Richard DeLisi's Journey from Prison to Freedom

0:07BubblemanAll right, we're just about to go live here. It's October 27th, Sunday, 9am PST, and we are about to go live for Hash Church 5.0, Episode 12. Here we go. Here we go. Welcome, everybody. Nice to see such a large group in the chat today. That's wonderful. Always puts a smile on my face. I'm going to let the folks in here. Boom, boom, boom, and boom. I want to thank ATN for reminding me today that I did not send out the link like a total space cadet.

0:41BubblemanI apologize for that. But here we are now, and it looks like some of the people got the link. So let's hope it all works out. Let me just change your name, Mr. Skunk Man.

0:53SpeakerWhat's up?

0:55BubblemanWhat's up? What's going on, folks? I see some nice smoke puffing. How you doing, Etienne?

1:03Etienne FontanGood morning, sir.

1:04BubblemanHow are you? Doing very well. Doing very well. I woke up to a sick little guy. My little guy's got a sore throat today, so that's never fun to see. But we got Rick coming in on the sideways. Looks like he needs to turn his phone around, maybe.

1:19SpeakerHold on one second. Let me set my phone up.

1:21BubblemanIt's early over there, dude.

1:26SpeakerI'm over here like, whoa. Hey, Ricky, I'm home. Hey, what's going on? There he is. There he is. Good to see you, Rick. Been a while. Yeah, you too. How you doing on AVN? Doing good, boss.

1:46BubblemanDefinitely good to see you. It's really good to see you and your father in the room together. This is a highlight of my day right now, bro. I remember pretty... Hold on, wait one sec.

1:59SpeakerLet me just get this right. There we go. Yeah, we spent a lot of time... yeah we were talking and hoping that someday this would be a reality that we would not only get to speak to you but we get to speak to your father who's free who back in the day that wasn't the case no straight up like um yeah i've mentioned um mark bubble man a lot and um all the podcasts we we actually have done and all the different little things we've we've um Been able to like explain the experience with, and it's funny because he was one of the first few people that kind of woke me up to the fact that I was going to get to see my dad again, you know?

2:47SpeakerSo it's like, it's a wild realization after it started to happen. And then like going back to the conversations in my head with him where he was like, I remember him saying like, dude, no, like, sorry to mention this, but him saying, my dad's really gone, you know, and you're going to see your dad again type of situation, you know? And it's funny, only you and Flux said those exact words to me because y'all both had lost your fathers.

3:23SpeakerAnd then it hit me like, oh shit, I actually have the opportunity to make this be, you know? So I'm very grateful. Very grateful to you for like awakening that in me, bro. You know, because here we are where it's actually a truth. And yeah, I was telling my dad about you numerous times about how you were like one of the first people that let me like on your platform to be able to, um, Yeah, raise awareness in the cannabis community about my father, you know, and kind of woke me up to the path that I would have to take.

4:02SpeakerYou know, I think it was like, I think it was like you, Flav, and a couple other close homies that had just kind of like given me like hugs and pats on the shoulder, like, bro, You're going to get through this, and we're going to be chiefing with your pops one day. And I remember saying to you, like, you really think that's going to happen? And you were like, yeah, bro, that's really going to happen.

4:30SpeakerLike, I promise you, you're going to be able to accomplish that. And I didn't even believe it at the time, you know? I remember.

4:36BubblemanI remember. I don't know why I believed it so much, dude. I think it's all perspective. And had you told me that your father had been in prison for 30 plus years and my father wasn't passed away, you know, I don't know if I would have had that same perspective. But I just had this clear perspective the first time you told me. I was like, dude, you're going to see your dad.

4:56BubblemanWe're going to hang out with your dad and blaze some bowls. And And welcome, Richard, by the way. Right now, isn't that something? Dude, it's unbelievable, man. And I've been watching all the different interviews you guys have been doing since you got out. And I've watched, I mean, even before you got out, obviously, I was watching the whole thing very closely and speaking closely with Rick. And just, it's...

5:21BubblemanYou know, we don't get enough wins in our industry. So when we see and our community, more importantly, so to see you get out, to see you and Rick be able to, you know, to see you with your grandkids and your family, it's it just brought it just brought joy to my heart. And so it's really, really nice to have you both on here today. And I'm just sorry it took so long.

5:44SpeakerAnd I'm glad the platform is back up and running now because we all go through our patches. You know, it's like when I first When he first got out, it was like, I never felt such a fast forward in my life, you know? So it was like, first like, okay, now get to the States, now go, you know, receive him. But then the actual feat of trying to understand how to fit everything into the puzzle of life, you know?

6:09SpeakerAnd it's been an amazing, amazing process. And yeah, I'm just glad, I'm glad we finally got this locked in.

6:17BubblemanYeah, it's unbelievable.

6:36BubblemanThat perspective that, you know, taking us back to that, and I'd love both your perspectives, obviously, both yours, Richard, and yours, Rick, in regards to taking us back when it first went down, you know, what it was like facing such a long sentence for cannabis, you know, especially when, I mean, I guess it must have been in the, what was the year that this went down? Yeah.

6:59Speaker89, 88.

6:59BubblemanIt was, it was 89, 88. Oh my God, dude. That is the year that I met my wife. And we've been together now for 35, almost 36 years.

7:08SpeakerSo what's crazy? What's crazy, bro? How you said that? Everybody has had some monumental thing that happened to them that year. It's crazy. So everybody says that to me, like, yo, that's the day my son was, that was the year my son was born. Or that was the, that was the, it's just crazy, dude. How many parallels there are to it. And it's just like, Yeah, I think, yeah, Pop, why don't you talk a little bit and introduce yourself?

7:34SpeakerWell, you know, it's rich. First of all, I got to thank you. I have to thank my nephew, Kenneth. I have to thank my daughter. I have to thank Champelli. I have to thank just so many people for their energy. They had so much energy in this thing. I had no idea until I came home. How much actual energy and time was involved in getting me free, you know?

8:07SpeakerAnd people just never stopped. They just kept on going and going and going and going. And now the, the, the outspec of the whole thing is I'm here right here with you right now. You know, that's the best part of it all. That we can actually talk about, you know, things That went down and I'm back, you know? Yeah. So, yeah, going back to, I guess, 88, 89, what was your first inkling that things were not going well?

8:47SpeakerWith me? Yeah. Like when, did you have any ideas of what was going down or what, how, what was your... I actually didn't know because it was one of my friends that set me up. So it was, I was actually unaware of what was going on until the bus came down. Until it actually happened, you know. Because I couldn't believe my friend would do something like that to me after I helped him so many times, you know.

9:25SpeakerAnd, um,

9:29SpeakerI mean, we could start from the very beginning what happened, or we could, you know, just touch in spots that are... I was just trying to get people updated.

9:40BubblemanWe got four hours. We got four hours. Start at the beginning. I'd love to hear this story. I mean, it is... It is an unbelievable story. And I'm sure that, you know, like right away, I'm like, why would this friend, you know, it's always, there's always a friend that turns code and no one can betray you. That's not a friend. You can't be betrayed by a stranger.

10:02BubblemanRight. You can only be betrayed by a friend. And that's that's well, it's a it's a very good point. It's a scary point. It's certainly, you know, so many questions about like, how do you trust people after this? How do you I mean, wow, to take so much away from you. I'd love to hear it from the beginning. I'd love to hear what led your friends to corrupt his integrity to do such a thing and then just sort of to walk us through it.

10:28BubblemanWell, what had happened was.

10:33SpeakerI was trying to collect some money that was owed to me by somebody. This is after I came out of prison the first time for being in prison for a nonviolent marijuana charge for five years. And what he did was he set the trend for me to get so locked into what I was doing that I had no way out. Because I kept telling him, no, I don't want to do that.

11:07SpeakerYou know, I don't want to do any more smuggling. I'm done with it. I want to raise my family and I want to be with my children. I want to, I want to see my grandchildren. I want to get everything going like normal people have going on with themselves, you know. And he just, it didn't even matter to him. He just enjoyed Getting money from everybody that he set up, you know, he set up so many people.

11:34SpeakerHe set up like 80, 89 people, I think, or something. And I mean, big time people too, not just, you know, like I was like a small fry compared to some of the people he got involved with, you know, I mean, he got involved with people with Coke, with income tax evasion. I mean, this guy was burying everybody. Um, Oh, JJ was a real slickster, him and his wife.

12:03SpeakerThey knew how to get in your pocket, you know what I mean? And make you feel like it was normal. He was also my dad's pilot.

12:18BubblemanHe was actually one of my pilots.

12:25BubblemanUnbelievable. So he's out there. He's just setting everyone up. You you is this all kind of like when you get caught up, he's also catching other people up before, during and after you.

12:36SpeakerHe had like, oh, God, I don't know. Like when when I got arrested, I think he was setting up like four or five different people. You know, and is this guy in WITSAC now or did he get what was coming to him? Like what what happened to this guy? Oh, he might he might be dead by now. His name was Jim White, Jim White and Shelly White.

12:56SpeakerAnd they lived in a place called the Naked Lady Ranch, which was a fly in community and. And in Martin County. And in the funny part is I drive right by the place.

13:13SpeakerAt least once a week. Where he set me up, you know? Since he's been out. Yeah, since I've been out. I drive by there like once a week, probably. Sometimes twice a week, depending on if I'm going to stores, if I'm representing True Leaf at the grand openings of new stores. I'd like to give a shout out to Kim, Kim Rivers.

13:41BubblemanYeah, we're going to definitely talk about your brand as well. I want to get into that as well. So this guy's setting you up. Is this like a bunch of loads? Is it a single load that he himself goes and gets to set you up with?

13:54SpeakerOr how does that play out? What happened was he got caught with a plane load of cocaine. And they told him, if you work with us, we'll let you do whatever you want to do. So what he did was he just started setting people up. When I was in prison, there was two people in my quad with me that he set up.

14:23BubblemanJesus Christ.

14:24SpeakerI mean, you know how small that world is? For two of the people that he set up, that they wound up in the same quad as me in the same prison? It's like, things like that don't happen unless God makes it happen. You know, and I was like, I mean, I was talking to this one kid and he goes, oh yeah, there was this guy, Jim White.

14:49SpeakerI said, what? You know, I was so amazed. I was so amazed that he would, uh, uh, I mean, and the guy was, the guy was only like 30 minutes from my house where he lived, you know? Ah.

15:07BubblemanSo he gets caught with a plane load of cocaine, and that's kind of the beginning of him becoming some type of confidential informant. They're just paying him. They're letting him get in the way with his own crimes, and he's just rolling people up. Oh, yeah.

15:21SpeakerAnd he became a multi-multi-millionaire doing it.

15:26BubblemanJesus Christ.

15:27SpeakerYeah, the Naked Lady Ranch was like... The Naked Lady Ranch was like... I remember looking it up when my dad was still locked up. It was like a fully functional... Yeah, runway at his house that he could just still land. He drove his plane right into a hangar that was connected to his house. Insane.

15:47BubblemanAnd so this guy is like, how did you get wrapped up in state instead of federal? Does this have to do with who caught him and how he got wrapped up?

15:56SpeakerWell, here's what happened. When they went to the feds with it, the feds didn't want anything to do with it. The feds told the state that you can't set up a guy when he's not really doing anything. You know, you can't make up a fake crime, but they did it anyway. And they took me to a county that's so far behind, you know, Polk County was a very...

16:28SpeakerThey were fascinating and glorifying the fact that he was Italian blooded and that he was probably some kind of mobster. So it was like a funny, so funny little story while Polk County comes up is...

16:58SpeakerLast Prisoners Project, Last Prisoner Project, one of the founders, her name's Mary Bailey. She's from Polk County, so she knew the extent of how kind of Billy Bobish this area was and how like if they had him on a second major offense, how they would deal with somebody like that. And I remember her calling me, um, In 2020, it was exactly, it's so weird because it was this actual week in 2020.

17:32SpeakerIt was like the week before Halloween. And it was like, it's crazy because let me, let me, let me just go back. It's like a little wild moment, but basically around, yeah, actually the 27th or the 28th,

17:50SpeakerMy uncle called me at like one in the morning and he never called me at that time in Amsterdam. It was like, he knew he was very keen on time zones, my uncle, who also worked with my dad before he got busted. He was one of his assistants with the whole thing. He said, hey man, I looked on the website, the database, and there was a online database that you could search inmates.

18:13SpeakerThat was like the only way I could see my father in a photo form currently, you know? And see his sentencing and what he was sentenced for and so on and so on. And my uncle's like, dude, look at the date, bro. It changed from 2026. And it was like it because it was supposed to be with good time and everything. He would serve 40, 41 years.

18:34SpeakerRight. And we were at 30, 31, 32, right at that point.

18:43SpeakerAnd my uncle's like, look, look, the date's changed on the fucking database. I'm like, I'm like refreshing it, looking at it, seeing it, it's saying 2020 and it's 2020. So I'm like, I'm like having this weird epiphanic moment that, This might really be happening, you know? And then shortly thereafter, the communication got so strong with Last Prisoner Project, Mary, Kiara Juster, and a couple of other people, Mariah, These pro these attorneys that were going to work pro bono on my dad's case.

19:20SpeakerSo all of a sudden they started communicating with me in a way that I had actually never had interaction from people before. So it felt very real for the first time because I got to be honest, that was what you experienced to me. Marcus, like that hopelessness. That you had kind of snapped me out of, that hopelessness stopped right then that night. It was very weird. I remember waking my wife up.

19:44SpeakerShe was in bed and I was like, honey, I got to wake you up. She was like, fuck, what's going on? I was like, baby, yo, my dad's going to get out. Like, and she was like, and I, bros, you know how many times my wife had heard me say this by this time? We're together 25 years. You know, it's like, she's looking at me like, yeah, okay.

20:00SpeakerOkay. One o'clock in the morning, he wakes me up and tells me that. And then it was like, the next day there was action. We were on the news all of a sudden. There was this traction that picked up that was unbelievable. So sorry to jump all the way from that to that, but Polk County had such a deep reference in that that I just wanted to make sure that cusp in reality was shared.

20:29SpeakerBut yeah, so back to Polk County and your extreme sentencing because Somebody had set you up. Who was your pilot? Pop. Huh? I said back to you. I didn't mean to take it all over like that. I just wanted to make sure. It's cool. That that depth was reached. It's unbelievable how you're so tuned in to everything. You know what I mean? You know, we talk about this stuff all the time.

20:59SpeakerBut, I mean, you stay super tuned in to it. And... It's like, it's our ghetto story, you know? Well, you know what?

21:10BubblemanI haven't been present for all of it, but the stories that you've told me, Rick, the day you started getting super tuned into this was the day you watched your dad walk out of that safe with those guys.

21:23SpeakerYeah.

21:23BubblemanBecause, and maybe you can tell that little story because I remember you telling me like you were 11 years old, I believe.

21:31SpeakerYeah, it's weird because my two brothers Like deepest memories of being a child are his first time being busted. You know, so the second time I don't really recall how it went down because I was 11 and it was like they were trying to bridge me from the reality at the moment. They didn't want me to like know exactly what had happened. So my parents were like my grandparents and my mom were trying to shelter my brain.

21:59SpeakerBut it's funny because. I do remember going, so I remember going to the court date. That's like my earliest memory of this situation where I really understood the traction of it. And my mom was like, we're going to go see your dad and hopefully he's going to be set free, you know? So my mom was like almost certain to bring me to the courtroom. She didn't think my dad was going to be sentenced guilty, you know?

22:28SpeakerSo we drove up to Polk County and we went to the court case and I just remember, I remember it wasn't going good. Like the final statements were kind of awkward. And there was this weird energy in the room. And then I remember them sentencing him. And then I knew, I mean, when they set the guideline, they had said, 12 to 17 years maximum. That was with Rico.

22:58SpeakerThat was with, and you got to understand, this wasn't a Rico case because this was a reverse sting operation. There was actually no crime that happened. They didn't, what had happened is they tried to catch my father on a runway. And my uncle who had told me about him getting free was out there on the runway and he saw like a chopper in the distance. And that chopper was not a chopper that would be in that area ever.

23:28SpeakerSo my uncle was like kind of smart, lightweight, like military minded. He like tried to key my dad in like, yo, something's wrong. And then they tried to change the whole deal. Like, yo, we're not going to do it from there. We'll do it from there. Something was wrong there. And my uncle had backed out at this point, was like, yo, there's no way. I'm leaving Columbia, blah, blah, blah.

23:52SpeakerAnd then that shit had gone down. But when they had given him the, back to the courtroom, when they had given him the sentence, It was a 17-year maximum guideline. And they came... My PSI, the guy that did the probation and parole guy, he recommended only 12. Yeah. And they came out after a little deliberation. And yeah, they said 98 years. And I just remember the dead silence We're gonna get this taken care of and my dad was like,

24:52SpeakerLike, am I on a TV show type of thing before there was reality TV, you know, like looking around like, what the fuck? And then, yeah, everybody, it got more real after that.

25:05BubblemanLet me ask your father, you know, and it's, geez, it's a hard question for me to ask you because that's got to be one of the worst experiences you've ever had in your life. What, what were you thinking when you heard 98 years?

25:20SpeakerI thought it was a joke. I actually thought I was on some kind of joke TV program or something, you know? I didn't know what to... I said, 98 years? What are you talking about? They're recommending this and that. That's what they're talking about? But what they was, they had me down like I was a gangster from New York, which is complete hogwash, you know what I mean?

25:45SpeakerI mean, it's so ridiculous. They had... They had... They had the reporter, Geraldo Rivera, testify in the court case. So the reason why my dad said he thought maybe he was on a TV show and maybe you could find the reality in that statement, even in that time, was that my dad had just been on the show called, it was a Geraldo Rivera special. It was called The Doping of a Nation.

26:10SpeakerAnd the way that Geraldo had portrayed my dad was as a super mafia, like Columbia gangster. And he was just sitting in a place in the Keys with his glasses on. And he asked them a few questions and they had it all set up. And it made my dad just look like somebody from the Gambino family at the time or from like the Cosa Nostra. You know what I mean?

26:28SpeakerSo it was like that. That reality was implemented very much into the court case through the use of Geraldo Rivera. He actually testified against my father. Like, yeah, fuck that dude, bro. Fuck that scumbag, dude.

26:44BubblemanAre you saying Geraldo Rivera testified against your father?

26:48SpeakerThat's correct. Yeah, yeah. Geraldo Rivera, the actual superstar. My dad had just been on his show.

26:58SpeakerSo it was like, it was like the government was using Geraldo, maybe three months, sorry, I didn't mean three weeks. The government was using Geraldo to like focus because it was the time that COPS was just launched. So there was this, there was this time on, on, on, on, On television that was so primetime and it was used to focus on people getting busted, you know? So this was like this amplification they used on my father.

27:27SpeakerIt was like, oh, we're opening Al Capone's, you know, fucking safe. And now we're going to show Richard DeLisi over in the Keys talking about how he made 50... $50 million. I think my dad might have slipped up at that point because he had mentioned like he might have boasted a bit on the fact that he was on this show because he didn't know he was being set up.

27:49SpeakerBut it was used as fucking evidence in this case, you know? Jesus Christ. And you know what it was? And now, now you got to remember, we go to this, this little town where the people are like, you know, like all country people, right? And they're watching Geraldo on TV and they think, uh, Geraldo is, is the king of, uh, the king of, uh, of, uh, Television, you know?

28:14SpeakerMedia, yeah. You know, a media. And they were like, yeah, yeah, he's got to be guilty for this. You know, Geraldo's involved. So, you know, it's crazy, man.

28:27Etienne FontanYeah, he sold you out for ratings. And then to boost his ratings, testified against you to make you look like the gangster you weren't.

28:38SpeakerYeah. And then he says, then he says to me in the courtroom, don't worry about nothing. You'll be back in court. This ain't going to stick when he's hugging me. He gave me a hug when he left the courtroom. That was the best part of it all. And I haven't heard from that dude since I was in prison.

28:57Collin PalmerYeah, and you're in the fact of the matter is that he's he's working with Fox and all these other networks and and you probably never will because of who he thinks he is. And that's a shame. And honestly, it's very telling of of media to control narrative and take your words and spin it. And it's not saying it does every media outlet does this, but it's it's part of show business.

29:19Collin PalmerRight. And

29:20BubblemanIt's the evil part. It's the evil part because this is just straight good and evil, dude.

29:26SpeakerIt's way beyond that. Godaldo Rivera also gave weed to somebody before he interviewed him. He gave him tie sticks so that he would be really stoned and loose and casual. And so Godaldo Rivera, he's just a user, you know, of people. A super user. Yeah.

29:50BubblemanYeah, but it's not, listen, he's one, this is why it's good and evil is because he's just one person who chose evil. Who created the narrative of 98 years, whoever that person is, because I guarantee you, it was probably one or two people, some person who just has evil in them. How the fuck are you going to ask for 98 years?

30:11SpeakerThat was David Birdall.

30:15BubblemanDavid Birdall.

30:16SpeakerWho was the person that signed that got you out early? um that was the the board of um parole the head of the board of parole that was uh so that was a crazy situation so back it that'll take us right back to kind of where i left off when i was tripping about the whole situation about all of a sudden i knew it was real and there was these like level of people like it was like So to break down how I got in touch real quick with Mary, and I don't want to veer off the story, but I had reached out to Steve D'Angelo a few times because I had heard he was starting The Last Prisoner project.

31:05SpeakerAnd a few of my friends were like, yo, this is going to be the real way to get your pops out because the ambassadors and the pro bono action on this group, on this social group can maybe reach who you need to reach out to. So I was like communicating a few times with them this circa 2018, 2019. And I had gotten like mild responses from them, but not like More like we're about to launch something really serious.

31:40SpeakerAnd as soon as we do, we're going to put your father at the forefront of it. Now, I had heard shit like that so many times that I was like, yeah, whatever. But I did get responses back from from Yako, who was Steve D'Angelo's assistant. And then. I kind of had so. I'm sorry, I'm like throwing so much of this in, but I remember having this like moment when COVID struck, you know?

32:12SpeakerAnd what had happened was I'd had a dream after COVID started, like once it had fully kicked in, like when all the planes were on the runways and airports and shit like that, I had this dream that my dad died in prison. And I woke up and I said to my wife, I said, like, I had this dream that my pops died in prison and this shit, it felt so real.

