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DEAN BECKER: The failure of drug war is glaringly obvious to judges, cops, wardens, prosecutors and millions more now calling for decriminalization, legalization, the end of prohibition. Let us investigate the Century of Lies. 

HOST DOUG MCVAY: Hello and welcome to Century of Lies. I'm your host Doug McVay editor of drugwarfacts.org on today's edition of Century part 2 of my conversation with Doug Fine, the jounalist, hemp farmer activist and author of his new book American hemp farmer is out. It's great and we'll hear about that in a moment. But first Students for Sensible Drug Policy is a US based nonprofit organization with an international Focus. It's a terrific organization. I have the honor of being on its Advisory Board. I was an actual board member for a brief time; SSDP held its annual conference recently. It was originally to be held in Baltimore, but due to covid-19 in the resulting Shut down it was moved online fortunate for me because I was able to attend there were a lot of great speakers were going to hear from one of them. Now. Sanho Tree is the director of the drug policy project at The Institute for policy studies. He's a longtime drug policy reformer, a military and National Security historian and a great friend. He spoke at SSDP conference on the topic of Human Rights and the drug war.

SANHO TREE: Drug policy have been doing this for 22 years now, is one of the most interdisciplinary problems of ever study and that's what makes it hard to solve and it makes it hard to talk about the totality of this problem. But if we only stick to our own silos we end up talking to ourselves. So I want to find ways or lenses for for wasting talk to your colleagues and friends about these connections. So I do a lot of work on the axis of authoritarians and the War on Drugs. So there are these it's not a formal alliance by any means but there are these right-wing Global governments that have waged vicious drug wars and how they're reacting to covid. I think it teaches us a lot. So the most obvious example, I think would be the Philippines where the drug war is the most deadly and brutal at right now president duterte since he took power and 2016 has killed by many estimates up to 30,000 people.

No one really knows the final of the ultimate death toll so far that's been on pause for a little bit because of the Lockdown but he's using many of the same tactics to keep people who are often very very poor don't have more than you know days worth of food stocked stockpiled in their shacks and letting them from going out and getting food. In fact, he's issued shoot to kill orders for people who resist the curfew and cause trouble and one person has already been killed as a result to that but he's been able to get away with not only the drug war but also these brutal lockdown tactics by playing the strongman tactics that that made him very politically popular and he still is very popular within the Philippines. But he gives simple answers to very complex Solutions. This is a common thing you'll see whether it's was talking about Donald Trump or president Erdogan and turkey or president or Bond and hungry or president both scenario in Brazil. These are really far right wing governments that take a cornucopia of social ills projected onto minority groups and say aha. That's why we have all these problems in our society just unleash holy hell on these people get rid of them kill them if you want and that's how we get to a better world. So president Duterte I think is the most obvious example of that but what he's been doing reminds me very much of what what what the czarist Russian secret police did in the 19th century.

They wage a pogrom right, a pogrom is where you take a cornucopia of social ills under czarist Russia, projected onto a minority group in this case. It was Jews in the 19th century. And you say aha. They're the reason we have all these problems just unleash holy hell on this group. And that's what they did and president duterte flipped that formula and adapted with the drug war. Now. The drug war is awful and it's bad But what's really important about this is that once you condition your police forces, once you're once you take your security forces and get them to be able to identify the track and then to murder extrajucitially people that you don't like once you train them to do that. Then you've got a really powerful and dangerous tool, right? It's getting their cops to kill. The first person is the hard part. The next hundred murders are really easy after that. And so it's very important for us then to look at the drug war and how it's going to be used because they can take that apparatus and then turn it on a dime to go after other targets curfew violators under under, you know, Corona virus. Or they can go after Labor organizers next year feminists, indigenous organizers, sexual minorities.

It's very easy to use a kind of scapegoating tactic and that apparatus to go after people and so I think it's an exterminationist policy, eliminationist policy and one that is morbidly being used talked about by various political actors. There's some very cynical stuff going on. So the current  President in Brazil came to power last year. They called the Trump of the tropics far far far right president. He was a he was a military officer in the Junta in the 80s. In the dictatorship and these pot openly about returning to a dictatorship he is a huge coronavirus denier he says it's just a little flu and he absolutely refuses to go along with these lockdown policies and his help him that he's on the brink of firing as health minister right now and this court ends very badly for the rest of the world because if we are able to manage to to suppress this problem in the northern hemisphere as we go into summer.

You know he'll be there winter down there and Brazil is a huge reservoir of this virus and it could come rocketing back to us in the next season so these things have Global implications and so we need to pay attention to this axis authoritarians not just how they avoid the drug war but how they use social control and President also when he ran for office at my spoke openly and admiringly at president Duterte in the Philippines say I'm going to do even more than he did in terms the drug war so this is kind of a tality we're dealing with right now in Columbia another country that you know done a lot of work in Colombia over the years and they're thinking of returning to this disastrous policy of aerial fumigation of spraying to try to destroy these crops, but beyond that there's also the problem of human rights Defenders and people who work for social justice under the drug war are being targeted have been targeted are especially being targeted in recent years, especially after the recent peace deal. Because there's a graph for land for power for resources in Columbia. And a lot of these people are now being threatened and assassinated. Some of them have worked on drug policy issues in the past. They also work on indigenous rights issues and peasants rights issues. And what's happening with the lockdown is that once these people are in quarantine, they can't go out and so now the death squads know where to find them and hunt them down. I think that's an incredibly sobering thing to keep in mind quite apart from from the drug war. 

SANHO TREE: In Guatemala, We just found out the two days ago that the US has been deporting people taney's for immigration violations who are positive who are actively you know ill and sending them back to Guatemala, which I think is an absolutely sick and disgusting and in saying thing to do we're sending vectors back to to these regions to spread this disease and I think quite frankly it fits very nicely with Steven Miller's agenda which is always been to conflate immigration with crime disease rape all these the social ills that you know, go back to the Third Reich in terms of that kind of dehumanization and scapegoating and now he's able to then take these people send them back create more disease and that forces that that gives them a feedback loop and say Ah, that's another reason we have to keep you know, these enforcement policies in place is because they carry the disease.

Well, we're actively contributing to that in a horrific way in other places. There are more guests in a perverse way optimistic things going on in in places like El Salvador, Brazil, Cape Town. There are gangs that have been fighting and feuding for many many many years killing each other and they're now actually declaring truces amongst themselves and trying to provide basic social services and enforce the lockdown. Where their own governments won't do it. So they're the ones kind of keeping order and making sure people get fed. This is a double-edged sword because these are criminal groups, but on the other hand, it's a great way of illustrating the struggle for legitimacy. The state should not have to fight this hard to establish legitimacy within their own borders. It really highlights what they haven't been doing and people who've been involved in the drug war have known that for a long time.

These are marginalized populations that never did really taken care of and it's no mystery why these gangs were able to get traction today? Because they're actually fulfilling a role in state won't or hasn't been able to and then finally just want to show you a couple of images to think about these are some photos from let me see from the Philippines. This is when I talk about disease, this is a major prison in the Philippines, right? This is taking back in 2016 it in it's been over crowded but especially so after president Duterte declared his drug war and so those who were able to turn themselves in got locked up and we've been our I've been saying for years. We need to pay attention to disease. It's not just now under coronavirus but in situations like this where you have these right-wing governments to lock people up in horrendous conditions.
 
