April 15, 2016 - Rubin Report - Dave Rubin
55:54
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| Speaker | Time | Text |
|---|---|---|
| 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. | ||
| My guest this week is Angel Teager. | ||
| 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. | ||
| Angel, thanks for joining me. | ||
| Thank you for inviting me, Dave. | ||
| Yeah, I'm very excited to talk to you because I've wanted to do something a little more in-depth on pot for a long time. | ||
| And you brought pot cookies. | ||
|
unidentified
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Yes. | |
| And brownies. | ||
| Let's get into this stuff first. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| And then we'll talk about the history and legalization. | ||
| What do we got in front of us right now? | ||
| These are some of the things that I make. | ||
| Sweet Dreams Brownie. | ||
| It's dusted with a little bit of sea salt on top. | ||
| It's about 57 milligrams here. | ||
| So, 57 mg of THC, what does that mean? | ||
| So you eat that, how do you feel after? | ||
| Well, I personally would not eat a whole brownie. | ||
| I would have half and that's plenty for me. | ||
| But it really depends on your own metabolism and your how experienced you are, and it can differ on, | ||
| depending on the day, on how much you've eaten that day. | ||
| Sure. | ||
| But, and dosage guidelines vary. | ||
| You know, I've seen recommended dosages between five and 15 milligrams for people, | ||
| or some who want between 20 and 30. | ||
| And this is all sort of uncharted territory for a lot of people. - Definitely. | ||
| Because for a long time, you know, I think I said once on the show, | ||
| when I got my weed card, I went in there and I said, you know, they showed me wax, they showed me oil, | ||
| they showed me edibles. | ||
| And I said, well, do you have any just weed, you know, green buds, like old fashioned weed? | ||
| And that made me feel like old, like, oh, that guy wants to smoke weed. | ||
| But this is sort of the new thing, right? | ||
| 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. | ||
| Right, well I work with the dispensaries. | ||
| I work with a handful of dispensaries in my area. | ||
| So I am a member that's providing edibles for my fellow members. | ||
| Sure. | ||
| And you can't really, you can't, in California you still have to get a doctor's | ||
| recommendation to even go to those dispensaries. | ||
| It's not too hard. | ||
| It isn't too hard. | ||
| And it's tough to make the distinction between what's recreational. | ||
| In my mind, it's tough to distinguish between recreational and medicinal because If you're using it to relax at the end of the day, to de-stress, | ||
| That's medicinal. | ||
| In some ways, yeah. | ||
| All right, so let's get a little bit into your story and then we'll talk about business and legalization and all that stuff. | ||
|
unidentified
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Sure. | |
| 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? | ||
| Right, yes. | ||
| 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 | ||
| check, grow my own food and cook my own meals and rather than pay | ||
| someone to do this and that, I wanted to do those things. | ||
| those things. I wanted to be the one with my family. | ||
|
unidentified
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Right. | |
| So that's really interesting. | ||
| So it wasn't just I want to get stoned and have a good time. | ||
| You got into the edible garden thing, which it was nice. | ||
| You were growing weed, but you were also growing stuff to actually eat and to feed your child. | ||
| We were growing and at one point we were growing enough food in our garden that it was too much for us to even eat. | ||
| I mean, neighbors would come and we encouraged our neighbors to come and Tomatoes, artichokes, peppers, eggplants, collard greens, chard, kale. | ||
| We still have lemon trees, apple trees, nectarines, oranges. | ||
| It's a beautiful thing to just go outside and pick your food. | ||
| You don't have to get in your car. | ||
| You can't get anything fresher than that. | ||
| Yeah, it's funny. | ||
| I live in L.A. | ||
| too, and I have a little outdoor space with a little garden. | ||
| And even if I'm just plucking tomatoes or something, I find that very therapeutic. | ||
| Oh, it is. | ||
| 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. | ||
| Right. | ||
| So this is all intertwined with ultimately you going into this business. | ||
| I believe so. | ||
| I mean, it's wanting to simplify, wanting to be more in touch with nature. | ||
| You know, it's so easy to get disconnected from food and to know what food looks like when it's actually growing. | ||
| I mean, When we first planted our garden, it was with the help of a non-profit called LA Green Grounds. | ||
