The Power of Cannabis with Andi Novick

(upbeat music) ♪ This is synchronous ♪ ♪ This is synchronous ♪ ♪ This is this is synchronicity ♪ ♪ This is this is synchronicity ♪ ♪ This is synchronicity ♪ ♪ This is synchronicity ♪ ♪ This is synchronicity ♪ (upbeat music) ♪ Welcome to Synchronicity ♪ My guest this week is Andy Novick. Andy is a Kana activist. She is up here in New York doing some amazing work trying to get this bill passed. She's got some really interesting nuanced perspectives on cannabis. There's a lot to unpack in this episode. I tried to do an intro where I talked about it all, but I think I'm just going to give you the bullet points and get to the episode.

Before I do, let's thank the guys at Ned CBD also. Big thank you to everyone who has actually used the code to get the Ned stuff. I'd love to hear your feedback on it too. Just because I'm a big fan of it. I actually use it. It's dovetails wonderfully into this episode. So again, if you know what I'm talking about, Ned. Hello, Ned.com. Go check it out. Full spectrum CBD oil, body butter. They got this cool stuff. I use the full spectrum of blood. I use the full spectrum oil near daily. If I miss a day, I'm like, why did I miss a day? That was foolish. And it's fucking awesome. It's the only CBD I've ever used.

We'll ever use at this point because of who they are and what they do and what they put into the plants. Truthfully. So when you'll hear a lot about the plant in this episode, that's hemp, but we're going to be talking about a lot about the other side of cannabis too. So use, just had a kid, by the way. Alexis had the child, but he is also my son. Gabriel Lampard is here. So forgive any lapses in memory or speech or whatever it is. Just forgive me because we're not going to get a lot of sleep. But anyway, it's awesome. He's happy. He's healthy. Everything is great. Eli is adjusting. Well, it's wonderful.

But anyway, back to Ned. Hello. Support my family. Continue to use the Ned code Hello, Ned.com. Go there. Get the full spectrum C video oil. Use the code S-Y-N-C at checkout. You get 15% off. I know you guys are using it because they told me and they're happy and I'm happy. And that's a win-win and you win when you get this stuff because of fucking rules. Okay. So in this episode, Andy and I talk about a lot of stuff. Right now, we are in the eve, the 11th hour of the New York legislative session. I'm recording this on Wednesday, June 19th. It's coming out Wednesday, June 19th. We're right here on the cusp.

It is oscillating between definitely not going to happen with legalization New York. Might happen. Looks like it's happening. Definitely not happen. Things are going bad too now. Wow. There's a glimmer. There's a spark. Could it be a phoenix rising from the ashes? So anyway, that's going on right now. I'm sure Andy is in Albany letting her voice be heard right now. We know of the social equity issues related to cannabis and locking black and brown people up at a really disproportionate rate to white people. Here's a little fact. I was arrested in New York City. Right? I have actually gone through this.

For weed. For one gram of weed. They thought I was buying heroin because I was shady and blue and yellow track pants and just kind of long sleeve shirt and sandals. Looking weird on the lower side of Manhattan. They thought I was really say a lot for me. Did I have dreadlocks then? No, I didn't. But it looks like a shady character. Got busted by narcotics officers and it was a fucking 24 hour saga. They put me in the back with this black dude and this other guy and we got shuffled around in this van all day. They were just fucking with us because they were pissed that it wasn't a big bust. Then they fucking put us in a cell and then they didn't move us to central bookings for like eight hours.

So we had to stay in central bookings. It's called the tombs and Manhattan is on the south side of the island. There is a holding facility for people who need to be processed. Right? It's jail. It's not prisons. It's just like a jail. So got sent there. It's insane. That's all I'll say. Pretty place. Everyone was very nice in the cell. No one did anything according to them. Which is probably pretty true based on what we found out. And what we know about the criminal justice system now. But anyway it was fucking nuts there. Got out. So I've been through this process. I know what's involved. I also know that I'm a white dude and I had the not when you're going through you don't know this.

But had the confidence that I'm probably not getting locked up for a long period of time for jail. But a lot of people do. So that's a huge component of what's going on. But cannabis does a lot of other things too. Right? We know there are medicinal components. You already spoke about the CBD from the hemp part of the plant. There's a lot of cool things that did. One thing that I didn't know it did is it has the ability to be regeneratively grown. I practiced on saying that. It's not an easy word to say. Try it regeneratively. It's tough. For me sometimes. Anyway, what it does is it pulls CO2 out of the air and pulls it into the ground.

Which is obviously good in terms of greenhouse gases and good for plants that use that to basically grow and repeat this amazing cycle. Which is really cool. Now one of the things I had not thought about is the difference between indoor growing and outdoor growing. And Andy astutely points out that we kind of have fallen into this trap of believing that indoor is definitely better all of the time for everything. And I think there is value in recognizing that there's some amazing indoor grown cannabis. But this ability of the plant to naturally thrive in the environment, in the world really has some kind of mind blowing potential if you think about it.

Not just ecologically but also fiscally and economically for farmers. And I think that's a really like we got to recognize like people growing our food and sustaining like kind of the backbone. This is why America was originally part of the reason so prosperous is the fertile lands across the world. So if you think about that, there's a lot of potential for cannabis across the board. We've named some major fucking things. So we have social equity reparations in terms of just sneaking this not all thing that's used to lock people up. And then we also have this ability to medicinally treat people both physically and psychologically.

And then economically, economically restore the environment. Did I mention I had the kid? I don't even remember. Did that happen? Okay. And also ecologically, right? Easy for me to say. So there's this amazing potential that's going on. So we'll see what happens in New York. We'll see. We'll see. We'll see against all odds maybe. I tweeted it out a couple of weeks ago. We'll see what becomes reality. What is imagined in? Who knows? I think you guys can imagine it though. Wouldn't it be cool if New York was the 12th state? It'd be cool. So what else is going on? That's it. I'm done. Brain, slowly, but surely shutting off.

Go right and review the podcast if you like it. Use a hell of Ned.com. Those guys are awesome. Use the code Sync at checkout. Go get this shit. Get in the vibe. Tune in. Smoke a joint. Do what you need to do. Here is, without further ado, Andy Novak. Thank you. Thanks for coming on. Thank you for having me here too. Awesome. We connected through my mom who is very awesome. She's really cool. Two of her passions are kind of what led us together. In her career, she was a lawyer. She was very much into putting together legal documents and briefs in a high-powered attorney in D.C. But I also, after a certain age, realized she's also a cannabis enthusiast as am I.

And she tuned me into you and you had some very interesting perspectives that I hadn't encountered before, which is really saying something. I'm an enthusiast. I really studied this stuff. I love it. I care about it on a deep level. And a couple of the things that really caught my attention with you were initially not only your keen interest in making sure that cannabis is legalized, that we're bringing some form of social equity of this, but also this idea of respecting the plant and allowing it to kind of do its thing in a natural setting, which to me was a bit of a shock to hear, because almost all the weed anyone gets commercially, whether it's sanctioned or not sanctioned, is grown indoors, like the vast majority of it.

You'll get the outdoor stuff, but people want that special indoor grown quality, so they think, "I'm curious, like, we have a lot to cover here, "but how did you become so passionate about cannabis? "How did you get to the point where you were recognizing "the connection between how the plant has grown, "what its benefits are from the actual natural setting "it thrives in?" And also, as we sit here, I don't know, a week before the legislative session closes in New York, a final kind of effort and push to legalize it or set some framework in this state. So, what does this look like for you? Where have you come from to get to this point?

I know it's a loaded question, but I'm genuinely curious, because I don't encounter a lot of people with unique perspectives on cannabis these days.

So, that's interesting, because there's something that I usually don't say out loud, and I have been saying it out loud. Recently, and for your podcast, I guess it's okay, if I was in front of a legislature, I might not, but that's just because people judge you, and I don't know how plants communicate. I'm actually doing a workshop in a couple of weeks, because I'm becoming increasingly curious, and I have some books about it, but she spoke to me. I don't know how it happens, but she spoke to me, and what she said, this was back in September, and she said, I was meditating, and she said, "They're gonna lock me up in warehouses there.

