FM Talk 1065 Podcasts
Sweet Home Cannabama 7-15-24 Nicholas Patrick, movie Weed Wars part 1
(upbeat music) - It's time for Sweet Home, "Cannabema," a show that'll answer all your questions, provide accurate information, and dispel the myths of cannabis, and have your specific questions answered by emailing jennifer@cannabema.com, or text or call 3430106. And now, for all things cannabis in Alabama, here's your host, Jennifer Boozer. - Welcome to the show, everybody. I'm your host, Jennifer Boozer, owner and founder of "Cannabema" in downtown Mobile. We're located at 558 St. Francis Street, just a block off of Dauphin Street, where everybody likes to go to eat at Wences, or go have a drink at posts, we're just a block away from those awesome establishments that are our neighbors. Our phone number is 251-255-51-55-5. Our website is www.cannabema.com, that's C-A-N-N-A, B-A-M-A, look at me, misspelling it. (laughing) You can find the show on social media pages on Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube, that's Sweet Home, "Cannabema." And of course, we're here live on the radio on the Gulf Coast, right here at FM Talk, 106-5 every Monday night at 7 p.m., central. So welcome everybody to the ones of you that are listening on the radio. And now our video live stream listeners, watchers, whatever you want to call yourselves, you can find us on the Instagram page, live streaming right now. And I want to go ahead and jump on into some current events. We have our anniversary show coming up. That will be July 30th, and we'll be here. We're gonna have some special guests, a lot of special guests. We're gonna have a ton of giveaways, and I've already been digging around, looking for all kinds of cool stuff that we can give away, and we're gonna give our brands an opportunity to send some merch in, for us to be able to give out to our customers and appreciation, our listeners, particularly the ones of you who listen, deserve for hanging in with us for five whole years. So join us July 30th right here. And so I want to get into some current events real quick before our very important guests. These both came across my desk today, and they're both national news. So right out of the gate, House Republicans voted this week to block the Biden administration's effort to move cannabis from schedule one to schedule three under the Controlled Substances Act. So as we get into this, it's a little bit crazy. Lawmakers in the U.S. House Appropriations Committee have voted to block the Biden administration's effort to move cannabis from schedule one to schedule three under federal law. The Republican Control Committee on Tuesday approved an amendment to a commerce, justice, science, and related agencies funding bill that if enacted would block the Department of Justice from using any federal funds to reschedule or deschedule cannabis under the Controlled Substances Act. And of course, we want them to completely deschedule. That moving it to schedule three will not make it legal. It will still remain federally illegal, but that would give more access to research and for medicinal purposes. The House Appropriations Committee also rejected an amendment from Representative Barbara Lee, who's a Democrat out of California, who co-chairs the Congressional Cannabis Caucus that sought to block the DOJ from spending resources to interfere with state, legal, or tribal cannabis programs, including adult use reforms. The House Republican's effort to block cannabis rescheduling and other reforms appears to run counter to public sentiment after a Pew Research poll in March found 88% of Americans believe that cannabis should be made legal for at least medicinal purposes, if not outright for adult use. And then meanwhile, according to a survey published in April, most Americans no longer believe cannabis use carries a stigma. I beg to differ here in Alabama. And 72% said that cannabis is only going to get more popular. Well, we could have told you that. I think we do tell you that every week. Okay, so the next national story, take that for what you will. I don't know why they're trying to block it. This is House Republicans, I get it. Biden's got this one thing. Anybody who says they're going to help reschedule, deschedule, expunge when it comes to cannabis is going to get a major surge of voters because 88% people, come on. And that doesn't, you know, even just the people that use it and need it, there's a huge outcry from the public. This is not a big deal anymore. Why are we still doing this? Elizabeth Warren went to see, she delivered marks at a cannabis event this weekend, emphasizing the need to legalize marijuana in a manner that prevents domination by big business and aims to repair what the senator called a century of racist policy under prohibition. She was one of many speakers who addressed attendees at an event organized by Parabola Center, an equity-focused cannabis advocacy group. The two-day conference includes an anti-monopoly cannabis crash course on Saturday and a leadership training session on Sunday. So this was just ended yesterday. She was joined by others, including TV personality, Jonathan Venice, from the show Queer Eye. Legalizing marijuana is about more than just allowing recreational use or the money that can be made from this new market or even about the potential medicinal benefits. She's basically saying it's an opportunity to make up for all of the people who were injured by the war on drugs. But she says it's also clear that legalization alone is not enough and warned that industry giants will try their best to swoop in