CULTURAL BAGGAGE

MAY 19, 2017

TRANSCRIPT

DEAN BECKER: Hi folks, this is Dean Becker. Thank you for joining us on this edition of Cultural Baggage. I'm in a bit of a rush. I'm at the Doubletree Hotel, marina in Berkeley, California, reporting on the Patients Out of Time gathering of doctors, nurses, and scientists about medical marijuana. I want to get back out there right now to get some more interviews, so, let us begin.

DEAN BECKER: All right, I'm back in Berkeley, California at the Doubletree, outside listening to the birds sing, watching the water glisten in the bay here.

MICHAEL KRAWITZ: Quite beautiful.

DEAN BECKER: Speaking with Mister Michael Krawitz, he's the director of Veterans for Medical Cannabis, and we're attending the Patients Out of Time conference here on a beautiful day. Hello, Michael.

MICHAEL KRAWITZ: Hi, Dean, how are you doing?

DEAN BECKER: I'm well, sir. It's good to be back, kind of like old home week here, is it not?

MICHAEL KRAWITZ: It is, it really feels like family, the advocates that you get to know over the years working on so many projects together, feels great to get to see them.

DEAN BECKER: Now, you know, we have again, we have the scientists coming, we have the doctors, we've got the authors, we've got the lawyers, we've got the top dogs, if you will, examining and directing our nation's policies, our understanding about marijuana. Give us a summary of what you're bringing to this conference, would you, Michael?

MICHAEL KRAWITZ: Well, the thing that I'm working on is veterans' advocacy and veterans' coordination, and right now, we've got probably the highest number of veterans' organizations working on medical cannabis access that I've ever seen, and we had a meeting last night that Weed For Warriors put together, a little gathering, and we're going to have another veterans', more a stakeholder meeting and an activist kind of strategy session on Sunday.

So this is sort of a subtheme of the conference here, working with veterans and veterans' advocacy, and recognizing that veterans as a community are very much in need of cannabis as a medicine to help them break the cycle of abuse of opiates and overdose, and even to help with lowering suicide rates.

DEAN BECKER: Yeah. Twenty two a day, I keep hearing, and it's unacceptable indeed, Michael, we veterans deserve much better. I'm going to keep quiet, it's a very touchy subject, isn't it?

MICHAEL KRAWITZ: Well, I think it's important for people to understand what we're talking about here, we're not just talking about, okeh, cannabis is great, give it to vets. We've actually got science that shows that if you allow patients to have access to cannabis, let's say as a pain medicine, they're going to use less of these pills, the opiate pain medications, and that very logically leads to less opiate overdose, and less death.

And the same thing with post traumatic stress, we've been working on that as a qualifying condition under state laws, and we've found the same thing, where veterans are telling us they're getting a better result using cannabis as an adjunct and using a lot less of these pills. And together with other treatments that are available at the VA, I think cannabis is just an effective tool that's kind of missing from their toolbox.

DEAN BECKER: Sad but true. You know, and the heck of it is, is, it's still, in essence, reefer madness. It's clinging to hysteria of the past, that something horrible might happen if this were to be allowed. Your response to that, Michael.

MICHAEL KRAWITZ: Well, in a way, it's kind of the past fighting the future, but I would word it a little differently. What we've got here are a lot of officials, like, let's say the Attorney General of the United States, you know, Attorney General Sessions. These are individuals that, their entire concept and memory of marijuana is, you know, a handful of people with signs outside, you know, trying to legalize marijuana, you know, back in the 1960s or something like that, and, you know, we stand by that, those are our people, we're not ashamed of our activist past, but we've grown and changed so much since then, based on the evidence, based on the information that we've gained through science, and ironically a lot of it paid for by the US federal government.

But heck, they're not taking any of this into consideration, they're not taking it seriously, they're just dismissing it as just wildeyed claims of potheads, and, you know, heck, we've had some great wildeyed claims, you know, of our potheads, but this isn't one of them, this is hard science, the National Academies of Science, the Institute of Medicine, the, you know, Journal of the American Medical Association, these are the kind of things that we're referencing these days, it's not High Times.