| We had 50 volunteers come out and help us plant our front yard and our parkways. | ||
| I was intimidated because I had never tried to grow food before. | ||
| I didn't know how it all worked, and I'd never put my hands in the dirt and planted anything. | ||
| And to watch things grow, and to be able to feed my family that way, and help feed the neighborhood, It was an amazing experience. | ||
| And food is medicine, you know? | ||
| Cannabis is medicine. | ||
| I mean, I really don't see much of a difference. | ||
|
unidentified
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Right. | |
| 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. | ||
| But the city wasn't that thrilled, right? | ||
|
unidentified
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No. | |
| With your garden? | ||
| So here you are, a person that sort of takes life into your own hands on your own property. | ||
| And the city of Los Angeles, what did they do? | ||
| Well, okay, going back a little while, what got me inspired to plant the garden was I watched a TED Talk by Ron Finley. | ||
| I don't know if you've heard of him, the guerrilla gardener, gangster gardener. | ||
|
unidentified
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Oh, okay. | |
| Right. | ||
| 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, yeah. | ||
| The city, though, didn't want you to do it at some point, right? | ||
|
unidentified
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No. | |
| 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. | ||
|
unidentified
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And this had nothing to do with weed, just to make it clear, right? | |
| No, this is squash. | ||
| Lettuce. | ||
| Yes, eggplants and things like that. | ||
| That, because we had the support of a lot of, you know, L.A. | ||
| Green Grounds and Ron, it was easy to get attention drawn to the issue. | ||
| It had been going on for some time. | ||
| Steve Lopez from the L.A. | ||
| Times came out and wrote an article about our garden. | ||
| Helped bring the City Council's attention back to this issue. | ||
| And not long after that, they did change the laws so anyone in L.A. | ||
| can grow fruits and vegetables on their parkway. | ||
| Before, there was only a short list of approved things you could grow. | ||
| And if you wanted to deviate from that, you had to, I think, file a request, and I think it was like $400 to even ask, | ||
| just to ask. | ||
| To use your own property. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| To feed your own self. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| And then, you know, you might not get the approval. | ||
| So now I think the way the law reads is you can grow whatever you want, except for some | ||
| fruit trees are not allowed to be on the parkway. | ||
| But it's a huge step. | ||
| Right. | ||
| And now, as long as you have a medical marijuana license, you can also grow weed. | ||
| I'm guessing you can't do that in the front of your house, though. | ||
| I don't think it would be such a good idea. | ||
| Probably not the greatest idea. | ||
| 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? | ||
| What actually was the right strain? | ||
| And can you talk about strains a little bit? | ||
| I know with some conditions, people look for particular strains. | ||
| When you talk about cannabis, there's cannabis indica and sativa. | ||
| They look different physically. | ||
| Let's do one-on-one. | ||
| When you talk about cannabis, there's cannabis indica and sativa. | ||
| They look different physically. | ||
| Like sativa plants are usually taller and leaner, thinner branches and grow better in | ||
| warmer climates. | ||
| Indicas are kind of shorter and bushier and heartier. | ||
| Besides that, indicas are usually, they help to relax you. | ||
| Most people will use them at night as a sleep aid. | ||
| And sativas generally will give you more energy, let you keep more focus. | ||
| So, more people will use sativas during the day, because you can still function. | ||
| All my comedian friends that get stoned on sativas and write all day, that kind of thing. | ||
| Yeah, exactly. | ||
| Within, okay, so you have strains that are either Indica or Sativa, or they can be a hybrid. | ||
| And then each particular strain has its own profile, how much THC is in there, how much CBD is in there. | ||
| Yeah, so let's unpack that a little bit. | ||
| So THC is the psychoactive part, right? | ||
| Correct. | ||
| And CBD is, it's the medicinal part? | ||
| Is that fair to describe it that way? | ||
| THC also has medicinal properties, but it is the psychoactive element. | ||
| CBD is cannabidiol. | ||
| It's another cannabinoid. | ||
| Those aren't the only two. | ||
| I mean, there are others. | ||
| But CBD does seem to have Most of the medicinal value. | ||
| It's been shown to stop some tumor growth. | ||
| It's great for pain relief. | ||
| It reduces inflammation. | ||
