Upstream - A Blunt Conversation about Cannabis w/ David Bienenstock

Episode Date: April 20, 2024

“The illegality of cannabis is outrageous, an impediment to full utilization of a drug which helps produce the serenity and insight, sensitivity and fellowship so desperately needed in this increasingly mad and dangerous world.” This is a quote attributed to the late astronomer, planetary scientist, and cannabis enthusiast, Carl Sagan. And if you’ve ever watched the original Cosmos series which he created and hosted, you won’t be surprised that he appreciated pot. His decades-old insights and wisdom about marijuana and its individual and societal benefits carry forth the energy that we’re bringing to this special 4/20 episode of Upstream which is a celebration of this incredible plant—its history, its myths, legends, culture, and much more. And we’ve brought on the perfect guest to discuss this with us. David Bienenstock is the author of the book How to Smoke Pot (Properly): A Highbrow Guide to Getting High, and host of the podcast Great Moments in Weed History. In this episode we explore the history and culture of cannabis from prehistoric times, through to the ancient biblical times of Jesus, and up to the present. We recount the real story of how 4/20 became a celebrated holiday, we hear some of David’s favorite weed stories, and get serious too as we discuss the impacts of criminalization, the commodification of cannabis in the legalization process, the need for racial justice to repair communities of color disproportionately impacted by the war on drugs, and the possibility of a general strike on 4/20. So lean back, grab your joint or your pipe or your bong or your vape or if you don’t partake, just imagine you’re in the remote blunt rotation and you’re skipping your puff and politely passing the joint—and this is important—to the left-hand side, as you join Robert and David in conversation about all things cannabis. Further resources: How to Smoke Pot (Properly): A Highbrow Guide to Getting High Freedom Grow Here's The Real Story Of Why We Celebrate 4/20, by Ryan Grim  Intermission music by The Olivia Tremor Control.  Episode artwork by Berwyn Mure. Upstream is a labor of love — we couldn't keep this project going without the generosity of our listeners and fans. Subscribe to our Patreon at patreon.com/upstreampodcast or please consider chipping in a one-time or recurring donation at www.upstreampodcast.org/support If your organization wants to sponsor one of our upcoming documentaries, we have a number of sponsorship packages available. Find out more at  upstreampodcast.org/sponsorship For more from Upstream, visit www.upstreampodcast.org and follow us on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and Bluesky. You can also subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts.    

Ah Ah Cannabis has probably been in humans' lives for about 10,000 years. To give you some perspective on that, no less than Carl Sagan, who was himself a noted stoner, who attributed a lot of his best ideas to thinking about things while he was high. He once speculated in his book that cannabis might be the first ever domesticated plant, really the plant that drove the dawn of agriculture, which you know, been a bit of a mixed bag for humanity as far as I'm concerned. But that aside, it shows you how far back this relationship goes and it shows you how

central to the human experience cannabis has been in that entire time span. You are listening to Upstream. Upstream. Upstream. Upstream. A podcast of documentaries and conversations that invites you to unlearn everything you thought you knew about economics. I'm Della Duncan. And I'm Robert Raymond. The illegality of cannabis is outrageous, an impediment to the full utilization of a drug that helps produce the serenity and insight, sensitivity and fellowship so desperately

needed in this increasingly mad and dangerous world. This is a quote attributed to the late astronomer, planetary scientist and cannabis enthusiast, Carl Sagan. And if you ever watched the original Cosmos series which he created and hosted, you won't be surprised that he appreciated Pott. you won't be surprised that he appreciated pot. His decades old insights and wisdom about marijuana and its individual and societal benefits carry forth the energy that we're bringing in to this special 420 episode of Upstream, which is a celebration of this incredible plant,

its history, its myths, legends, culture, and much more. And we've brought on the perfect guest to discuss this with us. David Bienenstock is the author of the book, How to Smoke Pot Properly, A High Brow Guide to Getting High, and the host of the podcast, Great Moments in Weed History. In this episode, we explore the history and culture of cannabis from pre-historical times through the ancient biblical times of Jesus and up to the present. We recount the real story of how 420 became a celebrated holiday, we hear some of David's favorite weed stories, and we

get serious too as we discuss the impacts of criminalization, the commodification of cannabis in the legalization process, the need for racial justice to repair communities of color disproportionately impacted by the war on drugs, and the possibility of a general strike on 420. So lean back, grab your joint or your pipe or your bong or your vape, or if you don't partake, just imagine you're in the remote blunt rotation and you're skipping your puff and politely passing the joint. And this is important to your left hand side as you join Robert and David in conversation about all things cannabis. Before we get started, Upstream is entirely listener funded. We

couldn't keep this project going without your support. There's a number of ways that you can support us financially. You can sign up to be a patreon subscriber which gives you access to bonus episodes, at least one a month but usually more, at patreon.com forward slash Upstream podcast. You can also make a tax-deductible recurring donation or one-time donation on our website upstreampodcast.org forward slash support. Through your support you'll be helping keep upstream sustainable and helping keep this whole project going. Socialist political education podcasts are not easy to fund, so thank you in advance for the crucial support. And now, here's Robert in conversation with David Bienenstock.

