TRANSCRIPT

CENTURY OF LIES

MARCH 6, 2019

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.

DOUG MCVAY: Hello, and welcome to Century of Lies. I'm your host Doug McVay, editor of DrugWarFacts.org.

This week, my guest is Mary Lynn Mathre. She’s a Registered Nurse and a Certified Addictions Registered Nurse. She’s also the co-founder and president of Patients Out of Time, which is a 501c3 educational nonprofit that works to educate healthcare professionals, other professionals, patients and the public about medical cannabis.

Full disclosure: I do work part-time for Patients Out of Time, doing website and social media management.

Patients Out of Time conferences, you work along with medical school and professional organizations, and you provide accredited materials. These courses are accredited for continuing education credits, and, I mean, it's -- why is that? Why do you go through the, I know that it's an arduous process getting the accreditation, and getting everything straight, and all the, heck, the paperwork itself. Why do you do that?

MARY LYNN MATHRE, RN, CARN: Yeah, you described it well. It's an arduous process. You know, years back, we actually, my husband and I started out with NORML, the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, I'm sure the listeners know, and you know, clearly, at that point, seeing that it definitely should not be prohibited, that the laws were - the punishment was so much greater than the potential harm of the plant.

As we recognized the health benefits, it just became clear that it's very important healthcare professionals understand the safety and the value of this plant, this medicine. And to do that, we felt we had to have accredited conferences. These are conferences that physicians, nurses, pharmacists, can go and get credits. All practicing clinicians need to continually maintain their license by, you know, showing that they are keeping up to date with new science.

Specifically with cannabis, they really need to understand this. So if we have a conference that accredited, that's basically telling them that this has met the criteria. We are going to be presenting scientific information. We're going to have professionals presenting this information.

So there are many hurdles we have to go through, but, that's it. This isn't a business, it's not a cannabis expo, it's not a business meeting designed for industry people. It's clearly designed primarily for healthcare professionals to really understand the endocannabinoid system, and help them understand the risks and benefits of cannabis, how to use cannabis.

Our attendees -- besides healthcare professionals, we often get patients, because, you know, they look to healthcare professionals to get their information, and sadly, most clinicians, because of the prohibition in the United States, they really don't understand how to use it. Oftentimes, the patients are teaching the clinicians.

But a lot of the patients come to our conference wanting to learn more, and simply to get validation, that they, you know, they really are using a medicine. Patients know how they feel, they can tell if they're feeling better, if the medicine's working or not.

But anyway, yeah, accreditation, for us, is basically saying this is a valid conference. The information you're going to get is valid. And along with that, let me just also introduce the fact that on the Eleventh, Thursday April Eleventh, we'll kick off the conference itself with a pre-conference workshop, and this one is literally really designed for the new clinicians that are considering making recommendations for cannabis, called "Integrating Cannabis Into Medical Practice."

We want to let the healthcare professionals be able to answer questions when patients come in and ask them about their use, and if they -- they can make a better decision about is this -- would cannabis be a good option for this patient, and if so, what would be the best route that they should take? How can I make a recommendation that's meaningful for this patient? How should I chart, or document, my interactions with the patient, what should I be looking for, you know, as they use this medicine?

So, it's, again, the preconference workshop is geared especially for clinicians new to this field. It will give you basic answers, and if we've got two, actually three leading clinicians in this. Doctor Sulak is coming down from Maine, excellent clinician. Deb Malka, Deborah Malka, an MD PhD, she's been taking care of patients for decades as well. And then a local physician, Terel Newton, who's been -- has a background in anesthesiology and treating a lot of patients for pain, pain being probably the most common reason patients seek help with cannabis.

I want to make sure people also know that on April Twelfth, we will be hosting a benefit dinner at the Florida Aquarium, rooftop on the Florida Aquarium. Really excited about that. It's a chance for those who might not -- who come to the conference, they might want to celebrate that Friday evening with us at the benefit dinner, but it's also open, certainly, to the public, a chance to meet the faculty, a chance to just help Patients Out of Time.

This is a fundraiser for us, so we really -- we depend on donations. As Doug said, we're a 501c3. Folks can find more information at either website: PatientsOutOfTime.org or MedicalCannabis.com. PatientsOutOfTime.org will easily get you all the information about the conference, how to register for it, and I'll hope to see some of you there.

Please encourage your own healthcare professional to attend this conference and learn so that they can take better care of you.

This year, we're changing things up a little bit. We always like to have an evening reception on Thursday evening, which is really a time for the faculty to come, and attendees to come and just interact socially with some of the faculty. And this year we've got Rick Doblin, PhD.

Rick is the founder of MAPS, the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies, and he's going to go back and do a little history of this, you know, what all's happened, how cannabis became illegal in the first place, and where are we today. So we're really thrilled to have him.

Again, we hope folks can come and join us. The reception is going to be at Le Meridien Hotel in Tampa. Again, all that information is on our website.

DOUG MCVAY: That was my interview with Mary Lynn Mathre, RN, CARN. She's the co-founder and president of Patients Out of Time. Their conference April 11, 12, and 13 in Tampa, Florida. The websites are MedicalCannabis.com or PatientsOutOfTime.org. Full disclosure: I do work part-time for Patients Out of Time doing website and social media management.

You're listening to Century of Lies. I’m your host Doug McVay, editor of DrugWarFacts.org.

Here's Valery Shuman. She's Senior Director of the Midwest Harm Reduction Institute at the Heartland Alliance. Audio comes to us courtesy of SAMHSA.

VALERY SHUMAN: So, a lot of the work that I do is in trying to change people's minds about harm reduction, to get them to accept it, to adopt it.