| 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. | ||
| It's so gentle. | ||
| I mean, it has so many benefits and has never killed anyone. | ||
| I mentioned that at the top. | ||
| I've never murdered anyone. | ||
| It was yet to happen. | ||
| 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. | ||
| Yeah, I mean I can tell, it truly boggles the mind. | ||
| Yes, yes. | ||
| Alright, so we have THC, CBD, and then you have the Indica and the Steva and the hybrids of that. | ||
| So for the medicinal stuff, let's just do that first. | ||
| If you didn't want to get stoned but you just wanted medicinal benefits, that's where you would use just the CBD, is that right? | ||
| 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. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| So when you found the right one for you, well, first off, how long did it take for you to find the weed that was like, oh, these migraines are gone? | ||
| Yeah, you know, I didn't even think about weed as a treatment for my migraines because when I get bad migraines, I would get very nauseous, dizzy. | ||
| Smoking pot was the last thing I thought would help me, really. | ||
| But then I did read that it helps. | ||
| And for me, it relaxes me enough that, I mean, it helps the nausea. | ||
| And also, it helps me control the anxiety that comes along with the onset of a migraine. | ||
| I don't know if you've ever... So it's like two things attacking you at once. | ||
| You have the migraine, but then knowing it's coming, now you're suddenly anxious about that. | ||
| Oh my gosh, yes. | ||
| And the weed can kind of hit both of those things. | ||
| It treats both of those things, yeah. | ||
| Alright, so then you started doing that, it was working. | ||
| When did you say, alright, I could make a business out of this, or I gotta tell people what's going on here? | ||
| Well, you know, a friend of mine was baking and I was fascinated by it. | ||
| And so I would Look up recipes and send them to him. | ||
| You should try this. | ||
| You should try that. | ||
| And finally, he got to the point where he said, you know what, Angel? | ||
| You should try it. | ||
| So I started experimenting, and that's how I got introduced to making edibles. | ||
| And then I started trying them because, well, honestly, I tried a few edibles And hated them. | ||
| I mean, this is going back to like 2008 or something. | ||
| So this is before they had perfected the brownies and the cookies. | ||
| Exactly. | ||
| 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. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right. | |
| Where now it's like, literally, it's like going into a great bakery. | ||
| Oh, you can get anything. | ||
| Pizzas, sauces, sodas. | ||
| Chocolate bars, candy. | ||
| Anything you can think of. | ||
| So you started making this and it was really for yourself and then you started selling it. | ||
| How quickly did you realize there were going to be some legal issues, even in California where it is legal? | ||
| Right away. | ||
| Right away. | ||
| 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. | ||
| Literally, I mean, you're not making this up. | ||
| 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? | ||
| Right. | ||
| I'm at risk. | ||
| We have no feds watching. | ||
| Don't worry about that. | ||
| We block it. | ||
| Yeah, but it's not even just, it's not that, I guess that is the case in some instances | ||
| that the feds do come in and shut them down, but even local municipalities are going in | ||
| and shutting down places because they're using a. | ||
| Yeah, so how do you operate, knowing that that's sort of out there, it's a very precarious position to be in as a business person? | ||
| shut places down. | ||
| Yeah, so how do you operate knowing that that's sort of out there? | ||
| It's a very precarious position to be in as a business person. | ||
| Yes, well first of all, it's a business but for me it's primarily a passion project. | ||
| I do this because it means a lot to me to be in the industry and to help change perspectives on it. | ||
| I know that Well, I believe that a lot of people who are anti-marijuana are really just misinformed. | ||
| You know, there's been a lot of negative propaganda, and it's going to take some time to get good, real information out to people. | ||
| 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. | ||
| Well, I guess this is. | ||
| This is between those two places. | ||
| You'd be surprised at how many of us really fall in between. | ||
| You're saying most people are at the extremes? | ||
| I can't believe you. | ||
| 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. | ||
| But there's so much more to it than that. | ||
| Yeah, I'm so fascinated by that because, you know, I've talked about, you know, gay people coming out. | ||
| They're not trying to push anyone else into being gay. | ||
