Dave Rubin and Angel Teger examine the War on Drugs through Teger's journey from a migraine sufferer to Ruby Doobie founder, detailing how Indica and Sativa strains offer distinct therapeutic benefits via THC and CBD. They critique California's federal Schedule I classification for disproportionately harming communities of color while stifling small businesses treating conditions like Crohn's disease and brain tumors. Ultimately, the discussion advocates for state-level regulation to dismantle pharmaceutical lobbying influence, reduce stigma, and legitimize cannabis as a vital medicinal tool. [Automatically generated summary]
We're going to be talking about marijuana this week.
I'll give you guys just a sec to roll a joint, pack a bowl, or put fresh water in the bong.
Of course, those are just a couple of the old school ways of getting stoned.
These days it also includes vaping, waxes, edibles, and oils.
I should tell you I've tried all of them a couple times each to cure this darn glaucoma I diagnosed myself with back in high school.
I still haven't been cured, but there is always hope.
Before we get into a big discussion about marijuana, meaning legalization, health benefits, recreational use, and more, It's only fair if I tell you guys a bit about my history with weed.
After smoking my first joint during sophomore year of college, for a couple years I was probably what most would consider a pothead.
I'd get stoned and watch TV, write, or go grocery shopping, gathering all the best snacks I could get a hold of.
I should note, I never got into a fight, robbed a bank, or murdered anyone while smoking weed.
After college I smoke now and again, usually while just hanging out with friends.
Despite the marijuana raging through our systems, we also seem to never get into a fight, rob a bank, or murder anyone.
Since moving to LA, where medicinal marijuana is legal, at least on the state level, I got my med card and I smoke every couple weeks.
Usually I enjoy a nice bowl at the end of a long day when I just want to veg out, And watch Seinfeld or The Simpsons.
And to this day, I haven't gotten into a fight, robbed a bank, or murdered anyone while smoking weed.
When it comes to marijuana, I'm a libertarian through and through.
What I do with my own body, in my own house, is nobody else's business, much less the government's.
As long as I'm not doing harm to another person, then I have the right to do as I wish as a citizen.
This is a place where libertarianism makes absolute sense to me.
We don't even have to get into the health benefits.
Or the dangers of other currently legal drugs.
The liberal argument for weed is pretty good too, which basically is it's not doing any real damage, so you should be able to smoke it, plus we're putting too many people in jail for partaking in a drug that generally doesn't lead to criminal behavior.
This is a case where libertarians and classic liberals take on something really lines up.
On the other hand, conservatives in the US have generally been against marijuana.
They call it a gateway drug, which is pretty much like calling Gerbers a gateway food.
Conservatives have scared people into thinking that marijuana will make you a criminal or a degenerate, and they don't mind wasting your taxpayer money locking up people for a personal choice that they do with their own bodies.
There are some conservatives who even now, with all we know about the multiple benefits of marijuana, are still against legalizing even at a medicinal level.
Ironically, it's conservatives who also preach about small government, yet they seem to want to regulate what you do in the privacy of your own home, while at the same time wasting taxpayer dollars, which they say they want to save, on trumped up criminal charges.
Of course, none of these examples are perfect, which is why Rand Paul, a libertarian, still hasn't fully come around on the marijuana issue, and Hillary Clinton, a Democrat, hasn't either.
Meanwhile, the Republican candidates are all against it in one form or another, despite the fact that the only tolerable way to watch a Republican debate is while stoned.
The one candidate who I do think understands the issue is Bernie Sanders, who wants to decriminalize marijuana at the federal level.
Ironically in this instance, it's the big government guy who is making the government smaller by getting them out of your private life and not putting you in jail for having a good time.
If you are sick with cancer or with Parkinson's, why should the government or any other human being be able to stop you from doing anything that would alleviate your pain and suffering?
If you get caught with marijuana, should you have your life ruined by being thrown in a federal jail?
If you get really high and watch The Wizard of Oz with Dark Side of the Moon playing in the background, does it really sync up?
These are just some of the important questions that talking about weed brings up.
