Program Notes
Guest speaker: Rick Doblin
Dr. Rick Doblin and others present an overview of the current state of medical marijuana research. Also included in this podcast is the story of activist Steve McWilliams, who lost his life in America’s War on People who use non-prescription drugs.
Previous Episode
013 - Cancer Anxiety Study Tests Psilocybin
Next Episode
015 - Treating Schizophrenia With LSD and Psilocybin
Similar Episodes
- 218 - The Truth About Cannabis - score: 0.78865
- 402 - Global Psychedelic Research Update - score: 0.76470
- 487 - Mainstreaming Psychedelics - score: 0.73058
- 005 - Psychedelics_ Therapy, Recreation & Politics - score: 0.72805
- 043 - The Politics of Psychedelic Research - score: 0.72333
- 405 - Marijuana At Your Corner Store - score: 0.71504
- 512 - California’s Prop 64 is a TRAP - score: 0.70719
- 425 - Drug Policy, Technology and Everything Else - score: 0.70404
- 555 - Drug Policy - score: 0.68750
- 551 - Women in Cannabis - score: 0.67639
Transcript
00:00:00 ►
3D Transforming Musical Linguistic Objects
00:00:09 ►
Greetings from Cyberdelic Space. I’m Lorenzo and I’m your host here in the Psychedelic Salon.
00:00:20 ►
Today I thought it might be interesting to take a look at some news from the war on drugs and in particular the issue of medical marijuana and what’s going on on that front and particularly in the courts this week.
00:00:33 ►
Then I’ve got some soundbites I’d like to play from some memorials and some talks about Steve McWilliams.
00:01:07 ►
Steve Williams actually begin the program here with some sound bites and clips I got from a press conference at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., where the ACLU was giving a presentation about
00:01:14 ►
a case that’s in sort of a revolutionary case that’s in the courts in D.C. right now.
00:01:20 ►
And it’s a case that with the backing of Rick Doblin and his MAPS organization,
00:01:25 ►
a university professor is actually suing the government for the right to grow medical marijuana for research purposes.
00:01:34 ►
You see, there’s this real interesting catch-22 going on where the government says,
00:01:40 ►
well, marijuana needs to be on schedule 1 because there’s no proven medical usage.
00:01:45 ►
But, of course, to do research to prove that there maybe is some medical value,
00:01:50 ►
you have to have government-approved marijuana,
00:01:53 ►
which can only be obtained from the National Institute of Drug Abuse,
00:01:58 ►
which, of course, is a group designed to prevent people from ever using marijuana.
00:02:03 ►
And, as a matter of fact, this is the only prescribed substance that has a single source,
00:02:08 ►
namely the U.S. government.
00:02:09 ►
All the other psychedelics, for example, can be purchased from other sources,
00:02:13 ►
and so the government can’t hold them up.
00:02:15 ►
Only on cannabis is it a holdup.
00:02:18 ►
So, you know, it’s just an absolutely scandalous situation.
00:02:22 ►
At the very best, I guess I’d say it’s an insane policy
00:02:25 ►
I hope you don’t mind but I’ve had to cut a good deal out of this press conference in order to
00:02:32 ►
have the time and the program for the Steve McWilliams tributes too and I think you’ll
00:02:37 ►
find that was worthwhile and hopefully I’ve only cut out the repetitious parts and left in all the good stuff. So now let’s go ahead and here’s the ACLU’s press conference about the medical marijuana
00:02:51 ►
movement that’s now on the offensive.
00:02:57 ►
Hearings began this morning at DEA headquarters in Arlington, Virginia, before an administrative law judge in the ACLU’s
00:03:05 ►
challenge to the DEA’s policy of obstructing research that aims to develop medical marijuana
00:03:12 ►
into a legal prescription medicine.
00:03:16 ►
We represent Lyle Craker, who has appealed the DEA’s rejection of his application to
00:03:21 ►
grow the supply for these FDA-approved trials.
00:03:26 ►
Rick Doblin is the president and founder of the non-profit organization
00:03:32 ►
Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies, also known as MAPT.
00:03:39 ►
One of the primary missions of MAPT is to sponsor scientific research
00:03:43 ►
designed to develop marijuana into a prescription medicine
00:03:47 ►
and to educate the public honestly about the risks and benefits of this drug.
00:03:53 ►
MAPS holds the only orphan drug designation granted by the FDA for marijuana’s use in the context of treating AIDS wasting syndrome.
00:04:02 ►
in the context of treating AIDS wasting syndrome.
00:04:04 ►
For those of you who aren’t familiar,
00:04:08 ►
the Orphan Drug Program was created by Congress to facilitate the development of drugs for rare diseases.
00:04:12 ►
Dr. Doblin is the sponsor of the only research at this time
00:04:18 ►
that has the goal of developing marijuana
00:04:21 ►
into an FDA-approved prescription medicine
00:04:23 ►
and for which Professor Craker has petitioned the DEA
00:04:28 ►
to grow a supply of this medical marijuana for research.
00:04:32 ►
Dr. Doblin will be testifying at the DEA hearings tomorrow,
00:04:36 ►
if any of you are interested in attending.
00:04:38 ►
Now, Rick, why don’t you give your statement,
00:04:39 ►
and then we’ll move on to any remaining questions we have.
00:04:42 ►
Yes.
00:04:43 ►
Well, I first off really like to welcome you all here.
00:04:47 ►
What is so grateful for me to see is that the government has been for many years, for decades,
00:04:53 ►
trying to say on the one hand that there’s not enough research to make marijuana into a prescription medicine,
00:04:58 ►
and on the other hand they’ve been doing whatever they can to block the research from taking place.
00:05:03 ►
And they’ve been able to do that quietly without much attention being given to the fact that
00:05:08 ►
through their monopoly on the supply, they’ve been able to refuse to permit certain projects
00:05:13 ►
to go forward.
00:05:14 ►
Now, in the wake of the Race v. Ashcroft Supreme Court case, where federal supremacy over state
00:05:21 ►
medical marijuana laws has been affirmed, There are no other avenues left for patients and their physicians
00:05:28 ►
and sponsors of research who think that marijuana might have medical benefits
00:05:31 ►
other than through the FDA.
00:05:34 ►
That is the only route left to protect patients
00:05:37 ►
and to try to develop the medical potential of marijuana.
00:05:40 ►
So the movement of the medical marijuana legal struggles has now shifted
00:05:48 ►
to Professor Crager’s case, because we are now in a way where we should have been 20,
00:05:53 ►
30 years ago.