"I'm not gonna see the light of day. "They're gonna spray poisons on me. "I don't have a voice. I need you to be my voice." And of course, I'm a farmer, and I'm a lawyer. The lawyers are, what do they call, mouthpieces, right? So, that's why I started doing this work, and from my, I didn't know what you just said until I started doing the work. I didn't know that 95% of the cannabis grown in this country is grown indoors. I'm a farmer, so it's a plant. You grow it outdoors, like you grow everything else. I know hydroponics, but I had no idea how vast it was. I understand it was forced underground, and I get all that, and now it has these warped perceptions about how it has to look a certain way for top shelf.

But for me, I was just like, this is a plant. This is what farmers grow. We know how to grow it, and that's the way it should be. And then I found out how horrible it was, because we're now enslaving the plant. Now, it's really important to pass this law in whatever form it is, because we've enslaved black and brown people in the name of this plant, but I'm still unhappy at this moment with the statute, because it doesn't have enough of the farming protections that we've been fighting for. Yeah, and it's interesting. I didn't answer your question before, sorry. No, you didn't, but you brought up another topic that we'll get to that question. I'll find out who you are.

Don't worry, we'll get to that. It's a really interesting cannabis. It's not cut and dry, right? It's not this binary thing. It is in the fact that, yes, if you decriminalize it, people won't be locked up for it anymore. We saw this with Denver, with psilocybin, and then Oakland just did it with all the enthiogens that they actually got that word in to the bill, which is pretty nuts. So that's a huge binary thing that, yes, at least people won't be locked up. But to think that there's only, it's as simple as, oh, now it's legal, and then everything works out, and we're in this kind of utopian cannabis wonderland, is definitely not accurate.

We've seen this play out in California. We've seen it Colorado's done a decent job, but we've seen it play out in California pretty poorly over the past 20 something years. We've seen Massachusetts recently legalize, I've been to the legal dispensary there, theory, and no, I don't mean this to be too pejorative, but it's shitty, it sucks. This system that they set up, it's this kind of corporate clinical anesthetize, like, they're wearing gloves and putting this thing. It's just so weird. And like, the weed's fine. It's not like bad. It's not terrible. It's certainly not something, at least you know where it's coming from for the most part.

But it's this weird, anyone who is really has a connection with the plant, knows this is not the way it wants to be expressed, knows that, like you said, being trapped in indoors and cages, and really, more importantly, the intention of it is just to use to make money, right? The guys in suits are coming in, and now I want to make money off this thing that they've been putting me in jail for. That's a real issue that I think gets overlooked because the two perspectives I see with cannabis are that originally, kind of when it was outlawed, is that this is a tool that we can use to kind of put people in cages.

This is really what it is. This is the methods of what we'll use. And the other kind of mean that's come over the past 30, 40, 50, 60 years, is that this is just for like lazy people, you know, who just want to have fun. This is, these are the two perspectives. So they're not very serious. One is serious in terms of negative ramifications, but it's not typically looked at as this, you know, helpful, useful tool. Now we've seen in the past 10 years after, you know, clinical studies are being done over and over again, there is some real medicinal benefit, and there's psychological benefits and emotional benefits.

I think it's important that we don't lose focus specifically what you're talking about is honoring the plant, right? If we really believe this is something that can help, that can alleviate or at least just help people, that's the only word I have for it. We don't want to disrespect it, certainly. And I think, let me ask you this. How do we go about a opening people's eyes into how this plant can be grown, what it can do, not just for people, but for the earth, regeneratively? Like, how did we begin this conversation? We know you're not happy, and I'm not happy either, that this is probably not going to get into any legislation that's passed in New York any time soon.

But what do we do, let's just assume it gets legalized in a way that we have a framework. What are the next steps we as individuals and collectively should take to make sure that we're pushing towards something that's equitable, not only for the people, but for the plant, too? What does that look like for you? Okay, so let me start, I guess, back up by saying last week, I think in the Buffalo News or something, I read an article in Liz Kruger who was one of the sponsors in the Senate for the last few years of the bill, was saying something about cartels. She was saying that there's a $3 billion underground industry and that huge portion of that money is going to drug-affiliated cartels.

And I looked up the word cartel again, and a cartel is essentially a group of manufacturers or suppliers that get together to fix prices and destroy competition. So I'm thinking, huh, that sounds a lot like, you know, all of the cannabis companies that are trying to come in. So seriously, this is what we're doing. We're just going to take it from one cartel and give it to another cartel. And not only that, but that cartel that wants to make all this money off of it, this white men cartel, let's just call it because that's what it is, they're going to do it the way they've done everything else in the most destructive way.

It turns out that the indoor cannabis cultivation industry is one of the worst offenders of carbon pollution. It's one of the greatest greenhouse gas emitters because of all the electricity it uses. So among the things that I've argued to the legislature is, are you kidding? You have these goals set from New York about how you're going to reduce carbon emissions and now you're going to invite these people in because what? You're so desperate to get your hands on 300 million tax revenues. Like seriously, because there's another solution. There's another solution to not destroying the planet. There's another solution to not just turning it over to another cartel that's going to produce cheap mass produced toxic laden pesticides sprayed all over it, hormone growth sprayed all over it.

And that's to grow it outdoors in the sun and to be grown regeneratively. And what we've asked the legislature to do is to mandate, to say, okay, it's a privilege because let's face it, we're not legalizing anything. We're regulating it. We call it legalization, but it's still illegal, right? It's just regulating so they can get taxes out of it. And to decriminalize it further because decriminalization only worked for white people. It didn't work for non-white people. But if you grow it outdoors regeneratively, which is what we've asked for, then not only are you countering all the crap that's going to happen by growing it indoors and the planet destroying methods that they use and the pesticides that they use and just passing on billions of profits to a few corporations, you're actually, we're proposing is first of all, regenerative growing and regenerative growing with maybe your audience knows maybe it doesn't, but it has to do with growing in a way that literally sucks carbon out of the atmosphere and sequesters into the soil.

So we're discussing humans know about reducing carbon emissions and we're at this critical, critical, or probably beyond this critical point, have to do with reducing carbon emissions. We're talking about a solution that literally pulls it out of the air and then sequesters it in the soil, which is the soil is the second largest sink, the ocean being the first and the ocean is getting pretty filled up. So here you have a literal real solution on my website, New York small farmer dot org, Ben Dobson, who's my co-founder, he has this really cool little TED talk about how carbon farming, and they call it a regenerative farming, can save the planet, you know, and it's awesome.

So you have that going, you have this really bad industry for pollution, for carbon, and you have a solution which is growing it outdoors. And what we've also advocated is why does it have to be this big corporate, you know, like a few corporations get it, and New York state says, we understand that we know we screwed up with medical marijuana by making it a vertically integrated industry. So we're going to not do that this time, but they are doing that because they're salivating over the money that the wealth finance companies can bring in. And then, and my argument has been, okay, so you think this is a $3 billion a year industry, right?

And you're willing to settle for $300 million. Like, why don't we just recirculate that money? When was the last time communities, particularly rural communities, in New York state, we're looking at $3 billion a year, and it's probably going to be a lot more. So what if we created, which you can do that legislature, what if we created industry that was small? Well, you didn't have to have 18 stores, and you didn't, you know, in all of the states or wherever. And that's what we've been advocating for. So small farmers growing small amounts of marijuana, sorry, I don't usually call it marijuana, small amounts of cannabis for, you know, because it's derogatory.

Yeah, even though it's literally in the bill. Well, they changed that. Oh, they're getting smarter. They're trying to change it. It's still the MRTA that they're starting to use the word cannabis more because they get how they're agitoring. Although, you know, Cassandra, who was the head of DPA, has rightfully said, I'm going to call it marijuana because it's marijuana that put my, you know, everybody in prison and stuff. Own it. But I still don't like using the term if I don't have to. But anyway, the idea of thinking about the business is not something that is like the rest of the city. It is like the rest of the capitalist business that are in this country.