32:38SpeakerIt was like he just got sick and died and they couldn't help him, you know? And that moment kind of sparked some crazy shit in my mind that I had reached back out to Last Prisoners Project and sent them a long text message saying, I think my dad's going to die in prison of COVID. So can you guys please get on your job? Because the prior message to me was like, we're going to handle your dad.

33:08SpeakerWe're going to put him in the forefront of everything we're focused on. And then I hadn't heard from them for about nine months, 10 months because of COVID. So I hit them back like, look, I think that if we don't do something soon, my father's going to die in prison. I had this dream and da, da, da, da, da. Then all of a sudden I got this reaction back, which was this second movement from them, which was like all this.

33:30SpeakerThen I knew for a fact that things were going through what I was talking about before, because before that message from Kiara, Mary, Mariah and Jaco, I didn't know that I had a real connection with Steve D'Angelo. He was just somebody on Weed Wars to me. You know what I mean? Like, it was just something that I was thinking like, oh, wow, famous ass dude who got on National Geographic and broke all the Like walls of how cannabis is perceived to the public, you know, because that's the only way I saw it out there in Amsterdam.

34:10SpeakerYou know what I mean? I was living in Amsterdam for 30 years and that was the first time I'd ever seen a show documented about weed and dispensaries. So all of a sudden I felt like, OK, this is really real. And then then things started to take traction. So it was like it was like COVID.

34:29SpeakerCOVID is the reason why he got free in the end. So thank God to COVID for my life.

34:37BubblemanPerspective, right? Everything's perspective.

34:40SpeakerCOVID brought me back to family in a way that I couldn't have imagined.

34:46BubblemanYeah, I will say during COVID, what me and my family spent almost every day doing was just hiking the forest behind our house all together. It was nice.

34:57SpeakerHow are you going to beat that time?

35:00BubblemanIt's really hard. It's like you don't want the whole world to shut down and the economy to collapse and all these other things. That's one perspective focusing on that. Oh, 100%. The importance of like getting out of the rat race, getting back to what's important, you know, which is it's family.

35:18SpeakerAll of a sudden you had time to fix your bathroom or the leak in the thing or the gutter. Everybody had time to like do things that they didn't have time for years to do, you know? What was that? A point where they weren't even letting people out on the street, you know? Yeah. It got crazy. Like I got, I got, I caught COVID inside and I got so sick.

35:47SpeakerI couldn't even walk. I had a quote where I went with my friend. That was when I had the dream. And with my friend holding on to my shirt so my stomach didn't wind up in my chest on the concrete.

36:08BubblemanYou guys both seem so like not bitter and so not like like it's how do you choose love in this and not bitterness? How do you how do you how do you move on from people who stole so much from you in such a personal and intimate way?

36:25SpeakerWe have to thank. We have to thank God for that. If I didn't find God in my life while I was in prison, I wouldn't be here talking to you right now. Because when I was in prison, when I didn't, I thought I wasn't coming home anymore, I wanted to just end it all. I definitely wanted to just stop breathing, you know?

36:55SpeakerAnd I even said something to Richie, I think I said something to him about that. Yeah, yeah, I mentioned that a couple times already and I remember him like calling me This is before this action started with Last Prisoner Project, but I remember him calling me probably a month prior to that and telling me like, you know, please don't get mad at me. If I'm not here anymore, you know?

37:23SpeakerAnd I was like, you better not, you motherfucker. Like, I swear to God. I got so on his shit when he said that to me. I was like, pops, I'm telling you, like, I'm going to carve a lane out this industry for you. When you get out, like, you're going to get love from people that you don't even know, like, that made money off this game without...

37:41SpeakerYou know, having to deal with the shit you dealt with because, and, and I remember that clearly, you know, like hanging up the phone and like being hella pissed at him. Um, yeah.

37:58BubblemanYou know, when I was younger, when I heard the word God, I would think like the guy up in the clouds with the son of Jesus. And as I get older and I hear your father say that, I'm like, this is, God is a word we give to make the right choices. You know, to think, to not, and temptation is the word we give to make the wrong choice.

38:20BubblemanOh, this is, I'm never going to get out of this. I'm never going to see my family again. I just want to end it all like, you know, throwing away the greatest thing you have, your life, and thinking that way is that temptation of when you're so far down. I can't personally imagine how, what you felt like and how far down you were. That is unbelievable to me.

38:39BubblemanBut then to find that temptation In a hard place, in a not a good place to find that sort of positivity, to find that, no, I'm going to make the right choices. I'm not going to, I'm going to see my family. I am going to get out of here. That is, that's pretty incredible. Not everyone will experience that.

38:58SpeakerIt was a short time, right, Pop, between, it was a short time between that moment where you were giving up to when you got free, right? It must have tripped you out. It was within months. It was crazy. It was, uh,

39:13SpeakerYou know, I got called to classifications. And what happened was that the awareness was pumped up by Fox News when I went on Channel 10 Fox News at 10 o'clock. And people heard about the story. They started complaining to Tallahassee about how can you have this guy in jail for that when you got murderers and rapists and all this stuff running around on the street, you know?

39:42SpeakerAnd also, mind you, medical cannabis is in full swing in Florida at the time. So people are enjoying cannabis in Florida and getting... So this was basically the time where the tides were changing public opinion on cannabis. You know, you could start seeing that public opinion on cannabis might lead to your release. Yes.

40:19SpeakerFor sure. Yeah, he knew that. He knew it in his heart. Yeah, I definitely, I could feel it. You know what I mean? I said, look at this. And the wild part of the whole deal is the state that put me away for 98 years licensed me now in the state to sell it. Is that sick? Dude, it's unbelievable. Yeah. It's great. It's not, it's sick in a good way.

40:47SpeakerIt's really like, is this for real? You know what I mean? Can I actually do this?

40:54BubblemanI'll tell you one thing. If the people who did convict you and create this narrative are seeing this play out now, like this is... I'm going to be real with you.

41:05SpeakerA lot of those people are dead. You know? The judge died. So when you said before, you said, who was the person? There must have been one or two people that made this decision. He had been in front of the same judge before. And this judge had told him, like, if I see you again, kind of like your ass is mine type of deal, you know? And here he was in front of the judge.

41:30SpeakerThat's what he told me. What was the judge's name, Pop? The judge's name was... The first, Judge Maloney. Of course, rhymes with baloney.

41:43BubblemanYeah.

41:48SpeakerRick, you didn't see Steve D'Angelo in about 2005 when he was in Amsterdam? No, I never met him then, no. The first time I met him was... Yeah, because he came over to my place and... wanted to know how to set up a lab because they set up their first labs in around 2008 and uh i explained because we had had a lab already then for uh almost 10 years i should add when sam's talking about a lab he's not talking about like a hash making lab he's talking about like a full analytical lab with the ministry of health

42:34Etienne FontanYeah, that's when we were all doing it. Steve D'Angelo was originally with Steep Hill Labs, and that's what we were trying to set up originally.

42:44SpeakerHe came over for dinner, and I did everything I could to help him. I said, of course you need a lab. It's the only way you can be sure that the consumers are safe.

42:56BubblemanWell, I got a Steve D'Angelo story, which he told me in Panama when I texted him in Panama saying, are you in Panama? He's like, yeah, I'm just in the lobby of this hotel. And I was a Panama. No, sorry. It was it was Columbia. We were in Columbia. I had just been in Panama. I had flown to Columbia. And so we were in Colombia. I heard he was there.

43:16BubblemanI had never met him before, but I had sold him bubble bags years prior. And he came. He was like, oh, I'm just talking to the president of Mexico or something. And he's like, I'll come up because I said, hey, I got some dabs. So this is the this is the hilarious way of meeting this guy. He's hanging out with a president of a country. But he's going to ditch him to come up and puff some dabs with me in our hotel room.

43:38BubblemanAnd he tells me a story on camera that in the 90s, I think it was the late 90s, I may get some of the details of this story wrong. He was busted. He lost pretty much everything. And he discovered bubble bags. And he was like, he bought some bubble bags and he started making hash. And he's like, He's like, those bubble bags were the foundation of everything.

43:58BubblemanLike for me, after getting busted, I basically created from the bubble bags, you know, Harborside and all of this neat stuff. So another kind of neat, neat, full story there for, you know, Steve is an incredible guy. He really is. Let's give a shout out to Steve. Seriously. We love you, Steve.

44:19BubblemanAbsolutely, we do. He is a solid dude. I have not got to spend much time with him, but the time and more importantly, what I see him and how he moves in the world, it leaves the right wakes. It leaves, you know, the results of his movements are good and positive.

44:36SpeakerThat's really well put. That's really well put. It's a trip because after Pops got out, we went over to his house up there in California and He goes to me, he goes, Rick, I just want to let you know something that I literally moved your dad's work back in the day. He's like, and I followed your dad's case before you reached me. He's like, and it always blew me away that he was still inside, you know?

45:05SpeakerSo I didn't know he was personally attached to him in some way.

45:12SpeakerYeah, that's where my love comes from to him. You know what I mean? I mean, I stay with him. When I go to California, I stay with him in his house. Yeah. It opens his home to me, you know? It is. I see you chiming in. And I know a lot of things also. I'm not going to go there. I was more... I think the best way to refer to him is what Mark just said, is that he somehow has a really amazing wake in things.

45:48SpeakerLike he leaves a wake in the waves that does something in the ocean of cannabis. So it is what it is. And for what he did for my family, I'll always have a place in my heart for him. Whether it was a wave of a hand or An initiative directed that he did. I think it was more of a wave of a hand, but respect and love, you know?

46:17BubblemanAfter so many years in prison, you must have a sort of ongoing struggle to see anyone else who's in jail for cannabis convictions for them to be out.

46:31SpeakerThat's why I'm an activist. That's why I'm trying to get, I want the 40,000 out on the street just like me, and I want their records cleaned. And, you know, I want men, women, everybody. You know, of every race, you know, I want... I don't think that anybody who's been sentenced to any type of cannabis-related sentence should be put in the same prisons as murderers and rapists and these type of people.

47:00SpeakerIt changes the mentality of a human, you know? It's like all of a sudden you have to be... Yeah. If you got a marijuana charge and there's no violence on it, there's no reason for you to be in prison. Especially that Washington, D.C. right now is cleaning up on cannabis. They're making so much money off of it, they're redoing their streets up there now, you know?

47:27BubblemanYeah, it is a weird time for this sort of end of prohibition, even though it didn't kind of, it's not playing out exactly how I certainly would hope to have seen it play out. It's still playing out. It is still playing out, though. You know, like you're sitting here with your father.

47:44SpeakerIt's better than it was. Yeah, better than it was, exactly.

47:49BubblemanWell, go ahead, Colin.

47:52Collin PalmerBut if you say we have a long way to go, but it's these, I look at it like a staircase. We have many stairs to climb, right? And there's a saying, one stair at a time. And I feel like we're still at the bottom of the staircase, but because of the stairs that you've climbed, Rick, and others around you and people that have been before us, You know, we're just here supporting it, you know, with our work, and we're trying to make a better future for ourselves, but it's only off the learnings of those that have become for us.

48:24Collin PalmerAnd that's, you know, we stand on the shoulders of giants like Sam and yourself, Rick, you know, it's totally two different dichotomies, but somehow it's fitting, right? It is us. It's wholly to us as individuals. So... Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

48:58Etienne Fontana lot of people think that through an initiative or through something it's going to be achieved whereas we have to never forget that the price of liberty is eternal vigilance which means we have to be a participant of our world our democracy our laws Because if we're not, our laws will impact those who we love. And here we're witnessing one of the more tragic cannabis realities that's befallen the reprehensible drug war and prohibition.

49:36Etienne FontanAnd here is for everybody to see a family that was torn apart. But fortunately, due to the change, a lot of people all over the decades worked on, you were able to arrive here. And that is a beautiful miracle all in itself of hard work, determination, not giving up. Rick, your constant vigilance, pushing for your father. He wasn't here to see it, whereas we were watching you suffer, watching you grow, We're going to have a little twist and turn on a fucking knife blade that you hoped and dreamed this was a possibility.

50:18Etienne FontanSo to sit here years later, I mean, what was that, 2017 or something like that, that you're still talking about?

50:25Speaker16, 17, 18. Yeah, yeah, heavy.

50:28Etienne FontanSo, you know, thank you for taking the chance on yourself to believe to do that for your father, because I know people who wouldn't even try.

50:40SpeakerRick was making daily posts in things like Facebook and other things saying, please help me. Yeah, I remember going back to that and I'm so glad that all of you sitting here because it brings me right back to that time when we were doing Hash Church and I was trying to use the Hatch community, which seemed to be the wokest community in the cannabis industry.

51:13SpeakerAll of you sitting in this room right now had something to do with my father. All of you. As I see all of your faces, Colin, Mark, Sam, Etienne, it's a wild thing. So it's really great to have this moment where we come back and go over it all because it seems So surreal, you know, like I, but, but you made this, you made this moment. No, no, you're, you're, you're 100% right.

51:46SpeakerThank you. You dreamed it, but you achieved it. But I also met the right people that gave me this energy, like, yo, Keep going, you know what I mean? Trust me, keep going. Because if you don't have that in the world, like it can feel really bewildering, you know? And at a certain point I was losing self-confidence, you know? Even though I had a wife and beautiful children, I was losing my self-confidence because I was like, I was seeing Mandela get out.

52:17SpeakerI was just seeing a lot of things in my life that were being corrected. So I was like, man, if this doesn't get corrected, I'm going to fucking be hopeless. I remember, Rick, the really big problem was that they were already starting to release some federal prisoners from nonviolent cannabis. It was freaking me out. Yeah, but Florida, they played hardball. They did. And, you know, coming back to that, like, I get bashed a lot for my partnership with Trulieve.

52:59SpeakerAnd how I deal with that and how I respond to that is cannabis would not be medically legal in Florida if it wasn't for Trulieve. So there's certain people that have to take certain actions to make certain things happen. And they took those actions. And the first place to ever sell medical cannabis in Florida was that brand. So that's why looking over everything and looking back on everything, what made this possible, they were super cog in that.

53:38SpeakerAs hard as some people have time imagining that, Because now every Floridian can drive up the road and go get cannabis if they need it. So that if that didn't happen in that state, there would have been no recognition to my father's situation. You know, so it's really deep, like how it's all come around and who we sit with now. And and like it also stuns my father that the state of Florida now Now we have a brand in the state of Florida to medically distribute cannabis is pretty amazing, you know?

54:22BubblemanIt's absolutely amazing. And I want to get into it more. But I want to go back still before we get there. You know, one of the things that I always think about my mentor, Ron Hickey, who served, he served six years in a federal penitentiary for cannabis, and then he got out and he got another five years. So he, he always called it 11 Christmases instead of 11 years.

54:41BubblemanBut you know, so I'd hear a lot of these stories, particularly when he would go go Thank you so much for joining us.

55:14SpeakerThe phone was one of the wildest. The computer. You know, the computer was like, I was like, you got to be kidding. Like Richie hands me a phone when I get out. I don't know. I think it was an iPhone 12 or something, Max or something, a sports. He said, here, dad, here's a phone for you. And he started showing me some of the stuff on it.

55:37SpeakerI said, get out of here. This can't be. I mean, I could talk to the thing and it would tell me whatever I wanted to know. I was like... Imagine being dyslexic and being handed an iPhone with Siri.

55:52BubblemanIt must have looked like alien technology. It really must have. Just the dyslexic part.

55:56SpeakerLike, how do you communicate in the world that we know digitally And then all of a sudden you're handed this Siri thing where you're like, hey, send my son a message, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And it's not like you have to write it. And it takes seven hours for a dyslexic. I feel like that would be overwhelming.

56:16Etienne FontanLook how he cut his teeth back then, right? You were using pay phones and pagers, right, to communicate.

56:22SpeakerAnd all of a sudden. Oh, when I went away, yeah, it was like if you didn't have a quarter, you didn't make a phone call. Right, exactly. I'll be right back.

56:30Collin PalmerI'm thinking about how much time we all had to adapt from the very first iPhone till even the Max 12. I mean, all the iterations in between that. We were like on this curve. You just were like all the way up immediately into it.

56:44BubblemanDude, it's like smoking a tiny hit off of a joint and then like smoking DMT after that in regards to a drug experience like straight up. Oh, wow.

56:55Collin PalmerSo, wow. That's pretty amazing though. So, Rick. Can you tell us a little bit about the experience you had, you know, not just coming out, but you know, the, your journey with cannabis was one of, of necessity and, and real complexity as well.

57:17SpeakerWell, you have to remember, you know, I was, I was actually 13 when I, when I first started smoking weed and the third, the difference between me being 13 and you being 13, It's like 50 years. So back then it was like so unbelievable in my head how much I loved this thing and how much I wanted to get involved with it. And I wanted to be a I wanted to be a marijuana dealer.

57:51SpeakerAnd then after a little while, I said, I don't want to be a marijuana dealer. I want to be a marijuana smuggler. I want to bring thousands and thousands of pounds of this stuff into America to make all my friends happy and make New York State happy for one day. And that'll make me, you know? Am I right? You are right. Absolutely. And you did make people happy.

58:19SpeakerI did. I did. Trust that. There's no doubt about it. I mean, people, people, I made, you know, I made people love what I did the way I loved it, you know?

58:36BubblemanSo how would you go about, you know, how, you know, obviously you were good at it, but how did you learn to do that? You just sort of, would you go to the countries? Would you get hands?

58:44SpeakerHere's the way it happened. I had an old Porsche, an old, I don't know, a 356. And me and my brother were driving around one day in Pompano Beach, Florida. And we, I had been doing little things with car loads and truck loads to New York. You know, other people were smuggling it. And we pulled into this place, a 7-Eleven, and we went in there and got like a Slurpee or something and some chips and stuff, maybe a honey bun, who knows.

59:18SpeakerAnd there was a car traded there, you know, the thing that sells cars? And there was a house for sale, a coffee plantation in Minka, Columbia. But I seen the thing Columbia and I seen Plantation. I could barely read and write at this time. And I grabbed it and I said to the lady, my brother's out in the car now, he's sitting in the car. And I said to the lady, give me a roll of quarters.

59:51SpeakerI went out to the phone booth outside. My brother's rose window down. He says, what are you doing? I said, I'm making a call. I'm calling this guy about this house, this finger that's for sale in Columbia, this coffee plantation. He said, get the fuck out of here. Get in the car. Let's go. I said, no, you get over here and come with a pen and a paper.

1:00:12SpeakerSo what happened was I called this guy in Michigan, and it's the father of the kid that owns the house in Columbia. But the kid is in Columbia. He's trying to make things happen, but he just couldn't do it. So I said to the father, I said, hey, listen, I want to buy that place in Columbia. How do I go about going and seeing it and everything?

1:00:35SpeakerAnd he said, oh, no, you can't do, you can't just go to Columbia. You know, Columbia is like, you know, it's crazy. They got, you know, gorillas there and all kinds. I said, man, forget about all that. Just tell me about the house and how I can get there. So he told me some stuff. He gave, he told me how to get there and everything. And we didn't even have passports.

1:00:58SpeakerIn 24 hours from when I talked to that guy, I had a passport in my hand. Wow.

1:01:05BubblemanAnd what year was this? Like 80 something? When was this? Yeah. What year would this have been?

1:01:12SpeakerThis was in 1975.

1:01:19SpeakerOne, right? Oh, shit. 71, right? 71, when you told me the stories. 53 years ago? Right after my federal deal went down. Okay. Wow. All right, so then you flew to Columbia to go see this plantation? Oh, we fly to Columbia. I rent a car in a place called Barranquilla, and we drive. We drive for like an hour, an hour, an hour and a half. We drive to this place called...

1:01:49SpeakerSanta Marta, Columbia. But there's a little resort just before you get there. And we stopped and got a room and stuff, you know, and hung out. And I seen this kid, you know, in the lobby. And I said, hey, man, you think you could help us get some weed? And he said, oh, yeah, sure. Blah, blah, blah. What room you in? So we went to our room and he came over to our room and he says to me, yeah, I can get you some good weed.

1:02:21SpeakerHe says, give me the keys for your car. I looked at my brother. I said, you believe this fucking kid is looking for the keys for the car? Is he out of his fucking mind? So make a long story short, I wind up giving him the keys for the car. I give him $50. And he says, I'll be back in a half hour. He comes back in a half hour.

1:02:47SpeakerHe's got a fucking shopping bag full of weed. A shopping bag full and $40. I said, I looked over at my brother. I said, this is the guy we wanted to meet here.

1:03:00BubblemanBefore you saw the plantation, you got the weed connection.

1:03:04SpeakerOh, so no, here's what happens. Yeah, I had the weed connection already. So the next day we drive up to the place, right? And I mean, I don't know if you've ever seen Richie. I'm going to have Richie actually send or I'll send you pictures of the whole place, what it looks like. And... We go up there and I'm like, wow. I'm saying to my brother, holy fuck, look at this place.

1:03:33SpeakerIt's a two-story house on the side of a mountain overlooking the valley with Santa Marta and the Atlantic Ocean. I mean, really fucking magnificent view, right? And it's like, there isn't even electric in the house. There's a little wire like something that you'd see like an antenna on a portable radio, you know, a little thin wire. That's what's going into the house to make a couple of light bulbs light up.

1:04:02SpeakerAnd that's it. But, I mean, it changed because I had bought a giant generator from a yacht company, you know, that sold generators to these big 200-foot yachts and stuff. And I brought a generator down there on one of my planes and brought it up to the house and had it all put in and everything, put air conditioning in. I mean, we tricked the house out, you know.

1:04:26SpeakerNot bad. Yeah, man, we made it real comfortable. You know, brought all furniture from America. Every time the plane went down empty, I put clothes, you know, all kinds of stuff in it to have in the house. And that's how we furnished, got it all straight, you know, to where you want to live in it and hang out in it. I mean, the gorillas used to come out of the mountains and come hang out with us.

1:04:49SpeakerAnd everybody was so afraid of them. And I didn't, I wasn't afraid of them. You know, I grew up in Brooklyn, New York, bro. And tell them actually why you weren't afraid of them. Because I'm just remembering, you brought them a lot of appliances that weren't available in Columbia. So it was like coming back down, loading it. Oh man, I used to load the plant with refrigerators, dishwashers, air conditioners, VCRs, TVs.

