Latest / Ready To Drink Podcast / Cannabis Disinformation, Hemp Advertising Suppression and the Fight to Normalize the Plant | Madicyn Marinaro, CCAT

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Cannabis Disinformation, Hemp Advertising Suppression and the Fight to Normalize the Plant | Madicyn Marinaro, CCAT · Ready To Drink Podcast

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_03: My name is Madison Marinero, and I'm currently executive director of the Cannabis Council for Advertising Transparency.
• 0:07
  SPEAKER_03: Excellent.
• 0:08
  SPEAKER_00: I also am a category observer and service provider for multiple categories of Innabel beverages.
• 0:13
  SPEAKER_00: So I have a feeling you and I are going to see things in a similar way.
• 0:16
  SPEAKER_00: And I want this conversation out there.
• 0:18
  SPEAKER_00: So that way you're aware of all the context that I'm not a typical podcaster.
• 0:22
  SPEAKER_00: I'm an owner, operator, and founded in the space as well.
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_00: And um also, like I said, somebody looks at it from the from the top 30,000 as well as in the weeds when I need to be.
• 0:31
  SPEAKER_00: So let's jump right.
• 0:37
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I started uh selling alcohol when I was 19 years old.
• 0:41
  SPEAKER_03: Oh wow, that's funny.
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_03: In all the clubs in Philadelphia, like bottle service, that kind of thing.
• 0:49
  SPEAKER_00: That's that's where I'm that's where I'm from.
• 0:51
  SPEAKER_00: I went to Drexel and worked my co-op, and that's the wholesaler, and that's how that's where I'm from.
• 0:55
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 0:56
  SPEAKER_03: I was shampoo, um, got all on what was that avenue?
• 1:01
  SPEAKER_03: God, I forget that all the clubs.
• 1:03
  SPEAKER_03: Columbus Boulevard and that yes, yes.
• 1:07
  SPEAKER_03: Um, went to all the clubs out there, and then I wanted to get out of the city, so I went to Bloomsburg University in the mountains as far as I could get away from the city.
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_00: And do you live in Pennsylvania now?
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_03: No, now I'm in Santa Cruz, California.
• 1:21
  SPEAKER_03: Um, I'm actually a cannabis patient.
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_03: And back in Philadelphia, I was getting arrested constantly for cannabis possession, and they'd impound my car.
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_03: And I don't know if you've ever been to Philly traffic court, but what a nightmare that is.
• 1:35
  SPEAKER_03: Um, and so I was born in Santa Cruz, and so it was decided that I'd come back um for better medical care and also for the medical market out here.
• 1:45
  SPEAKER_03: And so that's that saved my life.
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_03: I met amazing caregivers out here who like provided me with medicine.
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_03: You know, they cultured it and exactly for what I needed, like anti-nause, anti-pain.
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_03: It was a beautiful market.
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_03: And then I kind of watched the destruction of that as Prop 64 passed.
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_03: And I watched this beautiful, compassionate medical market got turned into, you know, corporate capture, basically.
• 2:13
  SPEAKER_00: 100%.
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_00: And and all of the lobbying work that we do alongside those agencies, the only opposition that I that is on record is always within the own industry of cannabis as a whole.
• 2:23
  SPEAKER_00: So uh I appreciate what you just said.
• 2:25
  SPEAKER_00: And uh actually was just in a lot of conversations this weekend about that from a state level and things like that.
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_00: So I uh I'm I remember doing a lot of research about 10 or so years ago when Pennsylvania was considering doing the medical marijuana, and I was blown away to see that I believe, and I could be misquoted, but at least in my memory serves, it was a million dollars liquidity you had to have in order to have a dispensary.
• 2:46
  SPEAKER_00: And that was like no assets, anything like that, like liquid cash.
• 2:49
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and that was like not even what you were spending for the project, it was what you had on the side.
• 2:53
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 2:54
  SPEAKER_00: And that was my first wake up to the fact that this is no longer going to be a consumer patient focused industry.
• 3:00
  SPEAKER_00: This is gonna be a corporately run industry.
• 3:02
  SPEAKER_03: Yes, because that that money also had to be bankable and traceable, right?
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_03: It couldn't come from the illegal market.
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_03: So when they say they were supporting legacy growers, they were because legacy growers were operating outside of banks at that time.
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, we uh we're actually fighting right now.
• 3:18
  SPEAKER_00: This month we have a hearing for uh for trying to get our hemp beverage bill carve out, and then they're going with recreational for Pennsylvania.
• 3:24
  SPEAKER_00: So once we're finished this uh hemp beverage carve out, my perspective, just so you know, on hemp beverages, I'm not I don't believe it's an either-or.
• 3:31
  SPEAKER_00: Um, what I believe is hemp beverages are a great gateway, and I don't mean gateway like we used to say, gateway or marijuana and all that stuff, but I really mean a normalization um for you know the everyday consumer to be able to experience something from a medicinal as well as recreational within moderation, but also not having to go through sometimes the hurdles in the dispensary model, whether it be, you know, they're at the liquor store with their stroller and they're going through, and they might not be able to do that in a dispensary easily and things like that.
• 3:56
  SPEAKER_00: So allowing that access, I believe, allows people to more experience the plant in various formats and various platforms to then allow them to choose whether or not they want to be deeper into it as far as the dispensary world goes.
• 4:08
  SPEAKER_00: So mine is a genuine confusion as to why, if it's not about money and it's not about selfish defensiveness from a corporate level, uh, why you wouldn't want a product in mass in a mass scale retail so it is approachable and so it is normalized into society.
• 4:22
  SPEAKER_03: But that's really the crux of the issue, right?
• 4:25
  SPEAKER_03: They don't want it to be a free market.
• 4:27
  SPEAKER_03: And we saw that with intoxicating hemp, which I was a proponent of because I knew people who were in, you know, Texas and states that couldn't have medical cannabis and they were serving patients the only way they knew how with hemp THC.
• 4:42
  SPEAKER_03: But then it became a battle between the cannabis lobby and the hemp lobby, right?
• 4:47
  SPEAKER_03: Because the cannabis lobby is, well, I spent so much money on licensing and regulations and high taxes that it's not okay that hemp can, you know, be freely sold.
• 4:57
  SPEAKER_03: And I'm like, but if you believe in your business model, you would advocate for a free market and know that you can compete.
• 5:03
  SPEAKER_03: I don't, I absolutely do not think the market is so small that we need to fight over territory the way we do.
• 5:12
  SPEAKER_00: Exactly.
• 5:12
  SPEAKER_00: It's it's uh we dealt with the we deal with it a lot in the alcohol world with territories and that type of competition.
• 5:18
  SPEAKER_00: And so I was used to it.
• 5:19
  SPEAKER_00: That's why a lot I did none of this scared me.
• 5:21
  SPEAKER_00: And I was ready for the fight and rolled up my sleeves immediately and tried to find ways to do it.
• 5:25
  SPEAKER_00: And ironically, a lot of the louder people behind the scenes and a lot of the people in the lobbying space are former or current, most people like me who are doing in both industries.
• 5:34
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 5:34
  SPEAKER_00: Um, because of the ones that see that going on.
• 5:36
  SPEAKER_00: Actually, we have a uh Hemp Beverage Alliance coming up, uh, or Expo, excuse me, and coming up in uh few weeks in Texas.
• 5:43
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, the panel that I'm moderating is the head of cannabis for Sam Adams Boston Beer.
• 5:47
  SPEAKER_00: It is the economist for the Brewers Association, which is the Kraft Brewers, not the MBWA or any of the beer institute.
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_00: And it's a uh Scofflaw Brewing Company which does about 50 different co-packing brands.
• 6:00
  SPEAKER_00: So it's like the panel is something, and it's the topic is what craft beer taught us about the next evolution in adult beverages.
• 6:07
  SPEAKER_00: And that's what it is.