| They're just coming out for themselves. | ||
| Exactly. | ||
| 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? | ||
| Yes. | ||
| Once I decided that this was important and this is what I wanted to do, I definitely Made a shift to being out. | ||
| And I told my parents, you know, this is what I'm doing. | ||
| I use cannabis for my migraines. | ||
| I use cannabis, you know. | ||
| I'm still a good mother, you know, productive member of society. | ||
| I mean, not that they question me, but... But you felt it was like sort of on you to sell your case in a way or something? | ||
| Oh yes, yes. | ||
| And it's interesting, you know, there's still—even though they know what I do is good, they believe that I'm providing a good. | ||
| But there's—you know, they worry. | ||
| They worry. | ||
| They see how the laws are and see how, you know, there's a risk. | ||
| Yeah, so one of the laws that I simply cannot believe is this Section 1 thing, right? | ||
| So this is that the federal government basically says at this point that marijuana has no medical benefit. | ||
| There's a gajillion studies that show that's not true. | ||
| There are a zillion examples of people like yourself that show that that's not true. | ||
| I smoked weed after hurting my knee playing basketball and felt better. | ||
| You know, most people know that this isn't true, but this is the Obama administration that still is backing this. | ||
| So when these dispensaries are closed here in California, where again, it is legal, this is coming from Obama, who's pretty good on weed. | ||
| So it's so complex, isn't it? | ||
| Yes, I'd hoped for more change. | ||
| 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? | ||
| Schedule one, by the way. | ||
| Schedule one. | ||
| Schedule one, by the way. | ||
| Right, schedule one, yes. | ||
| Schedule one, schedule one, yeah. | ||
| So that would be amazing if he did that. | ||
| Yeah, it's-- | ||
| I had Gary Johnson on the show, and I mean, a libertarian, as I was saying at the top, | ||
| a libertarian should be the most pro-weed person there is. | ||
| This is you and your life, and you're not pushing it on kids, you're doing something that makes you feel better. | ||
| 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? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| 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. | ||
|
unidentified
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No, no, no. | |
| Exactly. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| I read that same thing. | ||
| 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. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right. | |
| 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? | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| I mean, you know, I just read something that I think was Normal issued it about how That's probably not the fastest track. | ||
| You know, it's really more of a state's issue, and the more states that legalize it, then... The feds will just kind of give up. | ||
| The feds will follow, hopefully. | ||
| You know, Bernie Sanders said he would de-schedule it. | ||
| Hillary Clinton said she'd move it to Schedule 2, right? | ||
| Yeah, she's waffling on this thing, as I mentioned. | ||
| For California, at least. | ||
| I can speak to that a little bit. | ||
| I mean, that's what the L.A. | ||
| Medical Cannabis Task Force is trying to accomplish here locally. | ||
| California is like 49% of the national market when it comes to cannabis, and L.A. | ||
| is the center of all of that. | ||
| For us to not have Common sense regulations for this industry is ridiculous. | ||
| I mean, we all know it's here. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| You know, the majority of L.A. | ||
| residents want it here. | ||
| So how are we going to provide access to people? | ||
| I mean, it's part of it that it's hard to motivate people that smoke pot. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| Like I was trying at the top, I was trying to say, you know, it's hard to have this conversation without saying things that sound silly like that. | ||
| But there's some level of that. | ||
| Right. | ||
| Like I can think of my four years of college when I sat on a couch stoned. | ||
| But if you had told me, if I would just go next door, we could legalize it, I probably wouldn't have got up. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| 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? | ||
| How do we need to make that happen? | ||
| 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. | ||
| Side effects may include. | ||
| Do you think they should have to show those people having those side effects? | ||
| Like, they should show someone vomiting and on the toilet having diarrhea and thoughts of suicide. | ||
| That is a brilliant idea! | ||
| They're hang gliding and they're dancing around and it's like, come on. | ||