00:05:55 ►
Why have we, over the last, since 1996, was the first two medical marijuana initiatives
00:06:00 ►
in California and Arizona.
00:06:02 ►
There’s been roughly $15 million or so spent on state medical marijuana initiatives and
00:06:08 ►
legislative campaigns.
00:06:10 ►
And that money was spent, misspent, I would say, in a sense, from a social sense, because
00:06:15 ►
the money should have gone directly into research to try to do the scientific studies that are
00:06:20 ►
necessary to have the FDA evaluate marijuana’s medical safety and efficacy.
00:06:27 ►
But because those avenues have been blocked,
00:06:32 ►
we’ve had to see patients appeal to the public through these referendums and through state legislative actions.
00:06:34 ►
But really, we’re talking about marijuana as a medicine,
00:06:37 ►
distinct from marijuana legalization,
00:06:39 ►
and that should be addressed through scientific research.
00:06:41 ►
So now that there are no other avenues,
00:06:43 ►
and Professor Craker has had the courage to sue the government,
00:06:49 ►
even though DEA has several times tried to get the university
00:06:51 ►
to withdraw their application, which they have courageously not done,
00:06:56 ►
now we’re able really to get back to where we should have been a long time ago,
00:06:59 ►
which is can we indeed do the research?
00:07:02 ►
Now, MAPS, the nonprofit that I founded and currently direct,
00:07:07 ►
is a membership-based organization,
00:07:09 ►
and in a sense we are a nonprofit pharmaceutical company.
00:07:13 ►
There’s a market failure here in the sense that marijuana competes with other products
00:07:19 ►
that pharmaceutical companies manufacture.
00:07:21 ►
It’s difficult to patent.
00:07:23 ►
It’s not something that the pharmaceutical
00:07:25 ►
industry is trying to develop at the moment. There are lots of efforts to develop isolated
00:07:31 ►
cannabinoids, which can be patented, which can be delivered in certain ways, which don’t
00:07:34 ►
have the stigma of marijuana. So there’s a lot of flourishing of research into isolated
00:07:39 ►
cannabinoids, which we support. And we think that some advances may take place that, for
00:07:44 ►
some certain circumstances, isolated cannabinoids may even be preferable
00:07:47 ►
than smoked or vaporized marijuana.
00:07:50 ►
However, there are certain circumstances also where we think that the plant has advantages,
00:07:56 ►
and that this should be something that’s developed and researched.
00:08:01 ►
We’ve got a history now of being blocked by NIDA. And I’m going to briefly run through
00:08:08 ►
that history. I should add also though that
00:08:12 ►
governments right now, the United States government is not interested in funding
00:08:16 ►
research into the benefits of marijuana. They will
00:08:20 ►
fund research into the risks of marijuana, but they will not fund research into the benefits.
00:08:25 ►
And the major foundations are still reluctant to fund such a controversial area as medical marijuana.
00:08:32 ►
So into that mix, MAPS has decided, through the nonprofit context,
00:08:37 ►
to try to make these drugs available through donations from private individuals.
00:08:44 ►
So we are acting, though, as a nonprofit pharmaceutical.
00:08:47 ►
I have a Ph.D. from the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard,
00:08:50 ►
and my dissertation was on the regulation of the medical use of Schedule I drugs.
00:08:55 ►
As Professor Craker can tell you, as other researchers can tell you,
00:08:58 ►
they have to focus on trying to do their research, trying to get grants,
00:09:03 ►
trying to develop the basic science.
00:09:06 ►
There is so much regulatory red tape that many people have been dissuaded from doing these projects at all.
00:09:12 ►
And so MAPS and my role is to try to work through the regulatory system
00:09:15 ►
and help people get to the point where the research could actually be done.
00:09:20 ►
Now, I started work in 1990 with a survey of oncologists
00:09:24 ►
Now, I started work in 1990 with a survey of oncologists that asked them to compare Marinol, the RLTHC pill, with smoked marijuana
00:09:29 ►
and found that 44% of oncologists had indeed recommended to at least one patient
00:09:34 ►
that they break the law and try marijuana
00:09:36 ►
and that they felt that marijuana was safer and more efficacious than Marinol.
00:09:41 ►
I did that study in 1990 when it was impossible at that time to get permission for doing clinical research. The last
00:09:48 ►
research had been in the late 70s, early 80s, state studies that had
00:09:52 ►
looked at marijuana for nausea control for cancer chemotherapy. In 1992
00:09:55 ►
there was a woman named Brownie Mary. You’ve got someone who
00:09:59 ►
works in your ward. She’s facing criminal prosecution.
00:10:04 ►
Do you think that you’d be willing to try to do some research
00:10:06 ►
into the use of marijuana for AIDS patients
00:10:10 ►
in order to try to support her situation?
00:10:13 ►
And Donald said yes.
00:10:15 ►
And that led us to a five-and-a-half-year process
00:10:18 ►
of trying to get his study approved.
00:10:21 ►
Donald is one of the world’s leading AIDS researchers.
00:10:23 ►
He’s going to be testifying in our case as well. And his was the first example of an FDA approved protocol that had
00:10:30 ►
been approved by various institutional review boards that look at safety. And the National
00:10:37 ►
Institute on Drug Abuse refused to provide the marijuana for the study. So that was the
00:10:41 ►
first clue that something needed to change, that the systems, we had tested and we had done everything,
00:10:46 ►
but we could not get the marijuana.
00:10:48 ►
What finally changed was Prop 215 in 1996 in California.
00:10:53 ►
One of the arguments that was used to pass that
00:10:55 ►
was that the federal system of drug review was so hopelessly obstructed
00:11:01 ►
that states needed to act on their own to protect their medical marijuana patients.
00:11:05 ►
After Prop 215 passed, Dr. Donald Abrams was contacted by NIDA,
00:11:10 ►
and they said, now we have a willingness.
00:11:12 ►
We will try to work with you,
00:11:14 ►
but we want you to fundamentally change the design of your study
00:11:16 ►
from looking at AIDS wasting to looking at the risks of marijuana
00:11:20 ►
in HIV-positive patients.
00:11:23 ►
And we decided that that would be worth it,
00:11:24 ►
that we needed to start wherever they’d be
00:11:26 ►
willing to let us start.
00:11:27 ►
And so the protocol was redesigned.
00:11:29 ►
It was to look at the interactions of marijuana with the protease inhibitors and to look at
00:11:34 ►
viral load and immune system functioning.