Although, again, I love High Times, and I just had an article in last month's High Times I'm really proud of.

DEAN BECKER: Well, I'm proud of you too, Michael. Hey, look, the heck of it is, is if I understand right, our northern neighbors already have medical marijuana, they're fixing to legalize marijuana outright. Our southern neighbors, Mexico I think just voted to legalize medical. And they're considering legalizing it outright as well. A couple of these United States, the legislatures are teetering on the brink of legalizing more outright medical -- outright marijuana. History's just not going to be kind to those who cling too long to these ancient creeds.

MICHAEL KRAWITZ: I think that's true, but I think it's also true, there's a kind of a general thing, a general truth that's emerged, that the more you resist a rational change, the more that you, you know, prevent, you know, regular kind of common sense reforms, the more radical that change is when it finally happens, and that's the irony of the people that are clinging too hard to the past, clinging too hard to these prohibition policies. They're the ones that are really causing some of the most liberal policies to become enacted, through their resistance.

And I think that the United States' federal government anymore has become a little island, where, you know, you have states, inside the United States, that have rebelled now, but you also have these other countries as you pointed out that have rebelled, and the United States is caught in between, because we've signed treaties that lock us into this drug war with, you know, 185 other countries, and a couple of those countries are China, and Russia, and France, and some of these countries just don't take no for an answer that easily.

So, the United States federal government is stuck between its people and the constitution of the United States, which is how we're working at the state level, you know, through the allowance of the state's authority under the constitution, and then on the other side their responsibility in the international quarters, to the drug war that we've signed into, you know, back in the days of Anslinger and Nixon.

DEAN BECKER: Holy crap. It's such a, I'll be polite --

MICHAEL KRAWITZ: Rabbit hole, it's a rabbit hole.

DEAN BECKER: Rabbit hole, thank you Michael. Well, Michael, we're going to have to wrap it up here, but if you will, please share your website, and some closing thoughts, with the listeners.

MICHAEL KRAWITZ: Well, we're at VeteransForMedicalCannabis.org, but we're also easily found on Facebook, it's facebook.com/USA.VMCA, Veterans for Medical Cannabis Access, and we're out there working as a voluntary organization, a voluntary association of veterans, mostly negotiating policy change, and we're working on policy right now with the VA, and hopefully in this legislative session we're going to have Congressional guidance and actually change VA policies, so watch, watch the news for what we're up to next.

DEAN BECKER: We're here at the DoubleTree here in Berkeley, California. Beautiful sunny afternoon, I'm looking at the cover of a new book, Marijuana Horticulture: The Indoor Outdoor Medical Grower's Bible, written by Mister Jorge Cervantes. How are you doing, sir?

JORGE CERVANTES: Really good, and it's really nice to be here, it's a beautiful afternoon, and the thing is, we're right over the bay, here, and the marina's out here, and puffing away on the patio. Couldn't be better.

DEAN BECKER: I agree with you, Jorge. You know, the hell of it is, this looks a whole lot like freedom, doesn't it?

JORGE CERVANTES: Yes, it does, and it feels good. I like it, I like it. California's wonderful, really, that way, because there's quite a few freedoms here. But we've got to watch them, they're -- we get a freedom, and they try to erode it really quickly. There's a lot of communities that have banned cannabis, you know, cannabis cultivation, in fact, I live, and I'm going to move from there, a homeowner's association, they're working at banning cannabis right now. You know? And, that's not a good thing, you know, because we worked so hard, and then we've got more resistance, more resistance, so, the only thing we can do is continue to grow.

DEAN BECKER: Right. And, you know, and it really boils down to, once it becomes legitimized, legalized, I don't know how else to say it, that people just get over this paranoid delusion about marijuana and allow it to just find its own level.