David, it is great to have you on the show. I'm wondering if you could just start by introducing yourself for our listeners. Hi there. I'm David Bienenstock. I am the host of the podcast, Great Moments in Weed History, the author of the book, How to Smoke Pot Properly and a Self-Described Longtime Weed Guy. Well, it's really great to have you on. I first heard about your podcast and the work that you do actually from Sam Sax's Means hear you, I think, last year, a little bit before 420. And you were talking a lot about sort of a general strike on 420, and that really piqued my interest. And so I'm going to ask you to tell us about that in

a little bit. But first, I guess I'm just curious, like, you know, you've written a book, you have this podcast, you've done a lot of work in the weed industry. I'm curious how you came to do that kind of work. Sure. Well, I should start by saying Happy 420 to you and to everybody listening. And I'd say, you know, it really started with a personal connection for me with this plant and then with this culture, I was a pretty sort of angry, disaffected younger person and not an uncommon condition to find oneself in.

And the very first time, not the first time I smoked pot, but shortly after the first time I really felt the effects of it was a pretty profound experience for me. I, you know, one, I got super fucking high, but, you know, I was able to look at myself. I was able to laugh at myself, which was something that was really hard for me. I was able to look at myself with some kind of a distance and just sort of step out for a moment.

And you know, the more I've learned over many decades now since then about how cannabis affects the brain and in particular things like trauma and PTSD. And I don't compare my experiences as an adolescent to those of soldiers or other people with incredibly traumatic life experiences. But what I do understand is that the relief I felt, the change of consciousness and perspective that I felt, and the lasting benefits from that are very real and are very rooted in science and the idea that this thing that was this plant that was so vilified and the source of so much racist, oppressive prohibition was actually really beneficial for me. prohibition was actually really beneficial for me.

And that was on the sort of brain level. But then as you start to think, how can this be? And I was, you know, nerdy enough then to go to the actual pre-internet library and try to find out, you know, Hey, maybe it made me feel good, but it's, I really thought I was doing something kind of dangerous the first time I smoked pot, you know, certainly outside of its actual potential, you know, harms. And then I came to discover, you know, what, you know, millions and millions of other people have discovered that it's really bullshit and propaganda. And so that set me on a course and really kind of directed some of that anger I had towards how fucked up everything is.

And I've never looked away from that. You know, nothing that I have discovered since has convinced me that I was wrong about weed in that moment, or that I was wrong about weed in that moment or that I was wrong about how fucked up everything is in this society. And so, you know, fast forward quite a bit, I was a working journalist at the time. You know, I'd been in what you could loosely call alternative media everything from adult entertainment magazine to alt weeklies and stuff like that and this Somebody sent me a one ad for a job that turned out to be at high times and it was like

weed and journalism You know, I've never wanted a job like I wanted that job and I was fortunate enough to get that job and especially at the time I just always have to say Unfortunately, and we could talk about this or not, but the people who have taken over High Times magazine in the last few years are Fucked up stock swindling pieces of shit. But at the time that I worked there, it was still, I had this legacy back to the original owner who was a political radical, who was one of the driving

forces of the underground press movement in the United States, who was a weed smuggler on the grand scale of flying airplanes full of weed in from South America to hidden airstrips in South Florida. So it was a real outlaw tradition and I was proud to be a part of it. And that's the long story of how I came to work professionally writing about weed. Well, first of all, happy 420 to you too. And yeah, thanks for sharing about your story a little bit. I can definitely hear your passion come through,

and I really resonate too with some of your experiences, like my early personal experiences of discovering this seemingly dangerous substance and finding out gradually, you know, how beneficial it can be in so many different ways. And just like, you know, navigating that aspect of it being criminalized with the benefits and really like, you know, the joy that it brought and the enhancement of experience and the mode of thinking and seeing the world with fresh new eyes and all of that. And of course, the medical benefits too, the medicinal benefits and all the while, this vilification that comes with it. And that's something I think we'll talk a bit more about

throughout this conversation. But first I'd love to talk to you a bit about your book, just if you could tell us a little bit about the book titled How to Smoke Pot Properly, A High Brow Guide to Getting High. And yeah, I guess I'm just curious what inspired you to write it and what you were hoping to convey and I think most importantly, what does it mean to smoke pot properly? And have I been doing it wrong this whole time? All right, well, we'll have to have a demo.

No, so the title of the book is a bit tongue in cheek on one level, you know, there is information certainly in the book about how to roll the joint and pass it on the left-hand side and just sort of some of the basics of weed culture. Like any culture, it's good to be respectful of the reasonable traditions of a culture that you're learning about or joining or just hanging with for a night. Of course, you wouldn't want to go somewhere and wash your feet in the hand bowl or whatever.

But really what I'm getting at is that for me and for a lot of people, not everybody who smokes some pot has a transformative experience and not everybody currently needs cannabis as a medicine. Some people might just smoke a little pot, have a good time, go about their day. That's awesome. But for a lot of us, it either is a very, very powerful medicine, and that could be for anything from getting through chemotherapy and ALS and seizure disorders to anxiety and depression and simply feeling good is medicinal. But for a lot of us, the culture around it brings a lot into our lives.

And so people love to grow this plant. So there's this deeper level of it. And that is yielded a lot of lessons to me. In essence, you know, writing about cannabis, you're writing about the criminal justice system, you're writing about the medical establishment. You're all from a critical, critical point of view when it looks at these institutions. But you're talking about art and culture, you're talking about creativity, you're talking about botany. I was writing recently about

attempts to patent components of cannabis and cannabis plants themselves. So it intersects with all of these things. And what I wanted to convey in the book through my experiences is the lessons that I learned from different people that I've met along this journey, whether it was about the plant itself or the culture or about life. And really to me, one of the most important things about cannabis is this shared understanding that the government oppresses people for no fucking reason and gets away with it. That the medical establishment lies to curry favor with the government or for their own profit margins. That combined with how fun weed can be, you know, we got pushed into the margins, but we also like through the greatest party

in the margins that we could. And so when you combine all of that, there's a lot of wisdom. And then when you look at the fact that in the 1970s, support for legalization and just, let's just say, support for no longer arresting people for weed. Like legalization, I'm making the little air quotes, certainly gets into what's going to be the economic system by which people grow, distribute, and buy weed.