before small businesses and those most harmed by the war on drugs have a chance to even enter the market. I don't know what the current statistic is, but I know a few years ago, it was like only 17% of the industry was minority or women combined. So I don't know if any of those numbers have changed. I certainly know a ton of great people who are who fall in that category who are doing really well in the industry. But she said we must make sure that the communities that have been harmed most by the war on drugs are at the front of the line for reaping the benefits of legalization. And we need to make sure that legalization doesn't just pave the way for big tobacco or big alcohol companies or retail giants to come in and dominate the cannabis market. Let's keep this in mind. When we see companies like Amazon lobbying for cannabis legalization, she said Elizabeth Warren, she said I'm deeply skeptical that their lobbying is anything more than a self-interested move to monopolize yet another market, blocking black and Latino entrepreneurs from breaking into the industry. And this article is from marijuana moment. I'm sure you can find it on their website. So go read the rest of it. There was a lot of really good information. And I wanna go ahead and get to tonight's topic. We're gonna be bringing on a guest in the next segment, Nicholas Patrick. He's the president and co-founder of the Maryland Healthy Alternatives Association. Actually, I wanna go ahead and bring him on the show. Now, Nicholas, welcome to the show. - Thank you very much, can you hear me? - Yes, I was hoping we could play the movie trailer before the break, but I talked too long. So we're gonna have to wait and we'll do that at the beginning of the next segment. But I wanted to introduce you, you're the president and co-founder of the Maryland Healthy Alternatives Association. And you yourself are a retailer like me or have been. - Correct. - And you're located where? - Located about 10 minutes outside of Baltimore City in Maryland. - And how many stores have you had? - I had three and we're down to one, we had three. - Okay, and all in Baltimore, were they in other cities or? - Oh, they were all within 15 miles of one another. So we were... - Nice. - Yeah, I had three stores, one pretty close to Baltimore and two more in the suburbs and outdoors, a little bit more west. But yeah, we had three stores and we were doing extraordinary well. - Right, and when people understand why you're on the show and what we're talking about, this film that you created, we're gonna show the trailer after the break. It's called "Weed Wars" and the movie is split into two parts. And I know the first part is like 32 minutes. How long is part two? - Part two is about an hour, it goes into a lot of-- - I knew it was a little bit longer. So tell us a little bit about the Maryland Healthy Alternatives Association, I'm sorry. - Okay, great, so first of all, thanks for having me on the show. I think it's really, I think it's awesome. I'm glad to be able to talk to some people down there in Alabama and down there in some of the Gulf States. So for those of you listening, hi, nice to meet you. I'm glad you guys are tuned in. The Maryland Healthy Alternatives Association is a nonprofit that was started by myself and to other local Maryland business owners. The goal of it was to protect the hemp industry from government overreach and from corporate greed. We also work not just in hemp and cannabis, but for all sorts of alternatives to prescription drugs. Our goal as an association is to protect the public and consumers' access to alternatives to big farmers' drugs, as well as protecting the businesses in the supply chain that provide that access. - Wow, okay, well, we're about to have to go to break. When we come back from the break, we're gonna talk more with Nicholas Patrick and we are going to watch the trailer to his movie, Maryland, sorry, Weed Wars, Maryland's Monopoly and the Fight for Free Markets. So stay with us when we come back from the break. We're gonna get more information and watch this trailer and then we're gonna break it down and talk about how for every time you see this trailer or this movie and you hear the word Maryland, you could insert the word Alabama. Stay with us. (upbeat music) - Welcome back to Sweet Home, Canada. Now with all the information you want about cannabis, here's your host, Jennifer Booser. - Welcome back, everybody. Tonight, you're listening to Sweet Home, Alabama right here on FM Top 1065, every Monday night at 7 p.m. and live stream from the Sweet Home, Alabama Instagram page and YouTube. Tonight, we're talking with Nicholas Patrick, president and co-founder of the Maryland Health, the Alternative Association and he is the director of a movie called Weed Wars, Maryland's Monopoly and the Fight for Free Markets. So right now, we are going to watch the trailer. It's about three minutes. And then when we come back, we're gonna speak to Nicholas some more about this film. You gotta tell me when it's over. - It's not playing. - Welcome to a world of contracts where the promise of a budding industry collides head off with a shadow relentless monopolistic food. Country, we have a civil war going on between the hemp industry and the cannabis industry. Just civil war is not beneficial to public interest whatsoever. - They felt that every turn to discredit us and took zero opportunities to argue anything factual in their defense. - The Maryland hemp coalition is suing the state, arguing Maryland is monopolizing the marijuana licensing industry and therefore hurting