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All right, y'all.
Welcome back to the show.
I'm Scott Horton.
Our next guest today is Alan St. Pierre.
He is the executive director of NORML, the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws.
Welcome to the show, Alan.
How are you doing?
Good day.
I'm well.
Isn't it strange?
I've been doing a radio show for, I don't know, 13 years.
And I've never interviewed you before.
That's kind of strange.
Well, an interview show for 10 years.
Well, having done myself about 25,000 radio interviews since 1991, statistically, this is odd.
Yeah, it seems like we'd have crossed paths before.
Anyway, I'm very happy to have you on the show.
Welcome to it.
Obviously, NORML.org is the website, N-O-R-M-L dot org.
And so this piece is called Hawaii Joins Four Other States Considering Marijuana Legalization Measures.
This comes after the victories in Colorado and Washington.
And I want to get into the particulars of those, but we've got plenty of time.
So I was hoping you could start by telling us about the new proposal in Hawaii and then the four other states, too.
This year, we expect a number of states, upwards of maybe 10.
We had five last year that introduced legalization bills.
We were surprised a week and a half ago, out of nowhere, that the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania is entertaining a legalization bill.
We're not surprised that Hawaii's bill was introduced.
We think pretty much the entire West Coast, anywhere where salt water touches America on the West Coast, you're going to get a legalization bill and or an initiative in time.
And now, is this because of the costs of prosecuting the thing, or is it just because more of the older people are retiring out of so-called public service and you have younger baby boomer types taking over?
Well, two points.
One is that when NORML was founded in 1970, about 10 percent of the public supported legalization.
According to Gallup polling today, it's pretty strongly about 50 percent.
The votes in Colorado and Washington came in at 55 percent in favor of legalization.
And to your second point, yes, of the five major reasons I think that marijuana law reform is as politically salient as it is today is because the baby boom generation is largely taking over our institutions.
And as the World War II generation basically leaves the scene, they are taking the reefer madness with them.
Good times.
All right, well, and so, and then what about the cost, the economic crisis and all of that?
Indeed.
In fact, back in the 70s, 80s and 90s, NORML and other groups would certainly lobby our legislators arguing for the tax benefits of legalization and that we shouldn't be spending all this money on a law that really can't be enforced.
But that didn't seem to have any resonance with them whatsoever until about 2007, 2008, as we really started to get into this now prolonged recession, particularly at the local and state level.
They have very, very hard choices about where they want to spend limited public money.
And at the local level, there's no doubt there's a great support for reform here in Washington, D.C.
Unfortunately, the disconnect is still with the Congress.
We can't even get a subcommittee hearing hardly in the Congress on these reforms.
But 18 states have medical marijuana laws in the District of Columbia.
Fourteen states have decriminalized it.
Two states have legalized it outright at this point.
This equals well over 100 million Americans live in these states.
So the great disconnect is really here in Washington, D.C. and the Congress.
Well, now, what about all the disastrous consequences for those states that have legalized, you know, for medical purposes and otherwise so far, though?
In terms of the consequences being?
Yeah, I don't know.
I thought maybe you knew of some.
Well, just that in these states that they have gone in that direction, that people have access to the drug.
In five or six of the states, the state is a regulator.
They receive taxes.
That is a problem.
The government is getting more tax money.
Well, in this case here, this has been the quid pro quo that has been anticipated for a very long time.
And that is when there is a popular product or commodity, it's going to generate a tax base at some level.
And where the problem with prohibition largely is, is that it has no tax constituency.
It has a criminal constituency, but no tax constituency.
So as I speak to you from the canyons of K Street, where there are 25,000 trade groups and associations representing almost every conceivable type of commerce in the world, we don't really have somebody yet, because it's not legal at the federal government level, to be able to have folks arguing from the retailer and the wholesaler's perspective.
Normal represents the consumers.
We certainly want to get the lowest possible cannabis in the safest environment.
But in the end, the power to tax is the power to create or to destroy.
If the government doesn't tax cannabis, then it creates the problems associated with prohibition.
Well, and I think it's pretty easy for them to foresee that if they did legalize the marijuana business and the trade in it and bring all that above board and into the open market, that they would still only be able to tax a bit of it, because a lot of people just grow their own.