Angel is part of the Los Angeles Medical Cannabis Task Force and owns her own edibles company, Ruby Doobie.
She got involved with marijuana after Western medicine failed to help her with her debilitating migraines.
Angel now speaks about the medicinal benefits of marijuana, the ongoing quest for legalization, and removing the stigma attached to the conversation.
Some of you have probably heard me tell the story of how, in 1997, I went to see the movie Air Force One after eating some pot brownies with a couple friends.
The movie was sold out, so we walked into another movie called Contact, which I had never heard of.
Remember that incredibly mind-blowing extended panorama of the universe that opens the movie?
Well, it may sound corny, but my world actually felt bigger after seeing that movie stoned.
I ended up reading many of the books by Carl Sagan, who is the author of Contact and brilliant scientist, after seeing that movie.
That stoned moment opened up something in me that got me interested in many of the ideas that I talk about today.
Maybe it would have happened without the weed, but it sure didn't hurt.
That also reminds me, I'd love to tell you about the week I spent in the Red Light District in Amsterdam a couple years ago.
I just can't remember any of it.
Angel Teager is a speaker, an activist, and an entrepreneur.
She works with the L.A.
Cannabis Medical Task Force and runs her own cannabis edibles company known as Ruby Doobie.
And we've got a lot of Ruby Doobie goodies in front of us right now.
I think not as many people are familiar with edibles but it's been around and it's a great way to make use of the whole plant because really when you smoke you're smoking the flowers, the buds, but you still have all of the leaves and the trim and the small buds and all of that has active ingredients in it too and that's primarily what I use to make my goodies.
Here's a peanut butter brownie, ginger cookie, The crew is very excited, by the way.
Oh, I'm happy!
Ginger cookies, snickerdoodle cookies, and chocolate chip cookies.
And I make cakes and other things, too, lemon bars.
Yeah, so you make all this stuff, and this is for people that may want the medicinal benefits, this is for people that may want the recreational benefits.
It doesn't matter to you, right?
Like you're selling it and yeah, it's nice if someone alleviates some pain.
So you got into weed basically, I think you were smoking it recreationally, but the reason you really got into this was because you were having migraines and pretty much the Western medicine that you were trying just wasn't working, right?
I think there were two forces that kind of both intersected in And drove me into cannabis and definitely my migraines.
I've had migraines for many, many years and about 10 years ago they started getting a lot worse and more frequent and I was trying all kinds of different medications.
I had steroids injected into my neck to try to get rid of them.
I had some prescriptions that were so strong that they require the triplicate prescription.
And nothing helped me.
I mean, lots of times the drugs would irritate my stomach so much that I would feel worse.
Sometimes they would just knock me out and that's how I would survive my migraines.
And cannabis is really what allowed me to continue living and manage them
without having to check out for weeks at a time or days at a time.
So that definitely, treating my migraines was one for us and also a desire to simplify my life.
You know, I was working at the XPRIZE Foundation.
I was the chief of staff there.
And, you know, very rewarding, challenging position, but I just felt that there was something missing.
You know, I wasn't spending very much time with my son, who was two years old at the time.
I would have to travel a lot and I just wanted to create a change in my life where I would not be so dependent on a
So just that action of doing, of growing something for yourself, whether it's marijuana or a tomato or a pepper or something, even right there connecting with nature.
So you see this green thing that grows naturally from the earth, like all this other stuff that we eat, you see that just sort of as an extension of every other thing.
So, the whole idea of That he presented, growing your own food is like printing your own money.
I mean, there were some things that just resonated so deeply with me that immediately after I saw the talk, I got in touch with LA Green Grounds and said, I need to learn how to do this.
How can I volunteer?
And it turns out they were actually looking for an L.A.
resident to plant a garden, and the timing was perfect.
So we planted—we were selected, and that's how we got our garden.
So, Ron, when he did his TED Talk, he had planted an edible garden a few years before mine and was cited and went to city council and made the case that, you know, it doesn't make sense.
You should allow people to grow food on their parkways.