1:05:17SpeakerColumbia and Santa Claus. Yeah, it was like Santa Claus. I used to bring them all kinds of food that they couldn't get their hands on.

1:05:24Dr Mark ScialdoneYeah, I'm thinking it was actually gorillas, like the animal.

1:05:28SpeakerI'm talking about gorillas hanging off their shoulders, sitting in my living room.

1:05:34Dr Mark ScialdoneI got that.

1:05:35SpeakerHanging out, smoking J's with us, you know, telling us if anybody gives you any problem, you just let us know, you know?

1:05:42BubblemanJust an army of gorillas in and around your house. And so you fix up this house, you get it all pimped out. You've got a relationship with the gorillas.

1:05:51SpeakerNow we get with this kid and we meet these couple of guys and we did business with them for a little while, but it wasn't, they were too, they were too gangster oriented. Like, They were hurting people to get things done. And I seen that and I said, I said to my brother, I said, hey, Ted, I'm not into this shit with this. We got to find someone else.

1:06:17SpeakerAnd we wound up founding a Sky Romero, which became like a dear friend of mine also. My son's middle name is Romero and his son's first name is Richard. I mean, that's how close we got. And I mean, this guy could move a mountain. He was only five foot two. He could move a mountain in five minutes by just waving his hand. That's how strong this cat was.

1:06:48SpeakerGod bless him, you know?

1:06:50BubblemanYeah, indeed. So you guys end up planting like, what is this, like an acreage or something? No, what happened was we wound up growing.

1:07:02SpeakerAll gold marijuana.

1:07:06SpeakerI mean, literally hundreds of tons of it. Jesus. You know, like the gold. Yeah, close to a million pounds of yellow marijuana I brought into America. And when I say yellow, I mean like yellow like gold. You know, I'm talking about 14, 18, 22, like that color, you know? Was that called Santa Marta Gold? Huh? Was it called Santa Marta Gold? Yeah, Santa Marta Gold. That was just me.

1:07:41SpeakerI was responsible for all that weed. Me and my brother.

1:07:46BubblemanThat's unbelievable. And what, how did, how did that come about? Like, obviously it must've been like, it's, it's, it is drying it out in the sun a special way. Is it not? Or is it, it's.

1:07:56SpeakerYeah, it was, it was, it was the way, it was the way that they, they cured it. You know, that's the way, the way they made it happen. Cause it was females and males together. That's how potent that stuff was.

1:08:14SpeakerI remember we grew like seven acres of just females, like five, eight mountains from where we grew the, where we grew the other way, the males and females were mixed. And I'll tell you what, man, people in New York were outraged by it. Outraged. You know, they were like, you gotta be kidding me. This can't be. Like in disbelief, happy or not happy? Oh, they were so unbelievably happy with it.

1:08:46BubblemanI was going to say.

1:08:48SpeakerIt was like the kryptonite of today.

1:08:52Dr Mark ScialdoneJesus.

1:08:53SpeakerBut meanwhile, the regular gold weed was the happy weed that made you give you the munchies and the laughs and everything. It was the perfect smoke. And it's gone.

1:09:04BubblemanIt's not here anymore. So did you like discover a group of Colombians that had been doing this on a smaller level and then you blew it up? Or did you like, were you a part of, how did you guys come up with this curing the weed this way? Had they been doing it for a long time?

1:09:20SpeakerNo, they weren't.

1:09:21BubblemanSamir.

1:09:24SpeakerMy friend, my friend was in the, was in the, the man that I met, Romero, was in the weed business, but not heavy. He was like, like a small time guy. And I said, hey, listen, when you get, when we get involved with each other, this thing's going to blow up. It's going to change your whole life. You're not going to be like, you know, driving this car that's got, you know, like two flat tires, you know, stuff like that.

1:09:49SpeakerYou'll be driving, you know, a nice car, you know, you'll be, you'll be in nice business and everything. And that's what why that happened to him. He was very, very business oriented. And he wound up, you know, supermarkets and all kinds of things he owned, he owned before he passed, you know, now his children own it, you know, but he was really, really business. Did he come up with the Sims Mia or did you?

1:10:15SpeakerI'm sorry? Did Ramon come up with Sim Samia or did you? No, Romero, Romero. Romero. Yeah, he's just asking who- I guess it was a joint effort. I told him I would not ever, ever bring commercial marijuana to Florida. It just wasn't my thing. I didn't want to, or to New York or to anywhere else on the planet. But who handled the harvest and everything and everything was going on in Columbia is what they're asking.

1:10:51SpeakerWas it Romero? Yeah, it was Romero. Romero took care of everything. He took, he, in other words, he took care of everything right up to the, to the airport when the plane landed. Yep. Which the airport was in the Guajira Desert. The first sims for me I saw was in the very late 60s or maybe 1970s. And it was actually Acapulco Gold Simpsomia. But my friend brought it up and he says, I've got two kinds.

1:11:26SpeakerI've got one with seeds and one without seeds. I said, well, give me an ounce of both and I'll try them. And so once I tried the Simpsomia, I says, I don't want no one's seeds.

1:11:40SpeakerOnce you had sense of me, it was over. You got to break out the double album. Go ahead. Hey, you got to remember, you got to remember when I come out, there's no such things as seeds and weed anymore. I was like, holy shit, man. You know, I can't even find a seed in a jar. You know, I'll buy a pound of weed and I can't get one seed out of it.

1:12:02SpeakerIt was nuts.

1:12:03BubblemanWell, you can look at the evolution of music and how we listen to music and the evolution of seeded weed. When we had albums, double albums, the weed had lots of seed in it, but you could get it out with the records. Then they just got smaller and smaller and smaller, and now they're like MP3s and we pay for music subscriptions. Excuse me for a second. Absolutely.

1:12:28SpeakerNow, I was just thinking that I was wondering, I was wondering if the people who, I was wondering if the same groups were curing the weed the same way back then, you know, like that there was actually somebody who was running things, going to Acapulco, going to Mexico, and then going to Colombia and being like, this is how it has to be. It was just common sense.

1:12:49SpeakerYeah, okay. In Morocco, when I visited there in 1971, the way they dried their tea plants, well, you For either smoking keep or for making hashish, they put them on the roof, dried them in the sun for a couple days. Gold dried, yeah. And yeah, that's the way they did it. Gotcha. Yeah.

1:13:14BubblemanVery cool. Very cool, man.

1:13:19BubblemanWhat a trip. Like, what an unbelievable... It's got to be a movie, dude. Like, it's... And it's not even done.

1:13:25SpeakerWe're working on that. We're actually working on that at the moment. It's funny you say that. We signed an agreement for a movie with a group and I'm busy evolving that at the moment and evolving a documentary at the same time. So a feature film and a documentary. The feature film will be more It won't be all factual. It won't be based 100% on reality because if you do a movie, well, just the way they approach us, they don't want to do it that way.

1:13:56SpeakerAnd then that's why we want to still do the documentary in the book that's just like the stone cold hard facts.

1:14:01BubblemanI think Mr. Nice was a similar movie from the book. They kind of veered in some directions.

1:14:07SpeakerAnd even the movie Blow. I mean, they started off as hot dealers in Hermosa Beach. Yeah.

1:14:17Collin PalmerThey did the same thing on the doc where they, you know, did the doc first and then did the film.

1:14:25Dr Mark ScialdoneYou know, the one thing you've heard of the old saying, you've heard of the old saying, Rick, art imitating life, right? So this would be now art that would be, you know, basically telling your story, but you almost got to wonder just based on the timing of your dad's decision, you know, with like, Goodfellas and The Godfather and all those other movies that kind of casted, you know, Italians from New York is all being, you know, in the rackets, you know?

1:14:56SpeakerI'm sure, I'm sure that that had a big part in people's minds, you know?

1:15:02Dr Mark ScialdoneYeah.

1:15:03SpeakerBecause they were watching stuff, you know, they couldn't wait for Tuesday and Wednesday night and stuff like that to watch certain, you know, shows that were on television. And you're right. And I didn't even get a chance to see the Sopranos till I got home.

1:15:23SpeakerThey wouldn't let us watch it.

1:15:26Dr Mark ScialdoneThat could influence the judge and the jury. It could have had a big impact on your sentence, don't you think?

1:15:34BubblemanYeah.

1:15:35Dr Mark ScialdoneYeah.

1:15:37BubblemanThey wouldn't let you watch The Sopranos in jail because it promoted gangsterism? Is that what you said?

1:15:42SpeakerWell, they wouldn't let The Sopranos because they showed breasts, you know, the dances and all that. And violence. Bada bing.

1:15:53BubblemanNo bada bing, eh?

1:15:56Etienne FontanWell, this is a reminder, you know, there's still people in jail. You know, the people are still going to jail for weed. You know, Florida has... I think there were 60... That script... Yeah, I was about to say, Rick, do you have anybody that you want to make us aware of since, you know, your dad won the freedom ticket, you know, but there's other people, unfortunately, still waiting on their freedom ticket.

1:16:19Etienne FontanYou know, is there anybody that we should be aware of?

1:16:22SpeakerYeah, the latest case, I mean, there's a lot of cases that I'd like to mention right off the bat, but the latest case I've been awoken to is Michael Beeman.

1:16:36SpeakerWho was sentenced to 999 years for cannabis. It's a black man. Um, I, I also would say Kevin Allen is another one. Um, Edwin Rubin, these people are all just sitting in prison on these crazy, crazy sentences. Um, yeah, I, I don't want to just say one person. I would say that if anybody wants to help, please go to like Last Prisoner Project website, check who and how to get in contact and really take action and donate.

1:17:16SpeakerI would also say connect with freedomgrow.org. So these are people that directly communicate and impact constituents' lives. For me to just talk about one particular person right now, it will distract our goal as a community. There's over 40,000. I think it's 60,000 this year that were arrested. So when my dad was put onto it a few years ago, it was 40,000 on a kind of like annual basis.

1:17:48SpeakerBut this year, still 60,000 people were arrested for cannabis. So there's this kind of like gung-ho anti-patriotism when it comes to cannabis that touches a lot of people in like the brown and black communities. And they get tormented with really weird sentencing. I mean, I know a lot of white people have also been affected by cannabis sentencing, but it's out of proportion. So the best thing to do is really go to Last Prisoner Project dot org or Freedom Grow dot org and See who they have on their list because they know the actual order of what things can be done and who they can help and stuff like that.

1:18:35SpeakerSo me personally, that's what I'm doing. We give a certain amount of proceeds to them because they are constantly in real action with constituents, you know? Yeah. But Michael Beeman, 999 years. Look that one up and be fucking blown away. Like, wow, they're still doing this weird shit. Like, yeah. It would have been a lot more. But people like me left America in 1985 because I could see the writing on the wall.

1:19:17Etienne FontanBut then there's people like me who refused to testify against our friend Ed Rosenthal in 2007 and were literally put on the stand in federal court and grilled and sentenced to potentially jail. And, you know, the judge who was My judge, Judge Breyer, who was the twin of the Supreme Court Judge Breyer, you know, it took seven of us getting on the stand and refusing to testify, declaring our Fifth and Tenth Amendment rights to protect ourselves, that we were doing what we were doing right.

1:19:55Etienne FontanAnd, you know, so it takes sacrifices at times to challenge the system, because out of that, The Ninth Circuit realized that they could no longer convict people for medical marijuana. Okay, so this is the type of precedence we set over the years. I'm just a very small little speck of grain of rice.

1:20:18SpeakerAt that time, every grain counts. You weren't even allowed to mention medical marijuana in court. Correct. Not use it as a defense.

1:20:29Etienne FontanCorrect. And that is the reason because this week we celebrate Berkeley Patients Group 25th year and Berkeley Patients Group as the oldest dispensary in the United States. The name Patients was willfully put in the name by our founders, Jim McClellan, Debbie Goldsberry, and Don Duncan. Because there was no medical defense, we were hoping that a series of our peers of 12 plus a couple on the guest list would hear the term patients when they would read the name of the business.

1:21:08Etienne FontanThat's how far we knew that we had to take it because we expected to fight it out in the courts. We never expected to be here at 25 years. We expected the matching bracelets and to use the courts to change the system so there would be no, no more Delisis in the world. Or unfortunately, I had to deal with a friend of mine, Will Foster, who was sentenced to 93 years back in 94.

1:21:35Etienne FontanOklahoma. Yeah, Oklahoma. I held his daughter in my arms as he was sentenced to 93 years. And years later, he would finally be absolved. And now he's back living and has his own cannabis business in Oklahoma. So I'm glad to see people rise above the realities that the absolute shit hole the government threw you in. that you had the wherewithal to fight that your son had the wherewithal to fight so that you're sitting here today In a different reality that none of us dreamed possible in 2017, but here you are.

1:22:19Etienne FontanSo a credit to all of you and everybody along the way who helped make that a reality. But most of all, Mr. DeLisi's both. Thank you for your tenacity and leading by example and showing people what is possible by love.

1:22:36BubblemanYeah, not just coming out of it, coming out of it right into a whole scene. Like, I'm going to carve a lane for you, pops. Don't worry. It's like, boom, got the brand, got the relationships. You guys are doing all these store openings and suddenly you're selling weed legally. Like, it's such a beautiful, like, little cherry on top. It's like, not only are we going to get them out, This is a brand.

1:22:59BubblemanThis was like a movement. It's more than a brand, really. It's a movement. And I'm guessing that you're using this brand to fund and to promote the activism and to create the awareness for the prisoners.

1:23:15SpeakerBeautiful.

1:23:16BubblemanThat's just so good. It's all good.

1:23:19SpeakerAnd a certain percentage of our proceeds go back to the activism constantly. So that's gone on. We've been able to donate nice amounts to Last Prisoner Project, Freedom Grow, Um, certain, certain people that we come across in the industry, um, 40 tons, uh, with Corvain and, um, Anthony and, um, King, King fights cancer. Certain people that we come across, we, that, that are, that use cannabis and act and are, and are, um, active in, in active, in, In trying to promote cannabis reform, then I try to give back as much as I can to those people if I see they're really solid, you know?

1:24:06SpeakerYeah, that's awesome.

1:24:07BubblemanWell, we're always here for you guys. Hash Church is your vehicle to use as you see fit and as you please. Anything we can do in this part of the community for you guys and what you're doing, it's just, we're 100% behind it.

1:24:22SpeakerYeah, it's a trip because Hash is what brought us together, you know?

1:24:28BubblemanAnd hash is what- Dude, the first time you came here, we made hash.

1:24:31SpeakerSo yeah, and hash is what set my father free. Hell yeah. Through the activism of the community, That there was a very close-knit niche community in the hash industry and the extraction industry. And those people are the people who put me on a platform that made me understand what was my goal and how I was going to achieve it. So, yeah, Hash Church, man. Everybody pray. Put your hands together for the hash, everyone.

1:25:03BubblemanDude. Yeah, man. Legends of hash. Hash Church.

1:25:10SpeakerYeah, that was that was how. So it's a good thing. It's a good time for me to give this dude a shout. Also, I'm going to take a dab, but let me take a dab and then I'll holler. As we speak also.

1:25:28Collin PalmerOne thing you said earlier, you were saying you're self-conscious about your deal. And I think all of us have worked with large companies of one form or another in our career in this industry. And the one thing I think is important to highlight is that Darren Aronofsky, Tribe Called Quest, I could name many artists that all work with large entities to get their artistry out. It's not about who you work with, it's how you work with them and how you use the platform for your voice.

1:26:01Collin PalmerAnd I think that's a lot of times and misunderstood. And I think those that are out there listening need to understand that distribution is key. If you're an artist, that's all you care about. If you're in cannabis, that's sometimes all you want to do is you want to touch more people. And to touch means that you need help. And having help isn't not a bad thing. And no one deals the same.

1:26:28Collin PalmerSo if they can make it work for themselves, make it work for themselves, it doesn't mean that's a bad thing or they're bad people. It means that they're utilizing the platform for everything that makes sense for them. So.

1:26:41BubblemanWell, you know what? And I'll say something about that real quick. Is that, you know, when I first started working with one of my partners for bubble bags, actually, You know, a lot of people in and around Amsterdam had stories and they were like, oh no, he did this and he did that and he did this. And I said, well, you know what? That's great that you manifested that with that group, but don't feel that you have to like warn me on my manifestations because I'm going to create my own relationship with this person.

1:27:13BubblemanAnd me and that guy went on to do millions and millions and millions of dollars in business. When many, many people, you know, tried to poison that before it happened, right? They tried to, they got their little, they got their little opinions in there. And it's like, okay, maybe you heard some rumors. Maybe you even had a bad experience. Are we not allowed to grow as human beings?

1:27:36BubblemanAre we not allowed to become better? Are we not allowed to make mistakes? Or when we make that mistake, is that now what defines us and who we have to be for the rest of our life? I hope not.

1:27:47SpeakerNo, it's a good point. Yeah, it's a... Sorry, before I go back to just... It's a trip because I was just saying that Hash had brought me to this experience, you know? And how I had originally been introduced to Hash had to do with a certain group of people which I want to shout out for sure, which one of them is Ramon and another one is Barry.

1:28:12SpeakerHe's also who brought me together with... Mark. Personally, me and Ramon still are communicating as friends. Me and Barry no longer communicate, but I wanted to give True Cannibalist a shout out just for one of the first people who kind of like, we started extracting and making hash together and he was growing weed around me and I was growing weed with him at a certain point. And trying to evolve things.

1:28:44SpeakerBut, um, that was, that was like the, one of the key people who brought, brought me in to this whole, yeah, evolution of my, of myself in a way, you know, where I, where I saw like, Hey, wait a minute, there's that niche crowd, you know? But, um, yeah, I didn't want to take too much off focus and hop back. I just wanted to say that one thing.

1:29:04SpeakerSo I didn't lose that thought. My bad.

1:29:07BubblemanYeah, yeah. And you wanted to take a dab and then shout someone out. Is that who it was? Those two guys? That was it. Yeah, that was it. No, I'm glad. I'm glad. That's awesome, man. Yeah, I remember meeting. That was how we met.

1:29:19SpeakerYeah.

1:29:19BubblemanMeeting you both, you and Ramon.

1:29:21SpeakerYeah, it was a trip, dude. It was fucking awesome, to be honest. Because it was this pivotal shifting time in the cannabis industry where all of a sudden we were feeling a little bit liberated just as people. So it was like, oh shit, we could actually show face and talk and communicate and build and stuff like that, which was fucking awesome, you know?

1:29:45BubblemanBut yeah. A quick question for your father, Richard. You know, being a father myself of three children, like, how fucking much did it touch your heart? And what level of pride did it give you to watch your son do what he did for you?

1:30:04SpeakerThere's no words on the planet to describe what my son did for me. And it was a joint effort. It wasn't... It was Richie, my nephew, and my daughter. They were like a group. And they never stopped. They kept on, you know, Ashley and Kenneth, I mean, and Richard just stayed on it and stayed on it till something happened. They, you know, I remember him telling me once he got away from it for a little while, you know, to focus on what was going on in his life.

1:30:43SpeakerAnd It's just, like I said, there's no words. You can't, you can't even, you can't even come up with words to, to, to, uh, express how, how, uh, how wonderful these people were in my life. You know?

1:31:02BubblemanYeah. I mean, clearly the love they had for you, they took, they focused it out into their communities, that community, those communities were extremely receptive and then it just built this whole thing that seemed to, uh, I mean, I just can't imagine it. 30 some odd years in prison. It just must have felt like it was never going to end.

1:31:23SpeakerOh, believe me, I thought I was going to die in prison. I didn't think I was ever going to come home. That's how brainwashed they had me. But it didn't stop me from trying to Better myself while I was there. I kept doing all kinds of nice things. You know, I kept bettering myself. I kept learning more. I was in the chapel's library, you know, just absorbing all this stuff and taking it all in.

1:31:54SpeakerSo maybe someday that I could help someone else out, you know?

1:32:00BubblemanYeah, just being a positive voice in a place like that, it helps a lot of people out.

1:32:07SpeakerIn there, if you're not, if you ain't thinking positive all the time, you'll jump off the third rail. You know? And I'm sure it happens. I've seen it happen many times. People hang up the phone, go upstairs, and dive off the second floor, you know, like they were diving in a swimming pool with their hands on their side. Oh my God.

1:32:37BubblemanThat's a frightening place. It is pretty insane. I always think back to Todd McCormick's words, you know, like to to to to imprison habitual florists, you know, people that are obsessed with flowers that just want to share their flowers and grow their flowers and move their flowers. It just seems so sick and twisted to to put someone in there for that. It's it is.

1:33:07SpeakerIt's pretty scary. And just yesterday, they probably put a few more away, you know? It's really incredible.

1:33:17BubblemanWell, it seems like they have incentive to do it.

1:33:24SpeakerYeah.

1:33:26BubblemanYou know, like, I don't just think they're doing it out of like the pure enjoyment of their sick and twisted minds. There has to be a system in place that benefits many people. Yeah, like the industrial prison complex.

1:33:40SpeakerI mean, and also putting someone in prison for that kind of, once you get over, you know, certain amount of time in prison, your brain functions different, your personality changes, and you deal with situations different. So it's like they're breaking you You know, in a certain way, because you can either break, you can either break good or bad. Like some people like wake up and realize like that shit is not, we're going to, I'm going to do this.

1:34:06SpeakerSo this never, it is not a possibility. And then there's the other people who just get like a cycle and keep coming back and coming back. And usually people meet people in there that take that right when they get out, they do shit that they shouldn't do. It's crazy. Prison.

1:34:22BubblemanYeah, it's a fucked up system for sure. A system that like is getting sometimes paid for inmates, subsidized.

1:34:32SpeakerOh, no. When when you have private prisons, it's all it's all that's that's tax money. It's a whole industry, right?

1:34:39Etienne FontanI mean, yeah, it's like weaponry industries from food to supplies to.

1:34:46SpeakerOh, you have to look at every single aspect. Jobs for the people that come there. Right. Which are which are who like.

1:34:53Etienne FontanHaynes, Fruit of the Loom, you know, Old Navy, all these companies where people buy very cheap clothing. Where is that made? It's made in prisons by cheap American labor because that's what they they have found is affordable labor. And why you can buy your nine ninety nine pair of jeans at Old Navy is because you've got people in. Just to get out of their cells, right, Mr. DeLisi?