This is a breeding ground for disease and tuberculosis is bad enough, but now we have strains of multi-drug resistant tuberculosis, which scare me as much as this Coronavirus. Because we literally have no cure for them. And once that comes out it could play the rest of the world. We need to take these kinds of situations very very seriously and then finally in closing what we're living through today keep in mind. This is not unlike what indigenous peoples confronted 500 years ago in this hemisphere that a disease with people have no natural immunity is taken over and caused unprecedented damage, some estimates up to 90% of the indigenous peoples in this hemisphere were wiped out before they even laid eyes were able to lay eyes on a white person the disease travels much faster than the colonizers. So as we think about things like Columbia and how do you deal with drug cultivation and and helping the human rights of drug producers? We need to also keep in mind the rights of indigenous peoples and how we're affecting their lands and their lives and their life with aid. So thank you very much. 

DOUG MCVAY: That was Sanho Tree director Drug policy project at The Institute for policy studies. He was speaking at the students for sensible drug policy annual conference, which was held online at the beginning of May. You're listening to Century of lies. I'm your host Doug McVay Doug Fine is a solar-powered goat herder a comedic investigative journalist and a Pioneer voice in hemp and regenerative farming. He's cultivated hemp in four US states is we genetics or in five more. He's an award-winning culture and climate correspondent for NPR the New York Times And The Washington Post among others his books include first legal Harvest, not really an Alaskan mountain men, Farewell My Subaru, too high to fail and hemp bound. Well Doug has a new book. It's just been released. It's called American hemp farmer available at bookstores everywhere, you know once book stores are open again. It's published by Chelsea Green publishing. You heard the first part of our interview on last week's show so here's part two.

DOUG MCVAY: I'm very particularly interested to know moving forward. And now how are things looking for Hemp Farmers. 

DOUG FINE: This is still the really early postnatal period for the industry. We are truly embryonic as big as the industry is becoming we're embryonic and so everything now has these really wide jolting changes in One Direction or another that are you could have you could predict them by the behavior of markets in general by the way people behave in Gold rushes and all that and all that business and that's why I so harp on the the fact that a lot of it's going to come down to customers choosing their regions Farmers on those products rather than something that they see on TV that's actually a publicly traded Corporation or whatever, you know, I love our system and I love a free market and I love Everyone having options. I just urge people to make the free choice to support a community based regionally-based B Corporation or cooperative farmer owned entity that's going to win-win and get you the better product. So at this moment there's a lot of panic amongst farmers who left in and really went all in with just CBD because the wholesale Market predictably, you know has shown Corrections.

DOUG FINE: It's like always as folks give me remember from Black Market cannabis. It creeps up the further one gets away from Harvest Time and that's true in any commodity but the prices that people may have been sort of already, you know, pricing out their new tractor or their new truck. Those aren't the kind of prices that you're seeing if you're just growing for CBD and that's why I think it's so important to brand for value-added products one side of the plan architecture. We haven't discussed it. We talked a little bit about flour and a little bit about seed one side that we haven't talked about yet is fiber.

The fiber of the plant as I'm sure most listeners will know is outstanding performance. I wear hemp clothing all the time. I'm wearing hemp Yoga Pants by Pacific Northwest company right now. My sweetheart likes to there's a TMI alert. She likes to make my underwear out of Organic hemp provided by the women-owned Enviro textiles of Colorado. So it's all about performance for me. It's not I’m in the hemp World therefore I should just the part. It's this is what I like to wear works. Well, it feels good. So at it and it lasts a long time so fiber requires large acreage and it's going to be no trick no easy trick. I should say to get fiber established back in the US it's going to involve the herding cats, which is you know, what it what it's like to get Farmers cooperate because if I crunched the numbers in the new book and even for the smallest of the professional TurnKey fiber processing facilities that run about five to eight million dollars, you need to have minimum of around 3100 acres and that's a small-scale operation feeding that processing facility and in a place like a North Dakota and Nebraska.

That's no problem. Um, I mean that's like Joe to round the corners got more than 3100 acres but in most places it's going to evolve Farmers cooperating just on the fiber regardless of what they're doing with the other side of the plant and my favorite next-generation hemp. I'm going to say it application that I haven't you know, this one will solve a lot of problems. This one feels a lot of gaps in this sort of righteous low-carbon my life.

DOUG FINE: I and many others have been trying to live live and that Is hemp-based supercapacitors in next-generation batteries. So the premise on this as a Layman is for of the types of next-generation batteries that are going to not just charge our phones quickly or devices quickly, but charge our entire solar-powered homes super quickly our vehicles super quickly our equipment quickly. We want to move away from these Rare Earth minerals many people are aware of the damage those cause Right. So guess what? I don't know. I'm a spiritual man. So I won't say it turned me religious probably more spiritual but I learned that hemp has somehow known to evolve in this sort of waffle like pattern at the at the Nano level at the 1 carbon level in such a way that it outperforms any other known nanomaterial many of them are not very environmentally friendly it outperforms any other known nanomaterial slightly in performance and at 1000 of the cost not to mention one one trillionth of the environmental cost being a regenerative so visualize the hemp fiber on your Tesla or some other electric vehicle with the embedded solar, you know collectors in the actual vehicle charging a battery that is not only made from hemp but it's compostable and recyclable and I think we're going to see that in 10 years or less. That's my prediction. Straight here for you today Doug

DOUG MCVAY: I mean the drug. The drug side is obviously whether it's CBD or the or just smokable we did is the the one that gets people's attention. But yeah change that last question around a little bit. So do you think that with with some of these fiber products with things like these hemp batteries with things, you know hempcrete and other kinds of things mean infrastructures are real thing. Do you think that hemp, do you think Hemp is going to be some kind of what do you think happens going to do for the farmers could hemp could hemp save some of the the what the farm economy that we that there still is one God knows.

DOUG FINE: there is yeah. So yes, I would say the answer to that question is I do believe that hemp and other crops in the digital age have the potential to revive rural economies. It's going to be up to Farmers to make brave decisions to grow regeneratively. To realize that the practice of farming is not seasonal anymore. It's your round. The farmer has to be a farmer and an entrepreneur. That's jolting and hard. I've experienced this in the real world and talk about it in the book that the best farmers are often the hardest to convince that there's more to it these days than just selling stuff to wholesalers. So and then a lot of it is going to be up to customers folks listening to this broadcast to say I am going to read every label and everything.

I buy it. I'm going to try and do Everything that I can to support local broccoli, hemp and everything farmers, and when it comes to the wider thing The Wider question does have the potential to actually help mitigate climate change and save Humanity. I would say not just him but hemp and other crops have the strong potential to help mitigate climate change in a significant Way by turning our entire Industrial Pipeline from a petrochemical based one to a Biomaterials based one so hemp is kind of leading the way for whatever reason the intelligence of the hemp plant is it's the spearhead of a Renaissance in biomaterials. And this is not like oh because it feels good or even oh we better do this to save the Earth.

It's a performance issue Sherwin-Williams paint never moved away from hemp seed oil as a stabilizer in their paint because they couldn't find anything better. There's some really funny correspondence between their marketing director and the head of of cannabis prohibition. Harry Anslinger about dude. We need the hemp seed oil for our product. What are you doing making us important? And we all know that that came to a head with hemp for victory during World War II George Bush senior's life saved by his hemp cord, but on his parachute, but will it happen? I'm an optimist Doug. There's a lot of things that have to go right but it has to happen because I want Humanity to Survive and Thrive and if that happens, we have to mitigate climate change and cultivating hemp regeneratively and support the farmer entrepreneurs to do that. He is one of the best things we can do to help bring about that reality. 

