Hey look if you guys are anything like
me you have found it harder and harder
to turn around recently without seeing
words like free-range farm-to-table
organically produced especially here in
Colorado now is we’ve become more
conscientious of the way that we eat in
recent years these once unfamiliar words
have worked their way into our daily
lexicon when we started to pay more
attention to the way that the food we
were eating interacted with our bodies
and with the earth the food industry had
to listen and the results have been
really powerful words like all-natural
and homegrown are not just being used in
our diets there’s this whole new
industry using this language now now
those of you out there from states like
Washington and Oregon and of course my
fellow Coloradans y’all know what I’m
talking about it’s weed an industry the
taxes sale of about six billion dollars
worth of product in 2016 so what if I
would have proposed to you that some of
what you think you know about this
legalized marijuana thing could be wrong
listen I get it talking about issues
with legal weed is a pretty quick way to
get uninvited from the cool kids table
I know that better than most but I
intend to do it anyway first before I
get started let me be perfectly clear
about one thing my fight is not against
the casual adult use of marijuana I
don’t care about that
what I care deeply about is this new
industry that is working to convince us
that we are consuming something natural
while fixing social ills when we aren’t
so let’s start with a little bit of weed
101 cannabis is a plant that grows
naturally and has been used within
textiles and even traditional Chinese
medicine for thousands of years
Genesis 1:12 even tells us that I have
given to you all of the seed bearing
plants and herbs to use as such that is
the microphone it’s got a TV preacher
sort of thing
now cannabis is made up of hundreds of
different chemicals but what two of
those chemicals are by far the most
interesting that CBD and THC so CBD is
where almost all of the medicinal
properties lie
it’s an incredibly fascinating part of
the plant with real potential to help
people it also is totally non
intoxicating you could take a bath in
the stuff while vaping pure CBD and
drinking a CBD smoothie and you still
couldn’t get high I’ve tried I haven’t I
haven’t that cost a lot of money
not now fur is interesting and
remarkable a part of the plan is CBD is
it actually makes up a really tiny
portion of the commercial market the
real money is being made in that other
chemical in THC so THC is the natural
part of the plant that gets you high and
before the 1970s cannabis contained less
than half of a percent of THC that’s was
naturally occurring over the last 40
years is we became better gardeners that
that percentage of THC started to slowly
but steadily rise until recently when
the chemists started to get involved
these guys move cultivation exclusively
indoors and they may grow cycles
extremely and unnaturally short they
also started to use pesticides and
fertilizers in some ways that we should
be concerned with in fact I was recently
talking to a buddy who had just left a
job at a commercial grow operation
because he was so concerned with the
chemicals that he was being asked to
interact with some of his fellow
employees were actually encouraged to
wear hazmat suits while they were
spraying their chemical cocktails on the
plants with that kind of manipulation
the product the products are being sold
today can contain above 30%
see it in our concentrates our
concentrates can actually contain above
95% THC a far cry from the natural plant
listen this isn’t your Grandpa’s weed
this isn’t your dad’s weed like this
isn’t even my weed
if you’ve ever set foot inside one of
the thousands of dispensaries that have
sprung up in recent years you know that
what we’re really selling in them is THC
all of the weed that you buy
commercially lists exactly how much THC
it contains as do our other much more
popular products like vape pens coffee
ice cream condiments granola gum candy
baked goods suppositories and of course
Lube pretty much no for real
pretty much anything that you can
imagine introducing into the human body
the vast majority of cannabis that’s
being sold today it isn’t really
cannabis its THC in either a pure form
or in an extremely high in unnatural
concentration to say that we have
legalized weed is subtly misleading we
have commercialized THC and it’s
happened really quickly now the reason
why the commercial market is so rapidly
exploded is because there is a hell of a
lot of money to be made in satisfying
and increasing our desire to get high
and that money is no longer really being
made by the mom-and-pop shops so
industry groups and corporations groups
like the drug policy Alliance the
Marijuana Policy Project ArcView
investment the cannabis Industry
Association they’ve chased out and
helped to chase out a lot of the
small-time growers so these cats know
that the best way to get us to continue
to or to continue to profit off of us is
if they follow the alcohol industry’s
8020 rule as simple as where 80% of the
product is consumed by 20% of the
consumers
the problems users the wealthy white
weed lobbyists and seriously they are
almost all rich white men they know that
we will consume more what they’re
selling if they jack up the potency they
also know that we are more than twice as