JORGE CERVANTES: Yeah.

DEAN BECKER: Many of these problems will just dissipate, won't they?

JORGE CERVANTES: Well, they sure will, because, you know, the thing is, it's a plant, it's been around here, it's been around the world for way longer than man has, and it's really interesting because, you know, we developed with cannabis because we've got an endocannabinoid system, and we've got CB, or, well CB1 and CB2 receptors, there's more, so we developed this, we developed together, and then, then politicians went and took the cannabis away from us, and it's incredibly medicinal. That's the funny thing. They took it away to help us, and replaced it with synthetic opioids.

DEAN BECKER: Which are killing tens of thousands as we speak. I kind of slipped up, I didn't really introduce our guest. This is not his first book, this is not his first venture into educating, and emboldening, good folks like you, dear listener. Jorge, tell us a little bit more about your writings, the work you've done over the years, please.

JORGE CERVANTES: Okeh. My first book, Indoor Marijuana Horticulture, came out in 1983, and nobody wanted to publish it, so I self-published it myself. And it turns out that that book, it, the first year it sold six thousand copies. The next year it sold 20,000 copies. And it continued to grow, and since then it's sold a million copies.

And then my newest book, Cannabis Encyclopedia, that thing is huge. It weighs two kilos, and it's 596 pages long, eight and a half by eleven format, it's got over 2,000 color images in it. And, yeah, and it's really well-edited, I was really fortunate to be able to work with some top-level professionals.

DEAN BECKER: All right. Well Jorge, I don't know what else to say, except it's an honor to meet up with you here. I've been a fan of yours over the years, hell, the decades, and, is there a website? Closing thoughts you'd like to share?

JORGE CERVANTES: Oh yeah, you should just type in my name, Jorge Cervantes, into the internet, and you'll have hundreds and thousands of things to look at. You can type my name into Youtube and go to my Youtube channel. I've uploaded more than 250 grow videos.

DEAN BECKER: I'm here with Mister Chris Conrad, author of, co-author of Shattered Lives and many other books that you should read and pay attention to. A man who's worked to bring justice here in his state of California. We're attending the Patients Out Of Time conference. My friend, Chris Conrad, how you doing?

CHRIS CONRAD: I'm doing great, up here signing copies of my new book, The Newbie's Guide To Cannabis And The Industry, and it's going well.

DEAN BECKER: And, there's a lot of newbie needs these days, is there not?

CHRIS CONRAD: Yeah, there sure is, in fact, what my book does is it introduces people to cannabis. I mean, you know, we don't presume any foreknowledge of it but it goes quite in depth, actually, about the endocannabinoid system, and the ways it effects people and things like that. Then it goes into how the various business side of it as well, so that people can look at it from both points of view, if you're interested in cannabis, or if you're interested in the biz.

DEAN BECKER: Right, and you can get in trouble economically and judicially, and probably a couple or three other ways, if you ain't careful. Right?

CHRIS CONRAD: Yeah, that's one of the things we talk about, that it's like any other business but you've got a lot of other issues on the side you need to watch out for and be mindful.

DEAN BECKER: PR being paramount, I would think, right?

CHRIS CONRAD: Right, yeah, that's an, really an important one, in fact, especially when, if you're doing something and you're working with the community, then you get more support and also if you have legal problems then you get more legal support, too, so we've seen, in fact we give some examples of that in the book, about how being a good neighbor is such a critical part to being a successful cannabis business.

DEAN BECKER: Right. Now, are you working just in California or are you branching around the country a bit?

CHRIS CONRAD: Well, mostly we -- we just got back from a trip to Europe, so I did speaking tours with my wife, Mikki Norris, we hit -- spoke in Holland, we spoke in Spain, we spoke in Ireland. So we did a little tour like that, but, basically, we're focusing on California. We worked on the Prop 64 campaign, very happy with the outcome of that. But we, you know, the thing about that is of course that the initiative, it had a lot of regulations built into it. Now, after it get -- got passed, in the legislature, they introduced 43 bills, and 41 of them are to make it more strict. You know? And only two of them were to help people out, one of them being the, to stop federal interfere -- to have the state not work with the feds in terms of going after medical marijuana or marijuana here in California.