00:11:37 ►
Knight actually gave the marijuana and also a million dollars for the study.
00:11:41 ►
And to their surprise, the study showed that marijuana
00:11:45 ►
did not hurt the immune system,
00:11:46 ►
did not increase viral load,
00:11:48 ►
did increase appetite,
00:11:49 ►
and seemed to be actually beneficial
00:11:50 ►
for the HIV-positive patients.
00:11:53 ►
We were not permitted, though,
00:11:55 ►
to work with actual AIDS-wasting patients
00:11:57 ►
in this study.
00:11:59 ►
Since that study was done,
00:12:01 ►
nothing’s happened
00:12:02 ►
because NIDA will not fund research
00:12:04 ►
into beneficial uses.
00:12:06 ►
So that’s a very promising line of research
00:12:08 ►
that needs to be continued
00:12:09 ►
but that cannot under the current circumstances.
00:12:12 ►
In 1997, I started
00:12:14 ►
working with Dr. Ethan Russo
00:12:15 ►
at the University of Montana
00:12:17 ►
for a study with marijuana
00:12:19 ►
in the treatment of migraine headaches.
00:12:21 ►
Marijuana has hundreds of years, thousands of years
00:12:24 ►
of medical use,
00:12:26 ►
and migraines have been one of the uses that has appeared throughout history.
00:12:31 ►
We also were able to get FDA approval for Dr. Ethan Rousseau’s study,
00:12:36 ►
and yet NIDA once again did their analysis and said they did not consider the protocol to be scientifically meritorious,
00:12:42 ►
and they refused to provide the marijuana.
00:12:42 ►
they did not consider the protocol to be scientifically meritorious and they refused to provide the marijuana.
00:12:45 ►
What I should highlight, though, is that we’re not asking NIDA to give us marijuana.
00:12:50 ►
We’re asking to purchase marijuana from NIDA.
00:12:53 ►
This doesn’t cost the government a penny.
00:12:55 ►
We’re willing to pay for the studies ourselves.
00:12:57 ►
We’re willing to purchase the marijuana from the government.
00:13:00 ►
And yet, under those circumstances, we could not do it.
00:13:03 ►
So with two FDA-approved protocols that NIDA refused to provide marijuana,
00:13:07 ►
I recognized that there was two fundamental prerequisites that needed to take place
00:13:12 ►
before we could launch a realistic drug development effort.
00:13:16 ►
One of them was that we needed our own independent source of supply.
00:13:19 ►
The other was that we needed to develop a non-smoking delivery system
00:13:24 ►
that would address the issue of the smoking of marijuana.
00:13:28 ►
And that system is the vaporizer.
00:13:30 ►
Now, I want to emphasize that I think a rational risk-benefit analysis
00:13:34 ►
with high potency marijuana, higher than what NIDA provides,
00:13:38 ►
I do not believe that that will show that it is too risky for patients to smoke marijuana.
00:13:45 ►
There’s just been Dr. Donald Tashkin,
00:13:47 ►
who’s been the leading researcher funded by NIDA for decades
00:13:50 ►
into the effect of marijuana on lung function.
00:13:52 ►
He’s just done a large epidemiological study
00:13:54 ►
and has found that marijuana is not linked to lung cancer.
00:13:58 ►
In fact, there was a slight protective effect.
00:14:00 ►
So this common understanding that marijuana cannot be a medicine
00:14:04 ►
because it’s smoked is not data driven
00:14:06 ►
I think that smoked marijuana can probably
00:14:10 ►
be made into a medicine that FDA would approve
00:14:13 ►
however because of the social concerns about smoking
00:14:15 ►
and because vaporizing does eliminate
00:14:18 ►
the combustion products that are what are considered
00:14:22 ►
most harmful in smoked marijuana,
00:14:25 ►
I think that we have a much, much better chance of getting through the FDA with vaporized marijuana.
00:14:29 ►
Vaporized means you heat the marijuana almost to the point that it burns, but you don’t burn it.
00:14:33 ►
You get a steam that comes off the marijuana plant,
00:14:36 ►
and that steam contains various cannabinoids that have therapeutic effects.
00:14:41 ►
So MAPS, in association with California Normal, and Dale Gerringer is here
00:14:46 ►
from California Normal, we started a
00:14:48 ►
series of projects looking at, first
00:14:50 ►
off, water pipes, whether water pipes helped.
00:14:52 ►
We found out that they did not in terms of reducing
00:14:54 ►
the particulate matter.
00:14:56 ►
But we found early hints that
00:14:58 ►
vaporizing did help.
00:15:00 ►
So we have then tried to get
00:15:02 ►
a sequence of studies done with
00:15:04 ►
vaporizing just last week,
00:15:05 ►
just in time for this hearing.
00:15:08 ►
The Health and Human Services refused to provide chemically
00:15:12 ►
laboratories with 10 grams of marijuana for our vaporizer research.
00:15:18 ►
We are the only people in America that cannot find 10 grams of marijuana
00:15:22 ►
after trying for two years.
00:15:24 ►
not find 10 grams of marijuana after trying for two years.
00:15:33 ►
Chemek Labs, and I think that what NIDA is really scared of is the vaporizer gets around the concerns about smoking.
00:15:36 ►
I believe vaporized marijuana can make it through the FDA. So over two years ago, Kimmick applied for these 10 grams,
00:15:46 ►
and it took suing the government
00:15:51 ►
in the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals,
00:15:52 ►
arguing unreasonable delay,
00:15:54 ►
and that did not work, actually.
00:15:56 ►
That worked for Professor Krager.
00:15:57 ►
Professor Krager had applied in 2001.
00:16:00 ►
We had to sue the DEA
00:16:01 ►
and the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals
00:16:02 ►
just to get them to say no.
00:16:04 ►
Finally, the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals said that the DEA had to respond to his application,
00:16:10 ►
but that not enough time had gone by to constitute unreasonable delay for the vaporizer research.
00:16:15 ►
And it took this court date to get them to finally review the simple protocol for the vaporizer study.
00:16:23 ►
Now, the fact that they’ve refused to permit us to do the vaporizer study,
00:16:28 ►
the fact that two FDA-approved protocols have been rejected,
00:16:31 ►
means that no drug development can really take place
00:16:34 ►
until we get our own independent source of supply.
00:16:38 ►
Fortunately, we were able to use some preliminary data from the vaporizer research
00:16:42 ►
to submit to Dr. Donald Abrams.
