Two-Year Anniversary and Lyft Expo Adventures

0:02BubblemanAll right. Hello, everybody, and welcome to Hash Church, episode 104. If you can imagine, today is our actual two-year anniversary, and I'm not sure of how well the internet is going to work for me here. I'm staying at a hotel in the city for the Lyft Expo, and I'm just trying to make sure that... I was trying to hook up and get the faster internet for the last half an hour.

0:25BubblemanTony got to listen to me from the other room bitch about the computer not working, but... I think slower is better than nothing. Hopefully it's coming through and everything works out. And yeah, I'm going to send out the links here to our regulars here in the panel. I'll do our Facebook link first. Send out the email link, which today is just going to Mr. Indra. And then I don't have Skype on my computer.

0:53BubblemanThat's how I generally invite Chimera into the room. So if maybe Sam or someone else who's got the link would like to send that to Chimera, that would be most wonderful. I'm not sure how he's doing, but it would be great to... Great to hear from him today and see how he's doing. Two years, two years we've been doing this Hash thing, Hash Church thing, if you can imagine.

1:14BubblemanPretty incredible how fast time flies and goes by when the consistency of each week just seems to be there. Every seven days it's happening. It's been a blessing for me, really, out of all the things that I've been doing for the last couple of years. Hash Church is at the top of the list in regards to A success. You know, it's a wonderful thing that even already we have 400 people in the room watching and checking it out, and it's literally 9-0-1.

1:43BubblemanSo thank you, everyone. And thank you, Monsieur Etain Fontaine, Mr. Regular. It was weird to not have you in the room.

1:53Etienne FontanWell, it happens very rarely, but, you know, it's good to be back. I missed you guys for sure, and congratulations on two years, dude.

2:01BubblemanYeah, we did it, man. We did it. Pretty incredible, actually.

2:06Etienne FontanI would say it's due to, you know, your wonderful access of great people, and then on top of that, you know, great topic, cannabis, people are very interested in apparently, and we've had some of the greatest people, I mean, come on, we've had some of the best of the best come through here, so it's an honor just to be associated, much less to...

2:31Etienne FontanJust be part of, just to listen, to learn, to teach all at the same time and absorb is just beyond epic. It's, I can't thank you enough. And the audience and everybody who watches, you know, it's very humbling to be a part of something that people, you know, climb into every single week that they're always searching for more cannabis knowledge. And thankfully we have the crew of people who've been able to bring that to them consistently.

2:59Etienne FontanGood morning, Todd. Welcome.

3:01SpeakerGood morning. What are y'all talking about? Weed?

3:05Etienne FontanTwo years on this thing.

3:07SpeakerKind of. Welcome, Todd. My first time seeing this was Mark at Soma's around Christmas of, what was it, 14 when you were doing it from the cannabis cup in his apartment? Do you remember that, Mark? Yeah. That was like a million years ago right now, right? Yeah.

3:27BubblemanYeah, that was a good one. That was good fun. We had a good group. That was kind of the year the cup kind of got canceled, I think.

3:33SpeakerYes, that was the year that the expo didn't happen in any city. But we had a good time. That was the year that Mark got his award, Mark and Jody. And Howard Marks, that was the last year we saw Howard Marks. God, it feels like forever ago.

3:48BubblemanRest in peace, Howard. Yeah, that was ominous seeing him that trip. I remember being just shocked at just the difference in how he looked and stuff. You could really see his sickness on him, which is always disconcerting when you see a friend looking not as healthy as he once was, but it was definitely nice to be at that event. I thank you for inviting me. I know it was an invite only, and you got me in, so I do appreciate that.

4:17BubblemanIt was a nice memory.

4:19SpeakerI think anytime, Mark, really. Anytime. Yeah, I think it was nice that we waited for Howard Marks. And when he showed up, you know, looking so different from the cancer therapy, I think we all took a moment and just were thankful that we had that moment to wait.

4:37SpeakerAbsolutely. Hey, so today, Diane, Diane Goldstein was going to join us from Leap. I just sent her the link. She, I think, only has an hour with us, so it'll probably be a short.

4:48BubblemanNo problem. That's wonderful. I've kind of been trying to figure out getting some people from Lyft, the Lyft conferences across the street at the Vancouver Convention Center. Beautiful, big, giant venue. One of the first things I noticed right away when I walked in was I was like, They sprung for the carpet. Because often at these cannabis events, you know, it's a serious amount of money for these venues.

5:11BubblemanLike it must be like 100 grand or 150 grand for a day or something. And the carpets can be like a ridiculous amount of money.

5:20Speaker2009 THC Expo, $40,000 to rent a carpet for 98,000 square feet. Yeah, it runs, runs. Yeah, no.

5:29Etienne FontanYeah, it's an extra expensive detail for sure.

5:34SpeakerAbsolutely. But it makes the world of difference. The companies up here doing it without it, without the dressing, without the decorations, it makes it look like just a flea market. I think it degrades our culture, if you will.

5:46BubblemanYeah, it's definitely all I know is it was really nice to have that walk in. It's a good event. There's a lot of people. There's a lot of different aspects of the community, of the industry, and some good talks. There was an interesting, I didn't really catch it, but yesterday an investment group named Arcview set up a dragon den type thing, and they were like, we're going to listen to three people pitch their company's ideas, and we're going to choose one to invest in.

6:12BubblemanThat was kind of a cool little concept.

6:15Etienne FontanWhat was the dominating product?

6:18BubblemanYou know, I'm going to have to find out today because I was just walking by. They were like, yeah, it's happening right now. Go check it out. And I was like, oh, that would be great. I've been standing at my booth for seven hours, so I'm actually going to be going to check out the bong in my room right now. So I didn't get to hang out.

6:33BubblemanWe came back to the room and basically chuffed this room down so hard, so hard, that we set the alarm off

6:42Etienne FontanEven with the shower cap around the top of the...

6:47BubblemanSo we had the security show up, very much like the Krasnopolsky in Amsterdam. Very serious security guys that looked like they were potentially mercenaries. And they're just like walking through. Basically we had six or seven guys around the table, three or four pipes, hash and weed everywhere. In about 45 seconds, we cleaned it up so well, there was not a, you couldn't see anything of any sort.

7:12BubblemanSo when they finally came to the door and burst in and walked, and we're like, we smell, the thing went off and we smell marijuana, we have to check out the room. So they ran in here and we're just all sitting around this table like, what's up? And the guy's like, he's got his little earbud and he's just looking for anything. I was going to take him through the whole terpene thing and be like, oh dude, you're smelling terpenes and we're not actually blazing.

7:34BubblemanYou can tell there's no smoke in the room because we were actually only vaporizing. But yeah, it was just an interesting situation. They didn't fine us. They didn't kick us out. They just said that's a warning. You know, next time it's a substantial fine, like 300 Canadian dollars for For puffing the room down, but we did survive, and I think it's about that time. What do you guys say?

7:58Etienne FontanWell, I think you brought up an interesting thing is whenever you are somewhere else, you know, always keep your packing things open and available because I've had a similar situation happen where I was in Arizona. And yeah, you literally have about 30 seconds to pack your shit up and get everything out, get your osium flowing and everything else, you know, and that's it. And then they're at the door and same thing.

8:21Etienne FontanThey're just in the room looking around. You know, it's always good to be smart and know where to put everything.

8:28BubblemanHere's the funnier thing, Etienne. After they saw us, then they hid over in that corner by the pool over there, and they watched our room. They were watching our room. So we're just like, whatever. We had like 10 people in here and we did chuff down pretty hard, but today's another day and I'm sure new security are working today so we can probably start all over again.

8:58SpeakerWe had some pretty damn good peanut butter and jam sandwiches with no crust on them that day too.

9:07BubblemanOh hey, how's it going, D? Good morning, D. I'm not sure what the fuck you're talking about, but I appreciate it.

9:16SpeakerThat room, in the room. The peanut butter jam sandwiches we ordered, that room service from where you're at now, I believe.

9:24BubblemanI was not in the room for such a thing.

9:28Etienne FontanOh, you weren't there for the feast. No. You missed the PB&J. Damn, dog.

9:33SpeakerCome on, D. There was no crust on it. There was PB&J and milk after. Don't worry, Mark. Just get on the bill, bro. You'll see it on the bill.

9:42BubblemanI think D's talking about this room that someone else rented many months ago, not this last two days.

9:49SpeakerOh, no, I'm sorry. I just jumped in at the tail end of the conversation.

9:53BubblemanI was like, when did he have PB&J here?

9:56SpeakerWhat the heck? I haven't had a bong rep this morning yet. Me neither. Me neither.

10:00BubblemanI'm ready. I'm totally ready.

10:02SpeakerOh, come on, gentlemen.

10:04BubblemanIt's 10 minutes in.

10:05SpeakerYou're taking your first. Let's do it.

10:09BubblemanYeah, I know. Worse than that, ATN, I've been up for hours. I had to drive into the city from my house. I lived like half an hour plus away, so... Just this, you know, this two-year thing, it's not that it's two years is any more progress than one year or one and a half years or episode 57, but I will let you guys know that I truly do have anxiety at the thought of Hash Church not working out.

10:33BubblemanWhen my internet's not connecting or I'm, I just have anxiety. So I do want you guys all to know out there that I'm definitely putting the energy in to make this happen. It doesn't seem like much because it just, you invite your friends in and they show up and, Thank you for watching.

11:09BubblemanI always feel so relieved when Hash Church is done and it's in the bag and I'm like, yes! And then it's like, all of a sudden it's Friday night, Saturday night.

11:16SpeakerHoly shit, we got to do this again.

11:18BubblemanSo, yes, breathe, breathe. They're telling me to breathe. I will breathe. I'll breathe in some resin. Well, maybe my coughing will wake Tony up and he'll come join us for Hash Church in a bit. Is he there with you?

11:35Etienne FontanIs he up there with you or is he stateside?

11:40BubblemanNice. He's in the other room right now.

11:44Etienne FontanOh, I see it here. You got your torch going. Good man. Good man.

11:50Etienne FontanWhat are you toking on this fine morning on your brothership there? Mothership and brothership there.

11:58BubblemanI'm going to hit some Congolese with some Kush Cleaner Terp Dip.

12:05Etienne FontanThank you for watching.

12:20BubblemanWell, dude, like I'm saying, these guys were like mercenaries or something. They're like some next-level security dudes, right? And keep in mind, like, later that night, for instance, when we went outside after getting harassed for smoking in our room, we were like, okay, whatever, let's just go outside. We can smoke outside. We all loaded up our Omicron vape pens and went and had a mad Omicron vape pen gelato session just on the other side of the building, gelato-filled cannolis.

12:44BubblemanWith a chocolate layer. Oh my gosh, Bella Gelato is just ridiculous. But anyway, we walk outside and there's about like $3 million worth of cars parked just in front of the hotel. Lamborghinis and Ferraris and Bentleys and that new BMW that glows in the dark and it's electric. All sorts of crazy shit. Anyway, the gang unit rolled up. And it kind of for a second, it was kind of getting heavy out in front of our hotel.

13:10BubblemanAnd just for that split second, I remember someone in our group going, man, they didn't call the cops on us because we're smoking weed. I was like, listen, those aren't just cops. Those are gang unit cops. They're here specifically for a reason. They're not here to harass us about smoking weed.

13:27Etienne FontanYet they still posted up and spied on you after going through your room. Yeah, exactly. Hey, welcome, Indra. And Sam.

13:36BubblemanAnd Sam. Look at that. They both came in. I'm spacing out here. Welcome, Sam, Indra and Sam. Welcome. Good morning.

13:48BubblemanWhat? You don't say hello when you get welcome?

13:51SamHowdy, howdy, howdy.

13:53BubblemanRight on, Sam. Howdy doody. How's everybody doing on this beautiful Sunday afternoon, evening, morning, whatever it is for you?

14:06SpeakerI'm fine. You know, I think you were talking about me contacting Chimera or Chimera. And he was here, but he left early this morning. So maybe you can contact him. I don't know. Like left the country or? Yeah, well, he was in the Netherlands, but he left today. Yes.

14:36SpeakerWell, bon voyage.

14:40BubblemanSafe travels, Chimera.

14:43Etienne FontanAlways safe travels.

14:46SpeakerIs this microphone working?

14:48BubblemanYes, sir. It surely is. You sound great. Good morning, John. But you're supposed to tap it and go, is this thing on?

14:56SpeakerTesting, testing.

14:58Etienne FontanNice mandala, sir.

15:01SpeakerMy wife painted that.

15:04BubblemanReally?

15:07SpeakerShe's actually, that's a simplistic one. She actually has two paintings in the book that the guys printed about the Beatles and about artists around the world who painted their paintings. Everybody got one painting in, but Annie's work is so good that they included two of her paintings in that book. But actually, it's not a mandala. It's a woman-dala.

15:34Etienne FontanA woman dolla. A woman dolla, of course. I like that. Pardon me.

15:41SpeakerI'll pass that on, but she's a fierce feminist.

15:44BubblemanOh, well then she should be willingly to accept her woman dolla.

15:51SpeakerI think that's what she was calling it from the beginning.

15:56Etienne FontanRight on. So does she paint often? Is that acrylic or is that...

16:01SpeakerThat's watercolor. And if I had the time, or if I, I don't know how to use screen share yet, so I won't show you the rest of them, but she does some John Lennon and George Harrison paintings that most people look at and say, wow, where was that picture taken?

16:26BubblemanAnd so is she a fan of the Beatles? Is that what's going on here?

16:29SpeakerNo, she's a fan of, well, she does like the Beatles. I mean, we're both from that period in time. She also paints Jimi Hendrix and other notable rock people of the era.

16:41BubblemanI feel like, although I'm not from your same time, I also feel kind of, because of the technology of listening to music, Records were still happening when I was a kid, so I got my dad's record collection and basically got turned on to all of these. I feel kind of like a child of the 60s when I think of all the old music I used to listen to, all the Zeppelin and the Stones and Beatles and all these great bands that still hold today.

17:10BubblemanNeil Young, definitely one of my favorite all-time musicians.

17:15SpeakerThat's funny you say that. I inherited my mom's record collection, all her Beatles, Stones, Zappa. That was everything that influenced my childhood.

17:23Etienne FontanFrank Zappa so much with his lyrics on the slime and stuff like that.

17:27SpeakerJohn Kay was amazing. Catholic Girls. Ah, Catholic Girls. That's a great one right there.

17:34BubblemanYou know, gotta give a shout out to Dweezil Zappa, who's actually, a couple of years ago, we went on the road and he did a tour called Zappa Plays Zappa. And he played for hours a day for something like two and a half years before the tour, building up to it so he could go and do justice to his dad's music. He had people that sounded so much like the singers from the past, and he just had this amazing band doing these amazing songs that you just...

18:06BubblemanI mean, it was impressive. First of all, I had no idea the level of which Zappa Dweezil played guitar. I knew he was a shredder, but it's like when you find out that it was him that found Jimi Hendrix's old guitar, the one that he burnt at Woodstock or whatever, like the one that he set on fire. I guess Jimi gave that to Frank, and Frank had it.

18:27SpeakerHold it, hold it. That's not a true story. I was standing in a Monterey Pop Festival. Thank you for watching.

18:54BubblemanThank you for watching.

19:14SpeakerThe one from the Monterey Pop Festival, there was no restoring it because the first thing Jimmy did before he set it on fire was he used it like a sledgehammer on the stage. He pounded it until the neck broke loose from the body. Then somebody handed him a can of Zippo lighter fluid from slightly behind the drums off stage. He covered it with lighter fluid and then lit it on fire.

19:40SpeakerAnd listen, at that point in time in my life, seeing Jimi Hendrix that close to me and all the rest of the people that are at the Monterey Pop Festival and we were tripping hard, believe me. And I had that piece of that guitar for years and a girlfriend that I won't mention her name who was completely out of control with certain substances ripped it off. But for sure the Monterey Pop Festival one.

20:11SpeakerHe may have done it in several other venues.

20:14BubblemanYeah, 1968 Miami Pop Festival. You can Google it and read all about it. It's definitely wasn't, it was, if it was told to me by anyone other than Dweezil, I just, it was his words I was reading. So it was a neat story and it really was only according to the fact that that guy, if you go see him play guitar, yourself included, you should because you've stood in front of Jimmy Not comparing them or anything, but man, that guy blew my mind at how well he played guitar on that tour.

20:44BubblemanBlew my mind.

20:46SpeakerThere's so many people that are playing guitar amazingly these days. You can go on YouTube and see people do things that you wouldn't, that, I mean, weren't even possible 10 years ago or no one had tried them. Anyway, you know, I've got a big gap out of my life. I spent 13 years hanging out in India and going back and forth to Switzerland, back and forth to Switzerland.

