FM Talk 1065 Podcasts
Sweet Home Cannabama 7-22-24 Nicholas Patrick, Weed Wars pt. 2, Marty Schelpers, licensing, advocacy
(upbeat music) - It's time for Sweet Home Canabema, 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@canabema.com, or text or call 3430106. And now, for all things cannabis in Alabama, here's your host, Jennifer Buser. - Welcome to the show, everybody. I'm your host, Jennifer Buser, owner and founder of Canabema in downtown Mobile. We're located at 558 St. Francis Street. Our phone number is 251-255-5155. Our website, where you can shop if you would like to, contact us, send us a message about the store, the products or the show, that's canabema.com. And of course, you can find us right here on Sweet Home Canabema Facebook page, Instagram, and our YouTube channel. And so, I wanna get into real quick, the only current events I wanna talk about, our next week, is our fifth anniversary show, and we are gonna have a really special show. I have like eight people coming into studio, and at least one calling in, and we're gonna be giving away five prizes of $100 worth of product each prize. So it's $500 in celebration of our fifth anniversary. And so, how do you win the prize? You win the prize by sharing this broadcast, this show right now, tonight, or the replay all week. And then next week, at the end of the show, we will be drawing names from those people that shared these broadcasts, and we'll have five winners. So, if you wanna start sharing now, please go ahead. We wanna make sure that as many people as possible are gonna be able to hear from our guests tonight, and about this issue, because these are really, really important issues, not only to the consumer, but to the industry and to the country as a whole. So, make sure you share that. And I wanna go ahead and get into our first guests tonight. He's calling in. We're gonna talk tonight again to Nicholas Patrick, who is the creator, director of the film Weed Wars. We talked with him last week about part one, basically talked about what happened and how it happened, and tonight we're gonna get into why it really happened. So, I wanna welcome Nicholas Patrick to the show. Welcome to the show. - Hey, thank you, Jennifer. Please grab me again. - Oh, yes, well, you know, I got fired up even more because I was going back over the second movie, and I had been watching it in pieces, but I really sat down and watched it, and I just, I was so excited to get to talk to you, because what happened in the first film was awful. That by itself, in and of itself, was awful. How your own state and your own colleagues ended up turning on you and tearing down the businesses you guys had created over five years, and the legal struggle. And so, when I got into this social equity topic, man, it's gonna make a lot of people mad, I think. So, I really appreciate you coming on, sharing this with us, sharing the film. And I really just wanna ask you to sort of break down what part two is about, and let's talk about that big, giant social equity elephant in the room. - Sure, so part one obviously talked about what happened to the happen for you to discuss that last week. Part two talks about the cannabis licensing process and scheme that they created here in the state of Maryland for the adult use of cannabis, the quote unquote, legalized recreational cannabis, when really not what it is, it was just kind of a smokescreen for the state to further enrich itself at the expense of small business owners and minority business owners and the cannabis industry and the cannabis community as a whole. So, when they passed the law that we discussed last week that decimated the hemp industry, it was the same law that legalized the adult use cannabis and created the infrastructure to be able to roll out an industry cater to adult use. And one of the provisions related to the bill that had everybody that wanted to play the game and get a cannabis license in the state of Maryland would have to submit to the administration proof that they were what you would call a social equity applicant. Now, this was the state's way of trying to address the historic disproportionate effects of cannabis criminalization against certain communities. What would never actually wound up happening was those people actually having a chance to play the game because what they did was, and you see this a lot, especially in today's political climate, this political pandering and using certain hot button words like social equity and restorative justice to use as kind of a weapon to weaponize against the competitors to the cannabis monopoly. So, you have a social equity criteria in Maryland that had absolutely nothing to do with anybody's history involved in cannabis, meaning you would think that if you were trying to rectify the harms done by the war on drugs, that you would probably give people who were directly impacted by cannabis criminalization first chance at the license. - Right. - But instead what they did was they just said, if you lived in this zip code, or this zip code or this zip code or this zip code, you can apply. Now, those zip codes that they determined were the social equity zip codes were literally, the only factor that they used was whether or not there was 250 or more cannabis arrests over the last 10 years. Now, keep in mind, in Maryland, cannabis has been decriminalized for the last 10 years. So, there's not very many arrests, but needless to say, 250 arrests in the zip code without adjusting for population. And a lot of those zip codes happened