But using the cannabis plant because it's so awesome to change the agriculture and to change the business culture. And so what we propose is small farmers and then having truly an equitable supply change going from seed to sale, where it's then produced by small mom and pop, if you will, you know, like whoever small places all across the state, but using farming to begin it. So you've got this infusion, potentially of billions of dollars all over the state in farming communities, in rural communities. And then, but, and we have all these provisions and, you know, I wrote the statute and it just hasn't gone in about how we would be a benefits corporation so that the primary, the primary focus of the corporation wouldn't be just to make money for tax holders.

It would be to consider people and to consider the environment. And all of those qualities that don't exist anymore in this ultra patriarchal society could be part of this new industry. And it should be prioritized for women and people of color and equity applicants, certainly. And cannabis should be the catalyst for doing this. See, I share this vision. I haven't heard it so eloquently put and so logistically worked out. And I didn't truthfully know about any of the regenerative qualities. I really had just, you know, known about the effects and kind of my holistic view of what the plant was. I never thought about any of this other stuff until I moved up here.

At least I started my garden as soon as I moved here two and a half years ago. I had always seen my mom garden. Anyone who hasn't garden doesn't really know the joy and kind of fulfillment, the kind of existential fulfillment you get from watching something grow from seed into, you know, a vegetable or flower or tree or plant. There's something to it that there's a magic to it that gets you in tune with nature, you know, you're walled in moment, if you will. So that's amazing. And I really tuned into that aspect of it. And what I really love about kind of your solution here as using cannabis as a catalyst is when you grow something.

I'm a firm believer. This is again, you know, listeners of my podcast will accept this, people who are more scientific materials probably won't. I do think the intention of what you're doing goes into everything you're producing. And I mean, that not just with plants and physical things, but imagine only as well. So if that is in any way true, what you're describing is really, really, really, really important because everyone can sense, like people ask me, I've gotten asked by a lot of friends, like, do what marijuana companies should I invest in? Because they know I'm into cryptocurrency. So they go, what marijuana stocks? And I've had to think about it because I never invested in it.

And I said, I'm not ever going to put my money into these companies. I think they're probably going to be decent investments. I think if you put them in, you're probably not going to lose money if you pay attention and, you know, see who has designs on doing what. But I don't feel like supporting and making money from something that is basically, you know, bastardizing and raping something that I hold really sacred. And it's not a feeling of, oh, well, other people are getting in and I'm not, and that's why I don't like it because you have to deal with those questions too. It's that this is something that's dishonoring the real ethos of what this plant has offered people for millennia.

And even if you don't care about that, which I do too, but even if most people don't care about that, there's another truth that we know, which is before industrial agriculture. Excuse me, the fruits and the vegetables that we grew from the ground had more nutrition value than they do now. And we can restore that. We can restore the microbial content. We can restore the minerals by practicing regenerative farming practices so that the food and the cannabis that's grown from that is much healthier. It's much more nutrient dense. And when I talk about this publicly, because I've been doing these kind of curious community chats, I start off usually talking about, well, sort of what you asked me in the beginning, which is why I got so passionate about it.

And I got so passionate about it because I saw what it could do for people. I saw the extraordinary health benefits. Yeah, yeah. And then, you know, and I can talk about that, but then I talk about that a little, and then I say, okay, so this plant is so good for you. How do you want it? You want this crappy Marlboro version of the boy. Exactly. You want something that's high in nutrients and the best, you know, you want the fast growing, what's going to produce the most profit for someone who really cares about their plant puts into it. It's your health that's involved. And so that's, you know, whether or not you believe in the other aspects of it, there's absolute proof that if you grow it regeneratively, you're going to get much more nutrient value for your.

So how do we, I mean, we're dealing with obviously a lot of different groups of people, cannabis, you know, consumers, people who use it and appreciate it, people who don't use it, but don't have anything against it. And then, of course, we have our friends over at Sam and organizing with the PTA here yesterday and today, I think, you know, who are just vehemently against it for reasons as best as I can tell is they're just afraid of something. I don't know. It's not the plan. It's clearly nothing to do with cannabis, but of some impending doom or just there's something going on there. So you have these different groups of people who look at all these conversations and sometimes they look at people like us and say, oh, well, you guys just, you're just hippies and you just want to have it legal because that's just the way you think things should be. And there's no basis for it because you like it.

That's the only reason. And then you talk about something you just mentioned. I've seen this plant help people with serious physical disabilities, serious, like seizure, like fucked up shit, like that documentaries have been made about them and put out on the air to people with psychological issues or emotional issues. And you see the changes that this can offer and that they recognize that's offering them. How do we begin to build not necessarily a coalition, but kind of an awareness of the specific things you're talking about integrating kind of vertically this idea of seed to table to consumer, but letting people know this stuff is transparently grown in a way that shows that this is not just about making money because I tweeted out today as I was looking at a lot of political things flying around.

I was like, imagine thinking that the only way you can get money or power is by doing fucked up things to people. Like, imagine if that's your only conception of how you get those two things. And that's how a lot of people are operating from. And it doesn't have to be like that. We see examples of this constantly in our world of people who have created essentially regenerative and sustainable systems, whether it's an agriculture or business. It's rare rare in the business world, but it does exist. So how do we start building kind of this framework to let people know because this is just an initial conversation.

I can almost guarantee most people hearing this will have not known about regenerative farming. But I think that's the answer, which is the reason I started having kind of community, kind of curious community. And I will continue is because I think it has to be a conversation and the conversation had to start. And by starting to talk about it, I think people start hearing about it up till now it's so stigmatized and so many people are afraid to even talk about it. A lot of the places the libraries I asked, I said, it's not legal, we can't talk about it. It's amazing. And I've had people come to these chats saying, "Oh my God, it's changed my life. This one woman has fibromyalgia and so much pain. She's got kids to take care of."

And she's terrified to let anyone know. And people have said to me, "Wow, when you talk about it, you don't have any of the stigma associated with it." So just hearing about it that way, I always start off with, I have many personal stories, but I start off with my mom, who was 91. And when she was 89, we were out in California at her grants on my nephew's wedding. And she has pulmonary fibrosis, so her lungs are really in bad shape. And she's not on oxygen, but she would be if she wasn't being treated with cannabis, which she doesn't get in the state because you can't get flowers, but it's a whole other thing.

So we're out in California, and she's got to get from one party to the next. And this woman takes four steps, and she's out of breath, and she's huffing and puffing. So it would take her forever just across the lawn. And what are we going to do? And she had resisted taking it into her lungs, which is where it would go immediately if she were to vape it or smoke it and do the best good because she didn't want to get high. So even though I'd been treating her for years with cannabis, it was in a way. It was a tincture under a tongue that wasn't getting her high. And it was helping, but not like this. Well, so what happened was, it's like, it's time she wants to get through her grandson's wedding.

And we had a portable vaporizer, and we gave her some. And that night, she danced. She danced all night at her grandson's wedding. This is a woman who can't walk more than four steps. It was immediate relief. You know, I mean, after a half hour, I said, Mom, you know, like, you haven't moved like this in 10 years. Maybe you should sit down, right? But it was amazing to watch that happen. Now, if you speak to doctors, they'll say, Well, there haven't been the scientific studies done, and we haven't had control blah, blah, blah. You know, it's like, Okay, good, you can go do that if you want to do that. But meanwhile, she'd be dead before that happened.

And she got that benefit. And everyone I know who's gotten that benefit, you experimenting with a plan. Nothing's going to happen to you. It's safer than anything else we take. So I talk about that. I talk about other stories because I could go through the list of the things that cannabis help. And I know that you know why, you know, when you talk about the extraordinary array of conditions that cannabis can heal, you sound like you're selling snake oil, right? And then when you explain, Oh, well, we have endocannabinoid system, right? And the endocannabinoid system isn't just one system. And I won't talk about it because you've probably talked about it on your show.