• 6:09
  SPEAKER_00: It's a cyclical thing that we need to understand that it is it is not about the consumer or the patient.
• 6:14
  SPEAKER_00: It is about the greed and corruption that is existing and the and the boot on the neck of of any sort of growth of entrepreneurship.
• 6:22
  SPEAKER_00: And we experienced this in the beer world when craft beer started booming from 2008 to 2012.
• 6:27
  SPEAKER_00: The large big three did anything to either create a wood a myriad of line extensions to block the shelves or creating legislation with ABV caps in order to stop brands from being able to enter states.
• 6:38
  SPEAKER_00: And so a lot of people are like, oh, this is so new.
• 6:40
  SPEAKER_00: I'm like, no, this is the same playbook, and it's just getting old at this point.
• 6:44
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 6:44
  SPEAKER_03: Well, that's nice that you understand the playbook because I think a lot of people entered this industry with all of the best intentions and were just totally beaten down by what was going on behind the scenes.
• 6:57
  SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.
• 6:58
  SPEAKER_00: So let's talk a little bit about what it is your organization does and kind of get into the details of a day-to-day and kind of how you service the industry and the public at large.
• 7:08
  SPEAKER_03: So, right now I mainly focus on researching the cannabis space and specifically, like I said, the disinformation.
• 7:15
  SPEAKER_03: Because to me, it's completely leverageable in the fact that the cannabis world has been a victim of historic propaganda for nearly 100 years.
• 7:26
  SPEAKER_03: And Reefer Madness is one of the most well-known and also most successful disinformation campaigns that we're aware of in modern history.
• 7:36
  SPEAKER_03: And so what I do is instead of appealing to institutions, you know, like do the moral thing, do the ethical thing, I appeal to institutions on an incentive level and say, hey, you know, not only can we use cannabis to learn more about disinformation, which is becoming a global growing concern, you know, the World Economic Forum, I think ranked it as like the number two most severe threat we face currently.
• 8:03
  SPEAKER_03: Um, and so not only can we leverage like what cannabis teaches us about disinformation, we can also quantify disinformation in a way that you can't in most other areas, like politics.
• 8:16
  SPEAKER_03: A lot of disinformation research in those areas is based largely on theory.
• 8:21
  SPEAKER_03: But what I did is I went first, why I call it Cannabis Council for Advertising Transparency, is I quantified the disinformation.
• 8:29
  SPEAKER_03: I call it the disinformation tax within the advertising space, because cannabis is heavily restricted when it comes to advertising.
• 8:37
  SPEAKER_03: Um, programmatic ads, meta, Facebook, Google, all of these platforms have strict rules.
• 8:44
  SPEAKER_03: Even LinkedIn, although LinkedIn seems to be open to cannabis business, they have a policy against open promotion of cannabis.
• 8:53
  SPEAKER_03: Um, and so you have people getting Instagram deletions.
• 8:56
  SPEAKER_03: I faced Instagram deletion at one point, thousands of followers, all my work gone, and you know, a blink of an eye.
• 9:03
  SPEAKER_03: And so what happens is people can only advertise through very niche markets, like trade publishers, um, and people that charge a really high premium because they know they have a very the market is scarce, right?
• 9:20
  SPEAKER_03: They they have scarcity pricing.
• 9:22
  SPEAKER_03: And so um I quantify that cannabis companies pay almost five times more in advertising expenses than mainstream businesses.
• 9:32
  SPEAKER_03: Um, and so that is very clearly because because what happens then is the incentive becomes who needs to normalize cannabis because there's so many ways that you can make money off of high advertising costs.
• 9:46
  SPEAKER_03: And then ultimately what high advertising cost does is it creates narrative control because small and legacy businesses and single person operators are not able to consistently stay top of mind in advertising.
• 10:00
  SPEAKER_03: They cannot afford it.
• 10:02
  SPEAKER_03: And so the corporate, the MSOs, the compliance vendors can create this sort of narrative control through pay for you know podcasts and premium web placements and all of these creating authority, manufacturing authority.
• 10:19
  SPEAKER_03: And so they create this narrative.
• 10:21
  SPEAKER_03: And then what ultimately I quantified is that this um leads then into market manipulation.
• 10:28
  SPEAKER_03: Um, cannabis stocks are the most, some, if not the most, um volatile stocks on the market.
• 10:39
  SPEAKER_03: And they they trade primarily on sentiment, not fundamentals, because again, with narrative control, counter-narratives can't scale.
• 10:47
  SPEAKER_03: So you can completely control the narrative and you can drive down prices by um promoting disinformation, cannabis danger, um, cannabis risk, um businesses failing, things like that.
• 11:01
  SPEAKER_03: And then you can also, on the other hand, promote short bursts of optimism to drive the stock back up at specific times.
• 11:09
  SPEAKER_03: And so you can see that I've actually um documented this happening.
• 11:13
  SPEAKER_03: Um, in 2019, cannabis stocks were the most shorted on the market.
• 11:19
  SPEAKER_03: Um, shorts made billions of dollars in profits, and it was so profound that the FCC actually investigated what was happening and levied sanctions on like well-known short sellers.
• 11:31
  SPEAKER_03: So there's this whole kind of business around um disinformation and this weaponization of um narrative control and advertising scarcity.
• 11:43
  SPEAKER_03: And and so there's not a large incentive in our industry, like you were saying, to normalize.
• 11:50
  SPEAKER_00: It's uh it's interesting in everything you said because everything is what one of the reasons the reasons that I started bringing hemp brands into the podcast.
• 11:56
  SPEAKER_00: So obviously, a lot of this was beer related in in the past and it was rebranded.
• 12:00
  SPEAKER_00: And when I rebranded it, I intentionally on the logo have every ingredient from every adult beverage, every major ingredient is represented in that for that reason as well, but also for the buying power.
• 12:12
  SPEAKER_00: My intention was always to get it to a scale that could be monetized, not for any sort of wealth, but to be able to allow a co-op type of platform and also to be able to do it in a story-based fashion.
• 12:24
  SPEAKER_00: Because in my mind, um, you know, my business is called Free Mind, and I've had it for 18 years.
• 12:28
  SPEAKER_00: So obviously I'm not a I'm not a conformist in any way, but I do always look for the delta.
• 12:32
  SPEAKER_00: And I played football in rugby, so it was like look for the gap in the line of scrimmage and go.
• 12:37
  SPEAKER_00: And what I see is uh really as far as uh what means to be an American business and an entrepreneur is your story.
• 12:44
  SPEAKER_00: And we're not selling anything, we're never selling a product, but we are telling stories.
• 12:48
  SPEAKER_00: And that's one of the things that I believe that that somehow has really punched through the algorithm.
• 12:53
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and I've I've had my moments as well where I've been flagged and taken down in different aspects.
• 12:58
  SPEAKER_00: But at the end of the day, I don't believe I believe it's resilient because it's story-based and because it's entrepreneurial-based in that story.
• 13:04
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so I appreciate what you're saying, and you validated uh what my mission is here and what I'm trying to do.
• 13:10
  SPEAKER_00: So yeah.
• 13:11
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, it's so it's so important for a healthy market for counter-narratives to be able to scale.
• 13:17
  SPEAKER_03: Because on top of all this, we also have to keep in mind that funding around cannabis research, around like 75% of$1 billion, goes towards studying cannabis risks instead of cannabis benefits.
• 13:33
  SPEAKER_03: And then when it can study cannabis benefits, it's restricted to studying mostly isolated cannabinoids because of federal law.
• 13:40
  SPEAKER_03: So we're not getting a clear picture of what whole plant cannabis can do as far as medical benefits in the research aspect.
• 13:48
  SPEAKER_03: And then you add that to the suppression in speech, and that's where you get the structural disinformation.
• 13:56
  SPEAKER_03: You are looking at a biased um information environment where positive promotion and patient stories and these important counter-narratives just cannot scale effectively.