00:16:45 ►
He submitted it to the FDA.
00:16:47 ►
The FDA permitted a human clinical study with vaporization.
00:16:51 ►
It took place at UC San Francisco.
00:16:52 ►
The data is being analyzed right now.
00:16:54 ►
And so vaporizers have been used in clinical research.
00:16:58 ►
So that’s one of the two prerequisites.
00:17:00 ►
The other, of course, is our own independent source of supply.
00:17:03 ►
We believe that eventually with the more attention being
00:17:07 ►
focused on this the better that the government will not be able to
00:17:11 ►
sustain the hypocritical situation of calling for more
00:17:15 ►
research on the one hand and blocking research on the other
00:17:18 ►
so I’d like to then just
00:17:20 ►
really open it up to questions
00:17:22 ►
look at your docket number that you have then just really open it up to questions.
00:17:30 ►
Look at your docket number that you have in the press packet,
00:17:37 ►
and you say that this is for a manufacturer of a Schedule I controlled substance.
00:17:39 ►
It doesn’t say anything about research. Is this about establishing an independent supply of marijuana, or is this about research?
00:17:46 ►
I don’t see the connection there.
00:17:48 ►
MAPS is a non-profit pharmaceutical company.
00:17:51 ►
No.
00:17:52 ►
So we now have studies underway with MDMA, with psilocybin,
00:17:58 ►
where we have our own independent sources of these drugs.
00:18:01 ►
And so Professor Craker will manufacture the drugs.
00:18:05 ►
MAPS will sponsor the research in the human clinical studies.
00:18:10 ►
The petition to report DEA is just about the manufacturing.
00:18:14 ►
When it comes to doing the actual research,
00:18:16 ►
we have to go back to the FDA
00:18:17 ►
and the institutional review boards.
00:18:20 ►
You can’t file these in concurrence or parallel?
00:18:25 ►
Well, no, because when you file with the FDA, you have to identify your drug source.
00:18:29 ►
And the fact that we’ve had two FDA-approved protocols that have been rejected by NIDA,
00:18:34 ►
we can’t find researchers.
00:18:36 ►
It doesn’t make sense for us to develop additional clinical studies.
00:18:39 ►
It takes a lot of time and money to get the studies approved by the FDA,
00:18:42 ►
approved by institutional review boards,
00:18:44 ►
and then if you end it up at the end of the line, you can’t get the marijuana.
00:18:47 ►
So we’ve ceased trying to do actual clinical research.
00:18:50 ►
We’ve focused on the vaporizer study.
00:18:52 ►
I was just wondering if you and Dr. Craker could sort of explain the narrative
00:18:56 ►
of how two of you connected on this issue and where it started,
00:19:00 ►
especially for Dr. Craker.
00:19:02 ►
Okay, I’ll start with my portion,
00:19:01 ►
it started, especially for Dr. Craker.
00:19:04 ►
Okay, I’ll start with my portion, which is that
00:19:05 ►
once I recognized that we needed to have
00:19:07 ►
an independent source of supply,
00:19:11 ►
I set up
00:19:12 ►
some criteria for the ideal
00:19:14 ►
kind of person that would
00:19:16 ►
be the grower.
00:19:19 ►
And it
00:19:20 ►
took me a year to find
00:19:21 ►
Professor Craker. Several people
00:19:24 ►
said that they were not interested because it was too controversial,
00:19:27 ►
they didn’t want to do it for other reasons.
00:19:29 ►
And so what I really needed to find was somebody, expertise in medicinal plants,
00:19:34 ►
a senior tenure professor so that they could withstand concerns about their career,
00:19:39 ►
someone that ideally had no involvement whatsoever with anything to do with legalization of marijuana,
00:19:44 ►
ideally had no involvement whatsoever with anything to do with legalization of marijuana,
00:19:50 ►
and somebody whose primary commitment was to resolving this issue through scientific research.
00:19:54 ►
And through working with various people in the botanical medicine field, I ended up being referred to Professor Craker in the year 2000.
00:19:58 ►
And then it took us about a year or so to go through the university system
00:20:03 ►
to get approval from all the different levels there,
00:20:05 ►
and that’s when we started working together.
00:20:08 ►
I think that Dr. Doblin has summarized it very well.
00:20:11 ►
I was very impressed when Dr. Doblin first came to me
00:20:16 ►
and explained what he wanted to help accomplish,
00:20:22 ►
and again, as I’ve stated before,
00:20:24 ►
the thought of trying to help accomplish. And again, as I’ve stated before, the thought of trying to help people through the development of a new use of medical marijuana,
00:20:35 ►
something that’s been restricted for so long and not investigated,
00:20:39 ►
I thought it was an appropriate time for this to be done and readily agreed to participate.
00:20:45 ►
I think this might be a good place to interrupt the press conference and to tell the story
00:20:50 ►
of Steve McWilliams in order to personalize this issue a little bit more.
00:20:55 ►
As many of you already know, Steve McWilliams was a medical marijuana activist in the San
00:21:01 ►
Diego area who not too long ago took his own life.
00:21:06 ►
And to tell this story, I’m going to begin with a soundbite from a radio program on KPBS
00:21:12 ►
in San Diego that aired the day after Steve’s death.
00:21:16 ►
And that clip I’ll follow with a recording I made, part of a recording anyhow.
00:21:21 ►
I made a memorial service for Steve that was held in downtown San Diego on the same day, actually, as there was a rally in Washington. And actually, I
00:21:31 ►
guess similar rallies were taking place in quite a few other cities around the U.S.,
00:21:36 ►
all centered around Steve and the medical marijuana issue. And then after that sound bite, we’ll return to this ACLU press conference to wrap things up.
00:21:50 ►
When he took his life, he was facing jail time on a federal drug charge.
00:21:55 ►
McWilliams appeared as a guest on These Days many times.
00:21:58 ►
He joined us just last month to comment on a Supreme Court decision on medical marijuana.
00:22:04 ►
He also appeared on our show as a candidate for San Diego City Council in the year 2000. Claudia is a retired
00:22:10 ►
nurse, and she was a friend of Steve McWilliams, and she joins me in studio to talk a little
00:22:16 ►
bit about Steve’s life. And, Claudia, thank you very much for coming in.
00:22:19 ►
Thank you.
00:22:21 ►
Claudia, why do you and some of Steve’s friends think he took his life?
00:22:26 ►
This was quite a shock.