So, but it just amazes me that the legislature immediately thinks that, oh, the voters legalized marijuana, therefore we have to clamp down.

DEAN BECKER: Which state was it here in the US that, was it Florida? That voted for legalization and they tried to crimp it down to where you can't even get smokeable marijuana anymore. It's the --

CHRIS CONRAD: Yeah, I was just hearing about that, talking to Irv Rosenfeld about that, and he's saying that they're -- that the new -- proposed new rules was that you'd be, that you don't get flowers to smoke, which of course, the initiative that had passed said that it would. I think Arizona's the most interesting one, though, where they had, I think they passed two marijuana legalization initiatives, and then they had to, the legislature messed them both up so they had to pass another initiative that said the legislature cannot screw with an initiative passed by the voters, and now they've, then the third one didn't make it through. But, they -- it was close, but they didn't quite pass it, that was the one state that didn't succeed last year, of the legalization initiatives.

DEAN BECKER: Now, I'm proud to say, my county in Texas has made some major progress. The rest of the state, the legislature -- the legislative session is just now ending, or nearly so. They had something like 22 bills dealing with marijuana, medical marijuana, et cetera, that were advanced more than ever before, and yet didn't reach the goal line of being voted on in the House.

CHRIS CONRAD: Well, I think that Texas is really important, because if Texas makes a move, and you've made a lot of progress, as you mentioned, we've been supportive of that, you know, from afar, from here in California, but it's one of those things where if Texas would actually go ahead and do something, that that's going to really have a big impact on a lot of other states.

California, people have been expecting it for a long time, so, you know, we have a big effect in some -- one sense, but having Texas turn around would be a really beautiful thing to have happen. So I'm giving a lot of shout-outs to people out there that make this happen.

DEAN BECKER: All right. We've been speaking with Mister Chris Conrad, author and criminal and cannabis expert, and, Chris, is there a website?

CHRIS CONRAD: That's criminal expert, not --

DEAN BECKER: What did I say? What did I say?

CHRIS CONRAD: You said criminal and cannabis expert. Criminal expert and cannabis expert.

DEAN BECKER: Well, there's a comma in there somewhere or something. But, we've been speaking with Mister Conrad, and are there closing thoughts, website, you might want to point folks to?

CHRIS CONRAD: Yeah, well, if people want to catch up on the news we have TheLeafOnline.com, and my website is ChrisConrad.com, where I talk about Californi laws and legal defense. Basically, if people have a legal issue that they have in their home state, I'd like to talk to them about it and see if I can help, because I've been able to help people all over the country. I'm qualified as an expert in something like eight states right now, and federal courts, and 30 plus counties in California, 35 or something like that, so I have quite a lot of experience and have a lot of insight that, you know, I don't bill everybody for everything, I like to, if I can just give some advice and help out, I like to do that.

DEAN BECKER: It's time to play a quick Name That Drug By Its Side Effects! Relief and euphoria. Time's up! The answer: cannabis.

Well, it's not just old home week with the people I run into here at the Patients Out of Time conference, I was just introduced to Nick Morrow, he's another speaker for Law Enforcement Action Partnership, formerly Law Enforcement Against Prohibition. And he's here at the Patients Out of Time conference. What brings you here, Nick?

NICK MORROW: I do a lot of court expert work, I'm a possession for sales, drug sales, expert, DUI expert, field sobriety testing expert, so, that's a primary way that I earn my living now. I'm retired from law enforcement, obviously, but, I do work with LEAP. We're still all getting used to the new changeover in the name type of thing, where we've taken the prohibition out, but, all of us have our own areas of expertise, and I've gone to the, the Cannabis Therapeutics conference before, back, well, jeez, 2012. Outstanding conference, couldn't say enough good things about it. Learned tons, made some -- made a lot of good friends, made a lot of good contacts.