to be some of the wealthiest of codes in the state of Maryland. And so, all you had to do was just say, you lived in one of these zip codes over the last 10 years and you can apply for a license. Meanwhile, in the rural parts of the state where all the hemp farmers are and the actual agricultural community was, none of them were even allowed to apply. So, I mean, in and of itself is just un-American. - Of course. - It's picking winners and losers and saying who can play and who can't. - Right. - Additionally, they limited the amount of licenses to 70 dispensary licenses and 50 grower licenses, which to me is like not anywhere near. - Oh, bro, if you knew Alabama's numbers, it would make you cry, 'cause y'all, when I heard 70, I was like, wow, that must be nice. And I think Alabama geographically is probably a lot bigger than Maryland. I don't know about the population, but yeah, I mean, they are equal amount, even less than that over here. - Yeah, I mean, and one of the reasons why they say they limited the licenses is because they wanna promote a healthy market for the license holders and to increase the value of the licenses. - Right. - That's market manipulation. This is America and we don't limit the amount of barbershops because we're worried that this guy down down the street here with his barbershop is not gonna make enough money. We don't do that with Italian restaurants and then we have 8,000 licenses for alcohol in the state of Maryland and we're talking about 70 for cannabis. So it makes no sense. The bill was written and influenced by the largest cannabis companies in the state and across the country. And our governor signed it and our governor has $1.2 million of cannabis stock and applying trust. And he sat on the board of one of the largest multi-state operators for cannabis in the country called Greenthom Industries based out of Chicago. He sat on their board of directors for four years and then stepped down to run for governor, got elected governor. He bought cannabis money, right? He got elected with cannabis money. - Big candy, a lot of cannabis money, huge cannabis donations. And then he proceeded to two days before he signed the cannabis reform act into law. He put that money into a blind trust. So it was just, there's so much corruption at the heart of this. - Well, and it's almost like they're parading it 'cause that stuff is pretty obvious. I mean, I saw the news clips. They're outing people and still it's allowed to happen. I mean, that's insane to me. And the way, there's a two minute clip in the movie. I think it's around minute 17 and 30 seconds. There's about two minutes where they list all of the different ways one, an individual or a corporation can donate to a campaign and how much and how these people have used their family members, they use different business names and they funnel all this money to one person. You would never be able to give someone running for governor $150,000 as an individual. But if you did it with enough people at $6,000 at a time from what I'll remember, then you can do that. - Sure, yeah, absolutely. And it's not just to the governor you're talking about to the authors of the bill. - No, it was the Speaker of the House. In that portion, you listed all, and it was the highest offices in the state, the Attorney General. - And we came up against them during this last legislative session and it just seemed like they were still walling us, like they wouldn't even, like the Chair of the Finance Committee who which was the Committee in the Senate that approved the language in this bill, wouldn't even take a meeting with us. Then we find out that back to back at the end of one legislative session and the beginning of another, she got two back to back $5,000 donations from one company. - Right, right. - And if you look at the timing of a lot of these donations and we highlighted that in the film as well, 20% of those donations take place after campaigning is over and before the legislative session before. - Right, before they go to make their votes, yes. Okay, I wanna stop you right there 'cause we're gonna have to go to a commercial break. But when we come back, I wanna pick up there because like I said, that two minute clip about who got donations and how they spread it out and do it legally, I mean, they might as well not have these laws against big campaign donations because they're being bought just in small amounts at a time but a ton of people involved. When we come back, we're gonna talk some more with Nicholas Patrick about weed wars. Part two, stay with us, we'll be right back. (upbeat music) (upbeat music) - Welcome back to Sweet Home, Alabama. Now with all the information you want about cannabis, here's your host, Jennifer Boozer. - Welcome back, everybody. We're talking with Nicholas Patrick tonight, the director of the movie, Weed Wars, part one and two and we're talking about, we're getting into corrupt donation practices, you know, go to about minutes 17 of the second part and there's like two whole minutes. Everybody needs to see that, I don't care where you're from. This is happening, this is how things get done and this is why I wanted to talk to Mr. Patrick so badly. Nicholas, let me ask you this because we have a limited amount of time. Let's talk about the minority hemp businesses in Maryland that this law actually shut down in the name of social equity. - Yeah, I mean, isn't that the most ironic, just ridiculous thing you've ever heard? - Right. - It's like, so, you know, you'll see in the film, one of