Endocannabinoid Science and Federal Reform

0:01SpeakerLove you.

0:13BubblemanOkay.

0:15Etienne FontanLet's see what we got going on here.

0:17BubblemanOh, it looks like we're live. Well, that happened quickly. That happened very quickly. Welcome, everyone, to Hash Church, Season 11, Episode 51. Jeez, we're almost at the end of the world. Hopefully, everyone's having a good Christmas and, you know, all of that. Jazz, happy holidays. I don't even know what you can and can't say anymore, but, jeez, I've never really followed along with that either, have I?

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1:37BubblemanAnd I am working right now to create a situation where the Press Club is our official bags of the Bubble Man brand down in the US. So we are working on that with those guys. Hopefully that will come through sooner than later. Next up.

1:55Etienne FontanIf I can get this to work.

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3:46BubblemanI think our hemp hoodlum jackets are actually on for 60% off. So that is pretty awesome. And just thank you, everyone else. You know, I thank the sponsors all the time, but thanks Bingo Lombardi for holding it down every Sunday like clockwork. Thanks to all of you that show up. And for whatever reason, want to listen to us speaking. I appreciate you all in the biggest and the most incredible ways.

4:15BubblemanWell, Chip, Chip's in the house. Look at that. No, no. That is what I call on time, Chip. I appreciate your on time. Let me make sure I got good volume here. How are you doing today, Chip? Good, Marcus. How are you today? I'm doing very well. I'm doing very well.

4:34SpeakerDo you prefer Bubble Man or Marcus?

4:36BubblemanYou know what? I would accept both of them. Marcus is the name my parents gave me at birth, and Bubble Man is the silly moniker I chose for myself in 1999, not really realizing, excuse me, that it would last for 27 or 28 years, you know? People meet me all the time and they're like, oh, I thought you'd be a little more bubbly, more heavy.

5:00SpeakerLike, no, no, I'm skinny. Yeah, my name back in the day was real high science guys. I like that. I like that.

5:12BubblemanWell, why don't you give our audience a little introduction to who is Chip and what Chip's been up to? I know that you were invited in via our good friend Farmer Tom, who's going to be making an appearance here later today, but I'd love to hear an introduction for the room from you.

5:29SpeakerYeah, sure. So I kind of do two different things. So as let's say a business, I'm an endocannabinoid researcher. So I research the endocannabinoid system and the endocannabinoid system is the system that marijuana affects. So it's very relevant, let's say, to cannabis and cannabis discussions. But then when I kind of relax, I put on an activist hat and in my activist hat, my wife and I are the activists really responsible for, you know, turning Oklahoma green.

6:03SpeakerSo the reddest of the red states. And that was Extraordinarily hard to do, which we're happy to talk about. But then from there, I became really good friends in a weird way with a guy named Roger Stone. And Roger really is Trump's number one guy on cannabis policy. And so I've been involved, like I helped write some position papers for Trump on adult use cannabis, you know, when that was voted on in Florida last year.

6:31SpeakerI wrote several op-eds for Roger about de-scheduling and rescheduling, but happy to talk to you guys about that whole process and journey and where the administration is on that thinking, because I know that's been a big hot topic lately. I'm both an activist and I'm an endocannabinoid researcher. And, you know, I just pulled together, let's say, the world leading scientists in endocannabinoid sciences, along with fat scientists, lipid scientists, and metabolic scientists.

7:08SpeakerAnd we wrote a statement to the world on really a public health crisis that's happening right now that has to do with omega-3, omega-6 fats. But those are what naturally feed our endocannabinoid system. So there you go. Yeah, they are essential for a reason. Exactly. And they are essential in balance. And that's a very important caveat to read a one. Yes, yes, three to one to one to one.

7:35SpeakerYes, sir. Good for you.

7:37BubblemanYou know, I've been a bit of an activist myself for the last 30 years, but today I'm mostly going to listen. Last time I got very passionate and excited about, you know, this sort of de-scheduling thing, not because I think it's the be all end all, not because I really know much about it at all, but just because I have noticed the cannabis community growing Thank you so much for joining us.

8:26BubblemanThank you so much for joining us.

8:50BubblemanYou know what you think this is bringing forward because a lot of the cannabis activists, and when I say a lot of them, I mean most of the cannabis people that I know in the industry seem to be quite upset about this schedule. I mean, you know, obviously it's like, hey, it's de-schedule or bust. Mark has a lot of good perspective on that. But today I thought I'd open it up to the floor and maybe yourself, Chip, in regards to What you sort of think of this, whatever it is.

9:22BubblemanI called it de-scheduling and then someone says, no, it's not de-scheduling. All he's doing is suggesting something. So I acknowledge that I know very little, but I'd love to hear your perspective, Chip.

9:32SpeakerYeah, so let's just kind of walk through some history, first of all, and let's back up to the 50,000 foot level. So, you know, we've all been promised action on marijuana, on cannabis, on medical marijuana, on recreational marijuana. Thank you for joining us.

10:04SpeakerBut, you know, kind of fast forward to, let's say, a year ago, I got a really interesting. So I have a relationship. You know, he's a friend of mine, Roger Stone. He takes our products. Our products have helped him through his PTSD. And, you know, we've helped in some other ways, let's just say in his life. So I have a good, you know, personal relationship with him.

10:25SpeakerBut anyway, about, you know, a year and a half ago, he calls me and he says, listen, I think Trump is good. And Trump is not a marijuana guy. He doesn't care about it. He doesn't drink alcohol. He doesn't smoke marijuana. You know, he's got people in his face all the time about marijuana, just living in Florida. And you know who those people are. But he's got lots of people in his face all the time.

10:48SpeakerSo he knows it's a big issue. But anyway, so Roger calls, he says, hey, listen, it looks like Trump is going to be a yes on adult use, FL number three in Florida. I'm like, you've got to be kidding me. He goes, no, really? So we got all excited about it. And, you know, I asked him, do you want me to write some position papers? And so, you know, it turns out Trump kind of, and I don't know if Trump even knows who the hell I am, but it turns out He positioned himself pretty well right where we suggested.

11:16SpeakerSo after Trump got elected, Roger calls and he says, can you put together a group that will look at building an executive order on de-scheduling? Okay. So, and that's, you know, what we all want, right? Free the plant, free the weed, all that. But can you put together a group on de-scheduling? And I'm like, yeah, absolutely. So I put together a group and we wrote an executive order, a de-scheduling executive order.

11:44SpeakerIt was pretty damn good. We gave that to him. He gets ready to hand walk that to Trump. He has his meeting all set up, and this is last summer, has his meeting all set up with Trump. And so he has this conversation with Susie Wiles. You always have to have a conversation with Susie before you walk into Trump's office. And so he has this conversation. Susie says, if you're going to talk about cannabis and marijuana, do not bring up de-scheduling.

12:10SpeakerHe does not want to go that far yet. He wants to talk about rescheduling. So let's talk about that. So Rogers like, oh, crap. Okay. so we kind of rethink everything we give him some talking points so he goes in there you know with a pretty good rescheduling plan but that plan is not to stop at rescheduling and really if you look at logically what's the right scientific thing to do here the only controversial thing in cannabis is thc And the only really safety issue with cannabis is THC.

12:47SpeakerHave we studied that? Yeah, again, we could talk about 12,000 years of anecdotal data and blah, blah, blah, blah. But no, we have not studied that in the way it needs to be studied. Why? Because it's federally illegal. We haven't had NIH money and NSF money and all that to study it. So... The plan is reschedule, study THC as THC is either proved to be safe, as we hope and think it will be, or some weird caveats with it.

13:16SpeakerLike, you know, again, we're seeing cannabis hypermesis, we're seeing cannabis use disorder. So is that true or not? Let's figure that out. But build that safety profile around THC and then deschedule it.

13:30SpeakerSo that's the plan right now. And, you know, again, is that the best plan? You know, a lot of us would have just preferred that he descheduled it. But is that really the best thing to do public safety wise, you know, without that data? So again, you can make an argument both ways, but that's the history. That's kind of how it happened. We all thought it had happened like two months ago, which is really interesting.

13:57SpeakerAnd there's a lot of people that have helped with this. You guys are probably all in groups that have helped and contributed to this happening. But again, we've got action on marijuana at the federal level. That's a huge thing. Both of those two actions, so Farm Bill 2018 and this, again, have come from the Trump administration. So, and I'll shut up now.

14:22BubblemanMark, you must have some things to say about this.

14:25SpeakerCan you guys hear me?

14:27BubblemanYou're very low.

14:28SpeakerCan you hear me?

14:29BubblemanI can hear you. You got some laryngitis going on there?

14:33SpeakerHold on a second. How about now? I want to hear you more. Yeah, we want to hear you more, bro. Is that better?

14:44BubblemanHow does that sound? Oh, that was amazing for half a second.

14:48SpeakerFor half a second?

14:49BubblemanYeah, you like hit something and it sounded like it clicked in better.

14:53SpeakerI just disconnected my microphone and reconnected it. Is that not good? Hold on a second. How about now? Is that better?

15:01BubblemanQuiet. Dr. Mark's 50% volume now 75. That's not better. Oh, there it is. There it is. There it is.

15:09SpeakerThat's without the mic. Okay. Yeah, I mean, I don't know. A half full, half empty kind of view of what's going on. I mean, I'll start with the half full. I mean, I think for a lot of doctors who... Have incorporated cannabis into their practices. I think this is a good thing because obviously it's, you know, the first time the government is now, you know, professing that there's actually medical use, accepted medical use, right?

15:48SpeakerThat's the language that they use, right? There has to be accepted medical use. So that's important. I think moving it to Schedule 3, also, you know, obviously taking away 280E is really big for the existing cannabis businesses. So again, that's a half full, you know, view of what's going on. Just going back to patients and people's access, I mean, whenever, you know, you're increasing access to patients, I think it's a good thing, you know, and I think it's, you know, more doctors are going to say, okay, now there's accepted medical use, so there'll be more doctors that are willing to prescribe it.

16:39SpeakerWell, I think the half empty has to be, you know, is this big pharma's, you know, play, being that they're the Schedule 3 dispensers of Schedule 3 products today. I mean, there are no Schedule 3 plants, I think, in a way. I've said this before. I think I said this last week, right? Moving a plant that people can grow themselves to Schedule 3, requiring a doctor's prescription to get, you know, You know, product, uh, mids grown by an MSO at a dispense or at a, at a Walgreens.

17:15SpeakerI, I don't think it's going to be successful. I, I see the trap market winning. When I say the trap market, the legacy market, you know, the market that's always existed around this plant. Uh, in fact, I think I see that getting bigger. Under Schedule 3, right? And I guess, again, going back to the hemp thing, you know, I've said it before here. I think in no way, shape, or form did the 28 Farm Bill even contemplate cannabinoid production.

17:56SpeakerBecause of the FD&C Act prohibiting the use of an FDA-approved active ingredient of an FDA-approved drug into food, feed, or cosmetic. So I think that the 2018 Farm Bill was all about rope and fiber and oil and protein. Marcus, like we've talked about, the Canadian definition of hemp. I don't think they were... Considering type 3 cannabis, I think type 3 cannabis was kind of like the ace of the hemp industry's sleeve that then became, oh no, this is hemp.

18:37SpeakerHemp is just low THC. And then there was the whole THCA thing. Thank you for watching.

19:01SpeakerForever, this is what we've breeded for, which is high THC content, more type 1 than type 2 or type 3. But the last thing I'll say, and then I'll shut up, is that, you know, I think it's important. Thank you for watching.

19:37SpeakerCould be the ultimate home run and maybe that's the so-called October surprise maybe to swing things for the midterm elections. Who knows the way politics works these days and you know is I'm you know known as not a supporter of the Current president for many other reasons other than this position. But yeah, I do think that this was a significant move. You know, I'll remind everyone it was started by the Biden administration and there was always all that foot dragging by the DEA who was having just these meaningless hearings.

20:17SpeakerTo talk about, you know, really rulemaking that ultimately should have come from Congress and not from executive order. That's the real question. I mean, I think that this, this kicks the can down the road, ultimately how this is enforced. And I think that that language in section one of the executive order, where they direct the attorney general to, uh, Thank you so much for joining us.

21:14SpeakerWould the conflicting now language of the federal thing put those businesses in question or out of business? And who would be the regulating authority to do that? I don't think they want to do that. I really don't think that, you know, unlike, you know, Mojave said it really good. Unlike previous cannabis provisions, this one isn't trying to snuff out This one would be trying to snuff out a $30 billion business and a lot of those even in the headwinds of 280E are paying taxes and are employing people and are the livelihoods of several small towns who again were relying on the promise of the cannabis industry to create jobs and Revenue and income.

22:06SpeakerSo, yeah, again, I think there's a half full, half empty here. I don't know if I'm, if I was describing it well.

22:12BubblemanI think you put it very well, Dr. Mark. Actually, I think you put it very well. The only solace I can give you guys down there, because I see a lot of people just like, it's schedule three now, everything's going to go to shit. It's like, right, but schedule one was much worse and everything didn't go to shit, so. Under Schedule 1, it was available at gas stations, it was available everywhere, thousands of places across the US, and now magically they're going to make it Schedule 3 and they're just going to put it back into Pandora's box.

22:40BubblemanI don't believe that's possible. Personally, I'm getting a... Oh, there it is. It's Dr. Mark's mic. So the only thing I will say in Canada is that we had a push. It was Shoppers Drug Mart, which is owned by Loblaws, a $55 billion monster American company. They own our, this pharmacy has 1200 pharmacies across Canada. They put tens of millions of dollars into cannabis when When medical was a thing and we had not done recreational yet, this was pre-2017, and they were putting all this money in and they were like, listen, we are the people that sell drugs.

23:16BubblemanAnd if you're going to be selling this as a drug, then we're the ones that want to sell it. This is what we do for every drug in Canada. And Canadians were like, okay, whatever. And they made this big push and they really spent a lot of time and energy and money. And then Canada, the weird thing about cannabis is it's not just medical. It's also a recreational drug, which is super fucking unique.

23:40BubblemanThere's just nothing else kind of like it. Now, with recreational, what happened in Canada... Was everyone realized recreational is much easier and all the people that use the patients as their shield, which is no different, which is what happened down in the US. Everyone used the patients as their shield to get permission and licensing and all this stuff. And the minute recreational became a possibility, the minute the farm bill became a possibility, they turned their backs on those patients faster than you could.

24:12BubblemanLike it was just an instant. It happened here in Canada. One day a company had 17 different tinctures that you could buy and the next day they got bought by a big company and now it was all wreck and they didn't care about those tinctures. And the medical patients, my mother being one of them, was like, whoa, like I can't get my oil anymore. They just don't make it.

24:30BubblemanThey don't care to make it. It's like, yeah, because patients are super hard to deal with and recreational patients are super fucking easy to deal with. And so here in Canada, when I see people in chat going, a farmer's going to own it, they're going to start raiding people, they're... This is not what happened in Canada. We got permission through recreational to grow our four plants. Anyone that's above 19 or 21, depending on which province you're in, we can grow those plants.

24:54BubblemanWe do not have to buy it with a, we don't have to get a prescription to buy cannabis. If you want to get a medical license, you can certainly go to a doctor and get one very easily and start buying through the medical platforms. But those medical platforms do a fraction of the business of the recreational stores and the recreational stores So there's literally like more recreational cannabis stores in Canada right now than there are pharmacies.

25:24BubblemanSo pharma shit the bed in Canada. They don't run it. They're not doing raids here in Canada. We have open banking. And so I have that optimistic perspective of maybe that could happen in Canada. Thank you so much for joining us.

26:06BubblemanI just have a hard time not seeing this kind of as like somewhat of a win. Go ahead, Colin, you had your hand up.

26:13Collin PalmerI think you're just highlighting the broken system, right? And you're just highlighting, I think, all the ways that it is broken and how easily it is dismantled, you know, and the moment you have another option, it's like, boom, gone. Your mom has no access, right? And that, I think, to your point, Everyone should take heed and understand what that looks like, you know, because we've already seen history.

26:36Collin PalmerWe know what's coming because we've already seen it happen. We do have examples. Now, is it going to be one for one? No, but it's going to be pretty close. You know, because let's be honest, like humans are not that daring, you know, and they're not going to create this new system that's, you know, different than what we've seen before. So, you know, I truly believe everything that Marcus just said is real.

27:02Collin PalmerThe systems don't work. So therefore, the moment you have an option, it gets dismantled. You know, like, it's just, there's too much red tape to get to that tincture, you know, as the example. How much taxes are going to be ensued before you even get access to the thing? And then how much does it cost? You know, and when you remove that... You have patient access, right?

27:25Collin PalmerAnd I think that the heart of things, that's really where we can hang our hat on is if we push a narrative, the narrative should be patient access and remove the tape so we can then build policy around the business, not the other way around. Because what I see us do a lot to ourselves is we all agree on these three sort of things. It's all usually around...

27:49Collin PalmerThe rules and regs. But you forget that those influence the business that allow us to do the things that we do. And no one wants to talk about that. Like when you're overtaxed, you lose, right? That affects your business because then the patient has to take up the slack on that. I mean, we all know what needs to happen, right? So I think it's more of the conversation.

28:10Collin PalmerAnd I'd love to hear ATN's thought on this because he's so on the belly of it all. No one talks about how these things that we want, age gate, yes, we can agree on that. Testing, we can agree on that. Patient access in retail stores, we can agree on that. But how we get there, we haven't agreed on in terms of patient access, meaning the cost of it.

28:37Collin PalmerSo I think that's the biggest thing that I see being missed right now. It's like, we're all talking about rules and regs, How much is this going to cost for the consumer to say that you can have this thing that says cannabis?

28:50BubblemanWell, that's why everyone just went and bought it off the rec market in Canada. That's why the medical system just sort of collapsed in Canada because No one really wanted that. They just wanted cannabis to be able to be legal, to be sold. You know, it was like it's it doesn't stop at patients. The minute people are like, OK, now we have medical, then it's like, well, now we need recreational.

29:12BubblemanAnd the minute recreational happens, It just completely undermines the medical. At least that's what happened in Canada. We saw it play out as clear as a bell. It happened in Canada. The compassion clubs folded and closed. You know, the medical access Is a bit of a pain in the ass. And it's super easy to walk into a store and just buy what you want. And for the most part, like I can walk into a store here in British Columbia and get something that I would be pretty happy with, which is insane for me to say.

29:47BubblemanMaybe a little bit more than I wanted to pay, but still the quality is there.

29:52Collin PalmerDr. Mark, and maybe everyone, do you believe a patient should be like, oh, I got to pay my $150 a year to a doctor that really doesn't know anything about cannabinoids? Does that sound right to you? It feels a little weird to be like, hey, stranger, you have the keys to this thing I want. Here's $150, brother. Yeah.

30:11SpeakerHaving set up a system, so I literally kind of wrote the law in Oklahoma, wrote the underpinning system. So we did some interesting and unique things here in Oklahoma. So we have no rules on patient access. So again, there are no medical conditions here in Oklahoma. We allowed very inexpensive and unlimited commercial licenses when we first rolled out. And again, that was to build a commercial market.

30:40SpeakerThat was a little short-sighted, I would say, in retrospect. But then we also allowed home grow. So we really rolled out a very powerful situation. But at the same time, looking back, should we have, you know, and I even made the card good for two years instead of one year, but should we have charged anything for a card? No, probably not. You know, and if you look at this industry, it's just so annoying to watch.

31:08SpeakerWe got Everything that we wanted when we passed the law in Oklahoma. I mean, I gave under this law, we gave granted huge freedoms and liberties. And what has happened? The, you know, our legislature and our regulatory have just eroded. Blah, blah, blah. Every one of those freedoms and liberties that we won. And I mean, cannabis is the most overregulated industry on the planet, maybe except oil and gas.

31:38SpeakerAnd that's insane. It's an agricultural issue. You know, it's a it's a simple thing, let's say, to ensure consumer safety. So to Colin's point, we need to The whole thing needs to be burned down and started over. But I don't know if that starts at the federal level. Does that start at the federal level is some kind of that's what we were when I was when we were put together this group to write a de scheduling order, executive order.