hemp businesses. - In the face of the booming cannabis and hemp industries, a storm was brewing. One of power struggles, monopolies, corruption and injustice that has come to my attention that there are some people in this room working on behalf of the cannabis establishment that have been using political influence to mislead the legislature by spreading misinformation about our industry on behalf of their clients with a competing economic interest. - It's exactly what the state wants. They see that they know there's a lot of money involved and they want to step into the shoes of the cartel. - Who do you think have people interested in cannabis while the state would busy lack of people up for it? It was us. - Trump argues politics and money played a role when crafting pot policies. - As soon as a lot of money gets on the table, elected officials seem to forget about those basic principles. - But this is more than just a battle for the cannabis industry. It's a fight for fundamental rights, for social and economic equity and for the spirit of free enterprise. - How do you put me out of business and policy equity? - I've got a $6,000 donation that will sink out another $1,000 donation at a rate, getting a $1,000 donation on January 5th. Hayes getting $2,500 from Van Windgarden on January 2nd too. But it's not just legislators. Governor Westmore got a $6,000 check from Sun Med on January 5th, the week before session began, with all this money flowing to the lawmakers, Patrick and hemp grower Levi Sellers say their business could dry up and it's not an accident. - But I believe the cannabis industry is trying to consolidate monopolize the market. As voices rise and alliances form, the state is set for an epic struggle. One that will shape the destiny of an entire industry. - We are concerned about things that get you high and you can walk to Main Street and buy some right after this hearing. - Behind me today, you will see many people that are here in support of our industry. Please look at them. These are the men and women whose livelihoods this bill has written will destroy. - Buckle up as we delve into the heart of the battle, where passion meets policy and the fight for free markets becomes a war for justice. Witness the clash between power and principle, the resilience of the human spirit and the relentless pursuit of a dream, the dream of a truly free cannabis industry. This is the untold story of weed war, Maryland monopoly and the fight for free markets. - All right, ooh, I get so fired up, man. Okay, Nicholas, let's get into this. First I wanna, I do want a little background. Tell me just a little bit about how you even ended up in the cannabis industry. Because unless you've been in California doing it for 20 years, most of us are fairly new. You know, I've been in it for almost seven years, six years with my business. How long have you been in and how did you get in? - Well, I've been involved in the cannabis market since a teenager in the legacy market, right? I've been a legacy operator since I was 17 years old and I've had many run ins with law enforcement due to cannabis for a very long time. And in 2012, I had a run in with cancer and during chemotherapy got infatuated with cannabis science. - Wow. - And I did a lot of studying during that time, a lot of research and I've always been politically active so I've been paying attention to what was happening in Congress surrounding hemp. I saw that as my opportunity to break into the industry legally and I opened my first store less than 30 days after the 2018 farm bill was ratified, offering CBD products, but to answer your question long and short of it is this plan has been a part of my life since before I was legally an adult. - Right. - Now you said something I never heard of, you said legacy, something? - Yeah, legacy market is a term I guess coined by the industry that would refer to people who were in the illicit market or in the black market. - Okay, yes, I saw something on social media discussing legal versus traditional market, I think is what they called it. And I thought, well, isn't that clever? - Yeah, it's a nice way to put it. - It is, it's kind, it's kind, it's southern, I swear that, legacy, I mean, it sounds like your mom was in a sorority, so you get to be in a sorority. (laughs) - No, so like I said, this plan has been a part of my life for a very long time without getting too much information. You know, I made a lot of mistakes in my formative years where I wasn't able to get a, you know, I never went to college, I never finished high school. I didn't do myself a whole lot of favors, but this plan was the way that I provided for myself and eventually now legally provide for my family with it, it's my whole life, so. - Right, no, I think that that's true for most people who come into this because either they were sick or someone they loved, their child, a lot of people got in because their child was sick and they could not find a conventional answer. And it does, it becomes your whole world because you have to defend it to the death. Everywhere you go, you have to defend it at the bank, you have to defend it in the eyes of your peers and the people that you are working with and people in your community, that's, it's tough down here. It's tough. I mean, 'cause people still think, oh no, ah, ah, that's gonna, you know, I think people get this vision when you use cannabis in whatever way most people think of smoking it, that you're gonna somehow end up in a ditch with a needle in your arm because it's the gateway to all things that will send you straight