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Jan. 23, 1997 - Art Bell

02:33:23

Coast to Coast AM with Art Bell - Chris Conrad - Hemp & Marijuana Advocate

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31:37

chris conrad

01:27:50

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Speaker	Time	Text
unidentified		Welcome to Art Bell Somewhere in Time.
unidentified		Tonight featuring coast to coast a.m. from January 23rd, 1997.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		From the high desert and the great American Southwest, I bid you good evening, good morning, as the case may be across this great land.
		We're in the age of Aquarius, they say, as of 9.35 this morning Eastern Time.
		It's great to be with you.
		I'm Mark Bell from the Hawaiian and Tahitian Island chains in the west all the way eastward to the Caribbean and the U.S. Virgin Islands south into South America, north to the Pole.
		This is Coast to Coast A.M. And we're going to do something a little different.
		Well, we always do that, I guess, don't we?
		As you know, California and Arizona passed initiatives allowing for the medicinal use of a substance known as marijuana, pa him.
		Whatever all other names exist for it, and there have been many.
		Mary Jane, ah, that was another one.
		This morning, we are going to try and find out what we can really find out about marijuana.
		Chris Conrad is my guest.
		He is founder and global, debt, global operations director of the Business Alliance for Commerce and Hemp.
		A director of the Family Council on Drug Awareness and a board member of the Hemp Industries Association.
		He is the designing curator of the International Hash Marijuana Hemp Museum located in Amsterdam, Holland, where he researched cannabis culture.
		He is art director for the Human Rights 95 atrocities of the drug war exhibit.
		He has been qualified as an expert witness on industrial hemp and hemp seed in a Superior Court of California case.
		He founded the American Hemp Council in 1989.
		Holy Mackerel was chief proponent of both the 1992 and 94 California hemp initiatives.
		So he was behind this.
		Portrayed Johnny Marijuana Seed in the PBS program in the 90s segment, hemp show number one.
		Is an acknowledged expert on a broad spectrum of industrial, ecological, and social uses of cannabis hemp.
		He is a popular and entertaining guest speaker on interview and call-in programs as well as college campuses.
		So he's been on Larry King.
		He's been on boys, he's been just about everywhere.
		He is Chris Conrad, and the subject is hemp.
		And in a few moments, we're going to find out what we can about him.
unidentified		Aaaaaah!
		Thank you.
		You're listening to Art Bell's Somewhere in Time.
		Tonight featuring a replay of Coast to Coast AM from January 23rd, 1997.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right.
		Now, to Chris Conrad, who's going to tell us about marijuana and try and separate truth from myth.
		And there is an awful lot of myth surrounding marijuana.
		It has been for a long time.
		Chris, are you there?
chris conrad ▲ ● ▼		I sure am, Martin.
chris conrad ▲ ● ▼		Good morning.
unidentified		Welcome.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Good evening.
unidentified		Well, whatever.
unidentified		Wherever you are.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, that's right, wherever you are.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		How long have you been involved with marijuana?
chris conrad ▲ ● ▼		Well, I got involved with the cannabis reform movement about the end of 1988 and really started becoming active in 89.
		That's when I formed the Business Alliance for Commerce and Hemp and started just taking it on as more of a life calling at that point.
		Actually, one of the things about this art, what got me involved with it is that I was involved with the search for alternative energy sources.
		And so I had long thought that there must be a way that we could produce energy without having to rely upon foreign oil and use our farms to do that.
		But I could never identify a farm crop that would be able to produce the amount of biomass that would be sufficient to meet America's energy needs.
		And it was in 1989 that I found out about hemp producing about 10 tons per acre, which converts to a very substantial amount of biomass fuel.
		And then, of course, I found out that hemp was illegal because marijuana was illegal, and the two were lumped together.
		And that's really what started me down this path.
		I didn't come into it from the idea of doing something about marijuana.
		I actually came into it from another point of view of trying to improve the environment.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		When did marijuana, I want to know the history of marijuana legally.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		When did we decide that marijuana was a dangerous drug?
chris conrad ▲ ● ▼		Well, the earliest laws that dealt with it really came up at the beginning of this century about, I think, in 1913, California, or it could have been 1916.
		I don't remember the exact date.
		But from a federal level, it was in 1937 that the Marijuana Tax Act was passed in Congress.
		And there were two things that were very heavily stressed during the hearings.
		One is that that law would not stop farmers from growing hemp, and the other was that it would not prevent doctors from prescribing medical marijuana.
		And, you know, in retrospect, it appeared quite clear that it was, in fact, engineered to outlaw the industrial uses of the hemp plant and that the medical patients were just considered expendable, and that the way that they were doing it was by tying it to the, actually the jazz phenomenon was the main thing that they were going after.
		It was a way of closing down jazz clubs.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Are you serious?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		That's why they passed a law against it?
chris conrad ▲ ● ▼		Basically, that, well, there was another factor there, too.
unidentified		Wait a minute.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Does that they had speakeasies, right, during prohibition?
chris conrad ▲ ● ▼		Right, and as a result of that, the prohibition on alcohol, there was a big increase in jazz clubs, like down Central Stanford Street in San Francisco, I mean, excuse me, in Los Angeles and in New York, the Harlem Renaissance was based around jazz clubs where you couldn't get alcohol, but there were people smoking marijuana.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Uh-huh.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So, in other words, in the middle of prohibition, it was an extension, in a way, of prohibition then.
chris conrad ▲ ● ▼		Right, and that's that other thing that I was mentioning is that the other factor that really determined this was that there was a plan to take $200,000 out of the law enforcement budget, which had been previously used against alcohol.
		And when that cut came on, what actually happened was there was a meeting between people in the Treasury Department, the DuPont Company, and some timber companies and the Bureau of Narcotics, and they decided to, because it suited everyone's purposes, to put the cannabis plants in under a control of drugs.
		But they couldn't really succeed with that because the farmers called hemp, you know, that hemp was a standard farm crop.
		And in the medical community, cannabis was being used.
		And something like there had been 37 products, the medicines on the market that had cannabis in them.
		And so they had to come up with a way of getting it for everybody in that quick advantage.
		And so they came up with the word marijuana, which almost no one had ever heard of that.
		Even the people who smoked it called it reefer.
		They didn't call it marijuana.
unidentified		Marijuana.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right, well, whatever the name is, is it a narcotic?
chris conrad ▲ ● ▼		The problem that we hit there is the way they changed the definitions.
		Technically, it is not.
		A narcotic is supposed to be a drug that causes narcosis, meaning that it knocks you out.
		Right.
		And marijuana doesn't do that.
		The real narcotics are the opiates.
		But what they did is they made a legal definition of narcotics that if it's in Schedule 1 or 2, that they considered narcotic.
		And so then they just arbitrarily stuck marijuana in the narcotics category.
		But from a scientific viewpoint, no, it is not.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		It is not.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		A narcotic, as in a pain pill, for example.
chris conrad ▲ ● ▼		Well, narcotics are not just pain pills.
unidentified		Narcosis means that you're in a death-like sleep.
chris conrad ▲ ● ▼		So for it to be scientifically a narcotic, that means it's supposed to knock you out completely.
		So you can't be woken up.
		And then marijuana doesn't do that.
		Well, morphine will do that.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Morphine might do it, yes.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		But there are an awful lot of in-between things, the Perkidin class.
chris conrad ▲ ● ▼		Right.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Those are narcotics, aren't they?
chris conrad ▲ ● ▼		Well, the problem, again, is that the definition of the word narcotic has been grossly changed by the lawmakers in this country.
chris conrad ▲ ● ▼		So there isn't really the scientific definition isn't applied the way it used to be.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		right uh...
		so that's how it In other words, why it was made illegal?
		We've got paper.
		I know hemp can be used for paper.
chris conrad ▲ ● ▼		Right.
chris conrad ▲ ● ▼		And that's why the news media, particularly the Hearst newspaper chains, started promoting all these stories about the dangers of marijuana because they had the timber resources and the papermaking resources that hemp was challenging.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Is that a problem today?
chris conrad ▲ ● ▼		In the converse way.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		For them.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		In other words, if hemp was legal today, would they have a big money problem?
chris conrad ▲ ● ▼		I don't really think so.
		I think it's going the other way, in fact.
		International paper is looking into hemp.
		There's going to be an international conference in Vancouver, British Columbia.
		And international paper, the people who make masonite, amongst other things, is going to be there because there's a global fiber shortage right now.
		And so hemp is really part of the solution.
		What it did was it allowed the logging industry really, basically, to have windfall profits because there was no alternative fiber available on the market for 50, 60 years there that was able to produce the kind of quantities that timber could.
		And so really it was the logging companies that made that profit.
		But of course, again, the newspaper chain that Hearst ran owned that logging company and had the forestry, I don't know about the word rights, but they had the permits from the federal government to do a lot of logging on national forest land and so forth.
		So they basically used that to profiteer.
		And now we're in the other situation.
		There's a fiber shortage and farmers can't grow hemp to meet that need.
		So they're in the other situation.
		The price of pulp for paper went up 40% in 1994.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Wow.
chris conrad ▲ ● ▼		And it's continued to rise since then.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		How many fewer trees, if hemp was in full production for whatever use we wanted to use it for, including paper, how much of the forest, how many trees would be saved?
chris conrad ▲ ● ▼		Well, let's see.
chris conrad ▲ ● ▼		I think that an acre of hemp roughly equates to about 14 trees.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		14 trees?
unidentified		Right.
chris conrad ▲ ● ▼		But now you do that on an annual basis.
		Say trees take, the fastest growing trees that we have now take eight years to grow.
		And for real sustainable forestry, it's estimated at 20 years to grow it.
		And nature, of course, trees grow for hundreds of years.
		So if you do that on an annualized basis, that you see that each acre of hemp is really, over a period of time, going to save acres and acres of forest land.
		Basically, the federal government in 1916 did a study of that very point, and they found that each acre of hemp on a sustainable, continuous basis, produces as much fiber as 4.1 acres of forest land.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Holy mackerel.
		Somebody sent me an article a few years ago, and it was from the Wall Street Journal.
		And it estimated that if hemp was in full production, marijuana sold and taxed, the income to the federal government would be in the range of about a half a trillion dollars a year.
		That's $500 billion.
		That's a lot of money.
chris conrad ▲ ● ▼		Now, you're talking about the industrial hemp value of that.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes.
chris conrad ▲ ● ▼		Yes.
		I think that that sounds a little high to me.
		I anticipate that you would get about that much of gross profits out of it for the United States alone.
		Now, if you're globalizing it, then you could be correct.
		But I would anticipate you'd get about $500 million a year off of just developing hemp as more or less what it I don't think it's going to quite hit a trillion dollar industry in this country for at least 20 years.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Can you legalize hemp for uses like paper and the rest of it without addressing the marijuana question?
chris conrad ▲ ● ▼		Interestingly enough, that's exactly what the European community has done.
		In Europe, farmers get about $425 U.S. dollars per acre as a subsidy to grow hemp.
		And France is a very good example.
		They have very rigid anti-marijuana laws, but they are also one of the largest hemp producers in Europe.
		And for a long time, they had almost a virtual monopoly over hemp.
		And some people think that that's one of the reasons that they have such strong anti-marijuana laws, is that it gave them this undue advantage in the fiber market by controlling the supply of hemp.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, this is going to seem like a silly question to you, but one of the arguments made by perhaps the ill-informed is that if you allow hemp to be grown for other purposes, people will be smoking shirts and paper and all this sort of thing.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Wouldn't happen?
chris conrad ▲ ● ▼		Well, it's pretty unlikely.
		Actually, if anything, I think that what might more likely happen is that you might have some people who would be selling phony marijuana, you know, hemp that looks like marijuana but it doesn't get you high.
		So you probably have a lot of people who would try marijuana and think it didn't get me high.
		And in reality, they would have been sold some bad stuff, some industrial hemp.
		So, you know, even if they would start smoking this shirt in their newspapers and stuff, they wouldn't get high from it.
		So, you know, eventually they would get tired of it, I think.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Very quickly.
chris conrad ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, I would think so.
		In fact, there's an interesting situation in Canada where a drug enforcement expert has said that he has detected cannabinoids in hemp shirts, and so therefore he wants them considered a dangerous narcotic.
		that brings us back to the thing about what is a narcotic?
		A shirt?
		How does a shirt be a narcotic?
		I mean, they're just extending these definitions beyond the scope of reason into the absurd.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So then, what kind of progress are we actually making toward - I haven't even started on the issue of marijuana yet, but with regard to hemp for commercial use, is there progress being made?
chris conrad ▲ ● ▼		Well, there was a federal report to Congress done in 1992 by the Library of Congress, and they said that the main barrier to hemp is the fact that the federal government is going to oppose it.
		And sure enough, since then, there have been a number of bills introduced, and the DEA has always come out against it.
		However, I would say that we've made quite a bit of progress, and I'll just put it this way.
		In 1991, the first modern industrial hemp bill was put before the New York legislature.
		It never got out of committee.
		In 1992, they attempted again, and it didn't get out of committee.
		But then in 1995, we had a bill in Colorado that went forward, and it went through a conservative committee, and it lost by only one vote.
		Then last year, we had four states introduce hemp bills.
		Of the four, the one in Colorado made it through all but one vote of making it clear out.
		The Vermont approved a research project to see about restoring hemp to that state.
		Hawaii approved a project.
		Now, they don't allow for cultivation, but they approved the project.
		And Missouri didn't get all the way through the committees.
unidentified		It made it through several committees, but it didn't make it all the way through the legislature.
chris conrad ▲ ● ▼		So in the period since 91, we've gone from not being able to get more than one vote in a committee to two states adopting research policies and two states there probably will.
		We're anticipating about 10 states to have legislation about hemp this year coming up.
		There's also some native peoples who are looking at doing it on sovereign tribal land.
		And in Europe, there's quite a large amount of improvement.
		Germany has started growing hemp again.
		Holland has increased its hemp output.
		France and Spain have both increased theirs.
		Italy is beginning to grow hemp again.
		And also there's a lot of international support for it.
		And nationally, the National Farm Federation, I believe, I may not be saying the name of it right, Federation of National Farm Bureau, I believe it's called, has endorsed it.
		The Kentucky Farm Bureau has endorsed hemp.
		Colorado Farm Bureau has endorsed hemp.
		And the Kentucky Tobacco Growers are apparently now supporting hemp, although I haven't gotten the official document on that.
		I've only gotten secondhand reporting.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		There's an awful lot of it growing there now, isn't there?
chris conrad ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, and in fact, that's one of the logical things is that the tobacco industry gives us a model of how we could really put some good controls over the positive and the negative.
		You know, there have been mistakes made in the way that tobacco has been regulated that we can learn from.
		But there's also some very positive things that have happened there in order to keep anyone from getting too much of a monopoly over tobacco.
		For example, in Kentucky, particularly, farmers are allocated a certain amount, like one acre or two acres each, that they're allowed to grow.
		And that way it supports the small farmer, gives them a profitable crop without making them into tobacco barons and converting their whole farms into tobacco.
		We can maybe do something similar to that with marijuana if we get to that point.
		As far as Henta is concerned, though, you're going to want to grow a lot of it.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right, Chris.
		Hang tight.
		We'll be right back to you.
		This is a big subject, and there's a lot of truths to be uncovered.
		If you'll just stay tuned.
unidentified		You'll just need to art well somewhere in time.