00:22:28 ►
Well, it was a shock to me, obviously, when I heard about it yesterday.
00:22:31 ►
I was very upset.
00:22:33 ►
But in a way, I could understand why he would have been driven to this.
00:22:37 ►
He lived with severe pain from a car accident that occurred about 10 years ago, and he had severe neuropathic
00:22:46 ►
pain that is very hard to control with regular opioids and pain relievers that are prescribed.
00:22:52 ►
Also, he was really pretty despondent about the Raish case decision a few weeks ago by
00:22:57 ►
the Supreme Court, and felt that his appeal that had been rejected finally was going to eventually lead to his going to prison.
00:23:07 ►
And he didn’t think he could face that without some kind of medication
00:23:12 ►
and that he wouldn’t live through the imprisonment.
00:23:16 ►
Now, as a result of having been arrested and convicted, he was not allowed to use medicinal marijuana,
00:23:22 ►
and so he was using certain painkillers, which apparently had side effects and weren’t working all that well for him, right?
00:23:30 ►
That’s right.
00:23:31 ►
As anybody with neuropathic pain can tell you, there really are no good pain relievers out there.
00:23:38 ►
And he really needed the cannabis to control it.
00:23:44 ►
I think until people do have the kind of pain that Steve suffered,
00:23:47 ►
they probably won’t understand the kind of pain he was actually in
00:23:52 ►
and how much cannabis can relieve that type of pain especially.
00:23:55 ►
Well, you may have just answered this question,
00:23:58 ►
but why was he so passionate about this issue of medical marijuana?
00:24:03 ►
Well, he felt that Prop 215 was passed,
00:24:05 ►
and overwhelmingly by the voters of the state.
00:24:08 ►
Even here in San Diego, it had wide political acceptance
00:24:12 ►
by the population that voted.
00:24:15 ►
But there wasn’t any implementation going on,
00:24:19 ►
that the politicians were keeping hands off,
00:24:22 ►
and that he as a patient needed to push this.
00:24:24 ►
And always he had a very altruistic attitude about this.
00:24:29 ►
He was obviously trying to help himself with his own pain,
00:24:32 ►
but he felt a real responsibility to others in trying to get this bill implemented.
00:24:37 ►
And he was actually the person that pushed very hard and got the task force established
00:24:43 ►
that eventually did pass our own city guidelines.
00:24:46 ►
So we can really thank Steve for that.
00:24:48 ►
He was an advocate for all patients in California.
00:24:52 ►
Now, I know that there are some people who were skeptical of Steve’s message
00:24:57 ►
and what he was trying to do.
00:24:58 ►
There were those who suggested that it was a front for all-out legalization of marijuana,
00:25:04 ►
both for medicinal purposes and recreational purposes.
00:25:07 ►
You knew him better than most of us.
00:25:10 ►
What do you think about that?
00:25:11 ►
Well, that is completely specious.
00:25:13 ►
It has no merit whatsoever.
00:25:16 ►
He was very much against even the dispensary system.
00:25:19 ►
He felt that people that were using it recreational might take advantage of that.
00:25:24 ►
that people that were using it recreational might take advantage of that.
00:25:30 ►
He really advocated for patient cooperatives and community gardens where there was no money exchanged and it was strictly for patient use.
00:25:34 ►
He was never a recreational user and never did advocate that use.
00:25:42 ►
I should mention that Steve was actually a neighbor of mine, and I remember seeing him
00:25:48 ►
just about every day out walking his dogs, and he’d always say hello.
00:25:53 ►
What kind of a person was he, and how do you think we should remember him?
00:25:58 ►
Steve was a very compassionate, sensitive, intelligent man.
00:26:03 ►
The first time I met him, I really thanked him for his activism,
00:26:08 ►
that I had silently been admiring of his courage in the face of the law and politics
00:26:16 ►
to go forward with his convictions.
00:26:19 ►
And he was very gracious about it.
00:26:23 ►
I met with Chief Lansdowne and his partner, Barbara.
00:26:26 ►
And when Chief Lansdowne first came into office, he was extremely articulate with the chief.
00:26:37 ►
And I felt that by the chief having an actual personal face-to-face with Steve,
00:26:44 ►
could see that this is a very sincere man that had the best interest of everyone in mind.
00:26:50 ►
Now, prior to him taking his own life, he was facing a six-month sentence.
00:26:55 ►
Now, what was that for?
00:26:57 ►
Can you give us a background on that?
00:26:59 ►
Well, he had been arrested by the federal government for growing 25 plants.
00:27:06 ►
And, you know, according to the current city guidelines,
00:27:11 ►
he would never have been arrested or prosecuted.
00:27:15 ►
He felt that the city police department had cooperated with the DEA,
00:27:21 ►
which is against our state constitution,
00:27:29 ►
the DEA, which is against our state constitution, that when we have a state law, that our state law enforcement people should not go and arrest people, according to federal law.
00:27:33 ►
Right, right.
00:27:34 ►
But he was charged by federal authorities and, in fact, pleaded guilty, and this is
00:27:41 ►
what he was facing six months in jail.
00:27:44 ►
And I think you have said and other people have said
00:27:46 ►
that this is one of the reasons why he may have killed himself
00:27:48 ►
because he just didn’t want to serve the time.
00:27:52 ►
That’s right.
00:27:53 ►
He really didn’t feel that he would survive it.
00:27:57 ►
I met with Steve on various occasions
00:27:59 ►
and just sitting for him was a hard process.
00:28:06 ►
You know, when people have an illness that’s very obvious,
00:28:08 ►
it’s very easy for people to acknowledge it.
00:28:11 ►
But when a person is in pain, many people look at that person and go,
00:28:15 ►
well, you look perfectly normal to me.
00:28:17 ►
But as a nurse practitioner that was a pain management specialist,
00:28:21 ►
it’s very easy to spot a person in severe pain, and Steve lived with it constantly.
00:28:27 ►
Was there, about Steve’s condition, was there evidence that he was becoming despondent?
00:28:33 ►
I mean, did you see a change in him over the past couple of months?
00:28:36 ►
Well, I did accompany him and his partner, Barbara McKenzie, to a federal court hearing probably a little over six months ago. And I myself
00:28:47 ►
left that hearing feeling that I would not be able to live under the kind of pressure
00:28:51 ►
that he was having to endure. He was treated with disrespect and skepticism and just blatant
00:28:59 ►
discourtesy by the judge. He was virtually a prisoner in his own home, and I don’t know
00:29:09 ►
how anyone could live with that.