But when I say legalization in this context, it means less than 20% of Americans supported no longer arresting people for weed. And now in that span of time, not only have we accomplished that goal in so many states, but support for that idea is at about 80%. If every other progressive or even radical position that people push for had had similar progress in that same time span, we would be living in a fucking paradise. And I think that it can sometimes be frustrating for those of us in the drug policy reform movement, which has so much further

to go, and we could talk about the actual war on drugs, where the progress is still really hard. But to have had so much success on an issue where neither political party meaningfully supported this change until it became so popular was it was inevitable, where we were, our biggest advocates were also putting a target on themselves to be directly or indirectly fucked with by the police. some lessons learned and some hard, hard one wisdom to share with other progressive communities. And even within that world, sometimes you feel stigmatized. And there's just sort of an idea of like, oh, this is it's not a you just like to get high. And it's like, yeah, I do. But this is also the

most crazy fucking racist, oppressive thing. As far as public policy goes, the war on drugs is the most racist public policy, I believe, going. And how hard it damages people's lives and people's communities and how disproportionately targeted it is. And so, you know, I guess that would be my appeal to maybe people listening to your program who this isn't their issue, or, you know, whatever their feelings might be about it that this is very much a central part of pushing back against misused, oppressive government power. misused oppressive government power. Absolutely, I couldn't agree more with all of that. And we'll get more into the criminalization of weed and the legalization of weed to a bit later on. But I'd love to ask you now to maybe just tell us

a little bit about the history of cannabis. You get into the history, of course, quite a bit in the podcast. And there's so much from the ancient use of cannabis in biblical times and, of course, even before that, all the way up to the present. There is just a really interesting history, a deep history of the marijuana plant.

And I'd love it if you could share some of that history and maybe talk a little bit about how we've used cannabis throughout the decades and centuries and millennia and how it emerged to become what it is today. The biggest headline is, you know, cannabis is probably been in humans lives for about 10,000 years. So that is to give you some perspective on that, no less than Carl Sagan, who was himself a noted stoner who attributed a lot of his best ideas to thinking about things while

he was high. He once speculated in his book that cannabis might be the first ever domesticated plant, really the plant that drove the dawn of agriculture, which, you know, been a bit of a mixed bag for humanity as far as I'm concerned. But that aside, it shows you how far back this relationship goes and it shows you how back this relationship goes and it shows you how central to the human experience cannabis has been in that entire time span and something important to really understand in terms of our co-evolution with this plant is that we have in our human bodies what's called the endocannabinoid system, which is basically the central processing unit of the human body that regulates all your other systems.

And it is a series of receptors into which cannabinoids compounds found in cannabis like THC fit like a lock and a key. So that's about as foundational a relationship as you can get in terms of agriculture, in terms of obviously prior to that gathering the plant, you know, you had to know you love that plant a whole lot to create agriculture simply to have a steady so you could get high on your own supply no matter what. And then I'd say the next, when we get to recorded history, we're going to be looking at it through the framework of ancient spiritual practices and religions. Um, primarily because that's what's documented and I've got episodes of the

podcast and I'd say, you know, some of this might sound pretty far out, man. Well, I document things really well in the show, you know what I mean? I'm going to kind of go through them quicker now. And also I bring on real experts to discuss these things. So it's not just me spouting off, but we have an episode about cannabis in the ancient world and what they're discovering and only recently is cannabis resin at these extremely old, extremely important religious sites in the holiest of holies, the central chambers of these ancient religious sites. And basically anytime you hear incense in the Bible, you can just think hashish.

And then we have episodes about, I interviewed a professor of Islamic studies about cannabis in the Islamic world, in the ancient trade routes, in the spice routes, in the Hindu tradition. Shiva is strongly, strongly associated with cannabis cannabis and there are religious rites to this day dating back that far around cannabis. If you've ever heard of pung or b-h-a-n-g, people often call it beng, is this sort of ancient edible that you drink that's got hashish and other spices and sometimes yogurt. So these traditions go back a long, long way.

And we also have an episode about Jesus and cannabis because the anointing oil that Jesus used in the healing miracles contained, there is a recipe for it in the Old Testament and it contains eight pounds of something called cannibosum, which somewhere along the way scholars started saying was calimus, but it's clearly cannabis. It clearly has this medicinal properties. It sounds exactly like cannabis, and there's more evidence than that. And just to understand kind of quickly

how central this anointing oil was to actual Jesus. The name Jesus Christ, okay, Christ is not his last name. His father wasn't Bob Christ. Christ is a word that means anointed. So he called him Jesus anointed because he told his followers to make this anointing oil from the Bible and use it to go out and heal people. And that anointing oil contained eight pounds of something called Cannibosum. And when you really understand, you know, just as one example, if you've ever seen a small child with a severe seizure disorder, hundreds of seizures a month, given cannabis medicine, cannabis oil medicine in essence, and then those

seizures immediately can stop or just go down to a couple of seizures a month from hundreds and hundreds well, I mean that looks like a miracle to me with all my understanding and sophistication But if you were in ancient Judea and you saw something like that and then of course it is a miracle Whether it's metaphysical or not. It's certainly how we commonly use the term miracle. I forget who said this unfortunately, but somebody made the point once. If somebody had just sort of walked out of the jungle

in South America yesterday with the cannabis plant and brought it to the pharmaceutical companies and they were able to without stigma or anything like that, tout its actual medical properties, it would be considered the miracle drug of all time, quite rightly. And so, just to kind of wrap it up on the more ancient world, I think the flip side of that is that with the rise of monotheism, that's when we see in general a demonization of plant medicine and plant medicine healing, but also specifically to weed.