And the city council, at that time, agreed and said that They would work to change the laws.
And fast forward two years later, I plant, you know, we plant our garden.
And I was operating under the assumption that it was all good.
Right?
Right.
The changes were in the works.
But a few months after, we were cited.
A guy came to my house and kind of aggressively said, you know, all of this has to come out.
You have 48 hours to put it all back to the way it was.
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And this had nothing to do with weed, just to make it clear, right?
Alright, well, I don't want to get too into the weeds on that, no pun intended.
But I thought it was an interesting way to start because it shows how marijuana and legalization and medicinal uses and all that are so tied into our legal system.
And then we can get into some of that stuff.
So, all right, so you have the migraines.
You start saying, all right, I'm going to smoke weed to make myself feel better.
How long did it take to figure out what worked for you?
I mean, I have a friend that takes CBD oil for anxiety, and she told me all she does, literally, is she has a little dropper in the morning, she drops like two drops under her tongue, and that's it.
But she doesn't have the diarrhea and vomiting and thoughts of suicide and restless leg syndrome and all the other crazy things that come with all the commercials that you see on TV for all these other anti-depressants and anti-anxiety.
But it still boggles my mind that a plant, first of all, that has so many medicinal properties, so—besides medicine, I mean, what about, you know, renewable energy and, you know, paper, you know?
I mean, it's strong.
It's a strong fiber.
I mean, it can replace so many things.
The fact that we look at it as such an evil thing, I don't understand.
Okay, CBD, yes, you want that, but there's been a lot of research that shows that CBD alone is not as effective as when you mix it with THC, meaning that it's the whole plant that you want to treat you with, not just taking, you know, One piece of it.
I think it's referred to as the entourage effect because there's so many elements and they all kind of work together.
So people who are looking for CBD are usually looking for CBD rich strains or in some cases you know like the concentrates and things like that.
But I think for the most part you'll find that They're more effective when there is a little THC in there.
I mean, at that time, you'd go to a dispensary and you'd see stuff that was just in like Ziploc bags and, you know, totally unappetizing to look at and oftentimes didn't taste very good.
And I mean, I found myself in those early days just sort of like, You know, eating it real quick and just hoping for the best.
I mean, you know, there's still such a problem with perception, first of all.
So, okay, California was the first to allow for medical marijuana.
It's been that way for about 20 years.
But beyond doing that, There really aren't any regulations established.
So, it's like the Wild West, or it has been like that.
And there are a lot of people who want to do the right thing, want to operate in a safe way, but without guidelines, without regulations, you can't really do that.
You know, because of the perception problem, because of the stigma problem, and because there are no clear laws, dispensaries are still being attacked, closed down, shut down.
Dispensaries in California, there was a dispensary maybe five blocks away from me that about six months ago was closed down.
It was legal within the California set of laws, but federally, because it's not legal, the feds pretty much at any time could come in and stop you, right?
Yeah, this is sort of like, for people that are pro-marijuana, even, not even recreation, but even medicinally, this is sort of the fault of, you've had the government, which scared people about marijuana, right?
You can think of those just, those posters in the 60s, you know, just like making everyone look evil, smoking weed.
And then even the Hollywood side of things, Hollywood, which is obviously very liberal and pro-drug generally, but every movie related to pot is just a bunch of goofballs doing ridiculous things.
So it makes it seem like it's going to make you dumb or stupid or something like that.
There's really nothing in between those two places.
People are afraid to come out, and rightly so, because it is still federally illegal, and there is still the stigma attached to it.
When I was working full-time in the corporate world, I definitely kept my use private, because I didn't want to be judged.
I didn't feel ashamed, but I didn't want anyone to use that information against me.
And I think that a lot of people fall into that category, and it's a shame, because it's so easy to keep those stereotypes going, of the pothead, the stoner.
You know, it's easy to dismiss the whole industry if that's all you have in your head when you think about it.
I've talked about this related to atheists because I get emails all the time where atheists, even in Western societies where it's okay to be atheist, We'll say, I'm afraid of coming out because it might have an effect on my job or my parents or my cousin or something like that.