1:35:21Etienne FontanYou know, you have to work or you're stuck hanging around riffraff.

1:35:25SpeakerYeah, they paid him like 33 cents a day.

1:35:29BubblemanJesus Christ. Think about this. How many of you think are working full-time hours? Like, is it a million in the U.S.? Is it 2 million prisoners working full-time hours at 33 cents a day?

1:35:39SpeakerOh, yeah. They're working for 30 cents a day.

1:35:42BubblemanDude, think of the monetization of that. That's like 20 million hours plus a day of slave labor.

1:35:52SpeakerI think a million is a really small number of how many prisoners are working.

1:35:57BubblemanI think so too.

1:35:58SpeakerOh, but I like to be probably three quarters, three quarters of the prison system. They're working. Yeah. A friend of mine, rebuilding highways. They're either rebuilding highways. They're making clothes. They're making license plates. They're out cleaning up the neighborhoods. Imagine if you could value your life at 30 cents a day.

1:36:22Etienne FontanA friend of mine in Colorado did his time. They did tilapia fish, and they were selling it to Whole Foods as organic for pennies on the dollar because they were able to just monitor the ponds.

1:36:37BubblemanThat is super evil.

1:36:39Etienne FontanYeah, so they're even into food now so that they can make affordable, you know, fish for people to purchase.

1:36:45SpeakerOh, the state in Florida, they have their own fish farms. Yeah. And you know, the best part is we don't eat any of the fish, the prisoners.

1:37:01SpeakerIs that something they have fish for? That's about right. I don't know how he survived so well. Like when he got out, I don't know how, because he had a lot of health ailments in prison, right? But when he got out, we slowly weaned him off all his medication and got him on healthier foods and healthier regimens. And it's just a trip. I'm like, how did he live off that shit for 32 years?

1:37:31SpeakerThe Mahoney Baloney.

1:37:34BubblemanHe's a tough bastard from Brooklyn. That's how.

1:37:38SpeakerYeah. I came out weighing 218. I'm 165 now. Holy shit. Detoxed.

1:37:47Etienne FontanYeah.

1:37:47SpeakerA lot of carbs, right? They feed you a lot of carbs in there. Shitty. The worst carbs. Yeah. Oh, my God. I mean, I tried so hard not to eat the food. But sometimes you have to, you know? I mean, right on the boxes, it said not for human consumption. On the box that they're feeding you with out of.

1:38:08BubblemanIs that unbelievable?

1:38:12SpeakerAnd I'm not just saying that. My friend, my roommate actually has pieces, the torn off corner of the boxes. Because his friend worked in the kitchen. And he told me, yeah, get me some of that stuff. And when he left the prison, he had it stuck in some of his paperwork. And he got all that stuff out of prison with him. Talking about Sean? Yeah, Sean Best.

1:38:38SpeakerShout out to Sean Best. That's my bro. Yeah.

1:38:43BubblemanHoly shit. So it's just, I mean, we all know it, but it's overall not a good place. They're just not doing... They're not doing it good. It's like there's a certain group of people that want to be prison guards or run prisons or control people in that level. And I'm not sure if you could have a consciousness at a certain level. Like, how do you do that?

1:39:11BubblemanHow do you feed people food that's not...

1:39:13SpeakerI'm telling you, I remember going to visit my dad. He's my sister. And she had jeans that have like a little tear in the knee, like a little tear like that big and maybe like that wide. And I remember we drove four hours, three hours in total to go see my pops. And she had to sit in the car in the parking lot for the whole visit.

1:39:37SpeakerAnd that's his daughter. Like, no, she can't come in with those, that little rip in the jeans, that Nick in the jeans violates. That's too much sexy. I was like, I was like, what the fuck? Like, and I'm not, I'm there only once out of like the five times I went to visit him. Cause I didn't visit him much. Yeah. I, I just, I didn't even want to go visit him that day.

1:39:59SpeakerCause my sister had to sit in the car, but I went, we, we sat there. We, we, it was like crazy. No.

1:40:05BubblemanIt's just a mind fuck psyop.

1:40:08SpeakerOh yeah, a hundred percent. That's the best. Yeah. You know, they love, they love in the visitor park, they love coming up with anything to make you visit miserable.

1:40:22SpeakerEspecially in the state places. Now the private prisons are a little different, but not much, you know, because the private prisons are more, um, They're looking to see what they can get out of what's going on. You know what I mean? Yeah.

1:40:41BubblemanI think that the problem is, and this is just an opinion I'm basing on my thoughts right now, is that there are probably a small percentage of people, you were there, not me, you could speak to this better than I could, that maybe deserve to be in the harshest prison conditions that you could create. Thank you so much for joining us.

1:41:23SpeakerBecause if they really used the people that did crimes that fit and put them somewhere where they worked and they actually were productive, they would just become people good back in society. But there's some kind of system that they're like, hold on, wait up. We're going to catch them right here, throw this into their mind, and see how they react as mild sociopaths back in nature.

1:41:46BubblemanIt's the most sick and twisted system, dude, from the foundation of it, right? Like I think of Deer Creek, Indiana, Grateful Dead Tour, go free for three. So they ask you to find them acid.

1:42:02BubblemanThen they bust you. They bring you into the van. It's like on the property. And they say, if you go get us three people, you can go free. And that's like the foundation. Yeah, dude, go free for three. Trust me. Deadheads, no. It's fucking frightening that that mentality exists where you're going to like, and it's terrible because they'll go up to people who are holding up a finger looking for a miracle.

1:42:28BubblemanAnd they'll be like, hey, I got a ticket. But I just want like a hit of acid. And then at the person, it might not ever have done acid, might not even be into acid, but they'll go find you acid and get you that, get them that tab. And then it's, well, bam, dude, now you're serving this time. That guy, who's a friend of mine who did not go free for three, he did two and three quarters years.

1:42:51BubblemanHe got sent home. This was for one tab of ecstasy, actually. He got sent home to Oregon. And months later, they called him up and said, we need you to come back for another 111 days or something like that. And he went and he found out that every day that he was in there, they were getting paid. He found out that the judge and the prosecuting attorneys are private owners in the prison system in Indiana, which I was just like, this can't be a real story, dude.

1:43:19BubblemanThis is... Fucking mental.

1:43:21SpeakerYeah, that's insane. That's fucking crazy as fuck, dude.

1:43:29Dr Mark ScialdoneSo that's a big obstacle to fight. Marcus, in 1990, my wife and I went to the Deer Creek Grateful Dead show. We had a person with us who did not have a ticket, and she did have a sign in my car saying she was looking for a ticket. And an undercover knocked on the window, said, hey, I have a ticket for you. What do you have to trade for it?

1:43:53Dr Mark ScialdoneAnd all she had was her headstack, which I think was just a mushroom cap, maybe a joint, maybe a hit acid. Yeah. And for those three things, she basically got the cuffs thrown on her, totally fucked up her life. We had to go on. This was in 90. So the next shows were in Tinley Park, which was Brent's last shows. But we tried to get her out, but they set bail so high that we couldn't afford to get her out.

1:44:21Dr Mark ScialdoneAnd it totally fucked up her life from that point forward. So I totally agree with you on the Deer Creek thing. It was an entrapment thing.

1:44:30SpeakerAnd you know what? It didn't just destroy her. It destroyed everybody around her too.

1:44:35Dr Mark ScialdoneThe family, yeah.

1:44:37SpeakerEverybody. Not just family, like friends, you know, everybody. And they don't even think about that. I mean, if Richie says there's like 60,000 now in there, how many millions of families are getting affected by that? You know, their kids committing suicide because they can't have their dad and, you know, all kinds of crazy. I went to like the, I went to the Blessed Prisoners Project Gala, September 23rd in New York.

1:45:08SpeakerAnd it was wild to be in a room full of everybody trying to do something. But the weirdest part of it was meeting other children and of prisoners that they were still fighting to get out. And I was trying to instill that hope in them. Like, listen, because they were like looking at me like, wow, you're like the success story. I'm like, listen, I'm like, please just stay focused because now is the time.

1:45:35SpeakerAnd this will be a restitution situation for you if you just stay focused and stay true to yourself and stay true to your family, you know? So it was it was that was that was so wild to think about because a lot of the time when I'm living my life, I'm not thinking that that shit's happening anymore, you know? And then there's those moments that get brought back to it where it's like that, where I'm and when I talk to Rashida, I just started crying because she was around my daughter's age and I was thinking she hadn't seen her dad in 17 years.

1:46:08SpeakerSo I was just immediately like put in back in my moment, you know, and I was and she was like, why are you crying? I was like, oh, man, because I'm seeing my daughter's eyes in you and thinking if I didn't have her for 17 years, how that would have felt. And my dad's right there free, you know, so it was it's really is a trip and I'm glad we're on the road to change.

1:46:29Speakerbecause it's kind of it's kind of kind of weird that that they don't allow uh drug cases to be in uh uh uh innocence project but they don't no and it's it's they've always i mean uh early on when i was in the cannabis action network 93 94 we were meeting all kinds of

1:46:57Etienne Fontanfamilies and victim and as you said Mr. DeLisi ripples those ripples go so far and so wide and how many you know friend structures lost not only one friend but a series of friends just because they went went off for a concert and then nobody heard from them again you know they were literally it was all over the country it was like mass disappearances of Family, friends, brothers, sisters, uncles, nephews, grandfathers, fathers, sons, you know, absolutely just horrible.

1:47:32SpeakerAnd every time they locked a real one up, that the people that dealt with that real one had to go find other people. And most of the time they didn't find another real one. They got locked up, too.

1:47:45Etienne FontanAnd more ripples and which turned into waves, which turned into, again, a lot of fodder for the drug war. And sadly, over time, they realized that the cost does not meet the reality that they expected.

1:48:02BubblemanIt's senseless suffering.

1:48:03Etienne FontanBut it caused how many decades of lives? I mean, of, you know, your PTS, I can still hear in you, Rick, and your father as well, because of the layers of pain, agony, and traumas that you have been through. You know, how many birthdays, Christmases, holidays did you miss that you hoped, that you dreamed? That one day that was a possibility. And Mr. DeLisi, how many days did you sit in there after getting 98 years wondering if you would ever taste freedom, much less hug your son again?

1:48:38Etienne FontanAnd that had to be some of the worst fucking feelings in the goddamn world.

1:48:43SpeakerNo doubt about it, but you can't let that stuff eat at you. That's why I'm home and I don't feel anything ill-minded for what Happened to me while I was away. I gave it up to God and I let God handle that. I'm just trying to do the best thing I can now for my family and my corporation. You know, I'm trying to make sure that when I leave, everybody will be okay.

1:49:18SpeakerYou know? And that's a very important thing for me. Because I wasn't there for them 32 years. I want to be remembered. I want to be remembered for all that, you know? Absolutely.

1:49:36BubblemanWell, I'm sure you will be.

1:49:40BubblemanIt's quite a story and it's still going. So I like that. I like that it's still going. I like that you're out and able to enjoy your family. And really what I'm really impressed with is that you've let all of that go. Not a lot of people could let that go. They'd carry it like a hot potato and it would damage them and probably slowly kill them.

1:49:59SpeakerYou know, I mean, don't get me wrong. I don't...

1:50:08SpeakerI don't feel remorse for anything that happened, right? I just let it go. Like I said, I gave it up to God. Let God handle that, you know? But, I mean, there's so many people who are trying to help me. I mean, just like you guys right today. I mean, this is going to help me a bit. It's going to benefit all of us, and it's going to make the world a better place to live.

1:50:36SpeakerAnd for all of us that like to smoke every day and have fun and do good things for this planet, that's what it's all about. I mean, you don't have to have billions of dollars. All you need is an income and everything's cool. You know what I'm saying?

1:51:03BubblemanOh yeah, I know exactly what you're saying. It's just good to be helpful. It's good to be grateful. It's good to understand the perspective of gratefulness because sometimes people can get, you know, entitled and spoiled. And I think that from all the people I meet in the world, the people who have been through hardships have A core strength that's very different from people that were protected from hardships, you know?

1:51:35BubblemanAnd I don't wish, you know, insane hardships. Go ahead, please.

1:51:40SpeakerI still live in the hood.

1:51:46SpeakerGot a banana, Rich. I'm in the hood right now as we're speaking. Nice.

1:51:53BubblemanIt's my hood, you know, but I like it.

1:51:59BubblemanWell, that's where you want to be. You want to be in the hood that's yours and the one that you like. For sure.

1:52:06SpeakerWell, he's very attached to Florida.

1:52:09BubblemanYeah.

1:52:10SpeakerI'm trying to get him to Hawaii.

1:52:13BubblemanYeah, I guess that couldn't be as any further away, could it?

1:52:17Etienne FontanYeah, speaking of Florida, they've got a vote coming up next week. Thank you. An initiative there that I see on your hat, sir. You want to educate us? Excuse me? You want to educate us on three?

1:52:30SpeakerOh, say yes on three, yes. If you do say yes on three and you are in Florida and you actually are watching this broadcast, if you say yes on three, you don't have to worry about your neighbor or your cousin or your brother or your father going to prison for having marijuana in their home anymore. They can have up to four ounces. Three ounces? Yes, on three.

1:52:56SpeakerYeah, three ounces. Oh, three ounces. Yes. Yes, on three. But yeah, it's about also about, yeah, the legalization of recreational cannabis for adults. And adult use in Florida, in the state of Florida. So, yeah, I've seen a lot of things misconstrued about it also. Talk about it. It doesn't allow home grow. It's an amendment. Each amendment in Florida has one purpose, and the purpose is to legalize cannabis for adults recreationally.

1:53:33SpeakerSo I definitely support that. Yes, I agree.

1:53:39BubblemanListen, anything that like for me, for cannabis, you know, whatever you want to call it, legalization, I don't know how much of a legalization it was, but the minute They allowed us to have it. And now all of a sudden the smell could exist without incurring a search. That was kind of the game changer. You know, the fact that like you could have weed, it was like, oh, no, you can like in Canada, you can just smoke it like at the airport out in front of the airport doors.

1:54:05BubblemanThere's like a sign that says you can smoke weed here before you get on your plane and stuff. So it's like there's no longer this power that the police had when any time they smelt weed, They could just get into people's houses and cars and bags and personal shit. And so here in Canada, that was really, I guess, when medical cannabis became a thing in early 2000s because, uh, Well, first of all, it was, there's like a, there's, there's this medical thing that sort of protects you from the police asking you if you have, you know, what your ailment is.

1:54:39BubblemanYou're not really allowed to ask people in Canada what they're, what, you know, it's, it's, it's why I was so confused during COVID when people would start asking people if they were vaccinated because it's like, it's a very personal question and it's not like any of your business, but people use that question to divide as they always do.

1:54:58SpeakerIn America, all the police had to do was say they smelled it. They didn't have to smell it. They just said they smelled it.

1:55:08BubblemanYeah, that's even worse.

1:55:09SpeakerA lot of the time that was the case, yeah.

1:55:12BubblemanWell, that power is taken away from them as well now that you can have the smell of cannabis exist in society without incurring a search.

1:55:21SpeakerYeah, I'm pretty much in favor of any...

1:55:26SpeakerAny legislature that, that, you know, encourages the possibility of not being infringed on like that, you know? So it's like, that's, that's why I support it because it's like, yo, I remember being an adult and being searched for cannabis in Florida. And I remember getting locked up for it and it sucked. You know what I mean? So it's like, that's one of the reasons why I left Florida, why my mother forced me to leave Florida.

1:55:53SpeakerSo it's just to know that it could be possible for people that that's not, you know, a probable situation as much anymore. I don't think it'll just stop because you always have the gung-ho cops that don't want to let go of whatever. And, you know, but I mean, like on a big scale, it will help people.

1:56:12Etienne FontanBut it's also a contentious law because, as you stated, amendments can only be one particular thing. And the problem, of course, is people are saying, oh, well, Trulieve is going to get a monopoly out of this, et cetera, et cetera. And this is where people need to be reminded of California's failures, right? We passed our law in 2016 with Prop 64 that was supposed to allow for, and it was written in the law to allow for Small farmers, five years, five years to get a foothold before big business came in.

1:56:53SpeakerYeah.

1:56:54Etienne FontanAnd it was lobbied and changed in the state of California to not be the case where they opened up. So what I'm basically saying is to you Floridians out there with this amendment changes happening is this is where now if it passes and it changes, you have to be at your state capitol watching what happens to make sure you get the law you want Not the one that they tell you you're gonna have.

1:57:26Etienne FontanThis is where it goes back to that discussion. Are you at the table or are you on the menu? And by showing up and being there, what is it? What's the state capital there? Jacksonville? Tallahassee. Tallahassee. Okay, so Tallahassee, you know, people need to get there and consistently be there. Once the law passes to make sure that there isn't shenanigans because there's going to be lobbyists, there's going to be people behind the scenes.

1:57:57Etienne FontanAnd this is where Floridians need to get off your asses, not stop complaining and contribute. Otherwise, you're going to get like what California has, which we're not happy what we got in the end because not enough of us showed up to help make the change that the little things happen, that enough things happen, that Those small farmers did not get that opportunity. Big farming came in. We got a bunch of bulk mid-grade crap that no longer is small craft grade quality, you know, artisan quality cannabis that we used to see.

1:58:34Etienne FontanSo, you know, just realize our fuckers. Yeah, yeah. Be vigilant in Florida. Don't settle on what you're given, okay, is what I'm saying.

1:58:45SpeakerThe big way to solve that is by allowing home cultivation. If you have home cultivation of, you know, five or ten plants, whatever it is, then the government can't make you buy bunk weeds.

1:59:03Collin PalmerYeah. Something happened in New York like this where, you know, we try, you know, everyone tries to look at all these markets and learn from it, but you never quite get it right. And it was a situation where it was a cart before the horse kind of thing where everyone had these licenses. So they decided to plan all this stuff. Thank you so much for joining us.

1:59:36Collin PalmerIt takes a time, but it took a lot of people coming to Albany, like you're saying, ATN, to really bring their voice to the table, to put it out there and really demand, not just, they didn't just say it, they demanded a better system.

1:59:53SpeakerIn New York, are you allowed to home grow?

1:59:56Collin PalmerYeah, you are. Yeah, you are. It's not a whole lot of plants, but it's enough, I think, to get to start. Yeah.

2:00:02Etienne FontanYeah. I will say this about smoke a joint, man. You can actually walk down the street in New York and smoke a joint wherever cigarette smoking is allowed. I was literally just New York there. And as I was smoking a joint with Rob Clark in Mojave, the cop drives by and waves at us. They wave at you. It's crazy. They wave at you. You have to understand, Rick, you have to understand the last time I smoked a joint in New York was with the High Times crew hiding behind the dumpsters looking out just in case the cops came by so we didn't end up in fucking Rikers for the weekend.

2:00:37Etienne FontanSo that's a total 180 from my previous experience in New York to now standing there on the street openly smoking. Fucking love it. I can't even do that in California.

2:00:49SpeakerYou can't do it in Amsterdam. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, the key is what you just said, ATN, is that people need to stop complaining and take action. If they do that, they'll gain, they'll gain what they want. A lot of people are using like, you know, chat, chat and comments and just saying really dumb shit and weird TikTok. Like, It's so off key to what's really happening that it's like, wow, you know, you could talk about the monopoly of a business that's successful a lot, but there's a lot of licenses in Florida and they're going to keep growing.

2:01:24SpeakerIt's really about the next step of action and people not complaining and the community coming together to achieve what they want to achieve. And yeah, also not letting like TikTok hate and misinformation get in the way of what's really being done because that happens a lot.

2:01:41Etienne FontanEnjoying organizations that are there supporting cannabis. And if there isn't one there, create one. OK, that's what we did with Cannes. That's why we created the NCIS, why I created the Veterans Action Council, National Cannabis Industry Association and others, because it didn't exist. So it doesn't exist. OK, so create it, nurse it and make it a reality. We've done it. We've shown you it can be done.

2:02:03Etienne FontanSo quit complaining, as you said, because. Rick could have sat back and just complained about missing his dad, but he got off his ass and did something about it. And now look, we're all sitting together smoking and enjoying life because he didn't settle for what was there. He dreamed. Thank you so much. No, no. Thank you. And thank your dad. And your dad thanks you because I thank my dad more than anything because we can talk about it.

2:02:29Etienne FontanBut the action is what what you're saying isn't following up people's writing. OK, it's one thing we had more than enough people who would say, I'm going to show up at this rally. I'm going to show up and do this. But only one in 10 did. OK, and it takes a special person to finally show up. Why? Because that person didn't want to show up at the rally because either they were a dealer connected to a dealer, didn't want access to their dealer to be a problem because they're seen at a rally.

2:02:58Etienne FontanYou know, those were realities back in the day that are no longer considerations because enough of us got off our asses and shift the paradigm. And we're not happy with where we are, right? We're glad we're better where we were, but we know we can do better and have a better place tomorrow, right? So get off your asses, people. Plug in, get active, get involved, and then enjoy the reality you create from it.

2:03:26Etienne FontanOtherwise, you'll settle for what you're given.

2:03:30BubblemanSo I have a question for you guys. I want to ask you both, you know, from your different perspectives. Tell me the story of, okay, it's starting to happen. You're getting out. You're got, you know, for you, Richard, you're about to see your family. You're about to get out of prison for the first time in 32 years.

2:03:50SpeakerWalk us through that. With me?

2:03:57SpeakerWhen I was told that, I started to tell you the story about how it happened. With me, when I was told that, I felt like it wasn't real at first, you know? I felt like, how could this be? How did this happen to just me and everybody else? It's not gonna get helped. You know, this was my train of thought when I first heard all this. And I said, God, I'm going to be able to hang out with my grandchildren and be with my kids again, you know, and be able to try to survive out there again.

2:04:43SpeakerYou know, this, you know, because it was a whole new thing now. The world was so changed in them 32 years. I mean, I couldn't even find my old house that I lived in, you know, that Richard lived in when he was a baby. I had a problem finding a house because the neighborhood had changed so much, you know? Yeah. The site of it, you know, the way they did all their...

2:05:15SpeakerTheir architecture again, you know, they changed it so much. I was like, you gotta be kidding me. And it, it's just, it was just the best. I, if I, if I, um, it's a trip because if I can remember back to that, to that moment where it all started to really happen. It was just funny. It was like that. It was a lot what he just said, like not believing it might like almost like it couldn't really be really happening.