• 14:10
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's uh my history is all public relations and counter-narrative work.
• 14:14
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, that's what I've done in the alcohol space when I worked with the craft breweries.
• 14:17
  SPEAKER_00: I went to college for corporate communications and public relations.
• 14:20
  SPEAKER_00: So, like, this is my pattern recognition has been flying high for years now as far as how how cannabis is not organized in the in the way, and I don't mean this as a negative to the industry, but they just haven't found their footing in an organized way to collaborate, like similar to what craft breweries did in the 2010s or so.
• 14:37
  SPEAKER_00: They collaborated and they knew their numbers weren't going to compete with the big guys, so they had to kind of get together and platform base it.
• 14:43
  SPEAKER_00: How do you currently how do you fund your work in the research aspect of things?
• 14:49
  SPEAKER_00: Like how do you kind of are there partnerships that with other brands, or is it a is it kind of an NGO type thing?
• 14:54
  SPEAKER_03: Or um, well, I haven't had a lot a lot of luck specifically with like cannabis brands, um, because I'm kind of going uh against how the industry is sort of structured.
• 15:05
  SPEAKER_03: So it's kind of like hands off in that sense, but I do find a lot of interest from institutions that are interested in the anti-disinformation aspect and also ESG, environmental, social, and governance um focused institutions, because it's like cannabis is primed for ESG.
• 15:24
  SPEAKER_03: ESG is like a multi-trillion dollar market.
• 15:28
  SPEAKER_03: Most people aren't even aware of it.
• 15:30
  SPEAKER_03: And cannabis, the environmental, social, and governance all speak to cannabis.
• 15:35
  SPEAKER_03: You know, hemp is a great environmental uh healer.
• 15:39
  SPEAKER_03: Uh, cannabis and the war on probe war on drugs and prohibition caused a lot of social issues.
• 15:46
  SPEAKER_03: And then we also have governance, and and we need, and that's why I established CCAT, is that we need a standards body, right?
• 15:53
  SPEAKER_03: We need some sort of system where people are being held accountable for what they're doing because we don't have that at the moment.
• 16:02
  SPEAKER_03: And so it's it's still new work.
• 16:04
  SPEAKER_03: I came from PR and marketing and social media marketing in cannabis to kind of focusing on this because it's something I stumbled upon that, you know, not many people are talking about.
• 16:17
  SPEAKER_03: And so right now I'm working to get a fiscal sponsor for CCAT and kind of just kind of grow from there.
• 16:24
  SPEAKER_00: That is amazing.
• 16:25
  SPEAKER_00: And it's it's one of those things in parallels to alcohol that a lot of people don't realize is there's a lot of there's not as many restrictions, but there are a lot of restrictions on alcohol.
• 16:32
  SPEAKER_00: Even today, like I have the same algorithms and profiles for the past 10, 15 years, but there's times where I'll put an RTD Spirits brand up, and if I have too much of the can on it, it'll get taken down.
• 16:43
  SPEAKER_00: And by the time you have a person who takes up more of the screen than the can, then it goes through.
• 16:48
  SPEAKER_00: And so it's all of these people don't realize it's these optical angles as much as it is the content and context of the captions that you're putting in there.
• 16:55
  SPEAKER_00: And there used to be in the beer world as well as in the spirits world, a handbook.
• 16:58
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm sure it still exists, but I haven't looked at it as much where it was like, here's all the states, here's what you can tell.
• 17:03
  SPEAKER_00: Because there's states where you can't talk, you can't even promote a happy hour and you're not selling anything in certain states and different things like that to incite uh, you know, let's say uh, you know, overconsumption or anything like that from that aspect of things.
• 17:14
  SPEAKER_03: Well, that's a great point because that's kind of gatekeeping in itself, right?
• 17:18
  SPEAKER_03: Because to navigate these restrictions that and regulations that you don't even fully understand takes like a lawyer or really in-depth understanding.
• 17:29
  SPEAKER_03: And so when you're just starting out and you're a legacy operator that doesn't have that experience, that's also you know a hurdle that's very difficult to navigate, that the MSOs and and these high-level corporate factions completely understand.
• 17:45
  SPEAKER_03: Again, because a lot of the people in the space are from alcohol and pharma and tobacco.
• 17:50
  SPEAKER_03: And so they understand not only how to navigate regulations, but how come how complexity can be a moat for them?
• 17:58
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 17:59
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's uh complexity can be a moat and an advantage because at the same time nobody can see everything.
• 18:04
  SPEAKER_00: So as soon as the certain ones of us could that can see the hole and the and the opening, uh, that's a real good exposure point.
• 18:10
  SPEAKER_00: What do you think are uh are there any kind of campaigns that you've seen currently on any aspect of cannabis that are kind of the most successful navigations or any brands or organizations that you kind of have seen that are really rocking it as far as that goes?
• 18:23
  SPEAKER_03: Well, I think um similar to you, I was part of the International Women's Cannabis Conference a couple of weeks ago, and I love what they're doing, just platforming marginalized people in the space and giving them the chance to speak.
• 18:37
  SPEAKER_03: Because again, I don't think people realize how important that is in a suppressed information environment.
• 18:42
  SPEAKER_03: Like it is so important to get counter-narratives to scale because it just creates what what my whole basis is that disinformation in cannabis is causing systemic risk.
• 18:55
  SPEAKER_03: And that's the market manipulation and the fragility and all of this, and it all comes back, in my opinion, to this kind of suppression of speech.
• 19:07
  SPEAKER_00: That's that's a very good way to put it.
• 19:09
  SPEAKER_00: It's uh the what do you think is, I mean, the motivator, let's be honest, is not what they put out there.
• 19:15
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, you know, it's it's and and so on the flip side, is there ever a point where you know the metas of the world or the algorithm algorithms of the world would look at I really wish that it would look at the sometimes the the money-making opportunity to buck the system.
• 19:31
  SPEAKER_00: I think in my gut, and this is just my gut, it feels like the volume and the attention that has been happening in the past six to twelve months would if I was if I was Mark Zuckerberg at this point, like I feel like I would be like, I don't care anymore.
• 19:45
  SPEAKER_00: This is my private.
• 19:46
  SPEAKER_00: We've already proven that it's a private platform.
• 19:48
  SPEAKER_00: It's not a publicly traded and I remember a publicly uh regulated platform and they they have their leniences when they want.
• 19:55
  SPEAKER_00: I'm wondering when that, I guess when the pot is gonna boil so much where they're gonna the the even the platforms are gonna say, no, there's money to be made here.
• 20:01
  SPEAKER_00: I don't care about that anymore.
• 20:02
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, so that's a great point because that's some of the work I do with CCAT.
• 20:07
  SPEAKER_03: It's inverting the incentive structure and showing businesses that it's more of a liability to make decisions on cannabis based on this distorted information environment where you're forced to stay out of this growing multi-million dollar, billion dollar, excuse me, market based on stigma and historic propaganda.
• 20:27
  SPEAKER_03: Like AI systems, algorithms, the platform policies, financial risk models were all trained on prop cannabis propaganda, that cannabis is dangerous.
• 20:38
  SPEAKER_03: That was their that that was their data set, right?
• 20:42
  SPEAKER_03: They didn't have, again, a counter-narrative to scale that, hey, cannabis is actually saving lives.
• 20:47
  SPEAKER_03: Cannabis is not as dangerous as reefer madness let us to.
• 20:51
  SPEAKER_03: So you're you have these institutions like Facebook and Google who are making poor decisions based on faulty data.
• 21:00
  SPEAKER_03: And that really creates a liability.
• 21:02
  SPEAKER_03: And one of the um case reports I just did is fascinating because it's on cannabis banking, right?
• 21:08
  SPEAKER_03: And what they're doing is they're refusing to bank operational cannabis businesses.
• 21:14
  SPEAKER_03: And these are completely compliant businesses, subject to track and trace and seed to sale and POSs and so forth.
