marginal,

you know, it was always polling either below 50% or a little bit above. So again, yeah, we had no money, but was anybody even trying to get us money? You know, is sort of how I feel. I would ask about fundraising periodically during the year, and I was always told that's not your problem, you know, it's being taken care of. And then August rolls around and we're broke and I'm worried. That's what I was told from leadership. You know, we're worried.

But again, this is a problem. You know, it's just as funny, as Jamie will back up, a strange thing was the entire time everybody was acting like the victim of circumstances. Like the new approach folks, even though they were the ones who wrote the policy, would act embarrassed about the 12 by 12. And the consultants would act embarrassed by it, but they would blame new approach. You know, like they would say, oh, you know, we told. them not to put in the 12 by 12 and so much home grow. We told them that would be a huge issue.

And look, this is what happened. But again, they were it. Like it was kind of like you're blaming yourselves, guys. You know what I'm saying? Like new approach, you hired these consultants. So if they're the problem that's on you. And similarly to the consultants, you ultimately took this job. So if you didn't think this could work, why did you take the job? You know, like it was ridiculous is maybe the best way to put it. Yeah. Or nefarious. We go back and forth because again, it makes so little sense.

You're kind of like, was the, so the conspiracy theory explanation of this. And again, me and Jamie, we don't know. It seems so absurd. But like the conspiracy version of this is the goal here was to discredit decriminalization and widespread access on behalf of pharmaceutical interests and other people who want to make money off of this. And so the idea was to take a bunch of donors who were expendable because a lot of people held their powder on this. A lot of politicians who are close to our consultants didn't endorse. You know, it seemed like certain people were getting the message,

don't pull the trigger on this ballot question, you know, from on high. I mean, again, this is all speculation, but you can look at the numbers and you can say who donated, who didn't, you know what I'm saying and and what a great thing you know the whole time the whole message is psychedelics are dangerous but they can help people if they're regulated and uh but then you're selling a measure that says people can have them and do whatever they want with them and then it fails oh well we know why it failed it's because of the home growers because of the decriminalization you know but but again you you primed this failure to happen in this dramatic way and then after the fact, you can say, look, this isn't politically viable. We love home grow. We're really in

favor, but this just can't work. Look at Massachusetts. And then you ask, well, why would they do that? Well, I think there are certain donors who care about these things, who care about home cultivation, who care about decriminalization to their credit. But if they think it's not viable, they won't insist on it. So the conspiracy theory explanation would be this whole thing was set up to discredit decriminalization. politically in order to unite the donor base and make it easier to push through policies that prioritize profits for a select group of people and pharmaceutical companies over the little guys and over the people who are supposed to care about, you know. And it seems like that's what's happening.

That's medicalized model is what's being pushed. Through the grapevine, absolutely new approach has been, that's what they've been saying. that they did everything right in Massachusetts, but the policy was just too much of a stretch. They didn't know it was too much of a stretch. They thought it would win. The experiment didn't work. There's no bad intentions here.

There was no real mistake, except, you know, trying too hard or whatever, you know, whatever. You know, like they tried for, they swung for the, they swung, you know, they swung for, you know, the home run and they whiffed and that happened sometimes, but now they've learned you can't do decriminalization. you can't do something like this for the foreseeable future. And so it's been a learning experience for everybody.

That's kind of what they're telling people. That's what we've heard, we should say. And again, that's clearly BS in terms of like they totally messed it up. But there is a world in which they weren't intentionally trying to lose and they're just incompetent. So again, we can't really say. For sure, obviously. You know, is it gross incompetence? Is it intentional ballast?

Is it apathy? Is it a combination of all sorts of things? Because, again, there were so many interest groups involved as we're telling you that, you know, maybe some of them sabotaged it and some of them didn't. You know, maybe some of them weren't paying attention closely enough. Maybe some people were paying too much attention. And so fucking things up. It's all a mess.

And there was so little transparency. You know, a surprising amount of dirt was left for me and Jamie to, disseminate actually, but there was also, there also is a lot that we're not privy to and we're never given access to. So yeah, I always feel that a coincidence is something you get when you apply a bad theory. So when I start seeing multiple coincidences come up like that, I'm like, wait a minute. But I, you know, if you can if you can pan back and see it as a win, okay, these PR firms are dog shit. No one should ever use them. Like these guys are either incompetent or they're on the payroll for people that don't want it to happen.

That's a giant win for anybody moving forward. Hey, these guys right here, they're not good. They can't even figure out how to put the best foot forward and bring someone like heroic hearts or bring on the doctors or go to the VFW and have some speeches there with the community. Like, okay, those guys showed their cars. And if they're really smart, they're so dumb for showing their cards that way. You know, so I think that on some level, what you, what you get when you don't get what

you want is experience. And I think there's a ton of experience right here. So moving forward, you got to see, okay, the big guys are going to come in with their money. They're going to use flawed language in the beginning. Who starts off a campaign with like, this is very dangerous, but we want to pass? Like that is such, like that's so transparent. Like that is so dumb. I do. First of all, sorry, I go on. From this pot, I looked, then I start going through other podcasts of our genius. Sorry, now I'm being, now I'm being going to be mean. And I shouldn't be mean. because I want to be clear, me and Jamie are also, I think behind the scenes what we're hearing,

again, a lot of behind the scenes what we're hearing is this sort of narrative of like we're disgruntled, angry, vicious people. Of course they're going to put that way. And that's just so far from the truth. Like if people were to go through all of our interactions with these people over the last year, especially me, because Jamie, J.B.

Spicey, but especially me. It's like, I'm just kissing their ass, complimenting them, you know, playing along to get along the entire time because that's the sort of person I am, you know? And I still, not, I'm not a kiss ass anymore thanks to Jamie and thanks to this experience, but I do still like to be diplomatic and get along with people. I mean, if all these people were to suddenly have a, you know, take enough mushrooms or whatever

and wake up and wake up and be ready to play on the right side, like, I welcome them back. You know, it's not, I don't have a grudge that way. But, but it does make me upset. So I listened to this other podcast by. the same campaign consultant about a campaign that they won. And she talked about why the other campaign lost. And she explained it was because they were running a no campaign. Like it was the exact same thing that she did for us, you know, where she said they were running a thing and then their messaging was kind of going against their own measure and it was too confusing. And that's,

and that's exactly what what the campaign she did for us did for our measure. So again, I'm like, I mean, again, people can be distracted. I don't know what was going on in this person's life. And they definitely had other clients. That's the other thing. This consulting firm, you know, everybody, this was part-time for everybody, except for sometimes me and Jamie essentially, especially sometimes me. But for everybody else, this was like very part-time.

And the bigwigs, you know, new approach, Dewey Square Group. They all had other clients. other priorities and they always made that clear to us. Like, you know, like the new approach folks, you'd ask them about something in the campaign, they'd say, I'm very, very busy with a lot of stuff besides your little campaign. You know, I'm paraphrasing here, but that's what we'd get, you know. But it's like, but again, it's your campaign. This is your thing.

It's, you know, you've asked donors to give millions of dollars to. Why is this an afterthought, you know? Like, it just, it's, it's insane. And also, if you're going to do something sneaky like this, Why are you telling? That's their thing. It's the disrespect of like they didn't, they weren't even criminal masterminds.