my friends Derek Sproul, who was the owner of Cherry Blossom Handbook, he's an African American, he's a hard worker, he built a great company and then he lost it. In the film, he says, how do you put me out of business and call it social equity? - Yeah, that's why I mentioned that because that just was like, wow. What, we've had that happen in Alabama but I wanna hear about it, you know, like, what is your reaction to that? - Well, I think the important thing to understand is that if we were to, you know, and you see it all the time in government, it doesn't matter what side of the political aisle you fall on. Politicians care very little about solving problems because if they solve problems, then they have nothing to run on, right? - Yeah, they run on their promise to solve problems but never with the intention to do so. Social equity is no difference. They understand that there are certain optics, right? So legalizing cannabis, like, you know, well, you did lack a whole lot of people well for this and, you know, so the state-- - Right, so it doesn't help them at all, it doesn't give them an advantage. And correct me if I'm wrong, but the way I'm hearing it from you and from the movie, this isn't about whether you're black or brown or any other non-caucasian color. That's not what qualifies you. It's literally living in a zip code, right? - Yeah, and no one should it though, right? - Well, right, but still, this isn't even about that. In Alabama, we have a certain amount of ours going to minority farmers and licensees and that's, I don't think it's, it's not by zip code, it's whether or not they are a minority. You know, that and then whether or not they qualify. - Right, so even that is unconstitutional and un-American, right? We're not supposed to be doing things based on the color of people's skin. Now, at the end of the day, if you were somebody who was arrested for cannabis, there absolutely, there needs to be some sort of reparations, some sort of restorative measures taken to those individuals that were actually impacted, but just because your skin is black doesn't mean that you had a run in with the police over cannabis and doesn't give you a leg up over somebody else. And just because you live in a zip code where maybe your neighbor got arrested for cannabis doesn't mean that you should have a leg up either. - Right. - The only way, so you asked for my reaction, is here's what I know. I am somebody who truly is a true believer in social and economic equity. And the only way that you get to true social and economic equity is by removing the barriers to entry, loosening the regulations and removing caps on licenses so that everybody has a fair shot to play. - Right. - Not gonna have everybody win, but everybody deserves an opportunity to fail. - Right. - And that's how we get to a truly equitable industry. The people with the strongest ties to cannabis culture, the people with the strongest ties to the plant, that understand the medicinal benefits of the plant, that care about it, the craft growers, the craft cannabis, the legacy operators, these are the people who will, if given the opportunity to blow the MSOs out of the water just based on their understanding of cannabis culture. - Right, and the fact that MSOs and big corporations and even the big corporations that won in, they're not considering the end user. They're considering how can I maximize my profit line, you know, and my profit margin and how can I maximize my exposure to the customer? They don't care about the quality or the diversity of the products because cannabis is a very diverse plant and it has so many different uses and they're not even including the requirement to have this type of education in these programs. They just want to take over everything, drive up the price and we'll get crappy, crappy cannabis. But hey, we gave you cannabis. - And I think you would say just the same as I would that, you know, your customers that come into your store every day are people who probably don't want the Apple store cannabis experience. - Right. - Like when you go into a dispensary and there's an armed guard at the door and there's all these crazy, you know, restrictive regulations and that you have to show your ID and get logged into a system and they track every purchase that you make, people don't like that. - Right. - That's not how, that's not cannabis freedom. - Right. - This is just more over regulation and just an attempt to control an industry and a market and to pick winners and losers and the consumer I think suffers the most. - Absolutely. - So we'll never get to social and economic equity until we stop trying to control this plan. Oh my goodness, it's so hard for me not to use profanity while I'm on the radio. - I appreciate your efforts. Well, listen, I do want to say I and maybe you agree with this, I think maybe you will, but I think this whole zip code thing is a huge, it's not even a well planned farce, it's so bad. But the zip code thing, this is how it's probably going to go down. The people in those zip codes are the least likely to want to or have the economic ability to open these businesses. So these big corporations are going to come in and find a couple of suckers in each of these zip codes and say, "Hey, I want to use you as the majority owner." And then when we get the license, I'm going to give you a handful of money and you'll be a 1% owner or a half a percent owner, have a nice life, get out of here. And we're so poor, especially now, I bet a lot of people would take it. They