| But how much of that is just related to politics? | ||
| The pharmaceutical companies don't want this to happen. | ||
| I think that is a big part of it. | ||
| I mean, the way things are, benefits a lot of people. Those people don't want to see | ||
| things change because that takes money out of their pockets and it's pretty | ||
| simple. But for me, you know, it's not about getting rich. For me, it's about | ||
| simplifying, like I said, and you know I would love to just be as self-sufficient | ||
| as possible. | ||
| I mean, to grow my own food, to grow my own medicine, you know, to compost, to, you know, to not have to go to a store for everything that I need. | ||
| I mean, that's kind of the default mentality. | ||
| You know, you need something, you go out and buy it. | ||
| You use something, you're done with it, you throw it away. | ||
| And we're so disconnected from nature, from what we're doing to the environment, you know, it's so easy to not think about that. | ||
| And for me, cannabis is an important part of taking care of myself in a way that, you | ||
| know, it helps me in so many ways. | ||
| I don't need to go to a doctor to get it. | ||
| You know? | ||
| Yeah, it's... | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| 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 think so. | ||
| 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. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right. | |
| Yes, you have to get a recommendation from a physician to get it in California. | ||
| Yes, it's pretty easy to do that. | ||
| Right. | ||
| Have there been any, I mean, everything that I've read about what's going on in Colorado right now, I'd say 90% of it has been very good. | ||
| Basically, they're bringing in a lot more tax revenue. | ||
| Right. | ||
| I haven't seen anything about crime suddenly going up or suddenly other spikes in other drug use. | ||
| You know, they always say marijuana is a gateway drug. | ||
| What do you say to that when people say that? | ||
| A gateway to what? | ||
| That's what I wonder about. | ||
| I've used cannabis for many years and I don't like to drink alcohol. | ||
| I can occasionally, but it makes me sneeze. | ||
| I get really congested. | ||
|
unidentified
|
There's probably weed you could take for that. | |
| I just don't really enjoy it. | ||
| I think there's been research that shows that a lot of people can use drugs and not get addicted. | ||
| Addiction is a problem, but to say that just because I smoke cannabis, I'm headed down this road where I'll never come back, it's silly. | ||
| 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. | ||
| Exactly. | ||
| Well, what about crack? | ||
| I never heard of crack, but I'm just saying. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| No, I understand. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Misinformation, you know, and people aren't stupid, you know. | ||
| So, yeah, it does send the wrong message. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| 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? | ||
| Well, what's interesting is, okay, so they found that your body has an endocannabinoid system, right? | ||
| So there are receptors in your brain and all through your body that are there to accept cannabinoids. | ||
| You produce cannabinoids in your own body. | ||
| You know, it's in breast milk. | ||
| So, they've found that what cannabis does is just, it affects your endocannabinoid system, which then brings your body into balance. | ||
| And that's why it helps with so many ailments. | ||
| And that's why, for many years, people couldn't believe that it helped with so many things. | ||
| How could it do this and this and this and this? | ||
| No drug does that. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| It's because you have this built-in regulation system in the endocannabinoid system, and cannabis helps bring that into balance. | ||
| So it kind of does make sense that if you're using it, you know, and that after a certain amount of time, maybe you need to use less. | ||
| Yeah, which is such an interesting thing about a drug, right? | ||
| That, you know, you think, you do it more, you're gonna need more. | ||
| 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. | ||
| No, exactly. | ||
| Normally, with addiction, you have to keep upping the dosage, upping the dosage. | ||
| When I have an edible cookie at night, I mean, it's 12, 13 milligrams, and that's plenty for me. | ||
| So that may not be migraine-related. | ||
| 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. | ||
| Right, now these are all carb-free, right? | ||
| So with some of the medicinal stuff, when I was doing a little research for this, you can see all kinds of crazy things. | ||
| I mean, you can see people that say, literally I cured brain cancer just by using CBD oil or something like that. | ||