I think that cannabis and psychedelics, which were also psychedelics, are very ingrained in a lot of ancient societies, allow people to have an access to the divine and to the spiritual realm directly without the intervention of priests and hierarchy and dogma. So if your organization is based on priests and hierarchy and dogma, this plant becomes a threat to you. And I think cannabis also leads people to question things. And if you, and one of the things they're going to question is the authorities. And if the authorities were acting in a just and beneficial manner, they'd have nothing to worry about. If we were all going, oh man, what's the government up to? Oh, just more equality and, you know, wise use of our common resources, far out, man.

You know, they'd love weed. But that's not what happens when you question the authorities. You come to these conclusions that, as I said, I was coming to as a much younger person. So from that time, you know, while the modern war on drugs is a relatively recent phenomenon when we're talking about 10,000 years of history, these prohibitions and these attempts to suppress plant medicine do go back a long way. I wanted to ask you another really fascinating episode that I just,

I loved was the history of the day 4 20. And there's a lot of like myths that I think we've all heard about, you know, 420 being the police code for marijuana or something like that. I think Jerry Garcia's birthday, something like that as well. But those are all just myths that this episode sort of busts those myths and then tells us the really interesting, fascinating story of how 420 arose and it actually has its origins in sort of my neck of the woods in the Bay Area and in the North Bay in like Marin County, I think. So maybe, yeah, if you could just recount that story for us.

Yeah, it's a really beautiful one. And it really hearkens back, you know, I've been doing this work a long time and like 420 has now become sales at the dispensary and Chipotle ads. And, you know, I saw, you know, whatever, there's, you know, there's other things I've worried about than the over commercialization of 420. But in another way, you know, going back to the earlier celebrations of them, often they were completely unpermitted events of just, we're going to all gather in this place and defiantly smoke weed together. And basically, you know, you can't stop us all. in a way, events like that were important to the legalization movement. To show those numbers in spite of literally having an illegal event with no permits or organization really says something to people.

And not always just what it shows the rest of the world, but what it shows us. Wow. There's a lot of us. Wow. We can assemble peaceably. Wow, we can assemble peaceably. So all to say that like the real history of 420 is a beautiful story about underground cannabis culture and how tightly connected this network was to allow it to spread like a meme in a time before the internet. So we're going back to the 70s. There was a group of students in Marin County and they were stoners and they called themselves the Waldos and there was five of them. And I'm convinced that stoner crews are capped at five because that's

how many people fit in a car. You can have a larger something, a unit larger than a weed crew, but a weed crew has to fit in a car or a van. And this idea of weed crews pops up over and over again in different episodes of the podcast. You know, Obama was in a weed crew, Baudelaire was in a weed crew, you know? So they, in essence, long, long, interesting, I would say, you know, it's the time, if you're not going to listen to the history of 420 on 420, you know, I probably don't have the right podcast for you, but there was one of their brother's friends or something, lived on a military base nearby and was sneaking off into the woods to grow what's called a gorilla patch, not the animal,

but the style of combat of wheat. Going out, put the seeds out, wait, give it some water when you can, but basically it's out in the woods and you hope for the best and make sure no one follows you. And then this guy got worried that somebody from the bass had seen him too close to this patch and didn't want to ever go back, but had put all of this work into it and loved weed. And so he drew. And I just will say this too, because this sounds like too good to be true, some of it. It's a pretty well documented story.

I have to give it up to Ryan Grimm. I don't know. I'm sorry I don't know exactly where he is had I think he might still be at the Huffington Post or something I think he's at the intercept the intercept that he's the DC bureau chief of the intercept I believe so like not only a really legit journalist but somebody that I think I'm you know A lot of people listening to this probably know and respect his work Deep dive this it's is, you know, a very well documented story for what it really is. And so, yeah, yeah. I'm glad you specified that because it is a wild story, but you definitely

make sure that folks know in the podcast, in this episode that like, this is grounded in like research and evidence based. It's not just some story that someone came up with. Yes. Okay. Thank you. Okay. So they get this map.

This map ends up in the hands of these high school kids and they decide to, you know, answer the call of adventure and go looking for this patch of basically ready to harvest weed. And they all have different schedules after school or whatever. So they kind of least common denominator it and realize, okay, everybody can meet at 420, you know, by the time we're all done with our after school stuff under the statue of Louis Pasteur on their high school campus, please don't go to a high school campus and smoke weed there. It's a really bad idea. I know it's tempting. That would be smoking pot improperly.

I would say that's you're not going to get too many lectures from old man. Venus talk about not smoking weed, but I would not advise doing it in high school. Anyway, so then that whole day, you can imagine how excited you would be to have a hand drawn secret map to a weed field. And so they're all saying to each other, hey, 420, 420. And weed people love slang. One of my favorite episodes of the podcast is about the jazz era of the 1920s and the 30s. How many big, big influential to this day jazz musicians loved weed and wrote and performed songs about it.