Talk as much as you like, you know, what I so I start off explaining to people all these things. And then I figured, you know, you're probably going to be interested because a lot of conditions and ailments people have either they've tried Western medicine and it hasn't helped or, you know, or they haven't, you know, they don't even know what to do, you know, a friend of mine. Another friend from yoga. I had made her a cream with cannabis in it and for her carpal tunnel syndrome and it didn't help. But she has really bad gout in her large toes on both feet. And she's had it for 20 years. She's tried everything Western medicine has. She's also a farmer. She's lines up in the ER periodically. She's an excruciating pain. It's all swollen.

She said, what the hell? She tried some of the cream. She said within six hours, the pain was gone. At the end of the week, it was over. It's like, she's tried everything. And there's a lot of people out there who have conditions that we don't know how to deal with or they have toxic side effects the way we deal with it. So why not try it? And then I think once you start hearing that, the more you hear it, people get more open to it. And then you can talk about, well, wouldn't it be great if when we grew, we grew it in a way that was really good for the environment and for you? It's like, yeah, and wouldn't it be great if all of our neighbors could make money off of it rather than if you got $3 billion coming in, you could have all of that or the super majority.

I mean, yes, it'll create jobs and people will get paid as little as they can get paid so that you get the greatest profit and it'll all leave the state. Or you could take the $3 billion, which is coming out of the pockets of New Yorkers. We're not even talking about out of state. This is New Yorkers parting with $3 billion a year and just keep recirculated if the legislature were to create a structure for small businesses. What is the resistance? What are the logical arguments against that? Because I didn't follow. I just looked in it because I wanted to see who's running the Senate, you know, on the Republican side of the GOP in the state, and I went and looked at the GOP in my state Twitter account, and then they're just, you know, easy shooting fish in a barrel blasting Cuomo for being inefficient and idiot and it's like, okay, great. Not hard. And they're all linking to New York post articles and hit pieces. But the focus as far as I could discern was about making sure that New Yorkers weren't getting taken advantage of in terms of their tax dollars, that they weren't just being doled out to Willy Nelly whoever and, you know, mix in with their dog whistle, racist stuff about immigrants. But if that's your focus, what is the counter to saying, let's set up an infrastructure that recirculates money within the state alone?

Like, where is the resistance coming from? Or is it literally just kind of one of those things that you see a lot from politicians is they'll listen, smile and nod, and then just completely disregard anything they heard, whether it was a good or bad idea. I think it's the latter. I don't know. I have spoken to some wonderful legislators up here who are very supportive of small farmers who get that this is a great opportunity. But first you have to deal with, when I first started talking about this, I testified in front of the Assembly in October, and I read the M.R.T.A., which is the current bill that the Marijuana Regulation Taxation Act.

And it didn't mention the word plant. I read the whole freaking bill. It didn't mention plant. It didn't mention crop. It was just a drug that was being regulated. And so it's a really interesting moment to be on the cusp of post prohibition or almost post prohibition, because the people in the position to make that decision don't have any familiarity with cannabis, don't understand what it is. They've been fed the disinformation for a century and they don't even, people went, you know, it's like Cuba, they'll get off here. It's like people don't know that they've been brainwashed. It's all they've been told their whole life. So people don't understand that their mindset is so misinformed.

So part of the problem, when I go in and I talk about, "Hey, how would you like a billion dollars in your community?" You know, people are like, "Wait, Marijuana, they're afraid of psychoactively. How about hemp? We can deal with hemp." So people are frightened by it and then you have to get over on all these ways that people committed. And it's a real problem. In fact, even the, you know, one of the things that the Governor's Office said, it was easier when we were just negotiating with the Governor's Office. And one of the things was, you know, they're all, they want that tax money and I was saying, "Wait, all these years we haven't produced cannabis and it's been okay."

And suddenly you need to satisfy the demand tomorrow because I was told, you know, you're only farmers. I mean, there's only so much you can do, which is true. And it's also true that we can only, unless we're willing to like destroy the environment, the most we can get is two crops a year if we, you know, do some like deprivation. We can outdoors get, you know, with a little, you know, electricity, which we can use from renewable sources, we can get two crops, but indoor growers, they can get five crops a year. So suddenly New York is very concerned that we should produce enough to satisfy the demand. And it's like, or you can let farmers do this and we'll gradually get up there and we'll gradually satisfy the demand.

But all of a sudden it's like, "No, no, no, I need those tax dollars and I need them tomorrow." And yeah, I know, I hear you're saying something about $3 billion, but I'll just take my $300 million or I don't know what you're talking about. It's the people who listen or the people who don't have an issue with cannabis. And the other people, I mean, they don't even mostly talk to me. Yeah, well, I mean, that's understandable because they're probably just not tuned into the same reality tunnel as you are, which is a very focus. And I don't have money to buy my way in or lobbyists, you know, you know, show up.

I've recently subscribed to this idea, a metaphysical idea that has really kind of changed my conception of how this reality that we share works. And it's been pretty pleasant. And it's this guy, I'm actually the guy I'm going to interview tomorrow, Mitch Horowitz. It's like an occult writer tuning me into him. I read his book or listened to his book a couple of weeks ago. And he got it from this guy, Neville Goddard, who essentially got the principle from William Blake, which is essentially that our imagination, our individual imagination, creates reality. And so that not only shapes our vision of reality as we perceive it, but we co collectively dream these stable, imaginal facts. So this is a pretty, you know, if you're really digging to it, it gets pretty heady.

But what I've noticed in terms of lacking resources, like when we talk about, oh, we don't have money to reach people. We don't have this. I've found that money is one modality that gets action and kind of can claim power. But I've really seen the power of community and ideas kind of memetic ideas really make change. I noticed it. So I had the sneaking suspicion. We'll see what happens. Right. We'll see what happens. But I had the sneaking suspicion starting last week. And when we've spoken about it in the past, I've been relatively pessimistic about this legislative session, anything positive happening for cannabis at all.

Last week, I started being like, you know what? I got this weird feeling that that stuff is shifting. The day after that, I see these coalitions on social media really organizing, like really getting this collective push. You see people in Albany, vocal people just really getting all the starchmark coalish. Yes, which. It's confused with the Sam. No, I know, which is like, I know it's almost. Yeah, I know. And I follow them on Twitter and what they're doing is amazing stuff. And that's, you know, yes, there's some money involved in getting this stuff out there. But for the most part, these are people who just care about this and they can envision a future where this is taking place. And what I am bringing this up is, I think why stop there? Like, why are we going to stop just with this one little push over, let the corporations come in, bar the doors, and then we get our corporate weed? Why not do exactly what you're saying? Really start hitting up our legislators. So the start smart coalition, of which I'm a proud member, is very focused on ending the enslavement of black and brown people in the need of cannabis possession.

And it's an extraordinary, it's probably the most important goal, right? So for human beings, right? For human beings, right? And that's where all of their focus and energy, they are very supportive of, you know, the things that I've been advocating for. And they would advocate them too, but there's only so many people, right? And because money is limited. I mean, there's money involved there too, but there's only so much energy. Perhaps if I'd started this a year ago, I would have had more people clamoring for the rights of, you know, I'm arguing for farm co-ops. I'm arguing for, I'm arguing for having something called what I've called resource hubs and locating five of them in strategic parts of the state.

And what they would be in my vision is they would be these cooperative learning centers, which would be vertically integrated in which farmers, because let's face it, this is a tough market to deal with. It's got so many regulations and you've got to buy into it. You've got to buy a license. You've got to go through all this paperwork. You know, it's going to be difficult for farmers, but what I've tried proposing is having smaller levels that you can go in on. So if you're a regular farmer, you just want to add some cannabis to your rotation. You can do that. If you want to grow more, you can get a license to grow more. But where are you going to sell it? How are you going to play that whole game?

And if we set up these strategic hubs across the state, that would be a built-in market for farmers to come sell. And then it could be produced there. And just like it's a farm, it could be sold there. And we would share information about genetics, about what strains grow best for this area. And we would make sure that more than 50% of the people who work there were people of color and women. And we could change the business culture that way. And what I've asked the state to do, but I literally, no one's responding to this, is to partner with its citizens, to put some money in, because people don't have this money unless you're a well-financed cartel.