| And then you can see people that it helped with pain or it helped with nausea or I got my appetite back. | ||
| I mean, really the gamut of everything. | ||
| What's like the most amazing case that you've ever seen of helping something really serious like cancer or Parkinson's or something like that? | ||
| Well, I have a good friend that has Crohn's disease, and he really credits cannabis with giving him his life back. | ||
| I mean, he was suffering tremendously for many, many years. | ||
| And another friend of mine has a young niece who had a brain tumor, and her family was treating it with the Rick Simpson oil. | ||
|
unidentified
|
What's that? | |
| 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. | ||
| Oh, is this like what they give very young kids? | ||
| Right, right. | ||
| Does this have something to do with what happened in New Jersey and Christy got in all that? | ||
| Because I think he didn't want to pass it, but then got sort of guilty to it, which made no sense anyway. | ||
| I think, wasn't he just allowing the CBD stuff? | ||
| What was that CBD? | ||
| All right, so we'll chalk that up to we're not here. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Fair enough. | |
| You don't have to know everything. | ||
| Yeah, I try. | ||
| But I think that, you know, I've seen a lot of people who really believe that it's | ||
| helped them for so many different things. | ||
| Even if it's just, you know, I have a bad back and I rub a topical on my back and I feel better. | ||
| It's not always about getting stoned. | ||
| You know, and for a while I was volunteering in a cannabis physician's office and I would see different patients and how they were using the medicine. | ||
| I mean, it's great for any kind of neuropathy, you know, any kind of nerve pain, | ||
| it provides great relief for that. | ||
| And breast cancer, there's been studies showing that, I mean, they've shown that it can really just | ||
| kill certain cancer cells. | ||
| I mean, to me, that's incredible. | ||
| 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. | ||
| Right. | ||
| What do you think goes on in the mind of that person? | ||
| I really, I cannot imagine. | ||
| 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. | ||
| There's money to be made here. | ||
| for a lot of people. It's happening in Colorado right now, it's happening across California. | ||
| So these are serious business people. | ||
| Right. | ||
| Yeah. It's like the new California gold rush in a way. | ||
| It is. | ||
| But you have to be willing to sort of put your butt on the line, I suppose. | ||
| 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. | ||
| I don't think so. | ||
| I mean, okay. | ||
| I'm still sort of vacillating where I stand on it. | ||
| Yeah, well, okay. | ||
| Drugs, there are many drugs that aren't legal now that people try. | ||
| It doesn't limit people's ability to access it. | ||
| Right, they can get them. | ||
| Right. | ||
| You're risking going to prison. | ||
| You know, so, I mean, legalizing all drugs, I do believe that there are drugs that don't have any | ||
| real health benefit and are dangerous. | ||
| But I don't think criminalizing activity that way is the right answer. | ||
| If you're trying to fight addiction, putting someone in prison is not going to solve that. | ||
| Preventing them from having a productive life is not going to solve that. | ||
| 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. | ||
| Insane. | ||
| Just insane. | ||
| Veterans right now are really fighting to get access to medical marijuana. | ||
| The fact that they've had to fight to be able to treat their PTSD with cannabis is crazy. | ||
| I think they've earned that. | ||
| Yeah, I agree. | ||
| All right, well, we have to wrap up, so first off, I'm very happy about all this. | ||
| This is very exciting. | ||
| I think I've gotten it already, but give me your final sell. | ||
| Give me your 60-second sell on why all this is important, so we can clip it for Facebook perfectly. | ||
| Why is making this legal and doing all this? | ||
| Just give me the elevator pitch. | ||
| Well, cannabis medicine is You know, cannabis is an amazing plant. | ||
| It has so many health benefits. | ||
| It has saved many lives. | ||
| To make it illegal, or to continue to keep it illegal, it just hurts. | ||
| It hurts us as a society. | ||
| It hurts individuals. | ||
| I mean, it's just bad all around. | ||
| I mean, this is—this is—for me, it's about really getting people to understand | ||
| that I'm not a bad person, you know? | ||
| I'm here to provide products that people enjoy and that people benefit from. | ||
| And, you know, it's time for L.A. | ||
| especially to accept this industry and to create some framework for us to be successful. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| I think you nailed it. | ||
| 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. |
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