Louis Armstrong, most famously, but so, so many others. And they had so much slang for weed, like, you know, some of which like tea and reefer, you know, has survived and muggles, you know, now is associated with something else. But, you know, all these terms around weed that, you know, are pretty obscure in these days. But so 420 kind of morphed within their group from the time to meet to like slang for weed, because of course they were going to get their adventure started by smoking a joint together. And then because they lived close to where the Grateful Dead were headquartered, and one of their older brothers had some connection to the band,

you know, nothing big, but like Sound Guy, Roadie, something like that, and they were kind of like allowed to just kind of hang around the practice space sometimes, and so they're slang, five people, you know, you can document a moment in time when five people knew what 420 meant. Kind of worked its way into the Grateful Dead scene, which, you know, obviously the band travels all over the country.

And we have an episode of the podcast about the effect that just the band had on weed and weed culture spreading knowledge about how to grow obviously spreading the plant itself and also seeds high quality seeds at a time when you couldn't honor them over the internet and they were really hard to get and that you know how we succeeded this obviously goes on and people are Incarcerated right now for cannabis somebody will be arrested tomorrow for cannabis

But we're gonna fucking at least on that level of stopping these arrests I feel we're gonna eventually win and part of that has been the totally decentralized nature of the cannabis supply. Okay. When you look at drugs like cocaine, because no one's able to grow and process coca in the United States beyond what I would imagine are some very, very small batches, that creates a narrow pipeline, that pipeline of supply to get into the country and over the border has to narrow

so much that it becomes so valuable that it begets all of this violence. Like that trade in cocaine, you know, if you just think of it as a pipeline, starting with all the coca plants in the countries of origin, but narrowing, narrowing, narrowing, narrowing down until like these access points to smuggle it into the U S that's where it is so valuable that people will obviously, you know, not only murder people, but raise armies, undermine, you know, on and off. Mexico has been described as a narco state all to control that narrow window. Well, because cannabis grows everywhere in this fucking country and in closets and in Hilltops and out in the woods and of course in people's backyards now.

It never had to go through that process and of course, you know, there have been violent crimes associated with the sale of cannabis, but nothing like cocaine as just one example. So anyway, a bit of a tangent from the Waldo's, but just how much this underground culture accomplished and how we can look to this as a resistance model and we got everybody their fucking weed. Like, you know, by and large, weed was always available almost everywhere. And so anyway, 420 spread and sort of stayed underground and stayed underground. And then it was really sort of the internet that blew it up to the point where it no longer served its original function of being a viable underground codeword. But it became something else.

It became this whole day of celebration. And that's kind of like when I say looking back at the older 420 era, I think it was this big coming out party for the modern weed movement. And to see how many people were willing, at least for a day, to openly defy this law did put a lot of wind in the sails of this resistance movement. You're listening to an Upstream Conversation with David Bienenstock. We'll be right back. Lazy man who can't find his words all caught up inside his head He is there with you, he is there with you And when he can't speak from too much wine You're always there with his life

He wants to go home You know that jolly show must go on But he sees beyond you and you A summer buzz and summer heat No, no For go to the picture show today We're living in a game we both own And this world ain't no sense

When you jump everybody's press We're living in the spring We both own up this world It ain't no same When you're chomped, everybody's faster than the wind Yeah, we're living in the spring We both own up this world No, we can't Yeah, yeah, yeah, you know we can

No we can't No, we can't. That was Jumping Fences by the Olivia Tremor Control. Now back to our conversation with David Bienenstock. Your podcast is titled Greatest Moments in Weed History, and we just talked about some really cool ones,, you know 420 But i'm wondering if there are any other like particularly Interesting or some of your favorite moments or a favorite moment in weed history that you might want to share with us

Yeah, well i'll say this. I think we have three kinds of stories on great moments in weed history and i'll give you like an example of each. One is we have stories about famous people who famously love weed, like Willie Nelson smoked a joint on the roof of the White House, or how Cheech and Chong made their movie Up in Smoke.

And those are, of course, super fun. And I think hopefully bring people in to the idea of weed history with these kind of classic type stories. And then we have stories about famous people who you never knew had a weed story. For example, Maya Angelou Wrote beautifully about how the first time she smoked weed she had that feeling of of trauma release and

You know in essence said something I'm gonna paraphrase unfortunately, but like for the first time But for the first time, life appealed to me. And if you know from her first book, I know why the caged bird sings, how traumatic her upbringing was for her to say that this experience that she had, I think either as an older teenager or maybe even in her 20s, was the first time life appealed to her and then she describes how she started smoking pot once a week you know she had a very hectic life just trying to survive in those days but she would started carving out this time once a week to smoke weed and try to work through her past trauma and ultimately obviously became, you know, the acclaimed writer and performer and poet that she was. And I get emails from people who I know put Maya Angelou into their podcast search bar because they love her work

and feel a connection to her work and her life. And only to then discover this part of her life that was so central to her life. And that speaks to me to how suppressed this whole history has been. And I really love stories like that. And then the third kind of story that we have are about the heroes of weed culture itself. And that could be anything from in the Bay Area, Dennis Perrone, who, you know, went to prison, was shot by the police, and Brownie Mary, she wasn't shot by the police, but they both were imprisoned and arrested for providing free cannabis to AIDS patients during the height of that health crisis when it was clear to anyone who chose to look that this was not a medicine but the medicine for the symptoms and to eat and to have some quality of life and some ability to nourish and sustain your human body enough to have a chance to heal or at least to have a quality of life, you know, it's a crime against humanity

It's a crime against humanity when this plant is kept from people who need it that much. And I would say the same for so many conditions. Every time somebody goes through chemo, puking their guts out because they've been denied access to this medicine or because they've been so turned against it by lies and propaganda. When you add all of that up, what an incredible toll in human misery. And, you know, it's, we all rightly look at the arrests and the criminal justice side of it that way, but the medicinal side. And then we have an episode about the musician Fela Kuti when he was arrested and he ate weed so that they couldn't use it as evidence against him and they held him in prison to try to get his shit to drug test it. But then one of the other prisoners in a very mutual support moment was like, take my shit.