They like told everything to me and Jane. And so it's sort of like at the end of all this, making the decision to go public or not, like they didn't have a sign NDAs that lasted beyond the campaign. They put it basically everything in writing, especially the new approach guy. So it was kind of like, are you like daring us to open our mouths about how poorly run this was?

Because you didn't even try to hide. you know like again it was just it was insult after injury you know yeah i mean jamie i just keep talking and talking you got to talk there's just yeah there's there's so much to this i think it's really hard probably for your listeners to understand um because there were so many different pieces and, you know, the financial piece, the strategic errors. It's just a big story with a lot of parts. But yeah, I think at the end of the day, it's just there wasn't enough care taken by new approach when they decided to come to Massachusetts and disrupt the legislation that we already had working its way through. You know, we had an act relative.

to plant medicine, which was a really expansive decrim bill. Not as expensive as the ballot question, but expensive. But it had bipartisan support. You know, it was a good bill. And I think they rushed into Massachusetts without the proper support on the ground, without enough money and just didn't put the energy into this campaign that it deserved. I just think the people of Massachusetts deserved much better than this. And I think that's the problem with people coming from out of state who don't care enough because they're not the ones personally affected. And there was a lot,

there were a lot of, you know, a lot of problems. And the big problems, big problems, to me was after it failed, nobody wanted to honestly talk about what went wrong. There was just a weird shift and like a clamming up from all sides when we started to ask questions, which is, of course, what you should do when anything failed. You know, when something fails, you have to figure out what went wrong to avoid making the same mistakes the next time. And we could just see they weren't willing to do that in an honest way at all. And we could see that they were going to move on to the next state in the next state after that without learning anything from what went wrong here. And that I just couldn't let happen again.

I felt like people deserved to know. I felt like it would help us in Massachusetts. You know, we needed our lawmakers to see that this didn't fail because people don't want psychedelic healing in Massachusetts. We knew that that wasn't true because we had spent months talking to people all over the state who wanted this. the post-mortem polling of voters in this election showed that 55% support decrim and two-thirds support therapeutic access. So, you know, the people of the state did want something, just not necessarily what new approach was selling and did a bad job, in my opinion, of selling.

So that's why we started to dig. was to, you know, like, what can we learn? Why aren't they, why don't, why aren't they digging in to this the way we are to see what needs to be done differently? It was just a very strange sort of sweeping under the rug. They started, you know, they didn't want to talk much about Massachusetts at all. And the one public conversation that Jared from New Approach did have with the Shakuna Institute, he chose Stephanie Jones from Open Circle Alliance, you know, who supposedly wasn't involved in the campaign to talk about what went wrong. Yeah, go ahead.

No, no, Jamie, I don't want to cut you off, but I do want to. Nobody wanted to really dig in. And when we started asking very straightforward questions, the response that we got from all sides was very suspicious. And what I also want to make very clear to people listening to is I'm not just, so first of all, there's opinions and there's facts. So Jamie said, you know, talked about it being our opinion that there was a majority in favor of therapeutic access. Our internal polling, 38% for home grow and like 36% for home grow after the fact in the post-mortem. So home grow unpopular before and popular after the campaign. Maybe that wouldn't have been the case if we'd run a better campaign, but, you know, that remained unpopular.

But you know what remained very popular? like the whole way through not arresting veterans for for psychedelics, not arresting people using them for therapy. It just like that was polling like letting cancer patients use psychedelics. It was like pulling in like the high 70s. So there were parts of this that were polling in those winning, winning ballpark areas, particularly the access for veterans and cancer patients and people with mental illness. That was polling in the high 60s and 70s, you know,

kind of consistently. While, you know, then you got to decrim of personal use and that's now maybe just a small majority and then you get to the home growing for everybody and that's unpopular. So that's a fact. And then the other thing is that after this thing failed, I especially thought, okay, it's a sunk cost. Let's try to make lemonade out of lemons here and let's try to, you know, new approach still as resources.

The consultants still have resources. and connections. Like if we tried their thing, maybe now, you know, they'll support me and Jamie's thing. And we can, and not just me and Jamie's thing. It's not about me and Jamie, but about like, they'll support good policy moving forward. And we can kind of get a fresh start with a new team of allies who, you know, I don't love, but like I can work with them. But then there was the final betrayal where where we were talking about what to do next. And there was all this, lip service about how me and Jamie would take the reins and be supported in that. And so we, me and Jamie, we're talking to people about how to pragmatically move this movement

forward in this state in a way that align with the polling and also the needs of people. So affordability, for example. So we were talking about like a medical cannabis dispensary model, which obviously would be affordable. So you just buy mushrooms, you know, and you wouldn't need deKrim for that. against, but this is, we have to deal with where people are at, right? Another thing, another approach that we were interested in was decriminalizing just for people with certain conditions. Again, so it would cost the state nothing, but yeah, veterans like the one we helped would

no longer be subject to issues. And again, me and Jamie are for complete decrim and full legalization, but we have to work, we're trying to be pragmatic here. But what happened was the, our supposed out. allies basically vetoed all of that. You know, like, like they sort of said, we're not supporting, you know, very quickly it was we're going to support a very restrictive medical model in Massachusetts moving forward exclusively, more or less. And, you know, if you guys want to do something else, good luck. You know, and they weren't particularly nice about it, except in the most surface level way.

And in fact, they let us on. They said they were going to help us make all these introductions, including to move D-Krim forward and help us, you know, test the waters with lawmakers, and then two months go by and they tell us they haven't done anything. And again, good luck keeping this issue alive and keeping D-Krim alive. And they did one bill, new approach in the consultants did one bill, this medical psilocybin bill, which, by the way, me and Jamie's support. Like, we're for medical access. But the fact that they did that one bill in kind of a backroom way without including us

and then sort of told us to fuck off and didn't help us with the other stuff, in any substantive way, that that to me said a lot, you know, that these people are not just we're in our friends. They're not going to be our friends. They're not going to help the right policy in this state moving forward. We can't trust them to do the right thing in other states. They kind of left us with nothing. And to your point, this in some ways, this will be positive if we get the word out. But if we don't get the word out and the same thing keeps happening, then this will just suck. So we're doing our best, but we're so grateful to you bringing us on here so that people do know. So things can change and this can be a real learning moment.

Yeah. It sounds like a turf war. It sounds like people already have their turf staked out. There's vested interests that are making money on the way the system is. There's political connections to bigger money. There are PR firms that come in. And like, let's be honest, if you work at a PR firm, you probably have like a pretty awesome degree in language. You probably have a pretty awesome degree in language, you probably have a team around you that knows exactly what you're doing. You're not alone. It's not a lone wolf at a PR firm. Those people are competent strategists for messaging. And there's probably a reason it failed. And we are probably not privy to that information because for all we know, the campaign worked exactly like it was supposed to. Like that's kind of

what it sounds like on some level. Like let's keep the most credible people away. We don't want them influencing. We're already 38. How do we get down to 34? Like that's kind of what it sounds like. like to me was happening there. And I'm curious what it looks like to us, but we just don't want to say something that, you know what I'm saying? We just want to be very clear because we're not the crazy people they say we are. Like, we're just stating facts here and people can draw their own conclusions. You know, we certainly have drawn ours, but we don't 100% know.