21:09SpeakerAnd Switzerland to India or Amsterdam to India. And so I missed out on a lot of things that were happening because I was busy. I lived maybe two blocks from Frank Zappa and saw him practice maybe a hundred different times. And yeah, I still think that Jimi Hendrix was the world's greatest guitar player for me personally, but Zappa came strong number two. I agree. My wife's made some amazing paintings of Jimi that they're mind-boggling.

21:50SpeakerHe's put together over the years of Jimmy with psychedelic backgrounds. Maybe one of these times I'll send some of them to Mark and he knows how to put them up.

22:01BubblemanI can do that for you. No problem. No problem whatsoever.

22:06Etienne FontanAndrew, how many times did you catch Hendrix?

22:10SpeakerListen, Hendrix... He used to go to a place on Hollywood Boulevard called the Psychedelic Supermarket, which didn't last a real long time. It was an old Safeway that they had opened up and it was all psychedelic. And anyway, Hendrix and the guy, the drummer from the Monkees and a bunch of other people would go in there and jam on Friday and Saturday nights. And Hendrix, we had a table right by the stage and Jimmy's girlfriend, one of his girlfriends, came and sat there with us and he came and sat with us at the table in between breaks.

22:46SpeakerVery soft-spoken guy with hands that were twice as big as normal hands ought to be. He's very soft-spoken, very sharing, very, very, just a cool all-around person. I mean, you didn't feel like, it went from rock god to human being in like two seconds. So I saw him there. I saw him at a bunch of other places. I was just in the right time and the right space to see those people.

23:15SpeakerI got to go to most of the major concerts just because of the era that I was born in and the age period.

23:24BubblemanBonus for sure. My, my unfortunality was growing up in the 80s, so all the concerts I got to go to back then were just like, I mean, I guess people now, when people are like, you got to see Iron Maiden and Judas Priest for their original albums, I was like, yeah, yeah, all these metal bands came through my town, like every metal band from the 80s, everyone played in Winnipeg like twice a year.

23:49SpeakerSo that's... Is that... There are a lot of beavers in that area. What's attracting them there? Who? Metal bands.

24:01BubblemanI don't know what attracted metal bands to Winnipeg, but I'm telling you, in the 80s, like, every metal band would play. My first concert, in fact, was a Twisted Sister opening up for Iron Maiden. And I can't remember the tour now. It was like some 1984 shit, whatever Iron Maiden was doing in 1984. But as a young man, it was quite exciting to see the Eddie, you know, big statue do its thing and it's all the crazy rock and hard metal for the time.

24:31BubblemanBut I don't listen to that at all. I don't even really particularly like it now. So I would much rather say, yeah, I was watching Hendrix and then like one time Jimmy Page showed up with Clapton and I watched them all jam. It's like, what? But that's okay.

24:48SpeakerWell, I wasn't a Grateful Dead fan at all ever.

24:51BubblemanWell, then you'll have to leave, John. I'm sorry.

24:54SpeakerYeah, I know. It happens all the time. But Annie, my wife... There was another lady that was very close with the Grateful Dead and we knew her and her husband made travel arrangements, dead air. And anyway, they asked Annie if she would draw the, and I'm sure everybody's seen it, the Grateful Dead picture of the skull with the dreadlocks and the rose. And Annie painted that. She actually drew it on the back of a piece of Grateful Dead stationery in their kitchen.

25:26SpeakerWhat, the cover of Skullfuck?

25:31SpeakerI'm not sure if that's the one. They've used it endlessly over the years and all kinds of things. They put it on t-shirts, on hats. But it was the front page picture in Berkeley for the Jamaica tour. And it was on the Berkeley pink edition paper, the entertainment paper. And it was a full page of that shot, which I'll send it to you. And then you can see all the different things they did to it over the years.

26:02SpeakerThey added little clip arts and things to it. But anyway, she did the original.

26:08BubblemanOkay, so just a second. Is it this one right here, just so we can be on the same page?

26:17SpeakerNo. No, okay. No, this is just the skull with the dreadlocks on it. Okay, okay, right.

26:30BubblemanI wish I knew how to do it. I don't know why I pictured the roses when you said dreadlocks so clearly.

26:38SpeakerYeah, it was the skull with dreadlocks and a rose was tossed in the picture.

26:44BubblemanWell, you blew me away for a second there because when I thought it was, because that's an album that the Grateful Dead did and they named it Skullfuck, which they had to change and the label did not like that at all.

26:56SpeakerWell, I didn't follow them. I was not a fan of the Grateful Dead. Listen, while we were sitting there, while she was drawing that, Jerry came walking in and he was just sort of looking over her shoulder and saying, Gave me a hi. And we're sitting there and he's fixing himself something to eat and a drink. And he's watching it more and more. Finally, he decides to come over by us.

27:23SpeakerAnd I didn't say anything to him. And Annie was just drawing away. And... He sat down for a minute and he said, hey, you know, that's looking pretty good. He said, I'm impressed. And I said, that's nice. And I wasn't feeling like I'm in the presence of a rock god or anything because I was watching him at People's Park back when they were all dirty and Bear was throwing out drugs to get people interested in them.

27:53SpeakerBut anyhow, he... Yeah, he was... Sitting there and after a while he said to me, when Annie was done with it, he said, that's really something, man. He goes, would you guys like to come to the backstage party and come to our concert and I'll fix you up with tickets. And we're sitting there quiet and he's looking at me and he says, Well, are you interested? And I said, well, I don't want to insult you, Jerry, but I'm not a fan of your music, and I don't think that we would have a good time there, but I appreciate the offer.

28:23SpeakerAnd he said, you're not a fan of my music? And I said, no. And he said, well, goddamn, he said, let's have a talk. He said, here, give me, he said, give this guy something to drink. He wanted to talk to me for about 45 minutes because I wasn't sitting there going, yes, Jerry, yes, Jerry. Yeah, no shit.

28:43BubblemanI never met Jerry, but I definitely read a lot about him as a person, and it seemed as though he was quiet and not interested in having smoke blown up his ass about how good he plays guitar.

28:53SpeakerNo, no, he didn't want to talk about music or guitars or nothing. He wanted to talk about fucking fishing with me. That's the exact same reason I give you such a hard time, Andrew. The exact same reason. What? Because you don't want anybody blowing smoke up your ass, right? And Sam just wants to talk about fishing. Gee whiz. I don't know, Sam. I've never... I don't know how to answer that, Brent.

29:24SpeakerI'm not really into having anything blowing up my ass, but okay. Not even a little smoke? I don't know. I guess if it was the right kind of smoke, I'd be at least thinking about trying that.

29:37BubblemanThere you go. Yeah, it's the bufo method.

29:42SpeakerYou know, I was in the Moscow airport going in between India and Amsterdam, and I had two big fat doobers in my pocket. And up on the second floor in the Moscow airport is where they put all the black guys who fly in from Nigeria, because there's only one plane a month in and out back and forth to Nigeria. And guess what? The planes are full. And so there's about 200 black guys upstairs from Nigeria.

30:10SpeakerIt's kind of funny sitting around listening to all these guys with Nigerian accents. But... Right at the end of that was a big pillar and I went over and sat by the pillar for a while and there was this tremendous breeze blowing up. It was like some kind of real ventilation system there. So I fired up that big fatty and smoked it. Then I went back downstairs and about 10 minutes later I saw the Russian security guys, jackboots, 20 of them going upstairs to shake down all these black guys and gave them a real hard time for quite a while.

30:42BubblemanThey thought that they were smoking the herb?

30:45SpeakerYeah, well, the herb blew up in the top, so it took a while to get around to the right people. So after they got done messing with them, it was almost time for my plane. I went back up and smoked the other one. Then I came back downstairs, and just in time, I saw the jackboots heading back upstairs to those guys again. I have to apologize. Sorry.

31:06SpeakerI did use 200 black guys to smoke two joints in the Moscow airport.

31:11BubblemanIn a perfect world, you could have smoked it with them.

31:13SpeakerYeah, I know. It's a shame, but, you know, life is a picture of shame.

31:21BubblemanYeah, it's definitely dichotomous, to say the least. I love dichotomy. Yeah, of course. Yeah, it seems to even shit out. I'm kind of excited. I'm kind of excited to get back to the Lyft conference today. It was pretty damn vast. I'm not sure if I'm going to have time to do any footage or whatnot, but it seemed... What impressed you there?

31:48SpeakerIt was vast. That's better than half vast.

31:51BubblemanHonestly, what I was kind of impressed was with this company that both Tony and I were at their booth, actually. They've created what I guess kind of like what I've created with The Quiver. They've created their own quiver. I'm not exactly sure where they started if they were analytical like lab. I know a few of them are chemists, have their PhD in chemistry and run GCs and do analysis and all that sort of thing.

32:20BubblemanHow I met them was actually one of the gentlemen who's a PhD chemist for this company. He bought bubble bags from me in like 1999 and got all inspired. It was really neat because he told this story to my wife yesterday and he said, yeah, your husband like inspired me to go to school and get a PhD. I was so enamored with this process of water extraction that I just wanted to learn more about extraction and more about chemistry and I got my degree.

32:47BubblemanIt took him eight years and eight months, almost nine years for him to get this. PhD. So a lot of vested time and commitment to this. And so he contacted me last year while I was actually at Lyft in Toronto through LinkedIn. And I ended up talking to them a few times and they were kind of like, yeah, we're starting this company and we've got, or their company had been a couple of years old.

33:12BubblemanBut basically in a nutshell, what they do at ATN is they have all of the aspects of what you would want and need to do if you wanted to open a cannabis, like a licensed distribution, an LP, a licensed producer here in Canada. So a lot of people want to do it. They don't know how to do it. These guys are like, we will not only apply and write your license for you, we will not only construct and build and design your grow for you, we will not only harvest and process and package and distribute, and then they've even got ERP software, analytic software that monitors everything from seed to sale.

33:54BubblemanSo they kind of are building this quiver And how they're doing it is much the way Hash Church does it. You know, they're just bringing in the best people that they can find and the people who want to work together. And they just, they seem really open. Their company name was Benchmark Labs. And during this event, they just restructured and renamed, kind of recreated a new company to Umbrella Benchmark and many of the other companies they own called Theracan.

34:20BubblemanSo these guys, Chris Bolton and Steve Henson, those are the two that are my connections there. Are just really good guys. They seem to know what they're talking about. They seem to be building a really cool team and they're very, it's very, you become very aware quickly at the level of professionalism that they bring to the game and it's hard not to be impressed by it because it's, for me, after, you know, the 25 years of activism, I welcome really organized people helping bring this to a mainstream population.

34:54BubblemanI think it's great.

34:58BubblemanSo there's that.

35:03BubblemanWho's coughing? Who's coughing?

35:09Etienne FontanI think we should all be coughing then since there's such a low, everyone.

35:14BubblemanWell, have you been enjoying the show, Darren?

35:18SpeakerOf course. Just checking it out, meeting people, saying hi. Yeah. Getting high. What did you see, D?

35:27Etienne FontanDid you see anything memorable there, D?

35:31SpeakerAt the lift?

35:35SpeakerLots of pretty ladies. Memorable.

35:42SpeakerThat's for sure. I love it. What's going on, T?

35:51BubblemanTony's still high from last night's edibles. The West Coast Concentrate guys came and put this bag of edibles down and it was just like full of these like 100 milligram granola bars. There was like 10 or 15 of them. How many did you eat? Really?

36:10Etienne FontanLike eight?

36:13Etienne FontanYou were hungry and you ate cannabis food and ate more. That's pretty good there, buddy.

36:19BubblemanYeah, exactly. That's what we all did. It's a dangerous game to be sitting around. What happened? Did we start eating those after we got busted by security? Right. So that's hilarious.

36:34BubblemanThat's right. Security shows up and you're already eating granola. Well, no. Security showed up and then we couldn't puff, so we started eating granola. Then we packed the vape pens, which also was nerve-wracking because I kind of was like, okay, everyone at the table has an Omicron pen now. They just received them as gifts from Tony and Gary, the owner of Omicron. And now they're packing these pens.

37:00BubblemanAnd they're like, how does it work? How many times do you push the button? And I'm like, I'm like, don't push the button in here. Those guys are literally outside watching us right now. So before we left, we fucked with them. We turned all our lights off and we closed the drapes. And then after about five minutes, we opened the drapes like fully. And the room was just dark.

37:20BubblemanAnd we were kind of like, you know, with phones making just fucking with the security guards. You know, it's good. It's good fun. Thank you for watching.

37:51SamDoesn't it smell like pineapples?

37:55BubblemanIt smells like pineapples. Well, because whatever, was it you that blew out that vapor?

37:59SamNo, it was Dave.

38:00BubblemanDave did that?

38:01SpeakerAnd it was chocolate.

38:02BubblemanI know, he said it was chocolate vanilla. I was like, man, that smelled like pineapple to me. All that vape juice. I'm not a big fan of the vape juice myself. I mean, it's great, I guess, if it can help people stop smoking radioactive cigarettes, but it still seems kind of like a bummer.

38:18BubblemanI don't see you guys hitting the vape juice. What's going on?

38:25BubblemanNo? All right. It's quiet in here.

38:30SpeakerI got to head over to the Lyft conference soon.

38:33BubblemanYou better do that. I'm not going to be there until... I won't be there until at least noon, I think, so... Yeah. I've got a couple hours to talk about fun stuff here on Hash Church.

38:44SpeakerWell, it's been a slice, everybody. Long rips around and we'll see you down at the Lyft. Hell yeah, dude. Hopefully we'll have a sesh today. Yeah, well, maybe a meal too. Let's do one more bong rep on the way out because it's early.

39:03BubblemanSession and meal.

39:04SpeakerPut a turp dip in there, some fucking Cherry AK-47.

39:08BubblemanCherry AK-47.

39:09SpeakerYeah, with my old kush rosin.

39:21SpeakerVery nice combination.

39:22BubblemanIt's interesting talking to people at this event because mostly I've been mostly talking about Blue River Terpenes. I have the SC Labs printouts and the terpenes on display and just showing people them, sharing them, smelling them, seeing what people smell in them, different levels of olfactory. What Brent was saying yesterday about the nose was pretty on point, wasn't it, Tony? I mean, hopefully he'll come by later and he'll be able to repeat it, but yeah, about how the olfactory and the way it travels directly into the brain and how the majority of everything else is filtered through different parts, but this one thing, this olfactory is just direct.

40:03BubblemanHe'll say it in a much more elegant fashion than I, so hopefully he stops by later and Tony and him can Have a little conversation with you guys.

40:14Etienne FontanSo this is that Terp Cap I was telling you about.

40:17BubblemanAnd how are you liking the Terp Cap? That's a lot of Terps you have in there.

40:20Etienne FontanI did put a little too much Terps in there.

40:22BubblemanIt's very nice actually. What do you mean? That looks like 0.5 ml.

40:27Etienne FontanIt's doing well. It's a nice little number. You fill it in the top here and it just settles on the bottom and you've got the exit through here. It doesn't come through and you just rest it on and

40:45Etienne FontanYou get a nice terp flavor without that robust burn. It's very nice. I really like it.

40:51BubblemanI don't like the terps off nails. I'm not going to lie. I find it to be too much. That's interesting that that's cooling that down and making that nicer. I find that what I do enjoy is the vape exhale, putting terps in that little quartz and then putting it in on real low and letting it heat up like that. Man, the flavor I get deep, deep, deep in my lungs with that vape exhale and a little bit of a dab is unbelievable.

41:21Etienne FontanSo Michael Manning was asking, okay, so the terps go in here. They settle on this. There's a little mechanism inside here so the terps don't spill out of the bottom here. So this actually heats up the base here, heats up on the nail here. So it actually lightly evaporates and comes out through your inhale. So that's how it actually works. That's the exit.

41:47BubblemanVery cool. All these carb cap technologies. I talked about it the other day. I'm really enjoying the spinning one that JS Glass does with the offset little… That looks very nice with the carved notches all the way around it.

42:04Etienne FontanThat's the one that allows you to focus right in on right where your oil is, right?

42:09BubblemanI think that might be a different one, the one that looks like a lattice all the way around.

42:13Etienne FontanYeah, I've seen that one as well. I keep up on Instagram, so I try to follow the technology because it's changing as we speak, you know. Somebody's making something new and different that depends on the banger. People are trying to make more universal bangers. People are making the banger covers that seems to be very common for the regular XL bangers and things like that seems to be very common right now.

42:41Etienne FontanSo it's interesting to see somebody take this idea even further. And like I said, you put this thing in here so now you can have layers of terpenes. You know, what's next people? What are you doing next? You know, this is fascinating and fun what everybody's doing. So they took your technology and the terpenes and extracted terpenes and I'm already trying to figure out different ways to administer them because they also agree with you and I.

43:05Etienne FontanAnd I would probably with Tony is that directly, you know, hit terpenes on the nail head, you know, doesn't work as well. But this way you get the nice flavor and you're not, you know, singeing everything because as we know, these terpenes are not cheap.