Long story, I didn't do it justice there. That's funny. That's a whole next level from Swapin' Urine. Yeah, well, this is what his song, Expensive Shit, is about. And then, you know, I get people's first-hand experience, you know, everybody from like, we just had an episode with a guy, he was a race car driver in the 80s in Le Mans and the Indy 500 and he was funding it all by smuggling huge amounts of weed into the country and raceboats and So all these just different rogue characters and people and what's you know, it is cool To actually get some of these stories firsthand from the people

Who live them and then as I alluded to earlier when i'm looking at older history I really try hard to find guests who it's not a chat show. You know, that's the only I'm just trying to appeal to people maybe to check it out. It's not me, you know, we have all different kinds of shows, but it's not me just shooting the shit and giving you five minutes of history in a 45-minute show. I'm either talking to the person who lived this story, or I'm talking to somebody with some real expertise on the subject.

Yeah, absolutely. And the breadth of the show is really amazing. Like you mentioned at the top, cannabis has so many different... It's like a many-sided diamond, right? Like there's just so many angles and perspectives that you could approach it from botany to its medicinal uses to its spiritual uses to its history and all of the above. It's in politics and social aspects of it, which actually I think maybe that's a good sort of transition to talk a little bit about that because, you know, you're somebody who has experienced from the days when marijuana was completely criminalized to now when legalization is much more common and many states have legal marijuana, if not completely medicinally. And so I'm wondering, you know, can you talk a little bit about just some of the benefits

that have come with legalization? And I think there are a lot of those and some of them are fairly obvious, but maybe if you could just outline some of the benefits and then also some of the challenges and the issues that have arisen as weed has become legalized and also as it's become legalized, it's also become commodified. Yeah, absolutely. So biggest picture, broadest sense. I've been writing about weed for like 20 years and I've touched on all of these subjects

and I've gone to fancy weed dinners and I've had trimmed weed on a hillside, beautiful people sharing communal meals. I've had unbelievably positive experiences, but my foundation in how I got this job and what I did all along the way was often writing about the worst outcomes of the criminal justice system. And it's not just getting arrested. Getting arrested can mean having your children taken away. Getting arrested can mean losing your job. Getting arrested can mean going to prison, obviously, you know, and not just how unjust the laws are because weed is a beneficial plant, so to have these incredibly harsh laws against the beneficial plant, but then the application of those laws is racist and discriminatory. And then the authorities implementing that prohibition are corrupt beyond belief.

And so that system every single day created completely unnecessary human misery. And we have so many problems in our society that even if everybody was of good faith and working together, would be hard to solve. You know what I mean? But this is a completely self-created problem where the easiest solution is don't do that. Stop hitting yourself in the face with a frying pan. You know, like if your biggest problem is I'm gonna keep hitting myself in the face with a frying pan the best news is that there's a pretty easy way to solve that problem and so to work back in the day when progress seemed

Like it could never have you know, we got very close to legalizing weed in the 1970s in the United States Yeah before my time But that that lesson also always I was rising weed in the 1970s in the United States, you know, before my time. But that, that lesson also always hung over this movement. And of course, I'm a part of a larger movement to end the war on drugs. And unfortunately that, you know, if there's ever a moment when I can, in my lifetime, when I'll feel as good about that struggle as I feel about the progress with weed, I will die happy. So my point being we're going to get to the real pitfalls of legalization. And, you know, in my book, I wrote in a more hopeful time, cannabis should transform capitalism, not the other way around.

I didn't say cannabis will transform capitalism, I just said it should. But before we get to that, I just want people to picture 800,000 plus arrests, almost all of them for simple possession, a year in this country and that that number now has been cut by at least 75%. And you might have been the person who got arrested yesterday but didn't because these laws have changed or somebody that you know and that is a huge amount of progress and unfortunately it's hard to see you know what I mean those of us who have been arrested and certainly I have a unique experience in that I have interviewed and written about so so many

people who had the worst outcomes of this system. But I think for anybody who's been arrested, had someone close to them arrested, understands how unjust this is, that negative is super important. And then the other part of it for me, as I mentioned, is the medicinal aspect. All the people who have needlessly gone through chemo and all of these other conditions without access to this medicine. And it's not just the law. But because of this societal change, I don't think there's too many people. And we should also of course, always talk about, you know, the whole world loves this plant and needs this plant and prohibition, you know, is all over the globe. But I just don't think I know

the United States well because I live here. I don't think there's too many people in the United States who if they got a diagnosis tomorrow for cancer and had to take chemotherapy, it wouldn't at least pop into their mind, weed might help. Or secondarily, they know somebody who knows that and has been through that. And so that just is a factor of all of this public progress as well. And people's willingness to talk about this, despite all the negative consequences of being honest about cannabis. And so that is a huge reduction in human suffering as well.