People can be that incompetent. People can be that apathetic. People can be that dumb, you know, unfortunately. So, you know, we don't want to assume nefarious intent. But yes, this campaign looks like it was run to the ground. like it was run to the ground avoidably and predictably by people who should know better. And people can draw their own conclusions. You know, maybe they just all had better things to do.

They had more important clients. This was an afterthought and not taken seriously and this is what happened. Or maybe it was more nefarious. But me and Jamie want to be very clear, like we're not about opinions. We're about facts. You know, and so there's polling. There's the internal comms. We don't have any NDAs.

Good job, you guys. They did intentionally keep us out of a lot, too. Of course. So my background for the past 25 years is in survey research and strategic messaging. And we weren't included. I wasn't included in much of that at all. I was intentionally left out, which is strange. Why?

You know, think you would want someone on the team. They just, they had a plan that we weren't really a part of. And we were on the team, but not really. And there was a lot of behind the scenes stuff that we were kept out of and why. And still not, and still can only speculate about it. So one thing, there's so much and I hope you don't mind how much we're talking. Not at all. A really key thing that that I think was nefarious, again, not necessarily nefarious in the way of trying to tank it intentionally nefarious, but just not.

done with good intentions was they had this pretend campaign director, the quote unquote grassroots campaign director of the campaign who was this local veteran. And she won a lot of people over who were skeptical of their intentions, including me. Jamie never really got into it too much. But I really believed in this woman. She's very young. I mean, I think she's 29 now or something. She's younger than me. She had no political experience, no prior political experience. But she was given this six-figure job as campaign director, grassroots campaign director. Now, honestly, because of I had basically no political experience, I thought that was fucking awesome. And she had all the, I used to tell people, you know, her hippie credentials are completely unparalleled.

And they were. She was a conscientious subjector. You know, I talked to her at length for hours about, you know, how violence is bad and war is bad. and all the radical ways of improving society. And I really did feel like with her, because I was told, well, me and Jamie were told is this woman, this veteran, she's going to be, you guys might not be privy to everything,

but she's going to be right there in the command center as like the heart and soul of this campaign. And I talked to her again for a few hours and was like, man, they chose the super hippie who's local, who's a veteran, like right on. Maybe the conspiracy theories aren't, aren't true. And very quickly, it was not, it was apparent. It was not what it seemed. They were keeping her out of the loop. She didn't really want to be in the loop. She was very apathetic throughout the campaign. And again, like, that's, I don't, like, that's her right. Not everybody, not every veteran, just everybody listening at home, you're a veteran who got healed with psychedelics. You don't owe your life to, like, promoting this stuff. You know, if you don't want a campaign or be an advocate, that's fine. Go live your life. Like, life is for living.

So she just didn't really want to be there, which again, that's whatever. But, you know, it was a real mistake to keep somebody feeling apathetic, struggling in their job in this role as basically a figurehead and puppet, which is what she ended up being. And then she, you know, we've been sold this thing. We have a local, this local great veteran is in the command center. And then she wasn't in the command center. And she wasn't a full-time organizer.

You know, she was giving six figures to be a full-time organizer. but she's working part-time. She's been called into do press interviews with the PR person as her handler. And that's basically all she does. They trot her out to donors. They trot her out to public events every once in a while.

But she stopped attending, like, our internal, like, all hands for a while, like for a couple of months. There's four months. She took a lot of time off, and she tried to quit multiple times. She did quit at one point. This was all kept quiet.

And again, like, you know, things don't work out. They could have let her go. They could have replaced her. They could have brought me and Jamie into the command center. But the whole point, it seems, was they wanted somebody with no political experience they could push around who wouldn't fight back, which is exactly what she was. And so they could sort of put on a human face, you know, a face, you know, like one of these show killers and like walk around and pretend, oh, we're one of you, like the guy for men and black. You know, it's like, but in fact, there was no real human from Massachusetts running the campaign. You know, it was, sorry, consultants are real people too.

My apologies. But there was nobody invested in this issue, you know, who was in the command center from the state. You know, it was the consultants who are consultants and their mercenaries. And I think they didn't do a very good mercenary job here, but, you know, whatever. And then there were the new approach folks. But again, what I think is nefarious is they weren't honest about. that and they used Emily, sorry, that is her name, but I'm trying to have wood names. They used this veteran as a cudgel to kind of beat me and Jamie out. You know, they'd say,

you know, people, our polling is very clear. People want to hear from veterans, not an OCD patient, not a mother and spouse of a veteran with four kids, you know, like they don't want to hear from you guys. They want to hear from the veteran. So if you want to win, if you really care about this like you say you do, you'll let us keep this veteran from. front and center and as our star. But the issue was, again, she was, she was not performing in the role. Essentially, she was supposed to perform and she wasn't looking out for our interest the way we were told she would. And also, they were huge hypocrites. And I'm just going on, on George, but, but, you know, they said they couldn't, you know, me and Jamie, after the election,

they got us one interview with the press. And that reporter didn't even know who, me and Jamie were, that we even worked on the campaign. Like when we told her that we worked on the campaign, this reporter, who the campaign introduced us to, was like, you guys worked on the campaign? I didn't know that. Again, and they expect us to not be upset about this or to think this any kind of way. Like, that's ridiculous. You know, they wouldn't be after the election. They wouldn't even tell this woman who they set up the interview with that we worked for the campaign. And then, but they say, you know, this is so important that me and Jamie stay quiet because we're not veterans, but then they dump all this money into this new, unproven nonprofit,

where Emily is on paper, sorry, the veteran, is on paper, one of the co-directors. But in fact, it's very clearly being run by this woman working for this defense contractor who's not even a, like not even a mental health patient, like her thing's all about helping veterans, but she's not a veteran, she's not married to a veteran, she's not in the veteran community. you know, then they have this drug policy person who talks about her thing being recreational drug use and not therapeutic drug use. Those are the people they give, you know, hundreds of thousands of dollars to during a tight election year to run this psychedelics nonprofit. This woman, this defense contractor, worker, she's the one who the consultants get in the press release about this veterans bill that signed.

Not Jamie, you know what I'm saying? He's married to a spouse who struggles with PTSD, but this woman who has no personal connection, you know what I'm saying, besides caring, about the veteran community. And she's the one they'd even do some campaign promotion about her. So they say, oh, me and Jamie, you can't be too public because you're not veterans,

even though I've cared for a loved one who is suicidal. I've lost my best friend of suicide. We have these compelling personal stories. And then they take two people who don't have, comparatively. Again, they're real people and, you know, have souls and matter. Like, again, we're not. But, you know, it just isn't in line with what they say, how things work. You know, they elevate these two people who on paper are much less sympathetic and compelling than me and Jamie. And in the simultaneously, they tell me and Jamie, you've got to shut up because you're not

veterans. Like, it was hypocritical and, and this was the pattern the whole way through. You know, whatever they wanted to do was the smart thing to do. And if they didn't want to do it, it wasn't the smart thing to do anymore. It didn't have to be consistent. We were ants. We didn't know what we were talking about. And if we pushed back, it's because we didn't care enough and we weren't letting the experts do the winning job that they were doing. Okay. So listen, like, think about the name, new approach. Like, just think about that as a strategy. Like, if you want to derail something, The best way to derail something would pretend to be for it and then probably kill it. Like their name, like the answer is in their name.