DOUG MCVAY: You've published this you can do the book tour and all that. But what's next for you

DOUG FINE: besides prepping my own fields and growing hemp to do my own part to mitigate a few and you know, tons of climate cup carbon. I am putting together a TV show of the same name American hemp farmer where I'm profiling farmers of like mind who are trying to do the same thing that I am which is support their families communities and the planet by making a good I mean a good living regionally-based. The only thing the only thing that's different about the new entrepreneurialism is that it stays Regional base to end game is not selling out and having shares and like living in that kind of way. It's the long-term community based potential for the plant and and the industry. Yeah. So the TV shows that I love joking around and having a good time. So it's an opportunity as the host to kind of, you know show my ineptitude on a tractor while making the key point that you know, these particular farmers are growing Clover right around there hemp plant which not only builds nitrogen and is a great polyculture technique but keeps the grasshoppers that are bothering their neighbors out of their own field. So it's a one part humor one part earth-saving and one part practical profile of farmers

DOUG MCVAY: apps and influencers and now a reality show. Truly the 21st century is a return to the roots and and regenerative practices of our grandparents.

DOUG MCVAY: The the listeners don't realize how far we go back here. I mean I have I have memory the last time I saw you was at another United Nations event in New York. I think that was the last time I physically saw you that was really interesting. The Bolivian indigenous folks came there and get a ceremony right there in the street across from the UN while you and I are hanging out and so listeners should know. Doug has full green light to tease Doug as Doug does to tease Doug.  So please tease

DOUG MCVAY: I I just I just thought it was fascinating. It's a reality show. It's a reality show about him farming. I mean, I would watch that. I don't know I would watch that. I would I want to 

DOUG FINE: thank you 

DOUG MCVAY: the I'd watch that. I will watch that. Wow. Okay. So American hemp farmer look for it on look for it on Channels Near you I'm I'm wow. So, uh, so where can people find it work me find your book you're doing the you have a website for it. They want your social media other people follow you

DOUG FINE: thank you for asking that. Yes at Dougfine.com. There is information on all the books and some media appearances tedtalk the United Nations testimony, you mentioned and places to get all the books as well as live events in the Portland area. I've got Powell's, the Great, the mighty policy of books on June 23rd at 7 p.m. Hope to see everybody there. And on social media is organic Cowboy one word the two C the middle at organic Cowboy

DOUG MCVAY: terrific. Terrific. I'm going to try and make it to that reading. I hope to see you when you are here. Now. Do you have any closing thoughts for any closing thoughts for our listeners?

DOUG FINE: I would say to all the folks out there who enjoy the cannabis plant in any one of its forms to realize that that very enjoyment can be manifest as playing a positive role for the future of humanity. The return of the cannabis plant is not only the biggest Economic Development the biggest economic Market sector development since Silicon Valley came on strong in the late 70s just in sheer impact and dollar value but it also for those of us who know about cannabis and and how it works in our bodies and our brains. It is precipitating a shift a sort of dark It's always darkest before the dawn kind of feeling and many of us have the situation with grannies that have rediscovered cannabis for their arthritis.

And and it's it's a it's a giggly positive development as opposed to and again their folks, Enjoy a drink. Every now and then that's fine. But you know as opposed to sort of the barroom fight pituitary lizard brain stuff that happens in some of the drugs that have been popular while we have been forced to shut down our endocannabinoid system. So in closing for folks to enjoy the cannabis plant if you actually think about it as part of your home maintenance program, but also as part of your pro Humanity activism in terms of supporting outdoor cultivated, Grown cannabis and hemp and thinking of it as one plant realizing We're All in This Together. I do think that Humanity I get a twinge when I say that because it sounds a little pollyannaish but I do think Humanity has a chance 

DOUG MCVAY: and on that note. My guest today has been Doug fine. His new book is American hemp farmer. It is a great read. I recommend it highly look for it in your favorite bookstore go to an independent bookstore. That's locally owned. That's the right way to do it Doug the best of luck to you and thank you man 

DOUG FINE: Doug. It's so great to connect with you again. And I hope to see you in June. If not sooner. 

DOUG MCVAY: That was my conversation with the hemp activist farmer journalist and author Doug Fine his new book American hemp farmer published by Chelsea Green publishing is out now and again a quick reminder. The bookstore event that we discussed in that interview is actually not going to be happening, certainly not on that date the state of Oregon and many other places remain. They shut down because of the covid pandemic be sure to check local listings and look at the website DougFine.com public service time. If you are one of the lucky ones who are able to work from home and earn a paycheck if you're able to cover your housing and other bills and you still have something left over then please consider helping out those less fortunate community service agencies are always hurting and now more than ever.

They need your help syringe service programs, Food banks shelters; we’re spoiled for Choice really which is quite sad and also part of the point. The need is great and it's getting greater those of us who can really need to step up. Thank you. That's it. You have been listening to Century of Lies. We're a production of the Drug Truth Network for the Pacifica Foundation radio network on the web at DrugTruth.net will be back in a week with 30 more minutes of news and information about drug policy reform in the failed War on Drugs for now for the DrugTruth Network this is Doug McVay saying so long so long for the drug truth Network. This is Doug McVay asking you to examine our policy of drug prohibition. The Century of Lies Drug truth Network programs archived at the James A Baker III Institute for public policy.

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DEAN BECKER: The failure of drug war is glaringly obvious to judges, cops, wardens, prosecutors and millions more now calling for decriminalization, legalization, the end of prohibition. Let us investigate the Century of Lies. 

HOST DOUG MCVAY: Hello and welcome to Century of Lies. I'm your host Doug McVay editor of drugwarfacts.org on today's edition of Century part 2 of my conversation with Doug Fine, the jounalist, hemp farmer activist and author of his new book American hemp farmer is out. It's great and we'll hear about that in a moment. But first Students for Sensible Drug Policy is a US based nonprofit organization with an international Focus. It's a terrific organization. I have the honor of being on its Advisory Board. I was an actual board member for a brief time; SSDP held its annual conference recently. It was originally to be held in Baltimore, but due to covid-19 in the resulting Shut down it was moved online fortunate for me because I was able to attend there were a lot of great speakers were going to hear from one of them. Now. Sanho Tree is the director of the drug policy project at The Institute for policy studies. He's a longtime drug policy reformer, a military and National Security historian and a great friend. He spoke at SSDP conference on the topic of Human Rights and the drug war.

SANHO TREE: Drug policy have been doing this for 22 years now, is one of the most interdisciplinary problems of ever study and that's what makes it hard to solve and it makes it hard to talk about the totality of this problem. But if we only stick to our own silos we end up talking to ourselves. So I want to find ways or lenses for for wasting talk to your colleagues and friends about these connections. So I do a lot of work on the axis of authoritarians and the War on Drugs. So there are these it's not a formal alliance by any means but there are these right-wing Global governments that have waged vicious drug wars and how they're reacting to covid. I think it teaches us a lot. So the most obvious example, I think would be the Philippines where the drug war is the most deadly and brutal at right now president duterte since he took power and 2016 has killed by many estimates up to 30,000 people.

No one really knows the final of the ultimate death toll so far that's been on pause for a little bit because of the Lockdown but he's using many of the same tactics to keep people who are often very very poor don't have more than you know days worth of food stocked stockpiled in their shacks and letting them from going out and getting food. In fact, he's issued shoot to kill orders for people who resist the curfew and cause trouble and one person has already been killed as a result to that but he's been able to get away with not only the drug war but also these brutal lockdown tactics by playing the strongman tactics that that made him very politically popular and he still is very popular within the Philippines. But he gives simple answers to very complex Solutions. This is a common thing you'll see whether it's was talking about Donald Trump or president Erdogan and turkey or president or Bond and hungry or president both scenario in Brazil. These are really far right wing governments that take a cornucopia of social ills projected onto minority groups and say aha. That's why we have all these problems in our society just unleash holy hell on these people get rid of them kill them if you want and that's how we get to a better world. So president Duterte I think is the most obvious example of that but what he's been doing reminds me very much of what what what the czarist Russian secret police did in the 19th century.