Now, when we moved the economics of it, it's too much to ask the weed movement or the drug policy reform movement to also upend American capitalism. We tried to make it the best system we could. It's a little frustrating to me when sometimes people will say things which I completely agree with. Like, how can you be out having a weed party while people are still in jail for weed? Or look at all these rich white assholes, making money hand over fist selling weed. And if it makes you feel better,

they're not making money. But we'll, we'll talk more about that later. While people are still in prison, and I absolutely obviously agree with that. But it wasn't our people who sold everything out and made it a shitty system. You know what I mean? When it got to the point of like, lots of money to be made, capital flooded in, political deals are cut. It's the bottle, not what we poured into it.

You can go back to my book that was published, you know, long before the implement, not what we poured into it. You can go back to my book that was published, you know, long before the implement, not long before, but really on the, at the foothills of these laws being passed and implemented and warning against all of this, but ultimately I would just say to those people, then please help us. You know, please join in in this ongoing effort to create a just industry around cannabis that works for workers, that protects small farmers, that gives a hand up to

people who were disproportionately targeted by the laws against cannabis that is, provides good cannabis to consumers at a fair price, you know, everything we want to see. I think there was the window because it was going to be a new industry. And window is closing and so many of even the well-intentioned efforts to create that kind of an industry have been thwarted and attacked from every side. And so I would just say this to people, the one thing that you can do and feel great about to be a part of the solution is to buy equitable cannabis. If that means to you, small farms that grow organically and keep their economic activity in their local communities and aren't part of some big, huge conglomerate

and respect the land where they grow in the sun with a low carbon footprint, beautiful. You're gonna get amazing cannabis. You're gonna get the best cannabis, in my opinion, that you can. If that means to you, black-owned businesses or equity businesses run by people who were targeted by this system, you can make those choices.

I wish that that was that they were all thriving, but you can directly vote with your dollars if you if you're buying weed in a legal system. If you're buying weed in the underground system, it's harder, but you can certainly have a critical eye on at least what you can see. You know what I mean? If you say, hey, if you like your dealer and you know your dealer, I'm never going to tell you. Just be aware you're not going to get lab-tested cannabis if everybody takes their own reasonable risks in life. But I would say if you like your dealer and you like that experience, I'm never going to tell you not to do that. But it is a little harder to really know all the inputs and who's in the supply chain and how they're treated.

And then of course, if weed is legal where you live, it's fucked up how it's being regulated and you can work with people who are already trying to push that in the right direction and if weed's not legal yet where you live, you are actually in a better position to have some impact on how this all happens because the process of legalization is also the process of commercialization in a capitalistic system. They go hand in hand. So by getting involved earlier, when less people are seeking their profit margins and more people are pushing for this very important policy change, you can have more of an influence. And

then the last thing I will say to everyone is to distill it down because this is not going to be most people's daily work. I'll just saying this, any legalization law, everything else is so hard to fight for. And there's the backroom deals. And I just like, I don't want to be pessimistic, but it's details and bullshit and lawyers and regulatory reg tape and making things so expensive for the small players that they get forced out of business and scooped up, you know, capitalism. But if you can push for home grow,

if you can push for each individual's right to have, say, six plants, That one is your human right as far as I'm concerned. But it is also a huge counterweight to the power of the industry because I will tell you, I smoke a lot of weed and I do not smoke the output of six medium-sized outdoor cannabis plants all by myself in a year. I might come close. Uh, but for most people that is cannabis for pennies on the dollar of what you're going to spend, even getting a good deal. Plus so much to share with people I mean if you sell it you sell it but like we can decommodify this plant by growing it and sharing it and That is a beautiful beautiful way

You know It's very frustrating to deal with the policy aspects of this and it is very Heart-nourishing to just grow a bunch of weed and give it to your friends And so if you want to decommodify this plant if it's legal and you have even if you don't smoke weed Like I know it is a people listening to this podcast have that mindset and have friends who love weed And of course not everybody unfortunately is gonna have the ability and the resources to grow weed. It's very easy to grow weed outdoors if you have good sunlight and decent soil and you can of course bring in soil. But not everyone has a backyard or you know if you live in public housing you can't even sometimes usually you can't even consume cannabis. But what you can do is if you have that space

and it's legal, grow weed, it's easy, give it away to people, and that's how we can collectively create a new kind of underground that is completely commodified. I think that's a really beautiful invitation and thank you so much for sharing that. I think to just explore the policy front a little bit specifically, because I think this is one of the, for me

personally, when I think about some of the injustices that exist around both the criminalization and then the legalization of weed, are the issues of, like we talked about racial justice. We've touched on that before. And I think, I've heard statistics that black people are three to four times more likely to be arrested for smoking weed

or having weed on them. And when you think about those kinds of numbers, then that becomes something that you just, you can't talk about any of this stuff without putting that front and center. And I think that I'm wondering if you could talk a little bit about maybe some of the battles around, you know, reparations more broadly around that. And, you know, I know that certain states have talked about or, you know, I'm quite sure, maybe even passed some propositions around mass part-ins and expungement of marijuana offenses and stuff like that, which activists are working on.

I don't know if that's a topic that you're too familiar with, but if you have anything to share about that, I'd be fascinated to hear what your thoughts and experience has been around that. Yeah. I mean, that is the huge issue in the room, of course, is people currently incarcerated for something that has, in some cases, been fully legalized in the very place they're being incarcerated.