likely to consume THC regularly if we
earn under $50,000 a year then though
I’m sorry if we are in under $20,000 a
year then those who are in over fifty
thousand dollars a year in other words
the poorer you are the more likely you
are to spend your money on their
products and in this country income and
race are highly correlated one of the
reasons that we often hear cited for the
legalization of marijuana is that it
will help to stop the disproportionate
incarceration rates among minorities
which is something everybody in this
room should be extremely concerned with
unfortunately we don’t have to look any
further than arrest rates for juveniles
here in Colorado to counter that
argument according to the Colorado
Department of Public Safety since we
opened retail in 2014 almost all of
which are in poor minority neighborhoods
we saw an 8% reduction in the arrests of
white kids for all weed related activity
good on them during that same time
period there’s a 29% increase in the
arrests of Hispanic kids for weed
related activity and a 58% increase in
the arrests of black kids for weed
related crime so you guys heard that
right we are actually arresting more
people of color in Colorado than we were
prior to commercialization and you’re
not reading that in the post another big
issue that we have is in-school
suspension rates so schools that are
predominantly white that is they have a
minority population of 25% or fewer in
the first full year of data collection
following commercialization
these schools had a grand total of a
hundred and ninety drug-related
suspensions almost all of which are for
THC at the same time schools with a
minority population of seventy-five to a
hundred percent had eight hundred and
one drug-related suspensions almost all
of which were for THC when discussing
minority populations one that
unfortunately often gets left out of the
conversation is the LGTBQ community now
members of this community are more than
twice as likely to consume THC than
those who identify as heterosexual or
cisgender they also unfortunately have
higher rates of mental illness and
suicide according to a study published
in 2014 called going to pot we see that
the unnaturally high levels of THC found
in today’s products they actually
compound those issues and make them
worse
unfortunately that seems to matter very
little to the folks who are selling
these products because as you just saw
clearly this is a good consumer base
listen man I get it and in many circles
legalized marijuana is too much of a
sacred cow to question but we need to
start this conversation because what’s
being sold today is not natural and
lobbyists and Industry are using social
justice as a smokescreen so that they
can get richer it’s my own journey to
sobriety that led me to begin
questioning a lot of what I was seeing
that’s kind of one of the things that
were taught to do when I left Boulder
for the Washington DC area at 12 years
old May I was transported into a world
where the kind of shoes that you wore
mattered more than just about anything
else and my family was just too poor to
help me play that game so I was faced
with a pretty real crisis of identity in
this new scene where there’s more
blacktop than treetops man I just didn’t
know who I was so I smoked we
for the first time when I was 13 and I
loved it I instantly found this social
group and and I also just really liked
being high like I finally found a way to
shut this up I quickly turned to other
drugs and alcohol and something just
woke up inside of my brain I was a daily
user within a couple of months
so my addictive use it mirrors many of
the stories that I’m sure you’ve heard
before it started out as fun it got
scary and then it was just necessary
enough said I got wasted for the last
time on June 15th of 1996 an iron
thank you and I’ve spent the last 21
years trying to both put my life back in
order as well as trying to find some
peace in this world and one of the ways
that I’ve done that is by working inside
of nonprofit drug and alcohol treatment
for the last 10 years with groups like
Phoenix multi-sport the University of
Colorado Hospital and now gap the
National Association for lesbian gay
transgender bisexual treatment providers
and their allies even after all of my
work on the frontlines and is a former
consumer myself I was shocked and pissed
when I started to see what
commercialization was doing to cannabis
because you see our hope for something
pure and natural is making it hard for
us to see what’s really going on and
that is that the rich are getting richer
on the backs of the poor and lying to
our faces the entire time thank you my
friends once again I fear that we are
allowing industry to take advantage of
the most challenged among us in order to
turn a profit much like we saw with
tobacco and food in years past so when
we told the food industry that we
understood the impact our choices were
having and that we demanded better for
ourselves and our families that industry
got into line so is there any reason why
we couldn’t demand the same thing from
this and from future industries who are
trying to get a piece of our paychecks
what if we made these guys answer some
hard questions what if we held them to a
higher standard than we are right now
because as it stands for many in our
community the grass isn’t greener on
this side of commercialization
they’ve just been sold a bag of goods
thank you
you
[Applause]