Like they were high, in my opinion, I'm just a truck driver. What do I know? But like, I love language. And if I was going to be a brilliant fucking PR firm, I would come up with something like new approach. Hey, guess what? We're for this. Let us show you how to do it. You know, but it seems to me like, and fuck, on some way you can't get away from the brilliance of it.

Like what better way to tank a campaign than to pretend you're for control all the resources? Get the ideal poster child that you know doesn't want to be there. You know for a fact, hey, they're a veteran, they're a conscientious objector. It's a perfect person to put in front that doesn't want to be there. And then just fucking poke them the whole way so they don't want to do it anymore. Like, oh my, you're totally, you have no idea. That's exactly what. That's what happened.

We, again, we get to speculate on the motives. But like, that's exactly what they did. They burnt her out. Of course. They did everything they could to make her not want to do the job. And they were more than happy when she started finally said, you guys run everything and leave me out of it. And it was effed up.

Well, it also made no sense because she was not working at all. Not present, not at any of our meetings. People didn't know where she was for four months in the middle of the campaign. I wouldn't say four months. Sorry, I just want to be very careful. She was very detached for like a lot of the campaign, like most of 2024. But I will say she showed up, she started regulation up to meetings again in September. There were like two months during the summer.

Maybe it was closer to four, but she was. I looked at the day. She was very out of the picture, you know, for a while. You know, so out of the picture that one of the senior consultants that early asked me, I don't really know what's going on with her. you know, so do you know what's going on with her? And so that is true. The point is collecting her full salary and she was absent for multiple months in the middle of-

Yeah, she did collect her full salary and was absent essentially for multiple months. That is correct. Not performing, you know, the duties of the job that we needed her to perform. And they were, you know, essentially using her, still paying her, saying there wasn't enough money for anything else, but, you know, giving her $10,000 a month and using another veteran who stepped in and the work that she was supposed, a lot of the work that she should have been doing for free. Now, one thing I want to make. What a deceitful way to ruin a 29-year-old.

Like, think about that. Like, new approach. I've never spoken to them. I don't know. But if that's the case, if that is the case, man, like, how do you sleep at night? Is it just a giant amount of money and not caring about what's right for the community, not caring about the veterans in the world, not doing the right thing? Like, how do you sleep at night when you take money to ruin something like that?

And like I said, I don't know, but it just, it blows my mind to think that people are out there willing to do that. But maybe that's the world of politics. Yeah, again, we don't want to go too much into motives because we don't know. I don't know either. No, no, but I do want to say that, like, it's worse than me and Jamie are saying because we're trying to be respectful. As everybody who knows this story, and it's a lot of people,

if anybody's watching you think the truth isn't out. The truth is very, very, very, very, very out, but everybody's a good person and not saying everything. But, like, it's worse than we're saying in terms of her treatment, it, but again, we're trying, we're doing the right thing. And we know that they're trying to spin it. And they were trying to spin it the whole time. And we were complaining about things. They tell Emily, oh, you know, they're jealous. They're sniffing at your heels. You know, so they want to make it that we're ganging up on this 29-year-old who has a right to make mistakes and live her life and has gone

through a lot of trauma and deserves the best. So we're not trying to attack her. And again, she was doing, she, they were telling her the whole time. They were gassing her up. You're doing great. You know, we love you doing your part-time thing. You know, she, she did what the experts, quote-unquote, told her to do. She did it to the standard. They told her was adequate, you know, even though I think objectively, it was not. And, you know, and she made a bunch of money, you know, but not that much. I mean, again, like, 106K is great, but it's not like, you know, they didn't give her five million bucks. Like, she deserves to live her life and, you know, do whatever she wants after this. Like, we're not coming after her. They'd love.

love the narrative to be, oh, they're attacking this person. But that's, that's not it. We're attacking the people who put this person in this position that is unfortunate. Maybe, maybe she could have made 100K and something else that would have moved her career forward and not harmed her in the way this day. So, yeah, I just want to be very clear that our, our issue is with her treatment and how they used her. It's not, we're not, we hope she has a very happy and productive. effective life. Of course. What do you think, like, do you think that this is like part and parcel?

Is this sort of what, you know, if something happens once, it may never happen again, but if it happens twice, it'll definitely happen again. Do you think that this is sort of what we're looking at on a bigger scale in the country as far as decrim or legalizing psychedelics? There's vested interests that don't want it. Call it big pharma, call it political, whatever the big interest is. but, you know, maybe it's a good old boy network, whatever it is. But do you think that this is sort of the same thing that people are going to face in other

jurisdictions? Yes. It seems like it's already happening and we have to be careful about what we say, but we're helping more people share more information soon. But from what we've heard, it's already happening. And again, you know, there's a world in which this is just people covering their asses, they're blaming DECRM in Massachusetts. It's not because they are in a conspiracy against DECRM,

but because that's much more convenient. been saying we're like ridiculously absurdly incompetent but but it already seems like they're using Massachusetts as a cudgel to kill decriminalization in multiple states and and that's an issue and one thing I want to bring up because this is something that tricked me perhaps perhaps I used to think you know I looked at Colorado where they did where new approach did pass a measure successfully and I thought so clearly they're the good guys because you know Colorado has its issues the centers. I know people, you know, have issues with it. Fundamentally in Colorado, you can get shrooms. I mean, like, that decrim, you know, the infinite growing and giving away, it really works.

It really works if you want people to get mushrooms, you know, let everybody grow it and give it away. A lot of people grow and they grow a lot. They give a lot of it away. You know, the decrim in Colorado, to me, is great, you know. It's not perfect. And I have a lot of issues with the specifics. I would have preferred like a dispensary model or whatever, but you know, Colorado, with all its flaws, pretty grateful for it. Yeah. But Colorado was never supposed to win. And I think that's really important to point out.

The highest in any public poll, to my knowledge, you could look this up, like before Election Day, the most recent representative in polling Colorado showed the thing at 43%. Ours was polling at 50%, right? But the Colorado measure that new approach advanced was at 43%. And I know somebody who spoke to people who were there on the campaign, and supposedly they all thought it was going to lose on election night. Why would they think anything else? It's a mid-year, so you don't have the same youth turnout.

You know, it's this crazy thing to let every brave grow mushrooms, and it's at 43%. And then it wins handily, 54%. And a part of me wonders if somebody was watching the election results come in and was like, darn it. How did this, it's like the producers, you know? Like, how did we just unleash free the plant here when we thought we had the perfect thing here? You know, it was polling at 43 fucking percent.