00:29:11 ►
Steve, to people who knew him and met him, he always seemed like a very easygoing, laid-back
00:29:17 ►
guy, but when it came to the issue of medical marijuana, he was very aggressive. Some people
00:29:21 ►
would say aggressive to the point of being a bit reckless.
00:29:26 ►
And I don’t know.
00:29:27 ►
Did he push too hard?
00:29:35 ►
Well, from my standpoint, I say thank you, Steve, very much for how you did push for this. I only hope that your hope that the city will get behind the guidelines in a way that patients that don’t have the resources can have access,
00:29:47 ►
maybe by donating some land or by providing some warehouse space.
00:29:52 ►
San Francisco is actually doing that.
00:29:54 ►
They’re looking at the possibility of doing that right now.
00:29:57 ►
Our city should be doing that, too.
00:29:59 ►
There are so many patients that need access that aren’t able to get it.
00:30:05 ►
Thank you for coming to Steve McWilliams Memorial.
00:30:10 ►
My name is David Bronner.
00:30:12 ►
I was a good friend of Steve and Barbara’s.
00:30:15 ►
I’m a good friend.
00:30:17 ►
Barbara McKenzie, Steve’s life partner, is going to come up and share some words, share Steve’s departing message.
00:30:31 ►
And Barbara?
00:30:34 ►
Steve would have wanted everyone to know that he loved everyone. And that even though he is not here, his spirit is here, and he wants his work to go on.
00:30:51 ►
It’s been very difficult for the last almost three years since neither of us have allowed to use our medicine.
00:30:58 ►
But with Steve, it was more difficult than even it was for me
00:31:00 ►
because even though we both have constant, severe, intractable neuropathic
00:31:07 ►
pain from nerve damage, his was in his head and there was no release for any of that pain
00:31:14 ►
to go anywhere.
00:31:15 ►
I could at least lie down and get off my back.
00:31:19 ►
He could not get away from the pain ever.
00:31:22 ►
And in the end, it was just
00:31:26 ►
too much. So
00:31:27 ►
I wanted to start this with reading Steve’s
00:31:29 ►
last words.
00:31:31 ►
Dear all,
00:31:33 ►
this is my time to say goodbye
00:31:35 ►
to you. I
00:31:37 ►
came to California and San Diego
00:31:39 ►
to celebrate life and health
00:31:41 ►
with the right to use
00:31:43 ►
marijuana for my pain and suffering.
00:31:47 ►
But the law that was supposed to protect patients like me has been turned on its head
00:31:51 ►
so that no patient can feel safe ever again.
00:31:57 ►
Taking the methadone was only supposed to shut down the pain from the headaches,
00:32:01 ►
which lately has been very bad.
00:32:04 ►
I wanted to stop the pain, but that got out of control too.
00:32:09 ►
I didn’t realize what I was taking.
00:32:12 ►
I just wanted the pain to go away.
00:32:15 ►
But now, with everything that happened, I know I will never be whole again.
00:32:22 ►
I am an advocate and activist for a good cause, my good health. As an activist, I believe
00:32:30 ►
in acting when the time is right. To be an impeccable warrior, I believe that my actions
00:32:36 ►
of not being here can help move the discussion of medical marijuana back to what’s good for the patient without the DEA telling us what medications we can use.
00:32:49 ►
Judge Reuben Brooks is a wretched, evil little gnome
00:32:53 ►
who thinks he can practice medicine and tell me what medications I can take.
00:32:59 ►
After last week, I expect to be called to the federal courthouse
00:33:03 ►
for somewhere to talk about my use of methadone,
00:33:06 ►
and I have to stop here to interject.
00:33:07 ►
If you haven’t read his story, I had been out of town for a few days,
00:33:13 ►
and he had been in extreme pain, which would sometimes,
00:33:17 ►
would always happen, actually, whenever I had to go out of town.
00:33:21 ►
And he had apparently found some of his old pain medicines that he had
00:33:26 ►
tried before that hadn’t worked very well and he apparently had decided to try them
00:33:31 ►
again and he had been getting more confused lately because not only was any more pain
00:33:37 ►
but cannabis also is very beneficial for patients who are head trauma patients because it helps
00:33:42 ►
regulate the synapses between the brain
00:33:45 ►
and it helps clear their thinking.
00:33:47 ►
So he was being impacted on many, many levels because he didn’t have his cannabis.
00:33:52 ►
Anyway, he apparently, and he told the doctors, and I certainly believe him,
00:33:57 ►
and especially I did not find a note, he had used some of that methadone
00:34:02 ►
and he had taken too many.
00:34:04 ►
I found him and woke him up to go to his acupuncture appointment,
00:34:07 ►
and I couldn’t wake him.
00:34:09 ►
I called 911.
00:34:10 ►
I looked around to see if anything was around,
00:34:12 ►
and I found a nifty bottle of methadone,
00:34:16 ►
which I knew was a prescription but hadn’t been there before.
00:34:20 ►
There was no note.
00:34:22 ►
They took him to the hospital.
00:34:23 ►
It was not a good experience going through the coming back that time,
00:34:28 ►
but actually after the first night, he was very positive.
00:34:32 ►
There was things going forward.
00:34:34 ►
They were addressing his pain.
00:34:37 ►
He had all sorts of appointments, and he refers to that somewhat in here,
00:34:41 ►
so now I will continue.
00:34:44 ►
After last week, I’ll read this again.
00:34:46 ►
I expect to be called to the federal courthouse or somewhere to talk about my use of methadone.
00:34:50 ►
I cannot allow the government to decide what drugs I must take.
00:34:55 ►
It’s my life.
00:34:57 ►
I had intended to see my Dr. Janaka, who has been the best doctor I’ve ever had,
00:35:01 ►
and she has been remarkable.
00:35:03 ►
She has gone to bat for us.
00:35:07 ►
Our Marinol bill, Steve’s last Marinol bill at Kaiser was close to $16,000,
00:35:12 ►
and you can well imagine that Kaiser kind of questioned that at first.
00:35:17 ►
Judge Wilhelm Brooks even tried to take the Marinol away from Steve,
00:35:20 ►
saying that the drug company doesn’t have it listed for pain,
00:35:25 ►
even though it can be prescribed for that.
00:35:28 ►
That was another battle he had to fight.
00:35:30 ►
So, I mean, it was a continual thing over and over and over,
00:35:33 ►
and I think everything just eventually piled up.
00:35:36 ►
That’s what he says, anyway.