		Tonight, featuring a replay of Coastal Coast AM from January 23rd, 1997.
		Gotta get right back to the home.
		is When you first came my way, no one wants to take your place.
		Get hurt, get hurt by the little things I think.
		I'm not going to die, I'm not going to die, I'm not going to die.
		Oh, my God.
		Ranger Radio Networks presents Art Bell Somewhere in Time.
		Tonight's program originally aired on January 23rd, 1997.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Exactly what it is.
		Chris Conrad is my guest.
		He knows about hemp and marijuana.
		And if you want to know the truth, stick around.
unidentified		BANG
unidentified		Tonight featuring a replay of Coast to Coast AM from January 23rd, 1997.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right, back now to Chris Con arrived in San Francisco, East Bay of San Francisco.
		And Chris, aside from paper, clothing, you mentioned fuel.
		And I know you've got a book called Hemp Lifeline to the Future.
		How can we use hemp for fuel?
chris conrad ▲ ● ▼		Well, there's a lot of new processes.
		Let me speak in my book.
		I just double-checked on that figure you asked about saving trees, and I misspoke myself.
		One ton of hemp saves about 12 mature trees.
		So you get about five tons of stalk per acre.
		That's about 60 trees.
		And then over four years, that means you're saving the equivalent of about 240 trees for each acre of hemp that you dedicate to cultivation like that.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Based on our current production, what does that mean really per year, tree-wise?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Any idea?
chris conrad ▲ ● ▼		In terms of how many trees there are per acre forest.
chris conrad ▲ ● ▼		I'm sorry you got me on that one.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		It would be a bunch.
chris conrad ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, but it adds up.
chris conrad ▲ ● ▼		I mean, if each acre comes to 240 trees, you can see that it's going to add up rather quickly.
unidentified		Rather quickly.
chris conrad ▲ ● ▼		Now, back to the fuel question, though.
		One of the things that I don't think is very likely is that I don't think we're really going to get too much of dedicated mass acreage of hemp that's produced just for fuel.
		And the reason for that, Art, is because the fiber is so valuable that it would be a waste.
		I think what we're going to do is that you'll take the fiber out of the crop, and then you'll still have a lot of, it's called wood, actually, but it's the epitheli part of the plant.
		And that would be what they would convert into fuel.
		With this variety of technologies that are available now, we're able to use plant matter and convert it into virtually any form of fuel.
		Meaning, in addition to methanol, which people think of normally, there's a process called pyrolysis that you could use that would, you could use the hemp wood to produce pellets.
		Then they could also be used to create charcoal in place of coal, except without the sulfur.
		So it's a cleaner.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So you're saying it would be economically less feasible than continuing with either oil or other alternative methods.
unidentified		It would be that valuable.
chris conrad ▲ ● ▼		It would be more valuable than what we would have going now.
		One of the main issues here is that you wouldn't have to go to war in the Persian Gulf or whatever to protect the hemp fields growing in America.
		And you wouldn't have a target for military attacks because what would be the point of bombing a field of hemp?
		So essentially, you would save a lot of money that's currently used to clean up oil spills, that's used to repair damage to the environment, that's used for exploration for fuels, that's used for transporting all these fuels.
		And a lot of this stuff is basically being subsidized by the taxpayers without really knowing it.
		But if you had it the other situation where hemp was being grown here in this country, we could set up pyrolytic conversion stations that would make liquid fuels, solid fuels.
		They could use that to burn to produce electricity.
		So you have your electrical fuels.
		You'd have all the energy that you would really need basically that can be produced here in this country, particularly if you add to that the 30% energy waste that we have right now in our current systems and cogeneration on top of that giving us another 5% or so.
		You've got plenty of energy that would be possible to have.
		It's just having the national willpower to go ahead and do that.
		And I think that the people of America would be more interested in it, but we've got this problem of powerful interests that are working behind the scenes in the government.
		And that really became clear when the voters passed the medical initiatives here in Arizona.
		I know it's a different topic, but I think that that's the kind of problem we're really up against, is these hidden interests.
		It's hard to tell who they are, but they're blocking the American farmer from making this money and forcing us to send it over to the Saudi Arabian sheikh.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, I know that a lot of people are going to sit out there and they're going to say, boy, this sounds good.
		Paper, clothing, maybe even fuel, all these uses.
		But this guy, Conrad, all he wants to do is smoke pot.
		Come on, let's get to it.
		He wants to smoke pot.
		These uses are just sort of a sidebar way of getting to be able to smoke pot.
		How do you answer that?
chris conrad ▲ ● ▼		Well, he's not going to be able to smoke this industrial hemp, so it really is an argument.
chris conrad ▲ ● ▼		It doesn't hold up very well at all.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, then why is it holding up legally?
chris conrad ▲ ● ▼		That's a really good question.
		It really has to do with the series of legal fictions.
		If you look at the Constitution, you don't see anything in there that gives the federal government the right to prohibit farmers from growing crops like hemp.
		In fact, the signers of the Constitution were primarily hemp farmers, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson.
unidentified		And, uh...
		The signers of the Constitution were made by the Constitution.
		You're listening to Art Bell somewhere in time tonight, featuring a replay of Hosted Coast AM from January 23rd, 1997.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Hear me now.
		We've got Chris Conrad, and he's here talking about hemp and marijuana.
		He is founder and global operations director of the Business Alliance for Commerce in Hemp, or BOC, director of the Family Council on Drug Awareness, and a board member of the Hemp Industries Association.
		He has testified to lawmakers.
		He's talked to courts.
		He's been involved in this movement for a very long time.
		So if you want to know the truth about hemp and marijuana, not the myth, not the bill of goods you've been sold so many years, but the truth, stick around.
		And by the way, if you have questions, we will be getting the lines open.
		As a matter of fact, I'm going to open an anti-marijuana line.
		I may even open two of them, and we'll take on the issue head-on.
		We'll do that as the program progresses.
		Stay right where you are.
		Marijuana, interesting topic.
unidentified		him fascinating topic Now we take you back to the night of January 23rd, 1997 on Art Bell, Somewhere in Time.
unidentified		Art Bell.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Chris, the U.S. Constitution was written on hemp paper?
chris conrad ▲ ● ▼		Well, yes indeed.
		The original draft was, the version that's now on display is on parchment, which is made out of animal hide.
		But the versions that were circulated and originally signed were on paper made of hemp, as was about 97% of the paper, I believe it was, at that time.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		In those days when hemp was being produced, commercially used, how much was being smoked?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Do you know?
chris conrad ▲ ● ▼		That's an interesting point because there was a misunderstanding that was going on.
		There was what was in the United States, not very much, basically.
		There's a chance that some slaves were using some of the cannabis because it was very popular as an African cultural tradition.
		But the Europeans thought that you could only get the effects off of cannabis that was grown in India.
		So they would make the resin into charis or hashish and then bring that over.
unidentified		And so it was really relatively rare that people had access to that.
chris conrad ▲ ● ▼		But at the meantime, this is also subject to quite a bit of debate.
		There are some people who really believe that our founding fathers were smoking a lot of cannabis.
		I haven't seen any documentation that really supports that, nor anything that really disproves it.
		But my indication is that probably amongst the slaves, there was a lot more being smoked than there was amongst the slave owners.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		When then in America did the smoking of cannabis become popular?
chris conrad ▲ ● ▼		Well, there was a discovery by a British surgeon who went to India in the 1840s who came over and when he did his work in India, he found all these medical benefits of cannabis.
unidentified		So he reported it to the British medical associations and societies.
chris conrad ▲ ● ▼		And that was later on worked its way into America.
		So around the 1850s or so, we had cannabis coming into this country.
		But when it really became popularized was after 1876, because at the Centennial Exposition, they had a Turkish booth, I believe it was Turkish, where they had hashish smoking was one of the things that people went in.
		You know, if you've been to a world fair, you know what it's like.
		So they had one of these and you went into the Turkish booth and you got to lay on pillows and smoke hashish out of giant water pipes, which was quite a popular phenomenon.
		And from there on it became rather popularized, again, with the idea that it only came from India.
		But meantime, we definitely had the jazz scene and the Mexican Americans that were smoking the herb.
		And so around the turn of the century, that was beginning to be popularized, and then it became very popular once alcohol was prohibited.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right, and recall for me the year it became no longer legal.
chris conrad ▲ ● ▼		1937.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		1937.
chris conrad ▲ ● ▼		January the 1st, 1937.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So in other words, basically from 1876 through 1937, cannabis was legal.
unidentified		Yes, definitely.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		But those were the good old days.
		Now, there weren't a lot of random murders.
		The crime rate was much lower per capita.
		Things were not awful.
		Brains were not totally fried.
		I mean, that's a lot of years, 1876, 1937.
chris conrad ▲ ● ▼		Right.
		And in fact, when they had the hearings for the Marijuana Tax Act, one of the things that was quite conspicuous is that no one from the Department of Health came forward to say that marijuana was a risk.
		Nobody from the Department of Agriculture came forward and said that they were having a problem with cannabis being stolen from fields.
		And no one came from the children's department.
		And in fact, the American Medical Association, which testified against making cannabis illegal, pointed out all these facts.
		The only people who were against it were a couple of newspaper headlines and the Department of Narcotics, Bureau of Narcotics, were the only people who were in favor of that law when it was introduced.
		And one other point that really is worth mentioning here is that at the time, one of the big reasons why Harry Anslinger was saying we need to make it illegal, he said, oh, it's becoming a big problem.
		60,000 Americans smoke marijuana.
		Well, now that's been illegal for 60 years.
		They're saying 60 to 75 million Americans smoke marijuana.
		So making it illegal had just the opposite effect.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right, here's the facts.
		Art, please ask your guest if the DuPont Company was responsible for the laws against marijuana in the 30s.
		I've heard that after DuPont discovered synthetic nylon, he went to the U.S. government to keep marijuana from being illegal.
		I'm not clear as to why one man could prohibit the use of marijuana so he alone could prosper from his invention and prohibit the many benefits of marijuana.
chris conrad ▲ ● ▼		True?
		I would say the DuPont company was really one of the prime movers on this whole thing.
		Because in fact, the groundwork for making hemp illegal, one of the things the Federal Bureau of Narcotics did was they went through and convinced companies that they could use nylon, which was patented the same year that hemp was made illegal, in place of hemp.
		And they also convinced these companies that they could use synthetics instead of hemp pulp for making plastics.
		In fact, one of the big things that happened in the 1930s was the development of these organic plastics, and hemp was the primary source of the raw material, and several companies were formed and testified against this bill when it was offered to Congress, in fact.
		And the group that benefited the most probably was DuPont, ultimately.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Here's a question for you to ponder.
		I've pondered it.
		Forget marijuana for a second.
		If there was a substance, let's say, invented today that produced an acute state of euphoria with zero downside, no after effects, no lung problems, nothing to be discussed at all in terms of a downside, simply produced a euphoric state.
		Do you believe that in today's atmosphere it would be made illegal?
chris conrad ▲ ● ▼		We have laws right now that cover things that have never been invented yet.
chris conrad ▲ ● ▼		They have the designer drug law, and so the way things are currently set up, any drug that is an alkaloid or a relation To an existing illegal drug is automatically illegal.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Automatically illegal.
		Yeah.
		So, in other words, the idea is they want no artificial euphoric states, period.
chris conrad ▲ ● ▼		Well, yeah, but in another sense, we have this scheduling process where drugs are scheduled according to their relative dangers.
		The only problem is that the federal government never has to prove any of the dangers.
		So, like, Schedule I drugs where marijuana is listed, which prevents doctors from prescribing it federally, is there's supposed to be three tests for that.
		It's supposed to be subject to abuse.
		It's supposed to have known medical utility and not be accepted by the medical community.
		In the case of cannabis, what does abuse mean?
		I mean, they haven't really demonstrated there's any major abuse issue there, except that they say if it's illegal, then you use it, that's abuse.
		Well, you know, that's the Catch-22 definition.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right, let's actually talk about the up and downside of marijuana.
		If I were to ask you to list the up and downsides of the use of marijuana, forget the medicinal value, just the use of it.
		What are the up and downsides?
chris conrad ▲ ● ▼		Well, that's certainly a personal kind of a question to each individual.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Give me general answers.
chris conrad ▲ ● ▼		Well, in general, I would say that one of the real upsides has to do with that it creates a sense of community amongst people who use it, and it reduces a lot of the stress and tension which can often lead to violent behavior.
		For example, in the 19th century, it was recommended to reduce spousal abuse.
		Abusive husbands were, they told their wives to give them hashish instead of alcohol.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		No kidding.
chris conrad ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, no, no kidding.
		Excuse me.
		On the downside of it, I would think that maybe the biggest downside of such getting arrested is the big downside, of course.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Now, that one aside, are there real downsides?
		What about damage to the lungs, for example?
		It is per puff more or harsher, is it not, than tobacco?
chris conrad ▲ ● ▼		In one section of your lung it is, but in other parts of your lung it's not.
		And in fact, it actually helps people with asthma because it expands the capillaries.
		I'm spacing out a word here all of a sudden.
		It's the little bronchia, there we go, that absorb oxygen into the lungs.
		Right, so it's got a benefit to the lung, and it does have a downside as far as affecting the large part of the lung.
		And that's where they come up with these figures claiming that marijuana is more harmful than tobacco.
		But if you look at it objectively, you see that there's never been one single cancer which has demonstrably been linked to the use of marijuana.
		And believe me, if there had been one, we've certainly heard a lot about it by now.
		So, you know, when you've got, you know, hundreds of thousands of people dying from tobacco and nobody dying from cannabis, you know, you could say, well, maybe it's a little tougher on some parts of the lung, but overall, it doesn't seem to be having as much of an effect.
		I think that as far as the negative that I encounter, perhaps, amongst people has to do with perhaps maybe a little on the forgetfulness side, or that some people, I would say, that they become overly reliant upon it to maintain their mood sometimes.
		And that could be good or bad.
		I mean, some people, you know, I know people who are depressive, for example, again, now this is a medical situation, where it's important for them to be able to keep their mood at a stable point.
		Namic depressives particularly, it mellows out their depressive periods.
		And at the same time, when they get hyperactive, it keeps them in more of a middle ground.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		What about paranoid states?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		There are people who smoke marijuana and claim it induces a paranoia.
chris conrad ▲ ● ▼		It does for some people.
		Yeah, there's no question about that.
		In fact, one of the things about the THC pills that are available by prescription under the name of marinol or dromabinol is that they don't have any CBD.
		CBD is an anxiolytic drug, meaning it reduces anxiety.
		And so natural marijuana is less likely to cause anxiety and paranoia than the THC pill alone.
		And the more high THC people get, the more likely they are to have those kinds of effects.
		It's hard to gauge in a certain way, Art, though, because how much of that paranoia has to do with secret police?
		And if you get a problem, you're afraid to call the police because they might find you marijuana and so forth.
		So there's some other psychological factors that make it a little difficult to gauge.
		But I do know that I've seen myself people who have gotten to a situation where they start being really paranoid about things around them.
		Actually, though, what's more common is when people eat a lot of it because they can't gauge it as well.
		If you're smoking it, it takes 15 seconds to feel the effect from when you inhale it till you feel the effect.
		And so if you take it up to where you're enjoying it, then you can tell.
		And when you start getting paranoid, you can tell that too.