It was ridiculous. You know, everybody can grow mushrooms. And then it won anyway. And then they were like, okay, let's go to a state that's more buttoned up where this definitely not happen again. Fala, Massachusetts. But the part of my issue is they would justify, oh, we did this in Colorado. us, we can do this in MA. But again, even if it was all with good intentions, that's, that's insane and reckless. Like you don't say, okay, we were at 43% and we won on election night,

even though I thought we were going to lose. Let's repeat that. That's definitely a repeatable, replicable model. You pull in the 40s, you look like you're doing terribly, you know, and then miraculously you win. You know what I'm saying? Like, that's not, that's not something you say, okay, let's do that again everywhere. You know, you say, okay, we get locked down. out, let's see if we can improve on this. Let's see if we can be polling higher, you know, and maybe we can tweak the policy, tweak the policy to do better, you know, rather than just copying and pasting from Colorado in a very different state. So, yeah, it doesn't make sense. I don't know if they're just horrible at their jobs or they're great at their jobs-ish,

because even if the goal was to kill it, again, they were so sloppy and hem-fisted in the way they did it and they hired me and Jamie who actually care and aren't as dumb as they thought we were. So that's really not working out for them. So I don't know. If there's some sort of mysterious mastermind behind the scenes, my suggestion is you find different people to work for you, you know, who are more careful and just cover up better. Because me and Jamie, honestly, if they hadn't been so ham-fisted,

and again, I'm not saying there was a conspiracy, but if there was, they could have pulled this off a lot smoother, raising much less suspicion of me and Jamie, if they'd just been slightly more competent at it. Because me and Jamie didn't know anything. You know, we were novices. We were naive, and we were looking for the best, especially me. You know, like, we were all trying to make this work and wanted this to work,

because it would have been this beautiful thing, you know, if this had passed. So. Man, you know, it's, I'm squarely in the camp of, like, decrim. Like I really think that that and I realize it's not perfect. You know, I get it. But it just seems for so many of us on the bottom, for so many people that are struggling and so many people that can see this sort of mushroom or this plant medicine as a way to circumvent some of the struggles, to circumvent some of the pressures, to circumvent some of the bureaucracy and heal ourselves. Like, I'm squarely in that camp, but it, I don't, I want to, it's hard for me to move beyond

good and evil. And I know it's more nuanced than that. And like, maybe that's the idealist understanding of like, hey, these are the good guys, just the bad guys. But on some level, can you guys make any cases? Like, I don't know that I can. I guess if I was going to steal man their argument, the opposite side, I would say something along the lines of. listen, we have the drugs out there right now. We have the therapy that's helping for people. And we have these nonprofits that are doing great work. We don't need this new thing to come in here and fundamentally tear that down. And that's not even a good argument for it. But if you were to steal madden in a good way, what is the arguments of the people that are trying to keep psychedelics

from being decrimmed? I think the argument is that too wide access will hurt people. You know, irresponsible teenagers will get access. Kids will, you know, two-year-olds will get into their mom's purse and take, you know, the psilocybin pills and have a really bad time and maybe even worse than that. I mean, that's, that's it. I mean, the argument against deep-ram is the argument against widespread access. And I think it's pretty obvious, again, in terms of the facts that, you know, even in the scenario where, like, everybody has psilocybin everywhere, you know, most people are not going to

have a catastrophic experience, you know, especially if they know what it is and know how it works, you know, and are educated. That said, right, I do think the more psilocybin, statistically, right, the more of those, whatever percent it is, you know, less than 1 percent horrible things are going to happen, you know, in terms of absolute numbers. And so if the concern is culturally and politically and socially, you know, gradually integrating this in the way that's sustainable, I can understand the argument against widespread access immediately because you just don't want a bunch of news stories of some guy chopping off their dick because they took psilocybin or jumping on a plane and trying to take it down. These are both things that have happened.

So I'm for D. Crim, I think interestingly enough, Colorado does not have a lot of horror stories. You know, at the center of Free the Plant. I know bad things have happened there, but not one of these sensational things like chopping off your own penis, you know. And again, things happen with alcohol all the time. And we too. I love weed, but like weed causes problems too. So to me, I'm a legalized and regulate all drugs kind of guy and you definitely decrim personal use. But I think, but I think the legit argument against immediate decrim is you're going to have more accidents. It's going to be messy. It's going to scare people. And it will set things back. That's that's my thinking.

What do you think, Jamie? Yeah. I think a lot of people who don't believe we should have control over what we put in our own bodies. Yeah. And I don't know how to argue against, you know, I think that's what's behind a lot of this. They just feel like people can't be trusted to make decisions like this for themselves. They're well informed. I don't know. I try to understand it doesn't make sense. There's such a disconnect in the way people think about psychedelics and the way they think about alcohol. It makes no sense to me. I think we need to do a better job of understanding how these anti-D-Krim people, you know, what it is that's, you know, like what is the real issue. How can we message it in a better way? How can we make it?

people understand that no one should be put in jail for for using these medicines. I don't know. I think it's just a fun difference in the way some people think you, you know, the medical establishment makes things safe. They're here to protect us and to regulate so that, you know, and yes, there is a huge part of that, but none of us would be here talking about psychedelics if people hadn't been using them outside of clinical context illegally in the underground. You know, it's just I ponder that all the time. You know, how can we do a better job of really, really understanding what people's issue is with decrim? I think it's really complicated.

I think there's a lot of things, but I think it's just a reflection of our society and how we outsource our physical. and mental health to, you know, pay professionals. You know, I was at the, I was at the store yesterday, and I was wearing my heroic hearts t-shirt. And I was looking for some food for my family. I was picking up a salad, actually. And out of nowhere, like, someone just tapped me on the back of the shoulder. Like, it was almost like a, just a stealth move.

I was like, oh, I turned around. And this guy was staring at me. And he paused for a minute. And it wasn't just like a real. regular stair. It was like that thousand yard stare. And there was this moment between us. And I was just looking at him and he's like, hey, I noticed your shirt. And I'm like, I had to look down to realize what shirt I was wearing. And I'm like, yeah, these guys are doing really great work. What, what got your interest? And he's like, psilocybin for veterans. And I just, I could feel the weight of his stare. And I'm like, they're doing, they're doing really awesome work. And I'm like, what, what about it? Interest you. And he goes, I'm a veteran. I'm a veteran. in with PTSD. And I could feel the weight of his words on me like a thousand bricks on my shoulder. Like I almost started tearing up because I could feel the pain. And I'm like, are you curious about it? Like I know some people like, would you be curious to maybe want to

try it? And he goes, I've thought about it a lot, but I don't do drugs. I've never done drugs. You know, and I, but like in that in that language, I don't do drugs. I could hear him calling like, I am fucking dying inside. I need something. Nothing is working for me. Like I felt all of that. And so we just sat and kind of stared at each other for a little bit. I'm like, what if it's not a drug? What if it's what if it's not a drug? What if it's something natural that helps? Like I've seen people I love get better. And I know that my my definition of drugs has changed. Is it possible yours could? Man and like a coup of me fucking cry right now thinking about it. He was like, maybe and he went on to tell me about being an operator being in iraq being in afghanistan

and so thankful that he no longer holds the the weight of what he had to do or was told to do and there's no escape for him we began talking about neuroplasticity but like there is no there is no new approach there is no PR firm there is nothing powerful there's no government official there is no law that could ever carry the weight of the conversation that this gentleman and I had. And that is where the change is coming from. There's, I don't care how much money you pay a PR firm. Like that is getting out there. Those are the stories that are be told in the community. If I had that conversation with him at a VFW and those conversations are happening all the time. They're happening in your circle, Graham. Jamie, they're happening in your circle. That is the real