32:06SpeakerThat's one of the things that we knew needed to happen is like we needed a state regulatory example. That was something that was not what any of us are operating under now. But you know, this has not been done right. And it's, you know, the errors have been compounded one on top of the other as we built this whole system.

32:26BubblemanWe can agree that it's better than everyone just getting imprisoned and dog shot and kids taken away. Like we can all agree on that. We're past that. Now we're into a new level of Thank you for joining us.

33:01BubblemanThank you so much for being here.

33:15BubblemanIs they had a hard time taking their wins. And I just, I just, you know, even if this is just a little win, we should at least, you know, celebrate it for patients or celebrate it for the people who are maybe not going to get bankrupted by 280E. I don't pretend to understand enough about it. It's very, people are very, very sensitive about this. And mostly what I see people saying is that they don't want this.

33:37BubblemanIt's not good. And I'm just like, isn't schedule one like the worst? Isn't getting it off schedule one just better than anything else? Or am I wrong?

33:44SpeakerI liked your analogy though. If you, just real quick, if you're a hemp business out there, you know, like, so if you're, you know, Brett Worley with MC Nutraceuticals or whatever, you know, it, you have the best thing in the world happen, right? You had Farm Bill 2018 and, you know, to whoever's point that was making it, again, that was unintentional. I know those guys, they didn't, you know, decide, hey, I think we'll open up the whole market to analytes and Delta-8 and THCO acetate and all that.

34:12SpeakerI don't think that was their intent. At all. And that's what pissed off Mitch McConnell. And that's why we have the rebound stuff that just happened in this latest spending bill, right? We're all non intoxicating hemp got shut down. But you know what that and you know, is that bad? If you're in the hemp industry? Is that bad? Yes. I mean, potentially, you just had your whole livelihood taken away.

34:36SpeakerSo we need to kind of be let's say sensitive to that. And if you're a We're patient. Let's say in Texas, you had access taken away by this, right? So that's not good. But at the same time, it really creates an opportunity to rehab these conversations at the federal level because Congress should debate this. Congress should absolutely in public in the light of day debate this with some of us right there helping them.

35:03SpeakerIt should, you know, we have not got this right. Anybody who thinks that we've got this right is wrong. But to your point, Bubble Man, Marcus, we need to take the win, man. This is, you know, two major things have happened, let's say, through the federal legislation in the last 10 years, Farm Bill 2018, and this, it's huge, huge. You know, take the win. Let's take the win.

35:27SpeakerTo your point.

35:28Collin PalmerYeah. And, you know, Marcus, you said it last week about MJ Biz. It's like being on tour with Fish and being like, man, that yam last night was just not good enough. I saw 500 shows and it just it wasn't in the top 10. You know, because I'm so used to seeing and hearing that composition. Right. But in the subject of cannabis, it's very similar. It's really easy to overshadow the importance of what just happened because you have, you know, a narrative.

35:58Collin PalmerRight. And everyone's got one. But the reality of it is, you know, Chip, you said it like we need to get in the room with these lawmakers. We all need to sit down with them, have mature conversations that are healthy and Steeped in fact and help dismantle the false claims that are out there and build a world that, you know, can support the ideas that I know all of us here on this call have for whatever, you know, segment that you're focusing on in cannabis because, you know, from research to rec to innovation, I mean, it all needs to kind of Thank you so much for joining us.

37:01SpeakerI recently tried to do something, and I'm sorry, I'll shut up here in a second. I have a lot of information here. So I recently tried to do something, and again, I study the endocannabinoid system, humbly said on the theory of the system, I'm pretty far up there, but We all need to eat, let's say, omega-3 and omega-6 fats in balance. Why? Because they are the master precursors for the endocannabinoid system.

37:27SpeakerCannabis is a nice supplement, but this is the way your dog does it, your bird does it, your fish does it, right? Well, right now, and hardly anybody knows this, but first of all, nobody knows what our essential nutrients are. Name me your essential We all need to know that. But we also need to understand that right now in our food supply, our omega-6 over omega-3 consumption is a public freaking health crisis, okay?

37:54SpeakerEvery single cell in your body is reflective of this intake. And we are creating, we've never been configured like this in human history. So anyway, I got, because I have a position in endocannabinoid sciences, I got literally the world expert on dietary fats to submit to HHS this public health crisis. We need to do something paper. And she's super weighty. There's no one else better in the world to submit something to.

38:21SpeakerShe's very, Dr. Artemis Simopoulos is her name. But anyway, we submit this paper right when Trump came into office. Nothing. We got crickets. So and then I've turned around now and you guys know who Vincenzo DiMaggio is, I'm sure. And so I've gotten all in Pomelli. And so I've gotten all the world experts and world experts now to come out with a statement on this. But all that to say, But we have to realize HHS is captured.

38:51SpeakerIt's captured by big food and big pharma. And I'm sorry, that's just the case. So we have to figure out a way to break down those walls. We have to figure out a way to whoop. To reset that. And again, cannabis might be a way to do that. Big food might be a way to do that. Public health crisis might be a way to do that. But we've got to reset HHS because HHS is, you know, who's going to write regulations for De-schedule cannabis policy when that ultimately happens.

39:21SpeakerWell, that's likely going to be HHS. And if that's a captured agency, we're going to get a lot of cannabis use disorder and cannabis hyperemesis and a bunch of addiction and, you know, a bunch of Canra type people out there, right? Sorry, Canra. I didn't mean to be... Diss on you.

39:41BubblemanScrommeting. Don't forget about scrommeting.

39:43SpeakerThat's the one I see all the time. How much were they getting paid for every scrommet? Was it like a 7k post? I don't know.

39:50BubblemanI just see it everywhere now. And I'm like, I'm looking at it going, that looks a lot like my friends growing up drinking alcohol, like on all fours, just throwing up. Like I never saw anyone in my group Puking from like, I mean, one time from taking too much L at one time, you know, like 50 hits or whatever, he puked right away. But otherwise, it was always alcohol doing that.

40:12BubblemanBut yeah, now we have a whole narrative that the problem with this day and age is the narrative, right? And who is the better storyteller and who has the louder voice and who has the more points, right? That they can get their narrative out to. That's kind of why I like Hash Church. It's why I like getting together with you guys and talking it out. And, you know, really, once again, I'll acknowledge that I really don't have a super intense knowledge on what is going to happen down in the U.S., but...

40:44BubblemanI don't think a lot of people do. I think it's a lot of assumption and that assumption is connected to the narrative that they've told themselves. And so, I mean, there's people that are literally like, they're going to start kicking our doors in. They're going to start arresting us. I'm like, whoa, that seems like a super backwards maneuver. I really hope that doesn't happen. That would be terrible.

41:06SpeakerAnd to your point, again, you know, Mitch McConnell pulls this stuff, right? And a lot of you guys were paying attention. I got a call from a Missouri lobbyist who's like, do you know what Mitch McConnell's trying to do in this spending bill? I'm like, no, what? He goes, trying to, you know, get rid of all intoxicating hemp. I'm like, well, that's interesting. Pick up the phone and call.

41:27SpeakerAnd this is, again, you know, not to pick up my, we'll say, call my friend in the administration who's way up in the administration and, you know, kind of Trump's right-hand guy. He goes, what? He didn't even know. OK, they didn't know. They didn't know that McConnell was pulling this stuff. They didn't know he was trying to pull the dirty in the spending bill. And they it was after the fact and they tried to recover in the House, but they didn't.

41:50SpeakerYou know, it's too late. So we think that everybody's got a really good handle on this. It's hopefully you have good spirituality and good spiritual thinking because I would go there over, you know, some bright and shining champion in the administration. And, you know, Roger, Roger Stone is our guy in the administration. So Roger Stone is 1000% the guy that has gotten Trump where he is and has gotten Trump to where he is and has kind of got this to where it is right now.

42:22SpeakerSo it's, you know, thank Roger for this really. So partially.

42:28Collin PalmerChip, do you think the siloing, because when I hear like, hey, that person didn't know before you knew, that sounds like major siloing in ways that is iconic, kind of like iconic siloing, you know, because you're not sharing... You know, and the responsibility that we all ultimately are going to have, right? When a move like that happens, right? It's much bigger than all of us kind of thing.

42:57Collin PalmerSo it feels, you know, perhaps, you know, if you can, someone like yourself, Chip, if you have connections like that, it seems like we need to form, you know, maybe ATN is the right person to talk to about this, to form a coalition to go and sit down with these people and have a bipartisan conversation because, you know, You know, it seems like we need that kind of maturity in the room for this to go the right way.

43:22Collin PalmerIt just because I don't like Marcus, like I have no idea what this truly means. Like I know I have ideas, but like it doesn't really make any sense to me if I'm honest about it. Like it's like, OK, yeah, that could happen if this happens. But these are all if and then equations, you know, they're not. Yeah.

43:39SpeakerThe certainty though, the certainty is now we can, now we can research it, right? So now you don't have to go through Dr. Solieri's group at, you know, Ole Miss and through all the, you know, bullshit hoops and ladders and, you know, shoots and everything that you had to do to research it before. So if I'm a, Joe Blow, PhD at University of wherever. I can now write a grant to study marijuana.

44:04SpeakerAnd that is huge, number one. So that helps things along. 280E will absolutely help things. But if I'm a pharma company, can I go start making marijuana products? No, there's no APIs. It's just a mess to try to do that. But here's the big thing. Two major things happen. So you had... In the announcement, and this is just narrative and positioning and kind of, you know, what happens in people's minds.

44:33SpeakerBut you had, you know, you had RFK Jr. there, you had Dr. Oz there, you had Dr. What's-His-Nut, and Dr. What's-His-Nut, and Dr. What's-His-Nut, and they're all coming out and saying, yeah, it's time, medical study. So that just creates a legitimacy that, you know, we've been arguing against forever, right? We've had all these same people, you know, really arguing against us forever. Now they've turned around. So you can't really argue with the people in the room, right?

44:57SpeakerThose people in the room said it was medically viable. It needs to be changed and all that. The second really important thing that happened was we will allow CBDs in Medicare.

45:13Collin PalmerSo again, but Chip, like how did you say you said it before? There's no mechanism to get it behind the counter. Like I, for instance, like I have topicals in in across Three different states in pharmacies, right? And pharmacists love it. They talk to them all the time. Hey, this is some of the best thing. My patients love it. But I don't know how to get that into circulation for that to happen.

45:36Collin PalmerAnd then my other question is, I donated, and Marcus, you were sorted by part of this. I donated half a million dollars to Lambert School of Cannabinoid Research.

45:47SpeakerOh, wow.

45:48Collin PalmerAnd that was out of, that was Thomas Jefferson University. And Marcus was a part of it.

45:53BubblemanHow could you get half a million dollars?

45:56Collin PalmerWe were, remember we were doing the cap raise for Pennsylvania. So I used some of that when we were, when we did it. And I was like, yeah, I'm going to put my money where my mouth is. I want to further research. I don't want to play around. I want to actually, boom, here's your money. And that's actually where I met Steve D'Angelo for the first time was through that, that, uh, That team.

46:17Collin PalmerAnd we did a bunch of really cool work together, but it went nowhere. Like it just didn't go anywhere. And I look back on that and I just, I remember walking with Steve at the time way back when I was like, man, I'm really concerned that we don't have the right people driving this forward. I know in my head where we think we should go, but I'm not important enough yet in this room because they don't know me enough.

46:43Collin PalmerTo bring these ideas to the table in the way that I think I should. So what does this mean for someone like TJU? And could that an entity like that actually get the work done that needs to be done now? Is that is that what I'm hearing from? Does that make sense?

47:00SpeakerYes, absolutely. Yes, yes, yes. I'm sorry to get excited about this, but yes, absolutely. So again, now, you know, what could they do before go through University of Mississippi's, you know, or somebody else who's got a license, right? Their program. Well, now and again, this still needs to be written out in regulation and it still needs to be drilled into a little bit. But the anticipation is that now, you know, the federal government is going to be opening up big grant pools right for study here, big grant pools under NIH and NSF.

47:31SpeakerAnd if you're a university, you already know how to, you know, apply for those grant pools. So you're going to have people applying for those grant pools. The other thing that's really important in what you said, so you could have had, you know, Vincenze DiMaggio, Ethan Russo, Pameli, you know, all the people that we know are kind of experts in endocannabinoid sciences. You could have had all those guys walk into HHS with this giant, you know, folder of information, of wonderfulness and everything, say, you know, here we go, guys.

48:00SpeakerAnd then tell the people that we saw in that executive order signing group, So now we have open mind. Again, now we have a stake in the ground. So if somebody comes back and says, hey, HHS won't consider my

48:22SpeakerSo, you know, you guys were in the room. You guys were in the room. You can't take this away from us now. We've got a stake in the ground. So I think that was almost more important than anything. And then back to the on the Medicare. So same question that I had. So they will have to build

48:45SpeakerSo it's not going to be like, hey, I've got this really cool CBD brand. I'm going to be the, you know, Medicare, Medicaid brand now. It's not going to work that way. It's you got to come to them really with a plan. You know, how are you going to data drive your results? How are you going to measure them? How are you going to monitor them? You know, why are you different than anybody else?

49:03SpeakerYou know, are you coming with a system? Are you coming with a product? You know, so all that kind of has to, I would say, be collated through CMS and Oz and all that. And then they'll figure out some kind of a box, you know, to put us in and then we'll be able to operate in that box. That's how I think it's going to go. And that's kind of how it should go, honestly, logically.

49:23Collin PalmerDo you think there's a license type that will be released? Like, you know, that crossed my mind was like, you know, the state systems are such a lockhold. There's no way that's going to be touched, right? So is there just a new like, hey, you now can buy or get and obtain these new license types and As a result, you can do X, Y, and Z.

49:43SpeakerThey've already kind of said that, again, sadly, and to your point, we need to redo all this, but the way that it is right now, so we've already defaulted to ag, right? So farm bill for hemp and for CBDs, we've already defaulted to state. Thank you for joining us.

50:13SpeakerAgain, the FDA, and again, if you work for the FDA, I'm sorry, this is just truth, but the FDA is, you know, it's captured. The leadership is good. So our leadership right now in these agencies is good, but I'm sure you guys have heard the same thing I have. The CIA is circulating subversion manuals all through the HHS. It's captured by Big Food and Big Pharma. Again, why isn't HHS just teaching us what our essential nutrients are?

50:48SpeakerThat would get rid of most disease just right there. It's just that agency is captured. It serves institutions. It serves Big Food and Big Pharma right now. Until we uncapture it, it's not going to serve us. And I think that's in the process of happening. And again, this is a waypoint, isn't it? You can't uncapture HHS without some kind of cannabis policy and federal change here.

51:18SpeakerYeah, sorry, I get a little ranty on that one.

51:20Collin PalmerNo, Chip, it's really cool information. I mean, I'd love to hear Dr. Mark's thoughts, because I know you've been in kind of the belly of this whole thing with grants, and you're a professor, so it affects you in different ways.

51:36SpeakerCan you guys hear me? Yeah. You're very quiet again, Mark. I'm very quiet? Oh my gosh.

51:43Collin PalmerSorry, buddy. We do want to hear from you. Everybody turn their volume up.

51:47BubblemanI'll just say I have faith in cannabis. You know, people don't have faith in cannabis. You know?

51:53SpeakerHow about now? Is that better? Yes, a little bit better. Sort of sounds like you're in a ball. I got a little dials on this thing.

52:02BubblemanOh, nice.

52:03SpeakerUm, yeah, I mean, again, like a lot of half full, half empty. I mean, and you know, you can't help. I mean, I understand what you're saying, Chip. And I, you know, again, all truth on the table. I mean, you have a Thanks for watching.

52:53SpeakerJust thinking about the president's address the other night and thinking about the disgust when I think about him tearing down the East Wing of the White House, there's bigger fucking fish to fry right now. And I think this announcement, this executive order around hemp, I'm sorry, falls into me, you know, some diversion because they're doing 10 other things that are 10 times worse than For the country and, you know, let's face it, Roger Stone is one of the enablers of this guy who is an authoritarian.

53:32SpeakerAnd there's a lot of people who are very worried about this. You know, it has nothing to do with hemp or, you know, the announcement that was made, but, you know, has everything to do with, you know, taking bribes from fiefdoms and, you know, sheiks and... Oligarchs and everything else that's going on in the world today. I'd be pretty careful there, Mark, about that kind of thing.

53:57SpeakerBefore you make any accusations against anybody, I'd be really careful. All I'm saying is what I'm hearing, what is out in the... In the news, I mean, this is, yeah, I guess you're going to say it's fake news, whatever. I mean, all these connections, I mean, again, what's going on today in the world? I mean, is this announcement of moving cannabis to schedule three a real issue?

54:26SpeakerThank you for joining us.

54:54SpeakerThank you so much for joining us.

55:16SpeakerI think it remains to be seen how this thing is all going to be shaken out. I think the announcement is interesting. I don't think there's anything legal in that. It'll all depend on, I guess, the Attorney General's interpretation and how the rulemaking happens and who will actually enforce this. So, I don't know. Yeah, it remains to be seen. Yeah, sorry to rub you interesting on the politics, Chip.

55:51SpeakerI didn't mean to go there, but, you know, just kind of just mentioning things that are in people's thinking today when they look at what's going on. I get it. And I get Rogers controversial and all that. I just don't want you to get sued. So I don't want you to say something and accuse him of getting sued for what he's going to come back and taking money from foreign entities to have a position.

56:15SpeakerSo just be careful with that. It's because he's I know him personally. I know he doesn't do that. Yeah, I mean, I'm just repeating what's in the news, right? I mean, that's, I'm not.

56:23BubblemanWell, we all know the news is accurate and truthful and they would never lie to you. They always tell the truth. I prefer CNN for my source of global news, but I'd love to hear Russ's perspective on this because he's rubbing his eyes and he's got something to say.

56:42SpeakerOkay. Echo, can you guys hear me?

56:49SpeakerOkay. Okay. All right. So from my, you know, limited perspective, I'll try to give you like a overview of what I understand about what's going on. I'll try to do it in bullet points. And maybe if you guys have questions, we can go back and visit it. From my understanding, Trump signed this to schedule three, but it's technically not schedule three yet. It still has to go through like a review process.

57:19SpeakerThe DEA still has to rule on it. So there's like something could go haywire with that or it may take time, right? There's time involved. Okay. I would say The main difference between what's going on with Canada and the United States involves the legality of... It's sort of like the function of how the Cannabis Act in Canada by Health Canada created its own category for cannabis. And it's like, it's not a federally...

57:58SpeakerIt's not, it's not a schedule three drug. Hold on. Let me, let me go back to my notes here. Cause I'm like, I'm still running on like really low sleep. Hold on. Hold on. There's a bit of a difference between the, the health Canada version of cannabis and the, uh, hold on here. So in Canada, Canada, Canada, cannabis was legalized under the cannabis act. It was removed from the narcotics law.

58:29SpeakerRegulated as a consumer good and explicitly not medicalized. I don't know if that's accurate, but that's what I'm being told. But in the US, schedule three keeps cannabis in the drug laws and is now has oversight by the FDA. So there's like a really key difference between the two countries policies. And so technically, The FDA now and the DEA have control over the Schedule 3s. They have enforcement capabilities over the Schedule 3.

59:01SpeakerAnd so the problem, what people are bracing for, which is like the thing that everyone's bracing for, is that all the FDA has to do if it wanted to is issue letters. If it really wanted to is send letters to all these businesses that are like, you're not in compliance with a Schedule 3 drug. Right. Like they could do that if they wanted to. And from what I heard, I don't know, you know, there's like a birdie on my shoulder told me from a guy that dated a girl in the pharma is that big pharma is like preparing to try to work with the FDA to enforce it like they want it enforced because, well, obviously they can consolidate the market.

59:45SpeakerNow, that being said, though, I don't know that. Right. We don't know that. But but but also an important thing to consider is that so you look at other examples of schedule three drugs like testosterone, steroids, ketamine. Right. These are two examples of schedule three drugs where states are flying in the face of the federal three. They're going around schedule three federal law. They have their own state programs.