They wage a pogrom right, a pogrom is where you take a cornucopia of social ills under czarist Russia, projected onto a minority group in this case. It was Jews in the 19th century. And you say aha. They're the reason we have all these problems just unleash holy hell on this group. And that's what they did and president duterte flipped that formula and adapted with the drug war. Now. The drug war is awful and it's bad But what's really important about this is that once you condition your police forces, once you're once you take your security forces and get them to be able to identify the track and then to murder extrajucitially people that you don't like once you train them to do that. Then you've got a really powerful and dangerous tool, right? It's getting their cops to kill. The first person is the hard part. The next hundred murders are really easy after that. And so it's very important for us then to look at the drug war and how it's going to be used because they can take that apparatus and then turn it on a dime to go after other targets curfew violators under under, you know, Corona virus. Or they can go after Labor organizers next year feminists, indigenous organizers, sexual minorities.

It's very easy to use a kind of scapegoating tactic and that apparatus to go after people and so I think it's an exterminationist policy, eliminationist policy and one that is morbidly being used talked about by various political actors. There's some very cynical stuff going on. So the current  President in Brazil came to power last year. They called the Trump of the tropics far far far right president. He was a he was a military officer in the Junta in the 80s. In the dictatorship and these pot openly about returning to a dictatorship he is a huge coronavirus denier he says it's just a little flu and he absolutely refuses to go along with these lockdown policies and his help him that he's on the brink of firing as health minister right now and this court ends very badly for the rest of the world because if we are able to manage to to suppress this problem in the northern hemisphere as we go into summer.

You know he'll be there winter down there and Brazil is a huge reservoir of this virus and it could come rocketing back to us in the next season so these things have Global implications and so we need to pay attention to this axis authoritarians not just how they avoid the drug war but how they use social control and President also when he ran for office at my spoke openly and admiringly at president Duterte in the Philippines say I'm going to do even more than he did in terms the drug war so this is kind of a tality we're dealing with right now in Columbia another country that you know done a lot of work in Colombia over the years and they're thinking of returning to this disastrous policy of aerial fumigation of spraying to try to destroy these crops, but beyond that there's also the problem of human rights Defenders and people who work for social justice under the drug war are being targeted have been targeted are especially being targeted in recent years, especially after the recent peace deal. Because there's a graph for land for power for resources in Columbia. And a lot of these people are now being threatened and assassinated. Some of them have worked on drug policy issues in the past. They also work on indigenous rights issues and peasants rights issues. And what's happening with the lockdown is that once these people are in quarantine, they can't go out and so now the death squads know where to find them and hunt them down. I think that's an incredibly sobering thing to keep in mind quite apart from from the drug war. 

SANHO TREE: In Guatemala, We just found out the two days ago that the US has been deporting people taney's for immigration violations who are positive who are actively you know ill and sending them back to Guatemala, which I think is an absolutely sick and disgusting and in saying thing to do we're sending vectors back to to these regions to spread this disease and I think quite frankly it fits very nicely with Steven Miller's agenda which is always been to conflate immigration with crime disease rape all these the social ills that you know, go back to the Third Reich in terms of that kind of dehumanization and scapegoating and now he's able to then take these people send them back create more disease and that forces that that gives them a feedback loop and say Ah, that's another reason we have to keep you know, these enforcement policies in place is because they carry the disease.

Well, we're actively contributing to that in a horrific way in other places. There are more guests in a perverse way optimistic things going on in in places like El Salvador, Brazil, Cape Town. There are gangs that have been fighting and feuding for many many many years killing each other and they're now actually declaring truces amongst themselves and trying to provide basic social services and enforce the lockdown. Where their own governments won't do it. So they're the ones kind of keeping order and making sure people get fed. This is a double-edged sword because these are criminal groups, but on the other hand, it's a great way of illustrating the struggle for legitimacy. The state should not have to fight this hard to establish legitimacy within their own borders. It really highlights what they haven't been doing and people who've been involved in the drug war have known that for a long time.

These are marginalized populations that never did really taken care of and it's no mystery why these gangs were able to get traction today? Because they're actually fulfilling a role in state won't or hasn't been able to and then finally just want to show you a couple of images to think about these are some photos from let me see from the Philippines. This is when I talk about disease, this is a major prison in the Philippines, right? This is taking back in 2016 it in it's been over crowded but especially so after president Duterte declared his drug war and so those who were able to turn themselves in got locked up and we've been our I've been saying for years. We need to pay attention to disease. It's not just now under coronavirus but in situations like this where you have these right-wing governments to lock people up in horrendous conditions.
 
This is a breeding ground for disease and tuberculosis is bad enough, but now we have strains of multi-drug resistant tuberculosis, which scare me as much as this Coronavirus. Because we literally have no cure for them. And once that comes out it could play the rest of the world. We need to take these kinds of situations very very seriously and then finally in closing what we're living through today keep in mind. This is not unlike what indigenous peoples confronted 500 years ago in this hemisphere that a disease with people have no natural immunity is taken over and caused unprecedented damage, some estimates up to 90% of the indigenous peoples in this hemisphere were wiped out before they even laid eyes were able to lay eyes on a white person the disease travels much faster than the colonizers. So as we think about things like Columbia and how do you deal with drug cultivation and and helping the human rights of drug producers? We need to also keep in mind the rights of indigenous peoples and how we're affecting their lands and their lives and their life with aid. So thank you very much. 

DOUG MCVAY: That was Sanho Tree director Drug policy project at The Institute for policy studies. He was speaking at the students for sensible drug policy annual conference, which was held online at the beginning of May. You're listening to Century of lies. I'm your host Doug McVay Doug Fine is a solar-powered goat herder a comedic investigative journalist and a Pioneer voice in hemp and regenerative farming. He's cultivated hemp in four US states is we genetics or in five more. He's an award-winning culture and climate correspondent for NPR the New York Times And The Washington Post among others his books include first legal Harvest, not really an Alaskan mountain men, Farewell My Subaru, too high to fail and hemp bound. Well Doug has a new book. It's just been released. It's called American hemp farmer available at bookstores everywhere, you know once book stores are open again. It's published by Chelsea Green publishing. You heard the first part of our interview on last week's show so here's part two.

DOUG MCVAY: I'm very particularly interested to know moving forward. And now how are things looking for Hemp Farmers. 

DOUG FINE: This is still the really early postnatal period for the industry. We are truly embryonic as big as the industry is becoming we're embryonic and so everything now has these really wide jolting changes in One Direction or another that are you could have you could predict them by the behavior of markets in general by the way people behave in Gold rushes and all that and all that business and that's why I so harp on the the fact that a lot of it's going to come down to customers choosing their regions Farmers on those products rather than something that they see on TV that's actually a publicly traded Corporation or whatever, you know, I love our system and I love a free market and I love Everyone having options. I just urge people to make the free choice to support a community based regionally-based B Corporation or cooperative farmer owned entity that's going to win-win and get you the better product. So at this moment there's a lot of panic amongst farmers who left in and really went all in with just CBD because the wholesale Market predictably, you know has shown Corrections.

DOUG FINE: It's like always as folks give me remember from Black Market cannabis. It creeps up the further one gets away from Harvest Time and that's true in any commodity but the prices that people may have been sort of already, you know, pricing out their new tractor or their new truck. Those aren't the kind of prices that you're seeing if you're just growing for CBD and that's why I think it's so important to brand for value-added products one side of the plan architecture. We haven't discussed it. We talked a little bit about flour and a little bit about seed one side that we haven't talked about yet is fiber.