00:35:39 ►
I will continue.
00:35:40 ►
I am gone now.
00:35:42 ►
I didn’t want to wake and worry Barbara.
00:35:45 ►
She has no idea that I’m gone.
00:35:48 ►
This was my last chance to help the medical marijuana movement
00:35:51 ►
and others that I care about.
00:35:56 ►
None of this was ever planned by me.
00:35:58 ►
No one knew what I was set out to do.
00:36:02 ►
After last week, my mind and body have not been the same thinking is much much more
00:36:08 ►
difficult i still feel very dizzy and nauseous and this was a continual problem that he’d had
00:36:14 ►
since he had been in the hospital and since he’d come home but it also was a problem that he always
00:36:20 ►
had to deal with and cannabis helped not only the pain for that but for the for the nausea the
00:36:24 ►
vomiting too and it had been very debilitating over helped not only the pain for that, but for the nausea and the vomiting too.
00:36:25 ►
And it had been very debilitating over the last,
00:36:28 ►
especially the last year had been extremely, he had really been going down.
00:36:33 ►
But people who know Steve know that he would never, ever want anyone to know
00:36:38 ►
that he was suffering at all.
00:36:39 ►
He always believed that it was his responsibility to help the people because if he didn’t help
00:36:46 ►
them, then there wouldn’t be anyone there for him and then the law wouldn’t be there
00:36:52 ►
for him.
00:36:53 ►
His whole goal was to get people to act and to change the world and do things better.
00:36:58 ►
I think people hear from other things in the medical marijuana movement that I want to
00:37:02 ►
thank.
00:37:03 ►
Steve also was active in the environmental and the peace movement.
00:37:07 ►
He gave really unrelenting of his time.
00:37:10 ►
He continued to push on.
00:37:12 ►
Even when he was in pain and I couldn’t go, he would still go.
00:37:16 ►
He was at several of the last peace rallies that I could not make.
00:37:21 ►
He couldn’t get to some, though, and so he would probably like to say that fight goes on also.
00:37:27 ►
I’m going to read this now.
00:37:29 ►
I know I will not be able to recover
00:37:31 ►
to the pain level I was at before.
00:37:33 ►
I have been hurt by last week,
00:37:35 ►
and that was just an accident.
00:37:37 ►
I believe now, though,
00:37:38 ►
that I will be locked up in some kind of cell.
00:37:41 ►
I refuse to allow the government
00:37:42 ►
to control my life.
00:37:46 ►
That’s what so much of this has been about. My right to use a medicine that worked for me. As an activist, and this
00:37:53 ►
is just, parents really, really want people to understand this, and this is true, okay?
00:37:59 ►
As an activist, I’ve given everything to the cause, all my possessions. Steve had nothing
00:38:04 ►
left.
00:38:05 ►
He always gave everything away.
00:38:07 ►
When we had the coffee house, we could never sell anything
00:38:10 ►
because he was always giving the T-shirts away.
00:38:12 ►
He was always giving everything away.
00:38:14 ►
But it gave him such joy.
00:38:16 ►
Really, the reason why we had the coffee house was so patients could have a safe place to medicate.
00:38:20 ►
And so we could put the stuff up on the walls and give away the free information.
00:38:24 ►
Making money was never a priority of Stephen McWilliams.
00:38:27 ►
In fact, I think it was probably the opposite of really what he wanted to do,
00:38:31 ►
but he wanted to be able to live peacefully, help people.
00:38:36 ►
He loved having people come over to the coffee house, and he loved feeling well.
00:38:41 ►
That was probably the happiest time of his life.
00:38:43 ►
Actually, his birthday uh during
00:38:46 ►
that year when so many people came over to celebrate with him and his mother wants to thank
00:38:50 ►
everything everyone she also was there so um i’m sorry i keep getting tracked off track here
00:38:57 ►
let me finish this i’ll do this one more time as an activist I’ve given everything to the cause of my possessions, my time, and my life. They can’t give more than that. He ends with the words in very big letters,
00:39:12 ►
no retreat, no surrender, love, Steve.
00:39:20 ►
Bill Wilson with Family News and Focus. I’m trying to get to the bottom of why DEA might not want you to do this
00:39:28 ►
because it seems to be singled out as Dr. Craker.
00:39:32 ►
Are you saying that you want to set up a marijuana farm to grow this stuff for distribution
00:39:41 ►
to people who might do private research and then enter into a prescription
00:39:45 ►
situation so that Americans would receive prescription marijuana.
00:39:50 ►
Is that what we’re seeing here?
00:39:53 ►
And in that case, it would be kind of the forerunner to a commercial operation of making
00:39:58 ►
marijuana available.
00:39:59 ►
I want to let Professor Crager address that, but I think Rick Doblin, who is the one sponsoring the research that you are referring to,
00:40:07 ►
would probably be better to begin the answer to the question.
00:40:10 ►
Is that right?
00:40:10 ►
Yes.
00:40:11 ►
Okay.
00:40:11 ►
Yes.
00:40:12 ►
The answer is yes,
00:40:14 ►
that our goal is specifically to make marijuana into an FDA-approved prescription medicine.
00:40:20 ►
And I think that the DEA is doing whatever it can to block Professor Kroepker’s application
00:40:27 ►
because the DEA does not want the research done to evaluate whether marijuana should or should not be an FDA-approved prescription medicine.
00:40:36 ►
We’re at the stage where we’re saying we believe that if we were able to do the research,
00:40:41 ►
we would be able to demonstrate safety and advocacy to the satisfaction of the FDA.
00:40:45 ►
We don’t know that to be true, but that’s our belief.
00:40:48 ►
And I believe that the DEA also fears that that is the case.
00:40:52 ►
While they have consistently said there are no medical applications for marijuana, that
00:40:57 ►
it could never be made a medicine, I believe that they are fearful that it actually could
00:41:01 ►
and that we could meet FDA standards.
00:41:04 ►
And that’s why they’re not willing to permit us to have a facility
00:41:08 ►
where we can deal just with FDA. Right now, there’s
00:41:12 ►
a special review process so that if you have FDA approval for a project
00:41:16 ►
or if you want to do research at a lab where it doesn’t even involve humans,
00:41:20 ►
that you have to have the public health service and NIDA
00:41:23 ►
review the protocols for scientific merit.
00:41:28 ►
And they don’t add anything to the process.
00:41:30 ►
There’s no similar review for LSD research, for MDMA research, for anything like that,
00:41:34 ►
nor are those agencies involved with pharmaceutical drug development.