		If you eat it, it takes up to an hour to feel the effect.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So in other words, you might eat too much, an hour will go by, and boy, you're really blasted.
chris conrad ▲ ● ▼		Exactly.
chris conrad ▲ ● ▼		And at that point, you might even be able to eat enough to where you start having hallucinations and so forth.
unidentified		It's very rare.
chris conrad ▲ ● ▼		I mean, I'm not trying to make anybody nervous about that as an apprentice.
chris conrad ▲ ● ▼		But it is to say I've seen a lot of people that particularly they go to Holland, they go to the coffee shops, they smoke some graft, and then they see these bonbons.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Bonbons?
		Bonbons?
		You mean you can get it in bonbons?
unidentified		You can get in bonbons and cookies and all sorts of things like that.
chris conrad ▲ ● ▼		But somebody who's already high, then they buy one of those bonbons, and then it tastes good, so they buy another one.
		Now they've got a lot, and the next thing they know, they're sitting there and they can't get up.
		And it's not going to hurt them, but they're just going to be sitting there for a while.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, there are people that, even without the DHC content, get put into altered states by bonbons.
		Right.
		All right.
		I do want to get the audience involved here shortly.
unidentified		One thing we haven't touched on at all though is the hemp seed nutrition aspect and I think I want to touch on Arizona.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		California just passed this measure.
		The whole world seems like it's tumbling in.
		The federal government immediately said, I think Barry McCaffrey said the voters were asleep at the switch in California and Arizona when they voted for these initiatives.
		And it seems to me that's one of the worst statements I've ever heard from a public official asleep at the switch.
		In other words, they did not know what they were doing.
		How do you react to that?
chris conrad ▲ ● ▼		I would say Medical Marijuana got 4,800,000 votes.
unidentified		Barry McCaffrey got zero votes.
chris conrad ▲ ● ▼		I think it's an insult to the voters, essentially.
		What happened here was that the opponents of this initiative came in with horrendous lies about the intention and about the effect of this initiative, Proposition 215.
		And I would say, including Barry McCaffrey himself, he came out here.
		He said that if this initiative is passed, that it effectively legalizes marijuana in California.
		That wasn't true when he said it.
		He knew it wasn't true.
		At least I have to think it, unless he didn't read the law at all, that he knew it wasn't true.
		And yet he came out here and lied to the voters.
		And the voters saw through it, and they made a good judgment, which was to pass this initiative.
		And the opposition raised all sorts of specters.
		And one of the things that's most of the greatest concern to me, Art, is that when I hear Barry McCaffrey or the Partnership for Drug-Free America or the DEA or any of these guys, Shalala and Dan Arino, they're saying that this is a message to young people, you know, that they're worried about what kind of a message is this to young people.
		Well, one thing is that what's their message, that no matter what the voters do, the government's going to keep doing what it wants to?
		That's not a very good message.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		The reason that I've always been in favor of decriminalization or illegalization of marijuana is following.
		It's because of the message to the youngsters.
		And what scares me to death is we're telling them marijuana is terrible.
		It's right in there with crack cocaine and heroin and all the rest of them.
		And they say it is a stepping stone.
		Well, you're damn right it is.
		The way they've got it right now, it certainly is.
		Because the children try marijuana and they say, oh, gee, they lied to me.
		It isn't this horrible thing.
		I'm not suddenly dependent.
		They lied, they lied, they lied.
		And then somebody lays out a line of cocaine for them and lie one leads to the cocaine up the nose because they're going to figure they're being lied to all along.
		So yeah, it is a stepping stone by not telling the truth.
		We are allowing them to move on.
		Do you agree with that?
chris conrad ▲ ● ▼		Well, I think that you're very close to hitting it right on the head with that one, Art.
		And this whole thing of creating self-fulfilling prophecies for young people, it's like if you tell a young person, if you smoke marijuana, you're going to get lazy, and then they smoke marijuana, well, what are they going to think?
		Oh, I'm just going to lay here now.
		So you give them these bad images.
		You tell them if you smoke marijuana, you're going to go onto hard drugs.
		Then that's what they think they should do.
		You really have to give them more positive images of what's possible.
		And one of the most dangerous false and mixed messages I've heard that came from Barry McCaffrey was that he said that on national television, he said that medical marijuana, he's against it because if it's medicalized, that that will give young people the message that marijuana is good for you.
		And then he said, but it's not true because it's a Schedule I drug.
		Then he says, on the other hand, cocaine and methamphetamine are Schedule II drugs because they have medical use.
		Now, what kind of message is he putting out for you?
		I think we need to hold these guys accountable for this thing.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		How strong really is the case, Chris, for medicinal use of marijuana?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		For what conditions and what does it really do?
chris conrad ▲ ● ▼		Depends how broadly you want to use it.
		And one of the things that was the case in California, at least, and I haven't read all the language in Arizona, but the law in California said it's for people with serious conditions.
		Now, we've got 5,000 years of medical books saying that marijuana is good for different conditions.
		That even includes, by the way, runny nose in India and in China and a number of other places.
		Because you may have heard people, they say cotton mouth, it dries out their mouth.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh, yes.
unidentified		Okay.
chris conrad ▲ ● ▼		Well, it dries up your whole sinus system.
		So if someone has a runny nose, a few puffs of marijuana inhale through the nose, it dries it right up.
		Now, that isn't really a serious condition, but it's a medical use for it.
		On the other hand, when you're talking about people with AIDS, right, cancer, that are using it as an adjunct for another treatment where it can keep them from starving to death.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right, I do want to talk about that.
		Hold on.
		Just hold it right there, Chris.
		Chris Conrad is my guest.
		And when he comes back in a moment, we are going to talk about the very serious uses of marijuana.
		AIDS patients, cancer, that sort of thing, glaucoma.
		We will talk about that, and we'll try to pin down whether it really is so.
unidentified		You're listening to Art Bell's Somewhere in Time.
		Tonight featuring a replay of Coast to Coast AM from January 23rd, 1997.
		Coast to Coast AM.
		You're the student to Art Bell somewhere in time on Premier Radio Networks.
		Tonight, an encore presentation of Coastal Coast AM from January 23rd, 1997.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		It is, and my guest is Chris Conrad.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		We're talking about marijuana.
unidentified		Hot.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Mary Jane.
		I'll have to go through all the names there really are for this thing.
		If you want to know the truths, stick around.
		If you want to hear the arguments, stick around.
		As I said, I'm going to reserve one line away for people who are anti-marijuana, who take the position that it causes people to be crazed, commit murders, rapes, bank robberies, or you just generally oppose it for one reason or another.
		That way we'll get both sides.
unidentified		Gunshot
		Tonight featuring a replay of Coast to Coast AM from January 23, 1997.
		Dramatic Music
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right, here we go again with Chris Conrad.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Chris, how many deaths every year are associated, do you know offhand, with alcohol?
chris conrad ▲ ● ▼		With alcohol, I believe it's about 100,000.
		Let me get this number for you.
		That would be 150,000.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		150,000.
chris conrad ▲ ● ▼		But that doesn't include highway deaths and that doesn't even include drunk driving.
unidentified		No, no, that has neurological problems.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		What about cigarettes?
chris conrad ▲ ● ▼		350,000 to 450,000.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		What about marijuana?
chris conrad ▲ ● ▼		Zero.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Excuse me?
chris conrad ▲ ● ▼		Zero.
		There's any recorded deaths from consuming marijuana.
		And now I'm waiting.
		Someone's going to call in and say, well, what about that train wreck?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, what about that train wreck?
chris conrad ▲ ● ▼		Well, that train wreck was actually caused by two electrical malfunctions that occurred.
		One was a switch and the other one was a signal, both of which malfunctioned prior to that.
		Now, in addition to the fact that there were people who had smoked marijuana and there was someone who was alcohol intoxicated and so forth, there were a lot of other problems on there.
		But one of the interesting things about this whole issue is that once the fact that two people had smoked marijuana was uncovered, it's like they stopped the investigation into all these other problems that had occurred.
		And so I think that someone needs to be held accountable for that too, that instead of following through and, you know, whether those guys had been high on marijuana or not, the light would have still been out on the signal.
		The switch still would have been jammed.
		And so it's been more like a cover-up on part of the government in order to be an anti-marijuana campaign.
		They ignored the real problem.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		How many people died in that train wreck?
chris conrad ▲ ● ▼		16.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		60.
chris conrad ▲ ● ▼		16, 16.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		16, I'm sorry.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So even if we were to attribute all of those deaths to marijuana, it would still be $150,000 for alcohol, $400,000 for cigarettes, and $16,000 for marijuana.
chris conrad ▲ ● ▼		Right.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Kind of puts it in perspective.
chris conrad ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, it does.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right.
		Now, the medical benefits, I really do want to know about that.
		The reason I passed the initiatives really, as I understood it, were for people with terminal problems, cancer, not necessarily terminal, but for treatment of, you know, the...
		Serious.
		Oh, that was the word, serious.
unidentified		Correct.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right.
		AIDS.
		What does it really do?
chris conrad ▲ ● ▼		The effects of cannabis should be broken into three categories.
		The first is the physical effects, and then there's the neurological effects, and then there's the effects of smoking.
		Now, the negative effects that we talked about on the lungs, that's strictly from smoking.
		If you eat it, you don't get any of those.
		So looking at the way that cannabis itself functions, you've got the physical and the neurological.
		On the physical point of view, it dries and drains the system.
		It flushes the human's anatomy is one example.
		What that means is, in addition to what we talked about, drying out your sinuses, drying out your mouth, it also reduces the, it dries out your eyes.
		Glaucoma is a leading cause of blindness.
		It is caused by a buildup of too much liquid in your eyes, too much pressure.
		And so what happens, they have medicines that try to, there's little ducts that are supposed to be draining your eye and they're not functioning properly in glaucoma.
		So we use medicines to try to open those ducts.
		We use surgery to try to open those ducts.
		Some of them work, some of them don't work.
		There's all sorts of side effects.
		You can go blind from the surgery.
		Marijuana does something completely different.
		It reduces the moisture in your eye, and so that's how it lowers the pressure.
		That's one example of a physical effect.
		Now, on the other hand, you've got neurological effects.
		And that's for people who have, I would have to put the appetite stimulation in the neurological category now because we haven't found a physical trigger yet.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Is that the actual benefit for AIDS patients who are thinning away?
chris conrad ▲ ● ▼		That and the other thing is it's very good for pain control and for depression.
		And when you're diagnosed with a terminal illness, people tend to get depressed, so it's good for that.
		But as far as the overall physical thing, you're right.
		When people contract AIDS or cancer, and particularly when they start undergoing chemotherapy or radiation therapy, they lose their appetite, they become nauseous, as a result they lose weight, and then the body doesn't have the physical resources to combat the illness anymore.
		And so what cannabis does is it stimulates the appetite, it controls the vomiting, controls the nausea, allows people to eat again and even to enjoy eating again, which is quite an important thing for a lot of people as this condition.
		And that allows them to put on the weight that they then can use for their body to combat the illness.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right, a lot of doctors will say, baloney, this is all baloney that you can take.
		You can take pills, synthesized marijuana does.
		Exactly the same thing, true or false?
chris conrad ▲ ● ▼		False.
		The pill that they're talking about is the THC pill.
		It will get you high like marijuana does, and it will also help to control the nausea like marijuana does.
		It does not stimulate the appetite.
		And the other problem is that if you take a pill and then you throw up, that pill is not going to help you anymore.
		If you smoke marijuana, even if you do throw up, it's still in your bloodstream.
		It's a much more efficient way of getting the benefits of cannabis.
		Smoking it is more efficient than eating it.
		I mentioned before because of the time and the dosage questions.
		But in addition to that, in the case of someone who's having a lot of vomiting, you don't throw up it once you smoke it.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You know, I'll bet you, had the question, the ballot question been, do you think people dying of cancer or AIDS should be able to get any damn drug they want, the answer would have still been yes.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		What do you think?
chris conrad ▲ ● ▼		Well, I think that the Arizona bill shows that you're completely right about that, Art, because that bill didn't just limit itself to marijuana.
		It was off Schedule I drugs.
		So there's, you know, that's much broader than what happened in California.
		The Arizona bill was structured around the idea that our law enforcement is supposed to be directed at violent crime.
unidentified		Right.
chris conrad ▲ ● ▼		And that doctors and patients are not violent criminals.
		So there were two parts of it.
		The first part had to deal with allowing patients and doctors to use Schedule I drugs, which includes marijuana.
		The second part had to do with freeing nonviolent drug offenders in order to allow police to concentrate their resources on violent criminals.
		As I mentioned already, a third of all state prisoners are in there for minor drug offenses, and two-thirds of all federal prisoners are in there for minor drug offenses.
		Blocking those people up isn't making the streets any safer.
		We need to get the violent criminals off the street.
		And that was one of the major, that's why Barry Goldwater and all these other conservatives came forward in support of Proposition 200.
		So I think you're completely right.
		I think that the public understands that someday one of us is going to possibly have a terminal condition, and we're not going to want our doctor to say, well, you know, the best thing for you is marijuana, but I can't tell you that.
		So here's $100 worth of pills that you can take that may or may not work, but they'll give you strange side effects.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Other people will say this was just a foot in the door toward the eventual legalization of marijuana, period.
chris conrad ▲ ● ▼		would you agree with that i would say that you're being bluntly honest Realistically, there's no reason to think it would have to be like that at all.
		You know, morphine is a Schedule I drug, I mean, excuse me, Schedule II drug.
		It can be prescribed, but it's not legal.
		So, you know, there's no reason to think that that is the case.
		I personally have never seen the material to convince me that making marijuana illegal has helped anything or that going to prison is better for a person than smoking marijuana.
		And particularly the argument that's been put forward that somehow this is to protect families if we have marijuana illegal.
		Well, if you take the breadwinner of the family and you lock them away, you take the family car, you take the family house, you take all the bank accounts, you put the kids in foster care, how does that benefit the family again?
		Somebody's going to have to, one of the anti-marijuana people is going to have to explain to me why that helps because I don't see it.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Is that typical of what occurs when somebody's caught with a substantial amount of marijuana?
chris conrad ▲ ● ▼		The scariest thing of all art is it's completely arbitrary.
		It depends what the prosecutor decides to charge you with.
		For example, if you get caught with two ounces of marijuana in California, one ounce is just a ticketable offense.
		If you have two ounces, they can say it's for your personal use, then it's a misdemeanor.
		If you have two ounces, they say intent to sell, then you can lose everything.
		If they say you're part of a conspiracy, then you can be charged with the guy who drove the boat from Columbia up here.
		You might get charged with 14 tons of marijuana for your two ounces.
		And in that case, then they can really destroy your life.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So that allows it to be political.
chris conrad ▲ ● ▼		Correct.
		And in fact, there's a lot of evidence that's emerged that during the Nixon administration, particularly, that the reason that, you know, he had a presidential commission look at the subject, and they came out in favor of legalizing marijuana for adults.
		But Quint Nixon didn't follow up on that.
		And there's actually more and more evidence that's come up in the past few years that part of that was because this was a way of arresting the peace protesters against the War in Vietnam.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes.
chris conrad ▲ ● ▼		And in one particular case in May of, I believe it was 1971, they rounded up 8,000 demonstrators in Washington, D.C. and held them throughout the weekend of a national protest over marijuana.
chris conrad ▲ ● ▼		And basically, that was just to get them out of the protest.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Let me tell you a little story.
		Maybe you can tell me what happened.
		I was working for KENI in Anchorage, Alaska, many, many years ago.