The science intrigues me. I'm a drug geek, anything to do with drugs, anything to do with treatment, especially therapeutic treatment, and this is the conference for that particular subject matter.

DEAN BECKER: And, no, Nick, you're absolutely right. This is where the scientists are invited, where the nurses and doctors who deal with this every day are allowed to present the unvarnished truth, that it is of benefit and worthy of respect. The government should be here. They should have DEA members here, they should have members of ONDCP here, to learn, but they don't want to learn, do they, Nick?

NICK MORROW: Well, there's, was it Upton Sinclair, one of my favorite quotes is, it's impossible to teach a man something when his livelihood depends on not understanding it. And once you learn, once you know, you can't unknow it, and, you know, this battle that we've had back and forth about medical efficacy and all this kind of stuff, oh it's not, you know, we need more research, and marijuana's been researched enough, there's medical efficacy, there's, it's a hundred percent.

There's no argument, anybody who says there isn't, they're a liar. They've got an agenda. And so, when you satisfy that, now, let's find out what it can help with. Let's let the people, the people at this conference, the people in the white lab coats, the scientists, the social workers, the people that are actually going to be treating patients with it, what do they say about it? And that's the exciting thing. You get what, like you said, the unvarnished truth outt of the whole thing. It's science, it's not an opinion, it's not an agenda, it's actual science.

If it didn't work, we wouldn't be here. And so there are enough people here, heavy hitters in this, in the industry, heavy hitters in medicine, that are involved and coming to, you know the next breakthrough of what cannabis can help with. You know, there are studies that cannabis helps with 400 different maladies. Why aren't we putting this stuff in the water? You know, that kind of thing, and so that's my thing, is I -- you know, I'm not a scientist, I'm an ex-street cop, I'm an ex-drug expert, or current drug expert I guess. I believe that there's an incredible future for it, and I think that the white lab coat people, the scientists, the people that are behind this 100 percent, they need to be let loose and do the research we should be doing.

And, you know, that's kind of why I'm here, and the last one that I went to, I think I took two and a half, three days, I took 35 pages of notes. I mean, just, I couldn't keep up with all the information that was coming at me, so I was very excited about it, and first and foremost that's why I'm here, because there's so much information that I gain, helps my expertise, helps my opinion. If I get a chance to talk to groups, I have the latest greatest scientific evidence. Not an opinion. And so it works out pretty good.

DEAN BECKER: Nick, any closing thoughts, a website maybe you might want to recommend?

NICK MORROW: Yeah, I do. I'm easy to find on the internet, you know, NickMorrow@aol.com, if there's any other kind of questions or anything like that. Like I said, I do a lot of DUI work, I do a lot of drug expert work, and I kind of unravel a lot of law enforcement approaches to under the influence and DUI, that type of thing. So that's what keeps me busy mostly now, and of course whenever LEAP calls, you know, I show up, and I'm giving presentations for them on a regular basis. So, always got to keep busy, you know.

DEAN BECKER: Sitting in the sunshine with my friend Irv Rosenfeld. How are you doing, Irv?

IRV ROSENFELD: All right, good afternoon, good to see you.

DEAN BECKER: Irv, tell folks about Irv. What is -- what brings you here to this conference?

IRV ROSENFELD: I'm here for the Patients Out of Time conference. It's an organization that teaches doctors and nurses about the benefits of medical cannabis, and I'm the longest surviving federal medical cannabis patient in the United States. I learned about the medical aspect of cannabis in 1971. I started taking on the United States federal government in '72. In 1982, I won, hearings before Food and Drug Administration, and they've been supplying me ten medical marijuana cigarettes per day for almost 35 years.

So every month, I get over a half a pound of marijuana for medical use.