00:41:37 ►
So it’s only these agencies whose mission is to oppose the recreational use of marijuana
00:41:44 ►
that have the control over the
00:41:45 ►
supply that can be used for medical use
00:41:47 ►
and what we’re trying to say is that
00:41:49 ►
that’s not the way drug development is done
00:41:51 ►
and that we would like to have this
00:41:53 ►
decision based on scientific data
00:41:56 ►
subjected to FDA evaluation.
00:41:59 ►
Jeff Brumfield with Nature again.
00:42:02 ►
I guess the only question I had
00:42:04 ►
was,
00:42:06 ►
to anyone here’s knowledge,
00:42:10 ►
has anyone applied for an independent license in the past?
00:42:13 ►
And do you know what the outcome has been for growing marijuana?
00:42:15 ►
As far as I can tell,
00:42:19 ►
there has not been a private producer of marijuana since 1941.
00:42:23 ►
That’s when marijuana was removed from the pharmacopoeia and there was no legal medical market for it anymore.
00:42:27 ►
Since then, in World War II, marijuana was used in mind control research,
00:42:33 ►
in the Army, in mind control studies that was produced by the government.
00:42:38 ►
There has been no other applications that I’m aware of of anyone actually applying.
00:42:43 ►
The government was so successful in convincing people
00:42:46 ►
that they would never get permission for such a facility
00:42:49 ►
that people did not bother to apply.
00:42:51 ►
So the first application since 1941, as far as I know,
00:42:54 ►
was Professor Craker’s in 2001.
00:42:57 ►
There is a very specific and detailed set of research,
00:43:04 ►
a path of research that has to take place
00:43:06 ►
before a drug or a chemical or a plant
00:43:09 ►
can be made into a prescription medicine.
00:43:13 ►
And the way the current regulatory framework is set up,
00:43:17 ►
it’s like a catch-22.
00:43:19 ►
That particular type of research and development
00:43:22 ►
cannot take place.
00:43:25 ►
The government is afraid of the truth.
00:43:29 ►
Marijuana may be a safe and effective medicine,
00:43:33 ►
and the researchers and advocates of medical marijuana
00:43:38 ►
ought to be able to subject marijuana to the varied, carefully controlled,
00:43:43 ►
stringent FDA-required approval process
00:43:47 ►
in order to have the scientific answer, not a political answer, about marijuana and its efficacy
00:43:53 ►
and its availability as medicine.
00:43:56 ►
We hope that Professor Craker’s legal challenge will expose and begin to redress this reprehensible situation.
00:44:02 ►
Thank you.
00:44:02 ►
and begin to redress this reprehensible situation.
00:44:02 ►
Thank you.
00:44:11 ►
And a reprehensible situation it is.
00:44:16 ►
The medical marijuana story is really beyond Orwellian,
00:44:21 ►
which means, I guess, that there must be some more to it than just mere stupidity.
00:44:26 ►
And I think probably the answer is pretty clear if you take a close look at it.
00:44:32 ►
You know, one of the major constituencies of our own great corporatocracy here is the drug industry.
00:44:33 ►
Just imagine what would happen to their profits if we could all grow our own miracle medicine.
00:44:40 ►
Wouldn’t that change things?
00:44:42 ►
And by the way, if you aren’t up to speed on the latest news about the medical medicinal properties of cannabis,
00:44:49 ►
which is its proper name, by the way,
00:44:51 ►
the potential medical benefits of cannabis are just, I think, amazing.
00:44:56 ►
I know of at least one major U.S. medical school that provides their students with an entire day of presentations each year
00:45:05 ►
about the anti-aging and anti-cancer and other tremendous benefits of cannabis.
00:45:11 ►
You’ll be amazed when you read about some of these things,
00:45:14 ►
the positive benefits that cannabis can provide in addition just to pain relief
00:45:20 ►
and appetite suppressant or nausea suppressant, I guess.
00:45:26 ►
But there’s some really positive benefits to be gained by everyone, I believe.
00:45:32 ►
And between Arrowwood and MAPS, you’ll probably be able to find more of the latest news about
00:45:37 ►
medical marijuana that you have time to read.
00:45:39 ►
There’s a lot going on in the field.
00:45:41 ►
So check it out at erowid.org,
00:45:46 ►
arrowid.org, and maps.org, m-a-p-s.org.
00:45:51 ►
Maps, by the way, is the group headed by Dr. Rick Doblin,
00:45:56 ►
who you heard speaking at the beginning of this program
00:45:59 ►
at the press conference that was put on.
00:46:02 ►
And Rick and Maps are also the co-sponsors with Planque Norte of this year’s Burning Man lectures.
00:46:09 ►
In fact, if you go to our website at matrixmasters.com,
00:46:13 ►
that’s M-A-T-R-I-X-M-A-S-T-E-R-S dot com, matrixmasters.com,
00:46:20 ►
and click the podcast link at the top of the page,
00:46:23 ►
and click the podcast link at the top of the page,
00:46:28 ►
you’ll see that podcast of Psychedelic Salon No. 5 was a podcast of Dr. Doblin’s talk from the 2004 Burning Man lectures.
00:46:35 ►
And it’s titled,
00:46:36 ►
Psychedelics and Marijuana, Therapy, Recreation, and Politics.
00:46:40 ►
And I think it’s really a terrific presentation.
00:46:43 ►
You’ve got to go check it out if you haven’t already heard it.
00:46:47 ►
Well, I guess that’s about it for this session of the Psychedelic Salon.
00:46:52 ►
I hope you’ve enjoyed it as much as I have.
00:46:55 ►
A big thank you, of course, goes out to our friends,
00:46:58 ►
for the use of their music here in the Psychedelic Salon.
00:47:02 ►
And thanks to KPBS, streaming live on kpbs.org.
00:47:08 ►
And their guest, Claudia.
00:47:09 ►
And to all of the friends of Steve McWilliams.
00:47:12 ►
He will really be missed, but not forgotten.
00:47:17 ►
And thank you to C-SPAN and the National Press Club
00:47:20 ►
for hosting the press conference for the ACLU.
00:47:23 ►
And let’s all of us keep up the good work.
00:47:26 ►
We’re all in this together, you know.
00:47:28 ►
So for now, this is
00:47:30 ►
Lorenzo, signing off
00:47:32 ►
from cyberdelic space.
00:47:34 ►
Be well, my friends. Thank you.