to hell, that's where we're at. - Right, yeah, I mean, in states like Alabama, from my understanding, you guys are still battling the stigma while here we're battling the collusion, and the corruption. - Well, I think we're on the cusp of that. We're definitely on the cusp of that. And one of my favorite lines from the movie is when the other guy that they were interviewing said, it was us. We're the ones who cleared the way. You know, like when I opened, I know for Alabama, when I opened Canabama, nobody had done that before. And so everybody else who opened behind me had an easier time, you know? And then the thought, because what I opened before the Farm Bill started, because we had a state law that kept me from going to prison, and an agricultural law. But you know, it does, it becomes your whole life because you have to defend it to the death. And we were the ones, the people who came out and said, okay, CBD is this, and presented that, which paved the way for all of the products we have now, which are exponentially more diverse than what we started with when all we had was isolate and, you know, 50 milligram topicals. And nobody even knew the letters CBD, you know? And so, but it was us who made it normal to talk about it. It was us who made it, who made the social impact, the normalization of consuming in public. You know, doing things like our events. Yeah, I mean, we built the market for the larger cannabis industry by taking the, what I refer to as the cannabis curious, and people that have had no interaction with the plant whatsoever and taking them from a CBD user and then gradually introducing other minor cannabinoids until you have a full-blown cannabis user. Right. So we built and sustained the market for the cannabis industry. Well, and I think I don't think it's presumptuous to say that the normalcy of saying, I'm going to apply for a medical card now after five, six years of that reversal of the stigma. It's not a big deal to use CBD and your neighbors don't care. You know, and it's not a big deal to walk into a shop and ask for something. It was in the beginning. And I think that the normalcy of the hemp market and the impact that it has had on society's opinion about cannabis, being able to use CBD products and THC products, especially publicly, and nobody's fighting, nobody's shooting, no one's getting sick and puking everywhere or going to the hospital unless they ate too many edibles which still won't kill them. But you know what I mean? It's, we've proven it's harmless. That that's been probably my biggest talking point when dealing with legislators and when dealing with all the things that we do related to advocacy here in the state of Maryland and also across the country as I work with the national organizations fighting on behalf of the small businesses in the hemp industry. What I've been telling people is that hemp has exposed the fact that cannabis is unnecessarily over-regulated. - Yes. - That we shouldn't be treating this plant and regulating it so strictly, even more so than we regulate our gun stores and our liquor stores, which is absolutely ridiculous. And so the hemp industry has shown over the last close to six years that when you have some common sense basic standardized testing protocols, some basic packaging and labeling standards, and you allow the market to be open to any and everyone. What you're gonna see is drastic amounts of innovation where the hemp industry has explored dozens of minor cannabinoids, created targeted relief products, things that you never would have seen had there not been a free market and the competition that pushed that. But yet and still, the sky hasn't fallen. People have been buying THC and gas stations and everybody is okay. So when we talk about normalizing cannabis and we talk about hemp's role in normalizing cannabis, we have shown that the sky doesn't fall when you have common sense regulations around cannabis and when you open the market to any and everyone, we created a $28 billion industry built on the backs of small, mom and pop businesses. And that's what the cannabis industry should look like and the hemp industry has set the standard in the model for that. - And that is why we do this show that I've been doing the show this month five years to normalize. When we come back from the break, we're gonna talk more with Nicholas Patrick about weed wars, stay with us. (upbeat music) - Welcome back to Sweet Home, Canada. Now with all the information you want about cannabis, here's your host, Jennifer Bouser. - Welcome back everybody tonight. We are talking with Nicholas Patrick, who is calling in from Maryland. We talked about kind of how you got into cannabis. How, why did you make the film? I know that a lot of crazy stuff has been happening up in Maryland and it is eerily similar to things that are starting to happen in other places and even nationally with the farm bill and the spending bill and them trying to take the THC percentage down to zero. Tell us about the film. - Sure, well, first off, I love the intro, the little music that plays before the show starts. I mean, it's the coolest thing. - I have all my Leonard Skinner t-shirt right now. I don't know if you can see me, but I wore it just because I had a feeling you would think that was cool. (laughs) - It is super cool. - To answer your question, I think the really short answer is to bring awareness, right? - Right. - Because I think a lot of people, when they hear the term cannabis legalization, you mentioned the vast majority of Americans now who are for cannabis legalization. It's no