1:00:14SpeakerSo there are examples of states going against schedule three drugs. Cannabis is like a super unique example. Like Mark said, it's a plant, right? It's not like a compound like ketamine or steroids. It's like everyone can grow a plant. So there's this like huge gray area of the unknown regarding this. And then the other unknown is like, like you guys said, is like $30 billion or whatever in revenue coming in across all the states.

1:00:46SpeakerYou know, are the states going to be like, yeah, well, I guess we don't want that money anymore. So we're just going to allow, you know, all the businesses to shut down and we're just going to allow pharma to come in and take over everything. Right. It's like, are they going to do that? Are they going to be willing to like, Give up all of that money or is it going to be like an MSO type takeover consolidation and conglomeration into like you know 20 large MSOs in every state and then then that's like the funnel that runs in you know the the the tax revenue for the states i don't know i really don't is this like a huge gray area And I don't have an answer for you, but these are like some of the things that I'm, you

1:01:36SpeakerAnd I really don't, I really don't know. It's a fascinating time. I will say this though, from a positive side, right? Like, so the main problem is like the idea that like we, the culture built all of this up and the idea that, you know, big pharma, the government, the whole time is like, no, no, it's really bad. And so now they're just like, oh yeah, we got it from here.

1:01:58SpeakerThanks guys, right? That's a ridiculous thing. But I guess the positive side, if you look in the glass, it's half full. The amount of research that can be conducted is great. The access to seniors for medicine and just generally, generally the general public that is like, you know, thought cannabis is a bad plant. It is now Oh, well, it's scheduled. It's, it's a medical substance now. And I guess it's okay.

1:02:23SpeakerSo there's a huge shift in the culture. You know, about the medical benefits of cannabis. You know, there's 280E, if that sticks, if states are allowed, businesses are allowed to do that, that's great. So, I mean, there's like definitely, like I would say overall, like if you look at it from a holistic collective of like the larger picture, it's a positive shift, a very positive shift. But then on the micro scale, like the businesses, the small people that are running this that have passion for the plant, it's a negative shift, potentially.

1:03:01SpeakerNow, and it's just like whether or not this, you know, what it's just, it's really comes down to enforcement. Like, what are they going to enforce? Like, maybe they don't care. Maybe they don't want to deal with enforcement. Maybe the big dogs, you know, like Trulieve and Canopy and Altria, whoever's getting into this, you're going to be like, well, we just want tax write-offs. We'll just out-compete them, you know?

1:03:24SpeakerAnd we'll just out-compete them, and we won't worry about enforcement. I don't know. I don't know, because I'm not up there in the upper echelons. So I don't know if anyone has any ideas, but that's generally, at this moment in time, my current understanding. Yeah.

1:03:44BubblemanYeah, well, it's, you know, someone, there's one guy going off in chat. He is just like not going to budge his belief system. Apparently, he knows everything about everything. I'm almost tempted to give him the link and give him all the rope and let him come in here and hang himself with his words. But I don't think I will do that. In fact, he's saying that the FDA can't regulate Schedule 1 drugs.

1:04:07BubblemanWell, you are absolutely incorrect. They absolutely do regulate Schedule 1 drugs. You can do a simple Google search or a grok or a perplexity AI if you prefer one with a background. But yeah, he's just saying that everything we're saying is misinformation. So I, you know, how do you please someone like that when it's just, it is what it is. I don't pretend to know exactly what's going on.

1:04:34BubblemanI definitely know he doesn't know exactly what's going on. I'm sure there's not anyone in here that knows exactly what's going on, but I will say that of all this sort of bickering and back and forth, someone in the room said here recently, and I believe it was Black Larry Bird who said, I'm in pain every day. And if this helps me not get fired for using cannabis at my job, I am all for it.

1:04:58BubblemanSo there's these perspectives of patients that, funny enough, when we were just so patient driven back in the early days, They don't seem to have much of a voice in this conversation of reducing schedule one to schedule three, which I think is good for them. Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe I'm wrong. But if people aren't, you know, people should be able to use cannabis. The bottom line is this.

1:05:24BubblemanIf this isn't what we want, we'll keep fighting. If it's not, you know, and I said earlier as well, my faith is not in people. I don't have the, my faith is not in people. My faith is in the plant. And this plant got out of the worst prohibition of any plant that has

1:05:56BubblemanThank you.

1:06:11BubblemanAll over the country. And we're able to grow our plants and we're able to get licenses for medical if we want. And we're, I just, that is my dream for the US. Obviously, you know, I used to be very paranoid about big pharma and big alcohol and big, I created these like David Icke-like delusions that they were the, you know, shape-shifting reptilians, the all-powerful, we have no power over them.

1:06:36BubblemanIt's like, fuck. We have all the power over these people. They also have, they're also human beings. They don't hold this, don't create a narrative where you think they hold this incredible power over you. When they just don't. And when you have people, you know, like many of the people on this panel, like ATN who just popped in, making change on the regular, fighting them face to face and making change.

1:07:01BubblemanI just think we gotta, you know, we gotta stay positive and not let what the guy earlier said, his positivity has been beaten out of him. It's like, well, guess what? The positivity has not been beaten out of the plant. It's still, every time I puff it, I feel the positive vibes of cannabis. And that is the vibe that I will take into this in the future.

1:07:24BubblemanWhether this is a big, horrific mistake and everyone two years from now will be like, see, see, I told you I was right. It's like, well, great. You were right. Let's change it. Let's make it better.

1:07:38Collin PalmerJust to like before we move on from this, like the guy in the chat, just so you're aware, man, like just to back up Marcus, the FDA's role is, yes, it's limited, but there is a role. And before it goes through its clinical research, they are heavily involved in this all the way through from preclinical data, clinical trials, one through three phases, manufacturing quality GMPs. Where that stops and the DA comes in is when that all is done.

1:08:07Collin PalmerBut I just want you to cool off a little bit because it's really important that you understand there is a role that these departments play together and they do cross-pollinate and work together. Let's all cool off on that, you know, because it's not at all.

1:08:21BubblemanLet's get hot. Let's get intense. Let's get real pissed here, man. I need some good 60 second clips here, guys, for the shorts. So I need some anger. I need some fighting. Mark, if you could maybe get on chip again and we'll get some tension going.

1:08:36Collin PalmerBut I thought it was important to say hi, ATN. Good to see you, brother. I had so many questions for you earlier. I wish you were in.

1:08:46Etienne FontanSorry, I'm in Maui, so I'm a couple hours behind usually. It's like 8 o'clock in the morning or 7? Yeah, it's 8 now, but yeah, it's just too early for me, but now I am. But yeah, it's been a busy week, needless to say. If you've got questions, we've got some answers.

1:09:04BubblemanSend the link to Michael if you don't mind. I don't have a contact for him.

1:09:09Etienne FontanOkay, one second.

1:09:11SpeakerSo I have a question, you know, for Marcus, like I completely resonate with what you're saying. I think you're right. And you have to stay positive and the power of the plant is there. And we can always change. I'm an eternal optimist when it comes to that. So I share your opinion. The one caveat I would maybe consider, like what we need to consider is like the difference in, I don't know what the licensing fees are in Canada, right?

1:09:38SpeakerBut if it's schedule three licensing is enforced in the United States, the licensing fees are going to be prohibitive for all of the smaller farms. I mean, you're talking six figure licensing fees, easily six figures. For all of the steps. So I just I worry a little bit about how that's going to be implemented.

1:10:02BubblemanIt started like that here. We had horrible licensing fees and it was brutal. And the taxes and this, that, the other thing. What happened was eventually and not only was it brutal, there were like insane. So, you know, like rules, like you had to have a level three vault with like, you know, 12 inches of concrete walls and, you know, a bank vault door. And so people spent millions of dollars on these on these vaults.

1:10:32BubblemanThe big companies, right? They came in and they did all this stuff. And then the little companies came in behind them as the rules changed and were just like, oh, now you just need one camera and a fence. It was like it was this whole scenario that changed in a way that no one would have ever guessed because the big companies got fucked. And the little guys came in and were like, oh, I'm going to just buy a micro.

1:10:52BubblemanAnd they just kept making what they've done in Canada. And they certainly have slowed things down. And I could complain about it for days and days if I wanted to. Or I could look at it as the win that it is, is that it just keeps getting better. It just keeps getting better. Now we're fighting taxes. We're still fighting milligram limitations and marketing and advertising. But access-wise...

1:11:16BubblemanIt's about as accessible as it's ever going to be in Canada. It is literally everywhere. I live in the middle of nowhere and I'm probably about seven minutes away from a weed store that I could go buy, you know, live hash rosin or gummies or whatever else. So I can only hope that it plays out in the same way. You know, here the big MSOs thought that that That this prohibition-based pricing, right?

1:11:42BubblemanKeep in mind, pricing for cannabis used to be based on people doing years in prison. Whether people want to acknowledge that or not, there is a karmic debt to pay for all of that profit that was made based on people going to prison. It's like, I can sell this for $5,000 a pound. Well, why is that? Well, because they have 10-year mandatory minimums. And if you get caught, you do 10 years.

1:12:02BubblemanSo you got to make it worthwhile. It's like, holy shit, that's not a good way to make profit. People go into prison for 10 years at a pop. And I being in Vancouver in the 90s, where so many Americans came up here and bought cannabis, and then went back down, then they'd come up and buy cannabis, and then they go back down, then they come back and buy cannabis, and they go back down.

1:12:22BubblemanAnd then we would never see them again. And we just kind of hear the stories like, oh, yeah, buddy got Yeah, he was at a roadblock or something. And In Washington. And yeah, he's he's he's gone for a while. That guy he's. And so that was. Very disconcerting, more disconcerting from my perspective than like MSOs trying to take over cannabis. It's like cannabis, Prohibition tried to block cannabis and I suspect Prohibition was a much stronger beast than the MSOs personally, I think, because it was the US government and it was big and scary and terrifying.

1:13:01BubblemanAnd cannabis kind of won that battle. You know, I mean, geez, you guys had the hemp bill for... How many years was that? Seven years of just like, you guys took CBD, I think it was $60,000 a kilo and got it all the way down to $600 a kilo by having no regulations whatsoever, no boundaries, lets everyone just plant fields, lets everyone just like, there are regulations in industry for a reason so that you don't destroy the industry.

1:13:29BubblemanAnd, you know, maybe $600 kilos of CBD is great. I, you know, I wouldn't want to pay $60,000. I thought that was batshit insanity. But I saw it go down in like less than three years from up there to like down to like $600 a kilo based on just the sheer velocity at which Americans were buying farmland, planting hemp, and making CBD out of it. It's pretty wild.

1:13:55BubblemanDidn't happen up here like that.

1:13:57SpeakerYeah, I mean, that's something people need to consider, too. You know, it's like there's always the talk of the culture and the farmer. But then on the larger scale is the society as a whole, that we have to look at the health of society as a whole. And if cannabis is prohibitively expensive, it does not do the entire society very good. We need the medicine. It's a medicine for all people.

1:14:21SpeakerAnd it should be affordable. And unfortunately, the only way to do that is to do some scaling of it. You know, so I don't know. It's a rough line between the livelihood of the small farmer and the health of the entirety of all of us. You know, it's a balance. I don't know. But I think you're right, though. It has to, it has to, we have to get it out there more.

1:14:42SpeakerAnd I don't know, maybe then you got to, as a small person, you got to think larger. You got to pivot and think, think a little bigger, you know, strategize, think differently. You know, I don't know. It's a tough ride. You know, I know you all guys are all worried about, you know, some kind of egregious federal, and I just kind of put this in the chat, but some kind of egregious federal, you know, big licensing.

1:15:05SpeakerThe FDA is going to come out with a $100,000 license if you're going to be a, you know, Schedule III operator or whatever. And again, it's a screwed up system. I'll really admit that. But that hasn't been the way that they've done things in the past. And I would look to, again, they're really not going to change their stripes midstream, I don't think. So what, you know, this is all regulated at the state level.

1:15:29SpeakerSo that's a good and a bad thing, right? If you have a good activist network in your state, like we do here in Oklahoma, you know, if you've got a bunch of screamers who you can send down to the Capitol anytime you want, That's not a bad thing. Because again, if this is all regulated at the state level, well, there's a lot of power that we have.

1:15:49SpeakerI have a lot more power as an Oklahoman than I have as a US citizen, right? It's just because it's a smaller pool. And I can go grab my state senator and say, listen, state senator, here's what I want, or my state representative, or we have a governor's election in 2026. So we need to make this part of the conversation. It's OK now. It's okay. It's rescheduled.

1:16:29SpeakerIf you want to know what to do, I'll tell you. But plug in at the state level. And again, get organized. And you likely already are very organized if you've got a state law. But plug in. Understand the good side of that, the citizen side of that. A lot of states have interesting trade organizations that are very, let's say, MSO focused. And that may be your focus.

1:16:52SpeakerIt may not be. But it's really not my focus. My focus is on the people of Oklahoma. So There's organizations that are there that will do that and that are already active likely in your state. So we have, this gives us a lot of power because again, it's going to drill down to the state level.

1:17:14BubblemanDid Michael come in? Oh, he did. Welcome, Michael.

1:17:18SpeakerThat's reassuring. I'm glad Chip is saying that. That's very reassuring. So thank you.

1:17:24Etienne FontanYeah, Michael's in. And we've kind of been doing a deep dive on this this week because of our international team and just kind of understanding exactly what's going on. So we've done a kind of a deep dive, look through the paperwork. And one of the main things we saw is it takes a lot of the teeth that Kevin Sabet might have had for a lawsuit later on.

1:17:47Etienne FontanIt kind of takes a lot of his teeth out, which is very fascinating because of how it was directed. So exactly as it's gone down, there can be no change except because of the directive schedule three. Now, schedule three has not happened. It's not gonna happen for a few years, okay? So before the timeline was stopped, we were looking at approximately three to four years before it was implemented.

1:18:15Etienne FontanSo he stopped it, right? And now he's restarted it after a year. Now, he has directed the Attorney General, who is now Bondi, which now she just hands it to the DEA and then sits back, right? Now, the FDA and the FDA have already, pardon me, HHS have already ruled it has medicinal value, okay? So... That does not have to go through the rigmarole all over again.

1:18:44Etienne FontanOkay. So basically all that's going to happen is the DEA is going to go through a dog and pony show and it's going to be a little long. And then afterwards they're going to say schedule three stamp. And that's what's basically going to happen. So the line is eventually going to change. But 280E has not happened. If I were a company like myself, I own one of the oldest dispensaries in the country, I would continue with your 280E deductions for at least the next year or so until you're told otherwise.

1:19:16Etienne FontanOkay. You cannot, you know, do not underestimate the power. They can come after you. For every single year and that's a reality for every operator in the United States currently. I have already been through the process and I've already paid it off at least so you know it's a very much a pain in the ass. Now if you are caught in 280E you may be able to get an injunction or a unique place because of the historical significance of where you are.

1:19:46Etienne FontanThat depends on the, you know, the judge as well as your counsel. However, you may be able to go there. However, if you're in the offering compromise or in the settlement phase already, you're fucked. It's already, you know, you're committed to the situation you're going to have to deal with it. End of story, period. That happened to me. I already explored that route. And of course, that's just the reality of what happened.

1:20:08Etienne FontanAnd that's a real significance because a lot of people thought that 280E was over and that they can start doing their deductions. You've seen articles stating that, oh, well, you know, they'll be able to pass the savings on to patients and to customers. Not the case yet. Okay. Until the official change comes down, you'll officially know. And this is where there's a lot of confusion. You've got the National Transportation Commission.

1:20:33Etienne FontanDepartment putting out information right now saying, hey, you can't start smoking and drink and driving. You know, it's still illegal. Everything is still status quo. And those that are in the federal and under federal transportation, you're still under the possibility of your analysis for THC. So nothing has changed. OK, so just it was a lot of pomp and circumstance. All he did was restart what Biden did prior.

1:20:59Etienne FontanThat's it. That's all that's really, really happened, except some of those steps have already happened. So, Michael Krawitz, thoughts?

1:21:09SpeakerOh, man, I got lots of thoughts. I love you guys. I just really want to say that out loud. I really do. Some of the best minds that we get the pleasure to meet with, right, Dan? Right here in this room. But yeah, I, you know, just to start this, I want to weigh in on some of the little nuances of some of this stuff, but first I want to talk a little bit about big picture just for a second.

1:21:32SpeakerI was just laughing to myself because it always brings me back sometimes, these kind of conversations bring me back to a random crocodile Dundee line from the movie where he was asked a question about politics and he said, you know, to me, and she had to really corner him and really had to pressure him to answer the question. Look at that butt, that's beautiful. But Crocodile Dundee finally, you know, relented and he said, well, you know, we're talking about Aboriginal issues, politics or something like that.

1:22:00SpeakerHe's like, it sounds to me like a bunch of fleas arguing over who owns the dog. And, you know, I just want to call back to, you know, one of the highlights of my of my world of my life really was to get to bring Dr. Watson, Sam the Skunk Man to the United Nations and speak. And he did that a couple of years back. And his message at the U.N. was really simple.

1:22:27SpeakerHe's like, we did a lot of things that were fucked up. Thank you for joining us.

1:23:00SpeakerThis is really what it comes down to is this is part of the sort of the transition phase back to where we once came from. And he was really clear about this. He was like, we can't do reparations. We can't go back and try to fix the past. But we have to look forward and do this right. And I would propose and overlay over all these conversations that we are still stuck in a colonial loop.

1:23:23SpeakerWe still have colonial powers producing cannabis and those source countries of that genetic material are being shut out of the market. As long as that exists, everything we're talking about is fleas talking about the dog that we live on because we're not really talking about the big picture. And until we do, none of these issues about how we handle these substances and their sourcing and their pricing and the marketing and the industry around it is all going to be in flux.

1:23:54SpeakerAnd I've talked about this before, but probably not here. I call it sandcastle architecture. You know, you can build the coolest looking architecture on the beach out of sand, but the next big wave is going to take it away. And I would contend that we've got a couple of big waves coming our way in the cannabis space. And just to finish this thought, you know, I had the privilege and, you know, sort of joy really to talk with the Canadian government at the time when you know you're working on legalization nationally we were talking to them in vienna about how they were going to present how canada was going to present itself to the international body and it decided canada decided that this is a local issue that they were going to deal with this is a local issue and have local uh uh You know, within Canada, rules that did not extend outside of Canada.

1:24:45SpeakerThey were not related to the international community. They were strictly Canada dealing with internal issues, you know, pursuant to their constitution and their rule of law, their need to protect health and welfare, secure security, and And, you know, peace and tranquility, right? And this is really important because it meant that Canada was going to be, you know, sort of leading from the back instead of leading from the front in Vienna.

1:25:16SpeakerAnd that's a situation that has to change. The United States, Canada, Netherlands, Germany, Colombia, countries that want to lead from the front can't lead from the back. They got to step up in Vienna. They got to do what, you know, president, Morales did years ago with coca and get up on the stage. I was there in the room. He pulled out coca leaf out of his pocket and he waved it in the air.

1:25:38SpeakerA crime.

1:25:42SpeakerPresidents could get away with this shit. A crime in Vienna. And he was waving that coca leaf around and saying, we need to change this shit. This is something that's important to our people. It represents our culture, our medicine, our industry, and we need to change this shit. And until we have a president from a cannabis country do that, I don't think we've really, you know, had the success that I think our movement is sort of pat itself on the back about.

1:26:10BubblemanWell said, Michael. Yeah, honestly, really nice. Nice, nice, nice.

1:26:22Etienne FontanSo, yes, it's been a lot of just misinformation this week. And of course, the administration did this on purpose, you know, because they they they flourish in the chaos as opposed to and restarting and then taking the credit for things as opposed to, you know, doing them outright. So. You know, credit, we're here. But yeah, exactly as Michael said, we got a lot of work to do.

1:26:45Etienne FontanAnd I was surprised when I went and started doing at the international level, how Canada was checked out in the sense of it wasn't necessarily leading internationally. And we're not chastising y'all markets as much as just surprised that you have one of the most leading four countries. You mentioned cannabis laws. You actually can federally mail it. You can literally, our veterans can get on. There's a national app that you can have, pharmacy app, that you can actually, veterans can order from Canada what they need up to three grams of cannabis per day choice of modality they'd get to choose.