And people have a lot of misconceptions about harm reduction. You know, they feel like it's enabling drug users. They feel like it's giving up on people, right, like setting the bar too low. They feel like if they are sensitive to people's pros of using drugs, right, the reasons that they do it, the things that they get out of it, that that's somehow signing on, or agreeing, that it's okeh to do that.

And so a lot of the work that we do is in trying to understand where people are coming from. I think that's one of the most important things when you're engaging with a community, to try and get them to accept harm reduction, is to understand what their beliefs are, their misconceptions are, why they believe them, what their fears are, because it's often fear-based as well, and to help them understand the ways in which they're already doing it.

That's one of the things that I find, is that people are often practicing harm reduction, but they aren't calling it that. They aren't recognizing it as that, and so we do a lot of discussion around, you know, seat belts. Right? And speed limits, and really pragmatic public health strategies that we all use, that we're all engaged in, that are harm reduction, and around eating, and nutrition, like the dietary choices that we make.

There's a really great book that I often reference called Eat This, Not That. It's like, if you go to a fast food restaurant, this is the healthier choice. Totally a harm reduction strategy.

People who are engaged in primary and tertiary -- primary and secondary prevention strategies around substance use often don't recognize that it's harm reduction as well. They think of harm reduction as only tertiary prevention, right, when people are already sort of on death's door. But all of that is harm reduction. We're all on the same team.

So, trying to help people recognize that we are all on the same team, that they're already engaged in some of these practices, can help them to sign on to some of the more overt practices, as well.

So, another thing that's incredibly important when you're engaging communities around harm reduction is to find what the hook is for that particular community. And it's different in every community.

A good example is if you're speaking to legislators or politicians. They can often leverage information about cost savings to convince people to change the laws, and rules. So for example, there's lots of good evidence of cost saving on syringe exchange programs, reducing the incidence of HIV and hepatitis C, which are incredibly expensive for lifetime prevalence.

Similarly with Housing First, there's great data on how much less expensive it is to house people than to let them remain on the street and use expensive services like emergency rooms, like jails, like prisons, and so to arm people with that information, if that's the hook for them.

But it's different for other people. You know, for some people, it might be their religion or their spirituality, or their morality, that you can tap into, that really speaks to harm reduction.

For other people it's about bodily autonomy, so, trying to figure out what's important to the people, the audience that you're talking to and finding what the hook is for them.

DOUG MCVAY: That was Valery Shuman, Senior Director of the Midwest Harm Reduction Institute at the Heartland Alliance. You’re listening to Century of Lies. I’m your host Doug McVay, editor of DrugWarFacts.org.

On Monday, March 4, in the UK Parliament’s House of Lords, a government minister answered questions about the government’s plans to make medicinal cannabis available on prescription.

The questioning is opened by The Baroness Meacher, Molly Christine Meacher, a Crossbench member of the House of Lords and Co-Chair of the All Party Parliamentary Group for Drug Policy Reform. The Minister responding to questions is The Baroness Blackwood of North Oxford, Nicola Claire Blackwood. Baroness Blackwood is the Parliamentary Under-Secretary for Health and Social Care.

Other Members of the Lords follow with questions. I’ll give you the list at the end.

BARONESS MEACHER: I beg leave to ask the question standing in my name on the order paper.

BARONESS BLACKWOOD: My Lords, government officials have been working with colleagues across healthcare and the wider system to ensure that where appropriate patients can access ?medicinal cannabis.

Clinical guidance has been issued by the Royal College of Physicians, the British Pediatric Neurology Association, and the Association of British Neurologists. Specialist doctors will consider this before prescribing, but we are clear that the decision to prescribe should be one for individual clinicians to make in partnership with patients and their families.

BARONESS MEACHER: I thank the Minister for her reply. The Minister will be aware, of course, that only about four people have received a prescription of medical cannabis since it became legal on the First of November last year.

Doctors have had no training in prescribing cannabis. They need to know the contents, the dosages, the side-effects, and everything else about medical cannabis products. And the pressure on doctors with desperate patients whose standard medications are not working or are causing unacceptable side-effects is intense, and doctors do need government help, urgently.

Will the Minister ensure that the NHS [National Health Service] medical director makes specialist doctors aware of the new guidelines to be launched later this month by the Medical Cannabis Clinicians’ Society, and also to make doctors aware of the twelve module online training course already available from the Academy of Medical Cannabis?

BARONESS BLACKWOOD: Well, I thank the noble Baroness for her question. This is a challenging area, and the evidence base is still developing.

But the Government is working hard to ensure that awareness is increasing. This is why we have asked NICE [National Institute for Clinical Excellence] to develop guidance which will be released later this year. We've asked HEE [Health Education England] to develop a training package to increase knowledge and awareness among health professionals.

And it's also why officials are working closely with suppliers and importers to ensure that when prescriptions are given, they are filled. But we do understand that there is work to do on this and we will continue to work on this issue.

BARONESS MEACHER: My Lords, following the -- following the --

LORD HOWARTH: Will the noble Lady comment on the issues illustrated in the predicament of a person who has been prescribed the cannabinoid Dronabinol, branded as Bedrocan, which is the only medication that has proved effective for her following the failure of 35 different medications previously prescribed to relieve her chronic pain from cervical and lumbar spondylosis?

Given that it was last summer that the Chief Medical Officer stated that there is conclusive evidence that cannabis-based products are effective for certain medical conditions, why is this patient still forced to travel to Holland every three months to obtain the medication which her consultant considers essential for her, and why does confusion still reign over licensing procedures?

Will the noble Lady, the Minister, meet with me and the person I've mentioned to see if she can introduce some more sense into these arrangements?

BARONESS BLACKWOOD: I thank the noble Lord for his question, and I am very sorry to hear about the situation that he raises. I am of course very happy to meet with him. What I would say is that there should be no reason, as I can see, for the situation that he has outlined. It is up to clinicians to prescribe as they see fit under the guidelines which have been put out, and I'm very sorry to hear of the situation that he's raised.