tried to do, I actually was approached by a company myself here in Alabama because I'm a long-term resident. And this company was foreign led and didn't have anybody on there. And they told me majority owner and then 1% and I could have a 40 hour a week job in their dispensary. And I was just like, "What?" But that's what this is, is that what is happening? Is that what you see happening? - That's precisely what's happening. And not to mention the outside of the ridiculous social equity criteria, they're also handing the licenses out through a lottery system. - Oh yeah, you've got to qualify and then it's still a crapshoot. - It's still a lottery, yeah. That takes experience in the industry, it takes merit, it takes-- - Right, it takes qualification and all that out of the equation. - It goes without the window. Yeah, I mean, there's no need for any of that in a lottery system. And, you know, if you're one of those people like you were just talking about that are trying to tap on people's shoulders to front the license, how many times can they do that? Well, some of these companies have entered dozens of applications. - I was going to mention that too from the movie that they are stacking the deck. - Correct, correct. I mean, it's ripe for fraud. We always knew that it was going to be. And we're hoping that, you know, when we go to trial in February that the courts overturn this and make them go back and rewrite this bill in a way that is, you know, consistent with American values of economic liberty. - Well, let me ask you this, have they gone and already given these licenses? Are they in the process of letting people apply? - They're in the process now, they're in the process now of awarding conditional licenses. They did the first lottery drawing in March and oddly and funny enough, 30 of the licenses that they gave out to bona fide social equity applicants have already been forfeited because the winners of those licenses were told they needed to show adequate capitalization within six months. So not only is the state telling you who can play and then now they're telling you also how much money you have to invest in your business in order to meet their compliance costs and it's out of control. - Yes. - There's so much money that you have to spend to open a dispensary or to open a growth just in compliance costs because cannabis is so intentionally and unnecessarily over regulated. - Right, right. What do you think is the solution to this before we have to say goodbye? What do you think the average American citizen who wants medical cannabis, who wants access to the hemp they already have? What do we need to do? What are we doing here? - We need to encourage our politicians to use the hemp industry as the model for national cannabis reform. The hemp industry has and has always since 2018 and even before that had a free and open market where everybody is able to play. We created a $28 billion nationwide industry on the backs of small business owners with 30% minority participation. Social equity will happen naturally and organically when the market is allowed to be open to everyone. So we need to encourage true cannabis freedom. Take the handcuffs off the plant. Stop treating it with less regulation than you treat handguns and alcohol. It's out of control. We regulate cannabis more than we regulate handguns and alcohol at the point of sale. - Yeah, and not everybody trying to get in and become a part of either side of the industry is coming into it to be a true leave or take over the world. Some of us want to just have a small business work in our community with our fellow citizens and have just like not everybody has to be a pay less shoes. Sometimes you, your mom and pop shoes and you sell in your community and that's okay. - That's right and that's how it should be. We should have the ability to have cottage industry. We have breweries and microbreweries. - That's right. - And so we need to have the same thing for cannabis and the industry needs to be open to the people who built it and sustained it. And the hemp industry has already set the model. All we have to do is copy and paste. I believe that's true too. And hopefully they're not about to decimate it on the federal level and blow it. We've got it, we've got it half right, you know? If everybody will just get on board. Nicholas, tell us where we can find weed wars before we have to go to break. - Weedwarsfilm.com and you can go on YouTube. Type in weed wars, Maryland. And you'll see it pop up. Parts one and two on the YouTube channel for the Maryland Healthy Alternative Association. Thank you again, Jennifer. - Absolutely. And give us that website for the Maryland Association. Its healthyalternativesmd.org. - All right, thank you so much, Nicholas, for coming on the show again. Thank you for making this film. And we're gonna continue to try to disseminate it to as many people as we can. We ask our listeners to do the same. If you haven't watched the movies, go watch the movies. This is happening. And the consumers have to care at some point. When we come back, we're gonna pick up with Marty Schilper of the Alabama Cannabis Coalition. Stay with us. (upbeat music) - Welcome back to Sweet Home, Alabama. Now with all the information you want about cannabis, here's your host, Jennifer Booser. - Welcome back everybody. Tonight we've been talking with Nicholas Patrick about the weed wars part two and the travesty that happened in Maryland where we could be facing this on a national scale. Certainly, we're never without threat