longer really a partisan issue. It's kind of becoming a common sense issue. And so when people think of the term cannabis legalization, most people will view it as a net positive. They'll say, this is great, right? We're making, this is progress. This is what we should be seeing. What people don't see is what happens kind of behind the curtain. Who's responsible for getting ballot initiatives passed? - If you can get 'em in your state, 'cause we can't. - Right, exactly, yeah, we talked about that. I mean, who's responsible for rioting cannabis legislation? Who's responsible for determining what the regulations are gonna look like? - Right. - These are things that people don't understand. And most people that are not trying to be a part of the industry, let's say as an entrepreneur, think that these issues don't really affect them. But as a consumer, it affects you a lot. - It does, it does. If you're paying $10,000 a year for a license, that goes into your operating expenses, which goes into your pricing, if nothing else. - I mean, and it's not always just operating expenses that will cause prices to be high. Prices are high because of a lack of competition. - That's right. - Because of limited license models. And those are all by design. And the way that the large cannabis operators, particularly the multi-state operators, use terms like social and economic equity and these other hot button issues to rally people around an idea, but then manipulate those very same systems to their own benefit and to the detriment of the people who were the most harmed by cannabis criminalization, like myself. - Right, of course. - So the reason I made the film was, what happened in Maryland was they passed the very same law that legalized cannabis for adult use in Maryland. Also in that same exact bill had language that gutted the hemp industry from top to bottom to where you could not sell any hemp product, even a full spectrum CBD product, that contained more than two and a half milligrams of THC in a package. So that eliminated about, for me in my business. - Well, right, because in legal states where they have recreational adult use cannabis products, they have a 10 milligram cap on those edibles. So of course they don't wanna let the hemp industry have any of that equity, any of those sales. They wanna keep the hemp industry so hindered that we couldn't possibly add to or compete with legal cannabis. - I mean, that's absolutely right. I mean, when you look at it in Maryland, it was about a $480,000 that was raised to fund a ballot initiative. 94% of it came from a handful of cannabis companies in Scott's Miracle Grow. Right, so this wasn't an initiative that was pushed by advocacy groups or the actual public itself. It was really pushed out by the industry. They wrote the bill exactly the way that they wanted it to. They have diminishing product, they have diminishing revenues and profit sharing because they're so greedy, the real cannabis people. I think, let me just get this point out, I think it's important. The large cannabis operators, the people who are outsiders to the cannabis industry know nothing about cannabis culture. - Right. - And when you know nothing about cannabis culture, you're not connected to the cannabis community, the people writ large, and you start to create dispensaries that feel like you're shopping at the Apple Store. People will go right back into the illicit market. They'll buy it for less, they'll buy it where they feel more comfortable. And so I think that the large cannabis operators are destroying the industry because they don't listen to the consumer. - And there will be more of those one size fits all, mass produced, low quality products because they can. Because once they get their way, they can do anything they want to. - That's exactly right. And that's what happened here in Maryland. We had a good bit of media coverage. I mean, I was able to write an op-ed for the Baltimore Sun. I wrote an op-ed in a few other local papers. We had some news coverage about the issue, but everything was limited to a three to four minute news cycle and there were so much more that needed to be said so that we can show people exactly what's happening behind closed doors in cannabis legalization in Maryland. And that's where the idea for the movie came from. I had a good buddy of mine who's got a film company. I'm really good with using certain AI tools to streamline processes. And so we used some of those tools. We interviewed all the plaintiffs in our lawsuit, which by the way, for your listeners, we actually sued the state of Maryland. That's kind of the background for the film. We sued the state of Maryland over creating an unjust monopoly around cannabis. And the courts in Maryland ruled in our favor that Maryland had created an unlawful monopoly, an unjust monopoly around their cannabis licenses. And we're hoping to set a standard here in the state that can be copied and pasted across the country. To open the industry up to the people who deserve to have a seat at the table. And the people who deserve to have a seat at the table is everyone. You can't pick and choose winners and losers. This is America. - Right, well, what does that ruling, how does that affect the law, the new law that's in place is does that give you some ammunition to get that change? I want another correlation. - Yeah, so when we filed the lawsuit that claimed that the, well, so again, for some more background in order for us to be able to continue to sell our CBD and hemp products, the Delta 8, the Delta 9, the THDA, the whole gamut of