And I never thought of it really in the context of marijuana, but yeah, as a professional person, you didn't want to be seen a certain way.
So how did you remove that stigma?
I mean, did you go home to your parents and say, I'm going to go on and do this and smoke some weed?
You know, I did read the other day, who knows if this is true, that Gary Johnson predicted that Obama would Was it reclassify or declassify it on his way out?
Yeah, I think the problem is just this, it's been this way for so long, it's hard to change course, especially when you're going pretty much 180, you know?
To have cannabis on the Schedule 1 has led to so many people suffering needlessly, you know, being put in prison, having criminal records that affect the rest of their lives.
And what's horrifying about it is that it impacts communities of color more.
So, this whole war on drugs It's a failure, and it's been used as a way to target certain communities.
I think just this week there was something that came out that one of Nixon's advisors has now admitted that part of what they did related to criminalizing certain drugs was purposely aimed at minority communities.
You're not just picking up something and saying, this is what I think.
He admitted it was the hippies and the African Americans that they wanted to be able to go into those communities, arrest their leaders, raid their homes.
That was the goal.
And here we are.
It's still happening.
It's still happening.
And so, I think we're asking people, you know, law enforcement, to give up control of this.
You know, there are a lot of law enforcement that believe that's for the best, but there's still resistance because it's the way we've operated for so many years.
So basically, if you're a business owner like yourself or someone at a dispensary or just somebody that likes weed, if you want this thing to flip as quickly as possible, basically you want pretty much a lawsuit to get involved where a dispensary is shut down and that case has to get up to the Supreme Court, right?
Like, is that where you see that Ultimately, the only way we're going to stop this federally is through the Supreme Court, right?
Yeah, well, you know what, I think it's more fear that has stopped the community from coming together.
Because when you know that you could get busted at any time, it's hard to form alliances.
You know, it promotes everyone having a, you know, A mentality of being just out for themselves, you know?
That's the way it's been.
People operating kind of in the shadows because they don't want to draw too much attention to themselves because who knows what's going to happen next week, you know?
But that's what the task force is trying to accomplish is, you know, the state of California recently passed some laws that went into effect the beginning of this year.
MMRSA, Medical Marijuana Regulation and Safety Act, which creates a path for legitimacy and licensure for everyone
that's in this industry.
But it's up to all the cities to then enact regulations that comply with that.
So L.A.
does have an opportunity now, and that's what we're hoping to accomplish, is to get some regulations on the books that really encourages this industry.
I mean, we want it here, you know, so what should that look like?
Yeah, it's so interesting because it so much reminds me of the fossil fuel versus green energy argument, because obviously, like the fossil fuel lobbyists, big pharmacy has a lot of lobbyists, right?
They're all paying all the politicians to basically keep weed illegal at some level, keep cannabis illegal, because they are trying to sell a lot of pills.
And it sort of goes back to what you started with about creating a garden and a life that you could grow something out of the earth that could take care of some of your problems and yet we're so afraid of that and we'd rather them hand it to us in pill form and then at the same time half the commercial for that pill tells you worse things than you had to take the pill for in the first place.
When you see those guys, you know, if you walk down Venice Boulevard, you know, right on the strip there, and they've got the guys all dressed in green, and they're the 420 doctors, and they got a hat on with a weed leaf and all that.
Do you think that actually is doing some of the reverse effect?
Because then people are like, this thing seems so silly, you know?
I see a lot of tourists taking pictures of those pot doctors.
I think I did it the first time I saw it.
Yeah, exactly.
You know, it's a spectacle, I guess.
That's mostly what they're going for, I think, down there on Venice Beach.
Yeah.
But I do think it points out, kind of, that there isn't really that much of a difference, you know, between, in my mind, between medicinal and recreational.
I remember thinking how crazy it was the way they've demonized weed, because when I sat at the top of the show, I had never smoked weed until I was a sophomore in college.
I remember smoking weed and then laughing or whatever went on, and I remember thinking, Well, wait a minute.