here in Alabama. And so we're gonna continue talking tonight with our good friend Marty Schilper. Marty is the founder and president of the Alabama Cannabis Coalition. And one of the most vocal people in the whole state always has been, always will be. Marty, welcome to the show. - Thank you for the opportunity, Jennifer. I'm happy to be here with you. Well, look, I wanted to get into this with you too because you are the reason that I even knew about this movie. And so I wanted to ask you, like, how did you come across the movie? And when you watched it, why was it so important for you to try to help him get this message out? - Well, I really believe in the 12 years that I've been advocating here in the state that one of the things that I had become the strongest with is networking with other people. And I'm on plenty of social media platforms. And I'm on LinkedIn, which is a professional social media platform for people who are in business. And there's a lot of people in the cannabis industry that are on LinkedIn. So, and I believe in freedom and liberty. I believe less regulation and control is actually good for markets. And when I met Nicholas Clark, Nicholas Patrick on LinkedIn, and I saw in his bio, the main thing that it said was free market. And if I could continue on a little bit more about that, back in September of 2023 when I began to realize that this legislation was, it was, it was tanking. I mean, it was tanking. I mean, we had licenses that were issued or whatever, or awarded in, was it June or July of 2023. And then we found out they had to throw out, you know, they had to throw out those licenses. They had to start it again in August. Well, in December, I sent out a press release calling Governor K.I.V. requesting that she call a special session to get the Alabama legislators back to my summary to write free markets into this legislation. Because I knew that was the only thing that was going to solve this quagmire. Because the reason that we have the quagmire is because people want to be involved in medical cannabis in the state of Alabama, but this legislation was set up to fail because of the regulation and the control. And we did not get any response from any legislators. We did do a couple of TV interviews. We didn't hear anything from Governor K.I.V. and I would like to state today that we still, the citizens of the state of Alabama have not heard from Governor K.I.V. And I mean, I'm trolling her on Twitter and I don't know if her intern, that handles her Twitter account is relaying those trolling tweets to her. But we need to hear from her. We need to hear from her and find out why this is not being handled. And I spoke with Mike Ball probably a week ago in Messenger on Facebook. And I was asking him about free markets. And his response to me was this. We're not California. I said, I know we're not California. We're Alabama. - Thank God. - We don't, we don't, you know, exactly. We don't, we don't need to be California, you know. - Right, why can't Alabama just be great at something besides football? - Exactly. So I, you know, I believe that the Alabama Medical Cannabis Commission is the Alabama Medical Cannabis Cartel. And when I watch weed wars and I heard them talking about all of these states, not just the state of Alabama, happening in Maryland, happening in other states, we have other states that have passed this regulation and control model. They have created legal cannabis cartels. - I agree. - Where they pick, where they pick who's allowed to participate. And I even spoke with John McMillan, who is the executive director of AMCC. And I was trying to discuss free markets with him. He did not want to talk to me about free markets. And I pulled a conny chunk on him and I said, "Hey, this is just, this is just between you and me. "What is your personal opinion about free markets?" And he said to me, "We're a regulation and control commission." He would, he would not even discuss. - Yeah, no other possibilities. - Yeah. - I've had multiple journalists that I've talked to about this that asked me, Marty explained to me what free markets are. So if anything, weed wars, part one, part two, if you do not know what free markets are, it's freedom and liberty to be able to, Nick gave a great response about the barbers. We don't limit how many barbershops are on a block. - And Coca-Cola sold on every corner. That's the one I always say, and everybody's making money. But I think you're right. I was just thinking when you were saying that, I was thinking that the big hold up here is these lawsuits, but it's because of the limited licenses. And having a free market open up means all, there wasn't there like in the initial application request part where you requested an application. There was 600 and something people that requested these applications, and yet a fraction of that actually applied. And then a fraction of that are getting a license. But they opened it up and made it reasonable as far as the fees go. And I know there's more than five companies that could pass background checks and residency requirements and all that stuff. But open it up if you want to do the whole background check as a requirement, whatever. But anybody who wants to can open a business means we're going to compete. That breeds innovation. And it drives the price down. And exactly for the consumer. Well, when I started in hemp, almost seven years ago, the products that I have now that I sell for a hundred, well, I have one bottle of oil. It's enough for a whole family. I sell it