1:27:27Etienne FontanAnd then within 48 hours, that arrives by postal. To the front door of that person. Okay. That is to us in America. You know, we can't do that. It's very illegal to cross state lines. It's very illegal to mail things in these big, nasty laws, etc. So that y'all have led so far. And gone so effective. Now, don't get me wrong. It's not the most perfect system.

1:27:54Etienne FontanI mean, you've got audit systems. The system used to be 10 grams a day, then went down to three because you're spending hundreds of million dollars giving away free cannabis. But I was surprised by the lack of pride internationally to really push other countries like Uruguay, Germany, et cetera, that, you know, like Germany, they rely on

1:28:21Etienne FontanBedrocan cannabis initially, right, to be imported in. So you've got a robust export market, you know, going on there. But I was surprised to see Canada be so isolated. Why do you think that is, Marcus?

1:28:37BubblemanWhy is Canada so isolated?

1:28:38Etienne FontanSpecifically on the cannabis issue at the international level.

1:28:45BubblemanWell, I mean, it's hard to say. I mean, I know a lot of different countries came here to follow suit with what Canada was doing. We've had all sorts of countries come to Canada and visit and look at what we're doing. You know, like the core of what we were doing It was pretty awesome. It came from Hillary and the BC Compassion Club. And she was one of the main people that was involved, that the government would go and ask her questions and kind of follow suit with how they were dispensing medicine.

1:29:15BubblemanBig company like Shoppers Drug Mart came in and said, we're going to do it our way. And they failed miserably at it. Like you don't really buy cannabis at a pharmacy in Canada. It seems like the minute recreational came into play, that medical just took a massive sideline to the juggernaut that is recreational. I mean, I guarantee you all those, I mean, listen, I know a ton of cannabis people Who, you know, used patients as their excuse to get into the legal market and be able to sell products that just turned their back on the patients.

1:29:52BubblemanThe second it happened, it certainly wasn't just MSOs, but the MSOs did it as well, almost immediately. Like the minute recreational came in, they were like, oh shit, this will be way easier. We can just do this. The other thing, um, That is interesting to state with cannabis is that, you know, I know people that did multiple, you know, my mentor Ron did almost 12 years in prison in a federal penitentiary here in Canada for cannabis.

1:30:18BubblemanSo it's not like we were void of long penitentiary visits for cannabis. It's something that absolutely did happen. And I had a really good point I wanted to make on that in regards to jail time. It's not something that's happening so much anymore. People going to jail. Oh, right. What I was going to say is, so when cannabis became legal in Canada, and it was all licenses and this, that, and everyone was very afraid, especially the people who were from legacy and activists, because we were like, oh my God, they're going to arrest us.

1:30:52BubblemanThey're going to take this. They're going to take that. You know, Canada is one of the countries that takes bank accounts. Remember that during... During the trucker convoy during COVID, they closed bank accounts and stole like $80 million in one fell swoop. So don't think that we're so mellow and unlike the US, we can be absolutely savage up here as well. But one of the things that didn't happen that everyone thought would happen, you get your license, now you gotta protect your license.

1:31:22BubblemanDon't break any laws, they'll take the license away. Well, they don't take the license away. And the MSOs learned that, they figured it out. They were like, You know, there was companies running whole rooms that weren't licensed. They were just like, oh, let's just add a 20,000 square foot addition, but we won't get a license. No worries. Slap on the hand, maybe a $50,000 fine, maybe some other little thing.

1:31:42BubblemanNo jail time, no actual All the worry of the PTSD of being a cannabis activist, oh, they're going to kick our doors, they're going to shoot our dogs, they're going to, none of that happened. All of that went away, even in the legal aspect, like companies breaking massive laws, companies taking cannabis out of the legal chain of custody and just sending it to the black market, like thousands of kilos.

1:32:09BubblemanThat's what happens. The laws just aren't like insane the way they were during full blown prohibition. And I really hope that that is the same case. And you have to understand, Prohibition was a part of brainwashing a massive part of your society. And when you had those people brainwashed, they didn't give a fuck if you got a 10-year mandatory prison sentence. But that brainwashing has been like diluted down so much with the hemp bill and cannabis just being all over the fucking place.

1:32:42BubblemanAmericans just flying with it on airplanes from Nevada to Denver, from Vegas to California, just crazy. You're not really allowed to do that on a federal level, but people are doing it. So the intensities of the laws that were once these 10-year mandatory minimums, like no fucking around, three strikes, you're out kind of thing, seems to have dissipated in both of our countries. I don't see it down there as much, but I'm not down there very much.

1:33:12SpeakerHey, Marcus, I would love to dig into your, you know, what you just brought up about, you know, the penalties and, you know, really flesh that out because we are still talking about death penalty in Malaysia and Indonesia and elsewhere. But before that, I just want to say something that goes to the previous point, answering ATN's question about, you know, sort of this international perspective. I was very recently, very, very...

1:33:40SpeakerI'm honored, really, to be brought into a conversation in St. Vincent and the Grenadines. And the government of St. Vincent actually paved the way for a handful of our advocates to go down there and participate in a governmental discussion with six different countries, including Jamaica and, you know, The various Caribbean countries, St. Lucia's just passed a new medical cannabis law and Barbados has a very sort of archaic medical cannabis law and St. Vincent is trying its best to roll out a medical cannabis law.

1:34:10SpeakerAnd, you know, and, and, you know, just as a background, I mean, we're talking about the home of Jamaica, you know, which is somewhat the epicenter of our cannabis culture in some respects, certainly a source country for some damn good cannabis. So, you know, this is their perspective, right? A couple of takeaways I had from the meeting. One, and by the way, this was the prime minister of St. Vincent, the three ministers of the cabinet, the minister of the...

1:34:40SpeakerTourism and the Minister of the Finance and stuff. So this is fascinating, you know, real serious perspective from the top of the government. And the takeaways were two. One is that they felt that when they were working with Canada, And Netherlands specifically that they were, you know, sort of being caged out that, you know, they were looking at these countries as sort of setting up standards and, you know, cannabis guidelines that would just make it impossible to grow cannabis in their region.

1:35:13SpeakerAnd I'm just directly quoting them. I believe I have nothing of myself in that statement. And I have even less of myself in the next statement, which was really fascinating because I believe it was the Minister of Finance got up and said, United States is brilliant with their Schedule 1. And of course, that got my attention. What's so brilliant about Schedule 1? But he's like, yeah, Schedule 1 has maintained a prohibition at the federal level while allowing the individual states to set up markets.

1:35:42SpeakerWhich has completely kept out any of our cannabis and any of our influence from around the world and kept a complete monopoly on the cannabis products inside the United States. And they just looked at it as this sort of unfair thing that was done at the federal level. I am really troubled by giving like Harry Enslinger that much credit for that much brilliance. So that's not coming from me.

1:36:03SpeakerBut that's what they see that. They look at that and that's what they see.

1:36:08BubblemanWell, thank God they also see Charlotte Fiji and they also see all of these stories that slowly just reduced prohibition to crumbles, right? You know, these were the, I remember it very specifically, like they're all this fighting for and, you know, battles and compassion clubs and nothing affected prohibition more than sick children.

1:36:34Etienne FontanWell, and Sick Elderly, too.

1:36:37Collin PalmerDown here, I felt like Charlotte, right, just opened the guitar. I felt like it was like someone strung the guitar up all of a sudden. It was like, now we're playing the Heartstrings of America. Because everyone started, to Marcus's point, recognizing that it's no longer... Just grown adults, it's children. It's people that have these terminal illnesses or imbalance, chemical imbalances that are driving a whole new wave of wellness that we didn't, and really also, If you even want to call it pharmaceuticals, it's really nutraceuticals.

1:37:16Collin PalmerJust this idea of medicine that was much bigger than any of us. And I think that really helped us down here in the States really lay the groundwork as to how the hemp bill evolved and how much square footage was being planted. I mean, I know I grew acres in New York State and I feel pretty passionate about...

1:37:51SpeakerThe fact that the United States especially, I don't want to say about Canada, but the United States especially hasn't been leading the world on cannabis reform. It's been removing the floodgate that's been stopping cannabis policy reform. And I'll just give you a quick anecdote from that same meeting. The prime minister got up there and it was so fascinating because here on the same panel was the, I think it was the tourism minister, was previously a prosecutor in St. Vincent.

1:38:19SpeakerAnd the prime minister was formerly a defender, a public defender in St. Vincent. And the prime minister actually defended Rastafari against prosecution in the same court that this public, you know, prime, you know,

1:38:37SpeakerSo I think it's just fascinating that we have these stories from around the world that are really amazing that we just don't really tend to internalize as part of a global movement. But it is a global movement. The social club networks and the social club work in Spain and coming out of Spain and Netherlands, you know, the Fascinating fights inside of Japan and Thailand, etc. These are people that have put their life on the line, not just to use cannabis as we did, but to fight against it as well.

1:39:15SpeakerI don't think our stakes have ever been that high in our countries working on this stuff. So anyway, kudos to those people around the world that are just being held back by the United States. And another thing the St. Vincent government said was our schedule one placement with the banking affects them. Not so much them because they have their own bank system down there that they're able to access, but they were pointing at the world.

1:39:38SpeakerThank you so much for joining us.

1:39:55Etienne FontanTo clarify earlier, Marcus, what I was saying about old people, Proposition 215 passed specifically by using elderly and the sick in the posters and the advertisements. And then it shifted specifically to the children after it passed. And I think you're correct, is that it really tugged at heartstrings. I mean, it was one thing because they... Dennis Brown and them made sure that, you know, they had representations of everybody's grandparents.

1:40:25Etienne FontanThat's pretty much, I have a lot of the old posters from 2015. There's a lot of elderly and sick people and then people in wheelchairs who were used to specifically tug at heartstrings. That was a concerted effort to realize the cruelty that had been going on for so long and exposing that cruelty to the public. And the public responded. They did not like the cruelty. They did not like seeing old and sick people being incarcerated and fucked with over a plant just because of a medicine.

1:41:00Etienne FontanNow, you know, thanks to Charlotte and various others and Forest Lee's work and, you know, Wade's, you know, work directly with children, right? And cannabis, right? Which is something that was, you know, very much verboten in a sense, right? Keep, keep, Everything to do to keep cannabis away from children, right? But nobody thought that this medicine might be needed for seriously ill children. And Charlotte was really that one who was held up in the light on a pedestal for everybody to go, whoa, wow, okay.

1:41:35Etienne FontanOkay. All right. We get it with kids now. So it was, it was, it took time. You know, you couldn't, we could not have rolled out with children, right?

1:41:44BubblemanWe couldn't even roll out with cannabis. We rolled out with hemp. We were like, let's just get hemp. I'll never forget my partner Martin saying, when we have hemp growing in fields in Manitoba and people drive by and see that plant, it's 100% going to change the way they think.

1:42:03SpeakerAnd I remember being kind of like, Will it though? Like, will it?

1:42:07BubblemanAnd this was in the 90s in like the Bible Belt in Canada, where Ron did his 11 and a half years in prison for cannabis only. So it was very strict. It was very, you know, they were demonizing it in a very big way. And lo and behold, it absolutely changed the way people thought about cannabis because now they had a different pathway. Cannabis didn't just have to be about getting high or using it as a medicine.

1:42:37BubblemanIt could be about consuming the essential amino acid rich seed oils. It could be about wearing it as a cloth. There was, you know, you could be writing on the, it just sort of expanded a little bit in a place where expansion wasn't really something that was happening in people's minds on the regular. You know, you've got a lot of poverty, you've got a lot of alcoholism, you've got wicked cold winters and wicked hot summers, and it's just sort of a godforsaken place.

1:43:06BubblemanAnd I really did see hemp growing. I'll tell you who it affected right off the bat were the local high school students. They went and cut fucking buds off those plants and then got busted at their school with like four foot... Thank you for watching.

1:43:41BubblemanWe found the lowest, forget about 0.3, we were growing 0.03, which is, of course, thanks to Goroborodko from the Institute of Bass Fibers, who came up with this methodology of a litmus test in the field over 20 plus years, pulling any plant that had this purple litmus test that showed a higher percentage of THC. He did that for over 20 years, and he reduced THC in the Zola Tenosha cultivar

1:44:14BubblemanSo that was our story. And it was interesting, you know, it wasn't until some years later that Hilary Black started the BC Compassion Club, based on, you know, Perrone and Valerie and Mike and all the people in California who were her inspiration to do this up here in Canada. So that was our story. Like I said, have faith in the plant. You know, it's what Etienne said is very correct early on when he came in.

1:44:42BubblemanWe don't know where this is going to go. We don't really have any idea. Let's... You know, as the people, let's make sure that it doesn't go somewhere that's bad. You know, rather than be pessimistic, let's just help drive it. All the amazing people on the panel who help drive these things. You know, the fact that the fact that Etienne and Michael have this international thing, you know, shows me that America got to a point where they were pretty comfortable and they thought, you know, maybe this is the most important thing to focus on right now, which is people being Put to death in countries for cannabis, which is absolutely bonkers.

1:45:18BubblemanAnd I applaud you guys and your group for, you know, lobbying and fighting that shit. Who's fighting for those people? We're all bitching about who gets to control it. These people are just trying to, you know, stay alive.

1:45:32Etienne FontanThey just want to live their lives. You know, they didn't, they didn't, they just were trying to deal with the plant. They weren't trying to get themselves put in a situation where, you know, they're going to lose their life. You know, the United States guy, the basketball player got sentenced to 15 years. So he didn't get life, that he didn't get executed, but still 15 years over some gummies for your medicinal needs seems rather...

1:45:58Etienne FontanStill extreme. So that's one reason why, you know, we've taken it upon ourselves to work at the UN level. Michael and I, we've got it, you know, medical cannabis removed from Schedule 4, which internationally is the most dangerous drug category for medicinal. Okay, where that in the United States, that's called schedule one, right? So it was pulled out of that. So that took decades of work, people.

1:46:22Etienne FontanThat was nothing that was done overnight. It takes a lot of change. Michael and them had to go literally change the World Health Organization before the UN. Okay, so everybody's sitting here all excited about schedule three. Well, for a second, y'all should all sit down and shut the fuck up. Nothing's happened. Nothing's changed. What you need to do is you need to find a local organization, an organization nationally.

1:46:48Etienne FontanAnd start plugging yourself in, you know, join them, get involved. This is your opportunity, right? We're talking about getting involved. Well, you'd be surprised how actually powerful you as an individual can be. Most people are more afraid of their power than of their failure. Okay, so that's what Nelson Mandela said. So in that case, wake the fuck up, plug in, get active. We all talked about how our 10th Amendment realities are where it's at and what you need to do.

1:47:17Etienne FontanWell, do you belong to your state organizations? Do you belong? Do you go to their meetings? Do you get their newsletters? Do you organize? Do you plug in? Because you can and you should, and this is now an opportunity. Thank you for joining us today.

1:47:50Etienne FontanQuit talking about it and put action to it. You'll find like-minded people. You'll find and share great times and great weed. And you'll never know what might be possible. You might be able to change the world. What's wrong with that?

1:48:07BubblemanYeah, I mean, it's, don't get me wrong, going into chat rooms and bitching and moaning and whining about your position is probably awesome. But I think what Etienne just suggested is maybe a little bit more effective than that. And there's lots of sort of, People that you can reach out to to to get help for that. You know, I know one of the things we have going on here in Canada, thanks to Jodi Ramghizi, is the fair cannabis.

1:48:39BubblemanShe's still fighting for fair cannabis. She's still just trying to create resources for people so people can take action. You know, it's it's it's hard for people to take action because they're just doing this. This is a lot of what's going on out there right now. This is people's actions, right? They just do this. They scroll. So faircannabis.com gives you a take action button that you can actually hit that button and then get into the resources of what is it you want to take action on?

1:49:07BubblemanIs it you want to take action on the pricing or the taxing of cannabis? Do you want to take action on the ability to gather And so, yeah, it's just, it's these small little things that you can help people.

1:49:18SpeakerHey, Marcus, we at Veterans Association Council are just wrapping up an effort that we started a while back with the internet, the IAVA, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, Is that right?

1:49:39SpeakerIraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America and the Smithsonian. And we had to come up with a definition for a veteran, military veteran in the United States that made a significant contribution to the cannabis experience or the cannabis space. And we actually came up with criteria for that. It's all been published now. We got about 125 veterans that satisfy that. And, you know, that's what you're talking about.

1:50:06SpeakerWhen we're looking for somebody, we're trying to figure out, you know, if they're eligible for the list, we go to Google. And Google tells us what they've done. So, you know, you scrolling on your phone doesn't put your name on Google as having participated in this fight. I'm just sorry to say that. Just write a letter to the editor, write an op-ed, lead a new school program in your local school, your high school, your colleges.

1:50:28SpeakerYou know, these are all kinds of things that you can do that you get on our radar. And then once you get on our radar, let me tell you how this works. So we worked from 2009 to 2015 on getting the World Health Organization to start a review process. 2015 to 2018, we fed them information. We fed them everything. They had to sit through patient stories from firsthand accounts.

1:50:50SpeakerChris Brown, Chris Brown, Chris Brown, Chris Brown, Chris Brown,

1:51:10SpeakerOn the side of the mountains there, the favelas, I think, something like that they're called. And just constant shooting. This is like what the kids have to experience as a result of the policy that results from the placement and the schedule that is in your hands. They had to deal with it. They had to deal with a couple of activists with little cannabis plants inside the World Health Organization, on the desk, in front of them, face to face.

1:51:33SpeakerBut at the end of the day, they wound up being our champions and going to the U.N. And we were we our activists were no longer using the talking points. We were no longer teaching the World Health Organization that picked up that mantle. And they had like five meetings inside the U.N. And one of the countries that spoke up against the WHO recommendations was Indonesia, the place that I was just talking about, where they didn't execute the basketball player.

1:51:59SpeakerThey leniently only gave him like 15 years in prison. For a couple of gummy bears. Indonesia said, and I quote, we need you to not do any of the World Health Organization recommendations. We can't relax the penalties and the placement of cannabis in the treaty at all because that will undermine our use of the death penalty. And God knows death penalty is the only Thank you so much for joining us.

1:52:37SpeakerReally quite good at coming up with, you know, sort of nefarious talking points to feed to these people. So that's another area that you can get into is actually, you know, follow Kevin Sabet around and be his Twitter shadow or something, you know, that's someplace where you can scroll and maybe make a difference.

1:52:55BubblemanWhat does he think about this schedule change? Is he happy about it?

1:52:59SpeakerHe had a complete meltdown.

1:53:02BubblemanOkay, so the guy that we hate the most about Cannabrand...

1:53:06Etienne FontanHe did melt down, but we have to put this in a context. People realize that Kevin Sabet is aligned with Jazz Pharmaceutical. Jazz Pharmaceutical owns Sativex and Epidiolex. So he's already aligned with them. So he had to put on his own dog and pony show to his people. Thank you so much for joining us.

1:53:40Etienne FontanYou know, as he's as it said in the paper, spent six figures because that's what it would cause to hit all of the major news outlets in that kind of Maryland, Virginia, D.C. area. I used to live there. So you've got a little conglomeration of states. So you've got a lot of different news there. But, you know, he's sitting on nine million and he only spent, you know, six figures specifically trying to stop it.

1:54:02Etienne FontanIt shows you that this is all just dog and pony show. Right.

1:54:06BubblemanWhere do we know that? Like, where do you find that? How much he spent? Is this just like a public?

1:54:11Etienne FontanOh, it's it's it's news articles that come out. We have news searches for him and we keep an eye on Google searches for cannabis and marijuana. And so his name pops up, especially a lot all the time. Two, you know, some of our people in our circle are formal intelligence people. So we kind of just set them loose on him. So we found his funders, which is a private, you know, private funders giving about a million dollars a year.

1:54:38Etienne FontanAnd then all of his records are public. So you can go and find that Project Sam has sitting on nine million dollars. And then this week it came out that Kevin Sabet spent six figures. So we started going through our head and looking through the budget as well. Thank you for watching.