They've told me weed is so horrible, so what about these other drugs?
So, in a weird way, by demonizing weed and marijuana and cannabis, whatever we're calling it now, they actually have convinced a lot of people, I think, to try other drugs.
Because then you try weed, you go, this isn't so bad.
What do you think about how I noticed that a lot of my friends who used to be huge, huge potheads either don't smoke anymore or barely ever smoke, or when they do, they only need the tiniest puff.
As I said at the top, I smoke at this point maybe once a month.
I take one puff of granddaddy purple.
You know the granddaddy?
Yes.
Which is an indica, because I told the guy I just want to melt into the couch and watch TV, and that's it.
And really, it's once a month, one puff, I'm good to go.
But something about weed is different than other drugs, because people that use it a lot seem to, I think George Carlin did a bit about this, they seem to not grow out of it necessarily, but it has a reverse addictive thing in some ways, you know what I mean?
For the people that get paranoid, let's say.
They say, well, I don't want that anymore.
And I think you would probably say, well, then maybe try an indica more than a sativa, right?
And in a lot of ways, I know that that exists at some level with marijuana, that some of my friends, you know, they need to smoke more because it doesn't hit them the way it used to, or they'll change strain or something, but that a lot of people eventually either need much less or have much less of a desire.
I mean, that doesn't fit any of the definitions of what addiction and drugs are.
That might just be... Just as a sleep aid, or if I'm feeling... It helps if your muscles are sore.
It just relaxes you.
But 12 milligrams is not a lot.
Um, you know, if it were, you know, if that were true, addiction and having to have more and more, I mean, I would be eating more and more cookies, you know, and it's, one is fine.
I've never tried it myself, but Rick Simpson developed this method of making this concentrated oil, and you can find directions on how to make it yourself.
So for the people that would say this is, they still have this stigma attached to it,
you know, I think a lot of them, They don't want people to even deal with their own pain.
It's unfathomable to me that if someone across from me had cancer or had Parkinson's or AIDS or whatever it is, what right would I have to say, well, you can't do that to yourself to alleviate your pain.
Again, I think it's fear and misinformation, and that's why—thank you so much again for having me here, because I think it's so important to come out and speak on the topic.
I know I'm fighting a stereotype, you know, but I do not consider myself a stoner, and I am very productive, you know, so I think— That's the funny part.
Yeah, for hopefully not too much longer. I mean, we'll see.
I mean, I think that the energy is definitely going in the right direction and hopefully we'll get some regulations in place, especially here in L.A.
because, you know, we are the center of this industry and we should take a leadership role in creating regulations that could be, you know, used other places as well.
Yeah.
And what I'd really like to see is An industry that encourages entrepreneurship, encourages small business owners, encourages creativity, and not a monopoly.
And that's really another goal of the task force, is to allow that to happen, you know, really bring everyone out of the shadows and operate legitimately.
Yeah, so I know you don't buy the gateway drug thing, but where do you stand on legalization of all drugs in general?
Because I think this is probably one of the places where the argument gets tough, where suddenly you say, I'm all in on weed, and then there's probably a lot of people that say, well, I'm just all in on everything.
And then you could get what I would think, even though I'm basically for legalization of most stuff, pretty much, I think people could make a more sound case and say, if you legalize all of this stuff, People are going to just be trying all kinds of really crazy things.
What a crazy system that someone could try to alleviate their pain because of a chronic disease and the way we deal with them is by putting them in jail.
Well, as I told you before we started, you know, I spent a lot of time here talking about terrorism and politics and jihadism and all kinds of crazy stuff.
So this was an absolute pleasure.
And this will help me relaxing after the show.
So I thank you for that.
And you guys can follow along what Angel's doing.
It's rubydubybakes.com, right?
And she just signed up for Twitter.
So give her a follow at rubydubybakes.
And it's also at rubydubybakes on Instagram.
How was that, Pimpin?
Was that pretty good?
That was pretty good.
Alright, thanks for watching and we'll do it again next week.