cannabinoids, we would have had to get one of these nearly impossible and highly limited cannabis licenses. So that was where, and also the cannabis licenses were limited to what they were referring to as social equity applicants, which was really just people that lived in a certain zip code or attended a particular school, which has been radically just manipulated regardless of their actual race. - Regardless of their race and regardless of their-- - 'Cause I, yeah, like I'm me, I'm Caucasian, and I'm a woman, but I operate in a underserved community. And so does anything negate, you know, like, I guess the zip code would matter more than my race or my sex? - That's right, I mean-- - Wow, 'cause it's my race and my sex that make me the minority. - Yeah, I mean, but even still, even if everyone that was awarded a license was a minority, if they only have 70 licenses-- - That's true. - It's their fundamental-- - Who gets to pick which 70 minorities get it, you know? This is the first come, first serve, or they're, you know, like in Alabama, we've got so many lawsuits that are holding up our program now for over a year, and they're fighting over five integrated facility licenses. And they're holding up the dispensary licenses. Everybody else has received theirs. I have a friend who's already harvested and cured his first crop, but there are no dispensaries because they're holding those up over two dispensary licenses. And five integrated facility licenses, so they can grow it, process it, transport it and test it, but they cannot get it to the public. - I mean, here they handed out the licenses to do a lottery system. - Oh, well, at least that seems fair. - I mean-- - Who turned the crank on the little balls with the numbers, I mean, come on now. - Yeah, I mean, and how many times can you put your name in it, actually? - That's true too, that's true too. 'Cause-- - That's the part that people miss. And I have to make sure that I make this very clear that my stance on cannabis legalization and cannabis licensing is that there should be no carve outs, no set of sides and a free and open market for everybody to play. - Well, when you look at alcohol, does any state have a limit on who can, I know you have to qualify for one, you have to meet certain requirements and pass certain tests-- - Yeah, that'll get the baseline criteria. - Yeah, but anybody who wants to can sell alcohol, which does and can kill you and ruin people's lives, unlike what they say, cannabis will do. And it, by the way, I think if all the things on the control substances act, the one thing that should be there that is in is alcohol. - Correct. - It should be up there on the top because it does more damage to more people because it's all available. You know, it's available in every corner. And look, there's two, and two, alcohol is available in every corner, literally sometimes every building in every block. Alcohol is everywhere like Coca-Cola and yet everybody who's selling it is making money. Which is how the weed business is. If you have a vertebra and an endocannabinoid system, which we know is every mammal, then you are a potential user. So, not everybody's a potential alcohol user, but we know that our bodies are made to use this plant. And so every human being on the planet is a potential user. And there's plenty to go around 'cause we can't all sell the same thing either. You know, it's just like the bad blood between different farms, especially amongst retailers. You know, like I can't serve all 400,000 people in this county and city. I'm glad to have people around me if they're doing it right. And with integrity, I was glad for the company, but it has not been that way with anybody else. I don't understand that. There's too many people in this area for me to be the only one. I don't wanna be the only one. You shouldn't wanna be the only one either. You know, that's just, it doesn't jive either with cannabis culture, which is such a family vibe. - Right, I mean, we have roughly 8,000 alcohol licenses in the state of Maryland, and they wanted to limit the cannabis licenses to 300. - Wow. - Yeah, which is just, it's ridiculous. And then, you know, we actually have video, we played it in court. It's actually, it's in part two of the film where we actually show that the chair of the House Economic Matters Committee, who was the author of the cannabis reform bill here in Maryland, stated very clearly that they were limiting the amount of licenses to increase the value of the licenses in order to, and he said it in plain English, and we used that in court, and we were able to, so the answer to your question from earlier, how does it all correlate? We were granted a preliminary injunction, which prevented the state from enforcing the law against hemp businesses, and we saved the industry in our state. - Oh, wow. - And now, is that something you're gonna have to continue to fight for, or is that all said and done? - So the case is now going to the appellate courts. - Of course. - We have a hearing for oral arguments in October, and we have our trial back in the circuit courts scheduled for February. That trial will determine whether or not they have to go back to the drawing board and rewrite their entire bill, or create an unlimited number of licenses, or a number of licenses that better reflect what they did with alcohol. - If you ever wanna truly achieve social and economic equity, and you know what, to be honest, I'm so tired of hearing the word social equity, 'cause no one's ever done it. - Right. - No one's ever. - No one actually really sincerely wants to do