BARONESS WALMSLEY: Lords, when the Chief Medical Officer recommended that cannabis medicines be rescheduled, she produced a report which showed that the most rigorous regulatory authorities in the world -- those in the US, Australia and Ireland, and indeed the World Health Organization -- had strong evidence of the benefits of cannabis-based medicines for people with epilepsy.

In light of that, surely four licences is completely unacceptable. Why are UK patients being deprived of these safe and effective medicines which have actually fewer side-effects than some licensed pharmaceuticals, such as sodium valproate?

BARONESS BLACKWOOD: Well, I don't accept the characterization which the noble Baroness has just given. UK patients are not being denied access to these medications. They are able to access medications via prescription from a doctor who is on the specialist medical register.

And, the Government has acted fast on -- with the review of the best clinical evidence and are going further with a NICE guideline which will come forward, and also with, further, a Health Education England training package to raise even more awareness.

BARONESS THORNTON: What troubles me, my Lords, about the noble Lady's answer, is that -- I've looked on NHS England’s guidance, and it said that medical cannabis can only be provided only where all “other treatment options have been exhausted," and where there is, “published evidence of benefit”.

Well, we've heard lots of evidence of the benefit here, just this afternoon. What, I think, we're right to be worried about is, what is the research that's allowing that to happen? Why is it not happening quickly enough? And I think the thing that underlies this is, can the noble Lady describe what level of opiate addiction and which severe side-effects of other medication can be tolerated before medical cannabis is prescribed?

BARONESS BLACKWOOD: Well, the evidence base for the quality and effectiveness of these products is limited, and it is developing. But this is why the Government has asked the MHRA [Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency] to call for a proposal to enhance our knowledge of these medications.

However, we have not waited to do this. We have introduced a route via the unlicensed medications, which allows for doctors who are on the specialist register to prescribe for patients.

This is the right route because these are the doctors who will understand the conditions which are mostly likely to benefit from prescription, and they are the ones who are able to make a judgment about the safety and efficacy of medicinal cannabis.

And, it is the route which is usually used for unlicensed medications, and is the one which the MHRA has set up already. We want to see more licensed products in this route already, though, so we do also call upon industry to invest in more trials and publish the results and the full underpinning data to build our knowledge in this space so that more patients are able to benefit.

LORD WEST: My Lords, the majority of those guilty of violent terrorist crimes in this country, we have found are heavy users of cannabis. When one looks at violent crime outside of terrorism, again, and I don't know the details of this, but it does seem that very often the people involved are heavy users of cannabis. Skunk, not the ?stuff we're talking about, the liquid stuff.

Could I ask the noble Lady Minister, is the Government actually looking at the relationship between use of these really strong types of cannabis and violent crime, to see if anything should be done about it?

BARONESS BLACKWOOD: Well, the types of medicines that we're speaking about are not skunk. And he is right that all medicines carry risk, but they can also be beneficial.

That is why we have introduced a route to allow medicinal cannabis to be used for those conditions where it will be beneficial. But the change in the law allows strict access by specialist doctors who, in making the decisions to prescribe, can ensure that the benefit outweighs the harm to the patients and that restrictions are line with the advice from the ACMD [Advisory Council on Misuse of Drugs].

Any further concerns around the kinds of drugs which he is talking about are still strictly controlled by the Home Office and policing.

DOUG MCVAY: You just heard The Baroness Blackwood, the UK Government’s Parliamentary Under-Secretary for Health and Social Care, answering questions in the House of Lords on March 4 about the Government's plans for access to medicinal cannabis on prescription.

The other members of the Lords you heard in that segment, in order, were:

The Baroness Meacher, Molly Christine Meacher - Baroness Meacher is Co-Chair of the All Party Parliamentary Group for Drug Policy Reform;
The Right Honorable the Lord Howarth of Newport CBE, Alan Thomas Howarth;
The Baroness Walmsley, Joan Margaret Walmsley - Baroness Walmsley is Co-Deputy Leader of the Liberal Democrat Peers;
The Baroness Thornton, Dorothea Glenys Thornton – Baroness Thornton is Labour Party Shadow Spokesperson for Health;
and the final question was put by what I can only describe as the living caricature of an ill-informed patrician politician, The Right Honorable the Lord West of Spithead GCB DSC, Alan William John West.

You're listening to Century of Lies. I'm your host Doug McVay, editor of DrugWarFacts.org.

Here’s Valery Shuman once again. She’s Senior Director of the Midwest Harm Reduction Institute at the Heartland Alliance. This audio comes to us courtesy of the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration.

VALERY SHUMAN: I think it's really important for people to shift the culture around drug use and drug users in general, really recognize the importance of drug users in taking care of one another, and that they can and they do already, and we can give them some tools, we can use them to help avoid overdoses with others in their community, to educate one another.

So, naloxone is really important, and it's really important to get it into the hands directly of drug users and the people that love them, but there's a lot of other strategies that we can implement as well.

Some of the more interesting and unique things that are coming up right now is DanceSafe and some of the drug users unions have begun experimenting with fentanyl test strips, which were originally made for urinalysis to detect fentanyl in a drug, but they've found that they're actually pretty sensitive if you dilute a little bit of the drug and then dip the test strip in it, and they're detecting fentanyl.

And there's been a small pilot study in Canada, where they've discovered that folks using these, they're actually making different choices with regard to their drug use once they know that fentanyl is present in their drugs.

So that's a really important one.

Other really pragmatic things that people are doing are encouraging people to avoid using alone, you know, to have somebody else there so that they can intervene in the case of an overdose.