So to put this money into five different places in the state, and then go ahead and hire people who will come work there, and eventually those will turn over to work co-ops as my goal. And the reason some people have caught me on it to say, "Aha, aren't you just being hypocritical? You're against vertical integration, but now you want vertical integration?" It's not at all hypocritical. One, you have a situation, the vertical integration, like the medical marijuana companies, is one company is taking most of the profits and providing jobs by paying the lease salary they can because their goal is to earn, squeeze out every single cent.

But, wait, I've lost my train of thought now. Now you're talking about co-ops? Oh, yeah. So right. But co-op, the opposite is thank you very much, is it's the opposite of consolidation of wealth. It's shared wealth model. And a co-op, what I propose is that there's a distribution of profits. So if you have 500 farmers all distributing the profits and the expenses of that, then you're sharing it with 500 people as opposed to one person. So it's not at all inconsistent and it would be this huge renaissance performing in this country. I don't even remember what you've asked me because I could just go off on it.

This is what I love to hear about because you're giving, I think for me, and a lot of people who think about this stuff, it's typically just conceptually. How am I going? How is this going to work? How does this evolve? What is some vague impression of what it looks like? But you're doing the work. You're like chiseling away at what this could look like. And what you just described sounds incredible because not only, and you know this as well, but when you form these types of hubs, these co-ops, these centers, you not only have a system that allows distribution of finances and expenses. But you also have people coming together and that's where the magic happened. That's when this amazing connection happens here that changes this and it changes that and someone learns about this and all these magical kind of anecdotal stories.

Collaborative learning, collaborative sharing. So, I mean, here's kind of my bring it back down to Earth realistic take. Let's just again imagine that this bill passes in the legislature, right? So we have some now, some framework for legalization and then we still have other legislative sessions to kind of make inroads at this. What do you see is the next steps? Let's say we wake up, murder past, right? All were green lights. People are now gearing up, not only us, but the corporations, they're gearing up for their big push too. This is what they've been waiting for and spent all that money for.

What do we do in terms of the next day when we wake up and this is happened to make sure that this doesn't what we're talking about get lost? What are some practical actions we can do as individuals and if we organize together a little bit? So, what's going to, if the MRTA passes next week, every, all of the organizational work has to go on, it has to go on with an intensity because the prediction that I've heard from various legislators is going to be a year and a half and a two years before you can do anything because they have to pass the regulations. A lot of what we hear about what's come out of Colorado, what's come out of Massachusetts is by way of regulation.

And I know that a lot can be done in regulation, but I also know as an attorney that the more you get in that statute, the better your regulations you're going to look like. So, whatever gets in there or doesn't get in there, there's enough in there right now that we could still have, we could still get a lot of this by regulation. There would still have to be some stuff done by future legislation, but that's been true in every state. All I've done is I've looked at every state and said, "Okay, where did they make mistakes? How can we learn from it? How can we change it in this new law and then keep learning and keep changing?"

So, those fights are going to go on and go on, and of course, as you said, Big Canada is going to be pushing and pushing through. My concern is what we've seen in the states that are post-provision now is that if you don't set this up from the beginning, then Big Canada sucks up all the air, sucks up all the money, and there's no opportunity. There's no place for small, regular, ordinary people to go, which is why I'm fighting so hard to get this in. It's true that the MRTA has a micro license, it even has some kind of a co-op license, but not the farm kind. The farmers need a certain kind of protection, which exists already in New York state law because it's recognized and that's a whole other show.

But we need certain farm protections or else it's going to fail. Some of that stuff can go in by way of regulation, some of it may have to be by pushing for more legislation. We've started the dialogue, I'm going to keep doing these chats, and it's only by having the same kind of force that the coalition that's pushing the MRTA just to stop locking people in prison is nothing else. And they're also trying to prioritize who gets a license and that sort of thing, but all of that has to be done better than it's done, there has to be more money given to ordinary people if they're going to participate in this industry, and that has to be done as you said in an organized way.

So if more people join New York's small farmer, it's not just small farm alliance of cannabis growers, it's New York's small farm alliance of cannabis growers and supporters, because who else the farmers grow for, right? If we can have that voice larger than we've had it, because it takes time to grow, then I think we can make those changes both in regulations and in legislation. It's like a crop, right? You have to grow it, you have to feed it what it needs to be fed to have it happen, but I mean, I think this is something, I mean, I know I'm hooked, like I live here, this directly impacts me, not just from, you know, an ethical, you know, and belief system way, but like this is practical for me.

I live here, I've been someone who, all my friends know, I said as soon as this gets legalized, I am figuring where I live, I am figuring out a way to do something in the industry, ethical, that helps, like that's my stated goal. And that starts with how it's grown. And it does start with how it's grown. Which is where you live. Which is where I live, exactly, which is really, I mean, as much as you can do for any product you're going to be putting out in the world if you're growing it. So, to me, it's a question of like, you know, we build the coalition, we get people to understand this is an idea.

And I think, I mean, let me ask you this, what have the farmers kind of reactions been when you speak to people who maybe don't know or haven't been aware of the potential benefits of growing cannabis, not just regeneratively, but for the bottom line and just how it could work? Are they receptive to it? It's funny, I thought for sure I was going to start organizing farmers and they were going to like be all over the place. And in Massachusetts, I was looking for example at NOFA's website, they were really on top of it, they were doing workshops, they were getting sold out. In New York, I don't know why, NOFA didn't jump on it, they've been very supportive, like Andy, it's great that you're doing it, we didn't budget for it, but they haven't otherwise been involved.

Even, you know, young farmers haven't been involved and I started going around and some people were interested, they organized some, but a lot of people weren't and when I went back to ask, I've gotten different reactions. I think that there's probably a fear that they can't keep up with this big competitive industry and they don't know that what I've tried to advocate for is having these smaller tiers so that you could just do, I hate to talk in terms of square feet because we're talking about outdoors, the legislature doesn't understand it if I don't break it down that way, so the tiers that we've proposed have been and I created were like, started with a thousand square feet and went up to an acre, so if you're a regular farmer you add it to your rotation.

It's not always going to drive so much money, it's going to come down like everything else, but for a while it will, so it's a real opportunity to make more money. A lot of farmers have been afraid, they hear that, "Oh, cannabis farms, they can pay more money, they're going to lose their workers," so they're sort of frightened about that, or they're just so overwhelmed being farmers. It's so hard to be a small farmer up here that they can't even deal with, "Oh, it's not leaked, talk to me later when it's legal," which is a little childhood story of the red hen who goes around and says, "Will you help me grow the weed?

Can you help me?" And everyone's, "No, no, no, until it's time to eat it," and then they're all like, "Yeah, get some weed, yeah." It feels a little bit like that, it's wheat that weed, but none the less is just spent a lot of people are overwhelmed, they haven't wanted to deal with it, they don't see the way it's going to happen, and they probably know that this is not going to be liberating, it's not going to be free, it's going to be regulated, you're going to have to jump through a lot of hoops, and you're going to have to get a license. It's just more difficult, unless we can make it simpler, which is more affordable, which is part of what we're trying to do, to lower those thresholds, but farmers understandably have that resistance, but mostly the hemp farmers are closer to it, they get it.

Well, because they have that kind of... Yeah, the 30s there. Well, they're there, and they also, there's something psychologically for people when they look at hemp, and it's legalized, and there's some framework for it that, "Okay, this is real, I can do it." I think a lot of people are right on the fence of knowing, even you and I who very much believe in this, we don't know if this is going to pass next, we'd love it to, we can read the tea leaves as much as we want, but that would be a seismic shift. And that's when people are first going to get on board, which is a shame. Yeah, which is a shame, because this is the constant, when the gold rush happens, you don't want to be there after it happens with everyone else, you want to be the first person who's like, "Oh my God, I think there's gold."