And they would still just trade in the same old kind of underground market that they always did.
Why buy a pack of Marlboro joints at 7-Eleven when the market already exists out here, you know?
Well, the market definitely already exists.
There's no doubt about it that people are going out and spending $200, $300, $400, as much as $600 for an ounce of vegetable matter.
No doubt that is already existing today.
But if we move to a regulatory legal model like we already have for things like alcohol or, oh, I don't know, jam or jelly or tobacco, you used the example for that, we can all, if we want to, if we're able to, grow tobacco.
We can all make our own beer if you're over 21, and most of us can make our own jam and jelly.
But what percentage of us do?
Very, very, very small percentage of people will go out and make their own jam, brew their own beer, or make their own tobacco.
So in a really true, genuine, free market, consumers will want to get the product when they want it, in the amount they want it, in the variety that they want it, in the locations that they want it.
So, no, I suggest that when marijuana is legal, really genuinely legal, very few people will actually be growing it.
I mean, someone like myself, who's from New England, I'm frugal, I'm cheap, I'm inclined to maybe grow my own.
But if we do look at these existing models we already have out there, something like less than 1% of people who drink beer brew their own, because it's just simply easier and more convenient to go pick up a six-pack if that's what you want to do.
Yeah.
Although, with brewing beer and treating and readying tobacco for smoking and that kind of thing, that's a lot more labor-intensive and time-intensive kind of thing, whereas weed is a weed, and pretty much just grow it without working too hard.
Well, there's no doubt that it is a lot easier to grow.
Your point's well taken that those other products are more labor-intensive.
But for those who have seen a crop fail, for one reason or another, it is still agriculture.
And in the end, when we looked at – and to get down to bottom dollars here – Hey, by the way, not that I'm familiar with the pot market at all.
Just read about it in the Wall Street Journal.
Exactly, yeah, yeah.
In the end, we can see here that right now, if we just take a 50,000-square-foot grow operation indoors with lights and hydroponics, that cost, if you take the massive grow unit like that, you can drive the cost down to about $1 per gram for really good marijuana.
There's 28.5 grams in an ounce.
So just rounding the dollars up here, it would cost about $30 to produce a high-quality ounce of marijuana.
And of the $1 per gram, 90% of that is the human interaction with the plant.
The lights, the energy, the water, the nutrients are fairly cheap.
It's the humans who cut it, dry it, package it.
That's where most of the cost is associated with it.
So if you grew it outdoors as a true row crop, holy moly, now we're talking about pennies on the pound, just like sorghum and barley and tobacco in bulk form, that when you grow this stuff outdoors in true crop form, you can drive these costs down to where they should be, which is pennies on the pound.
Well, you know, for all the hysterical moms screaming, oh, you're sending the wrong message, I think that would really send the right message, that actually pot is no big deal, and you shouldn't dress it up and make such a starlet out of it, because that's what gets all the kids interested in it in the first place, if that's what you're trying to prevent so much.
And using that classic reverse psychology that parents should definitely specialize in, exactly so.
That to vilify and demonize in the minds of a 12 to a 17-year-old is practically an invitation.
There you go.
All right.
Now, so we've had medical pot for, what, since the mid-'90s, California, what, 1996 or 7, something like that.
But now, in the case of Colorado and Washington, we have outright legalization, at least of the possession.
But what I want to understand better from you, because I know, obviously, like you were saying, it's still completely federally prohibited, what does this do for the drug business?
I know that, you know, in cases all the time we hear where a guy is growing medical pot, he's selling only two medical dispensaries, he's got every state and local license he could possibly have to do it, and then the feds come and prosecute him, and the judge says, you're not even allowed to tell the jury how legal it was, what you were doing.
And so the jury is left to use their imagination that you are participating in that dangerous and criminal black market.
Yes, the federal-state conflict is still real.
It is most real where the state is not a player, where the state has not passed laws, the state doesn't have a regulatory agency for medical marijuana, doesn't have a taxation scheme.
So when I'm speaking here, most notably of states like California and Washington and Oregon, and Washington until recently regarding the voters voting for legalization, but it's in these sort of states where the industry is at most peril because it has no legal protection from the state.