DEAN BECKER: One of the lawyers in here at the conference was talking about, many times police find somebody with an ounce, and kind of declare that to be enough to sell to others, because it, you know, an ounce a month is way too much for one person to consume. There's no logic in that thought, is there, Irv?

IRV ROSENFELD: None whatsoever. Again, I go through eight ounces a month, and that's with my prescription, and I have prescription, I'm one of two people in the United States that actually have a prescription. And so that's what I get from the federal government. And lots of patients can use a lot of medicine, and not get the euphoric effect, like I don't get a euphoric effect, never have. So therefore it's not unusual for a patient to use, you know, multiple ounces per week for different parts of their disorder, especially if they happen to be juicing it or making edibles out of it, or even vapor or tinctures. It will use more, you will use more of the plant material doing that than just smoking it.

DEAN BECKER: Now, we've heard Doctor Sanjay Gupta, he brought forward the truth about these little kids with epilepsy that benefit greatly from the use of cannabis, and many other maladies are beginning to come forward. What is the malady for which cannabis benefits you, Irv?

IRV ROSENFELD: I have bone tumors all throughout my body, called Multiple Congenital Cartilaginous Exostoses, and a variant of the syndrome Pseudopseudo-Hypoparathyroidism, which means that these tumors that I have could grow at any time, in existing ones, I could grow new ones. I've not had a new tumor develop since I was 21, so, what the cannabis does for me, it serves as a muscle relaxant, relaxing the muscles growing, where these tumors that grow outwardly into the muscles, making it very painful, but more importantly, can make it to where I could tear a vein and hemorrhage and a clot could break off and go to my heart, my brain, or my lungs.

So it serves as a muscle relaxant, serves as an anti-inflammatory, keeps the bursa or sac of fluid over each tumor less inflamed, less chance of going malignant. It's an analgesic, it helps with pain. And it's kept the tumors from growing. So for me, it's been, it's saved my life.

DEAN BECKER: Irv, you know, in recent days we've heard from our US Attorney General declaring no good people smoke marijuana, and, you know, there are still many within government, mostly oldtimers these days it seems, who still cling to the old reefer madness, and want this war on our people who use this plant to continue. But we're also hearing many others who are discussing this more openly, who are allowing this to be re-examined. There's hope, isn't there? Especially after -- with conferences like this, that educate people and propel them back into the community to help that progress. Your thought, sir.

IRV ROSENFELD: Well, there definitely is improvement. I mean, in 1982, there was Robert Randall and myself as the only two federal patients. So at that point, we decided we were going to teach the entire world about the medical benefits of medical cannabis. And here, you know, decades later, we're really getting somewhere, but what people need -- what people forget is 1850 to 1937, marijuana was legal in this country as a medical -- for medical use. Merck, Eli Lilly, Squibb, they all manufactured, mostly in tincture form, for many different disorders, and for me, I saw a bottle of tincture from Eli Lilly from 1914, and right on there it had 50 different diseases it was recommended for or prescribed for, and one of course was muscle relaxant, anti-inflammatory, and for pain.

And that's what it helped me with, but the funny thing is, I was at a medical conference, and we were auctioning off this bottle, and we got three hundred dollars. And the last disorder was a sentence, and this was a medical conference, and so I said, I've got one more disorder, and then you'll make final bids, and whoever wins, wins the bottle. And what it said, this was 1914, Eli Lilly, for that time of the month when women are out of their minds.

Well, the head of the American Nurses Association stood up, and said, $350 and nobody better bid against me because it's that time of the month. So the point was, it was a medicine in this country long before they outlawed it, and the sad part is that nobody remembers in this country today that's alive that remembers when cannabis was a prescribed medicine, and was a medicine in this country, that was before 1937. And there's nobody alive, so the hysteria that people has been ingrained into all of our generations for generations, I mean, for 60 years now, 70 years.