1:55:12Etienne FontanThank you so much for joining us.

1:55:36BubblemanSix figures could be like anywhere from $100,000 to $999,999. He could have spent upwards of a million dollars to try and stop this.

1:55:47SpeakerTrue. Hey, while you're talking about, you know, Kevin Sabet. All right. So, Kevin, geez, now my brain just went completely blank.

1:56:01BubblemanTake your time. Take your time. Inhale some haze. Inhale some haze. Who is this character, Kevin Sabet?

1:56:11SpeakerYeah, yeah, Kevin. So, you know, the rescheduling petition stalled under the Biden administration. It was our fault. All right. So we had lawyers that took some cases to the U.S. Court of Appeals that stopped the administrative law judge process and in its tracks. And then we had a reelection and election of Trump. That's how it sort of unfolded. Why did our lawyers go to the appeals court?

1:56:38SpeakerKevin Savette. And the reason why was because Kevin Savette had conversations with the administrator of the DEA. And this is completely unprecedented, right? We've always had the DEA completely against us. We've had the FDA completely against us, HHS against us, the White House against us. Here we had all the cards flipped. The White House was with us. The HHS was in support. The FDA did an extensive review, changed its classification to accept the legal status of has accepted medical value in the law.

1:57:07SpeakerI mean, everything flipped our way. The DEA administration was in favor of rescheduling as it is bound to by law from the HHS review. And the only thing that was in our way was the administrator. The administrator was against us and the administration was on our side. That's a surreal position to be in. And Kevin Sabet had a conversation with the administrator of the DEA. And that conversation wound up spilling out into the real world in a couple of different ways.

1:57:35SpeakerOur lawyers on our, you know, proverbial our side got a hold of that. And they wanted to do some digging. They wanted to get some, you know, the power of the court to do some subpoenas and, you know, get into that conversation and figure out what the hell they were doing behind the scenes to undermine this. The DEA had been stalling and, you know, Thank you for watching.

1:58:09SpeakerI think these guys got a lot of backlash for stopping the process. But anyway, I think Kevin Savette is poised to do that again. He's got the Attorney General of the United States, Pam Bondi, is an anti-marijuana person if I ever saw one. She butted heads with our groups down in Florida. We work with the Cannabis Action Network of Florida and she was not a... You know, really a straight player on that down there.

1:58:35SpeakerSo we've got one person against us, the person tasked to carry out the will of the president. I firmly believe she's going to do what the president said. I see no evidence and no reason to believe that she isn't going to jump to it. And I mean, she's prosecuted people within two days that had no criminal case against them because the president said on a tweet. To do it.

1:58:57SpeakerI'm sorry. A true social post. And yeah, I think that the other random card is somebody I don't know very well, but maybe you guys know him better. The new administrator of the DEA, and he's, I'm told, is not a marijuana person either. So you got anti-marijuana, AG, anti-marijuana, you know, DEA administrator, and every other card flipped our way, literally.

1:59:21BubblemanInteresting. I remember having this conversation a while back before he got into power and kind of everyone was like, oh, he'll never do anything for cannabis. And I was like, really? Like, I mean, the other, I don't know. I just remember being like, I feel like he will do something with cannabis. He just seems like, I mean, listen, I'm not pro Trump in any way. The guy seems like a bat shit maniac as most presidents and prime ministers and all of these people.

1:59:49BubblemanI can't say that he's better or worse than the last people, but it did seem like this is under his watch as was the farm bill. You know, for us, it was Trudeau who ended up bringing cannabis to legalization in Canada. And he's the worst. Like he is absolutely terrible. People absolutely fucking hate him on every level, except maybe like Katy Perry or whatever. But everyone else is pretty upset with him.

2:00:16BubblemanI'm not going to lie here in Canada. Like you bring up that guy's name and people are like legitimately upset. If you just go even on to a social media post and You'll just see a thousand people spewing negativity, but he did bring cannabis legalization to Canada. I think it's better than it was when it was illegal. I'm sure people would argue with me here in Canada and say it's all destroyed and ruined, but...

2:00:45BubblemanYou know, like I said, I went to the school of Skunk Man Sam of like more access, less care about who controls it and who ends up making the money at the end of the day, as long as it's available in all forms, you know, and from and being able to grow it yourself, which we are able to do here in Canada. So. It's amazing when you're actually allowed to grow cannabis, how few people actually grow cannabis when it's just available at the store.

2:01:11BubblemanIt is a lot of work to grow cannabis. It's a lot of work to understand soil and genetics and being able to get seeds from the right place and planting them and caring for them for months without going away or, you know, forgetting about them or any of that. There's a lot of work to growing cannabis and to... You know, like most things, I don't farm all of my food or, you know, the fibers for my clothes or for these things.

2:01:38BubblemanSo I have a deep appreciation of farming. I grew up in the farming belt of Canada and in Manitoba. I think we have a couple of million acres of usable land for farming grain and other things. And it's just, yeah, we always kind of We always kind of learn that farmers are pretty darn important. In fact, we got one that just popped into the room a little while ago.

2:02:01BubblemanWelcome to Farmer Tom. How are you doing, Tom? You must have some things to say about this.

2:02:07TomPretty good, Marcus. Thanks for having me back on the show. It's been a minute. And I just want to thank everybody here for their years of dedication to the plant. As long as we're moving it forward and everybody's doing their part, things move forward. For me, I started using cannabis medicinally 50 years ago, so the medical side has been hugely important to me. It's come a long way.

2:02:34TomLittle did I think when I was gathering petitions and getting all my friends in 1995 to sign up and vote for Prop 215, where would we be now? I mean, look where we are now. We can go down to the store in many states. And grab whatever we want. Never in my wildest dreams did I ever think that we'd be here. And then a decade ago, we got the federal government to use the word cannabis in a study.

2:03:03TomLast year, we got the CDC to say cannabis has medicinal benefits. These are all big strides forward. They may seem small, but we've all been doing this a long time. Those are big strides. And last week, The man, he, Trump, he, you know, he pushed the ball even forward, further forward, you know, and I'm really excited for, I'm getting to be a senior myself. I'm really excited for, to help the seniors out and for senior centers and hospice and all those places that people can consume cannabis on, on site without, you know, getting yelled at or kicked out of their You know, care facility or whatever.

2:03:50TomAnd I see this as just we just move the ball forward. It's not enough. It didn't go far enough. We all want the schedule. But, you know, 50 years into this, this thing, these things take time. And I'm very happy that everybody's pushing. I think we need to all put our advocates hats back on. Start getting out there at the local, state, federal level, wherever you have access and let your Voice be heard.

2:04:18TomI'm a big proponent of I don't care where I'm at. If I'm at the table, then I'm not on the menu. So I really want to be at the table all the time. And they may not want to hear what I have to say, but they have to hear what I say because I'm there right there with them. And these are the most important things to me.

2:04:38TomAnd we really can't stop now. You know, we do our best continually to Not take sides politically, but just go, you know, promote cannabis because it's given so much to me health wise and my wife with MS and it's really bettered our lives and whatever we can do on putting a good face on cannabis and being active and letting our voice be heard. Well, that's what I'm all about.

2:05:08TomSo thanks so much, Marcus, again for having me on the show.

2:05:17BubblemanThanks for coming on, Tom, and thanks for inviting your friend Chip. He had to leave a little while ago. He mentioned that he had to leave, but he was here for, I guess, a couple of hours.

2:05:29TomI thought he'd be pretty informative. He has an inside track, and he's got a seat at the table, and I thought bringing a new voice into the group could be beneficial.

2:05:45SpeakerWhat does Tom think about all Schedule 3?

2:05:47TomI want to know what Tom thinks. Me? I don't think it went far enough, but I do think it's opened up doors for senior citizens and getting it in their medical, you know, for senior citizens especially, because I'm becoming a senior citizen in senior homes, I think it's We've got to do well in colleges and more research. We still hasn't taken away our home grow rights. It's not changing the state systems yet as far as regulated market.

2:06:26TomWe can still grow. It hasn't changed the medical in states yet. Do you think this is going to happen?

2:06:36SpeakerSchedule. What do you think is going to happen with states' rights? Do you think the states are going to keep their policies and fly in the face of the federal ruling? Do you think that's going to move?

2:06:46TomIt's follow the money. They want the money. When those states are getting a half a billion dollars a year to a billion dollars a year in revenue, it's always been follow the money. My grandfather told me when I was a kid, you want to get to the bottom of anything, follow the money. You'll get the truth there. Great. Good to hear. Thanks, Tom. I appreciate it. Thank you, Russ.

2:07:06Etienne FontanYeah, one of the most things I just do want to point out is that the 10th Amendment realities aren't changing, right? We're still allowed to do them, including the hemp ones like Texas that just happened. So that's going to be interesting to watch go down as the hemp Sunsets in November. You know, there's this is also does not open interstate commerce as well, people. So everybody still has to stay in their 10th Amendment realities.

2:07:34Etienne FontanHowever, you know, again, the line in the sands moved, right? We're at a line in the sand. This is not permanent destination. We get to make more lines and keep moving. But it's only if you plug in and make the change.

2:07:47BubblemanWhen it comes to this administration, are they big on federal power? Like, are they are they doing other things like, oh, we're going to take control from the states and create a federal power or they because I don't know, or are they more like CBD? Like, what are they doing with education? Is that? Is that like a state thing or is that controlled by the federal government?

2:08:11Etienne FontanIt's controlled nationally. I mean, there was a concerted effort to dumb down our populace right after the 60s and 70s because... It worked. Right. Well, no, the education was too effective. People plugged in, got active, challenged the system. You saw massacres at Kent State, etc. You know, all due to people saying, fuck you, fuck this, I'm tired of this. Right. Well, now we've got such a dumb, uneducated populace.

2:08:38Etienne FontanThey'll just let pretty much anything, you know, roll on. So it's dangerous to be intelligent. But, you know, get together, be smart and challenge the system. But you have to go within the system. You know, we used to fight outside the system. And then we realized, you know what, we have to put on suits and ties and actually go down and do the shit. You know, last thing I wanted to do was that.

2:08:58Etienne FontanBut, you know, Dr. Todd McCurry and Dennis Perun were the first ones to take me to D.C. And they're as hardcore as activists as activists were. You go look at their histories and they are completely diametrically different people altogether. But one of the most amazing experiences I had was going to senators and representative offices with my elders. So this is what we also do. Veterans Action Council, we actually go down, we actually organize our veterans and we physically go down to DC and meet with our senators and representatives.

2:09:31Etienne FontanYou represent when you speak out is one thing. When you physically go down, you can represent a few thousand people in your district and area just by showing up, just by writing letters, just by Thank you for joining us.

2:10:06Etienne FontanEverybody has a gift. Everybody has a voice. Everybody has a unique talent. So find a way to apply it to an organization. Or if there isn't an organization that represents you, well, guess what? You can create one. You don't like the businesses that are out there? You can create one, right? These are your powers if you choose to. But, you know, they take time, money, and, you know, plugging in.

2:10:29Etienne FontanThat's why we recommend plugging into organizations because they can give you materials and information and save you that time and effort of necessarily creating them so that you're sharing them or educating them, going to events. That's what we used to do with the Cannabis Action Network. We did rock and roll tours where You know, people like Fishbone, Primus, Jane's Addiction, Lollapalooza were like, hey, come on tour.

2:10:52Etienne FontanWe like what you kids are doing, passing out literature and gathering information and registering voters. We did that free of charge, people. Nobody paid us to do it. We just got up off our asses and collectively were like, hey, and you know what they did? They gave us free passes to shows. I got into Grateful Dead shows. I'm not a Grateful Dead fan, but I got into more shows that I could realize because they were like, we want you to gather people to register to vote.

2:11:16Etienne FontanAnd because it was the initiative, we were gathering signatures back then. They were like, come on in. Your activism also opens up doors to access that you would have never, ever had. I would get backstage passes and be able to hang out with artists. Not only that, the artists would then come out to our booth and talk to us and engage us. And then they liked us and were like, hey, why don't you come out on our tour as opposed to this big tour?

2:11:39Etienne FontanWe like what you guys are doing. So incremental change, you never know where it can lead you. And by taking those chances, what kindness will be offered because people appreciate you volunteering. They'll give you food. They'll give you drink. They'll give you weed. They'll get you high. They'll give you seeds. They'll do all kinds of amazing things. But it takes you doing the action. It doesn't just come to you.

2:12:02Etienne FontanYou have to go to it.

2:12:03BubblemanAnd it doesn't have to be on like this massive level. Like I can promise you, like you start in your neighborhood. I do it just a little bit here and there. I offer the elderly people in my neighborhood, sometimes single moms, to help them with their gardening. To help them with overgrown ivy and blackberry brambles. And I go in there and I get bloody and I pull these things.

2:12:25BubblemanWell, when I do that, it opens me up to discussions and conversations. And let me tell you, every single person I've done it with, I've had the conversation of cannabis with mainly because they're all elderly people and I know just how much they would love. I tell elderly people all the time, holy shit, you are not going to believe how excited you are about this plant when you learn how to use it properly.

2:12:48BubblemanAnd sometimes those conversations, if I just stop those people on the street, it would be very much like this. But once I go in there and I offer my time and I offer to be in service of them, to be of service to them and help them by cleaning their roof or their backyard or whatever it is, I open this opportunity where the gates open a little bit and allow me to get in and have a real conversation.

2:13:12BubblemanAnd, you know, that's just something I've been doing on my own level. So, you know, we don't, we can't all be Etienne's and Michael's and go to the UN. And God damn, it's amazing that he's doing that. And for the people in chat who said, I want to take a master class from Etienne and Michael, well, they give them every time they open their mouth on Hash Church.

2:13:31BubblemanThey're telling you exactly what you need to do, exactly how you need to go about it. And if that's, you know, overwhelming and you don't, You know, on that level, you can start at an even smaller level than your state level. You can start with your community. Talk to the people who are in your community, for God's sake. See how they feel about it and think about it.

2:13:49BubblemanAnd if, you know, maybe they're a little, you know, propaganda eyes in the mind, you can help. Give them information and share information with them. And that's kind of what I've been doing. I've even offered recently my neighborhood to go down to town hall and maybe invite a couple of other peoples and just do a small hash church like dialogue for my community who they have questions.

2:14:12BubblemanThey don't know about cannabis. They don't know, you know, here in Canada. Yeah, okay, we can use cannabis. We have Health Canada that allows medical cannabis, but Health Canada has made a statement that they don't believe there's any medical value to cannabis. In the recreational world, we have strict limitations and rules that say you can't tell someone this is going to make them sleepy. You can't tell someone, oh, this is going to reduce your inflammation.

2:14:34BubblemanYou can't in any way, shape, or form talk about cannabis and how it might help your health. How you're feeling, in any aspect of medicine, the bud tenders are not allowed to mention anything like that. So we obviously still have our limitations. There's still lots to fight for here as there is around the world. I wouldn't accept anything as the be all end all. Like Farmer Tom said, you know, schedule three, it's gotta be better than schedule one.

2:15:04BubblemanThere's wins in it, so let's take them. And the losses? Or the assumptive losses, the assumptions that we're making that are the worst case scenarios. Maybe they happen, maybe they don't. If they do happen, are they going to be worse than full-blown prohibition, which we totally beat and struck down? No, they're not. Which means this is going to be an even easier fight if it doesn't go the way we want it to go.

2:15:32Etienne FontanStart with your smoking circles. It doesn't have to be large, but everybody's got a smoking circle, right? My curiosity started because my smoking circle used to say, oh, we're burning brain cells. Well, then one day I found out that, oh, you know what? We aren't burning brain cells. You know what I'm saying? Because it was just misinformation. And I brought that information just to my smoking circle.

2:15:54Etienne FontanAnd everyone was like, whoa, really? And I showed them the information. And then we all got educated. And then there we were, six of us, all a little better educated than we were before. So it doesn't have to start with big things. You know, just a little, a little less.

2:16:07BubblemanI also believed that at one point in time when I was 14, 15 years old that I was burning my brain cells while I was smoking herb. Even though deep down, I think subconsciously, I just couldn't possibly believe that. But I literally was like, oh, what if I get cancer? What if I'm like, Bring my brain cells and, you know, years later to be where we are today.

2:16:29BubblemanWho would have ever thought when you first smoked a spliff and the brainwashing that you had undergone, because I had certainly undergone all of it, It was just such a good thing that it cut through the brainwashing. It was like, no, this is, there's something else here. I would go out in minus 20 behind my dad's house in a metal shed and I would smoke my joints in the shed in minus 20 degrees.

2:16:58BubblemanAnd just like my stepbrother and stepsister were like, what the fuck is he doing out there? Like, what is he doing out there? Well, I'll tell you what I was doing out there. I was, I was re...

2:17:11BubblemanStarting my whole system. I was literally like between psychedelic mushrooms and cannabis. I was able to just reduce my belief systems down to, you know, an acceptable range where I could start building through education, through books and through, you know, well- Thank you so much for joining us.

2:17:49BubblemanThe straight propaganda of just what a negative it was. And so I'm sorry if I don't believe the media and I don't believe sometimes the doctors and some of the people who stood up for decades and fought against this plant. It certainly wasn't just the DEA.

2:18:08BubblemanAnd how wild it was when suddenly it became legal that people were just like, oh, it's legal now. Okay, yeah, you can have it. Yeah, it's just legal now. Yeah, yeah, I went and got some gummies. Like it was just the weirdest thing how powerful it is for these little shifts. Now, we're all hardcore, so maybe they don't shift as powerful for us, but I'll tell you, for the mainstream people who saw that the other day, That opened their minds.

2:18:36BubblemanI guarantee it. It's like, what? He just signed what? They don't even understand it exactly. But for the most part, what they think is cannabis is going to become more available. Cannabis is a medicine. That's what they just told the American populace for the first time ever. I've never heard them acknowledge that cannabis is a medicine. Maybe I'm wrong, but I've never heard it. That was the first time I ever, ever heard anyone say that cannabis is potentially a medicine.

2:19:03Etienne FontanBiden whiffed. Biden started it, but he whiffed. He did not come out strong or the show and tell. See, Trump does the dog and pony show very well. He had all the people in doctor's outfits. He had the VFW hat guy, the American Legion hat guy. But I got to say, the guy in the VFW hat, fuck you, you piece of shit. You had a fucking... Dry Triangle Tattoo, which is a fucking Nazi symbol.

2:19:27Etienne FontanSo fuck you. I don't know who you are, but if I ever see you in person, you're going to get a piece of my fucking mind. I ain't got no fucking love for Nazis, but he was standing there with his hand like this. You did not have that in the fucking military. They would have kicked you out for that bullshit. So I appreciated the dog and pony show, but fuck that guy.

2:19:45Collin PalmerYeah, well, fuck that guy. But I think, you know, Marcus, you touched on it. It's like, you know, some people, all they understand are rules. They don't really understand much else. And that made people understand that the rules are changing. You know, and that's a really awesome thing for the United States because it's so patchwork down here. We don't have... You know, you have whole swaths of states that are just highly illegal, you know.

2:20:17BubblemanWell, Dr. Mark, you do a lot of research and stuff. Do you feel that this will open you up to federal research? Where's he gone? Did Dr. Mark bounce?

2:20:28Etienne FontanHe stepped out of the frame.

2:20:30BubblemanThat's so funny. I wait for him to step out of the frame. What do you think there, Caleb? You got an answer for that?

2:20:35SpeakerYeah, I can speak to that a little bit. Chip earlier talked about how, you know, theoretically, this could open up more pools of funding at the federal level. And I know Dr. Mark has mentioned many times, like the website that any one of us could go to to see that, you know, that's already started to happen, even without this process of implementing Schedule 3 over the next several or few years.

2:21:00SpeakerAnd that when I apply for grants at my school, that, you know, there's a process where I talk with a pre-award specialist and they make sure that whatever I'm applying to do, the grant activities are okay with the school's lawyers, with their insurance, all that kind of stuff. And the issue with most cannabis research, the reason why I like haven't done any plant touching cannabis research is because the school is federally funded.