		And I was the guy who ripped a bulletin off the wire up there that said the Alaskan Supreme Court had just decriminalized marijuana.
		Two ounces or less is what I'm recalling.
		I'm not sure the details.
		And you could actually grow it in Alaska.
		And this lasted for a period of time.
		And I can't remember how long because I left.
		But for a period of time in Alaska, it was virtually legal to grow and to smoke.
chris conrad ▲ ● ▼		Right.
		That was in 1976, Alaska versus Raven, commonly known as the Raven decision.
		What they said there was that because the Alaska state constitution includes the right to privacy, that the government doesn't have any business looking into your house to see if you have marijuana or not, or if you're smoking marijuana in your home, that that was protected under the right to privacy.
		That remained the case until 1990, I believe it was.
		It could have been 92, but I think it's 1990.
		There was a referendum in the state which I believe it was 54% in favor of that, that recriminalized it.
		However, two years later, it went back to the court process, and the court said, guess what?
		The Constitution is still the same.
		You still have the right to privacy, and so it's unenforceable.
		So what the police have done in lieu of that, rather than agreeing with obeying the Constitution, they've come up with knock and talk, which is where they go to someone's house, they knock on the door, they come in, invite them in, and then they look around.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Right.
		Would it be all right if we come in?
		And a lot of people have no idea they have the right to say, well, actually, no.
chris conrad ▲ ● ▼		Exactly.
		And in fact, there's a legal section.
		The division is at your threshold.
		Once you step outside your house, then you're in public.
		There's a case of a person who had a beer in his hand.
		The police came to his door.
		He was in his House, you know, and they said, Will you step outside?
		He stepped outside, they arrested him for having a beer in public.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Public intoxication.
chris conrad ▲ ● ▼		Right.
chris conrad ▲ ● ▼		Now, if he had stayed in the house, then he wouldn't have been able to be arrested for that, and also he could have kept the police from entering the house.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right, what's going on now in California?
		Since the passage of this initiative, the federal government huffed and puffed and then seemed to back away a little bit.
		Sorry about the huff and puffing.
		But they did, right?
		So what is the current status?
		What's going on?
chris conrad ▲ ● ▼		Well, what's going on is that there's a group of physicians who have sued the federal government.
		One of the things that you'll notice is that the feds made a lot of noise, but they didn't go to court to challenge this because they had no legal standing.
		And so instead they decided to use threats and intimidation.
		Well, there's a group of doctors and patients who have sued the federal government now, arguing that this violates a doctor's First Amendment right to free speech to the extent that the federal government can say you can't prescribe marijuana because we have federal regulations of what prescriptions are.
		But they can't tell you and me when we're talking to each other what we're allowed to say to each other.
		And so the California law is written to accept a recommendation rather than a prescription because we were aware at this very point.
		And so when the feds came in and they said, you know, we'll go after doctors who make this recommendation, then that created the opportunity for a suit on freedom of speech, a civil liberty suit on the part of the medical community.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So where is this going to go in the courts?
		In other words, at some point, somebody's going to get arrested for marijuana.
		And they're going to say, I'm smoking this on recommendation of Dr. So-and-so.
		And then it's going to head to the courts, right?
		Right.
		Where do you think it's going to go, and how's it going to end up?
chris conrad ▲ ● ▼		Well, it's going to depend upon that doctor's recommendation.
		If the doctor comes in and says that they did recommend it, then it would be up to the jury.
		And I think the juries are going to be pretty broad-minded, to tell you the truth.
		I don't think that they're going to see this as having to be last resort or near-death situation because people don't really see that much of a danger caused by marijuana.
		And I think rightfully that that is the case.
		So I think it's going to be expanded when those cases arrive.
		The real problem we have right now is that it does require a specific doctor's recommendation.
		Since the drug czar has made his threats and the attorney general has made her threats, doctors are afraid to give that recommendation.
		So what you're really going to have is a patient who has AIDS or cancer or glaucoma, for example, growing their own marijuana.
		Their doctor won't recommend it, but they know it will help them, so they're going to grow it anyway.
		And then when it goes into court, then the question is going to be, you don't have a doctor's recommendation.
		Now, will the jury be allowed to hear the testimony about that glaucoma, or are they not going to?
		That's made the Massachusetts situation interesting.
		The legislature there is proposing a state certification of certain conditions.
		Like if you had glaucoma, you could get certified with the state of Massachusetts that you have glaucoma, and then just because you have a condition that marijuana is known to benefit, then you would be exempt from the marijuana laws.
		However, that hasn't been passed or anything.
		This is in the discussion stage.
		What's going on here in California, back to this, is we have new legislation that's been introduced to the state legislature that tightens up some of the loose areas, the language of the initiative.
		For example, the phrase, it says a physician's recommendation.
		Well, during the campaign, our opponents were saying, well, physician, that could be a chiropractor, that could be a veterinarian.
		You know, of course, that's absurd.
		You're not going to get a veterinarian to prescribe marijuana for your condition.
		So it was really a silly argument.
		However, we have a definition of what a physician is in the state commercial code.
		And so now the legislation that's going in before the state legislature was going to specify that in compliance with the commercial code of a definition of a physician and surgeon in the state of California.
		So there's a little cleanup that's going on.
		A lot of it's going to be happening in the courts, though.
		The most exciting positive sign, I think, is the decision to allow the Cannabis Buyers Club in San Francisco to reopen.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Any idea how the street cops are being instructed right now?
chris conrad ▲ ● ▼		I don't know statewide.
		Actually, I do know the state police.
		One of the things that the Attorney General has said is that when they apprehend people with marijuana, that they have to make inquiries about medical conditions.
		And that they also, when they are monitoring buyers' clubs, which are locally sanctioned sources or outlets of marijuana for patients, that one of the things they're supposed to keep track of is if there's people under the age of 18 who are going in and getting cannabis, that they should consider taking action against those clubs rather than ones where they're 18 and above clientele.
		And there's also getting to be more and more clubs that are getting local recognition in order to identify the patients.
		But that's not going to totally work because the law doesn't say you have to belong to a buyer's club.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right, yeah, I wanted to ask, if you're standing behind the counter in one of these buyer's clubs and somebody comes in, obviously of legal age, what do they have to produce to be able to buy?
unidentified		Anything at all?
chris conrad ▲ ● ▼		The way that the clubs that I've been visiting and talking to the people that are working is that they require you to come in with a doctor's diagnosis and preferably a written recommendation.
		If they won't give you a written recommendation, then the person who is issuing the photo ID cards will then look up the doctor's name in the registry of doctors.
		You can't just go in and give your friend's name and say, hey, you know, when they call, tell them you're a doctor.
		No.
		They look you up in a registry of doctors, or they look up the physician there, and then they call the physician.
		And then the physician, if they give an oral recommendation over the telephone to the buyer's club, then the patient will be issued a photo identification.
unidentified		That's becoming more or less standard at the moment, it looks like.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		But it could be done on diagnosis only.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		They could come in, prove they're HIV positive, or they're presently being treated with chemotherapy or glaucoma or how many different things and get issued an ID based on that short of a physician recommendation because you're not going to get those.
chris conrad ▲ ● ▼		Actually, this is really the big problem is that because the law requires a physician's recommendation, there are thousands of patients who were, before the election, were getting marijuana from these clubs simply because they had a condition like AIDS, most commonly in San Francisco, I guess.
		And AIDS and cancer are the two biggest groups that are using this medicine right now.
		But since the election, because of that specific requirement for a physician's recommendation, the clubs are having to turn away a lot more people than they actually were before.
		It was an unfortunate aspect of the language that it actually had, well, it wasn't intended to have a converse effect, but when the federal government threatened all these doctors, a lot of doctors have in fact rescinded their recommendations.
		And worst of all, Art, is the doctors who are dealing with the really people in the worst condition.
		You know, like if you're a doctor who has patients that you have to prescribe morphines to, now, and then you tell them, well, Chris, they're afraid of that.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Listen, hold on.
		We're at the top of the hour.
		We'll be right back, and we will open the lines.
unidentified		Shortest into Art Bell somewhere in time on Premier Radio Networks.
		Tonight, an encore presentation of Coast to Coast AM from January 23rd, 1997.
		Coast to Coast AM from January
		23rd, 1997.
		Coast to Coast AM from January 23rd, 1997.
		Thank you.
		Review Radio Networks presents ArtVelle Somewhere in Time.
		Tonight's program originally aired on January 23rd, 1997.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		We are talking about marijuana with Chris Conrad.
		Hemp, marijuana.
		Chris Conrad is founder and global operations director of the Business Alliance for Commerce in Hemp, or BAC.
		BACH, Director of the Family Council on Drug Awareness, and a board member of the Hemp Industries Association.
		He is the design and curator of the International Hash Marijuana Hemp Museum located in Amsterdam, Holland.
		And we're going to find out how much you have to do with Prop 215 in a moment.
		I haven't actually asked that yet.
		And then we're going to go to the telephone.
		So if you have questions, and I know you do, because the lines have been in gridlock for some time now, warm up your auto dialer and come on in.
unidentified		Gunshot
unidentified		The 23rd, 1997, on Art Bell, Somewhere in Time.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		We are going to proceed to phone calls in just a second.
		Back now to Chris Conrad.
		Chris?
		Yes.
		I have one other question for you, and then we're going to go to the phones, if that's all right with you.
unidentified		My pleasure.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I asked you about Alaska, and you said that the change in the law there was based on privacy rights in the Alaskan Constitution, correct?
		That's correct.
		Does the Alaskan Constitution have privacy rights that exceed those that we perceive to be inherent in the Fourth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution?
chris conrad ▲ ● ▼		Yes, because they have explicit, as you mentioned, we're more or less dealing with an implicit situation where it's quite clear to a lot of us that our founders of this nation had the intention that privacy be respected at a very high level, but they didn't really say it outright.
		They just put certain restrictions on what the government can do.
		Whereas in Hawaii, I mean, excuse me, in Alaska, they specifically said privacy is a right, and so they have much stronger protection there.
unidentified		Okay.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right, to the phones.
		On our anti-marijuana line, you're on the air with Chris Conrad.
		Hi.
unidentified		Hello.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Where are you?
unidentified		I'm in Santa Monica.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right.
unidentified		In California.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes, sir.
unidentified		How you doing?
		Fine.
		Good.
		I caught you as I was driving home tonight.
		I had a girlfriend that passed away, unfortunately, May 1st.
		I had a cancer patient in John Wayne Cancer Institute.
		Right.
		And, you know, she had the pot pills, I guess, Chris.
		Is that what you would call them?
		The pot pills?
chris conrad ▲ ● ▼		Well, THC pills, marijuana.
unidentified		THC.
unidentified		So it is a pill that's out there, isn't it?
chris conrad ▲ ● ▼		That's correct.
unidentified		Yeah.
unidentified		And is that something that doctors can prescribe?
chris conrad ▲ ● ▼		Yes, it is.
unidentified		Okay.
		Well, you know, it didn't work for her.
		And I presume it didn't work for most people.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, you're not making an anti-marijuana case.
unidentified		you're making a pro marijuana case your your um...
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, you really are, isn't he, Chris?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Because that's the only thing that's important.
chris conrad ▲ ● ▼		Actually, you are, because this is one of our points, is that that pill only contains one out of 60 medically active compounds, whereas the herb itself contains 60.
		So, you know, the federal government has picked out one compound and said this is medicine and the rest are not.
		But reality shows us, and there's research that's been done in Czechoslovakia and the European countries showing that another compound, cannabidiol or CBD, actually is more helpful for some of these conditions, such as T. You know what, though?
unidentified		Tell me, whether or not you're smoking pot or taking the pill, it really doesn't help if you've got cancer or you have AIDS.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		How do you know that, sir?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I mean, what are you basing that on?
unidentified		Well, I'm basing it on true life story.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You're basing it on your girlfriend, sir, who didn't smoke.
		She said she didn't smoke.
		She took some pills.
unidentified		Well, she did take the pills and they didn't work, and then she smoked, and that didn't work either.
unidentified		The only thing that worked was morphine.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Ah, all right.
unidentified		Now, was she using it for pain or for her appetite or for rest?
chris conrad ▲ ● ▼		What exactly was she trying to achieve?
unidentified		She was trying to achieve, I guess, you know, peace of mind before she really got bad, but only the morphine really worked when it really got bad.
		And so what I'm trying to say is, I mean, it's kind of like a placebo, isn't it?
		Whether or not it's a pill or even smoke in the pot, that's not correcting the problem.
		It's not even going to end the symptoms, is it?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right, that's a fair question.
		The placebo effect.
		How much good medical documentation is there for the benefits, or is it a gray area?
		Chris?
chris conrad ▲ ● ▼		Well, there's a couple of things I need to preface this with.
		One is that it's not a cure.
		It's a treatment for symptoms normally.
		It doesn't, even glaucoma, it doesn't cure it.
		It just gives a temporary relief from the symptoms of it.
		And the same is true for cancer and for everything.
		It's a temporary thing.
		Now, the other thing is that not all medicines work for everybody, no matter what.
		And so the fact that one patient, it works for one patient and not for another, that's fairly normal for any medicine.
		Now, as far as the placebo effect is concerned, that's something that there is some validity to that marijuana may have some placebo effects.
		But at the same time, there's a lot of documentation.
		There's at least 60 human studies that have been done.
		There were over 100 medical reports filed in the 19th century.
		There have been 12,000 studies, they say, done on marijuana in this century, mostly looking for harmful effects and, in fact, finding quite a few of beneficial ones.
		And one of the more recent ones that was approved by the government, and mind you that the government has been blocking a lot of this research, in 1988, the Vinci Guerra report, which was published in the New York Medical Review, you find that they've worked with patients and that they found that smoking marijuana was more effective than marinol.
		And they did that with tests where they used placebo marijuana and regular marijuana.
		Placebo marijuana is where they take the cannabinoids, or at least the THC, out of it.
		So it still has the same effect of smoking, it still has the same effect of taste, the same smell, etc.
		So that the patient would, if it's a placebo, they can't tell the difference.
		And they still found that there were beneficial effects in that case.
		So I would say that your girlfriend, it sounds like she was just one of the unfortunate ones that it didn't happen to work for.
		And it doesn't work for everybody.
		Another issue here, though, is that certain kinds of marijuana work better for certain kinds of conditions.
		And, you know, I said there are these 60 different medicines that are all in there.
		The ratio of those medicines to each other is called a cannabinoid profile.
		That's critical to whether the cannabis works for your problems or not.
		For example, if you're trying to use it because you can't sleep or because you're in pain, you probably want something with more cannabis or CBD in it.
		If you're using it because you're depressed or because of your glaucoma, you probably want something with more THC.
		The way the law is set up now, we don't know what's in any of them.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right, let's address physical and psychological dependence.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Is there physical dependence on marijuana?
chris conrad ▲ ● ▼		It does not fit the classical definition of addiction because there are no withdrawal symptoms.
		You don't need to increase your dosage to continue to use it and so forth.
		So it doesn't fit in the classical symptoms of addiction.
		And in fact, it's not physically addictive.
		What we run into is what they call the psychological addiction.
		And that's so nebulous, it's really hard to say.
		I know, personally, I know there are some people who use too much of it, and it's somewhat detrimental in their lives.
		It's relatively as if they were drinking more alcohol or something.
		It's not that bad, but it is still too much.