To go really slow with their injections, so that they can feel the drug at the beginning, they're not, like, slamming it in really quickly and then they've got all of it in their system, you can't go back.

To avoid mixing with other depressants, because that raises people's incidence of overdose.

Educating people about their overdose risk, things like, if you've had an overdose before, you're more likely to have one again.

People are using social media to share when there's so-called bad batches around, if they know, for example, in Chicago, there was a couple of things on social media about this person, this black Prius, is in this neighborhood handing out drugs and it's, people are overdosing, it's incredibly strong. So using social media.

And then just really importantly encouraging drug users to work with their community and take care of one another, and recognize their ability to do so.

I think that there's a lot of misconceptions about what drug users are capable of. Right? People assume if they're putting this thing in their body they must not care about themselves, they must not care about others. But what you often find when you talk to people about what they're experiences, and what they're already doing, they're already employing a lot of strategies to keep themselves and others safe.

DOUG MCVAY: That was Valery Shuman with the Midwest Harm Reduction Institute. All right, now, let's hear from Dan Bigg, co-founder of the Chicago Recovery Alliance.

DAN BIGG: Well, for the past 27 years, we have operated what we call harm reduction outreach, and that is, we, our philosophy is simply to assist any positive change, as a person defines it for him or herself.

So instead of having chaotic, out of control addiction on the one hand, and abstinence on the other, and saying these are the only two choices, we've said there's a huge productive middle ground, any positive change, and any improvement.

So we try to operationalize any positive change. You would define it for yourself, I would define it for myself, and then we as an organization would provide the most cost-effective and scientifically proven means to accomplish those things. But the choice is yours, both to what and intensity.

So for almost forty years I've been an addictions counselor, and the focus has been on struggling between those two poles, chaotic out of control addiction and abstinence. And the idea was to migrate people who are chaotic and out of control in their drug use to people who are abstinent. That is the traditional model of addiction treatment.

Unfortunately, it's inconsistent with human behavior, human condition. And there's a huge fertile field between the two that would be called improvements. In other words, using in a way that -- separating drinking and driving, for example. Hugely successful public health intervention.

It's not that we stopped drinking. It's not that we stopped driving. It's that we began to develop mechanisms for separating the two. You see them most on New Years, things like this, where, you know, where there's a designated driver, or cabs that are, or CTA, the trains, are offering free rides, and so forth. We realize there's a danger to that, and so we separate the two.

It's not that we're prohibiting one or the other. We could, but we don't, because we know it wouldn't work.

So, and that's basically all harm reduction says, is public health is the most important thing. The health of your children, the health of my children, the health of the community. That has to be first. We have to put in the background moralism, condemnation, one's perception of how one should be.

And so what we're talking about, for the first time, is affirming and even rejoicing in improvement. Not perfection, improvement. And humans are really good at improvement. We are not so good at perfection.

DOUG MCVAY: That was Dan Bigg, co-founder of the Chicago Recovery Alliance. He was speaking on a video recorded by SAMHSA that was released just a few months before Dan sadly passed away.

He was a legend in harm reduction. He was a pioneer in the distribution of naloxone. And he is sorely missed.

And for now, that's it. I want to thank you for joining us. 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. I’m your host Doug McVay, editor of DrugWarFacts.org.

The executive producer of the Drug Truth Network is Dean Becker. Drug Truth Network programs, including this show, Century of Lies, as well as the flagship show of the Drug Truth Network, Cultural Baggage, and of course our daily 420 Drug War News segments, are all available by podcast. The URLs to subscribe are on the network home page at DrugTruth.net.

The Drug Truth Network has a Facebook page, please give it a like. Drug War Facts is on Facebook too, give its page a like and share it with friends. Remember: Knowledge is power.

You can follow me on Twitter, I'm @DougMcVay and of course also @DrugPolicyFacts.

We'll be back in a week with thirty more minutes of news and information about drug policy reform and the failed war on drugs. For now, for 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 archived at the James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy.

CENTURY OF LIES

MAY 27, 2018

TRANSCRIPT

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.

DOUG MCVAY: Hello, and welcome to Century Of Lies. I'm your host Doug McVay.

The Patients Out of Time Twelfth National Clinical Conference on Cannabis Therapeutics was held in mid-May in Jersey City. The first day of that conference was devoted to public policy. One of the panels that I found most interesting involved veterans' issues. We're going to hear from part of that panel. In the interest of full disclosure, I do need to mention that I do website and social media work for Patients Out of Time.

We're about to hear Mary Lynn Mathre, the co-founder and president of Patients Out of Time, who's a military veteran, along with Brandon Wyatt, an attorney and medical cannabis advocate in Washington, DC, who is also a military veteran.

MARY LYNN MATHRE: -- well, it clearly elapsed. I mean, well, and that's the problem, the veterans were not appreciated for what they came back from. When you think of post-traumatic stress, and I'm kind of answering it, but I go about it in a different way, but when we think of post traumatic stress, it can happen to anyone. I think we all know that, whether you think of rape, a hurricane, a tornado, life's loss, et cetera.

But if you can picture a combat veteran, who, as you saw in the clip earlier, has nightmares of their buddies being blown up, of knowing that they just killed someone, of being wounded themselves. But then, the next day, you go do it again. The next day you go do it again. It -- it shatters whatever happens to you. So they're really screwed up with that.

They come back, and a lot just got kicked out of the service because of post traumatic stress symptoms. They were literally kicked out for -- dishonorable discharges. Sometimes it was just smoking pot, and yeah, so going back then, in that era, that was the Just Say No, you know, the war on drugs and all that, and they started the urine testing. They start that with veterans, just, years earlier, decades earlier, they started the LSD on veterans, experimenting with that, what it did.

Well, drug testing started on veteran -- on active duty, I should say, on active duty military.