2:21:34SpeakerIt is a land grant institution and it gets money from the federal government. And. what that means is the plants that are touched need to be federally compliant and so what i've heard is you know this the issue is that it's scheduled and the issue is that like the experiments i'd love to do involve like taking cannabis that is readily available at a licensed dispensary but these are state licensed dispensaries and The products there, you know, would not, the school would not approve those to be used in a, whether it's state funded, federally funded thing.

2:22:12SpeakerAnd that is a, you know, to what Etienne was saying earlier about the federal versus the state and how the guidelines, you know, get passed down. That's really going to be where all this shakes out. And for the school and like, You know, the federal research issues are very much still there. And the ability to get the supply of cannabis that's worth researching, which, you know, is also another issue.

2:22:45BubblemanWell, I'll tell you, back in the day, I know Skunk Man Sam had DEA export licenses and the ability to do federal research. I don't think he had a problem with quality. I think if he could do it, someone else could do it for sure. So it seems like they're protecting their funding as everyone is always doing, right? That's what the school is doing. They don't want to step out of that federal funding and allow you to do any research that goes against schedule one.

2:23:10BubblemanSo maybe, maybe people like yourself and Dr. Mark will have a more, maybe it'll open up more to federal research of cannabis. I mean, that's a That's what we've wanted for a long time.

2:23:26SpeakerThey clearly said in the documentation and in the press release and conference at the White House that they were going to try to do two things, which should seem rather extraordinary here. One is to try to do real world cannabis research, which is what you're talking about. Uh, cannabis from the quote real world. Uh, and, and, uh, uh, the other is to make CBD products available to people.

2:23:50SpeakerAnd everybody has this mental picture that CBD products are going to be made available to patients. Uh, that's, they, they purposely put that in people's heads. The president sat down with true leaves leader and, uh, uh, American hair. What's the name of the other one? I always forget the, uh, Mountain Foundation or something. I forget the name. But anyway, he sat down with the leader of those two.

2:24:15SpeakerOne is, of course, a cannabis multistate operator. And then the other one was a nonprofit organization representing mostly elder issues relating to access to cannabis and cannabis products. And they're pushing very hard and want access to CBD products to be put through the system and somehow made available to people under Medicaid. Clearly, that's what they're thinking. And that's going to be a real hat trick to try to pull that off.

2:24:43SpeakerIt's going to be interesting. On the research side, it is interesting. You know, there's always a devil in the details and there's some rather mundane things that might actually be quite meaningful here. If you don't have to have a Schedule 1 license, but a Schedule 3 license to do your research is a lot less paperwork burdensome. You know, it's a lot less burdensome with the regulatory issues around how you handle the cannabis and stuff like that.

2:25:06SpeakerIt could actually lower your budget and even lower your manpower needs, you know, for doing the research. Those things actually, I think, are meaningful. But hey, Marcus, last time we met, I started out a rabbit hole. The basic question was, and I reacted quite strongly to it. I remember emotionally the idea that somehow the majority of the reason why CBD was descheduled was somewhat negative. Thank you for joining us.

2:25:50SpeakerOf where we're at right now in the United States, this is why it's so complicated, right? You got three different things that are overlapping each other. You got the Controlled Substances Act and the Department of Justice, the FBI, DEA, all the lettered agencies, the cops, the police, the state cops, the drug squads, all of them. They're all under the CSA. The CSA isn't getting changed here. The CSA isn't on the table to be changed here.

2:26:14SpeakerNone of that process is being changed here. Then you have the FDA and NIDA. FDA does approval of drugs, new drug applications. They come after your ass if you make medical claims without appropriate research and FDA approval. They will definitely come down hard on you if you're outwardly selling a dangerous product. That's their purview. NIDA, they control all the marijuana research. It has to go all through them.

2:26:38SpeakerAny of the studies that we do go through them. Again, none of those processes are being really effectively changed by the rescheduling, except for NIDA with the study of cannabis. And that's really fascinating to me because The way it is right now, we haven't done the deep dive on this, so I don't want to speak on it, but we're now under something that Kevin Sabet helped author and put through really under the nose of the cannabis movement.

2:27:08SpeakerIt's called the Marijuana Research Act. And that Marijuana Research Act takes prevailing wind over any rescheduling on cannabis with regard to how we handle cannabis studies in the future after Schedule 3. It's not really dictated by so much change from 1 to 3. We already got around that. By taking a compromise with the enemy. I'll leave you to go into the rabbit hole of what that means.

2:27:32SpeakerBut as far as the state laws, that's the third piece. So you got the CSA and the cops, you got the FDA and NIDA, and then you got the state laws. And the state laws are separate. They're completely separate. And they're the reason why we have what we have now is because of the state laws. There's two things that went into the FDA changing its position. When Biden went to the FDA and said, look into this, he said, take into consideration what the states are doing, how the states have done this.

2:28:01SpeakerThey've never had that mandate before. Carlson out there probably cheering because I'm saying this, but that's a big thing to take on the actual, you know, they're looking at whether it under law has accepted medical use. When there's tens of thousands of doctors in various states that have been already prescribing it or recommending it in 1996 already, 1997, 1998. And that experience, the FDA reviewed, I think they went to six states.

2:28:30SpeakerI think they talked to 30,000 doctors. And I think that extended out to 6 million patient cases that they reviewed to make their recommendation. And the other thing that changed was the treaty. And the treaty was written in a way. Tell me Insuliner didn't try to fuck with us because the treaty was written with schedule one, two, three, four, with four being the worst. Our laws in USA were one, two, three, four, five, with one being the worst, completely reversed.

2:28:55SpeakerYou know, just upside down, backwards shit just to confuse us and I think really effectively prevent us from 19, you know, So, in 1961, when that treaty was passed till now, the cannabis movement has had almost no engagement and very, very little impact on that treaty process that is in 190 countries laws, including the US and Canada, woven in there in various ways. And that's the thing, right?

2:29:20SpeakerSo, there's another thing that's overlaying all of this. And this is what I think is really confounding the activists out there. And that's what is versus what it could be and then versus what it should be. And when I say what it should be, the US has been in violation of that treaty since 1971 when we passed our initial law. We put cannabis on schedule one temporarily.

2:29:41SpeakerWe then reviewed it and then we didn't pass, we didn't put the recommendations of the review into into force. The normal organization, the national organization, I think at that time was called the Repeal of Marijuana Laws and later the Reform of Marijuana Laws. They came in in 1971 to sue them. We've been suing them ever since to reschedule cannabis. And they've always used the treaty against us effectively because the treaty, Schedule 4, really did support Schedule 1, at least in the minds of our court system in the United States.

2:30:12SpeakerBut Schedule 1 in the United States Bars the thought of cannabis being a medicine. Schedule 1 says that cannabis is not a medicine. It's a matter of law. And that's in violation of both the spirit and the letter of the treaty. It never should have... If that was ever enforced, we'd be in a very different world than where we are right now.

2:30:32BubblemanIt goes against the U.S. pass as well.

2:30:37BubblemanRight?

2:30:38SpeakerWhat's that?

2:30:39BubblemanIt goes against the U.S. patents that the U.S. government has on on everything.

2:30:44SpeakerEverything is everything is a paradox. So, you know, the FDA has extraordinary powers under Schedule one that they've just never used. And people were like envisioning them using them under Schedule three. And it's awe inspiring and scary, but it's not new. And I think that, you know, the protections of the state, you know, the Constitution of the United States gives state authority under the Constitution that we've actually used to get medical cannabis.

2:31:12SpeakerAdult rec went in under the radar of medical cannabis, but medical cannabis is fully protected constitutionally in some states double. Colorado and Florida have a constitutional right at the state level to use cannabis, then protected under the U.S. Constitution against the threat of intervention from the federal government. That's been our shield. And right now, you know, we're coming out from under that shield and we're going, what's going to happen next?

2:31:41SpeakerAnd I'll tell you, I've assessed this and I could cut to the end, I think, you know, of the entire thought process and say just this. I don't think your fear should be pointed at the federal government inside the United States. I think your fear is well placed pointing at your state agencies, how they react to Schedule 3. What they do to change their state laws under Schedule 3.

2:32:03SpeakerWhat Schedule 3 looks like in your state because the schedule numbers in states look in some states slightly different than the schedule placements in the Controlled Substances Act. So that's where the devil, I think, is in the details. And again, it goes back to you guys talking about getting involved. Here's a place to get involved. In your state, start reading your state law. Look at your controlling drug schedules in your state and read Schedule 3.

2:32:26SpeakerMake an assessment. Start thinking about it. And get into the fray because that's what's coming up next.

2:32:35Etienne FontanSo Dr. Sheldon, while you're away, we were kind of wanting to ask you, do you feel it's going to be easier for you to do research now with this type of situation ongoing?

2:32:47SpeakerI don't know. I think it really depends on how the law works. Shakes out. It seems like this is kind of like what I predicted because the carve out for full spectrum medicine Is something that, again, isn't something that the FDA has a current stance on or a process to figure out. So, I don't know. I think that, like, you guys were talking about the NIDA farm down in University of Mississippi.

2:33:22SpeakerYou know, now there's five other sites that are growing for the, not just NIDA. I mean, when you look now, the... Labs that are looking at, you know, all different kinds of beneficial aspects of cannabis have also gotten Schedule I licenses. I'm thinking of people like Neil Garg at University of California, Los Angeles. You know, there's like, there's state... There's state program that that's the real question.

2:33:59SpeakerI think Mike was talking about it earlier, which is that what we don't know is that how is this going to harmonize with the state programs? I was kind of saying it earlier, you know, like what the Cole memo said is that if you're operating. Within a state program that's legal, they can't use federal dollars to go after you. Well, to answer your question, ATN, like about research dollars is like a lot of the research dollars, which are federal research dollars, come from the federal government but have Again, to abide by the laws of the states where those dollars are spent.

2:34:47SpeakerYou know, like, I think about like Sue Sisley's study, for example. Sue Sisley is probably the most well-known. She was wanting to study PTSD, but wanting to use what the local veterans were buying, which was stuff at the dispensary and not stuff from NIDA. And then what she found from NIDA is that the Mississippi swag farm down there was growing moldy weed, right? So... The Mississippi Swag Farm.

2:35:17SpeakerThe Mississippi Swag Farm, right? But isn't it true? I mean, again, like, I think this lowers... ATN, tell me if I'm wrong. And Michael, tell me if I'm wrong. This lowers the risk for getting cannabis to veterans without jeopardizing them losing their VA benefits, right? Moving the schedule. Okay, you're shaking your head.

2:35:45Etienne FontanSo that's Directive 1315. That's what Michael helped create that back in the aughts, which is the actual law in the VA that states you cannot lose your benefits or discussing medical cannabis with your doctor. So that is Michael takes credit for that. We give credit to Michael because he did that change, which is why I have my benefits from the VA now.

2:36:08BubblemanThat's a big one.

2:36:32SpeakerThank you so much for joining us.

2:36:56SpeakerSchedule three, obviously. Okay, so that's, there we go. Perfect. Schedule three. But I think that the thing I would caution is that this doesn't result in complete de-scheduling, which is, which would really kick research up quite a bit, right?

2:37:16BubblemanBut how much does it kick it up from schedule one to three? Like just a tiny little bit or quite a bit?

2:37:22SpeakerNo, quite a bit. I would think so.

2:37:25BubblemanI would think it has to be kicking it up in a big way. I would have to think as a researcher, you've got to be stoked even if you're not doing that type of research for all the money that's going to come in and all the good research that's going to be potentially done. I would hope. I hope so too.

2:37:42SpeakerGo ahead, Russ. Caleb was saying, just real quick. From a university standpoint, there's a ton of opportunity for those interested in applying for DEA licenses now to start small businesses that are supplying plants to universities. That model now sort of exists. It becomes more of a reality. It's very feasible in this new scheduling that's coming. So let me answer the second part of that question on the veterans.

2:38:14SpeakerThere is a very tangible result for the veterans. The fight that we got in, like Etienne said, before 2010 when that policy was put into play revolved around a question that came about from Prop 215. So 1996, medical cannabis comes out, and there was all these questions that sort of circulated through the VA, and they were trying to answer them. And they went to the VA, went to the DEA in somewhere around 97 or something like that, 98, and asked the DEA their position.

2:38:49SpeakerAnd at that time, if you remember, the United States federal government was literally trying to shut down medical marijuana. Our good friend, Dr. Mick Greer, that he was talking about, was being... It pummeled on TV by the drug czar calling him Cheech and Chong medicine, practicing Cheech and Chong medicine. He was going to shut them down. And there's a famous court case, the Conant versus McCaffrey, later Conant, I mean, Conant versus Walters.

2:39:14SpeakerWe won that one. Conan got a ruling in the Ninth Circuit that said the federal government couldn't attack them for writing a recommendation, not a prescription,

2:39:32SpeakerBecause that was free speech. And that that was a superior, unbelievably big win. The federal government tried to appeal that the US Supreme Court, Supreme Court then declined to hear the case. Therefore, it was only the law on the Ninth Circuit, you know, the West Coast. But it's a very, very strong and compelling argument that certainly should be taught to people. Well, the DEA never went back to the VA.

2:39:53SpeakerThe DEA told the VA that If your doctors recommend cannabis, we're going to jail them for aiding and vetting access to marijuana, just like we're going to do the doctors out in California. Well, they failed with the doctors in California, but that memo really never got back to the doctors inside the VA. And to this day, to this day, they're afraid if they write a recommendation that they're going to go to jail because it's Schedule I drug.

2:40:17SpeakerThey're not allowed some medical, you know, the prohibition to write anything, any paperwork. The VA clarified from what the DEA told them That even to fill out the forms for a veteran to participate in a state program would be a violation of the policy, coming straight from the DEA who had threatened to prosecute them. And they've made it very clear under Schedule 3 they won't feel that prohibition.

2:40:39SpeakerSchedule 3, the doctors inside the VA should feel very comfortable recommending cannabis to their veteran, knowing that that piece of paper would then go to a state program and be used for eligibility to access cannabis under a state program.

2:40:53BubblemanI see how you guys can be

2:41:11BubblemanHoly shit, like cannabis has just been illegal for so long. I just want you guys to legalize it, make it available. It would be great if we could go over each other's borders with our cannabis. That would be super awesome. I think it would be great. Go ahead.

2:41:28Etienne FontanPush home grows, people. That's the big thing that we're working on in your states and in areas and everywhere around the world. You know, Germany got it. Others is pushing for home grows. If your state doesn't have it, you know, it's the most important thing. Cannabis is expensive, you know, and it's easy. It's semi easy to grow. You know, it has its own challenges, but, you know, everybody should have the right to produce their own cannabis, period.

2:41:53Etienne FontanEnd of story. So if you're looking... If you're looking for, that's where we're flying the flag internationally and locally. Have the ability and the freedom to grow. That's it. They have that in South Africa. And, you know, this is, it matters. It really, really matters. So that's one talking point that you can use and go towards and push because, you know, it's something everybody can do, you know.

2:42:21BubblemanNo one can really, well, I mean, unless you sell tents for a living, I guess. No one's going to think you have some hidden agenda to get people to home grow. I will say that I've had a license to grow over 100 plants and I barely grow any every year. It's so much work for me to get the plant to express it the way I want it to express it.

2:42:44BubblemanThat, I mean, I try every year. Last year I had four plants out and a couple of them got kind of, I tend to take care of all my other hundreds of plants that are on my property that are non-cannabis plants. And I'm sure if I put the time and energy, like when I go to Remo's and he's got the plants in like a five to seven gallon bucket and they're like, Eight feet tall and look like they have three pounds on them.

2:43:06BubblemanI'm just like, what the fuck is this? Like he is an exceptional grower. I'm not saying that I'm a terrible grower. I'm just saying that it is a lot of work for people, especially if they have arthritis or any sort of like thing that's going to affect labor. Did you have something to say there, Caleb? Or were you just saying we got arthritis?

2:43:27SpeakerIt's just saying bye to Dr. Mark.

2:43:29BubblemanOh, saying bye to Dr. Mark. Okay. I didn't see that he was leaving. Sorry, Dr. Mark, I was blabbing on. Thanks for coming on and sharing your perspective with us.

2:43:39Etienne FontanWe were talking in the chat about how the University of Mississippi has lost its license in the sense they decided to, NIDA didn't renew their five-year contract. So in a couple of years, the University of Mississippi's crappy marijuana will finally be gone. And somebody said, well, hey, we should get access to their genetics. And one of the things we learned last year at Geneva from one of the guys there is that the DEA actually came down to the University of Mississippi in 09.

2:44:07Etienne FontanAnd made them burn their archives. They literally took the cannabis archives that they had and burned them. Destroyed the historical cannabis that they had since the 60s and 70s in 09. So all they would have from 09 onward, just so you know.

2:44:25SpeakerI think for pre-09 stuff, they have like a display case that, you know, they were allowed to keep. And so there's like some stuff that could be testable, but it's, you know, a whisper compared to what DEA forced them to destroy when we're talking about like the genomics research that could be possible with what they had.

2:44:45Etienne FontanGood to know. I wasn't aware they saved that one particular thing. But yeah, I mean, because if there's genetics there, there's DNA, then you could, you know, right?

2:44:54SpeakerOne day. You want to hear an inside story on Night of Weed?

2:44:58BubblemanAbsolutely.

2:44:59SpeakerAlways. All right. So I got to start at the beginning. The beginning starts with a guy named Gabriel Nahas, a drug warrior in the 70s, died a few years back. Like the arch, you know, you think Kevin Savette's bad. He's, you know, Gabriel Nahas, Professor Nahas was like 100,000 times worse.

2:45:20BubblemanHe was killing monkeys and rabbits.

2:45:23SpeakerYeah, yeah, the Reese's Monkey Study. Yeah, yeah, that was him. Yeah, yeah. Student of history, my man. Oh, I know who he is. So he was very pissed off because the National Academies of Science Institute of Medicine in 1999 convened a huge panel on medical cannabis and didn't invite him. So he did his sort of retaliation to University of New York University, of which he was a tenured professor and on their, you know, whatever is prestiged boards and stuff.

2:45:54SpeakerHe did a meeting over there and he brought in, I would say, a better crew. I mean, I got to say he brought in Dr. Mishula. He brought in, you know, Dr. Morgan from Normal. He brought in some beautiful people. And it was a really beautiful thing. And I was there as an activist. Chuck Thomas was there. I mean, I was there as a patient. Chuck Thomas was there as an activist.

2:46:15SpeakerWe were a two-patient team, a two-person team, you know, sort of for the movement on the inside of this thing. And I got to meet a couple of people. One person was Dr. Tashkin. And that relationship that day when I met him led to him coming into our side and being part of Patients at a Time meetings, a rather historical relationship that we have with Dr. Tashkin.

2:46:35SpeakerAgain, if you're a student of history. But then there was another conversation with the guy that ran the rowing machine. At the university down at Duke Triangle Research in North Carolina for the federal program. And I just found that fascinating. I pulled him aside and I was like, I had a conundrum, right? Dr. Musto, Musty, Dr. Musty was the head of the International Cannabinoid Research Society. They started out the International Cannabis Research Society.

2:47:02SpeakerAnd Dr. Musty told me about stories that he got cannabis from NIDA I mean, you know, from You Miss Farm. And he specifically told them just to send him the flowers and tops. And he got flowers and tops and he did stuff with it. And he reported instances where the patients reported anxiety attacks and stuff from the cannabis. I was like, that doesn't sound like, you know, weak weed.

2:47:24SpeakerYou know, this sounds like the bomb. I want to try some of the stuff the way he was, you know, reporting the weed. Not that you should have anxiety attacks, but that's really strong weed if you never... I've experienced that. But anyway, yeah, I was asking him, like, why are these joints that, you know, Rob Randall gets so horrible? Why is this? Why can't you just send him the flowers and tops?

2:47:47SpeakerAnd he said, well, it was the court case. It was actually Bob Randall wanted in court to get his lawyer asked for cigarettes. And believe it or not, this is the story, right? You miss goes to the government in a court case is literally the federal government. The United States goes to RG Reynolds, the only people they knew that rolled cigarettes. And they said, can you help us roll cigarettes?