2:05:50SpeakerBut then, you know, getting the part, getting the house where he was going to stay, making sure I had the tickets for the whole family, setting that all up and like kind of making a cushion for him to come into. And then him giving me his list. He had this list of all these things he wanted, you know, when he got out. Bro, it was like, I said, at a certain time, I said, Pop, bro, are you fucking tripping?

2:06:16SpeakerAnd he kept coming with more shit. And I was getting it all. I was getting it all. Like, I had a fucking carry-on suitcase for him when he got out. Like, it was crazy. The cigar, fucking, I mean, he didn't ask... Funny enough, he didn't ask me for weed, but I had like a quarter pound there. And I had like chosen a few different flavors that I really liked and had them shipped to my boy in Florida.

2:06:41SpeakerSo when he got out, I like sat with him and I was like, the first night after everything calmed down, because it was a whirlwind, bro, from the news reports to the first meal to then him seeing his grandkids and then sitting down with him. At the pool in the back of the house, I remember rolling up like, like a good like two gram special joint, you know, it was like my favorite weed at the time.

2:07:07SpeakerAnd I said, Hey, pops hit that. What do you think? And bro, it was so funny. His eyes lit up. It was like, he was like, Oh, you got one rolled like that. And then I showed him the weed. And then he then we sat there and smoked and his he just kept hitting it and tasting it being like, hold on. Holy shit. Like he was like, what the fuck is that?

2:07:28SpeakerYou know, like it was a trip, bro. That to me was like probably the most surreal days of my whole life. You know, like it just, it felt so wild.

2:07:42BubblemanWhere was, where was it when you first saw each other where he's, he's leaving the facility? Is it right there? Or is he getting transferred?

2:07:50SpeakerThere was, there was about 60 people waiting for his release in the parking lot. So Last Prisoner Project showed up. Shout out to everybody at Last Prisoners Project that came. Champelli showed up, like my good friend came out and there was a film crew. There was like all his brother and sister's husband. There was a lot of people just waiting on the release in front of the prison, which was crazy because at first it was like, oh, he's getting out at eight.

2:08:26SpeakerAnd then it was like, he's getting out at nine. Oh, and now it's 930. But when 930 came out, dude, I wish I could. I wish I could share a video in this. Can I share a video in this?

2:08:38BubblemanYeah, I can let you share. Absolutely. Absolutely.

2:08:41SpeakerI think I got like a video of him walking out, actually. It will take me a minute to find it. It's pretty easy.

2:08:49BubblemanYeah, you just open it in its own box. You click share and you'll be able to see a bunch of different screens and just pick the one that's that box you opened. Okay. So this is at 9.30?

2:09:01SpeakerIs that what this is around? Yeah, 9.30 you'll see me coming out of the back gate with my housing sergeant. I can't figure it out. Pushing a thing with all my stuff.

2:09:12BubblemanWhat did that feel like when you stepped on the outside of that door?

2:09:21SpeakerIt felt like I was alive again. It felt like It felt like all my prayers were answered. And I was looking and I could see my grandkids and my brother and my sister, you know, I could see everybody in the parking lot. My daughter, my son, you know, everybody was out there, you know. And all the people that backed me, you know, all the Last Prisoners Project people were out there.

2:09:52SpeakerThe girls, the lawyers that worked for the Last Prisoners Project, they were all out there, you know. And so many of my friends came from New York and California and, I mean, all over the world, actually, they came from, just to be in that parking lot.

2:10:11BubblemanWell, they hadn't seen you in what, almost 12,000 days?

2:10:16SpeakerYeah, 32 calendar years. Jesus Christ. It's only letting me share photos.

2:10:28BubblemanYou should be able to...

2:10:31SpeakerI'm going to keep looking. Hold on. Let me just check. I went to share at the bottom.

2:10:36BubblemanYeah.

2:10:37SpeakerAnd it says iCloud Drive website URL or screen. I'll just share my screen. Hold on.

2:10:43BubblemanOkay. Yeah, that's it. You have to share your screen. That's exactly it.

2:10:46SpeakerI'll do that. Screen broadcast. And then I go to the photos. One second.

2:10:58BubblemanOh, wow, you're doing all this on a phone.

2:11:00SpeakerYeah, yeah, sorry.

2:11:02BubblemanThat's okay.

2:11:02SpeakerBut it's easy, because I could go straight to the day.

2:11:07BubblemanOh, wow. I bet you remember that day. Yeah, yeah, for sure. December 8th.

2:11:15SpeakerSo, here's a little... It's like a new birthday. It's like a time lapse. Hold on, let me get to the voice. This is it right here. So this is, this is pretty much the experience. Shit, I've never shared this with nobody. So let's see if it plays.

2:11:35SpeakerI think it's downloading. Give it a second.

2:11:37BubblemanNo problem.

2:11:38Etienne FontanThank you for sharing.

2:11:40BubblemanYeah, absolutely. We're all walking.

2:11:50SpeakerThat's my daughters. That's me with my daughter and my wife in front of me. You must have butterflies in your stomach. Oh, no, I can't even explain. And then that's Kiara Juster. She fought to get him out. That's his buddy right there. There we go. Wow. That's it. Oh, shit, dude. Yeah, that was it. And what there is another one here. Hold on. I want to show you.

2:12:19SpeakerSorry, I'm going to flip around a little bit. Because there is one where you see him fucking actually walk out. I think it's.

2:12:31SpeakerNo, hold on. It's a shame. I don't know the exact video. I think this is it. Yeah, here we go. Here, y'all live it up. Check this shit the fuck out. First time ever besides.

2:12:47BubblemanAnd so was he in this prison the entire time?

2:12:51SpeakerThis and one other. He got moved around a little bit, but it was mainly this prison, right, Pop? It goes to gate. That's where my heart started beating. Oh, my God.

2:13:06Etienne FontanThat's when you knew it was real, right? That when the gate was opening, it was all talk and that this was the action. That's Papa. That's Papa.

2:13:17SpeakerIt's Papa. It's Papa.

2:13:22SpeakerYeah. Yeah, dude. We call him Papa, like Grandpa. Papa, yeah. So that's everybody.

2:13:32SpeakerJeez.

2:13:35SpeakerThat's Mary Bailey.

2:13:40BubblemanHoly shit.

2:13:43SpeakerYeah, bro. Sorry it took so long to get on here and show you.

2:13:49BubblemanOh, dude, are you kidding me, man? I've just been happy watching the show. This is amazing, dude.

2:14:04BubblemanLook at the fucking barbed wire.

2:14:07SpeakerThat is... That's a maximum security prison.

2:14:10Etienne FontanOh. Mr. DeLisi, tell us what you're feeling right here as the gate opens. That has to be... It's all real now. My life began right now.

2:14:25SpeakerHere's your papers.

2:14:27BubblemanUnbelievable.

2:14:28SpeakerMy heart was beating so hard right there. I thought it was going to come out of my chest.

2:14:34BubblemanJeez, you're just hoping, please don't like explode right now. And from that right there, that's the walk.

2:14:42SpeakerLike after that, we all walked over there like I showed you, you know?

2:14:46BubblemanOh man, that's awesome.

2:14:49SpeakerYeah, brother, there you go. Let me get back to, that's emotional, man. It's crazy. Really, nuts. Yeah, it's unbelievable. So how do I get back to the story? I'm going to stop the share. You just gave me that lovely feeling again inside of my chest, you know? Wow. I just can't even really imagine. Is this for real?

2:15:18BubblemanIt's definitely a movie. That's a movie that's going to touch some people.

2:15:25SpeakerYeah, brother. Thank you. Thank you for helping me.

2:15:28BubblemanThat scene they shouldn't change. I've seen they shouldn't change.

2:15:32SpeakerActually, all of y'all, y'all are all a brick in my wall, you know?

2:15:36BubblemanThank you. Yeah, absolutely, Rick. It's been a long, long journey, much longer for you, but I'm just happy to see, I don't want to call it a happy ending because it's not an ending, just a happy continuance.

2:15:55SpeakerYeah, it's been an amazing time getting to know my dad, you know?

2:15:59BubblemanOh, dude. I can't imagine. It's good that good exists, and the world needs more of it.

2:16:07SpeakerAnd Rick, you didn't broadcast this before, but you did show me at my house. Yeah, yeah, for sure. I remember.

2:16:19BubblemanOf course, Skunk Man Sam got the pre. Sam, come on, Sam.

2:16:23SpeakerDude, he's so awesome. I'm so glad I'm going to get to see you. Yeah, it's weird being away from Amsterdam for so long. Definitely miss you guys. Are we going to end this soon? Is that what we're doing now? No, right? No. Not necessarily. We usually go for four hours.

2:16:41BubblemanWe're here for all your stories. Yeah, exactly. No one has to stay, but everyone can stay. And yeah, just chatting around. And I love to hear the stories. I love to hear, you know, I just love to hear things go in a good direction after going in a very terrible, maybe the worst direction ever for so long.

2:17:00Dr Mark ScialdoneHey, Marcus, did I ask Rick a question just about the laws out in Florida? So, Rick, looks like Florida is like game on for the hemp industry, right? I mean, there's still, again, really deep pockets down there that are making these hemp-derived products that are probably going everywhere else but Florida. Do you think this law is going to affect what's going on in that hemp-derived arena, which is really kind of like the 800-pound...

2:17:33Dr Mark ScialdoneNow I do mean gorilla, like the animal gorilla in the room, right?

2:17:37SpeakerSo yeah, about that, it's funny. That's the thing I wanted to mention. I'm really glad you just brought that up because I forgot it and I wanted to mention it before when we were talking about Yes on 3 and got like into another subject. But the most barrage of people that go against me

2:17:56SpeakerOn my thoughts on Yes On 3 are all hemp community based, you know, because there is a lot, there's a big hemp farming and yeah, money making machine in Florida. And I think that The problem that they're having is more gonna be a federal issue because federally, I think that hemp is being looked at now and understood of the chemical processing that goes on and how it's handled and what it's turned into and what you can make out of it.

2:18:28SpeakerI mean, Probably federally, it's going to be attacked, I would think. And I think that a lot of hemp farming is going to be changed the way it's done. It's going to have to be a more organic approach and less of a processing approach. You know, I'm not totally keyed in on it because I don't work in the hemp industry, but I'm talking about what I'm seeing from a distance and just watching it, you know, and hearing everybody's attacks and stuff like that, because everybody is quite against Yes on three, who's hemp business related, you know?

2:19:05SpeakerSo I don't know how that ties in in Florida because Florida's its own, it's like its own country in a certain way. It's weird. So everything the United, what? It's the truth. Yeah, it's weird. It's like everything what other states are doing, it's like doing in its own way, but it controls a lot of itself, you know, and the way it's doing things. So I guess that when you recreationally legalize cannabis, that there's going to be less want for THC products, correct?

2:19:41SpeakerBecause there's going to be recreational cannabis access everywhere.

2:19:44BubblemanIf we can make it as cheap as they can, if it can be produced, because people, it's always about how much THC and how little can I pay, right?

2:19:54Dr Mark ScialdoneWell, and access too, Marcus. Access too. You could go on the internet right now, Rick, and I believe two clicks after saying you're 21, they're asking you for your credit card information. So, I mean, it's, yeah, and Marcus, you bring up a great point, you know, cheap. I mean, right now, those hemp-derived beverages, which are in liquor stores in places like Minnesota, which has now allowed hemp-derived products to be sold next to, you know, alcohol and booze, that's being produced at, you know, a whole lot less than, Having to get a cannabis license, having to have background screens.

2:20:40SpeakerUnderstood.

2:20:41Dr Mark ScialdoneSo I get where it's coming from. So do you think, I mean, I thought like Florida, because it seems like there is a lot of money in this industry. I could tell you, Rick, I've seen small little video clips inside. I think they're in the Tampa area or around Tampa. And these are warehouses that are like 50,000 square foot warehouses, three pallet racks high of finished goods, man.

2:21:11Dr Mark ScialdoneAnd you don't do that unless you got deep pockets. And I think that like there was a notion that somehow I think what wasn't DeSantis going to do something about the hemp derived thing, but he waffled on it. And somehow now.

2:21:25SpeakerYeah. Yeah.

2:21:26Dr Mark ScialdoneI, you know, is running into it.

2:21:28SpeakerSo I'm so not, I'm so not up on what really is happening with DeSantis and like, um, government in Florida because of how quickly it's persuaded by like money or a situation just shifting. So it's very weird for me to watch politics. That's what I was just talking about. It's like its own country where it's like, uh, um, It's where the America idea comes from in a certain way.

2:21:54SpeakerIt's just like, holy shit, how does this function this way? But it does, you know? And the market is so big that I could imagine like, yeah, like I think it really breaks down a lot to what I said is that if cannabis is legally recreational, There's going to be very, the markets are going to shift in such crazy ways, you know, and people who really have it locked in with licensing and their corporation already set up with points of sales and all that are definitely going to benefit more.

2:22:29SpeakerDo I think it's a monopoly? No, I think it's a structure that's following a structure that's following a structure, you know, and at a certain point, like, Thank you so much for joining us.

2:23:00SpeakerYou know, but if you're using hemp for hemp creep or rope or hemp for paper or hemp for clothing, maybe not. You know what I mean? But I think if you're just using it for that one processing property, I think there'll definitely be new approaches. You know, it's like, yeah, I think that also it's, yeah, I never worked with hemp, honestly. Just learning about it recently, how it's processed and all that from being an extractor was kind of shocking to me.

2:23:32SpeakerMark, under the Farm Act, how this THCA thing came around being synthesized from CBD, isn't it technically illegal to do any sort of synthesization with the CBD?

2:23:54Dr Mark ScialdoneYeah, I mean, but there's been loopholes. It's something called an IFR, which is, oh God, this initial ruling that the DEA put out that basically said, it was actually interesting because Rod Kite, who's known for being an attorney to represent some of these companies, basically stirred up the shit storm by Having a letter issued by the DEA claiming that THC-O or THC acetate is, because it's synthesized, Sam, is illegal.

2:24:35Dr Mark ScialdoneBut in that letter, they also said, well, and the fact that you're making this from Delta 9 THC or Delta 8 THC, both of those are also Schedule 1 substances listed by name in the Controlled Dangerous Substance Act. The THCA sort of pseudo loophole is just for those of you who read the Farm Bill, you'll see that they don't say anything about THCA. It's all about THC, but it's implied that you're using a test that decarboxylates the cannabis.

2:25:12Dr Mark ScialdoneIt would turn any THCA into THC. So therefore, yeah, high THCA cannabis is not hemp at all. It's cannabis. And Rick, it's so funny to hear you talk about hemp. Hep and cannabis are the same fucking plant, man. I mean, it's just... No, I know, I know.

2:25:32SpeakerIt's just that I didn't know how it was being chemically processed with heptane to derive certain properties or things like that. I all learned about that lately when I started getting into the hemp market and thinking if I wanted to work with it. And then I realized, like, I really don't because I tried the products and the effect that I had from that synthesis was not what I craved or liked.

2:25:54SpeakerYou know, so it was like, OK, that's really a weird feeling that makes me feel completely fucking estranged to cannabis. You know what I mean? And I don't want to promote it because I feel bad for people who don't really understand how cannabis works. That they're going to think that that's cannabis. And that's fuck, dude. That's like, that's like going against everything that made me love cannabis, you know?

2:26:18SpeakerSo I don't, when they're, when they're hating on me with their fucking TikTok posts and shit, I'm like, go fuck yourself. Like, I don't, I don't sell shit in like, yeah, I don't sell shit in a gas station to people who think they want to try cannabis. I'm trying to curate for people who really love cannabis flavor wise and extract wise and

2:26:40Etienne FontanIt's also not really hemp. Hemp is clothing and fiber and stuff like that. We're talking about low THC flour. Okay, people, this is what we're realiztically talking about. Hemp is the jeans and stuff and the canvas that's stretched and all of that, right?

2:26:57SpeakerI get what you're saying, Mark, coming back to that.

2:27:00Etienne FontanThese flowers, how are they grown? They're not grown like industrial hemp, which is a million to a couple million per square meter. No, they're spacing them and they're growing them like a drug varietal. They're growing it for the flower, whereas in hemp, we don't care. The flower has no meaning to anybody's reality except for the seed. Everybody's going in for something else. That was the latter effect.

2:27:23SpeakerNot only that, Ed Chan, but the truth of it is, of course, that Any variety of CBD that's over 10%, not only is it not hemp, but it also has more THC than is legally allowed. Yeah, we keep saying THC and CBD, but it's really THCA and CBDA, right? It's the acid form.

2:27:48Dr Mark ScialdoneYeah, my bad.

2:27:50SpeakerWe're all saying it, but I mean, it's short form, but I think we got to be clear for the people watching, right? Yeah, thank you for straightening that out. It's CBDA that synthesized it at THCA. They're closing that third ring structure. Yeah, Rick, man, dude, it's so good to see you. And, you know, I've been watching the journey since you told me this story in Amsterdam. And I can't tell you how much it fills my heart seeing you and your dad on the show and watch those videos.

2:28:17SpeakerAnd I'm sure the people that are watching in the audience do. Dude, it's fucking incredible, man. It's like, it's obviously it's a win personally for you guys, but I had this like real sense of heart swelling up, you know, like this is a sample of a win. Thank you so much, brother. Respect. And 2025 is actually the 50th year. And 2025 is the 50th year.

2:29:00Etienne FontanSo it's a hundred centenary of prohibition in Europe. That will also be the 50th year of people fighting back against the system.

2:29:14SpeakerWe were fighting back before 1975.

2:29:20Etienne FontanI understand that and others were too, but for the world.

2:29:24SpeakerYou know, it's, I know it's a personal win for you guys, but we're not done this war. There's more prisoners in prison. I mean, look, stuck behind barbed wire for plant material. It's so absurd. But like, to me, I know that's just a personal win for you guys. And I love that. But I also feel like it's just a symbolic win. And I hope that puts some wins under the wings for other people.

2:29:51SpeakerAnd we can keep getting these people out of prison. You know, for one, stop wasting the money on it, but stop ruining people's lives. I mean, people are locked up in a fucking box behind bars. I can see Ryan smiling when he came in and you were telling the story of puffing the joint with your dad and just loving the flavors and.

2:30:29BubblemanI was like, oh yeah, Ryan's like that.

2:30:30SpeakerYeah, I remember it was like, it was, it was like, it was biscotti and, and, and it was called 54, which was RS 1154. I just remember going back and forth with him. What an experience. Yeah, he was tripping, bro. He was tripping. He was like, what is this bag it's in? He was like, all fucking branded out. He's like, I was like, that's what I'm talking about, pop.

2:30:53SpeakerWe're going to have our weed in a bag like that. You know, he was like, he was like looking around. What was it like coming out and seeing the new flower, like 30 years of evolution of cannabis? Oh, I was, Richie said before, you know, like when I seen it finally, I was like, you know, I seen some stuff inside, don't get me wrong, but nothing like, you know, the stuff from Amsterdam and Northern California.

2:31:20SpeakerIt was, it was unbelievable. When I seen the bugs, the colors on them, you know, the purples and the yellows, I was like, you gotta be kidding me. Like they, like they weren't, like they just came out. It looks like it's something frosted out of the freezer. It looks like you just froze it. How did it stay icy? I was like, that's awesome. Beautiful.

2:31:49BubblemanWhat about dabs? Like some crazy rosin or full melt bubble? So he does dab.

2:31:55SpeakerHe'll dab. Yeah, but his preference is flower because the whole process, you know? And I set him up with a dab rig, a peak pro, all that shit. But in the end, it's just like he likes to roll and smoke a joint. And that makes sense. That's what I like too. Like in a situation like this, I don't mind dabbing. I dab like this. I dab like when I have like a family day because I can't sit and smoke a joint around them.

2:32:18SpeakerBut like... For the most, I smoke joints, you know?

2:32:22BubblemanYeah, joints smoke ass.

2:32:25SpeakerLove flowers. Still love hash too. Me too. Been making a lot of hash. I've been luckily linked up with a really good Group out here. Shout out to my friends at Fire Farms. They make a great organic flower and hash and sun grown, all K&F, fully organic amazement. So I've been learning a lot about the plant, too. Like here. Hold up. This is all. This is all shit.

2:33:00Etienne FontanIt's all just tree that I just flower.

2:33:03SpeakerYeah, some Pacalolo, but then some exotic Pacalolo, you know? Yeah, dude. Yeah, but I'm learning how to grow flour properly, organically. It's been a great little side project.

2:33:16BubblemanWell, you know what? That reminds me of we should have a discussion off camera about potentially like figuring out synergies for the brand because maybe there's some collaborations. 100%. I'm in like eight or nine states now. I'm sure I could probably introduce you to my partners. Get you guys selling joints. Then we do some extracts. We do some like Last Prisoner projects.

2:33:37Speaker100%.

2:33:37BubblemanYou know? Fucking A, dude. That would be awesome. Parallels. Without a doubt.

2:33:43Etienne FontanSo I want to bring it back to Mr. DeLisi. You're now out. You're free. How long does it take you before you sit down and you're just like exhale and you realize you're free this is life this is gonna be life on the outside now i mean because there had to be a lot of anxiety a lot of anxiety with you coming out and and you had expectations versus the realities that you experienced right

2:34:17SpeakerRight, but you got to remember this. Every day is a new experience for me now. I mean, you know, we got a movie, we got a movie coming, we got a documentary coming, we got a book coming out, we got different products coming to the stores that we're associated with now, the True Leaf stores. We're trying to get a full cabinet full of stuff in True Leaf, you know?

2:34:47SpeakerAnd like, like, we want to... Doing a pheno hunt? Yeah, we want, yeah, he did a pheno hunt, Richie did. But we want to, we want to spread out. We want to spread our wings now. We want to get, we want, we want to make sure that everybody in all the states know who we are, you know?

2:35:07BubblemanWell, I can certainly introduce my partners.

2:35:09SpeakerWhat is your age? Excuse me? How old are you? I'm 75. 75. You're both 49ers. You're both 49ers. Yes, sir. Yeah.

2:35:24Collin PalmerNice. Well, I got a license in New York, boys. So, you know, let us know. Yeah. I'd love to bring you home.