43:19BubblemanNo, for sure they aren't. Although I do still enjoy a dip, a little rosin dipped in a terp. I'll hit that on a nail. I guess the rosin or bubble hash melting around it, that was interesting too. Side note, yesterday we must have puffed 200 bowls in a row of rosin. Then the West Coast Concentrate guys showed up with some freshly freeze-dried bubble hash. I think Tony hit one dab of that.

43:47BubblemanAnd then the alarm went off soon after that. So it was definitely like a heavier smoke on that bubble.

43:54Etienne FontanSo when the guy came in, did he see the cap on the fire extinguisher? Y'all pull that off?

44:00BubblemanNo, we pull that off. We're professionals.

44:06SpeakerSo how much do terpenes cost anyways? Because I've never been in any place where you could buy them. I only just...

44:13BubblemanThey sell for anywhere between, depending on the company, because Tony did an amazing explanation of this the other day, and how Blue River, Tony's company, which they sell for between $80 and $100 for 10 drops, 0.25 ml's,

44:30BubblemanThey buy the nicest cannabis that they can find, you know, organic and greenhouse and Cali grown. And they use that as their starting material to produce, to extract the terpenes from. Whereas different people were cleaning oil before they make the clear. You might cold trap it in the back oven and use the cold trap to capture terpenes. People here make terpenes with trim. So just like making oil, you know, a nug run versus like anything else, there are levels to the different companies.

45:05BubblemanSo some companies sell it for like $20 a vial, like for 10 drops for 20 bucks. Other companies sell it for 50 to 80. You know, other companies sell it for 80 to 100. I guess it really depends on how well it comes out, you know. Is there a distinguishable difference between each one that you're extracting or do they all have a similar taste because depending on the process, some people end up, you know, Creating this real similar, I would guess what's going on is that they're getting heated up to a point where they're turning into a certain terpenoid.

45:40BubblemanAnd then that is giving it a certain odor to it. Almost like badly cured cannabis that smells like hay. Everyone kind of remembers that. Todd's like, nope, I don't remember that at all. OG Kush for the win, baby.

46:00SpeakerYou know I'm more of a Hayes head, but I love OG too.

46:04BubblemanNothing wrong with a little OG, but I have to say if I were to take a favorite, it would be a very easy answer for me as well.

46:13SpeakerHayes. Yeah, I'm a Hayes head. Always been. Since I stepped into Amsterdam and tried Cali Mist and NL5 by Hayes, I was pretty much hooked.

46:23BubblemanI lucked out, you know, one of my first trips to Amsterdam, I met this girl and I guess I had a rude raksha bead around my neck and I was at the greenhouse. Her name was Wendy and she was like, Hey, what's up? I noticed you have a Rudraksha, a little hippie chick from like the U.S. started talking to me. She had a one Mookie Rudraksha, which is a fairly rare.

46:45BubblemanThese are the little beads in India, and they trade them and stuff, and it's kind of cool. I have a crazy story in regards to being gifted mine for the first time that I've told before, and maybe we'll tell later. But anyway, this chick was growing a garden for Neville. And so I went back to her place and it was like the Neville's Hayes garden that she had going.

47:08BubblemanAnd got talking to her and she was like, oh man, you gotta like, I gotta call Neville right now. You guys gotta talk. And that was the first conversation I actually ever had with him was over the phone and it was all about... It was all about like the Anunnaki and like breeding like koi fish and I only met him a few times in the end but back then I was like I still kind of like I didn't really know the full story of Neville and I kind of was like I just was like oh that Neville's Haze like I was just sort of obsessed with it.

47:40Etienne FontanI could see why you would.

47:41SpeakerIt's a great stream. Yeah, it was great. I used to get to play chess with him and he'd bring haze to me and we'd sit and smoke and I loved it. And he's really interesting. But yeah, breeding parrots and koi fish and racehorses was his thing. He was into breeding, not just cannabis at all. Yeah.

48:00BubblemanWell, he was really into like, well, not really into, but wanting to talk about like Zachariah Sitchin and the 12th planet and like the origins of mankind and the You know, potential alien bloodlines and like he was definitely into some out there shit.

48:19SpeakerIt is for sure. I met some pretty strange people in India.

48:25BubblemanYeah. I think the strangest shit I've ever seen in my life was in India.

48:31SpeakerYeah, I would have to agree.

48:34BubblemanWho just decides to stand on one leg for like a decade?

48:39SpeakerI saw that guy too.

48:41BubblemanHe was at the Maha Kumbh Mela.

48:45Etienne FontanAnd his arm disintegrates basically.

48:47BubblemanOh dude, his arm was like a stone. It was calcified like a rock. Although it was very sinewy and small, it was still like gnarly.

48:59SpeakerMy favorite one was a sadhu. That pulled an automobile with a chain wrapped around his penis to prove he had no sexual desire. Well, if you have to pull automobiles around with your penis to prove you have no sexual desire, what can I say?

49:16BubblemanYeah, that's out there for sure.

49:21Etienne FontanThat's a whole other level of out there.

49:24SpeakerWell, another popular one they do in India is they'll take a kid and take a small log and tie a rope to their ankle and then bring it back up and tie it around their waist until they get the lower leg to bend in a U shape. And while I was working at the free hospital in India, I got to examine several of these guys and it was pretty amazing to see what the human body is capable of doing.

49:51BubblemanYeah, well that's definitely where you can see what the human body is capable of doing in India. Especially in some of those big cities, it's just unbelievable how populated and how like every strange aspect of being exists there.

50:09SpeakerYeah, no doubt. And a lot of them that you couldn't imagine for yourself.

50:15SamNo way.

50:16SpeakerOh my God. I'm telling you.

50:20BubblemanSome shocking shit for sure.

50:24Etienne FontanWell, they take belief to a whole other level where it literally alters their own metabolism, their body, you know. They're pushing their own personal limits of their bodies, correct? All the time?

50:35BubblemanWell, the fakirs certainly are. Not all of them are fakirs, but the fakirs are definitely pushing themselves to levels of like, what the fuck?

50:46SpeakerThere's not too many figures. Most of them are created so that It's quite common in India for a beggar to find a child or steal one and then warp and twist their body and use them as a begging instrument. And that's what I found to be true with 95% of the people that were on the street begging for money who had physical deformities or deformities that were created so they could use them for that specific purpose.

51:15SpeakerI met a few fakirs over the... Period of time. And those were some very interesting people.

51:25BubblemanYeah. I've seen a group of them at the Maha Kumbh Mela in Haridwar. And they were doing just stuff I couldn't even wrap my head around. And actually didn't really even want to wrap my head around. I was just like, I think I'm just going to go hang out with those Shivite babas and smoke some charas because these fakirs, man. They're sticking knives through their body. They're hanging from hooks.

51:48SpeakerThey're... Yeah. The ones I was talking about don't show up at the Mahakumba Mela and do anything. They live up past and near Gangotri and they have holes and rocks that they've hollowed out over the years. And... We met a guy who invited us to come up to his tent, which was nearby where the Ganga spews out from underneath the glacier and comes out of the ground.

52:19SpeakerWe walked up there, and the guy had given us the invite through another person, and we went there, and when we got there, we discovered he really didn't talk. He had a little chalkboard. And he did everything, all communication with you. I know, Sam, what you're going to say. He doesn't talk, but he's using a chalkboard. But anyway, that was the scenario. And he fed us with potatoes and garlic, which he cooked up for us that night.

52:48SpeakerAnd around 2.30 or 3 o'clock in the morning, I had to go out and pee. And I was standing outside this tent in this vast field where there was a mound up the front side of us and I heard a howling sound and I looked up and there was a huge, huge being of some sort that was white and he kicked a boulder about the size of a basketball down the hill in our direction and I hurriedly went back in the tent A little out of fear and I thought the guy's, the tent's been there a long time so maybe nothing will happen.

53:21SpeakerAnd I tried to explain using the guy's chalkboard and he suddenly knew exactly what I was talking about. He drew the thing and then he told me on the chalkboard, That not to worry because they were the guards for Shambhala or something like that. And they only gave you their darshan or showed up if you were worthy of seeing them. And that they helped him all the time and kept the snow off his tent in the hardest times of the winter.

53:49BubblemanThat's tripped out.

53:51SpeakerYeah, it was an amazing experience to say the least. Sounds like a humbling moment. It was. I shook for probably six hours afterwards having seen this thing. I guess some people would say it was a Yeti, but I don't know what it was. A Yeti.

54:13BubblemanThat's what I was thinking.

54:15SpeakerYeah, I don't know. It was just around eight and a half or nine feet tall. It was 75 meters up a hillside. And I'm pretty good at gauging distance. I lived in Switzerland and in Europe and in India. So I'm conversant with the metric system even better than inches and feet. And so I looked up the hill and I was pretty sure he's about 75 meters away.

54:39SpeakerAnd he was that tall because the trees he was standing by were that tall. And the next day we walked up the hillside to look at those trees to see, to confirm that that was how big they were. And there was all kinds of huge footprints dumped around up there in the snow. Anyway. Sasquatch. Sasquatch, yeah. There was nobody to report it to or anything. Yeah. My friend Louis was with me.

55:06SpeakerHe's like, we got to report this. I'm like, yeah, go ahead.

55:11BubblemanGo ahead. You should have taken a picture of it with your cell phone, man.

55:15SpeakerYeah, dude. Those days, cell phones didn't take pictures. I know. You had to have one of those little brownie cameras with you or something. But who was expecting to run into a Sasquatch after hiking up to see this yogi who didn't talk for 20 years, only to find out that he had a chalkboard and he blabbed on it all night long?

55:40BubblemanYeah, that's interesting.

55:43SpeakerYou had to be there.

55:46BubblemanI wish I was. Are you kidding me?

55:49SpeakerYeah, you literally froze your butt off like I did. It was cold. Let me tell you.

55:54BubblemanI'm pretty good in the cold. I got to admit, being from Winnipeg, Manitoba, I can do cold. That's right. You're a Canuck. I forgot.

56:01SpeakerI'm a Canuck.

56:02BubblemanIt's like if it's minus 40, okay, that's cold. But if it's only like minus 10 or minus 15, I could sleep outside in a tent in that, no problem.

56:12SpeakerNo, the river was going right by the Ganga, and it was coming right out from underneath the glacier. And so you had this... This, it was wet, wet, cold. And we had to walk through about a quarter mile long, four inch deep creek of water sort of that surrounded all the boulders up by where the water came out of the ground. Because it was coming out so fast, it didn't all have time to leave right away.

56:39SpeakerSo we congregate around. You had all these boulders you had to walk through to get to this place. It seemed like we were tripping on something because it seemed like another worldly place. All of a sudden, you're walking through water four inches deep and there's boulders the size of Volkswagen's and houses and you have to weave your way through them. It's just by some luck because you can't hear anything because the river is just unbelievable at that particular location.

57:08SpeakerIt sounds like a freight train. And you can't even scream in each other's ears, which we discovered. And I think that had something to do with the guy using the chalkboard.

57:19BubblemanYeah, maybe he just like blew out his voice the first three months that he lived there trying to talk to his buddy across the river. Exactly.

57:28SpeakerInterestingly enough, though, although he was a yogi, he had a stash with him. And he had some kush with him that was hypnotic. It was the strongest hypnagogic I ever inhaled, I think, to that day anyway. Get any seeds? No, but you know what? I have still all a huge seed collection that I've maintained over the years, starting from Vietnam. I have a bag with about probably 700 or 800 Vietnam seeds that I got out of Thai sticks and You know, every time I would run across some interesting buds that had seeds in them while I was there, I would collect the seeds out of it.

58:15SpeakerAnd, and don't, I know what you're going to say, 20 years later, they're not going to.

58:19BubblemanOh, yeah, they do.

58:20SpeakerYeah. Last year I took two of the 22 year old ones or 24 year old seeds that I had out of that collection. And I've had even older ones, but I took them out and they both germinated and they were both females. It all depends how you keep them. I just recently germinated 25-year-old seeds and got 96% germination. I have germinated ones that are only 10, 20 years old, kept at room temperatures, and they didn't bear so well.

58:52SpeakerSome wouldn't even germinate, depending on the variety and the conditions.

58:58BubblemanYeah, I had the 20-year-old ones that I cracked from Jamaica last year or two years ago, and I only ended up getting one to crack out of the eight, but it was a female, and it's still around circulating.

59:16SpeakerHey, speaking of females circulating, are you going to call me later?

59:21BubblemanAm I a female circulating?

59:23SpeakerIs that what... No, but everything makes me think of that.

59:26BubblemanYes, I'm absolutely going to call you later. It's just a crazy busy couple of days. We're at the booth till 6 o'clock from 12 to 6, and then afterwards there's usually like a dinner, but I'll try to call you right around 6.

59:38SpeakerAll right, no rush.

59:42BubblemanYou can call and get on that. It's always good to keep things going. Look at the loud mic. Is that Sam? Let me try. Oh, yeah, that was weird how Sam's mic started coming in so loud in the background there. And what time was it, Diane? Todd? Was that her name?

1:00:00SpeakerSomething must have come up. She has kids.

1:00:03BubblemanOh, that's no problem. It happens. It happens. She's always welcome to come on any day, any way. There's no...

1:00:11SpeakerNow, for people listening, though, I think the group that she represents is Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, and it's at leap.org, I believe, and they came on the scene some years back, and I was a little impressed. I mean, I think that we need more of these people that were in the system Thank you so much for joining us.

1:00:59SpeakerA lot of the police officers, you know, make the comment that it was the drug war that destroyed the relationship between the community and the police department. And I think it's completely fucking true. And, you know, I don't like seeing my friends gardens get, you know, home invasions. I don't like seeing pot clubs get robbed. I don't like seeing any of that shit go down. And I think that as we see legalization change, You know, just like the wine industry will go from being the NASCAR drivers trying to get away from the man, you know, to just dealing with it like any other situation, you know.

1:01:32SpeakerAny other liquor store gets robbed, they call the cops, they don't get arrested for having, you know, too much whiskey on the shelf. So I think this is really where it's going to have to change to. We're going to have to normalize. And I was kind of hoping to hear a talk.

1:01:47BubblemanYeah, absolutely. Me too. I'm always looking forward to that sort of perspective of ex-law enforcement coming on and talking about, you know, that perspective of prohibition being on that side of it and then having seen the light and, you know, sharing that perspective with people is, it seems to be a fairly valuable perspective. Just like, you know, Sanjay Gupta coming out and saying, holy shit, like, man, I'm sorry for Being a part of perpetuating these lies, you know, I believe them myself.

1:02:16SpeakerHe bothers me in the sense that he wrote a really, what I think was a strong editorial against Proposition 19 before he had this epiphany of science and suddenly went back and read books. And it bothered me that he influenced so many people not to vote for Proposition 19 through what was an ignorant editorial on his part because then years later he would come out patting himself on the back saying, hey, I went and I read Proposition And now I know I was wrong.

1:02:42SpeakerAnd I was a little like, you know what? You should be held accountable because how many people in California have been arrested since we couldn't pass that because of jerks like that asserting bullshit into the system and, you know, just perpetuating the lies. So I was very disappointed about that guy, to be honest.

1:03:02BubblemanYeah, the first part for sure, but the second part coming out and doing the I apologize and now I see the light, that's exactly what you were just saying that we want to see grew.

1:03:11SpeakerNo, you're absolutely right. And we need to, you know, we need to see more cops rejecting the drug war. And that's why I was supportive of, in a sense, it's why I am supportive of LEAP. That's why I think it's a good group of people. And, you know, it's... It's weird for me. I mean, as a little kid, though, I got to say, like, you know, to frame this, there was a cop two doors down from my grandma's house, and he was always super fucking nice to me.

1:03:32SpeakerAnd I mean, super nice to my friends. And I liked him. I straight up liked him. I liked his family. I liked his wife. I liked him. And growing up, liking the cop next door was a little weird as a pot kid, but it was reality. And I'll throw this out there. You know what? He really instilled upon me, hey, look, It's a high stress job and you get what you give.

1:03:53SpeakerYou know, if you get pulled over, if you get, you know, don't fucking give him a reason to fucking fuck with you. And I got him completely. And in all the years I've been arrested, all the times, which is quite a few, I could rattle off. I've never had my ass kicked. I've never had a cop. Even be a dick to me because I was never, ever a dick to them.

1:04:13SpeakerAnd I think that it's a weird thing for a lot of people to stomach, but I have had so much experience going through the system and the system has never kicked my ass. The system's never fucking done anything other than lock me up. But you know, I will say this, going into it, knowing that I wasn't going to cooperate, I was probably extra polite because I knew I wasn't going to do what they wanted in the first place.

1:04:34SpeakerSo I really was trying to like have a smooth and experience as a conscientious objector in their system as I could, if that makes sense. I think everybody in the system there is a conscientious objector. No, not really, because a lot of them cooperate within the system, John, and they perpetuate the problem. And I think, you know, I grew up from a situation of feeling like, you know, you don't cooperate with the police, in my opinion.