		And so, you know, I can't give it any kind of a carte blanche.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right, so psychological addiction, perhaps to the degree that a guy is at work all day, has had a stressful day, comes home, has a martini.
unidentified		Right.
chris conrad ▲ ● ▼		So you might do it every day just as a part of your normal life, which in fact, when they talk about psychological addiction, they say that if you do it every day, that that means you're psychologically addicted.
		Well, I brush my teeth every day.
		So what is that exactly saying?
		It's kind of a nebulous thing.
		But for individuals, if they find it's interfering with their life, then definitely they should cut back.
		What I really find, Art, though, is that there are people who, if their life is out of control, it's very convenient to use marijuana as an excuse or as a scapegoat.
		Oh, you know, my kid was doing good in school and then he started smoking marijuana and started having problems.
		Well, can't know your kid was having problems and then maybe they started smoking marijuana or maybe there's nothing, no relationship at all.
		But it's not really fair to, particularly for your own self, to say, well, marijuana messed up my life.
		People have to take responsibility for their own lives.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		In an ideal world, Chris, would you have marijuana laws similar to alcohol laws?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		In other words, not dispensed to underage?
chris conrad ▲ ● ▼		My personal view is that we should have about an 18-year age of consent on it.
		And part of that, actually, Art, is that I think whatever age you set, there's going to be a little trickle-down.
		You know, there's some people who are not going to be quite that age who are going to look like it.
unidentified		Of course.
chris conrad ▲ ● ▼		People who sneak into shows.
		So I think we have to keep it old enough that even the trickle down is still going to be post-puberty.
		I'm really against adolescence and people going through puberty as using cannabis.
unidentified		I don't think that they're psychologically prepared for it.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		May I ask this, Chris?
		What about this?
		You know, people who smoke marijuana say all right.
		Music is better.
		Food is better.
		Sex is better.
unidentified		And on and on and on.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		In other words, experiences are enhanced.
		Is there any actual evidence, documentable evidence, to prove that really is true?
		Or is it all a mirage?
chris conrad ▲ ● ▼		Well, now we're into the question about the psychological effects of cannabis.
		What I would say is that there have not been any clinical studies that I know that have dealt with the mechanisms.
		However, we have medical literature going back to the Vedas of Hinduism.
		There are some of those that talk about the wonders of cannabis for increasing men's virility and women's sexuality and so forth.
		So it's been known for a long time that it has these effects.
		But as far as actual clinical studies that really show any of how that works or to demonstrate it, I haven't seen those yet.
		Now there was a study where they found that young men who had smoked marijuana had a temporary reduction in their sperm count.
		And that was played up to a big extent, almost to the extent of making it sound like people might become sterile from smoking marijuana, which was not at all close to being true.
		But one of the things that that same study showed with the decline was that people who continued to smoke marijuana or who did not, within 60 days, the sperm count was back to normal and that their ability to be sexually stimulated was the same whether they were high or not.
		One of the things that falls into that category has to do with the enhanced blood flow that comes from the smoking of cannabis.
		And a lot of our sexual stimulation is actually caused by that blood flow.
		So there is a physiologically demonstrable reason as to why people might become more sexually excited.
		However, when they've done the studies with animals, they find that they have the same physiological response, but yet the sexuality does not increase.
		So there's obviously some kind of a psychological, sensual, intercommunicative aspect of cannabis that seems to be inherent to people and doesn't apply across the board to other animals.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Wild Carline, you're on the air with Chris Conrad.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Hi, where are you, please?
unidentified		I'm in Missoula, Montana.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes, sir.
unidentified		And Chris, real informative.
		I mean, it's real good to hear that there's so much information on the positive side.
		I wanted to ask, how, in your findings of, you know, what it does and everything, I'm sure that you've been out there in the streets a little bit.
		Probably a smoker yourself.
		I'm a 13-year smoker of marijuana for both social and medical reasons.
		Would you ever find any connection maybe between the drugs coming into the country and maybe the police force?
		A little cahoots there money-wise.
chris conrad ▲ ● ▼		Well, if you want to get into that, you should probably read the politics of heroin in Southeast Asia to find out how the military was involved in transporting heroin to this country.
		And I think it's really ironic that you have somebody like Oliver North, who has been, actually he's under indictment in Costa Rica.
		Wait, is it Costa Rica?
unidentified		Nicaragua?
chris conrad ▲ ● ▼		No, maybe it is Costa Rica.
		I have to look at my map here.
		But anyway, he's under indictment in Central America because his involvement with smuggling tons of cocaine.
		Yes, it is Costa Rica Rica.
		The Senate of Costa Rica had hearings and they found that him and a number of other people involved in the Iran-Contra affair actually were involved with cocaine smuggling into the United States, and he hasn't been brought up on any charges, and yet some guy on the street who's giving marijuana to sick people is subject to going to prison for years and years.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, I don't think, though, that it's restricted to one political side of the spectrum, because look at all the questions surrounding NENA.
unidentified		Right.
chris conrad ▲ ● ▼		No, I absolutely agree with you, Art.
		Unfortunately, this is not part of an issue here.
		Both parties are up to their necks in this special interest and this dirty dealing that's been going around, and there's plenty of blame to go around.
		This is, I think, there's plenty of cred to go around for heroic people who are willing to risk their own liberty in order to help out sick and dying people like the medical buyers clubs around the country.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right.
		East of the Rockies, you're on there with Chris Conrad.
		Where are you, please?
unidentified		I'm in New Orleans.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes, sir.
unidentified		How are you doing, Chris?
chris conrad ▲ ● ▼		All right.
unidentified		I'm glad there's somebody out there like you.
chris conrad ▲ ● ▼		Well, I hope you pick up a copy of my books, Hemp for Health and Hemp for Life Light of the Future, and spread them around.
unidentified		Is there any place around New Orleans locally that is trying to legalize marijuana?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		It's a good group.
		That's a really good point.
		Chris, you're talking to literally every state in the union, not just Louisiana, but all of them.
		And a lot of them are looking at California and Arizona, and they're asking, I'm sure, what can we do in our state?
		What can they do?
chris conrad ▲ ● ▼		Well, as far as I know, Vermont, excuse me, New Hampshire is the only state that's actually got legalization or actually, legalization is a tricky word.
		We're talking about age of consent, okay?
		So please understand I'm not talking about adolescents again.
		That's the only state that I know of that's moving ahead with decriminalization for adults of marijuana.
		At the same time, we've got about 10 or 11 states that have decriminalization, which includes California, meaning that it's a ticket offense, not a prison offense.
		There are, like I said, four states that introduced temp legislation last year.
		We're expecting about 10 to do it this year.
		The medical marijuana issue seems to be breaking out all over.
		As we said, Massachusetts, it's going to be debated in Virginia because they have a medical marijuana bill that some politicians are trying to rescind, similarly with Ohio.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right, so what do you advise us in Louisiana?
chris conrad ▲ ● ▼		Well, what I would advise is that you need to be starting to going through your state legislature yourself and talking to the legislatures, finding out who it is that would be interested and from what angle.
		You can't, we haven't found a wildcard, if you don't mind my using your word art, a wildcard that everybody agrees with.
		In certain parts of the country, the agricultural issue, the pesticides issue, stuff like that makes hemp very compelling.
		Other parts of the country, medical marijuana is.
		You know, it took me by surprise personally that in Arizona, the big question was violent crime versus nonviolent crime.
		I mean, nonviolent offenses, should I say.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, that's one big issue.
		What about the farming issue?
		We're being heard through a lot of the farm country.
		If hemp was legal to grow, how much of a benefit for farmers would there be?
chris conrad ▲ ● ▼		It would be staggering.
		In fact, during World War II, the federal government had about a million acres of hemp grown by farmers.
		It produced and distributed a film called Hemp for Victory that was shown all over the country to farmers to encourage them to grow hemp.
		It even had a program where 4-H club members were encouraged to grow one or two acres of hemp as a project, which was then shifted and sent over to the mostly military applications.
		There was about 50 mills that were set up around the country.
		The federal government prepared and gave people loans for equipment to process the hemp.
		The mills that were run, in addition to producing jobs and textiles and so forth at the local community level, they also were able to power themselves up with the leftover bits of wood, or as they call it, the inner part of the hemp stock away from the fiber in order to run it and then sell energy back to the utility companies.
		And hemp doesn't require pesticides or herbicides or very much of the, or nearly as much, should I say, chemical fertilizers.
unidentified		Why not?
chris conrad ▲ ● ▼		Because it's such a hardy, rugged plant.
		Part of it has to do with this resin that it produces, which has the cannabinoids in it.
		Whether it's THC or low THC, apparently insects don't like it that much.
		And it also filters out ultraviolet.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right.
		West of the Rockies, you're on the air with Chris Conrad.
		Hi.
unidentified		Hello, Art.
		Hello, Mr. Conrad.
		Hello.
		I was random one question in the comments.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right, where are you, sir?
unidentified		This is Ralph from Browning, Montana.
		All right.
		My first question was about, like, say if weed was legalized and sold like Margro cigarettes, would the government regulate the THC like they're doing with the nicotine?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh, that's a good question.
		There's all this big argument about nicotine levels being manipulated by tobacco companies.
		What about THC levels in a legal environment?
chris conrad ▲ ● ▼		Actually, that's a very good question.
		During the 1970s, there was a lot of speculation that the federal government would authorize certain lower THC kinds of cannabis to be available and keep higher THC forms off the market.
		And of course, they didn't do that at all.
		They kept with a blanket approach.
		A lot of the modern thinking that we're hearing, though, is that the higher THC is probably better because you don't want people to smoke so much.
		You know, it's actually the smoke is where the inherent risk of cannabis is.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So in other words, if they get high by taking one puff or two puffs, they're not doing very much damage to their lungs, but they're achieving the blissful results of marijuana.
chris conrad ▲ ● ▼		Right.
		And then you get to like industrial hemp, which at 0.3% THC, you might have to smoke a kilo of.
		And, you know, to get high, first off, you couldn't even physically do that.
		But second off, even if you did, just think of all that particulate matter you're getting into your lungs.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		An entire shirt or a pair of pants or something.
unidentified		Right, exactly.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right, on our anti-marijuana line, you're on the air with Chris Conrad.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Hi.
unidentified		Hi, Art.
unidentified		This is Kelly from Chico, California.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You oppose the use of marijuana, Kelly?
unidentified		I do.
		I'm an alcohol and drug counselor.
		One of the things that I think has been failed to be mentioned is the physiological effects.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right, look, we'll cover that.
		Can you afford to hold on?
		I'm sorry, we're at a break here at the bottom of the hour.
unidentified		Go right ahead.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right, good.
		We'll bring you both back right after the bottom of the hour.
		Chris Conrad is my guest.
		We're discussing him, marijuana, Mary Jane.
		We'll have to come up with all the names.
unidentified		We'll be right back.
		You're listening to Arch Bell somewhere in time.
		Tonight, featuring a replay of Coast to Coast AM from January 23rd, 1997.
		She has told me whispers of some quiet conversation.
		She's coming in from the device No one that brings me back, it's all I said I think that I'm thinking of asking if he's going to stay Why don't we ask you?
		If it's going to be what's going on, why don't you tell me?
		You're listening to Art Bell somewhere in time tonight featuring a replay of Coastal Coast AM from January 23rd, 1997.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		It certainly is an honor bell.
		My guest is Chris Conrad.
		We are having a discussion about marijuana.
unidentified		Tonight featuring a replay of Coast to Coast AM from January 23, 1997.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		The End Back to it we go, Chris Conrad and my caller on line one.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Caller, go ahead.
unidentified		Yeah, Art.
		The point that I wanted to speak to is what marijuana smoking does to the brain.
		The norepinephrine, the serotonin, and the dopamine that we're just starting to fine-tune and find out about, there's a good 150 more of those brain amines and neurotransmitters that we have no idea what they even do, but we know that they're strongly connected to mood.
		When you smoke marijuana, have you ever seen what that looks like through an MRI imaging machine?
		It looks like the 4th of July.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right, that's a fair question.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		The effect on the brain, Chris, how much do we know and how much don't we know?
chris conrad ▲ ● ▼		Well, there's always room for more research on these kind of things.
		One of the things we know is that it doesn't affect those dopamine receptors and so forth.
		Some of the things he was talking about, it has some effect on, but primarily you've got these specialized receptors in the brain that are clustered in certain areas, such as the area dealing with motion, and there's some in some memory areas and so forth.
		And it seems to be movement.
		Movement is an important one.
		So when people smoke marijuana, for example, it's good for problems like epilepsy or convulsive problems and things like that and multiple sclerosis where people are having a problem with aspasticity or ataxia.
		For example spasticity is an involuntary movement of a muscle and ataxia is where you can't move even when you want to.
		And cannabis seems to allow the neurological transmission of data to be more effective.
		Now there was one study that was done by Dr. Robert Heath in Florida that alleged to find damage caused by marijuana.
		However the research that was done was done in such a bad way.
		There was contamination, there was bias, there was damage that was attributable to known causes that he tried to blame on the marijuana that's been fairly well discredited.
		There hasn't been any data that really shows any serious harm whatsoever from it.
		Now if you're talking about not liking the mood that it puts people in, I really can't go anywhere with that.
		It's up to you whether you like your mood or not.
unidentified		Well Chris, you mentioned memory and motor activity.
		There's much more.
		It's hallucinogenic.
		So we know that it affects the auditory part of the brain, the upper right and left lobes, the back part, the visual perception in the back of the brain.
		Of course it affects the memory.
		But I think the problem that we're starting to run into is an exhaustion of these brain amines and these neurotransmitters after a long extended period of use.
		Our brain no longer is able to effectively reproduce the neurotransmitters of serotonin and norepinephrine.
		And we find that we have a reduction in that, and that's directly altered to our mood.
		And I think that's probably where a motivational syndrome eventually sets in.
		Now, I've spent a lot of time smoking an awful lot of weed and hung out a lot with the Grateful Dead.
		And I think after five or ten years, you may not experience the amotivational syndrome right up front.
		But after a while, when these natural chemicals start exhausting themselves, that you just basically become fried.
		Now, have you ever met anybody that smoked a lot of marijuana after many years, and they just seem to have that amotivational fried syndrome?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		The fried syndrome.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I suppose you can abuse anything, Chris.
chris conrad ▲ ● ▼		Well, there's an assumption being made here that people, that no one who smokes marijuana is amotivated, which I don't buy.
		Personally, I think watching television probably amotivates people more than anything else.
		Having the drugs art take away people's election results makes people not want to vote.
		So, you know, there are some things that are motivationally problematic that don't have anything to do with marijuana.
		A lot of what you're talking about there, yeah, it affects people's sound receptors.
		And people think the music sounds better sometimes.
		You're talking about the Grateful Dead.
		You know, people that I know seem to like them better when they're stone than when they're straight.
		You know, I can't really criticize them for that.
		You know, that's just the way they feel.
		Or people who smoke marijuana and then food tastes better to them, maybe you don't like that, but I don't really see how is sending anybody to prison helping any of that?
		How is the laws against marijuana helping any of that?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right, we'll let that hang in the air.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Wildcard line, you're on the air with Chris Conrad.
unidentified		Hi.
unidentified		Yes, hi.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Where are you, sir?
unidentified		Madison, Wisconsin.
		Okay.
		My question to Chris was that, you know, this is an interesting and amazing plant.