2:35:33SpeakerWe're ready. Yeah, we've been. So my dad was super active in New York. So we've been working on New York and slowly just. As it's really getting developed. But I'd definitely like to come back to you on that and seriously talk about it because we're definitely busy. He's like, I got this. Yes, sir. Acknowledge. Yes, sir.

2:35:56BubblemanNot only will Colin hook you up with a deal in New York, he'll score musically your movie and your documentary.

2:36:03SpeakerOh, dude, I'm doing that, but I want to do it with you now. I'm doing that, but I want to do it with you now. Do me a favor. If you guys got any time, check out Delicioso.net. It just went live. And there's a button on it called Santa Marta Gold, and that has the trailer to the documentary on it. And at the end, that has my music on the trailer.

2:36:25SpeakerI did a couple songs for my pops when he was in. I'm an emcee and a producer, but I definitely... And I'm looking for people to do that with. So that's dope as fuck. Respect.

2:36:34Collin PalmerYeah. And I have like a great network of just other amazing producers that you'd probably know about or probably know of. So let's definitely, Marcus put us, you know, the, no, we're, we're, yeah.

2:36:48SpeakerYou know where to find me.

2:36:51Collin PalmerYeah.

2:36:51SpeakerYes, sir.

2:36:53Collin PalmerBut yeah, that's, you do have a lot going on, but your story is, You know, it's got such rich context and such honest truth to it. And there's so much to learn from it.

2:37:05SpeakerEspecially we're on and we're on a like organic. Thank you so much for joining us today.

2:37:39SpeakerYeah, I'm going to pretty much delve deep into that in the future. I'm Mark over here with the guitar, man. I just see him.

2:37:47Collin PalmerWhat's going on? And Phil over here.

2:37:51BubblemanHe wrote the Hash Church song. Rest in peace to Phil. We haven't even mentioned Phil all day today. We almost want to do a whole show just talking about Phil in the future. But I can say RIP to Phil.

2:38:03Etienne FontanYeah, the day before I got a shout out on the Grateful Dead show for our 25th anniversary. And then the next day, because Mark actually hit me up. He's like, hey, I just want you to get shouted out on the XM radio. I was like, oh, shit.

2:38:20Dr Mark ScialdoneI heard it driving home, you know, Big Steve's show on XM radio is at five o'clock Eastern. And I was driving home and I heard Big Steve come on. And right when he came on ATN, he goes, I want to shout out ATN and he mispronounced your last name. But if so, that was on the live episode last week, which was Thursday evening. So if you want to listen to it again, ATN, you could listen to it live.

2:38:49Dr Mark ScialdoneOn the XM channel on Wednesday morning, I think they redo the episode from last Thursday. But he shouted out you by name, again, mispronouncing your last name, but NBPG as being, you know, the thing that got it all started in the Bay Area. And yeah, so cool to hear that. I text, I pulled over to the side of the road and text you immediately.

2:39:16Etienne FontanAnd then, of course, then right afterwards, the worst news that no deadhead wants to hear, which is rest in peace, Phil. Tall, nice guy, but I mean, I didn't experience him as much as y'all did, but the influence and the ripples he had were vast.

2:39:34Dr Mark ScialdoneOh, he was just, he reinvented the bass guitar for rock and roll. And like, if you listened to him, he's kind of like, Miles Davis or Elvis Presley or Chuck Berry. Everybody who came after Phil was influenced by Phil's playing, whether directly or not. Yeah, he was absolutely brilliant. And one thing too, I mean, I don't know if you saw this later on. He was just so generous with his time and with fans.

2:40:05Dr Mark ScialdoneAnd he opened up that restaurant over there in San Rafael or in Sausalito there for many to come and basically see Tim play with his family band. I remember we went there for a brunch one day and he was there with his family playing and he would go around and talk with people at the table. And he was just such a great, very approachable guy. And yeah, I mean, he was there since I guess he didn't start in the Warlocks.

2:40:37Dr Mark ScialdoneHe came down after the Magoo's Pizza gigs where they started because Jerry knew That he was really into classical music and had scored all this other music. And they're like, hey, man, can you play? I guess the original bass player wasn't that good or wasn't holding his weight. So Jerry knew how talented he was. And he turned Jerry and Mickey and Billy all on the Coltrane and on to cool jazz.

2:41:06Dr Mark ScialdoneAnd yeah, it had such a big impact. And you can imagine, again, what Phil was going through when Miles Davis It warmed up for the Grateful Dead at the Fillmore East in 1971 before the Fillmore East closed. And imagine, you know, Phil seeing one of his heroes, Miles Davis, you know, warming up for them. I mean, it was just totally amazing. And yeah, you know, everyone knows, too, he had some illnesses.

2:41:36Dr Mark ScialdoneHe suffered, I think, suffering from either cirrhosis or liver damage and have a liver transplant. In 1998 from a kid named Cody and for the rest of his professional playing career, he always had a sweatband on his right hand that said Cody and always came out after the show and really encouraged everybody at the show to become organ donors because the reason why he was standing on stage there was because Someone said, I want to be an organ donor.

2:42:13BubblemanDude, I had a friend at one of the first shows Phil did that at. It was like maybe one of the first times he ever did that. And my friend was like, So tripped out in his trip and experience that Phil was asking him to give up his organs that he just couldn't wrap his head around it. He was so high. He just didn't. It wasn't like he was against the concept.

2:42:36BubblemanLater on, he was like, oh, my God. But he was so fucking confused and left that show like, Phil wants me to give my organs away.

2:42:45Dr Mark ScialdoneWell, you got to think, though, with Phil making that organ donor wrap at so many of his shows. That did actually convince people to become organizers. 100%. And one of my late friends who passed a number of years ago, Ron Morley, shout out to Ron. I think his eyes were donated. There are people who are alive. I want to say this right, Sheila. I think there were six people alive who have Oregon's donated from her late husband.

2:43:19Dr Mark ScialdoneAnd yeah, I mean, it's a real thing and it affects people. People are able to stay alive. Some people would probably slight Phil on saying, well, Phil was rich. And there's like a lot of people who probably need organ transplants who didn't have the money that Phil had. But Phil enriched all our lives so much. And yeah, you know, he's 84 years old. Certainly he's been through a lot.

2:43:43Dr Mark ScialdoneSo I think it's just a great The thing that he's now joined Jerry and Brent and Pigpen and all those who, you know, used to call the Grateful Dead their band.

2:43:56SpeakerAnd yeah, they're guys are tripping my dad out.

2:43:59Dr Mark ScialdoneThey're going to be playing. They're going to be playing Grateful Dead music hundreds of years from now. It's going to be one of the real, you know, bands whose music catalog stays throughout. I mean, their music today is more popular now than when Jerry died. And I was on the train. I was on the train from 77 to 95. And I'm telling you, if you go in any city, there's a Grateful Dead band playing somewhere.

2:44:27Dr Mark ScialdoneThey're playing his music. There's large groups that are, you know, playing his music. I don't know. I mean, I never thought we'd be here 30 years after Jerry's gone and his music would be more popular than it is.

2:44:41SpeakerI've been with them for a long time.

2:44:45Etienne FontanYeah, it's not just the music. It's also what he did for bass, what he and Alembic did together. I mean, literally changed the face of bass. I'm a bass player of 40 years. So, I mean, geez, I've always dreamed of having one of those, but they've always been one of those instruments that's always been just outside. The Realiztic Grass, but I mean, the craftsmanship, but on top of that, with the technical abilities, go look at that old base, that Olympic with all those knobs and all the controls that are now... Mission Control, he called it.

2:45:17Dr Mark ScialdoneMission Control.

2:45:17Etienne FontanThat are now, what are now pull buttons and little switches on your thing were all individual things that... We're absolutely trailblazing in bass availability and sound availability right because it gave you different dimensions of sound that were a different than just your standard you know fenders you know plugged into you know a fender amp you know which was that same vanilla sound now you could texturize and make your bass sound different in different parts of the sound just at the flick of a button which was I mean, to the regular person, you didn't realize it, but you sonically heard it and it made a difference in your reality, whether you realize it or not.

2:46:02Collin PalmerYeah, I mean, they also, I mean, we can talk about the wall sound for a second. I mean, Osley Stanley designed the special microphone system that prevented the feedback system for them, which is an engineering feat in and of itself at the time and really pioneered live sound in which we're at today is really the basis of that ideology. So it's really it's kind of amazing that through their in their innovations as a band and their desire to touch more people they were inadvertently shaping the future of music is really and that's just outside of them playing and touching their instruments and understanding inversion and all of the beauty and and things that they they could bring to the table with with their instruments so It's like it just goes and goes with the band, whether like you said, whether you respect them as individual musicians or as a band or not.

2:46:57Collin PalmerIt's just all the things that they've touched. Yeah.

2:47:01Dr Mark ScialdoneAlso, Colin, the one thing I've said here on church a couple of times and I live this. This was my life. It brought good bud from NorCal across the country. Right. When you were growing up in suburban New York City, there was kind of like, yeah, you could go in the Upper West Side and get a little manila envelope that's full of brown Mexican weed, full of seeds and stems.

2:47:28Dr Mark ScialdoneBut when you went to the Grateful Dead show, you smelled good NorCal bud. And I'm telling you. Kind buds. Yeah, kind buds, man. I'm telling you, the Grateful Dead and Grateful Dead tour brought good weed across the country, which I think changed American consumer habits around cannabis because people used to come to the Grateful Dead parking lots. Parking lots at Grateful Dead show was like a, you know, a fair of every kind of drug you could probably imagine.

2:48:01Dr Mark ScialdoneAnd yeah, people would come and buy LSD At that parking lot. And then that LSD would be in that community forever now because everyone would strip it out because the great dude I did.

2:48:13SpeakerI did DMC in 2016 from a Grateful Dead show and fucking like 10 years earlier.

2:48:22BubblemanI will say, you know, shout out to all the LSD prisoners that got dinged and are doing 10-year mandatory minimums on Grateful Dead and Fish Tour over the years as well, because that was all a part of that go free for three. Yes. Really bad shit.

2:48:38Collin PalmerWell said, man. Yeah, that's a lot of heads that I knew. They're incredible growers. I mean, some of the best got nailed on LSD charges. So that's well said, man.

2:48:49BubblemanYou didn't have to have much. And shout out to Bear, too, for the LSD, not just the wall of sound. First, he made all that acid. Then he was like, oh, yeah, we should create this wall of sound.

2:49:01Collin PalmerYeah, and strangely enough, you know, it's connected back to New York. Macintosh was the reason they were able to do that because of their amplification technology and their audiophile ability to understand how to make... it all work you know from a and that's what jerry's rig was based off of for a very long time was a macintosh uh headpiece which you know that's i was as a musician i really got into what they used and why and the choices they made for even down to like the symbols that you know they were using and the hi-hats and i mean it just it's really interesting because they They were very thoughtful about the choices they made as individual instruments that they played.

2:49:46Collin PalmerAnd then together, that sound that they had was, as you know, Mark.

2:49:52SpeakerThe first acid I took was for Blosley, still legal in California. Wow.

2:50:02BubblemanWell, your wife just said that she went to several shows at Golden Gate Park in 67, so I'm guessing you were probably there as well.

2:50:10SpeakerNo, no. I didn't meet my wife for a couple of years later. Okay, okay. You should have gone to those shows.

2:50:20BubblemanYou might have met her earlier.

2:50:23SpeakerWell, I might have been there, but I didn't know her. And yeah, the shows that I went to on both the Panhandle and in Golden Gate Park, I was pretty high.

2:50:38Etienne FontanYeah, a forever shout out to Shakedown Street. All the respect in the world ever.

2:50:45SpeakerI want to throw another comment too about the organ transplants. I know Diana is also an organ transplant receiver. I also am an organ transplant receiver. I have two corneas from two different people that allows me to see now about 30 years ago or 25 years ago, 20 years ago, sorry, I had two cornea transplants. So it's like, it's really something major that's a huge gift that people give.

2:51:13SpeakerI don't think a lot of people really think about it, but when you're done with your organs, definitely consider giving them up, folks. You change lives. Yeah, I remember getting my first idea and making a choice. She's the longest liver transplant patient in the Netherlands.

2:51:35BubblemanWow. Awesome.

2:51:37SpeakerMuch love, Diana. Hope you're well. Yeah, much love, Diana.

2:51:43Etienne FontanSending our love. What were you going to say there, Rick? Shout out, much love to Diana.

2:51:48Collin PalmerThat was it. Oh, that was it. Love to hear your connection to the dead and how you followed them. Who, me? Yeah, Rick, yeah.

2:51:59SpeakerHow I followed them was one of my friends that I grew up with, this is back in the 60s, in the early 60s, just when the dead started. And he said to me, he had bought a brand new Porsche. And he asked me if I would drive it to California for him. And I agreed with him. And I, you know, agreed on a deal. And I went to my father because I used to work for my dad.

2:52:31SpeakerI told my dad, yeah, I'm going to go out on a vacation to California. My friend wants me to drive his car out there. My father let me go for like, you know, I thought I was going for only for a couple of weeks. And my friend was going to fly out, but he wound up going with me. And when we get out there, I don't even know, you know, I don't even know about the Grateful Dead.

2:52:57SpeakerYou know? Well, I heard of them, but I didn't know, you know, what they were really about yet. Because it was so early in their career, you know? And we get out there and He rented this log cabin and he rented me like there was like two little, there was another little log cabin right next to it and that's where I stayed. And he stayed with his girl on there.

2:53:28SpeakerAnd then I wound up going and staying with Mickey Hart for a while and learning the whole deal on what was going on, right? It was crazy. And we became really super good friends.

2:53:41Dr Mark ScialdoneIn Nevada at his farm? Huh? In Novato? Yeah, yeah, at the Palm. Yeah, okay. With the little teeny bridge going over? Yeah.

2:53:51SpeakerOh, I loved it. I loved it.

2:53:54Dr Mark ScialdoneSo what year was that, Rick?

2:53:56SpeakerOh, God. 64?

2:54:04Dr Mark Scialdone63? 64, maybe? Okay, he didn't join the band until 67. 67. He joined a band late in 67.

2:54:15SpeakerOkay, maybe, let me think, 67?

2:54:18Dr Mark ScialdoneYeah. So he joined at the Strait Theater in New Orleans for his first show.

2:54:28SpeakerI'm trying to think when my friend passed away. It's definitely later than that. Oh yeah, you're right. You're absolutely right now that I'm thinking about it.

2:54:38Dr Mark ScialdoneSo maybe more like 68-ish or 69?

2:54:40SpeakerIt was when he first got the farm.

2:54:44Dr Mark ScialdoneOkay, yeah, that would have been in 68. So he joined the band in late 67. I think he got the farm in Novato in 68. And that's shortly after that is when they started the New Riders of the Purple Sage, right? Jerry started playing pedal steel and actually Mickey was the drummer in that band when they first started and Phil was the bass player. With John Marmaduke, Dawson, and David Nelson, Jerry's old friend.

2:55:18SpeakerBig Ben was still alive then also.

2:55:20Dr Mark ScialdoneBig Ben was still alive, yeah, yeah.

2:55:23SpeakerBecause he used to hang around with a friend of mine named Omaha who lived up in Cotati. And I, yeah. Long time ago.

2:55:37BubblemanSo you just drove out from like New York to California in a Porsche, had no idea who the Grateful Dead were, and then suddenly you were just like hanging out on Mickey Hart's farm.

2:55:48SpeakerBut I was into the whole deal, you know? Like I was, I was into music. I was into acid. I was into, you know, I was into the drug deal.

2:56:06SpeakerWe nested, you know? That's awesome. Excuse me. Nick, you're pretty incredible.

2:56:13BubblemanIt was completely like my world, you know? Yeah, clearly. You fell right into the middle of it as you arrived. Huff wonk. And what were you doing?

2:56:23SpeakerDo you remember a guy named Huff? Huff. Yeah, that was my friend's name, Huff. I think he asked it for Mark.

2:56:41Dr Mark ScialdoneI don't go back that far.

2:56:43SpeakerHe was the guy that got all the good weed for the dead.

2:56:51Dr Mark ScialdoneOkay, great.

2:56:55BubblemanYou'd think they'd call him Puff. Huh? You think they call him Puff? Yeah, call Huff Puff if he's all about the, although maybe Huff was a good little nickname back in the day for hitting some joints too.

2:57:12BubblemanThat's pretty awesome. And so now you guys got this brand going and you're in, you're in Florida. Are there other states that you guys are in right now?

2:57:21SpeakerWhat now? Yeah. Go ahead. Go ahead, Rich. We're busy. We're busy in Florida right now. And we've been trying to get active in California, kind of like busy. I was almost going to get into the black market and then kind of backed up. I'm really just looking to do legitimate business with cannabis, you know? So we've had only, we haven't gone anywhere but Florida thus far. We've had a lot of meetings.

2:57:55SpeakerWe've had a lot of, you know, efforts, but nothing has, like I said, been like organic. So I kind of stepped back. We just were in New York last month in September. And I had a good meeting with someone from Happy Monkey, but pretty much that's it. You know, haven't really gone forward on anything. Rick, aren't you connected with Curaleaf? No, Trulief. Oh, Truleaf, excuse me. Yeah, Curaleaf is another company.

2:58:28SpeakerThey're a similar name, but still. Yeah, and they're one of the biggest in America. Yeah, definitely. Yeah.

2:58:39Dr Mark ScialdoneAre they owned by Canopy? I didn't know that.

2:58:44Etienne FontanAre they?

2:58:44Dr Mark ScialdoneYeah. Yeah, I think Canopy owns Curaleaf. I do believe that. I think they also bought Moana, the gummy brand Moana.

2:58:54Collin PalmerOne is definitely owned by Canopy.

2:58:56Dr Mark ScialdoneYeah.

2:58:57SpeakerNo, I don't think Curaleaf is owned by Canopy. I think they're their own publicly listed company. Are they not? As far as I knew, yes, but I don't know for sure.

2:59:07BubblemanIf only we had like some system that we could check to see if this was true or not.

2:59:12SpeakerHold on, let me just check. Let me hold on, let me give it a real quick look. They might have shares in Cureleaf, but Cureleaf is a publicly traded company like Canopy. So if Canopy owns a share, that's possible.

2:59:27Dr Mark ScialdoneI could have that wrong, Ryan. I could be wrong on that.

2:59:30Collin PalmerRich, you know, Vlad and Vermont are great people, and I've known them for years. I know Jay, the whole team.

2:59:36SpeakerCureleaf's in 37 states in America.

2:59:42Collin PalmerThat's amazing. We definitely work together.

2:59:45BubblemanWe'll get there. We'll get there.

2:59:47Collin PalmerYeah, I think, for some reason, I think Cureleaf is their own entity. Yeah, they are. They are.

2:59:53Dr Mark ScialdoneAren't they the Boris Jordan guys? Yeah. Oligarch dude from Russia.

2:59:59Collin PalmerYeah, it started in Connecticut, then it was bought, and then it was expanded upon. So, yeah. But, but yeah.

3:00:08SpeakerSo yeah, only, only, only been functioning in Florida, but fuck, yeah, definitely want to expand 100%, just want to have the right partners.

3:00:17BubblemanYeah, well, that's listen, I've, I had an interesting method of this right partner experience. And I sort of, you know, for a while, I put everything into my partnerships. And I was just like, you know, then I get hurt, or it wouldn't work out. And I was kind of like, you know what, the I don't mind making mistakes, because those are lessons that I learned from, and they end up being quite valuable.

3:00:39BubblemanBut I'm like, I want to get to them faster. I don't want it. So I've been like, I've had all these partnerships, and some are going really well, some are going pretty good, some are going okay, and some just kind of petered out. And I found that I didn't hold on to them, you know, where I just let these experiences kind of pass through me. And if one, you know, took hold, and then I could sort of direct it.

3:01:02BubblemanI also like All my partners learning from one another. So when I have one group who's doing it the best, we look at what it is that they're doing and how they're doing it. And then we try to recreate that with our other partnerships in different states. And we can kind of have a little co-op because it's not federally legal. Every state that you're in is this individual deal that you're doing that's separate and different.

3:01:24BubblemanBut yet that doesn't mean all of your partners can't benefit from one another because A, there's no fear in scarcity worry where your partners in Florida are like, we don't want you giving SOPs away to your partners in Ohio or your partners in wherever. So there's this, at least for my brand, I've just made it really congruent, made all the assets available. You know, like if it's in the start, there's a couple of deals that are putting together all the marketing and the planning and all of the assets basically.

3:01:52BubblemanAnd then the companies that come along later, they just acquire those assets. Maybe they pay a thousand bucks or something and they get all of the assets, all the die lines, all the boxes, all the everythings. And it's it's just been a it's been a it's what I've been doing literally for the last two and a half years straight, just slowly building, you know, this brand that that should be in every state that cannabis is sold in, but finding the right partners.

3:02:18BubblemanIs definitely the trick. And don't be afraid to make the wrong partner at first. And just as long as you have the good deal, my deals are loose and small. My contract's four pages long. I try not to go really too deep into it and just be like, look, if the deal's not working as a win-win, No problem. You know, I'm never upset when my partners just come to me and say, hey, I don't think I can do this.

3:02:43BubblemanAnd I've had a couple, I've had a couple of play out like that. But, you know, my partnerships in Illinois and Michigan and Oklahoma and Missouri and Colorado and Washington State and soon to be New Mexico and possibly Montana. These are all just great partnerships that are getting better and better.

3:03:02SpeakerRelationships.

3:03:03BubblemanYeah, and I'd love to pass any of that on that I could to you, dude, what I've learned and potentially introductions for you.

3:03:09SpeakerRespect, brother. That's love.

3:03:12BubblemanYeah, absolutely, man. Well, you know, it's like you guys got a good brand and there's a good, it's not a good story. It's like an unbelievable story. It's going to be a fucking movie. Whose brand has a movie? It's like yours does. Yours guys does. So I think that it's pretty cool as well. The sort of philanthropy and activism that's attached to the brand that makes people like, well, why should we smoke your joints?

3:03:37BubblemanIt's like, well, because there's this sort of Social justice aspect attached to your brand, which I think is just really cool.

3:03:47SpeakerMarcus, what do you think the first legal brand was? And I'm not talking about, you know, from the 60s with Lebanese hash bags marked with cedar on it. I don't know.