The fiber of the plant as I'm sure most listeners will know is outstanding performance. I wear hemp clothing all the time. I'm wearing hemp Yoga Pants by Pacific Northwest company right now. My sweetheart likes to there's a TMI alert. She likes to make my underwear out of Organic hemp provided by the women-owned Enviro textiles of Colorado. So it's all about performance for me. It's not I’m in the hemp World therefore I should just the part. It's this is what I like to wear works. Well, it feels good. So at it and it lasts a long time so fiber requires large acreage and it's going to be no trick no easy trick. I should say to get fiber established back in the US it's going to involve the herding cats, which is you know, what it what it's like to get Farmers cooperate because if I crunched the numbers in the new book and even for the smallest of the professional TurnKey fiber processing facilities that run about five to eight million dollars, you need to have minimum of around 3100 acres and that's a small-scale operation feeding that processing facility and in a place like a North Dakota and Nebraska.

That's no problem. Um, I mean that's like Joe to round the corners got more than 3100 acres but in most places it's going to evolve Farmers cooperating just on the fiber regardless of what they're doing with the other side of the plant and my favorite next-generation hemp. I'm going to say it application that I haven't you know, this one will solve a lot of problems. This one feels a lot of gaps in this sort of righteous low-carbon my life.

DOUG FINE: I and many others have been trying to live live and that Is hemp-based supercapacitors in next-generation batteries. So the premise on this as a Layman is for of the types of next-generation batteries that are going to not just charge our phones quickly or devices quickly, but charge our entire solar-powered homes super quickly our vehicles super quickly our equipment quickly. We want to move away from these Rare Earth minerals many people are aware of the damage those cause Right. So guess what? I don't know. I'm a spiritual man. So I won't say it turned me religious probably more spiritual but I learned that hemp has somehow known to evolve in this sort of waffle like pattern at the at the Nano level at the 1 carbon level in such a way that it outperforms any other known nanomaterial many of them are not very environmentally friendly it outperforms any other known nanomaterial slightly in performance and at 1000 of the cost not to mention one one trillionth of the environmental cost being a regenerative so visualize the hemp fiber on your Tesla or some other electric vehicle with the embedded solar, you know collectors in the actual vehicle charging a battery that is not only made from hemp but it's compostable and recyclable and I think we're going to see that in 10 years or less. That's my prediction. Straight here for you today Doug

DOUG MCVAY: I mean the drug. The drug side is obviously whether it's CBD or the or just smokable we did is the the one that gets people's attention. But yeah change that last question around a little bit. So do you think that with with some of these fiber products with things like these hemp batteries with things, you know hempcrete and other kinds of things mean infrastructures are real thing. Do you think that hemp, do you think Hemp is going to be some kind of what do you think happens going to do for the farmers could hemp could hemp save some of the the what the farm economy that we that there still is one God knows.

DOUG FINE: there is yeah. So yes, I would say the answer to that question is I do believe that hemp and other crops in the digital age have the potential to revive rural economies. It's going to be up to Farmers to make brave decisions to grow regeneratively. To realize that the practice of farming is not seasonal anymore. It's your round. The farmer has to be a farmer and an entrepreneur. That's jolting and hard. I've experienced this in the real world and talk about it in the book that the best farmers are often the hardest to convince that there's more to it these days than just selling stuff to wholesalers. So and then a lot of it is going to be up to customers folks listening to this broadcast to say I am going to read every label and everything.

I buy it. I'm going to try and do Everything that I can to support local broccoli, hemp and everything farmers, and when it comes to the wider thing The Wider question does have the potential to actually help mitigate climate change and save Humanity. I would say not just him but hemp and other crops have the strong potential to help mitigate climate change in a significant Way by turning our entire Industrial Pipeline from a petrochemical based one to a Biomaterials based one so hemp is kind of leading the way for whatever reason the intelligence of the hemp plant is it's the spearhead of a Renaissance in biomaterials. And this is not like oh because it feels good or even oh we better do this to save the Earth.

It's a performance issue Sherwin-Williams paint never moved away from hemp seed oil as a stabilizer in their paint because they couldn't find anything better. There's some really funny correspondence between their marketing director and the head of of cannabis prohibition. Harry Anslinger about dude. We need the hemp seed oil for our product. What are you doing making us important? And we all know that that came to a head with hemp for victory during World War II George Bush senior's life saved by his hemp cord, but on his parachute, but will it happen? I'm an optimist Doug. There's a lot of things that have to go right but it has to happen because I want Humanity to Survive and Thrive and if that happens, we have to mitigate climate change and cultivating hemp regeneratively and support the farmer entrepreneurs to do that. He is one of the best things we can do to help bring about that reality. 

DOUG MCVAY: You've published this you can do the book tour and all that. But what's next for you

DOUG FINE: besides prepping my own fields and growing hemp to do my own part to mitigate a few and you know, tons of climate cup carbon. I am putting together a TV show of the same name American hemp farmer where I'm profiling farmers of like mind who are trying to do the same thing that I am which is support their families communities and the planet by making a good I mean a good living regionally-based. The only thing the only thing that's different about the new entrepreneurialism is that it stays Regional base to end game is not selling out and having shares and like living in that kind of way. It's the long-term community based potential for the plant and and the industry. Yeah. So the TV shows that I love joking around and having a good time. So it's an opportunity as the host to kind of, you know show my ineptitude on a tractor while making the key point that you know, these particular farmers are growing Clover right around there hemp plant which not only builds nitrogen and is a great polyculture technique but keeps the grasshoppers that are bothering their neighbors out of their own field. So it's a one part humor one part earth-saving and one part practical profile of farmers

DOUG MCVAY: apps and influencers and now a reality show. Truly the 21st century is a return to the roots and and regenerative practices of our grandparents.

DOUG MCVAY: The the listeners don't realize how far we go back here. I mean I have I have memory the last time I saw you was at another United Nations event in New York. I think that was the last time I physically saw you that was really interesting. The Bolivian indigenous folks came there and get a ceremony right there in the street across from the UN while you and I are hanging out and so listeners should know. Doug has full green light to tease Doug as Doug does to tease Doug.  So please tease

DOUG MCVAY: I I just I just thought it was fascinating. It's a reality show. It's a reality show about him farming. I mean, I would watch that. I don't know I would watch that. I would I want to 

DOUG FINE: thank you 

DOUG MCVAY: the I'd watch that. I will watch that. Wow. Okay. So American hemp farmer look for it on look for it on Channels Near you I'm I'm wow. So, uh, so where can people find it work me find your book you're doing the you have a website for it. They want your social media other people follow you

DOUG FINE: thank you for asking that. Yes at Dougfine.com. There is information on all the books and some media appearances tedtalk the United Nations testimony, you mentioned and places to get all the books as well as live events in the Portland area. I've got Powell's, the Great, the mighty policy of books on June 23rd at 7 p.m. Hope to see everybody there. And on social media is organic Cowboy one word the two C the middle at organic Cowboy

DOUG MCVAY: terrific. Terrific. I'm going to try and make it to that reading. I hope to see you when you are here. Now. Do you have any closing thoughts for any closing thoughts for our listeners?

DOUG FINE: I would say to all the folks out there who enjoy the cannabis plant in any one of its forms to realize that that very enjoyment can be manifest as playing a positive role for the future of humanity. The return of the cannabis plant is not only the biggest Economic Development the biggest economic Market sector development since Silicon Valley came on strong in the late 70s just in sheer impact and dollar value but it also for those of us who know about cannabis and and how it works in our bodies and our brains. It is precipitating a shift a sort of dark It's always darkest before the dawn kind of feeling and many of us have the situation with grannies that have rediscovered cannabis for their arthritis.