1:05:00SpeakerI mean, if somebody, you know, kidnaps a girl and rapes your daughter or something, yeah, you cooperate with the police. But when you're talking about LSD and mushrooms and hash and grass, where I grew up, you don't fucking cooperate with the police. You're part of the problem. And that's just, you don't do that ever. And nothing, in my opinion, what I was taught was that it's not going to make it better.

1:05:24SpeakerYou're way better off to just shut up, do your time, go through the system and get out than you are if you start capitulating to their demands. Bluntly, I'll say it. And in my experience, it's been true. I went through prison, I got out. Yeah, no problems. You know what I mean? Every time I get busted, just go through it. Fuck it. I thought you were talking about prison.

1:05:44SpeakerThat's what I was referring to. I did. I did five years in prison. There are a lot of people in the prison that fancy themselves little cops. You know what I mean? When they're just snitches. Right. I just meant most of the people in prison are probably conscientious objectors. Now, I met a lot of assholes in prison, a lot of bank robbers. You know, see, this is weird.

1:06:06SpeakerWhen I got out of prison, John, I straight up was not anti-cop because there's a lot of people that would love to steal your truck, rape your wife, grab your shit, and fucking go party. They are, I met them. They're losers, and there are a lot of them. And I'm really glad that there are some checks in society because this place would be the wild, wild west without it.

1:06:23SpeakerAnd so I think that, you know, we as a socialized democracy need this effect. We need cops. I get it. We need firemen. We need hospitals. We need these things. But when they're used improperly, they're really fucked up sharp tools that hurt society. Yes, I agree. And listen, I don't have anything against cops. Cops are like a bottle of wine, you know. Different kinds of wine have different flavors.

1:06:56SpeakerCops, I mean, if you put yourself, take a cashier at the local grocery store, if every single person that she had to check out at the line gave her a mile of shit about it, the cashiers would have a much different reaction. I'll look to them people be as cashiers are a bunch of cocksuckers. I mean, the cops have to deal with these other people that you're talking about all the time.

1:07:24SpeakerSo they get short fuses. And I think one of the best things that ever happened for police would be if we would change Thank you for watching.

1:07:47SpeakerBetty is, you know. Can I tell you a funny? I was in Greenhouse Tolstrat, the very first greenhouse, and it was in 1990, maybe five. And I was standing there and I went in, I got some haze and I ordered an orange juice. And a guy came up next to me and ordered some haze and an orange juice. And I turned to my left and it was a Dutch cop in uniform.

1:08:08SpeakerAnd I stood there like an American, like, oh, and he just looked at me and I said, hi. And he said, hi. And he said, no, I could tell you're American. I said, how come? He goes, it just, I could tell when I, when, when you saw me, I could tell you were American. I was like, oh yeah. And I was like, you can come in here and get pot, you know, when you're in uniform.

1:08:26SpeakerHe said, I'm on my way home. I'm off work. He says, and I don't want to take my job home with me. So I stop in and I have a smoke before I go home because I'm stressed out and I don't want to bring that to my wife and kids. And I was just blown the fuck away at this, that he was so casually telling me this.

1:08:42SpeakerAnd this was 1995. And we both drank orange juices and he split.

1:08:50SpeakerJust because the show orange juice is good for you. Yeah, I was amazed, honestly. It just, you know, I think that as we move forward, you know, and I'm just against bad cops. I'm against criminals. I mean, I didn't like the guys in prison for the most part. There were a few that I fucking thought were great people. And, you know, to this day, I think are great people.

1:09:09SpeakerBut for a majority, I'm glad we have prisons. There's a lot of fucked up people in this world. And I really don't support criminal acts and any of the shit that they do and they think is glorious. So I get it. You know what I mean? Like, I really do get it. And... But again, I mean, when you see police abuse, they're, you know, under the color of authority.

1:09:29SpeakerI think it's more of an egregious act because those assholes took a oath to do no harm or to protect society or whatever the fuck they took an oath to. If they're breaking the law under badge, fuck them. They should get twice the sentences, in my opinion. Yeah, but you know, they've got the unions who regularly let them shoot people and get away with it because the thin blue line and so forth.

1:09:53SpeakerListen, I think it's fucked up in America how we don't shoot people in the legs. You know, you can shoot people in the arms. You can shoot people in places where they're not going to get up and run. But they don't. They shoot in the head. They shoot in the chest. I think that we have a fucked up society in that sense. Well, my question is always, when an orangutan or a dangerous monkey escapes from the zoo, they don't hunt him down and shoot him.

1:10:17SpeakerThey use a tranquilizer dart. But if it's another human being... It's because you care more about animals.

1:10:26SpeakerIf it's a human being, don't tranquilize him. Just take him out. Yeah, just take him out. I mean, you know, but especially like 12 and 13 year old kids with BB guns. Wait a minute. You want to know something, though? I think that's a fucked up thing. Where's the parent in that? Everybody's complaining about this 13-year-old kid. Somebody just got robbed. I don't care if you hold a fake gun on somebody or a real gun on somebody.

1:10:47SpeakerThat's fucked up. And then this kid runs away, pulls it. You know, if you're in a dark alley, you don't know if this kid's 13 or 19. You don't know if that's a 9mm or a BB gun. What the fuck kind of parent does that? What kind of parent raised a kid that he's going to have a BB gun, go jacking people, and then pull it out in front of cops and not expect to get mowed down?

1:11:07SpeakerWhat the fuck kind of parent is that? I say lock up the parents too, because if that kid was a dog, the parents would be responsible for that dog's behavior. Yeah, but you know this, these always happen in those neighborhoods, projects and so forth and so on. And so I'm sure that there's a lot more to the backstory about why... Hold on, John, wait a minute. You mean that white kids in Beverly Hills are not using BB guns to jack people on the streets of Beverly Drive?

1:11:32SpeakerDamn it. Why is that? Well, because those BB guns that they get are probably... Given by mommy and daddy along with someone they can shoot with it all the time. So they don't have to go out on the street and shoot. I think there's a wealth disparity that is causing people in these neighborhoods to go rob other people. And this is why I joked about Beverly Hills, but that's true too.

1:11:56SpeakerSure. The people in Beverly Hills have shooting ranges next to their bowling alleys and their fucking expensive mansions. Yeah. With live targets. They have hard people down where they're shooting at. And, uh, You know, I mean, the disparity of the haves and have nots in this country has gotten totally outrageous. I used to think it was crazy in India because in India Some of the richest people there have like 20-story buildings with a helicopter pad on top and marble floors and the doorknobs are made of gold.

1:12:31SpeakerBut actually, now I've had the chance to compare with what those people call rich and what the elite in this country do with money and it's no comparison. Those guys are like... I mean, yeah, they've got a 20-story building and a helicopter pad on top, but it just doesn't match up. Can I bring this up, though? Because I think with dogs and with kids, we blame the parents or the owners of dogs if their animals don't act right.

1:13:01SpeakerWhy don't we blame the parents of these kids more? Why isn't there an onus of responsibility on the people that so easily make babies? I mean, up to the age they're 21, I think the parents should be liable for any crimes their child commits. Absolutely, just like dog owners are. If my dog gets out of my gate and mauls somebody, guess who goes to jail? You know, but if my kid runs outside and shoots someone with a gun, I just sit back and go, that's fucked up.

1:13:24SpeakerWell, it's a double-edged sword. If your dog gets out, you're going to be responsible for it, of course. But what are you going to do? Keep your kids penned up in the yard? What people refuse to... No, you've got to be a good parent. That's my whole point. There should be an onus or responsibility on the parent because this is what we're not seeing. I mean, when you see so many deaths and stuff in places like Chicago, I go back to the parent.

1:13:47SpeakerMy parents taught me to respect life so much so that I don't even fucking eat animals anymore. I went a little over the top with it. So, like, in my opinions, you've got to instill these things into children. And when it's not happening, you see this shit. And so I blame parents more than anything. Well, Todd, I'm with you 100%. Every kid's behavior is homeschooled. And I don't care if it's good, bad, or otherwise.

1:14:17SpeakerI remember being, I went to a few PTA meetings when my kids were growing up, but I couldn't stand to go to them for very long because people would stand up and say, Well, my son is a good boy and I don't know why he did that to that other little girl. It doesn't make any sense. It must be something here at the school or something the teachers or something he learned in the 15 minutes that I'm not continually down his fucking neck about every book he makes.

1:14:46SpeakerAnd, you know, suppression breeds all kinds of stuff. And when people... People don't get it when they buy fast cars, cheat on their wives, drink too much that the kids are watching. I mean, the kids are watching, you know, they learn everything from you. And I was teaching a class in body work and my One son and daughter wanted to be in it. And part, one of the exercises I gave them was to stand up and say that thing which you are most afraid of in life.

1:15:25SpeakerAnd everybody was standing up and spilling their guts saying these things. And my son and daughter stood up and I said, okay, let's hear it. What are you most afraid of? And they looked at me and they said, failing in front of you. And holy crap, man. Let me tell you, I got connected in another whole way on that day to my kids and how they saw and did things.

1:15:49SpeakerI think that's beautiful, John. You know, when I was a kid, I started learning martial arts at a young age, age 12. And through my training, there came a point where my teacher was teaching us how to teach children. And one of the tenets of his philosophy in teaching children was this simple concept that you do not get... You only get respect through discipline. You only get discipline through respect.

1:16:13SpeakerIt's a really simple concept, and I do it with my dogs because in a sense, you know, when I'm standing there with the front door open, you know, three Dobermans want to run outside, but I have to make it so that they want to not disappoint me more than they want to go after the squirrel. So out of respect for me, they stand there waiting until I say go, and then go.

1:16:36SpeakerYou got three Dobies? Yeah, I do, actually. Well, Dobies just are that way. They respect you no matter what. Fucking Dobies are the smartest dogs on planet. They're extremely intelligent, and I completely agree. So are humans. And if you give kids the right lessons, they can grow up to be incredible human beings. We all have the same potential. And when you look at the potential that a human child had, I really think it's even more infectious when a parent doesn't parent.

1:17:02SpeakerWhen that homeschooling you mentioned doesn't happen. And when they're trying to, you know, kick the kid's ass in a submission, you know, instead of actually just being a good example of how to live. No, what I'm saying homeschooling is the examples of behavior that the parents put forth for the kids. I mean, I think your example is excellent. I think that, you know, we do teach at home.

1:17:24SpeakerEvery little thing we do is teaching them the way we keep our house, the way we treat other people, the way we interact. We are teaching lessons every single time we move. That's right. You know, they look at Mark that, you know, I'm sure his kids pick up on everything he does, every little nuance, you know, and I see it around my friends with kids. So the kids are picking up on a lot more than the lessons you're laying down.

1:17:44SpeakerThey're picking up on all the subtleties going on all around you. And this is where I think that when you look at places like Chicago, there has to be a reflection here because we're these kids learning this disregard for life, this irreverence towards authority. They're learning it at home. And it isn't working out too practically when they're in an alley pulling out a BB gun in front of three nervous cops who think they're going to get shot.

1:18:08SpeakerWell, you know, I heard a guru in India say that when children are taught peace in the home by their mothers, there'll be peace in the state. And when there's peace in the state, there'll be peace in the nation. So once again, I refer you back to mom and dad.

1:18:28BubblemanMom and dad went...

1:18:30SpeakerYeah, and we do teach our kids to walk past the homeless. I can't tell you how many times I've been in a store, and a little kid looked at me and smiled, and I smiled and waved back at him, and the mother would go, hey, don't talk to strangers, or that whole thing. If we teach all our kids not to talk to strangers, things are going to be fucked up in 10 or 15 years, let me tell you.

1:18:53SpeakerAren't we all strangers at some point? We all had to meet each other and become friends. That's how it all starts.

1:19:01BubblemanNow it all starts with a like on Instagram.

1:19:05SpeakerWell, likes are important, bro. Likes on Facebook are double important, bro. Dude. I'm kidding. Have I shown you my analytics? No. I'm sure the numbers are huge. Now, you know, John, I love what you're saying. You know, I think there's got to be, you know, my mom was always so kind of, Like gangster, gangster with me about the pot and stuff. She was just like, look, you can't talk about this at school.

1:19:30SpeakerWe're a team, you know? And I loved her for it. I mean, it kind of put me on the same side of my mom. She was so honestly realiztic about what I was going to deal with in the world. And it really set me up in a good way. And I just, I kind of wish more parents were doing that, being honest with their kids. You know, that poor kid that got shot in the alley.

1:19:50SpeakerI'm not being racist when I say what the fuck. I'm just saying like, Where was his parents to teach him? That's not a good thing to do. I mean, you know what I mean? At 13 years old, I could tell you I wasn't pulling no BB guns out in an alley after jacking people because I already knew that was the wrong thing to do. Yeah, well, my dad's favorite way of getting my attention about doing things that were wrong was slapping me in the back of the head when I wasn't looking and going, what the fuck are you doing?

1:20:20SpeakerAnd that always led to a, you better not do that again or I'm going to put this size 11 right straight up your ass. Those were very effective behavior changing modalities that he went in that kept me on the straight and narrow. I never even thought about pointing a BB gun. My brother Bob, the second one underneath me, however, was a Some kind of a maniac. Dad gave him a BB gun at 12 years old.

1:20:47SpeakerBy six months you couldn't find a bird within five miles of the house. So it just depends, I guess. You know, I couldn't dream of killing an animal because it just never was part of me. I haven't eaten any cow meat in over 45 years. And I'm not about to stark up because I look at these cows and they got these big, soft, wet eyes and they're looking back at me and I reach out and I'm like, no, no, no.

1:21:17SpeakerMy thing is, if you're going to eat that, you have to be willing to kill it yourself. Dress it out. If I'm not willing, I just barely get by with fish once in a while. I'm not killing anything big. As far as I'm concerned, everything's sentient. There's no such thing as non-sentient. Even the fucking rocks are sentient. It just depends on how you look at it. Sure.

1:21:40SpeakerWhat about the Buddhists that won't kill animals, but... If a car ran over a deer, for example, they would eat it. Well, they're very practical in that sense, Sam. As much as they believe in not killing, they also believe in not wasting. And so true Buddhists are funny like that. They'll do a lot of very strange things like that that a normal person would look at and go, huh?

1:22:09SpeakerBut it's just another way of looking at life. They look at life as a gift and What's left behind is a husk, and it shouldn't be wasted. If it's needed, it's needed, and let's use it. I know. You think that when a person is dying, the id screams out, and that's the last thing before the dark. I know.

1:22:35SpeakerYeah, but it's a Buddhist id. A Buddhist id. I don't know that... Any of those parts of the mind are religious, but I don't know. Look, once when I was in India, this guy said, let's go see the Nagababa. It's a guy who can handle a cobra. And I'm like, well, okay. I wasn't real in a big hurry to go see this because I'd seen the shows on the street, but this guy was supposed to be some kind of special guy.

1:23:10SpeakerAnd so we went there, and as I walked up, To where the cave was where they directed us. After I got about within 10 feet of the cave entrance, somehow it got by me. I looked around and there was about 70 or 80 cobras in the rocks and in the sand and dirt all around the cave. And this Naga Baba was sitting in the opening of the cave and had cobras all over him.

1:23:35SpeakerAnd I froze, quite frankly, with you. I was, you know, I was forming multiple bricks in my colon. At that moment, because there was no way to get away from all these cobras that I could see, and I'd already stepped in there. And the Baba motioned me to come forward and sit down on a rock across from him. And somehow my body was not automatic, and it went over and sat down, probably because I was in abject fear.

1:24:03SpeakerAnd believe me, I was in an abject fear of Vietnam when bullets were flying. But with 90 cobras, I was in abject fear. Thank you for watching.

1:24:22SpeakerCalled to them to come and they're like, no, dude, take some pictures.

1:24:31SpeakerAnd we're not going to come over there. But it was very interesting because the abject fear thing finally went away and the cobras weren't hooding on me. They were just crawling around between my sandaled feet, which was, I was thinking to myself, why did I wear sandals today? But anyway, there you go. Well, I saw cobras quite a few times in India, usually being managed by people.

1:24:59SpeakerBut I never handled one myself. And number two, I did smoke King Cobra venom, which was extracted by snake babas who put it on rice paper and you could smoke it in a chillum and it's a psychedelic downer. It's pretty strong.

1:25:22BubblemanA psychedelic downer.

1:25:25SpeakerWell, the guy did put two cobras around my neck at one point in time. And we were at a sort of a snake show. This is after I kind of lost my fear of them. And there they were around my neck. And I sort of went into some kind of trance. I leaned back and my friend said that my eyes just rolled up in my head. And once again, I could palm that off to abject fear.

1:25:53SpeakerBut I don't think I was in abject fear at this time. And when the guy went at the cobra's back, They hooded on him and he couldn't take them off me. And I had to reach up and take one cobra at a time off and hand it back to the guy. And that's as close as I've come to. Yeah, I'm not in a trance. But anyway. A lot closer than I've ever been.