3:04:06SpeakerHorda Labs?

3:04:11SpeakerWell, I saw things like Copa de Oro from Jerry Comstra, who did an article for Life Magazine. And instead of writing just an article, he went down to Mexico and bought a field of Copa de Oro Gold Mountain cannabis and smuggled it back up to America and Wrote the book Weed.

3:04:45BubblemanAwesome. Yeah, that is awesome. Good on him. Good on him. Good on all the smugglers over the years and all the farmers.

3:04:53SpeakerDead Life Magazine refused to publish it. So he published it as a book.

3:05:00Etienne FontanBelievable.

3:05:02SpeakerBecause he used their money to buy the weed.

3:05:08SpeakerOh. Thank you for joining us.

3:05:34BubblemanAnd then use the crop to fund the movie. And the last scene in the movie, they're all sitting in the restaurant and his buddy says something like, oh, did you fund, did you, he asked him if there's some question about whether he funded the movie or something, or he said, are you going to make a movie? He said, movies, movies cost money and money doesn't just grow on trees.

3:05:55BubblemanAnd then they pan back and they're basically in the movie scene filming this. It's a great movie if you haven't seen it. The buds. It's the first time I've ever seen real beautiful 10 foot plants, big, crazy old school plants growing in like Northern California in that photo.

3:06:13SpeakerMoney Tree is the movie?

3:06:14BubblemanThe Money Tree. Yeah, it's called The Money Tree. Oh.

3:06:18SpeakerThat's a good movie. The Google search results are going up for that today.

3:06:29Etienne FontanThat was like 94, something like that?

3:06:33Bubbleman92. 92. Yeah, The Money Tree came out in 92.

3:06:39SpeakerAnd before that, there was movies like Acapulco Gold.

3:06:43BubblemanYeah.

3:06:44SpeakerI think it was a little later, but Homegrown is a great movie, Northern California movie with lots of famous people in it. Jamie Lee Curtis, Ted Danson, Bon Jovi, and so many folks. Watch that one if you haven't seen it. Homegrown. Homegrown and Money Tree. Definitely in my rotation this week.

3:07:05BubblemanDude, the one I want to watch is the Richard DeLisi story.

3:07:10SpeakerOh, man. It's heavy. The guy who's filming it has just filmed the... The sizzle reel, and it's about five minutes. He's still editing it. It's driving me crazy. I'm like waiting and checking with him all the time. And he's like, I'm not going to give it to you until it's right. You know, so it's like, it's a trip, bro. This whole process is crazy. Dealing with an artist.

3:07:35SpeakerThe next step is right now we're trying to fund the documentary. So that's the next short step.

3:07:42BubblemanAll right. So how can people support that?

3:07:47SpeakerThe best way is just to get on delicioso.net and go to the Santa Marta Gold tab on the page and connect with Matt Hamer.

3:08:00SpeakerYeah, his name is Nate, but his real name is Matt Hamer. So yeah, Matt Hamer is right now in production. We've got the director for the feature film is somebody who's pretty heavy, Terry McDonald, who had worked on Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul, among other things. So it's definitely a good team being put together at the moment for everything. It's crazy. Yeah.

3:08:30BubblemanThat is crazy.

3:08:31SpeakerThat's awesome.

3:08:32BubblemanThat is so cool. Like what a, you know, it's one thing to just, you know, get out. That's unbelievable in itself, but lots of people get out and they don't have that support and the world's changed and they don't have this like lane carved out for you pops. And it's like, uh, It's like, that's a big deal, man, to be able to come out and just have, you know, I'm sure it hasn't been easy.

3:08:54BubblemanI'm not saying that by any means.

3:08:57SpeakerNo, of course not. It's of course not. There's going to be, you know, but it's fucking awesome. Yeah, it is fucking awesome, bro. It is pretty awesome.

3:09:07BubblemanAnd to use that story now as well, even like it's inception upon inception upon inception that you're like, not only did Florida put you in prison for 32 years, but now you're out and you're like, I'm going to sell weed in Florida. That's where I'll start. Yeah, boom. Now I'm selling weed in Florida. I'm going to use the money I make to sell weed in Florida and I'm going to promote these, you know, expose these injustices and get more eyes on, you know.

3:09:32SpeakerAnd that's also why I have to thank people like You know, as much as I have to thank someone like Mary Bailey or Steve D'Angelo, I also have to Thanks. I'm Kim Rivers, who, when my cousin stepped to her with my father and said like, hey, do you know about my uncle? She was like, yeah, I know about him and I want to help you guys, you know?

3:09:58SpeakerSo there's a different, you know, I'm trying to just, it's an amazing type of human that it takes to have a passionate heart and project. Thank you so much for joining us.

3:10:28BubblemanYou have to serve others.

3:10:30SpeakerYeah, you have to service, service to the ones you love. And, you know, Rick, when you were telling that story about getting the list of things for your dad together, all I could think of is like that was a mission of love that you were doing. You know, on top of a long mission of love of getting them out, putting all the work into getting them out, but to make that start, you know, to put all that stuff together, it was just, you feel the love emanating from you.

3:10:55SpeakerIt's really a beautiful thing. Like, I've always had a ton of respect for you, but, you know, that really shows what a kind heart you have, man. Thank you, brother. Respect.

3:11:06Etienne FontanAnd y'all deserve all the happiness. You deserve all the success. You know, I'm sorry you had to go through hell to enjoy this little slice of heaven. But do your best to enjoy it and revel in it and appreciate it for the special time that, you know, y'all have that you have.

3:11:24SpeakerI don't think there's anybody in this room that hasn't gone through heavy things to be where we're standing, you know? So, I mean, I'm just glad that we all get to be here and share our experiences and like be able to communicate like this and build. And it's like, it's a trip, you know? It's like every, there's deep connections. It's like Mark talking about the dead the way he did and everybody talking about the dead the way they did.

3:11:48SpeakerAnd then just like everything, there's just so many multi, Thank you so much for joining us.

3:12:16BubblemanIt makes me want to ask Richard as well. Oh, go ahead, please. I was just going to ask you a question.

3:12:21SpeakerIt's so unbelievable that a plant made all this happen.

3:12:28BubblemanWell, and what I was going to ask you about your plant was the Santa Marta gold. Like, what was that? Like you said, like, oh, people were blown away or whatever. But you must have some specific sort of stories of like when you first smoked that weed, especially the sense of meal aversion, the one that was seedless and gold and how that was received when you brought it to the US.

3:12:49BubblemanYou must have been like, oh, fuck, this is going to be bigger than I thought.

3:12:52SpeakerThis is what I want. You know, this is the thing that I was looking for. This is the taste I want to taste. This is the smell, the smell of it. If you walked into a room and you were smoking Santa Marta Gold, it was like, wow, man, what is that incense? You know? It's beyond that because skunk number one is Santa Marta Gold times Afghan. And then I took that and times it to Acapulco Gold.

3:13:30SpeakerWow. That's really what that is, huh? Santa Marta is a Colombian. Absolutely. There was a study that came out not too long ago, and they'd grown all these excisions down in Columbia, all over different places in Columbia, and analyzed them in a lab, and they were all really high in Neuraladol for whatever reason. I don't know if it's something in the environment that's bringing that terpene out in a more predominant way, but I wonder if that was what they did.

3:13:58SpeakerGenetic-based. It may not be the environment. They had all these different lines that all had the same kind of signal. So it makes me wonder. Including important genetics or just Santa Marta genetics? Well, no, they weren't all Santa Marta, but they were all Colombian lines from different places around the country. So anyway, who knows?

3:14:21BubblemanSo they're related. Yeah, because it wasn't cultivar dependent, right? Santa Marta gold was just gold flower, no?

3:14:30SpeakerThat's insane.

3:14:54SpeakerIt's the first time I heard that. It's going in the documentary. Yeah, it's going in the documentary.

3:15:00Etienne FontanCan you say that again, Sam? So it was the Santa Marta Gold. So did you find a seed in it? And then you popped that?

3:15:07SpeakerNo. What it was was really, really, really high quality Santa Marta Gold that was imported into Santa Cruz, California. And I used it as one of the parents with an afghan. And then to make it earlier, I hit it times at Acapulco Gold.

3:15:31SpeakerThe first year I grew them, every single plant smelled like a dead skunk. But what I found out it was that because I was growing a lot of them, that the ones that were sweeter, I actually liked better. So I bred away from within the same gene pool. All right, guys, thanks for watching. We'll see you next time.

3:16:21SpeakerOr a plant of it in your greenhouse and people can smell it from blocks away. I remember being brought into a hydroponic store in Vancouver and I wasn't living there at the time and I went in with a grower and he introduced me to the shop owner and said, you know, this is Chimera, he bred these varieties. She had been growing the frostbite and she lit me up about the smell so bad.

3:16:54SpeakerIt was like back then you had to make these decisions to like grow varieties that were less, less stinky, right? It was like really doing the amount of what we wanted in the flower, but that's what you had to do to stay alive.

3:17:10Etienne FontanYeah. Otherwise those hydroponic stores would be like, you don't smell like tomatoes.

3:17:17BubblemanWell, I just got sprayed by a skunk, actually. So in my tomato patch.

3:17:23Etienne FontanSo, Mr. Delisi, you know, there's a saying that, you know, you judge society by its prisons. So now that you've come and you've spent more than enough time there, how do you view this society? I know you've let go of that, but you must have your own feelings after experiencing the system so intimately.

3:17:50SpeakerI think that society is adjusting to what's going on. I don't think they're taking a blind eye on what's happening. They're paying attention for sure. Because look what's happening. Look what's going on. It's changing every moment that we speak. You know, it's just, it's like a nonstop thing. You know what I mean?

3:18:14SpeakerNot only that, but we won't stop until everyone in every country can grow cannabis for any reason. Maybe if they sell it, they should have it lab tested, but A small tax, but except for that, let it be everywhere with everybody. I mean, I don't understand why that would be an issue. It's such an awesome plant to grow. When you grow the plant and you get a relationship with the plant, even on just a small level, it's so shocking to think that that's in any way something bad.

3:18:53SpeakerIt's got to remember back when Prohibition was being put in, it was the society, at least North American society, was so scared of anything that was different from the norm, right? Like if you were outside of the norm, you were a freak and you were something to be worried about. Humans try to control things that they are fearful of the power of those objects, right? And I think it's undeniable that cannabis has a special power.

3:19:21SpeakerThat disrupts the typical thinking of society, you know, what they probably viewed as the ideal in society, right? And it's the, you know, it's like they used to say, it's the thinking mad cigarette. We saw the old movie, Marijuana. We know that if you smoke marijuana, the first thing you're going to do is start playing the piano really crazy, and then you're going to chop up your mom and dad.

3:19:49SpeakerI want people thinking for themselves, right? They really didn't. They wanted people following the message. Yeah, yeah. Which is why they demonized it, right? They had to make it into something that it wasn't. For a long time. Back then, if you were a freaky, long-haired, hippie dude, you were something that society could not become, right? So. I'm going to get going, y'all.

3:20:18BubblemanThanks for coming out, man. Thank you guys for sharing your time with us. And I'll put up all the links on the description box.

3:20:26SpeakerLove. I'll be in touch. I want to thank you guys for having us and give a shout out to True Leaf and Kim Rivers and my friend Brian. Thank you, Brian, for helping. Yeah, for helping out.

3:20:48SpeakerHey, Rick, always great to see you. And Richard, welcome back, brother. Thank you so much. It was amazing to be here. And I'll circle around more often. My bad. Just been, you know, I've had a really busy few years. So it's great to circle around and share it with you guys, to be honest. Yeah. For me, it was a happy afternoon. Yeah. Love you guys. Peace. All right.

3:21:16SpeakerLove you guys. Thanks for coming out, guys. Appreciate that. See you soon, fellas. Nice meeting you, Richard.

3:21:22BubblemanWe've got a potential 30, 40 minutes left if you guys still want to chat for a bit. Totally up to you guys. He's got, they're gone now, I think. Oh, or maybe he's staying. I think I shut his video off accidentally. Oops, my bad, Richard. I thought you were leaving. Maybe he's hanging out. Yeah, it's up to you guys. We can end the show now. That was pretty awesome.

3:21:49BubblemanI don't mind ending it on that note and picking it up next week, possibly, you know, doing more of a Grateful Dead episode next week or the week after. I've invited a couple people. I've had even Chimera mentioned a friend of his who was potentially would be good for that podcast. In private message, I know Mark's would probably and Colin would probably have a few people. It'd be nice to do just Mojave, of course, but just remember it's Sunday.

3:22:15BubblemanSo it's like this has this list of people. If we're going to do it next week has to be in by like Tuesday, Wednesday at the absolute latest. I like to have a pre-plan these days for the show. Really happy that Rick and his father Richard came out and shared their story. It's just nice to see, man. I really remember how heavy that weighed on him. I mean, can you imagine 32 years of your life?

3:22:43BubblemanYou don't have your dad and then you get him back. And now he's like, it's just such a it's such a nightmare, horrific tragedy. Yet it's like awesome and amazing. And, you know, it's ever changing. And it's just nice to see those guys.

3:22:55Etienne FontanImagine losing 32 years of your life.

3:22:59BubblemanDude, are you kidding me? I'm only 59.

3:23:02SpeakerYou missed your kids growing up. You missed the grandkids. You missed everything. I mean, it's such a ripoff. It's such an absolute scam. And, you know, when I first met Rick, he was in the middle of it, right? It was all real. It was like, yeah, my dad's in prison. And it just, you could tell the weight on his shoulders, the way that it impacted the way that he went about life.

3:23:23SpeakerSo it's, I was so happy to see it happen, but him come out, but it's amazing to catch up with them and see where they're at. It's such a, such a win.

3:23:33Etienne FontanYeah, that was an extra special day today for sure. I mean, to watch, you know, yeah, yeah, from him back in the day wishing his dad was a possibility and seeing it go from an idea from a possibility to sharing time and space and joints and such with that's...

3:23:56Dr Mark ScialdoneWell, it's got to be a domino, right? Part of the story, isn't it?

3:23:59Etienne FontanYeah, we need more of this in the world, right?

3:24:03SpeakerDoes anybody know how many people have been released from prison from cannabis crimes?

3:24:12BubblemanI know the answer is not enough.

3:24:14SpeakerYeah, right. It's got to be a domino effect, right? Like, I want to see more people experience that joy that they have.

3:24:23Collin PalmerYeah, they work together as a as a team. You know, how special is that?

3:24:28Etienne FontanYou know that he gets what we said, right? Get active, get involved. If you're in a state where it isn't legal work to find a Jordan organization there, you're helping. If you're in a state where people are incarcerated, go join letter writing services and go write letters to these people who are still incarcerated and, you know, throw a couple of bucks their way into their, you know, their cantina.

3:24:53Etienne FontanSo that they can actually enjoy a little something extra in life because they don't have that luck yet. And hopefully they will all experience it. But for those that are in, there are supporting groups. There are organizations who support families who have people who are incarcerated. So there's many different services out there that you can plug into and get involved that unfortunately we've all been made aware of due to The years of activism and watching so many different demographics become affected by the different levels of the drug war.

3:25:31Etienne FontanYou know, this is it matters. You know, I got to actually run into, you know, a gentleman, Luke Scarmazzo. I got to run into him recently at the state fair. He had been incarcerated while he was incarcerated. My friend of mine was selling key chains with his name on it to, you know, Phil, his canteen so that he wasn't forgotten. And years later, you know, when I saw him, I was like, I still have your key chains.

3:26:03Etienne FontanLike, I remember sending that key chain. So, you know, they remember everything, you know, and these little things that that you can affect their lives and brighten their day. Not only will brighten your day, it'll make their day a hundred times better. Or, you know, depending on what's in their canteen, you know, they're going to get something to last them a couple of weeks. And that means a lot when you're going through hell.

3:26:26Etienne FontanAny type of little sprinkles of salt of heaven matter so greatly. And they carry so much weight.

3:26:35SpeakerYeah, he said it earlier, dude. I mean, One of the best parts of life is being of service to others, right? Improving other people's lives. And there's a lot of ways to do it. But yeah, if everybody could incorporate that into their day, we do make the world a better place for everybody, including ourselves, right? Like being of service to others is incredibly gratifying.

3:27:00Collin PalmerYeah.

3:27:00BubblemanWell, everyone wants to live in a better world, but they don't believe that they can make it a better world by just doing good stuff for people.

3:27:08Collin PalmerYeah, they don't want to take, right? They don't want to, they don't want to share. And that's not what our community is not on that.

3:27:18SpeakerHumans are incredibly selfish. And when you give, you realize that the more you give, the more you get back.

3:27:24Collin PalmerYeah, that's the universal law.

3:27:27Etienne FontanYeah, but it also, what is it? It feels good. Oh, oh, oh, wait, wait, what? It feels good. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Giving is kind of like a drug. It feels good to give. It feels good to share. It feels good to lift somebody up because when you do that, you're giving up your time, which is the most valuable thing that you have. And you do it in the service of others.

3:27:51Etienne FontanYeah, you'd be amazed what floats back into your world, the experiences, the opportunities, the doors that open just from those experiences. I think a lot of us have experienced that by kind of letting go of the universe and having the universe reward us accordingly. You know, you have to kind of ride that lightning, right?

3:28:11Collin PalmerYeah, I mean, I can say that my creative career was built on that in the early days. And then I started getting paid for my work. And then my work became my job. I was like, holy crap, this is this is my job now. And I could never, my younger self, I never would have thought than that, you know, but it was only because I put myself in the position of giving to get.

3:28:31Collin PalmerAnd that's, you know, even with What we do with with hash making, it's important to give all the information that you know, because you never know what you're going to get from a younger mind or someone that's that's doing something differently. And I love I love that. I love that someone can bring something back to you in a way that you never thought. And that's that's that's a beautiful exchange.

3:28:54Collin PalmerThat's what's needed. We need that. That exchange.

3:28:59Etienne FontanThose are priceless.

3:29:00Collin PalmerYeah, that's what it's about. And Colin, do you, do you copyright or patent any of your varieties?

3:29:27Collin PalmerI've been in this, I have been a part of patents, so I am on certain patents, but I don't know how valuable that is. If you don't commercialize a patent, how valuable is that patent? Right. Are we just holding a patent to say we have it, you know, or what would be the mechanism? Why would we do that is something I struggle with a lot because I am on certain patents, but I have nothing.

3:29:56SpeakerI have nothing against patents as long as it's new and novel. I think if people put a lot of time and energy into something, they deserve intellectual property right on it. Yeah. Yeah, if you're creating something new and you're, you know, being remunerated for all that work, look, I mean, creating new varieties. If you're actually creating something new, you know, like that's, there's a lot of time and energy and money that goes into that.

3:30:24Collin PalmerIt's the truth.

3:30:26SpeakerAnd, you know, we talked about it last week, you know, in the context of, you know, we were talking about cultivar groups and creating new things and, you know, stabilizing traits and the importance of characterizing plants and describing plants. That's how you know that something is new and different is that when you characterize all these plants and you realize, hey, this one has, you know, say a huge abnormal spike of neuraldol or whatever it is.

3:30:53SpeakerRight. That's like, that's, that is the differentiator. And by forming a, by filing some type of intellectual property protection, you're actually teaching the entire community that, hey, look, there's this whole thing that we have that we did that comes from within the species or that we made from within the species that we didn't know existed. And so you're teaching everybody that that's a direction that they can push towards.

3:31:17Collin PalmerYeah. Yeah. Very fair. Yeah. That's, I think it's, A lot of the things that we do, I think I struggle with how we would protect it when we file it. And that's another conversation we have a lot of like, okay, yeah, we could say improve all these things, but how well can we protect it and how well could I, you know, defer someone from taking that from us ultimately and patent trolling it and then creating something and saying they a wholly unique, you know, it's, it's, it's happened before.

3:31:51Collin PalmerIt'll happen again.

3:31:52SpeakerIt can be protected. There are professional firms that prevent, for example, cut flowers. If you breed a new variety of a cut flower and you give it to a grower and he starts cheating you on the revenues, there are companies that can have free access and go right into their books and, you know, I mean, you shouldn't make a deal if you don't want to keep up with it.

3:32:20SpeakerRight. And having that piece of...

3:32:26SpeakerYou know, in the case of the states of a plant patent or internationally with a PBR, a plant breeders rights protection certificate, that is the piece of paper that allows you to go to the court and say, hey, I own this thing. These guys are producing it without proper compensation to me. And the courts will send the marshals over into the greenhouse. You're literally stealing somebody else's invention.

3:32:55SpeakerI can honestly say that we did file several patents, not on plants, but on other aspects like a vaporizer using a Venturi air system and several other ones like analogs of... Anandamide, which were used for controlling glycoma and it worked better than any other medicine out there. And I also got plant breeders rights. I was the first one in the world to get a drug variety plants breeders rights for skunk number one.

3:33:37Collin PalmerSee, that's what I, we're going to start working on plant breeder, breeders rights, and then we'll work ourselves into the novelties. But it's just cash, to be honest, guys. I think it's, it's the number one hindering, hindering factor for us as a team right now, because we're, you know, we're working on a license in New York now, and we're trying to build that thing up. And that's spending, taking a lot of time out of our hands.

3:34:02Collin PalmerAnd also. Our finances towards that.

3:34:06SpeakerI filed 29 plant breeders rights for cannabis. And I did all the paperwork myself. I did all the breeding myself. And yeah, I'm proud of what I did. It's not impossible too, right? Like character, like, again, I'm going to go back to it again. Characterizing plants is so important and it's just part of lab results, testing all the lab results and seeing, you know, a hundred or 200 or 500 different lab results and identifying the one that's like, Hey, this one's different from all the other ones.

3:34:49SpeakerRight. And that's, that is where that is novelty. Like that's where you find something that's truly new and, um,

3:34:57Collin PalmerYeah, we sequence everything. So you do have that.

3:35:05SpeakerSequencing doesn't work for patents or PBRs. They won't even, it's not part of the process and they don't even consider it. No, with plant breeders rights, it's how it looks. Yeah, well, and then, as you know, we talked about this, where they're getting into the chemistry, but specifically, Colin, for you, you're in the States, PBRs for cannabis, especially if you're talking about a clonal variety, or like a cultivar, you're better off seeking a plant patent than a PBR.