for $180. Five years ago, it would have been $600. And I was only selling things. I was determined to keep it at 10 cents a milligram. The national average for a CBD product. Not even something that would get you high, but a CBD product was 11 cents per milligram. And now it's less than a third of that. So it does because we had a free market. Like what Patrick said, open it up and use the hemp program as a model because we had a free market situation. And guess what? The price went, I mean, look, I was buying this new fabulous butt everybody loves. A year and a half ago, I was paying six times the amount that I had been paying for the high CBD flower. And this week, I cut my prices by $3 a gram because it's back down to a normal range. And instead of keeping it high price, I can lower the price, make it more accessible and more affordable. That's what a free market does, right? - Exactly. And I am beyond insulted that every time that I try to express my thoughts and my opinions about free markets that I'm treated like I don't understand how business I am a business owner. And I know what would happen. And I'm a massage therapist by trade. I know what would happen if the government limited massage therapists. There would be massage therapists out there that would actually love that because that would increase the number of people that would have to come to their business if they limited the number of massage therapists. - And guess what? No, but most people can't afford massages regularly. The average person doesn't. And the price would just go up and up and up because they can. Just like it costs so much now to get a plumber and you gotta wait a week because there's so few people available to do it. - It's called what the market will bear. - Right. - That's why gas stations that are along the interstate, the prices are gonna be higher. Because people want to get off the interstate, they want to get gas. I'm not saying they don't care how much it is. - Alcohol and cigarettes are more expensive on the coast because people are stuck down there in a beach town and they don't have a choice. And they have these massive taxes on those products because people don't have a choice. - And I don't want to say anything disparaging about the people that were awarded license. I know several of them. - Me too. - No, I have held them in high regard. Some, I don't hold in high regard because I found out some things about them most recently. But they don't realize, or maybe they do realize, they are applauding this limited controlled and regulated licensing program because they know that it's going to be-- - That's right, they've tolerated being jerked around and slung around and-- - Because they know the reward is still greater. - It's going to benefit them. We have 67 counties here. - And one of them got rejected at least one round. So they all know that they're one round away or one decision away from losing it again. But they're still willing to go that route because they have the best chance right now or day. And they know that with the limited number it will be more money for them. - The reason that I'm so vocal about this is because this legislation passed and it bill 46 passed in 2021. It's going three, you know, we're three plus, the citizens of the state of Alabama that are six suffering and dying that need access to legal medical cannabis still are not being allowed because of our legislature, it's not the applicant. You know, people think, well, Alabama always is one. We'll some reveal, you know, they're fighting for their, you know, to be awarded a life. And then I applaud them. And I believe that Judge Anderson is trying to applaud justice. I think he's trying to render justice. And people want to blame somebody. Everybody, it doesn't matter what it is. People want to have somebody to blame. The person, the people to blame is Governor Kay Ivey and the Alabama legislature. And I cannot impress upon them enough to Google Governor Kay Ivey, call her, email her, send her a personal message and let her know why this is important to you. Find out who your Alabama legislators are. Here in the state of Alabama, I'm not talking about your congressmen and your senators that are in Washington DC. I'm talking about your local legislators. Here in the state of Alabama, if it's squeaky, we'll get the grief. I always go back to everything that my mother said. She told me, you know, if you're fighting for something, this week, we'll get the grief. And I'm running out of grief. I'm still squeaky, but I'm running out of grief. But you need to contact those legislators. And don't sit back and say, oh, it's never going to happen in Alabama. We didn't think that any legislation would pass an idea. Don't say we're never going to have recreational here in the state of Alabama. - Right, because just the year before, you were saying we'd never have medical. - Right, exactly. You have to participate in the process. And in 2026, every one of those legislators that are in Montgomery right now, the Alabama House and the Alabama Senate, they're going to be up for reelection. And when you write to them, just let them know that you know in 2026. - Yeah, I vote will depend on how you handle these situations, which is how it should be. I guess they probably aren't maybe not even threatened by that because so few of us actually vote, you know, when I get that it's hard to keep good morale about voting in a state that gives you no voice, but we have to change their voices. If they won't give us a voice, then we have