Kara Gotsch is a national expert on sentencing reform with over 25 years experience advocating to end mass incarceration and racial injustice in the US criminal legal system.

Kara has served The Sentencing Project in various roles for over 13 years. As Deputy Director since 2021, she helped operationalize the executive director’s vision of expansion and mission focus by managing and leading staff in areas of strategic planning, organizational oversight and development, communications, public education, research, and advocacy.

Charles Lynch ran a marijuana dispensary in Morro Bay, California, in violation of federal law. For nearly 17 years the Feds tried to bring Charles to trial. He was convicted of conspiracy to manufacture, possess, and distribute marijuana, as well as other charges related to his ownership of the dispensary. After 17 years, Charles will be off paper on 04/20/24.

Thomas Knapp is our guest, Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

Chris Conrad and Mikki Norris are known as the Power Couple of Pot for their
nearly 30 years at the forefront of the cannabis legalization movement with a
series of educational materials and books. They helped bring industrial hemp back
to America, were leaders of California’s Proposition 215 campaign to legalize
medical marijuana and exposed the atrocities of the US drug war by telling the
stories of its victims. 

DTN GODAMARAMA EDITORIAL !!!! Doctor Carl Hart is a professor of neuroscience and psychology at Columbia University. Dr. Hart joins us for the half hour to discuss his newest book: Drug Use for Grown Ups - Chasing Liberty in the Land of Fear. Hart is known for his research in drug abuse and drug addiction. Hart was the first tenured African American professor of sciences at Columbia University.

Todd McCormick is a drug reform pioneer.  One of two men arrested in 1997 for growing some 4,000 marijuana plants at a Bel Air mansion was sentenced to five years in federal prison. Todd  is a former cancer patient who started using cannabis in 1979 under his mother's supervision while undergoing chemotherapy and radiation. Todd overcame the cancer and went on to become a lifetime advocate for cannabis. Starting in 1994, Todd worked with Jack Herer as an editor of The Emperor Wears No Clothes.  Todd is now owner of Authentic Genetics Seed Company.

Cliff Schaffer established the world's largest online library of research into the drug laws at http://www.druglibrary.org. The reason I established the site is simply because I had read some of the major research on our drug laws and I just became astounded at their stupidity. There is no other area in which the law is so completely out of touch with the available research.

Det. Howard Wooldrige (ret) regularly patrols the halls of Congress.  This week he was in Iowa and New Hampshire to report on the Republican race for US President.  Topics include the stalling of officials, the failure of drug war and the success in other nations of regulating, legalizing and actually controlling the distribution of drugs.

Dr. Richard Andrews joins us to discuss his trip to Switzerland gather new information about drug policy and techniques now being utilized around Europe.  Harm reduction., opiate use, needle sharing, compassion clinics, cannabis use, vaping, tobacco and alcohol.

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Paul Armentano has over two decades experience working professionally in cannabis policy. He is the Deputy Director of NORML. He also serves on the faculty of Oaksterdam University in Oakland, where he is the Chair of Science. His writing on cannabis and cannabis policy has appeared in over 1,000 publications, scholarly and/or peer-reviewed journals, as well as in more than two dozen textbooks and anthologies. He is a regular contributor to TheHill.com as well as to numerous other print and online publications.