The state is not standing with them in federal court saying, hey, it's us too.
We're partners in all of this.
The juxtaposition here is Colorado.
There are hundreds and hundreds of medical marijuana businesses operating in full view of state and federal law, but only 30 to 40 of these dispensaries and cultivation centers have been harassed by the federal government, and why were they harassed?
Specifically because they were within 1,000 feet of these absurd drug-free school zones.
So the federal prosecutors broke out like the world's longest tape measure, determined that these dispensaries were within 1,000 feet of one of these no-go zones, and they sent them letters basically saying you have 60 days to shut down or we're going to raid you.
Half of them have moved to compliant zoning, and the other half put up a fight or have gotten rolled.
Again, if the state is a player, if they have passed laws and regulations that create a legal structure for medical marijuana, then the feds really don't intervene a whole lot.
Now, the example you mentioned regarding getting into, for example, a federal trial, yes, if you actually do get arrested by the feds, you can't turn to the jury and tell them, well, yeah, I got caught growing 500 marijuana plants, or I had this storefront and I was selling marijuana because I had a license from the state, the local government had given me a business permit, I was paying local taxes, I was compliant with local laws, and yet the federal government sort of swoops down on them like a hawk on a mouse.
There are definitely very regrettable cases.
Right now the most notable one is the Matthew Davies case out of California where a guy seems completely compliant with federal law, and next thing you know, with state and local laws, and next thing you know, the federal government comes in, says you're violating federal law, and he's looking at a 10-year sentence when across the street from him, practically, is somebody else who's doing the exact same thing.
One county over, there are 25 dispensaries.
The federal government isn't raiding any of them.
So one has to stand back and say, why?
Why the subjective application of the law?
Why are there 3,000 marijuana dispensaries and cultivation centers in the United States, but the federal government only raids 100 of them?
Why just those 100?
Nothing makes them stand out, really, than any of the others.
Well, it's really just the whim of the U.S. attorney, right?
It would appear at this point they're not really making a good case, in my view, of why this character as compared to that character is getting popped.
And this has been going on since Brian Eppes and a guy named Charlie Lynch and a number of other notable cases, Aaron Sandowski of G3 Holistics.
Why is he going to jail for 10 years when within a 10-mile radius there are 50 other businesses operating with the exact same business model, advertising the local paper, having advertisements on the local radio?
So, yes, you'd be rightly confused, as we all would be, and probably flummoxed with the idea that some people operate lawfully and don't have any harassment from the feds, and others, for no articulable reason, come under the hammer.
Well, now, so you talked before about how the American people are better and better on this all the time.
Obviously, our entire subject here is that the state governments are getting better and better on this all the time.
What, in your view, is the explanation for why the House of Representatives, never mind the Senate, is so far removed from the American people's point of view on this subject?
Well, people can criticize Congress, I think rightly, across the board for this on a lot of different things, marijuana just being one thing.
And I wouldn't surprise anybody that the further you go up in the political system, the further you get away from the local concerns.
If you're a local select person, you're a local mayor, you're hearing about those potholes.
You're hearing about, you know, troubles in the schools.
You're hearing about no nets on the basketball courts.
You hear and understand local politics, and you have to respond to it.
If you don't, you're crazy.
You won't survive.
As you keep going up the chain, you become a state representative, a state senator, a congressperson, a senator.
You get further and further and further away from the sort of day-in, day-out realities of politics.
So that's the sort of easy answer, is that these Congress people and senators are at the top tier of American politics, where they are just simply not hearing from the average people.
They're hearing from a very select group of people like an echo chamber around them.
And, of course, a lot of these people are trying to influence them.
They're very affluent.
They're people.
They're corporations.
They're countries.
So it's a terrific disconnect.
And particularly if they're older, in my view, if they happen to be over the age of 70, there's not a very good chance they're going to relate personally, culturally, or politically to this issue.
But if they're under that age and they went to college or they went to Vietnam and served in the military, there's probably a good chance they have either primary, secondary experience with marijuana in a way that our grandparents from the World War II generation simply did not.
So that is coming into play, and it's a serious upward pressure that is starting to bubble up from the states.