		What are the uses that it could be a substitute for paper, you know, rather than the deforestation and the landfill use with wood being, you know, we're cutting up trees?
		And also, I've heard something like it could be used for fuel.
		I guess my question to you then is, is all this being held back industrial hemp because of maybe, you know, messing up the economy with all the different industries out there?
chris conrad ▲ ● ▼		Actually, basically anything that's made out of timber, fossil fuels, or cotton can be made just as efficiently, often of a higher quality and usually with less environmental harm by using hemp, plus producing more raw material per acre.
		So there's a lot of good, solid reasons of why it should be available.
		As best as I can tell, the main thing holding it back is the DEA's power over classification, because they don't make the distinction between industrial hemp and marijuana that gives people high.
		They have this arbitrary, absolute control over the scheduling, and they have a process they're supposed to go through, as I mentioned earlier, to define what goes into what category, but they don't follow their own process.
		It's like we signed a treaty, the Single Convention Treaty on Narcotic Drugs in 1968.
		That treaty states that the United States will provide and maintain the availability of marijuana for medical purposes.
		The United States has never obeyed that treaty.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All of these medical arguments aside, is it simply time that the United States had a grown-up national dialogue on whether or not to legalize marijuana?
chris conrad ▲ ● ▼		I would say that that is the fundamental thing that has been lacking.
		And it was deliberately contrived by the Reagan administration to cut off the discussion of it.
		And actually, a lot of data, research data, was deliberately destroyed by the government during that time period.
		And so we're continuing to suffer from that.
		The point of the whole thing is that this country is a democracy that's supposed to be based upon the sharing, the equal sharing of ideas wherein an informed voters are able to make decisions.
		That's one of the things that's been very hard to have in this country.
		When we finally did have it, the voters decided that medical marijuana at least should be available, and then we have the federal government come in and say, well, they were hoodwinked.
		Well, that's baloney.
		They weren't hoodwinked.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		He's got sleep at the switch.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Easter the Rockies, you're on there with Chris Conrad.
unidentified		Hello.
		Hello, Art.
		This is Michelle from Orlando.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Orlando, Florida, all right.
unidentified		Oh, yeah.
		And I would like to inform your guests that I am a glaucoma casualty.
		And I believe that if I had been given at least an experimental basis, marijuana, I probably wouldn't be blind today because I had, you know, a lot of complications with my eyes and, you know, two eye operations.
		And, you know, I just believe that it could all be prevented.
		I mean, I know that you can't really cure glaucoma, but you can sure reduce its effect on the optic nerve if you've got something that will remove the fluid from the eye.
		And these drugs that they give us, the eye drops, you know, you have to take more and more and more of those to get the same effect.
		And yet I'm hearing that with marijuana, that isn't the case.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Is that true, Chris, with regards to, say, reducing the liquid in the eye, which is a problem, I guess, with glaucoma, is there increased dosage required to achieve the same effect, or is it level?
chris conrad ▲ ● ▼		No, it's the same amount.
		Cannabis acts as a deuritic.
		It causes people to urinate, and so it draws moisture from throughout the body, the mouth, the eyes, the mucous membranes.
unidentified		And it doesn't require more and more.
chris conrad ▲ ● ▼		It's kind of an unexplained process as to how it causes this to happen, but it's definitely true what you're saying.
		Interestingly enough, in Florida, there's, I believe, two glaucoma patients.
		Out of the eight people who get legal medical marijuana provided free from the United States federal government, two of them in Florida have a medical use for glaucoma.
		One of them is L.V. Musica, who's a good friend of mine.
		Another case is Robert Randall, who was in Washington, D.C. when it happened.
		And in his case, it's been documented very clearly that he was expected to go blind within six months in the 1970s.
		I believe in 1976, he got arrested for growing his own marijuana because he found the halo effect that indicates a high pressure in the eyes.
		When he smoked marijuana, that went away.
		And so he started growing his own, and he got arrested for it.
		They anticipated he would be blind in six months, but because he's been on this program of using it regularly, 20 years later, he still has his eyesight.
		Elvie Musika thinks her eyesight is even better.
		But most importantly to me, from what your story is, where I feel it the most myself, is you're saying you didn't even get a chance to find out if it worked or not.
		My dad died of cancer.
		You know, he was under morphine.
		He wanted to try marijuana to see if it would help some of his insomnia, the irritation, the discomfort, the pain, the loss of appetite, etc.
		And he couldn't ever use it.
		And that, to me, is almost like the worst of all.
		Maybe it'll work, maybe it won't work, but at least people should get a chance to find out.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Is that what motivates you?
chris conrad ▲ ● ▼		It has something to do with it.
		It has no doubt.
		In fact, you were talking about my involvement with the Proposition 215 campaign here in California.
		Well, as I said, I got involved with this movement primarily out of an environmental interest, an economic interest in restoring industrial hemp.
		During the course of this, of course, I learned a lot of things that I hadn't known before about the medical utility and about the social aspects and even the religious uses of cannabis, which is a whole other show in itself, practically.
		But nonetheless, you know, to be in that situation of having my father there, you know, dying, wanting to try the marijuana.
		His doctor wouldn't even acknowledge it at all.
		He was afraid to do it because he didn't want to get in trouble and didn't want, you know, he thought if they caught him smoking marijuana at the hospital, would they take away his insurance?
		So watching him have to deal with that is very hard on me.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Look, I know the DEA is a kind of a terrorist organization for doctors in the sense that they monitor even the normal drugs.
		I saw the story of a doctor not very long ago who was prescribing drugs for people who are dying.
		And basically, he was doing what we were talking about earlier.
		If they wanted something, he gave it to them.
unidentified		Big deal.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		The people who are dying, they know what their level of tolerance is and what they need to prevent pain.
		So he gave it to them.
		DEA came in, goodbye license.
		Not an unusual story.
chris conrad ▲ ● ▼		Was this a doctor at Blue, Virginia?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, that's right.
unidentified		Right.
chris conrad ▲ ● ▼		And again, this is a case where the doctors who, a lot of doctors are afraid to prescribe heavy medications because they don't want their license to be scrutinized and perhaps told.
		So when you find a few doctors like this guy, whose name I don't remember, by the way, who are willing to take the chance and they get targeted by the federal government.
		So now my understanding is there's something like 200 to 400 patients that he had that no longer have access to pain medications.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		That's correct.
		Several of them have committed suicide.
		West of the Rockies, you're on the air with Chris Conrad.
		Hi.
unidentified		Hi, Art.
		Hi, Chris.
		Hi, Art.
		I am so glad you're having this show.
		Back in 89, I heard Chris Conrad on the radio station that I now produce radio shows for.
		And I heard this information, and it just totally changed my life.
		And my partner and I've produced hundreds of hours of programming about hemp.
		And one of the subjects that hasn't gotten mentioned yet, though Chris wanted to talk about it, was the hemp feed.
		Now, I happen to know the researcher, Dr. Roberta Hamilton, who's a biochemist from UCLA, who was doing a research project to find the most nutritious food on the planet.
		And it just turned out to be the hemp feed.
		And this is a woman that's a grandmother in her 70s.
		And she has been speaking out a lot about the nutritional value because it is the perfect balance.
		And when we're talking about diseases with immune system deficiencies, like AIDS, like cancer, the chemotherapy kills their immune systems, eating this seed or taking the oil can rebuild our immune systems.
		I call it preventative medicine.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Are you aware of that, Chris?
chris conrad ▲ ● ▼		Oh, yeah, and I was trying to work it in a couple of times myself here as this is she who remembers.
unidentified		Yes, this is she who remembers.
chris conrad ▲ ● ▼		I recognize your voice.
chris conrad ▲ ● ▼		And in fact, the hemp seed contains the essential fatty acids that help with the immunological system in this ratio that's closest to our human anatomy of any other seed out there.
unidentified		So it's in a proportion that works the best for people.
chris conrad ▲ ● ▼		And it also has something in it called Edistin that helps the digestion process.
		Plus it lubricates the bowels, improves bowel movements, etc.
		So you can't even make this stuff up.
		It's like the more we have researched it, the more amazing it becomes.
		In fact, jumping away from the hemp seed for a moment, Mercedes-Benz, the company that owns that, is now planning on using hemp fiber for their cars because they found it's better than fiberglass.
		You know, I mean, this things that we're coming up with about hemp are things that at one point I would have written off as being jokes, but now as time goes by, the scientific data comes in and it's more and more impressive.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right.
		If I'm a scientist and I want to study, I want to get a grant and I want to study hemp somehow or another, and I want to come up with a, I'm sort of predetermining that I'm going to get a negative result, something the government can depend on to continue this war on drugs, war on marijuana.
		Am I likely to get funded?
chris conrad ▲ ● ▼		If you promise to get negative results, very likely, yes.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And if I just want to do independent research, they're going to be afraid of the result.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		They're not going to fund me.
chris conrad ▲ ● ▼		That's about right.
		There's Abrams, Dr. Abrams here in California has been, put three years in a row, he's put proposals before the National Institute on Drug Abuse and the Food and Drug Administration.
		He's gotten his protocols approved, but the government won't release the marijuana.
		He needs like one ounce of marijuana to do this study.
		Street price is $500.
		He spent over $15,000 doing the paperwork to get the permission for $500 worth of marijuana, and the Fed still won't release it to him.
		Another interesting twist here, though, is that a lot of researchers, they'll change the thrust of their research in order to make it sound negative, in order to get continuous funding.
		And what I'm thinking about specifically is there's a study that was done on migraine headaches in marijuana.
		Well, throughout history, we know that marijuana has been used for migraine headaches to treat it.
		Well, they did a study where they found that marijuana smoking was keeping people from having migraine headaches.
		Then when they took away the marijuana, the migraine headaches came back.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So they said it gave people migraine headaches.
chris conrad ▲ ● ▼		Exactly.
chris conrad ▲ ● ▼		They said that the withdrawal symptom of marijuana is that it causes migraine headaches.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I see.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Anti-marijuana line, you're on the air with Chris Conrad.
unidentified		Hi.
unidentified		Hi.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Where are you, sir?
unidentified		I'm in central Nebraska.
		All right.
		My name is Monty, and I'm a police officer.
		I have been for 27 years.
		All right.
		Go ahead.
		A couple of questions for a gentleman.
		Chris Conrad.
		Okay, Chris, a couple of questions for you here.
		Sure, Monty.
		You say that the DEA has classified marijuana as a narcotic.
		Now.
chris conrad ▲ ● ▼		As a Schedule I narcotic.
unidentified		A Schedule I narcotic.
		Okay.
		In all the seminars and training sessions and everything that I've gone to in Nebraska, I realize we're somewhat isolated from the rest of the country, but I've never read or heard it classified as a narcotic.
		It's considered a controlled substance.
		And I agree with you, a narcotic is a substance that does induce narcosis, and it's never been presented to me in that manner.
chris conrad ▲ ● ▼		That's reassuring to me.
		One of the reasons that they classified it as a narcotic was because there was a Federal Bureau of Narcotics that was in charge of it.
		When they did the reclassifications in 1970 or 71, I believe it actually happened, that they approved it, they changed it to a class of hallucinogens, and that's why they put it in Schedule I. Officer, if you go to a domestic dispute, you go to somebody's house, you get inside, you see a joint laying on a coffee table or something, what do you do?
unidentified		I do what I have to.
		I issue a citation.
		If there's less than an ounce in the house in Nebraska, we issue simply a citation to appear in court.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh, I didn't know that.
unidentified		Same way with paraphernalia, which is a citation to appear in court.
		I wanted to get a little further into this background on hemp.
		Yeah, please do.
		You stated that the people who signed the Constitution and so forth stated that hemp should be considered to be necessary for security of this country.
chris conrad ▲ ● ▼		Pardon?
chris conrad ▲ ● ▼		Thomas Jefferson said.
unidentified		Well, essentially at that time, that was true because hemp was used in the making of ropes and it was needed for the rigging of ships and for carrying cargoes, you know, both on land and sea.
		That's about all they had at that time except for jute and flax.
		And the marijuana plant, seeing as at times can be seen growing as high as 15 feet, would have the longest fiber.
		Therefore, it was the most efficient.
chris conrad ▲ ● ▼		That's true.
unidentified		That's not necessarily true at this time.
unidentified		I mean, it's no longer that big a need for a natural.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Officer and Chris, we're at the top of the hour.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Officer, do you want to hang in there?
unidentified		Well, I would, but I'm supposed to be out patrolling.
unidentified		I just had a few comments.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right, well, you have made them, so when we get back from the news, Chris, you can hang on.
unidentified		Yeah, I certainly may I make one more comment, please.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Not enough time unless you want to hang on.
unidentified		I guess I'll just hang on.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right, hanging you are then, as we all are.
unidentified		I'm Art Bell.
		Thank you.
		You're listening to art bell somewhere in time on Premier Radio Networks.
		Tonight, an oncore presentation of Coastal Coast AM from January 23rd, 1997.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		My guest is Chris Conrad.
		We are discussing marijuana.
		It is a full national radio discussion on marijuana.
		Rational, I hope.
		And we've got an officer on the line in Nebraska.
		And so back to Chris Conrad and the officer in Nebraska.
		Officer, sorry to hold you over.
		No choice.
		I work by the clock.
unidentified		Okay, I understand that.
		Go ahead.
		Another point I'd like to make is, as you know, the teen use of marijuana in this country has reached almost an explosive state.
		That means we've got a lot more teen drivers that are smoking marijuana.
		These kids aren't going to be smoking that marijuana at home.
		They're going to be out on the road or somebody's house or something like that.
		And on the way back, do you feel that a person who's driving under the influence of marijuana is not an impaired driver and therefore a danger to the public?
chris conrad ▲ ● ▼		This is, well, should I address your first series of questions first or should I address this?
unidentified		However you like.
chris conrad ▲ ● ▼		Okay, well, let me just start with this one because this is on the table.
chris conrad ▲ ● ▼		First off, I do not endorse adolescent or teenage use of marijuana, so please don't misconstrue anything on that.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		No, I'm not.
unidentified		I've heard you say this before.
unidentified		Okay, fine.
chris conrad ▲ ● ▼		Now, if you look at the statistics about what's going on, first off, marijuana hasn't been legalized, and yet teenage use has gone up.
		So therefore, keeping it illegal has not kept the use down.
		Second off, teenage marijuana use is at a very high level right now.
		What else has happened?
unidentified		Oh, methamphetamine has gone up and our diseases have gone up and everything else, yes.
chris conrad ▲ ● ▼		But the relevant issue here is that teenage fatalities have gone down.
		Teenage involvement in violent crimes has gone down.
		Teenage arrests for drug offenses has gone up.
		Teenage student SAT scores have gone up.
		So there's no evidence whatsoever that teenagers smoking marijuana, which I don't favor, has caused any social problem other than the fact that politicians are using it as an excuse to continue this prohibition against cannabis, which they didn't ever justify in the first place.
		And if you can answer a question for me, officer, if you have the choice that there's a truck driver coming towards you on the freeway, they're either drunk or they're high on marijuana, sober is not an option, but they're coming towards you and you're going towards them, which would you prefer to have a driver on, alcohol or on cannabis?
unidentified		Quite frankly, I prefer not to have either one because we all know that depth perception, time perception, and everything like that with marijuana use is somewhat distorted.
unidentified		It's still a fair question, officer.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		If sobriety is not an option.
unidentified		Well, I don't see how you can, I mean, I can't choose somebody who might be sober, right?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Right.
unidentified		I guess I'd have to say I honestly don't know on that particular point.
chris conrad ▲ ● ▼		Okay, well, the Department of Transportation says that marijuana is much safer for drivers.