fundamental change that happens in the underground that cannot be. stopped and like when I look at these things that are happening on these whether it's a it's a corrupt case or it's a non-profit that's trying to sway the election like the real election is happening in the underground to each one of us like we are changing it on some level so if i could turn it that way just for a minute there's no stopping the underground mycelium grows underground and only every now and then when the conditions are right does the mushroom come above board so like i just want to put that out there as something positive like there's no stopping it decrimmed or not decrimmed. These medicines are here for all of us and they're a birthright for us and they're going

to change the way we move in society. They're going to dissolve the boundaries out there. So I wanted to put some of that positivity out in there. There's no stopping us. But I want to, I don't know, I go to say I want to answer that positive with negativity. No, I think that's beautiful and great and true. And, and I think it out there. Yeah. And, you know, and that's definitely something especially Jamie has experienced. She had so many conversations. And Jamie, me all pass the bike to you and have you talk about that a little bit. And I first want to say my little, I want to get on my soapbox and say it's one of my interviews. Let's hear it. So I am very frustrated with what I consider to be the hypocritical and not factual way that so many in the psychedelic community talk about psychedelics, even in the underground,

we wouldn't have a sort of in the underground, but especially, you know, when communicating with outsiders. you know, there's so much focus on how intense and strange and weird these things are and how, you know, how they're so important to be used responsibly. And by the way, like, I'm not here saying don't use psychedelics responsibly, but then you actually talk to these people, you know, like the new approach folks behind the scenes or the doctors behind the scenes. Sorry, not all the doctors, there's some people who are good. I don't want to be, some people actually start.

The doctors, the good doctors in Massachusetts, I have no problems with them, the ones that talk to. cool, they're not hypocritical. But like, there are people who like, they'll be all about, you know, regulation and everything publicly, but they talk to them privately and they're doing the most ridiculous, irresponsible shit. And they're getting away with it because the drugs aren't that dangerous. You know, like I was talking to these people who were involved in, like, something and trying to be, you know, really above board publicly. And then they were telling me about this wild experience they had where a friend, like, had a psychotic.

break on mushrooms and like they were scared and they were all tripping together and they hadn't really prepared for it at all. And, and then I asked, well, what happened after after? And they were like, oh, he was totally fine. You know, there's been no issue. And like, and again, that's so typical. Like statistically, I'm not, you know, let's say this. The, the, the, the, what information is available out there suggests that a lot of people are not using. psychedelics responsibly. Okay? Like when I talk to people who use psychedelics, the typical person in that category, and myself included at times in my life, have used them in ways that the medical establishment would say was profoundly irresponsible and dangerous. But the vast majority of us, the experience is,

no matter how bad it is, after six hours or whatever, you're back to normal. And again, that's not the case for everybody. I do believe people cut their dicks off and get up in a hospital. and that's bad and we want to avoid that. But like that happens with other things too. That happens with prescription psych meds. That happens with alcohol. That happens with cannabis. There are these freak things that happen or not even freak things, just rare things.

And but psychedelics are actually astoundingly safe in my view for what they do, you know? Like you do can have some really wild, very profoundly unpleasant experiences if you take so much in the wrong set and setting. But like, and I hate to bring this up. But like in Israel, when they had that massacre and people were on psychedelics, a lot of the people who were on psychedelics actually did better. Like they found, you know, the ones who are on MDMA, they have less PTSD than the people who weren't. So like, that was the worst set in setting possible. And the people who were on the psychedelics, certain ones, did better than the ones who were not.

So if you can like watch people get shot in front of you on MDMA and be better off than the person who wasn't on MDMA, then I don't really understand how. people are talking about MDMA, like it's so much more intense and dangerous than alcohol, you know, like when if you were drinking and somebody got shot in front of you, I think you were more likely to get shot or whatever. You know what I'm saying? It just, they have danger. There's a real danger to psychedelics, and I'm not one, like some people, to dismiss that. Like, I don't think there's no such thing as a bad trip, and I don't think everything is just a lesson from the universe. Like, I've seen extreme mental illness, you know, in my kids.

community and it's not to be romanticized. You know, it's very scary. Jamie's seen it too. And psychedelics can help it, but it can also make it worse or cause it in some rare circumstances. And that's real and bad. But psychedelics, to me, used responsibly, are really astoundingly safe. And for me, the biggest danger was psychedelics. The thing I'm most afraid about out in the community, it's not people voluntarily taking too much. It's people, you know, using them to hurt people. That, that to me is the nightmare scenario out in the community.

It's not somebody accidentally taking too much mushrooms. It's somebody like giving mushrooms to somebody before they give them a beating or something to make it worse. That's the thing that I worry about, you know, in terms of widespread use. So that's just my little thing. And I wish that, you know,

people who sort of know this to be true would stop thinking that they have to pretend otherwise to like be accepted and respectable. society. Just say the truth. They're not that dangerous. There are serious dangers. They should be treated respectfully. There's a lot we don't know. There's a little bit we do. These seem to really help people and we're still learning and they're wonderful and you certainly shouldn't go to jail for having them. I just wish we were all sort of on the same page because to me those are the facts from the knowledge we have right now, you know. Yeah. What do you think, Jamie? Well, that was a lot.

But, yeah, I definitely think people should not be going to jail for using mushrooms or any other drug. And I hope that we can do better going forward and messaging around that. I think it's really amazing that, you know, the American Medical Association has come out in favor of decrim. That it should be treated as a public health issue. not a criminal one. I think that's really promising to have an organization like that be willing to come forward and say that. And a lot of other ones too, you know, in Massachusetts, the mass psychiatric society that opposed the ballot question, they actually endorsed several of our decrim bills, which I think is huge. So I think, you know, it's going to happen. They will be

legalized, the stories of healing, the clinical, the evidence, it's all there. It's not a matter of, you know, if, it's more when and how. And I'm with you, you know, I think it has to be, I think we've got to have decrim. We have to have just a basic understanding that people should not be put in jail for using these substances or any substance, you know, in my opinion. And I think the howl really matters. And I think making these medicines accessible to the people who need them is the most important thing. Is if it's legal and you can't afford it, what good is it? So to me, that's the most important piece of all of this is making sure that, you know, psychedelics are for the people and they don't get,

overly medicalized and inaccessible to only the rich. It's, you know, capitalism tends to ruin everything. And I'll fight really hard to have that not happen here. But, yeah, at the end of the day in Massachusetts, and all that Graham and I've seen, and, you know, this was sort of a rambling conversation. There is, there are a lot of facts very well. documented facts evidence you know anything that we've said about this is something

that you know we have written proof of and I think a lot of that will come out in future reporting that's laid out in a way that people can understand a little a little bit better but my perspective is just what happened here was really wrong it was wrong for an out-of-state entity to roll and to our state and make such a mess of this and really set us back. You know, when a ballot question fails, it's a huge problem for the issue in the state. You know, the prevailing wisdom is it sets you back like 10 years because legislators don't want to touch it because they feel that the people have spoken.