1:26:14SpeakerI mean, I might have touched one one time. But I never had one in my hands and never under any circumstances. But I did smoke it a couple times, the venom. Yeah, I never got around to doing that. Hey, everybody. Diane, welcome, welcome, welcome. Thanks for actually joining us. I'm so sorry for being late, guys. Normally, I'm not a flake. I had a little car and grandkid thing this morning.

1:26:39SpeakerNo problem. Thanks for joining us. This is Mark. Mark is our host. I don't know if you guys have ever met.

1:26:46BubblemanHey, Mark. Hello, welcome, and don't feel bad at all. We do this for hours, so anytime you can show up is wonderful.

1:26:53SpeakerWell, the good news is I'll be with you guys for at least an hour, if not longer.

1:26:59BubblemanExcellent, excellent. Well, welcome. We're definitely happy to have you here.

1:27:02SpeakerWell, could you tell us a little bit, could we start off by me asking you, you know, what is Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, when did it start, and what's its mission? Sure. Law Enforcement Against Prohibition started in 2002, and it was started... Retired American police officers and one active duty Canadian police officer who had spent career in the criminal justice system and recognized that our drug policy very, very specifically was the most abject policy failure in American policing.

1:27:36SpeakerAnd so they started a nonprofit educational organization whose role and goal is to educate not just policymakers and other law enforcement officers, but the public in general about why the drug war is a failure and why we need to move to a system of control regulation, sensible regulation, mind you, You know, and treating all substance use and abuse as a public health problem and not a criminal issue.

1:28:09SpeakerI think that's huge. So you really are, this is not, you know, hardly just about cannabis relief. This is about the entire drug war being a functional problem in society, really. I don't know how else to put it. Yes, and you know what, Todd, that's exactly it. You know, is cannabis policy, although it appears to be such a huge part of what we do, is only really one of the small things that we do.

1:28:36SpeakerThis year in California, for example, the last two years in this legislative session, I've worked on civil asset forfeiture reform, and it looks like Governor Brown will likely sign that bill. I've worked on harm reduction, you know, needle exchange, safe injection facilities, Uh, police reform. So it, you know, we're taking a broad view that the drug war has really caused a, um, really, um, deep division between us and our constituents in the community we're supposed to be working with and, and protecting, not just policing mindlessly.

1:29:15SpeakerWell, can I, you said us, you know, you're not just a volunteer, Philippe. Can you, you tell people what your background is? Sure, I spent almost 22 years in law enforcement for Redondo Beach Police Department in Southern California. And I started out as a patrol officer. By the time I retired, I was the first female lieutenant. I ran a special investigations unit as a sergeant, which was our career criminal narcotics unit.

1:29:40SpeakerAnd so I think that was between my family history with my brother who was dual diagnosed and had both mental health and substance abuse issues. I saw really the failures both on a personal and professional level of our policy and recognized I had no idea that LEAP even existed. Until the Proposition 19 campaign in 2010 when I went and saw a debate between Judge Jim Gray and one of the police chiefs here in Orange County and I went and introduced myself and literally that week I was then speaking for Lee during Prop 19.

1:30:19SpeakerThat's a fast transition. Thank you for that. That's pretty quick. It was. It was so interesting because Neil Franklin, who's been our executive director for quite a long time now, happened to be in town and I think that what they recognized is here I was, I was a mom, a grandmother, female, fairly conservative, Republican in Orange County and It really, I came on board with LEAK just believing that cannabis needed to be legalized, and I was still kind of iffy on the issue of the further drug war, but I really, once I got over the initial I need to talk about this and look at it.

1:31:07SpeakerI looked at the death of my brother in 2007 that probably could have been prevented if there were more mental health resources and if we would have treated his chronic substance abuse disorder from a public health perspective. I think a lot of us can relate to I had a cousin die of a heroin overdose. Yeah. I really do think that criminalizing some drugs, I've always called it a war on and I put in parentheses some drugs because if you're a tobacco, alcohol addict, Thank you so much for joining us.

1:31:59SpeakerAnd I feel that the whole drug war needs to end. I haven't been much of an activist for the entire drug war, but I do support what DPA and others have done. I see the importance of taking addicts out of the criminal justice system when they're not criminals. Correct. It's so interesting because, you know, can we talk about cannabis exceptionalism or marijuana exceptionalism? I think that's one, as much as I absolutely, you know, let me be completely clear.

1:32:32SpeakerIf I get... Thank you for joining us today.

1:32:57SpeakerAnd perpetuates the we're better than those people and kicks them to the curb. And so one of the issues that LEAP is really, really afraid of is once we really kind of win this issue around cannabis, that people are going to forget that there are so many other harms with drug prohibition and they're going to become apathetic and not work to completely blow up the drug war.

1:33:26SpeakerI have mixed feelings about that. I mean, for me, I always used to run around saying that cannabis was the cornerstone of drug prohibition. And if that we took away cannabis prohibition, you know, you as law enforcement, I don't mean to pigeonhole you, but law enforcement would lose 80% of the budgets. Because when you start looking at the way the money was spent through the 80s and 90s, Thank you so much for joining us.

1:34:02SpeakerYou know, cocaine, LSD, LSD being really not the one, but heroin, cocaine, stuff like that, it really doesn't have that much of an impact on society, statistically. Tobacco, alcohol, way bigger killers. You know, legal pharmaceutical drugs, way bigger killers than we see in cocaine or heroin overdoses. And I don't mean to say, hey, forget about those poor people that are, you know, my cousin was one of the ones that died of heroin, but you're always going to deal with people that, you know, Thank you for watching.

1:34:50SpeakerIt was, you know, it took them away from the murders. I mean, if you look at the statistics for how many of the murders they are solving now, the number has dropped substantially to where it was in like the 60s, because now I think that law enforcement is distracted with things that really don't matter, which is, is a person consuming heroin or wine on their path to killing themselves?

1:35:15SpeakerIt's all about control. It's control. It's not about the drug, which one it is, and how many people it kills. It's about the control issues. And the elites want control of the system. The people who hire people to work in factories don't want someone to come to work smoking pot or whatever. It's okay if you go home and get completely blasted on alcohol and maybe a little cocaine as long as you show up the next morning to work in the factory and you don't seem impaired.

1:35:42SpeakerWe have to get back to Let's look at this word, impaired, and what does it actually mean? Because these people are using these words in a double way. I mean, it's doublespeak. They say impaired when they want to make you look bad, but when it's the other way, when you're trying to understand, well, I wasn't really impaired. But they want to use those old definitions against you.

1:36:11SpeakerBelieve me, until the day comes that all policemen can roll one up and smoke it, we're going to have a problem with law enforcement.

1:36:24SpeakerThey are, if they aren't allowed to do it, they're not going to be overly thrilled about turning a blind eye towards you. Or if you do something to piss them off, they're going to go, okay, well, that's federally illegal, so I'm going to arrest you based on that. You got a lot of people out there looking to get their pound of flesh, and a lot of them work in law enforcement.

1:36:45SpeakerAnd a lot of those people have never tried any of these things and have no idea. They've only got what the preacher told them. In church on Sunday about how you should feel about these damn pot smokers. Well, so can I agree and disagree in a couple of things? So I think you're right. And I think that I would like to be very honest about, and Todd and I have talked.

1:37:12SpeakerI mean, I went to school in the 1970s. I smoked pot. I smoked a lot of pot. You know, even throughout my whole career, up until the time where real strict zero tolerance laws We're enacted. Street-level law enforcement doesn't necessarily in particular care about marijuana. It's the special organization. It's the narcotics officers. It's the police chiefs. It's people that have... These really, really entrenched interests. And I'm in grad school right now.

1:37:48SpeakerI think I have probably a dozen FBI agents and police officers in a cohort of about 60. And every single one of them will tell you, we don't care about pot. In fact, we want clarity on it. And so, you know, it's, I think that that Like kind of teachers unions sometimes or police unions is you have a small percentage of people who are spokespeople that aren't necessarily representing everyone's interests.

1:38:16SpeakerNow, to your point, I think that the problem and the biggest opposition from law enforcement on marijuana is it removes a tool to probable cause. And that's the thing that I talk about all the time because I call that lazy policing. In fact, I was on my way to Sacramento literally two weeks ago and a guy who retired deputy sheriff now working for the state and I'm going through all my Proposition 64 stuff because I was going to an editorial board and literally the guy looks over and goes, Let me tell you the number one reason why police officers continue to oppose this.

1:38:56SpeakerIt removes the tool for us to get in and search people. And that to me is unconstitutional policing. And, you know, Todd, you're right. If we remove cannabis out of it, you know, last year I think we had about 1.5 million people Drug arrests across the nation. But that's for everything. Cultivation, sales, distribution, manufacturing, possession. But 83% of all those were for possession only. And then if you look down the numbers further, it's almost over 700,000 was for some form of cannabis.

1:39:29SpeakerAnd so we need to remove cannabis out of there. And, you know, it's a spearhead. It's the tipping point. We're using cannabis as a way to blow up the entire drug war. Period. Simple. End of story. But we still need to... We're using it. It will blow up the drug war. It's been the cornerstone of this whole bullshit forest. And I feel like, you know, again, when you take cannabis hemp out of the equation, the cocaine, the heroin, there's not an epidemic there.

1:39:58SpeakerThere is nowhere near the kind of use or death rates to justify the kind of spending that they've spent on the drug war in the past 30 years. It's over. Todd, there's one thing about this that stands out. And that is that they are using pot as a substitute for good police work. Yes. And they can smell something, so they're going to go in and bust the place up.

1:40:26SpeakerInstead of doing good police work and getting some solid evidence, they're using this as a prophylactic for a way of entering into your nether regions.

1:40:35Etienne FontanDiane, when did you, you were an officer, and of course, when you came into the police force, of course, you were in the height of the drug war there. At what point did you personally cross over? When did you actually personally go, wait, this is really wrong? Because you had to have been an officer at the time.

1:40:53SpeakerWell, you know, there's a couple things. I think, look at my philosophy. One of the things that's really problematic in law enforcement right now is law enforcement, you know, my career was 1983 to 2004. So yeah, I got the height of the drug war. And the thing that zero tolerance policies did is it removed Discretion from law enforcement that allowed us to not ruin people's lives. So, for example, when I was a school resource officer, I started a school resource officer program in 1994, best four years of my career.

1:41:35SpeakerI still have kids that I work with that find me on Facebook. You know, I get invited to weddings. That was my kind of my line in the sand, which was, oh my God, we are expelling and arresting kids out of school for marijuana. And that, and so, you know, and then I look back at my experience in high school, which was, you know, I graduated from South High School in Torrance.

1:42:03SpeakerI grew up in Redondo Beach. Every single drug was available in the 1970s. It was just different. We had Quaaludes and, you know, Bennies and cocaine. And there was heroin. There was, I mean, everything was available from 75 to 79 when I was in high school. And in 1994, when I was a school resource officer, everything was available to these kids, except maybe it wasn't Quaaludes. It was a different, you know, opioid or downer.

1:42:33SpeakerAnd so, unbeknownst to me, my first semester on campus, my agency with the LA County Sheriffs run an undercover operation on our high school campus. I had no idea I had two undercover cops. I'm setting up this program. I don't know who these people are. And then like the night before they're going to do a bust, I get brought in. And it was like, first of all, how unsafe is that for me as the person who's on that campus?

1:43:04SpeakerAnd how unsafe is it for those two officers who... Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

1:43:40SpeakerAnd it was kind of like, you know, the drug lord, whack-a-mole, drug user whack-a-mole, drug seller whack-a-mole. It was like, are you kidding? We wasted all this time, all this energy, and it didn't matter. And so, and then in that high school experience, all of a sudden we're now into the zero tolerance policy because the federal government came out with drug-free zones. Is that if you don't kick these kids out, you're going to lose funding.

1:44:11SpeakerI mean, everything in our policies is back down to money. And so we ruined kids' lives, ruined them, because we know that if you expel kids or send them to jail, they are much more likely not to graduate from high school. And that is almost 100% guaranteed that you're going to end up in the criminal justice system because you're unemployable.

1:44:35Etienne FontanThat had to be gut-wrenching to witness and just be wallowed in.

1:44:39SpeakerYeah, it was hard because there's, you know, always with... I guess this was always my mantra is, is I was, I really believe in community policing. I think that policing done right is a necessary part of our society because I cannot say enough good things about people that I know that have gotten shot. I've had officers, friends who've been killed trying to protect other people. Okay. But this drug war has caused Thank you so much for joining us.

1:45:28SpeakerBut yet I recognize that we need police officers who want to be there, want to change the system. So, you know, LEAP is actually getting active duty police officers now who are joining us. We have a police in Missouri who's a LEAP speaker. You know, and we're starting to see at least in our international branches, active duty law enforcement, judges, prosecutors, who are working to change the system.

1:45:56SpeakerSo I think that our voice is really critical, similar to like the Vietnam veterans who were against the Vietnam War. You know, we can... Thank you so much for joining us.

1:46:18SpeakerWell, do you think there's a culture of understanding that's happening now that we're all walking around with smartphones and we can access information that it's more comfortable for people that are active duty to come out and, you know, so to speak, kneel during the national anthem and say, I think there's a problem here, rather than just stand there blindly and say, I'm not going to sit down.

1:46:38SpeakerBecause really, that's the problem. When I bump into cops and I go through the system, I had a lot of very nice experiences with individual people that happened to be cops that were very nice to me. And I never had a problem with the individuals. It's just when they put their collective bureaucratic hat on, it's a dunce cap. And they all walk around doing whatever they're told and they don't think.

1:47:00SpeakerThat's the problem I have. And, you know, hearing that there are active duty officers stepping up and saying, yeah, this is, it would be like in Nuremberg. I mean, you know, and I brought this up to the DEA that were questioning me back in 1997. We had to meet them one day for a, to tell them we wouldn't cooperate. And I asked them this, I said, you know, At what point don't you feel culpable for the crimes you're committing on society?

1:47:26SpeakerBecause when you look at the Nuremberg trials, they didn't get the option of saying, oh, well, hey, fuck it, I was following orders. They got prosecuted for what they did. Even though they were following orders, and I wonder when that's going to happen here in this country. And I'm not trying to put the Otis on you. I realize you're former law enforcement, but there has been a lot of egregious shit happening under the color of law and the color of the drug war.

1:47:52SpeakerAnd at what point will those people be held accountable, in my opinion? Like they were... Well, I think that's coming real soon, Todd. I think you got people, you got vast groups of people talking about and looking at accountability in the police and law enforcement all the way up to and including the DEA and the other secret super cops because all of them over the years as you look at it have had a bunch of rotten apples in them that have All the stuff that they do, everything that a police officer on the beat or out in public does is okayed by somebody higher up.

1:48:31SpeakerThey do not encourage free thinking in the police department. They encourage follow the rules and do what we tell you to do and do how we tell you to do it. And that's the mentality. They have this and they're not given very much room because if they don't, Report every little thing and like take kids out of high school and search their lockers. The people that are upstairs who are handing down these orders rain hell on them.

1:48:59SpeakerAnd you just got a bunch of guys who are trying to do the right thing, but they're in between a rock and a hard place. Yeah, when you're trying to feed your family and keep your job and not lose your retirement and, you know, all this time you invested into it is going to go to nothing if you start speaking against the system that's paying your checks.

1:49:17SpeakerI get it. I get it completely. But now Leap is providing a safe space where there can be conscientious objectors and creating a conversation where even active duty cops can step in and say, you know what, guys, we've got to think twice about this. We've got to... We really got to divide up pot and pot smokers and hippies away from criminals because the criminal justice system was built and put together to take care of rapists, murderers, killers, bank robbers.

1:49:48SpeakerAnd now you've got them putting a bunch of hippies who are smoking pot and who are growing weed because they like it and it's giving them a way to make a living and pot opens your eyes sooner or later if you start smoking it. And we're putting them in with the killers and the rest of them. And furthermore, what's even worse is it's getting crowded in jail, so they're letting the people that have been in the longest out first.

1:50:11SpeakerGuess who that is? That's the killers and the rapists and the murderers. And instead, we're packing it with pot busts. I mean, it's costing us all. We're all paying through the nose for the police to strictly focus on marijuana. And people who are using it. We got to take it out of their hands. We got to defund the DEA away from control of all this. And then law enforcement will come back into focus and they'll start solving these cases and finding these people that are doing things because you won't be able to go to work and go, let's see, all we got to do is round up some hippies today and we've earned our paycheck.

1:50:50BubblemanYeah, and if a band like Fish of the Grateful Dead was rolling through, it became easier. It was like picking, shooting fish in a barrel. I was at a show in Spokane where law enforcement had binoculars in the buildings surrounding the parking lot. And they had people laying on the ground with earbuds and it was just like, yeah, two more guys over to the left. That guy right there, grab him.