Well, you also want to be shaping the legislation so that it's in your favor, if there were a thousand of us, instead of we'd be able to be in the proposals that I've put, and maybe some of them will get in the regulation, they have to do with lowering the threshold, they have to do with making it easier, farmers just aren't going to be able to jump into this unless we create a structure. Well, you know that from being a lawyer, right? Well, I also know that just from reading what's going on, and when I first sat down to do this, back in the fall, I was like, "How do I know how to create an industry that keeps big business out?"

It's like, "I live in the most corrupt capitalist country in the world, right? How do I know how to do this?" But you know what, I realize, if you do the right thing, that keeps them out. You know, if you go for, I mean, this is also in a patriarchy, I'm not just blaming the patriarchy, but the patriarchy is a very authoritarian culture, and it's really engendered bad values. If you go back to good values, they're not interested. So if you say, "Okay, you want to grow? I would like to be indoors or outdoors, but let's just say outdoors where farmers grow, you have to do it regeneratively." They're not going to want to participate, so that's one good way of keeping them out.

I've said you have to be a benefits corporation, which means your primary focus isn't just making money. They don't want to do that. I've said, "You can't use pesticides." Well, if you're not going to use pesticides, there's a lot you need to do in order to discourage the pests that would otherwise come that you would poison. They don't want to do that. So by creating the industry that is the right way to do it, it keeps Big Cat out of it, and that's the kinds of things we have to push for going forward. And if you're not in the game because you're waiting to let the legislature take your life, then the luck that comes out of it is going to be much more difficult to shape it in the way that works for regular people.

Not to mention purely reactive rather than coming up with something beforehand and shaping it. Like you said, the truth is where money and influence and big businesses will always have an advantage is in the reactive game. They can react quicker, faster, with more resources than an individual. And they're the default. I mean, that's how things work. I mean, and I think this patriarchy thing is a really good, you know, this is one aspect of cannabis that I think is really, really important and it gets overlooked a lot. I think it's the part that we smoke or ingest or take is the female part of the plant, right? This is hemp is the other part. But hemp is female to I just learned this, I didn't know this, but for growing, you know, you try to get the males out.

But I think there is really something to the effects that it has on people's consciousness that opens them up to those qualities that we typically associate with the divine feminists. Right. And I think people intuitively also sense that stuff is shifting now, just in our temporal world. Like we are getting a clear influx of more, I don't want to say instability, but our reality as we know, it seems to be kind of coming apart if it seems. And the reality of as we've known it for the past 2,500 or 3,000 years has been a pretty predominantly patriarchal top down authoritarian society. And I think when some people, I know this from conversations I've had with friends, people have been on this podcast, when they hear a term like patriarchy, they think we're bashing white men and white men only and all white men are garbage and they're pieces of shit and now it's time for women, white men take a back seat.

And I think they hear it as kind of an attack and it sucks because it's not an attack. It's an invitation to be more balanced and in equilibrium with the natural state of things. And I don't want that to get lost that when we talk about patriarchal systems, this isn't an attack on men, this isn't an attack on a gender, this isn't an attack on a system, and it is an attack, I mean I would like to bring out. It is because it's something that hasn't worked very well. It's led to these precipitous declines in ecological wellbeing, mental wellbeing, psychological like shit is not going great for a large portion of the world.

Some places it is, people are okay, but for a lot of people it's not okay. So when we start talking about cannabis, the reason, one of the reasons I've continued to stay passionate and advocate for it, and I'm very open about my use and how I use it, is because I think it invites people to get in touch with this. And I think for men, talking about genders, this is a really, really useful tool because a lot of men grew up in a society where you are not supposed to show emotion. You're not supposed to show vulnerability, you're not supposed to show kindness and compassion wherever you go, because that's not how you get ahead in the world, that's not how the world works, you know, it's a dog eat dog world.

And all you have to do is just look around to see that this system has not worked out well. So when we look to tools, when we look to modalities, when we look at systems that can alleviate this, find the ones that are actually bringing up some solutions. And here we have this amazing plant that not only deals with some of these socioeconomic issues, but these medicinal issues, right? That's what we're talking about all this stuff, and I love that you brought this up. All this stuff, again, can get very conceptual, very intellectual, but when someone you love is physically suffering or emotionally or psychologically suffering, and you have something that helps them, and you recognize it helps them, and they recognize it helps them.

That's all the proof you need, you don't need to go start talking about all these other things. So once we've identified this thing, which seems to hit all of these checkboxes of good, good, good, good, what can we do to honor that plant, and how do we make sure that it interfaces with our world, our Caesar's world, right? How do we get it, at least to the point where it has a chance to thrive and do the things it's what you and I believe it's meant to do, right? Change the world. So the values that you attribute that the plant helps bring out, those are the values that are in men and women. They're just called the more feminine values, you know, and feminine gets degraded in the patriarchal society, but they're in everyone.

It's just a question of which ones you're going to let out and which ones you aren't, and the ones that have been allowed, the competitive, the idea that corporations' responsibility is to take every dime and the hell with the earth, and the hell with the employees, and it's okay for the, you know, CEO to make 8 trillion times as much like, how did that happen? That wasn't even true in my lifetime when I was younger, you know, so all of those values have to be re-examined. You know, I sometimes think if I was going into a kindergarten and I was saying, okay, kids, like, let's make a business, you know, and you'll be the consumers and you'll be the manufacturers, you know, you do the whole thing.

What would you tell your 5-year-old children, you know, you'd say, what's going to work for you, how are you going to have enough free time, how are we going to collaborate, how are we going to do things that are beneficial to us, what we don't want to do harmful things, and we also want to make some money, you know, we want to, we don't want to need to make too much money, we have to cover our expenses. All the most basics, what you would tell a child, and then like, when does it change, like, okay, and when you get older, screw that. Now, screw everybody, dog, dog, exploit whoever you need to exploit, exploit whatever resources you need to exploit, like, when did we change those values?

We still have those values, but someone told us we have to let go of them, you know, when we get to be, I don't know, when does it happen, 10, 15, 20, when do you start? It's when you, well, I think there's two things that happen, right, there's one that people as individuals rarely will do fucked up things. But if you create a system or an umbrella that essentially gives them shields or protection or plausible deniability that this is, like, if you ask someone who works at Monsanto, right, there are probably some very nice human beings working at Monsanto. But if you say, like, how can you work for a company that's just destroying the earth? They'll say, oh, that's not my department.

You know, I focus on processing this. I work with this farmer, and he's a very nice guy, and he likes me a lot. So you have these systems that are not human. We can say they have personhood, we can give them legal protections as though they have personhood, but they're not. And they're specifically most corporations in this day and age do exactly what you described. They're designed to make the most money possible. That is their only function. They are these kind of external entities that can use human beings to serve their function. It's like a weird virus that has infected people. And yeah, it wasn't like this even, like, 60 years ago.

It wasn't this hype. I mean, yeah, there were the Rockefellers and the Morgans. I went on my whole Ron Chernau kick and really learned about the roots of kind of finance and business and how we kind of got to this place. And it usually was a very small group of people who just were slaves to money. They didn't know any better. They thought they were. So everybody else had to be enslaved to get out of what it is. So what you're describing, and I think this is an era that is possible to move into, is for people to recognize, like, money's good. Money isn't necessarily a bad thing that we have to say is the root of all evil.

It really helps a lot of people, especially if you don't have any, you get a little bit. It can help a lot. But how much do we need? What are our priorities? Would you like $10 billion, but never get to see your family? Would you like $50 billion, but be perpetually stressed out and unhealthy? Most people will probably be like, no, I'm good with a lot less than that. And that's going to do. So I think what happens is as children emerge out of this kind of, and I have a young toddler now, so I'm seeing this happen, is they emerge out of their kind of cocoon of awareness that's just like insular, mommy, daddy, everything is good utopian world.

They start to get these impressions of how things work. And if our cultural operating system is reinforcing that this is a doggy dog world, most things aren't fair. Things are going to be fucked up. This is how you make money. It's just a natural adaptive quality to be like, okay, well, this is how things are. It's very, very difficult to kind of maintain that child like innocence and be like, you know, maybe there's another way. But we see this. I can tell you that I know people in this area who have moved here who really understand this concept, recognize that community, good plants, food, you know, social interactions, like that's what we need.