And and it's it's a it's a giggly positive development as opposed to and again their folks, Enjoy a drink. Every now and then that's fine. But you know as opposed to sort of the barroom fight pituitary lizard brain stuff that happens in some of the drugs that have been popular while we have been forced to shut down our endocannabinoid system. So in closing for folks to enjoy the cannabis plant if you actually think about it as part of your home maintenance program, but also as part of your pro Humanity activism in terms of supporting outdoor cultivated, Grown cannabis and hemp and thinking of it as one plant realizing We're All in This Together. I do think that Humanity I get a twinge when I say that because it sounds a little pollyannaish but I do think Humanity has a chance 

DOUG MCVAY: and on that note. My guest today has been Doug fine. His new book is American hemp farmer. It is a great read. I recommend it highly look for it in your favorite bookstore go to an independent bookstore. That's locally owned. That's the right way to do it Doug the best of luck to you and thank you man 

DOUG FINE: Doug. It's so great to connect with you again. And I hope to see you in June. If not sooner. 

DOUG MCVAY: That was my conversation with the hemp activist farmer journalist and author Doug Fine his new book American hemp farmer published by Chelsea Green publishing is out now and again a quick reminder. The bookstore event that we discussed in that interview is actually not going to be happening, certainly not on that date the state of Oregon and many other places remain. They shut down because of the covid pandemic be sure to check local listings and look at the website DougFine.com public service time. If you are one of the lucky ones who are able to work from home and earn a paycheck if you're able to cover your housing and other bills and you still have something left over then please consider helping out those less fortunate community service agencies are always hurting and now more than ever.

They need your help syringe service programs, Food banks shelters; we’re spoiled for Choice really which is quite sad and also part of the point. The need is great and it's getting greater those of us who can really need to step up. Thank you. That's it. You have been listening to Century of Lies. We're a production of the Drug Truth Network for the Pacifica Foundation radio network on the web at DrugTruth.net will be back in a week with 30 more minutes of news and information about drug policy reform in the failed War on Drugs for now for the DrugTruth Network this is Doug McVay saying so long so long for the drug truth Network. This is Doug McVay asking you to examine our policy of drug prohibition. The Century of Lies Drug truth Network programs archived at the James A Baker III Institute for public policy.

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DEAN BECKER: The failure of drug war is glaringly obvious to judges, cops, wardens prosecutors and millions more now calling for decriminalization, legalization, the end of prohibition. Let us investigate A Century Of Lies.

DOUG MCVAY: Hello and welcome to Century of lies. I'm your host Doug McVay editor of drugwarfacts.org. Doug fine is a solar-powered goat herder a comedic investigative journalist and a Pioneer voice and hemp and regenerative farming he's cultivated hemp in four US states and his weed genetics are in five more. He's an award-winning culture and climate correspondent for NPR, the New York Times And The Washington Post among others. His books include hemp bound, too high to fail, Farewell My Subaru, Not really an Alaskan Mountain Man and first legal Harvest Doug has a new book out. It's just been released. It's called American hemp farmer available at bookstores everywhere once book stores are open again. It's published by Chelsea Green publishing,  Doug. Thank you for joining us

DOUG FINE: It's always a pleasure to be with you Doug. 

DOUG MCVAY: So let's get right to it. Now. Your new book is American hemp farmer, the title kind of says it all but tell my listeners what it's about

DOUG MCVAY: the resurgent hemp industry worldwide is the economist side of folks likes to point out the fastest agricultural based economy to cross the billion dollar annual revenue generation of any industry. However, and that's fantastic, but for from my perspective, it only means something if the farmers are the beneficiaries of anything that comes out of the soil, especially with regenerative practices. Farmers have not been the primary Financial beneficiaries and we have the opportunity to change that in the hemp kind of a sphere. So I sort of explored what farmer friendly models farmer first models might look like as hemp. Continues to Surge.

DOUG MCVAY: you are a very strong proponent of organic farming in general. It's not just with hemp. But am I right you were into Organics prior to becoming a hemp farmer?

DOUG FINE: Yes. My second book is called Farewell My Subaru and it's about trying to live with modern Comforts. But without fossil fuels and embedded in that is organic and regenerative food practices and I like to think that I put very few non-organic Foods into my body.

DOUG MCVAY: Well you certainly seem healthy. So you look healthy, the so it must be working. I'm now I'm curious did getting involved with him have any impact on your perspective on organic farming. I mean you already into it, but it didn't have any impact on your your perspective on it. 

DOUG FINE: Huge impact. First of all a fun practical impact my home state of New Mexico, but I work in heaven cultivate have been a number of places around the world and one of the places where I have direct entrepreneurial effort a farm-to-table product growing is in Vermont. And when I and my farming Partners in Vermont had the or USDA certain, you know approved organic certifiers come out to our farm and then stamp our Crop Organic a crop that three or four years earlier was in the Orwellian final days of the war on cannabis, a schedule 1 felony.

That was a remarkably good feeling in general. just in terms of official that intimacy but when it comes to the idea of organic, I first of all think it's still valuable. It's a valuable stamp to have I look for it. If I'm not let's say at a farmers market or I'm not growing food myself. I'm actually in let's say a food co-op I look for it because it means a few important things. That's obviously not when something is federally mandated for 300 million people. It's Not going to be as strong probably as many of us would would want but it means something. These days, there's a lot of efforts on to improve on Organics. In other words alternate certifications that include things like fair trade and all that good stuff. I'm thinking of brother David's cannabis certification.

There's a lot of there's a lot of cool proposals out there. The main thing really is educated Customers knowing about asking the right questions about regenerative practices- organic is part of regenerative practices. My definition overall of regenerative, Doug is basically are you leaving everything not just your field in as good a condition or better as you found it, you know basic kindergarten stuff one example being I do a very small run Hemp products Farm stable organic product and I ordered composable non-tree labels with non-toxic Stickam and so expensive between front and back label.

We're talking a dollar a bottle, but it's like we were in the ninth inning for Humanity here from a climate change perspective, and there's no more time for putting these kind of decisions off. So I just bit the bullet and I encourage everyone else to do that. You could do every part of your Enterprise regeneratively these days and that also means
Focusing it regionally, you know not having an in-game of getting bought out by a hedge fund or going public but rather a long-term lucrative living for your family and your community. 

DOUG MCVAY: In fact, I was just just looking through Facebook saw some kind of product that was supposed to be a hemp-based plastic container for the weed for dispensaries to use. Hmm interesting. That's very good. 

DOUG FINE: Sorry to interrupt. What that sounds like is packaging. Those are nice. The folks on the radio won't be able to see this. But since you and I are communicating visually you have this in the U.S. Grown hemp plastic 3D printed in the form of a goat since I'm a goat herder. Really the goodbye Pacific Garbage Patch movement is on the end of trash is the current National Geographic cover story and hemp and other biomaterials. It can play a huge huge role in that. It's a real thing. It's not just, you know, a righteous cutesy thing. It's we need to make Every step in the Industrial Pipeline regenerative or or we go away as a species, you know, the Earth will be fine.

DOUG MCVAY: to talk a little more about the environmental impact of hemp production. It's a I mean the plant itself has some impact but also the products I Know Jack was you know, the everybody likes to focus on the drug products, but Hemp itself really does have a lot of potential and it just seems to have more. Oh God all say the word. Seems to have more and more applications every day. Yes. You got me to say it. 

DOUG FINE: I knew you were going to say we joked about it before we went on the air all the buzz words that we're working our way into our into our dialogue spider heavy. 

DOUG MCVAY: You're just you're just that kind of an influencer Doug. Oh gosh. 

DOUG FINE: Oh my goodness, um a little inside job here for the benefit of the pretty confident us. So you guys it's a touch me with the environment talk more about the environmental impact of hemp and pimp production cultivation wise hemp can be the best of Worlds of the worst Two Worlds and the argument that I make in the new book American hemp farmer. Is that if we who decide to do things for regeneratively are willing to make that our brand and to shout out that are top shelf products are just that they're actually Superior and things like bio availability and performance precisely because we're focusing not just on immediate bottom line, but on sequestering carbon through good soil building practices for instance that that's our brand and if we can educate customers.