1:51:11BubblemanIt was like, boom. And that was when they had the go three for three, which was like, all you need to do is bring me three more people. So now all of a sudden these dudes that just got like busted are now basically like have been hired by the law enforcement. Look, you're now law enforcement. I need you to go out there and get me three more people.

1:51:30BubblemanThank you for joining us.

1:51:51BubblemanI always found them to be like family, which is they're a very tight-knit group. Of course, if you're in, you're extremely in. I was the son of Paulette, who was the chief operator. She was communications for all of them, no matter what group they were in. A-side, B-side, didn't matter. She was going to be on the phones, and they understood who she was. And so I got a different perspective growing up.

1:52:15BubblemanThank you so much for joining us.

1:52:37BubblemanYeah, it's not the right energy for law enforcement to be enforced on. I mean, the fact that alcohol is probably responsible for 60 or 70% of 911 calls worldwide, and maybe that's being generous. My mom, who worked in Winnipeg, Manitoba, she said it was closer to like 85, 90%, which is incredible.

1:53:00SpeakerYeah, I would tell you that my... Experience my history. And this is why it's so important for voices to be heard that speak to probably about 85% of my presentations are, you know, in a public policy type of environment where I'm also speaking to very conservative business groups and rotary clubs, you know, and yeah, colleges and I do do a lot of cannabis stuff. But speaking to the crowd is not, even though it helps, because I think we can bridge that gap to try to get law enforcement support back to people that we have traumatized and marginalized.

1:53:49SpeakerI always share the story in my almost 22 years of law enforcement experience. I never once went to someone's house who was under the influence of cannabis, you know, that beat their wife, their children, molested them, or raped and pillaged the neighborhood. You know, even a marijuana-only drug under the influence, you know, I never... It was in combination with other drugs or with alcohol. Alcohol by far is the worst drug.

1:54:18SpeakerThat's why... I'm retired. I got into too many fights, car crashes, drugs, that type of stuff. I find alcohol to be much more dangerous to our communities. That's a good point because to me the government doesn't care personally about you. They come in and intervene if you're doing, Thank you for watching.

1:54:58SpeakerAnd it was perfectly okay. You know, but my cousin doing her heroin, absolutely, you know, criminal 101. And what was the end result? Nothing. They both died. There was the same end result is what I should mean. That's what kind of bothers me. Because if it really was this intervention of caring, you know, put down those cigarettes, you're gonna, you're gonna ruin your lungs. It isn't though.

1:55:20SpeakerIt's here's the cigarettes. Here's the liquor. It don't get crazy. That's the spirit. And then, you know, I smoke a joint behind the bus, the dumpster, and I'm getting shaken down. But Todd, you know, one of the things about people who get involved in policing and in the police department, and same thing with congressmen and senators, the minute they get the badge and the gun, they somehow feel like they're experts in psychology, medicine.

1:55:53SpeakerAnd a whole host of things that they just learned about the day before yesterday, especially with congressmen with the things like, is there such thing as global warming? And their thing is, well, I'm not a scientist, but... I mean, you got a lot of police officers who think that they're expert psychologists and doctors. I mean, I once was stopped in the middle of Montana going seven miles over the speed limit.

1:56:23SpeakerAnd because I have a shitload of pills that I carry around with me, the guy... Zeroed in on the pills. He wanted to look in the front seat. And I was a little less on the paranoid side. So I said, okay, now he's like, okay, well, what are all these pills? And I go, they're all, it's clearly says on the bottle, they're prescription medications. And he says, these are from out of state.

1:56:50SpeakerThey're from somewhere else. He goes, I'm going to have, you're going to have to come to the station with me. Then, so I followed him to the station and then they looked at the pills and I said, by the way, I got to take my evening heart pill, there's time for it. And they said, no, we can't let you take any medications until you get seen by the jail physician.

1:57:11SpeakerAnd This is a big problem. We don't understand that people have health conditions and mental conditions and the police just go about taking care of the situation the same way they do with everybody else. Get out the zapper or pull out a gun. And we've got to get away from that, and we've got to get back to policemen who are so melded into the community that they don't need to ask you any questions because they know what's going on, and it's already been understood and made okay that these certain things are the way they are.

1:57:45SpeakerWe don't do that.

1:57:46BubblemanAnd that's exactly what our federal police doesn't do. The RCMP in Canada... If you're an RCMP officer, they'll give you two years in a zone. They don't want you getting comfortable in an area. They don't want you meeting... Because back in the day, 20 plus years ago, it was exactly like that. One cop on this one island, and it was like everyone knew him, and it was like cool.

1:58:06BubblemanOf course, he couldn't do super stupid shit. It was good that he was there, but he wasn't going around interfering and harassing with people because that wasn't his job. His job was just to be like, okay, I'm a policeman. If I need to get called in, I'll go do it. Otherwise, I'm just a community... A person that's here to be helpful, and that's the way it was, and it got changed, and now it's not that way anymore.

1:58:31BubblemanLocal areas get a couple years with an RCMP, and then he or she gets shipped to the other side of the country or another place.

1:58:39SpeakerThat sounds a lot like the kind of stuff they did during World War II in prison camps, doesn't it? Thank you for watching.

1:59:08SpeakerMaybe it's just me, but I came from a time when a lot of people weren't doing those sort of things. Back, you know, in the 60s and the 50s, when I was growing up, very seldom did that kind of stuff come up. The police were, it was a whole different focus. Well, yeah, you know what, and you're right. And so I think one of the things that...

1:59:36SpeakerWe have a very subculture. Say, you know, let's say that, John, the hippie culture from the days, you know, from a societal standpoint, subcultures develop. Law enforcement has its own subculture. That needs to be drastically changed. We need to... Hold law enforcement accountable that if somebody sees someone doing something wrong and they don't say something, they need to be held accountable for that, for not putting forward.

2:00:09SpeakerBut I think the other issue is we have to remember that this whole drug war back up, you know, hundreds of years is law enforcement largely ignored cannabis up until the 1960s and Richard Nixon and political... We had in the changes in our society, you know, it is society changed tremendously and Nick did that to gain political power, no different than Trump is doing now. You know, I think this is what scares me very drastically about our political system is what happens if Trump is elected.

2:00:52SpeakerYou know, he says that he'll respect states' rights, but I don't believe it. I think, you know, I think that if Trump gets elected, it's going to be sad. Thank you so much for joining us.

2:01:30SpeakerOrganizations that hold a tremendous amount of political power and they actively use lobbyists to undermine the system. And that to me is completely unethical. Well, listen, Diane, you know, in 1877 in Texas, the Texas Rangers, they had this thing of shooting people in the leg, like Todd was talking about. And one guy, one senator asked him, why do you guys just shoot them in the leg? And this, I forget the guy's name now, but he was a famous Texas Ranger guy.

2:02:04SpeakerAnd he says, listen, he says, our job is to catch these guys and disable them, keep them from doing crimes. We're not executioners. I think a lot of cops today forget that. And I think that's a great point, you know, but you know that, This is where I think the culture of policing in America has to change incredibly. And I think it's only going to change when things like the drug war are taken away from them as tools of abuse because the drug war has been a big stick that they've really clumped over the heads of the chosen few that they've wanted to extend their authority over.

2:02:37SpeakerAnd one of the main reasons I've been such an advocate of Proposition 64 passing, even though it's not, you know, the utopian lottery ticket to cannabis freedom we'd all like, it's going to stop Bigoted police from being able to harass minorities for amounts of cannabis that I give away. Well, I wouldn't bet on that. Oh, no, it is. Listen, you know what? Look, you can't have open containers in public and stuff.

2:03:03SpeakerSo if you're, you know, some teenage kid walking down the street with your 40 ounce, you're going to get harassed. You're going to get pulled over. You're going to get stopped. I think that the marijuana laws have been giving these people carte blanche to be able to harass kids. I mean, if you look at statistics from when Schwarzenegger decriminalized in 2010, on average, California has been arresting between 20 20 and 30,000 people a year for what's considered misdemeanor amounts of marijuana possession.

2:03:33SpeakerAnd I would almost guarantee 80 or 90% of those people aren't white kids from Beverly Hills. And Todd's right. I just actually looked at stats for this because of all the work that I'm doing in the editorial. Interesting enough, in California is Latino teenage boys are the ones that are being targeted for misdemeanor tickets. Then you have African Americans, and then you have whites. And so, and it's in the age range of under 18.

2:04:08SpeakerSo one of the things if we care about our kids is what we have to recognize is If and when it passes is if you're under 18, you're going to be treated the same under that infraction level. And if you have an amount that's over is you're not, you can't go to jail, you can't go to juvenile hall. You know, the worst thing that may happen to you is you'll have to do community service.

2:04:35SpeakerThank you so much for joining us.

2:04:55Speakeris you have to go out and do it yourself you have to have the fiscal resources you know and the know-how on how to get it done now it'll just happen if proposition 64 happens that is one of the parts of the law that will enact yes that's fantastic i did you know what it's interesting that you say this because that i didn't realize and another thing i didn't realize is that cases would be dismissed all up and down the state by prosecutors because they One don't want to try the cases.

2:05:27SpeakerThey don't want to go through the expenditures of their budget. They would rather go after more problematic people. And, you know, I was in court because I'm the only one that got prosecuted out of the Oakstradam University case for growing cannabis. And The prosecutor flat up said, you know, let's put it off till after the election because if this passes, we being the prosecutors are going to make motions to dismiss cases up and down the state.

2:05:51SpeakerAnd I was kind of surprised by that. But if you look at Colorado, when you look at Washington State, that's exactly what happened after the respective propositions passed as law. And in addition, literally at 12.01 a.m. on the night of the election, if it passes, That will be able to start requesting expungements or resentencing of their cases.

2:06:22SpeakerStatistically, right now, we just got the information from Department of Corrections. There is currently nobody in Department of Corrections that is there, at least that's what they're telling us, for cannabis-related offenses. I don't necessarily agree with that. I think that they're kind of skewing the stats, but a lot of people now, because of AB 109 and realignment, are doing their time in county jails. But if you have a felony that's being reduced to a misdemeanor, you can get that immediately resentenced.

2:06:59SpeakerSo that's another positive thing. And you know, so from, it's not perfect. I will be the first to agree, but I think from a social justice standpoint, it's going to do a tremendous amount. And when we talk about the complexity of the problem, I don't think there's ever going to be a silver bullet that takes this monster down. So it's really going to be an incremental change that's going to happen that we can't avoid.

2:07:25SpeakerI mean, there are so many problems from asset forfeiture to police using bigoted laws against minorities that all have to be addressed. And it's going to take time to do that. Go ahead, John. Todd, I think there is one silver bullet that could do the job. And I myself have been working towards it diligently. And I post online about it all the time. And that is to allow our vets Thank you so much for joining us.

2:08:18SpeakerI mostly agree with you about that, Todd, because nothing really changes unless it's long periods of time and all the people from the original idea died. But anyway, I think what's going on is that a lot of people in the VA are pushing towards the idea of allowing VA doctors to prescribe for vets. And I think that that can knock the giant to its knees and refocus law enforcement away from one fucking excuse my French thing, marijuana, and refocus on what it is we originally hired them to do.

2:08:54SpeakerAnd that's to keep us safe, make sure we're all okay. We can walk in the neighborhood at night and our kids are safe. And they're not just out buying new tanks from the Department of Homeland Security and crushing your front door because someone said you had a joint in there. And there's a couple of things that law enforcement just doesn't seem to be getting onto right now.

2:09:18SpeakerAnd that is they are not an occupying force here, goddammit. They are people we hire and they better start paying attention. I don't care how entrenched they are. Change is coming.

2:09:32SpeakerI agree. You know, I think it's ironic when we're talking about vets coming home and have to fight for their freedom to medicate themselves with something as benign as cannabis in the face of the government oppressing them. Makes me wonder why they left the country to go fight for whatever freedom they thought they were fighting for in the first place because ironically when they come back they realize they don't have any friggin' freedom at all.

2:09:55SpeakerI mean, ATN, one of my best friends is a vet. I mean, he's been self-medicating since I met him. He's been speaking about it for as long as I've known him. And I think it's been, you know, it wasn't easy for him. He had to take a bold step forward and say, fuck you, I won't do what you tell me. And this is what's helping me. And I've always supported you for it, ATN, honestly.

2:10:15Etienne FontanHe's not black too, is he? No, it's me. And it costs me all my benefits. But, you know, in the end, I'm still working behind the scenes and working with other vets groups. And we are working behind the scenes on making sure the rest of the vets are taken care of. Instead of fighting for myself and bitching about myself, I went out and I fought for everybody else in the end.

2:10:36Etienne FontanAnd we're going to continue to do so. Well, that was the whole reason. Because that's the only way it's going to end. I'm not going to win it for me. I'm going to win it for everybody. And then I have it for me.

2:10:44SpeakerYou went into the service for the very same reason, didn't you? You went in for everybody else. You didn't go for yourself.

2:10:51Etienne FontanCorrect. I signed my name on the dotted line and wrote a blank check up to my life.

2:10:56SpeakerThat's right. I volunteered. I was regular Army. My serial number started off RA. That's because my dad was in the Army and I grew up on a goddamn Army base, eh, Mark? Yeah. I didn't know any better when the moment came and my dad on my 17th birthday dropped me off in front of the recruiting station with a $20 bill and said, you're on your way in the world, you're a man now.

2:11:19SpeakerAnd the next thing I knew I was in Vietnam. And I learned a lot about life the very, very difficult way of a very young man who didn't know shit from Shinola and maybe still doesn't. Until where the current thing is. And I've watched all these changes go through. I've watched how police officers used to be and how they are now. And now they've elevated and militarized and elevated themselves so that when they talk to you, it's like you're talking to from the people from the Politburo or the Nazi SS guys.

2:11:57SpeakerI mean, they don't, there's no human, there's no human, There's very little, Todd. I know you... I've been arrested. Listen, I've been raided three times since I got out of prison, John. I mean, I've had a lot of contact with them myself, and I get what you're saying, but in my experience, actually, I met a lot of human beings. And I get what you're saying totally, but it's not always that case.

2:12:23SpeakerAnd, you know, this is the rift we need to heal because this is really the problem is the perception. And when perception is so egregious, you can't get over that wall. That's really a problem. So I think we've got to see them for the humans they are. So, so John, John, John, Any total evidence says we've got more goddamn people in jail for marijuana than the whole rest of the fucking planet has in jail for everything.

2:12:50SpeakerJohn, it costed two million while I was in prison there. It costed... It crested two million while I was a prisoner. I get what you're saying entirely. It's why since I got out of prison, I've been tirelessly making documentaries, writing books, and being an advocate for change. I get it. But at the same time, I didn't run into a gazillion monsters like you're saying. I ran into human beings that were having problems dealing with their job.

2:13:16SpeakerAnd when I was cool with them, they were cool with me. And I mean... I had weird experiences, dude. I got arrested by a cop, no shit, in 99, who had me in the back of the car and said to me, he's sitting in the front of the car having a weird moment and I didn't know what was going on. I basically got arrested for speeding, going down the highway on the way to LAX.

2:13:35SpeakerAnd he says to me, my dad just died of pancreatic cancer and the last conversation I had with him was about you. And I don't know how to deal with this right now. And I just sat there going, holy shit. And I just said, man, I'm really sorry about your dad. And he was like, dude, he totally admired you and what you were doing. And I can't believe you're in my car right now.

2:13:53SpeakerAnd he ended up being a super nice guy to me. And he was just having a really human moment, dude. I watched the guy fucking start crying over his dad dying. And it's hard for me to hate people when I'm dealing with that kind of shit in my life. So there's a lot going on because we've got so many goddamn people in jail for it. Why are they focusing on that many people for this one crime?

2:14:15SpeakerThen go paint the prosecutors in their suits and the judges in their black robes is the real problem because they're capitulating to this. They're the ones locking us up. They're the ones that are fucking doing this to us. I don't want to sound like a dick, but you know what? Trying to blame, and don't take this as an offense, Diane, but the pawns in the game as the problem is looking at the game wrong.

2:14:37SpeakerBecause you've got prosecutors who could kick those cases. You've got judges that could correct the problems that the prosecutors bring in front of them, but they all just go boop, boop, boop and sign on the dotted line. At my sentencing, I went off on my judge, dude. I told him that he thought he was the most powerful man in the room when in fact he wasn't. It wasn't him.

2:14:55SpeakerIt wasn't the prosecutors. It was the cops really sitting there deciding who was going to come before them because they were never checking the power in the back of the room. And that was to me a problem because really that's what the prosecutors and the judges should be doing. They should be making sure that justice happens and not injustice happens. So blame them all. And that's, I think, Todd, I think that's so critically important because the police do not have the power to charge people.