• 21:21
  SPEAKER_03: Cannabis is the most heavily surveilled and track uh commodity in the world currently.
• 21:28
  SPEAKER_03: And so banks are refusing to uh to uh support these legal, transparent businesses that are making money while they're supporting the speculative capital markets and the shorting, um, which creates reflexivity because what the banks are ultimately doing is they're creating the risk that they're claiming is the reason they're not entering helping the cannabis businesses.
• 21:54
  SPEAKER_03: And this is a failure of um their own model risk programs.
• 21:59
  SPEAKER_03: And so The way I approach institutions is like it is more of a liability to be operating off of this structural disinformation and making these multi-billion dollar business decisions than it would be to enter the market in a healthy, clean way.
• 22:18
  SPEAKER_03: And for me, that's in advertising, right?
• 22:20
  SPEAKER_03: Like a platform like you.
• 22:23
  SPEAKER_03: An institution can support that and say, not only am I supporting free speech, but anti-disinformation, because this is creating a counter-narrative that can counteract the structural disinformation that is creating the systemic risk.
• 22:40
  SPEAKER_00: There's a it's a fascinating uh piece when when we uh start peeling the onion layer of the data apart.
• 22:46
  SPEAKER_00: Like just again, go back to hemp beverages, for example.
• 22:48
  SPEAKER_00: It's like I sit in in Congress and meet with our staff.
• 22:50
  SPEAKER_00: I sit in the state level, and we're doing two campaigns right now where we work in in North Carolina and Pennsylvania as well as in DC.
• 22:57
  SPEAKER_00: And all of it is, you know, talking about the children and all this stuff.
• 23:01
  SPEAKER_00: And when you but I'm not gonna, I'm not mocking this when I say this, so I want people to understand this.
• 23:06
  SPEAKER_00: When you pull the data back, and and feel free to tell me if I'm wrong, and I'm very open to hearing that I'm wrong.
• 23:11
  SPEAKER_00: But when I've looked at it from the stuff I've been provided, the instances where children are accessing this product is number one, they're accessing it after their parents have purchased it at the at the point of purchase.
• 23:22
  SPEAKER_00: They're not actually accessing it and buying it from the store and then doing it.
• 23:26
  SPEAKER_00: Number two, there are also the issues that are happening have zero on the beverage side of things.
• 23:31
  SPEAKER_00: They are all the instances are in the gummy and flour.
• 23:34
  SPEAKER_00: And then when you go to the third level, they're all instances of not seed to sale where they are synthetics that are being imported or domestically fat actors that are not using the proper products.
• 23:45
  SPEAKER_00: If we had a regulated market, these products would automatically be filtered out because of that.
• 23:51
  SPEAKER_00: And one of the things I uh my girlfriend actually gave me an idea last week when we were driving, she's like, why don't you build a database of all the brands that are that are like actually under the farm bill thing?
• 24:01
  SPEAKER_00: Because we just deal with, I'll give you an example.
• 24:03
  SPEAKER_00: I'm in York County, Pennsylvania.
• 24:05
  SPEAKER_00: We have a health inspector and a district attorney that is just on gung-ho on eliminating everything and is literally trying to.
• 24:12
  SPEAKER_00: I'm getting calls from my retailers because this new health inspector or new handbook that he has in checklist is targeting hemp beverages.
• 24:19
  SPEAKER_00: Yet it doesn't fall under their purview, and it's not actually literally on their checklist or in their handbook, it's a verbal threat.
• 24:27
  SPEAKER_00: And so, even to uh nine days ago is when the my one retailer called me and I talked to the health inspector over the phone, provided the you know, the farm bill, I provided all of the data.
• 24:36
  SPEAKER_00: I also provided the Pennsylvania Department of Revenues taxation categories for him beverages, and I'm like, it's it's taxed, it's everything.
• 24:45
  SPEAKER_00: And they have not countered back to the retailer to file and go public with the violation because there is nothing to support that stance, it's just threats.
• 24:52
  SPEAKER_00: And then the problem is that at least again, I'm going to speak to Pennsylvania because that's where I'm on the street.
• 24:56
  SPEAKER_00: I drive about three to five thousand miles a month meeting with retailers to do this.
• 25:01
  SPEAKER_00: And what it is also is they don't follow through in a documented way, but they do follow through in a PR media way, which is why I felt, and I got I have chills when I say this, where from my perspective of where I came from and where I the industry, as well as my education from an academic standpoint, I'm feeling like I'm on an island and the only one that's saying, like, this isn't a real legal battle.
• 25:22
  SPEAKER_00: You're you're you're manipulating the perception through media that it is a legal battle, because at the end of the day, these are false narratives that are built on nothing in writing from those people from an enforcatory or enforcing aspect.
• 25:35
  SPEAKER_00: And that is, while it doesn't anger me, it frustrates me because every response I get with the retailers where I say, you know what, take them to court, they can't.
• 25:44
  SPEAKER_00: And it's you touched on this before because it's they don't want to be public about it, they don't want to buck the system.
• 25:49
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm not blaming them for this.
• 25:50
  SPEAKER_00: I understand this.
• 25:51
  SPEAKER_00: Their budgets are tight and they're trying to survive in this world as it is in a brick and mortar establishment.
• 25:57
  SPEAKER_00: But that is what it comes down to is the fact that we don't have big corporations in our corner, we don't have the proper funding, and it's not a victimhood statement, it's actually a call to action for everyone listening to the show and watching it to band together and wake up because in the next few months there's not going to be an industry if nothing's banded together.
• 26:16
  SPEAKER_03: Yes.
• 26:17
  SPEAKER_03: And powers in the numbers.
• 26:19
  SPEAKER_03: That's so important.
• 26:20
  SPEAKER_03: I love your idea about collecting the data because that is going to show very clearly that these businesses are operating completely transparently.
• 26:29
  SPEAKER_03: You know, it's it's not this criminal CD underground, it's a transparent business.
• 26:34
  SPEAKER_03: And that's something I've also looked into doing, you know, collecting data on cannabis businesses and showing like these are operating completely legally and transparently.
• 26:46
  SPEAKER_03: Um, and so the issue is that it's again a structural distortion, right?
• 26:51
  SPEAKER_03: Because I am not saying cannabis doesn't have risks, right?
• 26:55
  SPEAKER_03: But contaminated water has risks.
• 26:58
  SPEAKER_03: Peanut allergies kill people, you know, bad produce can harm people, right?
• 27:03
  SPEAKER_03: And we're not demonizing these things.
• 27:06
  SPEAKER_03: It's just a fact of life, and we put up protections in place to keep people as safe as possible, and kids especially.
• 27:14
  SPEAKER_03: Um, but with cannabis, what we have is this overwhelming narrative of danger.
• 27:19
  SPEAKER_03: Like, again, that's the only narrative that can scale.
• 27:22
  SPEAKER_03: So while the danger might be relative to peanuts, cannabis is lifted up as this, you know, completely horrible substance.
• 27:31
  SPEAKER_03: And what I go to is like anthropologically speaking, cannabis has been around for thousands of years.
• 27:38
  SPEAKER_03: And civilizations that did not communicate with each other all found similar benefits from cannabis and very minimal side effects.
• 27:47
  SPEAKER_03: And so when we say we haven't studied cannabis enough and this and that, we don't need to in that sense, is that we can see anthropologically, and also we can see in things like crack cocaine and fentanyl and opioids, when within 10 years of those hitting society, measurable damage to communities and to people are seen very clearly.
• 28:12
  SPEAKER_03: We still do not have that on any level with cannabis.
• 28:16
  SPEAKER_03: Um, and so, you know, again, it comes back to the structural distortion where these sorts of realities are being displaced by this fear-mongering.
• 28:28
  SPEAKER_03: And some of it is absolutely like people genuinely believe it because it's it becomes once you're fed something so often enough, cannabis is dangerous, cannabis is dangerous, it becomes film familiarity and that becomes truth.