BRANDON WYATT: So, let's -- let's drill another key point. One of the key points it that veterans a shared, similar experience, but we also had a shared similar law and regulation, which governed the country, that, when we left and went home, everybody in their fifty states abided by, but together, when we were a unit, was one law, UCMJ [Uniform Code of Military Justice], which allowed to be their experimental code for a lot of policies that related to drug use, not only in testing, to see if you were using it, but testing to see if it worked.

So, that's where the key to listening to Mary Lynn from the nurse's side, and the balance from the lawyer's side, kind of comes in, because now you're talking about jurisdiction, who had jurisdiction and control of what the veterans did, and then what happened in the federal government as a result of the testing in the military, and then how can we use that leverage to break open the entire country for cannabis laws. It would be fun when we get there, but, go ahead, Mary Lynn, I'm sorry.

MARY LYNN MATHRE: But -- yeah, no, point well taken. And so we get to, as I was saying, with the stigma, so the Vietnam vet is really suffering, they're finding cannabis is helpful, but they will -- they're going to be very quiet about it, because they've already been, the stigma is very bad on them just for being a Vietnam vet.

So we fast forward to today, and certainly, Brandon, you can talk more about the veterans of today. There still are some vets who are unaware of the use of cannabis for post traumatic stress symptoms, because they go to the usual healthcare system in the VA -- yeah, and, so people can understand the VA system, when a veteran comes back, as veterans, we can go to the VA to get our healthcare. It's a federal facility, the physicians are under federal law.

And so, that basically means, as Brandon said, from state to state, these laws are happening with cannabis, but the vets are stuck under federal law. Now, what did happen, in 2010, Robert Petzel, the director of the VA at the time, made a decision, a directive, and he put the directive out, saying that if you are a veteran and you live in a state with a medical cannabis law, then -- and you go outside of the VA system and you get permission from a civilian doctor to use cannabis, then the VA should recognize that.

Well, in one sense, hallelujah, but a couple of things. Now, the vet has to go pay for their medical care, which they're not supposed to have to, they've got to go pay for that medical visit, they've got to go pay for their medicine now, which should not happen.

But two, what happens when you're, like my husband, in the state of Virginia, which won't allow that, or, CBD only, now, but, so it's -- these are the issues which I think lawyers get into a lot. And, what happens when they get sick and they're on their medicine, and it's okeh under the VA, but if they have to go into a VA hospital, now it's not okeh.

BRANDON WYATT: Well, let's go from it -- from a different way. So, in the sense of, generationally, as I've studied, and been able to be lectured and learned from Vietnam era veterans down, what we're able to see is a shift in government resources and funding based on their perception of if you were quote unquote from a good war era or a good soldier duty time. Okeh?

So you go through the whole war we've gone through, Grenada, we've gone through the first gulf war, and we develop a cadre of individuals who have disabilities. And I'll say that directly, and I'm from Fort Bragg, so I've worked in Washington, DC, great, but I grew up in Fayetteville, North Carolina, Fort Bragg, North Carolina, so I grew up around the young men and women that I'm speaking about, so I know them very, very well, they were my friends' parents, and my older neighbors.

So, in that regard, another issue that happened is, when they come back, they don't necessarily have a trust for the VA, from what Mary Lynn spoke about, they don't necessarily have a trust for the system, because prior to -- I guess you would say really when you get to the GI Bill, working very well at the end of the '80s, you had a pull back from using the VA systems because veterans would have their benefits, if they were not already reduced, reduced further if they were convicted or had any testing for drug crimes, if anything effected their benefits that way, especially in regards to cannabis.

For some of the other, harder drugs, maybe say heroin or things like that, I try not to scale them, but they are in scale harder drugs, they would not have the same kind of effect, but for cannabis, however, it seemed to be a big trigger.

So as we got down to my generation, I'm a second Iraq war veteran, I went over in 2003, which is crazy, to be thinking about it. So a recent sample of my peers, about 600 of them from Iraq and Afghanistan, found that fourteen percent of them had post traumatic stress disorder, 39 percent reported severe alcohol abuse, three percent reported drug abuse, in addition, axis one and axis two depression was identified as a major barrier to housing and employment.

And so, with these kind of figures, you're -- well, maybe you will ask, you'll say, well, who caused the injury. We're not pointing the blame, and in fact we're at duty to serve our country, but why should veterans that have fought for one country be treated differently from state to state?

Why would you -- why would you not understand that the symptoms and conditions that triggered this matter should not be handled differently. Now, in studying it, what we've outlined, as Mary Lynn has traveled across the country, and has taught me, is every state has a different flow, and the way their policy considerations affect individuals.

A quick case I'm going to touch on, not a veteran, but in New Jersey, is Barrett versus Robert Half. Robert Half is like a staffing placement company, especially for lawyers, so it's pretty interesting. So, Barrett versus Robert Half, and it's a case about the violation of New Jersey law against discrimination. You had an individual who was required to take mandatory drug testing, but he previously was a medical user of cannabis. He was terminated from his employment.

So, when you go into a situation similar with veterans, they are required to go to the VA to get healthcare, but when they go and they're drug tested, even randomly, we have a good friend Michael Krawitz, even randomly, that then affects their treatment profile. And then it affected the benefits received each month.

And then, if -- depending on if you were in certain states, and good folks in here like Doctor Burnett can let you know, that if you sign up for a card as a veteran or recipient of federal benefits, they may exempt you now as a holder of the card from owning a weapon, they may exempt you from receiving benefits, they may exempt you from receiving actual opioid medication that you may need in addition to cannabis, or other antibiotics, because of the feared impact.

And that kind of relates back to what you said, in 1985, Mary Lynn, is they're doing all this without any research.