So this was a huge deal. This was a huge deal for the people who... It was a deal nationally too. Yeah. Who wanted it. And for the many people, I think of the people, you know, for me and my family, I don't mind breaking unjust laws to heal my loved ones. I'm fine with that. But there's a lot of people out there like the guy that you talk to, you know, I don't do drugs. I don't break the law. Only do what's legal. And I think those are the people. I think the people who don't even know or care about psychedelics. But who could be saved by that. them, like those are the people who really lose out. Because those of us who are in this community, whether it's illegal or not, you know, it's like you said, there's nonprofits. There's ways to get

your hands on these medicines if you're willing to break the law. But there's a lot of people who aren't and who are losing hope. Maybe we lose a lot of lives that way. And there's just, you know, it has to end. So Graham and I feel like it was just really important for the truth to get out about what happened. So that other states, other advocates, other people could make informed decisions about, you know, how new approach operates or how they operated in this specific instance. And I hope that, you know, people can do with that what they. will. But I think when you read the reporting where everything is laid out and linked and you can see the emails and the texts, there's just a lot done wrong. And, you know, and the people of Massachusetts lost out. And I think nationwide people should be paying attention because it matters how we proceed and legalizing these matters a lot. I also want to say that I think one of the issues is I used to be one of those people who didn't care about psychedelics, didn't know about psychedelics, didn't want psychedelics, was even a little bit scared of psychedelics that they even did bother to think about it. Yeah, of course.

And the only reason why I, and I was one of those don't do drugs people. And it was only because I went basically totally insane, which again, I also be careful about saying that because now I'm extremely lucid, but people who want to discredit me will. say I'm still insane. In fact, that has been communicated to me indirectly. That's one of the things they're saying. Like somebody who knows me and also knows some new approach people was like, I haven't heard anything bad about you, Graham, since this happened. But apparently they're very worried about your mental health. You know, like your mental health is just spirally and causing you to see all these things that aren't real about this thing. But the truth is, per my, this is getting too much TMI. But the point is I'm doing very well, actually, with my mental

help and being able to fight this fight as a reflection of that. But in the past, I was doing very, very badly and was desperate, and it was only thanks to a family member that I turned to psilocybin and it really helped. And so when that happened, there was kind of this lightbulb moment where this wasn't a drug issue. It was something so much more profound, as you, George and Jamie have said. And one thing that's frustrated me is I think so many people still have that mindset that I used to have and kind of compartmentalize all drug policy stuff is kind of unimportant to other issues. But it's really not. You know, the mental health crisis really affects pretty much everybody directly or indirectly.

I think most people can benefit from psychedelics in some way. And in terms of the story of this ballot campaign in Massachusetts last year, the reason this matters is because this sort of incompetence or at worst, intentional sabotage could happen for other things that people care about. You know, it could happen for, you know, UBI, or it could happen, you know, universal basic income, or it could happen for, you know, education, you know, for people, you know, universal pre-K or whatever you, whatever things. is difficult that will challenge the powers that be, if you allow this kind of thing to happen, you're making it easier for it to be sabotaged. And again, maybe sabotage wasn't here. Maybe it was incompetence. But even then, you know, if you care about an issue, whether it be LGBTQ rights or anything, you know, you have a vested interest in making sure that we don't have a system where the people who like care the least about it and are the least competent are the ones moving it

forward. That's a problem. And the people who have, who worked on this campaign, like, they're involved in all sorts of stuff, you know, they're not just psychedelics. They're going to do other things. So maybe you don't care about psychedelics, but it'll be your issue next that goes through the wood chipper. So this isn't, this isn't just about drug policy. This is about how our politics works and gets corrupted potentially by vested interest, even if it's sort of incidental. Like, again, maybe there was no grand conspiracy. Maybe it was just every. everybody having other priorities and, you know, slight conflicts of interest and being apathetic and also somewhat genuinely incompetent and it all kind of came together.

So, so, but regardless, this shouldn't happen again for psychedelics, but it shouldn't happen for any issue that matters, you know, so. Yeah. That's important to know. It's amazing to me to get to see the way, you know, if I just, if I were to pan way out and look at it from a giant thousand foot view. You know, maybe it is psilocybin that allowed this campaign for us to see how politics works. And maybe you have to be that close to it to know the young lady that was the face of it,

to know the people at new approach that were PRing it, to understand the intricacies of it, to see, oh, well, this looks a lot like it was done on purpose. But like once you have that clarity and the same thing with a lot of psychedelics, like once you know, You can't unknown. And like that's a big problem for people, but it's also like the greatest asset. Like once you see how it works, you see it everywhere. So for those that have been a huge fan of your guys work and especially for you guys that were in it, like you can't unsee it now.

Like you could call it a coincidence. But I mean like you can't unsee the connections that were made and just the fact that we're bringing it to light. And you guys have done so much epic work and I'll put Jack Gorslin over there too and Noah Daily like these people that are shining a light on the. mechanics of how the operation works, that is a giant win. Even though you don't get the outcome that you want, perhaps it's better to show the machinery. Look at this machinery. Look at how this cog fits in over here. Hey, look at this person over here doing this. And when we all become aware of

that, it makes that, it's like the magician. Like, if you watch a magician do a trick, it's pretty impressive. But as soon as you know how the magician does the trick, you don't ever want to see it again. You're like, that guy's just con in me. You know, so on some level, I think just bringing light to these issues is a great way to see it as a win, even though it's not the win we want it. It's still a huge win for people who have eyes to see. I agree. I know I've been talking a ton, so I want to make sure Jamie, Jamie says what she wants to say. But I agree. And what, darn it, you know what's funny? Jamie, you have to talk because I completely lost my thought. So. Yeah. I was, oh, no, I haven't. I haven't. Really quick. Jack, Jack Gorsline. You know, there's so.

much. We're not going to get to all of it. To me, it's pretty clear in this conversation. But I want to whoever, if there is a mastermind out there, you want to know who's responsible for this whole debacle in terms of me and Jamie. I want to note, you know, because people have been saying, oh, it's Jack and Cahoots with Jamie and Graham, that months before me and Jamie joined the campaign, Jack, at new approaches, you know, decision to make Jack like the inside journalist. So it was a decision all the way from the top to leak Jack information about this grassroots activist that they had turned on, you know, to leak Jack information from internal comms between them and this and this troublemaker. You know, that was months before me and Jamie joined the campaign that had happened. New approach had declined an interview with the Boston Globe and then gave an interview to Jack Gorsline, you know, to give their first public response.

this misinformation by this activist and further, and then I'll turn it over to Jamie. When the consultant PR person from Dewey Square Group told us you can't talk to any journalist without prior authorization, including Jack Gorsline, and I'm pretty sure I have a text message. I'm going to make that public soon, but like it was the new approach person who told me and Jamie, don't worry about the PR campaign's PR person. You guys can keep talking to Jack because new approach, all the way from the top, thought Jack, Jack is our guy. And again, so you're upset about Jack now. You created Jack too. You know, like me and Jamie where if you told us, you know, this is a firm line.