2:48:08SpeakerAnd RG Reynolds gives them an old cigarette machine to roll the cigarettes with. But it kept gumming up the machine with the pot because it was so sticky and stuff. And then they came up with an idea. What they do is they desiccated it. And then they could, you know, sort of beat it to death, take the flowery mix, the leafy mix that was left, and that worked really well in the rolling machine.

2:48:32SpeakerAnd then they just rehydrate it again, roll it, and then put it in a tin, dehydrate it again, and put it on a shelf, wait about 10 years, and give it to Irv Rosenfeld. That's the story of, I swear to God, actual story of a joint of, roll of joints, a tin of joints in Irv Rosenfeld's possession. There's some seeds mixed in there, you know, from that process.

2:48:53SpeakerThe keef, I always imagined somewhere there was a 55 gallon drum filled with keef. That was just beater barred out from the process. But the moral of the story, and I just think it's worth correcting history, they have good or had good weed there. Top notch, some of the best weed in the world. They were growing weed. The DEA would send them seeds that they would arrest someone and they want to know if those were viable, you know, high potency cannabis producing seeds and they would grow them down there and that kind of stuff.

2:49:20SpeakerThey were sort of in the food chain of our drug war for a long time with this little side job of rolling some joints for a handful of patients in a court ordered settlement.

2:49:30BubblemanI just went down the rabbit hole of Gabriel Nahas. I didn't really know That he was born in Egypt to a French mother and a Lebanese father, that he grew up in France, that he went to the University of Toulouse in 1944 and was active in the French resistance during World War II, helping allied personnel escape Nazis. He received honors, the Legion d'Honneur and the U.S. Medal of Freedom.

2:50:00SpeakerYou're going to love this. What the fuck? Remember I said he was the activist and I was the patient? Yeah. We were also like the good guy, bad guy, good cop, bad cop. And I was the good cop. And I was given a task. Lenis Wirth told me to go up to Dr. Nehas, which I did. I pulled him aside during this meeting. And my instructions were to thank him for his service.

2:50:26SpeakerAnd, you know, and thank him for his honorable service and not giving out to the enemy, you know, and never because I think he was actually subject to torture. He didn't give up his compatriots. I mean, serious, serious respect for his war, you know, war experience. Um service and and it was really beautiful he like hugged me it was like seeing him yell because he was at some point during the meeting chuck thomas every single time that he could during the actual meeting i was talking to nahas out during the coffee break chuck was like in his face during the meeting How come you don't have any patients on the stage?

2:51:08SpeakerWhy are you telling patients they have to go to prison? And at one point, Nahas kind of lost it. And he's like, don't blame me. The government of the United States should have come up with a safe marijuana cigarette long ago. Don't blame me. It was like really funny him going back and forth.

2:51:24BubblemanIt's crazy that you met him, dude. Yeah. That is wild. I didn't know anything. I didn't know that about him. Go ahead and answer it.

2:51:33Etienne FontanWell, he was, he's the shoulder that, that, that Sabet stands on. Okay. You know, he was given every accolade, but of course he did some of the most heinous, cruel things to, you know, maintain prohibition. So he's one of those rare figures. That's a double-edged sword in that sense. Right. You know what? He's absolutely commendable for what he did during, you know, the revolution. You know, I found out my last name is Fontaine and I had found another Etienne Fontaine.

2:52:01Etienne FontanHe lives in France. And he told me that my namesake were printmakers during World War II. And so they would actually print the papers so you could escape if you were Jewish or if you were trying to escape. You know, they were actually the ones that would Thank you for joining us.

2:52:39SpeakerListen, listen, universe will provide both punishment and reward. And in this case, I would say that he got punishment. You know, his his first book, his very first paper was titled To Prove the Harms of Marijuana. I mean, he just he came into this with a bias that was absolute. He actually talked at some points about how cannabis has brought down every civilization, you know, every civilized nation.

2:53:08SpeakerI mean, that kind of talk would come out of his mouth. And this is the thing he was looking he was working in the 70s. Looking at the very same systems that Dr. Mishulam was looking at, but Dr. Mishulam was looking at it with an open mind. Dr. Mishulam didn't have a bias. I don't know that Dr. Mishulam ever had a bias. We loved him because he was our sort of patron saint, but he wasn't a weed guy.

2:53:29SpeakerHe didn't smoke weed out behind the high school.

2:53:32BubblemanYou didn't do dabs with Mishulam at the ICRS?

2:53:36SpeakerNo, never. Me neither. He was kind of a really straight-laced guy that I got to know, the Dr. Michelin that I got to know. But anyway, this is the thing, right?

2:53:49SpeakerWell, what was the thing? Man, my brain just doesn't want to lock on anything anymore, my fucking God. It's cannabis. It's rotting your brain. I tell you, man, I'm a little bit overwhelmed. I'm dealing with some heavy, heavy, heavy shit here. Personal world is tough sometimes. Family with cancer and neighbors with cancer. I don't know. I don't think I'm in a cancer cluster here, but... I almost feel like I'm in one these days.

2:54:16SpeakerBut anyway, yeah, Nahas. All right. So Nahas was looking at the very same things that fucking Mishulam was looking at. But he was looking at it with a closed mind. So he didn't he he came up with, you know, things like, oh, it's affecting the the what was it? The. Thank you for joining us.

2:54:56SpeakerYou know, the team that discovered THC and that kind of accolades. Think about the accolades. And, you know, there's been talk of Nobel prizes for, you know, Dr. Mishulam in his honor post, you know, and I just think Dr. Nahas is forgotten. I mean, if you're a real student of history, you know his name. But otherwise, he's just a footnote of history. And he got that in his face, man.

2:55:19SpeakerWhat I just story I just told you, the Institute of Medicine didn't even call him. They convened this panel on medical marijuana. At one point in the 70s in the Eastland hearing, he was the top guy for the world talking about medical cannabis. And now he wasn't even invited. That's what happens to you when you don't have an open mind and you take the, you know, don't follow the evidence.

2:55:42SpeakerAnd have a, I don't know, some sort of bias that's black, I guess. You decide for that one. Where do you get that black bias? I guess it's a racism, maybe. It's some sort of defect in the human condition that manifests itself in Canada's space. I'll leave that to you philosophers and scientists and doctors.

2:56:04Etienne FontanYeah, he wasn't at the, when we testified for the Institute of Medicine back in 99, he wasn't there or invited either.

2:56:14Etienne FontanWhich is rather interesting.

2:56:16BubblemanThat's insane. How are you not going to invite him?

2:56:21Etienne FontanRight. The godfather of your prohibition, right? Literally, you know, he fed that.

2:56:26SpeakerYeah, that was his punishment. I mean, he was a professor, emeritus professor at New York University that centered on cannabis entire career. And he went out in a whisper that the cannabis space didn't even, you know, feel a leaf move.

2:56:43SpeakerThat's bonkers.

2:56:46BubblemanWell, we respect Mishulam. We recognize what he did and it won't be forgotten. And who knows? All of the new people that are going to come along and do science and research and figure out things that maybe we know about this plant, but will be like a easier way to prove it to those, you know, that are arguing otherwise. Because I do see the, I definitely see since all of this started happening, the pickup of like anti-cannabis propaganda is picking up again.

2:57:19BubblemanI see it with psychedelic mushrooms as well, brain tumors and fucking scrommeting for cannabis and like they're picking up.

2:57:27Etienne FontanIt's a concerted effort. Remember, we have spies in our circle, right? We call them spooks. So the spooks know what they and what they do is they do exactly that. They're given an agenda and then they center around putting that propaganda out. So we know there's a concerted propaganda push by the United States, by the intelligence communities. uh within the past month you've seen just all of a sudden from all the positives you know news articles all of a sudden boom scrommeting reappeared all the negatives this that way and the other everything kevin sebette was published you know all of a sudden everywhere so you know it's definitely out there but which was i guess used to support the hemp bill but you Now has taken an interesting twist, you know, as you saw initially, he's like, I'm not happy.

2:58:16Etienne FontanBut we know that behind the scenes, you know, Kev Boyd is very happy because his alignment with Jazz Pharmaceutical lines his pockets. And I would not be surprised if we see a side event once again at the UN in March, which is going to be the 9th through 13th in Vienna, that he has another side event with Jazz Pharmaceutical, probably talking specifically about Schedule 3.

2:58:40Collin PalmerIt's crazy, ATN, you brought that up because I did something for New York State where I was giving classes on how to enter the market, right? And there was a guy that came on and he was asking me about tax dollars and how the state spends it for campaigns. And he admitted that he made campaigns that were showcasing the adverse effects of cannabis. It was the most bizarre thing I've ever heard.

2:59:07Collin PalmerExperienced my life and the guy was asking legitimate questions on how he could get funding to make these commercial spots. Like it was in that moment, I just started realizing like, oh my gosh, like there's people out there like you just explained, ATN, that are, that's their whole career. Like they are trying to push the other side of the narrative. And it was just really fascinating because I think you're right.

2:59:31Collin PalmerThere are, you have to be really careful. You know, there's going to be people that are going to challenge all of this at all times. And use the funding against us. It's like crazy. I was like, what?

2:59:46Etienne FontanThere's millions of dollars available from NIDA. Right? And currently, you know, he's cornering, I mean, Sabet's been cornering the market, so there's going to be others. I've seen other names recently pop up in articles in the recent propaganda that's popping up, at least through the U.S. media. So, you know, we just keep an eye on those names and follow, you know, keep an eye on them. You know, this is where we kind of do our little intelligence, right?

3:00:11Etienne FontanWe keep dossiers on these people, which we, you know, anything that pops up, we keep an eye because we know that there are, you know, spies infiltrate via media and we'll try to also infiltrate, right? We always believe that Cointelpro really never went away. You know, I had a thing in my office that it's now in my room at the house that says this place is bugged, right?

3:00:35Etienne FontanTreat it accordingly, you know what I'm saying?

3:00:36BubblemanNow we just record everything we say and fucking film it and blast it out to the internet. Hey, do you have a dossier on me by the way?

3:00:44Collin PalmerThey know, they know about us.

3:00:45BubblemanDo you have a bubble man dossier? Is that what's going on over there?

3:00:48Archive SeedsWe're not, we're harmless.

3:00:50BubblemanI'm just the devil's advocate. I swear I'm on this, I'm on the right side.

3:00:54Archive SeedsWell, it's just it's just the second recording they have.

3:00:57SpeakerHey, I can't. I've tried. I've known Kevin since he was, you know, a student writing as a student at, you know, sort of an outlier at Berkeley, a pro drug war student. And he got picked up by the drugs are from there. You know, that's where he comes from. And I, for the life of me, I don't know what his strategy really is. I, if I were to guess, he thinks that this is just an incremental battle, you know, field that you just keep persevering.

3:01:29SpeakerAnd just like we incrementally fought, you know, we started, our movement started in 1971 with the very first initiative. 13 initiatives later, we won one with Prop 215 that propagated across the country. And then from that, we rallied and went to legalization. And he's stopping us here. He can see it stopping like he's putting the brakes on all that. And he's got two or three initiatives now in the United States where he's going to be rolling back, you know, legalization.

3:01:55SpeakerAnd if these don't win, certainly the next one will. And he'll have the same trend line backwards that we had forwards. And You know, he's like Nahas. He's just like Nahas. He doesn't realize that one of his premises is wrong, that he didn't have an open mind, that he wasn't really paying attention. The thing that's at the basis of all this is you can't unlearn something. When you find out that you have a cannabinoid receptor system in your body and it's responding to this cannabis plant, that leads you down a path that you can't unlearn.

3:02:23SpeakerYou can't come back from that and then, you know, sort of unlearn it.

3:02:26BubblemanUnless you've been bamboozled. What did Carl Sagan say about being bamboozled?

3:02:31SpeakerI don't know.

3:02:33BubblemanBut you know, it's literally impossible. Once someone bamboozles themselves, once someone goes down the brain, sometimes it's just impossible for them to learn new things. They just refuse out of their own. Like they want to just continue their narrative. They want to protect their narrative. And they do it at any cost, particularly cognitive dissonance and full blown psychotic delusions.

3:03:02TomHow do we activate the youth out there? How do we activate the next generation of advocates out there? Because it's really discouraging to me. They think the war's over. They can buy weed down the street. You know, they did the schedule three, but now we really need to be educating The state legislators and the town councils are wherever we can have our voice. Education and utilizing the media to get our message out there.

3:03:33TomNow that this kind of wall or semi-wall of schedule three hits, it's time we need to really attack this and get on this quick so our voices can be heard. And I really want to figure out a way that we can activate the youth and the next generation because we're not getting any younger. That's for sure.

3:03:54Archive SeedsI think the main thing that activated the youth, at least in, you know, our era, you know, let's call it the early 2000s. And that was probably the last era where it was kind of People were still respecting that history was that there, just like everything, there was a financial incentive. There was a business to be built for young individuals. You're 18, 19, 20 years old, interested in cannabis, you can build a business for yourself potentially.

3:04:23Archive SeedsAnd that's all but gone away for the most part. With the overproduction that's occurred, there's really no upward momentum. Mobility within the cannabis industry at this point and we've monopolized the production because of legislation that allows massive overproduction

3:04:45Archive SeedsAnd so what we really need is a collapse in the industry, which is occurring. But what we really need is all these big grows to realize that they can't sell all that weed that they're growing profitably. And then that'll actually, once all that supply kind of dries up, if this were to happen, Then you'd see a reemergence of small businesses where young people are interested in building their business and being involved in the scene.

3:05:16Archive SeedsWithout that incentive, it's just hobbyists, essentially. You know, people that enjoy cannabis, but they're not motivated or incentivized with anything. And as we know with government policy and everything, You want to see, if you want to know why something is the way it is, look at the incentives that are in place. That's why we need to hold on to home grow with a death grip.

3:05:42TomI mean, everybody can get by that, even the youngsters out there, because growing is addictive. Once you get your hands in the dirt and, you know, when I get home from a trip, I don't hug and kiss my wife. I go see my plants like right away. What happened? What's their status? She knows it. She totally accepted. Like 30 years with me, she's as happy to see me.

3:06:08TomBut everybody goes directly to their plants, checks their plants out. Is there bugs? Like what happened in the week that I was gone, right? So if we can get everybody really excited about home grow again, educating about home grow, really pushing the, The envelope on holding on to home grow with the death grip. I think we stand a chance. You know, it's all about education. If you have the chance to use the media, it's been highly effective for me over the years.

3:06:33TomJump on it. Never turn down an interview. Get your word out there. You know, don't be afraid what side of the political spectrum is on. Get out there and, you know, let your voice be heard because it really makes a difference.

3:06:46SpeakerYeah, it definitely does. You know, with the young people, it's really, to me, that's a subject close to my heart. And I'm concerned. I mean, there's sort of a split screen, right? On one side, there's, like I talked about cannabinoid, you know, the unlearning the cannabinoid receptor system. I don't think there is a single university program that's working on neurological medical issues that isn't covering the cannabinoid receptor system, that isn't part of their curriculum.

3:07:18SpeakerAnd the same thing goes for agriculture. Cannabis is there. There's a whole cannabis program here at University of Roanoke College just down the road from here. There are numerous degree paths for legal professionals to go into the cannabis space that are very lucrative. And there's lots of models for them to follow. I'm going to be attending a meeting on Monday with two big heads of big law firms in the USA that have been very spot on with their assessment of rescheduling in this moray of Thank you.

3:07:54SpeakerThank you. Thank you.

3:08:21SpeakerDoing things that shouldn't be emulated or copied at home. And I don't know, man. I wonder about the young people like Turning Point USA with, you know, Charlie Kirk. They're very, very big and very small schools, high school level and stuff like that. That bothers me. It worries me that there's, you know, sort of fertile ground for cannabis insanity.

3:08:45BubblemanWell, I will say this about growing cannabis. It is definitely the gateway plant. That you end up growing a lot of other plants. You're like, hey, maybe I could grow some tomatoes. Maybe I could grow like, uh, I mean, just, it happened for me like that more. I mean, I grew cannabis for years and years and years. And now as much as I love it, I'm like, I'm more interested in growing all of these other hundreds of plants that I have on my property.

3:09:12BubblemanIt's super exciting. You do have a relationship with them. And, you know, if you ever read Rupert Sheldrake's morphogenetic resonance theory, He was the guy that did Trilogues at the Edge of the West with Ralph Abraham, the Fractal Mathematician, and Terrence McKenna. Also a great book, Dash. Listen, if you punch it into YouTube. But yeah, he was the one that kind of, he wrote books about like how a dog knows you're coming home before you're even like, And so now they're doing this with plants that when the person who cares for and waters their plants is on their way home, those plants start like letting off a frequency that they can record.

3:09:58BubblemanThat it knows that that person is coming, is in their morphogenetic resonance field. It's pretty cool shit. Definitely, you know, not your average everyday biology, but definitely worth going down the rabbit hole, Rupert Sheldrake. His son Merlin has a really good book on mushrooms as well that he just released not too long ago.

3:10:21TomWell, today's the solstice, right? The winter solstice. And I'm all about following the sun. And when you follow the sun and you grow vegetables and cannabis and, you know, you get in tune with the earth cycle. I know I'm getting a little, you know, out here wooey wooey, but, you know, you get in flow with what's happening. You know, our state and government institutions, their sessions all revolve around ranchers and farmers because that's when they had time.

3:10:52TomThey needed to get to the state council, the state council, I need to get to the federal capitals to get their wishes taken care of. So, you know, it's a balance in life. You know, when you're out here and the Internet's going crazy, politics is going crazy. Everybody needs to get their hands in the dirt and stay grounded and growing vegetables and cannabis does that. And I'm a big fan of, you know, following the sun and planting by the moon and You know, let's get in touch with the earth because the world's gone crazy and here's a place where, you know, we have a sanctuary and we can stay grounded and being grounded is still very important at this point.

3:11:36Collin PalmerYeah, the one thing I wanted to jump in on is what Fletch was saying with activism and how that, you know, ultimately trickles down to commerce and, you know, and what Michael said, you know, with education and And how we keep everybody engaged. You know, I think it's in two parts. It's sort of me perhaps invigorating through education What new avenues there are with plant science and cultivating and all the other things that surround post-processing and all the stuff that we need support on to create a better environment to actually do all the things we want to do from a agricultural perspective or a breeding perspective, because the things that have been traditionally going on do not work.

3:12:27Collin PalmerRight. And we do need to evolve and Sort of kind of take a hard look at all of it in a sense and I think if we could perhaps use education as the springboard for that it might be a good thing you know because we do need better Insight into how to do the things that we want to do, because these ideas that we have are grandiose, you know, like genetics is a big conversation.

3:12:54Collin PalmerScaling is really hard. Consistency is nearly impossible, you know, most of the time, you know, so and people depend on these things. We depend on these things, you know, so it's to your point, activism, I think is You know, in one part could mean a governmental facing thing, but perhaps there's something larger at stake here because, you know, in the early 2000s, I think all of us were like hell bent on

3:13:25Collin PalmerWe're just like, so, I mean, I was growing so many different types of plants at once. It was ridiculous. It was like, but I was scaling myself and growing more and more every year, especially specifically outdoors. And then I was attempting to get more warehouse space indoors. And it was just shorning almost this world that didn't exist, but I wanted it to, you know? So, and I think a lot of people did that, you know, so, and it carried into the industry that we have now, you know, like we, we took some of these methodologies, methodologies essentially, and, you know, sure, we're getting better, but, um, you know, if we could go back, Mike, to your point of like education and then encapsulate kind of what, you know, you were talking about Fletcher on like this deep passion for what we were after, you know, um, You know, maybe we have a chance at this thing because I know everyone's still passionate.

3:14:25Collin PalmerI talked to everybody about this, like everybody wants it, but just nobody knows how to get through it because it's so complex.

3:14:34Archive SeedsIt all boils down to money at the end of the day.

3:14:36Collin PalmerYeah, exactly. You're nailing it, brother.

3:14:40SpeakerActivism, when we basically split in a way, you know, created a cannabis industry at the sort of, I don't know what year you want to put on it, but it wasn't really that long ago. The cannabis activists disappeared and what took our place basically were paid lobbyists for, you know, firms and multi-state operators. Industry insiders, yeah. But the thing is that the activism It is very much still needed.