MARY LYNN MATHRE: Yeah. It -- yeah, it's scary. And when you talk about that, I -- that's probably the biggest thing, hitting on weapons now. We have, as most people know, there is no treatment for post traumatic stress.

There's two antidepressants that are approved for the depression with post traumatic stress, but you've got, vets or anyone with post-traumatic stress, we don't like to say disorder, post traumatic stress symptoms being, obviously, nightmares or insomnia, not being able to sleep at all, depression, huge anxiety, when I say anger we probably -- it slips into rage really quickly. Very often they've been wounded so there's pain as well.

So, the VA medicates them. They give them an antidepressant for their depression, they give them an anti-anxiety medication for their anxiety, they give them an opioid for their pain, they give them a sleep medicine, they give them whatever else they need. You cannot take those medications and not have serious consequences.

Every antidepressant drug that's out there has a black box warning on the label that says, if you open the package insert, that says may cause suicidal or homicidal ideation.

BRANDON WYATT: Wait, that happened to me. Wait. But I had, I was in law school. Wait, I almost killed myself.

MARY LYNN MATHRE: Yeah.

BRANDON WYATT: They gave me all this cocktail of stuff, and I asked the math question, Mary Lynn --

MARY LYNN MATHRE: And Brandon could have a weapon.

BRANDON WYATT: If every -- I asked a question, and you remember, I asked it almost the first time we met, and it almost put you in tears. If they gave me five pills that all had a five to ten percent occurrence of suicidal thoughts or ideations, I had to take five, don't I have like 60, 65 percent chance then of wanting to kill myself?

MARY LYNN MATHRE: Well, it's not all of them that have that chance, but when you mix them all? And again, our healthcare professionals, we've all learned that we need random controlled trials. Double-blind, placebo controlled studies, that's when a drug gets FDA approved.

We have never had any -- any of those studies on poly-pharmacy, on when you mix five drugs. So you've got -- that's never happened, and we know from veterans saying I felt like I was going insane. Maybe they did feel homicidal. And when you bring up weapons, they could have their weapons, and frankly, a veterans -- in my mind, anyway, just being around them, is much safer with weapons because they know how to use them, they know what they can do. They're -- they know what to do.

But, now they get cannabis --

BRANDON WYATT: Let's clarify --

MARY LYNN MATHRE: -- but now they get cannabis --

BRANDON WYATT: -- if they didn't have an ID card, if they did not register for an ID card, they can have weapons, but if they did, you can't. So, let's just clarify.

MARY LYNN MATHRE: No, that's what I'm saying. But, if you're a cannabis patient, yeah. So if you're a cannabis patient, you cannot have a weapon. So, now the veteran gets off the medications that make them homicidal or suicidal, to go to a medication that helps them feel normal again, and we'll learn at the last session a little bit about why that happens, but, helps them normalize their system, feeling better, and they have to give up their weapon.

And, again, that's a security issue to the vet. They're not going to -- generally, a healthy vet is not going to be crazy out there with it. In fact, I want to -- here's a really sad story. Before our conference in 2012, six months before it, in Tucson, Arizona, there was an incident. It was a veteran, an Iraqi veteran. Hispanic. He's back home. DEA's going to do a drug bust. Somebody said that he's using cannabis, whatever.

So they did one of those pre-dawn drills. Well, veterans, the other thing about post traumatic stress is you're hypervigilant. He heard something. He know something was going on. He thought he was being burglarized, going to be burglarized. He put his wife and son in the bathroom. He was ready with his weapon, whoever was going to come and rob him. There's not a knock knock, can we see you, we've got a search warrant. There was a bust in that door, and sixty bullets later, what did we find?

Nobody could go in for a while, and I was thinking, oh, what are they going to do, plant drugs on him or something? But, those sixty bullets, I don't think all of them hit him [sic: police fired 71 rounds in this incident, and Jose Guerena was hit 22 times], but of course he was killed.

He still had the safety on his weapon. You know, when you think about it, vets are trained to kill. I mean, it's a sad story, but that's -- their warriors, they're trained to kill. Police are trained to serve and protect. And so we've got our police service now coming in, unannounced, to a veteran's home, guns blazing, without knowing what they're shooting at, and a dead vet.

And --

BRANDON WYATT: Well, let's talk a little bit about how that, how these kind of stories, you may way, well, why would Mary Lynn tell us such a sad story, why does this matter? Because it happens in every state. It happens in every jurisdiction. It happened to my brothers in arms, it happens to my big brothers like Al, his brothers in arms, it happens in every state, so it's a cross-cleaving tie, it makes everything come together.

Now, when we look at equity laws, when you say, what do you mean, equity? Things that provide remediation. That's a big portion of the population that everyone should pay special attention to, because we taught ourselves as veterans, no matter if you're black, white, yadda yadda, we're all green, blue, some weird color that matches our uniform, at the same time. We're not girls or guys, we're soldiers or airmen or navalmen [sic: sailors], okeh?

And so, that gives us an ability to work together. We're a political bloc. Now, there's laws and different tools that veterans can open the door for, that relate to disability rights, relate to the rights of individuals to have public housing, rights of individuals to have reduced medication costs. One of the big reasons that you want to point out your veterans in that is because the laws that are shaped that way are favorable to politicians.

Call your politicians, talk with your politicians, make sure that they establish equity laws and programs that assist veterans, because by allowing us to open the door, you allow the door to be opened to help all disabled individuals have reductions on benefit rights, if it's, hey, the cannabis cost is too high, great, that's something that will be annexed.

When you look at countries like Canada, how they treat their veterans and what not, they all get a certain little stipend each month, I think it's around $175, for medication, not too much, but enough to keep the industry alive and going.

So we can start making a bridge between different laws, especially as it relates to interstate laws, by focusing on helping veterans. Why? Because we didn't fight for one state, we fought for all fifty states. So when we're down in DC, where I live, we can talk in the same language. All right?