We don't need bigger buildings and more expensive stuff. Like they recognize this is like, no pun intended, going back to the roots of what forms of community. But there has to be a means for people who get it to make money. So you have to get away from the one person gets to make an excessive amount of money to, you know, the thing that's interesting about cannabis is it both represents a consciousness that we're talking about needs to come back. And it also represents an opportunity to make a huge amount of money. So my objective is to how to spread that money among as many people as possible. That means like Cuba means like not, you know, like no one person is getting too much.

There may not be, you know, in Cuba, there may not be enough to go around, but at least, you know, everybody sharing it. Whatever there is to go around, I want to see that shared. I want to see small businesses and there's so many ancillary small businesses that grew up and they could all be making. I don't know $100,000 as opposed to $1 million or $10 million. But if all those people get to participate and make $50,000, that's, you know, and do it in a caring, conscious way. That's good for them. That's good for the environment. That's good for the plant. There's like nothing you can say bad about it.

When I've spoken to the legislature, even the simple, how can you allow this industry to come in that's going to release this amount of greenhouse gas when you said to you said, we have to control our carbon emissions. I just don't even know responses. It's a funny system because it's cognitive dissonance. And what I think it really, what I've noticed in myself, which I'll extrapolate my own realizations to other people do that. I'm fond of doing that is that most people aren't very clear about what they want and what they're asking for, and that would certainly include politicians who are typically subservient to not only their constituents, but outside money. God knows what, right?

That's a really tough thing for people to do if they're not experienced doing it. I know that I didn't really start asking myself that question. What do you want? What do you want to do? Not just career-wise, but what do you want in life? What would make you happy and fulfilled? I started asking that question three weeks ago. I'm 35. I'm normally asking it now when I'm 65. So it's a very normal thing that people don't ask. And I think it's kind of this disempowerment thing. People don't think they have this capacity to receive what they want. That's because our senses deny us things that we may feel are true. That's the system, because how else are we going to work for the man if we're not willing to just forget what we want?

Exactly. So I am embracing this idea that, again, our imaginations aren't just a component of reality, but are the actual creators of everything we see. So I play with this idea pretty actively now. It's actually even got me to meditate, which I never thought I would do. I have so resistant to it, but it's even got me to do that. I meditate. I imagine things. It's like a one-pointed, single-focus, mindfulness exercise that I inadvertently have taught myself. I think if people were more aware that this is something they can at least empirically test within themselves, so envision the thing you want, give it sensory detail.

A lot of the stuff people refer to is the secret types of this power of attraction, law of attraction. That's not what I'm referring to specifically, but it's this idea if you test this out before you go to sleep, you envision specifically what you know you want. Deep down inside. You'll know. Everyone knows. Everyone knows when they're bullshitting themselves, too. If you do this, and then all of a sudden, these things you're imagining begin to happen, something shifts in people. You start realizing, "Oh, my God. Maybe this doesn't work exactly how I thought it did." This is why I think people like psychedelics. I think they like these plant medicines because they get these in their face.

Realizations where maybe otherwise it's kind of an internal thing, but I think how this relates to what we're talking about is if you're someone who's very clear. I mean, you've used your mind as a lawyer. You're successful in the patriarchy for many years. Yeah, including my model. I had to learn that skill, right? Right. You see that certain women and certain individuals are able to work within a system that is really designed to not have them succeed, right? Succeed in the face of what is most likely for most people, imminent failure. It's set up to be that way. If you can start doing that in any aspect of your life, theoretically that applies to any aspect, literally anything that's going on.

And for me, that's a very liberating and sometimes terrifying prospect. You can't blame anyone else for anything, which is very troublesome because you want to blame other people with things, but it also potentially gives you the operative power to make this place better, right? Work for the Shambhala in latent society. Work for the utopian thing where, yeah, we're not going to imagine something and next day every world piece is going to happen, but maybe we do exactly what we're talking about today. Form these groups in hubs and allow people to see that, yeah, you know what? Let's use the world of Caesar and the fiscal means available to show people that they can be less stressed out.

I mean, how many farmers are struggling in this state who are either subsidized or wish they were subsidized who, like, just with a little extra could sleep easier at night knowing their families are taken care of? Like, who doesn't want that? Like, no one. So, I think we have a lot of stuff coming for us in the years to come. And I think in no small part, the reason, again, I'm so passionate about cannabis is, I think it tunes you into this idea of thinking. It brings you to these imaginal worlds where reality isn't as fixed and stable and it's a little more malleable. I think the case is you can call it the universe communicating with you or the plant communicating you and they're probably one and the same, but when you open yourself up to hear the universe or to hear the plant, I mean, it's not going to tell you, you know, like, what's the joke about lawyers?

Or on your deathbed, you're not willing, you wish you'd put in more billable hours, right? That's not what it's about, right? And the plant tells you something else. And the plant doesn't want to be used to lock people up in jail or to make shit loads of money for a few people. Well, I personally sense that something is shifting. I'm interested to see how it plays out in our reality, but I think we're even if it doesn't happen next week, even if it doesn't happen in the next year or two. It's going to happen. It's going to happen. It's going to happen. And how it's going to happen is really important.

It's very important. Well, this is this goes back to what I'm talking about with imagination. If you know something has happened, if you have the ability to imagine how it happened, the chances of that reality, you moving into that reality where it happens, you're increasing the chances. You are visualizing. I mean, I don't know how many people have experienced this, but if you've ever had a dream, and then at some point in the future, the exact thing you dreamed about, maybe with a few minor details off literally happens, call that what you want. But there's some operative principle in there. You can call it precognition or manifestation, either one, kind of not important.

It means there's something going on. And if we can tune into that, the more vivid you can be and the more detailed and specific you can be about what you want the future to look like. I think that's an amazing opportunity for people who like recognize like, again, how many things have you found in this world? I haven't found many. Cannabis is one of them. That truly is a win, win, win, win, if applied correctly, right? I mean, I don't see those things everywhere. Even for when it's not applied correctly, which is abuse, right? And people will also say, "Well, what about the abuse? What about this?" It's not the cannabis.

It's just like being a workaholic. You don't blame the work, right? If you have the cannabis abuse disorder, it's because you have an abuse disorder, which could never be talked about because it's illegal. And once it's legalized, they even put money in the bill aside for studying that because we can't even talk about it until it's legal. Yeah. And the abuse thing, I mean... Regulated. Yeah. Regulated. Yeah. My take, I use cannabis every single day and I have for the majority of my life at this point since I've been about 15 with a year or two off in between. And I always take the same kind of cut with any type of addiction. If it's hurting you physically, emotionally, psychologically, or it's hurting people around you, physically, emotionally, psychologically, whatever it is.

Coffee, weed, alcohol, reinvesty. Work. Work. Okay. Literally, it love relationship sex. It could be anything. Re-evaluate what the fuck is going on. That is the only starting point you can go to. I think it's okay if people have a sacred relationship with cannabis or anything if they're acutely aware of what they're doing. Second, it just becomes a default, modus operandi. I'm not even thinking about it, habitual thing. Time to maybe re-evaluate. But I do think, listen, we know that people in India, the Sadhus, they got their chillums and they're doing stuff. This is a sacred plant. Vishnu, I believe. No, Shiva, I think, in the Eastern and the Vedic traditions was the person who was constantly shown smoking and that's who the Sadhus were embodying when they were doing it.

This is a very magical plant. I believe in a lot of types of magic, but when you have this physical thing in front of you and it does something to you internally, it's pretty impressive. It's pretty fucking cool. We have easily, just seamlessly, spoken for an hour. Is there anything I haven't brought up in our conversation that you would like to? No, I think we could talk about this forever but I think we've covered the finest points and if we haven't made it clear enough that people have to organize if they want to see a better way of going about their lives. And being clear about what they want. If people want to connect with you or what you're doing in your organization, what is the best way for them to do that?