3:15:13SpeakerAnd before I start, you know, blaming some in our little space, I have to look at the bigger picture. Like in Vienna, we have an NGO committee that we're part of. I think there's 190 or 210, 220, somewhere around there. NGOs are actually part of this thing. It's a pretty big number of NGOs. They range in, you know, big like Human Rights Watch to tiny, you know, like Veterans Action Council.

3:15:38SpeakerRight. And The entire community is struggling for funding, universally. Everybody is struggling. People working on harm reduction, people working on human rights, people working on medicinal access, people working on drug policy reform, everybody struggling and not being able to fund what they're doing. So I just wondered if somehow we're in a different age and we have to do things in a different way is overlaying over sort of growing pains of the movement and their additive.

3:16:09Etienne FontanWell, it's a reason why they lost the lobbyists on Capitol Hill is because NCA and the other people could no longer, you know, afford to put people up on Capitol Hill. So when the bill happened, there was nobody to go up on the hill and do anything about it. This is why we're also telling y'all to plug in and get involved is because, you know, people think there's this whole school of lobbyists.

3:16:33Etienne FontanThere's only one. And he's a former elite guy. He's a retired police officer and he goes around with shirts, you know, ask me about heroin, you know, because he's trying to work on, you know, harm reduction. So he's carrying many different, you know, loads right now. But you can call your local senator representative and set up a meeting or a phone call and actually go down and engage with them.

3:16:56Etienne FontanYou can. That's your voice. You can. But, you know, majority of you won't. And this is what we're trying to encourage you. If you can't, then find those who will and support them. If you can't do it, then donate money to those people who will so that they can. But, you know, there's no lobbyists in California anymore. It's all down to individuals. The same thing at the national level.

3:17:19Etienne FontanTrust me, the alcohol lobby had a lot of people. I mean, the whiskey lobby itself in Kentucky just threw almost a million dollars just at, you know, Mitch McConnell to kill the hemp bill, which, oh, what an amazing thing happened. The next day he pulled all of that, you know, and that's why you've got this closed loop situation that's happening that the hemp people have to get together and organize by November.

3:17:43Etienne FontanAnd then we are kind of side-eyeing watching out of the corner of our view because we've watched the THC industry, the hemp industry squander their good favor as well as their good graces. You know, we would not be in this situation if they were all good actors testing their products, making sure they were ethical and good products out there. It's the bad actors that put us in that situation there.

3:18:10Etienne FontanIt's also...

3:18:11BubblemanThey just use those products as an excuse. I mean, they sell the most deadly poisons on earth. They kill the most amount of people, cigarettes and alcohol. How are you going to sugarcoat that? Even if cannabis burned a hole in your lung after five years of using it, it still wouldn't even compete with the deadliness of cigarettes and alcohol.

3:18:34Etienne FontanRight. And so follow that, follow the money. You know, that's, that's, that's where it is. It's on the Hill. They, they, the alcohol industry made sure, because remember they said, you've seen all these articles whipped out recently, the hemp industry's worth $28 billion. Well, that's a lot of money if that's really the case. And I guarantee you those alcohol companies realize that's no longer in their bank account.

3:18:56BubblemanThey know it because right now in mid 2025, Alcohol has hit a nearly 90 year low for consumption. Only 54% of adults consume alcohol. And that is a 90 year low and a 13 point drop just since 2022. You can't even fathom how much money that is that they've lost. Forget about a million dollars, a million dollars. They should have been laying down a billion dollars because they've lost a lot more than that.

3:19:29Etienne FontanOh, and especially what are the tariffs and the shenanigans that we did? I mean, one of our biggest suppliers we used to supply in the world was Canada. And y'all have effectively said what y'all are doing your activism very effectively, I must say, and saying, fuck your American alcohol. We got our own shit. You know, fuck Vegas. We can go to Mexico. And you know what? You're voting with your dollars.

3:19:50Etienne FontanAnd Mexico is very happy. And Las Vegas is very lonely.

3:19:54BubblemanYeah, but the poor Canadians are just the useful idiots. They don't realize how badly they're really being played. The activism isn't real. It's beyond smoke and mirrors. And it's really just virtue signaling. What we're really doing is we're slowly strangling and killing the country that is Canada. And the people that live here are unable to afford houses, groceries are through the roof. The cost of living in Canada Thank you for watching.

3:20:37BubblemanThat is the Canada that I unfortunately live in. I wish it wasn't so, but it is. It's a bummer. It's globalists. We got a lot of resources. I get it. I get that Canada has a value on the world stage in regards to our resources alone. And there's lots of big sort of powers that be that are bidding on that. And I think that's why the US is upset with Canada right now, at least government wise.

3:21:06BubblemanBut yeah, our prime minister, he ran like the Bank of England for his last job. You look at the stuff that this guy's doing, he's got all his money offshore. One of the things he's doing under the guise of environmentalism is, oh, don't let the tankers, the oil tankers go up and down the coast between Alaska and, you know, down past Canada. And so Canada doesn't do that.

3:21:32BubblemanWe don't gain any of that money, but all you guys included, all these other countries are moving tankers through that very same water while they So that's the kind of weird smoke and mirrors that's going on in the Canadian economy.

3:21:54BubblemanThank you for watching.

3:22:14BubblemanI always think of myself as like, I want to hang out in the middle of the bird with the same people and travel out to the tips and the extremes as like minimal as possible, particularly as I get older. Maybe I used to hang out there a lot more when I was younger. Now I'm just like, like, let's just kind of find agreeance and solutions because it's really easy to get to a point with people where it's just like, no.

3:22:38BubblemanNo, like you just you can't go like an inch further. And I think that is the most dangerous thing. I think discourse is good. Not, you know, belittling and calling each other names and getting it to a point where it like I know what it's like. I had a guy doing it to me today in the chat room and I had to break down and remove him from the chat room, even though now I feel bad about it.

3:23:00BubblemanBecause, yeah, you want to give people their voice. But there's also this strange thing of when you build Your own sort of audience that you don't necessarily want to have someone come in and take a shit on them.

3:23:14TomSo, so where's the big money? Where's the big money at this point? Like all of the ancillary equipment, people, these multi-state operators, these big in-state operators, how can they're not putting, and they never have really put their money into advocacy. You know, it's time they like crack open in their wallet, start paying some legitimate advocates out there to get out there and pound the pavement for them.

3:23:42TomBut all they're concerned about is money. And they really, they take advantage of all the work that all of us have done over the decades, right on our shoulders and virtually poop on us along the way. So, you know, this is their time to step up. They're fighting for their livelihoods and the billions of dollars that They've made, you know, it's time for them to really step up and now, you know, throw some money at it since it is such a large, you know, money making or money handling industry right now.

3:24:14BubblemanI always think grain is one of the biggest things and no one's talking about grain. I mean, Cargill did $154 billion at the end of May 31, 2025 for the fiscal year. That is a whole lot like grain is monster. You're talking about a $28 billion. Billion dollar hemp industry in the US, Cargill, 154 billion, and that's without hemp as a grain. These guys have to have their eyes on hemp as a grain and the value of hemp as grain.

3:24:49BubblemanThe importance of, you know, to me, the importance of essential amino acids and hemp seed oil and hemp seed being like promoted and the fact that it's not goes back to sort of a pharmaceutical like, oh, I guess they want people sick. You know, they want to manage people's illnesses, not help reduce them or, you know, remove them from existence, because truly people that are Endocannabinoid deficient are essential amino acid deficient.

3:25:17BubblemanAnd I would say a huge percentage of the population is essential amino acid deficient. And here's a plant that can grow this grain with this enormous amount of protein Thank you so much for joining us. We'll be right back.

3:25:55BubblemanThank you so much for joining us.

3:26:13BubblemanThere really isn't. Hemp grain is very similar to many other grains. They've got the dehauling process, which they've nailed down on a commercial level, and you can remove that embryo. Sure, the defatting process of like cold pressing is a little bit archaic, but I'm just personally blown away when a company like Manitoba Harvest sells for $419 million, you know, 10 years ago now.

3:26:37BubblemanThat grain didn't blow up bigger. I'm just surprised that Americans saw the value in CBD before they saw the value in grain.

3:26:48Etienne FontanAnd we tried back in the 90s. We were, you know, again, but back then you could only import pre-steamed cannabis.

3:26:54BubblemanDude, I was just going to say, well, we were selling steamed distilled seeds. I was with you, brother.

3:27:02Etienne FontanBack in when the 1937 Marijuana Tax Act happened, they actually said that if they passed the law, the birds would stop singing. Okay. And they were like, oh shit, we can't have the birds stop singing shit. So they allowed us to then bring in hemp seeds, right? Well, you know, it's, it's, I mean, as you saw, I mean, you, y'all became the leaders up there in Canada.

3:27:24Etienne FontanI mean, I still buy and use, you know, hemp seed oil to this day. I just had some just a few minutes ago, you know, and it's Manitoba hemp seed oil, because I don't know why Marcus is just, we never saw the value here in America. They saw the dollar signs in CBD and all of a sudden, as opposed to growing 300 to 400 seed per square meter, now they're growing one plant every six feet.

3:27:47BubblemanWell, you can't get- I think you guys would have made a thousand times more growing grain. Oh, we absolutely could have.

3:27:52Collin PalmerHere's an interesting thought though, like, because you're, all right, so this ideology that you're, this world, this construct that you're presenting really challenges like the whole world that like soy, corn- All these other industries rely on because these because then I started thinking about in the same moment, like you've you've whole companies that have formulators and formulations that require this oil and you're disrupting all that. So it goes down the line of it's such it's we're now disrupting whole constructs that Thank you so much for joining us today.

3:28:58Collin PalmerFor that not to happen seems preposterous and insane in and of itself, right?

3:29:04BubblemanDr. Allen just hit me up and he said, the next step is actually acknowledging of hemp and cannabis being a dietary imperative and a nutraceutical.

3:29:15Collin PalmerWell, that's, well, that's taking it to the next level.

3:29:18BubblemanWell, because they don't understand the connection of essential amino acids and endocannabinoids production in the human body.

3:29:25Etienne FontanYeah. Right. But you're also right, Marcus, because y'all created the market for hemp seeds, but consumers didn't buy it. Consumers like me did. Isn't it education though? Isn't that fair to say?

3:29:38Collin PalmerLike they just didn't know.

3:29:39Etienne FontanBut is it the, you know, the company. Well, it's sold in all of our grocery stores now.

3:29:43BubblemanIt's available everywhere. It is.

3:29:45Etienne FontanIt is. And even hemp seed milk. I mean, hemp milk is also available, but for some reason it hasn't. I think you created a market and the market is limited or the market has shown that it's limited. And I think Colin, exactly as you stated, there's just, um, uh, Not enough diversity or availability. It's the gatekeepers of the propaganda.

3:30:12BubblemanSo maybe if they finally acknowledge that cannabis has medicinal effects, maybe that'll change the way the majority of people look at it.

3:30:21Etienne FontanMilk has its own advertising campaigns, its own overseeing organizations, right? They've been doing advertisements, right? You see that with the milk on it? Well, there's no hemp industry doing that, educating people on hemp milk and hemp protein. That was us activists and Jack Carrere with those t-shirts, right? You know, it has more digestible protein than soybean. That was us spewing that. But I think you're right, Colin.

3:30:47Etienne FontanI think there is a lack of education. There's been a lack of education because we saw the Hemp Industry Association and the Hemp Food Association, which was really done by Richard Rose, really fracture and separate in 1990, in the 1990s. And that never really, so you saw the hemp industry kind of shun the food. And so therefore, there was the biggest organization pushing in the United States for hemp and they were not pushing food.

3:31:11Etienne FontanSo that was gatekeeping, right? That was gatekeeping. And also, I think what Richard was doing, even though Richard had hemp and regular hemp products in normal grocery stores, they could not wrap around the normality of it.

3:31:26Collin PalmerBut doesn't it also go back to the way that they view hemp and how it can be used in food, right? Isn't there like a there's a I can't remember what the there's a law in place. Maybe the FDA enforces this. I don't remember who, but You can't use it in food at scale. It's not grass certified, right? Like there aren't, it's not a certified ingredient.

3:31:51Etienne FontanRight, they're working, they're trying to do that right now through like being feed for chickens and stuff and they just got that approved. But yes, there's regulatory hurdles that are in the way.

3:32:01BubblemanImagine a dietary imperative. Well, we'll let the chickens have it. Then you can eat the chickens. That's all we're gonna, that's as far as we're going.

3:32:09Archive SeedsI know Bayer and its lobbyists.

3:32:12BubblemanLike those chickens have amazing lobbyists is all I want to say because they got that shit done for their kind and we're still fluttering around.

3:32:20Etienne FontanMichael tells the story of the hemp seed filled chickens that won the DEA's barbecue contest. Michael, you want to talk about that one? You know, years ago, right?

3:32:30SpeakerYeah, I wish Al Byrne and Mary Lynn Matthew were here to tell this one. But yeah, they had chickens that they fed exclusively hemp seed for quite a while. And they had a contest. It was... Hands down winner. Everybody loved it.

3:32:47Etienne FontanIt was copier, juicier, everything that you would want from something that was fed omega-3, 6, and 9 and high protein. It won the contest. The DEA's own contest. That's the irony of it all. It was incredible.

3:33:03SpeakerIt was beautiful.

3:33:05Collin PalmerMarcus, what was like Manitoba? So Manitoba Harvest started out with like seeds and harlots. What was the products that they were putting out?

3:33:13BubblemanLike what was the... Well, initially we were growing hemp experimentally and everyone in the prairies, the experiment was for grain. It wasn't like we were going to be like, oh, let's grow the world's greatest fiber in Manitoba. So it was just like we went with what we knew. And all of our farmers were grain farmers. So it was just like it just kind of made sense that we would grow it for grain.

3:33:37BubblemanAnd, you know, just the first few years of watching it grow and how tall it got and how blown away these old farmers were that were in their like 80s and one dude even 90 that was just like I'd never seen Boris grow that that tall that fast and then to produce that kind of grain as well.

3:33:56Collin PalmerGot it. See, that's I don't know. I still think that, you know, Marcus might be right, guys, like there could be a world where grain and these ancillary use cases like even fiber, you know, because people don't have enough fiber in their diets like today. That's a huge thing.

3:34:11Archive SeedsYou know, that's why you made the right point earlier, though, that There's too many competing businesses in other grain industries, right, that don't want that to happen. And they rely on, in a lot of cases, subsidies that come from the government. So if you actually like replace those subsidized businesses with profitable new grain businesses, it would completely change who's making the money. Right. They probably still sell the tractor, but the seed, the fertilizer, the land that produces the best, the acreage that is the most valuable, et cetera, would change drastically.

3:34:48Archive SeedsAnd everybody, every county and state that currently produces soybean for whatever and You know, Roundup Ready Corn from Bayer and everything else. Well, they don't want to see hemp hearts become the new supply for whatever that industrial product is.

3:35:06Collin PalmerYeah, well, it's not until they own the seed supply to that yet, right?

3:35:09Archive SeedsIt's like, you know, they're already, I mean, they could usher that in with their own practices, but it'd be hard to beat them at their own game.

3:35:19Collin Palmer100. Yeah, but I feel like that's happening under the, you know, as we speak, like today, it's it's literally submitted, it's happening, like they have their seeds that like all the universities, most of the universities, from what I understand, even a couple that I've spoken to, like their seed performs better than most of the people that they've gotten seeds from.

3:35:37Archive SeedsWell, maybe we'll have Roundup Ready Hemp here. Oh, mark my words, brother. I'm well aware. I even know some people that are already working on it, basically.

3:35:50Collin PalmerYeah. So, you know, but yeah, I don't know. It could, but maybe, I don't know, maybe that opens up the door for us to Be able to do work as well. I don't know. I don't, you know, like I try to find the silver lining and things like that where it's like, okay, if someone's going to do it, how do we... You can do your breeding in the middle of a legal hemp field and get away with your multi-thousand plant selection.

3:36:16Collin PalmerSo how do I benefit from this like wrong, basically?

3:36:20Archive SeedsRight, right. Yeah. Yeah. Just use it as cover.

3:36:23Collin PalmerYeah. So, but yeah, no, it's, but I, you know, like we... In the United States, I feel like, yeah, we focused on it because it seemed like that was the best path for the use case, right? And I think most people, when hemp tanked, you know, when that kilo went from, you know, what it was, it was ridiculous and isolate, CBD isolate all the way down to like, now I was even told the other day, like a liter right now of CBD isolate is like 250 bucks.

3:36:57Collin PalmerYou know, I had not I don't know if you guys have heard those types of prices, but that's that's really. That's all it's like less than it costs to make it from what I know, you know, so that's that's. You know, we have to, we have a lot of work to do if people expect these types of prices, you know, because it doesn't add, it doesn't pencil in from an agricultural point of view all the way down to the, you know, to that finished good.

3:37:24Archive SeedsWell, those ag economics will always balance itself out eventually, right? It's just a matter of time. How long do people want to pump money into a business that loses money every year? And that just becomes, that's a typical agricultural curve. We've seen it with grapes and wine and everything else too.

3:37:46Collin PalmerTrue. That's really true. Yeah. And it's like, I just feel like we're heading into an era, we're already in the middle of the era of like, how do we build the system that works? Because, you know, we worry about the terps, but that's not what a commodity runs on, right? They run on a totally different set of parameters. That are far outside of that. Like, sure, it can be a part of it, but it doesn't run on that.

3:38:14Archive SeedsYou know, getting a job at Bayer and making Roundup ready.

3:38:20Archive SeedsDon't tell me that, buddy.

3:38:24SpeakerYou got all this scary shit.

3:38:28Collin PalmerYou're singing my nightmare right now, man.

3:38:31Archive SeedsI mean, that's the reality of the situation, you know. Unfortunately, that's what makes sense to them because you get to sell the seed and the weed killer, right? So you're doubling up the profit per acre on farmers. And that's the whole incentive of industrial ag in America. That's what Cargill... We've got a couple of questions here. We've got a couple of questions here. We've got a couple of questions here.

3:38:55Archive SeedsWe've got a couple of

3:39:21Collin PalmerThere it is.

3:39:23Archive SeedsThat's just that's just pests, you know, wait till they start engineering it for profit.

3:39:30Collin PalmerYeah, it's going to look and we, you know, wait until they break down the walls and people are like, all right, fine, I need to get a gig.

3:39:39Etienne FontanWell, the concept 10 years from now is to have one seed. And depending on how you grow it, it will express what you want. So light manipulation will give you, that's what they want to ultimately create.

3:39:55Collin PalmerSo wait, they're after that or you're saying that they've already sort of...

3:39:58Etienne FontanThey said in 10 years, that's what they will have.

3:40:01Collin PalmerGot it. Wow.

3:40:03Etienne FontanYeah.

3:40:04Collin PalmerI mean, look, I believe it because, you know, I already know that there's things that are far beyond... What we have seen today already happening in terms of genomic breeding. So specifically with marker based reading.

3:40:20Archive SeedsI mean, there's there's people that are willing to spend money on on stuff that spend more money on stuff that we don't care about than we could ever spend on the shit that we care about in terms of breeding and producing these new varieties for industrial application. Yeah.

3:40:45Collin PalmerYep. And it's sorry about that, guys.

3:40:47BubblemanI just had something come up here. I'm yeah. Yeah, I'm OK. I'm totally fine. I just I probably have to go here. It's a family issue. But I want to thank everyone for watching. I want to thank the Press Club and Puffco and Bubble Bags for sponsoring the show. Thank everyone for coming on from Chicago. Farmer Tom and Michael and Chip and Etienne and Colin and Archive making an appearance.

3:41:19BubblemanMuch appreciated to everyone. Showing up for 51 Sundays in a row in 2025. We got one last Sunday, Hash Church next week, and that'll be the last of the year of this, of Hash Church, which will be cool, 52 episodes in a row. In the meantime, yeah, may the full mount bless your bowl sooner than later. Merry Christmas, happy holidays, happy new year, all that stuff. Well, we'll see you before the new year, but yeah.

3:41:48BubblemanHappy holidays. Thanks everyone for watching. And we will see you next time on Hash Church. Peace out.