So that's a big thing for New Jersey to bring forward, I'm proud of you guys. You guys passed an opioid disorder, I hate to say disorder, but opioid addiction disorder, about a month ago, for your bill. That's huge. One of the big things about veterans and opioids is, it was one of the highlights that they noticed because the VA spent so much money on the pills, and immediately there was a study done by individuals, like Doctor Sisley and her friends, that showed there was a correlation between suicides and the rate -- the amount of money spent on opioid medication for veterans.

So that's why many states started paying attention. So Mary Lynn, I want to let you close out a little bit, we talked about equity laws, but one of the big things we also talked about, or should have talked about, is to make sure we looked at the post-service to prison pipeline, like, but we didn't get there, but, anything you want to close out with today?

MARY LYNN MATHRE: Well, cripe, just even thinking, prison, that pipeline, uff-dah. I -- in closing, I think the big thing here is, veterans kind of epitomize, in many ways, the United States. What are they doing? They're defending the Constitution first. They're defending freedom in America. So to come back, as a veteran, and want to grow a plant? And be thrown in jail, to be kicked out of the service dishonorably, to lose your family because you can't take the medicine.

We have families break up because, if it's a male in the service, he needs that to keep his sanity, to be a good parent. The mother, the wife is sitting there going, but if anybody knows this, they will take my children away, our children away. It breaks up families all the time.

So, I guess that's it, with the veterans. It's just -- it's the epitome of what is wrong with this country. They go and risk their lives for, you know, for all of us, to come back and not be able to use a plant. Uff-dah.

BRANDON WYATT: And if you use the plant, different benefits and things are taken away, so, it's really great talking with you all. It's often hard to get veterans up on a panel to speak, so it's an honor to be educate a little bit with you all today. Please take the time to speak with veterans in your life. They're great advocates, and they often will provide you with some information that will help you tremendously in your push for cannabis rights and legislation.

If you have an issue talking with a senator or a councilman, take your local veteran in there with you. They're going to open that door, all right? Thank you all.

MARY LYNN MATHRE: Thank you.

DOUG MCVAY: That was Brandon Wyatt, an attorney and advocate in Washington, DC, an Mary Lynn Mathre, co-founder and president of Patients Out of Time. Both of them are veterans, and they appeared on a panel at the Patients Out of Time Twelfth National Clinical Conference on Cannabis Therapeutics, speaking about veterans' issues and medical cannabis.

You're 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. I'm your host Doug McVay, editor of DrugWarFacts.org.

I ended up spending a few extra days on the east coast this year because of a travel snafu. I know, poor me, stuck in New York City. But, I had a good time, got together with some friends. One of those friends, Steve Bloom, and I took a food pilgrimage through the lower east side to one of my favorite spots ever, Yonah Schimmel's Knish Bakery.

After all that, we went back and sat and had a long interview. I'm bringing you portions of that interview through the next couple of weeks. We heard a little bit last week, about Steve and I and the Cannabis Action Network and Hemp Tour and those glory days back in the '80s. Now, let's hear about some of the work that Steve is doing currently.

Wow. Let's start with -- let's start with some of the fun stuff that you're doing now. Well, we just finished this great walk through New York, and it's -- it was like a blast from thirty years ago, walking into some of these places, and just the smells and the sounds, and going to Nine Bleecker Street, to the old YIPPIE! headquarters, and it's just been madness. It's just been madness.

It's been -- how did you get here, Steve?

STEVE BLOOM: Okeh, where?

DOUG MCVAY: Oh, well, to this -- to the exalted position that we find you in now, as publisher, editor, no, not publisher, you're the editor of -- yeah, let's talk, let's do the current, so that we -- so that people, I mean, people already know who you are but that's okeh, we'll, just in case they don't.

And, Freedom Leaf Magazine is -- full disclosure, I occasionally write for Freedom Leaf Magazine -- is a terrific publication that's one of the top in the marijuana media industry, field, as far as I'm concerned. I did mention I write for them, right? Yes.

So, how did that start? You're the, you were -- you are the first news editor? Then --

STEVE BLOOM: Well, I'm the editor in chief.

DOUG MCVAY: Editor in chief, sorry.

STEVE BLOOM: I started in the third issue. The first two issues came out the end of 2013, and Chris Goldstein, who's affiliated with NORML, Philly NORML, and does his own thing, works for Philly.com. He had gotten involved with Freedom Leaf, and he had contacted me about this new publication that he was working on, and asked me to write for it.

So, for the first two issues, I wrote articles. And in the second issue, when the second issue came out, it looked a little sloppy to me, and I got in touch with Chris and I gave him, like, a critique, you know, I sent him a note with, like, you should do this and that.

And he got back to me and he said, well, you know, maybe you should do it. You know, and I said, Chris, I don't want your job, that's not what I'm saying here, I'm just trying to give you a little advice on how to improve the magazine. He says, well, maybe you'd better do it.

DOUG MCVAY: It was less a, you think you're so smart you try it, it was more like, you know, you're so smart.

STEVE BLOOM: You know, I think Chris knew it really wasn't his thing to be the head of a magazine. He's a good reporter, and he's super knowledgeable about so many things, but it wasn't necessarily, you know, where he needed to be, and he needed a little help, and instead of, you know, me coming and coaching him, you know, he kind of felt like maybe better I just take it over.

So, I did leapfrog over Chris and became the editor in chief, and Chris stayed on as senior editor, and we worked together, you know, very closely for the next couple of years. So that's how I got involved.

Freedom Leaf is a cool little publication that deals with marijuana policy, politics, some science, some business, some culture, you know, we have our hand in whatever is happening, but the main focus is the policy changes in the US. Every issue we zero in on the latest and now it's Massachusetts going legal in July, and a lot of movement here in the New York area.