2:15:22SpeakerOne of the things that we've been talking a lot about in LEAP and in talking to a tremendous amount of policymakers is that the district attorneys Exert much more power than either the judges or law enforcement, which is why we as LEAD focus not just on the law enforcement portion, but the entire criminal justice system of needing correction. If you start talking about accountability at the prosecutor level, there's not.

2:15:56SpeakerYou know, people always talk about accountability lacking in police. Accountability lacking in DAs who overcharge people, who withhold exculpatory evidence, which happens pretty regularly. There's like none. I think we finally had a DA who went to prison in Texas for the first time ever. That's because they're immune. We make the mistake of giving those people immunity. Qualified immunity. I would agree with you. When you get qualified immunity, you also exhibit the next behavior, which is no responsibility.

2:16:31SpeakerAnd people who are completely immune don't act responsible. Why should they? They're fucking immune. There you go, John. Spread that anger around. John, I don't disagree with you, but I think Todd's right. Right now, we're at a really pivotal point in our society that we can change not just policing, but the criminal justice system for the better. One of the things, because I do a tremendous amount of writing, I just had an article that was posted in VICE that was about the Black Lives Matter movement, and my response to them is that we are talking over each other right now, and that's the problem.

2:17:12SpeakerWhen we make broad generalizations about every police officer is this horrible, racist human being, It's going to be hard to get people to acknowledge that there's problems in policing. So we have to start talking with each other, not over each other. And I think, you know, just like law enforcement has stigmatized drug users and cannabis users, I basically yell at them for doing the same. I have to let go of the revenue and to move forward to understand We need to work.

2:17:52SpeakerAnd I believe that we're at a very critical and pivotal time in our society, but we have to basically, you know, it's almost we need like a truth and reconciliation process. You know, Todd, you asked when is that going to happen? That's exactly what we're seeing starting to happen. I don't know if you guys watched the CNN town hall after the Dallas police shooting and Neil Franklin was on there, our executive director.

2:18:22SpeakerReally good one. I heard the first person say that exact same thing and it was stunning to me that he admitted Very publicly on CNN that law enforcement is wrong, we need to change, and there needs to be like a truth and reconciliation process where people sit down together and talk about this and not just beat each other up, whether it's physically or physically over it. Well, dare I say this, the truth and reconciliation could be considering that, look, all drug users are not automatically criminals.

2:19:01SpeakerCorrect. And all cops are not necessarily jackbooted thugs. Yep. And is the reality that both sides have to come to the conclusion of, I mean, you know, I as a cannabis user never felt I was a criminal. I was not someone who was going to go rob a bank. I'm not hiding a gun. I'm not going to go jack somebody. I'm against all that shit, really. And you know what?

2:19:22SpeakerI kind of believe in a civilized society. I like going out and not worrying about myself. I like not getting stolen, you know, things stolen from my car. I like that in the world, and I'd like to see it perpetuate. The reality is, though, there are people that don't. And, you know, so... Look, I think that when we realize that we need each other, like when there are going to be cigarette smoking, alcohol drinking, pot smoking, whatever, LSD taking happy people, we have to tolerate each other and not kind of, in my opinion, overgeneralize one another's camps.

2:19:58SpeakerAnd this is why I was so embracing of Leap, John, to be honest with you, because to meet Some of the early people in it, they were featured in both our films, The Union and The Culture Highway. And I think that realiztically what they were saying needs to be heard because they're coming from a place of experience. You know, I have never been a cop. I'll never be a cop.

2:20:20SpeakerWhen I say the drug war is bad, people look at me and go, yeah, because you're a pot user. Of course you do. But when someone steps up who's the former chief of police of Seattle and makes the point, I'll step aside and go, now what do you have to say? And because realiztically, they're coming from a place that isn't circumspect like I am because I'm standing there literally with a joint in my hand puffing away, obviously wanting my own liberty as much as I want everybody else's.

2:20:47SpeakerTodd, you're circumspect. Listen, the thing about... I'm not trying to jump on all placement as being bad guys, and I'm not trying to group them all in one group of people. But what I do believe is... Thank you for joining us today.

2:21:18SpeakerThank you for joining us.

2:21:38SpeakerThank you so much for joining us.

2:22:00SpeakerThere should be responsibility for these decisions all the way up to the judges. I really think that lifetime positions and immunity are like poison in our system. Well, now that we're getting rid of pay-for-profit prisons, things may change because it'll go back into the hands of the state and those people are going to have to perform for a change. These private prisons they put people in, you could go in one of those for a year and never get out.

2:22:29SpeakerThey do kangaroo court jobs on you in there. You were found with a button in your pocket during lunchtime yesterday, so therefore we're going to give you six more months on your sentence. These are the kind of inequities that are happening in what is now laughingly called the U.S. justice system all the time. We've made a business out of it. How bad is that? I mean, Chinese people, I have Chinese friends who used to say, hey, you know what?

2:22:56SpeakerHe goes, now you got more people in jail than we do. And then I come back to them as I said, yeah, but you guys, you know, you don't put them in jail for over a half hour and then you shoot them. Well, I hear you. Can I ask, what are some of the things LEAP is working on now? What direction is it heading? Well, right now we're ingrained in cannabis campaigns across the United States.

2:23:20SpeakerAnd after the election, you know, We'll continue with that portion, but one of the things that we're working on also is massive forfeiture reform, not just in California, but across the rest of the country and at the congressional level. You know, I talked about kind of the importance of California. As election this November, not just on California, but how it's going to impact kind of the global drug policy, also progress.

2:23:57SpeakerYou know, John, I hear you say about how we need to de-schedule. In California, I think that's going to create even more pressure for that create pressure for banking reform. It's going to create pressure on our UN treaties and how we pressure other countries to You know, support drug prohibition. And in fact, yesterday, or is it the day before, Pino Nieto said that if California legalizes, he is going to introduce a similar type measure in Mexico, which will go to great lengths to reduce violence down there.

2:24:37SpeakerAnd so, you know, LEAP is working on the expansion of our international branches. In February, I was in the United Kingdom. And we kicked off LEAP United Kingdom in the House of Commons with tons of support and active duty law enforcement there. We just kicked off LEAP Germany. Leap Belgium may come online. And Leap Belgium is interesting. It's actually an active duty police officer who's getting the support of other police officers over there to change the laws.

2:25:13SpeakerAnd so, you know, I think our goal and our role continues to expand. Remember, in 2002, we started with five Retired and active duty police officers. We now have, I think, over 5,000 current former retired criminal justice professionals. We have in excess of 150,000 community. And we're starting to have policy. Call us all to ask our opinion on new laws or better ways to change policing.

2:25:50BubblemanVery cool. It's definitely a very cool organization. I'm in the same boat as you thinking that the gap needs to be bridged and people need to understand that... You know, it's happening here in the sense that a lot of people are upset about how our cannabis laws are coming into effect. We have dispensaries on one scene still operating under civil disobedience. We have licensed producers operating with licenses under a legal federal regime, but there's this gap between the two and you just see people involved on both sides just constantly promoting that gap rather than actually looking at Thank you for joining us.

2:26:54BubblemanA fireman, like right on, that guy's a fireman right there. He's got a sticker on his car. And I asked my brother-in-law, why don't you guys put stickers on your cars? And without even skipping a beat, he just said, oh my God, Mark, they would vandalize our cars. Our cars would get vandalized everywhere we went if we had stickers on them saying that we were in law enforcement.

2:27:13BubblemanAnd I just thought, I thought, well, that's fucked up. That means that the police are doing something wrong. If the community or a percentage of the community is so upset with the police that they'll actually smash their vehicles, this is a problem. We need to definitely change the perspective because these are the people that you call when something goes really wrong. You want to be able to have a trust in them much the same way you do with the fire department when your house is on fire.

2:27:39SpeakerSure. Oh, you know what? I think that every person that I know who's a speaker for LEAP and our board of directors, All had their epiphanies in very, very different ways. You know, Neil Franklin, our executive director, had his best friend killed in an undercover drug operation in D.C. If he was a UC and he went in to buy dope and it was supposed to be a big deal and he got executed and it was a money wreck is what it ended up being.

2:28:14SpeakerAnd, you know, other people like Norm Stamper saw it from... Thank you for joining us today.

2:28:40SpeakerThank you for joining us.

2:29:04SpeakerYou know, make America great again to me is just go back to the 1950s and white America. No civil liberties. No, you know, there wasn't a feminist movement there. You know, it is, we don't need to make America great again. You know, we don't need coded language to go back to how it was. You know, yes, it was different, but it wasn't that great back then or we wouldn't have had The riots over the Vietnam War or civil liberties and other issues going on in our society.

2:29:35SpeakerAnd so, you know, I have, I think that there's a tremendous amount of police officers that are kind of like the unsung heroes. Minority, majority actually that are having, why they got into policing, which was to help people be hijacked by people who value power, self-entrenched interest and have In some aspects, you know, some real bias towards minorities. You know, you look at the board members of the FOP, they're all old and white.

2:30:14SpeakerThey're like, you know, I say this all the time, and I don't wish ill will on anyone, But right now what we're seeing is we're seeing the extinction of an era of dinosaurs. You know, no different than if you've ever been to the La Brea Tar Pits where, you know, there were dinosaurs that were dying and they were being sent to the tar pits and had no clue that they were going to be dead soon.

2:30:42SpeakerI don't wish it on anybody, but we are seeing the last ring of dinosaurs. And they're going to be gone soon. And I can't wait for the day so we can really enact smart policing, community policing, end the drug war, end implicit bias in policing, and really work to make our communities what they should be. Don't you think we should have like two levels of law enforcement?

2:31:13SpeakerWhen something comes up, first the guys who are level-headed and don't take a gun with them go and talk like the Swedish police do in most of the cases. And they talk and they interface with them. And then if you really need it, then you call the guys who have guns. But if every time you call the cops, the guys who have guns come, you're going to run into this anecdotal problem of guns being used to solve the problem.

2:31:38SpeakerSo the last guns we send to a situation, you know, somebody calls up, hey, the guy next door is beating his wife. Instead of sending guys there or SWAT team or people with guns who are trained to kill people, you send people there who are professionals, just like when they want to talk down hostages. Well, you know what, John, though, aren't you speaking to a bigger, you know, one of the things that I heard over and over when I was in prison from the prison guards was they felt like they were improperly assigned to deal with people with mental instability issues where they should be in some type of State dealt with psychological space and instead they get bumped into the criminal system and you get inexperienced police officers who are not psychologists dealing with people that are psychologically disturbed and you instantly have a clash and a problem.

2:32:28SpeakerAnd I would love to hear what Diane has to say because I'm sure you as a cop ran into a shit ton of people that were not necessarily criminals but were like really just crazy. So, you know, I think this is such a very, very complex issue. But, John, in some aspects, you're right. And in some aspects, I would completely disagree with you. So I ran our crisis negotiations team.

2:32:53SpeakerI was one of those hostage negotiators. We did de-escalation training for our whole entire department. And it really, really does work. The problem is, I think, is you have to look at American society differently relative to the proliferation of guns. Now, I don't know if you've ever had a gun pointed at you, but I've had guns pointed at me a lot and not by police officers. And so I... Just so you know, Diane, I'm a wounded Vietnam veteran.

2:33:23SpeakerOkay. Combat field medic. I've had more guns pointed at me than probably you will see in this life. And you were right. And then you know what? And I apologize for that because yes, you're right. And so... Number one is I didn't mean to offend you and I do apologize for that because I didn't realize that because I would have said that because most people don't have that level of military training that you and Etni had, you know, in a lot of people that I deal with.

2:33:51SpeakerBut you're so right about that de-escalation training and I wish we could go back to the The issue of like England does it where they have bobbies that don't have guns and like Sweden does it and then if there is a true hostage situation you send people in. I just don't know how we're going to be able to pull back on that because we have so many guns out there right now.

2:34:13SpeakerBut we have to train our officers differently. Huge. We cannot and that's a big part of the problem you know is And the military gets so much better training on the use of force than law enforcement does. And I just read an article that's fascinating.

2:34:34SpeakerWho went to a suicide by cop situation back in West Virginia and he didn't shoot the guy. He was deescalating it based on the training he had been given. Two other officers show up and they killed the guy and they fired the guy for not shooting him. And that's what's wrong. And you've identified a point. So we need to correct that. But the only way we're going to correct that is through legislative action.

2:35:02SpeakerI hope you're not talking about taking the guns away because it's not really. No, I'm not. I'm not talking about taking people's guns away. I'm talking about retraining police officers. I mean, look. I think that's a great point, honestly. You're sending the wrong people into the wrong situation is the point. And that's what I see happening more often than not. Because realiztically, a lot of the people I met in prison are not playing with a full deck of cards.

2:35:29SpeakerI don't know how else to put it. It's mental health issues. And that's the problem. You know, again, it's complex. You had Ronald Reagan shut down the whole entire mental health systems in California. And then we then created Police officers to deal with people with mental health issues. And then we have people who live in poverty who are selling drugs in order to not starve to death.

2:35:57SpeakerAnd we criminalize that behavior instead of doing job training, infrastructure, creating jobs, education. So right now, We focus too much money on the law enforcement side and not enough on basic social needs, mental health, public health options. Law enforcement should only be one equal portion of that budgetary wheel. And not the most important one, you know, is I just read a study that says if you increase high school education by 10 points, you would reduce violence by 10%.

2:36:37BubblemanHmm.

2:36:38SpeakerSomething as simple as that. So, John, you know what? I would love for there to be a 24-hour social worker network that responds with law enforcement to things like domestic violence situations or to mental health issues. I agree with you 100%. It should definitely be part of the system. Right now, all we have is these guys who go in with guns, and if things don't go the way they want, they put handcuffs on you and take you to jail, and your entire life is interrupted no matter who you are.

2:37:11SpeakerThank you for joining us.

2:37:26SpeakerThank you for joining us.

2:37:55SpeakerYou have to remember is some of policies that have been enacted in law enforcement has been because law enforcement unwisely used their discretion as well. So there's very, very interesting balance that needs to be met. So we used to take kids home. They were stoned and, you know, we'd dump out their booze and, you know, rip up their pot, that type of stuff, you know, take it away from them.

2:38:21SpeakerAnd then we got in trouble for doing this. A parent complained or we got sued because we didn't take appropriate action or a kid, you know, maybe died or overdosed because we didn't take them to a hospital and we took them home. So it's, you know, I think it's a very, very complex issue, but one of the things that's very clear, we have too many laws, okay?

2:38:45SpeakerAnd our politicians think that creating laws solves social issues, and it doesn't. And so we have to completely roll back the number of laws that we have to return law enforcement back to what they should be. Todd said something really interesting earlier, that in the 1960s and 70s, law enforcement was solving eight or nine out of 10 murders, okay? Now, we solve 6.5. And yet, law enforcement is more educated, has more resources, more forensic technology.

2:39:25SpeakerWe should be solving more crime, but instead, because we've focused so much on laws that, I'm not saying that they don't matter, but because we've been incentivized by the federal government to focus on drug enforcement, it has taken us away from things that we should be doing, which is, That. If you have this many laws, what happens is people who are enforcing the law start enforcing it selectively.

2:39:55SpeakerAnd that is the pit that we've fallen in now. There's a law against everything. There's no thing that isn't touched upon by a law. And if the police want to arrest you for something, they will find a way because they have at their disposal The land of a billion laws. And you're exactly right. We need to trim it way back. And a lot of these laws that people... My daughter was drunk driving and killed herself, but she was smoking pot too.

2:40:28SpeakerAnd then they demonized pot because they always added on to anything that when someone does something, especially drunk driving stuff. In Colorado, I read the statistics where they said that there was more... Thank you for watching.

2:41:04SpeakerMarijuana involved in another traffic accident. And it's, again, selective use of the laws. And our lawmakers are a bunch of assholes for creating the kinds of system that we could be subjected to in this way. It's not that they've taken our freedoms away. It's just that they've made everything we do illegal. So therefore... What freedom are you talking about? I think a funny poster would be is your police department distracted by the drug war and then put that statistic of how, you know, eight and nine out of 10 murders were being basically, um, Figure it out in the 60s compared to 6 out of 10 now with all the technology and advancements we've had and it just really qualifies how distracted these people are with mundane laws that don't matter like the drug war or possession of a small amount of whatever.

2:41:59SpeakerAnd high tech toys. High-tech toys that they waste the money on in the departments. Look, the reason they solved more murders back then was because they used common sense, good police work, and deductive reasoning. Now, instead, they want to have 20 different tests. This is the thing though, I think that we use the resources of the police department differently. When you talk about the 60s, you cannot miss the fact that you didn't hear the drug war uttered out of Nixon's mouth until 68.

2:42:29SpeakerSo if you're talking anything utopian, 368, you're talking about a police department that was not distracted with the bullshit that the 70s and 80s and 90s were. Which was run around, look for people doing things other than alcohol, tobacco, and pharmaceuticals and give them a hard time because that's how we're going to fix society. And then put them in jail and then say to all the people listening, look how many of these dirty rotten pot smoking druggies we got and put in jail this year.