I really searched and searched for an acronym to come up with the title when Ben and I first founded this organization and I could not have someone. So I settled for small pharma, which my kid keeps telling me, no one's going to get to joke mom. They get it when they see it on paper, so it's small pharma, just an A, and they can sign up and God, we really need help going forward because it's now, whether it passes or not. I assume it passes next week, how it's then going to be shaped because these legislation provides the bare bones. We'd like more bones, but it'll provide bare bones and then how that take shape is going to be influenced by Big Canada, which has a lot of money and a lot of energy, therefore, to put into influencing our way and the only way we can influence it otherwise is to be on them. Yeah, yeah, and I think outside of one of us or someone listening, actually getting into politics, which seems like it's probably not going to happen.

That is all we really can do at this point. I mean, it does start with being able to change the people's minds or show them the way forward who are making decisions. And I think even if we don't get in all the foreign provisions that I would like to see, when New York first came up with the craft brewery industry or the craft winery industry, or the media, these were all like, they were just carving out a small niche for themselves. You still sell Budweiser, but you can also sell this other and then that's an education too, which is once people appreciate, "Oh, I can go and buy in local dispensary, whatever craft they're selling me." And yeah, it's going to be marked and it's going to have labels on it now.

But is it going to tell you how much pesticide it is? Let me just address that because that's an important piece of it, which is the pesticide issue was another one of those glaze over when you talk to people, you talk to politicians about pesticide. And I have raised this so many times, what kind of pesticides are you going to allow in this plant? And they're going to generally allow either what the department of whoever says they can allow, or what's in the bill right now is the minimal risk, that's in quotes, minimal risk, that's what they call it. And the minimal risk is such a bad misnomer. If you look up, even it's a federal, if you look up on the EPA's website, a minimal risk pesticide is one that the manufacturer has decided has got small risks, and the government in cahoots agrees with them, and no one tests it.

On the EPA's website, it says they don't even check, so the manufacturer who's making the toxin can say whatever they want, and it's just going to pass as minimal risk. The only thing minimal about it is the oversight. And so do you want that? And I don't even know if that will go on the label. I mean, yes, everyone talks about this is better than underground because you'll know what's in it now, it's going to be on the label. But what if what's on the label is really crap, or what if they don't tell you that it's got whatever level of pesticide is acceptable, so they don't have to tell you. I mean, what we've been advocating for is only biological or botanical, anything, and you don't need all this other stuff, but that's another thing. I had, there are some really wonderful legislators, and they're so lobbied by the other side.

And then they'll come back and say, yeah, but I was told X, or I was told if I do this, but I was told, oh, with cannabis, you know, because this happens to that. It's not true. It's absolutely not true that you need to have these synthetic chemicals. And they're really, really, really bad for you. And they're really bad, of course. Yeah, they're just there. I know exactly what you're talking about. And I mean, you can even tell when you get a final product sometimes, you're just like, no, like this, there's something. Right. Or when people have these say, oh, you haven't used it in a long time because I get paranoid or I get headaches or I get this.

How do you know what you're reacting to? How do you know it's the cannabis is opposed to the pesticide or the growth hormone or whatever it was freaking sprayed with, you know, which is done with great disregard. For human beings in the planet. So even, you know, when they allow this cannabis huge industry to take off in the state, as long as we can keep working to have a niche for people who grow it consciously and with love and without pesticides and with concern for the environment. And produce that superior quality product. That's what people, as they come to appreciate it, will seek out more and more, not just want the Budweiser. Yes, yes, Budweiser.

But that is the very in line with my vision of how I see this working and how I would like it to work in the industry because what we're advocating. You know, you go to the farmers market, you learn who's good and who has the good stuff. Oh, these people grow these vegetables. It's a little bit better than that. And it's also transparency. Like, can you go to the farm? Can you see what they're doing? Exactly. So I think with enough concerted effort and focus like this will emerge. I think people don't not want this. They just don't know better. To me, it's a, and it is, you know, unfortunately, a constructed information gap because there's been no studies or awareness or any industry for them to even set up any guidelines for the past however many decades that this will naturally emerge. I mean, all I know is this is if you've grown weed before and you've given your friends some and, you know, you've said, what do you think of this?

And they go, "Holy shit, what is that?" You know the difference between something grown that you know everything went into it. You know what your intentions were. You know all this. It's just, you can't, it's night and day. They're too broccoli and tomatoes. It's just... Exactly. You can feel it more immediately with that. Exactly. All right. Well, I end with three questions and then a longer one. They'll seem trivial, but they're so nice. No, no, no, I listen to you. I know you're for the questions. Here's my problem. I don't have a favorite color. I can make one up, but I don't have a favorite number. I don't have a favorite number. But I can make it up.

When I ask you the questions, the first one that pops in your head will say is your favorite. I don't like any primary color. Okay. Well, what's your favorite color? I would say sage, if I ask you. She's a really good answer. And I would say 13, only because 13's been forbidden. That's my favorite number. That's my favorite number. And then animal. Like, you know, who knows, but I really have this thing for the sea turtle. I want slime. There you go. Which was awesome. There you go. And last question, practical tips. And plant counts. We should add that. Plant counts. I should add plant at the end.

A practical tip that you could share with people listening that's helped you in your life. I would say what I've learned at this point in my life is what we were talking about earlier, which is to really try hard to hold on to those values that are devalued in the patriarchy. And that's for men and for women. But all of those qualities that we take for granted because they've been so pushed on us and ingrained on us. And that's what we feel good about. And I myself, I mean, I really got sucked into that. I thought I was doing it differently. I thought I was, you know, when I first started practicing law, there were like no women around.

I mean, I'm not that old, but where I was practicing, there were very few women. I remember I got pregnant early on. And boy, they used to call my cases out of turn when I was in Bronx housing court. And you'd have all these, you'd have to sit there forever till they got to your cases and then you'd send out to a park. And all of a sudden I started walking in. I was barely pregnant, but they weren't used to women attorneys never mind pregnant ones. And they would look and find my cases and call them early. And I thought, well, isn't that really nice to them? They're just like trying to be nice to me because I'm pregnant.

They were so terrified of having me around. They were so sure I was going to go into labor at any second in my fourth month, but they wanted me out of the courtroom. So there were no men. There were only men around to learn from them. There were so few women. And I really tried to do it different. And I thought I was doing it different. And I was doing it different. But I was so working within the patriarchy. I so learned how to do their game and do it better. And it would be so much better if I could, you know, and I still held onto those values of cooperation and support and not trying to squeeze every time out or whatever, you know, all of that kind of cutthroat doggy dog. And the more everyone can hold onto that and to trust their gut and their intuition and what they know to be right or just go back to what would you tell your five year old. Yeah, that's what we should be doing.

That's awesome. Andy, thank you so much for doing this. Thanks for listening to that episode. Go check out Andy at New York Small Pharma. That's F-A-R-M-A. nyswalfarma.org on the internet to go find out what she's doing. There's a whole team of people there really doing important work, like not just in terms of, you know, talking about this stuff and having an organization that really is awesome, but legally understanding, you know, the differences between decriminalization, legalization and regulation. Regulations are actually what kind of facilitate the ability for someone to do something. Those lawyers understand that, right? So yeah, go check her out.

Also, big thanks again to the guys at Ned. Go to hellonead.com/sink. Get yourself the...no, not/sink. Just go to hellonead.com telling you, baby, second baby, not getting sleep. Quick, go there. Hellonead.com. Use the code Sink, S-Y-N-C at checkout. You have 15% off your order. Seriously, that's a good idea. It's a whole can of, can of circle is complete. That's it, rate and review. If you can, you can so do it. Not a big deal. I think Apple would think a killing iTunes. Apple podcast should hopefully make this easier to do. Go ahead and do that. That'd be great. I will see you next week. You can earn a $300 bonus when you open a new checking account at Walden Savings Bank. Our local team makes banking symbols, porto and stress free. That's the Walden Way. To earn a $300 bonus, open a new Walden Savings Bank checking account and complete qualifying direct deposits.

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