We've been following obviously very closely developments in California, Nevada, the new states, the old states, you know, that are even getting older by three, four, five years, Colorado, Washington, Oregon, your home state. So keeping an eye on what's going on domestically and internationally. Canada, we just did a report on that, looking around to cover world issues.

We have a new issue coming out with a lot of Mexico coverage. So there's just so much out there, you know, you just have to carve your own space, and I guess we have. You know, just sort of by the unique vision that I suppose I have, because I don't get too much direction, I have a lot of freedom to more or less do what I want, so it's my pallet every month to put together, you know, curate, you know, a new issue from start to finish, and we have, you know, people who write regularly, and we let NORML, and SSDP, and NCIA, and WomenGrow, and a few other organizations have their voice, and they write regular columns.

And then the rest of the magazine is, you know, whatever is in the news, you know, and just get good people to write about it. You know, that's the key, and then I'm also editing the website, FreedomLeaf.com, which you write for, and that's a little more up to date newsy. The magazine's a little more broader in terms of the overall focus of being feature-y. So, we try to make a distinction between the blog format that we feature online versus the print format of a magazine, which is a little bit of a different style of writing and look.

I had been an editor at High Times for many years, I got away from print publication, and it's fun to get back into it, because my heart is always in print. That's where I got my start, when I was younger, in high school and college. But I love the web, you know. When I left High Times, I started CelebStoner. I learned a lot early on. I know how to do basic coding, probably a lot of people don't even know how to do that, of course I learned a few years ago, when you had to know a few things, like today I had to fix a story, it needed some coding, and thank goodness I knew, you know, I remembered the basics. But still, basics help.

And -- and I started, you know, before I even really knew what a blog was, in 2006, and kind of had some training wheels to learn how to blog, and learn how to post articles, and put photos together up onto, you know, a website, and you know, learn the real basics of that, and that's evolved into CelebStoner. So I kind of wear two hats, I'm the editor in chief of Freedom Leaf, I'm the publisher of CelebStoner.

DOUG MCVAY: Well, the -- I love the idea that you have the activist kind of orientation, the sort of, I mean, the back page of your, of the issue I was just looking at is the events calendar. There's a big ad from SSDP, there's a big ad for Patients Out of Time. Anyway, the -- and I love that. I love that. It's a, I think it's -- especially because you're covering the politics, it's, I mean, the business is part of it, so you talk about some of those as well, but you still cover the social justice side and the politics side. I just, I think that's brilliant.

STEVE BLOOM: It's a must. That's my background, that's my interest, but we also want to cover the business too, because there's a whole new world out there, and it would be foolish to ignore it. So just like, you know, you have that big article in the new issue, you know, an interview with BioTrack THC's CEO Patrick Vo, you know, this is a world that, you know, people have to deal with now. You know, seed to sale tracking and all that is kind of technical, but important.

And so, you know, if we can break it down a little bit in the magazine too, in addition to talking about policy, why not? You know, there should be a little bit for everybody. We're not snubbing anybody and saying, oh, we don't want to cover business or we're not into the green rush, or we'll just, you know, pick our spots, and be very careful about what we cover.

DOUG MCVAY: I think it's -- you mentioned the international stuff. One of the things we were talking about earliier, of course, this newest edition has Vicente Fox, your interview with him. And there's a conference that you're going to be going down to down there as well, cannamex. So let's talk about Mexico for a minute.

STEVE BLOOM: Well, it's CannaMexico, the event which Vicente Fox's organization, Centro Fox, is putting on. It's north of Mexico City in Guanajuato, near the León area. It's an international summit, and it will be new to me, because I haven't been to Mexico for any event, I haven't been to Mexico in quite a few years, and certainly not for a cannabis event.

You know, Mexico's getting in a little late, but, last year they passed a medical marijuana law, it's very limited, only allows for CBD, and it allows for US companies to possibly import to Mexico, and so the door's open a little bit there, for business.

Fox, who I interviewed, would like to see a business begin in Mexico. There really isn't any type of, you know, legal marijuana industry to speak of, and Mexico's still wracked with, you know, tremendous violence, you know, that's due to, you know, the illegal drugs in many ways, and the cartels, who do that business, and, you know, cause a lot of mayhem and violence in the country.

He, you know, clearly sees the solution to curbing the violence is ending prohibition. He believes that marijuana should be legal as well as all other drugs, sort of the Portugal approach, or he mentions Portugal and Holland in his conversation, that that's where he wants things to be.

So, he has a big plan, at 75, to try and, you know, steer Mexico finally in the right direction, try to end the violence, and get Mexico in the middle of the industry that's evolving here in the US, and that this should be a place for Mexico, too.

DOUG MCVAY: That was part of an interview with Steve Bloom. He is the publisher of CelebStoner.com and editor in chief at Freedom Leaf Magazine. Again, full disclosure, I write for both of those. And that's it for this week. We'll have more from that interview with Steve Bloom, and more from the Patients Out of Time conference, in the next couple of weeks. For now, that's it.

Thank you for joining us. 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. I’m your host Doug McVay, editor of DrugWarFacts.org.

The executive producer of the Drug Truth Network is Dean Becker. Drug Truth Network programs are available via podcast, the URLs to subscribe are on the network home page at DrugTruth.net.

The Drug Truth Network is on Facebook, please give its page a like. Drug War Facts is on Facebook too, give its page a like and share it with friends. Remember: Knowledge is power. Follow me on Twitter, I'm @DougMcVay and of course also @DrugPolicyFacts.

We'll be back next week with thirty more minutes of news and information about drug policy reform and the drug war. For now, for the Drug Truth Network, this is Doug McVay saying so long. So long!

DOUG MCVAY: 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.