me you have found it harder and harder
to turn around recently without seeing
words like free-range farm-to-table
organically produced especially here in
Colorado now is we’ve become more
conscientious of the way that we eat in
recent years these once unfamiliar words
have worked their way into our daily
lexicon when we started to pay more
attention to the way that the food we
were eating interacted with our bodies
and with the earth the food industry had
to listen and the results have been
really powerful words like all-natural
and homegrown are not just being used in
our diets there’s this whole new
industry using this language now now
those of you out there from states like
Washington and Oregon and of course my
fellow Coloradans y’all know what I’m
talking about it’s weed an industry the
taxes sale of about six billion dollars
worth of product in 2016 so what if I
would have proposed to you that some of
what you think you know about this
legalized marijuana thing could be wrong
listen I get it talking about issues
with legal weed is a pretty quick way to
get uninvited from the cool kids table
I know that better than most but I
intend to do it anyway first before I
get started let me be perfectly clear
about one thing my fight is not against
the casual adult use of marijuana I
don’t care about that
what I care deeply about is this new
industry that is working to convince us
that we are consuming something natural
while fixing social ills when we aren’t
so let’s start with a little bit of weed
101 cannabis is a plant that grows
naturally and has been used within
textiles and even traditional Chinese
medicine for thousands of years
Genesis 1:12 even tells us that I have
given to you all of the seed bearing
plants and herbs to use as such that is
the microphone it’s got a TV preacher
sort of thing
now cannabis is made up of hundreds of
different chemicals but what two of
those chemicals are by far the most
interesting that CBD and THC so CBD is
where almost all of the medicinal
properties lie
it’s an incredibly fascinating part of
the plant with real potential to help
people it also is totally non
intoxicating you could take a bath in
the stuff while vaping pure CBD and
drinking a CBD smoothie and you still
couldn’t get high I’ve tried I haven’t I
haven’t that cost a lot of money
not now fur is interesting and
remarkable a part of the plan is CBD is
it actually makes up a really tiny
portion of the commercial market the
real money is being made in that other
chemical in THC so THC is the natural
part of the plant that gets you high and
before the 1970s cannabis contained less
than half of a percent of THC that’s was
naturally occurring over the last 40
years is we became better gardeners that
that percentage of THC started to slowly
but steadily rise until recently when
the chemists started to get involved
these guys move cultivation exclusively
indoors and they may grow cycles
extremely and unnaturally short they
also started to use pesticides and
fertilizers in some ways that we should
be concerned with in fact I was recently
talking to a buddy who had just left a
job at a commercial grow operation
because he was so concerned with the
chemicals that he was being asked to
interact with some of his fellow
employees were actually encouraged to
wear hazmat suits while they were
spraying their chemical cocktails on the
plants with that kind of manipulation
the product the products are being sold
today can contain above 30%
see it in our concentrates our
concentrates can actually contain above
95% THC a far cry from the natural plant
listen this isn’t your Grandpa’s weed
this isn’t your dad’s weed like this
isn’t even my weed
if you’ve ever set foot inside one of
the thousands of dispensaries that have
sprung up in recent years you know that
what we’re really selling in them is THC
all of the weed that you buy
commercially lists exactly how much THC
it contains as do our other much more
popular products like vape pens coffee
ice cream condiments granola gum candy
baked goods suppositories and of course
Lube pretty much no for real
pretty much anything that you can
imagine introducing into the human body
the vast majority of cannabis that’s
being sold today it isn’t really
cannabis its THC in either a pure form
or in an extremely high in unnatural
concentration to say that we have
legalized weed is subtly misleading we
have commercialized THC and it’s
happened really quickly now the reason
why the commercial market is so rapidly
exploded is because there is a hell of a
lot of money to be made in satisfying
and increasing our desire to get high
and that money is no longer really being
made by the mom-and-pop shops so
industry groups and corporations groups
like the drug policy Alliance the
Marijuana Policy Project ArcView
investment the cannabis Industry
Association they’ve chased out and
helped to chase out a lot of the
small-time growers so these cats know
that the best way to get us to continue
to or to continue to profit off of us is
if they follow the alcohol industry’s
8020 rule as simple as where 80% of the
product is consumed by 20% of the
consumers
the problems users the wealthy white
weed lobbyists and seriously they are
almost all rich white men they know that
we will consume more what they’re
selling if they jack up the potency they
also know that we are more than twice as
likely to consume THC regularly if we
earn under $50,000 a year then though