That those are the products to seek out, you know, it's sort of an extension of the know your farmer concept for anything that you buy that's food. But beyond that know your regenerative farmer asked questions. Like are you building soil and to give you one example of you know, the side of it that is is not the way that I love to grow. I'm a little against the current Trend in the Hemp side of growing sensimilla style. And you know, don't get me wrong. I love all sides of the plant big fan of of sinsemilla, but I grow dioecious hemp male and female hemp with the argument that everyone's happier when they're dating that there may be a hormonal balance kind of thing and it's a little bit against the grain not against the grain for the last eight thousand years Against the Grain for the last 10 years when folks started cultivating cannabis hemp for for specific cannabinoids other than THC, you know, the first big rush was CBD, but now there's a big rush for CBG on I really like CBC but in truth, I'm a whole plant kind of guy inlife in general.

I don't extract lycopene and take it in a pill. I eat tomatoes for instance. So with with hemp cannabis, I'm not really that interested in jacking up one or the other. I'm interested in varieties that have developed in a Locale and have what you might call terroir like a fine fine wine or a fine cheese. That's the market that I'm interested not how many, you know milligrams of CBD are in every bottle this tincture or what percentage of this Flower is just one or two cannabinoids. I'm much more interested in the balance. Right? So when you are growing Outdoors under God's sun in the soil by organic regenerative means and growing dioecious. And by the way, the bees were all into save the bees were the new save the whales right?

That's they love mail hemp flowers by the way the best when you're growing deliciously you're kind of doing it as Farmers have always done it in a way that's very natural. And that doesn't mean that sinsemilla style can't be grown regenerative, organic, but when I hear folks making the pitch. Oh, I grow my CBD organically in this organic approved plastic wrapping. I plug clones grown out of state somewhere in the ground in soil that I bought out of a bag and plug it through class. And guess what? It's organic. Everything's organic. I mean, yeah, that's a lot better than spraying, you know a toxin poison all over it, but then you're plowing the plasttic back under and then folks are like, oh, it's biodegradable.

Yeah. God didn't didn't make petrol Plastics. Sorry. So, you know everything comes from nature of course, but it's all about how things are the environments in which our plants feel comfortable and I think many of us now I was late Doug coming to the awareness about plant intelligence. I was always an animal guy, you know got along great with cats and dogs and you know a Raven wants to talk to me in Alaska and I got to see, see a Jaguar with their kittens on a rafting trip in the Amazon.

I live always had these sort of totemic animal relationships and only through the the journalistic and then now personal work with the Cannabis hemp plant have I recognized plant intelligence and one of the things I believe plants are telling us is that what we see coming out of the soil beautiful hemp plant or tomato plant is the result of a very happy microbial Kingdom in that soil and that's not an overnight Phenomenon that's about things like building your local microbes just to give one quick example you can this is something I learned from a practitioner of Korean natural farming a type of soil building agriculture that you can go up into your Watershed and I've done this and it works gather mycelial like mushroom crust from what parts of your upper Watershed diluted in the sort of rice mixture and then use it as a compost tea and all of a sudden you have much higher Mushroom microbial my cilia live in your soil and it results I believe in a better hemp crop.

So when we're talking about the environment all of these type of practices which give you a better product in the end are actually the product that the practice is that sequester carbon and have a chance of giving us humans an option after fossil fuels.

DOUG MCVAY: you're listening to an interview with Doug fine the journalists and hemp activist. His new book is American hemp Farmer published by Chelsea Green publishing will have more in just a moment. You're listening to Century of lies. I'm your host DougMcVay; Louis Reed is the national organizer for the cut 50 Campaign, which is organized by The Dream Corps. He was one of the speakers in Council on criminal justice has recent webinar entitled Corrections and covid-19 challenges and strategies;

LOUIS REED: in our minds We don't think that this takes you have a more degrees than a thermometer in order to be able to do something first and foremost. We need to make sure that we are identifying people who are scheduled to be released from prisons or jails within the next six months and we need to get them those individuals out and to home confinement barring a specific specific reason not to do so, that's number one. The second thing is is that we think that we need to procreate people who are over the age of 65 with priority given to those individuals who have pre-existing and or other underlying health conditions that make them particularly susceptible to the virus.

That's with two number three, we need to suspend co-pays for medical visits for people who are incarcerated when they have to go down to Medical all that stuff needs to be suspended, the next thing we need to make sure that his sanitizer stations and or other personal hygiene products are available to people who are incarcerated free of charge. I personally as someone who did almost 14 years in federal prison, I think that it's absolutely asinine that you have a state like New York that are having people produced hand sanitizing equipment where the offender population can't necessarily use it because it's considered contraband and last but not least. We need to make sure that we are implementing smart social distancing policies to protect more than 4.5 million people who are under some form of Community Supervision. So look this is not a matter of our heads. This is a matter of our hearts and ultimately in time our values are going to be interrogated. They are going to be prosecuted and they are going to be evaluated by how we responded to the so-called least of us. 

DOUG MCVAY: That was Louis Reed National organizer for the cut 50 campaign. He was speaking in a webinar on Corrections and covid-19, which was organized by the Council on criminal justice. You're listening to Century of lies. I'm your host Doug McVay,  now let's get back to my conversation with the journalist farmer and hemp activist Doug fine. You've been on quite a journey with this plant this last eight, ten years. How did it all start?

DOUG FINE: Well, I'll answer that directly, but I'm really glad that you asked that question because have it having what you might call the creds of someone that clearly cares about all sides of the plant and the and the farmers of all sides of the plant my endgame, Not just mine. I'm just a mouthpiece for many for many people who feel this way is the return to the reality that this is just one plant that the delineation we have today between cannabis and hemp is something that hopefully will go away and can and should go away and if it's okay, I'll explain why first off.

The definition of hemp as we have it today legally was the result of a 1976 paper Canadian paper small and Shepherd researchers and they said that they arbitrarily chose this based on studying a whole bunch of different varieties of like well, hey, it makes sense that to call everything on this side of here hemp, and interestingly. They suggested a testing method that's much more friendly than the flower Cola Bud testing the top and done today.

They suggested testing the leaves of the plant which we know, You contain ratios of cannabinoids, but not nearly enough in the amount that the buds do I mention this only because it's an important wonky policy issues for him for me right now because we're trying to do everything we can to get the burden off of farmers during during tests. Right? So on the .3 delineation of 1976 people today just assume that there are these two different plants, but actually for all of history, it's been one plant whether or not you were looking for roofing, Sandals a superfood or a party favor. It was just your cannabis plant people didn't even know.

What was it 64 that THC even got isolated and identified. So I think it's important that we return back to this concept of one plant and to I'll give you two quick reasons. Why one is when you are growing for we talked a little earlier about hemp plastic when you're going for a fiber application like that or clothing or Camp Creek feedstock, For animal bedding or all that, you know rocket parts or any of it. You don't necessarily want the lowest possible THC to make the strongest fiber now, no one's going to smoke that flower at least not commercially, so it should be the completely the burden should be off the farmer on the THC. It should be completely irrelevant.

It should be cannabis that's legal to grow and no one, no farmer of any kind of cannabis even ganja farmers in the Emerald Triangle. No Farmers should be subject to THC testing until and unless a Final flower product that is potential psychoactivity is going to be making it to the public into the retail market and when I first floated this and others floated this a few years ago people thought it sounded so crazy. Now there's a whole movement on and it really just makes sense and it's about protecting farmers.

DOUG MCVAY: Of course you can you do a lot more than hemp. Obviously you have testified at the United Nations in Vienna before the commission on narcotic drugs where you represented encode the European Coalition for Just and effective drug policies. Are you still involved in the international scene? In your spare time. 