		And again, this is not my advocating that people drive, but I just think that, you know, the dangers of alcohol, which is legal, and it's illegal for teenagers, and the relative dangers of marijuana in society, they don't even really begin to compare.
		And so back to your first set of questions here, having to do with how important is hemp now compared to what it used to be.
		I think this is an example where the private sector has more of a right, I think, to make that determination than groups of government bureaucrats.
		And I'm sure you're a good police officer, and I'm not criticizing anyone's intentions on this.
		But have we stopped cutting down trees because we don't need wood and solving supplies and paper anymore?
unidentified		No, we have.
chris conrad ▲ ● ▼		Have we stopped growing cotton?
chris conrad ▲ ● ▼		It uses 17 pesticides.
unidentified		No.
chris conrad ▲ ● ▼		We still need fiber for that.
chris conrad ▲ ● ▼		We're not energy self-sufficient as far as I know.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I have a question, law enforcement point of view, while we've got them online.
		Sure.
		I think, Chris, you would agree we don't want people out driving cars stoned, right?
chris conrad ▲ ● ▼		Sure.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So if this officer stops somebody and he thinks they're under the influence of marijuana, does he have a way to find out?
unidentified		I can request a urine sample on that.
unidentified		which is very expensive, but it can be done.
chris conrad ▲ ● ▼		But now that wouldn't tell you if they were high or not, because urine contains cannabinoids for...
		Now, see, that's a really wasteful way of going about it, because that means that someone who's been exposed to cannabis or, you know, there's some other substances that can trigger a false positive there, it wouldn't have any way of knowing at all if the person was high on marijuana or not, in fact.
		That's why what I really favor, I think that we need to have impairment testing or driving simulators in the vehicle with the officer in order to see if a person is driving, is capable of driving the vehicle.
		I think that should be the real concern whether they have cannabinoids in the urine.
unidentified		The chances are there were probably something wrong there.
unidentified		The officer wouldn't have stopped him to begin with.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Right, that's a good point.
unidentified		Right.
chris conrad ▲ ● ▼		You know, there's a good chance on that one.
unidentified		Something else I'd like to mention.
		You're talking about studies and so forth on the effects of marijuana on the human body.
		I'm speaking second-handedly here when I say what I'm about to.
		My wife's grandfather, who was, to me, was a very great man, was a medical doctor.
		And he told me that in the 30s, I'm not sure the exact year, but I'm sure probably somewhere around that 1937 year that you were talking.
		The American Medical Association sent notices out to the doctors advising them to quit using what they were seeing at that time was called cannabis indicus.
		It was a heavy green liquid used to enhance painkillers.
		And the reason that they put out at that time was that in some cases it has been found to cause softening of the brain tissue.
		And they didn't feel that the risks were worth the benefits.
chris conrad ▲ ● ▼		Well, I never saw that report or whatever that you're describing, so I'm, again, just as secondhand as you are.
		I find that very doubtful.
		What they did do was in 1941, they withdrew marijuana from the National Pharmacopia listing of drugs.
		But that really had to do with the fact that between 1937 and 1941, hundreds of doctors literally were harassed and arrested by the federal government for narcotics violations by allowing people to use marijuana.
		So as far as I know, it was very much a self-defense method of keeping the doctors from losing their license.
		I would be interested to see that, though.
		I mean, you know, I can't write these things off.
		But I haven't seen any data whatsoever to indicate that cannabis has any tissue effect on the brain, even approaching what you're describing.
		So if maybe is there any way, Art, where if he can get some documentation on that, he can get it to you and you forward it to me or have a little difficulty there.
unidentified		My wife's grandfather is since deceased, so I don't know where he's got his information.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right, officer, thank you.
		I'll tell you what we'll do.
		I'll tell you what we'll do.
		I am not giving you an I've got some commercials to do because I wanted to get him back on the air.
		So let me do those.
		When we come back, if you have a phone number, Chris, an address, a book you want to plug, get it together.
		We'll do that when you come back before I forget about it.
		So stay right there.
unidentified		We will be right back.
unidentified		Now we take you back to the night of January 23rd, 1997, on Art Bell, Somewhere in Time.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Art Bell All right, back now to my guest, Chris Conrad.
		Chris, a gazillion people here want to talk to you.
		So let us proceed.
		Wild Card line, you're on the air with Chris Conrad, who is about to tell us in a moment about his book.
		Hello there, Art?
unidentified		Hi.
unidentified		Hi, how are you doing?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Fine.
unidentified		What if we look at some big picture, Art, about, you know, the smoking pot isn't even nothing to really even do with it.
unidentified		Well, what about all the other uses it has?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, we've been talking about that.
unidentified		You know, I mean, if they legalize just the hemp part, the commercial use of it, it would mess up the whole economy.
unidentified		You know, Dow Jones, you know, all that.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, all right, that's a good question, Chris.
		What about that?
		The impact on our economy?
		Forget the marijuana part of it, but just the industrial use part of it.
		What would that do to our economy and to existing corporations?
chris conrad ▲ ● ▼		Well, what it would primarily do is introduce a new domestically produced resource that would be able to supplement or replace other resources that are limited or running out, such as we mentioned the forests and fossil fuels that are imported, that we would be able to increase our self-sufficiency.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, you're giving me the positive side.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		What I'm asking is the negative impact on present or current industries.
chris conrad ▲ ● ▼		Well, the only negative That comes to mind is that we lack a lot of the infrastructure that is required to process it between the farm and the level of use.
		For example, we have paper mills in this country that we need to give them pulp.
		If we give them hemp stalks from a farm, that's not going to work.
		So we've got a missing link in the process that's going to require investment to bring that up to level.
		But in a short term, that means that we're going to have an economic expense that's going to take time to recap.
		But in the long term, I think even that turns out to be a benefit because we develop new technology and we will create a more sound economic infrastructure for the country.
		I think where you're going to really get the hits are drug testing is going to take some hits on this because, you know, it's, well, it's just not doing anything for society.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		What's your attitude about this new?
		They've got a brand new drug test, by the way.
		Mail it off.
		You know, test your children.
		Have them pee in a little cup, seal it up, send it off to the government-approved lab, and they will write back and tell you what your children are doing.
chris conrad ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, I've heard about that.
		Actually, what I've heard is that people are using that to test whether they can deep urine test at work.
		You know, I mean, you can test your urine at home and see whether whatever process you're using, like lemon juice or whatever various things people are using to try to get the THC out of the system, see how effective it is.
		I think that's going to backfire really fast.
		All right, but as far as the, again, there's going to be a benefit to the commodities market.
		It's going to increase the amount of overall agriculture.
		It's going to increase the number of jobs, industrial hemp that is.
		It's going to increase investment in research and development.
		It's going to create jobs on a local level, creating the infrastructure.
		The shipping is going to be involved.
		It's pretty much overall positive.
		Most of what we're talking about replacing here as a resource, like I say, it's things that we're running out of, like timber or things that we can't even grow very much of.
		Cotton is so harmful to the environment that was very limited of how much we can grow in this country.
unidentified		And fossil fuels, of course, we import most of that.
chris conrad ▲ ● ▼		So as far as maybe some of these multinationals might have to concentrate more on developing a domestic operation in order to take advantage of the growth of the American economy, but the average citizen is going to definitely gain.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right.
		Would you do it all at once, or would you do it incrementally?
		In other words, to lessen the economic downside or impact on corporations, would you incrementally allow production to begin to gear up slowly, not all at once, not just say marijuana suddenly, marijuana hemp products are all suddenly, as of this moment, legal?
chris conrad ▲ ● ▼		What's going to happen in that regard, I think, is that we're going to have to be careful from the point of view of the farmer, that the farmer could, if we just said, okay, throw it wide open, every farmer in America could grow as much hemp as you want, we're not going to have the processing equipment or facilities in sight, and they're going to wind up with a lot of hemp that they don't have a use for immediately.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So it would have to be incrementally then.
chris conrad ▲ ● ▼		Right, because as the infrastructure grows, then at that point the amount of production grows.
chris conrad ▲ ● ▼		I think there's a real danger, you clearly and correctly pointed out, that if one part of the production process gets too far ahead, it's going to throw the whole thing out of balance.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		If somebody wants to get hold of you for information or get your book, what is the title of your book?
chris conrad ▲ ● ▼		Well, my book that is currently available is called Hemp Lifeline to the Future.
		And that's available in various bookstores like Tower Records and Books.
		And any bookstore can order it.
		It's listed with the ISBN.
		In March, I'm having a new book that's going to be released.
		It's called Hemp for Health.
		That's going to be available in health food stores and bookstores, things like that, too.
		So those are the two books.
		For people who are interested in general information or who would like to make a donation to support some of the efforts of the Business Alliance for Commerce and Hemp, our address is P.O. Box 71093.
unidentified		And that's Los Angeles, California.
chris conrad ▲ ● ▼		And the zip is 90071.
unidentified		All right.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Any phone numbers?
chris conrad ▲ ● ▼		Yes, we have a phone number which is the area code 310-288-4152.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And when is that manned?
chris conrad ▲ ● ▼		It's a service, so it's just a machine.
chris conrad ▲ ● ▼		We pick it up periodically, and depending upon the volume of calls, we get back to people as soon as we can.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right, that's post office box 71093, Los Angeles, California, 90071.
		The telephone number is 310-288-41.
		Is it 52?
chris conrad ▲ ● ▼		Correct.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		4152.
chris conrad ▲ ● ▼		And if people need more information about the, we'll send information about the book titles and availability also.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right.
chris conrad ▲ ● ▼		One other thing, though, there's stores that specialize in hemp products.
		And the Hemp Industries Association has over 100 businesses in the United States and elsewhere, but primarily in the U.S., that produce and provide hemp products.
		And many of them also carry these books.
		And so if people go and if you find a hemp store in your area, you can always check there too.
		And anybody who's working with the Hemp Industries Association will have an opportunity to get my book through them.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Are you doing this full-time now, or do you have another job?
chris conrad ▲ ● ▼		Well, I do this pretty much full-time between the research, the consulting, and some of the other things that are tied in with it.
chris conrad ▲ ● ▼		Primarily the consulting at this point, although I've been very busy researching for my new book, Hemp for Health, for the past year or so.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		How do you find media reaction generally?
		You don't hear a lot of big national discussions like this that we're having this morning about marijuana.
		Does the media shy away?
chris conrad ▲ ● ▼		That's an interesting point because in general, it's a fine line that we're walking through here.
		For example, I had some networks that I was talking to at a certain point about the industrial hemp issue, and they said, so what's the controversy?
		There's no drug in it, you know, what's the controversy?
		I went, well, it's illegal.
unidentified		They said, yeah, but what's the controversy?
chris conrad ▲ ● ▼		And also with the medical marijuana issue, I've had people, you know, where we talk about doing a program, and some will say, well, that's a no-brainer.
		Of course, medical marijuana should be legal.
		But then it's like, well, it's not happening, you know, except for when the people move these agendas forward themselves.
		One of the things that's really been hilarious to me, though, is I did a program, for example, that was broadcast in North Dakota.
		And before the show, the host was telling me, oh, these guys are going to tear you Apart.
		You know, there's this very conservative country up here.
		We really hate marijuana and all this stuff.
		And then, you know, when we did the program, as it turned out, we had police officers saying that they felt that the marijuana laws were a waste of their time and resources.
		We had farmers asking technical questions about it.
		You know, it turned out almost nobody was against it.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, I sense that there's been a shift.
		There's been a shift in attitude in the U.S., and that's how you got the votes in Arizona and California, and other states are going to follow.
		East of the Rockies, you're on there with Chris Conrad.
unidentified		Hi.
		Hi.
		Good morning, Mr. Bell.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Good morning.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Where are you?
unidentified		I am in La Crosse, Wisconsin.
		Okay.
		And I have a question, and it centers on the on-site testing.
		And I was wondering if anybody's been developing anything similar to a breathalyzer for the law enforcement officials out there.
		Because obviously, you know, if they do legalize marijuana, I think the first thing they need to do before they even do that is to come up with an on-site test.
		Because I personally don't want stone people on the road with me.
		Even though I agree that this should be legalized.
		I don't want them on the road with me.
		I don't want them working beside me.
		Another thing is, too, with the on-site testing, the company that I work for now, if I get hurt at work, the first thing I have to do is take a urine test.
		And I think that's kind of unfair because if I sit around on a Saturday afternoon and contemplate my existence in the universe, and I get hurt on the following Wednesday, you're going to test positive and they're going to throw it out because you tested positive.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I hear you.
		We'll answer that one when we come back from the break.
		Sit tight, Chris.
		Chris Conrad is my guest, and you're listening to a discussion nationally about marijuana.
		We'll be right back.
unidentified		You're listening to Art Bell's Summer in Time.
		Tonight featuring a replay of Coast to Coast AM from January 23rd, 1997.
		Music Your duty's home for my girl.
		Keep it on and on.
		I'm so excited, and I just can't hide it.
		I'm about to lose control, and I think I like it.
		I'm so excited, and I just can't hide it.
		And I know, I know, I know, I know, I know I want you.
		We should be We don't think about tomorrow.
		No, we will have no more time.
		You have the time, baby, don't you worry.
		And we will be around for the time.
		Sure, the student Art Bell somewhere in time on premium radio networks.
		Tonight, an oncore presentation of Coast to Coast AM from January 23rd, 1997.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		From the high desert to the nation, I'm Art Bell.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		My guest is Chris Conrad.
unidentified		been talking about marijuana and it looks like it's going the whole way Oh, I'll tell you, you don't need pop to enjoy that.
		Good morning everybody.
		Tonight featuring a replay of Coast to Coast AM from January 23, 1997.
		Dramatic Music
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right, Chris Conrad is my guest.
		And Chris, let us address this.
		Sitting home, on the couch, watching football, enjoying music, munching down on munchies, whatever you do when you're smoking pot, that's one thing.
		In a car, under the control or controlling an automobile, which could kill, that's something else again.
		And even though we might argue there's more control under marijuana than there is alcohol, that's still not a good argument.
		And we don't want people on the street a smoking pot while they drive or under the influence of.
		So on-site testing, how do you address that?
		And his question about fired Thursday for Saturdays smoking?
chris conrad ▲ ● ▼		Well, as far as the on-site testing issue is concerned, I would say that there's two aspects of that.
		One is that urine testing is obviously not functional, but it is possible to do a blood test that would test whether a person is under the influence of cannabis.
		Now, whether they're under the influence doesn't necessarily mean that they're impaired, though.
		So I really think that the idea of using impairment testing and driver simulators is a much more effective way of telling whether a person is capable of driving or not.
		It's just as likely that a person who's driving badly could be too tired, they could be too stressed.
		There's a lot of prescription drugs and non-prescription drugs.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right, so the answer is impairment testing, and that's logical.
		What about fired Thursday for Saturday smoke?
		In other words, an accident occurs, the guy slips, he falls, whatever.
		He's got to take a urine test.
		It comes up positive, then he gets fired.
chris conrad ▲ ● ▼		I think that shows the inherent problem with urine tests is they don't tell us anything.
		They don't tell us if people are capable.
		They don't tell us if people are intoxicated.
		They don't really tell us anything except that some company just made $60 to $100 testing someone's urine, and if it comes up positive, then they make $60 to $100 to test it again.