I’m sorry if we are in under $20,000 a
year then those who are in over fifty
thousand dollars a year in other words
the poorer you are the more likely you
are to spend your money on their
products and in this country income and
race are highly correlated one of the
reasons that we often hear cited for the
legalization of marijuana is that it
will help to stop the disproportionate
incarceration rates among minorities
which is something everybody in this
room should be extremely concerned with
unfortunately we don’t have to look any
further than arrest rates for juveniles
here in Colorado to counter that
argument according to the Colorado
Department of Public Safety since we
opened retail in 2014 almost all of
which are in poor minority neighborhoods
we saw an 8% reduction in the arrests of
white kids for all weed related activity
good on them during that same time
period there’s a 29% increase in the
arrests of Hispanic kids for weed
related activity and a 58% increase in
the arrests of black kids for weed
related crime so you guys heard that
right we are actually arresting more
people of color in Colorado than we were
prior to commercialization and you’re
not reading that in the post another big
issue that we have is in-school
suspension rates so schools that are
predominantly white that is they have a
minority population of 25% or fewer in
the first full year of data collection
following commercialization
these schools had a grand total of a
hundred and ninety drug-related
suspensions almost all of which are for
THC at the same time schools with a
minority population of seventy-five to a
hundred percent had eight hundred and
one drug-related suspensions almost all
of which were for THC when discussing
minority populations one that
unfortunately often gets left out of the
conversation is the LGTBQ community now
members of this community are more than
twice as likely to consume THC than
those who identify as heterosexual or
cisgender they also unfortunately have
higher rates of mental illness and
suicide according to a study published
in 2014 called going to pot we see that
the unnaturally high levels of THC found
in today’s products they actually
compound those issues and make them
worse
unfortunately that seems to matter very
little to the folks who are selling
these products because as you just saw
clearly this is a good consumer base
listen man I get it and in many circles
legalized marijuana is too much of a
sacred cow to question but we need to
start this conversation because what’s
being sold today is not natural and
lobbyists and Industry are using social
justice as a smokescreen so that they
can get richer it’s my own journey to
sobriety that led me to begin
questioning a lot of what I was seeing
that’s kind of one of the things that
were taught to do when I left Boulder
for the Washington DC area at 12 years
old May I was transported into a world
where the kind of shoes that you wore
mattered more than just about anything
else and my family was just too poor to
help me play that game so I was faced
with a pretty real crisis of identity in
this new scene where there’s more
blacktop than treetops man I just didn’t
know who I was so I smoked we
for the first time when I was 13 and I
loved it I instantly found this social
group and and I also just really liked
being high like I finally found a way to
shut this up I quickly turned to other
drugs and alcohol and something just
woke up inside of my brain I was a daily
user within a couple of months
so my addictive use it mirrors many of
the stories that I’m sure you’ve heard
before it started out as fun it got
scary and then it was just necessary
enough said I got wasted for the last
time on June 15th of 1996 an iron
thank you and I’ve spent the last 21
years trying to both put my life back in
order as well as trying to find some
peace in this world and one of the ways
that I’ve done that is by working inside
of nonprofit drug and alcohol treatment
for the last 10 years with groups like
Phoenix multi-sport the University of
Colorado Hospital and now gap the
National Association for lesbian gay
transgender bisexual treatment providers
and their allies even after all of my
work on the frontlines and is a former
consumer myself I was shocked and pissed
when I started to see what
commercialization was doing to cannabis
because you see our hope for something
pure and natural is making it hard for
us to see what’s really going on and
that is that the rich are getting richer
on the backs of the poor and lying to
our faces the entire time thank you my
friends once again I fear that we are
allowing industry to take advantage of
the most challenged among us in order to
turn a profit much like we saw with
tobacco and food in years past so when
we told the food industry that we
understood the impact our choices were
having and that we demanded better for
ourselves and our families that industry
got into line so is there any reason why
we couldn’t demand the same thing from
this and from future industries who are
trying to get a piece of our paychecks
what if we made these guys answer some
hard questions what if we held them to a
higher standard than we are right now
because as it stands for many in our
community the grass isn’t greener on
this side of commercialization
they’ve just been sold a bag of goods
thank you
you
[Applause]
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