• 28:44
  SPEAKER_03: And so you just believe it without questioning.
• 28:46
  SPEAKER_03: And that's really what we're um working against is just this inherited idea that cannabis is dangerous, when the reality just does not match that statement to the degree that it's being spread.
• 29:01
  SPEAKER_00: I'm uh I'm quoted last week in an episode of uh saying, and I'm gonna repeat it on this because it's relevant in case anybody skips episodes.
• 29:08
  SPEAKER_00: The argument that the cannabis industry uses where alcohol is poison and blah, blah, blah, I think it's bullshit.
• 29:14
  SPEAKER_00: Um, because it's it's also a manipulation in reverse, and it's a weak counter-narrative.
• 29:18
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I and I do support it because I do sell, I sell alcohol as a living, but I don't consume it.
• 29:23
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, and I haven't consumed it in three and a half years.
• 29:26
  SPEAKER_00: And what I found out from my personal standpoint is I can I don't drink hemp beverages every day either.
• 29:31
  SPEAKER_00: And I do I don't drink anything ritually because of my my personal biology and how my body reacts to addiction.
• 29:37
  SPEAKER_00: At the same time, I'm I'm a original OG libertarian, not the bullshit perversion that exists today, where it's like put it on the shelf, let the world, let the world decide what they want.
• 29:48
  SPEAKER_00: But what I'm trying to say, I guess, in this is that you know, we sit here and and you know, I sat in a congressman's office a couple weeks ago, and I got to hear the speech about kids.
• 30:03
  SPEAKER_00: And but at the same time, I pulled my phone out and I said, I'm gonna show you something as somebody who works in both industries of alcohol in this.
• 30:10
  SPEAKER_00: Right now, you have a federally regulated alcohol market that sells, and I pulled up the new Welch's grape juice hard, and then I pulled up the Lipton iced tea hard, and then I pulled up the Sun Sunny D.
• 30:22
  SPEAKER_00: And I said, What from a regulatory, the TTB, the everybody like that approves every single label that goes through for alcohol.
• 30:29
  SPEAKER_00: So this went through a vetting process and was approved in multiple levels to where those graphics, those alcohol.
• 30:35
  SPEAKER_00: I also created products in the alcohol space where if the word I remember creating a tequila margarita, and the word tequila was bigger than the word margarita, and my label got rejected because people didn't, they didn't want the public to think that it was a straight tequila in the spirit in the can.
• 30:50
  SPEAKER_00: They wanted it to know it was a cocktail.
• 30:52
  SPEAKER_00: Well, that's an incredible observation.
• 30:54
  SPEAKER_00: So why wouldn't you use that same discernment to then be like, okay, the Welch's grape juice, you can make Welch's hard grape juice, but you're not allowed to make it look exactly like the Welch's grape juice because what we don't talk about is that product, whereas all the other stuff, is gonna sit in a cooler this summer in a barbecue, and somebody might have regular Welch's grape juice for their kid, and they're gonna have that in there.
• 31:17
  SPEAKER_00: And let's be really honest about what is going on.
• 31:20
  SPEAKER_00: And it's not that one is better than the other, it's the hypocrisy of the unsubstantiated data, which is again why I was excited to have this conversation with you.
• 31:29
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, absolutely.
• 31:30
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, I can say from anecdotal experience, I drank the most as a teenager or like 18 years old when I was over my friend's house whose father had a bar downstairs, right?
• 31:42
  SPEAKER_03: She would take the liquor and then take some and then pour some water in so it looks, you know, and it's like, and that didn't happen at my house because my mom didn't drink, you know, and so kids are exposed to it.
• 31:54
  SPEAKER_03: My primary issue, I guess a little like a libertarian or free market person, is that we have we we can speculate as much as we want about the dangers of cannabis, but we have hard data, um, empirical evidence that shows how harmful prohibition and ultimately criminalization was.
• 32:15
  SPEAKER_03: Um, and so, you know, we rarely see government intervention that's you know completely beneficent, right?
• 32:24
  SPEAKER_03: Like that there are harms to to everything.
• 32:27
  SPEAKER_03: And so you have to navigate with caution.
• 32:30
  SPEAKER_03: There's, you know, the yin and yang, there's balance needed in all of life, right?
• 32:36
  SPEAKER_03: And when anything gets to any extreme, trouble happens.
• 32:40
  SPEAKER_03: Um, and so, but I think we're at such an extreme right now with cannabis that nobody from my experience is thinking like logically, like you and I are speaking.
• 32:52
  SPEAKER_03: It's like I said, these two lobbies against each other, the cannabis lobby and the hemp lobby.
• 32:58
  SPEAKER_03: And I mean, hemp, if anything, I think would be viewed as safer than cannabis, but for some reason that's being demonized now.
• 33:07
  SPEAKER_00: And that's what I'm blown away.
• 33:09
  SPEAKER_00: I really from a logical standpoint.
• 33:11
  SPEAKER_00: I'm like, why is this the fight?
• 33:14
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, it doesn't make sense until you look at it from a business perspective, right?
• 33:18
  SPEAKER_03: And that's really where it where it starts.
• 33:21
  SPEAKER_00: It's the highest volume opportunity and the highest access opportunity if it's allowed to be legal.
• 33:26
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I mean, it should be.
• 33:27
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, if you have a problem with cannabis and want it medically restricted and or right heavily regulated, okay, but explain to me why hemp has to be, you know, just as criminalized.
• 33:39
  SPEAKER_03: That doesn't make sense to me.
• 33:41
  SPEAKER_03: Um, but the the bigger issue is, I think, is that we can compare cannabis to like alcohol and tobacco, and that's all well and good, but ultimately cannabis and hemp compete with oil.
• 33:54
  SPEAKER_03: And I think that's really where our issues come in because oil is very heavily controlled, but cannabis and hemp you can grow in your backyard.
• 34:04
  SPEAKER_03: And so at what at what point does that start affecting, you know, the oil barons?
• 34:10
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, these are this is a huge, and I'm not talking secret societies or anything conspiratorial, but I'm talking about power structures, right?
• 34:19
  SPEAKER_03: And these exist and they absolutely exist in oil and finance.
• 34:24
  SPEAKER_03: Um, and so we're really trying to navigate this this world where hempic cannabis can really compete with the petrochemicals, with the textiles, um, with the oils and all of these things.
• 34:38
  SPEAKER_03: And so one theory of my work is that you can look at how valuable a market is by looking at how much uh finances and time and energy is being spent to control it, right?
• 34:55
  SPEAKER_03: Because if cannabis and hemp had zero value and was just some stupid weed you could grow, there would not be the kind of um environment we're seeing where billions and lobbying and all these special interests and like obviously power structures that exist see the value in our market.
• 35:18
  SPEAKER_00: It's uh just speaking of my work in Pennsylvania, it's interesting to see from a lobbying standpoint.
• 35:24
  SPEAKER_00: We're we're working with a thousands of dollars per month budget, and our opposition is working with putting millions in against what we're doing.
• 35:33
  SPEAKER_00: And it's really, I want to stress to everybody listening and watching as well, is like that's the importance of what we're trying to do with the show.
• 35:41
  SPEAKER_00: Is the show was originally it was it's always about stories, and it's always about getting people's stories over the product so that there's a human aspect to it.
• 35:48
  SPEAKER_00: Because that's the other problem is a lot of these faceless brands that are the best actors are faceless brands.
• 35:54
  SPEAKER_00: They're not emailing, they're not DMing me on LinkedIn, they're not connecting with me on LinkedIn, and I understand that.
• 35:59
  SPEAKER_00: I wouldn't want to if I was them either.
• 36:01
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I don't say that because I want to be them, I say that because I'm the type of person, much like you, that can put myself in other people's shoes and see their perspective, whether I agree with it or not.