to change who their voice is. And the only way to do that is vote. And it's, oh, it's so maddening that people don't. I get it though, we need voter initiatives. We don't have those numbers that we need when we go to say this is the percentage of the state that is okay with this, you know? And I think that's a travesty. And people get discouraged, but you still have to do it. Marty and I and the people that we know around us that are doing what we're doing, they can easily drown us out. All they gotta do is block us, ignore us. We're one person, I'm one person over here. She's one person over there. Every other organizations in their place and they can drown us out. It's the people of the state of Alabama, everybody. If you're old enough to cast a vote, you ought to be writing letters and emailing just one time. I don't understand why nobody, 'cause they'll get up heated in your face about it. And they'll curse the governor and they'll curse the program and they're just horrible, but they won't get up and do anything about it. - Jennifer, it's human nature that people love to comply. - I know, when we come back, we'll have more with Marty Shelper from the Alabama Cannabis Coalition. Stay with us. (upbeat music) - Welcome back to Sweet Home, Alabama. Now with all the information you want about cannabis, here's your host, Jennifer Buser. - Welcome back, everybody. We're talking tonight with Marty Shelper from the Alabama Cannabis Coalition. We spoke with Nicholas Patrick earlier, Marty, about weed wars, we're on part two. And we talked about the limited licensing in the last segment. I do want to touch on the hot body issue of social equity because really I think why, I don't know, free market means anybody, everybody, and it levels the playing field. - That's correct, but I do want to touch back on one thing that we were talking about, and that's the citizens writing to their legislators. - Okay. - They love to comply. - Oh yeah. - And they may say, and they may say, and you suggested just write them one time, do you want to write to those legislators? So when they see your email address, they're like, Jennifer Buser has sent me another email. Email them every week, call them, leave them voicemail. They have to log every phone call in every email that comes in and what that phone call is about. So please, if there are citizens that are listening and they live in the state of Alabama, make sure that you are contacting the governor and you are contacting your Alabama house rep, and you're contacting your state senator. And yes, free market levels the playing field. There is no need for a, you know, social equity program. If anybody that wants to participate, whether it's medical cannabis, or whether it's adult use or recreational, however you want to label it, if free markets are written into that legislation, anybody can get involved. You know, and if your business fails, that's- - That's on you, and like any other business in this country, that's on you, 'cause it's easier to go open a liquor store and literally kill some of your clientele. Then it is to do something like this that's also medicine that people use, you know, to enrich their lives and their quality of life and sometimes to live at all. You know, why is it so easy to get a liquor license and a nicotine license and, you know, it's harder to get into this plant on the hemp or the legal cannabis side than probably anything. I can't think of anything that's harder to get into, and the punishment involved is so harsh, and it's so non-violent, you know, and it's amazing to me that we're doing this. Marty, what do you think that people in Alabama watching this film really, what do you think is the most important takeaway when it comes to this farce of social equity? Doesn't, I mean, doesn't that remind you of what Barbara Drummond and Vivian Figures did with this vape bill last year when they got up and said, you know, 100,000 children are gonna die in Alabama in two years, we don't pass this legislation, and this is for public safety for the children, and yet it was going to shut down thousands of businesses in the state where most of those people have children, what about those children, and what about the children who go to school with a vape they got from some gas station somewhere, and their parents aren't gonna pay a fine, or can't pay a fine, or they don't have a parent, and they end up in the juvenile system in middle school, you know, and we're doing this under the banner of Save the Children, but we're actually hurting the children. - Yeah, anytime they wanna pass any kind of legislation, it's about saving the children. - It's not about saving, this is not about saving. - But I mean, but they're trying to say, let's do this in the name of social equity, and it actually closed down already functioning minority businesses all over the state, and forget those families, forget those people that are minority, or that even live in those zip codes, everybody's dead. You know, how does that social equity? - Well, it isn't, and I haven't had any equity in the 12 years that I have been advocating. - Right. - I have begged, and just, I mean, just begged, businesses, citizens, anybody to get involved, and to help, we have lobby days, you know, in my gut, we have to busy people, and maybe we get 30 people show up. - Right. - So if there's somebody out there that does that thinking that, you know, they should get a social equity license, they need to watch this film, they need to learn and understand what free markets