You can't talk to Jack even. I know I would have kept to that, you know, like maybe, you know, I don't want to speak for Jamie, but I was the sort of person. This was a big break for me. I want to do everything right. I was told by, you know, the new approach guy, you can keep talking. talking to Jack and Jack continued to be given scoops and so that were authorized by the campaign. So this Jack problem also created by your wonderful new approach geniuses. So I just want everybody to know that, you know, who's curious that like it's another self-inflicted whatever, you know, is Jack because new approach, this campaign really helped Jack's career and that was in large part not due to me and Jamie. We told new approach about Jack, but it was

new approach you decided Jack Jack's a guy we can give exclusives to you know so um yeah I just want to get that out there Jamie you can you can take over um I was just yeah I'll just add I think it's really disappointing that the response to all of this reporting that um Jack Gorsline and Noah Daly and through Lucid News has done campaign finance piece of this The response from new approach has basically been to discredit Jack, you know, disparage his reputation and ours behind the scenes. There's been no one has come forward with anything to counter any of the claims that we've made. they either not responded or said that it was just a misunderstanding over and over. We misunderstood.

But there's been no attempts to clarify anything. I mean, if you're not guilty of something and you're accused of it, usually the first thing you try to do is present facts to exonerate yourself. And there hasn't been any of that. They've just, you know, they've ignored the issue. and I tried to cast doubt on us, you know, as people, which I think is, again, not what you typically do if you're in the right. If you have facts to support yourself, you usually come out with them. I think they're just hoping all of this goes away, but just wanted to reiterate for people when they read the reporting.

You know, there's a lot of evidence in there. It's not just us making things up because we're disgruntled, you know, because we're not discontal. you know, because we're not disgruntled and angry. What do you mean? I'm definitely disgruntled. But I also have the truth on my side, overwhelming. You are. Yeah.

But for me, anyway, it's, you know, this was just about the truth needing to come out. And I hope that people will take the time to really, you know, dig into this and read the facts that have already been reported and those that are coming out. out, which so far the reporting has been on the campaign finance violations pretty much exclusively, but, you know, there's additional reporting coming out on some of the other issues that we talked about, just the nitty gritty of how this campaign was run or not run very well. So, yeah, just the one thing I want to reiterate is that's it. It's the truth of the situation and what really happened and what really went wrong is what was important for us to tell.

And nothing personal to anyone involved. I actually have spent a lot of time racked with guilt about speaking up. I felt like I do feel like it was the right thing to do. But I'm super compassionate person. And I know that this has caused a lot of problems for people at New Approach and people at Dewey Square. that we, you know, that we worked closely together. And I feel badly about that, but I feel like the truth is the most important thing. And that's what we've told.

And we have, you know, have it in writing. We have the receipts. So I hope people will pay a little attention to what really went wrong here and take some lessons from it going forward. And we have not been about, you know, when Graham mentioned, you know, they were trying to keep us out of the media and the spotlight. I just also want to say that is not something that Graham and I have been buying. I actually hate.

You know, I'm not constantly posting on LinkedIn or social media. Look at me. That's not me whatsoever. And there, yeah, just sort of attacks on our reputation and our character and our motivation have been floating around. And that's, I think, just part of it when you speak up. But I think if people take the time to really dig into this, there's a lot here that's really scandalous and well documented and a lot of good stories that should be some good lessons

for people who want to pay attention. Yeah, I agree. I think it's an important issue, and I'm grateful. And I think my listeners are too for you guys having the courage to come out and talk about it. But more than that to shine light on how to fix it, what's important, why you did what you did. There's probably a lot of people that are curious to find out more. So let me start with you, Jamie, and then I'll come over to Graham. Like as we're landing the plane, like, what is it that you want people to know?

And where can people, if they wanted to find you and talk to you more about some specifics, or maybe they just want to share some stories with you. Where is a good place to find you at, Jamie? Masshealing.org. Mass healing is the nonprofit that I started with C.J. LaCanty, who was the veteran associated with the campaign that sort of got pulled in, but not compensated for his awesome work as another sort of spokesperson for the campaign. Yeah, him and I started mass healing. Grams helped us out with that as many other awesome people in Massachusetts have. So yeah, you can find me there.

I'm always happy to, we haven't talked about this publicly a lot, but we're always happy to answer questions. It's really important to me that, you know, people, people know and understand the why behind this. So, yeah, I'm happy, happy to answer. any questions talk about this to anybody who's willing to hear. I think a lot of people, I've been surprised that there hasn't been more interest in this story. I think people are maybe waiting, waiting and watching. But yeah, I'm happy to answer any questions. And I know Graham does,

too. You know, it feels the same way. willing to we're not going around trying to sell this story but um we're happy to happy to talk about it and lost my audio or video sorry that's all right that's all right grand let's say someone's looking to um learn some more or maybe they want to follow up with some of the things you're doing where's a good place for them to reach out to you mass healing although i just checked the website and i realized that uh we don't have our like emails up there like we have a form, a contact form, but we really just got to throw our emails up on the website. You know, I have a gram at masshealing.org email, and that's a great email to reach me.

And Jamie has a Jamie at mashealing.org email, and that's a great way to reach her. And mass healing is spelled M-A-S-S-H-E-A-L-I-N-G. So it's mass-healing, just like you think, you know, dot org. So, yeah, I just think that's a great way to meet me. And in terms of takeaways, I want to echo what Jamie said about this not being about the individuals involved. And like I said, I'm angry and disgruntled and I am, but that's because of the fact. And I do have some negative feelings about some people involved because of the way they treated me and the way they handled this campaign. But as I said earlier, if they start acting right or whatever or apologized or really,

did say, you know what I'm saying? It's like I'd want to, you know, welcome them back, you know, like, like I, that's, that's the lesson I learned from psychedelics is to be very compassionate towards people, although I, and I used to think that's a lesson everybody takes from them, but clearly that's not, but I really, that's not just lip service to me, you know, I, one reason I felt good about reporting the campaign finance stuff was because the penalties are so minor, you know, like, I didn't want any of these people, you know, even the ones I'm most upset with to be like hauled into jail, you know what I'm saying? Or like, you know, like this is, my understanding was basically there'd be an admission of guilt, you know,

or something akin to that and some sort of nominal fine for these very well, you know, well, uh, well financed orgs. And it would sort of help the truth get out. But again, me and Jamie aren't like, oh, we want these people to be on the streets or whatever. We want them to live happy, productive, healthy, ethical lives, you know, contributing to the human race in a positive way. And that hasn't changed. And we haven't been popping off on social media. And we tried to avoid names in this podcast to emphasize that this isn't about, oh, this person was mean to me or this person sucks. And actually there's, I'm not going to name the name, but there's an individual in particular, you know, for the consulting company who I actually really liked and treated me with nothing but the utmost respect. And they did some stuff that I'd take issue with, but I blame their boss.

And I really do not, you know, to the extent this has affected them adversely, that is certainly entirely insidious. dental because I really, really liked them. So still like them. I mean, I haven't been contacted. Yeah. Well, awesome. Jamie, Graham, I'm super thankful that you guys are doing the work you're doing. Thank you for spending some time with me and everybody out there who's hanging out with us.

And hang on briefly afterwards. But to everybody within the sound of my voice, that's all we got for today. Go down at the show notes. Check out Graham and Jamie. Make sure that you get involved with things you're passionate about. And that's how we make this place a more. more of a wholesome community and that's all we got for today ladies and gentlemen. I hope you have a beautiful day. Aloha.

Thank you.