3:35:35SpeakerIt's really suited for that type of cultivar. Yep. In the United States, he's talking about.

3:35:42Collin PalmerYeah, because we don't have a federal program, right? Like a Marshall couldn't technically go in. In your world, yes, a Marshall could technically go in and say, hey, guys, look, we have the paperwork here. This varietal is owned by this X company. You don't own this, you know, but here it's a bit trickier. And that's what you can use.

3:36:03SpeakerIt's a civil thing, right? It's a civil infraction of the United States. These things are like, if someone takes your variety and it's a clonal variety, you get We've got them dead to rights.

3:36:25Collin PalmerThat's why we do it. That's why we do it. Honestly, it's because you can actually take the flower. Kevin and I did that. I gave him the plant. We grew the flower. I packaged it. It went out into the ether. I went and bought it. I gave him a sample and it was a New York City garlic hit for New York City garlic. I was like, okay, cool.

3:36:44Collin PalmerSo now we have an ability to know Off the shelf, if this is something that's authentic, number one, and then on top of that is, you know, is what they say it is.

3:36:54SpeakerBut only when you register the... When you register... right when you register a plant patents it's based on the unique chemistry of the plant so you could technically have like it's it's any flower that reproduces your unique chemistry would be a violation of that even if it was a different clone right so the the sequencing is not uh it's a method for identification but You know, really the important part is the patent, not the sequencing.

3:37:25SpeakerThe sequencing doesn't give you any enforcement ability. The patent does, right? It's literally a certificate of ownership is what it is.

3:37:33Collin PalmerWell, it gives you prior art with the, with the, uh, With a, with a sequencing, with sequencing GM, exactly.

3:37:43SpeakerThe sequencing doesn't, we don't, we don't have that understanding of sequencing representing a specific chemical variant.

3:37:52Collin PalmerKevin would differ to say on that because it's what I understand.

3:37:57SpeakerIt's, it's like Kevin tried to invalid, Kevin was talking about invalidating the patents that we filed through Napro. And that was all talk. So, I mean, there's, like I said before, Kevin's a brilliant dude, but he's a part of my daily gutter guy. Well, I mean,

3:38:16Collin PalmerI can say even with the work that we did with Phyllis way back when, like the ideology that this is my understanding, this is what I was sold on, this is why I got excited about it, was that we can put prior art on something much like you can write a song and say, yo, I own this art right here.

3:38:35SpeakerNo, no, no, that's not what it does. It doesn't provide ownership. You say, I had this thing on this date. It's like the equivalent of mailing yourself a book or an audio tape or a dad tape or a CD. And then you leave that thing in a sealed envelope. And then when there's an official court process, you're opening the envelope on record.

3:38:58Collin PalmerRight. Because it's in blockchain, that's how they sold it to me. It was like, yo, this goes into blockchain. It can't be altered. It cannot be removed. The dates are what they are.

3:39:08SpeakerRight. But it doesn't it doesn't mean it doesn't prove ownership, though. It doesn't prove ownership. It only proves that you had it on that date.

3:39:15Collin PalmerGot it.

3:39:16SpeakerRight. So it's like, for example, like some company came along and decided to patent, let's say, Sour Diesel or Blue Dream. It doesn't matter again the name. But if a corporation comes along and says, hey, this is our plant, if we can, if the community can demonstrate that it was in our possession before the filing of the patent, it invalidates the patent. Right. And so really all that it does is it says, I had this thing on this date.

3:39:43SpeakerTrue. There's a company that doesn't show ownership. There's a company that got it. Yeah, I agree.

3:39:49Collin PalmerYeah, I saw that. How do you feel about that, Sam?

3:39:56SpeakerThey got their seeds via via me. Well, they've really, you know, it's a pretty, pretty weak patent. Really what they were patenting was that variation on the name. Like what was the name? I called it the original Purple Haze or something like that. I've got it here, but, uh, Yeah, when I looked at it, I laughed because... So did I. Yeah, that's not a good... When all these pubcos came around, people tried to defile all these things and they said, hey, we got a patent.

3:40:31SpeakerA patent is like a stake in the ground on a mining claim, right? It's like, it doesn't mean, it doesn't actually give you ownership. The truth behind the ownership or the patent's validity comes about through the court process that surrounds that, you know, the contestation of the patent, right? So just because you've got a patent issued, it doesn't mean that it's truly yours. It's really a matter for the courts.

3:40:58SpeakerYeah, it's after being challenged by a big, rich lawyer company that it's really yours.

3:41:06Dr Mark ScialdoneYeah, I've said it before. This patent is only worth How it'll hold up in an infringement case against it in court. Exactly. And I've said patents is lottery ticket to a lawsuit. Where you claim stuff, if you have issued claims in a patent, that is intellectual property. That's property. Now you can claim that property and you can license that property. But if you license that property and you're accepting licensing income from someone on it, They're going to expect you to go after infringers, right?

3:41:41Dr Mark ScialdoneSo you have kind of like a fiduciary responsibility if you're collecting some licensing fees for your patent that you're going to go after people who are infringing it. But again, something that Colin said earlier I want to expand on, and you'd said this, I think, Timera, in a right way, but I just want to make sure that you know that When you claim something and there's prior art that's cited against it, what can happen is that now you have to hire an attorney and go after that in a court to basically challenge the claim saying you're going to present something from 1987 or something where you already had that claim described and everything.

3:42:28Dr Mark ScialdoneWell, first of all, there's two things about that. That's extremely expensive to do because you have to hire an attorney to go after that. The other thing is that there is no case law in the United States right now. I don't know about Canada and elsewhere, but I can tell you in the United States, there is no precedence for taking cannabis related IP Thank you so much for joining us.

3:43:22Dr Mark ScialdoneThe law or the bar commission, the people who basically keep lawyers doing things by the straight and legal will basically tell you that if you're advising a cannabis business related client, you're breaking federal law and that's not allowed. So certain attorneys and certain legal firms will kind of go around that. And certainly there are a lot of, Lawyers that do cannabis law, but in certain law firms, they just, they can't touch cannabis related businesses, cannabis trademarks.

3:44:00Dr Mark ScialdoneAnd I think I wanted to mention one thing about trademark. I think you were talking about this chimera, which is haze and, you know,

3:44:09SpeakerNo, it was not a trademark. It was a patent.

3:44:12Dr Mark ScialdoneYeah, the patent. Well, again, Sam, I'll tell you this because I've probably gotten more patents than anybody here on the panel combined. Is that, is that, is that, you know, a name is, is one thing. And again, you could trademark a name, you know, and like, I know the people who trademarked Sour Diesel and you know who went after them? The Blue Jeans Company, Diesel, didn't want any connection with, because they had already had patented the word diesel and they thought sour diesel, well, we don't want to be associated with that.

3:44:52Dr Mark ScialdoneBut the one thing I could say about patents is there has to be an invention. There has to be something that couldn't be predicted from the prior art or else the examiner will deem it as obvious. That's typically how you get a patent thrown out is you go into the court and you have an expert witness like me present, you know, data to say that, no, this is based on what's known.

3:45:22Dr Mark ScialdoneThis is obvious. And when the patent was examined, maybe the patent examiner wasn't aware of all the prior art that existed. But if you, if you could claim on a patent and you could like, we, I had this discussion With the late great Indra, rest in peace. People were challenging his patent, right? And if you look at the literature, you'll find out that did people do extraction of botanicals with hydrocarbon prior to Indra getting the claims on his patent?

3:45:55Dr Mark ScialdoneThe answer is yes, right? And so there were companies that were selling extraction machines. And I think maybe Indra took too aggressive an approach And rather than sending cease and desist, he should have encouraged these companies to buy a license to his patent because it's a low cost way to basically make sure that you're okay. So if you think you're violating someone's patent, basically you just pay that individual.

3:46:24Dr Mark ScialdoneThat individual now it's like, okay, I'm monetizing my IP because holding IP is an expensive thing, right? If you're holding IP, it costs a lot of money to maintain that IP and everything. That's why When you finally do get it, you definitely want to encourage people to not infringe on your IP, but encourage them to buy a license for it. But now, again, I'll go back to what I'd said earlier.

3:46:50Dr Mark ScialdoneThe fiduciary responsibility is on you to now go after those infringers. And we're dealing with HHCA right now. There's some patent infringing that's going on on that. And yeah, it becomes really ugly and really messy.

3:47:09SpeakerI agree with almost everything you said. The one thing about the federally illegal thing, you know, just because certain law firms won't touch it, that doesn't mean that it's truly federally illegal. I realize the law is federally illegal, but it doesn't mean that the patent's not valid. When we were doing that patent process, part of the process that we had to do was deposit seeds, okay? And so you have to, there's these recognized deposits for all over the portal.

3:47:42Collin PalmerWe lost you, Jamiro.

3:47:44SpeakerWhat he's trying to say is that he had to file seeds With a representative to show that he had this material. And he did it not by depositing the seeds in America where it was illegal, but by doing it in either the UK or Ireland, I forget. But he got around it and he did receive the patent.

3:48:11Collin PalmerWell, I didn't receive the patent. Well, look, I think Mark can tell you, you know, you know, The first rate of refusal in the United States is really where the key is in filing your patents. And I think that's the biggest playing field if you're going to file a patent. So while, yes, you can do it in other places, for us in the United States, it's really difficult to defend that and bring that here and for them to take that.

3:48:42SpeakerNo, it's not. It's not at all. It's not hard to defend it, but but here's just just I've been listening to you guys. It's such a great show. I had to jump in. It was you guys like just keep nailing it. All I would say is that because it's this conversation on patents started about Colin, whether it was worth seeking a patent on. And so the difference between utility patents, inventions, methods, all that.

3:49:07SpeakerThey're very defendable. The problem with individual plant patents is just to what you guys just mentioned. It's all about prior art. When the patent office had no prior art, because there was no plant patents, So the more plants that are submitted, the harder it is to prove prior art. And because it's all based off of plant color, height, width, shades, and not about on genomics, although genomics can be used in defense, then it's going to be really hard to defend.

3:49:41SpeakerI mean, it's going to be really easy to troll patents in the future. It's going to be really easy for, it's going to be harder for people to show that they have a novel creation as they go along. But the real kicker is what's the value of any individual cultivar? Are you going to get a return from that before you just decided to start growing something else?

3:50:03SpeakerAnd in the real plant world and ag, there's so few selections that if you get a patent on a grape variety and you're one out of 30 grape varieties in the market, that patent is worth a lot. But if you're one out of 5,000 and you occupy 0.000321% of the market, the patent might not even pay for itself. And that's the hardest part is that when you make that initial submission, you've got one year to commercialize that patent before you pay those fees to prove that it was worth it.

3:50:43SpeakerAnd that's where most people seeking a patent think, look, I've got this novel thing. I can't commercialize it until I submit the application. And then as soon as they submit the application, the clock starts ticking. And then eight, nine months into it, because of just getting cycles into the market, they realize, dude, nobody wants to grow this thing. And Mojave, do you have plant breeders rights or patents or both?

3:51:09SpeakerBoth. But the reason we did it, we did it for one is because I do feel like these were novel creations. I have been working with one line for 30 years. So it was like kind of like... Man, you're pretty slow, man. You should have been a lot sooner than that, dude. No, I know, but I'm not a breeder. So it was plants that I held on to for years and years and then made selections and held on to for years and years and made selections.

3:51:37SpeakerBut the reason that we did it is both that I felt like the plant has a potential economic impact, it's novel, but also it was to do it, to show as an experiment for cannabis is just to go... To take a plant that you bred, that you feel is unique, to get protection, get it in an international market and have those plants sent to multiple countries around the world legally with full protection and enforcement through RAI, that it was just an exercise in trying to be an adult cannabis world.

3:52:15SpeakerAnd it has proved, I mean, it was worth it for sure, but it gets harder and harder to, you know, I mean, put it this way, if OG Kush and Skunk One and Durban Poison and Gorilla Glue and Chemdog and all those were patented, they're all billion dollar plants. But today, when it's just poly times poly times poly every year, just on a hamster wheel, it's pretty hard to, To find value in any one cultivar and say, like, I'm going to get these four cultivars patented and spend a hundred grand because I think that I'm going to be able to.

3:52:53SpeakerAnd the ones that you've proven are valuable, you've already lost the ability because they've been in the commercial market for more than a year.

3:52:59Collin PalmerAnd then you're also working on new stuff in between that. And like, that's the other thing, Tamara. It's like, he just said everything that I was trying to say, because it's like, I want to, but also for all the reasons he just explained, I just keep forging forward. And I'm like, it's more about making new things, more about searching for new things. And a lot of those things to, Mojave just said it, the magic word.

3:53:22Collin PalmerCan I utilize that in my process? And that's what I've always done. I've always looked for things that are novel for extraction. Like how can that benefit this particular method that I'm really interested in? Right.

3:53:36SpeakerBut again, don't take this the wrong way. This isn't a criticism of you. Yeah. It's only about the process. When you're always crossing all these things and you come up with a name, once you're describing the plant, you're actually not showing novelty, right? And so until you describe the plant and you identify the chemistry for which makes that individual unique, you can't even seek a path. Yeah, 100%.

3:54:03SpeakerYeah, so like that, again, I'm going to go back and harp on it again. It's so important to characterize these plants for the chemicals that you think make them special. Because the act of doing the registration process is when the patent examiner comes along and he looks at all the available chemical data for the species. He says, yeah, your claim that this is unique is wrong. Because all these other plants already have that chemical signature, right?

3:54:30SpeakerAnd that's what I was talking about last time when I was talking about different crosses yielding the same chemical signature in plants. They're actually part of the same cultivar group. So if you create a cross that has a plant that might be new to you, but it's the same as some other plant that's already registered, that's not an invention, right? There's no novelty there, so therefore it can't be patented or filed correctly.

3:54:55Dr Mark ScialdoneWell, it's obvious. It's obvious.

3:54:58SpeakerAnd the thing that I want, yeah, exactly. It's stated to be obvious.

3:55:02Collin PalmerWe do get everything tested, though, Chimera. Like, we get the extract tested, the flour tested. We look at all the chemical constituents of that. We send it in to, like, Max and Abstract and those guys.

3:55:11SpeakerOkay, but is it unique?

3:55:15Collin PalmerSometimes there's some unique things. Sometimes there's not. He's found a lot of unique things and things that we've sent in. But it's only through those testing, to your point, that you're going to reveal those things. So I agree.

3:55:27Dr Mark ScialdoneI just wanted to follow up. Secret formula of Coca-Cola, right? There's six ingredients in Coca-Cola. It's on every can of Coca-Cola, right? But it's not in a patent. It's a trade secret. I think what you're talking about here, the type of intellectual property... Doesn't need to be filed as a patent because you're going to waste a lot of money doing that. But what you do is you keep your IP locked up like the recipe for Coca-Cola as a trade secret.

3:55:56SpeakerBut there's a big difference. There's a big difference between Coca-Cola and plants, Mark, is that Coca-Cola keeps that recipe in their factory where the very nature of licensing genetics is you give away the trade secret every time. So everyone can just walk up and take a little snip and it's gone.

3:56:19Dr Mark ScialdoneYeah, I was just to interject for a second. Isn't that all the more reason to not do the heavy lift of a patent? Because a patent is only good, like I said, as it'll hold up in an enrichment case. Enforcement. And being able to enforce it. That's right. So you have to do those two things. So if the idea in plants is that you're going to make this new breed and then you're going to give it out and everybody and everybody is going to start making cuttings and clones and... Well, you don't...

3:56:55SpeakerSo it's very important when you're making that licensing contract to put all the stipulations of what the licensee is allowed to do with the plant. Sure, they're allowed to take cuttings, but to ensure that they aren't walking off with cuttings. And to be honest, good contracts... And you don't need a patent for a good contract to have that. But here's just the one thing I wanted to say, because I know we're about to sign off.

3:57:19SpeakerI don't know if I mentioned this before, but what I do with plants is I keep the cotyledons. I snip them off. I freeze them. Because it is the poor man's copyright that shows real custody seed. And not only that, it carries the DNA of the mom and the baby. Yeah. Yeah, but the problem is though, if I cross that plant to something else, sift through the offspring and find the new plant that has the identical chemical signature to yours, I just bypassed your patent or your protection.

3:57:52SpeakerI know, but in defense, you can use genomics in defense of a patent. It's an added, it's added to the... It doesn't, yeah, but if it's not registered, it I know, I know. We've had this conversation before. I don't think that that gives you the protection that you think it does because again... It doesn't. No, I'm not saying it gives you any... It doesn't give you protection.

3:58:19SpeakerIt doesn't give you protection as a patent, but what it does is it reinforces your patent because even the patent doesn't show custody. The patent just shows that you are the person who got the patent on a plant. So just like sour diesel, if someone could have, you know, the person who tried to get the trademark was also the person who was claiming to be the guy who, you know, so, so I'm saying like that.

3:58:40SpeakerSo you have a patented plant and that's defendable. And then if anyone calls you out on it, you're like, dude, I've got the little, I've got these little, little wings too.

3:58:49Dr Mark ScialdoneThat's why he's called Asshole Joe, right?

3:58:54Dr Mark ScialdoneDude, I like how you set up.

3:58:56SpeakerJust to bring it back around to what I was talking about before.

3:58:58BubblemanYou didn't even, he wasn't even. Go ahead, Ryan.

3:59:01SpeakerI just wanted to bring it back. But before when I, when you guys, when I broke up or you could hear me. All these seeds to back up the patent with an American repository and they wouldn't accept the seed. And so the seed went offshore and we put them in a repository in another country. And the patent system, the way the patent system has this thing called the Budapest Treaty, and essentially if any repository around the world has those seeds, the courts interpret that Thank you for joining us.

4:00:04SpeakerThe interpretation of that law has now changed. And so, you gotta remember these repositories and like even the law form that you were talking about, Mark, they operate in the United States, but they also have their own code of conduct. And it's the code of conduct that's kind of top down from the people that run the corporation. But they say, no, this is the way that we're going to be able to be in compliance with these state laws.

4:00:32SpeakerThose interpretations change. So although although patents have not been checked, cannabis plant patents have not been challenged through the court process yet. That doesn't mean that it's illegal because, again, the USPTO, which is the office that is processing these patents, is a federal organization. They're now accepting cannabis plant patents. So, you know, it's essentially de facto illegal.

4:01:01Collin PalmerYeah, I mean, we should talk about it more offline together, Tamera, so I can better understand. And I'll talk to my, you know, we'll figure it out. But it's like, you know, it's partly what Mojave said also. It's like, can we... Can we really get the value out of these things that we believe we can because of the nature of this plant and its ability to- The only way to really know is to have characterized the plant.

4:01:34SpeakerRight. Because when you've characterized the plant that you've got, you've got it broken down by the individual chemicals and you're saying, Hey, look, this plant is really high in a chemical that, that we've never seen in any other cannabis plants. And it gives a unique flavor profile. Yeah. Like Bobby said, like you can put it on the market for, you can put it on the market immediately, but you have to have filed your paperwork.

4:02:02SpeakerWithin one year of you putting it on the market.

4:02:05Collin PalmerYeah. Right.

4:02:05SpeakerSo as soon as, as soon as yourself, as soon as you sell the flower, you, the clock is ticking, right? It doesn't mean that you have to be profitable within a year. It just means that you have a one year period of commercialization before you can apply for which you can apply for the patent. And if you exceed that one year period, you're, you're, you essentially made that product publicly

4:02:32Dr Mark ScialdoneI think you might be mixing up something here, Ryan. So when you file a provisional patent, you have a year to add data to that provisional patent. So you could file a provisional patent today and you have on a year anniversary to add anything. In fact, that provisional patent is never examined and never viewed by anybody in the public. It's never published. It's just basically a placeholder for that date.

4:03:00Dr Mark ScialdoneAnd you then have a year from that date to basically determine whether or not you want to do what's called a national filing, which is where you actually put a document into the USPTO to be examined. So for that first year, yeah, you kind of get, you know, a year to basically figure out whether or not it's a commercially viable. Yeah.

4:03:27SpeakerIt's also true. It's also true that you have to have had no commercial sales before the patent is granted.

4:03:46Dr Mark ScialdoneYou could do commercial sales. You could do, wait a second, wait a second. You could do commercial sales the day after you file provisionally. If you do commercial sales before you file provisionally, that can be used as prior art. That's what I'm trying to say.

4:04:05SpeakerAnd remember, the other thing that I just wanted to say, These discussions become a little bit regional because, again, plant patents only apply to the United States. Outside of the United States, those documents are essentially toilet paper. And it's a different system. Like I said, we're talking about CBPO and plant breeders' rights systems. And those are regional, but they do share common legislation. They're backed up by common legislation.

4:04:38SpeakerAnd there is a slight difference between all of these things in PBRs versus not. So, you know, it becomes a little bit semantic, whether it's like, you know, which system we're talking But just for anybody out there who's thinking about it, I guess the lesson that I'm trying to give here is that if you want to file a provisional patent, which is very cheap and very easy, you can actually technically they can be submitted on a cocktail napkin.

4:05:05SpeakerYou know, literally, it can be all kinds. It's not a formal thing like people think it is with all that you file that. But the day before you file that, make sure you've got someone out. You've got the ability to prove that the next day. Because what people do is they usually sit for a while because they wait to do it. So it's like you should have made all your agreements with all your commercial growers and do all the products and all the downstream stuff way ahead of time so that as soon as you hit the road running, then you can prove it.

4:05:34SpeakerAnd then six months later, you might actually have data to say this shit's worth it. Or like most people, pull out and don't waste your money. Right. Well, you know, for a plant patent, for a plant patent. On that note.

4:05:52BubblemanThank you so much for joining us.

4:06:11BubblemanAnd of course, I want to thank all of you guys for coming in and watching on the YouTube chat right now. There's 250 people still in there after four hours. Thanks for jumping in last minute, Mojave and Chimera. Always appreciate you guys. Dr. Scaldone, Colin, and Etienne. Thank you so, so, so, so much. Skunk Man, Sam. We want to bring in a good group

4:07:02BubblemanI invited a couple of different people and we kind of got some ideas in mind for that. So hopefully we'll have that show maybe next week. And may the full melt bless your bowl sooner than later, as they say every week. Thanks everyone for coming out and we'll see you next Sunday. Peace out, everybody.

4:07:23Dr Mark ScialdoneYes, we can.