• 36:10
  SPEAKER_00: And and it's very indicative of that.
• 36:13
  SPEAKER_00: And I I really wish that um we could get to a place in the next few weeks or months.
• 36:17
  SPEAKER_00: I don't I don't necessarily think this would happen, but I really do from a scale and uh a place of attention for that.
• 36:25
  SPEAKER_00: You said about your theories.
• 36:26
  SPEAKER_00: I'm interested about, and I'm I could I would love to to have a tinful hat on with you on that one as well and go down that rabbit hole, but we'll pause that on.
• 36:34
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 36:34
  SPEAKER_00: Tell me some of your career theories from power struggles on our power standpoint, and some of the research that you find the most fascinating so far that you've been doing.
• 36:42
  SPEAKER_03: Uh so it it again, it's I don't like to go down rabbit holes.
• 36:48
  SPEAKER_02: So I yeah, we don't have to, yeah, yeah.
• 36:49
  SPEAKER_02: So the surface, yeah.
• 36:51
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, yeah.
• 36:51
  SPEAKER_03: I skim the surface of it, but I'm like, because you can really go down these holes and get all sorts of paranoid.
• 36:58
  SPEAKER_03: And so I really just try to stay on the information systems, right?
• 37:02
  SPEAKER_03: And like the structural distortion and how it's easily leveraged.
• 37:06
  SPEAKER_03: And I don't call out anybody specifically by name.
• 37:10
  SPEAKER_03: It's you know, it's there's no need to attack personally or professionally.
• 37:15
  SPEAKER_03: It's like this is what's happening on a systemic level, right?
• 37:19
  SPEAKER_03: And it is being leveraged.
• 37:21
  SPEAKER_03: And again, I think the ultimate um goal of my work is to show, but it's not beneficial.
• 37:27
  SPEAKER_03: Like while you may be profiting in the short term, there's all this money that's being left on the table.
• 37:33
  SPEAKER_03: There's only a few people who are controlling the industry, you know, whoever that may be, the lobbyist interests, these things.
• 37:42
  SPEAKER_03: I definitely think the lobbyist interests play a huge role, right?
• 37:46
  SPEAKER_03: Because they're the ones speaking to um political um people.
• 37:52
  SPEAKER_03: And again, they they have the experts that can give the expert testimony.
• 37:57
  SPEAKER_03: And there's this whole level of where information is passed into like legislation, right?
• 38:04
  SPEAKER_03: That common people just don't even fathom.
• 38:07
  SPEAKER_03: And again, the billions, the millions of dollars going into lobbying and all these different narratives that hemp versus cannabis, ultimately, it just creates confusion, right?
• 38:18
  SPEAKER_03: Which just creates uh delay in reform.
• 38:22
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, I don't think it should have taken this long to get, well, everybody's cheering schedule three, right?
• 38:29
  SPEAKER_03: I thought in 2019 we were like a few months from decriminalization totally.
• 38:34
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I I'm with you on that.
• 38:36
  SPEAKER_00: There's nothing to celebrate.
• 38:37
  SPEAKER_00: Like it's just a distraction.
• 38:39
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I had no idea we would be here six years later.
• 38:43
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, it's just unbelievable to me.
• 38:45
  SPEAKER_03: And the fact people are still getting arrested for cannabis while people are making billions of dollars off of it.
• 38:52
  SPEAKER_03: Um, and so yeah, it's it's just structural because again, what all this creates is systemic risk, because it creates a massive distrust in our institutions because people aren't stupid.
• 39:03
  SPEAKER_03: People see what's going on, and while you can market it, oh, we're banning hemp because it's dangerous.
• 39:09
  SPEAKER_03: Well, there's not narry a study that they've shown to actually support that sort of, oh, intoxicating hemp is is destroying the world.
• 39:20
  SPEAKER_03: And or and I mean, I I also tell people it's really incredible to me.
• 39:24
  SPEAKER_03: We've waited so long for any progress in reform or legalization.
• 39:28
  SPEAKER_03: But boy, did they move fast to ban intoxicating hemp, right?
• 39:34
  SPEAKER_03: Like if they can move that fast on policy, why aren't they moving fast on cannabis, at least to schedule three?
• 39:41
  SPEAKER_03: You know, we're still waiting.
• 39:43
  SPEAKER_00: I have a good gut feeling that the public pressure this summer, if we if we all do our job and and follow this, what what we're talking about here and take these action steps to count, to put the information out there.
• 39:54
  SPEAKER_00: And I think I implore every I talk to I interview about four to six founders and leaders in the industry like yourself every week.
• 40:01
  SPEAKER_00: And every time I try to have this conversation with them where it's like, I know sales are so important right now because of an impending ban.
• 40:08
  SPEAKER_00: That's important.
• 40:09
  SPEAKER_00: Putting into your social media and putting into your marketing, that not the come sign my pop my petition.
• 40:15
  SPEAKER_00: Like that's that's important, I get that, but also your story.
• 40:19
  SPEAKER_00: And because that's where people are going to emotionally connect because they're like, that guy was just like me before he did this, and now he's doing this.
• 40:25
  SPEAKER_00: And I intentionally have been showcasing parents that are running businesses now in this space.
• 40:29
  SPEAKER_00: And we talk about how do you parent your child.
• 40:32
  SPEAKER_00: I have four kids in a blended family, and it's how do you parent your child while working in this industry?
• 40:36
  SPEAKER_00: There's a lot of great information that we've been putting out, and it's been used.
• 40:40
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, we get we get requests from lawmakers where like, hey, can we get some clips?
• 40:44
  SPEAKER_00: Can we get some clips and some quotes from your stuff?
• 40:46
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that that's been changing in the past few weeks, where that's been an outreach on my end.
• 40:51
  SPEAKER_00: And and I say that in a place of I think everybody needs to understand that if you're scared right now and you're in survival mode, it's the opposite right now.
• 40:59
  SPEAKER_00: It's roll up your sleeves and not get dirty.
• 41:02
  SPEAKER_00: Don't don't get dirty, but stand up for yourself because this is what this is the the true narrative is your narrative, and it's whoever you are out there.
• 41:11
  SPEAKER_00: You know, it's your story is a real story, and your story can't be suppressed.
• 41:15
  SPEAKER_00: And at this point, only your story at some points will be connecting with the everyday consumer who then will be able to sign that petition and call their local lawmaker to put some pressure on them.
• 41:25
  SPEAKER_00: And again, I don't, I don't, I'm not saying dirty pressure.
• 41:27
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not saying call centers.
• 41:28
  SPEAKER_00: I'll give you an example.
• 41:29
  SPEAKER_00: We're trying to circumvent some some uh optics where this week today we just started uh my my calls my call team is doing 1200 calls a week for the next four to six weeks.
• 41:40
  SPEAKER_00: And there's a six-question survey across Pennsylvania that they're conducting with independent operators only and people that have either carried in the past and don't no longer carry hemp beverages because they got scared and they got threatened, or they and they want to carry it.
• 41:54
  SPEAKER_00: You know what I mean?
• 41:55
  SPEAKER_00: So I want to what I'm trying to do is get a statewide data set of out of the thousands of people that can legally sell it today, how many are actually doing it?
• 42:04
  SPEAKER_00: My guess so far, based on my travels, is gonna be 300 tops out of the five to ten thousand people that can actually sell it.
• 42:14
  SPEAKER_00: And from there, I want to get the data as to why.
• 42:17
  SPEAKER_00: And then that the that's the the six questions are really important.
• 42:20
  SPEAKER_00: I'm excited, I'll share it with you when it's done in a couple weeks because I think it's I want to replicate it as well.
• 42:26
  SPEAKER_00: I want to use, I'm using Pennsylvania as the pilot.
• 42:28
  SPEAKER_00: But if that works, and my goal is to get a thousand to 1,500 completed surveys in the next four to six weeks.