it. - That's exactly right. The only way that you get to social equity is through a free market model, where anybody is allowed to play, because it's almost insulting to minority communities to say that they can't play on the same level as anybody else. - Right, no, I agree. I agree. I think it's insulting to women too. - Yeah, me. - And personally, because I'm a woman, and I know lots of women in cannabis, I think cannabis, women are ideal for cannabis, because we're natural teachers and nurturers, and you have to have an unprecedented level of compassion and the ability to have empathy for other people, but still be able to get through to them intellectually and women being multitaskers and multi-communicators are really great for that. And I think that it's a shame that we are such a small, small part of the whole industry. - So what happens, right, is there's politicians who understand that there's a need for diversity in an industry. - Nick, I'm sorry, Nick. We've got to take a commercial break. When we come back, we're gonna finish up that statement, so hold that thought. Stay with us, we'll be right back with Nicholas Patrick. (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) - Welcome back to Sweet Home, Cannabema. Now with all the information you want about cannabis, here's your host, Jennifer Buser. Welcome back, everybody. The final segment of Sweet Home, Cannabema. We're here every Monday night at seven o'clock central on FM Talk 1065, all over the Gulf Coast. And we are streaming as a podcast afterwards on all your favorite streaming services. And now we are live streaming with video from Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube. And then you can, of course, watch the replay later. Tonight, we're talking with Nicholas Patrick from Maryland, who is the president and co-founder of the Maryland Healthy Alternatives Association. And in Maryland, they basically created a law, correct me if I'm wrong, Nicholas, that legalized adult use, but crushed hemp. - Yeah, I use legalized like super loosely, 'cause you can't really legalize something and then put massive restrictions on it. - Right, they loosen the grip a little bit. - No, they monetize, that is what they did. - Right, I tell people all the time, you know, if you can't own a plant, or if you can't own something, 'cause it was here before government was created, the only way to get control of it is to make it illegal and throw a bunch of people in jail for so long that a lot of people will stay steer clear of it. I don't wanna talk about it, I don't wanna touch it, I don't wanna be near it. And then, you know, all the propaganda, we know reformateness is still alive and well. And then go, okay, we're gonna give this back to you. And they trickle back your rights to you. Like they're doing you a favor, and then you gotta pay 'em through the nose for something that existed before any of us and any government existed. And it really is insulting to me. It really is because we allow it to happen, which is infuriating to a doer and a fighter who, this doesn't make any sense. You know, why are we just doing this? And I've had those feelings a lot in the last few years. Oh man, I just, you know, you can, you can insert the word Alabama and even America because of what's going on in the Farm Bill with the word Maryland, you know? I mean, you must see what I see. - Yeah, I mean, I've been seeing the writing on the wall for quite some time and, you know, you mentioned refurnateness a second ago. The refurnateness talking points are now coming from the industry itself. - Right. - The larger cannabis operators are talking about hemp, like it's some boogie man talking about, oh, the unregulated cannabis and it's killing kids and it's this and that. It's the same stuff that we heard for a very long time that was the reason why cannabis has been illegal for so long. - Right. - Those same talking points are now being puppeted by cannabis companies in an attempt to sway legislatures and use them as a tool to crush their competitors because the hemp industry is taking up a lot of their market. A lot of their-- - Right, because calling it diet weed-- - Mostly more closely models. - Yeah, calling it diet weed didn't work. Calling it fake weed or trying, oh, that's nothing. You know, I've heard so many things and people want to realize how rude they are when they say, oh, what you're doing with your life is stupid. You know, and they laugh and you're, I've had it all, I've had it all. I've had people accuse me of having blood on my hands and got threatening phone calls saying that, you know, that I was causing kids to get hooked on, I mean, it's just some crazy, crazy stuff. You wouldn't think what happened this day and age, but again, I'm in a state where we are, you know, a century behind. One thing I did want to ask, how did it feel? 