And five years ago, there wouldn't be what I would describe a cannabis caucus in the Congress now, that there are about 30 representatives who not surprisingly represent districts where medical marijuana is largely legal.
And so in a chamber and commerce-like relationship, they're able to now be able to send money to Congress and to have their representatives heard.
Now, you know, Ron Paul said that when it comes to Plan Colombia and all of the intervention down there and eradicating all the cocaine and I guess some pot too, I don't know, all that kind of thing, he says the only people who show up, he says it's not the mothers against pot smoking or cocaine abuse who show up to lobby for this thing, it's just the helicopter companies.
And they just want to know that they'll have an excuse to keep selling helicopters.
And that, you know, these people, as they walk around on Capitol Hill, they don't even know they're corrupt, this conflict of interest.
They're just doing their job and they do it all day and that's where it comes from.
So I wonder when it comes to the domestic war on pot, at least the kind of conventional wisdom, or I would think, well, I'm from Austin, so I think people pretty much just assume that it's Anheuser-Busch and it's the police unions and it's maybe the gun manufacturers that sell guns to the police departments.
It's the iron bar manufacturers and the Wackenhut, whatever they call themselves now, the prison companies.
Are these guys really the ones who are the ones who show up and demand all these drug laws, but you can't find the concerned moms of America anywhere or what?
Is that really how it works?
It does have that strong component to it.
I wrote an essay years ago called The Five Killers of Pot Prohibition, and I would suggest you've touched upon one of them, and one that most people frankly don't think about much, and that is what I call here domestic pork, that there's just so many different constituents that make money off of the current system of prohibition.
You alluded to some.
I could go further.
Private prisons, pharmaceutical companies, the high-tech companies that make, for those who live along the southwest border or along the Florida Keys would know what I'm talking about when I talk about aerostat balloons, these ridiculous silver bullet technologies that we've had for 20 years, these blimps that are tethered all along the United States border that are supposed to create a supposed electronic curtain that does not allow any drugs to come up from our south.
Yeah, how is that working?
How has that worked for 20 years in the United States?
This technology doesn't work, and yet these companies just basically keep funding politicians to keep getting in domestic spending these expenditures, which do not stop heroin or cocaine or methamphetamine or marijuana from coming up from the south.
But we've had these things for years, and I mean literally to your point about how incestuous it is, the company is run by the former chiefs of staff of the senators who regularly approve the appropriations.
So yes, it's painful to see that there are many, many companies that probably don't themselves really care whether somebody smokes marijuana or not in the privacy of their home, but in the end, prohibition works for them, whether it's a drug testing company, a private drug test, a private prison company, their business models don't really work unless the government makes marijuana illegal.
And so they are one of the few entities left that are really arguing to keep marijuana illegal.
There really aren't that many today that are.
You don't hear it from teachers and nurses and doctors or religious institutions, or even for that matter, businesses.
Not even from the churches anymore?
Not even from the churches.
Churches are no longer and really weren't a strong component against these things.
So it is really the federal government at this point that puts too much resources and power on the scale here.
And if the federal government would simply back off and allow the states to move forward, we're surely going to see a dozen or more states follow Washington and Oregon.
Nate Silverman at the New York Times has an estimate in place that by 2021, 60% of Americans will want marijuana legalized.
So at that point, it should be a fait accompli.
Right.
Well, it should have been all along, too.
It's interesting, though, to hear that it is just like I would have suspected, It's just the lobbyists and representing these very selfish interests that in no way represent the national interest or, you know, what's good for us or whatever kind of general thing at all.
It's always just about selling more iron bars or whatever.
Well, again, that's a good example, and it does happen.
Again, I suggest there are five reasons why marijuana has been kept illegal, and that is one of the solid pillars of that prohibition paragon.
All right.
Well, listen, you know, it's the growth industry, the 21st century still.
So, you know, invest today.
Thanks very much for your time.
I really appreciate it, Alan.
My pleasure.
Be in touch.
Yeah.
Nice to meet you.
We'll be speaking again soon.
Everybody, that is Alan St. Pierre, executive director of NORML, the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws.
Of course, that's NORML.org.
And there is good news.
Of course, I'm too pessimistic.
This is Hawaii Joins Four Other States Considering Marijuana Legalization Measures.
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