2:42:58SpeakerBut guess what? Here we are with... Two plus million people in jail, mostly for marijuana. And guess what? Every single one of them costs about 50 grand a year to take care of. When we could have had a 24-hour social worker go in with the police force and maybe the whole thing would have been defused and no arrests would have happened. But no, social work in a police department these days is what kind of a gun do you carry?

2:43:24SpeakerJesus. Well, we're a long way away from rehabilitating human beings, and now it's just about warehousing human bodies, and when that changes, society is going to have a significant shift.

2:43:37BubblemanIndeed. I wanted to welcome Mark Scaldone and Marcel Braun into the room to the conversation. We're having an interesting conversation today on our two-year anniversary.

2:43:48SamWhat's up, guys? Thanks for having me.

2:43:52BubblemanYeah, man, good to see you. Glad you made it. We're just, yeah, it's been a while. How are you, Mark? You seem to be somewhere out and about right now. Are you at your course?

2:44:03SpeakerYeah, we're at the Chemistry for Hashmakers course here at Cloverleaf University in Denver, Colorado. Say hi. We were actually out to lunch. Here's class coming back from lunch.

2:44:14BubblemanOh, nice. Nice. I like that. Professor Mark.

2:44:17SpeakerYeah, so we're talking about chromatography and we're talking about, in this slide, identification of residual solvents by HPLC. Nice. Hey, Mark, are you guys talking about reverse phase chromatography by any chance? Say that again, John. I didn't hear that. Have you guys discussed reverse phase chromatography? Reverse phase and normal phase, yes, both of them. Yeah, I wish I was there listening. Oh, just hit me up anytime, John.

2:44:55SpeakerI'll be happy to tell you about it. Well, that's good because I have a few questions for you, but I don't want to ask them here. Ben Cohen here, and we got Michelle from Green Dot, and here's Chris from Hawaii. So these... Everyone is coming back from lunch now, just taking a lunch break. Let's love Colorado. Yes. Well, I got a couple of important questions for you, but I don't want to ask you here.

2:45:24SpeakerOh, well, go ahead. Feel free to, if you like. No, trust me. I'll talk to you later.

2:45:35Etienne FontanSo, Marcel, how goes the coin making, and how is Mama Jessica doing?

2:45:41SamMama Jessica is doing wonderful. Right here.

2:45:45SpeakerBye.

2:45:48SamYeah, she's doing good. Everyone's happy and healthy. We're really blessed and grateful for that. We totally pulled a coin last night. We were up to like three or so doing that. It was pretty awesome. Can you show us?

2:46:07Etienne FontanYeah.

2:46:10BubblemanUp to three pulling coins.

2:46:19SamSo many different aspects of our community.

2:46:31BubblemanMarcel will find the coin. Mark's about to teach a chemistry and hash class. I think that's really cool that Cloverleaf is doing that. I got to say, it's great to see.

2:46:41SamThis is a really rough chunk.

2:46:46SamOh, yeah. Too hot. I'm going to go to put it on the cold working wheel and make it flat. It's just not going to be good enough. Art equals modern warfare. Art equals modern warfare. And it's a 6.6 unit coin.

2:47:06BubblemanBeautiful. I'm sure it was quite an adventure as it always seems to be.

2:47:12SamYeah, yeah, it was definitely an adventure. My friend Jack was here filming with a professional camera crew, and so we got some really quality footage.

2:47:25Etienne FontanHow many people actually work on a coin?

2:47:29SamThere must have been like eight of us last night, eight or ten. I mean, it depends on how many people are there, because the team will tend to kind of fill. You get more people doing... Best work sometimes but overall you've got to have a solid like six people or it's just not even going to happen. Yeah and dip when you when we open the big door to put the whole coin in for the last time you got like probably four people that are just stationed there to block heat from the people that are doing stuff.

2:48:05SamTwo people, three people actively like pulling the thing out and getting it cut off and stuff. So that's like the most intense part right there.

2:48:18SamBut yeah, man, we're really excited about the project. And actually Dan Collins has been editing footage from basically from January. Until now, we're about to release our first edited piece of work.

2:48:39BubblemanAwesome. I saw that you guys had someone filming.

2:48:41SamYeah, that's someone with Robert here.

2:48:46SpeakerThat's nowadays, especially. Welcome to your world. I can honestly say last night we just did a 12-hour adventure with this master artist and we're working on a project called American Art, American Glass. And what's amazing is he's a little modest. There must have been around 15 people in support. Six to eight active people. You have to understand this heat. These guys are sweating. It's the most physical active thing I've ever seen.

2:49:19SpeakerSo we came out of Nevada with a full crew to shoot this in 4K and automate it so the whole world can actually see how Eugene, Oregon has taken glass A 4,000-year-old human art form and has really elevated it to a process that is absolutely amazing. Nobody in the world is pulling hotness like this. I hate to embarrass him, but please tell everybody how hot... Oh, wait, you're going to love this.

2:49:51SpeakerThe furnace has a name, okay?

2:49:56SamDraco, can you guys see that? I can't see. It doesn't really look much... Look like much when it's not all bright. When we're working out of it, the interior of that chamber is about the same color as the sun. Wow. The same bright yellow.

2:50:13BubblemanWell, I remember you like at least 16 years ago showing me pictures of you in this crazy space suit, pulling glass. And they were pretty big even back then. And I was like, what's up with that suit? And you're like, yeah, it's just... Just so I don't burst into flames while I'm pulling this cane.

2:50:30SpeakerAnd I'm just like, what the fuck? It was like being on a NASA launch pad. But the apex of this conversation is that what makes it interesting for this whole group speaking, he's breaking this art form and bringing human nature into the greatest form and making it into a tradable, palatable form. What we would call money unit. We actually went there.

2:50:54SamAre there a way into the art unit thing? I've been on here several times talking about the art unit.

2:50:59BubblemanOh, yeah.

2:51:01SpeakerYou know what's so interesting? Because think back to just 2000 when the DEA wasted 12 million of our taxpayer dollars in Operation Pipe Dream and sent Tommy Chong to prison. You know, it... I sit there and, you know, and look at where we are now and as frustrated as I get that we don't seem to make progress fast enough in blowing up the drug war, but an artist like you guys talk like this, it gives me hope.

2:51:33SamYeah, I mean, you know, you can't focus on the fact that, you know, they've got people making barely a living wage firing munitions that cost enough to support my artwork for a year. You know, like, it's hard to think about that, but at the same time, like, we're just out there getting it done. Like, everyone who's part of the cannabis movement is, like, part of this, like, we're creating an environment where we can operate with different principles, and that's really the heart of it.

2:52:06SpeakerYou got people making uranium. I just wanted to say that the whole pressure of the subculture being underground, for whatever reason, I'm not going to make a testament, but that's my copy. The road to a successful glass business is paved with broken glass, isn't it? Thank you very much. There we say, you grow through pain. Thank you, Marcel.

2:52:36Etienne FontanYes, you shattered the silence indeed.

2:52:40BubblemanThat's hilarious. Spilling the guy's coffee, man. I mean, come on.

2:52:45Etienne FontanSomeone get that man a cup of Joe. He went to bed at four.

2:52:47SamI've been sitting on the rail of the bench. Really, this was the table it was on.

2:52:52SpeakerYou guys are just making bongs. They got people sitting on assembly lines putting together bullets made out of spent uranium to fire at people in other countries, and they want to put bong makers in jail. See, that's what I mean. There's something basically wrong with our law enforcement and justice system. The people who are deciding what's against the rules, the regulators who start all this shit from the top, that's what the trickle-down theory is.

2:53:17SpeakerAll the fucking nasty dreams that they have about running the world the way they want to run it trickle down into our asses. The only trickle-down stuff that comes is something you wouldn't want to get on you, believe me. And people who are... People who are thinking up these ideas when, look, he should be teaching glass blowing nationally, worldwide maybe. Instead, we're spending big money on making weapons.

2:53:45SpeakerThey just said, hey, another $38 billion aircraft carrier.

2:53:50BubblemanBy any means, this isn't exclusive to law enforcement. All of these systems are flipped up on their heads. Look at the medical system.

2:53:59SamI really like what you guys were saying when I first came in about talking about getting a hold of the DAs and getting a hold of the DEA and getting them to reflect more of what we're interested in seeing in their choices for policy and stuff. I think that's kind of the concept behind the Project 33 currency idea is we're just creating an environment where you can...

2:54:28SamChoose to do that.

2:54:30SpeakerI thought it was called free trade. And if it's really free trade, if you want to use banana peels for money and somebody else over there is happy with taking them, what is the freaking problem? You know, they want a monopoly on it, so they want only to use dollar bills that they print Which is shin plasters, as my grandpa used to call them, because that's all they're good for in time of real emergency is shin plasters.

2:54:55SamRight, because they want the control of being able to pull the rug out from under the currency. So if they're the only ones who can do an IOU-based currency, then no one else can have that easy ability to provide an alternative so that then... They have full control. Now, if we choose to provide an alternative through real value with something like an art unit, then there's no, it's not an IOU-based currency, so they can't pull the rug out of it the same way.

2:55:25SpeakerWell, obviously, you're a commie, so... You would be labeled a commie immediately with that kind of thinking. Those kind of thoughts are the thoughts that come to you after you start smoking a little pot and you start looking around and realizing what a giant fuck has been going on behind your back literally and figuratively in your pants. And you start thinking to yourself, gee, what would be wrong with that?

2:55:54SpeakerNothing. You know, the ultra rich actually use that. They use it to buy art. Oh, this Picasso sold for $347 million last week.

2:56:05SpeakerBullshit. The only people who are going to pay $347 million for a goddamn painting a guy did 75 years ago are those people, the elite who are running it, who are talking about such nonsense. I mean, no painting is worth $347 million. You have to be living in a whole nother universe, a whole nother Thank you for joining us.

2:56:51SamYou know, bullshit effects where, you know, some of the earlier currencies were like certain kinds of shells. So you could have, you know, your tribes people could go out and pick shells on the beach and you'd be bringing currency into circulation. And when they did that, they're not wasting their time. They're actually doing a service for everyone and all the tribes where they now have shells that they can trade with.

2:57:13SamAnd every They can go to a neighboring tribe and carry in one small bag enough trade value to bring home all the resource they need from that group of people for the year.

2:57:25SpeakerBut that doesn't go through the IRS, see? I should call it the IRSS.

2:57:32SpeakerWhen you start with these alternate currency things, you're taking their fingers out of your pie, and they don't like that, and they make rules about it, and they'll make new rules about it, and guess who they'll use? They're filming him because he's actually doing it. He has a whole group of people that come in here. They're dedicated to the process, and you know what's great about a conversation like this?

2:57:57SpeakerThank you so much for being here. I'm so happy to be here. I'm so happy to be here.

2:58:23SpeakerAre other people doing these form of high-end art dollars or community art pieces? How do you phrase the coins? Art units. Art units. Is that happening in Canada and in other companies like it's happening here in Eugene? Still happening on islands in the Pacific with shells. Which island is that? Oh, there's plenty of them. I mean, you look at the people who did what he was talking about, shells and also stones.

2:58:55SpeakerAnd the controlling thing for that, not everybody could just go out and run and grab a bunch of stuff off the beach. These had to be really nice shells. And they had to be really big stones. Some of these stones were like eight foot diameter with a hole in the middle of them. They'd roll them over and go, hey, we want to buy some potatoes for next year.

2:59:13SpeakerAnd here is our giant stone coin.

2:59:16SamWell, and sure, that's the aspect of it where it's like maybe that coin was a really rare like chunk of a metal like gold, but, you know, at the... When you put the value in by choosing something that actually has the value there, like the shell has that value. Everyone accepts that. Not that it's an IOU for somebody did the work of picking a shell. It's like that's really a shell.

2:59:41SpeakerOf course, of course. But the stones weren't made of gold. The valuable part of what I'm saying is the art you're talking about. The stones were works of art. It took about 20 guys to carve a eight foot diameter stone. So it was valuable in that it had their energy in it. And that's what you're talking about. You're not just making these little glass pieces. You're making these pieces that are imbued with the energy of the thought of the idea of how to use them.

3:00:09SamExactly. Absolutely. Absolutely. And that's where it steps outside of being regulated by an IOU system because we're actually paying it forward. It's a gift out front of here's the value. And essentially, when we sell them, we trade them for dollars. So they move into that system in the same way that most of the other goods and services move around. Here, so like, it's not really, it's not something that I see as like a tax shelter or not a tax shelter.

3:00:43SamIt's more like just a basic, like a right that I would like to reserve as a human being to use an alternative to a system that isn't healthy.

3:00:55SpeakerDude, you're talking to Mr. Pay It Forward. I'm the guy who released the BHO system back in 1998. And I never expected to get anything back from it. The thing that I got back from it so far is people saying, you don't know how much you've helped me. Right.

3:01:11SamAnd that's an amazing feeling when people are coming to you and telling you that they're like putting food on their table every day because of something you did. You know, five years ago.

3:01:21SpeakerIt doesn't go through the IRS. No. You know, I gave it to the public and the public put it to use and we bypassed the IRS just like you guys are trying to do with this. It's about energy. Exactly. People say you can't put a finger on energy, but you can't put your finger anywhere where energy doesn't exist is the real truth.

3:01:44SamThat's awesome. Totally. Your finger can't exist if there's no energy.

3:01:50SpeakerThat's right. Energy is all of it. You know, we made these dense bodies on this plane of existence so we could come here and have these talks about things that happen on dense planes of existence.

3:02:05BubblemanWell, what an interesting time that it is to be alive where Google and YouTube, probably, you know, a corporation that other people in chat are like talking, the evil corporation. I appreciate the ability to use this platform for this very use to gather amazing people like all of you and to just sort of talk in an organic, natural way that leads into really cool dialogue often in regards to the different things that we're, uh, You know, there's no censorship in Hash Church.

3:02:34BubblemanWe don't tell anyone what they can and can't talk about. It's just a naturally forming conversation. And I sure appreciate the hell out of it and all of you guys for coming in and sharing your time. It's really... It's a wonderful thing. I hope that we get another two years out of it because the last two years have been pretty amazing to just go back. I forgot about a lot of them, but I went back recently and I looked at some of them and it was...

3:03:02BubblemanIt's been amazing how many different wonderful people have shared their time with us here and shared their ideas and their thoughts.

3:03:13SpeakerWell, Bubble Man, you rang the bell, and when you ring a good bell, it resonates through all the rest of the bells, and they all start ringing too. So blame yourself.

3:03:23BubblemanYeah. Damn you, Bubble Man.

3:03:25SpeakerSo thank you guys very much. And really, honestly, I apologize for being late because I could have been on for the whole three hours now. And I think I'd like to come back another time if you guys so choose to have me back. But as for another attorney who just said the same thing you did, Bill McPike. Just said the exact same thing. I just did another case.

3:03:51SpeakerThey delayed it till after November from the election. Everybody needs to support Prop 64 because there will be thousands of cases, I think, that are going to be dismissed if it does. Wow. They didn't do that in Washington. I have friends in Washington who are still suffering. He got busted for... I think announced back before Washington, before anything was illegal. And he tried to get it expunged from his record just recently based on the thing.

3:04:21SpeakerAnd they're like, oh, no, we're not doing that. When you did that, it was against the law. So no reason to forgive you. Isn't that wonderful the way they think upstairs? It makes you think that, gee whiz, the people who make up the rules and run things don't really give a shit about us. They don't really care about us, da, da, da.

3:04:40BubblemanWell, it's amazing that that is in Prop 64 for Californians. I mean, that is something that's in the rules. So maybe if that gets voted in, we'll see a small, slight change in the right direction.

3:04:56BubblemanThanks, Diane. Thanks, Diane. Thanks for coming on. Definitely invite her again as well. I wanted to get William Zandergraf on. Van Der Graaf on, sorry, who is, he was an ex-homicide detective. He did that for 20 or 30 years, and he's also part of LEAP. I was hoping to have him on while she was on, but maybe we can get them on again another time, and... Open up a conversation in that.

3:05:23BubblemanI think, you know, I've been anxious to get over to my conference. It's only about four hours left, five hours left of it today, and I have to go stand at a booth. So I'll have you back, Marcel, to talk more about what's going on with you guys as it was short, this visit. But I do appreciate your time, dude, and you coming in and visiting us.

3:05:44BubblemanAnd I want to hear more about Project 33. Thanks Todd for bringing in a great guest and interviewing her and just doing a wonderful job as per usual. Etienne, Skunkman Sam, John, Indra, always appreciate it guys. Much thanks to the audience, the 700 or 600 people that are still watching. Thank you guys so much for sharing your time here at Hash Church. We will see you next week for Hash Church episode 105 and yeah, hopefully it's a good one.

3:06:16BubblemanThanks everybody.

3:06:17SpeakerThanks Mark. Bye.