'Cause I know how I have felt in a Senate judiciary committee meeting, and I didn't even speak, but how did it feel to have to go before your state legislators and basically beg for your life? - I know that's probably a personal question, but-- - No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, the weight of it was extraordinarily heavy and I'll tell you why. Because I know how hard I worked to build my business. I built my company with $8,000 and turned it into a $1.5 million company in three years with my wife, and I know that I'm not the only person that's done that. Everyone in the Maryland hemp industry did the same exact thing. And what was happening to me and losing my business was also happening to count with other people. And I just happened to be blessed with some sort of, I guess some sort of leadership ability, so the ability to speak publicly and the ability to organize people and raise money. - By accident, I can relate. - Right, yes, exactly, so I kind of fell into this role, and so being in those rooms with the legislators and realizing how much misinformation was being spread about our industry, realizing how broken our system is, how crooked some of these people are, and they're not even hiding it. - Nope, that's the worst part. - So we spent the better part of $100,000 or so on lobbyists. I have five paid lobbyists in 2023. One of them was the law partner of the author of the bill, and he got me in a room with him one-on-one where we can talk, and he shared with me that his hands were tied, that the Speaker of the House and the leadership in the Senate and in the House wouldn't let him help the hemp industry, and these people were taking gobs of money from cannabis companies. Large cannabis operators have spent hundreds of thousands of dollars getting these people elected, paying for their campaigns, and their lobbyists taking them out to dinner, and the whole nine, everything that you think about a corrupt political system that you see in movies actually happens in real life, and once you understand-- - Well, of course he does, I mean, we, but like I said earlier, when he said it was us who cleared the way. I mean, we were right there with them. We were right there with them saying legalize. I used this radio show for the last five years, and I had to become a lobbyist 'cause I can't afford to pay one, you know, and I have other colleagues that are store owners and farmers, they can't afford to pay lobbyists either 'til we became them, and we did what we had to do. I don't want to be a lobbyist. I don't want to go to the State House. I hate that. I get told you shouldn't speak because you had pink hair. I just, I don't want to do that. I just want to have a shop, and I want to help people, and I want to go home and finish raising my kids and have a nice life. That's all I wanted, but I had to become a leader. I had to get on the radio because who else was going to do it? You know, so I know that that's terribly, it's a terribly heavy weight. - How it felt was amazing at certain points to see how the industry showed up to protect itself, to see the amount of collaboration that's been happening between people that were once competitors are now working together and able to put-- - And now we're their competitors. That's the crazy part. - Building real community within the hemp industry here, where there's a real spirit of collaboration and a shared goal. - Right. - And so all of that feels great. What didn't feel so great was losing. - Right. - That felt really bad, losing everything, inches away from bankruptcy. And then finally we found a lawyer that saw things the way we saw things was able to put a great case together, a great argument together, and we got it all back. - Yeah. - But we're still fighting every single day to keep it. - Right. - And that's why I encourage you to watch this film. - Yes, so I want to ask you, before we run out of time, I want to make sure people have all the information they need to see the film, tell us where they can find the film, and then tell us where they can find you. - So weedwarsfilm.com is where part one of it is housed, our YouTube channel, the Maryland Healthy Alternatives Association. Again, that's the Maryland Healthy Alternatives Association. We are an offshoot of the American Healthy Alternatives Association that is responsible for saving the hemp industry across the country, including helping to get that veto in Florida that we just got. So the Maryland Healthy Alternatives Association, YouTube channel, you'll be able to see parts one and part two on there. Part one is titled Legalization with a lie, L-I-E. And part two is entitled The Social Equity Illusion. Both of them are a part of a story that talks about Maryland's monopoly and our struggle for free markets. My name is Nicholas Patrick, and I can be found on LinkedIn. Nicholas Patrick, you'll find me there as a free market cannabis advocate. I can also be found on Facebook and Instagram at real Nick Patrick. - Thank you so much for being on the show with us tonight, Nick. - Thank you. - And I want to let the listeners know, go watch the second part. If you haven't watched part one, watch part one. But next Monday, we're going to sit down with Patrick again and go through the second part of the movie. Now that we know who he is, we'll have more time to discuss the film. And as always, you can find us here on Monday nights. It's seven o'clock right here at FM Talk 106.5, live streaming from Sweet Home, Canabamas Facebook page. And if you would like to get in touch with me in order to get into any of my guests or suggest topics or be a guest yourself, you can email me, Jennifer at canabama.com. And of course, you can shop at www.canabama.com. Thank you, Nick, so much for being here. I know you squeezed us in and we really appreciate it. - Thank you. - And I'm looking forward to hearing more about part two next week. I know our listeners have probably really enjoyed this because it's such a fascinating subject. And there's so much more. I can't wait to talk about Miracle Grow. And I have a story about that with weed and how scary that is that they're involved. But thank you everybody. Join us next Monday night at seven o'clock right here on Sweet Home, Canabama. Good night. (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music)