DOUG FINE: Yeah, when I'm not home schooling the kids and milking goats and stuff. Um, so um, by the way Doug I just have to say as I go in to answer this question that you are proof of what Bob Marley used to saying. I'm let's he didn't say Let's get high. He'd say, let's get steady. I mean you have like nearly photographic memory and that's I can't I can't believe that you can just off the top of your head remember and list all that stuff. But so yes the the hemp boom is very much an international phenomenon.

I've been participating in efforts to bring him back ranging from the Netherlands to Hawaii and talking now about places like Haiti and Ethiopia. So I'm interested in you know, we need to build soil. The the world over India is another place that has a lot of interest and a lot of potential and a lot of history. So it is an international phenomenon and just to tie a loose end on one of your earlier questions about how did this all start for me? It started for me since you've been working so so fervently to bring about the Cannabis peace for longer than I have.

You'll recognize the story that spurred me to first start researching cannabis and professionally as a journalist and as an author and that was I live really remote in New Mexico and you know, when there's a car where it's not one of the ranchers on the area coming in when it's like 30 Cars of all kinds of agencies with guys with ear pieces coming out and automatic weapons and helicopters flying overhead, you know that there's something weird going on and what was going on in 2010 was a close neighbor of mine like physically, you know, he was, you know, probably couldn't hear if I shouted to him right now, but what passes for close neighbor he was being raised as a retiree from a corporation, mellow guy has grown 11 or so plants for PTSD mitigation of Vietnam era veteran and someone who had a falling out with him tipped off our law enforcement folks in a millions of dollars were spent on these few plants put my family at risk with automatic weapons that could go off I to drive through them to get home and we know that kind of thing is insane.

We're going to be laughing about it when we tell our kids and grandkids about it, but it can answer your earlier question. This is actually what spurred me to spend a good, you know portion of my career energy for quite a number of years figuring out what the mutt we all knew we were going to we have a love affair with this plant, Humanity as love this plant. It was a camp follower anthropologists call it a camp follower. We were even sedentary Farmers. We were carrying it around in our pouches and Pockets because it provides a lot of great valuable things and we knew that we were going to return to the plant but the question was how would it look in a way that was good for Humanity and that's that's what I've been investigating the last 10 or so years. 

DOUG MCVAY: Let's get back to hemp. That's that's American Hemp farmer. That is the name of your new book. There are a lot of companies in the CBD Market these days hemp derived cannabidiol. CBD is everywhere. It's the big box stores the corner shops CBD, you know kind of seems to be the thing that's pushing him forward now is that is that a misperception is that actually the case are those other products going to become just buy products made with the waste material once CBDs been extracted?

DOUG FINE: Well, CBD is definitely a gold rush and there was gold. Let's say in the 49er gold rush in California. There was gold to be had people want CBD, you know as they should I eat cannabinoids every day as I mentioned. I'm more of a whole plant guy than isolating one cannabinoid, but it's a real thing feeding our endocannabinoid systems. I mean, there's a reason we evolved endocannabinoid system. So it's a real thing and it's worth many many billions of dollars, but as in the actual Gold Rush, it's very few of the actual Prospectors of the are the people who strike it rich. It's the people who sell them the shovels and the flower and all of that some of those businesses and stores are still like I lived in Alaska for a while some of the ancestors of the people that sold the coffee and the bags in the mules are still in Skagway Alaska because they did great.

So we're seeing that today through things like wholesalers people that sell processing equipment or just outsideside investors, so the task at hand is how does a multibillion-dollar market no matter what side of the hemp plant were talking about. How does that benefit rural communities and Farmers would be nice if we did not need a far made anymore just as you know as much as I love the music, it'd be nice if farming was a lucrative profession like Dentistry or something like it would be fantastic when we reach the point of 30% of Americans making their living from the soil as that as was the case when cannabis Federal cannabis prohibition started in 1937. So just as I was researching that started to research This Book American hemp farmer, and in fact after a field day, I was in my field.

I with my partners in Vermont. I was hanging out and I notice I had a voice mail and it was from Wendell Berry the great farmer philosopher from Kentucky now in his 80s. I had written to him on hemp paper at PO Box 1 and whatever Town Kentucky and ask him to attend a him conference and some friends were organizing not far from where he lived and he called back immediately and in his voicemail, which I've saved. He said my one real message for him Farmers is please do your own thing. I'm just paraphrasing here do your oh, he didn't say influencer or app.

By the way. He said, please do your Do Your Own Thing, Market your products, control your products, because if you just wholesale surf to the vicissitudes of the buyers, you're going to face the same, you know destitution and problems and not to mention environmental destruction that farmers of nearly every other crop have faced around the country and around the world. So that has that has stayed with me as a number one mission that regardless of what products the market demands that farmers be the ones who are benefiting at that retail dollar today farmers get about three percent three, 3cents on the food dollar and the goal that I and many other share. This was told by a told to me by a friend at a great organic hemp Cooperative in Colorado. We said our goal is Farmers getting 100 cents on the dollar less expenses. There should be nobody else involved just the farmers getting paid and you know, that's an extreme position and I support it, but it comes down to If you're forming an Enterprise. You should either be them in my view. Sorry to you should you should be the farmer or the farmer should be a co-owner a revenue share in that operation and not a not a wholesale wage slave and then just to come back to your original question while CBD is a gold rush.

It's also giving way to the next best thing. Now a lot of farmers now are looking for CBG heavy crops. We've got a hundred plus known cannabinoids, but the niche im going for side steps that a little bit and is looking for the idea of Imagine in your in Sonoma some beautiful Wine Country somewhere and you go into a wine fine. Fine wine shop that top shelf offering that has a particular varietal from that year. That's what I'm looking for is what I try to cultivate myself or if you know if somebody's inviting us over for dinner and we want to bring over wonderful hemp product, whatever, it is tincture book shirt.

Look for the real farmer cultivated top-shelf regionally made distinctive, you know product you go and take a trip to Botswana. You're not bringing home somebody. I hope you're not bringing home. Somebody, you know a fridge magnet that says Botswana you’re bringing home someone a really cool crafts from there, but someone made and that's how the the niche help Market the high-end Craft Market that that I feel I represented and Not exclusively speak for but the people that I'm trying to support our these type of family and Community Based hemp providers no matter what the side of the plan in my own product.

I don't just use the flower. I also use the seed the seed being a superfood so I don't think flower only, Let alone CBD only is the long-term play for hemp Farmers. The question is are folks in it for the long term play. If you're desperate farmer who's saying, you know, I'm about to sell to sub developer and not make any money for my GMO soy or whatever. I'd like to give this tempting a try. It's really easy really, you know read my book you'll see if we should have a three to five-year game plan. They've got mortgages this year. So it's a it's a gut check any entrepreneurial ism is gut check whether or not it's depending on the whims of Mother Nature but in particular it's important for hemp entrepreneurs to have a long-term game plan and not just chase the let the latest Gold Rush somebody else is going to grow The CBD for a chain drug store Coke CBD, you know, it's coming the big MickMac CBD or whatever is coming. That's not going to be you and me we're going to be the people that are doing something better and different and hopefully that is a market Niche that customers will patronize. 

DOUG MCVAY: That was my conversation with Doug fine. His new book is American hemp farmer published by Chelsea Green publishing find him on the web at Dougfine.com. And on social media where he's at @organiccowboy. And for now, that's it. I want to thank you for joining us. You have been listening to Century of Lies where production of the drug truth Network. This is Doug McVay saying so long “so long” for the Drug Truth Network. This is Doug McVay asking you to examine our policy of drug prohibition. The Century of Lies, Drug Truth Network programs are kept at the James A Baker III Institute for public policy.