• 42:34
  SPEAKER_00: If we can do that, that gives me what I feel like a good independent operator, single, you know, single retail location, and maybe like, you know, maybe I have multiple locations, but nothing that's corporately focused.
• 42:44
  SPEAKER_00: Um, because I also believe that from a data standpoint in all regulated beverage industries, the independent operator as a retailer is underserved in data.
• 42:53
  SPEAKER_00: Um we only collect data from grocery stores and chains and those that is easily accessed.
• 42:58
  SPEAKER_00: We don't go signing up independent mom and pops to access their point of sale systems.
• 43:03
  SPEAKER_00: So I feel like I'm I feel like we're really a label able to give a next layer of the onion to showing who's really out here and then not working off of assumptions or generational uh data that's been given to us word of mouth or uh from this is how we do it.
• 43:16
  SPEAKER_00: Do you know what I mean?
• 43:17
  SPEAKER_00: That kind of thing.
• 43:18
  SPEAKER_03: Yes.
• 43:19
  SPEAKER_03: No, that's a that's a great idea.
• 43:21
  SPEAKER_03: Again, data is so valuable, and I didn't know there was kind of that gap in the market where the independent owners are not being seen.
• 43:29
  SPEAKER_00: And it's not just this industry, it's also alcohol.
• 43:32
  SPEAKER_00: Like if you look at alcohol percentage data is where they show like this SKU is is ranked in Memorial Day and this one's dropping, that's all from chains.
• 43:40
  SPEAKER_00: None of it, it's all Nielsen and uh and IRI data that's only brought in from chains because they're they're able to connect to their point of sale system through approvals and commission or admissions, permissions, but not they don't do it with independent operators.
• 43:53
  SPEAKER_00: So you have thousands of operators in every state that their data is not being done, and we make decisions in the alcohol space.
• 44:00
  SPEAKER_00: Based on the IRI data from a grocery store and a convenience store, which, yes, they are great, you know, great retail partners and they sell a lot of products, but that's not always, and I'll be honest with you, I don't I think people underestimate, and you'll you'll probably agree with me the psychology of a grocery store buyer that's going to also buy from the thing.
• 44:19
  SPEAKER_00: And I don't want this to be taken negatively, but the psychology is of convenience.
• 44:23
  SPEAKER_00: So they're going to buy the products that are in those places.
• 44:26
  SPEAKER_00: We also need to understand and realize that, and I can speak because I'm the one that does the sales to those chains, those chains don't always bring in a lot of the small brands.
• 44:34
  SPEAKER_00: The small brands are found at the independent operator.
• 44:37
  SPEAKER_00: So you have an entire, most times 60, 70% of the brands are not in the place that you're actually collecting data from.
• 44:45
  SPEAKER_00: They're in the other places.
• 44:46
  SPEAKER_00: So you're really just like when we talk about supporting small businesses and all that, but then you know, maybe we create taxes that are for the rich and not for the small business owner, which I'm 18 years as a small business owner and own 100% of my business.
• 44:59
  SPEAKER_00: We are underserved from all of those aspects, regardless of an industry.
• 45:03
  SPEAKER_00: Yet we are the ones that yield more than 60% of the bit of the businesses in the country.
• 45:08
  unknown: Wow.
• 45:08
  SPEAKER_00: Just don't have the buying power.
• 45:10
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 45:10
  SPEAKER_03: Well, that's an interesting niche.
• 45:12
  SPEAKER_03: And you know, I've read books like um platform capitalism and surveillance capitalism.
• 45:17
  SPEAKER_03: And I can tell you there's always value in another data layer.
• 45:20
  SPEAKER_00: I mean it's uh yeah, it's it's we're I'm I'm really excited to do this and be I'm not funny.
• 45:26
  SPEAKER_00: It's my money um and it's my it's nobody sponsored it or funded it.
• 45:30
  SPEAKER_00: And I say that with pride uh because I believe in what this this is, and I believe in what will come out of it, regardless of what it's not even to benefit my business at this point, it's to give a grounded data-centric perspective, regardless of what the outcome is.
• 45:46
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that we need more people like yourself is uh to to also there needs to be more of us that want to look at things not from a this is what I was told, but this is what it is.
• 45:56
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, well, I think it's on a fundamental level.
• 45:59
  SPEAKER_03: It's who believes in, you know, profiting over everything and who believes in like doing work that you can stand by and that's fulfilling and that you believe in, right?
• 46:11
  SPEAKER_03: Um, because I think that's the huge divide in cannabis right now as a whole.
• 46:16
  SPEAKER_03: It's like who really is here because they're passionate about it, because they believe in it, and who just sees it as a money grab?
• 46:23
  SPEAKER_00: Exactly.
• 46:24
  SPEAKER_00: That's exactly it.
• 46:25
  SPEAKER_00: It's mine is from just so you know, as well as the audience, it's from a place of principle is that hemp beverages and non-alcoholic beers and mocktails save my life because I tried to get sober multiple times.
• 46:36
  SPEAKER_00: I almost killed myself multiple times trying to get sober and dealing with my addiction between that and it wasn't until those products were available and tasted good.
• 46:45
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I have to also say that as I tried multiple times when it was just O'Dules and just the other stuff, and it just wasn't the crutch that I needed and the bridge that I needed.
• 46:53
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so mine is from a place of thank you.
• 46:56
  SPEAKER_00: Mine is a place from a, and I say this to every lawmaker, is like, yes, I have a business because I want to participate, but I'm not here just trying to do no.
• 47:04
  SPEAKER_00: I'm here to, I'm here so that other people like me can go, okay, maybe I will take a break from a beer every once in a while or take something else and do this.
• 47:11
  SPEAKER_00: And then I'm more present with my kids, I'm more present in the morning.
• 47:14
  SPEAKER_00: And and that for me has like exponentially grown my life in a more fulfilling way.
• 47:19
  SPEAKER_00: And I don't push it on anybody as much as I want to I want it to be available if they want it.
• 47:24
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, you're preaching to the choir because I also had addiction.
• 47:28
  SPEAKER_03: I suffered a medical trauma, I ended up with sepsis, almost died.
• 47:32
  SPEAKER_03: And this was back in 2005 when they were just over-prescribing opiates.
• 47:37
  SPEAKER_00: I went mine with opiates as well.
• 47:38
  SPEAKER_03: I didn't tell you, I was I went to a pain management clinic in Langhorn, um, right by the Sesame Street.
• 47:45
  SPEAKER_00: And from Love, I'm I'm from I was born in Yardley in Levitown.
• 47:48
  SPEAKER_00: I'm definitely we are like we are right there.
• 47:50
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I was born right down right down the street from that center.
• 47:54
  SPEAKER_00: I was born in that hospital St.
• 47:55
  SPEAKER_00: Mary's.
• 47:56
  SPEAKER_03: Oh my gosh, how wild is life.
• 47:59
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, so I got addicted and kind of uh for like 10 years, I was just trying because at this point they were saying, you know, you have to take it around the clock.
• 48:09
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, the things they would tell you about like these opioids, it was like, okay, I'm taking it all the time.
• 48:15
  SPEAKER_03: And then, you know, you're so addicted to it.
• 48:18
  SPEAKER_03: Um, and you know, cannabis was just the godson.
• 48:21
  SPEAKER_03: I take nothing now.
• 48:23
  SPEAKER_03: I'm off every single same thing, same thing here.
• 48:26
  SPEAKER_00: I take an allergy med every day, and then I take my lion's mane and every all the other pills are supplements on a natural basis.
• 48:32
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, no, yeah, I'll take my gummy.
• 48:34
  SPEAKER_03: That's the only thing I'll take.
• 48:36
  SPEAKER_03: I I and that's the beautiful, beautiful thing about cannabis.
• 48:39
  SPEAKER_03: I tell people is when I was withdrawing off the opioids, oh my God, I I basically like overdose myself with cannabis.