So it's hard to overcome the non-knowledge, so we say, of people that are zealots against us. And that's why it's so important for me. I've been getting this medicine from the federal government for 35 years. They said smoking it harms your lungs. Well, I've smoked more marijuana than -- documented than anybody in the world. Okeh, I was smoking 12 years illegally before I became a federal patient. Federally I've smoked over 140 cannabis cigarettes, and my lung capacity's 108 percent of normal. So, now how can people say that it causes lung damage? I'm walking proof it doesn't.

Okeh, they say it harms, you know, your brain, it does this, it does that to you. Well, I'm a stock broker. I handle millions of dollars on a daily basis, smoking ten medical cannabis cigarettes per day. So, it hasn't inhibited me in that respect. I'm very motivational, okeh, I don't, I teach disabled sailing on weekends, in Miami, in Coconut Grove with an organization called Shake A Leg. So the point is, the people that talk so badly about it, how bad it is for you, I'd sometimes like to ask them, have you ever tried it? Of course they could come back and say, well I've never tried arsenic but we know it's bad for you.

DEAN BECKER: I'd like to throw in one thought here, kind of, you were talking about the early days, how it was illegal up to '37. And some of the very racial posturing that was put forward in state legislatures around the country, here's an example, I think it was South Dakota where they said, you give one of these Mexican beet workers a couple of tears off a marijuana cigarette, the next thing you know, he thinks he's been elected president of Mexico, and sets out to kill his enemies. They all laughed, slammed the gavel, and passed the bill.

IRV ROSENFELD: Right. Well, the whole point of it becoming illegal in '37 was, it was all political and racist. It's very simple. The white families that were in power were such as the Hearst Foundation, Hearst family. Okeh, well they owned millions and millions of trees in Mexico, and to make paper for their newspaper. Okeh, well, hemp was a big competition for them, was the biggest competition. So people in the -- were worried about, you know, economic, but what they were really worried about is the Mexicans and the blacks proliferating. And becoming more popular than -- populous than the white people, and so therefore they could take over.

So how do you do that? You can't keep them from having babies. Well, how do you stop them? Well, let's take away their vote. Well how are we going to take away their vote? Well, let's make marijuana illegal. Because they're the only ones that use that, blacks and Mexicans and a few musicians, certainly none of our kids do it. So if we outlaw that, then we can arrest them all and take away their voting rights.

So the Hearst Foundation said, well gosh, if we can outlaw marijuana, we can outlaw hemp. And that would sure help my trees, you know, in Mexico, so yeah, I'm all in favor of that. Then you have the Dupont family, a very wealthy family. Well, the Dupont family had just come out with rayon and nylon. Well, what was the biggest competition? Hemp. Well, gosh, if we can outlaw marijuana, we can outlaw hemp, and people will have to buy rayon and nylon. That's fantastic. Okeh? So it was all, it was all political. The cotton industry, cotton says my god, if we can cut hemp out, then people could buy our cotton.

DEAN BECKER: Friends, we've been talking with Mister Irv Rosenfeld, one of the two surviving medical marijuana patients.

IRV ROSENFELD: Federal. Federal.

DEAN BECKER: Well, I was getting there. Supplied by the United States government. Irv, is there a website, some closing thoughts you'd like to share?

IRV ROSENFELD: Yes. You can go to my website, which is MyMedicineConsulting.com. Repeat, www.MyMedicineConsulting.com, where they can learn about what I'm doing, and consulting in this industry, and what myself and others are doing for patient navigation, to help patients, especially in the new communities, the new cities. Somebody walks into a dispensary, they're 70 years old, they go, I've got a recommendation for marijuana. They don't know what to do with that. They have no idea. Okeh, so again, we want to help navigate those patients so they have a positive aspect of using the cannabis, not just well here's your pot. No, you're not getting pot, you're getting medicine. We need to teach you how to use it. So that's what we do through My Medicine Consulting.

DEAN BECKER: Just enough time to remind you once again that because of prohibition you don't know what's in that bag, please be careful.