are. - They need to learn. - They need to learn. - They need to learn and understand what true freedom and liberty is. I personally believe that if you want to grow cannabis on your property, you shouldn't have to have a license, you should be able to take it to a farmer's market, and Mike, Bob, if you're listening, on the top of your head's probably gonna blow off, but they should be able to take it to a farmer's market just as if they had grown feed, that they had grown coal, - Right. - If they had grown Oprah, or they had grown tomato. - And they could sell it, or they could trade it for other vegetables and other foods? - They want to go with bars. - Whatever they want to do with it. - Absolutely. But until the citizens, this is not just with cannabis, it's with anything that you believe in. Until the citizens stand up, until they make their voices heard, you are going to get what, the people in Montgomery think that you deserve in any way that they can put money in their pocket, that's what you're gonna get. They want to benefit from this. - Yep, and corporate cannabis companies, corporate cannabis companies that want these limited licenses and they use this smoke and mirrors of social equity and still cheat the system, they're spending so much money paying these politicians. The ones of us who wanna do this the right way and want everyone to have the equal opportunity, that are here trying to also partake in this equal opportunity, they don't care about us anymore than Walmart cares about you. Walmart doesn't care about you, but the lady who makes jams and jellies in your neighborhood with elderberry that you take during flu season does. And remembers that your kid has a jam allergy or whatever, Walmart doesn't care about you. Neither will these corporate cannabis companies and they'll be the only choice. If that is allowed to happen nationwide and there is just this stranglehold on the licenses, you will not be able to get what you can get right now. Even in a state like Alabama where we don't have full access to whatever product we want, what we do have access to will be a dream compared to what you'll get in a legal cannabis dispensary that is under the umbrella of Pfizer or someone like that. - Oh my God, let's start and talk about these scheduling, but I have said since rescheduling, I have said since September of 2023 that we have a quagmire here in the state of Alabama and free markets would end the quagmire. And they, you know, and they probably wish that I would stop talking to citizens about it because they want people like mushrooms. They wanna keep them in the dark. They don't want them to know the truth. They don't want them to understand what their freedom and liberty truly means. And until those people are either educated or stand up and I don't know, I really am at the end of my rope on how to educate them. I mean, I try on social media. - We just gotta keep plugging at it, I think. Just like doing stuff like tonight. Marty, we're at the end of the show and I wanna remind our listeners and our watchers that next week we're gonna have our fifth anniversary show and we'll be giving away five $100 product prizes. And the way to get that is to share this broadcast, either live or during the week we'll get a tally of who's done that and we're gonna draw for five different prizes for $100 worth of product, my personal product line and some of my friends and we've got some great prize packages available. Like Marty said, you've got to get involved. We've got, they've got to hear from us. 30 people at the state house is nothing. 300 people, that would get some notice. 3000, they'd have to listen to us, you know? And if that's 3000 emails, so be it. We couldn't get 10 public comments on the vape bill. You know, I know you worked so hard the whole session and got a bunch of signatures on, I mean, comments on the cannabis legislation that they were trying to present. And the Decrim bill, that's right, that's right. And so we do, we need you to stand up, we need you to call somebody, we need to just share it. If you're in the industry at all or care about maybe possibly being in the industry, but if you are a consumer also, or if you're a small business person, if they can do this to us, they can do it to you and they will do it to you. If they find a reason to do it, do not think you are safe. We're an easy target, you know? We're a big old red target because everybody is still clinging to stigma, but we've already proven that majority of people poll don't even think there's a stigma anymore and that it's normal and it's okay. They're okay with it and it should be available, medical and don't use. So open up these markets, open up the floodgates, let the people do what they're gonna do. Americans are great at innovating and creating small businesses and each being different from the other. And that's what I think fuels the American dream is being able to take something that you're passionate about, that you love and put everything you have into it and let it be a way to connect with your community, help other people and it's a meaningful life. So join us every Monday night here on FM Talk 106.5 at 7 p.m. Central or the live feed on the Sweet Home, Alabama page. And wait, what? The giveaway, I just said the giveaway. Share this broadcast so you can get that giveaway. Tyler wants y'all to know. Join us next week for our fifth anniversary show. Thank you for being with us tonight, everybody. Good night. (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (dramatic music)