• 48:47
  SPEAKER_03: I was taking cannabis edibles and cannabis calm caps and smoking like every five minutes because it was such, it was hell, right?
• 48:56
  SPEAKER_03: If you've ever withdrawed after 10 years on a tremendous amount of fentanyl patches, like all of these things.
• 49:02
  SPEAKER_03: But now that I'm off it and away from it, it's been years.
• 49:05
  SPEAKER_03: I don't need cannabis every day.
• 49:07
  SPEAKER_03: I don't need to overdo cannabis.
• 49:09
  SPEAKER_03: I'll take a cannabis gummy, a five milligram gummy, the way I would take a Tylenol.
• 49:15
  SPEAKER_03: You know, here, like I did gardening the other day and I was so sore.
• 49:18
  SPEAKER_03: And I was like, okay, I'm taking my gummy, I'm gonna have a good night's sleep, and it was wonderful.
• 49:23
  SPEAKER_03: And, you know, and so cannabis brought me to a place where I don't even need cannabis.
• 49:28
  SPEAKER_03: And there's not many medicines on the market that do that.
• 49:32
  SPEAKER_03: Because as someone that has been around doctors, most of the medicines they prescribe for you, you need to keep on taking if you want the supposed benefit, right?
• 49:42
  SPEAKER_03: But then there's all these side effects that come with it.
• 49:45
  SPEAKER_03: And so, yeah, I definitely am with you on I do this out of passion.
• 49:49
  SPEAKER_03: Um, because I I think for every anybody that's a small business in this industry, it's not easy.
• 49:57
  SPEAKER_03: Um, I've been cheated.
• 50:00
  SPEAKER_03: I people have stolen my work.
• 50:02
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, I was PR in marketing for a company and we parted because they literally tried to steal my research.
• 50:09
  SPEAKER_03: And he took my name off of the author and put his own company as author of my research paper, which has already been published.
• 50:18
  SPEAKER_03: And I'm like, it's just cannabis.
• 50:21
  SPEAKER_03: Like, this is what we deal with in cannabis.
• 50:23
  SPEAKER_03: And again, that's why I say like a standards body is so important because there's no ethical board, there's no union, there's nothing.
• 50:32
  SPEAKER_03: And I see posts like this on LinkedIn all the time.
• 50:36
  SPEAKER_03: My work has been stolen.
• 50:37
  SPEAKER_03: They haven't paid me.
• 50:39
  SPEAKER_03: Like, this is a big issue in cannabis.
• 50:42
  SPEAKER_03: Um, and it and it's really a shame because the people that are still here after all these years of this back and forth legalization, will it happen, won't it happen, cut off from institutional capital and banking.
• 50:54
  SPEAKER_03: Like everybody in 2019 that thought this is the green rush, we're getting paid.
• 50:59
  SPEAKER_03: It's like this is brutal.
• 51:01
  SPEAKER_03: Nobody's getting paid, right?
• 51:02
  SPEAKER_03: And so the people that are still here genuinely believe in what they're doing for the most part, you know, and have a passion for it.
• 51:11
  SPEAKER_03: And that's where I'm I know cannabis can save lives because along with me, the compassionate programs out here will we're healing cancer patients, sick children with cancer, you know, the elderly.
• 51:25
  SPEAKER_03: And the reason, only reason why we're here at this point in legalization is because the California medical market was so amazing at the job they did.
• 51:36
  SPEAKER_03: Patient testimony and caregiver testimony made people change their mind about legalization.
• 51:42
  SPEAKER_03: But now, unfortunately, we've moved so far away from the medical model, we're now in this recreational model that that forgets about the patients and the caregivers that got us here.
• 51:55
  SPEAKER_00: Madison, we're we're closing it on time.
• 51:57
  SPEAKER_03: I'm sorry, I went on a diatrick.
• 51:59
  SPEAKER_00: No, you're good.
• 52:00
  SPEAKER_00: No, it's perfect, but I wanted to I want to be on your time for me and be and be respectful of that.
• 52:05
  SPEAKER_00: But also I want to um tell you that I want to bring sometime I'll reach out to you this summer and try to organize a little, like uh maybe bring a brand in as well or some some opposition point.
• 52:15
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe we can have a very constructive conversation as a round table style.
• 52:19
  SPEAKER_00: So I think I I want to thank you for like truly, I want to thank you for this conversation and and thank you for everything you're doing.
• 52:26
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm looking forward to diving deeper into your work and and uh collaborating with you on anything we can over the next few months and beyond for sure.
• 52:33
  SPEAKER_03: Yes, I would love to help you with the data or whatever.
• 52:36
  SPEAKER_03: I I think that's a great idea, and I definitely think there are ways we can work together.
• 52:41
  SPEAKER_03: And I'm happy to meet you and just to see where this goes.
• 52:45
  SPEAKER_00: I cannot believe also the small world or like the connections that you're in California yet, you you're all that stuff got to where you're all important.
• 52:54
  SPEAKER_03: It's so important work in Pennsylvania because, like I said, I was arrested there and I was just trying to use cannabis as my medicine, right?
• 53:02
  SPEAKER_03: And I'd be in Philly and you'd see the paddy wagons come around and people just put into the paddy wagon over weed, and it's like you it's important work you're doing.
• 53:11
  SPEAKER_03: So thank you.
• 53:12
  SPEAKER_00: It's the equivalent of I try to tell people in uh all dogs go to heaven when the paddy wagons drive around driving all the stray dogs.
• 53:19
  SPEAKER_00: That's what it's like over there.
• 53:20
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, it's it's wild.
• 53:23
  SPEAKER_00: Perfect.
• 53:24
  SPEAKER_00: Well, hey, thank you so much for your time.
• 53:26
  SPEAKER_00: I really appreciate it.
• 53:27
  SPEAKER_00: And I'll close out uh the way I do with every episode for everybody is when you're walking down the street, I want people to remember this is a podcast not only about what we talk about in these topics, but also it's connecting with strangers.
• 53:38
  SPEAKER_00: And Madison and I have never met, we've never shared a drink together, we've never gone to a coffee shop, we've never done anything together, and we've never even met to this, what you just saw on camera.
• 53:47
  SPEAKER_00: And we want to remind everybody that humanity is really there, and empathy and connection is important.
• 53:52
  SPEAKER_00: And if you're scared about meeting a stranger, I hope that you follow these episodes watching and listening and understand how easy it is to connect with a stranger, share your story, be vulnerable, and most likely you'll have a connecting story that you can then build a relationship off of.
• 54:05
  SPEAKER_00: So when you're walking down the street, put your phone in your pocket, look at the stranger when they're walking by you.
• 54:10
  SPEAKER_00: When you're at the gas station filling up your cup of coffee, ask the person next to you how are they doing and actually listen to what they say.
• 54:16
  SPEAKER_00: I try I challenge everybody for the past few weeks and started out to give five minutes a week to a stranger.
• 54:21
  SPEAKER_00: 20 minutes a month.
• 54:22
  SPEAKER_00: If we all talk about ROIs in this every day, if you give 20 minutes a month to a stranger, I bet you're gonna get one person where it's gonna make their month, their year, and it might even save them from a really dark place to know that the human connection is there.
• 54:34
  SPEAKER_00: So that's a great ROI.
• 54:35
  SPEAKER_00: And Madison, thank you again for the courage of coming on without questions, without prep, and telling your story and the work that you're doing.
• 54:42
  SPEAKER_00: So thank you so much.
• 54:43
  SPEAKER_03: Yep, thanks for having me again, and what a beautiful closing.
• 54:47
  SPEAKER_00: You're good, you're good.
• 54:49
  SPEAKER_00: Hey, thank you so much.
• 54:50
  SPEAKER_00: You have a good rest of your day, Madison.
• 54:51
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you.
• 54:51
  SPEAKER_02: Take care.
• 54:52
  SPEAKER_00: Take care.