		And it's grossly unfair.
		And in the situations we're having here with California and Arizona where people are going to be able to use it medically, I think that there's going to be some civil cases that are going to arise out of that.
		I'm surprised that there aren't more lawsuits involving false positives.
		I get phone calls from people who say, oh, I never smoked marijuana, but I came up with a false positive.
		What do I do?
		You know, I would think sue would be the thing that would come to my mind, but I don't really know what the legal basis to do something like that would be.
		It seems to me like accusing someone falsely, depriving them of their livelihood without having any more evidence than a false positive on a urine test would be something that someone should be held accountable for that.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right, here we go again.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		On our first time caller line, actually the anti-pot line, you're on the air with Chris Conrad.
unidentified		Hi.
		Okay, this is C.J. Art.
		You've got a great program.
		I've been listening for about a year, but I want to ask you, Chris, you've got some good facts, you've got some good figures, and it sounds like you know what you're talking about, but I want to ask you this, how long you've been smoking this stuff?
chris conrad ▲ ● ▼		Well, let me see.
unidentified		Okay.
unidentified		It's been quite a while.
chris conrad ▲ ● ▼		I've been judging contests over in Holland, for example, for the past five years.
unidentified		Really?
		Okay, then you know that like back in the 60s when I was smoking this stuff, that when you was paying 10 bucks for an ounce of it, which now you can pay as high as $400, the difference is the THC, the tetrahydrochloride.
		Now the thing is, when this is, if this goes on the market for medicinal purposes, after listening and listening and listening over the years here, I think it's something that would be good.
		This would be used properly.
		But as far as your biblical verse there, that is true, but it's not talking about the abuse that I'm trying to get you to understand that what's going to happen here is you're going to have all these people out there that are going to be stoned.
		Because that's basically what you do when you're on marijuana.
		You get stoned.
		And when you got this guy going out there, man, where was this break, man?
		I know it was in this car when I got in.
		You know, I mean, the thing is, that's what's going to happen out there.
		I hear where you're coming from, but we're talking, what I'm talking about is the abuse.
		It's just like you got the guys in the bar selling the alcohol.
		The cops are out there ready to pick you up.
		Have another bar across the street or the same place that's selling that marijuana.
		Everybody comes out of that thing stoned.
		I got news for you.
		You want to get out of the way of those stoned people because that's what happens.
		It makes you hungry, horny, and stupid.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		not hungry, horny, and stupid.
unidentified		Chris, he's...
unidentified		you'll have a nation full of stoned people.
chris conrad ▲ ● ▼		I think that the people who are afraid of this think that as soon as someone smokes it, they're automatically going to fall in love with it and give up everything else in life to smoke marijuana.
		That just simply does not happen.
		There's only a relatively small percentage of people who smoke it and enjoy it or smoke it regularly.
		Holland is an excellent example of a place where you can go to a coffee shop, as they're called, buy cannabis, you can consume it on the premises, you can take it with you.
		They have actually a lower use of marijuana, particularly amongst the youth, than America does, where it's illegal.
		So keeping it illegal, if anything, I kind of agree with the previous caller who said that we have a forbidden fruit sort of a syndrome there.
		You know, if you make it so that it's more mysterious and desirable and secretive, then that's going to bring out a certain kind of a personality who's going to be interested in it.
		That may not be the personality that's most suited to it.
		And in fact, I think it can make it more complex because if someone wants to be a rebel and then they get involved with it, they might be more likely to get into more things of a negative nature than someone who gets interested in it because they find that it makes their appreciation of art and music higher, for example.
		I think I'm a little reluctant to go along with quite a few of the things he's saying there.
		I would just point back to Matthew 15, 11.
		It's not that which goes into the mouth that defiles the man.
		It's that which cometh out of the mouth that defiles the man.
		That's what Jesus said.
		And basically what he was saying is that you don't worry about people who are getting high or eating things that you don't think they should be eating.
		What you should do is watch what you say about other people.
		And so when you make these broad judgmental statements like that, I think that that's where we run into more of a problem.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right.
		You said you go to Holland and judge contests.
		What kind of contests do you judge?
chris conrad ▲ ● ▼		Well, they're called cannabis cuffs.
		They're usually grower's cups or seed lines.
		There's two different categories because the genetics of the cannabis are important for this effect, but also the grower, the cultivation process, is similarly important.
		And so it's normally engaged in two categories.
		And then from there, you judge it by virtue of how much PHC, you don't measure that chemically, but just how the effect is, how much you enjoy the effect, the smell, the taste, the effect of the wine tasting contest?
		well it's similar except in wine tasting i believe you spit it out and you don't get the uh...
		the effect of the alcohol whereas in cannabis cups you would normally part of what you're checking is how do i like the effect of this marijuana i suppose But some of the else may have a different taste altogether.
		So I'm not an exact science.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I suppose then if you have to spit out a seed, that's points off, huh?
chris conrad ▲ ● ▼		Right, yeah.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Wildcard line, you're on the air with Chris Conrad, huh?
unidentified		Yeah, Chris.
unidentified		It's really nice hearing somebody telling more of the truth and honesty within the marijuana culture.
chris conrad ▲ ● ▼		Well, thank you for allowing me this opportunity.
unidentified		Yeah, I actually, in 1970, I graduated from high school and I smoked my first joint.
		And for 26 years, I smoked pretty much daily.
		And it was always amazing to me that I would run out and somebody somewhere would come up with some more and I'd end up having another joint that day.
		And the only time within that 26 years that I hadn't been stoned, which I'm not stoned now, was when I would leave the country and I'd never carry or smoke anything and I'd be out of the country for a month and I never felt any ill effects or anything of the sort.
		And then recently I was unemployed so I just quit, you know, one day decided, well, I've got to have to quit because I'm going to go look for another job.
		And I quit and I haven't smoked for three months now and have no problems relative to that other than I've always had a back problem.
		And I had back surgery 13 years ago and that's actually why I'm up right now because my back was hurting me so I had to get up to take something for that or I'd already be back asleep if I had a joint to smoke.
		And the only thing I've really noticed after quitting for three months, which is the longest I've ever quit in the 26 years, is my dreams are actually better.
		I remember my dreams now.
		Where before, when I was always getting stoned before I went to sleep, I wouldn't remember my dreams.
		And that's the only real difference.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		That really is interesting, Chris.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Have you heard other people comment that their dreams are affected one way or the other with the use of dreams?
unidentified		Absolutely.
chris conrad ▲ ● ▼		And in fact, what makes that really fascinating is that your rapid eye movement is actually measured at more rapid eye activity, indicating that you're dreaming more, but your recollection of the dream is less.
chris conrad ▲ ● ▼		And that's something that has not been explained satisfactorily to me yet.
unidentified		Right.
		That's very much the way I felt.
		And with my back problem and stuff, in the early years before my operation, I was given a lot of medication.
		I was on Valium and Code all the time.
		And I found I took less of that because the marijuana helped intensify what I was taking.
		And so I wasn't using as much pharmaceuticals.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Interesting.
unidentified		That's true.
chris conrad ▲ ● ▼		The synergistic effect has been noted repeatedly.
		Just one other thing here.
		Did you find that when you smoked marijuana for your back pain, I don't know whether you were thinking you smoked it until you could sleep better or whether you smoking it for the pain.
		But if you were using it for the pain, did you find that the pain actually went away or did it just seem less of a bother to you?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		He's not here.
		He's already gone.
		But I can pick up on that.
		And I want to ask you this, Chris.
unidentified		You know, people keep saying they use it for pain.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Marijuana intensifies most things I am told, right?
		In other words, whatever.
		Sex, music, whatever emotion or feeling or input you're getting, it intensifies your concentration on it.
chris conrad ▲ ● ▼		Very often, yes.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		With respect then to pain, why would it not cause you to focus more on the pain that you're having?
		It's not really a narcotic in the sense that it stops pain.
		So in what way would it prevent pain?
		I would think quite the opposite.
		It would cause you to concentrate on it or feel it more sharply.
chris conrad ▲ ● ▼		That's why it doesn't work for everybody.
		Because for some people, it does have exactly the effect you're describing, Art, of bringing people's attention to something like that.
		But for most people, what it's been demonstrated to do is two things.
		The first is it has an analgesic effect.
		It's not an anesthetic.
		It doesn't kill the pain, which is why I was bringing this up to the collar before.
		It simply reduces the pain.
		But the other thing that it seems to do, it goes with irritations and with pains and with a lot of things, is that it just doesn't bother you as much.
		You know, whether it's the traffic, you're driving and people really get on your nerves.
		I know people who smoke marijuana because it makes them feel less upset about the traffic.
		And similarly, when people are, if they're in pain and they smoke marijuana, sometimes it's just like the pain doesn't really bother them as much.
		They're still aware of it, but it's not the same kind of a problem.
		And then on the other hand, in the cases of migraine headache and some congenital diseases that are very painful, it seems like it actually does take it away.
		Arthuritis is another example where it seems to just take it away and help people to walk.
		And the neurological aspect of that hasn't been adequately explained to a large extent because the government has blocked the research.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		If traffic congestion causes one to want to smoke punk, then there must be an awful lot of stone drivers in L.A. Actually, there's an interesting study that was done.
chris conrad ▲ ● ▼		The Baltimore Trauma Study did a report that was released in 1988 that was put in the archives of surgery.
		And it was overall traumas, injuries.
		And one of the things that they point out in here was that in the vehicular accidents that they found that 16.5% had used marijuana, I believe it was.
		But then when they checked how many were driving, they found that only 1.7% were driving.
		One of the things about cannabis appears to be that it doesn't make you want to drive.
		It makes you would rather do something else than drive a car.
		And so marijuana smokers, they tend to feel, now this is a Department of Transportation study that was completed in Holland in 1991.
		It hasn't been released in the United States except for by importation of the report itself.
		But what they found was that the people who smoked marijuana tended to feel like they were impaired before they actually were impaired.
		And so they took steps such as driving more slowly and being more attentive because they felt like they were impaired and they didn't want to take a chance.
		Whereas they compared that to alcohol drinkers.
		They found that the alcohol drinkers felt less impaired and they felt more like they can handle it.
		They can take a risk.
		I can handle it.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		What about actual tests?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I remember when I was in high school, they had a machine and they would test your reaction time going from the gas pedal to the brake in an emergency situation.
unidentified		There was a little meter there that would actually test.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		When you compare somebody in a test of that nature between inebriation 1.0 levels, whatever it is, and somebody stoned, what results do you get?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Any idea?
chris conrad ▲ ● ▼		Well, they found two areas.
		Well, overall, the person who had cannabis in their system did better, particularly people who were familiar with the experience.
		People who had smoked it for the first time were more disoriented.
		People who were regular smokers were less so.
		What the areas they found that it affected were two areas.
		One is tracking, which has to do with following a light that for some reason the cannabis smoker has a little, not a really significant, but a very minor slowdown in their tracking.
		They also were a little less steady, not compared to straight, not to alcohol, excuse me, alcohol is worse on everything.
		They weren't as straight driving down the road.
		They wove a little bit.
		They didn't go out of the lane, but they did within the lane tend to weave a little bit more.
		And the other one was that they didn't look at that speedometer as much.
		However, they were also driving slower.
		So even though they weren't looking at the speedometer, they were not speeding.
		They were driving faster than they were usually in fashion.
unidentified		I see.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		West of the Rockies, you're on the air with Chris Conrad.
unidentified		Hi.
chris conrad ▲ ● ▼		You're on.
unidentified		West of the Rockies.
unidentified		This is Sandy in Kennerwick, Washington.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		How are you doing, Sandy?
unidentified		Oh, not too bad.
unidentified		How are you, Art?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right.
unidentified		Hey, I want to compliment you on the job you're doing.
		I think that the information that you get out to the public is invaluable and that you're going to open a lot of doors and change a lot of stuff.
		Really, I want to ask Chris if he's aware of any studies on the psychotropic effects of marijuana, say, compared to Prozac or anaphranil or anxiety, depression, etc.
chris conrad ▲ ● ▼		I'm aware of some of that.
		I don't think I'm versed enough to just sit here and rattle off too much about it.
		One of the things that I definitely do know is that there's a patient that I talked to in Iowa who was under 18 different kinds of medications, and by smoking marijuana, he got down to a marijuana plus three.
		And so it's actually able to replace a lot of them, particularly things like Valium and so forth.
		There's more data at the moment showing its ability to replace barbiturates and analgesics and things like Valium that are mood alterers.
unidentified		Yeah, well, I certainly agree with you on that.
unidentified		Another question I have is like, if I go up to Canada, I can buy certain medications that have codeine in them, and then I can bring them back to the state of Washington, and these are perfectly legal drugs.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Khitto from Mexico.
unidentified		If I were to go down to California, because I do suffer from back pain, if I had a recommendation from a doctor there, and I were to pick up the medication there, you might maybe try to address to the listening audience what ramifications that might have should you get picked up in another state with your medicine.
chris conrad ▲ ● ▼		Well, they could be very serious because you could be crossing a state line with cannabis is a federal offense.
		And that's one thing that the Constitution does give the federal government jurisdiction over is intrastate commerce that's inter-between states.
		So once you cross the state line, then you're facing a possible federal jurisdiction situation.
		Oregon doesn't recognize the same law as California.
		I think when you get into Washington, the state is starting to say there was just an important Supreme Court decision that came down there, I believe, in the past couple of days recognizing the medical rights of patients in Washington.
		However, you don't have the same legislative protections as we have in California now.
		But basically, if you're charged with transporting or anything like that, again, my point earlier in the program, it's up to the prosecutor.
		Whatever they charge you with creates a whole nother dynamic.
		If they charge you with possession, if they charge you with transportation, if they charge you with trafficking, if they charge you with conspiracy, each one of those has a, they have a lot of discretion, and once they pick out a charge to levy against you, you really, you have to deal the hand that you're dealt at that point.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right, look, we're coming to the end of the program.
		What final statement would you like to make to everybody across the country about what you're doing with marijuana?
		What should happen next?
chris conrad ▲ ● ▼		I believe that what we want to achieve here is to create a consistent and integrated process by which we restore industrial hemp for the most broad development that we possibly can, that medical marijuana becomes available with the doctor's prescription, and that we allow for an age of consent whereby persons above the age of 18 are not prosecuted for their own personal choice to use cannabis, presuming that they're using it in a responsible manner.
		That's going to require action on the state level, on the federal level, and on the local level.
		The local level is where you're going to have the most impact.
		This is how we've done it in California, is by educating local communities to the medical importance of cannabis, working with the local communities to allow buyers' clubs to open to provide cannabis to patients, and by making it so that people could see that we're talking about human beings here.
		It's not a demonized drug.
		It's a human being who needs something to make their life better.
		They were able to elevate the consciousness of the people to where they really understand this issue in a way that all the lies and deception that were put forth to them were not enough to stop the people from doing the right thing.
		There's a bill in Congress, Barney Frank has put a Medical Marijuana bill that needs support.
		But basically, we need people to become involved in all levels of getting the information out, of doing the lobbying.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Okay, well, look, we've done a little bit of that, and we are utterly out of time.
		Chris Conrad, thank you very much.
		We'll do it again sometime, my friend.
		You've been great.
chris conrad ▲ ● ▼		My pleasure.
chris conrad ▲ ● ▼		Thank you for the opportunity, Art.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Take care, Chris.

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