And you know, I've had episodes of the show about people who served decades in prison for nonviolent cannabis offenses. And what's to me really fascinating about it is they so often come out of prison and dedicate their lives to ending this system, getting people out. We have an episode about a guy named Weldon Angelos who was targeted because he was bringing hip hop shows into Salt Lake City, Utah. And he was set up by somebody he knew for a few hundred dollar for a few hundred dollar drug deal and they magically claimed he had a weapon on him that there was never any evidence presented of and he credibly denies ever having and you know now he's doing he did sentence to decades in prison he was only able to get out through

a pardon and now he runs an organization or the gentleman I was speaking about earlier, Randy Lanier, the race car driver is now the head of a longstanding organization called Freedom Grow that does prisoner support for people with long-term cannabis terms in prison and their families. And so, you know, that has always been another function of this community is to try to support people while they're incarcerated and after their release and of course, to work towards people's releases and to ensure that no one else finds themselves in the same position.

And in some states there's concerted programs to expunge records, to have people released. There is always political pressure and movement for pardons. As long as one of us is incarcerated for this plant, then really, truly none of us is incarcerated for this plant, then really, truly none of us are free. We cannot ever look away from that. And I think that if you are moved by this issue, I think there's a couple of ways that you can go about it.

You can work to push with other groups to get these expungement programs in place, to have sentences commuted. This is work that is done, you know, across all kinds of, you know, the criminal justice system so you can join in those efforts. Or, you know, what's really great about the organization Freedom Grow and that I know long enough and have seen work intimately enough to encourage people to engage with them. It can be a crapshoot with nonprofits. You know what I mean?

It's a murky world. And so unless I really feel like I would donate my money and have to something, you know, there's a lot of kind of feel-goodery, but are they actually like doing the work and supporting people? And what Freedom Grow does is support people on a kind of micro level where they're putting money in their commissaries so that they can call their children and that they're putting money towards legal defense when they can. And it is an organization of and for cannabis prisoners. It doesn't have big CEO salaries and sort of professional fundraisers.

And so it's a place where you could feel that your money is really gonna directly go to the people that they support. Awesome, yeah, thanks for sharing that. And I know it's a tricky topic, because a lot of it is state by state. And just a couple of things that come to my mind before we move on is that there also are different pushes,

either official task forces or just activists who are pushing for things like reparations that go towards the racially disproportionate harms that result from the war on drugs that go towards the communities that have been disproportionately harmed. I know there are some proposals for part of the tax revenue that states bring in to go towards communities that have been disproportionately harmed, which

are communities of color. So there are lots of different things that you can plug into if you're interested, depending on where you're based, if you wanna get more into that kind of policy activism. That's broadly what's been called social equity in the cannabis world. The most successful efforts have been trying to divert,

successful in actually doing what they're supposed to do is we've pushed really hard to have the money from cannabis sales and taxes go towards communities disproportionately targeted. And that has been happening. And that's something people don't talk about enough because there is so much disappointment about different aspects of this. So that's kind of the where there's an opportunity to do good. And then the back line of that has been attempting to make sure that this cannabis revenue does not go to law enforcement. And that includes just going to the general fund, which can be 40% to law enforcement, depending on the

municipality. And that's something that I feel very passionately about that we cannot have this oppressive force that fucked with us for so long and fucks with obviously everyone to some degree. Well, not everybody, as we know, but then be the immediate and, you know, take all this money off the top. That aggression cannot stand man, as the great stoner, Lebowski would say. So that aspect of it is one aspect of it. And then there are social equity laws,

you're varying success. It's a complicated issue why so many of those laws have not lived up to their best intentions. But that fight goes on and is super important. So before I let you go, I alluded to this at the top, but the whole reason that I originally found out about you and your work was because, like I mentioned, you were on Means Morning TV talking about a general strike a year ago, and you were advocating for a general strike on 420 2024.

I have no idea anything beside that. So like, how is that going? Are you still advocating for that? Do I need to release this early enough that people can listen to it on 420 in the morning and call in sick from work? I will say this. I am predicting that many, many, many fewer people

will work on 420 this year than last year But I believe that phenomenon is going to be due to the fact that is on a Saturday I would say that when I Spouted off with Sam on Means morning news, you know, it was an idea that came into my mind as we talked almost It was a bit of a I love that a bit of in fun, but I did not realize it so seriously. I'm like planning ahead. Well, this is what happened.

I took it a bit. I liked the idea. Uh, but then I quickly realized, uh, this year for 20 would be a Saturday and next year for 20 would be a Sunday. So that does give me three years To raise this flag. Yeah, we could raise a whole strike fund by that time. Yes, so stay tuned but the general idea is If you love weed and you're sick of this bullshit Don't work on 420 and don't call you don't have to call it and say I've taken the day off to smoke weed. But I think we can we can flex a little

political power and have a super fun 420. And that would be so so 420 2026. I have anyone within the sound of my voice 2026. If anyone within the sound of my voice loves this idea and actually feels like they're gonna, you know, I've, this is in the creative commons as far as I'm concerned, please take that ball and run with it. And I'll see you out in the streets smoking weed exactly two years from today. You've been listening to a 420 Upstream conversation with David Bienenstock, host of the podcast Great Moments in Weed History and author of How to Smoke Pop Properly, a highbrow guide to getting high. Please check the show notes for any of the resources

mentioned in this episode. Thank you to the Olivia Tremor Control for the intermission music and to Berwyn Muir for the cover art. Upstream theme music was composed by Robert. Upstream is entirely listener funded. We couldn't keep this project going without your support. There's a number of ways that you can support us financially. You can sign up to be a Patreon subscriber, which will give you access to bonus episodes, at least one a month, but usually more,

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